If you date a poet, you will know the true meaning of 'swoon' and you will do it often. They know the power of a stunning phrase and it's way hotter than the Hallmark lines a non-poet will default to.

2.  They see the raw beauty in things that others take for granted.

3.  You will never ever need to worry that they aren't telling you something. Poets are ALWAYS trying to tell you something.

4. They're quite handy if you need a graceful way to tell someone off. They can tell em where to go and how far to stick it without using a single foul word.

5. Roses are pretty sub-standard and typical. Instead, you will get hand written love letters and sticky notes with one line *****-wetters. (Yes, I said *****-wetters. You know what it is.)

6. You will never not know the deeper meaning of something. Anything. There is nothing at all that a poet cannot analyze the hell out of. There's an underlying meaning behind EVERY single thing and if you ask a poet, they'll be elated to share it with you.

7. Poets tend to be minimalists. They don't always need a lot to set the butterflies a flutter. If you can come up with a couple of your own expressively charming lines, that will pretty much substitute a $125 dinner date.

8. Poets make curiously good alcoholic beverages. Because poets drink a lot of alcoholic beverages.

9. You'll never be without somewhere to go at any given moment. There's bound to be an open mic night, a poetry slam, a house party centered around poetry, a poetry in the park event, etc. There will always be something poetic going on. And they will know about it.

10. You will know what a true apology sounds like. Poets can apologize like NONE other when they know they have done something wrong.

11.Making love to a poet feels like syllables being whispered along the curve of your spine as you unravel into a million pieces.

12. Poets like smell good stuff. But not obnoxious fruity scents. Poets don't like to smell like fruit baskets. Poets like sandalwood, and amber, and lavender, and patchouli oils. You know...the **** stuff.

13. Poets cherish quiet time. Meanwhile, most non-poets you date will probably have the television blasting, music playing, friends climbing over one another and a cell phone conversation on speaker phone...all at the same time...every day.

14. You will always have a crowd-pleaser on your arm. Not all poets are attention ****** at parties BUT all poets know how to say at least one extra deep/witty thing that will have everyone else envious that you are the one dating the poet and not them.

15. Poets can wear the color black during all seasons, during thunderstorms or sunny spring days and make it look extra sophisticated and intentional.

16. Poets break rules...but also enjoy the process of making them. Keeps things interesting.

17. Poets shun conformity. So you know that if your poet bought it for you, said it to you, wrote it for you, etc...it's gonna be something edgy and unique and outside of the normal (boring) box.

18. Poets are great with their hands and even better with their mouths. Enough said.

19. Poets are the gatekeepers AND the rallyers (is that a real word?) of the community. If you don't know what a gatekeeper is...you aren't dating a poet. If you don't know what a rallyer is, it's because there's a possibility that it's not a real word. But you get it.

20. Poets like to make up their own words.

21. Poets don't like to be told that they can't do something. Maybe it's the whole submit and rejection process of writing. Who knows? But tell a poet NO and they'll keep trying until they get a yes. Persistence is way more handy than what can be explained here.

22. Poets read books. Book readers tend to have better vocabularies. A broad vocabulary is usually a trait of a good conversationalist which means no lame dinner convos.

23. Poets can write ugly things beautiful and can ***** up a pristine scene like nobodies business. In other words, when you need a different perspective on something...your poet can provide that for you.

24. A well-written poem can be the most powerful and therapeutic dose of truth and self-realization. Poets write poems. Therefore, dating a poet is like getting free therapy.  

25. Poets don't need a list of 50 things to prove why dating them is the best thing you will ever do.

it goes beyond just getting rid of things,
it's a way of life.
it means no unnecessary action.
imagined if you lived in your home by yourself
and you only did literally the things that needed to be done,
no extra stuff. no excess action.

that is minimalism.

the key is to be able to do that
when there's other people around.
the key is to be able to recognize
what's just filler and bull
and what is actually the meat of life,
because most of it is just
nonsense that gets in the way
of the important stuff.

but
it comes
from a perspective shift.
it's about seeing that
wealth is futile
and self preservation is futile
and that really the only purpose
to any of this ****
is to help others.
that is the only thing that means anything: helping others.

think about it...
why even live a long life?
why preserve yourself?
of what purpose is any of this?

we are only beneficial
when we are of use to each other.

we are of no use to ourselves.

In this age of global uncertainty, clothes have become a kind of panacea for a growing number of consumers. Designers are responding to the political upheavals of the past year by injecting some much-needed humour into women’s wardrobes. Browns CEO Holli Rogers is already predicting that spring’s sartorial hit will be Rosie Assoulin’s smiley-face T-shirt. This cheery number, which reads "Thank you! Have a Nice Day!’" neatly sums up the jubilant mood of the coming season.

The logic goes that turning up the dial on the fun, the colourful and the crazy is the sartorial equivalent of Michelle Obama’s "when they go low, we go high" mantra. We may not be able to control the chaos of world events, but we still rule our own style.

It’s no coincidence that a cartoonish aesthetic, of the sort you’d find if you rifled through an eccentric child’s dressing-up box, was in plentiful supply on the spring/summer 2017 runways. Alessandro Michele’s army of Gucci geeks displayed growing swagger in garish get-ups that ran from fuzzy crayon-coloured furs featuring zebras to tiered, tinsel-y coats that rivalled Grandma’s Christmas tree.

It was a similar story at Dolce & Gabbana, where sumptuous eveningwear was loaded with pasta and pizza motifs, and drums became bags, while Marc Jacobs tore a page from a psychedelic colouring book, covering clothes with the childlike scrawl of the London illustrator Julie Verhoeven. Even ardent minimalists would have to admit that these playful looks have potent pick-me-up power.

For Anya Hindmarch – whose empire is built on feel-good fashion – all this frivolity is nothing new. "An ironic, lighter and more irreverent approach has always been my thing. People love beautiful objects and increasingly, they want to show their character – that’s the point of fashion," she says. "Customers today are more confident with their style. There aren’t so many rules. It’s about putting a sticker on a beautiful handbag and not being too precious about it."

What’s surprising is who is consuming this cartoonish style. Though there’s no real rhyme or reason, says Hindmarch, often it’s older clients who are investing in the maddest pieces – like her cuddly, googly-eyed Ghost backpack that has also been spotted on Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner.

The same is true of the customer for the Lebanese designer Mira Mikati’s emoji-embellished styles. Though her fans run from twenty to fiftysomethings, at a recent London pop-up one of Mikati’s most ardent buyers was an 87-year-old. "She tells me that whenever she wears my clothes people stop her on the street. They smile. They start conversations. She literally makes friends through what she wears."

Mikati began her career as a buyer, co-founding the upscale Beirut boutique Plum, before launching her own line some four seasons ago – largely out of frustration at the sameness of the mainstream collections. "I wanted to create something fun and colourful but easy to wear – that you can add to jeans and a white T-shirt, but that’s also a conversation point."

Her clothes, worn by Beyoncé and Rihanna, are certainly that: pink parrot-appliquéd trench coats, scribble-print hooded tops and dresses clad with a family of monsters who spell out her Peter Pan ethos in scrawled speech bubbles that read "Never Grow Up’" The antithesis of normcore, these designs take their cue from her children’s toy trunk and the Japanese pop art of Takashi Murakami – who returned the compliment by donning one of her patched bombers.

Mikati is clearly onto something. According to Roberta Benteler, who founded online fashion emporium Avenue 32 in 2011, it’s the cartoon aesthetic that’s really piquing women’s desire right now.

"Anything that looks like a child’s drawing or a toy sells incredibly well," she says. "Brands like Mira Mikati, Vivetta and Les Petits Joueurs inspire the impulse to buy because they’re so eye-catching. You have to have it now because there’s a sense you won’t find it anywhere else."

The exponential rise of street-style stars and the social-media machine that now propels the fashion industry also plays a part in the popularity of these playful looks.

"Designers are creating for the online world and customer," continues Benteler, who cites the Middle Eastern consumer as a big investor in these niche eccentric designs. "People find escapism in fashion and more than ever they need something to cheer them up. These are clothes that stand out on Instagram, and for designers that translates into sales."

In practical terms, in an effort to beat the warp speed of high-street copying, designers are differentiating themselves with increasingly intricate and artisanal styles that are harder to mimic. Just because these pieces have a childlike sensibility doesn’t mean they’re not beautifully crafted.

"My aim is create a handbag that you can keep as a design piece," explains the accessories designer Paula Cademartori. One of her most successful designs – the Petite Faye bag, which comes in a whole rainbow of configurations – takes more than 32 hours to create at her Italian studio. "Even if the styles are colourful and speak loudly, they’re still sophisticated," says Cademartori, whose brand was recently snapped up by the luxury goods group OTB. It can pay to be playful.

One man with a unique insight into the feel-good phenomenon is Marco de Vincenzo, who combines his longstanding role as leather goods head designer at Fendi with creating his own collection. "When we first created the Fendi monster accessories for bags we were simply playing around," he says of the charms that still loom large some three years on. "The most successful designs are created without pressure, through play."

His own-line debut bag features an animalistic paw. ‘It’s about creating something new and different for women to discover,’ he explains. "You buy something because you love it, not because you need it. Fashion is like a game – it has to excite."

When it comes to distilling this childlike abandon into your wardrobe, take cues from super style blogger Leandra Medine, who balances madcap pieces, such as her first collection of colourful footwear under her MR By Man Repeller label, with plainer, simpler ones. "It’s all about wearing your clothes with joy, and having fun, but not looking ridiculous," says Cademartori. "You don’t want to look like an actual cartoon."

It’s advice that chimes with that of Anya Hindmarch. "I love the idea of wearing a super-simple Comme des Garçons jacket and a white shirt with a really fun bag to mess it all up a bit." It’s a failsafe formula for dressing your way to happiness.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses

the **** are you talking about? i just came from there, you want me to go back, to tell you something new? (a) you weren't born under the iron curtain, and (b) you didn't live beneath it! + (c) you probably don't know many people who lived through, having been born in 1939! and yes, communist hoarded ****... you think they were all moby-esque: vegan feng shui minimalists?! barking up the wrong tree, no squirrels up there, just a ******* baboon.

i've said it once, and i'll say it again:
   the system *works -
it's a fail-safe mechanism of a worn-torn
country... that's why i don't argue
against capitalism,
but capitalism doesn't rebuild nations,
it can't:
   sometimes people have to huddle
and become "buddhists": selfless collectivists!
it's obviously transitionally orientated,
got that lead from syria,
    why do people turn all humanitarian
giving our free loafs of bread to children?
it's not supposed to be a permanent
system, for one thing:
   there is clearly an expiry date
on the packaged communist implementations...
i really do not understand western leftism...
just flew past me above my head:
giving me a haircut while it flew past...
can't say i agree...
  but then again, mullets were a thing in the 80s
with the metal scene...
   so no, you don't know veterans of the communist
idea implemented: snotty audacious *******...
not everyone required the athenian semi-detached
castle back, too much personal grief,
relatives lost, what not... communism is
spartan... but in the end, even hoarding was
allowed... notably? books... like i said,
i think i out-competed the size of a private
library compared with my grandfather...
   but i love his honesty:
  i haven't read much of these books -
odd, i own a library that i'd say i managed
to digest in the fraction of:   6.5 / 10... o.k. 7 / 10...
you can't exactly read an art book...
    or a book on b & w photography...
oh look! pretty pictures.
           dim wits, so why is it that there was this
massive fascination, under the iron curtain,
on a local small gov. level in a rainbow of sports?
everything worth citing the olympics was
taken to, it wasn't just the gulag of football,
              problem with body image?
just watch the olympics, even fat people wrestle
and lift weights... and ping-pong?
  test of reflexes...
                  how about ski-jumping?
      or szermierka? what's that? fencing,
what was pretty pop back then;
         and at least there was a celebration of manual
labour... these days?
    a real phobia - aspiring to the status of gods
we've crafted a problem...
        work is not celebrated, it's shunned -
nothing to do, and a poor inspection of being
leaves us with aspiring to be much:
   while at the same time - doing too little;
yes, i cheated the plagiarism algorithm / bot,
whatever, when writing a sociology essay at
edinburgh... i plagiarised!
   guess what, back then, in 2003 / 4 i.t. didn't
discover the cheat code: a ******* thesaurus...
so i took an essay written by an academic,
and just rearranged it, reworded, deconstructed
it, and? got a 1st.
  top notch stuff, i was never into sociology
in the first place, i just wanted to find out if i could
outsmart a computer system that was
designed to "see" whether a plagiarism was made...
kimovich kasparov would've been proud...
well, that's history,
    what else was there to say?
  ah... aphorism vii ponderings vi...
        i started taking notes...
   atheism presupposes the non-existence of god...
fair enough, but as a presupposition it's
adamant, stern, and always "seemingly" right,
if not angry, then just plain ridiculous -
     i'm a wolf that finds mauling these sheep
that gesticulate with both palms, knees and other
assortments... that's called a punch below
the belt in boxing...
     is it so hard to attack st. augustine, pascal,
or thomas aquinas, let alone maimonides,
rashi or nachmanides?
     come on... making a ridicule-centered argument
is doesn't deserve respect:
   for every ounce of ridicule - there's an ounce
of disrespect...
  theism merely supposes the existence of -
since the "law" states that
    a supposition cannot be related to a negative
expression of non-existence "of"..
while the atheistic presupposition cannot be
related to a positive expression the existence "of"...
(the inverted commas on a trivial word
like of? so i stop short of implying god, mmm'k?)
these opposites seem to be strangely
anti-chemical in relation to the mirror of chirality -
for some reason they are super-imposable...
they compliment each other,
primarily? the show must go one,
         neither side rests, and finalises itself...
why? well, if atheism is based upon presuppositonal
logic, and theism is based upon a suppositional
logic... then evidently they both share
the no-man's land of propositions...
     oddly enough the "non"-existence "of" argument
loves to be pro the suppositional circumstance...
now i know why kant focused on meditating
5 + 7 = 12...
               like a hebrew might burn the tetragrammaton
into his mind...
     it means? to ensure the rigidity of sentences,
to burn into his mind a clarifying ingredient -
that all sentences make: sense,
   with the basic arithmetic being the benchmark
for all subsequent endeavours into scribbling
down the critique: makes sense.
   now to come to think of it,
i'm purposively digressing paying attention
to heidegger's (vii, vi) -
       i just want to keep it to myself -
i might as well write it out verbatim, than try
to explain it...
  and subsequently write several other cohort
"paragraphs" stimulated by the content,
than attempt the dry martini of explaining what
he "meant"; because: he meant this.

Trees, houses, Treehouses,
Abandoned.
                  beaches
                ­                 still
                                 appear the same as summer
but the sky's gone
                 Sunshine
to
                Windwine
                                  (Clouds and clouds, some much            
                                    larger than others, sometimes just one big cloud  
                                   mapped out between            
                                   us and rest of universe to the cascade horizon)

All the pets can tread cement
without
worry of burns and the two hundred calamities
of July are over.
                              Replaced with
                              rain and bums escaping to the
                              soup kitchens and
Churches
                                  (East side Vancouver, Pandora Victoria,  
                                                 astreet in a city astray)
Ashtrays freckled in the evening drizzle
common.

My hands are held by gloves and
                                 fingertips from half of
                                 Japan,
my lips are kissed by the                          comet
beauty mark on right side
bottom
                                                (Though this universe is attending
                                                  unive­rsity in a distant city
                                                  while I hold my own
                                                  practicing the Dharma,
                                                 or MAYBE none of this will happen!)
Everything is in its place
as it always was-
though circumstance has tried to
teach us otherwise the                        
                                     ­                            Blackbox
                                      made of star-rubber S T R E T C H I N G
Hasn't the concept
of          calendars or
                             Jesus or
                                medicine cabinets
                                                         Dentists and
                                                             ­               Saints.
Everything is in its place
as it will always be
        as it has never been...
(Ever)
SPONTANEITY of matter
                         Gliding thr-
                                          -ough matter.
What does it all matter anyway?
There's                    loving
and                    ­     experiencing,
                Music.
           Personsong.
         Do-no-wrong.
That        no-no           of making
             mistakes?
A falsity!
**** up

In blissful circles
to the         SOUND
                    OF SNOW
                    MELTING
on streetlamps front of my
House.
                                (A very silent orchestra performing
                                 Before collision and like dog whistles
                                 It's a sound we cannot hear.
                                The peoples got their poetry and
                                cognitive thought so the other
                                Animals get the REAL sensory
                                Inconceivables to write about
                                But the ******* can't)
In that
                        future
_____
basement house

Where the Van Gogh
                   Velvet Underground sit
P
O
S
T
E
R
E
D
on the wood-c
                        u
                          r
    ­                       v
                             e walls.
I'm in unfolding daydream
Thanking
HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS
predating my
EIGHTEEN.
Thanking the
                              Beats and the Dadaists
                           and Buddhists and
                        Existentialists
                     ­ Post-modernists
                  Minimalists
                Expressionists
            FOR BEING.

Really, they aided
Me off
  the ^ ground
during
eight month unemployment induced depression where
I felt disassociated with myself
and the dynamo                                                       outside the front door..
Glowing via
         sunlight in the day window and
            headlights in the night window.
Either way
I filled up with
                                   (((Purposeless cynicism)))
The world bulb clicked ON
With/without me           there,
None of the corner stores
Or      airports
Or      hospitals
          courts and
          institutions
gave a rat's ***
what woes I be asphyxiated by
or that                 Farmquiet two lane
                                 tarnished path
In the country                       (in May)
      seemed fine a place as any
to     step a few feet to the          
                                               right
                            and
      left

of me and
                         .......DIZZY.......
by death traffic
old Buick polish
(Tragedy they'd say!)

While there midway in the firing line
I felt like
the wackos in      l o o s e
stone COLISEUM daisy cages
               Empty lots,
       Place where the beast of
  Emptiness cuffs to your sleeve
             and weeps
                      All over itself
                      that Sarte was right all along!
(No Exit! No exit!)

Autumn quartz moonlight                        O
Illuminated headstone repetition
circling musk fields.
  Skeleton wings
Of preceded seasons' timbers
Caught muttering the
Corpseconvo
as the               tumblecar
trembling             hot in
                           Music sauna HUM
Approaches life,
to the
                       paralyzed November air
of
Coffin bodies insulated
By roots N' six feet of terrestrial barrier.



Faces disappearing now
to Heavenly chandeliers of time
offering distant light future
and above my ponderous skull presently
                 dancing riverside to situations
                                                  and newness
                           (2016)
                  enigmatic spiral
  every                 color             every
                        possibility
every                rainbow          or
                      non-rainbow chromatically
                           webbed in Attic
                                          of secluded
                                Quantum Dimensions-

The big blue doors are opening to cosmic entirety,
cats everywhere are purring in their sleep,
somebody reads                          Murakami,
                                                      Picabia,
                                                      Joyce,
   ­                                                   W.C Williams,
                                                      B­erryman & Brainard too.
Big blue doors, rites of passage,
Aarti Varanasi twenty-seventeen,
             joyride to San Francisco (I wrote a poem on that once!)
Continuing self-exploration,
            reminding that soul to stay awake,
            the search for love-
Warmth when the year is
metamorphosed to cardinal leaves
       Sunset Summer!
      Autumnal transfiguration
      spiritual!
      Rearrangement of the concurrent reality!

I turn 19 in October and
a procession of kind-eyed children
will be born in the moments
I blow the cake candles.
Light goes out!
light comes in!
Hanoi expects me still.

So, long ago
we had the Renaissance Period,
and then there was
the Baroque Period,
and then there was
the Classical Period,
and then there was
the Romantic Period,
and then we got to
the Twentieth Century,
and we called it modern
and we called it contemporary
but we can't use
those words anymore,
so I say
we call it
the Weird-*** Period,
where every artist,
musician, playwright,
composer, poet,
and so on,
were doing weird-****.
I love this period.
So, in the sixties or so
we had the killing
of music
by John Cage
in his silent piece,
and the death
of painting
in the blank canvas,
and there must have been
a blank piece of paper
that was a poem,
and then
we had the rebirth
of art
in the work
of the minimalists,
and of course,
don't forget
the conceptual artist
who had himself shot,
so now,
we are well into
the Twenty-First Century,
so it must be
the Post Weird-*** Period,
but maybe
we should call it
the Bizarro Period,
or something like that.

(picture of feindflug's vierte version compact album sleeve not included.)*

one day a compact silver,
might be worth more than a 33 1/3,
as tim wonnacott might say:
today’s youth are not into clutter,
they’re moby minimalists;
but i say: what sort of still life
would anyone paint without the clutter
of things, colours people?
i guess modern art is also anti-clutter:
throw in a black rhombus and
you get the end-scale of cubism,
like a single ****** contortion of
block-bulging triangle: a mixture of
them all: equilateral isosceles and scalene
(but not a pythagorean triangle in sight)
on the faces of les demoiselles d'avignon
(the young ladies of avignon) - ripped
off the page and given a whole new canvas.

An indigent old man, in a drunken stupor, with the grime of the streets on his skin, with twigs and **** in his beard, indecently exposes his junk. And a cardboard sign saying he’s hungry.

The flasher from the window of a motel, opens the curtains for the lunch crowd to view his flaccid, Rolly Polly obesity, just standing there Full Monty, ******* his thumb. The audience grow restless, having had a laugh, they begin to grumble and point their fingers with concern angering their faces.

The **** bearded *** points along with the crowd, “hey look! There’s a streak—burp! —in the window there! Look! Heheh.”
“Your fly’s undone dude,” claims a passerby.
“*******! No flies will come, it was just a movie!” His **** still hanging out.

In the nursing home, sometimes old age can’t catch up with the fact that everything seems like it’s slowly melting, especially them home folks’ skin.

A sagging sad white haired lady, with nothing on, holding on for dear life, stuck in her walker, in the middle of the hallway right before the lunch crowd. “Help Lifealert!”

ten men beginning to show outward signs of starvation are standing shoulder to shoulder on the other side of the small window my son is looking through while balancing himself on an exercise ball in a room I am convinced expands.  I am not allowed to have this dream.  when my wife whispers, I whisper back and god continues to be here by choice.  repeating myself means I’m here when I wake up.  son, ball, room, window.  ten ******* minimalists.  I am not supposed to admire the travel writing career taken on by my son your surgeon.  I am saddest knowing my wife’s dream is not the same.  ten women and the chance I haven’t done it.  were it the first year of my probable eleven, god is the lie I’d pick to get out of the room.

There are words
tucked away
in minds,
to incite,
move forward,
shake cores,
turn hoarders
to minimalists,
create
lists,
tasks,
set to do,
choose for me,
shift between
different places,
draw different
faces,
passing by on
streets
I’ve got a tweet
for each
one of you,
wrapped in
treats,
a delicious bonbon,
desserts of
verbs,
adjectives,
nouns,
and more
words.

1.
The scent;  amber
The color; pine
The touch; echos
The sound; blind
They are
All
of the senses
Intertwined.

2.
Sweet Robin, alight... takes to wing
Bruce's laughter, a booming thing.
Mark serenades, Michelle My Belle
Rog recants exploring tells
Scott japes, and keith's ad libs
Karen oh Karen,   heaven forbid!

Artists Dreamers Escapists Poets.
Jesters Lovers Genius Knowers.
Alarmists minimalists
Extroverted introverts
Fighters flighters
Together
Loners

we’re not too sure about these people
we’ve become, minimalists in deliverance
but gluttons in our feeling—protecting our
belongings but not really protecting them
at all, while yielding ourselves to those
people who join us on our train home.
though we might confess, in hesitance, how we were
moved to tears by the man in the window seat
who ignored his reflection as we rode through
a tunnel, how we suddenly began to crave
bare flesh when the hood of her jacket barely
blessed our shoulder, and even how we swore
we saw the outcome of our lives as we were
stung by the eyes of a stranger—we quietly crave
this power to distort somebody. it is a language
we are already fluent in, yet we all dream about
how great it must be, to be able to adjust
sentiment purely by thinking or touching.

it’s a daiquiri colored morn, countlessly
as I, gazing never tiring, of a vista I’ve seen,
awoken to, endlessly changing, voyagers of
birds and boats, the redecorating minimalists,
moving pieces on a latticed shadow lawn

the Sun eastern, asking the trees to turn and bow,
hence the shadows their branches cast are a waffling,
hopscotch pattern irregular, so jumping from/to
yellow-green sunspots, the children are delighted by a
new game, moving to and from and between an ever
changing crazy chessboard of light-patches unsquared

described, written of, yet here I am, once again, a servant
despairing, looking for new combinations of superlatives,
though I never spoke before of it as a vista,
until today, wondering why, perhaps because
it’s here, one lives, one doesn’t conceive of  being
part and parcel of a vista, humans, just visitors,
pawn observers, gallery visitors, art appreciators,
transient hobos after forty years, truthfully claiming
that they’re merely still, passing thru, passing by

9:40 am, respectable hour to meander over
to the throne room, the four Adirondacks, them,
the year round poetry nook authorities, are equal
sunned, shaded, simultaneous, stately shadowing,
observing, advertising as perfect for composing,
willing to make verbal suggestions, rhyming notions,
especially when the poem pays proper obeisance

and so it does, and so it is, as you can clearly read


9:53am Sunday Jun 14
Year of the Pandemic

There was this boy I once loved, one of the last ones.
When he walked, a trail of poetry followed him,
Words that came from Poe, Whitman, and Eliot.
His friends were overrated minimalists compared to him.
He wasn’t a lover of literature, although his face read like one
Of those old library books with the yellowed pages and the feel of
Somebody having loved the words before you, running their fingers along the lines
Passing it on and now it’s your turn, but remember, you can’t have it forever.
Oh no, he wasn’t a lover of literature.
His friends told him stories though, and they were ugly ones.
One day he said, “Hey, are you writing stories about me?”

I pause and think about what lies I should spill next

Because although I want to say, “Well, yes, I write you
“Like the ink was spilling and slipping uncontrollably from my grasp,
“Staining my fingers like you’ve stained my heart.
“I write you because your smile is like the world’s currency
“The one thing we die for, bleed for, dream for, steal for
“Slyly taking and unitedly fall when it’s breaking,
“The one thing everyone sees themselves in, reflected so clearly
“Although we couldn’t be more different, you and me.
“I see myself in you, the poetry, the words overtaking life, the beauty,
“You come onto the pages in a storm of passion and dreams, like a fantasy, you see?
“Like something out of Lewis or Tolkien, like the final empire or a savage song
“Or a wrath and a rose, or a castle made of glass, or the dawn when it comes.
“You look like the stories I love so dearly. You are the words that made me dream
“And have hope when I’m alone.”

Well, of course I don’t say those things because Christ, who does, right?
No matter how cathartic, we never say the words in our head, the words that cry to be let out.
We all think in poetry, but say things that slander the works of Plath and Poe.
So I do that, and I cast my exploding mind so far aside, I swear I heard my bones break.

I said, “No. That’s a lie.
“I don’t write.”

At the age of three, pedant. At sixteen no writer of

love notes, disability number one. Returning, age

four, I curl up my toes. At seventeen, waiting only

longer for delays. At 20 I saw a jumbo jet fly in the

sky, without first taking off. Miracles happen, strange


or not. Will I have visions at 21? A birthday present, she.

Reading tweets on Twitter, drooling over Jill Masterson.

Life is a pleasant surprise at 22, suffering a premature

male menopause, some say. Ironing my friend's shirt, sun

-day is great for minimalists. By the beach, empty at 33

The Renaissance
The Enlightenment
The Baroque
The Romanesque
The Classical
The Neo-classical
The Romantics
The Avant-Garde
The Dark Ages
The Middle Ages
The Federalists
The Philanthropists
The Modernists
The Cubists
The Minimalists
The Impressionists
The Imperialists
The Rationalists
The Surrealists
The Transcendentalists
The Gilded Age
The Industrial Age
The Golden Age
The Space Age
The Age of Reason
The Age of Mediocrity

modern and clean-
a minimalists approach
He nods in agree-
ment and takes off his coat

the internet rules us
emperor of all good
and evil
emperor of the modern
generation
modern places and faces
minimalists have accustomed to it
we live for the morning when we
rise and get on our phones
minds so prone to what we find
through those 1s and 0s

i've become victim to it to
thinking my life only matters as much
as what i see through those digital vacuums
portals to a different life
reality to many
accurately valued to few
the internet has led many to
lose touch of their
rational views
it's sad

- negassie