Please,
If you would,
Be my mother,
Let me be your daughter,
And not see me as your second chance at life.

Please,
If you would,
Don't see me,
Don't look at me,
And hope that I'd grow up to be like you.

I don't mean to be rude,
I am not insulting,
I am speaking my opinion,
On how you rub off me,
I don't mean anything.

But,
I want you to accept,
that I can't be what you planned,
Though you're a perfectionist,
I understand.

Let me be me,
please,
just love
accept,
that I am almost a complete opposite of you.

I want you to accept,
so I don't disappoint you,
I am uoy,
Though I am your daughter,
I am me.

must love rainy days
adventure
pumpkin carving
and unexpected kisses

must be tolerant
of jimmy stewart
and bob dylan
the other men in my life

no height
weight
or hair color requirement
but big hearted weirdos
who smile for no reason
are always welcome

no
racist
sexist
homophobic persons
or those who say baby
as a term
of endearment

i like my coffee bitter
and my men sweet
never
the other way around

lopsided grins and kind eyes can get you everywhere

if similar in tempermant style or appearance to
the doctor
david bowie
mickey mouse
or jesus
please contact immediately

must be accepting of
raucous laughter
black and white films
cold feet
and occasional insomnia

i am always late
rarely refined
and have almost no perception
of the volume of my own voice

in junior high i asked a girl to stop picking on another child

she told me to go fly a kite

it was not until much later that i realized she was insulting me
not offering ideas
for an enjoyable way
to spend the afternoon

my hair is an untamable beast
but when fashioned properly
can be wrapped about my face
to create a rather fetching beard

i enjoy being scared
and am not easily so
unless you are a bug

i talk in my sleep
never know what day it is
and cry while reading good books

i just want
to hold your hand
in a crowded theatre
while we wait for the scene
at the end of the credits

and to be able to tell you
i love you

Perplexed and troubled at his bad success
The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,
Discovered in his fraud, thrown from his hope
So oft, and the persuasive rhetoric
That sleeked his tongue, and won so much on Eve,
So little here, nay lost.  But Eve was Eve;
This far his over-match, who, self-deceived
And rash, beforehand had no better weighed
The strength he was to cope with, or his own.
But—as a man who had been matchless held
In cunning, over-reached where least he thought,
To salve his credit, and for very spite,
Still will be tempting him who foils him still,
And never cease, though to his shame the more;
Or as a swarm of flies in vintage-time,
About the wine-press where sweet must is poured,
Beat off, returns as oft with humming sound;
Or surging waves against a solid rock,
Though all to shivers dashed, the assault renew,
(Vain battery!) and in froth or bubbles end—
So Satan, whom repulse upon repulse
Met ever, and to shameful silence brought,
Yet gives not o’er, though desperate of success,
And his vain importunity pursues.
He brought our Saviour to the western side
Of that high mountain, whence he might behold
Another plain, long, but in breadth not wide,
Washed by the southern sea, and on the north
To equal length backed with a ridge of hills
That screened the fruits of the earth and seats of men
From cold Septentrion blasts; thence in the midst
Divided by a river, off whose banks
On each side an Imperial City stood,
With towers and temples proudly elevate
On seven small hills, with palaces adorned,
Porches and theatres, baths, aqueducts,
Statues and trophies, and triumphal arcs,
Gardens and groves, presented to his eyes
Above the highth of mountains interposed—
By what strange parallax, or optic skill
Of vision, multiplied through air, or glass
Of telescope, were curious to enquire.
And now the Tempter thus his silence broke:—
  “The city which thou seest no other deem
Than great and glorious Rome, Queen of the Earth
So far renowned, and with the spoils enriched
Of nations.  There the Capitol thou seest,
Above the rest lifting his stately head
On the Tarpeian rock, her citadel
Impregnable; and there Mount Palatine,
The imperial palace, compass huge, and high
The structure, skill of noblest architects,
With gilded battlements, conspicuous far,
Turrets, and terraces, and glittering spires.
Many a fair edifice besides, more like
Houses of gods—so well I have disposed
My aerie microscope—thou may’st behold,
Outside and inside both, pillars and roofs
Carved work, the hand of famed artificers
In cedar, marble, ivory, or gold.
Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see
What conflux issuing forth, or entering in:
Praetors, proconsuls to their provinces
Hasting, or on return, in robes of state;
Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power;
Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings;
Or embassies from regions far remote,
In various habits, on the Appian road,
Or on the AEmilian—some from farthest south,
Syene, and where the shadow both way falls,
Meroe, Nilotic isle, and, more to west,
The realm of Bocchus to the Blackmoor sea;
From the Asian kings (and Parthian among these),
From India and the Golden Chersoness,
And utmost Indian isle Taprobane,
Dusk faces with white silken turbants wreathed;
From Gallia, Gades, and the British west;
Germans, and Scythians, and Sarmatians north
Beyond Danubius to the Tauric pool.
All nations now to Rome obedience pay—
To Rome’s great Emperor, whose wide domain,
In ample territory, wealth and power,
Civility of manners, arts and arms,
And long renown, thou justly may’st prefer
Before the Parthian.  These two thrones except,
The rest are barbarous, and scarce worth the sight,
Shared among petty kings too far removed;
These having shewn thee, I have shewn thee all
The kingdoms of the world, and all their glory.
This Emperor hath no son, and now is old,
Old and lascivious, and from Rome retired
To Capreae, an island small but strong
On the Campanian shore, with purpose there
His horrid lusts in private to enjoy;
Committing to a wicked favourite
All public cares, and yet of him suspicious;
Hated of all, and hating.  With what ease,
Endued with regal virtues as thou art,
Appearing, and beginning noble deeds,
Might’st thou expel this monster from his throne,
Now made a sty, and, in his place ascending,
A victor-people free from servile yoke!
And with my help thou may’st; to me the power
Is given, and by that right I give it thee.
Aim, therefore, at no less than all the world;
Aim at the highest; without the highest attained,
Will be for thee no sitting, or not long,
On David’s throne, be prophesied what will.”
  To whom the Son of God, unmoved, replied:—
“Nor doth this grandeur and majestic shew
Of luxury, though called magnificence,
More than of arms before, allure mine eye,
Much less my mind; though thou should’st add to tell
Their sumptuous gluttonies, and gorgeous feasts
On citron tables or Atlantic stone
(For I have also heard, perhaps have read),
Their wines of Setia, Cales, and Falerne,
Chios and Crete, and how they quaff in gold,
Crystal, and myrrhine cups, imbossed with gems
And studs of pearl—to me should’st tell, who thirst
And hunger still.  Then embassies thou shew’st
From nations far and nigh!  What honour that,
But tedious waste of time, to sit and hear
So many hollow compliments and lies,
Outlandish flatteries?  Then proceed’st to talk
Of the Emperor, how easily subdued,
How gloriously.  I shall, thou say’st, expel
A brutish monster: what if I withal
Expel a Devil who first made him such?
Let his tormentor, Conscience, find him out;
For him I was not sent, nor yet to free
That people, victor once, now vile and base,
Deservedly made vassal—who, once just,
Frugal, and mild, and temperate, conquered well,
But govern ill the nations under yoke,
Peeling their provinces, exhausted all
By lust and rapine; first ambitious grown
Of triumph, that insulting vanity;
Then cruel, by their sports to blood inured
Of fighting beasts, and men to beasts exposed;
Luxurious by their wealth, and greedier still,
And from the daily Scene effeminate.
What wise and valiant man would seek to free
These, thus degenerate, by themselves enslaved,
Or could of inward slaves make outward free?
Know, therefore, when my season comes to sit
On David’s throne, it shall be like a tree
Spreading and overshadowing all the earth,
Or as a stone that shall to pieces dash
All monarchies besides throughout the world;
And of my Kingdom there shall be no end.
Means there shall be to this; but what the means
Is not for thee to know, nor me to tell.”
  To whom the Tempter, impudent, replied:—
“I see all offers made by me how slight
Thou valuest, because offered, and reject’st.
Nothing will please the difficult and nice,
Or nothing more than still to contradict.
On the other side know also thou that I
On what I offer set as high esteem,
Nor what I part with mean to give for naught,
All these, which in a moment thou behold’st,
The kingdoms of the world, to thee I give
(For, given to me, I give to whom I please),
No trifle; yet with this reserve, not else—
On this condition, if thou wilt fall down,
And worship me as thy superior Lord
(Easily done), and hold them all of me;
For what can less so great a gift deserve?”
  Whom thus our Saviour answered with disdain:—
“I never liked thy talk, thy offers less;
Now both abhor, since thou hast dared to utter
The abominable terms, impious condition.
But I endure the time, till which expired
Thou hast permission on me.  It is written,
The first of all commandments, ‘Thou shalt worship
The Lord thy God, and only Him shalt serve.’
And dar’st thou to the Son of God propound
To worship thee, accursed? now more accursed
For this attempt, bolder than that on Eve,
And more blasphemous; which expect to rue.
The kingdoms of the world to thee were given!
Permitted rather, and by thee usurped;
Other donation none thou canst produce.
If given, by whom but by the King of kings,
God over all supreme?  If given to thee,
By thee how fairly is the Giver now
Repaid!  But gratitude in thee is lost
Long since.  Wert thou so void of fear or shame
As offer them to me, the Son of God—
To me my own, on such abhorred pact,
That I fall down and worship thee as God?
Get thee behind me!  Plain thou now appear’st
That Evil One, Satan for ever ******.”
  To whom the Fiend, with fear abashed, replied:—
“Be not so sore offended, Son of God—
Though Sons of God both Angels are and Men—
If I, to try whether in higher sort
Than these thou bear’st that title, have proposed
What both from Men and Angels I receive,
Tetrarchs of Fire, Air, Flood, and on the Earth
Nations besides from all the quartered winds—
God of this World invoked, and World beneath.
Who then thou art, whose coming is foretold
To me most fatal, me it most concerns.
The trial hath indamaged thee no way,
Rather more honour left and more esteem;
Me naught advantaged, missing what I aimed.
Therefore let pass, as they are transitory,
The kingdoms of this world; I shall no more
Advise thee; gain them as thou canst, or not.
And thou thyself seem’st otherwise inclined
Than to a worldly crown, addicted more
To contemplation and profound dispute;
As by that early action may be judged,
When, slipping from thy mother’s eye, thou went’st
Alone into the Temple, there wast found
Among the gravest Rabbies, disputant
On points and questions fitting Moses’ chair,
Teaching, not taught.  The childhood shews the man,
As morning shews the day.  Be famous, then,
By wisdom; as thy empire must extend,
So let extend thy mind o’er all the world
In knowledge; all things in it comprehend.
All knowledge is not couched in Moses’ law,
The Pentateuch, or what the Prophets wrote;
The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach
To admiration, led by Nature’s light;
And with the Gentiles much thou must converse,
Ruling them by persuasion, as thou mean’st.
Without their learning, how wilt thou with them,
Or they with thee, hold conversation meet?
How wilt thou reason with them, how refute
Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes?
Error by his own arms is best evinced.
Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount,
Westward, much nearer by south-west; behold
Where on the AEgean shore a city stands,
Built nobly, pure the air and light the soil—
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And Eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or suburban, studious walks and shades.
See there the olive-grove of Academe,
Plato’s retirement, where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees’ industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing; there Ilissus rowls
His whispering stream.  Within the walls then view
The schools of ancient sages—his who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there; and painted Stoa next.
There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,
AEolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own.
Thence what the lofty grave Tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life,
High actions and high passions best describing.
Thence to the famous Orators repair,
Those ancient whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democraty,
Shook the Arsenal, and fulmined over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes’ throne.
To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear,
From heaven descended to the low-roofed house
Of Socrates—see there his tenement—
Whom, well inspired, the Oracle pronounced
Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous streams, that watered all the schools
Of Academics old and new, with those
Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe.
These here revolve, or, as thou likest, at home,
Till time mature thee to a kingdom’s weight;
These rules will render thee a king complete
Within thyself, much more with empire joined.”
  To whom our Saviour sagely thus replied:—
“Think not but that I know these things; or, think
I know them not, not therefore am I short
Of knowing what I ought.  He who receives
Light from above, from the Fountain of Light,
No other doctrine needs, though granted true;
But these are false, or little else but dreams,
Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm.
The first and wisest of them all professed
To know this only, that he nothing knew;
The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits;
A third sort doubted all things, though plain sense;
Others in virtue placed felicity,
But virtue joined with riches and long life;
In corporal pleasure he, and careless ease;
The Stoic last in philosophic pride,
By him called virtue, and his virtuous man,
Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing,
Equal to God, oft shames not to prefer,
As fearing God nor man, contemning all
Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life—
Which, when he lists, he leaves, or boasts he can;
For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,
Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.
Alas! what can they teach, and not mislead,
Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,
And how the World began, and how Man fell,
Degraded by himself, on grace depending?
Much of the Soul they talk, but all awry;
And in themselves seek virtue; and to themselves
All glory arrogate, to God give none;
Rather accuse him under usual names,
Fortune and Fate, as one regardless quite
Of mortal things.  Who, therefore, seeks in these
True wisdom finds her not, or, by delusion
Far worse, her false resemblance only meets,
An empty cloud.  However, many books,
Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge,
As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
Or, if I would delight my private hours
With music or with poem, where so soon
As in our native language can I find
That solace?  All our Law and Story strewed
With hymns, our Psalms with artful terms inscribed,
Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon
That pleased so well our victor’s ear, declare
That rather Greece from us these arts derived—
Ill imitated while they loudest sing
The vices of their deities, and their own,
In fable, hymn, or song, so personating
Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.
Remove their swelling epithetes, thick-laid
As varnish on a harlot’s cheek, the rest,
Thin-sown with aught of profit or delight,
Will far be found unworthy to compare
With Sion’s songs, to all true tastes excelling,
Where God is praised aright and godlike men,
The Holiest of Holies and his Saints
(Such are from God inspired, not such from thee);
Unless where moral virtue is expressed
By light of Nature, not in all quite lost.
Their orators thou then extoll’st as those
The top of eloquence—statists indeed,
And lovers of their country, as may seem;
But herein to our Prophets far beneath,
As men divinely taught, and better teaching
The solid rules of civil government,
In their majestic, unaffected style,
Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.
In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so,
What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat;
These only, with our Law, best form a king.”
  So spake the Son of God; but Satan, now
Quite at a loss (for all his darts were spent),
Thus to our Saviour, with stern brow, replied:—
  “Since neither wealth nor honour, arms nor arts,
Kingdom nor empire, pleases thee, nor aught
By me proposed in life contemplative
Or active, tended on by glory or fame,
What dost thou in this world?  The Wilderness
For thee is fittest place: I found thee there,
And thither will return thee.  Yet remember
What I foretell t

"I call people creatures sometimes
That may not
Be a good sign"
        -mikecccc*

I can't help but wonder what the writer's trying to convey,
And in my mind I picture one of the creatures who say;
"We're much more like people than humans are anyway,
As proven by Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet,
Inheritance played a part in changing human DNA,
Which caused you to view every creature as prey,
So next time you blurt out a line so passé
Remember it's us you're insulting today."
And with that the fair creature returned on it's way,
Whilst the humans returned and lined up for their pay,
Earned from the torn earth and the creatures they slay.

I ask my fellow writer a question if I may;
Was it your intent to insult creatures that day?

“It is the voice of years, that are gone! they roll before me, with
  all their deeds.”

  Ossian.


NEWSTEAD! fast-falling, once-resplendent dome!
Religion’s shrine! repentant HENRY’S pride!
Of Warriors, Monks, and Dames the cloister’d tomb,
Whose pensive shades around thy ruins glide,

Hail to thy pile! more honour’d in thy fall,
  Than modern mansions, in their pillar’d state;
Proudly majestic frowns thy vaulted hall,
  Scowling defiance on the blasts of fate.

No mail-clad Serfs, obedient to their Lord,
  In grim array, the crimson cross demand;
Or gay assemble round the festive board,
  Their chief’s retainers, an immortal band.

Else might inspiring Fancy’s magic eye
  Retrace their progress, through the lapse of time;
Marking each ardent youth, ordain’d to die,
  A votive pilgrim, in Judea’s clime.

But not from thee, dark pile! departs the Chief;
  His feudal realm in other regions lay:
In thee the wounded conscience courts relief,
  Retiring from the garish blaze of day.

Yes! in thy gloomy cells and shades profound,
  The monk abjur’d a world, he ne’er could view;
Or blood-stain’d Guilt repenting, solace found,
  Or Innocence, from stern Oppression, flew.

A Monarch bade thee from that wild arise,
  Where Sherwood’s outlaws, once, were wont to prowl;
And Superstition’s crimes, of various dyes,
  Sought shelter in the Priest’s protecting cowl.

Where, now, the grass exhales a murky dew,
  The humid pall of life-extinguish’d clay,
In sainted fame, the sacred Fathers grew,
  Nor raised their pious voices, but to pray.

Where, now, the bats their wavering wings extend,
  Soon as the gloaming spreads her waning shade;
The choir did, oft, their mingling vespers blend,
  Or matin orisons to Mary paid.

Years roll on years; to ages, ages yield;
  Abbots to Abbots, in a line, succeed:
Religion’s charter, their protecting shield,
  Till royal sacrilege their doom decreed.

One holy HENRY rear’d the Gothic walls,
  And bade the pious inmates rest in peace;
Another HENRY the kind gift recalls,
  And bids devotion’s hallow’d echoes cease.

Vain is each threat, or supplicating prayer;
  He drives them exiles from their blest abode,
To roam a dreary world, in deep despair—
  No friend, no home, no refuge, but their God.

Hark! how the hall, resounding to the strain,
  Shakes with the martial music’s novel din!
The heralds of a warrior’s haughty reign,
  High crested banners wave thy walls within.

Of changing sentinels the distant hum,
  The mirth of feasts, the clang of burnish’d arms,
The braying trumpet, and the hoarser drum,
  Unite in concert with increas’d alarms.

An abbey once, a regal fortress now,
  Encircled by insulting rebel powers;
War’s dread machines o’erhang thy threat’ning brow,
  And dart destruction, in sulphureous showers.

Ah! vain defence! the hostile traitor’s siege,
  Though oft repuls’d, by guile o’ercomes the brave;
His thronging foes oppress the faithful Liege,
  Rebellion’s reeking standards o’er him wave.

Not unaveng’d the raging Baron yields;
  The blood of traitors smears the purple plain;
Unconquer’d still, his falchion there he wields,
  And days of glory, yet, for him remain.

Still, in that hour, the warrior wish’d to strew
  Self-gather’d laurels on a self-sought grave;
But Charles’ protecting genius hither flew,
  The monarch’s friend, the monarch’s hope, to save.

Trembling, she ******’d him from th’ unequal strife,
  In other fields the torrent to repel;
For nobler combats, here, reserv’d his life,
  To lead the band, where godlike FALKLAND fell.

From thee, poor pile! to lawless plunder given,
  While dying groans their painful requiem sound,
Far different incense, now, ascends to Heaven,
  Such victims wallow on the gory ground.

There many a pale and ruthless Robber’s corse,
  Noisome and ghast, defiles thy sacred sod;
O’er mingling man, and horse commix’d with horse,
  Corruption’s heap, the savage spoilers trod.

Graves, long with rank and sighing weeds o’erspread,
  Ransack’d resign, perforce, their mortal mould:
From ruffian fangs, escape not e’en the dead,
  Racked from repose, in search for buried gold.

Hush’d is the harp, unstrung the warlike lyre,
  The minstrel’s palsied hand reclines in death;
No more he strikes the quivering chords with fire,
  Or sings the glories of the martial wreath.

At length the sated murderers, gorged with prey,
  Retire: the clamour of the fight is o’er;
Silence again resumes her awful sway,
  And sable Horror guards the massy door.

Here, Desolation holds her dreary court:
  What satellites declare her dismal reign!
Shrieking their dirge, ill-omen’d birds resort,
  To flit their vigils, in the hoary fane.

Soon a new Morn’s restoring beams dispel
  The clouds of Anarchy from Britain’s skies;
The fierce Usurper seeks his native hell,
  And Nature triumphs, as the Tyrant dies.

With storms she welcomes his expiring groans;
  Whirlwinds, responsive, greet his labouring breath;
Earth shudders, as her caves receive his bones,
  Loathing the offering of so dark a death.

The legal Ruler now resumes the helm,
  He guides through gentle seas, the prow of state;
Hope cheers, with wonted smiles, the peaceful realm,
  And heals the bleeding wounds of wearied Hate.

The gloomy tenants, Newstead! of thy cells,
  Howling, resign their violated nest;
Again, the Master on his tenure dwells,
  Enjoy’d, from absence, with enraptured zest.

Vassals, within thy hospitable pale,
  Loudly carousing, bless their Lord’s return;
Culture, again, adorns the gladdening vale,
  And matrons, once lamenting, cease to mourn.

A thousand songs, on tuneful echo, float,
  Unwonted foliage mantles o’er the trees;
And, hark! the horns proclaim a mellow note,
  The hunters’ cry hangs lengthening on the breeze.

Beneath their coursers’ hoofs the valleys shake;
  What fears! what anxious hopes! attend the chase!
The dying stag seeks refuge in the lake;
  Exulting shouts announce the finish’d race.

Ah happy days! too happy to endure!
  Such simple sports our plain forefathers knew:
No splendid vices glitter’d to allure;
  Their joys were many, as their cares were few.

From these descending, Sons to Sires succeed;
  Time steals along, and Death uprears his dart;
Another Chief impels the foaming steed,
  Another Crowd pursue the panting hart.

Newstead! what saddening change of scene is thine!
  Thy yawning arch betokens slow decay;
The last and youngest of a noble line,
  Now holds thy mouldering turrets in his sway.

Deserted now, he scans thy gray worn towers;
  Thy vaults, where dead of feudal ages sleep;
Thy cloisters, pervious to the wintry showers;
  These, these he views, and views them but to weep.

Yet are his tears no emblem of regret:
  Cherish’d Affection only bids them flow;
Pride, Hope, and Love, forbid him to forget,
  But warm his *****, with impassion’d glow.

Yet he prefers thee, to the gilded domes,
  Or gewgaw grottos, of the vainly great;
Yet lingers ’mid thy damp and mossy tombs,
  Nor breathes a murmur ‘gainst the will of Fate.

Haply thy sun, emerging, yet, may shine,
  Thee to irradiate with meridian ray;
Hours, splendid as the past, may still be thine,
  And bless thy future, as thy former day.

Teach me, if thou can-forgetfulness!
Teach me how to forget thee, for I ain't
worthy of these feelings. I am undeserving of
thy love-for I can only dwell in and cherish it-
I cannot give thee yon pleasure, my love. Pleasure-
and its affectionate satisfaction-t'ose two-o but
amusements, the ones whom thou so dearly adore-
are but a sin to me, a sin so brief and beautiful
but even more ungrateful then the unblinking
foliage-into which I am unwilling to sink. Aye,
forgetfulness shall be a mercy to me. For in
such idiocy have I dreamed-dreamed of being
in thy lovely arms, absorbed in the mist of thy
charms. But I can never be so! Even dreaming
shall I be refrained from-I can never hug
thee-even in my deepest tempestuous fears.
Thou are t'at bizarre light that roam the stones
of my pernicious dreams. But Thou despiseth me-
how thou hate me, thou who shall never glance back
in my last breath, thou who but condemn me-I,
should t'is world be altered, shall still remain
thy sudden wound; I am but a flawed work of
insulting wretchedness. Then teach me-
teach me, my love, invade my heart-and grasp
my veins, rob my of my dearly, dearly affection-
for thee, yes, which was born only for thee-
and leave me loveless, just as no-one flatters me
and endorse my feelings, in t'is very loneliness.

Our fellow "*******" people, or should I say mentally handicapped, have two eyes, a nose, and a beating heart far more large and caring then any1 else's. Everyday people abuse the word "******" We use it to describe something slow or stupid. The problem with this is that everytime you use that word, you're insulting a group of people that cannot defend themselves.
  The mentally handicapped aren't locked in dark basements to rot and die anymore; they're out in the world living as every1 else. And becuz of this we've "accepted" them right? We're a big happy and accepting world to every single human being becuz we're all equal! WRONG. We glorify freedom and how wonderful it is, but with freedom comes hate. With freedom comes words that r always going to be there forever, just to remind the human race that some1 with an extra chromosome is different.

I saw a gigantic tree.
Uprooted and on its side.
The great roots forming a mane for the snarling ringed face on the stump.
But the fallen beast is taken, it’s husk a Home.
A vibrancy of weevils, ladybugs, frog hoppers, Cockchaffers that’s skittering, scattered like a smashed ant farm.


Around its base were prehistoric ferns,
Curled and scaled like sand lizards’ tales.
Reminiscing the demise of the tyrannosaur.
When dust clouds darkened the sun which warmed their claws.
The skittering skinks, slow worms and other small lizards, who need far less to survive, then feasted upon the monsters’ flesh and found a home in its bone structured palace.

As whale sinks,
Distorted into a globster of its former self,
It hits the sea bed hard in oil-Black darkness.
The hagfish burrow, starved for millennia.
Brutally tearing at the befallen banquet.
Mouths used to scraps choking on steak.
Getting their guts knitted as they squirm over each other to grasp some sashimi.
Dripping saliva as if we’re sweat in the ruckus.

Yeti crab pinch, as do isopods
But get only mucus insulting their jaws.
And they thought they helped to cut up the portions.

Soon all that is left is a skeleton.
Hanging in a museum for future generations to see.

Once again, dust gathers, from bombed out sand.
Erupting in the air as giants hit the ground.
We may soon again see darkness fall.
As the rayiys is skinned.

But no tears are shed.
We all cheer none the less.

When I was chief creative officer for Liz Claiborne Inc., I spent a good amount of time on the road hosting fashion shows highlighting our brands. Our team made a point of retaining models of various sizes, shapes and ages, because one of the missions of the shows was to educate audiences about how they could look their best. At a Q&A; after one event in Nashville in 2010, a woman stood up, took off her jacket and said, with touching candour: “Tim, look at me. I’m a box on top, a big, square box. How can I dress this shape and not look like a fullback?” It was a question I’d heard over and over during the tour: Women who were larger than a size 12 always wanted to know, How can I look good, and why do designers ignore me?

At New York Fashion Week, which began Thursday, the majority of American women are unlikely to receive much attention, either. Designers keep their collections tightly under wraps before sending them down the runway, but if past years are any indication of what’s to come, plus-size looks will be in short supply. Sure, at New York Fashion Week in 2015, Marc Jacobs and Sophie Theallet each featured a plus-size model and Ashley Graham debuted her plus-size lingerie line. But these moves were very much the exception, not the rule.

I love the American fashion industry, but it has a lot of problems and one of them is the baffling way it has turned its back on plus-size women. It’s a puzzling conundrum. The average American woman now wears between a size 16 and a size 18, according to new research from Washington State University. There are 100 million plus-size women in America, and, for the past three years, they have increased their spending on clothes faster than their straight-size counterparts. There is money to be made here ($20.4 billion (U.S.), up 17 per cent from 2013). But many designers — dripping with disdain, lacking imagination or simply too cowardly to take a risk — still refuse to make clothes for them.

In addition to the fact that most designers max out at size 12, the selection of plus-size items on offer at many retailers is paltry compared with what’s available for a size 2 woman. According to a Bloomberg analysis, only 8.5 per cent of dresses on Nordstrom.com in May were plus-size. At J.C. Penney’s website, it was 16 per cent; Nike.com had a mere five items — total.

I’ve spoken to many designers and merchandisers about this. The overwhelming response is, “I’m not interested in her.” Why? “I don’t want her wearing my clothes.” Why? “She won’t look the way that I want her to look.” They say the plus-size woman is complicated, different and difficult, that no two size 16s are alike. Some haven’t bothered to hide their contempt. “No one wants to see curvy women” on the runway, Karl Lagerfeld, head designer of Chanel, said in 2009. Plenty of mass retailers are no more enlightened: under the tenure of chief executive Mike Jeffries, Abercrombie & Fitch sold nothing larger than a size 10, with Jeffries explaining that “we go after the attractive, all-American kid.”

This a design failure and not a customer issue. There is no reason larger women can’t look just as fabulous as all other women. The key is the harmonious balance of silhouette, proportion and fit, regardless of size or shape. Designs need to be reconceived, not just sized up; it’s a matter of adjusting proportions. The textile changes, every seam changes. Done right, our clothing can create an optical illusion that helps us look taller and slimmer. Done wrong, and we look worse than if we were naked.

Have you shopped retail for size 14-plus clothing? Based on my experience shopping with plus-size women, it’s a horribly insulting and demoralizing experience. Half the items make the body look larger, with features like ruching, box pleats and shoulder pads. Pastels and large-scale prints and crazy pattern-mixing abound, all guaranteed to make you look infantile or like a float in a parade. Adding to this travesty is a major department-store chain that makes you walk under a marquee that reads “WOMAN.” What does that even imply? That a “woman” is anyone larger than a 12 and everyone else is a girl? It’s mind-boggling.

Project Runway, the design competition show on which I’m a mentor, has not been a leader on this issue. Every season we have the “real women” challenge (a title I hate), in which the designers create looks for non-models. The designers audibly groan, though I’m not sure why; in the real world, they won’t be dressing a seven-foot-tall glamazon.

This season, something different happened: Ashley Nell Tipton won the contest with the show’s first plus-size collection. But even this achievement managed to come off as condescending. I’ve never seen such hideous clothes in my life: bare midriffs; skirts over crinoline, which give the clothes, and the wearer, more volume; see-through skirts that reveal *******; pastels, which tend to make the wearer look juvenile; and large-scale floral embellishments that shout “prom.” Her victory reeked of tokenism. One judge told me that she was “voting for the symbol” and that these were clothes for a “certain population.” I said they should be clothes all women want to wear. I wouldn’t dream of letting any woman, whether she’s a size 6 or a 16, wear them. Simply making a nod toward inclusiveness is not enough.

This problem is difficult to change. The industry, from the runway to magazines to advertising, likes subscribing to the mythology it has created of glamour and thinness. Look at Vogue’s “Shape Issue,” which is ostensibly a celebration of different body types but does no more than nod to anyone above a size 12. For decades, designers have trotted models with bodies completely unattainable for most women down the runway. First it was women so thin that they surely had eating disorders. After an outcry, the industry responded by putting young teens on the runway, girls who had yet to exit puberty. More outrage.

But change is not impossible. There are aesthetically worthy retail successes in this market. When helping women who are size 14 and up, my go-to retailer is Lane Bryant. While the items aren’t fashion with a capital F, they are stylish (but please avoid the cropped pants — always a no-no for any woman). And designer Christian Siriano scored a design and public relations victory after producing a look for Leslie Jones to wear to the “Ghostbusters” red-carpet premiere. Jones, who is not a diminutive woman, had tweeted in despair that she couldn’t find anyone to dress her; Siriano stepped in with a lovely full-length red gown.

Several retailers that have stepped up their plus-size offerings have been rewarded. In one year, ModCloth doubled its plus-size lineup. To mark the anniversary, the company paid for a survey of 1,500 American women ages 18 to 44 and released its findings: Seventy-four per cent of plus-size women described shopping in stores as “frustrating”; 65 per cent said they were “excluded.” (Interestingly, 65 per cent of women of all sizes agreed that plus-size women were ignored by the fashion industry.) But the plus-size women surveyed also indicated that they wanted to shop more. More than 80 per cent said they’d spend more on clothing if they had more choices in their size and nearly 90 per cent said they would buy more if they had trendier options. According to the company, its plus-size shoppers place 20 per cent more orders than its straight-size customers.

Online start-up Eloquii, initially conceived and then killed by The Limited, was reborn in 2014. The trendy plus-size retailer, whose top seller is an over-the-knee boot with four-inch heels and extended calf sizes, grew its sales volume by more than 165 per cent in 2015.

Despite the huge financial potential of this market, many designers don’t want to address it. It’s not in their vocabulary. Today’s designers operate within paradigms that were established decades ago, including anachronistic sizing. (Consider the fashion show: It hasn’t changed in more than a century.) But this is now the shape of women in this nation, and designers need to wrap their minds around it. I profoundly believe that women of every size can look good. But they must be given choices. Separates — tops, bottoms — rather than single items like dresses or jumpsuits always work best for the purpose of fit. Larger women look great in clothes skimming the body, rather than hugging or cascading. There’s an art to doing this. Designers, make it work.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/cocktail-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/black-formal-dresses

(Genesis chapter 1:6 and God said: “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let the waters be divided by the water.” I never understood this statement, well not until I wrote this poem).
The ocean.
It’s just a wetter version of the sky
a graveyard' of poetry
that broke into my heart and open my eyes,
and I saw the brightest darkness mirror reading
handwritten dreams cuffing the stars consoling the rain
whom tears laugh

and in that laughter, I hear the words
God hates you
these insulting tears that only once god could hear
now speaks to me with warring tongues
and I had nothing deep to say
just a crushed sentence
a pile of regret
a sky that jumped on my train thought
and we went from an angelic blue to a halo of black.

God, I do apologize if you feel like I have displeased you.
See I have been searching for a weightless god
because the others are too heavy
and too weak like watered down gospel,
Weak like the dark side of poetry
Weak like a religious inside joke no one gets
Forgive me for you know everything I don't

so tell me am I a self-portrait of you and will you promise to
clean ***** lost souls like mine
and will u forgive me for having an enchanted mind
You see I often mistook you for a poem that has never been written
Mistook you for masculine words that became undone
I mistook you  for a selfless father that has more than one son
Mistook you for a sky filled with multiple sunsets.

I know nothing of you,
you unseen god
tell me am I of the other god
am I his fleshly creation standing outside my normal heartbeat
and on the footnotes of his story
standing breathing whirlwinds on death ears of soundless music
into the lungs of his bible
The lungs of his heaven that often resembles the blood stains in his hell

blood that flows throughout my veins and into an anthem of sorrow
Sung with broken tongues
sorrow buried in all kind if ancient languages
And I sit in this hell crying with roses
that's been wounded by his thoughts and
his words shoved into each other and I hate this

so much that I stripped down to pain and
I am exposed naked with caution
and I can see that my heart is a jealous god also
an egoistic ghost filled with love I never felt
a love that has no title

a love I am not entitled to feel
and why should I be
When that god knows I am a sleepwalking addict high off of pain
why should I be when that God knows I am as useless as a headless butterfly
When I should be more like the ocean
Yeah just a wetter version of the sky
The human body is made up of 75% water
(So in Genesis chapter 1:6 when God said “Let the water be divided by the water.” Where did that water go? It is in me).

hey! i don't mind the dodo! i don't have some neuroticism encompassing vitriol to continue: but sure as ****, you do. what happens when the white ladies die off? **** a monkey?! i accept my fate, like you accept your being bound to heavenly graces of continuum inexhausted with death being a lost concept of compensation... it only takes 2 generations to revise the piglet race... so... where's the competing element of nervosity? really? really?! existential blackmail?! is this how low it has to be grounded in? look at me, do i look like i actually give, a ****?! maybe you do, but this existential blackmail in the anglophone world of puritanical darwinism is not for more... i already find it hard raising jerking off in this world, let alone a pair of tadpoles... honest to god, it's already hard raising a pristine jerking off, let alone a pair of children.

i'm still trying to figure out this existential anglophone
blackmail... it's been bothering me for
ages... i simply can't fathom it...
i really can't stop seeing it as an existential blackmail...
that i somehow need to reproduce...
   that i'm somehow needed, my genes are speaking
to the darwinistic affection
of keeping "form"... can i just say that i don't
get it?! can i just cite that
darwinism has a negative impetus strategy for
invoking existentialism?
    can i just say that darwinism belongs on
the isles, and existentialism
belongs on the continent, and that the two never
are allowed to mingle?
no? so why do i feel blackmailed
into "needing" to reproduce?
besides the point, i never intended,
i was one of the one child state policy of china,
we were always the weirdos -
but the english have half a wits' worth
of understanding of existentialism,
they kept **** *******
darwinism, sorry, but they did...
an ex-girlfriend's father once asked
me: what are the famous poles?
i forgot to reply...
copernicus, marie curie,
          chopin?
   no, doesn't ring a bell in your
paddy sodden brain? **** me,
i'm always late when it comes to
insulting someone, it usually takes me
years upon years to reply an insult...
which makes everything a really bad joke.
but i hate how english existentialism
took off,
   just as bad as my late reaction to
an insult's worth of joke...
     existentialism & darwinism do not exactly
mingle...
        come on, you have to be kidding me...
when it comes to english existentialism
(covert darwinism): i am being blackmailed...
i am literally being blackmailed into
some form of apartheid...
some sort of quasi: apartheid...
no, i'm not equipping myself
with misnomer tactics -
         i'm being blackmailed to: "continue"
my "species"...
  last time i checked,
i couldn't give two ***** of concern
for *queen sheeba's prophecy
of the world being populated by
the copper skinned peoples...
i.e. cuprum populus...
                 somehow darwinism,
existentialism and populism and the general
of competition, have created a toxic affair
of: a complete lack of competing energisation;
sure! the jews will win their "prize"
of recanting their jewel prize of ten diadem
rules...
     among the choccies and the copper skins;
don't you think the jews look a bit
odd, a bit out of place, given that they're
so white, in the middle east?
         oh right, no i remember:
stating the obvious huh? is now considered
a hate speech;
so the fact that the jews returned to the middle
east: kinda bleached, is not, "a bit" weird?
can i have those magic mushrooms now?

When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared,
Telemachus bound on his sandals and took a strong spear that suited
his hands, for he wanted to go into the city. “Old friend,” said he to
the swineherd, “I will now go to the town and show myself to my
mother, for she will never leave off grieving till she has seen me. As
for this unfortunate stranger, take him to the town and let him beg
there of any one who will give him a drink and a piece of bread. I
have trouble enough of my own, and cannot be burdened with other
people. If this makes him angry so much the worse for him, but I
like to say what I mean.”
  Then Ulysses said, “Sir, I do not want to stay here; a beggar can
always do better in town than country, for any one who likes can
give him something. I am too old to care about remaining here at the
beck and call of a master. Therefore let this man do as you have
just told him, and take me to the town as soon as I have had a warm by
the fire, and the day has got a little heat in it. My clothes are
wretchedly thin, and this frosty morning I shall be perished with
cold, for you say the city is some way off.”
  On this Telemachus strode off through the yards, brooding his
revenge upon the When he reached home he stood his spear against a
bearing-post of the cloister, crossed the stone floor of the
cloister itself, and went inside.
  Nurse Euryclea saw him long before any one else did. She was putting
the fleeces on to the seats, and she burst out crying as she ran up to
him; all the other maids came up too, and covered his head and
shoulders with their kisses. Penelope came out of her room looking
like Diana or Venus, and wept as she flung her arms about her son. She
kissed his forehead and both his beautiful eyes, “Light of my eyes,”
she cried as she spoke fondly to him, “so you are come home again; I
made sure I was never going to see you any more. To think of your
having gone off to Pylos without saying anything about it or obtaining
my consent. But come, tell me what you saw.”
  “Do not scold me, mother,’ answered Telemachus, “nor vex me,
seeing what a narrow escape I have had, but wash your face, change
your dress, go upstairs with your maids, and promise full and
sufficient hecatombs to all the gods if Jove will only grant us our
revenge upon the suitors. I must now go to the place of assembly to
invite a stranger who has come back with me from Pylos. I sent him
on with my crew, and told Piraeus to take him home and look after
him till I could come for him myself.”
  She heeded her son’s words, washed her face, changed her dress,
and vowed full and sufficient hecatombs to all the gods if they
would only vouchsafe her revenge upon the suitors.
  Telemachus went through, and out of, the cloisters spear in hand-
not alone, for his two fleet dogs went with him. Minerva endowed him
with a presence of such divine comeliness that all marvelled at him as
he went by, and the suitors gathered round him with fair words in
their mouths and malice in their hearts; but he avoided them, and went
to sit with Mentor, Antiphus, and Halitherses, old friends of his
father’s house, and they made him tell them all that had happened to
him. Then Piraeus came up with Theoclymenus, whom he had escorted
through the town to the place of assembly, whereon Telemachus at
once joined them. Piraeus was first to speak: “Telemachus,” said he,
“I wish you would send some of your women to my house to take awa
the presents Menelaus gave you.”
  “We do not know, Piraeus,” answered Telemachus, “what may happen. If
the suitors **** me in my own house and divide my property among them,
I would rather you had the presents than that any of those people
should get hold of them. If on the other hand I manage to **** them, I
shall be much obliged if you will kindly bring me my presents.”
  With these words he took Theoclymenus to his own house. When they
got there they laid their cloaks on the benches and seats, went into
the baths, and washed themselves. When the maids had washed and
anointed them, and had given them cloaks and shirts, they took their
seats at table. A maid servant then brought them water in a
beautiful golden ewer, and poured it into a silver basin for them to
wash their hands; and she drew a clean table beside them. An upper
servant brought them bread and offered them many good things of what
there was in the house. Opposite them sat Penelope, reclining on a
couch by one of the bearing-posts of the cloister, and spinning.
Then they laid their hands on the good things that were before them,
and as soon as they had had enough to eat and drink Penelope said:
  “Telemachus, I shall go upstairs and lie down on that sad couch,
which I have not ceased to water with my tears, from the day Ulysses
set out for Troy with the sons of Atreus. You failed, however, to make
it clear to me before the suitors came back to the house, whether or
no you had been able to hear anything about the return of your
father.”
  “I will tell you then truth,” replied her son. “We went to Pylos and
saw Nestor, who took me to his house and treated me as hospitably as
though I were a son of his own who had just returned after a long
absence; so also did his sons; but he said he had not heard a word
from any human being about Ulysses, whether he was alive or dead. He
sent me, therefore, with a chariot and horses to Menelaus. There I saw
Helen, for whose sake so many, both Argives and Trojans, were in
heaven’s wisdom doomed to suffer. Menelaus asked me what it was that
had brought me to Lacedaemon, and I told him the whole truth,
whereon he said, ‘So, then, these cowards would usurp a brave man’s
bed? A hind might as well lay her new-born young in the lair of a
lion, and then go off to feed in the forest or in some grassy dell.
The lion, when he comes back to his lair, will make short work with
the pair of them, and so will Ulysses with these suitors. By father
Jove, Minerva, and Apollo, if Ulysses is still the man that he was
when he wrestled with Philomeleides in ******, and threw him so
heavily that all the Greeks cheered him—if he is still such, and were
to come near these suitors, they would have a short shrift and a sorry
wedding. As regards your question, however, I will not prevaricate nor
deceive you, but what the old man of the sea told me, so much will I
tell you in full. He said he could see Ulysses on an island
sorrowing bitterly in the house of the nymph Calypso, who was
keeping him prisoner, and he could not reach his home, for he had no
ships nor sailors to take him over the sea.’ This was what Menelaus
told me, and when I had heard his story I came away; the gods then
gave me a fair wind and soon brought me safe home again.”
  With these words he moved the heart of Penelope. Then Theoclymenus
said to her:
  “Madam, wife of Ulysses, Telemachus does not understand these
things; listen therefore to me, for I can divine them surely, and will
hide nothing from you. May Jove the king of heaven be my witness,
and the rites of hospitality, with that hearth of Ulysses to which I
now come, that Ulysses himself is even now in Ithaca, and, either
going about the country or staying in one place, is enquiring into all
these evil deeds and preparing a day of reckoning for the suitors. I
saw an omen when I was on the ship which meant this, and I told
Telemachus about it.”
  “May it be even so,” answered Penelope; “if your words come true,
you shall have such gifts and such good will from me that all who
see you shall congratulate you.”
  Thus did they converse. Meanwhile the suitors were throwing discs,
or aiming with spears at a mark on the levelled ground in front of the
house, and behaving with all their old insolence. But when it was
now time for dinner, and the flock of sheep and goats had come into
the town from all the country round, with their shepherds as usual,
then Medon, who was their favourite servant, and who waited upon
them at table, said, “Now then, my young masters, you have had
enough sport, so come inside that we may get dinner ready. Dinner is
not a bad thing, at dinner time.”
  They left their sports as he told them, and when they were within
the house, they laid their cloaks on the benches and seats inside, and
then sacrificed some sheep, goats, pigs, and a heifer, all of them fat
and well grown. Thus they made ready for their meal. In the meantime
Ulysses and the swineherd were about starting for the town, and the
swineherd said, “Stranger, I suppose you still want to go to town
to-day, as my master said you were to do; for my own part I should
have liked you to stay here as a station hand, but I must do as my
master tells me, or he will scold me later on, and a scolding from
one’s master is a very serious thing. Let us then be off, for it is
now broad day; it will be night again directly and then you will
find it colder.”
  “I know, and understand you,” replied Ulysses; “you need say no
more. Let us be going, but if you have a stick ready cut, let me
have it to walk with, for you say the road is a very rough one.”
  As he spoke he threw his shabby old tattered wallet over his
shoulders, by the cord from which it hung, and Eumaeus gave him a
stick to his liking. The two then started, leaving the station in
charge of the dogs and herdsmen who remained behind; the swineherd led
the way and his master followed after, looking like some broken-down
old ***** as he leaned upon his staff, and his clothes were all in
rags. When they had got over the rough steep ground and were nearing
the city, they reached the fountain from which the citizens drew their
water. This had been made by Ithacus, Neritus, and Polyctor. There was
a grove of water-loving poplars planted in a circle all round it,
and the clear cold water came down to it from a rock high up, while
above the fountain there was an altar to the nymphs, at which all
wayfarers used to sacrifice. Here Melanthius son of Dolius overtook
them as he was driving down some goats, the best in his flock, for the
suitors’ dinner, and there were two shepherds with him. When he saw
Eumaeus and Ulysses he reviled them with outrageous and unseemly
language, which made Ulysses very angry.
  “There you go,” cried he, “and a precious pair you are. See how
heaven brings birds of the same feather to one another. Where, pray,
master swineherd, are you taking this poor miserable object? It
would make any one sick to see such a creature at table. A fellow like
this never won a prize for anything in his life, but will go about
rubbing his shoulders against every man’s door post, and begging,
not for swords and cauldrons like a man, but only for a few scraps not
worth begging for. If you would give him to me for a hand on my
station, he might do to clean out the folds, or bring a bit of sweet
feed to the kids, and he could fatten his thighs as much as he pleased
on whey; but he has taken to bad ways and will not go about any kind
of work; he will do nothing but beg victuals all the town over, to
feed his insatiable belly. I say, therefore and it shall surely be—if
he goes near Ulysses’ house he will get his head broken by the
stools they will fling at him, till they turn him out.”
  On this, as he passed, he gave Ulysses a kick on the hip out of pure
wantonness, but Ulysses stood firm, and did not budge from the path.
For a moment he doubted whether or no to fly at Melanthius and ****
him with his staff, or fling him to the ground and beat his brains
out; he resolved, however, to endure it and keep himself in check, but
the swineherd looked straight at Melanthius and rebuked him, lifting
up his hands and praying to heaven as he did so.
  “Fountain nymphs,” he cried, “children of Jove, if ever Ulysses
burned you thigh bones covered with fat whether of lambs or kids,
grant my prayer that heaven may send him home. He would soon put an
end to the swaggering threats with which such men as you go about
insulting people-gadding all over the town while your flocks are going
to ruin through bad shepherding.”
  Then Melanthius the goatherd answered, “You ill-conditioned cur,
what are you talking about? Some day or other I will put you on
board ship and take you to a foreign country, where I can sell you and
pocket the money you will fetch. I wish I were as sure that Apollo
would strike Telemachus dead this very day, or that the suitors
would **** him, as I am that Ulysses will never come home again.”
  With this he left them to come on at their leisure, while he went
quickly forward and soon reached the house of his master. When he
got there he went in and took his seat among the suitors opposite
Eurymachus, who liked him better than any of the others. The
servants brought him a portion of meat, and an upper woman servant set
bread before him that he might eat. Presently Ulysses and the
swineherd came up to the house and stood by it, amid a sound of music,
for Phemius was just beginning to sing to the suitors. Then Ulysses
took hold of the swineherd’s hand, and said:
  “Eumaeus, this house of Ulysses is a very fine place. No matter
how far you go you will find few like it. One building keeps following
on after another. The outer court has a wall with battlements all
round it; the doors are double folding, and of good workmanship; it
would be a hard matter to take it by force of arms. I perceive, too,
that there are many people banqueting within it, for there is a
smell of roast meat, and I hear a sound of music, which the gods
have made to go along with feasting.”
  Then Eumaeus said, “You have perceived aright, as indeed you
generally do; but let us think what will be our best course. Will
you go inside first and join the suitors, leaving me here behind
you, or will you wait here and let me go in first? But do not wait
long, or some one may you loitering about outside, and throw something
at you. Consider this matter I pray you.”
  And Ulysses answered, “I understand and heed. Go in first and
leave me here where I am. I am quite used to being beaten and having
things thrown at me. I have been so much buffeted about in war and
by sea that I am case-hardened, and this too may go with the rest. But
a man cannot hide away the cravings of a hungry belly; this is an
enemy which gives much trouble to all men; it is because of this
that ships are fitted out to sail the seas, and to make war upon other
people.”
  As they were thus talking, a dog that had been lying asleep raised
his head and pricked up his ears. This was Argos, whom Ulysses had
bred before setting out for Troy, but he had never had any work out of
him. In the old days he used to be taken out by the young men when
they went hunting wild goats, or deer, or hares, but now that his
master was gone he was lying neglected on the heaps of mule and cow
dung that lay in front of the stable doors till the men should come
and draw it away to manure the great close; and he was full of
fleas. As soon as he saw Ulysses standing there, he dropped his ears
and wagged his tail, but he could not get close up to his master. When
Ulysses saw the dog on the other side of the yard, dashed a tear
from his eyes without Eumaeus seeing it, and said:
  “Eumaeus, what a noble hound that is over yonder on the manure heap:
his build is splendid; is he as fine a fellow as he looks, or is he
only one of those dogs that come begging about a table, and are kept
merely for show?”
  “This hound,” answered Eumaeus, “belonged to him who has died in a
far country. If he were what he was when Ulysses left for Troy, he
would soon show you what he could do. There was not a wild beast in
the forest that could get away from him when he was once on its
tracks. But now he has fallen on evil times, for his master is dead
and gone, and the women take no care of him. Servants never do their
work when their master’s hand is no longer over them, for Jove takes
half the goodness out of a man when he makes a slave of him.”
  As he spoke he went inside the buildings to the cloister where the
suitors were, but Argos died as soon as he had recognized his master.
  Telemachus saw

my worth cannot be measured in poundsinchesorounces
& all that i am is neither reflected, nor summed up by a number sewn into
a pair of jeans--
hi, my name is Ashley, real swell person. future midwife, Scorpio, size 14.

Days in dressing rooms under poor lighting
when those size 14s feel a little too tight make my day into a battle
& if my being makes men cringe
then I will stuff my face in rebellion
if my body is under social seige, i welcome it with a smile
Because battalions of words cannot compare to the cannon
fire of insecurity
and trigger pulling i've had in my head for 14 years
we fat girls are really good at these sort of days because
we're good at insulting ourselves first.

Daniel, Peter, George and I sat in various stages of drunkenness.  Dee was sober and on the water. It was our annual dinner, the great catch-up, and most of us were drinking champagne. A great bouquet of peach roses sat in the middle of the table dropping petals by the hour.
“She’s got ginger hair.” Peter laughed.
“It’s more auburn.” George defended, pouring himself another drink.
“No.” Said Peter. “She’s ******* ginger.”
Daniel leant back in his chair with his arms behind his head, wearing his face of perpetual amusement.
“Dan. Come on, now. What colour is Melanie’s hair?”
“Oh…I don’t know.” Dan smiled. “A sort of strawberry blonde.”
Peter punched George on the shoulder."See! She’s ******* ginger!”
Boys will always jostle to be top dog. Daniel was the alpha and Peter resented it, but Daniel was everything that Peter would never be: good-natured, strong, calm, in control. Peter was loud and insulting, a bit of a bully but sort of sad with it, prone to fits of melancholy and drunkenness. We all had our role to play. George was fey and funny and got offended easily. I was the madman who did the things they didn’t dare.  The dynamic worked, most of the time.
Dee was quiet and an ‘outsider’, so he didn’t count. He sat with his glass of tonic water which was packed with slowly cracking ice, and he stuck to his usual routine : no food, no alcohol, no cigarettes, no smiling, no chit chat. Any time I laughed or told a joke, his silence would shame me. He reminded me of how desperate I was to fit in, to be one of the boys. He always shamed me just by sitting there, by not joining in, by being so ******* above it all, by being so himself.
“So, what exactly are you doing these days, Art?” Peter asked.
“Teaching. You know that.”
“Yeah but…why? Do they even allow mental patients around kids?”
Daniel leaned forwards in his chair and glanced at me, checking for discomfort.
“God.” I sighed. “******* Peter.”
“And what do you do?” Peter asked, looking at Dee. Dee took a long while to answer, focusing his eyes and adjusting his posture.
“PhD. Physics.”
“Sounds boring.”
“He’s mathematically gifted.” I said proudly.
Peter smiled with one side of his mouth.
“If someone gave me the gift of maths I’d return it and buy a calculator.”
Everyone laughed, including me. Dee started to fold his napkin, and then he unfolded it. Then he folded it again.
“Do you love maths, then?” George asked.
Dee pushed the napkin into his lap and shrugged.
“There’s something wrong with you if you love maths.” George said. “Maths is *******.”
“Do you want another tonic?” I asked Dee, putting my hand on his knee. He pushed it off with force.
“No. In fact - I think I want to go home.”
“Don’t go home!” Daniel said. “Please Dee, stay a while.”
“No, I really think I ought to go home now.”
“Hey.” I grabbed his knee again. “Come on.”
“No.” he stood up, the candlelight winking wildly in the silk wrinkles of his shirt. “I really want to leave.”
“The evening’s just getting started.” Peter said.
“The evening is not the problem.” Dee said quietly. “The problem is you.” He closed his eyes. “The problem is you.”
I felt my skin shrink. Dee stood up to his full height and exhaled.
“In fact, the problem is all of you. You’re all awful human beings. All of you. Awful, awful, awful.” His eyes sparkled as he warmed to his theme. “And you’re all so ******* boring!”
Peter and George were speechless. Daniel leant back and laughed beneath praying hands.
“Yes, you’re bores! You’re such ******* bores! Even the waiter is bored! Even the flowers are bored!”
“Dee, love.” I stood up and grabbed his shoulder. I was quite drunk.
“No Arthur, I’m going home, I’m tired. I’ll get a cab, you stay here with your awful, awful, awful, awful bores.”
He stomped off and Daniel blinked at me, his eyes wrinkled and drunk.
“Go on Art, go home. It’s ok.”
“God, Arthur.” Peter said. “What a lunatic. There’s something seriously wrong with him.”
“Oh *******, Pete.” I snapped, for the second time that night.
“Take this.” Dan said, thrusting his bottle of champagne at me. “I don’t want it. Go on, run and catch him. Go and get drunk with him.”
“No use. He doesn’t drink, remember?” I said, putting on my coat.
“Drink some water with him then. Tell him…” Dan grabbed my head and whispered into my ear, “…tell him that he’s right, that we are ******* bores.” He burst out laughing and sank down into his seat, watching me do up my buttons. “Oh my God!” he laughed, grabbing my hand like he was about to kiss it. “We’re so boring! We’re so ******* boring! Look at us! Even I’m bored!”
Daniel winked at me, still laughing. Daniel was one of Dee’s greatest defenders, and he admired Dee because Dee was honest, because he could not fail to be honest, and because Daniel loved the people that I loved, and I loved Dee most of all.
I grabbed the roses from their vase, just in case I needed them. They were wet, and dying, and they had no smell.
I caught up with Dee outside Angel In The Fields. He complained that he had a headache and told me he wanted to go home. He told me that he couldn’t have stayed one second longer.
He took the flowers from me, and buried his face in them until I hailed a cab.
Flowers were a running theme with us. Flowers in buttonholes, wisteria in gardens. Roses in his face. Buttercups in the grass. So terrible, when I think about it now. Perhaps someone was trying to tell me:
Arthur -  this story will start and end with flowers.

Dee had a habit of ruining social occasions. Perhaps the stress got to him, the terror of communicating, the fear of conversation. He became easily overtired and quickly over stimulated, if a conversation was getting too personal or staying at chit-chat level, he would begin to stress and flounder. If someone annoyed him he could not pretend to like them – he had to let them know that they were ****** or boring or dumb. He didn’t fully comprehend how offensive he could be. He didn’t understand that in order to maintain peace, you must suppress yourself a little bit, tailor yourself to fit the rest. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in suppressing himself, it’s that he simply couldn’t do it.
Most of all, he hated people taking up my attention, whether they were talking to me, amusing me, or even hurting me – he made it very obvious that he did not like to share.
Once, he emptied an entire bottle of red wine into a young woman’s handbag because she had been talking to me all night. He placed broken bottles in front of his mother’s car tires. He sent anonymous emails to my father, threatening disembowelment.  He beheaded ivory chess pieces, snipped the heads off anniversary roses, kicked people's shins under tables.
And he had the worst temper I had ever known.
When people didn’t understand where he was coming from, when he felt isolated and flustered by his own emotional poverty, he would begin to fragment. He would rock back and forth and moan. His voice would change, his face would change, and his anger would be frightening in its desperation, he would tear at his own clothes and hurl himself into walls. A few times I had to physically restrain him, pulling his sweater or shirt over his head to trap his arms, sitting on him, trying to calm him down.
But I could always deal with it, the crazy stuff – it didn’t bother me at all. The rage, the disconnect, the alienation. I knew what it was like to lose control. I knew what it was like to feel different. I used to say to him, “I was with Dee today and I seen hell in his face, Guv’nor. It was all red and blotchy looking.” And then, sometimes, he’d smile.
It was the eating thing that devastated me. It was the eating thing that made me feel useless. That was the one thing that I didn’t understand.

We took a cab from Angel In The Fields and went back to no.23. He went straight upstairs to get undressed, and took a pair of new cashmere socks out of their little beribboned box.
“It’s too warm for cashmere.” I said. He didn’t listen, and put them on anyway.
Dee had never had much of a *** drive, so I knew I was pushing my luck by kissing him – we had made love the night before. He kept his mouth closed and pushed me away.
“No, I don’t want to."
He picked the fluff from his black velvet computer chair.
“I’m not cross.” I said.
“Cross?”
“About…tonight. With the boys.”
“Oh. Ok.”
I went to kiss him again. God, I loved it when he bent his head back and his tongue met mine, his arms relaxing at the elbows, his limpet legs clamping around my own. But his mouth pursed up at me. No entry tonight, sorry.
“Goodnight, then.” I said. “I’m going to bed.”
Something cruel took over me as I opened the door to leave.
“Y’know, Dee – sometimes I think you really hate me.”
He looked at the wall behind me, scrunching his face up, wound up and stuck.
“Forget it.” I said. “Just ******* forget it.”
As I closed the door I heard an animal noise, a miserable animal noise.

Dee was the only thing that had ever made any sense to me. I had no real connection to my parents, I loved my mother but she was silent and neurotic, full of nervous energy that set me on edge. I never felt like I could fully confide in her. I hated my father because he had never loved me, and he had told me so. The only people I loved, my grandparents and my sister, were far away and mostly busy, unavailable, and I caught up with them through letters and telephone calls and occasional rushed visits - holidays, weekends away from school, time away from parents and *******.
I once walked to my grandparent’s house after running away from school, and I fought through a cage of conifers just to ring their bell, turning up at their door wild-eyed and full of pine needles.
I always fought to be with the people that I loved. I fought and fought and fought.
I loved Dee because he was mine and he was never too busy for me. He was as quiet as my mother, as vengeful as my father, but he was mine and I loved him, and he loved me back.
Perhaps that sounds very naïve. But it wasn’t naïve. My love was grown up, full of sacrifice and sleepless nights and heavy talks that left me exhausted. I searched for him when he wasn’t there, I talked to his mother about his health, I took his blood pressure, I poured his fortisip, I calmed him down, I made him laugh and I loved him, ******* hell I loved him, and I watched him like a God and reached out for him in the morning because he reminded me that I was alive, because he made my realness real, because he was my cold fire and he burned by the side of me, coldly, to balance out the crazed orange bonfire of me.

He followed me to bed soon afterwards, brushing his teeth and taking off his clothes, sitting down next to me.
“I hung up my blue.” He said. “Could you fetch it for me?”
His ‘blue’ was an oversized shirt that he slept in sometimes. He put it over his head and it fell around him.
“You know.” He said, “Sometimes I think that you hate me.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He got in next to me.
“I don’t hate you, not now, not ever.”
“I’m not one of your friends, though. If you had to choose a friend, you wouldn’t choose me.”
I didn’t reply, because I didn’t understand what he meant.
“Daniel is your best friend, isn’t he? But you’re my best friend. What happens when I have to talk about something, something that I can’t talk to you about? I don’t have any friends because I don't like anyone else. So who am I supposed to talk to?”
“Me! You can talk to me! I tell you everything.”
“Well, what if I wanted to do something, but I knew that you would try to stop me from doing it?”
“I wouldn’t stop you from doing anything you wanted to do. Not ever.”
“Forget it. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Please Dee, you can’t just start a conversation and then abandon it.”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore, I’m tired and I want to go to sleep.”
“What is it? Come on, please. What is it?”
He turned away and curled up.  I stayed with my head against the headboard, looking down at him.
‘I love you.” He said, without moving. “I thought I should tell you. I thought you should know.”
“I love you, too.”
And then he went to sleep, leaving me to the house sounds, the clanging inside the walls, the discordant duet of two sets of breathing and the occasional cough.

When I woke up, he was in the shower. His socks were bunched up at the edge of the bed, shrugged off in the night.
Like I said. It was too ******* hot for cashmere.

It's been a year since you left,
Six months since you last visited,
(But I didn't see you then).
When you left,
I thought I'd never see you again.
But when you came to visit
I thought that that would be my last chance
But you barely even left the house.

When I heard you were finally coming back
I figured that you'd be lazy
And not want to leave you house.
But your brother dragged you out
And I finally saw you.

As I turned down the road
And saw you for the first time
All I could think was
"Oh God!  Not again!"
An infinite amount of emotions
Slammed into my heart
All at once

It was all I could do
Not to throw myself into your arms
And cry tears of joy.
We fell into our comfortable insults and jokes
Just as soon as we saw each other.
It felt like you had never left;
Like it was any other weekend.

The next few days we just hung out
Talking, joking, insulting one another.
It seemed like we were thrown into the past
When nothing had pulled us apart
Before either of us made the mistake
Of telling the truth.
Watching movies
And giving commentaries
While eating pizza and soda
As we lay of the bed.

I wish we could rewind time
Just so we can relive those amazing moments.
But looking back on the past few days
And all those years we were together
I realized
I really do love you.
Never before
(Or after)
Have I ever been so close to someone
(ANYONE!)
Never have I told somebody so many secrets
Never has someone known me so well
Never has someone been able to say
"Oh she would say this"
Or "Don't say that, it'll make her mad"
Never have I been able to be myself and not feel uncomfortable
Never except when I'm with you.

I wish we still lived in the same country.
I wish there weren't oceans separating us.
I wish that I had the courage to give you these poems.
I wish you were here to help me through this move.
I wish I was in Sweden with you
(Or you were here in America with me)
I wish
I wish
I wish.
Only wishes are left.

I wish I could tell you I love you
I wish you knew how much!
I wish you knew I never loved someone as much as I love you.
I wish I had the courage
The courage to send you all the poems
I've ever written about you
Because there are so many
With so many words
That you'll never hear.

I wish
I wish
I wish

Engulfed encapsulated in the time and place that is extraordinary though it has its critics and
Some are true but there is no time that exists like the Christmas season in the most quiet and
Decent way it causes one to be spellbound enlightened by a peace that is all infilling its texture
Disarming with the sweetest entreaty it persists a mounting wonder of well being swirls and in
Its spell a glorious intoxication pervades every sense is engaged with grand significance your
Fellow man has become one of favorable stature with generosity each one is greeted honored
From humble mindfulness they are loved without question or without any feeling of spurious
Regard they are brothers and sisters recognized as pure defenseless humanity all in common
Pursuit of joy and safety the gifted goal all seek is tranquility in these days of honoring His birth
All these things spring into visible rich splendor they are invited called and asked to be evident
Without hesitation or reservation they become our shared reality we are drenched in love swim
In it have it in abundance all because we honor Him give ourselves to Him and others true
Utopia all that we crave and many cross and hurtful acts are from the fact we deny and reject
And push to the point in such numbers as a whole people we create a dam and we stop the
Great flood of compassion and need fulfilling answers that are sent but can’t make progress
Into an environment that is distasteful chaos brought on by unbecoming conduct we seek
Personnel pursuits that is at best abhorrent it brings nothing but waste hardness instead of soft
And gentle senses that provide a welcome that will be fed with new and gracious
Understanding it beckons instead of scoffs at divine privilege our very success that would
Continue our world throughout the year it is true there is nothing greater than love and when
Has it ever been needed more than now when our enemies are not just persons but they are
The things of horror stories and they are being guided by great evil it’s not just opposition to
Ideas it concentrated attacks by everything the very embodiment of Hell manifested it would
Be of little consequence if we called to our side our divine aid but we proceed blindly with
Arrogance alone and this assures our defeat and disaster that we willingly and carelessly bring
Upon all of our kind what would our country our world be like if we afforded God his rightful
Place in our affairs truth will set us free we are his made in His image to be not only his people
But His children the answer resides in us we could have the glory and happiness of the
Christmas season all year what exceeding joyous treasure we forfeit all because of self and
Willful pursuits that are insulting to ourselves and to our creator the biggest problem is failure is
Easy but to have a better life you have to stand up and fight for it but even harder you have to
Admit you can’t win by yourself in the beautiful act of surrender and asking for help you won’t
Recognize your life and at the deepest level you at first will wonder what is that then you will
Realize it is your own uncontrollable laughter welcome to the world as it can be and Merry
Christmas thank you Jesus for being all and all to us

Caring about other people when you're sixteen is like trying to complete a long jump from a high school football stadium on Friday night to a parallel universe where heteronormativity isn't even a word in the dictionary and misogyny is nothing more than a scary story told around the Girl Scout campfire- deemed impractical by everyone you know and more terrifying than you could possibly imagine.

         I. When I was in second grade, I became best friends with Hermione Granger. She taught me how to fall in love- with books, with learning. My seven year old self had a newfound adoration for life. When I laid awake at night and pretended to be at Hogwarts, I was free to fly across the night sky on adventures and then sit on my bed and read countless books whose titles I had never even heard before. In my second floor bedroom with the door shut tight, I was free to stop pretending.

         II. Fourth grade was the year I realized I could be good at something. It was also the first time I wrote a poem. It was about math, and I won a contest to have it published in a book filled with poems by other kids across the country. When I figured out how to rhyme math related words with each other to convey how much I hated the subject, I didn't know about the sense of accomplishment that would follow. I didn't know that forgetting about personal censorship was a better idea than listening to the priest who talked to our class every week. No one had ever told me about verbalizing the ink stains under your skin and liking what ends up on the page.

         III. Eighth grade was the first time I felt passionate about feminism. It was also the first time I witnessed the effects of **** culture in my tiny, Catholic grade school. The new boy in our class told girls he wanted to **** them through metaphor, as if objectification is justified by pretty words and a smooth tongue. When we informed our teachers, they promptly ordered us to "be nice" and "stop spreading rumors." Eighth grade was the first time I witnessed the effects of **** culture in myself- a loss of compassion for the boy terrorizing fourteen year old girls instead of learning analogies in English class. Boy is to girl as dog is to meat. God is to disciple as man is to woman- **** culture perpetuated by the word of God and only fifty percent of us knew it was wrong without knowing why. We were never taught to be anything more than meat.

When Hermione Granger was thirteen, she slapped a boy in the face for insulting her friend. Because she cared. Considering my complete aversion to confrontation and irreplaceable, debilitating shyness masking a deep seated feminist rage put into the words of a poet, I derive strength from Hermione Granger. Not the strength to fight on the front lines of an endless war, but the strength to care. It comes from best friends and books alike, but its ability to create bridges of freedom through parallel universes and ink scribbled hastily onto a page filled with ideas brilliant enough to fuel the world for centuries is never compromised. I don't identify with the Catholic church anymore, but I pray you find it too.

India is a traditional nation of high virtues, the compliments from and to an Indian must suit our moral image as described in books and epics. I think that each nation has a rich history at its base. Non-worthy, destructive, insulting, or over frank comments suggestive of other actions must never be made publicly or else emotions and feelings are going to be hurt badly one fine day and nothing can prevent the destruction.

i had a friend once, we used to meet up for drinks and talk *******... i like that notion: once... because it was only for a short period of time, i got ~bored of him, but in actual fact disgusted by him... one of those Dostoyevsky moments from Notes from the Underground... this is the thing about being well-read, self-educated, self-educated to the point where you can loudly say: university taught me nothing, hence my third class degree and ample material of having observed the pigs's numbed snout nibbling on the trough... how easily someone can say: i'm writing a book! i' writing a book! but when the question comes: can i see it? there's no book! i thought this friendly exchange concerning ***** and other juices of creativity would precipitate into a grand finale of actually seeing the sweat and tears on paper... so when i told him: i'm getting published, 100 copies and all, an introduction by an Armenian doctor... decent review... well... naturally jealousy came in... he said i should name the effort a word salad... funny thing about being well-read... you know certain terminological hot points... he was out there writing a book but really smoking dope and playing computer games like computer games are supposed to be played these days: about a million Stephen Spielbergs directing very economised games, very economised meaning: a great investment in them. he was being condescending with suggesting i name my first collection word salad, but that's the problem of being well-read, you know that word salad is a degrading term for someone not capable of writing a coherent narrative... someone who doesn't understand his own words, someone who writes loosely associated sentences of meaning, it's not a pleasant term... that was simply insulting my intelligence, not the sort of intelligence that's quantified within the framework of the i.q., when i mean the less statistical variation i'm invoking: intelligence quantum - a certain amount of understanding concerning a certain focus of interest - as with Kant, we choose what the mind might find entertaining, and discard what isn't entertaining - certainly, not everything contains in itself enough "energy" (for lack of a better word, hence the "   ") to be entertaining, partially because we are limited in what we find entertaining: a) something we understand or   b)   something we can barely grasp... usually the latter scenario, but sometimes the former... but to claim something is a word salad? let's just say i have enough psychiatric literature under my belt to know it's a degrading remark... and the hermit and a severed friendship.

people never think you're well read,
but they never, for once, think that
your isolation is due to the fact that you read,
as with the above stated scenario of
someone thinking you might not have
come across a phrase, that's essentially
degrading - too much video games and ***
will do that to you...
                          as with Bukowski
boasting about reading -
                                             he apparently
read Kant but doesn't bother to mention any
key ideas... populist at heart,
    sure... if i didn't bother to learn the laws
of spelling and punctuation...
                           i'd say as much on the rebellion
of never bothering to learn to tie my shoelaces...
it's pretty much the equivalent of...
     what he already said.
                              and philosophy books do
require patience... they're usually masturbated over
by students writing essays and instead
of going the full nine yards and entering
the narrative, they squeeze out a maxim and that's
that...
                       i'm 30 pages away from
entering the final part of the critique:
                                  transcendental methodology -
30 pages and i'm guessing two years since i
started reading the critique -
                                     well,
philosophy is more geology in terms of reactions
than it is chemistry, where reactions take much
less time to be completed -
                    philosophy in that sense is a variation
of geology - poetry and other forms of literature
are more or less chemically bound to be abrupt,
painfully drunk on the highs and lows -
                             and volatile -
                                                     hence the comparison.
   should i quote? i think i should...

idee czystego rozumu nie mogą nigdy same w sobie
być dialektyczne, lecz jedynie samo złe stosowanie
   ich musi sprawiać, że wypływa z nich dla nas
zwodniczy pozór.
                                                     (p. 303, vol 2,
                                      wydawnictwo naukowe PWN)

               another thing to mention... transcendental
methodology might be simplified in terms of
    transcendental grammar classification, i.e. borrowing
concepts higher than the general classification of words
allows -
                  the double noun exfoliation -
                                    apart from naming a word,
we can absorb the activity of the word beyond mere names:
         words that act as catalysts
                                   words that act as enzymes -
                 should there be specific examples?
                                   in general the substrate to product
transformation using an enzyme
                                                   can be voiced by sophists
throughout the ages -
                                 inflammatory coercion of words
to specific bundles of predictable excerpts is standard
                       when the pulpit is filled and all void denied.
but concerning the above quote, i too was thinking
something along the lines of *a priori being obstructive
       of the ideas of pure reason accommodating dialectics.

trans.
            ideas of pure reason cannot, ever, in themselves
                    be dialectical, but only the wrong application
of such ideas must cause, that from them there flows
        a deceptive guise.

      i could quote further, but the a priori principle is
the argued against dialectics are a false nature acquisition
in terms of these ideas of pure reasoning -
               that we've been given these ideas by a supreme
manifestation of nature in us, i.e. that this highest of
all possible tribunals dealing with pretensions and laws
of our speculation, could also contain within itself
primordial illusions and (loosely) spaghetti muddles.

            true to the reason behind moving from a)
a priori              through to          b)    a posteriori -
        if pure ideas are caustically anti-dialectical,
it's because dialectics would rarely mind the transition
being elementary -
                                       but then again,
i imagine the dialectics in a purely a priori guise
and the Newtonian debate given Einstein's counter-proofs...
in that sense, i somehow seem to disagree with Kant...
well, then again no... in themselves they cannot be
dialectical: i.e. disputed or argued against,
  hence the deceptive guise when Newton was supreme
for so many centuries and then Einstein came along
   and the mask that Newton put on the face of gravity
was to be found not straight, but parabolic.
so yes, that's true: time and space are ideas of pure reason,
and they cannot be dialectical -
                                        even though they are
but not in-themselves dialectical,
                                        they have to possess a dialectical
facade, or at least that's what they exfoliated
              and sedate with...
                                              i'd go one step further:
dialectics is, as far as i know, the only way to approach
ideas of pure reason -
                                           only once dialectics shows
us the ideas of impure reason (the Socratic daemon) -
as leading us into acknowledgement
                                              that certain things are truly
non-debatable -
                                      but that they somehow have
to be debated in order that they might be refined
for the purpose of them being true to their nature:
non-dialectical.
                                   this approach is at least better than
what becomes forcefully adhered to,
                                 i'm still facing a dialectical concern
over Darwinism...
                                      primarily because...
well... my concern is that a belief in a god is more comforting
not for some case in jurisprudence, a heaven on high...
          it's the bothersome timescale and the fact that
skeletons and drawings on cave walls are not much of
a comfort either...
                                   partially also, due to the fact that
i like to think about the item of concern, rather than
express some sort of benediction toward the item of concern:
    there's nothing insensible about that,
given that god, as much as space and time, is an idea
of pure reason -                if i was imbued with
   a natural supplement of atheism, i'd still be trapped
in a dialectical moment of concern -
                                 until i'd finally shed all manner
of a dialectical approach concerning the idea: and make
the final non-dialectical statement of faith.
the flip side is not whether you're right or wrong,
  but whether you actually can make that statement.
as far as i'm concerned (well, i never had that much
admiration for the man) - Mr. B never read a **** thing
of philosophy.

i find it abhorring to somehow feel the need for
a condescending approach to this subject of interest...
as any assurance there need be concerning philosophy...
one thing is perfected witch each new approach to
the subject: you never actually find the time to moan
about not being with women... or how poorly humans
treat each other... you never seem to complain about
solitude, you never once feel lonely...
                                                   you quiet simply get on
with it...                         perhaps that's what it always way:
the best way to entertain yourself...
                    you're basically having to write out with
ease crossword puzzles in your mind that precipitate down
onto the blank page... somehow with it:
life is bearable when alone... and there are more
entertainment hot-spots... none to do with gambling...
                 so that's about as much as being pegged
down to size actually means...
                                         never true: that cinematic
feat to depict modern (and very much Anglo) guises
of modern alienation...
                                           then again: he probably
did read it, but he never bothered to discuss it in any
way relevant as for it to be revealing his interest in
the topics... macho cool keeping it trendy, i'm guessing.

He heard a last echoed clink of liquor-laden ice-cubes,
Stuck between two stools that screamed for company,
I gazed across his vacant stare to the barman –the silent DJ,

Professionally ignorant as I gestured my hoarse thirst,
I waited a little minute, another minute an’ just one more,
Enter our businessman, full-schedule, long-hauled to drink,

With a rib-eye steak of a face an’ breath surely barbecued,
Two satisfied cheeks, pink-puffed with brows fit for burial,
Teeth ground with tension but brighter than the lighting

A fungal-lung nose perched upon a smile that I could smell,
He plumbed himself wet-shave close to my stiffened neck,  
“..Hana Drink..?” (Silence) best to follow the DJ’s example,

(Bullish huffs) (Lips licked) “.. Ya’ll wantin’ a drink, Mister?..”  
Flustered by the company, I replied “..Non, Je think eh Je chi..”
A retort of sorts, faux languages not my degree, “..Leaba..Bed!”

Spluttered just at the end – an insulting first impression,
He seemed nervously joyous, loosened from being himself,  
Yet his trouser belt buckled, pulled tight to conversation level,

An’ Redwood-trunk hands, alive with the latest deal struck,  
“..Bedtime for us..” he bare-bawled, splitting my weary eyes,
His numbed arm clumsily flung around me, “..bedtime for us!..”,

DJ unmuted, the music paused, I mouthed softly “..just the bill..”
(Silence)
“..Who’s Bill?.. a friend?…Is he cute?.. So this drink?” I panic still.

You are witnessing a prodigious talent and promise, and to a lesser extent but still to the degree whereby it should keep you awake at night writhing in cold sweats, your life, slip agonisingly through your open and clammy palms. Promise means so little if not actualised. You have been granted chance after warning after fortuitous escape yet have blithely spurned every omen and will one day fall, swiftly and perhaps terminally. You are almost certainly depressed. You say you love your girlfriend, and you mean it wholeheartedly when you do, but you worry that the relationship perpetuates as without her there would be no reason to rise with the sun. Even if the relationship is  unstable, and at times verging on the unhealthy, you believe you love her but are too great a coward to consider decisive action if that belief is to reside or subside. Your friends range from kind and honest yet deeply flawed to somehow toeing an inextricably thin line between dependability and duplicitousness. Conversations with a certain few of your friends necessitate decrying every undercooked ethos you've every conned yourself into believing you hold (you could well be the most hypocritical liberal to walk the earth, for you are innately and irrepressibly selfish) yet you still nod placidly as your conscience squirms. Grotesquely, like a beaten spouse, you crave the gaze of those who have treated you with the most insulting derision, but are too proud (of what?) and, a running theme, too cowardly, to stoop to a simple detante. You must change, for it pains you on a most base level to have to accept the feeble, whimpering, simpering spectre you have become. You must be bold, brave, unashamed in your convictions, anything but pursed and silent lips. You have a voice, and you must now speak loud enough for them to hear, for that which has become blunted must be whetted, sharpened, readied for battle to be unsheathed at an utterance. Heed the signs and change, for our sake. You, a milksop who attentively notes the sophistry of courage, you can still be brave, and you must be.

For one day you will be swelled with a courage and fortitude to fill your sails taut, enough to leave this place, forget these people and bear you away.

No. I don't hate you. I just pretend to be, it's easier I guess. No. I thought it would be easier.

No. I don't hate you. I'm just trying to. Or I guess I was prentending to. But I didn't.

No. I don't hate you for doing all these things. All those unnecessary emotions. I guess that love wasn't really for us.

No. I don't hate you. It's just that I can't love you anymore so I'm finding ways to stop this unnecessary feelings.

No. I don't hate you. I just thought you were that one but I guess I should still be looking for.

No. I don't hate you for doing this to me. I guess you were kinda right but if you still wanted to talk, I'm here. I'm always here.

No. I don't hate you. I just hate the fact that I can't look at you the sameway again. Cause I can't fall in love with you again.

No. i don't hate you. i just hate the circumstances that no matter what we do we can never talk to each other again.

No. I don't hate you. I just hate the fact that I can't even get near you. You feel like 10,000 fet away from me everytime.

No. I don't hate you. I just hate the way everyone looks at us that they wanted to tell something really insulting.

No. I don't hate you. I just wanted those few broken peices of myself that I can't find within me anymore. I just wanted those back.

No. I don't hate you. Because if I did. That wasn't love..

Can you imagine a world where
Every single word that you say,
Every tiny word that gets out of your mouth,
Would lend somewhere on your body ?
A world where every letter
Would end up tattooed on your face
Or on a place that can't be hidden.
In a world like this,
Can you imagine being mean ?
Being cruel ?
Insulting others ?
Can you imagine a world where
People would run the streets up and down
With written on their forehead :
"You're a ****."

In a world like this,
Would you be more careful
About what you say ?

/ because such examples have to, have to(!) be perpetuated, reiterated, perpetuated, reiterated... these... "things"... these minor quests of establishing being - against, the authoritarian rule of the democracy of beings.

you don't shout,
you don't disturb the "social", "peace",
of proverbial english society...
nope...
   shouting does not good,
akin to:
   silent water eats
         away at the shorelines...
what you do...
is akin to what birds do...
you don't gnash your teeth:
i.e. clench them molars...
gnashing means clenching
your molars -
a gnashing a gnarling,
a pestle & mortar scenario...
no...
    no shouting...
silent movie era of hollywood
translated...
   you... simply... chatter...
you strike incissor teeth against
each other... crafting a lightling storm
like crackling sound,
  like corn flakes...
    in a bowl of milk...
   you... chatter...
                 inspiration? birds...
bird calls...
    you... chatter...
    mind you, unlike the english,
looking into my mouth...
    the jaw should fit within the confines
of the skull...
    the upper set of teeth
should accommodate the jaw's
line of teeth...
   but you simply... chatter...
which is embodied by attempting
to take a phantom bite at "something"...
you...
          echo:
   central incisors against
              the lateral incisors...
you subsequently: chatter (χατερ)...
   i missed the eta (η): given that i also
missed the excess of tau - in what isn't,
a translation - other than a phonetic
equivalent of putting on sunglasses...

because, when your neighbour,
tells you... that you can't smoke...
in your own home, perched on a windowsill,
out of the window,
implying that the smoke is
vacuumed into his bedroom?
   and somehow, the law,
and the air, we share, is somehow his,
and his alone?
    and i can't do, what he can,
within the confines of his property?

NOW WE HAVE A PROPER SHITSHOW!

some english are ******* backward
hardly insulting the ****** community,
with some succumbing to prosopagnosia,
while some (notably down syndrome)
actually having a memory capacity...
that curious look and a familiar expression
waiting for a smile...

i basically live next to a mental illness
example, par uno...
          and englishman who "thinks"
he's king, rather than a convenient
citizen...
                       ****** won't budge...
guess all i'm equipped with is
                          my chatter remedy;
and english society still "thinks"
that i'm the "mad" one.
    
    - because it's like...
  how can you dictate, what someone can,
or cannot do, on their property?!
like smoking a cigarette,
     perched on a windowsill, outside a window,
with the accusation:
   the smoke is coming into my bedroom...
oh right...
   so...
          erm...
                you own the dynamic of air
to suggest such a bias?

I keep on telling the truth,
You know, like you never do.
I call you by name and say
All I say about you is true.
I wrote poems about you,
What the hell do you want?
You ignore all I have said
You ignore all my taunts.

I want you to sue me
Then with proof that you lie
The world can finally rest
And bid you goodbye
As they drag your fat ***
Off to Leavenworth jail
Where you won’t have Twitter,
Internet or even email.

I hope you get convicted
As the Corrupter In Chief
Because you are nearly
The worst kind of public thief.
You steal from the poor
And have kidnapped children,
And you  think your cowardice
Is a secret and is hidden.

Daily I hope someone intelligent
Will go sue you for defaulting
On the promises you made us
That have been obviously insulting.
You broadcast your hatred for us if we
Are not rich, perverted Republicans.
Now you are reversing all the good
That decent people have done.

I am ashamed of the millions
Who act like you are Jesus
When it’s as plain as your nose
You are like an obese Rhesus.
I’m sorry so many people are nuts,
Too weak-minded to recognize
What an ugly fate for America
You are unveiling before their eyes.

Kindred spirit, the privilege is mine, it's just that I,
I never finish because there is nothing going on, nothing to go on.

All right, all right, all right,
you're right,
I don't write as much as I used to,
but in all fairness (to myself)
I feel a bit more loose.

Never mean to,
but I guess I argue
a lot in order to hide
how much I really don't care;
Celina said it's not okay
but
that at least I know
it's insulting.


I only want to be in my body
when your feathery fingers graze my spine.
That tone an angel loaned
to you can ripple through
the void, make a soft,
translucent puddle out of reality,
can you see me
on the other side?

Don't say I'm angry,
it's just that
no one has ever really tried
to impress me, so I'm scared
I guess.

Remember you are here,
don't be weird about the types of things
sentimentality will bring,
will string along to the
forefront of an open sore;
no one pours the sink a whiskey
drink until the girls are crying out above the stars,
better yet, stirring them from afar
for their own faults, for being
fickle with love
and their own hearts.

You know I don't sleep much,
You know I don't dream of such
pretty things but I could imagine
how you, in a different life,
were gifted eternal wings.

Those that brought you to me.

I would weep

if I wasn't made of stone.

I'm the kind of person
Who will smile and laugh
Along with the mean comments
The derogatory names
The back-handed jokes
The quick insulting remarks

they don't hurt
theyre funny
theyre harmless
I tell myself

And then go home
Curl up
And cry for hours in agony

What have I done?
I've unleashed Quincy Valero into The Big Bad City, upon Greenwich Village for the first time
The 177 express, round trip
To Port Authority
To the A train to Canal

We missed our stop
Had to walk from Soho to Washington Square Park
But along the way we saw artists and galleries
Head shops and street performers
Hobos and junkies

"We made it"
"We in this *****!"
Quincy said as we walked through the arches

We saw a multitude of creatures
An artist drawing floral murals with chalk
Meditating Buddhists
A cello player playing for a meal
A drummer drumming for money to get back home
A jazz band
A clarinet player
Writers scribbling down whatever came to mind

We saw beautiful women everywhere
"Look, my ten, your two"
Quincy said nodding to a **** brunette wearing a sundress walking by

We got coffee at The Third Rail coffee shop
We met lovey dovey couples and a girl poet sipping espresso

Treading down Bleaker to Sullivan to Macdougal to Huston
*** shops, leather and studs, ****** and flavored lubes
"This **** reminds me of Saw"
Quincy said with a laugh
"Too much for your threshold aye?"
I said nudging him

We passed a guy selling vinyl on the street
"How much for the Charlie Parker record?" I asked
He took the record out and inspected it
"Five bucks" he said
"How long you gonna be here, like till what time?" I asked
"Oh I don't live by time or numbers" he answered
"Time ain't your mast huh?" I laughed
"Nope, you cant spell T-I-M-E without M-E" he said
Quincy and I looked at eachother with a grin
"I'll be back, if I'm not here before you leave good luck in your ventures" I said as we walked away
"Thanks brother enjoy the day" he said smiling and waving

We ate to Papaya Hot dogs
Best in the city
Then to the pool hall

Now folks, it is common knowledge where I'm from the Quincy Valero is the local pool shark
He can break and sink three *****
He can jump over your ball and get his in
He can shoot behind his back with one hand

Playing with him is a guaranteed loss
But I never cared, I just like playing
We talked and laughed about all the stupid nonsense back at home
And planned our next move

We went to The Blue Note, the best jazz club in the city
The Dizzy Gillespie All Star Band was playing that night
But it was too expensive for both of us so we went on to St. Mark's place

More head shops
More *** shops
And book stores, clothing stores
Punk things in Search and Destroy, record stores
All that good stuff

It was getting late
Back to Bleaker to start drinking
First stop, a little pub
The bartender was a gorgeous blonde, sweet as could be
We ordered two beers
She seemed to be having trouble with the tap
"Sorry guys it's a little foamy, next rounds on me"
We were amazed by that because back home all the bartenders couldn't care less if we got a whole mug of foam
We clinked glasses and took that first cool icy sip
So nice on such a hot day

"Ya know dude, this is it this is perfect" Quincy said
"What you mean?" I asked
"Well this is a great time, I'm on vacation right now and were here exploring and relaxing and enjoying the moment, this moment" he said with his beer hovering over his mouth

Quincy always talked about "This"
This moment
This time
This feeling
This thing

"This" is that time when you're in the moment
That moment of complete and total encumbrance
When you're wrapped up in what you'r doing because you love it and you're happy
The moment you live for
The moment you want to last forever
This moment
This right here
Not then, not before or after
But right now, this
We lived our lives trying to to make this happen every second of everyday
Living it up

Quincy took me to Artichoke Pizza
And my God, it was immaculate
A nine in wide, nine inch long and half inch thick slice of heaven
It was a mixture of crunchy, gooey, savory goodness
I highly recommend it

Then back to the bars
Wicked *****'s
Triona's
Off The Wagon
The Bitter End
GMT
The Red Lion
Cafe Wha?
1849

Beer
Wine
***
Whiskey
Scotch on the rocks
Bourbon

Smoking electronic cigarettes down cobble stone roads
Passing hipsters, college students and tweakers
Locals and tourists
"Out of my way you tourist *******" I yelled frantically pushing my way passed them with Quincy trudging behind

You can always spot a tourist because they got their cameras, their ***** packs and their head looking up saying "ooo look at the building and that one!" taking snap shots in awe

We walked to The V-club
As we walked up to the entrance a little old lady in a wheel chair called out to us, "Are you two brothers?"
We laughed and said "no, were best friends and next door neighbors"
"Oh, well you too look very similar, very young" she said
"Yeah we're both twenty one" Quincy said
"You live around here?" I asked
"Right over there" she said pointing to the building across the street
She told us about how the building was falling apart and how all the law students got booted out leaving the little old lady and one other person living in the nine floor heap
"Back in the day there were river rats in their the sized of cats, but now we only have mice" she said
"I'm being moved though, whenever the land lords and the officials decided where" she added
She had some sort old senior citizen perk that allowed her to be taken care of
She then started to spit some of her poetry from thirty years ago, perfectly from memory
It was full of truth, insight and hope
We were floored by this wheelchair bound geriatric
She was a a retired barmaid, a poet, and an ex-lounge singer
Her name was Tracy Warren

The three of us walked into the V-club
I ordered a glass of Pinot Noir
And Quincy got a draft Brooklyn Lager
While pulling out a stool a spilled my wine all over the wooden table
"****" I said as everyone in the bar watched me put my face in my palms
I got paper towels and cleaned up my mess while the bartender leaned over to Quincy and said "If you don't tip me that will be your last drink ever in here"
"Okay" Quincy said as he walked over to me laughing at my expense
"If it was Burgundy I'd be in tears" I said with a half serious frown

I went to the bartender and apologized and asked sheepishly if I could possibly get a refill

"You spilled your wine?" he asked with sarcasm
"Yeah" I said
"And you want me to give you another?" he asked
"Well, I mean I don't know if that's okay or not that's why I'm asking" I said
"We don't, it isn't okay, you have to buy another one" he said with the most insulting tone I've ever heard
"Okay" I said with disdain

"**** this guy" Quincy and I both said
I left the remaining wine dripping off the table
Quincy ****** all over the bathroom
He finished his beer and we left without tipping that bearded-high and mighty- *******
We said goodbye to Tracy and she told us to enjoy every moment and to get home safely

We went to one more bar, had one more drink and headed home
But on the way to the train we got stopped by a ***
"Hey you give me money I know you got it" he yelled at Quincy
"Na man, hes broke trust me" I said to end the oncoming confrontation
"No yous lying i know it" he said
"Na, see those shoes? I got him those shoes, fifty five bucks" I told him
"Stop putting me on" he yelled
Then some white knight hipster wearing thick rimmed glasses and a green flannel stepped in and said "What's going on here? You picking on my friend?" While putting his arm around the *** mocking him and making trouble for us
"This ******* won't give me any money for my troubles" he told the hipster
"Come on man, give 'em something" he said to Quincy
"Dude, he has no money he spent all he had today" I said to the hipster and the ***
"He's a trust fund kid, he gets it from mommy and daddy" I said winking to Quincy
"Trust fund kid?!" the hipster said
"Trust fund kid!" said the ***
"TRUST FUND KID, TRUST FUND KID" screamed the hipster, the *** and myself laughing at Quincy making a scene
Then me and Quincy just walked away throwing our heads back howling at the full moon, drunk and exhausted heading for the subway  

The subway to Port Authority
Our legs, our feet and our ***** were killing us
We just wanted to sit

We could not for the life of us find our gate
We got misdirections from officers, other public transportation patrons
Thank God for this one janitor for pointing us in the right direction out of our wild goose chase
And ***** the guy who I asked "Hey man do you know where I can find the gate for the 177 express?"
And all I got was a blank indifferent stare
"WELL **** ME RIGHT?!" I yelled in his face

Finally we got on the line for our bus
We saw some weaselly looking guy cutting the line until he got booted to the back of the line
As he passed us we both looked at his and said "Weet, get meerkatted scumbag"
He had to wait for the next bus, whenever that was

The bus ride home felt like an eternity
But we made it
We had to walk down the unpaved dirt road to our street

We did it
We took on The Village
Sailed through the bars
Walked the streets
Met cool, hip people
Made memories
And now we have stories to tell

In the Beginning, there was only The Divine Song;
The vibration of which gave birth to the ether.
The ether coalesced
And begat the Great Evil.

It grew, and grew, and grew Greater still;
The Evil wanted to be God so it denied us free-will.

The Divine, being sublime, decided not to Fight,
For the Love that is ALL prevented the exercise of might.
The Evil appeared to overtake the Light.
Until The Divine whispered the words:

You shall NOT surely die!

T'was the antidote for the Original Lie.

His plan foiled, The Great Evil grew Angry
And he cursed all of Humanity for insulting his vanity.
The Divine could allow this, as it is his nature.
He still loved the Evil, it was his creation.

There was but one rule:

You may not deny them their Free-Will!

You may control the prophets.
You may tell them you are I.
You may command them to do whatever you wish.

You may even send MY son there to DIE!

You may command them to write down your words,
To worship you most high.
You may set up establishments all over the globe.
It will only be more of your lies.

No matter how you torture them on Earth,
They will NOT surely die!

Oh, America….
how can you be enthralled with Trump
dumping on Mexicans and insulting the handicapped
hair piece flapping in the wind
almost as much as his gums –
dumb hicks with ****** chicks
lick ***** of donkey
if they vote that fool
El Prez
and give him the keys
to the nuclear arsenal –
my minds reels at the possibilities
******-bag ball-licking ***** face
at the seat of power
offering the impoverished
cake
or worst
nothing but catch phrases and clichés
intending on inspiring the masses
elevate themselves to a similar status
of ‘The Donald’ –
not all of us have mob ties
and millionaire family members
not that many Americans
can support a failing casino
or be the star of a television show
most of us
are just people trying to make the best
of an increasingly ****** up situation
made exponentially worse
by this *******’s real chance
at becoming the leader
of the free world –

We are born not of flesh
carved from the visage of mother and father,
We are born of nebulae,
of a symphony in the snow and
the seeking of knowledge we never acquire.
We are birthed for
good.
We are grown in
evil.
Our lives nothing more
than the squealing of wheels
as they spin in our
sempiternal filth,
a footprint in the dust since God said
"Let there be fear and malice".
Faces of dead, liquored men,
shovels in our piracy
digging for hidden treasure in the graveyard.
So we crawl in the holes and
cover each other up.
Insulting the demons who pull us through,
blessing them
with good tidings.
We go at our passing, to face the Devil.
God as our jury,
your hamartia plays witness.
I am driven only by my fantasy of tomorrow.
What a way to live.
What a way to die.

I feel somehow that they have mislabelled you

Perhaps just penned you in the wrong ink...

I'm not sure

It seems when I try to describe you, the idea goes sailing away and never anchors home

Slippery one might say...

As the man crawling out from beneath the wreckage of a rolled-over vehicle, slathered face to shins, in blood and *****

And the words that had beckoned to him
Now thoroughly lost...

Nothing more then a few gruelling moments in agony before it was just a memory and a phrase that didn't quite seem to fit...

Unreal. What did that word even mean?

It felt insulting.

As though the momentary terror that had consumed your reality was nothing more then a passing storm -- No more then a ghost or a Flying Dutchman...

But could the same not be said for it all?

Is any of this really what we came here for?

The choice alone is too much for me not to waste it and I fear if I leave it for too long that the choice will inevitably make itself...

But perhaps maybe that in turn is the choice

--The freedom to be or not...

White.
Female.
Middle Class.
Heterosexual.
Agnostic.
Libertarian.

Yeah.
That's me.
That's that first layer,
thin as the paper you could
read it on.
Just a
Jane Doe,
a nameless, faceless
demographic.

But peeling back the layers,
ripping through page on page of a complicated novel,
digging
down
into
a
bottomless
hole
to
China,
unravelling
­the intricate
web of
stereotypestruthsliesassumptionsprejudice
and
there you will find
me,
a colorless genderless asexual
spirit whose frame
is crafted and molded
not with how the world
chooses to see me and
who "they" deem me to be;

no.

A guy that didn't know me well
once told me that I
spoke more urban than he
expected,
and I couldn't help but wonder why
someone from an urban area
couldn't speak like they were
from a city,
like somehow what he saw in my
whitefemaleheterosexualmiddleclassagnosticlibertarian
prolog­ue forbade me
from speaking in colloquials and
abbreviations.
Oh, I apologize,
I laughed later to my friend,
law students are supposed to speak
with an ostentatious vocabulary and
an heir of
(superfluous) arrogance.

I am rarely a prototype
of what it means to be
White,
of what it means to be
female;
middle-class* or not,
my parents insisted at age 8
that I begin to understand
the value of a dollar;
my sexuality indicates little
about my level of attraction
to the world around me;
agnostic is really just a term
I put because I'm still trying to
figure out whether I really
believe everything I was forced to
learn at Catholic school;
and isn't Libertarian just a fancy
word for I don't want to
choose liberal or conservative?

It's insulting to
ingest how much is
insinuated about
my depth in
the shallowest of pools.
My cheeks burn hot
with frustration as I
try to balance on a beam
cracking underneath the weight of
a world that is constantly begging me
to go back in the neatly
wrapped package from which
the world would prefer I
came.

I'm not someone
you can put in a *******
box and
label;
you can't contain my
shine behind
blackout blinds;
I will burst out of your bubble
and break your glass ceilings;
I will scream at the top of
my lungs in a soundproof room
until you HEAR me.

I'm not meant to be judged
by my cover,
and neither are you.

We are meant to be read.