32 × 21=?

First digit of first #
Multiplied by first
Digit of last number= 6

2nd digit of 1st #
Multiplied by last
Digit of last number = 2

Now multiply 1st digit
3 by ( last digit) 1 & it =3
2nd digit of 1st # which
Is 2 × 1st digit of 2nd #
Which is 2 & you get 4
Add 3 +4
=7
Insert 7 between the 6 and 2
You get 672
32×21=672

perchance an epic was necessary, to consolidate the scattered thinking, and indeed, once a certain life, and was lived with a cherishing heart, the heart broke, and life turned from adventures to a more studious approach, and in here, a comfort was found, never before imagined explorations - of course sometime a tourist in the arts does come, but such tourists quickly fade, and the pursuit becomes more enshrined - to levitated towards epics is perhaps the sole reason for the cherished memory of some - and how quickly all can revolve around a searched for theme, after many incorporations were minded - as one to have travelled the Mediterranean, another to have been eaten by the great mandarin silkworm of the library of Kangxi - heading along the silk route with spices - indeed the great mandarin silkworm of the library of emperor Kangxi; as i too needed a bearing - to inspect the trickster of lore and the godly blacksmith of the north.

by instruction - an accumulation of the the zephyrs
into a vector, headed north,
toward the gluttonous murk of ice, jesting
with aches to the bulging and mesmerised crescendo
of adrift stars captured in the tilting away -
to think of an epic, to keep out-of-time of
spontaneity and thistle like swiftness in the last
days of summer, that Mercury brings the new
tides of the tetravivaldis -
   brought by the λoγος of a γoλας -
for reasons that satisfy the suntan copper of
the ***** - the λoγος of a γoλας - yet not toward
Monte Carlo or any hideout of money well invested
and greedily spent for a charm -
no, north bids me welcome from afar -
this norðri fløkja, this    ᚾᛟᚱᛞᚱᛁ       ᚠᛚᚢᚲᛃᚨ -
by my estimate, i could not take the nonsense
of numerology of a certain specialisation,
i took what was necessary, i pillaged the temple
of Solomon, perhaps that the dome of the rock
might stand - with its glistening dome and
its sapphire mosaics - i don't belong among
palm trees and date trees - hence i turned to
deciphering and subsequently encrypting -
as i have already with *ᚱᚨᛒᛖ:
the journey of an Æsir through a birch forest
on a horse.
                    with this method in mind:
(a) ᚾᛟᚱᛞᚱᛁ       (b) ᚠᛚᚢᚲᛃᚨ:

(a)
the need to acquire possessions accumulating
into an estate, is a journey encountered
day by day, although a journey on ice

(b)
cattle only thrive near water,
auruchs did not, and hence illuminated
their way to extinction,
         by way of the Æsirs' harvest
(to eat up diversity of life, and create
a godless world of man).

my escape route came from ᚠ - mirroring שִׂ
although the former standing, the latter sitting
down, although the former fathomable
to my pleasure, the latter unfathomable
to ascribe numbers to letters for patterns -
i seek no patterns, hence my sight turned to
the northern sights, and meanings amplified.
                
the greeks were intended to explore abstracts,
having stated a triangle
they invented the ² symbol and what not,
it was because
they didn't bother extracting a phonetic unit
from something definite,
they classified such endeavours barbarian,
what reasonable greek of 13% reason and
87% reality would extract alpha from
the sound you made when
saying ansur (ᚨᚾᛋᚢᚱ) - i.e. attention -
i.e. deriving a definite sound differentiation
for alphabetical rubrics from a definite thing
(in whatever classification that might be)?
the greeks used the alphabetical rubric of
crafting a definite sound from an indefinite thing,
so they said: acronym, aardvark, assumption,
                       α                 α      α     α,
then they said α² - there are no antonyms -
but indeed there were, hence the Trojan nation
settling in the boot, that's Italy,
the Romans escalated the greek theory
beyond taking out a definite sound distinguished
from other distinguishable sounds,
abstracting what the alphabetic sound assured
a list under alpha: assumption, advantage,
acorn, etc. -
the latins were the first atomist after the greeks,
the greeks believed in atoms, but had no
microscopes to prove atoms existed,
such scientific faith found no parallel;
the latins ensured this was true,
ending with castrato sing-along -
the latins furthered abstracting sounds from
definite orientation which the greeks did
working from ice into iota,
the latins just sang i, i, i -
of course chiral behaviourism of such dissection
emerged - hatch a plan, plan a chisel -
it's very piquant i mind to let you know -
the greeks abstracted nouns in order to create
the alphabet, the barbarians still used
proper nouns to speak proper, the greeks
thus created synonyms and antonyms to add
to the spice of life - after all,
not deriving definite alphas from
cursors that acknowledged points of origins
created diacritical stressing like comma and
semis of colon and macron, not deriving them
from definite things, shunning a helpful
vocabulary bank to an unhelpful vocabulary
banked: synonyms and antonyms the Gemini's
birth of rhetoric;
but the latins were rejected with their atomic theory
of pronunciation, since they became laden
with diacritics - punctuation marks of a different sort,
you can measure a man sprint one hundred metres,
but is that also measuring a man to say
mān or män or mán? i know that the slavic ó = u
given the scalpel opening the ensō to craft a parabola -
but it's not necessarily an accent debate
but a punctuation debate... the emergence of
the diacritic symbols above the letters is due
partly to their joy of the popes listening to
castrato operas and the fact that the romans
went too far... hence the chiral nature of certain
symbols when dittoing - the barbarians used
definite things to assert definite sounds -
the greeks used indefinite things to assert definite
sounds - mind you, if the romans became too
abstract with their little units that became engraved
with punctual accenting, then the greek letters
became laden with scientific constants as necessarily
fathered, unchanging in the pursuit of Heraclitus' flux -
for example... Pythagoras and the hypotenuse:
                            σ / κ² = α² + β² -
           or?
                             c² (ć) = a² (ą) + b² / š (bubble beep
                                                           bop barman backup hop
                                                           of shackled kakah
                                                           or systematic oscillation
                                                           for bzz via burp);
πρ² is still more stable
                                 than what the latin alphabet allows -
hence why greek phonetic encoding was used in
science, and latin phonetic encoding was used in music,
can't be one or the other - added to the fact that
latin encoding had too many spare holes with
the evolution of numbers, and greek didn't have them,
hence β-reduction in lambda calculus and F-dur and A#

the one variant of the grapheme (æ) they didn't include
among expressions: graphite and grapheme
was the variant - gravitating to an entombing
of the excess aesthetic - geresh stress -
somehow the twins match-up to a single womb:
àé vs. áè: V vs. Λ - Copernicus wrote over all
of this with the flat earth uselessness
in terms of navigation - flat earth is useless...
huh? flat earth is the only system that gave
Columbus the chance to explore the new world -
no flat earth no Columbus -
that satellite named Luna was no tool
in navigating across the Atlantic - believe me
i'm sure -
                  or that grapheme (æ) varied like statistics
or like the characters in the book of genesis
that famous adam und eve (kim and kanye):
chances came, chances went:
it was still a draw on the tongue tied decipher:
àè and áé proved another notation for plurality
was necessary, not at the beginning of the word,
but after, hence the possessive article 's,
we could have parallelism, there was a crux,
how once the chiselling of letters came about,
more economic to chisel in a V than a U,
both the same, much easier though...
almost barbaric i might say...
sigma (Σ) enigma rune e (ᛖ) - this compass
is a ******* berserker, god knows if it's
mount Everest or the Bermuda Δ

but one thing is for certain, never you mind how
a language is taught unless you mind it,
not that conversational athenian is really what
i'm aiming at - but a lesson is a lesson nonetheless,
out of interest something new,
richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi,
and what preceded him, namely pan-slavism,
just when the polish-lithuanian commonwealth
did a little Judaic trick of its own,
although snorkelling in the waters of not writing
history for less a time than israel -
you can't beat ~2000 under water - although
you could if your little tribe had an einstein
among them, or proust or spinoza, then
you could effectively become a whale, popping
an individual out from the rubble to say a polite
'hello' and 'when will the dessert be served?'
but indeed, learning a language on your own,
how to learn from scratch, the greek orthography,
and why omicron and not omega,
the give-away? sigma - purely aesthetic reason,
                             νoμισματων

                             nomismaton

omicron                                                 omega

                 you write omicron at the front
                 and omega at the back
                 pivot letter? two: σ     μ &
                 νoμι-                                -ατων
                      ­                     |
                 anything here  
                 will use o            and anything
                                              here uses ω

alike to sigma:
                          χωρας (choras, i.e. country)

sigma (ς) not sigma (σ), i.e. digitalising languages
without a clear connectivity of letters,
block-a-brick-block-a-brick-digit-digit-digit
you learn that handwriting is gone,
two options, your own aesthetic reasons now,
remember, some paired for the ease of handwritten
flow - digitalised language changes the aesthetics,
you make your own rules (considering exceptions
of oh mega mega, ergo revision -

                                       χoρας,

but still the sigma rule, others esp. o mega
you stamp on them like βλαττια, i.e. cockroaches -
κατσαρίδα                 not         κατςαρίδα

all perfectly clear when you explore plato's
dialogue from the book Θηαετητυς (as you might
have noticed, the epsilon-eta project is still
in the storage room of my imagination) -
but indeed in the dialogue, between socrates
and the "hero" of the book theaetetus -
a sample, without an essay on the theory
of knowledge -
socrates: ...'tell me theaetesus, what is Σ O?'
theaetetus: yes, my reply would be that it is
                    Σ and O.
socrates: so there's your account of the syllable,
                isn't it?
theaetetus: yes.
socrates: all right, then: tell me also what your
                  account of Σ is.
                                                             ­   (etc.
or as some might say, a shrug of the shoulders,
a hmmpf huff puff of hot air, impractical interests
and concerns - well, better the impractical
problems than practical problems, less feet
shuffling and nail-biting moments with your
tail between your legs and an army of
intellectuals working out what went wrong
and how history will solve everything by
the practical problems repeating themselves) -
you know that inane reaction - others would just say
Humphrey Bogart and nonetheless get on with it.

some would claim i was begot a second time,
not in the sixth month period of the aqua-flesh,
how did i actually related to the life aquatic,
for nine months i was taught to hold my breath,
however did this happen?
a miracle of birth? ah indeed the miracle of
a crutch for a woman - spinal deformities -
9 months, sort to speak, in water or some other
fluid - merman - a beastly innovation -
next you'll be telling me beyond this life
we turn into centaurs, given the Koran's promise -
you'd need the appetite of a breeding horse
to satiate the 72 - or thereabouts - martyr or
no martyr - 72? that's pushing it -
or as they say among children - a chance playground
without swings or sandpits, but very careless
gravitational pulling toward a certain direction;
nonetheless, they might have that i did indeed
settle of a sáttmáli                  ᛋᚨᛏᛏᛗᚨᛚᛁ
                  við         ­                  Vᛁᛞ
                  tann                         ᛏᚨᚾᚾ
                  djevul                      ᛞᛃᛖVᚢᛚ -
the hands you see, fidgety -
     hond handa grammur burtur    úr   steðgur
     ᚻᛟᚾᛞ  ᚻᚨᚾᛞᚨ  ᚷᚱᚨᛗᛗᚢᚱ   ᛒᚢᚱᛏᚢᚱ  ᚢᚱ   ᛋᛏᛖᛞᚷᚢᚱ
         the hands give an ardent pursuit
                                                 away from rest -
well not that my poems will ever reach
the islands in question - and indeed an
uneducated guess propels me - what does it matter,
λαλος babbler meant anything, indeed λαλος,
language as my own, is a language that i can
understand - and should anyone omit
disparities - a welcome revision would never tease
nor burn my eyes - but the phonetic omission
peeved me off: woad in water, ventricles in a
variety of entanglements - it's just not there -
and indeed, orthographically, if there are no more
optometric involvements of omicron's twin -
then the stance is with you to use whichever pleases,
i can't tell the difference, unless i was a pedantic
student, aged 70, with a granddaughter i wanted
to be wed teasing a millimetre's worth of
phonetic differentiation between the two -
POTATO PA'H'TAYTOE TOMATO TA'H'MAYTOE -
linguistically one's american and the other
is british, which looks like greek and latin
upside-down and in a mirror: pəˈteɪtəʊ, təˈmɑːtəʊ;
or as the spaghetti gobblers would put it:
the tetragrammaton is working on their
texan drawl (dwah! ripples in china) -
or the high-society new england ******* *******
coo with a cuckoo's load of clocks -
before being sent off to england for a respectable
education, something en route Sylvia Plath -
but not to ol' wee scoot land - ah nay - well
perhaps for a year and then talk of north european
barbarism of a deep friend pizza and mars bar.

and when descartes finished with christina
queen of sweden, she became an animate portrait
of feminine attempts at philosophising,
she was basically ostracised from society,
well, not society per se, she didn't become a stray
dog, but she forgot certain functions of
the upper tier - lazily modern man decides
to hide phenomena from understanding
individual instances, with the kantian guise
of a noumenon, hence cutting his efforts short -
indeed queen christina of sweden was ostracised
by society - only after descartes finished educating her;
and indeed to most people a little bit of sloth
equates to an amputation of some sort -
yet only with the x-files' season 2 episode 2
i've learned of the effects of prolonged alcohol
"misuse", that little boxing match in my liver?
it's not a pain as such, it's actually a hardening
of soft tissue - with prolonged alcohol exposure
soft tissue organs harden, notably the liver -
and it's not a pain, it's a hardening.
but indeed queen christina of sweden was ostracised
by her tier of socialites - i'm glad diogenes
didn't get to her, but then again a bit of cloth
goes a long way this far north -
yet unlike the encounter with napoleon by hegel
diogenes' encounter with alexander lasted longer -
which tells you the old method does no service
to a little bit of material accumulation -
but perhaps the acumen was briefer when you were
ably living in a barrel - and to think, as only
that being the sole expression, not so much
a body without organs as stated in the thesis
of anti-oedipus by deleuze and guattari -
a consideration for a body without limbs - prior
to a footprint an imprint on the mind -
carelessly now, a diarrhoea of narration -
how rare to find it - perhaps this idea of epic
poetry is a default of writing per se -
with this my whatever numbered entry i seize
to find escape in it - a lack of ambition -
a loss of spontaneity that's a demanded mechanisation -
by volume, by inaneness - to reach a single
technique accumulative zenith, and then back
into the ploughing, rustic scenery and the
never-bored animals - i rather forget such escapades -
and there i was dreaming of a grand
runic exploration - some imitable game -
some scenic routes - yet again -

i couldn't never write a book, sorry, a novel, i'd hate to become a puppeteer, someone who attempts to play chess, a fiddling and bothersome shadow-baron (schattenbaron)... imaginary "friends" is not my thing, plus... i don't have an exact elastic approach to heidegger's compliments concerning poets: i only like heidegger because he likes poets, **** me, he elevates poets to the stature of philosophers when language "things" are made necessary... i.e. (and verbatim) - language - only if speech has acquired the highest univocity of the word does it become strong for the hidden play of its essential multivocity (as withdrawn from all "logic"), of which poets and thinkers alone are capable... welcome! welcome! to plato's republic! Brennus & Alaric welcome you, quiet fondly depicted by Joseph-Noël Sylvestre... and when the Huns pushed the leaders Fritigern and Alavivus into the eastern empire to settle... and emperor Valens... that's history for you: a cascade of: and and and and and and... sometimes a p.s., but mostly the and and and of causality... facts come barging in, you forage... but thanks to heidegger: the poets have earned their graces... and can return to the republic... as wordsmiths... i mean, was i ever to think of myself as a french dada dandy? frivolous and superfulous raconteur / racketeer? poet or philosopher, that's beside the point, the point being: i'm not a novelist... i don't like dealing with language that chokes that i rely on mostly and that mostly being: i like the idea of a raw vocabulary... i'm more of a butcher than an artist... i like the rawness of an inverted crossword puzzle... in my "trade"... there are no clues, whether synonymous or antonymous, in this spaghetti of: ex nihil factum sermo (out of nothing came the word)... poetry, of all places, allows this form of unadulterated nibbling at raw vocabulary... bypassing the standard g.c.s.e.: overt-scrutiny of poetics... i never like that... a 5/ 7/ 5 syllable haiku poem should never be preserved for its essay-worthiness to extend into 2000 words in a school exam... poetry strapped to pedagogy is... less heavily censored, more... over-scrutinized... you're not supposed to think in terms of poetry: you're supposed to, feel... and since when has feeling become so overrated, so despsised? oh... when people "learned" to feel, prior to learning to think... you really have to learn to think, prior to learning how to feel... if you ask someone from the orient, they'd counter the western perception of placing thinking / "reason" on the top of the pyramid with horus' eye as emblem... to learn to feel: is to learn to how to not think, while to think? it's to learn how to not feel... pretty simple, no? not really... neither approaches should be underrated, they should be understood better... who the hell needs, or wants, to be an apathetic brain-in-a-pickle-jar zombie: constantly engaging with a dialectic? then again... who wants to be a heart in an electric chair constantly bamboozled into pointless reactions? so i'm more of a butcher than a "poet", i simply appreciate the raw realism of cutting pieces of the tongue that extends into the brain's fathomability - and that overrated visual ******* of dreaming most people associate themselves with... but that's beside the point... i really appreciate days akin to this one, humid as in the concrete basin of Beijing while europe is frying in the African plume... no thanks, no, me go to Greenland or the Faroes Islands... do i look like a ******* ******* / camel jockey? why do i have limited respect for islam? i once watched a video of a saudi with an european bride... sitting on oil was both a blessing... and a curse... muhammad would whip some of these saudi brats silly... but of all days... when i get to work my magic in the kitchen, and make the most superior food in the whole wide world? blue indian cuisine: i call them blue indians and not red soxs because: come on... the raj... and that polytheism that doesn't want to disappear... h'americans can boast all they want: the steak, the hamburger, the hot dog, the pizza... n'ah... n'ah mate... it's either curry or you're chewing chicken bones, ******* out the marrow... indian cuisine is superior... i love the days when i cook up two curries... it feels like being back in edinburgh, walking into the joseph black building, the perfumes of sulphur and wood, the 12 hour experiments it would take us to conjure up an ester... esters? bases for the perfume industry... that' the grand thing about cooking a curry... you start to feel like a chemist once more... the two curries? a tikka masala: sure, an easy adventure... marinating the chicken what not... the real fun came with the malvani... blitzing the masala up: a bay leaf, half a nutmeg, 4 / 5 cloves, 7 dried chillies, 10 peppercorns, a cinnamon stick, cumin seeds, coriander seeds, chilly powder, turmeric powder... and that's just the malvani masala... the cocunut masala... ****... only two green chillies... how to get the right colour? ah... blitz up some coriander stalks... garlic and ginger... milk to get the whizz-kid on the job... it's superior cuisine, indian cuisine... it reminds me of a being in a chemistry lab at edinburgh... doing organic experiments... mind you: it's more fun, the environment is less sterile... even my mother said: you're stinking up the place, you're worse than the sikhs two doors down... so... why would i visit an indian restaurant, or indulge myself in an indian take-away, if i can mimic? i see no point... there is no other cuisine on the planet as good as what could come from either Goa or New Delhi... the colours, the perfume of the spices... by now a hamburger, pizza or hot-dog are staples or both humble beginnings and even more humbled ends... i've found my 1st to none passion... and with a afghani naan bread... and with rice infused with turmeric... tiresome ponce schemes of duck a l'orange... spaghetti this that and the other... one bias... though... scandinavian treatment of raw herrings... in cream sauce... i'm a sucker for those herrings like i'm a sucker for pop music... the added zing of the herrings' rawness out-competes the bland sushi manifesto... eating one of these herrings in a cream sauce... has the complimentary sensation, very much akin to performing oral *** on a woman... oysters are beyond the marker of metaphor / literal association... well: hello today!

I.

i'm starting to suspect, that one of the...
"supposed" stars...
   is actually a planet - due to its colour -
      it's unlike all the other -
todkompf, metallic white
glitter...
      it's hued in a more orange
spectacle - more fire...
less distance...
                and on the canvas
of the night?
   sits lower than all the other stars,
which are more up -
   rather than on a horizon
to speak off...
   question is... is that *mars,
or is that venus?

**** it: 'ere i go...
'n' buy me a *******
telescope to investigate further...

II.

did the ancient romans really
distinguish the arithmetic
quantity of I - or IX -
   or XII or...
                with a dot?
       not unless it was inscribed
in stone -
   where even upsilon had
to vacate the more easily chiseled
in:              YOVR POINT?
just wondering
   how only two diacritical marks
were applied to the encryption -
and both... not for orthographic
reasons, but for aesthetics -
    what's the actual difference
when the guillotine digestion
machine (like me) comes in and
says...
    
     ȷokιng around...
        what with the iPod...
   why shouldn't ι,
                    come ιn -
   and give a ȷester's ιnquιsιtιon?
out of... mere... curιosιty?
ιt's not lιke those two-heads
even make a dιfference...
come on! ιt's ιneffectιve,
there are no orthographιc reasons
for ιt!
        why, even, bother?
    and no fancy name eιther,
ιn the dιacrιtιcal famιly...
  dot... when compared to?
cιrcumflex, caron, macron,
      cedιlla,  ͅ (ιota subscrιpt)...
you name ιt!
can someone, please,
ȷust gιve me, an approprιate reason?

III.

it's not like i can confuse,
i with I - since i have 1, and 2 instead
of II, and 3 instead of III,
and 4, instead of IV,
       and 6 instead of VI...
ah... L(l) -
              and the exodus of handwriting
in the digital age...
any schmuck can write
now... but... i'd love to see
them write with a pen, on paper...

personally - i couldn't write an intact
word with a pen...
   calligraphy: a bit like monkish
Gregorian chants... coming near
to extinction...
          i could sometimes write
out a intra-connectivity of syllables -
but... entire words?
    no chance... the digit system
came in... and i had to learn how
to position my arms before
the keyboard, to write, and not look
down...
   unlike my old G.P.,
who, bless him... nearing his retirement,
pecked, like a crow,
on the keyboard...
   looking down on it...

the ENTER key? right arm pinky finger...
SPACE BAR key? primarily
left hand thumb...
   unlike a piano, you don't actually
use all the fingers on both arms...
e.g.? ring ringer on the left hand?
rarely used... unless doing some
mental hand gymnastics...
  
stream of "consciousness" - no words,
just observations -

(0,0,) LH ******* A
    RH index finger N -
     that's - ah! ring finger of
the right arm is used, quiet a lot,
  notably?  SHIFT + (?/) key -
      *******...
   but for the apostrophe?
    the (@ ') key...
  which, on my machine translates
as the (" ') key...

IV.

     - interlude -
--- -- - - - -  - - - logic  -- - - -  -- - bomb -- - - --  -
- - -- computers -- -- - - & - -- microprocessors -
- - - --- -- - --- -- -(parasense ----- - - remix) -- -- -

V.

it is chiromancy in reverse,
only that i'm reading my hands...
facing down,
rather than staring on the reverse
side of the... where the girdle of venus
is situated,
   or the index finger skin folds
of the chokhmah, chesed,
    netzach - respectively -
akin to reading mandarin:
   from the the head - to the base
               of a knuckle.
i read my hands - looking at a screen,
how else can you write anything,
distracted by looking down
onto the keyboard -
  no aware of the spacing?
        question: how fast is your typing?
don't know:
what sort of ******* am i to note
down, and how many amendment
will i have to make to the text,
as we plow along to your diatribe
monologue?
                  
VI.

why would anyone sit up all night,
drinking?
     ****** question, esp. given
yesterday's 5 / 6 am carnival of rain...
out of nowhere,
there i was, ready to call it a night
well spent (not working in a Stratford
casino) - dreading the heat of
the sunrise...
  boom!
   thunder, lightning...
    the air turned white from
the ferocity of the rain...
   literally...
                the ground was wriggling
with a meteor shower -
excited gnat fly like puddles
appearing and disappearing -
soon becoming lakes
  within the confines of a supposed
**** of worm parasites...
      probably your typical day
      on the Faroe Islands...
you know... on such occasions...
you really can't help, but stick
your head out of the window,
far enough to drench your head
and hair in regenwasser...
            i should have walked
into the garden and
cleansed my whole body...
   but...
guess all ι needed, was the head...
       god...
  there's nothing more **** than
listening to horror movie soundtracks
while it pours a mini-monsoon
outside your window,
  and there's thunder, and there's
lightning...
   and you're just about to fall asleep...
like a baby might...

VII.

oh god... the one time i don't take
a beer for a walk, coming back
from the supermarket...
and i pick up... this genius:
genius... tortilla wrap...
    falafel + hummus + a hint
of mango chutney (with a tease
of arugula leaves)?
            **** me... who needs
beer... if not a bottle of mineral
water... to accompany
taking a walk?

10 little fingers, 9 little toes
Due to the topple of that Calor gas bottle
But still he took his first unsteady stumble
Between the sofa and the coffee table
And should have been grateful
For the outstretched hand that took the brunt
Of the sharp corner and the hot spill
But oblivious he bounced back

Right into a job with his mate’s dad down the garage,
Where he delved into the grease and spanners
That formed the bread and butter of a living wage.
And when the car fell on his toe that wasn’t there
He stumbled on without a care
Unstoppable, ready for the next obstacle,

And applied to the navy for a crazy venture round the world
Or he would have had the medical not red lined his missing digit
And said he wasn’t fit for the pitch and heave of a naval ship
Or so the story went as he took his grandkids
Hand in hand along Camber Sands,
With a wiggle of his nine hairy toes, raising familiar giggles

and the redraft:

10 little fingers, 9 little toes
Due to the topple of that Calor gas bottle
But still he took his first unsteady stumble
Between the sofa and the coffee table
And might have been grateful for the outstretched hand
That softened the corner and the hot spill
But oblivious he bounced back
Right into a job with his mate’s dad down the garage,
Where he delved into the grease and spanners,
The bread and butter of a living wage.
And when the car fell on his toe that wasn’t there
He stumbled on unstoppable, ready for the next obstacle,
And applied to the navy for worldwide venture
Or would have had the medical not red lined his missing digit
Cos he wasn’t fit for the pitch and heave of a naval ship
Or so the story went as he took his grandkids
Hand in hand along Camber Sands,
With a wiggle of his nine hairy toes,
Raising familiar giggles

(0)
Fly perfectly straight and high, and show the fly
out of the fly-bottle on your way.
Rise to victory, far above the blue sky,
and reap the reward: the opening of paradise!

The road ahead is clear and open this way,
with things small and big growing and disappearing up this way.
You will see sunrises and sunsets waxing and waning,
with mention of the moon and stars in the dark.
Be mindful as you sway, it's got to be laser-sharp.
There is no hard shoulder on this highway,
miss it by an inch and risk losing everything forever!

There is hope, there is light up high
pick up your paintbrush, just like the sun does
goodness knows how it sneaks in, right in the black
canvas of the night, painting the first light
lo, it shows up in heaven, the candle of the daylight.

As long as there is a man and a woman,
never give up, our canary bird can fly
rosy or not, the nest in every morn nets a sunrise!

(1)
A woman indeed plucks up the courage
she never had to look up to the stars
be it for the guide or the light in the night.
Fathima herself was the full Moon every night
is thanks to her Godsent innate light.

With it, she can bask in the full spread of the pi
on top of its short decimals mounting high
constantly as if countless stars in the sky.

The time and space under the sun
and that under Fathima's light
are far apart from each other
yet they coexist side by side.

As she points out,
"A circle is masculine
while pi is feminine."

Pi forms the circle with fine prints,
decimal dots continue to spring,
sprawling trillions of new digits,
the bandwagon is still increasing.
Connecting the dots is an untouched dream.

The full moon pi picture is veiled,
unseen at large, yet in short, 3.145 it can live!

(2)
Fathima flies her lock of hair
in the lurking air of the transcended pi
the primitive feminine does that,
no wonder she is God's secret feminine opus!
An immeasurable black hole lies in between
the short and transcended pi, running like a river,
dancing anew on every riverbank
in the many curls of Fathima's jet black hair.

She lent out a hair to the planet earth
and crossed over like a silhouette
without spilling out the colour
of the transcended end of the pi.
The earth takes it in the core in her heart
as if it would keepsake it forever.

Weaving the pi in Fathima embeds two hairs ties one
perfect circle at the back and one at the front of the universe.
Inside each hair the earth is finest fluid in the core
none is as deep as high as proportionate a perfect flow.
No time is as revealing no music is as sweet in this orb
no force is as mighty nor as prevailing a true giant
causing gravity and the heat at the earth's core.
Matter and spirit mix free in the play both wax lyrical
thanks to the pure resonance of 'Qun Be' the word of God!

(3)
The way to the earth's core is exposed to none other
save the Angel of Death the lucky one.

See both sides of the one lofty sky swathed in countless stars  
but the day and night render through still remains an unseen one  
Terra is shalet zeroed in Fathima is heaven on earth!  
Up in the sky-high bank turning the starry bowl upside down
Fathima took no star nor a pearl diving deep down the Arab water,
the brightest luminary came after Muhammad (PBUH),
in veil from the Night of Measures and into the flipside in the night
she's gone without lifting the veil but left her penetrating mark.

Few could find the shortcut contemplating on a blank canvas
the Moon looks down into the abyss down the sea eyes on far
for a mirror in the bottom on the as above so below matter
since Godsent Fathima touched on the all-inclusive primitive water.
The sun gets caught up in the very water dew she raised in the sky
the ancient fold of time still unfurls with the sun-kissed flowers
for the new hands yet the fingerprint on the sun remains only her!

Azrael heads to Fathima around the year 632 after death
touches down in Medina on his usual thin earth he steps.  
But this time a little mundane dust couldn't be thicker
he keeps descending deep down to the earth's centre
following from Medina but the angel locates her
inside the perfect circle a closed geometric figure.

(4)
Fathima is the female headline her secret is not all known
when she used to visit the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
he would stand up for her hold her hand and kiss it
and seat her on his seat, she would do the same to the prophet
when he would visit her like they did know each other
in and outside the spheres of heaven and earth!

She is the embodiment of the infinite feminine variations
the first spiritual woman created following God's word Qun.
Her is the mother tongue of the ever diversified feminine lingua
no one woman on her own can rhyme with her alone
she has no peer her rhetoric is unique like none other.
The galactic run from planet to planet up on the starry ladder
climbing high up the mountain heaven yet streams out like oval
off their rock bottom stone until that unleashes the final run
in perfect circle delving into the rhythm of the loop at the centre
made of Fathima's hair charged by 'Qun' God's uncreated word.  

Prophet David can sing on the bank of the river
and can see the fish are jumping to him out of the water.
The masculine is open form, eye on everywhere,
but not her the woman is in juxtaposition her
all-inclusive schema supplanting the details rest only on her.
She is the unseen world within the world at best imagine her!
Guess, through this inwardly open door who might disappear?
It's nature before the scientist on ultimate discovery of the matter!  

Aligning with her down the rainbow up high the land absorbs
the grooming sky looking on the running rivers within her.
Her words spread through like the smart cloud that flies far
over the lands and valleys but not even the wind none other
gets a sniff of the potion and melody it caries until that rain down
without a hurdle without a visual she moves on at the target
such a soul needs no after death lift from the angel of death.

Before Azrael Fathima loses an arc of the circle then and there
so not the earth but giant Azrael can take the pressure!
Marked by a fluid discharge since then she is cooling this fire
In Shaa Allah God willing when she ajars it, it will be elixir!  

(5)
Draw a straight line, but it won't be perfect
it keeps bending, fly straight touching the sky
the flight path won't look like a straight line
it would be like the crest of a crescent moon
like curve touched the sky, like climbing up
atop the pyramid is not going high straight on
it goes up from the widespread seked slopes.

Moves in golden ration 1.618 not the full two
and gets the designing formula flawlessly full
micro to macro all levels all the way to the true north!    

Fathima being the original feminine eyeing at her
she can tap in the knowhow of naturally feminine nature.
And discovers the immanent pattern - the world
is pre-designed and measured is never a coincidence.
The creatures' creativity, scientist's science
is to follow, discover working formulas like phi and pi.

Play along it works until an unknown hour strikes
comes with accurate knowledge dead on time
numerically correct never miss taking a life away
as if it was calculated beforehand before the birth.
A newborn is born for a limited time
already set but no one knows when it goes up  
is a deadlock clock but it isn't so shrouded
in the blueprint of the creatures' grand design
there the clock ticks safe and sounds it never dies!  

(6)
Fathima hailing from the other side of the pool
eyes on the ever live pre-design side of the creation!
Then its corporeal face was only a water drop,
the primitive one looks see-through it has dead zero
knowledge of its lively other side of the pool.
She comes closer and perfectly mirrors both sides
that shines through on her reflected face on the water.
An absolute new image that livens up the dead part
Bang - Big Bang! The corporeal world gets the spark
explodes out from the very first drop of the water!

Fathima's appearance was miraculously instrumental
God reveals nature the finite and infinite, 0 and 1,
future in the present and the death and life in play!
Nature follows suit it just saw the perfect role model
banged out but only to its corporeal set
it aspires to be with its infinite reality yet!

Fathima leaves the door open constructing a perfect circle,
hardly straight, took the mixed bag of countless variations
she zooms into the abyss irrational portion of the first matter,
the primitive water drop and aces the circle with her hair
that nothing can equate throughout the corporeal world.
Done the math discovering the zero starting point at the bottom.
The ocean of digit numbers, the DNA of all things material
banged out of it, still, the zero is numberless irrational!

(7)
All things, within oneself and in a set constantly vibrate,
strive to align with the enduring reality of itself.
The atom vibrates to reach out to its immortal portion
that doesn't die and is in the know of its lower base.
The planets are in a defined circular orbit, accurately measured
just the apex on top of their dynamic pyramid the pyramidon
is tucked away; they too have an irrational portion in the circle.

With the finest spin, they zoom in the spacious universe,
in part and like the sun outside the constellations round they go
never miss a target line yet to re-discover Fathima's perfect circle
the origin of their digital essences' breakthrough
the door to their transcended destination de jour.
Lo the matter turns the last stone pulsing across the cosmos
the mortal horizontal spread, the spirit returns home.

The earth has a line in its swansong it has a place in paradise
it's not here to stay for good neither to perish forever!

Matters form and break without losing the rope,
it's not to paint the shades of the eternal blue
but to ace an irrational portion in the circle
at the heart of the earth, as above, so below.  
The deep the high the perfect circle
up and down the centre of gravitation for all!

At even and at odd the vibration within the matter is fluid
somewhere is parched there the arch matter must make a splash.
Far away on that dark beach, the full-fledged sea of the matters
outpours its billowy potion with the Moon on the frontline
from deep within the physical world's most glowed up firefly!

(8)
The seven seas swell up smoothly into the moonlight-dip
oh, the waterless Moon at the core is still fasting.
Led by time the sweet swan punting along the waves
streams down the watery inner circle of the planets.
Until stuck in the Moon no water in the last waterfront
but paradise is on the other side of the pool!  

The sun dips away into the night
while the eve baths in the shades of pink and gold,
the dazzling hues soon turn to taupe.
Drawing down painting the picture in full colour
only to find the time is up on the halfway,
yet to print a colour copy of the night!
The other unseen half is passed down to the Moon
tiptoeing in slow motion in the depths of the night
barely keeping the head afloat in a fathomless ocean
of shades of black hails from where knows no one.  

The sun enkindles the moon half-lit keeping itself away
amid shadows as if comparing the shades now it knows
a Mehrem a veiled female is ahead not to look on or
compared to that the sun has no light or true are both.

Wrapped in the eternal night beneath its black mole
once the moon on the front approaching most close
directly down to the centre of the earth eyes on
over that inlaid string hairy black perfect circle
never did it turn back the same gaze is still on
orbiting around the earth in synchronous rotation.

(9)
The never-ending night is becoming a night indeed
it's coming to an end so soon in our time.
In Shaa Allah I will see it with my eyes before I die
in the Night of Measures in an odd night in Ramadan
Fathima from the transcendental end of irrational heart
will turn on top of the curve opening for the first time
a 9-degree angle in the circle at the centre of the earth.

Instantly the leading force, time will get the first sniff
of the other world, so peaceful heart-melting serene.
Rapturous time feeling an ounce of the enduring peace
for the first time cutting all the corners with ease
will be propelled into its yet uncharted golden mean.
Scurrying to the peaceful abode time will be on its wings
across the globe, people will be stunned seeing
how first the times pass from then on incredibly quick!

Fathima, the first spiritual woman on duty, will start
pulling her hair back off the circle at the centre
Juxtaposed in between the worlds of here and hereafter.
She will take back every inch of it, the heavenly bodies
will feel the pinch of her every little subtle pull
that too is a boon helping them perfect their circle.

(10)
Soon she opens it just 9-degree wide at first
the Moon will see a glimpse of the first drop of water.
Without it, it's living perched without the water of life
that's destined to rain down soon and the Moon
back into its original pond shall revive!
Mapping the pi's whole infinitesimals playground
finally, Fathima will turn the circle upside down
on the dot the stunned sun shall rise in the western sky!

By now under Fathima's hair's shaded closed circle
it must have sailed far over the blue sky in the other world.
Billowing with the breeze over the sea of uncharted water
and stacking to the brim with all that it could discover
humbly stood like a cloud in that corner of the sky.

The time is finally ticking fast to rain down with love
paradise's welcoming schema rendering in waterpaint drops
on the Moon over the sea of matters, that's most glowed up firefly
ah, finally can break the fast sipping in a drop of elixir!
It's their heavenly adopted, Miʿrāj performed, primitive water.
The Moon with the seven seas will leave off the corporeal shell
gliding gracefully with this stately water nymph as if it never dies
and will make a splash plopping into the pond of paradise!  

For the matter ultimately is water and its extent is sound
Fathima will fetch it the water of life and take it to the next life!
Oh, the matter shall do both die and revive with Israfil's sound
the cloud will fly out of the dead water on the ground,
like the earth with chorus songs of the rain revives.
When that a melodious nymph in the water makes waves
see paradise is here the Moon over the sea can't take off its eyes.

(11)
Hang on though they all set ready on their horizontal span  
to pull in such a fluid yet colourful descending like a rainbow swan.
First chaste Fathima will evaporate her hair's perfume away
that's yet lingering in the water warming it up to its premium
no crowd then can see where this heady, fragrant cloud will fly!
There are the momentum and delights where that will alight.

Israfil might then blow his trumpet swooning the world away
the secret will remain a secret exception is said in the Qur'an.
A strange sound will silence the chorus of the innate digits
collapsing the floating cosmos bubbling on their music.  
The corporeal circle will collapse as if there is no base no pi
the melody of the first word Qun means Be will still be loud
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious so how can we all expire?

Israfil too will play his reviving trumpet pure mellifluous
and In Shaa Allah numerically perfect Fathima will rise
amidst the resonant Qun as like she did in the beginning
when except prophet Muhammad (PBUH) there was nothing!
Now the earth once zeroed in beneath her hair will follow her
the stunned terra will discover Fathima took her hair away
only to shift the constellation up onto the upper world!

The old songs of the planets the chorus of the digits will revive
from the zero bases in the core the digital panache that dance
planet upon the planet as if they are always at the perfect hertz.

Indeed that is yet to come, the arts of the fine layers
opening from the irrational pi, the finest one is to flower
when Fathima will unloop her circled hair at the centre
piercing the very immanent irrational cut
that no creation can fathom only the loving creator Allah
will turn odd to even in between the here and hereafter
then the ocean stuck in deep salt shall turn to enduring potion!
The As-Sirat shall turn to be the bridge to paradise
the body shall revive with the enduring soul forever
and with ah Fathima couple shall enter paradise In Shaa Allah
with the rhapsody 'all praise is for Allah' Alhamdulillah!

I was on the way to pick her up,
was just about to cross a slippery *****
on the front yard of my in-laws’ home.
Forget how long it took me to cross,
Huh, I had to solve a riddle.
A Moon pops up halfway through,
right in my way, it just won’t move.

I said I don’t need any horoscope,
already married, I am not a groom!
She goes, I too don’t fancy fussing about.
The riddle I got is only an easy-peasy one.
Just tell me your W duo—Where and When
did you take your first breath?
I laugh, isn't it the mum who can tell best,
who saw it first when I was born
but I can't go back and ask her,
she won’t show up
unless I return home, picking her up.

I said to the moon, o dear,
never did I say you got a scar,
that a spot on your face is cute, fair,
is only a cool shadow of one’s
deep-rooted fine lock of hair!

I then ran to the expert scientist.
He said it’s all vibrating but knows not
where the heck, if ever the spin might stop.
Again I ran to knock on the Sufi’s door.
He seemed to know why I went there,
And said in a deep voice, “as far as I know,
you don’t have a sister-in-law!”

Again the moon asks, in a heavy tone
“Tell me the truth,” before it's too long,
I said you’re in my way,
“I am not asking for an acre of moon.
Spare me a digit gap if you could.”

Unlike how the lands on earth, she tells,
keep changing the hands,
owning the ultimate plot is still one’s dream.
But no space is left unmeasured in space.
You miss by a hairbreadth, no matter how tiny,
and you might as well miss it by the eternity.

So zero space can I spare says the moon
This is it, the dead end, no more room to move.
Still, even a closed circle can’t be close,
the smallest atom is not the smallest to be closed.
The constant spin inside it constantly finds
ever more space to move on, because the root
pi is cracked open, spills out a new decimal,
though none can pinpoint, in this finest loophole
the sky can sway and earth finds a mouth to jingle!

School was always humuorous to a degree in my opinion because of the underlying idea
that the more damaged you were, the cooler you were in the eyes of the rest of the school.
I have heard numerous conversations that began with something along the lines of, "Oh, you
think YOU got it bad, well my dad blah blah and my best friend blah blah and my life is hell."

I decided to get a little personal and share with you guys something I have never actually
told anyone in entirety yet. I am pretty sure the whole story is still only here in my brain.
I will, out of respect for these people, change their names.

It's October 31, 2012. It's about noon, and all of us sixteen to twenty-two year olds are just waking up.
Brianne woke up probably a few hours ago already to tend to her son, Aaron. He is adorable, one
and a half, blond hair, blue eyes. I have been living here for nearly two months. I am supporting her,
Aaron, and myself with food stamps. I get two hundred dollars a month to basically smoke **** and drink
on the government's budget. Trust me, I'm not proud of it either, and if I could I would pay it back.
Since Brianne is a single mother and an adopted child, she has a single-digit monthly rent (I was *******
baffled to hear this) and receives support from her foster parents. Basically, if I want to stay here forever
with absolutely no consequences save to miss out on a life of my own, I can.

Brandon is putting on clown make-up so he can troll the streets as a juggalo. I find this amusing as I always
liked to mess around with ICP fans, but he's a really cool kid so I let it go and I even help him perfect it.
I notice he has a bottle of Stolichnaya in his backpack and it's practically full. That, to me, is temptation.
I ask if he would mind me taking a few drinks here and there from the bottle and he says it's fine, so I proceed
to get a nice one p.m. buzz. It was always my favorite drunk, very light, and airy, almost like you're still asleep.
Something bogs you down, but it doesn't bother you, somehow it makes you lighter.

For the rest of the day, we hook up with a few friends, go out and trick or treat in the pouring rain, get soaked
and wait for two hours under an overpass while Brianne goes and gets her car. From there, we proceed home.

At this point, everyone is over at Breanne's and we're all making dinner and drinking beer and having a good time
(Aaron is with the grandparents tonight). I guess I started getting angry about the recent events (for about a month,
everyone in our group with the exception of Brandon have been slowly losing items...but they're obviously being stolen.
At a point, a few of us did some research and determined the only person who could possibly have stolen
a good deal of these things has to be Brandon) and I decided I was tired of sitting on the news waiting for no one to make
a move after a solid two weeks of being certain that we had our guy. So I called him out... and proceeded
to begin burning bridges slowly and very surely for the next few days. I am pretty sure a fight would have broken out
if Bri hadn't taken me into her room to relax. When I finally do, it turns out I woke up the upstairs neighbor,
her baby, and everyone in the house has left save for my friend Jeff and his girlfriend Marissa. This concludes night one.

I later learned that Brandon was not actually the person who was stealing from us (unless of course
he just happened to not get caught when we found out who had done most of it) and I feel bad for bringing the whole
thing up because I would have liked to stay in touch with him. We got along swimmingly and he actually did have
a lot of interesting things to talk about. Smart, nice, hilarious... Well, maybe he'll turn up one day.

The next morning, I woke up to find the house empty save for Jeff and Marissa in the next room, but where I am,
it simply appears empty. I don't know what happened but I intuit that I have been sleeping all night without
my girlfriend. This upsets me and I begin to weep like a confused child, which is exactly what you do when you're
helpless and too drunk in the brain to figure out how to pull yourself out of a helpless situation (trust me,
I own the handbook). Marissa walks in and begins to explain to me that I had scared her too much and she slept
on the couch and that she had left to go pick up her son. So I realize I need to calm down, but I can feel
Jeff is not happy with me in the slightest, considering he will not come and talk to me (this is extremely painful
because he is probably one of the best friends I have ever had, with a mind that vastly exceeds that of everyone
I have met save one other, and he's a different story). They leave and I decide to stay in the house all day.

This is a very bad idea. I stay home, watch re-runs of a show I have seen billions of times, and considering
that Brandon and I are no longer on good terms, like a complete *******, I drink the rest of his *****.

In walks Bri, it's around 7. She's not happy. She proceeds to tell me that the night before I asked out a friend of mine
and she said yes. And I was a bit shocked because I couldn't remember it at first. Then it all hit me.

A few days before, Aaron called me "dad." Now remember, this is not my child. I am dark, dark, dark, and she had this kid
about two years after we had any past relationship. I am extremely worried in my mind and I realize I am headed toward nothing.
That I am stagnant and can not even afford to go back to school. This scares me, so I drunkenly asked out Tanya.

Tanya...we had been friends for about five years, and I had tried to get with her so many **** times... she was like
one of those girls you see and you're instantly reminded of an anime character. Tall, thin, beautiful hips, perfect
proportions, lovely hair, eyes, voice, and a personality I can liken to a Disney princess/black metal lumberjack.
The kind of girl who has a tough exterior, but inside, she just wants someone to tell her everything is going to be ok.

After about two hours of pleading with Bri to let me stay, I finally send Tanya a message, and we hang out for the next
two days, whence I whisper in her ear that everything is going to be okay and we proceed to have quite passionate ***
for those nights, where I discovered the secret to making a woman ****** with my tongue (tip: if the underside of your
tongue isn't completely torn apart, you're doing something wrong). But alas, I could not stay.

This is the part I dreaded, because I know I have to go back to Jeff's house and ask him if I can stay there for a while.
And I got the answer I expected.

The words he used...

"I'm *******...extremely ******* at you, and disappointed." It was like a father saying it to you. And him and I
have a very interesting friendship built on such an extreme understanding that I knew exactly how badly I had been spiraling.
I began to leave and he gave me a slice of pizza, with that slight smile that told me "just go find yourself, we'll be fine."

I hobbled off into the night drunk, with one piece of pizza and all my food at Bri's, which could have lasted me another few days,
easing the transition into homeless. And it could have prevented a horrible occurance that took place the following afternoon. I
was crying, because I knew I was dying, but I didn't want to ask either of my parents for help, because this was the first time
I was out on my own and I was far too proud to give up and let the world make me its victim. So I walked...

Sixteen ******* miles...

To the next town. Took me all night because I was dodging traffic, easing into trees, avoiding on and off ramps, trying to stay
away from any police that may exist on the road. When I finally arrived in the next town (where I knew I may have one contact)
I decided to sleep until the morning came so I could have the energy to find my next venture.

It was five thirty am. I had 3 hours until sun-up, I had just walked enough to be burning, and there was plenty of whiskey in my veins.
I had left my sleeping bag with Tanya hours earlier, wishing in the park that I had not been so naiive as to think I would be allowed
back in the house. So I pulled out a pile of ***** clothes and put them over me like blankets, in some random corner of the local
park, under some bushes, hidden from cold and sight, with great hope...

Fifteen minutes pass. My eyes shoot open. I am freezing. The sweat has dried and frozen to my body. This is hell.

I grab my things and with the worst effort I can ever remember myself mustering, I drag myself to the toilet.
When I open it, the first thing I check for is cleanliness. It's spotless. I am so relieved. I sit in the corner of the room,
which my knees to my chest, head in my hands, wrapped in a leather jacket I had gotten from Jeff (ha, he really is my
guardian angel, though he would laugh to hear it).

I catch winks, occasionally looking up to check if the sun is rising. When it finally is, I get up, change my clothes (I had
ONE clean set of clothing and it had been rotting with the rest in the backpack) and immediately head to a thrift store where
a family friend is working.

On my way there, I notice in a little parking lot near the store a sight I had never actually come across but I always thought
would be the most amazing luck, and it was timed in such a spot in my life that it was the ultimate miracle...and a curse in
disguise.

In front of my eyes (this miracle appeared in my path as I was walking looking down, so it startled me) was the worst possible thing
for me: A half finished fifth of Smirnoff, and a half smoked pack of Marlboro 100 Reds. I open the pack and sure enough, the celophane
protected every cigarette inside from any water damage. I am ecstatic. This is not only amazing, but highly unlikely.

So I down the bottle in one go and take the rest of the smokes with me.

When I arrive at the thrift shop, it turns out I am there on a day when my potential savior is not working, so I get her number from the clerk
and head over to a payphone and realize... I have no money. So I decide to go on a quest for dropped pocket change.

Before I even leave the parking lot, I see a young man, no older than 23, sitting on a nice red classic-style Corvette and he's
reading William S. Burroughs. So naturally, I decide to strike up a conversation with the young man. Turns out he's the nicest guy
and his name is Jordan. So him and I got together and decided to go out for a game of disc golf (some may not know what this is;
Imagine frisbee but with a golf theme, so you need to get from a tee pad into a basket. Really fun, centering, and extremely popular
with potheads, Californians, beer-drinkers, and hippies) and before we go, he asks if I would like to snag a few beers first.

I tell him a piece of my story and he can tell I am down on my luck and broke so he decides to help me out. He buys us both some beer
and we proceed to disk.

Turns out he's an ex-****** and has been through quite a bit of hell himself, so we find that we're in a good position to help each
other make some better decisions in life. After the game, we go over to a payphone and he gives me money to call my friend.

Buzz (this the only name I am not changing because her name is ******* badass) answers the phone and unfortunately informs me that
though she would take me in any day of the year, she just moved in to a house with one older lady she takes care of, and its a single
bedroom apartment, so there is just no way it can work.

So I go back to his car and tell him the news, and he says he thinks he may be able to put me up for a few days until I can sort
everything out. We go back out to the store and grab ourselves a fifth of *****.

We end up in the park playing music, talking, performing standup for one another, and I begin to realize I am drinking too fast,
so I try to ease back a little. He was playing a version of a Radiohead song I had never heard before

"Everyone this way. Okay, get your hands against the wall. Spread your legs. Don't move."
The doors clanking, some ******* won't shut up in the next cell over.
More slamming of doors, someone rubbing my body all over trying to find my knives, no doubt.
And my AK 47 I conceal, and my ****, and my ... oh ****, I really did have **** on me.

"Move forward. Turn around. Alright, go to bed."

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

"Get up. Come on, slowly... There you go. There's a few more coming in so we got to get you to another cell."

Clank, clank...

"Pick a bed."

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

Something is wrong. This bed is not covered. There is no comfort. It's just a mat. And I have no pillow. This is not a house
of any sort, my bag isnt what I am sleeping on. Something is very wrong here.

I am in jail. Oh of course.

I know the answer before I hear it, but I ask anyway: "What are my charges, ma'am?"

"Drunk in public."

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

I'm about thirty miles or so North of inner Seattle. Not a bad place to be. I'm working for a Safeway. It's somewhere around
the first of June. I receive word that Bri has been on ******. And I may have left at a crucial time in her life thinking
only of myself, but I needed to go somewhere I could be productive. Yet my decision left her in a position where she turned
to hard drugs...

I can't help but feel I am to blame. I am listening to the dull, stupid words of my ex boss, Rod, who is telling me
that even though I may feel like I need to help her, there is nothing I can do for her, so I should bury myself in my work
instead. He tells me this in about six hundred different ways before I leave the room after twenty minutes. Well great.
I may have no focus here at work today, but at least I killed almost a half hour of the day just listening to someone
*******.

I am at a loss of what to do here, but I eventually get a hold of her, and after a long time not talking, we come to
somewhat of a closure, and she is beginning to sober up herself. I realize we were both in incredibly hard times, and I still
wish with all my heart there could have been some way I could have helped her raise that boy and stayed and been her
love, and at the same time, still go to college, and progress and get a good job...but I was in a small Northern California
town. There was nothing left, all the old shops were out of business. It was time for me to move on then, and we have
all seen better days for it. She looks incredible these days by the way. She lost an insane amount of weight, and I know
a lot of it had to do with the drugs, but if she truly is sober like she says she is, she'll be getting much better.

A few weeks ago 3 people I used to know and hang out with died in the span of a week. It was a terrible tragedy, and I have been
thinking back on all the names of people I used to love very, very much before they got lost in some way.

There's Lorne Holly, who killed himself after a few weeks of detoxing from crank.

Layla Harmon, who died in a car crash, blunt head trauma, with a drunk driver (I have a tattoo for this, I will never drive drunk).

Heavy Eagle, who killed himself after years of drug problems.

Chaz Lipman, who died in a car crash as well.

Ren Rain, who I am still not sure about...

And of course, Tray Beraldi, who was my closest friend's cousin... I wish I were there to mourne with him...

Last night I got a text from my best friend, who said he couldn't sleep and he barely eats anything anymore, and he feels like his throat
is going to explode, and he cant swallow and his neck is killing him constantly. He has been this way for a year, and he is talking constantly
about getting a gun and blowing his head off. And no one believes him because he constantly talks about it because he is in so much pain.
No doctor can diagnose him so far, he has no idea what's wrong with him, he's been tested all over the place, he has no hope, he's barely
cligning and he doesn't know how much longer he can hold on.

All I really want to say is

Lord? What I have done? I don't pray, I never pray, I don't even know who I would pray to. But WHAT ELSE DO I HAVE TO DO?!

I bring myself across hell and I pull myself from the worst depression I h

Around 4 in the evening, I proceeded to Karaikkal, a Union Territory.

By the time we reached Nagapattinam, I noticed that the driver was tired and asked him to have a strong cup of tea. When he was gulping it reluctantly, I, who did not like strong tea, watched the cows walking along the narrow ways. But, the cows did not look at me. The cows I watched. The cows that did not pay any attention to me. I was a bit out of breath realizing how quickly nonexistent relationships were formed in an unknown Tamil village.  I lit up one more cigarette. I remembered the doctor in Britain, a stunning beauty, who prescribed that as soon as I found it difficult to breathe I should light up a cigarette. ****! When it is hard to breathe because of nonexistent relationships and when I light up a cigarette as an antidote to that, there appear row upon row of relationships of some sort or other.  

I began to detest bitter strong tea. I was irked by the cows that went along the narrow ways. I felt hatred towards their not so small udders. An afternoon dawned one day when I felt the same kind of vengeance towards udders. The blood stains from the udders that were slashed down emerged on my hands, legs, back and under belly.

Once again I felt revulsion for bitter strong tea. The driver sipped the hot bitter tea. I hated the moment when I asked him to have tea. I loathed the words that I used to say that. I despised even the words that I had kept in reserve to say that.

Then, I watched the people etching tattoos by the roadside. I wondered how it will be if I got a tattoo for myself.  I tried to recall how deep I was to get a tattoo done.

A person I liked.
A name I liked.
A place I liked.
A digit I liked.
A syllable I liked.
A memory I liked.

I felt a lot of aversion. Wondered if I should tattoo my mother’s name on my shoulder. I found it amusing that when I die people may identify me by my mother’s name. But, I felt sad when I thought that stranger women may plant their kisses on it. ****! I felt so sad.  I abhorred those bitter cups of tea and narrow ways. I lit up one more cigarette.  Then, I, who tattooed my mother’s name on my shoulder, started decaying on the spot.  Rotting with a terrible stench. The people, the cows and the goats that I did not mention before bolted.  Abruptly, the driver came and told me that we could move from there.  I felt so bitter towards even the bitter tea that was inside him.

Somehow, we reached Karaikkal. Yes, at 630 in the evening. Even though I had never been to Karaikkal, a Union Territory, I sat on the same chair in the same corner of the same bar. The bearer poured me the wine.

He kept pouring the wine.
He kept pouring the wine.
The wine kept emptying.
The wine kept emptying.
The wine kept unraveling.
The wine kept unraveling.

It was a Dutch woman who gathered me up and took me with her when I got totally unraveled. She was older than me. There was no power in her room. The way she washed my body in lukewarm water could have put to shame even the midwives giving a bath to babies. When I rose up sometimes and asked her name, she sealed my lips with hers. When it was repeated many times, I thought that her name must mean something like a kiss. And, she never spoke a word except with lips.

Unraveling wine, lukewarm water, the nonstop conversation by lips. Though lips got tired, I heard the murmur from my pelvis. She too must have heard that. She touched my *****. Quite a guy she exclaimed cracking a joke. Told her I salvaged it from the sea at Tanjore and it was some temple mast some sculptor abandoned. If it’s a temple mast, let the festival begin she said.

It was some festival.
Festival of festivals.
Black lacquer bangles, vermilion, ribbons
Hydrogen balloons
Spinning tops
It was some festival.
Festival of festivals.

A simile as washed out as a festival ground emptied of crowds. For the lack of a better one.  Returned from Karaikkal, a Union Territory, at some hour.  I dumped that taxi driver on the way. Not only because I was disgusted with bitter tea, but also because his name was not Thintharoo.

I can never again put up with a driver whose name is not Thintharoo.




**(trans by Ra Sh)

“Big change, huh? Bet you could take some awesome shots here, Max.”

Max nodded, only hearing the last part of Warren’s sentence. Truth was, she was distracted by how beautiful this place was. If Max stood at the end of the street, she could get a killer depth-of-field perceptive image by aiming towards the long and skinny winding roads being enveloped by the building’s shadows. San Diego seemed to flourish with art and photography culture, and great opportune shots to shoot photographs.

“Earth to Max.” That seemed to knock her out of her thoughts. *****, focus. “Are you going to go swimming with me and Brooke?”

From the look on Brooke’s face, she was hoping to God that Max said no. Brooke is the relationship equivalent of a boa constrictor, and she wasn’t sure how this hasn’t dawned on Warren yet. “I’m not sure. Maybe. Let me unpack first.”

After Kate dropped out of going to San Diego Comic Con last second, Max was nearly going to join her when Warren practically begged her to come. Coming back to the present - equipped with her suitcase and messenger bag - Max lingered behind the couple by several feet. This was her way of trying to avoid the reminder that she was third-wheeling with a boy who used to have a very awkward crush on her and his salty girlfriend.

“I’m going to go down to the pool.” Warren said, sliding his key card into room #228, turning his head to face Max before opening the door. “Maximillian, are you sure you don’t want to join us?”

“Like I said, I’ll think about it.”

The moment the three of them walked in, Brooke and Warren beelined for the restroom with their bathing suits in hand. Once they came out, Warren had a blue and black plaid board short swimsuit on whereas Brooke came out with a highlighter-colored graffiti two piece.  “Alright, Mad Max. We’re out of this joint. Catch us at the pool if you need something or want to swim. If not, we’ll be back in an hour.”

Max waved them off, digging through her bag for that bathing suit. The crimson colored ruched one-piece vintage bathing suit sat abandoned at the bottom of her matching vermillion suitcase. Down below at the pool area, she could hear screaming and laughing and splashing of the pool water. Max got up from her suitcase, and opened the curtain enough to look out at the hotel pool. Several other people were down there, pushing the time limit very close to closing in an hour from now. Come on, Max, you’re really going to let your whole adventure be ruined by the usual high-strung Brooke?

**** it.

Max nabbed the swimsuit from the hidden corners of her suitcase, stripping herself down to pull the swimsuit onto her body. Once the swimsuit was on, she turned her waist feeling the soft fabric conform to her small but still vaguely prominent curves. Max can remember Mom always saying that she looked good in red, so she recommended a red one-piece since Max doesn't have the confidence to show her stomach to anyone.

Well, except her best friend Chloe. They used to take bubble baths together as toddlers so it used to be the most natural thing in the world to get dressed in the same room together. It must have been a better time, where there were no insecurities. Now Max has trouble calling her up without her finger freezing up as she attempts to type the very last digit of Chloe’s phone number into her phone.

As Max turned around in the mirror, she noticed how her lack of a rear end was a lot more distinguishable in red. Wowser, Max thought, this looks really good on me.

“Wowser.” Max said aloud to her reflection, and threw on a bathrobe.

It must have been ten minutes into Warren and Brooke swimming when Max opened up the pool gate, entering the vast perimeter of the pool area. There were significantly less people around the pool, where most of the people still inside the pool area were kids our age. “Max, you’re here!”  

This made two teenagers stop in their tracks as they were opening up the pool gate at the other end of the pool to leave. One of them whipped around so fast that it was a blur of blue hair.  “Wait…”

“Is that…Max Caulfield? It looks a lot like her.” Rachel asked to Chloe, who hung her jaw open in disbelief. No ******* way.

Furrowing her eyebrows, she watched Max drop the robe on a nearby chair. Like an awkward penguin, Chloe watched her best friend waddle up to the pool edge & cannonball into the waters below oblivious to the two girls standing at the gate watching her. “You’re going to wake up the neighbors and the owner of this hotel's parents forty miles away, Warren!”

“Do you want to go say hi to her?” Rachel asked Chloe.

As Chloe decided on actually going to surprise her, Max's friend said something that made Chloe change her mind in a split second.

“How would you know? Besides, you’ll eventually forgive me for that once you meet the entire cast of Star Trek tomorrow, Max.” Warren yelled at Max, and Chloe did a small grin as she turned away from her best friend, closing the gate on both of the girls.

“No. Guess the oblivious nerd is going to Comic Con too.“ Chloe took one last look at Max before going back inside the hotel with Rachel Amber at her tail. "Do you think she'll recognize me in cosplay?"

"Probably not. Unless I drop the bomb on you guys."

“Shhh. I don’t need you ruining my surprise party, *******.”

Max, Brooke, and Warren weren’t in the pool for long, since Warren bumped his head into the side of the pool while doing laps with Brooke. They had to get out, and put an ice pack on Warren’s sore bump on his head. “Now how am I going to cosplay the 11th Doctor? I need to gel my hair back, but I have this gargantuan bump on my head.”

“We’ll figure it out, sweetie.” Brooke said, and Max nearly gagged.

Max went back to the hotel room first, since being around Brooke made her want to strangle her.  This whole third-wheeling thing was annoying, and Max was regretting coming alone without Kate as her faithful chauffeur. Nonetheless, she wasn’t going to let that ruin her trip. She was here to have fun. And to take a bunch of photographs, of course.

The next morning around 4:00 am, Max was rudely awoken by Brooke who shoved her in her shoulder. “Get up, Max. We’re leaving in thirty minutes from now.”

Was that necessary? Max thought, crawling out of bed. From the bathroom, she could hear Warren fretting over the mammoth-sized bump on his head as both of them got dressed in their cosplay outfits. “Okay. That hurt a lot. Ow, ow, ow.”

“Oh, is there anything I can do to help?”

“Shut up, guys.”

Feeling slightly irritable from the loud ruckus Brooke and Warren were making in the other room Max rolled out of bed. She rustled through her suitcase for a pair of skinny jeans and a white t-shirt with the print of a doe on the front. Once she had her clothes, she stood up to walk into the restroom to change when she noticed the ending result of both of her companions.

Brooke’s multicolored dark hair was pulled down in waves framing the scarlet dress with a black belt fastened around her waist. As for Warren, his usually shaggy brown hair was gelled back for his cosplay. She had to admit, he looked handsome in his mahogany jacket, red bow-tie and matching suspenders, and the cotton collared button-up he wore underneath. For a cosplay of The Eleventh Doctor and Clara Oswald, it was quite impressive how close they looked like the actual characters of the TV show Doctor Who.

“Take a picture of us, Max!” Warren said in a chirpy voice.

“On it.”

Max pulled out her camera, and pointed it at the couple who held up peace signs together. Once the picture rolled out, the couple split apart to put on the finishing touches of their cosplay.  As for Max, all she had to do was throw on her clothes. There wasn’t a lot of work in dressing up like normal people. Besides, she’s never really been a fan of cosplay.

If you want to count dressing up as pirates with her best friend Chloe on Halloween five years ago cosplay, then yeah, Max has cosplayed several times before.

“Max, hurry your *** up. It looks like the amphitheater is getting crowded from here.” Warren yelled from outside the bathroom door towards Max, who sloppily tied her shoes.

As they exited out of the large double doors of the four star hotel, Warren and Brooke took the crosswalk, pointing out people cosplaying as characters from TV shows or video games. They were smiling and laughing, leaving Max to third-wheel again. Instead of lingering on it, Max put in her headphones and turned on Crosses by José González tuning them out.

“Where is the line?” Max asked Warren as they approached the crowded complex filled with restaurants on one side and the amphitheater on the other side. Tents were set up here, even.

“This is what I call natural selection. If you come prepared with prior knowledge on how this works, you can conquer this haphazard looking line.” Warren spread his arms out, motioning towards the crowd that was rapidly growing in size.

“Let’s go, Warren.”

“Wait!”

Like an octopus, Brooke latched onto Warren dragging him into the depths of the growing sea of people. After three painful hours of waiting, Max felt the crowd start to lighten up around her as excited but deafening chatter filled the air of the surrounding herd of people. Everyone was clamoring loudly, quickly rushing into the open doors with their San Diego Comic Con day pass thrown around their neck.

As soon as Max received hers, she eagerly threw her day pass around her neck. After buying a small breakfast sandwich from a booth, Max decided to start people watching. Some of the cosplays made her laugh like the Darth Vader cosplayer leading a conga line of faithful storm troopers, taking long confident strides.

Max took several photographs of several different cosplayers, ranging from Doctor Who, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, The X-Files, Breaking Bad, Undertale, Magic: The Gathering, and Family Guy. When it started getting crowded, she got up from her chair and entered the large archway into the convention center filled with colorful tents and cosplay galore.

Wielding her camera bag close to her waist, Max carefully maneuvered her way through the sea of people as she took a look at the booths. Suddenly, the throng of people became too much for Max. An elbow into Max's side pushed her into the left side of her waist, throwing her into a booth.

“Hey, are you alright?”

Max’s eyes glanced up towards a blue-haired girl cosplaying as Pris from Blade Runner, who had grabbed her waist. Something about her was actually kind of familiar, however, Max couldn’t tell. “You hit that table pretty hard.”

Max felt the warmth from her waist leave slowly. “This crowd is suffocating. I need a place to breathe around here. It’s too claustrophobic for my liking.”

“Are you alone or something? Because I could always use company in my tent. It gets hella boring inside this tent sometimes.”

“Do you say that to all of your customers?” Max asked, chuckling nervously at the blue-haired cosplayer’s comment.

“No.” She mumbled something under her breath that Max didn’t quite catch. “I mean – unless you’re uncomfortable with it. I’ve seen people faint multiple times from claustrophobia here.”

Since her head was bent down over a sketch she was doing in a journal, the only way Max could tell that the girl was blushing was by how red her ears had gotten. The realization that the girl became a nervous wreck all of a sudden after that comment had made Max’s day already.

“Maybe you’re right. I should just sit down. There’s no places to sit around here, though.”

The blue-haired girl patted the armrest of the empty fold-out chair behind the table. “This is Rachel’s chair, but Rachel is helping out with the convention rave for later. She’s on the committee or some ****.”

“Coworker?”

“And an annoyance at times.” Max went around the table, taking a seat in the chair the girl patted. It was itching at her brain that there is something about this girl that is so nostalgic.

Suddenly, a long brunette-haired girl billowed through the back curtains of the booth, where Max saw a tattoo chair in the back along with an extended table with clutter everywhere. “Chloe, do you have my phone? I really need it right now.”

Wait a second. “Chloe?”

“Great. Thanks a lot, Rachel. You ruined the element of surprise.”

"No ******* way!"

After Chloe handed the phone to Rachel, Max followed with her first impulse, throwing her arms around Chloe. Immediately, Chloe laughed as Max nuzzled her head into Chloe's shoulder blade. Max could feel the initial excitement pounding in her chest as Chloe tightened her grip on her as well. “Get a room, Chloe.”

“I will shove this combat boot so far up your *** –”

“Okay, I’m leaving. I need to call Frank and see when he was going to get here.” Rachel stated matter-of-factly, then added as she was leaving, “Hope you have a fun reunion.”

Once Chloe let go of Max, she held onto her arms staring into her face. “Wowser. This is crazy. You’re dressed as Pris from Blade Runner. That is definitely my ****.”

“I hope so. Someone asked me if I’m cosplaying Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Now I will accept that misunderstanding because Ramona Flowers is my woman crush.” Chloe glanced over at Max, changing the mood merely by narrowing her eyes at the brunette. “Alright, are you going to explain why you didn’t call or text me for five years?”

It was so sudden that Max suddenly felt inferior to Chloe. "I'm sorry. My parent's decision to suddenly move to Seattle wasn't my choice."

"That's not a good enough reason." Chloe attempted to change the tone of the mood lighter, since this wasn't exactly the place to discuss that. "So what's up with you? Living it up here in San Diego or something?"

"I - uh - moved back to Arcadia Bay. Two months ago."

"Without a phone call, telling me that you moved back." Chloe pressed her lips together, annoyed. "Nice one, Caulfield. That's just ******* peachy."

Max started to get a little irritated herself. "Look, I'm sorry. Can we just drop it?"

"I’m sorry, Max. I don’t want to be the ******* to ruin your day. In fact, this was the complete opposite impression I was going for. If you want to punch me for being such an annoying rat, go right on ahead.” Chloe pointed at the bicep of her left arm.

I shook my head – chuckling as Chloe kicked back her chair – propping her feet onto the table cluttered with various types of artwork. There was a dozen pieces of art here, but I noticed Chloe was really into abstract watercolor paintings. Mostly Chloe did sketches of characters from TV shows and video games and painted it in watercolor. One of the paintings in particular caught my eye.

Of course – like all of Chloe’s paintings – it was strikingly beautiful: In front of an obsidian background was a butterfly with eye-popping azure wings. One of the wings seemed to be slightly blurred to give more definition to the closest wing. “Wow, you’re a real artist.”

“I’m also a tattoo artist. If you want to get a tattoo, just hit your girl up. It’s on the house for you.” Chloe said, holding out her arm to show me. “Rachel helped me with both designs.”

Chloe had a beautiful sleeve on her arm and a tattoo on the top of her hand of a red chrysanthemum. Max traced the red ribbon detail on her arm tattoo with one finger, making Chloe shiver. “Dude, you can look, but you can’t touch the tats.”

“Sorry, it’s beautiful.”

“Hopefully it will still look beautiful when I look like the human equivalent of a raisin when I’m 80.” Chloe joked, holding out her arm in front of her face. “How about it, Max? Wanna get tatted up by your best friend Chloe? It might be a great experience for you, hippie. No gang related tattoos, though.”

“Yeah, because I’m totally a part of a gang.”

The smile that lit up Chloe’s face sent Max into a comatose state of delirium. Her eyes focused in on Chloe like a lens, taking shots in her head so she didn’t forget this moment with her best friend. For once, Max was having fun. “You’re still a ******* geek. That’s good news.”

“Always.”

Chloe shook her head before getting up. “Alright, so do you want a tattoo or not? This is your final offer, Max. Don’t let it go to waste.”

“I don’t know. You know I’m scared of needles.”

“Still?” Chloe grabbed Max’s shoulders. “Come o

They've turned life into a numbers game
At least we agree there's no right answer
But joy cannot be found in forever counting up because
We start at zero and finish at zero and no matter
How large our numbers got, this fact does not
Make us any more "here" now, does it? No
Good old George rising from his casket on
Account of all the quality investments he made over
The years, that's silly

I count. down

From birth a finite number of seconds allotted to
Running risks by the hourglass like elders
Skydiving when the grains are so few who
Cares when we go but how

                           How is the question

And words will always
                               always trump numbers

single digit self esteem

Alexander of Macedonia this time
won’t U-turn from the might Gangaridai.
At the bubbling edge in the Indian subcontinent,
one would dare, taking his last plunge,
believing it here the proverbial Well of Life!

Yet Al Khwarizmi will discover the algebra,
drawing from ‘nothing,’ purely untouchable:
The Zero from the Indian pole.
Not a digit, not a number on its own, yet it’s all.
Every number jumps up in the zero loophole!
Then the whole number bows down into decimals,
escalating the hunts of the 1.618 golden ratios.

Plough through at your own pace
for the uncharted water, for ab-e-hayath.
Sip in a drop of elixir in this secured zone.
Sylhet is in the core, is written in stone.

What do these mean? I too wonder
down the line, I was intrigued by the Arab
and Indian tectonic plates’ slow dance.
Both rolled out, hugging each other
Then the Makkan soil lying at the heart of earth
gets exposed, with Sylhet’s soil it pairs up!
360 Sufi dynamos, mathematically a perfect circle,
find the match giving a perfect heads up
laid on the nine yard show the whole box of wax,
simply inking the vivo jump on the storylines.

What’s under the tectonic-rug at the bottom of the earth?
Shush softly, whisper—the heavens might hear it out!
Hold on to the least bit, it could be all one wants.
The earth, the ocean, all started with a drop of water!
Let alone any well, which way did this original matter,
the first, primeval drop of water stream down
Has this alleyway been exposed here, or in Paradise?
Then how can we say we don't have a secret for Paradise?

There is a Professor Robbie,
who has a calculating hobby;
He delights in asking his pets,
with multiple inherent defects,
or not too brainy, to be exact.
If 2n is more or less than 2-n,
and 3x is same as 3 men, then,
the study of maths be banned.
With that Robbie will surely object,
for he makes a living on the subject;
He takes not too kindly our slow wit,
and chips away our esteem, digit-by-digit.
Equations after equations, he blast,
until one brave pet, at long last,
who sees more value in a candy bar,
than juggling numbers to solve algebra.
So Robbie, will you be ever so kindly,
spare the aging cells of these cuties,
singularly or simultaneously.
So loose no healthy slumber,
by chasing after prime-numbers;
And we who have trouble with dy or dx,
well, there is always graphic ***.
If you think this -- dX+2(x^2 - x*y^2)dy=0 -- is cool,
to make idiots out of fools,
do not be easily trapped,
into giving polite claps;
or stare at them with awe,
for they are nothing more,
than saying pluses can turn into minuses,
and at times even used as voodoo curses.
But Robbie will still caress them tenderly,
like they are his little babies,
annoying different people, differentially.

Saturday night – date night.
Trace the cracks in my palm,
What do they tell you?
How long is my lifeline?
[deepen my smile lines]

Truth or Dare
How much do you trust me?
Try to be unique and beautiful –
What makes me more than human?
everyone looks for the same thing
in a different color
[truth traps with easy intimacy]

If I kept a book of my answers
To questions
I could build myself with words
[first, i have to decide how to answer]

I'll pick me up at six oh eight
For a date
[with myself]

i have six beers and only two cigarettes
and no philadelphia digression.

as a pronoun you can dissociate yourself
from nouns and common noun usage
and censorable noun usage,
and find that the deconstructive aspect of *derrida
is not found in nouns but primarily in prepositions
& conjunctions
and the timing of adjectives to respect the manual labour
of cobblers & tailors is almost arbitrary
for the six digit people employed to use two five digit extensions
and swing less under par when unemployed on retirement
looking for busyness and 6am and the alarm clock’s chandelier at noon.

Dawn breaks. Sliver of light
through shutters, wakes Sister
Blaise, stirs her from sleep.
Bell rings. Chimes loud.

She sits up, legs over the
side of the bed. Bare feet,
wooden floor. Coldness bites.
Rubs arms, legs. Crosses

herself with middle digit,
in nomine Patris. Bright light
through shutters slices into
floor. Prayer said she rises

from her bed. Thoughts race
through her head. Drab night
gown, grey, long. She walks
to the enamel bowl, pours

cold water, washes face and
neck and hands. Et Filii, et
Spiritus Sancti. Lets water
run through fingers. Wash

me whiter. The Christ on
the wall hangs there in His
silence. Picture of Christ on
her desk, hands out stretched.

She runs water through her
fingers, wet, cold. Wash me,
cleanse me. She dries her
hands on the old white towel,

rubbing dry fingers, hands,
face and neck. Uncle used to.
Pushes thoughts of him away,
they slip back in place, eel like.

Uncle used to touch. Bless me
Father. She folds the towel,
places it neatly at the foot
of her bed. She removes the

nightgown. Dresses in her habit.
White and black. Mother said
nothing. Silence and the turning
of the head. Finger pressed

against lips. Dressed, she sets
about her cell. Tidying, sorting,
bed making. Uncle used to touch
her. For I have sinned. She opens

the shutters, lets light in, opens
the windows, fresh air, birdsong,
slight breeze. Father used to beat.
The Christ hanging from the cross

on the wall is silent. Nailed hands,
hands curled. She has kissed the
nailed feet. Now she stares at the
turned head, turned slightly to one

side, crown of thorns, wood carved.
Sister Clare is in the cloister. She
watches her walk. She stops. Looks
into the cloister Garth. Flowers

growing, neat rows, large bushes.
Mother said nothing. Beatings.
Lies told about Uncle he said.
Sent to bed, no supper. The sun

is warm, light on head. She walks
from the window and stands in
front of the crucifix. His hands
curled, nailed, old nails, pins.  

Feet one on top of the other, nailed
in place. She kisses His feet.
Presses soft lips. Uncle used
to touch, said our secret, sin

to tell, little girl. She presses
lips to His feet. Mother weak,
said nothing, dying now, cancer,
pain, hurts. Father dead. Never

make old bones he said. Proved
right. She closes her eyes. Touches
His legs, runs finger along. Stiff,
cold, smooth. Uncle did; she never

told again. Father displeased, the
beating pleased. The bell rings again.
Echoes along cloister. She crosses
herself with middle digit. A bird sings.

Wind moves branches by window,
He calls, must leave, must go.

better than any hallucinogenic ingestion: whether that be acid or magic mushrooms... head traumas... ooh: those brain-"freeze" rattlings, like licking ice... like eating post-accident scabs... hmm... peanuts?! black-pudding?! oats?! i don't know... it's a mix of all... dry blood...

turns out we're all pink underneath...
even me: copper-neck sun-tan boyo come summer
turns pink skinned once he falls spectacular
over: face first: Lucifer's birth... stars dangling
awry out of constellation patterns...
moving... stars roaming...
             we're all pink underneath...
as i can attest: picking at my scar tissue / scab...
subsequently eating it...
   no... i don't care what the scientists might say
about eating your boogies...
i heard that one before... i also love the taste
of nails... i love the taste of female genitals...
esp. that of female genitals that have had
many ****** partners but are also ****-hygienic...
****-hygienic?! oh... right...
the types of girls you can have unprotected ***
with... knowing full well that they are prostitutes...
and still not contract any STDs...
             you put a ****** on my phallus
you might as well choke me during ******...

she wants to dance like Uma Thurman...
  mmm hmm... 4th day running... one song on repeat...

so the boiler buy comes round on time:
around 2 and 2:30pm... i switched on the t.v.
to watch some SW19 (Wimbledon, tennis,
i'm not going to be cryptic, let's leave it in the open)
my next door neighbour shoved a note
through my door... Dear Matthew...
scribbled like someone might with a crayons...
could you feed my baby tomorrow, Tuesday...
Bella... an white heterochromia beauty-freak...

so the boiler man came: handsome worth of
a **** and a ring attached to a ring-finger...
      £80 for about 15 minutes worth of work...
thank god he left a receipt...
    but my neighbour approached him: can you check
my boiler?
   her house? i love her to bits...
but... she? and Ed Gein... yeah... on par...
every time i go into her house to feed her cat
i'm actually trying to find myself...
oh... i know where the sink the cat food is...
i'm just trying to find myself,
   i.e.: i couldn't live like this...
              and i'm being: seriously generous...

so she approaches the boiler guy...
CAN WE STOP WITH THIS BICYCLE ACCIDENT
CRAP?! YES... IT'S BEEN A WEEK...
I'M HEALING LIKE WOLVERINE...
BECAUSE I'M A HYGIENIC-****...

but outright she calls me a sadomasochist...
PROMPT...
      i just need a girl to rest her head on my shoulder
sigh into me and i'm off... like a racehorse...
**** myself into her house...
meet her son...
  tell him: drop the Spanish... choose German...
it's more grammatically aligned to English...
he's on board... bring her homemade wine...
homemade banana loaf... cycle to her house at night...
drop her a Valentine's card through the box
and leave flowers on the porch...
          but in the end get rejected and feel like
i might have a heart's worth of a tonne of pebbles...
perhaps sand... i think sand trickles better
with the aid of a shovel when spreading it...
actually: no... better moving a tonne of pebbles
than a tonne of sand...

sadomasochist? am i thinking out-loud?
i know i am... but the question is...
it's actually a good question...
not Heidegger questioning history via historiology...
that's his buzzword in the black notebooks...
historiology this... historiology that...
no no...
                it's a chicken and the gg... egg story...

a e i o u M u o i e a...
                   a e i o u N u o i e a
     a e i o u R u o i e a
               a e i o u P u o i e a...

(we'll come back to this "problem" later on;
what has it to do with anything?
well... why do the Greeks have names for
their letters... while the Romans don't and didn't?
they "sang" their wording... PIZZA...
PAPARAZZI! AMORE!
    but i'm pretty ******* sure that if
the Romans plagiarised the Greek deities...
how Zeus became Jupiter... etc.
   then i'm pretty sure the Greeks plagiarised
the Roman way of the abacus -
how? how?! how could you use letters as numbers?!
erm... weren't the numbers already hidden in
the letters?! 8 in B...
                          Z in 2...
                                       7 in L or gamma before
a mirror...
                    1 in I...
                                   6 in miniscule beta b....
    5 & G are not facing each other...
II + III = V
                  shake shake shake III in Cyrillic...
3 otherwise... (

i lost the plot... hence the (          open to question:
where did i leave of off?!

ah... right... sadomasochism...

  the chicken and the gg... i.e. egg...
i know who came first historically... Marquis de Sade...
as i know that leopold von Sacher-Masoch came
later... historically... but... ontologically?!
ooh... that's a tough one...
well... no... it isn't...
             the inner drive of a youth in me that
once was... i found Marquis de Sade literature prior
to finding Sacher-Masoch...
            i learnt from a sadist what i couldn't learn
from a *******... because?! i guess i was inherently
*******... but not of a ****** nature...
to hell with being shamed sexually by a woman...
Venus in Furs the Velvet Underground sort of *******...
no! nein! niet! nie!

so... what came first? the sadist or the *******...
i know that historically the sadist came before the *******...
but within the sadomasochist complex:
S comes after M...
it could easily have been a maso-sadist complex...
compound of words...
never mind...

i think i first have had to experience sadism...
born with a hernia...
with a Chernobyl birthmark like someone clipped
an angel's wing... now a Cain's mark...
a nurse at the hospital tried to
choke me... enlarged me heart...
that's the myth...
        i was born as an abomination...

i love hurting myself... i'm sort of immune to
pain... immune when it is spectacular,
spontaneous... a Pollack / Kandinsky / Bacon
moment of contortions...
an implosion of time being undifferentiated
from space and space being undifferentiated
from time... relativistic squadron of magpies...
or... lonely seagulls flying in the night
trying to perch and be at ease
inland... on lamp-posts... looking for the hush
and hum of the battering waves of sea...

so who came first? the sadist or the *******,
ontologically, not historically?!
personally? i love to give myself pain
while giving others pleasure...
           leniency: even at work...
i like giving someone a 1h break while i only take
a 15min break...
and then watch... i love watching the guilt trip...
and falling into line...
ergo? i'm a passive sadist: i don't need
all the kink and ******* of ***-tripping...
i need subtle queues...
just give me a NIQAB and i'll work with it
like an artist with a canvas...

i already spotted the "agenda":
Muslim girls peering into a blonde moustache
and a brown beard... ooh... ooh...
why? how?! they're not looking at my eyes...
they're looking at my lips...
perfect mayhem! perfect!
   rubber-band stretching agitation!

of course they're fuckable... anything that moves
is... is...
                 Somali, Bangladeshi...
you name the hue and i'll compare that with
Caramel White Choc-Blocks...
         it's only the white girls...
that highest prize arrogance...
            the dilution "liquid"... of what? *****!
we'll all be Brazilian by the end of "it"...

lyrically: it's so wrong...
she and you...
i can't get YOU...
   what a pronoun confusion....
i can't get rid her HER...

new term:  TERRIBLE-ENGLish...

i love the song... but the language is the pristine
example of native-neglect...
well... it's H'american Ing-leash...
so... it's going to supposed to fail...

like overhearing two black guys talking
about racial stereotyping: how if you use
racial slurs in England at work you'll be excused...
how H'america is dangerous...
how England is salvagage ground
for racial minorities...

*******! you're pink just as me when
you bruise! what?!
      
i ******* hate the H'american accent...
it's like making a spaghetti Carbonara with
phlegm and snot without
any cream eggz or parmesan cheese...
no... like in Iraq or Libya:
your "empire" is not welcome here... *******!

great for culture... your culture is great...
your politics?! no, not so much...
sorry...

    why is it that we have ALPHA?
but only A in the Latin script?
why isn't it ebb but be for (B)?
why do we have gee and not egg for (G)?
err and not Ra for (R)?!
              el and not La for (L)?
why do so many consonants begins with vowels
rather than end with them,
when isolated?

that's why i adore Heidegger...
he always suggested: what is worth being questioned...
exactly!
         i already made a question:
why is the alphabet sorted so?
why not a e i o u b c... etc.?!
why are the vowels randomly placed among
the consonants?!
  the alphabet unravels into words and sentences
in the end... why not cook-up a revision
of QWERTY as an ability to type without
looking down at the keyboard?!
i'm sure the GP that retired that was
"curing" me was typing like a crow pecking
at crumbs of bread... digit-index finger...
look down: digit-index finger... peck... peck...
who the **** needs to learn the alphabet
when you have QWERTY?!

oh sure, sure... sure sure... the people are "literate":
no they're not... they are just about
able to read STOP and GO signs...
associate the colour RED with STOP
and the colour GREEN with GO...
thank god we're not trying some Mandarin experiment...
you get to look at enough people you
know that individuals beside the herd...
but when dealing with the herd: there are no individuals...
we're not talking about a wolf-pack...
we're talking about herding mentality...

on my QWERTY?
the A is completely eroded... it's the most used key i
apparently use... then again...
it's all about hand-placing...
so that you utilise all your fingers... including
you thumbs...
*** is typing... i can't imagine writing this much
having to scribble death-end-notes with
undecipherable handwriting...
                
digit by digit... letter by letter...
        because in the 1800s i wouldn't be a part-time poet...
i'd be a lumberjack and a a shepherd...
or: thereabouts...
          mind you? from what i've checked?
the supposed professional poets
on gate-keeper sites of poetry?
mmm hmm... they're sort of pretentious / ****...
aren't they?!

oh... right... now i know why the A is scrubbed out...
i've lost a lot of poems...
my fault... i forgot to
ctrl+A / ctrl+C / ctrl+V...
lesser lessons for the greater reasons.

"Wagons East (1994) - IMDb www.imdb.com/title/tt0111653/ Internet Movie Database Rating: 4.7/10 - ‎3,545 votes (stylized onscreen as ‘Wagons East’) is a 1994 western comedy film directed by Peter Markleand starring John Candy and Richard Lewis. The film marked one of Candy's last film appearances although it was not his last film release. His last film, Canadian Bacon which he had completed before “Wagons East,” had a delayed release in 1995. The film was notable for its leading actor Candy dying of a heart attack during the final days of the film's production. A stand-in and special effects were used to complete his remaining scenes and it released five months after his death."

And it’s Wagons East!
John Candy’s last mega-bomb,
Released 5 months postmortem.
Alas, even the sympathy vote stayed home,
Reject the we-owe-it-to-him-for
“Planes, Trains & Automobiles”(1987, IMDB).
The role, like money in the bank,
Earning diminishing returns,
Yielding interest but losing value over time.
The myth of INTEREST:
Das Capital, 2015.
The Prime is at 0%,
Yet, Inflation soars at, well,
At inflationary rates,
Digit-pounding inflation,
Higher food & shelter prices,
Masked ever so cleverly,
So deftly obscured by benevolent gasoline prices.

“Planes, Trains & Automobiles” (1987, IMDB)
Meet Del Griffith,
An obnoxious slob,
A complete schlemiel
(Also shle·miel (shlə-mēl′),
A serene shower curtain ring
Salesman and tour de force.
A film illustrative of everything
We love about farce,
(Merci beaucoup, Molière!)
And love about any
John Hughes/Steve Martin collaboration.

Needless to say,
I watched “Wagons East”
On TV the other day.
It was ten o’clock in the morning.
Will-o'-wisping in the ashtray,
Smoke from my first joint of the day.
The ashtray, a mosh pit carbonara--
Actually, an inverted exoskeleton dome--
One of dem big muthas,
I once free-dived for,
Offshore Mendocino Coast,
Back in the day,
Back when THE FRENCH LAUNDRY . . .
(The French Laundry: Thomas Keller Restaurant Group, www.thomaskeller.com. Chef Thomas Keller visited Yountville, California in the early 1990's on a quest for a space to fulfill a longtime culinary dream: to establish a destination for fine --314 Google reviews · Write a review 6640 Washington St, Yountville, CA 94533 (707) 944-2380. Daily Menus - ‎Make a Reservation - ‎Restaurant)
Back when THE FRENCH LAUNDRY
Paid beaucoup bucks for
Well-tenderized,
Sledge hammered slabs of illegal,
Black Market abalone.
Most assuredly, I digress.

So where else would I be?
My laptop was open & willing,
Legs spread, wet and waiting for
Whatever comes what may.
What came was a film
Earning pitch perfect
Dramatic chops for Candy.
We owe you, Del.
We owe you for this Anthem:
“You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target. Yeah, you're right, I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you . . . but I don't like to hurt people's feelings. Well, you think what you want about me; I'm not changing. I like . . . I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. Cause I'm the real article. What you see is what you get.”
But that was then,
This is now.
Wagons East:
A disastrous ****** bomb.
A vapid character jambalaya:
(1) A defrocked doctor
(2) A sagebrush *****.
(3) A queer book vendor.
(4) A Donner Party Survivor
Sounds can’t miss, right?
Or was it a classic Broadway/Hollywood sting?
Redux: “Spring Time for ******.”
N'est-ce pas?
Four *******
Heading east by wagon train;
Giving up on The West,
Heading east for Saint Louie,
Where freaks & geeks go undercover.
Down go their guards.
Camouflaging the chimera,
Transits the urban Wasteland,
Vast & nasty, as it were.

St. Louis, Missouri:
A much more tolerant
Hideout place.
THE WEST:
Just too much of
A hassle, I guess,
Too much for one’s
Flat-lined human mind,
Bored too shitless by
Buffalo turds to venture thought.
THE WEST:
Neorealismo italiano.
Complete Jolting-Joe reality,
A veritable wake-up call
Devouring any & all
Residual romantic fantasies . . .
THE WEST:
Struggle & Drudge,
Life lived west of the Mississippi.

Rangeland Romances #9 Go West For Your Man! Kindle (www.amazon.com) Books Literature & Fiction Amazon.com, Inc. Start reading Rangeland Romances #9 Go West For Your Man! Get the free Kindle Reading App or read on your Kindle in under a minute. Don't have a Kindle? www.amazon.com

That’s right: another advertisement,
Smack dab in the middle of
Of the ******* poem!
My invention, by the by,
Putting herein another plug for
A preferred memorial gravesite,
The Shrine To Me!
Situated in Scituate,
(Always wanted to say that.)
Scituate MA (www.scituatema.gov)
Knowing my kryptonite crypt,
My not-marble-nor-gilded
Princely-monument,
Had no chance to outlive
This fakakta rhyme scheme . . .
The Shrine To Me!
My final resting place:
My very tony, exclusive
Sub Zip Code?
The South Transept
Westminster Abbey
The so-called Poets’ Corner,
Of course!

Which brings me to my true purpose:
My true intentions for you this morning?
To publicize the strange Case of
CHARLES ROCKET:
(Go ahead, ******* Google him!)
“Charlie Rocket, found dead in a field near
His Connecticut home on October 7, 2005,
His throat had been cut.
He was 56 years old.
The state medical examiner
Later ruled the death a suicide.”
And if you believe the Coroner,
A Medicine Man &
Master of Self-Interest;
If you give that sharp-dealing,
Proverbial Connecticut Yankee his due,
Then you will probably also think
That millionaire Robert Durst
Didn’t **** Susan Berman,
Even as we see him
Getting away with ******.
Again.

I was dancing at a dance club
Two stepping all about
When my thumb, it found a belt loop
And I couldn't get it out

I shifted and I wiggled
I ****** my hips out front in time
I bent over and I shimmied
I was twerking on the line

Now, I ain't no Miley Cyrus
You can believe me now or not
I wasn't up there twerking
It's because my thumb was caught

I sashayed and I moseyed
And others got up too
My thumb was still encumbered
What the hell was I to do?

I was twerking like a mad man
Not knowing how, or  why
But the pain in my one digit
Just made me want to die

Maybe now I know the reason
Miley Cyrus did her dance
She wasn't up there being slutty
She had her thumb stuck in her pants

Now, I'm through with twerking
And there's is one thing that you'll find
That unlike young Miley Cyrus
You don't want to watch me from behind!!!

success defined by a digit
all or nothing, which is it
no longer feel worth
granted i never did

chopped down with every number
burned and bruised by the red pen
but who's pen is really causing me this pain?
i'd rather not admit it
it's just success defined by a digit

.like i insinuated prior, the English are a people not competent in philosophy, they're the antithesis of what a people, inclined to philosophy represent... schematic, rigidity, like the German... or the frequent cafe bullshitters of the French, the English can't consecrate themselves on the altar of Sophia, they just can't... they're a people that succumbed to too much practicality, egalitarianism... no one attempts to write in Utopia, while not seeking to find Atlantis.

so the whole Greece, Troy,
Rome shuffle is about over?
i'm feeling slightly peckish
and i don't have the time...
i'm about to light the house
up using... light-bulbs...
don't you think that a name
akin to: Paul, Digit,
sounds great?!

don't get me wrong,
the English are a people bound
to other, gifts...
they can sing,
although... Aud Lang Syne
is a Pict song...
and the river-dance is pure Ire...

great sophists,
but philosophers?
they're too practical,
i'm trying to read
Sartre's being & nothingness
in English...
i simply, can't...
      it doesn't make sense...
if you gave me a copy
of the same book
in ******-speak...
i'd butcher it...
   but in English?

metaphor moment:
like catching the testicles of
a mosquito, wearing boxing
gloves...

fiddly ******...

sure... each country has its
career ambition...
russian and the romanians
and the bulgarians have
their gymnastics...
the brazilians and the germans
have their footie...

the English have their singing
and their poetry...
but philosophy?
      nope... not even close...
Oasis' wonderwall
will be remembered,
and even sang along to on
the continent...

                   but thomas more's
utopia,
or thomas hobbe's leviathan...
ever tried to read more than
twenty pages
    of joseph conrad's
         heart of darkness... ?
ever find eating porridge
equivalent to parachuting
   in terms of the level of excitement?

chill... the English have their virtues...
but the English are also
prone to call philosophy
impractical, verbiage, word salad...
because philosophy already
is an impracticality,
an impasse...
          it's supposed to be,
           it's not exactly an Ikea schematic
reading to assemble a *******
table...
             it's Picasso, cubism,
       see if you can see a cube in
the mesh of contortions of other geometric
signatures...

              the English do not do philosophy...
sorry... they don't...
whatever argument arises citing
the "need" for: "reason" and, "logic"
will not cut it for me...
reason? since God doesn't intervene...
well... the unfathomable depth of
human will... reason: the same freedom
as posited prior to: the unfathomable depth...

logic? 1 + 1 = 2...
      a + n + d | s + o = and so...
the English are barons over other traditions
of expression...
music being 1, poetry being 2...

hey, Polacks are decent at volleyball...
i'm not complaining,
it's not exactly a popular sport...

but no... no chance in hell will i read
a philosophy book in this language...
i can't, the language is already too shrapnel
for me... i need to clarify a focus
on an idea...
        language, the English language,
can't entertain the current "transcendental"
logistics of undermining the individual /
plural use of pronouns,
while also keeping a straight face
in other areas of thinking...

     i could have conceded to the whole
globalist liberalism of ideas...
but... looking at the other flank?
attacking grammar... ****... sorry...
dogma?!
                as if... i will bow down
to un-existing before my wedding with death.

that being said,
i think the English are in a dire need to relearn
their black sense of humor,
their islander sense of isolationist humor,
their: bizarre unpredictability...
  since they lost it...
             to a certain degree...
i'd say: relearn to laugh at what is,
otherwise unforgiven in other cultures...
more crass Americanism...
and... well...
                can you ever learn to
cry when experiencing beauty?
musically, that is, esp. in the musical
dimension...
                    i always hated this:
"you're laughing, but actually crying...
you're crying, but actually laughing"
inversion...
        i never came around to fathom this
"misnomer"...
          straight down...
    i'll laugh at a funeral...
            teasing death...
   but i'll cry over a decent piece of music, to boot.

I'm obsessed with the vision's edge
How we look straight but there's always a sideview
Looking right through
The glass of a picture frame
The image splattered my name
On every newspaper, a cheap kind of fame
The sideview shows the real me
The kind of person who I'd be
If I'd sent this body out to sea
In that funeral pyre blazing to the sky
Mom and Dad think that I'm too young to die
But you're never too young to be that one guy
Your friends see on the tv with a nice little snippet
Of how you hated your thread so you got up and clipped it
But your parents will talk to the reporters and flip it
Say you were so great, so happy and nice
Always the one to give the good advice
The one crossing the street as you looked both ways twice
And the truth is you were already cold as ice
You tried to cry out but they nodded with grins
And they looked at you pondering and stroking their chins
And in this situation there's no one that wins
Because there's always a bridge or a cliff to jump off
When the stress level rises set off by a cough
Or you just up and choose to dive into the trough
And get eaten by pigs, digit by digit
And since you don't give a ****, you don't even fidget
When they bite off your legs and leave you a ******
But size doesn't matter, you're dead in a few
And it's not as if you have to choose what to do
In the end your fate is just pay per view
Because you'll be there, it's you that is dying
But the life negation requires none of your trying
So you can sit back relax and just watch it
There's more than one way so it's hard to botch it
Your death is the end, because there's nothing else to it
You once had a life but you up and you blew it
There was **** to be done but you just said "***** it"
And it's true, it's your life, and you have control
But before you eat lead, put the thought on parole
Give yourself minutes or days to rethink
A miscalculation of that size would stink
Set up some goals, some silly, some not
Of things to accomplish before you hit the black cot
Where they stick all the toe-tagged
The black-bagged
The life-gagged
The death-filled
The over-pilled
All those singing from their throats
Bleeding like goats
From the knife wounds like Abraham
Would've done in just seconds, ****
But the voiceless have no spokesman saying
"Hey world, there was no point in staying!"
There's always a point, and you've just got to find it
Once you do, wrap your mind and bind it
Obsess yourself with the point of staying
Remember the steepest price you'll be paying
Sometime in the future, but now be braying
The call of the stubborn, those that won't leave
The ******* with something in which to believe
I'm one of those ******* and we need more members
To warm up the cold of Depression Decembers
Obsessing about the vision's edge
The only thing that kept me on the safe side of the ledge
When I was seconds from falling down
The sideview turned my *** around
Gotta find the source of the curious periphery
Curiousity killed the cat, but the sideview saved me

Not long after the beginning, and a bit before the end, the Almighty said to Noah: “Is that your real name?” “Yeah”, said Noah: “you gave it to me, your ever generousness. I was hoping for something a bit more romantic, maybe even an extra syllable or two, or become all psychedelic and have a hyphen and a double barrel, but Noah is functional. I’m not complaining, a lot. After all what’s in a name? Wouldn’t a cactus be just as uninteresting if it was called something else? Why am I and my not very exciting name so humbly in your almighty and quite tedious presence?” asked Noah. “I’ve had a great idea”, said God: “and I want you with the very boring name to be the first to hear it.” “Can’t wait to hear it your Denseness, even if it is only half as brilliant as the square wheeled chariot and deep-fried ice cube you nearly invented for us last week; and as for the three-armed jacket, well what can I say? Jacob wears his every day and I won’t tell you what he does with it at night, as it involves folk music. And didn’t the Paisley patterned boulder illuminate the landscape?” said Noah “Oh good”, said God: “I do so enjoy it when the minions are attentive to my every word and trembling syllable, What’s the point of being an Almighty if you can’t Almighty it over the lower orders from time to time?” “I couldn’t agree more, your Bampotness. Even if you do appear to be a few slices short of a full loaf on occasions. So, what’s this big idea you’ve had?” said Noah. “I want you to build a boat, the biggest and bestest boat there’s ever been” said God. “Why”, said Noah, “we live in a desert, we don’t do boats; never have done, don’t get a lot of call for them in these parts, your Obliqueness. Ordinarily you’re every utterance is a symphony of sound and beauty to the sticky out bits on the abstract countenance you have so generously created for me, O Guano features. Couldn’t you do another plague of frogs and locusts? We loved those. Your subjects haven’t eaten so well since. Very tasty they were indeed, and so much more nourishing than the daily fare of cactus bark and centipede you dish up to us as we go about our increasingly diminishing mortal trespass. I hope you weren’t baffled by the paradoxical construction of that sentence. One Almighty’s punishment is another lowly minion’s business opportunity. I was running a fast food joint while it lasted. Made a change from the normal feast, where you have to catch your dinner before it catches you. Eat before your eaten that’s the Law ‘round here. It makes you feel more like a recipe than a person on occasions, your Compostness.” “Be that as it may, said God: “I’ve got some drawings which Eve helped me to make” “Eve?”  said Noah: “did you say Eve?” “Yes” said God: “Eve”, that’s what I said, she likes me more than all the rest of you put together and that’s why she’s my favourite” “This will be good” said Noah: “let’s be having it. Let’s see the cosmic blueprint of a less than useless boat that Eve devised” “I helped to devise it as well”, said God: “In fact I done all the pencil sharpening, and here it is.” Noah sniggered and said: “That’s not a boat it’s a camel!” “Brilliant, isn’t it?”, said God: “you’ve got to hand it to Eve; she’s a genius at this kind of stuff, and she says it will make me look jolly clever as well. And that will stop all you ungrateful and wretched minions from smirking and sniggering every time I have a wonderful idea.” “This is even better than the ten commandments, three dos six don’ts and a maybe” said Noah. “My Ten commandments were wonderful” said God: “even Moses said so.” “The only reason you have ten commandments”, said Noah: “is because you have ten fingers. If you had seventeen fingers we would have seventeen commandments; one for each digit. People who use their toes to count their fingers should avoid life’s mathematical complexities. And as for Moses ‘The Born Leader’ he’s a party hack. He’ll agree with anything you say as long as he gets his name on the tablet. He’s publicity mad. When he grows up he wants to chisel the definitive text on cactus attraction, for the benefit of future desert wanderers. Eve says he a bit of a Freudian fruitcake on the quiet, whatever that is. She also says, his mother told him he was adopted, and he’s never quite got over it.” “Why would Moses want to get over a cactus, seems jolly silly to me” said God: “He’s a complete basket case, according to the local grapevine. Never mind all that, let’s see the blueprint.” said Noah: “A wooden camel, only a cosmic idiot could imagine it. If it was a wooden horse it could have been sold to the Trojans, or a wooden cat to the Pharoahs, and I’m told the antipodeans go a bundle on timber budgies, but camels; nobody wants one, not even other camels. How did someone as colossally dense and as infinitely thick as your self acquire the surreallness of thought to imagine it in the first place?” said Noah. “You’re a bright little chappie for a minion”, said God: “Eve told me about the Greeks and their wooden gee-gee and I suggested a boat, then Eve pointed out that this was a desert, and consequently we need a desert boat. ‘One that floats on sand’, I said. ‘Not quite El Plonkero’ she said. Then Eve said we have to adopt and then apply some lateral thinking to the problem. She pointed out that we live in a desert and that we need a boat that sails in the desert. And then I had the mostest cleverest thought I’ve had in ages. We need a ‘desert boat’ I exclaimed. And Eve said I was a true plankton eater. She says the nicest things to me. A ‘ship of the desert,’ she says, ‘and what’s a ship of the desert?’  Quick as a flasher in the rush hour, I said ‘a camel’, and Eve replied that I was quite bright for a log, and that camel plus ship equalled wooden camel to sail away from here to some other paradise she called Hollywood, ‘Land of heavenly bodies and the drop dead gorgeous Brad Pitt.’” “And you believed her?” said Noah. “Of course I believed her”, said God: “she’s Eve and if you can’t believe in Eve what else is there to believe in?” “There’s an answer to that”, said Noah: “but you’d toast me like a heretic on the happy juice if I repeated it, your Doorknobness.”

In the farthest reaches of known space, a single starship lay juxtaposed against the stars. The ship was named Destiny. The cold metallic shell hummed with energy as it sat motionless. There were large chunks of wreckage and shrapnel surrounding the Destiny, the last bits of oxygen burning away.
The Destiny was a silver and blue X-Class, a state-of-the-art high speed ship, currently the fastest in the Nine Galaxies. It's pilot was a female Extro-sapien named Jade. Her species was descendant from ****-sapiens, a long forgotten species from the Third galaxy. Extro-sapiens were humanoid, though taller than their descendants. They prided themselves on their indestructible immune system and immunity to all known poisons.That, coupled with the fact that their skin was strong enough to repel most blades with ease, made them extremely hard to ****. Extro-sapiens were nimble hunters, naturally armed with razor sharp fangs and claws. Jade was a bounty hunter, taking contracts to hunt down criminals or to escort VIPs in hostile areas for generous sums of currency. Her target's ship now lay in ruins, it's now-dead pilot floating in the void of space.
Jade walked from the cargo bay of her ship to the cockpit, stripping away her suit and clothes, tossing them in their respective rooms before sitting at her throne, not a stitch of clothing to be seen. It was relieving to be free once more.
She glanced over the various screens before her, some with pictures of her target either on a wanted poster or in the sealed container aboard her ship. She swiped the images to her left, compiling them into a message for her client before sending them. Almost immediately there was a soft chime as her client started a video uplink. Jade quickly grabbed the large headset from the floor and placed it over her pointed ears. She swiped her finger over the right earpiece and it clicked to life.
Jade growled and crossed a hand over her chest just before the screen shifted. An image of her client appeared before her, a reptilian humamoid adorned with gold rings on his short horns. Jade heard him hiss in surprise.
"Bounty hunter, if I had known you'd be so stunning, I'd have met you in person."
Jade's dual vocal cords echoed faintly in the cockpit. The sound of two angelic voices rolled off her forked tongue. "Flattery will get you nowhere. Besides, a night with me would cost you a fortune."
The man laughed, "Worth it, in my opinion."
Jade growled, "You have your proof of death, Silva, I expect you've wired the credits to my account?"
"Of course, of course! Though I could add a little extra if you simply move your hand."
Jade narrowed her eyes. "A show like that would cost you at least a million. Because I'm worth it."
She heard him chuckle, "Indeed you are." There was a pause and then he smiled, "Feel free to move your hand now."
Jade flashed her fangs, "Of course, you don't mind if I check first, right?"
Silva shrugged and Jade used her free hand to pull up her bank account. Sure enough, her initial payment had been received, along with the extra. She grinned and lifted her hand away from her chest. "Feast your eyes, perv."
She grinned as the reptilian choked. "Now that is worth a million!" He grinned from horn to horn, "I'll let you know when the next contract opens."
Jade returned her hand to her chest and growled, "This stays between us. Remember, I know where you live."
Silva's expression didn't change but she could tell that he flinched. "Of course. Until next time, gorgeous."
The video screen faded away and Jade quickly began to transfer her payment to other accounts. She sighed and turned to her right, seeing a map of the nearby systems. She spotted a contract pinned on a planet a few hundred lightyears away, and she gawked at the price tag.
"Ten billion units?" She whispered, "I could retire early with a payday like that."
She furiously began to type in calculators and coordinates. Her computer's voice echoed I'm the cockpit, "ERROR, PLEASE RECALCULATE TRAGECTORY."
Jade bared her teeth in anger as the holographic screen projected a diagnostic of her ship. One single line of text blinked slowly, enveloping her attention.
"FUEL LEVEL LOW, MAXIMUM SAFE TRAVEL: 40 LIGHTYEARS."
She swore under her breath, growling deep in her throat. She adjusted the microphone on her headset and cleared her throat. Her dual vocal cords echoed faintly in the cockpit. "Destiny, lock in coordinates to the nearest space station. Lock down cargo and prepare to engage hyperdrive."
The hologram buzzed to life as the various systems reacted to the sound of her voice. As Jade waited she shut her eyes, gently running her fingers over her bare chest. Jade's was proud of her body, hating to cover such beauty with clothes. Her arms, legs, and back were covered in ornate tribal tattoos. Jade had spent three continuous days enduring the hand poked tattoo, and she felt very proud in displaying the art whenever she could. She let her hands wander about her curves for a moment before stopping. Jade blinked a few times and shook her head. The bells at he tips of her long silver braids jingled. Jade whispered to herself, "There's time for that during lightspeed." Since she worked alone, she took every opportunity she could to relieve her tensions, as it allowed her to focus on her work without distraction. Companionship meant liability in her line of work.
She waited patiently for the computer, leaning back in her fur lined throne. Once all systems had finished their tasks, a soft voice echoed, "Hyperdrive on standby."
Jade took a soft breath. "Engage."
The starship lurched forward, the engines roaring ferociously behind her for a moment before the sound dampening system kicked in. She heard a familiar beeping and glanced up at the hologram, seeing the countdown from ten seconds. She felt the comforting shiver of excitement she always felt before launch, smiling softly to herself.
She braced herself in the chair and said, "Open view port, engage shield."
The large metal screen in front of her pulled away, revealing the grand masses of stars and planets before her. Jade took a deep breath and counted down, "Five. Four. Three. Two. One."
The ship screamed forward, and the starlight formed a beautiful tunnel around the Destiny as it traveled through hyperspace. Jade slumped back into her chair and closed her eyes. "Destiny, Disengage interior gravity field."
Jade felt herself lifting off of her chair, becoming weightless. Her braids jingled softly as they spread around her like a lionfish.
Jade pulled off her headset, letting it float in front of her as she stretched, running her hands along her body again and she shivered again. She twisted in midair, turning to the sealed door behind her. She touched the panel next to the door, feeling the familiar cold screen. The door opened and Jade floated into the corridor. She turned left towards her quarters and entered through another door. The walls were decorated with digital posters of various terrains she had visited during her travels. She drifted toward her bed, covered with a fur blanket and pillow. Jade wandered to the storage locker next to the bed, opening it delicately. Inside were a few personal mementos and data logs, and a small decorative box on the top shelf. She shivered as she thought about its contents. "Later. I think I need to sleep for now." She gripped the stability handle above her bed and lay down on the warm gel bed, covering herself with the fur. Jade breathed a sigh of relief as she relaxed, closing her eyes. It was at that moment that she felt how tired she really was, her muscles ached and groaned as she pressed a button on the side of the bed, changing the density of the gel to allow her to sink. The warm gel creeped over her legs and belly, then her chest and shoulders.
Jade groaned as the gel encapsulated her, covering every possible inch of her. Her mind wandered as her hand hovered over the other controls. "Massage or no?"
She bit her lip and pressed the button once, feeling the gel start to pulsate around her body.
Jade shivered and said to no one, "Who needs a man when you have tech like this?"
She spent the next few hours in the massage bed, finding her way into the decorative box partway through. Once Jade had thoroughly massaged her desires away, she climbed out of the gel, thankful for the weightlessness. She was no longer confident in the use of her legs. She pressed the first button twice and the gel began its cleaning process.
Jade retrieved her toys and placed them back in the box, pressing a button similar to the one on the bed, closing it and placing it back into the storage locker to clean.
Jade stretched again, invigorated. She floated back to the cockpit, checking the projected time of arrival. "Ten more hours. Plenty of time to get my gear ready."
Jade floated back into the corridor, this time twisting to the right towards her workbenches. The room was dark, save for a few blue work lights. As Jade hovered in the doorway, the overhead lights snapped on, casting a soft white glow around the room. She floated towards the first bench, where her gun hovered in a stasis field. It was almost four feet long, with three rotating barrels. Most bounty hunters favored energy weapons and plasma rifles, but not Jade. She preferred metal bullets that could shred flesh and punch through doors with ease. Her weapons would not fail her in case of electro-magnetic pulses either.
Jade floated to the next table, where her boots and mask hovered in another stasis field. Her boots were strong, heat and frost proof, and had a strong magnetic field to allow her to walk in zero gravity or even upside down. She had recently installed a pair of thrusters to them, which would allow her to fly for a short period of time, enough to get her out of harm's way or to a better vantage point.
Jade's mask was armor plated, angled to deflect any incoming rounds with ease. Two tubes connected the mask to an air reservoir that sat at the base of Jade's neck, underneath her braids. The eyepieces doubled as eye protection and target analysis. One of the lenses was cracked beyond repair and Jade swore. She hovered over the table and delicately disassembled the mask, letting the broken lens float freely away while she installed its replacement. She reassembled the mask and slid it onto her face. There was nothing at first, then the internal computers activated and she saw clearly through the mask. She glanced over the diagnostic data and nodded once she was satisfied. She took off the mask and set it back in its stasis field.
She turned to the final bench. Where her bodysuit lay in a crumpled heap of woven uranium and steel fiber. The bodysuit fit her like a second skin, adhering to every curve she possessed. The uranium fibers acted as an energy source, powering all of her necessities. The black suit shimmered as she touched it, reacting to her skin, begging to be worn. She smiled softly and patted the heavy fabric. "Soon, darling."
Jade glided to the door, leaving her gear behind as she returned to her living quarters. She hovered in front of the full length mirror, looking over her body. She smirked and purred, "Gorgeous as always."
Jade went to the storage locker and retrieved a large metal crate from the base. She took it to the mirror and opened the crate, revealing thirty blue feathers, each roughly a foot long. She had collected one for each of her braids, and she began to tightly weave the feathers into the tips of the braids. In the middle of each of her braids was a strong electro-magnetic core that, once activated, spread her braids like a lionfish. They would act as a distraction, allowing her the element of surprise. The magnetic field they created also acted as a strong shield.
Once the last feather had been woven into her hair, she then wrapped each braid in strips of the same uranium-steel fibers as her suit.
As the last of the fibers had been tucked into place, Jade grinned. The powerful fibers would amplify the effects of the electro-magnetic cores. Jade smiled at their resemblance to whips. She wanted to test them, see if they would crack like an actual whip.
Jade returned to her workshop, donning the bodysuit and her control gloves. She floated into the main corridor, which was wide enough that she wouldnt hit the walls once her braids were fully extended.
She took a deep breath and touched the her thumb and forefinger together twice, activating the electro-magnetic cores.
The sound was deafening, forcing Jade to scream involuntarily and clutch her ears in pain. She was shaking, her vision blurring. Her ears were ringing as she was finally able to hear again.
Jade reached up and felt her fully extended braids, marveling at their rigidity.
Once her hearing had completely recovered, she tapped her fingers together, deactivating the cores. Her braids floated limply in the air and Jade curiously went to the cockpit, sitting in her throne.
"Destiny, analyze decibel range of sound from main corridor."
After a moment, the ship's voice echoed, "Decibel range of one hundred ninety."
Jade shuddered, she was surprised she hadn't been deafened by the sound. She shook her head softly and looked at the projected time of arrival. "Seven hours."
She yawned, "Time to sleep then. Destiny, wake me up thirty minutes before we reach the station."
"Affirmative."
Jade lifted herself over the chair and ventured into her room. The gel bed had finished cleansing and she pushed herself onto it, feeling the familiar warmth. She focused on slowing her breathing and she closed her eyes, passing quickly into deep sleep.

In her dream, Jade stood on a slightly raised metal platform in the middle of a desert. The platform was massive, with sand covering the edges. Jade looked around, seeing nothing around her. She looked up into the sky and saw a single massive sun orbited by twelve planets and a ring of stars. Jade looked around her again and saw a massive wall of water closing in on her from all sides. She shut her eyes tight as she heard the water rushing around her.
Jade felt herself being carried away by the current. When she opened her eyes, she was back in her bed.
Jade blinked and sat up, unsure of herself.
She thought she could still hear the water rushing past her ears.
Jade shook her head and the bells brought her back to her senses. She could hear Destiny's alarm ringing within the bed and she pushed the third button, silencing the alarm. "Destiny, restore gravity.
Jade felt heavy for a moment, then the gravity stabilized and she rolled her shoulders. The countdown was now at thirty minutes.
Jade retrieved the headset from the floor and slid them over her ears. The screen in front of her had brought up a diagnostic of the space station. A light flashed on the instrument panel and Jade pushed it gingerly. An alien voice came over her headset, "X-Class starship, please respond."
Jade positioned the microphone in front of her mouth, "This is X-Class, go ahead."
There was a pause, then, "This is the Space Station Ender, please state your business and expected stay."
Jade hesitated, then said calmly, "Refuel and resupply. Expected stay no longer than forty-eight hours."
A minute passed, then another. Finally a response came, "X-Class you are cleared to engage docking procedures upon arrival."
Jade smirked, "Affirmative. ETA twenty-five minutes."
There was an audible click as the call ended. Jade sighed and pondered the contents of her cargo hold. She stood and turned to the back of her ship, going to the very end of the corridor to a locked panel.
Jade typed in an eight digit combination and the door swiftly slid open. The walls were lined with large storage compartments, though Jade wasn't worried about those. She counted her paces and stopped four paces from the door and she sidestepped right twice, touching her gloved fingers to the floor. The sound of gears and hydraulic pistons echoed throughout the room as a six foot by ten foot container lifted from the floor. Jade ran her fingers along the side of the container, opening the multitude of doors. As each door swung open, stacks of weapons and explosive devices became visible. This was the cargo that her target had been carrying. Since it no longer had an owner, it was worth a lot of money. Jade couldn't resist the possible fortune, bu

I'm A Suicide Bomb.
A Nuclear Explosion Of Unexplainable Inadequate Ambition.
A Hand Granade, Pull My Pin And  Watch Me Self Destruct.
A Land Mine Beneath Seven Inches Of Soil, Tensed Like Piano Wire, Ready To Sing Under Pressure. Ready To Scream.
Genocide Of My Own Veins. Pull Them One By One, Out Of Their Homes And Send Them Off To Interment Camps, Built To Hold The Blood Of A Body That Only Betrays Me.
I'm Holding Each Limb Hostage, Each Finger A Prisoner Of War, Every Fingertip A Monument Where Everyone I Have Ever Loved Will Mourn The Tragedy Of My Own Destruction.
Gas Masked And Gagging, They Will Always Ask Why I Did It.
A Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Diagnoses To Give Them Some Closure. I

Know They Didn't Understand The War I Was Waging Beneath My Ribs.

Waking Every Morning, Clawing My Way Through The Wreckage, With Knees And Palms Painted Filthy Black, Ears Ringing, Like The Sound Of A Thousand Dead Voices Vibrating,

I Have To Tell Myself It Must Be Happening For A Reason.
I've Been Wearing A Kevlar Vest Made Of Lies, White Ones, Stained Red.
A Purpose Born Inside Me, I Have To Ask How Much Longer Must I Keep Running?
I Have To Believe The God You Pray To, Prays To Someone Like Me, Because Who Else Would Declare War On This Kind Of Humanity.  

Every Day Is A Battle, Every Aching Moment Is A Last Attempt At Redemption,
Every Bone In This Body Is A Bayonet Aimed To Splint Apart My Skeleton.
This Isn't A War Anymore.
This Is Terrorism.
Terrorized My Paper Thin Skin,
Handed Me Black & Blue ink, and Told Me To Write Out My Surrender On My Skin, Like Bruises

Branded,
Wrapped In Kelodial Bandages.

I Am Damage.

I Am Destruction.

I Am Savage.

I Am. Terrified.

My Home Is A War Zone, Scabbed Over And Still Bleeding, No Where Is Safe, Not Even Inside My Own Skull.
I Am Eyelid Explosions And Neplam, Burning One Hundred Thousand Degrees Above My Own Boiling Point.

An Open Wound. Bullet Bomb Shell, Left With More Holes Than Whole.

Had Spent 6 Years On This Planet, 2,190 Days Too  Short To Understand What It Meant To Watch Twin Towers Fall.
They Said The Word Attack.
Lived Eleven More Years In This Body, In An Existence That Seems To Only Be Fighting Against It's Own Skin, Cutting It Into Pieces, Cutting Corners, Cutting Edges, Looking For Answers Beneath Whatever Remains Of Me.


How Can You Win A Battle When The Only One You Are Fighting Is Yourself?

I Think My Violet Eyes And Indigo Insides Believed In A Peace Treaty, But I Have Shrapnel Wedged So Deeply Inside Me, That It's Become Difficult To Understand Existing Without It.

How Do I Fight An Invisible Enemy, With Kerosene Lips And Matches For Fingertips?

I Am A Solider.
There Was A Draft And It Consisted Of A Single Six Digit Number That Matched My Birthday,
Like A Bad Joke,
I Can't Remember When It Began, All I Know Is That I Haven't Lived in A Time Without Bloodshed.

Mental Illness Runs In My Family,
A Weapon Of Mass Destruction,
Built Into This Blood,
O Positive,
Unsure,
Yet AB Negative
Of Where It Will Take Me,
Except To Live A Life Wondering If I'll Catch The Family Flu,
They Call This Biological Ware fare.

How Do We Wash The Blood Out Of Our Own Genes?

Us. The Sick Of Soul, The Diseases And Dying, The Psychosomatic, Sociopathic, Undiagnosed And Overmedicated,

Must Tell Ourselves

That Atleast Suicide Bombers..

Die For Something.

Holy water into wine. Beer from barley.
Walking on the roof of a brewery,
Contemplating how Jimmy Fallon's
Finger never really seems to heal.

Combine harvester headlights dance
On the living room walls
As I lean back on my white IKEA
Sofa, tracing long hairs and

Fingerprints of lovers gone,
Wondering why I chose such a
Revealing colour.
Suppose the transparency matches

That of my soul's lining.
Holy water into wine.
Fields of gold now liquid painkillers
Slurring the voices in my head that

Pick fights with my heart over
Insignificant issues.
I lip synch to the music of my
Neglected talents and the memories

Of inspiration attached.
Bullets like knuckles rapping, rapping
At my empty chamber
Door.

Every finger I ever broke
Was from typing or
Punching
Walls.

Sometimes I put on the mask of
Poet, and pretend to be writing  
For as long as it takes to fool
The empty pages.

Shouldn't we all be studying?

dedicated to M M Jones from Montana,
where I guess big skies make people think
about big questions and young poets thrive.


the butterflies of child-awakening
to the certainty
that school and
shame and embarrassment
were only minutes away,
once again,
is as fresh as
the flowers my love
buys every Friday,
fifty plus year later.

I would awake,
climb into bed with my mother,
telling her I did not feel well,
that my
stomach felt gray.  

I could not tell her that
the mocking I received by
my richer classmates at the
multiple lines in the fabric
of my corduroy pants
where she let my pants down
made me cannon fodder
for what we call now
bullying.

I could not tell her
of the heartbreak
when somehow the parents
of my supposed suburban friends
forgot to
pick me up for the weekly swim,
leaving me to watch
the sunset fall as I sat
on the stoop of our old house,
tucked away in an out of the way,
unfashionable street,
the shame still wet.

I could not tell her
of how two bothers tortured me
as I sat in the back seat
of their station wagon,
spitting seeds
on me like curses.  

Their older brother died of cancer
when that was still unusual,
and the mother wrote
a beautiful book
about his life.

I still hate them, those two,
fifty years later and it gives me
unusually great pleasure to
announce it to the world.

So I studied.  

Not my schoolbooks,
but lovely and ***** literature.
Friday afternoons, three children,
me the baby brother,
(anonymous, for they nicknamed me
brother as if  I was nothing but
checked off category)
to the library went.

Five, five was the max
they the austere librarians
and their coda of holy silence,
would let me withdraw.
(god I can see my library card still).  

By Friday night,
I had finished one or two,
ruining my eyes in
the lousy lamp light
in the living room,
falling asleep on the couch.  

this, reading addiction,
which afflicted the entire family,
I did well into my teens.

I have stopped reading
which amazes the very few
who know and care.

do let us re-pose,
let us repose,
the question:

Shouldn't we all be studying?

the answer of course is
yes and no.

my studying blue period
is long since ended.
now, my biographer,
will call this my red period.

for red are the memories that my remembrances
come back to me.
crystal is the clarity
of the indignities
I recall, though red,
is the anger
at the shame and
abuse I took.

now I can write what I have always held in my heart.  

those two awful brothers,
who loved to torture me,
I was glad their
wonderful brother died.

so this is my red writing period,
when the studying of a kind,
has long since ended
but the smell,
the memory of
fresh textbooks still can
make me nauseous.

Yet, I still study life around me,
as I clean countertops,
walk deserted beach isles
in early September...
this studying,
is the product of years
of studying the inside out
of me, and turning that study
fruitful into poetry.

why?
why am I writing this at 2:00 am on a Sunday morning?

I did not pose the question.

but it posed me,
and the dialogue in my mind came
sugarcane fresh and tumbling out
and will be both
recorded and recoded
("in the truth will out eventually" file)
after a fashion.

these days I sometimes study
my older poems,
whose titles I recognize,
but whose content
I cannot recall.  

so double digit delight
when I
meet again old words,
wondrous and trite,
that make believe
that all my studying
somehow paid off after all.

Let's go talk in a drop top
Let's go talk in a drop top
Low on cash auction bought
Making no stacks but I thought
I was rich yea but I'm not
I said I was rich I was caught
In a basic place
Shopping at Walmart on certain days
Cash in the hand
A few bucks
Stashing change
Outa luck
All I got
Yea I gotta bank
Yea no K
Two digit aye
Let's go talk in a drop top
Let's go talk in a drop top
Big bucks
Later on
No luck
Maybe not
Let's go talk in a drop top
Let's go talk in a drop top
Drop top bottom to the top
Rolling around town
Skrrt
Rolls or Rari
Skrrt
Let's go talk in a drop top
Exhaust go pop
Exhaust go boom
Watch this Lambo zoom
Which room
Hotel stay
Marriott
Everyday
Aye
Skrrt stay
Skrrt stay
Everyday
Dream in the day

professor Burke and professor Lee
two mathematicians who could not agree

loudly voiced their differences at half past noon
having daily lunch at the Greasy Spoon

the subject on the fateful day was Pi
and they could not see eye to eye

a disagreement on the thousandth digit
had Burke turn red and caused Lee to fidget

said Burke “No you are off by one!”
spat Lee “Your math is poorly done!”

Burke shouted, “Lee, you have gone too far!”
reached toward the counter for a candy jar

but his hand instead encountered pie
a hideous gleam sprang to his eye

he flung the pie with all his might
hit Lee full face, eyes wide with fright

but Lee recovered and found more pies
Boston Creme took Burke between the eyes

apple, custard, lemon, berry
pecan, pumpkin, key lime, cherry

pies of every kind were thrown
plates' radius squared remained unknown

the police arrived to break up the fray
took the two meringued men away

many hours later in the quiet cell
with pie for ink and tempers quelled

the two stood looking at the wall
upon which lay their equation scrawled

said Burke, with both their faces long
“Well, what do you know. We both were wrong.”

are feelings of love felt alone, feelings of love at all?
or selfish yelps for attention borne
of boredom & a sense we only hold on our own
of childish
- - - - idleness.
singularity less; more independence from a whole

the only company he keeps is furniture
together with the furniture of the house he sits,
with seven seats left empty,
the curtains tales appear to grin

without validation from another he feels
like a child standing
the school's final bells rung
the bustle of the day has droned
now dissipated

the bustle of the day irritated
when it droned, he longed for home
for the bus
as he waits for the bus the quiet surrounds hold tight
but hold cold
like a fridge door keeps, it clutches, encloses
the school yard empty
he stands; singular; out of place in the surrounds

the school bleeds terror when empty
The laughs & shouts & jeers & footsteps
keep the wholesomeness whole

empty of shouts
a graveyard now
the ghosts of the day linger
& they finger

your buttons they push
your tenderness they kneed out
they **** (with their cold digits they ****)

just like the furniture does.
just like the furniture in the house laughs
when uninhabited
it silently jeers
'Why so many seats mate?' it pokes with its linen digit; fuzzy but cold
as it continues
'you're alone
waiting for someone
to come by and pick u up
& take u back to home