Paris
The city of light
Having its darkest night
Since World War Two.

Lebanon
Double the body bags,
Yet no media hags
Turn their heads.

Normal
For there they say
But for Paris nay
And so we pay attention.

Kenya
Syria
Iraq
Libia

A suicide bomb
Over here,
Two hundred dead, we overhear
Wrapped into our daily news.

We pay it
Almost no heed
As the blood drips down to feed
The list of the dead.

We say
It is because we have grown
Accustomed, yet we have flown
Over the Coocoo's best to believe this.

The truth is,
Both for here
And there,
A white life is worth far more.

It is worth
10 Black American lives,
16 Hispanic or Asian lives,
27 Arab lives,
35 African lives,
These numbers
Straight from CNN
And the New York Times.

Do we not bleed the same blood?
Have we forgotten what it is to smile
Such that we cannot see ours are all the same?
What has happened to this world,
Once so gold and bright,
Now a darkened, saddened grey
As it weeps it's tears
Upon the red river
That runs through the valley of fears.

Woman is a title that comes with too many consequences shoved into the spaces between each letter. I have worn it proudly, not fully understanding the heaviness it carries, or exactly what it means. I still don’t.

Summer camp teaches me how to shave my legs when my mother neglects to. I am eleven, with hair on my skin barely long enough to pull out when my bunkmates coach me on how to erase it. "Boys don't like girls with prickly bodies," my counselor tells me confidently. I soon understand that to be woman means to be bare, stripped, and clean, always. Being woman means catching the changes of your morphing body before anyone else can point them out.

I am raised to keep secrets. We call the parts of ourselves that we aren't supposed to talk about private. I learn to be silent in more ways than one.


Haley is my best friend. Together we uncover the mystery of womanhood untold. She loves a boy two years older than us and gives herself to him in his parked car outside her house during one of our many sleepovers. I listen as she confesses the details to my eager ears. We learn more about *** from each other than we do health class.  The information given out is too much and not enough at the same time. We are taught enough to do it, but not enough to ease our unknowingness.

Condoms are given out for free. Tampons are not.

Virginity was a concept we were told to maintain from early on. At 14 I want to get losing it over with so I do, with a boy two years older, in between his childhood sheets. I am high enough to blur the details, but not high enough to forget it happens.

I learn how to cauterize undesirable memory with substance, the way too many women do.

When a sophomore girl comes to school with a broken face, everyone is quiet. We all know about the fight, the pushing down the stairs, the bruising that swelled violently like her love for him. "I think he's even hotter now," I overhear someone say.

The first boy I ever love treats me like ****. I let him because that's how it works in the movies.

I love a straight girl with curly brown hair and a smile too much like summer. She kisses me and then tells me about whatever boy she is pursuing that week. It confuses me to no end.

Mia meets her first love when we are 17 and gives him all of her too soon. When he dumps her, I come over ready with a box of popsicles in hand.

We play with Polly Pockets well into our teenage years. The dolls live out dreams impossible for us to reach.

I realize vulnerability is not an option, but something we are born wearing.

A friend shows me how to keep my keys peeking through my knuckles at night. I hold them through scared fingers as I navigate the side streets necessary to get home.

Mom buys me glitter covered pepper spray, "because it's cute." I know her unsaid words and what she really means. "There are too many bad people in the world to not be cautious, you can never be too careful."

When a girl I don't know well is attacked in a back alley by strangers, we sit nervously the couch and talk about the terrifying reality, how bad we feel for her, and how awful it must be to go through something like that.

I call my best guy friend immediately after someone I know takes my body without permission. I explain the details to him of what happened, still shaking from the shock of it. I wait for his response, hoping for open arms ready to hold while I shatter. He sighs and says, "you should have been more careful." I don't counter. I shower three times in a row, tuck myself into the same bed where it happened, and pick up the cracked pieces of myself in the morning. I tell no one else after that.

**** is the punch line to too many jokes.
I don’t laugh.

In an anonymous thread, I read as people discuss the topic of ****** assault. My eyes lose count of how many times strangers say, "just because you regret it, doesn't mean it is ****." I have seen doubt ******* too many faces hearing the stories of survivors with dull eyes from telling theirs over and over again to people who will never believe them. Their truth is taken with a shot of uncertainty.
They ask, "Why survivor? Why not victim?"
They say, “It doesn’t **** you, you’re not a survivor.”
I want to answer that survival is a choice made in the aftermath of destruction, that we either chew our way through the broken glass or swallow it whole, letting it break us from the inside out. I want to say survival is not as simple as we didn’t die. Survival is consciously refusing not to.
Instead I say nothing.

I know girls with too many piercings and tattoos because they had run out of room on their small bodies to let out any more anger. I watch darkness fill their skin with its reminder, young girls who know pain all too well.

A man on the street calls out to me. I shake my head quietly because I'm afraid of the bomb my response could set off. I have seen too many ticking men explode for me to want to fight back.

I learn about abortion when I am too young to understand it, too self-centered at the time to try to imagine the fear of unwanted growing inside of her. I have grown to understand the importance of choice.

A guy tells me that if a woman has *** with more than five guys in her lifetime, she's a *****.

Someone I hook up with shares with me about how his friends audio record their girlfriends during ***. He laughs, I shudder.

"Guys don’t like it when.."  is a tip I hear almost daily.  

School dress codes mark my shoulders unholy, my shorts too miniscule. I am sent to the principal's office in 10th grade when I refuse to change into a top that doesn't show my lower back. I ask what my body did to have to learn this kind of shame. I am suspended for the rest of the day.

Beauty pageants teach me that perfect woman is exactly what I am not.

My ex boyfriend calls me a ****.

My other ex boyfriend calls me crazy. I’ve learned that crazy is synonymous with “she had an opinion that did not align with mine.”

In my college lecture we talk about the origins of hysteria, remembering how women in history had their voices twisted into insanity. I think about how often “calm down” is used as a modern-day-tranquilizer.

Us weekly tells me every week, in one too many advertisements, how to lose weight.

My campus paper posts an ad for breast augmentation deals. "Get spring break ready."

The size of my chest is too much a reflection of my brain’s capacity.

Being woman means too much in a language I do not fully understand. It is skin and bones, it is raw and blood, it is a mouth filled with words unsaid, it is fear and worry, it is an unspoken connection between us all, it is 75 cents to a dollar, less for those of color, it is censored body, it is *******, it is being too much to handle, it is being equated with less, it is we are the same but we are not treated so, it is we are human in a world we call man’s, it is we have been struggling under the waves for centuries, it is not drowning, it is still swimming, always

i can move from the highly lyrical into what's deemed
modern -
        poetising within a prosaic framework,
gone are coordinates that would
define a poem on the premise of:
whether there's a pun in it.
       sure, poems as chicken scratches
to what would otherwise be an English
teacher's *******: pulverising
a haiku to mean an infinite number of things,
and about a dozen essays by students.
the opposite of what's nonetheless:
    squeezing out juice from an already
squeezed out lemon... and i mean lemon
because there's a threshold...
           poetry is tarnished by what i call
the over-scientification of language...
                 only poetry attracts
so much linguistic categorisation,
so much morge tenure, so much dissection,
before poetry is even spoken
it has already been dissected - a befitting
target practice for budding medicine students...
          and some even deem it a outlet to
their professions: as if poetry was nothing
but a colouring-in book compared to
a da Vinci sketch.
                why not become a martyr for the ******
art? sickly sweet with its rhyme,
  the auxiliary recommendation on a birthday
card... which upon industrialisation
                               is nothing more than
    a thumping of a hammer near a protruding
nail in a crucifix... but a hammer that never
   makes contact with the nail...
why ***** this art, because of the industrious
nature of scribblers exacted to 600 pages worth
of a novel, when, perhaps, one thing is said
and can be said to be actually memorable?
well: there is a greater demand for handcrafted
objects than Ikea veneer, that much can be said...
it takes a few glugs of whiskey and a few cigarettes
to get the final product...
            it doesn't take industriousness -
poetry requires handcrafting, and what's revolutionary
about our times? they once claimed
     southpaws to be of diabolical design,
   but now both hands are used when "writing",
sure, the archaic fluidity of the movement of the hand
is gone: so as i write, i do the cliche of a
peasant listening to classical music while pretending
to conduct an orchestra, that finicky maestro
hand gesture... waltz before you can walk
is all i have to say... and yes:
we either have our Humphrey Bogart moments,
or Forrest Gump moments...
                  Hanks did the miraculous -
play the idiot, and play the serious role -
     which was harder to do, Mr. Bean or Black Adder?
it's hard to play the village idiot while
    being submerged in the bile of malice
   and staring into attempted feats of quasi intelligence...
but you get the hang of it...
   your eyes become like nuggets of coal...
           whereby those that incite pity wet them,
and those that incite contempt: light them up...
        by the time they have burned out...
they have turned into nuggets of sulphur -
          inorganic methane - yellowish grit:
as some Dalton said - could the cliffs of Dover ever
be perceived as sulphuric? the Sulphuric Cliffs
of Dover... apparently this is what defined
London when Christopher Wren took to
ushering in a foundation as Nero did to Rome:
on the chessboard of stone.
        and yes... i can be seen as the oppressor,
after all, i live in a country that prizes its suburban
housing as if miniature castles...
and gardens... boy these people love their gardens...
but they never use them!
    i can use a window to my advantage,
sit on the windowsill and smoke a cigarette and drink
a whiskey, unafraid of voyeurism...
                    pompous in my presence there,
perched like a crow, grinding all life into a halt
as my neighbours peer into the recesses of
    what's 4 by 4 by 4 of living (civil) rooms...
       can we but change the name of this space?
can we call living rooms civil rooms,
   where we acknowledge some sort of civility
rather than a wrestling for the television remote?
i can make little things give me an advantage,
if the toilet is being occupied,
  i'll use the garden as my toilet...
           i feel complete disdain for people who
"require" a garden, but never use it... of people
who "require" a garden, but are never seen in it...
   i'm hardly a c.c.t.v. surveillance object,
   but i feel that over-exposure to ******* reads
as a counter in that: people start to become
      phobic about voyeurism... as universities claim
them to be: "caught with your hand down your trousers
in a safespace", where dolphins jump over
rainbows and unicorns speak Haitian voodoo!
              there is this fear, which is why i'll use the
garden more than the people around me...
          which means: owning a garden is the last
stronghold of moving into an urban environment from
a rural one...
             or perhaps i'm just good at what i do
           and the last point becomes a tangent i care not
to continue... should i ask
            (whether that's true)?
            i have this throbbing sensation in my eyes
when i write such things and overhear
  what's necessary to rereading books in snippets -
which is better than regurgitating maxims
    as if some truth will magically pop-up (once more)
like a Leprechaun with a *** of gold -
  a new film, and hence the all important soundtrack.
rereading books in snippet format reveals much
more than a memorable quote,
           given there's an adequate soundtrack
to accompany you revisiting the book you managed
to take on a weekend holiday (like a girlfriend),
  like lawrence lipton's the holy barbarians...
   (all about the beats)...
              the snippet? chapter 15, the social lie
(martino publishing mansfield centre 2009), pp. 294 - 296...
      the music? ~20minutes into http://tinyurl.com/zdvp8sc
(ben salisbury & geoff barrow)... or what
i image to be a toned down version of
                 ...
) interlude... wacko gets summoned to steal a mouse
from a cat...
      double time... the mouse is unharmed...
all action takes place in the garden...
   running after a cat, catching the ghostly mouse,
i mean: frozen by fear... senile little thing...
     petting the mouse... obviously within the
framework: the most famous mouse in the world
scenario... mouse is put into my neighbour's
garden: where it came from: which kinda makes
this whole thing a practice in Hinduism
     (i can't stop the industrialisation of
farming pigs or chickens or cows...
      so ******* to the sourced sustainably,
organic chickens et al.)...                                 (
i was looking for something as equally pulverising
as ¥ (chemical brother's
song life is sweet)...
      i guess i found it...
                            and what was that bit about
not getting hassle on the internet?
                      i can't force people to read my stuff...
how i love this idea of a gym and making an effort...
both the writer and the reader entwined -
rather than watching you-tube vloggers treat their audience
like penguins feeding their chicks regurgitation as part of
               the info-wars... alter news: propaganda.
'what is the disaffiliate disaffiliating himself from?
      the immense myth promulgated from Madison Ave.
& Morningside Heights...
              the professors and advertisement men (indistinguishable
these days, or in those days - apparently)...
   that intellectual achievement lies within the social order
and that you can be a great poet as an advertising man,
a great thinker as a professor...' hence the myth.
              summarised later as:
'the entire pressure of social order is to make
         literature into advertisement.'
  and why do they shoot people in North Korea and
Saudi Arabia (well, chop more than shoot)?
              bad literature, a.k.a. bad advertisement.
am i a bad advertiser?         point being: am i selling anything?
oh gee! i just might be...
   but i feel there's no need to oppress people into
reading something...         as was the same with
my democratic romance with a personal library of mine:
   how to create a democratic representation
of literature: or how to hear as many people out...
   even those alive would see the backlog of
stale books of the dead that have been under-appreciated
and need a ****** into the future.
        perhaps not Plato...
                    that's not a book, that's a column...
but i despise how feminism ignores its greatest asset...
Mary Shelley... no woman could have single-handedly
become so celebrated in pop culture...
               ex_machina is obviously a revamp of Frankenstein...
Mary Shelley is the embodiment of a woman worthy
a continual revised celebration...
                       you can see her celebrated more times than
any politically minded feminist of whatever 1st 2nd or
3rd movement: because she has the ability to
    turn a man's ego into a ******* umpf!
  like a cat listening in on a scuttling mouse...
              she testifies that women have supreme equality
in the pop culture spheres... after all: Frankenstein is
ugly... Ava? just beyond creepy...
                    she has absolutely no understandable
motives of what Frankenstein intended...
   it not merely creating artificial life...
                    it's about utilising it for a purpose:
in this case a housewife and *** toy... what was Frankenstein
expected to do?         there's no motive other than
     a per se intention... an open & closed argument...
was the monster going to be... a butler?
                  and instead of rebelling against a motive
that awaits her... the rebellion against a per se leaves
Frankenstein's monster driven toward isolation...
       Ava? she's already exposed to an interaction
and what's to be her subsequent interaction for the purpose
of being a maid and a *** toy... which doesn't drive
her to an isolation scenario... because the per se
concept is too complicated for her to establish...
    given she's defined as "artificial" intelligence,
she has to feed on an analysis-synthesis dynamic:
    to absolve herself from any notion of being intelligent:
but artificial... the scary part is that without a per se
element to her knowledge acquisition:
                  she sees no meaninglessness to her life -
she is created for certain customary necessities -
     Frankenstein's monster doesn't have that capacity
to acquire knowledge in an analytically-synthetic
dynamic -
  but i still don't understand why intelligence can
be artificial / faked... when man, if not intending to
  create an intelligence matrix outside of his own...
           will usually fake it, or create a superficial intelligence...
   this is the part where you get to play with
etymology, or at least apply etymology to better conceptualise
what some would call: a synonym-proximity barrier...
               which can be jargon to some,
   but in fact it represents "nuances" or nanometric differences
that is understood to imply: feverishness of
   the peacocking staging of vocab for rhetorical purposes...
if we only had a monochromatic utility for language:
people would be discouraged from talking fervently,
passionately, enthusiastically... rhetorically;
as suggested: is artificial intelligence
                                    superficial intelligence?
  or how to sharpen a distinction? or to what purpose
is making an illusion purposive, given that the already
   established technology is meant to be purposive,
as in replacing labour on the assembly line...
                     given that: it's never about faking it.

april 11 1952 Mom gives birth to beautiful blue-eyed girl Mom takes name Penelope from Great-Grandma Penny who died week after Odysseus was born Mom and Dad are not educated to know greek mythology and homer it is odd coincidence they picked Odysseus’s name out of book of names thought it sounded strong  anglo old money Odysseus is thrilled to have sister to share childhood with when Odysseus is 6 and Penelope is 4 Grandma Betty invites them to visit her house block away she serves them oatmeal cookies orange juice shows them her latest small painting of field brightly colored flowers birds in sky lower left corner is horse or dog painting is still wet she shows them magazine picture she copied from Odysseus realizes it is pony in lower left corner when they return home Mom yells at Odysseus “where were you? why didn’t you think to call or leave message with Teresa? do you have any idea what a nervous wreck you’ve made me!” she slaps hard Odysseus’s face reprimands “don’t i have enough to worry about without you pulling something like this? you only think about yourself it’s so typical of your selfishness wait until your father gets home he’ll deal with you now go to your room!" every time he gets caught in mistake he is punished the drill is Mom gets upset with Odysseus flies into rage yells slaps him around threatens him with Dad gets home has a few drinks Mom tells Dad explodes beats Odysseus Mom is judge jury Dad is executioner afterward Dad goes back into living room pours another drink sits in celadon green lounge chair Odysseus is trained to wipe tears put on pajamas go to Dad apologize admit fault promise to be good kisses Dad and Mom goodnight goes to bed that is the drill

Odysseus is barefaced curious exploring discovering tries to connect with Mom and Dad but they are unavailable they are his parents not his friends as far back as he can remember he lives in world of “it’s safe free here Mom and Dad can’t see us” children are smarter than parents think figure ways to self-protect something stirs inside Odysseus creature separate from Dad and Mom whatever psychological or emotional patterns are developing he does not understand obediently goes along

Mom and Granny Mattie take Odysseus and Penelope to browse shops on oak street at one store little statuette like kind Granny Mattie collects catches Odtsseus’s eye he slips it in pocket on drive home he takes statuette out to show Penelope she asks where he got it Mom Granny Mattie overhear ask Odysseus where he got statuette he confesses took it from store Mom gets livid steers car back to oak street Granny Mattie insists “it’s just a figurine let him keep it Odysseus meant no harm i don’t see why you want to make such a big fuss Jenny!” Mom replies “he’s got to learn right from wrong!” they all return to store mom explains to sales clerk what son has done Odysseus hands back figurine apologizes when Dad gets home he dishes out punishment years later Penelope remarks “that was the first time i realized Odys you needed to reach out for something beyond the family”

Odysseus wants to die he is 7 years old and wants to die he knows his life is critically messed up wants new different existence person he is becoming is too error prone ruined already he is way too ******* himself Dad’s temper Mom’s criticisms subsequent self-absorbed social demands drive him to ideas of suicide Dad and Mom are too busy to notice Mom always uses sleeping pills placidal nebutal seconal miltown whatever is the latest Mom says she does not dream Odysseus guesses she does not remember her dreams on account of those pills everyone dreams years later Mom remarks i need sleeping pills to forget about you Odys as Mom describes “i run a formal beautiful household” she delegates chores to weekly staff of brown skin ladies it is house of feminine décor matching pillows sheets pulled tight under elegant bedspreads everything put away in proper place furniture in precise order little dinner bell servant’s foot buzzer beneath Mom’s chair at dining room table maids in servitude once a week white woman with big shoulders foreign accent shows up to give Mom massage Mom is not to be disturbed during that hour Odysseus knows first names of each laundress cleaning lady doormen deskmen garage men janitors caterers at holidays tall black effeminate John comes twice a month on sunday to cook serve traditional american breakfast along with fried bananas apples afterward he cleans up shines silver first 13 years of Odysseus’s life are lived in buildings with elevators staff of residence employees

Mom’s closet is vast with colors textures ground level hundred or more neatly arranged clear plastic boxes containing pairs of expensive shoes walls of imported French and Italian designer label dresses skirts suits blouses top shelf fashionable purses hats other feminine accoutrements also two large dresser chests filled with drawers of sweaters scarves girdles lingerie hosiery more accessories Mom often wears joy by jean patou arpege by lanvin chanel # 5 Mom shops at saks bonwit teller occasionally marshall fields within several years most of her buying will be done at fantastico, exclusive import boutique on oak street clothes jewelry cosmetics are important to her but most important is hair she prefers bottle blonde color wears hair trimmed medium length fluffed up sprayed fixed as do many women of her generation social stature she visits beauty salon twice a week must enjoy letting her guard down with other women while being served by homosexual men her hair prevents her from driving in car with top down all other outdoor activities that might threaten hairdo Penelope mimics Mom though she keeps her things in less tidy fashion she is being groomed to be queen like mom maybe Mom is more sympathetic to Penelope because both innately share female experience Mom portrays herself as lady of elegance Penelope is different from Mom more earthy bumbling routinely scratches Odysseus’s records leaves her drawers messy Mom takes baths so her hair will not be disturbed Dad takes showers Odysseus and Penelope take baths together then apart as they grow bigger ****** is normal in Schwartzpilgrim household Dad hints reserve Odysseus follows takes showers Mom leaves bathroom door open while bathing she is constantly changing clothes traipsing around in robes slippers elegant silk lingerie

The Equalist!

RE: The guerrilla girl’s poster 5% women artists yet 85% of the models are female.

This poster was heralded as a feminist rebuff of misogyny and the male gaze.

It is my opinion: one of the reasons females are more sexualised than males in Western society; is because the majority of women working in a sexualised industry such as modelling, dancing, fashion or *******; choose to perpetuate that role and the connection between *** and femininity; often in industries where females outnumber the men six to one; I'm also aware that the majority of the hierarchy in theses industries are male, it seems their gender solidarity is more concerned with the money; than notions of ****** inequality; thus perpetuating the issue.

Vernacular test:
Step one - Question one:
I took a survey of 30 fellow artists asking what is a misandry? followed by what is your gender?

Step two - Question two:
I took a survey of 30 fellow artists asking what is a misogyny? followed by what is your gender?

I did offer any information or allow any of the subjects to see the survey paper, or overhear the question.

Results: 30 subjects took part in the survey; One female knew both words and their meaning, and one female didn't know what Misogyny was. (Two females approached refused to take part in the survey, all men approached engaged.)

Step three - Question three:
I then gave all the subjects the dictionary definition and asked why they thought the vernacular misandry is not as well known as the word misogyny?

(I should add that I too couldn't recall the vernacular meaning of: Misandry; though I could recall the meaning or definition of Misogyny.)

Answers:
Female... "I don't care"
Female... "It's due to a gender economic imbalance"
Female..."Blokes just don't like it when women speak out about it"
Female..."I don't get involved in protests"
Female..."I don't know"
Female..."Men just think with their ******"
Female... "There's more misogynists"
Female... "Because men are pigs"
Female... "Why does it mater"
Female... "It's just a word"
Female... "I'm not interested"
Female..."Try being a women"
Female... " It's *******; it's just a vernacular"
Female..."You wouldn't understand your a man"
The other 5 Females... chose to offer no explanation.

Answers:

Male..."I don't know"
Male... "who cares"
Male... "Yeh that's interesting"
Male... Why does it matter"
Male... "Let me think about it"
Male... "Who gives a ****"
Male... "What's this about"
Male... "Can I see the results later"
The other 2 males... Chose to offer no explanation.

I personally identify as human; and don't wish to be defined, labeled or marginalised; I also don’t believe that secularism in any measure is healthy or meaningful in an inclusive society.

I question why 29 out of 30 subjects had heard of Misogyny; and just one person had heard of Misandry.

Sexism is not as the dictionary suggested prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women.
Everyone is effected buy prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination.
The subtleties of which is played out every day.

In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist's appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist's waiting room.
It was winter.  It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited and read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
A dead man slung on a pole
"Long Pig," the caption said.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their ******* were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came an oh! of pain
--Aunt Consuelo's voice--
not very loud or long.
I wasn't at all surprised;
even then I knew she was
a foolish, timid woman.
I might have been embarrassed,
but wasn't.  What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I--we--were falling, falling,
our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.

I said to myself: three days
and you'll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world.
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a sidelong glance
--I couldn't look any higher--
at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.

Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging *******
held us all together
or made us all just one?
How I didn't know any
word for it how "unlikely". . .
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn't?

The waiting room was bright
and too hot.  It was sliding
beneath a ******* wave,
another, and another.

Then I was back in it.
The War was on.  Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
and it was still the fifth
of February, 1918.

Today I walked into Barnes and Noble to buy my summer reading book which just so happens to be super thick and its boring (**** me now!) Anyways, while we're there, out of curiosity, I asked if they had any John Green books (because everywhere else, they're either sold out or on hold) and they did. The lady brought me to a table. A few of my friends had recommended his works. Scanning the table of books, unsure of what to chose, a guy walks up to me. He looks about my age, maybe a year or so older. He's pretty cute, which is quite the pleasant surprise because usually guys don't talk to me. He says, pointing to The Fault in Our Stars, "I couldn't help but kind of overhear you talking, but I read this and it was amazing." He points at Looking for Alaska. "My girlfriend read this... said it was pretty good." So I say thanks and something awkward like 'I'll have to check it out,' and get The Fault in Our Stars. This small gesture has restored my hope in our generation. The guys in my school are mostly arrogant airheads with no taste in music, in my opinion, anyway. In addition to this experience with a stranger, today, while at a shopping center, I saw a girl wearing a 5 Seconds of Summer shirt, as I had mine on, too. I complimented her and she smiled and said, "Thanks, you too." This small gesture has also restored my hope in our generation. Today I learned that not everyone ***** and that makes me really happy. I guess that if you put yourself out there, ever so slightly, in the right places, you might learn things or make new friends.  What if I'd talked to the girl about 5SOS? Or asked the guy about other books he's read? There are so many opportunities every single day to improve the quality of our lives and we pass them up, because they're things that are thought of as small, but can have huge impacts. I believe that if each and everyone of us tried, just a little bit, to talk to  strangers, the world would be a better place. Not everyone wants to hurt you. I'm not saying to invite some random person  into your house, but to talk to people with common interests, or compliment someone on their shirt. Little things like that, as they did to me, can make someone's day. I walk to my mom with a pile of books. She turns to me and says, "Since when did cute boys talk to you at bookstores?"

He smelt like smoke
as he leaned away from me,
texting himself with my phone.

We left the campfire outside,
in our shoes by the door
our socks overlapped in a tangle of limbs.

In that leftover guest room,
on the bottom bunk of the microwaved bed,
I remembered why I thought I knew what love was.

He was tired and needed a nap,
I was restless and cold.
Trapped inside because of violent temperate rainstorms.

This boy owed me stubbed toes,
thorn ****** through my jeans,
nicknames and rubber soles.




This was the boy who had always smelt of smoke,
who knocked over dead trees for me,
who lied about being able to rock climb.

This was the boy who went swimming in the ocean
before summer had properly began
when it was still much too chilly.

I taught him a new card game,
he beat me at badminton.
We played capture the flag and threw pinecones.

We sold cookies on the side of the road,
ate dusty blackberries,
traded innuendos and bad jokes.

This was sea-urchin boy,
slug boy,
the boy with the bird's nest hair.




This boy grew taller,
dropped his voice like a used bus pass,
looked past the top of my head.

He laughed when i stepped in a mud puddle,
dared me to walk in bare feet.
This boy suddenly went mountain biking.

I talked extra loud, in hopes that he would overhear me,
offered him rootbeer straight from the can.
Ate pretzels and learned to read his mind.

We shared our childhoods like penny candies,
switching all the peach ones for strawberry.
we agreed these are the best years of our lives.

He layed beside me, underneath as many covers as we could find,
taking up too much space and he knew it.
my cartoon boy.




My hand-drawn boy,
With smoke coming out of his ears
moved away.

We didn't talk again

the construction industry is filled with Englishmen... well, let's just say the management and bricklayers, and from i hear it's a ****** management, they think it's cheaper to loan a crane than to install one... as i heard, a typical construction site of has about 30 Englishmen tops, a construction site population of about 400... i might be exaggerating, but i heard it first hand, and i've seen it, well 10 years ago it was a bit different, but the cracks were already showing - how one Brit undermined another Brit, dehumanised one ethnicity using another's desperation / exaggeration of rewards: by lowering wages of the former's.

only a casual inference of the vote -
it's one thing pushing away the psychology
of the collective into the recesses of Hades -
even further into Tartarus -
well, you can see Tartarus from here -
the Titans are above us, Luna, and Helios,
Jupiter and Saturn and Mars - we rise
from this place, at least with faithful command
to whatever childish ambition -
psychology can shove collective psychology
of a populace into theory - that calm resolve
of reason, the unconscious and its archetypes -
but to concern oneself with passions,
that's also necessary - side with the "enemy"
to understand them, and then see past the fog...
in a fashion magazine... citation:
if we block free movement, and experienced
Polish or Bulgarian seamstresses cannot come
into the country, it is not obvious how they will
be replaced - "we couldn't have grown the business
without the help and support of these killed people,"
says designer *Christopher Raeburn, who
wasn't able to find similarly experienced Brits
in London (pedantic note, the dittoing of that quote
should belong to me, i'm assuming direct contact
with the designer and the writer of the article,
ditto quotation starts with third party members,
people like me, not with the person interviewed
and the interviewee - i now understand how
dittoing works in English in terms of quoting
someone - in means as above, but by another person;
but i'm sure the quote was passed as word-of-mouth,
so the person who's first to pass a quote shouldn't
immediately use " " marks, he's not a third-person
encapsulation of a newspaper article, this isn't
a novel - simple math: origin (0, on an axis of
x, y, z), person who first encounters the origin-al
notes it with precision 'the sun will come up
tomorrow' - after that a person who encounters
'the sun will come up tomorrow' will then pass
the message down as: "the sun will come up tomorrow",
and then the dittoing cascade appears - the way
gossip spreads - it's not exact - it's ~truth -
people add to it, change it, overhear it and modulate
it - only the first person from the naked origin
should be allowed to ditto the quote - i.e. use
the " " marks - the second person directly citing
the origin makes a single layered membrane encapsulation -
after that it's a repeat of two layers, with the second
layer ably fluctuating, hence not loss of the origin
but a polymer of interpretations - Odysseus said of me:
'Homer' cited the 'Trojan war', we cite "Homer" and
the "Trojan war" as 'Odysseus' said, myth making in ambiguity
or the gossip factory, but given the sequence
0, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2... nth
a, 'a', "a", "a", "a", "a", "a", "a", "a", "a"... nth we all have a
chance to cite something from the third person,
after all, isn't fiction's limit based on the third person?
the pedant in me had to mule over this to get some
alcohol frenzy from it... and hey! i did).
it wasn't immigration to be honest, the racist smears
were a smokescreen... look at it this way...
the English Civil War... a friend of mine at university
once said: 'no great nation emerges without a civil war',
i could have written something in excess of that
but then i'd be writing as a third person " " inventing it
and almost treating it as my own, which is a no-go
zone - but from scraps you get the idea - go home,
things are about to get ugly between our civil partners...
and it doesn't boil down to wages as such,
Brits love the fact that Swedish students come to
the Norfolk fields for strawberry harvests, or whoever...
you know what i think it is? London urbanity got
to the vein of countryside folk, or Manchester being
overshadowed, actually globalisation ensured that
only capitals are "representative" of each nation
(inverse the dittoing, that's insinuating a passing-on
from an abstract, like Sartre's notation of "ego" meaning:
imitate me in between each "ego" with my narrative) -
they're not, but the golden nugget in my reasoning
is primarily concerned with You-Tube Sensations -
you name them: eat a tablespoon of cinnamon
and then sniff a ***** sneaker - film it, earn a billion -
become a unit of advertisement, sell it, bin it,
record your life, people binge on it, earn a windmill -
Vlog Blog Bog Sven and Fjoorn - remember when
children were employed in Victorian England?
this isn't between a Brit and a Bulgarian - this **** is
about a Brit and a Brit, hindsight: the English Civil war...
one Brit is saying, deep in the countryside:
you know what, there are people in urban environments
that teach their children that milk comes from
supermarkets and not cows, there's a borderline between
milking a cow and ******* on a part of a woman's
body overly sexed up - this has nothing to do with migration,
well, party it does, it want labourers to understand
a master, some ******* Bulgarian who speaks one
sentence of English gives about two nanoseconds trying
to understand authority - it's not demeaning to him,
he's told what to do, and off he goes and does it and
daydreams about his family reaping the benefits back home...
but employ someone proficient in the language,
who understands it, who has leisure time in it,
and you get a different picture dear Oliver - please sir,
can i have some more? no! back to work you filthy
little Beatnik! it's the self-worth pride, the self-sustaining
pride of nations - the people are saying: did we reduce
our youth to write video biography entries that only
tell other young people to buy the stuff they're advertising,
and all of them have become so fragile as to write poetry?!
well... better think again! minus the influx of migrants...
the doctor that relocated the upper-part of my index
was Hungarian... if it weren't for him... i'd probably have
to use a door to pull it back in...
and i understand what they're saying: i'm not racist... but...
my own countrymen have become so ******* lazy
i have to disguise my racism against other ethnic races...
because if i don't... it's back to Cromwell and the
Parliamentarians of the Square Table.

In a suburban, Midwestern split-level, a piano teacher (just turned thirty),
leads an eleven-year old girl and her parents down eight shagged stairs
to the piano room illuminated by backyard sunlight from a sliding glass door.
**** has infested the entire room and a polka-dot-print couch with skirt ruffles
and a low brown coffee table create a makeshift waiting area.
This is where the parents sit writing out checks (the bank president’s daughter
was denied lessons last week for paying too late, too often). A faux-wood
sign slid into a gold-trimmed stand demands Please No Smoking but it’s only 1980
and too overbearing not to offend the parents. Smoke still ascends the ashtrays
atop their classy black uprights with chipped middle Cs.
Nobody in the neighborhood but the piano teacher has a metronome.  
She wears flowered blouses and is slightly overweight in a padded movie-like way;
she has fat, muscled fingers for playing all kinds of notes.
A stubby brown piano is piled with stacks of dog-eared songbooks.
The eleven-year old slouches over the keys attempting simplified Chopin, Bach,
and “Tubular Bells” from The Exorcist, simulating her close-ups for Solid Gold.
Every year there are recital awards, a scale-shaped silver hanger or a coffee cup
with a handle fashioned like a quarter note. One year they all memorize the lives
of the composers. One year the piano teacher is pregnant by a tall, awkward,
bearded husband who practices fencing out in their backyard. Today she tells
the eleven year-old about last night’s dreams where “Christ is holding her baby.”
The parents overhear this and close their checkbooks.

For twenty minutes my father argued with her about the end of my music career.
She acquiesced in the end, saying a girl should always obey her father.
Within the year my teacher did find fame in the papers by obeying her father,
the day he commanded her to steam-clean the crimson stains on the **** carpet,
the day after he shot and stabbed and set afire that awkward, bearded, fencing man,
father of the baby that dreamed-up Jesus was so fond of. And now when she takes
the 5th, I never know if it’s that Amendment or Beethoven’s.
                                                                ­                                       Please No Murdering
the perfect melody with your bars and keys. The piano teacher went on teaching scales
and I imagine her piano is festering like a box of echo and madness, notes floating
through the sliding glass door stuck ajar. I imagine her frumpy, stomping on the stiff
damper pedal that sustains all our dreams.

It was time.
It was time, and so I read every one of your poems and
Cried.
They were different tears from last time.
Some truer grief fell with these
And they
Were silent.
Silver, like rain reaching its fingers into the soil
Late at night
Ready to grow something
Lovely.
I know you
So much better now.
I loved you- oh, how I loved you
In a complex way
The way that always
Loses me the thing I love.
I shake now, the aftershocks of feeling vibrating my bones
A music too low and too aching
For sound
It murmurs to the earth
And, sleeping beneath the snow, the ground echoes my loss back to me.
I loved you, how I loved you
But I never knew you like I do now.
How you must hate yourself, inside.
People who hate themselves always hate me.
They love me first, and then they loathe me.
If I am lucky, someday they face themselves and forgive me for loving what they hated for so long.
It is all very wearisome and human of them.
Sometimes I see you in the halls.
You refuse to meet my eyes,
As if we were two high school lovers broken up
The week before,
Pretending our lives were not
Altered.
I look at you, though.
I loved you different than that.
There was nothing of owning to it, nothing of flesh,
And so although my heart and mind miss yours
Miss the rise and fall of your low voice,
Miss the thoughts and ideas, so intricate, exquisite
That you would write to me instead of sleeping at night,
To see you doesn't make me angry.
I know seeing me makes you angry.
I see it in your jaw, the way your eyes go dead.
Oh, darling, I know you so well now
So much better than if you'd been kind to me.
Do you forget that as I told you my dreams and my fears
You slowly unveiled your own?
I still feel them, beneath your wax mask of indifference.
They live.
They rule you, as always, more even than before.
They are why
You cannot look at me.
Maybe you loved me. Who knows. And if you did
Who knows how. There are so many ways
To love someone.
There isn't a word for how I loved you.
Now when I dream it is of a little flat with a cat and a curly haired girl in bed beside me
But you never took shape like that in my mind.
You were never a companion, never a lover.
You were never a home for me.
Nor were you a sister, or a friend.
I loved you like I love music, like I love the way rivers surge forward after it has been raining for days, the way I love the sea.
But there was always a difference, I suppose, although I couldn't see it-
For Nature cannot hate. It is, only is,
And my love for you
Was
In much the same way
It was, like a stone is, like the trees are, like the sunlight is.
But you weren't, aren't. You are flesh, and you
Are ruled by feeling and, sometimes, by fear.
I see you now and I know I should hate you
For when you walked away from me
You confirmed every fear I'd ever confided to you.
You took a larger chunk of my soul
Than I had even thought was left, just then,
And I mourned you
Like you had died.
I still remember.
I will always remember.
I sat on Rachel's broken armchair
And I cried for hours
Unable and unwilling to speak.
She stared at me, grief stricken with her own loss
But through it she stared at me as if witnessing a great mountain cave in
Or the sea
Suddenly boil.
She stared and stared, and I shook apart, pieces of me flying into all the dusty corners of that apartment.
I'm sure some are still there, sharp and jagged, ready to cut a foot or tear a hem.
I had thought myself incapable of grief like that anymore
And yet there I was, my soul rejecting itself like a bad transplant.
And yes, I was angry at you, so angry at your cowardice,
So maddened to be left again to try to make sense of a mess somebody else made with no warning
And no
Apology.
Weeks later I asked you why
In a last stand of sudden strength I accused you
And in refusing to tell me you confirmed my suspicions that it was
Your fear and not my wickedness
That lost me your love.
I saw you as such a meld of energies, fierce and delicate all at once
And moons and suns decorated
Some of the most beautiful art I've ever created.
That style died with you. You have the first and last of it.
Sometimes I wonder if you've burned my paintings, or else thrown them away. I don't know. I hope not.
If you ever truly look at me again
You will see that my hands have a white scarlike design of a sun on one thumb and a moon on the other
When I clasp my hands they form a perfect circle.
I couldn't sleep, you see, remembering how you wanted to erase me
Wanted me to erase you.
Everything important in my life leaves a mark
And even if you never speak to me again these hands will make beauty, will spread kindness, will carry loads
And they will bear your mark, for I was so changed by you and your sudden cruelty that for a long time
My own hands looked so... foreign
And would create nothing lovely, nor touch anything gently, nor hold anything fragile.
So much time has passed,
And yet when I saw you again, here, after all the ways my life has changed since then
I knew when you refused to look at me
That you did care
Would always care
Would always hate that you cared
And I gazed at you
Because although I can't say I love you as I did
I would be dishonest to say that I don't. I always will. I always did, really. I chose you. I saw your self loathing and the depth of your beauty and I chose you
To know
And I paid the price I sometimes pay to know people like you.
And I still consider it worth it.
I find I am still partial to your voice
To the lines of your face-
The face I longed to draw, because it reminded me, still does, of some mighty greek heroine.
I still admire how you move, and I still laugh at your jokes when I overhear them, although my face remains unchanged.
Sometimes I am brave enough to search for your gaze,
Sometimes I stumble on it suddenly and it immobilizes us both, and I look away, although I wish I could stare you down and force you to, instead.
Sometimes I think of doing something small and nice for you
Because the desire never really leaves me once I care for someone
But I can never discover something you wouldn't trace back
And I admit I fear your anger.
You told me to leave
And my pride will only let me try so much to give to someone who scorns my kindnesses.
And so there is this odd, unsettled, unresolved feeling I get
Walking these hallways.
I dread and crave
To walk around the corner and see you.
When I do my muscles thrill with fire and ice, ready for a fight, ready for a struggle for my life
And I placidly look your way, force my gaze to slide over you as if you are ordinary.
Know that you are not. That you never will be.
We are so similar, inside.
Reading your poems tonight I cried because I miss your friendship,
But mostly I cried because I understand you
The lost wolf, pretending to be lone
The lonely little girl with fangs.
I understand how much you must loathe yourself, how much feeling you must bury each day to be as you are
And
As all true friends do
I wish you wouldn't.--
I wish you well. I wish you happiness. I wish you all good things. And it makes me sad to see you in the hallways
Because I know that as long as you cannot forgive me for having loved you
You haven't forgiven yourself for being loved.

when the evening gets drunk in the level of my knees,
when every clouds gather in one room with umbrellas
I begin to question every existence i met today
how a dog is called a dog and why they are animals
why human is not in the same class as them

Long I followed happy guides,—
I could never reach their sides.
Their step is forth, and, ere the day,
Breaks up their leaguer, and away.
Keen my sense, my heart was young,
Right goodwill my sinews strung,
But no speed of mine avails
To hunt upon their shining trails.
On and away, their hasting feet
Make the morning proud and sweet.
Flowers they strew, I catch the scent,
Or tone of silver instrument
Leaves on the wind melodious trace,
Yet I could never see their face.
On eastern hills I see their smokes
Mixed with mist by distant lochs.
I meet many travellers
Who the road had surely kept,—
They saw not my fine revellers,—
These had crossed them while they slept.
Some had heard their fair report
In the country or the court.
Fleetest couriers alive
Never yet could once arrive,
As they went or they returned,
At the house where these sojourned.
Sometimes their strong speed they slacken,
Though they are not overtaken:
In sleep, their jubilant troop is near,
I tuneful voices overhear,
It may be in wood or waste,—
At unawares 'tis come and passed.
Their near camp my spirit knows
By signs gracious as rainbows.
I thenceforward and long after
Listen for their harplike laughter,
And carry in my heart for days
Peace that hallows rudest ways.—

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 21, 2017)

Like engaging with my superpower
I am waiting to overhear.

I am the seed spot in this office
where I can overhear it all.

And there it comes
from behind a closed door.

“I would gladly do that,”

said in such a way to be completely without
pleasure or bloom, even maybe

with a tint of bitter apple
and a prediction of hopelessness.

And then the conversation turns
and somebody laughs

and then everybody laughs
and then the door opens

and promises are made at the threshold
with a keen shine of gladness that is full of deceit.

774

It is a lonesome Glee—
Yet sanctifies the Mind—
With fair association—
Afar upon the Wind

A Bird to overhear
Delight without a Cause—
Arrestless as invisible—
A matter of the Skies.

Versifyin'
Isn't dyin',
But man,
It's hard to do.
Words and lines
Sound like cliches,
What once
Was old
Is new..
Familiar phrases
Crowd the pages,
Causing such to do.
Can anyone write
Anything new.
Did I write that;
Overhear a wit?
Read it in the loo?
I'll note it down,
Sit,
Sweat and swap,
Get off the ***
And write it.

I don't purloin
Pretty Woman
Because Roy
Is older than me.
To write Yesterday
Is almost to say,
I've hijacked
Sir McCartney.
Write Daffodils,
And see what thrills
That word brings to you.

We may overuse them,
Unwittingly
Abuse them,
And with some we amuse,
But they're ours,
Put to good use
With me.

The number of chords
Limits the hordes;
Repetition ensues,
The decry is sung:
I've heard that song before.

The great ones of writing
Are cause for citing,
By we and me and you.

Can't contrast love to roses,
Shakespeare's told us;
Can't compare eyes to stars,
Lips to petals:
To say,
Your soft, white skin
Is an ink-black sin.
And Beautiful should not
Be used as such.
If one must use it,
One needs
A thesaurus.
Thee, Thine, and Shall
Have taken their toll;
Like Death,
Be not proud.

Be the chosen one,
You know how.

Words and phrases
Are replete;
Too well known
Not to repeat.
They're in
Our vernacular
To be used by
Any author.

But verbatim
Copying's outlawed.
The copy cops
Finger-print
The frauds.

one drink illuminated by candlelight
you sit across from me
and talk and talk
but your voice is in a low whisper
you don't want anyone
to overhear your pitiful excuses
you scold me
then feel bad
the red rose you gave me
when we first sat down
now sits awkwardly
on the small table

two drinks illuminated by candlelight
you beg me to say something
my mouth is closed
only open to the liquor
"you're acting ridiculous"
I don't respond
I ask the waiter
for another

three drinks illuminated by candlelight
I begin to envy the rose
it looks beautiful
there is no mirror
but I am ugly
I take the rose
and peel the green coat off
then the petals
until it's ugly
as ugly as I feel

four drinks illuminated by candlelight
you stand up
put on your jacket
"where are you going"
you don't answer
I watch you walk away
you don't turn around
you don't say goodbye

five drinks illuminated by candlelight
the glass is half full
the glass is half empty
the drink is gone
down into the pit
of my stomach
the seat
across from me
is empty
i toast the invisible man
he smiles

six drinks illuminated by candlelight
i don't know
why i'm sad
i just know
i feel sad
i sit
i say nothing
the glasses are scattered
on the table
my mind is muddled
my brain
is in pieces
i stand
i sit
i stand
i leave

You play three.
Me, seven.
Fifteen for two.
This is where I lose you.
Your phone vibrates,
You leviate
Sitting across from me,
Making me an unwilling audience
To all the drama.
You vibrate. Your shoulders droop
Like the gape-toothed village idiot.
You gesticulate,
Fading in and out
In a semi-conscious awakening.
You're trembling under stones
Sitting on your chest.
It shows in your tembling hands.
Twenty, for two...
Twenty-five, for six...
I overhear your child is truant,
Another wants a ride,
Another a car, doctor or lawyer.
You're shuffling in your seat.
Not to worry.
Affter the stones are lifted,
And you're properly pegged
In the stink hole, the game's over.
Thirty, for twelve and a go. Game.
So deal with it.

Great news Marjorie!

I have had tasar treatment on my eyes, so I am finding my keyboard much easier to abuse.

What a week I have had!  Since you sent my letter to the local paper, I have had several people contact me. I had no idea the scribbles of an old woman like me could generate such interest. A young reporter  even called round, and I thought I was going to have to call an ambulance, the poor boy went red and laughing all the time. In fact I was certain he needed medical attention but he assured me he would be fine in a minute. He did not tell me what it was he found so amusing, but young people can be quite strange, don't you find?  He may have needed the toilet but was too shy to ask.

Despite this we did get on well, and he even said he wished I was his Grandma, which I thought was very sweet of him, while making odd gestures with his hands.

After we had enjoyed a mice cup of tea together I showed the young man around the garden and he seemed very interested in the greenhouse, remarking on its spaciousness. I asked if he had green fingers and rather enigmatically he replied  'sometimes'.  He enquired if I would be interested in renting it out to him, an idea I found rather appealing. I think he wants to grow salad plants for his family.  My faith in the younger generation is restored.

His mobile telephone rang while we were in the garden, and feeling it was rude to eavesdrop I went back into the kitchen, but I did overhear him say that he hadn't had so much fun since his granny died,  so I suppose they must have given her a good send-off.

I am rather enjoying my position as a minor celebrity in the village. Even the bus driver was more cheerful than usual today, so I smiled and gave him a cheeky little w*nk as I got off, and I'm sure he noticed it.


                                        Ever your devoted fiend,           Dottie  **

When we arrive at the beach, the oppressive sun has
begun his slow, creeping descent towards the gap in
the dunes where, if one stood at the very crest, he
might see the swampy bay, tufted in tall, thin grass
and dotted with ospreys and cranes. I carry a bag
depicting a bastardization of the American flag, and
he tugs the narrow mesh cart with cartoon wheels across
the flesh-toned sand. The crowd of hungry beachgoers
is thinning, and the lifeguards have just begun to lug
their tall wooden stand back from its perilous proximity
to the gentle breakers. I walk just a few paces behind
my father, until he stops, asking, “Is this a good spot?”
I nod, never before remembering a time when he
sought my approval for a seaside roost. After ******* our
umbrella—blue-green, as though reflecting in canvas
the fluctuating shades of the mutable Atlantic—deep into
the cool sand, and setting the two chairs firmly in its chilly
shade, he asks, “Wanna swim?” Again, I nod, stripping
until I wear nothing but a mint green bikini and sunglasses.
Leisurely, we stroll towards the small waves and wade into
the just-right water gradually. Subconsciously, I am again
just three or four footfalls behind his frame, as if I cannot
continue any deeper until he has tested the sea, and each
step forward is a promise that everything is okay,
and I may proceed with caution.

Our steady immersion suddenly releases in me a torrent
of memories. I see myself, maybe seven, planted next
to him on the beach, where the sand is only just damp,
digging holes with our hands so that a small pool of
icy liquid slowly emerges, and then cupping the sand
and carefully dripping it along the edges to create a
system of fortresses and castles melting in the breeze.
I see him explaining to me, age nine, the proper way
to bodysurf, and I feel once again a sudden fear that
the salty water will fill my nostrils and cause that
choking burn that I detest to this day. I remember
him laughing that hearty guffaw as I was, invariably,
thrown from my boogie board in the aftermath of a
particularly large wave, skinning my knees against
the broken shells dotting the rough ocean floor. I
hear his careful instructions about the proper and
improper behaviors when ****** into a rip tide—
swim horizontally, he’d say, and if I didn’t understand
the word, he’d clarify that it meant to follow the beach,
because following the sea was certain death.

When our waists have just begun to adjust to the
temperature, I overhear the father of a girl who is
about the age I was in these memories exclaim that
a pod of dolphins has come quite close, and upon
looking, I see their gray bodies slithering in and out
of the deeper water. I nudge my father and point, and
we both marvel at this rare occurrence. Thousands of
seconds pass, and this time he is pointing off in the
distance, saying, “They’re still hanging around. Must
be a school of fish or something.” When I ask him if
he knows why they are within swimming distance,
he tells me confidently that it must be due to the
water’s unseasonable warmth, and I know in my
heart and in my brain that he is correct, as usual.

After the dolphins have disappeared, I say that I
am done swimming, that I want to start the Marquez
tome weighing heavily upon my conscience and that,
besides, we shouldn’t leave our valuables alone for
too long. He simply shrugs, as if to say, “Why would
you want to get out of this ocean?” almost as though he
didn’t realize thievery is such a common occurrence
at the Jersey shore. From my haven in the shade, I
feel goosebumps emerge as my father’s shirt deepens
from heather gray to taupe. Before leaving the
house our family has visited every summer for over
a decade, I borrowed his brand new headphones—he
was so excited to tell me that they don’t knot—and
their bulbous coverings, when stuck in ears on a
windy beach, create the sort of howling found in
1970s horror movies, my own personal FX. Despite
the fact that I have just surpassed one quarter of a
century in age, I still see him, a few years past the
half-century mark, turn around, squinting, until he
sees me safely planted in the plastic chair, as safe
as a father could hope his oldest daughter to be.

Flabs upon *****
of excessive skin
flock towards the sands
to soak up the rays of
the day light hours
and delude themselves
in the roped off
safety zone waters
of the seashore.
Benched from lack of participation,
sober and observant,
you can't help but overhear
a conversation about the salty tastes
and textures of boys *******
between four teenage girls
who look like they just entered
the early stages of middle school
and should not know anything,
at that age,
about that topic of discussion.
Seagulls slowly glide overhead
waiting for the perfect moment
to bomb white droppings in the
******* mouths of the hodads
and steal their bacon while they
quickly scurry off and guffaw
on the inside.
Young ladies *****
hang proudly out of their
skimpy bathing suits and stare
into the sunken eyes of perverse old men. Socks and sandals roam the shores
like tyrants to detect metals
in the sand with their hiked up baggies, buttoned up blue Hawaiians
and fisherman hats.
They'll find god before
they find these treasures.
Unsupervised children puke peaches
and use plastic shovels
to pour buckets of sand
down the backs and cracks of rubbernecks with discourtesy and no remorse.
Adults shaded, relaxed and
nose deep in books
leave the responsibilities
of their parental duties
with inexperienced lifeguards
to babysit their youngsters
while they doggie paddle
and submerge in the undertow
along the waves of the oceanside.
Concession stands serve
delicious yet unhealthy,
deep fried grotesque of
appetizers and entrees
to the potbellied roly-poleys
as they wash it all down
with a fountain of syrup
and carbonation.
Bare footed beefy **** diesels
and their skinny minis
walk hand and hand
over the broken beer bottles
and sharp rocks buried in the sand,
unscathed and luxuriate
in teenage love
and summer fun.
Dorks and dweebs
play sand sphere
with bunnies and honeys
while Gremlins and grommets
hunch like Quasimodo
on their surfboards
and ride the ankle busters
and pounders til the end
as they hit the bone yard
at point break.
The sun shines down on all of us
leaving that warmth and radiant glow
as you watch the mythical creatures
and sea serpent shaped clouds
slowly overpass.
What a lovely day at the beach.

Come closer
by all means come closer where in a blink
pools fix and widen into trackless lakes
your eyes unflinching against my own
forcing mine to yield to look's vortex power
I sink lengthways on to beached magnificence
fearing no fences bind this brimming shore
desiring all of your cresting feistiness

we close in privacy like a whispered prayer
I stoop to overhear furled head to head
the feather of your cheek ticked pinker
confession spilling loosely off shoulders
flowing undressed like some burlesque fantail
and I found myself buoyed up on thin air
shocked by the vapour in essential oils
so lavishly luxurious their condensing iniquity
I could only try to endure your body heat
by closing my own eyes for a moment
but out of focus pours into a concentrate

the control over hands gives me false hope
but I find a clearing of purity overwhelms me
caught helpless in all I add to mire seeping cruel
your lifeline lips offering a hint of moist buoyancy
then sinking a ship of plumped up poison
purple as inky clouds penetrating my mind
the slim tip of your tongue elusively unkind
flickering like a searching candle in a cave
dripping in irregular beats an anti-doting
to form rivulets which in their mystical midst
surround a fresh discovered vale to defile

I feel it's formation in an archway of neck
the undercurrents freed into giving way
you suspend on the bridge an apex and deck
my firmly held happiness into crowning cries
overflowing from the safety of inner recesses
the excesses needing knee breeches on both sides
to wade through a drowning press of paradise
in on the outstretched reach of a relentless tide

yet gorgeous is its precipitous edging test
with bouts of engorged selfishness
I hear your eager call in urge
return
from compliance into shambolic demands
until I am summoned to a trembling portal
biting on its handles like a moon crazed wolf
wanting to escape but in awe of its might
that it will capsize and spring open floodgates

plunging me back into dizzy abandonment's past
to the captivating idea of a last biting grasp
at your sweep-me-up voluptuous swoon
so tight on my heart we both go swimming
from intakes of breath into open eyes again
loving the saltpetre of a spa bath drop descent
into rapids extinguishing hot pulsating harm
which taunts and scolds me to calm the claim
for more days of dangerous vain tainted venom
held at bay
held aloft
by your pressure
bandage
arms

Sleep with my eyes open.
Hearing the redundant
crack as my heart is broken
and keep it submerged in tears
to truly know it's choking.

Losing life
before my eyes
I send my ***** to the sky
and hope to never love until
the day I die.

Admitting riddance
to take care of my heart’s
disappearance.

No one else's love to chase
while ice grows in a particular shape and
formed a cold faux heart to take its place.

Stares grow colder.
False heart gets older.
Mentality changes as
he finally lets go of the boulder
residing on his shoulder.

Family doesn't need him.
If he succeeds they'll need him.
Talk about how they never [leaved] him
and as truth resides in your eyes you
correct, and say [left].

You hear their lies in every single letter that is spoken, but where were they when your heart was broken, where were they when your innocence was stolen. Which one of you helped me look for it? Which one helped me find my dad. Who told me to just forget him. Who told me to just ignore it. None of you taught me to write, but you all wish to take credit and I won't let it happen.

I'm angry release endorphins.
Ignore every family member
until they see me become an orphan.

Hold back all the frozen tears.
They want me gone I overhear
and so I pack it all up.
Leave with no regret.

Family said they'd never
Leave, but I'm the one
who left.

Finally got my second chance,

The other night or other day
I  had a dream I sent this man I work
with an email, I think from my personal email address,

Revealing something I can't remember now
that was too personal in nature.
As soon as I sent it, I realized it
was the end of the world. I knew I couldn't unsend it

so I braced myself and told myself so what.

Then I woke up and was relieved this was just a dream,
this whole thing that never happened, just one less thing
to worry about.

But it felt like so close of a call.

That was last week or something,
Today I work, I go on too loudly,
He can always overhear me.

Sometimes I pass him in the hallways,
I look the other way.

Maybe it wasn't a second chance at all,
Just a retelling of what really does happen,
every day, every day.

No Limits

Anything passes,
Let the sins of mankind roam,
They have no limits.

2. To The Barrier Breaker

Heard he had a dream,
Unite the segregated,
Changed the way we live.

3. Dusk

Evening now enters,
The sun still colours the land,
Distorted shadows.

4. Dawn

A twilight moment,
The sun hasn’t reared its head,
Horizons soft light.

5. Depression

Plunge lower than low,
Mental design of anguish,
Dark beast locks the door.

6. Swallow The Pill

Damaged by habit,
Addiction of the worst kind,
Pop to help forget.

7. Inject The Juice

Doesn’t like himself,
Takes needles to ease the pain,
In and out of life.

8. Voices At Night

I hide from their eyes,
Overhear malicious words,
Knives stabbed in my back.

9. The Piano Player

On her wooden stool,
Her hands; perfect emotion,
Ivory rhythms.

10. The Performer

Commands crowds of fans,
Confidence masks the weakness,
Bowing with élan.

11. The Spotlight

Light blinds and dazzles,
As a monologue is read,
Star; celebrity.

12. Learning Lines

Armchair, coffee, script,
Read over, over again,
Recall; osmosis.

13. Applause

Don’t let it finish,
Continue, I’ll ride the wave,
Excitement and drive.

14. Their Laughter

Deliver a line,
Chuckle to aisle rolling,
Feeling of delight.

15. Dancing

Music in my blood,
The blood begins my movement,
Dance ‘til I collapse.

16. Rehearse The Scene

Practise lines and moves,
Again, again ‘til it’s learnt,
Sections of the play.

17. Backstage

Actress waits backstage,
Breath trapped in her throat; focus,
Nerves; then she enters.

18. Rehearsal For Life

Hope this is a try,
Just a run-through of my life,
Must change decisions.

19. My Gift To You

Enjoy these pages,
Words from somewhere in my mind,
Passionate haikus.

20. Thank You…

…for reading this book,
…for trying to read between,
Thank you and goodbye.

What is this precious stone
placed in the palm's heart, or ear's drum?

From where you stood
a new language has replaced your standing

and it glides and arches about you,
revealing your weight by not striking any where.

You are the leftover space,
the blood rising under the tongue.





Istanbul Metro

First I notice her other face
in the window her mirror reflection
I realize the only one she has ever lived with
and so it is full of heaviness and pull.

I am alone and so I can't but overhear
the two young woman across from me
coolly picking words from the air
and building a shelter of conversation.

and as they are sent hurtling,
delighted with the results
and shaking with laughter,
for the spangled moment
and nothing more,

The dim cabin made only for practicality
and the stale metro wind
add to the lightness,
that all of this will never come again.

There’s a change soon to come with autumn signs,
And with leaves rustling above in the trees,
To breathe in each scent as I raise window shades  
A gentle rain starts to fall you can hear its pleas
On this beautiful day with all the leaves changing
Within a splash of vibrant colors inside rain

While drops fall on the windowpanes in soft rain
A beautiful time of year with all the signs
Of autumn and this seasonal changing
That I see out my window in the swaying trees
Just listen to them closely and hear their pleas
Appeals of constant changes I see out the shades

In greyish skies dark clouds I see outside my shades
To wander off to day dreams in light showers of rain
Is such a peaceful calm as I overhear all its pleas
Within soft winds which carry each of the signs
through tiny delicate leaves drying above in trees
while leaves whirl and twirl in the times changing

Reddish, yellow, brownish and orange changing
Leaves changing soon will lose their colorful shades
And bare limbs shall soon follow within the trees
whereas the snow will fall in a form of white rain
But for now I’ll just enjoy these beautiful signs
with watching swaying tree limb and listing to pleas

While quietly enjoying the rainwater and their pleas
In harvest time at times when all leaves are changing
Juggling around in the air is one of this first signs
As they hit the ground such loveliness out my shades
Each filled with tender drops from the soft falling rain
And each leaf in a gorgeous view ruffling in the trees

Soon children will be playing in the leaves from trees
with such pleasure and laughter just hear their pleas
After the weather dry’s and coming to a stop the rain
Much joy there is to watch nature constantly changing
In this special place I love to sit just behind the shades
totally mesmerized  by each of the beautiful signs

Lovely autumn trees, with colors ever changing
Silent cries within pleas, between window shades
Tiny drops hit the glass I watch autumn’s  first signs

© Debbie Altiparmakis, All rights reserved.

Oh dear one, give me something I can keep,
let words be ardent messengers of thought,
then yours will be the place twixt wake and sleep,
and once that's true you'll never be forgot.
For now your mind's a window shut and drawn
and I outside can only overhear,
I'll piece together stories till the dawn
though if you'd open up I'd give you ear.
A simple peice of mind is all I ask
and hopefully it's flown up from your heart
let fly the words you've held up in your casque
and once they're in the air you've done your part.
Oh, speak your passions in a conscious stream
and claim the place of peace before a dream.

Silence speaks —
its say beheld in its
own truth laid bare

Its voice is deeply felt
but rarely revealed
in the tight economy
of considered words
it quietly whispers —

The reality it bares,
soundlessly eroding with a
shameless emotional deluge
that rivers through
the poet's heart

When you feel alone
in a crowded room,
you overhear the drone
a racing heartbeat ...

    When you're
going down the road
feeling bad,  chasing
    the centerline,
reckoning some kind
a life passing by
out the rolled down
       window ;
hearken in nature's
     tone poems
blowin' in the wind
                                                            ­    ­
    It  was  thence
    i came to know
my sum of simple truth:
Organically self-wrought
Environmentally  molded
    from the clay of life
    a survivor of many
    a passing storm

    Season's change,
water seeks its own level
The silt does not get to say
how far down stream
   the river carries it

and we still wind up
in the same old place
parsing the watermark 
       stains of time

and a poet — is not a word
i'll longer use to describe
   who i've become


harlon rivers ... December 7th, 2018

1.
I spent most of the day on the train from Boston –
writing poems and thinking
of how to undo the mess. I still haven’t found the answer.
My uncle takes me to the Met for the first time –
so much art and so much time
forever onward. Upstairs
modern art canvases, big plain swatches
of bright color. I want to stare for hours
get lost in blues and greens, but it’s closing time
so we get dinner and go back to the apartment.
Beneath the red light and behind curtains
of the same color, I blow up the air mattress
but I don’t fall asleep for hours.

2.
I’m supposed to make breakfast
but they shut the water off. Left
to my own devices, I go to Union Square
and duck in and out of stores all day,
no one to keep me company. Bitter wind skims
off the pavement. I can’t even open my eyes
long enough to see the faces in the park.
Tuesday, when I came home early after cheap dinner
and felt guilty for not doing more. I tried to get ice cream -
one whole hour just to circle a few streets.
I realized – the only day we’ve gone without speaking
in over a year. It feels so good. Maybe it’s cheating
if you reach out and I just don’t respond. But the wound bleeds
every time I open it, and just once I want to give it time to heal.

3.
The long morning where we talk about silence
from people we used to love. Except it’s not sad –
I couldn’t be happier. You’re not joining the army
and I’m not staying in West Virginia. I make hardboiled eggs
before going to Chelsea. I spend hours alone in a museum
but this time I don’t hear the music. I overhear conversations
and write them down for safekeeping. Better than words
getting lost forever. We get pizza and ice cream
and talk about the past. Dad’s in the hospital – has been for a week,
no one told me. Suddenly the ice cream is sour instead of sweet.
Later I hear his voice and he sounds okay. We make plans for the weekend.
I break the silence after one day. Nothing’s changed – it’s worse now.
Whatever – we don’t have to talk. I get wine drunk in a basement
and laugh because everything is so absurd. We get dumplings
and I ride the wrong subway back, the one that makes too many stops.
I’m still trying to figure out the balance
between avoidance and acceptance. One day
I’ll get there. I feel like I’ve been dipped in boiling water,
skinned and left raw. Tomorrow I’m going home
and there’s not enough time. For what I’m not sure –
ever since I stopped wearing the watch on my wrist
it feels like the world is moving so fast I can’t notice,
an illusion of stillness. I shouldn’t have sent that last text –
I always say too much at the end. Always teaching myself
to trip over my own words.

4.
Mornings have become slow and still here.
I never used to linger like this, but maybe it’s a blessing.
Now I can take things in. Old haunts in a city
where part of me grew up. I make grocery lists
for the people I love. Maybe there’s a better way
to care for someone – but I like narrow aisles
and neon lights and people getting what they want.
If I’m alone I can do anything I want. Walk to Central Park
and sit in the sun. Or look at old books. So much time
looking and not reading – does it matter
if I never see the words inside? I wish I was a ***** fish
living in the gutters. I’d swim and swim until I lost my eyes.
I miss the simple landscapes of being home. But I’ll be back
soon. Trains like bookends. Movement like blinking.
Before I leave my uncle asks what I learned and I say
“that I’m capable.” He doesn’t ask of what –
I don’t have an answer. It’s like I used to say –
roll with the punches, or with the trains,
or just roll home.