.let's begin: i've been watching youtube haemorrhage over the past few years (4 / 5 in total) and... i do still enjoy the sort of cabaret weimar associated with criticalcondition when comapred to beanie hat tim pool... sorry: i just like a bit of cabaret, i know that comedy is translated in the western lands by stand-up monologues, but in germany and poland: cabaret is the toy assurance to compensate the justifications for theatre or opera... i like criticalcondition, trans-, ******: my my, how did the chemistry prefixes of attachement groups of a benzene ring overpower bio-realism? imagine a blocked toilet in terms of hinduism / buddhism in terms of the metaphysics of reincarnation... well: metaphysics by their great culinary understanding implies: a return to the same debacle, perhaps only slightly elevated... we have already reached a post- gott ist tot scenario of metaphysics... gott is quiet apparent, since the ancient greeks believed that "shamed" men would come back as women: now? the women did a shortcut... they said: tod ist tot... wouldn't that be the case? a blocked toilet, well... if god has to die first, then death itself has to die, ergo: tod ist tot! ha ha... imagine... to think of the glamorous concept of eastern theology as nothing more than a plumber's day-shift... looks like the toilet is blocked... since... men are not spawning into female form after death, instead, deciding to spawn back into male form with a female "brain"... who is that god of mischief in hinduism? oh... look! Aditi! well it's not an isolated case, is it? i once picked up a thai surprise from a park bench, played her some jazz, ****** her in the garden... bangkok ladyboys are the duran duran of 1980s electro-puppy-pop! once god dies, death follows suit... after all... death is (a) shadow of (the) god... blocked toilet metaphysics, all the brahmin as running wild, naked, psychotic: but the lesser men were not supposed to know they were reborn into female bodies, there was that safety net in place to: let them reincarnate with an amnesia principle! what's happening?! the women are raiding up the ranks?! contrapoints compared to tim pool? sorry beanie-boy... you're not the beastie... quiet... i'd love to b.j. that make-up off from contrapoints... problem being... i love when a ****** speaks so much sense... but... hands... i find a woman's hands too be the most ****** aspect of her body... 4/5... that's a fraction... for my five knuckles in terms of hand size, ***** "envy" and what my five knuckles look like to a woman's 4? you get the picture... there is also another fraction... 72 genders?! wha-?! i see gender in the 3/2 fraction... a woman can satisfy three men... the ****, the **** the mouth... a man... can only satisfy 2... the **** and the mouth... oh... wait... 3/3... someone can be giving him a b.j. while he's giving him a b.j..... it's still a blockage of reincarnation though... the greeks believed the lesser man was to be reborn in a "lesser" body... ****, i always forget how the ratio works... i always think: 1 man has 3 options of entry, 3 women have 1 point of entry each... but fraction is wonky though... in that... a woman can entertain three variations of entry: mouth, ****, ****... but a man has to entertain two points of entry and one point of insertion... so the fraction still stands at 3/2... which makes the islamic celestial harem nonsense... unless equipped with an exess of res extensa ****** to satiate the hunger of 72 virgins... a ****** gambit if you ask me... 72 virgins sounds more like a headache than what Solomon forsake in owning for the queen of Shēba... king! Solomon! after all the *******, enough wisdom suddenly trickled into his head, and he chose the route of the monogamy of birds! mind you: whatever wisdom king! Solomon ever had to begin with... i would still favor king David... i like a man with a distrust of women and having an unadulterated desire for music as second to none medicinal property to cure existential ailments; i tried *******, no good... sure, great exercise... esp. with prostitutes... but an in depth analysis of the perpetuated banality of life and how to learn to masquerade it behind a veil of seemingly banal? a harem will not help, but music will. even nietzsche understood this... criticalcondition: i do actually fancy him it her they... she does have that: je ne sais quoi air... weimar cabaret "revised"... not quiet the switz cabaret dada voltaire... but all i know is the number of holes of points of insertion and the fact that i have hands the size that could hold a basketball in one... and how... oh, wow! i really came late to the asian fetish party late... here, have some grenades! **** ying, cat meng, na mu han, you mi, ni ye teng, ai sayama, hoshina mizuki, ayaka noda, (l)im ji hye, lie fei er, (barbie) ke er... ergo? this whole asian fetish scene? am i looking at dolls? i'm not even sure... am i white, by comparison to these procelain babushkas?! i'm not white: orange man bad! i thought so too: i'm... piglet! the i'm not white: these girls are... and the funny thing is, the "funny" thing, is? i don't have to see much more beside the cleavage or the ******* or the thighs to... hey! i'm a late bloomer to this asiatic fetish... side-tracked by the european transgender ******* and the thai surprise ladyboys... what is **** what isn't ****: that, really depends on how much you rely on your imagination... if a sight of white, porcelain cleavage gets you off... who the hell needs the whole "show"... after all... even the niqab is a game on how to arouse the male libido... it's pretty hard to be aroused by a fully exposed female torso like some maasai ivory beauty... then the "said" objects are more functional and designated for feeding purposes... than ***** *******... aren't they?! oh i can see a revision of the niqab... imagine this in saudi arabia... both the eyes are not hidden from view, as isn't the mouth! batman 2."oh"... oh i don't like these new communists in the west... white... priv. who, that japanese?! i'm not white, i said it already and i'll say it again: i'm not a porcelain doll! talk to the **** about white privilege... they're the ones with milk veils... my "white privilege" is only associated to having blond hair, green or blue eyes... it has nothing to do with... skin!

i’m suspicious of the ones that say: without telling the truth
we can moralise, by not stating the truth
we can allow ourselves falsehood in the prime
instinct to provide replicas of ourselves
without truth of two subject interacting,
but merely the truth of two objects interacting
reducible into the dwarf of darwinism
that speaks: over-sexualise and feel less encountered
by understanding the opposite!
so much is true in this era - with the english poodle
waggling in frenzies for the americans to spectate and applaud...
i’ve had to become a german in england,
the sort that might be liked by nietzschean arrogance,
but apart from that i’m working on how
certain people simply use words rather than letters,
how they can never use the shovels and pickaxes,
how this congregation of atheists at comic stand-up shows
is doing my head in: a theological mid-life crises,
this blatant take on theology using the logic:
from monkey you came, to monkeying you shall return...
now that trends like the crown all animals have,
all animals already unique do not need to replicate consciously,
but man is stumbling into wasting his conscious on replication,
on plagiarism... it’s so odd... so so odd! why would man
waste his consciousness to simply invoke replication?
where’s the self in that, the anti-frankenstein story so powerful
he does not wish to do anything other than marvel at
the connectivity of the bone to the nerve to the muscle?
the 20th century gave birth militant atheism -
the 21st century is labouring with a different kind of atheism -
the sort of atheism that says no barriers exist between master and servant
as between worm and pigeon - even though
the depression of the master is opposed to the servant’s depression
that he only spots analogues within the framework of
synonymity with other masters... ‘why are we so depressed?’
asked master a, ‘i have no idea,’ answered master b over lunch.
in the lower decks of the ship servant a says to servant b -
- ‘god, i rowed all day long, i’m so ****** tired!
no thought will keep me awake.’
- ‘that’s true, i’m knackered also, broken limbs of my effort
like a chestnut, no thought will keep me awake either,
lucky we exhaust the body.’
- ‘too true, with the body exhausted the mind is never disputed
never disputed by not having origins in thinking
but rather having origins in the body.’
- ‘verily, i rather our fate than the masters’ fate.’
- ‘why?’
- ‘as you said, our’s is the story of ****** demands,
their’s is a story of thought’s demands,
meaning they exhaust their mind in the accesses
thought provides, it’s like a secondary body we have no knowledge of,
they are exhausted by thinking because their body is not exhausted.’
- ‘makes sense.’
- 'hence their malady of melancholia and our as simple exhaustion.'
- 'where’s the buffer?'
- 'in the olympians, the discus throwers, the most positive lot, and due to this, the easiest
to break down from high positivity; they have no awareness
of complex thinking and are quickly undermined with all this sports’ psychology!'
- 'true to the burning tire... it's all dietary awareness and muscle bulk with them after a loss.'
- 'indeed, as our's is with aesop dreamily awaiting a freedom that’s an anarchy,as translated from aesop's fables into
spartacus' resolve.'
- 'ah yes, that old spartan revolt in the roman empire.'
so like i said, i do know that darwinism is the new super cool sensibility,
taking into account more than 10,000 years of history
and talking about it for 2 hours wishing that something
spectacular might happen tomorrow, or any other given day...
but like i said previously... darwinism just killed history...
outside the realm of journalism we’re talking millions of years...
so why would i give a **** if it’s a friday the 23rd of october in the imaginary year 2015?
well if you put crocodile into a pile of hyenas you’ll probably
get a a cuckoo mixed with a squid because of the beak shared by the two...
i know, atheism is cool, for now,
but when the quantum j provides the classical physics’ objects like jupiter
you’ll ask what the quantum of j is... and i’ll say... full-stop...
that’s because, perhaps, i never use language as:
copy - work - paste - with - copy - me - paste - on - copy - this - paste - one,
but rather...
w - grammatical arithmetic (g.a.) - o - g.a. - r - g.a. - k,
because no one can tell me that the letter j
is uniform in the context of i or k...
as the quantum phonetics of uttering the word
onomatopoeia... is no different from uttering the word bull...
so many variables of spotting the quantum physics
in pronunciation... so many varying levels of required energy
to utter j or k... onomatopoeia or bull -
so... what's the antonym of quantum - the maximum
amount of any physical entity involved in an interaction -
i know that poets speak of grains of sand = no. of stars
and that the mathematicians use the curtain of infinity
to digress... but finding the maximum will be harder
given that there will be no socratic knowledge to use as canvas...
i.e. nothing;
added to the fact that there’s a non-differential quantum
that makes ë and em almost identical in terms of the least energy used,
this humanistic paradox of bonding means there is no unique human
sound that doesn’t borrow another human sound to execute a phoneticism,
otherwise ë and em translate as eh and humming anti-treble of the lips, or finger licking mmm of kentucky.
actually... we have the opposite of quantum physics...
the body functions within an ~37ºC emission...
there are four seasons in a year... the earth's orbit is 365 days,
i just took all the known macro units
and consolidated them in the micro unit of joules undifferentiated
in terms of observable "energy."

Right now, loving you feels
the way my toes do when stepping on pebbles
(the stones they put on your back in physical therapy)
or mining ore -
supposed to be cold, but extremely hot to touch.

A copper meadow
shimmy into a tree so you can look up my dress
and catch me like gold armor when I tumble, tumble.

One defense, two defense, three defense, four
worms with spines as soft as hair
try to spindle cobwebs where we skip and hopscotch
skeletons dunk our heads in some sea
but pickaxes
make air pockets, iron is a pillow for us to sleep.

The lights cease when you leave
no longer nearby is the helmet that exudes site -
I think I could mine meteorite from your soul, there’s
only demonite in my own.

Let’s build a house with it
then wait for the bad men to leave, it is night again
perhaps they shall be burned by my evil.

Shrouded in wood, tucked into a golden chest
the walls are a deep purple
amethyst, aubergine, build our ceiling some citrine -
bunnies swallow the window frame
and I cry because somehow it is my fault,
I try to jump but I fall. And you open the door, you let
in some monsters, how I hate you for a moment.

But no bad man can get you
even ones who have skin sunken like a dead spider
pull out an archery kit
seventy-seven arrows, I put them all in hearts
leaving one special hook for you Cupid gave to me.

We make a great team
demonite meteorite silver copper topaz gold-tipped
and sterling the vultures listen in jealously
knowing this is what love can feel like right now.

[On my birthday]
                
                
At low tide like this how sheer the water is.
White, crumbling ribs of marl protrude and glare
and the boats are dry, the pilings dry as matches.
Absorbing, rather than being absorbed,
the water in the bight doesn't wet anything,
the color of the gas flame turned as low as possible.
One can smell it turning to gas; if one were Baudelaire
one could probably hear it turning to marimba music.
The little ocher dredge at work off the end of the dock
already plays the dry perfectly off-beat claves.
The birds are outsize. Pelicans crash
into this peculiar gas unnecessarily hard,
it seems to me, like pickaxes,
rarely coming up with anything to show for it,
and going off with humorous elbowings.
Black-and-white man-of-war birds soar
on impalpable drafts
and open their tails like scissors on the curves
or tense them like wishbones, till they tremble.
The frowsy sponge boats keep coming in
with the obliging air of retrievers,
bristling with jackstraw gaffs and hooks
and decorated with bobbles of sponges.
There is a fence of chicken wire along the dock
where, glinting like little plowshares,
the blue-gray shark tails are hung up to dry
for the Chinese-restaurant trade.
Some of the little white boats are still piled up
against each other, or lie on their sides, stove in,
and not yet salvaged, if they ever will be, from the last bad storm,
like torn-open, unanswered letters.
The bight is littered with old correspondences.
Click. Click. Goes the dredge,
and brings up a dripping jawful of marl.
All the untidy activity continues,
awful but cheerful.

My body is a rugged mountain pass
whose dangerous peaks and valleys
call out to the hubris of would be adventurers
with its hungry siren song.

Lovers have come the world over
with their maps, pickaxes, fire starters and rope.
Some brought tents intending to go the distance;
several with flags to stake their claim at the summit;
a few with pocket knives for carving their names.
All leaving trash on the trails as they went.

“Did I make you ***?”
they would ask believing in their foolish arrogance
that their movement and noise were really capable
of causing my avalanche.
Covered in the sweat of my labors in Sherpa-ing them to the peak
I whisper “Yes.”
Understanding in those moments that some things cannot be taught.

Only one ever came truly naked -without intention or ego.
The many times he found himself cresting my summit
it never occurred to him to pierce me with his pride
but instead he kissed the earth beneath him in gratitude.
He always moved through me as if he had gone this way his whole life
and yet still could get lost on the trails of a single limb.

He made himself an eager student of my skin
and produced waterfalls where before there had been none.
Singing songs into me as he studied my topography with adept fingers.
The echoes of which ring through me even now.
Never was he concerned with the ridges
for he being too preoccupied with the beauty of my slopes
thought of them only as trail markers.

The songbirds in the trees of me call always for him.
The animals of my wilds stay hungry as never before.
A small fire burns constantly for his return.

Unclothed.

I am a minor miner girl
Living in a go and get 'em world
We come in by the dozens
And I think you all know how this story goes
I try to please everyone around me
Forgetting what's important
And as we all know that isn't the best
I should use my mind more often
To guard my sooty heart
All you other minor miner girls know what I'm saying
But I love and I love and I love
Never stopping to think of the consequences
Sure to follow
I just dive in heart first hoping to not hit the ground
And minor miner girls you know it's true
We try so **** hard
And we always fall
Straight on through to the hellish pain that awaits
I'm sorry if I upset you
My dear fellow minor miner girls
But we need to grow up
And we need to exhibit some sort of conceit
Not to the point of egotism and bigotry
Just to the point of safety
To the point where we aren't always stepped on
And can roll in the Major Miner Girls league
I love you all
Because that's who I am
But as by unspoken and now finally written law
We minor miner girls abide by
I'm still learning to love myself
So minor miner girls
Raise your pickaxes and your shovels
Toss off your hardhats
Because we are about to rumble with
The world outside our mine
We will be
Major Miner Girls

Post-Apocalypse Liturgy

0.
These are the days in which the dead outnumber the living, and in which most of the living
                                                                                                                                     act like the dead.

1.
The wind in this place is a howl that never gets tired.

Still, I march on, a lonely soldier in a foreign land, desperately trying not to feel like a refugee.

The remains of my regiment left me long ago and are now buried under grey sand-dust or are walking, but away. This does not mean I am walking to anywhere, or that I know what I’m looking for
or what I will find.

                     I once knew a girl, and then knew that girl as a woman – two distinct and different people who would be strangers to one another if they ever meet.
                                                                   I once knew a boy, who did not become a man because I couldn’t **** the other man with the axe fast enough. There’s blood flecked under my nails and it is not his but it may as well be. I carried his keychain with the rabbit foot on it for the longest time, but in the end bartered it for clean water.

These are two of the people who are walking away from me.

2.
Here there is only a scarf over my mouth and nose, scratched sunglasses and my battered boots moving, always forward. There is no longer a North Star to guide me so who knows what direction my feet are taking me.

I see hollowed trees and cracked tarmac peeking out from the dust. The sand and the dust are the only things that move here, swirling, like us, directionless and in circles.

But not like me, no. I am moving                                                   Forward
                                                                                                                                                                          
Through the shimmering haze ahead I see a smudge, a smudge that is not a ruined tree or a ruined building. Just a ruined person, and they’re coming towards me. I check my hands, my knife, my pistol that has no bullets but does have a heavy **** and no one needs to know it’s just a glorified club.

We stop a few meters apart from each other. He’s wrapped in ***** bits of cloth and smells like turpentine and fatigue, but he holds himself like a wire. He’s looking at my pack, the blade at my hip.

“Howdy stranger. Any sign of life your way?” I haven’t spoken in weeks and no longer have a voice. I shake my head.

“Got any water to spare?” Again, I shake my head. He keeps looking at me, all wire and tightly wound desperation.

I’m going to have to **** him, so
                                                    I do.

3.
It’s a lonely dark, trapped between the teeth of suspense and resignation - an abandoned parking lot at midnight where an old drunk man cackles at nothing.

And I made
          ****** sure I was surrounded by nothing.
Sing to me silence
                   Remind me that I can still breathe.


4.
I still talk to you sometimes.

“Remember when we met? You smiled and looked clean and told me there was water nearby. I didn’t trust you, didn’t believe you but followed you anyway. Maybe because I couldn’t smell anyone else, maybe because I hadn’t been clean in what felt like years

            (but only dead gods can tell time here, so who knows really?)

Maybe because I still had a bullet left or maybe because I was

Lonely.

Were you lonely? Is that why you trusted a wandering wretch like me?

Or were you one of those dead gods who could see the Future, who could see the Forward, and what came at the end?

Sometimes I ask you things forgetting you are no longer there. When I’m thumbing the sharp of my knife and say

“Pass me my pack would you? Need the whetstone.”
                                                            Or
“Do you remember Before? Were you old enough?

I remember,
Before
        Before
Before
         Before…

Do you remember if it was better than this?”
                                                           Or
“Stop hogging the blanket already, just lie closer to me.”

And I wake up thinking you’re there but it’s just my own arms wrapped around my own waist.

5.
When I see the first sign I imagine I am hallucinating. I saw a bird earlier this morning, and that can’t be right. I saw you this morning, and that can’t be right either.

But I walk and soon hear something I haven’t heard in a long time. Someone is laughing.

And the town I wander into is not really a town, just a place to sit and sleep, cobbled together with people and plywood and spit.

‘Hopetown’ it’s called. And that would make me laugh if I remembered how to.

I’m greeted with a mixture of caution and curiosity. There must be a few dozen of them, ***** but alive and they smile at each other and have the energy to talk with their hands. There are huts and there is a circle marked by stones and a fire pit in the middle that is a meeting place. There is a hut with a table out front that is a ‘supply store’. There is a row of bicycles, some more battered and twisted than others, and I look at them carefully.

I come in peace, I come in pieces.

Stranger, stranger, become a bard and tell us of distant lands.

But there is nothing to tell about distant lands. There is only sand, and ruins, and those people walking away from me.

So I make something up.
It seems good enough, I can stay for the night.

I trade a battered toy doll with only one eye for a refill of water and a can of some food with the label scraped off. I ask for boots in my size because mine are broken and giving me blisters. They say sorry, don’t have any, and ask me to sleep with a woman with dark red hair and bird thin wrists. Plant a new seed, they ask me.

Don’t they know I’m shrivelled and hollow? There’s another woman and a man I’ve seen who I’d rather sleep with, but I’m a guest here and I say yes.

Rozelle, her name is, and I forget it immediately. It’s safer that way.
I can tell she doesn’t want to sleep with me and I’m still thinking of you so we talk for a while about things I also forget immediately (safer, safer, safer) and then we fall asleep next to each other. She can always tell the others it didn’t take,

It’s common enough.

I wake in the night like a ghost has tapped me on the shoulder. I don’t like it here, can’t remember the last time a body was so close to mine… It was you, wasn’t it? Then it must have been centuries ago.

So in the dark of night when there isn’t even a moon I steal the stallion of the bikes. I have to knock out a sentry to get it, but I don’t **** him, I put him to sleep quietly.

Because I am the villain here.

Maybe that means I should have killed him, but I don’t want to be the villain. Bad is what this life has painted me as, and I don’t want to be that.

Not that it matters because I’m only ever going
                                                                                                             Forward.
So I ride,
Going
                 Going
                                 Going
Gone.

6.
They might follow with pickaxes, but townies don’t like to travel. They have water, they have each other. But still I ride all night and into the rising sun but
Still don’t burn.

Two days I ride and nothing happens but                                         space.

Wait, that’s a lie. I rode past a graveyard for the elephants: huge trucks, hollow, huge trailers, hollow, huge dreams, hollowed out.
hollow                                               hollow                                          hollow

I peddled faster, then, because I don’t like mirrors.

And now the sun has fallen out of the sky and I usually stop before then and find a place to camp but I was caught up in getting past the graveyard and forgot about it.

Now it’s pitch black – no stars anymore – and I’m walking my stolen bike, looking for a dune I can crawl behind and sleep with one eye open, bike tied to my wrist with a bit of rope I found several suns ago.

And then I see the glowing shadow of a fire. I smell cooking meat. This cannot be a good thing. I consider riding on but without giving myself a why I lay down my bike and crawl as silence up a sloping hill so I can spy on the people gathered around the fire.

Apart from my hunting knife my most prized possession are my binoculars. I put them to my eyes like a spy from a Before movie. There are three men and a woman around a sad fire.

A leg is being turned on a spit.

The leg belongs to a middle aged man slumped on the sand. He has no limbs left, and there are ***** bandages on the stumps of his arms, his left leg. The Eaters kept him alive for as long as they could, taking a hand there, an arm here, an ear and some toes there, but now he is dead and they will cook and eat the rest of him. Feast, feast, and starve until they steal another body, another soul.

I turn to go but see something else. A girl
Hogtied and *****, tangled hair.

She’s a scrawny thing but they’ll eat her anyway. I wonder if she knew the man, if he was her father, or a friend. Or just a stranger.

I once ate someone:
She cried and cried and cried and I devoured, devoured, devoured until there was nothing left

But her flesh.

“You’re a cannibal of the heart” she said, still crying.

And I shrugged, because I no longer felt anything (this was before you, of course)

Because this is the book of our lives:
          Read it and don’t weep
There’s not enough water to spare.

And she is another person who is walking away from me.

7.
But I want to be the hero.
I want to be
                 Something someone will remember with a smile
And not with tears, or rage
                Something someone will remember without reaching for a handgun.

8.
It takes a few minutes of planning, and some sneaky footwork. They have weapons but so do I and I have surprise. So I get behind the one with the shotgun by his knee and slice his throat.

Surprise!

Can’t remember much of what happens next but it ends with three bodies on the ground with the man without limbs, a blossom of red on my forearm and a lot of sweat, a lot of kicked up dust.

And the leg on the fire has burnt now.
Ashes to ashes, and so on and so forth.

The kid is looking at me as if her eyes could slice. And who knows, maybe they can – she was certainly born After and no one knows what is possible anymore.

“I’m gonna get this off you, ok?” I say, holding my knife and touching the gag trapping her tongue. She doesn’t move and I slice it off and she still doesn’t move.

“What are you going to do with me?” She asks. And I don’t have an answer.

I didn’t think that far
                                               Ahead.

“Nothing. I’ll scavenge that lot” (I **** a thumb at the bodies behind me and repress a wince as my bleeding arm screams) “and go.”

What she says next is unexpected.
“Can I go with you?”

I look closely. She’s feral and ***** and reminds me of jungle cats from Before. She might jump me in my sleep and leave me for dead, steal my knife and bike and name and ride into a sunset and burn in it.

But I want to be a hero,
I don’

YOU delirious about the coastal span - from
the country that went on a hot year - then become the
beach your body: spread out - fragrant and hungry!

Like the perfume ad page, which is torn off
thick copies, magazines that chock short of pictures!

The one on you lies, I, which is released by the wind,
large pickaxes, mooring the sky, then sprinkling wildly

I started this guerrilla, facing my own shadow,
your spicy sand bath, quartz that grows hearts

Late afternoon. The sun goes past: yellow past
soon it was broken and glowing, the blood of a snake
I've repeatedly looked at digital numbers,
Casio - waterproof, 200 meters - an hour of the day



If the sea yells, the sentence is the waves!

He did not carry any name, until he called the bay
Place turtle loggerhead, from far journey,
Thousands of miles pilgrimage, to the sand he had hatched,
littered, food wrappers and beverage cans

This *******, like undesirable verbal abuse!



What have I found? Or broke it? I'm a farmer
threatened insect pests, certainly can not keep, seeds per
Seeds, immature rice. The season is short-lived.

When I see the location of the taxi to the North,
I also had to go back there, fold the map, then
stepping like a man's footstep -
like the song I heard from Springteen - and
write down a poem that I am afraid of his verses.

We packaged our dreams in spiked boots and razor sharp axes
willing to chip the mountain away to get to the top
of things that bothered us for a while
as we lazed in the summer sun
and wished for winters comfort
and high mountains and snow and ice and sherpas
tugging our dreams upwards
into a blue everest
where other dreams gathered
under colourful flags and photographs.

Our guides knew their goddess well
her whims and fancies
and bells tinkling as she allowed them
to climb upon her back
still tugging our dreams and us
our limited oxygen and pickaxes
and walking ropes.

Off in a line we went
holding on tactfully to our practised steps
and foot by foot we planned to conquer
the mountain of our ambitions
and write ourselves into the record books
as adventurers of conquests.

The goddess gently sneezed
and a gap in the long line of climbers
disappeared forever.
caught in the fist of avalanche fury
our dreams became dust.

© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 2 months ago

Stupidly genius, moronic and shrewd people eat their fast food on fine China
Failing is vertical, errors are slander
Their gross insults impacting easy digestion
Hyperbole falsehood messiah

Piercingly silent and ardently soft people keep their opinions on fences
Insults are weaponry not to be yielded
Their platitudes cradling fragile personas
Perversely destructive defences

Classically learned and bookishly rich people carry their privilege with kindness
Science is built with colonial scaffolds
Their method constraining all true innovation
Parochial qualified blindness

Shockingly worthy and recklessly small people polish their boots with lead solder
Gravity holding them grounded and upright
Their bootlaces impacting aerodynamics
Inferior sturdy upholder

Gallantly serving and fearlessly trained people douse the political embers
Fire escape blocked with hobnails and lumber
Their pickaxes caught in the thick poison ivy
Nugatory self-rule defenders

The silent, the learned, the worthy, the trained people trade voyeurism for vision
Hologram values are no longer trump cards
Their gazes averted from hate-dripping sophists
Integrity first coalition

Our lives are the space in between
The war of good and evil
Darkness and light
on opposing sides
And we’re the dusk somewhere in between
The gray we see in black and white
On the static of an old tv

Here i am to be influenced
Or mislead, I decide
As I stand where the West skies meet the East
There I see my sin,
Sitting right Where God left it.

Would he even care if I took it back?
So I could make myself feel condemned again
****** if I do if I Don’t

To hell or high water where I’m just looking up if I drown
Down to Sheol in a Creole mix of vudu or hudu, and “who did You say that you are again?”
Yoo-Hoo! You who breathes out ******* stars, gains the faith of the humans just to send them out to war
It’s a double-edged sword
These lines hand-drawn, into sand, thrown up by a whale, and out onto land, down by the bay to the gates of Hell
It’s the day and the night
With Blades drawn for the fight

Where the dark meets the light once again

Here I am to be influenced
Or put under influence
Or crushed underfoot
Like the serpent I’m grinning but losing this tooth
For the healing heel of my chosen Christ
As it taps into the god’s vein of gold
I see gray,
since I live under a rock made of slate
From old chalkboards
That that were never quite cleaned all the way
Dust lining my nose, Coke lines down the road, and a chalk-outline in the gutter

Where the body you made, to break only to fix again,
died so you could give it a new one
My brain is made of metal
Metal is gray
Gray matter and static
And the cobwebs in the attic are grey
There isn’t one color
But only the black shade of gray
And a white tint of day
Could peel me away from a life of which colors to see

If I don’t decide, live a monotonous life
And stare at the eyes in the screen
I live on either side of black and white,
Where I’m only ever to be seen by the faces lacking shading to be anything more than 2-d, anything thing less than deep
They’re flat like walls, screens, phone calls, steel beam conspiracies, and white girls before a wedding, the starving living in Haiti,
they’re all ******* flat and it’s bleak

I’m having to answer to cancer, and vandals, and rebels, and low profit margins
But I’m just advancing, the random and dumb scribblings of pencil, from a self-proclaimed celestial
And lack the knowledge fit for kindergarteners

And they’re still...  GRAY!.

But if I lean towards artists
And arson for grills made of sulphur and charcoal
The fire consuming a trail of addicts and some chain-smokers
Sinners in chains left like food for the vultures

And cities made of concrete and sin are still gray!
And so is the smoke they breathe out when they burn.
And drill bits dig as they turn into the thoughts, as my brain turns to gray, the gray pickaxes of seven dwarves
as they mine for ores or nether-regions, either or.
leaving God but still believing, ashes are not black in the shadows of factory smoke-stacks
Ashes, ashes, ashes, are ******* gray.

Even the diamonds we see through, to find the dried, white **** on the other side,
Black diamond slopes for the frequent skier, stretching into to the sky, even higher
Than the Everest in your viewfinder
Which still made of gray, is covered in white,
But when **** meets the black and snowballs down the other side, all you see are grey stars as it turns out your lights.

All that we see through is fake
anything less than opaque,
all that we through is clearer
As charades disappear into mirrors
You realize the line between darkness and light
Is a great work of sculpturesque figures
Made Of gray clay
Lodged in history of the gray clouds that rained out the world
A rainbow appeared but it was gray
Because god is not the color we see
And not picking a side is a travesty

So this line I walk doesn’t exist
Blissful in my ignorance
I choose bad or divine
But cant see down the line
But if I could it’d just be ******* gray

when i miss you
the longing makes a home under my skin.
drives pickaxes into my bones
and reminds the marrow
that i’ll never see you again

my skin crawls and my fingers grow cold
knowing i’ll never feel
the crepe-y skin
that felt like family

my nostrils burn
knowing they’ll never smell your scent
j’adore mixed with a little bit of menthol

your presence promised me a home
as long as the stove was burning
and there were people to gather around
the table at dinner

loneliness takes shelter
and wraps its spidery hands
around my vocal cords

insecurity whispers
into my ears

that it won’t be the same without you
that i’ll never feel okay without you
that i’ll never feel whole without you

as if going to church everyday and thinking of your steady voice and fervent Hail Marys weren’t enough to break me.

as if hearing the crack of peppercorns before dinner time wasn’t enough to bring me to my knees.

as if shards of ice don’t stab my heart when i hear the jingle of gold bangles on thing wrists

as if jealousy and rage doesn’t consume me everytime i see an old woman knowing that it’ll never be my Nana on the other side.



i see the farmer’s market and i hear you asking when the next time we’re going grocery shopping is.

i see a tablecloth and i see bright eyes alive with the thought of throwing a party.

i see a word search and i see the stains you left on the comforter when you forgot to cap your highlighter.

the worst part is,
is that i can still feel you
i can still feel the warmth of your hugs
i can still feel the mark you left on my heart

there’s no emptiness.

just constraint.

everything is just too much
knowing that
it’ll be a long time
before i can come home to you.

to my dear ghostwriter,
or whosoever has to carry
the burden of my unfinished thought,

if you're nothing like me -
and i hope you aren't -
you'll make a list.
a list of the things you think
i would want to say
even when my voice is still not silent
and still echoes in sceptres
of my favourite words,
even when they come out of your mouth.
don't worry when the numbers
in your list start to crumble -
you see, even the ghost of my presence
does not like structure.

dear ghostwriter,
if you're nothing like me -
and i pray that you aren't -
your first step after writing
would be to edit what you just wrote.
thin peals of laughter will echo
in your ears when you do,
ignore them,
that's just me laughing at the idea
that raw thought
can be made more powerful
by taking pickaxes and hammers to it.

alas, if you do turn out to be
anything, anything like me,
dear ghostwriter,
know that you are allowed to wander,
your words are allowed to escape
and run amok,
you have the freedom
to do literally whatever the hell you want,
as long as your defiance is written down.
then, i suspect,
you'll begin to sound a lot like me.

yours,
in death and in shadows,
in spirit and in words,
shivani lalan.

Why do I miss the chance
To be the tall among the mice among men
Among short people again and again
It's something I cannot afford
People extort from me extra privilege
On the metros and waterslides coaxing me pay more
Because I am the taller one in the army
That's why I'd rather skip out on being tall on the next date
So what to do when my crush wants a tall guy to eat cheese and wine with?
Giggle and dawdle I suppose
That's what dwarves are acclaimed for
Some dwarves are taller than lacdaiszical gnomes
That's the rule of the thumb, near the desolate ruin of moors
If I take the restroom on the left
The women make it your best chance at feeling free
When you kick down doors and backdoor men too
Soon pickaxes will be not allowed inside
Each seat is taken by the men in the restroom
Dreaming of the phone call and what it is to be bandleader

I often stand under the trees,
Waiting for the myrtle to fall
like drops on the mouth.

I feel the earth talking under my back
unveil secrets of other worlds
It keeps silent about a City, which is under the backbone
It is being built with drills and picks.
The ear rests, weightlessly, on the ground
to feel the sweat slide down your forehead
and fill up with the din of the miners
until all the walls of the body have been touched by its echo.
Up to the point of touching the din of the tips and pickaxes.
Rests.

The green of the stems twines around the fingers
and there they remain, too
watching the myrtle fall,
sewn to the earth.

I let emerge placid purple velvet leaves,
from the clothes.

I watch the myrtle fall
And the light filtered by the flowering trees
berry after berry, pierce the veil.