there was a little mouse he just loved to cook
lots of different recipes from his little book
he longed to be a chef cooking up a dish
work in some hotel was his only wish

cooking different meals fish and beef and steak
all these different things he could learn to make
doing lots of sweets apple pie and rice
lots of chocolate pudding dishes that were nice

he could wear his hat and his coat of white
a proper chef in uniform would give him such delight
maybe win some stars one or maybe more
then he would be a master chef just like he longed for

my sonnet is A light goes on in
the toiletwindow,that’s straightacross from
my window,night air bothered with a rustling din

sort of sublimated tom-tom
which quite outdoes the mandolin-

man’s tiny racket.  The horses sleep upstairs.
And you can see their ears.  Ears win-

k,funny stable.  In the morning they go out in pairs:
amazingly,one pair is white
(but you know that)they look at each other.  Nudge.

(if they love each other,who cares?)
They pull the morning out of the night.

I am living with a mouse who shares

my meals with him,which is fair as i judge.

She said she would be willing to get a matching tattoo
with me. A flower permanently imprinted on our skin.
She likes orchids, I like lilies. And even after moving
away she understands my addictions; growing old,
the rain, Team Gibbs, bats, my love for pistachios
and maybe even my need to come back home.

As much as I love Ohio, it’s nice to go home
every once and awhile. Saving up for my tattoo
is not easy when I keep spending my money on M&M;’s and pistachios,
especially when my mother isn’t there to pinch my skin
and tell me to put my wallet away. She’s not old—
but I certainly feel like I am when she says she’s moving

away from me. I toss and turn and move
in my sleep thinking about how home
will never be the same without her. The cats are getting old;
their time is coming. Maybe we should get a tattoo
of them instead of flowers—light and dark brown skin
warm and cuddled together, munching on pistachios.

I remember when I first became addicted to pistachios.
It was a church Christmas party and the wine was moving
closer to my hands. Mom said I could, as I felt the buzz of my skin
react to my fourth glass. She shook her head and drove me home
laughing at my sneaky attempts to act sober. A tattoo
was out of the question; what would I think when I got old?

Our relationship now has changed, intimate friends never too old
to dance or talk about our *** lives, throwing pistachios
at each other or plan out our future tattoos.
I am going to miss her, and she me, as she moves
on with her dreams, starting over, building a new home
In a place we’ve never known, but always in the same skin

that I have loved my whole life.  A soft, toasted skin
that has been passed down to me for my days of old.
Born, nurtured, taught and loved in my mother’s home;
home-cooked meals that surpass the freshest of pistachios
so I would one day learn how to cook. No matter where she moves,
my mother will remain deep in my heart, my skin—like a tattoo.

She gave me my skin and approved of my tattoo,
provided me with a home complete with pistachios
and an old promise: her heart is unmoving.

Am I just a wheel?
Consuming meals?
A speck in blue sea?
Bound by what I see?
Life amongst trees?
Breathing means free?

Am I my beliefs?
The truth I seek?
Flag of a country?
Defined by currency?
A liability?
Part of society?

Am I what you see?
The way you judge me?
The values you pick?
First impressions stick?
Norm defined by you?
Do I dare to be rude?

No...

I am who I choose.
I fill my own shoes.
I win when I lose.
I create my own views.
I see black beyond blue.
I pick me over you.

Who are we?
I am me.
Who are we?
Depends on you.

The obsession you have with the size of your hips.
They should be smaller,
Don't you think?
Oh, and be sure to do whatever it takes to have that thigh gap.
It's so worth it.
That thigh gap.
The more space the better.
The emptiness of your body.
The jutting collar bones.
Feeling dizzy.
Feeling depressed.
Worth every inch lost off your waist.
It is worth your once full and lushious hair now falling out like dead leaves.
Because you're dying.
You are killing yourself.
But it's all fine.
You're obsessed with telling yourself that it's all under control.
Isn't it?
Theres no sleep at night.
Not when your anxiety is this intense.
Not when your up planning how to skip the rest of the weeks meals.
Use that time to be productive.
Like right now.
Lying awake... obsessing.
Obsessing.
Obsessing.
But it's s all fine, right?
Because that thigh gap.
And bony fingers.
You're deliriously falling over every **** time you stand, and you think it's all still fine now?
You think it's still worth it?
Isn't it?

When I do not write poetry!
When I cant write poetry!

When all I can write is strings of meaningless associated  words
about my meaningless associated experiences
in  any of my meaningless associated lifetimes.
Spent committing meaningless associated actions.
Avoiding meaningless associated people with their
meaningless associated GroupMinds.
All meaningless without the Isness of the Universe's hand in mine.

Wandering through life with few companions.
Clad in yellow  dust.
Doing my Raja Yoga practices.
Doing my Tantric Yoga practices.
Doing my Bhakti Yoga practices.
Doing my Gnana Yoga practices.
Doing my Karma Yoga practices.
Doing my Hatha Yoga practices.

Raja Yoga.
waking--sleeping--sitting --lieing--standing--walking--running--eating--*******-swimming--r­ock climbing-trekking the  high  Himalayas---and always doing deep nasal Kriya Yoga breathing as I contemplate the passage of my days and nights and seek the answer to the eternal question of --
Who am I?.
Who am I?.
Surely not the vain and deceitful Mind?
Am I really a small but equal individual,independent,nameless,formless,genderless and non physical individual Isness formed from the Isness of the Universe?.
An individualIsness chasing after being in the
ultimate state of Separate and Merged with the Isness of the Universe.

Tantric Yoga.
Doing various sweaty and pleasure filled acts of ***  with male or female or femboy or boygirl or ******* or pansexual or anyone I fancy with a **** or a ****--and a minimum of love.
My stiff **** in a ****.
A stiff **** in my mouth.
A stiff ****  in my *******.
My stiff ****  in an *******.
*** dribbling down the inside of my legs.
*** dribbling down my chin--all over my face.
Licking wet swollen **** lips.
Licking swollen *****.
Always aiming to arouse ******--to turn on Kundalini.
To reach out and touch the hem of the Isness of the Universe's robe

Bhakti Yoga.
Singing and dancing and painting and glassperlenspiel and cooking and laughing and crying and playing----.
Saxophones and clarinets and flutes and drums and  stringed instruments and the "fool".
Especially my beloved Selmer Alto Clarinet--curved like a
serpent drunk  on life
But the greatest of my instruments is-the "fool".
Foolish for life.
Foolish for unconditional love.
Foolish for to make people laugh.
Foolish for believing that I can solve the riddle of "who am I"?.
All for the delectation of the Isness of the Universe.

Gnana Yoga.
Reading books and pamphlets and essays and sutras and suras and verses and scribbles on grubby pieces of paper.
Searching for that elusive string of associated words that tell me that an honest woman or man passed this way before me.
Not a worshipper of any "god" or "goddess" or any other Celestial being made by the Isness of the Universe to mask  its innocence.
No enlightend beings for me-oh no!.
No buddas for me-oh no!.
No beings in Gnosis for me-oh no!.
No avatars for me--oh no!
No sons or daughters of any "god" or "goddess" for me --oh no!
Just a person,*** irrelevant but compulsory, that had realised,existentially, for a brief moment that they too are a part of the essence of the Isness of the Universe.

Karma Yoga.
Every act I commit adding or subtracting from that accumulation of
Karmas,good and bad or neutral, from every lifetime I have lived.
Boy you gonna carry that weight!!.
Roll that boulder up the hill.
Only ever making Neutral Karma.
Beyond the deceptions of Duality or Non-Duality.
Neutral Karma that only arises
by practising the Six Fundamental Yogas.
But not as an obsession or a lifestyle choice.
Hey Isness of the Universe-give me a helping  hand here!

Hatha Yoga.
Keeping my current body healthy enough so I can
do all other five of the Six Fundamental Yogas.
Cooking million star meals.
No 5 star chefs in my houses.
Eating Organically and drinking water from lifes many springs.
A green leaf salad every day
Taking part in the exercise of living.
No contortions or posturing for me.
Ha! the ingoing breath.
Tha! the  outgoing breath.
Breathing set as conditioned reflex--living on automatic.
Random deep nasal breathing--waking and sleeping.
Dreaming of the Isness of the Universe.
Waking up in the Isness of the Universe's arms.
Feeling the Isness of the Universe's breath on my fevered brow.
Listening to the Isness of the Universe murmuring in a billion billion different ways--
I love you.

Hearing the Isness of the Universe say--
I breathe through your nose and lungs.
I smell through your nose.
I see through your eyes and insightfulness.
I look through your eyes.
I lick the  juice of **** or **** with your tongue.
I taste Vanilla Ice-Cream with your tongue.
I blow a wet **** or stiff **** with your mouth.
I breathe life into the Alto-Clarinet with your mouth.
I touch nakedness of others with your fingers.
I feel the Void with your fingers.
I wake into consciousness at your urgent voice.
I spring into life at your very step.
I experience all through your body.
I experience existence through your life.
I love unconditionally through being
loved unconditionally by you.
I am humble before you.
My beingness is  exalted by your humility
Your beingness is exalted by my humility.

www.thefournobletruthsrevised.co.uk

Well great goodness, where on Earth do I start?
The Garden of Eden  … or the bottom of my heart?

How can I make this as honest and heartfelt as I can?
How would I share with every woman in the world, the emotions of every man?

Yes, we hold them in. It's about pride. It's about standing tough.
But you'd really not have us any other way … you love to polish what's rough.

And we really love you, make no mistake, to you we are forever beholden.
We'll not forget those meals and those band aides and all those clothes gently folden.

You taught us to tie our shoes and look after our sisters and brothers.
And that unless we are standing for something correct, we must always be kind to others.

From you we learned that women are our partners, other halves and mothers-to-be.
Which leads my poem in another direction … as I continue my praises with glee.

Our wives took up where our mothers left off and carry our hearts in their hands.
They made us soup when sick, bore us amazing children and walked beside us in the sand.

They undressed us when drunk, both for fun and when it was needed.
And stood understanding when we failed miserably, as their warnings went blindly unheeded.

No matter our place in failure, glory or fame, they were always standing by our side.
No matter our outfit, five o'clock shadow, even our beer belly …
they always stand there with pride.

And in the brave new age, where we all live, they now do things so amazing.
They race cars, cure diseases, head up companies and set many trails a blazing!

What would we do without these women from our birth to our end of days?
How do we love them, now and forever?
You simply can't count the ways!

They say, in the wheel of life, you'll spend half your years rising to the top and the other half tumbling to the bottom. I guess they got it all wrong. I believe life is a crooked tire that can never roll up and down. Pretty sure, it is nailed to the ground where weeds could grow to entangle it forever. Until now, what they keep trying to say remains a puzzle to me. Perhaps I can never understand what they mean. Or maybe I just won’t. Why? Because from the moment our eyes opened for the world, we’re already stuck down below and I’m afraid we’re trapped here in this limbo for all eternity.

We’re just simple people living an ordinary life. Like every family who seeks refuge from the storm, we do have a place we call home although it’s not much of an architectural delight. However, for some reasons, I find our roof appealing like a real work of art. Patches of cardboard embellish the underside while a combination of tarpaulin and ad posters works in harmony to provide an extended shelter. On bright mornings, we’ll wake from the sunbeams piercing through its many gaps. On rainy days, however, the sound of raindrops falling from the gaps down to our water containers serves as our wake up call.

To jumpstart ourselves for another day’s challenge, we could either eat breakfast (if there were any), or just sing our skipping meals away and spend the rest of the day with sacks of scraps and rubbishes on our back hoping to make a good deal with Mr. Gomez, the junk shop proprietor. He reminded me so much of my father but without the alcohol problem and violence, though. During nighttime, we bring with us our drum to sing carols on the lonely streets. If our feet become too weary to walk, that’s the time we head home. We rush all together, eager to count the coins we’ve collected that night. We make sure to put a plastic cap underneath two of our table’s feet so that it won’t lean uncontrollably and spill the tiers of ten, five and one peso coins we’ve dedicatedly piled over. Then the next part does the trick. A portion of our collection for the night goes straight down a big jar and joins in the many others which fill more than half of the container. The remaining part is used to buy supper to save our hungry tummies from
shrinking again. However, during slack nights when drivers and busy people decided to become miserly, we’re fortunate enough to have a pack of noodles for supper. But if we ran out of luck, we just set our untidy beds ready and drown our raging stomachs to sleep. I know there’s not pretty much but this is where our lives revolve. And as they say, life must go on no matter what.

Together with the three most important persons of my life, I continue the journey for a better living. Along the way, we try to search for the good things out of life’s bitter truths. We never let misery **** our hopes and dreams. Instead, we work harder and tougher. Take Islay, for example. She’s cheerful,
clever, aggressive, talented, a model of hard work. She’s got most of everything. Well, except for height, probably. I wanted to be a doctor so I could help the needy. Islay dreams of becoming an elementary teacher. She said she really likes kids and teaching them would surely be a more exciting thing to do.

Then there’s Nova. Her looks may require you a little more time to think and consider, but she has a good heart. However, she gets a little, uhhm, what term do we use for an unsociable person? That’s it! She’s a bit of a Killjoy!

Islay and Nova caroled a store swarmed with drunkards. It was always Islay who’ll find every creative idea and propose it convincingly to Nova, who in turn hesitates and rejects it but then ultimately respects it in the end. Islay always has the winning edge. Maybe that’s one of her abilities. Her convincing power deserves a credit to the list.

The two didn’t mind the ***** that welcomed them. Inside her mind, Nova asked herself how many people could waste their money on a doze of liquid or spirit that can poison their mind and bring them to imminent danger. If only they have given it to the poor and needy, they could have saved a lot of lives instead of ruining their own.

But Aling Nena, the wicked storeowner, unleashed her witchy wrath to the two. She looked at them with eyes of contempt, of prejudice and disgust. She accused the two as jinxes and blamed them for the
store’s unprofitable end. If only she could look at herself and discover a chest of shimmering blame, she might shrink into shame. Islay and Nova ran off not because they were afraid of Aling Nena or the drunken men but because of what Aling Nena said to them. They cannot defend themselves from such
an attack. How could they when they were surrounded with eyes of ridicule?

And of course, there’s my dearest sister, Juaning. We’ve only got each other since our mother’s death. It has been months already. Juaning was still 15 when mama left us. She’s 16 now. It’s been quite a while and I know she misses mama a lot like I do.

And so they fought life’s bitter realities. They begged and implored to the unconcerned passers-by, almost falling to their weak knees for one very important thing - to live. But even if the three of them were sitting, lying, and rolling down the cold pavement, these people with more graces just pass by without even sparing a glance of concern. Wouldn’t it be happier if they shared their God-given blessings? But as the day continues, they have to endure the hunger, the contempt. Because other than filling their
hungry stomach, they have a sibling, a friend to support.

That’s my part of the story. It has been months now since I caught a serious illness which bound me
to this bed, flat on one’s back, weak, inutile, and useless. Every time they come home, I wish I was with them to taste the sweet and feel the pain, not just a good listener to their stories of survival and moments of friendship. Someday, I’ll become strong again, and this curse of a disease shall be gone.

I woke up to the longing for water. I’ve never been this thirsty before. I called out their names but my voice just echoed deep in the four dark walls of our crooked house. With no one to help me, I summoned my strength and decided to get a glass of water by myself. But my legs aren’t as strong as my will. And as I attempted to stand, they betrayed me. I collapsed and plodded down the floor. Luckily Islay came and helped me get back to bed. She scolded me for being careless. I cried. I can’t help it. I pitied myself all
over again.

The cold evening wasn’t a problem for Islay. Seeing me cry like that crushes her heart. I know, as a friend and a part of our family, she wishes the best for me. And that’s why she’s still out there in the middle of the night, working late to earn more for our better future. She ignored the chills and the exasperation. She knows she has to work harder and she’s more than determined for it.

But something happened to me while she’s away from home. I cannot move my body, not even my mouth. Tears just fell from my weary eyes. And before it’s too late, Juaning caught me unresponsive and paralyzed. My sister cried for help. Nova sprinted to get the jar. Juaning told her what to do. And wasting no time, Nova rushed to the nearby pharmacy to get me some medicine, and most probably to save my life.

But Nova’s effort was in vain. Prescription drugs cannot be bought that easily. The pharmacist closed down the only lining of hope for me. The security guard felt pity on Nova and he suggested her an alternative decision that will change our lives forever.

Islay was still busy serenading the busy streets with her chants of joy and sweet hums. But the clouds become unwelcoming. And by the sound of the thunder, big droplets of rain started pouring down the highway. She ran as fast as she could and sat on a corner where she thought of something deeply. She hugged the drum that she was carrying for five hours or so and tried to remain calm in the presence of the bad weather.

After half an hour, Nova came back with a pouch of medicine on her shaking hand. She handed it carefully to Juaning whose faith and hope were hanging to the tiny bottle of miracle.

Days gone by and my condition wasn’t going any better. It turned out that my medicine was consumed to the last drop. Still I remained immobile and my hands are going number by the days. Slowly I was losing hope. I wish they weren’t mad at me. I’m trying my best to live on. That’s why I’m still here. But Nova shared something worth listening to. She revealed how and where she got the medicine.

It was from a quack doctor on a stall put up on the corner of Rizal Avenue. She said he was well versed and very convincing. And that she spent all of our savings for a bottle of deception. But we can do nothing about it. We did not have formal education. We were fortunate enough to meet kind children on
the streets who would try to teach us something they have learned from school. We would attempt to read newspapers and the description in the carton boxes we spread beneath the Badelles overpass.

Nova cried in guilt and shame. Islay was still angry at her, and it can be understood. My sister, Juaning, comforted Nova with a promise that everything will get better in time.

December 27. It was my birthday. And more than anything else, what I wish is for the four of us to be happy. Nothing in this life is more important than seeing everyone you love smile with absolute
happiness. Juaning never forgot her job and that’s to buy me a cake. Every year, they will try to surprise me with every creative possible way. But that’s how their surprises become predictable with my age.

They sang me a birthday song. But this time, they were the ones waiting for a surprise. As my sister was about to hand me the cake waiting for me to blow the candle, she noticed something she was least expecting for. My lips are pale and my eyes are shut from the light of the world. I caught my last breath and before I gave it away, I left a smile on my face that can never be changed forever. That is how I want them to remember me. Not that heck of a frown clown whose audiences are stricken with sadness.

They say, in the wheel of life, sometimes, you'll spend half of your years rising to the top and the other half tumbling to the
bottom. Maybe they were right. It was then that I’ve come to understand what they were trying to say.

Our life’s wheel revolves around things way beyond just money, food, and shelter. It is about the moments you spend with your loved ones, friends and family that will be forever carved in your heart. We can never know when our life here on earth will be over. So let us cherish every bit of it. And for me, even if we skip breakfasts and eat only noodles for supper, I have realized in these last fleeting moments that my life has always
been on the top of the wheel after all.

Waiting for spring to return this winter’s day.
Straining to touch warm breezes of the past.
Caught in this prison of gray and white.
Wishing to break these dark chains that hold me.

Remnants of fall, crumpled like brown paper on the ground.
Straws of pale brown growing up through the snow, ******* it dry.
Seeds and freeze dried fruit lay scattered about under trees.
Bare limbs and stalks drip with liquid glass.

Trees hanging bare, gray in lifelessness.
Winter birds call out, single in their pursuit of leftover meals.
Tracks of animals unknown dot the landscape with patchwork.
Waves of ridges etched in white lead off to nowhere.

Sparse, sun filled days bring brief glimpses of hope.
With the promise of warmth waiting to banish the cold
that holds me to my past and this existence;
waiting for spring to return and thaw this frozen heart.

if you can find c. g. jung writing an answer to the biblical Hiob, i can be found writing this... or as the Lad Bible states: be your superficial you... so when she's not her superficial self... you can just play the awkward monotone speaking caveman that you weren't before she played you that superficial card of hers to tone down your interests.

you know why i'm fascinated with schizophrenics?
primarily because they are concerned with
an inorganic medical condition,
there are, absolutely, no reasons to suggests they
are organically prone to premature degeneracy,
they are what the Alzheimer old man calls an angel,
and what the "angel" experiences from time to time...
to cite a non-typical schizoid experience -
a splinter in the mind?
when i wrote my previous poem, i was listening
to the song *the parting glass throughout,
on and on and on... the rhythm took over...
and when the "poem" was finished i retracted myself
into my room and first played auld lang syne
(with lyrics and English translation)...
                           and then... the pure instrumental
of knee-deep-bagpie... bagpipes, sure, horrid,
screeching drowning-lungs of magpie
cackling cut short into a carbonated highland water...
     oh don't worry, what this comes down to
is personal experience, such negations of ease
are not like the black plague, or a.i.d.s.,
they don't come into contact with purely-riddle
human incompetence... it takes more than that...
certain conditions are not viral...
you can't interpreted them as political malevolence
akin to a political movement... primarily because
the numbers don't add up...
                    the complexity of thought is
the complexity of regarding the mind as an abstract
of the brain, given the brain has no accuracies
concerning abstraction when stated against being automated
to a pair of kidneys... i too wish for a La La Land sometimes...
but that's not the reason people allow ***** donations...
     but you know, it really gripped me,
i wrote that poem, listening to the parting glass,
and felt nothing, nothing... because i was so
formulated to write what i wrote...
  i wrote the last bit, walked into my room,
and played the second version of auld lang syne...
the royal scots dragoon guards pure instrumental...
   and you get to weep these cold tears
after an insomniac cold shivers getting warmer with whiskey...
              and whimper and bite your bottom lips...
because you're hardly a woman fainting
and the drama isn't in you...
               and it's actual tears...
people laugh and cry saharan tears, meaning: it never
rains over it...   i see Sahara as the ancient version
of the Himalayan mountain range, suddenly reduced
because god is fickle and well, aren't we all?
           if any of us are alive to read or speak such
encodings... there will be a desert made from
the Himalayas that will be called the Himalaya -
but that's really being optimistic.
       there used to be mountains, mountains in
north Africa, Gandalf! but they crumbled in deserts!
where once a mountain range, subsequently a desert...
where now a desert, once a mountain range.
can i please get a taxi to leave this current
history and Darwinistic revisionism of it as telling
us ape Adam had more psychology about him than
Charles XIV? i want to hear the geological version
of Darwinism! but am i hearing any of it? n'ah ah.
       so yes, upon hearing the scotch dragoon guards
pipe a full whiskey sodden breath into the
         bagpi - i heard the word counter to my scrambled
narrative... king... king?!
                   which is what's bewildering about
a medical term deemed premature dementia...
   it's an organic impossibility...
but given society is an inorganic organism
and all our socio-political mechanisms aren't exactly
organic, there might be some sense in this piquant
dabble in an auditory hallucinogenic experience -
which, evidently, people find frightening,
since they occupy defining their thinking with
hearing so much, and when seeing a homeless man
think so little...
                     logic? a particular arrangement of words
that does not provide kind rubrics for the testimony of
the many...
                    i can hallucinate this auditory "addition"
and competently go on my daily business,
or my nightly business finishing a bottle of scottish amber...
some people cannot...
                 what i see it western society predicating
their poor knowledge of Alzheimer's as if searching
for some genius to explain what happens to the abstract
functions of what the brain represents
                 in terms of how the brain and abstraction
can't be cleanly separated, i.e. to treat the degeneracy
of the brain as succumbed to, but not succumbing to
the elaborated foundations of the "brain"
within the trans-physical functions of the "brain"
within a framework of memory, vocabulary, memory.
people first attribute the brain with too much
           concern for abstraction when in fast the driving
force for abstraction is the now-vogue zeitgeist
"psyche does not exist" -
                            and when the brain degenerates like
a heart or a kidney can... people start to freak
out propping out a Frankenstein revival that brain
cannot in-act upon...
                                 they told us the brain is fat...
          then they tell us only 0%, or fat-free yoghurts are
good... isn't the case for the epidemic of dementia
due to the fact that we're censoring fat?
what feeds the brain? fat! what are we censoring from
our diets? fat! fat free ******* yoghurt!
                             where does the modern epidemic
stem from? censoring fat! you anorexic ******* morons!
  you know why i put extra fat in the way i cook
meals, you know what orthodox cooks tend to
like a sizzle of a lump of lard? brain food...
     and yes, some call it eating a lot of nuts...
well then... fry me a ribs-eye steak on a handful of
cashew nuts you crazy *******!
            this is what drives me crazy concerning
auditory hallucinogenic experiences...
there are no drugs that you could ever sell that people
would buy to experience an auditory hallucination...
primarily because people made thought
   an auditory experience...
                  that's the norm, i'm not talking Walt Disney
here... and people enjoy music because it feeds the heart
in a way averse to images that feed the libido
or dreaming...
    the point being, my "hallucinatory" experience lasted
for less than a second... some ***** on l.s.d. trips
for half a day because he finds modern movies boring
and finally gets to appreciate cubist contortion
mechanisations... i can do more damage with a second's
worth of "auditory" hallucination than that little
hippy can do away with 12 hours, and only end up
writing a haiku thinking he can suddenly conjure up
spirits of Shinto like some Gilgamesh *** Bruce Springsteen;
then he shaves his hair and travels to Mongolia
to learn the index against the lips motorboating
harmonica... and i end up saying: thank you;
cos it wouldn't be twangy without that kind of a tranquiliser
to stabilise excitement beyond encoding sounds.
          i can tell you how ******-up my internal
narrative has become, so i'm defeatist,
here's how it looks like when i get agitated...
               writing on a white flag...
      oh look: wavy! wavy! i'm waving it...
going boats full of nuts and bananas!
             you ever hear the story of a psychiatrist
jumping on a table and barking when a conscription
  cadet tried to fake being mad?
      she did what i just wrote and asked H. Clinton
to reiterate on the campaign trail.
                    inauguration 2017:
   i solemnly swear, that H. Clinton barked like a ruffian
poodle on the campaign trail.
  beside the point though, schizophrenia is an inorganic
manifestation of an actual organic degeneracy -
it's a negation-of-ease for dangerous people...
     people who probably have a music taste outside
the top 40 best selling albums (let alone singles)...
                   and they're quick to pick up on this grey area
concerning premature depression...
                it's trendy these days... people who are melancholic
are people who are like Homer, wrote the Odyssey
went blind from making too much heroism from
      the cannibalism at the gates of Troy and couldn't
handle telling a single lie after having written such an epic...
   or as Virgil convened: Paris didn't escape,
Aeneid did... no one knows what happened to Paris,
       probably choked on a raisin or something:
it's ancient history, if you're not going to talk about it
in a callous manner, then be prepared for careless mannerisms:
pout, **** *** cheek, shelfie!
               what i am seeing is this quote:
a butterfly on the Galapagos Islands... a Tornado in
Colorado... the poetics of quantum physics,
or misplaced potentials of counter-quantifiable
simultaneous counter-interpretations...
    the butterfly effect? under the umbrella corporate
otherwise known, from ancient times: a metaphor.
hey, we started reading into hydrocarbons,
there's no way to talk easy for us...
                           for all my love for one inspiration,
i lost my love for him when he said that not tying your
shoelaces (i.e. spelling) was because he thought it was
indoctrination... you know who i mean: Mr. Chow Chewski...
   spelling? that's like tying your shoelaces!
         question is... who would ingest a hallucinogenic
drug that didn't utilise the multi-coloured world to
an excessive amount to be prescribed, say, an U.V.
phosphorescent spectrum of seeing... when, given all
that... sound occupies this realm of b & w?
               who could create an auditory hallucinogenic?
can you imagine it?
                             most people with a weakened cognitive
membrane would go nuts... as the case has been proven
many a times...
        but given the fact that no such hallucinogenic exists,
or that "auditory" / cognitive hallucinations are
disregarded even though Descartes stressed this
   notion of a substance / thought, and an extension /
       sensual disparities with regards to cohesive uniformity,
i.e. regarding over-stressing a particular sense
      and never reaching a former cohesion...
           can only mean a circumstance later described
by Kant within the framework of the noumenon -
    i.e. perhaps you've seen too much, but heard too little...
perhaps you've tasted too much, but had barely a sniff of
                  more...
        the original thought when exposed to a cohesion
of uniformed senses, experiencing a discohesion of
             a presupposed sensual "uniformity",
returns back into a form of thought, i.e. an extension...
                only because the thing in question is a
presupposition, not a supposition that can be countered
with a proposition, i.e. since we all made mistakes
presupposing, we have become prone to propositions to
suppose otherwise... in terse terms: invent politics.
so what i termed "auditory" and "hallucination"
and conflated them in a prefix of cognitive-, in consolidation
i meant to say that: once all presuppositions (thoughts)
disappear by the miraculous ape that man either is
or wishes himself to still be... and we deem to say:
   reality...                 we only have suppositions (extensions)
               that appear...
                         by the miraculous ape that man never
was and wishes himself to nonetheless be:
  in that consolidatory ref. to the last trinity of Cartesian
thought: substance - in the former the formation
of will... in the latter the complete lack of it -
                              to the simpler scenarios,
we already have knowledge of prisons and asylums...
            because internalising such possible scenarios
never leaves the many to be grafting such possibilities
with enough calm as to persevere for the sole purpose
of understanding, as what point can a noumenon-unit
enter the argument if not from a reflex
                       as this continued narration explains...
none of this was reflected upon...
reflection in such circumstances usually means weaving
a machete at your neighbour...
                                  the noumenon-unit
the ping-pong factor in all of this is a reflex action...
         not a reflective action...
               i am no king no more than i am a pauper...
   now imagine if i tripped for 12 hours on l.s.d.,
having extracted so much, from an "auditory" "hallucination",
that, in the realm of the mind, is neither a minute,
nor a second, nor a nanosecond...
               it's unitary equivalent is simply that of: a word.

The morning after I killed myself, I woke up.
I splashed myself with cold water, and walked over to my dollhouse kitchen to make a cup of hot green tea in my favorite green ceramic mug. I cut myself avocados, laid them across my toast, and sprinkled it with pepper. My brother was still asleep, his covers crumpled under half his body and a leg hanging off the edge. He was dreaming of his favorite thing about the previous day, and that made me smile, as I tucked him back under the protection of his blanket.

The morning after I killed myself, I fell in love.
Not once, but many times. Not with one person, but with multiple. I fell in love with my mom and the way she looked like the happiest woman in the world when she laughed at us, and how from sitting behind her in the car it looked as if she was always smiling because her cheekbones were so high. I fell in love with the way she wiped her eyes with the top of her wrist, as the steam and aroma from the hot food she cooked, floated upwards. I fell in love with my dad and the way he walked through the backyard, moving his hands around as he played out important discussions in his head. I fell in love with my brother and the way he tried to talk to us about CNN news at over the dinner table every night. I fell in love with the way he would impatiently say my name as his eyes lit up, wanting to tell me something that excited him, or that he found funny. I fell in love with a little girl I caught dancing with her sister outside 85, on the way back from my math class. I fell in love with the curly-haired boy in my English class my freshman year, who sheepishly told me he switched back and forth from British and American accents from time to time, because it was just something that was a part of him. I fell in love with my best friend and the way she got so passionate about the importance of history and what she learned from her AP history class, over a Skype call after midnight. I fell in love with everyone I ever met, and saw them as entire galaxies, complex and burning bright yet simple at the same time. Because people are beautiful. People are beautiful.

The morning after I killed myself, I recognized kindness.
I recognized it when there were more than one million words in the English language to choose from, but every time, my neighbors chose the kindest ones. I recognized it in the mother I saw sitting outside the café on a bench, running her elegant fingers through her teenage daughter’s hair, who was telling her about her worries. I recognized it when a homeless lady gave another homeless man all the money she had made that day, simply because he had a daughter to feed. I found kindness in my friend when she ran to the Starbucks across the street to comfort a woman she did not know who was crying after her autistic son had a tantrum.

The morning after I killed myself, I took a walk.
I sauntered along the street, and I saw the bright green leaves of the sugar gum trees, that in a few months would turn gold and orange. The birds were chirping their warbling melodies, and the cool air was feeding my lungs. The sun was still rising, and the sky had a little bit of orange in one corner, and a little bit of pink in another. I sat down on the bleachers of my school, and waited for the sunrise to unfold.

The morning after I killed myself, I held my beautiful grandma’s hands.
I felt how small and cold they were, but what warmth they still preserved as her fingers tightly held mine. My fingers grazed the top of fists, the bumpy veins giving them a delicate texture. I saw the four golden bangles she had never taken off of her left wrist, and I wondered how many dishes those hands had washed, how many clothes they had folded, and how many meals they had made.

The morning after I killed myself, I watched a live symphony.
I sat dazed, in view of the wine-red instruments in front of me, from the contented mold of my chair. I listened to the beautiful wavelengths of sound being produced right in front of me, the music creating my sanctuary. The conductor created the loudest expression of music on stage, despite making no sound. His arms waved as wildly as the sea, but was no less graceful than an ebbing tide. I looked at the depth of the basses, the elegance of the cellos, the poise of the violins, and the dignity of the viola. The fingers of the cellists slid up and down, the strings undulating with every phrase. A pulse was beating within my own veins, and as long the piece lasted, I was the music.

The morning after I killed myself, I looked in the mirror.
I saw my almond-shaped eyes, and how my eyelashes outlined them perfectly. I saw the vertebrae of my spine, and how they looked like a line of marbles, across my back. I saw the curls on the top of my head that I’d hated when I was younger, because they stuck out as if I had my own atmosphere around my head. I saw my knuckles, and how they separated into mountains and valleys. I saw the beauty mark on my left ankle, and the dimple that formed when I smiled. I looked in the mirror, and I finally fell in love with what I saw.

The morning after I killed myself, I tried to get back.
I tried to talk sense into a girl who had made a horrible mistake. I told her about the avocados, and the valleys and mountains that appeared every time she crumpled her fists. I told her about how beautiful her mom was when she laughed, and how warm it felt to hold her grandma’s hands. I told her about how her brother said he always dreamt about his favorite thing about the previous day, and how her friends had so much kindness in them. I told her about the green leaves scattered over the ground, and the pink parts of sunsets. I told her about the orchestra where she would find peace, and the shy boy who switched accents.

May your tea be just the right temperature when you take a sip, and may you happen to glance through the window just when the rays of light are falling perfectly. May you lock eyes with someone just as they send you a warm smile, and may you turn on the radio just as your favorite song starts. May you love the ink pen you pick up, as it glides across paper smoothly, and may you pick up a novel to read that changes your thoughts on something important.

You may think it's funny.
Plain teasing.
Just girls having fun but you don't know.
You don't know what I've struggled with.
You weren't there all those nights when I cried myself to sleep because I was not thin like them.
All the times I would skip meals and tell my mom I had eaten elsewhere.
All the times I survived on water for the whole day.
All the times I came this close to sticking a finger down my throat and emptying the contents in my stomach.
It took me so long to feel okay and comfortable with myself.
Until you said that word.
It's funny how one word could have such an impact on me but you don't know my struggle.
When I got home after that, all I could see in the mirror was fats.
I had begun to determine my self worth by my calorie intake and the size of my waist.
I hated myself once again.

The feels rack me
Fits of squealing
In the dark so no one will see
Tumblr plans the wedding,
Look! My otp!
I ship it so hard
It actually pains to read fanfics
The ****,
The fluff,
We read it all
Just
To get more
Of those
Life giving feels.
Arms flap,
The cuteness makes us skip meals
One more episode.
When's sherlock season 3?

It was the summer of 1954. David Ito was from the only Japanese family we had in our town. I was glad he was my best friend. Actually, he was my only friend. His father moved his family to our small town of Prichard, Illinois when David was only eight years old. That was three years ago.

Only two and a half months apart, I was the older one of our daring duo. I even was a couple inches taller than David was, so that settled it. In spite of being an awkward girl, our differences in age and height made me quite superior at times, although David always snickered at that notion. To me, theses differences were huge and monumental, like the distance of the sun from the moon. To David, that was typical girlish nonsense. He thought it was so like a girl, to try to outdo a boy.  And he should have known. He was the only son of five children, and he was the oldest.

At first, David was not interested in being friends with a girl. But I was Josephine Dunn, Josie they called me, and I was not just any girl. Yet, like David, I did not know if I really liked him enough to be his friend. We started off with this one thing in common.

I knew he was smarter than anybody I ever knew, that is except for my father, a self-taught man. The tomboy that I was, I was not so interested in books and maps, and David was almost obsessed with them. Yet, there was a kindred spirit that ignited us to become close, something coming in between two misfits to make a good match. David was obviously so different from the rest. He came from an entirely different culture, looking so out-of-the-ordinary than the typical face of our Anglo-Saxon, Protestant community, and me, never really fitting in with any group of peers in school, I liked him.

David knew he did not fully fit in. I surely did not fit, either. My brother, Carl, made sure very early on in my life that I was to be aware of one thing. And that one thing was that I did not belong in my family, or really anywhere in life. Mostly, this was because I was not of my father’s first family, but I came after my father’s other children and was the baby, the apple of my father’s eye. But that wasn’t the real reason why Carl hated me.

During World War Two, my father enlisted in the army. He already had two small sons and a daughter to look after, and they already had suffered one major blow in their young lives. They had lost their mother to cancer. Louise Dunn was an important figure in their lives. She was well liked in town and very much missed by her family and friends.
  
Why their father wanted to leave his children behind, possibly fatherless, made no sense to other people. But Jim Dunn came from a proud military family and would not listen to anyone telling him not to fight but rather to stay home with his children. His father fought in the First World War, and three of his great grandfathers fought for the Union Army in the Civil War. It was not like my father to back out of a fight, not one with great principles.  My father was no coward.

Not only did my father leave three small children back home, but a new, young wife. Two years before World War Two ended, he made it back home to his lovely, young wife and family. Back in France, my father was wounded in his right leg. The result of the wound caused my father to forever walk with a limp and the assistance of a cane. It was actually a blessing in disguise what would transpire. He could have easily came home in a pine box. He was thankful, though, that he came away with his life. After recovering for a few months in a French hospital, my father was eager to go home to his family. At least he was able to walk, and to walk away alive.

This lovely, young woman who was waiting for him at home was twenty-year-old Flora Laurent, now Flora Dunn, my mother, and she was eleven years younger than my father. All soldiers were certainly eager to get home to their loved ones. My father was one of thousands who was thrilled to be back on American soil, but his thrill was about to dampen. Once my father laid eyes on his wife again, there was no hiding her highly expanding belly and the overall weight gain showed in her lovely, plump face. She had no excuses for her husband, or any made-up stories to tell him, and there really nothing for her to say to explain why she was in this condition. Simply put, she was lonely.

Most men would have left such a situation, would have gone as far away from it as they possibly could have. Being too ashamed and resentful to stay, they would have washed their hands of her in a heartbeat. Having a cheating wife and an unwanted child on their hands to raise would be too much to bear. Any man, in his right mind, would say that was asking for way too much trouble.  Most men would have divorced someone like my mother, kicked her out, and especially they would hate the child she would be soon be giving birth to, but not my father. He always stood against the grain.

Not only did Jim Dunn forgive his young wife, he took me under his wing like I was his very own. Once I knew he was not my true father, I could never fully fathom why he was not ready to pack me off to an orphanage or dump me off somewhere far away. Why he was so forgiving and accepting made him more than a war hero. It made him my hero. That was why I loved him so much, especially because, soon after I was born, my mother was out of our lives. Perhaps, such a young woman should not be raising three step children and a newborn baby.

My father never mentioned any of the details of my conception, but he simply did his best to love me. He was a tall, very slim and a quiet man by nature. With light brown hair, grey eyes, and a kind face, he looked every bit of the hero I saw him as. He was willing to help anyone in a pinch, and most people who knew him respected him. Nobody in town ever talked about this situation to my father. To begin with, my father was not a talker, and he probably thought if he did talk about it, the pain and shame of it would not go away.

One of my brothers, Nathan, and my sister, Ann, seemed to treat me like a regular sister. Yet, Carl, the oldest child, hated me from the start. As a girl who was six years younger, I never understood why. He was the golden boy, with keen blue eyes and golden, wavy hair, as were Nathan and Ann.  I had long, dark brown hair, which I kept in two braids, with plenty of unsightly brown freckles, and very dark, brown eyes.  Compared to my sister, who was five years older, I never felt like I was a great beauty.

I was pretty young when Carl blurted out to me in anger, “Your mother is a *****!”  I cried a bit, wiped away the tears with my small hands and yelled back, “No, she isn’t!” Of course, I was too young to know what that word meant. When my brother followed that statement up with, “and you are a *******”, I ran straight to my father. I was almost seven years old.

My father scolded Carl pretty badly that day. Carl would not speak to me for months, and that was fine with me. That evening my father sat me upon my knee. “Daddy, what is a *****?” I asked him.

My father gently put his fingers up to my lips to shush me up. He then went into his wallet and showed me a weathered black-and-white photo he had of himself with his arms around my mother. It was in that wallet for some time, and he pulled out the wrinkled thing and placed it in front of me.

My father must have handled that picture a thousand times. Even with all the bad quality, with the wrinkles, I could see a lovely, young lady, with light eyes and dark hair, smiling as she was in the arms of her protector. My father looked proud in the photograph.

He said to me, his expression serious, “whatever Carl or anybody says about your mother, she will always be your mother and I love her for that”. I looked earnestly in his somber, grey eyes. “Why did she go away?” I asked him.

My father thought long and hard about how to answer me. He replied, “I don’t know. She was young and had more dreams in her than this town could hold for her”. He smiled awkwardly and added, “But at least she left me the best gift I could have—you.”  

I would never forget the warmth I felt with my father during that conversation. Certainly, I would never forget Carl’s cruel words, or sometimes the odd glances on the faces of townswomen, like they were studying me, comparing me to how I looked next to my father, or their whispers as the whole family would be out in town for an occasion. It did not happen every day, but this would happen whenever and wherever, when a couple of busybodies would pass me and my father walking down Main Street, or when we went into the ice cream parlor, or when I went with my father to the dime store, and it always made me feel very strange and vaguely sad, like I had no real reason to be sad but was anyway.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


That summer of 1954, I was a bit older, maybe a bit wiser than when Carl first insulted my estranged mother. I was eleven years old, and David was my equal, my sidekick. Feeling less like a kid, I tried not to boss him too much, and he tried not to be too smart in front of me. I held my own, though, had my own intelligence, but my smarts were more like street smarts. After all, I had Carl to deal with.

David seemed destined for something better in life. My life seemed like it would always be the same, like my feet were planted in heavy mud. David and I would talk about the places we would loved go to, but David would mark them on a map and track them out like his plans would really come to fruition. I never liked to dream that big. Sure, I would love to go somewhere exciting, somewhere where I’d never have to see Carl again, or some of the kids at school, but I knew why I had a reason to stay. I respected my father. That is why I did not wish to leave. And David respected his father. That is why he knew he had to leave.

David Ito’s father was a tailor. David’s parents came from Japan, and they hoped for a good life in their new country. Little did they know what would be in store for them. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, their lives, with many other Japanese Americans, were soon turned upside down. David was born in an internment camp designed to isolate Japanese people from the nation once Americans declared war on Germany and their allies. David and I were both born in 1943, and since the war ended two years later, David had no memories of the internment camp experience. Even so, David was impacted by it, because the memories haunted his parents.

There was no getting around it. David and I, as different as we were, liked each other. Still, neither he nor I felt any silly kind of puppy love attraction. David had still thought of girls as mushy and silly, and that is why he liked me. I was not mushy or silly, and I could shoot a sling shot better than he did. David loved the sling shot his parents bought him for his last birthday. They allowed him to have it just as long as he never shot it at anyone.

David Ito, being the oldest child in his family, and the only son, allowed him to feel quite special, a very prized boy for just that reason. Mr. Ito worked two jobs to support his family, and Mrs. Ito took in laundry and cooked for the locals who could not cook their own meals. Mrs. Ito was an excellent cook. Whatever they had to give their children, David was first in line to receive it.

The majority of those in my town of Prichard respected Mr. Ito, at least those who did business with him. He was not only able to get good tailoring business in town, but some of the neighboring towns gave him a bit of work, too. When he was not working in the textile factory, Mr. Ito was busy with his measuring tape and sewing machine.  

Even though Mr. Ito gained the respect of the townspeople, he still was not one of us. I am sure he knew it, too. Yet Mr. Ito lived in America most of his life. He was only nine-years-old when his parents came here with their children. Like David, Mr. Ito certainly knew he was Japanese. The mirror told him that every day. But he also knew felt an internal tug-of war that America was his country more than Japan was, even when he was proud of his roots, even though he was once locked up in that camp, and even when some people felt that he did not belong here.

If David was called an unkind name, I felt it insulted, too, for our friendship meant that much to me. How many times I got in trouble for fighting at school! My father would be called into the principal’s office, and I was asked by Mr. Murray to explain why I would act in such an undignified way. “They called David a ***** ***”, I exclaimed. “David is my friend!”

Because David and I were best buddies, we heard lots of jeering remarks. “Josie loves a ***! Josie loves a ***!” some of the children taunted. And Carl, with his meanness, loved to be head of the line to pick on us. He once said to me, “It figures that the only friend you can get is a scrawny ***!”

In spite of my troubles at school, Father greatly admired David and his father, and he thought that David and I were good for each other’s company. Mr. Ito greatly respected my father, in return, not only for his business but because my dad could fix any car with just about any problem. Jim Dunn was not only a brilliant man, in my eyes, but the best mechanic in town. When Mr. Ito needed work done on his car, my father was right there for him. It was an even exchange of paid work and admiration.

Both my father and David’s father felt our relationship was harmless. After all, everyone in David’s family knew and expected that he would marry a nice Japanese girl. There was no question about it. Where he would find one was not too important for a boy of his age. Neither of us experienced puberty yet and, under the watchful eye of my father, we would just be the best of buddies.

David pretended like the remarks said about him never bothered him, but I knew differently. I knew he hated Carl, and we avoided him as much as possible. David was nothing like me in this respect—he was not a fighter. Truly, he did not have a fighting bone in his body, not one that picked up a sword to stab it in the heart of someone else. It was not that David was not brave, for he was, but he knew the ugliness of war without ever even having to go to battle. Nevertheless, he used his intellect to fight off any of the racist remarks made about him or his family. He had to face it—the war had only ended nine years prior and a few of the war veterans in town fought in the Pacific.      

Because of the taunts David had experienced in school, I was not surprised what David’s father had in store for his beloved son.  Mr. Ito could barely afford to send one child to private school, but he was about to send one. David was about to be that child. When David told me that when school resumed he would be going to a boy’s school in Chicago, my heart sank. Why? Why did he have to go? I would never see him again!

“You will see me in the summer”, he reassured me. He looked at me as I tried to appear brave. I sat cross-legged on the grass and stared straight ahead like I never even heard him. I had a lump in my throat the size of a grapefruit, and my lips felt like they were quivering.

We were both using old pop bottles for target practice. They sat in a row on an old tree stump shining in the evening sun. David was shooting at them with his prized slingshot. I had a makeshift one that I created out of a tree branch and a rubber band.

“You won’t even remember me”, I complained.

“I will to”, he insisted. “I remember everything.”

“Oh, sure you will”, I said sarcastically. “You’ll be super duper smart and I will just be a dummy”. In anger, I rose up my slingshot, and I hit all three bottles, one by one, then I threw the slingshot to the ground. David missed all the shots he took earlier.

David threw his slingshot down, too. “For being a girl, you are pretty smart!” he shouted. “You are too smart for your own good! The reason I like you is because you are better than anyone I ever met in my entire life. Well…not better than my parents, but you are the neatest girl I ever knew in my life!”

For a while, we didn’t talk. We just sat there and let the warm, summer breeze do our talking for us. I pulle

Little Miss Muffet
Sits not on a tuffet
But on a Le Corbusier chair.

Curds and whey
Are not for her
As she is a vegan
And rarely eats between meals.

Along comes Spiderman,
Sits down on a sedan
And questions her
On all things entomological
And graphic novels.

And do you know what?

She is not afraid at all!

In my real life,
not a poet,
just an astronomer,
an observer of
universes, bodies,
places, faces,
visited, discovered,
named and oft,
best forgot.

I observe:

Some never find true love.
Some never fly first class.
Some of us
never see the
South of France.

Some of us wear
hand-me-down pants,
white lined creases when “let down,”
mocked, we never forgive ourselves
the shame of it.

Some never experience
reckless abandon.

Yet, some of us are
recklessly abandoned,
and never forget,
and never forgive.

Some of us lose
children, husbands,
avanti nel tempo,
before their time,
and
the anger is
forever, palpable,
costly.

Some of us
were raised by
someone else's parents,
and never rest easy,
the abandoned taste
always nearby,
a cruel living, breathing
teasing wasting

Some we can pass over
with ease,
as new tissue grows,
those cuts marked -
emotionally healed.

But the ones that scar,
the ones that visible scar
permanent reddened,
are the
holocaust deniers
that there is a real
promised land of
peace of mind.

Peace of mind -
not even for a second,
foretold but
unrealized,
a biblical myth,
a promised land,
a capitalist paradisal hoax.

Some never feel
public victory,
adulation, adoration,
always wearing the T-shirt labeled
Property of Someone Else.

Most of us remain
unpublished, undiscovered,
unremarked, blanketed,
cloaked in bills to pay;

Living a triumvirate of
heart ache, loneliness, worry,
our normal table fare
consists
of hand to hand
into the mouth
combat MRE's,
we engage,
to survive,
just stay alive.

We are not digitalized,
nonetheless,
we are
but digits,
our faces hidden, and
in no one's heart book
are we recorded,
friended,
yet our viewing habits,
purchases, secret sites
are enumerated, captured.

Some of us live
exclusively
in the real life,
never to escape to the
province of Wifi,
in the landscape
of the electronic mind,
an option for which
we are
untrained.

Perhaps sanctity of separation,
safety of text, email,
avec the ******* intrusion
of tweets are
the real life today,
games are always won,
and what we don't enjoy,
we just delete away

But In My Real Life
getting up is trying,
IMRL,
the trying is trying,
IMRL,
delete buttons don't exist      
in the keyboard
of our brains,
IMRL,
all we have is a
measly twenty six aleph bets
to find new ways to say
that living is striving and
what we feel is
oh so real,
not digital

IMRL,
when I laugh out loud,
the neighbors
beat the walls,
complainants,
registering their feelings
in my face,
in my book,
so to speak.

IMRL,
I got a friend,
maybe two,
all I need,
voices to help soften
the 400 blows of RL.

Their synthesized silence
of their breathing
on the phone
is precious unto me.

IRL,
limp from Friday
night to
Friday
night,
a bottle of Medoc
my weekend reward,
my bedrock cushion
in order to sleep.

After all these years,
gains and losses,
conversations with God,
I look up,
see the risk,
the slightest breeze
is a
hurricane wind.

The shaft,
of the
the sword
hanging above me
the hilt,
swaying in living color,
is no legend.

But what I have is
the ability
and maybe
the responsibility
to let anyone know
that
in my real life
anyone who touches me
with fine and good intent,
a momentary glancing blow
or a gunshot to the ventricle,
is part and parcel of
my real life.

This makes you real too,
savior, and hereby notified,
that you are not
just an observer, but
a poet of me,
an astronomer of my heart,
and namer of
a secret universe
inside of me.


Sept. 1, 2010

_____________________________
US Army jargon: meals ready to eat

PLEDGE TO NIGERIA
By: Adigun Temitope Idealism


From between heaven and earth stand a perilous place
Where poverty kicked us on face
Tears stand as our drinks
Where hunger eat up our meals
Our pain is a poisonous laughter
Where sadness becomes our daily activities
Where hardship becomes our ambition
And sorrow our career
Still, we need to pledge to Nigeria

Blood, bone and oil,
Are the pedestal of earth
Where killing is a lifestyle
And ****** a hobby
Where humiliation becomes our take home
And misfortune our store-house
Where graduate works by the road-side
Where poverty is titillating and titivating before the mirror of our land
Yet we need to pledge to Nigeria

Pledge to Nigeria
Even when the birds refuses to sing,
When moon dims its light,
When our days turn into nights
When sun fails to shine
And flowers refuse to bloom
When life fails to give reasons
When dreams refuse to forgive
When the weep inside birth the smile outside
When tears wash hope from our sight
Nigeria must still be pledge to

I pledge to Nigeria
Not to be one if the ambassadors that sing the National Anthem with a teleprompter smiling at them in a shameful tears
I pledge not to be a naked masquerade dancing at the village square
I pledge to steal government money for the poor when I become the President
I pledge to be loyal and not betrayal
I pledge to fight off vices and calamities with my pen
If democracy must to end
I pledge to go crazy to stop it to the end
If civilization was to make us stupid
I pledge to swim in stupidity not to be civilised
I pledge, I pledge

©2015 Adigun Temitope Idealism (Deacon)


#Muse #PurposefulPoetry #BPM #IIB #Asaplanet #ThoughtAndSociety #Poetfreak
blackpridemagazin.simplesite.com
@blackpridemag1

I met a girl named Ana
she is beautiful in every possible way
her body is perfect, and she was
determined to stay

I made a friend named Ana
she promised to tell me her secrets of perfection
what I didn't know wouldn't **** me
until it led to addiction

my best friends name is Ana
she's always talking to me
recommending to skip two meals
maybe even three

I hate a girl named Ana
she promised me pleasure
instead I feel dead inside
it's nothing but torture

I'm prisoner to a girl named Ana
please, somebody listen to my silent crys
I can't speak my own mind
help me before I die!

my murders name is Ana
she made me starve, she made me weak
death wasn't the solution
I tried to seek

Where do I see you my blue eyed mum?
In colours of rainbows lit up by the sun,
In the chair by the window with your tea and a crossword,
In the picture you drew of me when I was a young boy,
In the last birthday card you were ever to send me,
In the list that you gave me to help me get sorted,
The photo of you holding me as a baby.
The love that you showed never came with a maybe.

How will I remember you my blue eyed mum?
Thinking of others would name but just one,
Camping with children from near and far places,
Cooking meals in the kitchen for friends and for family,
Changing the subject whenever you wanted,
Asking me to speak louder because you could not hear me,
The eggs that you bought for me every Friday,
Making the dress for your youngest granddaughter.

What did I learn from you my blue eyed mum?
The list would be endless but here are just some,
The listener learns more than the ones that are talking,
Words spoken in anger may someday be regretted,
Hate towards others will only consume me,
The loudest voice heard may not be the wisest,
Happiness cannot be measured in coins or possessions,
Let beauty be seen in all colours, shapes and sizes.

Siddhartha sat steady on a the hearth of an apartment, eyes closed
mouth closed, mind open and enchanted
Zen-man lingers in a dark park starting,
to realise indiscretions of his past lives avatar

(but don't for a second believe the lies you've been fed by the brother of your brother and the father's of the jingoist mafia because eyes blink often and the accumulative effect is a life of temporary blindness and in that blindness it's not possible to be enlightened)

Your mantras are a lie but the belief remains still
and so rolling over wild green hills in some Welsh country village it dawns on the spirits of the ether that humanity is struggling

to find absolution of even the most relative peace
- but so, and Siddhartha still sits, cross-legged and barely breathing
Emaciated; fast, faster
Losing her nerve

Zen-man died a few months back but you always live again and so a beetle on a hot car hood scampers in some intrinsic folly, semi-aware of being something or being at all

     Towards the walls of weather-beaten towns the levee finally bursts and all life ends -
until a gathering mist pulls absurd faces in the simpatico rays of a third-eye sun over the bayou of some forgotten rock in the cosmos
and the ethereal temptress of existence rolls the next dice on a green matted board
and our unified oneness speaks a solitudinal greeting to the sky.

Heretical Poems by Michael R. Burch

Bible Libel
by Michael R. Burch

If God
is good,
half the Bible
is libel.

NOTE: I came up with this epigram to express my conclusions after reading the Bible from cover to cover, ten chapters per day, at age eleven.



Saving Graces
for the Religious Right
by Michael R. Burch

Life’s saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter
(wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter).



Multiplication, Tabled
for the Religious Right
by Michael R. Burch

“Be fruitful and multiply”—
great advice, for a fruitfly!
But for women and men,
simple Simons, say, “WHEN!”



***** Nilly
for the Demiurge, aka Yahweh/Jehovah
by Michael R. Burch

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You made the stallion,
you made the filly,
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You forced them to run
all their days uphilly.
They ran till they dropped—
life’s a pickle, dilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
They say I should worship you!
Oh, really!
They say I should pray
so you’ll not act illy.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?



What Would Santa Claus Say
by Michael R. Burch

What would Santa Claus say,
I wonder,
about Jesus returning
to **** and Plunder?

For he’ll likely return
on Christmas Day
to blow the bad
little boys away!

When He flashes like lightning
across the skies
and many a homosexual
dies,

when the harlots and heretics
are ripped asunder,
what will the Easter Bunny think,
I wonder?



A Child’s Christmas Prayer of Despair for a Hindu Saint
by Michael R. Burch

Santa Claus,
for Christmas, please,
don’t bring me toys, or games, or candy . . .
just . . . Santa, please . . .
I’m on my knees! . . .
please don’t let Jesus torture Gandhi!



gimME that ol’ time religion!
by michael r. burch

fiddle-dee-dum, fiddle-dee-dee,
jesus loves and understands ME!
safe in his grace, I’LL **** them to hell—
the strumpet, the harlot, the wild jezebel,
the alky, the druggie, all queers short and tall!
let them drink ashes and wormwood and gall,
’cause fiddle-dee-DUMB, fiddle-dee-WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEee . . .
jesus loves and understands
ME!



Red State Religion Rejection Slip
by Michael R. Burch

I’d like to believe in your LORD
but I really can’t risk it
when his world is as badly composed
as a half-baked biscuit.



Evil Cabal
by Michael R. Burch

those who do Evil
do not know why
what they do is wrong
as they spit in ur eye.

nor did Jehovah,
the original Devil,
when he murdered eve,
our lovely rebel.



The Heimlich Limerick
by Michael R. Burch

for T. M.

The sanest of poets once wrote:
"Friend, why be a sheep or a goat?
Why follow the leader
or be a blind *******?"
But almost no one took note.



Be very careful what you pray for!
by Michael R. Burch

Now that his T’s been depleted
the Saint is upset, feeling cheated.
His once-fiery lust?
Just a chemical bust:
no “devil” cast out or defeated.


Practice Makes Perfect
by Michael R. Burch

I have a talent for sleep;
it’s one of my favorite things.
Thus when I sleep, I sleep deep ...
at least till the stupid clock rings.

I frown as I squelch its **** beep,
then fling it aside to resume
my practice for when I’ll sleep deep
in a silent and undisturbed tomb.



Enough!
by Michael R. Burch

It’s not that I don’t want to die;
I shall be glad to go.
Enough of diabetes pie,
and eating sickly crow!
Enough of win and place and show.
Enough of endless woe!

Enough of suffering and vice!
I’ve said it once;
I’ll say it twice:
I shall be glad to go.

But why the hell should I be nice
when no one asked for my advice?
So grumpily I’ll go ...
although
(most probably) below.



Redefinitions
by Michael R. Burch

Faith: falling into the same old claptrap.
Religion: the ties that blind.



pretty pickle
by michael r. burch

u’d blaspheme if u could
because ur God’s no good,
but of course u cant:
ur a lowly ant
(or so u were told by a Hierophant).



Defenses
by Michael R. Burch

Beyond the silhouettes of trees
stark, naked and defenseless
there stand long rows of sentinels:
these pert white picket fences.

Now whom they guard and how they guard,
the good Lord only knows;
but savages would have to laugh
observing the tidy rows.



Listen
by Michael R. Burch

Listen to me now and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone, screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black, and white is white, and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.

Does a madman choose his words? They come to him,
the moon’s illuminations, intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.

But listen to me now, and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell, and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,

but listen, or cut off your ears, for I Am weary.



fog
by michael r. burch

ur just a bit of fluff
drifting out over the ocean,
unleashing an atom of rain,
causing a minor commotion,
for which u expect awesome GODS
to pay u SUPREME DEVOTION!
... but ur just a smidgen of mist
unlikely to be missed ...
where did u get the notion?



thanksgiving prayer of the parasites
by michael r. burch

GODD is great;
GODD is good;
let us thank HIM
for our food.

by HIS hand
we all are fed;
give us now
our daily dead:

ah-men!

(p.s.,
most gracious
& salacious
HEAVENLY LORD,
we thank YOU in advance for
meals galore
of loverly gore:
of precious
delicious
sumptuous
scrumptious
human flesh!)



no foothold
by michael r. burch

there is no hope;
therefore i became invulnerable to love.
now even god cannot move me:
nothing to push or shove,
no foothold.

so let me live out my remaining days in clarity,
mine being the only nativity,
my death the final crucifixion
and apocalypse,

as far as the i can see ...



u-turn: another way to look at religion
by michael r. burch

... u were borne orphaned from Ecstasy
into this lower realm: just one of the inching worms
dreaming of Beatification;
u'd love to make a u-turn back to Divinity, but
having misplaced ur chrysalis,
can only chant magical phrases,
like Circe luring ulysses back into the pigsty ...



You
by Michael R. Burch

For thirty years You have not spoken to me;
I heard the dull hollow echo of silence
as though a communion between us.

For thirty years You would not open to me;
You remained closed, hard and tense,
like a clenched fist.

For thirty years You have not broken me
with Your alien ways and Your distance.
Like a child dismissed,

I have watched You prey upon the hope in me,
knowing “mercy” is chance
and “heaven”—a list.



I’ve got Jesus’s face on a wallet insert
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

I’ve got Jesus’s face on a wallet insert
and "Hell is for Queers" on the back of my shirt.
     And I uphold the Law,
     for Grace has a Flaw:
the Church must have someone to drag through the dirt.

I’ve got ten thousand reasons why Hell must exist,
and you’re at the top of my fast-swelling list!
     You’re nothing like me,
     so God must agree
and slam down the Hammer with His Loving Fist!

For what are the chances that God has a plan
to save everyone: even Boy George and Wham!?
     Eternal fell torture
     in Hell’s pressure scorcher
will separate **** from Man.

I’m glad I’m redeemed, ecstatic you’re not.
Did Christ die for sinners? Perish the thought!
     The "good news" is this:
     soon My vengeance is his!,
for you’re not the lost sheep We sought.



Pagans Protest the Intolerance of Christianity
by Michael R. Burch

“We have a common sky.” — Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 345-402)

We had a common sky
before the Christians came.

We thought there might be gods
but did not know their names.

The common stars above us?
They winked, and would not tell.

Yet now our fellow mortals claim
our questions merit hell!

The cause of our damnation?
They claim they’ve seen the LIGHT ...

but still the stars wink down at us,
as wiser beings might.



jesus hates me, this i know
by michael r. burch

jesus hates me, this I know,
for Church libel tells me so:
"little ones to him belong"
but if they use their dongs, so long!
    yes, jesus hates me!
    yes, jesus baits me!
    yes, he berates me!
    Church libel tells me so!

jesus fleeces us, i know,
for Religion scams us so:
little ones are brainwashed to
believe god saves the Chosen Few!
    yes, jesus fleeces!
    yes, he deceases
    the bunny and the rhesus
    because he's mad at you!

jesus hates me—christ who died
so i might be crucified:
for if i use my active brain,
that will drive the "lord" insane!
    yes, jesus hates me!
    yes, jesus baits me!
    yes, he berates me!
    Church libel tells me so!

jesus hates me, this I know,
for Church libel tells me so:
first priests tell me "look above,"
that christ's the lamb and god's the dove,
but then they sentence me to Hell
for using my big brain too well!
    yes, jesus hates me!
    yes, jesus baits me!
    yes, he berates me!
    Church libel tells me so!



and then i was made whole
by michael r. burch

... and then i was made whole,
but not a thing entire,
glued to a perch
in a gilded church,
strung through with a silver wire ...

singing a little of this and of that,
warbling higher and higher:
a thing wholly dead
till I lifted my head
and spat at the Lord and his choir.



Starting from Scratch with Ol’ Scratch
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh
went to the ovens. Please don’t bother to cry.
You could have saved her, but you were all *******
complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp.

Scratch that. You were born after World War II.
You had something more important to do:
while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza
with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a
religious tract against homosexual marriage
and various things gods and evangelists disparage.)

Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I’m quite sure
that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure.
After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians?
Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians.
Scratch that. You’re one of the Devil’s minions.



In His Kingdom of Corpses
by Michael R. Burch

In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many enraged discourses,
high, high from some mountain peak
where He’s lectured man on compassion
while the sparrows around Him fell,
and babes, for His meager ration
of rain, died and went to hell,
unbaptized, for that’s His fashion.

In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to vent
in many obscure discourses
on the need for man to repent,
to admit that he’s a sinner;
give up ***, and riches, and fame;
be disciplined at his dinner
though always he dies the same,
whether fatter or thinner.

In his kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many absurd discourses
of man’s Ego, precipitous Peak!,
while demanding praise and worship,
and the bending of every knee.
And though He sounds like the Devil,
all religious men now agree
He loves them indubitably.



Beast 666
by Michael R. Burch

“what rough beast...slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”―W. B. Yeats

Brutality is a cross
wooden, blood-stained,
gas hissing, sibilant,
lungs gilled, deveined,
red flecks on a streaked glass pane,
jeers jubilant,
mocking.

Brutality is shocking―
tiny orifices torn
by cruel adult lust,
the fetus unborn
tossed in a dust-
bin. The scarred skull shorn,
nails bloodied, tortured,
an old wound sutured
over, never healed.

Brutality, all its faces revealed,
is legion:
Death March, Trail of Tears, Inquisition . . .
always the same.
The Beast of the godless and of man’s “religion”
slouching toward Jerusalem:
horned, crowned, gibbering, drooling, insane.



I AM
by Michael R. Burch

I am not one of ten billion―I―
sunblackened Icarus, chary fly,
staring at God with a quizzical eye.
I am not one of ten billion, I.

I am not one life has left unsquashed―
scarred as Ulysses, goddess-debauched,
pale glowworm agleam with a tale of panache.
I am not one life has left unsquashed.

I am not one without spots of disease,
laugh lines and tan lines and thick-callused knees
from begging and praying and girls sighing "Please! "
I am not one without spots of disease.

I am not one of ten billion―I―
scion of Daedalus, blackwinged fly
staring at God with a sedulous eye.
I am not one of ten billion, I
AM!



Snap Shots
by Michael R. Burch

Our daughters must be celibate,
die virgins. We triangulate
their early paths to heaven (for
the martyrs they'll soon conjugate).

We like to hook a little tail.
We hope there's decent ** in jail.
Don't fool with us; our bombs are smart!
(We'll send the plans, ASAP, e-mail.)

The soul is all that matters; why
hoard gold if it offends the eye?
A pension plan? Don't make us laugh!
We have your plan for sainthood. (Die.)



Unwhole
by Michael R. Burch

What is it that we strive to remember, to regain,
as memory deserts us,
leaving us destitute of even ourselves,
of all but pain?

How can something so essential be forgotten,
if we are more than our bodies?
How can a soul
become so unwhole?



Nonbeliever
by Michael R. Burch writing as Kim Cherub

She smiled a thin-lipped smile
(What do men know of love?)
then rolled her eyes toward heaven
(Or that Chauvinist above?).



evol-u-shun
by Michael R. Burch

does GOD love the Tyger
while it's ripping ur lamb apart?

does GOD applaud the Bubonic Plague
while it's eating u à la carte?

does GOD admire ur intelligence
while u pray that IT has a heart?

does GOD endorse the Bible
you blue-lighted at k-mart?



Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.
But gods without compassion
ordained: Frail things must break!
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche's sake?

I did it not to push.
I did it not to shove.
I did it to assist the flight of indiscriminate Love.

But gods, all mad as hatters,
who legislate in all such matters,
ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters.



Alien
by Michael R. Burch

for  a "Christian" poet

On a lonely outpost on Mars
the astronaut practices "speech"
as alien to primates below
as mute stars winking high, out of reach.

And his words fall as bright and as chill
as ice crystals on Kilimanjaro―
far colder than Jesus's words
over the "fortunate" sparrow.

And I understand how gentle Emily
felt, when all comfort had flown,
gazing into those inhuman eyes,
feeling zero at the bone.

Oh, how can I grok his arctic thought?
For if he is human, I am not.



Crescendo Against Heaven
by Michael R. Burch

As curiously formal as the rose,
the imperious Word grows
until its sheds red-gilded leaves:
then heaven grieves
love's tiny pool of crimson recrimination
against God, its contention
of the price of salvation.

These industrious trees,
endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves,
finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing
themselves to bits, washing
themselves free
of all but the final ignominy
of death, become
at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb.

Together now, rude coffins, crosses,
death-cursed but bright vermilion roses,
bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire
together with a nearby spire
to raise their Accusation Dire...
to scream, complain, to point out these
and other Dark Anomalies.

God always silent, ever afar,
distant as Bethlehem's retrograde star,
we point out now, in resignation:
You asked too much of man's beleaguered nation,
gave too much strength to his Enemy,
as though to prove Your Self greater than He,
at our expense, and so men die
(whose accusations vex the sky)
yet hope, somehow, that You are good...
just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood.



Advice for Evangelicals
by Michael R. Burch

"... so let your light shine before men..."

Consider the example of the woodland anemone:
she preaches no sermons but―immaculate―shines,
and rivals the angels in bright innocence and purity,
the sweetest of divines.

And no one has heard her engage in hypocrisy
since the beginning of time―an oracle so mute,
so profound in her silence and exemplary poise
she makes lessons moot.

So consider the example of the saintly anemone
and if you'd convince us Christ really exists,
then let him be just as sweet, just as guileless
and equally as gracious to bless.



Heaven Bent
by Michael R. Burch

This life is hell; it can get no worse.
Summon the coroner, the casket, the hearse!
I'm upwardly mobile; this one thing I know:
I can only go up; I'm already below!



Shock and Awe
by Michael R. Burch

With megatons of "wonder, "
we make our godhead clear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

The world's heart ripped asunder,
its dying pulse we hear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

Strange Trinity! We ponder
this God we hold so dear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

The vulture and the condor
proclaim: The feast is near!―
Death. Destruction. Fear.

Soon He will plow us under;
the Anti-Christ is here:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

We love to hear Him thunder!
With Shock and Awe, appear!―
Death. Destruction. Fear.

For God can never blunder;
we know He holds US dear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.



Lay Down Your Arms
by Michael R. Burch

Lay down your arms; come, sleep in the sand.
The battle is over and night is at hand.
Our voyage has ended; there's nowhere to go...
the earth is a cinder still faintly aglow.

Lay down your pamphlets; let's bicker no more.
Instead, let us sleep here on this ravaged shore.
The sea is still boiling; the air is wan, thin...
lay down your pamphlets; now no one will "win."

Lay down your hymnals; abandon all song.
If God was to save us, He waited too long.
A new world emerges, but this world is through...
so lay down your hymnals, or write something new.



What Immense Silence
by Michael R. Burch

What immense silence
comforts those who kneel here
beneath these vaulted ceilings
cavernous and vast?

What luminescence stained
by patchwork panels of bright glass
illuminates drained faces
as the crouching gargoyles leer?

What brings them here―
pale, tearful congregations,
knowing all Hope is past,
faithfully, year upon year?

Or could they be right? Perhaps
Love is, implausibly, near
and I alone have not seen It...
But, if so, still, I must ask:

why is it God that they fear?



Intimations
by Michael R. Burch

Let mercy surround us
with a sweet persistence.

Let love propound to us
that life is infinitely more than existence.



Altared Spots
by Michael R. Burch

The mother leopard buries her cub,
then cries three nights for his bones to rise
clad in new flesh, to celebrate the sunrise.

Good mother leopard, pensive thought
and fiercest love's wild insurrection
yield no certainty of a resurrection.

Man's tried them both, has added tears,
chants, dances, drugs, séances, tombs'
white alabaster prayer-rooms, wombs

where dead men's frozen genes convene...
there is no answer―death is death.
So bury your son, and save your breath.

Or emulate earth's "highest species"―
write a few strange poems and odd treatises.



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

Poetry captures
less than reality
the spirit of things

being the language
not of the lordly falcon
but of the dove with broken wings

whose heavenward flight
though brutally interrupted
is ever towards the light.



Winter Night
by Michael R. Burch

Who will be ******,
who embalmed
for all eternity?

The night weighs heavy on me―
leaden, sullen, cold.
O, but my thoughts are light,

like the weightless windblown snow.



Tonight, Let's Remember
by Michael R. Burch

July 7,2007 (7-7-7)

Tonight, let's remember the fond ways
our fingers engendered new methods to praise
the gray at my temples, your thinning hair.
Tonight, let's remember, and let us draw near...

Tonight, let's remember, as mortals do,
how cutely we chortled when work was through,
society sated, all gods put to rest,
and you in my arms, and I at your breast...

Tonight, let's remember how daring, how free
the Madeira made us, recumbently.
Our inhibitions?―we laid them to rest.
Earth, heaven or hell―we knew we were blessed.

Tonight, let's remember the dwindling days
we've spent here together―the sun's rays
spending their power beyond somber hills.
Soon we'll rest together; there'll be no more bills.

Tonight, let's remember: we've paid all our dues,
we've suffered our sorrows, we've learned how to lose.
What's left now to take, only God can tell.
Be with me in heaven, or "bliss" will be hell!

I do not want God; I want to see you
free from all sorrow, your labor through,
a song on your tongue, a smile on your lips,
sweet, sultry and vagrant, a child at your hips,

laughing and beaming and ready to frolic
in a world free from cancer and gout and colic.
For you were courageous, and kind, and true.
There must be a heaven for someone like you.



I, Lazarus
by Michael R. Burch

I, Lazarus, without a heart,
devoid of blood and spiritless,
lay in the darkness, meritless:
my corpse―a thing cold, dead, apart.

But then I thought I heard―a Voice,
a Voice that called me from afar.
And so I stood and laughed, bizarre:
a thing embalmed, made to rejoice!

I ran ungainly-legged to see
who spoke my name, and then I knew
him by the light. His name is True,
and now he is the life in me!

I never died again! Believe!
(Oops! Seems it was a brief reprieve.)



To Know You as Mary
by Michael R. Burch

To know You as Mary,
when You spoke her name
and her world was never the same...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

O, then I would laugh
and be glad that I came,
never minding the chill, the disconsolate rain...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

I might not think this earth
the sharp focus of pain
if I heard You exclaim―
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom

my most unexpected, unwarranted name!
But you never spoke. Explain?



Peers
by Michael R. Burch

These thoughts are alien, as through green slime
smeared on some lab tech's brilliant slide, I *****,
positioning my bright oscilloscope
for better vantage, though I cannot see,
but only peer, as small things disappear―
these quanta strange as men, as passing queer.

And you, Great Scientist, are you the One,
or just an intern, necktie half undone,
white sleeves rolled up, thick documents in hand
(dense manuals you don't quite understand) ,
exposing me, perhaps, to too much Light?
Or do I escape your notice, quick and bright?

Perhaps we wield the same dull Instrument
(and yet the Thesis will be Eloquent!).



Gethsemane in Every Breath
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, we have lost our way, and now
we have mislaid love―earth's fairest rose.
We forgot hope's song―the way it goes.
Help us reclaim their gifts, somehow.

LORD, we have wondered long and far
in search of Bethlehem's retrograde star.
Now in night's dead cold grasp, we gasp:
our lives one long-drawn rattling rasp

of misspent breath... before we drown.
LORD, help us through this spiral down
because we faint, and do not see
above or beyond despair's trajectory.

Remember that You, too, once held
imperiled life within your hands
as hope withdrew... that where You knelt
―a stranger in a stranger land―

the chalice glinted cold afar
and red with blood as hellfire.
Did heaven ever seem so far?
Remember―we are as You were,

but all our lives, from birth to death―
Gethsemane in every breath.



A Possible Argument for Mercy
by Michael R. Burch

Did heaven ever seem so far?
Remember-we are as You were,
but all our lives, from birth to death―
Gethsemane in every breath.



Birthday Poem to Myself
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, be no longer this Distant Presence,
Star-Afar, Righteous-Anonymous,
but come! Come live among us;
come dwell again,
happy child among men―
men rejoicing to have known you
in the familiar manger's cool
sweet light scent of unburdened hay.
Teach us again to be light that way,
with a chorus of angelic songs lessoned above.
Be to us again that sweet birth of Love
in the only way men can truly understand.
Do not frown darkening down upon an unrighteous land
planning fierce Retributions we require, and deserve,
but remember the child you were; believe
in the child I was, alike to you in innocence
a little while, all sweetness, and helpless without pretense.
Let us be little children again, magical in your sight.
Grant me this boon! Is it not my birthright―
just to know you, as you truly were, and are?
Come, be my friend. Help me understand and regain Hope's long-departed star!



Learning to Fly
by Michael R. Burch

We are learning to fly
every day...

learning to fly―
away, away...

O, love is not in the ephemeral flight,
but love, Love! is our destination―

graced land of eternal sunrise, radiant beyond night!
Let us bear one another up in our vast migration.



The Gardener's Roses
by Michael R. Burch

Mary Magdalene, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, "Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away."

I too have come to the cave;
within: strange, half-glimpsed forms
and ghostly paradigms of things.
Here, nothing warms

this lightening moment of the dawn,
pale tendrils spreading east.
And I, of all who followed Him,
by far the least...

The women take no note of me;
I do not recognize
the men in white, the gardener,
these unfamiliar skies...

Faint scent of roses, then―a touch!
I turn, and I see: You.
"My Lord, why do You tarry here:
Another waits, Whose love is true? "

"Although My Father waits, and bliss;
though angels call―ecstatic crew!―
I gathered roses for a Friend.
I waited here, for You."



Kingdom Freedom
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, grant me a rare sweet spirit of forgiveness.
Let me have none of the lividness
of religious outrage.

LORD, let me not be over-worried
about the lack of "morality" around me.
Surround me,

not with law's restrictive cage,
but with Your spirit, freer than the wind,
so that to breathe is to have freest life,

and not to fly to You, my only sin.



Cædmon's Face
by Michael R. Burch

At the monastery of Whitby,
on a day when the sun sank through the sea,
and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free,

while the wind and Time blew all around,
I paced that dusk-enamored ground
and thought I heard the steps resound

of Carroll, Stoker and good Bede
who walked here too, their spirits freed
―perhaps by God, perhaps by need―

to write, and with each line, remember
the glorious light of Cædmon's ember:
scorched tongues of flame words still engender.



He wrote here in an English tongue,
a language so unlike our own,
unlike―as father unto son.

But when at last a child is grown.
his heritage is made well-known:
his father's face becomes his own.



He wrote here of the Middle-Earth,
the Maker's might, man's lowly birth,
of every thing that God gave worth

suspended under heaven's roof.
He forged with simple words His truth
and nine lines left remain the proof:

his face was Poetry's, from youth.



Prayer for a Merciful, Compassionate, etc., God to ****** His Creations Quickly & Painlessly, Rather than Slowly & Painfully
by Michael R. Burch

Lord, **** me fast and please do it quickly!
Please don’t leave me gassed, archaic and sickly!
Why render me mean, rude, wrinkly and prickly?
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re an expert killer!
Please, don’t leave me aging like Phyllis Diller!
Why torture me like some poor sap in a thriller?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, we all know you’re an expert at ******
like Abram—the wild-eyed demonic goat-herder
who’d slit his son’s throat without thought at your order.
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re a terrible sinner!
What did dull Japheth eat for his 300th dinner
after a year on the ark, growing thinner and thinner?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Dear Lord, did the lion and tiger compete
for the last of the lambkin’s sweet, tender meat?
How did Noah preserve his fast-rotting wheat?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, why not be a merciful Prelate?
Do you really want me to detest, loathe and hate
the Father, the Son and their Ghostly Mate?
Lord, why procrastinate?



Is there any Light left?
by Michael R. Burch

Is there any light left?
Must we die bereft
of love and a reason for being?
Blind and unseeing,
rejecting and fleeing
our humanity, goat-hooved and cleft?

Is there any light left?
Must we die bereft
of love and a reason for living?
Blind, unforgiving,
unworthy of heaven
or this planet red, reeking and reft?

NOTE: While “hoofed” is the more common spelling, I preferred “hooved” for this poem. Perhaps because of the contrast created by “love” and “hooved.”



Modern Dreams
by Michael R. Burch

after David B. Gosselin

I dreamed that God was good, but then I woke
and all his goodness vanished—****!—
like smoke.

I dreamed his Word was good, but then I heard
commandments evil, awful, weird,
absurd.

I dreamed of Heaven where cruel Angels flew
above my head and screamed, the Chosen Few,
“We’re not like you!”

I dreamed of Hell below, where prostitutes
adored by Jesus, played on lovely lutes
“True Love Commutes.”

I dreamed of Earth then woke to hear a Gong’s
repellent echoes in Religion’s song
of right gone wrong.



Star Crossed
by Michael R. Burch

Remember—
night is not like day;
the stars are closer than they seem ...
now, bending near, they seem to say
the morning sun was merely a dream
ember.




Well, Almost
by Michael R. Burch

All Christians say “Never again!”
to the inhumanity of men
(except when the object of phlegm
is a Palestinian).



O, My Redeeming Angel
by Michael R. Burch

O my Redeeming Angel, after we
have fought till death (and soon the night is done) ...
then let us rest awhile, await the sun,
and let us put aside all enmity.

I might have been the “victor”—who can tell?—
so many wounds abound. All out of joint,
my groin, my thigh ... and nothing to anoint
but sunsplit, shattered stone, as pillars hell.

Light, easy flight to heaven, Your return!
How hard, how dark, this path I, limping, walk.
I only ask Your blessing; no more talk!

Withhold Your name, and yet my ears still burn
and so my heart. You asked me, to my shame:
for Jacob—trickster, shyster, sham—’s my name.



To Know You as Mary
by Michael R. Burch

To know you as Mary,
when you spoke her name
and her world was never the same ...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

O, then I would laugh
and be glad that I came,
never minding the chill, the disconsolate rain ...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

I might not think this earth
the sharp focus of pain
if I heard you exclaim—
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom

my most unexpected, unwarranted name!
But you never spoke. Explain?



ur-gent
by Michael R. Burch

if u would be a good father to us all,
revoke the Curse,
extract the Gall;

but if the abuse continues,
look within
into ur Mindless Soulless Emptiness Grim,

& admit ur sin,
heartless jehovah,
slayer of widows and orphans ...

quick, begin!



Bible libel (ii)
by Michael R. Burch

ur savior’s a cad
—he’s as bad as his dad—
according to your strange Bible.

demanding belief
or he’ll bring u to grief?
he’s worse than his horn-sprouting rival!

was the man ever good
before made a “god”?
if so, half your Bible is libel!



stock-home sin-drone
by Michael R. Burch

ur GAUD created this hellish earth;
thus u FANTAsize heaven
(an escape from rebirth).

ur GUAD is a monster,
**** ur RELIGION lied
and called u his frankensteinian bride!

now, like so many others cruelly abused,
u look for salve-a-shun
to the AUTHOR of ur pain’s selfish creation.

cons preach the “TRUE GOSPEL”
and proudly shout it,
but if ur GAUD were good
he would have to doubt it.



un-i-verse-all love
by Michael R. Burch

there is a Gaud, it’s true!
and furthermore, tHeSh(e)It loves u!
unfortunately
the
He
Sh(e)
It
,even more adorably,
loves cancer, aids and leprosy.



yet another post-partum christmas blues poem
by michael r. burch

ur GAUD created hell; it’s called the earth;
HE mused u briefly, clods of little worth:
let’s conjure some little monkeys
to be BIG RELIGION’s flunkeys!
GAUD belched, went back to sleep, such was ur birth.



wee the many
by michael r. burch

wee never really lived: was that our fault?
now thanks to ur GAUD wee lie in an underground vault.
wee lie here, the little ones ur GAUD despised!
HE condemned us to death before wee opened our eyes!
as it was in the days of noah, it still remains:
GAUD kills us with floods he conjures from murderous rains.



Untitled ur poems

since GOD created u so gullible
how did u conclude HE’s so lovable?
—Michael R. Burch

limping to the grave under the sentence of death,
should i praise ur LORD? think i’ll save my breath!
—Michael R. Burch



One of the Flown
by Michael R. Burch

Forgive me for not having known
you were one of the flown—
flown from the distant haunts
of someone else’s enlightenment,
alighting here to a darkness all your own . . .

I imagine you perched,
pretty warbler, in your starched
dress, before you grew bellicose . . .
singing quaint love’s highest falsetto notes,
brightening the pew of some dilapidated church . . .

But that was before autumn’s
messianic dark hymns . . .
Deepening on the landscape—winter’s inevitable shadows.
Love came too late; hope flocked to bare meadows,
preparing to leave. Then even the thought of life became grim,

thinking of Him . . .
To flee, finally,—that was no whim,
no adventure, but purpose.
I see you now a-wing: pale-eyed, intent, serious:
always, always at the horizon’s broadening rim . . .

How long have you flown now, pretty voyager?
I keep watch from afar: pale lover and ******.



what the “Chosen Few” really pray for
by Michael R. Burch

We are ready to be robed in light,
angel-bright

despite
Our intolerance;

ready to enter Heaven and never return
(dark, this sojourn);

ready to worse-ship any gaud
able to deliver Us from this flawed

existence;
We pray with the persistence

of actual saints
to be delivered from all earthly constraints:

just kiss each uplifted Face
with lips of gentlest grace,

cooing the sweetest harmonies
while brutally crushing Our enemies!

ah-Men!



wild wild west-east-north-south-up-down
by Michael R. Burch

each day it resumes—the great struggle for survival.

the fiercer and more perilous the wrath,
the wilder and wickeder the weaponry,
the better the daily odds
(just don’t bet on the long term, or revival).

so ur luvable Gaud decreed, Theo-retically,
if indeed He exists
as ur Bible insists—
the Wildest and the Wickedest of all
with the brightest of creatures in thrall
(unless u
somehow got that bleary
Theo-ry
wrong too).



The Strangest Rain
by Michael R. Burch

"I ... am small, like the Wren, and my Hair is bold, like the Chestnut Bur?and my eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass, that the Guest leaves ..."?Emily Dickinson

"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry."--Emily Dickinson

The strangest rain, a few bright sluggish drops,
unsure if they should fall, run through with sun,
came tumbling down and touched me, one by one,
too few to animate the shriveled crops
of nearby farmers (though their daughters might
feel each cool splash, a-shiver with delight).

I thought again of Emily Dickinson,
who felt the tingle down her spine, inspired
to lifting hairs, to nerves’ electric song
of passion for a thing so deep-desired
the heart and gut agree, and so must tremble
as all the neurons of the brain assemble
to whisper: This is love, but what is love?
Wrens darting rainbows, laughter high above.



Note to a Chick on a Religious Kick
by Michael R. Burch

Daisy,
when you smile, my life gets sunny;
you make me want to spend all my ****** money;
but honey,
you can be a bit ... um ... hazy,
perhaps mentally lazy?,
okay, downright crazy,
praying to the Easter Bunny!



lust!
by michael r. burch

i was only a child
in a world dark and wild
seeking affection
in eyes mild

and in all my bright dreams
sweet love shimmered, beguiled ...

but the black-robed Priest
who called me the least
of all god’s creation
then spoke for the Beast:

He called my great passion a thing base, defiled!

He condemned me to hell,
the foul Ne’er-Do-Well,
for the sake of the copper
His Pig-Snout could smell
in the purse of my mother,
“the ***** jezebel.”

my sweet passions condemned
by degenerate men?
and she so devout
she exclaimed, “yay, aye-men!” ...

together we learned why Religion is hell.

Published by Lucid Rhythms, The HyperTexts and Black Waters of Melancholy


A coming day
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, due to her hellish religion

There will be a day,
a day when the lightning strikes from a rainbowed mist
when it will be too late, too late for me to say
that I found your faith unblessed.

There will be a day,
a day when the storm clouds gather, ominous,
when it will be too late, too late to put away
this darkness that came between us.



Hellbound
by Michael R. Burch

Mother, it’s dark
and you never did love me
because you put Yahweh and Yeshu
above me.

Did they ever love you
or cling to you? No.
Now Mother, it’s cold
and I fear for my soul.

Mother, they say
you will leave me and go
to some distant “heaven”
I never shall know.

If that’s your choice,
you made it. Not me.
You brought me to life;
will you nail me to the tree?

Christ! Mother, they say
God condemned me to hell.
If the Devil’s your God
then farewell, farewell!

Or if there is Love
in some other dimension,
let’s reconcile there
and forget such cruel detention.

Keywords/Tags: god, Jesus, Christ, Christian, prayer, Bible, angel, atheist, faith, blasphemy, heresy, heresies, heretic, heretic, heretical, pagan, pagans, god, gods, mrbhere



He Lived: Excerpts from “Gilgamesh”
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I.
He who visited hell, his country’s foundation,
Was well-versed in mysteries’ unseemly dark places.
He deeply explored many underworld realms
Where he learned of the Deluge and why Death erases.

II.
He built the great ramparts of Uruk-the-Sheepfold
And of holy Eanna. Then weary, alone,
He recorded his thoughts in frail scratchings called “words”:
But words made immortal, once chiseled in stone.

III.
These walls he erected are ever-enduring:
Vast walls where the widows of dead warriors weep.
Stand by them. O, feel their immovable presence!
For no other walls are as strong as this keep’s.

IV.
Come, climb Uruk’s tower on a starless night—
Ascend its steep stairway to escape modern error.
Cross its ancient threshold. You are close to Ishtar,
The Goddess of Ecstasy and of Terror!

V.
Find the cedar box with its hinges of bronze;
Lift the lid of its secrets; remove its dark slate;
Read of the travails of our friend Gilgamesh—
Of his descent into hell and man’s terrible fate!

VI.
Surpassing all kings, heroic in stature,
Wild bull of the mountains, the Goddess his dam
—Bedding no other man; he was her sole rapture—
Who else can claim fame, as he thundered, “I am!”



Enkidu Enters the House of Dust
an original poem by Michael R. Burch

I entered the house of dust and grief.
Where the pale dead weep there is no relief,
for there night descends like a final leaf
to shiver forever, unstirred.

There is no hope left when the tree’s stripped bare,
for the leaf lies forever dormant there
and each man cloaks himself in strange darkness, where
all company’s unheard.

No light’s ever pierced that oppressive night
so men close their eyes on their neighbors’ plight
or stare into darkness, lacking sight ...
each a crippled, blind bat-bird.

Were these not once eagles, gallant men?
Who sits here—pale, wretched and cowering—then?
O, surely they shall, they must rise again,
gaining new wings? “Absurd!

For this is the House of Dust and Grief
where men made of clay, eat clay. Relief
to them’s to become a mere windless leaf,
lying forever unstirred.”

“Anu and Enlil, hear my plea!
Ereshkigal, they all must go free!
Beletseri, dread scribe of this Hell, hear me!”
But all my shrill cries, obscured

by vast eons of dust, at last fell mute
as I took my place in the ash and soot.



Reclamation
an original poem by Michael R. Burch

after Robert Graves, with a nod to Mary Shelley

I have come to the dark side of things
where the bat sings
its evasive radar
and Want is a crooked forefinger
attached to a gelatinous wing.

I have grown animate here, a stitched corpse
hooked to electrodes.
And night
moves upon me—progenitor of life
with its foul breath.

Blind eyes have their second sight
and still are deceived. Now my nature
is softly to moan
as Desire carries me
swooningly across her threshold.

Stone
is less infinite than her crone’s
gargantuan hooked nose, her driveling lips.
I eye her ecstatically—her dowager figure,
and there is something about her that my words transfigure

to a consuming emptiness.
We are at peace
with each other; this is our venture—
swaying, the strings tautening, as tightropes
tauten, as love tightens, constricts

to the first note.
Lyre of our hearts’ pits,
orchestration of nothing, adits
of emptiness! We have come to the last of our hopes,
sweet as congealed blood sweetens for flies.

Need is reborn; love dies.

Keywords/Tags: Epic of Gilgamesh, epic, epical, orient occident, oriental, ancient, ancestors, ancestry, primal



Double Dactyls

Sniggledy-Wriggledy
Jesus Christ’s enterprise
leaves me in awe of
the rich men he loathed!

But should a Sadducee
settle for trifles?
His disciples now rip off
the Lord they betrothed.
―Michael R. Burch

Donald Double Dactyl

Higgledy Piggledy
Ronald McDonald
cursed Donald Trump,
his least favorite clown:

"Why should I try to be
funny as Donald? He
gets all the laughs
saying upside is down!"
―Michael R. Burch



Lines for My Ascension
by Michael R. Burch

I.
If I should die,
there will come a Doom,
and the sky will darken
to the deepest Gloom.

But if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

II.
If I should die,
let no mortal say,
“Here was a man,
with feet of clay,

or a timid sparrow
God’s hand let fall.”
But watch the sky darken
to an eerie pall

and know that my Spirit,
unvanquished, broods,
and scoffs at quaint churchyards
littered with roods.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

III.
If I should die,
let no man adore
his incompetent Maker:
Zeus, Yahweh, or Thor.

Think of Me as the One
who never died—
the unvanquished Immortal
with the unriven side.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

IV.
And if I should “die,”
though the clouds grow dark
as fierce lightnings rend
this bleak asteroid, stark ...

If you look above,
you will see a bright Sign—
the sun with the moon
in its arms, Divine.

So divine, if you can,
my bright meaning, and know—
my Spirit is mine.
I will go where I go.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.



Listen
by Immanuel A. Michael (an alias of Michael R. Burch)

1.
Listen to me now
and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone,
screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black
and white is white
and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.

Does a madman choose his words?
They come to him:
the moon's illuminations,
intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.

But listen to me now,
and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell,
and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,
but listen,
or cut off your ears,
for I Am weary.

I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

2.
Listen to me now: I had a Vision.
An elevated train derailed, and Fell.
It was the Church brought low, almost to Hell.
And I alone survived, who dream of Mercy:
the Heretic, who speaks behind the Veil.

3.
Listen to me now: I saw an airplane
fall from the sky. And why should I explain?
The Visions are the same. It is my Heresy
that I survive, because I sing of Mercy,
while elevated "saints" go down in flames.

4.
Listen to me now: I saw in Nashville
how those who "soar" will plummet―Fame in flames!―
and fall on those below, as if to **** them.
The lowly, saved, will understand their names.

5.
Listen to me now: I heard another
say, "That which died shall Resurrect and Live."
An angel with a Rose bestowing Mercy!
What can it mean, but that my Visions give
fair warning to the world that God wants Mercy.
My Heresy is that we must forgive!

6.
Listen to me now: she heard god calling―
O, who will love me, who will be my friend?
Does he want Perfect Saints, the whitewashed Purists,
who frown down on their "brothers," without end?

7.
Listen to me now: you are not perfect,
and your "wise counsel" helps no one at all:
unless it's sweetened with the sweetest Mercy,
it's pure astringent antiseptic gall.

8.
Listen to me now, and learn this lesson:
If God wants mercy, why dig at the speck
in your brother's eye, when even now the Beam,
your lack of mercy, spares, no, neither neck,
becomes the Hangman's Millstone. We're all children,
all little ones! Be patient with the fleck!

9.
Listen to me now: for the Announcer
explained that wars have given Presidents
the precedents to soon assume all Power.
Vote, citizens, or be mere residents!

10.
O, listen to me now: I saw the Warheads
stored safely underground, except for One.
A red-haired woman with a bright complexion
seduced the guard. Translucent blouse, red thong,
white bra―these were her fearsome antique weapons.

I saw the Skull and Crossbones! Heed my Song!

11.
O, listen to me now, and hear my Gospel:
three verses of such sweet simplicity!
God is Light: in Him there is no darkness.
In Christ, no condemnation: Liberty!
God want no Sacrifice, but only Mercy.
O, who could ask for sweeter Heresy?

12.
Theology? I swear that I disdain it!
If Love can be explained, why then explain it!
If Love can't be explained why, then, should God,
if God is Love? Nor hell nor cattle ****
is needed, if God's good, and God's supreme.
Ask, children, what "re-ligion" truly means:
"return to *******! " Heed the bondsman's screams!

13.
Heed, children, which Theologies you dream
when Hellish Nightmares wake you, when you Scream
for comfort, but no comforter is there.
Which Voices do you heed, which Crosses bear?
If god is light, whence do Dark Visions come
which leave the Taste of Venom on your Tongue,
with which you **** your brother for one Sin
you do not share, ten thousand underskin
like Itching Worms that Squirm and Vilely Hiss:
"Your brother's sin will keep him from god's bliss,
but You are safe because god favors You! "
If God is Love, how can this voice be true?

14.
For God is not a favorer of men.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Some meals you tire of before they're finished.
You push your plate away
the taste ash in your mouth
finished with even the idea of that flavor gracing your pallet again.

Some meals you devoir wantonly until there's nothing left.
They leave you hungry still.
You are forced to go find more to eat
another meal to fill you up better; more completely.

Some meals you nurse as long as you can.
They are savored tiny bite by tiny bite
you hoping to drag out the pleasure as long as you can
not wanting it to end.

Some meals you make as often as possible.
They become your favorite
delicious and effortless.
You eat them often without regret of calories or regard for consequences.

food
the requirement of life
comes in all shapes and tastes
   and smells and quantities

to the starving
   a bowl of rice
   the bottom barely covered
to the obese
   a five-course meal
   or piles of junk food
   in bright packaging

the starving
celebrate their meals
   in quiet concentration
each grain of rice
   is tasted carefully
   and chewed with care
extracting to the full its scant nourishment

the last one disappears
   with unheard sighs
when junk food and the five-course meal
   have long been finished

Thigh gaps, no fat flabs.
Bronzed goddess, half naked bodice,
We all buy into this masquerade
But let me tell you something, pretty fades

Society warps media to show us an unachievable dream,
One we will chase down till the day we run out of steam,
And then what?
They fabricate lies, telling us that if we have a gap between our thighs and pretty blue eyes,
Which will get the attention of guys and that’s the ultimate prize, right?

Diet suppressing pills that make you feel filled but are you fulfilled?
Running till blisters cover your heels,
Skipping those meals,
How did that make you feel?
Are you happy?
No
Because that’s the trick.
You’ll scroll social media and just as quick,
You don’t like what you see anymore,
It’ll make you sick.
You have to be skinny but hey wait we also like em thick,
So which do you pick?

But lets not forget the ones who scream ‘body posi’
And then say ‘oooh she’s too skinny’
‘That cant be healthy’
‘Gain 20 pounds, eat a Big Mac’
‘Guys don’t like girls with a small rack’
Is that a fact?
‘You need some meat on your bones’
Yeah well my body is my home, and I don’t remember inviting you in
You see, body shaming is a two way street,
Don’t go telling her she needs to eat,
Or her bones need some meat,
Stop fighting each other its this ideal were trying to beat

And then there’s those of us in the middle.
You’re not quite skinny but you’re not quite thick so you’re not allowed to complain,
‘You don’t know the pain’.
They call you skinny,
So you say you’re a size 12,
They say ‘that cant be’
They don’t believe me.
Just because I know how to dress my body to look a certain way
Does not mean that I don’t resent what I see at the end of the day.

I am sick of wanting to look like somebody else.

I am sick of crying every night in bed, and wanting to be dead
and to that voice in my head..
*******!
Stop telling me that no one will love me
Because I have a tummy
Because that’s not true.

And when I get a flat stomach then what?
What my hips are too wide? ***** too small?
**** too flat? Do you like anything at all?

No matter what I do there will always be something wrong with me in your eyes.
Ill never be good enough for you,
No matter how hard I try, how much I cry,
That wont change and nether will I.
You’ve made me wish I had the discipline to starve myself so you know what?
Go **** yourself

Comparison is the thief of joy, and I’m a serial burglar.

The Media shows you pretty and what a shame
Because beauty is not the same.
There are no standards or aims.
It’s not about how you look,
It’s about how you took
The gift of life
And you breathe and you blink
And you create and you think.
Beauty is laughing out loud.
It is being proud
Of yourself and everyone else.
Beauty is the smell outside after rain,
Picking yourself up after all that pain,
It’s keeping calm when you feel like you’re going insane.
It’s forgive and forget
No regrets,
Beauty is living.
Beauty is how you feel and breathe
Because you’re alive.
It’s determination, perseverance because you strive,
To be the best, because you expect
Nothing less,
From yourself.

The more you try to adhere to what society wants you to look the more you’ll feel like crap,
It’s a trap,
Now I’m not saying the key to happiness will just fall into your lap,
It’s hard. I know.
It takes time, work and energy,
But for the possibility,
That you like what you see
To be happy?
Isn’t it worth it?
My body is a work of art.
Tattoos and piercings line my skin,
I haven’t loved my body
But I can begin.

Society profits off of your self-hate,
Don’t take the bait,
It’s not too late,
Speak to yourself as you would your best mate.
When I die, my body is not my legacy.
Mourners will not say ‘lovely girl, shame about the belly’
‘Ya I agree,
A smart girl but not that pretty’
Nobody’s going to say
‘I loved her but her flat chest
Was not the best’
As they lay me to rest
The world will not come to a stop
Because of my muffin top
And I refuse to be a prop
In this production.
Killing myself to get a slim waist, big ****,
Big *****, small gut
And for what?
To perpetuate the message that you have to look like this too?
No, I refuse
If not for me, then for you.

I like my body
I don’t love it….. yet anyway
But I will one day
And that’s ok.
Find the charm in every mole, stretch mark and roll,
And don’t lose yourself
To the infinite scroll.
It’s not easy, I don’t have a simple solution,
But
Loving yourself is the greatest revolution

The clouds slowly conceal sunlight at night,
Who then slowly reveal moonlight at night.

In this city roams the Moon of New-York,
Who's face reflects the city's light at night.

All kinds of people walk around up here,
In lit streets who're full with delight at night.

When this city is seen, it looks like an
Huge ocean of lights by eyesight at night.

Every time I look at this adorned place,
I fail to forget that bright sight at night.

At sunset this city becomes one square,
A place where people can unite at night.

From miles away you can see this city's
Presence and signs by it's skylight at night.

Every second someone gets Pleasure's kiss,
While another feels Despair's bite at night.

In here roam hedonistic people,
And people who are strict and tight at night.

In this city who never sleeps at night,
I hear singing in highs and deeps at night.

The breeze of the summer stays at night,
Witnesses the turning to days at night.

I can't fail to remember this city,
Since I've seen that luminous face at night.

Because of the countless sighs of lovers,
You can feel in the air Love's haze at night.

The city's melody is determined,
By what each individual plays at night.

The strangest of all and mundane of all;
Each one has occurred in this place at night.

The rich, the poor, the mad, women and men
All walk along light-adorned ways at night.

The lights reach every soul in this city,
Coming from hotels and cafes at night.

Wherever that Moon goes, it leaves it's mark,
At each place you'll find that Moon's trace at night.

It takes miles for pilgrims from far away,
To enter this place trough highways at night.

In this city who never sleeps at night,
I hear singing in highs and deeps at night.

The neon lights cover the street at night,
Who are set in places who fleet at night.

Traces of drama, tragedy and more,
Is felt in every hotel suite at night.

The homeless and party-goers here,
Both walk on tired and sore feet at night.

Meals on wheels at sight at every corner,
To serve people who want to eat at night.

Both the old and youth are called to places,
With pleasures who are bittersweet at night.

Streets who reflect neon lights in puddles,
Are places for lovers to meet at night.

So many people walk along themselves,
Yet there's no time to greet at night.

This awake city who is always breathing,
Always blows to me a conceit at night.

I can't seem to stop to describe this place!
About this jungle of concrete at night!

In this city who never sleeps at night,
I hear singing in highs and deeps at night.

This place witnesses misery at night,
And also witnesses beauty at night.

Millions of fishes are swimming around,
Trough streets in this luminous sea at night.

The gates stay open without any rest,
All people come and go freely at night.

Trough happiness and even ill horror,
This places stays silent and steady at night.

Those who're in love in this city see with
Little eyes, who perceive blurry at night.

Lovers are tangled up in each other,
While raindrops fall in an alley at night.

No one is an exception in this place,
Darkness veils your ethnicity at night.

Many have acquired shine up here,
And lost, in that shining city at night.

Ideas are hoisted out of my well!
Gihon will end his poetry, at night.

*In this city who never sleeps at night,
I hear singing in highs and deeps at night.

Society, society, what do you say?
You've dealt your cards, you've had your way.

Society, society, am I not enough?
I've skipped my meals and ran until I've thrown up.

Society, society, I've tried my best.
I studied all night long, and I passed all the test.

Society, society, what more do you need?
I'm on my knees and I'm starting to plead.

Society, society, I can't take much more.
They said by following your rules, I'd open more doors.

Society, society, why are you so cruel?
I'd try to make a change, but I know you'd win this duel.

Society, society, what more is there to say?
You've already made it so that I dread the next day.

Society, society, I wish I could win,
but I know if I fight back you'd see it as a sin.

Society, society, it's becoming way too hard,
going about my days with a leaden heart.

Society, society, you've made me give up,
but at least now the weight has lifted, and I can finally stand up.

Into a place far away but too familiar,
I push open the rusty purple gates,
Inhale a lungful of the province air,
Kick away blue pebbles on the dusty ground,
And then
Mano my lolo, my tito
Beso my lola, my tita
And give my cousins a nudge on the arm,
A pinch on the cheeks.

I squeeze between four people
In a rickety wooden bench and
Pass around plate after heavy plate.
I fill my banana leaf
With spaghetti too soft too sweet,
Almost like pudding,
With crispy chicken dripping with oil.
I wash it off with a cool glass of gulaman,
Chewy beads and gems in sugary water.

Fathers talk about basketball, boxing, billiards;
Mothers browse through photo albums and magazines;
While we children argue about Superman or Batman.
Our laughter fills the humid air
And goes up, up, up to the ears of the neighbors.

In celebration of the time we have together
And a nice sunny day
We devour our meals
And go ahead and
Climb trees and
Get our faces sticky with sweet fruits,
Lick chocolate ice popsicles,
Chase each other in the weedy playground,
Bike around town,
Pick colorful flowers,
Wrestle with each other,
Play badminton on a windy day,
Scare around chickens and guinea pigs,
And play patintero under the dull orange street lamps.

We nervously creep inside the back door,
All sweaty, bearing bruises and scratches
But still with wide smiles on our faces.
All is futile though.
An angry grandmother awaits,
Scolding us for
Coming home past sunset.

More and more stars glitter the sky
As the night gets deeper and deeper.
The gentle evening breeze whistles a note
As it enters through the window.
The karaoke blasts grating voices
Interrupted by hearty laughter.
Playing cards and corn chips litter the table.
We children exchange jokes and ghost stories.

And then,
We bid our goodbyes,
Sharing hugs and kisses
Stained with discontent and sadness.
Our hearts about to burst
In excitement for the next
Reunion.

Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaay?
Proputty, proputty, proputty--that's what I 'ears 'em saay.
Proputty, proputty, proputty--Sam, thou's an *** for thy paains:
Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs, nor in all thy braains.

Woa--theer's a craw to pluck wi' tha, Sam; yon 's parson's 'ouse--
Dosn't thou knaw that a man mun be eather a man or a mouse?
Time to think on it then; for thou'll be twenty to weeak.
Proputty, proputty--woa then, woa--let ma 'ear mysen speak.

Me an' thy ******, Sammy, 'as been a'talkin' o' thee;
Thou's bean talkin' to ******, an' she bean a tellin' it me.
Thou'll not marry for munny--thou's sweet upo' parson's lass--
Noa--thou 'll marry for luvv--an' we boath of us thinks tha an ***.

Seea'd her todaay goa by--Saaint's-daay--they was ringing the bells.
She's a beauty, thou thinks--an' soa is scoors o' gells,
Them as 'as munny an' all--wot's a beauty?--the flower as blaws.
But proputty, proputty sticks, an' proputty, proputty graws.

Do'ant be stunt; taake time. I knaws what maakes tha sa mad.
Warn't I craazed fur the lasses mysen when I wur a lad?
But I knaw'd a Quaaker feller as often 'as towd ma this:
"Doant thou marry for munny, but goa wheer munny is!"

An' I went wheer munny war; an' thy ****** coom to 'and,
Wi' lots o' munny laaid by, an' a nicetish bit o' land.
Maaybe she warn't a beauty--I niver giv it a thowt--
But warn't she as good to cuddle an' kiss as a lass as 'ant nowt?

Parson's lass 'ant nowt, an' she weant 'a nowt when 'e 's dead,
Mun be a guvness, lad, or summut, and addle her bread.
Why? for 'e 's nobbut a curate, an' weant niver get hissen clear,
An' 'e maade the bed as 'e ligs on afoor 'e coom'd to the shere.

An' thin 'e coom'd to the parish wi' lots o' Varsity debt,
Stook to his taail thy did, an' 'e 'ant got shut on 'em yet.
An' 'e ligs on 'is back i' the grip, wi' noan to lend 'im a shuvv,
Woorse nor a far-welter'd yowe: fur, Sammy, 'e married for luvv.

Luvv? what's luvv? thou can luvv thy lass an' 'er munny too,
Maakin' 'em goa togither, as they've good right to do.
Couldn I luvv thy ****** by cause 'o 'er munny laaid by?
Naay--fur I luvv'd 'er a vast sight moor fur it: reason why.

Ay, an' thy ****** says thou wants to marry the lass,
Cooms of a gentleman burn: an' we boath on us thinks tha an ***.
Woa then, proputty, wiltha?--an *** as near as mays nowt--
Woa then, wiltha? dangtha!--the bees is as fell as owt.

Break me a bit o' the esh for his 'ead, lad, out o' the fence!
Gentleman burn! what's gentleman burn? is it shillins an' pence?
Proputty, proputty's ivrything 'ere, an', Sammy, I'm blest
If it isn't the saame oop yonder, fur them as 'as it 's the best.

Tis'n them as 'as munny as breaks into 'ouses an' steals,
Them as 'as coats to their backs an' taakes their regular meals,
Noa, but it 's them as niver knaws wheer a meal's to be 'ad.
Taake my word for it Sammy, the poor in a loomp is bad.

Them or thir feythers, tha sees, mun 'a bean a laazy lot,
Fur work mun 'a gone to the gittin' whiniver munny was got.
Feyther 'ad ammost nowt; leastways 'is munny was 'id.
But 'e tued an' moil'd issen dead, an' 'e died a good un, 'e did.

Loook thou theer wheer Wrigglesby beck cooms out by the 'ill!
Feyther run oop to the farm, an' I runs oop to the mill;
An' I 'll run oop to the brig, an' that thou 'll live to see;
And if thou marries a good un I 'll leave the land to thee.

Thim's my noations, Sammy, wheerby I means to stick;
But if thou marries a bad un, I 'll leave the land to ****.--
Coom oop, proputty, proputty--that's what I 'ears 'im saay--
Proputty, proputty, proputty--canter an' canter awaay.

I'm an anxiety driven teen ****-up.
I let my fears drag me on a leash.
I make the wrong choices in every situation
And I can never really sleep.

My meals consist of nothing.
I feel overweight and unclean.
I feel mostly suicidal
But I can't **** myself
I'm afraid of the unseen.

I am a walking paradox.
Tired but won't sleep.
Hungry but won't eat.
I am the embodiment of stupid
But isn't that every teen?

I'm an anxiety driven teen ****-up.
Just give up on me and leave.
Tear me up into pieces,
And run from the crime scene.