Bare-handed, I hand the combs.
The man in white smiles, bare-handed,
Our cheesecloth gauntlets neat and sweet,
The throats of our wrists brave lilies.
He and I

Have a thousand clean cells between us,
Eight combs of yellow cups,
And the hive itself a teacup,
White with pink flowers on it,
With excessive love I enameled it

Thinking 'Sweetness, sweetness.'
Brood cells gray as the fossils of shells
Terrify me, they seem so old.
What am I buying, wormy mahogany?
Is there any queen at all in it?

If there is, she is old,
Her wings torn shawls, her long body
Rubbed of its plush ----
Poor and bare and unqueenly and even shameful.
I stand in a column

Of winged, unmiraculous women,
Honey-drudgers.
I am no drudge
Though for years I have eaten dust
And dried plates with my dense hair.

And seen my strangeness evaporate,
Blue dew from dangerous skin.
Will they hate me,
These women who only scurry,
Whose news is the open cherry, the open clover?

It is almost over.
I am in control.
Here is my honey-machine,
It will work without thinking,
Opening, in spring, like an industrious ******

To scour the creaming crests
As the moon, for its ivory powders, scours the sea.
A third person is watching.
He has nothing to do with the bee-seller or with me.
Now he is gone

In eight great bounds, a great scapegoat.
Here is his slipper, here is another,
And here the square of white linen
He wore instead of a hat.
He was sweet,

The sweat of his efforts a rain
Tugging the world to fruit.
The bees found him out,
Molding onto his lips like lies,
Complicating his features.

They thought death was worth it, but I
Have a self to recover, a queen.
Is she dead, is she sleeping?
Where has she been,
With her lion-red body, her wings of glass?

Now she is flying
More terrible than she ever was, red
Scar in the sky, red comet
Over the engine that killed her ----
The mausoleum, the wax house.

I used to think that all of them were just bodies. She-figures, they came and went, facilitating infinite happiness and following with hellacious heartbreak, aorta explosions galore. They pass. I stay. She goes. I remain. We all take a trip, but she falls asleep while I follow the road, I sing the song, make the lyrics up as the 101 heads West, and I careen against the Pacific. I see silvery-white plumes of whale breaths spouting, they break the rocks of my rock and roll. When the levee breaks, we'll have no place to go- I'm going back to Chicago.

California. Line 5. Verse 1. She is born in Arkansas, in Denver, in New York City, in the back of a taxi cab, her parents waiting for a table at Earth Cafe, 1989. There are concerts, balconies, elevator shafts, and on benches. The gain rises, the volume up and up and up, I offer her a cigarette, I ask her if she likes my dress, I show up with two palms full of a flame, and I say hello. Browsing in high-definition, the water is warm, my feet are planted and I have everywhere to go. Classical emporium of light fill me with ease, greatness, and belief. She asks me if I'm gay. Every great confusion can be proven to be fortuitous with enough time on hand. I kiss in cars, in bathrooms, and barrooms, in hallways, on staircases, on beds, church steps, and legs. I touched a leg, ran my fingers through her hair, my thumbs curved to the height of two ears alongside a size B head. I love art *****. i burn candles, and I swirl the wax around until the walls wear masks of white. I check-in to a hotel. I stop to buy wild flowers on the side of the road, or to climb down a ravine, we open a page into an enormous patch of strawberries, wind-surfers, and the golden Palo Alto beaches. I am in Bronzeville, on my way to Bridgeport, I am riding the train, browsing magazines, and singing new songs in my head. My lips are wet with excitement and the musings of the Modern Art Museum and the gift of a first kiss; behind the statue on Balcony 2, near the drinking fountain, the Eames couch, and two lips meeting anew. Bravery in twos.

Chapter 1, Verse 2. The chorus is large and exciting. New plastic shining coats. Smocks patterned with the Random House children's stories that we played with as children. We didn't wear gloves, or hats, or pants, or our hearts on our sleeves. I was up to my knees in hormones and very persuasive. My fifth birthday was at the Nature Center, you chased me into the boys' bathroom and kissed me with your wet and four year old lips in the second stall from the door. I eased up maybe 2% since then. The speakers are a little bit fuzzy, it's like listening to the spit of someone's tongue cascade the roof of their mouth while they pronounce the British consonants of the 90s. Said and done and saving space.

I am saving up for Grace. A crush in the mid 2000s, black hair, long legs, and the only brunette for a decade before or after. We played doctor, with the electric scalpel we turned our noses red with Christmas time South American powders. A safe word for an enemy, the sun for an enemy too. You bolted out and took my early Jimi Hendrix Best Of compact disc case too. While we're at it, you took my Michael Jackson cassettes as well. I go mid-range, think Kiri Te Kanawa in the whispers of E.T.'s Elliot. Stuffed-animal closet party for seven minutes in heaven. Your family came with butlers while mine came with over-educated storage. A blue borage sky in the intestines of life, a splinter in the shanty-town of invincible daily struggles- both of us were born again in O'Hare Airport's Parking Level D. Too many nonsensical arguments in two-tone grayscale ripping open the packaging of a course about trysting in your twenties.

Your stomach's history is overpowering. It is temperamental, mettled by spirits and sleepless nights, borborygmus, wambles, and shades of nervousness you were never comfortable speaking openly about. The history of your ****** was privatized, in options and unedited films shot over and over candidly by a mini DV desk camera, nine months to read you wrong to weep in strong wintry walks back and forth from The Buckingham to the Dwight Lofts, Room 408 without a view. All of your secrets in a little miniature of a notebook, bright cerise red. You captured teardrops in medicinal jars meant for syringes. You tied strings to your fingers, named your field mouse Ginger, and introduced your mother as Lady Darling. Captain with stingray skin, the hide of Ferris Bueller with the coattails of James Bond, dusted with daisy pollen, and clearly weakness. You ate me like bitter herbs on Thursdays, and like every other woman I've ever met, on Tuesdays you always kept me waiting.

I have wings for everything. Yellow wings for a woman in a yellow dress, Red, White, and Green wings for Bernice from Mexico City, Purple wings for  Mrs. Doolittle the doctor who worked at Taco Bell, the Jamaican priestess who was traveling through Venice Italy- we smoked hash with the grandchild of James Joyce on the Northern pier against the aurulent statues of Apollo and Zeus, Cupids' collection of malevolent tricks, SleepingB Beauty's rebuttal in fending off GHB attackers, my two dear friends who were kidnapped in clothes, abandoned in the ****, and only remember eating chocolate donuts with sprinkles and the bruises and dirt on the insides of their thighs. Nothing clever. Nothing extraordinary. Everything sentimental, built to withstand soot, sourness, and early female bravado.

You know how to play the piano so you've said, but i only have the CD you gave me to prove it. I do have evidence of your addiction to men and *******. I have your collection of dresses with tags still on them (but every woman has some of those), there is the post office box in Kauai, the Halloween card from last November and the two videos I have stored on an external drive in a nightstand adjacent to the foot of my bed. You sleep atrociously, talk too quickly, and **** like your father abandoned you when you were five. Your talent for taking photographs is like your skill-set for playing the piano, but I don't have the CD to prove it. You don't believe in social media, social consistency, friendships, or hephalumps and woozels- with the exception of the classes we shared together in college, I've never seen you outside of the most glamorous of fashion. You hate flats, hats, and white wine, and for as sad as you can seem to be at times, I've only had you cry on me once. While we were on the phone, three days after your mother hung herself. That's when I last left California, and I haven't been back yet.

I love a Kristine, but once a Britni, a Brandi, a Joni, a Tina, Kristina, Kirsten, Kristen, and a Katherine and Kathryn too. I know rock stars who are my dearest friends, enemies who I share excellent taste in music with, and parents who've always had my back but show it in lashings of the tongue and of the belt. It's been two years and three states since I was two sizes smaller than I am now. I've never considered the possibility that I was the main character and not the supporting actor, but due to recent developments in antipathy and aesthete, reevaluation, and retrospective nostalgia. All of this is about to change.

I am me still evolving without my usually stolid and grim ****** features. i bare brevity to situations existing that would **** most or in the least paralyze a great many. There is one for every hour of every day, and one for every minute in every hour, second in every minute, and more than the minutes in every day. No one has a second chance, shares a different time, or works off a different clock. I have been called the master of the analog, king of the codependent, and rook to queenside knight. I share a parabola for every encounter, experience, and endeavor. I am three minutes from being a cadaver, one drink away from a drunk, and one thought away from being completely alone. I think upright, i sleep horizontally, and I love infinitely. I am the only finite constant i have ever known. I am the main character, the script, satire, sarcasm, and soundtrack are mine.

"I don’t care if you believe it. That’s the kind of house I live in. And I hope we never leave it.”
There's A Wocket In My Pocket by Dr. Seuss

Drowning inside hands.
A fluorescent chime.
Skin scrubbed radiation.
Force-feeding plastic and sugar and flesh.
Pushing and pulling until tendons flail weathered
Up. And. Down.
Up and down upanddown until the store of powders, prints, nails tumble out carmine and is sobbing
gagging on a high chair.
The candied calculator like heart-shaped pupils and sticky soles.  
Opaque ID’s and strands of you abandoned in navy sheets.
Shoulder tassels taught on Adam’s apple.

Love stitches bedding and hollows bodies.
Love lights the West and lines waste baskets wet.
Love is a little girl vomiting into a lion’s den.

I am the raven,
I eat the dead,
I am the raven,
I remember all things,
I am the raven,
I build all,
I am the raven,
I know all things.

I am the otter,
In rivers and creeks I swim,
I am the otter,
I eat and I play,
I am the otter,
On slopes I slide,
Joy is mine,
In the mountain streams,
I own the rivers,
I feed on their fish.

I am the snake,
The serpent I am,
Between and through move I,
On belly I crawl,
Gold are my scales,
Glacier blue and silver,
All colours they change,
First one then the other,
I taste the air with my tongue,
Through my belly,
I listen to all,
Far craftier than all,
The beast of the field am I.

I am the fox,
The vixon am I,
Crafty and wise,
And hard to catch,
In the ground I live,
Cross the fields I race,
Quick and fast,
I take what I want,
Nothing is safe,
If it I desire,
A vixon am I,
Fleet foot and large tail,
Back and forth it moves,
Grace and escasy,
All come to me,
All I desire.

I am hawk,
I soar and I fly,
Above the plains,
All things I see,
None see what I see,
From up above,
Down I soar,
To **** and eat,
Still on a wire,
Or on a fence,
I know when to wait,
I know when it's time,
When prey is in sight,
Not a second to lose.

I am the vole,
Who lives in the field,
Down in the earth,
I burrow and dig,
Across the field,
All seeds are mine,
To eat and enjoy,
From dusk until dawn,
Timid and cautious,
I look to the sky,
I cannot fight,
I'm weak and I'm small,
But many am I,
And many more come,
And still we will be,
When all you are gone.

I am the owl,
Silent and still,
You know not I passed,
Only my wind,
Silent end deadly,
Queen of the night,
I will consume,
Whatever I catch.

I am the horse,
Across the plains do I run,
Swifter than all,
The one none can catch,
I run like the wind,
For we are one kind,
My mane and my tail,
Like banners and flags,
Nothing can stop us,
Nothing can try,
For we're always moving,
The fast wind and I.

I am the trout,
See how my scales glisten,
I am the trout,
At home in the water,
I swim and I breathe,
What causes others to drown,
I listen to the water,
The rivers, the creeks, the lakes,
The secrets I know,
No others can know.

I am the eagle,
High, high I soar,
Queen of the high places,
All others beneath,
What is not prey,
I care not at all,
I and I only,
See what I see.

But above all tonight,
The fox and vixon am I,
****** and sensual,
Grace and desire,
In the land where the sun sets,
This land that is dusk,
I am all ***,
The kiss of the dead,
The dusk sets like dust,
It powders my fur,
In the night do I hunt,
In the night do I *****,
My fur is desire,
My tail moves and calls,
I walk here as ***,
All come to my call.

~I Am the Fox by Lorekeeper, June 7, 2014

Colorful, tasty
Sticky swirls, canes, and powders
Make the tongue delight.

Ambulance, paramedics
Diabetic coma; sigh

There is pleasure's sigh, there is despair's sigh,
Adorned with a sweet smile or a sour cry,
Screaming both in the night with no reply,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

All places of Tokyo change at night,
Streets are flowing rivers of gleamy light,
Lit-neon signs glowing at every sight,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

More footsteps have been set in these lit-streets,
Than the words have been said in these lit-streets,
Or the numbers of debt in these lit-streets,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

Glamorous in the busy night like pearls,
Hostess girls show to men a sight like pearls,
With smiles and teeth who're white like pearls,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

Girls who're shining like jewels are adored,
Who quickly by empty wallets get bored,
By the men who these sweet gems can afford,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

As long as bars shine with signs of neon,
The crowds in this city are going on,
Until they are put out at times of dawn,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

Lights are reflected as blurs in each pool,
Who distort the sights like the alcohol,
Who is served in passionate bars as cool,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

Water's flowing in the water business,
Who's to the old days a reminiscences,
Where the thin rules of the night are boundless,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

Unlike the tradition of the flower,
Here they paint faces to take a powder,
And then embrace the ones with much power,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

The alcohol is poured down like the rain.
How hide drunkenness from whiskey and champagne,
They put powders on the face to look plain,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

Adored, desired and loved is every star,
Who strolls around or drinks in every bar,
By each man with a luxuriant car,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

Mâhî's still to Tokyo a stranger,
Both to its pleasure and to its danger,
Where the eyes at night only see a blur,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

i can no longer understand how now,
this sleeplessness at night,
when the world is waking in other places
so far away from me,
to the ethereal powders of the breeze,
that paints the morning with its poetry,
as the phantom of the love i love,
causes me to awaken with a cry.

It's going to rain, rain, it's going to rain,
those sleek-silver drops will take me back again,
to those cobbled, winding streets,
the raucous, song-filled pubs,
and the green, the green, the red-brick,
granite and oh! the green,
the steaming Earl Grey tea,
of which i love with a yearning need,
waiting, waiting for me,
on that precious island on the sea.

Hark! Now everything is still,
The screech-owl and the whistler shrill,
Call upon our dame aloud,
And bid her quickly don her shroud!

Much you had of land and rent;
Your length in clay ’s now competent:
A long war disturb’d your mind;
Here your perfect peace is sign’d.

Of what is ‘t fools make such vain keeping?
Sin their conception, their birth weeping,
Their life a general mist of error,
Their death a hideous storm of terror.
Strew your hair with powders sweet,
Don clean linen, bathe your feet,

And—the foul fiend more to check—
A crucifix let bless your neck:
’Tis now full tide ‘tween night and day;
End your groan and come away.

I found a coven in the woods
Amongst an oaken forest glen.
There,
hidden behind a curtain of Spanish moss,
amongst fiddlehead ferns and fungi bloom,
two of Gaia's faithful maidens
Enchanted me unwittingly, and took possession of my gaze.

A Pair of Muses
One, of the forest
One, of the sea
Both wind and fire
Equally
In opposition and in sway

Their incantations softly chanted
In a tongue to me unknown
and I listened quietly entranced,
between them in the glow
Of their cauldron hearth fire
Embers burning low

She of the forest was enigma, playfully shy,
coyly toying with the strings all men share,
And in her den, among her herbs and powders and potions  
In preperation, and prepared.
She spoke in riddles and in parable,
Both with body and with stares.

Instantly she knew me
As I had never known;
As if Devined by a mysticism,
Ancient and pure,
So sublime it startles the soul.
In her eyes,
so sweet and sincere,
simplicity and innocence obscure
A strange and intoxicating knowledge
Of the rare and deepest old
Of the world and it's great secrets-
What its darkest reaches hold.

She of the sea
Was shimmering
A specter
Against the stars
Floating

She was Waves
Of aquamarine
Blue Green
Irridescent
Obscure and reticent
Behind her ever pulsing shade

Camaflouged by her surroundings
This piscian vision lingered in relief
Over a Gilded titan mother of pearl chariot;
The Persephone Throne.
She cast her stare upon me;
My hypnotized mind laid bare,
Wiped clean of anything I had seen.
No man could know her shrine of love
Nor the secrets that she keeps,
And none ever remember;
For one cannot resist her lair

An aquarian cavern,
A haven of calm,
Rest, respite and solitude.
It's lotus blossom lantern
Heart of glowing gold
Cast in shadow upon the ceiling
Glimmering radiant refractions
of the waning day

Her ocean sings soft and sweetly,
Casting mist into the air,
And a siren's song disrupts me
Ever suddenly
She washes over me,
Unaware

And though the seven signs they showed to me clearly
Still the stars I misread
through misted eyes,
and soon I fell to dreaming without sleeping
Or so I thought, though i shall never know

In their atmosphere I relinquished this mortal coil into the haze,
And disappeared completely
For an instant, just a moment,
perhaps it was hours.
Perhaps,
it was days.

And as abruptly as rushing water to the somnambulists face
I awoke,
As a dreamer awakes
from dreaming of waking,
alone and bleary-eyed,
dreary and confused
amid my own disheveled cave.
And where they've gone, I wish to go,
But where that is, I cannot know
For I would follow them until the days
Turned forever into nights amongst
The Forest and The Waves

311

It sifts from Leaden Sieves—
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road—

It makes an Even Face
Of Mountain, and of Plain—
Unbroken Forehead from the East
Unto the East again—

It reaches to the Fence—
It wraps it Rail by Rail
Till it is lost in Fleeces—
It deals Celestial Vail

To Stump, and Stack—and Stem—
A Summer’s empty Room—
Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,
Recordless, but for them—

It Ruffles Wrists of Posts
As Ankles of a Queen—
Then stills its Artisans—like Ghosts—
Denying they have been—

The ladies men admire, I've heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They'd rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read ****** poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints ...
So far, I've had no complaints.

I used to think that all of them were just bodies. She-figures, they came and went, facilitating infinite happiness and following with hellacious heartbreak, aorta explosions galore. They pass. I stay. She goes. I remain. We all take a trip, but she falls asleep while I follow the road, I sing the song, make the lyrics up as the 101 heads West, and I careen against the Pacific. I see silvery-white plumes of whale breaths spouting, they break the rocks of my rock and roll. When the levee breaks, we'll have no place to go- I'm going back to Chicago.

California. Line 5. Verse 1. She is born in Arkansas, in Denver, in New York City, in the back of a taxi cab, her parents waiting for a table at Earth Cafe, 1989. There are concerts, balconies, elevator shafts, and on benches. The gain rises, the volume up and up and up, I offer her a cigarette, I ask her if she likes my dress, I show up with two palms full of a flame, and I say hello. Browsing in high-definition, the water is warm, my feet are planted and I have everywhere to go. Classical emporium of light fill me with ease, greatness, and belief. She asks me if I'm gay. Every great confusion can be proven to be fortuitous with enough time on hand. I kiss in cars, in bathrooms, and barrooms, in hallways, on staircases, on beds, church steps, and legs. I touched a leg, ran my fingers through her hair, my thumbs curved to the height of two ears alongside a size B head. I love art *****. i burn candles, and I swirl the wax around until the walls wear masks of white. I check-in to a hotel. I stop to buy wild flowers on the side of the road, or to climb down a ravine, we open a page into an enormous patch of strawberries, wind-surfers, and the golden Palo Alto beaches. I am in Bronzeville, on my way to Bridgeport, I am riding the train, browsing magazines, and singing new songs in my head. My lips are wet with excitement and the musings of the Modern Art Museum and the gift of a first kiss; behind the statue on Balcony 2, near the drinking fountain, the Eames couch, and two lips meeting anew. Bravery in twos.

Chapter 1, Verse 2. The chorus is large and exciting. New plastic shining coats. Smocks patterned with the Random House children's stories that we played with as children. We didn't wear gloves, or hats, or pants, or our hearts on our sleeves. I was up to my knees in hormones and very persuasive. My fifth birthday was at the Nature Center, you chased me into the boys' bathroom and kissed me with your wet and four year old lips in the second stall from the door. I eased up maybe 2% since then. The speakers are a little bit fuzzy, it's like listening to the spit of someone's tongue cascade the roof of their mouth while they pronounce the British consonants of the 90s. Said and done and saving space.

I am saving up for Grace. A crush in the mid 2000s, black hair, long legs, and the only brunette for a decade before or after. We played doctor, with the electric scalpel we turned our noses red with Christmas time South American powders. A safe word for an enemy, the sun for an enemy too. You bolted out and took my early Jimi Hendrix Best Of compact disc case too. While we're at it, you took my Michael Jackson cassettes as well. I go mid-range, think Kiri Te Kanawa in the whispers of E.T.'s Elliot. Stuffed-animal closet party for seven minutes in heaven. Your family came with butlers while mine came with over-educated storage. A blue borage sky in the intestines of life, a splinter in the shanty-town of invincible daily struggles- both of us were born again in O'Hare Airport's Parking Level D. Too many nonsensical arguments in two-tone grayscale ripping open the packaging of a course about trysting in your twenties.

Your stomach's history is overpowering. It is temperamental, mettled by spirits and sleepless nights, borborygmus, wambles, and shades of nervousness you were never comfortable speaking openly about. The history of your ****** was privatized, in options and unedited films shot over and over candidly by a mini DV desk camera, nine months to read you wrong to weep in strong wintry walks back and forth from The Buckingham to the Dwight Lofts, Room 408 without a view. All of your secrets in a little miniature of a notebook, bright cerise red. You captured teardrops in medicinal jars meant for syringes. You tied strings to your fingers, named your field mouse Ginger, and introduced your mother as Lady Darling. Captain with stingray skin, the hide of Ferris Bueller with the coattails of James Bond, dusted with daisy pollen, and clearly weakness. You ate me like bitter herbs on Thursdays, and like every other woman I've ever met, on Tuesdays you always kept me waiting.

I have wings for everything. Yellow wings for a woman in a yellow dress, Red, White, and Green wings for Bernice from Mexico City, Purple wings for  Mrs. Doolittle the doctor who worked at Taco Bell, the Jamaican priestess who was traveling through Venice Italy- we smoked hash with the grandchild of James Joyce on the Northern pier against the aurulent statues of Apollo and Zeus, Cupids' collection of malevolent tricks, SleepingB Beauty's rebuttal in fending off GHB attackers, my two dear friends who were kidnapped in clothes, abandoned in the ****, and only remember eating chocolate donuts with sprinkles and the bruises and dirt on the insides of their thighs. Nothing clever. Nothing extraordinary. Everything sentimental, built to withstand soot, sourness, and early female bravado.

You know how to play the piano so you've said, but i only have the CD you gave me to prove it. I do have evidence of your addiction to men and *******. I have your collection of dresses with tags still on them (but every woman has some of those), there is the post office box in Kauai, the Halloween card from last November and the two videos I have stored on an external drive in a nightstand adjacent to the foot of my bed. You sleep atrociously, talk too quickly, and **** like your father abandoned you when you were five. Your talent for taking photographs is like your skill-set for playing the piano, but I don't have the CD to prove it. You don't believe in social media, social consistency, friendships, or hephalumps and woozels- with the exception of the classes we shared together in college, I've never seen you outside of the most glamorous of fashion. You hate flats, hats, and white wine, and for as sad as you can seem to be at times, I've only had you cry on me once. While we were on the phone, three days after your mother hung herself. That's when I last left California, and I haven't been back yet.

I love a Kristine, but once a Britni, a Brandi, a Joni, a Tina, Kristina, Kirsten, Kristen, and a Katherine and Kathryn too. I know rock stars who are my dearest friends, enemies who I share excellent taste in music with, and parents who've always had my back but show it in lashings of the tongue and of the belt. It's been two years and three states since I was two sizes smaller than I am now. I've never considered the possibility that I was the main character and not the supporting actor, but due to recent developments in antipathy and aesthete, reevaluation, and retrospective nostalgia. All of this is about to change.

I am me still evolving without my usually stolid and grim ****** features. i bare brevity to situations existing that would **** most or in the least paralyze a great many. There is one for every hour of every day, and one for every minute in every hour, second in every minute, and more than the minutes in every day. No one has a second chance, shares a different time, or works off a different clock. I have been called the master of the analog, king of the codependent, and rook to queenside knight. I share a parabola for every encounter, experience, and endeavor. I am three minutes from being a cadaver, one drink away from a drunk, and one thought away from being completely alone. I think upright, i sleep horizontally, and I love infinitely. I am the only finite constant i have ever known. I am the main character, the script, satire, sarcasm, and soundtrack are mine.

"I don’t care if you believe it. That’s the kind of house I live in. And I hope we never leave it.”

In a little church, where faithful ones
Are praying everyday for mercy
Then teaching it to their daughters and sons,
Whereof repentance they're always thirsty

In a little church, two famous ushers
Led everyone with smiles and vows
Nose powders and cheek blushers
Are flaking away, then drifting to the clouds

"Good morning, good Sunday!
Blessed shall be your family
All are welcomed here to pray!"
They'll be guided  to their seats, calmly

Yet, for one woman of color
They would never ever smile
They will hide her from father's collar
In the corner, behind the last aisle.

Nonetheless, she'd come all Sundays,
With the bravest faith of all
That one day, they'd change their ways,
They'll learn the truth, beginning small…

In a little church, a young child
Observed all this and had enough
With bare feet and eyes wild,
She went and tugged the woman's cuff

She said to her: "Don't be afraid,
Trust me, this world is gonna change!"
And then a promise she had made
"You'll never have to feel that strange!

You'll feel included, you won't be judged
I'll take you to the best of seats
You'd be listened to and always loved
You'll get to know only good deeds.

I'll raise my kids to be always kind
And never rush to judgment
To love thy neighbor and to find
Ways to observe true faith in many!"

That young child, had wings unseen
As all gasped, hearing her speech
They wondered where their hearts  have been
And how a child their minds can teach.

In a little church, two humbled ushers
Led everyone with smiles and vows
Nose powders and cheek blushers
Are flaking away, then drifting to the  clouds...

Place silhouette pieces or outlines of my heart in thirty or more envelopes.
Paste each one with a new soft paintbrush which clean cream bristles. Push them into torn up fragments of clean new watercolour paper. The sharp edges feel through onto the wooden table leaving mistaken, accidental grooves. Glimmers of sawdust are ****** up into the pockets of your lungs, where they contaminated and will permanently sit.
It was a small heart, the colour of grey sky reflected on seas and carried in bloated raindrops. The texture of diamond. Carved up as easily as wax by a blunt butter knife.
The envelopes are neatly labelled with white tailors chalk powders.

The snowflake is castellated cold,
Of chill crenellations and turnings narrow.
Court of pie-powders and gray-skied brazier smoke,
Of inner mazework dimmed to ****** holes,
Or the hooded machicolations from tower spire
Of oily darkness and arrowslits of Greek fire.

—

The snowflake is Medieval reliquary,
The frozen skull of rain and blood clear of sin,
Wind-captive with its prayer of quiet
On quietest lips, close to wine and sacrament.
Or the chapel and its waxen paramours
Of incorrupt body and candlelight upon the moors.

—

The snowflake is the mighty frozen spark,
Fire-forged and ironwrought,
Under the eye of Hephaestus,
Blacksmith of sorrow’s wind.

I didn’t knew you too was missing from me....
That you were my childhood fragrance...
How l lost you...
I don’t know...
I remember the times where I hated sweet smell of perfumes...
How the smell of flowers irritated me...
How it brings up a headache....
And you came back to me again after a long long time...
Thanks to my better half that he bought me your fragrance soap...
I didn’t realise it that then...
Suddenly I started to carve for your fragrance...
That I bought perfumes and powders of your fragrance....
Still I didn’t realise that you were with me before....
Only when my sis heard my pondering thoughts about you....
And told it’s bcoz you were used to it for years...
In your childhood days...
Made me remember you...
How I waited for my father to get your perfume on my dresses...
Don’t know when I stopped using you...
As it was still there in many more years...
Still I didn’t touched you...
And forgotten....
I don’t know whether to be happy that you came back...
Or sad and angry that I missed one more thing in my life...
May be I  can be both...
And I do hope you will be with me always...
The sweet fragrance of Lavender...

— Joanna Adam

She has an oval face
Round big eyes
Sharp nose with pretty lips

Nice feature of a face
When asked,
She got it from her dad

Soon she turned eighteen
Longed for beauty
She slaps powders on her face

Boys drawn to her beauty
She loved attention
Layers of powders gain it more

She stared into the mirror
Wondering who,
Is the girl beneath that powders

Too late to turn back
Her face,
Turned into a canvas

Whose face lose identity
Without paints
Ain't beauty in a plain canvas

Why hide beneath the powder
When you,
Could be beautiful through Him?

Needles and spoons and white powders,
Among other things I've never seen or touched or smelled -
Such things seem not meant for dabblers, or at least
Not for me.

Those things are meant for stars, who see stars,
Whose fame reaches the stars,
Whose face is broadcast through the stars and back again,
Echoing their brains and bodies and all that white powder.
They're not meant for schoolchildren,
Who climb up ladders and jump off cliffs,
Who grow tall only with scissor lifts securely under their feet,
Who stand at the top of water slides and sit at the top of roller coasters,
Who're only as close to the stars as the school roof will let them be.

Those things are not for them,
Not for me.

But there is something,
Something softer, lighter, easier, greener,
Something familiar to most.
Called a gateway for some, certainly for the famed,
A gateway to the stars even before the needles and spoons and white powders.
There are books about famed faces and the way they wrinkle over the years,
About their cultivations, their migrations, their explorations.
Books of things they've done, that I've done, that we've done,
Smoke billowing from our lips, our nostrils, from every pore,
And books about how, with the same ritual I've taken a part in,
They somehow manage to climb so high - mimicking their fame,
they soar up and up, to the stars and past,
Through religious experiences, baffling adventures, new and brilliant insight.

Not me.

I reach that roof or lift or water slide,
Stretch my hands as far as they can reach,
Point my toes for that extra barely inch,
And, after such heavy straining,
Fingertips atoms away from the clouds,
at least the clouds,
give me the clouds,
I collapse,
Breath short,
Heart racing,
In exhaustion.

Sundays
come in two flavors-
hallelujah
and goody powder

goody powders
go down easier
with flavored water

not the **** variety
but strawberry
or cherry

wall clock
goes ****
****
where's my ****

hallelujah-
FIRE

r ~ 9/7/14

Fingers dipped in purple powders
Fushia gold my makeup
Black skintight latex suit with neon circles
How my outfit is made up

Three rings around my waist
Intersecting, two vertical, one on the horizon
The circles glow with noble gases
Radioactive, after all, I'm an alien

Perfect spheres and concentric rings
Are trending, so I have read
I balance on stacked circles, my six inch latex heels
And floating circles surround the pair of buns on my head

My bones poke through my latex,
Anorexia won't stop my passions
I may not be the body type you want, but I'm the body type you have
And I still enjoy the fashions

Why is this world so pretentious
self-centered, building up your fences
Gotta take the prettiest picture
Photoshop for the best features
Your looks are all you care about
Your fake little words, and perfect pout
Well? are you happy now?
You seem to be, I wonder how?
Your powders and plastic
To me it's just tragic.
If this is the fate of the world
With saggy-pants and barbie-girls
I'd rather be six feet under
What will become of you, I wonder
When your looks fade
You've lost your trade
High school's bound to end
Will those shallow people remain your friend?

I think I was thirteen
when I shipped myself out
to the sea of solitude
since then I've tried rowing
back to shore but
currents of discontent
are hard to fight
inevitably I gave in
to the candy-coated
pills and powders
and the minty fresh breath
of men lurking in corners
almost as sweet as sanity
eventually I overdosed on emotions
but I was only trying
to rid myself of feeling
since I was never good
at walking on the tightrope
between wanting and reality
at this point I don't know
who to apologize to
since Hallmark doesn't have cards
for sincere self loathing

it's just that
some days it's really hard
to keep your voice even
when your mother asks
if you're slipping

Mix it up, spin it around,
Start with the flour,
Super simple, just flour,
Everyone comes and adds,
Eggs, Baking
Powders and sodas,
Water, don’t forget the flavors,
Cinnamons,
Cocoa powders,
Vanillas,
You can add anything you want,
Whatever suits you,
The spices of life,
The sugars of you,
Mix it up, spin it around,
My life is the cake,
I can make it by myself,
But I prefer you to help,
Just don’t add anything,
That will make,
No one wanna have a piece.
Just add the right things,
To make it look and taste perfect

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty’s orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more where those stars ‘light
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become as in their sphere.

Ask me no more if east or west
The Phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant ***** dies.

We rage
like hormones
like hyenas in heat
and ruin homes
(not on purpose, just on Fridays)
So grown up,
we're so grown up
with our mature parties
and relationship problems.
Look! I'm pregnant!
I'm oh so grown up!
We puke up jello shooters
and mama's meatloaf,
wipe the whithered corners of pale mouths,
smile
giggle
hazy glazy eyes
in smokey basements and tree houses.
Oh no,
I do not promote it
I only smoke it.
But what can we do?
I must be thin to be ****,
drunk to be interesting,
naked to be loved.
We need the skin contact
because God knows we can't communicate by words,
either by tweets
or  haphazard ******* in back seats.
We are so grown up
because we accept the filth,
the naughty,
the concepts that un-rad corporate burn outs can't comprehend.
Wisdom in destruction,
life in suicide.
So allow me to fill my nose with shaymen's powders,
so that I may regress
to the days that I was Daddy's ballerina,
and school yard games lacked dark ****** undertones.

The castle kitchens had big fireplaces, where the oxen and the meat
Were roasted on spits. The cookies were baking, roasting by using the heat.
The pantries were hung with birds, swans, pigeons, rabbits, mutton, ducks,
Venison and wild boar. Suddenly, the spring life became a luminous flux.

Everywhere on the tables, there were berries, nuts, and other fruits.
In the rooms, there were pottery, glass, fabrics, jackets, dress coats,  
Sweaters, bodices, pants, petticoats, silk, music, joy, pewter utensils,
Jewelry, purses, shoes, hats, ties, powders and eyebrow pencils.

‘The guests will arrive and the food is not ready, yet’, whispered Pauline.
'You can hurry a little’, said Frieda, ‘Guess, who's coming!’ ‘The queen!'
Anne tasted all the fresh food and drinks and found them well prepared.
'After you finish, open the windows, because the rooms are not aired.'

Queen hurried away, leaving behind a whiff of perfume and stress.
'Do you see her through the window? ‘What a splendid wedding dress!'
"Jezebel is beautiful. I heard that the marriage can change the doom.'
'Yes, the bad fortune of the bride can bring a bad fate for the groom.'
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

(At the monastery, Clara and Mary were preparing their luggage to go to the wedding.)

'I'm talking about this false teaching, which left me confused’, said Mary.
'No one is sinless perfect', said Clara, ‘we’re God's children. Be wary!'
'She hates her sisters; she walks in the darkness, while being so blind.'
'But God is Light, and the prayers have the power to change her mind.'

'She's not truly in fellowship with God, because she can't love her sister,
But I can't compare her with Surah, who is a real incurable blister.'
'Surah hates her sisters, she's a murderer, and doesn't need eternal life.
She's an ignorant, she needs power, and she lives only her life of strife.'

‘Is it true that whatever we ask, we receive from Him, because we fight
To keep His commandments, while doing what is pleasing in His sight?'
'It's true.' ', I asked Him to save my niece, but I didn't receive any response.'
'You must teach Surah how to love, and she will destroy her magic sconce.'

(It was three o’clock in the morning, and Surah entered the passage of the cave.
She entered the castle, and climbed up the stairs to be in the room of the tower.
There, she put two goblets on the table containing a beverage used to induce a coma.
After that, she came down from the tower to enter the Jezebel’s room.)

'How is my sweet niece, who will be a bride?' ‘I’m a little scared.'
'Every bride is scared knowing that her feelings in bed must be shared.'
"How was your first moment in bed?' 'Well, I started with a little kiss;
I gave it to the loveliness I was wallowing in. I felt the radiance of bliss.
(Surah smiled being a little tender while looking at her niece.)

‘Let me show you my wedding gift. Let’s go into the tower to see it.'
'This is a joke!' Surah took her hand. 'I have the key.' 'Does this key fit?
My mom can hear us, and you know that you're not allowed to enter here.'
'She cannot wake up early in this morning. Did you forget that I'm a seer?'

(Surah and Jezebel climbed up the stairs of the tower. They entered the room of the tower. Jezebel sat on a chair to marvel at the beauty of the altar and at the golden spindle. Surah took out a medallion from her pocket and put it into the Jezebel's hands. The medallion had two miniature portraits. One of them was the portrait of Frederick, and the other one was the portrait of a very beautiful woman.)

'I want you to know that this portrait belonged to his former dead fiancée.
He had abandoned her for another one. His love was only a flight of fancy.'
'Give me something to drink, my dear aunt, I really don't feel quite well!'
"Sure', said Surah giving her to drink the beverage having an interesting smell.

You live at the bottom of a bottle,
your life supply not the air you breathe,
but the drugs you ingest.
The pills, the powders,
trapping you in a permanent haze.
You're stuck.
The alcohol your only friend.
When does it stop?
Is the pain too steep?
Agony seeps into your veins.
Malicious intent creeping through your daily turmoils.
Your future is bleak.
Inner pain ripping you to shreds.
You self medicate, but it'll never stop.
There is only one way out.
It was all too much.
Another life lost to the monsters in the closet.

.
"That there Is'belle's house stinks wunderful turr'ble,"croaked Emma Beiler at their quilting bee.
"Jah...vell," sighed Rosanna Yoder. "All them there katzes , ain't so?"
Accordingly the two ladies set out to pay Travis and Isabella Salter a visit, only to be politely told that they had were in the process of taking some cats to a local shelter.
Two weeks passed and to the Amish folks' disgust the odour had merely intensified.
"Them there Englisch are chust liars!" Potato Sam spat the words out along with a *** of chewing tobacco.
" Ach, vell," sighed  his wife Rosanna, unaware of her heavily sweating underarms. The Ordnung  strictly forbade deodorant as well as perfume. "Reckon I best  mosey over and see fur myself."
Travis opened the door with a tired sigh.
'Chust thought I'de ask vhat fur stinks yer house up so vonderful tur'ble...Izzy tells us youse gettin' rid of them but-"
A puzzled look crossed Travis weary face as he glanced toward the kitchen. Irritation gripped him, not lessened as Rosanna glowered at Tabby washing her face on the couch. Then a waft of a familiar scent, overpowering, drifted toward him from the kitchen. Brussel sprouts enhanced by -.
With all the stress, Isabelle was increasing her calming herbs, mixing the powders.... Valerian?
"Good evening, Mrs. Yoder." He motioned her toward the door, locking it firmly behind her. For a long time after she was gone he stood staring out the window.

They bustle, hustle
like ants in a box,
going nowhere, nowhere,
pop up to my counter top
from their semi-ordered line

I take their orders, same as last time:
Venti-turtle-soy-sugarfree-latte-extrafoam-nowhippedcream
a­nd I swipe their plastic cards through my machine.
What a dream, a dream.

Chatter, swipe, shout, sign-here-please
And scatter on out with marginal ease—
hands full of coffee cups, bagels, cream cheese
Calling a boss, late again (I laugh,
I’ve been here since six,
and they think they’ve got a tough schedule to keep?)

When it’s finally time, I take my break,
stare at the syrups, the powders, the cakes,
and pour my coffee black
with nothing that’s fake.

days crawl by
and humidity stills the air.
the black flies are late this season,
though around here, most things are.
below the gnat line, girls like me
seldom get to die easily,
perfumed powders
masking the scent of illness,
flushed cheeks and damp foreheads donned
as our feeble bodies recline on fainting couches
to delicately languish away. we know that
there’s a certain beauty to decomposition,
to fungus gnats invading potted soil,
to fruit flies nesting in sink drains. we know that
rotting is a clock that never stops,
tallying each unflinching, humid second while the
days crawl by.

The roles
have turned
and the tables
reversed

phobia stricken mouse
will clean your ***** from the floor

I am stronger than my anxiety
and yours
and the rest of those
guilty and afraid

have you no faith in medicine
more so science
than powders you take for fun

I am so insulted
and so angry

imagine the first glimpse
of the top of your head
black roots on black thoughts


I could not feel my legs
and my stomach rearranged
to tickle my uvula

you remember it all
mom
you remember nothing

*mom

Altho nobody knows - and I’m not
telling! - I’m a dope fiend
******* hound and not in the
harmless sense i am
drug vampire, nocturnally creeping
into houses thru
open windows & easy doors taking
kitchen spices & cabinet cleaning

products
cooking little pills & powders
outta strangers’ **** i spend full
moons in velvet in backyards
falling out bathroom windows hopping fences
hoping your mother never finds out

Knowing how to paint is key, so they say,
When to brush and stroke, or erase it away.
But some painters out there just cannot paint,
They keep adding and adding; makes me faint!
Without knowledge or a care for the rest,
These women slather on makeup with zest!
Some demonic possession is at work;
Like some creature in the dark on the lurk,
Waiting for a victim who they can jump,
To ****** and caress and um, ****…
But enough of these victims, these lost men,
It is these creatures of “virtue,” these women!
Who capture the eye of peers with disdain,
Who then suffer in agony and pain!
Let us look at this process at it’s core;
But not to the point where it is a bore!
How the blank canvas of a womans face,
Is slowly and precisely won through race,
Of multiple brushes dabbing at paint,
Trying to turn a sinner to a saint!
The fine brush used to paint plump lips bright red,
And pale powders of primer of the dead.
To seize the image of porcelain death,
To mimic the perfection of Queen Beth.
The slight graze of the check with some faint pink,
And the strong tracing of the blackest ink!
On the lids and the lash of the blind eye,
Who fails to see that their face is a lie.
But for me that is surely not the case,
For in the mirror that is not my face!

To tell the story of the nice-guy
is to tell a tale of unlost innocence.  

There is no complexity that circumstance can’t remedy.  There is no effort
to niceness; only a ****** world that blossoms
on genetically mutated ideology, growing larger than generations past.

Tomorrow, in Houston,

a butcher will wake up to slaughter a cow he may have named.  

There will no be no tears when he grills steak for the wife he wooed
and the children he prescribed himself.  

Three daughters,
from fifteen to twenty-two.  

Tiramisu for dessert.  

Ten guns in the cabinet beneath the stairs
and innocence buried behind the woodshed.

Pretend now, that you are forgiven.  

Mistakes fade like snow angels, regrets
float like chemtrails.

You love you as much as the world always did.  

You have not seen friends struck down by powders or lunacy,
you have only lived in the glow of their light.  Hearts remain full.  

The word swagger hasn’t been hijacked by hip hop
and bluejeans still mask imperfections.  Sunsets are memorable,

and so are first dates and last kisses.  

Sun won't blister fragile shoulders.  

Fields blossom just in time to suit your irregular taste buds,
satisfying sweet corn cravings on Christmas.

Forget your father’s words
or a stranger's hand.  

Forget improbability, impossibility,
impotence, importance,
impatience
and improper goodbyes.  

Forget the tears cried alone
into ***** filled sheets at midnight.  

Forget the effect but remember the cause,
camouflaged like a landmine of good ideas.  

Forget the fights and slow-turn walk-aways
that turned words flaccid.  

Forget friends ******* ex-girl friends
and amphetamines crashing into hallucinations.  

Nice-guys vanish like good ideas,
lost in the shuffle,
looking for pen and paper,

just like house cats die
on the forth of July,

and all that’s left are ashes
on a mantel
alongside fraudulent grins.

The Surgeon with his highly trained skills~carefully prepares the area into which he will be Entering and Exiting.   He does not enter the freeway from the feeder street,  without first looking to check , to see if the way is clear or if there  may be an Oncoming Danger.     He does not go down the Dark Basement Stairs~without first turning on the light ~to make sure the steps are clear~ and exactly where he should place his very next step.   He does not stick his hand in the mouth of the Alligator~unless he knows the jaws are properly secured.          IF Man is so Aware of these Danger Signs~what is it that makes him so Unsure about tomorrow ?   And what is IT that makes another man~so sure about tomorrow ?   Which are the greater fears~the ones seen or the ones Unseen ?  Per chance the problem lies in the fact~ Man doesn't know for Sure~whom to ask !    Has mankind asked the wrong questions~ to the the wrong people ?   OR~does any other man~hold the correct  answers ?    Why is it~the salve rubbed on early in the morning~usually wears off by noon ?     Man has tried to make Erasers  for his fears~but as we scrub harder and harder with ~Man made Erasers~!    WE finally rub a Hole in the Paper !   So~what to do with the hole ? Start all over~on a new clean sheet~with even more erasers~as fears and errors~mount by the day.    As Man approaches his last sheet~erased and crumbled to the finest of powders .    Spelling out  ~ "WHO TO TURN TO " .