I'm going on an indoor picnic
Just a picnic for me and you
I'm going on an indoor picnic
While skies outside are grey, not blue

Nothing better than an indoor picnic
Fridge is full of food and lemonade
Nothing better than an indoor picnic
Don't have to look for trees for shade
Inside we've got it made

Just the two of us alone dear
That's the way that it should be
Just the two of us alone dear
An indoor picnic, just you and me
The way it should be...ah ha
Just for you and me

Turn on the music and we'll sit a while
No ants to give us trouble
Just the two of us sharing a smile
No way to burst our bubble

It doesn't matter that it's stormy
Liquid sunshine fills the drain
We're dry inside together
No singing in the rain..ah ha
No singing in the rain


We're both going on an indoor picnic
Just the two us, alone inside
It's so nice to have an indoor picnic
I've gone to heaven and died...ah ha
I've gone to heaven and died

When I was ten,
I had the tendency to raise my voice
A little too high;
I was afraid that if I didn’t,
Nobody would be bothered to listen to what I had to say.
But I was always silenced with a simple:
“Mind your indoor voice,”
Because my indoor voice was more easily ignored.

When I was thirteen,
I knew of a girl whose wrists were so eloquently lined with poetry
Because she didn’t dare make a sound,
But you see,
There was nothing beautiful about the verses
Written with the ink pouring from her veins.

When I was sixteen,
I came across a boy left sobbing
Because his sister dreamed of being as light as
The oxygen that no longer fills her lungs.
Tell me you could hear what you told her not to say.

When I was seventeen
My best friend fell in love
For the last time.
He could feel his heart climbing out of his chest,
And in foreign scroll it bore the name of a man;
For this he wanted to die.
Since when did falling in love become a ***** word?
I know you said to use my indoor voice but
Can you hear me now?

When I was eighteen
I learned that etiquette won’t banish the empty
Promises of a society
That doesn’t want to hear what I have to say;
A society that doesn’t want to hear the stories of the souls
They banished from their memories
Hiding behind the claims that there was nothing that could have been done
To save them.

No.
I will no longer use my “indoor voice.”
I will not quiet myself because you are afraid of the words I have spoken.
Even after my voice is confined to a hoarse whisper,
I will make you listen to the consequences of what you’ve chosen to ignore.
See, you’ve taken our bodies and turned them into time bombs,
And we shouldn’t be the only ones forced to listen as they scream:
Three. He told you that he couldn’t breathe,
And you said it was because he never even tried.
Two. It’s getting harder to breathe.
Can you hear me?
One. I promise,
I tried.

This is a verse of new thoughts,
I've invented indoor sports,
Written in a poem of riddles,
Like, "What is Time for Tiddles?"
Why, it's wine with Mahjong,
Those tiles don't tarry long,
Then it's "Drinks for Scrabble,"
With bevvies we'll all dabble,
Or, "Come and try my beers,"
Many varieties over here,
New indoor sports, my dears!

The first settlers to the area called the Lumber River Drowning Creek. The river got its name for its dark, swift-moving waters. In 1809, the North Carolina state legislature changed the name of Drowning Creek to the Lumber River. The headwaters are still referred to as Drowning Creek.

Three p.m. on a Sunday.
Anxiously hungry, I stay dry, out of the pool’s cold water,
taking the light, dripping into my pages.
A city with a white face blank as a bust
peers over my shoulder.
Wildflowers on the roads. Planes circle from west,
come down steeply and out of sight.
A pinkness rises in my breast and arms:
wet as the drowned, my eyes sting with sweat.
Over the useless chimneys a bank of cloud piles up.
There is something terrible in the sky, but it keeps breaking.
Another is dead. Fentanyl. Sister of a friend, rarely seen.
A hand reaches everywhere to pass over eyes and mouths.
A glowing wound opens in heaven.
A mirror out of doors draws a gyre of oak seeds no one watches,
in the clear pool now sunless and black.

Bitter water freezes the muscles and I am far from shore.
I paddle in the shallows, near the wooden jail.
The water reflects a taut rope,
feet hanging in the breeze singing mercy
at the site of the last public hanging in the state.
A part-white fugitive with an extorted confession,
loved by the poor, dumb enough to get himself captured,
lonely on this side of authority: a world he has never lived in
foisting itself on the world he has -
only now, to steal his drunken life, then gone again.

1871 - Henderson Oxendine, one of the notorious gang of outlaws who for some time have infested Robeson County, N. C., committing ****** and robbery, and otherwise setting defiance to the laws, was hung at Lumberton, on Friday last in the presence of a large assemblage. His execution took place a very few days after his conviction, and his death occurred almost without a struggle.

Today, the town square collapses as if scorched
by the whiskey he drank that morning to still himself,
folds itself up like Amazing Grace is finished.
A plinth is laid
in the shadow of his feet, sticky with pine,
here where the water sickens with roots.
Where the canoe overturned. Where the broken oar floated and fell.
Where the snake lives, and teethes on bark,
waiting for another uncle.

Where the tobacco waves near drying barns rusted like horseshoes
and cotton studs the ground like the cropped hair of the buried.
Where schoolchildren take the afternoon
to trim the kudzu growing between the bodies of slaves.
Where appetite is met with flood and fat
and a clinic for the heart.
Where barges took chips of tar to port,
for money that no one ever saw.

Tar sticks the heel but isn’t courage.
Tar seals the hulls -
binds the planks -
builds the road.
Tar, fiery on the tongue, heavy as bad blood in the family -
dead to glue the dead together to secure the living.
Tar on the roofs, pouring heat.
Tar is a dark brown or black viscous liquid of hydrocarbons and free carbon,
obtained from a wide variety of organic materials
through destructive distillation.
Tar in the lungs will one day go as hard as a five-cent candy.

Liberty Food Mart
Cheapest Prices on Cigarettes
Parliament $22.50/carton
Marlboro $27.50/carton

The white-bibbed slaughterhouse Hmong hunch down the steps
of an old school bus with no air conditioner,
rush into the cool of the supermarket.
They pick clean the vegetables, flee with woven bags bulging.
What were they promised?
Air conditioning.
And what did they receive?
Chickenshit on the wind; a dead river they can't understand
with a name it gained from killing.

Truth:
A man was flung onto a fencepost and died in a front yard down the street.
A girl with a grudge in her eyes slipped a razorblade from her teeth and ended recess.
I once saw an Indian murdered for stealing a twelve-foot ladder.
The red line indicating heart disease grows higher and higher.
The red line indicating cardiovascular mortality grows higher and higher.
The red line indicating motor vehicle deaths grows higher and higher.
I burn with the desire to leave.

The stories make us full baskets of dark. No death troubles me.
Not the girl's blood, inert, tickled by opiates,
not the masked arson of the law;
not the smell of drywall as it rots,
or the door of the safe falling from its hinges,
or the chassis of cars, airborne over the rise by the planetarium,
three classmates plunging wide-eyed in the river’s icy arc –
absent from prom, still struggling to free themselves from their seatbelts -
the gunsmoke at the home invasion,
the tenement bisected by flood,
the cattle lowing, gelded
by agriculture students on a field trip.

The air contains skin and mud.
The galvanized barns, long empty, cough up
their dust of rotten feed, dry tobacco.
Men kneel in the tilled rows,
to pick up nails off the ground
still splashed with the blood of their makers.

You Never Sausage a Place
(You’re Always a ****** at Pedro’s!)
South of the Border – Fireworks, Motel & Rides
Exit 9: 10mi.

Drunkards in Dickies will tell you the roads are straight enough
that the drive home will not bend away from them.
Look in the woods to see by lamplight
two girls filling each other's mouths with smoke.
Hear a friendly command:
boys loosening a tire, stuck in the gut of a dog.
Turn on the radio between towns of two thousand
and hear the tiny voice of an AM preacher,
sharing the airwaves of country dark
with some chords plucked from a guitar.
Taste this water thick with tannin
and tell me that trees do not feel pain.
I would be a mausoleum for these thousands
if I only had the room.

I sealed myself against the flood.
Bodies knock against my eaves:
a clutch of cats drowned in a crawlspace,
an old woman bereft with a vase of pennies,
her dead son in her living room costumed as the black Jesus,
the ***** oil of a Chinese restaurant
dancing on top of black water.
A flow gauge spins its tin wheel
endlessly above the bloated dead,
and I will pretend not to be sick at dinner.

Misery now, a struggle ahead for Robeson County after flooding from Hurricane Matthew
LUMBERTON
After years of things leaving Robeson County – manufacturing plants, jobs, payrolls, people – something finally came in, and what was it but more misery?

I said a prayer to the city:
make me a figure in a figure,
solvent, owed and owing.
Take my jute sacks of wristbones,
my sheaves and sheaves of fealty,
the smell of the forest from my feet.
Weigh me only by my purse.
A slim woman with a college degree,
a rented room without the black wings
of palmetto roaches fleeing the damp:
I saw the calm white towers and subscribed.
No ingrate, I saved a space for the lost.
They filled it once, twice, and kept on,
eating greasy flesh straight from the bone,
craning their heads to ask a prayer for them instead.

Downtown later in the easy dark,
three college boys in foam cowboy hats shout in poor Spanish.
They press into the night and the night presses into them.
They will go home when they have to.
Under the bridge lit in violet,
a folding chair is draped in a ***** blanket.
A grubby pair of tennis shoes lay beneath, no feet inside.
Iced tea seeps from a chewed cup.
I pass a bar lit like Christmas.
A mute and pretty face full of indoor light
makes a promise I see through a window.
I pay obscene rents to find out if it is true,
in this nation tied together with gallows-rope,
thumbing its codex of virtues.

~Many people rely on the convenient, easy ways of living in this age of fast food, plastic packaging and rapid development. Most people do not care to see why they live the way they do or what it takes to live in such a way. Toxic pollutants leaching into our earth and water should not be worth the convenience! Third world women working in dusty, cramped factories to make designer purses for fifteen year old girls. Garbage is America’s biggest export and it ends up in China, on the coast of Somalia... anywhere that American citizens won’t be bothered to see it.

~What does it mean to buy a pack of plastic razors? Some metal, some chemicals, some plastic, more plastic for packaging. Use a razor a few times and toss it in the garbage. Somewhere, maybe at La Chureca, someone will pull the rusted metal and plastic from the landfill. They might make one US dollar per day collecting scraps of aluminum, glass, plastic and other scrap metals. What does it mean to wear deodorant? The plastic stick isn’t reusable. The ingredients are highly toxic. Aluminum-based antiperspirants have been linked to Alzheimer's and cancer. Soap comes in plastic bottles, coffee makers made of plastic, water bottles made of plastic… hell, my plastic shower curtain came wrapped in plastic packaging.

~Americans are lucky. Indoor plumbing with quality water. Green lawns and exotic flower beds. Buy and use, throw away and repeat. Big corporations pay off politicians to pollute. Industrial waste, land erosion, low air quality, pesticides. Why are we so quick to trust an artificial sweetener being promoted by a company that makes poison? They call you a hippy, a conspiracy theorist. They tell you that you only live once and to stop being so worried about it all. I ask them, how can you look away? Deforestation and destruction are all around. Those that profit are not concerned with what happens to the land after the loggers and miners have left the ground scarred and desolate.

~Modern living is a hoax. Yeah, you get around quick in your car but at what cost? Carbon dioxide, greenhouse gasses choking us and everything alive that lives with us and cannot speak. Can’t you walk to the corner store? Can’t you grow a few things in the garden or in the windowsill? When was the last time you saw a sunset and didn’t take a picture of it? Dairy cows packed together so tight they can’t turn around for your glass of milk. The disconnect is everywhere. Overpopulation. Overconsumption. People don’t care.

~They can choose. They can choose paper over plastic. They can buy a water filter instead of 20 plastic bottles. They can bike to work. Anyone can lessen their impact, anyone can think more deeply and live more sustainably. But we’ve made it so easy to be lazy. We’ve become so dependent that we’re forgetting to use technological gains to make the way we do things better. We’ve come so far that we’re forgetting what brought us here.

~

‘We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire – a crackpot machine – that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate.’ Edward Abbey

‘In the developing world, the problem of population is seen less as a matter of human numbers than of western overconsumption. Yet within the development community, the only solution to the problems of the developing world is to export the same unsustainable economic model fuelling the overconsumption of the West.’ Kavita Ramdas

‘Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.’ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

‘Globalisation, which attempts to amalgamate every local, regional, and national economy into a single world system, requires homogenising locally adapted forms of agriculture, replacing them with an industrial system – centrally managed, pesticide-intensive, one-crop production for export – designed to deliver a narrow range of transportable foods to the world market.’Helena Norberg-Hodge

‘Throughout history human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonise-destroy-move on.’ Garrett Hardin

Science can't save you, neither can religion,
at least Popper and Niebuhr, philosophers and poets,
are entertainers, which is why actors and athletes
are paid so much. Thanks for the summaries.
I was teaching Shakespeare's 92nd ridiculous sonnet
to my student who lays blacktop in the off season
Shakespeare bellyaching about dying without her love
a feeling foreign to a modern adolescent sensibility
although many teens are pretty far gone searching
for their mothers or fathers in their dazed lovers' eyes.
Which is why we call it "the wound that never heals."
Or the lesion that's always lengthening. And bleeding.

Muslim fundamentalists and their Christian counterparts
are a mystery to me. Pews and prayer rugs, the airless
indoor environment of religious worship, reading
scriptures, hypnotized by hymns and fainting from staring
at candles through stained glass windows, almost certain
the preacher is faking his certainty about the afterlife.
It's not my problem. A more immediate concern:
receding gums and tooth extractions, swollen joints,
poor lubrication and circulation, wave after wave
of viral infection, the occasional antibiotic-resistant
bacterial attack, usually urinary, and who knows
what internal organs are dividing and conquering
without mercy or cease, i.e. the wound that never heals.

It is wise not to overvalue your continued existence,
good not to be innumerate, unable to compare
a mere 80 years with say 6.0 x 109 or all of time
(to date) times the multiverse. Conversely,
it is interesting all of space and most of history is contained
in your mind (realizing of course it's just a map
of the cosmos not the cosmos itself, or is it?). I'm
unable to wrestle free, tongue in that cavity
and locked in my memories, so separate and disparate
from the biomass in the crosswalks, even my spouse.
Alone, so alone, even your doctor can only devote
limited thought to your situational mortality through
the redress of poetry - also a wound that never heals.

Snow for eternity, that's what this February's been.
All to the good, for someone it's the final February
so enjoy it to the extent you can. By that I mean joy.
Joy at birth. Joy at death. All joy. All times. Anyway,
that was Shakespeare's message: even tragedies are comedies.
May, a Buddhist, chants each morning.
Her husband, Marc, who's Jewish, plays league tennis.
Their son, Aaron, will soon make Eagle scout.
How does that relate to your wound that never heals?
Luck runs out. For D.H. Lawrence in New Mexico
or Ulysses S. Grant in Ohio or Yasujiro Ozu in
Tokyo or Satyajit Ray in Bombay or Rabindranath
Tagore in Bangalore or at the Battle of the Atlantic in the Azores.

The night is a poultice, winter or summer solstice.
My anonymity will not affect the anomie ghettoside
seeing for myself how season by season
vacations and accomplishments accumulate, late in life
and early on, sunrise over mountains or moonrise over Bronx.
Masturbator, prisoner of war. Hospice of the Holy Roman Empire.
Numerous blue notes: the 3 flat, 7 flat, 5 flat,
the 6 flat and the 2 flat too. I don't get
what Wallace Stevens means by imagination.
When groundhog shows up as a totem, there is opportunity
to explore the mystery of death without dying.
This then is the purpose of purposelessness (and of eating less)!
Now what about that wound that never heals.

The Skeptical Observer column in Scientific American
was somewhat alarming when he accepted a paranormal
explanation for how his wife's grandfather's inoperable
transistor radio played music from its hiding spot
in his sock drawer on, and only on, their wedding day.
Now I'll have to believe my father (or mother!) is watching me
perform private ****** acts with (or without) partners
or that they could even know my thoughts. Or aliens
are attending our committee meetings and making
perfectly reasonable decisions given the available information
and the world is rotating just fine without humans.
These possibilities - angels, ghosts, aliens - are better
than holocaust and genocide. In this way,
and only in this way, does doom become endurable.
The wound that never heals in the end is all you'll feel.

Can you teach me how to smoke,
At the indoor pool?
Cannabis and chlorine
On a night so cool.
I can ditch the white pills
Without crushing the moon,
If you can roll something up
Without killing the mood.
         What's left to prove
If it's just me and you?
I mean, you and I
Decide
If we have any rules.
We can feel, we can chill.
We can deal with the truth.
                   Cannabis and chlorine.
Fuse green with the blue.
Cannabis and chlorine.
A mixture of hues.
All you gotta do
Is make my lungs so confused.
Cannabis and chlorine,
When it's just me and you.
Can you teach me how to smoke
At the indoor pool?

Caint Complain
                       By Phyllis T.  Halle  February 26, 2006
Growing up in a tiny coal mining town in the hills of Eastern Kentucky,
I frequently heard a response out of the lips of stooped, arthritic miners, toothless women, old before their time,
wretchedly poor widows with six children to feed.
It was just a common reply to the courteous, "How are you?" -
"Caint complain."
The high pitched voices of those descendents of English, Scottish, German, Irish pioneers still echo in my ears and I wonder always at the tenacity, strength and wisdom which resounded firmly in those two words,
                                          "Caint Complain."
Very few people had indoor plumbing, telephones, cars or two pair of shoes. Health insurance, retirement plans, paid sick days, furnaces, pizzas, air conditioners, jet planes, paid vacations, job security, career planning were all unheard of unknowns.
When someone became ill, the ‘‘kindly old general practitioner would come to the house and dispense his little pills and words of encouragement and instruction, knowing the limitations of his skill and ability to heal.
Mothers and fathers still buried their little children who died from diphtheria, pneumonia, whooping cough, measles, diarrhea, croup ( a disorder known in later years as asthma).
Husbands buried wives who died in childbirth, at an alarming rate. "Caint Complain," they'd say gently, with a soft 'almost' smile and deeply troubled eyes.
Sanitation was fought for, vigorously, by hard muscled women, who scrubbed and washed, and swept and mopped.
They'd boiled the family’s clothes which had been worn for a week, in pots in the back yard, "to get ‘em clean."  
Killing germs was not in their vocabulary, but that is what they'd were doing. Ask that little old gal who was out in the yard, stirring the clothes around in boiling water, over an open fire, "How are you doin’?"  
                            "Caint Complain, " she would invariably say.
WHY couldn't they'd complain? Where did their tenacity come from?
Where did that philosophy of not complaining come from?
Where did they find the resolve to place dire, critical deprivation, hard labor and malnourishment behind them and place a smile on their faces and say
                                Caint Complain?

I knew some of those people when they had grown very old and faced birthdays in their late nineties. Without exception, they had the sweetest dispositions, most grateful hearts, kindest words and calmest old ages of any among the many I have known who reached that age!
When the pressures of their life had faded and they had nothing remaining that had to be done except to live out the final part of their life, they did not have a habit of complaint.
Some recent phone calls I have received were what prompted me to think about this. One right after another, friends called and for the first ten minutes of each call, I listened to a long list of complaints about the trials and travails my dear friend was suffering.
Each friend has: no financial worries, a wonderful primary care doctor, prescriptions to keep their heart pumping, eyes seeing, brain focusing, stomach digesting and body sleeping, each night.
They are protected from financial ruin, by medicare and/or HMO, social security checks, pensions, savings and inherited wealth. They have loving, devoted sons, daughters, nieces and nephews who keep in touch and are there for them.
They each one have lovely heated and cooled homes, apartments or condos with every convenience known to Americans; cars or taxi/bus services to get them out and around. More than that, each has beautiful memories which they can call upon to bring a smile to their face at any moment of the day or night. But somehow we find plenty to complain about.
Why haven't we formed the habit of Caint Complain?
Maybe the philosophy of always seeking more comfort, more possessions, more money, more- more- more- of everything, has driven us to achieve, accumulate and accomplish but it required us to never know what the word contentment means.
Contentment doesn't mean having everything at one’s fingertips. It doesn't mean lacking nothing. It certainly doesn't mean every dream and desire fulfilled.

Yet there are many who have enough of everything except the common sense to know when they really "Caint Complain."
Happiness is a fleeting moment of joy. Contentment is finding peace in what you have, what you are and what you have accomplished.
Having the serenity to know which one brings lasting goodness into your life is wisdom.
A SMILE IS THE KNIFE GOD GAVE US TO CUT THE SIZE OF OUR TROUBLES DOWN TO A BEARABLE LOAD.    
Lots of love and hugs, Phyllis

It was only important
to smile and hold still,
to lie down beside him
and to rest awhile,
to be folded up together
as if we were silk,
to sink from the eyes of mother
and not to talk.
The black room took us
like a cave or a mouth
or an indoor belly.
I held my breath
and daddy was there,
his thumbs, his fat skull,
his teeth, his hair growing
like a field or a shawl.
I lay by the moss
of his skin until
it grew strange. My sisters
will never know that I fall
out of myself and pretend
that Allah will not see
how I hold my daddy
like an old stone tree.

T'was never meant to be,
Never meant to last,
Mistakes yet again from the past
You sing them like a tune
From a time nearly forgotten
My heart now decayed, rotten

Through closed eyes
I see a dark, distorted paradise
Where perhaps they understand
Where perhaps they accept it
Accept me for who I am
For what I am, alas,
They do not, they cannot
For I am what they shall never understand
What they cannot stand, nor comprehend

Every time they fall in love
With little old me
They cannot help but wish to keep me
An indoor cat, they cannot trust
Jealousy, jealousy, it's never pretty
But I am not meant to be
Trapped indoors all of my life
I wish to roam, to be free
To return and still love my home
Even if it were more than one
One can have more than one home
And love them all the same;
This they can never understand

All well, I should have known
In part, perhaps I did
Merely waiting for the other shoe
To finally drop
Hit the floor
Echo, and echo...

- Jay M
August 12th, 2022

MAN
Staying indoors
Me wanting you on all fours on your floor
Miss the intensity that comes with waiting
Your heat is emanating from a safe distance
This is what it's like waiting to be set free
Craving what is unavailable

WOMAN
I like the wholesomeness of you
It make me think maybe there's some hope in the world
I haven't tried on your gentleness yet
Something about you
Says some humans are alright
Craving what might be available

The dusk sets its hasty way
On the bricks and alleyways
where gypsies are endowed
smoking, trashing and fly tipping
Cursing, gossiping and fighting
and it all passes like an oasis
as a monster evades time
as the scorched leaves greet
after all those year and seasons
The tree by the window has grown
having seen misery and laughter
drunken nights and loving days
****** dates and eventual transitions
The burden of truth, it caught my eyes
Captured the barrenness of my soul
it thirsts for a far away distance
those reachable mountains of fortune
It hungers for an embrace full of life
outgrowing the space by the window
tearing the netted curtained screen
Every time I see the that tree
I giggle and then smile a little bit more
as if captured by an angelic love

Prelude

This happened after Layla-Majnun were separated by Layla's dis-approving parents, family and community when these two LOVERz realized that true eternal LOVE had happened between them
After that - Majnun had become a mad wanderer singing songs about/for/of his Eternal LOVE for Layla
And on this side – Layla was given by her family a life of every comfort she desired. But Layla's heart was worried for Majnun’s well being.


Layla's Family Response:

Many a times Layla cried longing and missing Majnun
The family of Layla could not see Layla sad and sorrowful
To cheer Layla up the family often told her they loved her so much
They tried to cheer Layla with her favorite flowers and decorated her room with lots of beautifully scented flowers
They got famous singers from around the world  to come in the evening and sing songs in front of Layla to make her feel happy
They saw that Layla was part of every occasion and functions, every party family had. They organized events just to keep Layla feel good and make her part of every gathering
Everyone overtly LOVED Layla and respected her
Layla’s family often made many sweets that Layla liked
The family took Layla to excursions, far and away to the meadows and the mountains, to the springs and the oceans, to the forests and oasis - so that seeing nature Layla would forget Majnun
They often complimented her - How beautiful she is…; How nice she sings…; How well she is behaved…; and how intelligent she is…
Whenever Layla was in little good mood and when she talked a little, the family sat around her to eagerly listened to what Layla had to say
The parents of Layla made sure that Layla was not kept alone for a single moment. There was someone or the other - friends, mates, children or relatives surrounding Layla to give her company
Many a times Layla's parents invited guests who would bring Beautiful gifts and souvenirs for Layla from distant foreign lands
There were mentors, coaches, teachers hired to teach and upgrade different skills that are useful for Layla
The mother of Layla often told “Sorry” to Layla for not allowing her to meet Majnun. Though the sorry was sincere. it did not cheer Layla's heart because the dictate always remained: "Majnun is not the right one for you Layla"
In the house of Layla it was made mandatory that family members while leaving and entering the house would always say good bye and give a hug to Layla to make her feel so SPECIAL
Every now and then inside the house - there were religious sermons preached, religious scriptures read. The Maula and Maulavis recited verses - the morals, ethics, codes were taught; faith, belief, worship, prayers were made integral part of their life to make Layla feel devoted to God. They thought – when Layla understands Allah’s LOVE there won't be any need for Majnun’s LOVE
The family invited Layla's friends to play - indoor and outdoors games to get her involved in some sort of hobby so that it would keep Layla busy and thus forget about Majnun
Some days if Layla did something on her own - the family members would praise her every little efforts and celebrate it to create an atmosphere of happiness around her for every little achievement in Layla’s life
The family had created that “Halo” around Layla's image in the village/ town. She was known throughout the land as the most decent, gorgeously beautiful, well-educated, noble, kind fun-loving girl. Everyone in their town LOVED Layla. All these were done so that they could find the the most suitable richest PRINCE for Layla to get married to...
To make Layla feel good and confident the family often asked her opinions and included her in all family and business decision making
To make Layla feel attached to something else, the parents gifted her with - a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a pigeon and other exotic birds. So that by LOVING them Layla will forget Majnun
They also filled the house with all sorts of books that  interested Layla. They thought while reading the good books - Layla will forget Majnun
Not a week went where Layla was not gifted and adorned with - diamonds, pearl, stones, gold and silver jewelry

Each and every person who came in touch with Layla was so nice and sweet towards her, just to make sure that  Layla is kept busy with things in LIFE. The whole idea is to keep Layla involved in different things of work and life so that the LOVE for Majnun is completely forgotten amidst enjoyments of chasing success, career, work, wealth and a partner etc.


Layla's Sorrow:

But Layla was different…!

Layla had everything a girl wanted
Wealth, education, family,
Friends, relatives, company
Fruits, sweets, flowers
Game, animals, toys
Trips, Travel, occasions
Festivals, events, get-togethers

But

Layla's heart kept beating for Majnun
She was always worried of Majnun
"Where will be my Majnun wandering today?"
"What will he be doing right now?"
"Did he get some food to eat?"
“Did he sleep well..?" etc.

If anyone on the village street
Got a little bit of news of Majnun
Layla ran out to listen to what it was

If someone was reciting
The new songs Majnun had sung today
Layla carefully listened to those lyrics
And wrote them in her secret dairy.
She read them again and again
In the candle light of solitary darkness

With tears rolling from her eyes

Day-night, afternoon-evenings
Waking, sleeping, eating, sitting
Layla only thought of her Majnun

Blessed with every luxury of life
Yet Layla felt so helpless about
Her inability to go to meet Majnun
So that Majnun can see…

Layla's eyes, Layla's face
Those lips, that smile
The smell of Layla….
The way she looks at Majnun
The LOVE in Layla’s soul
Pouring out for Majnun

Layla's knew very well that
Majnun's only dreams was having
One glimpse of his BELOVEDz Layla

This cruelty of the world & everyone
That they and their norms
Stopped Layla to reach out to Majnun
This broke Layla’s heart into pieces
It killed Layla from inside more
Than it killed Majnun
In his longing for Layla

That was Layla's sorrow...
This is Layla’z sorrow

End Note:
Only the one who feels LOVE,
Only the one who know LOVE
Will understand Layla's sorrow
Of seeing the cruel punishment the world had given
To her LOVERz Majnun
By making him an useless mad wanderer
- Who only chants Layla's name
And sings Layla's praise

I never put away all of these socks,
there's just something so final about putting away
all the socks. When I close the drawer after putting away
the clothes, its like saying "remain here for awhile,
for I do not plan to wear you again for some time".

But putting away all of the socks
is like saying "stay here,
I'm not going anywhere". What if
something pops up though?
It gets cold, a friend calls
with exciting plans and I must say,
"No sorry, I just put away all of my socks"

Whats the point in putting them all away if I just
go right back and take some out? Might as well
leave a pair or two by the shoes, at the ready.

Plus whenever I put away all the socks
I find the stragglers, the lone socks, the swiss socks,
the worn out ones and then I have to make difficult
decisions. Weighing the severity of the tears against
how uncomfortable they'll be. Designating indoor only
socks and how many more wears a sock can receive before,
garbage. And every time I put on a sock like this I shed a tear
because socks don't receive burials. Socks are easily replaced.
It's just not worth the trouble to put away all these socks.

the story went as though
she'd always known the sea
and trusted in its depth
to mellow any ill, caress her
open lovingkind as in a dream.
and dream she would upon the waves,
having settled into floating reverie.
she'd close her eyes and inhale being
there among herself caressing only
ocean, only breath, all sunlit space
to draw her earthly trials gently out.
softened beachside noise would fade
and let alone her ears to hear
the water oneness dipping clear
and deeper in the troughs, for distance
from the stranded holidays,
the beachy noise of seaside frills
and bear her boyancy to rest
in lilting motion, peaceful cresting sleep
atop an intercontinental,
earthsize water bed.
her trust profoundly spanned
the trans-atlantic rift
and any rift to set apart her undulating
ancient ocean mastery. moon
and sun were kneading vastly where
her snores were lost in starfish whispers balancing
the tidal volume set
to always fill and keep afloat,
or otherwise to wake in
sputters and a salty throat.
her body settles into swinging comfort
napping over waves so deep the shore recedes...
... what bright, kind, clarity cascaded in your dreams?
what heart you had, embracing open quiddity,
never sinking nowness breath alert in lucid sleep
and water surface mystic skyward shallow course?
to merfolk gazing up in wonderment
you limply crossed their bouncing sky,
just another flight of fancy in a world of mystery?
did you dream you were a whalesong
sphering out to carry sadness sonorously? did you
school the many impulse-thoughts to clump and flee
the jaws of time? did you bask in light
and find a shining womb of self
to nurture once again and labor out anew?
did gravity make sense to you?
i float sometimes and live that question true.
sleeping far you drifted out and out and in and out of view
and whistles drowned in gathered drama fear
'my grandma! my grandma!'
screamed my cousin at the lifeguard
sweating ******* and leaping over stroke to spash
into your side a breathless shouting mess for you to calm
and ask 'what's wrong?' and angle slowly back to shore
in fits of giggles, bubble laughter at commotion's reach.
they blink in crowds, standing herdlike on the beach.

and now you swim your last,
another summer day.
like any other i awoke
and fed you eggs, so soft
     (at first it wrinkled my nose),
but taste is strange, and slimy works
just fine sometimes,
like in the absence of teeth.
she never liked her dentures,
     (she said she couldn't taste her food)
and gummed her frozen dinner meals with a smile,
like it was the greatest thing in the world.
     (in fact she'd often say, 'that was the best meal i had ever had',
     and with a force that made me happy to suspend my doubt)
and who am i, judging
that which you select? your pills,
your diapers and your vote,
your shows, your nursery rhymes,
your crown manipulation,
your age?
i use abjection well,
as something not unlike a whetstone for denial.
performing daily rituals i abhor
i retrain and edit, revising social eyes:
dilapidated fictions, safer norms
and mores tailored to a loan
with interest from the self.

she didn't call herself a 'nudist,'
though she lived beyond the fence
living **** for decades saying
'i'll never leave, i love my home.'
we played dominoes 'til noon
'another kind of indoor game, one on a side'
her interpretation of my being there
changed soon, like my aversion
for the liquid yoke she buttered with a spoon.
our neighbors loved her and i,
and to meander down our path,
lay their towels and sit
like all there was to do was visit.
lunched,
she hobbles from her plants back to the sink,
and filling the cat dish, stands
century-old arms akimbo
in the doorway, with a sigh to wake the sun.
being of caretaking was never so fun.
holding hands i help her over roots,
around the rocky sections, through
the easy path and level now
she hobbles sure, the cane a decoration
for her pride at being old and young
at heart and quick at stories overtold
in grooves to satisfy the sense of time.
greetings shower us with beaming smiles,
inching to the sandy edge. denuding,
joining everyone, we stand engulfed
in air. modern digambar to don
a vaster cloth of letting be.
skinny dipping grandma, and me.
the water slips around
her fraglile skin, human driftwood
knotted with a smile.
a grand mother slipping through akashic cracks
to undiscover friends their seeing core.
they wonder at the shore
of hoary plight
and wonder on, once we're gone.

Honesty can be the wrong policy sometimes
Honesty can get you killed if you're not careful
Doing the'right' thing can sometimes be the 'wrong' thing to do
Being the 'good little boy' doesn't always get you home safely
When we were in our teens we lived close to a large holiday camp
And we'd get summer jobs there
My brother had a job as a swimming pool attendant cleaning swimming pools,
He got me a job working alongside him,
There was another guy too, but he kept going missing and it wasn't long before he got the sack
So that just left the two of us.

There were two pools, an indoor and an outdoor
With the indoor, a vacuum with ropes attached would be lowered onto the bottom of the pool
One Pool attendant would stand on one side of the pool
While the other would stand on the other
And between them they'd pull it back and forth across the bottom of the pool
Going slowly up the pool in increments till the whole pool had been covered/ cleaned.
For the outdoor pool we had a machine, it was a heavy thing with wheels
You'd attach these big poles to it then lower it into the pool
And then push it out with the pole
And then bring it back in with the pole
You'd do this the whole way along.
My brother told me he once lost the machine in the pool
And he said it was a hell of a job retrieving it
And the boss had run him over the coals over it and warned him not to let it happen again.

Anyway I'd only been in the job 2 or 3 weeks when my brother, he decided to take a day off
He left me no instructions what to do
So I found myself all alone there this evening
(We did an evening shift)
When the pool closed I got out my bucket and mop and cleaned all the decks, all the tiled floors surrounding the pool
After that I said to myself, I'm the Pool Attendant, it's my job to clean the Pools
I'll get the machine out just like my brother
(I'd only seen my brother use it once)
So there I am wheeling this big machine out
And I'm proud of myself, it's like Look at me, I'm the Pool Attendant
And then suddenly there's this big flight of stairs going down to the ground floor where the outdoor pool is
And I'm thinking, 'I wonder how do you get this thing down the stairs'
There's no one around to help
I think 'I'll just put it out a bit over the stairs then I'll lift it up and lead it down on its wheels, just like leading a dog"
So I push the wheels out over the edge a bit then I raise the machine
The moment I do this though, the whole machine takes off down the stairs with me holding onto it
Bump, bump, bump the whole way down a very large flight of stairs
Lucky there was no one coming up the stairs or it would have been like a bowling alley.
So I end up at the bottom of the stairs in a heap all bruised and battered
Suddenly this girl runs in and she's all over me
"Are you alright, are you alright!!! You're after falling down the stairs. I seen it, it was awful. Do you need a doctor!"
Of course, I'm embarrassed more than anything else, I thank her for her concern
But assure her I'm alright
I stand up and brush myself off
Then I think, "Well at least I got it down the stairs"
The girl, she persists, Are you sure you're alright, are you sure you don't need a doctor
I thank the girl again for her concern
Then I straighten myself and think "I'm the Pool Attendant. Gotta clean the Pool, I gotta do my job".
So I wheel the machine out into where the outdoor pool is
I plug it in and it starts making this whirring noise
Then I attach one of the poles to it
And then I put it sitting up on the edge of the pool ready to lower it in
Across from me there's a lot of windows looking down upon the Pool
I think to myself there's probably some people watching me... the pressure is on
Suddenly I get nervous, I think the last time I put this machine over the edge of something
It took off and took me with it
I could get drowned here if I'm not careful
And I can't swim
Then I think about what my brother had told me
That he'd once lost the machine in the Pool
And how it caused a lot of trouble,
And y'know the sad thing was it was this that seemed to scare me more
The thought of losing their precious machine in the pool
Than the possibility of me drowning
Finally I decided I couldn't do it, or shouldn't do it
I took the machine down and unplugged it, and removed the pole
I wheeled it back, I got the guy who cleaned the toilets
To give me a hand carrying it up the stairs,
I put the machine to bed.
Looking back I was glad I had the courage to say "No! I wasn't sure I could do this"
In those days there was no such thing as... well, as self worth
People had no worth at all it seemed
The only important thing was to hold onto your job and probably not make a fool of yourself I suppose.

As I sat there, the indoor Pool was very ghostly looking in the dark... in the shadows
With the lights from the street below reflected in the waters (the Pool had see through glass windows).  I found the scene very quietening...magical almost.

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

Are you the type of person
Preferring to be under a roof
Or wandering in the garden
Or galloping out on the hoof

Are you desperate to escape
To the sunshine
The beach or leafy glade
Or sitting on the sofa
Drinking whisky and lemonade

Do you love to look out the window
But pleased to be warm inside
When others are walking in wellies
And you are safe in the dry

Is your dream to have a posh bedroom
A shower and toilet ensuite
Or prefer to be on a mountain
With long grass round your feet

Is your pleasure the feel of the spray
When waves break on the rocks
Or the smell of bread in the oven
As you stand in your joggers and socks

Do you like to get up in the morning
And put on your running kit
Escape to the footpaths or roadways
Or sit on the sofa and knit

I expect the thought of a bike ride
Would not be everyone's thing
When theres chance to go to the bathroom
To stand in the shower and sing

The difference from indoor to outdoor
Shows each of us as unique
In the kitchen or in the garden
In the chair or up the creek

Some of us like to be walking
Or leaping over a gate
The wind and the rain don't deter us
Arriving home quite late

While some prefer the safety
Of the rooms within the house
Things in the warmth of the homestead
Hiding away like a mouse.

In truth the split isn't easy
From indoor to outdoor you see
The weather decides for it mostly
Unless you are a ***** like me!

The following is a very powerful dream I had the night of May 15th, 2009. I don’t often have dreams because my vivid imagination means I daydream a lot. I am seeking interpretations from anyone. Can you help me discover what it means…?

I am sitting in an auditorium. I am with my father, mother and brother, Shawn. The presenters are giving away tickets, one to a Cavs game, another to Cedar Point. I chose Cedar Point.
Instantly the environment changes. I am attending a huge social event party in a large multi-level office building. I am attending with 3 nameless, faceless friends. The party features 7 themed rooms. The first was an entry way similar to the one at my middle school. The second was a cross between the Cleveland Zoo (indoor parts) and an Indian bazaar market. There were tanks with lizards, salamanders, sharks, and sting rays. All had a price sticker on them. The third was a parlor with computers. I never discovered the other 4 rooms.
At this party, I knew Lisa was attending. I also knew she had a magical crystal that split her into 2 people. However, due to the 7 rooms she was accidentally split into 7. Each of the 7 Lisa’s was a different color (clothing), each representing a different personality characteristic.
The first Lisa I ran into was the black one in the entry way. When she saw me, she exclaimed, “Oh, ****!” and ran. It was shortly after that that I realized that she and the white one were evil. They were trying to **** me. I killed the white one. I do not remember how or why. Next I started running from the black one. I was sure that it had already killed my friends and I was next. She chased me into the parlor where I confronted her. When I turned around I realized this “Black Lisa” had turned into me. I killed it by slamming its head into a laptop screen.
I ran from the parlor into a stairwell. Here I encountered the red, purple, and yellow Lisa’s. These, I was sure were the good ones. I wanted to protect these 3 Lisa’s from the other 2 (colors unknown), that I was sure were trying to hurt us. I paid most attention to the red one. It was then, that my friends returned, coming down the hall with one slung over the shoulders of the other two. All three were alive and well.
Then I woke up…



Ryan’s Interpretation

The Dark Muse Dream

The following is a very powerful dream I had the night of May 15th, 2009. I don’t often have dreams because my vivid imagination means I daydream a lot. I am seeking interpretations from anyone. Can you help me discover what it means…?

I am sitting in an auditorium. The womb or an early family home.
I am with my father, mother and brother, Shawn. This scenario represents the beginning, my childhood and early family life before Lisa.  It also portrays quiet desperation.
The presenters are giving away tickets, one to a Cavs game, another to Cedar Point. Cedar Point is circumstantial.  I was going there later that month.
I chose Cedar Point.  The choice represents the choices I had to make in my life to go from child to man.
Instantly the environment changes. The 360 my life took after I met Lisa.
I am attending a huge social event party in a large multi-level office building.  Suddenly I had a social life and friends.  I was no longer an unknown and alone.  She brought me out of my shell.  The multi level building represents the complexity of my life with Lisa.
I am attending with 3 nameless, faceless friends. The party features 7 themed rooms. The first was an entry way similar to the one at my middle school. This was the familiar.
The second was a cross between the Cleveland Zoo (indoor parts) and an Indian bazaar market. This was the bizarre, strange, and new.  These first two rooms represented the outside world.
There were tanks with lizards, salamanders, sharks, and sting rays.   These creatures represent the untouchable, i.e. slimy.
All had a price sticker on them. They are for sale.  Nothing is sacred.
The third was a parlor with computers. The parlor represents my sanctuary, calming, and relaxing.  Yet the computer was one of many causes of my divorce.  To Lisa, me on the computer meant neglect.  The parlor also represented home with Lisa, hidden from the rest of the world.  This is where all the fighting and problems occurred.
I never discovered the other 4 rooms.  
At this party, I knew Lisa was attending. I also knew she had a magical crystal that split her into 2 people. Lisa was 2 completely different people.
However, due to the 7 rooms she was accidentally split into 7.  This represents the 7 deadly sins.
Each of the 7 Lisa’s was a different color (clothing), each representing a different personality characteristic. In my world, color represents emotion.
The first Lisa I ran into was the black one in the entry way. When she saw me, she exclaimed, “Oh, ****!” and ran. She is scared of me or ashamed.
It was shortly after that that I realized that she and the white one were evil.  White means my hidden anger towards Lisa while black is my guilt.
They were trying to **** me. Both my anger and guilt are killing me from the inside out.
I killed the white one. I do not remember how or why. Next I started running from the black one. I was sure that it had already killed my friends and I was next. The “Lisas” or more accurately, me destroyed all I had left (my friends).
She chased me into the parlor where I confronted her. When I turned around I realized this “Black Lisa” had turned into me. I was really running from and angry at myself.
I killed it by slamming its head into a laptop screen.  The act of slamming the head represents the violence I am guilty of and fear I am capable of.  Breaking the computer destroyed that which destroyed my happiness.
I ran from the parlor into a stairwell. The stairwell represents the path to my new life.
Here I encountered the red, purple, and yellow Lisa’s.   The good parts of Lisa I wanted to protect.
These, I was sure were the good ones. I wanted to protect these 3 Lisa’s from the other 2 (colors unknown), that I was sure were trying to hurt us.  I have an apprehension something else out there will hurt me again.
I paid most attention to the red one. Red means love.
It was then, that my friends returned, coming down the hall with one slung over the shoulders of the other two. Slung over the shoulders means a shoulder to lean on.
All three were alive and well. They were there, surprisingly, when I thought I was alone.
Then I woke up…

I

What’s become of Waring
Since he gave us all the slip,
Chose land-travel or seafaring,
Boots and chest, or staff and scrip,
Rather than pace up and down
Any longer London-town?

Who’d have guessed it from his lip,
Or his brow’s accustomed bearing,
On the night he thus took ship,
Or started landward?—little caring
For us, it seems, who supped together,
(Friends of his too, I remember)
And walked home through the merry weather,
The snowiest in all December;
I left his arm that night myself
For what’s-his-name’s, the new prose-poet,
That wrote the book there, on the shelf—
How, forsooth, was I to know it
If Waring meant to glide away
Like a ghost at break of day?
Never looked he half so gay!

He was prouder than the devil:
How he must have cursed our revel!
Ay, and many other meetings,
Indoor visits, outdoor greetings,
As up and down he paced this London,
With no work done, but great works undone,
Where scarce twenty knew his name.
Why not, then, have earlier spoken,
Written, bustled? Who’s to blame
If your silence kept unbroken?
“True, but there were sundry jottings,
Stray-leaves, fragments, blurrs and blottings,
Certain first steps were achieved
Already which—(is that your meaning?)
Had well borne out whoe’er believed
In more to come!” But who goes gleaning
Hedge-side chance-blades, while full-sheaved
Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o’erweening
Pride alone, puts forth such claims
O’er the day’s distinguished names.

Meantime, how much I loved him,
I find out now I’ve lost him:
I, who cared not if I moved him,
Henceforth never shall get free
Of his ghostly company,
His eyes that just a little wink
As deep I go into the merit
Of this and that distinguished spirit—
His cheeks’ raised colour, soon to sink,
As long I dwell on some stupendous
And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)
Monstr’-inform’-ingens-horrend-ous
Demoniaco-seraphic
Penman­’s latest piece of graphic.
Nay, my very wrist grows warm
With his dragging weight of arm!
E’en so, swimmingly appears,
Through one’s after-supper musings,
Some lost Lady of old years,
With her beauteous vain endeavour,
And goodness unrepaid as ever;
The face, accustomed to refusings,
We, puppies that we were… Oh never
Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled
Being aught like false, forsooth, to?
Telling aught but honest truth to?
What a sin, had we centupled
Its possessor’s grace and sweetness!
No! she heard in its completeness
Truth, for truth’s a weighty matter,
And, truth at issue, we can’t flatter!
Well, ’tis done with: she’s exempt
From damning us through such a sally;
And so she glides, as down a valley,
Taking up with her contempt,
Past our reach; and in, the flowers
Shut her unregarded hours.


Oh, could I have him back once more,
This Waring, but one half-day more!
Back, with the quiet face of yore,
So hungry for acknowledgment
Like mine! I’d fool him to his bent!
Feed, should not he, to heart’s content?
I’d say, “to only have conceived
Your great works, though they ne’er make progress,
Surpasses all we’ve yet achieved!”
I’d lie so, I should be believed.
I’d make such havoc of the claims
Of the day’s distinguished names
To feast him with, as feasts an ogress
Her sharp-toothed golden-crowned child!
Or, as one feasts a creature rarely
Captured here, unreconciled
To capture; and completely gives
Its pettish humours licence, barely
Requiring that it lives.

Ichabod, Ichabod,
The glory is departed!
Travels Waring East away?
Who, of knowledge, by hearsay,
Reports a man upstarted
Somewhere as a God,
Hordes grown European-hearted,
Millions of the wild made tame
On a sudden at his fame?
In Vishnu-land what Avatar?
Or who, in Moscow, toward the Czar,
With the demurest of footfalls
Over the Kremlin’s pavement, bright
With serpentine and syenite,
Steps, with five other generals,
That simultaneously take *****,
For each to have pretext enough
To kerchiefwise unfurl his sash
Which, softness’ self, is yet the stuff
To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,
And leave the grand white neck no ****?
Waring, in Moscow, to those rough
Cold northern natures borne, perhaps,
Like the lambwhite maiden dear
From the circle of mute kings,
Unable to repress the tear,
Each as his sceptre down he flings,
To Dian’s fane at Taurica,
Where now a captive priestess, she alway
Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech
With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach,
As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands
Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands
Where bred the swallows, her melodious cry
Amid their barbarous twitter!
In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!
Ay, most likely, ’tis in Spain
That we and Waring meet again—
Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane
Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid
All fire and shine—abrupt as when there’s slid
Its stiff gold blazing pall
From some black coffin-lid.
Or, best of all,
I love to think
The leaving us was just a feint;
Back here to London did he slink;
And now works on without a wink
Of sleep, and we are on the brink
Of something great in fresco-paint:
Some garret’s ceiling, walls and floor,
Up and down and o’er and o’er
He splashes, as none splashed before
Since great Caldara Polidore:
Or Music means this land of ours
Some favour yet, to pity won
By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers,—
“Give me my so long promised son,
Let Waring end what I begun!”
Then down he creeps and out he steals
Only when the night conceals
His face—in Kent ’tis cherry-time,
Or, hops are picking; or, at prime
Of March, he wanders as, too happy,
Years ago when he was young,
Some mild eve when woods grew sappy,
And the early moths had sprung
To life from many a trembling sheath
Woven the warm boughs beneath;
While small birds said to themselves
What should soon be actual song,
And young gnats, by tens and twelves,
Made as if they were the throng
That crowd around and carry aloft
The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure,
Out of a myriad noises soft,
Into a tone that can endure
Amid the noise of a July noon,
When all God’s creatures crave their boon,
All at once and all in tune,
And get it, happy as Waring then,
Having first within his ken
What a man might do with men,
And far too glad, in the even-glow,
To mix with your world he meant to take
Into his hand, he told you, so—
And out of it his world to make,
To contract and to expand
As he shut or oped his hand.
Oh, Waring, what’s to really be?
A clear stage and a crowd to see!
Some Garrick—say—out shall not he
The heart of Hamlet’s mystery pluck
Or, where most unclean beasts are rife,
Some Junius—am I right?—shall tuck
His sleeve, and out with flaying-knife!
Some Chatterton shall have the luck
Of calling Rowley into life!
Some one shall somehow run amuck
With this old world, for want of strife
Sound asleep: contrive, contrive
To rouse us, Waring! Who’s alive?
Our men scarce seem in earnest now:
Distinguished names!—but ’tis, somehow
As if they played at being names
Still more distinguished, like the games
Of children. Turn our sport to earnest
With a visage of the sternest!
Bring the real times back, confessed
Still better than our very best!

II

“When I last saw Waring…”
(How all turned to him who spoke—
You saw Waring? Truth or joke?
In land-travel, or seafaring?)

“…We were sailing by Triest,
Where a day or two we harboured:
A sunset was in the West,
When, looking over the vessel’s side,
One of our company espied
A sudden speck to larboard.
And, as a sea-duck flies and swins
At once, so came the light craft up,
With its sole lateen sail that trims
And turns (the water round its rims
Dancing, as round a sinking cup)
And by us like a fish it curled,
And drew itself up close beside,
Its great sail on the instant furled,
And o’er its planks, a shrill voice cried
(A neck as bronzed as a Lascar’s)
‘Buy wine of us, you English Brig?
Or fruit, tobacco and cigars?
A Pilot for you to Triest?
Without one, look you ne’er so big,
They’ll never let you up the bay!
We natives should know best.’
I turned, and ‘just those fellows’ way,’
Our captain said, ‘The long-shore thieves
Are laughing at us in their sleeves.’

“In truth, the boy leaned laughing back;
And one, half-hidden by his side
Under the furled sail, soon I spied,
With great grass hat, and kerchief black,
Who looked up, with his kingly throat,
Said somewhat, while the other shook
His hair back from his eyes to look
Their longest at us; then the boat,
I know not how, turned sharply round,
Laying her whole side on the sea
As a leaping fish does; from the lee
Into the weather, cut somehow
Her sparkling path beneath our bow;
And so went off, as with a bound,
Into the rose and golden half
Of the sky, to overtake the sun,
And reach the shore, like the sea-calf
Its singing cave; yet I caught one
Glance ere away the boat quite passed,
And neither time nor toil could mar
Those features: so I saw the last
Of Waring!”—You? Oh, never star
Was lost here, but it rose afar!
Look East, where whole new thousands are!
In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

They meet
They greet
No common hobbies till later
But one common friend they had
No one was sure why they even met?
Not at least the two of them
Soon became friends
Exchanged texts
Later thoughts
Unexpectedly bumped into one another a lot
Maybe it was a sign from the Lord
They were meant to be after all?
Soon shared the same feelings
Became the un-named home for each other
She gave him comfort while he made her smile again
Still they didn’t label their bond as anything exclusive
But inside she knew
Maybe he did too
But neither of them opened up
Until she broke the ice
But too late, because he had taken a step to break her heart
He called her his best friend
She had quite a hint
What was going on
But couldn’t completely move on
Not because she had any grudge
But because she was too broken now
Not by him
But by love she was always destroyed

It never meant anything did it?
Backed off for a while
From him, love and maybe a bit of her life
She got someone too
Never felt the same but maybe cause the feelings were too new
The two of them became friends again
But all in vain
The secrets of the past unfolded
Let some people down
And her ‘someone’ left her alone
But came back in a while
Worked on things
More on feelings
And soon he was pushed completely out of sight
And blamed not by her but by her actions
Amidst all this some bad experiences took place
‘He would have been so caring in such a case’
She thought
A lot
But just kept mum
Accepting the present is right
That’s what she thinks at the time
Love is different this time maybe
Sweet and sour or salty
But deep inside her feelings she couldn’t ****
He still had a place in her heart not completely, but against her will
She gets love
But not the same type
She’s respected
Maybe
Or not
I don’t know
He’s happy she thinks
He was nice
His girl is too
Really caring he was maybe still he do
Pushed me away
Lied and ran
To protect my honor
Not like others who care about their ego more
She kept thinking in her mind’s indoor

Maybe she’ll meet him again someday
When they will both be able to actually meet
But not only to greet
To unite as one
Only if possible
She wishes still
Only if she had taken that step before
Their love could have been eternal
And would have won!

But till that day
He didn’t know her
She didn’t either
They just existed in a parallel universe
Nothing more than known-strangers!

I am
Sitting in the sun
Eating store-bought chocolate pudding
Next to one who calls me a friend,
I cannot say the same.
The sun is warmer,
The pudding sweeter...
And the company is almost excruciating.
But,
Eating indoor pudding
Is nothing but bland.
And for all that she ******* about everything incessantly,
She is still warmer than the abandoned hall.

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The garden gnomes with frocks on,
They're sat in the room at the front of the house,
Fishing rods in hand,
They came in because of the chilly wind, blasting round their socks,
The fish pond's overflowing after all the rain,
The neighbours were much too noisy,
Partied in the garden, every night and every day.
And here they go again.
They're hungry, no fish to catch in the lounge.
(C) Livvi

Clothed up to the max
I enter the garage to mount my indoor bike tracks
On a digital road we drift
As we press Go on the biking game "Zwift'

Ride fast, ride free
No need to watch out for the tree
As the game takes us on a journey
Hey "ride on' there's Bernie

The sweat builds to a stream
I race on in my digital dream
Watopia world provide us with freedom
A place to gather, a fellow biker's Eden

Our signal is poor
when indoors
ceilings caught us off
we are left with small thought.

When revealed to the sky
and looking into it's enormousness
we taste the universes endlessness
outside
there we think large

The electricity
in that moment,
when your hand first
brushed past mine,
could have lit up New York City
for the night.

I could have lived in that moment.
Plugged in.
Turned on.

But, in the same way we got used to
light switches and indoor plumbing,
I got used to your touch.

What I wouldn't give
to go back to candlesticks and outhouses
for just one night
so that when you reach for my hand tomorrow,
I won't be jaded by the light that now seems
so perfectly ordinary.

The rain that fell on the night was of the type *** plants like,
it has stopped the air is mild, and the flowers smiles except the lemon tree
that is born grumpy and bears bitter fruit, which incidentally is good
with fried fish and it refreshes otherwise lame dishes, say fish cakes with
boiled potatoes, a meal crying out for something bitter to hide
the Norwegian boredom food like seeing Oslo's municipal building
ten times a day. My wife has watered the indoor plants that were green
with envy not being allowed to go outside.
For lunch we are having soup, it has too much pepper in it and again
I have to ask the lemon tree for help as roses are pretty but useless.

I didn't expect it
but in that dark basement
of some strangers house
coated in a blanket of dance rhythms
veins running with fire
arteries pumping chemicals
you chose me
we danced until I can't remember

but then I found us outside
walking back to your dorm
my arm around you
protecting you from the cold winter night
I never wanted that walk to end
cars rushed past us,
and could see how happy I was
we got back to dorm commons
our small party the only inhabitants
she got on the floor
flat on her back
so I took our coats
rolled them into a pillow
and place them under her head
with my arm comfortably back around you
my favorite muscle memory
looking at that ceiling
not speaking,
not having to
caught in the magnificence
of stars which
were for our eyes only

Hey Papa, it's me. It's been a while. I get it. I don't remember your voice anymore. I forgot Nanny's a long time ago, but I kinda hoped I'd be able to hang on to yours. You turned 79 yesterday. We had chocolate cake from Haggen, the kind you like. I couldn't eat any. But it had a snowman on it. You would've liked it.
I'm almost 17 now. There's a lot of things I wish I could say to you. A lot of things I wish you could say to me. I only knew you for 10 years. I'm jealous that Kellie knew you for 16. She got more time with you, more trips to Long Beach with you than I ever did. She got more time with Nanny too. Much more time. I only got 6 years with her. When I think about it, she was almost a stranger. I don't even remember her accent. I didn't even know she had one. Dads impersonations in stories aren't enough for me. His impersonations of you aren't either. They make me laugh but I hate laughing at people I don't really know.
If I really didn't know you it might make it easier on me. You'd really be a stranger. But you weren't. I hugged you and spent time at your house. I remember your cats and your TV and your pile of firewood. I remember our dish of York Peppermint Patties. I remember the piles of leaves in your yard that Kellie and I would jump in and I remember your tiny lake. I remember our treehouse. It was really Kellie's treehouse. But I liked to think I'd get my own one day. I didn't.

You wore think glasses and you never took off your hat. You smoked for 60 years and my Dad was your only child. You had 4 step sons that you raised but I don't know them all. I never met Michael. Did Nanny cry when Michael was born that way? Did she blame herself? Or the nuns at the hospital who crossed her legs until the doctor got there? Could she feel Michael struggling for air? He died at 38. He really is a stranger. Uncle Al lives in Maine, I haven't seen him since you left us. Uncle John used to live in Marysville but he and Aunt Pamm live in California now. He's only my second favorite uncle because he's really the only other one I knew. He's in remission from lung cancer. He still smokes. I'm not sure what he's trying to get rid of by doing it but it's not cancer. Aunt Pamm is a Buhddist I think. I don't really know either of them.
Uncle Brian and Aunt Terri came to visit on Tuesday. After a couple cigarettes Dad and Brian started talking, like always. They sat there and shared memories as if it was just them in the room. We all watched like they were on TV. They talked about you and Nanny. I laughed and remembered little about you and even less about her.

Kellies married now. His name is Tim. You'd have really liked him. He's tough and funny and kind. He hikes and knows how to weld and forge and build things. I was always jealous of her, you know. She had the boys, and the height, and the talent. She's a better artist and a better singer. She learned more from you than I ever could. She always wanted to. I wanted to play with my toys and watch TV while you taught her how to split a log and identify plants and grow carrots and use a machete. I hate myself for that. I'm the indoor cat that gets fat and drains your bank account at the vet, Kellie was the outdoor cat that brought you rats and squirrels and knew how to hunt. I know you loved both of us, but I wish I would've been there with you like she was.

I wish I hadn't ever seen you cough of blood at the dinner table. I wish you'd lived longer, to see me in my formative years, to tell me all the stories Dad tries to. I wish you could've told me what you thought about Nanny getting baptized on her hospital bed weeks before she left. I wonder if that had any affect on you before you left. I wish I'd known if you missed her. I know you did, I would've liked to hear you tell me.
I wish you could've met Ryan. You'd like him too. He's funny and sweet and lovely, he's witty enough to keep up with you. And he loves me. I wish you could see it.

I know you loved me, no matter what kind of cat I was. I know life was always hard for you. I know your sons gave you hell and I know you lost your brother and I know you had it rough and I know you watched your dreams get crushed over and over but you were, for the time I knew you, an amazing grandfather. My first thought of you is always a hazy ghost at the edge of my life but that's not true. You were always there for me. I would sit on your lap every Christmas while you read me The Night Before Christmas. You gave me presents, good ones, meaningful ones. You built me a dollhouse. You slipped the Sunday comic strips from your newspaper into my cubby at Sunday School every single week. Somehow. You made Kellie and I a treehouse and a little boat and a little plane. That plane is in my room now. You came over for dinner every week after Nanny died and you ate with us and laughed and hugged me goodbye. The week you died, maybe even the day before, Dad led me down the hallway to your room, to say goodbye. You were weeping like a child and you hugged me so tight and told me you loved me. Your hands were thick and calloused and heavy. The wedding ring that was on your finger, and the one that was on Nannys are both with me now. I take them out sometimes and hold them. I can't tell if the smell of cigarette smoke on them is real or just a fading memory.

You were a blessing on my life, in the way I must have seemed a blessing to yours. I know you and Nanny are together again, I simply do. I know I will see you again, Tom Hazen. And when Dad tells the story about your Jedi powers, or the stort about Nannys time as a cocktail waitress, I'll laugh and I won't feel like I'm laughing at strangers. I love you too.

There was a child went forth everyday;
And the first object she look’d upon, that object she became;
And that object became part of her for the day, or a certain part of
The day, or for many stretching cycles of years.

The dew laden grass became part of this child
And the fresh daisies and lightly scented lilacs and
the song of the morning sparrow,
And the crisp air, the mud puddles and the tall, tall tress that rained water droplets, when the wind passed,
And the magic world within the reeds, waiting for a curious someone to discover all the twists and turns and available hiding spaces.
And the yellow skunk cabbage and weeping willows, with their gracious locks—all became part of her

The golden grassy haze became part of her,
And the anthills poking up from the red Earth,
And the shaded creek, loosely singing.
And the freshly picked strawberries, dirtying any white shirt.
And the content busker sharing his music and stuttering his words, in a most peculiar manner,
And the passing grandmother walking hand in hand with her granddaughter
And the Jamaican man kissing his pipe and the funny odor that followed
And the old Italians bantering about soccer outside small cafes and coffee shops, that dotted the street like lanterns on a string
And all the changes of city and country, wherever she went

Her own parents,
He that had father’d her, and she that had conceiv’d her in her womb, and birth’d her,
They gave this child more of themselves than that;
They gave her afterward every day—they became part of her.

Her mother’s care-free ringlets, falling past her breast, her open hands and thin arms hidden behind an over sized shirt, the strength in her voice,
And the youthful, naive nature woven into her giggles.
The father, klutzy and drunk, the sudden change from a hearty laugh to an unsettling yell, the large hands and the lost feeling that showed through the anger. The confusing elixir of love and hate.
The landing in the stairwell, the black dial phone, the old tarnished green oven, the stapled on carpet, the Rug rats pillow cases and the laughter so good it hurt.
Never ending love—the difference in words and the actual inner emotion felt--wondering if dreams are reality--and if perhaps the real world and all its conundrums is a carefully devised skit.  
Who decides a mirage is an illusion, is it the same inhabitants who crowd the streets?
Do the rushing people, passed from one generation to the next, think the same thoughts, do they laugh at themselves or the passed on jokes that follow their age group, and are the sparks of people just mirages themselves?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets—if they are not flashes and specks, what are they?
The bakery windows, row in row, the fake cake in the window, the names of the streets and the differing decals hanging from car's indoor mirrors.
People being within the cars zooming by on the highway, the jingle of the Popsicle truck and the sticky hands following. The feeling of trying to wipe away the stickiness on tall grass, walking across the peeling yellow paint of the highway divider, left to the side of some lonesome road---the wooden train set and the carefully maneuvered tracks,

the orange morning sun, the rising steam from plants and houses, the comforting sleepiness cast over the whole town, settling upon rooftops and curling into closed arms, The mid-day beaming street, seen from the city bus window,
The fresh ocean and the old ferry boat, the smell of oatmeal and scrambled eggs and over buttered white toast. The balance between the clouds and sky, sharing the space, the dry feeling gathering around the eyes, the white waves forming from the ferry boats side, the gentle rocking from side to side,
The cold feeling the window casts as the face, leaning against it, gently surrenders sleep to the lulling gesture—knowing the world is round by glimpsing upon the horizons edge, the thought of explorers who sailed the same sea only years and years ago.
The innocence beaming down from the heavens and leaving speckles of white on the ocean’s surface, the cluster of yellow beaked seagulls greeting the arriving boats, the distinct fragrance of the earth and sea joining together, the salty barnacles and shore mud, the leaning  grass with  crusty sand clinging to its base.
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will go forth every day.

An indoor plant wilts
Clouds come and go in the sky
Heavy heart inside

the night i met a map maker
who'd never seen the world
i found out that this living life
slowly comes unfurled

with every sought experience
and everything undone,
granted we are shoelaces
tied and gone **-gung

so much so that we don't know
the order of our things,
like when we meet a pretty girl
we take her off some rings

and when the rings come ringing by
the anchor on your ship
i answer the phone and to him say
i'll never take your ****

to my house
because i don't have indoor plumbing.