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Meena Menon Sep 2021
Flicker Shimmer Glow

The brightest star can shine even with thick black velvet draped over it.  
Quartz, lime and salt crystals formed a glass ball.
The dark womb held me, warm and soft.  
My mom called my cries when I was born the most sorrowful sound she had ever heard.  
She said she’d never heard a baby make a sound like that.    
I’d open my eyes in low light until the world’s light healed rather than hurt.  
The summer before eighth grade, July 1992,
I watched a shooting star burn by at 100,000 miles per hour as I stood on the balcony  
while my family celebrated my birthday inside.  
It made it into the earth’s atmosphere
but it didn’t look like it was coming down;
I know it didn’t hit the ground but it burned something in the time it was here.  
The glass ball of my life cracked inside.  
Light reflected off the salt crystal cracks.  
I saw the beauty of the light within.  
Nacre from my shell kept those cracks from getting worse,
a wild pearl as defense mechanism.  
In 2001, I quit my job after they melted and poured tar all over my life.  
All summer literature class bathtubs filled with rose hip oil cleaned the tar.  
That fall logic and epistemology classes spewed black ink all over my philosophy
written over ten years then.  
Tar turned to asphalt when I met someone from my old job for a drink in November
and it paved a road for my life that went to the hospital I was in that December
where it sealed the roof on my life
when I was almost murdered there
and in February after meeting her for another drink.  
They lit a fire at the top of the glacier and pushed the burning pile of black coal off the edge,
burnt red, looking like flames falling into the valley.  
While that blazed the side of the cliff something lit an incandescent light.  
The electricity from the metal lightbulb ***** went through wires and heated the filament between until it glowed.  
I began putting more work into emotional balance from things I learned at AA meetings.  
In Spring 2003, the damage that the doctors at the hospital in 2001 had done
made it harder for light to reflect from the cracks in the glass ball.
I’d been eating healthy and trying to get regular exercises since 1994
but in Spring 2003 I began swimming for an hour every morning .  
The water washed the pollution from the burning coals off
And then I escaped in July.  
I moved to London to study English Language and Linguistics.  
I would’ve studied English Language and Literature.  
I did well until Spring 2004 when I thought I was being stalked.  
I thought I was manic.  
I thought I was being stalked.  
I went home and didn’t go back for my exams after spring holiday.  
Because I felt traumatized and couldn’t write poetry anymore,
I used black ink to write my notes for my book on trauma and the Russian Revolution.
I started teaching myself German.  
I stayed healthy.  
In 2005, my parents went to visit my mom’s family in Malaysia for two weeks.
I thought I was being stalked.  
I knew I wasn’t manic.  
I thought I was being stalked.  
I told my parents when they came home.  
They thought I was manic.  
I showed them the shoe prints in the snow of different sizes from the woods to the windows.  
They thought I was manic.  
I was outside of my comfort zone.  
I moved to California. I found light.  
I made light,
the light reflected off the salt crystals I used to heal the violence inflicted on me from then on.  
The light turned the traffic lights to not just green from red
but amber and blue.  
The light turned the car signals left and right.  
The light reflected off of salt crystals, light emitting diodes,
electrical energy turned directly to light,
electroluminescence.  
The electrical currents flowed through,
illuminating.  
Alone in the world, I moved to California in July 2005
but in August  I called the person I escaped in 2003,
the sulfur and nitrogen that I hated.  
He didn’t think I was manic but I never said anything.
I never told him why I asked him to move out to California.  
When his coal seemed like only pollution,
I asked him to leave.  
He threatened me.  
I called the authorities.  
They left me there.
He laughed.  
Then the violence came.  
****:  stabbed and punched, my ****** bruised, purple and swollen.  
The light barely reflected from the glass ball wIth cracks through all the acid rain, smoke and haze.
It would take me half an hour to get my body to do what my mind told it to after.  
My dad told me my mom had her cancer removed.
The next day, the coal said if I wanted him to leave he’d leave.  
I booked his ticket.
I drove him to the airport.  
Black clouds gushed the night before for the first time in months,
the sky clear after the rain.  
He was gone and I was free,
melted glass, heated up and poured—
looked like fire,
looked like the Snow Moon in February
with Mercury in the morning sky.  
I worked through ****.  
I worked to overcome trauma.  
Electricity between touch and love caused acid rain, smoke, haze, and mercury
to light the discharge lamps, streetlights and parking lot lights.
Then I changed the direction of the light waves.  
Like lead glass breaks up the light,
lead from the coal, cleaned and replaced by potassium,
glass cut clearly, refracting the light,
electrolytes,
electrical signals lit through my body,
thick black velvet drapes gone.  





















Lava

I think that someone wrote into some palm leaf a manuscript, a gift, a contract.  
After my parents wedding, while they were still in India,
they found out that my dad’s father and my mom’s grandfather worked for kings administering temples and collecting money for their king from the farmers that worked the rice paddies each king owned.  They both left their homes before they left for college.  
My dad, a son of a brahmin’s son,
grew up in his grandmother’s house.  
His mother was not a Brahmin.  
My mother grew up in Malaysia where she saw the children from the rubber plantation
when she walked to school.  
She doesn’t say what caste she is.  
He went to his father’s house, then college.  
He worked, then went to England, then Canada.  
She went to India then Canada.  
They moved to the United States around Christmas 1978
with my brother while she was pregnant with me.  
My father signed a contract with my mother.  
My parents took ashes and formed rock,
the residue left in brass pots in India,
the rocks, so hot, they turned back to lava miles away before turning back to ash again,
then back to rock,
the lava from a super volcano,
the ash purple and red.  


















Circles on a Moss Covered Volcano

The eruption beatifies the magma.  
It becomes obsidian,
only breaks with a fracture,
smooth circles where it breaks.  

My mom was born on the grass
on a lawn
in a moss covered canyon at the top of a volcanic island.  
My grandfather lived in Malaysia before the Japanese occupied.  
When the volcano erupted,
the lava dried at the ocean into black sand.  
The British allied with the Communist Party of Malaysia—
after they organized.  
After the Americans defeated the Japanese at Pearl Harbor,
the British took over Malaysia again.  
They kept different groups apart claiming they were helping them.  
The black sand had smooth pebbles and sharp rocks.  
Ethnic Malay farmers lived in Kampongs, villages.  
Indians lived on plantations.  
The Chinese lived in towns and urban areas.  
Ethnic Malays wanted independence.
In 1946, after strikes, demonstrations, and boycotts
the British agreed to work with them.  
The predominantly Chinese Communist Party of Malaysia went underground,
guerrilla warfare against the British,
claiming their fight was for independence.  
For the British, that emergency required vast powers
of arrest, detention without trial and deportation to defeat terrorism.  
The Emergency became less unpopular as the terrorism became worse.  
The British were the iron that brought oxygen through my mom’s body.  
She loved riding on her father’s motorcycle with him
by the plantations,
through the Kampongs
and to the city, half an hour away.  
The British left Malaysia independent in 1957
with Malaysian nationalists holding most state and federal government offices.  
As the black sand stretches towards the ocean,
it becomes big stones of dried lava, flat and smooth.  

My mom thought her father and her uncle were subservient to the British.  
She thought all things, all people were equal.  
When her father died when she was 16, 1965,
they moved to India,
my mother,
a foreigner in India, though she’s Indian.  
She loved rock and roll and mini skirts
and didn’t speak the local language.  
On the dried black lava,
it can be hard to know the molten lava flickers underneath there.  
Before the Korean War,
though Britain and the United States wanted
an aggressive resolution
condemning North Korea,
they were happy
that India supported a draft resolution
condemning North Korea
for breach of the peace.  
During the Korean War,
India, supported by Third World and other Commonwealth nations,
opposed United States’ proposals.
They were able to change the U.S. resolution
to include the proposals they wanted
and helped end the war.  
China wanted the respect of Third World nations
and saw the United States as imperialist.  
China thought India was a threat to the Third World
by taking aid from the United States and the Soviets.  
Pakistan could help with that and a seat at the United Nations.  
China wanted Taiwan’s seat at the UN.
My mother went to live with her uncle,
a communist negotiator for a corporation,
in India.  
A poet,
he threw parties and invited other artists, musicians and writers.  
I have the same brown hyperpigmentation at my joints that he had.  
During the day, only the steam from the hot lava can be seen.  
In 1965, Pakistani forces went into Jammu and Kashmir with China’s support.  
China threatened India after India sent its troops in.  
Then they threatened again before sending their troops to the Indian border.  
The United States stopped aid to Pakistan and India.
Pakistan agreed to the UN ceasefire agreement.  
Pakistan helped China get a seat at the UN
and tried to keep the west from escalating in Vietnam.  
The smoldering sound of the lava sizzles underneath the dried lava.  
When West Pakistan refused to allow East Pakistan independence,
violence between Bengalis and Biharis developed into upheaval.  
Bengalis moved to India
and India went into East Pakistan.  
Pakistan surrendered in December 1971.  
East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh

The warm light of the melted lava radiates underneath but burns.  
In 1974, India tested the Smiling Buddha,
a nuclear bomb.  
After Indira Gandhi’s conviction for election fraud in 1973,
Marxist Professor Narayan called for total revolution
and students protested all over India.  
With food shortages, inflation and regional disputes
like Sikh separatists training in Pakistan for an independent Punjab,
peasants and laborers joined the protests.  
Railway strikes stopped the economy.  
In 1975, Indira Gandhi, the Iron Lady,
declared an Emergency,
imprisoning political opponents, restricting freedoms and restricting the press,
claiming threats to national security
because the war with Pakistan had just ended.  
The federal government took over Kerala’s communist dominated government and others.  

My mom could’ve been a dandelion, but she’s more like thistle.  
She has the center that dries and flutters in the wind,
beautiful and silky,
spiny and prickly,
but still fluffy, downy,
A daisy.
They say thistle saved Scotland from the Norse.  
Magma from the volcano explodes
and the streams of magma fly into the air.  
In the late 60s,
the civil rights movement rose
against the state in Northern Ireland
for depriving Catholics
of influence and opportunity.
The Northern Irish police,
Protestant and unionist, anti-catholic,
responded violently to the protests and it got worse.  
In 1969, the British placed Arthur Young,
who had worked at the Federation of Malaya
at the time of their Emergency
at the head of the British military in Northern Ireland.
The British military took control over the police,
a counter insurgency rather than a police force,
crowd control, house searches, interrogation, and street patrols,
use of force against suspects and uncooperative citizens.  
Political crimes were tolerated by Protestants but not Catholics.  
The lava burns the rock off the edge of the volcano.  

On January 30, 1972, ****** Sunday,  
British Army policing killed 13 unarmed protesters
fighting for their rights over their neighborhood,
protesting the internment of suspected nationalists.
That led to protests across Ireland.  
When banana leaves are warmed,
oil from the banana leaves flavors the food.  
My dad flew from Canada to India in February 1972.  
On February 4, my dad met my mom.  
On February 11, 1972,
my dad married my mom.  
They went to Canada,
a quartz singing bowl and a wooden mallet wrapped in suede.  
The rock goes down with the lava, breaking through the rocks as it goes down.  
In March 1972, the British government took over
because they considered the Royal Ulster Police and the Ulster Special Constabulary
to be causing most of the violence.  
The lava blocks and reroutes streams,
melts snow and ice,
flooding.  
Days later, there’s still smoke, red.  
My mom could wear the clothes she liked
without being judged
with my dad in Canada.  
She didn’t like asking my dad for money.
My dad, the copper helping my mother use that iron,
wanted her to go to college and finish her bachelors degree.
She got a job.  
In 1976, the police took over again in Northern Ireland
but they were a paramilitary force—
armored SUVs, bullet proof jackets, combat ready
with the largest computerized surveillance system in the UK,
high powered weapons,
trained in counter insurgency.  
Many people were murdered by the police
and few were held accountable.  
Most of the murdered people were not involved in violence or crime.  
People were arrested under special emergency powers
for interrogation and intelligence gathering.  
People tried were tried in non-jury courts.  
My mom learned Malayalam in India
but didn’t speak well until living with my dad.  
She also learned to cook after getting married.  
Her mother sent her recipes; my dad cooked for her—
turmeric, cumin, coriander, cayenne and green chiles.  
Having lived in different countries,
my mom’s food was exposed to many cultures,
Chinese and French.
Ground rock, minerals and glass
covered the ground
from the ash plume.  
She liked working.  

A volcano erupted for 192 years,
an ice age,
disordered ices, deformed under pressure
and ordered ice crystals, brittle in the ice core records.  
My mother liked working.  
Though Khomeini was in exile by the 1970s in Iran,
more people, working and poor,
turned to him and the ****-i-Ulama for help.
My mom didn’t want kids though my dad did.
She agreed and in 1978 my brother was born.
Iran modernized but agriculture and industry changed so quickly.  
In January 1978, students protested—
censorship, surveillance, harassment, illegal detention and torture.  
Young people and the unemployed joined.  
My parents moved to the United States in December 1978.  
The regime used a lot of violence against the protesters,
and in September 1978 declared martial law in Iran.  
Troops were shooting demonstrators.
In January 1979, the Shah and his family fled.  
On February 11, 1979, my parents’ anniversary,
the Iranian army declared neutrality.  
I was born in July 1979.
The chromium in emeralds and rubies colors them.
My brother was born in May and I was born in July.

Obsidian—
iron, copper and chromium—
isn’t a gas
but it isn’t a crystal;
it’s between the two,
the ordered crystal and the disordered gas.  
They made swords out of obsidian.  





Warm Light Shatters

The eruption beatifies the magma.  
It becomes obsidian,
only breaks with a fracture,
smooth circles where it breaks.  

My dad was born on a large flat rock on the edge of the top
of a hill,
Molasses, sweet and dark, the potent flavor dominates,
His father, the son of a Brahmin,
His mother from a lower caste.
His father’s family wouldn’t touch him,
He grew up in his mother’s mother’s house on a farm.  
I have the same brown hyperpigmentation spot on my right hand that he has.

In 1901, D’Arcy bought a 60 year concession for oil exploration In Iran.
The Iranian government extended it for another 32 years in 1933.
At that time oil was Iran’s “main source of income.”
In 1917’s Balfour Declaration, the British government proclaimed that they favored a national home for the Jews in Palestine and their “best endeavors to facilitate the achievement” of that.

The British police were in charge of policing in the mandate of Palestine.  A lot of the policemen they hired were people who had served in the British army before, during the Irish War for Independence.  
The army tried to stop how violent the police were, police used torture and brutality, some that had been used during the Irish War for Independence, like having prisoners tied to armored cars and locomotives and razing the homes of people in prison or people they thought were related to people thought to be rebels.
The police hired Arab police and Jewish police for lower level policing,
Making local people part of the management.
“Let Arab police beat up Arabs and Jewish police beat up Jews.”

The lava blocks and reroutes streams, melts snow and ice, flooding.
In 1922, there were 83,000 Jews, 71,000 Christians, and 589,000 Muslims.
The League If Nations endorsed the British Mandate.
During an emergency, in the 1930s, British regulations allowed collective punishment, punishing villages for incidents.
Local officers in riots often deserted and also shared intelligence with their own people.
The police often stole, destroyed property, tortured and killed people.  
Arab revolts sapped the police power over Palestinians by 1939.

My father’s mother was from a matrilineal family.
My dad remembers tall men lining up on pay day to respectfully wait for her, 5 feet tall.  
She married again after her husband died.
A manager from a tile factory,
He spoke English so he supervised finances and correspondence.
My dad, a sunflower, loved her: she scared all the workers but exuded warmth to the people she loved.

Obsidian shields people from negative energy.
David Cargill founded the Burmah Oil Co. in 1886.
If there were problems with oil exploration in Burma and Indian government licenses, Persian oil would protect the company.  
In July 1906, many European oil companies, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and others, allied to protect against the American oil company, Standard Oil.
D’Arcy needed money because “Persian oil took three times as long to come on stream as anticipated.”
Burmah Oil Co. began the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. as a subsidiary.
Ninety-seven percent of British Petroleum was owned by Burmah Oil Co.
By 1914, the British government owned 51% of the Anglo-Persian Oil Co.  
Anglo-Persian acquired independence from Burmah Oil and Royal Dutch Shell with two million pounds from the British government.

The lava burns the rock off the edge of the volcano.
In 1942, after the Japanese took Burma,
the British destroyed their refineries before leaving.
The United Nations had to find other sources of oil.
In 1943, Japan built the Burma-Thailand Railroad with forced labor from the Malay peninsula who were mostly from the rubber plantations.

The rock goes down with the lava, breaking through the rocks as it goes down.
In 1945. Japan destroyed their refineries before leaving Burma.
Cargill, Watson and Whigham were on the Burmah Oil Co. Board and then the Anglo Iranian Oil Co. Board.  

In 1936 Palestine, boycotts, work stoppages, and violence against British police officials and soldiers compelled the government to appoint an investigatory commission.  
Leaders of Egypt, Trans Jordan, Syria and Iraq helped end the work stoppages.
The British government had the Peel Commission read letters, memoranda, and petitions and speak with British officials, Jews and Arabs.  
The Commission didn’t believe that Arabs and Jews could live together in a single Jewish state.
Because of administrative and financial difficulties the Colonial Secretary stated that to split Palestine into Arab and Jewish states was impracticable.  
The Commission recommended transitioning 250,000 Arabs and 1500 Jews with British control over their oil pipeline, their naval base and Jerusalem.  
The League of Nations approved.
“It will not remove the grievance nor prevent the recurrence,” Lord Peel stated after.
The Arab uprising was much more militant after Peel.  Thousands of Arabs were wounded, ten thousand were detained.  
In Sykes-Picot and the Husain McMahon agreements, the British promised the Arabs an independent state but they did not keep that promise.  
Representatives from the Arab states rejected the Peel recommendations.
United Nations General Assembly Resolution181 partitioned Palestine into Arab and Jewish states with an international regime for the city of Jerusalem backed by the United States and the Soviet Union.  

The Israeli Yishuv had strong military and intelligence organization —-  
the British recognized that their interest was with the Arabs and abstained from the vote.  
In 1948, Israel declared the establishment of its state.  
Ground rock, minerals, and gas covered the ground from the ash plume.
The Palestinian police force was disbanded and the British gave officers the option of serving in Malaya.

Though Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy supported snd tried to get Israel to offer the Arabs concessions, it wasn’t a major priority and didn’t always approve of Israel’s plans.
Arabs that had supported the British to end Turkish rule stopped supporting the West.  
Many Palestinians joined left wing groups and violent third world movements.  
Seventy-eight percent of the territory of former Palestine was under Israel’s control.  

My dad left for college in 1957 and lived in an apartment above the United States Information services office.
Because he graduated at the top of his class, he was given a job with the public works department of the government on the electricity board.  
“Once in, you’ll never leave.”
When he wanted a job where he could do real work, his father was upset.
He broke the chains with bells for vespers.
He got a job in Calcutta at Kusum Products and left the government, though it was prestigious to work there.
In the chemical engineering division, one of the projects he worked on was to design a *** distillery, bells controlled by hammers, hammers controlled by a keyboard.
His boss worked in the United Kingdom for. 20 years before the company he worked at, part of Power Gas Corporation, asked him to open a branch in Calcutta.
He opened the branch and convinced an Industrialist to open a company doing the same work with him.  The branch he opened closed after that.  
My dad applied for labor certification to work abroad and was selected.  
His boss wrote a reference letter for my him to the company he left in the UK.  My dad sent it telling the company when he was leaving for the UK.  
The day he left for London, he got the letter they sent in the mail telling him to take the train to Sheffield the next day and someone from the firm would meet him at the station.  
His dad didn’t know he left, he didn’t tell him.
He broke the chains with chimes for schisms.


Anglo-Persian Oil became Anglo-Iranian Oil in 1935.
The British government used oil and Anglo-Persian oil to fight communism, have a stronger relationship with the United States and make the United Kingdom more powerful.  
The National Secularists, the Tudeh, and the Communists wanted to nationalize Iran’s oil and mobilized the Iranian people.
The British feared nationalization in Iran would incite political parties like the Secular Nationalists all over the world.  
In 1947, the Iranian government passed the Single Article Law that “[increased] investment In welfare benefits, health, housing, education, and implementation of Iranianization through substitution of foreigners” at Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.
“Anglo-Iranian Oil Company made more profit in 1950 than it paid to the Iranian government in royalties over the previous half century.”
The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company tried to negotiate a new concession and claimed they’d hire more Iranian people into jobs held by British and people from other nationalities at the company.
Their hospitals had segregated wards.  
On May 1, 1951, the Iranian government passed a bill that nationalized Anglo- Iranian Oil Co.’s holdings.  
During the day, only the steam from the hot lava can be seen.
In August 1953, the Iranian people elected Mossadegh from the Secular Nationalist Party as prime minister.
The British government with the CIA overthrew Mossadegh using the Iranian military after inducing protests and violent demonstrations.  
Anglo-Iranian Oil changed its name to British Petroleum in 1954.
Iranians believe that America destroyed Iran’s “last chance for democracy” and blamed America for Iran’s autocracy, its human rights abuses, and secret police.

The smoldering sound of the lava sizzles underneath the dried lava.  
In 1946, Executive Yuan wanted control over 4 groups of Islands in the South China Sea to have a stronger presence there:  the Paracels, the Spratlys, Macclesfield Bank, and the Pratas.
The French forces in the South China Sea would have been stronger than the Chinese Navy then.
French Naval forces were in the Gulf of Tonkin, U.S. forces were in the Taiwan Strait, the British were in Hong Kong, and the Portuguese were in Macao.
In the 1950s, British snd U.S. oil companies thought there might be oil in the Spratlys.  
By 1957, French presence in the South China Sea was hardly there.  

When the volcano erupted, the lava dried at the ocean into black sand.
By 1954, the Tudeh Party’s communist movement and  intelligence organization had been destroyed.  
Because of the Shah and his government’s westernization policies and disrespectful treatment of the Ulama, Iranians began identifying with the Ulama and Khomeini rather than their government.  
Those people joined with secular movements to overthrow the Shah.  

In 1966, Ne Win seized power from U Nu in Burma.
“Soldiers ruled Burma as soldiers.”
Ne Win thought that western political
Institutions “encouraged divisions.”
Minority groups found foreign support for their separatist goals.
The Karens and the Mons supported U Nu in Bangkok.  


Rare copper, a heavy metal, no alloys,
a rock in groundwater,
conducts electricity and heat.
In 1965, my Dad’s cousin met him at Heathrow, gave him a coat and £10 and brought him to a bed and breakfast across from Charing Cross Station where he’d get the train to Sheffield the next morning.
He took the train and someone met him at the train station.  
At the interview they asked him to design a grandry girder, the main weight bearing steel girder as a test.
Iron in the inner and outer core of the earth,
He’d designed many of those.  
He was hired and lived at the YMCA for 2 1/2 years.  
He took his mother’s family name, Menon, instead of his father’s, Varma.
In 1967, he left for Canada and interviewed at Bechtel before getting hired at Seagrams.  
Iron enables blood to carry oxygen.
His boss recommended him for Dale Carnegie’s leadership training classes and my dad joined the National Instrument Society and became President.
He designed a still In Jamaica,
Ordered all the parts, nuts and bolts,
Had all the parts shipped to Jamaica and made sure they got there.
His boss supervised the construction, installation and commission in Jamaica.
Quartz, heat and fade resistant, though he was an engineer and did the work of an engineer, my dad only had the title, technician so my dad’s boss thought he wasn’t getting paid enough but couldn’t get his boss to offer more than an extra $100/week or the title of engineer; he told my dad he thought he should leave.
In 1969, he got a job at Celanese, which made rayon.
He quit Celanese to work at McGill University and they allowed him to take classes to earn his MBA while working.  

The United States and Israel’s alliance was strong by 1967.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 at the end of the Third Arab Israeli War didn’t mention the Palestinians but mentioned the refugee problem.
After 1967, the Palestinians weren’t often mentioned and when mentioned only as terrorists.  
Palestinians’ faith in the “American sponsored peace process” diminished, they felt the world community ignored and neglected them also.
Groups like MAN that stopped expecting anything from Arab regimes began hijacking airplanes.
By 1972, the Palestine Liberation Organization had enough international support to get by the United States’ veto in the United Nations Security Council and Arab League recognition as representative of the Palestinian people.
The Palestinians knew the United States stated its support, as the British had, but they weren’t able to accomplish anything.  
The force Israel exerted in Johnson’s United States policy delivered no equilibrium for the Palestinians.  

In 1969, all political parties submitted to the BSPP, Burma Socialist Programme Party.
Ne Win nationalized banks and oil and deprived minorities of opportunities.
Ne Win became U Nu Win, civilian leader of Burma in 1972 and stopped the active role that U Nu defined for Burma internationally
He put military people in power even when they didn’t have experience which triggered “maldistribution of goods and chronic shortages.”  
Resources were located in areas where separatist minorities had control.

The British presence in the South China Sea ended in 1968.  
The United States left Vietnam in 1974 and China went into the Western Paracels.
The U.S. didn’t intervene and Vietnam took the Spratlys.
China wanted to claim the continental shelf In the central part of the South China Sea and needed the Spratlys.
The United States mostly disregarded the Ulama In Iran and bewildered the Iranian people by not supporting their revolution.

Obsidian—
iron, copper and chromium—
isn’t a gas
but it isn’t a crystal;
it’s between the two,
the ordered crystal and the disordered gas.  
They made swords out of obsidian.


Edelweiss

I laid out in my backyard in my bikini.  
I love the feeling of my body in the sun.  
I’d be dark from the end of spring until winter.
The snow froze my bare feet through winter ,
my skin pale.
American towns in 1984,
Free, below glaciers the sunlight melted the snow,
a sea of green and the edelweiss on the edge of the  limestone,
frosted but still strong.    
When the spring warmed the grass,
the grass warmed my feet. 
The whole field looked cold and white from the glacier but in the meadow,
the bright yellow centers of those flowers float free in the center of the white petals.
The bright yellow center of those edelweiss scared the people my parents ran to America from India to get away from.  
On a sidewalk in Queens, New York in 1991, the men stared and yelled comments at me in short shorts and a fitted top in the summer.  
I grabbed my dad’s arm.

























The Bread and Coconut Butter of Aparigraha

Twelve year old flowerhead,
Marigold, yarrow and nettle,
I’d be all emotion
If not for all my work
From the time I was a teenager.
I got depressed a lot.
I related to people I read about
In my weather balloon,
Grasping, ignorant, and desperate,
But couldn’t relate to other twelve year olds.
After school I read Dali’s autobiography,
Young ****** Autosodomized by Her Own Chastity.
Fresh, green nettle with fresh and dried yarrow for purity.
Dead souls enticed to the altar by orange marigolds,
passion and creativity,
Coax sleep and rouse dreams.
Satellites measure indirectly with wave lengths of light.
My weather balloon measures the lower and middle levels of the atmosphere directly,
Fifty thousand feet high,
Metal rod thermometer,
Slide humidity sensor,
Canister for air pressure.

I enjoy rye bread and cold coconut butter in my weather balloon,
But I want Dali, and all the artists and writers.
Rye grows at high altitudes
But papyrus grows in soil and shallow water,
Strips of papyrus pith shucked from their stems.
When an anchor’s weighed, a ship sails,
But when grounded we sail.
Marigolds, yarrow and nettle,
Flowerhead,
I use the marigold for sleep,
The yarrow for endurance and intensity,
toiling for love and truth,
And the nettle for healing.
Strong rye bread needs equally strong flavors.
By the beginning of high school,
I read a lot of Beat literature
And found Buddhism.
I loved what I read
But I didn’t like some things.
I liked attachment.  
I got to the ground.
Mushrooms grow in dry soil.
Attachment to beauty is Buddha activity.
Not being attached to things I don’t find beautiful is Buddha activity.  
I fried mushrooms in a single layer in oil, fleshy.
I roasted mushrooms at high temperatures in the oven, crisp.
I simmered mushrooms in stock with kombu.
Rye bread with cold coconut butter and cremini mushrooms,
raw, soft and firm.  
Life continues, life changes,
Attachments, losses, mourning and suffering,
But change lures growth.
I find stream beds and wet soil.
I lay the strips of papyrus next to each other.
I cross papyrus strips over the first,
Then wet the crossed papyrus strips,
Press and cement them into a sheet.
I hammer it and dry it in the sun,
With no thought of achievement or self,
Flowerhead,
Hands filled with my past,
Head filled with the future,
Dali, artists poets,
Wishes and desires aligned with nature,
Abundance,
Cocoa, caraway, and molasses.

If I ever really like someone,
I’ll be wearing the dress he chooses,
Fresh green nettle and yarrow, the seeds take two years to grow strong,
Lasting love.
Marigolds steer dead souls from the altar to the afterlife,
Antiseptic, healing wounds,
Soothing sore throats and headaches.
Imperturbable, stable flowerhead,
I empty my mind.
When desires are aligned with nature, desire flows.
Papyrus makes paper and cloth.
Papyrus makes sails.
Charcoal from the ash of pulverized papyrus heals wounds.
Without attachment to the fruit of action
There is continuation of life,
Rye bread and melted coconut butter,
The coconut tree in the coconut butter,
The seed comes from the ground out of nothing,
Naturalness.
It has form.
As the seed grows the seed expresses the tree,
The seed expresses the coconut,
The seed expresses the coconut butter.
Rye bread, large open hollows, chambers,
Immersed in melted coconut butter,
Desire for expansion and creation,
No grasping, not desperate.
When the mind is compassion, the mind is boundless.
Every moment,
only that,
Every moment,
a scythe to the papyrus in the stream bed of the past.  

































Sound on Powdery Blue

Potter’s clay, nymph, plum unplumbed, 1993.
Dahlia, ice, powder, musk and rose,
my source of life emerged in darkness, blackness.
Seashell fragments in the sand,
The glass ball of my life cracked inside,
Light reflected off the salt crystal cracks,
Nacre kept those cracks from getting worse.
Young ****** Autosodomized By Her Own Chastity,
Nymph, I didn’t want to give my body,
Torn, *****, ballgown,
To people who wouldn’t understand me,
Piquant.

Outside on the salt flats,
Aphrodite, goddess of beauty, pleasure and fertility and
Asexual Artemis, goddess of animals, and the hunt,
Mistress of nymphs,
Punish with ruthless savagery.

In my bedroom, blue caribou moss covered rocks, pine, and yew trees,
The heartwood writhes as hurricane gales, twisters and whirlwinds
Contort their bark,
Roots strong in the soil.
Orris root dried in the sun, bulbs like wood.
Dahlia runs to baritone soundbath radio waves.
Light has frequencies,
Violet between blue and invisible ultraviolet,
Flame, slate and flint.
Every night is cold.

Torii gates, pain secured as sacred.
An assignation, frost hardy dahlia and a plangent resonant echo.
High frequency sound waves convert to electrical signals,
Breathe from someone I want,
Silt.
Beam, radiate, ensorcel.
I break the bark,
Sap flows and dries,
Resin seals over the tear.
I distill pine,
Resin and oil for turpentine, a solvent.
Quiver, bemired,
I lead sound into my darkness,
Orris butter resin, sweet and warm,
Hot jam drops on snow drops,
Orange ash on smoke,
Balm on lava,
The problem with cotton candy.

Electrical signals give off radiation or light waves,
The narrow frequency range where
The crest of a radio wave and the crest of a light wave overlap,
Infrared.
Glaciers flow, sunlight melts the upper layers of the snow when strong,
A wet snow avalanche,
A torrent, healing.
Brown sugar and whiskey,
Undulant, lavender.
Pine pitch, crystalline, sticky, rich and golden,
And dried pine rosin polishes glass smooth
Like the smell of powdery orris after years.
Softness, flush, worthy/not worthy,
Rich rays thunder,
Intensify my pulse,
Frenzied red,
Violet between blue and invisible ultraviolet.
Babylon—flutter, glow.
Unquenchable cathartic orris.  

















Pink Graphite

Camellias, winter shrubs,
Their shallow roots grow beneath the spongy caribou moss,
Robins egg blue.
After writing a play with my gifted students program in 1991,
I stopped spending all my free time writing short stories,
But the caribou moss was still soft.

In the cold Arctic of that town,
The evergreen protected the camellias from the afternoon sun and storms.
They branded hardy camellias with a brass molded embossing iron;
I had paper and graphite for my pencils.

After my ninth grade honors English teacher asked us to write poems in 1994,
It began raining.
We lived on an overhang.
A vertical rise to the top of the rock.
The rainstorm caused a metamorphic change in the snowpack,
A wet snow avalanche drifted slowly down the moss covered rock,
The snow already destabilized by exposure to the sunlight.

The avalanche formed lakes,
rock basins washed away with rainwater and melted snow,
Streams dammed by the rocks.  
My pencils washed away in the avalanche,
My clothes heavy and cold.
I wove one side of each warp fiber through the eye of the needle and one side through each slot,
Salves, ointments, serums and tinctures.
I was mining for graphite.
They were mining me,
The only winch, the sound through the water.

A steep staircase to the red Torii gates,
I broke the chains with bells for vespers
And chimes for schisms,
And wove the weft across at right angles to the warp.  

On a rocky ledge at the end of winter,
The pink moon, bitters and body butter,
They tried to get  me to want absinthe,
Wormwood for bitterness and regret.
Heat and pressure formed carbon for flakes of graphite.
Heat and pressure,
I made bitters,
Brandy, grapefruit, chocolate, mandarin rind, tamarind and sugar.
I grounded my feet in the pink moss,
paper dried in one hand,
and graphite for my pencils in the other.  



































Flakes

I don’t let people that put me down be part of my life.  
Gardens and trees,
My shadow sunk in the grass in my yard
As I ate bread, turmeric and lemon.
Carbon crystallizes into graphite flakes.
I write to see well,
Graphite on paper.  
A shadow on rock tiles with a shield, a diamond and a bell
Had me ***** to humiliate me.
Though I don’t let people that put me down near me,
A lot of people putting me down seemed like they were following me,
A platform to jump from
While she had her temple.  

There was a pink door to the platform.
I ate bread with caramelized crusts and
Drank turmeric lemonade
Before I opened that door,
Jumped and
Descended into blankets and feathers.
I found matches and rosin
For turpentine to clean,
Dried plums and licorice.  

In the temple,
In diamonds, leather, wool and silk,
She had her shield and bells,
Drugs and technology,
Thermovision 210 and Minox,
And an offering box where people believed
That if their coins went in
Their wishes would come true.

Hollyhock and smudging charcoal for work,  
Belled,
I ground grain in the mill for the bread I baked for breakfast.
The bells are now communal bells
With a watchtower and a prison,
Her shield, a blowtorch and flux,
Her ex rays, my makeshift records
Because Stalin didn’t like people dancing,
He liked them divebombing.
Impurities in the carbon prevent diamonds from forming,
Measured,
The most hard, the most expensive,
But graphite’s soft delocalized electrons move.  






































OCEAN BED

The loneliness of going to sleep by myself.  
I want a bed that’s high off the ground,
a mattress, an ocean.
I want a crush and that  person in my bed.  
Only that,
a crush in my bed,
an ocean in my bed.  
Just love.  
But I sleep with my thumbs sealed.  
I sleep with my hands, palms up.  
I sleep with my hands at my heart.  
They sear my compassion with their noise.  
They hold their iron over their fire and try to carve their noise into my love,
scored by the violence of voices, dark and lurid,  
but not burned.  
I want a man in my bed.  
When I wake up in an earthquake
I want to be held through the aftershocks.  
I like men,
the waves come in and go out
but the ocean was part of my every day.  
I don’t mind being fetishized in the ocean.  
I ran by the ocean every morning.  
I surfed in the ocean.  
I should’ve gone into the ocean that afternoon at Trestles,
holding my water jugs, kneeling at the edge.  














Morning

I want to fall asleep in the warm arms of a fireman.  
I want to wake up to the smell of coffee in my kitchen.  

Morning—the molten lava in the outer core of the earth embeds the iron from the inner core into the earth’s magnetic field.  
The magnetic field flips.  
The sun, so strong, where it gets through the trees it burns everything but the pine.  
The winds change direction.  
Storms cast lightening and rain.  
Iron conducts solar flares and the heavy wind.  
In that pine forest, I shudder every time I see a speck of light for fear of neon and fluorescents.  The eucalyptus cleanses congestion.  
And Kerouac’s stream ululates, crystal bowl sound baths.  
I follow the sound to the water.  
The stream ends at a bluff with a thin rocky beach below.  
The green water turns black not far from the shore.  
Before diving into the ocean, I eat globe mallow from the trees, stems and leaves, the viscous flesh, red, soft and nutty.  
I distill the pine from one of the tree’s bark and smudge the charcoal over my skin.  

Death, the palo santo’s lit, cleansing negative energy.  
It’s been so long since I’ve smelled a man, woodsmoke, citrus and tobacco.  
Jasmine, plum, lime and tuberose oil on the base of my neck comforts.  
Parabolic chambers heal, sound waves through water travel four times faster.  
The sound of the open sea recalibrates.  
I dissolve into the midnight blue of the ocean.  

I want to fall asleep in the warm arms of a fireman.  
I want to wake up to the smell of coffee in my kitchen.  
I want hot water with coconut oil when I get up.  
We’d lay out on the lawn, surrounded by high trees that block the wind.  
Embers flying through the air won’t land in my yard, on my grass, or near my trees.  





Blue Paper

Haze scatters blue light on a planet.  
Frought women, livid, made into peonies by Aphrodites that caught their men flirting and blamed the women, flushed red.
and blamed the women, flushed red.
Frought women, livid, chrysanthemums, dimmed until the end of the season, exchanged and retained like property.  
Blue women enter along the sides of her red Torii gates, belayed, branded and belled, a plangent sound.  
By candles, colored lights and dried flowers she’s sitting inside on a concrete floor, punctures and ruin burnished with paper, making burnt lime from lime mortar.  
Glass ***** on the ceiling, she moves the beads of a Palestinian glass bead bracelet she holds in her hands.  
She bends light to make shadows against  thin wooden slats curbed along the wall, and straight across the ceiling.
A metier, she makes tinctures, juniper berries and cotton *****.
Loamy soil in the center of the room,
A hawthorn tree stands alone,
A gateway for fairies.
large stones at the base protecting,
It’s branches a barrier.  
It’s leaves and shoots make bread and cheese.
It’s berries, red skin and yellow flesh, make jam.
Green bamboo stakes for the peonies when they whither from the weight of their petals.
And lime in the soil.  
She adds wood chips to the burnt lime in the kiln,
Unrolled paper, spools, and wire hanging.
Wood prayer beads connect her to the earth,
The tassels on the end of the beads connect her to spirit, to higher truth.
Minerals, marine mud and warm basins of seawater on a flower covered desk.  
She adds slaked lime to the burnt lime and wood chips.  
The lime converts to paper,
Trauma victims speak,
Light through butterfly wings.  
She’s plumeria with curved petals, thick, holding water
This is what I have written of my book.  I’ll be changing where the poems with the historical research go.  There are four more of those and nine of the other poems.
Brianna Aug 2015
It could be my lack of faith or the fact that this rose quartz has yet to bring me the love it should. It could also be my lack of self acceptance but I will never admit that.

I hope you when you're driving down the interstate, closing in on the exit you seek, you remember I'm not that far away.

And I hope one day you'll wake up and know that I would rather be anywhere with you than in this summer heat dying for the rain.

It could be my lack of faith or the fact that this emerald didn't bring me **** for luck. It could also be my lack of self esteem that brings me to his bed dreaming of you.

One day I'll wake up and wish the best for you and your new life... And one day I'll wake up in my room sober instead of drunk and lustful night after night.

And I hope one day you'll wake up and remember that I'm not that far away... And you'll wake up and know that if clean my **** up if you would just stay.
Heavy Hearted Jul 2018
;heart made of metal, you're too hard to soothe
as an iron *****, you coldly shine smooth.
n head full of ember, your trickily burnt  fire-
With its heat licks my lips, scolding hot with desire.
And then
Voice made of water,
may you speak of unknown
rivers lakes- oceans blue
Typhoon and cyclone.

And soul made of moonstone- may
outwardly you shine,
Dance, scintillating- a
pure serpentine.
Darby Rose Jan 2014
Jordan gave me rose quartz prayer beads. Freddy picked me up and spun me around.

I kissed the beads and kissed my hand and blew it to the stars, over and over again.
Thank you universe, for the kind hearted people you have dropped into my existence.
Thank you universe, for the good music, the good ****, good wine, and good company.
Thank you, for the smiles, the laughs, the cigarettes, the numbers given out on backs of receipts.
Thank you for the swing sets, the campfires, the coffee and tea, the cars we drive around in.
Thank you for emotions.
Thank you for the feeling I get when someone kisses my forehead,
the feeling when someone compliments my smile,
the feeling when I notice the moon for the first time that evening.
Thank you, for the moon, the stars, the clouds, and the autumn breeze.
Thank you for the sounds, the crickets, the leaves rustling, the clinking glasses,
and the sound of small kisses.
Thank you for the snort I get when I laugh to hard.
Thank you for the bass, the guitar, the drums.
Thank you for the shouts, the soft spoken, the loud, and the whispers.
Thank you for the doors, the staircases, and the windows.
Thank you for everything that ever was, is, and will be.
Thank you for the indefiniteness of the now.
Thank you for everything.

I once read in a book, that the likelihood of our proteins folding just so to make us what we are is comparable to that of a twister rolling through a junkyard and assembling a jumbo jet.
This is something I like to remind myself daily.
It is so miraculous that we are here today to experience everything and everyone around us, and be able to document and share it.
I hope one day someone can look at my photographs and writings and feel these immense and overwhelming emotions that I feel in these moments.
Liz Apr 2014
The burning flowers underline the sunset and 
Dash before the fire (k)night catches them.
Ripe berries cheaply
tremble 
but hopefully their vitality won't burst the pulp pulsating
beneath.

Crumbling flowers
crumb the floor
And Prisms of catching silver refract rose quartz and petal
and crimson
dust.

Bejewelled in Scarlet,
the air,
as the (k)night approaches, grows colder,
Unsure of whether he will bring
solace or strife.

In his chariot
he flies faster than the bees which buzzed around the fruit flutes
in the morning and among the trumpeting bluebells.

Stars fleck the (k)night
like freckles
and the milky ways resins stain his spouting steams lovely. 

The (k)nights kind onyx reaches his crescendo and the floating moon danced drowsily through the cloud's spiralled tendrils

Which diminish as dawn
approaches
so their Tentilcles
droop to crinkled tissue paper sheathed in pink.

And so the (k)night
rides on into
The frivolous sunrise.
The lowing, glossy calves
in sage beside the ***** fields
cast a beloved ambience 

As though
we are safe
in the knowledge
that the sky will remain
forever
topaz and the leaves
forever emerald.
Oliver Philip Jan 2019
A series of  Acrostic poems noting the healing properties of the crystals to the Zodiacal signs. .
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Capricorn  ♑️  December 23-January 20.
~~~~~~~~
Capricornian don’t mind me. I can’t live as you.
As you have the highest of standards always.
Peridot,Garnets, Agate or Turquoise to wear
Ruby’s grace a  beautiful young maidens hair.
I see the jewels in your eyes when you smile
Carnelian stones or Malachite for soul healing
Or Jet ,Smokey Quartz or shiny Black Onyx.
Red Garnets,Blue Aragonite,Green Tourmaline
Nonsuch is the birth symbol ,graceful as thee
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aquarius ♒️  January 21 -February 19
~~~~~~~
Aquarius the symbolism for the water carrier.
Quite an important member of our community
Under spells by an association of the heart
Aquarian crystals are Garnets and Amethyst
Rainbow moonstone, Labradorite, Magnetite
I would buy thee Lithium Quartz ,Moss agate.
Under your care placing Crysoprase n Cryolite
Some Rainforest Jasper for love of this lady.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pisces ♓️  February 20 - March 20
~~~~~
Pisces are healed by birthstones of Amethyst
In tune also with Turquoise,Aquamarine,Amber
Sapphires,Sunstones,Smithsonite, Labradorite
Chrysoprase of green, Ocean Jasper, Flurite
Especially Bluelace Agate,Rainbow Moonstone
Stones Charolite, Calcite,Ametrine,Bloodstone.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aries ♈️  March 21 -April 20
~~~~
Aries children tackle life head on.
Ruby,Diamond,Amethyst and bloodstone
I know she’s into Aquamarine and Tourmaline
Especially pink, Dravite aka Tourmaline brown
Stellerite, Sardonyx , Citrine, Kunzite n Axinite
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Taurus ♉️  April 21 -May 21
~~~~~
Tourean girls have an inbuilt stubbornness
And are partial to the birthstone Sapphire
Understanding An Emerald and Aquamarine
Rhodonite, Amber,Lapis Lazuli and Tiger’s Eye
Universal faith in crystal’s Kayanite n Kunzite
Spiritually in tune with Carnelian

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gemini ♊️ May 22 -June 21.
~~~~~
Gemini never grow up.They are so  flirtatious
Ever wooing and seducing their audiences
Moonstone,Agate,Aquamarine,Tigers Eye
Into the healing powers of Chrystoprase stone
Naturally Green Tourmaline and Serpentine
I also see Anyolite, Citrine,Thulite and Variscite
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cancer  ♋️  June 22 - July 23
~~~~~~
Cancerarians are high on the emotional scale.
And they benefit from Emeralds and Rubies
Natural Amber,Rhodonite ,Rainbow Moonstone
Chrysoprase,Carnelian, Citrine, Moss Agate.
Even with the beautiful crystal Fire Agate
Ruby stone and Pink Tourmaline healing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Leo ♌️  July 24- August 23
~~~
Leo has birthstones of Onyx, Peridot,Ruby,
Even Turquoise,Amber,Citrine,Larimar,Petalite
Or Fire Agate,Red Garnet,Sunstones,Sardonyx
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Virgo ♍️  August 24-September 23
~~~~
Virgo needs be a person advocating virginity
I know because I have fusion and experience.
Realistically fusing together two personalities
God knows n loves my approach and approves
Of Peridot,Carnelian, Blue Sapphire,Tourmaline
      Of Green ........
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Libra ♎️  September 24-October 23
~~~~
Libra uses healing properties of Lapis Lazuli
In Peridot,& Sapphires, Aquamarine stones
Bloodstones,Emerald stones, Sunstones,
Rainbow Moonstones, Morganite, Lepidolite
Aventurine,
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Scorpio ♏️  October 24- November 22.
~~~~~
Scorpio needs the healing of Aquamarine
Charolite, Turquoise, Malachite or Emerald
Obsidian Black , Golden Topaz and Boji Stone
Ruby, Lapis Lazuli,Green Tourmaline,Kunzite
Peridot , Rainbow Moonstone, Rhodochrosite.
I know of Variscite Hiddenite n Apache tears.
Or Herkimer Diamond ,Hiddenite , or Variscite
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sagittarius ♐️  November 23- December 22
~~~~~~~~~~
Sagittarius is so joyous and very fun loving
Amethyst,Turquoise,Lapis Lazuli n Blue Topaz
Grace her body with healing properties now.
I recommend Azurite stone, Blue lace Agate
Tourmaline pink, Malachite, n Yellow Sapphire
Topaz of white and beautiful Ruby Stones
A Zircon Crystal and Snowflake Obsidian
Rich Merlinite, Labralite ,Dioptase n Charolite
In these healing crystals wear them with faith
Understanding the powers the Universe grants
Sacred is the space that you take upon Earth.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Written and inspired by Sacred Space.
Shop 10 /74-78 The Corso , Manly , 2095 NSW . Australia. Louise Winchester.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Written by Philip.
December 2018.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A series of 12 Acrostic poems linking crystals to the Zodiacal signs.
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2016
~
words given life's first breath by this comment from
SE Reimer  
"thy tiller has found a storied port"

~~

captain of a city street ferry,
upon the choppy holy waters of
scarlet fevered spotted gum stained
christened concrete streets

daylight guided by the starlight
of quartz sparklers sidewalk embedded,
resurrecting, overwhelming,
the grayness of men's mortared materialism,
these textured bright city lights,
from murk morn steam-pipe risen,
signposts of a city boys life,
navigation tools on his
steerage cruises

'tis only my poor torso
I captain,
my bus driving days retired,
single masted, obedient to the sun's paths plotted
on a personalized AAA TripTik,^
my cargo, my tiring physique,
the refined mettle product of a
sixty five year too short voyage of
deep diving mining defining,
and for surety, water divining

city walking life driving,
debtor-in-possession of a
city infection
of perpetual motion sickness

enabled inability
for standing stilled,
lane weaving,
people receiving and perceiving
as buoyed obstacle objects
to be passed by
in a higher lane
of shaken and stirred
city waterways

muscle's squeak in sonnet speak

Why speed thy errant boots
upon lanes of wandering men,
is there not time enough,
words suffice,
in history's future present
unlived long life,
to recompense
all your recorded stanzas,
mariner's tales and wrote recitations of seafaring voices?

sea nat run.
sea nat go.

dodging tween his fellow citified citizens
and the puzzled and puzzling drowning tourists,
sea nat write his unsecreted visions,
sailing from street to shining street poetry

this glorious grime,
this delicious dirt,
stuff of my blood,
genes of my children's children inheritance,
of thee I sing,
in thee I revel,
of thee I am composed

when my decomposing time scheduled arrival
lately comes on time,
bury me in its cemetery of memories,
within the soft earth of a watery grave
that the jackhammers drill bit paddles can uncover,
in rough canvas toss my worn smooth
failed frame overboard,
so I may become but one more
fable
in your fabulous liquefying
cement oceans

~~~

3:53 am
5/18/16
nyc

^
http://pearlsoftravelwisdom.boardingarea.com/2014/01/remember-triptix/
with apologies to all the great poets from  I liberally borrowed
Glacier National Park, Lower Quartz Lake
Wednesday August 12, 2015 Day 1 of the backpacking trek.

Our tent next to the still waters.
Eventide respite.
Deborah reflecting in solitude at sunset.
Quiet with a gentle breath of mountain air.
Without an updraft to soar and glide upon, the eagle, nesting in the range of the watershed, has retired for the day.
A pair of Common Loons and four Hooded Merganser prepare for the nights cooling, moving in the glossy water toward their rest, gentle lines tracing as the water crests and falls behind.
Black swifts emerge from the shadows, dancing near the lake to feed on twilight insects.
The orange sky and red orb of Sol are a prelude to a multitude of stars as the world turns into darkness.
Kiefer D McRay Feb 2013
We'll live off contemporary breaths
Feeling the others resonating behest.
Faltering novelties woven at peace by pieces sampling these dangerous games.
Strutting their stuff, presence increased, releasing their hold over the tame.
Grand new shapes in sight
Moving closer, my feet are too fast.
How many past times can this outlast?
Inflated euphoria, bleeds over and takes me aghast.
Lining my heart, these infectious consorts and subtleties.
Letting me believe only in quartz and melody.
Judy Ponceby Sep 2010
Traveling the hollows,
Of this deep, damp, mountain,
Seeking treasure in mother earth,
Placed eons ago in times unknown.

Lanterns shedding light,
Illuminating the dark depths,
Casting elongated shadows,
On the dark tunnelled walls

Soft gold metal woven in tendrils
Through ponderous tons of granite.
Given away by the presence of
Shards of broken quartz,
Shining dully at my feet.

Why is this golden metal so precious?
Why would men give their lives for it?
Indeed, beautiful, rare, mysterious.
But I find myself captured by the reflections,
In these quartz crystals.

Not only quartz, but diamonds,
Emeralds, rubies, sapphires.
Heated and compressed over millenia,
Awaiting discovery in mother earth's,
Deep dark recesses.

Brought to the surface,
Faceted, polished, mounted.
Dazzling, sparkling color,
Eye-catching, elegant, mesmerizing.

Jewels.
Of death
the barber
the barber
talked to me

cutting my
life with
sleep to trim
my hair—

It’s just
a moment
he said, we die
every night—

And of
the newest
ways to grow
hair on

bald death—
I told him
of the quartz
lamp

and of old men
with third
sets of teeth
to the cue

of an old man
who said
at the door—
Sunshine today!

for which
death shaves
him twice
a week
ShFR Aug 2016
This isn't Rome
I'm standing still because of statutes
Stone grill: I a carved marble statue
not a muscle dares,

Near frozen by the fear,
let it go I hear
over shoulder: perfect pass
if I get shot over a penalty

Is it clear?
my arms are arms?
a load chopper; in his shades,
do those aviators make me even darker?
(if I studied aviation I could take off I can hover, I can…)

Wait.
he's moving closer,
every hair strand an antenna,
I can feel him,

The smell of disdain on his glare,
stained blood on his hands,
another brother,
my brother

Guiltier with every pace so
--  show your hands,
foot mixed with concrete
I take this order serious,
my motions are motive
and mistaken for resist,

Wait.
Is it his stare or am I ******?
(Why did I decide to go my friends wouldn't believe this…)

limitations to the thoughts;
am I arrested or caught?

I'm cold on the surface,
Erode so slow is my sediment evidence,
A blue god so I'm pacified,
I'm hesitant,

he calls and I say that I'm innocent,
I'm witnessing
the transitioning from eruption to ocean
-- volcanic

Blue Medusa,
can you only sculpt destruction?
(I'm not 3 dimensional, I'm real and I matter, I'm real and I matter)

I'm real,
But I shatter,

Gravel if determined that I'm rude so I can't breath,
Gravel if My license plate removed I don't leave,
I don't speak,
I don't flee,
I'm not free,
I believe,
That this happen to my mothers, mother
mothers' brother,

Brother from another was granite
and granted he's valuable
but only in a home
-- of course

I'm quartz in the making
A corpse still shaking
Cause a wallet was mistaken
Or I.D. was misplaced

So, I'm on the rocks
since the bar says that I'm a criminal,
velvet rope divider marks my life
and a vigil,

a wake,
or a hashtag,
you choose,
glass house,
Cold Stone’s,
rocky road,
Medusa licks his finger tips

same finger which
petrified me in the first place,
Reminded I'm in Rome
as I'm standing there motionless

a statue for display
or a trophy for the kitchen,
this art is not for sale
there will be no shipping,

With solidarity
through our solidification,
It won't matter if I look back,
I Matter and I’m Black.
© 2016 by S Fraz All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of S Fraz
Color of lemon, mango, peach,
These storybook villas
Still dream behind
Shutters, thier balconies
Fine as hand-
Made lace, or a leaf-and-flower pen-sketch.

Tilting with the winds,
On arrowy stems,
Pineapple-barked,
A green crescent of palms
Sends up its forked
Firework of fronds.

A quartz-clear dawn
Inch by bright inch
Gilds all our Avenue,
And out of the blue drench
Of Angels' Bay
Rises the round red watermelon sun.
Tanisha Jackland Oct 2016
I wrote you a love letter

It was all dolled up

Pretty words to
make you fall in love

Some parts dangled
With the charm of
golden bling

Then another part
you could smell
the lather of my skin

But I didn't stop there

I conjured up cupid

Then wrote your name
in blood and burnt it

Placed the ashes in a honey jar
with lavender and rose

Whispered your name 69 times
under a blue red moon

Now
I watch you in my crystal ball
and wait for you to come to me
https://soundcloud.com/ladyofire/rose-quartz
Rose quartz, diamonds an' sapphires:
-I'd give you them all, just, to light a fire
- and cause your spirits ta' lift up higher
- cause' you are the one which I admire.

Rubies, sparkling citrine or pearls;
I'd gift you any mineral in the world
- cause' it makes my mind, endlessly, twirl:
- imagining you - as, my queen, my girl.

Amber, ammolite, an' lapis lazuli;
- Aye - I'd buy you all o' this, truly,
- to ensure your mind's never gloomy.
Is it a far-fetched dream? Absolutely.

An' am I a fool to believe it ta' be possible?
Unfortunately - it's an outcome very plausible.
April Third, Two-Thousand an' Seventeen.
'Diamond' Poem Prompt, #NPMDiamond
Oliver Philip Dec 2018
Aquarius  ♒️
~~~~~~~
Aquarius the symbolism for the water carrier.
Quite an important member of our community
Under spells by an association of the heart
Aquarian crystals are Garnets and Amethyst
Rainbow moonstone, Labradorite, Magnetite
I would buy thee Lithium Quartz ,Moss agate.
Under your care placing Crysoprase n Cryolite
Some Rainforest Jasper for love of this lady.

~~~~~~~~
Written by Philip
December 18th 2018.
Aquarius the zodiacal sign of the Water carrier.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2021
(i) pre-scriptum: anchor posit

it would be all-too obvious that i'm going to begin with writing about nonsensical subjects... bowel movements... what's not to laugh about... a warm-up standing before a firing-squad metaphor... not my last words: how they don't tend to bury people with epitaph these days... in manus dei... which is hardly an epitaph... definition of epitaph: a transcendence of maxim... the... maxim... the sigma of all the incremental parts that once held the man as subject of life...

...i cycled into central London to do no more than:
**** myself off...
all those lives i'm not part of...
without a drop of bitterness:
i guess i can only be glad...
somewhere in South London past
Waterloo station nearing the Shard
i came across... a mythological blonde...
yoga-pants... *****-esque...
couldn't tell the traffic from a horserace...
she had that expression
on her face that read:
i've been to a few ******* parties...
all holes properly used...
come to think of it: i'm only
there to be ******: not there to do some
return policies...
so a timid deer...
point made when i noticed three-guys
ogling her up...
eyes turned to lap-dancing tongues...
point proven...
well... it's South London... even if's still
teasing the scent of the Thames...
it's a lot different over the river...
so i "debated" myself
on the point...
   CS4 is worse than CS3...
oh most assuredly...
CS4 is congested...
too many pit-stops...
i promised myself that i would never
again cycle into central London
via little Bangladesh that begins
in Ilford and ends at Aldgate...
that's CS4...
CS3 though? oh that's another barrel of
laughs... begins in Barking...
although it could begin in Rainham...
and ends at... don't know... to be honest...
i must have taken a CR13 from tower bridge
through to Waterloo station...
but... it's the proper underbelly of the city...
near the docks come Canary Wharf...
as i promised myself i would never
again cycle into a heavily urban scenario
being the tourist of faces and all manner
of the locals' mannerisms:
i said to myself... Essex county is open...
the trees the diluted traffic... all that fresh air...
but not exactly Belgium: flat...
such contemplations when you find
a pseudo-Nirvana of the third take of
emptying yourself into the throne-of-thrones
because... you put a quasi-hibernation
plug in your ******* for the day
and now the bowels strike back with
a build-up to a crescendo of: unplugging...
the usual suspect of bits & bobs...
  that allows you to suppose you've
been emptied but... ooh... oh...
the crescendo proper...
                      custard pie... of ****...
thank god for all the stealth work...
the pipes... the sewage treatment plants...

(ii) change of focus

i always had an invitation toward a monk's life...
ever since visiting Taizé...
the Teutonic Order had a brothel in their
monks' citadel at Marienburg...
a break from a 4 year dry run...
perhaps the end of a year of grief having
buried a friend of mine:
fishing, cycling / reading buddy...
someone to watch the Vierschanzentournee
come Christmas and New Year...
someone to listen to on a dementia loop
as if: no... the memory bank wasn't broken...
it was on a repeat that
asked the question:
is this a drowning man...
               clinging to a razor?
once old ages enter the fore...

it was all pristine in my head: i almost chuckled...
now coming to the canvas i can see it's going
to be a hard-won effort:
mini-digressions is my best attempt
to keep this afloat... even though it's sinking
like a hard-earned stone of mass...

sometimes drinking has a taste.... esp. in the variation
of kalimotxo... with a red Marlboro:
like it's the taste synonymous with a
first kiss... both of you are slobbering teenager
all to ready to precursor either *******
of glugging down oysters / eating fleshy
flowers... tongues to eager...
an ode to the mosquito legion owner/ vampire goat...

(iii) words come across as shortcomings
  
i don't have enough patronage money to begin
painting... a photograph will have to do...
i remember this room, this same brothel...
there were two mirrors on the wall...
i'll bring her a copy of my book of poetry
and i'll ask her if i can take a photograph
of her face... for the love of Rousseau's
heart for a god... beside the argument: i need to photograph
her in a variation of the antithesis of the self-portrait...
i'm already saving up for the hour...
perhaps she will say no...
but i don't want a ****...
nor a picture of my phallus in her mouth...
i need contortions using the two mirrors...
words have become the weapons of gods
and gagging orders of men...
Khadaj'ah...
              something has to arrive sooner:
i'm breathtakingly agonised by my own: coils...

cauliflower - ALUMINITE - alias
of brain tissue folds...
           Al₂(SO₄)(OH)₄ . 7H₂O...
well... if it isn't me looking at paintings...
or naked bodies of prostitutes...
it's me looking at minerals
and their chemical formulas...

all that's quartz SiO₂...
most notably the amethyst... iron stained quartz...
jasper... petrified wood quartz...
onyx quartz... agate...

or... VANADINITE
   Pb₅(VO₄)₃Cl....

now... if i were drinking a second bottle of wine
to calm the already frantic nerves
at the prospect of the next encounter
all school-boyish...
and owned a dog... he might bark at me...
a feline presence is more welcome:
joke of my curing insomnia and "insomnia"
with this here wine...
fern of a creature... always disappears
into the dream world...
who asks for a leash or a muzzle
or walkers in the presence of a cat:
a time least spent: certainly not wasted:
that cats decided to sleep more than
actually waste their time with being:
conscious...
not somehow a waste of time:
like the waste of time modern man has
become: seeking refuge in "reverse-psychology":
duped by the undercurrent of
the crucifix of the subconscious...

the holy Freudian trinity... the sacred secular
trinity of the: consciousness:
the son... subconscious: the holy spirit...
the collectively shackled premature
*******... pre-suppositional heap of dung...
the father: shackled... proper:
in the unconscious...
if asked: about time to raise the father:
to unearth him... "him": who is my father?
shy-titan... you already know the score...

it excites me more and more with the prospect
of writing these words
and coming back with a photograph of the
*******...
dizzying heights of the grave of gravity
in that's how my body: hollows out
futures... and tendencies of a list of todays...
if only i had enough and of having enough
i would become bored:
perhaps i could become an ageing lecher...
but since i'm gagging for the least:
of the last... i'll be keeping up the spirit of mute:
sometimes teasing onomatopoeias during
*******... i want to take a selfie of
her using at least two mirrors...

i want to take two photographs...
my mind is burning from the mere thought...
clear the fog...
thank god no genetic details of mine
will be passed on...
i couldn't shackle myself to the responsibility
of children...
call it immature:
a delinquency... i will call it what it has been
for almost... "forever"...
share my responsibility in the coming
onslaught...
           if i'm feeling it... what's to suppose there's
no build-up of a greater tide...

i've made satire of the "diet"...
fuckless for years...
but come the opportune moment when i wake
up and take to a feeding:
i find her...
       juiced up from the cradle of my
unsatisfied longing...
can a woman tell a man hasn't touched
his antonym in so long
as to also not have: some... pillow-talk ref.
to combat that carnal Kandinsky-build up moment?

wine! wine! more wine!
words are staggering when picture would
better suffice to encapsulate these sensations...
for those that have had enough:
retreat into kink... gimp suits and all that's latex...
for those that haven't had enough:
retreat into mirrors...
    revising slits of katakana-niqab rereading...
some depeche mode doesn't hinder...
and one: either...

        oh sure: reimagine...
it's a feverish writing of a man who desires all that
might invoke the zenith of a shared
patience with each other:
for the worth of an hour's worth...
after the hour's done...
there's no companionship...
there are no shared stories...
we return to the shadow: we return to the grave...
the foetus is cut from the womb
from the umbilical chord...
the hour's enough...

i return to my: steinherz...
she returns to her: dachboden-frivolfotze-eskapaden...
i'm glad other people can:
cut-the-mustard... and... reproduce...
if i don't die by my own hands
aiming at the pulse...
alone in a hospital ward eyeing up nurse
with one of these octopi purely pupil eyes
of rage... i never...
it will be a private affair:
no one will interrupt the world
of people having their conversations:
i'll keep in mind the congregation
of crows:
i'll keep the crow forever in my mind...

(iv) body needs to be under 5K

can you believe me that i acknowledge all that you have written with... how can i escape verbiage...  oh wait... i was hoping your wouldn't spiral out of control with a bunch of defence mechanisms: easily-offended etc. you are... a breath of fresh air... truly... comparison? even though you sent me your picture... it's in the back of my mind... i don't remember it: i'm still focused on the avatar you presented... and... oddly enough: you are starting to resemble Harley Quinn... sipping that espresso while reading a romance novel while the whole world around her: is ablaze... let's forget the the buzzwords i picked up... they're not important... they're not important if we have allowed ourselves to synchronise ourselves on other points of interest... i can be excused leaving some time between reply, though, no? you still are a pen-pal who's sharing her passion for teaching... it's never personal... it might become personal if i pressure you with imitating my punctuation, or, for that matter: some grammatical idiosyncrasy... the red roses: roses are red... n'ah... bad example... not off the top of my head (scalp included) to make a point... i agree... we're two people toying with imitation ping-pong... next subject matter... ah... oh... casual ***... paid for or... somehow... spontaneously... given?  i already have an answer in my head: from experience... i was reading the sunday times magazine last weekend... dating apps... i know they came about circa 2012... apparently there was this great revolution of people seeking & finding casual ***... i was still into my psychotic trip without the use of hallucinogenic juice... "fear of god"? ha ha... i've just heard that dating apps were a breakthrough in how people made themselves available... casual ***... me visiting a brothel probably itches the thought: where *** is so freely available... but there's someone out there... still willing to use cables... when everyone else is using wireless WIFI... notably for headphones... i still buy vinyl and CD to "translate" the music to MP3... you're asking what casual *** is: akin to? you want me to describe what it feels like? it probably feels like any form of intimacy that one subscribes to within the "confines" (parameters) of long-term relationship expectations... although more concentrated... esp. if you haven't had a chance to be intimate with someone... my last diet lasted for 4 years... extended by a year since i was grieving for my grandfather's death... i was grooming my pet cat and she... decided to agitate me... not cognitively: primordially: therefore sexually... i'm not into this whole trans-sexuality... but what i was agitated by was a trans-species probe... i had to find resolve and exercise against a canvas of a woman... "against": to match-up to... to compliment... i found that in order to have casual ***: one must be unusually restrained for the whole affair to become: passable: casual... you can't bring your firsty laundry... your most inhibited frailty to the fore... a most assured contraint is to never invoke words during *******... at best: vowels... with a pinch of consonant: i call it the vowel-catcher "principle": what could be shouted as A... becomes a softly oozed out Ah from mouth to mouth... you chose the subject matter: blah! politics... whatever faction we supposedly belong to: there's always that citizen of the world: the universal man nibble... isn't there? would you want me to tell you what you might be missing in the arena of casual ***? i couldn't tell you... since i haven't used any of the modern short-cuts of the hook-up culture "dating" bonanza... i'm an outdated model when it comes to ***... if it happens... casually... proper... once or twice... there was this... no... i won't go into the details... it was my birthday and i mixed her a decent cocktail and.... well... the pistons... the grease.. whatever metphor you like... then there was this Thai-surprise... she was supposedly a lesbian... later a bisexual... i took her home and played her some Kind of Blue... it's not like jazz is cheap... am i still... sounding a bit crass: "objectifying" as a way of making shortcuts? isn't it? *** without having children? it must be... esp. if you have long spells of not doing what most urban folk seem to be having all the time: unless they're merely boasting about having: smoke & mirrors... i'd allow my head to be chopped off and turn into an urban myth surrounding a cockroach if i could have more of it... the urban myth of the cockroach? apparently if you decapitate a cockroach... it keeps on living: a zombie torso... finally dying after two weeks from... hunger... since... the ****** obvious... it has no head to ingest food with! - how odd... i thought i had something original to write tonight... i started scribbling then lasted long enough to find myself writing too poorly, so i resorted to read my inbox messages... i am more willing to leave you with a reply than have to masquerade with some "originality"... you asked me: or at least insinuated about casual ***...what's your take on *******? i ask the question while listening to the cure: short term effect from the album: *******... i'll hardly make this a light-hearted question... i don't even think it might be categorized as a question: hasn't ******* / rather the spread of it... become ominous? i still remember the ****** of shame with colour in my cheeks when i would buy: a magazine short of sinister... a woman's naked body: if not celebrated.... sure... i'll be the one jerking off to a revision of the **** via cubism... the face will not be a sorting out process of a nightmare...  if ever i watch a pornographic movie: it will be done via turning the sound off... whatever a woman is concerned i like to see a potential: i don't like to see something to imitate... come to think of it: i don't think i've asked a question: if i wanted some clarity... i would be gagging for it... no wonder we moved away from politics and onto such "pressing" matters as to why: so many of us are not getting enough of "it"... no? whether we have children or we don't have children: i've seen it for my very own eyes: having children doesn't allow you to savour certain guarantees:  my maternal grandfather ought to have been surrounded by his loved ones... his grandson (moi) and his daughter... (my mother)... what came about? a "conspiracy" between his wife (my grandmother)... and his son (my uncle)... so he died... alone... in a hospice... last time i checked in never wanted to have *** beyond the gratifications bound to the "casual":... i want the puddle experience when other people might stress: there's the sea! there's the sea!
you probably acknowledged a truth that wasn't a question before someone who... wouldn't want you to find seeking said experience as something... necessarily... equally shared by one and all... it won't be... i've had my moments of raging against the night having spent a paid hour with nothing more than kisses... caresses and a limp phallus... come to think of it: i don't think *** is ever "casual":  it might be for sociopaths... sociopaths who "think" that stealing apples from a grocery stall is synonymous with buying them...  by casual i'm implying: it's better that there's a transactional transparency invoked: someone is getting more than the other... the party involved with thirst is thirsty... the party selling water: eh... a metaphorical muddle by now...  while you're wondering why casual *** is like... i'm wondering what... fatherhood is... it's a nice compliment of agitations... what wouldn't i do with fatherhood: well... what wouldn't i... keep 3am a time worth staying awake for... so that i might sccribble some words down...

(v) comment section

commented on Mr *******s Integrity

- it must be a fairies' tail...no? at least en engaged cat telling with waggling to joke at the dogs' investment in: the currency of leash / muzzle? good to know that you remember Mr. Schmidt... i'mm somehow sure he wouldn't be content with anyone else remembering him... lessons seem to have been learned... and all the best of him: kept, since you allowed him to be: so graced.

- One thing I’m sure of is only a twisted A-hole would make a comment like this but at least thanks for reading this and these were real people.

- i'm the twisted A-hole and you're the "dear Jesus"... crux-sucker? fair enough... love's a temple... however you want it: on your knees... hey! your take on the best dangling of doodling fancy. no problem... i'm no homophobe.

seems to me... people lack all the entertainmet
when it comes to nuancing language...
they can digest jokes...
they can doodle around with crosswords...
but... when it comes to...
hell: if they're not going to bother...
why the **** ought, i?!
too many movies: too many books unread...
a barrage of art has left everyone
yet to feed into the feels of:
the end of the 20th century: romance.
You don't need the smoky colored quartz dangling in your hair,
Or the liquid rubies painted onto your soft lips,
Or the powdered gold dusted onto your eyelids to hide the look of pain.
You don't need the silver buttons strung up your shirt to make your aura seem pure,
Or the perfect pearls around your throat to tease and allure,
Or the obsidian skirt hugging your thighs to add the finishing touch.
You don't need the diamond blade to make you bleed imperial topaz onto your marble floor,
Or the laxatives made of howlites to cut your figure thin,
Or the breast implants made of danburites to make you seem attractive.
You are worth more than the emeralds that people compare your eyes to.
You are worth more than the sapphires that make up the water in your body.
And you are worth more than the taaffeites that compose the air you breath.
You are a perfect angel without the expensive things.
Just sing sweet lullabies of the truth and be yourself,
To ensure you live in a beautiful reality.
©LogenMichel copyright 2015
haley Jul 2017
my heart flutters at
the way she speaks my name.
"lover", she hums,
and i watch speechless as woebegone
drips from her lips. she
tastes like moonlight
when she kisses me. fragile.
unknown. known.
when our bodies meet
i can't imagine living life any
differently than this;
magnetism draws me closer and
i am intoxicated and sobered and
and i let my fingers
trace symphonies over her skin
love songs and love letters
and the lust of
knowing that this is belonging.
we fold into each other
and it is inevitable. i want to
learn her, learn
every part of her, as if
it's what my soul was sent to do;
her heartbeat weaves a
gossamer of beauty and
she leaves it in the crease of my
neck. "lover".
lightworker. twinflame.
architect of this home, these
two arms that sing safety
into rose quartz bones.
this is harmony.
i release a held breath and
whisper back, "always".
this is my promise.
wrote this sweet one about someone i loved.
Hunks o' rose quartz, diamond an' sapphires:
- tis' these shining stones - which your admirer
- would love to gift you - an' dress your bones in.
Aye - I'd love to see this necklace lying upon the skin
- of your chest, or - rather, - of your *******:
- tis' that same place I'd love to make a nest,
- an' take, such, a soothing an' peaceful rest.
Aye - with my dreaming head upon your ****:
- I'd listen, attentively, ta' your perfect heart's beat
- an' wish we, both, could stay like this for weeks!
April Third, Two-Thousand an' Seventeen
'Diamond' Poem Prompt, #NPMDiamond
Katarina Jul 2017
Dust the base of my spine
In red sparks of Jasper
The cherry of a cigarette on a
Smoky quartz

Stability.

And then you progress
Caress my lower abdomen
Make me contract and shake, in infinite bliss
And lay me in a field of orange marigolds

Sensuality.

Stroke the naval centre -
My life principles of power and identity
Melted away
In the honey calcite that drips in pearls

Power.

528 Hertz, you vibrate
The frequency that renews the very
Physical matter of my vessel,
My coded waves

Love.

My throat, where you talk your wisdom
Lace my waist in agate
And your hand circles the point of serenity
Teeth in the butter soft skin

Truth.

And then you kiss me
On the forehead between the eyes
Those eyes that transform to yours,
When I open my third, and see the indigo

Insight.

Shatter, shatter the shards through the finality
The barrier of quartz and clarity
And melt into my Sahasara
And we become knowing.

One.
Daughter Oct 2012
A princess made of bubbles.
Flowers open to reveal
a world
where the ants congregate.

Light drips and pours                                                            ­                                                                 ­             
little rivers through trees that grow pockets, holding dust                                                             ­                 
that makes you sneeze sparkle streaks.                                                         ­                                                       

Watch out for the grass that looks too green.
It'll tickle your little feet.
The purple fields are much nicer.
As soft as the lime green grizzly who lives in the cave
made of quartz.

Lay down.                                                            ­                                                                 ­                                   
Listen to the song of                                                               ­                                                                 ­                
Kistin.                                                         ­                                                                 ­                                              
The king, the leader.                                                          ­                                                                 ­                   
The buffalo who keeps the peace                                                            ­                                                              
and keeps it all in the pretend.
Kelsey Robb Sep 2012
blood red diamond
tops tender green emeralds,
rose quartz and morganite
in a feast of polished deposit.

teardrop laden,
glistening against the stirring sun,
the world waits in dew.
crystal drops wink,
the blood diamond contemplates emerald tightrope,
slick escape.

with a bubble here,
a drop there,
Little Lady Beetle
attempts to dry its wings.

the flower that rests beneath
bends low,
and too shimmers
like a July sparkler.
Viciousness in the kitchen!
The potatoes hiss.
It is all Hollywood, windowless,
The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible migraine,
Coy paper strips for doors --
Stage curtains, a widow's frizz.
And I, love, am a pathological liar,
And my child -- look at her, face down on the floor,
Little unstrung puppet, kicking to disappear --
Why she is schizophrenic,
Her face is red and white, a panic,
You have stuck her kittens outside your window
In a sort of cement well
Where they crap and puke and cry and she can't hear.
You say you can't stand her,
The *******'s a girl.
You who have blown your tubes like a bad radio
Clear of voices and history, the staticky
Noise of the new.
You say I should drown the kittens. Their smell!
You say I should drown my girl.
She'll cut her throat at ten if she's mad at two.
The baby smiles, fat snail,
From the polished lozenges of orange linoleum.
You could eat him. He's a boy.
You say your husband is just no good to you.
His Jew-Mama guards his sweet *** like a pearl.
You have one baby, I have two.
I should sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb my hair.
I should wear tiger pants, I should have an affair.
We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,
Me and you.

Meanwhile there's a stink of fat and baby crap.
I'm doped and thick from my last sleeping pill.
The smog of cooking, the smog of hell
Floats our heads, two venemous opposites,
Our bones, our hair.
I call you Orphan, orphan. You are ill.
The sun gives you ulcers, the wind gives you T.B.
Once you were beautiful.
In New York, in Hollywood, the men said: 'Through?
Gee baby, you are rare.'
You acted, acted for the thrill.
The impotent husband slumps out for a coffee.
I try to keep him in,
An old pole for the lightning,
The acid baths, the skyfuls off of you.
He lumps it down the plastic cobbled hill,
Flogged trolley. The sparks are blue.
The blue sparks spill,
Splitting like quartz into a million bits.

O jewel! O valuable!
That night the moon
Dragged its blood bag, sick
Animal
Up over the harbor lights.
And then grew normal,
Hard and apart and white.
The scale-sheen on the sand scared me to death.
We kept picking up handfuls, loving it,
Working it like dough, a mulatto body,
The silk grits.
A dog picked up your doggy husband. He went on.

Now I am silent, hate
Up to my neck,
Thick, thick.
I do not speak.
I am packing the hard potatoes like good clothes,
I am packing the babies,
I am packing the sick cats.
O vase of acid,
It is love you are full of. You know who you hate.
He is hugging his ball and chain down by the gate
That opens to the sea
Where it drives in, white and black,
Then spews it back.
Every day you fill him with soul-stuff, like a pitcher.
You are so exhausted.
Your voice my ear-ring,
Flapping and *******, blood-loving bat.
That is that. That is that.
You peer from the door,
Sad hag. 'Every woman's a *****.
I can't communicate.'

I see your cute décor
Close on you like the fist of a baby
Or an anemone, that sea
Sweetheart, that kleptomaniac.
I am still raw.
I say I may be back.
You know what lies are for.

Even in your Zen heaven we shan't meet.
Bergen Franklin May 2015
Your Crystal like body,
Shinning with cracks.
malicious sparkles.
Sharp facets.
Every chip, every drop,
That should have crystallized,
And then dropped off.
Has not.

Gorge on pain,
Revel in confusion,
Misery isn’t hereditary Like your back.
You can be happy.
Not seek out pain.
Is this what you want?

The girl I loved,
Is gone and missed.
Replaced by a miser of woes,
An unhappy beast.
That spits and sulks
Gone are the purrs.
The felicity.
The light.
I dated a wannabe corpse,
Not something I like,
Revel in your pain,
You can do it without me.
Everything brings you down,
Especially me,
That seems how you like it to be.

The girl I loved,
  Is gone and dead,
As are we,
Stop ******* with my head.

Love me.
Hate me.
Do both,
I don’t care.
Do whatever you want,
I’m not there
7/6/04
Anecandu Sep 2016
Til two we played in the quartz sand,
Hoping the sands of times would quickly past,
You will be my first,.........last love,
for drawing kisses and hearts on my cast.

I felt you squeeze my hand when I cried,
I felt to squeeze your .... yours well I tried :)
To speak for you out of turn,
how rubbing grade school crayon from walls burn.

I gave you that rose stolen,
from the secret garden that stole our hearts,
and crosses don't come often,
but i'm happy we crossed paths
Alicia Mar 2021
She is quartz
a hard dark exterior
a vibrant multitude of fractalized particles
dancing in the light of springs rays

her voice an oral orchestra
a solo violinist
exposing emotion in an aria of sound

shoulders back, head held high
determined, through ***** streets she stalks
her looks are perilous

waves of bleached blonde hair
eyes that hide secrets she will not share
olive-skinned city enchantress

mystery in the words she writes
poetic dreamer by day
waitress by night
I wrote this for my daughter
Rose quartz, diamonds, an' sapphires;
- all o' these things: I'd get from the mart
- if only ta' light an intense, burning fire
- in your, so, beautiful an' vibrant heart.

Alas, me' pockets - all - be empty
- so all I may do is tempt thee
- with an invitation, given gladly,
- ta' join my picnic in the valley.

So - tell me -
- *is that something you'd fancy?
April Third, Two-Thousand an' Seventeen.
"Diamond" Poem Prompt, #NPMDiamond
Oliver Philip Dec 2018
Capricorn  ♑️
~~~~~~~~
Capricornian don’t mind me. I can’t live as you.
As you have the highest of standards always.
Peridot,Garnets, Agate or Turquoise to wear
Ruby’s grace a  beautiful young maidens hair.
I can see the jewels in your eyes as you smile.
Carnelian stones or Malachite for soul healing
Or Jet ,Smokey Quartz or shiny Black Onyx.
Red Garnets,Blue Aragonite,Green Tourmaline
Nonsuch is the birth symbol ,graceful as thee
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Written by Philip.
December 19th 2018.
Capricorn as a zodiacal sign.
Egeria Litha Jun 2015
Vibration in my hands sending me
show less but when you sing
sing from the bottom of lungs
and the fullness of one heart
Be a mystery but upon
revealing behind the curtain
Be certain that the energy
delivered is worth it
Dance slow
so when the beat drops
the body bursts and explodes
I can handle anything I experience
eternal reasons
Did you forget forever?
Honestly, Probably
it actually happens all the time
r Sep 2013
I crossed a crystal bridge
A bridge of clear quartz crystal
Leading me to nowhere land
My rubber soul did whistle
I could see beatles through the sides  
And yellow submarines below
I decided to sit in and make no plans
And be a nowhere man but here
In this bridge of quartz crystal clear

r  22Sept13
Kudos to the Beatles: John, Paul, George and Ringo.  Nowhere Man my favorite song of their's.
Jacob Dec 2014
Our first words were hey
I greeted with my hand
In response I got a smile
That soft smile I didn't forget
From then to now
Looking at your eyes
And the laughter that we shared
I know I know it was the first time we met
But honestly who cares
And of course I went home that night
smiled at my ceiling
And stared out at the sky
Wondering if she thought
I'm going to like this guy
I mean we shared a glass of wine
Our last words haven't been said yet
Meena Menon Apr 2021
The eruption beatifies the magma.  
It becomes obsidian,
only breaks with a fracture,
smooth circles where it breaks.  

My mom was born on the grass
on a lawn
in a moss covered canyon at the top of a volcanic island.  
My grandfather lived in Malaysia before the Japanese occupied.  
When the volcano erupted,
the lava dried at the ocean into black sand.  
The British allied with the Communist Party of Malaysia—
after they organized.  
After the Americans defeated the Japanese at Pearl Harbor,
the British took over Malaysia again.  
They kept different groups apart claiming they were helping them.  
The black sand had smooth pebbles and sharp rocks.  
Ethnic Malay farmers lived in Kampongs, villages.  
Indians lived on plantations.  
The Chinese lived in towns and urban areas.  
Ethnic Malays wanted independence.
In 1946, after strikes, demonstrations, and boycotts
the British agreed to work with them.  
The predominantly Chinese Communist Party of Malaysia went underground,
guerrilla warfare against the British,
claiming their fight was for independence.  
For the British, that emergency required vast powers
of arrest, detention without trial and deportation to defeat terrorism.  
The Emergency became less unpopular as the terrorism became worse.  
The British were the iron that brought oxygen through my mom’s body.  
She loved riding on her father’s motorcycle with him
by the plantations,
through the Kampongs
and to the city, half an hour away.  
The British left Malaysia independent in 1957
with Malaysian nationalists holding most state and federal government offices.  
As the black sand stretches towards the ocean,
it becomes big stones of dried lava, flat and smooth.  

My mom thought her father and her uncle were subservient to the British.  
She thought all things, all people were equal.  
When her father died when she was 16, 1965,
they moved to India,
my mother,
a foreigner in India, though she’s Indian.  
She loved rock and roll and mini skirts
and didn’t speak the local language.  
On the dried black lava,
it can be hard to know the molten lava flickers underneath there.  
Before the Korean War,
though Britain and the United States wanted
an aggressive resolution
condemning North Korea,
they were happy
that India supported a draft resolution
condemning North Korea
for breach of the peace.  
During the Korean War,
India, supported by Third World and other Commonwealth nations,
opposed United States’ proposals.
They were able to change the U.S. resolution
to include the proposals they wanted
and helped end the war.  
China wanted the respect of Third World nations
and saw the United States as imperialist.  
China thought India was a threat to the Third World
by taking aid from the United States and the Soviets.  
Pakistan could help with that and a seat at the United Nations.  
China wanted Taiwan’s seat at the UN.
My mother went to live with her uncle,
a communist negotiator for a corporation,
in India.  
A poet,
he threw parties and invited other artists, musicians and writers.  
I have the same brown hyperpigmentation at my joints that he had.  
During the day, only the steam from the hot lava can be seen.  
In 1965, Pakistani forces went into Jammu and Kashmir with China’s support.  
China threatened India after India sent its troops in.  
Then they threatened again before sending their troops to the Indian border.  
The United States stopped aid to Pakistan and India.
Pakistan agreed to the UN ceasefire agreement.  
Pakistan helped China get a seat at the UN
and tried to keep the west from escalating in Vietnam.  
The smoldering sound of the lava sizzles underneath the dried lava.  
When West Pakistan refused to allow East Pakistan independence,
violence between Bengalis and Biharis developed into upheaval.  
Bengalis moved to India
and India went into East Pakistan.  
Pakistan surrendered in December 1971.  
East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh.

The warm light of the melted lava radiates underneath but burns.  
In 1974, India tested the Smiling Buddha,
a nuclear bomb.  
After Indira Gandhi’s conviction for election fraud in 1973,
Marxist Professor Narayan called for total revolution
and students protested all over India.  
With food shortages, inflation and regional disputes
like Sikh separatists training in Pakistan for an independent Punjab,
peasants and laborers joined the protests.  
Railway strikes stopped the economy.  
In 1975, Indira Gandhi, the Iron Lady,
declared an Emergency,
imprisoning political opponents, restricting freedoms and restricting the press,
claiming threats to national security
because the war with Pakistan had just ended.  
The federal government took over Kerala’s communist dominated government and others.  

My mom could’ve been a dandelion, but she’s more like thistle.  
She has the center that dries and flutters in the wind,
beautiful and silky,
spiny and prickly,
but still fluffy, downy,
A daisy.
They say thistle saved Scotland from the Norse.  
Magma from the volcano explodes
and the streams of magma fly into the air.  
In the late 60s,
the civil rights movement rose
against the state in Northern Ireland
for depriving Catholics
of influence and opportunity.
The Northern Irish police,
Protestant and unionist, anti-catholic,
responded violently to the protests and it got worse.  
In 1969, the British placed Arthur Young,
who had worked at the Federation of Malaya
at the time of their Emergency
at the head of the British military in Northern Ireland.
The British military took control over the police,
a counter insurgency rather than a police force,
crowd control, house searches, interrogation, and street patrols,
use of force against suspects and uncooperative citizens.  
Political crimes were tolerated by Protestants but not Catholics.  
The lava burns the rock off the edge of the volcano.  

On January 30, 1972, ****** Sunday,  
British Army policing killed 13 unarmed protesters
fighting for their rights over their neighborhood,
protesting the internment of suspected nationalists.
That led to protests across Ireland.  
When banana leaves are warmed,
oil from the banana leaves flavors the food.  
My dad flew from Canada to India in February 1972.  
On February 4, my dad met my mom.  
On February 11, 1972,
my dad married my mom.  
They went to Canada,
a quartz singing bowl and a wooden mallet wrapped in suede.  
The rock goes down with the lava, breaking through the rocks as it goes down.  
In March 1972, the British government took over
because they considered the Royal Ulster Police and the Ulster Special Constabulary
to be causing most of the violence.  
The lava blocks and reroutes streams,
melts snow and ice,
flooding.  
Days later, there’s still smoke, red.  
My mom could wear the clothes she liked
without being judged
with my dad in Canada.  
She didn’t like asking my dad for money.
My dad, the copper helping my mother use that iron,
wanted her to go to college and finish her bachelors degree.
She got a job.  
In 1976, the police took over again in Northern Ireland
but they were a paramilitary force—
armored SUVs, bullet proof jackets, combat ready
with the largest computerized surveillance system in the UK,
high powered weapons,
trained in counter insurgency.  
Many people were murdered by the police
and few were held accountable.  
Most of the murdered people were not involved in violence or crime.  
People were arrested under special emergency powers
for interrogation and intelligence gathering.  
People tried were tried in non-jury courts.  
My mom learned Malayalam in India
but didn’t speak well until living with my dad.  
She also learned to cook after getting married.  
Her mother sent her recipes; my dad cooked for her—
turmeric, cumin, coriander, cayenne and green chiles.  
Having lived in different countries,
my mom’s food was exposed to many cultures,
Chinese and French.
Ground rock, minerals and glass
covered the ground
from the ash plume.  
She liked working.  

A volcano erupted for 192 years,
an ice age,
disordered ices, deformed under pressure
and ordered ice crystals, brittle in the ice core records.  
My mother liked working.  
Though Khomeini was in exile by the 1970s in Iran,
more people, working and poor,
turned to him and the ****-i-Ulama for help.
My mom didn’t want kids though my dad did.
She agreed and in 1978 my brother was born.
Iran modernized but agriculture and industry changed so quickly.  
In January 1978, students protested—
censorship, surveillance, harassment, illegal detention and torture.  
Young people and the unemployed joined.  
My parents moved to the United States in December 1978.  
The regime used a lot of violence against the protesters,
and in September 1978 declared martial law in Iran.  
Troops were shooting demonstrators.
In January 1979, the Shah and his family fled.  
On February 11, 1979, my parents’ anniversary,
the Iranian army declared neutrality.  
I was born in July 1979.
The chromium in emeralds and rubies colors them.
My brother was born in May and I was born in July.

Obsidian—
iron, copper and chromium—
isn’t a gas
but it isn’t a crystal;
it’s between the two,
the ordered crystal and the disordered gas.  
They made swords out of obsidian.
This is the next part of Lava.
Amethyst ,
Greek for not intoxicated
A gemstone of violet colored quartz
once believed provided protection
against becoming intoxicated

Black Butterfly , a book about transformation and rebirth after death
But I don't know where the stripper
drama comes in
The rest is life ,
compartmentalized
into daily drudge

Oh , but for the last dregs
of glory
at the bottom
of the bottle of life

The electric breath that once
activated every nerve cell
of your being
into ecstacy
has become a distant emoticon
that was once closer
than shadow thin
But now has become the one
living in a graveyard
with hopes
of raising dead dreams
Nevermind Jul 2015
And with eyes on palms
I'll make it through
And find my way
Through the darkness to you

— The End —