part of me
stands
as a stiff bust
in the center of the square
(no one cares anymore. it's been there for a long time)

part of me
dances
as a shameless plastic bag
gone with the wind
(it is disturbing. its plasticity is too mobile and *****)

The horoscope instructs you when to try,
Sportscenter shames
Time poorly spent,
And a commercial on the tv tells you why
You tried to earn more
Than covered rent.
In fact, you’ve learned that you can sigh
From the same logo that aims to prevent
A tree growing straight,
Still wondering why
The kid from Into the Wild preferred a tent.

The weatherman told you when to go but
Those hills have eyes that
Tickle your spine;
You can convince your arteries’ juice to flow
But some streams run deep,
Deeper than a drill could unwind.

The schoolboard cannot be stopped
In rain. In snow,
Knowledge breaks the naked man’s vision.
The hardwood floors in an old house
Grow, and when those panels crack
I hear they glisten.

phyllo dough considerations
veil the rigid silence
under quip, under smile-
covered cliche cud.
it is in essence meaningless,
this large party,
this braying urgency of guests

the house swims with life,
we mingle charismatic coughs
as talents strut; bouncing fruit
and swaying surface tension fizz
sparkles off the balcony of floating drinks

our tall pines are echoing beyond the yard
a sylvan soft allure of
living soundboard drape,
it needles aromatic carpet for a
*******, brink-of-dawn escape

allocate the living and the dead,
the borderline is begging to be tread.

an elastic belt extends the real,
a tool for party tricks, a tool for bending time--
i'm bounding off into the darkness
balling lightning in my dantien,
the world a trampoline;
running full i top the rail of gasps,
swinging through the arc
of thinning line to pull me back around,
stomach churning fiction-sick
with gravity inverted joltingly,
umbilically, aware.

then she has a turn as i,
as being me, and as i (as I)
careen away, the vaster leap
of single body, double mind-
it pulls beyond substantial thought

our uber-jumprope dangles
while we speed above the trees -- all is dark
excluding speckled stars
and the one, shrinking party-glow i lose below

the television orbits,
wobbles in a superstrings' embrace
all balance lost --
we're floating in a spin alone
unfocused universal locus..
stars diminishing reliquish cosmic depth
and nourish life in death

reeling eyes of weightless ******
squint to spacetime surgings
inward of the who i am--
plasticity-encasing glass of box
to offer all subverse companionship.
i tug the corded fabric
fronting interweaving screen
of futile marking where
i've riveted, lost, gazing
psychosoma scene
a modern mind-toy posted
to enframe another me we are,
even here with outside sight of world
vacuum up and lower heading
compass only gulping awe,
the breath is gone, a stinging heart
revalves its pacing flow
descending cosmogonic thread

allocate the living and the dead,
the borderline is begging to be tread.

i imagine trees again,
branches soft,
trunks my guideposts to the ground i've lost~
i'm mingling against my sense of real again,
packing leftovers, living social lies unknown.
a man compliments his speech
as "Bristling with business."
the jelly seeps beyond the pita's edge,
the pita slides out from under foil.
the party swivles on its axis,
the clowns play on, noble chefs
laughing in their pots
while i visit drooping psyche forms,
around and through glass doors,
crystal tables -- a furniture of ideal norms
to overturn. ah. i'm found again,
a bit less vast among a crowd
of nescient lives unlived. i'm
found undiscovered open all,
plainly lacking truth as well,
i'm me, this other presence,
this shifting sight,
flood experiential zoo,
this empty vessel holding two
a social fissure prying sense of self
from up a wild void..

hope stretches out
makes you dream
of faster, larger
synchronous,
stronger synapses
that show you
the same path
in different light,
that spans across
those past attempts
and future thoughts
still out of sight.

Neuro--plasticity----in language simple and plain
is re-organisation of your brain.

With no argument I think most people agree
With the adage stating that, "you are what you eat"
But it's possible there's information not known
Having equal importance or maybe more so

All the nutrients eaten; We intake our food
It will travel through digestive tract once consumed
Same can also be said of our actions and thoughts
They're the building blocks making up all that we are

Brains are not like a rigid or fixed type machine
An old dog and new tricks go together it seems
Our plasticity will let us both change and shift
It makes pathways; New neural links over the rifts

These connections might possibly benefit us
But this same mechanism can also do stuff
With a negative scope, the outlook and belief
We might think we're no good; Our lives filled with much grief

If we're constantly saying things inside our heads
Like self-doubting, self-loathing and feelings of dread
Then our brain will re-wire to fit this outlook
Once ensconced in this spectrum; Not easily shook

The same way that a person engages with time
Like activity, also is true with the mind
A small change in the way that we look at ourselves
The new thoughts and beliefs in our mind start to meld

With the make-up within that each one of us holds
Self-beliefs and self-doubts from our birth till we're old
Like a painter with ink; Our brush never is dry
We are always creating what's in our mind's eye

So don't hinder yourself with a picture that's bleak
Just believe in yourself and go get what you seek
You are capable of so much more than you know
All it takes is belief and in time it will show

Grass turns rest round
love set world self need.
Vomitorium forget word
hand thought waste powdered
leaves minds present
wills leak simply
say wan turn time neon
Dreams moments' control
Idea, ascent;
graze cliches
Adversity based lump myth solid
disguised cancer cages.
Repetition, test, twist, strip, sew.
Entered shortly.
Promptly moral,
border seeing stirred tale wanton.
Spake grace,
“Eat, scar message
loses heed, seemingly!”
Serpent gravity,
tame killed bearing.
Engine resound telekinetic
499 merry-go-round repeatered,
answer's 'cos empathy's idealogical.
We've sapphire muppets
when'll sighn heat-ray -
Truithfilled.
Beltsched.
Amyth.

Ord's sighns,
discotheques placticity teaste;
firstless plasticity.
Algorithms gruesome
argue opaque feeding.
Cheated clips lame distraction,
beings tease statement,
cogs cote photosynthesis.
Evasion necessarily replenish
ebbs divided.
Tamed, ensues coils ajar
freed shed attention.
Mountain lined sail, future redeemed.
Talk.
Seen heart grind, operate wings.
Tail door using shared stop,
kept heard miss.
Music start:
sky winds lust shall gave bit kiss.
Feel like know just way,
live left fall
sees mind truth.
Wrong room.
Disdain.
Eye life face writhing coat,
drinks rhythms
fat appeared blade.
Died state half answers
broke wheels simplicity.
Bliss.
Solution deeply faced, fades perfection,
rises failed.
Necessary lines selling,
read,
asked.
Catalyst train turned lead memory,
lights feeling book grave.
Algae sent burns bear,
dove follow led.
Field filled
astray comfort.

~
I work in the clouds
Building a world out of hype
I could be a beekeeper
A prison guard
Reverse pop idol
Extinguishers, all

Hackers ferry contemporaries
Around the diseased city
Merchants of transference
Polymorphing
Paths and angles
Pieces of eight

They could be brutal war fantasies
White noise translations of the snow
Cathedral nights in the deli
Ghost recordings from an opera house
Each with its own price tag

All the pretty girls
Thick with mascara
Go to plasticity
Drink chloroform
100 aspects of subterranea
So long as they come home
With a credit problem

Money devotion
It's what transferred us
Into numbered silhouettes
Slavishly pouring our blood into the sea
~

You travel between disparate realms
desperate knights, with splintered shield
and cracked helm, black rose on their white backs.

Such void, from which universes are created,
where normality is clay, and plasticity.
Granting merit to my thefts
Your ink spills in torrents,
rapidly alternating colors.
But my black and white photos
they are beautiful too!

I never have known boredom
as a man in my own home,
such is my inability to understand
how you flit and zip,
I only have two hands and two lips,
to try and transform a gift,
from the norm, while a storm sleeps
beneath every syllable.

Countless bodies, devoid of mind
until swooping in they come,
it is not enough that I possess true feelings.

It must be the purity within my tainted stanzas
that counteracts the inadequacy of the volume.
Or some subliminal, or sublingual amplifying agent
or reality distortion involved,
which brings shapeshifting angels
gliding by, leaving tokens of bone carvings,
and charcoal drawings of what I choose to hide,
but simply cannot.

The brain is a piece
Of hardware acquiring the
Best software—takes time

Slippery insanity careens through marble forests,  
trained insurgents capture dragon flies
grinding them up for pixie dust,
cowards siphon rain drops from entangled subatomic particles
inscribing hopeless anecdotes for economical tyranny,
bloated bumble bees bomb pearl harbor,
golden harps sprout wings chasing lost lovers
nourishing their insipid dreams,
homophobes parade **** inside sinking ships,
graveyards sneeze showers of formaldehyde,
nature's chemical cathedrals synthesize
the eleven dimensions of space and time,
summer's daughter bathes in autumn's waters
a myriad of memories engraved in the brain's tissues
trace the tapestry of neural plasticity
Prometheus's pollution and the alchemist's sunset

a pale neurology
within
pale iron gates
painted in pallid shades
of steel, gold and myrrh.
locked within recursive delusions of grandeur
like granite, horizontal and brittle
snapping within their multiplicities
lost within blindness' entangled waves.
drowning at the cusps of its own banality:
vacant plasticity
homeomorphic sludge
betraying nothing
of the mystified real
but an idempotent of
projected projections,
of a recursively flickering reel,
an echo-chamber,
of pale
gated communities.

aether.
flesh.
bronze.
iron.
silver.
gold.
gold.
ink.
(tape)
flesh.
sili­con.
pale.
pale.
ether,
aether
    
                           (void)

nosebleed
black heart
making paper mache knives
sitting on pottery thrones
cause we're the reigning water
falling from the
quilted sky

There are many thoughts that escape my conscience
I don't know where they escape to
The deep parts of my mind that I don't visit?
I try to think disconcerting thoughts
Rather than exercise my memory
I think my mind is strong
And it will be an ***** that will remain functioning
Once I turn into a vegetable
My mind will function and sin
It will fantasize fetishistic acts
Plot ******
Question God
Think condescending thoughts
When my father who is very kind
Cries over my cold unmoving mass
I will curse people I don't like with satan's words
I will write my eulogy
And no remorse will pass my preoccupied mind
And then let's see what will happen when I wake up
A new woman
Ready to ****.

-an entry from the National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health-

processes protruding
excitatory synapses
cerebral circuits
dendritic differentiation

growth is     s         lo           w.

a complex dance, unfolding of a blueprint; how do we understand this dance?

stress stress stress stress stress learn grow develop stress stress stress stress stress

the brain is sensitive! plastic changes are not all permanent
                                 permanent
                                 permanent

choose...you­r...psychomotor stimulants!
amphetamine
*******
nicotine

choose:
gray or white matter
schizophrenia or drug addiction
ADHD or depression

the brain structures will not be changed;
pathological plasticity = pathological pain

                                                           ­                      not all plasticity is good
just like a sculptor
who creates a statue
with a block of stone
and a chisel
to remove the unwanted pieces

in vivo → cell death

The nights draw closer
The days grow shorter
Everyday I try to feel fulfilled
It's that feeling of getting thrilled

Yet deep down something is missing
To the point I'm crying,
Crying myself to sleep
and its everyday I weep

You've kept me in chains
But now I have to let go
of these constraints
Goodbye my love
One day, you'll see me rise above

Feel something i beg!
The camphor in my demeanor tastes sweeter than the salts spread over the eyes of hour dreamers.
Don't trifle, in menial,
spread fires for three,
Gimel whispers; promises me.
Crawl backwards through womb and bough.
Bow forward through the plasticity.

Coiled, grey March –snow patches slow to disperse on the townscape -
trying to turn the year.
A grey plume drifts through the low sky, like smoke but not smoke,
slow to disperse
reforming and palping like a long streak of foam on the sea; a grubby bag
turning, plastic and drifting
dividing in the sky: a shifting exclamation mark pulls out of shape
turns pale to vanishing, is gone.  
A sound like pages riffling, like a thousand paper fans rustling, a darkening in the air
turning in the low light all together
wheeling , breaking, re-combining, stretching again.  Sky geometry.
Still that dry whisper-clustering
of many wings holding close formation, turning and swooping together.
The cloud is back, is gone, is back again – endlessly
The grey light feels unnaturally late
above the Eagle Rec
starlings are moulding shapes, most beautiful murmuration.
The complex maths of defence – stay close, stay close –
turn, wheel, stay close.
Against the pale dusk the moment stretches beyond bearing,
that high, remote plasticity floats on as the light hesitates
dragging out the turn towards darkness.
The hawk must be near, striking into the crowd -
spin, turn on a wing-tip, wheel close, divide and turn: with luck
she will take your neighbour.
The black bunched crowd drops as one, to roost, to rest.

When you're lucky enough
to find yourself having great ***,
you keep going.
Prudence pushed aside,
nurses her sore feelings for another day.
This day,
you keep going
until everyone is spent.

With animal ***,
you simply open the orifice,
accept the appendage,
and mop up the mess.

With drug ***,
millions invade.
I just lay there, open
wanton
innocent synapses
entirely vulnerable,
and invite the eager hordes in.

Plasticity pushed aside,
nurses her sore feelings for another day.
This day,
I keep going
in orgiastic union
with some very
promiscuous molecules.

Dare I disturb the image of your beauty?
Though I fear such torment, I strike at memory
Shattering beliefs and scattering them haphazardly
Across a pool of my own lucidity.
You are now only a product of past tragedy
Never in the foreground to hurt me
Always sinking deeper into the water we’ve wasted
Nourishing black roses hardly blooming.

Nay, still you smile in amusement
Knowing you have evaded deployment
Shielding yourself with a layer of plasticity
That returns to haunt the subtle elasticity
Of minds superficially moulded into belief
Now brandishing nothing against an enemy
Elated in the minute lapse of reality
They’ve made ripple in your vanity.

Dare I shelter a deadly renegade?
With arms shaking, I open doors to your shadows
Watching them slither back into their corners
Forming warm cloaks of comfort
In the crevices of a vessel unrecovered
Safe in its weak kindness and susceptibility.

I close my eyes to the feeling
Of your presence within my soul
Roping in the acceptance I had always evaded
Locking it into the vacant basement
Of self-acceptance, as you sigh out resentment
Removing it from the dying voices in my lungs
Tasting copper dissipating on my tongue.

Dare I accept my demons?
You are already a part of me.

I see them walking down streets with names like
old buckingham
old gun road
westchester common street
robious
hugenaut
broad
grace frankling main cary
carry the weight of a group of ****** up **** ups
trying to "make a difference"
delusional *******
difference is made from killing a status quo
and their hands shake like childrens'
take a stake in the mental quake of the plasticity of the fake looking for mates
I'm tumbling down sure fall peak
free fall
until falling free is forgotten as a quest
childe roland to the dark tower came
yeah I went to college for a little bit there
broke out when I broke out of a sane frame of mind
swallow the sludge created by incontinent consumerists
snakes on trees make better friends than invisible fathers
but get these depressed lunatics out of my sight
feeling a fight bubbling up
complaints are for the complacent
so I don't see you
fear or hear no evil
evil makes good possible
using my vice versa as my vice
quoting bible quotes verbatim
I don't ft right
jigsaw piece chewed up by toddlers
jam me into place
and cover me in duct tape to silence the protests

You make me feel the plasticity in my blood
It resonates through my words
It resonates in your world
It resonates in your fake convenience
And if I could, I would run away
From myself, farther away that I've ever been
Farther than your touch
Farther than your "I love you very much."

DEPRESSION


Ayad Gharbawi



A word, my friend, I heard
Where Angels of my Father’s memories, spoke shockingly
Where Mother’s weepings sang dirges in my mind
I can never ignore these pages and essays that affect us brittle humans

And where throats hurt once more
The dryness wounds sincerely
How could a clown cry, I thought?
Here, and forever more, I thought - and for what meaningful end?

The Wilderness will forever be my highway!
Endless in repercussions and unsure threats vague
Where eyes conversed in sentences distracted and disconnected
Where body language denied the presence of all meanings or sense

I complained unto no one
For I did complain once unto a god I believed in once
A god I thought could change and alter physics and its grand laws
Yet dryness once more hurt my memory as I attempted
As I attempted and tried to recall what efforts I needed to do
Such as recalling images exact of my ‘friends’ that were meant to help me

I saw too many hollow, unoccupied, futile skies
‘Neath which thorny verses of Sacred Scripture were passionately, lucidly preached
But I tried my self far removed and away
And turned aghast towards
Situations where lies convinced us of truths
Where lovers expressed intimacy within plasticity’s contexts
Eventually, surrendering my sanity and soul
I myself simply stood and looked at snowy sands cold
That was all I existed for
To stand and watch you all live on.

Beneath the mask quivers and shivers weak and fragile flesh
Frigid and frozen with chills of fear.
I am crippling in-security secured, where they countlessly hide and whisper at the endings of each breath
Riddles veiled with gleams of chemicals disposed and recomposed between night and day,
Until the light hits it and the wind gusts it and incessant defections rise from the deepest depths of my horrific broken authenticity.
And they are all staring at me.
But this time not into the toxicity of my rusty razor eyes.

Beneath the mask is where my falling tears secrete
Pouring vacancy as a smile that feels more like a cracking cut that screams, "I do not belong here" , forms and quietly disarrays.
Buried, piercing eternal reminders that what is shrouded is and never will be clean.
Dig far enough and you'll unravel my roaring encrypted codes.
I want to feel the inner me. I want to let go. So please let me go.
I'm sick, surveying perplexed eyebrows and transient smug slugs that pass through me like a hundred and five venomous knives.

Beneath the mask rests squashed hope branded in the never seen.
Examine the clothed truth that's mounting me into a false entity
If only this was an illusion derived from my bitter history.
But the lights begin to flicker as endless passing heads and lifeless expressions come and go. Stop requested.
The laughing fluorescence continues.

Beneath the mask, recycled empty, plasticity.
Carried with titanium, Styrofoam delirium, impalpable veined elasticity.
And if you come close enough you may just see,
From the scabs and scrapes of doom that are bombarded by and masqueraded with false decadence.
Clipping the wings of individuation,
Don't label me innocent.

Beneath the mask are humorous symbols, layered with obscurity and decay residue.
Of shattered dreams and scattered stars drenched in solitude.
Guide me to the darkness so I can feel blended in, meaning comfortable in my own crumbling skin, and once again soak into my unsuccessful fantasies.
Cause I am stifled from a thousand suffocating bandages weighing me down,
I am the under-works of the ground, sleeping in the soil.
Like meds morphed into led, showered with alcohol.

Beneath the mask it is hard for me to breathe
It is hard for me to belong and it's hard for me to believe
Seek and create your deciphers and you will find deception draped in reverie.
But I've been inflicted with a mistaken realism.
Destined for something that will seemingly never ever be.

I am captivated behind nauseating smirks and painful smiles
So today please let me astray so I can remove this mask for just a little while?

sever and broken all the world
all that’s loved, all that’s lost
all that searched through empty lots and ducked
all that slips through the night
like a broken playground dream

. . .and all that could have been, condemned and contained

like all the putrid of miscreation
. . .and all scorned with painful regretation

like all those born with a tortured soul

and all that are and all that could have been

I am your placid thought
hiding your wicked desire of plasticity
I am the trees’ haunting

. . . I am your forgotten, by all it seems
I am your ruined . .

Bury me inside your favorite dreams.

Gritting my teeth to the chalk of a smile,
I ******* tongue-tied tipping
points of platitude and innocuous
glances. I’d like to take
a dip into the powerade
of an eye—poison
my electrolytes and throw
up the unconscious effort to keep it all
down. Bellow
the belly of this
bending in binary is the mending
of mind
body
and soul—the syrup to my cynicism.
I’ve been bundled
together tight enough to taste the tingle
of anticipation just before the
fall
into cool, quiet cotton
candy. I could scream if I cared
to. My madness mumbled and muttered
mulled through and muted—
passed from eye to mind—
mind to measure—
measure to mechanism.
The hum of
impetus. The creak
of rising action. The screech into
final release.I’d like to
plunge my plasticity in a pool of electricity—
singeing all but just the edges.
Rattling rails of self imposed righteousness.
Tattling tales of presupposed hypocrisy.
Only I can mold my moment
at the peaking of this pinnacle
to whatever my mind would
make it out to mean:
a death
a daredevil
a daydream.