Is there room for context at this table?
We can move some dishes and shuffle chairs.
I’ve checked all four legs and they seem stable,
but choosing a placemat is like splitting hairs.
I notice the candle’s flame is getting dim,
and my fingers pirouette in the puddles of wax,
my hair needs a cut but I settled for a trim,
and I’m donating my salary and spending my tax.

I’ve told you every thought in my head,
except the ones that matter the most,
the facts that scald my cheeks to red,
now they’re burning up like charred toast.
I’d promise you whatever you ask for,
and I’d drag myself to deliver each time,
but I’m ignoring the truth at my core,
and I’m confessing to you in mime.

Sit across from me with crossed legs,
see magnets becomes our eyes,
“come closer together” both begs,
but we’re determined and polarized.
There’s no world existing around us,
and there certainly is no group,
you listen while I ramble and make a fuss,
over the death of Lipton’s Alligator Soup.

We turned Heaven into a Hell,
we took a skeleton and made a shell,
We dragged our nails down the walls
scribbled ephiphanies on bathroom stalls,
and silenced a story we could never tell.

And all the things that have driven us apart,
in truth have only made us stronger.
and my love you are actually my heart,
I won’t question it’s beating any longer.

If you’re stuck with a choice
you should flip a coin in the air,
then listen to your mind’s voice,
‘cause your answer will be there.
When it comes to heads or tails,
you already know your favourite side,
you’ll pray for it as the coin sails,
ignore the outcome but absorb the ride.

It’s embarrassing to have too much money
The make believe buddies and the fake deference
Measuring your height in yachts and widescreens
Kids who are unfamiliar with your touch
Ever more expensive toys to overflow
The ever-thinning circumference of time.

Holidays can be a way of dealing with
The superfluity of excess in day to day lives –
The addict learns to miss his true love
While the CEO goes food shopping
And remembers how to set forks and knives
On an empty placemat’s either side.

It is later than late,
the simmered down darkness
of the jukebox hour.

The hour of drunkenness
and cigarettes.
The fools hour.

In my dreams,
I still smoke, cigarette after cigarette.
It's okay, I'm dreaming.
In dreams, smoking can't **** me.

It's warm outside.
I have every window open.
There's no such thing as danger,
only the dangerous face of beauty.

I am hanging at my window
like a houseplant.
I am smoking a cigarette.
I am having a drink.

The pale, blue moon is shining.
The savage stars appear.
Every fool that passes by
smiles up at me.

I drip ashes on them.

There is music playing from somewhere.
A thready, salt-sweet tune I don't know
any of the words to.
There's a gentle breeze making
hopscotch with my hair.

This is the wet blanket air of midnight.
This is the incremental hour.
This is the plastic placemat of time
between reality and make-believe.
This is tabletop dream time.

I am surrounded by empty booths
& four sides clothed in beige,
highlighted by hanging globe- lanterns casting a serene aura.

The swing of the kitchen door
greets me, the lone patron
who has placed his order
for miso soup &
white sticky rice.

My placemat educates
me about the zodiac &
I can almost hear the
creaking of the bamboo
painted on the walls,
it leaves me
feeling nice
inside.

i am life in all its forms
gardenias blossom in your garden
roses and geranium are in full bloom
sun, rain and wind nurture your soul
all is held in a vision of beauty
suspend judgement for a moment and relax duty
just be still and see the quality of life unfolding
have you found the rhythm yet
take time to wait for it to come to you
so long as you chase it
it will fly away faster than an arrow
but sit back and wait
and it will return as fast as it can
solve nothing and situate yourself between all limitations
as for pouring out your heart you must do that in stages
send messages to the ladies you are in love with
tell them you are always willing
to partake in the kindness of their salvation
send them flowers by way of mental teleportation
insanity is courage spread out upon the table
like a banquet we dine and resolve to try all the flavors
sorrow and madness are two tastes
that you remember from your childhood acquaintances
a long time ago there lived a boy in a basement
he had no friends or other people to educate him
so he set off on a course of morose self effacement
and learned the secrets to yesterday’s replacements
so many mornings he woke up
and found himself in a shallow pool of water
not knowing how he got there
he decided he would try to have a daughter
so he found himself a girlfriend
that he carved out of some stone
and into the water he tossed her
so he would no longer be alone
what a small child they had inside the pool
a tiny being the size of a pebble
yet they loved and cherished her like a princess
since they never left their home they could stay together
frequently his mind was a vacant island
surrounded by water on all sides
a perfect getaway for a tranquil vacation
next to the galapagos
there are seventeen dragons who take the form of turtles
he sold his hair for cash
and stashed it in their pockets
he sold his eyes for a sack of rice
and borrowed visions from the earth
she was a huntress
who gathered all her weapons
and sent them out with magic
into the forest to look for food
her legs had given up
but her mind was as strong as a lion
her spinal column danced in lightning’s garden
successful at shooting she could **** a bear in thirty seconds
her most altruistic side was alive
the day she discovered their burning child
instead of rescuing her she stoked the fire higher
but before she could be immolated
she untied her wrists and ankles
she ran away screaming but her mother didn’t even move
her stoic features held together like the stillness of a mountain
down, down, down deep in the valley
her laughter echoed loudly and her smile could cut through diamonds
all of the creatures that lived in this canyon
could only hope to be devoured
by someone as naughty as she was
and now the snow melts in summer
slowly as a snail
and dry are the fields who get only hail
and never rain nor shower
only thunder and the brightest flowers
for lightning fertilizes the soil
and soil is precisely new matter
that is waiting to be born
turning in the womb
the child is torn from her mother’s body
and pierced with the red spear of the dawn
shadows of mercury remain
in the warm amniotic fluid that is collected in a jar
like dew its is the moisture that holds the nectar of the stars
shreds of luminous light from the moon are shining like knives
tearing the sky to pieces as quickly as a kite darts past the sky
birds return to their nests as the day is over
and now its time for all to rest
so set yourself a placemat and prepare dinner in your sleep
yes you are present but at the moment talk is cheap
like porous cheesecloth used to strain milk and butter
long hours spent working tirelessly to prepare meals for
seven little brats
your music is a carriage to take you far away from that
pain and isolation that blooms despite your breath
never ever let them see you like that
start a journal or a blog
and tell the world how you feel
about chickens and turtles and the rest of the farm
stars are our teachers, for in letting go of beauty
they fall from the sky to finish off their duty
studious and serious the child plays with nothing
all is work and study in this day and age
of modern educational slavery
a stage for violent revolution is set
yet we fight the battles in the bathtubs
with our children’s hearts breaking
each day new devastating accounts
of tragedy and violence everywhere you turn
who will brush your hair
who will look out for the little ones
several hours pass and their is no sign of the rain letting up
its pouring harder than a drummer
hitting all the symbols at once
symbolic language a variation of music
variance and broad spectrums of diversity
amuse the angels who see only unity
lounging around on solid ground looking for happiness
this residue of yesterday is all over the flowers
targets in the city street are lighting up one at a time
next door to your house i see the writing on the wall
left there by a writer neither short nor tall
mint tea with honey drunk from a mason jar with almond milk
a stallion rides through heaven and raises up a storm
the sky he rides upon gives way to the stars
and like the bottom of a canyon
venus, earth, and mars are all slowly trampled upon
by the steeds powerful form
meditation is never ending
in full bodied harmony
our strings are being pulled by a puppeteer
he is a father figure
dreamed up from the pages of a story book
yet all the words are meaningless
until you’ve held that spark of luminous silence
that echoes in the darkness of the heart
yelling out loud but no one can hear you
through frozen windows you scream that you are lonely
come on outside and play in the Sun
hanging from the treetops are your old classmates
you tied the noose around their necks and let them sway for days
anger is a poison yet it heals many wounds
forgive the collective unconscious
or your destiny may be to wind up empty as a shell

I have an old farmhouse inside my chest,
wooden siding rotten in places and windows
fractured from too many winters,
the roof of which sags near the chimney--
faint smoke-clouds rising, and a light
glowing yellow inside the kitchen, a beckoning

invitation into the faded blue walls
full with portraits of four--my mother, father,
and little sister--brassy frames hung close
together above the wooden table,
nicks and scratches connecting each placemat
like dots of the coloring book page left
magnet-stuck to the refrigerator.

The countertops have grown dusty.
fruit-bowl collecting gnats and mold,
but the zinnias over the sink flourish, replaced
daily and blooming red as the teakettle
rusting on the only remaining stove-top burner,
the others broken, tossed into the garbage
beside the back door, which leads to a forest--

rib-like oaks bent and bowed
over the farmhouse, ivy vines coiled ‘round
each trunk, stretching limb to limb, weaving
webs tangled as the unruly branches from which
they hang, caressing the slumped rooftop
as if to remind the battered, tired building how,
despite everything, the hearth still smolders.

Old breadcrumbs litter the placemat where
my little one had sat that morning.

That morning I told her she was running too
late to finish the PB&J with fine
pineapple pieces she had made for herself.
She gobbled the thing up in seconds, and with
a mouth still full she walked over and mumbled
bye. I wiped juice leaking out the corner, and
with a snort and a kiss to her forehead I
said see ya’, have fun. And with that she was out
the door, her red backpack one strapped like the
baseball boys did.

All that’s left are these breadcrumbs. I can’t
get myself to clean them up and throw
them away. I see them every day,
every meal, every middle of the
night as I peck on pineapple PB&Js.

As much as I know these crumbs must go, I don’t
regret for a second letting her eat that sandwich
the way she did. It was hell to raise such a rebel,
but she was never going to let anyone stop
her from what she wanted, including me. And she
makes me proud. I’ll clean it up eventually, but
for now, my little one’s breadcrumbs stay.


-
Aleksander Mielnikow (Alek the Poet)

Do you hear a little child crying?

Keeper holds up a cheap, placemat
With a pattern of Blackeyed Susans
And says *See that pattern?
You made it.

Came your birthday
Black coffee, a packet of Sweet & Low
I choked when the grounds touched my lips.
You're feeding her and telling her
Your Mommy is the smartest,
most beautiful woman in the world.
I painted white and yellow
petals around the droplets of coffee.
And mailed it off,
My gift, se lah!

It was returned two weeks later.
Marked twenty years!

That was the day we became friends.

Alone again in this four-room house;
the wind stagnant, like water.
empty beds
crumpled
from bodies that have long ago left.

On the table there is but one placemat
and eight chairs.

I have turned off all the lights
to look at myself
reflected
on the moon on my table.

I wish you were here

but you never are, never were.
you are a ghost
hiding behind words from far away.

It's been days of us reading
each other.
letters, commas, question
marks dancing
into a person.

I crane my neck to hear your voice
but there are only faint echoes,
like murmurs
from distant mountains.

There is a house on Trepidation Street
and it is where I have often lived.
You are beyond

a poem
you are beyond me
you are my fear in human form
because you are so many things I am not,

talented
intelligent
interesting.

you are what I've been looking for
and more,
it is this more that makes me fear
the distance
between us is further than my imperfection can take.

My own fear rests
in my occupation of this space
you've given me: between loving you
and wondering
if
you love me too.

or perhaps
in the realization
that no good poem will come to me untilyouleaveme
but I don't think any poem could be worth losing



you.

Little lashes
Bopping on heads
Off goes one
In drool and
Headphones
The big green monster
The mousey placemat
The heavy breathing of congestion
The one lullaby
The one mother
Your little boy world
I love him through  
You

On this day
15,17,20,37,62 Years ago
a person was born
(many persons actually)
And these people were created
To live a life set out like a placemat before them
So as the years go by
and birthday after birthday passes
These people endure heartache, tragedy, loss, happiness, jubilation, and everything in between
But all they have to show for this is another year.
Another candle in the cake
Another punch on the arm
Another "happy birthday" card
But not everyone can share this day with the important people
So tonight when I'm staring down at a cake
And the light from the flame flickers across my face,
They'll lean in close and whisper "make a wish".
And I'll close my blue eyes as memories of birthdays are shuffled through my head
Then, only then,
I'll wish.

*I wish that I'll make it through another year

I invested too much for the bet i never placed
I never asked for a placemat to be set
for the spills i didn't know i would make

I never asked for these wrinkles on my face for the time i spent not missing you
I never asked to feel so much in common with a speck of dust
I never asked why to me the moon shines brighter than the sun at its very best
I never asked why happiness to me was a shooting star
beautiful too look at
but hard to grasp
I never asked a lot of things
all because
not everything has an answer
not everything has to make sense
not everything is anything you want to hear
however all I do ask is that someday
when you people
decide to blossem babies into this perpetually doomed earth planet we call home
all I ask
is that you have the decency to tell your child with its eyes so wide
that its not going to be easy
cheers to the loners who wear masks too big or too small to fill the very shoes they never put on to go anywhere to do anything with anyone.

i feel like i am the only one who gets upset about how quickly the earth moves and it took a lot of time and a lot of people to sit me down and explain why i can't feel each second and each rotation like a carnival ride and i think messing with my placemat at the dinner table asking why we all don't get dizzy was the first time my family made me feel stupid. this isn't poetry as much as not being able to sleep but when you're a writer i doubt there's much of a difference. things go over my head a lot so i always ask people to be blunt with me but sometimes the force trauma hurts so bad i want to throw up honesty and i can't admit that i like beating around the bush better than knowing exactly what's happening and being able to cross off and narrow down like a game where i never learned how to deal with feeling genuine emotions for other people because there is a strange comfort in ambiguity knowing that even though things change all the time and the earth spins at a million miles an hour that's not the reason why im sick

The placemat said I was a boar,
but I swear I'm a dragon,
definitely not the rat,
that's my brother.

He's really cheap.
He doesn't believe
in such things, in
eating Chinese out.

Why don't we worship the amygdala, make it sound exotic, start a fever-fire in the tropics, pour ice over the horizon via helicopter, view the mind's eye like a crystalized Shambala, sell entry to inner-peace to create the illusion and wall the dam, there's no concept of reality without a sham, low as the almighty dollar, processed meat behind bars get your necktie pulled through your collar, I've been all over the world from the edge of my seat, I'm what you could call a stay-at-home road scholar

You braggarts, *******, maggots and fascists
politically correct censorship-sailors and catfishes
you politicians and career-victims, you're all slapstick
you talk too much and don't hold water
you bark at false alarms and pet yourselves because even a broken watchdog is right twice a day
and then ignore every other crisis you called all hands on deck to, raised arms to crush in uproarious righteousness like you were the voiceless minority's own private militant flyswatter
everybody has a voice, we're all screaming or sitting in silence, tired and apathetic
I'm going deaf, I've lost it and I can't keep beating this dead hoarse, the whole world has issues, why are we making such a meal out of ourselves like we were the main course
ever since being put in the spotlight when Columbus sailed up onto the wrong shores
you can recite the diddy of fourteen hundred and ninety two, but you know why Native Americans were called Indians is because he set sail for India initially, don't you?
I have little hope the future will even be able to keep the ocean blue

The only thing I learned in school was psychological warfare, every day since I first set foot on those grounds I've taken live rounds and dealt my hand from the bottom because you can bet on the flop life doesn't turn up fair, it's too much to ask for someone else to care, read from a script for drugs, your alcoholic or *** deviant teachers whisper be-wary of thugs, down sleeping pills, painkillers and my daily dose of brain-fire extinguisher with *** from one of those best dad mugs, it never fails that when you go chucking snails, karma turns around and reminds you why you have to watch out for disgruntled slugs

You might catch one with your name on it
slower than you imagined, this grueling dawn hits
the purple of the sky lines up with the shade of skin under your eye
it's like makeup made to match, a tone only being sleepless for so long
or being on the business end of a fist can really catch, unnatural beauty looks so wrong
it's become normal to manufacture sell and lie, be a product, a marketing scheme
wanting to lean into exposure, explode and fracture and leave behind a profitable footprint to follow at the launch site
it's inhuman, to be switched on for twenty four hours, seven days a week, to be a character, it's obscene
and to defend this are small armies, cute little consumers who don't think beyond the opinion placed before them, placemat bib and all
dissent is negativity, disagreement is not normalcy, it's not okay, you're attacking someone who's so important to me, they literally saved my life
insult and rant, sob and bawl
unless you were personally given chest compressions, or they showed up and held your head so you wouldn't swallow your tongue while you OD'd, and then helped you back from suicidal depression
I don't care if you've shared a stage and danced and sang together, all people are equal
and none of them worth what they think they are, good, moot, or evil
so you can waltz up to a celebrity getting into their car, pop them off and become a shooting star

Sit on the curb and crack a spine, the Catcher Murders loosely spun a web and cast a net all through a grimly imagined fascination of mine, what candid activity to activate a conspiracy for an elected representative on who gets to live, give me the nominee for Manchurian candidacy! Violate the vile walls of a small mind's sanctity, the moral composition of even the purest person is only sound in theory, threaten their family, test their temptations, loyalty and mortality, fill their head with supposition, non-disclosure to time of day, information, no exposure to familiarity, turn what they think is false inside out and convince them what was never real was all along a secret reality, watch them break their neck to stare directly into an eclipse like it was their fealty, to disable themselves in service to pushing out of their skin and beyond their own ability

Mind control is simply too powerful to be stopped at a question of whether or not it's ethical
if I wrote this while someone dictated it, with a gun in one hand while they fed me an acid strip
and I knew they had complete deniable culpability, say for example if they worked for the Central Intelligence Agency
and they were abducting citizens from America and Canada, for one big experimental acid trip
to create Whitey Bulger and Ted Kaczynski
I mean, I know everybody hates to hear other people whine, you fall on your knees in thoughts and prayer for or worship on forums shooters like the murderers at Columbine,
when every day someone provokes a loner, outright pressing them to slip into a violent state
I begrudge myself a few hard feelings against people, but I wouldn't **** time to squash my hate
a child with a gun is an adult making bad decisions, the grey area is a lot harder to see when you're sorting through footage of dead children, bullet-torn classrooms haunting your nightly visions
everything is a joke and everyone laughs in the privacy of their own shadow
when their standards in public are much higher, where there's smoke there's not always a real fire
how can you police yourself, live up to the idea of who you think you are right now,
don't look for an answer, go on and say it, how?

I grew tired of being a placemat
By the door to your vacant home
Will I ever be more than history
Lying in the back of your mind

I haven't seen the sun in days
You walk but you don't run
Tell me, is it better to flourish
To leave it all behind
Than to have lived through a passionate wish

Being with you was a wasted ******
I'd flow my stream into you
Wished for more than necks intertwined
I punctured your rejection with great strength
The pain was nothing compared to the way
You left me behind at arm's length

I cough, I ache, achoo
I sneeze not one, but two
Times as I forget you
You **** fool, why did you make
Me fall in love with you

I don't really know you.
The sparse details scattered across
Days unremembered yet unforgotten
Are but small glimpses to a life
Beyond my knowledge.

The true nature of your heart lies
Between the sunrise atop bumper crops
And the sky that holds it illusionary,
Yet the orange glow shines through my window
Every morning since our meeting.

Eastward drifts my soul,
Beckoned regardless of wakefulness;
Foreign things kept in choice vocabulary
Run away to from the moon
To only be considered there of--

Do I know you...?

I know how you went about your day when you
Woke up with a weight in your belly,
Groggy eyes squinted in sorrow and sleeplessness;
A tired mind running on hamster wheels with
Thoughts organized in bedhead disapproval,
Feigning extraterrestrial happiness
With bookwork and a cup of coffee,
Topped off with a bad taste in your mouth
And a blunt headache that didn't go away-

I know the monotonous capital of existence,
The placemat of our truths walked upon
Without a sole by the hustle imposed;
Drudgery felt like clockwork in the digital a.m
Shining neon "Go! Go! Go!" and you go,
"go. go. go..."

As I have gone...
As we have gone together...
As we'll have come before and since,
In shared moments of stasis every morning
We rise-

I will not forget how you greeted the day,
Not to yourself or your love or your household
But to myself and blessed others in those morning hours,
Knowledgeable and fierce,
Optimistically aware of every day past and upcoming,
Guiding the times as if set to sculpture

-Arisen is the phoenix at dawn,
Flamed feathers spawn the day
As we greet the nighttime gone;
I don't know you,

Not really, anyway.

How many times do I have to say “I’m sorry”
Before you stop looking at me like that?
I ask you if you’re even listening to me
While you pick at something on your placemat.

You couldn’t be bothered to ask about my day,
Never mind that I don’t ask about yours.
I’ll lose my nerve and twist your words in every way
Before I try to settle all our scores.

I hope to break the painful silence by saying,
“We shouldn’t let this dinner go to waste.”
You look away, like you don’t plan on staying,
And it fills my mouth with a lonely taste.

i have 3 helpings of pollo guisada
the fat girl in me was still salivating from the saborrr
its soo good, gracias bamba thank you
she smiles at me
watching me take each bite to notice if i
somehow crunch on a bone and make a face to then
tell all the family in puerto rico that i
was disgusted at her food.
she takes a seat,
ghloe, why ju so skeeny mama
ju no eat en school ?
i look from my placemat with a water stain and to her,
i smirk
of coursee, it just disappears to i dont know where
she walks off back to the kitchen to start preparing tupperwares of her leftovers for my dads lunch breaks for the week
i went on my health app and logged my progress-
still nothing,
i thought about my inability to gain
ran up to my room and started to write.

W.i.t.l.e.s.s
Woman
In
Training
Learning
Essential
Skills 4
Survival

Go with your heart.
Hold the doors that make you happy.
Satisfaction is an ego placemat
For your joy to work
Makings of imagining
Your heart a vessel. For confessions
Bless every tear you cried in youth.
Illusions. Just concoctions
Of an unrequited truth...
Your journey is a unknown trail.
With kindness as your friend.
Truth is just illusions
Revealed as more than just pretend...
Silence is a laughter.
Followed after by a rushing thought
To sit and hear the emptiness
Forgetting everything your taught
Your mind is like a maze of mice
With fixation on the prize.
Calm the scurried paws and just enjoy
The greatness of your life....
Your soul a sleeping giant
Ahman and praise allah
karma is God's
Way of repaying you for deeds.
And saving you from harm

When I touch you
I'm nineteen again.

I'm on the bridge again,
Looking at the water beneath.

I'm making shadows in the moonlight,
I'm driving three hours to Williamsport
At 10 PM on a Sunday night.

I'm looking at our reflection
In every pane of glass,
I'm ******* in knots
And I'm driving a little too fast.

I'm playing hacky sack
In a big circle outside
Of the Limerick diner,
With all my friends by my side.

I'm staying up too late,
Because to sleep would be a waste
Of the seconds
And the hours
And the days.

I'm surrounded by orchids.

I'm watching fireworks
On a pier down Wildwood,
Where we jumped over
The banister
On the fourth of july.

I'm carrying wood over
To a blazing fire,
I'm playing pool and darts
And I'm not even tired.

I'm watching a couch burn
As Pat finishes his Bailey's.

I'm writing in that notebook
Behind me on the shelf.
I'm savoring a coffee
With a spoon in it.

I'm drawing on the back
Of every paper placemat.

When I touch you
I'm nineteen.

Or twenty nine.

I'm losing the meaning
Of time.