first I smell myself.

the deep bass tonality of my musk,
hot, creamy, sweetness unique, of coffee and creamy,
my owned sweat oiled secretions massaged into her skin
emplaced by vigorous parts rubbing and tongue caressing,
under the fading shadows of my glancing, desirous admirings


then I smell herself.

sinking sunset glimpses of last nights parfume parfait,
scattered in random strategic locations architecturally planned,
some flavors come over me like modest waves,
others spelunking found in crevices, cracks and caves,
where humans tread in guileless search of guiltless pleasure

then I smell our sharings.

lemon and thyme, paprika, sea salt and pepper,
a basted rub laid upon animal skin consuming, and consumed,
the vinaigrette balsamic and California yellow raisins, pine nuts,
decorating leaves of red soil spinach and spicy arugula,
word salads, so miraculously ingenious, you swear off eating flesh

then I smell our combinations.

the air conditioned atmosphere that blends us properly chilled,
the olive oils pressed from two colored differing skins,
the mortal and pestle finely grinding our own fresh crumbled dirt,
appearing in places where dirt is wet panko crumbs encrusting us,
our combined liquidity, shaken and stirred, drying in martini tandem

it is 8:17am and this recipe of reciprocity,
at its most pungent peaking,
for soon raining waterfalls of potable city water
and the sophistry of French soap,
the pseudoscience of modern chemical shampoo,
together erasing, scrubbing away this poems aromatherapy tapestry,
your perplexed complexing nostrils will mock you once more,
for ever disbelieving, thinking you could no longer write of
only love poetry that crested high above the trite


Friday, March 29 2019

That flesh’d vizard – does it decay,
So much alike the ******.
My mortal stature – emaciated –
Forthwith; it’s programmed.

Do those lines – like trenches deep –
Carve moats for tears to flow.
And do they flow – like rivers march
My countenance; fallowed.

To rejuvenate – vials and vials,
Ointments in plethora.
I rub and rub, till the vizard cracks
Lo! Restore my aura.

Pseudoscience, falsehoods galore –
A vice of fiscality.
Like a cyst, does it tremor,
Melting my vanity.

Visage – deep – a pick inside my soul.
Those flakes of ego crumb.
A mien so ******, yet so loved…
Can they not see how numb
                         I am.

I remember behind the bookshelf,
by the young adults’ section,
how she picks off a paperback spine,
rests her finger on a half-forgotten name,
holds the edge against her skin and feels out a page.

we read the backs of books that day. run through twenty different blurbs,
let plotlines curl up into the air and swirl into the scent of musty paper reams,
wander past secondhand copies of Murakami novels and pick up pseudoscience theories,
flick through encyclopedias and chemistry theses while our voices entangle into
first-person points of view.

in the afternoon, we wonder at syntax. fix misplaced alphabets and authors left out of order.
on the eighth aisle she spots the old sci-fi series I read back when I was twelve,
and we laugh at the blurbs, at words like warp drive and plutonium capacitor which
would’ve thrilled our younger selves
until tired, we lie down on carpets and pretend to stargaze,
with old paperbacks as pillows -
ink rushes through our breaths.

There,
underneath the bookstore’s cheap fluorescent lights,
her hand reaches for a half-opened book
at the same time as mine;
a soft brush of fingertips on fingertips.

I look up and find words on her lips,
lifted from my synonyms and grafted onto her skin,
think - poetry.
think - all the punctuation running in disarray skipping syntax in the spaces of my synapses relapses and sonnet turns pentameter heartbeats run in free verse feel my chest grow too light and too heavy like all the voices that they kept measured in their stanzas were let loose into her smile,

until the hours grow long into closing time.

This is it, baby.

All we are is each other.
All we have left is the right to eat passion.

No. Not Now. Not with my back turned to time.
I'd like to face apocalypse, please.

"Entropy is a pseudoscience"
  Says my dad.
  But so is love.
         And materialism.


What happens when...
           My dreams come true and my life reveals itself as irrational?
            The humans are forced to realize they're already dead?
             I've lost everything, even nothing?
              We all have disamnesia?
               The communities of resistance are bought out?
                 The sustainability movement comes to terms with its own mortality?
                
                                                                                                         Love abandons us?

She makes small talk feel like a TED talk
She makes me feel like I know nothing at all
She’s too smart for me
I stumble when I speak
I’m drunk driving through this conversation
She is an agnostic angel
I’m a whiskey priest
But I only wanna get drunk off what she can teach
And I don’t know if she cares about how I preach
A lesson in pseudoscience in her backseat
Leaves us in an afterglow of creative problem solving

We agree to disagree

I am so sick that I feel
I am so sick that I hear
I am so sick that I smell
Sick of the patented experience

I am so insane I can read books
I am so insane I can converse
I am so insane I can see
Insane because of pseudoscience

I am mentally ill because of what I hear
I am mentally ill because of what I write
I am mentally ill because of what I see
Mentally ill because of segregation & isolation

I am mad because of audio software
I am mad because of video software
I am mad because of editing software
Mad because of channels & mixers in a studio

We are sane because of witnesses
We are sane because of kindness
We are sane because of love
Sane because of strangers

One day Dostoyevsk talked to me in dreams.
In my early teens, way before the time of my life.
A stripling adolescent,
misspent juvenile youth.
I sat on the roof of the bakery,
reading The Devils.
Over and over again,
until it started to make sense.

Before Kierkegaard,
I found life hard,
no meaning, no dreams came true.
Quantified in my mind,
applied to doctrinal differences I found within,
authenticating the delusions and disorientation of this absurd world we live in.

It all Sartre(d) with being and nothingness.
A cultural movement brought to public providence.
Ominously before I was born,
but I was still torn between being,
and nothingness,
like everyone else.
Distinguishing secular humanism,
rejecting pseudoscience,
apparently.

Now the Blade run’s across my skin.
Married to the cause,
with the force like Harrison,
can you appreciate the retort of
my existential crisis.
We could get lost in the Matrix,
in the “necessary absurdity of the human condition and the horror war”
Like Kubrick.

There’s beautiful new tricks I use to wake up each morning and go about my personal piece of silver screen.

I remember when I was
Self-conscious.
Sure, I still have my struggles-
Little negative thoughts navigate
Through nothingness natively out of
My mouth.
But, sometimes I like to think
I am the greatest.
Sometimes, I like what I do.
Through and through,
I try to keep this thought true,
Take something I learned and
Share it with you.
I feel new,
Just sometimes.
As if I am not who I was back then.
As if depression never took me,
And if social anxiety
Was a construct of pseudoscience.
Sometimes I feel stronger,
As if I can take on the world;
By my own hero,
And save the ones I love.
Sometimes, I feel the sunshine
And the weight lift from my shoulder.
The older
I get, the longer it stays.
I am getting better,
Or maybe I was never
Ill in the first place.
I can do things
Other cannot,
But also learn from those same people.
I can grow as me-
Stop the burning and cutting
And constant lonely late night crying.
I am free to be balanced
And to be me
And happy.
Sometimes, just sometimes,
I get a glimpse of the time if those moments
Became my everytime.
And then I smile, and breathe
Just breathe.
And continue to think of myself
As broken, but still beautiful

The law of attraction says that you attract what you think.

So, there's a chance you're attracted to me
because I think about you often.

Except the law of attraction fails
when walking into a sliding glass door.

Ever done that?
It's like stubbing your toe, only it's your face.
And though it's your face that takes the hit,
it really just hurts your spirit.

Nothing about it looks attractive.

Like the other day, a hawk — a widely respected bird of prey —
flew straight into my office window
with a humiliating thud
because it thought the reflection it saw
was more sky.

Hawks are supposed to see everything!

So the law of attraction
causes blindness.

It promotes crash landings.
Or at the least, awkward tripping
over words
or the lines we drew in sidewalk chalk.
It's just a friendly game of four square, right?
I’ll wait to step into your circle
only to stumble and fall for you
with a humiliating thud.

sorry, did you hear something?

It sounded faintly like a dream just shattered,
but I think you said this is your fiance.

so
nice
to
meet
you

I hope your wedding has an open bar.

I mean, I hope your wedding sets the bar
for
your
marriage
to reach limitless heights.

And don’t mind the mess. I’ll just sweep it up like nothing happened and catch up with you love birds later (never) - watch out for the glass.

This law sounds a lot like gravity, and it too
is flawed because people fall
for people that don't fall back.
And then you get the odd man out
walking into closed doors and wanting to curse on impact,
but I will hold my tongue.
Because cursing will attract curses.
Instead, I'll bring gifts — I know,
a stuffed teddy bird —
and I'll leave one at the foot
of every sliding glass door
that doesn't open.

I realize that sounds creepy.

So I’ll just leave them by the window
(my window)
where I can watch the moon I shot for
behind the clouds.
Until another blind hawk goes down.
Then it's a less attractive view.

It's hard to get sleep in an empty bed,
to wake up in front of a fake tree in late January
and open the gifts I never got to give.

The law of attraction:
it’s an ugly Christmas sweater.

If I can't attract who I think,
then I'll repel the cold that I feel
until I'm convinced that this empty feeling
is freedom - the kind that precedes flight.

I believe in defying the gravity of my emotions.

Therefore, I don't believe in laws.
They just break.
I once believed in marriage
until it broke
and I want my daughter
to believe it was no one’s fault

This is a lawless country — think feudal Japan —
where lovers are fighters and who is to tell the masterless heart what to do.
It's a teenager
who never made it past high school
because it keeps skipping class.

Fear not: I am a grown up.
I am too old to be falling
for the pseudoscience of false hope
even if our chemistry doesn't lie.
Except our math doesn't add up.
And my history is an essay on wartime aviation
crumpled and thrown out of an open window
because I used the word 'alone' too many times
to describe what it feels like to fly solo

Alone means nothing on paper
It should be torn in half:
All and One no longer together

Anything that isn't one
must be in pieces,
and being with some One
is not the end all, be all

God was a lonely man for Christ sake

I’ll think of other words:
Alone, all one, no.
One.

Thinking attracts no one.

I'll make up a new law:
don't think. Move

Just not near anything made of glass.
It’s bad for the birds.
I got nothing but love for the birds.

Teachers never liked me because i asked ''too many questions'',
that's when i knew the whole sistem was failure,
creating obedient slaves to not use their brains,
locked in invisible chains,
force feed them with trends,pseudoscience and ''intellect'',
while they shouting ''we are free'',
having weak mindset,
killing your brain cells with alcohol,drugs and pills,
followed by excuse ''we are just having fun'',
they forget some things can not be undone.

Trying to keep these emotions in check,
Instead of going for enemies necks,
Like a hyena on the defence,
I’m Stuck in a trance.
Trying to protect,
A heart so pure,
Yet also so insecure.

Why do I let it get to me?
Got me all chemically imbalanced,
Looking more of an *** than a donkey.
But, I’m ******* if I speak out or remain silent.
Trying not to step on glass,
Getting told I should be careful where I’m stepping.
For if I step on that glass,
I’m treated as defiant.
With my words becoming,
Nothing more than pseudoscience!
Perhaps I care too much?
After all society tells me to toughen up.
So, I build up these barriers.
But it’s never enough.
For my hearts still fragile.
Got me feeling like a bad child.
Fighting back against demons like I’m Madchild.
Got me wondering if trauma,
Truly can be reconciled?

For now though I’m just...
Trying to keep these emotions in check,
Instead of going for enemies necks,
Like a hyena on the defence,
I’m Stuck in a trance.
Trying to protect,
A heart so pure,
Yet also so insecure.

Gods sick threw up all over the floor
The odds slick slidin towards war
A ***** an skin splits with black tar
Tin soldiers march after a dark star
We molder under a tyrants charge
Flickering compliance on the verge
Without defiance suffer the purge
Silent laughter after every surge

A tyrant who defies sense and science
Irate eyes die and fry in noncompliance
Half a brains alliance with petulance
Ants who think themselves giants
A gross death squashed by pseudoscience
Until the breath stills they rave and rant
Many a contrivance for the easily pliant
Really dyin because of words on an appliance

i woke up thinking of you just now
and how you snaked your arms
around my waist and breathed
your hot lies onto the skin of my ear
just so that you could remind me that
you were there.

ironically your pseudoscience;
you know,
where you presented your false
admiration and adoration and affection towards
me, led me to believe you
actually cared.

you could not go two weeks without speaking to
her. but what is wrong with me?
all the words escaping your lips
of her inadequacy and my perfection.
were they lies— or just false truths?
to me and you. these are not the same.

i hope one day you can walk through
a hall of mirrors and not feel empty anymore.
i stole your reflection once you refused
to see it in my eyes. my tears have flown miles.
i would have sailed miles for you.

you… you
knew all of my entrails in the
****** and beautiful ways.
you filled my heart with the innocence of love
and ripped my soul out with betrayal. god
i feel so sorry for you.

i pity you for losing me. i am the
purest of flowers in the crystal palace, and
whether i be a daisy or a tulip,
although your calloused hands may have plucked
me, i have put my own vase on a pedestal and
no, you may not damage my petals.


of course, along with a grain of salt, i
remind myself of all the things you have taught me:
i am best when i create my own happiness.
you cannot build your own facade and expect others to
follow your cues. and
i will never let go the fact that you hurt me.

from you, to my ******, to the boy who i thought loved me then
threw me down the stairs because i thought i was pregnant,
each of you have pinned me down like some strange form
of taxidermy. the prowess being stripping —
clipping me of my wings and framed amongst the rest of your empty cadavers.

i hope you will never forget the night
we sat in your car in silence. you raised your
hand to caress my cheek and i flinched. i was so used to being
hit instead of held. you promised me,
on your grandmother’s grave, that you would never hurt me.

i would have preferred a black eye over snapped heartstrings. i will never know how long you planned on leading me on.
most likely nine months, as it is difficult to conceal not only an affair,
but a baby as well. how mesmerizing is it that you have the
ability to provide such an innocence to the world?

it will be sad to see you raise a child,
as we had talked about our desire for them. and
to know that i never made a lasting impression on you.
i was always a doormat, never the door. you never
opened me up and saw me for what we could have
been.

through the door, a wilted flower sits. just beyond
there is you and i.
we refuse to look at eachother.
i hope. i
hope you hate the taste of Dr. Pepper,
and you can never get my perfume out
of your bedsheets.

Interestingly, it seems that Kentucky
Enjoys incredible satisfaction
In boasting the Ark Encounter, which is
A strange and bizarre tourist attraction.

Noah’s Ark--an allegory--
Is presented as history.
That folks believe the pseudoscience
Involved is a total mystery.

Misleading information awaits
People who choose to visit the park.
For example, replicas
Of dinosaurs are on the ark!

The park's creator believes that Earth
Really isn't so very old--
Only around 6,000 years.
He tries to prove it, so I am told.

What he's doing is misleading folks--
Brainwashing kids, or so it appears.
Dinosaurs predated human
Beings by millions and millions of years!

The structure itself might be amazing--
A massive work of art. Who knows?
But being something described in a popular
Tale is about as far as it goes.

The story of Noah is interesting;
However, depicting it as fact
Is an inaccurate practice, which
By logic and reason cannot be backed.

-by Bob B (10-30-23)

By: Cedric McClester

On the anniversary of
The January 6th violence
Only two Republicans
Stood there in silence
It was almost as an act
Of defiance
Those absent revealed
Their servile reliance

On a former president
Who defies science
Which has been demonstrated
By his noncompliance
With even the most basic
Acts of reliance
On his prescriptions
Of pseudoscience

On the anniversary
Of a fateful date
Most Republicans feared
Being crushed by the weight
Of the former president’s
Penchant for hate
And his innate ability
To complicate

Their present and future
Political ambitions
Which has most of them
On various missions
To avoid being made
Acts of attrition
And having to show
Their true contrition







Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2022.  All rights reserved.

Oh God,
it's neuro this
and you know that,
there's nothing like
being crazy.

The ways we try
to compromise
to get the grit out
from our eyes
until at last we
realise
we only see
what we want to see.

A full lobotomy
is available to those
who follow me,
but let's face it,
if you do
why would you need one?

Sick of pseudoscience
and of those who think
it's real and
of those who make a
meal of it,

let me out of here.

Pseudoscience and political discussions
are like ***** and stereotypes of Schrödinger's Russians.
They may or may not be related
and they may or may not be true
as long as there's no proof,
there's nothing you can do.

I have grown distasted regarding
left and right and alt and fright.
Why does everyone need recognition
and a border on their gender definition?

We are people, we are human, men and women
or whatever name you want to have and give.
I was always taught to live
and let.

Things new and weird are fine by me,
just let people be. It doesn't matter what we say.
As long as it doesn't affect us in
a negatively connotated way.

Intrinsically mind
Is a crime
Of defiance
Each rhyme defies reason,
Vies not
For compliance
From logic’s
Inscrutable,
Useless appliance
Reliance on gods’
Claim to feign
Pseudoscience
Is of their own making
A seed of deception
And truth
At root-taking
Forsaken life forms
To beyond the pain-staking
Awakening to
What divines inspiration
Confined in the absence
Of its intimation
Implied,
Deified,
Or denied
Realization
Remaining forever
A mortal endeavor
To render a purpose
From service
Indentured
As masterpiece puzzles
Of willing submission
To passion’s
Fine works of heart’s
Artful ambition
Conditioned to love
And to hate
Its creator
To take its place,
Seal it’s fate,
Make its world
Greater