Vaginas are all shapes & sizes
Not many vary from the fold
there are very few surprises
Seems nature's gone & set it's mould

But the ****** has such allure
A pull on man to lesbian alike
A calling so strong and pure
Enough to turn a straight girl ****

Is it the promise of warmth & touch
A memory of a time inside
The scent of our matriarch's crotch
Draws us to those legs held wide?

It was nature's way of ensuring
The human race continues on
So that our presence here's enduring
Never ceasing. On & on

Instinct has been subject to a ploy
To harbour this hypnotic power
Sell it back, a high class toy
Put to work this delicate flower

Control the basic urge of man
The essential need to drink & eat
Once you create the ultimate fan
Then the surplus you do deplete

Until it feels that a simple look
Purchased, from a few feet away
Is as good as one hard ****
Copulation they do delay

And so vaginas became a mystery
Sold back to all who do desire
Remember to look back in history
The vaginas are for more than hire

for Jennie in gratitude*

For days afterwards he was preoccupied by what he’d collected into himself from the gallery viewing. He could say it was just painting, but there was a variety of media present in the many surrounding images and artefacts. Certainly there were all kinds of objects: found and gathered, captured and brought into a frame, some filling transparent boxes on a window ledge or simply hung frameless on the wall; sand, fixed foam, paper sea-water stained, a beaten sheet of aluminium; a significant stone standing on a mantelpiece, strange warped pieces of metal with no clue to what they were or had been, a sketchbook with brooding pencilled drawings made fast and thick, filling the page, colour like an echo, and yes, paintings.
 
Three paintings had surprised him; they did not seem to fit until (and this was sometime later) their form and content, their working, had very gradually begun to make a sort of sense.  Possible interpretations – though tenuous – surreptitiously intervened. There were words scrawled across each canvas summoning the viewer into emotional space, a space where suggestions of marks and colour floated on a white surface. These scrawled words were like writing in seaside sand with a finger: the following bird and hiraeth. He couldn’t remember the third exactly. He had a feeling about it – a date or description. But he had forgotten. And this following bird? One of Coleridge’s birds of the Ancient Mariner perhaps? Hiraeth he knew was a difficult Welsh word similar to saudade. It meant variously longing, sometimes passionate (was longing ever not passionate?), a home-sickness, the physical pain of nostalgia. It was said that a well-loved location in conjunction with a point in time could cause such feelings. This small exhibition seemed full of longing, full of something beyond the place and the time and the variousness of colour and texture, of elements captured, collected and represented. And as the distance in time and memory from his experience of the show in a small provincial gallery increased, so did his own thoughts of and about the nature of longing become more acute.
 
He knew he was fortunate to have had the special experience of being alone with ‘the work’ just prior to the gallery opening. His partner was also showing and he had accompanied her as a friendly presence, someone to talk to when the throng of viewers might deplete. But he knew he was surplus to requirements as she’d also brought along a girlfriend making a short film on this emerging, soon to be successful artist. So he’d wandered into the adjoining spaces and without expectation had come upon this very different show: just the title Four Tides to guide him in and around the small white space in which the art work had been distributed. Even the striking miniature catalogue, solely photographs, no text, did little to betray the hand and eye that had brought together what was being shown. Beyond the artist’s name there were only faint traces – a phone number and an email address, no voluminous self-congratulatory CV, no list of previous exhibitions, awards or academic provenance. A light blue bicycle figured in some of her catalogue photographs and on her contact card. One photo in particular had caught the artist very distant, cycling along the curve of a beach. It was this photo that helped him to identify the location – because for twenty years he had passed across this meeting of land and water on a railway journey. This place she had chosen for the coming and going of four tides he had viewed from a train window. The aspect down the estuary guarded by mountains had been a highpoint of a six-hour journey he had once taken several times a year, occasionally and gratefully with his children for whom crossing the long, low wooden bridge across the estuary remained into their teens an adventure, always something telling.
 
He found himself wishing this work into a studio setting, the artist’s studio. It seemed too stark placed on white walls, above the stripped pine floor and the punctuation of reflective glass of two windows facing onto a wet street. Yes, a studio would be good because the pictures, the paintings, the assemblages might relate to what daily surrounded the artist and thus describe her. He had thought at first he was looking at the work of a young woman, perhaps mid-thirties at most. The self-curation was not wholly assured: it held a temporary nature. It was as if she hadn’t finished with the subject and or done with its experience. It was either on-going and promised more, or represented a stage she would put aside (but with love and affection) on her journey as an artist. She wouldn’t milk it for more than it was. And it was full of longing.
 
There was a heaviness, a weight, an inconclusiveness, an echo of reverence about what had been brought together ‘to show’. Had he thought about these aspects more closely, he would not have been so surprised to discovered the artist was closer to his own age, in her fifties. She in turn had been surprised by his attention, by his carefully written comment in her guest book. She seemed pleased to talk intimately and openly, to tell her story of the work. She didn’t need to do this because it was there in the room to be read. It was apparent; it was not oblique or difficult, but caught the viewer in a questioning loop. Was this estuary location somehow at the core of her longing-centred self?  She had admitted that, working in her home or studio, she would find herself facing westward and into the distance both in place and time?
 
On the following day he made time to write, to look through this artist’s window on a creative engagement with a place he was familiar. The experience of viewing her work had affected him. He was not sure yet whether it was the representation of the place or the artist’s engagement with it. In writing about it he might find out. It seemed so deeply personal. It was perhaps better not to know but to imagine. So he imagined her making the journey, possibly by train, finding a place to stay the night – a cheerful B & B - and cycling early in the morning across the long bridge to her previously chosen spot on the estuary: to catch the first of the tides. He already understood from his own experience how an artist can enter trance-like into an environment, absorb its particularness, respond to the uncertainty of its weather, feel surrounded by its elements and textures, and most of all be governed by the continuous and ever-complex play of light.
 
He knew all about longing for a place. For nearly twenty years a similar longing had grown and all but consumed him: his cottage on a mountain overlooking the sea. It had become a place where he had regularly faced up to his created and invented thoughts, his soon-to-be-music and more recently possible poetry and prose. He had done so in silence and solitude.
 
But now he was experiencing a different longing, a longing born from an intensity of love for a young woman, an intensity that circled him about. Her physical self had become a rich landscape to explore and celebrate in gaze, and stroke and caress. It seemed extraordinary that a single person could hold to herself such a habitat of wonder, a rich geography of desire to know and understand. For so many years his longing was bound to the memory of walking cliff paths and empty beaches, the hypnotic viewing of seascaped horizons and the persistent chaos of the sea and wild weather. But gradually this longing for a coming together of land, sea and sky had migrated to settle on a woman who graced his daily, hourly thoughts; who was able to touch and caress him as rain and wind and sun can act upon the body in ever-changing ways. So when he was apart from her it was with such a longing that he found himself weighed down, filled brimfull.
 
In writing, in attempting to consider longing as a something the creative spirit might address, he felt profoundly grateful to the artist on the light blue bicycle whose her observations and invention had kept open a door he felt was closing on him. She had faced her own longing by bringing it into form, and through form into colour and texture, and then into a very particular play: an arrangement of objects and images for the mind to engage with – or not. He dared to feel an affinity with this artist because, like his own work, it did not seem wholly confident. It contained flaws of a most subtle kind, flaws that lent it a conviction and strength that he warmed to. It had not been massaged into correctness. The images and the textures, the directness of it, flowed through him back and forward just like the tides she had come far to observe on just a single day. He remembered then, when looking closely at the unprotected pieces on the walls, how his hand had moved to just touch its surfaces in exactly the way he would bring his fingers close to the body of the woman he loved so much, adored beyond any poetry, and longed for with all his heart and mind.

From the ashes I descend,
Rising among the flames,
As shades of red.
Orange and yellow,
Blend within the explosion,
Of my rebirth,
Claiming my life force once more.

My deep hazel eyes,
Drenched in golden brown,
Surrounded by a burst of jade,
Speckled with dark green,
Reveal my humility,
Compassion and genuine kindness,
Allowing you to behold,
The window to my soul.

The vessel,
Containing my spirit,
Conflicts with the feminine demeanor,
Exposing sincerity,
Comforting hands of a care-giver,
The voice of loyalty,
Gently escaping lips,
Tears of empathy,
Seeping with understanding,
Kisses of affection,
As soft spoken words,
Depict desires,
Hopes and the warmth,
Of pure love.

Mystery envelops my origin,
Becoming a mystical being,
With the ability to heal,
The potential to inspire,
Living proof of an alleged myth,
Yielding in protection,
As my plethora of feathers,
Shield the individuals I adore,
From darkness,
Attempting to swallow the light,
We yearn to discover.

Blind Thoughts of denial,
Shall forsake your eyes,
If you pass judgment,
Upon me,
For my cloak of skin,
Concealing my true beauty.

As a Phoenix,
I refuse to watch,
The children of diversity,
Suffer degradation,
Living in fear of discrimination,
Stifling the right to love another,
To dress in garments,
That correlate the body with the mind.

I shall rage to cease,
The hands of violence leaving bruises,
Ignorance stripping,
Breaths of air from a pair of lungs,
As homophobia,
Transphobia, and intolerance,
Deplete individuality from a heart,
Deserving liberty,
The pursuit of happiness,
A chance to survive.

The Earth returns my soul,
To reap the love,
Concealed in assumptions,
And sow acceptance into,
The fields of society,
As I continue,
To soar into a cerulean sky.

They live in huge houses, drive fancy cars
Most know poverty only secondhand
So how can they fix a problem... They don't really understand

Given the role of a leader
However, I'm convinced they are confused
We live in worlds too far apart...
How can they lead with similar views

Their children go to private schools
Only the finest and elite
Their children will never need public education
So they allow funding to deplete
Their children will succeed
I believe it's part of their plan
To ensure that high society
Will forever lead the average man

The evidence is no secret
They don't seem to care if we agree
They know they hold this power
So it doesn't matter if we see

Our taxes keep going up
Unemployment is at an all time high
Life keeps getting harder for those just scrapping by
The people making these decisions
Of course they find it easy enough to do
They're not deciding for themselves
They decide for me and you

The truth of the matter is...
This country is ruled by hypocrisy
They disguise this, however, very cleverly
Today it's what we know as Democracy

"A political government run by 'The People' through 'Selected' officials"... Democracy defined
Compare it to the way it was truly designed

Sure we get to 'select the official'
But the one thing they seem to neglect
They pick the people
Many, that corruptive politics help select

You must look back upon our time together and smile. I know it's going to hurt, some days it's going to feel like your heart is ripping to shreds and tearing you apart from the inside out. I'm not saying that living without me is going to be easy, for I know it will not be. But whatever you do, do not let this loss deplete the warmth your smile holds or the joy your laughter spreads. Remember that in order to feel so much sadness, you once had to have experienced an equal amount of happiness. So, when the tears well up in your eyes and your throat hurts from the sobs you are choking back, I beg of you, remember me with a smile.

an intergalactic being of the static
trying not to panic
in the sporadic antics
of a frantic romantic

manic freak

bobbing to the beat
of drones and sheep
as the storms seep
from the more discrete
holes in my heart
render me obsolete
and deplete me from afar

weave me the dreams of delicate surrender
cleave me at the seams in vicious splendor
deceive me in the memes of malicious pretenders

and take me to never was
tell me of the ridiculous
the insidious
the belligerence of thugs
the deliverance of slugs
the hideous
wrap me in a rug
with no love
*****
drugs
and a mean mug

peacefully pitiful

Do you promise?
Do I have to promise?
Why can’t you just promise me?
Why can’t I promise you?

Compounding compromise after compromise
Plunge unto the same mold and lose our eyes
Lose our ability to realize
I drift to you because you aren’t me
You don’t complete me but you don’t deplete me

After-surge, recharge
Electricity in your touch
A culmination of all you’ve ever felt, been through

And I fall harder through the floorboards of my arrogance
When your fingers fuse with the heartstrings
Reminding me without words
You’re easy to move around and I swim through you

Converge and compromise
God, I think your fingers should melt me down
Oh, they make some of my favorite sounds
Fusing with the heartstrings
Reminding me without words
That feeling is you
Do you promise I can have it too?

Compounding compromise after compromise
We pour unto the same mold
And lose our eyes
We didn’t need them anyway
I’m not me, you’re not even you
Release myself into the wild and swallow you
All we can be, drowning on the same wave
Holding hands to stay in parallel motion
Amidst all the commotion
Without eyes I can say I wouldn’t want it any other way
Converge and compromise with you

"You were born to do this."
I reminded myself as I sat there feeling encaged in a flurry of endless thought and emotion.
"Why do I have to feel every aspect of every event of life, so deep?"
I thought as I fought myself once again to simply pick up the pen and drain the overflow of despondency onto paper.
"Breathe."
The words, letters, verbs and thoughts continued to swirl in my ever rampantly unsettled abyss of ideation.
Once I surrendered to the raging of the erupting of the soul..there was calm.
It's likened to the deaf..taken away their ability to sign..The dancer with both feet removed.
Had I no other pleasure but to expel grief, fervor and elation and form them into words to heal the shattering so entrenched..they appear unreachable..I'd beg to be buried with just a writing utensil and endless reams of freshly pressed paper.
"Theres Light."*
I mouth that..as I continue to jot as if I were stitching my heart back together with this pen.
Even though I'm within this seemingly grave like cave of aching..I can write.
The beauty is in the creation..The ability to construct, like a carpenter..all that your heart desires with your own two hands..to simply Heal the paragraphs of life that were written badly, write over them or erase and rewrite..if only it were that easy.
I don't aim to undo..I cannot.
Just to poetically fabricate from this point on..allow the stumbles to happen and Love greater than thought fathomable.
Surrender. To the page.
Scribble it out, empty it onto line after line..and crawl atop..until the words fill the fragments and the ink stains your fingertips..Keep climbing upon the proverbial stacks of paper until the towers reach the aperture of the pit.
Creating the mending of affliction, soothing the misery of the choking of words you cannot utter, but you can scratch them onto tablets to deplete the churning of the mind.
Write. Write badly.
Write as if in a mad race to the finish line, then start over again..Until the trails of Letters stretch so long..you could dance upon them for days.
Then Breathe.
Soak every word into your skin as if attempting to heal the afflictions..
then Become it.

I can feel her creeping back into my blood stream
The anger, she's unravelling again
The veins in my arm are pumping flames I thought I'd put out for good
But you, you've ignited them
Flicked your selfish lighter
I'm on fire
My chest constricting with your apathy
Suffocating me
And slowly
I shrink
Deplete
Revert back into that girl
Who could not control her affect
Running on a constant adrenaline high
Dear god I'm on fire and I'm praying for someone to put me out

                     *-lf-

What's rendered me an impotent of life,
while others live a life with vibrant hum?
A curse that's hedged me by a wall of strife!

While other lives with fine success are rife,
my own's deplete, a curse has sure become
what's rendered me an impotent of life!

Through failure to provide I've lost a wife!
Though I believe, there are those doubts in some,
a curse that's hedged me by a wall of strife

cannot exist, they say, I'm a midwife
to all my troubles, I am who has done
what's rendered me an impotent of life!

Or maybe I've insulted a spaewife,
who cast, to love and money make me dumb,
a curse that's hedged me by a wall of strife.

I've searched from North Recife to Tenerife,
and failed to find a way to make undone
what's rendered me an impotent of life,
a curse that's hedged me by a wall of strife!

(C)2012, Christos Rigakos

I'm not sure you understand
Just exactly how I work
I'm not normal
But then, who is?
So let's put formality aside
Have at me, uncertified surgeon!
Let your knives peel back my skin!
Use your blades to cut the organs
So you'll see the stuff within
In my heart is the place where I keep the love
Protected from fiends who like vultures above
Wouldst dare to steal my sacred store
That will deplete forevermore
My liver is a strange one, and yet
You'd know what goes inside, I'd bet
Therein lies all the things I hate
Filtered from life and made to wait
Inside the liver, oh so dense
To keep the hate from the present tense
To keep it all just locked away
So I can try to be okay
Then in my lungs is icy air
That I breathed in, frozen, from your cold stare
I thought you were jesting your eyes must be wrong
But it turns out you meant it like that one Beatles' song
Because I truly did not realize
As I gazed deep into your eyes
Into the soul that just days before
You swore was mine, threw open doors
Your eyes this time would shut me out
What was this alienation about?
But I guess you just snapped and all loving stopped
You were still sane, but your toleration popped
Which is totally fine and I have no problem knowing
That these fractures and breaks had slowly been growing
But I thought if we tended the garden of love
And forgot all the issues I alluded above
That we'd be fine and could just carrry on
And though I still believed that you went and you're gone
So again, I say unto you, uncertified surgeon!
Cut deep into me and pull out my soul
My heart's been ripped out, why not seal the deal
*Tear out my soul with a smile and a flick
And stitch me back up with the thread of past wrongs
That each day I might look down and see
That what was done was done by me

You told me your stories, your past to present, but today lead us to another dimension.

I wasn't there when you dealt with your demons, but now you have me so let's be fair.

You told me you were an alcoholic drunk, with no self luck, ambition or love for life. I never judged you and understood your story.

But now it's time to deplete your new mission.
You left without a say
You parted your lips to the bottled glass and began your sipping.
Waited 8 hours wondering where you were, and it sure felt like forever.

When you came back to me, you told me what happened, but you had a new demon inside you, growing like I never seen before.
You hurt my feelings, because you lied to my face, but I guess that's what happens when you're dealing with the addictions you must really face.

No more you said, You don't like the taste, your stomach hurts but now again you repeat the same mistakes from many years before.

I try to help, frustrated I' am, sad I' am, crying I' am, but you do not care, you're emotionless, because to you, I' am the mean one.

What is it I must do, you tell me to dump you, but meanwhile you tell me you love me, so what is it?

confusion, haste, anger, malice,
you left within a clip of air once again,
because after our talk, you had to disappear from the truth, the bitter cold truth that bit your tongue like a scared cat in the middle of a dark alley way.

I cannot forgive you, not yet, not now, prove yourself first to me and then we will see...

Once it was just an innocent pick and shovel,
not much effort not much trouble,
Populations grew and demands exploded,
machines invented, more fuel was needed.
Trees were cut, factories built, coal discovered,
Smoke stacks billowed, still it was not enough!
And populations doubled.
  
Holes were drilled, to reach down deep,
"Black Gold" they said would be so cheap,
light the homes and run the ships,
drive the trains and keep the peace.  
Still it was not enough!
And the populations doubled!

**** the Earth, she can take it,
there is always more to exploit,
more to shamelessly profit from it.

Deplete the surface, Oh hell,
just go down deeper,
Oil all gone, well how 'bout shale?

A little recipe for disaster:
Drill multitudes of holes miles deep,
inject under extreme pressure,
thousands of gallons of water
imported from some great distance.
"Truck it in, ***** the expense!",
Add tons of harsh chemicals into this
volatile, polluting mix.
Blast deep strata with this brew,
until solid rock does crack,
Shale into gas and liquid gold,
Then bring it to the surface.

Now never mind the consequence,
That near by ground water as it flows
from out of household taps,
can be set afire by just the touch
of the lighted flame,
from a single just struck match.

And those now huge cracks deep
within the mantel of the Earth,
what of them I say,
Well not far below those cracks
is our molten lava core,
Just looking for escape.

Respected Geologists warn us of the risks,
Triggering quakes and huge volcano rips,
Yet the Fat Cats and their government,
still assures us, "never mind the consequence".

Ridiculous yes, perhaps suicidal,
As if the Captain of a submarine allowed his crew
to pound large nails into the body of his boat,
To hang up pictures of the Pope.

Again ridiculous you say,
Who would do such a insane thing?
The same **** guys that once owned the crews,
that swung that old pick and shovel,

A father to son inheritance,
by the same thieves, that manipulate our economy,
Riding the Bull up Wall Street and back down again,
All at their selfish greedy whims,
Never considering their corruption as any particular sin.

Those one percent spoilers who generation to generation,
continue to profit from their latest Big Business Gyration.
Even inventing a new name for this particular indiscretion,
Never even wincing, they straight faced lie with conviction,
and say hence,
"Hey folks, it's called Fracking, and you shouldn't mind
the consequence", 

So, it's profits over common sense,
The Fat Cats win again?  
My response to that,
Perhaps someone should FRACK them!

Now as to this just read little parable,
Less you dismiss it as some environmental fable.
The moral here is,
You glutinous greedy Big Oil Boys,
need to push back from the table!

A golden white sunset

Serenades the canyons

With tasteful symphonies


Crescendos of passion cry

Elevated euphoria

Oblivious be despair



Sharp, yearning hunger

Bellows creamy reveries

Roaring taunting thrills


This tigress teases in spirals

Trickles of sweat lavish us

Rhapsodies deplete us


Eyes glisten odes of desire

Her aroma illuminates the bed

Neon vortex


© 2012 (All rights reserved)

Silence is still...
A Rose thorn ****** into the darkness of the night.
Ghosts and ghouls wander a yard of thee,
ones who sheltered by the tree, 6ft yonder.
A veil blows as the river flows,
lost bride who can't find her ride.
Chills of the midnight light ***** down
unto your spine and you begin to run,
but their following you, chasing you-
and they won't give up until you're out of luck.
Angels fall and lose their wings to grow again and recover
their ancient beings of heaven's dream.
Silence is still,
Morning comes to greet you,
and all the spirits of the night find a place to rest,
until the next time, they may deplete you.

The hot boiled rice
With brown gram curry
The nutty smell of sesame
Oil shrills in hurry
Deployed on a thrice
larger rounder plate
For a boy's belly deplete.
"Can't eat this much rice!"
He shouts with a surprise.

“You can do my son sure.",
Her firm voice enssures
The boys look measures.
"The remainder you keep aside"
Her remand saves  his pride.

A monthly forty rupees
Should not be pretty reason
For a lodger's liberty to please
Among two of her teen sons
Than a welling spring of kindness
A heart huge in roundness
Larger than a stainless steel plate
With a profuse heap of hot rice
The smooth boiled brown pies
Oiled with fragrance fleet.

For how he fully did feat it?
How she purely predict it?
The stomach of a young one could hold
The heap of love on a stainless steel mold.

A slum outside Paris

A cardboard city thrives a place where no one has
to pay the rent and electricity are purloined.
is it impossible for middle -class folk to understand
but the Roma thrive despite living by a city dump
where you dump your trash wash your hand and are
happy to live in a block of flats and house the rules.
Now they want to get rid of this illegal city that cost
nothing to run and need not tramlines. But they are
not like us do not share our values, no they are not
like us the do not deplete the world's resources and
when the last car has stopped the Gypsies will as they
always have done crossing the landscape with their children
women and dogs carried pulled donkeys on ancient carts.
And the man with a wristwatch and finery will offer
them riches for a lift to better times.

Unfortunately you are not for everyone. Not everyone will like you. Not everyone will love you regardless of what you do and how nice of a person you are. Not everyone will vibe with your energy and not everyone will understand and support you.

Even though it is a bitter pill to swallow at times don't let it make a turmoil of your emotion and deplete your energy. Because your time and energy is so much more precious than exhausting yourself by shapeshifting to pander to the whims of others, moulding yourself to fit in every where and hence retaining no shape to call your own.

Choose not to sacrifice your uniqueness to succumb buttering up their bread. To Be selective with your energy by politely waving them goodbye to stand by your values and lifestyles that most deeply resonate with you. Choose to take social risks regardless of the awkward glances and haughty whispers. Choose to not care of what others think to the point it stifles your ability to take risks and disrupt your social satisfaction.

For there is nothing more liberating than to not waste your life allowing the faultfinders to dictate your actions. To seek to align your actions with your heart. To stand up for something, to do and believe what brings  content regardless of it being disliked. It is beautifully candor being your authentic self.

My organs need aligning      
To my mind's meandering tract.
Irrespective if she loved me,
I should have loved her back.  

August 1st 1994

What do you want from me? I am not just,
As you desire; I am not whole or part
Of your antiquity. I know I must
Deplete my ore of you; I must depart,
If only to withstand the judgment call
That I should sober mine my soul. I dig
But find my land possesses naught but pall
Shrouds, wrecked by empty casks and crowded brigs.
‘Tis only with the passing time and flight:
When I long to belong, when I am blind
With *****, stupefied and brain-dead bright,
That Scotland, you invade my winding mind.
The question haunts as dreich as my desire.
My constant drunken dream will ne’er expire.

Where do we go from here? What is to come
Of me within you, in you, here and now?
The solitary plight in one man’s sum
Of rhyme and reason creases on my brow.
I, sweat in winter outcast by the self,
Must sit. I crouch and crawl from bed to bowl.
This box is stutter stained by glass, the serf
My conscience specified, to catch the soul’s
Transfusion red to street. It drips and slides,
It split my very sides when sadness swept
So close. Dear Scotland, will I ever hide
The condemnation, nailing my inept
Existence? Will I ever find the time?
Dear Scotland please prepare my earthbound lime.

It did, and I did, one after the first.
And now the long time that I walk upon
Has thrown itself, is gone. The wayside burst.
Yet blind, I still conceived my setting sun.
Lone looped black celluloid, I circled, fed
Upon the axle of my own demise,
So many times in dry feet, airborne led
(To a) dishevelled Scotland, spread for absent eyes.
Undressed: acceptant in the throes of musk,
The tear comes shuddering. The chasm wails;
The dales of concrete weep from dawn till dusk.
Yet my visage of sickened eyelets fails.
If Scotland is to eye, my wounded knee:
Then tomb my head in Boston, let it be.
Because,
You loved me with a broken quill clutched tight
Into your hand. My blind eyes reacted to
The sound of greyness in your voice. A flight
And fancy ploy: the essence of a truth.
As memories of eggshelled sojourns waltzed
To Spain and back my tip-skin touched the soul
Of spirit taste, on foot, which cracked beneath
Another sole. My role had shifted poles.
Yet then, in linened white and Boston bright
Disdain, I worshiped, nay, I bled the thought
Of rain on cobbled Ahston Lane. To fight
The want was useless. Now, to the fight, I float.
A ghost in life, I crawled the clouds for miles,
To shake my Scotland’s hand and reconcile.






Barry Miller-Cole 2011

Oh, routine.
My dear friend, we've grown to fond of one another.
The zone of my comfort has become the footsteps I follow in your light.
Change.
Yearning for change, I find myself;
Stuck, stuck, stuck.
Oh routine; tear your palms away from my skin.
Unhealthy is the nature of the lifestyle you have kept me trapped in.
Free me of your tyrant grasp;
Deplete of me my negative emotions.
Wishes; they could be nothing more then to have these wings clipped and to be set free.
I now untie these ropes that bound me down.
I now release myself of the burden of the unknown.
Deplete, release, rinse, and repeat.

Some people would say that I am a fantasist, an idealist or a romanticist. They would be right.
But its not innocent; I've seen love in all its powers; its glory, its sacrifice, its understanding, its passion, its beauty, its happily ever afters, its successes, and also in its suffering, its misery, its hardship, its jealousy, its insecurity, its possession, its cruelty and most of all its longing. Love is illogical. The amount of love you have for yourself, will attract that same love from someone else. Its hard work or its easy. Its equilibrium or its imbalance.

Everyone in your life in whatever form of relationship holds this love for you, and you for them. You become a mirror image for whatever you desire in life from others. What you lack, you hope they will fill the void, making you whole. Or sometimes where you lack, they take a look around, sniff the air and make themselves cosy in the cavern of your longing. Sometimes just sometimes, you find the jigsaw puzzle piece to fit the void.

This is what I believe about love.

Love is sacrificing yourself for another, but not all of you until you are deplete of reason, choice or circumstance.
Love is making the effort. Actions speak louder than words.
Love is giving til you want to punch yourself in the face, because it seems too much, and then getting over it because you learnt from it afterwards.
Love is breaking past that barrier, taking down those walls, even if its brick by tiresome brick.
Love is travelling 4 hours to see someone to make them smile, to let them know that you care.
Love is attuning your inner spirit. Taking pride in yourself. Taking care of yourself.
Love is loving yourself.
Love is cartwheels, fairytales, hand-me-down stories and a rollercoaster ride.
Love is 22 cut out love hearts, each with a 'I love you because....' hanging from your living room ceiling.
Love is listening. Really listening to one another, and talking like adults.
Love is loving someone, way after they have gone and made their own lives away from you, just because.
Love is letting someone go, for the last time, giving up and slamming the deadbolt on that door, so they can, never, come, back.
Love is letting go of control, negotiation and acceptance.
Love is forgiveness. Internal, and external. Even if they are not there, even if they continue to try to destroy you. Understand, everyone has their own demons to deal with, and theirs aren't yours, you're purely a emotional punching bag. You accept that or you don't, your choice.
Love is understanding that you are not part of their life, unless they make you part of it, then you have a say, but you still might not get anywhere.
Love is saying sorry and meaning the **** out of it.
Love is giving a second chance.
Love is sitting up with someone in the midnight hours, holding them while they cry themselves out of their pain and living nightmares.
Love is believing in what you want, and respecting someone for what they want, despite your misgivings about it.
Love is being honest, in every which way.
Love is a cup of tea in the morning.
Love is your hand cupped on my cheek, so I know you're there.
Love is play fights, pillow wrestling, hide & seek and treasure hunts.
Love is laughing til you cry and your belly hurts.
Love is knowing when I have had enough, really don't want you here, nowhere ******* near me, and holding me anyway, because you know I really do, but can't help myself.
Love is creating trust. Breaking down boundaries and letting someone in.
Love is chinese whispers, bbqs, outdoor fairy lights and midnight fire pits.
Love is a mutual appreciation of the same music.
Love is mutual appreciation of each other. Mutual understanding.
Love is fighting for those you love, against the world if need be.
Love is giving, sometimes until you are spent and weary.
Love IS kind.
Love is acceptance.
Love is being a best friend, a role model, a partner in crime, and a creator of mutual dreams.
Love is wiping away the snot, the blood and the tears. Placing magic kisses on scrapes, scratches and bruises.
Love is believing.
Love is holding someone til they're ok with letting you go.
Love is packing up the car early in the morning with a tent and walking boots and driving off in the sunrise.
Love is teaching someone how to ride a bike, understand a question, try a rope swing or do roly polys down the hills
Love is letting them get it wrong, so they know how to get it right.
Love is giving your life to something you believe in.
Love is not giving a flying **** and jumping off the cliff. Recklessness abandonment.
Love is an adventure of mass proportions.
Love is unconditional - if you place conditions on love, you are limiting yourself in every avenue of your life. Place conditions on other things - respect, commitment and trust.
Love is passion; passion til it overflows into all avenues of your life, til it reaches your happy place, and puts a smile on your ****** goofy face.


Love with all your heart.
For no reason.
Forget the rest.

Expectations fall short
As I thought they never would
I didn't expect to lose you like I did
I didn't think you would just walk away from me like you did
Little did I know how wrong I was

Don't you see that I still care?!
Don't you see that I don't want this to fall to shambles yet I’m watching you leave
Like you don't care.
Like you want us to fail
It’s a bittersweet realization to say the least.
You were one person I thought would be there til the end
One person I could always call my best friend

Stuff got messed up
Stuff blew up
It wasn't supposed to happen this way but this is our new reality
It’s a reality where I see you every day and wonder if you think of me
Do you wonder how I am or do you not care?
Do you ask how I’ve been or do you go on your way like we never met?

I thought we would make it
But this doesn't deplete the memories I have
It just makes it that much more nostalgic of what we won’t have
I thought I had so much more time
So many more memories to create
I didn't know that they would be taken from me in a heartbeat
From one incident that changed everything
That thought brings tears to my eyes—
It makes me despise
All the passed time—
I lost it like a crime

No words can describe
What I would do to fix this
Stupid pride gets in the way
And it plays us just like any other day
Suddenly I’m at a loss for words
Because I don’t know what to do!
All I can say is, I lost you, but you lost me too

You didn’t try either and that hurts the most
You didn’t fight for me, you just let me go
I’m not sure if this will ever be right
And after this I’ll act like I don’t care
But know this—
If you ever need me, I will ALWAYS be there.

liturgies of lethargy
lull their sleepy tongues,
and run among my stumbling dreams
towards the visceral setting sun
keep the soldiers’ safeties off and order no retreat
you can’t afford to chip your teeth for the price of being numb
stay glassy eyed and leave your pride
behind the backs of bus seats
with notes, sharpie, and lies
these men are not what they seem
this world is a messed up dream
while the elite claim to delete the supposed deadbeats
as if they deplete the city’s concrete streets
i want to scream
they’re really the secret
to keeping the working class alive in the heat
to keep the coffee shops open on every street
to keeping the cheap soda purchased
at the indiscreetly laundering cover up convenience stores
you would only see when you’re walking pavement
breathing in the scent of cigarettes and pollen spores

the further life progresses
the more it beams stresses
the more I yearn for peace
a road with no holes or grease
a broken siblinghood
I now yearn for Paraclete
my faith in humans deplete.
so bring tonight the gleaming dream
of a furry friend who understood
the erase button of esteem
and so my dreams flow like whipped cream
in the starry starry nights of what would seem
like orange cats make the best friends
tabby kings and big boy mends
the tears of mine dear feline heart
....
or a hustling panting brown eyed brook,
a long nosed lad reads like book
who smells and licks my aching heart.
....
my colourbook waits to be filled with love
of furry lives from each colour above.

A...

Body and title.
Benevolent temple.
Brevity to misconstrue.
Beseeching is ample.

Coarse line drawn.
Completion marked for a later day.
Complacency made eyes blind.
Conception vague, I'm led astray.

Define by showing.
Deplete the art of talk.
Distraught by nature.
Dashed, the outline: chalk.

Erroneous calculation.
Every rhythm wrong.
Expect a hand for help.
Effronteries made for song.

Freedom fought for.
Frivolous attitude displayed.
Feeble attempt concerning unity.
Frightened, we kneel, we pray.

Gullible we've become.
Gregarious while holding motive.
Greed is behind our movement.
Genocide is holy solace.

Hark the herald,
Humans sing.
Habitual enemy of one's self.
Humility stings.

Insecurities overpower our decisions.
Indiscretions aren't seen as shame.
Instability is welcomed.
Idiosyncrasies are left to blame.

Juxtaposed loser.
Jovial perception placed.
Jealousy never apparent.
Just relationships - never disgraced.