The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and main;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
- The other seeming to look on -
And stands anonymous again

Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps
Two dozen distances surficed
To fable them : faint afternoons
Of Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,
Whereby their names were artificed
To inlay faded, classic Junes -

Silks at the start : against the sky
Numbers and parasols : outside,
Squadrons of empty cars, and heat,
And littered grass : then the long cry
Hanging unhushed till it subside
To stop-press columns on the street.

Do memories plague their ears like flies?
They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.
Summer by summer all stole away,
The starting-gates, the crowd and cries -
All but the unmolesting meadows.
Almanacked, their names live; they

Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,
And not a fieldglass sees them home,
Or curious stop-watch prophesies :
Only the grooms, and the grooms boy,
With bridles in the evening come.

The thing about privilege,
Is that it is not our fault,
Like our biological ***, our name, our lot in life,
It's handed to us the moment we're born,
Wired in DNA and red strings of fate,
Strings that form a safety net for one and a noose for the next.

It's our advantage,
Head starts while the rest have handicaps,
But this advantage against the disadvantaged,
It makes us lose our vantage point,
It's not our fault, it was handed to us on a gold platter,
And it's our job to make the changes,
That make the world fair.

Dealt the tattslotto number of existence,
Our road smoothed down,
The right race, the right gender,
Right religion, the right neighbourhood,
Things we didn't fight for and disregard,
Diss and say is too hard.

But the only race that should matter is the one of life,
And helping those who fell behind, forced behind,
And to help them cross the finish line,
I don't want to stand on the mountain top alone,
Join me up here, together with free flowing air,
And if you can't make it on your own,
It's our privilege to help you there.

I: Introduction—A History Lesson
The word ******* was derived from the Sanskrit
svastika,
meaning good fortune,
or well being.
The shape is a monogram,
the interlacing of two Brahmi words,
a hooked cross which, over 5,000 years ago,
represented the rays of the sun,
the four directions of our natural compass,
and the four elements of our world.
Earth, wind, fire and water,
the symbol was balanced,
sitting firmly on its base
like a poised animal
on its haunches.
In other interpretations,
the symbol was a sacred text
explaining, “here is how the sun moves across the sky.”
A map of the heavens,
a lesson in astronomy.
The *******, when standing on its base,
is still sacred today
in many religions.
It is
the Buddha’s footsteps,
the seventh saint in Jainism,
and the four possible places of rebirth
in animal and plant world,
hell, earth and the spirit world.
In the 1870s the ******* was changed forever.
An archaeologist engrossed in discoveries
from ancient Troy and Mycenae,
Heinrich Schliemann,
found the symbol likeable
and claimed it,
because as a man he had the power to define.
He designated it
the symbol of his people—the Aryans—
and soon this is what it became.
By 1907 the ******* was turned at an angle
physically
becoming a hooked cross precariously balancing
on its side.
Its meaning, however, was turned upside down.
The cult of Aryan supremacy
claimed it,
and finally ****** adopted the
bedraggled image
as the symbol of the **** party
marking the beginning of its legacy
as an image of hate,
a harbinger of genocide,
and unthinkable atrocity.
In the course of twenty five years,
under the direction of ****** and Himmler
and Heydrich and Daluege
and Jeckeln and Prutzmann
and Eichmann and Mengele
and countless other men with vacant expressions
and the ability to spell death with pointed fingers
the ******* came to mean loss
of integrity, of citizenship, of basic rights,
of personal safety, of property,
of an untarnished image of humanity
of hope.
Under the *******
unraveled a calm, coordinated,
and systematic extermination
of 6 million Jews
200,000 gypsies
70,000 handicaps
and unknown numbers
of people of color,
political prisoners,
homosexuals
and deportees.
Under the *******,
there were gas chambers
and the burning of children’s bodies.
There were prison-like ghettos,
and there was no humanity.
Part II: A lesson in Linguistics
First, language is meaningful only
because of shared understanding.
Words mean nothing,
symbols are vacuous
unless we share recognition
of the things that they signify.
All language is arbitrary
if we cannot agree on what object,
or emotion or event in history
are called forth by the words that we say.
Second, to be able to change meaning, you must have power
and you must have time.
Trust me,
if I could rewrite the meaning of every blood-soaked word
I would.
I would scrub them clean of their histories.
I’d redefine them,
make them useful,
maybe even kind.
But I can’t, and neither can you.
At least not alone
and not on command.
Because I’m sorry to say
that that’s not how language works.
I’m sorry to say
that a symbol made synonymous with hate
cannot be used innocently,
cannot only mean what it meant before ******
and Himmler
and Heydrich and Daluege
and Jeckeln and Prutzmann
and Eichmann and Mengele.
Even if you claim to redefine it,
even if you claim to only use it for what it once was
even if once it was beautiful,
like the stalwart path of the sun,
the ******* has innocent blood on its hooks
and it eyes us sideways like a crooked lamppost
burdened with memories we cannot dismiss.
We remember.
As a society, we remember,
because pain is a finicky creature
that will not be reasoned with,
or re-defined out of existence.
We cannot use the ******* without remembering the pain
how it was ironed onto the starched coats
and painted on the national flags
of those who murdered
6 Millions Jewish men, women and children,
200,000 gypsies
70,000 handicaps
and unknown numbers
of people of color,
political prisoners,
homosexuals
and deportees.
Even if you say so.
Even if you claim to only use it for good.
We remember,
we remember.
Part Three: A Story
In elementary school my Hebrew teacher was Mrs. Wygodski.
When I was ten she seemed ancient.
I remember her shaky hands, but the steadiness of her voice.
Most of all I remember the numbers on her forearm
from when the Nazis decided she was no longer a girl,
but a numerical value.
I remember her telling us about the concentration camps
when they shaved her tiny girlish head
and gave her *****, ill-fitting clothes,
when they took her arm and erased her
like a message in the sand,
and she became a number.
In elementary school someone wanted to play a joke
so they scrawled a *******
on its side
in large black ink on the white board of class.
The symbol was the first thing you saw
when you entered the room.
I remember
when she came in she was smiling
as usual
her grey hair down, her kind, open face,
a miracle of a woman,
to withstand the darkest night and still smile.
I remember that Mrs. Wygodski said it is important to forgive
but I could never understand how she forgave the Nazis.
She would look at us and say
“hate is the darkest tunnel,
and harder to climb out of
than forgiveness is to bestow.”
The day she walked into the room with the *******
looming large on the white board
I will never forget the look on her face.
As the symbol spoke to her directly
it unearthed everything she spent years flattening down,
memories she sifted through for decades with trembling fingers,
images she shelved in the recesses of her mind
to make room for the possibility of tomorrow, and the warmth of smiling children.
For a moment
that symbol broke her,
and in that moment, the ******* once again stole her humanity,
and turned Mrs. Wygodski into the number
they once told her she was.
Part Four: Land of the Free
Today thousands of hate groups continue to use the *******
teetering sideways
the way that ****** intended it.
Once a symbol of good fortune,
it is now the most widely recognized symbol of hate
the world has ever known.
Used in the United States
the ******* has opened its claws
and staked claim to the beating hearts,
and hopeful sovereignty
and promised dreams
of countless African Americans,
who became the targets of the same bottomless hate
that engulfed millions in the holocaust.
Under our star spangled banner
the ******* has overseen
thousands of racially driven lynchings,
ongoing police brutality
the imprisonment of one out of three black men
and the bombing of black children in their Sunday school dresses.
In Oregon,
the ******* celebrates the sealing of borders,
is embraced by the very groups
who once outlawed black existence
in our very own state constitution,
the same groups
who once dictated the state’s refusal
to ratify the 14th amendment
of equal protection,
and the 15th amendment
giving African Americans the right to speak
at the ballot box
and be heard
by their government.
In the land of the free, the *******
is still tattooed on chests
and ironed to coats
and scrawled on the walls of my classroom.
In our communities
there are
the European Kindred,
the Northwest Hammerskins,
Volksfront,
the National Socialist Party,
and the Ku Klux ****.
And they wear the *******
because they recognize its meaning,
the meaning we all know
the meaning imbedded deep
by the pointed guns of the Einsatzgruppen
Today,
here,
they wear the ******* because they want to swallow the world.
Part 5: In Conclusion
To whoever drew the *******
last week,
last year,
in every year before that
in the bathroom, in the hallway, on my classroom wall and desks.
I forgive you.
Not because I want to
but because Mrs Wygodski would.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
I will believe you didn’t mean it.
I will believe you didn’t know.
I will still have hope in your humanity
because what choice do I have?
This is my refusal to become what the Nazis wanted,
what hate groups still want.
That is how I resist.
I refuse to hate you,
I refuse
to hate.
However, now that I’m addressing you directly,
I want to take this moment to make clear
that when I see the *******
this is what I see:
I see Mrs Wygodski,
with her kindness that was like a spring
flowing from somewhere dark and unseeable
and I see her face when she walked into a room with that symbol
and I see the colors of her world bleed out.
I see my missing family members,
who I never actually had the chance to really see.
So I imagine them,
my grandfather’s aunts, uncles and cousins
from a shtetle somewhere in Poland,
erased completely from history, from record, from existence
by ******* wearing men
who forgot how to be human.
Finally, I see my students.
The rest of them,
with their still young impressionability
and their beautiful array of skin colors, backgrounds, ethnicities, cultures
and their intact understanding of love.
They are the hope that our grandparents thought was lost,
and this ******* is their antithesis.
It is the undoing of their sanctity,
it is you spitting in the face of everyone who is not you.
And if you do that intentionally,
if you do that knowingly
and with purpose,
well, that
is unforgivable

Handicaps

Handicaps: we have them, each and every one of us.
Too busy with the busy-ness to notice,
Till one day life catches up;
Former choices do no longer;
Slurping, supping, sipping wine and caviar.
What you’ve been, no longer are.
Leg, finger, hand-icap:  
Pand-epi-demi-cap.
Imprisoned and aware
In new surprising ways, forced to adapt:  
Perhaps pace slowed, head bowed,
The lapse of time interpreted anew.

Doings take on an insistence you
Ignored all through the years before;
A not-so-secret cue to more-than-woo a state
Wherein resistance is effete,
Clues lord, you servant.

Yes, we have them in the karma.
They may harm.  They have no charm.
They are the permanent new feature,
You, prisoner and creature
Left to farm this new terrain,
Use its fertility to seed again
A life of happiness;
Fruitfulness no less than it was once:
A handicap turned Ponce de Leon.

Handicaps 4.26.2020 Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

come back to familiar couches and concerned words that run like bugs across your skin,
back to a sliver of window and never-any-snow-days,
not a ******* one.
nor summers that mean anything but uncomfortable skin,
but what else is there to do but check the weather report?
i’ve got it carved into my palm, butterknife wounds and burned
kisses, your name hurts the best.
(sit with me on a greyhound bus while i drink blue apartment buildings and handicaps)

the clowns are getting crowded in here, little
multicolored car, painted blue eyes and i will never stop dancing in big shoes, but
compromising is the most useful major i could choose. learn how to;
stop saying i, stop saying no, stop consuming the eyes of boys
very far out of my reach, forget your very special language of misunderstood gestures and
keep getting older

the orange-bleached days in the company of my 24-hour loves were worth it, worth
every salty confession shed off the side of the Belle,
worth losing faith in everything else. maybe, someday,

we can share headphones.

Yesterday night I was there on a bus.
Road was jammed and was a muss.
Bus was empty, travelers were few.
Amidst the jam it crawled through.

Soon I got curious about two old chaps;
Sitting on seats marked 'for handicaps'.
They were different from common folk.
Without making any sound they spoke.

To talk some sign language they used.
I didn't understand and was confused.
Different ****** expression they made.
Lips and hands moved, heads swayed.

With hand they wrote on other's hand.
They savvied but I didn't understand.
On the next stoppage halted the bus.
Holding each other both left without fuss.

I looked but my vision came to a naught;
Mind got occupied with their thought.
Many languages recognized and known.
But their language had beauty of its own.

When I was a girl I loved cars and Kim Possible
And green rocks I’d find in the pebble fillings of our school playgrounds,
Because they were rare and therefore special.
I read twenty books on gemstones and minerals and stared at the pictures for hours
Hoping one day I could be beautiful and solid and reflect the colours
You can’t see
If you burn your retinas looking directly at the sun.

When I was a girl I became a driveway because I thought
If I paved myself with tarmac or cement
I’d be hard enough to withstand the weight of everyone around my heart
And grounded enough to support myself,
But the construction workers forgot to check for groundwater
And I caved in when people decided
To unapologetically and unquestioningly park their ***** in the handicap spot,
Mistaking the importance of my handicaps for the importance of their egos.

When I was a girl I became an asteroid,
Seeking a gravitational pull around a star that would give me a name and meaning.
But instead I found a black hole,
And before I realised my mistake in universal direction
Her gravity obliterated me
And absorbed whatever the **** was left
Of the force I could have been.

When I was a person I became a tree,
Rooted to the earth rather than separate
And absorbing the light for sustenance.
I’ve forgotten what it means to be hardened,
But even my cells have walls around them
And now I’m as afraid of the ground as I am of the sky
And brave enough to reach into both
And just maybe find some answers in the crust or clouds.

Why is it so hard to find my voice
In the cacophony of large gatherings,
Yet so easy to draw on paper, words
Silently arrayed into profound meaning?

­­­­Meant for more from birth
Carried in satin like a god
I do not envy you
When I succeed it is a surprise
Something met with pride
Due to lack of expectation
The Underdog Advantage
When you succeed it is anticipated
Should have been more
Greater in size and worth
Living up to your destiny
I do not envy your
Royal Disadvantage
In this great race
The start line may begin
With varied handicaps
But the finish line is in turn
Equal distance
I do not believe in Royal Design
We are all nothing to begin with
Nothing simply looks different depending on
Where you're standing.

Americans ... Is it just Americans you're talking
about here Trump? ...
those chosen,
those special people,
those singular red-blooded people,

because I'm a little confused here
as you didn't seem to consider Syrian
refugees as bleeding the same red blood
even when it flowed so freely for them over
there in their pitiless homeland,

& Hispanic immigrants,
they bled red too,
or being rapists & murderers
was it a tainted red?

& black folks?
was their blood red?
from reading your White Supremacist
re-tweets I figured darker skinned Americans
had some innate handicaps or un-American
tendencies & thus their blood was a might
different to us white folks,

& Muslims?
do they bleed red too?
or is it a special breed of red,
an Islamic red?
a special sort of red that favors
deportation as says Brietbart news
or that forbids them entry as per your
unforgivable attempt at en-masse criminalization.

There was no bleeding of the same red blood
as you appealed to the lowest denominator in
white folk bigotry during your successful rise
to top of the heap in Republican vengefulness,
bitterness & just plain Supremacist American
red blooded horror was there?

No, there wasn't.

The manicured lawn behaves splendidly all summer
never pushing its way through the throngs
of flower beds and razor cut edges.

How pleasant to look at a tempting golf course
in my backyard with no nine holes in it
but a coffee club sunk just out of sight of the lawn-mower blades!

I guess that's  a way away from the lady of the house
who cannot always see how men must tamper
with manicures and pedicures with brazen coffee cup
tricks to catch a bit of practice on handicaps and nine holes!

I like those Sundays, especially, when she goes off to bombard
the saints with a litany of rosary beads and complaints
on why I bring the outdoor golfing into her indoor lawns!
I don't want to talk about how poor my putting is though!

If I had all the money in the world tucked into my bank account
I could go off and buy me an 18 hole ecstasy
but that's not possible. So until my numbers show up
on the one dollar ticket, I'm happy to build my dream
on this one hole, 10 sq yard coffee cup implanted
retirement plan. How about you?

Author Notes
Mini golf course at home.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Intro:
Humanity balances in the grasp of a belief of a higher order a belief that handicaps and restrains us from our true self and what we desire to become just for the fact to be in a nirvana that nobody has proof that it is real
For we could know we all could be going to hell for the corrupted society and government we live in

Poem:
They wanna lock me outa of sight for not recieving any contacts
That the lord and savior had givin out to me
Then i beheaded a ******* for his contacts
i hide the body where nobody could see

See the devil in my eyes with his contacts
Now my eyes are blacker than the bottom of the sea
Everybody knows that were going to hell
Everybody knows that we will never be free

The monsters in my mind
Are taunting me through eyes
That laugh at me,
Scratch at me,
And beg for time to play.

The monsters in my mind
Distort my face,
Curl my lips into a snarl of pure disdain.
My skin and nose become reptilian,
The hands that touch my features
Become claws of smoke.
I laugh at my shell, it is a joke.

The monsters in my mind
Allow no time for rest.
They coo at me,
Bleeding for attention.
Timid, I close my eyes.
My attempt is feeble,
And the monsters are inside.
My shell takes shape,
It bends to their temptation.
They have control of me,
And I am pushed aside.

The monsters in my mind
Are always there.
Each glimpse of my reflection
Reveals my inner self,
But my eyes hold their stare.
The monsters are aware,
I usher them back in, but to where?
My mind is not my own,
This is not my face.
I do not recognize myself,
Has this become my fate?

The monsters in my mind
Are keeping me awake.
They are alert,
And cannot be tamed.
I am screaming, crawling,
Begging for relief.
My eyes mist from the thought
Of them leaving me.
But who can I tell?
Who can see?
The monsters in my mind are me.
Who could understand my dependency?

They cannot see my claws of smoke
Or hear my hooves
As they tap on the petrified wood
That encases the entrance to my darkest fears,
My deepest secrets,
The parts of my mind that frighten
And intrigue me.

The monsters in my mind
Are cruel.
They are my secret burden,
My constant delight.
They plague my eyes to see
Livid dreams of what could be.
They need attention,
They feed on my weakness,
They devour my light,
And I am grateful.

I enjoy the familiar prickle
That shudders over my shell as they enter my mind,
Controlling my thoughts.
It consumes me,
Washing over me like ****.

The monsters in my mind
Hold me captive.
I am Stolkholmed to their urges.
I hold no breath that resists the be tainted
By their gruesome illusions.
They entice me,
Feed me,
Satisfy me,
Until my gluttony physically handicaps me.
I try to stop, I attempt to purge my mind,
But when they ask me why
I lose my will to try.

The monsters in my mind
Never fault.
I am laughing at the pain,
The idea of harm doesn’t hurt.
They will never fail,
I will never waste.
I am them,
And they are me.

There are monsters in my mind
And though I know no rest
I am at peace.
Death no longer frightens me.

He was not beautiful.
Unlike the others, those spectacular animals
That grew exotic, wild
He was cultivated carefully
Handicaps tied to a splint
Hold him up and covered in burlap
--Milkfed--
Long ago, he had played his card for Unique
And got a handful of Subtle Wrongness
Poor thing, pitiful and susceptible to the hunt,
Described remotely in their ****** chant
A sign, a portent dropped
With ominous carelessness
It's inevitable--
Gross ineptitude, even without the physical weakness,
Is no match for Chaos
You know the end...
The Beast
Will feast

The drive home

From a unknown

Black circles under my eyes

The headlights of oncoming traffic

Come at me with a strainful glow

Twinkling like diamonds

Or snowflakes in the sun

Windows black, handicaps vision

The “hum” of my exhaust

Constant behind my ears

Tread slamming the pavement

It could all disappear

Right in front of me

you got this rattle in your chest
like the timing belt in your heart's been limping towards death since birth

it always hurt to listen to

so here
     here's the message at the bottom of the bottle
     you spend so many nights studying
as if perhaps
          you might actually remember what it read when the sun assaults your head come morning

here's what you been begging every fair-haired eve to whimper
as you slip her a dose of your hand-crafted love-sludge on her boyfriend's couch

this is the truth i learned about you seven years ago
while you spilled your guts on my favorite boots
     you really were cute
all campfire-light and anguish as you visably contemplated introducing your hand to my chest

you're different
not just from me
     but from everyone you meet in every pub on any street
and for some reason
     you seem to think that means that they don't see you

          they see you

you're scared
     not of dissappointing onlookers
but of disappointing yourself in some manner you can't help
so you help yourself to whatever opportunity you can find
     to exhibit boisterously the ******* you think they see you as

          you're too smart to be so stupid

and you're hurt
i get it
     i've heard your monsters howling through your head
     everytime you ever used my bed to rest it
but that's not an excuse to pull the dumb **** that you do
that's not a reason to abandon whatever sense of self-worth you once grasped

oh
     handsome boy
          the wounds of your past are not handicaps
     no
pain catalysts enlightenment

and i meant to tell you that night
     'long the river in the fire light
that you're going to be alright
          that you'll survive
so long as you give up the act that you're the only one who's ever felt like that

hurt just proves you've still got feeling

Greetings, Sky.
I have been away.
It's been years,I reckon.
But I have not forgotten how tenderly you cradled me like the grandmother I never had.
I loved you like a love dream and you loved me back.
And yes,I remember,
How like a ball was every night,when the stars danced to sweet cosmic tunes!
How like an encounter with God Himself, Reading to me the story of creation!
But how like a dream,
It ended!

I came to you the other night,
For the sake of a humble discourse.
I talked at the top of my lungs,
And you didn't answer.
Everything has changed.
I must add,
That friend who often visited you with me,
The one who was very fond of you,
Wants to rid himself of his own existence now.
But so would I wish on myself, should you remain indifferent,any longer.
Why! God!
Why the inevitability of certain circumstances handicaps us, to even practise our own will?

I,thus in shame cry and bid you adieu,
And I pray we mend our friendship anew!

I detest what you've made me become 
you ******* hate me 
I just don't understand why 
and I try 
oh do I ******* try 
but to communicate the recipient mustnt be a brick wall
A week ago you loved me
now I'm beneath your hellos however have enough energy to talk about me 
while I still can't fathom how I can't call you up about the thing I just saw that I knew would make you laugh 
the thought of that incapability handicaps me.
I don't even try to watch the same channels anymore because I know those situations where I'll lift myself from the couch only to collapse back down because you don't even want to see my number on your caller ID
I try not to but I cry. 
I cleanse my body from this pressure that has harden me from the inside out 
I feel so deeply I turned the feelings you've infected me with into water 
I begin to breathe 
To realize I can't feel
youve seen me and want none of it.

I envy those who're not afraid of living,
of life and all the possibilities it brings,
as I clamber cowardly in my corner,
towards nowhere, in circles,
crippled by my fear of the unknown future

I admire those who walks straight in front of their own handicaps,
as I hunch my spine scraping for my confidence and self worth

I wish my image can stand tall to fulfill who I really am,
but one says, and one knows the journey to the summit of one's self is trying and arduous,
and somehow sometimes I found doubts are easier to find, and belief is the rarest jewel

BELIEVE
but are you really the key?

It's hard to watch a brother die
But his impact cannot be denied...
His Polio damage at four was hard
At year eighty-seven he died.
Between those sad years he  stood pretty tall.
But not once did he have it made...
Trudging his way through hunger and challenge
Leaving smiles in the hardest decade.
Not ever to ask for a quarter
No charity taken, his role.
Nothing handed to him on a platter
His crutches a quite heavy toll.
Depression years were his to defeat--
The young man filled family plates
By pencils he sold when jobs were not there
Those cold evenings he sold them till late
Later he met his most wonderful wife
Where his biggest dream was fulfilled.
Handicaps never slowed down his life
He had a warm spirit still
Frail but inspired, he always aspired....
His story, a story of will.

I'm trying to match
the beat of my heart with yours,
and I'm beginning to truly understand
what the basis of an abusive relationship
is like. We're nothing but porcelain
dolls
that have shattered into a million
shards, and glued back together into
a mocking semblance of "what if"...

Parts of our anatomy
are missing, now: hands, so that
we can't
hold one another, my cognitive
dissonance
so that I may never fully feel the handicaps and
disabilities
of You+Me.
But I can't
just leave.
You are a fraction of my soul.
I am an even lesser fraction of yours.

I should be afraid
of the fact that we've deteriorated
into nothing but shadows, fleeting
and haunting each other's heads.
But I am more afraid
that it's just me
who feels this way-
that I'm alone with your ghosts,
while you never
even saw
mine at all.

"I've given it up."
"Given what up?
"***, love, the works."
"What, like you're not going to try anymore?"
"Yeah, no more.  I'm done, I've had it!"
"Wow, done.  How long has it been?"
"Two weeks."
"And you feel better?"
"I feel like ****.  Every day I think about it, all the time." "It's all I can think about!"
"Then why don't you try again?"
"No, I can't, I'm done, it's just another thing that handicaps me."
"Yeah, but it's great."
"Yeah, well I'm done.  I'd rather be miserable than walk with a limp, no more."
"You'll be back one day.  You'll break down."
"Yeah maybe…but for now, I'm done."
"What does Kathrine think about all this?"
"She doesn't know yet."

Not everything is going to go right
But not everything is going to be wrong either
Why trudge through life by just going along
Wallowing in what you don’t have or what doesn’t exist
Existence is selfish
It’s full of valleys and embellishments meant to keep you high as kite or down in the basement
What’s interesting is
If you take an interest in investing in self
You’d know it only takes a few breaths to dream
In the gestation of what apathetic people call a weird thing
There’s growth and maturation
The process of success is failure via division and multiplication
Survival teaches that enabling someone only handicaps a person’s ability to go out
To take a walk about and make it on their own
Whether you’re born with a silver spoon
Or birthed into a family destined for doom
Sooner or later we all find out the same truth
That without passion and determination or a goal to place our motivation
We become like hamsters chasing projected images
Filling our medullas with hubris ideas of being moguls and tech savvy engineers
The sweet melody that plays in my ear says
Being fearless is kind of like being insane
Being vain ensures your forefathers don't die in it
The moment you realize how good you really are
no one on this Earth will be able to rival it

Nothing worth reporting besides the usual
Importance of ignoring negligent thoughts
That seek to destroy me,
Harboring inside me,
A caged bird with a broken wing.
Hope calls out in many ways,
Still your surroundings to hear its bays.
Quiet. Listen.
It’s seeking you in earnest,
Its mysterious hands fiddling with
The lock of your entrapment.
Soon, you will have the strength
To pursue all of your dreams.
But right now, you’re too consumed
By the hopelessness of your confinement.
The bars disappear when you look at them
A certain way. Illusory, these posts, these chains.
Break free, some sympathy may come your way,
And unleash you, teach you how to fly with your handicaps.
Don’t look back, once you’re released -
Fly over the valleys and the rivers, wherever you please.
Fly brave, fly free.
Continue to seek
All that seems out of your reach.
Bathe in the waterfalls of your fortune.
It’s yours, after all.
You have this as your guiding motion.
Snap back to your present situation.
You see the cage, you feel your stuntedness,
Your loss from grace,
From freedom, the chase,
You so earnestly thought you’d finally taste.
One day, it’s yours.
Just hold on to hope, on to your scope,
The sights and the breeze under your wings,
It’s all yours, always has been, always will,
And still, I know it stings.
Listen to the way the ocean sings,
Once you make it there, I know you will,
But for now, let the ink spill and spell
Your own misfortune, your own destruction,
Slowly deteriorating any sense of fruition.
I know you want to give up on these ghosts,
But they are yours to catch with a gilded net,
So let them go, if you choose, but remember
You’ll have to live with regret that you never pursued
Beyond the bars that immobilize you, like roots.
You were meant to travel and traverse,
The universe will push you towards your path.
Do not listen to those who jeer and laugh.
You know your purpose. Listen, it’s there.
What your inner voice guides is your truth to bear.

He has endured a chronic pain
Both in his heart and in his worn-out soul
At least his heart beats
There is air in his lungs
He yearns to be more
Than a mannequin
wearing the uniform of the
"underprivileged American."
He might have handicaps
That people notice more than his soul
"To help the world and invent newer items of luxury and of life's ease"
Are the successes that he so desperately wants
If only the investors and people around him could see
Placing stock into a brilliant, but, limited soul
can bring them new collections of creation
to enjoy their own life and
make it through everyday tasks
with ease.

The challenges to keep on morphing
in a changing bewildering World
to a template of myth and mythical
and a man practising His preaching love
to follow into the depths of soul
with all the handicaps of finite mind and body
to never reach fully the one goal this side of eternity
keeping on despite all, because of the all in all.

Ridden with mud and dirt
From the flow of feelings
and tears
To the minds
of the unknowns
Begging to be understood

Usually I like my hands clean
But I want to dive in
For you
In that world
with you
Ridden with mud and dirt
Scars and handicaps
of feelings
told, untold,
a rollercoaster
our ride together

I just want to know you better
Let me know you better

I told myself to chase poetry - my life's purpose
But something is dragging me - making me low
Handicaps and tests all along the road
things just froze

I am confused, utterly disturbed
The meaning of the lights and the signs
no longer I can describe

Only when I'm immerse in the pain
I can see where I must stray
only when I'm head deep in ****
I can speak, but I'm bound
It's painful to be caught
in this aphasia of thought
of the heart

This is life through a window pain
this is make believe living for amputated girls
never never succumb to its spell
you've already had this - you were living dead
remember those days?
So many words to say, which will indeed find their way
but maybe not today.

Can I run away from the ruin of us!
No, I cannot. I am hurt like a hunt deer
and we are dead so I live through this
I breathe through this. But I do not live.
But you haven't broken me - it was me

So here I am, an aphasic driver
trying to get to my destination
trying to understand
trying to roam again
so ******* misled
right is wrong and right is left
trying to steer the wheel
like I always did

Accrue, I do
With vivre and flair
Despite the
Handicaps, apparent there.
Accrue as ardently
As I can
In lieu of
Limitations span,
Ingestion of
This days hard knocks,
The parody’s
Through induced shocks…
The ins and outs
Of life’s travail
To trample that
Which helps to veil,
Obscenities,
That intervene,
Through contemplation's
Selfish screen……
Yet all for one
And one for all....
Could prove, accruals,
My downfall?

M.
8 September 2021

I am one

However, I am not alone.

I am just one of many.

Who has his downfalls, his physical handicaps, or dark feelings

Raising my heart to warm it from the truth and the sun...

I am warmed to the bone.

I spring to life and reach out to the others

Who shares in similar events or life struggles…

I consider them my true sisters and brothers.

We are all links connecting a strong chain

Of true heart changing the world

Standing behind those bullied or weakened by their dark moments

In life, this is the only true way

In which one can be part of many and then be a happy loner

Who has more than enough warmth coming from other caring souls

To warm him through the days.