An ocean of suffering burst upon me,
and I set out on the deserted street.
Walked without in mind a destination,
Walked towards this life's conclusion.

Rain was falling, the atmosphere had cheer,
but my grief-struck heart had no care.
Getting wet in the biting cold,
directionless I kept on my painful stroll.

Clouds were showering the earth,
but the real storm brimmed inside my heart
Getting wet in this grief-filled rain,
directionless I kept on my walk of pain.

It was winter outside,
but the real chill was in inner emptiness,
Shivering in that void so cold,
directionless I kept on my painful stroll.

...And when it all goes silent, and I am left with only me.

My racing thoughts, the emptiness, the pain throughout my body.

Chaotic darkness in my mind

Directionless

Feeling disconnected

I need to find the route home back to me.

I don't want to
Get lost
In you
But I fear
I have travelled
Much too
Far.
I never planned on
Staying up
Till four am
Wondering
About the thought
Of us.

I am not a traditionalist;
I believe newness makes more sense.
So I make it up as I go along,
and my footfalls make a sort of song
rending silence till sunlight appears
And dew spreads like the sweet earth's tears.
Some stories are written, some left untold;
I'll write my own, before I get old.
There comes a fork in the road; decide-
I take whichever one feels right inside.
When you have no destination, any path is fine.
Some think that's a negative; I think it's sublime.
We put too many expectations, constraints on ourselves.
It's not good to worry; it's bad for your health.
Sometimes I wonder if human life is so short
because we spend it anxious about the hours we hoard.
That which you hold closest will slip through your grasp,
and our lives are so fragile, brittle as glass.
It's better to wander this world without direction;
let things come to you-and stop chasing perfection.

i found myself walking towards you blindly
there was no end, there was no start
just you and my stupid heart.

Today, suddenly, I reached an absurd but unerring conclusion. In a moment of enlightenment, I realized that I'm nobody, absolutely nobody. When the lightning flashed, I saw that what I had thought to be a city was in fact a deserted plain and, in the same sinister light that revealed me to myself, there seemed to be no sky above it. I was robbed of any possibility of having existed before the world. If I was ever reincarnated, I must have done so without myself, without a self to reincarnate.
I am the outskirts of some non-existent town, the long-winded prologue to an unwritten book. I'm nobody, nobody. I don't know how to feel or think or love. I'm a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I've even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breathe life into me.
I'm always thinking, always feeling, but my thoughts lack all reason, my emotions all feeling. I'm falling through a trapdoor, through infinite, infinitous space, in a directionless, empty fall. My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, books, boxes, snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool.
And I, I myself, am the centre that exists only because the geometry of the abyss demands it; I am the nothing around which all this spins, I exist so that it can spin, I am a centre that exists only because every circle has one. I, I myself, am the well in which the walls have fallen away to leave only viscous slime. I am the centre of everything surrounded by the great nothing.
And it is as if hell itself were laughing within me but, instead of the human touch of diabolical laughter, there's the mad croak of the dead universe, the circling cadaver of physical space, the end of all worlds drifting blackly in the wind, misshapen, anachronistic, without the God who created it, without God himself who spins in the dark of darks, impossible, unique, everything.
If only I could think! If only I could feel!

Brutal, unforgiving
Organic
Like sand in your teeth

Undeniable as truth in its purest form

As beautiful as color

Planes are departing
Landing
Crashing

Frogs are leaping
Dogs are guarding
Cells are dividing

The woman with her Judas smile
Poison forked tongue flicking
Darkens my doorstep no more!

Freeways hum
Refrigerators buzz
Oil goes unchecked

I turn off the tv set
Ignore the rioting in the streets
Look away as the one percent
Ruins America

The silence of the phone
Is deafening
Tomorrow is uncertain
As I contemplate my obsessions
And A.D.D
I wonder how patient
Can God be

Gun metal gray,
this pigeon grasps
at current strung black
across a brick-
bounded back alley

edgy eyes on
uneven piles—
disposable
artifacts of people
caught in-between—

it trills its plea,
a directionless
directive to throw
away smaller,
more edible, trash

Once a bridge was nothing more than an abstract tool for reasoning. But one day, this very abstract tool for reasoning became the literal direct opposing opposite to this very operation.
(The operation that was meant to be disposed of from the very get-go!)
But something stopped that from becoming a seamless reality...
After all, seamless is nothing more than predictable tension in the right places that don't normally fit into the very crowd of normalities itself.
But the universe is connected by such truths that don't normally (either), point its own self in the right direction full of directionless odds that don't poke and **** your very potential progression forward...if it wasn't truly for the very bridge that again, (as an abstract took for reasoning), points these very directionless odds into a newer meaning than ever before. Hence, an abstract tool (obviously) when dealing with such tension involving the universal boundaries and conditions and features and traits and meanings and properties that surround itself among many other things in its general surroundings that bear itself too much for an actual correct dose of conquest to deal with all at one single time.
Basically, because if that was the actual case (all at one single time...) Then it'd be a non-localized protocol that would pave the way for ALL such manufacturing projects in one single action!
(And non-localized making such advances in the very field of study, for the very meaning that happens all at once, not within the same boundaries from one another, length and size wise.)
Seeing as how big the universe really is, with still too this very date is filled with such EXTREME (unknown sizes and expectations of it, regardless of its own such limits regulated by the very anticipated push for discovery itself). There wouldn't even be a certain timeframe for things to have its own say (in for how ever long they want to take). Instead, you have something happening all at one time, where everything is truly about one thing, and one thing, ONLY...
Nothing is about progression (or even the very process of actually getting it done) when it's all about the bridge that reasons out the very different areas and points of many likelihoods that don't limit its own variety to its own protocols...when their own hunger is trying to go about achieving one's own aim, or goal of precipitation...
When it's entirely longer than the standing idea...that nothing is without flawless results, if and ONLY if...you make it or break its very abstract tool for reasoning itself!
If and only if you do, then you’re looking at yourself as nothing more than the very truthful meaning for "treason."
Once you commit treason... You’re also breaking the connection with the bridge who's meant to connect everything in one single action for conquest. (And not the misguided mindset for simply achieving a consequence full of such disorder.)
If that were the actual case, then everything isn't as connected as one would previously think.
Especially when your very abstract tool for reasoning is the very reasoning for shame in the face of such irrational thinking.
Hence, when different mixtures of fate and probability confront the very limitations (upon their own such instances full to brim of primal instances and events...)
That's when the bridge that is meant to connect an entire universe together.
Becomes the greatest story ever told about a bridge who also...became the abstract tool for reasoning.

an ample empty Sunday
nothing on the agenda,
the calendars cease their chirping,
it's a kinda free rarely heard

maybe will go see a movie,
walk alongside the East River currents,
rushing somewhere we don't have to be,
maybe we will practice rolling on the floor,
visiting and winding up the grandkids,
then escaping/leaving them with parents,
crazy high and wet & dry

maybe I'll cancel some credit cards,
crack open the briefcase of deferred questions,
have pizza for breakfast,
write half a dozen baker's poems,
finish some more of Dr. Zhivago,
that I started several years ago,
maybe, I'll keep her ******* in our bed,
releasing her when she releases me  
because I released her first

yup,
an empty day ahead
full of the oscillating,
a true east/west directionless
vibrating range of
ample possibilities

There's a magnetism -
in the air, in the ground, in the eyes of the sun,
keeping gravity in check with the mind of the sun
to keep things in order with the heart of the sun -
outside of structure, inside of paradox -
circles, circles, circling the cosmos with blank maps and directionless compasses
Writing, writing, writing - to collect a volume of love and work and truth and play -
seeking nothing more than meaning, an answer to the eternal enigmas
- why? - how? - what is this? - who am I?
Coming up empty as a begger's hands
and as rich as the poorest soul inside the palace of enlightenment -
silent solitude in the meditation of the sun,
inner exploration through the thoughts of the sun,
exploiting the strength of the light of the sun -
all to gain a following of selfless knowers -
all flowing along the river empty endless,
holding together through the magnetism,
Praying for salvation come the other side of this life,
the Heaven, the Garden, the Utopian dream
The magnetism - unexplainable electron of consciousness -
the Universal It - the All in the One - the Whole -
the Source and the Body,
circles, circles, circling in orbit the mathematical patterns of Being,
within the question of the answer,
within the definition of "nothing", where nothing is still something -
Let gravity fall where it may, just as love hunts its prey
As law holds flaccid in the court of Cosmic Direction,
The hearts beat stronger during resistance than in times of rest -
pulled into existence past the veil of illusory doubt through magnetism -
That taste of creation, grand awesome beauty within delicate fingers,
playing piano silent in halls of endless imagination - infinity.
There's a magnetism - everywhere, there's a magnetism.

I get her, she writes me,
so eloquently,
”the nub of me; gist, manifested poetic”

one of the many poets I have never met,
one of the many poets, by whom,
I have been suchly, justly, richly and correctly
accused

this mesmerizing judgement,
her-over-easy, mini-essay so succinctly
assaying an accidental ability mine

explodes
a happy passageway to my brain,
a new aperture, the neurons firing at will,
the tormented inquisitor’s unasked question,
how did this happen to me?

rocking the Sunday morn cradle’s calm,
ok, ok, write me, write me,
demands my no longer free will,
utilize the free wi-fi of we fidelty

the bay, surgically barely treading water,
its surface of multitude of small waves
but now an entire ****** expression bidding welcome

the breezeways genteel,
smilingly
invites and push us into its
directionless & tideless soothful embrace,
to the shoreline we goeth,
to watch the occasional crossing vessel intruder,
woking the waters gentle

its white path residual wake foam-formed,
then almost instantaneously absorbed, bubbly bursting,
a history of a million moments awakened,
then, instantly returned to restful sleep,
akin to a newborn’s gurgling happy dreaming,
wiped clean away off to
Peter Pan’s it-never-happened-land

this carnival trick sideline of deep tissue knowingness,
sensing the essence of the who and the whom within,
with no data to go on other than their poetic collection,
the hidden meanings of the spaces and places between
the gene sequencing of their wondrous word-fullness
DNA poetic children, freely given,
and well taken
by me

I cannot explain it well enough, but then
a strayer thought breakaway,
a prehensile comprehension insertion
proffers itself as an explanation
intruded,
and here,
extruded

the perfect world exterior before me observable
thrusts itself through picture windows onto my demeanor,
a ****** addiction of mine, my soul enslaved,
cannot bear to be taken away from

this vista,

which begs me,
bring all those you know!
here, to share, this precious precise nook
where eye insightful incisions elicit poems-by-command

but I cannot, bring you here,

so I see~imagine it better through
your eyes, then
your
gist
is in my stubbed pencil nub, it is
your
poem’s destiny manifesting,
penciled through my scruff edged fingertips,
which-when-then transcribed to paper, to history,
‘tis all you
who writes,
not I

for now
you
are the solitary vessel waterborne,
you,
you
are the captain and I

but a
Samson-nite, burdened, baggaged and blinded stowaway,
hopeless, yet still see-worthy,
with your guiding eyes,  
keeping me to keep
your copyright righted,
onto its course true


7-14-19 9:43am
in shelter, on the isle

Listen! Oh, peasants! Be still and hear!
Must we live our whole lives frightened like deer?
Content to be tossed around like waves,
rolled over like dice,
wandering directionless through life's clever maze
like little white mice?

It is time to act and stand tall!
When Liberty cries for Mercy,
we must answer Her call.
They think us imbeciles,
fools one and all,
We must fight with tools,
this tyrant must fall.

It is time for revolution!
All ye students early rise,
stock up on Redbull and
take your fight to the skies.
We must strike from the top
to take Them by suprise, and
do not stop until
each one of Them dies.
We will no longer be fooled
by this government's guise.

To the skies, you mortal beings!

So the lads decided to head down the town one day
(it bein' a great stretch of sun, especially for here,
and playin' Fifa tournaments and
actin' smart were losin' their charm)
Anyway,
Miles had his eye on this young one, and Giro and Hooper
bein' the friends they were riled him up no end about
what he was goin' to do once he got his chance with her, y'know, the usual stupid teenage macho lad crap.
But sure, poor auld Miles, as he was back then, was a sensitive sort
and although he was the handsomest of the chaps at that stage
-with the boyband cheekbones and
the butter-wouldn't melt bring-me-home-to-your-mammy-she'll-think-I'm-Lovely exterior-
he was just a bit too shy to get taking to her in the square that day,
the two of 'em were both awkwardly just sat on opposite benches
with their eyelashes flutterin' in the wind.
And sure didn't the boys make a holy show o'the chap by shoutin' "D'YOU WANT TO SHIFT HIS FRIENDS" at the young one's mates, and them visibly horrified,
with the precious stuck-up Loreto girls' mouths dropped in mortification.

They were somethin' else back then, alright.

But here's the thing,
He's marrying that girl next weekend. (-The same one?) (-Hardly?!)
Swear on me Granny's grave, got sent the invitation on Facebook and all!
Meself and Tracy are goin' to it, obviously, but I barely seen the chap since he moved up to Dublin that time, but the girl is friend's with Tracy's cousin.
Danielle is her name, she works as a graphic designer.

(-She designs games?) (-No, ads, posters and stuff, you ****)
(-Well, I extend my heartfelt apologies
to Mr. CAO himself over here)
(-G'way you, the last time you heard tell of the CAO
was when  you used it as a farewell greeting to
the sub-teacher you fancied when you
handed in your pass maths exam.)
(-What's he doin' again?) (-He works in KPMG)
(-...Sorry I asked)

Apparently they had lost track of each other, but then randomly met out one night and rekindled the old flame. (-what, the old premature pubescent horn?)
My point is, doucher, that you cant keep a good man down...not the greatest choice of words given the context, but, y'know,
fair ******' play to him anyway.

On the other hand, I saw Giro in Mooney's there last weekend,
back from Canada after only six months over there.
Hated it apparently, plasterin' walls in a city that was
only bein' built up for the first time, nothin' to do on the weekend
but drink **** beer and go fishin'.  I told him he should have gone
to Vancouver but he wanted to head where Hooper was goin'
-Those two were always the same, they'd manage to waste each others time if they got to the moon.

There Giro was, all he got to show for himself for goin' to Canada
was a flannel shirt, a snapback hat and a beard like one of those
grizzly lads from gay ****. (-What would you know about gay ****?) (It's an metaphor, genius, I don't need to know anythin' about it in order to make the connection.)
(-Sounds like the only expert piece of information you've given it all night) (-Here, your Da hates ya, go home)

But I suppose, at least a lad like Giro, totally directionless, still has the ability to laugh about himself.
He'd say worse things about himself that I would and laugh away at it, no bother.
But that's it, isn't it? Being able to laugh at the lads and at yourself when you deserve it, to own up to your flaws and forgive them.
That's what it's all about.

No one could love me
Because even I hate myself
So I always know there is no 'we'
And that there never could be

I'm lost among the masses
A sea of blurs to by cast away
In a world of ambition and fascists
No one can know what peace is

Am I insane for running?
Can there be no cure?
I know how disturbed I'm becoming
I don't know if anyone's listening
If not then only to myself am I talking
Shuffling feet in directionless walking
No one to give hope for the future
I'm lost and here for the finding

If only there was anything worth being found

and it’s always unfair
to count upon
the promises he built
only to find yourself
the only one
grieving
in the end.

it’s always unfair
to be left alone
with only fractions
of who you used to be
as the flashback of memories
flooded you
drowned you
and
left you
useless
lifeless
and all the while
directionless

it’s always unfair
how he believed
that it’s just fair
to leave you
hanging and
seeking for answer
because for him
it’s what
will hurt you lesser

it’s just so unfair
to have yourself
give all you’ve got
and not be given
even just a tiny bit
back

it’s just unfair
so unfair
that you ended up
hopeless
that you stopped
longing it to be fair
because
it’s always, always going to be
pointless

I want to learn everything; everything comprises of everything,
be it the knowledge of the nature or the horizons of the cosmos
I want to canvas over the universe, multiverses;
to paint my reality with a brush of joy.
But, it's tough for me, because I'm dementic
If I decline it while inclining towards a book
Dyslexia obliterates my desires and hurt me badly
If I ignore all this, ADHD comes forward to poke me
with a stick of astounds and pains of eventide
If I cut down the roots of ADHD, S.A.D greets me
and enter to my dark world and enhance its darkness
I'm confused, shattered; directionless in a myopic way
Highly myopic, no direction, but I do have vision
I want to crisscross my myopia to an extent
where it diminishes.
Meningitis, shut up, you *******,
Please have mercy on me, I don't deserve U at least,
But do I really need someone to have mercy on me?
I guess no, I can build my own world where
Dementia strengthens my spirits by saying,
Why just Embryology, what secrets do you want to find
Ova is not dependent on a ****** *****,
it is a complete YOU.

Your gray matter is divine
I like the way you rhyme
You leave it all behind
because all inhibitions do is eat away your time

I don't want life to wane
to a sad state of disdain
so I keep up this game
and wait for you to flood my mind

I create a new me in every moment
while I let the memories of you unwind
I try to find a way to embrace this life
no matter how unkind
I feel full of emptiness and wasteful ways
but around you I try to put up a face
morph my ever shoulder-conscious body
into something I recognize as a valid use of space



I look through your window
Eager to see if my old skin has shed yet
I watch myself change shape
Like a skinwalker, I give up my coat
and steal someone else's
But I can never call it my own
and I can never feel at home
so I drift in the dark
hoping to warm your heart

I try to make my actions align with my words
so I can make myself real
but I never want to translate the things I feel
and every attempt to voice my beliefs
seems like I'm putting on a set of false teeth
I've got the armor but nothing underneath


Worry of judgement consumes me
My brain is ringing like the rails after impact
remembering the first time more vividly than the present
I'm a depressed undercover pessimist
A charlatan and a fabricator
I'm sober in my insanity
comfortable with the my self-aware self-destruction
Eating the leftover proverbs
To give me food for thought

The same questions fill me to the brim
The water's leaking out
The panic's setting in
My cup of water is too full
and I'm choking on the flow
I don't have a clue what to do with curiosity
I never let this feeling leave my lips
I can't explain what it and what it isn't
so I just move my finger tips


Somehow I can keep a conversation with you
and I enjoy you more than I ought to
I observe what I can
Slip into your shoes and point of view
Read into the pursuit of peace
You ameliorate my imagination
Give me faith in humanity
I feel less animosity
I let the mercury in me liquify
So I can produce my own light
Breath in and relieve my heart
from the pressure of years
spent stumbling in the dark


You are not a voice showing me the way out of the fog
but rather a hand covering my ears
so I no longer have to hear the echo of my thoughts
I spend the time tracing lines on your face
checking to see if anything has changed
the way I feel is constantly being re-arranged
defining it is never worth the juice it takes
but the lies I feed myself
empower me in this situation rather than degrade

I try to live in a new skin
around you and your friends
fit into the outline of who I set out to be
but every clone of me is messy
and I can never tell if I have changed yet
or if I will ever kick the habit
of being utterly hiffy and uneasy
burning with rudeness of my anxious impulsions
justifying inaction because of power displacement
but always trying to prove something

I make friends with those unwilling souls
that I thought would change me for the better
Open me to a world of ideas
and liven the lonely light I've been harboring
but you can't force things
and you can't always shake first impressions
I try to comprehend why I stay friends
with people only for their usefulness
Settling for those who think I'm adequate
Always conscious of what it may look like on the outside
rather than enjoying it for what is it


30 seconds is all it took for you to size me up
you read people so easily
it's easy to pass me off as devoid of heightened thought
but I managed to change the current when I finally spoke
Ranting about trees and sustainability
And my desire for invisibility
I was surprised how quickly you were convinced I was worthy
and like most compliments I can't take
I rejected your eagerness all too readily

I loved all your rants about black jesus and justice
about community and shared happiness
over material wealth and vanity
I'd rather listen and remain invisible
but somehow I still want to reach out
and grab a look of approval
but like you said, we don't listen to learn
we listen to reply
so I tried so hard to be so sly
and convince you I was super fly
sayin do or die
but you were too **** high
and I felt like I had fooled you
with a terrible lie

But with your soft skin against mine
I feel sublime
I'm wasting time getting close to you
When I have so much work to do
Reconstructing this mish-mash of metal
This wood with all the wrong angles
That is inside my fleece
That composes me
I've fenced myself in too long
And this restlessness is insatiable
I may be directionless but I'm able

I doubt my love, so my love is equivocal
I feel capable of loving you and everyone I know
even though I am just beginning to love myself
But love is definite
not something you quibble and question
and even though what I feel is far from real

I still want you to tell me everything
about philosophy and hypocrisy
about the ins and outs of what gives life meaning
about the uprising and government desecration
about what it means to have free will
But I may never tell you how I feel
Because I know your turmoil has nothing to do with me
when all my whirlwind nausea is centered towards you


You are a sapiosexual intellectual
the thirst for knowledge is alive with you
that curiosity grip me too
sets my mind on fire
and I dip into the news
you inspire a passion to find a purpose
and always follow through
but I know I cannot live as you do
the care does nothing but wear me down
because this fraction of attraction
Will leave me with nothing but a sound

This wilderness,
                I aimlessly wander through.
A deep breath
               The air, it holds a tangible primitivism
I follow a beated path along the brook
               As it guides my directionless saunter
Stillness of mind and habitat coalesce.
Dragonflies dance with my eyes
               As I ponder their surreal spirits
Loneliness is liberated from every definition
Identity is lost in the harmonies of every root and leaf and songbird
Begone to all the names and labels,
               Now
It comes in the abstract waves of shades and colors,
               Now
This wilderness,
               One organic tellurian phantasmagoria.
This wilderness,
               A warm ablution for the cold comfort of my reality

As it humbly sits
Just beyond my backyard picket fence
Waiting.

I remember how that Puxatony dirt
felt between my fingers. Gritty
and cold – the earth that covers  graves.
Falling from my palm, landing at his paws,
he curled around my leg, shivering.
Against my ankle, he rested his long ears.

Polaroids of a mothers chew-toy earrings;
memories of March spent playing in *****
backyards, forests, and playgrounds. We shivered
together, in the heat of Spring, with gritty
rock-filled driveways underneath our paws.
Lives, those playful daisies sprouting from gravel,

that we ate day by day; pushing graves
down out of mind, but spilling from our ears.
The summer wrought steel cages to grip awe,
with training meant, bent to destroy dirt
kept caked on worn-out sandals. Grits
scooped off a breakfast plate to a shivering

dachshund. His collar jingled, shimmering
as it clashed against his bowl. Cold gravy
and dry cat food, with textured scents. Gritty,
furry, and harsh. Ears dipped in water bowls
finding the only bath of the month, clearing dirt
from a death in the family. Soft, unknowing paws

treaded with grace, and a parentless pause
as we crumbled. Directionless grief shivered
the big men with their shrunken hearts, *****
from a three-hour drenching sob at the grave.
But love is not measured by the size of loss -
it is made of highs and lows; rough and gritty.

Seven pounds of compassion weighs with gridded
precision on my chest. Those tiny paws,
batting at my heart. Soft, two-times-too-large ears
crying with us and pleading through shivers
to enjoy everything. Now your graves are dug
together - between you only a foot of dirt.

Gritty reality seeps in from shivering
fiction. Your paws on your own grave,
I place my ear to the dirt, and whimper.

All day
it’s been like this since Friday night
Like little pinpricks
short stabs of adrenaline
giving me an increasing amount of jitters and pain
with no beautiful passion or art to show for all the hormone fireworks
I’m not depressed
I’m not anxious
but I’m suffering directionless excitement
My journey of healing has brought me to this mountain and commanded that I climb
So I climb
I have no choice but to rise
Reaching up with bruised and blistered fingers
it’s the only way to leave my ruined body behind

HANDWRITTEN WORDS OF A MISGUIDED WOMAN

Ayad Gharbawi

February 1, 1989 – Cambridge, Mass., Boston, USA.





A silence dictates
Its hopes essential
That thirst in their intertwined
Hatreds for the
Struggle to breathe
The crowds staggered in their plodding
The howls turned nowhere
Even though they themselves
Really felt that their words
Had so many depths
But at least some flocks did hear these sounds
There was some heat generated
I say I heard roses
Crying gases inert
Their real feelings were soon discoloured
Did you ever understand
The ways and means
Of people?

I heard of clowns dying by suffocating themselves
Quietly
Didn’t they at least
Entertain themselves?
I saw humbled and determined gatherings
Of angry frustrated citizens
But they soon were to hear
The words
Of misunderstood monks
Who finally produced a smile
But their words
Did ramble on and endlessly on
And the winds of their spirits
Were far too directionless
To be of any meaning

Then I saw Hurt
I saw engines crying
They spoke meaningless melodies to me
And I did try to guess
But I screamed
“You engines!” I screamed
“You can never sing, you maniacs!”
My brain
I felt was losing
Its functions
I wasn’t too sure of what functions they were supposed
To do actually
Did you know what those functions
Were supposed to do?
I was not walking straight
And I knew it

Tell me of your cooking
I’ve been hungry for too long
You see
Or, you may see
It’s been too long
And your language destroyed me here
My appetite was killed as well

And your subtle hatreds
Yes, I remembered them all
And I will repay you real for real
What you gave me
I shall give back to you

While a hopeful clown
He
And she
Entertained and spoke in dialects misunderstood
I swear
I even saw smoke
Emanating from your breaths
That gunned me down
Down to my protecting ribs
I never have ever
Seen hatred like this
I confess to you
The units of my poetry have gone mad
And my sense of geometry
Have turned ridiculous
No, I agree
I never hated as much as you did
But I am catching up fast with you all
Jesus
I never guessed
What predicaments Man can debase himself into
And then again
I never realized
What a lowly depth, I too could be forced into
I was stunned
I cried
My name is ‘Ayad’
I thought that was enough
To convince criminals of my innocence

I was not misunderstood
That was incorrect
I was actually understood, quite well
Truth was
Nobody wanted to feel my truth
The speed of life
And human interactions and conversations
Easily bewildered me
And misguided me
I was tempted by the flowers of literature
I was tempted
When I saw independent women
Laughing joyously
I believed
There can exist a time
When loving can exist
In its sheltered solitude
Wherein there exist no indignities
Imagine
That your father
Is never berated
Imagine your mother
Is never to be shouted at

But then
The skies did change their colours
And meanings changed
And with the change of meanings
Intentions did change
Unto whom did the skies turn to?
And where did all the meanings of
Of every philosophy become?
Unto whom did they turn to?

Mr Darwin, please explain

Reading TS Eliot is to be drawn into timeless space where images of past and future combine in a continuous stream of thinking …. perhaps the immortality of ideas. The genetic material of life, DNA, is immortal, an unbroken thread linking life’s origins 4 billion years ago to the present ….. and future.

Sequence upon sequence of symbolic letters encoding countless forms of bodies, built to the same principles inherent in the genetic code, yet morphing in endless variety according to the tenets of natural selection ….. Darwin’s idea that transformed our thinking from a moment of purposeful creation to how life changes through time.

Cosmologists suggest we live in one of many possible universes perhaps in parallel time allowing parallel lives, one not knowing of the other’s existence because of the limitations of our three dimensional view of the world and its existence in the cosmos. We see in three dimensions and no more, but we are aware of more because mathematics tells us so.

Mr Darwin, please explain explores the seamless continuity of Darwinian thinking with the timelessness of Eliot’s poetry…..

I In my beginning is my end …. V In my end is my beginning.
(East Coker, Four Quartets, TS Eliot)


Mr Darwin, please explain

I

What is this selection of love so natural
To drive men insane and women to purgatory
Can Mr Darwin explain?
Some ask the question
But I doubt not, that his meaning is clear
Why love one to one remains so dear,
Though Karl denied it, Lenin too
And Uncle Joe dismissed it
As a plot to subvert what was good for the proletariat.
But in that recent time when ******’s darkness shadowed The Earth
Love glowed in the gloom of the despair of nations’ Terezíns
Which to-day helps to repair our broken dreams
Of why we love one to one.

Keats loved one ***** Brawne
And Coleridge his Asra
But what is ecstasy’s advantage?
When comes the pain of separation
Mr Darwin, please explain.
Is it lust, is it reproduction?
But then when love is thwarted
We cannot function,
Where is the advantage
Mr D --- what is the aim, can you explain?
How the coiled spiral passing from time to time
Its immortal message which condemns each generation
To the pain of separation
When the reaper calls, or the rival sunders
The coils of love’s message we’ve inherited
Since the beginning of time
Why? What is the advantage?
Mr D, please tell me your answer.

The whales they sing one to one
Like Eliot’s mermaids singing
Not to Prufrock but perhaps to you and me
The message of communication.
Is this love as one to one
Each supports another wounded
By the enormity of the harpoon?
The dictator’s message in another form
Devoid of love, sundered, never whole
Coming from that Terezín we never solve.
Dysfunctional Mr D, where’s the advantage
For such conflicting feelings to evolve?

David Applin
March 2012

II

Genes are the immortal ones
The links between past and future
But ever present
Unintentionally directing the future and fate of humankind.

Silent, unobserved yet Gods of their domain
Which is us and life past and future
Coiled threads of eternity that determine our happenings
Including our loving one to one.

Yet ….

In their entirety and interaction
Do they, in their interaction
Determine our loving one to one?
The bond that binds each to each
Perpetual celebration.

Or ….

Is their selfish blindness which some accord to be
Inconsequential
Like boats tossed helplessly on storm driven seas
Subject to the whims of wind and rain
No more than replicators housed in vehicles
Subject only to the chances of a changing world.


III

Bodies are vehicles, genes the replicators
Bodies and genes indivisible
At least in the present
But separated as bodies die after
Genes have passed to their immortal future.
Perhaps this is what is meant when they say
That the gene is selfish.

Accommodated in the selfless body at a particular time
But then discarded as genes pass its immortality
From past to future
Changes slow, quick depending on stasis or acceleration
According to Darwinian tenets that enfold the changes
In genes and therefore bodies
Through all time.


IV

Cycle upon cycle of genes and bodies
One perpetual, the other discarded each generation
By the unseen hand of an uncaring Nature.

Our nature, all nature, the beauty of sunsets
Driven by the mechanical clocks of cosmic cycles.

Yet Relative to other Dimensions where
What we see, we do not see
Because of the profound limitations
Of three dimensions.
We see only dimly what might be past
And what could be future
As we struggle in the presence of tautological explanation.

Body and gene, gene and body the temporary and perpetual
Bound in the dance of a living presence
The one ensuring the other’s future
For all time.
Circle upon circle, tautological argument
Explaining everything and nothing but all powerful
In its reductionism of humankind
And life kind as whales support the one
Wounded by the enormity of the harpoon
Loosed by the bodies of genes
Storm tossed and directionless
When thinking that others’ bodies
Can be discarded without thought or thinking
Perpetual damnation.

Tautomeric interaction.
We say the same thing in different ways,
Recycled ideas that parody the twenty different plots of novels
That return to the same point,
Come back to the common question

Why do we love one to one?

People ask…. ‘Can Mr Darwin explain?’

Perhaps not through bodies and genes
But instead, understanding the epistasis of genes and where we live.
We live in this world because of our past
As genes dance to the chance of environmental shifts
The whims of wind and rain, sea and wave
That blow and toss the genes
In their bodies, in random patterns,
Some sinking, others floating
Not always by chance
But because they float and fight
Yielding to the pressures of an uncaring nature.
Like soft down yielding to the thud of falling bodies
Softening their impact.

So to yield as well as fight
Is part of the selection of one by another
In the perpetual
Celebration of loving one to one.

We yield to the blandishments of the soft embrace
We fight to attain it

And once attained, what we do is all we do
To keep a hold on what we love
Only to lose it to the grim reaper of all our dreams
In this present world,
But to regain it in worlds to come
The link between past and future
For immortal genes
Of transitory bodies which is how
We think and see our presence
In time without end.



V

General relativity and quantum mechanics
The combination of infinity and the very small
Do not replace the Newtonian meaning of the day to day.
Just, that Newton is displaced to another time and place
Where description is precise but with uncertainty according to
Heisenberg.

To be certain is to fix ideas in time
Like natural selection in the Darwinian mind
To be propitiated without exception, else suffer extinction of self
And of all that matters to self and others
Sacrificed on the alter to propitiate the Gods of our certainty.

That is not to say that an idea cannot be fixed in time
That its central tenet is not true for eternity.
But truth is relative and uncertain
To be strengthened or cast aside
By better truths or developments of the same.

Our understanding expands with time
But often returns to something that was said before
And said again as if it were newly minted
In the mind of its creator
To become dogma
And as all dogmas
The truth unchanged in people’s minds.
Yet the central tenet survives, as survival is the result of natural selection
But with added components as
Understanding expands as to what is meant by surviving and survival.
To inherit the coils of love’s message is to survive.


VI

Can Mr Darwin explain?
Perhaps is not a whole question
In the same sense that answers depend on
The question asked and who is asking.

The truths that questions seek to answer
The truths of love, beauty and heating systems
Arise from answers to questions in different languages,
And languages translate imperfectly from one to one
As genes imperfectly translate proteins and therefore love in the
Darwinian world of our dreams.

Truth comes in different forms
And Darwinian truth is true to the questions it addresses.
But these are not the only questions of why we are,
Who we are, what we are
Who, what, why are we?

Questions past and future asked in the present
For all eternity.


Christmas (25th-28th) 2012
David Applin

Copyright David Applin 2015

damp roads at night pushing and pulsing light
whip soiled water onto pack and *** from back bicycle wheels rotating furiously out of purgatory out of bleary eyes of incandescence and towards the same eyes lit by patriotism or in another sense incarceration
wheels spinning straight and directionless
sore legs denying illusion of purpose purported by a between eyebrows headache only achieved through a blindfolded walk down memory lane keys jingling from a carabiner and a misplaced confidence self corrected before it was too late to realize that reality is difficult to handle with all 5 senses and a distinction between right and wrong and being left handed but not leftist because the only thing worse that being dumb is being spineless invertebrate vampires killing sheep in the prairie and funding proxy wars while fighting for who?
wheels spinning round and round keep insisting on idealism

Eight months limp in a guilty repose,
Waking with no intent.
Clouds eclipse the routine rooms,
Societies dynamic continues
directionless I spin dizzily within it,
Cycle on high.
my eyes hold their listless weight.
But here ends the night, intermittent,
Cease the unconscious days!
Sun soon glazes the archaic temples,
February becomes July.

From the beginning:

It’s a new year and I quit my job
**** it, I’ll never be good at serving
Directionless in 2013
January.
It’s unusually warm.

Your presence in the room is a rock in my shoe
You’re so cool
And I’m a mess.
Remember, you called me Heather in bed?
And I made you go home?
Well.
I forget.

Now we’re crossing the street
For your birthday, it’s your birthday,
Makers Mark, count ‘em, 2 ounces at a time.
Stacked up like unread texts and why don’t you like me’s
I don’t remember
But I’m probably crying

Flash in to outside
God it’s like 60
Deciding to go with you
Asking you to kiss me

(I had a long term boyfriend in my 20s
And his mother would buy me toilet paper for Christmas
The gift of hindsight is kind of like that:
Practical and helpful and a ****** of a gift)

Today is 9 years to the day
My parents know and they’re on their way
The nurse thinks I might be paralyzed
11 broken bones and two black eyes

This is the end of the beginning
Which is the easy part
I’ve never been able to write it all down
Spin it into art

Be warned, I can’t guarantee poetry
From a patched-but-still-leaking heart.

Good-byes bid one by one, like a row of candles
Glowing, but flickering with the most temporary relief.
The disbelief, a pathetic excuse to suffice as justification
Prove me wrong, but offer no reason or explanation,
Only lies.
Harbingers are callow cries
Marked by the change of season
Or waning of the moon,
Take your pick,
Pick the scabs
That flake away,
Like the broken air vents scratching your room
Noiselessly.
Blame the airwaves for failure,
Fail to deliver an honest example, a sample
Of blood you donated to a lost cause,
A ship without a sailor
Headed for a vacuum in the wrathful waters, bubbling blue.  
Your blue
Crystalline eyes that spoke emotionlessly,
Evoking commitment devotionlessly.
My intention, apparent and there
Your attention limited to a direct, directionless stare.
A washed out jacket smelled of sweet dry sands
Concealed your regret, a heart held weak with grainy hands,
Like the hands of a clock
Or an hour glass, releasing a last tock
Before the neglected and battered boat
Caught glimpse of the welcoming flock
Of seagulls
Lounging lazily upon a desolate dock,
Waiting for the incoming tide
Relying on your "sick and pale"
Grieving orbital
That refuses to abide
By the laws of science, set
So stubbornly,
Setting itself for denial,
Demands that will never again be met,
A decision thought out without precision,
Finality embodied through
Hands waving away.
Those cleansing waves indicating disarray...
Or perhaps welcoming the sun's promising rays.

god i think i could die happy now if i could just stop thinking, but i am rage,
sleepless nights, fake premonitions,
i know its not real stop telling me its okay cause even if the ceiling stays steady i still cant sleep,
i know it will fall. i know i will dissolve.ill be fine after i write,
writing my name on a monument of trash,  
scratching out epitaphs on gravestones, dead but still twitching,
still electric, still choking on my own hands,
three am with gravesoil pressing on my lips and sleeping pills dont work anymore.
six am with the water so hot i can almost feel it,
red skin/black lungs, anode/cathode, electrical circuit and a broken bulb.  
current like signal fires drowned in desert light; please notice me im here please help me i know its bright but
my nightmares havent been banished by daylight in years.
december 11, 2014, thursday 10:41 pm: the people in my sketchbook are realer than i am.
there is gum in my mouth and it tastes like blood.
across the room i see an omen and welcome it home.i imagine my hair fades to murky gray.
i imagine myself at thirteen, i imagine learning to spit out poison
before it trickles down my throat,
i imagine i learned im not broken before i accepted it as something
i could never change.  
i think im sweet.i think im insufferable.i think i think about myself far more than anyone else ever will,
a placebo, a replacement for god knows what.medicine for an unknown illness,
downing whole pharmacies to **** a malaise, i cracked when i realized
i was not a work of art.
nothing beautiful, nothing to be admired. unnoticed at best,
smoke signals in a foggy sky, i am angry.im unclean.ive never had a dream about you,
my mind is polluted every waking hour but asleep im
unaware.in my nightmares strangers loathe me,
loved ones hurt me,
and those i hate are absent.im scared to have no outlet for my anger.
im scared to have no scapegoat for my hate, i don't hate myself.i dont.i dont. im so
talented,
im so gifted, im ******* blessed, why do i hate myself so much -
youre so happy i want to die.i want you to die.i want us to die,
i want the link between us to die, how do i cut you off when youve burrowed yourself into everything i love,
you tainted everything when you came,
you sunk your claws in the flesh of my arms and called it an embrace,
decided
this is a good way to live,
and i shake, spite and spit and staring down,
try to pretend you dont exist.
youre rotting meat.youre flies and falsehoods am i the only one who knows
you're a ******* fraud.you lied to me.
you said i want you to care and i heard i want to eat you,  
i want you soft and easy to swallow,
[even soft i would rip you apart. im vast. im endless and youre just a girl]  
you said say something and i heard appease me
before i tell them all how sick you are.
[they know!!!!they know, everyone knows, ive never been an actress and ive stopped trying]
in fantasies youre on the floor, youre crying and im laughing,
shouting every lie you told so you hurt
just as much as i did.just as much as i do.do you feel guilt?anger?envy?
do you write poems like this about me,
do you hate me too?ive never been good at assigning blame.was it my fault?
you were a burning coal and i was a stupid kid/you were a cobra and i believed you when you said
bites dont hurt.i want to be hurt.i want a reason to feel this sick.please, please,
directionless anger, unplaceable implacable pain,
hyperventilating in a quiet room[please, im safe, im safe, please dont, dont touch me, please dont **** me]
who are you talking to? i shrugged, laughed,
you know, i can feel my bones under my skin when i sit too still.
i can feel them shake.
im trying to drown myself from the inside out, im trying to become a shark
and not a girl.im trying to eat my illness alive but i feel so
soft.my teeth cut nothing.  
december 12, 2014, friday 1:11 am: the air feels like velvet in my throat and i think im choking,
winter always made me sick. summer makes me slick, slime,
a melting statue, tears and sweat and god knows what else.
its winter and im frozen over, fevers every night. your neck is so slender she said,
a swan's neck she said,
all the better for wringing, i know, i know.an unwilling martyr,
im not here to be killed.im not delicate and meek i am huge, towering,
thick-necked like a bull. try to strangle me now, i have no feathers to pluck,
only sharp horns strong legs and
unapologetic rage.i will trample you. ill gore you through dont come near.dont touch me.
you think i cant hear you breathing but i know youre there.  
i remember my dream and clutch the rails. plot gone, words gone,
but a face and soundless mouth and a smile like i know what youve done.
these words are too cold for my mouth.i freeze when i speak.
a void trapped within thin stretching skin.
black hole waiting for my chance to implode.
i can feel it between my lungs, pulling.dense mass.collapsed star walking the crust of a
blue planet.when i die im taking this with me.when i die im taking you with me.
you thought you could just  watch me wither?you thought i would burn out,
i am cold as empty space and i am wearing myself raw and
when i burst
i will not be the only casualty.
i am so scared of  my own body. i am so scared of my own mind.
sleep doesnt come easy. december 16, 2014, friday 12:04 am: i am trying to tear down my own thoughts.
trying to fell redwoods with bare hands,
ending with ****** fingertips,
splinters beneath the nails.a childish fear of churchbells,
metal at the back of the throat body of christ in the hands, when i blink i see stars.
when i ***** i see coffee grounds.
the valley is flooded with fog and i think im dreaming,
fantasies drying like mud on my boots - gauze and gods,
surgical tape like a prayer.
caribou hearts
rotting in your cellar. do you understand? im trying to explain. wringing my hands to squeeze out the sin,
they can smell the blood i disgraced.see how easy it is?i can play along.
they play a dirge when i walk down the aisle.funereal,
an ossuary body fit only to hold my bones.
january 1st, 35°F,
i am a forest fire.im washing my face in magma, hot and hurting and numb.
burning off the skin. searing off the gauze.

I speak in the heat of the moment; I forgot to tie my mind’s shoelaces and now I’m spluttering in ways I recognise from falling over as a kid. My words fumble over themselves the same way my hands did the first time they tried to find yours. Reaching for something familiar should have come so natural and maybe that’s why I was so shaky, because I had surrounded myself with unfamiliarity and it became all I knew, but then you.

          But then I had seen the walls of your bedroom before.

I had felt your palm.

                                         I had tasted your skin.

I knew your scent, or maybe it just smelt so much like an unspoken promise we made a lifetime ago that it lingered in my mind. I do not know if I was real before I met you. Directionless has never been pretty but I am a wanderer and I have opened fields within myself to plant daffodils in your honour.

I forgot to tie my mind’s shoelaces and now here I am, staggering upon syllables hoping it bows together to form something less loose; something for you to chew on, something to fill you up. I have tasted dirt plenty of times. I sank my teeth into it those times I used to fall over as a kid but I fell for you and all I can taste is honey. I have been pollenated with seeds and I cannot stop blossoming visions of you and our future and they pour out of me on to blank pages and create something worth reading.

I am still directionless, but it can only ever be beautiful with you by my side.

I speak in the heat of the moment and I am ensorcelled by your mind and I try to speak less to listen but you create floods within my throat and it cascades out of me in spoken promises and too many “I love you”’s for someone who agreed to only tell you twice a day – I cannot. I love you, and my heart resides within you.

Chasing the dreams to touch the sky, shaking the roots of feminism;

Happy to shoot for the Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Gia's plagiarism-

All for her superstar Angel, she lived the attitude of lesbianism;

From Philadelphia to New York she sold, her fraternity and parental prism-

The ambitious gal, the ambition gal felt addicted to ******* and heroinism.

Climbing the hills in Beverly was not tough enough, shredding chastity for mean;

Hallowing for her Tomb Raider, she swallowed her city of sin-

All in her attempts she brewed her habits, she tattooed destiny for her queen;

From abortion to scandals;   she breathed to see her prolific akin-

The injured gal, the pitted gal still nearly was not doomed to grin.



Succumbing like the serpentine in salt, still longing to meet her dream star;

One fine morning she was found half-dead down the alley, waging her life-war-

All the fever she had, yet not looking to get out of the foxfire;

From one hospital to another, she was taken and was declared a patient of cancer;

The lucky gal, the ******* gal was lame enough to meet her jester.

The tumor had eaten her bones, like the steroids that made her a body-

Donating a million dollars in charity, made a brief appearance by Angelina Jollie;

All in her graceful charm, she penetrated hope to fight the disease folly-

From a life directionless to the motive of her strife, she kissed her cheeks and regretted being silly-

The ambitious gal, the ambition gal had just a single day to cherish her so called glory.