The inaugural bang swiveled with the vacant expressions of a muted feral crowd indignant about ethnic identity and swift in the recourse of tyrannical thugs pandering withered abuse

I solemnly abided in a chirpy itinerant glower against the exclusive system for stranding the disintegration of lyrical integrity for the Potemkin cheers of the culmination of too many jeers

Withered words for the abeyance of silence I incurred with wistful pleas for resurgent clarity beyond   sheepish fears

So I loitered in the evanescence of words..

Watching with alacrity as the strident ignorance of grafted wretchedness writhed its last mustered exsibilation at the sound of windbags bloviating beyond prodigal extravagance without a visible tweeted word

I measured my pause…..as I considered the heft of poignant exposures to a dismal serenade of miscegenated politics and garbled breaths of wheezy mendicants seeking participation in the trophy of smothered compliance

But I marveled simultaneously at the extinction of the shriveled crowds as they sized up the minutiae of wastrels glamorously inviting a frozen recapitulation of sorrows borrowed and wasted on minced platitudes that swindle still the votive confidence of regimented sympathy pretending empathy for soured hearts professedly defiant at their bereaved will

My pulse I clocked at 120 as I wondered where on earth the 140s and 150s have frittered their patience on with such brazen alacrity for the garish snarl of a sojourn into the ineffable effrontery of aureate mutiny against the tyrant of deaf spoon-fed indignation without the luxury of shared ignominy of memorable cadence for frippery in sparse blurbs registered in braille rather than brawn

Then I remembered my vociferous persnickety temperament and the curdled hatred of procrustean swan songs to an etiolating standard of ethical entanglement in aloof issues delivered with a decisive swoon too swift in earnestness to outfox with a quipped rebuff or a calculus of classical spoof

Then I wondered with a problematic but inherent prolixity…..
I too could adorn the adoring moon with a lyrical lampoon geared for a clockwork punchline or a winsome rebarbative tune….OR…. enchant with an incisive acerbic rant about how pasquinades outstay their welcome because of the clambered insistence of happenstance years ago in a blinkered mirror but never rehashed too soon

But where would affection heap its laurels if I dared to swindle the spotlight away from frisky poetasters who proved a renegade inspiration for fluttered triumph in a seaside tragedy only the crestfallen waves of pestilent Idiocracy could steal from my outstretched tenacity in verse and verve

Boom went a fulmination of hatred at my labored words! And then I swerved to avoid potholes of tenuous gainsay…. and other miscreants littering the world with misappropriated labels for laments belabored with publicity for displaced enmity distilled from a cauldron of mismatched ignorance….tethered to the vagrancy of gripe plucked at the ripe time for a twenty-dollar prize give or take a dime

But that dime separating 1990 from 2010 meant more than anything to a life littered with hallowed word crimes…. against the sanctimony of syncopation with cheap bleats too arrogant to be sheepish at the lavish indulgence of the marginalized wines…. brewed in a castle flickering on fiat worth rather than the simplicities of minutes of warbled time

So I currently warp minds with the proctor of a gamble too garish to finesse the quicksand of attrition but jaunty enough to bypass the limitations of a linear self-referential memorial about the circular nature of irony espoused by divorced rhymes

Now I stand ascendant….waiting for the retinues of retinas to absorb the wavy rigmarole of the serpentine pathways carved beneath the buzzwords of race and division and towards soldered unity with a human race beyond racism…. and a class divorced from socioeconomic crass division

Just then I arrived at serenity…. as I realized that the BAR exams that encage so many aspirant hearts are counterfeit in the court of the highest judiciary art that believes that insidious artifice is an embezzled venture of frolicsome guttersnipes wallowing in division can never revive a lifeless heart…. even if quick-witted credentialism rattles the slaves to vapid artforms that any humanism would never deem smart

Ditch the agitprop as a human frailty indentured to endure the curated disease without a cure to make the snollygosters in Washington ever so cocksure with their cockalorum disregard of the palatable consensus to make news real again….Finally for the fraternity of an enlightened human race in a benighted world of trendy fatuousness that infests the planet with the debauchery of glorified urchins jerking the levers with severed brevity to promote infectious foofaraw with cultural indemnity

I leave you with this

What is ornate complexity without the luxury of concerted beatific bliss that the parsecs that flummox your minds throb vehemently with cohesiveness in my internal design are not remiss

And remember the benighted standards of kitsch for the kitchens of penury bewitched don’t stand a chance against the overriding itch to vanquish mountains one after another to cross them off the list

The car window rolls down
Scraping off the condensation that hugs softly
Onto the gossamer surface as it exudes from existence
Welcoming a life on exhibit
Letting in the worlds expectations
A caustic compound of sleet and breeze
This incomplete paper city glows green with envy
Rotting from the inside with cirrhosis and disease
Binary choices yet palindromic
Twisting towards a misnomer of free will.

A cigarette **** let loose
As it arcs towards infinity
Exhaling a sigh from inside my vice
Laced with addiction
Leaving me like flies from ****
Rain beating off our rusted exterior
Oil stripped paint oozing into the street
The suspension rocks to one side
As I unfurl my jacket
and strike a match off my forearm
I look up at the unknowing residents of this metropolis
Each light representing my social dissonance.

My hands stir nervously underneath my coat
As I begin the entrance to exit
Slowly draping my legs from comfort to the sketches of snow
Pushing myself between steel like I wasn't in agony
An abstract conceptulisation of progress
A smooth turbulence smashes against my scalp
Like a metal rod boring into my uncertainty
I was swimming in the same pool as the ****
That populated these furrowed streets in excess
The dead had all the answers
And the living had too many questions.

Something went off in my head
My brain exploded with colours ranging from grey to ****-stained
Dripping onto my shoes with disgust
There was a hole in every pub from here to god knows
Drinking myself into oblivion and waking into this night terror
Rapid eye movements and the slurred decadence of my life on replay
Minds on fire and burrowed into ****** exaltations
But now it's gone
An image in the trees, now splattered across pavements
I make my home where I dream
Starving my journey of canonical basics.

It was all plastic
As I make my way up the emergency exit
Abounding up the stairs with wandering steps
Falling deeper into the past
Granite mirrors, mincing with guilt
Exposures, taped together backwards and inside out
My life is an alibi for reality
Dipped in *******, surfing on opiates
I was sick
Too ill to cope with enlightenment
Too stupid to hate myself.

I'll make my home where I dream
In hotel beds and in cars
On the roadside and in pity
Food crumbled on blankets
Lifestyle in overkill
In hope that travelers see
I make my home where I please.

waiting outside of the recording studio
near the train tracks and the tall buildings
running out of time.
an old gypsy woman
wearing magenta rubber boots
and riding a  stained crimson fixed gear
passes me, trains come and go billowing
their impatient whistles
as I take double exposures of them and the sky
with my lomo 35mm.
Ate nothing but six shots
of espresso
and a pack of cigarettes last night, with
a side of liquor which
reminded me too much of memories too good
to be worth remembered .

Best advice I've read in three months;
wear sunscreen, and realize that
good advice is wasted on the young,
advice is also a form of nostalgia,
the givers of it reach out to the dirtier parts
of their memories, clean it up into something
hopefully worth salvaging.
another train passes and I start to grow
impatient myself, a long day of work
ahead of me.

~
Desert pond,
       idle sun.

Salt, shadow,
       and the revealing light of midday.

She traipses from
the safety of the car
        to the danger at the water's edge.

One hand shielding her eyes,
the other,
        her over-exposures.

Discomfited by a lack
         of self-confidence.

Loving the water,
         hating her thighs.
~

Leave aside your spiritual hunger,
There’s enough wisdom in generational ideals.
Leave aside your worldly exposures,
There’s enough comfort in familial misery.
Leave aside your vindictive allergies,
You’ll crawl for societal acceptance anyway.
Leave aside dark undertones & this poetic licence,
In spite, light breeds light every single day.

Don't read if tyring. Don't think this is absurd. Don't don't love me.
My grandmas hands were gentle as the skin was raw from water. I loved her.
Now you know me. She loved me. always. wanting me to wear a cap not to freeze deep. I always beat up my brother at chess if we play slow.
Clocks bounce me out of my natural rhythm. My thought processes are sheer speed as light and love is. Now you don't know me. The best ice cream I ever had was in Köppenhagen. The best strawberries are from the nearest forest. Not there. Aaaapchoooo.
                      We posses only the internal first right to grow

To become longer and thirst. . . for each other to be subjected to
                                       heart throat belly sweet feet wrenched longings and the Psyche subtexted and restored on our Path
                   saved from the diaries of diabolic old id

Awww the crazy romantics overlaps my reason frequently thinking of you
overflooding my boiling red rivers, being genuine blooe blood blooms

                          The Enchanter Neptune is here within this perfect I am entwined making love to my Venus and the Arrow of Eros flies impeccably from the bow's tangental string long before it hit me in the core of my radiant formidability
                            formatting the infinite flowers open from the rose bleeding             tears of honeysuckle nectar alluring even the still air around us
              
                      breeze deep lovers
                         our written diaphanous dreams untangle this fluent love of fluctuations - "madam i'm madly intoxicated with thou love" - spinning
                    mind to body
                             pinnin' up our glowing souls to the edge of the nearest galactic centre approaching as a dark unforgettable symphony
                        attractive spirits permutating
visages, forms and visions
                          zebras, donkeys and magnificent horses stampeding
to the shores of passionate burning collision    

I have had this most magical dreams of different creatures emerging out of the ocean waves forming in the foam of their peeks, or as large as mighty waves when they grab you and swing you on their amplitudes. We are all velocity swimmers, for others we dive, for me you floaat above the mundane... I love your thoughtful elegance This style of a heart budding into ions of ineffable revelations
I was walking under ancient palm trees and healthy pines . . . on the Riva dressed in linnen summers dress . A humble content joyful human being Castaneda's legacy dreamer ... A spectator of energy waves on the real coloured gem deep dark azul and deep blue see . . . emerging flamingoes and pelicans transforming into dolphins, fish, little birds, turtles, lions, whales  
                          each other merging
as a cluster of maidens in Roman bathtubs waiting for Turkish honey to be massaged and soaked deeply into their bronze white skins as they were a perfect medium for younger mystics : As they are tempted to be untamed from untainment again
What I do  know
         is that        magic is floating all around me and I don't convey this simple fact with exact assurance in no time : are we sinking or gliding as a spectre of wave lenght

My friend din't love Aurora Borealis. He's too much of a loner and I felt that the triangular topography of my electro charged notebook
was a magnetic love tale from the enchanted forest. I was mistaken. I could . .  in my utter..  the immediate intricate love crush occured

Unintentionall y
for The Northern Exposures went surfin' south. From here we switch easily from one Galaxy to another. Easily! Come! Choose wise, my inspiration, my
Nebulae
    before the cosmic wind rattles my green bones and crush them into nonexistence, brawling and wavering the micro humus for the next generations.

I've been dreaming of memory losses or i really am losing sense of self

A painting on the room, a girl sits like an ant, three straight haired girls laughing like nothing is happening, another thinking about *** all the time; a boy in a frame, all boys watching ****, all boys eating their own toes;

A tree, a whole tree in your stomach

"Your tongue is going to be enoki farm, that's what i think," he said to a carefully moonlit ice cube, he said that to his mother too, he said that to the taxi driver; now he is becoming lunatic, he wants lake, he wants paper, he wants to drown in the sky

Now is the time, now is not the time, please do not stop, oh, please stop

"Sorry i yelled, i was on my period," a boy says sorry to his grandfather, his grandfather died a year before his adolescence, his grandfather had no ears before he was buried, his grandfather was a bunny, he used to eat carrots a lot that's why a boy sees you with different eyes, that's why a boy sees you with clearer sight

You judge me unfair, but i don't care, it's better than you knowing what i really am

So we are competing, so we want to see who is more terrible at being liar, so we try to hide things in exposures, but you lose, but i also do
So we are objectifying ourselves and we don't want to stop
We love the smell, we long for the reeks, we want hurt, we want the thing they do to sinners, we want fire, we want the burns, we want the pain but we run
And no one thinks of coming back

"A year from now we will become strangers," oh, to shooting stars

But heart isn't the only thing that beats, but heart isn't the only thing that draws blood to your head

I am, i am, i am, losing my legs!

It was another way of saying i love you but you don't understand my stomach is growing, my stomach is alive, my stomach is going to **** me at midnight so i won't sleep, i won't feel sleepy at all, i will see the sun rises, and i won't fear when she is here, i won't fear even when she is outside; she exists and she proves it-

Why can't anyone do the same?*

Life does not go that way, it does not go any way; life is stomachache, life is ******* and marital rapes, life is what your country does to separatists-
"I've been dreaming of wide windows," says the moon, "but there's

None wide enough for me."

You don't think I understand.

That was the last thing you said to me before I found out you had taken the easy route, the one where the only ticket available to purchase is a stomach full of sleeping pills.

I tried so ******* hard to understand after that, because that was the only note you thought to leave me. Whether on purpose or by accident, I took it more to heart than your absence, anyway.

You never really left. You hid behind my ear and over my shoulder so for a long time, before I got used to seeing your reflection behind me in the bathroom mirror like in a cheesy horror flick, I was constantly dizzy because of all the whirling around. A mixture of fear and excitement, tasting something like stomach bile and the lemons that were on your breath no matter what the time of day, would prepare me to meet you, or rather the lack of you. If the acidic solution wasn't used up on a kiss to your cold and rotting lips, it burned a hole at the base of my stomach that grew into a volcanic crater.

Maybe that was why I erupted so many times that autumn, my mouth burning and smoking before blowing bits of my top into the atmosphere. I lost so much of me in those natural disaster moments. I lost my mind with my temper and raved too often to be trusted. I was called a lunatic because I saw you outside of the photos and family videos your mother showed me after your disappearance.

She was the only one who didn't avoid me; quite the opposite. She clung to me because I was the last physical link to you, no matter how dishonest that connection was. I was as lonely as she.

Slowly, though, slowly, I forgot to look for you in the shadows and behind ocean waves, and I forgot what you looked like breathing deeply in and out with your limbs sprawled out and occupying my entire bed, and I forgot how you licked your lips before pressing them to mine, every time. I couldn't find you anymore except for in the memories haunting the flowers you gave me on our first dinner date, the one I asked you to, pressed between the pages of the one book we agreed would be our favorite, or in the quickly-fading scent you left in all the sweaters your mother dumped on me the moment she moved to Thailand after her messy divorce.

But I can't say I don't want to lose you; I don't have anything left of yours to lose. I lost you long before your accidental suicide note. I lost you when the plants littering your apartment, the ones I gifted you, started wilting because you lost interest in other things' lives trying desperately to find purpose in your own. I lost you when you traded your guitar in for an attempt to find sanity and when you broke every one of your CD's, your most prized possessions, one night in a fit of rage against unfairness and bad luck and life in the universe.

Most of all, though, I lost you completely when you ripped up the Polaroid exposures you had taken of me one night when we finally believed that love was real, and that we were in it. When I asked you why, you only suggested I leave.

That was the night you told me I didn't understand, and I'm only just started to realize that you were right, and that I will never understand. I will never understand your cryptic, poetic responses. They're romantic as heck sometimes, but other times, all I want is a straight answer. I hate the way you would save pictures of me sneezing, or talking, or doing something ugly and dumb. You may have told me I was beautiful doing those things, but lying does not make me love you more. I was far too gone for that. I hated your slow and rolling hips, your lazy grace, all the things that a romance novel might describe as **** and utterly perfect, but when we were in a hurry, they were so inconvenient.

I could feel bad about saying these behind your back, but when I say I cannot wait to forget you completely, it is only a little bit a lie. I've found it so much easier to write about someone you love, whether the unrequited type or the type  so romantic your heart swells to a grapefruit size after he says yes and is so ******* romantic it stays that size for a year after, after they've died, only the feeling isn't euphoria anymore but that of suffocating as the heart presses against the throat and slowly drowns you.

These words stem from the extra heart parts I had to cut out to survive, and while I am left stoic-faced and cold, I can finally fly.

days and nights and days
all melding into one
a temporary escape lies
at the bottom of a bottle.

in ash-blackened mountains,
white soldiers in crumbling helmets
crowd glass barracks to the brim
as they burn in embers of regret.

awake, arise and stumble;
residual drunken stupor;
rehydrate as hungry stomach grumbles;
flip through blurred snapshots
of the night before.

double, over-exposures
forever lost in your strobe-light mind.
massaging temples, rubbing eyes,
you let slip this futile plight.

lets write poems under the sky
about intimacy and anatomy
adorned in sheets and flesh

lets take photographs in the dark
exposures of pale faces on black
adorned in mittens and sweaters

lets break our fingers off the piano
crying melodies and harmony
adorned in disappointment and blood

Listen to the motion of the waves
and be not afraid
of the oncoming torrent.
We’ll just grow larger lungs,
our fingers and toes will web,
we will develop a vernacular
of the likeness of whales, dolphins
and other mammals of the sea.

But do not worry, when the torrent does come,
we may be far away.
For now let us partake in hallucinogenics
in the tall forest at night,
and take long exposures of the stars
with our cameras,
and then after take long exposure of each other
with our eyes
and we will see movement.
We will see the frozen waves of the campfire
And our eyes will burn,
And it will make us feel alive
to be next to each other.

And we will travel together to that Great City
of monuments and people and concrete
where people wear their bones on the outside
Wearing rags or the highest end fashion
(lately the two are one in the same)
We can travel the city for miles on foot
eating at the strangest of places
and being able to feel art;
feel the art of the city of the movement
you will find it only aesthetically different from
the Ocean or Forest
it is one, part of this place.
and it is our place,
even if you have not
found it.

Gulf winds , carve thy signature across the open plains ...
Unto granite exposures , across the mighty Water Oaks of antiquity ..
Carry thy burden across Appalachian hills , over sandstone shore
and cotton field ...
Hold rare flocks of Starling in thy sured grasp and nurturing ways , usher the cool winds of Autumn on brilliant October days ...
Bring forth the scented air of Gardenia and Magnolia , the pollen of Chestnut Tree and Peach blossom ...
Calm the farm fires of November with captaincy and vigor , return Mother Georgia in May to her lush ,  Summer splendor ....

to the managers of hello poetry.....

to whom it may concern
i would like another exposure
more than one i think i have earned
i've used up the ones you gave me
but have published other poems for sure
i have commented on writers who inspired
and for my comments you've promised me more
to others i have given my mouthful
but for exposures you can count me poor
how do i get an exposure
when i think i've done all i can
i just want my poems read by others
read once and  again and again
please hold up your part of the bargain
and read the fine print too
for it says that you'll help expose me
so others can comment too....

On my way to teaching my lovely yoga class this paradoxical poem:✍️
       We Die When We’re Supposed To

We die when we’re supposed to,
Karma chained in cause/effect.
One eve I lay there,
Sorry, sad and full of fear
When of a sudden, shocked, aware,
The snare of truth, as clear as day,
Told me that we pass away
From causes self-created
From our characters, our choices,
Gene pushed, situation fated…

You know, when you get these flashes,
(call them insights, revelations, mind disclosures)
You can sense veracity’s exposures crashing in
And you’ve no choice
But to believe
What mind and thought receive,
In this case this:
Death comes when it will,
And it is up
To us to give this hidden ‘reasoning’ a whirl
And take the pill
However bad the taste.

We Die When We’re Supposed To 9.18.2012/8.16.2018 Birth, Death & In Between II; Arlene Nover Corwin

This life
This second
Pases by like fraight trains over never ending tracks;
and the endless miles of  big rigs on the interstate

This life
This minute
Dwindles away like the drop of rain off a leaf right after the rain
And the  harsh realization

That this is'nt home- It's not even close
Home was better; Much warmer despite all the negative exposures of the past

every moment every ounce of emotion

burrows within
like the rats in your wall.
and the coldness in your soul.

The ice became a reflection of how I treat every moment of my past
Frozen in time
An ice cap to place on the emotions I refuse to deal with
Some way to construct a barrier between myself and reality
I've sent out to sea
The functioning parts of my interior that are no longer needed here

I have found replacements
I would feed you to the wolves
Mirrors of the land would prove too many theories correct
In search for pressured cracked exposures
I found longing
A feeling measured by regret laced with muted passion

There on the ice, miles at sea
I found myself digging up parts of me
I was bound to forget
As the temperature began to rise
Separating the ice I have hidden upon
Falling deeply immersed
Into a sea of decisions constructed by the lack of oxygen in my blood

Sing in the brittle tree tops my despair
making sweet your melody to winter's song
try to be hard at the spring of March
make stupor merry to your seasons end

Fantastic your endeavours turn mild winds
all you did makes us more sullenly pure
they know, I know you really hate that
and in your reality death comes once every year

Make blooms the crescent of despair
be sure that the most in northern exposures
wish that they never had the bite of you
even the back lands Kind Town, Nova Scotia



By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

in the photograph from the wildlife camera
she appears at dusk, side-on
her full tail in the air: the big ginger cat
from the farm next door

she is one of those puzzles you find
in newsprint books at the tobacconists
— which one of these doesn’t belong? —
because before and after her on the camera
were a mountain lion and a red fox

Film ain’t dead yet.
We brought three
disposables to festival,
the ones that whirr up, do thirty
exposures and flash so bright they blind you.
Immortalize the medium, the moments
are secondary.

I remember Dad, toes in the sand,
shorts and his eczema legs, with the camera,
you were building castles –
the photos are somewhere. Shining
millennial baby then,
ringing me now, drunk, crying.

i thought of the two bobcats who came
to the picture window on St. Stephen’s Day
at three o’clock in the morning
looking intently in
and the man in Finland whose dog got out:
the wolves at the forest fringe
were calling it to come and play

there was no blood, he said
the dog just disappeared into their jaws

There was more blood, this time,
the third time, third time, that you had tried to
excommunicate
yourself from this life without consulting me.
You know, when I tried that nonsense
they dragged me
kicking and screaming to the clinic.

still she comes around:
again this morning on the deer trail
where she sat gazing up
the jays and the blackbirds with new hatchlings
diving, exploding into the air

and her
wearing their worry and disapproval
— even, you think
their appetites and their hatred
like a bright blessing
the urgent chatter of the birds an electric hum
almost to the horizon

*Here you are again.
This last time past you were probably on drugs,
you were
vomiting adoration down the phone. Reborn?
You’re seventeen,
the black dog keeps going for your throat
but lifts you by the scruff.

I’m watching you fly up in a spray of wings,
loose feathers, high heels and lamentation.
I’m no lioness –
I’m just a fat, cool cat you think is mighty.
I surrendered to the mice though, when I
was your age.

Lily magnolia
written November 29th, 2020

I walked by you this summer
dressed in all your green finery.
If I thought anything
it was, "what a nice little tree."
I am sorry to say
I did not look close enough
to form much of an impression.

Now fall has come
you have shivered most of your leaves off
a few hold on tenaciously
trying in vain to cover your virtues.

I look at you and am I ever surprised!
Your branches are craggy and twisted
displaying the lovely complexity of advanced age
result of many exposures to the storms of life.

The tips of your branches
hold fuzzy little nubs
that remind me of ***** willows.
I stand near and marvel
at the aching tenderness of your womanhood
kept hidden until now
under your leafy raiment.

I look but I do not touch
I have not asked permission
and I will not.
I hope the world
continues to pass you by
leaving you unmolested.
It is not easy to be so revealed.

I look forward
to seeing you next summer
all dressed up again.
I will smile and nod
as I pass by
knowing what your verdant covering
hides beneath it.

Here born a princess
Without titles or castles or jewels
With no crowns nor grounds nor lands
With no treasures nor exposures
With no prestige nor heritage nor lineage
Not even a silver spoon in her mouth she should’ve brag about
Not one subject or object
But all the same, with a name as grand
A celebration as loud
She’ll have the state-of-the-art carriages out of old tires
The best ball gowns from the best-deal market fares
She’ll have the best accessible education
And only the kindest words spoken
But she’s a princess only in his mind
And she should’ve known firsthand
Because there’s an invisible ladder she must climb
Not any elegant staircases she can glide down from
When the real world greets her unceremoniously
One amongst the rest
One among the many
Ranked in between the real deal the richest the smartest and the fairest
Fairly
As should be…
Because she’s a princess only in his mind
And she should’ve known firsthand
The hidden danger of a love bind