Once (not that long ago, perhaps, though we likely know better)
The summers were languid, liquid things without end
Each day fully equipped with a high sky,
The blue so all-encompassing, so all consuming,
That lazy fly ***** seemed to disappear
As if God had scooped them up like so many routine grounders.
We played, in a field long since abandoned
To crownvetch and scrub grass,
Twenty one--five points for those *****
The celestial powers had bobbled
And we were able to catch on the fly,
Three points if we took it on the hop,
One if we safely trapped it before it rolled stone dead,
And so our Julys and Augusts fluttered by,
Every bit lazy and aimless as butterflies or knuckleballs,
With the exception of the de riguer tribunals
In which the assembled debated and determined
Where bounce ended and roll began,
Where shoestring catch was reduced to single-point trap.

It all came to an end, of course;
At some point, we crossed a line
(Undelineated but firmly established nonetheless)
Where it was no longer advisable to attempt this at home,
Mere joy no longer an acceptable substitute for proficiency.
Find something else to do, kid, we were told,
And the bats went to the back of the closet,
The gloves and ***** consigned to a spot
(Where we would surely remember to find them)
Behind some canned tuna and Christmas lights,
The fastball blurring by us now,
The field a warren of subdevelopments and cul-de-sacs.

And so you’d forgotten,
Or perhaps just suppressed, the whole notion;
There were, after all, a gaggle of coupon books
With return addresses from an ever-changing confusion of banks,
Sales on pasta and milk, other fees and foundations
Politely requesting ones attention,
So you couldn’t be sure
That it was really the crack of an old thick-handled Adirondack,
Or the comforting thwick of the ball landing squarely
In the pocket of a Wilson A-2000,
Yet when you wandered to the window and peered out,
There they were, looking straight up at you,
Waving their hands like childlike Prosperos
Gesturing to reveal some fairytale glen.  
Come on back, they are saying, and you go down,
Powerless to resist, even if you had wanted to,
Returned instantly, seamlessly to a time and place
Where a shout of I got it! I got it!
Was all the prerequisite or vitae that was required,
And you are unable to bring even mock-edginess to your voice
When you insist I got that cleanly on the hop.  That’s three points.

I’m sad, big deal
You don’t even care?
then whats that i hear?

“your fault for taking what i said to heart”
‘there are better reasons to be unhappy”
“edgy. edgy. edgy. edgy. edgy.”
“Calm down. No need to be so edgy”
“woah that’s pretty edgy”

Sorry to inconvenience you friend
if you really are my friend
I never meant to hurt you with my edginess.
I apologize ever more
Your anger is not what I intend

In fact it’s not even anger as result
No, it’s more
The mocking never ends

You say you’re making me a better person
what you’re really doing is tying lose ends
You said i need a better reason to be sad
And now i have one

I don’t know what your were told
but calling me edgy doesn’t make me less of person
just makes you more of an *******

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE
Where every scene from every play
Ever written flows seamlessly into
Each other in no particular order

ALL THE WORLD'S A ****** MYSTERY  
Where everyone’s a probable suspect
Including  the investigating officers
Playwrights and audience
Yet we’re all sure we know whodunit

ALL THE WORLD'S A COMEDY OR STAND-UP ACT
Where everyone’s a dressed-down clown
Even the straight man and the cast and crew
And everyone plagiarizes the punch-lines

ALL THE WORLD'S A PASSION PLAY
Where everyone’s a martyr
Even the judge and executioners
And the messiah must be
A flavour of the week superstar

ALL THE WORLD'S A  SOAP OPERA OR CRIME DRAMA
Where the cast doesn’t realise
They aren't wearing any clothing
Even though they are seasoned
And respected award winning actors
And the show is being marketed as pornographic

ALL THE WORLD'S AN OFFICIAL DOCUMENTARY
Where everyone’s the subject
Director producer and crew
As long as the camera is rolling
And it’s rolling 24/7 !

ALL THE WORLD'S A REALITY SHOW
Where everyone’s a drama queen
Including the director producer and crew
And the camera is always rolling
Even when there’s no film in it
And the props and stage are
Being torn down all around them

ALL THE WORLD'S A COMEDY/DRAMA
Where nothing’s really that funny
And the edginess is trite and melodramatic
Like a cast of mimes in a Shakespearean play

ALL THE WORLD'S A GAME SHOW
Where everyone is the host
Including the audience
And there are no contestants
Only models on a flashy stage.

Passing is paranoia
Like oiled up blonde blue eyed women
On the slave for sale stage
Next to dark skinned slaves in the same chains
From the clamor in the audience
White women
Yelling
Proclaiming
Protesting
“Are we selling ourselves now?!”
Passing is paranoia
I don’t know who knows I’m not white
I do not like white people behind my back
Where I cannot see them
I keep my back against the wall
Passing is dangerous
Confidently passing
Will get you beaten and killed in a dark place
White uniformed militia will say you did something you didn’t
White women will force themselves on you and say you did
Passing is ****
Until her white parents find out
Then passing is loneliness
Passing is plotting
Them against you
Anticipation
Edginess
Tension
Passing is in limbo
An interval of genocide
A frantic meditation on what it is to be human
Passing is revolution
Passing is waiting for the perfect moment of revenge
Passing is vengeance
Passing is the blackest you will ever meet

Bonjour Mon Cher,
As the stars rise and the moon lights, I meld you deeply. The time we spent together is so fruitful, with explorations of nature and a friendly company.  You whisk my motivation , the very nature of warmth and strength.  There has been times when my willpower to be strong has been crushed and trampled; muddled in the muddiness of the overflowing pond.

As the duck glides on the rippled calm water, I picture your essence. As it strolls on the waters, deep in thoughts yet conscious and aware of its existence; there you are in the calmness, the stillness of the wavelet. As the duck sets to rise, it flutters. I sensed your edginess and the indecisiveness you have burdened all your life. Indeed, your life has been a challenge. Breath in,feel free and submerge in the depths of the ponds. Then rise again and explore the skies above, for brief moments escape in the dense freshness. Set your being  in the briefness of ecstasy, the succinctness of forever. For your essence is ambient and radiant.

My being is filled with warmth and a reminiscence of the great days. The times when the chariots with it’s magnificent horses would flow in the saccharine grounds. The time frame when the yellowish hue of the daffodils bloomed and shone their beauty to the world. The touch cascading the shivers from one neurone to the next in sequenced loops. The ever-condensed electric magnetism. My mind explodes with the synchronicity of the beauty sacrificed by yours. My soul has woken from it’s hibernation, its departing the doorway of the cave. The cave laid with layers of secrets, mystery and mystic existence.

The nip of the earlobe tip is a pleasure I pass. A chance to trace the resonance of my whispers. More so, a declaration of my naiveness. The statue poising on the plinth of the Romany windows in declaration that she does not understand many things. It’s in the whisper her beauty, my representation. The words that she wants to transpire but as such there is never enough time. Neither is there an eternity, but snippets of memories and moments.

Let me deep inside, to see every thought, to hear every dream to touch the breath of every sound. The existence of everyday living is absent and helpless. However, to love one is to embrace all. Someday, I wonder how we exist in such a dichotomy of life. I would like to hold you and touch you. To feel your oneness coursing in my blood and mind. I try and try to see above this existence. To touch and dream of the beauty, to collapse in the core of the humanness. My drug is ingested in the craziness of realness, an authenticity of the façade that we don day in and out.

Yet as the wind we fade in and out. When our insides are hollow and empty, drenching in lonely paths. But we stand un-fainted and feint. In the chaos of uncovering the curiosity and the depths awaiting to be exploded as the volcano boils. I want you to know that I am alive in your presence, I am real, I am me. This is one of the very rare connections I have had and I respect it. Hope not to whelm with my ambiguousness or eccentricity. I have no expectations and I am not wanting to be owned or own. Tis’ you giving the hungry eyes and Tis’ me who hope you can see beyond my interior.

In retrospection and introversion, welcome to the pleasures and treasures.

Be you,
SassyJ

The blue over her eyes caused a blinding glare.
"Don't look in." Her empty gaze warned.
Her smile. sinister and beautiful.
"Don't make me feel." Her tongue flicked.
She made sick jokes and carried herself like shattering glass.
You want to watch the way she moves,
but all you know of is her evil outlook.
You force yourself to look away.
Only outsiders will see in this moment
the edginess softens into plush.
The blue runs down her face into a stream.
The smile is shattered with each step..
When  you muster up the courage to look again
the glass is tied together by loose string.
It's your decision to pull it and release the pieces
or look away and allow the evil to fester.

I sensed your edginess
Clasped in my mind
Drawn with precision
Projection of tides forming
Then rising, falling in sequence
Followed by exhaustive exertions
A strain to calm the storms
All I have sensed in you..........

On the mountains of the unconditional fondness and tenderness, a flag is raised. The brightness of the skies is a continuum.In firm foundations, not withering, but thriving and yielding to the optimum. The connection was like the flickered light Einstein cocooned in. A stream from a dimension another. The  interconnection by the mind, the crown. Merging the locus of focus in consciousness and unconsciousness. A gateway that was beyond comprehension.

My antenna attuned and sequenced in synchronicity. A flow of perceptions vivid and broadcast with clarity. A feel of the web of the universe itself, the oneness of one to one to another. An augury unfolds  and foreseen precedents. The wavering, as you stagger from the solvents that imbue. Your trips suited with restraints of the thought and mind. A floodgate of inconclusiveness.

Why the sudden weigh?  You tremble in fear, wobbling with shilly-shally. Should I........ should I not? My turf lined up in cognisance. What happened to the cardinal we created? The winterly red bloom of explosive and attentive grenades. A silence of the dark permeates. Miles and miles of a mirage of gloomy inwardness.You wax and wane in surveillance. Just like the moon, you revolve in cycles.

Yet, I felt unconditioned and ecstatic. The aliveness in the nothingness. A light in the blackhole. For "romanticism" itself does not exist. It's a notion of owning, inquisition and imprisonment of another being..... never alluring. For you would know my stance of , "structure verses agency". An achievable liberation of autonomy and freedom. Whisper in my dreams as we uncover unseen dimensions.

Do become the presence of my walks. As I reflect alone be audible in the vibration of the air we breath. Trigger a magnetic feel of existence itself.Time and space is an illusion, one that does not exist. A trick of the light that acquiesces you comply. It hoovers with a whisper that 'you are getting older'...... 'you need to do this and that'. If you escape such hallucinations you can regurgitating on more responsibilities and succeed.

All puzzles in the human suffering have already been solved. Why can't you see them? Echoing your name, tapping your shoulder blade as if recognizable. One should never feel as if life is weary. There is always a need to want more, amass and make ones print. Or even depart. But being weary? Any being is able to chew as much, with pride and confidence. An interlude of imbalance will always be an interlude of imbalance.Through the century and ages this never changes. There is nothing to balance, you just need to search it deeper in yourself. Yourself is correcting. .

Irrationality often knocks my door. It seduces me, with sweet sensual word. Cajoling me to embrace normality. If only you knew what I know. A fading magical fantasy is not a fixated ideology. You are my inescapable tie and link.

Reach for your depths,
SassyJ

There in the looking glass
he stands
his back to me...

a sign says kick me

            kick me when I'm down

                           then kick me some more.


I break the mirror
shattering the illusion all is well
my mind
               in pieces
                              Pieces together the fragments
of my pain
the edginess of my torment
cuts me deep
as I bleed darkness
on an empty page exorcising...


My daemons.



This is in response to Umbra's poem Demons to show she's not alone we all face our own darkness.

Her heart was just pumping scar tissue
Thumping dry red dust
A reflection of last night’s affection
Pain pointing to another *******
Skin so thin but opaque
Raw nerves and edginess
Desire lacking eagerness
Child in a monster’s nest
Two packs of smokes a day
One bottled downed and another one saved
Could have been a beauty queen
But now she’s just a dried up pruney thing

how does confidence work? {wizassume, control, I say}
effing around
ecting right - effectual
use
ual expectations seeing out
-proper angle aim

ritual window looking through
see through the eye,
be the face behind the mask,
speak as gods spake
in the dramas
- dharma play passion
dance in circumstanding
conserving eE qualia
humming
sixty cycle key of being

You are the older of the two
minds used to operate your casing
think how you survived on mars, water

ah, Hailie Selassie can I lie and say I never knew
one wild black chic at the welfare office,
who wore one of those brass MGM lion buckles,
and swore it depicted the lion of the tribe of  Judah
aspect of Hailie Selassie…
You know he drank…
I queried her faith in the knowing, she whispered,
*******.
---------------
who knew who was otherwise,
secrets from the kiva,
live in the chakras
ladder of life
messengers meaning go do act re act

and after ever before
now became our
moment.

then. Now. You know the feeling, right?

How many seeds can one **** sow?

Semper fi. Such as use the faith in semper fi,

Tcells ever utter semper fi,
You know, in you, your Tcells never forget
who you are,
though as they age they allow odd
possibilities to challenge our
edginess,

stay sharp. You asked for this.
Expertise, in a word,
perfectly right use-skill-knowing

inside out upside down and back
to wards of reason so gentle
any hint of war begging
reason for one  more
shot…

nay, nay, be tamed tongue of man,
be ware like, wait,
warlike did not work.
wait, calculate, go go go again
e be virus-virulent vigorous
closer, but…
Were you ai-mmmmming aiming I mean,
were you shooting me
a glance

across the way, wow, we do, yes
yes, alike
I think, Ja, like Einstein,
a little, but at thought speed,

due to mutablasphmisical re-ai-ties with time for children in it.
L-reala-aimouri, branded class of fictions,
legal as reminders, chemical stress tests, read

no. read. no. read. no… who cares

we settle or we splash, be hap may hap per pur pose
or none. Life is a joy in the living, I can imagine, as a word.
---
Those are suns, said Jesus to Bruno, see where that secret
takes you.

<>

she raw whispered, edginess deep in her throat,
combo of delighted annoyance coated in
wary weariness of she-wanted-wonder,
what he wants that I can keep/take?

my untold secrets he knows how?
needy aches unsatisfied uncovering,
his knowings creates unfamiliar needs,
accentuates secretions of secrets discovering

did not ask for revelations without no resolution,
how dare he tense me in private places hid,
my properties aren’t his, my neck, eyes,
tonguing my senses is crazy senseless

this schema, this tracing of a figurine,
braising my body in his, its own sauces,
while perfume of mine unrequested are mined,
taken away in railway cars to his treasure houses

left utterly gagging and gasping
to hell with him, unbounded gone,
to heaven by him, I went bounding up,
giving me that everything I never desired

but only knew him as the my-mysterious,
tales unwritten yet tensed in the familiar,
poems elucidating, all that I didn’t
write, knew,  but never uttered

now, now! all are freely spoke aloud,
outed, foundering, highlighted and now
decomposing me, I’m honestly betrayed by
what he calls the sense, the knowing of the unknown




Friday, March 6th, Twenty Twenty,
2:47am

I can’t seem to detach
The shelves hold books
I do not need
Soft and hardbacks
Stacked chaotically
I want to keep them
I want to give them
To someone who will
Appreciate them
But I do not know who
Will take them and treasure them
As I did and do

I want to detach
From my cache of comic books
But my memories are attached
To all that muscle and flash
The stories of my past
Are sculpted heroes
Of fantastic proportions
And grand moral fortitude
I do not want to lose
The person who was
So deeply intertwined
With those graphic stories

I want to detach
From the ****** way of thinking
So I rub one out
Yes it hardens and shrinks
So that each day
I am not driven
By lust and passion
So my perspective is not blurred,
Woman are more than mere
Objects of desire
Desire speaks more of
Seeking something special
A unique kind mind
But the yearning still surges
Spews milky madness
To calm my edginess
It is in my flesh

The world is sleeping
under the covers of a silent night.
The stars are peeping
from the recesses of a languid sky,
musing about the unusual calm of an
else boisterous planet.
The night air ridden of its usual clamor, seems to sing a silent eulogy
to all those lost lives.
While,
we humans try to maintain
a facade of calm
masking our ruffled insides,
as we catch on to the air of edginess surrounding us.
Apart from the gentle rustle of the trees and the occasional bark of a dog,
even the cacophony of the birds and insects has died down,
as every living thing is hushed.
They lie in a drugged slumber.
Along with sun up, rises the anticipation of yet another day,
as we feverishly repeat
the actions of the previous day,
with an undercurrent of
self righteousness.
Comical!
This abides day after day.
Amen.

I feel so off, she said
I can feel the cortisol swimming all over my
body
mind
touching every cell with unpleasant
edginess
I need to release it
I really need to work out
I need to f*ck you

                        He looks up at her windy, soft face as they cuddle
                        he smiles and they lock eyes

hate to me is a precious emotion
something even more sacred than love
i keep it reserved for very few people
and for even fewer occasions
it isn't something that I carry around with me
spewing at random strangers on internet
sometimes I do get a bit sarcastic
sometimes a bit edgy
but trust me what you saw
was neither sarcasm nor edginess
and definitely not hate
it was my stupidity
stupidity to forget that the only use of comments section is to
shout out compliments
it can't be used to express disagreements
disagreement for the usage of the word 'thing'
for a living person
specifically a girl
i didn't know you wrote that for your daughter
don't remember if it was mentioned anywhere
all I can say is sorry
sorry for misunderstanding
and sorry for being misunderstood
sending love for your daughter
blow her a kiss for me
educate her and give her books to read
so that when she grows up
she won't be stupid like me

Goodbye, won't bother you again

The army intruder

I live near a stream that has been running dry for years
into a winter lake that has been drained to a helicopter pad
trees around wear dusty uniforms.
There is edginess in Europe after many years of peace
the warrior monster is waking up.
The monster is ****** erratic and can strike at any time
asks for more weapons.
We think we know who the enemy is, as usual, but we are wrong
as we listen to the voice of antagonism.
A new page of history is written; we must make a choice
Not wait till millions of people are killed, the last bomb dropped
when a poet writes about the war, be “the guardian famous.”
The new peace will only last so long because the human mindset
is set on war; this is our tragedy.
The voice for peace is as puny as children cry in the symphony
of the battlefield.

Somewhere in this paradoxical space our imaginations are free....

Quantified and Eroticised

The sacred cow of the community
Drooling on doorsteps
Sleeping on sidewalks,
Looking into our silent world, sheathed in ice
Like exotic minarets and baroque domes
These brilliant and exotic creatures
From an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness
To a state of chronic edginess
and
The perpetual scanning of the great twentieth-century delusion
Micro doses of madness
Strychnine in a nerve tonic
Reality
Stuffed inside our heads
Commercial and nasty
An ideal marriage of function and design
Intelligent sensibilities with no possibility of escape
Hoarding every morsel of life
Between the burial mounds
Our famine of peace
In a deep dream of war
Humanity
A truly free psychopathology...


g.

Tomorrow is the near future.

I live near a stream that has been running dry for years
there used to be a winter lake too, now drained
as a landing pad for military helicopters
trees around get dusty like tired soldiers on the western front.
There is edginess in Europa, many years of peace the monster,
that lurks in mankind awakes.
We think we know the enemy, as usual, we are wrong
when listening to the voice of antagonism.
A new page of history written we don’t know which
side to choose, when millions of people killed
and the last bomb dropped, then it doesn’t matter which
sides we choose.
Poets will write for peace; few will listen to their warnings.
The new peace can last, but only so long, because the human mind
is bent on war; this is our tragedy the voice for peace is a child cry
in the symphony of the battlefield.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                       Teenagers Have Always Worn Masks

I was already wearing a mask anyway
Perfecting that James Bond pose in the mirror
Then wearing his cool edginess into home room
Where no one noticed