Mikaela Lagdameo-Martinez has forged her way in and around the beauty industry. Starting out as a model at 15, she’s now started working as an entrepreneur and VIP sales manager for Stores Specialists Incorporated, one of the top names when it comes to bringing international beauty brands to our local counters.

With such a background and how she continues to grow her opportunities (she’s now started a scented candle business called Mink), you would think she’d have a million things in her everyday makeup stash, but the reality is quite the contrary. She still keeps it easy with tried and tested products that do their job efficiently. How else would she be able to keep up with all her work on top of being a mother and wife?

On a Thursday morning, Mika was kind enough to squeeze us into her busy schedule to share her favorite makeup and skincare products and how she doesn’t believe in going over-the-top when it comes to beauty.

Describe your approach to beauty

I’ve always been drawn to effortlessness. For me, beauty is in simplicity and comes in the most natural form.

What’s the best beauty advice you’ve ever received from your mother?

Always put lotion on! Ever since I was a kid, I knew that after every bath came lotion application. I was never allowed to get dressed without [applying lotion first.] I can say I was officially brainwashed until this day!

If you had to prioritize skincare or makeup, which would it be?

Skincare, definitely. When you take good care of your skin, makeup is secondary. Plus, I literally feel the weight on my skin when I have makeup on. It’s not the best feeling.

What is one beauty item you would always repurchase?

Moisturizer!

What is the first beauty or makeup item you even bought for yourself?

I think it was makeup remover when I started modeling.

Name five grooming items you would recommend to any man.

After-shave, hair gel, moisturizer with SPF, a good bottle of perfume, and hand cream.

What are five makeup items you never leave the house without?

Moisturizer, bronzer or blush, brow mascara, lip balm, and my favorite **** lipstick.

What is one makeup trend do you always do I always follow?

Neat brows.

What is one misconception about the beauty industry people should know about?

One brand fits all—it isn’t necessarily true. Most of the time you really have to take into consideration your skin type, lifestyle, skin sensitivity, etc. You really have to try them out and see what works best on you.

Who are your beauty icons? Why?

Cheryl Cole aka Cheryl Fernandez Versini. I never get tired of staring at her. She’s one face that never bores me.

One a regular day, which tube of lipstick do you reach for?

Make Up Forever in Mat 2.

On a night out, which shade of lipstick goes with any ensemble and occasion?

MAC Ruby Woo.

What are your top three favorite perfumes?

Jo Malone Nectarine Blossom & Honey, Hermes Pamplemousse Rose, L’eau Par Kenzo

Smoky eye or dark lip? Why?

Dark lip. Not a fan of heavy eyes.

Can you tell us about your nightly skincare routine?

Wash face with my gel cleanser. Moisturize and done!

What are the five best skincare products you’ve tried?

Every time I’m pregnant I run to my ever reliable Clarins Tonic Oil for my tummy and *******. It’s the best and most effective product for firming and avoiding stretch marks! Next would be Murad’s ****** cleansers. I alternate between the foaming wash and gel cleansers because they’re the best. Third would be Benefit’s Boo Boo Zap for treating zits! Fourth, Maui Babe’s browning lotion. Fifth, Kérastase Powder Bluff dry shampoo!

What is one thing that you think is lacking in the beauty industry?

Personally, I think everything we need is already available. What else do we need?!

Who is in your beauty black book (hair, makeup, skin, body)?

For my hair, I go to Alex Carbonell. He knows how to manage my wavy hair with the right layers, length, and color.

For makeup, my favorites are Gela Laurel-Stehmeier, Juan Sarte, Steven Doloso, and Angie Cruz. They know exactly what to do with my face and how much I dislike foundation. (Laughs)

For my body, I go to Marie France. I started going to them ever since I gave birth to my daughter almost 12 years ago. I actually enjoy their treatments because they work so well and I don’t even have to break a sweat.

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/vintage-formal-dresses

www.marieaustralia.com/****-formal-dresses

All too often the question is posed :
What has happened to all of the " Real Men"?
Do they even exist anymore, or have they succumbed to extinction?

And the answer is no. They are still very much alive, just fewer in numbers. These days, if you happen to come across one, chances are you will find him at what, from the outside, appears to be him at his worst. After having been so beaten down by life, that he hardly resembles a man any longer. (Or at least to what your un-natural opinion of a man resembles) This, as a result of standing up for what is decent, fair and moral. You know, being a "Man", while living in a world void of any morality. But do you know?

Do you really have the ability enough to be able to recognize some one for whom and what they really are? Where do your eyes stop when they peer at someone? Do they penetrate through the car window? Past the $20 hair cut? Can they keep going, beyond the glare of jewelry and through the named brand distractions of the accessorized apparel? And even then, past the last line of defense for this facade, the camouflage more commonly referred to as body art. Which, just like any other item one don's for a masquerade, it sole purpose is to distract others from the truth of what little substance lies underneath the skin.

Those aren't real men or in many cases women either. A tattoo, or any other equivalent of artificiality can never be as honest as a Scar can be.
An Emotional Scar does more damage than a superficial one. A wound speaks more of the individual who bears it. Who's suffered the pain which came with it and who is constantly reminded by it. That is what true sense is derived from, Lessons.

However, when it comes to the moral Man's personality,
the world today & the people in it tend to push these types of individuals into corners. These types of "personalities" suffer to hold on to their integrity and pay terrible prices in order to do so. They sacrifice their security, their psychological state of mind & their physical personal comfort for it. And living in this world, for them, is like torture. So many have had the things and the people they fought for, loved and held dear, snatched away from them, just because they do, not what is easy & popular, but what is right. And these days, the difference between those three are worlds apart.

The lethargic effortlessness of life has made men like me, obsolete and replaced us with the self-serving Narcissist. No longer Gods creation  but a new creation of the self. Void of any empathy, understanding, sympathy or human emotion. Synthetic, and machine like, a Frankenstein incarnate. Look around out there and if you have eyes to see with, you will see that humanity has traded who they were born to be, for what is in fashion to be. They have given up the now elusive spirit of the human heart, for the abundant trend of the human ego. Take a closer look, it is like "The Walking Dead" out there. Mindless, heartless, merciless dead things, only doing for them selves. Consuming whatever they can, how ever they can & who ever they can, in order to stay well supplied and well hidden among'st the rest of us. Lying in wait to ambush us, victimizing us, selling us out, draining us like Vampires.
Men and Women like myself, start to feel as though we are the last human beings on earth, being hunted by these consumers. Always weary and uncomfortable. Going through life trying desperately to hold on to that which is real within us, so that decency does not vanish from our lives, by being chewed up and swallowed whole by a dead eyed world gone mad.

A horrible existence. This way of living/surviving is completely unnatural & brings with it a new type of loneliness & attached to that is the worst kind of hopelessness. A dangerous state to be in if one does not keep his wit's about him. And have the given sense enough to know, that If it were not for a God in heaven, there would be no hope at all. No reason to suffer un-popularity or ostracism. No reason to do what is right, over what is convenient . No reason to not just give in to the temptation of an easy life. A life where all that matters is numero-uno. Where everything else and everyone else is just secondary.

I would rather be alone & miserable for the rest of my life, than to be a self-centered, backstabbing, bloodsucking son of a b¡tch like the rest of you out there.

Now, getting back to these "Men" that so many our Women are attracted to. The men that keep letting you down time and time again. The ones who's possessions make them look like they are worth something, whom you so easily swoon over like some kind of hypnotized harlot. My dear sister, eventually those things get stripped away. Either by time or the trial's of life. And then what you are left left with is whatever pathetic thing was hiding underneath.

And that is what you get, for being led by your eye's, your hands, your ears and your selfish little minds.You listen to & are led by, every other part of your body except your heart, which is the Apex O r g a n over all others. Which has been given charge and authority, by The Creator himself over all of those other things you are always so quick to bow down to. And that is a d a m n e d shame. And that is your d a m n e d shame. And it is no one else's fault but your own.

You want to see a mans character or a woman's? Then look for their Scars. They will tell you what kind of survivor they really are. The kind that is self reliant or the kind that feeds off of the flesh of his brother or his sister to survive. The opportunist, The scavenger, The rat.

But thankfully, there is a God. One God.
And there always will be. And so the rest of the world can go on doing what it does, and taking what it can.
But it will never get what it wants, not from me. My individuality is my soul and it is held together not with pride, or greed, or vanity, but with integrity. And that belongs to Him. And when it is inevitably brought back to him, it will be brought to him intact, un-molested &
Immovable-

On one of the myriad bays
along the Maine coast. Keep the holocaust
at bay I said to Dave because
you’ll spend all day gathering
2,000 calories and still be miserable hungry.
An undiminished population of humans is risible.

Black spruce and balsam fir,
you can eat the inner bark
in a starvation emergency.
There’s plenty of Cornus—bunchberry—
each orange pith around the stone
worth maybe a quarter calorie.

Lots of sarsparilla but the fruits
not out yet and to date I have not
savored one. Let’s see—dandelion
of course and huckleberry but
the most important source of sustenance
would be seaweed.

Learn your mushrooms! for the protein.
Accept the situation
come the apocalypse.
I struggle against my insignificance
but it would be better to struggle
against my ignorance.

Less effortlessness, more fishermanliness.
That’s the lesson of this Maine vacation
there’s a lot you can eat when in need—
the hips of roses and the pips of grasses.
And an endless supply of seaweed—
bladderwrack, dulse, kelp and thin green lettuce.

Our trajectory is unknowable, you tell me: the planet
corkscrews around the Sun, sure,

but the Sun corkscrews around a black hole at
the heart of the Milky Way,

and our whole galaxy travels on some mysterious,
incalculable vector. But sister, I saw a photograph

in which two whale sharks were brought to
heel by men in simple reed boats just

off the coast of the Philippines. All that they had
to do was often feed

the sharks many gallons of grocery-store frozen
shrimp, poured from plastic garbage bags into

their yawning six-foot maws to portside.
Gargantuan, sure, but still

as obedient and eager for food as backyard
squirrels. I remembered a grainy

internet video—I saw it probably seven or
eight years back—in which

a captured whale shark was winched
ashore in Madagascar, or

maybe it was the Philippines again—no matter—
the thing still had life left

in it and struggled to breathe while a crowd of
people gathered around—there were

women carrying babies, girls holding baskets atop
their heads—and then the

men came with a long slender blade and sliced clean
through the whale’s spine, vivisected it

right there on the dock, and the onlookers stood there quite
unfazed—I remember

being shocked at the effortlessness of the cut,
the pinkness of the whale’s blood,

and the boredom in the onlookers’ eyes. Our father
took us down to San Antonio

on one of his business trips there when we were five
or six—I think

you were probably too young to
remember it—

it was when you and I saw the ocean for the first
time. We drove down to the Gulf

of Mexico, and we saw waves breaking
out near the horizon in pale

sunlight. I kept scanning for a dorsal
fin off beyond

the breakers, thinking that I might spot one—
sandy brown, mottled with

cream spots and glistening—so that I might be able to
say to you, pointing, “look,

sister, there is a whale shark!” Years
later we would learn

that he traveled down to San Antonio so
frequently because he was a philanderer. As

a child I believed that whale sharks
crisscrossed the ocean following

paths that we couldn’t fathom, that
their concerns were somehow

beyond our comprehension, but then
Keppler pinned down

the shape of the Earth’s orbit over four
hundred years ago,

and the lives of ancient sea
titans are sundered

effortlessly
by men with indifferent faces.

A tattoo is just a scar;
A person is just a human being-
Not much more than a Wendy’s bag
That looks like road-****;
Not much more
Than a series of frames in a film
With a blackness in between
That our minds remove,
Creating an illusion of motion
Similar to the illusion of effortlessness
Created as we drive up a hill,
Pumping fossil fuels into the air
As everyone breathing outside the car
Rings like the aftermath of a gunshot
Or a screaming plea in an unfamiliar ear
“Stab me some more, dear,
Let the ink flow,
The film is running out
And I can see the blackness finally
Of the space that’s in between”

That smell isn't around anymore.
I didn't even realize it until I could barely remember it.

It's the smell of the old place I used to live
alone.
The smell of the doors at night
and the corn patties in the cupboard
and the leather sofa
and my old cat.

It's the smell of the doubt.
The lack of the light.
Being stuck in the middle of the tunnel.
The smell of the tunnel vision.
The smell of the fact that it was
midnight after the journey through the tunnel.

The smell of my heavy chest,
that I smelled with my head hung,
nose close to my heart.

Straight ahead, it doesn't have that heavy smell.
Now it smells of ethnic food.
And breath always on the side of my neck.
It's warm.

The smell of trying and failing.
I only smell success from effortlessness.

you know
when i first beheld the icy greyness
of this giant sepulchral building
a giantness of Empty
a giantness of unrecognised surreal faces
a giantness of being sorta kinda lost
a giant lostness of slamming into glass doors
hurriedly breaking out
to a place i wanted to know

when i first beheld that giantness
i had never thought
imagined felt conceived
hell i had it all figured out
in what i thought was a deep deep experience

i had never thought
it would be that crisp
that quick
the creepiness of mounting heartbeat
pounding like a drumbeat
rising out into the rosiness of dawn
full of a wisdom of it's own experience

that it would be that supple
lifting me with effortlessness
like a wave of adrenaline
rush; gushing into my
guts; breaking out like
a furious river bent on
flowing with the vastness of the ocean
and the innocence of the sky

i had never thought
that is how you have a Crush.

I am desperate –  
     for all the effortless things

just so my blood has a chance to
     sing for something
          again

but out of all the open air that
     has kissed my skin
          and all the people who
                were lucky to love me

the only easement I knew
     was you
           and before, during, after

well,
     I was never enough for myself –
          not once, not ever

so I find myself
     aching for the effortlessness
          but not aching for you in the way
       I used to

I can’t find it – my effortlessness –
     without you
          because I believe they
               are one in the same

so I wander –
     a drifting soul –
          from progression to progression

congratulations

you seem so happy

I am so proud

all these tangible things –
     they will never bring me the
          easement I knew from only you

nonmeditation
is the best kind of meditation
not doing,
just being
not listening,
simply hearing
simply here

How do I write poetry
simple by being?
effortlessness is effortful
How do I show to the world
the way my brain should work
so that I appear
                          smart
                          ­         articulate
                                                   thoughtful
                                                      ­                 d
                                                               ­        e
                                                               ­        e
                                                               ­        p
when really I feel like spurting a string of thoughts that would not make sense to anyone, including myself, in any moment but this one

**** appearance

here's me:

    -
  (      .     .  )
(           >    )        ()()
(          =      )  __ (   )
xxxxxxxxxx            )

I daydream of dreaming
a dream:
comfortable and surreal.
In it, an antique shop full of character
and the scent of mothballs and dust.
A haphazard maze of dark lit corners
pulls me to its depths,
where nestled in the back,
is a perfectly imperfect piano.
Ironic how the blatantly splintered key
is the most out of tune, no?
In this dream within a daydream,
I sit on a squeaking stool,
foot on a loose damper,
and play all that I know.
In this dream to be,
I know not,
or recognize what I play,
but know it's home
and find peace in knowing.
The name Chopin
would be the faintest
of underlying memories,
but the first upon waking.
All we are is what we are not,
and were I dreaming this dream,
that notion would live in my being;
in the pockets of my marrow
and in the pit of my throat.
No Steinway could produce
such a twang so unimaginably beautiful.
Only the physically appealing use the word ugly,
and only the true understand the word beauty.
In my dream to be,
I watch myself,
but feel the keys
as they disintegrate
after violently being yanked from slumber.
Would I dream,
I would gasp and reach in wake,
grasping nothing,
and yearn again
to live without
vivid self awareness.
Yet when conscious,
I seek lucidity,
despite the comfort
found in effortlessness.
So snap me out of it.
Slap the porcelain saucer
that is my cheek,
for I am no Poe,
and this no "dream within a dream"
but a waltz
with the idea of serendipity.

“The trouble is, we think there’s time”
Buddha said it so urgent
Complete with Sanskrit contractions
The baby delivering doctor saying we all have a cancer, no matter how slow
so pick up your passions with a god’s effortlessness
Play a concerto that makes your hair stand on end
because the music was more important than a reflective surface
Looking like a you were born in a stormy garret
Writing, thinking, and plucking, as if the gods set you there
instead of the million hopeless mediocre ones
No, instead you are brethren to those gods
All competing for immortal kicks – like mortal tail
Until the game board perspective ceases
looking down on the plebeian pantheon
and it’s just you and what you lived for

Maybe only slowly, can someone
come nearer, and closer, in thought,
where he might be a sliver

of painted visions on a glass
ceiling. Somehow, as thinking fades
and the colours take precedence. Blue

purple hues, taking place on the
pink of a lovely sight or thought. He felt he
needed to trample what I have come

to, shatter this illusion of a
benevolence. He cracked my gauges,
took the defenses right away. As my

last stroke failed, a broken lance of the
first. Silently he cuffed away his iciness, pursuing me
with a granite effortlessness. Then the impermeable

onyx kissed my mouth and went away.


© 2006

like bathing, all of this waiting
stillness, silence
a pin submerged in water

or a wide-eyed boy scanning the sidewalks for his father
groping the dark

an abstract art

the effortlessness in the breaking of this vase
fine wrinkles in its maker’s hands, deep creases in his face
his pain disintegrates
a million pieces on linoleum 

that beautiful vase.

silence,
golden
then suddenly
broken
becoming a chorus
of chaos and moaning

this waiting,
this hayride
my swollen balloon

it’s lifetime is numbered
in pieces of you.

She's crawling these days,
And it's a joyous throwback to
The wordless days, when the
Eye reflects sunshine instead of tonic
And there was someone,
Always someone                                                 up
To take over when it was too much.         up
                                                               up
She's crawling in her own spit-up
And learning how to drown.
There's a certain effortlessness
To a downward spiral
And she's mastered it with the
Dedication of a carnie's mid-night
Reflections in a backdrop
Of cotton-candy and ****** expulsion.

The world has painted itself white
And she's the little blemish
Of hangnails and spilled cognac
When Atlas would rather decorate
With her broken winter smile;
Teeth to match the whites of his eye
And shattered eggshell.

She's crawling these days, amidst
Broken bottles that reflect such starry eyes
The way puddles muddy the sky
And house the most optimistic birds,
Unheeding the poolside signs saying
Shallow end.
The water is dedicated to darkness
And she's dedicated to falling.

Let anger be(go).

Doubt comfort.

Be the joke.


Too something.

I don't quite believe everything.

We always forget where we came from.

Mitsugi Saotome

Glory be to the father and to the maker of creation.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be
World without end:
Jah Rastafari:
Eternal god:
Selassie I.

And it's all in order to create effortlessness.

I smile to myself
As sleep caresses your spine.
You fall under, covered in blankets,
Sheltered by thunderous peace.
I want to touch you,
To run my hands through your ebony locks,
To put my palm against your cheek,
And have your warmth
Melt my cold, cold soul,
Until all that's left of me
Is a puddle of liquid light.

You rest soundly,
With the confidence of a thousand lying politicians,
Your subtle grin defying the darkness outside our shelter.
I yearn to crawl between your arms,
To make your very being a haven,
To rest my head on your chest,
And listen to your heart beat,
Loud enough to drown out my troubled mind.

Oh, the effortlessness of it all.
How easily we tangle between the sheets.
How cozy, and breezy, and light we feel
On this cloud of a mattress.

And as minutes pass,
And months,
And years and decades,
Millennia upon Millennia,
Until we are covered by dust, and rust, and ivy,
We will stay here, alone together, in this bed.

I held on so tight to the string that was attached to the storm cloud of our relationship. Afraid that if I let go I will not see the sunshine that was once us.

I held on to the smiles of happier times and the looks of love. I held onto the effortlessness of our beginning and the passion in our kiss.

The cloud became heavier and heavier and some helped me to hold on, others begged me to forget.

I found my strength in remembering.

Every red flag that I painted white. All the dreams that died when you left. I remember the wasted time spent on forlorn hope of empty promises.

It took me awhile to realize that I was holding on to a mistake because I took so long to make it, blinded by the fantasy of what we could be. I cannot continue watering a dead plant.

I’m ready to let go of every ‘what if’.
I’m ready to let go for me, for a heart that doesn’t lie and a love I can believe in.

Love's the base line
Let us be and what would we lack?
Love's no elixir nor intoxicant
Love's the pure undifferentiated state of joy
Love's where we go when we let go of ourselves
And we let go of our games and our desires
And our pasts and our futures and our fates and destinies
Love is tasting good food and chewing till it's paste and sitting back and smiling feeling it energize every cell
Loves hoping everybody wins the poetry slam
Because what good would it be to be in it for yourself
For one person
Against the universe?
None of us are opposed in love,
We are the unbroken chain
But every link is not connected to just
The link in front and the link behind
It is connected to every link at once
It is connected to every link ever forged with the blacksmith's love
The chain doesn't draw a line between us,
It wraps around us and ties us together
Oh love is all I knew before this poem
And love is the effortlessness of every word
Because only Nothing could be easier than love
And love is to BE nothing
Because who could resist such loving completion?
Nothing is the soul of the universe
And anything at all is Nothing but Love
Love is finishing my speech and sitting down because I'd rather hear yours

Within some experiences I am “there,” within others, I am “not there.” In the latter sort, it is either anxiety-laden hyper-awareness or sardonic dissociation from minutia-made-material. In the former, it is effortlessness, freedom, gliding bones through sea, the waves pushing me down its throat and breathing me back out, moistened and changed. In both forms of existence I find myself; this is not something to reconcile, but to accept. I have realized myself as one contradiction—a noose round the neck of a flower, a gardener of thistle and thorn. The blue sky stretches across the horizon, and my mind removes itself to a distant branch. I find myself both here and not here. This space between body and mind is the closest I have to freedom. And so I add a layer to myself, or uncover one. And this, always, is where I find purity, where I comprehend the contradiction, where I taste the essence of that which I cannot otherwise know.

You really seem quite nice
and your brain is just my size
and I tell ya man im not an easy fit

id love to have a chat
pick your brain about
this and that
no better way to possibly spend my time

but when I get to talking
theres this voice that comes a mocking
and I find my self in a war with my words

and im shuddering
and im stopping
and im wishing that I could just find
that perfect and clear combination of words and sounds

a conversation
some discourse
a verbal interaction
its and itch thats needed scratching
for some time

I just wish I could give it a try

see iv been running around in circles
pushing boundaries
stepping backwards
even gnawed my foot down to the bone

communication at its finest
effortlessness interaction
the kind were we can see each other new

iv love to get to know you
iv got lots of things to show you
but im choking
and im gasping
purely willing my self to spit out
that perfect and clear combination of words and sounds

a conversation
some discourse
a verbal interaction
its and itch thats needed scratching
for some time

but I never can get it quite right.

Cutout smile pasted to my mouth
as my head hits the pillow.                         I feel at peace and myself.  

This effortlessness of our time spent is
like a diamond to be treasured and
coveted.

I float on our memories in
my thoughts and dream of the day
when I will be with you again.

Effortlessness is what empties a room- a mind also being a room- and extends a willowy collection of bones that you hope you can touch in your attempt to communicate the context of the rooms, so that the enigmatic hand might grasp at least a flicker of recognition that the moment has passed, and now She must be going, receding ever sublimely into the airiness of a nascent week’s end- how contradictory- and so am I, begging for peace and quiet and crawling instead into the raucous night, like a blind centipede that is expected to scare away the house, making the true Resident Rodents their rightful place at the throne- the bejeweled Rat Regent rules the underworld, but She has ignored the portal and it has vanished- perhaps never there in the first place- perhaps She and the Rat King both made of smoke. A vestige of a vapor. A room within a room- windowless, wall-less, and wafting in and out of seeming existence like a flame- could it have been the same flame as was before? Could ever a flame be reborn, revived, said to have previously existed? Can one say this flame could not have already been? And is this room, this space, new or old? Perhaps recycled? Is it a fluctuation, regeneration, or is it a continuation- like infinite space? And when considering infinity, what to make of repetition? Pattern, even? What is to be said about consistencies? What can the ants see that we cannot? What is this perspective that we are given? And by whom? And our language- where does it bring us? To the next essentially empty room? Or do you feel the life pulsing right under your very nose, in the hidden eye of the void- do you sense the deaf-dumb omniscience of consciousness? And is it growing or dying? Is an ice-age approaching, or truly, is this a momentary lapse of reason- a period of time where reason (matter and the mind) take shape in the disembodied womb of consciousness? And how can one ever measure a moment?

I have not been honest with you and I think that it is about time that I am. Ever since I first saw you, across the park with both of our heads bent over some sort of controversial art, I have always thought you more mind than matter but contrary to my indecisive head you always put me before my words.

If you were still here listening to what I have to say I guarantee you would compliment more the effort I may or may not have put into my hair this morning than the effortlessness of the trash spewing from my lips.

I should have seen the danger of this after your constant affection of my ears and chest and toes - you adored every bit of my that you could see - but I was too caught up in you being caught up in my eyes that I could not see that you didn't like them for the shine but for the shade.

I think I finally started to understand when you painted pictures of me doing normal things - cooking, writing, smiling - but nothing natural, like sleeping - which I often and always mused about in prose about you, my dear - or just thinking. They must have been much too mundane.

Your sketches of clothes and trees and urban sprawl were impressive but lacked depth. It was as if you were unable to see past the surface like every lake you stood and stared at was covered in a silvery film you were unable to pierce, even in the most shallow places.

We were too unalike - I trained myself to see each person as a character with a blank slate for hair color and texture and the size of hands and feet, but you saw only freckles where they shouldn't have been and fingernails too long or too shorts and although you found it all beautiful, it took more than aesthetics to find a tell tale heart.

You lost mine beneath the lake waters.

I strip the sheets off my bed
I put my clothes to wash
But there is still nothing that can erase this
Not the rubbing of my skin raw to remove your stain
Or the brushing of my teeth to get rid of your taste

None of it can erase the feel of your lips and tongue drafting novels that should never be published on my back
Or your fingers painting life onto the blank and ordinary canvas that is my leg
It doesn’t help me forget, it doesn’t help me hurt any less
Because I can still smell you on my bed - the smell of you and old love I’ve grown too attached to now
And I can still hear your breathing and I shouldn’t - but if I think even a tiny bit harder
I can see every strand of your left eyelashes because those were the last things I memorised before you woke up
I memorised the tightness of your hug and the effortlessness of your goodbye kiss too
But I’m not prepared for the torture of remembering these details - I’m lying down and you’re not here to wipe these tears

WHEN YOU ARE OLD.

When you are old and dim and loaded with rest,

What's more, gesturing by the fire, bring down this book,

What's more, gradually read, and dream of the delicate look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows profound;

What number of cherished your snapshots of happy effortlessness,

What's more, adored your magnificence with adoration false or genuine,

In any case, one man adored the traveler soul in you,

What's more, adored the distresses of your evolving face;

What's more, bowing down alongside the gleaming bars,

Mumble, a little unfortunately, how Love fled

Furthermore, paced upon the mountains overhead

Furthermore, shrouded his face in the midst of a horde of stars.

I like you
Not because you're the prettiest
Not because you're the smartest
But because you're you
You don't care about these things
You just let them be a part of you
A side effect of you just being you
I like that
This care-free-ness
Your mind, its mental prowess
Your looks, their god-given effortlessness
Makes you all the more sexier
Yeah
I like you

It was this robotic effortlessness,
Getting on the plane
Landing in this place I will now call my homeland
I slept soundly on the flight
It did not feel so definite.
There would always be other planes
Planes that can rescue me and take me back
(Until I sign those papers to enlist,
then I cannot leave the country for the next three years)

But I tried not to think about that

Something took over my body
I methodically went through the motions for this first month here.
Visited the family, set up meetings,
then went to them
Though slowly it feels like this fear is creeping in
That feeling of no safety net
The clouds, the ideals,
and then there is this crash of the actual reality of this
But also this is exactly what I expected.
Slowly the robot is beginning to feel some feels
Slowly boys are starting to matter to me
Slowly my friends are starting to make me feel like I care about them
and I care when they don't invite me out.
Slowly it begins to hurt seeing my father on that hospital bed
Suddenly the missiles are no longer a distant threat,
but things that explode before your eyes.
Slowly emotions are beginning to show up again
(and most of these emotions are not happy ones)
So I'm scared
This robot has broken down
Now it's up to me to put back the pieces of a happy human.

The only thing he was closed to was
             the bottle or his gun...
Caressing both gently as he lingered
on this chair..
He had thoughts of yesterday,
            The barrel still had that
         just used smell,
he sniffed the casing.

Smiling at the cold effortlessness
         for which he knew it was
going to be used once again.
As he leant back the front door opened,
             A gentleman strolled in,
turning his rooms dim lights on.
            Not even noticing me sitting
there, smiling as he walks past..
A head then pops back around.

The pistol pointing at his blank expression,
                I use the gun as a pointer showing,
him where to go.I can see in his eyes he want
to run, to do something stupid.

"Don't even think about it,
            as I wave the gun at him,
as I if I were gesturing him
                                               "No,

He sits there, calmly sweating.
              Eyes racing around his skull.
A hundred and one bad ideas of what to do...
But there is only one out come.
             Its ok, I tell him. if I were going to **** you,
I'd have put one in the back of skull outside when
you were concentrating on opening your front porch.

So we find ourselves in a predicament.

   My son found out about my past from you?
He's a version of  me, at a younger time.
But I wanted to bestow on him knowledge of
   my transgression at a moment of my choosing...

So when a parrot talks to much do you pluck its
feathers, or do you snap its neck?
       what you think!

What should I do, so many things my son now
                     thinks he knows...

Do we have an understanding here..

He nods in a hastily manner,

the next day I watch my son,
the **** of my heritage
                      go to the parrots cage,

He answers the door..

Words are spoken, Raised voices are spoken.
           Then the door slams in my sons face,
       he kicks the door,  
he has my temperament that kid.
As he drives off, I wait,
                  the parrot is flying the coop..

As he gets in to his car echoes bounce of the
surrounding as broken glass falls like broken
snow flakes. The interior now painted with
his mistake. Parrots should never talk...

I walk off, later finding my sons car.
     I smell the barrel, god that smell never
gets old.. putting it in his glove compartment.
     taking my gloves off I wonder in the house.
Asking him why there's a pistol in his car?
Running out he grabs it out, and now his prints
are on it.. lets see him betray his old man now..

Today I was reminded of her soft skin
And holding her and sitting next to her
Was...unique, she left me hanging
And i don't know why but it excites me

The jokes, the effortlessness of it all
The teasing "time out". All  if it
Was like a sweet candy,
That left me wanting more

The only thing he was closed to was
             the bottle or his gun...
Caressing both gently as he lingered
on this chair..
He had thoughts of yesterday,
            The barrel still had that
         just used smell,
he sniffed the casing.

Smiling at the cold effortlessness
         for which he knew it was
going to be used once again.
As he leant back the front door opened,
             A gentleman strolled in,
turning his rooms dim lights on.
            Not even noticing me sitting
there, smiling as he walks past..
A head then pops back around.

The pistol pointing at his blank expression,
                I use the gun as a pointer showing,
him where to go.I can see in his eyes he want
to run, to do something stupid.

"Don't even think about it,
            as I wave the gun at him,
as I if I were gesturing him
                                               "No,

He sits there, calmly sweating.
              Eyes racing around his skull.
A hundred and one bad ideas of what to do...
But there is only one out come.
             Its ok, I tell him. if I were going to **** you,
I'd have put one in the back of skull outside when
you were concentrating on opening your front porch.

So we find ourselves in a predicament.

   My son found out about my past from you?
He's a version of  me, at a younger time.
But I wanted to bestow on him knowledge of
   my transgression at a moment of my choosing...

So when a parrot talks to much do you pluck its
feathers, or do you snap its neck?
       what you think!

What should I do, so many things my son now
                     thinks he knows...

Do we have an understanding here..

He nods in a hastily manner,

the next day I watch my son,
the **** of my heritage
                      go to the parrots cage,

He answers the door..

Words are spoken, Raised voices are spoken.
           Then the door slams in my sons face,
       he kicks the door,  
he has my temperament that kid.
As he drives off, I wait,
                  the parrot is flying the coop..

As he gets in to his car echoes bounce of the
surrounding as broken glass falls like broken
snow flakes. The interior now painted with
his mistake. Parrots should never talk...

I walk off, later finding my sons car.
     I smell the barrel, god that smell never
gets old.. putting it in his glove compartment.
     taking my gloves off I wonder in the house.
Asking him why there's a pistol in his car?
Running out he grabs it out, and now his prints
are on it.. lets see him betray his old man now..

I’ve always known it was the water that connects us
Not just the waves, soothing, rolling
Not just the community built within,
Not just the rain falling quietly in the thick breeze of the Florida afternoon
But in all of it
Even the new water
Frozen and pristine and soft
the kind that surrounds us now.
You are always with me,
No matter where I go,
Seemingly intertwined with my existence
But I have always been afraid to write about my ocean
Because with the written word
I am compelled to search through all of it
The beautiful coral that lies just underneath the surface
And the hidden depth that’s a secret to most
For how can I express my love for you
If you are but an ocean partially explored
The fear is cold
Unspoken
understood
While great revelation might be a few written lines away
Scribbled down with a simultaneous effortlessness and unrefined stimulation
I am afraid that like a snow flake,
While I continue to explore you my love
You will but melt away in my palm

The anxiety of the unexplained
Is like an impoverished state
A mental ache
Caged alone
Sidestepping the back of an alleyway
pummeled in
cobwebs
Squeamishly awaiting the sentencing of a scarcity filled critter approaching its death

The existence of him; an individual
And myself
I thought I knew what I felt at the time
The excitement in my chest
at the very thought of speaking to him aloud
Even in my thoughts
In my dreams
The relationship between them
has been severed by it

As though it had been abandoned
By the riverbed
of endless possibilities
met with the banks of effortlessness neglect to which nothing happens in the end

I kept
waiting for more to flood my insides
in due time


It was not my energy alone
that was responsible for this repeated
Cycle
We were unprotected and unrenewed: despite him always speaking of protection
it was manipulation before any sort of new,
A blinded experience
That I did not choose to see

Only a man who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, will live the best of relation
to another as something that can grow and remain alive

I willed myself to exhaustion

This existence of fear
as a large or small window depending on the day, I only knew pieces of that room, he showed me a heart contained by secrecy

Placed by a locked door
a slipshod floor on which he walked
up and down the steps of my attempted understanding

He had his own fatal security
And a dangerous
insecurity that created a madwoman out of me

I felt out the shape and the textures of his cornering
A room set up to be a closet without light
He said he is a prophet
Like God
But all he created was himself as a stranger

To me and whoever knew him

I did not want to be a prisoner.
But I felt trapped
Nothing could worry me
I kept going with it

I had no reason to
mistrust that world for it wasn’t against me.

YetI was alone and the dangers did I try to love

It seemed to me the most alien
But I wanted to trust him without faith.
How can that be? It was not in faith that I believed.

Perhaps all the wolves of our lives are cloaked
in false princes clothing
waiting to see us
even for a single moment
beautiful and brave

And they don’t even know why

“Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.”

i write upon the colour of defeat -
defaced, defamed, devalued,
inconsistencies plagiarise -
      what would ever make a handyman
forget his tools, fixing a window?
such a bountiful array of drill heaads
left vacant on my bed?
i'll gloat and chance my inquiry upon
the fact that my bedroom is bloated -
hence i gloat -
            books stacked from floor up
to the ceiling...
      a library of music that makes radio
anything but a platform unused to
master talking...
                       a hanging George flag
folded encompassed by two bandannas -
and a salty perfume of a drunk
clinging to what is best described
as: even the drowning man will hold onto
a razor blade...
i actually dream of shaving,
         one solid year and i think about
attiring myself with a goatee,
to simply feel that, scraping sensation
is not merely sandpaper -
      i miss it more than a woman's kiss...
see, the problem with poles emigrating is
that, on the rare occasion they congregate as
a minority...
        poles are strange in that they thrive
like fungus, but only when isolated -
they are the epitome mimic in situ...
        the proverb of any exiled poles
is best left alone -
                 there will be a part of this observation
when i say that i, rummaged in
the underbelly of england, mostly among
the celts - irish or pict scotch -
        and will look at the english with
a strange familiarity of bewilderment -
the ironic huh?
               you live here, oh, i thought you
were here as primarily in, passing...
                   i can embrace a form of islam -
sure... but it's not a taste for submission
that i like:
           let me give you the second schism of
this religion...
         i'm sometimes concerned with the minaret
and the celebration of all things lunar &
lunatic...
                   an aisti -
i surrender to the sway of Xerxes orderning
the whipping of the Aegean -
                i surrender on my own terms,
but that also makes me things beyond necessitating
an obedient servant...
i believe in prokofiev's lieutenant kijé -
kij - stick - kije sticks -
             zbałamucić - to profane -
to attache mongrel -
            i will ensure language is felt as if
an **** has just taken place,
  with the desired annex of ancient rome...
tickling as much as tingling the fancy of
such comparison being made in the first place...
dreptać -
           tiptoeing like a centipede -
           hrap = a snore...
               hrapać = to snore...
how the ancient tongue wriggles and wines
to be nudged into waking from
its slumbers, mummified in an acquired
tongue...
               i can't even begin to comprehend
why i've become more english
than the english...
  with their cosmopolitanism that replaced
a ****'s worth of soul regarding their
waking hour and the death bed...
    i have no desire for resignation within
these confines,
             i have become a monstrosity of
imitation,
           so inept at "faking" the natives that
i have no desire for their women,
other than the taste of admiration for
their eccentric beauty...
                  yet so chameleon-fleshed,
so bland in blending -
               that i'm starting to inquire as to how
much alienation of bring to surface
in the immediacy of, barely scratching
to revise a whimper...
                only the best liars are those
who believe they are telling the truth...
        from truth to lie via tease -
         lying has become nothing short of
telling a **** good joke...
                      hence the idiot in me sometimes
laughs, at the mere stress of
identifying with a consciousness not so much
aligned with a sharpening of,
  toward seconding a transcendental layer -
but simply from an awareness of there being
thought -
               a tongue detached from
laceration - floating freely,
          in some demand for superiority -
breathless, ageless, limbo's saint Sebastian...
               past the slurring past the anguish
of: in the defence of -
               god, that defence of speech when
compared to the abstraction of tongue that is
thought is comparable to the dichotomy of
the effortlessness of a butterfly's two weeks,
or the lament of the prisoner of Pignerol...
once you have lived in a homogeneous society
you'd start to inspect whether talking
is at a freedom of exhorting
           the painful expense -
               in defence of free speech:
  it has become exhausted -
it has become exhausted to the point
where it's actually become exhausting to
speak, let alone defend an innate need to be allowed
to do so...
                 turn off, tone down, shut up.
nothing short of any other dictum -
         merely an upper tier of the "right" to
vote...
            for so much freedom resting upon
making a choice, so much is despotically:
obligatory.

I love you with an innate
effortlessness of true love
a soul in spate
like the bright stars above
light in space