Flicker Shimmer Glow

The brightest star can shine even with thick black velvet draped over it.  
Quartz, lime and salt crystals formed a glass ball.
The dark womb held me, warm and soft.  
My mom called my cries when I was born the most sorrowful sound she had ever heard.  
She said she’d never heard a baby make a sound like that.    
I’d open my eyes in low light until the world’s light healed rather than hurt.  
The summer before eighth grade, July 1992,
I watched a shooting star burn by at 100,000 miles per hour as I stood on the balcony  
while my family celebrated my birthday inside.  
It made it into the earth’s atmosphere
but it didn’t look like it was coming down;
I know it didn’t hit the ground but it burned something in the time it was here.  
The glass ball of my life cracked inside.  
Light reflected off the salt crystal cracks.  
I saw the beauty of the light within.  
Nacre from my shell kept those cracks from getting worse,
a wild pearl as defense mechanism.  
In 2001, I quit my job after they melted and poured tar all over my life.  
All summer literature class bathtubs filled with rose hip oil cleaned the tar.  
That fall logic and epistemology classes spewed black ink all over my philosophy
written over ten years then.  
Tar turned to asphalt when I met someone from my old job for a drink in November
and it paved a road for my life that went to the hospital I was in that December
where it sealed the roof on my life
when I was almost murdered there
and in February after meeting her for another drink.  
They lit a fire at the top of the glacier and pushed the burning pile of black coal off the edge,
burnt red, looking like flames falling into the valley.  
While that blazed the side of the cliff something lit an incandescent light.  
The electricity from the metal lightbulb ***** went through wires and heated the filament between until it glowed.  
I began putting more work into emotional balance from things I learned at AA meetings.  
In Spring 2003, the damage that the doctors at the hospital in 2001 had done
made it harder for light to reflect from the cracks in the glass ball.
I’d been eating healthy and trying to get regular exercises since 1994
but in Spring 2003 I began swimming for an hour every morning .  
The water washed the pollution from the burning coals off
And then I escaped in July.  
I moved to London to study English Language and Linguistics.  
I would’ve studied English Language and Literature.  
I did well until Spring 2004 when I thought I was being stalked.  
I thought I was manic.  
I thought I was being stalked.  
I went home and didn’t go back for my exams after spring holiday.  
Because I felt traumatized and couldn’t write poetry anymore,
I used black ink to write my notes for my book on trauma and the Russian Revolution.
I started teaching myself German.  
I stayed healthy.  
In 2005, my parents went to visit my mom’s family in Malaysia for two weeks.
I thought I was being stalked.  
I knew I wasn’t manic.  
I thought I was being stalked.  
I told my parents when they came home.  
They thought I was manic.  
I showed them the shoe prints in the snow of different sizes from the woods to the windows.  
They thought I was manic.  
I was outside of my comfort zone.  
I moved to California. I found light.  
I made light,
the light reflected off the salt crystals I used to heal the violence inflicted on me from then on.  
The light turned the traffic lights to not just green from red
but amber and blue.  
The light turned the car signals left and right.  
The light reflected off of salt crystals, light emitting diodes,
electrical energy turned directly to light,
electroluminescence.  
The electrical currents flowed through,
illuminating.  
Alone in the world, I moved to California in July 2005
but in August  I called the person I escaped in 2003,
the sulfur and nitrogen that I hated.  
He didn’t think I was manic but I never said anything.
I never told him why I asked him to move out to California.  
When his coal seemed like only pollution,
I asked him to leave.  
He threatened me.  
I called the authorities.  
They left me there.
He laughed.  
Then the violence came.  
****:  stabbed and punched, my ****** bruised, purple and swollen.  
The light barely reflected from the glass ball wIth cracks through all the acid rain, smoke and haze.
It would take me half an hour to get my body to do what my mind told it to after.  
My dad told me my mom had her cancer removed.
The next day, the coal said if I wanted him to leave he’d leave.  
I booked his ticket.
I drove him to the airport.  
Black clouds gushed the night before for the first time in months,
the sky clear after the rain.  
He was gone and I was free,
melted glass, heated up and poured—
looked like fire,
looked like the Snow Moon in February
with Mercury in the morning sky.  
I worked through ****.  
I worked to overcome trauma.  
Electricity between touch and love caused acid rain, smoke, haze, and mercury
to light the discharge lamps, streetlights and parking lot lights.
Then I changed the direction of the light waves.  
Like lead glass breaks up the light,
lead from the coal, cleaned and replaced by potassium,
glass cut clearly, refracting the light,
electrolytes,
electrical signals lit through my body,
thick black velvet drapes gone.  





















Lava

I think that someone wrote into some palm leaf a manuscript, a gift, a contract.  
After my parents wedding, while they were still in India,
they found out that my dad’s father and my mom’s grandfather worked for kings administering temples and collecting money for their king from the farmers that worked the rice paddies each king owned.  They both left their homes before they left for college.  
My dad, a son of a brahmin’s son,
grew up in his grandmother’s house.  
His mother was not a Brahmin.  
My mother grew up in Malaysia where she saw the children from the rubber plantation
when she walked to school.  
She doesn’t say what caste she is.  
He went to his father’s house, then college.  
He worked, then went to England, then Canada.  
She went to India then Canada.  
They moved to the United States around Christmas 1978
with my brother while she was pregnant with me.  
My father signed a contract with my mother.  
My parents took ashes and formed rock,
the residue left in brass pots in India,
the rocks, so hot, they turned back to lava miles away before turning back to ash again,
then back to rock,
the lava from a super volcano,
the ash purple and red.  


















Circles on a Moss Covered Volcano

The eruption beatifies the magma.  
It becomes obsidian,
only breaks with a fracture,
smooth circles where it breaks.  

My mom was born on the grass
on a lawn
in a moss covered canyon at the top of a volcanic island.  
My grandfather lived in Malaysia before the Japanese occupied.  
When the volcano erupted,
the lava dried at the ocean into black sand.  
The British allied with the Communist Party of Malaysia—
after they organized.  
After the Americans defeated the Japanese at Pearl Harbor,
the British took over Malaysia again.  
They kept different groups apart claiming they were helping them.  
The black sand had smooth pebbles and sharp rocks.  
Ethnic Malay farmers lived in Kampongs, villages.  
Indians lived on plantations.  
The Chinese lived in towns and urban areas.  
Ethnic Malays wanted independence.
In 1946, after strikes, demonstrations, and boycotts
the British agreed to work with them.  
The predominantly Chinese Communist Party of Malaysia went underground,
guerrilla warfare against the British,
claiming their fight was for independence.  
For the British, that emergency required vast powers
of arrest, detention without trial and deportation to defeat terrorism.  
The Emergency became less unpopular as the terrorism became worse.  
The British were the iron that brought oxygen through my mom’s body.  
She loved riding on her father’s motorcycle with him
by the plantations,
through the Kampongs
and to the city, half an hour away.  
The British left Malaysia independent in 1957
with Malaysian nationalists holding most state and federal government offices.  
As the black sand stretches towards the ocean,
it becomes big stones of dried lava, flat and smooth.  

My mom thought her father and her uncle were subservient to the British.  
She thought all things, all people were equal.  
When her father died when she was 16, 1965,
they moved to India,
my mother,
a foreigner in India, though she’s Indian.  
She loved rock and roll and mini skirts
and didn’t speak the local language.  
On the dried black lava,
it can be hard to know the molten lava flickers underneath there.  
Before the Korean War,
though Britain and the United States wanted
an aggressive resolution
condemning North Korea,
they were happy
that India supported a draft resolution
condemning North Korea
for breach of the peace.  
During the Korean War,
India, supported by Third World and other Commonwealth nations,
opposed United States’ proposals.
They were able to change the U.S. resolution
to include the proposals they wanted
and helped end the war.  
China wanted the respect of Third World nations
and saw the United States as imperialist.  
China thought India was a threat to the Third World
by taking aid from the United States and the Soviets.  
Pakistan could help with that and a seat at the United Nations.  
China wanted Taiwan’s seat at the UN.
My mother went to live with her uncle,
a communist negotiator for a corporation,
in India.  
A poet,
he threw parties and invited other artists, musicians and writers.  
I have the same brown hyperpigmentation at my joints that he had.  
During the day, only the steam from the hot lava can be seen.  
In 1965, Pakistani forces went into Jammu and Kashmir with China’s support.  
China threatened India after India sent its troops in.  
Then they threatened again before sending their troops to the Indian border.  
The United States stopped aid to Pakistan and India.
Pakistan agreed to the UN ceasefire agreement.  
Pakistan helped China get a seat at the UN
and tried to keep the west from escalating in Vietnam.  
The smoldering sound of the lava sizzles underneath the dried lava.  
When West Pakistan refused to allow East Pakistan independence,
violence between Bengalis and Biharis developed into upheaval.  
Bengalis moved to India
and India went into East Pakistan.  
Pakistan surrendered in December 1971.  
East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh

The warm light of the melted lava radiates underneath but burns.  
In 1974, India tested the Smiling Buddha,
a nuclear bomb.  
After Indira Gandhi’s conviction for election fraud in 1973,
Marxist Professor Narayan called for total revolution
and students protested all over India.  
With food shortages, inflation and regional disputes
like Sikh separatists training in Pakistan for an independent Punjab,
peasants and laborers joined the protests.  
Railway strikes stopped the economy.  
In 1975, Indira Gandhi, the Iron Lady,
declared an Emergency,
imprisoning political opponents, restricting freedoms and restricting the press,
claiming threats to national security
because the war with Pakistan had just ended.  
The federal government took over Kerala’s communist dominated government and others.  

My mom could’ve been a dandelion, but she’s more like thistle.  
She has the center that dries and flutters in the wind,
beautiful and silky,
spiny and prickly,
but still fluffy, downy,
A daisy.
They say thistle saved Scotland from the Norse.  
Magma from the volcano explodes
and the streams of magma fly into the air.  
In the late 60s,
the civil rights movement rose
against the state in Northern Ireland
for depriving Catholics
of influence and opportunity.
The Northern Irish police,
Protestant and unionist, anti-catholic,
responded violently to the protests and it got worse.  
In 1969, the British placed Arthur Young,
who had worked at the Federation of Malaya
at the time of their Emergency
at the head of the British military in Northern Ireland.
The British military took control over the police,
a counter insurgency rather than a police force,
crowd control, house searches, interrogation, and street patrols,
use of force against suspects and uncooperative citizens.  
Political crimes were tolerated by Protestants but not Catholics.  
The lava burns the rock off the edge of the volcano.  

On January 30, 1972, ****** Sunday,  
British Army policing killed 13 unarmed protesters
fighting for their rights over their neighborhood,
protesting the internment of suspected nationalists.
That led to protests across Ireland.  
When banana leaves are warmed,
oil from the banana leaves flavors the food.  
My dad flew from Canada to India in February 1972.  
On February 4, my dad met my mom.  
On February 11, 1972,
my dad married my mom.  
They went to Canada,
a quartz singing bowl and a wooden mallet wrapped in suede.  
The rock goes down with the lava, breaking through the rocks as it goes down.  
In March 1972, the British government took over
because they considered the Royal Ulster Police and the Ulster Special Constabulary
to be causing most of the violence.  
The lava blocks and reroutes streams,
melts snow and ice,
flooding.  
Days later, there’s still smoke, red.  
My mom could wear the clothes she liked
without being judged
with my dad in Canada.  
She didn’t like asking my dad for money.
My dad, the copper helping my mother use that iron,
wanted her to go to college and finish her bachelors degree.
She got a job.  
In 1976, the police took over again in Northern Ireland
but they were a paramilitary force—
armored SUVs, bullet proof jackets, combat ready
with the largest computerized surveillance system in the UK,
high powered weapons,
trained in counter insurgency.  
Many people were murdered by the police
and few were held accountable.  
Most of the murdered people were not involved in violence or crime.  
People were arrested under special emergency powers
for interrogation and intelligence gathering.  
People tried were tried in non-jury courts.  
My mom learned Malayalam in India
but didn’t speak well until living with my dad.  
She also learned to cook after getting married.  
Her mother sent her recipes; my dad cooked for her—
turmeric, cumin, coriander, cayenne and green chiles.  
Having lived in different countries,
my mom’s food was exposed to many cultures,
Chinese and French.
Ground rock, minerals and glass
covered the ground
from the ash plume.  
She liked working.  

A volcano erupted for 192 years,
an ice age,
disordered ices, deformed under pressure
and ordered ice crystals, brittle in the ice core records.  
My mother liked working.  
Though Khomeini was in exile by the 1970s in Iran,
more people, working and poor,
turned to him and the ****-i-Ulama for help.
My mom didn’t want kids though my dad did.
She agreed and in 1978 my brother was born.
Iran modernized but agriculture and industry changed so quickly.  
In January 1978, students protested—
censorship, surveillance, harassment, illegal detention and torture.  
Young people and the unemployed joined.  
My parents moved to the United States in December 1978.  
The regime used a lot of violence against the protesters,
and in September 1978 declared martial law in Iran.  
Troops were shooting demonstrators.
In January 1979, the Shah and his family fled.  
On February 11, 1979, my parents’ anniversary,
the Iranian army declared neutrality.  
I was born in July 1979.
The chromium in emeralds and rubies colors them.
My brother was born in May and I was born in July.

Obsidian—
iron, copper and chromium—
isn’t a gas
but it isn’t a crystal;
it’s between the two,
the ordered crystal and the disordered gas.  
They made swords out of obsidian.  





Warm Light Shatters

The eruption beatifies the magma.  
It becomes obsidian,
only breaks with a fracture,
smooth circles where it breaks.  

My dad was born on a large flat rock on the edge of the top
of a hill,
Molasses, sweet and dark, the potent flavor dominates,
His father, the son of a Brahmin,
His mother from a lower caste.
His father’s family wouldn’t touch him,
He grew up in his mother’s mother’s house on a farm.  
I have the same brown hyperpigmentation spot on my right hand that he has.

In 1901, D’Arcy bought a 60 year concession for oil exploration In Iran.
The Iranian government extended it for another 32 years in 1933.
At that time oil was Iran’s “main source of income.”
In 1917’s Balfour Declaration, the British government proclaimed that they favored a national home for the Jews in Palestine and their “best endeavors to facilitate the achievement” of that.

The British police were in charge of policing in the mandate of Palestine.  A lot of the policemen they hired were people who had served in the British army before, during the Irish War for Independence.  
The army tried to stop how violent the police were, police used torture and brutality, some that had been used during the Irish War for Independence, like having prisoners tied to armored cars and locomotives and razing the homes of people in prison or people they thought were related to people thought to be rebels.
The police hired Arab police and Jewish police for lower level policing,
Making local people part of the management.
“Let Arab police beat up Arabs and Jewish police beat up Jews.”

The lava blocks and reroutes streams, melts snow and ice, flooding.
In 1922, there were 83,000 Jews, 71,000 Christians, and 589,000 Muslims.
The League If Nations endorsed the British Mandate.
During an emergency, in the 1930s, British regulations allowed collective punishment, punishing villages for incidents.
Local officers in riots often deserted and also shared intelligence with their own people.
The police often stole, destroyed property, tortured and killed people.  
Arab revolts sapped the police power over Palestinians by 1939.

My father’s mother was from a matrilineal family.
My dad remembers tall men lining up on pay day to respectfully wait for her, 5 feet tall.  
She married again after her husband died.
A manager from a tile factory,
He spoke English so he supervised finances and correspondence.
My dad, a sunflower, loved her: she scared all the workers but exuded warmth to the people she loved.

Obsidian shields people from negative energy.
David Cargill founded the Burmah Oil Co. in 1886.
If there were problems with oil exploration in Burma and Indian government licenses, Persian oil would protect the company.  
In July 1906, many European oil companies, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and others, allied to protect against the American oil company, Standard Oil.
D’Arcy needed money because “Persian oil took three times as long to come on stream as anticipated.”
Burmah Oil Co. began the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. as a subsidiary.
Ninety-seven percent of British Petroleum was owned by Burmah Oil Co.
By 1914, the British government owned 51% of the Anglo-Persian Oil Co.  
Anglo-Persian acquired independence from Burmah Oil and Royal Dutch Shell with two million pounds from the British government.

The lava burns the rock off the edge of the volcano.
In 1942, after the Japanese took Burma,
the British destroyed their refineries before leaving.
The United Nations had to find other sources of oil.
In 1943, Japan built the Burma-Thailand Railroad with forced labor from the Malay peninsula who were mostly from the rubber plantations.

The rock goes down with the lava, breaking through the rocks as it goes down.
In 1945. Japan destroyed their refineries before leaving Burma.
Cargill, Watson and Whigham were on the Burmah Oil Co. Board and then the Anglo Iranian Oil Co. Board.  

In 1936 Palestine, boycotts, work stoppages, and violence against British police officials and soldiers compelled the government to appoint an investigatory commission.  
Leaders of Egypt, Trans Jordan, Syria and Iraq helped end the work stoppages.
The British government had the Peel Commission read letters, memoranda, and petitions and speak with British officials, Jews and Arabs.  
The Commission didn’t believe that Arabs and Jews could live together in a single Jewish state.
Because of administrative and financial difficulties the Colonial Secretary stated that to split Palestine into Arab and Jewish states was impracticable.  
The Commission recommended transitioning 250,000 Arabs and 1500 Jews with British control over their oil pipeline, their naval base and Jerusalem.  
The League of Nations approved.
“It will not remove the grievance nor prevent the recurrence,” Lord Peel stated after.
The Arab uprising was much more militant after Peel.  Thousands of Arabs were wounded, ten thousand were detained.  
In Sykes-Picot and the Husain McMahon agreements, the British promised the Arabs an independent state but they did not keep that promise.  
Representatives from the Arab states rejected the Peel recommendations.
United Nations General Assembly Resolution181 partitioned Palestine into Arab and Jewish states with an international regime for the city of Jerusalem backed by the United States and the Soviet Union.  

The Israeli Yishuv had strong military and intelligence organization —-  
the British recognized that their interest was with the Arabs and abstained from the vote.  
In 1948, Israel declared the establishment of its state.  
Ground rock, minerals, and gas covered the ground from the ash plume.
The Palestinian police force was disbanded and the British gave officers the option of serving in Malaya.

Though Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy supported snd tried to get Israel to offer the Arabs concessions, it wasn’t a major priority and didn’t always approve of Israel’s plans.
Arabs that had supported the British to end Turkish rule stopped supporting the West.  
Many Palestinians joined left wing groups and violent third world movements.  
Seventy-eight percent of the territory of former Palestine was under Israel’s control.  

My dad left for college in 1957 and lived in an apartment above the United States Information services office.
Because he graduated at the top of his class, he was given a job with the public works department of the government on the electricity board.  
“Once in, you’ll never leave.”
When he wanted a job where he could do real work, his father was upset.
He broke the chains with bells for vespers.
He got a job in Calcutta at Kusum Products and left the government, though it was prestigious to work there.
In the chemical engineering division, one of the projects he worked on was to design a *** distillery, bells controlled by hammers, hammers controlled by a keyboard.
His boss worked in the United Kingdom for. 20 years before the company he worked at, part of Power Gas Corporation, asked him to open a branch in Calcutta.
He opened the branch and convinced an Industrialist to open a company doing the same work with him.  The branch he opened closed after that.  
My dad applied for labor certification to work abroad and was selected.  
His boss wrote a reference letter for my him to the company he left in the UK.  My dad sent it telling the company when he was leaving for the UK.  
The day he left for London, he got the letter they sent in the mail telling him to take the train to Sheffield the next day and someone from the firm would meet him at the station.  
His dad didn’t know he left, he didn’t tell him.
He broke the chains with chimes for schisms.


Anglo-Persian Oil became Anglo-Iranian Oil in 1935.
The British government used oil and Anglo-Persian oil to fight communism, have a stronger relationship with the United States and make the United Kingdom more powerful.  
The National Secularists, the Tudeh, and the Communists wanted to nationalize Iran’s oil and mobilized the Iranian people.
The British feared nationalization in Iran would incite political parties like the Secular Nationalists all over the world.  
In 1947, the Iranian government passed the Single Article Law that “[increased] investment In welfare benefits, health, housing, education, and implementation of Iranianization through substitution of foreigners” at Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.
“Anglo-Iranian Oil Company made more profit in 1950 than it paid to the Iranian government in royalties over the previous half century.”
The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company tried to negotiate a new concession and claimed they’d hire more Iranian people into jobs held by British and people from other nationalities at the company.
Their hospitals had segregated wards.  
On May 1, 1951, the Iranian government passed a bill that nationalized Anglo- Iranian Oil Co.’s holdings.  
During the day, only the steam from the hot lava can be seen.
In August 1953, the Iranian people elected Mossadegh from the Secular Nationalist Party as prime minister.
The British government with the CIA overthrew Mossadegh using the Iranian military after inducing protests and violent demonstrations.  
Anglo-Iranian Oil changed its name to British Petroleum in 1954.
Iranians believe that America destroyed Iran’s “last chance for democracy” and blamed America for Iran’s autocracy, its human rights abuses, and secret police.

The smoldering sound of the lava sizzles underneath the dried lava.  
In 1946, Executive Yuan wanted control over 4 groups of Islands in the South China Sea to have a stronger presence there:  the Paracels, the Spratlys, Macclesfield Bank, and the Pratas.
The French forces in the South China Sea would have been stronger than the Chinese Navy then.
French Naval forces were in the Gulf of Tonkin, U.S. forces were in the Taiwan Strait, the British were in Hong Kong, and the Portuguese were in Macao.
In the 1950s, British snd U.S. oil companies thought there might be oil in the Spratlys.  
By 1957, French presence in the South China Sea was hardly there.  

When the volcano erupted, the lava dried at the ocean into black sand.
By 1954, the Tudeh Party’s communist movement and  intelligence organization had been destroyed.  
Because of the Shah and his government’s westernization policies and disrespectful treatment of the Ulama, Iranians began identifying with the Ulama and Khomeini rather than their government.  
Those people joined with secular movements to overthrow the Shah.  

In 1966, Ne Win seized power from U Nu in Burma.
“Soldiers ruled Burma as soldiers.”
Ne Win thought that western political
Institutions “encouraged divisions.”
Minority groups found foreign support for their separatist goals.
The Karens and the Mons supported U Nu in Bangkok.  


Rare copper, a heavy metal, no alloys,
a rock in groundwater,
conducts electricity and heat.
In 1965, my Dad’s cousin met him at Heathrow, gave him a coat and £10 and brought him to a bed and breakfast across from Charing Cross Station where he’d get the train to Sheffield the next morning.
He took the train and someone met him at the train station.  
At the interview they asked him to design a grandry girder, the main weight bearing steel girder as a test.
Iron in the inner and outer core of the earth,
He’d designed many of those.  
He was hired and lived at the YMCA for 2 1/2 years.  
He took his mother’s family name, Menon, instead of his father’s, Varma.
In 1967, he left for Canada and interviewed at Bechtel before getting hired at Seagrams.  
Iron enables blood to carry oxygen.
His boss recommended him for Dale Carnegie’s leadership training classes and my dad joined the National Instrument Society and became President.
He designed a still In Jamaica,
Ordered all the parts, nuts and bolts,
Had all the parts shipped to Jamaica and made sure they got there.
His boss supervised the construction, installation and commission in Jamaica.
Quartz, heat and fade resistant, though he was an engineer and did the work of an engineer, my dad only had the title, technician so my dad’s boss thought he wasn’t getting paid enough but couldn’t get his boss to offer more than an extra $100/week or the title of engineer; he told my dad he thought he should leave.
In 1969, he got a job at Celanese, which made rayon.
He quit Celanese to work at McGill University and they allowed him to take classes to earn his MBA while working.  

The United States and Israel’s alliance was strong by 1967.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 at the end of the Third Arab Israeli War didn’t mention the Palestinians but mentioned the refugee problem.
After 1967, the Palestinians weren’t often mentioned and when mentioned only as terrorists.  
Palestinians’ faith in the “American sponsored peace process” diminished, they felt the world community ignored and neglected them also.
Groups like MAN that stopped expecting anything from Arab regimes began hijacking airplanes.
By 1972, the Palestine Liberation Organization had enough international support to get by the United States’ veto in the United Nations Security Council and Arab League recognition as representative of the Palestinian people.
The Palestinians knew the United States stated its support, as the British had, but they weren’t able to accomplish anything.  
The force Israel exerted in Johnson’s United States policy delivered no equilibrium for the Palestinians.  

In 1969, all political parties submitted to the BSPP, Burma Socialist Programme Party.
Ne Win nationalized banks and oil and deprived minorities of opportunities.
Ne Win became U Nu Win, civilian leader of Burma in 1972 and stopped the active role that U Nu defined for Burma internationally
He put military people in power even when they didn’t have experience which triggered “maldistribution of goods and chronic shortages.”  
Resources were located in areas where separatist minorities had control.

The British presence in the South China Sea ended in 1968.  
The United States left Vietnam in 1974 and China went into the Western Paracels.
The U.S. didn’t intervene and Vietnam took the Spratlys.
China wanted to claim the continental shelf In the central part of the South China Sea and needed the Spratlys.
The United States mostly disregarded the Ulama In Iran and bewildered the Iranian people by not supporting their revolution.

Obsidian—
iron, copper and chromium—
isn’t a gas
but it isn’t a crystal;
it’s between the two,
the ordered crystal and the disordered gas.  
They made swords out of obsidian.


Edelweiss

I laid out in my backyard in my bikini.  
I love the feeling of my body in the sun.  
I’d be dark from the end of spring until winter.
The snow froze my bare feet through winter ,
my skin pale.
American towns in 1984,
Free, below glaciers the sunlight melted the snow,
a sea of green and the edelweiss on the edge of the  limestone,
frosted but still strong.    
When the spring warmed the grass,
the grass warmed my feet. 
The whole field looked cold and white from the glacier but in the meadow,
the bright yellow centers of those flowers float free in the center of the white petals.
The bright yellow center of those edelweiss scared the people my parents ran to America from India to get away from.  
On a sidewalk in Queens, New York in 1991, the men stared and yelled comments at me in short shorts and a fitted top in the summer.  
I grabbed my dad’s arm.

























The Bread and Coconut Butter of Aparigraha

Twelve year old flowerhead,
Marigold, yarrow and nettle,
I’d be all emotion
If not for all my work
From the time I was a teenager.
I got depressed a lot.
I related to people I read about
In my weather balloon,
Grasping, ignorant, and desperate,
But couldn’t relate to other twelve year olds.
After school I read Dali’s autobiography,
Young ****** Autosodomized by Her Own Chastity.
Fresh, green nettle with fresh and dried yarrow for purity.
Dead souls enticed to the altar by orange marigolds,
passion and creativity,
Coax sleep and rouse dreams.
Satellites measure indirectly with wave lengths of light.
My weather balloon measures the lower and middle levels of the atmosphere directly,
Fifty thousand feet high,
Metal rod thermometer,
Slide humidity sensor,
Canister for air pressure.

I enjoy rye bread and cold coconut butter in my weather balloon,
But I want Dali, and all the artists and writers.
Rye grows at high altitudes
But papyrus grows in soil and shallow water,
Strips of papyrus pith shucked from their stems.
When an anchor’s weighed, a ship sails,
But when grounded we sail.
Marigolds, yarrow and nettle,
Flowerhead,
I use the marigold for sleep,
The yarrow for endurance and intensity,
toiling for love and truth,
And the nettle for healing.
Strong rye bread needs equally strong flavors.
By the beginning of high school,
I read a lot of Beat literature
And found Buddhism.
I loved what I read
But I didn’t like some things.
I liked attachment.  
I got to the ground.
Mushrooms grow in dry soil.
Attachment to beauty is Buddha activity.
Not being attached to things I don’t find beautiful is Buddha activity.  
I fried mushrooms in a single layer in oil, fleshy.
I roasted mushrooms at high temperatures in the oven, crisp.
I simmered mushrooms in stock with kombu.
Rye bread with cold coconut butter and cremini mushrooms,
raw, soft and firm.  
Life continues, life changes,
Attachments, losses, mourning and suffering,
But change lures growth.
I find stream beds and wet soil.
I lay the strips of papyrus next to each other.
I cross papyrus strips over the first,
Then wet the crossed papyrus strips,
Press and cement them into a sheet.
I hammer it and dry it in the sun,
With no thought of achievement or self,
Flowerhead,
Hands filled with my past,
Head filled with the future,
Dali, artists poets,
Wishes and desires aligned with nature,
Abundance,
Cocoa, caraway, and molasses.

If I ever really like someone,
I’ll be wearing the dress he chooses,
Fresh green nettle and yarrow, the seeds take two years to grow strong,
Lasting love.
Marigolds steer dead souls from the altar to the afterlife,
Antiseptic, healing wounds,
Soothing sore throats and headaches.
Imperturbable, stable flowerhead,
I empty my mind.
When desires are aligned with nature, desire flows.
Papyrus makes paper and cloth.
Papyrus makes sails.
Charcoal from the ash of pulverized papyrus heals wounds.
Without attachment to the fruit of action
There is continuation of life,
Rye bread and melted coconut butter,
The coconut tree in the coconut butter,
The seed comes from the ground out of nothing,
Naturalness.
It has form.
As the seed grows the seed expresses the tree,
The seed expresses the coconut,
The seed expresses the coconut butter.
Rye bread, large open hollows, chambers,
Immersed in melted coconut butter,
Desire for expansion and creation,
No grasping, not desperate.
When the mind is compassion, the mind is boundless.
Every moment,
only that,
Every moment,
a scythe to the papyrus in the stream bed of the past.  

































Sound on Powdery Blue

Potter’s clay, nymph, plum unplumbed, 1993.
Dahlia, ice, powder, musk and rose,
my source of life emerged in darkness, blackness.
Seashell fragments in the sand,
The glass ball of my life cracked inside,
Light reflected off the salt crystal cracks,
Nacre kept those cracks from getting worse.
Young ****** Autosodomized By Her Own Chastity,
Nymph, I didn’t want to give my body,
Torn, *****, ballgown,
To people who wouldn’t understand me,
Piquant.

Outside on the salt flats,
Aphrodite, goddess of beauty, pleasure and fertility and
Asexual Artemis, goddess of animals, and the hunt,
Mistress of nymphs,
Punish with ruthless savagery.

In my bedroom, blue caribou moss covered rocks, pine, and yew trees,
The heartwood writhes as hurricane gales, twisters and whirlwinds
Contort their bark,
Roots strong in the soil.
Orris root dried in the sun, bulbs like wood.
Dahlia runs to baritone soundbath radio waves.
Light has frequencies,
Violet between blue and invisible ultraviolet,
Flame, slate and flint.
Every night is cold.

Torii gates, pain secured as sacred.
An assignation, frost hardy dahlia and a plangent resonant echo.
High frequency sound waves convert to electrical signals,
Breathe from someone I want,
Silt.
Beam, radiate, ensorcel.
I break the bark,
Sap flows and dries,
Resin seals over the tear.
I distill pine,
Resin and oil for turpentine, a solvent.
Quiver, bemired,
I lead sound into my darkness,
Orris butter resin, sweet and warm,
Hot jam drops on snow drops,
Orange ash on smoke,
Balm on lava,
The problem with cotton candy.

Electrical signals give off radiation or light waves,
The narrow frequency range where
The crest of a radio wave and the crest of a light wave overlap,
Infrared.
Glaciers flow, sunlight melts the upper layers of the snow when strong,
A wet snow avalanche,
A torrent, healing.
Brown sugar and whiskey,
Undulant, lavender.
Pine pitch, crystalline, sticky, rich and golden,
And dried pine rosin polishes glass smooth
Like the smell of powdery orris after years.
Softness, flush, worthy/not worthy,
Rich rays thunder,
Intensify my pulse,
Frenzied red,
Violet between blue and invisible ultraviolet.
Babylon—flutter, glow.
Unquenchable cathartic orris.  

















Pink Graphite

Camellias, winter shrubs,
Their shallow roots grow beneath the spongy caribou moss,
Robins egg blue.
After writing a play with my gifted students program in 1991,
I stopped spending all my free time writing short stories,
But the caribou moss was still soft.

In the cold Arctic of that town,
The evergreen protected the camellias from the afternoon sun and storms.
They branded hardy camellias with a brass molded embossing iron;
I had paper and graphite for my pencils.

After my ninth grade honors English teacher asked us to write poems in 1994,
It began raining.
We lived on an overhang.
A vertical rise to the top of the rock.
The rainstorm caused a metamorphic change in the snowpack,
A wet snow avalanche drifted slowly down the moss covered rock,
The snow already destabilized by exposure to the sunlight.

The avalanche formed lakes,
rock basins washed away with rainwater and melted snow,
Streams dammed by the rocks.  
My pencils washed away in the avalanche,
My clothes heavy and cold.
I wove one side of each warp fiber through the eye of the needle and one side through each slot,
Salves, ointments, serums and tinctures.
I was mining for graphite.
They were mining me,
The only winch, the sound through the water.

A steep staircase to the red Torii gates,
I broke the chains with bells for vespers
And chimes for schisms,
And wove the weft across at right angles to the warp.  

On a rocky ledge at the end of winter,
The pink moon, bitters and body butter,
They tried to get  me to want absinthe,
Wormwood for bitterness and regret.
Heat and pressure formed carbon for flakes of graphite.
Heat and pressure,
I made bitters,
Brandy, grapefruit, chocolate, mandarin rind, tamarind and sugar.
I grounded my feet in the pink moss,
paper dried in one hand,
and graphite for my pencils in the other.  



































Flakes

I don’t let people that put me down be part of my life.  
Gardens and trees,
My shadow sunk in the grass in my yard
As I ate bread, turmeric and lemon.
Carbon crystallizes into graphite flakes.
I write to see well,
Graphite on paper.  
A shadow on rock tiles with a shield, a diamond and a bell
Had me ***** to humiliate me.
Though I don’t let people that put me down near me,
A lot of people putting me down seemed like they were following me,
A platform to jump from
While she had her temple.  

There was a pink door to the platform.
I ate bread with caramelized crusts and
Drank turmeric lemonade
Before I opened that door,
Jumped and
Descended into blankets and feathers.
I found matches and rosin
For turpentine to clean,
Dried plums and licorice.  

In the temple,
In diamonds, leather, wool and silk,
She had her shield and bells,
Drugs and technology,
Thermovision 210 and Minox,
And an offering box where people believed
That if their coins went in
Their wishes would come true.

Hollyhock and smudging charcoal for work,  
Belled,
I ground grain in the mill for the bread I baked for breakfast.
The bells are now communal bells
With a watchtower and a prison,
Her shield, a blowtorch and flux,
Her ex rays, my makeshift records
Because Stalin didn’t like people dancing,
He liked them divebombing.
Impurities in the carbon prevent diamonds from forming,
Measured,
The most hard, the most expensive,
But graphite’s soft delocalized electrons move.  






































OCEAN BED

The loneliness of going to sleep by myself.  
I want a bed that’s high off the ground,
a mattress, an ocean.
I want a crush and that  person in my bed.  
Only that,
a crush in my bed,
an ocean in my bed.  
Just love.  
But I sleep with my thumbs sealed.  
I sleep with my hands, palms up.  
I sleep with my hands at my heart.  
They sear my compassion with their noise.  
They hold their iron over their fire and try to carve their noise into my love,
scored by the violence of voices, dark and lurid,  
but not burned.  
I want a man in my bed.  
When I wake up in an earthquake
I want to be held through the aftershocks.  
I like men,
the waves come in and go out
but the ocean was part of my every day.  
I don’t mind being fetishized in the ocean.  
I ran by the ocean every morning.  
I surfed in the ocean.  
I should’ve gone into the ocean that afternoon at Trestles,
holding my water jugs, kneeling at the edge.  














Morning

I want to fall asleep in the warm arms of a fireman.  
I want to wake up to the smell of coffee in my kitchen.  

Morning—the molten lava in the outer core of the earth embeds the iron from the inner core into the earth’s magnetic field.  
The magnetic field flips.  
The sun, so strong, where it gets through the trees it burns everything but the pine.  
The winds change direction.  
Storms cast lightening and rain.  
Iron conducts solar flares and the heavy wind.  
In that pine forest, I shudder every time I see a speck of light for fear of neon and fluorescents.  The eucalyptus cleanses congestion.  
And Kerouac’s stream ululates, crystal bowl sound baths.  
I follow the sound to the water.  
The stream ends at a bluff with a thin rocky beach below.  
The green water turns black not far from the shore.  
Before diving into the ocean, I eat globe mallow from the trees, stems and leaves, the viscous flesh, red, soft and nutty.  
I distill the pine from one of the tree’s bark and smudge the charcoal over my skin.  

Death, the palo santo’s lit, cleansing negative energy.  
It’s been so long since I’ve smelled a man, woodsmoke, citrus and tobacco.  
Jasmine, plum, lime and tuberose oil on the base of my neck comforts.  
Parabolic chambers heal, sound waves through water travel four times faster.  
The sound of the open sea recalibrates.  
I dissolve into the midnight blue of the ocean.  

I want to fall asleep in the warm arms of a fireman.  
I want to wake up to the smell of coffee in my kitchen.  
I want hot water with coconut oil when I get up.  
We’d lay out on the lawn, surrounded by high trees that block the wind.  
Embers flying through the air won’t land in my yard, on my grass, or near my trees.  





Blue Paper

Haze scatters blue light on a planet.  
Frought women, livid, made into peonies by Aphrodites that caught their men flirting and blamed the women, flushed red.
and blamed the women, flushed red.
Frought women, livid, chrysanthemums, dimmed until the end of the season, exchanged and retained like property.  
Blue women enter along the sides of her red Torii gates, belayed, branded and belled, a plangent sound.  
By candles, colored lights and dried flowers she’s sitting inside on a concrete floor, punctures and ruin burnished with paper, making burnt lime from lime mortar.  
Glass ***** on the ceiling, she moves the beads of a Palestinian glass bead bracelet she holds in her hands.  
She bends light to make shadows against  thin wooden slats curbed along the wall, and straight across the ceiling.
A metier, she makes tinctures, juniper berries and cotton *****.
Loamy soil in the center of the room,
A hawthorn tree stands alone,
A gateway for fairies.
large stones at the base protecting,
It’s branches a barrier.  
It’s leaves and shoots make bread and cheese.
It’s berries, red skin and yellow flesh, make jam.
Green bamboo stakes for the peonies when they whither from the weight of their petals.
And lime in the soil.  
She adds wood chips to the burnt lime in the kiln,
Unrolled paper, spools, and wire hanging.
Wood prayer beads connect her to the earth,
The tassels on the end of the beads connect her to spirit, to higher truth.
Minerals, marine mud and warm basins of seawater on a flower covered desk.  
She adds slaked lime to the burnt lime and wood chips.  
The lime converts to paper,
Trauma victims speak,
Light through butterfly wings.  
She’s plumeria with curved petals, thick, holding water

My feet shift oceans
When I wade.
My fingers poked craters
In the moon when I tripped
Over the Shatsky Rise
Under a stroll to Oceania from

Eurasia. I eat from
Tectonic plates;  
Glaciers are my
Popsicles.

I shake fallen stars from my
Shoulders and walk on,
Earthquake by earthquake.
Interstellar breezes soothe the

Blisters from when I
Burned my head on the sun.
My arms can reach Mars, look:
Red bits of Olympus Mons and

Nereidum under my
Fingernails.

I leap lightyears.
I cry tsunamies over the fact that

You can't see me.

Mons getting better *** I spoke of you....
she didnt shed a tear like she would ususally do.

I told her about a happy memory...
and I smiled really big at the end....
and she did she.

immensely immersed in
pensive verses
that don't make sense.
pencil thin & shrinking.
thinking about the end
before the **** begins
is just...
ignorant.

hi.
I'm comin to
all yall still alive
from down in the
diamond mines &
I'm having a helluvatime
winding around the spine
& biting through the wires.

I am not of your kind.

I am gypsy science.
I am high minded & iron sided
& I like fire & liars
& violence & thieves        
I find them quite inticing
since there was no one to supervise or guide me but thats fine with me
but it is tiring spiraling between
subterranean lows
& olympian peaks.

My daughter will not crawl from crib to tanning bed.

She will learn
the terms “unnattainable beauty standards” before she learns the alphabet.

She will never compare herself
to anyone.

She will never compare herself to Britney, Christina, Selena.

She will never compare herself to Cinderella, Ariel, Belle,
Hell. No.

She will never aspire to be the sultry *** kitten taking seductive showers in shampoo commercials.
No.

My daughter will be named Venus.
The goddess of love, beauty, fertility,

The most beautiful woman I ever saw.
She is plump, fullfigured barebreasted wide hipped with curly hair covered mons

Goddess.

My daughter will grow up to be ******, poisonously beautiful

With long locks of goldenrodred hair, like her mother.
Greyblueblack eyes and shoulder freckles, like her father.

And if I can never become pregnant,
my sisters daughters will be my daughters
skin the color of cinnamon or chocolate, or vanilla ice cream
and just as sweet.

Men, women, boys, girls will pine over her, fall in love with her radiating skin
that will never look photoshopped, but always real.

As if the sun came down from the sky to give her the glow of all the light in the universe.

She will love her body the way that my mother taught me to love mine.
I will show her pictures of Whoopi Goldberg and America Ferrera and Margaret Cho and Marilyn Monroe

And she will know that beauty
is not a synonym
for skinny.

Beauty
is not a synonym for
****.

Beauty is not defined by size
or color
or texture, no.

It is defined by how she distributes
her love
and light
to everyone she meets.
no exceptions.



and she will never doubt that she is lovely.

In the orange cream dying sun's half light
swaddled by blankets wrapped in ***** clothes
I open my lips wanting your taste
eye to eye, mons *****, warm fragrance
To offer myself and soul over completely
When we were young did you ever think
we'd drown in the ocean of flesh between legs?
She smiled brightly, made noises
overjoyed much more than confused,
though that's not the story now, is it?
In an instant passion rises up with steam
gone again before I wipe the mirror and
brush my teeth, and once again I see
blackened debris, they're rotting out
from misspoke verbs
All that's sweet now is the imagining
of diabetic what once was
Two closed eyes reach back with a breathy sigh
withheld truths and well meant half lies,
cannot inspire lift again that left me,
but that doesn't stop the faithful
Has the tide this whole time been sending
waves of false hope, on which I'm floating?
Daydreaming, heating oil, she wants dinner,
and I hunger for satisfaction in new pictures
A hand for a finger, a tongue from both mouths
comforting by grabbing hungrily
until heads get thrown back, abs tighten
when pressed to relax, on the rack
stretched but both floating
Why does she want to drink my blood?
I don't ask just imbibe in return
Those days are long gone
Times when the worst thoughts could not undo
whatever flicker remains in the waning brazier's ember

Here I sit...
Same feeling again
Like a bittersweet memory.
I'm my own worst enemy
I wish I cared for someone
Like one shot too many;
My rush when I wake up...
I'm always the "other" boy:
Nothing special; I just love everyone.
Is It possible to feel so much you feel numb?
Where's my one and only gone?
Am I far away;
Floating on the waves?
Will someone reach out to me and
Make me feel like I'm home;
How frostbitten I have become
Like glass,
Like a sadness I cant repair alone.
In the dark I roam
Like a dim candle searching and
Yearning...
For someone to call my own.

Why can't we all just get along?
Maybe if we all just hit a ****
Bhatiboys, bald heads, reggae mons too
Open your minds, and see what JAH can do
Rioters and looters fighting with cops
Roll up some ****** and the violence stops
Terrorist blowing up the middle east
Some Afghan kush would bring them all peace
If Escobar sold ****, not ***** cocaina
Then the whole world would be a lot greena
We are all JAH's children, so lets all get along
Maybe we could, if we all ripped a ****

His Anaïs Nin-THE MUSE
     Of ****** Souls.

Glancing up from her pipe,
    She saw his gazing to her face.
Eyes connect, she almost freezes in
     bewilderment. Exhaling, lips rise at his, she knows his thoughts.  They
     are her own.

Lighting the Camel, face flickering,
     As the campfire drifts,
Giving way to the glow of the distant
     horizon of the ocean,
He moves his lips to her  neck;
     Lifts her to the blue Ford.

"Dance primal for me, baby.
     These shorts are not needed.
I'll throw dollars you way;
     Or I'll love you forever, for now.
Or eternity. But I must taste you.
     Share every drop of my...
       warm...juice.

That's beautiful. I see you."
     The creases where they should be.
"Glistening slit, where I probe to touch
     your soul; where pain, itself,
Feels the sword, as intensely
     As, deeply, as you feel my ****.

May I join you?" Dance the stars.
     Sway, embraced, bodies toasting,
Celebrating survival; of themselves, the stars,
     Glowing, feeling all their fire burning,
A tingle, a hot chill, moistening her libia minora;
      Now sliding, anticipating his tongue;
Inviting his bell shaped head; come inside,
      find me.

Climbing, standing, rod throbbing, grazing mons *****,
     Precum drips across a tiny patch of hair.
Pulling her, ******* titillate on his chest.
     He kisses her softly, passion deepens; tongues, as well.
I want you. I need you inside me. **** me until I can't move?
     **** my breast, my primal beast. Bite them.

I'll almost ***. You'll pulse at that, then drip.
    Give me that, baby. I need your *** on my ****;
Mixing with my cream, a perfect solution;
     Smooth glide of life. Put your fingers inside.
Stretch my walls. I'll touch my ****,
      My *** covered fingers. My tongue in your mouth.

He grabs her firmly; spins her around.
      His soaking head slips down her crevice;
Across her ****; it tightens, wantinglly,
     Yet like her soul, timidly afraid. This might hurt...
A bit. But if she doesn't have him,
      She will sure die from crave, curiosity, what ifs.

"I'm coming, baby", she cries,
     Distant figures, walking the beach,
With eyes to dilated for detail, see a shadow push,
     Another shadow give and lean,
Over the hood of a truck, banned from the beach.
     They suspect. They do not know...

She is shaking; trembling; pulsating...*******:
     Whimpering, "Please **** me, baby."
Arching a perfect ***, with a dimple he knows intimately,
     She feels his head massage her ***** lips,
Slightly dipping inside. Then "OH MY GOOD GOD!!!
      I...can't...breath!....I...can't...I'm still *******!  

I...can't....oh GOD!  Deeper baby!  I'm gonna *** again...AAHHH..."
     Pushing deeply. Retracting. Slamming.
"Faster!  That ****'s yours!  Just ******* take it!!!"
     **** me!  ****.....ME. **** ME...TO....DEATH!!!!"
She shares her lovely juices, the length of his ****.
    
     The sun illuminati. Not man's, but pure truth.
Now, most assuredly exposed, both the couple
     And ten early morning beach strollers;
He slides out, still strong. Still hard. Very wet.
     To take her up the trembling ***.

"It does hurt, my love. My **** and my soul.
     Be gentle. Tender. Move slowly.
For now. Protect me. Love me.
    Then *** in my depths. I am your muse.

I try to convince myself that there’s no struggle;
That these are just war games. 

I wear long sleeves and the word
Fine
Like kevlar.
I search for second player, when,
Real
       ly, I need a commander.
I gather treasures, battle strategies in
Journals;
I tell myself that they're just easter eggs,
Useless
Use
      less.
I philosophize  
That reality is, really, a hollow
Hologram,
A video game, not real, not wrong, not
True, useless;
A projection,
Protection.
There's no war, no battle,
It's my d mons that speak dark things, when really, there's a
             a
             e
One  lett r difference.
I tell myself that the game's over, try
Again, try again.
Failure stabs, I say
That it was my own doing,
It's just war games.

I need to take a walk,
Run, run away
I tell myself,
It'll do me good.
I come back for another
Try, try again.
I was retreating, my armour could
Not protect me from the claws, the scratches from
Within.
It's nothing, I say,
It's all in your head;
It's all in my head.

I try to tell myself that there's no battle to be won, to  
Be a man.
Men don't play video games;
Men be me n.  
They defend, they protect,
They forgive.
But I don't feel forgiven,
I say I'm forgiven.

I'm fine, and
These are just war games.

Because the beauty of your ****** is not a sin.**

I saw you in the twilight
Disrobed in the state of nature
And I gaped and gasped in awesome delight
Spellbound and elated in rapture
As I beheld your voluptuous features
As I gazed upon your priceless treasures
From peak of the mountain
I went down to the fountain
In the valley of your mons veneris
And holding on to your alluring pillars
I have been transfixed at the altar of your estuary
The estuary of your conjugal sanctuary.

I saw the falconer trading his falcon
With the bounty hunter for his gun
Lost in their lust for your connubial offerings
Spellbound by the allures of your charms
And I came in the fleeting mist of the fleeing night
To behold you even before the Aurora Borealis
And saw you embracing the heavenly light
As Father Heaven kissed Mother Earth
And you were enchanted in heavenly mirth
Oblivious of my winking mortal eyes
Hypnotized in the ether of celestial bliss.
At the unveiling of the beloved daughter of Eve
Made perfect in the bowels of boundless love.

Let the fire be kindled in my heart
The eternal flame of my spirit
The breath of eternity
The ether of life formed in purity
Born bare and born free
As my enchanted eyes can now see
Freed from the chains of pains
The pains of natal travails
Oh! Woman! Thou art the vessel of motherhood.
And in thy mammary gourds abound our first food
How much every man in bound to thy *****
For from the canal every man is born
Through the third eye of Eve where love flows
From the seed sown the fruit is grown
The sweetest fruit of love is found in the ******
To behold your naked beauty is not a sin.

~~ Orikinla Oosinachi, 2006.

1.
Princely I am, as Michigan loam,
as carefully turned mud,
as old, old dust––

my breaths are still and unresolved
and don’t dissolve in alcohol
like snakes or dead, bloated fish––

I am nothing monumental.

2.
Stuttered breaths lie in limp open circles around our feet,
hanging by threads of unmade promises––

symmetry was never my forte.
The bent nose,
the crooked lips,
the slow-ballooning wen where nitrogen bubbles––
my flesh is like untilled soil,
all raw and swollen with possibility.

3.
You asked me if it was probable
to find life on Mars
where the iron-leeched sand
crumbles like dried hemoglobin.

I don’t know about amino acids or genesis
or the first man of Dust,

much less mysteries of lovesickness, respiration,
really good ***––
We’re barren in different ways;

your dust comes from dreams, from heaven,
crimson and majestic
and dead as Olympus Mons

while I am like moon dust,
just as cold as your bone-dry lakes of carbon dioxide,
but paler, heavier,

and more remote.

A no-strings-attached thing is easy to arrange
It sounds exciting too, seems very straightforward
But sometimes you get caught up in things you don’t expect
Before you know it, you start caring
You develop feelings
You learn things about the other person
Her middle name, her favourite music, food
Her pet peeves, ambitions
You learn her innermost thoughts
Her insecurities, her ****** proclivities,
The little birthmark just above her mons *****
The one that she says looks like a map of the Dominican Republic
You lie in bed with her all day
She teaches you how to swear in Farsi.
You **** her every day.

One day she sees you making out with this random ****** and she flips
You say, but we said no strings attached or did we not?
It’s not as simple as that though, it never is
But this girl, she believes in you
She’s a paragon of patience
She sits you down and tells you to listen to her carefully
She explains to you that now you are sleeping with her on the regular
Your body is somehow her body too, partly, and vice versa
Says she understands that you are not together officially
But intimacy usually comes with an implied exclusiveness.
You say, Ok, I've heard you. And I understand where you’re coming from.
Then you tell her to *******.

Time passes
You begin to miss her.
But you’re pride won’t let you call her.
You have *** three times with two different girls in one weekend
One of those girls has a boyfriend, you **** her in a night club restroom.
The other one on the beach a day after
Then a few hours later in her bedroom.
In the morning her room is all sandy,
Going home you begin reflecting on things
You've learnt one thing for sure:
However much top-shelf ***** you get, it doesn't compare to the love of a good girl
So it doesn't matter how many lovers you have in this world
If none of them give you the world.

You swallow your pride and call her
She can’t make it, she says.
But she comes the next day in the evening.
You explain everything,
How it felt like she was tethering you to her
How you took it all too lightly.
You’re not too good at it, talking about your feelings
You say that what she’d told you that day had gone through one ear, out the other
So you had to learn it all by yourself, you had to go through it
Finally, you apologise.
You’re very sincere.
She asks you, so is this closure?
You don’t want it to be, but you don’t know if you actually deserve her
****, you don’t know if she’d even take you back.
If she does, you've still got a lot to prove.
You’ll be in luck, but you’ll be starting on nothing.
If she doesn't then you knew and blew a good thing.

Huit millisecondes
Huit infimes millisecondes
Voici tout ce que Muse
M'a laissé entrevoir
De sa vulve.
Etait-ce par inadvertance
Par bravade ou en toute innocence
Qu'elle m'a autorisé ce jour-là
A me rincer l 'oeil
A travers le trou de la serrure
De mon portable
Alors qu'elle finissait son bain
Et allait se sécher?
Huit millisecondes
De peep show
Qui ont effacé tous les nu non niet
Nee nein não no
Huit millisecondes
Que depuis j'essaie de visualiser à nouveau au ralenti.

En vain.
Rien n'y fait
Muse est de marbre de Carrare.
Inflexible. Intransigeante.
Décidément Muse n 'est pas exhibitionniste.

J 'ai pourtant tout fait pour l 'amadouer.
Je lui dis je veux j 'exige
je la supplie, je lui joue de ma cornemuse
je me mets à genoux, je boude
je lui promets l'enfer et le paradis
Je fais ma grosse voix
je suis saint Thomas
je ne crois que ce que je vois
J 'ai tout fait pour la convaincre.
C'est une chatte comme toutes les chattes, me dit-elle
et moi je lui réponds : non c'est une sainte chatte diablesse
Elle me parle de foi et me jure qu'on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur.
et pas avec la queue.
Fort bien. J 'ai donc décidé
De regarder la chatte de Muse avec le coeur
Aveugle et scientifique
Au ralenti de mon télescope électronique .
Et savez-vous ce que j 'ai découvert ?
Je vous le donne en mille.
La vulve de ma muse est un vrai diaporama !
La vulve de ma muse est écomorphe !
En un mot pour faire court
La vulve de ma muse a 88 nuances de vulve !
Du mons ***** aux ***** minora
Des ***** majora au *******
des glandes de Bartholin à l 'introïtus
Ma muse c'est quatre-vingt-huit vulves en une !
Toutes de la même espèce rare de vulvae anolis
Mais aux niches, couleurs, mucus et formes fort différents
En fonction de leur environnement et de leurs prédateurs.

Quand je fais l 'iguane
et que je m'approche trop d'elle
La vulve de Muse se perche
Dans les hautes sphères de la canopée
elle est verte alors et se confond avec le feuillage
Tel un zandoli vert
bien malin qui pourrait la voir.

Lors des grosses canicules elle devient marron
elle a soif , se faufile dans le tronc des arbres
A la recherche de la fraîcheur
et s'alimente de la maigre pitance
Du latex des sapotilliers

Et quand elle fait sa sieste
Elle est blanche et noire à la fois
fantomatique et phosphorescente
et elle se pend aux branches
Et est si vulnérable
offerte à tous vents
qu'on peut la capturer
l 'identifier
la mesurer la peser la baguer
et la photographier sous toutes les coutures
avant de la relâcher dans le flot de ses rêves.

Huit millisecondes
C 'est peu pour satisfaire
Même avec les yeux du coeur
Le désir du ******
Mais c'est assez pour alimenter
Les constellations de l 'écriture
Et n 'est-ce pas cela en fait la raison d'être des Muses :
Alimenter , nourrir, susciter l 'envie...d'avoir envie ?

"What a little ******* *****,
He’ll never come cross a chick,
That will wanna **** his ****,
So why the hell does he think,
My mouth gonna be his kink,
Imma let him drown and sink,
In his vast tide of loneliness,
**** his wavy-haired holiness,
Just there to steal his coziness,
Nah *****, **** the harmonious,
And **** humans, they’re odious,
Leave em’ rotting in moldiness,
Let em’ express their emotions,
And question all of their notions,
Cause they’re all losers and broken,
Why not speak, you’re all unspoken,
But let’s not cause a commotion,
Cause I think now we’re approaching,
The part where I tell you something,
When music had the bass bumping,
And mons push and our lips touching,
And to your **** blood was rushing,
I was high, think you’re disgusting,
******* *****, please become nothing."

Although the things that I said are probably not true,
I'm just seeing the worst outcome from her point of view,
Now I'm going off with my old friends and my new crew,
Starting a rap group called Dugtrio, gonna make our debut.

There we stood, resplendent, in our articles of war
daring for a moment to forget the matters core--
that death and dying looming, like mountains in the night,
would be the grim reward for those who'd dared to fight.

The British expedition, in that humid august air,
would hoist the recognition of mankind's new despair;
the wave of Schlieffen's reckoning had broken us that day
and the yeoman of Agincourt had come and gone away.

We fought and bled and fought and died a day or two at Mons,
but soon retreat was sounded, a melody to pawns.
French soil stained in English blood and washed in English tears
then tilled by German cannons for four more ******* years

was less the blessing we first conceived, that bitter, deafening fall,
so late in 1914, when the Great War came to call.
The salient crumbled, frailly; a grave portent it seemed,
soon would come the Somme, Verdun, and horrors never dreamed.

projective geometry used to get me *****
all those positions

,palmately pink and ever green
breathing vasts of void my dark heart laughs in gulping wholes
moaning plenums, hooded over boundless venus-vim

now i'm tired of infinite lines
too many shapes to fit in
too wide, too tight, sharp or empty

,too many ways to come

this was meant to be a disclaimer before a collection of poems

,a way to unclutter
                angst of public  
                              lexicality,
years  after  ­ 'explaining'
                  Samir's 'polygonal me'
                                                to only-me-myself-i-was,
to then indulge this analogic soundlessness...
             
        as i disengage

i can't write without planning on it
i can't write about  writing  without feeling like a fool
                                                            ­                 (,Lear is the only one
that saves me now
                       as now i am the Fool,
                                                 dividing hearts along
in storm-***-love-like railway-*****
                                 steaming full of fiberoptic nooks,
chaining spectra-cogs of a good-will-spirit-****:
                                       concatenated hard-ons every word
each thought a pulsate vulval dream awake,
                                                redichotom­izing lives
                         of shining mons my Athene forehead
                                                      forging fountain thought,
                          urethral letting-beings-be...
freely, my chubby comes back to me
                                         prone before the prostate god)

,in other words
              the same,
                     i cannot write as other than a fool
for
why should i repeat the abject horror of the world?
isn't despair a bit.. overdone at this point?!
and why should i write just the happy!? i'm not in denial, am i?
or am i in denial
about insisting on being in denial absolutely?
--like mind-only schools...
(O the uselessness of words, dismissing patriarchal vigor with yet another wave, the 'brine-milk' ends unending,
forever Femen liberating us of words,
replaced with Fragilaria,
wasting diatomic seas and waterways,
depleted algae gone, extinct: metaphysiCalListo-craticality aborted on a broken Amazonic spear,
our bodies, bodied-hearts, finally won as ours, across Alternaqueeria, fully lucid human-species spanned
i blink my tears and blur my gaze at weeping Pleides

the plan was this: painful poem, pleasure poem, painful poem, happy poem... **** poem, sterile poem, carnal poem, priggish poem, punk poem, open poem, confessing poem, eros poem, **** poem, 'obscene-attractive' poem...
to cleanse inverted mainstreams of my steady-rhythmed pratitpaksha-bhavanams; not "poem, poem, poem, poem..."
but a taut poeming in and out of poems of poemed poiesis prosing poets free to **** again in Issa's snow, or *** on Chiera's cumaholic Shards.

pendulum left, pendulum right; then two pendulums, then none; then one that swings right and left at the same time; then one that spins all the way around, but only clockwise; then one counter-clockwise; then one both clockwise and counterclockwise; then one timeless, then one imaginary one... full of infinite little ones... to represent all the pendulata in the universe as experienced through minor parts of self.. itself as universal part-whole-parcel self-hood spanning star-births yet to come...
,
,
,but it's time to eat a 'square' meal
take off my job-search tie, my peddled lies
                   forget the sunrise vestibules we sipped from,
                                           sleeping by commoding cows

and pretend i'm not dicking myself over
                                                          by­ retreating
into cryptic spectionism-voids again
                                               all seagull-divert-adverts, play
of frozen youth abstrused,
                      self-referred referring loosed
                                          staggered worse than marginalia
no single species 'seagull' singing here

I remember the night I graduated from Olympus Mons Military Academy.
I remember what my father told me,
the "one hundred percent true story of the creation of mankind."

There was a being who lived on Venus, all alone he lived, so alone he wasn't even sure he was living. This being had no name, but they had a heart that beat and a mind that thought.
He lived on a Venus that this universe has never seen, nor will ever see. Space and time are fabrics, but even the finest of linens have space, impossibly small amounts of space and within them universes. This being lived on a Venus woven into the fabric of time itself.

This being prepared a torch,
fueled by matter the likes of which humanity knew, but has forgotten and will never remember.
He lit this torch and carried it through the fabric of time.
He spoke to beings there about time and he did not like what they thought of time and so he took the torch elsewhere, abandoning the others in a perfect nothingness.

He took his torch to Mercury and asked the beings there what they thought of space.
He did not like what they had to say about space and so he left them in their chaotic abundance of space.

Dissatisfied, he traveled to the furthest edge of the universe and looked Beyond. He asked the beings there what they thought of space and time.
They did not answer.
He asked them what they thought of existence and they told him to stop speaking.
They asked him what fueled his torch and he refused the answer.
They grew angry and decided to try and strike a bargain.
They told him they'd reveal their thoughts on time and space if he reveals what burns his torch.
They told him time is only within his mind and that space is a projection thereof.

He fled.
He fled to earth and dropped his torch there, and it burned to the center of the planet.

He returned to the fabric of Venus and thought for an impossible amount of time and willed time and space to cease and yet he could not.

After, he willed himself to cease existing and he did.

His torch stopped burning with him and humankind was born from the ashes, they crawled from the center of Earth and wept for their creator.

I asked my father what this meant and he told me to stop speaking, and asked me what fuels my torch. Once I answer that, I will understand.

how many have met you
with their lips
or fingertips

or their pumping blood ***** attached to their hips


how many have seen your redness
how many have felt the blood you bestow
each month

it trickles
like water down cave side walls



my cave
how many have seen you

and not wanted to touch

why do they always want to touch


I curl inside my cunte
on days when my heart stops beating
anvils on my eyelids
keeping everything out of sight


so i don't look
i touch


I feel
the words
the whispers
upon my skin
the hair of my mons crawling like Medusa's crown

snakes, serpents
slithering


around
whatever is put inside

I will ****
if anyone touches me
again

I have to protect
myself

She is
The size of a flower petal
Attracts me
As if she is the size of Jupiter
Pulling me straight to her core
Crushing my being

She smiles
Whilst playing with her hair
Blinds me
As if she is Betelgeuse
But still my eyes glued on her
Destroying my retinas

She touches
My heart with her little fingers
Pulverises me
As if I was squashed by Olympus Mons
Yet I still reach out to her
Completely *wrecked

They say time heals everything. I guess that applies to anything.
but since love is just not anything, I struggle with these thoughts. I don't know where to begin. It's like this game of life, so we all start all in. Mostly in for our-self, life by our-self with no one else around you. Mind of matter, let me remind you. That love is a pain, gifted to all of us. Unfortunate for some, life's not fair to all of us. All created equal, and by mistake, nurtured by hate, left on our own to find  love. And while we wait, we learn to hate - that which is not us. Even though, no such thing is such. It pains my heart, bothers me so much. So all of this hate, overpopulating love. If had one wish, it wouldn't be enough. But all my fate, in the God above; I wouldn't blame him, for blaming us. People killing people, in lands created for us. The commandments, broken if commanded, then judged by You-Mons - aliens looking down on us, like we are monstrous. Unidentified flying objects, staying away from us. They way we label each other is so unrighteous. Somehow our own poison is too good for us. If any of this makes any sense, then they then pay attention. to all of those around you, or then your just a king- dumb.

wake up
look outside
the sun has risen and so have you
your mind has wandered
and returned to where you let it lie
but it can return to that world
where boundaries were undefined
and you struggled to touch sides
for there were none, neither allegiances
just a vast empty world of promise
where a cheshire cat plays with string hanging off olympus mons
and you play twister in nebulae with the gods

Martian Gothic
It was a unique environment.
They were unique people in a unique place.
A mountain fifteen thousand metres high with a vertical south face.
Two pretty Goth girls stood on the edge.
One footstep forward and it was a huge fall to the Martian plateau.
Three hundred metres in front of the girls was a fine layer of Cirrus cloud,
thirty metres thick.
The Terraforming had worked brilliantly providing a heavy Earth like atmosphere on Mars.
Olympus Mons was a great holiday destination for young East European adventurers like Hanneke and Silge.
Hanneke had waist length black hair and Silge shoulder length red hair with lip piercings.
Both were equally beautiful as the magnificent landscape straight out of a sci-fi film.
They were taking time out of their Earth based Martian Geology course after a short field trip.
A quick hike was a chance to chill out and take in the stunning views.

If I could impregnate myself with my tears
My children would be innumerable and divine
Delicate as the lilacs at my feet
And as giving as my mothers hands

My children and I would dance wildly to the sound of the shaking leaves
And laugh until we cried at the absurdity of the decaying frames of the eternal surrounding infrastructures

I would gather our collective tears and water my children
Careful to sift the salt and reserve just enough for future implantation

My babies would nest in the tight curls of my crown and I would rock them to sleep in the gentle curve of my lashes
Blinking slowly and steadily to ease the restlessness of their being

If I could birth my children from my ear
I’d rest my head on a pillow and never leave
I’d rest my head flat on the soft surface
Turning my head only slightly to the left to give a final shake
Releasing my babies from their sack

I’d let them snuggle against my cheek as I sang to them the songs of the old Gods
And the new
I’d warm them with heat of my breath and nourish them with the saliva of my tongue
I’d listen intently to their soft whispers inquiring about the beams of light seeping through the cracks of the walls
And
The vines sprouting through the floor boards and climbing pillars on the bed

If I could birth my children from the scrapings from under my fingernails
I’d tear at my flesh until there was nothing left but raw nerve and blood
I’d dress them in gowns made from the weaved patches of hair growing across my mons *****
And I’d make them sun hats from the shattered pieces of my toe nails

If I could sink into the soil and grow my babies from my decay
I’d sprout a row of sunflowers
And the many seeds in its ***** would be my youngins
They’d fall away one by one
Matured
And run off uninhibited into the spring

Little pieces of me
Drowning in the sunshine
Free

Martian Gothic (short)
Unique environment unique people.
Fifteen thousand metre mountain vertical south face.
Two pretty Goth girls stood on the edge.
One footstep fall to Martian plateau.
Three hundred metres ahead thirty metre layer of Cirrus cloud.
Terraforming worked brilliantly Earth like atmosphere.
Olympus Mons great holiday destination for East European adventurers.
Hanneke had waist length black hair,
Silge shoulder length red hair with lip piercings.
Both beautiful like the magnificent sci-fi film landscape.
Chance to hike,
enjoy stunning views after their Earth based Martian Geology course and field trip.

Though the distance
between the star and the earth
be a thousand light years
I would gladly walk on rough pebbles
till I get to the stars feet.

If heaven were a physical city in some distant land,
I would hold your hands and surmount the mountains between.
If depression were an island in the Pacific,
I would hang you on my shoulder and swim across.
If fun were a drop of water,
I would rain on you showers of memorable moments.

I will take you to the moon
and dance with you on those barren rocks.
We'll visit Mars and stand on Olympus Mons
At night we'll watch the stars
Pitching our tenths in space we would never grow old.

I would rather hold your hands,
than steal your heart.
I just want you to be fine,
Even if you aren't mine.