Subconsciously,
I replaced your emotions
With emoticons
Your eyes
With profile pictures
Your voice
With fonts
Falling into this technological abyss
How could I be so stupid
Thinking whatsapp
Could compensate
For your aura.
And now consciously
I suffer...

Times New Roman reminds me of a time when I knew that romance was not dead because I got to hold it in my hand 
 
The curve of the characters reminds me of the uneven curve of your cupids bow

The claustrophobic clustering of vowels reminds me of the cringe worthy cling of your foggy glass  frames stuck to mine, failing sight feeding failed intimacy

The simplicity of each symbol reminds me of the systematic sufficiency with which you seduced me in so few words,
 the straightforward soliloquy with which you struck me and bereft me of my sanity.

The length of each letter reminds me of the longevity of our last embrace
Lanky limbs looped laterally to the length of my body for literal milliseconds

The overuse in overdue essays typed in early hours of the morning reminds me of the overuse of three words and the emptiness and lack of effort behind them, 

Submitting those three words for a good grade and a pat on the back, coming up short because professor and princess alike saw through the inability to do
With meaning,
That your words had no feeling.

The fact that though I've faced fancier fonts and fell for them fanatically, I always return to the first, reminds me that though a fair few have found more than friendship in my fragile forearms that the first is the forever 
and if at times the former 
then always the future

the finest font I've ever found is you

I love my very own pen
a pen easy to push
a pen for truth
lies out-cast!

I love my pen
the way it goes along
with my helical head
the way it goes swift
with my roguish paper
the way it writes blank prose
delighted? Not me, it's them
or you.

non-sense fonts, they say
I beg for disgrace
for they are the power
of my visions thing
they are the power of my dark ink
freedom sharpened, inked
I scribbled its wisdom

Thoughts once ooze out
ideas irretrievable
impressions? I don't need
exactly its ballpoint's labor of thoughts
desires for precession and
harmony
of ideas never pirate.

I swallowed her and now
She lives inside me or I live
Through her, we are alive.
I’m her friend, her teenage
And fantasies, a sixty year old-
Hair and books she ever read
Long distance phone calls
And delight matched our
Love for Sujata, Mr And Mrs Iyer
And I sat on her couch on my
Despised vacations sketching
Letters to Milena, Quabbani
And we spoke of her brothers,
Generations and cafes I went.
I’m Delhi, Bangalore and
Endless conversations-
She never met and she’s my
Lost Malayalam, postcards and
A world so familiar, a childhood.

Hold your breath and relax
I’m going to stay and listen
Till you are out of stories and
I repeat, remind and you smile.
I’ll get you melodies and 60s
Harold Robbins and Nutan,
Your weirdness and aloofness.
You don’t grow old with me
I’ll live, I promise as your fonts
Visit places you walked and
Write to you all, deep- blue
Letters, deep- blue-letters.
You are my first high-heels
Strawberry fields and music system
I’ll recite you a love story
Picture him as our classic heroes
And giggle as girls sixteen and
Seventeen. You swallowed me
And I live through you, we’re alive.

Tattoo Promises

Read these words now inked of a passionate verse
From miles away, beneath clouded silver linings
Far beyond every enchanted moon glow vista
Phrases of undying devotion in eternal fonts
Styled by a hand now longing your touch
Tattoo promises melodically whispered
Breathless devotion in sonnet sighs
Forevermore holding tightly your
Affectionate kisses dripping
Of sweetest pure honey
Unto my wanting lips
In poetic phrasing
Written entirely
Upon the walls
Of this my
Beating
Heart

much of the time Nietzsche was wrong,
in that claiming systematisation in philosophy
is a form of dishonesty,
perhaps, but for people having to wake up
to an alarm clock at 7 a.m. for several years
there's hardly any dishonesty to think about,
no long lost dream...
what bothers me is the supreme (apologies
for the adjective) usage of maxims in
the English speaking world - they're everywhere,
it's almost parallel processing of the maxim
and an advert snail (slogan), Achilles did
indeed lose in Zeno's paradox (fair enough
it was a tortoise and not a snail... but i
did mention slogan)...
English society hardly reads, hence it stresses
maxims, extracted from texts like it stresses
advert slogans... plenty of soul-mates about...
it doesn't read, hence it pressure to pretend it reads
by the process of regurgitation...
but it doesn't regurgitate what's necessary:
a unique interpretation, heretical, it just regurgitates
****, maxims... i find great dishonesty in the maxim,
it's a flimsy truth that attracts no bothersome
experience, observationally speaking... it's true,
but it's hardly experienced... that's the greater dishonesty
Nietzsche claimed paired-against systematisation;
any number of maxims can disorientate a man,
systematisation places him in a cohort,
in that great summer of 1961... re (i.e. repeat)...
in that great summer of 2005... re (  "        "     )...
English society doesn't read because it's saturated by
the virus of advertisement... the iconoclasm of
fonts, the swirly and curly coca cola insignia...
the proof that it doesn't read is the French work ethic...
and the fact that it's too eager to regurgitate maxims...
it's basically stating a philosophical bulimia,
although a bulimia of having eaten an anorexic's
daily allowance of a malteser and a lettuce leaf,
puking out more acidic saliva than the content of
what the oesophagus just constricted down like
a boa into the lake of Hades know as λιμνη ασιδωρ;
grapes of wrath? more like sour grapes, or simply
gooseberries. honest, they don't read, they just
maximise what's intended when it isn't intended,
they have no narrative, and if they do, they narrate
with images like some obscure rekindling of
Egyptology from the Suez clan of those ******* Africans
who built graves so high that it took the Eiffel tower to obscure
them. so no, Nietzsche was wrong about systematisation
being dishonest... what is dishonest is his excessive
maximisation, overly utilising maxims, truths that
very few will experience given the σ paradox
in practical saying: no plumber can or will experience
**** or skydiving, horse riding, **** ***...
i.e. the totality of all possible experiences... hence the
by-product of the σ paradox is the observer,
who utters many truths but experiences only a fraction,
a dividing summation, as in Nietzsche's case,
a descent into madness - σ of course refers to the mathematical
understanding of anti-phonetic encoding: sum of, total.

Waiting for that paper, a light
A cursor that keeps blinking for the next word
Even when the screen arranges to sleep in daylight
Fingers begin to itch and start being febrile.

An email, such a pity,
is more accessible than
a post box.
All the handwriting fonts that I did try, couldn’t,
Just possibly couldn’t mirror the impeccable tries
To struggle to be parallel to the top
Or bottom of a page.

The improbability of what the next thought would be
The prediction  of where the addressee would smile
Or frown, or pick up eyes to stare at the wall for a while,
To embrace what had just been conveyed.

Letters are like light, they reach us later
From when they were born, but the spaces
they illuminate or burn on their arrival!
I wonder if our pupils shrink.

They more than just tag along, they tap in,
They’re the result of cleaning the ink from
the nib, a thousand times, over thousands
of sentences, or maybe just a few, but they do.

And don’t dare ask the pen for proof!
It’ll track down wrinkled pages
Who had their thirst quenched by
The swipes of fountain pens’ fountainheads,
And pictures of the fingers
Bathed in red, and black, and blue,
And occasionally of table clothes
Spilled over by the consequence of imperfect handles.

Imagine if light came as soon as it was made,
It would be difficult for our eyes to handle such bait
Sometimes, a pause is necessary,
Imagine a world without commas!

I’d like to peek into the writer’s letters,
Not to read, but to sense the shapes of emotions
And stretches of As and Ns, or the reach of commas
On the next line, and then, close my eyes
And shove my nose in it, to sniff hard
The paper and the blue smells,
And die doing so if it was eventual.

Dear technology,
You replaced my emotions with emoticons
Voice with fonts
Love with likes
Compliments with comments.

You make distance seem so close
But you have no sense of touch
For you overrode internet connection over soul connection
You gave me a list of friends, yet I feel so alone.

You made me believe in a world all of your own
Pictures to prove their existence
Status to update me on their life
And a message to make me feel connected.

Under your loving hands, like an infant, I rest, protected in hand.
Under the vast emptiness and dullness of the galaxy, your light shines, your robe, O so white!
SO glorious your face, your presence!

Your presence, it caresses me, with just a little bit more, I would have been crushed and would have been drowned under my own tears and would have dented the marble floor with certain and whole-hearted knees.

How marvelous is that cross...a word won't fit it.
That cross...if only words, dots, dashes, and punctuation can have more to offer. An endless murky drowning sea of words of different fonts and sizes won't quite make the mark.

You made my mouth like a sharpened sword. Ready to fight for your name, ready to stand my ground, ready to make the darkness fear and make fallen angels regret their mistakes. They already are.
ready to open hearts and minds, as you call many to you.

You make me like a polished arrow. Ready to go wherever you shoot me, ready to tear down what the devil has built. Ready to have your word, the gospel tied to me, as I fly through the spiritual realm and spread your word, the gospel. Simply the gospel. NOTHING MORE NOTHING LESS.

You hid me in the shadow of your hand. You cover me. You protect me. You hide me even if it seemed like all eyes were on me. Maybe they are on you. I want to be more like you in image O LORD.  

You concealed me in your quiver, God USE me!!! IF only words quite make sounds of hunger and thirst and the cries of my spirit and my new heart to you! You polished me and I am ready.
Ready whenever you say its time to go, or then I have to stand strong. Ready whenever, wherever, however you call me.

You polished me.
I am sharpened.
I am a polished arrow and have a sharpened mouth.
"Okay LORD GOD, I am ready."

She is the typesetter’s “e”

The once-rounded uncial script,
Unbroken like the solemn vow of a monk,
His whisper, a shepherd of words under the cowl,
Murmurations of the Holy Mother to the lambswool shroud of candlelight.

His candle-flock of dreams to some hill of penitent towers, war-cowed
And broken open like faith-unfended helmets, littering the ground,
With their unspeaking tassels in babbling pagan sound of wind,
That hill too, once-rounded bare under the glittering apostles of twilight.

In the abbeywork of air, calligraphy was a cipher of souls,
He unwrested demons from an inkwell of sunsets, smothered them in blotting paper,
Freed the incarnate whole to the book of hours, nib-pointed in quills and illuminated in gold,
Line by line, in Carolingian winding sheets, he returned the misshapen to the fold,
To the carpet page of home and the warm ligatures of their waiting women.
So the shutters of the heavenly house could blow light in slanted rays to a wilderness in storm.

But he never tamed the aero-elongated, descender of Troy in a “t,”
He never knew the unholiness of the underscore or fonts as ******,
Or the world unwilling to know itself in serif robes of ancient lore.
His life was a simple rounded-out syllable of one man,
Left in the muddied, unintelligible text of faith and war.

She is the typesetter’s “e” and now belongs to any hand.

Can you read what you read?
I'm sure you can and there's no need to ask.
But it's weird.
Feeling through symbols.
Understanding symbols.
Writing symbols.
Combining symbols to make sense.
But some combinations are wrong.
Making sounds for symbols.
Saying the symbols correctly.
Different accents for symbols.
Drawing symbols, making them look pretty.
Fonts for symbols.

Imagine. We are ruled by systems of symbols.

Microsoft "WURD"
slang font.
i know your type.
you like Arial.
you dig Arial Black cause there's no Arial White.
she wears a size 0.
invisible to the eye.
she's from Georgia.
print her out on white paper.
she'll be prettier than Courier New Times New Roman.
her Impact on Felix Titling will be extravagant.
she'll put him under a spell with her Book Antiqua.
you'll give up on her and take a train through the Terminal towards Tahoma in the "Golden State"
you'll come across Verdana who is a size 12.
bold as you are, you'll ask why she tries to underline her beauty by showing off her colon(:) .
and you ask her why women are always cranky before they get their period (.) ?


[arial, arial black, georgia, courier new, times new roman, impact, felix tilting, book antiqua, terminal, tahoma, verdana=different fonts]

I was given, at my first birthday party,
a gift sublime, a lovely, lush garden
I played among its fonts and flowers,
traded baseball cards with Atlas and Athena,
rolled in high grass with iridescent dragons

Then one fine day through leaflets high,
I spied a fat juicy fig, haloed by Summer sun
The tree was poison, I knew, its sweet fruit
most likely bad as well, but in my arrogance
I climbed the trunk, got tangled in its branches

I lost control, lost something never truly held,
and fell, through viney snarls and vicious thorns
Fell farther than I ever rose, to putrid death,
moldered slime beneath the canopy
of verdant paradise on gentle hillside above

I crawled about in mud and earthen warrens
Slowly, year by year, learned to walk again
But arrogant I remained—had not my
lesson learned, and so I doubled-down,
made mockery of this chance for redemption

All the sweet virgins did I ****, and teach
our children sin, in crystalline waters
I did shat on mulched fields, amber and green,
with cigarette butts and baggies blowing
listless on Autumn winds

When Winter finally came, as winters must,
to **** off weakened souls, and make
the garden ready for new attendants,
I did not learn, I did not take the blame...
It's Him, I cried, I have not power to do this!

But then my youngest daughter sobbed
She watched, sadly, out clouded, grimy windows
and, looking up at my limpid, sullen eyes
crawled into my arms one last, lonely time
to face what I could not...

Behold, the Silent Spring

When you feel taken for granted
thinkin' they just don't care
wanting to move away again,
but again, you don't know where

burned-out, tired of trying
to be all the bossman wants
to be everything to everyone,
reading in between the fonts

We who sit beside you
in the office and the stall
who sing along, the same old song,
while you stand and take the fall

in a cubicle, with mistletoe,
this lonesome caroler hums
it's all benign,
please don't resign
before the yule tide comes

Want to see you here on Christmas
don't leave us all alone
want to hear you 'woe ** **' again
so don't slam down the phone

don't make that snap decision
when the pressure starts to build
just let the steam out somewhere else
and let your heart be filled...
with joy

At the meeting, you suggested
wrap the garland and a bow
and all the trimmings, here and there
around whose neck, we know

the one about the lighting
the star atop her head
and now the head of operations,
wants to move you to the shed.

They just don't understand you,
your work is so complex
you didn't sign his Christmas card
but the boss still signs your checks

so don't be rash, just try to hash it out
and make a deal,
and let bygones be gone
before the office Christmas meal.

Want to see you here on Christmas
please don't leave us all alone
want to hear you 'woe ** **' again
so don't slam down the phone

and don't make that snap decision
when the pressure starts to build
just let the steam out somewhere else
and let your heart be filled...
with joy

Crying under the covers
half hoping that you suffocate
is not cute.
Breathing into a paper bag
because you can't breathe the air
that everyone seems to inhale so easily
is not pretty.
Ruining yourself on the outside
to fix whats on the inside
is not beautiful.
I don't care how many
line breaks you add,
how many fonts you change,
how many pictures you can etch into your skin.
It is not something to allude to.

No one writes letters anymore
We live in a world that needs more
Than fast messages with emoticons;
We speak our mind through funny fonts.

Tell me you could visualize
A tortured heart that slowly dies;
I truly wish you read the signs
Tears I poured while writing those lines.

In my handwriting, I revealed
In my letter, my heart I sealed
I made mistakes I can't erase
I am so sorry, I lose face.

You won't forgive me easily
Don't expect an answer swiftly;
My words came from deep down inside
One day, perhaps, you'll let it slide.

No one writes letters anymore
But I am the kind that is for
Face-to-face communication
From afar, words must move mountains.

In my handwriting, I unveiled
In my letter, my heart is sealed
I'll say sorry until you care
Was a letter enough to repair?

I am what you’re alive for, and I’ll let you start over,
And over again, before the last chance you have is done.
My name is life; though it’s not always fun.
I live in your veins and breathe in your heart,
My name is passion, and I am very smart.
You were born to use me,
To live by me,
And to inhale and exhale me.
My name is love.
You can’t run away from passion, life, or love
But this might inspire you to bring out what’s underneath to above,
To let your inner Van Gogh out or maybe, just your soul.
Pleasing anything and everything but you,
They made it your ultimate life goal.
You may still think that’s exactly what you want.
Engineers, lawyers, doctors with crazy fonts.
But you come to think that maybe that’s not for everyone…
And for that, they all make fun.
But maybe, you’re good for something that doesn’t need you
To memorize formulas, letters, numbers, symbols alike, it’s true!
Maybe you, need to be memorizing shapes, lines, colours, and words that rhyme.
Despite the way no one else has your kind of flow, it isn’t a crime.
Don’t worry about judges or surgeons, with their fancy titles and big pay,
They have their own light, their own great ways.
If you’re better with a paintbrush, then stroke away, or splash, or stipple.
Anything to show them that art is not that simple.
Its takes courage to speak out what the world craves to be said,
If one doesn’t write books or poems, there’s nothing that will be left to be read,
And children rely on stories, it’s what keeps them innocent.
It also keeps the rest of us wide awake and vigilant.
So the world bursts at the seams,
With people aching to fulfill their vibrant dreams,
Of being the ones who can finally fly; oh so very high.
The world is bursting at the seams,
With people craving to feel the colours in ungrouped teams,
That pop and crackle and spark when touched.
Turn into stardust and glitter but in the hands, are tightly clutched.
But there might be a need of people,
Who love dandelions more than roses,
Who stand strong, even as every door closes.
Who play with ice rather than fire,
Who from their risk takings, would never retire.
And who rather they feel the softness of the sand
When the wind blows it around on the beach in their hands,
Than the blankets that they sleep on.
Who look to clean the chessboard of their enemy’s pawns.
But what we see is mainly what we hope to find,
And if we look at life with love we can find it to be amiable and kind,
One can achieve their goals if they let go of the headaches for a second.
Impossibilities should never be counted, thought of, or reckoned.
So breathe; you don’t have much left of your fast travelling time line.
Recite; you don’t have much air left but your voice is just so fine.
Write and your fingertips will never stop screaming,
Just like if you run, you will never stop beaming,
Never hitting the pavement with the steps of wraith.
And if you can feel... then you will always keep close faith.
You have not badly slipped, or played the wrong note.
Because even in the midst of beautiful gardens,
Weeds were never remote.
And then you walk through the streets of love.
Hand in hand with a culture fitting you like a glove,
As the smoke draws you in a feeling not unfit;
Feelings your heart clenches; at least you can hold it.
Some have lost this rare, valued treasure,
In the waters of functions and formulas, always measured.
So never swim with them if you are one to tight line,
At the end of your life you can say, “This life is mine.”
Always one to dream, never one to follow
Never let them tell you the mind is hollow
Always experiment, don’t be the child of a shadow.
And they put art at the lowest hierarchies,
Displacing the solution to locks on creativity.
Saying art is nothing but they don’t know where we’d be
Had shapes not evolved and paintbrushes never
Met paint and gave birth to an image you can see.
That you mixed and threw together, you’re clever,
No canvas should ever be empty,
Odd reasons say still… there are plenty.
And only an artist can solve that problem.
Breathing life into objects, one can make into an emblem.
So now what you do without math, science, or neither?
Yeah… I wouldn’t give up either.

Remember all the old familiar faces?
Helvetica's the nicest of the lot.
Gill Sans and Johnston take the second places;
It seems as though the serif has been shot.
Verdana has its own intrinsic glories;
The fairest text that ever left my desk
Was set in these-- for essays or for stories.
But using them for sonnets?  That's grotesque.
   And gravestones are a special case as well:
   A mortal lack of serif fonts would be
   A certain kind of typographic hell
   With Comic Sans for all eternity.
In death, the Roman lettering is best.
May flights of serifs sing thee to thy rest.

You can control love,
as you type.
You can change the style,
which evokes feeling.
Script — curvy lines,
fitting for passion.
Sans Serif — Strong,
but friendly.
Grunge — Anger or,
vengeful.
Serif — Elegant,
and structured.
This four letter word —
is a shapeshifter.
Shifting styles, weights and
kerning on a whim.
You can control love,
highlight and change it.
Again.

But, love is fluid,
as fonts are to typographers,
as words are to poets.

I am "Josephine Wild."
I am 35 years old.
I am an artist and an ultra runner.
I experience the world differently.
I wake up.
I work and workout.
I play.
I eat.
Then I sleep.

I see things like design and shapes.
I focus on the details.
But I try to see the bigger picture.
I look at typefaces and fonts.
I get hyper-focused.
I like to work.
To make.
To create.
Day after day
This is what I do.

I am never finished.
I date things
Because I lose track of time.
Time is against me.
So, I learn not to waste it.

Sometimes, I make believe.
But I am not a child.
I am grace.
I am strength.
I am beauty.
I am determined.
I have a good heart.

I live in my own home
With my husband.
We share the same bed.
I have toys and figurines.
I collect them.
I arrange them.
They always stay the same.
They bring me joy.

I am easily distracted.
I like to escape.
I can run away with my thoughts.
I’ve learned to domesticate my emotions.
I am an artist.
I am wonderfully weird.

I like people too.
They are beautiful each in their own way.
It’s nice to connect with people,
To feel loved.
Now, I know that I am so, so loved.
It’s hard to let people go, especially when you love them.
I know that I’m not alone.

I am apart of this world.
I just experience it differently.
But sometimes, I don’t feel free.
My life isn’t easy, but it’s a gift.
Life wouldn’t be great if it was easy.
I’m easy to get along with, and now I understand.

I love music.
I love to sing.
The music I like doesn’t need words.
I’m sometimes without words.
I search for them.
I need them quicker than they come.
But that’s OK.

I try my best to better myself.
I am not wrong, I am different.
When I fall, I reset.
I try not to cling onto people, but it’s hard.
I’ve learned to forgive myself.
I’ve learned to love myself.

I make more of an effort to think things through.
I have succeeded at leaving my comfort zones.
My effort is success.

I am not a problem.
Life is opinion. The universe is change.
And I’m always changing, always growing, always living.
I have grown a good heart.

I am awesomely autistic.

One day I will be a famous poet
for now I write stillborn poems
that die after a line
so I have to delete them
my professor tells me unfinished thoughts
are just as intriguing as finished ones
but they will not make me famous
so I do not need them

One day I will be a famous poet
I will write a one thousand page poem
so long that no one will ever finish it
but they will think everyone has finished it
so one will ask
"Have you read that one thousand page poem?"
and the other will answer
"Yes I have and it was great!"
and then the two will agree
and continue to speak of its greatness
even though neither has read the poem
because if they had made it past page 193
they would have seen that the remaining pages
are just the word "famous" in different fonts
strewn across the page like dandelions
and then I will be famous

One day I will be a famous poet
I will write a poem with no words
with just a title that says "Think"
and people will read it
and they will think
and they will write their own poems
each different and precise
unique in its own way
and they will credit me when they do so
they will say "you made us think"
"you are a genius"
"A great"
and all I would have done
is write one word
a word we all say
and then I will be famous

One day I will be a famous poet
I will write a poem with no ending
And people will proceed to write their own
Because I