towering gently overflowing with heightened awareness
subtle hints of blade’s keen glittering chiseled edges
untamed rugged surface powerfully averts gale’s acrid tempest
vigor pulsating that doth persuade the cloud’s reflections
if i shall not again embrace a meager glimpse; a demure echo
of thine towering mounts my soul shall ever suffer

my spirit soars with e'er one glance of thine majestic presence
replete with reminiscence seasons stir and beg thine tender mercies
to house the changing leaves at dusk of autumn’s auburn portraits
and give birth to crystal snow cascading peripherally in winter
which melding into spring then begs thy bluffs to cover
in soft amethyst of columbine blossoming first light of summer

‘tis not paramount to scale high aloft thine peaks in escalation
for small sheer glances stamp forever with imperial impressions
and ‘tho i’ve traveled ‘round and savored nature’s varied essence
none can compare thine evergreens laced in aspens nuance
my breath is gone and shan’t return ‘til in thy shadow casting
i stand and look upon thine hallowed face the rocky mountains

©2016 janetaylor

***** dishes piled peripherally
Melting muscles begging to be built
Education egging me on evilly
Facebook friends warning I may wilt
Clothes choking roomish rubble
Coldhearted clocks click callously
Traffic tickets to trouble
Prodding for payment perniciously

in peripheral vision lives a little all seeing wizard
wand in hand he waves in apostrophes
but if like me you are we ignore
go on a merry path until;
the sun seems to no longer shine again,
handcuffs get slapped on,
the electricity goes off,
some quick tow truck finds your title loan ride,
or you wake up....

You held my hand with love
as we strolled down the way
Peripherally, i saw wings up above
nothing said, but all to say

As we strolled down the way
frolicking children flourished the air
Nothing said, but all to say
Engrossed in them as we prepare

Frolicking children flourished the air
not far from my bed
Engrossed in them as we prepare
no longer filled with dread

Not far from my bed
peripherally, i saw wings up above
No longer filled with dread
You held my hand with love

check it out check it out
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
it's da state of this here disunion
this here bangalore torpedo seeks yer minefields
this here suffering hero
n
crows about         strafes
multitudes                 peripherally
****** blind prophets
exclaim
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
it's nothing but beginning
of  beginning & z end of approximation
time's sweet angry subluxation
universal caving in on U & U
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
when was z last time U really loved
i mean really really really loved
ha i could only hold to z imagination
z skeleton z allegory z myth
'cause everything slides & falls
screams careens outta control
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
she brought in rrrrevolution.evolution.now
is z caustic effervescence of her wit
eroding my sandy castle of deceit?
ha and repeat ha
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
forgive-me-notes are written high
on z forehead of my despair
a cursive flowing interdiction
malediction cruxifiction err-u-diction
en-passant
in each pyrotechnic moment when we don't see I-to-I
on anything relevant to what we once hoped was us
but we continue dance dance dance
perseveration aberration indiscretion cha-cha-cha
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
she said *** is z engine of z world
like engine like world like ***
like like like
could say no more
oh it's tiresome to go on
describing that chimeric uniting
flesh-to-flesh-in-flesh eliding
we all are guilty of
do not end a line with a preposition such as
that or a proposition such as this:
given angle a prove that old triangle theorem
two simultaneous loves don't make a right
cherchez les angles les anglais la bon mot
ya know
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
when i die please  bury me upside down
prone to z ground making dead love to earth ya kno
while the centuries lie down next to me
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
chic chicky boom chicky boom chic chic
chic!
chic!

Our father liked to play a game.
He would count each hawk
preying, circling above veiny tree lines
graying like shadows of industry.

There’s a redtail, he would say, look
at its proud chest and talons of mastery. Our
eyes searched for the creature, noses
pressed to cool glass and 65MPH speed.

Sometimes we’d catch the bird with two eyes, one eye
or none. Meanwhile, our father never took his eyes
off the road, fixed on painted yellow lines stretching
to heartlands down New York’s I-90 West.

With age my eyes became engaged, detecting
the slightest movement peripherally. Rods
in retinas distinguished plump plumes from leaflet
tufts, razor beaks from thorny stags, white breast from

billowing plastic bags. My sideways scan
of leafy fringe is an artifact of habit
when traveling down state roads of this infra-structured
nation. I search for evidence of its natural relation,

beyond all that is manufactured by the jelly-
spine of convenience, beyond wheels spinning
at deafening speed, beyond the grubby hands of greed.
Still, our connection to place is still here and Earthly,

coexisting in delicacy, like the hawk’s nested-blend
of twig and trash. I trust there is a chance for us yet,
despite cloudy puddles of progress, despite integrity
lost in capital gain, despite a forgotten native name.

How quiet it gets
Just after snow
When at 5am walking out the front door
Onto the lawn
Hearing muffled road noise
Slipping like sand through a sieve
And whispering peripherally
Until sputtering out in indivisible steps
Dimming and fading
Like a cigarette
In a glass of
Water
Flowing slower and slower
Like a river freezing
Locking and waxing
Until woven into outbound threads
And creaking as it settles
Grasping on to tree branches
Yellow glow
Silent 5am scene
With streetlight
How moonlight so easily mingles

Intimacy is a hell of drug;
When I see you peripherally,
My thoughts are done.

The way light hits you
Just makes me nervous,
Bouncing ‘bout in my retinas,
Mixin’ with spirits.

Which, you might say,
Are oppressing my brain,
But I’ll misattribute you
All night and day.

Takin’ that serotonin,
Puttin’ it in your name,
As you run your fingers
Down my face.

Because, these impulses
Are shootin’ through me,
Driving my prefrontal insane.

I try to regulate feelings
That have no name.

I want you tactily, in-fact-ly
I want your intimacy,
‘Cause if you’re into me,
I want that dopamine.

On oxytocin, I’m choking,
These emotions, are roping,
Like I just overdosed
And am dangling,
Floating.

So if you’re itching,
I’ll fill your prescription.

concave,
convex;
you stretch and shrink

from the blood and chocolate
on your tongue.
a mouse, peripherally,
jumps sobbing out of your
breadbox.

you drive your fist through the mirror and when
i walk in you
are at the dining table,
playing chess with the pieces of your shattered
soul
the blood still running
from your knuckles.

Can there be intimacy without proximity?
Empathy without vicinity ?

Can we live without touch,
keeping brothers out peripherally?

No, that path only leads deceivingly
further into living life more miserably

So rather than espousing self-sufficiency
let's discuss band of brotherly

A brother unity that unconditionally
maintains a mature masculinity

A unity revealing a core fragility,
yes - a humility that risks indignity

I'm talking about an increasing capacity
a growling capability
for actual manual connectivity

I'm calling for a comprehensive solidarity
that embraces fierce timidity

You see I stand against living artificially
I'm all for living purposely

Yes, I'm here loudly
Campaigning
Against anyone
Living
Miserably

i lie quiescent
listening to the conversations of bees

and the roar of butterflies as they
begin the chaotic whirlwinds
of strife

this is a moment....of nothingness

when my eyes are closed to the rat race

when the green green grass..

......subsumes me

and i am peripherally,
at one with myself.

mother to all,
mother to none.

i hear the ants
tunneling beneath
and the bugs flying above

the earth speaks and moves

and i listen...

the sky smiles,
the tides greet the moon

and I am but one small heartbeat

                                                 ...............among millions

The journey has begun
It’s her journey,
But, of course, it’s mine as well.
Different roads we’re on,
She is on a path of discovery;
A new land.  A new man.
Perhaps even a path to freedom.
My travels are inward
Trying to grasp the changes
Which will surely come.
Like a billboard rushing by
In the glare of headlights
Its message seen peripherally
Is that what it said?  Maybe not.
Just trying to get a sense
Are we traveling apart?
Or simply in different lanes
Parallel. Watching each other
Always mindful of the gap.
Or am I following her
Mimicking her every turn
Destined to never catch up?

So this is what my life's become?
A solitary drinker in a crowed pub;
Nursing a burgeoning alcoholism
And entrenching melancholy with self-seclusion.
Worse: compounding isolation by ignoring
Or minimally acknowledging, peripherally,
Those Sunday night lushes;
Instead, focused on the static dynamic of an evolving city;
Absorbed by a blue-meshed scaffold adorning
Another modern eye-sore of urban consolidation.

I'm sitting on the carpet of my rented room
Swatting neurotically at gnats and fleas that may
Or may not
Actually be there,
On my arms and on my face.
The only proof are the little red bites,
Up my left arm and across the bottom of my chin, where they stop.
As if my blood boils while I sleep, leaving little red marks to show that I need to
Chill out
Calm down
De-stress
But I'm
in distress,
Destroyed.
I need a higher up.
I need a voice that speaks with more experience,
With firm understanding,
With the knowledge of everything.
And I can't seem to find it in Bibles, Torahs, Quarans, or other holy scriptures.
I only hear it whisper from old history textbooks,
I hear it only
Chiming softly like drowned out cymbals from the radio talk
I only see it peripherally in my rear view mirror,
Can only taste it as an after taste of many drinks.
It is ribonucleic acid,
It is thymine, guanine, adenine, and cytosine.
It is the carpet of my rented room.

so happy anniversary
of yesterfray

when I peripherally laid
my eyes on you

the day I
didn't believe
because why???

it didn't compute
so my brain pushed it
away away away

because how
could you find it so easy
to replace me and ricochet
between four arms that were
not me

that was my logic:
if you loved me, if it meant
- anything ever -

you wouldn't have
made those decisions
like a haphazard hellbat
rattling off the tracks

so it was
quite obvious
I was just hallucinating
just pasting my aching heart
onto some random guy
who was oddly
not dancing

the truth is deep
and I'm trying to not
have you OD but I think
it's time to increase your dosage
and we're getting closer
closer still to
a mouthful

and one demispoon is
I noticed you the instant
you hit my periphery
maybe 15 feet away

I guess by noticed
I mean my stomach
did a nosedive down
through my intestines
resounding repetition
internal to the tune of
this isn't happening

as you made your way
in front of me

I was petrified
losing my mind
it made no sense

but that feeeeling
had your name
beating down
my lips

and I even pondered
tapping you on the shoulder
to ask something as asinine as
do I know you?

so, here comes
another serum dose

it wasn't until I was
contemplating the potentials
of reactions by you
or not-you

that I remembered
I wasn't alone -
I was, how you say...
with someone?

and maybe you can relate a bit
to how I could possibly find
myself in that situation
so quick

dear Watson, I can certainly now
understand how easy it in fact is
to fall into the arms of someone
you have history and unfinished
karmic business with

when you're
so alone and lonely
feeling lost and hungry
for connection you bypass
all the utterly obvious
ill-fitting cardboard edges
that aren't even the same image
and just focus on the one or two
that click right in, so comforting it is
to walk down the same old street
even though you already know
how and where it ends

it was certainly
a welcome distraction
from picking glass splinters
out of crippled crimson fingers

and now I understand
how you did what you did
and that is why I came back
again...

because it took me that long
to let go of feeling
unloved

and realize
you did

there's a shadow in the house
lurking in the kitchen and hallway
sometimes peeking out
into the living room or dining area
I catch its movement peripherally
a flash in the corner of my eye
gone before I turn my head to look
a ghost of the past?
a haunting in the present?
a purposeful visitation?
something insidious?
imagination's figment?
should I be afraid of karma's regurgitation
or comforted as I sit alone?
or is it just a shadow
the movement of leaves and branches
breezing in the window's wind
outside this cold, drafty old house

I appear unexpectedly,
For no apparent reason;
And I begin a conversation
You've waited for.
You're reticent when I speak,
When I sit in a familiar chair
In a room we both know;
Where I don't belong.

I've no control over my visits,
No more than yours.
Others are peripherally present,
With marbled voices.

Your focus is me,
Wondering why I'm there.
Do I move to your blind spot, occasionally?
I am invasive and untoward.
I am not plasma, a phantasm or apparition.
I emerge from the mist to your surprise.
     What are you doing here?
I ask the same when you visit,
Yet I love to see you, relaxed, intwined.
You treat me as an old friend
With inquiries and interest.

I have so much to confess to you,
But you're disinterested in past failures.
Someone interrupts us,
You leave,
Through the same ethereal.

If you called to say you were coming
For a visit,
I'd get no sleep.

Dear, Arabia Ohana,

This brief but edenic stint shared en masse and peripherally has, a fortiori, made me brimfully ecstatic to have become apart of this ohana. This parcel is to impart my incredulously revered kismeted perspective on this pleasant billet symbiosis that I accredit to the deific clairvoyant who fondly granted our correspondence with utmost prudence. I cannot convince myself some lackadaisical serendipity materialized this perfectly pertinent vista. With profound sentiment I personally express how this considerably blessed boon has merited profuse gratitude, absolute admiration and the reverent affection from my entire family as of quandam, contempto and nigh.

With genuine gratitudinous laud

Jesse Revollar

the stars
otherworldly and untouchable to i
brought me to feel insignificant and far
from worthy enough to look at the sky
and yet
i feel also chosen by
those beautiful unknowns to me they lie
they evade my gaze
staying only peripherally mine
twinkling, flickering, reminiscent of a child
innocent, lovely, and wild
shadows of those jewels is all i see
of the distant stars avoiding me

Some familiar voices are irritating me. Like they sound so loud. But they've always been so loud. What's different today? You know I wanna write for you. But right now, I'm just too tired playing a role of a savior for the world. And it's not necessarily a role I'm playing for you, it's something I've been playing for myself. What's the use of an existence which isn't doing something significant or adding some value to the world. I'm also peripherally hoping that this letter adds some value to your life or just your day. But when it comes to my frontal attention; I also don't care. I had a bad day. And if you're here, you probably are one of the people who know me (or my writings) closely, and I'm so grateful for you. I can't write anything that doesn't feel true, you probably know that about me. So I'm really glad you're here to have a glimpse into my honesty. Thank you.

Some familiar voices are irritating me. I don't know if it's just today or it's been happening for a while & I was too busy to notice. I used to have a best friend. I know 'used to' hurts. For a whole lot of us. Um, It doesn't hurt me anymore. But I know that she probably would notice the grammatical mistakes in this letter/email/whatever we'll name this in the coming days, if she reads this. When I think about it, I've been wanting to write this for so long. But I also wanted her to read what I write. I wanted to write this for so long, but I've been super scared. You know, she had been one of those people I really wanted to impress. Not with my looks or achievements. But with my authenticity. Yeah, I wonder too if it's really authentic if you're trying to be authentic. But, she was one of those people I really wanted to impress because I had felt her love once upon a time, and I wanted to feel it forever. Or maybe just enough to find that love in my own self. That look in her eyes which showed I was so loveable, was one of the key moments when I felt a sense of 'I am'; of an alive existence. I've been too scared to write because she has been invisibly here forever even though her physical presence has left me long ago. How do you forget the first glimpses of affection you ever felt? Have you also tried to gain attention and affection of a long lost love (even if it's just in your head)? I know I haven't been consciously doing it. I mean, honestly, I don't want to be loved by her. My practicality shut my cravings for being loved, a long time ago. But today is one of those days when I'm sitting down and writing because I'm tired of putting off the process of getting into myself. It's a very startling and unsettling feeling to realize that all you've been doing was to be loved by someone, anyone. Not adored, not admired; loved. You think that you want to be noticed or crushed upon or get famous or contribute a lot to the world and live a meaningful existence, but really, you just want to be loved. Because in its purest form, when love knocks on our door, we can't belive we deserve it. It's the most significant validation of our worth. And when we get too proud of our lovability, it starts slipping from our hands & bodies, until we're lying on the floor questioning our worth all over again. What crazy things we do(consciously/unconsciously), just to be loved a little bit. I've been wanting to write this for so long, but in my head she has always been reading my unwritten writings, and judging my worth(to be loved), and not chosing me because I'm too sensitive, too philosophical, too 'in my head', too impractical for this world.

You know me
only peripherally
and boldly advise
what I should do
to set my life right

like an HM or pastor
you boasted you knew better
I needed help being on the wrong side
of things-- I would slip further

away unless my conscience I search
bid the past goodbye
you would audit me then
with a warning: 'Our truth you should not deny'--

won't you leave me
to my ignorance and folly?
however wayward I might find myself
yet my life is lived in freedom and I am happy.

"Slavery"


This is that and that
Is what i say
Do you believe me?
Fool!!!
Better to blunder than be
A slavery of
Movement    speech    thought
Seen peripherally absorbed
Pre consciously rewarded
Habitual approval delusion
Assembles i after function infinitude
To escape or not to escape
That is a dilemma
Suffering the finger shouting
Not here!!        Not here!!!
Where?        Where?
Not here     Not here.

he set the drums on fire
which is what started it all.

the catalyst
for a sound that shook the earth,
so much so
that the the redwoods broke the silence
in a forest full of minds lost
lost among the falling leaves
that catch fire.
drifting toward the coast
to meet the footprints
soon to be washed away
by the force of reflection.
and the fires rage up toward the clouds
which shade the surface from the sun.
day is night and night is day
in a world that fears
live music.
and i dream about the drums so much
that i hide out in the dark room
full of pictures
that reveal moments
sensitive to the real world.

the red lights nearly blinded me
once-
as chemicals filled the atmosphere
and i escaped just in time to
watch it burn
peripherally.
i walked away and never looked back.
to return was to risk my sanity.

and i let the cds burn.
i locked the letters in a shoebox
and buried the box beneath the surface
of my time here. i used to read them too often
never to be read again, only recognized
by my own subconscious.
at a time where music reminds me, still, of an instant.

see, i am dependent on sound and color
of the drums
that distract me from surrounding,
so that i don't surrender
to the fires
that consume
so many souls in which see only red.
to be in this world full of vibrancy and passion,
expressed through the essence of art.
it is a shame to feel it burn.

i saw the drummer live years ago
and i learned how to play myself.

i'll tour on Mars instead.
i read about it yesterday,
and it appears to be red from a distance.

i travel the lexicon of bulbs
and petals and visible light
backward and forward
like a monorail of time.
the conductor is naked exposure,
an amorphous functioning of human body l
only peripherally perceptible
so that it mostly looks like a humanoid, octopus-mantis chimera.

i am the hand, prophetic and terrible.
i am the party, bacchanalic.

touching rare earth minerals
with a vibrantly common approach
i am the poverty of self and other.

take me far from linear modalities
to the temple altar
of concentric, overlapping,
principled
cause and effect.
superposition
my 80something years
so that action/reaction
have no independence.
i want to remember the future and speculate on the past.
i want the present to be the contour
that shines like antipodal moss
between their confused directions.

i am the long androidal night.

walking towards you in the mist
glimpsing peripherally
unsure of why
imagination does exist