Any song can sound sweet,
if you tune your tone appropriately,
and add a lyric,
with a melody
and I have seen where there is a life,
there is a song
but some songs are not only a love song
that notion was a loop, intense, black and blue passionate song
was not romantic

She was a sad song
and I thought I would know how to make it better
like if I could be the only to love her again,
I believed that everything would fall into a melodious love song
but  I lost a few lines of lyrics
and there was bit melody missing that I couldn't find
and I saw too many scratches on the disc
I couldn't let myself be made no longer
trying to fix her entirety.
.
@Musfiq us shaleheen

(0)
Fly perfectly straight and high, and show the fly
out of the fly-bottle on your way.
Rise to victory, far above the blue sky,
and reap the reward: the opening of paradise!

The road ahead is clear and open this way,
with things small and big growing and disappearing up this way.
You will see sunrises and sunsets waxing and waning,
with mention of the moon and stars in the dark.
Be mindful as you sway, it's got to be laser-sharp.
There is no hard shoulder on this highway,
miss it by an inch and risk losing everything forever!

There is hope, there is light up high
pick up your paintbrush, just like the sun does
goodness knows how it sneaks in, right in the black
canvas of the night, painting the first light
lo, it shows up in heaven, the candle of the daylight.

As long as there is a man and a woman,
never give up, our canary bird can fly
rosy or not, the nest in every morn nets a sunrise!

(1)
A woman indeed plucks up the courage
she never had to look up to the stars
be it for the guide or the light in the night.
Fathima herself was the full Moon every night
is thanks to her Godsent innate light.

With it, she can bask in the full spread of the pi
on top of its short decimals mounting high
constantly as if countless stars in the sky.

The time and space under the sun
and that under Fathima's light
are far apart from each other
yet they coexist side by side.

As she points out,
"A circle is masculine
while pi is feminine."

Pi forms the circle with fine prints,
decimal dots continue to spring,
sprawling trillions of new digits,
the bandwagon is still increasing.
Connecting the dots is an untouched dream.

The full moon pi picture is veiled,
unseen at large, yet in short, 3.145 it can live!

(2)
Fathima flies her lock of hair
in the lurking air of the transcended pi
the primitive feminine does that,
no wonder she is God's secret feminine opus!
An immeasurable black hole lies in between
the short and transcended pi, running like a river,
dancing anew on every riverbank
in the many curls of Fathima's jet black hair.

She lent out a hair to the planet earth
and crossed over like a silhouette
without spilling out the colour
of the transcended end of the pi.
The earth takes it in the core in her heart
as if it would keepsake it forever.

Weaving the pi in Fathima embeds two hairs ties one
perfect circle at the back and one at the front of the universe.
Inside each hair the earth is finest fluid in the core
none is as deep as high as proportionate a perfect flow.
No time is as revealing no music is as sweet in this orb
no force is as mighty nor as prevailing a true giant
causing gravity and the heat at the earth's core.
Matter and spirit mix free in the play both wax lyrical
thanks to the pure resonance of 'Qun Be' the word of God!

(3)
The way to the earth's core is exposed to none other
save the Angel of Death the lucky one.

See both sides of the one lofty sky swathed in countless stars  
but the day and night render through still remains an unseen one  
Terra is shalet zeroed in Fathima is heaven on earth!  
Up in the sky-high bank turning the starry bowl upside down
Fathima took no star nor a pearl diving deep down the Arab water,
the brightest luminary came after Muhammad (PBUH),
in veil from the Night of Measures and into the flipside in the night
she's gone without lifting the veil but left her penetrating mark.

Few could find the shortcut contemplating on a blank canvas
the Moon looks down into the abyss down the sea eyes on far
for a mirror in the bottom on the as above so below matter
since Godsent Fathima touched on the all-inclusive primitive water.
The sun gets caught up in the very water dew she raised in the sky
the ancient fold of time still unfurls with the sun-kissed flowers
for the new hands yet the fingerprint on the sun remains only her!

Azrael heads to Fathima around the year 632 after death
touches down in Medina on his usual thin earth he steps.  
But this time a little mundane dust couldn't be thicker
he keeps descending deep down to the earth's centre
following from Medina but the angel locates her
inside the perfect circle a closed geometric figure.

(4)
Fathima is the female headline her secret is not all known
when she used to visit the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
he would stand up for her hold her hand and kiss it
and seat her on his seat, she would do the same to the prophet
when he would visit her like they did know each other
in and outside the spheres of heaven and earth!

She is the embodiment of the infinite feminine variations
the first spiritual woman created following God's word Qun.
Her is the mother tongue of the ever diversified feminine lingua
no one woman on her own can rhyme with her alone
she has no peer her rhetoric is unique like none other.
The galactic run from planet to planet up on the starry ladder
climbing high up the mountain heaven yet streams out like oval
off their rock bottom stone until that unleashes the final run
in perfect circle delving into the rhythm of the loop at the centre
made of Fathima's hair charged by 'Qun' God's uncreated word.  

Prophet David can sing on the bank of the river
and can see the fish are jumping to him out of the water.
The masculine is open form, eye on everywhere,
but not her the woman is in juxtaposition her
all-inclusive schema supplanting the details rest only on her.
She is the unseen world within the world at best imagine her!
Guess, through this inwardly open door who might disappear?
It's nature before the scientist on ultimate discovery of the matter!  

Aligning with her down the rainbow up high the land absorbs
the grooming sky looking on the running rivers within her.
Her words spread through like the smart cloud that flies far
over the lands and valleys but not even the wind none other
gets a sniff of the potion and melody it caries until that rain down
without a hurdle without a visual she moves on at the target
such a soul needs no after death lift from the angel of death.

Before Azrael Fathima loses an arc of the circle then and there
so not the earth but giant Azrael can take the pressure!
Marked by a fluid discharge since then she is cooling this fire
In Shaa Allah God willing when she ajars it, it will be elixir!  

(5)
Draw a straight line, but it won't be perfect
it keeps bending, fly straight touching the sky
the flight path won't look like a straight line
it would be like the crest of a crescent moon
like curve touched the sky, like climbing up
atop the pyramid is not going high straight on
it goes up from the widespread seked slopes.

Moves in golden ration 1.618 not the full two
and gets the designing formula flawlessly full
micro to macro all levels all the way to the true north!    

Fathima being the original feminine eyeing at her
she can tap in the knowhow of naturally feminine nature.
And discovers the immanent pattern - the world
is pre-designed and measured is never a coincidence.
The creatures' creativity, scientist's science
is to follow, discover working formulas like phi and pi.

Play along it works until an unknown hour strikes
comes with accurate knowledge dead on time
numerically correct never miss taking a life away
as if it was calculated beforehand before the birth.
A newborn is born for a limited time
already set but no one knows when it goes up  
is a deadlock clock but it isn't so shrouded
in the blueprint of the creatures' grand design
there the clock ticks safe and sounds it never dies!  

(6)
Fathima hailing from the other side of the pool
eyes on the ever live pre-design side of the creation!
Then its corporeal face was only a water drop,
the primitive one looks see-through it has dead zero
knowledge of its lively other side of the pool.
She comes closer and perfectly mirrors both sides
that shines through on her reflected face on the water.
An absolute new image that livens up the dead part
Bang - Big Bang! The corporeal world gets the spark
explodes out from the very first drop of the water!

Fathima's appearance was miraculously instrumental
God reveals nature the finite and infinite, 0 and 1,
future in the present and the death and life in play!
Nature follows suit it just saw the perfect role model
banged out but only to its corporeal set
it aspires to be with its infinite reality yet!

Fathima leaves the door open constructing a perfect circle,
hardly straight, took the mixed bag of countless variations
she zooms into the abyss irrational portion of the first matter,
the primitive water drop and aces the circle with her hair
that nothing can equate throughout the corporeal world.
Done the math discovering the zero starting point at the bottom.
The ocean of digit numbers, the DNA of all things material
banged out of it, still, the zero is numberless irrational!

(7)
All things, within oneself and in a set constantly vibrate,
strive to align with the enduring reality of itself.
The atom vibrates to reach out to its immortal portion
that doesn't die and is in the know of its lower base.
The planets are in a defined circular orbit, accurately measured
just the apex on top of their dynamic pyramid the pyramidon
is tucked away; they too have an irrational portion in the circle.

With the finest spin, they zoom in the spacious universe,
in part and like the sun outside the constellations round they go
never miss a target line yet to re-discover Fathima's perfect circle
the origin of their digital essences' breakthrough
the door to their transcended destination de jour.
Lo the matter turns the last stone pulsing across the cosmos
the mortal horizontal spread, the spirit returns home.

The earth has a line in its swansong it has a place in paradise
it's not here to stay for good neither to perish forever!

Matters form and break without losing the rope,
it's not to paint the shades of the eternal blue
but to ace an irrational portion in the circle
at the heart of the earth, as above, so below.  
The deep the high the perfect circle
up and down the centre of gravitation for all!

At even and at odd the vibration within the matter is fluid
somewhere is parched there the arch matter must make a splash.
Far away on that dark beach, the full-fledged sea of the matters
outpours its billowy potion with the Moon on the frontline
from deep within the physical world's most glowed up firefly!

(8)
The seven seas swell up smoothly into the moonlight-dip
oh, the waterless Moon at the core is still fasting.
Led by time the sweet swan punting along the waves
streams down the watery inner circle of the planets.
Until stuck in the Moon no water in the last waterfront
but paradise is on the other side of the pool!  

The sun dips away into the night
while the eve baths in the shades of pink and gold,
the dazzling hues soon turn to taupe.
Drawing down painting the picture in full colour
only to find the time is up on the halfway,
yet to print a colour copy of the night!
The other unseen half is passed down to the Moon
tiptoeing in slow motion in the depths of the night
barely keeping the head afloat in a fathomless ocean
of shades of black hails from where knows no one.  

The sun enkindles the moon half-lit keeping itself away
amid shadows as if comparing the shades now it knows
a Mehrem a veiled female is ahead not to look on or
compared to that the sun has no light or true are both.

Wrapped in the eternal night beneath its black mole
once the moon on the front approaching most close
directly down to the centre of the earth eyes on
over that inlaid string hairy black perfect circle
never did it turn back the same gaze is still on
orbiting around the earth in synchronous rotation.

(9)
The never-ending night is becoming a night indeed
it's coming to an end so soon in our time.
In Shaa Allah I will see it with my eyes before I die
in the Night of Measures in an odd night in Ramadan
Fathima from the transcendental end of irrational heart
will turn on top of the curve opening for the first time
a 9-degree angle in the circle at the centre of the earth.

Instantly the leading force, time will get the first sniff
of the other world, so peaceful heart-melting serene.
Rapturous time feeling an ounce of the enduring peace
for the first time cutting all the corners with ease
will be propelled into its yet uncharted golden mean.
Scurrying to the peaceful abode time will be on its wings
across the globe, people will be stunned seeing
how first the times pass from then on incredibly quick!

Fathima, the first spiritual woman on duty, will start
pulling her hair back off the circle at the centre
Juxtaposed in between the worlds of here and hereafter.
She will take back every inch of it, the heavenly bodies
will feel the pinch of her every little subtle pull
that too is a boon helping them perfect their circle.

(10)
Soon she opens it just 9-degree wide at first
the Moon will see a glimpse of the first drop of water.
Without it, it's living perched without the water of life
that's destined to rain down soon and the Moon
back into its original pond shall revive!
Mapping the pi's whole infinitesimals playground
finally, Fathima will turn the circle upside down
on the dot the stunned sun shall rise in the western sky!

By now under Fathima's hair's shaded closed circle
it must have sailed far over the blue sky in the other world.
Billowing with the breeze over the sea of uncharted water
and stacking to the brim with all that it could discover
humbly stood like a cloud in that corner of the sky.

The time is finally ticking fast to rain down with love
paradise's welcoming schema rendering in waterpaint drops
on the Moon over the sea of matters, that's most glowed up firefly
ah, finally can break the fast sipping in a drop of elixir!
It's their heavenly adopted, Miʿrāj performed, primitive water.
The Moon with the seven seas will leave off the corporeal shell
gliding gracefully with this stately water nymph as if it never dies
and will make a splash plopping into the pond of paradise!  

For the matter ultimately is water and its extent is sound
Fathima will fetch it the water of life and take it to the next life!
Oh, the matter shall do both die and revive with Israfil's sound
the cloud will fly out of the dead water on the ground,
like the earth with chorus songs of the rain revives.
When that a melodious nymph in the water makes waves
see paradise is here the Moon over the sea can't take off its eyes.

(11)
Hang on though they all set ready on their horizontal span  
to pull in such a fluid yet colourful descending like a rainbow swan.
First chaste Fathima will evaporate her hair's perfume away
that's yet lingering in the water warming it up to its premium
no crowd then can see where this heady, fragrant cloud will fly!
There are the momentum and delights where that will alight.

Israfil might then blow his trumpet swooning the world away
the secret will remain a secret exception is said in the Qur'an.
A strange sound will silence the chorus of the innate digits
collapsing the floating cosmos bubbling on their music.  
The corporeal circle will collapse as if there is no base no pi
the melody of the first word Qun means Be will still be loud
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious so how can we all expire?

Israfil too will play his reviving trumpet pure mellifluous
and In Shaa Allah numerically perfect Fathima will rise
amidst the resonant Qun as like she did in the beginning
when except prophet Muhammad (PBUH) there was nothing!
Now the earth once zeroed in beneath her hair will follow her
the stunned terra will discover Fathima took her hair away
only to shift the constellation up onto the upper world!

The old songs of the planets the chorus of the digits will revive
from the zero bases in the core the digital panache that dance
planet upon the planet as if they are always at the perfect hertz.

Indeed that is yet to come, the arts of the fine layers
opening from the irrational pi, the finest one is to flower
when Fathima will unloop her circled hair at the centre
piercing the very immanent irrational cut
that no creation can fathom only the loving creator Allah
will turn odd to even in between the here and hereafter
then the ocean stuck in deep salt shall turn to enduring potion!
The As-Sirat shall turn to be the bridge to paradise
the body shall revive with the enduring soul forever
and with ah Fathima couple shall enter paradise In Shaa Allah
with the rhapsody 'all praise is for Allah' Alhamdulillah!

let's all revel in the duplicity
duplicate posts that lack authenticity
authentic thoughts fall to the simplicity
simple minds are guilty of complicity

a new origin of no originality
original thinking crushed by formality
formal rules lead to our commonality
common perspectives to lower our mentality

Fear the Mobius
strip mind: one-sided, closed-off
and severely kinked.

TO PUT the art and talent of Mindanaoan fashion design into the spotlight, Kagay’anon fashion designers put their hands together to organize the 5th Mindanao Fashion Summit at the Limketkai Center Rotunda from August 4 to 6, every 4 p.m.

“Being a core event of the Higalaay festival, the opening salvo, the Mindanao Fashion Summit can really highlight fashion designers here in Cagayan de Oro and also in different points of Mindanao to let everyone see what they can do in the world of fashion design especially now that there are only so few opportunities for these designers to show off their works to the public. This is why we have the Mindanao fashion Summit because Kagay-anon designers believe that even if they join national fashion shows like the Philippine Fashion week, most of them still aren't getting the right encouragement as a fashion designer.” said Robbie Pamisa, the overall organizer of the event.

The Fashion Summit is a three-day event composed of seven sub-categories such as the Mindanaoan collection, the Menswear collection, and the Ororama orange collection for the first day, the Guest Designers’ collection, the Fashion Institute of the Philippines collection and the Loop Lifestyle Fashion Show for the second day, and the Holiday Grand collection for the third day which will serve as the culmination of the fashion event.

Mindanaoan Fashion designers from Cagayan de Oro as well as Davao, Butuan, Iligan, and Bukidnon have come to showcase their talents. Some of the fashion geniuses of the event include Alma Mae Roa, Angela Soriano, Ann Semblante, Benjie Manuel, Boogie Musni Rivera, Gil Macaibay III, John Mark Magellan’s, Joshua Guibone, Juniel Doring, Kiko Domo, Mark Christopher Yaranon, and Mavy Cooper de Leon.

One of the highlights of the event is the Oro Fashion Designers’ Guild and the Designers Assembly featuring a collection of clothes using Mindanao material such as the Mindanao silk. Sponsors such as Ororama and The Loop Towers will also be showcasing their products in the fashion event.

“Even student fashion designers from the Fashion Institute of the Philippines have been encouraged to participate so that they will be able to experience how a fashion show works. This is also a way for us to fulfill our mission to be another avenue for fashion designers to show what they have,” Paisa said.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/long-formal-dresses

for Jennie in gratitude*

For days afterwards he was preoccupied by what he’d collected into himself from the gallery viewing. He could say it was just painting, but there was a variety of media present in the many surrounding images and artefacts. Certainly there were all kinds of objects: found and gathered, captured and brought into a frame, some filling transparent boxes on a window ledge or simply hung frameless on the wall; sand, fixed foam, paper sea-water stained, a beaten sheet of aluminium; a significant stone standing on a mantelpiece, strange warped pieces of metal with no clue to what they were or had been, a sketchbook with brooding pencilled drawings made fast and thick, filling the page, colour like an echo, and yes, paintings.
 
Three paintings had surprised him; they did not seem to fit until (and this was sometime later) their form and content, their working, had very gradually begun to make a sort of sense.  Possible interpretations – though tenuous – surreptitiously intervened. There were words scrawled across each canvas summoning the viewer into emotional space, a space where suggestions of marks and colour floated on a white surface. These scrawled words were like writing in seaside sand with a finger: the following bird and hiraeth. He couldn’t remember the third exactly. He had a feeling about it – a date or description. But he had forgotten. And this following bird? One of Coleridge’s birds of the Ancient Mariner perhaps? Hiraeth he knew was a difficult Welsh word similar to saudade. It meant variously longing, sometimes passionate (was longing ever not passionate?), a home-sickness, the physical pain of nostalgia. It was said that a well-loved location in conjunction with a point in time could cause such feelings. This small exhibition seemed full of longing, full of something beyond the place and the time and the variousness of colour and texture, of elements captured, collected and represented. And as the distance in time and memory from his experience of the show in a small provincial gallery increased, so did his own thoughts of and about the nature of longing become more acute.
 
He knew he was fortunate to have had the special experience of being alone with ‘the work’ just prior to the gallery opening. His partner was also showing and he had accompanied her as a friendly presence, someone to talk to when the throng of viewers might deplete. But he knew he was surplus to requirements as she’d also brought along a girlfriend making a short film on this emerging, soon to be successful artist. So he’d wandered into the adjoining spaces and without expectation had come upon this very different show: just the title Four Tides to guide him in and around the small white space in which the art work had been distributed. Even the striking miniature catalogue, solely photographs, no text, did little to betray the hand and eye that had brought together what was being shown. Beyond the artist’s name there were only faint traces – a phone number and an email address, no voluminous self-congratulatory CV, no list of previous exhibitions, awards or academic provenance. A light blue bicycle figured in some of her catalogue photographs and on her contact card. One photo in particular had caught the artist very distant, cycling along the curve of a beach. It was this photo that helped him to identify the location – because for twenty years he had passed across this meeting of land and water on a railway journey. This place she had chosen for the coming and going of four tides he had viewed from a train window. The aspect down the estuary guarded by mountains had been a highpoint of a six-hour journey he had once taken several times a year, occasionally and gratefully with his children for whom crossing the long, low wooden bridge across the estuary remained into their teens an adventure, always something telling.
 
He found himself wishing this work into a studio setting, the artist’s studio. It seemed too stark placed on white walls, above the stripped pine floor and the punctuation of reflective glass of two windows facing onto a wet street. Yes, a studio would be good because the pictures, the paintings, the assemblages might relate to what daily surrounded the artist and thus describe her. He had thought at first he was looking at the work of a young woman, perhaps mid-thirties at most. The self-curation was not wholly assured: it held a temporary nature. It was as if she hadn’t finished with the subject and or done with its experience. It was either on-going and promised more, or represented a stage she would put aside (but with love and affection) on her journey as an artist. She wouldn’t milk it for more than it was. And it was full of longing.
 
There was a heaviness, a weight, an inconclusiveness, an echo of reverence about what had been brought together ‘to show’. Had he thought about these aspects more closely, he would not have been so surprised to discovered the artist was closer to his own age, in her fifties. She in turn had been surprised by his attention, by his carefully written comment in her guest book. She seemed pleased to talk intimately and openly, to tell her story of the work. She didn’t need to do this because it was there in the room to be read. It was apparent; it was not oblique or difficult, but caught the viewer in a questioning loop. Was this estuary location somehow at the core of her longing-centred self?  She had admitted that, working in her home or studio, she would find herself facing westward and into the distance both in place and time?
 
On the following day he made time to write, to look through this artist’s window on a creative engagement with a place he was familiar. The experience of viewing her work had affected him. He was not sure yet whether it was the representation of the place or the artist’s engagement with it. In writing about it he might find out. It seemed so deeply personal. It was perhaps better not to know but to imagine. So he imagined her making the journey, possibly by train, finding a place to stay the night – a cheerful B & B - and cycling early in the morning across the long bridge to her previously chosen spot on the estuary: to catch the first of the tides. He already understood from his own experience how an artist can enter trance-like into an environment, absorb its particularness, respond to the uncertainty of its weather, feel surrounded by its elements and textures, and most of all be governed by the continuous and ever-complex play of light.
 
He knew all about longing for a place. For nearly twenty years a similar longing had grown and all but consumed him: his cottage on a mountain overlooking the sea. It had become a place where he had regularly faced up to his created and invented thoughts, his soon-to-be-music and more recently possible poetry and prose. He had done so in silence and solitude.
 
But now he was experiencing a different longing, a longing born from an intensity of love for a young woman, an intensity that circled him about. Her physical self had become a rich landscape to explore and celebrate in gaze, and stroke and caress. It seemed extraordinary that a single person could hold to herself such a habitat of wonder, a rich geography of desire to know and understand. For so many years his longing was bound to the memory of walking cliff paths and empty beaches, the hypnotic viewing of seascaped horizons and the persistent chaos of the sea and wild weather. But gradually this longing for a coming together of land, sea and sky had migrated to settle on a woman who graced his daily, hourly thoughts; who was able to touch and caress him as rain and wind and sun can act upon the body in ever-changing ways. So when he was apart from her it was with such a longing that he found himself weighed down, filled brimfull.
 
In writing, in attempting to consider longing as a something the creative spirit might address, he felt profoundly grateful to the artist on the light blue bicycle whose her observations and invention had kept open a door he felt was closing on him. She had faced her own longing by bringing it into form, and through form into colour and texture, and then into a very particular play: an arrangement of objects and images for the mind to engage with – or not. He dared to feel an affinity with this artist because, like his own work, it did not seem wholly confident. It contained flaws of a most subtle kind, flaws that lent it a conviction and strength that he warmed to. It had not been massaged into correctness. The images and the textures, the directness of it, flowed through him back and forward just like the tides she had come far to observe on just a single day. He remembered then, when looking closely at the unprotected pieces on the walls, how his hand had moved to just touch its surfaces in exactly the way he would bring his fingers close to the body of the woman he loved so much, adored beyond any poetry, and longed for with all his heart and mind.

Our eyes are near
and my heart is hot
but your stare is cold —
a thousand miles away

Your words are clear
and time has stopped
there's nowhere to go
my thoughts are broken and blurred

Sweet lips, your sweet lips
Carry such a bitter sound...

I'm floating in place with
no lover to face

trembling, trembling
trembling heart space

I'm spinning in circles
looking for miracles

and it's proving to be
horribly difficult

Trying to fly
with no wings to spread

I crumble and cry
a song for what's dead

the sound of alarms
ring in my head

the sound of alarms
ring in my head...

I'm trying so hard
I don't know what to do

My heart is aching
thinking of you

A small square of paper
sits on my tongue

With razor sharp edges
and tasting of dung

It takes me to spaces
deep in my mind

Where there's too many places
and not enough time

I've been drowned in guilt
and I'm suspended in shame

Repeatedly killed
like in a video game

Written upon
the sharp paper square
are words for destruction
and guilt and despair

It's a trip like no other
you won't even feel high
you'll feel like a bother
and just want to cry

Drifting in place
dead in deep space

You left me here with
tears on my face

Crystalline droplets
scintillating pearls

spinning in circles,
spirals, and swirls

Why did you think
to leave me alone

at the cold ugly brink
a frost to the bone

the cold hard shoulder
feels far colder
than a lifeless boulder
I'm cold, I'm
cold

I speak with my music
and these notes are my words
My harp is my voice
and these strings are the cords

I try hard to play
But you've cut them all off
My harp is left bare
naked, unstrung

I'll move all the pedals
But unto what end?
I can't speak my heart
I can no longer pretend

It's time to stand up
and take a great bow
Walk off the stage
The end is —
.....

and
There is a silence
in the mist, hidden
between the little
droplets, whispering
rivers of soft words from
past lovers evaporated~
.....

together
we held hands
and in our palms
we held time

and we ran away
from the rising sun
so we could see it
rise forever

but we grew tired
and we slowed down
and the sun sped up
and time was slipping
between our fingers
dripping
from our knuckles

and together we ran
we ran away toward
the setting sun
as fast as we could
but we were too tired...

and
you showered me in
silky sheets of glowing lovelight
you embraced me with
warm rays of shimmering soulshine

you pushed and pulled my ocean's tides
in and out like a lilting melody
making love to a perfect harmony

but slowly you
drifted away
into space
to shine on new rocks
leaving me cold my
ocean waves
still...

and
For the longest time
I wanted to thank you, thief
for stealing my heart.

I thought it'd be better off
in someone else's hands anyway,
because I sure as hell
didn't take good care of it.

Can you tell me about the time
you carefully held it close?

because I'm sure
that you can remember that
because that's all you want
to remember.

It was your
little pet.

and I can't tell you
how much it meant to me
that you found it so
intriguing...

but I can't tell you
how much it hurt when
it stopped being something special
and started being
just another animal

Don't you remember
how much fun you
had with it?
Mm..

But you don't remember
watching it struggle
to breathe in
and out?

Because it seems like
despite that

all I can remember now
is your tightening grip
suffocating it
carelessly
and your acidic lip
spouting seemingly
ceaseless
abuse

Tell me about the time
you played with it
until it was broken
and it bored you

Because I can sure
remember that.
but can you?...

Oh!
Batshit crazy,
Batshit soup.
Am I just lazy,
or caught in a loop?

Batshit crazy,
Owl **** soup.
Razor blades,
Razor blades,
Razor blades,
****!

Love is not a competition,
Love is not a game!
You see me as a player,
and it's a downright shame!

Batshit crazy,
Owl **** soup!
I am totally lazy,
and caught in a loop-die-loop?!

Glass houses
Baseball games
Angels wings and tar
SEPTA lines and pine trees
Can take you pretty far

Love is not a competition,
Love is not a war!
and acting like a soldier
is really quite a chore!

Silly souls
Wacky words
Dragonflies and tar
I want to make some art with you
but I don't know how you are!

and
it's
Just another slide
down the razor blade
of life! into a bowl
of sour owl ****...

Batshit crazy,
Owl **** soup!

Am I crazy,
or am I caught
in a loop?

Razor blades
Razor blades
Razor blades
****!

and you are
ribbed, but uncaged, and
you read like a book broken,
with a cracked spine, snapped,
always opening to
the same page

the wrinkles stacked
dendritically, along the
ragged column, show
where you were split,
down the seam,
in a fervent attempt
to be figured out

your leaves are worn,
dog eared, and torn,
with words used, and
defiled

unadorned,
sickly souls

forlorn figures,
sitting silently

wishing and waiting,
no kissing or playing

it seems that you've left me,
and you're all I want to read...

blistering sunsets
burn my skin

I watch the ball of love
get further from me,
falling a w a y

It was always out of reach,
but I could feel it's warmth!
as long as it was in sight,
but, no longer

It forms rivers from dry wells.

In it's absence
it has them brimming,
now overflowing, down
channels of skinclay
wrinkles

they run deeper,
than the roots of
the tallest trees,
falling slower, than
the softest cries,
unheard

rocky river ways
froth from the mouth,
splashing and bubbling
in maniacal sadness —

silent white water rapids...

Tussled and unkempt,
shriveled livers beg for mercy!
hidden behind layers of rotting drywall

a rusty sledgehammer.

—unused

You may want to take me inside
but your mind is a million dripping daggers
perpendicular to the infinite edges
of my circular paradigms.

your cold soul wraps around me
like a chainmail suit.

I want to love it, as
it's supposed to love me, but
it's heavy and pinches every fiber
of my existence

and why should I wear it
when I want to run into love
completely naked?

My name is derived from Tyrant
I would say you should have expected it
but I am not one to take someone's heart
that is the ultimate crime.

Can't you see that you've stolen your own?
Look in the mirror! Unfurl your ****** fists.

Now my fingers are ablaze with hellfire!

and
My unseen tears
condense onto windowpanes
as they're smashed open by codependent assumptions.

Blinding
blunt force flashlights
shatter sharp shards of light
across the darkest crevices
of my soul.

Impatience
and uncertainty
leads to reactionary behavior.

Do not plant flowers
in the gardens of someone
who cannot take care of their
own plants.

Their soil is unsaturated
with nutrients.

How can you expect to enjoy the fruit of their love?

I am a withered plot.
I am the dead of winter.

No one is interested in how it has died.
They are only upset that they can no longer feed themselves.

What you see is what you get.

i open my eyes and look at the ceiling
cant help but to feel this drowsy feeling
acquired some sickness when will be the healing?
of this infinite loop and will i ever be willing?

to roll the dice and gamble for the future
or stay up all day and endure this torture?
they said i should not give up this said fortune
but how can i pursue my passion for tune?

the unconscious command takes me on a cold floor
this body demands for a conductor like an old score
this sleepless mind is shouting and wanting for more
rest, but i found myself standing at the front door

getting ready to leave and i'm on my feet
just need to pretend that life is sweet
from this hour till dawn i'll be missing some beat
but i have no choice, it's an infinite loop to repeat

I was a new-born when you promised
You would carry me anywhere I wanted
And at any time I wanted,
You promised me safety
You promised me freedom.

Dedicated and deceptive
You had teased me growing up
But I never would have predicted
How malicious you could be
You fooled everyone, even me.

Parts of you were destroyed
But you always found other ways
To stick out, ugly and obscene
You screamed at me, you harassed me
And everyone else recoiled.

You were ruthless, relentless,
I needed your permission to leave
On the worst days I could do nothing
But lie there and seethe.

You were always there waiting,
Until I was distracted, to capture me
Trapping me in a time loop dimension
Loop after loop after loop;
Like an elaborate knot.

My tongue no longer tasted
My humanity began to rust
Like a corpse and its restless ghost
I was dormant but deprived of sleep
How could I rest under your glare?

Like a deranged anaesthetist
You forced me to the very edge
I hung over that abyss, wondering
If you would let my hand go, or pull me up
Until boredom struck again

Amidst the beeping and droning machines
Serpentine, you still twisted around me
Pungent disinfectant; the white-room scent
And the pointed metal tips
Their shrieking tongues turned to monotone.

Well, organs and cells,
I had long outgrown you and
Your demented, slothful ways
What did we have in common
Anymore aside from me?

But we are bound like conjoined twins
As fused together as can be
I’d die without you, you’d die without me
I aim to live in harmony with you
And help you gain a much sunnier hue.

The city is a grid
of lights projected
by man-made mountains
built of glass and steel;
they reflect, distorted
off the glass surface
of Lake Michigan.

Good morning

The sun rises
with heavy-eyed commuters,
homes filling with
the smell of coffee;
yesterday’s events are
brought inside, rolled
up in a blue plastic bag.

Soon the traffic on the Dan Ryan
will turn the stretch of road
into a temporary parking lot.

Life enters the veins
of downtown;
it heads down Michigan Avenue
to the heart of The Loop.

The ferris wheel at Navy Pier
begins to turn hypnotically,
attracting all walks of life.

A Muslim passes a Christian
on the street;
they smile at each other;
their backgrounds don’t matter.

Someone is calling;
someone is answering.
Today is the best day for one,
the worst day for another.

The day does its job to go on

Chicago fills its lungs,
then exhales life back home.
The sun colors buildings,
traces of day
to be soon replaced
by the form of lit office windows.

From a plane passing over,
the grid is a chessboard
waiting for the next day,
the next game.

.
          These thoughts
are a haphazard
                 tessellation
of moments,
         sounds
           and scents -

  caught in a
      persistent loop…

         Such it is,
   that they herald
       no known beginning,
and yield
     no foreseeable end.

.

This is how it goes
your hands will be proxy for mine
my hands will be proxy for yours
your fingers my fingers
and my fingers yours
what I describe, you enact
told in detail so exact

Just to begin
I squeeze your *******
knead and pinch
tweak a ******
give it a tug

Stroke your tummy
work over your thighs
move up the inner
where skin is smooth
circle around, moving in
till soft contours are caressed
through pants that burn
to be removed
that pain you to wear
and I see in my mind
as you describe
the spreading, darkening patch
that fills the gusset

Now they're pulled down
removed quickly, completely
and you are revealed
spread, opened, shameless

Gentle fingertips tease
dance in circles, barely touching
yet the fire within grows
back and forth, round and round
dance the fingertips
as both reciprocate
with growing pace
and firmer touch

I hear you gasp down the line
and your breathing quickens
as you hear mine
as your excitement fuels mine
as mine fuels yours
in our feedback loop of lust

And I tell you how
my fingertip would give way
to tonguetip if I could
that I can taste you
in my imagination
fragrant, salty sweetness
with musky undertones
the tip of my tongue now circling
then flicking back and forth
beating out the rhythm
that you best harmonise with
bringing forth your moans

Then darting down, back
between wet, glistening folds
exploring each ridge and valley
working remorselessly

Breathing faster now
with animal grunts and moans
directions of pleasure gasped
breathless down the phone

As fingers again
take the lead
find the opening
slip readily within
probe, explore, ****
find that place
on your front wall
yes, just that spot
that's a little rougher
and feels sooo goood

Add a second finger
working and *******
licking and rubbing
moaning and gasping
barely intelligible now
...yess...more...yess...ohhh
are all that have meaning

Finger three joins one and two
then the pressure builds
demanding release
and shaking and thrusting
grows to shuddering
and...yes...yesss...sooo clooose

******* faster furiously
till we both explode
hearing each other's
voicing of our ecstasy
in language intelligible
only in this one context

Brains and voices return
as we bask in the afterglow
and what passes between us then
in those moments
is the deepest intimacy of all

Cynthia Pauline Jones 01/02/2014

Blanket city run along soaked in rain. Idiot Boy wastes his time visiting a passing crush at the other end of town. Slips between two houses and a metal sheet, communal refrigerator in the middle of the road filed with half-empty soy bottles.

Dead bell stop, mocking red blink of the operator. Father arrives, a mess of wiry muscles and hair.

“Hey. Is Coffin Cat here?”

“Who?” Father squints at Idiot Boy’s cap. Idiot Boy avoids eye contact.

“Um.”

Recessed in the blackness behind Father, a Figure says, “You looking for Coffin Cat?”

Idiot Boy nods.

The Recessed Figure turns. “I’ll go get her.”

Father returns to his parched body on the couch, content.

Indistinguishable forms move back and forth in the kitchen to the right. They stop their pacing and glance at Idiot Boy as he passes. Idiot Boy avoids eye contact and slips into the left-bound arterial vessel.

“So this is the heart chamber I’ve been living in,” Coffin Cat says as Idiot Boy enters her room. There is music gear. “It’s pretty comfy.”

“Oh, sick mic,” Idiot Boy says, pointing at the mic behind Coffin Cat’s head.

“I feel like a ghost,” Coffin Cat replies, falling on her bed.

Idiot Boy settles next to her. Animal distance. Intensely aware of his rain-soaked right shoe. “Same.”

Nothing comes out right, intersubjectivity a false God to mediate the impossible kernel of being, nobody can find nor express. Idiot Boy searches for connection. He glances around the heart chamber, at the music gear, but nothing grips. Four pears sit on a table by the window, their skins garish green in the harsh grey light.

Coffin Cat moves from the bed to the floor. She opens a virtual aquarium on her computer; fish eat pellets dropped from the sky to **** out coins to buy more fish to **** out coins to buy more fish. Capitalist investment and accumulation. Every few minutes a rocket-spewing robot teleports into the aquarium to attack the fish. Ruthless competition in the global marketplace.

“No! Why would you swim there, you ******* fish?” Coffin Cat yells as one if her fish is eaten by the nomadic war machine. “So dumb. ****. Why did it eat my fish?”

A knock at the door. The Recessed Figure from earlier enters the room. “Hey, mind if I join?” Their arms dangle like fine threads of hair.

“I like your music gear,” Idiot Boy says, pointing at nothing in particular.

“Idiot Boy also makes music,” Coffin Cat adds from the floor.

The Recessed Figure does not respond. They are enthralled by their phone, streak of dead pixels along a digital chessboard, minute reflection of their own gaunt face in the glass. After an extended period, they decide to move none of their pieces. A gaping coffee grinder rises out of the rubble at their feet. They begin filling it with tobacco from broken cigarettes.

“I’m surprised you’re still playing this,” Idiot Boy says to Coffin Cat. “I swear this is one of those games designed to ruin your life. Get addicted, stop going to work, become a hikik weaboo.”

“Already there, man,” Coffin Cat laughs. “Nah, this is my new job. I’m going to be a professional gamer.”

“Stream only PopCap games.”

Another knock at the door. Tired squander in an endless pacing of flesh. Strawman enters and nods at the Recessed Figure. “Hey bro.”

“Good to see you, man.” The Recessed Figure plugs the coffee grinder into the wall. “You got any ciggys?”

Idiot Boy points under the table and says “Ahh” with his mouth.

The Recessed Figure empties it into the coffee grinder. The device whirs into motion, creating a centrifugal blur, a mechanical and headless hypnotic repeat.

Idiot Boy and Coffin Cat look for horror movies to watch. The Recessed Figure empties the contents of the coffee grinder onto a metal tray. Strawman repacks it into a ****. White smoke fills the empty column, moves in slow motion like an oceanic rip a mile off coast, surface seething with quiet, impenetrable violence.

Idiot Boy refuses the first round. It’s never done him any good. Face turned to smoke and the wretched weight of a tongue that refuses to speak. Headless carry-on as time ticks through the clock face.

The door bursts open. Everybody turns as Manic Refusal or the Loud Person saunters in.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. They’re selling me off!” the Loud Person says in exasperation. “First time back in New Zealand in five years and they do this to me!”

“What? What’s happened?” Strawman asks.

“Some rich ****** in Australia has bought me as his wife. I knew it, I knew if I came back, my parents wouldn’t let me leave again. Whole ******* thing arranged!” the Loud Person laughs bitterly, before hitting the ****.

“Oomph, that’s rough,” Coffin Cat quips from the side.

“No, you don’t even understand. This is the first time back, the first time back in five years, and I’m being sold to off some rich ****** who owns all the banks in Australia.”

“But like, who is this guy?” Strawman asks, pointing.

“And he’s been reading all my profiles. He has access to all my information. I don’t even have control over my Facebook profile. Grand Larson’s logged in as me, posting for me,” the Loud Person continues. “I met him once in Australia, clubbing, and now he’s tracked and bought me.”

“That’s creepy as ****,” Idiot Boy says.

“So he’s not a complete stranger?” Strawman asks.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. First time back in five years and I’m being sold off!”

Idiot Boy decides one hit from the **** wouldn’t be so bad. He packs the cone with chop, lights and inhales. Smoke rushes through the glass channel, a swirl of white ether, more than he’d expected. He quickly passes the **** to Coffin Cat, before collapsing onto the bed, eyes closed. A suffocating sensation fills his body. He sinks into the chasm of himself, further and further into an impossible, infinite depth.

“Still working at . . . ?”

“Yeah, yeah. Management. Hospital. You?”

“Like, property. Motions.”

“Subcontracting? Intonements?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Mmm.”

Idiot Boy doesn’t know what’s going on. He feels sick and tries to get Coffin Cat’s attention, but cannot move his body.

“Come on. Sell me drugs, Strawman.”

“Nah. I don’t deal drugs. I don’t deal drugs.”

A strange silence stretches like an artificial dusk, a liminal duration, the hollow click of a tape set back into place in reverse. The Recessed Figure coughs and the Loud Person whirs back into motion.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. They’re selling me off! First time back in New Zealand in five years and they do this to me!”

The Recessed Figure makes a noncommittal noise.

“I knew it, I knew if I came back, my parents wouldn’t let me leave again. Whole ******* thing arranged!”

Coffin Cat laughs quietly.

“No, you don’t even understand. This is the first time back, the first time back in five years, and I’m being sold off to some rich ****** who owns all the banks in Australia.”

“How about this fella? He doing okay?” Strawman asks, pointing. Everyone turns to Idiot Boy and laughs affectionately.

“Still working at . . . ?”

“Yeah, yeah. Management. Hospital. You?”

“Like, property. Motions.”

“Subcontracting? Intonements?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Mmm.”

“Sell me drugs, Strawman.”

“Nah. I don’t deal drugs. I don’t deal drugs.”

Idiot Boy slowly opens his eyes and stares out the window. The same grey light as before. He moves his arm further towards Coffin Cat, but is still too weak to get her attention. The same strange silence stretches. The Recessed Figure coughs and the Loud Person whirs back into motion.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. . . .”

As the conversation repeats over and again, Idiot Boy begins to think he has become psychotic, or perhaps entered into a psychotic space. He thinks of computer algorithms, input-output, loops without variables, endless regurgitations of the same result. Human machines trapped in their own stupid loop. Drug-****** neuronal networks incapable of making new connections, forever traversing old ones. Short-term memory loss, every repeat a new conversation of what has already been. The same grey light painted upon four pears by the window.

He’s not sure if Coffin Cat’s laugh is getting weaker with each repeat.

Signal-response. The exterior world oversaturated with variables: roadways, rivers, forests, wildlife — an ever changing scene to respond to — the illusion of depth. Automatic response mechanisms reorient to new stimuli. The soul rises like surfactant, objectified fractal diffusion. A becoming without end.

But within the border of this interior world, the light stays grey. No input, no change; the same dead repeat, over and over, until sundown triggers a hunger response. Lined all along the street, a black box ceremony of repeating machines, trapped in their idiot cults, walls of clay and blood.

Idiot Boy finally gets Coffin Cat’s attention. She helps him through the house’s arteries to reach rain and wet stone, overcast skies. As he shakes in shock, Coffin Cat mumbles, “It’s cold.”

Idiot Boy sits silent on the ride home. Travels through himself. Tunnel through the body or Mariana Trench. Loses his footing before a traumatic void. Leaves the car and pukes.

It’s just easy for them
Isn’t it?
This couple on the train.
They walked on laughing together
Holding hands
And I felt that familiar something-
Not jealousy
Not envy
But...
Chagrin.
Astonishment.
Incredulity.
Incomprehension.
Looking at them feels like looking at one of those
Impossible pictures
Where the stairs keep going forever in a loop.
It’s just
Easy for them.

It doesn’t hurt anymore, that thought,
But thinking it feels so odd in my mind
When I can’t imagine loving someone without
Shame,
Without pain.
They fit.
These people,
They fit without having to carve anything out.
They fit without punishing each other.
They fit like puzzle pieces cut from the same board-
No worries, they just go together, and that
Is that.
They fit like
“Of course.”
Like breathing.
Neatly.
Simply.
Carelessly.

I can’t imagine what it’s like
I can’t comprehend it-
To fit
Somewhere
Much less to fit somewhere
With someone.
I am always trying to corset myself into this world,
Lungs burning,
Trying to remain small enough to squeeze by
Catching myself by the wrist to keep from reaching
For anything.
And if there seems to be a spot where I might be able to exist as I am

It is always

Occupied.

Like a shiny pinprick
That thought hurts-
Not like the others it is newly cut
And still ******.
The idea that maybe there is a home for me
And that maybe I was too late for it.

They’re laughing.
He says something clever,
Passes a hand along the small of her back
And she leans into it,
Smiling because she loves that he wants to touch her innocently.
They seem to exist behind glass.
Not for the first time I wonder
If I could just slip into that life
Like a drop into an ocean
I want it badly
I want it stupidly
And I examine all the parts of myself,
All the edges and cracks,
All the things I’ve worked so hard to protect and repair.
It is not a welcome sight-
I am not a home
I am like an old ruin
Full of murmurings and cold spots
Full of dusty sunlight.
I sigh,
Knowing the secret I keep so poorly-
That if I really had a choice to be otherwise
I would have already made it.

I couldn’t reach them if I ran for a thousand years,
They are too far away.
They walk off the train, arms linked
Talking about nothing
And I watch them go
Like a hallucination,
Like a mirage in the desert.

Her perfume smells like forgetfulness
And it lingers.

Zero is enduring
zero is deathless.
Nothing is up to it
none can mirror it
though forever
it's an open case.
The eyes are yet to
see an open face!

Because like it's
nothing is in perfect shape
purely a perfect circle!
Nothing matches it
as like Fathima is none else!

Ever more sprawling pi decimals
never go unnoticed propelling
to the end surge before her.
Before the original one
Fathima is yet to be mirrored.

All the planets turn circular
before the unseen perfect circle.
Fathima nails it snapped it up
circled it with her hair!
Before the furthest sighted eyes,
the dot at the earth's centre
at its pool of primitive water.

Fathima embeds in a loop of her hair
thus supercharges the water!
It finds the cut, the golden ratio,
constant continuity in her hair's inner flow.
And the Big Bang happened
there, their breakthrough!
The potential worlds to be
from the first drop of water
she gets them all buzzed out.
From down the rock bottom,
from the zero null
Fathima finds and raises the sun!

Nothing is comparable to it on the ground
nor up on the high, we only see the fire
of a heavenly phenomenon is beyond the sight!

Use your pen to be expressive
express yourself and be impressive
impress your will to be progressive
progress of the muse possessive

possessed by another expression
expressing myself is my obsession
obsessing over words in succession
succeeding is hopeful in every session

Like a chain
each ending word
of every inscribed phrase
ties up the innate sentiments
like waving a spectacular poetry
which brings out thrilling suspense
with candid inscription of an expression

A poet has all options
to use instinctive creativity
enthuse with an intuitive inkling
to demonstrate in clear composition
every substantive thought of wisdom
employing artistic serial rendition
words written in beauty as loop poem

the ocean waves crash in and out
          in and out
                              in
                      and
              out
on a loop
            loop
               loop
                  loop
repeat after repeat repeat repeat
         again and again and again and again
a force pushes them
            a force pulls them
                                     push                  pull
                                          push          pull
                                             push     pull
                                                pushpull
like clockwork
like a magnet
-you & i

In and out
Round and round
Loop the loop
Come back down

Breathe in and out
The rope goes round and round
The knot goes loop the loop
He jumps but doesn't come back down.

I have never been sophisticated
sophistication just never related
relative to everything i hated
hatred of the over-stated

i have never been materialistic
materialism isnt a characteristic
characterized by a mind that's realistic
realize i am not hedonistic

i never gave a **** about tradition
traditional is subject to my definition
defined by my own composition
composed of passion and ambition

-Hate yourself to the point of misery

-Slash your skin into oblivion

-Make your flesh a canopy of the hatred you feel

-Still feel numb after all of the pain

-Get yourself a rope

-Hang the rope on a sturdy branch

-Tie the knot properly
         - make a loop
         - spiral the rope around the loop
         - tuck the rope through the loop
         - pull on the end to tighten

-Pull a stool under your necklace

-Stand on the stood and wear your craft

-Kick the stool away

-"Look, Mum! No hands!"

-Think of your mum.... and others you love...

-Gasp for air but find none

-Shed a tear, cry out in agony

-Feel your neck being stretched out

-Remember the lovely touches from your loved ones... Remember how your brother used to nuzzle up by your chest and whisper against your neck

-Remember the times your friends used to hug you around the neck

-Remember the way Their lips felt against your supple skin

-Cry out harshly one final time

...Darkness

                                       Nothing is left anymore...



-You did it!

------------------------------------------------------------­-------------------------
The pain you face doesn't go away when you do. It's simply transferred onto others. The ones who cry at your funeral, the ones who will miss your voice, the ones who notice an empty place where you used to sit, the ones who shed a tear at the mention of your name, and even the ones who seemed to hate you will still love you the same. They'll be devastated. If you ever need to talk with somebody, I've been here before. I've been to the lowest of lows, and I've attempted before. You can always talk with me. My instagram DMs are open all the time. @darlingdrawingqueen

Don't be afraid to reach out. Your life is important, and you are loved by so many people. If not until now, then I love you. I love you so much, and I really want to get to know you.

Down,
           Down,
                       Down.
The farther I fall the darker it gets,
Lost,  
         Lost,
                   Lost.
Everywhere around me I feel these threats.

I’m falling faster but I can’t slow down,
All these eyes are looking at me as I look around.
My head is shrinking, and it begins to pound,
An escape is nowhere to be found.

Can someone help me?
Can I even be seen?
Please just somebody, Please just help me get free.

Stuck in a loop, forever feeling alone,
Putting myself out there but I remain unknown.
I just want someone to see my true self,
I’m tired of putting her away on the shelf.

I fall faster into the deep abyss,
The old times I simply reminisce.
As the loop continues, the void grows,
I feel like I’m dead and I’ve begun to decompose.

Falling,    
             Falling,
                          Falling.
Is anyone out there?
Alone,
            Alone,
                       Alone.
Now I’m losing my air.

Slowly I step away from the gate,
Gait unsteady, I stop and I wait
Weight of the moment sees me in a daze
Days ahead blur into a chilling haze.

She whispers her last from upon the kerb
Curb my fear, this I know I need to hear
Here and now is my only chance at peace
Piece together what happened to make this cease.

She said that I made her my fragile dear,
Deer caught in headlights, my ******,
Heroine to be rescued from all mist,
Missed the chance to know this girl I kissed.

She was done being made to feel weak,
Week after week she assembled her fort,
Fought all urge to let this issue slide by.
Bye, she murmured, I am now ready to fly.

So this is the sad end to my tale,
Tail tucked in between my legs I
Eye her walk away into the night
Knight I am no more, fade to white.

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

Why the hell do they form all these alliances?
The loop probably created all of these disguises.
But they were the ones who gave life no meaning.
So now hate evil and greed are roaming freely.
I guess I know who started this mess.
But who was it before them? Will they ever give it a rest?
I guess this is why there are terrorist bombings.
But look they’re intertwined with isis. Don’t worry I saw it coming.
People say they’re lending a helping hand.
But what if they stop caring, it was probably part of their plan.
I hope my time comes before the world goes to ****.
Because I never wanted to be a part of any of the *******.

why do we fear rejection?
rejecting the chance for positive projection
projecting an image of our own detection
detected by the other's inspection

take a look at your own reflection
reflect on your eyes' connection
connect to the true perception
perceive yourself as perfection

(the rules for a quantum loop poem are that the last word in each line must be used in a different form, as the first word in the following line. It also must rhyme. It can be any length.)

1.

From our
safe windows,
we crane our necks,
rubbernecking
past the slow
motion wreckage
unfolding in Homs.

We remain
perfectly
perched
to marvel at
the elegant arc of
a mortar shell
framing tomorrows
deep horizon,
whistling through
the twilight to
find its fruitful
mark.

In the now
we keep
complicit time,
to the arrest
of beating hearts,
snapping fingers
to the pop
of rifle cracks,
swooning to
the delicious
intoxication of
curling smoke
lofting ever
upward;
yet
thankfully
remain
distant
enough to
recuse any
possibility
of an
intimate
nexus
with the
besieged.

2.

From our
safe windows,
we behold the
urgent arrivals of
The Friends of Syria
demanding
clean sheets
and 4 Star
room service at a
Tunisian Palace
recently cleaned
and under new
management
promising a
much needed
refurbishment.

The gathered,
a clique of
this epochs
movers and shakers,
a veritable
rouges gallery of
ambassadorial
prelates, Emirs and
state department
bureaucrats
summoned
with portfolio
from the
darkest corners
of the globe.

They are
eager to
sanctify
the misery
of Homs,
deflect and
lay blame
with realpolitik
rationalizations,
commencing
official commissions
of inquiry,
deliberating
grave considerations,
issuing indictments
of formal charges for
Crimes Against
Humanity
while
remaining
urgently
engrossed
in the fascination
of interviewing
potential
process servers
to deliver the bad news
to Bashar al-Assad
and his soulless
Baathist
confederates,
if papers
are to be
served.

Yes, the diplomats
are busy meeting
in closed rooms.

In hushed circles
they whisper
into aroused ears,
railing against
Russia’s
gun running
intransigence
and China’s
geopolitical
chess moves.

Statesmen
boast of the
intrepid justice
of tipping points
and the moving poetry
of self serving tales,
weighing the impact
of stern sanctions
amidst the historical
confusion of the
asymmetrical
symmetries
of civil war.

Caravans
of Arab League
envoys roll up
in silver Bentleys,
crossing deserts
of contradictory
obfuscations,
navigating the
endless dunes
with hand held
sextants of
hidden agendas.

The heroic
Bedouins are
eager to offload
their baggage
and share
on the ground
intelligence from
their recent soirées
across Syria.

They beg
a quick fix,
the triage of a
critical catharsis
to bleed their
brains dry
of heinous
recollections,
pleading
release from a
troubled conscience
victimized by
the unnerving paradox
of reconciling
discoveries of
perverse voyeurism
with the sanctioned
explanations
of their respective
ruling elites.

The bellies
of these
scopophiliacs
are distended;
grown queasy
from a steady diet
of malfeasance
an ulcerated
world parades
in continuous loop;
spewing the raw feeds
of real time misery;
forcibly fed
the grim
visions of
frantic
fathers
rushing
the mangled
carcases
of mortally
wounded
children
to crumpled
piles of smashed
concrete that were
once hospitals.

We despondently
ask how
much longer
must we
look into
the eyes
of starving
children
emaciated from
the wanton
indifference
of the world?


3.

From our
safe windows
we wonder
how much
longer can
the urgent
burning
ambivalence
continue
before it
consumes
our common
humanity in
a final
conflagration?

My hair already
singed by the
endless firestorms
sweeping the prairies
of the world.

How can we survive
the trampling hoards,
the marauding
plagues of acrimony
fed by a voracious
blood lust aspiring to
victimize the people
of Homs and a
thousand cities
like it?


4.

From my safe
window I stand in witness
to the state execution of
refugees fleeing the
living nightmare
of Baba Amr.

The ****** of innocents,
today's newly minted martyrs,
women and children
cornered, trapped
on treacherous roads,
mercilessly
slaughtered and
defiled in death
to mark the lesson
of a ruthless master
enthralled with the
power of his
sadistic fascist
lordship.

I cannot avert my eyes
marking sights
of pleading women
begging for the
lives of their children
in exchange for
the gratification
of a sadists
lust.

My heart
is impaled
on the sharp
spear of
outrage
beholding
careening
children mowed
down with the
serrated blades
protruding
from marauding
jeeps of laughing
soldiers.

I drop
to my knees
in lakes of
tears
reflecting
a grotesque
horror stricken
image of myself.

My eyes have
murdered my soul.

The ghastly images
of Homs have chased
away my Holy Ghost
to the safety of a child's
sandbox hidden away
in a long forgotten
revered memory.


5.

From my safe window
I seethe with anger
demanding vengeance,
debating how to rise
to meet the obscenity of
the Butcher of Damascus.

The sword of Damocles
dangles so tantalizingly close
to this tyrants throat.  

The covered women
of Homs scream prayers
“may Allah bring Bashar to ruin”

Dare I pray
that Allah trip the
horsehair trigger
that holds the
sword at bay?

Do I pick up
the sword
a wield it
as an
avenging
angel?

Am I the
John Brown
of our time?

Do I organize
a Lincoln Brigade
and join the growing
leagues of jihadists
amassing at the
Gates of Damascus?

Will my righteous
indignation fit well
in a confederacy
with Hamas and
al-Qaeda as my
comrades in arms?

Do I succumb to
the passion of hate
and become just
another murderous
partisan, or do I
commend the power
of love and marshal
truth to speak with
the force of
satyagraha?

I lift a fervent prayer
to claim the justice
of Allah’s ear,
“may the knowing one
lift the veil of foolishness
that covers my heart in
cloaks of resent, cure
my blindness that ignores
my raging disease of
plausible deniability
ravaging the body politic
of humanity.”

6.

Indeed,
physician heal thyself.

I run to embrace my
illness.

I pine to understand it.

I undertake the
difficult regimen
of a cure to eradicate
the terrible affliction.

This
pernicious
plague,
subverting
the notion
of a shared
humanness
is a cunning
sedition that
undermines
the unity of
the holy spirit.  

The bell from
the toppled steeples
still tolls, echoing
across the space of
continents and eons
of temporal time.

The faithful chimes
gently chides us
to remove the wedge
of perception that
separates, divides
and undermines.

Time has come
to liberally
apply the balm
that salves the
open wounds
so common to
our common
human condition.

The power of prayer
is the joining of hands
with others racked
with the common
affliction of humanness.

Allah,  
My eyes are wide open,
my sacred heart revealed,
my sleeves are rolled up,
my memory is stocked,
my soul filled with resolve,
my hand is lifted
extended to all
brothers and sisters.
Lift us,
gather us
into one
loving embrace.

Selah


7.

From the safe
windows of
our palaces
we live within
earshot of
the trilling
zaghroutas
of exasperation
flowing from
the besieged
city smouldering
under Bashar’s
symphony of terror.

Our nostrils
fill with the
acrid plumes
of unrequited
lamentations
lifting from the
the burning
destruction
of shelled
buildings.

Our eyes spark
from the night
tracers
of sleeking
snipers
flitting along
the city’s
rooftops.

The deadly jinn
indiscriminately
inject the
paralysis of
random fear
into the veins
of the city
with each
skillful
head shot.

These
ghoulish
assassins
lavish in their
macabre work;
like vultures
they eagerly
feast on the
corpses of their ****,
the stench of bloated
bodies drying in the
sun is the perfume
that fills their nostrils.


8.

From our
safe window
we discern the
silhouettes of militants
still boldly standing
amidst the
mounting rubble of an
unbowed Homs
shouting;

Allah Akbar!!!
Allah Akbar!!!
Allah Akbar!!!

raising pumped fists,
singing songs
of resistance,
dancing to
the revelation of
freedom,
refusing to
be coward by
the slashing
whips of a
butchers
terrible
sword.


9.

From my
safe window
my tongue laps
the pap
of infants
suckling from
the depleted
teats of mothers
who cannot cry
for their dying
children;
tears fail
to well from
the exhaustion
of dehydrated
pools.

10.

From my
safe window
my heart stirs
to the muezzin
calling the
desperate faithful
from the toppled
rubble of dashed
minarets.

We can
no longer
shut our ears
to the adhan
of screams
the silent
voices that echo
the blatant injustice
of a people under siege.


11.

From my
safe window,
I pay
Homage to Homs
and call brothers
and sisters to rise
with vigilant
insistence
that hostilities
cease and
humanity be
upheld,
respected and
protected.


12.

From my safe
window
I perceive
the zagroutas
of sorrow
manifest as a
whiling hum,
a sweeping
blue mist,
levitating
the coffins
from the rubble
of ravaged streets.

The swirling
chorus of
mourning
joins my
desperate
prayers;
rising in
concert
with the
black billows
of smoke
dancing
away
from the
flaming
embers
of scorched
neighborhoods.


13.

From my
safe window
I heed
the fluttering
wings
of avenging
angels
furiously
batting
as they
climb
the black
plumes,
lifting from
the scattered bricks
of the desecrated
city.

It is the
Jacob’s
Ladder
for our
time;
marking
a new
consecrated
place
where
a New Adam
is destined
to be formed
from the
pulverized
stones of
desolation.

14.

From our
safe windows
we peer into
resplendent
mirrors
beholding
the perfect image of
ourselves
eying
falling tears
dripping blood,
coloring death
onto the
blanched sheets
of disheveled beds.


15.

From our
safe windows
our voices are silenced,
our words mock urgency
our thoughts betray comprehension
our senses fail to illicit empathy
our action is the only worthy prayer


16.

From my
safe window
I hear the
mortar shells
walking toward
my little palace,
the crack
of a ******
shot
precedes
the wiz of a
passing bullet
whispering
its presence
into my
waxen
ear.


17.

From my
safe window,
my palms scoop
the rich soil
of the flower boxes
perched on my sill.
I anoint the tender
green shoots of  the
Arab Spring
with an incessant flow
of bittersweet tears.

Music selection:
John Coltrane
A Love Supreme
Acknowledgment

Oakland
2/28/12
jbm

Day, night again the day and night rounding
I can’t break your thoughts at all
It seems a true loop ever -

@ Musfiq us shaleheen

as watch myself become infinite, the days go on by myself in the loop day in and day out the same thing over and over again sleep, work, by myself, sleep, work, alone. This infinite loop is a struggle, although I don't see myself in this loop forever, I don't know how to change it. I know where I want to be, I know what I can be, it's the motivation I don't know how to grasp.to whom that is reading this I have a question to ask you. Have you ever seen a TV show called Californication? The main character is named Hank Moody, is a writer alone in LA, with a daughter, chasing after his ex, who runs into the arms someone she cheated for. He can't write, he has no aspirations, no motivation. but we watch as he drowns himself in smoke, *****, and alcohol. It's so entertaining to the viewer because he is a walking case of misery and self-loathing. It makes ourselves seem like our lives are so much better, When they're really not. the strange thing is I see myself becoming Hank Moody and not the viewer, I get excited over new ***** but it doesn't fill the hole that I had for another. So my life becomes an endless loop. Work, sleep, ****, drink, alone, repeat.
infinite.