Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she's half crazy
But that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.
And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you'll trust him
For he's touched your perfect body with his mind.
Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that you can trust her
For she's touched your perfect body with her mind.

Ah the persimmon, a word from an extinct language of the Powatan people of the tidewater Virginia, spoken until the mid 18th C when its Blackfoot Indian speakers switched to English. It was putchamin, pasiminan, or pessamin, then persimmon, a fruit. Like the tomato, it is a ‘true berry’.
 
Here in this postcard we have a painting of four kaki: the Japanese persimmon. Of these four fruit, one is nearly ripe; three are yet to ripen. They have been picked three days and shelter under crinkled leaves, still stalked. Now, the surface on which these astringent, tangy fruit rest, isn’t it wondrous in its blue and mottled green? It is veined, a ceramic surface perhaps? The blue-green mottled, veined surface catches reflected light; the shadows are delicate but intense.
 
You told me that it troubled you to read my stories because so often they stepped between reality and fantasy, truth and playful invention. When you said this I meant to say (but we changed the subject): I write this way to confront what I know to be true but cannot present verbatim. I have to make into a fiction my remembered observations, those intense emotions of the moment. They are too precious not to save, and like the persimmon benefit from laying out in the sun to dry: to be eaten raw; digested to rightly control my ch’i, and perhaps your ch’i too.
 
So today a story about four kaki, heart-shaped hachiya, and hidden therein those most private feelings, messages of love and passion, what can be seen, what is unseen, thoughts and un-thoughts, mysteries and evasions.
 
                                                                            ----
 
 
Professor Minoru retired last year and now visits his university for the occasional show of his former colleagues and their occasionally-talented students. He spends his days in his suburban house with its tiny non-descript garden: a dog run, a yard no less. No precious garden. It is also somewhere (to his neighbours’ disgust) to hang wet clothes. It is just grass surrounded by a high fence. He walks there briefly in the early morning before making tea and climbing the stairs to his studio.
 
The studio runs the whole length of his house. When his wife Kinako left him he obliterated any presence of her, left his downtown studio, and converted three rooms upstairs into one big space. This is where Mosuku, his beautiful Akita, sleeps, coming downstairs only to eat and defecate in the small garden. Minoru and Mosuku go out twice each day: to midday Mass at the university chaplaincy; to the park in the early evening to meet his few friends walking their dogs. Otherwise he is solitary except for three former students who call ‘to keep an eye on the old man’.
 
He works every day. He has always done this, every day. Even in the busiest times of the academic year, he rose at 5.0am to draw, a new sheet of mitsumatagami placed the night before on his worktable ready. Ready for the first mark.
 
Imagine. He has climbed the stairs, tea in his left hand, sits immediately in front of this ivory-coloured paper, places the steaming cup to his far left, takes a charcoal stick, and  . . . the first mark, the mark from the world of dreams, memories, regrets, anxieties, whatever the night has stored in his right hand appears, progresses, forms an image, a sketch, as minutes pass his movement is always persistence, no reflection or studied consideration, his sketch is purposeful and wholly his own. He has long since learnt to empty his hand of artifice, of all memory.
 
When Kinako left he destroyed every trace of her, and of his past too. So powerful was his intent to forget, he found he had to ask the way to Shinjuko station, to his studio in the university. He called in a cleaning company to remove everything not in two boxes in the kitchen (of new clothes, his essential documents, 5 books, a plant, Mosuko’s feeding bowl). They were told (and paid handsomely) to clean with vigour. Then the builders and decorators moved in. He changed his phone number and let it be known (to his dog walker friends) that he had decided from now on to use an old family name, Sawato. He would be Sawato. And he was.
 
His wife, and she was still that legally, had found a lover. Kinako was a student of Professor Minoru, nearly thirty years younger, and a fragile beauty. She adored ‘her professor’, ‘her distinguished husband’, but one day at an opening (at Kinosho Kikaku – Gallery 156) she met an American artist, Fern Sophie Citron, and that, as they say in Japan, was that. She went back to Fern’s studio, where this rather plump middle-aged woman took photographs of Kinako relentlessly in costume after costume, and then without any costume, on the floor, in the bath, against a wall, never her whole body, and always in complete silence. Two days later she sent a friend to collect her belongings and to deliver a postcard to her husband. It was his painting of four persimmon. Persimmon (1985) 54 by 36 cm, mineral pigment on paper.
 
‘Hiroshi’, she wrote in red biro, ‘I am someone else now it is best you do not know. Please forgive’.
 
Sawato’s bedroom is on the ground floor now. There is a mat that is rolled away each morning. On the floor there are five books leaning against each other in a table-top self-standing shelf. The Rule of St Benedict (in Latin), The I-Ching (in Chinese), The Odes of Confucius, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (10th C folk tale) and a manual of Go, the Shogi Zushiki. Placed on a low table there is a laptop computer connected to the Internet, and beside the computer his father’s Go board (of dark persimmon wood), its counters pebbles from the beach below his family’s home. Each game played on the Internet he transcribes to his physical board.
 
He ascribes his mental agility, his calm and perseverance in his studio practice, to his nightly games of Go in hyperspace. He is an acknowledged master. His games studied assiduously, worldwide.
 
For 8 months in 1989 he studied the persimmon as still-life. He had colleagues send him examples of the fruit from distant lands. The American Persimmon from Virginia, the Black Persimmon or Black Sapote from Mexico (its fruit has green skin and white flesh, which turns black when ripe), the Mabolo or Velvet-apple native to Philippines - a bright red fruit when ripe, sometimes known as the Korean Mango, and more and more. His studio looked like a vegetable store, persimmons everywhere. He studied the way the colours of their skins changed every day. He experimented with different surfaces on which to place these tannin-rich fruits. He loved to touch their skins, and at night he would touch Kinako, his fingers rich from the embrace of fifty persimmon fruits, and she . . . she had never known such gentleness, such strength, such desire. It was as though he painted her with his body, his long fingers tracing the shape of the fruit, his tongue exploring each crevice of her long, slim, fruit-rich body. She had never been loved so passionately, so completely. At her desk in the University library special collection, where she worked as a researcher for a fine art academic journal, she would dream of the night past and anticipate the night to come, when, always on her pillow a different persimmon, she would fall to ****** and beyond.
 
Minoru drew and painted, printed and photographed more persimmons than he could keep track of. After six months he picked seven paintings, and a collection of 12 drawings. The rest he burnt. When he exhibited these treasures, Persimmon (1989) Mineral pigment on paper 54, by 36 cm was immediately acquired by Tokyo National Museum. It became a favourite reproduction, a national treasure. He kept seeing it on the walls of houses in magazines, cheap reproductions in department stores, even on a TV commercial. Eventually he dismissed it, totally, from his ever-observant, ever-scanning eyes. So when Kinako sent him the postcard he looked at it with wonder and later wrote this poem in his flowing hand using the waka style:
 
 
*Ah, the persimmon
Lotus fruit of the Gods
 
Heartwood of a weaver’s shuttle,
The archer’s bow, the timpanist sticks,
 
I take a knife to your ripe skin.
Reveal or not the severity of my winter years.

Awaking blithe each morning,
with eyes upon the World,
I wonder, are we mourning
with ebon flags unfurled –
or are they but a warning,
some draped like snakes and curled,
stray stars and stripes adorning,
sent from the netherworld.

I wander through the garden
with nothing on my mind
and say 'I beg your pardon'
alarmed at what I find
as winds begin to harden
and fate begins to grind.

Confused, I watch my neighbours,
they're wide-eyed, unafraid
to halt all useful labours
and join the death brigade;
the ritters rattle sabres,
the frail and fragile fade,
morticians tap on tabors,
the potentates parade.

The military blesses
(in tunics somewhat browned)
its crimson-stained successes,
hell bent and heaven bound.
Such scenes no more distress us:
a ****** battleground,
dissevered heads with tresses
and arms and legs abound;
the fourth estate suppresses
the heaps of bodies  found
(collateral excesses
discarded in a mound).

Society regresses,
now living by the sword,
with torture and its stresses
upon a waterboard;
a captive kid confesses,
his innocence ignored -
fallacious facts and guesses,
the guts of justice gored!

With canting vindication
a big brass bully brags
(with pearls of perspiration
and swollen tongue that gags)
of third world  subjugation
for gelt and oily swags,
of human rights' castration,
and on and on it drags.

The manifold migration
of refugees in rags
while searching for salvation
soon finds compassion lags;
uprooted populations
are fleeing from their flags
else dying of starvation
as naked hunger nags.

With trump cards politicking,
two little hands (all thumbs)
may send the Mad Dog siccing.
Insane! All sense succumbs.

Atomic timepiece ticking
until the Reaper comes
as Geiger counters clicking
drown out the droning drums.

Cast out for not conforming,
I wander day by day
to find the earth deforming
as nature wastes away,
with bees no longer swarming
(expunged with garden spray)
and ocean depths transforming
(neath plastic overlay).

With CO2 performing
the climate's led astray,
the atmosphere's been warming,
the grasses ashen gray,
eternal tempest storming
while permafrosts decay,
and ozone holes are forming
in deadly disarray.

The people profiteering
descend a slip'ry *****
destroying, never fearing        
of running out of rope;
instead they sit back sneering
“our wealth’s your only hope”.

Yes, Armageddon's nearing,
it's doubtful that we'll cope,
for Evolution's jeering,
she's scanned our horoscope:
we'll soon be disappearing
with whale and antelope.


           Epitaph

The multitudes were jumbled,
some milling ’round the mall,
while politicians bumbled
when bracing for the brawl.

The World around us rumbled,
our backs against the wall,
as bombs were tossed and tumbled
across our broken ball.

My kneecaps creaked and crumbled
but I, too proud to crawl,
took but a step and stumbled  
yet found no place to fall.

And no one heard me grumble
although I tried to call,
or maybe I just mumbled,
as strength began to pall.

Well now the World’s been humbled
I seek an urban sprawl,
but since the feuds were fumbled
there’s nothing left at all.

by simply watching 'don't call me crazy'
with regards to mental health... a bbc3 documentary.

i find a few pointers, apart from the fact that i've learned
English to a standard that i could
be misjudged as a native, what with african psychiatrists
   and the history of England as  a postcolonial nation...
     the problems of premature depression
and other divergences from the "norm"
  (or is that a tu-dum tss... "the norm"?
i never know how to tell the joke a proper
way, so many jokes are mothered
by punctuation, i don't know
how many there are that aren't) -
so aside from that... the fact that i'm
faking being British... if you have any grievances
against me: you'd better me Ukranian
or Lithuanian... otherwise? *******.
yes, i know the Poles did terrible things,
Vlad wasn't the only person ready to
do sadistic **** on people by impaling them
on sharpened-wooden poles...
   and you thought the crucifix was bad...
but oh look... the artists inserted a peddle-stool
so he could stand while on the cross...
rather than actually: hang from it.
talk about a woman faking an ******.
then again: he was all kissy-kissy with
a centurion having cured the ravaging libido
of his "demon possessed" daughter who
had a hot bagel flirt under her skirt for him...
or as i say: **** a prostitutes
           **** for an extra ten quid: the sigma
of how many ***** that thing has seen
turns your tongue into a dagger...
that's where i have seen my salvation:
   not in the eucharist or degrading symbols
of a godly stature.
       no, the point is:
this misapprehension of where the origin of
thinking resides...
  the true materialists posit the origin of thought
in the brain... but, honey-bee, the brain
is preoccupied with its materialistic responsibilities...
to shoot adrenaline when bungee jumping...
why think it isn't already preoccupied with anything
but thought? the brain doesn't think
no more than the heart might... or your *******
wetted or your phallus becoming *****...
there's no point in ascribing thought to the brain,
even if you abstract the source of thinking
toward the brain as a *mind,
     the suggestion parallels what the brain does,
and what the brain isn't...
   as with the notion of god...
          ridiculous for most people:
or also ridiculous when man is taught to stress
his "individuality"...
                               both seem on equal footing
to be considered phantoms, but the individual is
more of a phantom than god...
                             and as Diogenes of Sinope found out:
you'll find god and the Archimedean eureka
quicker than finding an honest man -
who takes a candle at noon into a market square?
     ah: that famous lunacy...
but in the beginning the word was with god,
       yes, because when we started we only said ooh ooh!
and made those frightening monkey faces to
war off evil spirits and the Arabic third eye, evil.
   Darwinism created historical fiction...
           a bit like science fiction, but instead of looking
forward, historical fiction is looking back,
toward a time when people struggled against
the elements, and had no sense of having to think
given their actual pentagram equilibrium was tuned
into what was around them...
                   the senses could never deviate from
the world of shouting down a cave and hearing echo,
it's only when thought emerged and conceived words
   that the dubiousness of simple musing:
chicken or egg first? created auxiliary sense perceptions...
   we have left the sensual world...
           for we have "enriched" our lives with
thinking, the byproduct of which is what scared me
about this bbc3 documentary... that all mental
illness stems from allow thought to automate itself...
      in other words having no moral compass...
in other words: not having read a single book
   and learned a process of equating thinking with
narrating... as a sensible option to what others tend
to do (the innovators), and allow narration to be a void...
into which they pour all their thinking to
fill that void... with, say, Thomas Edison and the lightbulb...
Isaac Newton and gravity...
it's just scary that people can allow automated thinking,
     made even more evident that counters
the punitive transgender pronoun scenario
   that only focuses on the pronouns: he, it, she.
these youngsters in the documentary are dealing with
submitting to a pronoun focus of: i, it, you.
                      in some vague sense of a religiosity,
that they cannot allow cogito ergo sum into their minds,
a possessiveness of body, that later translates
into an identification with the mind: which is -
well, if you're going to posit the origin of thinking
in your brain, which isn't even there - you mind
as well posit the mind, seeing how the soul
is argued against primarily through our mortal condition.
   is the eye the window to the soul?
  and the brain merely a paraphrasing of that statement?
perhaps...
              but i wouldn't be too worried
             as Walter Benjamin was about art in the age
of mechanical reproduction... i'd be worried
that art is bound to the morgue of psychiatric institutions...
that art is not a term that suggest the origins of
   such ailments:
due the original lack of it in such places:
  but that that it was never there... and that finding
art can be therapeutic is why art can be scolded
               and establishment art is nothing more
than the pinnacle of us, having abused words,
waging fewer and fewer words, can't produce
    a work of beauty... merely a work that occupies
a space.
                art = space...
          that's the statement these days...
being oversaturated with scientific assurances has created
this insurgence of over-competence or making
art not art in a sense timelessness, as in Dante's
comedy isn't equal to space,
            but that it's equal to timelessness...
    or a statue by Donatello...
                          these days art = space...
because it's not going to be timeless... it was once
the iconoclasm in metaphor of: the lion of Judea...
          Lucifer as the morning star...
                         it will not be timeless because it
has been reduced to the establishment's aesthetic
of tracey emins' unmade bed... or
       damien hirst's the physical impossibility
of death in the mind of someone living -
i never said these things aren't art... some people
said cubism would never be art compared to
surrealism... but shove a triangle into Pythagoras'
head and you get some sort of mathematics...
              it's based on that principle...
what wouldn't work in the case of hirst would be
to put a cancerous tumour into a plastic cage...
people would associate it as some sort of atomist
representation of a nanometre worth's of some
larger thing... i do appreciate the fact that big
art works... it needs so much face to embody
the fact that you are to think about it...
                         and not to have a **** over it:
it's art that's anti-arousal and more and more
and more about how to juxtapose it in your mind,
always to abstract the brain as the mind
   and to never appreciate the idea of having
to source thinking as solely endemic to the brain...
the brain is busy, the heart is busy...
            we have perpetuated an outer-body
experience throughout our time since the time when
we first acquired the phonos of thought...
                 and it is a peculiar "sound", thought...
a dance memorable to actually having a hope in
possessing a soul... even after all sturdy things
shrink into the obsolete, and even vegetable.
but the piece i'm referring to?
     kinda paradoxical... given that a shark would
probably eat you... but then again counter-paradoxical
given the fact that most shark-attacks
     make the shark refrain from eating you,
but merely nibbling on you and leaving you alive
albeit nibbled on... maned... with scars...
so i get the part where the shark is in fact:
an impossible death to conceive... only for the lucky few.
  apart from the fact that the shark is caged
like a prehistoric mosquito lodged in amber...
              woodland gold, amber...
  that's the literal interpretation...
                                 but it's still a moving piece,
modern art isn't crap at all... it's just something you
don't get an ******* over...
            take any still life and apply a cognitively
based chemical reaction: stimulate a narrative...
in that famous phrasing, connect the: dot dot dot(s).
    become, in that almost ridiculous sense:
     a Sherlock Holmes... but all that died was about
a minute's worth of your attention...
this is what's fuelling revising a need for television,
big static things... my personal favourite?
that Tate Modern installation by richard holt -
hand on heart: about 3 times...
              i felt like a mosquito drawn into that:
ah the bright shiny light... 180º and a glass ceiling...
that's all it was...
                   art in the age of mechanical reproduction
has to almost ridicule man, or at least ridicule
the idea that he can become an individual,
    as was the ridicule of man that he could become
a god...
               sooner or later any attempt at individualism
becomes trendy, vogue, and magnetises and
monetises a need to mimic, replicate... one punk today:
20,000 punks tomorrow...
       /
           but that sort of mincing is mostly associated
by the bewilderment of our own success...
                           it's almost like a we're engaging with
a sabotage process: deliberately trying to undermine
ourselves by staging a variety of "anti-social" endeavours
we promised ourselves upon a belief in the "individual"...
      modern pieces of art debunk that myth,
it's that modern art pieces require so much space that
gave them the most adaptation prowess over, say,
a puritan's concept of art, as in a Turner painting...
           classical art can be put into a Florentine market
square and be passed by quiet casually,
because it provides an assurance - it forbids engaging
in an iconoclastic vigil, it's an assurance of the past
and how golden it was... but a modern sculpture
in a busy place where many people congregate
without first allowing it the asylum of an art gallery
and people will treat it as a chance to hone on it,
vandalise it, or steal it and sell it from scrap metal...
       modern art requires an asylum to be accepted,
an art gallery is an asylum where people with
good intentions enter and leave appreciating something
that, to the pleb, would get a rotten egg thrown at it.
    and as with regards to how i phrased something
earlier? how philosophy talks of the logos
     that doesn't see the phonos: or the dichotomy
between actual sound, and sound ascribed a
optically-phonetic disparity encryption:
deepened by a self-styled aesthetic of the "ruling elites"...
          and in the beginning the word was with god...
we're merely licking the toes of such a possibility...
         and just you try to bypass the orthodoxy of
encoding sounds with queer spelling...
                     you, in a sense, learn two-languages
with every single one you learn...
   how to say it and how to write it...
                              and then there the how you hear it
and how sometimes you hear different lyrics to
the ones sang...
                         a bit like the Chinese,
who, upon reading the English translation were
bothersome to get rich quickly after seeing
too many matchsticks in ideogram translated as merely
Li Po; i'd too go bananas and become frustrated
and retaliated by getting to Einsteinian grips with
the mathematical alphabet that bore Li Po... i.e. 1, 0
through to 9.
      ah yes... philosophy that doesn't appreciate
grammatical words, or in that sense credible for a biologist
not necessitating a genus to ease any argument,
to actually further it... or to play ping-pong...
   grammatical words are equivalent to the subconscious
given we tend to write some a sense of fluidity...
the unconscious? schematics akin to triangles...
  "images" or rather shapes...
                             beginning with Δ: isosceles...
later varied to the Γ triangle of Pythagoras...
          and as far as we got, a respectability to
not conjure up a square as worthy of encoding a sound...
nearest being the H... and that turned out to
be much ha ha ha.
                   still... i can't come to grips with these teenagers
in the bbc3 documentary talking about
automated thinking! i'm not denying it, i'm not
doubting it... it's just a question:
          how could such a pronoun muddle come about
that you discourage ownership of all your mental
activity? and instead leave a rampant kindred of an
abandoned snail's shell body to wreck havoc?
   it's almost like a a want to refuse to use words...
or encode words... rarely are people told
that the eyes are used as encoding organs...
                   but that the tongue knows no filters...
what the eye ingests... the tongue sometimes can't
digest... and vice-versus... that what the eyes digest
the tongue can't ingest: hence the rebellion
against contrary political ambitions -
   the ears? well: the ears are allocated the heart as
a partner... the tongue and eyes are entwined...
but the ears are allocated the heart...
                     you tend to feel words more than
hear them... because by the time the tongue
represses combining itself with the eyes to
that elevation of thought... your body becomes
autocratically synchronised to a sort of music
of heightened of unanimous response...
             well, it's not exactly a fetish watching such
documentaries.. iconoclasm in metaphor...
  i swear i wrote this before... how philosophy avoids
grammatical genuses... and how all too
ambivalent poetically equivalent nouns and verbs
are to hide our imperfections that precipitate from
art... iconoclasm / anamorphosis in metaphors...
                         camaïeu in allegory...
                   divisionism in pun...
                                       chiaroscuro in imagery...
gestural abstraction in onomatopoeia...
                     just some examples, and none necessarily
     convincing - as ever... this is my excuse
for i am always bound to say language is Alcatraz
   and my escape from Alcatraz is bound to metaphors,
fo

Overwhelming mental congestion for perfection,
Socially influenced blueprints of future attraction.
Constructive criticism given by construction workers,
The labor of family and friends for reassurance.

A solid foundation of first impressions,
Structured walls of growth and development.
Insulation of natural feelings and experiences,
Ventilation to cool down the heated encounters.

Electrical wiring of an emotional and physical connection,
A circuitry of passion and romance with a light switch.
Hardwood flooring for candle lit dinners and ballroom dancing,
Granite kitchen counters for intimate midnight snacks.

An attractive exterior siding to woo the public eye,
A secure lock of commitment on all the doors.
A roof of trust, and a picket fence,
And now, my love,

I’m simply yours.

The Cross, the Cross
Goes deeper in than we know,
Deeper into life;
Right into the marrow
And through the bone.
Along the back of the baby tortoise
The scales are locked in an arch like a bridge,
Scale-lapping, like a lobster's sections
Or a bee's.

Then crossways down his sides
Tiger-stripes and wasp-bands.

Five, and five again, and five again,
And round the edges twenty-five little ones,
The sections of the baby tortoise shell.

Four, and a keystone;
Four, and a keystone;
Four, and a keystone;
Then twenty-four, and a tiny little keystone.

It needed Pythagoras to see life playing with counters on the living back
Of the baby tortoise;
Life establishing the first eternal mathematical tablet,
Not in stone, like the Judean Lord, or bronze, but in life-clouded, life-rosy tortoise shell.

The first little mathematical gentleman
Stepping, wee mite, in his loose trousers
Under all the eternal dome of mathematical law.

Fives, and tens,
Threes and fours and twelves,
All the volte face of decimals,
The whirligig of dozens and the pinnacle of seven.

Turn him on his back,
The kicking little beetle,
And there again, on his shell-tender, earth-touching belly,
The long cleavage of division, upright of the eternal cross
And on either side count five,
On each side, two above, on each side, two below
The dark bar horizontal.

The Cross!
It goes right through him, the sprottling insect,
Through his cross-wise cloven psyche,
Through his five-fold complex-nature.

So turn him over on his toes again;
Four pin-point toes, and a problematical thumb-piece,
Four rowing limbs, and one wedge-balancing head,
Four and one makes five, which is the clue to all mathematics.

The Lord wrote it all down on the little slate
Of the baby tortoise.
Outward and visible indication of the plan within,
The complex, manifold involvedness of an individual creature
Plotted out
On this small bird, this rudiment,
This little dome, this pediment
Of all creation,
This slow one.

.all this is suggesting is: i'll meet you half-way; given that "this" question was always going to hover over "us", given that there's a disparity between English: a people, and English: a language... evidently the natives cannot begin to envision themselves as a lingua franca peoples... no wonder, their language has been "hijacked".... the "xenophobia", but like kevin spacey said: well, i'm here, am i suddenly supposed to, *******? playing the ******* *****-eyed poodle is not on the cards, but at the same time, it's hard to envision this language, as a people... given all the infringing demands of the anglo-saxon economic model into areas, where displacement is rife, subsequently... i can understand the concern of the natives, given that i didn't transgress the base principle: don't **** their women. see what a mild spaghetti-custard blip of history we're getting into? i am expected to integrate, but i'm not expected to integrate. i am somehow expected to be told to do what others want, but at the same time, i'm expected to protect my individual rights... no "parallel" anlogy akin to a catherine perry song? no kitty-*******, just around the corner? i can see islam... you know its prime sense of failure? that arabic would and never will, become given the same lingua franca status of english... you're complaining, or is it me stating the facts? evidently is a language reaches a lingua franca potentiality and subsequent expression, the natives will suffer... i'm not a native, but i can only imagine... what the consequences are... being ram-packed with excesses in ***** purchases... so much for a protected status of international economic ventures... like: i am waiting for the intra-national economic counters... can't see them coming, or i can see them, in a Casandra conundrum variation. there's still the topic of the natives... rarely can the English be allowed an outsider perspective without a sediment of their language being used, by a foreign entity... now, or never, why? you have somewhere important to be at as of: tomorrow? can you blame the natives, given that their language is a lingua franca, and not just, relegation to a national idiosyncracy "pH scale" differentiation? as a foreign entity, you know what i've learned from living on the most outer aspects of London? sure as **** it's not Cheltenham... i speak the tongue, i'm no genius, it's only English after all, it's hardly anything near Mandarin... what i feel sorry for, are the jihadi buggers who were born here, and were never taught their native sprechen... whatever the hell happened to English, and what Islam is jealous of, it came about naturally... arabic was never supposed
to become the standard bearer, the lingua franca of commerce and disinhibiting individuals entrenched... which, implies? i can look at the natives, with a more piercing dedication: excuses... excuses could be had, if, your, language, wasn't as "******" as it currently is... seems like i've reached a status of post-integration... now, i'm asking the language, the sort of application usage cruxes, that a native, simply wouldn't.

                         there's just so much
                           baggage,
that madmen
can carry,
for the "sane" standard
bearers of civilization,
of civility...
    at least some
of these outliers have
the *****
to not cower behind
an insanity plea...
     most of the madmen?
imagine
a tiger in a cage...
after a while...
          the tiger becomes
tamed by
zoological structuring
of its day-to-day...
and everyone's happy...
but that doesn't make
the tiger into a *******
bonsai, a feline "companion"...
beside the point...
  it's when some medical
conditions are slandered,
exposed to metaphor,
misnomer,
             that the madmen
receive the package
of social constraints
"levitating" just above
the state of being dormant...
but in this scenario:
well... that settles it...
now we know what
a level-playing-field looks like...
intellect,
and the debacle concerning
trust...
               well...
i've learned of trust
the upside-down way...
    relationships,
notably with a russian
specimen...
              me, ******,
why was i thinking i wouldn't
be ****** over?
   oh... right...
i can claim all
the responsibility with
what i "did" with a *******...
but when it comes
to the "affair" of a woman:
of free disposition,
i'm suddenly the culprit...
psychic trenches,
there "we" are,
entrenched in some plateau
of what seems to be
Belgium,
   and there "they" are,
entrenched in the same
plateau...
            sigh sigh, one more
for the party...
point being,
   people have not unearthed
the + + + + +
aspect of this debacle...
it's now a level playing field...
everyone is suspect,
everyone is limited...
a true: forensic quest for
democracy...
  all the other incidents
came and went,
always, as if: in passing...
  so this incident can also
come, and go, in passing...
solidarity to what?
to whom?
or rather: with?
            i can deal with this
sort of indigestion
surrounding my day to day,
but before long:
what other sop-story is
supposed to grab my attention?
clarity of intent,
   unlike someone experiencing
a psychotic break-down
of the psychic labyrinth...
a transcendence of
the categorical incentive...
somehow:
  the categorical imperative
was never supposed to mean:
what it meant to begin with...
the categorical imperative
has somehow lost the whole:
living by the standard
of a maxim...
               given that all maxims
are true...
  much harder to "test the waters"
with aphorisms...
            sure,
observable facts,
    then...
               disinhibited fictions...
glorification?
  today i had a problem
killing an ant...
   i was taking a ****
and had a problem killing
a moth that decided to freak
out the inanimate objects
of the bathroom...
       yeah: oh sure, sure,
i'm all for Herod's "conundrum"...
point being:
   we now know what
both sides feels...
         we now know...
       that there are outliers
on either side of the "debate"...
one: i am suspect,
but two: so is the counter-suspect...
no sacred cows...
   no: i think i'll just milk
a muslim in new dehli
for the jyst and thrill of a per se...
- at least now:
s.j.      w?
                or the conservative
mediator crowd of:
      there for the sake
of outrage only on the behalf
of outrage-in-itself?
past the phenomenon,
i can only return to the anti-phenomenon
of the noumenon (per se)...
which is not disappointing,
seeing how the whole "feel"
of it is begs the crux
fathomability of the individual...
just another skim read /
listen to the modern day
                          pharisee...
heavy sighs,
   blinded eyes...
frivolous waggling tongues...
but deep down,
most of the people are
content with having to experience
a revision...
  the revision being:
a level playing field...
   behring just attacked
the elites...
this?
    this dog ***** pile of
media attention?
         good...
        now everyone's uncertain...
i'm not afraid to think it,
and put it into writing...
    after a while:
   you just tire...
   you get tired of hearing
just one side of the story...

      what could leave someone
extreme: glee "riddled"
just leaves me exhausted...
     but at least the schizophrenics
are off the hook...
at least there's still some
belief in personal restraints...
even with a debilitating condition...
at least these people
are not facing the collateral
stereotyping of someone
with: the clarity of intent...

         there's just me, at this point,
thinking to myself:
and why did "they" drug me
to the point of:
making "them" feel uncomfortable...
clearly my mental faculties
have not been
                 car-crash dimished...

welcome the new hybrid...
soul mongrel...
           what is it about the polacks
that has made them so...
immune?
     i guess only recently
Poland has celebrated
the centenary of independence...
i wouldn't know,
i'm strapped to England
in metaphorical strait-jacket
  (what is metaphor
compared to metaphysics?),
   sober, drunk,
drunk, sober, etc.
               i was given a crash-course
in multiculturalism,
i guess i assimilated...
   back in school there was
the popular irish gang...
and there was "my" group...
of all the outliers...
   we used to spend lunch breaks
playing cards...
but when i heard news that
i would only be fully integrated,
once i gave up my native tongue
which i used to speak in
private?
    that broke the camel's back...
the centenary of independence
of Poland...
i wouldn't know...
i'm in "exile"...
   which is: economic "war"
came to where i come from
after the fall of the soviet pact...
and...
                every time i go back
to visit my grandparents...
i am only associated
with that country by speaking
the language...
and boy, it's not so ******* rosy
on the inside, compared to what
is being pushed to the outside...
Poland is like a: death-zone...
**** me, even the Hungarians
know how to ***** themselves
when it comes to tourism...

    i am, in "exile"...
            come to think of it,
most of the Muslims in the west
have it worse,
but i blame their parents...
i had one Pakistani friend
in high-school...
   now that i succumb to
reminiscence... yep...
he spoke perfect Urdu;
    but all these outliers?
   what their parents did...
****** themselves into
an integration mechanism...
not retaining their mother tongue?
like all these,
western jihadi prospects...
speak about 10 words of arabic,
and they are "attempting"
to compensate...
   i somehow feel for them,
a complete mine-field
of a mind-****...
       like being impreganted
by a virus,
a cancer...
     the linguistic dysphoria...
so yeah: if everyone would please
like to make heavy scrutiny
of the blatantly obvious,
regarding the genital region,
and forget a sobering note of
worthwhile problems,
namely the language dysphoria
of muslims, in England,
feel free to keep looking
at the genital "problem"...
            
clearly there's a dysphoria horizon,
i would know,
given that i have retained
my mother tongue...
but they haven't...
               and all they want is probably
so little...
   i remember that my father
once called me
the bellybutton of the world...
referencing me as
   an english child...
  that's how the Polacks view
the English: the bellybuttons
of the world, center of attention,
yada yada...
                 gender "dysphoria"...
you have to be *******
kidding me...
              what about the language
dysphoria of Muslims
                    in the (v)vest?

jak to się mówi:
            tym co się od razu, ma?

i can understand the language
dysphoria, well,
being a 1st generation immigrant...
i can't imagine being
born to 1st generation immigrants,
not retaining my native
tongue,
   knowing only the tongue
of integration,
   it would feel alien...
   like i was impregnated
by a foreign body,
   retaining nothing of my "******"
natural resources...
so... the problem we've arrived at
is very real...
  more real than gender dysphoria...

hopefully i'm less "schizoid"
at the end of this marathon,
and more: relieved to be merely
bilingual...
entrenched bilingual -
            so no, not a polymath...
or rather: not a polyglot;
my maternal great-grandfather
apparently was,
spoke 7 languages,
disappeared somewhere near
Niagara Falls...

   the plan was: England, stop-over...
via Argentina
   and toward the U.S.,
****... seems i was side-tracked
into remaining,
being shackled to these isles.

Mikaela Lagdameo-Martinez has forged her way in and around the beauty industry. Starting out as a model at 15, she’s now started working as an entrepreneur and VIP sales manager for Stores Specialists Incorporated, one of the top names when it comes to bringing international beauty brands to our local counters.

With such a background and how she continues to grow her opportunities (she’s now started a scented candle business called Mink), you would think she’d have a million things in her everyday makeup stash, but the reality is quite the contrary. She still keeps it easy with tried and tested products that do their job efficiently. How else would she be able to keep up with all her work on top of being a mother and wife?

On a Thursday morning, Mika was kind enough to squeeze us into her busy schedule to share her favorite makeup and skincare products and how she doesn’t believe in going over-the-top when it comes to beauty.

Describe your approach to beauty

I’ve always been drawn to effortlessness. For me, beauty is in simplicity and comes in the most natural form.

What’s the best beauty advice you’ve ever received from your mother?

Always put lotion on! Ever since I was a kid, I knew that after every bath came lotion application. I was never allowed to get dressed without [applying lotion first.] I can say I was officially brainwashed until this day!

If you had to prioritize skincare or makeup, which would it be?

Skincare, definitely. When you take good care of your skin, makeup is secondary. Plus, I literally feel the weight on my skin when I have makeup on. It’s not the best feeling.

What is one beauty item you would always repurchase?

Moisturizer!

What is the first beauty or makeup item you even bought for yourself?

I think it was makeup remover when I started modeling.

Name five grooming items you would recommend to any man.

After-shave, hair gel, moisturizer with SPF, a good bottle of perfume, and hand cream.

What are five makeup items you never leave the house without?

Moisturizer, bronzer or blush, brow mascara, lip balm, and my favorite **** lipstick.

What is one makeup trend do you always do I always follow?

Neat brows.

What is one misconception about the beauty industry people should know about?

One brand fits all—it isn’t necessarily true. Most of the time you really have to take into consideration your skin type, lifestyle, skin sensitivity, etc. You really have to try them out and see what works best on you.

Who are your beauty icons? Why?

Cheryl Cole aka Cheryl Fernandez Versini. I never get tired of staring at her. She’s one face that never bores me.

One a regular day, which tube of lipstick do you reach for?

Make Up Forever in Mat 2.

On a night out, which shade of lipstick goes with any ensemble and occasion?

MAC Ruby Woo.

What are your top three favorite perfumes?

Jo Malone Nectarine Blossom & Honey, Hermes Pamplemousse Rose, L’eau Par Kenzo

Smoky eye or dark lip? Why?

Dark lip. Not a fan of heavy eyes.

Can you tell us about your nightly skincare routine?

Wash face with my gel cleanser. Moisturize and done!

What are the five best skincare products you’ve tried?

Every time I’m pregnant I run to my ever reliable Clarins Tonic Oil for my tummy and *******. It’s the best and most effective product for firming and avoiding stretch marks! Next would be Murad’s ****** cleansers. I alternate between the foaming wash and gel cleansers because they’re the best. Third would be Benefit’s Boo Boo Zap for treating zits! Fourth, Maui Babe’s browning lotion. Fifth, Kérastase Powder Bluff dry shampoo!

What is one thing that you think is lacking in the beauty industry?

Personally, I think everything we need is already available. What else do we need?!

Who is in your beauty black book (hair, makeup, skin, body)?

For my hair, I go to Alex Carbonell. He knows how to manage my wavy hair with the right layers, length, and color.

For makeup, my favorites are Gela Laurel-Stehmeier, Juan Sarte, Steven Doloso, and Angie Cruz. They know exactly what to do with my face and how much I dislike foundation. (Laughs)

For my body, I go to Marie France. I started going to them ever since I gave birth to my daughter almost 12 years ago. I actually enjoy their treatments because they work so well and I don’t even have to break a sweat.

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/vintage-formal-dresses

www.marieaustralia.com/****-formal-dresses

This is a three-part, longer narrative poem, seen
as old photographs that follow the main character, My Aunt, Lillian Goldrick, across two decades.  It was written 30 years ago*
______

“Hey Kid!”     Part I

Photographs aren’t fair
stopping the soul where it’s not
in rectangular guffaws
surrounded by serrated edges, pickets, teeth?
to fence and stab in yellow, soft-covered booklets
with designated floppy phrase
“Your memories”

Happier than she could ever be...

A black and white day at Salisbury Beach, NH
hung over his hammock
Private pin-up girl
tilts her head against silver sheen of shoulder
Hair, dark chignon
except for a few wispy curls about her face
freed by wind
bleached by sun

Stopped

...for three decades
Legs slightly bent—long extended
that could stop trains, stop traffic

Stopped

Modest bathing suit, probably peach
cannot hide (not that she would)
the undeniable
And if there were question left
you could look at her smile—and love her
posed by he message scrawled in sand:

“Hey Kid!”

What kid? Where?
In the foreground?
In the camera’s eye?

In the background—
a Ferris wheel, a billboard
and  r-i-g-h-t  there—Can’t you see it?
Look again—behind her eyes
You can barely see it, but it’s there.
Remember?

The Depression
Only ten years before
It was April
Stroke, heart attack
Both of them gone, a year apart!
The priest came
Last Rites for mortally stricken
Candles, crucifix, the Catholic containment
of holy water that dams the tears

Kneeling around the bed
they said the Rosary

——————————

After VJ Day he came
to the house on the corner
of Commonwealth Ave.
She knew he was coming
but she could not be ready today
nor tomorrow
nor next week—or ever...

“Lill! Will ya come to the door?
She’ll be ready in a minute.
Hey Lill! Hurry up, will ya!
They’re waitin’ fer us!”

Upstairs in the dark hallway
her door clicks shut....
________


"Hey Kid"    Part II


The clock at Joe Rianni’s read 20 minutes to 12...

Crowd from the Phillip’s Theater—gone
though laughter lingers
in a Friday mood
in high-backed booths
where only an hour ago swinging free
were high-heeled shoes
legs crossed at knees....

Now on tables abandoned
deserted fields of French
fries lie cold in salt flurries

Only female straws wear lipstick
as do Luckys bent in ashtrays
Males, uniformly flattened
as powder burned, as mortar might
shells, casings—the evidence of war
Among explosions of tickled giggles
one was taken broadside...

listing     toward      stars
_______

...The clock read 20 minutes to 12

when she walked in--
And Rhea stopped swabbing black mica counters
long enough to absorb late-customer hate
and envy that such beauty can arouse
In voice hoarse and weighted like a trucker’s

“Whadaya have, Lill?”

“coffee”

The small answer settled at the soda fountain
and slowly struck a match...
She was falling from the slant
of her black felt hat
dripping off the point of pheasant feather
Gray gabardine suit
tailored from angle of shoulder
to dart diagonally
toward such a waist!
Turned to skirt hips
that arched and dove toward slit—
then seams that run the round of calf

that seem to flow
to ankles of naught—
...and all that seems

Black     high-heeled     above it

Coffee— cold, stale
Gray glassed-in stare
searches air and random walls
of coat hooks, menus, mirrors...
while lips ****** exiled words— replies

Dragging a demon from her Camel
slowly     purposefully
she exhaled a burly arm of smoke
that rose and laid its hand
against the ceiled atmosphere of embossed tin
Then leaning over her shoulder
in roiling emission of shrugs and sneers—

“Lill—There’s no way outa here!”
________


“Hey Kid!”    Part III

After kneeling backwards on their chairs
after nuns, catechism recited
After—
Five of them scuffed through leaves and litter
along the curbing
spotting cars that counted—
Bugs, beach wagons, flying bathtubs
A slower way home of hunting
shiny chestnuts and muddy finds
rare match book covers
and bottle caps that win ya things!

One breaks from bunch
and trials off to where
dimes turn to candies!
...at a dingy luncheonette...Joe Rianni’s
____

Here—behind smeary wall of glass
pleasure leers while holding back
those grimy fingers, lips that long
for jelly fish, gum drops, lollies
holding back the company
of Baby Ruth, and Mary Jane
O Henry or Bazooka Joe!
For less money but the same salivation
there were colored dots to chew and ****
from strips of paper that last forever!
For a little more, plus the sweet struggle
of desire denied
a kid could be proud owner
of a pea shooter or trading cards!
While in the mouth
were golden imaginings—
the chocolate foil of coins
and the candied pretense of cigarette adulthood
_____

Rhea didn’t see her in the line...

Only grownups with wallets and purses
Only grownups get waited on...
...because Rhea was a Gypsy!
Kids could tell!
by her big red lips and hair to match
by the nasty way she chased them out—
“****** kids!”
Only grownups get waited on....
_______

And the clock read 20 minutes to 12

While a child waits—
time stirs in a ceiling fan
   There’s a drift in attention
      along deepening endless walls
         toward a line of sleepy booths
              carved with

“I was here—in such and such a year”

Her aunt—at the last stool—like always
Their names too close
Confused too often

A little girl wonders
about the sight behind the sightless stare
loafers, ankle socks, the ‘40s hair
the gathered skirt that gathers ashes
as they fall from cigarette
held in yellowed fingertips
Tremors crimp the smoke that climbs—

              ...a strobing pillar

“Whataya want, girly?”

              ...the only movement

“Hey! What’s it gonna be!”

              ...in a shot—

“HEY KID!”

              Snapped

Interestingly enough, a city filed with intoxicating dress, yes, I like the chucks and baggy pants, no I do not wear it myself, but I appreciate the look, with the Giants hat, let me write you a vignette, techies tools talking bout tacky office gossip and girls they will never ****, bahaha and iPods ipods iPods fueling a sweet melody for the ride in boxcar boxcar. Yas yad yas

People going to and from work , quieter, contemplative, examining their tax returns, the hat pulled down straight

people, ticking, tocking, the images of content, staring up with amusement, the people talk of beer, of business, in seriousness, the pamphlets, the trends, counters, crawlers, beggars, in solitude, all of them

have


lovers, insecurities, mal adaptations, taking the drug that says that the life is alright, and thats alright

the little town looks so real to them, they, use the crosswalk, they, stop at the red stop sign, they, don't make eye contact, because their purpose is

to purpose, their purpose is their power lunch, a power lunch, of a sandwich, what of a sanwhich?  and what does that have to do with the urban life?  

the power meal, designed with purpose, for purpose, in chairs that are made for rain, in intersections made for walking, in red lights made for stopping

and aliens must be amused, by the order, the roots must be...facinating

It follows my movements
behind a seashell,
every few steps
it drops the cup
over it's shoulder
prolifically it shifts
positions, so do I,
as slight of hand.

If the secret of love
is buried in his armpit,
and it is, maniacally.
Tho' not the kind
you buy at the movies,
of optimist derringers,
smoking guns.
Still,
flight begins when
the sun goes down
it shifts euphemistic trees
like shadow puppets
into walls of passion,
makes bulimia dreams
of doughnut holes,
something sweet
craving bakery counters
and bagels take up
the lonesome place
still ringing in our ears,
my ears,
placards hanging lobes
of the emotionally distressed,
handicapped dangle
I can't move my tongue
...again.
But, they still hear love
whisper their name
just before
the dawn becomes.
Sunny rising sonic
boom that scatters the birds
all  into synchronized
sign language.
We strain,
to hear them sing anthems
over the roof tops,
it makes us happy to hear
every time,
just one more time.

That which Boils Toils
the product of my affection
May I make an interjection,
      I may be at a spike,
my mind may be filled with spite,
       and that's right, I am more than probably,
       more than likely
       overly hormonally irrationally irate.
Instigated, mind you, by your subterfuge,
       incessant, noncovalent, depressant,
actions of will will make me seethe.
For my seething wreathing rampage feels so good.
Too good,
ice that cascades down your back on a stark hot summer day    
The ice, tiny razors cutting tracks down your back.
Racing beads toward the finish line.
And it feels sublime
The pain of the chill counters the pain of the heat.
And that's how I feel when we meet
at that place where I become a monster.
My chill blown westward
counters the visceral heat in my breast.
That heat that makes me want to beat sticks and drums
and call in my army
It alarms me
That's why I whisper
And shy away
And sulk, because the Hulk is who I'm keeping at bay
My enemy is not the one with eyes searching for me,
but my Jealousy who is at war within me.

our kisses were as soft as our hearts & this must be the seed of all that came thereafter,
and all that didn't see light outside my mind.

perhaps our soft hearts led to my current introspection and my disposition when it comes to
pens, papers,
and all that lies
between them in truth,
in confessions by
soft tongues in shaky lips in scattered sheets in paling cheeks and blushing eyes,
in that which lies
between thought and its expression,
between brutal honesty in the heat of an oncoming summer,
in mosquito bites and my sweet blood which attracts this
violence, this heatstroke
sunshine;
it is divine,
like we imagined,

it is hectic like we desired,
it is nonsense and is madness and knows no explanation other than our
awkward silence,
our differences in imagined futures,
our various degrees of love/hate passive-aggressive
actions and feelings and resentments and appreciations;

we both are optimistic but you believe in that which counters my belief and it is
strange and unexpected and before you,
i needed someone,

and after you,
i need to be alone

Removing the little lace dress with its white hem I place it back on its chair.

The white hem radiates slightly enticing my naked boyhood once more

With its lusciousness, a savannah of continuous beautiful evocation

I sit naked and watch the little lace dress with its white hem

See it become languorous and dreamlike

I smell the exotic flora of its continued subtle seduction

It ripples softly in a slight waft of air

Like a breath blowing on a still pond

I cannot resist it, I am the trance of its hypnosis

Nothing intervenes, nor tries to prevent me

As my fingers fall for its flirtations

Once more I acquiesce to the most wanted desire

Of the little lace dress with the white hem

To caress the body of a fifteen year old boy

To become a second skin

I allow it to slide over me seducing my senses

Realizing the counters of my thin syrup coloured form

The words whisper again about my girls’ complexion

About my long black hair, about the body I inhabit, the likeness of a girl

I look once more in the mirror, they could be correct

There is a Mouse in this House.
Insatiable,
He keeps me up at night,
thin fine claws on metal stove tops,
whispering to the birds what a fool he's made of me,
because I couldn't make the fibers of my home work with me.

There is a Mouse in this House,
Immortal,
I've fished him drowned out of drains,
fed him bleach on silver trays,
listened to him choke in air vents,
his chestnut jacket perpetually in the corners of my eye,
leaving reminders in my cereal,
this rodent he refuses to die.

There is a Mouse in this House,
Intangible,
he is not slipping through my fingers he's dancing on them,
quick petite feet tapping on my counters,
fleet and fast like smoke,
I've seen him seep through a clenched fist and still escape with wedding bands,

There is a Mouse in this House.
Impish,
he waits 'till I'm alone to play his music,
the crack and chew,
too early with the morning dew,
he will not play his song for you, it'd be too easy to be seen.

There is a Mouse in this House,
primeval,
he's been waiting,
mapped the walls and painted my flaws,
tactician skilled and iron willed,
this beast knows war far more than my militia mind was ready for,
plotting out insurgencies for restless and anxieties,

There is a Mouse in this House,
emaciated,
what's his is his,
what's mine is his,
there is no sacred to things with tails.
clearing out my pantry,
his jaws now tasting for my sanity,
finished with the:
Rye,
White,
and Sourdough,
he's fixed his tongue on sweat breads,
scuttling with unnatural flow,

There is a Mouse in this House.
Charming,
too handsome a creature to ever be singed,
he peddles on the burners simply too strut,
scampering through flames to test his luck,

There is a Mouse in this House,
Insomniac,
from now until each evening hour,
his paws touch turns time sour.
Ivory teeth clanging out a new ink-printed deed,
he owns the tenant and never even had to rent it,

There is a Mouse in this House,
arrogant,
too self-assured and clever,
cunning, devilish a creature he may be,
but he has yet to get a load of me,
holed away within his den,
his first mistake was not letting me win,
setting aria's on fly's wings to declare his victory,
this furry phantasm is all too aware of what he did to me.

There is a Mouse in This House,
sleeper,
I'm plotting my comeback,
sure-footed,
slow breathes,
and savage hands,
I'm ready,
silent and steady;
this beautiful monstrous mouse had best prepare for battle.

There is a Mouse in this House.
But it's my House.

.you do know that the light emanating from the moon, at night, absorbs the clarity of relevance when you're squinting your eye... of a camel absorbing the light of the sun, in a desert storm of gushing winds... the moonlight become shrapnel... but a distinct ray of light, passes the eye, and penetrates your forehead... as if... the travel of light... bends much more than time... squint your eye when looking at the moon, the uttermost tier of moonlight shrapnel... it misses the eyes... and heads straight to the forehead; funny, eh?

dude... i heard that before, white dude?
that's new...
only Lebowski is a, "dude" aged
over 40...
         me? readied for the wrinkly old
man...
        and it's not Lay-bouw-skee...
               *******...
                               Le-bov-skí -
tightening longbow men's tugs of war,
strings, ****...
  a job for a semi-glad tailor...
playing the violin or shooting
a bow?
                     ah... ah! that's what was
the problem!
          the modern man is just as afraid
as the ancient Greek with
regards to expressing a dialectics...
mind you...
um...
            modern technology?
****... sorry... but this is actually
accurate...
       a "public" debate...
no bench, no park, what the ****
is public about it?
             i couldn't give a **** about
free speech,
i'm a tier above the argument for
free speech,
  me? i care much more for dialectics...
which counter rhetoric...
which counters speaking freely,
or as freely as freedom "demands"...
see...what i find...
free speech that exists in an
echo chamber,
a free speech without
a dialectical engagement...
no... the comment sections
do not count:
i never left any, or if i left any
they're complimentary...
because?
   now... why would i find it necessary
to troll someone,
when i have no reason to do so?
just for the per se?!
just for the per se reasons?!
**** that...
                 it has become a ****-show
of pseudo-solipsistic "dialectics"...
oh... look    a hyphenated word
and "air" quotes...
                        -    "      "
kinda looks like Braille...

                   free speech is one thing,
but engaging in dialectics, another...
right now i'm spewing opinions
that are not defended by dialectics:
i.e. counters...
     but rather...  solipsism...

              there is no modern "dialectics"...
there is simply a pulverizing overt-presence
of sophistry,
again the rhetoric,
  again the rhetoric,
again the rhetoric...

       me? i don't require myself to
the avowal of speaking in public...
         i'm not the one for constitution market
of ideas to become dogma...
but let's face it...
freedom of speech is one thing,
but what counter a freedom
of speech is...
isn't freedom of speech simply
a monologue?
    can't that be wholly internalized?

the critique comes with the concerns
for dialogue...
a dialectic...
           hell, speak whatever the hell
you want...
            but that isn't the point,
the point is, the ability to entertain
a dialogue, a dialectic,
an intellectual boxing match...
it's no good exploring being offensive
by being offensive
in the ideological ring with
a lax on using boxing gloves...

        did sports take over our
perceptions?
   and kissing our middle-man
point of exit for talking out
our differences?
   what the **** happened?

dialectics has died, a boring death
worthy of: in his sleep, aged 84...
if we can rekindle the basis of
dialectics, replace the, "moderator"
with a simple park bench...
     you'll be me...
talking about bicycles,
grand-children, and drinking
alcohol in public with some
retired cockerel...

                 who's old age...
bred an insomnia he's trying to wake
from, by dying.

no... this is not a war against
free speech...
this is a war for free speech,
within the confines of dialectics,
an exercise of...
    why?
      free speech presumes
the posit of undefended opinions...
unchallenged opinions...
oh i'm pretty sure...
      with however many comment
section narratives...
everyone's sheepishly nodding
along...
              
i abhor the case for a "freedom of speech"...
here's my posit:
i am complying with a defense
for dialectics...
which implies a freedom to speak,
but also a freedom to counter,
subsequently begging for a debate /
a resolve / a momentum of what
will forever be known as: forward /
the cyclic ontology of time.

we're all bound to solipsistic / cyclops
echo-chambers of opinions,
whether challenged, or unchallenged,
rarely discussed within the confines
of the canvas of civility...
when the civilians become more
militant than the actual soldiers...
    that's the problem of the citizen stature...
not all civilians are citizens...
some civilians are counter-productive
to the status of citizen...
British Muslims are civilians...
but with their views?
              they're not citizens...
given they're also militarily subversive
of the status: civilian...
hence... hence?! home-grown terrorists!
what?! the status quo asked
me to refine nouns...
     and pronouns...
                  my hands are tied...
              something hits me,
i react by hitting it back...
i.e. this language... in the wrong heads,
mouths, tongues, hands.

p.s.
   oi! white western girl!
"dude" my *** the next time you see me;
savvy?
don't worry... hand does the same
as ****; i don't know,
but i'm sure of the same firm cavity.

god... i can't believe i'm making comments
about this...
but i am.... i'm drunk and rowdy,
not sober & sane reality makes
point at this point...
        in ref. to cheryl tweedy...
"mum shaming"?!
                           not being able to breast
feed in public?
          these critics...
they are not inclined to make a fetish
out out lactating females?
  no? none of these ******* never had
the fetish quest of desiring to drink
milk from the **** of the mother,
so they would not become jealous over
the baby? no? so they jumped head-strong
into the latex gimp-suit fetish?!
handy...
        why would i mind some rat
of a leader worth the vermin of a party
known as the UKIP not bail out?
over a cleavage frenzy?!
             sure sure... **** things up...
bail out... and then jump ****...
good tactic...
                much applause...
******* wankers...
                      i did make one mistake
in my life... believing a 19 year old
Russian girl... to stick to her guns...
and take the ******* contraceptive pills
she promised to take...
i still don't know whether she was...
whatever the hell she was aiming at...
******? i don't mind the rubber...
i'd like some more...
in a latex suit, preferably...
i can't, lie...
   ms. amber is doing the polygraph
"thing" again...
                             i'll lie when i'm
not having fun, then i'm not telling
the truth...
  huh? which milk?
goats' milk... Behemoth's mother
good ****, counters every superseding
cover version of... cow...
              goats' cheese over feta...
you name it... goat has it covered...
creamy yum-yum...
            why would i lie to  begin
with? lying is a focus for serving
an imbalance for both the rhythm
and the tempo...
                              just play me some
drum & bass (base... might as well
throw this one in... bāß)...
i actually hope more mothers
feed in public...
hell... more cleavage...
like... an aversion to seeing a niqab
20 seconds later...
         what?!
thank god some people in Europe
still persist with donning their
sanity kippahs...
         what would the western world
do without them?!
     frown?
            or convert?
         i have actually found an escape
route from the excesses of
*******... the potential bound
to the inanimate picture of a revealing
posit of a cleavage...
   basically a woman donning
an *** on her chest...
and her ******* where her *** ought
to be...
      like fine art...
                     no no no, no thank you
Ms. Frankenstein, i'm not into
your ******- *******...
          but a woman breast-feeding
in public?
                     what's the problem?
you jealous that you're not suckling?
i bet that's it... ha ha...
that must be it...
   not playing out your fetish...
but i mean... like foreplay...
*****-******* and what not...
again... the sunday times
style supplement...
        the life of dolly column...
topic? relaxation...
         how do you guys relax...
one reply reads...
    oral ***; it's the only thing that works.
boyfriends should be incentive-
(please revise the adverb)
           to do it, government- (again...
-ally what?)
well... well well well...
you know what?!
you really wanna know? or are you
just kidding...
all that foreplay begot me thinking...
how about i... play milking
the cow?
       why should the baby
only **** on the ****?
         ooh... double-whammy-mummy
fetish... imploding spiral!
ooh! double-whammy-mummy!
**** that fetish outstretch of
                   role-play *******...
when lactating... let me suckle...
i want to erase the fact that i was
child in the minds of my mother and
father...
i want to be conscious of being
an infant...
                          i want to see
what it feels like to suckle at what...
my father did in a counter
variation of the biological function...
what? Nigel: Nigh-Gel ain't so hot
now... is he?
                      if i was going to father
a child... i'd like to taste what
the child was having...
so we're not competing for
first spot of: mummy's littler helper.
          
i should seriously stop reading
female columns of female orientated
supplements / magazines...
no, really...
              this is worse than ****...
then again... breast-feeding in
public?
          what could be worse...
scenes of Muslims decapitating
veterans, more roughly than
a butcher aiming at caressing
a torso of meat with a toothed knife?

Magazines, newspapers, letters strewn across
every table.
Flowerpots, paperweights, nick-knacks atop
every remaining empty surface.
"Tacky" was the word that first came to mind.
Ledges, counters, and all but one chair are drowned in the mess.
The last chair is the womans.  She used to keep a few other chairs vacant in case of company, but
as she continued to grow slower she couldn't make the effort

and an extra chair was never needed anyway.

mind stands solemnly in the middle,
with logic and emotion on either side
like devoted sentinels guarding a queen.

"don't think about it,"
emotion says, batting her long lashes.
"just do what feels right
and follow your heart."

"but sometimes,"
logic interjects with his sharp eyebrow cocked,
"what feels right will
hurt us in the long run."

"do you want to try, and know, and fail?"
emotion asks with suprisingly honest conviction.
"or do you want to spend the rest of your
life wondering what could have been?"

"would you rather open your heart,"
logic counters thoughtfully and quickly,
"and have a part of it stolen?
or would you rather protect it all?"

as mind wavers in the middle,
she feels herself rip in two.

half of herself stands upright,
stiffly held under logic's watchful eye.
the other half melts into emotion's warm embrace.

her heart aches and she feels sick.
the idea of following logic's advice
would mean to ignore emotion's advice--
and to follow emotion's advice would
mean ignoring the advice of logic.

she looks back and forth pleadingly.
logic's cadaverous stare seems to tell
mind that only logic will solve this problem.
but emotion smiles softly, and her eyes say
that this way, though it may cause pain,
will be the most rewarding.

"neither choice is the right one,"
mind says finally,
with a little bit of logic and
a little bit of emotion.
"but i must choose now, for soon i will
not be able to make a choice at all.

"then whose advice will you follow?"
emotion questions carefully.
"will you open your heart to love?"

"or will you listen to me and protect
yourself from unnecessary pain?"
logic asks, eyebrow cocked again.

"perhaps you are correct, logic,
and i would do well to seal off my
heart and never let anybody in."

at these words, logic smirks knowingly,
but mind continues anyway.

"as for me, i think i would rather
feel true, burning love and have to
live with the scars than to be
lonely, bitter, angry, and old
and die without ever knowing
how to love myself and somebody else."

emotion does not gloat;
she simply nods softly,
encouraging mind to continue.

"after all, is life not a journey of risks?
how could we ever find peace and
contentment without enduring a
few bad decisions and learning from them?"

It is almost sunset but it is still too hot. She sits next to me and passes over a mason jar of crushed ice and lemonade and I take it gratefully into my hands. Instead of drinking it, I rest it against my forehead and allow the condensation from the glass to drip down the sides of my face with closed eyes. I take more of it with my fingers to drench the back of my neck, but my palms burn more for it. When I sigh because this small jar does not alleviate my apparent and immediate threat of heat stroke, she laughs at me.

She is my best friend. There was a never conscious moment that I made that decision, it just happened. Before she'd joined me on her concrete stoop I'd been turning over the idea of whether or not there was an exact moment that I'd perceived her differently, but could not pinpoint it. I’d been eyeing the patches of dirt and dead grass scattered within her yard, listening to her hum If I Ain't Got You out of tune, mumbling some of the more repetitive words here and there, picking out the sounds of her fetching things as she sets them on the counters of her run down kitchen. I try to guess what she is doing as I am hearing it, but feel unwilling to join her. It is even hotter inside her house since her air-conditioner is broken. We are devastated.

After a moment of silence she narrows her eyes against the sun tells me that she misses him. I nod, but say nothing. Three of us sat here last year and suddenly the heaviness of his absence rests between us. She quickly changes the subject and tells me she wants to start jogging because when school comes back around she’ll be thin, for sure. “I’m going to be so ****, I’m not even joking.” I smile at her determination. She talks about a girl in our year that everyone calls pretty, but I shrug. She asks if I think she is pretty. I can only nod my head. I can’t compliment her properly because I haven’t found the right words to tell her that it’s not about being thin. That is not what makes her perfect. Not to me.

I never liked her lemonade, but I begin to drink it anyway, thankful that some of the ice has melted fast enough to be a bit watered down. I don’t mind. It made it less sugary. The first time she’d given me lemonade, her father had laughed and said, “If you eat the ice, it’s like a dessert,” not knowing that dessert was literally the last thing I ever wanted. I have never been fond of sweets.

She laughs a little and crunches away on her ice and I cringe. She knows I think it’s an awful sound, but I’d grown so accustomed to it after the years of hearing it. For her, it was a typical summer treat. It wasn’t even real lemonade. In her freezer were small cylinders of an odd, condensed yellow mush that they’d dump into a plastic pitcher and then add water to. Remembering this, I no longer feel like drinking it. I hand it to her.

“Don’t want it?” she asks. I shake my head, watching neighbor girls sit under a tree with a small dollhouse as I wait for her to finish both jars. I don’t like the way it leaves the back of my throat feeling dry anyway and I never feel less thirsty after drinking it. She sets the empty jars between us and we talk about where we’ll go this summer, what movies we’ll see —lamenting that there really haven’t been any good ones recently and that maybe it’d be way more fun to see if we could convince her parents to let her join my family at the lake house. She doesn’t want to swim at all but seems excited to lay on the dock and get a bit of color.

She wants to take pictures. She rises from the stoop to return the jars to her kitchen sink and grab her camera and we walk through her neighborhood. I trail behind her consciously as she raises it to her eye, letting my fingers run along her neighbor’s chain-link fences, dreading the moment she finds a way to somehow sneak me into the frames of her photographs. She’s seemed more eager to try and capture me now that I am taller. I have grown so much in just a few months that I’m not sure how to handle my limbs just yet. They are too long and too thin and I am strangely aware of them —but even more aware of where she points her lens.

We find out that there is construction behind her neighborhood and sneak past the half constructed fences, large barricades, and signs (Keep Out, Construction Ahead). It is an odd place for nicer houses, we decide —right next to the ghetto. She laughs at the brick wall and shakes her head. “That’s not going to keep them out.” But it looks intimidating anyway. Maybe that’s the point.

In the middle of the area rests newly planted trees shading a small, wooden gazebo. They overlook a manmade pond, just large enough to swim in. She knows me too well. My first instinct is to jump in so she dares me to. Practicing self-restraint I tell her all I want is the shade and I lean against the railing of the gazebo instead. I watch her snap more photos —of leaves, of ripples, of her feet, the construction. She asks again if I want to join her and shrugs at my reluctance. She dips short legs in the water and casts a teasing glance in my direction. Her pink hair looks silly against her warm face and I smile. She tells me she knows I want to, that I’m a *****. I shake my head. She draws it out mockingly and threatens to take a picture. (I cover my face with my hand.) “Paaaaansssyyyyy.” She laughs and tells me to just get in. “You gunna just take that?” I was a lot less eager to break rules, but no. I wasn’t going to just ‘take that.’

So I jump in, glad to be cool. The momentary weightlessness frees me for just a small space of time. I feel it cling to my skin when I surface, but my clothes make me feel twice as heavy. I want all of my thoughts to feel the way your body does underwater. Light. Careless. Far away.

Suddenly, behind us, someone is shouting at us in an indistinguishable accent. We trade horrified glances, swearing we catch the word cops, and we bolt, leaving a frantic trail of water and wet foot prints to evaporate behind us. We don’t stop running until we get back to her porch, the sun fully set, and we collapse against her concrete stoop out of breath, laughing much harder than we should. “Oh my god,” she repeats over and over again with exasperated giggles and small gasps for air. My heart cannot be tamed, like it's run ahead of me. I’m sure I won’t be able to find it for a while.

“Oh my god...” She tells me she doesn’t want to run anymore and I cast her a confused glance and tell her we’re definitely in the clear, but she shakes her head. “No, I mean all summer. Forget being thin,” she says. Suddenly I feel her in that missing section of my chest. “Who wants to run in this heat?”

I quite like the virginity of a fresh notebook
the way my wrists and palms drag across its leaves
breathing life between lines in pink magic marker or the severity of red ballpoint
I like the prickly practical meticulousness of a shopping list:
a dozen eggs
one pineapple
one bag of fresh spinach
one bag of English muffins
one bottle of dish soap
I like the tender impressions of curlie cues and firty cursive
communicating endearments placed on counters such as:
TAKE OUT THE RECYCLING YOU LAZY OAF ******* <3 XOXOXO <3
I enjoy the audacity of a wandering doodle
meandering
cartwheeling
hopskotching
between
and under and over
indices

and spaces
between shopping lists and death threats
i enjoy the lingering ghost of prose shaped caverns
carved onto seemingly empty sheets that carry on for pages
until they fade like whispers into an evanescence
I crave the obnoxiousness absurdity of a to do list
daring me to take a day off from procrastination
until tomorrow
call Gramma
rent due on the first of the muuuuuuuunth
take the GRE
update resume
be awesome. like a boss.
most of all
I love the pain and joy of a poem
the way it slowly leaks from heart to mind to hand to paper
staining
spaces
urgently
faster than muses whispers
barely escaping onto lines
prolific terrific poetry
sporadic spacious atrocious poetry
I croon over the denial of the last page of a beat up notebook
the way the paper hangs onto spirals haggard
littered with stringy remnants of lists and reminders and death threats and poems and goodbyes

Customers have torn open the Christmas
chocolates. Shoving it in mouths,
shopping bags, children’s eyes.
Quiet. We are shopping. as. a. family.
Smoke accordions out of Santa’s mailbox. The sprinkler system
hisses stale air. Custodians ride by on their metal cart laughing,
sanitation chemicals flickering out of buckets.
The 80 year-old piano player is hammering out Schoenberg.
Customers shove lamps into their shopping bags, shove children
into them.
Turn on the light Jimmy.
The ninth floor is barricaded off by old woman. They
have turned the clearance divans on their sides
and are throwing toasters. Down in the basement,
the security staff have locked themselves into 2’ by 2’
cells. Fetally-positioned, their panting echoes off stone walls. Static
sizzles on the array of sixteen camera screens. Customers
have begin to bow in the reinforced door next to the two-way mirror.
A fat man is leaning against it. He has been dead
for over an hour. Restaurant staff are tearing
down the great tree. Ornaments funnel down pop-crashing
upwards from the floor. Three pound ceramic dinnerware crashes
into the walnut bar The customers are putting mattresses in their bags,
they are putting the offices in their bags. Human resources
are backed into the employee orientation computer lab. Customers
have poured Starbucks on the circuit-breakers. The lights are dimming,
Escalators are jamming. Children scream
I want to see Santa.
Santa is dead. Employees calmly walk over  his protruding
belly. The velvet and fat feels good on tired
feet. An inhuman voice garbles
The store will be closing.
Families grab onto shelves, racks, other
families. Employees pick up the registers and slam
them on granite counters. Coins explode out like bells. The rotating
doors are not spinning. They are stuck, crunching on limbs.

who would have thought i would become so obsessed with clean? not
my mother, who’d nag me to pick up all the clothes scattered across
my bedroom nearly every day of ninth grade. we rarely saw the floor.
i’d sleep beneath books and laundry on my half-made bed. now i
scrub dishes, scrub counters, scrub the floor at night because i can’t
stand the thought of a ***** kitchen—little cockroaches scurrying
in and out of pots and pans. my home smells of lavender oil, a soft
mist, air cleansed by a pink-glowing himalayan salt lamp and plants
in the living room. now i put things away in drawers, close doors of
rooms that are the slightest bit messy. now i straighten books on the
coffee table, set the remotes parallel to one another, everything must
be in place. now i floss, wash my face every night, stare in the mirror
and repeat i am clean, i am clean, i am clean. now i burn my skin in the
shower, inhale the steam until my breathing is slow and my sinuses
are clear. i am clean, i am clean, i am clean. now i fold the laundry, stack
our clothes into two piles, his and mine. i make our bed, i organize
our shoes by the door, i kiss the man i love goodnight. i am clean, i am
clean, i am clean. i know what my father must think, i know he loses
sleep, i know there are holes in his tongue where his teeth have made
a home. i am clean, i am clean, i am clean. i know he wishes i still went
to church, wishes my boyfriend believed in a god, wishes i was clean.
i am clean, i am clean.

From the kindness of my parents
I suppose it was that I held
that belief about suffering

imagining that if only
it could come to the attention
of any person with normal
feelings certainly anyone
literate who might have gone

to college they would comprehend
pain when it went on before them
and would do something about it
whenever they saw it happen
in the time of pain the present
they would try to stop the bleeding
for example with their own hands

but it escapes their attention
or there may be reasons for it
the victims under the blankets
the meat counters the maimed children
the animals the animals
staring from the end of the world

On
The counters of poetry
I dock and lock myself
Then
I scope on the bottles of liquors seductively
And spellblind by their syllables
I took the shakers and hybrid
The Similes
The Onomatopeia's
The Nemesis'
The Near-Rhymes
And The Triadic-Lines
Then I gulp fourteen shots of Sonnets
From my paper-glass
And glug a paradox
Or a foil-sigh
Trice,
The knots
Bundling my eloquence
Will exonerated itself
And torpidity will cuff my consciousness
And the droplets remains in my paper- glass
Will impel me
To quest for myriad of them

I'm not drunk!
I'm not drunk!
I'm not drunk!
I
Will slur
With half an eye open
As if the other is broken
Stock on a comedy chair

Then
When the
Limbs of time tread
Will I rush to the counter
Like the athletes at Olympia
And hybrid
The Blank-verses
The Alliterations
The Limericks
The Litotes
The Aporia's
And The Dysphemism's
And
Gulp countless
Yet measured shoots
Of Ballad,with my paper-glass
And unravel the oratories
Of sacred secrets,eclectic enchantment and regrettable reflexes
Aside,or injects the world
With my rugged pins of eruditions
Bestowed in me by the liquors of poetry

I'm not drunk!
I'm not drunk!
I'm not drunk!
I
Will slur
With half an eye open
As if the other is broken
Stocked on a comedy-chair

Again
I will rush
To the counter,and hybrid
The Exaggerations
The Personifications
The Imageries
And The Caesura's
And
Gulp uncounted shoots
Of Epic's from my paper-glass
And
Eulogise my steam and wit
Yet,I'm drunk
And deeply drunk wholly
By a might that mortify me so much
That I've become a slave
In the awe of my servitude

Now and then
Will I weep and wail terribly
Each morning,each noon,and each night
For the great demise of myself
And for an emancipation
From the perpetual counter-cells poetry
I'm drunk,and deeply drunk by poetry.

Deeply Drunk
©Historian E.Lexano

Urban Community Living:

Some days I actually noticed how grey it was
All of this space, here around us
As our half-beaten stone trodden 52 bus
Rolls into its unfortunate terminus.
Terminal more like.

The shops have boarded windows,
Bakeries have bullet-proof counters
Staffed by bulky bakers-***-bouncers
A praised underground centre for perilous shopping
Dodge rival factions on various floors
Fighting for stair supremacy
And burly painted girls with latent spent applause

Some colour on the underpass is some relief
Only it warns of impending doom
for someone soon

Wanderer.
From window to window.
Seeking
             something
in different glass scenes
from offices and trains and restaurants.
Like she'll see something or someone
or somebody.
And the world will no longer be
a tilted painting.

Clear spring cold
papers over
the scene of the city of her world.
She's freezing.

There is a cafe at the end of the
road
where sidewalk snow has mingled
with trod-on mud
from commuter's shoes.
It's called
'Les yeux qui voient tout'

She can smell coffee and cigarettes and paper and words
and smiles and wine all the way from Bordeaux.
She sits by the window.

Tendrils of hair cut
across her cheek
as she lowers.
The seat is cold.
Legs crossed,
                       arms clasped,
high-heeled shoes with straps
that cross,
head bent
over a crossword.

'Un cafe au lait, s'il vous plait.'

Last four-letter word pencilled in so
she crumples up the paper.
The eyes don't notice
origami birds dangling above her.
Somehow
they're all angled
towards the glass window
like sunflowers reaching for the sun.
Perhaps the casual
shuttered-open winds
are the birds' oxygen;
reminders that
                          something
like
sky,
air,
wind,
exist, beyond
coffee-smoked counters.
Reminders that
they could breathe, live, fly
in some other city of some other world.

Cup and saucer on a silver platter
hover over.
Idle fingers
and then a clatter.
She stares down into
the white porcelain pit,
teeming with hot brown
                                           alarms.
It isn't a portal
into
       something.
Just a cup of coffee.
Now that is an alarm.

Slow and
                shaking,
drip,
         drip,
                  drip.
The milk is poured.
Curling, italic, Persian carpet spread
from the cup's centre into warm-cream brown.
She imagines it is
blood in her heart.

She raises the little silver teaspoon
napping on the saucer and
stirs.

'Le sucre?'
Does she want it all
to be
sweeter?

Two packets, long like
Marlboros,
hastily, desperately dumped
into the mix.
Quick and
                  shaking,
she raises the little silver teaspoon and
stirs.
Little sugar grains ******
into a vortex,
dissolved and melted into
the city of the world of the cup.

With her little finger, she
dabs
stray sugar grains
on the table
and tries to bring sweetness
to her sleep-thick tongue.

Slow and
                shaking,
sip,
      sip,
            sip.

She's­ tricked herself
into feeling warmth.
Ticker-tape banner
pops up in her head:
'All of this will not
fix you.'

Porcelain clatter
as cup meets saucer.
Again.
She arms herself with
a cigarette case and a book.
Maybe now she will belong
amongst these people
with sad eyes and burning lips,
clinging on to cups and drinks.
So desperately-lit smoke
trails out of
her warm mouth,
steaming up her face
like a window on a cold winter day.
And meanwhile Camus perches
in her hand.

Her eyes swim
in the choppy seas
of French.
The cigarette dangles,
painting the air grey, grey,
tilting, tilting, tilting.
Slow and
                shaking,
she weeps.

Half-aglow in the white sunshine filter
from the glass window,
a woman is wondering.
She drinks her coffee,
wipes her smudged mouth
and leaves.

Nobody notices the wobble
in her high-heeled gait.
She's just a part of
another tilting painting,
another glass scene.

These simple acts,
           simple things,
define
the speaking soul.
In a scene of the city of the world.

There are women
Short skirts
Tight shirts

Leaning on counters
Popping gum
Smiling at every man that passes

Handing lollipops out to girls with braids
Ribbons
And ambitions.

Women who get undressed
Flip hair, don't care
Sliding into passenger seats
Standing on tip-toes to reach

Wear blue on a golden afternoon
Read books "far too complicated"
Eat messy food with unmanicured hands
Who don't belong to you.

There are women

Can't even begin to squeeze
into that tiny size 2 dress
Don't have the time to stress over
How many times a week
A month
A year they shower.

Women that don't even think about the color pink.

There are women
With babies
And menstrual cycles
With short hair
And Harley motorcycles

There are tough women
And strong women
With tattoos
Degrees
Febreze
Who love other women.

There are women that save lives
Who thrive on the idea of being free
"I don't want children"
"Don't need no man"
Who don't like to sing
Don't like to dance

There are women who are loud
Who take tokes
and laugh at jokes
Women with hymens still unbroken
Or reminded of it's absence every single day.

Women who have hair in more places than one.

And there are women who are sad
Who are broken
And angry.
But those same women can be glad
Can be put back together again.

There are women
Who don't know stereotypes
Or how to break them.
And there are women
Who have hips
And know how to shake them.

Strange, except true.
Some folks refuses to face the real truth.
Whenever asked, who profited more from racism?

Since Civil War and probably before.
We all within the real world know this answer.

Using the politicians present and of the days of old.
They craft legislature to hold back some.
Just like laws created to banned throw from counters and selected water fountains.
Where the water were the same color?

So, who profited more from racism?

Presently, we heard "Black Lives Matter" which isn't against any particular group.
But as with any controversy some complains and miss the point.
Which were addressing verdicts decided by juries in courts.

Where some are dead on?
And others completely wrong.
Then like a Four Tops songs "It's The Same Old Song".
The power that be always complains they being done wrong.

Without addressing, who profited more from racism?
Families with good connection.
Where their child should be serving time?
Instead on probation seeking some type treatment.
Because the power of wealth works decisive in those decision.

Facts, has been written and analyzed several times.
That white often don't how to handle conflicts with others.
Then when you bring this up.
Many use the reverse racism tricks.

Failing to comprehend many white judges courts decision that got off many.
We seen this in Alabama and Mississippi during the sixties.
And continue to in the present.
If up for votes whites would revert back to segregation.

Cause been on a competing level they finding out education truly matters.
Then they had better schools in the past.
And was the creator of white flight.

But history has pointed out during days of old they terrorized blacks during the nights.

So who profited off of racism?
Of course this is just one person's question?

I wanna go back to my girls, my clique
My number one team, my winning pick

Young, wild, and free we're the kings of Queens
Cuz **** sexist *******, not defined by our genes

I miss laughs and long nights and soda bottles of *****
Freezing, but hot in our high heeled shoes

Dancing on tables and counters and bars
Getting home late, looking up at the stars

We are so weird and so lost, but in each other we're found
Not just college friends, sisters; eternally bound

With the nickname glow worm
A jingle jangle jungle flunky
Experiment gone completely wrong
Radiation Monkey

Ran out of the backdoor
This monkey on the lamb
Glowing footprints across the floor
Running fast this lab rat

See him in the hills at night
Swinging wild amongst the trees
Don't get too close cause he might bite
Radiation Monkey

With the strength of 20 men
He started robbing grocery stores
They say he has the brightest grin
Banana smudges left on doors

Where they lift his fingerprints
Taping off of the crime scene
Geiger counters loudly tic
Radiation Monkey

A menace to society
This florescent ape that's escaped
A radiating personality
Waiting for you to make his day

Wanted posters all over town
Doubling up the bounty
They'll take him live or in the ground
Radiation Monkey

Lessons lived are lessons learned
Latch the windows, bolt the doors
Mistakes are made then hard earned
For stupidity there is no cure

In the lab behind those doors
Is where genius and crazy meet
They might lose a few but they'll make more
Radiation Monkey's