Smile
an indentation that can change the mood
Smile
an indentation that can change the feeling
Smile
an indentation that can change the bud become a flower
Smile
an indentation that can change a pupa to a butterfly
Smile
an indentation that can change the rain into the beauty of the rainbow
Smile
an indentation that can change winter become summer
Smile
an indentation that can change everything
One person smile, two people smile, three people smile and everybody smile
Smile
an indentation that can change everything
Smile
an indentation that can change some words into a poem..

It's not OCD
I'm just ****-rententive.

There are two
coffee urns
in my office kitchenette.
Each urn has
a spot to place your mug
beneath the spigot.
Each of these spots has
a circular insert
of gridded plastic
to mark the mug-placement area
and allow spilled coffee to flow through
so this spot
doesn't become
just a puddle of coffee
soaking the bottom of everyone's mugs.
Each of these inserts has
three indentations:
one on each side
at nine and three o'clock
small, arcing parabolas
like reversed parentheses
there to allow someone to
get their fingers into the
coffee mug spot
and under the insert
to remove it
and, presumably
clean it
and then another indentation
more like a groove
or a notch
much smaller, thinner, and deeper
at the top
that fits perfectly with
a matching
small plastic protuberance
jutting from the coffee mug spot
where the insert goes.
In an almost ****** fashion
this protuberance fits into
this last indentation
this notch
this groove
to secure the insert in place.

For some reason
I've never known
perhaps laziness
perhaps inattentiveness
more likely simple
couldn't-care-less-ness
this insert never seems to be
placed into the mug spot
properly.
It is always placed sideways
rotated a quarter-turn
so that the larger indentations
on the side
meant as finger holes
are placed top-to-bottom
noon and six
the small plastic protuberance at the top
being swallowed whole
by the too-large indentation
and its mate
the groove
meant to hold the plastic piece
so tightly
is left alone
to one side
empty
and useless.
This has always bothered me.
Bothered me more than I would like to admit.
It's such a simple little thing to get right
it would take almost no effort at all
and yet, day-after-day
someone
I don't know who
whoever is in charge of these things
insists
on doing it wrong.
And I cannot abide it.
So, day-after-day
when I go to get my morning coffee
I fix it
I twist the insert ninety-degrees
and secure it in the correct position.

Lately
I have noticed something.
Sometimes
when I go to get my coffee
one of the inserts
will already be
fixed.
Someone else has seen
what I have seen
and felt the same
had the same response
took the same corrective action.
This feels like winning something.
I don't know what
but it definitely smells like Victory.
And Conspiracy.

And it makes me happy.
Happier than I'd like to admit.

Through the years of transparent existence, a void of illusion becomes apparent and slowly becomes nothing more than a side-show. The dribbling glimpses of truth fade like the bones of old. No man can create such an indentation in the mold of space and time that the observers at the end of eternity will render their imprint upon the infinite gaian consciousness and body of universal proportions of any significance. Even the earth laughs at such ridiculousness. The ego is a strong bind - it can create maya and attachment to such fantasies easier than a bear can find it's ideal location for a winter hibernation. It's a world of craziness, where nobody knows whats going on.
The man woke up from his deep slumber. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Squinting, he looked around, studying his surroundings and taking mental notes. His thoughts are ***** scribblings on a subway wall. His heart is beating, searching for a band to play in rhythm with. His soul is aching from loneliness and desire. His feet lifelessly surrender their position up on the couch and find the floor, shrieking from the cold of the linoleum. His presence is that of a bird with a broken wing still attempting to fly. He stands up and stares at the ceiling.
The room is small. Four walls of white, one window and one door. The window looks out over the grey city. The door leads into another room - the room most would call a kitchen. In the small room before the kitchen, there is only a couch and a blanket. No lamp. No television. No electricity. No electricity in the entire apartment. The kitchen holds no refrigerator, no oven, no toaster, no pantry. It's called a kitchen because that's what it would be if somebody else was living in the apartment. There are two bananas on the floor along with a box of wheat flake cereal. No milk, no bowl, no spoon. The bananas are almost entirely rotten. The box of cereal is on its side, leaking bits of wheat flake, resembling a dying soldier on a battlefield who's losing all his blood through the wound on his neck rather than a box of the West's favorite morning go-to breakfast.
The man is observing the cracks on the ceiling, along with various stains with no known origin to him. His eyes dart from one corner of the room to another to another to another and back to the first. Spiderwebs. Dust. Decay. A perfect example of life's ability to take care of itself. Biodecomposition. When no one is around to look after a house, over time, Nature will take over it. Vines will grow and overcome the walls. Rain will fall and wear away the roof and general structure. Winds will blow, taking blindshots at the weakened building, eventually cause it to fall. Nothing lasts forever. Everything goes back to where it came from.
The man now steps into the "kitchen", where he begins to study the stains on the ceiling in this room as well. His mind is electric, with no thoughts in the usual sense, but rather just a vague presence of void to help the ceiling stains feel important. He is the space through which everything around him can exist to their fullest potential. After a measureless amount of time, the man walks over to the sad bits of food on the far side of the small room. He picks up one of he bananas and studies it. He feels where it came from. The tropical skies and smells and earth of Costa Rica. There's a little sticker on the banana that says so. Each bit of fruit in the markets nowadays are individually stickered...for prosperity, one can only assume. Though it's best to never assume anything, and instead be open to everything - afterall, anything is possible, at any time. Likelihood and probability are also important factors in the universal constitution of existence. What was the likelihood that this man, when he was a little child, figured he'd be holding a rotten banana from Costa Rica in his hand inside of a kitchenless kitchen? Who knows? The man wouldn't be able to recall his thoughts from early childhood - he barely remembers waking up and experiencing the chilling sensation of early morning linoleum. In any case, everything is exactly the way it's supposed to be, for it wouldn't be if it wasn't meant to be.
He slowly peels open the banana peel to reveal this brown, soft mush of tropical fruit. Just the way he likes it - soft enough to chew with his toothless mouth. He takes his time consuming the fruit, savoring every particle. After a good bit of time, the fruit is gone and all the man is left with is the peel. He takes another good look at the peel, once again imagining where this particular banana came from. Then, in two swift bites, he devours the entire peel - sticker included. He figures the sticker came from Costa Rica as well, and thus must carry that Costa Rican tropical vibe of health and longevity. His eyes then focus on the wheat flake cereal lying next to the other rotting banana. He bends down and picks up the box. The box is upside down when he picks it up and so the cereal spills out all over the area of the "kitchen" floor that seems to be dedicated to eating food. The remaining banana is now covered in wheat cereal.
The man drops the box back onto the floor and takes a seat alongside of it. His fingers hold his face from drooping onto his knees. His knees are keeping his torso from melting onto the floor. He screams with no sound. The pains of existence seep through his hollow eyes and into the receptors of his soul. He screams with no sound. He’s as empty as the American Dream.
The cobwebs are spreading from the corners of the room and are aimed for the human form sitting in the “kitchen” screaming silence with all his might. The cobwebs grow. The commuters of the city highway are commuting. A thousand birthday celebrations are being had. A thousand people sexually uninhibited, joyously seizing the moment in disgusting miraculous unity of mortal physical desire. Junkies are roaming the street for their morning fix. Teaching are teaching their students absolute lies. Governments are stealing the lives of billions and counting. And the cobwebs are growing, encompassing entire walls. The the ceiling. Then the floor. Then they crawl up the lifeless legs of the man who sits screaming in silence and the spiders overtake his body. They stitch his mouth shut and close his eyes with their spun proteinaceous spider silk. The man withers into the wind of time and vanishes from the world without a single soul taking notice. Leaving nothing behind except an empty apartment, overdue rent, and a number in the system of Western Society. His spirit cries sorrowfully as it flees the clutches of molecular existence into the realm of eternity and space. Heaven. He made it. He looks down at the people of the world he just left and sings a pitiful song for them. He’ll see them again. Afterall, they are Him. And He is Them. His Heart, the Sun, burns as the world he left turns. The lessons He left are slowly being learned. One by one. But still, there’s a space between the atoms, between the cells. And that space can never disappear. Without it, there would be no point to the story. All would be one, as it is, and there’s be nothing to overcome. No triumph. Just an endless loop of bizarre beautiful experience and pattern.

Pastel paint down a gridded terrain,
square indentation in a porous grain,
snow atop the mountain melts away,
floods the chasm to crumble today,
gone in a flash, its been known,
short-lived is my ice cream cone.

Paraphrased is my paradise
Pushed down

Clouds
Waiting to be found

Left in mass transition
Pondering in blurred positions

Paraphrased is my paradise
Pushed down

Celestial clouds
Waiting to be found

Distorting my vision
Bent through kaleidoscopes
Caught in between
Periods of hope

Since the first day I met you
I've compiled a list of ten things that I wish I could tell you.
ONE: I wish I could wipe that stupid grin off your face whenever you mention your ex-girlfriend because if she's your past, I'm your present and to be honest I don't know what's coming up next, but God knows that I will fight for you. That somehow, some way, although God managed to create the sun and the stars in seven days, you gave me a life's worth of love in the first two seconds I met you. Arms outstretched, eyes not quite reaching mine, your stride as you passed me in the hall was brisk, you looked as though she ****** my name from your lips,
you looked at me,
you smiled and said 'hey'.  You see, there are moments in your life you know you will remember as your mind grows old and fades into nothing, and that was one of them. You said a three letter word in my general vicinity and until today I crave the three worded sentence that will validate everything I wish I could say in the three years that I have wanted to know what you sound like at 7 in the morning.
TWO: I want to **** the name of your ex-girlfriend from your lips because it's just another reminder of everything I'm not.
THREE: I'm sorry I'm not her.
FOUR: Let me backtrack, I'm sorry you can't have her.
FIVE: I love you.
SIX: I don't think I could stop if I tried
loving you. But I can trace my name into you as many times necessary for it to make an impression, indentation on you.
SEVEN: and I will choose you every time she didn't. I will choose you at 2 in the morning and you can't sleep. I will choose you when you are drunk and everything that I'm not falls out of you. I will choose you and hold onto you as though it is the one thing in this life I am meant to do.
I will choose you until the sun doesn't rise and ice freezes over the world because there is no way possible that I could get cold feet when I am with you. Wrap your arms around me, smile, and wake me up in a way words can't, until I am singing with the birds, "good morning". I will choose you, I will choose you, I will choose you. I will choose you when you can no longer remember my name and all that remains is her.
EIGHT: Don't text me at 3 in the morning. Call me, or better yet, come visit me so my dreams don't have to be dreams, they can become a reality. Dreams are great and all, but I'm not about the material, fictional, idea of you. I want you like how I want my tea; pure and without all these little filters. You see, love to me isn't always about the physical. Teach me how to paint and I will paint your name onto every part of me that doesn't remember your touch. Teach me to see the stars and don't stop until I can speak in angel.
NINE: All my poems are about you. The way you are set in an irreversible state of gratitude and how God must have spent two years longer on you just so he could paint each mole on your body in hopes that I would be there to connect them. Or how you never try to stretch too high  so your belly doesn't peak out of your shirt, and wear sweaters in the middle of summer when it is 30 degrees. If you see him, you'll know it's him. He's probably wearing his favourite outfit; heart-shaped sleeves and stars for eyes.
TEN: I wish I could tell you that I see your face in rain clouds and write you into every poem, hoping that you'd somehow find a way to become closer to me. I wish I could tell you that I'm not much of a poet, but you are my favourite poem. You give me writer's block, reminding me that you have to work for what you love, and that if your really, really, really love something, you can't will it into being.
That love is harder than you think it will be, and sometimes it will be messy, and will feel like it's impossible to write again. But all those poems were just practice, helping you get to a new level you never imagined you could get to. You see, in every poem I write I hope to find a better understanding of how you have the audacity to love when everything in your past tells you otherwise. Why your lips are like the composers to my melody, we make the best music. I wish I could tell you that it feel like my heart plays jump rope whenever the ground splits in two and my name slips passed you lips, just before slapping you across the face because not even God could have made my knees fall to the floor and beg for mercy. I wish I could tell you that I am horrible at math because there isn't a number large enough to quantify love. But if I really, really needed a number for the things I wish I could say,
it would be
one:
I love you.

In between sips of skim-milk splashed coffee; in between the sharp, fragmented, ink-drags of pen and indentation of paper and the simple sketch of a fish in a lake [the fish like the hand and the cog, and the lake like piano keys and copper machinery] The Imagist explained to me the conception of music and clockwork.
And the Human Condition.
"Humans," he sketched, "have a very peculiar sense of self - it ends at our skin. Cut off my arms and I'll survive, but sever the air from my lips and... At what point did our limbs become more a part of ourselves than the sky?"
And after a moment of measuring the weight of words, he thought to me, "Man, I don't know why I get myself into this... What made me think I could write a children's book?"

I told him how I wished I could write music. You could read it in my poetry; my metaphors about sheet music and night skies. My yearning to explore worlds that my starfall has never blinked in. And it struck me, bittersweet through the roots of my wisdom teeth, how we can never choose our art. Rather I'll bushwhack through, leaving trails of half-started, stutter-stepped poems, looking for something that sings like guitar strings.

The Imagist and I, we are children of a visual age.
I try to sculpt our twenty-seven minute attention spans through sporadic hand gestures.
He told me about his trip to Montana through drawings of the people he'd met,
from the three friends of friends who were a quarter of a face or less. Like Bob, the right eye and jawline, who knew something about everything  [He said it's like having a conversation with Wikipedia], to the deeply detailed dreamy girl who played the accordion.

Sometimes we wake up feeling like Mr. Potato Head, with our mouth where our eye should be.

In between sketches of friends who fell out of touch and John Ashbery poems, we gave credit to palindromes. The Imagist drew HannaH with a handlebar moustache and I realized that this poem ends when Two Creek closes - comforted by the fact that poetry can be about the simplest moments, the ones that I never understood exactly how beautiful they were until I read them in my own shaken handwriting.

In a mix-up of words, He discovered how sick he was of writing with something, rather than writing for something.
I evaluated my own pen and chewed on my tongue.

I wish I could draw portraits so that I'd remember first impressions.

When The Director showed up, we exchanged science and art. He explained to me the imaginary horizons of black holes and Hawking radiation, but even he taught it through a sketch in the top left corner of his science fiction movie script. At the foreign end of the table, The Imagist continued a conversation about the complexities of children's books, and theories someone developed through observing their attention-starved cats who bore uncanny likeness to kids, and the appeal of Furbies, while The Director asked me how I write a poem.
I told him it starts with a single line, something that zings in my mouth like cavities and canker sores, but not to take my advice because I have far too many illegitimate, ******* sons; clouds of words daunted by the clear skies of the rest of the page. After The Director's end credits, eventually I joined the foreign conversation where we had begun it, with The Imagist saying, "Our skin connects us to everything, it doesn't trap us in to our own narcissism."

And then they were gone too, each dissolved into a part of themselves and each other - to fall into place in a world that runs on six-billion beating hearts.

In between the grain of a yellow birch table that's hosted the gunfire of mouths and lonely bones, I stayed and played my part, losing my fingers in the varnish and pages of books, believing that I, my entirety, my open borderline skin, my wooden grain, my air in the wind, my ballpoint pen finger, was writing for something.

The ripple effect of a rash decision.
Ignoring with a cold precision.
Glass cannot completely melt away.
Yet it never heats up the way they say.
A small crack in the upper lip.
An indentation, a simple dip.
If you don’t read the bible, Jesus will hate you.
But, Jesus, that is something I’ll never do.
The crack expands to a spider’s home.
A girl in a metal chair all alone.
Do you know what the gospel is, kid?
I don’t know if I do, but I wish that I did.
Splicing incision, multiple cracks.
Spiraling around in un-orderly stacks.
Mummy, I’m feeling ill.
Doesn’t matter, you are going still.
A piece falls to the floor with grace.
A trickle of water fills its place.
She throws her square hat into the air.
Whipping away the wafers and wine out of her hair.
The dam breaks away, the glass cascades in a sparkling haze.
Washing away the church daze.
Never. Again.

the rain wet floor
the man with a birth mark in the shape of Pangea

the backwards baseball cap

the re-used meme

the re-used meme

the idea of “retro”

cumulus clouds floating

heavy &

overhead

all electrical goods just sitting on stand-by

waiting

the machines are waiting

the blueprints that are 1mm out
at right angles to the rest of the world neon lights flash downtown

reflected on wet concrete

arriving at a destination and not knowing how you got there
my glasses leave an indentation on the side of my head
my children are asleep and I can see the signs

a new Netflix series that goes on for 125weeks – I have no stamina for this –

the mundane beauty of a leisure centre
the perfection of the shopping mall

<!>
inspired by a conversation with Maira Kalman


******* a name, adopt a persona, let my fingers do the talking,
place the instrumental sharp point tip upon the blankety blank paper,
maestro baton raised, coordinating,
the first sound, the vocal chords trembling,  
the first thought, the ultrasound image, entrance of a first violin,
coalescing into, into the initializing single primary phonation,
the stinging geometry of chance at last,
throwing  down the gauntlet, glove slapping, and the
tendons tense, the mouth opens, release and indentation,
a letter's curvature, a black and white downward stroking,
a sign is televised, revealed and released

a one way only sign

time bends knee, gravity suspended, terror morphs to
expelling rapid firefights of imagery needy for spacing,
even pauses mid-word  leave just this:

where is the in in
intimate?

are you the in in
inmate,
or the jailor at the gate?

you swear never again

until committing once more,

a sentence commutation, by committing a first sentence,

and the greater toll taken and paid for,

and the in in in-nate,
questions your sanity

happily


<•>

9/17/17 10:55pm

The loving puddle in the gutter off market street-- the one that fills with dirt and **** and damp newspaper, plastic soda cup, strange indecipherable Chinese pamphlets with bleeding characters. She smiles at the sun and renders its visions on her face, and with great tension attempts to demonstrate her willingness, her blushing consent to being totally subsumed by its whims. Of course she trembles at the diurnal stampede of feet, but is not afraid-- for she too speaks in eternity. She has evaporated before-- she has kissed the incessant sky over Marrakesh in the soft morning and dreams of the sparkling mountainsides in the night, when she is divided by callous rubber tires or cast below by competing distant rains. Yet she has always found her way back home; Nestled in the subtle indentation of road besides the brickway near Battery.

"Dewdrop, let me cleanse
in your brief
sweet waters . . .
These dark hands of life"

It was one of the waning days of winter, in the blurred haze of rains, when we left the coast and began our journey home. As she drove, I watched the pebbled streaks roll across the window into great vertical streams, to be cast off indistinct along the stationary road. Upon all our sides, Even the black-toothed mountain tops lost their grandiose summits into the fog. Off the road, next to the sagging remains of a gas station, a man sat beneath the naked fist of an old willow tree. He, with a teal umbrella, twirled the nylon circle so that the collecting sheen of water spun and spiraled centrifugal out into the bombarding camaraderie of fellow drops. The damp fields sat empty of life behind him, casting into evanescent black oceans of dirt. As we hurried past, I turned back-- and following him with my own watering eyes, I watched for as long as I could--until he too faded silently into the mist.

I hope you wore a sweater,
in your favorite shade of blue.
It gets cold in late November,
(it gets darker faster, too)

I hope the shoes you wore fit snugly
(even if your socks don't match)
I hope your last day wasn't ugly,
I hope the pain was over fast.

I'm sure you felt your sadness deeply,
I'm sure you felt your heart ache too.
When you took a walk when all were sleeping,
in your favorite shade of blue.

I wonder what it felt like,
to pick the perfect tree.
To end your painful heartache,
snug shoes on dangling feet.

But my most pressing question,
that I would ask of you,
is where did you lose your earbud?
(you're wearing one, not two)

They moved you to the metal table,
(the one that tilts down at an angle)
They cut the sweater off you too,
your favorite one in midnight blue.

They make their notes:
your weight,
your height.
They check your shoulder width and write:
"He will fit a standard casket"
(they carry on with their assessment)

"Rope indentation - on the neck
Eyes and fingers - blue and red
Socks mismatching
Nike shoes
One earbud gone"
(that's all I knew)

Tell me why'd you take that walk?
I know the road ahead looked bare.
Tell me how you chose a song.
Did you brush your teeth and comb your hair?

Did it happen on a school night?
(your file says you were in 12th grade)
Did you tell your mom you loved her?
- with your mind already made.

So to the boy with just one earbud,
I'm sorry this world felt so wrong.
I hope you're in your favorite sweater,
and you're listening to your favorite song.

Shackles closed tightly leave a scar around the wrist
A faint indentation
When you've been released they'll tell you you are free
You're human again

They hand you your belongings and send you away
Feeling triumphant
You welcome what you see as a second chance
Start your life over

Finally you've escaped the labyrinth
Everyone notices the scars
Shackles closed tightly leave a scar around the wrist
A faint indentation

A baseline that you feel in your chest,
Humming thick in your ears,
And your mouth,
You just want to live in their blur of impactful words,
That you don’t understand,
Because it’s just a baseline to you,
But have you ever felt so proud of someone?
That what they’re saying, or what they’re playing or who they’re being,
Becomes the only thing that’s keeping off the rain,
And you can see every tooth in the room,
Every heart that becomes unbroken and
        every heart that breaks,
Well it’s a shooting star,
Baby it’s gold dust,
Because his gaze is tattooed on your body,
Under your sweater,
Under your skirt,
Yours is a crime scene littered with his fingerprints,
But you’re no ****** victim,
Jackie,
       Jane,
             Joan,
Wife,
     Mother,
             Daughter,
Survivor,
          Protector,
                     Warrior,
Woman,
Know when it’s dark,
And subtle shadows are all that remains of your bodies,
Finding all the bones in your shoulder,
The piano strings that move your fingers,
And each indentation of your spine,
Is a bible,
But God won’t give him strength,
It’s your skeleton that is fortitude,
You’re the dragon protecting the castle,
You’re Rosie the Riveter,
You can hold up the world with perfectly manicured hands,
You will listen,
And you will care,
Let him breathe in the fractions of your soul that you exhale,
That way,
Every standing ovation and
     every wound that heals,
Is saturated with the influence of you,
Though you don’t understand,
That baseline you can feel in your chest,
It is your to be proud of too.

In the forest, there grows a flower
That the night loves with starlit showers.
How it blossoms near the tree beneath the moon!
Its petals are a vibrant indentation
Which, with its beauty, betokens the wilderness.

Rapacious and beguiled
Become the seekers of the bloom.
Ravenous are they for its syrupy nector,
And greedy for its savory and intoxicating effect,
Which is delusive to those who would otherwise be able to reckon.
Its glamour incites a yearning
That, not sated, becomes a burning
Which leaves a hollow place where the logic used to be,
And tangles the chords of one's emotions.

Not everything that is enticing is worth the bill of fare,
Even if it thrives freely throughout the land.

She missed him
in her bed

missed the smell of him
the indentation

in the pillow
where his head lay

the silly
romantic things

he used to say
the kisses

on her body
every place

ending
on her face

but it wasn't
just the kisses

or the *** she missed
or the way

he fired her up
on entering her

the way
he did each time

no
she missed of all things

the deep joy
he brought

the kind
that only

happiness brings
she turned over

and gazed at the pillow
where his head

once lay
the missing indentation

the dark hair or two
the sight of him

smiling back
after having ***

another time
(he was never slack)

she felt
his absence

more so then
no ghostly smiles

or gazes
just the white

dumb pillow
laying there

smooth and silent
like a sleeping sheep

she ran her finger
along the bed

where once
his body lay

that is where
his **** would be

and there
is where

we made love
that last day

before his death
took him away

she sighed
the echo of it

filling the room
spreading out

each bit of space
sometimes

she thinks
he's still kissing her

first her body
then her face.

Swoon, swindled, spindled, and spun.
Wisp of a hand,
to the possession of tongues.

With your lungs producing breath; methane gas.
Lips like matches,
with tendencies to strike,
engulfing us in a passionate blaze.

Bodies connected in the dark,
the silhouette of your euphoric body proved that ignorance was needed and illumination,
never needed.

                                        Settle.


Intert­wined in the repose,
Was the leaf to our stick.
Fathomed indentation
Tethered in our unspoken script

Heavy apparitions conjured from tight gasps.
Releasing 3 whispered words,
becomes our catalyst.
One embedded in your eyes
     A riptide
          of size to rise
the ties
           in the endearing future of our lives
    until we say our goodbyes
you'll shed this pain that cuts like knives.

Daydreaming of electric wires.
Tiptoeing on what
hangs lower than our fire.
Closed currents in the air
You continue the shock
as your fingers dance through my hair.

We're the flowers and petals,
withered into the passion we're plagued with.
Oh so crowded,
We're cursive
Characters tied in knots,
We can't be split.

Fearing the closure,
We mustn't ever be print...



...Fragmented, affluent, vacant, and split.
The script unraveled
Not cursive,
now print.