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All things that pass
    Are woman's looking-glass;
They show her how her bloom must fade,
And she herself be laid
With withered roses in the shade;
  With withered roses and the fallen peach,
  Unlovely, out of reach
    Of summer joy that was.

    All things that pass
    Are woman's tiring-glass;
The faded lavender is sweet,
Sweet the dead violet
Culled and laid by and cared for yet;
  The dried-up violets and dried lavender
  Still sweet, may comfort her,
    Nor need she cry Alas!

    All things that pass
    Are wisdom's looking-glass;
Being full of hope and fear, and still
Brimful of good or ill,
According to our work and will;
  For there is nothing new beneath the sun;
  Our doings have been done,
    And that which shall be was.
softcomponent Feb 2014
There is the latent hum of some probably-industrial sumthin-or-another in the distance. Sounds like a ferry at dock, or the Townsite mills characteristic hum of eternity as it once acted as the forever-whitenoise of my past life in Powell River.

Sasha has gone to see her friend a floor down. I sit candidly at her desk typing these words on her MacBook Pro.. her dorm is an ambient water of a place, but with every passing night I spend in it, it becomes harder and harder to fall asleep. The bed feels like wood board or padded cement now. Sasha rolls around in her sleep, occasionally choking on her tonsils and gagging a prolonged operatic note of snores. It's not like she can help it.. often, she talks about removing her tonsils as if it's something she can do with a spare moment between classes.

The dorm was easier for me to inhabit when I imagined her living quaintly and quietly without my constant everywhereness.. on her first night alone in bed, she slept like a baby and the overheating, I'm sure, was less to bear in my absence as there wasn't a ******* furnace spurning mammalian blood to every antipode of my body for the sake of staying alive.. just her capillaries attending to the night-shift and leaving no feedback loop between our ***-drenched thermostats. There was a feeling of otherness to it that I could warm my soul with as if I were people-watching at a mall filled with everyone I've ever encountered in the matrix.

She's beautiful. Sasha, I mean. Superstitious despite her attempts to claim otherwise, but of a massive intelligence often unspoken and endowed with a linguistic nature that can speak regardless of words. Highly suspicious of some perceived bond between Anya and I that can't seem to be severed, and playfully dousing suspicions of general infidelity into many of our brink-night conversations.. I can't say I do much to remedy her paranoia as I always kick it back with consistent jokes of having '30 girlfriends' or 'that was what the girl I ****** the other night said as well! Trippy.'

These are obvious jokes. I would never cheat on her and it's a pain to have her imagine I would.

Christ be honest, I can never find the time to write anymore because I keep pretending I'm busy. I keep glassing my eyes apart with coffee and **** and feeling the inner sting to write and write and write until my fingers are bruised and my entire demeanour is nothing more than an existence in pure, floating consciousness of sleet-covered panic attack self-immoliating itself in a Wal-Mart parking lot just to say hiya, Good God, how's the cloud of idolatry today? Fleeting? Empty? Shat? I'm starting to think you have the shorter end of the stick cuz I'm pretty sure I've found the Kingdom of Heaven and it's all a bunch of beautiful panic remedy exacterbated by SSRI psychedelic depersonalization with a life-wish disguised as a death-wish to push the envelope for mails sake, cuz I've got a message for the human race and all it says is 'humanity is not a RACE chill the **** OUT and become the human pace for the sake of nil planet without a plan you aren't a ******* poster-boy you're a poser' all very stone-cold thoughts in a volcano.. all very valid but pointless semantic gestures towards Finnegans Wake and the sequel I'd like to write called Finnegans Nap.

The other day, I stole a book from the university library.

I had a freelance article I had to start and preferably finish that same day, and Sasha had decided to skip psychology for Charles Bukowski so we scouted a quiet space on the windowsill overlooking the perpetual busk of student body.. I plugged my laptop in and sourly gazed at the flakey subjects I had to choose from until I noticed we were right next to a giant section entirely dedicated to the study of the Beat Generation. I picked out the closest book, and dove up on some academic diatribe about the implementation of Timex making watches an affordable commodity during the post-war boom, causing economy to become totalitarian in its accuracy and thus mental hegemony. It worked its way into stating that Jack Kerouac's On the Road was a blatant and concise rebellion against this form of timekeeping in its hedonic, careless flow that was not marked by 6 o'clock or on-the-dot redundancy.. the subject matter being so dense and alluring, I turned to Sasha and said, 'I have to steal this book.'

She chuckled a little, being a chronic kleptomaniac herself, and retorted, 'are you sure you can do that? They have these sensor things that go off when you leave.. they'd catch you probably.' In my mind, I was needing to exorcise myself of Judaeo-Christian morality so as to guarantee a survival and thriving intellectual feed regardless of red-tape or monetary symbolism.. I saw myself adapting to a hedonic habit of robbery for the sake of food and freedom or some such half-witted excuse like that, and took Sasha's warning as a challenge to transcend my typical moral comfort zone.

Glassy-eyed, I asked Google how I'd go about bypassing the security scanners and, lo and behold, within 5 minutes I had my answer and was already digging through the books binding with my house-key to remove the magnetic strip hidden in the spine. After 10 minutes of exhilaration and anxiety at potentially being caught, the strip was out and jammed between two loose wood-boards in the window sill. I told Sasha we should try to leave.

As I neared the scanner, I let go of consequence in remembrance of my mortality, the blank expressions on our faces probably hinting at some form of degenerate nervousness had someone decided to analyze us aaaaaand yet.. we made it through as safe as a bird through an open window then out the other side.
excerpt: "the mystic hat of esquimalt"
That mirror
Which makes of men a transparency,
Who holds that mirror
And bids us such a breast-bare spectacle see
Of you and me?

That mirror
Whose magic penetrates like a dart,
Who lifts that mirror
And throws our mind back on us, and our heart,
until we start?

That mirror
Works well in these night hours of ache;
Why in that mirror
Are tincts we never see ourselves once take
When the world is awake?

That mirror
Can test each mortal when unaware;
Yea, that strange mirror
May catch his last thoughts, whole life foul or fair,
Glassing it—where?
softcomponent Nov 2013
the left side of every entrance tells me
a singer-songwrite about the fashion
in which you once entered a room..
glassing around your iris in false
-search for something to pretend
you are not paying attention to
me as much as you are to what
is in front of you because you care
so much.. beyond a comprehensible
dust-jacket mind-map lick-my-toes
and prove your

LOVE..

I kid, I kid, you love me, you
needn't prosthetic yourself into
a dark misogyny over there.
it's always strange to consider
how strangled you become in
flashy jackets bought forever
at a thrift-shop cash-register
and oh good ******* the
employee is no employee he's
a volunteer and he's been here
forever sweet mr. christie (avoiding
the obvious reference because Judaeo
-Christianity does not make

                          Good

           Cookies)

processing your purchase--
perhaps soon it'll be dollars
to counter. dollars have found
her--

**awake
at my wake
Amanda Jul 2015
Giving up:

It is when you look at the chef's knife at a strange hour wondering if it is sharp enough to draw blood. You already know it is, but the white lies beg to stay within your skin.

Don't you dare say I gave up, or I am giving up.

1. Especially when I cry with anger glassing over my eyes.
Bleeding out all the bad truths & rusty faults, for a better day.
I have not given up if I look for truth over sweet fiction.

2. How ferociously warm and red my cheeks are. The kind of red reminicent of berry stains in tumbled laundry. Truth is they were slapped by a ghost's hands.

Or when I found out that hot tears and hot showers feel the same.

Do not say I lack the strength to stay here, when my veins dance to a heartbeat; loud & defiant.

Don't ever say to someone: 'You gave up easily' unless you know the exact & imperfectly precise way their thoughts align into dizzy constellations.
Like the way you know the back of your hand.

*Don't.
Trivializing one's decision/feelings is not always the best thing to do.
Griffin Schapp Oct 2014
spreading
it creeps
plaguing your mind
filling your heart
flowing your veins
clouding your mind
glassing over your eyes
much
like
hate
Lorenzo Cawley Sep 2017
tear upon the climbing highs,
rip-- bring up the 'cending lows.

this is living in your fears.

drinking through the breaking points,
a mind full of troubled pints,
there's a story within this glass,
a tale within her eyes.

hear the tale of broken glass,
beautiful in the moonlight,
like crackling indifference 'gainst
hope's warm embers of light.

claim the territory of her pain,
a force like soul-fallen rain
all in vain-- all in vain.

as she is...
she once was...

so shall she be.

so there is hope!
as once she was--

no! you cannot see?
the tale within her eyes?
the story within the glass?

so shall the rain fall,
pins and needles
pins and needles.

so shall the numbness grow.
novicane and empty bottles,
moonlight. tears.

all in vain: novicane.
all in vain: careful rain.

was she? the glass of my life?
shall she be? a tale of shattered moonshine?
am I the story, beautiful in fractured embers:
crackling indifference to hope?

so shall she be, it seems.
so shall I be in dreams:
again, under tearing seams.
broken. moonlit glassing gleams.

pain.
rain.

pins and needles.
Kristina Weeks May 2018
Look at the sky
Isn’t it beautiful
The wind dances on the warmth from the sun
The trees and grass sing salutations in response to its rays
Wet pavement reflects light like silver
A mirror to the sky creating an abyss of blue
A river
Floating in this beautiful life, alive
This is life through the eyes of a child

But then there’s me
Staring through and empty face
Hollow eyes
The river is just a river
The pavement is cracked and worn
My soul is torn between
Between wanting to die
And living a lie
What is alive
When you can’t feel anymore

What the **** is wrong with me
Every touch could be my last sensation
Someone please help me
I’m running out of patience
**** God
Who the **** are you
I’d like to talk to him
I’d like to meet him
Ask him why he’s doing this to me
Why did you give me so much

I’m losing a battle I was forced to fight
It doesn’t seem right
I’m losing the light
In my eyes glassing over
With each pathetic petty interaction
Put on my mask and dance
Dance you ******* monkey
Smile for the camera
Spin around and take a bow

I didn’t ******* ask for this
I didn’t ask to be here
I didn’t ask to be alive
I didn’t ask to be sad
I didn’t ask to be

They keep telling me
Everyone has a purpose in this world
Well maybe mine is to be ******* fodder
For the worms
Maggots eat through my body and lay their eggs
Let them swim down my throat and through my eyes
Maybe then I would see what this world really wants from me

I wish I could feel
No sensations anymore
No touch
I feel like I’m floating
Everything tastes like bile
My mind lagging behind my body like watching an old movie

Look left; look right
Step one; two
Itch; scratch
Breathe; cough
Hurts; stop
Eyes; burn
Stare; through
Laugh; stand up
Walk; now smile

Isn’t this fun?
Let’s do this again.
Same time tomorrow?
Tiger Striped Feb 2022
If you read this
carefully, you’d know
it was about you
and you’d mention it
the next time you saw me
you’d say just the right thing.
You don’t love to read
or even like it at
all, sometimes.
It's in the reflection of your
eyes, glassing over as
you trudge through
your morning news articles
but you finish them
anyway.
If you read me
carefully, you’d know
I am all about you
even when your eyes
glass over as
you pick me apart,
trying to figure out
what makes words
so **** important.
I’ll tell you later
that you already know,
if only you’d read
between the lines
of me and you.
emperor maples signpost ghost-roads
down which eyes flow cold as lights
glassing an inner field of kindness
& storms flavored by leaves sculpted
in the silent snow of last good-byes
& the perfect peace of knowing even
this cannot come between us

— The End —