Flicker Shimmer Glow

The brightest star can shine even with thick black velvet draped over it.  
Quartz, lime and salt crystals formed a glass ball.
The dark womb held me, warm and soft.  
My mom called my cries when I was born the most sorrowful sound she had ever heard.  
She said she’d never heard a baby make a sound like that.    
I’d open my eyes in low light until the world’s light healed rather than hurt.  
The summer before eighth grade, July 1992,
I watched a shooting star burn by at 100,000 miles per hour as I stood on the balcony  
while my family celebrated my birthday inside.  
It made it into the earth’s atmosphere
but it didn’t look like it was coming down;
I know it didn’t hit the ground but it burned something in the time it was here.  
The glass ball of my life cracked inside.  
Light reflected off the salt crystal cracks.  
I saw the beauty of the light within.  
Nacre from my shell kept those cracks from getting worse,
a wild pearl as defense mechanism.  
In 2001, I quit my job after they melted and poured tar all over my life.  
All summer literature class bathtubs filled with rose hip oil cleaned the tar.  
That fall logic and epistemology classes spewed black ink all over my philosophy
written over ten years then.  
Tar turned to asphalt when I met someone from my old job for a drink in November
and it paved a road for my life that went to the hospital I was in that December
where it sealed the roof on my life
when I was almost murdered there
and in February after meeting her for another drink.  
They lit a fire at the top of the glacier and pushed the burning pile of black coal off the edge,
burnt red, looking like flames falling into the valley.  
While that blazed the side of the cliff something lit an incandescent light.  
The electricity from the metal lightbulb ***** went through wires and heated the filament between until it glowed.  
I began putting more work into emotional balance from things I learned at AA meetings.  
In Spring 2003, the damage that the doctors at the hospital in 2001 had done
made it harder for light to reflect from the cracks in the glass ball.
I’d been eating healthy and trying to get regular exercises since 1994
but in Spring 2003 I began swimming for an hour every morning .  
The water washed the pollution from the burning coals off
And then I escaped in July.  
I moved to London to study English Language and Linguistics.  
I would’ve studied English Language and Literature.  
I did well until Spring 2004 when I thought I was being stalked.  
I thought I was manic.  
I thought I was being stalked.  
I went home and didn’t go back for my exams after spring holiday.  
Because I felt traumatized and couldn’t write poetry anymore,
I used black ink to write my notes for my book on trauma and the Russian Revolution.
I started teaching myself German.  
I stayed healthy.  
In 2005, my parents went to visit my mom’s family in Malaysia for two weeks.
I thought I was being stalked.  
I knew I wasn’t manic.  
I thought I was being stalked.  
I told my parents when they came home.  
They thought I was manic.  
I showed them the shoe prints in the snow of different sizes from the woods to the windows.  
They thought I was manic.  
I was outside of my comfort zone.  
I moved to California. I found light.  
I made light,
the light reflected off the salt crystals I used to heal the violence inflicted on me from then on.  
The light turned the traffic lights to not just green from red
but amber and blue.  
The light turned the car signals left and right.  
The light reflected off of salt crystals, light emitting diodes,
electrical energy turned directly to light,
electroluminescence.  
The electrical currents flowed through,
illuminating.  
Alone in the world, I moved to California in July 2005
but in August  I called the person I escaped in 2003,
the sulfur and nitrogen that I hated.  
He didn’t think I was manic but I never said anything.
I never told him why I asked him to move out to California.  
When his coal seemed like only pollution,
I asked him to leave.  
He threatened me.  
I called the authorities.  
They left me there.
He laughed.  
Then the violence came.  
****:  stabbed and punched, my ****** bruised, purple and swollen.  
The light barely reflected from the glass ball wIth cracks through all the acid rain, smoke and haze.
It would take me half an hour to get my body to do what my mind told it to after.  
My dad told me my mom had her cancer removed.
The next day, the coal said if I wanted him to leave he’d leave.  
I booked his ticket.
I drove him to the airport.  
Black clouds gushed the night before for the first time in months,
the sky clear after the rain.  
He was gone and I was free,
melted glass, heated up and poured—
looked like fire,
looked like the Snow Moon in February
with Mercury in the morning sky.  
I worked through ****.  
I worked to overcome trauma.  
Electricity between touch and love caused acid rain, smoke, haze, and mercury
to light the discharge lamps, streetlights and parking lot lights.
Then I changed the direction of the light waves.  
Like lead glass breaks up the light,
lead from the coal, cleaned and replaced by potassium,
glass cut clearly, refracting the light,
electrolytes,
electrical signals lit through my body,
thick black velvet drapes gone.  





















Lava

I think that someone wrote into some palm leaf a manuscript, a gift, a contract.  
After my parents wedding, while they were still in India,
they found out that my dad’s father and my mom’s grandfather worked for kings administering temples and collecting money for their king from the farmers that worked the rice paddies each king owned.  They both left their homes before they left for college.  
My dad, a son of a brahmin’s son,
grew up in his grandmother’s house.  
His mother was not a Brahmin.  
My mother grew up in Malaysia where she saw the children from the rubber plantation
when she walked to school.  
She doesn’t say what caste she is.  
He went to his father’s house, then college.  
He worked, then went to England, then Canada.  
She went to India then Canada.  
They moved to the United States around Christmas 1978
with my brother while she was pregnant with me.  
My father signed a contract with my mother.  
My parents took ashes and formed rock,
the residue left in brass pots in India,
the rocks, so hot, they turned back to lava miles away before turning back to ash again,
then back to rock,
the lava from a super volcano,
the ash purple and red.  


















Circles on a Moss Covered Volcano

The eruption beatifies the magma.  
It becomes obsidian,
only breaks with a fracture,
smooth circles where it breaks.  

My mom was born on the grass
on a lawn
in a moss covered canyon at the top of a volcanic island.  
My grandfather lived in Malaysia before the Japanese occupied.  
When the volcano erupted,
the lava dried at the ocean into black sand.  
The British allied with the Communist Party of Malaysia—
after they organized.  
After the Americans defeated the Japanese at Pearl Harbor,
the British took over Malaysia again.  
They kept different groups apart claiming they were helping them.  
The black sand had smooth pebbles and sharp rocks.  
Ethnic Malay farmers lived in Kampongs, villages.  
Indians lived on plantations.  
The Chinese lived in towns and urban areas.  
Ethnic Malays wanted independence.
In 1946, after strikes, demonstrations, and boycotts
the British agreed to work with them.  
The predominantly Chinese Communist Party of Malaysia went underground,
guerrilla warfare against the British,
claiming their fight was for independence.  
For the British, that emergency required vast powers
of arrest, detention without trial and deportation to defeat terrorism.  
The Emergency became less unpopular as the terrorism became worse.  
The British were the iron that brought oxygen through my mom’s body.  
She loved riding on her father’s motorcycle with him
by the plantations,
through the Kampongs
and to the city, half an hour away.  
The British left Malaysia independent in 1957
with Malaysian nationalists holding most state and federal government offices.  
As the black sand stretches towards the ocean,
it becomes big stones of dried lava, flat and smooth.  

My mom thought her father and her uncle were subservient to the British.  
She thought all things, all people were equal.  
When her father died when she was 16, 1965,
they moved to India,
my mother,
a foreigner in India, though she’s Indian.  
She loved rock and roll and mini skirts
and didn’t speak the local language.  
On the dried black lava,
it can be hard to know the molten lava flickers underneath there.  
Before the Korean War,
though Britain and the United States wanted
an aggressive resolution
condemning North Korea,
they were happy
that India supported a draft resolution
condemning North Korea
for breach of the peace.  
During the Korean War,
India, supported by Third World and other Commonwealth nations,
opposed United States’ proposals.
They were able to change the U.S. resolution
to include the proposals they wanted
and helped end the war.  
China wanted the respect of Third World nations
and saw the United States as imperialist.  
China thought India was a threat to the Third World
by taking aid from the United States and the Soviets.  
Pakistan could help with that and a seat at the United Nations.  
China wanted Taiwan’s seat at the UN.
My mother went to live with her uncle,
a communist negotiator for a corporation,
in India.  
A poet,
he threw parties and invited other artists, musicians and writers.  
I have the same brown hyperpigmentation at my joints that he had.  
During the day, only the steam from the hot lava can be seen.  
In 1965, Pakistani forces went into Jammu and Kashmir with China’s support.  
China threatened India after India sent its troops in.  
Then they threatened again before sending their troops to the Indian border.  
The United States stopped aid to Pakistan and India.
Pakistan agreed to the UN ceasefire agreement.  
Pakistan helped China get a seat at the UN
and tried to keep the west from escalating in Vietnam.  
The smoldering sound of the lava sizzles underneath the dried lava.  
When West Pakistan refused to allow East Pakistan independence,
violence between Bengalis and Biharis developed into upheaval.  
Bengalis moved to India
and India went into East Pakistan.  
Pakistan surrendered in December 1971.  
East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh

The warm light of the melted lava radiates underneath but burns.  
In 1974, India tested the Smiling Buddha,
a nuclear bomb.  
After Indira Gandhi’s conviction for election fraud in 1973,
Marxist Professor Narayan called for total revolution
and students protested all over India.  
With food shortages, inflation and regional disputes
like Sikh separatists training in Pakistan for an independent Punjab,
peasants and laborers joined the protests.  
Railway strikes stopped the economy.  
In 1975, Indira Gandhi, the Iron Lady,
declared an Emergency,
imprisoning political opponents, restricting freedoms and restricting the press,
claiming threats to national security
because the war with Pakistan had just ended.  
The federal government took over Kerala’s communist dominated government and others.  

My mom could’ve been a dandelion, but she’s more like thistle.  
She has the center that dries and flutters in the wind,
beautiful and silky,
spiny and prickly,
but still fluffy, downy,
A daisy.
They say thistle saved Scotland from the Norse.  
Magma from the volcano explodes
and the streams of magma fly into the air.  
In the late 60s,
the civil rights movement rose
against the state in Northern Ireland
for depriving Catholics
of influence and opportunity.
The Northern Irish police,
Protestant and unionist, anti-catholic,
responded violently to the protests and it got worse.  
In 1969, the British placed Arthur Young,
who had worked at the Federation of Malaya
at the time of their Emergency
at the head of the British military in Northern Ireland.
The British military took control over the police,
a counter insurgency rather than a police force,
crowd control, house searches, interrogation, and street patrols,
use of force against suspects and uncooperative citizens.  
Political crimes were tolerated by Protestants but not Catholics.  
The lava burns the rock off the edge of the volcano.  

On January 30, 1972, ****** Sunday,  
British Army policing killed 13 unarmed protesters
fighting for their rights over their neighborhood,
protesting the internment of suspected nationalists.
That led to protests across Ireland.  
When banana leaves are warmed,
oil from the banana leaves flavors the food.  
My dad flew from Canada to India in February 1972.  
On February 4, my dad met my mom.  
On February 11, 1972,
my dad married my mom.  
They went to Canada,
a quartz singing bowl and a wooden mallet wrapped in suede.  
The rock goes down with the lava, breaking through the rocks as it goes down.  
In March 1972, the British government took over
because they considered the Royal Ulster Police and the Ulster Special Constabulary
to be causing most of the violence.  
The lava blocks and reroutes streams,
melts snow and ice,
flooding.  
Days later, there’s still smoke, red.  
My mom could wear the clothes she liked
without being judged
with my dad in Canada.  
She didn’t like asking my dad for money.
My dad, the copper helping my mother use that iron,
wanted her to go to college and finish her bachelors degree.
She got a job.  
In 1976, the police took over again in Northern Ireland
but they were a paramilitary force—
armored SUVs, bullet proof jackets, combat ready
with the largest computerized surveillance system in the UK,
high powered weapons,
trained in counter insurgency.  
Many people were murdered by the police
and few were held accountable.  
Most of the murdered people were not involved in violence or crime.  
People were arrested under special emergency powers
for interrogation and intelligence gathering.  
People tried were tried in non-jury courts.  
My mom learned Malayalam in India
but didn’t speak well until living with my dad.  
She also learned to cook after getting married.  
Her mother sent her recipes; my dad cooked for her—
turmeric, cumin, coriander, cayenne and green chiles.  
Having lived in different countries,
my mom’s food was exposed to many cultures,
Chinese and French.
Ground rock, minerals and glass
covered the ground
from the ash plume.  
She liked working.  

A volcano erupted for 192 years,
an ice age,
disordered ices, deformed under pressure
and ordered ice crystals, brittle in the ice core records.  
My mother liked working.  
Though Khomeini was in exile by the 1970s in Iran,
more people, working and poor,
turned to him and the ****-i-Ulama for help.
My mom didn’t want kids though my dad did.
She agreed and in 1978 my brother was born.
Iran modernized but agriculture and industry changed so quickly.  
In January 1978, students protested—
censorship, surveillance, harassment, illegal detention and torture.  
Young people and the unemployed joined.  
My parents moved to the United States in December 1978.  
The regime used a lot of violence against the protesters,
and in September 1978 declared martial law in Iran.  
Troops were shooting demonstrators.
In January 1979, the Shah and his family fled.  
On February 11, 1979, my parents’ anniversary,
the Iranian army declared neutrality.  
I was born in July 1979.
The chromium in emeralds and rubies colors them.
My brother was born in May and I was born in July.

Obsidian—
iron, copper and chromium—
isn’t a gas
but it isn’t a crystal;
it’s between the two,
the ordered crystal and the disordered gas.  
They made swords out of obsidian.  





Warm Light Shatters

The eruption beatifies the magma.  
It becomes obsidian,
only breaks with a fracture,
smooth circles where it breaks.  

My dad was born on a large flat rock on the edge of the top
of a hill,
Molasses, sweet and dark, the potent flavor dominates,
His father, the son of a Brahmin,
His mother from a lower caste.
His father’s family wouldn’t touch him,
He grew up in his mother’s mother’s house on a farm.  
I have the same brown hyperpigmentation spot on my right hand that he has.

In 1901, D’Arcy bought a 60 year concession for oil exploration In Iran.
The Iranian government extended it for another 32 years in 1933.
At that time oil was Iran’s “main source of income.”
In 1917’s Balfour Declaration, the British government proclaimed that they favored a national home for the Jews in Palestine and their “best endeavors to facilitate the achievement” of that.

The British police were in charge of policing in the mandate of Palestine.  A lot of the policemen they hired were people who had served in the British army before, during the Irish War for Independence.  
The army tried to stop how violent the police were, police used torture and brutality, some that had been used during the Irish War for Independence, like having prisoners tied to armored cars and locomotives and razing the homes of people in prison or people they thought were related to people thought to be rebels.
The police hired Arab police and Jewish police for lower level policing,
Making local people part of the management.
“Let Arab police beat up Arabs and Jewish police beat up Jews.”

The lava blocks and reroutes streams, melts snow and ice, flooding.
In 1922, there were 83,000 Jews, 71,000 Christians, and 589,000 Muslims.
The League If Nations endorsed the British Mandate.
During an emergency, in the 1930s, British regulations allowed collective punishment, punishing villages for incidents.
Local officers in riots often deserted and also shared intelligence with their own people.
The police often stole, destroyed property, tortured and killed people.  
Arab revolts sapped the police power over Palestinians by 1939.

My father’s mother was from a matrilineal family.
My dad remembers tall men lining up on pay day to respectfully wait for her, 5 feet tall.  
She married again after her husband died.
A manager from a tile factory,
He spoke English so he supervised finances and correspondence.
My dad, a sunflower, loved her: she scared all the workers but exuded warmth to the people she loved.

Obsidian shields people from negative energy.
David Cargill founded the Burmah Oil Co. in 1886.
If there were problems with oil exploration in Burma and Indian government licenses, Persian oil would protect the company.  
In July 1906, many European oil companies, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and others, allied to protect against the American oil company, Standard Oil.
D’Arcy needed money because “Persian oil took three times as long to come on stream as anticipated.”
Burmah Oil Co. began the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. as a subsidiary.
Ninety-seven percent of British Petroleum was owned by Burmah Oil Co.
By 1914, the British government owned 51% of the Anglo-Persian Oil Co.  
Anglo-Persian acquired independence from Burmah Oil and Royal Dutch Shell with two million pounds from the British government.

The lava burns the rock off the edge of the volcano.
In 1942, after the Japanese took Burma,
the British destroyed their refineries before leaving.
The United Nations had to find other sources of oil.
In 1943, Japan built the Burma-Thailand Railroad with forced labor from the Malay peninsula who were mostly from the rubber plantations.

The rock goes down with the lava, breaking through the rocks as it goes down.
In 1945. Japan destroyed their refineries before leaving Burma.
Cargill, Watson and Whigham were on the Burmah Oil Co. Board and then the Anglo Iranian Oil Co. Board.  

In 1936 Palestine, boycotts, work stoppages, and violence against British police officials and soldiers compelled the government to appoint an investigatory commission.  
Leaders of Egypt, Trans Jordan, Syria and Iraq helped end the work stoppages.
The British government had the Peel Commission read letters, memoranda, and petitions and speak with British officials, Jews and Arabs.  
The Commission didn’t believe that Arabs and Jews could live together in a single Jewish state.
Because of administrative and financial difficulties the Colonial Secretary stated that to split Palestine into Arab and Jewish states was impracticable.  
The Commission recommended transitioning 250,000 Arabs and 1500 Jews with British control over their oil pipeline, their naval base and Jerusalem.  
The League of Nations approved.
“It will not remove the grievance nor prevent the recurrence,” Lord Peel stated after.
The Arab uprising was much more militant after Peel.  Thousands of Arabs were wounded, ten thousand were detained.  
In Sykes-Picot and the Husain McMahon agreements, the British promised the Arabs an independent state but they did not keep that promise.  
Representatives from the Arab states rejected the Peel recommendations.
United Nations General Assembly Resolution181 partitioned Palestine into Arab and Jewish states with an international regime for the city of Jerusalem backed by the United States and the Soviet Union.  

The Israeli Yishuv had strong military and intelligence organization —-  
the British recognized that their interest was with the Arabs and abstained from the vote.  
In 1948, Israel declared the establishment of its state.  
Ground rock, minerals, and gas covered the ground from the ash plume.
The Palestinian police force was disbanded and the British gave officers the option of serving in Malaya.

Though Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy supported snd tried to get Israel to offer the Arabs concessions, it wasn’t a major priority and didn’t always approve of Israel’s plans.
Arabs that had supported the British to end Turkish rule stopped supporting the West.  
Many Palestinians joined left wing groups and violent third world movements.  
Seventy-eight percent of the territory of former Palestine was under Israel’s control.  

My dad left for college in 1957 and lived in an apartment above the United States Information services office.
Because he graduated at the top of his class, he was given a job with the public works department of the government on the electricity board.  
“Once in, you’ll never leave.”
When he wanted a job where he could do real work, his father was upset.
He broke the chains with bells for vespers.
He got a job in Calcutta at Kusum Products and left the government, though it was prestigious to work there.
In the chemical engineering division, one of the projects he worked on was to design a *** distillery, bells controlled by hammers, hammers controlled by a keyboard.
His boss worked in the United Kingdom for. 20 years before the company he worked at, part of Power Gas Corporation, asked him to open a branch in Calcutta.
He opened the branch and convinced an Industrialist to open a company doing the same work with him.  The branch he opened closed after that.  
My dad applied for labor certification to work abroad and was selected.  
His boss wrote a reference letter for my him to the company he left in the UK.  My dad sent it telling the company when he was leaving for the UK.  
The day he left for London, he got the letter they sent in the mail telling him to take the train to Sheffield the next day and someone from the firm would meet him at the station.  
His dad didn’t know he left, he didn’t tell him.
He broke the chains with chimes for schisms.


Anglo-Persian Oil became Anglo-Iranian Oil in 1935.
The British government used oil and Anglo-Persian oil to fight communism, have a stronger relationship with the United States and make the United Kingdom more powerful.  
The National Secularists, the Tudeh, and the Communists wanted to nationalize Iran’s oil and mobilized the Iranian people.
The British feared nationalization in Iran would incite political parties like the Secular Nationalists all over the world.  
In 1947, the Iranian government passed the Single Article Law that “[increased] investment In welfare benefits, health, housing, education, and implementation of Iranianization through substitution of foreigners” at Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.
“Anglo-Iranian Oil Company made more profit in 1950 than it paid to the Iranian government in royalties over the previous half century.”
The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company tried to negotiate a new concession and claimed they’d hire more Iranian people into jobs held by British and people from other nationalities at the company.
Their hospitals had segregated wards.  
On May 1, 1951, the Iranian government passed a bill that nationalized Anglo- Iranian Oil Co.’s holdings.  
During the day, only the steam from the hot lava can be seen.
In August 1953, the Iranian people elected Mossadegh from the Secular Nationalist Party as prime minister.
The British government with the CIA overthrew Mossadegh using the Iranian military after inducing protests and violent demonstrations.  
Anglo-Iranian Oil changed its name to British Petroleum in 1954.
Iranians believe that America destroyed Iran’s “last chance for democracy” and blamed America for Iran’s autocracy, its human rights abuses, and secret police.

The smoldering sound of the lava sizzles underneath the dried lava.  
In 1946, Executive Yuan wanted control over 4 groups of Islands in the South China Sea to have a stronger presence there:  the Paracels, the Spratlys, Macclesfield Bank, and the Pratas.
The French forces in the South China Sea would have been stronger than the Chinese Navy then.
French Naval forces were in the Gulf of Tonkin, U.S. forces were in the Taiwan Strait, the British were in Hong Kong, and the Portuguese were in Macao.
In the 1950s, British snd U.S. oil companies thought there might be oil in the Spratlys.  
By 1957, French presence in the South China Sea was hardly there.  

When the volcano erupted, the lava dried at the ocean into black sand.
By 1954, the Tudeh Party’s communist movement and  intelligence organization had been destroyed.  
Because of the Shah and his government’s westernization policies and disrespectful treatment of the Ulama, Iranians began identifying with the Ulama and Khomeini rather than their government.  
Those people joined with secular movements to overthrow the Shah.  

In 1966, Ne Win seized power from U Nu in Burma.
“Soldiers ruled Burma as soldiers.”
Ne Win thought that western political
Institutions “encouraged divisions.”
Minority groups found foreign support for their separatist goals.
The Karens and the Mons supported U Nu in Bangkok.  


Rare copper, a heavy metal, no alloys,
a rock in groundwater,
conducts electricity and heat.
In 1965, my Dad’s cousin met him at Heathrow, gave him a coat and £10 and brought him to a bed and breakfast across from Charing Cross Station where he’d get the train to Sheffield the next morning.
He took the train and someone met him at the train station.  
At the interview they asked him to design a grandry girder, the main weight bearing steel girder as a test.
Iron in the inner and outer core of the earth,
He’d designed many of those.  
He was hired and lived at the YMCA for 2 1/2 years.  
He took his mother’s family name, Menon, instead of his father’s, Varma.
In 1967, he left for Canada and interviewed at Bechtel before getting hired at Seagrams.  
Iron enables blood to carry oxygen.
His boss recommended him for Dale Carnegie’s leadership training classes and my dad joined the National Instrument Society and became President.
He designed a still In Jamaica,
Ordered all the parts, nuts and bolts,
Had all the parts shipped to Jamaica and made sure they got there.
His boss supervised the construction, installation and commission in Jamaica.
Quartz, heat and fade resistant, though he was an engineer and did the work of an engineer, my dad only had the title, technician so my dad’s boss thought he wasn’t getting paid enough but couldn’t get his boss to offer more than an extra $100/week or the title of engineer; he told my dad he thought he should leave.
In 1969, he got a job at Celanese, which made rayon.
He quit Celanese to work at McGill University and they allowed him to take classes to earn his MBA while working.  

The United States and Israel’s alliance was strong by 1967.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 at the end of the Third Arab Israeli War didn’t mention the Palestinians but mentioned the refugee problem.
After 1967, the Palestinians weren’t often mentioned and when mentioned only as terrorists.  
Palestinians’ faith in the “American sponsored peace process” diminished, they felt the world community ignored and neglected them also.
Groups like MAN that stopped expecting anything from Arab regimes began hijacking airplanes.
By 1972, the Palestine Liberation Organization had enough international support to get by the United States’ veto in the United Nations Security Council and Arab League recognition as representative of the Palestinian people.
The Palestinians knew the United States stated its support, as the British had, but they weren’t able to accomplish anything.  
The force Israel exerted in Johnson’s United States policy delivered no equilibrium for the Palestinians.  

In 1969, all political parties submitted to the BSPP, Burma Socialist Programme Party.
Ne Win nationalized banks and oil and deprived minorities of opportunities.
Ne Win became U Nu Win, civilian leader of Burma in 1972 and stopped the active role that U Nu defined for Burma internationally
He put military people in power even when they didn’t have experience which triggered “maldistribution of goods and chronic shortages.”  
Resources were located in areas where separatist minorities had control.

The British presence in the South China Sea ended in 1968.  
The United States left Vietnam in 1974 and China went into the Western Paracels.
The U.S. didn’t intervene and Vietnam took the Spratlys.
China wanted to claim the continental shelf In the central part of the South China Sea and needed the Spratlys.
The United States mostly disregarded the Ulama In Iran and bewildered the Iranian people by not supporting their revolution.

Obsidian—
iron, copper and chromium—
isn’t a gas
but it isn’t a crystal;
it’s between the two,
the ordered crystal and the disordered gas.  
They made swords out of obsidian.


Edelweiss

I laid out in my backyard in my bikini.  
I love the feeling of my body in the sun.  
I’d be dark from the end of spring until winter.
The snow froze my bare feet through winter ,
my skin pale.
American towns in 1984,
Free, below glaciers the sunlight melted the snow,
a sea of green and the edelweiss on the edge of the  limestone,
frosted but still strong.    
When the spring warmed the grass,
the grass warmed my feet. 
The whole field looked cold and white from the glacier but in the meadow,
the bright yellow centers of those flowers float free in the center of the white petals.
The bright yellow center of those edelweiss scared the people my parents ran to America from India to get away from.  
On a sidewalk in Queens, New York in 1991, the men stared and yelled comments at me in short shorts and a fitted top in the summer.  
I grabbed my dad’s arm.

























The Bread and Coconut Butter of Aparigraha

Twelve year old flowerhead,
Marigold, yarrow and nettle,
I’d be all emotion
If not for all my work
From the time I was a teenager.
I got depressed a lot.
I related to people I read about
In my weather balloon,
Grasping, ignorant, and desperate,
But couldn’t relate to other twelve year olds.
After school I read Dali’s autobiography,
Young ****** Autosodomized by Her Own Chastity.
Fresh, green nettle with fresh and dried yarrow for purity.
Dead souls enticed to the altar by orange marigolds,
passion and creativity,
Coax sleep and rouse dreams.
Satellites measure indirectly with wave lengths of light.
My weather balloon measures the lower and middle levels of the atmosphere directly,
Fifty thousand feet high,
Metal rod thermometer,
Slide humidity sensor,
Canister for air pressure.

I enjoy rye bread and cold coconut butter in my weather balloon,
But I want Dali, and all the artists and writers.
Rye grows at high altitudes
But papyrus grows in soil and shallow water,
Strips of papyrus pith shucked from their stems.
When an anchor’s weighed, a ship sails,
But when grounded we sail.
Marigolds, yarrow and nettle,
Flowerhead,
I use the marigold for sleep,
The yarrow for endurance and intensity,
toiling for love and truth,
And the nettle for healing.
Strong rye bread needs equally strong flavors.
By the beginning of high school,
I read a lot of Beat literature
And found Buddhism.
I loved what I read
But I didn’t like some things.
I liked attachment.  
I got to the ground.
Mushrooms grow in dry soil.
Attachment to beauty is Buddha activity.
Not being attached to things I don’t find beautiful is Buddha activity.  
I fried mushrooms in a single layer in oil, fleshy.
I roasted mushrooms at high temperatures in the oven, crisp.
I simmered mushrooms in stock with kombu.
Rye bread with cold coconut butter and cremini mushrooms,
raw, soft and firm.  
Life continues, life changes,
Attachments, losses, mourning and suffering,
But change lures growth.
I find stream beds and wet soil.
I lay the strips of papyrus next to each other.
I cross papyrus strips over the first,
Then wet the crossed papyrus strips,
Press and cement them into a sheet.
I hammer it and dry it in the sun,
With no thought of achievement or self,
Flowerhead,
Hands filled with my past,
Head filled with the future,
Dali, artists poets,
Wishes and desires aligned with nature,
Abundance,
Cocoa, caraway, and molasses.

If I ever really like someone,
I’ll be wearing the dress he chooses,
Fresh green nettle and yarrow, the seeds take two years to grow strong,
Lasting love.
Marigolds steer dead souls from the altar to the afterlife,
Antiseptic, healing wounds,
Soothing sore throats and headaches.
Imperturbable, stable flowerhead,
I empty my mind.
When desires are aligned with nature, desire flows.
Papyrus makes paper and cloth.
Papyrus makes sails.
Charcoal from the ash of pulverized papyrus heals wounds.
Without attachment to the fruit of action
There is continuation of life,
Rye bread and melted coconut butter,
The coconut tree in the coconut butter,
The seed comes from the ground out of nothing,
Naturalness.
It has form.
As the seed grows the seed expresses the tree,
The seed expresses the coconut,
The seed expresses the coconut butter.
Rye bread, large open hollows, chambers,
Immersed in melted coconut butter,
Desire for expansion and creation,
No grasping, not desperate.
When the mind is compassion, the mind is boundless.
Every moment,
only that,
Every moment,
a scythe to the papyrus in the stream bed of the past.  

































Sound on Powdery Blue

Potter’s clay, nymph, plum unplumbed, 1993.
Dahlia, ice, powder, musk and rose,
my source of life emerged in darkness, blackness.
Seashell fragments in the sand,
The glass ball of my life cracked inside,
Light reflected off the salt crystal cracks,
Nacre kept those cracks from getting worse.
Young ****** Autosodomized By Her Own Chastity,
Nymph, I didn’t want to give my body,
Torn, *****, ballgown,
To people who wouldn’t understand me,
Piquant.

Outside on the salt flats,
Aphrodite, goddess of beauty, pleasure and fertility and
Asexual Artemis, goddess of animals, and the hunt,
Mistress of nymphs,
Punish with ruthless savagery.

In my bedroom, blue caribou moss covered rocks, pine, and yew trees,
The heartwood writhes as hurricane gales, twisters and whirlwinds
Contort their bark,
Roots strong in the soil.
Orris root dried in the sun, bulbs like wood.
Dahlia runs to baritone soundbath radio waves.
Light has frequencies,
Violet between blue and invisible ultraviolet,
Flame, slate and flint.
Every night is cold.

Torii gates, pain secured as sacred.
An assignation, frost hardy dahlia and a plangent resonant echo.
High frequency sound waves convert to electrical signals,
Breathe from someone I want,
Silt.
Beam, radiate, ensorcel.
I break the bark,
Sap flows and dries,
Resin seals over the tear.
I distill pine,
Resin and oil for turpentine, a solvent.
Quiver, bemired,
I lead sound into my darkness,
Orris butter resin, sweet and warm,
Hot jam drops on snow drops,
Orange ash on smoke,
Balm on lava,
The problem with cotton candy.

Electrical signals give off radiation or light waves,
The narrow frequency range where
The crest of a radio wave and the crest of a light wave overlap,
Infrared.
Glaciers flow, sunlight melts the upper layers of the snow when strong,
A wet snow avalanche,
A torrent, healing.
Brown sugar and whiskey,
Undulant, lavender.
Pine pitch, crystalline, sticky, rich and golden,
And dried pine rosin polishes glass smooth
Like the smell of powdery orris after years.
Softness, flush, worthy/not worthy,
Rich rays thunder,
Intensify my pulse,
Frenzied red,
Violet between blue and invisible ultraviolet.
Babylon—flutter, glow.
Unquenchable cathartic orris.  

















Pink Graphite

Camellias, winter shrubs,
Their shallow roots grow beneath the spongy caribou moss,
Robins egg blue.
After writing a play with my gifted students program in 1991,
I stopped spending all my free time writing short stories,
But the caribou moss was still soft.

In the cold Arctic of that town,
The evergreen protected the camellias from the afternoon sun and storms.
They branded hardy camellias with a brass molded embossing iron;
I had paper and graphite for my pencils.

After my ninth grade honors English teacher asked us to write poems in 1994,
It began raining.
We lived on an overhang.
A vertical rise to the top of the rock.
The rainstorm caused a metamorphic change in the snowpack,
A wet snow avalanche drifted slowly down the moss covered rock,
The snow already destabilized by exposure to the sunlight.

The avalanche formed lakes,
rock basins washed away with rainwater and melted snow,
Streams dammed by the rocks.  
My pencils washed away in the avalanche,
My clothes heavy and cold.
I wove one side of each warp fiber through the eye of the needle and one side through each slot,
Salves, ointments, serums and tinctures.
I was mining for graphite.
They were mining me,
The only winch, the sound through the water.

A steep staircase to the red Torii gates,
I broke the chains with bells for vespers
And chimes for schisms,
And wove the weft across at right angles to the warp.  

On a rocky ledge at the end of winter,
The pink moon, bitters and body butter,
They tried to get  me to want absinthe,
Wormwood for bitterness and regret.
Heat and pressure formed carbon for flakes of graphite.
Heat and pressure,
I made bitters,
Brandy, grapefruit, chocolate, mandarin rind, tamarind and sugar.
I grounded my feet in the pink moss,
paper dried in one hand,
and graphite for my pencils in the other.  



































Flakes

I don’t let people that put me down be part of my life.  
Gardens and trees,
My shadow sunk in the grass in my yard
As I ate bread, turmeric and lemon.
Carbon crystallizes into graphite flakes.
I write to see well,
Graphite on paper.  
A shadow on rock tiles with a shield, a diamond and a bell
Had me ***** to humiliate me.
Though I don’t let people that put me down near me,
A lot of people putting me down seemed like they were following me,
A platform to jump from
While she had her temple.  

There was a pink door to the platform.
I ate bread with caramelized crusts and
Drank turmeric lemonade
Before I opened that door,
Jumped and
Descended into blankets and feathers.
I found matches and rosin
For turpentine to clean,
Dried plums and licorice.  

In the temple,
In diamonds, leather, wool and silk,
She had her shield and bells,
Drugs and technology,
Thermovision 210 and Minox,
And an offering box where people believed
That if their coins went in
Their wishes would come true.

Hollyhock and smudging charcoal for work,  
Belled,
I ground grain in the mill for the bread I baked for breakfast.
The bells are now communal bells
With a watchtower and a prison,
Her shield, a blowtorch and flux,
Her ex rays, my makeshift records
Because Stalin didn’t like people dancing,
He liked them divebombing.
Impurities in the carbon prevent diamonds from forming,
Measured,
The most hard, the most expensive,
But graphite’s soft delocalized electrons move.  






































OCEAN BED

The loneliness of going to sleep by myself.  
I want a bed that’s high off the ground,
a mattress, an ocean.
I want a crush and that  person in my bed.  
Only that,
a crush in my bed,
an ocean in my bed.  
Just love.  
But I sleep with my thumbs sealed.  
I sleep with my hands, palms up.  
I sleep with my hands at my heart.  
They sear my compassion with their noise.  
They hold their iron over their fire and try to carve their noise into my love,
scored by the violence of voices, dark and lurid,  
but not burned.  
I want a man in my bed.  
When I wake up in an earthquake
I want to be held through the aftershocks.  
I like men,
the waves come in and go out
but the ocean was part of my every day.  
I don’t mind being fetishized in the ocean.  
I ran by the ocean every morning.  
I surfed in the ocean.  
I should’ve gone into the ocean that afternoon at Trestles,
holding my water jugs, kneeling at the edge.  














Morning

I want to fall asleep in the warm arms of a fireman.  
I want to wake up to the smell of coffee in my kitchen.  

Morning—the molten lava in the outer core of the earth embeds the iron from the inner core into the earth’s magnetic field.  
The magnetic field flips.  
The sun, so strong, where it gets through the trees it burns everything but the pine.  
The winds change direction.  
Storms cast lightening and rain.  
Iron conducts solar flares and the heavy wind.  
In that pine forest, I shudder every time I see a speck of light for fear of neon and fluorescents.  The eucalyptus cleanses congestion.  
And Kerouac’s stream ululates, crystal bowl sound baths.  
I follow the sound to the water.  
The stream ends at a bluff with a thin rocky beach below.  
The green water turns black not far from the shore.  
Before diving into the ocean, I eat globe mallow from the trees, stems and leaves, the viscous flesh, red, soft and nutty.  
I distill the pine from one of the tree’s bark and smudge the charcoal over my skin.  

Death, the palo santo’s lit, cleansing negative energy.  
It’s been so long since I’ve smelled a man, woodsmoke, citrus and tobacco.  
Jasmine, plum, lime and tuberose oil on the base of my neck comforts.  
Parabolic chambers heal, sound waves through water travel four times faster.  
The sound of the open sea recalibrates.  
I dissolve into the midnight blue of the ocean.  

I want to fall asleep in the warm arms of a fireman.  
I want to wake up to the smell of coffee in my kitchen.  
I want hot water with coconut oil when I get up.  
We’d lay out on the lawn, surrounded by high trees that block the wind.  
Embers flying through the air won’t land in my yard, on my grass, or near my trees.  





Blue Paper

Haze scatters blue light on a planet.  
Frought women, livid, made into peonies by Aphrodites that caught their men flirting and blamed the women, flushed red.
and blamed the women, flushed red.
Frought women, livid, chrysanthemums, dimmed until the end of the season, exchanged and retained like property.  
Blue women enter along the sides of her red Torii gates, belayed, branded and belled, a plangent sound.  
By candles, colored lights and dried flowers she’s sitting inside on a concrete floor, punctures and ruin burnished with paper, making burnt lime from lime mortar.  
Glass ***** on the ceiling, she moves the beads of a Palestinian glass bead bracelet she holds in her hands.  
She bends light to make shadows against  thin wooden slats curbed along the wall, and straight across the ceiling.
A metier, she makes tinctures, juniper berries and cotton *****.
Loamy soil in the center of the room,
A hawthorn tree stands alone,
A gateway for fairies.
large stones at the base protecting,
It’s branches a barrier.  
It’s leaves and shoots make bread and cheese.
It’s berries, red skin and yellow flesh, make jam.
Green bamboo stakes for the peonies when they whither from the weight of their petals.
And lime in the soil.  
She adds wood chips to the burnt lime in the kiln,
Unrolled paper, spools, and wire hanging.
Wood prayer beads connect her to the earth,
The tassels on the end of the beads connect her to spirit, to higher truth.
Minerals, marine mud and warm basins of seawater on a flower covered desk.  
She adds slaked lime to the burnt lime and wood chips.  
The lime converts to paper,
Trauma victims speak,
Light through butterfly wings.  
She’s plumeria with curved petals, thick, holding water

I think sometimes, about what it means to be transgender. I probe and probe for answers, because as the possibility for a new age of enlightenment and safety increases, the others want to know. I’ve come up with many answers, but I can hold to none. I don’t deserve to paint the definition of a culture with the limited experiences I’ve had. I don’t see myself in the transgender identified people allowed on television. I don’t see myself in the transgender identified people making news feeds and giving high profile interviews. And as my nation’s exposure to our culture increases, likely will their curiosity. Am I transgender? Do I have the right? I’ve heard doctors, psychiatrists, may refuse transgender patients access to hormone therapy based on how dedicated or convincing their portrayal of their identified gender. If you want to be a man or woman, you’ll have to look like the women and men on TV. If you want to be transgender, you’ll have to look like the trans identified people on TV. Every single one of us who has an active role as either participant or observer in our society is prey to the crisis of validity. Am I pretty enough? Am I strong enough? Am I brave enough? Mom enough? Dad enough? Competitive enough? Successful enough? Rich enough? **** enough? Pious enough? It never ends. We’re, as a nation of people, being crushed and compartmentalized by this ever present lens, looming over us, exploiting our weaknesses and fears so it may grow wider, and support itself as it follows us, seemingly forever into the future. And one of the worst fears this camera of existential torment exploits, in most of us every day, is, “Do I have a reflection?” “What does it look like?” “Do I look like me?” What does it mean to be transgender? I can’t get away from that question. But I don’t have an answer. There are varying degrees of anguish, depression, panic, anxiety, and other wonderful emotional states that creep up on you and breathe down your neck nearly every waking day. Absolute contempt for the lie of a life you’ve lived till now, and contempt for the fragments still stuck to you, in memories, attached to your body and mind. Fear of those in your own community who would purposefully humiliate, invalidate, or attack you, choosing their own universal moral code over the innate urge and capacity to support the health and continued well being of another human. A ******* neighbor. A ******* pupil. A ******* employee. A ******* sister, brother, son, daughter, mother, father, cousin, ******* blood. What is being transgender like? By my experiences, it’s just like being anyone else in the country. But with a lot more fear, death, exclusion and medication.

dearer to me than my heart
dearer to me than my soul
and i bleed
I lose
with my heart and soul
Inflicting pain, sorrows
griefs -- endless remorse

Once my homeland was pure
it was freed from blood
******, insensitivity
once my homeland was free of evil inhabitants
sorrows multiplied a thousand fold
gathered in pain-inflicted tears
with lump in throats
distant from your presence
i cry-- for your loss

On the rooftops of tragedies, my heart sink more
like an orphan, an abandoned child
my homeland bleeds
i scream within
i feel the abandonment

dearer to me than my own voice
dearer to me than my own eyes
and i am silent
I am blind
losing my sight, losing my voice
as my voice can't reflect the pain i feel
my eyes can't cry any more
reflecting ocean of deprived

once my homeland was free of pain
people were safe
we running like rivers
do not say it
our country was a flesh in body
now it is a dead body amongst many flesh
forgotten the promises
forgotten the true colors
in the name of revenge, we humiliate humanity

my intention is not to write poems
in my soul, i embrace nights long
this land absorbed wounds, tears
blood, fights, and many martyrs
who are forgotten
my country is our hope
we are growing in broken shadows
this siege is waiting us to drown us
in the middle of lonesome warrior

nobody can feel in absence of love
who are incapable to feel
to take, to absorb
love require us to cry, to embrace
today our homeland is deprived
abandoned, bleeding

she is under siege
as we forgotten to love
we deprived her of her loyalty
we deprived her of her love
we deprived her of her true lovers

My homeland I feel your pain
in my heart I carry all with me

My hijab is a piece of imagination
a symbol of Islamic populism,
yet I get carried away by racists
misjudging my outer belief, only
for the sake of white extremists,
I cry and wet my birth certificate!
why am I a Muslim? Is it my choice?
I see a minute third-piece frame
down the lane-a sorrow to share,
it chokes my individuality- an insult
to my devotion for god, for life ;
yet, people have the time to call
us terrorists when they roam naked,
some pretending to be feminists
and lovers! Reality is a bitter piece
of chocolate melting away as time fades,
as it erodes the values we held before,
20th century is still marred by those
who wish to keep their history books
unfolded, un-kept and unstated;
a wish down the memory lane is needed
for it will awaken the senses of my fellow
brothers and sisters fighting over a shawl
covering my head!
 
I am curious and this curiosity is not a mere
joke, its the curiosity weaved into a cloth
hiding my sensitive and strong brain
from those “all-seeing” eyes around me,
pretending to expose my hair as if it was
something of utmost importance and value,
but friends,  it’s nothing, it’s a trick
by those who seek to humiliate me and
my faith for god, and I am sure that this
will echo for the decades to come,
for me, a hijab is – “ a piece of head
covering worn by women of the world”;
and I am sure that our fight for the right
to wear something will reprimand
and will be carried out by my fellow
successors and those who shed light
to our cries and woes in this big world
of ours!
[AMEN]

But that's not his name.
He really doesn't have a name.
For starters no name could even hint at what he means to me.
No name could get anywhere near his sheer visceral naked beauty.
No name could delineate the slim ripple of his muscles.
His beautiful stiff ****--oh so suckable and lickable.
No name could hint at the smell of the dried **** on his *****.
No name could begin to describe the taste of his warm fresh ***.
No name would fit the feel of the shaft of his perfect stiff **** in my fingers.
No name could describe the shade of lavender of his exposed **** head.
The way his **** head fits in my mouth.
The feeling on my tongue as I slide it along the full length of the shaft of his stiff ****.
I call him Ben.
Weve travelled the world together for nigh on 29 years now.
Ive ****** his **** in ,my imagination on most continents,as ive laid in the same room tossing myself off imagining being ****** by him every night and during every day..
Ive licked his *** filled ***** in Bangkok and Delhi and London and Amsterdam and Barcelona and Deia and Kathmandu and Bodh Gaya and York and Paris and Dharamsala and Amravati and oh so many other places.
Ive swallowed litres of his warm fresh ***.
Ive rained typhoons of kisses on his upturned face.
Ive tossed him off to ******* too many times to count.
Ive loved him endlessly.
I call him Ben .
His diamond sharp intellect.
His smirky smile that lights up his face.
His oh so tasty tongue flickering in and out of my mouth.
Licking my lips--wrestling my tongue to a standstill.
The taste of his saliva --like the sharpest sweetest nectar.
His arms that wrap themselves around my nakedness.
His hands that never fail to connect to my *****
no matter how dark the room.
His fingers that tease and ****** my throbbing testicles.
My lovely boyman--my lovely lover.
I call him Ben.
His fingers wrapped around the shaft of my stiff ****
like ivy on an ancient wall.
they seem to grasp my ***** member so deeply
its as if they live below my skin.
I call him Ben.
When I kneel in submission to him and lick his *** filled *****
I am elevated into the land of adjectives and superlatives.
When I cringe servilely at his feet licking the full length
of the shaft of his oh so stiff and perfectly shaped *****
I become just a tongue tasting his dried ****.
I call him Ben.
Oh I so love and adore the taste of his dried ****
coating the lavender helmet of his bell end.
When I slide the whole of the head of his hard *****
between my lips filling my mouth completely
I am turned into a human shaped jelly quivering
with the anticipation of swallowing the cream of his pre ***
flowing out of that divine slit.
I call him Ben
When his naked hips ****** his stiff **** down my throat
I feel divinely graced with unconditional love
and I realise he owns me.
I am his ****.
I am his Slave.
I await the whip.
I long for the sharp sting of the lash.
I need the tender chastisement that only Ben can give me.
I call him Ben and he is  my Master.
He tells me stand with my hands on my head
and I immediately comply with his order for I am his Slave.
His very own *******.
There to give him the pleasure he gets from whipping me.
There to offer all parts of my nakedness to the whip in his hand.
Why is Sado-Masochistic love with Ben so lovely?
Why is the pain of his whipping so soft and gentle and tender and stinging?
Why do I stand with stiff **** jutting out and ***** dangling
begging him--beseeching him to take advantage and whip it as he does?
Each stroke of his whip making my **** **** and bounce and sway
turning it red and so mildly painfull?.
I call him Ben and I love him.
Ive loved him for 29 years.
But alas he does not love me unconditionally..
When we are together he humiliates me and I love him more--for his weakness in being the Slave of the Mind and Conditioned Identity.
I love feeling inadequate when I am near to him.
I want him to humiliate me.
To be humiliated is to be humble.
I do not care what people say.
I love him.
I call him Ben.
But oh how I wish wish wish that he were like me.
Mindless and Conditioned Identityless.
He could be such a nice guy if he weren't such an *******.

I don't desire to share my opinions with anyone
Too long, have they been bashed upon by peers or anonymous figures
"You should respect their opinion."
What hypocrites, even opinions could be wrong and hurt others

"For the sake of arguing."
It doesn't matter if they humiliate someone.
It doesn't matter if they turn others against them.
It doesn't matter if they were wrong as well

Even if you understand their perspective, they refuse to see yours
I long to be mute
I hate my own speaking voice
If all my words are unheard


"I can't express myself, this secretive awkward human."

If only they knew of the true cynical and diabolical thoughts locked away
Would anyone bother to accept and understand
Or would I be shunned
Isolated like I had been since so long ago

I don't mind singing
The rhythm and flow much better to the accented jumble words
However I'm merely a ghost that no one notice when they have stars to illuminate the room

"Ahhhh.. The jealousy and bitterness will consume me."

"Please see me."
"Please acknowledge me."
"Please talk to me."
"Please hear me."

*I'm fading away.

free spirit bound tightly.

the equivalent
of keeping a wild tiger
as a house kitty.

you may gag my mouth
you may bind my wrists
you may stimulate
you may penetrate

you may humiliate

but though i am your slave
I am still my own master.

Thanks.
For calling me all those pretty things
everyday
for months
and months
being the center of my thoughts and conversations
being the guy I tell my friends about
because I have never liked a guy the way I like you
and no guy has ever liked me before at all
you are pretty much beyond out of my league
and yet somehow here we are
telling me you want to take me on a picnic
being so wonderful
being a writer and a poet
being gorgeous and handsome
being wonderful
such a wonderful person
making me fall for you
then after WASTING
so many months of my time
you HUMILIATE me
when I have to call my friends
and admit to them
that you texted me
and told me you were in love
with some other girl
in "love" my ***.
Please.
Don't make me laugh.
...or cry.
:(

I met her by the way
she is the mother of all *******
and also doesn't wear actual shirts
just these loose pieces of fabric with slits along the sides
that show everything
that she refers to as a top
I've seen bikinis that are more modest
but whatever
I'm just in a good mood
because you dropped me
so quickly
like it was nothing
and watched me fall
all my friends sharpened their battleaxes
and called you all sorts of colorful things
but I was still sad and disappointed
but I am in a good mood
you know why?
Today I saw her making out with this guy
she is either dating him and NOT dating you
so you lost her
or she is cheating on you
so HA
now you know how it feels to be replaced
you **** well better not try and get me back
'cause now I realize
back before you let me go
I thought I didn't deserve you
because you were so wonderful
and I was worthless
now I know I was right
I don't deserve you
because no matter how much I loathe myself
and I really do
Even I don't deserve
a worthless waste of space player like you

i want to feel it
the pain
the hurt
make me beg
and surrender
play with me
light my fire
stoke the desire
i’ll lose control
burn in lust
at your touch
get me wet
release me
from the puritanical
ecclesiastical shame
raise your voice
punish
humiliate me
sexually
it turns me on
tell me sternly
i’ve been naughty
absolve me
of my carnal sins

I. The lifespan of a pumpkin is incredibly short. Considering the rapid pace in which a pumpkin goes from flower to fruition, it is quite literally a blink of an eye. And there is no nobility in a pumpkin death. No, it is a long and grueling process. From the beginning, the pumpkin patch is like Wall Street, 1763. Being poked and prodded, weighed, gawked at and compared to my brothers and sisters. I was chosen earlier than the rest for my robust size, even ridges, and vivid colour. I remember being severed from the vine- I know that humans don’t remember being cut from the umbilical cord, but it’s the only human experience I can compare it to. I imagine that if I had lungs I would scream or eyes I would cry, but I suppose the lack of these organs is what makes it so easy for humans to humiliate us as they do. We have no voice of our own- and who would stand up for us? Possibly vegans, but I digress.
Once inside the human home, I’m set on a “tiled countertop,” as they call it. I’m not sure what that is exactly, but it’s polished and hard and artificial. The coldness of it makes my skin stiffen. And then, as if overcome by brain fever, the smaller humans rush about their living space grabbing up “newspapers” and “paper towels” (no doubt made from abused trees) and just as I had feared, knives. More polished coldness. I know what is to come- I’ve heard the cautionary tales. When my siblings and I hung on the vine as buds, we’d swap horror stories. Of course, we didn’t think that they were real then. Though we had seen older pumpkins snatched up, we were too young to understand. And now that I know it’s all true, my fear isn’t for myself but for my kin. I know that it isn’t normal for humans to hope for their loved ones to rot, but it is for pumpkins. I hope that they will grow old, old, old until the day comes that they quietly fall off the vine and become food for the animals and the soil and their seeds impregnate the earth. And though I may be faced with this violent fate, I am not going to be afraid. I shall not sweat, nor make my skin tough to their blades. No, I will be soft as butter and dry as the sky. As the humans pick up their tools of operation and discuss what kinds of sweet treats they’ll be making with my “guts,” I yield to the steel and dare them to do their worst…

II. They’re finished now, and I’ve been gutted to within an inch of my life. My insides are piled in a white bowl beside me, my seeds rest on a tin sheet, dried of juice and covered in salt. Their skin is transparent and flaky like fish scales and the flesh underneath is toasted brown. They baked my babies! They baked my babies and now they’re popping them into their pudgy, glistening mouths like the giant who used bones to bake his bread. It occurs to me that I can see more of the room than I originally could. It makes sense… now that half my skin is gone that I should have a clearer view of the world. The oldest human walks over to the small ones.
“What did you make guys?” she asks.
“A face!” they exclaim. Was my original face not good enough?
At this point I catch a glimpse of the “face” that is being discussed. Behind the humans is a painted forest locked in by a sheet of glass. On the spotless surface I see my reflection- my smooth, rounded skin has become a hideously comical mask. Two triangles and a semicircle make up this face, the mouth being a jaunty one-toothed smile, a sweet ironical touch. A hanging man with a grin. A tiny white candle has been lowered into my hollowed out stomach and lit. The flame burns my core and scorches my skin in some places to a charcoal black.
My consciousness is sliding around now… from the kitchen to the pumpkin patch and back again… The fire in my belly has dulled to a pleasant burn… maybe because I’m so cold and now I’ve gotten colder… they’ve taken me outside… placed me on an artificial hay bale… more children appear with plastic replicas of me dangling from their polyester-draped arms… they grin and their smiles match the “pumpkins’” smiles on their arms, match mine… this is all too hilarious…
“Trick or treat!”

I hate you when you catcall her
I feel the anger rise, tightly coiled in my stomach
Clench my fists and feel my blood pound,
Because I know what you do to her,
Reducing her to her body, just for your pleasure.
To you she is only a body, just another opportunity to prove
your manliness, your superiority.
Just another girl to humiliate.
I know this and my rage roars, a dragon, untamable
ready to tear into you the second you try it with me.

But then as I walk pass, the voices are silent.
No calls, no whistles,
I don't exist.
The dragon within me becomes confused,
am I really so ugly, so unwanted, so plain,
that the **** on the streets, the ******* who harass girls as they walk,
won't even look at me?
What's wrong with me?
The dragon fades and a new type of hate arises.
I hate myself, my stupid hair, my ******* up jaw, my plain appearance.
I should feel lucky for the blessed silence, the peaceful walk,
but instead I feel a nauseating sense of shame and hate for myself,
As I tuck my head down like a good girl and hurry home,
Trying not to cry.

Society has turned being harassed as a goal to reach for.
Keep telling us "it's a compliment"
And sooner or later we'll start to believe it.
But that doesn't make it true.

So I sit sharping my nails, not sure whose throat to rip out,
Yours? Or mine?
Because you've told me,
It's not ladylike for me to hate anyone,
Except myself.

Few freaks
have such impeccable taste,
Singing Pagliacci, smoking a Cuban cigar,
And sipping L'Essence de Courvoisier,
As he lowers you into the shark tank,
To feed his hungry pet.
Forget appearances
He cloaks himself in affectations,
And feigned cordiality
But he will take you down at the knees,
And kick your face until he can hide his shoe in your skull
Or put a bullet through your brain,
Before you can ask why he has an umbrella
When the weatherman said
No rain
Cobblepot
A name as Gotham
As Chapman and Wayne
Always dressed to the nines
He drinks the finest wines
But he can humiliate four thugs
Who try to mug him
In an alley
Cut the fools down in a fury
Steel shod umbrella,
Razorblade shoes,
And a gun up his sleeve
Appearances deceive
The definition of The Penguin

I find myself skipping to another page,
Moving from myself and focusing
On the people around me,
Inspecting all of the holes
In what I am supposed to call my family.
An alcoholic nan who only respected me
If she had a whole bottle of whiskey beforehand,
Aunties and Uncles who refuse to talk to me,
Another Uncle who despises me because of who I am,
A dad who left me here and went to France so I barely see him,
A brother who would rather belittle and humiliate me than love me,
And so many relatives who don't even know I exist.

But my hatred can outshine them all,
I love my dad, but I wish he was here,
The others can light another match
And continue to burn their bridges.
I know who I love and who love me in return,
Who will never abandon despite the monster I've become,
The real definition of family.

• because I was questioned for calling Beyoncé a god
• because I was told Beyoncé is overrated
• because some white lady I don’t know touched my hair before she               learned my name at my place of work
• because one of my white friends made a joke about crack houses when we were watching fake anime and eating fried dough…in addition to making that joke, he made me uncomfortable
• because a white friend of mine agreed with someone who said cis white men are the most oppressed group on my campus
• because people still tell me “ALL Lives Matter” and ask me “why isn’t there a WHITE History Month”
• because “I don’t see color” is a “less racist” way of saying “that isn’t my problem, so I don’t have to get involved”
• because girls “like me” are fetishized
• because girls “like me” are seen as the **** of jokes or just the ****
• because I’m the only non-white passing person of color in my dominant friend group
• because #Lightskinned is still a way to humiliate someone for being fairer skinned and having feelings
• because #Darkskinned is still a way to demean someone who is darker than you and painting them as “*****”
• because colorism exists in every racial group, but no one wants to talk about it
• because someone argued why a white person should be able to wear dreads and black people are kicked out of institutions for wearing the exact same hairstyle
• because black on black crime is still used as some sort of crevice you try to shimmy yourself through
• because somewhere, a white girl is teaching tutorials on how anyone can have an afro, and no one is stopping her
• because Facebook exploded when I expressed that I want to be respected
• because everybody wanna be a *****, but no one wanna be a *****
• because I didn’t know what to say until I couldn’t stop speaking
• because we are twenty days into February and Black History Month hasn’t been mentioned by ONE of my professors
• because of ******* course I’m the angry black woman
• because I’m essentially the backbone, which means that it’s easy for me to break, right?
• because this **** happens to me every **** day of my life and it will continue to happen to me every **** day of my life
• because you made it that way
• this poem does not have an ending
• this poem is the abyss
• why do I make it about race?
• because this poem can go on and on and on forever
• and I’ll still be talking about the same thing


**~~a.s.f.

You could die for it--
love,
or refuse it altogether
and know nothing
except the urgency
of youth. Men

have been
solitary
for ages
carrying the
stoniest of hearts
in their broad chests
while we women

begin too early
brush the brown leaves
from our shoulders, go
from bloom to fade
as soon as
we see the sunrise

We let our eyes go first
Then there is the limp lolling
of our hearts from side to side
the tongue we cut away
the blind kiss on the backlash of night
the giving giving giving of skin

As women
we blindly wish
past the ****** of passion
as we vanish into a world of men
whose ribcages we were scraped from
Perhaps we are born of seeds
our essence crawling up the stem
to feed the bees.

Perhaps
every flower you see
is a woman
and when
she's in bloom
and when she is blooming
red
and when her leaves are wingbeats
of green in the autumn wind
beating wings of green, yes
even as the wind tries to humiliate her
it fails because
she's in love
and only she would die for it

Feel the entropy heating up your gears
With meshing poetic rhetoric flowing through your ears

Pistons pinions piercing pulsing
Calculating creates cruelty convulsing
Which confuses itself as a new form of dance
But it’s actually mating while still wearing pants

There’s mercury around your hat’s brim
As you look up to your cherubim
They’re not good MCs you’re suffering from delirium
We’re not an ocean we’re a city: Pandæmonium
Whether stage, stereo, or behind a podium
My flow so addictive you need rehab to quit this *****

Undercutting uppercuts straight to the jaw
Dangling there mangled but you’ll never lose the awe
I can talk sunlight into becoming my shade
Stand up to me? Step down before you fade

I am the Clockwork Seraph
Each word must be cherished
Because words hold more power than any man
So I’ll trick the legless to take a stand

We’ll walk miles for this vile style
Bloodied grin? Show us your smile
All is well? Or all is in denial?
Who cares? Let it rest for a while

Throat grabbing metaphors
Chokes gabbing sell-out ******
Garrote grappling violent scores
Rogues glancing harlot stores

Cut to the point or cut to source
Cue the anointment meant for the Force
Wrong religion but ***** it any myth will do
My words are Set to Isis like Osiris rose for you

Scheherazade’s in her padded cell full of fright
Shouting frantic nonsense for 1,001 Asylum Nights

Love is a chemical that seems too harsh
It comes from the brain, we call it the heart
Anger is an arrangement that can tear you apart
Here’s an outlet try again end at the start

Pause
Think
Take a breather now
While sixty feet under water
As you drown

Yesterday’s miracle is today’s explained fact
Truthful anomalies become outliers for the mass

If a beat drops does it plummet to its death?
Was it suicidal it could be anybody’s guess?
It tried to forget so it kept all repressed
Tongue play twisted by the embittered press

Oh yes! Says the ******* moaning ghost
Raise your glass take a sip prepare for the toast
Overdosed on rufilin for the life/death duality
The party forgot to plan this half-hearted tragedy

Fires burn like thunders boast
Of the speed the hot flash was provoked

I don’t do battle raps I just humiliate my foes
There reputation lying in graves row by row
Blank stares earned as they feel the throes
More white towels thrown in as their hope corrodes

My left hand spits for the pages thrones
My tongue tests it to see how it flows

Shoot for the moon and if you miss
You’ll be surrounded by infinite emptiness
Obviously I’m different so I won’t waste your time
Every rapper claims their special somewhere down the line

Are you lost? here’s a map: blank canvas
Crumble it up to see it form a crevice
A Knight of Bedlam here for your service
Rising with the lunar crescent for their hubris

Blood stained White Knight
A hero’s antithesis done right
Funeral garbs for this sable raft
Beating hearts for disabled craft

Buried in deep and now I’ll rise
To the occasion to claim this prize
The only thing we all have in common
Is the differences in our perception

I am the Bayssic scion
Hold on tight if you plan on riding
On my dark white lyrics
Beautiful insanity with spirit

Each and every person you meet
Is as real as you imagined them to be
From my mind un-vaulted in hopes it’ll last
Join us now, through the looking glass

Therefore, the Lord himself will give them this sign: "A ****** will conceive and give birth to a son, and she will name him Immanuel." From this calami lapse, all of Patmia was refracted in the chromatics of Emmanuel, alluding to Isaiah as an infallible God of Salvation after having sent Sennacherib's mesnadas to his turn. His ministry came to be established along with all the soldiers who did not finally confront each other, but he came to support them from the waters that came from the eastern sea. The kingdom of Judah appeared in glory and solemnity anticipating seven centuries before the Mashiach came to the world of Israel. Hezekiah appears again after seven centuries in Patmia, to decline the fraternal help of Isaías, to save the collective quasi shipwreck in the mountains that would strike the edges of Patmia later after the conclusion of the battle, Etréstles intervening from where he entered the Hydors, as the sixfold brightest star of Aquarius of the Gulf of Skalá to protect all the landowners of the Oikodeomeo, litigating the swells of the sea that should refer to the synchronous beats of the Ruach Hakodesh. Etréstles entered the pointed mansards on the tops of the allotropic waves, carrying a scarlet ribbon in his right hand and in the other with an indigo hue when he swam he did not hold back from moaning for fear that the whole island might disappear, he deprecated while He floated imploring in Hellenic all the Prosas of Rhodes, thus leaving hanging on his neck the suffering of mercy that looked at him from the expectant shore, but the scarlet ribbon cried out for the Emmanuel who would be born among the cerulean granules, concomitant with the Mashiach that clung to him on the blue ribbon when a fragmented chroma emerged from the rib that divided the seven colors into fourteen, from where he propelled Etréstles over the calvaries of the water that prevented him from seeing how undaunted Saint John was reflected with his staff. The Vernardicidal ***** harassed the ministry of Isaiah who came to save Vernarth from the Hercules vortex, where everything will guide him with the conception of Vernarthian and Saint John the Apostle, with from afar they encouraged him saying: "Epoikodomeo" with the aim of building geomorphological waters of the Dam or blood of the Mashiach, forging, increasing wisdom and security to preserve and encode them with the Talmudic essences of Spirit / Pnevma that is the essence of the Messiah to make the ephemeral phase of Jesus with the prosopon of the fit in the primordial scale of Patmos, along with all those who entrusted their ministry to him. Isaiah stated that from a Maltona the Messiah will be born soon, the same one who has accompanied Vernarth throughout this journey par excellence from Judah when he sublimated the iconography of Saint John the Apostle on his return to his inheritance, thus the requiems said that Isaiah had been sawn. by Manasseh, indicating that his prophet's remains would gather on Patmos to materially reintegrate themselves before the panorama of any, beyond the scriptures, only the Pnevma prevailing, which ingratiated itself with the apocryphal papyri. The laws of the sea opposed the arms and chinstraps that Etréstles wore in the joints of each arm, creating with them psalms that indicated the presence of the divine mother of the Mashiach, with the divine contribution that embroiled the scriptures by the Psalms of Etréstles by besieging at once on the cusps of the waves, making use of the same phalanxes and of the Apsidas Manes with watery and ****** meddling by Sennacherib's troops, who by a narrow imbalance in the authorship of the debate segment on a defense that was with the angels, who had already slipped through the opening of the dying parapsychology, to enter the purging compass of the blanket with a Venerable who would speak to them in the first person about the lashes of the breakers enclosed in the annunciation of the Emmanuel that was going to radiate with his counterpart Jesus Christ in the scarlet and indigo Hydor of the Kosmous water compendium of all Patmia. The exegetes were all in their robes on the top of the mountain, they were all and at the same time, they were not. Isaiah wanted to predispose the messianic perception to unite the generous ends of the Majestic Tikun and the Gam zu Letová, so that the scarlet tekhelet itself merges with the chinstraps in the joints and Etréstles that came from the Seventh Cemetery of Messolonghi, to present them the chants of the seventh parapsychological regression of Vernarth's wounded hands that he could barely hold, having the Pisan Verses of Ezra Pound, agglutinated with the Psalms of Etréstles saying thus:

“Humiliate your vanity, You are nothing more than a dog beaten under the hail, just a swollen magpie in the fickle sun, half black, half white, and you can't even distinguish the wing from the tail. Humble your vanity, Petty is all your hatred nourished by falsehood. Humble your vanity, eager to destroy, greedy in charity. Humiliate your vanity, I tell you, humiliate it. But having done instead of doing nothing, this is not vanity. Having decency, called for an obtuse to open, having picked up a living tradition from the air or from a magnificent old eye calls it undefeated, this is not vanity. Here the error is everything in what was not done, everything in the shyness that hesitated ...

Etréstles answers with his Psalm:

"In the main, I attend to his voice that undresses small when they fall cliffs ...when the fierce sentinel hides the Xiphos from the evil ones who shield them inthe iniquity here on Patmos of his tongue-lashing sword that spills bitter blood,that she is thrown on famous vices of Pronoia and dry crops in the storehouse ...
with dormant grasses between lashes of hunger, thirst, and angry sleep.

This is where the Mashiach sleeps and does not lavish the drowsiness of the world! that he shoots and is not afraid of spitting a splendid Hercules cloaked with fullerides of necromancy and flashes of unsustainability in the bitter Pashkien eating the sores from the ferments of his hemlock fingers.

Who will be in the glory that calms his fingernails over the joy of Anubis? inquiring pustules of bolted injustices that stagnate in the
Sagittarius tongue flaring up trilingual on their own languages ...
If there is the blood that I can retain, it will be by submission with declined sphincters or not! seeing where everyone is without pressure or punishment of stuttering or fact that will never happen on a Patmian Reichstag, understanding that their voices
They are the proscenium of the Elohim containing the glory of the fallen when the periphery of the incisive tenebrosity are slices of the Vernarth Psalm, and of Rabbi Masoretic that shelters you when you sleep, however in a thousand years ...

I've been stragglers collecting extreme remains of immortal bones,
In invisible frames with the vanity of seven verses that escaped from my hands, thousands of them being built away from my Duoverse of love towards them atavistic ... almost become adopted children of Masoretic ignorance ... and in the confusion of the
Elohim translated into a genome after an open heart between the Alef and the Tav, between the arrow that serves as accommodation in her mind, unable to sleep if she is not there…! but high up where I can dwell, I see and I abide by being silenced in my vanity, seeing that nothing is mine and of those around me on the battlefield, who sublimate themselves by walking a lifetime on the side of my enemy wounded by the Dorus, and that I have never tried to take it off completely with slight iniquity, only avoiding zafrales and scrutiny in its search.

My vanity will perish undefeated but failed to revive itself with dazzles and sagites that pierce the saps in your children and mine, being poles of renewal of a Hoplite Raeder, cutting the thymus of the cattle and saying that their wounds are the same splendor of the Sagittae Parvulum, like Seraphim children prior to a hyperonym, fracturing sacred bravery that they enumerate him to lose himself in the numbering of infinity ...! As gladiator children, eternal infants and children of Zeus, also being Seraphim of Zeus and Cherubim who will make mustard its fragility, unstitching the time that it carves from the thyme trying to be the Kashmar "

From the eye of heaven, everything was supplied when Emmanuel himself, who was tried at the end of the battle of Patmia, was recognized. It was six o'clock in the afternoon when the omnipresent presence of Isaiah's interface antiphons was marked from where he would make them hold onto the mega Nazer as the offspring of the uncontrolled branch of his hyper parapsychology that expiated itself from the trunk of the descendants of Vernarth, alluding to to Wonthelimar as one of them who was on the wheel of Capricorn as an internal element of Hydor when it was made effective between the golden hands of Isaiah, with full genuflection enumerating from sinister to right the upright derivation of the Psalm of Etréstles with the Nazer, which is It would take refuge in the foundations of omission as a new shining principality, from where the light of the fifteen hundred years between the seventh heaven and space of this same inaugurating the stolon from where the angel Gabriel would make of all the natives of the Notsri of Nazareth the energy that surpass the masses of matter above the average of its brightness, implanting the Duoversal advance where the Mashiach. From Ofel will come the palmar remains with Marie de Vallés propitiating from the Notós or the South of the Mandragoron of Patmia, like a Bull of Concession of collective rights from Jerusalem with the remains of Isaiah in his living Status. The vernacular spirits of the Bethany journey were incarnated as the ruling planets, which would thus all be similar to Saturn, leaving all the rest with the same unrestricted semblance of cosmic materiality, with this transfer of Saturn's atmospheric outer pharaoh overshadowing all others. planets, under a stepped level towards the Messianic primogeniture, dislocating the vibrational levels above the primary embankment of the lithosphere, like a Qliphoth or shell of Saturn's debauchery when experiencing the bonds of emerging Christianization of the emotional state that made up this external preferential layer, of which of this genre they would create multi-natalist phases with the Qliphoth of the configuration of the vibratory cessation of the physical body of Patmos. In this way the seventieth Qliphoth or farfara of the compendium of exteriority and interiority would culminate, giving way to the Fos or light that would constitute the hybrid Greco-Hebraic componence on the braids that lowered from the Tekhelet of Etréstles when it levitated towards the Megaron, specifically the Naos that It would incite an end that just headed the engagement of the spaces that will be covered by the reviewing archetribe on the acroteria as the Lux of the beginning of the transfer of quantum of energy, which would begin to form the browbones and chin of Euclidean incidence in the cockades of Etréstles, by structuring itself in the cosmic rhythms of the tzitzit of its right hand, and in its left the Tallit that westernized all the supreme dogmas of eternalism, that carried a brand new covering of Áullos Kósmos with this mantle of hegemony, hanging from the tzitzit that would finally be the dragging ropes of the body of Etréstles to the cosmic ridge of Skalá. From a Genioglossal Muscle; where the Etréstles stimulation tendons were inserted, great impulses of language opened towards the pre-Adamic gates, radiating like wide puffs of the superior process that strangled the phraseologies that indicated error of omission, making everyone could conceive of each other before heading towards conversion, and to be able to aspire to the Naos from the Megarón. The most experienced used to expectorate and move sharply with their jaws when the membranes of this region fled from the tip or hyoglossal of their mouth, shuddering from its sublingual base when they saw that the Mashiach carried Etréstles half-dead from the sea, amid so many prosaic waves consuming him from a breath that was separated from it by a thin layer of adipose cell tissue, and by the Middle Septum towards the definitive Seventh Heaven of God, speaking to them of spaces that will be filled by the magnanimous who have reaped him from his Eternalism. This was neither more nor less than the protruding border of the Messiah speaking through those mouths with insignia of enunciation, and portents of words of reconversion.

Covered feet on black clicking the time of walking stride
The fume of frozen gas sticking to my throat
The late winter leaves having stuck to guttered sidelines
Their huddled swaddled backs burdened with the soft shell of academia
I missed this place
As much as it is a sign of failure it also holds triumph

Where I found my mind when I thought the world
Was defined by a god long dead
That I was lost in a sea of faces
Who prayed, believed and spread faith
Like a soothing blanket
Their thoughts where not troubled
They didn't not question
They had hope
As false as I believed it to be

Even now as I watch them
Flocking to bus stop shelter
How they hold a happiness beneath their chilled skin
Glowing with some assurance I feel I'll never have
But I'm pushing for that feeling
That  place to belong
Somewhere between down to earth and too consumed with my study
But not quite there enough to fall into that group
That speaks academics but knows when to let go

But I can't let go
When it is a matter to the existence of even having a soul
Why do others not feel this need to know what constitutes their own being
Why do I scream out silently to persons whom I had not hoped to know
For we all know that faces on the web are less real than those we see
Everyday
Every moment waiting for that moment they would reach out and cure the ache of loss

They slow the footfall pavement
When passing the stop
Hearing the lively chatter
The silly matters that don't haunt an old soul not looking trouble
As if their frequency vibrates on a different level
Fm to my Am
Where the genuine character of my self turns back on itself
And I become the shy
Confused not knowing how to approach them
So instead of humiliate I walk by
Singing my oldies and rhyming my rhyme

I

I am Ann, Anna, Annastasia
confined, confounded in her own fantasia

roll over doggie under my car
oh i'm sorry, i meant it
she told me, when she told me
i had to obey
a rubber stamp and electric nodes
shock, convulse and make me sway
oh make the voices go away!

II

Smashy smashy Annie
throw mummy's good flower pots
over the wall into the yard
weee it'll be so much fun
come out and play Annie!

III

You naughty girl, stand in the corner and
think about what you've done
what did I tell you about listening to your mother?
bad girl, strike yourself
iron out the creases in your fingers

but mummy, they told me , I had no choice

IV

Tut-tut Anastasia
what did i tell you about listening to your father?
trickle tears down your face
remind yourself you are a disgrace
with little grasp of good taste

You sickening little troglodite,
shower yourself cold in the dark

V

One would be so wisest of oneself, Anastasia
thereby present yourself as loyalty
pray hildegarde you navigate yourself correctly
i suspect your remuneration would be pitiful
exentuate those dentalized Ts and Ds
and for Julius' sake
mind your Ps and Qs

VI

Cease, desist, Anna
Regard yourself from your heart's eye,
be nice, be humble
lest you want to cry, *****!


VII

I can't I can't
someone help me
she's pulling my hair, ouch!

'Stop squealling for attention!'
her friends sneer,
'Better off talking to yourself Ann!'

VIII

I can't help my impulses, they meticulously
humiliate my ego and my sanity
with crude, latent vulgarity
thrown off course with profanity


'oh clumsy me,' pipped Ann,
I'm a clumsy, heavy strumpet,
I'm a couplet short of a sonnet!'

IX

hush hush hush
the booming voice chides,
'Still, Anastasia, soothe your spirit.
be calm, and play some poker
by your uncle's fireplace
you'll be a good girl,
if you hit your brother.'

X

oh cry cry all for Ann
lost for words at her chamber pan
licking the bowl clean
as her mummy told her
sweet, if not
then she would scold her.

XI

'Annie Annie, long of face
won the Ascot horses race.'

'Heaven forefend Anastasia, straighten up and shoulders back!
you'll get rickets so far gone, you please no man but the crickets!'

'****** off those others Anna and listen to me,
forget about you mummy, daddy and any, all authority.'

'Stupid Ann, drown yourself in turpentine
and stub your nose like the common swine.'

'Now remember Anna dear, no cherry trifle
until you've  boxed your sister's shins.'

'Leave me, please, I'm begging, bereave me!
leave me, please, I'm praying, release me!'

XII

Poor Ann whose been afflicted
by personality, conflicted
of her own thoughts, convicted
a most grievous war of minds
betray her deepest common senses
violate her fidelity by bathing in slop and pig feed
degenerate her innocence through foul revolt and tantrums
lest she cannot restore herself from her inner sanctum

XIII

Setting hard concussions, Anna threw a hammer at her temple,
in all hopes to knock it down.
Running low on cortisol
she burst her fleshy, brunette crown
letting all the fluid spew upon her
agonisingly, she writhed in settling timely
for a brutal death is less sinister
than eternity in sanity

Look in the camera with the colgate smile
sound concerned even when you aren't.
Tell them that someone famous just died.
Don't fumble, you're LIVE.
Get the story before anyone else
or wave your career a goodbye.

Two minute break
Sip that water and put that make up on.
Manipulate the public
and your legacy shall live on.
Humiliate the politicians till they
can stand no more.
Sound vaguely interested
when you're bored.
Display the public ranting,
the promotion is yours.
Get your sources lined up
take down the unimportant notes.
Write about the bodies which were blown up
but your boss wants more.

Shove the mic in their face.
Demand reasons behind this failure we embrace.
Exaggerate the words said by a famous mind.
In place of truth fill it with lies.
You dared to step in the public's misery.
You were just another journalist desperate for a story.

His days are filled with books and a beautiful view.
He reads all day, then watches the sunset, every day from his room.
All kinds of books that penetrates him to another world,
for as kind as he is; at school he tries to go unnoticed. Find a corner and curl.

Nobody knows this boy who has so much to offer.
He doesn't get a chance, 'cause the cool kids like to see him suffer.
He slowly peeks around the corner, to see if they're around.
He has to get to English, the bell just rang the final sound.

Almost there he see's the door,
picking up the pace he trips to the floor.
He hears laughing and see's them pointing at his falling body.
It's the same everyday. Is there someone real he thinks. anybody?

Late that evening just finishing his latest book,
he goes to his view just to take his evening look.
Something was different, there was beauty he couldn't see.
Definitely something different, there was odd colors' behind his red oak tree.

Adjusting his view to perhaps get a better peek,
he saw a beauty he couldn't explain. He tried to holler down, but couldn't speak.
She came out from behind the tree,
Who was she he thought, for he could not see.

Cautiously he walked outside,
usually reserved he didn't know why.
He saw her just staring like a woman with so much on her mind.
He wanted to speak to her: what would he say? Just be kind.

"Hello", he said, as he took a step closer.
She turned around, and it was over.
The boy never knew something so beautiful could be so close.
For after a romance novel, from his dreams they arose.

After her initial shock she said "Hi, you must be my new neighbor."
"I just moved here from Florida, I'm not use to the chill."
The boy mesmerized thought he took one too many pills.
He tried to talk, but it just wouldn't flow, and as she stared at him
he saw her face contort, and she started to go.

He said "wait don't leave. I'm just not use to people talking to me."
He was actually a handsome boy if they would take the time to see.
He said, "my name is Cole and I live in the white house just there."
He pointed to it and noticed she didn't look. Instead at him she stared.

Her gaze made him uncomfortable, for he thought it a prank,
but the more he looked the deeper he sank.
She said, "Cole, I like that name,
mine is Lila." Lila Verame."

He saw her shiver and recalled her comment about the chill,
so he took off his jacket, and placed in around her hoping the warmth she would feel.
"Thank you" she said as she looked in his eyes.
Cole said "your welcome, this should keep you dry."

Lila giggled and said, "what do you mean?"
"There is a storm coming. I can smell it. After awhile you sense things that don't have to be seen.
She never heard a boy talk like this,
she said "so after awhile living here, there'll be things I can sense?"

Cole puzzled, said "sorry if I talk a little strange."
Lila smiled and said "no I like it, from where I'm from it's a nice change."
In Florida it's all about how good one looks in bikini's.
It's nice down here to have you talk about the scenery.

Her green eyes sparkled as he talked like never before.
Lila laughed, smiled, and even seemed interesting all the more.
So many thoughts were exchanged before the first rain drop fell,
and as Cole walked Lila home, she knew there was more to him than anyone could tell.

Back in his room he pondered the day and thought; just wait til school.
I'll be a ghost; just made a made up fool.

Cole didn't sleep as he thought what would transpire.
It was a small school and she surely would burn like a candlelit fire.
Being new and so beautiful,
It was going to be interesting for sure. Very eventful.

Anxiously and nervous he looked in the mirror,
no matter what he did, he knew he would be inferior.

The steps leading inside came faster than he ever could remember,
God why couldn't we have had a huge snow storm like it does in December?

He stepped inside and sure enough,
there stood Lila with the boys who thought they were so tough.
He avoided contact hoping not to be seen.
especially from Lila. Lila Varame.

The day went on and not one class did he have with her.
Although sad, at least she wouldn't see all the trouble the cool guys stirred.

Finally at lunch, walking outside,
He found his spot. His spot to hide.
Today seemed different for more guys sat at the cool spot.
Then he saw why. Lila, they swarmed to her like flies do to the rot.

She seemed confused and not liking all the racket,
and then his eyes lit up, as he saw her with his jacket.
No it couldn't be. If only she knew how Cole got treated.
He wouldn't fight, for everyday he went home defeated.

Finding courage he never knew within,
he strolled the cool kids way confident and with a grin.
Lila saw him for the first time that day,
and the smile on her face couldn't be contained.

He stopped as he noticed her smile,
their eyes never leaving each other all the while.
No, no, no, this can't be.
I'm just Cole. Why would she be looking at me.

But she was looking at him and walking all the same,
and then he heard the cool kids laughing saying his name.
It's over he thought, now she will see,
here they come to humiliate me.

A fire started to burn deep inside,
no more he thought not this time.
As they made their way,
he stared in her eyes feeling something. No matter what he was going to stay.

They teased and goofed trying to make him feel alone,
but with Lila looking he stood like a marble stone.

Through all the jokes he stood staring at her.
"I've been looking for you," she said. "Please get me away from them nerds."

For the first time in his life Cole didn't go home and read a book,
he spent it with Lila, and in her hands his she took.

The boy, the nerd, got the most beautiful girl in school,
and deep down she was so kind too.
Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months.
Cole was the new man in school. He was even blunt.

What if I told you that Cole and Lila found what some don't believe.
What if I told you they were soul mates. Is that something you could conceive?
Well in this book Cole found love and not through they eyes of a character in a book.
In the moment of opportunity. The opportunity he took.

He could have kept to his novels and his evening sunsets,
but he saw beauty and he took that chance.
Who would have know their love would have reacted.
who would have known, he'd find love by sharing his jacket.

Some people never get the chance,
to show their is more to them than what you think.
Just take the time open your ears,
or you could miss out on something special....faster than a blink...

When did I become a joke to you?
When did I become the person you build up and up,
Only to tear down piece by piece by piece?

When did you start thinking it was okay to mess with my mind?
When did you start thinking that I was the perfect person
To break down and humiliate?

First I became your diary,
Then I became your therapist,
Next it was the advice giver
(Even though you never listened),
And now I’ve become the one you pretend to make plans with
Only to cancel at the moment you're supposed to arrive.

What gave you the idea that any of this was okay?
I’m so tired of the drama you bring.
I’m so tired of trying to help when you won’t listen.

I don’t think I can do this anymore
I don’t think I can be your friend;
Not if this is where it leads.

We planned an entire day,
And yet, here I am,
Writing this poem while watching TV
As I sit at home alone.

If you were looking for my breaking point
Then I can congratulate you on finding it,
You’ve finally hit the last straw.
No more!
I’m done!
This isn’t what friends do.

i liked your politics and i liked that you liked women
and i liked your ex girlfriend
but you were a little too macho and
you wanted to rescue me from something
but i liked calling you when i was ****** and telling you
how funny constellations were
and i liked that you sat and listened to me interrupt myself
and you got me so high (with drugs) and i leaned my leg into yours because it felt good
and you leaned in to kiss me and i let you because it felt good
and you drove me home and i was sobering up and you leaned in to kiss me again
and i didn't want to
i did it because i didn't want to see you humiliate yourself
you asked me to hang out many more times
i made up excuses every time

Your anonymous blog

To my face you are kindness itself:
cheerful, always upbeat,

but in your anonymous blog
you rip me apart.

You press your thumb and forefinger on each side,
hold, pull and rend,
and rupture my very innards.

You focus on me,
my life, my words, my actions and my body
like you are a Celestron Telescope
searching for every single crater and irregularity.

With an Ultima Barlow lens
and your Leica M9 18MP
You grab each natural image
and then rearrange reality with
your precious, perversely pesuasive, periscopic Photoshop technique.

poetic liberty has leased you a license to assassinate,
humiliate,
decimate,
invalidate,
severely lambaste,
and mockingly castrate
everything that I identify as me.

literary freedom allows you to liberally fabricate,
mutilate,
denigrate,
incriminate,
scathingly castigate,
and maliciously urinate
on what others think of me.

To my face you are kind beyond selflessness,
but on your online beat,
your anonymous malevolence
sets you apart
from all the others
that have ever wanted
to write me up,
put me down,
and publish me out.

– Zumwalt (2011) (copied from www.zumpoems.com)

Didn't your mother ever tell you
It's not nice to break someone
Who's already broken


Didn't your mother ever tell you
Not to make promises
You can't keep


Didn't your mother ever tell you
Not to publicly humiliate
Girls for loving you

where did the hatred come from?

who planted it who watered it who let it grow
like a **** choking me
where in history or my family tree

I close my eyes
I am a butterfly, and the flap of my wings
could move mountains
could topple empires
and so I follow the twisted roots of hatred
to their source

I fly to England in 1611
this time, this time
as my wings beat against the air
the translators know
that malakoi and arsenokoitai condemn pederasty
not men who love each other as equals
or men who are strong enough
to be soft

I fly to a time that never happened
to a place that never was
but that is somehow no less real

I am the first butterfly, in the garden of Eden
the first human watches me in awe
and as I come to rest on their hand,
they give me my name

and the glittering of my shiny blue wings
catches the eyes of all humanity to come
draws their attention to the first human
and they see the truth:
a chimera, both male and female
created in G-d's image, both male and female

I am flying above the crowd at Mount Sinai
and my wings shape the air
it cups their ears to G-d’s mouth
and they hear the silence between the words
as they listen to what could not be understood then,
but what is understood now:
do not ****
do not use *** to humiliate

I follow the roots back
as they disappear
and there is no more hatred,
fear, or misunderstanding

but the dream ends

and in this life
I am still only a caterpillar

will I live to be a butterfly?

when my father and mother leave me
G-d will gather me in

G-d, my father, and my mother bird

G-d is my refuge and stronghold
my G-d who I trust
will save me from the hunter's trap
from the deadly plague
G-d will cover me with Their wings
under which I find refuge
until I grow my own wings
and I will not fear the terrors at night
or the arrows that fly by day.

i would like to break you
i would like to press upon your throat
untill my knuckles come undone
i would like drag my nails over your face
and destroy what you are in love with
i would like to kick you in the mouth
and make ****** your arrognant smile
i would like to spit in your face
and laugh as you drown in helpless fury
i would like to destroy your holy body
so you can no longer be admired for it
i would like to run you over
when you parade in your gay little shorts
i would like to drown your face
in a bucket of your own *****
i would like to humiliate you
and show everyone who you really are
i would like to tell your boss
how you steal his money
i would like to make you poor
and see you begging at the street corner
i would like to punch you in the gut,
and tell you to go **** yourself

you are nothing
you are a fake
you are impotent
you are a narcissist
you are too stupid to see it

the only way you will ever be happy
is if your mirror had a ******

but no matter what ill i wish you
kharma will ******* in the ***
and i will deem my lessons well learned
while you adore yourself

why can't i write?

i'm feeling so much and it hurts too much and i can't think of anything to say about it
i can't think of anything to say
not a single ******* thing and i just want it out out OUT GET THE **** OUT OF ME
JUST STOP
just stop just go away and leave me alone
i can't take this it's just too much
i could take it if i could write about it if i could describe it if i could express it but i can't
it's just stuck it's overwhelming it's too big to fit inside my massive body and i feel like i'm going to split open
and i need to get it out but i don't know what it is and i don't know where it is and
i don't know what to say
i don't know how to say it i don't know i don't know i don't know

I hate those words so much.

this is an act of desperation trying to find the pressure-release valve in my mind to find the off button in my chest
each new line like pulling one of my own teeth
just trying to get the words to drain from my fingertips until i'm empty and numb but they won't come
the words won't come
just words about the words but not the words i need just empty useless mute words that laugh in my face
when all i want to do is scream at the top of my lungs GO **** YOURSELF
please just go **** yourself to death and get away from me i hate you so ******* much
still not right still can't write that's not what i need to say just a violent reaction to the words stuck in my throat
oh gods it hurts so ******* much just make it stop just make it stop whatever you want just make it stop
just don't make me say i'm sorry
just don't make me say i'm wrong
just let me keep my pride please just let me keep my pride don't make me humiliate myself just to end the pain

I'm doing this to myself.

you did this to me but i'm doing this to myself because i know how to end it but i won't because

i don't want to
i don't want to pay that price
i'd rather respect myself in agony
than hate myself contentedly
so i'll hate you instead
and torture myself enough
for the both of us