I.

This is a poet of the river lands,
a lowdown man of the deepest
depth of the valley, where gravity gathers
the waters, the poisons, the trash,
where light comes late and leaves early.

From the window of his small room
the lowdown poet looks out. He watches
the river for ripples, flashes, signs
of beings rising in the undersurface dark,
or lightly swimming upon the flow,
or, for a minnow, descending the deeps
of the air to enter and shatter
forever their momentary reflections,
for the river is a place passing
through a passing place.

The poet, his window, and his poems
are creatures of the shore that the river
gnaws, dissolves, and carries away.
He is a tree of a sort, rooted
in the dark, aspiring to the light,
dependent on both. His poems
are leavings, sheddings, gathered
from the light, as it has come,
and offered to the dark, which he believes
must shine with sight,
with light, dark only to him.


II.

Times will come as they must,
by necessity or his wish, when he leaves
his enclosure and his window,
his homescape of house and garden,
barn and pasture, the incarnate life
of his desire, thought, and daily work.
His grazing animals look up
to watch in silence as he departs.
He sets out at times without even
a path or any guidance other than knowledge
of the place and himself as they were
in time already past. He goes among trees,
climbing again the one hill of his life.
With his hand full of words he goes
into the wordless, wording it barely
in time as he passes. One by one he places
words, balancing on each
as on a small stone in the swift flow
in his anxious patience until
the next arrives, until he has come
at last again into presentiment
of the Real, the wholly real in its grand
composure, for which as before
he knows no word. And here again
he must stop. Here by luck or grace he may
find rest, which he has been seeking
all along. Sometimes by the time’s flaws
and his own, he fails. And then
by luck or grace he will be given
another day to try again, to go maybe
yet farther before again he must stop.
He is a gatherer of fragments, a cobbler
of pieces. Piece by piece he tells
a story without end, for in the time
of this world no end can come.
It is the story of eternity’s shining,
much shadowed, much put off,
in time. And time, however long, falls short.







Wendell Berry's most recent books include It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture and Other Essays, New Collected Poems, and A Place in Time, the newest volume in his Port William series.

How do you fix feelings
that like melted butter
getting solid again
coil back to numb pains ?

What do you do
when feelings like
tasty frosting
taste salty
instead of sugary
and creamy
hmmmmm...
taste like salty grime?

How do you
fix a pizza
with too much salt in
you can't throw it
in the bin
for hunger gnaws
in terrible pains.

What do you do
if you want to throw out
that inedible cake
but have to swallow it all?

What do you do
when the life you live
is not what you wish
but have to keep breathing?

Take sleeping pills
go to sleep
and never wake up
is that what you do?

Shhhhh
but you can't tell anyone
never, never
till you see or not see me again.

THE ENIGMA OF TIME IN VERSE: PART TWO
Dear Friends, having introduced ‘The Enigma of Time in Verse’ in Part One, along with few selected poetic quotes, I now mention what some of the important Philosophers thought about Time down the past centuries. But while doing so, I have tried my best to simplify some of those early concepts for better understanding and appreciation of my readers. If you like it, kindly re-post the poem. Thanks,  – Raj Nandy of New Delhi.

          THE ENIGMA OF TIME IN VERSE : PART TWO
   I commence by quoting Sonnet 60 of Shakespeare about Time,
   Hoping to seek some blessings for this Part Two composition of
   mine!
“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
  So do our minutes hasten to their end;
  Each changing place with that which goes before,
  In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
  Nativity, once in the main of light,
  Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,
  Crooked elipses ’gainst his glory fight,
  And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
  Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
  And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
  Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
  And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
  And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.”

              PHILOSOPHY OF TIME
Animals are said to live in a continuous present,
Since they have no temporal distinction of past, future,
or the present.
But our consciousness of time, becomes the most
distinguishing feature of mankind.
Though we are mostly obsessed with objective time, -
As the rotation of our Earth separates day from night.
With the swing of the pendulum and the ticking of clocks,
Which regulates our movements, while we try to beat the clock!
But the ancient theologians and philosophers of India and
Greece,
Who were among the first to ponder about the true nature
of all things,
Had wondered about the subjective nature of time;
Was time linear or cyclic, was time endless or finite?

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS ON TIME:
I begin with Heraclitus, the Pre-Socratic philosopher of 6th Century BC born in Ephesus.
He claimed that everything around us, is in a constant state of change and flux.
You cannot step into the same river twice Heraclitus had claimed,
Since water keeps flowing down the river all the while and never
remains the same.
This flow and change in Nature is a process which is ceaseless.
The only thing which remains permanent is impermanence!
Here is a quote from poet Shelley reflecting the same idea:
“World on world are rolling ever
  From creation to decay
  Like the bubbles on a river
  Sparkling, bursting, borne away.”

Now Heraclitus was refuted by Parmenides, born in the Greek colony of Elea,
On the western coast of Southern Italy, as his contemporary.
Parmenides said that our senses deceive us, since all changes are mere illusory!
True reality was only eternal and unchanging ‘Being’, which was both indivisible and continuous - filling up all space.
Zeno, a pupil of Parmenides, through his famous ‘Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise’ had shown, that when the tortoise was given a head start,
Swift footed Achilles could never catch up with the tortoise,
Since the space between the two were infinitely divisible, resulting in the impossibility of movement and change in motion!
Now the Greeks were never comfortable with the Concept of Infinity.
They preferred to view the universe as continuous existing ‘Being’.  
However, unlike Heraclitus’ ‘world of change and flux’,
Both Parmenides and Zeno have presented us, with a static unchanging universe!
Thus from the above examples it becomes easy for us to derive,  
How those Ancient Greeks had viewed Time.
Time has been viewed as a forward moving changing entity;
And also as an illusory, continuous and indivisible Being!
To clarify this further I quote Bertrand Russell from his ‘History of Western Philosophy’;
“Creation out of nothing, which was taught in the Old Testament, was an idea wholly foreign to Greek philosophy. When Plato speaks of creation, he imagines a primitive matter, to which God gives form as an artificer.”

PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON TIME:
For Plato, time was created by the Creator at the same instance when he had fashioned the heavens.
But Plato was more interested to contemplate on things which lay
beyond the sway of time and remained unchangeable and eternal;
Like absolute Truth, absolute Justice, the absolute form of Good and Beauty;
Which were eternal and unchangeable like the ‘Platonic Forms’, and were beyond the realm of Time as true reality.
Plato’s pupil Aristotle was the first Greek philosophers to contemplate on reality inside time, and provide a proper definition as we get to see.
He said, “Time is the number of movement in respect to before and after” - as a part of reality.
To measure time numerically, we must have a ‘before’ and an ‘after’, and also notice the difference objectively.
Therefore, time here becomes the change which we see and experience.
Time takes on a linear motion moving from the past to the present;
And to the unknown future like a moving arrow travelling straight.
Aristotle had developed a four step process to understand everything inside of Time and within human experience:
(a) Observe the world using our senses,
(b) Apply logical rules to these observations,
(c) To go back and consult past authorities, if your logic agrees with their logic,
(d) Then only you can come to a logical conclusion.

No wonder in our modern times, experiments conducted by the LDC or the Large Hadron Collider, located 100m underground near the French-Swiss border,
By going back in time simulates the ‘Big Bang’ conditions, that moment of our universe’s first creation.
The scientists thereby, study the evolution of our universe with time, which  resulted in the  finding of the Higgs Boson !  (On 4thJuly 2012)

NOTES :  All elementary particles interacting with the Higg's Field & obtain Mass, excepting for photons & gluons which do not interact with this field. Mass-less photons can travel at the
speed of light with a mind boggling 186,000 miles per second! Now this LDC is a Particle Accelerator 27 kms long ring-shaped tunnel, made mostly of superconducting magnets, inside which two high-energy particle beams are made to travel close to the speed of light in opposite directions, and the shower of particles resulting from the collision is closely examined, presuming that these similar shower of particles must have been produced at the time of the ‘Big Bang’ some 13.8 million years ago, at the time of Creation! Sound like fiction? Well, Prof. Peter Higgs got the Noble Prize for Physics, for locating the particle called ‘Higgs Boson’ among those shower of particles, on 10th Dec. 2013.

NOW TO LIGHTEN UP MY READERS MIND, FEW TIME QUOTE I NOW PROVIDE :

“TIME WASTES OUR BODIES AND OUR WITS,
  BUT WE WASTE TIME, SO WE ARE QUITS!” – Anonymus.

‘Time is a great Teacher, but unfortunately it kills its Pupils!’ – HL Berlioz

“Lost , yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two
   golden hours,
   Each set with sixty diamond minutes.
   No reward is offered, for they are gone forever!” – Horace Mann


PLOTINUS & ST. AUGUSTINE ON TIME:
Now getting back to our Philosophy of Time, there was Plotinus of the 3rd Century AD,
The founder of the mystical Neo-Platonic School of Philosophy.
He had followed Plato’s basic concept of Time as “the moving image of eternity.”
Mystic Plotinus tried to synthesize both Aristotle and Plato by saying that the entire process of cosmic creation,
Flows out of the ONE  through a series of emanation!
This ONE gave rise to the ‘Divine Mind’ which he called the ‘Realm of Intelligence’ and is an aspect of reality,
When everything is understood in terms of Platonic Forms of Truth, Justice, the Good, and Beauty.
However, the later Christian theologians had interpreted this ONE of Plotinus, -
As the Christian God, the Divine Creator of the Universe.
For God is eternal, in the sense of being timeless, in God there is no before or after, but only a timeless present.

Now this lead St. Augustine, to formulate a very admirable relativistic theory of Time!
St. Augustine, the greatest constructive teacher of the Early Christian Church, had written in Book XI of his ‘Confessions’ during  5th century AD, -
His thoughts about the enigma of Time which had perplexed the Greek philosophers of earlier centuries.
To simplify St. Augustine’s thoughts, I now paraphrase for the sake of clarity.
Time can only be measured while it is passing, yet there is time past, and time future in reality.
To avoid these contradictions he says that past and future can only be thought of as present: ‘past’ must be identified with memory, and ‘future’ with expectation.
Since memory and expectation being both present facts, there is no contradiction.  
“The present of things past is memory, the present of things present is sight; and the present of things future is expectation,” - wrote St. Augustine.

This subjective notion of time led St. Augustine to anticipate Rene Descartes the French philosopher the 17th Century,
Who proclaimed “Cogito, ergo sum” in Latin, meaning “I think, therefore I am”, and is regarded as the Father of Modern Philosophy.

Now cutting a long story short I come to Sir Isaac Newton, well known for his Laws of Motion and Gravity.
Newton speaks of ‘Absolute Time’ which exists independently, flowing at a consistent pace throughout the universe, which can only be understood mathematically.
Newton’s ‘Absolute Time’ had remained as the dominant concept till the  early years of the 20th Century.
When Albert Einstein formulated ‘Theory of Space-time’ along with his Special and General Theory of Relativity.

Now the German philosopher Leibniz during 17th century, had challenged Newton with his anti-realist theory of time.
Leibniz claimed that time was only a convenient intellectual concept, that enables to sequence and compare happening of events.
There must be objects with which time can interact or relate to as ‘Relational Time’ he had felt.
Ernst Mach, like Leibniz towards the end of 19th Century, said that even if it was not obvious what time and space was relative to,
Then they were still relative to the ‘fixed stars’ i.e. the bulk of matter in the universe.

CONCEPT OF TIME AS 'SPECIOUS PRESENT' :
During late 19th century, Robert Kelley introduced the concept of ‘spacious present’, which was the most recent part of the past.
Psychologist and philosopher William James developed this idea further by describing it as ‘’the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible’’
William James also introduced the term “stream of consciousness” into literature as a method of narration,
That described happenings in the flow of thought in the mind of the characters, - likened to an internal monologue!
This literary technique was later used by James Joyce in his famous novel ‘Ulysses’.

TIME CONCEIVED AS DURATION: HENRI BERGSON (1859 -1941)
Next I come to one of my favourite philosopher the French born Henri Bergson.
The Nobel Laureate and author of ‘Time and Free Will’ and ‘Creative Evolution’.
Will Durant in his ‘Story of Philosophy’ says Bergson was ‘the David destined to slay the Goliath of materialism.’
It was Bergson’s ‘Elan Vital’ that life force and impelling urge, Which makes us grow and transforms this wandering planet into a theatre of unending creation.
For Bergson, time is as fundamental as space; and it is time that holds the essence of life, and perhaps of all reality.
Time is an accumulation, a growth, a duration, where “duration is the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and which swells as it advances.
The past in its entirety is prolonged into the present and abides there actual and acting.
Duration means that the past endures, that nothing is lost.
Though we think with only a small part of our past; but it is with our entire past that we desire, will, and act.”
“Since time is an accumulation, the future can never be the same as the past, -
For a new accumulation arises at every step, and change is far more radical than we suppose…the geometric predictability of all things, Which is the goal of a mechanistic science, is only a delusion and a dream!”  
Bergson goes on in his compelling lyrical style:            
“For a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature,
to mature is to go on creating one’s self endlessly. Perhaps all reality is time and duration, becoming and change.”
Bergson differed with Darwin's theory of adaptation to environment, and stated;
“Man is no passively adaptive machine, he is a focus of redirected force, a centre of creative evolution.”

Martin Heidegger, the German thinker in his ‘Being and Time’ of 1927, had said:
“We do not exist within time, but in a very real way we are time!”
Time is inseparable from human experience, since we can allow the past to exist in the present through memory;
And even allow a potential future occurrence to exist in the present due to our human ability to care, and be concerned about things.
Therefore we are not stuck in simple sequential or linear time, but can step out of it almost at will!

CONCLUDING  PART  TWO OF ENIGMA OF TIME IN VERSE
In this part I have tried to convey what the Ancient Greek Philosophers had felt about Time in a simplified way.
Also some thoughts of Medieval and Early Modern philosophers and what they had to say.
Where Sir Isaac Newton stands like a colossus with his Concept of Time, Laws of Motion, and Gravity.
Not forgetting Henri Bergson, one of my favourite philosopher, of the mid-19th and the mid-20th Century.
All through my narration I had tried to hold the interest of my readers, and also educated myself as a true knowledge seeker.
In my concluding Part Three I will cover few Modern Philosophers along with the relativistic concept of time.
Certainly not forgetting the space-time theory of our famous Albert Einstein!
Thanks for reading patiently, from Raj Nandy of New Delhi.
  *ALL COPY RIGHTS ARE WITH THE AUTHOR ONLY

I can't help but call out, look at the flame!
see it blush the highway bridges, see it burn my family name,
it churns like a half-sarcastic love song on repeat
it dances on the steel mill, makes the blackest smoke taste sweet
it stokes my little leafless heart, gnaws the edges of my sleeves.

because that hot bright tongue is mine, it's mine
a winking message, a cryptic sign,
the mad plumage fluttering above a gridlock hide
a hundred hands snatching up from the skyline

and even when it's lost in the daylight or the rain
I still find it, send it kisses, call it by the family name.

I never for once thought that I'd take writing seriously. It was just one of those passing things I did when I was in fourth grade (and it was journalism, even). Short stories became a breather in high school but somehow that stopped too with the revival only happening towards my end in college.

Ever since then my life has been in a kind of complicated knot. It's hard to get out of but a lot harder to understand. There are days when I like what I've written and sometimes I just want to burn my notebook with all the poetry I made. Every single time you get this brilliant, excitable idea come to you from nowhere, your blood springs up, you sweat the small stuff, your fingers itch—that kind of nonsense. But the writing part is a hell's worth of tricky. You see I'd start writing then stop midway because my brain shuts down in the best times. Kind of like a sprain during a running momentum. I feel terrible because I can't move on from that sort of limbo. And then I swear at myself for being too stupid and incompetent—it's insane. It can't be undone, it's somehow part of my process now. The worst thing is I get even more riled up if I don't get to write down that idea completely. The immense relief I feel when I finish a story or poem is unimaginable. It's comparable to having a cavity lifted out of your sore mouth. You can sleep better, do things better. Ball of stress but it comes from your thoughts.

Now that I am too invested in writing, there is only the fact that I must continue this no matter what kind of life I lead. I might become a diplomat or a crackhead (who knows life is fickle) but I think I need to write or I'll be doomed in my world of ideas. Writing is the closest I can get to a relationship lol and I humor myself in the silliness of it all. Honestly, I feel empty not doing it everyday but at the same time it gnaws on my biggest self-doubts. You know you're in too deep when it becomes a reason for being depressed as it is your hope in the ******* days. It has been with me in my extreme highs and lows and in times when I don't think anything is important.

All my entries here in HP are truly my babies. Which I also call out on my bad moods and frequently tell myself that they are utter crap. I'd work so hard to expunge them out of my system but if people tell me they're as hopeless as a Thomas Harris fiction then I don't mind, I plan on getting rejected anyway just so I can take writing even more seriously.

Though I realized from all of this that writing is not for the blind optimist or the stubborn pessimist. I'm more of a realist. Poetry, literature do not go with people who fool themselves with lies just to be happy. Luckily, I am not the sort of person who will compromise my thinking just so I could smile like a marionette. With writing, I realized that some of my beliefs were illusions that we tell ourselves. And I left them because I'd be lying to myself. This is probably why I've been writing darker material. Nobody wants to talk about them because they leave a bad taste in the mouth, so why not, right?

I've come to believe that our existence feeds on dark and light. (That yin and yang stuff is starting to make sense.) People thrive on two ends to grow and being happy all your life is completely overrated. Pain, sadness and death are some of the things I embraced thanks to writing. Hey, we can't have everything, it's better to just tolerate the different sides. If you deny pain, you will never understand the pain of others and how will you ever learn compassion? And so on. Writing has taught me that crap is crap until you change your perception and acceptance of things.

So all in all in this annoyingly long rant, I've exposed how I'm a self-absorbed little ****. Sorting things out has been my top priority since everything (except writing) became boring as **** to me. Not even food could cheer me up and that is a big sign that things have gone the wrong way. My mom complains that I've been sleeping too much, been extremely lazy but I saved her the bother of asking incessant questions because my depression is too hard to explain. Just the other day, I thought of doing extreme sports hoping the adrenaline rush could kick me out of the slump. But I also thought about getting bored with them so nahhh.

Mania and madness

The heartland bustling
With people filled with sorrow
The depletion of gratitude
There is a bleak tomorrow.

Today I saw pain march with
A broken leg
Today I saw mania and madness
And the monster of this world being
Fed.

The corner of my mind
Aches and gnaws
I'm frightened by the rush of dramatic
Hearts
I'm at one with my flaws.

The years have took their toll
My hairs turning grey
I'm looking at the half broken mirror
Overwhelmed by the trappings
Of dismay.

I can't change the face
I can't change the face
Of the world

if you've felt sad for a long time,
that sadness that gnaws at you,
and sometimes throws self-loathing in there,
don't think for a single second,
that not talking about will help anything.
because it won't.
if you face it alone, it's like fighting
a whole army with nothing but a
toothpick.
and that's not very useful, isn't it?
so think-- should you deal with this alone?
or tell someone?
talking doesn't make you weak,
it's not talking that does.
so if you open up about your feelings
you'll feel a weight pull off your chest.
sure, the misery will still be there,
but at least someone knows.
at least someone will help you.
at least you will face an army
with allies.

my mind will finally be hollow when explosive entities of its existential warfare finally self destruct.
until then,
Recondite rifles are ruthlessly reloaded with unanswerable questions regarding the purpose of seemingly non purposeful things;
lack of resolve wrecks me.
Unanswered ammunition degrades cerebral cells, intercepting normal neural connections:
I cannot think properly in the midst of pellets of panic

until then,
Selfless soldiers employed by future uncertainty battle against selfish soldiers of MY physical being, employed by my diminishing desire for sanity.
They engage in trench warfare: digging desolate ditches, hammering holes, all of which eventually collapse and contribute to the constant compression of my cortex.
But Compliments and Hope fracture into particles of sand that are ****** into the openings in my pupils by amorphous wind which is structureless anyway
these particles are vacuumed down my optic nerves and pile into pillars of petrifying plant-based picket fences that try to guard against the existential warfare plaguing my mind
But more explosive entities enter through my ears and reproduce in my temples waiting to self destruct

until then,
Forces convolute: existential warfare compresses my cortex into inevitable flat nothingness, while pitiful pillars of disillusioning dust collapse because the wind that whisked them inside NEVER EXISTED ANYWAY
Eventually i will implode

Until then,
numbness gnaws at my heart to balance the bullets
waiting to implode
until then,
Existential Warfare bombards my brain with bullets of black metal

This is a long one Ladies and Gents, so strap in!

IF you asked what the biggest evils are in this world,
any rational man,woman boy or girl,
would answer its things that bring us too much harm,
talkin bout Alcohol,Tobacco and - Firearms
forget about illegal drugs and mafia clans,
its time to focus in on the Government plans,
to cause mass confusion in the minds of the sheep,
keep us all in our pens,disoriented and weak,
only a danger to ourselves in this struggle of life,
its the subtlest cut from the surgeons knife,
that emasculates us wholesale,money for blood,
three opponents to the death in the war for good,
run by corporations with no frontiers,
profiteering on your misery,they're milking our tears,
legal taxable killers that shorten your life,
and not just YOUR life man,your children and wife,
and leave you with no fight in you to cause some strife,
for our overlords and rulers,in the neverending fight,
to bring truth to the truthless and sight to the blind,
its a high stakes gamble and the stake is your mind,
but the tables rigged,and the dealers a shark,
whos only happy when you're ignorant and kept in the dark
and fed **** like fungi,think you're fun guy?
cos when your dumb fat and happy then its easy to die,
24without reaching any truth,time to read between the lines-
and learn the truth about these ****** end times.

Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms

1.8 million people a year,
go straight from here to the valley of tears,
with the help of a bottle,its our friend alcohol!,
its a double hit,taking both your money and soul,
its like Futurama having suicide booths,
just have a few beers man,your troubles to soothe...
while it gnaws at your insides a rat in a cage,
like 1984 and the worlds a stage,
well its more like a circus,and guess who's the clown?
its a never ending pratfall like "falling down",
how many mornings can you wake up feeling like ****?
before we ALL decide that its time to quit,
and how come science hasnt found a way?
to render it less harmful in these amazing days?
simple,cause its perfect. - *Its doing its job
keeping billions of people in deadend jobs,
leaving social meetings with a dark undercurrent,
just look at any News Source,stories stay current,
about the constant madness and daily strife,
another drunken encounter that ends in lost lives,
and more zombies walking on our city streets,
looking for a confrontation,just someone to beat,
in 20% of interventions by Cops
the trouble would stop,if the bottle was dropped
so take the beer goggles off and start taking names,
of the companies we need to name and shame

cough,cough cough,its the daily song,
its the people nailing down their coffin too long
cigarettes cause cancer...and there I should stop
(sample penny dropping)
to let the penny drop...
in the first few seconds that this verse just took...
another poor dumb smoker just ran out of luck,
its an incredible figure for our global deaths,
that are pure homicides,people stealing your breath,
its like paying a murderer to stab you in the chest
when it comes to mindfucks man smoking's the best,
while tobacco company lobbyists still write checques,
their customers are choking in a haze of death,
govt. warning's man the ***** too late,
while you're staring at the package your eventual fate,
is slapping your eyeballs with a message of doom,
but you're still a ****** Addict and the profits just zoom,
the glory days of the deathgame until 94,
tobacco company tales for many years before,
using bogus science for a tissue of lies,
never giving two cents for the people who died,
testified to the senate man the God ****** Nerve!
when they die I think their souls will take a downward curve,
to an everlasting hell,their own sweet special doom,
to be greeted by a sign, welcome to the smoking room.
so drop the ash and stop dropping cash,
and start saving your life for a better re-hash

I've saved the best for last,you might be surprised,
when you hear me breaking down another tissue of lies,
you see guns don't **** people people do
disagree if you like,its still a universal truth,
you see to me a gun is only a tool,
it all depends on whether it is in the hands of a fool,
and guns save lives too another headfuck,
they also take them too in the hands of the rough,
I'm not thinking bout the crack dealer packing a glock,
I'm thinking of the group that sold him the lot
running drugs AND guns its the CIA!
all protected by the might of the USA!
dont believe me? just google it,its easy to find,
although the facts may not sit well in your mind,
its funny,maybe they should have used ray-guns?
then their actor president would have given MORE funds,
to the contra rary of the public story,
while the truth at the bottom is much more gory,
but its back to the future now the latest plans,
acted out in the future in a global land,
and its only the start of the endgame plan,
to take away the tools from the everyday man,
**so he cant cause trouble its machiavellian,
cos their plans for the future are so Orwellian

Sometimes I wish I was invisible.
Not to go around and be sneaky.
Doing **** that upsets people or hurts them.
I just wish I was invisible because
I'm just so ******* tired of being seen.
Having to hide my insecurities.
Having to lock up my emotions.
Having to keep myself safe.
Just being out there.

I rock.
Not the kind where i'm awesome...
The kind where I find I hug myself.
Where I move back and forwards.
All the ******* time.
When I eat.
When I write.
When I read.
When I do anything.
Just gently rocking.
Always have and probably always will.
But it comforts me.
I comfort me
That's so ******* weird.
But it's honest.

I wish I was invisible.
So that the world could leave me alone.
Because it gnaws on my bones.
Like it has the right to do that to me.
I just want to be invisible so I can live quietly.
Doing my own thing.
And no one will know I am there.
And hopefully no one will see me.
And, if I close my eyes.
And rock quietly, and slowly.
I think that's the closest I will ever get.
To being invisible.

filled up with enmity coiling up inside
The chest billows up
Thy want to heave it out
Then destined to tranquility

The claws scratch the flesh
Death gnaws on the remnants of longevity
Unless visions have a chest
To burst out into effervescence

Spontaneous sigh is kicked out of your breath
The clavicles sharpen, the eyes ogle ahead
The nothingness dilates
The flicker has no entrance for itself to adumbrate

For utopia has its own gore
To marvel over inside,
The plasters of bliss
Have guffawed over the gullible dusk

The gloom has left with a whisper
A muttering not to be heard
The relief has sewed on flesh
With the clouds coming out of thy outburst

The relief rebirths the serenity
Has been meandered, halted
For thou shed leaves
Making agony to clouds of no return

Utopic defiance,
the idiosyncratic anectodes
Stains of externalized innundation
For the literal existance of hope.

when the word "****"
resonates from the lips of
any teacher, i cannot
help but perceive
how many students' heads
fall downward, staring at
their disquieted hands. i am
wondering how many people are closing
in on themselves, lips pressed together
in thin lines, burying themselves

six feet under into graves
constructed however long ago.
somewhere within the catastrophic enclosings
of their minds, they are the people
reminiscing violent robberies, not
of television sets or radios, but of
innocent souls. they are suffering
from the post-traumatic stress

of feeling  naked skin and cracked
ribcages and heaving lungs
never burn in the turbulent
wildfires left
behind in their burnt
lives; a simple word
is enough to have them
reliving the mournful
affair forming their
empty chest. i glance around the
room for students whose
memory gnaws at their
scarred skin, and

the  problem is
is that there are too many.

you invite her in,

as she knowingly falls into your subliminal abyss.

she gnaws on her pale pink lips,

almost violently enough to cause crimson blood to drip.

no longer is she timid,

because she’s not naive, and neither are you.

she stares up at you with those bright, yet jaded eyes,

tearing you apart as you tug at the fragile lace that encompasses her waist.

calloused fingertips graze against collarbones,

then silently discovering their way here and there.

she inhales the sweet atmosphere that surrounds,

opening her eyes just wide enough,

capturing the sullen skies that threaten to collapse above.

but the comforting familiarness in the empty inches that lie between your ribs,

make her feel at home.

Passengers of scarcity.

Hi through dark and space to you my friend
Cause yes I know you
As you know me;
We’re both passengers of scarcity, guessed it huh?

I’ll begin like it started for me. I want it to be honest this time
-As if poets could be honest-
But let’s try my friend.

My evening sky doesn’t talk to me like it used to.
It talked louder then.
Before, I remember the before when my legs were fast, my heart full of hopes
And when we –you know- looked at reality only and only within the lenses of dreams.
Distrustful of truth, world-paintor inside the cupboard of our mind, schemer of realms of now and there...
Time has flown
Remember
Time has flown
And now my evening sky grew rarer.

But today it came to me
Almost as loud as before
And I could see once again
In crimson and purple.

“Soon I’ll come back, ma!”
The children play! Madman you hear

Don’t you look back in wonder sometimes?
Don’t you look back at you like at a stranger
Passing by. Walking on the sidewalk of your notice
And you turn and you look at his back
As he steps away, eaten by the crowd
And you wonder ‘This man...’
Whose face you’re not really sure
Whose air, maybe... in a foreign country...
But through your voluntary mist something knows
It was you.
Little shame, little laugh.
Little forget, little lie
Let’s add another mindless night
To twenty thousand others.

“Oh man! Such a spastic.
Crippled.
How can he walk along with that big
Too big!
Can’t he see it is showing
runny, weeping,  noisy, babbling
Heart.
Man, it’s showing!
Hide it;

Hide it.

Hide it!”

It was you;

Now I’m hungry for your light
-Jealousy gnaws at the sheets of my memory –
My belly roars at the table. The neighbour she told me. She heard it from her bathtub.

The hairdryer is still hot.
"Sombebody was killed here man!"
Can’t see the body... But, I can smell it.
The hairdryer is still hot
"Why do you smile girl"
There was a ****** here.
See the hairdryer.
Don’t you... Why keep you smiling?
We really need to leave before...
The hairdryer you know
I wish you’d stop smiling girl!
See!
See!"
A hand
-I can’t move-
Creeps on
-I can’t move!-
The Hairdryer
-Please, please, stop laughing heart!-
It’s my fingers.

The mirror got broken.



Now you’re with me, I dropped a few lines between you and this
Like antipasta.
If I had an airline company for truth, I’d call it
‘Delayed’


Passengers of scarcity
We are.
We can see now.
Hungry for some light, always on the lookout
For the outside glow, to warm up dead bowels.
But
Passengers of scarcity
We were.
You just couldn’t see.
Your eyes mistook you.
For what were the words and dreams but the ailments of our locked-up souls
Already burning from within
Alone
Covered in the rags of self-deceit;
Ashes to the old

So little are you
So nothing you were.
Eyes breeding monsters
In your decadent corpse.
All your lies, all your animals
You put them here, not me!
Hunger has made its way through thy heart
And they have died in your cage.
Empty chuckle.
*** pause.









It was a poopause. At least one in your useless life.(just kidding)


So scarce.
The forced smile. The faded ‘hello’ to passing stranger
The hours of mindless thoughts and petty hopes.
Criminal mediocrity.
Vessels of going somewhere for
Going somewhere.
The to-do
To do.
To do something.
But really nothing struck you.
Desert.
A little too much food won’t fulfill it.
The phone fell silent with my lips –oh friends I need more than you-
The smoke of cigarettes is powder to your eyes
But nothing else.
Walk
Walk
Without purpose
Without even an idea of purpose
.
Isn’t it eternal Justice,
That those who have less
Have less.
Isn’t it eternally Just.
Of course, it’s hard for us the passengers
But there can’t be winners without losers though...
Still,
Reasons of the thirst...do not quell the thirst.

So what! What can we say! What can we do!
Oh! Who will save me.
Gimme some light sweet mamma!
Gimme some light!

Somewhere in the distance, two things:
a baby is born
-Blue-eyed-;
A gambler rolled the dice
-Eyes closed-;
A light sprung and a light dimmed
-You need black and white to draw pupils-
And my evening sky turned a dark pale of night.

Maybe we write to
make ourselves feel better

about the pain,
heartache
and every other
torturous infliction
that gnaws at our insides

Maybe we write to
survive the torture

because,
instead of screaming on the underground
or crying at dinner
we wait for the confines of paper
or thumbs to Notes.

Maybe we write
because we know
nothing else

isn't that ironic?

We know nothing.
Maybe that's why we write.

Seconds drag like years. Stuck in a silent mist.
My mind like a “For Sale” sign, tethered
Constrained.  An occasional sway in a breeze,
Resulting in an unoccupied state of mind.

An unbearable feeling of uselessness
Stemming from a grimy background
From which no answers can be elicited
The Blackboard has been erased forever

Locked doors and high walls mean,
Therapy is only good for the Therapist!

That; that was once ingrained, is lost
Danger lies ahead, lurking in the shadows
Waiting for the right moment to strike.
                                      A silent killer.

This; that gnaws at my brain, is without
Doubt, slowly killing me. Extruding life.
My head hurts. My soul is broken.

I have forgotten how to laugh
I have forgotten how to whistle

I don’t want this death!

How the heart approaches what it yearns, I considered.
Or how the mind remembers what is doesn't need.
I smile at the memory of an ex's ex's ex's name.
How the heart approaches what it yearns,
Or how sometimes the heart stays still and yearns and yearns till it gnaws into your ribcage and you feel every pulse and every whimper and every sigh of that very sad *****.
How it sometimes falls in love with no regard to where you are in life
with no real regard to how you feel, the *******, your heart, just falls in love.
As if it never belonged to me, as if it belonged wholly to you, it just goes and falls in love like every dawn and dusk belonged, in fact, to it.

This grief
has teeth

my son
it bites through

skin and bone
tearing at heart

and mind
(the deeper

the love
the harder

the pain
I find)

this grief
with its pearly whites

gnaws at me
through dull days

and dark nights
trying to drag me

to dark depths
shaking me

like a dog with bone
bringing me

to deep hurts
and aching moan

this grief
holds hard

bites deep
taking me

to dark dawns
and black dogs

of sunset red
and echoing memories

in numb
and hurting head

this grief has teeth
my son

biting through
bone and skin

tearing me within
but memories remain

strong and clear
and bright

which will
sustain me

through many
a deep dark night.

Temptation gnaws at my soul
It worms its way through my defenses
Confusing my senses, bamboozling my thoughts
Until up is down and right is wrong
But worst of all…
Wrong has become right

Somewhere inside a voice is screaming
Telling me to turn back before it’s too late
But a stronger, more seductive voice
Whispers, “It’s too late”

My self-loathing and hatred
Is matched only by a longing
For that which I cannot…
Should not…
Have

The voice feeds on my hatred
Assuring me that it isn’t wrong
Yet also reminding me
That I couldn’t make it any worse
I cannot hate myself more
Even should I choose the path of darkness

But it is a path I must not follow
For it only leads to misery and pain
I have been there before
Many times before
And while pleasure is found
It is temporary
The suffering it brings lasts forever

God give me strength to resist my curse
To turn my back on myself,
My desires, my needs
To plunge my heart into Your word
To wash my soul in Your cleansing flow
To let You guide me, as a little lamb
To live my life solely for You
Give me the strength to banish the snake
Whispering silky words to my heart
Help me to overcome my weakness
To utterly reject my temptation

Sun does tickle his dreams on the blazing pave
when pass by him countless feet honking cars
fires don’t burn him nor do elements make him slave
upon him the street dirt is powdered stars.

In the luxurious cushions bed is a veritable thorn
sleep defers or visits not eyes’ awakened nightmare
men burn power to being breathing to the morn
while his eyelids at dreams’ wonder gapingly stare.

There’s a kingdom carved by him where gods don’t reign
a few picked crumbs magically brew metabolic bliss
fairies stir laughter misty angels wipe out pain
the moment his head the concretes kiss.

It isn’t hunger that in his deepest bowel gnaws
but a gratitude not battered by existential flaws
for being gifted a mind broke free sanity’s laws
be just there amid rush an island of pause.

A pain gnaws him as he looks out to the falling day.

On this land of dimmer glow and vaster stretch

stings him the thought

separation could be such unimaginably painful!

From the beginning he had dreamed a resemblance
had hoped for it

between this world and his

but his wildly scanning senses
keep bouncing on a dead wall!

He remembers how he missed home
from a few scores of miles

and when younger

even five hundred yards from mom
was enough for tears...

Here he’s away five hundred light years!

The night dawns with the blue moon sphere.

He has to live from now on

*his worst nightmare!

Intangible computer guy

The one you trick yourself into feeling closest to,

When in reality he is the farthest away.

Hell, an entire ocean separates the two of you.

But none the less,

He has gained importance.

Your life has become so lack luster

That more and more you find anticipation rising

As you near your PC.

It practically singes your fingertips

As you reach for the keyboard

And paw at the mouse.

Your body is

Taken over by an infestation of cyber butterflies;

Flapping their steel bolted wings

So hard,

That they thin your breath in anticipation of his next paragraph

Of small talk words;

Adorned with innocent courtesies

And make-shift smiley faces of semi-colons and parentheses.


Perhaps you’re eager because of the complement he threw in near the end of his last message?

As you scroll slowly down the page,

You see that he has not replied

Even though it has been two days.

In that instant

you realize that “intangible computer guy”

Is only so intangible to you;

For on the other side of the Atlantic,

He lives a life that is real.

Maybe it is you who is intangible?

Your shell of a life has been a bit depressing as of late.

For you,

A 20 year old

Who should be having flings and going to parties,

Has only been kissed once and never been touched;

Stuck living a life not your own.

Maybe “intangible computer guy” is so real

That your pathetic life can’t fathom the fact that he has one too.

You realize this as the mild depression

That has been like an infestation of maggots,

Gnaws at your senses;

Causing your eyes to burn, redden and cry.

Yes.

You realize that with Mr. Computer Guy

You get the chance to be charming

And talk about yourself,

When in reality you can barely get a word in edgewise;

Too busy living for others

That you,

In a sense,

Have begun to fade.

Becoming almost…

Intangible.