We read tragedies to cast shadows on our fingers until we pull our hands away and realize they're stained black.
Our impartial grief resolves by tucking the stories in the shelf and taking a shower.
We scrub away another world's trauma from our wrist, browse Netflix for something happier, and go to bed at 10.

Tomorrow we will reach out for handshakes to display their firmness and how it's all a hoax.
See we're stronger than the others. We don't lie in graves, we scrawl marks on a concrete wall and say they would have died regardless.

We reach out for handshakes and tell you it's inconsequential.
But your arm tremors from holding tragedies woven through your lips, and your hand shakes as it grasps at strings holding your house together.

We reach out for handshakes and cry freedom.
While you read tragedies scribed under your skin.
They wrench under layers of sinew, twisting your nerve endings into a lump at the base of your skull so big I can play tennis with it.

We reach out for handshakes and tell you grandma was old anyway.
You breath in tragedies and hope the heart beating in your ****** can scrub it off.
You bleed tragedies on a hospital bed and wait for a transplant that matches.

We reach out for handshakes and tell you you're not choking
You clutch at the tragedies swallowing your lungs and tell us to let go of the plug.

love   apple   like   time   know   feel   heart   bed   little   life   home   red   boy   georgie   sleep   away   left   dear   ruth   gone   just   right   long   mind   hope   hair   mi   parts   say   fear   met   laugh   makes   sailing   make   tell   hands   day   poem   different   small   words   private   wish   legs   child   man   free   te   welcome   easy   apples   meteorite   smile   flower   want   way   arms   look   eyes   better   war   lie   good   thing   truly   teeth   passion   thought   work   seen   letters   friend   talk   brought   future   fingers   knew   imagination   sure   told   space   cold  la   mask   black   big   bite   age   size   shadow   petals   inane   stretchmarks   medic   we've   wouldn't   hear   tap   really   best   goes   face   gray   maybe   things   dream   tongue   forever   hate   set   room   death   need   truth   comes   night   lost   calves   pain   end   years   brings   touch   feet   blades   memories   new   core   times   dead   favorite   finally   minute   brain   hearts   getting   belly   far   rain   blue   knees   filled   stupid   woke   cream   fit   young   brown   se   fat   tan   cough   spoke   says   unlike   footprints   ******   rough   forward   buckle   blues   task   shoulder   grace   *******   reason   nostrils   firm   juice   palms   someday   mis   thumbs   screams   arguments   wobble   *****   elbows   *******   wrists   headaches   amo   pesky   ligaments   one-liners   thoughts   later   ash   clouds   lips   dreams   breath   mouth   hold   sense   taking   world   bit   speak   dance   gave   shall   ready   skin   air   single   breathe   button   peace   choices   hill   wrong   weak   close   use   quite   sky   phrase   darkness   justice   sound   unable   brave   holding   deep   grabbed   ****   try   building   paper   lunch   think   kind   stay   days   smooth   perfect   learned   care   fair   hard   grant   sweet   high   fruit   short   terms   kept   relationship   underneath   presence   water   looking   fool   sorrow   tree   second   delicate   nearly   happy   line   tall   tried   sad   satisfied   point   feels   falling   purpose   game   lazy   que   amor   agree   known   naught   loss   broke   failed   games   limp   grin   final   spring   act   south   flare   race   sake   car   large   wishes   neck   blink   knife   seeing   idea   steve   company   greens   spread   ship   lo   sally   sum   drowned   december   weep   sting   smiles   lessons   promises   successful   whistled   drowns   perfectly   pleasing   failure   brothers   cliche   harder   thirteen   ale   signs   limit   serenity   mundane   origin   chat   sapphires   handshakes   skinny   contagious   succeeding   super   refer   maturity   destination   civil   uncomfortable   collects   clack   liz   beatles   vez   attract   accomplishment   backside   throes   flaccid   audi   oneself   beastie   applesauce   naivete   bungalow   outie   there's   couldn't   isn't   they're   let's   'n   primos   primas   cantuta   fronton   redd's   mott's   innie   phallicly   tiny   fight   yo   para   walk   ****   hello   light   flash   silent   stone   does   forth   conversation   polite   green   minutes   ****   clear   flesh   couple   wake   anger   throw   torn   tangle   play   shattered   soldier   land   victim   carry   battlefield   came   darkest   blood   battle   warm   shine   reminds   lose   eye   dismay   hide   impossible   fast   earth   grab   stand   die   worse   year   people   white   story   hit   god   anxiety   realize   fall   asleep   dark   course   apart   morning   remain   beauty   ****   slowly   start   happen   remember   pray   past   easily   straight   mean   hand   driving   instant   thunder   messages   friends   old   coming   pen   seeds   shape   wasted   word   living   tore   shadows   knowing   bad   class   joy   trust   leaves   path   sun   ways   leave   meet   broken   head   weight   means   mountain   boys   true   stars   learn   sliced   naive   decided   player   actually   reality   ease   music   hood   desperate   promise   wishing   begin   miss   caressing   moan   thighs   heard   pretty   emotion   figure   floor   exotic   sand   hits   angel   awake   dreaming   probably   wins   seek   stretch   loved   tears   heartbreak   punk   walking   piece   furniture   unreachable   roots   near   deserve   simple   cats   tail   precious   lovers   loves   mother   tongues   clueless   share   taken   yesterday   faith   freedom   ripe   cursed   running   yes   unknown   feeling   going   stairs   opposite   wonder   afloat   packed   bones   acting   playing   wind   passions   dismissed   hourglass   reached   stares   mouths   singing   shaped   trapped   toll   dies   rock   trunk   discovered   especially   dull   choice   awful   patient   great   indoors   attached   thread   shoulders   warms   bright   bring   ending   drowning   sadness   winter   baby   looked   cute   beating   tight   kids   crying   ran   intoxicating   growing   saying   opposites   melancholy   gives   follow   clearly   dove   tu   soon   entwined   juicy   drown   laid   took   moved   bear   anyways   shirt   negative   clean   guide   sore   location   faux   nodded   glance   caught   chances   week   started   today   obvious   sweat   ***   quiet   laughed   worry   round   ladies   mama   smack   goodbye   rising   sides   wished   beds   infinite   positive   scared   admittedly   mistakes   meal   common   rises   toes   bullets   bound   suited   birth   clothes   belt   pounds   ground   barren   sitting   table   woe   swimming   stick   deepest   motion   cleared   sing   angry   action   sons   smiled   bedroom   wall   wiped   grins   mad   july   store   road   snow   pulse   important   adventure   exactly   foundation   trap   colors   floors   neon   outside   language   summer   north   fifty   served   wavy   kick   raw   thirty   row   changed   hanging   lied   drenched   companion   begins   strength   flies   direction   okay   stories   inky   stubborn   cloud   track   described   lover   replaced   pit   packs   circling   honest   wage   dinner   slave   paradox   faking   screamed   lightning   exterior   stopping   complete   deal   rifle   dependent   gifts   dancer   vision   students   horror   punch   anymore   pack   sagging   folk   honestly   tearing   prepared   creatures   listening   rhythm   unique   roar   card   glass   stage   desert   offered   fought   suffer   awoke   master   eating   furnace   glad   choir   graceful   *****   treasure   ships   bark   musical   strand   bee   finished   pink   slink   stronger   disclose   gravity   schedule   march   medicine   hates   weird   brush   laughs   helped   june   pitched   dumped   tense   sin   withdrawn   stem   proved   whispered   anew   amazing   louder   english   knocked   chilly   boots   false   mistake   toffee   whistle   smirk   gas   poised   buttons   bet   necks   elate  vi   bleak   decades   intention   plane   swollen   unseemly   en   sir   creeping   tells   success   doth   ***   balance   ant   fourth   fits   matters   pan   shook   tingle   dusty   reaching   thanked   careers   pile   tempt   ix   xi   xii   xiii   moms   hushed   spears   twinkling   works   fairytale   double   fighter   shocked   barriers   boot   thanks   solitary   lesson   owned   systems   groan   weekend   tomatoes   cider   calculating   drawer   partially   handy   stumpy   album   appealing   pet   unfortunately   jokingly   hotel   teacher   tag   eighteen   leg   dash   peep   betwixt   swear   attempt   inescapable   venues   worker   suit   coughed   remembers   rhyme   listed   chatter   stuff   assist   blocks   sheen   stanzas   jobs   cleaned   handshake   natural   moi   fantasy   cheers   smaller   curl   nay   leaning   frequent   eggs   cuando   el   desayuno   tus   beige   imperfections   difficult   darlings   overcome   oranges   keys   newfound   fairly   occasions   stats   ponder   pools   ablaze   rushes   fret   quell   breads   progress   comfortable   settling   desks   tile   trails   rainy   homemade   stunned   cemetery   plus   ideas   avocados   bananas   apply   latch   rocky   digress   experiences   vacation   sanctuary   earlier   rocket   precise   various   author   pie   explosions   *******   lighter   matched   plunged   isaac   jefferson   abe   measured   saturday   claw   welcoming   gear   trained   suffocation   leapt   gap   lee   disturbed   es   thrill   alarming   grill   frankly   importantly   una   fray   candied   amalgamation   nasty   american   optimism   guns   craters   contracted   rampant   unattainable   spilled   courts   carrots   shuffled   combined   blonde   forgave   artillery   sandwich   comfier   limitation   personalities   friday   strongly   crude   banana   tennis   limits   quaking   recesses   loot   andromeda   shells   playful   luckily   area   upwards   flail   largest   sappy   freckles   biology   fruition   cases   overtook   pinks   instruments   brownies   birthmark   reinforce   laptop   pirates   blinks   frontier   forwards   resonate   capacity   mumbled   marched   scraping   prompts   multiply   haiku   football   como   function   unfeeling   eighty   backsides   prompt   raced   blare   likewise   pro   chrome   gran   pears   puede   corazon   elated   indecisive   basketball   burgundy   synonyms   braced   effeminate   mutually   duties   companies   honeymoon   flailing   patted   mayo   headon   pero   misma   marveled   aforementioned   abhors   forefront   hesitating   identical   creepy   possessive   screeched   gotcha   infidelity   friction   barrage   nonetheless   disparate   itchy   apex   gettysburg   lunchtime   pickup   muchas   then   and   trading   distinguishable   pitches   bunk   ven   ladylike   encompasses   diagrams   underlying   spaghetti   soccer   trashcan   papa   disarming   finalmente   clashed   rosie   smirks   snapshot   pug   songbird   spitfire   yanks   thankfully   mesa   flexing   virginia   effectively   variations   eclipses   tambien   outrun   incident   vitamin   willpower   underdog   hardboiled   miniscule   checkerboard   entrust   siento   heavyweight   davis   thyroid   foreshadowing   frances   heresy   starburst   deficiency   sawing   peruvian   leche   antithesis   villanelle   alliteration   hora   vivir   clacking   droopy   whizzed   britney   futbol   parameters   disney   mangos   disproportionate   orbiting   tanka   stubby   intro   listo   goldilocks   teamwork   pbj   exemplifies   rey   retainer   tenia   triples   espanol   estuvo   castillo   ferrying   suficiente   racecar   dorky   garganta   veo   julio   peripherals   labios   rojos   foreseeable   frito   groggily   venn   macbook   inanely   hubo   goofball   you've   she's   weren't   wasn't   we're   others'   you'll   should've   haven't   what's   you'd   they'd   man's   boys'   god's   woman's   fruit's   orion's   newton's   lincoln's   adam's   momma's   ******   jackson's   audis   dulces   disproportionately   charon's   deseos   avocadoes   hailey   eran   beatles'   ingles   he   she   it   rackets   --   hashtag   sixty-three   duct-tape   joysticks   sherman's   15   6th   32   500   7th   2013   extraño   barenaked   tamales   6-year-old   tierras   derpy   ewell   rom-com   themit's   adan   mudpits   puddlepits   war--hell   culp's   shitpits   completaron   chocolatada   levantanse   duraznos   n'sync   huevo   cholitos   levantaron   manzanas   endurece   wozniak's   dispara   nuez   open-endedness   innies   cankles   dunder-mifflin   tunks   buck-toothed   outies   grief-blown   a-gawking

Her hair was long, brown, and wavy, like homemade brownies.
Her eyes were different shaped blues, lighter than sapphires.
Whenever she blinks, I look forward to seeing those sapphires again.
Her teeth are perfect imperfections, retainer and all.
Her bite is one of love but packs a punch.
Her nostrils flare when angry but remain miniscule.
Her mouth a light pink, like Starburst, my favorite by far.
Her smile brings me back from the darkness every. Single. Time.
Her tongue is exotic and playful, and I long for it.
I have never heard her whistle, but I know it like the back of my hand.
Her laugh is intoxicating and contagious; I find myself acting the fool just to hear it.
Then she coughed and I patted her baby back.
Whenever those pesky headaches come, we lie still, thus foreshadowing what will come.
Our arguments are stupid, but they happen nonetheless.
Her neck is thin and ripe for the taking.
Her *******, much like Goldilocks: not too big, not too small, but just right.
Her spaghetti arms flail about when I act the fool, and then that precious laugh again.
Her elbows are full of cream, and you will never find them itchy like mine.
Her wrists are disproportionately large for her size, which makes her all the more unique.
Her handshakes are delicate. Ladylike.
Her long and skinny fingers were weird to me once, but they have contracted and fit perfectly between mine.
Her palms tell the future, and she has great things in store for her.
Her thumbs have no story to tell, positive or negative.
Her shadow is smaller than hers, but no shadow can overcome her.
Her cats keep her company, but luckily we found each other.
Her heart is as big as her brain, and thankfully they mutually agree on most occasions.
Her ******* are stumpy and droopy; this is no Snow White fairytale.
Her shoulder blades are tense but minute.
Her belly button (an innie, not an outie, not an Audi) never collects ****.
Her private parts pulse like her heart above with passion.
Her backside is small and smooth. She has no hourglass figure, yet she does, too.
She has no stretchmarks in my mind, but I have enough for the both of us, anyways.
Her whole system is that of a heavyweight fighter; she’s a little spitfire.
Her legs are perfect and skinny; she has “the gap”, not that it matters.
Her knees buckle and wobble in my presence. I should know: mine do when she is near, too.
Her ligaments reinforce her, much like her willpower.
She has the calves of a dancer, but she has not trained in years.
The ***** of her feet are poised, ready to spring into action to tap tap tap away.
Her toes curl against mine, in an attempt to hold hands.
I have never seen her footprints, and I have no intention of ever seeing them. Ever.
Her promises elate me since I know she is good for her word.
Her one-liners are worse than mine, and I laugh all the harder for it.
Her grin, or rather her smirk, warms my heart like a furnace in the winter.
The last time we spoke, it was mumbled in bed, a hushed goodbye for that awful biology class.

She is my rock, ever leaning forwards
with nothing but my Dunder-Mifflin shirt to keep her warm for the foreseeable future.

I told her, Te amo,
well before she was ready to say that inane phrase back in English.
Inane since words do not do it justice.

But then she broke my heart.

My hair was tearing at the roots, unable to stay attached.
My eyes were set ablaze with passion anger, if it weren’t for my sorrow to drown it out.
Whenever I blink, I see a snapshot of what it was, what it cannot be, what it will never be again.
My teeth were her favorite: buck-toothed and all, but that was when I smiled. They hide from you.
My bite isn’t nearly as big as my bark, but do not tempt me.
My nostrils have hair creeping out; it’s hard to keep clean after something like that.
My mouth is louder than all my thoughts combined, but I still can’t find the right words to say.
And my smile would be what brought her back from the darkness every. Single. Time.
My tongue, like my private parts, is limp and dead; phallicly flaccid, there is no passion here.
I have never whistled, but why should I learn now? I keep quiet to quell the roar.
My laugh is contagious, or so they tell me. It’s high pitched. Effeminate.
I cough. I get stares. My cough makes you uncomfortable. Your infidelity makes me uncomfortable.
Whenever those pesky headaches come, I lie still, and for a minute, just a minute, I die. I’m at peace.
Our arguments were stupid, but now there’s nothing left to talk about.
My neck is fat and swollen. **** my thyroid. This vitamin D deficiency is taking its toll.
My ******* are fat, but a momma’s boy would be: too much in the trunk, not enough under the hood.
My arms are as big as her thighs. We measured. Maybe it gave her peace knowing she was small.
She tells me I have a black woman’s ***, and elbows, to boot. Not enough cream. Not enough carrots.
My wrists are the cankles of my life.
My handshake is firm, but is it firm enough?
My short and stubby fingers claw upwards, desperate for air. Her hands are nowhere to be seen.
My palms have no future, and I worry I’ll follow suit.
My thumbs tell all the best stories when joysticks are underneath them.
My shadow eclipses me. It’s not how you feel, it’s how you function.
I’ve never owned a pet. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel possessive.
My heart was full of love, but the love spilled out when you broke it on Friday, December 6th – Saturday, December 7th, 2013, 5:00 AM.
My ******* are tiny and ***** from the cold. I feel the cold indoors, too.
My shoulder blades are dull and sagging with the weight of my world on my shoulders.
My belly button (an innie, not an outie, not an Audi) collects all of the ****.
My private parts, like my tongue, are limp and dead; phallicly flaccid, there is no passion here.
My backside is large and rough. Are you getting the point?
I have all of the stretchmarks, for I am her antithesis.
My whole system is that of down and out former has been; I’m all out of gas.
My legs are thick and fat; I suffer friction with my tree tunks.
My knees buckle and wobble in her presence; I’m weak around her because I’m weak.
My ligaments are partially torn, which perfectly exemplifies me: hanging by a thread.
I have the calves of a soccer player out of shape. Hashtag truth.
The ***** of my feet sting -- unable to carry two hundred plus pounds of failure.
I have finally seen footprints; I’m just glad they were mine.
Her promises mean nothing. My trust is shattered. My faith withdrawn from this or any other world.
My one-liners make everyone laugh but me; I know I mask the pain. Do they?
My grin was effectively wiped off my face when you told me.
The last time we spoke, it was on good terms. But how good are those terms with this double size?

I was comfortable, lazy, ever dependent on her
with everything in my life, especially that which she didn’t need to deal with.

I told her, You deserve to be dumped.
She nodded slowly, crying, and whispered back, I know. My hate described by inane words.
Inane since words do not do it justice.

Then, it hit me.

Our hair is fairly short together, not unlike our time apart since the incident.
Our eyes well up, and the only drowning I hope we get is of love.
Whenever we blink, I want to make sure that I am in front of you, and you in front of me.
Our teeth, much like our personalities, are disparate, and that’s okay.
Our bite is one of teamwork: you can’t bite with one row of teeth.
Our nostrils could use some work. Hair and flare rhyme, but neither fits in our time.
Our mouths chat chat chatter away. We have nothing to talk about. We have so much to talk about.
Our smiles are the reason why people find us cute, and they’re the reason why they were shocked. Let’s give them another reason.
Our tongues dance across language barriers. Mi español no puede vivir sin tu ingles.
We have never whistled. Finally! Some common ground (opposites attract).
We’ve been told that our laughs are nearly identical, like a choir singing in different pitches. Sing.
We cough together, because we know we can take care of each other.
Whenever those pesky headaches come, we take a deep breath, hold on tight, and move forward.
Our arguments ARE stupid. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Our necks are like the Happy Meal and the Super Size Me. I love to see us smile.
Our ******* are life; I don’t know what mine do, but I know yours will come in handy someday.
Our arms have their “things”; you have that birthmark, and I have unseemly hair growing everywhere.
Our elbows could be a rom-com: one smooth, one rough, but they can’t get enough.
Our wrists make sure our hands can keep us afloat.
Our handshakes are delicate but firm.
Our fingers latch onto each other, like a bear trap.
Our palms SMACK together when you high five me. Goofball.
Our thumbs are bound to get sore if we keep caressing our hands while holding onto each other. Raw.
Our shadows slink away when they see us shine so bright.
I hope to God that Rosie the pug is as derpy as your heart can take.
Our hearts have duct-tape all over them…it’s a work in progress, but bones get stronger when broken.
Our ******* are disproportionate. There, I said it.
Our shoulder blades dance across each other when we lie back to back.
Our belly buttons (innies, not outies, not Audis) keep us close to our moms; you’ll agree someday.
Our private parts tingle as we move in motion and rhythm. It’s been too long, mi amor.
Our backsides are like Venn diagrams: yours could easily fit in mine.
I have all the stretchmarks, but I hope you get them after birth someday. We share everything else.
Our systems are the underdog rising up, straight to the top; it took its time, and its chances.
Your legs could fit in one of my own. Please refer to the stretchmarks line.
Our knees buckle and wobble. Please refer to the private parts line.
Our ligaments have taken a beating, but somehow, there’s a strand holding us together.
We have calves of different passions, but we both know what the sweet sting of success feels like.
The ***** of our feet touch down as we’re back to reality. The honeymoon stage is over. Cloud 9.
Unfortunately, we’ve seen footprints, but I think they’re circling back around to meet up again.
This promise should be the last until the most important one comes up. This is it.
Our one-liners keep us close to our dorky sides. Honestly, something is probably wrong with us.
Our grins (or smirks) show that we can’t really stay mad at each other for TOO long.
The last time we spoke, it was yesterday night (or was it earlier today?), but I’m sure you woke up.

We ******* up. Admittedly you more than me,
but I digress: one mistake is not enough to throw away two years of work.

I forgave you.
You were elated. Let’s try this once more, with feeling!
I’ll inanely tell her again, *Te amo.

What makes you feel the most beautiful?
  ->doing whatever the fu€k I want
edit 1: I usually thought this way, but now I would say when I’m worshipping or praying
edit 2: I would add it is when I am completely vulnerable. It is a different kind of beauty. One that is emotionally strong
(usually a person will say when they look a certain way which is sad to an extent because it reflects the way in which they associate beauty immediately with an external reflection; however, most people think this way)

2. Who do you love the most in your life?

3. Who has shown you and made you feel the most loved?
—> I had a 11 year old ask me this once

4. What would you do during the summers as a kid?
—> it can reflect the socioeconomic background one comes from

5. Do you think you’re an aesthetically  beautiful person?
—> this is quite interesting, bc if a good looking person says yes, then they’re proud and stuck up; if they say no, then they’re obnoxiously oblivious and seeking attention; if a not so good looking person says yes, then they are praised for their confidence; if they say no, then they are pitied and encouraged, the best answer is to give an answer back: do you believe that everyone should feel aesthetically beautiful?

6. Do you have any siblings? If so, how many brothers and sisters, and are you the oldest or youngest?
—> learning about birthing order can be huge! Oldest tend to be protective, responsible, mature at a very young age, selfless, and carry more of a silent burden and stress, introduction to adulthood is rather quick. Middle child is often overlooked and will seek a sense of family/community elsewhere with friend groups and such; they feel like their thoughts/existence goes unseen by the ones that are supposed to care the most youngest tend to seek the approval of others especially of those older than them, outgoing, irresponsible, and babied. They can have a harder time managing task without it being done for them by others.

7. When we fall asleep, where do you think we go?

8. What is a thought that has kept you up at night?

9. What was the most humbling moment you’ve had in your life?

10. What is a piece of advice that you still hold today that transcends time?

11. What’s a favorite quote of yours?
-> the unexamined life is a life not worth living; don’t take yourself too seriously; come back home to yourself and choose to show up authentically; growth is a dance not a light switch; Harriet Tubman- I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed  a thousand more of only they knew they were slaves.

12. Who has impacted your life the most? How and why?

13. What is an overlooked or under appreciated strength that you have?
—> honesty, forgiveness

14. How do you give love? How do you receive it?
—> 5 love languages: words of affirmations, physical touch, acts of service, quality time, gifts

15. How do you communicate when in repairs after a rupture has occurred?
—> discuss as soon as possible, take a five minute break, wait a few days, words, touch, gifts, silence, etc. so you never repair after a disagreement?

16. Do you enjoy the late hours of the night or the early hours of the morning?

17. What’s your favorite type of weather?

18. Do you prefer exploring and staying in the gray, or the black and white?

19. Of you could study anything what would it be?

20. What are ways that you work on your emotional intelligence and character?

21. What type of communicator are you?
—> words, touch, actions, silent, loud, stoic, expressive, curt, bombastic, blunt, passive, etc.

22. Would you say you have a better face or body?

23. What is a moment where you felt a supernatural appreciation for the earth due to the view you saw?

24. How do you handle seasons? The ends and beginnings of them?
-> journal, reflect, avoid, acknowledge, cry, run backwards, move forwards, etc.

25. What book had a huge effect on you? What was it about the book?
-> all the bright places, Fahrenheit 451, the curse of the good girl, it ends with us, great gatsby, the voice of archer, etc.

26. What is the worst thing you can take from another person?
-> their time

27. What’s the greatest act of love (that you can do for another) ?
-> to die for another since the greatest fear is death

28. What is something that brings you peace that not many people do or notice?

29. What is the worst form of loneliness?
-> when you are uncomfortable with yourself

30. When do you feel the most vulnerable?
-> sleeping, expressing emotions, sick, crying, etc.

31. How do you handle seasons? The end and beginning of them?

32. Liquid or bar soap?

33. Have you ever closed your eyes, plugged your ears, and listen to the noise that comes when you let the water from a shower head pour over your skull

34. What is the most beautiful sound you have ever heard?

35. Do you think your parents are soulmates, or do you question their love for each other?  

36. What are important qualities to have in any relationship (platonic, romantic, etc.)?
-> trust, love, loyalty, respect, empathy, compassion, boundaries, autonomy, differences, effective communication, etc.

37. What are qualities that you look for in a romantic partner?
-> thoughtfulness, observant, confidence, wisdom, romantic, humorous, self-driven, self-discipline, humility, grace, etc.

38. How do you know that your (insert name/ relationship) loves you?

39. Would you rather be hated or alone?
-> interesting philosophical question in regards to being hated would mean that there is a recognition of your existence as opposed to being alone

40. How did you learn to ride the bike? Ice Scate? Snowboard?

41. When was the last time you felt rejected? By who? For what?

42. When was the last time you cried?

43. What has a kid said to you that has made you stop and reflect?

44. Which is a worse fear: the fear of dying or the fear of not being worthy of love
-> Jordan Peterson claims that the greatest fear that humans have is not death because then how would we explain suicide...the fear of death is a subcategory for the greatest fear which he believes to be the complexity issue (people **** themselves not because they want to die but because their life has become too complex for them to handle emotionally and/or physically)

45. What is the most destructive thing a person can do to themselves?
-> to deny themselves; to place the responsibilities of loving and accepting themselves onto others such as lovers or family members; to believe they are not worthy to be loved

46. What is something you want to experience/feel in a relationship
-> unconditional love; lol I have a while poke dedicated to experiences

47. Tell me about a dream that you have had multiple times

48. What do you like most about yourself?
-> my mind/thinking process; understanding, and open to conversation

49. Would you be friends with yourself

50. What is the worst thing you have done or said to another person? How old were you?

51. Why do you choose to wake up and participate in society?

52. What makes a woman or man their gender? Their body/attitude/characteristics?

53. Would you let your child date someone that has the character of you?

54. What makes you special? Since the beliefs you hold and the personality traits that you have aren’t exclusive to you?
-> it’s the combination and ratio that makes us unique

55. when was the last time anyone ever told you how important you are?

56. what are things you do when you need to feel nurtures?
->hot bath, foot rub, curling up in a comfy chair with a comforter and a good book, or making a *** of soup or a nourishing hot drink

57. what are ways that you neglect your physical and emotional well-being?

58. where in your life are you not protecting what is precious in you?

59. what adjectives describe your relationship with your mother? do you like the closeness or is it uncomfortable in some ways and hard to fully accept?

60. What do you do when you cry? do you try to stop it, cover your eyes, in the dark, into a pillow, silent, loud, sooth your body?

61. What was something that someone said to you that made you feel seen for the first time in a long time? what is something that touched you heart?
-> you are do brave, you have a courageous heart, you are a natural teacher and psychologist, you lean towards healing, you do not realize how much you impact other people's lives

62. what is a go to song that you could listen to at any moment in your life?

63. What do you do when you feel lonely?

64. What is something that puts a smile on your face?

65. What smell brings you joy?

66. would you rather get caught or catch your parents?

67. what is one of the biggest lies you have told yourself?
-> you are unworthy of love

68. what is a memory that reminds you of the beauty in life?

69. what is your favorite word to pronounce?
-> tantalizing, satiate, revere

70. what stereotype do you think people put you in when they see you?
-> pretty, (not super smart) blonde

71. what are things about you would shock other people?
-> first generation. youngest of five, 4.0 student, write poetry, love to read, not active on social media, don't like taking pictures, never been kissed, played the violin and cello, struggled with insecurity

72. tell me the accomplishments that you might be hesitant to share bluntly in fear that it comes off as being a show off?
-4.0 since sixth grade to nursing school in college, won a poetry competition in senior year of high school, got a full ride to UW Seattle and declined, won best dressed in high school, squatted 225lbs, muscular body, sang in a few songs (good at singing)

73. how do you interact with others when they are invading your personal space?
-> don't do anything, interrupt and tell them to move, slowly do something on your own without saying anything to them

74. what do you do and how do you feel when someone cries next to you?
-> hug/touch them, talk to them, remain silent, get stiff and uncomfortable, try to get them to stop crying, walk away

75. how do you regulate your emotions when they are out of homeostasis?
-> don't know how to, take deep breaths, walk away from the situation so the stimulus/source is not in front of me, cry

76. name as many emotions as you can
-> reflects their ability to accurately label their emotional experiences and can possibly be a marker/indicator for their emotional intelligence/maturity

77. how do you feel about death, do you talk about death, do you see others shut down or open up when you express this topic?
-> isn't it ironic how death is an inevitable event yet so many humans are uncomfortable with talking about it. I believe that it interrupts the natural grieving process. I talk about death with my dad and he is more open with talking to me about when he passes; my mom gets uncomfortable and gets upset and tries to switch the topic.

78. would you rather eat any form of noodles or burgers for the rest of your life?

79. when was the last time you sat in silence and was comfortable with it (excluding before you fall asleep)?

80. when was the last time you had a conversation with yourself about something deep? what was it about?

81. what is a revelation in your life that made you cry?
->only God can provide me with unconditional love; no one else can

82. what do you think is the root of all fears? what do you think can remove them?
->ignorance; distraction/knowledge -> unconditional love

83. What is the most unique response you’ve received when you’ve asked someone how they are doing?
-> still breathing

84. Do you think humans are easy to love?
-> I don’t think they are easy; it is complex just like they are

85. When was the last time you read a book? What was the title called? what was it about? Why did you read it?
-> the emotionally absent mother by Jasmin Lee Cori

86. If you’re comfortable with sharing, talk to me about the life of someone that has passed away? What were they like? How did they make you feel? Who were they to you? How did you cope when you realized they passed away?

87. Who are addicts? What do you need to do to be one? Do you think everyone is an addict to some extent? Why do you think people become addicts?
-> whenever faced with such questions it is imperative that we must ask ourselves the question of why! Yes, I believe all of us are addicts to dopamine; our brain is wired that way. But when we think of addicts, we forgot to ask the question of why they are addicts. Life became too difficult to manage and the body found a way to stimulate the mind in such a manner that it either numbed the pain or provide sensation to a chronic state of numbness

88. Other than the lips, where do you like to be kissed the most?
-> forehead, cheek, behind the ear, neck, top of head, hand, nose, shoulder, chest, back, collarbone

89. What type of kiss do you enjoy the most?
-> slow, fast, French, peck, open mouthed, short, long, sloppy, hungry, passionate, affectionate, sweet, etc.

90. it is easy to agree with the statement that dehumanization is not okay, but is it more gray than we think? is there a degree of dehumanization that is okay or needed? if so, what is that degree? also, do you think we commit acts of dehumanization regularly? if so, when and what are these instances?
-> i believe that as humans we have a tendency of wanting to see our light and ignore the aspects of ourselves that are casted in that shadow. to have a light is to also have a shadow; i believe that we dehumanize almost every time we meet someone by limiting their mystery to small snipits of who they really are; also, sometimes it is very difficult to handle and hold such emotional space that our minds need to shut off and dehumanize for our own sake of well-being

91. are soul mates meant to be with each other?
-> A soulmate is a person with whom one has a feeling of deep or natural affinity. This may involve similarity, love, romance, platonic relationships, comfort, intimacy, sexuality, ****** activity, spirituality, compatibility and trust

92. what are ways that you can take a break from reality?
-> sleep, reading, gaming, showering

93. do you have people in your life where their presence is enough? no conversation is necessary, just each other's presence is comforting enough.
->celesa, kristina, michelle, marta,

94. what is a memory you like to relive time to time?
->dancing with celesa at the bistro to adore you; trinity; late night phone calls with close friends

95. how would you describe your relationship using 5 adjectives or phrases with your best friend, sibling (if you have one), and care giver?
-> "If you love yourself, you love others. If you hate yourself, you hate others. Because in relationship with others … the other is nothing but a mirror." - Anonymous

96. how would you describe yourself using 10 adjectives?
-“I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best." I like this quote because it acknowledges the negatives of who we all are. we aren't all only happy, funny, bubbly, hard-working, etc. we are also grumpy, boring, rude, and lazy. we are a combination of every adjective out there; it just depends on how aware we are of our expressions of these adjectives. So, notice the kind of adjective the person uses when they respond and also note the context and circumstance of your relation to them.

97. do you prefer a hot drink on a cold day or a cold drink on a hot day?

98. if you could be famous would you? famous for writing, acting, food, music, sport, YouTube etc.
-> for me personally it depends on the exposure i get. if i get a lot of focus on myself then no (music, acting, etc.) but if my work gets more focus than i do and i can still live a "normal" life then yes (writing, food, etc).

99. which musicians or artists do you think deserve more recognition?
-> emotional oranges, Justice Der, cigarettes after ***, the 1975, pink sweat$, A. Chal

100. what is one of the most thought-provoking questions or statements you have ever heard?
-> "not all of us can afford to be romantic" - Pride and Prejudice;
"when will it be enough; how much more do you need to finally be happy"- My dad; "do you believe that everyone deserves to look and find themselves to be aesthetically beautiful" -My brother

101. Favorite piece of clothing?
-> yuriy’s wedding: the dress I had, red socks, fuzzy sweater

102. What’s your full name?

103. What’s the weirdest saying an old person has said?
-> don’t go spending your money in a wooden nickel

104. What age would you consider a person to be old?

105. Do you believe that life requires s purpose?

106. What is your purpose?

107. What is one of your biggest fears that you believed in (as a child, adult, etc)?
-> that I was unlovable at some point in my life

108. When you are in an emotional emergency, do you have someone you can call? If so, who is it and why?
-> I don’t really...I try to stick through it...weird since I have had people tell me that I could call them but I still don’t feel comfortable to talk to them...

109. Do you have relationships where you felt valued, a sense of belonging, calm, accepted?

110. What is your earliest memory of feeling left out?
-> the social pain overlap theory (SPOT) describes the overlap between the pain of being physically hurt and the pain of being left out. In our bodies, there is literally no distinction between the two.

111. If you could only have one for the rest of your life, would you choose to keep limes or lemons?

112. Have you ever experienced the relational paradox? If so, with whom?
->  when you’re convinced that your friends won’t tolerate who you really are so you decided the best way to be excepted is to leave a part of yourself out of those relationships; By hiding yourself you may preserve the friendship but at the cost of feeling that you don’t legitimately belong but if your friends can see who you truly are they would cut you loose

113. Have you ever done a relational mindfulness exercise?
-> set a timer for 10 minutes, and then stare into each other’s eyes silently. It should sync your cardiac systems as well as your respiratory systems. Hold each other’s pulses to identify; I find it weird how we get stared at lovingly when we are babies and then that goes away as well get older...

114. What is a secret that you have kept from your partner, family, or closest friends that you believe if they found out they would reject you?

115. Do you have a person in your life that can be categorized as “the one that got away”? Someone you either dated or never dated?

116. Is there someone in your life that you don’t see anymore that you would like to have a conversation with? Dead and/or alive.

117. Sunset or sunrise?

118. Do you want children? What is your opinion on men who don’t want children; what is your opinion on women who don’t want children?

119. Have you ever felt forced to do something that you didn’t want to do or say? Like give a handshake, hug, take a picture, have a conversation, give a number, compliment someone, disclose personal information, go on a date, say I love you?
-> there’s a difference between not wanting to do something and feeling forced to do something, and I find it interesting that we all do things that we feel are forced upon us when no one is directly stating that we have to do it; it’s like an invisible force

120. what is something that another person did that made you uncomfortable but you never addressed it?
-> sing terribly while they are genuinely trying, get physically close to me, compliment me in a creepy way, talk in a movie theater

121. What is a pet peeve of yours?
-> leaving garbage on a table after you eat (not cleaning up after yourself), having poor etiquette with servers or cashiers, saying “mom” instead of “my mom” if I don’t share the same mother as them (missing the possessive pronoun before a parent).

122. Who is someone that you find attractive that is the same *** as you?
-> Arbby, Irina, Jessica, Sara, Valentina

123. What is the most sweet/****** compliment you have given to someone?

124. What is the biggest plot twist you have ever seen in a movie or book?

125. When did you  feel the most loved (in your entire life, this week, by me)?

126. what is something I have said that you have always remembered?

127. Blue or red Gatorade?

128. Star gazing or sunset picnic?

129. What is something that is underrated?
-> our bodies (specifically our our hands, eyes), stars, cologne/perfume

130. have you ever tried to impress the other? If so, for what reason and when?

131. Which do you prefer: breakfast, lunch, or dinner for the rest of your life?

132. Are you missing someone right now? Do you think they miss you?

133. What was the happiest meme out you have had this year?
-> dancing with Celesa at trinity, at the apartment, after hours at the bistro, French dip at lost like with Celesa, holding Lorenzo, seeing a birth and colostrum, making my first song and listening to it for the first time, board game with Hayden, D.E.A. Hat guy, Fourth of July with kristina -> ride back with questions, eagles falls, yuriy’s wedding and gelato boy, euphoria makeup with Bella, painting with Michelle at green lake, reading books

134. where were you born?

135. how many states/countries have you visited?

136. what color would you use to describe your life

137. would you say it is better or worse to listen to sad music when you are sad?

138. what is the #1 factor that predestines people for failed relationships?
-> no examples of healthy relationships

139. what is the weirdest ice cream flavor you have ever tried?
->black licorice, peppercorn/caramel/goat cheese

140. What’s the most exciting dream you have ever had?

141. What’s the most peaceful dream you have ever had?

142. What’s the most terrifying dream you have ever had?

143. Who is the most misunderstood person you know?
-> Mark; he wasn’t well liked, but I remember thinking that the was just misunderstood...

144. Who in your life are you misunderstood by?
-> my mom

145. Do you prefer handshakes or hugs?

146. Do you prefer movie nights or dinner dates?

147. When was the last time you read a paper book for pleasure?

148. What is a comment that someone said to you that you were honestly shocked by? Like, you couldn’t believe it came from their mouth?
-> when I was in sixth grade and my friend’s mom said, “aren’t you jealous of [her daughter/my best friend’s name] ****”?; “do you even know what wings are”?

149. As a kid in elementary school, where did you play during recess? Tetherball, four-square, hopscotch, jump rope, soccer, basketball, slide, monkey bars, swings, sandpit, etc?

150. What otter pop flavor was your favorite?
-> the pink one

151. When you brush your teeth, are you messy or clean? Meaning, does the toothpaste get outside of your mouth at all?

152. What do you remember about elementary school in terms of field trips, punishments, recess, fun run, day of activities, lunch food, movie nights, fundraisers, assemblies, and reading points?

153. what do you remember about middle school in terms of the change from elementary school with no recess, classes, $ex ed, lockers, assemblies, P.E., lunch food?

154. what do you remember about high school in terms of the change from middle school, classes, assemblies, P.E., sports, lunch food, standard tests, dances, friends from your first year to your last year?

155. what do you think is a poet's aphrodisiac in the form of a person?
->intelligence, originality, mystery, intriguing personality

156. what is a bad habit that you know you should quit ( can be a substance, activity, or person)?

157. How often would you say you reflect on your life? with the mundane activities and the more impacting activities?

158. what's a song that you are replaying right now?
-> redbone x childish gambino by Jospeh Solomon

159. what is the most random food combo that you really enjoy?
->mashed potatoes/gravy with corn; hot dog with jelly

160. who is a person in your life that was the most mysterious to you?

161. would you say that you were shown healthy relationships throughout your childhood? in particular, your parents' relationship?

162. would you say that your family made you feel seen, heard, and understood? if not, would you say that you subconsciously expect this in your adult relationships? what have you done to unlearn this mentality?

163. would you say that you are always the one doing the caretaking in your relationships?

164. do you have a hard time listening to others?

165. do you act differently with men than with women?

166. do you get hurt easily and withdraw when there is conflict; what are you like during conflict?

167. what are you like when you don't get your way (aggressive, sad, quiet, loud, irritated, calm, unbothered, indifferent, annoyed, happy, frustrated)?

168. what are the molds for your ideas about how relationships are supposed to work?

169. what do you believe you're entitled to within a relationship (any/ friend/ romantic/ family)?

170. what was your closest experience with death?

171. do you prefer cauliflower or broccoli?

172.  what's the weirdest thing you have ever eaten?

173. what are your favorite tv shows or movies?
-> bridgerton, pride and prejudice, law abiding citizen,

174. what is the most controversial thing you have ever done?

175. what is the most controversial thing another person has done?

176. what is your superpower?
->there is no one on this planet that is quite like me

177. what do you believe is the purpose of a romantic relationship? Marriage?

178. do you think love is needed to marry someone? would you find yourself ever in a situation where you would marry someone that you did not love?

179. what is your weirdest talent? hobby? experience?

180. do you bring your phone with you when you go to the bathroom? if so, when was the last time that you went without your phone?

181. what is something that most people have done but will not admit to?
->eat a ******, smelling their **** out of curiosity, ma$turbate, blame a **** on someone else, etc.

182. do you believe that there should be aspects of yourself that no one else on this earth except yourself should ever know?

183. what's the weirdest conversation you've ever had with someone?

184. How old were you when you had your first kiss? Describe the situation? Who made the first move?

185. What is the spiciest thing you have ever eaten?

186. what is the most bitter thing you have ever eaten?
-> unripe pear!!

187. what is the most spontaneous thing you've ever done and/or said?
->eagles falls with kristina, lorenzo's birthday with selesa

188. how would you want a girl/boy to shoot their shot at you?

189. if you could be someone else for a day (someone you have met and know) who would it be?

190. if someone wasn't interested in you, how would you want them to rejected?

191. do you prefer buttered popcorn or the sweet kettle popcorn?

192. what is the rudest thing you've wanted to say but stopped yourself from saying?

193. what is the most genuine, heart-felt compliment you have received from someone?
-> you are courageous/brave; you are a natural psychologist and healer; you're my best friend, I can tell you anything

194. what is an experience you look forward to in life?
-> walking down the aisle and maintaining eye contact with my man the entire time until I have to hug my dad goodbye; my wedding night; going on vacations with just my husband; going to Jamaica; holding my baby in my arms for the first time; watching my husband play with our children on a beach as I sit under the shade; trying fruity cocktails on my 21st; going on my first date; my first kiss; moving into my house

195. what is a moment that you tend to relive in your mind?

196. what is something that you have learned to accept in life as you have gotten older?

197. who was your first crush? how old were you? what about them made you like them?
->ruslan at church; I was maybe four; he was really sweet to me and I thought he was cute; at yuriy's wedding, I saw him and told him about it which made him get really excited

198. what is something that you hate to eat? you've tried it and you know that you will try to avoid it at all costs.
->parsley, celery, beets, ginger

199. at what age would you say you lost your child-like innocence?

200. your turn. create a question!

201. how old were you when you found out that santa wasn't real? how did you handle it?

202. what is something that people hate, but still choose to participate in?
->beauty standards

203. what super power would you wish to have?
->time control

204. if you had the chance to have the superpower of mind control, would you accept it?

205. how would you decorate your ideal house?
-> different vibes for different rooms; monochromatic black room with lava lamps, white room with dark brown wood accents and lots of plants, pastel light pink with neon glass decorations

206. who is a person that had made you cry?

207. what is one of the most scariest thoughts you have had run through your mind?

208. what is one of the most sad thoughts you have had run through your mind?

209. do you believe you should have to pay to live on a planet you were born on?

210. what is a candy that you hate?

211. what is a song that you try to avoid because it is too personal?
-> apple bottom jeans

212. would you say that you are alive or merely living?

213. what is something that someone said to you that you have never forgotten?
-> you have a lot of knowledge, but you lack experience

214. what is an example of a person that you thought was good but turned out to be a genuinely bitter, horrible person?

215. When was the last time you felt truly understood by somebody? Who was it? What did they understand?

216. Can you think of someone in your life who understands you better than anyone else?

217. Is your relationship with yourself healthy or unhealthy?

218. Growing up, the relationships I primarily saw were healthy or unhealthy?

219. Do you attach guilt with growth?

220. Have you spent too much time today comparing yourself?

221. When did you feel the most trapped?

222.who do you feel most yourself around? Why?

223. what parts of yourself do you need to break up with?

224. what is your favorite conspiracy that you believe in right now?

225. do you prefer to work with people are are the same or opposite gender as you?

226. what was the most intense experience of $exual tension that you have had?

227. what activity do you do that makes you feel most at home/ yourself?

228. what was the most painful truth you have ever been told?

229. who is someone you will never forget even though you have only had one encounter with them?

230. when was the last time you felt adrenaline pumping through your veins due to excitement?

231. what about you feels easiest to love (physical and character)?

232. what about you feels hardest to love (physical and character)?

233. What kind of love feels more familiar to you -> peaceful or chaotic love?

234. to what extent to you feel your appearance is the most important aspect of who you are?

235. do you think being attractive is a privilege? are you nicer or meaner to people you find attractive?

236. what was the hardest thing that you forgave someone for?

237. how would you define forgiveness?

238. who have you farted the loudest or most often?

239. what is an embarrassing story of when you really needed to **** in class but struggled to hold it in?

240. what is something that made you blush really hard?

241. if you had the opportunity to be famous, would you choose to be?

242. what is the longest you have not dated someone (or was flirting or thinking with someone)? In other words, what is the longest you have been alone?

243. what separates us from God?
-> ignorance (spiritual) and death (physical) - Jordan Peterson

244. what is a message that everyone deserves to hear in life?
-> "you deserve someone who's going to work hard to find ways to care for you." You are worthy of unconditional love.

245. what is a difficulty in your life right now?

246. what is something you've always wanted to try but haven't yet?
->fall in love, go on a trip by myself, go to Europe with Itzhel, drink a mimosa at brunch in a sunny place

247. what are qualities that you really admire in people?
-> attentiveness, observant, thoughtful, thought-provoking, mysterious, charming, honest transparency, vulnerability, calm curiosity, humble confidence

248. what is one of the most important connections you can have in life?
->your relationship with yourself

249. what memory comes to mind when you think about the ocean/beach?

250. what memory comes to mind when you think about carnivals?

251. what memory comes to mind when you think about water balloon fights or snowball fights?

252. Do you think your parents have thought about killing themselves?

253. Do you think your best friend has thought about killing themselves?

254. How often do you think people have thought about harming or killing themselves.

255. Do you believe in the concept of marriage?

256. what is the worst advice you have ever received?

257. was there ever a time where you were vulnerable and regretted it? if you are comfortable with it, what was the situation?

258. if you could go to any concert, who would you go see?
-> chase atlantic, post malone, cigarettes after ***, ariana grande, the 1975

259. why do you think people protect their pain? what does that look like - to protect one's own pain?

260. what is an acoustic version of a song that sounds better than the studio version?
-> like a rockstar & what u call that & cassie - chase atlantic

261. what is an experience that you wish to never experience again?

262. how do you feel about silence? is its presence comforting?

263. have you taken any drugs? if so and you feel comfortable sharing, what are they?

264. what is advice you would give to your 15yo self and your 40yo self? (a much younger and older version of yourself?)
-> younger self: you are worthy to love; you are worth getting to know and understand; you will one day believe that you are enough and choose healing with a life filled with authenticity that will get challenged; you'll be more unconventional; your way of thinking will not be like most that are around you - this is okay and expected
older self: I hope you are happy and live a life that you chose and not one that you compromised on for the sake of other's happiness and comfortability; I hope you live authentically and continued the process of living actualized as Maslow would saw; I hope you married your best friend that is your match in his own unique way; i hope your communication is better and that your relationships are healthy and boundary enforced

265. if you knew you were going to interview God for thirty minutes and could ask him only one question, what would it be?
-> who am I?

266. what would you do if knew you could not fail?

267. how are you, really?

268. how would you behave if you were the best at what you do in the world?

269. are you finding your dream job or are you creating it?

270. if there was a solution to your anxiety, what would it look like?

271. why are you worth knowing?
-> well, you're sitting in this seat listening to me

272. when was the last time you did something for the first time?

273. how do you treat people who can do nothing for you?

274. do you stack the plates and clean up your table when at a restaurant?
->analyze SES and their behavior to working class

275. what or who lights you up?

276. what would your perfect day look like?

277. what is an underappreciated fruit and vegetable?

278. what is something that guys/girls are insecure of that guys/girls do not really care about?

279. tell me about a time where you threw up in public?

280. tell me something illegal that your family did?

281. what is a word that would always make you laugh whenever you heard or said it when you were a kid?

282. what is the first cuss word you started using often in your vocabulary?

283. if you could be one animal, what would it be?

284. what insect were you the most fascinated by as a kid?
->ladybugs, dragonflies

285. if you could blow one thing, what would it be?
->paint, slaughterhouse, firework stand

286. what emotions would you associate to every color in the rainbow including pink, brown, black, and white? If that is too much, if you could choose one color, what emotion would you assign to it?

287. what is the saddest thing that a person has ever said to you about themselves or their life?

288. if you could be any pair of shoes, what would it be?
->professional rock climber, work boot

289. would you consider yourself to be an addict?
-> I think we are all on a continuum and are all wired to be addicted to dopamine and love we just go about it different ways.

290. if you could have any dog in the world, what would it be and why?

291. if you had to describe love and what it feels like to a young person, what would you say? OR
if a kid asked you what love feels like, how would you answer them?
-> able to feel no judgment and feel free to be who you are without the fear of rejection

292. how would you define healing?

293. how would you know that you are healing or healed?

294. where in your life have you compromised and lived for someone else?

295. what is a thought or idea that scares you?

296. why do you think people protect their pain?

297. how would you like to be cared for when you are experiencing an emotional crisis?

298. what is something that you were told when you were a kid that you have never forgotten because it provoked you so much?

299. who is a friend in your life that you know you should stop the friendship with but you struggle to?

300. what is a motto that you would tell your kids that you have lived by?
->be the man/woman that you would want your daughter/son to marry one day

301. when was the last time anyone ever told you how important you are?

302. Who have you spoken the most genuine I love you to?

303. What social situation are you the most anxious of?

304. What is something that people would never think or associate with you that you’ve thought or done?
-> I love to binge on romance novels, I played the violin and cello, I’ve never been kissed/had a bf, I have a song on all platforms, I’ve had a 4.0 most of my life, I tend to write ****** poems, I was in a drill team for five years, I wasn’t born in America, I love country music

305. What is something you’d like to say to someone who has already passed away?
-> Robertson: I hope you’re proud of me in the way that I am; thank you for supporting me in more ways than one

306. What is something you’d like to say to someone who hurt you badly?
-> i deserved better than your projected insecurities, but I was too naïve to understand any better

307. If you were forced to only listen to three songs on replay during the deed for the rest of your life, what would it be?

308. Like all of us, we are replete with contradictions -> we are walking contradictions. What are yours?
-> a desire for intimacy and a fear of touch/commitment; a desire to be known and a fear of vulnerability

309. Do you think you ever turned a teacher on?

310. What is the greatest lesson that the other person has taught you?

311. if people could not take pictures, do you think they would still drive to the tulip festivals?

312. why do you think we met?

313. which is the hardest for you to say
(1) I love you
(2) I was wrong; I'm sorry
(3) Worcestershire sauce
(4) I need help
(5) I appreciate you

314. what is one of your favorite lines in a song?
-> hoodie on low cuz I stay focused yeah, hard to stay low when everybody notice
-> heart on your sleeve like you've never been loved; I don't feed her fears I feed her habits; type to make you f*ck 'till you finish
->said you needed this heart then you got it turns out that it wasn't what you wanted

315. Are you struggling with your mental health right now?

316. Are you afraid to admit the things that go on in your head?

317. Have you ever met a person that made you so nervous that you avoided them at all costs due to the way that they look?

318. Who is the most selfish person you know?

319. Who is the most selfless person you know?

320. How many Costco hotdogs could you eat in 45 minutes for a hotdog eating competition?

321. What do you put on your Costco hotdog?

322. What’s your favorite cereal brand?

323. Stargazing or sunset?

324. What is an underrated aspect of life that is mundane to most?
-> breathing, eyesight, touch

325. If you could only keep two out of the five senses, which ones would you choose? What if you could only keep one?
-> taste, touch, smell, eyesight, hearing

326. Would you consider yourself to be more black and white or gray in terms of your thinking?

327. What was your favorite kind of candy cane: the peppermint, chocolate, or fruity ones?

328. What’s an American tradition that you do not follow?
-> I'm not a huge fan of chocolate chip cookies, PB cups, peppermint candy canes

329. what do you love most about your family?

330. what is something you would like to change about your family?

331. what is a fashion trend that you think is overrated?

332. what is an aspect about people that you have only encountered a few times in your life?
->humble/ confident authenticity, thoughtfulness

333. what do you think is the ugliest trait one can have?

334. which is worse to be super insecure or to have an inflated ego?

335. would you call yourself a good person? how do you define good?

336. what is something that fascinates you that you think about time to time?
-> reality doesn't really exist; it's our perception of the stimuli in our life that we come to understand as our own reality which is only one side of the narrative. Also, people have conversations that are quite incompatible in the sense that their definitions of words and their life experiences impact how each person enters the conversation. It is like there are two conversations that are being shared and understood in the same space.

337. what is a job that you think is much more difficult to do/live with?
-> acting: how do you separate and keep hold of your authentic self and the characters you play if you can play them really well. Does life become your stage?

338. what is a movie or song that is about to release that you look forward to seeing/listening?

339. how do you feel about your inevitable mortality?

340. what do you think about graves? how do you think society has shaped or challenged your opinion of them?

341. what is a reason for why you cried?

342. when was the last time you laughed so hard you couldn't breath?
-> talking to Bella's family and Devin jumping into the conversation with his friend that his lactose intolerant when we were talking about birth control

343. what is the best vacation that you have had? what made it so special?

345. what is the greatest lesson a friend has taught you?

346. what is the greatest lesson a parent or adult has taught you?

347. what is the weirdest thing you have done with someone in public?

348. have you ever looked at someone while they're doing something like driving, laughing or eating and just smile because they mean so much to you? If so, who?

349. what do you think is the most influential relationship that you have that impacts all other ones that you have?
-> yourself or with your parent(s)/caregiver(s)
-> "never forget that the relationship you have with yourself sets the tone for the relationship you have with everyone else. If you want to work on your relationships, start working on yourself"

350. what was a phase of your life that you would go back to if you have the chance. why?

351. what is a warning that you wish you got before knowing me?

352. what is a question that you have wanted to ask someone but got too nervous to announce?

353. talk about a time where you needed toilet paper but it wasn't there. what did you do? were you in public or at home?

354. what is an instrument that you think is harder than it actually is?
-> the drums!! that is multiple rhythms to keep up with...

355. describe a time where you thought you were going to cry but tried really hard to keep your composure?

356. when you would cry as a kid, what would your parent(s) say? other adults? if they shamed or shut you down immediately, do you still do this to yourself today?

357. what is the craziest drug you have ever taken?

358. what is something you would miss if your home burned down?

359. if you could move anywhere, where would it be? would it be in the city or country?

360. what is knowledge that you wished you knew when you were younger?

361. what is the most expensive item you have bought that you regretted?

362. if you could hug anyone in the world, dead or alive, who would it be?

363. what is the most messed up thing you have seen another person do to another?

364. what do you tend to think about during the time where you are laying in bed and trying to fall asleep? where does your mind tend to go to?

365. what is an event in the future that you are looking forward to?

366. Is a hotdog a sandwich?

367. If you were diagnosed with Alzheimer's and you could remember only one memory, what would it be?

368. What aspect/version of yourself are you the most ashamed of?

369. What aspect/version of yourself are you the most proud of?

370. Is there someone in your life that you hide aspects of yourself from? Do you believe that if they knew all of you unfiltered that they wouldn’t accept you? is this true love?

371. Do you know how to swim? If so, how and where did you learn to?

372. What is a song that makes you cry/emotional? W

373. What song reminds you of another other person?

374. What is the name of a song you will not listen to again because it is too painful?

375. Who has emotionally hurt you the most in your life?

376. When was the last time someone told you that they loved you? How did it make you feel?

377. What did you dream of last night? If you do not remember any dream, then what was your most recent dream?

378. If you had to either eat and **** out of your mouth or *** which one would it be?

379. What's something a stranger said to you that you remember to this day?
-> I think that your body is perfect

380. What is a lesson that the earth has taught you?

381. What is a lesson that your body has taught you?

And it's difficult to remember something as the very name of Eisenhower
Or flowerbaskets
And tired movies made of silicone and
Aftersex
Or sixteen candles echoing out of an imaginary suite with cigarettes at every table
And green lawns
Barbershop conversation
The reflection of the sun in special trees
Or my best friend Jesus Christ
Or the smell of the theater that one day with the cynics who just got back from a tennis match and barbwire still laced delicately around their thoughts and
Nihilism
And automotives
And priestess Jane or Henry's gloomy doppelganger who reads alternative magazines and loves the aesthetics behind broken glass
And fine tuned musical instruments

It's difficult to remember
Lonesome Fridays smoking on a park bench trying to finish the puzzle
Or synagogues you've never been in
Or insurance
Or newspaper articles detailing the misadventures of Mr. City
(Of course of course! Take your shoes off at the door and make yourself at home)
We're tossing all our sewage into the ocean
that's far from clean as it
LOOKS anymore these days
That's anything
And everything except for the glowing mountains seen faded and wintry behind Apartments and the
"Glorious Mexican House of Spices"
Never been in there either

It's difficult to remember
Times of Mr Twin Sister
Or Joan Jett in the hallway
In a highschool who's psychology classrooms have become a time capsule in the ground/
Or the gentle skinny ******
Wearing Broadway makeup and
Kafka tattooed on his shoulder
I like his hat
He looks at me suspiciously
Or the guy who is yelling his order at the counter when it's quiet here anyways
Or the mariner who has a hobby of the saxophone
Or 1970s *******
Or the sheepskin bikeseat fad that's yet to come but I'm predicting it now!
Or two dollars and twentyseven cents at the beginning of Allen Ginsberg's America
"I've given you all and now I'm nothing"

It's difficult to remember
The Oriental
Sacramento flies
Midnight Moon
Quarter to four
"The Immortalization Commission"
Remodelled hotels downtown
Where mandalas on the floor became a
Tiger lily luminous
And the kimono is yesterday's painting/
Dearest Darling
When I was feeling down!
A staircase in reverse (??)
The sound a kiss makes
It's difficult to remember
Colleen's earrings
Or Washington State
Or air conditioners in Bali
The Indian ocean's daybreak hymn
To Seminyak
Or whatever happened to Steve from the Airplane out of Taiwan
On 3 days awake
Hello Kitty nursing stations
****** (Kubrick's version)
Cardboard taking up half my bedroom
It's difficult to remember until I jot it down and then its a sudden forever
Sunshine Superman in a cafe spontaneous
drawings with someone I just met who has some ******* attitude/
Who hops fences and has feral ideas
People! En Masse! Te Amo!
You're all in wolven liberty
And vague postulators
And holy prostitutes for the dollar
Sad eyed intellectuals
With undergarments made of breakfast cereal/
Seaferry poetry is different from
Trestle in August poetry
Or henna handshakes
Or the Napoleonic era
Sweet Cherry Pie
The tulip's tongue
Garabajal
Cloudy first day of July
Was hotter yesterday
But not too hot

It's difficult to remember
Antiquity
The pale horse Studebaker outside the clinic
With a glossy red trim and **** I wish that was my ride
Andy Warhol's exploding plastic inevitable
Nearsightedness
Angels and their ability to shower with a a snap of their fingers
Distant harp music
Better him than me
Bananas almost ripe
Green aquatic
Reclusive junkies
Palomo's appliances
Questions for the next time
How much I like what you like and how I like that you like what I like
Ahh that's not my bus
I'm trying to get to the city!
That one quote Socrates is known for about knowing nothing as true wisdom
Supermarkets being built on top of liquor stores burned down a while back
Monopolies
Tragedies
"No Love Lost"
THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL
Your guess is as good as mine
Never tried to eat Asian food in Asia
It was all pasta and good cider that tasted like pineapple
Rain hitting the window and I'm
Drowsy again
God Save The Trees!
Curly hair looks good on boys
Torn up blinds
Queer as a three dollar bill
If Bill costs 3 dollars I'm sure he's caught something better safe than sorry
Sage advice
I'm the very model of a modern major general
Golden yen and international currency
Incense in the bedroom and how good it smells
There's my bus! Applying for a better job than the one I got now
But that's how it always is right?
Chasing satisfaction
1007 apt
Porch ornaments
Unique names
Unique style le style
The extra charge on foreign ATMs
Cordoroy polo shirts
Flooding in New York!
When someone's face screams *******
"Slippery when wet"
Dine N Dash
Grass gone yellow
Confidence in dyed hair and capes as long as wedding gowns
But less expensive
Doors that always seem to be locked and I'm wondering 20 year later what's behind them?
Albino animals
White thoughts as clouds or
Abstractions
Weathers nicer in Florida but who cares
Festivities this early in the day
Automatopeia
Do sad orphanages still exist?
Just like the movies
Midnight in mirrors
That sick puppet at the shoe shop used
To know how to really hammer it down
And now he's weak and forgotten
Never heard the words of a true prophet only Oceania
Or the private temple near Apollo Bay
Like Japanese gardens behind that gate
Will I ever see it
Make a proud example outta ya misbehavior
Form without function
Exhausted spiritualism
*** Kettle Black
negative photographs of dark rooms
And there's laughing coming from SOMEWHERE
Essays on kleptomania
Had a bad dream I became a cliche
Surrounded by other freaks and there was a lovely ***** I fell in love with her
We married in Oregon by the sea her name was rosy
***** rosy
Check your mailbox for nails
And what you don't wanna hear/
If you were a vegetable you'd be organic!
Empire
Satirical bubble gum
Satori
Linda Lovelace and her special party trick
That's someone's fantasy
Diamond in the rough
Mister guy with two black eyes frequents the adult playhouse
Hes fully stocked on fishnet leggings
He's too proud to put them on himself but
Has nobody else around
Boo hoo
Swigs back the whiskey and trips down the stairs getting a third black eye in the process
Marion came by with her dog the other day
Wanted her box of clothes back but he loved to sniff them to remember her
But she wouldn't have it

"Honey I'm going to call the police!"

"Ah they don't give a **** they have bigger things to worry about"

"Yeah you got that right shrimp **** enjoy my unwashed *******"

And she never came back again
He started losing the vertebrae in his spine 1 by 1 and you know where this is going
I won't say he was a poor man because he had it all coming to him the *******
But he coulda had a better start if you ask me.

It's difficult to remember
And even more difficult to forget
After the fact

Seagull opera
Giganticism
Portrait of the artist as a young man
Losing one's pencil when the best idea of your life drops down from heaven and into your sorry head
Signs graffitied to have funnier meanings
Cruelty
Impassive
The Loyal Lioness
And Bangladesh has too many kitchens
And not enough dishes
When I was young I used to say Island as "is-land"  
Which is true it is land
But the Europeans probably stole it from somebody else anyways/
I left my future behind
And objects in the mirror are closer than they appear
Im no illusionist
I'm terrified of the cracken
Father feels the same way about
Hotels
Why bother/
This has been going on and on for a while are you tired yet
Is your patience being tested
Mine isn't because this wasn't an all-at-once kind of rambling
It's extremely important to laugh at least
Once a day
Otherwise you'll find yourself a politician
In no time at all
Rockefeller
(         ) Quaint home to die in
I think
Trains create great music
Float on
Sink into yourself
Roses in a crooked alley
That's people
Busy busy busy busy
Let's describe a situationist
I'm not a fan of bright colors on clothes
Your best shade is blue
Bricklayers transcription of Don Quixote to a skyscraper
Rocket thyme
& Garden
Erratic children's
Insomnia
The doorbell repeatedly
Vancouver riots/ I saw that live on the news!
Pictionary with the surrealists
N Dada TV set MC Escher
Antenna
You're in the Twilight Zone now
Dear Ramona
I'm trying to make it up to you
With a brightness only seen when you're ready to see it so please for the love of God don't blame me when it's not appearing
The tapestry hidden
Keep your blankets clean
And avoid hospitals unless you're fine with fishbowls & the halogen
The water gestapo
Storage lockers full of unacted plays and
Antique microwaves
Emitting the nostalgia of the cold war era
And what a waste of time that was /
Walter Wanderleys presence in Autumn universities
The opening of Vivre sa Vie
Salvador Dali's pluvial taxi
Lightbulb epiphanies
Aquariums and their protestors
Zebras in the shade
Two wrongs dont make a right
Elizabethan theater
Saloon shootouts in a fever dream
I lost and bled out all over the rustic wooden floor
A maiden reached out for me and El Paso did play I woke up and pretended nothing happened/
Funerals for bad People who did bad things
My first memory of a cat beneath the mattress
Hello Dolly!
Auditory learning
Psychotherapy
Lillian the landlady lost her ladle and labeled little Lyle as a lair
The Black panther movement
Reading symposium some years ago and
Making note that Phaedo was still my favorite dialogue/
Zen Buddhism
Xoxo xoxo
The day Gypsies were replaced with
Surface ****** appetite
And not the real thing
Newspaper clippings
Hypnotism when all other options are out
Mystical visions of sidewalks
And the love of your life stepping through a door you've never seen
Maybe Yes No I Don't Know
Creature comforts
Che Guevara's problem is that his beard made him too easy to recognize
(Also that little hat!)
Chinese cough medicine didn't work
For long I still wheeze sometimes
Domestic violence thru the wall
Ceiling fan probably doesn't even work!
Dimpled laughter
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
In skytrains to Commercial
Bermuda in her mind
And courtesy in her voice
I'm no Arthur Rimbaud
But you already knew that
Alcazar of Seville
Filling up the shipbottle
Here's your paradise
Now relinquish it as it is
False!
Hare Krishna
Nowhere Fast
El Diablo and the
Portofino loaf left rotting on the countertop
Latin children speak of the sacred viper
You'll hear of it after this but we'll never see what the ******* meant
Heads alternating round the social current
Of my lively city
There's a dog soaking up the rain
And songs are made in honor of
Recent catastrophes
Trials are dealt
Cards cast to the gutter
New York quiets down for the news of another war
You scratch my back I'll scratch yours
Skeleton key
Ballad of the last wailing zoo
THE ATRIUM
Complexity in simplicity
That's how Brainard got me!
Elderly overcoats
Hiding purest LSD
Is a fan of Hawaiian T shirts
And a communist
What if I was a Freemason
Or owned a tanning salon
Faint crimson
What did Marv look like again?
"You're surrounded by people who love you"
Coffee when one needs it
GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY
Tattoos on the wandering man
Oriental chimes and the people who own them
Bus stop regulars
Vines overtaking power lines
The hypnogogic state
Strawberry light softening
The mind
Sister Ray LOUDLY PROCLAIMING
doitdoitdoitdoit
Passing the graffiti n Pluto neon
Halal wide awake another Saturday
Where's the Karaoke
Flashing by here
Those who find comfort in a bridal scavenger hunt
Or expensive beer
And here comes the hooded clown
Clamoring about his favorite
Loudspeaker
Telling me my time is soon and the noise
Drowns out the drowsy bliss
After hour spirits the perfect time for
Writing and trying to read distant Chinese
Indecision on the tip of the tongue
"NOW WHO IS THAT KNOCKING
ON THE CHAMBER DOOR?
COULD IT BE THE POLICE?"

I'm completely off the topic
And into Apartment lobby photosets
Low battery phone calls
Confessions
Nauseated reverb
Trying to see the attachment people got with bingo halls
And moving companies
Ah no luck again
Eve is at it with her showtunes
Halfway methodology
Triage
Paisley headbands left
Distraught on the quivering
Heater
Dwindling sunsets
We're truly disciples of the moon spirit which grants us more energy
(This is according to a drunk I met one night)
Or ***** old men
When the horizon is engulfed with
A winking cinder
Suitcase at the door
Last time
First time
Magician never reveals his fetishes
(They all have to do with bags under your eyes)
Employment office dramas of my friend the one who blinded a social worker
And the one who blamed Islam
And the one whos philosophy entirely consisted of Spooky Action at a
                                            DISTANCE
Parisian riots
Queer youth
Didn't make the team! Jester
'cross the hall who's beard suggests
Ishmeal n car battery n expired vegetables n rain which crosses the line n
***** cranberry n
Poorly fitted suits n
Harsh pigment n incense shops n
Bocca     secret towns
With churches more beautiful than any you'd find in your own city
n the cultural market
Xylophone ear to ear
Soul cleansing starting at only
$89 (with a 6 month guarantee)
Sophie's birthday and her picnic at Victory Park
The nearby bums trying to sell tea mugs and
Loose wires beside gated convenience stores
I'm an Island away attempting a poem
And never bought a scratch n win
Or heard the same song more than seven times in a row or been in a column
Or escaped the washhouse
Invested in a birdcage for next year
Been to a palm reading
Visited Oasis
Smoked salmon
Told anyone else about Montana
Screamed the things I'd like to scream
** Word of the day
Or kissed a lunatic or swallowed the corpse of yesterday
I keep her on my neck until
I'm too anxious to let go
Counting streetlights
Jeans worn in and faded to be sent off to
A lonely caffeine addict
Christmas Eve I'll be reading a postcard from San Francisco
Asking the same questions
My imagination is made of a different material than last week
Now it's the same color as your hair
HEY that's a good pickup line to use in the heart of the Canadian Embassy
Drinking discarded music resembling a sweater you may have said YES to if it wasn't so unsure of itself
And now Mr. Acker Bilk ascends thru the window of an August home
Like a lazy hornet
I'm still lost without identification
Or a nice belt
As happens when one uses a quality item too casually
How did uphill suddenly seem so downhill?
I'll claim a waterfall
For SALE that inevitable Indonesia
Greyhound O another greyhound O another greyhound
I'm fretting too much about not enough
Delayed the Airport and the yellow question

????

II

What if I knew how to read the curb?
Or translate drunken droll
What if I was never tired again and could
REALLY do anything I set my mind to?
What if I was the first cigarette that cured cancer instead of caused it?
What if I could end superstition
And walk underneath any ladder I wanted?
What if I could make it with a young Audrey Hepburn!?
What if I stopped pretending to be a microphone and got on with "it"
What if the grocery store closed later
And I opened earlier?
What if parking lots werent so sad
All the time?
What if gravity simply had enough of exotic birds and specifics?
What if we stopped trying to recreate what is truly lost?
What if foreign children embraced
Wasting time instead of
Midnight starry bicycles
And the antics of a monk
Disguised as a romantic?

There are those that worship God
And those who worship the Sun
And those who worship nothing at all
But I suppose on the last bus
We're all the same exhausted
Voice who can't wait for next pay day
What is an empty bank?
Or authenticity
What is there to prove anymore?
I hope I don't die tonight and regret
Being impulsive for once
You're a smart shadow
And a dull character
Pushing the last of the daisies
Get the lamp to turn on again
Give the pavement something to look forward to with your walk
Be consistent in being inconsistent
If there's a word there's a ***** and a poem for it!
We all oughta worship
Nothing at all except
Clarity
Compassion with ones neighbor who either forgot the pay the electricity bill or couldn't afford to
We're a swimmin

i am seven and in your living room
with antiques & photographs
of family that are more like strangers
and handshakes at christmas
there is a jar of circus peanuts by the armchair
and i remember being told that these are here because they are never out of stock
and that they are the only things
children will not want to take from me
i still do not like the color orange.
i am eight and round the bannister
to an upstairs that reminds me
of heaven in that
place i can't go sort of way & i am
knuckle deep in your pumpkin pie
wiping it on my uncles suede jacket
our hands still shake but the jury is still out
on if he looks at me and napkins the same
i hope you do not sleep
with my apologies under your fingernails
i will not say them out loud
i know i should have mowed your lawn
i should have been a home
for second hand smoke
if i could go back i would be your ashtray
i remember the day you forgot who i was
i bound into the room and throw my arms
around you like an armistice
and you ask who i am
we are not in church
but everyone stops singing
i am passed from child to child
while we all laugh
but my lungs feel like
they've been mugged in an ally
who's son does he look like, mom?
my father says like gospel
you pull on your cigarette
sip from your watered down wine and shrug
and i am neck deep in forgetfulness
i imagine alzheimer's
as being born again every day
so, we will spend ages
looking at captions to photographs
telling your stories to strangers
as my father begins to forget
and when i imagine probate
an unfamiliar hand unfolding a will
to be read to wayward angels
i want to burn down the house
and sleep in the ashes

The political zombies have no idea they are dead
dead to the world and so dead to me
look at the pathetic liars
watch the swill like pigs
spit out their monotone drivel
little children with big issues

Watch them send us to war
just to cull the shepherds flocks
watch as they rub their hands
whist in their back pockets they sell arms
sell them cheap to the enemy
in double handshakes of disgrace

By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

I don't feel like it anymore, I must say.
Maybe I should put up a missing person
alert for my inner kid. He must be hiding
somewhere, I hope wherever that is i'ts not
a dark place, he was always afraid of it.
Maybe that is what I've loose, I think I must
come to terms with it. It's that time
of the year already, when it's to late
for everything. To say hello and goodbye,
is this real, is it not,
no turning back, no way to run,
one eye blue and the other red,
one ear open and the other closed,
one hand reaching out and the other
clenched in a fist behind my back,
one sweet word and many a bitter silence.
Handshakes and kisses, folks.
Telescopes and microscopes,
is all about points of view.

Handshakes and kisses, folks.
I am what I am, nothing more than
the continuation of an idea.

Lipstick cigarettes and the empty soul of modern rock n' roll
laid in ruin amongst my collection of black soul addictions and sultry benedictions.
MIDI saxophones and an ex-girlfriend on the telephone
directing me to find my home, to rebuild the comb, to banish the bartender and the Reverend ******.

Alamo idiot stand and a neon Jesus
waving newcomers into the whitewashed port town known as "Cuba North".
At the Caged Gorilla, Linda, the waitress,
laughs through yellowed teeth, while my bloodshot eyes crawl up her red gums.
Binge'd and my brain keeps parallel with the ceiling fan
while a plain clothes cop tries to give me the reprimand for nostalgic mischiefs.
Handcuffed and looking for that old fiend, Freedom,
while Miranda spews on the back of my skull, slides down my shoulders, dots the cement.
Out the door and tourists with cameras looking for evil behind my irises,
but I can assure my handshakes feel the same, I'm front pew tame, and I blend with the parade.

(written 3-18-2014)



I just needed something different, something to think about: an alternative night, a different scene with new environmental stimuli. It’s true that if the stimulus is unchanging we will adapt, but for me, I live best being able to react to different things. Yesterday was fun for that reason.



I was going to drive, but then Alistair said Yarab was going out too and he offered to drive. I considered the gas money and how I would prefer to drink and not worry about driving, so I agreed. At this point, you and I were in amidst a discussion regarding me coming over too late– or not at all– and I was in a particular mood where I didn’t want to think about the relationship strain. I knew I was causing it, but it was nothing new, and nothing bad. I just wanted to actually see my brother since I was so suffocated and domesticated. I wanted a night away from Giovanni’s room, which made me feel like your little housewife, your obedient certainty assigned love.



Why did we stay so ignorant when we started with uncertainty? It was a beautiful stage of development, a coming-of-age stage of accepting my sexuality and exploring sensuality. We we drunk college girls, amateur philosophers and ****-smokers, confused about the world but idealizing a better world. That was the ideal of us. The truth was too tragic, but we endured it for so long that for one night I wanted to celebrate. I wanted to get away. I didn’t want to think about you. So I didn’t. It was inconsiderate of me to consider you worrying and upset, but at this point I wanted to enjoy myself and have fun with my brother when I figured you’d be sad and disappointed no matter what happened, so I may as well enjoy myself. I thought hard about it, but decided since it was Alistair’s birthday, I didn’t have work until 6:00 p.m. the next day, and yes, it was St. Patrick’s Day, I wanted to go out and celebrate. Sorry you didn’t want to come.



In the car, Alistair packed the bowl. They were smoking it on the way up and I declined but instead had a cigarette. Yarab said he was working with an artist who made glass pieces resembling scary, mystical-like creatures, and the bowl Alistair packed was one of them. It was mostly blue, and the front of it was a head where the **** would go into the top of the head. It had wide eyes, a big, sorcerer-like nose and big, scary-looking teeth. “Trippy, right? The line is called Enoch based off the book of Enoch in the Bible—which is actually removed in most but still a part of Russian Orthodox.” They packed it twice throughout the ride and I sat in the back, smoked my cigarette and thought about you and the night before me.



We were going to Harrington’s Irish Pub but it was packed (naturally), so we tried Cadillac Ranch (the bar was full there too), so we finally decided on Public House. We each had 3 Washington Apple’s between beers and conversations before getting food. I had two Yuenglings, Alistair had a Yuengling, three Irish Stouts and Yarab drank 3 Stellas. Alistair and I split nachos and a hummus plate. I’d never been there before, and I appreciated the upscale environment compared to cramped and loud local bars I was used to. It was quiet enough that we could talk and hold conversations, and our bartender, Sarah, was pretty, friendly and attentive. I thought about my restaurant experience and briefly thought about her and her life.



My favorite part of the night was when we were at Public House. The conversations were just interesting; they talked about Putin, Ukraine and Russia and how “of course the U.S. wouldn’t let part of the country join into Russia” and the proposal would be rejected by the UN; we talked about birdhouses and fireplaces and utilizing space in people’s yards, so that if the world changed for the worse and we needed to survive we would be able to; we talked about being arrested; we talked about the Zionists and the fake group of evil Northern European people who migrated and were rejected by both Islam and Christianity, so they essentially took over Judaism—and how the conflict between Israel and Palestine is a struggle for power with the Zionists and U.S.; all of this was relevant to our talk about how we don’t live in a Democracy but a Corporatocracy, and the world is determined by whoever has the most money and power.



Yarab talked about tolerance for other cultures and intolerance, telling us about the other day when his stepfather was at their house going over notes with a woman from Sudan. She and her company wanted to use a product (he was a rocket-scientist and worked on a greener product in 1967 which weapons would have less of an environmentally hazardous effect) of his, but before going over the professional aspects he basically insulted her culture and country, criticizing how wrong they were. Yarab said he was in the kitchen getting water and had to leave because he couldn’t help but laugh, saying how his step-father was brilliant but very opinionated and could be rude. “He’s a buddhist-atheist,” he said, and I thought of us chanting. I brought up Niechren Buddhism and the lotus sutra, expressing how nice it made me feel after. He said any way to get peace is a good one, but atheists shouldn’t be ignorant when talking about their non-beliefs because that’s just as bad as religious people talking about their beliefs. Alistair commended him on never forcing his beliefs on Alistair, and I asked what he thought of God.



He described himself as polytheistic, saying that there wasn’t just one god but many, and because of how everything in the universe connects and resembles each other there must be something to cause it, because it can’t be explained. I thought about the mystery of life and how it’s developmental to wonder about it, and felt secure in the fluidity of my beliefs which has a general principle, that life may not be a coincidence but it is comprised with a series of coincidences and connect factors which cannot always be explained or determined, but rather appreciated and analyzed to create a memorable life in which existence is valued. I didn’t ask further about his gods, but I figured the idea he held was similar to the atheistic view Alistair held and the scientific-spirituality I held as well.



It was interesting talking to another person about it besides Alistair, and the discussion changed and added to the one we had the night before, when Alistair and I were drinking ***** with ginger ale (while I tinted with green food dye). I’ve always appreciated drunk talks with Alistair because they were some of the most real conversations I had. I brought up the hour-long documentary “Obey” and confessed my frustrations about the consumerist-capitalistic society we live in, where it’s nearly impossible to change the system as we’re being monitored. Big Brother is among us, I noted, and I praised George Orwell as a prophet and how we are living in 1984 even though so many people fail to realize it and don’t care or consider the bigger consequences of it. There was something so mystical in our depressing little talk, and I felt empowered to reexamine my life and work towards something with meaning.



While maybe more spiritual than existential, I knew Yarab could understand these ideas and provide even more insight to the social issues which confined us, the same ones we were so immersed in. We toasted to Alistair’s birthday; we toasted to being Arab; we toasted to Franklin Lamb; we toasted to Palestine; we toasted to peace.



Alistair was in the bathroom and I asked Yarab whether it was possible to live outside Capitalism without rejecting social conventions, being isolated and living off the Earth away from society. He replied it was very hard not to feed into the system, and explained how even he felt like a hypocrite for living in the U.S. and being American when his family and people were in Syria enduring the hardship of resources, lack of employment and political regimes. He explained that it was necessary to be a part of the system but not buy into it, to use the system and eventually work towards changing it. “Like Robin Hood,” he said. I told him it was hard because it seemed so easy to get ****** into it, and he said work towards what you believe in. “You’ll have a clear conscience.”



Alistair came back from the bathroom, and he talked about going to Lebanon toward the end of summer. “I could study Arabic at AUB,” and I supported his idea. Yarab chimed in that he deeply respected my father because of his work. “He actually cares about what’s happening and he speaks from the heart.” I was proud of my father for his work, despite everything else, and thought it interesting that the one Syrian we happen to encounter in our small town was immersed in politics and actively followed my father.



“You should take over what your dad is doing,” Yarab said to Alistair, and Alistair agreed it would be a good thing to do. Alistair mentioned Fatima Hajj and my time learning about Palestinians and spent in refugee camps. “She died a week after Louisa interviewed her.” “Three days,” I corrected him, and I felt my insides turn as we reminisced on my accomplishments. Almost two years had passed, and I made no progress on my activism, besides an article. Two weeks was not enough to change the world, although from my feedback it was clear I had inspired many.



I told them both how I felt so stagnant and unintelligent, boring and unproductive regarding any progress of working towards something of importance.”Do what you can while you’re able. Even if you don’t see it grow, you can still plant the seeds. You can be a sheep or you can be a Lamb.” I was grateful that my brother had a friend who could think about the world in a way differently than the normal crowd of friends he had who just focused on losing themselves in substances with no thought of life beyond their boring little lives.



Alistair suggested I visit Beirut for a month to see visit Dad, make connections and see what else was happening in Lebanon, Syria and throughout the Middle-East, and my heart sank with nostalgia and the prospect of a dream. I could see us going to Lebanon, and if I went I would feel inflated with purpose, the way I felt when I went before, the way I felt I could change the world. Yarab agreed with Alistair and supported my journalistic endeavors, while Alistair mentioned Mediciens sans Frontiers. “I don’t know if I’d be able to,” and I thought about you, Camino and Arizona. I thought about ASU and AUB. “Rachel would understand if you went for a month right?” I didn’t want to listen what I knew would follow.

After finishing our food we went outside to smoke. Alistair drank his beer, I chugged mine and Yarab left more than half of his second Stella. “I have to drive,” so Alistair picked it up and emptied the cup in two stealthy gulps.We went back to the garage and the plan was to drive back to a house party in Accokeek. I didn’t know Elton, or what to expect, but from the company I knew they kept in Accokeek, I expected a drastic change in environment from the bar talk with two like-minded Arabs.



Alistair packed the bowl again, and I was offered to smoke but again declined. “We stopped smoking.” “Rachel smoked with me while she was waiting for you to get off work one day.” “What? Recently?” “Yeah, like two to three weeks ago or something. I was in disbelief. “Are you serious? We were stopping together! She didn’t even tell me!” I was angry, and resented feeling like a fool, believing that we made a decision together—only to discover my efforts were stronger than hers. “Don’t ask her about it though.”



“No! I’m going to. Here I am, not doing anything and she does it? Doesn’t tell me about it?? It’s not that she did it but she didn’t even tell me. Typical *****. We talked about it since and she just chose not to bring it up? And she’s here accusing me of things when I’m not doing anything wrong?”



“She’s probably projecting her guilt on you.” I thought about other times I didn’t know about something and remembered finding out and feeling so stupid. “Do you want some?” “Maybe I will.. but no. Not right now.” I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.



But I did. I asked you and we texted about it, and in the car I felt annoyed and unincluded, rejecting the **** that was offered to me. By the time we got to the house, I left my phone in the car. I was there to spend time with my brother, not get into a text fight over something that didn’t matter anyway. We went inside and I didn’t recognize everyone. I suspected I was the youngest, and I couldn’t help but observe I was the thinnest girl. People were playing beer pong and sitting at a table. Someone offered me a beer. I sat down on a couch. Alistair was getting hugs from girls and handshakes and fist-bumps from guys, and I made brief introductions with no real effort of talking to anyone. There weren’t many seats, and the most comfortable couches were facing the television where rap videos were playing. I hadn’t heard any off the songs that were on the playlist, and felt uncomfortable by the blatant sexuality and objectification of girls in the videos. The drunk girls were dancing to the music and singing along with the degrading, raunchy lyrics. “Can we smoke?”



I hesitated and held the bowl in my hand, staring at the green. I thought about putting it down. “I haven’t smoked in two months and twenty-one days,” I vocalized, and some guy (who didn’t smoked) responded “but who’s counting?” “Come on Weezee,” and after further hesitation I decided it was nothing new, and nothing bad would happen as a result. I brought the piece to my lips, lowered the lighter and inhaled. It was smooth, and I held it in my lungs for several seconds before slowly exhaling. I couldn’t feel it at first. It was passed around, and I took another hit. I thought about what you might be thinking about me, but pushed the thought from my mind. A guy made brief eye contact with me, and something about him seemed familiar. He had a beard and was wearing a hat, and I thought it was impossible I could know him. The other person who lived there asked if we could smoke in the room because the guy who asked me who was counting, and others, didn’t smoke. So we went. I hit the bowl once more and as we were standing I felt the high come to me, the surreal feeling of being and experiencing. In the room was myself, Alistair, Yarab, a guy with a ‘fro, Elton and the guy with the hat and beard. Someone packed the **** and handed it to me, but I refused; I was pressured and still refused. “I haven’t done this in a while, so no, I’m fine, and I’ve been drinking.” I think some were taken aback by how adamant I was not to push my limit, because it was so clear many people there viewed partying as pushing the limit.



Alistair introduced me to the guy with the beard and the hat as Mat, who worked at Chevy’s and now McCormicks, and I instantly recognized him. “Oh hey!” I said and hugged him, and he said “I thought you looked familiar. How’ve you been?” “I’ve been pretty good,” and I explained to Alistair that he worked with Alex at Bonefish Grill and was our server when we went in to her work once, years ago. They continued to smoke and I stood among them, half paying attention to conversation and half thinking about anything and everything else. There was a familiarity being among these people I’d never met, and the surrounding of burnouts. I wondered if everyone there was a server and that was all they did. I told Mat I worked at Buffalo Wild Wings as a server, my first serving job, yeah I like it okay, I guess, and he told me he knew Alistair through McCormicks. “I’m serving there too,” and I wondered how many restaurants he’d been through so far.



He told me he graduated from tech school and I congratulated him and asked, “which one?”, where he replied Lincoln Tech. I wasn’t surprised it was that type, and I told him I graduated from Salisbury with a degree in Psychology, which he congratulated me for. I felt it necessary to disclose I was taking the GRE in May and imply that, yes, while I am serving in Waldorf and my college degree doesn’t give me much to do in this area, I am going back to school and I am going to do more than stay around serving, like you. I was reminded of a poem I wrote and th

only one word prompted me: szło,  i.e. as it went...
urgh... phobias for slavs.... she was drininking tango...
(strachy na lachy, piła tango; czarna bandera! i or spanish y,
janosik! hula huj! niby, oby, nie prawda).
ugh, i sat there, on the throne, with my **** eager,
i felt sick more about a ******* relationship than the actual
taboo infested act... family via ****, what a dross!
back to level 1 of art, heterosexual, and onan,
                it was alway going to be
akin to history, and the caurosel... bilinigual "dyslexia" -
carousel... kabbalah in the moment, loss
of fixation on the tetragrammaton...
and i woke up today, fiddling with my hands
like a blind buddha...
that handsignal he is understood to "wave"
about in statue form, how the ring finger
bends and touches the thumb's nail...
and that's to represent a family,
index woman, middle man, pinky a child...
and why we use acronym base
for putting on a ring onto the ring finger,
touching the tip of thumb,
meaning Caesar said: all good...
outside the coliseum...
so that's what blind buddha said...
and like i already said,
in the future philosophers were sellers
of dictionaries, and lawyers were
sellers of thesarus rex...
you mention the dinosaurs,
and i'm supposed to say: you're the lucky un.
i drank in order to remember
that i must forget...
but still my previous life was flashing
before my eyes...
like i was about to engage in
re-imitating it... a *******'s load of hope
groping the eyes of those who,
stranded in the desert, suggested an oasis...
as the title suggest: always about
cliche, about a faux pas... and yes:
an opera...
  i want to be the linguistic orginating in
chemistry, seems i am,
how the english tongue took to
late christainity, the un-orthodox mention
of st. thomas' gospel unearthed from
an egyptian desert... 30 miles south of Cairo...
or so so...
            i might like to read an existential
novel of the children bound to feminism
and i.v.f., and how horrid it was to live
with your parents, and economy,
   and how the shame came,
in pakistani format...
                 just thinking...
my **** said much more 30 minutes prior,
but the i.v.f. narrative and how our nature
was dislodged by our power to overcome
our foundations, and still people died
in earthquakes and tsunamis...
                 but indeed, szło:
how it went...
                and thus my reason to give it ***...
like learning french, masculine and feminine forms,
of the said word,
  szła = she went; szedł = he was dasein / walked,
ergo revision szła = he was dasein...
   and that's the reason i didn't really
love my russian girlfriend, she said
polish was primarily defined by
   ш ш ш, i said huш, she said: шut up!
   the last love and the only and the end, of a concept
and matrimony to fiction.
let's deal with realities... play marbles,
talk about gambling and gamble...
**** it all away... flip coins and
do whatever is necessary, having found love
is rare more than a peacock feather for a quill,
and let's just, grow up.
every, single, time, that jewish ghetto freak
of a god comes up, an all encompassing word,
that can encompass mere noun, from mere sound,
from mere onomatopoeia, into a verb,
   a lament configuration that just encrusts itself
into the concept of a noumenon...
past terms, present terms, future terms...
and sexuality...
  szła шedł szło...
     three sexes, one, the last, neutral...
               and when psychology comes along to play
the game of anthropology you'll say
what i said... she dasein, he dasein,
   it, the world, happened...
                             and that's a thank you
to a philosopher of lore (20th century) for being
able to complicate my life, and
   celebrate the ghetto god of Jews...
  nah, they can keep the crucifix and their
Judas reward like altars...
  all that gold needs the stink of prayer
and sycophancy... like they do in Russia:
priest stands before the altar, reads an orthodox
verse, his back against the people kneeling
behind him, as the depiction of Judas
in the scenario of the last supper...
and you can't even sit and listen to the choir
doing a rendition of Bach... some church
attendant tells you to not sit...
and appreciate the choir...
"modern" Russia for you...
   what's with this cult of modernity?
we are living in times where modernity is cult,
it's nothing but cult, or the limit...
modernity is a cult of journalists...
they're almost anti-darwinist in their expression...
poetry, poetry has to, attack journalism...
i see no other way to go about it...
   marriage... hmmph! шło, how it went...
well... it went like this:
siała baba mak, nie wiedziała jak...
chłop powiedział.... i to było tak:
   an idiot mongolian played the imaginary
harmonica doing motorboat with
his lips and moving his index finger
up and down against the "slur" of excess phlegm...
(a woman was sowing poppies,
she didn't know how,
a man said: like this... and both became
Glaswegian ****** junkies to "feel" good)...
   i broke up with that russian hyenna
just before she embarked into m.d.m.a.,
yes, i'm a happily alcoholic concept of
sanity, for what sanity's worth looking
at other people claim their rites of passage
beyond religion, beyond anything,
as said: only choice, and subsequent regrets
and joviality: if prominent on the faces
of some you encounter in the fudge of
modern grey matter / area.
i can only say that this current transgender
movement is almost as prominent as
what's inherent in the english language,
how words like table, chair...
pineapple, do not have gender in the language
per se, there's no masculine or feminine
conceptualisation of simple things,
someone who's french might say
a chair has male qualities,
   and a table has feminine qualities...
it's subtle... refined to a very slight
           chance of spotting a variation of spelling...
e.g. шło (how it went), and the two variations,
one for man (шedł), and one for woman (шła)...
evidently the anglophone language has too
much money, and even more spare time,
to actually un-poeticize the nag hammadi library...
i mean, everyone is killing poetry,
but this sort of ****** is beyond any worth...
the genesis of this story begins with
psychiatry and the 1960s, primarily a Scot,
a Glaswegian, r. d. laing, coming straight out
of c. g. jung.... freud is for rich people and
the only oedipus: Wilhelm II of german...
it must be a luxury, it can't be anything but,
it must be a luxury to have dreams
and to also have an interpretation of them,
right? they call them the snowflakes generation...
i just call them freud-tards with their toothpicks
for trees forests of "depth".
looking at the way jesus is depicted, with a
void black halo around him:
i'm suspecting we wasn't a big dreamer,
to lift the veil: an imitation of Joseph,
seven lean years, seven bountiful...
   and how so few of us actually have a rich
dream life... we don't, not everyone is invited
to lead such a double life...
  some do, and they have recurrent dreams,
well, one dream over and over and... what a boring life.
i dream sometimes, but it looks like scrambled eggs,
too many: dreams within dreams...
   then again, if i followed the diagnostics of
w. burroughs, i'd probably feel embodied in dreams
if i shot up ******... or smoked it...
  but i prefer a rested body anyway.
so yeah, a bit quasi-etymological,
those "idiosyncratic" but rather specific words:
шło... id.... that it went / how it went...
  and so it went...
english doesn't have a *** in language,
   nothing to decipher whether a man or woman uses
it, unless you congest it with
   excess pronoun shrapnel...
          excess pronoun and conjunction shrapnel...
the only thing that resembles saxon in post-Hastings
french viking invasion are the way chemical
nouns reflect what a german makes of
antidote to claustrophobia:
                  habbeschneizergoo, or thereabouts.
let's just say: language as theory.
   this is mine... what do you have?
ah... right... a concrete heart, an empirical heart...
does that allow counter defining an origin
not related to the big bang, but a meow or a woof
of knuckling a tree... i.e. extracting sounds
and later appropriating the invocation of sound
to later state pointless mantra, and otherwise
read more, see less?
   if we're talking sounds, or the big bang
is my idea of the φoνoς, look... the ancients
beginning with Heraclitus had logos...
or word, until that concept became ghetto...
now we have so much music, and that one
defining "sound"... i say φoνoς, to counter
the science of the bang... and yeah, it's apparently "big"...
just learn a science to a degree level,
and then relax unlearning it writing philosophy...
you just might spontaneously write poetry,
     and gave a libido of a Solomon, but no harem;
gents! handshakes! handshakes!

As a child he remembered Cardiff as a city with red asphalt roads and yellow trolley busses. On a Saturday morning his grandfather used to take him in his black Sunbeam Talbot to the grand building of the Council of Music for Wales. There Charles Dixon presided over a large office on the third floor in which there were not one but two grand pianos. At seven a little boy finds one grand piano intimidating, two scary. He was made of fuss of by his grandfather’s colleagues and – as a Queen’s chorister – expected to sing. A very tall lady who smelt strongly of mothballs took him into what must have been a music library, and together they chose the 23rd Psalm to Brother James’ Air and Walford’s Solemn Melody. After his ‘performance’ he was given a book about Cardiff Castle, but spent an hour looking out of the windows onto the monkey-puzzle trees and watching people walking below.
 
50 years later as the taxi from the station took him to the rehearsal studios he thought of his mother shopping in this city as a young woman, probably a very slim, purposeful young woman with long auburn gold hair and a tennis player’s stride. He had just one photo of his mother as a young woman - in her nurse’s uniform, salvaged from his grandparents’ house in the Cardiff suburb of Rhiwbina. Curious how he remembered asking his grandmother about this photograph - who was this person with long hair?– he had never known his mother with anything but the shortest hair.
 
He’d visited the city regularly some ten years previously and he was glad he wasn’t driving. So much had changed, not least the area once known as Tiger Bay, a once notorious part of the city he was sure his mother had never visited. Now it was described as ‘a cultural hub’ where the grand Millennium Opera House stood, where the BBC made Doctor Who, where in the Weston Studio Theatre he’d hear for the first time his Unknown Colour.
 
Travelling down on the train he’d imagined arriving unannounced once the rehearsal had begun, the music covering his search for a strategic seat where he would sit in wonder.  It was not to be. As he opened the door to the theatre there was no music going on but a full-scale argument between the director, the conductor and three of the cast. The repetiteur was busy miming difficult passages. The two children sat demurely with respective mothers reading Harry Potters.
 
The next half hour was difficult as he realised that his carefully imagined stage directions were dead meat. They were going to do things differently and he had that sinking feeling that he was going to have to rewrite or at the very least reorganise a lot of music. He was then ‘noticed’ and introduced to the company – warm handshakes – and then plunged into a lengthy discussion about how the ensemble sequence towards the end of Act 1 could be managed. The mezzo playing Winifred was, he was forced to admit, as physically far from the photos of this artist in the 1930s as he could imagine. The tenor playing Ben was a little better, but taller than W – again a mismatch with reality. And the hair . . . well make up could do something with that he supposed. The baritone he thought was exactly right, non-descript enough to assume any one of the ten roles he had to play. He liked the actress playing Cissy the nurse from Cumbria. The soprano playing Kathleen and Barbara H was missing.
 
He was asked to set the scene, not ‘set the scene’ in a theatrical sense, but say a little about the background. Who were these people he and they were bringing to the stage? He told them he’d immersed himself in the period, visited the locations, spoken to people who had known them (all except Cissy and the many Parisienne artists who would ‘appear’). He saw the opera as a way of revealing how the intimacy and friendship of two artists had sustained each of them through a lifetime chasing the modernist ideal of abstraction. He was careful here not to say too much. He needed time with these singers on their own. He needed time with the director, who he knew was distracted by another production and had not, he reckoned, done his homework. He stressed this was a workshop session – he would rewrite as necessary. It was their production, but from the outset he felt they had to be in character and feel the location – the large ‘painters’ atelier at 48 Quai d’Auteuil.  He described the apartment by walking around the stage space. Here was Winifred’s studio area (and bedroom) divided by a white screen. Here was the living area, the common table, Winifred’s indoor garden of plants, and where Cissy and the children slept. As arranged (with some difficulty earlier in the week) he asked for the lights to be dimmed and showed slides of three paintings – Cissy and Kate, Flowers from Malmaison, and the wonderful Jake’s Bird and White Relief. He said nothing. He then asked for three more, this time abstracts –* Quarante-Huit Quai d’Auteuil, Blue Purpose, and ending with *Moons Turning.
 
He said nothing for at least a minute, but let Moons Turning hang in space in the dark. He wanted these experimental works in which colour begets form to have something of the impact he knew them to be capable of. They were interior, contemplative paintings. He was showing them four times their actual size, and they looked incredible and gloriously vibrant. These were the images Winifred had come to Paris to learn how to paint: to learn how to paint from the new masters of abstraction. She had then hidden them from public view for nearly 30 years. These were just some of the images that would surround the singers, would be in counterpoint with the music.
 
With the image of Moons Turning still on the screen he motioned to the repetiteur to play the opening music. It is night, and the studio is bathed in moonlight. It could be a scene from La Bohème, but the music is cool, meditative, moving slowly and deliberately through a maze of divergent harmonies towards a music of blueness.
 
He tells the cast that the music is anchored to Winifred’s colour chart, that during her long life she constantly and persistently researched colour. She sought the Unknown Colour. He suggests they might ‘get to know the musical colours’. He has written a book of short keyboard pieces that sound out her colour palette. There is a CD, but he’d prefer them to touch the music a little, these enigmatic chords that are, like paint, mixed in the course of the music to form new and different colours. He asks the mezzo to sing the opening soliloquy:
 
My inspiration comes in the form of colour,
of colour alone, no reference to the object or the object’s sense,
Colour needn’t be tagged to form to give it being.
Colour must have area and space,
be directed by the needs of the colour itself
not by some consideration of form.
A large blue square is bluer than a small blue square.
A blue pentagon is a different blue from a triangle of the same blue.
Let the blueness itself evolve the form which gives its fullest expression.
This is the starting-point of my secret artistic creation.
 
And so, with his presentation at a close, he thanks singer and pianist and retreats to his strategically safe seat. This is what he came for, pour l’encouragement des autres by puttin.g himself on the line, that tightrope the composer walks when presenting a new work. They will have to trust him, and he has to trust them, and that, he knows, is some way away. This is not a dramatic work. Its drama is an interior one. It is a love story. It is about the friendship of artists and about their world. It is a tableau that represents a time in European culture that we are possibly only now beginning to understand as we crowd out Tate Modern to view Picasso, Mondrian, Braque and Brancusi.

IT’S COOL TO BE BLACK

I can use the word ***** even,
When I’m talking about a TV character
It is fun saying it’s because I’m black huh
And no matter what race they’re they start laughing
I like hearing the saying once you go black you never go back
Because it’s usually true

I like President Barack Obama because he goes
Against the grain of those negative black stereotypes
It’s tight how even though people hate on black folks
They listen to our music, copy the way we dress, talk,
Slang terms and the way we walk
They pay a lot of money to watch us play sports
I love how when people want get a good laugh out of life they:
Watch our movies, comedy shows, plays and poetry

I love walking up to my homeboys, home girls, family etc.
Saying: What’s up, giving daps, hi fives, making crazy handshakes,
And sometimes nodding your head as a sign of respect
I love being black because we are a beautiful race.

as a usual Saturday, a sniff of whiskey left
from the previous night -
that'll do - it's not much, but it steadies
the nerves and handshakes with ghosts
of dead writers and poets -
but then the paranoia kicks in -
this isn't the same utensil as a fork, or a typewriter -
this keyboard is attached to a matrix -
it extends far and wide,
i don't know... you can get paranoid
after writing at the height of your drinking
the previous day and wake up the next day
and consider it as nothing more
than diluted prose - which it is, a snapshot
of Joycean ergonomics - but you then
by accident hit the F5 button, yep, the one just
above the 5% button: are there poets
out there, still writing as if they are holding
quills and their fingers have ink stains
and they're airing their frustrations at a blank page?
seriously? i freaked out for a minute having
pressed the F5 button, panic! sheer panic!
panic is worse than fear, i thought for a splinter
second that the government was trying to
censor me... that i was somehow in deep ****,
writing propaganda for some obscure government
that allows 12 year old children perform public
executions by shooting culprits in the back of the head...
what does the F5 button do?
it freezes / blocks / denies the laptop mouse -
a rectangle mat and two buttons incorporated into
the actual laptop - for those few seconds
i felt monitored - standard paranoia of the 21st
poet / writer / whoever, but not quiet enough
for a spy novel... just bog standard feelings... which
are very much linked to printed book materials...
e.g. **** deus: a brief history of tomorrow by
yuval harari - about how we're getting dumber
because someone smarter programmed something
and we weren't given the manual...
funny... they started selling computers like they
were selling hammers... they said: easy, easiest
thing to operate... i'm well chuffed (i guess i use
that word to replace being surprised - local
ingredient - how they bang on about organic
locally grown potatoes and beef, same thing,
only with local vocab) - but they don't sell computers
with instruction manuals - so obviously
the smartest kids these days get on the app. rather than
the mortgage ladder - but **** me! you
could have at least included a little booklet that tells you
what F5 does... i never use it! i'm one of the few
lucky ones, i have some literacy in this department,
but i'm not a techno-philiac as such -
i'm one of those people that says: well, so much
for the building, but you have to put something
meaningful and human in it for the building
to be worth something... not what it is, but:
what it's about - i once learned to use Excel...
****! gone, not coming back. i once learned to
code and build a website... ****! gone, not coming
back, goldfish syndrome due to excess drinking...
but what bothers me is finding something
interesting in that book review... the invention of
humanism as a religion in the 17th century (
funny how Nietzsche criticised Christianity when
as an academic he would have known about
humanism, but dumbly persisted to criticise
what was already being replaced... unless...
he was anticipating American Evangelism,
which might be true) - so i'm trying to look for humanism,
and i come across Copernicus and Galileo -
because, apparently, (as already mentioned)
'Christianity was gradually dislodged by a belief
in the scared status of every individual's feelings
and judgement; we became the centre of the universe,
placing our trust in an unease alliance between
science and moral instinct.'
so there me thinking: so this goes back
to what we're experiencing now, heliocentric humanism
and geocentric humanism -
like i already mentioned, what's west for
nautical calculations past the moon and where's up
or north? it's still flat, the earth, if you're
trying to get from A (Lisbon) to Rio (B) -
so it's happening now, the great schism in humanism,
one side demeaning, angry, frustrated,
the other optimistic - heliocentric humanism
suggest that humans have all the great answers,
that we're all little Louis XIVs, about to dream big
about sorting hunger with spaghetti with a chance of
meatballs machines lodged in our head...
cure for cancer, etc. but then the geocentric humanism
movement is also strong: carbon footprints being
more important than carbon dating, global warming,
you know, typical ****.
still, the F5 paranoia was great,
writing this with an unlit roll-up cigarette was even
better, puckering that luxury before
the last word, and Houston: we have lift-off.

Guys with long hair have agendas. And if they don't, they're stoners and 'agenda' a really long word, man.

Guys with long hair are the poetic types with acoustic guitars and incense in their dorm room and they hold their hair back with a pen behind their ear and they use it to write in a leather-bound journal about girls who smoke too much and have soft ***** so they can pick up more girls who smoke too much and have soft *****.

Guys with long hair are the metalheads who sit in the back of class and use their hair to distract from the fact that they're wearing poor-quality ironic headphones that project Alice in Chains to everyone within a four-desk radius but no one's going to say anything because hey, that guy's a creep.

Guys with long hair are the classical types that play expensive instruments and have beautiful eyes that you can't see very often and have to keep ponytail elastics on their wrists, their wrists that never stop moving, conducting, tapping, curling, because Chopin slows for no man, no matter how long his locks.

And if you poured all these guys with long hair in a test tube and melted them until the agendas broke and forged and changed colors, you'd have him.

I found him in a smoky sweet basement in a house where everyone belongs but no one should actually live. I braided his shoulder-brushing hair without asking and saw his smile like a chunk of snow the size of your high school falling off a mountain, fast and white, huge and more important than anything else around.

I found him again in a different basement where only musicians belong. He invited me into the closet with the piano and it's like he asked me to crawl inside his head and hang out for a while. He casually mentioned his favorite angry bands while his fingers brushed keys in an order they seemed to know on their own, tendons and strings.

He says things that deserve to be handwritten in leather-bound journals. He holds your wrist with one hand when you shake the other because people have become desensitized to handshakes and don't feel the human contact of it anymore. He hugs to the right because you're supposed to hug heart-to-heart.

*"People are going to judge based on what they see anyway. Might as well make sure they're right, sort of."

Time passes a thought
To another, in a climbing sense of renderings...
We see the call to unify, in a shy voice ought?
Today was a marveling hour, we could marvel's ends...

Bite me...with a resolve?
They said the sour news is a welcome sunshine
With pets and history to come at all...
Of a younger moment to be quiet, for a composure of time...

Hours as we know, a fixation on else
Can be, the truth be found in a place of sin
Was this imagined tongue, the saying of wealth
Yet to be, the stir of justice of what is a craved wince...

Of passion over a legend to become, our friends
The tale we notice, and simplify by devoid and avoid
Is but a loose remark of such to roll and imbue, the like we end
As if the world knows any better: the fight of certainty's choice...?!

Sly or slime?
Tows of redoubt, between lovers or a heroism of dry finality's
Sunny as we should note, is about the hour I am trying
We see the traitor of commonness and pence, our humor is...

A rushing eye, to know a catastrophe
That is being a silent opportunity, to approach though
And worth the implied key, we find in the future feat
Of lying to the misses, when a game is for those we hosted, should first owe...?

Mercies at  juxtapositional refinement
Abandoned constitutional confinement
Handshakes on the bridged ligaments

The sweet melodious serene dreams fleets
One after the other like peculiar inventions
The mellow scenes of frames realignments

Wonderful crafted words verses paradigm
Harmonic jazz awesomeness, decode freeness
Orchestral spontaneity drills pragmatic energy

Yet, as the gingered steams rise from the hot brew
The scented breeze of life vaticinates with a smile afar
Whispers of "no obligation, no expectations" reverbs..... on and on....on and on

There is a state of existence,
                                                 where a person is neither A nor B
he's inbetween--
he's the addition, the subtraction, the shove and retraction,
                                                 I've spent my life "+"ing and "-"ing
building empires of handshakes,
floating from bar to bar with drinking pals,
crowbarring ice off queens of black venom,
                                                 I'm the distortion in the middle, but I can't see the end--
I never promised answers,
but the soft hands, the wet eye'd, and the widows
cry out for closure,
                                                 I get edgy and the "+"ing turns to "x"ing
Instead of answers--
I take the As and Bs,
I inhale their the white-knuckle moments,
I simmer in their fading passion,
I glide through their dying beds,
Instead of clear answers--
                                                A x B x A x B x A x B x A x B
=

(unfamiliarperfume, missingherwedding, socialnetworkwindowshopping, backroom, thestoplight, theschoolzone, dirtylaundry, rejectedphonecalls, hisgirlfriend, herboyfriend, hisboyfriend, hergirlfriend, otherwives, otherhusbands, blackout, clenchedfist, animmatureandirresponsibleflirtationwithaddiction, howlingatthemoon, gettingoffonthepast, leaveherinthenursinghome, makingthewake, mowingthegrass, droppingthebouquet, tooold, tooyoung, toolate, toosoon, toosweet, toocruel, toofat, toothin, toonosy, toodistant, toobad)
---------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­----------------------
                                          ­                            Best Laid Plans              

And in the grey of early morning,
they look at the equation,
they look at the proposed solution,
and inevitably the As and the Bs
say to me,
"Now, simplify it."


I get edgy
I get edgy
I get edgy.

.i'm in luck, they're selling it at under 11 quid right now,
stock dry - gone in an instant - laphroaig like -
but not as smoky - but smoked scotch it it
at £10.34 - oh the little joys of having little money to spend -
you end up less picky and less hoarder and
the junk yard.

na głowe sypano mi, tak popiół:
     popiół! a obiecano mi *****!
           popiół! a obiecano mi *****!
                 popiół! a obiecano mi *****!
                  (not my words... lao che's dym)...

me, beer, cigarette, outer-suburbia -
police whizz past, silent with flare
or screaming toddler and Odysseus' 20 sirens
with wax in the ears of oaring company
akin to Ajax'ς vitality -
along the way, my neighbour (who's mother
killed my cat.. listen, i know he had
heart problems, he was on aspirin -
but kidneys, even if complicated are not
real problem, felines take longer to ****
than do the no. 2, pigeons don't have kidneys -
they're always of an **** diet of diarrhoea;
write like Aristotle sometimes,
forget the facts, be wrong, get it wrong,
never put a glass cup into the waterfall of
poetic cascades - get it wrong, be wrong -
get to know yourself - it's not that dumb
to be predictable in yourself -
if you allow self-predictability you will
see certain social events as being pointless -
you'll see friends and "friends" -
self-predictability is a verb, compounded -
i already know i'll make references to grammar
and it being missing in philosophy -
no, not coherence and appropriate arrangement -
i mean undoing the box of thing-in-itself
and the subsequent tennis with a brick wall,
to surprise yourself when something is unearthed,
a little piece of the puzzle - simulating awe,
the genesis of all that's to come, even awe from a yawn
and boredom... it's here somewhere... i'll karate
catch it with chop sticks.... (looking around)...
i don't know, might be a moth or a fly...

Antichrist: or a summary of Antisemitism - a variant of,
or at least a concentration - mainly confiscated
by Christianity - prime complaint:
a democracy of Anointed One (Messiahs) -
obviously a manifested justifiable practice of Antisemitism -
the throng of Golgotha intelligence quotient -
Jew v. Jew, and one convert from the delusional
4 x 4 (in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy
                                         spirit... hold on!
                                    i make four gestures... and make a fifth
                 with Romeo and Juliet talking -
St. Matthew-Luke-Mark-and-John... penta penta pent-up
pentagon - evidently there's a pentagrammaton somewhere:
ah! i b l i s.                       Surat no. via Rumi - 7:143 - veils and
the one - reward in heaven - more veils, gardens veils,
grapes in heaven veils - stomach a veil - hunger a veil -
rewards in heaven also veils - the poem?
praise be Jesus - and Jason and the Argonauts - and whoever
wanted a strawberry flavoured pastiche to lick tears off -
love's apocalypse, love's glory -
         well bloodhound eyes say it all - droop drool -
droop & drool... Jack & Jill... went up the hill, and passed
the Grimm Bro. baton to Hanzel und Gretyl in the 100m x4
relay of Disney Limps - then rabbinical literature to sober up -
Albotini's Sulam HaAliyah (Ladder of Ascent, formerly Jacob's
ladder - to be: Ladder of Skip-rope; Oxford, hello! yes,
can you please consider un-hyphenating what is desirably
a compound worthy word in the practice of German?          )?
is a bracket necessary anywhere and i missed it?
Antichrist - or a very strange form of antisemitism -
be like a Jew, congregate applauding in the right corner: Jesus -
in the blue corner: Crux Golgothia.
export from Portugal - the said book -
key principle (kefitzah) jumping or skipping (dilug) -
and this being applied to the one practice of mystic Judaism -
the ****** gematria; hishtavut (stoicism) -

me - is it still 20 quid for an eighth?
Sim (my neighbour) - yeah, but these days
                                       they sort of cheat,
                                       you'd get an eighth nibbled on,
                                       twenty for a tenth?!
me - ******, well, we can't expect it to not happen,
         we had coin debasement - clippings of silver
         keratin with Siliqua, third stage and
         all encoded authority is gone: Thomas and Anne
         till death and nail clippings be fraud unison in
         the depart (or when narration extinguishes
         a character, the character is worth nothing -
         the narrator wakes up - all the characters run
         like phantom-hares into nonexistence -
         phantom! thin air!
politeness said: only one **** at the wacky wee ö wee
(umlaut O / double oh, 007 - 00'7 - double u... oh!
                                 i get it!                             Jamie Oliver!)
DEI.GRA.REG.FID.DEF.
   "   (-tia) (-ina)(-ei)(-ensor) -
all that would have been clipped - authority of visage -
the courtesan only knew the mint in silver
and the mint in the flesh - hence clipping of coin
to erase the authority from the holy authority of words -
in the beginning - but once dei.gra.reg.fid.def.jpeg /
                                   dei.gra.red.fid.def.gif.

that ****** moth is here somewhere! there it is! catch it!
                                                             ­   catch it!
SLAM!          and the job is done )                                      ).
i really waiting a bus stop pretending to wait for a bus
toking on a joint - joint is mix tobacco and wee wee
and spliff is pure? i forgot the slang - haven't been
addicted to it in years.
Sim - yeah, that's how it is. work in central london -
         have to get up early in the morning.
         corporate finance - no that's a commercial firm,
         corporate finance - McDonald's, etc.
me - oh cool waiting for  ghost bus - never get paranoid
         then?
(police cars whizz by)
Sim - n'ah, a perfectly decent area, got stopped once,
          three years ago.
and the price goes to the laziest narrator in history - absolutely
no engagement with characters - it's too real, everyone's
lying - this is the second time i spoke to my neighbour properly
in the past.. ooh 2002... 14 YEARS - it's not even funny -
no amount of marijuana will make you feel comfortable -
you can mate and make Kingston handshakes and what not -
this is purity of absurdity and western isolation,
we went against the maxim: no man is an island on purpose,
not by chance like Robinson Crusoe -
at least Crusoe had a talking Friday - we have a ghost
of Michael Faraday on Friday - ******* disco blink blink -
poet... or alt.: the narrator complex - inhibitions toward
character craft and pseudo-schizoid symptom -
believing in ghosts is easy, fiction writers and their ghosts
and abortions, hardly a way to escape from that -
poetry: rebellious narration - just anything with narration,
modern fiction is read like a chess match between deep blue
and Kasparov - or Pavlov v. Jezebel playing gynaecologist.

blank.... blank... wait for the atoms trilled R to make
their toady presence felt -
the more pricier the whiskey the more pristine water,
i.e. you get drunk more easily -
anyone that smokes marijuana and thinks
they're clever are stupid; how many people are out there that are
stupid! - resounding hearsay-hooray!
drugs, ******, crack, blow, marijuana, ****, ***,
  cannabis, dope, ******, mary-jane, 13, M - herb shake -
Humphrey saying to Bogart - that joint. as said in Saudi
Arabic - a Ferrari G.T.I. and MeKubalim HaMitbodedim
                  )
                                  -chism - schism - sky - ski -
                                  cha cha, cha cha - kilo or 100th -
                                  1000 thd. - hundredth a thousandth -
                                  - where then the acute,
                                  timber from Czechs -
                                  kebab from Mesopotamia -
                                  and the Trojan horse to boot -
                                 chatter - chopper whopper -
                                 astoikism - not chew off
                                 curve into cherish but
                                 cravat chew in -
                                 Slavic mining zed - czarna
                                 ciasność - blackened claustrophobia.
a Buddhist clap
                   immersion -
left handed the right hand claps against air
                  )             )              )               )            ) ) )            )
a night at the Opera, right handed the left hand claps against air
(                       (        (            (               (          ( ( (            (
scimitar Luna - so they said, would like an audience with the
further unmentioned mention -
you're mates with neighbours who over 14 years you only
spoke to the count of thumb and index on occasion -
and thus necessarily high -
i was going to write something really important before
i finalised this draft... but i forgot what it was...
got almighty this whiskey is good...
i'm smoking salmon and pickling reindeer hooves and antennas;
a bit like practising Chinese miracle medicine with
whale blubber and Mongolian nostril hairs.

it's not about loving your enemies -
this love sinister must be invoked as: making your
enemies bearable.

i'm sure i had something concerning poetry and narration -
ah! it was... poetic compensation -
a.d.h.d. narration - attention deficit hyperactive disorder -
true - all psychiatric terms are metaphors -
at least outside the psychiatric realm -
poetry as a.d.h.d. meaning: shrapnel narration -
a custard pie of missing characters -
poetry: i.e.: the inability to believe in ghosts
or write characters - claustrophobic or agoraphobic narration?
a mix of both - poetry - the inability to conjure
Ouija fancies - poetry, the over-specialised gift for
narration, but an inability to invent characters -
poetry, the truth of the narrative, and the truth of un-invented
characters, poetry: the ability to narrate, coupled
with the inability to create characters -
fiction and the dumb narrator - poetry and the exquisite
narrator - fiction and the exciting characters -
poetry and the God - our focus is based on that vector,
or bias to that vector - fiction and the Oscars -
narrator and director - when to change from first person
to third person - again Burroughs was right -
images 50 years ahead of writing - a bit obvious,
nothing spectacular with that phrase -
lightning and the sons of thunder: 12 of them -
made the tetragrammaton less spoken and swear words
fucken-uppen censored so the crucifix and **** could
collide - a fine fine excuse - the Boeing 747 first
and later the quasi-sonic broom shoo' 'mm -
poetry as fiction disguised when fiction was given
a seance with pure narratives - splinter group:
philosophy's juggling with pronouns esp. the plural deviation
from first person as if to proper punctuation -
psychiatry and the theory of pronoun usage -
poetry and the pronoun rōnin (macron = umlaut -
count to two, or prolong - reasonable man / **** sapiens, pre-noun pro-adjective / adjective attache-noun, noun counter-noun es duo-adjective, Kellogg's sunrise cockle-doodle-dip-in-tartan-chess) -
only poetry mediates the parallel vectors of prose-fiction and philosophy - it consolidates the use of pronouns, art of poetry alone -
pure narration we're talking about,
the narrator and characters of its fancy,
philosopher and dialectical placebos (character equivalence)
with self-conscious moments, mono-pro-noun - alone i name -
the sacred squash wall of lecturing an invisible audience -
rummaging epitaphs in a graveyard along with birth dates
and live by dates - yes, that sacred we philosophers use -
an entire theatre was summoned to continue in appearing
sensible when writing without fictive apparitions -
enabling a fluidity in pronoun use, without sensible letter
writing, as in dear sir,
                                       me in reverse, thank you.

it's almost beautiful, we created the thing called
money, in order to turn tribalism
into a myth of Eden (alone, stark naked) -
          it's almost as if we deviated from
creating it and asking for family values,
            but never got them,
       i'm trying to imagine a Russia where
Rasputin wrote a book
that might have resounded with Nietzsche's
ubermensch - but thankfully precipitated into
world war i & ii... fancy the interlude:
a cold war i, now the cold war ii...
you should be happy, to be honest, it's the best
status quo you'll ever get...
but **** me, 1970s disco craze: even i'm
like Mozart-who?
               a little notebook, and my getting
drunk thoughts in it, funny how drink intellect
knows all too well about the: diminished responsibility
white flag -
              as with the **** chokes come the
drunk-and-writing-a-poem jokes,
                                i'd say blame Al Capone!
you know how many diacritical distinctions i could
insert into that surname? diacritical marks
are ulterior forces at-be when all punctuation goes
*******, not sentences, but words -
Cá       ponè - cockney slang Capone on the phone:
        we had fun: because you really don't say
Cáponé like you might say a torero's olé, do you?!
me? i find it grand to paint syllables with
diacritical marks, i mean: it's not even a blank canvas,
shame the semi-colon isn't minded in distinction,
but still, i already know that poets are scared of
punctuation, hence breaking the lines and not
engaging in a paragraph... tying shoelaces seems about
fine when it comes to modern poets,
talk about knitting jumpers, or scarfs by grannies -
sold as doing that same activity on shredded wheat cereal:
- = a hanging pause (suspense);
       , = necessary pause (or the expected
in a rhythmic cyclone);
   then i say to all my would be assassins:
you'll be doing me a massive favour, to be honest.
at times it really is the age of trusting entertainers
and not the media and certainly not the politicians -
it's almost stating the obvious.
i was in St. Petersburg for a month, and every time
i wanted to go to a danceclub to dance she refused me....
me and my naiveness in thinking that people could
actually be seduced by good...
      i don't mean being exposed to a tsunami
among the other elemental congregations of Shiva
there goes my belief in people being good to each other...
shoom! gone... bye bi!
(origins of dyslexia? maybe).
                                 she took me to the opera and
she started her snarling condescending approach to
the new-rich girls in the next booth...
     **** me, relationships leave me so ill-equipped
i actually find it staggering that i had any...
                 i must have been really naive in believing
that people could do good that i ended up
   a hermetic pessimist or misanthrope -
i never expected to be one, or share the juices of such
a calibration of humankind:
but it's funny how a movement overstates the cartesian
sum and never the cogito,
and when you by chance encounter the actual cogito
organising a movement, you represent nothing
representative of the movement's sum,
because the cogito is actually so staggeringly
divergent from being affiliated to the (e.g.)
         French revolution's guillotine locomotive.
when utilising only one hand in writing?
a black notebooks is written into at a rhombic degree,
yep, slant.
        i have two or three decent points to make,
but, obviously, i have to utilise verbiage to state them,
let's compare that to building a thousand homes
before the leaning tower of Pisa comes along
and people say: wow! in the immediate sense i
will require compensating that exception with
enough social housing for the tower to actually be erected:
that's natural: regurgitating maxims from no experience
would be an equivalence to an exoskeleton:
no experience, no harm... and where's the fun in that?

(interlude no. 1)

almost 15 minutes in an opera house, long enough
for the march from your seat into the street and a smoke,
  i still can't understand while people adopted money
for the demand of talking to each other via pebbles,
we are in our billions and made it so demanding to
only appeal to the few for company... i mean, should
i be sad? we made our company so unbearable because
of engaging in the concept of money that we later had
adapt to books as the conversations we need to have
among people we can't even talk about the weather to.
people always think that talking about money is
shallow... as if it's some really necessary version of
the crucifix (which to my mind sounds like a name for
a charity and the need to be thankful for it being there),
then again: something so geometrically pure
hanging over us and then comes Rodin's the kiss:
that really is a miracle - walking on water can hide itself,
turning water into wine (40 days & nights in the desert would
do that to you, every time you rehydrated, any liquid
would be intoxicating).
             oh hell, i have the notebook narrative,
i need to take a break after having written the unexpected
intro, and subsequent interlude.

it seems to me that language can never be sampled,
sampling language
is anti-scientific,
because it breaches an objectification of things,
which sad,
    are the Balkan states Slavic, Christian or Turkish?
i'm asking because a Greek said
it's Byzantine, and then lapping allah illha Allah
turkish took to Istambul...
*how best to defame a god with ensnarled capitals,
each, levelled,
                                only Islam will reign under the
praise of my name, which alone, will sing my praise.
   to move mountains, one must move throngs.
          to move people you expect them to become
mountains: or sun-tanned noon
  having been charcoaled into obliteration.
     one thought: an ottoman janissary: and vlad
the lesser crucifier and the adamant
impaler, who said that homosexuality shouldn't matter....
   imagine the comparative pain...
i can't: therefore i won't.
                     thus the black scripts of notation...
better than uttering original maxims,
          as in... better to engage in transcendentalº
dialectics
     ºin ref. to Nietzsche: the masses do not hold
an opinion on sanity: hence my concordance
with "him" - and insanity in individuals (self-dividing
                      duos in calamity of one):
insane individuals are rare: but conglomerates are
the norm - thus an agreement of shared truths
that has no debate to support it, because it has been
"plagiarised",
   the transcendental aspect is the lack of dialectics
(replaced with diacritics),
     and also the historical novelty of shared observation
with a disparity of a century's worth of history:
governing still the caveman and the modern man,
            as if the two were mutually compatible.
that one could rewrite the other, and so too true in
reverse.
   i find it harsh having to relinquish the authority
of language, as my own it used,
but only when school-friends suggest it, those
with ******* family members do i foremostly
experience it as my own: well... thanks to you
i'm not a plumber because your father detonated
the atom bomb and never bothered checking what
the gorilla did next with the grand censor of fertility
to protect an aesthetic...
           but then again: you were always Irish.
oo! well: sodomite that oops... it'll be worth something
in 30 years' time. strange how it must read...
Holocaust deniers also have the same lysergic trip.
             insanity in individuals is rare,
among groups it's the norm, within a framework
of Nietzsche: thus an agreement of shared truths,
that has no debate to support it,
because it has been "plagiarised" (necessarily experienced
more than once),
   ºthe transcendental aspect is the actual lack of
dialectics, and also the historical shared novelty of sharing
of observation (the tsunami cult, the earthquake cult)
with a disparity of range toward the century-range...
   philosophy infamously aks purposively
unsolvable questions: or questions that require many
more questions... or what is known as a transcript
of Aristotelian awe: of those who commit to error
with that science of pure wording, to spur people on;
philosophers are the adventurers in error:
only because this engages them in providing a "gravity"
locus... for others to hone onto and correct...
(oh how i'd believe had there been a Koranic surah
on the mindful hoplites)...
         purposively erroring: philosophy;
philosophers are pioneers: birches... scientists
are all but oak: auburn well established.
       but what of transcendental dialectic that expands
into shared truths (as experience) within the dual-disparity
of nearing death and the dawn of the 20th century
   and never-nearing a life at the dawn of the 21st century?
excluding dialectics and diacritics has given us
such a society, where everything is nearly snowflake
lucratively dissolvable and gentle...
                   few people utter truths,
even fewer utter truths than need to be debated...
             for the over-lord truth is mono, or glue...
        but still the tactic of avoiding certain truths
for the necessity of sitting in an armchair rather than
on a cold pavement... for in their pluralism
they express as many universal traits of non-experience,
as they subsequently express enough
    particular traits of experience
(translate rhyming into philosophy and you get this...
going cross-eyed in allocating an understanding,
summarised by the word zez).
hence the unwinding: universals (x, ÷):
       and particulars (+, -):
    of time, and how to encourage abstracting
worded coordination into an advanced literacy rate,
that'll fail, because literacy is power that requires
labouring anyway.
  because you did say "encapsulating a zoo"
readied to perpetrate a staging of a freak-show.
examples: universals (x, ÷):
       and particulars (+, -)        are zeniths in
the narrative compensation to nothing -
        in literature a surprise turn of the plot,
a summarisation, as such stand-out moments,
or quotes: here is a version of encoding verbal
"mathematical" synonymity -
         i too would wish to create a language
that doesn't abide by the language of miles,
but that of metres, but then there's the thesaurus
distinction between metres in deviations of
centimetres and nano in close-proximity
          ruby, crimson, burgundy, bled throughout the week
until pale grey and with an epitaph.
      language never brings us together,
it never did, we all wished to be cats and have said
meow... but we rarely and will never say...
that's nearing toward shame...
  i absolve humanity of the original sin...
                    if sinning was so original i would suggest
other forms of compensating it rather than prayer:
i'm thinking of the original shame...
it's that story of a serial killer who believed he
had no universal traits concerning him,
he had no systematisation of conscience,
he denied having a sense of guilt...
          it's hard to believe such things,
given the ceiling is the universe...
        it's hard to become a rat in a solipsistic maze...
that's ****** had to believe...
                   to deny having universal a priori
is also to deny particular a posteriori...
                           even though nothing really happened
apart from god laughing and man yawning
and the devil crying. it's very hard to believe people
these days, even though they deserve it,
                    it's hard to summate oneself in being
able to;
  thank god philosophers didn't complicate simple words
with remnants of Latin like psychologists did,
there's the prior (a priori) and there's the after (a posteriori),
or the two within a-: without a prior (to) / priority -
                  or without an after / an imitable vogue / trend /
    zeitgeist.
          can you write something like someone disclosing the fudge
of what's technically an arithmetic summary?          
no intelligence is being undermined here,
         what's being undermined is what's critically an optical
   java transitory period.                                                    

(int­erlude no. 2)

the laziest philosophers always write about the word
philosophy without actually philosophising,
you can say as much when saying: i'm thinking about thought.
of all the professions, philosophers don't know theirs...
it's true, if you do it, you do it not-knowing / unconsciously.
modernity does in fact overprescribe the word genius
because it doesn't give practitioners of philosophy any
credit in the slightest of actually being recipients of
life... every time a thought spawns from nothing
the limitation of expressing it is: you don't exist;
soon enough you hang up having any competence in language
and say to people you thought you knew: adios amigos,
good luck: then you wonder why they're so
prematurely depressed, and then you forget about them
and think of a million Chinese carpenters:
simply because it's less depressingly so.
     do you ever write encapsulating a rhombus on a page
with your literary / wanking hand? i know i do,
write in a notebook askew - or that's what's called the
future of absurdity: i'm thinking about thought -
some later claim morality, and some later claim god -
        that should sound more simply as: ought i?
    but it doesn't... hey, here's to self-projecting ****** -
it's not even that good people invented god,
  it's that evil people did...
                  which is always a bit ****** having that
microchip in my abstract mind (the brain) i sometimes
try to get rid off while acting as an atheist for pop super!
       does that sound highly idealistic?
it probably does... have i an influential counter to it?
n'ah. thinking about thought without the either or of
ought leaves me asking outside the box / transcendental
questions about what self is ingested by that
Pontius Pilate... talk of the "true" self and talk of
the "false" self: who the **** is the narrator then?
are we all bleaching our handshakes these days to
give a handshake?!
    some men would claim to be the husbands of that
insatiable "woman" that's Sophia,
         who, after all, is better equipped to satiate 3
men, than a man to satiated 3 women:
the trinity of ****, vaginal: oral - funny that,
how perfectly that plays against all those years of
practising to a demand of the churches': kneel!
i'll just watch you **** him off while Mary Magdalene
spread the schematic that resulted in the Islamic
******* analing the "respected".

(interlude no. 3)

just can't be bothered mate...
  never did so much charity work pour into
      herr Herrman's charity chest of
the never thought of set of poems.

- and a day later, just a blank,
what a formidable evening,
why do i queue for even a trombone, violin,
       a viola, trumpet or a sax to add to my voice?
but in musicological terms: that's exactly what i'm doing.
it's hard to not see this as a cure:
with 16,713 views matta's echo babylon is
truly the antithesis of Prokofiev, or any other,
as might call it: windy character.
        classical music was bound to tornados and
zephyrs - modern music is the epitome of rhythmic
sampling, drum eroded violins,
           and other things happened, too.
rhombus within the framework of the hand-written prior,
on tiny scraps of rectangular paper,
because it's easier to write like that: slanting
and therefore for the imagery of cascading -
and as the pronoun revolution dies down,
                    and the voices go unheard,
   people will start to think about thought
and later thought per se for transcendental purposes...
     because choice will be ejected from
having competent access to it: namely?
   i can't see those **** the ***** protests seriously
if people can't take to shooting guns,
          i mean real rebellion... obviously i'm egging
on the situation and spraying gasoline on it
(obviously), but if the French give you the statue of
liberty as a present, you get to look at the appendix,
and start thinking: where are the guns, so
it looks like a genuine protest? i thought the idea of
being able to own guns (by the people), was to suggest
that if the government was electorally undesired,
people could start shooting... the tongue isn't
a

Take my hand, friend
just for a sec-
let's leave this ****** land of
SATs, PSATs, APs,
and college admission essays and guidance counselors
and homework and pop quizzes and exams and whatever else-

                                          behind.

Let's be two again.

Let's make Pringle-chip-duck faces
and grin with orange peel smiles-
I'll paint my nails yellow and we'll read Dr. Seuss with British accents
in the dimming light of the old
falling-down fort of pillows and blankets (that's almost too small for us)

Let's pretend
              Let's pretend
                            Let's pretend

That we've never seen the glowing screen of
televisions, computers, IPods,
that we haven't spent weeks wearing down our thumbs on text messages.
              Let's forget fights over boys that weren't even all that hot.

Let's sit in my yard and eat raw cookie dough behind my momma's back
And make too-sweet fresh lemonade, and blow dandelions
(into other neighbor's yards, of course)
Spray garden hoses at each other
and laugh and scream and giggle and make mud-pies.
Let's make twenty different secret handshakes,
Eat wild raspberries and hide sticky fingers
And pinky promise- again and again- BFFs forever.

Let's lose ourselves in the bliss of childhood
just one more time- please.

                            Just in case Peter Pan decides to visit.

We stand by those we trust,
All the while they transgress against us.
Friend or foe to behold?
For only they will surely know.

Trust someone in this day and age
Is nothing more than a noble cliché.

Slanderous words of dishonesty,
Destroying your character with their brutality.
The world believes them as they lie,
Who can one trust in this earthly enterprise?

Longing for the days of old
When men were men, as good as gold.

I long for days where a handshake meant
Your word a bond, and honor felt.
Agreements made without paper convention;
Handshakes were the business transaction.

Honor flowed throughout the lands,
Everyone gave a helping hand.
A favor wasn’t done for return,
As a friend indeed was someone earned.

Days of past will not return
As immoral acts are loved and learned.
Handshakes, a thing of the past,
Your word, a thing that no longer lasts.

The wind whips
and scrapes the walls
like ivy looking for its foothold

round windowsills
and rotten wood
winter chills a new years cold
scouring for the way in

rolling barrels of fury
tumultuous spasms
unrelenting open hands
slaps the face of every bush and branch
with each pass
the lawns and meadows left
rippled like a poorly tacked carpet

the scaffolding of men rests on brace and bolts
and handshakes with the granite walls
adornments flap their benign capes
eddies of grit spiral, walking tall

Inside I watch you
like a ****** staring at the passing crowd
but not knowing where to look;
only you are everywhere

blankets and lights and even the TV
are curtains to pretend your not outside;
I need not venture out yet

at least,
not until morning

In an oversized denim jacket Stands
a girl who treats kisses
like handshakes.
She's young.
With makeup done perfectlly
hidden beneath a baseball cap.
I wish for her to treat I love you like thank yous
so that she has her heart broken less often.
So she may pay attention to what all the men are thankful for
So she can hang on to one that's thankful for more than just
She treats kisses like handshakes.

There is this deadly eater

Which eats through even sweating

A sneeze gives it sharper teeth

To chew the human from inside

Merging blood is its travelling aeroplane

Pleasurable kissing its smooth vehicle

We're lucky the air begrudges it

Or it will wipe us all out

Lovers must be shunned

When they are caught

Because love can't protect

It's  wicked claws

It laughs at hand sanitizers

Because it is stronger than weak bacteria

And waits on death to get more flesh

One cannot be too careful

It kills even hands with experience

So stay away from handshakes and hugs

And be wary of high fevers

Ebola is real

Don't joke, don't laugh

No drug is known to conquer

So stay alert and stay alive.

  Amoafowaa Sefa Cecilia (c) 2004

From afar I knew her at school,
We talked once or twice,
She was a beauty you see.
Having a boyfriend elsewhere.

Came our Senior All Night Party,
Planned out all very cool.
After an afternoon Graduation,
Our entire class of several hundred
Embarked on a private train,
Eight passenger cars,
An Engine and caboose.
All Just for our use.

As a class officer I was in the entry car,
Handing out handshakes to the guys,
And goodbye kisses to the girls,
(One last chance to flirt.)

Until she, the leggy blond came along.
That kiss was not fleeting, not congratulatory,
If was mutually passionate and assuredly sincere.
It took my breath away, she tasted of lipstick
And honey, sweet as can be.

Minutes later we found ourselves
In a compartment, mostly alone,  
Stayed there though out the,
90 mile train excursion,
Discovering each other as
Young Lovers should.
Nothing seedy,
Nothing inappropriate,
Just kissing until our lips hurt,
And I felt like I might explode.
This beautiful long legged girl,
And I, fogging the windows up,
All Fireworks and night flares,
Like a steamy magic act on the rails.
Other people came and went,
But we hardly took notice of them.
Lost in a little world of our own.

We reached Oakland,
Departed the train,
Went aboard a three level,
Red Line Cruse Boat
And sailed away.
Two bands, music,
And just a little *****,
High on kisses, Royal Crown,
Jack Denials’ Black Label.              
All night on the Bay water,
A little dancing too, as I recall.

Then back at the Pier by six.
Breakfast and return train trip.
Somewhere along the way,
We lost track of each other,
Too many people,
All moving and shoving,
Friends pulling us in different direction,
Too tired to protest I guess.
I found a place to fall asleep and did.
And just like that it was over.

The next day and for years,
It all seemed like a dream.
How does that happen?
What had we both been feeling
For those four school years,
But had never expressed,
To ourselves or each other,
That put us together on that journey,
Of Steel Tracks and Water Adrift?

During those years,
What passions had we stifled,
All for lack of opportunity?
Both dating other people,
Busy moving blindly through adolescents,
As kids will do, with no real clue.   

After the train ride,
That ship on the Bay,
It was off to college,
And new friends with which to play,
Events and time took over, and
We both went our own ways.

For the first time, since that night,
I saw her some weeks ago.
And she still looks the same.
It’s been many years,
But she has not changed.
Lovely as ever and still my friend.
Both of us laughed as we talked,
Fondly recalled that night on the train.
She now a widow and me on my own.

Living 600 miles apart,
We email back and forth,
Pen Pals we tell ourselves,
And each other.

What was I thinking?
Back in those days.
How did I let her get away?
I suppose “Stuff” and something,
Called Life merely got in the way.

Now every day,
The first thing I do,
After I let out the dogs,
And brew a cup of Joe,
Is open my Email files,
To see if she is there.
So pleased when she is,
A little sad when she’s not.

on the way
to return sociology
to the library
i couldn't read the parking signs
so ended blocks away
at a salvation army

the kind with no books for sale
but an elevator shaft
running up, down
behind a drum-set altar
and a stage i didn't buy.

half-expecting 'the war room' ads
posted here as well
i let a stranger lead me to my muse
saying none would mind

Chuck asked me if i 'needed to pray this morning'
before unlocking -
i said, 'every day'  but thought
  not in his way
- i'm just begging him to play.

i read a psalm and kneel to test hypocrisy.
lotus palms connote release from suffering
wellness for all beings

and then  
i am here now
at the keyboard again
playing music i will never forget
even when my chainsaw body stiffens  creaks
the keys a saving home still  though shy
they hammer heart strings
broken, born -again again again.

praeludium, goldberg, well-tempered
minuets conjure Bach
in his stone church
and i cry for lost souls
my own lostness found
though convinced there is no static single 'self'
no 'soul'-rewarded other-life to justify our own
no 'god'- or science-demolished mystery
no metaphysic causa sui to separate
contempus mundi from the mundi...
no tidy verbal 'beyond beyond'
but that of Thales  Sappho  Gautama  
Laotse  Yeshua
Nagarjuna  Shankara
Duns Scotus  Hume  
Blake  Whitman  Darwin
Nietzsche  Du Bois
Tolkien  Stein  Merleau-Ponty  Sagan  Jong

but i will say we've sung the music of the spheres
in host-guest handshakes
stranger  xenophilic tunes
my earthling family hums my heart anew
as i begin  again
to sing my being into fingertips

skyward breath to lid-closed harmonies of hell redeemed
in Peter's vacuuming
request for 'Dixieland'
and Stacy's parting thanks
for 'we three kings'
Ruth's morning-making compliments and invitation back
my wish to share with them the love i feel
- from them, Gaskell's book
from deep within where no words win
authentic ownmost ocean depth of
less contingent love
historically embracing love
of errancy and freedom in our different loves
an atheist in love with vacuums
saucha and the music of human kindness
receiving gifts in giving thanks








.

Its been awhile since we've talked
Close companions are hard to come by
These handshakes new people they're not enough
Love bites from my cat help it out but still ain't no touch
Like your hands I used to write about
So firm and strong you could have made me danced
And to be fair maybe I never gave you the chance
Maybe I'm just wishing on what could have been
That life was fun but it's gone
I was born again
Right now I'm just seeking for some friends
To put me back on my feet
Its been awhile for such a feat
Been caught Falling into the Earth for awhile now
Got a lot of stones to bring my soul back to me
Ground me here for the next year to be

a stripe of asphalt on the blanket of green

I stare wordlessly out into other people's lives
peeking past the violet-tinted windows of the freeway
as your chat-chatter spills from your coffee cup
filled to the brim with handshakes and impatience

You clutch your earpiece tighter, scowling
as I trace the horizon across the glass
smudgy fingertips that sigh boredom

and the Mexican workers in orange vests
peer back at me curious and wave
turn to their left and shout something in Spanish
tongues dancing, slick with dust

I smile as they crumple their lunch sacks and
pitch them down into the rubble then hoist
brick by brick, stone by stone
no natural-made boundary
into the chalky air and perch for a while
to mop the sweat from their brown
creased faces and sing rowdily to their neighbors
and the immobile in the SUVs

You lock the doors fast
and pat your hair into place
I've got no time for this construction
you say, can't they build this highway somewhere else?
as you drum your fingers along to the siren song
of CEOs and business connections

You're just the same as the rest of them.
Man forever building bridges
that will only topple down.

He has this nervous tick.
When a person is lying he will open his mouth.
Sometimes his jaw will hit the floor.
Sometimes words will come out.
And sometimes there are consequences,
if not only a sore jaw.

He is an affable man.
Many would say he's a good sport
and in good nature, even though he's not
athletic and has severe allergies.
Handshakes are important to him.
And he understands the appeal of a thumbs-up.
Hugs are reserved for holidays,
and tears were only had at funerals.
Sunglasses optional, but the only pair
he owns he keeps
in the jacket of his black suit.

Any man that has a tendency to speak too freely,
or too much, will have to learn to talk their way out of a potentially harmful situation.
The "Gift of Gab"did not die with the smock.
It evolved with the suit.
It became five words said in three.
It is in relation to political correctness.
It's knowing that government is not *******,
but many representatives are mentally challenged.

He tries to stay ahead of his mannerisms.
Raised eyebrow.
Twitching eye.
Clenched teeth.
But some things cannot be hid.
Like the vein in his forehead.
And of course his verbal diarrhea.
But he would rather expell insight
and opinion rather than hold
it in only to force it out later in privacy.

People involved in Fine Art are shot on site.
Possession of a canvas brings a life sentence.
The art departments are born from advertising.
False pretense is considered flexible.
When the program used is for the sole purpose
of manipulation you aren't expected to become angry. Government turns the clocks back, stretching time and truth,
with knowledge of a man who has done
the same, and was considered a master.

Metaphysics and a mustache,
he changed the world with a canvas,
and with an open mouth he expelled truth
and injustice to a contemporary audience.
He applied his paint with a poetic eye.
Soon he learned that you don't need
to start a fire to melt a clock.
All you need is a brush,
and sometimes a barren tree.