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stirred deeply with joy
enthralled with the spirit
we return to Elysian fields
to live autumnal reveries

we prance once more
onto blue sky diamonds
with hometown heroes
to pitch perfect games
knock long grand slams
to honor and embrace
the semblance of siblings,
parents, lovers and friends

life's teammates
our dearest playmates
passed and still here
sustaining our spirit
filling the void of
riven hearts
with nothing more than
a smiling presence,
compliant ear
a warm embrace

keeping a
season of sunshine
alive for one more
golden day

in a resplendent moment
Measy’s youngest son
stood before me
as if it were him
five decades ago

his impish smile,
mischievous eye
and olive skin
wrinkled when
he grinned

your Old Man
was a hell
of a ball player
a great hitter
he always swung down
at the pitch, hitting
nasty line drives

I remember that
summer afternoon
when we first met on
the Washington School
Merry-Go-Round...
Measy just up
from Carolina
he spoke with
a slow Tar Heel drawl
we didn't know what
to make of him
so we made him
our friend

Sifford's Esso, B&D;
and Bulldog teammates
I marveled at his athleticism
but the thing I remember
most was the soft joviality of...

“ ah hoot,
ah hoot.
ah hoot”

his laugh would send
a soft almost *******
shudder through his body

Measy lives in me,
forever in my heart
I embraced young Roy
touched his cheek
a transcendent moment
that spans a half century

At first base
Gail “Peppermint Patty” Q
was scooping up grounders
and not letting anyone past her
without giving them a smile or a hug….
asking each player if their shirt fit right…

the way Gail played
she could start for
the Lady Gaels today...

on the mound
Moons was wearing
a Schmeds shirt
lobbing lollipops to the hitters…..
making sure everyone got on base…

at short Screwball
covering half the ground
he once did..
(never a ss but a classic junk baller,
never threw a pitch that you could hit)
but on this day his heart was filled
overflowing with the karma
of good works and his love for
Rutherford and its favorite
sons and daughters
who have gone on before….

other stars abounded on the field and off…
Noons cracked everyone up
with an endless stand-up routine
Skip walloped a few dingers
BL looked sharp in his Foster Grants
and Andy was looking good
destined for the next cover of GQ….

Coach Way gave a resounding pep talk…
the need to grow up and show up
with an attitude of gratitude will
always make one a winner
regardless of the score

in the stands I heard a hundred stories
about the prowess and foibles of departed friends…

Bay Bay’s HR smash that put Flash Cleaners
into the World Series

A cool Moose bringing the ball across
half court, driving and dumping one off to Head
for the go ahead points against Queen of Peace

Minnow ruling a territory that included Morse Ave,
Wood Street up to Chopper’s House and
half of the Washington School playground

Fic being the smallest Bulldog with the largest heart
ran over linebackers and tackled fullbacks twice his size

Weehawken Joe draining a jumper
from the top of the key to keep it close
at the Union Hill pit…

as the list of the departed was read by Gail, Pat, John and Jimmy
the depth of our loss was only exceeded by the magnitude of love
a caring community extends to one another….
Rutherford is indeed a very special place….

so many caring friends
so many good thoughts
the blessing of friendship
the grace of presence

as I turned to leave
I thought I saw
Nick and Joe
hanging with
Sweet Lou
the hog was
humming
his red bandanna
was flapping
in a rising breeze

Aaron Copland:
Our Town

Righteous Brothers
Unchained Melody

Whitney Houston:
I Will Always Love You

Oakland
Dia De Muertos
2015


Thank you Pat Francke, Jimmy Noonan, Gail Wilhelm Quinn and John Mooney for putting this beautiful event together….

My apologies for not mentioning all the beloved souls so honored at this game…..Know that all are deeply loved and equally missed…..

If anyone has a memory they would like included please add in comments section and it will be incorporated in future versions…..

Also if anyone has a list of the names would like to add that to this….

God Bless
an annual autumn softball game played in my hometown Rutherford NJ...
we gather to honor and remember passed loved ones......
L B Aug 2018
Katydids and fireflies have the levee tonight
Swat team held the day

There is peace now
and peeping neighbors
emptying horror
among themselves in whispers
left to wonder
‘bout the screaming and the barking
of earlier that day

“Put down your weapon and come out
with your hands up”

Again and again
the demand of surrender
Total
There is no other way

“Let them go!
Come out! come out with your hands up!
It will be okay”

…and he argues in his mind with the shame and loss
…and the shame and "No…it will not be okay"
He had hit her! Hit her with the Gun
again and again…with the gun
Of his demands
The gun of his power
to make her!
The gun of his despair
He had hit her
the dog is barking
His children scream!

“Put down the gun and come out
with your hands up!”

How many more times will they say it!
for all the neighbors to hear
on a loud speaker
Surrender!
in front of his children
Had she cheated?
Had he lost his job?
Could he lose any more to the screaming?
to the "junk"?
to the flashing lights?
to the window's smashing?
Fence run down?
Lobbing
canisters of tear gas
into the room's stinging eyes
where there is no room
where there is no time

"I would never hurt them!
You!
You know!"
"Let them go!"
"You left me!"

“Put down your weapon and come out
with your hands up!”

It is all too loud
It is all too much
as you put the gun against your temple and…
pull the trigger
This happened today-- two houses away.  I could hear it all and sometimes I feel this way.
Lucius Furius Dec 2021
I cried at Field of Dreams.
It wasn't Dad I was thinking of --
it was you --
us, lobbing that ball
back and forth.
  
You blossomed:      Specht Fans 11 …  Tuesday night.
Fireballer Bob Specht struck out 11 and allowed only two hits in leading the BPO Elks to a 4-0 victory over Lee Plumbing.

You were ten.

You threw so hard
my hand burned even with a catcher's mitt and sponge.
  
You stalled;
others caught you.
Age fifteen, and your career was done.
  
You were musical;
played trombone in the marching band.
  
School? You did well,
but were never really exceptional.
You defied conventions,
went to extremes.
  
In college, it wasn't enough to just protest;
you had to join the SDS,
to always be daring the police to arrest you.
  
You took ******, mescaline, speed, *******.
  
You were cynical, negative, moody;
scorned all masks and indirection.
What you offered was a ruthless honesty:
in a fake and superficial world,
no small commodity.
You married --
Justice of the Peace, no friends or family.
Seemed happier.
It didn't last;
you divorced.
  
Talked of suicide, occasionally.
I argued it to be a misunderstanding
of emotions' relativity:
Only the starving understand
the exquisite flavor of plain bread.
  
You wandered.
Work took us farther apart.

You became obsessed with a married woman
who had no intention of leaving her husband.
  
Injured your eye in a car accident.
The doctor prescribed corticosteroids.
  
I fell in love and got married.
You were best man.
  
And then:
P.M., May 20, 1981: A body was discovered in the kitchen of the second floor apartment at 68 High St. by the building's owner, Joseph Albertson. Mr. Albertson positively identified the body as that of Robert Edward Specht, the apartment's leasee.  The deceased had received a gunshot wound to the head. A .25-caliber Beretta revolver registered to the deceased was found one foot from the body. The substantial damage to the face and head, consistent with a very close firing range, the lack of any signs of intrusion or struggle, and the written materials (identified as being in Mr. Specht's handwriting) found next to the body, indicate that the wound was self-inflicted.

You'd left a note: "No hope of finding love. Refuse to live without."

Was it the accident, the drugs
that made you less communicative?
My marriage? Some inner-driven change?
  
Would that I could have eased your pain.
You were thirty-one.
Hear Lucius/Jerry read the poem:  humanist-art.org/old-site/audio/SoF_029_bobby.MP3 .
This poem is part of the Scraps of Faith collection of poems ( https://humanist-art.org/scrapsoffaith.htm )
Mike T Minehan Nov 2012
I want to tell you that all's OK.
Oh yes, I must confess, things could be better,
but look. There's a whole cacophony of kookaburras
on my patio who couldn't care less
so long as I keep up my largesse.
And my flash friends, the rainbow lorikeets,
those lurid little lunatics, still keep on lobbing in
to lick up all the honey.
Not to mention the crazy cockatoos who want to
chew my bamboo chairs when I’m too slow with food.
So things aren't all that bad, really.

And I could genuflect,
even get down on both knees, to appease
that great spirit who breathes the symphony of trees,
and the murmuring of all those bees and breezes,
the tympani and tyranny of storms,
the heavy, heady scent of jasmine, heaven-sent.
Not to mention the awesome majesty of galaxies and stars.

And I applaud, each morning,
that old crimson king, my Majesty the sun,
who says “Right, we've had enough of darkness,
we'll have no more of that today”,
and then he has a knuckle  with the night.
Of course, the darkness flees in fright again
when it sees that blood-red blaze of light.

It's magic when he brightens up the gloom like that.
He shows me every single day is sparkling, dancing, new.
So there's no good feeling blue.
And remember,
love is just around the corner, too.
Joe Bradley Jul 2014
Time Volume: 1
I’m eating up the hours
one by one.
Blink.
Click.
Blink.
another screen,
more non-words
Blink.
Click.
Just letters.
Click
9000 more words
blink
and more time.
Click.
To be forgotten.


Learning to forget
The melting *** cast a boy and I ran outside,
A slime soaked goblin, a monster from the pit
Lobbing clods of mud at a harmonic sky
Whirring with dragonflies and lolloping bees.

Sun and rain prepared a day on a different earth
Where there was life in the monkey puzzles,
And scuttling battle grounds that
hid hundred-handers beneath concrete slabs.  
Gravel churned up tiny black dragons,
rotten logs, fortresses of tiny fiends.

I had a sword in my hand, I was noble.
Defender of the realm, scourge until tea,
The hero of worlds
everyone else couldn’t see.


Time volume 2**
Excalibur was stuck fast
When the new branches fell
Click.
the tips of my fingers are beginning to rot.
Blink.
Click.
If only I could
blink
stop the second
click
See the world behind glass.
blink
and dance out of time.
Click.
This snow globe,
Is not the Antarctic.


Artificiality in Imagination
Turning my back on time and space with
Bottled brains, ***** mist, powdered thought
I chiselled into old pathways.
I carved a silk road through synapse and nerve
to return to my monsters.

I saw a sickness of colouration
A lynx effect for the sky
tearing punkish streaks into the atmosphere
that were quickly blinked away.
Sunspots, cloudbursts, tussocks, grass,
Paper squares, green, red, purple, pink, blue,
pungent smoke, bugs, ripples, shivers,
polka dots and blank spots.
A storm-cloudy stomach.

The perspective of a head plastered to the soil again
saw thing for what they were,
a tiny amazon thought lost to rationality.
My heart thumped for a fear and joy
in a way forgotten by time.


Time Volume 3
Why is it called wasted when it is time well spent?
Click.
my god, my eyes hurt.
Click.
Just 9000 more words.
Click.
What would I give for a pretty girl sat under a tree.  
Click.
search * (pretty girl sat under tree)
Click.
She’s hot.
Click.
So is she.
Click.
… could always.
Click.
don’t be stupid.
Click.
Just 9000 more words.


Fantasy for a Counterpoint
I questioned what’s real when she blinked at me
and stopped existing  when she closed her eyes.
No one taught us to write in blood,
Tattoo our names into each other’s skin,
Leaving claw marks for the world not to see.

Whatever you drew was Van Gough
Whatever you said was Keats,
Whatever bruise you left was Tyson’s.

The outer layers of or skin are dead,
It’s funny whatever you touch on a person,
Is already dead.

Just before our love got lost
I noticed a thread break away from the braid
Around your head,
a small incongruity,
That made your hair a mess.

Love became what it was when you said you were
‘as constant as the northern star’,
And I replied, ‘yes - always in the dark’.


Time Volume 4
This is progress for my sake,
Just in time.
Blink.
Time is money.
Click
Time flies.
Blink
A stich in time
Click
This is a paradigm of nothing time.
Click
I’ve got so much time.
Click
And so little time to waste.
Blink
I’m a long time dead.


Hope for a handful of dust
Eventually I will while away these lonely hours.

What black rocks stir while we sleep?
What prayers rumble still, among old stones?
Do they speak the eternal city and glow civilised blue -
Or burn timeless black?

Does the probing ivy find us out
And the blunt head of a worm investigate
our most intimate parts?

Or does a spectre rise from the soil
To live under children’s beds?

When is the point that death
Becomes something breath-taking -
And the brook, my brown blood,
The dead leaves my skin,

Is it fantasy
to put something
where nothing should be?

The soft earth will **** me in
And give my brittle bones
To worms and crows
What stirs beneath the stones,
may always be worms and crows
I know its long, i don't expect anyone to read all this, i certainly wouldn't but if you have, thanks.
MV Blake Mar 2015
Vocal silence
Does for an
Argument make.
You hide behind your belligerence;
With mortar of icy rage and
Stones of cold indifference,
Laid with trowels of denial,
Lobbing nothing wrong
Like fury-fueled firebombs
Then you run a mile.

It's not a war,
It's a conflict.
I'm hunting through a jungle
Of stone-walled edicts,
My defensive guns laying ammo
On metaphorical trees
Guilty of hiding the dead.
A bunker deep enemy,
Safe in their concrete head.

Hunting a deserter
Who spent a lifetime
Learning camouflage techniques,
Sulking under cover,
Lining up their gently angry shot
For when the cross-hairs meet.

I would call you out,
But you would only go in.
It's like fighting a shadow,
My silent twin;
Naturally nurtured
To hide behind benevolence
And fight a cold war.

I warn you, it's growing thin.
Sethnicity Apr 2016
In a stream of wrought
Invisibly
I reflect ripple and wave
thirsty for sun rays
my moments dribble by
these keys tapping beneath thumbs
my boss appreciates the drum
rocks against my body
easily downs the dream
my tone a calm serene
a frosty sheen but between
the cracks emotion currents
ebb and flow rushing to where?
longing logging lobbing for air
her head bobbing to the trickling sound
fishing through a stream of movement
distant in her delusion
work is getting done;
and I am like water
in a stream of thought

Be like water my son.
When your son asks how was work today?
"Be Like Water." - Bruce Lee.... Even at work.
NPM 2016
Third Eye Candy Sep 2016
when the kettle shrieks, for soothing green tea -
and the autumnal hum of the orange-yellow leaves of a sycamore
skedaddle in rust sparks across brown lawns with pink flamingos
lobbing their profiles through the Iris of blank stares...
like a field of poppies screaming anthems to ******
down a drain pipe...

when the kettle snipes at the supremacy of an eventual Silence -
that comes after the snow has hushed the rabies of our hustling tribes.
when it barks in the glint before attention span is wide enough to grasp it... when it's lodged in your throat
way back, behind the winds of your vexation... There !
breathing-in the Last Thing to ever make sense
and squandering the calm before a storm
for the lightning strike of a fresh ****
of an old
Lie.

be the very first to listen to your tea.
c quirino Apr 2013
when the child tugs at my apron strings,
what is my name but satan.
mistress river acid,
strip my legs of their skin with each step,
down to tendon, bone, and marrow.
i’ll wash up, limbless and parched.

we’ll stand, nubile and resplendent
beneath you while you sleep,
lobbing pebbles at your window,
while you’ll believe it to be rain,
commuting furtively into the pile of dead leaves
and crumpled tissues in the drain pipe.

you’ll ask us if we were there,
not believing voices beyond cave shadows.

we’ll lie, aged and eyelid heavy,
in sweet-earth-cupped-hands.

*~life's about to get real weird in the next ten seconds~
There's a mechanism
buried alive inside you
alive despite you
sack of omnipresent water
chalk full of code
whispers of people who no longer exist
asking that same question,
"To what capacity do I exist?"

I know some sons that come from cell division
they've won the entire human race.
I must be some mutant in the main vein
spectacular artery pumping symmetry  
trying to grow up.
Look closer.
I'm not burning ants with my lens anymore
in open ceiling
side walk heat
hot enough to burn role models.

Because they ain't sorry in heaven.
Their faces can be touched but they aren't there
and the same look persists
through spilt milk
and spilt blood.
Making me hot enough to burn flags
it's ours to destroy
we bought it with dead sons
dead daughters
and ******* so dense I'm not sure which is which anymore.

Drawn lines that we rehearse in the shower.
Songs where we exist for a brief moment
then grow quiet
with numb mouths
that have separated their speech
from what they wish to sing
divided by a distance too far to dream.
Like lobbing a football or collect call
between your own split cells.

I am so tired operator.
We need to marry these two points
by their spines.
I cannot connect the dots
for others but I can foster
my insides, out.
They exist in some capacity now.
Catch.

I am at your mercy stranger.
You naive monarch .
You impatient mortal.
You radical catalyst.
Take this and rule over it like it was yours
because by the time I reach you,
it is.
You cannot stay at this intersection for long
it's dying now
for the next.
RJ Days Nov 2016
must recognize our Form
in the mirror,
see our Face, and make our reflection
as we kiss it, though it regularly sickens
Us.

I

We are still Us, though
that probably means little if it ever did;

We have been amended beyond recognition
from centuries of lobbing
off limbs, appendages, stitching clauses
like bandages then forgetting about them
if we ever shower,
disfiguring the pale torso of our Body
politic, naked and middling before posterity
grotesque genitalia dangling
hopelessly, and useless
between marble columns
unable to unite in congress assembled
erasing pluribus unum;

We're our Legs, buckling under obscene weight
now cloture’s invoked, the question ordered
on history with yays and nays,
discourse long reduced to the nuances
of blusterfuck;

We're our Buttocks, passing gas
bills, denying a snowball’s chance of
melting in frozen hell or on house floor,
and our Brain, lobotomized
better half yearning “Yes, we Can…
…ada” beckoning the coasts, blue dots
on blue dot ever browning;

We're our Fists, clenching gavels
while advising Mother Earth to **** up
because even without her consent,
reality’s adjourned;

II

We're our Skin—yes, our Skin—, thin-
ly veiling contempt insufficiently concealed
by layers of spray tan and unmarred
by blood sweat tears of our foremothers
and our Brow, not sweating more perfect
when it's so easy to turn and follow storybook greatness,
when our Fingers, callused from tweeting
Little Bits of *****,
which though once again retitled
and re-released, remains a classic,
completely unrevised;

We're our Ears, nostalgic for the crack of doom
and we're our Tiny Hands, unable to help themselves
from popping a Tic-Tac and grabbing
onto those titillating, dusty buttons
on the hydrogen jukebox;

We're our Eyes, heavy
as a defeated queen
with makeup running, blessing us
all for this operant foray into madness,
ever observing how our Arms, which
(torches now extinguished)
flail in confusion amid incalculable darkness
still hoist our pitchforks low and
our Tongue still grievously petitions
for more deplorable words amid
hallucinations of victimhood;

We're our *****, *******
on progress, except
which—failing to rise to the occasion—
nonetheless manages
to flop over and strike once more: a dis-
chord in common defense of
fragile white male privilege
always showing, never growing,
general welfare and tranquility flushed down
the toiletbowl of history
hoping those old turds never
resurface, still ignoring the stench of injustice
and the chipping of gilded porcelain;

We’re our Lips–which neither Broadway hits nor
newspaper clips nor high minded pleas alarmed,
and with Dr. Franklin’s warning notwithstanding–
We are our Lips on treacherous steps which will be
all executive power herein vesting;

III

We're our Palms, grasping rope amid air
saturated in deathly vespers, which tugs
down-up toward unearned heavens;

We’re our *****, pretending to be
our Mouths which chide & otherize, while
our Shins expose their cuts to ****,
bullet-holes welcoming the swift infections
in what dank sewage now pours from open
Overton windows, broken along with
any pretense of civility; ultimately,
the only thing we could shatter;

We’re our Holes, shamefully enjoying
the prodding and poking caresses
of anarchy, be-
moaning un-
Equal Protection law & order bestows,
depriving life, liberty, property
when our Hearts, weary of
the long hard due process, supremely
malign centuries’ holdings;

We’re our Immunity, sovereign it be
fighting all insults foreign and domestic
and our Voices rising in lamentation
for what we’ve lost and what we’ve barely kept;

We’re even our Hair, unkempt, distracting us
from enduring corruption of our Blood;

We’re our *****, too. No, never mind.
We never had any. But She did,
and class despite the strength
of glass;

IV

We’re all that still, and our Souls'
politic too, fractured much asking
what Un-
ited States we’re in;
September 17, 1787 – November 8, 2016. Not a bad run, I guess.
Third Eye Candy Oct 2011
hello Poetry....remember anvils soaking in snow
bejeweled in Hello Kitty
cringing in the Marrakesh  of so much pantomime ?
Are you singing that song ?
the one you scrawled in a fit of distance
on the edge of ***
with    the
Unknown....

hello Poetry... swimming in ego butter... Lobbing off heads
in a red blue !
the stem of a lunacy
branching
into corridors
of soot
and last
rites.
Third Eye Candy Jun 2013
it's never the net.
it's always

" the box "

we stop.
we throb lobbing red breast robins
inna box, over double rainbows.
we lost
what the nail
had no art to crucify -
and we lie -
on a tarmac of truth, our err planes depart dark waters
for black
skies !
and it's not
You Yet...
only half as
wide...

only that.
Pearls of White Jul 2014
Hello,
there's someone I'd like you to meet.

Ferdinand is his name,
a great hero he's destined to be!
He was carved out from an ocean trench
Each limb, taken from the base of mountains
On his head rests seven thunderclouds
His heart burns hotter than the whitest sun

I want you to feel the terror of his mighty arms, swinging, lobbing jagged rocks at you

I want you to hear the volts and feel the jolts surging through your spine

I want you to fear him, to be frozen in shock and awe, to loathe him, to love him

I want you to see him too.

*I want Ferdinand to live!
Andrew Rueter May 2020
I found my call of duty
inside your warzone
after leaving my pressurized cabin
and dropping in randomly
I started collecting money and items as fast as I could
to match the competition’s capability.

Everyone’s an enemy, everyone is hostile
I fear them and the weapons they’ll use on me
barraging me with dragon’s breath shotgun blasts
to put me down quickly
or silently sniping from far away
so I can’t defend myself.

The only way I can survive is staying in your circle
which keeps moving away from me
so I sprint through the fields and forests
making my way through already looted homes
hoping no one takes advantage of my vulnerability
racing to your circle before I suffocate.

Once I finally get to your circle I realize it’s too small to hide in
because everyone is so close together
I must engage them before they attack me
but they all lay siege to the small shack I’m trapped in
lobbing grenades and firing at me
I can’t even poke my head out.

So I stay inside
donning my gas mask
letting the circle overtake them and pick them off one by one
as I wait inside anxiously worried someone may try to join me
but eventually they’re all gone and I’m the only one left
and in that moment I have achieved victory royale.
Vernarth passed his house, opening his skylight, he soon felt that his parents were fighting, being able to realize that those aggressive words came from generational hindrances that anticipated the luminous tubular Omega, in the global level split from its lower part, (ω) above and it happens at the beginning of a beginning based on the end of a beginning a thousand times more than a threshold based on hundreds, appropriate from the metric unit of the numeral Myriaz = ten thousand, three times more than the Falangists, one thousand less than the Peltasts and three thousand less than the horsemen, total thirty-seven thousand less than the fighting forces in Gaugamela out of a total of forty-seven thousand, under the myriad Myriaz of Falangists undermined by their Xifos in the area of the right instep of each man faithful under his command, before facing the Achaemenides. Being Omega and Micrón in the warlike primer of their cause, within the prophetic in all necropolis of tiny omega (ω), towards an Omega that reaffirmed the upright hand in Saint John the Apostle to rewrite the Apocalypse twice, being the same one but with the voice of Vernarth commanding the ten thousand Falangists, who made up the inter-generational gaps, but of camouflaged alien ancestors. For this purpose, he opened the windows with their pillars sheathed with tetrachloride chloride, at solid angles of Ω, in what was Virgo institutionum / Oarion-entity that was intruded by the projections and leaks that converged on the strut of the omphalos of his celestial father dealing in frequency and bleeding of immortality, becoming from a helper to the planes of subconscious reprogramming and perspective. With his arms raised, and in each hand a sword raised to pierce the vanishing point, between the spaces that were assigned, under the solid projection, from an observer that inhibits ad limit the biomass in all the masses of aqueous filter and lumens, towards the throne of the angelic guardian of avant-guard by the stereotype and the sclerosis of Zeus in dissociated physicality, even though it is an amorphous entity and with pulverized magnitudes, between Pi and Golden numbers, fading away without area or volume. Vernarth in his humanoid apocalypse transfigured from a solid point in Hyperdisis as a direct escape settlement to Oarion, towards a conical vestige surface in three-dimensionality towards Andromeda, the Milky Way, and the shoulder of Betelgeuse.

Vernarth distracted the emeritus stars in the corner of his room and in the convexality of the points of his celestial parents in conical spheres of perenniality, leaving only solid angles in each of the two parts of space-delimited by two semi-planes that start from his common edge, under the ideal geometric concept and that it is only possible to partially represent it as duplication in parallelograms with a common side, symbolizing two half-planes, making from all distances seclusion of visions as a culmination of imagination and apparent angles, viewed from any point the Celestial Vault in invisible counterpoint.

The decalcified cells of Vernarth sang with Sophocles in choruses after the victory of Salamis. Already being a tragedy in the next act of the prologue and their friendship bordering on his tragedy, he continues to exist in energetic arms to write, and Vernarth to dispute the characters from a regular prologue writing the hemo-verses with his own blood, which traveled meters and that shrunk from the anti-verses, scarring their declaimed intra-breath, in choruses that only the wind clarifies of what precedes and happens towards suffering, in the metrics of the Areimos chorus that lectured anti-verses, which they tried to ****** from his hands to Sophocles, in the immortality that refined him by abandoning him in sub-units. With masks and mythical cycles he mixed the metaphorical facsimile of the momentum of separation of friendship with him, seeing it in an episode of his works, and instead of Vernarth's transcript, sheltering origins of volatilization in his choirs, converted into physical waves of a dramatic order -oracular. Gods re-transformed into divination and futuristic germination, who hid asleep and forgotten in a time of subconsciousness of the Selenite heritage, felt in Colossi of signs of parliamentary, where the oracle leans on the lines of the vibrational words and how they cough their " páthis ”in the place that speaks the language dissociated from the heart nucleus. In misguided divination, the oracular mantic brought the cold of solitude and the heat of fire that divines the forests on laurels of oracular daphnomancy, towards the ironies that banish the degrading systematized of frantic nervous suffering, burning in defaults of neurasthenia, before an omega elixir and neuro-analysis, given the ontogenetic passions, before cutting the nasal protrusion that crosses the fallopian tube, for the healing by fragmenting with the smell the existence of other genetic amphibologies of myth-genia, and that bifurcate the challenge of anger and disappointment of taking him with him in this suffering, taken from smell to disenchantment after thousands of unfortunate lunations against the tósigo that fills with appetite and perfidious reptile, on who walks on our destiny without knowing who it is that creeps.
Vernarth omega sets himself up as a versatile column that temporalizes the threads of his organic brain, creating synaptic logos in Pashkein on the alert of abandoning the arm that rewrites his heroic Sophoclean and tragediographic biography of ancients traveling in disintegrated emotionality and ****** Hellenic neurotransmission, “Two men omega in omega speedometers, carrying neurons from ankylosed and frustrated herd of pleasure for tripartite meso-form and roughing of routine Alzheimer's losses, lost in routines of the sympathetic and para-sympathetic, with the probability of loss of Hellenic gray matter; that is to say, of all memory that does not sin of ignorance in the ancient world, in more than nineteen hours and hours of vehemence, with brightened dangers of reliving umpteenth times in the twilight of omega, transcript and biological bend towards the man heavy with anguish, and more distant in all the lacerated ones that have mutilated or almost mutilated the conversion of the sternocleidomastoid, crushing the shoulders and the magical healing on the nasal sinuses, which strangle the pains in the face of selective suffering, indicative of rational martyrdom and temporary unhappiness in " extreme combat of dissatisfaction ”, allowing to channel resilient neurons that transit towards the neck for reasons that not even the neck understands, lobbing as it is not foreshadowed, neither in oracle, nor in its frustrating focal matter.
Vernarth, was already narrowing on the tracóntero Eurídice, to save his pains, deposed in terms that would renew anti economies of supplying unsustainable liquefactions and synaptic melts, extra energized of molds of purely natural law of the eyebrows and lunation that rests in the inter millennium, beating with ecstasy in the Buddhist Suttas, and in the adaptation of the flesh in the hypersonic fissures of the Metelmi and in the attachments that still beat on the dermis of pain. Vernarth draws his sword Xifos of phenomenal structure and cuts it over the Sutta or sermon that imitated the lunation to the compass, making this a sabotage of redemption and anti-verse from the court of Sophocles, as a myth-saboteur and anti-value, overestimating the tricks of the same utilitarian tragedy, defeating itself in the curtain of mourning and sadness, unguarded and overcome by the stoic duel of joy.
From here Vernarth opens the gates of hell, eight hundred times going mad with omega value, which by reiterating omeganymy, creates the numbering of the anti-verse and the suffering that does not even sleep further from the departure of a soul and in a body-only Asleep of omega concavity, superimposed on golden transfinite chests, which rearrange the natural numerals with those of transfinite ordinal omega, but on frictionless wheels of other omegas that break the recirculation rules on Alpha, on supra Omega levels like Parados -Estásimos- Episode and paradigmatic Exodus Vernarth-Omega.

Prologue Omega I:

Once upon a time, amidst the rain of clouds full of drama, in a time that was of the oriented regime of the Subacal of Betelgeuse and Aorion, 334 BC, it was the penultimate breeze of Tsambika, in the spiritual devotion that hovered over the unison voice in the magnanimous Zeusian chorus, as an alternating event of imprisoning past and future in an episode of the present act. The expectant was curious about the retouched makeup and superlative consonant of the drama, in a disembodied place, but with a good narrative source to bring it to fruition. Here the myth is plausible, among everything mythical, more than all the super sums of expectations of the Isimous.

Párodo I: "For the submissive words in the proscenium of the trident fire, where I have to warm my hands with ashes of eternal fire"
(Directing the scenes through the coripheum, there is the master lord who, in flames by unequal numbers, peoned in the Aulos and piccolos, whose bare feet bordered the risk of the bellies of the Maenad damsels united in processions, between princes, powers
and Dionysian dances holding on to the Pufios; in Baquiana and ceremonial liturgy near Vernarth, taking every seven minutes a glass of animadversion, in the tasting of his little finger, which screamed of organic pimping, together with the dancers raising one arm and directing the palm towards the sky, while the other remained down with the palm facing the ground; in this position that was already like Vernarth buried by the tides of Patmos wandering him in times that marked the entrance from Mars to Jupiter and from autumn to winter in fifteen times agreed with Sophocles, hanging from the third to last towards the entrance with his trembling voice desalted..., swallowing in his own tragedy)

Esthasimo II: "Through the right half body, Vernarth intoned what his laterality exposed him in harsh gloom, as Hera brandished oats and sweets clouds over his existentialism, which in the homily liturgy personified the stasis, in between coral bearing his hands enraged with tragic passion in his frenzy, unleashing oratory of self-blame, unraveling drama-tragic, and in each pause the emotion that was accompanied in new episodes of stirring up "

(Vernarth says: “submitted to parts that are not its parts because my pain has blinded me, where it has embittered the conflict of ethical interest if the stars as an applauded public are invested, who sentence the opposition of other lesser stars than They cheer what does not shine. The principle of the voice violates the normal parenthesis, which is governed by the omega voice, mocked in a modal by four magistrates, in the martyrdom of an idea of the procession, each one wearing his toga of super deprivation, before me that I will not be the one who recognizes if I will be who I am, on the seventh judgment of my surviving ethics)

Episode I: "Vernarth extrapolates the values of the judgment, of him that they annul the first, the coryphaeus directs his promenade from the countryside on his Alikanto Horse"

(Vernarth says: “I have instantiated the steps that in the future my chestnut crossed with you if I am to sing with a sorrowful voice, no choir will be able to follow me when you are no longer there. However, I have to guide what personifies who more than a thousand miles carries with him the chandelier that opens the light of your gazapa gaze... "

Alikanto wailing says: "From the luster of your heartbeats, I dazzled the jailer from your ribs, for the preference of those who take you even further in stormy prose pro-agonist"

Exodus I: “Sometimes the endings smell like lavender fields, where the call of the almighty is heard, to take him over his loaded plantations, which are emerging from the afternoon dialogues with their twilight, as well as stanzas that smell of anointing of lavenders, separated into syllables and tonic that arch my charm, not to say that I was anointed with Lavender as a child "
(In fifteen times, and syllables and rakes, they are sterilized in the sentences of their paragraphs, leaving the audience speechless, without a gesture or word that emanates from a sacred paradise, rather from the stasis that never purged the omission of the syllable that is not proscenium or trident, but it is umlauts on Omega, between syllables of fire that burn from its proscenium)
Vernarth Omega (Ω) - Preface / Part 19
Addendum to title:
Boyhood Digs in Collegeville, Pennsylvania 19426

Oft times forced exposure therapy spelled rustling quiet
Pyrrhic punitive onslaughts noisome moody linkedin kicks
jarring inxs harbored grievances foo fighting essence
denoting cannibalized august boy aghast to confront reality
returning home meant compromising autonomy
acceptable collateral casting leftist strides rite
constituting timid steps circumscribing childhoods’ end,
comprising reluctant trudge treading toward adolescence
where wold wide webbed magic ride
rode ruff shod o’er carped hooked
synthetic threads re: fibrous veld
whence extolled impressive footprints
measured triangular wedges rung duff feet
expediently dragged churlish badinage afoot
stretching across Scottish tartan
Harris Tweed unwelcome matt despite frustrated parents
whose vitriol unleashed tough-love,
smacked regularly quasi planned
threatened ultimatums venomous viz witches
yawping against my brand
falling out of good graces,
though hatching escape merely fanned
actions hightail me to bedroom, a secure space,
not exceptionally grand
yet despite rapacious and relentless rage
against the sole son, who hand
did lee managed inciting wrath
of me papa and late mama,
this parcel of land, now entombs nostalgia
namely 324 level road, Collegeville,
Penna, 19426 make believe pal Joey and this creator
passively succumbed to withstand
invisible jetblue lobbing onslaught of slingshot barbs,
wharf fear to rely on self way past primetime,
which solo endeavor didst demand
absent belief, confidence and faith in innate survival skills,
hence countless admonitions recurred
razed quest qua pursed lips
those who begat their only male heir,
provoking predictable panned
da moan he hum in tandem
with concomitant wickedness akin to eland
caught in cross hairs getting pistol-whipped
with many barking explicit derogatory gerund formed
expletives, that did not dislodge this immobile body electric
defying logic, now in retrospect clueless why I suffered to withstand
incessant verbal, venal, and n’er vampire weakened blows
inexplicable, how this soulful, ruminating,
and tortured walking wounded blithely weathered turpitude  
though devoid of sense and sensibility, how no man iz an island
though at times incontinent, where jocund this bard for’er opened
Pandora’s box, but hindsight softened cleft pride and prejudice
whereat bulldozed site of once grand “Glen Elm” tears me up inside
fading memories refreshed, via priceless gift
from beloved younger sister
unwittingly mitigated hammer blows of pain to confront the void,
whence away from obliterated complex edifice grief felt ******!
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2014
little pockets hid inside big pockets,
storage units with keys
purposely misplaced,
envelopes of documents,
labelled, saved for a purpose
that is no longer memorable,
but still instant recognizable

scenes from a marriage
violent hatreds so great,
that years of a single silence
were successes celebrated,
secrets never secreted

the taste of them
from your gorge
can't be easy erased
once the bile comes up,
you can't stomach the notion
of choking it back down

well past
the limits of inane,
voided arguments
left your bowels cleansed
but your mind throbbing pain bombs,
your body
floored in an exhaustive state

the limits of inane,
voided arguments,
left your bowels cleansed
your mind lobbing throbbing pain bombs,
your body
floored in an exhaustive state
and you dd this to yourself,
so no one helps you up

caches of glimpses of video snatches,
trailers of a life woeful misbegotten,
sudden asunder ripped to the fore,
you know you were there,
know you took part,
is that a younger sadder version of you?

the backyard of your brain
where the cache was dirt buried
kicked open foul odor and
well you smell the screaming hatred fights,
and the reel to reel breaks but you see it
anyway in the orangey brown colors of
time decaying, burnt-edges of video tape

you think your life is tough.
*******.
did hard time, 30 years,
in a prison with no air or light,
a cell the size of my brain

just when the stench is mostly gone,
the cache ripped asunder
and stink so profound
you gotta lie down,
cause a reflection in a mirror
is ample excuse to put your
head or hand through it

and all you did was go see a play entitled
scenes from a marriage,
and afterwards you keep both hands in your pockets
lest you start choking yourself
10/12/14
Shauny May 2017
There are two spoilt children
Both boasting and showing there “might”
Each as childish as the other
Ants watch out! Here comes the magnifying glass!
No wait, that’s a cherry bomb
Look… the other kid is chewing on his rocket pop

One is a self-entitled god that does not take *****
The other is a self-entitled ****
I hate immigrants the fatter one says
Ohh look a pretty immigrant woman,
I think I will marry her
I am a “god” with a fools haircut
With a penchant for assassination

Both lobbing stones across the river
Flexing their jelly rolled flab
Each staring into the others eyes
Silently dreaming, ever sleepless
On each bank a heart drawn in the sand
Crazy loves crazy is what they say
First attempt at a poem without rhymes :)
Laura Slaathaug May 2017
Try to write when you are happy.

How do you write windshields with blue skies on                              

long car rides, window rolled down, wind in hands;

your bedroom ceiling at golden hour,

light from your window bent into a striped                                        

rainbow of sea-green, yellow, and coral;

your niece cackling, lobbing a blue balloon                                          

to your sister, who holds baby Sawyer;

your cat purring, folding into your side                                                  

a thousand times like a origami crane;

the trees bursting with red-pink and white blooms                          

that quickly appeared in the last few weeks;

if that, like the peace you have now, you          

don’t notice them til the petals

have left the branches

piece by piece?
Posting my final edit again because the website seems to be working. Sorry!
Satsih Verma Mar 2019
A pinch of pain, and
you hurl a poem
towards me.

The dilemma of undoing
a kiss of pen,
or lobbing a dagger
in the chest of moon persists.

I will never get the answer.

I would rather go
for a bath in the burning
river of your eyes.

Words do not convey
the real truth. What was behind
the gray dotage on your
withering face?

The voiceless silence would
let you dance on the flames?

O god I am waiting
on the heap of frail bones.
tread Sep 2013
tears come like canons lobbing failed
shots through the psychic space
between me and your

photograph- - -    

                  they miss

                                                      they miss

                     they miss

  and roll across the fields of my cheek-bones - - -

they miss

     because they
  
                       miss

                                  you

silence

                'Admiral, order the retreat.

      We're going

home.'
nivek May 2017
Could an alien race be more warlike than us
where lobbing bombs and missiles an ever threat
is daily a diet somewhere on this planet?
No! reason dictates, they would stay well clear!
and they probably do and have done for millennium.
Gigi Tiji Mar 2015
and well,
it's never too late to restart
it's never too late to restart
it's never too late to restart
it's never too
hahahaaaaa

Sometimes it's nice
how I can fall back
onto certain phrases,
but **** would I love to leap
into new ones!

It just means
I've gotta start skipping
I've gotta give myself a
good runnin' start!

It's like I'm pre-placing
all the notes in the scale
and ripping them out in a
roll roll roll
just because I know I can
but I should really pay
more attention
to each
and every
one
individually....
after all it's the sum
of all the parts that make it
greater than the pieces
apart

anyway like
what are you trying to say
what are you trying to black hole black hole where do these words come?!
from star gazer star gazer
try to think thoughts and
all of a sudden universe
universe and
I just want to make it
from one place to another but
it just so happens that
that place is just another
and then there's another
and another to go to and
all of a sudden I'm in the
throes of the universe
the throes of creating new places
and how am I supposed to create a new place if I'm trying to figure out how to get to the next place?

jeeze I'm just another face!
what the ****, look at all these eyes everywhere! how many are there?!

I'd love to count,
I'd love to sit beside
every single one of them
and enjoy every nuance
of their dilation and
it's always fun to see
myself in the blackness
of their pupils.
In the right light sometimes
I can see my own pupils.
Sometimes I can see
my own star
gazer gazer star gazer
black hole universe you are
a breath in the making you are
a breath in the taking in
the giving in the
receiving and
I'm in the throws
I'm in the lobby waiting
I'm in the lobby lobbing linguistic lilies from pond to pond and I'm licking lateral lines across your lilting laughter and what are you some kind of heart monitor?

My thoughts are shallower than the puddle you didn't even notice you stepped in.
December, end
of year, end of something,
my acquaintance will be forgot.
Ode to divorce, if we were hitched,
but hey! To a new beginning.

Night like charcoal
on windows. Out of bed,
coffee, new machine, shiny black
juddering awake,
spurting caffeine
into the vacant cup.

   You’re doing my head in, you know that?
Yesterday’s game, lobbing
words, ping-pong tiff, oh
you didn’t think I’d forget?
Regret it? No. I was on top.

A dog barks.
I think of my grandpa’s Alsatian,
bounding tennis-ball-in-mouth
when I’m fifteen, hands sticky
with slobber, for a second,
when you were unknown.

I sip, finish, got new batteries,
make that gawky move
with the jacket, slip on trainers.
I take my Soviet Kitsch, Sigur Rós,
and your Killers. After all, the latter
is how it began, ‘it’ being us, your lips laced
with lager, my Dr. Peppered self
gushing with excitement
at being out of the house.
  Didn’t peg you for a fan…
   I guess I’m not what I seem…

ain’t that the truth darlin’? Everything
will be alright. Look

at me now, opening the door so quietly,
cold latching onto my skin
like I’m a magnetised substance.
I like how you don’t know.

Ginger cat scurries from under a car.
I think it’s running away too, running
from us. Right idea ****.
You know ‘****’ means kiss and ‘tom’
means empty in Swedish? I think of that
now, funny how a strange thought
can leapfrog to the front of your mind.

I can’t drive, you can, but you’re asleep.
Boy, you’ll be wondering
where I am, but I was never
there anyway, really, I don’t think.

Hours from the shock of me, gone,
for reasons unknown,
a magic trick with
Carbon Monoxide in my ears,
your Brightside too.
Written: October 2017.
Explanation: A poem written in my own time for university inspired by the work of Karen Solie - as such, changes are likely in the coming weeks. The poem contains references to song titles by the musicians Regina Spektor, Sigur Rós, and The Killers. 'Soviet Kitsch' is an album by Spektor, while 'Carbon Monoxide', for example, is one of her songs. 'Everything Will Be Alright' is by The Killers, while 'A New Beginning' is a translation of a song title by Sigur Rós. There are several others throughout. Feedback welcome. A link to my Facebook writing page can be found on my HP home page.
NOTE: Many of my older pieces will be removed from HP at some point in the future.
Wk kortas Jan 2017
We didn’t dwell on the streetlights,
Festooned with garland-strewn bells, ersatz nutcrackers,
The odd buoyant and ebullient snowman;
We were crossing the Hempstead Turnpike,
No task for the faint-hearted in bright light of midday,
Outright perilous on a late Friday evening
(Especially for those feeling the effects
Of an afternoon of social drinking
Which had gently spilled over into that good night.)
There were four of us—myself, and a Tehran-born trio
(Fun-loving, borderline jolly sorts,
A group of thin, dark Falstaffs, as it were)
Headed to a nearby off-campus bar,
Low-slung ranch-style edifice constructed on the Levittown model,
As non-descript and indistinguishable as its regular clientele,
Some of whom eyed us warily if not angrily,
Weighing the pros and cons of lobbing a comment in our direction
Before we headed to the “Downstairs Disco”
Which had been added, very grudgingly at that,
As a nod to the times and fiscal necessity.

In between ear-numbing bass lines
And the strobe light’s cornea-threatening ministrations,
We nursed significantly watered *****-and-tonics,
Smiled unsuccessfully at spike-heeled and Jordache-clad local girls
(Every bit as unwelcoming to clear outsiders
As their decidedly less glamorous counterparts upstairs)
And carried on brief, lightweight bits of conversation.
At one point I’d mentioned that I was looking forward to getting home
And partaking in some peace and quiet and home cooking
When suddenly, one of my companions
(A full-bearded sophomore named Anush,
Whose last name I never knew;
As his roommate Mossoud once told me,
Shaking his head and smiling,
You would never be able to pronounce it.)
Gave forth with a wail—full-throated, tear-stained
Pained to the point of being almost *******.
As I stared uncomprehendingly, Mossoud snapped at me
(His eyes thunderstorms, his words blunt as broadswords)
You! What do you understand of any of this?
And as he comforted Anush as best he could
(The music the volume of bombs,
Disco ball spitting light like tracer fire)
I began to suspect my relative uselessness
Was not simply the inability to comprehend Farsi
thatwasthenandperhapsnow
Jodie-Elaine Jun 2020
Beach tunes happy-go-lucky spins around the living room the way you catch me when I launch myself at the kitchen tiles, I just wanted to catch something right like a childhood home and things won’t stop lobbing themselves at the walls like sad, falling existential poets eye rolls bad yarn fingerprints track loosely around this domestic space come in for a slow dance, I’ll tie my hair up and we’ll use the lawnmower as a kitchen table chasing our dinner down the street microwaved bats keep coming through the windows Happy Halloween, my love. Slow lips touch themselves together tiredly at the end of the words fall off the face sliding slowly drum beats pleasantly thoughts die here in this greeting card poster perfection ohh, how nice it would be to have a shootout in a 50’s diner with baguettes the same tune it lollops around the room a little glamorously nothing has ever been this perfectly balanced before I fall off my chair it knows something we don’t.
Andrew Rueter Apr 2023
People used to ignore jokes in poor taste
and accepted that pandering had its place
but since then we've had an about-face
and now look to callously race
to moral judgment instead of grace.

The right is more malicious
the left is more annoying
they all sound like *******
with the tactics they're employing
making rhetoric vicious
so discourse starts destroying
both sides' wishes
for positive change
because lobbing grenades
has made us deranged.

The right burns books like Maus
the right burned down the house
the left wants to sterilize society by judging my propriety
and taking away the ***** things that have delighted me
virtue signaling violently
both sides' bile blending
into arguments unending.

They assign an extreme value to minority status:
which is the raddest versus which is the baddest
the nature of these arguments is madness
quibbling over The Little Mermaid's blackness
we need to relax this
nationalistic mindset
not get behind it
while the country is divided.

Now the only reason to cross the aisle
is to call the opponent a *******
so it's been a while since that word has had meaning
other than Facebook feeding nightmare needing
fever dreaming conspiracy reading
fools following the lecherous leading
us into becoming stuck with nothing to discuss
other than manufactured disgust
man have I had enough
of incendiary bluffs amounting to dust
encouraging purchased pistols to bust
for paper saying 'In God We Trust'
while believing political lies
like the accusations that fly
from the internet hive.

The country is Turning Red
because the green m&m
is now sexually dead
and Taylor Swift said
that she felt fat
so we attack
going off track
like when we crucified Cuties
it's an excuse to forsake our duties
anything with ****** and *******
gives us the fire to act rudely.

This is my fear:
******* about Lightyear
will bring years of night here
when the sun never shines on the cause
because people can't ignore or press pause
more important issues can get lost
and we won't count the cost
through frivolous frost.

So what if a movie studio makes a character black?
So what if the NFL's rules are a bit lax?
They're more worried about the estate tax
and we can all agree they ain't that
thing to end the schism
yet we cajole with derision
with puppet strings just out of vision
moving to industry's rhythm
away from personal wisdom
into the day-to-day we stay
concentrating on collisions.
Jonny Angel Mar 2014
The first time I saw somebody die,
explode in half,
it was traumatic,

After that,
unfortunately,
it became second-nature.

I will never get over the killing,
pulling triggers & lobbing grenades.
I am haunted by it still.
I tried to tell the sea what I was thinking.
It simply unfurled its blue vowels at me,
a slippery blush at my feet.
   So I asked again; a similar response,
cauldron of murmurs into nothing.

Close by, a dog followed its owner,
a lady, lobbing a tennis ball,
the animal a black exclamation.
It panted excitement at me,
pink ribbon tongue sloshing about
like the sea when it sidles
back to where it came.

I asked, once more; there was no reply.
A glossy breath,
in and out, like all of us.
Written: December 2018.
Explanation: A poem written in my own time. Feedback welcome. A link to my Facebook writing page can be found on my HP home page.
Laura Slaathaug Mar 2018
Try to write when you are happy.

Ask yourself, How do you write

windshields with blues skies on

long car rides, window rolled down, wind in hands;

your bedroom ceiling at golden hour,

light from your window bent into a striped

rainbow of sea-green, yellow and coral;

your niece cackling, lobbing a blue balloon

to your sister, who holds baby Sawyer;

your white cat purring, folding into your side

a thousand times like an origami crane;

the trees bursting with red-pink and white blooms

that quickly appeared in the last few weeks.

What if

(like the peace you have now)

you didn’t notice these things

til the car was parked,

the sun had set,

your niece and nephew had grown,

you had found yourself alone,

and the petals

had left the branches

piece by piece?
margotskidder Feb 2018
“Butterfly skin” they said.
2 words that shook me and tipped me into a dark depression.
My Margot, my special.. special.. don’t like that word.
All I know is that my life would never be the same again.
Parenthood, the hardest job in the world just tripled in weight.
Urgh, how selfish.

I couldn’t pull myself out of it.
I started a list, all the things she wouldn’t be able to do or would need support with...

Applying make up
Shaving her legs
Carrying heavy shopping bags
Running in the rain. Running in general
Ballet lessons
Tattoos and piercings
Skipping a bath for a couple of nights
Camping
Athletics
Wearing high heels
Intimacy, would she be able to... start a family?

And then I thought of all the...

Confused looks
Judgements from outsiders
Abuse?
Having to explain myself
Not going out or taking her out
Not being a good Mum
The teasing, bullying, the blame.

I’m comforted by these 4 walls. Our routine.

I run her an antiseptic bath, wash her, dry her and pat her down gently, apply her steroid cream, moisturise her, apply barrier cream, wrap her in her zinc dressings, cut her clinifast dressings to size and put them on her and then dress her in her suits. Where’s the time for adventure?
No, maintaining her skin and her health is the priority.

Just about getting by and the confidence to get her out and then the one time you venture out, “What’s that on her face? Do you know what works wonders? Coconut butter. My work mate’s Auntie’s daughter’s friend used it and it disappeared, no joke” and all I can think about through my assassin’s smile is carving off this nitwit’s skin and lobbing a jar of coconut butter at her ignorant face.

No you don’t ******* get it, it’s not eczema and yes she could have had it worse but can I just wallow in my own selfish bubble for a minute?

Should I just remove myself from her life so someone stronger can step in, man up and deal with this? Stop being stupid!

The “safe” bubble deforms, another gift from the mutation she inherited from me. It no longer has sides to **** and push, just a swamp of black.

Then one dark period, it came to me.

How about I change my list and write down everything she can do easily without me?

She makes me smile on cue
She never lets her condition get to her
She is as bright as a button and educates me daily
She is bossy beyond belief, if I ever get sidetracked with me drowning in my narcissism, she reminds me what to do and when to do it
She is beautiful and I mean breathtakingly beautiful
Her laugh, the kind of laugh where you know she’s been around many more years then the mere 4 she’s graced us with
She has the confidence to strike up a conversation with just about anybody
She slips and falls but after the initial trauma, she gets up and keeps going
She senses my neuroses and makes me laugh by pulling funny faces

It’s through thinking of these things that I realise that if anything or anyone tries to take any of these most natural things away from her, I will be here. I have to be here. And all of this extra time I have to spend looking after her is a blessing. I don’t have to spend extra time with her, I get to spend this time with her.

She’s... we’re going to be ok.


Emma Stewart
I'm not sure if this is poetry but all I know is, this is the best way for me to express myself, my anguish, my daughter's anguish and if these words resonate with anyone I hope they can help reshape the dark thoughts that riddle our dark stages. Through his outlet, I find there's light.
Brian Rihlmann Sep 2018
grow thicker skin
like us
they say

also...
calm down
snap out of it
and let it go

advice
from friends
who seem to think
I'm someone else

they love him
this someone else
they've painted
this potential me
created in their image

while the flesh me
fails to explain
the experience
of this pulsing
straightjacketed
brain

the drop of errant blood
that pollutes the rest

what it's like
treading water with
concrete shoes

and how I tiptoe
like a cat burglar
around double helix
spiral staircases
trying to avoid
the mischievous child
who hides in dark corners
lobbing sticks of dynamite
in my path

I explain all this
but they are not appeased

they trumpet laughter
through their scaly trunks

I turn and walk
out the door into
my daily hailstorm
unprotected

— The End —