This is not for substance
Depth, not pragmatic at all
emotional ******* when mentally I'm Lance Armstrong, wit blue ball

But wit *****,I mean thoughts, as I Tom Cruz through life, so an apology
Id owe myself if not against my policy
Cuz "I'm sorry" like Scientology

Don't make sense so astrology
Can try to map out my stars
I just hope Lady Luck shows up Before Chris brown, and she sees stars

What can I say, I can really charm
Like lucky charms I march mellow
I like girls who still say&count; their chubby bunnys...no marsh mellows

If I lost u there ....just mellow
like yellow,pop songs whorin out hello
So of course forced ******* lately seems endorsed ...pudding pop, jello

Can't be trusted bad enough kids aren't safe anywhere ...gone
I even over react at subway when my sons asked if he wants a foot long

I already know this is foolish
But the rule is ...the real fool is
Those schooled by the useless
at least I know I'm stupid

Taking it out of context, no contest
Your honor....Honest
That was the first time I promise
I hardly ever try to hit on prom kids

Wit tight grips to poke a Bonnet
Off the bun from poccohontis
When findin the island of *****
Oops "He Broke her *******"

That blood soaks on a sausage
....Just another day at the office
Where we process the obnoxious
til the world is my Hospice

A no knowledge college for knowledge to abolish the need
To be correct politically&breed;
seeds Thatll bleed to succeed

Sp our goal, of bringing awareness
To the shortages pendin
As extinction of bent bananas grow
Straight, it's time to help bendin

bananas, but whats bananas is
ignoring real issues latched
To Muslim hate talks,instigated
Infiltrated so u won't go snap

When they send more of our kids to war, so if u hate, like they ask
When propaganda props the jenga, NVM...wait..look! Kim kardashian ***

That needs a cardigan...plaid
"Drugs drugs drugs! which are bad"
Ask your mom who made u at prom
Or ask your alcoholic abusive dad

Who thinks Itampons a small iPad
Where Dark and red bleeds
quoted Moses"a wifes rags a bonus, So like me  "part the Red Sea"

Will need are secure like cures
the government assures us do not
Really Exist like seniors ****, that
firmly sits, and not hip drop

implying the governments got
secrets but dont ask me ****
Cause wit metaphors, I'm never sure  
Maybe the govt has saggy ****

Some dictions descriptions givin has restriction or depiction's
equivocal, so ones vision of religion
Is another's flashback circumcision  

To an unforgiven rabbis hasty snip
No one Asked "may we strip"
The turtle neck ******* on your slim
priest teasing baby ****

But written permission maybe fit
When a baby's **** and crazy ****
Is so uncivil to fiddle and whittle the little middle, above my skittles it sits

And the initial riddle is, riddle this
What Is sprinkled with ****
And Often tinkles to spit ..
Full of wrinkles, it tickles... The hint?

If she swallowed and followed the
nutrients that hallows out ....
Ud still have wrinkles but it helps to single out,who's single⁢'s about

Time2see my psychologist who yells I need help...(yells) I need help!"
She said her head, lead her to bed
And said her brains dead &melts;

And to blame for her frame of mind
Is the frame of mine, it's the kind
That very rarely has thoughts that carry any logic&scares; me but I'm

Just daring and not caring but im
sharing the mind of jerry
Where clowns fill towns with slide whistle sounds&priests; that marry

Donald trump And Carrie
Whos news was very scary
as Carrie had to carry a Kanye west hilter hybrid and Arbitrary

Is how arbitrary and arm pit hair be
Armed with hairy Italian yarn
That they wear as bare, but armed
Is bare **** arms that like bear arms

Bears a bears hair where arms
Are usually bare but bears harmed
Is how the thick hair I wear, where it's layered, but not the ****

Hair that impairs where my palms  
Look like they grow two beards
But it's not like i would blow deers
maybe Bambi...who knows were

Not gettin hypothetical to go near
How endearing a dear is it's queer as for my hairy palms I wrote them
Ahem, Dear palms: be calm I'm here

And I'm so sorry u resemble the
Essential pieces that are detrimental
For trump hair that trump wears but
His is authentic ******* Assembled

By the youngest child laborer, paid
less than the condoms for rapin her
So embezzle on levels of unethical
Devils black *** ...and kettle...sure

Let's move on to...Ernie, hey it's Bert
I don't discriminate
Support abortion, or the portion
supportin orphans who's cure

Is particular and par with a ****
Who's testicular inhibitors
Make him a prematurely Shirley
So surely he's early in visitors

So to recap the crap hid in were
Child labour jokes great!
Abortion, psychotic neurotic topics
******* that'll fill in ya, all the hate

Oh wait wait wait...Can't forget ****
Or what I call a bill Cosby date
Afternoon delight? You'll sleep past moon and right to the drowsy awake

State... Wait.. are u a ****? Great!
I never ***** one of those
That's enough Cosby dialogue
It's dyin off, so I'm signin off vogue

Strike a pose, like a ****** my
***** bled all up my skirt in
My ****** like I was al bundy,
****** as a ted bundy surgeon

So uncomfortable like twerkin
When you see 12 yr old butts
That makes me want to be free of
tv, but it makes r Kelly want to ***

So go hug or **** a tree
He'll, **** two, have a treesome
this abuse of my speechs freedom
Must stand alone cause these dumb

Words.. This world.. needs none
cheeses of diseases...egregious,
The weedless, read this,&say; Jesus
Is he nuts? It's Needless,

deep pits, of pre-mixed, ***-*****
Three ****... Please fix
demons *****, from a **** bleedin
Fresh out yeast infected sheep *****

Where we sit&read; this,
praise Jesus Allah and people
Cause were all just quirky, evil
Good, obnoxious naive deceitful

******* with **** smells that equal
Even if not the same
We all bleed, breed and feel pain
And love a good line of *******

No wait , ****, sometimes my brain
Can't contain the stupid
Do models use the same fingers to ******* that use to puke wit?

I know.... I'm ****** useless
An abused ego bruised nuisance
Like **** pics sent to fit chicks
When they want rich pics, so do this

Take pics of a receipt that u slip
From the machine you use, if
You really wanna know, if they'll
Blow whats in the pic u send, do it

Cause she'll blow all that u fit
In the pic u send her I'm sure
And if your still reading this,
Im meanin this,u need help..a cure

Mental stability, tranquility, and
The ability, to stop the instability
Convoluted, polluted, and stupid
Literature, it can cause infertility

And psychotic, psychosomatic,
Psychosis, voodoo and neurosis
poetry roaches Eye halitosis,
To erode the road wit your soul if

You ****-inue, reading soulless
Ambivalence, so belligerent
That insolence so Insignificant
Is magnificent,

A Malignant indignant, piglet, in a
predicament, that approaches
As I ******* my immaculate *****
So swallow this osmosis

insufficient like what I've written  or Tuberculosis, and oh ****!
The oppositions mission is fixing
The risen conditions, to position

***** induced, goblin puke
Gobblin through, all of the usual
Til I'm suitable for cubicles made of pharmaceuticals ...indubitable

Now I'm awful like waffles, made in a
bra full, of a mucus' nostril
putrid puke with stomach fluids,, a used ****** u chew in brothel

It's a cross between a re-run
Of *******'delinquence&bee; dung
Don't think Im gd ppls than be one

And my wise parting words
Are not the rise of farting nerds
Or pretentious self righteousness
Of those dry and artsy jerks

Ageless eternal, endless divine soul
Needless infernal, shell of my whole

Wasteful demeanor, this humane toll
Scripted existing, money your sold

Watchful learning, boxed head control
teaching yearning, do what your told

Hearing preaching, god what you know?
Missing fearing, my temple cold

on the way down, digging my soul
feeling I'm sold, alone I'm buried
dancing the grave, these bones so weary
On the way up, slave ordinary

Image deception, mask on my soul
Wearing decision, not of our own

Crafted precision, life for a stone
Statue, prison, lies from the throne

Human shifting, truth never known
Living breathing, life over thrown

Serving willing, price of the tame
freedom giving, all threat remains

on the way down, digging my soul
feeling I'm sold, alone I'm buried
dancing the grave, these bones so weary
On the way up, slave ordinar

i look at her
and i forget i exist
and when i'm lost in thought
she hangsout in my dreams
she lives inside me
corrupting my essence;
expending my vibrance
and if she could have my last breath
she’d take that too

You made a visit
For a tidbit
That couldn't be called a date
And your portion was low rate
Like the unkempt hair above your lip
What the **** was that ****?
Inside is your invasive tongue's home
This is my mouth get your own
They're all connected to your stupid brain
That doesn't entertain
All this to say it didn't go well
And I'm searching for a way to tell

I'm so desperate for love
It seems absurd that I'm rejecting anyone
But that's the odd situation I find myself in
While searching for light and yours is dim
I have to deal with the frustrations
Of both of our expectations
And regret my instigation
While experiencing deflation
From a needless iteration

I say there's no spark
You call me a shark
You call me a farce
You keep calling of course
Calling from your high horse
I call the police to enforce
A restraining order
By explaining sort of
Our brief exhausted history
How you weren't a fit for me
They heard my story
Then gave you glory
For being rejected
You're viewed sympathetic
While I'm stuck in jail
For my ******* fail

I said I'd give it a shot
You thought I was caught
This is why I had fought
The ideas you brought
For a love you sought
I hope a lesson was taught
But I suspect that it's not
You just hate me instead
You didn't hate me in bed
But now that it's done
And we've had our fun
You resent me for not being your possession
I tried to let you know that wasn't my intention
So now I resent you for not learning your lesson

We go our separate ways
Both living in a hectic craze
I begin to naively call my loneliness freedom
After I convince myself that I don't need them
So to avoid a future locking latch
I start to say no strings attached

I am so sorry
for all that needless worry
just the hourglass of life
is now turned upside down

But is it the top
or is it the bottom
and what difference
it makes to me?


How sinful to live
how sinful to speak
how sinful to breathe
how sinful to even exist

Wanted* (read the three day old paper):
yourself, position effective immediately, pay negotiable

Being in the job market for longer than I’d care to admit, I applied.
I could be a yourself.
I hoped I wouldn’t have to sit in a cubicle.
(I knew I could though, if it came right down to it).

I wore Roots sweatpants to the job interview,
It’s quirky, I thought, I am *just doing me.
I envisioned my power animal: that vastly underrated emoji
(You know the one; he’s coy as ****).
I was also coy as ****.
Or as coy as I could ******* feel in pants whose proud purpose was to make their wearer perspire.

I bet NO ONE had thought of this.

Turns out everyone had thought of it.
****…

Needless to say, I didn’t get the position; the yourself life wasn’t for me.
So I applied elsewhere.
Somewhere far away from that whole embarrassing sweatpant fiasco.

The carrion that swarm
The veil upon my eyes
Grief of god keep me warm
Victim of needless "why's?"
Truth without a trace
Entropy with a face

I am the length the bullet travels
I am the  shadow of the sun
I am the voice that is broken
I am the hand that holds none
I am the true lie that unravels
I am resolve that remains unspoken

The crux of the mile
Every shattered smile
Sic Semper Tryanus
Flies forced upon us
The last nihl
That's finally worthwhile

There he was, Archibald Walker, like every mornin standin on the riverbank starin across the water as the sun began to rise.  He would just stand there with his lunch pal in one hand and that funny bowlers hat in the other.  That boy always had a big ol’ grin stretchin across his face from ear to ear.   Archibald Walker the third was actually his name.  A college boy from down south, he came from ol’ money.  You’da never knew though.  He came up here to escape he said.  I had always wondered why anyone in their right mind would give up money and education to come be a logger, but there was Archibald just starin across that river as happy as a peach.  I used to ask him what he learned down there in school and he would always reply the same way, “Good Jokes”.  I never could tell if he was being serious or if he just didn’t care too much to talk about it.  Archibald was real good at his job though for being a college boy.  Came in before everyone else and worked ten times as hard. Never did see him ***** up either.
He liked to keep to himself.  I was the only one he ever really talked to and even then he never talked about much.  Took me a year and a half just to figure out he was educated and from money.  I looked at that boy funny for a week after he told me that.  I was dumbfounded as to why someone would give that up for this gruelin job.  Funny thing is, he seemed to like it.  He had to clear up logjams and keep the wood flowin smoothly down the river.  Boy was he fast.  He would skip across them floatin logs like he was walkin on dry land.  There he’d go just a bouncin up and down across them logs, big smile across that baby face, with that funny lookin bowlers hat on.  He always had on that goofy thing.  Looked like someone had glued a bowl onto a plank’a wood.  I asked him why he liked wearin it so much one day and he just laughed and said, “Now what makes you think I like wearing it”.  Still don’t know what that boy meant, but I never took to tryin to understand him.
Everybody called him Walker cause he walked across them logs all day and it was his last name I suppose, but mostly cause he loved walkin them logs.  It was a dangerous job, but he never hesitated to go runnin out there with his push pole and clear the jam.  I told him to be real careful what logs he pushed outta the way cause if he got the wrong one, well he would end up crushed out there between two of those god-awful things.  He told me we all end up stuck between two pieces of wood in the end anyhow, so he didn’t care.  Boy shoulda listened.  Wasn’t a week later he went walkin out on them logs, smile and all, and wouldn’t you know it he sliped, got crushed between two big ole trees then sank all the way to the bottom of that river.
We searched the river for three days and never did find Archibald’s body.  It was sad to see that boy cut down so young.  We hired a new boy about a week later and he wasn’t half the walker Archibald was.  He wasn’t even a walker.  Nicknamed that boy crawler cause he was so scared of them logs he would lay down on his belly and crawl out there to fix a jam.  Three separate occasions we picked him up a mile down the river clingin to a log for dear life.  Boy was something else.  Needless to say we let him go down the river the fourth time and politely told him to not come back.  Symbolic in away.  Archibald got taken by the river and that’s how we let crawler know he was fired.  Just let it carry him away until he finally reached the bank a mile or so down river.
I finally took Archibald’s post after we couldn’t find anyone to replace him.  I won’t lie I was scared at first, but then I remembered what Archibald had told me about all of us endin up stuck between two pieces of wood in the end.  I figured he was right so I would just go boundin across them logs day in and out just like he woulda.  I still didn’t know why that boy was always happy.  Even though I did the job, I still hated it. For a while anyway.
One day I came in about the same time Archibald used to and I stood there on the edge of the river and watched the sun come up.  I knew why he was so happy all the time.  Boy it was the most beautiful thing seein that sun comin up.  It was like for a second the world was just explodin with life. I’m not sure what it’s like to have money and be educated, but I’m sure it’s nothing close to watchin that sun come up like that over the river.  Wouldn’t ya know it though when the sun was done risin and I was about to finally get to work there was that goofy hat of Archibald’s washed up on the bank.  It was a little soggy but not in bad shape.  It was like that boy knew I was gonna be there and had just left it for me.  That hat didn’t fit to well and it looked awfully funny, but I wore it everyday I went walkin them logs.  Now I start everyday like Archibald did, standin on that riverbank with my lunch pal in one had and that bowler hat in the other watchin the sun come up.  Still don’t know why that boy wore the thing, but I’m glad he did.

There's no honor in this service
It's a ******* circus
Clowns running around with spitting wires And loose circuits
Power trips hungry like sharks in a lake
But these big fish demonstrate
Their "authority"
More like lobsters in a tank

Don't talk to me like you know
What honor means
When the value is lost
It is simply a traditional proclivity
Duty means showing up on time
Fully pressed and clean
When the pretense you must respect
Is history

I get there are brave men who died in uniform
But for most of us it's living life dying
In the perfect storm

I've got three friends who turned out dead Who didn't fight in a war
Aside from the one inside their head

People throw around time
Like it means nothing
Saying in three years it'll be fine
And then you can be something
But I'm perfectly aware of my capabilities
It's only the needless restrictions
Working circles to nowhere
They call it Liberty

Pushing down every last reaction
Until I'm not a person anymore
Just a part of the faction to shut me up
And close the door
Thank me for my service
Or just shame me for the benefits
But you do not get to blame me
For not receiving this as Genesis

I hold my breath, say a prayer
And roll the dice
And that's the rat race anyone serving
Knows as military life

The Underground Man

“By the way, what does a decent chap talk about with  greatest possible pleasure?
Answer: about himself.”

Note one: On the Circus.

Lies are cars, I tell you, pummeling through the freeways of smiling faces and charmed ears.
Spitting smoke in my eyes. Despite this clear fact, honesty is *****.
I turn on the TV, I choke on the noxious laughing gases of the permanently paradoxical world.
******* smells of roses. We’re wooed by the scent of scandalous roses.
******* is a beautiful bouquet beating on so many dead horses. A million bouquet armed gadflies
Stinging the horse. Grating her with their stems and thorns.
Our lips contracts as sphincters in a never dead language, a romance language

L’amour du merde.

The air smells of rosebuds and vanilla candles, and I break into ulcers.

They sing the sugar songs. Muddled by the sound of a flock, imitating a fog-horn blaring in the mist of song. Speaking openly is **** and the **** clinch tightly to keep it in.
But we dance with bouquets reeking of peppermint, gumdrops and bon bons, smiling with courtesy, modernizing a Victorian cordiality
A half-made smile. Fetal. Sloppily pasted. Circus clown faces hysterically melting under the intensity of the honest moment.
It is truth: Half of the single human life is spent taking part in the most pornographic reality we can conceive, while the other half is a mask pretending we don’t grab the ***.

Note Two: We are an aftertaste.

Some days I feel ugly to the world. I justify these sensations by the believing the world to be ugly to me in return. So the world and I glare at one another in a staring contest between two ugly wounds. We’re really quite eager to bark the last word in a garbled string of language.

BLAH! BLAH! BLAH!!

Going on in the nights where my eyes are wracked by the tired pins and needles of insomnia.
My heart rate jumps to the skipping rope turned by anxiety and exertion.
Muscles are stretched thin and I’m no more fluid and wanted than old Play-Doh left to cringe in the sun.

Then the red glow of alarm clocks shriek at me to lie in sleep.

I’m a hammer split against a wall stored in a shanty hovel pooling of novels and slanders hissed through grit teeth and clenched jaws wading through this growing cesspool where I hiss and hiss as a coiled snake residing in these hidden underground passages.

I will be vile because the world is vile. And I will be beautiful for the world is beautiful. Humanity is the manticore. A Monster consisting of a million realities. A colour palette of melting hues and every person wants to say we’re pink, red, or green. We’re a mysterious aftertaste, left lingering in the back of nature’s tongue. A platypus walking on two legs. A monster with eyes leaking ****, with irises more alluring than Shakespearean Sonnets. An Angel with a lyre belting out the best of Bob Dylan. A mother leaving her newborn to rot in a dumpster.
And a doctor saying he ain’t gonna make it. Mama’***** the bottle cuz’ daddy’s comin home and daddy’s hittin’ mommy because look at what she made him do.

Humanity is a manticore. He gnashes her teeth at coiled snakes. He wants to swallow its eggs.
A bank machine to wallets, and creditors to pockets.
She’s crude and cold. He has eyes of atomic flashes, roar that wails an echoing wail of lives spent sighing behind a monitor. Tragedies piling into transcendence, gripping onto God with heads packed into ovens and daughter swallowing one pill too many.
Of wedding bells and birthday parties and strawberry shortcake and the hope we’ll just get together and feel all right. He has an underbelly glistening of ivory white, and she’s brimming with dreams filling with the hope of seeing Xanadu. A belly of ecstasy and climaxes of the most ruthless sort to glisten to the light of ****** that embers the night towards the ecstatic scent of chemical mornings.


The gravedigger.
I am the world’s gravedigger
Burying the world
In the needless disgust
Of a muscular mind, armed with an atrophied hand.

I’ve decided to not live in fear;
I can do all things through Christ,
Who, with His Word, strengthens me;
God loves this child- unconditionally!

I love different kinds of people
and enjoy helping them with my gifts.
I’ve decided to be difficult to offend;
quick to forgive, repent and befriend

others in the forming of relationships,
helps me in my solo pursuit of peace.
There’s no point to mindlessly hurry,
scurrying about with needless worry,

when I trust God and His principles.
His redemption of me and saving power
teaches me about forming new habits
for Life “without calling it quits”.

When I choose to think on purpose,
meditate on The Word and pray to God,
I can transform my ordinary life
when sharing it with my blessed Christ.

God is ready and willing to bless me
and I’m always willing to take it;
now what about friends, family and you?
Can you really choose to believe it too?
.
.
.
Author Notes:

Loosely based on:
Phil 4:13; John 13:34-35; Matt 6:31-34;
Prov 3:3; Josh 1:8; 2 Cor 10:4-5;
Jam 1:2-3; Luke 7:23; 1 Pet 3:11;
Psa 1:1-2, 23:1, 27:4-6, 35:27

Learn more about me and my poetry at:
http://amzn.to/1ffo9YZ

By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2014, All rights reserved.

Im a mile deep, still I'm shallow
A black, bitter ocean
My waves are hungry like the shadows
Starved of light and all emotion

I need solace to part the sea
Show a frozen heart the path to care
Or sink down and drown here with me
In the depths of my despair

A world upside down
Below all of the air
Devoid of needless sound
Still hitting sharper than a snare

Let the pressure overwhelm
In time we all decay
Let mother nature take the helm
And sail our ship away

Would you wade down in the murky brown?
Down in this fishy deep
No other life for miles around
Davey Jones locker where we’ll sleep

Scales and fins growing in my skin
I want a pond to rot in.

'Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb
Ascending, fires th' horizon: while the clouds,
That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the disk emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,
Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And, tinging all with his own rosy hue,
From ev'ry herb and ev'ry spiry blade
Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field.
Mine, spindling into longitude immense,
In spite of gravity, and sage remark
That I myself am but a fleeting shade,
Provokes me to a smile. With eye askance
I view the muscular proportion'd limb
Transform'd to a lean shank. The shapeless pair,
As they design'd to mock me, at my side
Take step for step; and, as I near approach
The cottage, walk along the plaster'd wall,
Prepost'rous sight! the legs without the man.
The verdure of the plain lies buried deep
Beneath the dazzling deluge; and the bents,
And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest,
Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine
Conspicuous, and, in bright apparel clad
And fledg'd with icy feathers, nod superb.
The cattle mourn in corners where the fence
Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait
Their wonted fodder; not like hung'ring man,
Fretful if unsupply'd; but silent, meek,
And patient of the slow-pac'd swain's delay.
He from the stack carves out th' accustom'd load,
Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft,
His broad keen knife into the solid mass:
Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,
With such undeviating and even force
He severs it away: no needless care,
Lest storms should overset the leaning pile
Deciduous, or its own unbalanc'd weight....


'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume,
And we are weeds without it. All constraint,
Except what wisdom lays on evil men,
Is evil; hurts the faculties, impedes
Their progress in the road of science; blinds
The eyesight of discovery, and begets,
In those that suffer it, a sordid mind
*******, a meagre intellect, unfit
To be the tenant of man's noble form.
Thee therefore, still, blameworthy as thou art,
With all thy loss of empire, and though squeez'd
By public exigence till annual food
Fails for the craving hunger of the state,
Thee I account still happy, and the chief
Among the nations, seeing thou art free,
My native nook of earth! . . ....


But there is yet a liberty unsung
By poets, and by senators unprais'd,
Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the pow'rs
Of earth and hell confederate take away;
A liberty which persecution, fraud,
Oppression, prisons, have no pow'r to bind;
Which whoso tastes can be enslav'd no more.
'Tis liberty of heart, deriv'd from Heav'n,
Bought with his blood who gave it to mankind,
And seal'd with the same token. It is held
By charter, and that charter sanction'd sure
By th' unimpeachable and awful oath
And promise of a God. His other gifts
All bear the royal stamp that speaks them his,
And are august, but this transcends them all.

Oh that your hips lock to the crevice of my interchanging mute fragility
that I may become a part of your absoloute screaming
inclining infidelity
that I may wrap my cotton black sleeves around your wrists
and have you hum some old lullaby that your mother
use to sing to you when you were a child

mourning down at the pastel lake
where the waters scream its wonders and secrets
that hold something in the deeper side of you

I'm casting the debut of our lives on a pictionary mind
where thoughts interlude and transgress
every now and then and I am eluded by your watchful glare
into the raindrops that fall into my naturally black hair
I am subtle and hollow in your speech
calm and protective
on defending my own means
of living

oh there you are and I am blinded
all along
invisible with the cloack that I saw
hanging on the sides of your face

imaginary- beautiful , envision no pain
nor disgrace
wrapped in sheets of warm weather
and cool breeze
needless and the most needed
uneeded needs

my cheeks are red sunkissed by the shine
of everything surrounding me
completely bewildered knowing this is mine

bare I hold out all my caged animals
to seek your truth
hidden under gardens of possibility and crime
my mind
I see
is on the edge of extingtion
when drowning in all the different skin

I wake up early on sundays
from the sleep of dead
and open my chest to take and impignorate to all the precious
flowers that I will keep my eye on them

while I master the language
and you master the art of gaze

I know my mother well.

I know that when she liked a person, she introduced herself as Jane. I also know that if she did not like a person, they called her Janet. I know when she had had too much to drink and that if her lips were pulled too tight, her smile was fake. 

Most of the time it was.

I also know that I didn’t like my mother very much.

I remember that she had a knack for insulting people behind their backs even if they knew her by Jane and if she were sad, everyone around her was inevitably miserable as well. Needless to say, aside from her party girl alter ego, my mother was a very sad soul.

My mother was not a good mother, either. 
At the age of seven I was always kept at my daycare an hour later due to my mother’s tardiness and I appeared to be the only one embarrassed by this. The employees didn’t seem to mind watching me, but I could detect their discomfort when my mother stumbled in, conjuring up yet another lie to ease some tension that always seemed to be there. And most of the time, she reeked of alcohol. And all of the time, no one ever said anything. And it kind of stayed that way.
That is, however, until our neighbor moved in next door. 

My mother introduced herself as Janet the day this neighbor found herself at our doorway offering sweets of some sort - I could smell them. I never actually tasted them. “No, these aren’t for you.” Being a seven year old I fidgeted as my stomach twisted and my mouth watered, but I managed to sit quietly, sipping a glass of tap water from a cup that shown its fair share of stains. 

This new neighbor had completely swooned at the sight of me. She then went to explain she and her husband’s incapabilities to conceive a child of their own - adding that she’d be happy to watch over me if my mother were ever busy.

To no surprise, this was the only part my mother caught. And strangely enough, I could tell that I’d grow to like this woman.

Afterward, I found myself next door a lot more often than my own home and I would accidentally refer to the neighbor with strawberry blond curls and soft eyes as Mommy. Once I was home I found it increasingly more difficult to talk to my mother, let alone call her Mom.

And one day, my mother had stopped picking me up from school. I didn’t see her for months after that day.

I grew accustomed to the smell of vanilla and the glow of porcelain skin. So 4 months later when I begged to see Janet, I was disappointed.

I wasn’t sure what I expected to see. Maybe this woman who had given birth to me to cry, sobbing because she missed me and wanted me home. I knew it was wishful thinking, and as much as I’d hate to admit it, it was saddening to come home witnessing the crunchy, dull brown waves of my mother and the tightness of her chapped lips and the bags under her eyes dark - her eyes themselves even darker. I’m sure my features showed my feelings well enough because she looked at me, expressionless. 


Then, after moments of nothingness, she stretched her lips into her infamous tight smile, the cracks in her bottom lip widening. “I don’t recall wanting you to be here.”

I don’t think I stopped crying that night.

Long days passed and I watched strange men shuffle in and out of my house at odd hours of the day. When I saw my mother, I was looking down at her in our tiny backyard through a window framed with sunflowers and she was motionless, placid, lips connected to an amber bottle of beer. 
Soon after my crying subsided, I discovered I cried so much I couldn’t cry at all.

The woman I called Mommy thought it would be best if I were to not see Janet at all anymore. I said nothing to this. 
Papers were filed, things were planned. But before my mother could sign a single paper, 
she had committed suicide.

I was eight and my mother had committed suicide.

My mother had killed herself.

My mother had ******* killed herself.

There was no funeral. No one but myself seemed distraught over this and even so, I refused to allow myself to shed a single tear. It didn’t feel right to cry. It didn’t feel right to care when she hadn’t. But I did care. And I hated that I cared because it made her death all the more painful.

I visited my former house before it was cleared out. Her scratchy furniture held no value - or value I cared for, anyway. And aside from scattered beer bottles and her clothing, the house had nothing. So I dug into drawers for the only thing I believed held value - words.

I shred though every kitchen drawer and nightstand and shoe box until I was left with a stack of papers. Some were as important as certificates and others as useless as her scrawled handwriting of untitled phone numbers and receipts for gum. But in my eyes, they were all equally important. 

The last place I found myself in was her room and I’m not sure what I was looking for, but I searched through each inch of it. I found nothing. I moved onto my old bedroom.

At my windowsill was an old composition notebook with creases and frayed edges and liquid stains that reeked of ***** and orange juice. 


After picking it up, I left.

From then on I had always caught myself looking through the stack of haphazard papers and never the notebook. It terrified me. 

No one moved into Janet’s house. The tension of sleeping beside the abandoned memory of my childhood had never shattered, either. It absorbed tragedy and nothing could change that. Everyone sensed it. Even at the age of fifteen I looked out of the sunflower framed windows and expected to see a woman sobbing with a bottle of beer.

Every morning I decided it was time to open up the notebook, the small part that had been haunting me.

Every morning I decided to open it another day.

Three years later, I realized that I had made it. I was normal, I had friends, I had typical high school memories. I was ready to leave for college, I was ready to keep going. So, I’ve decided, I was ready to opened it.

It was a diary, almost. Filled with endless pages of my Janet. 

Misery. 

Misery. 

So much ******* misery.

I couldn’t put the book down. 

But the most miserable part? 

The last line.

“I love you and I’m sorry.” I read this over and over until my eyes burned. 

I didn’t know Janet as well as I thought. 

Her dried blood dotted the darkened pages.

This is the story of when I woke up in tears and shakes to the slam of the house’s front door.

Janet had stumbled her way inside of the kitchen, intoxicated.


I sat there, staring at the distorted insides of the walls that wrapped around my vision - the chipped, brick, misery infused memory of my childhood. 

I immediately bolted up from the couch and sprinted outside of the the front door despite Janet’s shrieking of demands of where I’m running off to. My heart was hammering too hard to be possible.

I fell to my knees.

The lot beside us was empty.
 I was 7 again.

I turned and looked at Janet, my eyes filling with tears of horror and relief.


She scowled at me. “God, what the hell compelled me to have you?”

-Mars S.

it's high midnight and I'm up to my old tricks again

in an hour I'll have my nose prepared
in two, I'll sweat and pray

praying the windows I opened last year give way to Carolina air

me chewing an ice cube
with you pressing my shirt

and a shiver breathes into me

it's a funeral, you tell me

in twelve hours time I ask you how I got here

another hour and it's your voice
causing me to laugh from my belly

pounding my fists into your tombstone

too angry to light my cigarette

the willow hides the moonlight
sheds no tears on this chapter

the willow hides night sky
a reflection from my dark eyes

they warble in fear

for the sound my heart is like to make

so if it'd make you stay
I wouldn't act so angry all the time

it's three years later
chewing soil from your grave


the worms but ash

my heart
a muted trumpet

pale imitation
crystalline defeat

silhouette of a cursed shade


it's five years and the marble runs smooth

it's ten years and the willow roots join mine

a legacy of agony
countless copper dishes of bitterness

thirteen years a testament of longing and needless suffering

every smile bled to death
every night a star turned inside out

it's two years ago and I hear your name

So, the white man has come here, brought us "gifts"
Guns so we can all sleep less soundly, worried that
The stalker will find us in some dark alley-way,
Each one of these gifts are "perfect," "protect us" day by day.

So the white man has made his home here! He's got our "answers,"
He's made images and books that **** trees, needless to say
We don't need trees anyway, he's made houses that take even more,
His home is one of straw, will one day be gone but the scars remain.

So the white man has "aided in kind," he's given us blankets,
Blankets with all of our "needs met," yea we all don't mind,
Getting the small pox, leave this life behind it's fine,
We'll be better off dead than alive, but nature's deemed "less kind."

And all that I ask you is this, where will we be in the future?
We all know where this is headed. These creations are a lie,
Our lives and the land cursed with evil machines that will
Bring innocent life to an end, whilst men in vans take flight.

As it makes its way down my throat
My eyes instinctively close as if by default
Maybe it’s to savor the “sweetness” in its entirety.
These are the few times my fidelity to tea
Is put to the test and subsequently waylaid.
This casts aspersions on my throat’s integrity
Needless to say my day’s made
And as the day’s itinerary of events deftly
Unfolds, bliss’s unmistakably apparent.
My consciousness is re-acquainted with the elusive
Notion of an existence that’s pleasant
Occasionally, sparingly free from dismal mentally abusive
Modern day realities and practicalities
Try this elixir with some delectable munchies.

I found a slip of paper with your address
It didn't hurt to see it, not like it did when I tore it out of my notepad
I've justified keeping it for "revenge"
on who? your mom? it's her house; she didn't do anything
But, it didn't hurt this time
I crumpled it up and took a breath and threw it in my trash can
It was gone but not really
I want it to be gone, I want to move on
I lit an almost-burned-out candle, the small flame grew taller as it enveloped the purple paper ball
A delicate stream of smoke rose; the smell of burnt paper filled my room
I watched the flame dance while it slowly turned the paper into ash
The candle, now liquefied and exhausted, begged to be put to rest
But the flame desperately clung to the worn out wick, anything to stay alive; almost screaming "what if" and "but"
pitifully attempting to justify its needless existence
I want to move on
Why am I grasping at anything to keep this memory relevant?
I want to move on
Why is it so hard?
But seeing the paper didn't hurt this time
The smoke, like a Phoenix of catharsis, rose from the ash and melted wax
I can finally put it out
I gently place the lid on the jar
The flame that had been so tall and alive became meek and helpless
It's gone now
I am moving on,
So mote it be

I'm old enough to remember
**** Tracy's watch,
Kirk's communicator,
Needless injections,
Landlines, TV,
Head transplants,
And meeting for coffee.
You're young enough
To remember simpler times
Of virtual friends
Twelve thousand miles away,
3D transportation,
And clouds that don't rain.
The good ole days.

'Pets and Palates'

he had only two real loves
ducks and waffles
this was highly disconcerting
to his parents
who tried to distance their boy
from these strange affectations
by buying him a precious pet goose
named Berchunice
and putting him on a steady diet
of pancakes
and their various
international counterparts
needless to say
he didn't live to a great age
as a matter of fact
he died at twenty-two and a smidge
because while pets generally extend and enrich life
caring for a goose you despise
and dining on starchy carbs
seriously inhibits life expectancy

his passing was terribly unfortunate
as was the life his parents had forced upon him
if they hadn't forced these changes on him
had they merely accepted
perhaps
encouraged even
this love of ducks and waffles
their lovely lad
would have
efficiently and economically
solved global warming
in an effort to protect
the best interest
of his friends
the ducks
and in his downtime
he would have put
a major dent
in the world hunger problem
with a highly adaptable
waffle recipe
too bad.

Needless bloodshed;
Hands stained red;
All around you bullet shells,
And back home
Your best friend
Is the cause of funeral bells.

Why war?
What could be worth fighting for?
Do you know who's keeping score?
We're surely not.
We keep fighting
And dying;
We never give up trying,
But on and on explosions light up the sky.

A drafted man goes off to war;
Goodbye to kid and wife.
They see him soon
In a bandage cocoon,
Deprived of limb and life.

Why war?
What could be worth fighting for?
Do you know who's keeping score?
We're surely not.
We keep fighting
And dying;
We never give up trying,
But on and on explosions light up the sky.

Put your flags at half-mast-
Another life was lost today;
We fight for peace
What did we really gain?

Boys, put away your guns;
Men please tell your sons:
Don't ever break your mother's heart,
Because a war is never won.

Once, I never cared for this.
Incandescent lights,
Snowy streets.
Finding adventure in your own two feet.
Swift shoes on misty pavements,
Calling to you like sirens from old
Myths we've long forgotten to tell.
Once, I didn't care how badly
This desire inside me burned.
This call to the unknown,
A cry so deafening
It made me sick,
And I---
Liked it.
I was a wanderess stuck still.
A statue of wanderlust and unlicked postage stamps
So close but oh, so far
From being where I belonged.
It was a nightmare far
More sinister than any
Monster under my bed
Once, I gave up on trying to fly.
To get away
From the poison place I couldn't stand.
I didn't care how I lived
Because no matter what,
I never saw it as my life.
Needless to say
I was wrong.
Once I realized that...
No longer do I stare out windows that stared back daggers
Blaming me for a life I didn't fight to live.
But don't worry, no...
That fight is not over for me, now.
It's only just begun.

It was summer, late 80's,  Lubbock, Texas, age prevents me from recallng the exact date and time. It was my father on the phone, asking if me and my wife, Karen, would like to go with him out to the airport to visit with my Uncle Jack(Major, USAF ret.). Jack called him and said that he and a 'friend' were flying in private plane to Houston, and would be stopping in Lubock and would be in around noon. Jack was the youngest of three brothers, and my favorite. Shortly before eleven, dad picked us up and off we went. I asked dad if he knew who was coming with him, and he said "no, have no idea."
Sitting in the coffee shop, looking out the windows, we saw this Cessna land, and taxi over to the gate. "There they are", dad said, with some anticipation. In a few minutes Jack and his 'friend' emerged. The 'friend" was tall, slender, grayish hair, crew cut. He looked familiar, that 'friend' as they entered the room, and then came the introductions.
His name was "Deke" Slayton. One of the original seven astronauts chosen by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) to participate in the original Mercury program in 1959,and was later the pilot of the docking module when they docked with the Soviet Soyuz capsule in 1975. He was a bomber pilot during WWII, and later became a test pilot. Jack was a glider pilot during the war, and upon retiring from the air force went to work for the FAA(Federal Aeronautics Administration) as Supv. Flight Control Operations, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They had known each other for a long time.
Needless to say, Karen and I nearly "slid out if our chairs", for it's not everyday when you find yourself having a casual cup of coffee and conversation with someone who considered such feats as, "just doing his job."
"You never know, who you're going to meet..... on any given day..... at any given time."
r.riddle: 10-16-2016

Often in your life of days
You’ll hear them
With that speech they say—
*You are not the mistakes you’ve made; Troubles you created;
Your hope that has faded.
You’re beautiful; of that, do know.”
But here I stand, still transfixed
On the self-inflicted hurt
I couldn’t care to mend—
But why?
Needless pain, so superfluous and gratuitous,
Yet, still ceaseless, interminable—
Hopeless to change

Why are we so set on punishing ourselves
When really that defeatist inclination
Brought us pain from origination?
But who am I to say?
What have I done,
In my self-inflicted grief

Know, that if you committed the unjustifiable sin
Lost what your strong will or your whole life has brought you
Kept that one quality, so awful and deplorable
You will still be loved.

Have peace of mind,
Your cherished life has only begun