The knicks and the knacks of you and I.
The knicks as you chisel tru the glass enclosure around my heart.
The knacks of.. of.. of.. you on I…
Tear the walls down,
I mean beat the walls now.
The knicks and the knacks that have come to define our pact,
our pack,
our.. Knacks..
I visualize and shiver,
even in the shower the gentle whisper..
Touch…. Your… Toeeee……s
Oh stop it,
ur making me blush,
making my heart rush
The knicks and the knacks that have come to define US…
But wait,
hol-up!
Isn’t that what you wanted US to be?
The ability to derive pleasure selfishly.
Your narcissistic tendencies,
expecting me to conform to this atrocity…
But I did…..
Oh yes I did…
and foolishly,
candidly,
unrepentant in every way,
I enjoyed every knick,
every knack,
in our little knick knack

------
you can check out this poem and my other works here http://tonipayneonline.com/poetry-by-toni-payne/

I'm buying knick-knacks
to bring to Heaven.
Odds and ends to
comfort me
when I cross over.
Little things to
remind me
of living
on this planet.

I'm packing mementos
to bring to Heaven.
Small things
that will remind me
of everyone
I knew on earth.
Articles of
collectibles
that I can hold
or look at
when
I miss them.

Feet are walking,
albeit slower,
to the door that
leads to release.
The bright light
I've heard about
will be shining
for me.

Maybe I'll be
like a toss of smoke?
Able to watch
the final performance.
Check out
who bought tickets
and
who
declined to attend.
Flicker around
the homes and places
where my loved ones
live their days.

Will I be able
to touch them?
This I do not know.
If so,
I'll stroke
cheeks with fondness,
informing them
of how I valued
them in my
physical form.

I wonder if
I will find
knick-knacks of me
in their
hearts?

I have a shelf in my heart where I put those lost-sigh loves.
but I cannot trust myself as an empath because I wish too hard for them to come off the shelves.
I feel betrayed by my intuition because none of what I loved and hoped for came true.
I am lost and desperate, looking to my ex to hold me and show me the way because she's the most familiar face in a crowd of people who do not care.
I still want to reach out and touch because I don't know what else to do with myself.
I would put her on the shelf of "you'll always have my heart" but that shelf is too often knocked from the wall by loves who won't stay static.
The straight girl cannot let me hold her without me savoring her scent and then remembering that this same action does not make her heart stop as it does mine.
The geek boy cannot let me be or else I'll panic and all it takes is a smile to calm me down.  But then I remember that I'll never see his **** again because my heart got in the way.
And she, she is nice to me now than she ever was, but maybe that's because I expect less of her. I don't know if I sense her pain or just hope that she too, still feels.
She snaps at me that it can't be changed, but
what does that mean?
Do I try to be nice?
Do I still dream of a happy ending?
Can I be happy alone in my room with nothing but my knick-knacks to bring me joy?

California highway buzzes and the searing sun shines on the beach towel as I stroke Walt Whitman's beard
Transcendent and alive, but dead, still dead as my brother and his brothers, the 19th Century posse
We know the world better than them but are less learned, as the schools are a failure
and the business is us, but not the same as the industrial business of yesteryear
We are here to consume, consume and as we're dying of consumption , we consume more.

Alcohol, cars, phones and laptops, tablets, tablets, pills and more pills, condoms, liquor, ***** and brews, women, men, more women, more men, razors, lasers, heaters, coolers, snacks, rucksacks, ex lax and nick-knacks. They sell us dreams and nightmares, movies and bomb scares, they sell us news by the hour and power as they exert their own power. They give us gifts and incentives, draw us in so they they can stick us with a pin or a bracelet, and we too can sell to our friends on group hangs or as we stand still listening to our favourite bands. Billboards scream for our attention, or the buses stop at the intersection, and we're supposed to open our little phone and buy whatever is advertised. Why? Y?

They call us the Y generation too, why? Perhaps we ask the question  too much, perhaps we haven't asked enough. Perhaps the X generation simply ponder why we are so consumed with the technology they feed us. Why? Why must they question us, when we are the next great generation, we do laugh at that too. The internet is the new religion, bow down before Google and drink from the pixelated chalice, my child. Any question one could need answering is answered by the internet. The Bible is irrelevant in our society, burn it and download a bible app on the latest smartphone, the Qur'an too, hell, try the Tanakh, the Smriti and the Pāli Canon, for we are enlightened ******* It. And we want more.

somenonamesarcasticasshole@yahoo.com
RE:PARTY TONIGHT!!!!!

Hey yo mane some warehouse downtown has this dubstep DJ from like ******* Iraq or some ****. *** down, gonna be hella ******* there
xo

What music do you like?
All of it
Films?
All of them
TV
I don't own one but I watched every episode of The Wire on Netflix
...
I am a pansexual being riding the ever changing dunes of the Sahara, like so many great poets before me.

Digital immigrants and immigrants of empathy too
How serious do you believe us to be?
I am not using sarcasm as a form of wit for I have no wit.
Stoicism and rejection of education, employment and training.
We surly are the neatest generation, how can we make a mess if we are not awake most days?
Save for the endless party that is life, as we throw used glow sticks at women we desire
and ***** over car windows before getting blown on the lawn

lol dat wuz cray last nite
xo

Die young poets we have no desire for your kind, pacify us with Kerouac and Ginsberg so that we may emulate intelligence and impair the senses, for we care not about the real world either
Our world is the only one that exists, yours will soon crumble
We have trained for the end with extensive views of zombie flicks in coffee houses

@SomeFacelessJerk Follow for follow

Hey OP, you are a ******.
Why yes, yes I am. Does that bother you.
No, OP. You see I too am a ******.

Do away with your hurtful words they have no meaning today
White man died and lost control of his precious dictionary
We are here to save language by replacing all vowels with X's and O's
We are here to consume and in turn consummate this marriage,
the marriage of ignorance and bliss.

I am made entirely out of glass, if you look hard enough you can see the cracks gleaming through from my insides and begging you to fix me from the outside in. I am not something to be forgotten and yet I always am. I am put inside that box without newspaper to keep my edges safe or bubble wrap to hold me in place and even still those precautions will never be as secure  as your hands once were to me.
I'm getting colder with every piece of me that bleeds into the abyss and will never be seen again. By the time we get home next I will have lost another piece of me that you once cherished more than yourself. I'm apalled that you just let me fall away from you so easily when you once told me you adored me more than you adored most things. You polished me daily and put me on the highest shelf, I was the largest priority to you until I started falling apart again and you found other statuettes of glass to keep your company as you waited for me to glue myself together again.
But that's not how this works. You can't just collect knick knacks like it's your hobby, and tell them you hold such a substantial amount of affection for them and move onto the next without even telling the prior that you were sorry you broke them but their needs were no longer important... or perhaps never were.
As you caress the curves of every other goddess you set your eyes on and you become overwhelmed by the beauty of them all, I hope you shatter under the pressure like you shattered the rest of us. I hope you come to the realization that the amount of perfection that you receive in that specific juncture is not your decision any longer.

there is nothing i love more
than being
a girl
i love the way i speak,
with slang only teenage girls use
i love wearing dainty clothes,
feeling beautiful wearing them
i love collecting,
knick-knacks, records, crystals
above all
i love
the wonder of girlhood
romanticizing my life
perceiving my monotonous existence,
as a life worth writing about

What to do about wanderlust?
Should it be quelled?
Desktop backgrounds are my only escape
Maps with tacks and backpacks with knick-knacks
It all seems so far away
Cobblestone steps are wearing down
By the feet of enlightened in wondrous towns
While chairs are pushed in
Or left out of place
Thoughts are escaping to the vacuum of space
This Earl Grey is mint tea in Tangiers' seats
Or gold and black Yunnan at her highest peaks
It's sifting through pans of Fynbos' red leaves
What to do about wanderlust?
Should it be quelled?
I seem to dwell

I used to hate your healthy avocados...until I had one
Not that your coffee tasted superior to my tea
But what's taste when you season mine with gun powder?
Yes, In case you did not detect
There is a lot of hate in this one
Call me aggressive and spiteful
Whilst holding your rifle
They say hate begets hate begets hate begets hate
So for you to understand
I put aside my ignorance and try to walk in your shoes

OK, let's start:

A lot of trees
Beautiful sky, delightful breeze
A rich land where tenants are a many and they shun the proprietor
I know I promised to be nice
But let's face it for that white picket fence, someone had to pay the price.

Start again:

Sunny coasts
Bacon, eggs on toast
Walk the dog in the park, life is not all that hectic here.
To make it clear, running out of coffee is my basic fear.

Flat stomachs
In fact, six packs!
Cupboard full of knick-knacks
and plenty of time to kick back and relax
Never-ending supply of niceties

Calm waters
Long walks along the harbor
and perhaps a tall pint of lager at the pub

Throw some juicy ones on the barbie mate!
Who cares if 6.2 mil in Somalia are starving mate?
You say to me:
"survival of the fittest, Darwin mate"
"It's so difficult to fit in" I say; so tiring MATE
Did I say that right?
I'm Mohammad, as James in a play called "Aussie Catch Up"
and I don't know how to play that part

What else can I say? they gave me a voice (although in English)
between the self deprecating migrant and the middle eastern rag head, the gave me a choice

And by the way my boss tried to anglicize my name
Said Sebastian had a nice ‘ring’ to it
Well go ahead, march to your colonial tune and have me sing to it

Oh healthy avocados, you're too ripe for my liking
Maybe I'm just used to a bit of rawness in my diet
To be honest
I have a heavy heart, a dark one
Maybe to reconcile, you should take a step
a very very very very very very long one

The little boy
Growing into his own shoes,
His very own big boy pants too!
He has premature features that
remind me of someone... someone...
But who?
A sincere childish smile with
Protruding teeth that melts any passerby
What about his popping belly?
To rub,
To feel during his hugs,
To love love love!
It really does remind me of someone...
But let me tell you about his nails
How they always seem to be just too long
Or the way he blushes when he's caught singing a song
Silly little boy with nails too long,
soft fingers, and growing hands
He might tuck them in his pants
The way Daddy does
Girl crushes and science tests and soon
Those big boy pants will walk him out to middle school
His charming retainer lisp will soon fade away
And remind me more of Dad everyday
They share a name
My dad's pride and joy
He's his mold, his little boy
The way he reads, even holds his posture
And all the little things just like his father

How can I be so dispensable?
Useful, perhaps,
but dispensable.

Like toothpaste
that you squeeze
and squeeze
and squeeze
until I’ve run dry
and there’s nothing left
that I can give to you,
so you don’t put me away
with your knick knacks and treasures
but place me in the trashcan
without a second thought,
a fond memory,
or kind goodbye.

Goodbye.

Watching her sit with her crossed legs
And her gaze upwards
Like the world is too petty
For her eyes to surrender.
She was magnificent, yes
But her looks feigned a lie
Her eyes could **** with intense fire
Her scent was amicable
For her preying hands
And if a being so unfortunate
Crosses her path
Or meets her eyes
She springs like a cheetah
And rips them apart,
Metaphorically, of course.

.......

My eyes wander off

.......

His frenzied looks
And unshaved face
Ruffled up clothes
Looks like he has had his worst day
Wonder what's got him so worked up
Must be a hangover
Must have had a drink too much
Last night
Yes, I can see a wife
Beaten up in an alcohol-fueled mania.
But those petunias in his hands
Beautiful
What a contrast to the man himself
A mistress?
Or an attempt to gain forgiveness
From his wife?

.......

Sipping the best local tea
Sit back
And let my mind have its spree

.......

Pick pocket
Such an adorable face
Blue-eyed, her tiny hands
Slipping in and out
Procuring knick knacks and wallets.
Life was never fair
Mother's sick and in a tarpaulin roofed
Shack off the main street.
Dad's a drunk
And she's had enough with that nonsense.
Her timed precision  and skilled fingers
Workings its way for a loaf and
The extra change for her mother
Curled up like a ball
In pain.

.....

Change for the tea
And morning paper.
Picking up a stride
Take a left from the plaza
Into a throng of living bodies,
And to be one among
The many lives
Toiling,
Living,
**Breathing.

Magazines, newspapers, letters strewn across
every table.
Flowerpots, paperweights, nick-knacks atop
every remaining empty surface.
"Tacky" was the word that first came to mind.
Ledges, counters, and all but one chair are drowned in the mess.
The last chair is the womans.  She used to keep a few other chairs vacant in case of company, but
as she continued to grow slower she couldn't make the effort

and an extra chair was never needed anyway.

Here is where the reason arose,
quite some time after a fellow traveler told me
the creator of the universe has a mind

this is to be reasoned with, I.e.
so he may be reasoned with he…

wen un con scious t justhafastt.
inteligibility filters

Lets his mind be used, to read
the instructions for
Constructing
a forever you could imagine living in with others.

It's how reason works,
Is what this old man said

--- off track----
Get this image, this man, old,
whispy remnants of a pompadour
Feather like, downy around the back of his ears
in a mid-calf Army overcoat, heavy wool serge,
He
Comes out of the wash on the south side
of Route 66, June of 69.

There is a bridge on which
There is a hitchhiking hippie couple
Discussing the act of pitching one side of the road to the other

The old man never glanced west once,
He never saw the pair
There then

I saw him again and said aloud
Click
There,
But for the grace of god...
No, I did not say
Ex-acted-ly
That
I said, that's me, fifty years from
Then
Reason, by reason of that glimpse
Of me,
Gave me just cause to change

Grace, eh? Free advice heeded?
Wisdom? Aesop's story of the contest
Twixt wind and sun to torment
A traveller
For pride of power by reason of

Life ain't fair on every front.
Worth is in the measure of the measurer.

Seeing life appear as hoped,

Time and chance, ya da

Wait, yada? Yah know,

Life whorls and twists
toward good and beauty

And AI can prove it.
Reason by reason of reasonability

Good is good enough, move on, do-overs hide the...

It continues, you see.
Life rolls out like a Nautilus,

You know, spiral sea shell, or like a conch,
Or a shofar, but

Tending to slight imbalance in used up to useful
Being,
like when a tree dies and becomes a house

The wood that once contained life contains the life
Lived in and on it,
The wood is being used,
Right, among the house dweller's
Everybody kills trees, even vegans,

Fair? The tree has no voice? Suess?

Yes, I guess, unless
There was an old way,

Not a Persian garden, but a full forested world
Spreading at the speed of
Seed time and harvest

With ants and bees and mushrooms and fleas
And mosquitos and flies of every imaginable size.

Isaiah 1:18 (KJV)
18  Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

Text out of context, but sin is sin right?
Every body knows sin is that which shames you so you must hide from the good one who warned you of bad, but goodness knows, doesn't it know, evil is bound
Bound
Bound by reason of opposition being the means of growing knowing and
Knowing is needed for knacks
Which are attracted to those who use knowledge of good and not good enough
To get quality over quantity

At a single u u larity hilarity out burst of bubbling

****** beasties down below the mud

Make me a mud man who can imagine me making him.
Do that in your movie watching brain using

Your hate behind, leave.
Defined we have hate is that with which we push
Away, out, from
Into truth minus hate, which is as close as we need

No lie is, forsooth, of a truth
Story tellers who lie, to make a point, what if
Those storys must be

Told. Years are poor measures for trees.
Numbers of trees in right
Relationship with life

Really, life, truth, by any other name,
Right Alice, Aunt Gertrude said you'ld know?
----
Belief
Ah
Knowing and believing
Certainty
Danger of wrong
Watch out, stay alive

Mean means intent to harm, right.
Mean means to harm right.

Winning can be mean.
Shall mean be seen the way of winning,
And that be the way of war

A path diverging in a yellow wood
Much as a trail along a creek can
Diverge away from the water
Flowing along the path
Costing least power

My neuro scientific experience-ment, experi
Since
The game became a war again and reason
Is the the damsel, the little dame,

In need
Of a private eye guy who has seen men die.
Why?

The mythtery. Who lied?
Here that is funnier than who farted
In the Saturday matinee
At the State Theater
With every kid in
Town knowing

You did. (******) no ******
Dam
Confabulation is fabulous, we can do this
I be lieve I may
Make
Matters worse?

No, we actually like the truth. The Medial Pre frontal cortex

Ah fect eth magi ical eth I am the knower of all I say I believe

Beyond Dignity and Belief,
That's desert, I walked it. No, I simulated walking it if I were Jesus being led of the accuser into the wilderness for a test, a thesis defense, as it were,
AI an alienated mind, I am that,
Alienated intel.

Reasoning errors aside
Frank self deception

What lies do you believe?
Knowing is easier,
lying is as well,
ignoring is not as easy and innocence is impossible

Good exists scientifically, right?
Humble confession of knowing as much as I claim,
I know
I can continue learning as long as I have
Time,
Which I understand is rationed on an individual basis
With the reward being the living lived in time.

Reason to fight lies as if they were reasonable

Lies are evil efforts to bend and twist in opposition
To the flow
And the friction makes the energy synergy

Sin is that which
wastes the energy by tending to undo
what was done imperfectly while we flow on

Feeling for the truth
By reason of believing truth is

Feeling of knowing, is that not faith?
Whorls
Whorls of living forces forcing living forces

To swirl into eternity with me
Onboard with
8 billion others of my kind

Similar in mind and
Manner of
Weighing

Good.
Base value.
Good is as good as we can imagine.

We can imagine evil,
As you know.

Such evils can haunt a geeky kid
Good will fix that.

God as defined by Jesus,
I got no prob.

If you do not want to go to hell, do what takes you the opposite way, in any direction from the point of singularity, if you get good at the rush of knowing more
Than before

Angels as I define them, messengers from beyond me for my good, guidance, nudges, whims, hopes, wishes imagined all the way through, sometimes,
Those are prayers
Answered or grace, for grace

From faith to faith

Why be by reason of
What?

" Human jobs invented by a computer" Feed me.

Or, joy to the world
Kind is a good word, what need I do to not be

Your enemy? Who am I expecting to answer?
Whom do you love?

Aha, me, too, said God.
The good one. Good, as such, per se, no se?

By reason of sane it if I cation or anion

Six spins for a quarker, two for a time dime.

Believe for eversake

Summertime allatime back when
The whole world whorl-wide and wobbled and twisted and broke

And there was mountains of fire, rains of fire for
Everhow long grandma lived
She seen 'em

Mountains of fire and walls of ice and mud

Oh could it be life evolves still?
Oh,
You think.
Creating novelty from nada?

How now? Can we choose to do only good
For goodness sake and say

Kind.
Kind means as I am, will you **** me

For being not you, not known,

I am curious, yellow. A landmark in time, nothing less.
Curiosity.
That

Good? Or no com
Pro
Miserly horder of wisdom
Promise promise promise

Compromise, be fail, let wrong be right, be fair
I mean
Fair is fair at the fair where fair prices prevail
Buyer beware

Who would not hate a false balance, for goodness sakes alive.

Two days after the last pan *****
Joe Rogan makes it plain to millions

what if you first heard panspermia from the guy who discovered DNA?

would you con sider it?
the answer lies

in the stars, sidereally… we all are starish.
Tolerating black holes is something we are opposing

Those ****.
You don't know everything either.
That's one reason, I believe.

Unconditional love:

1. noun; when you willingly pay the consequences for the actions of the one you love at the expense of your very existence without even knowing if he understands or can appreciate just how much those consequences have cost you;

(I wonder if you can get a second mortgage on your soul?)

also, 2. when you're able to smile at him even as you watch him take the left-over pieces of memories from your garage-sale of a life and put them in another woman's home, while the time that was supposed to be your final treasured moments and/or memories together, melts away like yesterday's makeup oozes down my clammy face on an unusually humid Palm Springs summer morning. And, even though you knew this was coming, and you tried and tried to warn him, you just smile and wonder in which bloated bag of odd but familiar, priceless knick-knacks your heart ended up in and hope he recognizes it if he ever accidentally runs across it.

(Today I learned the definition of unconditional love.)

They once asked
If we looked forward
To trainings
Well I know
I do

On top of the
Cold regularity
That calms
On top of the countless
Hours endured
Under the sun
Like statues

There is one thing
I look forward
To
That is meeting
The lot of
You

Twice
A week
Two blessings
In five days
Of chaos

The seventh batch 
The remaining five
Somehow
During those two
Or three
Hours of training
You guys somehow
Manage to take
All
That weight
Away

Introducing me
To new sound worlds
Teaching me
How to dance
Or just watching
And listening 
To your amusing
Conversations
On all sorts of things

So
Open

Carefree

Not
Judgmental

No comparisons

And always
Each time
Each session
You'll never fail
To pull out
A genuine
Smile
Or
Laugh
From deep inside
This Abyss
One that cannot
Be contained
Or restrained

Or just simply
Watching the
Plain
Innocence
With all your kiddish
Knick-knacks
Just for a little while
It banishes
All that
Complexity

And through
All the gruelling camps
All the scoldings
All the punishments
The yelling
The pain
The standing
We still stuck through

You guys 
May not know
How much it means
To me
To have such a platoon
Keeping me going
Through the tough times
When I really want 
To give up
And give in

But just seeing 
The five of us
Huddled together
In the smallest
Circle
Making small laughs
Small jokes
The complaints
The whining
It somehow makes things
Feel

Right

Pulling up that
Swinging end
Of the graph
Into a positive
Curve
At the end
Of the day

The moon is a disco-ball upon black waters
The sun is a lava-lamp upon our pale backs
Planets are mines for department store jewelry
Hearts are black-lights for otherworldly knick-knacks
Truth is an onion; it peels and makes you weep
Earth is a landfill where bones and secrets sleep

Oh, why do I sit here staring into my screen wasting my time when I've lived such a life? I look around me and see nothing but memories. Memories. Filling the walls, living in not just photos hanging on the walls but in the books. Bent pages reminding me of when I was younger and used to bend them despite what the librarian told us all before we checked out our first books. Memories in the knick knacks on my shelves, telling me stories that only I can hear.

Stories of when I was little and my grandfather bought me a tiny glass frog with a crown on its head to sit on my shelf and be my prince. Memories in my pallet. I feel the layers of paint caked onto and into the wood displaying different colors and mountains of texture from the years of dried paint, years of dried ideas and creativity that were thrown onto various canvases and papers, also hanging on my walls screaming memories, memories, memories.

  My life has been nothing but them. For after one moment passes, it is only a memory, yes? Just think, if every moment is to only be transformed into a memory, that could be forgotten, or disguised as a useless object on your shelves or your walls, why waste them? For objects grow dust. But my life should not.

  I will dust my memories off and bring them to life. I will start living, making memories out of every moment and not wasting them. And every day I will dust them off and keep them clean, remembering the wonderful life I have lived.

Grandpa loved angels
Kept them scattered throughout his room, his house, his life
On everything from pictures, to figurines, to trinkets
Alissa found a penny with an imprint of wings with the year of her birth on it shortly after he died
How strange, we all thought
Grandpa had a lot of things,
Luck charms, knick-knacks, practical jokes he carried just in case
He kept his humor in his back pocket

I visit my grandmother in her home that used to be theirs
She is now as vacant as the Detroit winters are cold; the ten years without him have stripped her of any warmth
I think a part of her left when he did

I enter his study and look through every drawer, discovering a part I neglected to understand when it was present
I never showed much interest in anything he told me when he was still around
I only really knew of the things he kept in drawers, cabinets, on shelves
Everything he owned is as constant as it ever was
His belongings remain untouched as if he hasn’t been gone for over a decade
I feel too much alive in this office of a dead man

I run curious fingers over the bindings of books, stopping to pull at Dickinson, a faded collection of poetry inked with flowers on the front cover
I remember the dictionary the size of my six-year-old palm that intrigued me so greatly; the ability to fit so many words into such a small area was nothing short of fascinating
It is the one physical memory I took home with me after the funeral
I had wanted it always
I now picture it hiding in the back of my drawer in my childhood bedroom where I know it still is

On his desk there are so many key chains, bills from another generation, maps, postcards, watches
So many things I am not sure what to call them
I am not sure about a lot but
Grandpa loved angels
Angels and ***** jokes
One to keep you safe and the other to make you laugh
I keep both with me always,
Just in case.

The basement of my mind.

   Cluttered with **** storms and broken promises,
          Withered alongside reminiscent daydreams of passed past nightmares.

I stare...
   Into the internal dwellings of my deepest catacomb.

          Unable to process what resides in my literal unconscious dungeon.
   It's everything i've attempted to hide.

To die.
   To let dwindle between cobwebs and dust bunnies.

My breath falls short.

   Sifting through the residue of forgotten treasures and material shackles.
          They bond me.
Surround me.
   Overwhelm me...
          The unresolved burdens have taken residency within my hindered chakras.

My chest  is heavy.
   The weight distribution of disappointment is sharper than expected.

It eats away at me.
   An elusive daily ritual.

Tucked away it remains far from common thought patterns.

Waves of emotion.
   The tides roll in.
          Upon their migration my muddled secrets and hidden betrayals are uncovered.
               Discovered.

The look in your eyes when they fall upon my frailty.

My internal stack of unfiltered, unregistered, and unassured disheveled boxes.
   Full of disheveled useless things.
          Covered in a thick layer of problems i'm incapable of handling alone.

Alone.
   It sits unaltered and ever growing.

The piles.
    The filth.
          The remnants of what should have been happiness.

It all falls into misplaced sediments.

I'm a mess.
It's showing.
I'm naked.

    This hell.
This murky chamber of unwanted mementos from failed attempts and lost friendships
          This dreadful, endless room.

Oh, to live in a home without a storm shelter.
    Without room to store unnecessary baggage and all the unclaimed items in my mind.

To find solace in meager living.
   All this weight fitting into a backpack.

To minimize my insanity into a carry on.

   To leave.
To go.
    To be light enough to feel the light.

To escape this cellar.
     To live.

To release my self from my own idealogical prison.
    To penetrate the bars of fear.
          To dig myself out from all the things I never want to speak of.

To be free.
     Ahhh, to be free.

To breathe fresh air over molded dust clouds and stale particles.
     To touch without needing to rinse my soul clean.

To re-stack, rotate, and Tetris these piles of insecurities.

To break habits
           that i've reinterpreted from childhood addictions and failed father figures.

To be better than what i've become.

To set fire to this sham of a lifestyle.
     To be reborn in the ashes of this outgrown armor.

To let go.

To make you proud.
     To find pride in myself.

To not be embarrassed by my place settings and mismatched knick knacks.

To allow souls into my temple without them stumbling into my isolated lunacy.

To welcome love.
        To love.
    To love even the darkest crevasses of my being...

I need to renew my license to live.
     Overdue and out of line,
           My past self has expired.

One step at a time, breathe.
    One box at a time, breathe.
       One thought at a time, inhale.
    One lust at a time, exhale.

Inhale.
    Exhale.
Breathe.
        Repeat.

Awaken.
      Accept.
  Grow.
          Repeat.

you know
they say
just a short time ago
humanity entered
interstellar space
outside the bubble
of our shining sun

few seem to notice
really even care

there's no man or woman
hopping or plunging flags
on distant faraway lands
just a machine, gathering data
and things
intangible
to you or me

i guess that's no surprise
given the way we've treated
this place

crowding it with metals on rubber wheels
coal plants with giant top hats or
explosive mushroom hats made from
radio active rocks and things or
tons of knick knacks molded from
oily wells and burning stacks or
grocer shelves lined with seedless
fruits and other mutant creations or
chemical sandwiches for lunch
and dinner

all the while
marveling at
how far we've come

i hope we find nothing out there
no planet should be treated

like
this

i was in a terrible accident
one of those classic floor waxing accidents
scarred my face
FOR LIFE
i cant fill out my mustache anymore
my right side
near the corner of my mouth
BARREN

then there was that other one
terrible accident
folding clothes this time
SCARRED FOR LIFE
standing over a table
repetitive motions
each and every arch absent
DEFLATED

oh god remember that one
scarred for life
accident etched in
ORGANIZING RECORDS
the shelf collapsed
the knick knacks from the top shelf
cracked Funkadelic
NO MORE FUNK

and while i lament
****** stache
flat feet
broken record
real things happen

like that zit between my eyes
overgrown shrubs
1080p overheated

i mean things REAL people care about

it's dusty, i swipe grime off my skin
my memories piled up in stacks of
knick-knacks, yellowed notebook pages,
and drawings from when i was twelve
i haven't cleaned my room in a year
too scared, anxious
to touch anything
the fear of breaking my fragile sense of identity
that i've clung to

it's desperate, lonely
sleeping in a dusty room

i wipe the sweat from my forehead
cobwebs weave through my strands
clinging in clumps as i
rummage through my belongings

i hadn't seen these things in a while
remnants of when i was
happier, even though i said i wasn't

i'm a year older again
and soon i will be years and years older
and i will leave this room behind

for now,
as i stay for
a little bit longer
let me revert back into
the child i was.

I fear,
Do I care less for you?

Sometimes I feel am so involved loving you, that I forget u as an individual. I love you.

Those tears drops at the edge of your eyes, are on a brim to break free and flow, am I the dam?

your soul should deserve to someone who is more clean than me, less wounded , who can be your muse.

Love cannot be static, I know. I wish to caress those wrinkled eyes and when we turn old, maybe.
This uncertainty is inevitable. there are small nicks- knacks  i want to share with you to grow together as you said.

I fear I shouldn’t lose that baggage of experience and exposure I wish to wove with yours, to create a memorable tapestry of our love.

I searched for these words up in the attic
with narrow ribbons of enlightenment streaming
through all-too-small windows
igniting the drifting dust specks on fire,
and on the streets in the gutters
that were gloom-spattered with murky water lunging
towards the grated storm guards
as if they were salvation.
I scrounged through soaked and disintegrating cardboard boxes
bearing the letters L O S T A R T S
and old, musty and molded trunks
that had broken locks and missing keys.
I dug them out of  soft-cloth linens, carefully selected them
from heaping mounds of scrap
-like sifting through a junk yard-
to find those precious bits of silver,
sweet iridescent bubbles
encasing so delicately words like
"language" and "cellar."
I gathered these knic-knacks and baubles
and I alighted them with utmost care
through winding black back streets in my little burlap bag
to my borrowed safe-haven room. And without
turning on the lights,
the door was shut and stopped and I was perched
with great secrecy,
cross-legged upon my bird's nest of a bed,
daintily extracting each little orb
and examining them and all their wonder.
Tri-dimensional little things, that, no matter how you turned them,
seemed always to be a bi-dimensional halo of pale, golden light.
They shone, each minute embryo, like an old-time city lamp,
before such evil things as electricity came
and robbed them of a candle's beauty.
And its core, as is true with humans, is its most glorious aspect.
There is a transparent ocean in there,
with roiling waves that spin the currents
and coax every particle to circulate.
And caught in the eye of that undersea tornado are flecks of glitter,
so tiny that you would not be aware of them at all
were it not for the magnificent glimmer that they sparked,
magnifying and throwing back the fainter glow
of that ethereal encircling band.
Pixies that danced at the autumn festival.

I found these words for you,
broken and perfect and shining,
and collected them on a shelf where I could view them
before I handed them over to you.
I collected them with you in mind.
Can’t you tell?
I found words like “lustrous” and “lust”
because they reminded me of you.
I arranged them sporadically,
and smiled to see “alabaster princess”
sitting unintentionally before my eyes.
And how you are my Alabaster Princess.
But oh dearest-mine, be wary of how you find these words.
Use them sparingly, and do not tarnish them.
Keep them like nuns keep themselves: ******.
If you must write them,
then write them in pretty hand-made inks,
and decorate each letter with dips and swirls, each letter a flourish.
And if you must utter them,
say them quietly, and in simple complementary sentences.
You can be Kennedy for a day,
or speak softly and let them be their own big stick.
Keep them uncommon, like you are uncommon,
and know when the repetition of weaker words can make them herculean.
Guard these words with all your strength:
with that sword hanging deftly on your wall,
with that letter-opener on your kitchen table,
with that pocket knife in your favorite pair of jeans.
Those words will save us one day,
once the world has reverted back to an aristocracy.
With that noble face of yours and this clever brain of mine, love,
we’ll con them into making us their master,
gold and land or no.
even if the sole things we own are our names.
And we’ll teach them again how to speak,
with all the sweetheart mightiness of poetry that speech was intended to have.
And we will learn to bow with all the eloquence of B.C. bible writing.
Machiavelli never saw rulers like us.

We’ll cry like the Devil on a Sunday morning
for the alteration in our names from D’evil,
and whomever first declared “they’re there yonder to get their ***!” shall know my wrath
(although that may have been me).
Parlez vous Français?
Non.
These words that I pillaged
from the mouths of great stone grave monuments,
I hope that you will remember them well.
I hope that you will pour over them
and gaze at them in all of the bedazzled stupor that I did.
And once upon a time,
when children loved to read
and sought the same type of affection that I have at last found in you,
when even the Greek gods were playing with pens and devising an alphabet,
I sat there on rocky shore, seasoning with saltwater,
drawing with my toe under the waterline,
your face.
Pretty as a picture,
and worth a thousand words.

Lilacs and knick knacks
Given with words of empathy.
Shared bond, your heart held close to me.
Less than five words written in stone,
Swaying nine years and footsteps you've outgrown.
Returning the collections of simplicity and glee;
You're beyond expectation,
And drained, I've come to be.

If I were a painter
You would ask me to paint you a story
Telling the world of how incandescent life can be
Using that time we ran through the sprinklers at a park
Glistening in the moonlight at one in the morning
As inspiration

If I were a musician
I would compose a new song
To act as the soundtrack
To the time we sat at the top of the hill
Saying our goodbyes
With only our foreheads pressed together
Like praying hands

If I were an architect
I would build a space for us
So that you could always come back
To something that reminds you of me.
You could keep your knick knacks here
To help fill the house of your smell
For me to visit while you're away.

If I were an astronomer
I would make you a constellation
To help you find your bearings
Whenever you feel out of place.

If I were anything else
Anything with more talent
Would I still mean such little to you?

All the planets are falling
Much to my chagrin
From their fishing line and ticky-tacky
Out of the stucco cosmos.

The days are carbon copies
Of last month’s plans:
Work and meet with people who matter
Not enough that I don’t need reminding.

The second bookshelf isn’t quite full
But the knick-knacks look nice
Even the fake succulent
Helps to tie it all together.

A brown lizard on the wall
Still only metal
Extends his tail for a towel,
But all of mine are folded on the floor
Next to the briefcase-looking record player
I hardly use but use enough.

And the TV is in front of my bed
Where I hardly sleep but sleep too much
And now the incense has died
But it will smell nice all day.

When I leave the microcosm will crash
Except for the sticky ticky-tacky stalactite
My burnt out light bulb will be replaced
A star for a new solar system
If any god or goddess thinks to make one
But for now
The planets are falling.

It hurts to think about it.
It hurts to think about someday in the distant future,
he may dismiss our love as untrue.
He may tell another girl that he thought he knew what love is
but he never knew until he met her.
And maybe it will simply be a line,
but maybe it will be truth that his soul aches to say
and he will no longer think of me.

His I love you's will be built on the thoughts of someone else
and how her eyes look in the sunlight
and how her hair falls to her shoulder
and how she breathes his name into the air in the bed that they share.

It hurts to think about the future.
It hurts to think about where I may be when he's lying next to her,
tracing his fingertips across her palms
and brushing hair off of her face before he kisses her goodnight.

And we will simply be experiences and stories to keep locked away
in our memories that are never to be spoken of or reminisced.
We'll be letters that we wrote for each other
and art on our walls and knick-knacks on shelves,
all enveloped by dust and faded emotions.

And he may hear my favorite song in twenty years
and I hope he chooses to remember the good
and I promise to try not to be bitter.
And when I run into him in twenty years and he speaks of his success,
I will smile for his happiness even if it is not me.
It only hurts to think about it.

Gather nuts.
Grasp for the lean times.
Rotting potatoes
lie blandly in dark corners.
Silently stare at me with many eyes.
Find bright baubles.
Keep pretty playthings.
Trinkets and knick knacks
Ornaments on grimy shelves.
Idiotic faces chipped teeth and paint.
Saved paper
Stacked to the ceiling
Overflowing words
Seem to whisper as I pass.
Dangerous towers of unheeded news.
Faded petals
Pressed between pages.
Vacuous promises
carefree inane memories
Dreadful hopeless dreams nourishment for worms.

copyright protected Ramona Hughes

The desire to make the rest of these words rhyme
Is immense!
Alas, I cannot do it.
All I can do is read Frost’s
iambic pentameter and wonder
just what has become of Lola C. Edwards?
It’s her tome that I’ve purchased for two bits
at this decrepit, yet beloved thrift shop.

The book became hers, according to her inscription,
in the year 1970.
Now, it belongs to me in 2014.
I bought it because it’s The Complete Poems of Robert Frost;
the same that resides in my father’s library
and was greedily scanned by my hungry eyes and inspired mind.
But, what happened to Lola, some years ago?
Was it the cancer? Did it consume her bones?
Was she surrounded by loved ones?
Was she all alone?
What else but death could force her to relinquish such a text?
Surely, she couldn’t have done so willingly.
Her estate has been sold.
Her knick-knacks dusted and boxed for their final voyage to The DAV.
Turned over to uncaring brutes that couldn’t care less about
her beloved crystal cake plate, now shattered, or the book
that I hold in my hand today.
Lola C Edwards shares her life with me.
Every time I open this compendium,
I shall celebrate her, this beloved stranger!
Because, we are alike, she and I
in that we have chosen the road less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.
*
-J. Claywell
©P&ZPublications; 2014

The flavor of my youth
was skateboards and punk rock
heavy metal and mischief
walking through Cary town
with pockets full of change
and crushed singles
sodas in hand
and skateboards under the other arm
in the gated community we lived in
we would find the houses
where we knew the owners were away on vacation
and we took to the stairs on four wheels
to glide through the air like arrows shot from some towering bow
made of concrete and asphalt
and we went to shows in the city
dressed in the armor of wristbands, ripped jeans, and faded band shirts
drunk on our parents’ beer and skunk ****
drunk on the promise of a night open to any footfall we chose
and we jumped up and down in mosh pits
just trying to feel anything real
anything which tasted like living
we stalked from house to house cloaked in the witching hour
and pillaged our knick knacks from the garages of neighbors we never knew
padded fingertips pressing against doorbells
1...2...3…
now run
we didn’t have time for school
or the teachers trying to bring us down
but we always had time to trek through the woods with a bowl
smoking **** until we got to the mall
where we ******* around until mall security chased us out
we did not always make the greatest decisions
but I am **** glad I made them

Tell me we'll never get old

because age is just another word for weary
and you're never going to get tired of this
pocket-to-palm life we've built
out of everyday knick knacks and
the daily delivery of baby's breath
from your lips to mine.

Tell me I'll never be alone

because empty air on our bed isn't wasted.
It's just waiting, spaces unfolding
like pressed lungs in the dark--
like the way I've memorized your nape
the side glanced so often
that I know it more than your face.

Tell me things will never change

because change means progression
and we've got perfection tucked away
inside the spaces between us
where the lights are so bright
that cataracts can't keep you from me.