Tantalized by the fractious limerence of a vestigial habiliment of the old order, we conclude that hypertrophy leads to a limbo where random permutations alloyed by the rickety limits of concatenation subsume concepts that are equivocal but populate the imaginations of newfangled art forms that jostle the midwives of rumination to lead to unique pastures that are intuitively calibrated to correspond to definitive unitary events in conceptual space that sprawl unexpectedly towards the desultory but determinative conclusion of a meandering ludic sphere of rambunctious sentiments cobbled together to either rivet the captive audience or annoy the peevish criticaster when they dare to inseminate the canvassed and corrugated tract of intellectual territory created ad hoc to swelter the imagination with audacious ingenuity that is an inevitable byproduct of lexical hypertrophy. In this séance with the immaterial realm of concept rather than the predictable clockwork reductivism of a perceptual welter that is limited by the concretism circumscribed by spatiotemporal stricture we find that an extravagant twinge of even the smallest tocsin in the interstitial carousel of conscientious subroutines compounding recursively to pinprick the cossetted smolder of potentiality rather than extravagate into the vacancy of untenanted nullibiety can spawn a progeny of utilities and vehicles for dexterous abstraction that poach the exotic concepts we fathom by degrees of sapience malingering in lifeless bricolages of erratic abstraction in manners useful to transcend the repose of abeyance and heave awakening into the slumberous caverns of still-life to make them dynamically animated to capture ephemeral events that defy the demarcations of wistful indelicacy of the encumbered bulk of insufficient precision.

Today we embark on a quest to defile the anoegenetic recapitulation of canon that litters the dilapidated avenues of miserly contemplation that has a histeriological certainty and feeds the engines that enable novelty but ultimately remain rancid with the stench of the idiosyncratic shibboleths of synoptic alloyed impoverishment that leads to the vast wasteland of cremated entropy that is a stained foible of misappropriated context interpolated usefully as botched triage for daunting problems that require a nimble legerdemain of facile versatility that we easily adduce to conquer the present with the botched memorial of a defunct salience. Despite the travail of scholars to retreat from the frontier into the hypostatized hegemony of recycled credentialed information, we often are ensnared by the solemn attrition of decay as we traverse the conceptual underpinnings of all bedrock thought only to dangle precariously near the void of lapsed sentience because of transitory incontinence that is contiguous to the doldrums of crudity but nevertheless with mustered mettle we purport that the very self-serious awakening to our hobbling limitations is akin to a prosthetic enhancement of ratiocination capable of feats that stagger beneath the lowest level of subtext to elevate the highest superordinate categorization into heightened scrutiny that burgeons metacognitive limber. Marooned in the equipoise of specifiable enlightenment countermanded by the strictures of working memory we can orchestrate transverse pathways between the elemental quiddity of impetuous meaning and the dignified tropes of transitivity that bequeaths entire universes with feral progeny that modulate their ecosystems with both a taste of approximated symmetry and a cohesive enterprise for productivity that rests on the granular concordance of the highest plane to the indivisible parcels of atomic meaning that solder together to exist as intelligible if strained by the primordial frictions guaranteed by the brunt of motion incipient because of the metaphorical inertia created within insular universes to inform sprawling conurbations of mobilized thoughts designed to reckon with the breakneck pace of the corresponding reality to which they explicitly and precisely refer to.

We must singe surgically the filigrees that amount to the perceptible realities that transmute temperaments into the liturgy of routine conflated with the rigmarole of neural dragnets of reiterative quips in an elegant game of raillery with our supernal contumacy against the rigid authority of aleatory vagaries mandated by a dually arbitrary universe in a probabilistic terpsichorean dance with the depth of our dredge for subliminal acuity or the shallow bellicosity of common modes of glib contemplation characteristic of the basic nobility of improvisation. This basic interface with the world can either be mercurial or tranquil based on the interactionism of the enfeebled trudge of surface senses or blunt intuitions and the smoldering impact of the vestigial cloaks that deal gingerly with the poignant subtext evoked in the cauldron of immediacy rather than pondered with the portentous weight of imperative singularities of uniqueness derived from the plunge into the arcane citadel of microscopic introspection so refined that the ineffable drives we seek to fathom become amenable to the traipse of transcendental time that rarefies itself by defying the brunt of compartmentalized bureaucracies administered by the fulcrum of stereotypical notions of acquired gravitas imputed to mundane pedestrian quidnunc concerns that defile humanity rather than embolden the subaudition of gritty punctilios that show the supernal powers of the axiomatic divinity of sharpened sentience to reign with supremacy over the baser ignoble components of bletcherous nescience that leads to knee-**** platitudes that provoke folksy peevish divisions. We should rather orchestrate our activity by heeding the admonishment about the primogeniture of poignant sabotage buffered by the remonstration of innate tranquility and finding a whipsawed compromise of rationalization with true visceral encounters with the fulgurant quips of brisk emotions that grind industriously into amorphous retinues of the trenchant human imagination to either equip or hobble the leapfrogged interrogation of veracity and more consequently our notions of truth and fact.

When we see the hackneyed results of default ecological dynamics, we find ourselves aloof from purported transcendence because the whimpered bleats and cavils of the importunate masses result in a deafening din of cacophony because we strive throbbing with sprightliness towards the galloped chase of tantalization without the luxury of a terminus for satiation. Obviously a growth mindset is the galvanic ****** that spawns the imaginative swank of the pliable modulations of our perceived reality that, when protean, showcase the limitless verve of our primordial cacoethes for epigenetic evolution rather than the stolid and staid foreclosure of impervious sloth that memorializes the gluttony of speculation about fixed entities rather than imperative jostling urbanity that dignifies the brackish dance with dearth and the exuberant savory taste of momentary excess because it engages the animated pursuit of limerence rather than the exhumed corpse of wistful regret. Nature is a cyclical clockwork system of predatory instinct met with the clemency of the prosperous providence enacted by the travailing ingenuity of successive cumulative generativities that compounded unevenly and unpredictably to predicate a fundamental zeitgeist calculated to engorge the fattened resources of the resourceful and temper the etiolated dreams of the fringed acquiescence of a hulking prejudiced population of dutiful servants that balk at the diminutive prospects of a lopsided distribution of talent and means but slumber in irenic resolve created by the merciful hands of defensive designs that configure consciousness to relish comparative touchstones rather than absolute outcomes that straggle beyond a point of enviable reference to shield the world of the barbarism of botched laments clamoring for an uncertain grave from the gravity of the orbiting satellites of apportioned wealth both sunblind and boorish but simultaneously inextricable from the acclimated fortune of heaped nepotism and herculean opportunism. The intransigence of the weighted destiny of inequity is a squalid enterprise of primeval abrasive and combative tendencies within the bailiwick of the indignant compass inherent to the system that fathoms its deficiencies with crabwise and gingerly pause but airs a sheepish grievance like a bleat of self-exculpation but simultaneously an arraignment of fundamental attribution erroneously indicted without the selfsame reflexiveness characteristic of a transcendent being with other recourses to clamber an avenue to Broadway without malingering in the slums of opprobrious ineffectual remonstration against the arrangement of a blinkered metropolis of uneven gentrification.

We flicker sometimes between the strategic drivel of appeasement and the candor of audacious imprecation of the culprits of indignity or considerate nutritive encomium of the beacons of ameliorated enlightenment because we often masquerade a half-witted glib consciousness lazily sketched by the welters of verve alloyed with the rancid distaste of squalor and slumber on the faculty of conscientious swivels of prudential expeditions with an avarice for bountiful considered thought and wily contortions of demeanor that issue the affirmative traction of adaptive endeavor to cheat a warped system for a reconciled peace and a refined self-mastery. We need to traduce the urchins that sting the system with pangs of opprobrious ballyhoo and the effluvia of foofaraw that contaminate with pettifoggery and small-minded blather the arenas better suited for the gladiatorial combat of cockalorums tinged with a dose of intellectual effrontery beyond the span of dogmatism rather than the hackneyed platitudes that infest the news cycle with folksy backwardation catered to the fascism of a checkered established press that urges insurrection while tranquilizing dissent against the furtive actions of consequence hidden behind the draped verdure of pretense whose byproduct is only a self-referential sophistry that swarms like an intractable itch to devolve the spectator into a pasquinaded spectacle of profound human obtuseness that pervades malignantly the system of debate until the reductionists outwit themselves with the empty prevarication of circular logic that deliberately misfires to miss the target of true importance because of the pandered black hole easily evaded by creatures of high sentience but inevitably ensnaring the special kind of dupe into a cycle of bellicose ferocity of internecine balkanization. The vainglory of the omphalos of entertainment is also another reckoning because it festers a cultural mythos of glorified crapulence parading a philandered promiscuity with half-baked antics that gravitate attention and the lecheries of gaudy tenses of recycled tinsel alloyed by debased aberrations of seedy grapholagnia that magnetize as they percolate because of the insidious catchphrases embedded in pedestrian syncopation that ignite retention and acclimate to mediocrity the sounds of generations discolored by faint pasty rainbows rather than ennobled by majestic landscapes of ignipotent mellifluous sound that stands a supernal amusement still for the resourceful trainspotter.

Despite the contumely aimed in the direction of contrarians for deviating from the lockstep clockwork hustle of stooped pandered manipulation that peddles the wares of an entirely counterfeit reality, I stand obstinately against the melliferous stupefaction of entire genres of myth and subcultures huddled around the sentimental tug of factitious sophistries regaled by thick amorphous apostates that cherish the vacuous sidetracked spotlight with fervor rather than pausing on the enigmatic querulous inquisition about the penumbras that lurk with strained effort beneath or above the categorical nescience of the shadowy unknown that often coruscates with elegance even in obscurity. I fight with labored words to spawn a psychological discipline that invokes the incisive subaudition of the pluckily pricked exorcism of true insight from the husk of buzzwords that constellate auxiliary tangential distractions from the art form of psychological discernment that predicates itself on the concept that the rarefaction of rumination by degrees of microscopic precision enables the introspective hindsight of conscious events that can be parsed without the acrimony of cluttered conflations of the granular prowess of triumphant ratiocination that earns a panoramic perch with the added luxury of perspicacious insight into the atomic structure of the rudiments of our phenomenological field and the abstractions that linger beyond perceptual categorization. When we analyze the gradients of anger, for example, we can either be ****** into a brooded twinge of wistful resentment or we can decipher that through heuristics designed to cloister the provenance of subconscious repose with ignorance there exists a regimented array of tangential accessories embedded deep within the cavernous repository of memory that designates a cumulative trace of compounded symmetries of concordant experience immediately perceptible because of the tangible provocateur of our gripes and the largely subliminal tusk that protrudes because of primal instinct that squirms with peevishness because of the momentary context preceded by the desultory churn of smoldering associations swimming with either complete intangible sputtered mobility through the tract of subconscious hyperspace or rigidly fixated by an arraignment of circumstances with propinquity to the deep unfathomed flicker of bygones receding or protruding because of the warped and largely unpredictable rigmarole of constellated spreading activation.  
When we examine the largesse of the swift recourse of convenience we forget by degrees the travail that once bridged the span of experience from patient abeyance in provident pursuit to now the importunate glare of inflated expectations for immediacy that stings the whole enterprise of societal dynamics because it vitiates us with a complacency for the filigrees of momentary tinsel of a virtualized reality divorced from the concretism that used to undergird interaction and now stands outmoded as a wisp beyond outstretched hands straggling beyond the black mirror of a newfangled narcissistic clannishness that shepherds the ostentation of conceit to a predominant position that swaddles us with fretful diversion that operates on a warped logic of lurid squalor and pasty trends becoming the mainstays of a hypercritical linguistic system of entrapment based on the apostasy of candor for the propitiation of fringed aberration because of the majoritarian uproar about touchy butthurt pedantic criticasters with a penchant for persnickety structuralism. With the infestation of entertainment with the ubiquitous political cavils engineered by the ruling class to have a common arena of waggish irreverence we forget that sometimes the impetuous ****** of propaganda is cloaked by the fashionable implements of a rootless time writhing in a purported identity crisis only to gawk at the ungainly reflection of modernity in the mirror and remain blissfully unaware about the transmogrified cultural psyche that feeds the lunacy of endless spectacle based on the premise that one singular whipping post can unite an entire generation of miscegenated misfits looking for commonality to team up against the aging generations that cling to the sanctity of cherished jingoism against the intentionality of a revamped system that malingers with empty promises using exigency and legerdemain to obscure the mooncalves among their ranks that march on with quixotic dreams that tolerate only the idea of absolute tolerance and moderate only when feasibly permitted by the anchored negotiation of the fulcrum of totemic governmental responsibility between factions that wage volleys of invective at each other to promote a binary choice of vitiated compromises of mendaciloquence that ultimately endanger the republic with either the perils of hidebound conventionalism and nativist fervor or the boondoggles of fiscally irresponsible insanity cloaked with rainbows and participation trophies. Reproach can be distributed to both sides of the aisle because ironically in a world where gender is non-binary the most important reproductive ***** in the free world is a binary-by-default despotism that polarizes extremely ludic fantasies on the left met with the acrimony of the traditionalisms on the right that staunchly resist the fatuous confusions of delegated order only to the sharp rebuke of the revamped political vogue that owes its sustenance to a manufactured diplomacy of saccharine lies and ubiquitous lampoons that are lopsided in the direction of a globalist neoliberal bricolage of moderately popular buzzwords and the trojan horse of insubordinate flippant feminism that seeks to subvert through backhanded manipulation the patriarchy so many resent using lowbrow tactics and poignant case studies rather than legislating the egalitarian system into law using the proper channels. I myself am a political independent who sides with fiscal conservatism but libertarianism in most other affairs because the pettifoggery of law-and-order politics is a diatribe overused by sheltered suburbanites and red meat is often just as fatuous as blue tinsel and sadly in a majoritarian society the ushers of conformity demand corporate divestiture in favor of an ecological system of predictability rather than an opinionated welter of legitimate challenges to a broken system of backwards partisanship and wangled consent. Ultimately, I remain mostly apolitical, but I am a fervent champion of the mobilization of education to a statelier standard that demands rigor and responsibility rather than the chafe of rigmarole that understates the common objectives of humanity and rewards conventional thinking and nominal participation to earn credentialed pedigree when the bulk of talent resides elsewhere.

You tell me I'm beautiful,
pretty,
gorgeous,
But why?
Because you are not tricking me,
But only yourself,
You think,
"If I tell her she's beautiful, maybe I will grow to believe it too."
Well sweetheart, it is working?
You ignore the flaws of my body, my face,
Only to deceive your own mind,
Because if you saw my flaws you might no longer love me,
You chose to ignore my acne,
Because if you didn't, you're afraid you would leave,
You chose to ignore my protruding chin when I smile,
Because you wish you had someone who could smile sunlight rays,
You chose to ignore the redness in my skin,
Because you want to believe what matters is within,
But is it working dear boy?
The more you use the word beautiful,
Does it make you any more confident being around someone who's not?

*****


Apr 7, 2012, 6:08:21 PM by ~OmegaWolfOfWinter
Journals / Personal




"Name: Amelia Weissmuler. Date of birth: June 6th, 1920. Test subject number 314-X. Specimen: Tiger." Amy heard all of this through a haze of sedatives that had begun to lose their already poor effect. She turned in the direction of the voice and saw a fearsome **** SS General standing behind a white clad scientist with a heavy accent. The general said nothing but listened and watched as Amy was strapped down to a cold metal table, completely **** with various wires, tubes and needles protruding from her flesh. She groaned painfully, the needles were extensive, and the **** scientists had no care of decency or respect. she was hit with another sedative and before she lost consciousness she heard the scientist, who she guessed was Dr. Heismeiller, say, "Name, Mordecai Dansker, former Major of the Third *****. Date of birth: September 19th, 1919. Test subject 14-W. Specimen: Wolf. As you
can see, Heir General, these are both healthy specimens, as are the test subjects." Amy heard a
rattling of cages. Her vison slowly went dark but not before seeing the doctor's face, uncovered and psychotic.
* *
When Amy woke up again, she was being suspended from the floor, the tubes and wires accompanied by menacing electrodes. there was an unnatural blue and white crackling of electricity around her, illuminating the other suspended tables nearby, the bodies in various grotesque positions and levels of decay. she tried to scream but found a machine unceremoniously shoved in her mouth, stretching deep inside her. she looked and saw nothing but obscene machines and various glass tubes of colored bubbling liquids. she tried sluggishly to break free but to no avail. what little strength she had was useless against the torturous devices emplanted in and around her. "Doctor, begin the experiment."
"Yaboe!" She heard a solid click resound through the room and heard a male scream in another room. the screams echoed for a long while, then nothing. she heard a gasp of releif from
the doctor and, "General! Subject 14-W... he has... Survived!"
"Good. now start on the frauline." there was a large thud from outside the room. "Quickly! this facility is under seige!"
"Yes sir, heir general. Test subject 314-X prepped and ready. Begin phase 1." she cried out silently as the needles burned hot inside her and the tubes boiled her insides. the electrodes soon incapacitated her and she fell unconscious.
*
*
"Phase 1 complete, heir general, subject is ready, proceeding to Phase 2."
Amy felt an intense burning around the needles, and an electric fire through her veins. the machine had been taken from her mouth, but she doubted she could scream any more, as her throat was raw from the silent screams of Phase 1. She felt her body shake uncontrollably as more electric shocks were administered. she was left panting and slumped over. "Sequence complete, the bonding process was a success." there was another thud and sediment from the roof fell to the floor. "Get her down now! They will be through soon!" She was lowered to the ground and unstrapped from the table, picked up, and placed on a stretcher. she raised her hands on front her face and nearly fainted, her hands, or paws, resembled that of a tiger, and as she looked, her whole body was covered in a slick orange, black and white fur. She was put into the backseat of an armored car with a simple blanket draped around
her. Amy felt nauseated
as the car sped off. It hit a bump in the road and she moaned painfully, clutching her furry belly and retching. the **** next to her turned away in disgust. the car ride was long and sickening, and she lost consciousness twice, and finally she tried to lay down in the cramped space. when the armored car finally stopped, she was pulled from the back seat and carried over a soldier's shoulder and into a small bunker. Once inside, amy heard a metal door open and was laid down onto a stiff bed with a single pillow and a single cover. There was a small window in the cell, a drab, grey stream of light shining in her eyes. She propped herself up on her elbow and shielded her eyes from the blinding contrast. Once her eyes adjusted, amy noticed that things had a particular sharpness to them and she had an acute awareness of things based on scent. she stood shakily, and noticed she was almost
six inches taller now, and her new tail swished back and forth along the concrete floor. she stepped
forward and grasped the iron bars and peeked out, seeing a black leather messenger bag and a black uniform lined with white. she couldn't quite reach the uniform, but was able to get a claw around the strap of the messenger bag. she pulled it closer to her and saw that her initials were monogrammed into the leather. she pulled it through the bars and opened the bag, pulling out a small, blank, leather bound journal and a pen. still ****, she sat on the bed and practiced writing, tearing out two pages of scratch paper. She began her journal with, "I am no longer the person i once was. i am something new, something... different."
• * *
The **** captain stepped into the bunker and saw amy, half lying, half dangling on the bed, the leather journal clutched close to her chest. he stormed into the cell and backhanded her awake, snatching up the journal as she cowered in the corner, her tail wrapped around her. the captain flipped through the pages of the journal and then closed iit with a snap. he glanced at it and dropped it on the bed. "it is yours now, Frauline. you are very special to the third *****. the fuhrer himself has asked for you to be placed in the Waffen SS and trained." amy glanced at the uniform on the table outside the cell and he nodded, "specially tailored for you, frauline. he stepped outside the cell and grabbed the uniform, setting it down on the bed. "you may Change into your new uniform and join the rest of us outside." he stepped outside and she was alone. she donned the simple uNdergarments then
slipped into the soft black trousers, after which she put on her military boots. next she put on the black and white jacket signature of the SS. the jacket was sleek and menacing, though it did little to flatten her chest, but that, she supposed, was one of her feminine charms. last was her hat and armband, both adorned with the *******. she gathered the leather messenger bag and stepped outside the cell, where a mirror stood, giving her a chance to see what had been done, the black uniform was a dramatic contrast to her brightly colored fur, and her new black stripes added a fierce look to her. she grinned and flashed menacing white teeth. she turned her body, looking at herself from different points of view. she slipped the **** armband onto her right arm and turned to leave. she stopped when she encountered a high pitch noise right next to the door. for the moment she just walked past, opening the door and adjusting her vision to the outside light. the layout was grey and barren,
as it always was in wartime. the captain was waiting for her along with a small squad of SS troops. a
Few laughed and remarked at her appearance, making cat noises and wolf whistling at her. she glared at them with a bright white snarl carved into her soft face. *they will fear me...
she saluted the captain and said, "heil ******." he returned the gesture, "heil. you are now part of the Waffen SS, frauline Amelia."
"please sir, its amy."
he noted her directness and ferocity, "very well, amy. before we assign you a task, though, you must prove yourself." he addressed the squad, "they are all corporal's and sergeants. you are merely a private. you will gain a rank for each one that you ****. however, they have been told that if they do not force you to submit, they will be killed or sent to the russian front. so you best fight your hardest, private amy."
as he finished, the squad set down their Mauser 98K's and MP-40's and stepped closer to her. her eyes widened in shock, then narrowed in ferocious determination. there were twelve of them.
"Fight!"
• *
Amy took a fighting stance and faced her attackers. she attempted a punch at the nearest one but was kneed in the gut, she was thrown back a few feet. she fell to her knees and clutched her stomach with one hand, holding herself upright with the other. tears sprung to life in her eyes and threatened to roll down her cheeks. she fought the tears back and stood, feeling her claws extend. she swiped at a soldier's throat, catching him right in the throat. blood splattered the ground as he choked on his own fluids. the remaining eleven were taken aback slightly, allowing her to pounce another soldier, punching and tearing at his gut with lethal force. her fur was bloodstained and she waited a moment too late, watching the cavity she created fill with blood. she was barreled over, the wind knocked out of her by a sergeant. she lay on her back, gasping for air as the soldiers closed in,
landing a few punches and sending her reeling back. she staggered back, struggling for breath. she
Bumped up against something and realized it was a bunker wall, she was trapped. she thought quickly and decided for a new course of action, she waited for one of them to gather his bravado and throw a solid punch at her, which was useless, she grabbed his wrist and smashed his head against the wall, filling his helmet with blood and brains. in the same move, she had grabbed his Luger and had downed three more of the remaining ten. in their moment of confusion she kicked the closest one in the fork of his legs and followed up with a pistolwhip. the man went down quickly and died by the heel of her merciless boot. the remaining six charged at her, one falling by her last bullet and another caught a swift kick in the ribcage, shattering the bones to peices. the rest of the men were sergeants, and they began to retreat, running into the open field. she was about to chase after them when she
heard another Luger fire. she turned to see the captain shooting the deserters. each fell, one by
One by the captain's gun to her surprise he let a single man go. "you have done very well, frauline amy. you have killed eight out of twelve men, not bad at all."
she was panting, her uniform dirtied, "why.. did you let.. him go?"
the captain smiled, "someone has to spread you're reputation, heir captain."
she gaped at him. "i am... captain?"
"yaboe, heir frauline. you have proved yourself worthy to serve under the fuhrer."
she saluted him, "thank you, heir captain."
*
amy wrote in her journal as they were driven to one of the Stalags: "my promotion to captain has earned me my choice of weapons, ive chosen a few, two long barrel Luger's, a cavalry saber, and a sixteen foot bullwhip. i also carry an automatic Mauser in my messenger bag. other than a few knives carefully hidden on my body, that should be it. ive become the fuhrer's favorite enforcer, though i feel as if i'm forgetting something..."
amy closed the journal and placed it in her bag with a soft snap.
Amy waited for a **** private to open the car door and let her out, tapping her foot impatiently. when he finally came, she had a luger pointed at his chest. "you're late. she got out of the car and shot him, holstering the pistol as he crumpled to the ground. the colonel in charge rushed towards her, "what is the meaning of this?!"
"your man on watch was late, and now he'll never be late again. and also, colonel, as i am a captain in the SS, i am your superior officer and you WILL adjust yourself accordingly or i will replace you with someone who will."
his expression was that of shock, "y-yes, heir captain, please follow me." he escorted her quickly to the main building. amy glanced around at the peering POWs, glaring at them with distaste as they whistled at her. "who's the kitty?" "what the hell is that?"
her hands fell to her lugers and she was ready to fire when she was beckoned inside by the colonel and she followed behind him reluctantly. "you should control your prisoners.
i find an overall lack of order in this camp. you're lucky i'm in a good mood, or i'd have you strung up for incompetence. lets hope my further evaluation of this... facility... does not make me any more inclined to do so."
the colonel stuttered again and dipped his head, "y-yes heir captain."
she stepped outside unopposed by any. she snapped her fingers and a sergeant rushed to her side and saluted. she handed him a journal logbook and he opened it to the page marked with the Stalag number. she entered the closed off areas of the stalag to inspect the barracks.
*
amy's fists were clenched with rag, a prisoner mocked her from within his confines. his fellow prisoners pleaded with him to stop. "she's lethal!" "she killed eight SS sergeants and corporals singelhandedly her first day!"
the prisoner ignored them and began gesturing at her. she snapped her head up and their eyes met for an instant, she growled through a gritted snarl and was over the fence in mere moments. once over,
the prisoner that mocked her was now on the ground, his throat between her fangs. he cried out once and then gurgled blood as she tore out his throat. she spat the flesh onto the dirt and stood, brushing the dusty particles from her uniform. the men around her backed away when she approached them, and watched her cautiously as she stepped back out of the fenceline. amy picked up her cap from the ground and brushed it off. one of the prisoners called for a doctor, and when one of the guards began to look for one, she merely said, "no, he wont survive. leave him be."
the soldier saluted and went back to his post. she walked up to the colonel and said, "your prisoner annoyed me, as do you, colonel. you have three days to turn this place around or you'll end up worse off then your prisoner over there."
the colonel had turned a pale white and whispered, "understood, captain."
she returned to her quarters and listened for a moment as the colonel shouted orders. "that was fun." she remarked.

Amy was asleep in one of the larger rooms in the main  building, her uniform folded neatly on the table near the bed. she kep one luger on her bedside table and the mauser under her pilllow. her other luger, her sword and her whip were next to her clothes. she was clad only in her fur, as she'd found that the most comfortable way to sleep.
she was woken up by a knock at the door. she blinked her eyes a few times. clutching the mauser handle with one hand and holding the blanket to her chest with the other, she said, "what is it?"
"the colonel wishes to speak to you, heir frauline."
she growled, "grrr... fine. tell him to make it quick." she clutched the blanket closer as he opened the door. she held the mauser aimed at him and said, "turn." he did so without hesitation. she slipped cautiously out of the bed and began to dress. "what is it you wished to speak with me about, colonel?" amy put on her undergarments and then pulled her trousers up to her waist, fastening the belt comfortably.
"there is an important telegram for you, heir captain." she pulled on the jacket over her simple shirt, tugging out any wrinkles. "oh? from who?" next came the holster belts, each hanging slightly lower than her first belt. her sword was another belt, and there was a custom clip there for her whip as well.
"Himler, he has special orders for you." her messenger bag was next to last, slung over her shoulder before she slipped into her boots. ""You can turn now. hand them here." she stepped closer to him and took the envelope with her name scrawled on the front. the colonel excused himself so she could read the orders, "captain amelia weissmuler, once you have completed your assignment at Stalag 14, please make haste to stalingrad as there has been a number of our own turning against the *****. see to it that they cause no more problems. -heinrich himler"
she read it through three more times before folding it and placing it in her bag. she hurried outside, grabbing her hat
From the dresser.
* *
amy went about her inspection, seeing nothing wrong today. "the condition of stalag 16 has improved, heir colonel. well done. now send my car around." the colonel grinned and motioned for the car.
the black car adorned with swastikas roared to life, coming up beside her. the d

It seemed the space between us became torn and
Profoundly distanced....................

Jamming bony knuckles and spread eagled fingers,
Lying their mapped out journey.....direction on point patrol....
Adorned by silver decoration, delighting in their skinned habitat
Shafted, deceit punching the recipient of the poison digits
Prodding and pushing their intent....dare you contradict
The intended carved out dose of punishment, Risk and
Safety......not yours and never would be; stooped
Down under the assailing bony palmed attachements
That delivered penetrating power, cupped around
Your arm til it became discoloured, pressure points
Backed you into a corner, up against the grain of the
Brick wall, cold and damp, the odour reaching
And scolding your nostrils with its stale internal vows
Refuse, stretching and protruding its foul remnents
An earlier life, when you were not under threat fades
Your very existance in jeopardy, your eyes pleaded for
Normality, willing someone to hear your silence, grip you
Tightly, not with malice, but with bravery and valour
Right now you need that shining knight, that white
Horse galloping down the blind alleyway, yet you
Know that won't happen for you're already sinking
To the floor, the blow comes sharp and stings, warmth
Exudes and trickles a path downwards, leaving your
Body, finding the cold concrete beneath you, travelling
Outwards................

Capricorns, Capricorns are ruled and schooled by the planet Saturn, Saturn, Saturn. A bandit with a similar pattern, pattern, pattern. Capricorns, Capricorns are brethren from a legion; a legion of an atmosphere of the southern-hemisphere; in the equatorial region. At an
angle, angle, angle; Capricorns, Capricorns are angels of Aquarius and

Sagittarius. They’re boisterous, courageous, contagious, glamorous,
prestigious, rebellious, various and victorious-goats, goats, goats!
Capricorns, Capricorns cope, devote, note and quote, quote, quote.
They’re ambitions with superstitions and various missions, missions, missions! They’re novelties and poverties, revelations and

revolutionaries, revolutionaries, revolutionaries. Capricorns, Capricorns are theories and visionaries, visionaries, visionaries.
They’re objects, projects and rejects. They’re leaders and readers that are poetically, negatively or positively dictatorial and doctorial!  Some are historical, optical, political and radical; authentic, eccentric,

neurotic, poetic, theoretic, theoretic, theoretic. Unicorns, Unicorns are biblical and mythical, mythical, mythical; they’re ******, exotic, iconic, ironic, magic, nostalgic creatures, creatures, creatures. Their features
resembling a horse of course, of course. Furthermore, they’re fierce and a force. They’re a breed and creed of desire, fire and perspire, perspire,

perspire, perspire! They’re viral, viral, viral! This partial, sworn steed;
born awesome, awesome, awesome and too blossom, blossom, blossom. Unicorn’s spiral, crescent horn usually projecting and protruding from their foreheads. Rough and tough enough too pierce,
pierce, pierce! Unicorns, Unicorns are defendants, independents and

pendants. Hark! Hark! Hark! They’re brilliant and resilient sparks, sparks, sparks! They’re told as bold, old art, from the heart, from the start. Unicorns, Unicorns are fillers and pillars of guide, pride and
stride, stride, stride. They’re along for the long, long, long ride...
Unicorns, Unicorns are strong, strong, strong! Some as a song, song,

song, some throng, throng, throng, some wrong, wrong, wrong. As a
child, child, child; wild, wild, wild! Unicorns, Unicorns overwhelm, overwhelm, overwhelm. Their domicile realm, apparently, inherently and originally belonging from India; alleluia, alleluia for India, India,

India! Capricorns and Unicorns; two different creations. Capricorns
and Unicorns; two different relations. Capricorns and Unicorns; two
different situations and superstitions. They’re rainbows that glow, know and show. They’re of borrow, of sorrow and of our tomorrow.

checking potent aftershock
observing seismic anniversary
checking another tremor
resuming constrained writing

annexing hidebound constituents
hugging incoming eschatologies
fighting pervasive insomnia
battling invasive fatigue

damning incompetent fools
awaiting furtive escape
abandoning corporate wasteland
summoning celestial syzygy

detesting spaghetti code
protruding riparian dolphin
establishing unilinear escritoire
glowing cybernetic cynosure

avoiding eternal invisibility
supporting valued customer
performing lexical gymnastics
scrooping notification sounds

restoring usual happiness
glorifying darkwave fanfares
collapsing old relationships
raising ambient awareness

defining wolf people
propagating yesteryear's spectre
achieving hemispheric virality
testing weekend legerity
installing iron curtain

propagating today's spectre

developing niche audiences
transmitting abstract propaganda
disappearing thought experiments
overusing various condiments

double-checking hyper-real emotions
rubbernecking celestial explosions
observing splendid holiday
exploding volcano day

erupting bucolic mountain
disrupting hectic shouting
perfecting suggestive triptychs
checking festive pyrotechnics

drifting across multiverse
regifting glossy paperwork
writing six-lined hexagrams
liking two-toned instagrams

recalling pygmalion sculptures
brawling tatterdemalion cultures
"rambling corporate shill
rattling rapid prosody"
"battling hamburger hill
ambling hundredth library"
"sensing ideological schism
pending guttural neologism"

glowing verdant background
foreshadowing palmyra takedown
developing geopolitical mess
geminating quasi-couplet stress

"hugging cultural diversity
shrugging irrational adversity"

distancing spooky raindrops
avoiding potential burnout
implementing lexical databank
approaching crash-scene sudser

becoming increasingly selective
escaping tyrannical bureaucracy
perpetuating cut-throat capitalism
purchasing contrived happiness
incorporating chance elements
relaxing rigid structures
reheating your retweet

holding theoretical design
smiling beach life
scrutinizing eternal simulation
rushing artificial apothegm
annexing facetious document
freaking creepy centipedes

writing neural structure
congratulating yestreen's warriors
encouraging seatbelt usage
boosting abstract setting
sensing frivolous ochlocracy

keeping hypothetical metropolis
blurring metaphorical æsthetic
scrutinizing computational festival
memorializing towel day

raising six-fingered paw
eternizing fragment schedule
liking subtextual repository
quoting quintessential quidnunc

finding ideological style
disregarding their slovenliness
planning spatial factoid
spinning glacial ellipsoids

enjoying eternal spreadsheet
deleting repetitive tweet
awaiting festival lineup
gainsaying unethical startups

observing turgid experiment
contemplating conniving contrivances
enjoying dynamic project
dropping two-toned simulation
finding harmonic space
finalizing warring cavaliers

detecting enigmatic apathy
retrieving potential exchange
meddling middling muddling
baking hypnagogic pizza

spinning galactic dinosaur
building trans-pacific partnership
finishing theoretical mission
giggling agog googlers

crashing atypical tessellation
cherishing precious hexagons
proliferating western lottery
cretaceousing funkaholic skeletor

blurring turgid gallery
cancelling tsunami warnings
extemporizing incoherent neologisms
transmitting harmonic rave

gliding black hawks
hiding quacked ducks
archiving animated light
googling moonbow imagery

ignoring relatable messages
observing unfinished world
generating optional content
continuing exponential growth

Society sells beautiful lies,
Emphasis on the beautiful,
They sell you the definition of beauty in
small pictures,
small ads,
small sizes.
Spinning the world on a string,
They've got us all fooled.
Telling teens they don't need to eat,
"Skip the food today,
be beautiful tomorrow".
Selling the idea that beauty can replace sorrows.
Society sells the idea that beauty is empowerment.
Society sells the idea that if you are beautiful,
then you could have the world on a string.
These lies lead our leaders of tomorrow into disarray.
Sell us the idea that if we are beautiful
today will be better than yesterday.
But the empty promises lead us all astray,
Abandoned on street corners begging for scraps,
because we didn't think we felt empowerment.

Society sells small,
Society sells beauty,
Society sells small.
Small models,
Small manikins,
Small sizes.
Spinning the world on a string,
Society sells the idea that the size of your waist,
defines how beautiful you are.
Society sells the idea that beauty
is empowerment.
Society sells small.
Society sells the idea that if you are not small,
you are not empowered,
ugly,
waste of space.
Society sells small.
Society says beauty is empowerment.
These lies lead our leaders of tomorrow into disarray,
Too many teens today are to prone to facings their problems with razor blades,
Because today was not better than yesterday.
Then tomorrow won't be either.

Society sells small,
small pictures,
small ads,
small manikins.
Society sells protruding plastic ribs,
ribs sharp enough to cut paper.
Society sells the figures of the sick and dying.

Society sells small.
Small enough to be drop dead gorgeous,
Emphasis on the drop dead,
Society sells women who are severely underfed.
Society sells women suffering from malnutrition.
Since when did this become tradition?
Since when was fragile stature empowering?
Society sells skin and bones.
Society sells so small,
**women are literally dying to feel beautiful.

People always tell you that it can get better
What they neglect to tell you is how much worse it gets
Before the better part comes
In every eating disorder novel,
You can always perfectly pinpoint the moment
The protagonists steps over the line of unwell
Into well
This whole 'recovery' deal sounded good enough at first
I get to eat Luna Bars,
I have positive quotes all over the place,
I meditate and do yoga all day,
I somehow reach the a level of Enlightenment
Usually reserved for Buddhist monks
And I don't have to live with a ******* eating disorder anymore
I bought a recovery journal
To talk back to my mental illness
But so far my depression has taken control of the pen
I bought a adult coloring book
To help me de-stress
But I still only want to color a river on my wrists a crimson color

I keep thinking there's a way to be a functional bulimic
Or even better, a functional anorectic
A way that I can be recovered and enlightened and normal
And still dissect each and every meal
As if I was dealing with something ***** and impure
Is it still recovery if I can't fight the voices in my head?
Is if still recovery if I don't even try?
Is it still recovery if I still can't look in the mirror,
want the outside to mirror the chaos inside,
crave sunken cheeks and fallen out hair
That I want to preform a vanishing act right before your eyes
See my skin cave in, bones protruding
I used to think that eating disorders were about beauty
But now I realize they're about pain
And perfection and punishment
And I had to live through it to see that

I seem to never be able to do anything right
And my eating disorder was supposed to remedy that
I was good at self destruction
I was good at sitting at dinner, sipping diet coke
Feeling oh, so superior and smiling brightly
As I said that I'd already eaten
And begged my stomach pains not to betray me then
But now I've failed at having an eating disorder
And at not having an eating disorder
And I can't live anymore in this shade of gray
Coloring everything and ruling my thoughts
I don't want to be in "recovery"
I want to be recovered
Because no one tells you
How you'll cry through every single meal
How you'll see yourself grow in the mirror and not know
What's real and what's not
No one tells you
That an eating disorder never goes away
That you'll never diet again
That trying to lose weight in recovery isn't a good idea

The worst thing about an eating disorder
Is that there is no such thing as abstinence
Recovery is not one decision
It is a decision you will have to make
Every time you find yourself looking down at a plate
And at first, you'll have to pray to the gods
For indulging in the sins of being a human
But someday, maybe someday
Those prayers will go somewhere else

the thought of death is an uneasy thought
in my case it's a ****** nightmare

on the 16th day of May, 1967, Mr Youngblood took his 6th grade class to the playground as he always did, every Tuesday after lunch. The kids spread out to their usual positions. Some played catch with Mr Youngblood. A few, like Roger and me went to the basketball net and several played on the monkey bars, both of which were part of the big asphalt square. Just opposite this area was the soccer field and then some good distance between that and the Middle School. Lots of open space for a bunch of suburban kids to have fun. The Sun was bright and the wind was light and the temperature was right around perfect. We had been playing for 10 minutes or so when the wind picked up and clouds seemed to move in out of nowhere. We all thought it must be a storm coming...and it was. A distant laugh froze everyone. At first no-one saw him, but then we all saw him at once. He was walking across the soccer field towards us, long deliberate strides with long thin legs that seemed to bend once slightly below where the knee should be and again slightly above, making each stride awkwardly horrifying. Where he came from is a mystery as there was nothing but open land behind him for several hundred yards. He was tall and lanky and as he approached us, I noticed that his face was contorted and discolored...a pale, almost painted white and he had jet black hair combed back, long and greasy. His lips were thin and black and his eyes bloodshot and almond shaped. He wore a black suit, a black shirt and candy apple red tie. He looked like a mosh-up of Curry's Pennywise and Ledger's Joker, only I would have traded for either one of those ******* right now over this guy, ten to one. He came to the edge of the concrete square. Johnny ****** his pants and Charlene fell from the monkey bars, landing awkwardly on her left side and causing a compound fracture, her radius protruding from her skin leaving her hand dangling like a dead fish. She did not scream either because she was scared it might draw his attention or she was going into shock...or maybe both. He took two more steps forward and then began laughing as if he'd just heard the funniest joke he'd ever been told. His teeth looked as if they'd been replaced with shark's teeth. I swear there were rows of them and his mouth stretched inhumanly wide. His laugh slowly winded down to a snarl, and he gave a long look to each one of us, as if he was burning the faces to memory. And then he spoke..."You children just go on having lots of fun! Well, except for you Johnny...didn't your Mom just rip you a new *** for ******* your pants at Grandma's? shame, shame!" And Johnny was off...tripping twice before he got his feet under him. "You run home and ...Ha Ha Ha...oh my...change your pants, you pathetic little ****!" Mr Youngblood picked up Charlene and started to carry her inside. By this time her pretty pink dress was soaked in blood. The freak addressed him. "Nice man...but you can't save them. In a few days they will all be mine." He laughed again and every kid ran for their lives back to the school. I was the only one who stayed. To this day I'm not sure why. He turned and walked towards me slowly. "What have we here? The little man isn't running with the others. Are you not afraid Billy boy? Afraid for your life?"...and he leaned in close...close enough that I smelled a foulness that cannot be described. "Because that is what I'm here for...your life!" "Who are you?", I asked... and with that his dark black and pointed eyebrows raised and he straightened up. "Who am I...Who am I? My, my the boy has a backbone. The nerve to question while others lose control of their bladders. Well, I'll tell you who I am, child. I am God's worst nightmare. I am every ***** little secret thought you've ever had. I am evil in all it's forms wrapped up in one little package and sent to collect the souls of the innocent. All of you here today will be mine tomorrow. Roger will fall down the stairs off of his front porch and break his neck. Charlene will die from infection due to that nasty little accident and Becky will be hit by the school bus Thursday morning. That will be most nasty! Almost a decapitation. I won't bore you with the rest, but they will all die. Hmmm...you know what Billy... I like you, so I'm thinking, perhaps...yes, I'm going to make a special offer to my new special friend. I won't take your soul until you die from natural causes. What do you think of that idea? At that moment, when your family is gathered round your bedside after suffering that...well, maybe you don't want to know the details... you will see a bright light...but you won't be going towards the light Billy...at that moment I will place my hand on your shoulder and that light will slowly fade into darkness and we will meet again, and you will become my apprentice. So, what do you think of that, Billy? Do you want to be my apprentice, or do I **** you now? Come, come...I haven't much time!" I tried to answer, but my mouth was as dry as cardboard and I could only manage a weak gasp. That laugh again and he turned and walked away in the same direction..."I'll take that as a yes. Remember, you are mine upon your death, Billy boy!" The wind died and the Sun appeared again.
By the end of the week, every child on the playground that day had died...exactly as he stated they would.

And now you know why, even in my darkest days, I never, ever contemplate suicide.

1.

From our
safe windows,
we crane our necks,
rubbernecking
past the slow
motion wreckage
unfolding in Homs.

We remain
perfectly
perched
to marvel at
the elegant arc of
a mortar shell
framing tomorrows
deep horizon,
whistling through
the twilight to
find its fruitful
mark.

In the now
we keep
complicit time,
to the arrest
of beating hearts,
snapping fingers
to the pop
of rifle cracks,
swooning to
the delicious
intoxication of
curling smoke
lofting ever
upward;
yet
thankfully
remain
distant
enough to
recuse any
possibility
of an
intimate
nexus
with the
besieged.

2.

From our
safe windows,
we behold the
urgent arrivals of
The Friends of Syria
demanding
clean sheets
and 4 Star
room service at a
Tunisian Palace
recently cleaned
and under new
management
promising a
much needed
refurbishment.

The gathered,
a clique of
this epochs
movers and shakers,
a veritable
rouges gallery of
ambassadorial
prelates, Emirs and
state department
bureaucrats
summoned
with portfolio
from the
darkest corners
of the globe.

They are
eager to
sanctify
the misery
of Homs,
deflect and
lay blame
with realpolitik
rationalizations,
commencing
official commissions
of inquiry,
deliberating
grave considerations,
issuing indictments
of formal charges for
Crimes Against
Humanity
while
remaining
urgently
engrossed
in the fascination
of interviewing
potential
process servers
to deliver the bad news
to Bashar al-Assad
and his soulless
Baathist
confederates,
if papers
are to be
served.

Yes, the diplomats
are busy meeting
in closed rooms.

In hushed circles
they whisper
into aroused ears,
railing against
Russia’s
gun running
intransigence
and China’s
geopolitical
chess moves.

Statesmen
boast of the
intrepid justice
of tipping points
and the moving poetry
of self serving tales,
weighing the impact
of stern sanctions
amidst the historical
confusion of the
asymmetrical
symmetries
of civil war.

Caravans
of Arab League
envoys roll up
in silver Bentleys,
crossing deserts
of contradictory
obfuscations,
navigating the
endless dunes
with hand held
sextants of
hidden agendas.

The heroic
Bedouins are
eager to offload
their baggage
and share
on the ground
intelligence from
their recent soirées
across Syria.

They beg
a quick fix,
the triage of a
critical catharsis
to bleed their
brains dry
of heinous
recollections,
pleading
release from a
troubled conscience
victimized by
the unnerving paradox
of reconciling
discoveries of
perverse voyeurism
with the sanctioned
explanations
of their respective
ruling elites.

The bellies
of these
scopophiliacs
are distended;
grown queasy
from a steady diet
of malfeasance
an ulcerated
world parades
in continuous loop;
spewing the raw feeds
of real time misery;
forcibly fed
the grim
visions of
frantic
fathers
rushing
the mangled
carcases
of mortally
wounded
children
to crumpled
piles of smashed
concrete that were
once hospitals.

We despondently
ask how
much longer
must we
look into
the eyes
of starving
children
emaciated from
the wanton
indifference
of the world?


3.

From our
safe windows
we wonder
how much
longer can
the urgent
burning
ambivalence
continue
before it
consumes
our common
humanity in
a final
conflagration?

My hair already
singed by the
endless firestorms
sweeping the prairies
of the world.

How can we survive
the trampling hoards,
the marauding
plagues of acrimony
fed by a voracious
blood lust aspiring to
victimize the people
of Homs and a
thousand cities
like it?


4.

From my safe
window I stand in witness
to the state execution of
refugees fleeing the
living nightmare
of Baba Amr.

The ****** of innocents,
today's newly minted martyrs,
women and children
cornered, trapped
on treacherous roads,
mercilessly
slaughtered and
defiled in death
to mark the lesson
of a ruthless master
enthralled with the
power of his
sadistic fascist
lordship.

I cannot avert my eyes
marking sights
of pleading women
begging for the
lives of their children
in exchange for
the gratification
of a sadists
lust.

My heart
is impaled
on the sharp
spear of
outrage
beholding
careening
children mowed
down with the
serrated blades
protruding
from marauding
jeeps of laughing
soldiers.

I drop
to my knees
in lakes of
tears
reflecting
a grotesque
horror stricken
image of myself.

My eyes have
murdered my soul.

The ghastly images
of Homs have chased
away my Holy Ghost
to the safety of a child's
sandbox hidden away
in a long forgotten
revered memory.


5.

From my safe window
I seethe with anger
demanding vengeance,
debating how to rise
to meet the obscenity of
the Butcher of Damascus.

The sword of Damocles
dangles so tantalizingly close
to this tyrants throat.  

The covered women
of Homs scream prayers
“may Allah bring Bashar to ruin”

Dare I pray
that Allah trip the
horsehair trigger
that holds the
sword at bay?

Do I pick up
the sword
a wield it
as an
avenging
angel?

Am I the
John Brown
of our time?

Do I organize
a Lincoln Brigade
and join the growing
leagues of jihadists
amassing at the
Gates of Damascus?

Will my righteous
indignation fit well
in a confederacy
with Hamas and
al-Qaeda as my
comrades in arms?

Do I succumb to
the passion of hate
and become just
another murderous
partisan, or do I
commend the power
of love and marshal
truth to speak with
the force of
satyagraha?

I lift a fervent prayer
to claim the justice
of Allah’s ear,
“may the knowing one
lift the veil of foolishness
that covers my heart in
cloaks of resent, cure
my blindness that ignores
my raging disease of
plausible deniability
ravaging the body politic
of humanity.”

6.

Indeed,
physician heal thyself.

I run to embrace my
illness.

I pine to understand it.

I undertake the
difficult regimen
of a cure to eradicate
the terrible affliction.

This
pernicious
plague,
subverting
the notion
of a shared
humanness
is a cunning
sedition that
undermines
the unity of
the holy spirit.  

The bell from
the toppled steeples
still tolls, echoing
across the space of
continents and eons
of temporal time.

The faithful chimes
gently chides us
to remove the wedge
of perception that
separates, divides
and undermines.

Time has come
to liberally
apply the balm
that salves the
open wounds
so common to
our common
human condition.

The power of prayer
is the joining of hands
with others racked
with the common
affliction of humanness.

Allah,  
My eyes are wide open,
my sacred heart revealed,
my sleeves are rolled up,
my memory is stocked,
my soul filled with resolve,
my hand is lifted
extended to all
brothers and sisters.
Lift us,
gather us
into one
loving embrace.

Selah


7.

From the safe
windows of
our palaces
we live within
earshot of
the trilling
zaghroutas
of exasperation
flowing from
the besieged
city smouldering
under Bashar’s
symphony of terror.

Our nostrils
fill with the
acrid plumes
of unrequited
lamentations
lifting from the
the burning
destruction
of shelled
buildings.

Our eyes spark
from the night
tracers
of sleeking
snipers
flitting along
the city’s
rooftops.

The deadly jinn
indiscriminately
inject the
paralysis of
random fear
into the veins
of the city
with each
skillful
head shot.

These
ghoulish
assassins
lavish in their
macabre work;
like vultures
they eagerly
feast on the
corpses of their ****,
the stench of bloated
bodies drying in the
sun is the perfume
that fills their nostrils.


8.

From our
safe window
we discern the
silhouettes of militants
still boldly standing
amidst the
mounting rubble of an
unbowed Homs
shouting;

Allah Akbar!!!
Allah Akbar!!!
Allah Akbar!!!

raising pumped fists,
singing songs
of resistance,
dancing to
the revelation of
freedom,
refusing to
be coward by
the slashing
whips of a
butchers
terrible
sword.


9.

From my
safe window
my tongue laps
the pap
of infants
suckling from
the depleted
teats of mothers
who cannot cry
for their dying
children;
tears fail
to well from
the exhaustion
of dehydrated
pools.

10.

From my
safe window
my heart stirs
to the muezzin
calling the
desperate faithful
from the toppled
rubble of dashed
minarets.

We can
no longer
shut our ears
to the adhan
of screams
the silent
voices that echo
the blatant injustice
of a people under siege.


11.

From my
safe window,
I pay
Homage to Homs
and call brothers
and sisters to rise
with vigilant
insistence
that hostilities
cease and
humanity be
upheld,
respected and
protected.


12.

From my safe
window
I perceive
the zagroutas
of sorrow
manifest as a
whiling hum,
a sweeping
blue mist,
levitating
the coffins
from the rubble
of ravaged streets.

The swirling
chorus of
mourning
joins my
desperate
prayers;
rising in
concert
with the
black billows
of smoke
dancing
away
from the
flaming
embers
of scorched
neighborhoods.


13.

From my
safe window
I heed
the fluttering
wings
of avenging
angels
furiously
batting
as they
climb
the black
plumes,
lifting from
the scattered bricks
of the desecrated
city.

It is the
Jacob’s
Ladder
for our
time;
marking
a new
consecrated
place
where
a New Adam
is destined
to be formed
from the
pulverized
stones of
desolation.

14.

From our
safe windows
we peer into
resplendent
mirrors
beholding
the perfect image of
ourselves
eying
falling tears
dripping blood,
coloring death
onto the
blanched sheets
of disheveled beds.


15.

From our
safe windows
our voices are silenced,
our words mock urgency
our thoughts betray comprehension
our senses fail to illicit empathy
our action is the only worthy prayer


16.

From my
safe window
I hear the
mortar shells
walking toward
my little palace,
the crack
of a ******
shot
precedes
the wiz of a
passing bullet
whispering
its presence
into my
waxen
ear.


17.

From my
safe window,
my palms scoop
the rich soil
of the flower boxes
perched on my sill.
I anoint the tender
green shoots of  the
Arab Spring
with an incessant flow
of bittersweet tears.

Music selection:
John Coltrane
A Love Supreme
Acknowledgment

Oakland
2/28/12
jbm

dear aries,
had i known what love was back then,
we might have made it last.

dear taurus,
you were always everything
i wished i could have been.

dear gemini,
you are a fiesty, wonderful soul,
i love you dearly, my surrogate brother.

dear cancer,
i still remember the first day we met,
but i cannot remember the sound of your voice.

dear leo,
you are worth more
than your protruding collarbones.

dear virgo,
our horoscopes say we are the perfect friends,
but you are a heartless creature and i am afraid of you.

dear libra,
you are vicious,
picking petty fights over nothing,
yet you are still my best friend.

dear scorpio,
god, what a beautiful, fascinating being you are.
how i always wished to be yours.

dear sagittarius,
i gave you my heart,
and now it has two years
and eight batterings worth of scars.

dear capricorn,
i miss our late night storytelling,
i am waiting on an apology that will never come.

dear aquarius,
we are so different now,
i cannot bear to speak to you.
you are afraid of me.

dear pisces,
whenever i see you,
you take my breath away.

I was born a sickly, screeching baby, two months earlier than expected. The doctor and midwife did everything they could to keep my little limbs moving and to keep my tiny heart beating, fluttering like the wings of butterfly.
“Is it a boy?” my mother whispered through her pale lips, as they bathed my naked body in hot water.
“No, ma’am, it’s a girl” The midwife struggled to add on something that would make the wailing creature seem more desirable. “With exquisitely shaped feet, so perfectly miniature”
She let out a croak of conflicting emotions: the joy and pride of a newly-founded motherly love, the fear of presenting a girl as a first-born, the relief that the hours of agony in childbirth were over and the dread of facing her husband once he found out about me.

My mother was not healthy after my birth for a long time; and when I was only one and two months old she fell dangerously ill, and the house whispered footsteps running to her room late at night and muffled voices of different doctors. Mercifully, she survived but was left barren and forever unfertile.
I can not imagine my father’s fury. He believed in having sons to carry on his old last name of thirty-one generations; it was his religion and had I been a son, I would have been worshipped as a god. I can imagine how my mother prayed and thanked her ancestors that her dowry was of a large one.

He could barely tolerate being in the same room as me during my toddler years. Every time he entered a room I was playing in, nurse would sweep me to our garden out side; answering to my startled queries, “Be an obedient daughter, don’t bother your father and don’t ask questions”
My body had been born frail, but my natural spirit was as healthy as could be, full of inquiries, wonders of the world around me and everyday I would learn something new just wandering around the neighborhood observing things, with my nurse trailing with a worried eye behind me muttering, “Girls are not supposed to be exposed to this” she spoke the words as if they were sour, “you should be sitting at home and accompanying your mother.”

Every day at dinner, the two females of the house, me and my mother, were silent while my father ranted on and on. My appetite being very delicate, I often just sat there as still as I possibly could and listened to my father talking about politics, jobs, money. Things he called ‘men business’. I longed to ask questions about these ‘men business’, especially ‘university’ for I had an inquisitive sort-of nature but was refrained with a sharp, piercing look from my mother every time I opened my mouth and sometimes, she pinched me under the table leaving purple splotches which flashed, “Don’t question your father”
Sometimes, he would talk about the future he had decided for me, “You will marry off, sixteen at the latest, to some one rich and beneficial to our family. You will do as I say till I marry you off, and then you will do as your husband tells you.”
“Yes father, for I should repay everything you have done for me” I replied as sweetly as I could.
“Yes, you’re a good daughter. Bear lots of sons for him and your house will be one of happiness.”
I was proud that he had given me a compliment. “Yes father, for it will make you joyful as I always wish to make you so”
My childish heart did not understand why my mother turned her head down while her left eyebrow twitched, and why that night, as she tucked me into bed, I thought I saw a tear roll down her cheek and why as she kissed me that night she whispered, “Do not love me so; love your father. The men in your life are your gods.”

My physical health would constantly limit the desires of my free spirit. I could not to do what others who were as free of spirit as I was could do, and couldn’t socialize with them and the rest of the children in my neighborhood had their siblings to mingle with, causing me to become the pitiful outcast.
I saw children around my age, around seven or eight, climbing trees and wanted to do so as well, but my white feet did not have grip enough to grasp onto the fat branches.
Father caught me once trying to propel myself up a tree and his expression was both of a resigned anger and sadness before he turned him and his face away and back into the house without a word.
That night, mother told me not to climb trees ever again. I noticed a faint bruise on her cheek bone that had been covered with white powder.

When I was eleven or twelve, and was allowed to wander further out into the neighborhood with my nurse I saw the boys fishing in the nearby pond and wanted to do so as well. Starting that day, every week I pocketed the three coins mother gave me until I could buy the best fishing rod in the little store and ran as fast as my skinny, weak legs could carry me to the pond. I mimicked the way the boys flung the fishing rod out over the water but the metal pole was too heavy for my pale, shaking arms. I tried over and over again as my nurse watched, biting her lip in anxiety. I held the fishing rod with trembling sore arms till  I felt a bite; I pumped my small arms to reel it in, but they were so tired and I was far too slow, losing the fish I had spent half the day trying to catch. “Ah, just bad luck, don’t worry! It was a smart fish, I tell you!” nurse exclaimed, though her eyes flashed a look of pity and I knew she knew it wasn’t just bad luck or a smart fish.
In anger, I sold the fishing rod to one of the boys for two-thirds of the price I had bought it for. He was delighted with the bargain and I watched with a lump in my throat as he caught three fish with the tug of his healthy, muscular arm within fifteen minutes. “This is a beautiful rod, and the pond is just filled with fish today, Little Sister!”
Wanting to spend the money jingling inside my pocket, money that to me was just a reminder of a painful memory, I headed off to the collection of little shops close to my house where I was guaranteed distraction. Nurse, sweating and complaining of the heat, followed me.
An ageing man with a bunch of filthy hair working away on a piece of thick, rough paper with wondrous colors inside a shop caught my eye as I peered inside the window. He turned the picture upside down and continued blending in the dark colors of the shape to create a shadow along the curve of it. I entered the shop. “What is that?” I asked of him.
“A face” he replied back absentmindedly.
“Doesn’t look like one to me” I confessed with my honesty.
He looked up at me, “No, it does not to you, and maybe, neither will it at the end. To me, it looks like an angle of a faded face. But slowly, with time, it will become clearer and clearer, yet only to me, and as it does, I will be able to choose more colors to make it yet more beautiful. The outcome of this painting is entirely up to me.”
I felt my challenging self rising up. “But what if you imagined a certain color in your head but couldn’t find it or be able to mix it to your mind’s perfection?”
“Then I would create my own paint color.”
“You know how?”
“No, but if I could not find the paint color already made I would make it myself, and no matter what, would learn how to. So far I have always been able to compromise and mix different colors to please me.”
“You do an awful lot of shadowing light colors with dark colors”
“Why do you think I do so?” he questioned me this time, with bright eyes.
I pondered for a moment to give as good an answer as he had given me and then told him my answer.
He nodded with impress, “Yes, yes, absolutely right. I never thought I’d hear that from a child” and looked at me with his head cocked in curiosity.
“What would you like to buy from here, Little Sister?”
Still deeply interested in our conversation I pulled out the coins I had in my pocket. “How much stuff can I buy with all this money? I’d like those crayons, I’ve tried them once before and they are so creamy and smooth.”
“Oil pastels?” he asked, a little confusedly.
Feeling ashamed of my ignorance, I nodded. The tutor father hired evidently bent to father’s strict rules of what should be taught and what would not be taught. Father disapproved of women painting, and would’ve dismissed nurse had he known that instead of taking me out for a little walk to smell the blooming daffodils, she in fact let me explore the environment around me to the best of my ability even in disgruntle.
The man gave my red-patched cheeks and undeveloped translucent frame a sympathetic look and when he spoke, his voice was gentle. “Little Sister, I’ve a whole basket of oil paints that I’ve used but rarely and so are still in perfect condition. Would you like to carry the whole basket home for all the money you have in your pockets?”
I handed him all my golden coins, “But first I must see if I like it.”
“You won’t be disappointed” he chuckled and walked with an imbalanced limp to the back of the store. I noticed a wooden stump protruding from the bottom of his long, black pants. My heart throbbed achingly; he was ****** limited too. I turned to his painting and smiled from deep inside, a smile I rarely wore.
He came back tugging a huge brown basket filled to the brim with sticks of oil pastels, some longer or thicker than others. He lifted an orange one up and showed the tip of it to me, which was stained with a black mark. “Sometimes when you blend colors this will happen, but it’s easy to rid off. Just softly, and patiently rub it off on a cloth until it disappears.” He demonstrated upon his black pants.
“Thank you. It’s kind of you. But...I can’t carry this home myself. It’s heavy.”
I turned to nurse and smiled my best pleading smile.

The basket was toiled up as nurse undressed me from my shower and father and mother were otherwise occupied. That night, with my precious basket safely under my bed, I cleaned all the multi-colored oil pastels on an old shirt, and as soon as the house was ringing with silence, I locked my door and flicked on the lamp light, and started pressing the smooth colors into the paper to blend and make a picture of kissing colors on a relatively large piece of white paper. A thrill ran from my finger tips and along my arm, and made my palms tingle as I held the colorful sticks in my hand to the paper. I hid it underneath my bed just as a rosy sun was rising.
*
I was sixteen, and I was thought beautiful: for now, at this age, it was considered beautiful to be so pale of skin, so small of feet and hands, graceful to have tiny limbs and charming to have little strength for it was now considered ‘feminine’.
It was three weeks after I had turned sixteen and for dinner, father had brought over an ugly man with a bulging waist and shiny bald head who continually made ****** jokes at the dinner table while he believed I did not understand them. He was infamous for the two wives he had had (before they died from sickness), and how he not only hit them but kept other lovers too. Yet he was desirable for his vast richness. He leered at me obnoxiously, in an attempt to smile.
Father caught him looking at me, “She’s incredibly silent, never says a word of defiance and will be a most dutiful wife.”
“Yes, she is beautiful”
My heart froze and my brain was stimulated to work twice as fast. Him?! Him?! The man who’s wives were killed through an illness called ‘abuse, neglect and disloyalty?!’
I cast my eyelashes down in order to appear a calm, modest young lady while my heart hammered in fury, disgust and a rising hysterical panic. I shot a look at my mother whose left eyebrow was twitching as she stared down at her dinner plate, and I knew she was having the same thoughts as I.
“I would be glad to have you as my son-in-law. You would have no trouble with her, and would be embraced with open arms into our family.”
They continued this path of talk through dinner while he eyeballed me in a way that made me cringe. I felt his foot nudge mine under the table and in haste tucked it under the chair with a little gasp. His eyes glittered at my gasp and I was furious with myself for letting him feel a rotten triumph. Though I had always felt an extremely strong dislike towards him from what I knew of him and sometimes saw of him with an immoral lady, something pushed in the pit of my tummy, and I knew it was pure hatred.
When mother tucked me in she was being strange. On closing my door she whispered, “I love you… so I wish you to know… don’t ever contradict men”

As I was secretly drawing a picture as I did every night till dawn, I heard my father’s voice roar in the dead of the night. In a sudden, I shoved my portrait under the bed and threw all my oil pastels into the basket, hid it, and switched the light off. I heard his voice roar again, accompanied by a thud. I was wild with fear as I crept to my door and pressed my ear against it, barely even shocked at my own daringness as my instinct, love, took over- my instinct of must knowing what was happening to my mother.
“How dare you say I’m wrong!?” there was another thud, and this time I heard a soft whimper. “She is worthless to me, not a son. And I will marry her off to a rich man who can actually benefit this family.” He roared.
There was a whisper which I strained to hear, “He will **** her”
“From the moment she was born she wasn’t made to live!” he yelled.
A hiss escaped my tongue and I coiled like a serpent, flinching as a thud was heard yet again and an immediate cry of pain escaped from both my lips and my mothers’.
A fire awoke inside me, burning my temples and my whole body and my eyes stung with hot tears; tears that burned my face as they splashed down. My whole body was shaking and my tightly squeezed eyes were going through spasms. I was no longer wild with fear, but with anger.
I turned my light back on and tugged my basket of oil pastels out. I yanked my portrait off from a thick of pile of different pictures I had drawn.
My breath was coming in quick short breaths as I finished my portrait to the utmost perfection, using every oil pastel in the basket. Every time I heard a thud, I colored with more fiery… shadowing my jaw line with the fat black oil pastel, in the crook of my ear, the corner of my mouth… where the light shone upon my fore head, how it reflected in the color of my eye and glowed on my cheeks.
When I was finished, the house was deadly quiet again and dawn was breaking. I looked down upon it and realized something that changed my life.
In frenzy I swatted out all the things I had ever drawn and stared at them in an awakening.
The colors on them were the events of my life, the things that characterized it, the decisions. They were beautiful for they had been chosen and controlled by me … I had chosen the colors I wanted and thought best for my pictures; and spent thought over how to blend different colors to the color I wanted.
And everyday, as I worked into the drawings with time, they became clearer and clearer on what was the right thing to do, and how it should possibly look like in the next stage.
I leaned over and kissed the thin lips of my portrait that didn’t look exactly like me for not even the most skilled artists have complete control over what they draw.

Then I remembered what I had told the one-legged man in the shop a few years go:
“Lights not only illuminate, they also cast shadows. The contrast makes you able to appreciate the power of both.”
Now it was time to truly let the light illuminate my life, and let the shadows let me appreciate the light that shines upon me; I color my own life, and choose my own colors.

To pull out the colors underneath the darkness of my bed…
And spill it to the world outside.

The tenderness as they described it is circumnavigating more than the ******* and the roundness of my protruding *******
Perhaps by tenderness of the breast, what they really mean is tenderness of the soul and the emotions one hurriedly tucks under the crevices of their *****
If one imagines how ******* are anything but tender, with their ferocity of nurturing life and their wholly encompassing nature to weigh and weigh and weigh
Weight carried by a mother,
Shed off by her daughter,
Caressed by the one she lies with in the crevice of her soul and the gap between twin XL bunk beds and walls full of picture of people who no longer weigh her down
It's the feeling of nostalgia and nostalgia feeling this tenderness growing from one's *******.
Growth of the ***** of life as a life imagined is destroyed, nullified, kaput.
But most of all she feels nostalgia.
Nostalgia for the people whose tenderness she felt,
Nostalgia yes for her brother and grandmother cloaked in love around her neck like crystals from an iridescent silver clasp

I hated Dawkins a little less when his words came from your mouth.

Your unabashed sincerity endeared me to you from the moment you showed me your vintage Atari. I don't recall if that was before or after you bragged about your Star Trek DVDs. Not that it matters, but I hope you've found a place to store all of those wires protruding out of your gadgets like Medusa's head of snakes.

My family liked you, especially my mother. It was probably your staunch advocacy of 4th amendment rights.

Remember those nights we sat in bed and traded secrets on small scraps of paper? We were lovers  for... five weeks by then? It struck me by the third slip that it didn't matter what it would say--I knew I'd still love you anyway. But I knew that from the moment you removed my knee-high boots and kissed my feet when I rode up on my Harley. You unstrapped my helmet and poured me wine. Though we promised to never tell anyone, I just wanted to say: I still smile when I think of your 15-year-old self trying to pick up a ******* on a desolate dusty road. Do you still have those hastily-written pieces of paper? They're yours to keep; I hope they're safe.

Nothing of my new world reminds me of you. There's no Jeopardy to watch, no NPR to hear in your white Saturn, and no desert mountains to hike. Not in India. Maybe it's because nothing is similar that my memories of us stay so firmly imprinted in my mind. Similarities would only erode my recollections. Maybe that's why I almost forgot about the chai tea I'd serve you in bed, coupled with almonds and apricots on the saucer.

But you, you're a walking encyclopedia of my home town. You knew every cactus-lined freeway, the name of the state attorney general, and the best place to grab a Four Peaks beer. Because of this, I could never extricate my love of home and my love for you. To me, you'll always be home.

For better or for worse, I remember it all. Including the soft piano rift of the chess game we'd play on your XBox. I'm guessing you'd beat me, should we play again today. I still have the wooden chess set I got you for your birthday... but we both know I can't give it to you. I'm sorry.

I never believed in saving people before I met you. Before, damaged was a weakness; now I think you just needed a polish. I never told you, but I read your psych evaluation--I found it when I was cleaning your room (with your permission, I add). The therapist was right: you're not aloof, just too smart for the room. I thank God that you never bought that container of nitric oxide.

I know we said we'd marry if I ever came back home. A no-frills city hall marriage suited us just fine. I have no doubt we would have had a simple, sweet life. You would've relented to letting me get a dog to keep your arrogant cat company. Our biggest fight would be over which castle door the RPG character should open, and you would've helped me improve my golf swing on the inexpensive dilapidated course near my old junior high school.

But likewise... our biggest adventure would've been only a roadtrip to the neighboring county. And I wanted to explore. I needed to explore. You, who never wanted to stray outside of a 100-mile radius could never satiate that curiosity. But I know we could have made it work. I know we would've been happy.

Sometimes I wish we could be the best of friends. I know we can't; not when I started dating my now-husband so close after we ended things in tear-stained emails when I went overseas. He swore off her; I swore off you. That's the way things go, I guess, when you get older.

I know it might seem like I've moved on and forgotten you.

Moved on, yes. Forgotten? Never.

It probably wouldn't be the same if we met again. I have too much love for you that could never be conveyed. My love for you has changed; it's not romantic. But it's still this throbbing appreciation for everything you are. I couldn't bear guarded chit chat. Not with you.

And I hope you are happy. Have you realized your worth yet, or are you still wasting your time with broken high school grads who listen to Ke$ha? I can't tell you who to love... but I hope she's an astrophysicist, someone who loves Carl Sagan even half as much as you. I want her to read Noam Chomsky to you late at night, and wake you in the mornings with a glass of milk and cookies. She'll prefer simple mashed potatoes to dim sum, and have a weakness for microbreweries. She'd be gorgeous in that bookish sort of way. Yes. That's the girl for you.

....I'm sorry it's not me, my dear atheist.

in the year 2462 those with nails protruding from their palms
will talk in ancient tongues
& sway the tribes of men to eternal love,
& endless ammunition
of the soul.

spiritus.
kin, galactic
& the golden fire.
throb the saga of man,
into hip ****** illusions and combustive color schematas.
we bury our dead in flower clippings
or skull bits.

        [skateboarding rises as the highest form of intellectual sport]

thrum and plum-*** the sewers of electric babylon.
hive city reaching past gasp and wasteland,
her lips ruinous.
cement slabs and coils of fault with
vast artistic possibilities.
these skate-lords from their heaps, their clans, augmenting
& rattling bone masks
grinding themselves into meat-bit heroics
& death.
their teeth are yellowy awoken.

this is all seen globally,
via tele-cast-com-core-mind-warp-tech.
or video.

dreams impact reality
impact dreams
in such
that the cathode cortex filter, invented circa 2222,
evolves into a demi-god, a solar charged demon of unlimited knowledge.
& it mutates the psychosphere  of our mainstream public mind
with countless projected memories.
        [streamed alternate realities]
fills the belly and the brain,
but all those unhooked are skating.
sweet meat market.
ghost harddrives.

poor leftovers called children of the once-was-men
& their poolside parties.
they leap the rubble of centuries old plastic icons,
their boards, their weapons, their seeds and spit.
they hang chains from their necks
& spew black flame from their sunshaded boot-click
lickings.
they drink from large bottlesof elixer distilled
on old flowers
& worship archaic cassettes.

cults of cyborg women with gem-tipped-blade-additions
carve wooden planks from
groves of great oaks.
great oaken powers.
their creators chew gummies and bend time
to uphold
a proposed history of perfection.
they master pong from their crystalline towers,
& hire mathematicians to write
conceptual skate-deck algorithms,
solely for fun.
non-profit.

A fitness woman who had a boyfriend who didn’t train
But the love affair that did remain
The fitness woman being named Jennifer who always took care of her body even when she was in her teens
Yet Ted being her boyfriend really didn’t have any interest in exercise
But it was Fitness Jennifer that captivated Ted’s eyes
It wasn’t until Jennifer introduced Ted to a competing male bodybuilder named William
Ted Seemed Ah and noticed all his muscle detail protruding through his T-Shirt of William
Later Ted went home and gave a good thought that maybe he should try exercising and thought about William in giving him guidance
Fitness and muscle running through Ted’s mind
But will it convince Ted to exercise with the thought divined
Well barbells became Ted’s start in train
William who was a competing Bodybuilder to help Ted through various exercises in helping Ted establish his own physique
Well things were on go with the idea of mystique
In a span of two years, Ted now had a muscular physique that he could be proud of, and was thinking about stepping onto the Bodybuilding platform
Well Fitness Jennifer gave Ted all the encouragement he needed
Persuasion became defined into pursue
It was all the encouragement coming from Fitness Jennifer due
Ted stepped on stage for the first time, and was a little nervous, but when the music started and he started to pose, the audience gave a raw of applause and being totally amazed
He was standing next to other Bodybuilders who were more advanced
But Ted saw a vision, and wanted to take a chance
As names were being called out, there was a certain anticipati8on in how Ted did
Yet Ted felt he wasn’t going to win and it was the end
Suddenly Ted’s name was called out in first place
After all that there was no time to waste
Ted proposed to Fitness Jennifer right there on stage
Fitness Jennifer was very surprised and she said yes without any hesitation
The multitudes of applause
Fitness Jennifer and Ted kissed with a cause
Immediately, muscle became two heart shapes
Muscle being true love and the flexing of two doves.

The divine walkway
To the river-side
Has began to warp in
Singing and whooping with love,
But I was in the palace
To witness the examination,

See how the evening sky
Has suffered with crimson
And delight, awaiting
The gorgeous joy of the dawn,
How can the nations
Begin this monthly journey
With a broken arm?

The old gossip proclaimed that
Mother Africa caused the
*** to burst into loud wails
Early on that faithful morning,
Whiles the companions took
No pain to grace the occasion,

Oh gosh, is that the time?
Is that an absolute
Gospel of the gory spectacle?
Indeed, we need to offer
Sacrifices of praise
To propitiate the gods,

Let the gracious protocol begin!
Mothers, please cover
That beautiful black skin
With that sunblock sheabutter cream,
And cover that gracious hips
With that piece of kente cloth,

My dear, please
Taste the sacred food
And swallow the egg also,
For sitting on a golden stool
Which stands on a precious mat,
Has become good news for the ancestors,

Now perceive this,
When the moonlight slipped
Past the curled edges
Of the shades of nature, and
The children faces gleamed,

I knew I had
Fallen victim to the sensual
Lures and snares of the
Twin towers protruding
From your glorious chest,

You have indeed kindled
The eternal flame within me,
My black eternal beauty,
You are truly
A fine African woman.

© PRINCE NANA ANIN-AGYEI
Email: nanaspeaks@gmail.com

I need more intimacy,
Wanna feel someone else's flesh and skin and hairs under my hands
Look into their eyes and know their body trusts me,
Know every single inch of ugly scars and hidden acnea, protruding bones and round stomach,
Wanna kiss, grab, tear apart and let the soft animals we are take over for once,
Worship,
Be worshipped,
Trust and be trusted,
Need to be pinned down like a ragdoll,
Be touched like a craving man i
want it all,
And maybe i do want it
with you.

Counting... Always... Counting.

A cup of herbal tea, maybe with some sugar.
If I feel up to it.

Maybe some soup, grilled cheese.
If I can stomach it.

Dinner. Whatever mom makes.
My only supervised meal.

Tired, all day... Every day.
Drowning in college papers.

The curves I worked so hard to get back...
Well. They're nearly gone.

Protruding hip bones,
Protruding collar bones,
Boney fingers,
Pale skin,
Fantastic figure and pretty ribs,
Cold toes and bad circulation.

Heart murmurs... Shaky breathing... Migraines... Exhaustion... Confusion... Lethargy... Weight loss

Shaking, Shaking, Shaking...
Shivering?

Gotta go make a cuppa, warm up a bit.

But... what's left for me to be healthy for, anyway?

I'll take a bath to warm up instead






Probably.

Quintessential charmer, libidinous crow pheasant, has an eye on him,
thinly disguised mating calls disclose her keenness of intention,
protruding derriere, provocative walk, her amour leaves
nothing to guess, 'what you fancy is my desire' her acts yell out to him.

As my mind goes crazy
My clock beats faster
And the dam protruding from my face can't hold back the Red Sea any longer.
Everything that was once pure becomes stained
Stained with my sorrow
Stained with my love stations ooze

And in the midst of all of this insanity I start to question whether my body even wants to feel whole heartedly sad.
And yet it's my wish to be numb,
But my desire of honesty
And love gives no allowance for
Feeling nothing.

The cult moves in
circle. Stargazing
starts. You lie buried in
wet retreat. Eyes protruding

The veil sends a sweet death.

The death. Only you would
know, what was the conversation
between the repentant
and priest.

Superfluous. To beautify
the grimace. The lips―
always cheat.

A black cloud devours the moon.

Hanging from a Star
The girl sat on her star. The dark towering flowers around her, cast shadows over her blank face. She walked around the side of her star to the grass so she could watch the fiery sun and look down at the fluffy billowing clouds in earth’s atmosphere. Lying, hating thoughts floated up from the beautiful blue and green planet below. The girl had been watching earth since it was first created. Cain’s first thoughts of ****** were heard by the girl. She watched the black plague wash through the world, killing millions. The hell of the holocaust burned through her mind like fire across her own skin. Sometimes she swore she could almost smell the melting flesh and boiling blood from the sick world below.
The girl nestled down in the warm grass and focused her guarded mind in preparation to listening in on the earth, like she did every other day. “Her nose is so ugly.” “Why didn’t I do more today?” “I miss her.” “I need to put at least ten percent in savings if I’m ever going to retire.” “I hope no one else notices this huge zit protruding from my face.” “Why didn’t I just kiss him?” “The sun is burning my eyes.” She made her way through selfish minds of the shallow population and then moved for relief, to the newborn children. Images of parents, lights, and bright colors flashed before her eyes. Each new child’s face seemed to be surrounded in a beautiful clear light. The girl wished the children had never been brought to that terrible planet.
One child in particular tugged on the girls thoughts, making the girl want to focus entirely on her. The light around the child was brilliant. The baby’s ocean eyes were open and focused on the one beautiful flower in the room. The details of the daisy were perfect in the child’s mind. The baby fell deeply in love with the white petals that curled softly around the bright yellow center. The girl’s mind was entranced by the lovely child. The girl named the perfect child Claire and sent heavenly visions to entertain the child’s thoughts as the hospital buzzed around her.
As Claire grew, the girl watched her red curls flourish and darken with each day. Her blue eyes bloomed as she turned into a happy toddler and her pale skin stayed radiant and cloudless. Claire’s mommy was a large, reserved woman, but loved her little girl with all her heart. Her mommy sang her to sleep each night and gave her everything she could afford to. But the floor of the trailer where they lived was layered in mud, cat feces, and tobacco. Her father’s face and clothes were covered in stains and the beard that he never remembered to shave had remnants of chewing tobacco that he hadn’t spit far enough. Every night, his drunk, angry voice roared throughout the house, cursing at whatever he could get into his hands first. Each time this happened, the ******* the star poured daisies into Claire’s mind as Claire buried her china face into a soiled pillow.
After a sublime day of school filled with telling time and and reading silly stories, Claire  skipped back to her hostel under the warm autumn sun. She opened her front door to find her mommy in a pool of ***** and blood. Claire screamed in horror and fled back down the steps to the closest residence, trying to see through her own flooded eyes as she tripped along the avenue. Claire’s father never even went to the hospital to inquire about his wife. The hospital gave up calling him, and she was buried in an unplanned graveyard, under the cheapest tombstone.
Claire became the subject of her father’s wrath. Several times a month he would take Claire to bed with him and **** her. She cried silently as he seized her tiny body, leaving large dark bruises where he should have left kindness. The ******* the star filled Claire with exquisite thoughts as he blemished her, but a child may not always be calmed in a situation of pure agony. Tears streamed from the star, watering the daisies next to the trashed trailer.
The ******* the star watched as Claire grew and learned. Finally, Claire vacated the ***** trailer park, on her way to a brighter future. Then Claire met Him. His thoughts were black. Though his eyes scoured Claire’s body, his smile seemed sincere. The ******* the star tried to keep Claire away from him, but Claire was in love with his kindness and moved in with him. The bruises seemed to appear again on a larger scale all down her arms and across her stomach. This man’s hands were harsher than her father’s, but his constant words of kindness drew Claire in, melting her heart into his ice cold soul. Claire dedicated herself to the man, and just as she did, his temper turned fierce and there was fire in his hands.  Other girls seemed to appear in their small apartment dressed in scant ****** and smirks.
One night his fingers skimmed like sand paper up her frail arms and the smell of alcohol breathed down on her face. His fiery hands hit her over and over, slamming her into walls, bloodying her hands and knees, and knocking her out cold. He left her there, sprawled out on the floor, bleeding freely from several gashes. The ******* the star could not reach Claire. Her mind was gone. She thought Claire was dead, so in the path of the drunken abuser, the ******* the star put a murdering thought into a killer’s mind. The abuser was shot in an alley where no one would find him. Angry wailing poured down onto the streets.
Claire woke up and posed in the apartment for weeks. The ******* the star perceived in dismay, that Claire’s light was out. Claire drank whatever alcohol was left there and sliced her arms from wrist to shoulder. The apartment turned grimy along with her blood and oil matted hair. Some of her wounds became infected and her face was no longer a china doll, but a red splotchy entanglement, smeared with dirt and tears. For those weeks it rained steadily as the ******* the star wept. No pleasant thoughts were sent to any human’s mind, but the daisies grew tall and out of control.
Claire’s blackened spirit left the cool, ***** apartment one morning. Her tiny body abandoned in a corner, was huddled in the fetal position, covered in dust bunnies. The ******* the star made a noose from a black daisy, and for the first time, the sky rained blood on earth. Each morning thereafter, the ******* the star walked through her forest of black daisies, retied a noose , and hung herself from the bottom of her star, overwhelmed by the appalling nature of the world below, blocking earth out of her mind with her own pain and suffering.

My hipbones rock me on the wooden floor 
Protruding from my frame 
Skin bruises from simply laying on my stomach
Yet I am not skinny
 red lines mark where the folds of my stomach have been, 
my arm like wings 
my thighs hugging each other tightly
 stretching occasionally my eye catches the reflection of a stick like woman I can't recognize in the dark window until I realize she is me 
as that settles in my true details fill in 
morphing the strange woman into the ugly that is me. 
Striving to become the strange woman that once was 
I shove a finger down my throat