I wish for everything to become dreamlike,
For the visions that I see to be beautiful beyond recognition,
Prejudices to be erased and see everything as it is objectively,
The land and the sky emerged,
Eaten by the eyes of republics,
Societies fair and balanced in the long, long run,
That everything be made simple in all fruits,
I wish that the struts holding existence together be abolished,
Simians and pagan with currency abound in their hearts,
Abandoned for the love of idealist thought,
The fear of death leveled by the sight of life,
Pondering and pondering have brought forth a makeshift cannon,
The wick is filled with hate and as it burns so will the needs of man,
Slowly the blast of council will grant those new passage,
Those that didn’t think about things so hard,
Those that didn’t believe in anything,
Those that wanted to long for something,
Coming up short made those want for nothing,
Except the want to not want,
Those that rang bells and shouted out loud,
Those that twirled in the crowded room,
Those that had revelations of revolution,
Those that held rain in their hands,
Those that sought but weren’t sought after,
For them it was the single step that made a difference,
The mighty that were oh so meek,
Those that didn’t get lead to slaughter,
But by simple concept of overall were swept away by the tide,
Kicking and screaming,
Sanctuary
Sanctuary
They held human self worth above net worth,
Held sickly more virtuous than pampered
Held troubled and misguided as labeled dangerous thinking by the feeling mites,
Held the feeble meaning of the world on the string and chopped it,
Let it fall and fully saw truth laying at the bottom

(Cruz and Pedra were talking in the bedroom. Cruz had started to recover and his wound began to heal.)


(Pedra said,)



'' Pedro uses the morality to achieve his immoral,
Hidden goals, but you provoke the people to become
Immoral, considering them to be hypocrites; '' ''don't quarrel!
Criticism is something you cannot avoid; they're just ****.


(Cruz continued,)



You're the one who breaks any spiritual barrier
To overcome some secret limitations; you like
This concept of master-slave morality; you're a harrier.
I'm an old man, and I don't like that, sometimes, you're ready to strike.



(Cruz continued,)



Carla is your antipode; '' ''Do I spy? Did you question Ivan
About passing such a barrier between two powerful
Countries to do business? '' ''Their run just means survivin'.
I admit that I'm very curious; '' ''You think it's wonderful! ''



(Cruz said while smiling,)



''I want to change everything around and do not know how.''
''If you were not so morose and introverted, maybe
You would succeed; '' ''I'm not an orator, but I'm still alive now.
I speak too briefly and concisely, but I love you, baby.''



(Pedra replied,)



'' You're a very good observer and you think objectively.''
''I consider that you've found my way of being in the world
And this is why our marriage works so well; you're effectively
My friend; our life didn't fall apart when the lies were hurled.''


(Pedra said,)


''We have an organized family, and even when
We are not together, we are a team; '' '' I understand
That you have learned from the power of Aphra Behn's pen,
But, when you are with me, your ideas lose command.''



(Pedra replied,)



'' Maya appreciates my knowledge about botany
And history; '' '' She's a lonely woman, an unlucky one.
Between some passengers, she created a dichotomy.''
''Did you ask her some odd questions as you had done with Ivan? ''



(Cruz replied,)



''Maya is a war survivor and she learns to overcome
The poverty; '' ''she's an introvert but friendly and humane.
Although old, she works well and fast while needing to become
A talented cook; she's healthy for her age; doesn't live in vain.''



(Cruz said,)



''She needs to manage her anxiety by trying to control
Her reality; she views this ability as a matter
Of survival; '' '' she appeals to the evil powers for her goal.
To make this force be an energy field she uses the water.



(Pedra continued,)



She's a widow and her brother, Naimah, is rather clumsy.
He's not strong enough to overcome the difficulties in life.''
''How to keep fear under control she likes to study
And she's a kind of quack using plants to cure this inner strife.''



(Pedra replied,)



''She had fled war and chose the water as the primordial
Element instead of accepting the fire; then, those forces
Followed her to set this ship on fire 'cause that danger was mortal.
She thinks that these elements feed on her chakras sources.''



(Cruz replied,)



''The water quenches the fire, and when the water is dangerous,
There is no escape; '' ''Carla told me that Maya talked to her dead.
She's afraid of exorcisms; '' ''she cannot endanger us.''
''To bring Maya to Allah, Geraldine has a wise head.''



(Cruz replied,)



'' Geraldine has been pregnant while needing help; she seems to be
A fighter, but in reality, she's peaceful, frail and helpless.
You are a totally different person; '' ''no loss is known in me.
To help Surak after abandoning her kids was useless.''



(Cruz replied,)



'' Maybe her children are strong, but her nephew needs help.''
'' Maybe she needs purity to get her protective energy
While entering the unknown; '' ''stop turning my brain to kelp!
It's intuition. If I wasn't in that gun-room, we would die.''



(Cruz began to tell her about the person who had saved him from death.)



(To be continued…)



Poem by Marieta Maglas

I’m in my prime; at the cusp of my development.
A few more years of growth make decay a lot more relevant…

Glass Elephant,
Glass Elephant,

Irrelevance, benevolence,
Compassion, or malevolence;
I’m one of few who sees it sums no difference.

Glass objects.
Or Elephants.
Irrelevance,
Irrelevance

Striving for motion, with motive elusive
Each thing I endeavor is far too exclusive
I need something inclusive, objectively singular
A sinusoidal wave with a mean lacking integers
Peace in zero and equilibrium inclusion

Glass Elephant
Glass Elephant
Delusions, Delusions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I gave you up for adoption at 16 yrs old never gettin to know who she is
Sad that I learned what it takes to be a man after learning to use my *****

And at the time I was so inflicted being drug addicted my sight
To see the future sober me will have
To carry this all his life

After I gave her away I woke up some days not remembering why
I gave u away only to stay intoxicated to run away or fly

Becoming scared of not being high
So when I finally decided to quit
the drugs, I regretted all I was and
the love I turned away&now; miss

The daughter who I won't kiss
hug or love so I often feel sad
Picturing my daughter hugging a better man .. Who she now calls Dad

The one she says she loves, who
Was man enough to be
A Selfless, sober and responsible role model.All the things I couldnt be

&No; matter how sorry I am or how much remorse was in my tears
Eventually even the drugs couldn't help me run or numb the fear

That still grows every year
Scared shell think I didn't care
Or even worse not even care, cause I'm just a stranger she could stare

at and not recognize me like I wore a mask as we pass in street
not knowing who I am, and I'm so **** Scared she wont want to meet

Scared shell find that in time I became a dad and succumb
To the knowledge that I now lovingly raised another baby... My son

Leading her to be angry and confused on Why she couldn't stay
But I still kept my son who now has the one father who gave her away

And it eats at me everyday, cuz I never meant to leave my blood
In the hands of a better man but trust me Ive cried so much it floods

My face whenever I face this pain that I still face now
I often wish the tears that appear as I cry over u would cause me to drown

From the puddle left on the ground
But objectively this is much worse
Cuz I am cursed with facing your birth every day only to feel the thirst

To find closure, for all of the hurt
But deep down I know that first
Karma must fairly punish me mercilessly as thats what i deserve

So like revenge it's dished& served
As cold as anything can be
And I can only hope I can forgive myself but like Casey Anthony

I took for granted the gift planted So I reep what I sew as rancid
Is self hatred,that strips my soul naked now vacant after bein handed

Something sacred, that I refused
To protect so it was safe at night
Bearing the pain of missing your first words&steps; or teachingU2ride a bike

Never hear I love you. Never know you. Never be part of your life
... I wish you knew how sorry I was but in life. There are things that no apology could ever make right ....

/////////////////////////

You must do it for You.
No one can do it for You,
and you are alive for You.

You are not endebted to anyone
by virtue of existing;
except perhaps your Mother and Father,
but that's another story.

You owe it to no one to be a certain way
to look a certain way
to talk a certain way;
You owe it to yourself to be who you are,
to express yourself truly,
to come to terms with yourself.

You must do it for You
not because you are arrogant, selfish, or even hubristic,
but because it is you who suffers
when you fail to do it for yourself.
(As a result, those around you suffer, as well.)

You must be there for yourself
for you are stuck with you
in a far more than personal sense;
You must do it for you,
not because you are all that matters,
but because you are all you can control
if only you knew how:

Meditate.
Observe yourself as objectively as you can
though be not harsh to yourself
except when you need to be.

You are an extra-dimensional being
looking through a looking glass
that happens to be trapped in the Third Dimension.
Your prism is of a higher power than we can perceive;
perhaps that is why it is so elusive and "ineffable".

So, again,
Do it for yourself.
You'll thank me later.
Or, maybe not. Maybe this is only true for me;
either way I feel a need to express it, so there you have it.

there’s a delhi boy, somewhere out there

i like to to think that he is the physical embodiment of opposite day

because when push him away, he pulls me back

when i tell him i hate him, he says he loves me

and when i say i want to leave and im halfway to leaving through the door,

he grabs my arm,

pulls me back,

and gently says,



“this is YOUR house, you can’t leave YOUR OWN house. you’re being ridiculous. also where do you keep the mayo?”



there’s a delhi boy, somewhere out there

and he’s pretty **** wild

when i say wild, i dont mean he lives like every day is his last

i mean he’s wild enough to believe there will always be a tomorrow

and don’t get me wrong, im not saying that like it’s a bad thing

because when i tell him i won’t survive that night

somehow his tomorrow-ness always helps me make it to the sunrise



you see, he’s the first boy i haven’t scared away

with my tendency to want to die

no, it’s much more than that

in fact

he plants entire fields of flowers for me

instead of picking a few to put on my to-be casket

like everyone else does

he writes to me with the flower stems

and makes me feel like im the backbone of all his sentences

even though im more a sentence fragment, missing conjunctions, is that a misspelling of because? kinda gal

he likes to edit, but he never takes credit for fixing me



you see, writer’s block becomes a hollow garden full of red ikea flowers shrouded in my guts when i think of him

because it’s not that i don’t know what to say

its that i have so much to say all at once

because he is so much of everything good i did not know i deserved

for the distance between us not to hurt

the closest thing I have to an accepted prayer

as someone

that doesn’t really believe in soulmates, I mean



can you even objectively define a soulmate?

even if you could, what is the statistical probability that your soulmate isn’t dead?


i guess he can be unfamiliar territory because

im so used to people tearing off the parts of me they need

and hes the first one to ever say he would not let any part of me go



theres a delhi boy out there

and i hope he knows that he always has a home in my notebooks

because my writing comes from my heart and he has mine

i hope he knows that he fits in between the lines of my poems better than the spaces

of our fingers when im holding his hand and

after heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak



he is my first healing

Individual perception creates alternate realities. Infinite views.
Some shared among many,
Some among few,
Some are created and confined within one.
Objectively, everything is real.
Because nothing is real.

Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking
Most likely considering the effortless exchange of our thoughts
It happens more than I let on noticed
Each hiding beneath the same shell with the illusion of invisibility
Contradictorily with razorsharp X-ray vision
I see right through you and you see right through me
The most introverted extroverts and pessimistic love addicts
Sometimes it feels as if we are looking at a mirror and there appears the other
As if we are the same person
And if I changed a perspective
Would yours shift as well?
It is these wonderful similarities that make us magnetic
And our bipolar tendencies that make me objectively view the potential
Our evolution is stumbling when we are wearing such armor on our hearts
What if my confusion is brought on by yours?
Why are we so scared?
The answer to that would probably be the same as mine
But we are both too stubborn
To surrender.

I should be happy

Today was a good day
  like objectively a good day
  like, on paper, a good day

I should be happy
Today good things happened
  better things than yesterday
    or last week
    or last month
    or the last 6 months

I should be happy

But why do I feel like I'm moving my feet through water just to slow them down?
Like I'm looking through cotton just to see where I'm going
Like I'm laughing to prove my smile is bigger than it is
Like even breathing is made harder by the sheet over my lips
  parachuting into my mouth with every breath.
I swear

I should be happy

I've done and am doing
everything I can to avoid you
and save you from feeling uncomfortable
standing in line for drills, I'll give you
almost a ten-foot berth
it surprises and shocks me
when I still see your face
looking slightly disgusted
or when you and your sister make eye contact
I can't help but wonder if you've deduced it,
figured out, that though
I have no right to be jealous and hurt
I still am
and though
you do not belong to me
I love you like someone suffocating in the heat
who only occasionally gets a breath of cold air
and even then, it is just a trickle
for I am dying to stay away from you
dying when I keep you close
my heart is struggling, limply pounding
frail against my ribs, there's nothing left of me
because its all for you, I changed myself
a named bullet
or a placard on a seat at a table
saying 'here, this one's for you'
my mannerisms have changed
my dance, my walk, my voice, my sense of humor
consciously or subconsciously,
I have branded my soul
molded it into a you-shaped whole
but then
you never liked being told what to do,
did you?
so I turn away, I walk on the opposite side
I never want you to feel pressured or like you have to hide
I dance far away from you
It's not a matter of 'time to bide'
it's about you and your decisions
that you have your alone time,
despise being labeled,
your wants are completely yours,
defy my understanding;
I'll never serve them out loud to you, you'd hate that
all I can do is quietly avoid, conceal
because I'd give my life to make you happy
and fill your needs, objectively
for I've come to terms with the stark reality of love
and your plans, blueprints of what and whom you're going to be
and how they don't ever include me.

Smoking American Spirits
Like that name is not sickly ironic
As I watch the moon
And blow your name
Out through my teeth.

After all of it
I still can’t decide
If I’m happy that you’re happy
Or hate you for leaving me
In the cold to gape
At a barren rock.

The moon is a visceral spirit,
Pundit of creation myths,
Vaudevillian purveyor
Of heavy handed profundity,
Reflects the sun
When nothing else can,
Means so much to so many;

The moon is an entropic
Collusion of earth-chunk
That happens to orbit us,
Objectively meaningless,

Communicating with the ocean
As ants ***** chemicals
Into each others mouths to converse.  

Staring together up into
The gaping gnash of space,
Humans give the moon its meaning
Just as two people falling in love
Forever inhabit midsummer nights
'Till one leaves in a haze
Of evaporating brain chemistry.

I really am happy you’re happy,
Because I really do love you
Even after everything,
And I really do hate you
Because it hurts so much
And you were so selfish,
Go **** yourself,
Why can't I feel both?

Just this silly girl,
Just two broken people,
Look at what we made Chlo,
It's hanging in the sky
Strung up with used filaments.

I love you and hate you still
Because knowing the moon
Is a barren rock
Makes what it has become
Incandescently, infinitely beautiful.

we were all born from
challenged ancestral thought -
refracting in such a way against
our flimsy souls
that would
build us up gradually:
    (from the drowning
           beta-fish to the asphyxiated
                                              dove).

showing us how absolutely
okay it was
to recognize
a distant gaze belonging
to one on the brink of another
terribly lonely silence.

coupled with sighting
a trembling bone structure --
we could find yet another
sign of “Get Me Out Of Here” or
“Those Walls Better Keep Their Distance”
without one or ten stigmas attached to the core.

auto-pilot would really do us all a favor if
we could think objectively for more than
a few seconds: throw a side of coping mechanisms
into the mix while we’re off creating the perfect
human. but god, just save more than a handful
of our loves tonight.

if only we could learn to note
the difference between a
barely-there sigh that screams
“This Is Only A Yawn” vs.
“More Than A Coffee Crash”

perhaps we’d all find each other well-off
and striving for that sense of unimaginable
hope we can see every poet clawing for;
trapped in the depths of their
own abyss. they can’t find
the EXIT sign. can you even
salvage a reading light?

this world can only flourish
outwards from here on out:
I swear to you.
if only we can pry that mind
open and teach it to love
a little bit more than
the revolving planets
in their universes.

Genuinely feeling hope for something good, and being lead by false hope to believe a lie as truth, are two different beasts

I don't hate myself for what I felt, or thought, but instead what I was lead to think was okay to believe

I was lied to, again; my words beckoned something I thought was genuine, and deceit was all that met me, just like every time before it

I'm sick of being here, of thinking anything gets better, because it's true that the those who spend their fortune at keeping an authentic heart for others will inevitably end up alone, indebted to those who only care of themselves

I give myself away too often, but only for what I objectively observe as being meaningful, but I'm afraid that closing off my mind will bring me to the dark place again, and I never want to go back there

I have no control of what someone believes or feels, nor do I know what that may be, all the same

I just take what I am given, if it seems and feels good; if it echoes compassion and sincerity, because that's exactly what I lack most

I hate being a slave to this paradox, but my freedom may only come with absolute truth

I have no more faith for that - I still hope; potentiality rings, but I know that's one sided on my end

A wish is a wish..

There is no need to dwell on the exterior cliche of an injured soldier, the propaganda is superficial. Civilians have only plastic green men, heavy dusty movie set costumes, and Army-of-One heroes to populate stereotypes. Keep your images larger than life, no use touching up a paint-by-number. Mine was banal, foolish, and 19; enough said.

One fence is the fraternity itself, the next is brain injury. No other way to understand but be there. A Solid-American-Made-Dashboard cracked my forehead at 45mph.
Crumpling into the footwell,
unaware that the flatbed's rear bumper
was smashing thru the passenger windshield above me
the frame stopped just shy of decapitating my luckily unoccupied seat.
Our vehicle's monstrous hood had attempted to murderously bury us under,
but the axle stopped momentum's fate and ended the carnage under dark iron.
Shards of my identity joined the slow, pulverized, airborn chaos.
Back, Deep, Gone.

Unconsciousness is the brain's frantic attempt to re-wire neurons, jury rig broken connections, the doctor's desperate attempt to re-attach, stand back and say, good enough. Essential systems limply functioned, but unessential ones were ditched. Years later a military doctor diagnosed an eventual triage: Hypothalimus disconnected from the Pituitary Gland, Executive Function damaged, long pathways for emotional regulation interrupted.

I woke up still kinda bleeding, crusty blood in my hair, a line of frankenstein stitches wandering across my forehead.   My sense of self had literally dissolved into morning dust floating in a sterile hospital sunbeam.  My name was down the hall, words and the desire to speak were on a different floor.  Life became me and also a separate me under constant renovation, a wrecking ball on one half, scaffolding and raw 2x4's the other.

Waking up in the hospital, I realized I needed help to get the blood cleaned up.   A nurse came in, largely glared at me in disregard, and quickly left… for an hour.   She returned and brusquely dropped a useless ace comb and gauze on the blanket over my feet and abandoned me again.  This was my introduction to the shame of a VA hospital.  I minced my way to the bathroom, objectively examined my face in the mirror with shocking stitches above one swollen eye.  Gingerly rinsing my hair, the water ran pink in white porcelain.  I remembered the sound in my skull between my ears when a doctor scraped a metal tool across my skull, cleaning debris before stitching.  I recalled that in the ER I was asking Is he ok, repeating it like a broken record, knowing I should stop but I couldn’t.  There was also perhaps a joke about an Excedrin headache.

It was morning, and since there was no such thing as time or purpose or feelings anymore, I wandered to the hall with my only companion, the IV pole. One side was a wall of windows, and I was, what, 10 or 12 stories up from the streets of a much larger city than where I crashed.  The hall was warm and sunny.  I wheeled my companion to a blocky square vinyl chair to sit next to a pay phone.  I didn’t have any thoughts at all, or care about it.   After about an hour my first name floated up from the void, then with some effort my last name.  It took the rest of the morning to remember I had a brother.  After lunch we resumed our post, and I spent the afternoon in concentration piecing together his phone number.  God had pushed the reset button.

Thirty years ago the doctors didn't understand head injuries; they only recognized the physical symptoms. At first there was good reason to be permanently admitted to the hospital.  My blood pressure was unstable, sometimes so low that drawing blood for tests caused my veins to collapse even with baby needles.  My thyroid had shut down completely, only jump-started again with six months of Synthroid.  I had to learn to live with crashing blood sugar and fluctuating appetite.  For years afterwards, any stress would cause arrhythmias, my heart filling and skipping out of sync, blood pressure popping my skull.  Will the clock stop this time?  

There is always at least one momentous event in every person’s life that becomes punctuation, before and after.  The other side of Before the accident truly was a different me.  I have a vague recollection of who that person may have been, and occasionally get reminders.   Before, I was getting recruiting letters from Ivy League colleges and MIT, a high school senior at sixteen.  After, I couldn’t balance a checkbook or even care about a savings account in the first place.  Before, I had aced the military entrance exam only missing one question, even including the speed math section.  They told me I could chose any rating I wanted, so I chose Air Traffic Control.  Twenty years later, I thumbed through old high school yearbooks at a reunion.   I saw a picture of me in the Shakespeare Club, not recalling what that could have been about.   On finding a picture of me in the Ski Club I thought, Wow, I guess I know how to ski.   A yellowed small-town newspaper article noted I was one of two National Merit Scholars; and in another there’s a mention of a part in the High School Musical.  

This side of After, I kept mixing right with left, was dyslexic with numbers, and occasionally stuttered with word soup.  Focus became separated from willpower, concentration was like herding cats.  The world had become intense.

(chapter 1 continues in memoir)

History doesn’t repeat, it reproduces,

It ***** us well

into the darkest hour; we hold it so holy as

it wholly condenses, contracts, cracks, grasps and

Moans. It’s a venereal haunting,

ghosts of a ruthless world that doesn’t give

a **** and only cares about ******* **** up and *******

to be the fittest, survival of the wittiest.



You all want to reproduce your kind

but with the reproduction of your kin

your kind comes out sludge—

the soggy excuse of an abandoned mind

rotting away into “we’re not the first—

it’s always happened, all the time, is that a crime?”



Wreaking havoc amongst a species of your kind?

****! Me! Yes! It’s serious!

To trudge the earth for proof

that birth of war was something

of divine? Is it fine that people die

and never know of the privileged life—the life



We ******* live, ******* for Capitalism

But still getting ****** the same—

Like parents—if you won’t ******* take the time

to ******* notice what’s there and what’s right

what’s not and what is, sometimes—

what is sometimes more than one or two times;



The world is your baby, you can’t just decide

When to care and when to pretend you do

It’s true, getting ******, we all have—just a few

everyone is getting ****** in the entire ******* world

***** ******* with their ******* only want control

Hypocritical ***** in the government—they’re the ones creating ******

We the people, America the ******, swallowing what’s ******* from stores

Money’s flashy in that aspect it can buy whatever fetish

It can satisfy and pleasure

It can torture it can ruin it

It can break a nation’s soul;



Does Earth seem like a hole?

It gets ****** objectively, free of sentiment or affection,

It gets pillaged, ripped and hurled. It fights back

Vulnerable and totally ordinary—rare for our kind.

Who gives a ****, Earth doesn’t have a gender,

It’s not going to tell anyone,

You had a lot to drink,

It was social influence:



It was the way of human kind,

******* for any kind of benefit,

Privilege, artificial sentiment

******* to keep going

Like everyone else

Maybe one day we’ll have a family until,

Until,

they too, will die.

If you're expecting a regular, silly me,
well this is not for you.
And if it makes you uncomfortable,
I recommend leaving right now.
But my body
literally cannot take it anymore
and I feel that making an essay
explaining how anxiety affects me
will not only help me cope and deal with it,
but it may even help other people out there
come to terms,
or relate,
or empathize on just
what it can do to a person.
If there is only one single person out there
who finds even a smidgen of solace or comfort
in knowing that they're not alone,
then this whole essay will be worth it for me.

As you may or may not know,
I like to keep my personal life private and away
from strangers
as much as I can for the most part.

Not because
I'm embarrassed or scared of what people might think,
but mostly because I think it's unhealthy
to share every waking moment of your life
with a collection of strangers on the Internet.

Everyone deserves privacy,
and it's not something most people
even have to think about.
Never in a million years
did I ever even consider the possibility
that my privacy would be something
I may have to worry about.
So what does this have to do with anxiety?
Well,
in May of 2018,
I vanished for nearly a month.
I barely posted anything anywhere,
the only place you could have found me
was on classes.
Where I definitely wouldn't have mentioned
or talked about what was
happening to me at the time.
I did answers questions, where I loosely and vaguely
explained where I was for that time,
beating around the bush and avoiding
the exact reasoning,
but let me explain to you what happened.

Near the middles last semester, or early April,
I can't really remember,
The play and my overdue assignments
I have to catch up to,
had been tiring me
to a quite extreme extent.
And thus personally
it started to get...
insane.
No, I'm not talking about stupid essays
or poor language.
I mean exhausting,
crushing, abhorrent nature
of relationships
This includes not only relationships
between classmates and such,
but all members of my social circles:
my family, lecturers,
combined with some very personal issues
that i may or may not talked about.
I even developed multiple "voices" in my head
that was dedicated to ridiculing
my abhorrent behaviour
saying things like,
'Nobody likes you.'
'Why they would even bother anymore.'
And not surprisingly,
this completely threw me for a loop
and ever since then,
my anxiety has been
pretty much a daily struggle.
It can be anything that causes it
Maybe only a small thing, like...
being too scared to call up friends
to notify others about my sickness
because they are excited
about the play
and need my cooperation.
Or rushing out from classes and events
just because i don't want
to interact with people.
Or even more destructive behavior, like
panic attacks that wake me up at like 6 AM
and leave me shaking and out of breath
for seemingly nothing.
Or locking myself away
and refusing to interact with anyone
and just leaving myself
to my own terrible thoughts.

The cycle of anxiety
is one the worst things about it,
It's a spiral
that just gets worse and worse if you let it.
You may be saying to yourself
'Well, that's dumb, stop!'
'Just don't do it, that makes no sense!'
And you're right.
The thing that agitated me the most
about anxiety at first was the lack of being able
to find a reasonable explanation or cause
for why I feel the way I do.
Because the awful thing about anxiety
is that it's not reasonable.
It defies logic,
it is wrong.
It's a thought process and
a destructive vicious cycle
that is very hard to
wrap your head around at first
and only gets worse
the more self-aware about it you become.
Anxiety is destructive,
Crushing,
It hurts you both,
phisically and mentally,
It ruins relationships with people,
It makes you feel pathetic and lost,
It makes you feel wrong or broken,
Embarrassed and sick.

But let me tell you something;
You should never
feel embarrassed or ashamed for something
you have no control over.
Whether it's a mental illness,
your skin color,
your ****** preference...
Don't you let anyone EVER
make you feel like you should be ashamed,
guilty or embarrassed for that.

Objectively, on paper, I should have
absolutely nothing to worry about.
I have a very comfortable and safe life.
But another cruel symptom of anxiety
can be a sense of constant doubt
and worry.
Things like, my classes is doing TOO well,
My life is going TOO smoothly,
My partner is TOO attractive and TOO perfect.
Things are going too great for me,
and maybe I don't deserve it.
Even if you're joking or not,
the 'I'm stressed' thing
is something I hear extremely often.

But I remember a few years ago
when I worked in retail for a bit
Someone called me over to ask for help
I politely told this guy what to do,
as you're supposed to
and his response was to rudely say
'Well, how the **** was I supposed to know that?
I have a real job'
Now, I'm definitely not suited to retail
because I found it to be horribly crushing
but in saying that
conversely, anxiety was hardly
a problem for me at the time
It was still there,
but the difference is
I had no investment in weekend
throwaway jobs like that
So it was easy to shrug it off and forget about it

But when your life completely revolves around
interacting with an audience of people
that you are always constantly
trying to impress and make happy
because you really, really care about it
I found that I started to ignore basic human needs like...
staying healthy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
I now work every single day of the week
in some regard
I never switch off
I find it hard to switch off
It's always in the back of my mind
I used to take one day of the week to try
and relax and do nothing
But now I going out on that day
Which I thought would be fun
because I'm really bad at interacting with my friends
so I thought this would be the perfect way to avoid it.
But I've been met by a large backlash of people who
because I'm sacrificing even more
of my time to try to interact
and entertain my audience
and its not related with the
my current tasks at all...
I've people saying things like
'You has to get more hardworking.
do you not sympathize with others?'
You get the idea
And comments don't usually bother me,
but every now and again
there will be that one
that will catch me at the wrong moment
and will just make me ask myself
Why do I even bother?
So if getting more hardworking
results in me being able to sleep at night
and not have panic attacks
then please, somebody go ahead and
swap with me, yeah?

I do realize i was wrong most of the time,
or sometimes don't care about my laziness
but sometimes i tend to get overwhelmed
because I'm pretty "unlucky"
The truth is
I like working and talking to people.
I'm happy with it.

I used to often chat with people regularly
but that often led to times
where I forget my tasks.
where a couple of hours
would've made it that much better to me
To be honest, I m a quite forgetful person
and easily distracted with certain things cough
But going back to the main subject of the essay
I'm not talking about this
to try and get some kind of
sympathy vote from you guys.
Although anything kind or supportive
will not go unappreciated
But the whole point is
that anxiety is more common than you think
and if you've been suffering in silence
or relate to anything I've said
or who have let it gradually
build over the years and
spiral out of control like it did for me
Then please, please, please
make an appointment with your local general practitioner
and just talk about it
I know people who have dealt with anxiety
just by talking to people about it
You don't need to suffer alone
there are plenty of us out there
Seeing as anxiety is caused by
your body overproducing adrenaline
as soon as I saw the doctor
and explained my situation
he prescribed me with some tablets that lower the adrenaline output
and I've felt, like, really good ever since.
I know this has been quite a serious topic
but I didn't think wacky lines
and jokes left and right
would be suitable
for the subject matter
This has been on my chest
for a long, long time
So I'm glad I've finally got it out there
I hope this has been helpful,
interesting or eye opening for you
and good luck to all of you out there
who are dealing with similar issues.

See you soon.

Bye.

Christianity is the only tribe I subscribe to,
And the only religion that is objectively true.

Let me say something thats uncomfortable and taboo,
Doing good works wont give you eternal life or save you.

Call on the name of the lord Jesus before its too late,
Your decision friend, will determine your eternal fate.

I still have the USSR on the globe
in my room. Remember that time when it fell on you?
And you skirted away like
it was a bomb?
I hope it didn't scare you.
I didn't mean for it to drop on you.

I still have the blue nail polish
on my toenails. It doesn't have anything to do with you.
At least not objectively, you know?
You probably don't since
you are a dog.
And also because you are dead.

I keep it on because it was there when you were here.
And now you are gone.
Which is ok.
Not bad.

Because I still have the USSR on my globe.

Bees nestle in sunshine flowers,

a once adrift cold cat now warm in her glory hours,

birds coo rounded and loud,

the awesome blue sky without cloud.

Although objectively wonderful I wouldn't like it as much if not for you two,

all your actions gilded love's hue:

I'm lucky I came up smiling from the roll of the parent dice

and this little back garden resembles paradise.

I was a nerdy book loving
video game playing
weird music listening
awkward little short kid
in high school
the only difference
between now and then
is now I'm not in high school
and don't have the money
to buy video games
but throughout it all
since I was around 12 years old
I've been madly in love
like border line obsessed
with words,
they carry a mystique about them
capable of so much
yet objectively irrelevant
they are the conduit of humanity
and existence
and for every girl I've crushed on,
and a few time when it was more than a crush,
I would have picked the words over them every time
the same could go for my good friends
and even when I'm alone,
I'm never really alone
the words are everywhere I look
my first love
my only love

I once held onto the wonderful tapestries of stories long gone
That no longer even apply to the reality of existence
The stories that never existed anywhere but the romantic images of young poets
And artists prophetically penned in the language, which seemed so perfect
Until everyone and everything realized that we cannot simply rely on the stories we tell ourselves
And in an instant everything was destroyed and everything else was born
As it all rained for days, sleet and glass sideways, ripping the world to shreds
For god had finally shown himself
And his name was systematically comprehended by generations of scientist
Objectively reverse wiring the brain into a complete knowledge of everything that can never be understood fully
And proof of fact was there on the page for all to see but none listened
The word was too great to be understood
And so god left man again
To toil in the teleological
Like a blind shepherd who had forgotten that he was once Jesus
And that he held the key to everything that is and what should never be

A wise man once said "of that one cannot speak one must be silent"
But i think its worth the shot

Foxy pumps

Visually inviting

Stimulus


Leather jeans

Objectively elevating

Yield


Indie jazz

Naturally circuits

Relish


Vivid suspense

Intellectually appeasing