I have to stop placing people higher than me
In how I see how they are
In importance, see
I haven't got it through
my head that everyone
Is just bones and fluids
And thoughts and fun

All these ideas I have
About who I think you were
Are actually untrue
you are just a person

And this anxiety I have
That seems to wash over me
Is only here because deep down I think
You're better than me

There is no better or worse
Everybody just is
There isn't popular or outcast
Unless you start to think

they're just opinions and thoughts
And I just think too much
But I am sick to the core
I'm done giving a ****

I don't care how many likes
You got on Facebook today
I don't care how high your grades are
We both passed, ok!

I don't care who you are friends with
And who they're dating this week
I don't care what you did this summer
if it makes me feel weak

I want to know how you feel
I want to hear your passions
I want to feel your fear
And talk about the old fashioned

Ways that people would talk
And act so elegantly
Without these interactive
Mind magnets
changing our speech

I want to be confused
And vulnerable
I want that to be ok
And acceptable

I want to be myself
And care about other people
Not these manufactured movie screen
making bad sequels

Where's originality
I want passion and art
I want intelligence fuelled by
Love and not darkness

I want to feel ok
I want to talk to you
I want to feel as if I'm involved
And not trapped in a zoo

Let’s begin with your hands.
Pulling hair
and picking on strings
of hearts
and guitars.
Typing and writing.
Would your hands be happier hiding?
In a dark room with a desk?
Hands can be so dangerous
if you know how to use them.
I’d like to feel them
tight around my neck.
Closing in on breast
and hips and...
Your hands turn to fists
a lot
I bet.
What about your lips?
Do you lie to yourself
when you use your hands
and bend your wrists
to light euphorias within?
Do your lips leave you longing
for sonant truth
only your hands can execute?
I want you
to feel me through your chest.
You keep my fingernails stained
with your blood and bones and flesh.
We are carcasses full of maggots.
Marrow made of magnets.
Wearing skin jackets
stitched together with staples
and vices we don’t know how to live without.
Let’s forget.
Let’s remember walking down dark roads
and waking in dark rooms
with desks.
This time with paper and pens.
Let’s begin again.
This time with just our hands.

Victims of self discovery
Burdened by unwanted embraces
Searching for a release
Creeping into pools watched and gazed
Adjusting their lives as they unknowingly perform
Twisting structures and sparking atoms
Fling and hitting the walls
Trying to run for it
Attempted escapism and keyless doors
Clouded entryways with a dim glow
Beckoning to be explored
Unknowingly opening Pandora’s Box again
Magnets in the air to collect the scrap metal
Scratches and deep cuts on the interior
Nowhere to dispose of it
Folding and storing again in the grand drawer
Dresser pressed against the door to keep it shut

THE ENIGMA OF TIME IN VERSE: PART TWO
Dear Friends, having introduced ‘The Enigma of Time in Verse’ in Part One, along with few selected poetic quotes, I now mention what some of the important Philosophers thought about Time down the past centuries. But while doing so, I have tried my best to simplify some of those early concepts for better understanding and appreciation of my readers. If you like it, kindly re-post the poem. Thanks,  – Raj Nandy of New Delhi.

          THE ENIGMA OF TIME IN VERSE : PART TWO
   I commence by quoting Sonnet 60 of Shakespeare about Time,
   Hoping to seek some blessings for this Part Two composition of
   mine!
“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
  So do our minutes hasten to their end;
  Each changing place with that which goes before,
  In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
  Nativity, once in the main of light,
  Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,
  Crooked elipses ’gainst his glory fight,
  And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
  Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
  And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
  Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
  And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
  And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.”

              PHILOSOPHY OF TIME
Animals are said to live in a continuous present,
Since they have no temporal distinction of past, future,
or the present.
But our consciousness of time, becomes the most
distinguishing feature of mankind.
Though we are mostly obsessed with objective time, -
As the rotation of our Earth separates day from night.
With the swing of the pendulum and the ticking of clocks,
Which regulates our movements, while we try to beat the clock!
But the ancient theologians and philosophers of India and
Greece,
Who were among the first to ponder about the true nature
of all things,
Had wondered about the subjective nature of time;
Was time linear or cyclic, was time endless or finite?

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS ON TIME:
I begin with Heraclitus, the Pre-Socratic philosopher of 6th Century BC born in Ephesus.
He claimed that everything around us, is in a constant state of change and flux.
You cannot step into the same river twice Heraclitus had claimed,
Since water keeps flowing down the river all the while and never
remains the same.
This flow and change in Nature is a process which is ceaseless.
The only thing which remains permanent is impermanence!
Here is a quote from poet Shelley reflecting the same idea:
“World on world are rolling ever
  From creation to decay
  Like the bubbles on a river
  Sparkling, bursting, borne away.”

Now Heraclitus was refuted by Parmenides, born in the Greek colony of Elea,
On the western coast of Southern Italy, as his contemporary.
Parmenides said that our senses deceive us, since all changes are mere illusory!
True reality was only eternal and unchanging ‘Being’, which was both indivisible and continuous - filling up all space.
Zeno, a pupil of Parmenides, through his famous ‘Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise’ had shown, that when the tortoise was given a head start,
Swift footed Achilles could never catch up with the tortoise,
Since the space between the two were infinitely divisible, resulting in the impossibility of movement and change in motion!
Now the Greeks were never comfortable with the Concept of Infinity.
They preferred to view the universe as continuous existing ‘Being’.  
However, unlike Heraclitus’ ‘world of change and flux’,
Both Parmenides and Zeno have presented us, with a static unchanging universe!
Thus from the above examples it becomes easy for us to derive,  
How those Ancient Greeks had viewed Time.
Time has been viewed as a forward moving changing entity;
And also as an illusory, continuous and indivisible Being!
To clarify this further I quote Bertrand Russell from his ‘History of Western Philosophy’;
“Creation out of nothing, which was taught in the Old Testament, was an idea wholly foreign to Greek philosophy. When Plato speaks of creation, he imagines a primitive matter, to which God gives form as an artificer.”

PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON TIME:
For Plato, time was created by the Creator at the same instance when he had fashioned the heavens.
But Plato was more interested to contemplate on things which lay
beyond the sway of time and remained unchangeable and eternal;
Like absolute Truth, absolute Justice, the absolute form of Good and Beauty;
Which were eternal and unchangeable like the ‘Platonic Forms’, and were beyond the realm of Time as true reality.
Plato’s pupil Aristotle was the first Greek philosophers to contemplate on reality inside time, and provide a proper definition as we get to see.
He said, “Time is the number of movement in respect to before and after” - as a part of reality.
To measure time numerically, we must have a ‘before’ and an ‘after’, and also notice the difference objectively.
Therefore, time here becomes the change which we see and experience.
Time takes on a linear motion moving from the past to the present;
And to the unknown future like a moving arrow travelling straight.
Aristotle had developed a four step process to understand everything inside of Time and within human experience:
(a) Observe the world using our senses,
(b) Apply logical rules to these observations,
(c) To go back and consult past authorities, if your logic agrees with their logic,
(d) Then only you can come to a logical conclusion.

No wonder in our modern times, experiments conducted by the LDC or the Large Hadron Collider, located 100m underground near the French-Swiss border,
By going back in time simulates the ‘Big Bang’ conditions, that moment of our universe’s first creation.
The scientists thereby, study the evolution of our universe with time, which  resulted in the  finding of the Higgs Boson !  (On 4thJuly 2012)

NOTES :  All elementary particles interacting with the Higg's Field & obtain Mass, excepting for photons & gluons which do not interact with this field. Mass-less photons can travel at the
speed of light with a mind boggling 186,000 miles per second! Now this LDC is a Particle Accelerator 27 kms long ring-shaped tunnel, made mostly of superconducting magnets, inside which two high-energy particle beams are made to travel close to the speed of light in opposite directions, and the shower of particles resulting from the collision is closely examined, presuming that these similar shower of particles must have been produced at the time of the ‘Big Bang’ some 13.8 million years ago, at the time of Creation! Sound like fiction? Well, Prof. Peter Higgs got the Noble Prize for Physics, for locating the particle called ‘Higgs Boson’ among those shower of particles, on 10th Dec. 2013.

NOW TO LIGHTEN UP MY READERS MIND, FEW TIME QUOTE I NOW PROVIDE :

“TIME WASTES OUR BODIES AND OUR WITS,
  BUT WE WASTE TIME, SO WE ARE QUITS!” – Anonymus.

‘Time is a great Teacher, but unfortunately it kills its Pupils!’ – HL Berlioz

“Lost , yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two
   golden hours,
   Each set with sixty diamond minutes.
   No reward is offered, for they are gone forever!” – Horace Mann


PLOTINUS & ST. AUGUSTINE ON TIME:
Now getting back to our Philosophy of Time, there was Plotinus of the 3rd Century AD,
The founder of the mystical Neo-Platonic School of Philosophy.
He had followed Plato’s basic concept of Time as “the moving image of eternity.”
Mystic Plotinus tried to synthesize both Aristotle and Plato by saying that the entire process of cosmic creation,
Flows out of the ONE  through a series of emanation!
This ONE gave rise to the ‘Divine Mind’ which he called the ‘Realm of Intelligence’ and is an aspect of reality,
When everything is understood in terms of Platonic Forms of Truth, Justice, the Good, and Beauty.
However, the later Christian theologians had interpreted this ONE of Plotinus, -
As the Christian God, the Divine Creator of the Universe.
For God is eternal, in the sense of being timeless, in God there is no before or after, but only a timeless present.

Now this lead St. Augustine, to formulate a very admirable relativistic theory of Time!
St. Augustine, the greatest constructive teacher of the Early Christian Church, had written in Book XI of his ‘Confessions’ during  5th century AD, -
His thoughts about the enigma of Time which had perplexed the Greek philosophers of earlier centuries.
To simplify St. Augustine’s thoughts, I now paraphrase for the sake of clarity.
Time can only be measured while it is passing, yet there is time past, and time future in reality.
To avoid these contradictions he says that past and future can only be thought of as present: ‘past’ must be identified with memory, and ‘future’ with expectation.
Since memory and expectation being both present facts, there is no contradiction.  
“The present of things past is memory, the present of things present is sight; and the present of things future is expectation,” - wrote St. Augustine.

This subjective notion of time led St. Augustine to anticipate Rene Descartes the French philosopher the 17th Century,
Who proclaimed “Cogito, ergo sum” in Latin, meaning “I think, therefore I am”, and is regarded as the Father of Modern Philosophy.

Now cutting a long story short I come to Sir Isaac Newton, well known for his Laws of Motion and Gravity.
Newton speaks of ‘Absolute Time’ which exists independently, flowing at a consistent pace throughout the universe, which can only be understood mathematically.
Newton’s ‘Absolute Time’ had remained as the dominant concept till the  early years of the 20th Century.
When Albert Einstein formulated ‘Theory of Space-time’ along with his Special and General Theory of Relativity.

Now the German philosopher Leibniz during 17th century, had challenged Newton with his anti-realist theory of time.
Leibniz claimed that time was only a convenient intellectual concept, that enables to sequence and compare happening of events.
There must be objects with which time can interact or relate to as ‘Relational Time’ he had felt.
Ernst Mach, like Leibniz towards the end of 19th Century, said that even if it was not obvious what time and space was relative to,
Then they were still relative to the ‘fixed stars’ i.e. the bulk of matter in the universe.

CONCEPT OF TIME AS 'SPECIOUS PRESENT' :
During late 19th century, Robert Kelley introduced the concept of ‘spacious present’, which was the most recent part of the past.
Psychologist and philosopher William James developed this idea further by describing it as ‘’the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible’’
William James also introduced the term “stream of consciousness” into literature as a method of narration,
That described happenings in the flow of thought in the mind of the characters, - likened to an internal monologue!
This literary technique was later used by James Joyce in his famous novel ‘Ulysses’.

TIME CONCEIVED AS DURATION: HENRI BERGSON (1859 -1941)
Next I come to one of my favourite philosopher the French born Henri Bergson.
The Nobel Laureate and author of ‘Time and Free Will’ and ‘Creative Evolution’.
Will Durant in his ‘Story of Philosophy’ says Bergson was ‘the David destined to slay the Goliath of materialism.’
It was Bergson’s ‘Elan Vital’ that life force and impelling urge, Which makes us grow and transforms this wandering planet into a theatre of unending creation.
For Bergson, time is as fundamental as space; and it is time that holds the essence of life, and perhaps of all reality.
Time is an accumulation, a growth, a duration, where “duration is the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and which swells as it advances.
The past in its entirety is prolonged into the present and abides there actual and acting.
Duration means that the past endures, that nothing is lost.
Though we think with only a small part of our past; but it is with our entire past that we desire, will, and act.”
“Since time is an accumulation, the future can never be the same as the past, -
For a new accumulation arises at every step, and change is far more radical than we suppose…the geometric predictability of all things, Which is the goal of a mechanistic science, is only a delusion and a dream!”  
Bergson goes on in his compelling lyrical style:            
“For a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature,
to mature is to go on creating one’s self endlessly. Perhaps all reality is time and duration, becoming and change.”
Bergson differed with Darwin's theory of adaptation to environment, and stated;
“Man is no passively adaptive machine, he is a focus of redirected force, a centre of creative evolution.”

Martin Heidegger, the German thinker in his ‘Being and Time’ of 1927, had said:
“We do not exist within time, but in a very real way we are time!”
Time is inseparable from human experience, since we can allow the past to exist in the present through memory;
And even allow a potential future occurrence to exist in the present due to our human ability to care, and be concerned about things.
Therefore we are not stuck in simple sequential or linear time, but can step out of it almost at will!

CONCLUDING  PART  TWO OF ENIGMA OF TIME IN VERSE
In this part I have tried to convey what the Ancient Greek Philosophers had felt about Time in a simplified way.
Also some thoughts of Medieval and Early Modern philosophers and what they had to say.
Where Sir Isaac Newton stands like a colossus with his Concept of Time, Laws of Motion, and Gravity.
Not forgetting Henri Bergson, one of my favourite philosopher, of the mid-19th and the mid-20th Century.
All through my narration I had tried to hold the interest of my readers, and also educated myself as a true knowledge seeker.
In my concluding Part Three I will cover few Modern Philosophers along with the relativistic concept of time.
Certainly not forgetting the space-time theory of our famous Albert Einstein!
Thanks for reading patiently, from Raj Nandy of New Delhi.
  *ALL COPY RIGHTS ARE WITH THE AUTHOR ONLY

I'm taking back the things I wrote for you,
(I) and that includes your sweet little Bougainvilleas, too.
Let's go, take off all of your magnets, strip off your electricity,
leave the arrogance in the trash; don't set foot on my lawn
until you take off your ***** shoes (shoes); you'll travel
here with your swarming ideologies, too; but don't forget
my sweet little spatial rule. Let's go, fling off this act you have:
don't keep me waiting on a leash. On a leash. (I’ll have you on my leash, you.) Read some more of the
**** you sift through (through); I regret calling you and everything I do (with you). Let's go, you aren't higher than me, and I am not below you; remember what color comes after me, the Blue (blue)

What is the name
For that feeling when
You you seem to be drawn
To another, like moths to the flame
Two magnets that cannot bear to be apart

When someone is
Stuck in your head like
The lyrics to your favorite song
As if they are a feast
And you haven’t eaten in weeks
Every little action brings them into,
Your head

When you are with them
You can’t get enough of
Their touch, their smell, their voice
But they are like a dying fire
Giving just enough
To make you want, no need, more

What do you call this
When you don’t know what it is yourself
What do you call it
When you seem like so much,
But you are just friends

the only way we speak truths is through fridge poems,
the height of our vulnerability in
pre-written words,
mass produced magnets
holding together what's left of
you and me.

Red rained lips of the blue winds soaring.
It is all coming together like reckless memory magnets
Alone with prize high,
Painful pulse for the month's ending,
Rain convulsed,
As you stretched one hand out.
Laughter drips for you reached about the stacking strain,
Drained out dry of bright champagne.
Red rained lips of the blue winds calling.

it’s two same ends of magnets
trying so hard to meet
to click
we get so close but life and fate
chuckle at the polar opposition

[The Scene: She is sitting ahead of him in the dark with an amethyst hanging on a silver chain around her neck]

In the dark a loop siding from one end of the chain to the other
Eyes above the chain, pressed against, iris low in the eye, lids curtaining
Ineffable timbre-smoke plumes the atmos(tofall)sphere of us
The magnets drop
Amethyst colors the spaces between and outside of your eyes like a splash
Silver chain you're caught in, silver web I'm found in: you're the spider I'm eating
I pretend to follow you closely, though, you're following me, round in range into your crevices into the whites
We could find a well that'd be deep enough for our love, but you don't want me
We could lasso a meteor onto this Earth, crater a hole deep enough to fill with the bodies we'd(we've) ruin(ed) with our forces and heightened sense of being, but alas, you don't want me
At least, not in this form
For you have completed your karma, you've cut our attachments
Yet, I'm waiting for your return
Patiently waiting with the other Citta lost, wanting to return to their mothers
All I want is my mother: this is my karma, and this is my ball
This is my laundry to fold

[End scene: She gives him a kiss on the cheek and leaves him with the amethyst necklace]

You call me beautiful like it's my name
Play with my hair, twisting it around your fingers
Kissing my soul, but never my lips
You draw me in like magnets
Priming me until my skin is raw,
until my heart is vulnerable
And then you strike
Shredding the idea of what could've been
With your razor-sharp tongue
Setting my soul on fire
Burning me down, and you won't let me out
Please just let me out
If this is what your love is
I don't know if I want it
But call me beautiful one more time
And I'll fall at your feet

I expect nothing less from you tonight

Sick and tired of wandering off to another world?
The reality, it sticks to you like an appendix
Useless yet necessary
And when it hurts it explodes

It was just a kiss, but now your head spins like that bottle
In it way too deep
And some days when I walk by the house to wait for a bus
Energy seems to pull me, like magnets
You wrap me up in a copper coil
As you pluck the strings my head becomes that appendix

I scream the world away





I expected more from you tonight

Looks like I'm high and you're not here
Again
Then I remember that you're more of a tornado than a hurricane
Hit and miss with you
The ***** that had shame
A pride that never let you really play the game

Because there are no answers to the questions we battle with
I bruise myself, under my skin
Let's all ignore it, run away and shut every door
What is innocence, if not ignorance adored?

I guess I'll whisper to the world today





I expect nothing more of you tonight

I came back to earth in style
It's time we buried our sins, our narcissistic twins and toast to the solstice tangent
Let it take us away to another world where we can bury our heads in it

I guess some of us need to be the victim
Because that's all we know how to be
So the next time you need to go wandering

Hold your pillows as you would hold me

And pray for the day
Where you might be able to do everything yourself

And I can do a bit more for everyone else

Whilst we all sing for the world one day

They have been together,
give or take, for fifteen years.

Their marriage in the clasp
of puberty, its voice deepening,
its stubble sprouting.

Not long ago, shopping.
Necessary. Kid’s birthday.
It comes around quick,
like lunch, paying for the Ploughman’s
at the self-service in town
when the clock flicks to twelve.

Her right hand on his right hand.
They still do this,
though not quite as often.

Today,
he returns from work, wrenches
the tie out from beneath the collar
of a shirt she ironed yesterday.
Son, out.
Daughter, also out.

The fridge plagued with magnets
and a list; Milk,
                  Bread,
                  Eggs?
Inside, two beers,
sweating cold.
Later, he thinks.

How’s your day been darling?
We need to be at the school at six.
Oh yes.
They need to hear
how their progenies
excel at the expressive arts.
He hasn’t been expressive in years.

Hours expire.
Now his bare feet slide
under the duvet.
The wife reads a while,
Sunday Times bestseller.

Then she hugs him,
touches the skin she has known
since she was nineteen
at Northampton, literary sponge
absorbing Shakespeare and Joyce.

It is warm.
It is something
that has not changed.
The two of them are content.
They know they can
always have this.

Today I wrote
again

I tried writing your name since I thought about you
but it seemed impossible

actually it didn´t just seem like it
after the first letter I stopped

I just couldn´t look at it
I just can´t say your name out loud
it tears me apart
like two magnets pushing each other away

How does it come your everything on my mind.
and everything I don´t want on my mind

Help me to forget you
I´d say, if that wouldn´t be pointless.

like water
I poured myself into her until she was overflowing at the brim

like reinforced steel
I bridged my heart to hers and welded myself to her soul

like the sun
I filled myself with light to cover her darkness

like a blanket
I shielded her from the harsh world underneath the covers

like magnets
I orbited her aura until we inevitably collided

like a seed
I felt myself growing up from her

Then, like an idiot
I could tell she felt nothing.

People say I'm intense and aggressive
Not camping, just scampering, rampant
I'm too quick to take care and I'm helping
The message is hell bent on answering
All of your questions so let up the pressure!

Chat, chat, chat and you think you're all that
Talk some smack just so you can get back
Launch an attack on the boy in black
That boy so sad he makes me mad
That boy is trash have you seen his raps?
He's so **** suss I really wanna clap
Left right, goodnight, put him in the spotlight
And scrutinise like I have that right

Aye, I bet you think you know me
When all you've seen is nothing really
Yeah, bet it turns you green
To know that I'm better than what you carelessly,
Push away, in rage, that's cute, so sweet
When you stay, enraged, by your own heartbeat.
When you fake til you make and that's why you grin
Guess you don't know that to lie is to sin

Yeah I was the kid who got left out and yes I was the kid who'd always doubt
I was the kid who had no friends and I was the kid who'd get left til the end
Chosen for games as the last called name,
If I couldnt be avoided like I carried black plague,
But look at me now, I stand so proud, and if you try to take this from me I will knock you down!

I bring the rain and you brought pain
So I gave it back like, keep the change
Hate it when you take it
Hypocritically making
Bad choices lately, despise me for saying

So you sneak like a snake and talk behind my back
But it never really cut me so I wouldn't say backstabbed
You never really mattered so I'll be fine
You can drown in your ball pit of lies

While I raise the storm and I right the wrong
While I pave the way and still remain calm
The black dog follows and hounds at my feet
But I am electric you can't bite me!

Stormbringer,
Stormbringer

You could call me Zeus I'm lightning when I move

Stormbringer,
Stormbringer

I'm a Godlike youth that you dream to pursue

Bolt from the clouds comes crashing down
Charging the air like a love affair
Handle with care? I was kicked down the stairs
They called me Zaps so be aware!

That's spaz backwards! Ha! So funny
Now that I'm electric I guess it means something
Now that I write hectic I guess it means cunning
Yeah I'm spastic with my bars but I'm shocking and I'm stunning

You wish you had the talent to grasp words with magnets
And have the power to change the charge like its only magic
And link negative to its own, and vice versa
Take a slasher of a song and make verbal ******

Call out the curses, fill them with hurt and close all your curtains, the sunlight is burning

Go outside and raise your head to the sky
Dark clouds race to claim it all as mine!

Stormbringer,
Stormbringer

Was the reject now I'm relevant

Stormbringer,
Yeah, Stormbringer

It's no dead ringer I was always a winner

Call me a sinner, I eat y'all for dinner
Those who call me a quitter, make claims that I never
Will get any better, when I'm rising forever
When I'm using my head and I'm light as a feather

I told you my name, don't use it in vain,
I gave you my hand, you can't do the same
So trust is reversed and storms start to churn
When I raise my voice it's a third degree burn!

I gave it non-stop what more could you want
When voices persist I'm getting *******
Continual fights and TV highlights
It took me a while but now I realise

Now I realise,
Now I realise!

I'm the Stormbringer....

Stormbringer, your head's like a spinner
Gasping for air, I crushed your throat from a distance, so killer, killer, killer...

Killer, killer, killer...

I shout out and you twirl around
Rotating one-eighty like you're an owl
You look at me foul like a fowl out of bounds so
This is just something for which you're renowned
Back in the day when you used to clown
Now that I'm clowning you're the one running around
What have I done? This isn't fun!
Come at me strong, or come at me none

Back in your cage, the one that you made when you went insane and told me to stay,
Never have I ever followed in your ways
Never would I ever listen to you persuade

You'd need some skill, and not fumble your speech
I've seen examples, week after week
Calling me out saying that I'm a creep
When I used to feel to get by I must sneak

Now the tides turned, I'm friends with Poseidon
I'm a demigod and you're just a pirate
Plundering the ***** of your best mates
What? You don't like the **** I say?

Aww...

But I am no fraud
I am my own mob
I'm raising my head,
To inflict what I got!

Yesterday was okay:
   Food is good; mood is good
The newbies look wired:
  Lauren, he is nervous and pleasantly disturbed by forthright kindness.
  Arthur is slow and engaging and intimate.
  Kate is a little crazy
    She sneaks into the men's house:
    The men tense
    Our eyes move together like magnets
      "Hello." She accepts the challenge with interest.
        "Hello." A Slavic lilt.
    I comment that she mustn't like rules.
      She is overjoyed by this.
    Five minutes later she is caught and saunters sulkily away.
  We are friends.

The old men, we are slower;
  Even our eyes move slower
  We explore the grounds with less hurry:
    They will not move, and we resist the urge to pry their secrets before we have earned them:
     We save their hidden corners like sweets under a pillow:
        Times will come when they are needed; gorge now and starve later.
   For us, time will stay put if we ask it.
     With quiet acceptance we foresee the many moments that lie ahead when we will burn to usher time along.
     A sullen wise old donkey that resists the switch.
     He is our concern. And our fear.

You may become a master of time here.
More likely, you will realise its mastery over you:
Illuminated to a vivid and terrible outline.

chapter one;

“I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you're mine, I walk the line...”

i was yours
the first time your fingers
burned lust
against my neck

lunch time lunch break
45 minutes stretched
to find the beats
within the beats

“Yes, I'll admit that I'm a fool for you
Because you're mine, I walk the line.”

you grabbed my hand
hurried feet across hot pavement
a sudden coolness
my back
brown sun kissed skin bare
against rigid metal
pressure
suffused with a smoldering
you ignited
in places i didn’t know
lighting matches in me
just to swallow up the flames

“You've got a way to keep me on your side
You give me cause for love that I can't hide
For you I know I'd even try to turn the tide
Because you're mine, I walk the line.”

your hands
(how i came to love
the way just the anticipation
of their pressure
the sight of
fingertips dancing across a countertop
would make me wet)
slid slow almost slick parallel against my chest
crept slowly
upwards delicious slow race
breathing becomes optional
then forgotten
your fingertips are magnets
push back expose sweet surrender
salt kissed sugar spice
all spice

“I am not ashamed anymore
I want something so impure
You better impress now, watching my dress now fall to the floor
Crawling underneath my skin, sweet talk with a hint of sin
Begging you to take me
Devil underneath your grin, sweet thing, but she play to win, heaven gonna hate me.”

they say opposites attract
north seeks south
that is normal

this is not normal

we are heat seeking missiles
homing in one on the other
burning beyond brightness
when love sometimes feels like a fist around your throat
you command me to open my eyes
to look at you
into you
your eyes stay blazing
i am blind i can’t blink
i have never seen
more clearly
we are all stardust
mysteries inferno
your mouth tastes
i want to be the ashes in your mouth
you build my church of scars
you give me permission to be
you give me permission to
you give me permission
you give me
you give
you

fingers meeting my throat
for the first time
feels like home
our stardust becomes shrapnel
shrapnel draws first blood
i taste it on your lips
iron salt desire ***
my teeth your lust
your eyes smolder grey
so much heat
all hardness and promise
permission granted before
the question is even asked
your eyes
my eyes
close
first

round one
you win.

The wardrobe

stands

empty,


panels of pine

no longer

brushed by the fabric of you.


The doors close,

sealed by a magnets kiss -

a mannequin's tomb.

I promised myself never to give in
Never to be the hostage of my emotions
Never to let my knees turn to jelly
Never to lust and never to hope
Never to trust nor elope
But your fingertips are magnets
And every piece of my body that you touch
My skin follows, giving in to your warmth
Begging for more, begging for you
I'm letting you take over and control for me
Feverishly, I watch you handle my life
Piecing things together, tearing some apart
And as if you were magic
I sit back and think:
"I am so glad you have my heart".

ACT I -

Let's make love tonight
under the sheets, we'll start a
sweet, sinful war.

Our bodies, like magnets, will become one.
The way we move,
the friction we create,
will make
a fire
that'll burn each one of us inside.

- ACT II -
Leave the window open.
Let the moon stare at the messy art we make.
Its light kissing our skin,
its stars dancing with the rhythm of our breathing.

- ACT III -
Baby, can you feel it?
Your blood rushing through your veins,
your heart beating,
waking up underneath your rib cage.

- ACT IV -
In this moment,
we are drowning in the riverbed of thirst.
Our hunger for something real —
a connection,
hands we can hold on to,
purple hearts we can call our own.

Tell me this is real;
that we are alive,
that we are brimming with love,
and we are full of it.

Tell me this is real.
You and me.

- ACT V -
It's 4:00 AM.
The sun will soon kiss the horizon.

We are still lying in bed,
naked.

I reach for you
and kiss you here,
here, and here

and you look at me
with intensity in your eyes
and said,

"I am home."

I entered the display
case of people uplifters
subsidizing snobs

the multirich and companies
together with tourists and inhabitants
who want to be seen here

and with subtle pastry in the museum café
interweave the conversation
with careless clauses

they quote from an authority
whom nobody has to understand
to get the intention

of the praised artists
The shop was crowded
spotlights on showpieces

fancy coffee table books and chic
presents for the season
and the next holidays

Especially the past is on sale
postcards of the attractions
and sights of the city

without the attractions
interchangeable art
like the collections

by graduated stylists
cast in international moulds
to high-cultural magnets for visitors

on ruby jacobs walk, a
small girl
asked us for money for ice cream.

she eyed our cones
                                yours, lemon
                                mine, strawberry
with a child’s hunger
glinting and opportunistic
as she held out her palm for coins.

i was not yet accustomed to the shapes and sizes,
to a dime being smaller than a nickel,
and in any case wanted to preserve them for souvenirs
so we shook our heads and walked away.

a year later, writing this poem,
i learned that ruby jacobs was a local restaurateur
who, as a boy,
illegally sold ice creams
for a nickel on the boardwalk.
                                                a nickel is the larger coin
                                                the size of a ten pence piece.
                                                i know that now.

the wide atlantic rose from a sloping manicured lawn
        star-spangled,
                                like everything here
                                                            ­    the airborne flag
                                                            ­    above a wide pavilion,
                                                       ­         a fanatic wedding cake-topper
                                                     ­           against the blood-blue sky.

        i slipped
out of my shoes and let the white sand burn my feet and jaggedly fill the spaces between my toes

the atlantic held its wide arms open
though we weren’t, as we imagined,
                looking east
                looking home
but south to new jersey, across the bay.

the gnarled boardwalk was a
song of the twentieth century
        a roll-call of mass-market capitalism
        here in the city that didn’t invent the concept
        but certainly perfected it:
                                                hot dogs
                                        amusements
         ­                       ice creams (we’ve covered that)
                        fridge magnets
                baseball caps
        i bought an espresso cup with a picture of the president
and the caption:
                         ‘huuuuge!’
i stopped to take a photograph
of a space-age building from the fifties
which turned out to be
                                        a public toilet.

later
from the sunbaked d train
brooklyn spread out beneath us
the houses garnished with american flags
then the city coughed us up on seventh avenue
and night fell five hours early.

Next door is slick with sweat wet. Arid here. Flip manipulation. Force bendy like two magnets together. Sign in at registration. Ever too forward. My mind bleeds memory. Something about owls or captured butterflies. Maypole. Kicked-off boots. Split rivers and casual dreams. There was no comparison; nothing was gained from it.

I forget how to write
Sitting in my skin
Festering spoiled meat
Falls off the bone
When I move my hands
To pick up a pen
Before I reach it
My fingers are dust
Along with my thoughts
Floating in the air
Body and mind
Decomposing in time

I forget how to draw
Like repelling magnets
Ink jumps from the page
And into my eyes
Blinded I fumble
Stumbling I mumble
Something about art
About how it’s saved me
****** and confused
It avoids and evades me