1.

From our
safe windows,
we crane our necks,
rubbernecking
past the slow
motion wreckage
unfolding in Homs.

We remain
perfectly
perched
to marvel at
the elegant arc of
a mortar shell
framing tomorrows
deep horizon,
whistling through
the twilight to
find its fruitful
mark.

In the now
we keep
complicit time,
to the arrest
of beating hearts,
snapping fingers
to the pop
of rifle cracks,
swooning to
the delicious
intoxication of
curling smoke
lofting ever
upward;
yet
thankfully
remain
distant
enough to
recuse any
possibility
of an
intimate
nexus
with the
besieged.

2.

From our
safe windows,
we behold the
urgent arrivals of
The Friends of Syria
demanding
clean sheets
and 4 Star
room service at a
Tunisian Palace
recently cleaned
and under new
management
promising a
much needed
refurbishment.

The gathered,
a clique of
this epochs
movers and shakers,
a veritable
rouges gallery of
ambassadorial
prelates, Emirs and
state department
bureaucrats
summoned
with portfolio
from the
darkest corners
of the globe.

They are
eager to
sanctify
the misery
of Homs,
deflect and
lay blame
with realpolitik
rationalizations,
commencing
official commissions
of inquiry,
deliberating
grave considerations,
issuing indictments
of formal charges for
Crimes Against
Humanity
while
remaining
urgently
engrossed
in the fascination
of interviewing
potential
process servers
to deliver the bad news
to Bashar al-Assad
and his soulless
Baathist
confederates,
if papers
are to be
served.

Yes, the diplomats
are busy meeting
in closed rooms.

In hushed circles
they whisper
into aroused ears,
railing against
Russia’s
gun running
intransigence
and China’s
geopolitical
chess moves.

Statesmen
boast of the
intrepid justice
of tipping points
and the moving poetry
of self serving tales,
weighing the impact
of stern sanctions
amidst the historical
confusion of the
asymmetrical
symmetries
of civil war.

Caravans
of Arab League
envoys roll up
in silver Bentleys,
crossing deserts
of contradictory
obfuscations,
navigating the
endless dunes
with hand held
sextants of
hidden agendas.

The heroic
Bedouins are
eager to offload
their baggage
and share
on the ground
intelligence from
their recent soirées
across Syria.

They beg
a quick fix,
the triage of a
critical catharsis
to bleed their
brains dry
of heinous
recollections,
pleading
release from a
troubled conscience
victimized by
the unnerving paradox
of reconciling
discoveries of
perverse voyeurism
with the sanctioned
explanations
of their respective
ruling elites.

The bellies
of these
scopophiliacs
are distended;
grown queasy
from a steady diet
of malfeasance
an ulcerated
world parades
in continuous loop;
spewing the raw feeds
of real time misery;
forcibly fed
the grim
visions of
frantic
fathers
rushing
the mangled
carcases
of mortally
wounded
children
to crumpled
piles of smashed
concrete that were
once hospitals.

We despondently
ask how
much longer
must we
look into
the eyes
of starving
children
emaciated from
the wanton
indifference
of the world?


3.

From our
safe windows
we wonder
how much
longer can
the urgent
burning
ambivalence
continue
before it
consumes
our common
humanity in
a final
conflagration?

My hair already
singed by the
endless firestorms
sweeping the prairies
of the world.

How can we survive
the trampling hoards,
the marauding
plagues of acrimony
fed by a voracious
blood lust aspiring to
victimize the people
of Homs and a
thousand cities
like it?


4.

From my safe
window I stand in witness
to the state execution of
refugees fleeing the
living nightmare
of Baba Amr.

The ****** of innocents,
today's newly minted martyrs,
women and children
cornered, trapped
on treacherous roads,
mercilessly
slaughtered and
defiled in death
to mark the lesson
of a ruthless master
enthralled with the
power of his
sadistic fascist
lordship.

I cannot avert my eyes
marking sights
of pleading women
begging for the
lives of their children
in exchange for
the gratification
of a sadists
lust.

My heart
is impaled
on the sharp
spear of
outrage
beholding
careening
children mowed
down with the
serrated blades
protruding
from marauding
jeeps of laughing
soldiers.

I drop
to my knees
in lakes of
tears
reflecting
a grotesque
horror stricken
image of myself.

My eyes have
murdered my soul.

The ghastly images
of Homs have chased
away my Holy Ghost
to the safety of a child's
sandbox hidden away
in a long forgotten
revered memory.


5.

From my safe window
I seethe with anger
demanding vengeance,
debating how to rise
to meet the obscenity of
the Butcher of Damascus.

The sword of Damocles
dangles so tantalizingly close
to this tyrants throat.  

The covered women
of Homs scream prayers
“may Allah bring Bashar to ruin”

Dare I pray
that Allah trip the
horsehair trigger
that holds the
sword at bay?

Do I pick up
the sword
a wield it
as an
avenging
angel?

Am I the
John Brown
of our time?

Do I organize
a Lincoln Brigade
and join the growing
leagues of jihadists
amassing at the
Gates of Damascus?

Will my righteous
indignation fit well
in a confederacy
with Hamas and
al-Qaeda as my
comrades in arms?

Do I succumb to
the passion of hate
and become just
another murderous
partisan, or do I
commend the power
of love and marshal
truth to speak with
the force of
satyagraha?

I lift a fervent prayer
to claim the justice
of Allah’s ear,
“may the knowing one
lift the veil of foolishness
that covers my heart in
cloaks of resent, cure
my blindness that ignores
my raging disease of
plausible deniability
ravaging the body politic
of humanity.”

6.

Indeed,
physician heal thyself.

I run to embrace my
illness.

I pine to understand it.

I undertake the
difficult regimen
of a cure to eradicate
the terrible affliction.

This
pernicious
plague,
subverting
the notion
of a shared
humanness
is a cunning
sedition that
undermines
the unity of
the holy spirit.  

The bell from
the toppled steeples
still tolls, echoing
across the space of
continents and eons
of temporal time.

The faithful chimes
gently chides us
to remove the wedge
of perception that
separates, divides
and undermines.

Time has come
to liberally
apply the balm
that salves the
open wounds
so common to
our common
human condition.

The power of prayer
is the joining of hands
with others racked
with the common
affliction of humanness.

Allah,  
My eyes are wide open,
my sacred heart revealed,
my sleeves are rolled up,
my memory is stocked,
my soul filled with resolve,
my hand is lifted
extended to all
brothers and sisters.
Lift us,
gather us
into one
loving embrace.

Selah


7.

From the safe
windows of
our palaces
we live within
earshot of
the trilling
zaghroutas
of exasperation
flowing from
the besieged
city smouldering
under Bashar’s
symphony of terror.

Our nostrils
fill with the
acrid plumes
of unrequited
lamentations
lifting from the
the burning
destruction
of shelled
buildings.

Our eyes spark
from the night
tracers
of sleeking
snipers
flitting along
the city’s
rooftops.

The deadly jinn
indiscriminately
inject the
paralysis of
random fear
into the veins
of the city
with each
skillful
head shot.

These
ghoulish
assassins
lavish in their
macabre work;
like vultures
they eagerly
feast on the
corpses of their ****,
the stench of bloated
bodies drying in the
sun is the perfume
that fills their nostrils.


8.

From our
safe window
we discern the
silhouettes of militants
still boldly standing
amidst the
mounting rubble of an
unbowed Homs
shouting;

Allah Akbar!!!
Allah Akbar!!!
Allah Akbar!!!

raising pumped fists,
singing songs
of resistance,
dancing to
the revelation of
freedom,
refusing to
be coward by
the slashing
whips of a
butchers
terrible
sword.


9.

From my
safe window
my tongue laps
the pap
of infants
suckling from
the depleted
teats of mothers
who cannot cry
for their dying
children;
tears fail
to well from
the exhaustion
of dehydrated
pools.

10.

From my
safe window
my heart stirs
to the muezzin
calling the
desperate faithful
from the toppled
rubble of dashed
minarets.

We can
no longer
shut our ears
to the adhan
of screams
the silent
voices that echo
the blatant injustice
of a people under siege.


11.

From my
safe window,
I pay
Homage to Homs
and call brothers
and sisters to rise
with vigilant
insistence
that hostilities
cease and
humanity be
upheld,
respected and
protected.


12.

From my safe
window
I perceive
the zagroutas
of sorrow
manifest as a
whiling hum,
a sweeping
blue mist,
levitating
the coffins
from the rubble
of ravaged streets.

The swirling
chorus of
mourning
joins my
desperate
prayers;
rising in
concert
with the
black billows
of smoke
dancing
away
from the
flaming
embers
of scorched
neighborhoods.


13.

From my
safe window
I heed
the fluttering
wings
of avenging
angels
furiously
batting
as they
climb
the black
plumes,
lifting from
the scattered bricks
of the desecrated
city.

It is the
Jacob’s
Ladder
for our
time;
marking
a new
consecrated
place
where
a New Adam
is destined
to be formed
from the
pulverized
stones of
desolation.

14.

From our
safe windows
we peer into
resplendent
mirrors
beholding
the perfect image of
ourselves
eying
falling tears
dripping blood,
coloring death
onto the
blanched sheets
of disheveled beds.


15.

From our
safe windows
our voices are silenced,
our words mock urgency
our thoughts betray comprehension
our senses fail to illicit empathy
our action is the only worthy prayer


16.

From my
safe window
I hear the
mortar shells
walking toward
my little palace,
the crack
of a ******
shot
precedes
the wiz of a
passing bullet
whispering
its presence
into my
waxen
ear.


17.

From my
safe window,
my palms scoop
the rich soil
of the flower boxes
perched on my sill.
I anoint the tender
green shoots of  the
Arab Spring
with an incessant flow
of bittersweet tears.

Music selection:
John Coltrane
A Love Supreme
Acknowledgment

Oakland
2/28/12
jbm

Reclining in their rocking chairs, the brothers Beau and Cletus gazed despondently out
Past the final farm toward the convergence of the worn highway
And the fritz horizon. Cows paused their chewing; an ashy sun
Obscured in incongruous fluffs of cloud; it grew
Greyishly chilly. "Shame the kids're movin'," Beau squeezed out before a deep belch. Cletus only
Mumbled, his voice lost in the light drizzle rapping on the milky sheet-plastic roof. The
          porch

Was unfurnished, save the chairs, one ashtray, and a novelty sign reading: "Get off my porch."
Cletus took a long, pensive drag off a cigarette before stubbing it out.
He coughed a raspy croak wetted with sixty-six years. Besides Cletus' sporadic coughs, the only
Distinguishable sound to be heard in Moody Creek wafted in from the highway:
Rattles of the day's final Spokane- or Boise-bound semi-trucks grew
Inaudible as Beau transiently  murmured, "Purtier than a string of fried trout, that there
          sun-

set." "Whaaa?" Cletus wheezed. "It's settin'," answered Beau, loosely gesturing at the sun.
Fractaled-orange-shafts webbing manifold shades of yellow – amber, belge, stil-de-grain – grew
Plumply stout upon the farmland, edged between properties and crumpled on the porch.
"I'll tell you what Beau – I'm glad they got out,"
Cletus uttered with assurance, his eyes scanning the reaches of light upon the highway.
Beau fixed his cap, musing over Cletus' words. He cleared his throat before beginning, "If
          only..."

Then stopped and itched his belly-button. Cletus turned to his brother. "I know one thang only
Beau: they'll do good in California. They'll be livin' high on the hog. Yer son n' my son
'll 'ave secure futures." Jack nodded somberly. He hated the highway.
He hated its ability to isolate everything. It had been his original revamp, the now-rickety porch,
His first project on his fixer-upper after marrying Dorothy West. They'd wed out
In his father's corn field; bought a house a mile or so down the road. Kids were born. Love
          grew,

And in its growing all things tangible and gorgeous – like tangrams piece together – grew:
The farm, the house, savings account and family. They ate hearty; drank canned beer only –
Living was smooth – but it changed when Dorothy took Little Dale and got out.
She wanted what the farm couldn't give or grow, leaving tiny Moody Creek with their son
As the last moon of May, 1955 went up. "*****!" Beau had yelled from the porch.
He'd woken to his Buick's rev and watched its taillights wane upon the
          highway.

And though he remarried, this was, in truth, mostly why Beau never squarely looked upon highway.
The light drizzle grew
Heavy, intensifying. "Gosh **** rain might near knock the coverin' off the porch!"
Hollered Beau. Cletus looked up and blew a cloud of thick grey smoke. "It's only
Rain Beau. No need gettin' ornery." That morning they'd seen off their youngest sons as the sun
Was just rising. One left to work for a dairy ******* in The Valley, the other went to figure
          out

Himself and his career. The porch shuddered. Beau absent-mindedly repeated "If only..."
Daylight died; black inked upon the highway. Cletus lit a new cigarette. Moody Creek grew
Dense, compacted by the darkness. The sun inched away. Cletus hacked and put his cigarette
          out.

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

I.
Still thriving beyond immaculate walls.
Tincturing the water that solemnly streams in the river,
I await the corner of grassy marshes, and
Gather your secret spells.

In days when the land is prey to rhythmic beats;
The water dances with disturbance.
I run through the meadow barefoot, and
Cast the sun-dried bricks beyond me.

The red Moon drowns in woeful bliss, while
Its jealous relative illuminates the dew on Morning petals.
I glare through my destruction;
And see your silhouette.

Torn bridges of yesterdays misfortune send
Violent waves forth, undying they proceed.
Bravely-- they despondently conquer me;
No longer a trace of you I see.

II.
Unable to grasp reality, bitter
Tears of a Bright knowledge no longer in possession.
Red yonder, cognizant of former tribulations
Appear among the contour of wilted trees

Desperately searching for extraneous disposal,
Only melted clay reflects the ruins of an icy marsh.
Spring is obscure; but inevitable.
Soon harvest shall return to the field,
And barren no more will the land be.

No longer riddles, or secret spells;
Greet the stream of lost memories.
Impairment heals itself; it weaves
Filaments of seconds- to create a
Labyrinth of Time.

a nacreous tossing around at
the sides, a dappled silver
sunlight if looked one way, an

apocalyptic gloam if another,
exhaled from a seeming
mouth, feeding on what has

already eviscerated an unfelt
*****, a predator certainly its
own prey, a heat certainly

poison-breath on a cheek
falling when a meretricious
lover spouts that spurious

hypocorism, and also just a
wavering, iridescent puddle—
cornered, soft as a liquid steel

echo of a futile struggle
rolling around, bouncing off  
a wine glass, and a porcelain  

table edge, while a listening
head shakes, looks down
despondently, gloom glowing

out the hair, a voice jaded
since birth saying some
thing about differences, or a

helpless slender strap of hope
hanging itself on the way two
other eyes look at it across

checkered watered wings, two
swirling god whorls, two
effulgent galaxies the color of

melting pine bole circling
around in living umber striae,
pulling its gaze, raising it, as if

they, they were blazing truth
cased behind lithophane, and it,
only an aporetic puddle now

of tepid ocher, a mild earth
stone placed in a hand, asked
what is thought of it and the

response: yes, yes of course,
before foreign distance splutters
its face, and it retreats from

its meaning imparted to every
thing (with the vulnerable
precision of a swaying finger

tip) to the baby lanugo of a
delicate floating, through
human rills, of what is horizon

docked, dead, not merely
deciduous—forever jilted with
breath bulging as when beating

a flopping eyeless fish to
half-dead, head tilted up a
throat trying to pry itself

free, trying to live by
streaming snagless, airful,
without spirant sound of going

lost straight from the hands—
then a short chop of fullness
finally expunged and sputtering

like an escaped tuft of
shackled wonder soaring up
the sky in a puff and soul ring.

LOOSE-VEINED and languid as the yellow mist
That swoons along the river in the sun,
Your flesh of passion pale and amber-kissed
With years of heat that through your veins have run,

You lie with aching memories of love
Alone and naked by the weeping tree,
And indolent with inward longing move
Your slim and sallow limbs despondently.

If love came warm and burning to your dream,
And filled you all your avid veins require,
You would lie sadly still beside the stream,
Sobbing in torture of that vivid fire;

The same low sky would weave its fading blue,
The river still exhale its misty rain,
The willow trail its waving over you,
Your longing only quickened into pain.

Bed your desire among the pressing grasses;
Lonely lie, and let your thirsting *******
Lie on you, lonely, till the fever passes,
Till the undulation of your longing rests.

who re-marrowed this hollow tree ?
thought themselves of mythology ?
processed death into the dying **** ?
blunt   blackened hope
           buttering up what god ?
                                   what mischief maker ?
: Loki the crow with his promethean nose ?

covering his crooked actions
                          the defiling of a life
  murderer
  a coward of failed coupling
congress    a night down the pub
    the gender polar pair collided
            sottish upon their union
genitals bragging through urgent gaps in clothing
but that urgency deflated
it muttered away
he felt baited
and
  humiliated    
             he committed to ******

crude amateur throttling
  a ***** sogged brick  
an indiscreet botch up
    and a stolen wheelbarrow  
        to ferry her away

'The Mourning Tree'
           despondently sifts for nourishment
its gummy combs of branches
  sashing particles  from the night solution
the tree ; a cavity
too verrucose and fleshy to whittle the winds
                                               or fife a tune
a rubbery craggle     foreign against the landscape
should   rather   make out its' habits
                  off the floor of a deep sea trench

roughing in the corpse
head first   down the gullet thirstily
skirts up and claustro
between spread limbs
to ***** puckle in the hollow tree
evicting the bird of Minerva
      ‘whoing’ into the charged sky
  blooded over
             the night blackens further
               brooding on the event

who re-marrowed this hollow tree ?
married themselves to a mythology ?
force fed life   engorged within deathly seed ?
upended crime     in lieu of a sacrifice
           he offered a glass of woman
               to oder the night
he strummed teasing fingers
      raked them humming
         through the heady resistance of the air
electric creeping warmth   over the skin
                        erecting the hairs
   museum silence
   an arena    as fraught equal    between magnets
       clouds cut the moon
      moon cut the eye
    sinful kiting to mend a link
ramblings kinked
he makes sparking incantations to the gods

one scatting madman
one corpse woman


that same bled night
where the furrowed fields
            meets natures disarray
children approach this woodland border             
children with empty baked bean tins
      that they joined with lengths of string
trying to reach out their ears
    extend their timid range
       to sprites, nymphs, pucks or faeries
an older kid strikes up a cigarette
one of the younger ones squats to ***
         and be mocked

one brave girl of ten years
  runs a tin and the line into the woods  
it jerks taunt after about thirty paces
she wedges it in a tree fork and runs back
the children crowd the receiver tin
spooking themselves
eavesdropping   
        upon the hollow wisdom of small gods
            that mask their shame in the dark

There are things we come back to:

People we can’t stop loving. Places that sing and sigh. Words gritty and livening inside our mouths. Songs that shake us out of our indifference, make us feel. Those little coffee shops rattling with charming oddities. Stories of scares that turned out to be enjoyable thrills. Photographs where their hands are in yours and you are both beaming. Poetry. Motion. Light.

It’s all the same. All the wonder and heart-twist, all the love and loss.

…

There are things we come back to.

There are things we come back to, and there is you.

…

A long time ago, I dreamed of you. Back when everything was uncertain and fantastically, despairingly painful.

In this dream, you looked like the end of one world and the beginning of another. Like a door cracked part of the way open. I wanted to walk through to the other side. I wanted to see what this new world was like. I wanted rebirth. I wanted you. Simply, stupidly.

I’ll never forget the way the night and all its neon lights played with your face. I’ll never forget waking up with a pulse faster than a bird’s, and swinging my legs over the edge of the mattress, and blinking at the wall as I decided it was time to take my poor, engorged heart to the page.

I didn’t write that day. I confessed. I admitted the unadmittable: Love, being in love.  

I erupted.

…

Tell me to stop romanticizing you and I will be defiant, I will refuse your request.

Tell me to stop rhapsodizing you and I will tell you that I have always done so, have always been composing poems within your orbit, as if, like some kind of Jerusalem, all roads lead to you.

Tell me stop idealizing you and I will say it’s impossible for me, for someone who falls in love with everything raw and good and blooming, for a writer, for a woman who is all blush beneath her sarcasm, all stomach-flutter beneath her carefully arranged neutrality.

Tell me to stop and I will rebel.

I will keep writing you as you exist. Crackling with energy. Sharp, like new ice. Flagrant.

I will keep drawing upon language to arrange as close an image of you as I can possibly come.

I will keep telling all the world how you are collision upon collision of forest and wind, endless.

You cannot stop me.

…

There are things I come back to.

This (eyes that never fail to see straight through to my core; a laughing mouth; beautiful hands tuning a violin in sun-dusted silence as I watched with my own poised over piano keys, wondering despondently why our duets were always love songs);

and this (a small, privately lovely box of canvases with your trees, star-swirls, phoenix enflamed, and other rising things; two girls, a bookstore, a meeting of souls, a rescue from excruciating loneliness; us sprawled out side by side on an uneven cellar floor beneath the glow of lights strung everywhere, awash in amusement because parties were never something we excelled at);

and this (the moment it all became clear; the answering longing; the brilliance of synergy; the soft and glorious voyage of our hands toward each other; the inevitability of it all).

You, always.

You.

Today I sat despondently
As I realized you're avoiding me.

Perhaps its that you just suspect
That someone (me) has now unchecked

Your name off people with sad eyes-
I see they're only tired, no sighs

Adorn your heart as delicate strings
Of ivy clinging to a house

That holds regrets of things gone by
And wishes for more time to cry

But no, I understand that you
Are more important to me, it's true:

Merely checking you on a list
Was a silly excuse to dream of wrist

In wrist, a symbol of trust and light
That streaks my thoughts of you each night.

© 3/6/13

Deny yourself; deny everything. There is no reason for which you should be real. Your existence is very implausible. **** yourself so you can finally live! Good news: If your therapist asks when was the last time you cried, shame-crying doesn't count! "Oh, she's so cute. I bet she doesn't wake up screaming in the middle on the night, and can get through a day without doubting her own existence three times. I wish I were that attractive." It is true what they say, highschool is the best time of your life. However, nobody said it would be any good, they just said it'd be better than what comes next. He knew, even as he befriended BatteriesPlus on Facebook, that his life had hit rock bottom. It pained her to set her clocks back each Fall, knowing she couldn't set them back far enough to undo all her failures. His doctor stopped asking if he was sexually active years ago. A reason to live is at the same time a great cause to die for, so it is better to just go about life despondently, constantly sighing. I'm just two iPhone Apps away from never having to talk to a human being in real life again. You can also make a difference in the life of a child by killing their pet in front of them. He'd always believed that death wasn't the end of the journey, but then he took a basic biology class. Can't sleep. But at least now I can tell all of you from experience that an identity crisis and stabbing anxiety mix wonderfully into an energy-giving pernicious compound. Especially at 1:30 am.
mix wonderfully
mix wonderfully
mix wonderfully
mix wonderfully
mix wonderfully
mix wonderfully

There is an ever growing forest within my chest, viridescent canopies endlessly reaching towards powder blue skies like hands extended upwards in prayer
Vividly mesmerizing flowers of imagination and life bloom in scattered unmarked paths for meandering souls
Sadness flows in endless fountains pouring forth rapidly rushing streams of velvet indigo and starlight
Crumbling riverbanks signal the beginnings of tentative doubts
I’ve become aware of the weight of heavy shackles curling around my wrists like thick vines and ivy twisting over old bricks
Nature reclaiming my insides, society disdaining and threatening to capture and drag me beneath the underbrush
I feel the unmistakable pang of hopelessness nesting its thorns just below my ribcage, etching itself into my skin like stonemasons carving their legacy into mountain faces
My body is sacred ground, a temple of an apathetic deity who’s staked ownership over the emotions that run deep like ocean currents in my veins
My heart pumps opalescent despair, washing up on the shores like waves on new sands of lands I’ve yet to see
My forest lays on an island within the bermuda triangle, unreachable by sea or sky
My emotions act as geomagnetic pulses and methane vents to  confuse your aeronautical and sea faring instruments,  causing your vessels to come crashing down and sinking into the vast expanse of rolling royal blue unknown
I exist for the sole purpose of straining inspiration and failing aspirations
Those inky black buds slowly unfurling in the core of my being, remnants giving way to wilting foliage, petals listless at my feet, eroding with the will of misery and time with vibrant colors burning to ashen corpses
With my lips I inspire hope, yet my own lack thereof hollows me out like rotting jack o lanterns
with light flickering despondently through gaping hole, my eyes, liquid light vaguely sauntering downwards, softly dripping into my hopeful reserves like torrential rain
Drumming like the thrumming of my rushing blood in my ears and the powerful thunder of waterfalls cascading in the distance, returning to earth from their perpetual perch atop towering mountains
A jungle of my own endless shame carves me like a sculpture, eroding me like oceans and cliff faces over thousands of years, with fear uncoiling like deep blue carpets of jagged glass running like rivers, squeezes the paralyzing uncertainty into my blood like an injection. Turmoil joins self loathing, they loom above like my own personal berlin wall, disappearing into the white clouds composed of nervousness and doubt, separation from all I long to aspire to on the other side

“***”. I said, looking at my phone with wide eyes, “***”.
“What?” Anna, asked, blowing on her too-hot pop-**** breakfast.
“Tony, my ex-boyfriend’s coming - TOMORROW - for the university tour. - He’s asking if I want to meet up with him.” I said, twiddling my thumbs over my phone keyboard. Tony’s ID had flashed on my phone last week - but I hadn’t picked up. His tour was set for 8AM.
“Did EVERYONE at your high school get accepted here?” Anna asks.
“Apparently.” I moaned and found myself biting my lip in concentration.

Last summer, before I’d left for college, there’d been a brief window, when the pandemic looked beaten - if you were vaccinated. There were parties upon parties after the long virus lockdown. I’d decided it was time - I wasn’t going off to college as the only ****** in the ivy league. It was a summer of kisses and other things - with Tony.

In the end though, we never even got a chance to say goodbye because his dad, who lived in Arizona, was in a car wreck. Tony had to escort his little brother out there. We were pickpocketed by circumstance and parted on imperfect terms.

Now, suddenly, as if it were a surprise - there I was - and there he was, stepping out of an Uber. I moved toward him, tugging at my hair that chose that moment to writhe, like a live thing in the wind. I cursed myself for not digging my best clothes out of the trunk under my bed. I’d told myself that I didn’t need to - I wouldn’t - put on a show for him but now I was sure my reward for stubbornness was looking like a scarecrow.

His parents were climbing out of the other side of the car. His dad first, whom I liked and then his mom, who is a straight up *****. I overheard her sourly calling my family “foreigners” once. For some reason I hadn’t pictured them there.

Tony reached me first. My initial response to seeing him was joy, then it turned to a vague dismay. Tony, who’d stepped forward for a hug, noticed the shift and faltered. Our hug was off-kilter, as stiff as the embrace between two mannequins. Still, He managed to lean in and kiss me on the cheek, without saying anything.

When I’d imagined our meeting, I hadn’t accounted for adrenaline, for shaking knees and sweaty palms. I gripped my skirt with my hands, to stop them from quivering and dry them.

“I’m nervous. Why am I so nervous?” Tony said, laughingly.
“Don’t be,” I replied, trying to sound casual, “we’re old friends.”
His face showed a flash, a microexpression of annoyance at the word “friends,” and he said, “Old lovers, actually,” low enough that his approaching parents couldn’t hear it. He towered over me, could he have gotten taller?

As we walked across campus, to the welcome center, there were a lot of other groups of parents and students. Spring break is when most tours happen, when nascent, ivy league dreams come to be evaluated. Tony and I walked in front, and I fell into tour-guide mode, trying to entertain. “Yale’s old campus follows the pseudo-Gothic style, like Oxford University, in England - but the style originated in France - with cathedrals and abbeys.”

After a couple of minutes of similar pablum, I asked, “Where are you guys going next?”
“Harvard,” his mom said, adjusting her purse proudly, as if she’d personally been accepted. “Ahh,” I said, Tony and I exchanged a look rich with silent communication: “Ignore her, please,” he said with his eyes.

“Harvard is built in a flat, ugly, red-brick, neo-Georgian style that was originally used for colonial outhouses.” I mocked. Tony and his father chucked - instantly getting the ivy league rivalry humor. His mother pursed her lips and soldiered on.

After a moment she said, “It just goes to show.” I waited to hear what it went to show but the thought would remain forever incomplete. I finally delivered them into the custodianship of professional tour guides - right on schedule - and took my leave to meet Leong for coffee.

As I settled in, Leong asked, in Chinese (our private gossip language). “Zenme yàngle? (How's it going?)”
I started to give her a rote answer, but posturing, with Leong, would be dumb. “Zhè shì yi chang zhèngzài jìnxíng de zainàn ” (It’s a disaster in progress), I answered, despondently.

Why was I doing this? It was full-on awkward. But deep down I knew. I’d wanted to see him again, badly enough to endure seeing his mother (who, on some unconscious level, I had to know would come too.).

Later, as we waited for their Uber, Tony studied me and Yale’s manicured lawns. “I tried to picture you here,” he said, “and couldn’t. What’s it like here?” He asked.
“Oh, I’m livin’ the good life,” I answered at first, but then I added, “Everyone studies hard, hardly sleeps and is ravenous for fun.”
“Oh, like everywhere,” he says grinning.
“Like everywhere,” I agreed, and we laughed.

“Now that I’ve seen you here - you fit - you seem at home.”
After a moment of silence, I admitted, “I couldn’t stay, and risk another lockdown.” I didn’t know if I wanted him to exonerate me or confirm my guilt over leaving.

“I get it, I’d have left too,” he shrugged, “forget about it.” Hearing him say that brought tears to my eyes, we clasped hands and after a moment, the Uber arrived, and we hugged goodbye.

As they drove away, I felt a relief. You have to live in the moment here, not in the past. Summer kisses only last as fond memories.

Besides, we’re headed for spring break in Paris in - I checked my watch - 2 hours!

Ernest, *you  are the embodiment
of every melancholic song,
playing in the rooms of aching souls
with broken hearts.

You are the dark sky
that the sun has abandoned;
the wrinkled and weathered body
that youth forgot.

Despondently, you sit,
Day-after-day,
in that beige, aged lounge chair--
(which just like you, has seen better days)
rising from the dead,
only to scowl
about the ways in which your body has
failed you.

"Six months to live."
"Six months to live."
"Six months to live."

Six months to live*
but you're already gone
and I
can’t
bring
you
back.

Twilight crossed the evening sky,
Was a clear eve,
In early starlight I declare,
Saw shop of puppets appealing,
Almost calling out,
Some kind of lure, they'd called you back,
We had to stop and take a glimpse,

Now this evening,
My heels click clack across the cobbled square,
Desired another view of tragic puppets, looking blue,
From their incarceration of wooden hearts and bitter souls,
I too heard their suppressed weeping,
Sobbing tears despondently,

Looking through the dusty pane,
Visualised a figurehead,
Looked similar to you,
Wooden face stained with scars of tear stains,
Countenance of yours,
After I left you in the bar last night,
What veritable vision you now presented to my sight,

What kind of black magic kept you trapped,
For you were no bad man,
An occasional fool,
For now in the care of marionette curator,
In whose grasp became ensnared,
You were seized in a tragic subterfuge,
As a tragic marionette you dwell forever and a day!
By ladylivvi1

© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)

“To love is to tenderly dig into someone’s mind:
His or her heart and soul to forever find!
Care and carry compassionately in storms and in winds
To love is to find an eternal peace in the one that you lovingly abides
Love is to find a familiar ground that two forever binds!
Love is the joy shared by two that in this journey, true rides!
In love are routes rough, in love are ways tough, in love are rails-grids that grinds
Though, in love are determined souls that never part but remains set in strong stands”

A kiss is a stamp of love
To feel your breath warmth in mine
An emboss, an assurance of love
Our staring gaze, the stupors for each other’s sight
Is a language stronger than words-written or verbal  
Understood only by two fools honestly hungry for each other
The beauty and peace of your voice
Candidly meaning your saying that you love me alone forever
Is an indelible engrave of our love
Music, a sweet sacred hymn to my soul
Like a piper’s pious pipe, it is a song to my ears
A solemn instrumental, sentimental to my heart

To hear the heart beat of your heart
In the strong embraces of your arms
It’s a stigmata to our love, there to be binding forever!
An umbilical cord strapping us together end-ever
To listen to the whispers of your soul in our feelings and flows
To feel the silences of your heart in our emotions and elations
Is to be entangled in eternal love, to be chained in forever love

You are mine, there is no way I will let you go!
I will fight for you, I will care for you!
I will love you forever and ever for our love is forever  
I will love you beyond any Heaven's heights or Earth's extents
Now in its extant and ever even when we are lost extinct
We will watch the earth form and deform together
Nature, magnificently make and despondently delete together forever
Together we will quietly listen to the melodic music of the universe forever

When the sun sad burns, I will be your shade
When storms rage havoc, I will be your shelter
And when the rains pound, I will still be your umbrella
When lightening rudely strikes and thunders raucously scares
I will still be there besides to care, your scares to cure
When snows severely fall, I will be your oven, kiln warmth
When summer and springs sweet sings, I will be your mild melody
And when autumns dull comes, I will be the joy to raise your moistened moods
To who do you owe your heart to? To you I owe my heart
In my heart is my all-my soul, it that outlives me-dust!
Keep compassionate care of my spirit, until I returns-compost!

© Kìùra Kabiri. All rights reserved.

Lets walk down the street
Why’d I lose it again?

You are killing me
Keep calling me your friend

And it hurts, it hurts,
It hurts my dear.
Cause I tried, I tried to
keep you near.

I tried to keep you close

But it all just got away from me
We all lost out to misery
I have to wonder why
It always ends this way

I’ll pass you by on my way to see
And you’ll look at me despondently
Because I, I let you down

And they’ll all say their piece on me
Saying Oh she’s such a drama queen
But I, I never meant to let you down

And it hurts, it hurts,
It hurts my dear.
Cause I tried, I tried to
keep you near

I tried to keep you close

But it all just got away from me
We all lost out to misery
I have to wonder why
It always ends this way

I lost myself somewhere along the way
Trying to be perfect for you
I lost myself somewhere along the way
Trying to be someone new


And it hurts, it hurts
It hurts my dear
Cause I tried I tried to
keep you near

I tried to keep you close

And it hurts, it hurts
It hurts my dear
Cause I tried I tried to
keep you near

I tried to lock you down.

But it all just got away from me
I sealed myself to misery
Trying to be you

last i heard you were
reading Oscar Wilde's
The Picture of Dorian Gray
have you mustered the  
courage since then to
exhibit authenticity when
you say
i love you

to the golden girl
staring back at you in the mirror
can you peel back the
veil obscuring your self-image
to see a little clearer

ten months
since we last
exchanged
circumstantial
pleasantries

funny

we used to converse every day
c'est la vie is what i imagine you'd
have to say for yourself after all
it always did sound like an excuse
constantly reclusive your
imaginary deity the
only refuge you've ever known

so wander despondently
refugee of refuse
pilfer from the gutters
of garbage some semblance
of purpose some pretense of
predestination to validate your
meaningless existence

**** it up like
the rest of us
there's no rhyme or
reason for the so-called
seasons of life

you're a fair-weather
friend and though i might've
crossed oceans for you then
i don't mind you
out of my life

you should’ve paid closer
attention when they
once told you
be careful if you
befriend a writer

they'll make you
immortal
even when you
just want to
die

i guess that's life

Paired down in heaven, the hawk-eyed sun
Gleaming bitterly through five limbs sees
The jeweled moon behave despondently-
Say from man dream beats the foam and bleeds
Like Prometheus sullen prose on infinite Oregons.

Take from your time the frost-eyed sun altogether
Staring sharply through a blind and smoldering world,
A love of truths so tried and secret.

Shall we in mercy take our gains under the rose-lit morning
A trial for time and truest?
Sense for the sun is swimming in our heart
A love of radio and silence.

Bleached like my Albatross,
Come in quiet a world safest
That burns black embers
In the woods of our soul since forever
And sound.

Sound down the heavens
In the silent hour of their hell,
The tide of time on a bone-white beach.

From what high altar looking in his place,
God of man,
The god-man and holy to his place
To forge the eye of seasons,
Seven in their number,
And stretch out solitude
On the blistered ground.

Shared down in source,
The last of the kings,
Holy in his crown
Of bodies that smile
So wide and honest each.

Once in a while I wish I could dial
The day back to right where it started.
I’d then reconcile with things that did rile
And left me despondently-hearted.

It isn’t the norm but some days just swarm
With episodes rank and annoying
And in such a storm, it’s hard to transform
A dejection into something buoying.

Still, all things must pass and greener the grass
We will spot on our side of the fences.
We’ll relinquish the crass and begin, smooth as glass,
With a fresh start when morning commences.

There goes the alarm again.
The misanthropic crusader goes into shock,
I calm it down; comfort is mania.
Stare despondently into the void.

A chorus rises,
Violence, people trapped in time shout through metal,
A voice cries, confined, bounces from hall to wall,
I am not sure I woke up at all.

Some higher functioning brain activities
Get bored in their entropic state-
Trade places with whimsy,
Because that is what they do when they lose interest in their task,

As I have lost interest in my task,
And look for more chin music-
To raise a symphony within me.
To make one day look different to the last.

how can i say
that i envy the chase
from the tip of my pencil
to your graphite gaze?
spitting my heart
onto an endless canvas
of greys and blacks,
hoping the red would stain…
but it never does.
only your floral words are
indelible on my skin
and the reverse
is just a lie i tell myself
so i could sleep a little better
every forsaken night.
the truth is far from your moon;
beyond all your pretty stars
and iridescent eternities,
it is despairingly beyond my fathoms.
but i hope, and again i hurt
for butterfly smiles
and deluding taciturn undertows
and nightmarish illusions
leaving bruises of you
on the very tip of my lost tongue
and all over my wept eyes;
a lifeless empty void
against the autumn shower
of your warm hermetic glances.
and there is no one else
to keep this rusted clockwork
ticking rhythmically to the beats
of your mindless cradle…
and that is the ultimate folly
of this ascetic destructive shale
that i tactlessly call my soul.
for a fool’s machinery,
this chemical heart is.
So indiscernible to lose itself in
such vitreous self-infliction,
and sabotaging the very blood
that my tiring arteries
now regain, thus to sustain
the very memory of your breath
in tranquil consonance…
foolish—and yet; a fool, i am.
a fool for believing that this
lie was past the dark side of the moon
and beyond my wounded stars
and lacklustre infinities…
you are despondently beyond my fathoms.
but i hope, and again, i hurt.
darling, just how can i ever say
that i envy the calm reflection
from the incipience of your melody
to your coda’s revelations?

Don’t ever trust this smile
It’s a despondently, trained lie
My eyes may seem hostile
But you won’t ever hear me cry
And you won’t ever see my cuts
The only thing you’ll see is this **** smile

As with all of the big, great losses
not very much from here forward
is going to be      the same
I know it won't
I do want you to applaud
on your way out   though
despondently, once again
the harmonica begins to play.

Among the wreckage
of her soul,
lie shards of ribcage
(splintered like
the stern of a ship
that has weathered
many a beastly storm)
and fragments of heart
(veins as thin and lifeless
as the gossamers
of waterlogged spider webs).

Sunken treasures
you could call these things,
waiting in this perpetual limbo,
this Bermuda of Lovers Lost.

"Girl, overboard!"
he'd cried
(even though he
had been the one
to push her over the edge
in the first place).

Imagine that:

wrists tied behind her--
what hurts more?
The rope burns
or the cuts?--
feet sweeping despondently
across that doomed plank;
she can feel her love's breath--
frigid as Neptune's sea-bound winds--
undulating against the back of her neck.

She turns around slowly,
and he shoots her that
pathological
barracuda grin,
promises her that he cares--
truly, he cares--
that she means something to him.

But many a thing
a pirate does thief,
the truth
being one of them.

The next thing she knows,
she is plummeting
(watch how she does fall for him)
towards the convulsing
stretch of grey beneath her,
and as she whips about
through the bluster and the rain,
she stares up at him
with wild, pleading eyes.

She wants to scream out,
"Why?"
but there is no room
for words (or poetry)
upon the lips of the drowned--
after all,
dead girls tell no tales

I believed it wholeheartedly
When you used to say
That I was like honey
Soft smooth and sweet
Glistening like the amber shafts
That coruscated upon your tanned skin
When you yawned turned and moaned in your sleep
Before opening your caramel brown eyes
And uttering my name
from those dusty red slightly chapped lips
Without any reason
Just like you breathe or blink
And my eyes would sparkle
With a rapturous delight
Just like that empty glass bottle
Near your windowsill
That shone resplendently
When the sun smiled and winked at it
Or the wisps of grey misty clouds
That wandered despondently
But glowed luminously
When the scattered light of an aureate moon
Caressed them tenderly
You were the radiance
That engulfed the stygian darkness
Bleeding from my heart
Suffusing my veins
You were the vibrant spring
That restored my shattered pieces
sealed them with an undying warmth
And watched me replenish
As I bloomed from a withering bud
To the most exquisite flower
When your unconditional love
Percolated through my dead roots
But a blunder you committed
For you made me believe
That this happiness that you gifted me
Would never ever recede
it diminished and vanished
At that agonizing moment
when you left my side
And entered inside the gates of heaven
Now you don't seem to hear my cry
My tear ducts have long dried
My throat stings
I can barely speak
My skin is swollen and ruddy
Covered in bruises that don't seem to heal
My wrists are scarred
My lips crack and bleed
My complexion has turned sallow
And i believe wholeheartedly
That im not like honey anymore

The door is open
Something happened and I
don't dare to move

Was there a man?
Where are her clothes?
What is this smell?

Should I call the police?
Her hand lies protectively
between her legs

Did she hear me?
She doesn't look up, something
is wrong, she is despondently

slumped against the bed
the sheets pulled to the floor
under her bare lower body

the clip still in her hair