Razors, did you know they show a kind act of love?
Picture me at 18, not taking life or myself seriously enough.
Well not as seriously as some would take razors and love.

See, I discovered one day just horsing around on a carousel ride
of trauma, that we can all chase dreams, but few of us will catch them. I discovered I needed to be careful where I was dreams to.

Careful like I was in love, careful like I was using razors to chisel through the ground until I reach the earth's bones. I also
discovered, rubbing razors and love the wrong was can feel as if you had a brush with death.

See, God got it wrong, love should barricaded by stonewalls instead of hearts and songs. Love is messy, and poetic, and it carries a ratchet razors that I often use.

Understand cuts are messengers too, and they tattletale and dry snitch every change they get, about my anger, my fear, and my secret stash of razors to a world that couldn't possibly understand.
What the hell didn't they get the memo?

That I am looking for someone to feed on and stay full off of.
because I can't love normal, just insane and misunderstood. Someone to understand, this is why I stay quiet barely hear.

I got voice as loud as silence, and in the bedroom I make as much noise as a butterfly. Ironic they call me Navah the Butterfly, because when I speak it's poetic and no safe words.

Just someone else's slit wrist pouring out of me, O Negative premeditated blood drops to what is really wrong with me.
And I confess, I sick and creative. I am something you can't just simply sleep off, so sweet dreams.

and it is going to take more than razor shape words and music that sings to what's between my legs to fix me it's going to take God!
Running from every direction at once just to come and hold me.

And I will tell them, I don't know how to stop using razors or a world around as a mirror a world that is someone else's heaven and someone else's hell. So Sometimes I play the hero and the villain as I try to pick up the pieces of myself 5 at a time to put me back together again.

but Cant so I hurt with razors for now but one day I will hurt with kindness and I will be amazing! And I will teach my how not to use razors

LIVEN ON THE RAZORS EDGE

Remember how we used to dream
      the things that we were not
I was your knight in shining armor
      in our concrete Camelot
We played so many different parts
      like actors on a stage
We’d escape through picture magazines
      just by turning page to page

Back when we had nothing to lose
      by taking a chance by breaking the rules

When we were dead end kids living on the razors edge
     and I was King of the streets and you were queen of the avenue
When we were dead end kids living on the razors edge
     our castle was a run-down candy store our kingdom the theatre Bijou

And it’s good seeing you again
     though it’s been so many years
Since I played your Lancelot
     and you my Guinevere  
I’m glad to see those special times
     neither one of us forgot
And that we no long need to dreams
     the things that we are not

Back when we had nothing to lose
      by taking a chance by breaking the rules

When we were dead end kids living on the razors edge
     and I was King of the streets and you were queen of the avenue
When we were dead end kids living on the razors edge
     our castle was a run-down candy store our kingdom the theatre Bijou


sp-theatre / English / theater American English

         By VjKelly  1993  © for my song RAZORS EDGE

The tired, old cliché –life is short—is probably more accurate than I would care to admit. With wry amusement, I have to admit that overused saying can be quite a joke to me, for I’ve heard it said way too many times, quite at the level of nauseam. Often times, I think the opposite, that life can be pretty **** long when you are not satisfied with it.

I am now at the age which I once thought was getting old, just having another unwanted birthday recently, turning forty-seven last month. As a girl, I thought anyone who had reached the age of forty was practically decrepit. Well, perhaps not, but it might as well have been that way. Forty wasn’t flirty. Forty wasn’t fun. It was far from a desirable age to be, but at least it seemed a million years off.

Surely now, life is far from over for me. Yet I must admit that I am feeling that my youth is slowly slipping away, like sand between my hands that is impossible to hold onto forever. Fifty is over the horizon for me, and I can sense its approach with a bit of unease and trepidation.

It is amazing. Many people still tell me that I am young, but even in my thirties I sensed that middle age was creeping up on me. And now I really am wondering when my middle age status will officially come to an end and old age will replace it—just exactly what number that is anyway. If I doubled up my age now, it would be ninety-four, so my age bracket cannot be as “middle” as it once was.

When we are children, we often cannot wait until we are old enough, old enough to drive when we turn sixteen, old enough to vote when we turn eighteen, as well as old enough to graduate from all those years of school drudgery, and old enough to drink when we turn twenty-one. I can certainly add the lesser milestones—when we are old enough to no longer require a babysitter, when we are old enough to date, when girls are old enough to wear make-up, or dye their hair. Those benefits of adulthood seem to validate our importance in life, nothing we can experience firsthand as a rightful privilege before then.

Many kids can’t wait to be doing all the grown-up things, as if time cannot go fast enough for them, as if that precious stage of life should simply race by like a comet, and life would somehow continue on as before, seemingly as invincible as it ever did in youth. Yet, for many people, after finally surpassing those important ages and stages, they often look back and are amazed at how the years seemed to have just flown by, rushed on in like a “thief in the night” and overtook their lives. And they then begin to realize that they are mortal and life is not invincible, after all.

I am one of them.

When I was a girl, I did not have an urgent sense of the clock, certainly not the need to hurry up to morph into an adult, quite content to remain in my snug, little cocoon of imaginary prepubescent bliss. It seemed like getting to the next phase in life would take forever, or so I wanted it to be that way. In my dread of wondering what I would do once I was grown. I really was in no hurry to face the future head on.  I pretty much feared those new expectations and leaving the security of a sheltered, childhood, a haven of a well-known comfort zone, for sure, even though a generally unhappy one.

Change was much too scary for me, even if it could have been change for the good.

At the age I am now, I surely enjoy the respects that come with the rites of passage into adulthood, a status that I, nor anybody, could truly have as a child. I can assert myself without looking like an impudent, snot-nosed kid—a pint sized know-it-all—one who couldn’t impress anybody with sophistication no matter how much I tried. Now, I can grow into an intelligent woman, ever growing with the passing of age, perhaps a late bloomer with my assertiveness and confidence. Hopefully, more and more each day, I am surrendering the fight in the battle of self-negativity, slowly obtaining a sense of satisfaction in my own skin.

I have often been mistaken as much younger than my actual age. The baby face that I once had seems to be loosing its softness, a very youthful softness that I once disliked but now wish to reclaim. I certainly have mixed feelings about being older, glad to be done with the fearful awkwardness of growing up, now that I look back to see it for what it was, but sometimes missing that girl that once existed, one who wanted to enjoy being more of what she truly had.

All in all, I’d much rather be where I am right this very moment, for it is all that I truly can stake as my claim. Yet I think of the middle age that I am in right now as a precarious age.

As the years go by, our society seems ever more youth obsessed, far more than I was a child. Plastic surgeries are so common place, and Botox is the new fountain of youth. Anti-aging creams, retinol, age defying make-up—many women, including myself, want to indulge in their promises for wrinkle-free skin. Whether it is home remedies or laboratory designed methods, whatever way we can find to make our appearance more pleasing, and certainly younger, is a tantalizing hope for those of us who are middle aged females.

Is fifty really the new thirty? I’d love to think so, but I just cannot get myself to believe that.

Just ask my aches and pains if you want to know my true opinion.

Middle age women are now supposed to be attractive to younger men, as if it is our day for a walk in the sun. Men have been in the older position—often much older position—since surely time began. But we ladies get the label of “cougar”, an somewhat unflattering name that speaks of stalking and pouncing, of being able to rip someone apart with claws like razors, conquer them and then devour them. There is Cougar Town on television that seems to celebrate this phenomenon as something fun and carefree, but I still think that it is generally looked at as something peculiar and wrong.

Hugh Hefner can have women young enough to be his granddaughters, and it might be offensive to many, but he can still get pats on the back and thumbs up for his lifestyle. Way to go, Hef! Yet when it comes to Demi Moore married to Ashton Kutcher, a man fifteen years younger than her, it is a different story. Many aren’t surprised that they are divorcing. Talking heads on television have pointed out, with the big age difference between them, that their relationship was doomed from the start. Other talking heads have pointed out the double standard and the unfairness placed on such judgment, realizing that it probably would not be this way if the man was fifteen years older.

Yes, right now I have middle age as my experience, and that is exactly where I feel in life—positioned in the middle between two major life stages. And they are two stages that I don’t think commands any respect—childhood and old age.      

I’ve been to my share of nursing homes. I helped to care for my father, as he lived and died in one. I had to endure my mother’s five month stay in a nursing home while she recovered from major surgery. I have volunteered my time in hospice, making my travels in some nursing home visitations. So I have seen, firsthand, the hardship of what it means to be elderly, of what it means to feel like a burden, of what it means to lose one’s abilities that one has always taken for granted.  I’ve often witnessed the despair and the languishing away from growing feeble in body and mind.
There is no easy cure for old age. No amount of Botox can alleviate the problems. No change seems available in sight for the ones who have lost their way, or have few people that can care for them, or are willing to care for them.  

I think time should just slow down again for me—as it seemed to be in my girlhood.

I am in no hurry to leave middle age.

Dear Crystal ****,
I loved you
I put so much trust in you
I spent every hour of every day confiding in you
I told you my deepest fears
I let you know how broken i was
and you ******* took advantage of me
You took everything i owned
you stole my family from under me
you robbed me of all my money
We never had a healthy relationship

From the first night i met you
you beat me into a ****** pulp
You made me hate everyone
You turned me into a monster just like you..

You dug your claws into me
You slit my skin with your razors of control
But you just brushed it off and kept destroying me
I tried so many times to leave you
I tried so hard to cut you off
But the attemps just failed

You flooded my mind with thoughts of you
You gave me flashbacks of when we were together
I heard your voice screaming when all i wanted to do was forget about you
You controlled every aspect of my mind
my body
And my life

Then one day i couldnt take it anymore
Your abuse was to muc for me
You had me on my knees begging for a saving grace
I cried
I screamed
I begged god for the light
I wanted to die
I stood on the edge of bridges
I stared at knives and blades
I felt like i couldnt continue with you
and like i definitly count continue without you..

Then one dark august night
God awnsered my prayers
He wrapped his arms around me and rocked me to sleep after so many weeks without closing my eyes
I slept for almost 4 days
Waking only to use the restroom and to shove any food i could find in my face
You slowly left my system

You didnt go peacefully of course
You paniced
You clawed
You begged me not to do this
but i didnt listen

I stayed true to myself
I finally left you...

Things wernt smooth at first
I felt lost
I was confused about everything involving life
I didnt know who i was
I thought i would for sure go running back to you
But i gave it time

I pushed through the hot and cold flashes
Ignored the hallucinations and the fevers
It was pure hell on earth
But the torture was worth every second because leaving you was the best decition i have ever made for myself

Tomarrow is 30 days free from your shackles
Life still is a constant struggle
But honestly
I would not expect any different after breaking free from the cage of satan and into the sunlight of heaven

I now hae so many things to be greatful for
I have a roof over my head
I bed to sleep in thats not jail or a hospital.
I am a cherished member of y family again
I found love unexpectedly with a man who makes me feel like the most beautiful woman on earth
I have my goals and morals back
I see a future for myself
and most of all..
I am thankful i am breathing because you almost killed me

Someone once said
"Dope heads never quit, they only take extended breaks"
Well, i am proud to say i never am allowing you back into my life

So thank you ****
Even though you shattered every part of my soul
I now have a brand new outlook on life
I also never would have asked my now fiance for a ride home if you had never made me so sick i was in the emergency room
I dont regret you
Because i learned so much about myself and life from you

But now i can finally say...
I ******* hate you and i will never be with you again

Sincerally:
One greatful proud, life loving forever ex tweaker <3

stars and stardust fall to freedom
from the press corpse,
from the incessant demand of chemical crises.
crowds ache for love or a substitute
and false amore is what they have.
love is folie a deux-
[the shared madness of two.]
attachment is an affliction,
infatuation is disease leaping from remission,
with deadly symptoms.
red roses lead to black coffin doors,
roses dropped on floors
from vases shattered,
and life is the water spilling from the stems.

golden hair won't keep me docile-
blue eyes and a smile
are weapons of mass destruction-
cities sunk and flags risen
from the depths of inhumanity.
it's all for you, Helen, and humankind will never
perceive its aftereffects,
its hangover headache
sprawled over the world on a bad day.
little city partylights and shiny beer bottles
broken upon the concrete
covering the grass.
reflections of insanity upon the glass.

devilish, the temptress,
the succubus, a mistress
sent by Him, to spin doubt into
the spiderwebbed life of family trees
split in two by axes, divorces
to fifty percent, no-
no wedding band-aid will stop this flood.
abandonment.
neglect gets to a child's head-
can't help but wonder if
they were the cause of this.
little anchors,
keeping the heart in one place-
an anchored rubber band that demoness
stretched and snapped.
the relapse gave her whiplash, and
the stepdad whipped the boy's back, and
the boy grew up and
found a girl to take his pain to.
she gave him five stunted children,
with eyes hollow and glazed,
a mechanical response to a command.

lack of emotion only seems cruel
to those on the other side.
lack of flourish means nothing
to those who grew up to grey skies.

chains and handcuffs keep stardust grounded,
remains from a nebula which
birthed a black hole.
straight razors and pinky nails
teach fledglings to reach for the sky
and never fall back down.
glass ceilings never seemed so
breakable- tiptoe upsidedown
and reach the other side
before you fall back down to the real world.

angels have no eyes.
angels have no souls.
angels judge and leave the helpless for below.
cliffsides crumble and clouds dissipate,
and the devil lends a hand-
he is helping sinners make it up to him.
in his face sit eyes gleaming brightly;
there are teeth grinning, off-white-
he is human, though sadistic
and he understands your plight.
the devil is forgiving,
and you understand nothing, because you
are nothing.
you are nothing.

stars and stardust fall to freedom, and the devil takes in all.

~Many people rely on the convenient, easy ways of living in this age of fast food, plastic packaging and rapid development. Most people do not care to see why they live the way they do or what it takes to live in such a way. Toxic pollutants leaching into our earth and water should not be worth the convenience! Third world women working in dusty, cramped factories to make designer purses for fifteen year old girls. Garbage is America’s biggest export and it ends up in China, on the coast of Somalia... anywhere that American citizens won’t be bothered to see it.

~What does it mean to buy a pack of plastic razors? Some metal, some chemicals, some plastic, more plastic for packaging. Use a razor a few times and toss it in the garbage. Somewhere, maybe at La Chureca, someone will pull the rusted metal and plastic from the landfill. They might make one US dollar per day collecting scraps of aluminum, glass, plastic and other scrap metals. What does it mean to wear deodorant? The plastic stick isn’t reusable. The ingredients are highly toxic. Aluminum-based antiperspirants have been linked to Alzheimer's and cancer. Soap comes in plastic bottles, coffee makers made of plastic, water bottles made of plastic… hell, my plastic shower curtain came wrapped in plastic packaging.

~Americans are lucky. Indoor plumbing with quality water. Green lawns and exotic flower beds. Buy and use, throw away and repeat. Big corporations pay off politicians to pollute. Industrial waste, land erosion, low air quality, pesticides. Why are we so quick to trust an artificial sweetener being promoted by a company that makes poison? They call you a hippy, a conspiracy theorist. They tell you that you only live once and to stop being so worried about it all. I ask them, how can you look away? Deforestation and destruction are all around. Those that profit are not concerned with what happens to the land after the loggers and miners have left the ground scarred and desolate.

~Modern living is a hoax. Yeah, you get around quick in your car but at what cost? Carbon dioxide, greenhouse gasses choking us and everything alive that lives with us and cannot speak. Can’t you walk to the corner store? Can’t you grow a few things in the garden or in the windowsill? When was the last time you saw a sunset and didn’t take a picture of it? Dairy cows packed together so tight they can’t turn around for your glass of milk. The disconnect is everywhere. Overpopulation. Overconsumption. People don’t care.

~They can choose. They can choose paper over plastic. They can buy a water filter instead of 20 plastic bottles. They can bike to work. Anyone can lessen their impact, anyone can think more deeply and live more sustainably. But we’ve made it so easy to be lazy. We’ve become so dependent that we’re forgetting to use technological gains to make the way we do things better. We’ve come so far that we’re forgetting what brought us here.

~

‘We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire – a crackpot machine – that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate.’ Edward Abbey

‘In the developing world, the problem of population is seen less as a matter of human numbers than of western overconsumption. Yet within the development community, the only solution to the problems of the developing world is to export the same unsustainable economic model fuelling the overconsumption of the West.’ Kavita Ramdas

‘Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.’ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

‘Globalisation, which attempts to amalgamate every local, regional, and national economy into a single world system, requires homogenising locally adapted forms of agriculture, replacing them with an industrial system – centrally managed, pesticide-intensive, one-crop production for export – designed to deliver a narrow range of transportable foods to the world market.’Helena Norberg-Hodge

‘Throughout history human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonise-destroy-move on.’ Garrett Hardin

I’ve tattooed a line across
the veins of my wrist
and marked a down stroke
for every time
“you can’t wear red lipstick”
made me believe
I never wanted to in the first place.

for every time instead
I’ve stained my lips with cherries
learning how to tie the stems
so I can slip forget-me-knots
to the back of your throat—
do you feel my restriction now?

the razors that fly off my tongue
perk thorns on my skin,
another down stroke on my wrist
will teach me that
you were right,
shyness is a virtue.

no need to speak,
go spend one hundred dollars
and some percent for tax
to cover up,
even though I’m sure your mother told you
that cotton stains.

so make it black.
get your hair stuck
in the zipper of that sundress
and pray as you pull it out
that it will lose its pigmentation
in the process
mark a down stroke
for killing two flowers
for one bouquet.

hold it
close your eyes and throw it back,
I know we shouldn’t be wearing white anyway
but tradition can take a lot out of you
like what you really think—
don’t say **** in public.

instead drag your first impressions
all the way to the altar
and dress in your Sunday best
a flower on your lapel
clear on your lips
a stroke for the neat decline
of the son

I tattooed a line across
the veins of my wrist
and marked a down stroke
for every time
my image
was my fault.

As they purged the house
She stood and watched
They took the pencils
They took the sharpeners
She's not allowed to shave
They took the razors away
She cannot sharpen the pencils left
They took the razors away
The artwork gets dull
Her mind goes null
Idea box is full
But she cannot draw
They took the razors away
Her writing is forced
They speak of divorce
She can't express because
They took the razors
They took the razors away
They took her art
They took her love
They took her words
She took her life
Not all the razors had been thrown away.

Dear Math,
I wrote this letter to let you know how I feel about you. The thing is much as you love me so much, we can never be an Item when all you do is torture my brain and break my heart.
You claim to be a linguist, yet you know none of my languages. You don't know Kiswahili neither do you know English and only speak Algebra and statistics...I loathe you for all you do is play on my mind with words like Sigma and Meu, factorial and co-factor.You claim you want to be the only one but still ask me to find your X without even telling me Y.Well, grow up and solve your own problems because I'm tired of solving them for you.Just walk out of my life forever and not temporarily like the dew. You have hurt me enough with razors of matrices, pinched me simultaneously and never asked me whether I believed in your ancient beliefs like those of Pythagoras or not. We were never meant to be. I found a new one, her name is literature and she loves me so much.I won't apologize for saying I hate you because It's unfair apologizing for saying the truth.
Yours with anger

I have a message
For you haters
You're the wreckage
Your words like razors

No longer shall I keel
To your decimating attitude
I have an intransigent zeal
Of undeniable magnitude

Your reign of terror
Now a speck in the past
Your puppet strings I sever
Now free I feel, at last

I dare you, I dare you
Try to cut me down
But be warned, I will strew
Your face all over the ground

No longer am i afraid.
All the hated, it's time to stand
All the haters, it's time to be repaid
No more worries, just grains of sand

The tides now change
Deny them their satisfaction
Their power has no range
Haters, this is your termination

When I first heard of the concept of self harm, in sixth or seventh grade, I didn’t believe it could be addictive. I didn’t understand how people tore apart their skin just for the sake of tearing things apart.

That changed real quick when I had my first panic attack at 14 and used a dull pair of scissors to scratch a line down my arm. It barely even bled, but it was the beginning of something. It was a temporary peace, a comfort in the moment and a monster in the next.

And so it began. I bought men’s razors, carried them home in my pockets and hit them against dressers and with books until they broke apart. I hid the blades in a small cardboard box behind the books on my shelves, hid bandages and antiseptic and a long, dull razor blade (the kind you use to cut glass and paint) that I’d stolen from my dad’s tool bench. Just in case I needed to escalate.

I wore long sleeves and jeans to cover my misdeeds, the long, thin scratches lined up neatly along my thighs. Monthly became weekly became every other day as I lost control of myself, lost myself in the glint of blades and the pools of red and the feeling of pure, unadulterated relief. I was 14 acting like my life was coming to an end (I was convinced it was). I wrote poetry in the empty pages of my French workbook and scratched panicked lines down my forearms in Geometry. I became a shell of myself, a shell pockmarked with fading scars, little white lines that screamed at me whenever I dared to look.

I liked them. I wanted more scars, I wanted them everywhere, I wanted physical, permanent records of my failings and my abysmal self-worth. I wanted a reminder that I could still feel something.

Sometimes I stopped. Six months after I started I decided I needed to quit, so I drew butterflies on my arms and labeled them with the names of people I loved. I stayed off the drug for something like three months, leaving my blades untouched in their hiding place. When my grandpa died, it became too much and the blades came out, crashed into my shaking hands as I heaved with loss and the revelation that I felt nothing.

One weekend I came home from a lake trip with my dad and my best friends to find that my blade box, hastily shoved under a pillow, was gone. After searching under the bed for a good twenty minutes I determined that my mom had found it. So I waited for the next few weeks to be approached, for her to ask what the deal was, for her to say anything. And she never did. That was when I lost faith in the adults in my life and that was also when I bought new razors to keep in a new box in a new hiding place. I carved my resentment into my arms now, instead of on my legs where I’d already mapped out months of self-torture. On my arms they were visible.

I sometimes rolled my sleeves up in class, past my hidden Band-Aids and sometimes up past my scabbed cuts, to see if anyone would notice. No one did. I wasn’t cutting for attention, but I was lost and looking for help.

My best friend taught me how to sanitize my blades, walked with me to Target to buy razors and bandages. It was surreal how normal it was to us. We were talking each other out of suicide every other week because we didn’t want to be alone but we didn’t want to be alive, either. I was so, so scared that I would wake up one morning to find her dead.

My cuts went from panicked, messy, urgent to carefully executed, perfectly straight lines. I had it down to a science, sometimes going months in between but always thinking about the next fix. A year passed. I thought about it less.

There was never a moment that I decided to stop, but somehow I did, between my first job and my driver’s license and my transition into adulthood. I traced the scars on my arms but didn’t really feel like making new ones -- I was still sad, constantly, but I had started teaching myself to be happy, to find love for myself and beauty in life. As I write this, I’ve been clean for over six months.  

The urge fades over time. Sometimes, in the midst of a 3 a.m. surge-of-panic, I’m tempted to take the few blades I still have out of the iPhone box in the top drawer of my dresser. But then I remember that cutting didn’t solve anything, and it never will. My escapades in self-harm taught me to be kind to myself. And it’s so, so hard every single day. I still wish for more scars, more representation of the suffering I lived through, but I’m still breathing and I’m slowly clawing myself out of the mouth of this beast. I’m alive.

Because at the end of the day, all you can do is survive.

Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay (Razor Blades, Pills, & Shotguns)

Sittin' on the dock of the bay,
Watching the sun slip, Simon-says, slide away,
Cheeks blushing flushing from orange ray-guns,
Drinking blush rosé to oil our eyes
For the subtle story the sky shortly will reveal,
For the subtle story the sky shortly will revel.

Grievous judgement to make,
Thinkin' skills possessed to praise,
When but yesterday I easy confessed,
At the Blue Canoe Bar, I did not.

(The clouds were magnificent. No, I cannot write a poem about the cloud colors. Their shape shifting inexhaustible.  Mine eyes high on their creativity.  I'm just not good enough a poet to tamper with that sky.)

If you courage enough to
Call yourself poet, then
It is audacity, not blood,
Warming your extremities,
So foolishly try, always be prepared to fail.

No impulse. We pledged that tonight, ours,
One hour of sunset over Silver Beach.
Brought the wine, forgot the pillows,
So Abraham & Sarah went prepared to sacrifice
All feelings in their butts for the greater glory
Of love and one of nature's great poetic challenges..

The conundrum~miracle of every sunset
O'er bay, lake or ocean, is its special,
Only-In-Nature unique way of customizing
Its descent just for you.

No matter where one observes,
No matter where you worship,
Wherever your temple, mosque or church situé,
Tennessee, Rhode Island, the Philippines,
Germany, Colombia, even in the ole U.K.,
(yes, you, I know it, yes, you!)
The very same setting sun we all see,
Sends a magic dazzle gold orange path invitation
To the exact spot you are voyeuring,
One sun, all destinations equal before human.

How can that be?

Trepidation and tremblingly,
The clouds.

She leans on me, a perfect fit,
My back resting against a pylon,
So we see the clouds
With common exactitude,
But it is a quiet time, silence only shared.
Images stored silently within ourselves,
For we see the formation, man, woman,
Precisely and exactly, totally differently.

The clouds.
An armada moving imperial and imperiously
At a stately speed, saying I am awesome, fear me.
The largest cloud bank is an aircraft carrier,
Miles long, painted horizon blue-grey unsurprisingly.

The small white wisps, fast destroyers, stealthy submarines,
Moving fast to protect the mother ship,
Running random to confuse enemy radar and the
Pathetic, limited, human eye.

The colors.
Here I fail willingly, unashamedly.
So many sunsets, so many hearts,
All different, all the same.
Lacking knowledge, I cannot tender,
I cannot offer you tenderness to love
Enough,
The variety of oranges, gold, varietals interspersed
By the pinks, the cornea, singed,
And mock myself for all my meager brain yields is
Good Humor creamsicle comparison...a delicious irony

You who write after midnight
Of razor blades, pills and shotguns,
And not marked two decades even, on this planet,
You want hard,
Write a poem about a sunset in ways never done before.

You, who are wracked with despair
Speak to the man with no job for months
And mouths to feed and a life insurance policy.
Speak to me.

I want to tell you to get over yourself,
But you reject that old saw. Ok.
Get onto to yourself.

I have walked the hallways of deep despair,
Heard the bells ring between periods that signal only the next
Hell,
And to this day, still do,
But still I try to write external of sunsets and greater glories.

How many lives depend on you? Are you proud of your weakness?
Do you hate me yet for acknowledging out loud,
We are both cowards?

I have five mouths to feed,
Before I parse a morsel.
Two less than two,
What do you have but to
Grow yourself?

Yeah coward.
Too yellow to write about a
Yellow sunset, cause that is hard in a way incomprehensible
Until tried.
Or the passing of your mother who could not speak clearly
But you, thru her eyes knew that she had poems to yet recite.
Run away like I did ashamed with frustrated failure.
Why should I coddle, give you easy soft?**
.
If you come here to share, well and good.
If you come here to find comfort, good.
So gaze upon these words and feel
The love that only experience has earned.

What do you know of heartbreak?
Imprisoned for decades in a loveless life,
I walked by the water nightly,
Yes, the same waters where I CinemaScoped
Yesterday's sunset, and walked away.

You can read about if you look it, look me, look here,
Look up!

So do something hard, something external.
Fail but love yourself more for just having tried.
Then try something else.

The saddest poem ever wrote
Was not yours, where you titillate with daring words
Razors, pills etc.,
The saddest poem ever writ
Was this one, a meager vanity to capture a
Sunset that keeps trying every day to
Surpass
Supersede
Its previous glorious failure,
Like we should too.
Keep trying

Now, I shall rest,
For I know that soon I shall see, feel, think,
Of something new that will make me eager to

Write a new poem.


August 3~5, 2013

Our fingertips are getting so cold in the places we call home.
Putting themselves to sleep with braille goose bump bed time stories.
As our bone marrow weathermen  predict another liquid nitrogen winter.

Lately we have been falling apart like glacial walls.
Our chips off the old block selves falling short
Sinking deeper with all this new pressure and all the cold.
The last of our oxygen seeping through the cracks of our lungs as our time on the bottom runs out.
As our face in the gutter hourglass runs low.
Until we forget why were looking up.
The air bubbles are slipping through our lips like rubber balloon landmines that we've blown our hopes into.
And the places we house those dreams are beginning cut loose the strings that we have been holding onto
The childhood fantasies that are better let go.
Mostly our views of perfection an
d of affection that we should no longer be grasping.
Until we are almost bursting and all that fills our minds are the thoughts of red iron razors
The ones we grow when we think of our wrists.

And I am hoping that they can drag their metallic fingers through the flesh of those message in bottle balloons til they burst
so we can cut out the silence we have been thinking so long and fill it with some ****** inspiration

But the nights are still getting darker with tongues of shadow frostbite
and ever since our nomadic tendencies saw our survival expectancies
we have been moving around in our own skin with foster kid frequencies
wearing our heart sleeves rolled up because we don't want to get hurt again.

We are sensitive to light and you are diamonds and that scares us.

because even sunlight has a history of dripping agony
and the chances are high that we end up dancing with bad luck when the sky falls.
Stepping on cracks and filling shoes with puddles.

There's a cold war going on in our hearts
and were scared of the deja vu fallout of another nuclear winter
and you like to tango with destrucion
so we duck and cover behind the bright side of the sun
we live in shadows to protect our eyes from unclear reactions
Seeking shelter in empty alleyways
Under Gothic styled rib cages

And in the hollow places that we locked away our heart
We thew away the keys.

We have the same sickness as Icarus and we are burning up like a candle in the core of the earth.
Because we already have swallowed so much blue sky salt water
We have downed glasses and glasses of your unpredictability
and its been flowing counterclockwise down our throats
stinging like back stabbed golden friendships
like out cast creation
like the heartbroken rejection that had so much promise that we believed in it
and put our hearts into it
and then were broken
and burnt
like Alexander libraries and tornado explosions

Its been so lonely being safe.
Its been so cold.
So if you ask me how many heart beats I skipped for you
Ill tell you millions
Ill tell you life times
Ill tell you that I have missed you symphonies and that you should come home.

I've carved a place in my lock for your key.
I've looked up at the stars with wide eye telescope desire
and I want to dance with you and your big dipper hands.
I've worn chameleon skin for far to long and loved you under my breath even longer.

Your brilliance scares me but please let me join you.
I am sick of hiding behind shutters and stutters and dark water.
I am sick of thinking of razors and space and being alone.

We could blind the world together
You and I
Two happy people burnt into the memories of the universe.

In a bedroom in small-town Pennsylvania,
you’ll find an unmade bed,
a pile of clothes on the floor—
clean but not folded,
open drawers and dusty shelves,
a desk in the corner of the room
with pictures laid across it.

When I caught my first fish at six.
I held it at arm’s length by the fishing line
to avoid the slimy scales,
a frown on my face from being forced
to sit silently in the cold.

When my family went to Marco Island,
my sister and I, sifting sand for the best seashells
in our matching swimsuits and hats.
Mom and dad’s fights forgotten in our fun.

High school graduation
posing with my best friend since first grade,
diplomas in one hand and an extra cap held between us
because not everyone survived all four years.

Move-in day at college,
sitting on my raised bed with a grey comforter
and two decorative pillows the color of cotton candy.
Sweat on my brow from southern humidity
and moving furniture without the help of a father.

The pictures are merely snapshots
that lack the full story.

How I learned what it meant for love to fall apart
when I was eight years old.
My sister warned me before it happened,
told me what a divorce was.
I mistook her for joking until they called us upstairs.
Dad cried when they told us, but mom held her tears
until the day he left. The sounds of her cries
escaping from behind a closed door.
“This doesn’t mean we don’t love each other.”
But that’s exactly what it meant.

How I was taught by my father that love is conditional,
and I repeatedly needed to prove myself
through good grades and unquestioning obedience.
Forced to stay home to spend time with the family,
sitting wordlessly on the couch while he watched TV.
Made guilty for wanting to spend time with friends
because that somehow meant that I was a bad daughter.
It’s funny—I never asked myself if he was a good father.

If you look harder at the bedroom,
you’ll find journals filled with bitter words,
screws from disassembled pencil sharpeners, loose razors, and Aquaphor,
food wrappers stuffed in hidden places,
a closet brimming with junk and pairs of shoes,
evidence of a story untold. Until you.

Thirteen roses in a row
Red rain falls,
Don't you know
Down the window
Pain it goes
In the gutters
Through the nose
Where's the thunder
When it flows...?

(Chorus)
Wrapped around
The gauze that's stained
What difference snow?
The same as pain
When it melts
It's just rain.

Withered flowers.
Falling leaves.
It's a howling in the eaves
It's the cult the
Maimed believe
No one cares.
No one grieves.
Cover up.
Long jeans & sleeves.

Razors are a water slide
On track like
A carny ride
Over arms & over thighs
Release all
The pain inside

(Chorus)

It's an ocean
Where we sail
A coin that can be
Heads or tails
A lover's letter,
Or junk mail
A piece of garbage.
Holy grail.

(Chorus)


SøułSurvivør
(C) 7/23/2017

California highway buzzes and the searing sun shines on the beach towel as I stroke Walt Whitman's beard
Transcendent and alive, but dead, still dead as my brother and his brothers, the 19th Century posse
We know the world better than them but are less learned, as the schools are a failure
and the business is us, but not the same as the industrial business of yesteryear
We are here to consume, consume and as we're dying of consumption , we consume more.

Alcohol, cars, phones and laptops, tablets, tablets, pills and more pills, condoms, liquor, ***** and brews, women, men, more women, more men, razors, lasers, heaters, coolers, snacks, rucksacks, ex lax and nick-knacks. They sell us dreams and nightmares, movies and bomb scares, they sell us news by the hour and power as they exert their own power. They give us gifts and incentives, draw us in so they they can stick us with a pin or a bracelet, and we too can sell to our friends on group hangs or as we stand still listening to our favourite bands. Billboards scream for our attention, or the buses stop at the intersection, and we're supposed to open our little phone and buy whatever is advertised. Why? Y?

They call us the Y generation too, why? Perhaps we ask the question  too much, perhaps we haven't asked enough. Perhaps the X generation simply ponder why we are so consumed with the technology they feed us. Why? Why must they question us, when we are the next great generation, we do laugh at that too. The internet is the new religion, bow down before Google and drink from the pixelated chalice, my child. Any question one could need answering is answered by the internet. The Bible is irrelevant in our society, burn it and download a bible app on the latest smartphone, the Qur'an too, hell, try the Tanakh, the Smriti and the Pāli Canon, for we are enlightened ******* It. And we want more.

somenonamesarcasticasshole@yahoo.com
RE:PARTY TONIGHT!!!!!

Hey yo mane some warehouse downtown has this dubstep DJ from like ******* Iraq or some ****. *** down, gonna be hella ******* there
xo

What music do you like?
All of it
Films?
All of them
TV
I don't own one but I watched every episode of The Wire on Netflix
...
I am a pansexual being riding the ever changing dunes of the Sahara, like so many great poets before me.

Digital immigrants and immigrants of empathy too
How serious do you believe us to be?
I am not using sarcasm as a form of wit for I have no wit.
Stoicism and rejection of education, employment and training.
We surly are the neatest generation, how can we make a mess if we are not awake most days?
Save for the endless party that is life, as we throw used glow sticks at women we desire
and ***** over car windows before getting blown on the lawn

lol dat wuz cray last nite
xo

Die young poets we have no desire for your kind, pacify us with Kerouac and Ginsberg so that we may emulate intelligence and impair the senses, for we care not about the real world either
Our world is the only one that exists, yours will soon crumble
We have trained for the end with extensive views of zombie flicks in coffee houses

@SomeFacelessJerk Follow for follow

Hey OP, you are a ******.
Why yes, yes I am. Does that bother you.
No, OP. You see I too am a ******.

Do away with your hurtful words they have no meaning today
White man died and lost control of his precious dictionary
We are here to save language by replacing all vowels with X's and O's
We are here to consume and in turn consummate this marriage,
the marriage of ignorance and bliss.

I chew Nicorette gum -
I don't smoke cigarettes

I use safety razors (not for their intended purpose),
I draft suicide notes in an app

I won't overdose - reuse my organs,
I'll drive off a bridge in a Prius

I'll turn the lights off before I go,
Turn my ashes into a tree

The beauty of comatose can only be seen through
the eyes of a wizard in a blizzard
strutting in garlic slippers,

or Christ with knees bent at the tabernacle
peeling bananas and kicking prayers
farther than eternity with each gapping second,

or like Basquiat slumped back to the wall,
with ounces of speedball dancing through his veins,
eating 80’s free-based fried chicken *******  

as his eyelids paints beautiful nightmares of lemon flowers
and Bacchus bacon over a glycopyrrolate desert
of flagrant cuckold buffoonery.

Or like leprechauns burning chocolate ******* candles
on the mantle of Zion, sipping oatmeal sprinkled
with Staten Island malt liquor bacon.

or like Tupac reading the thoughts of Mother Shipton
through the daze of California cannabis
and hearing the ominous voice of Plutarch sing death assignments

from heaven to Assassins on horsebacks goggling ***** water
to wet the dry bones of their throats as they prepare to fulfill
the gospel of self-fulfilling prophecies of being fell by ***** bullets.

Or like sophisticated wallets of spice and kitchen characters in a bald head
cooking chemical kisses and 18 February nights under Moloch’s skin,
where constitutions are written in charcoal diaries with Egyptian ciphers and razors.

“I had rain sowed into the pockets of my sneakers and composed 1310 eulogies
at the basement of king David’s tower,” said the Kraftwerkian caricature,
as he dangles cigarettes in remembrance of Klaus Nomi and philosophizes on the proliferation
of poetic vandalism at urinals where modernism failed under the phosphorescence of coloration at the avenue of no trees where Picasso's "Guernica" **** Lies All.

Your ***** is funky
Dripping nectar like fine wine
Your ***** is thick
Fine hairs, crazed and divine

Your ***** don’t taste like water
It smells like a grown woman do
Your thighs are black
And slick with dew

Your ***** looks fuzzy
Your thighs do too
Razors don’t show it love
And chub rub burns it like glue

Your ***** ain’t pink
It ain’t petite
Its quite fat
Your ***** still pretty

Not that you needed affirmation of that fact

When we fell asleep video chatting every night for a month
When I cried because you were the first person to make me feel like I wasn’t alone
When you excitedly told me about kissing a girl in a cemetery
When you sent me videos of your dirt bike
When we went cruising and listened to songs from our favourite band
When you tried to teach me how to game
When you told me everything you love about your girlfriend
When you talked about engines and cars with me even though I didn’t understand
When you saw I was feeling bad even at the one place I’m always happy
When you didn’t ask questions when I asked you to get rid of my razors, but instead told me how proud you were
When you held me as I cried, knowing I hate crying in front of people
When you let me fall asleep holding you even though I was cold and wet
When you held my hand when we woke up on the day when everyone had to leave
When you let me hug you a hundred times because you knew how much I’d miss you

When you gave me closeness and friendship and love unlike anything I’d ever known before

When we sat in my porch for 3 hours after fireworks were shot at people during a party, so you could make sure I was okay
When you let me cuddle you even though your friends would give you a hard time
When you told me you’d help me out if anyone ever hurt me
When you took a selfie with me
When you carried me everywhere *** I was tired
When you held my hand going down a steep trail because I couldn’t see and you knew I was scared
When you brought me extra food because you knew I skipped lunch
When you were protective over who I was friends with
When I came over to your house for the first time and we made pizza, gamed, and hung out with your family
When you had you first kiss with me

When you always showed you were protective of me and became the big brother I never had

When you told me you were bi on the first day we met
When you told me that only people you know well or that you like get to know you’re bi
When you cried and told me all your favourite facts and memories of a friend who had betrayed you
When you told me I had a cute nose
When you fell asleep holding my hand
When we hugged eachother after not seeing eachother for a year
When we kissed for the first time
When we kissed more
When you were my date
When you told me I was the only non-celebrity you’d go gay for
When we danced together
When we agreed to have an annual one week relationship

When you were the first girl I loved

When I met these people I never thought we’d get to the point were at now.
I doubt I’ve effected their lives as much as they’ve effected mine but it doesn’t even really matter because I have them and that’s all that matters to me

i kept my hatches battened but that
didn't stop your love from barreling toward me
like a runaway freight train with faulty breaks.
and god almighty, did we crash.
you came to a screeching halt at my doorstep
and i didn't know what else to do but let you in.
you looked so cold. we did not start with a spark but a full-on fire.
i told myself i wouldn't fall, instead i jumped.
our sinking frames somehow morphed into life preservers,
and we managed to keep each other's heads above the waves.
we had seemingly saved one another.
you tossed your pills, i flushed my razors, and for a while that was enough.
but we learned the hard way that even the deepest love
can only keep the storm clouds in your mind at bay for so long.
eventually our cracks began to show.
missed calls and silent hours built houses of cards
that were blown down by too many miles.
we hardly ever smiled anymore.
my hands were sieves and yours were sand.
i want to break the hands of the clock
that cursed us with this bad timing.
i have mourned all the hours i won't ever have with you.
i have felt the thunder that rumbles in my lungs
when i reminisce about the memories we'll never make.
the moment i realized i would never wake up beside you
an atom bomb went off in the center of my chest.
but the radiation is what's killing me.
the life is being drained from me here in the wake,
in the ache of your absence. but i won't beg.
i will live out the remainder of my days
tormented by wondering if maybe in another world
our love is perfect and neither of us bleed.

- m.f.

I woke up to screams from a stolen razor.    Where is it?   It was a loud scream.          The end comes swiftly, anyway,
and, if there are no razors around, it comes even faster.                        
 
At the top of the mountain, the anger flows to the valley, and there is no scream.                                  
In the valley, we wait.                
There is a pull from a cigarette.                               
Small talk that is not small talk.                                        
A man wheezes   
A woman wonders where she'll go tomorrow                                          
it comes out as a laugh
                  and lightly in the background plays a song that can only be called the disease of the 80's.                                       
 
We didn't need another.                                     

But, thank you.

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

i like angry poetry
the kind that churns
in your gut,
with razors for teeth
and gums bleeding.
i like the violent sound
of verbs clashing
on a decaying page,
like the shot of a gun
on a quiet day.
i like the poetry that stays,
that lies in waiting
like a dog in a cage,
words that creep like
voided birds into the
wired tress of my brain,
that pay their rent
like drunken travelers
and trash the place.
i like angry poetry
the kind that sears it's
screams to my lips,
which spirit echoes and
moans for eager,
****** eyes.
words that hit like *****,
giving their reader
a killer hangover.
i like angry poetry,
the kind that leave you
with a smoky exit.

we always want to re-invent ourselves when we feel
rejected, unwanted, left to the side.
we dye our hair or cut our hair or style our hair
so differently, so drastically, so unrecognizable.
we pack on make-up or strip our make-up
or pierce our faces, belly buttons, get tattoos, choose a permanent mark
to remind us of something solid;
something that represents
self-sufficiency or this too shall pass,
because we know we are gonna feel
rejected, unwanted, left to the side again
(and again, and again).
we buy new clothes, give away old ones to our friends,
new shoes, new bags, new look.
and we’re always picking up new vices, new habits, new addictions.
cigarettes, alcohol, razors,
all the late night reckless binges on wine, narcotics, food, cutting ourselves.
sometimes we pick up healthy ones too,
like running, swimming, dancing, yoga, meditating, resetting sleep patterns, taking vitamins, treating ourselves to the spa, eating regularly, getting out of the house to see friends.
we either avoid intimacy at all costs because we can’t fathom
the concept of trust anymore
or we dive into it with practically anyone, just to feel something real
because we are so ******* lonely,
but we never really feel anything real at all.
we make resolutions, goals, plans for our next relationships
so that they won’t follow the same patterns as our last crumbling ones
(they usually still do).
some of us change what we like, what we want, what we need
to impress people so that they
fall in love with us and will never leave us.
we begin disregarding ourselves for another person,
or disregarding everyone else for ourselves,
both because we don’t want to get hurt again.

and then somewhere, somehow after weeks, months, maybe even years of
the full fledged wavering of
destruction meeting recovering meeting ignorance meeting shyness meeting loneliness meeting accepting meeting fear,
we start to see the intricacies of the pattern much clearer -
we make all of these sudden changes because
we just want to feel better,
we just want to be better;
that’s all.
it’s taking charge, which is healthy.
it’s also making fact and point that we need to change to deserve love,
which is unhealthy.
all of it is like learning algebra for the first time,
some of us take a bit longer to understand it all; the formulas, the variables, the balance.
and once we understand the formula, the variables and the balance,
then we can welcome back the beautiful,
real version
of ourselves we’ve been trying to
cover up.

Don’t love me.
Please, don’t love me.
I know myself, we’re quite close actually, and let me tell you, you don’t want to fall for her,
you don’t want that girl, I hate her.
I hate her because I know her so well and I know how horrible the truth can smell.
Don’t love me, because even I know to hate myself,
the vanity that despite this loathing I might actually believe that someone could fall for me.
Don’t love me.
Don’t love me, because I met Heartbreak once and she left me gasping for air
and I will never meet her again.
I refuse, so if you love me, please be aware that when you do,
some day I am going to leave you, battered and bruised, because
twisted self-preservation has taught me all the tricks to keep myself afloat by drowning you.
Don’t love me.
Because as much as I will love you, I’m not friends with Commitment,
and whenever I see him on the horizon I set off running in the opposing direction.
I will treat you like there will be no oxygen unless I’m holding you,
but when you’re the one reaching for my hand I’ll become the wind.
Commitment is not my friend, I said, but no one listens.
Don’t love me, because I am a tornado, a storm to chase until I’ve taken everything from you.
Don’t love me.
Someday, you will be married and happy, and I will
whirl back into your life like the hurricane that has never been named after me, and
you will believe that all your scars
and your broken heart
have healed enough that you can run with me.
But I have razors between my fingers and wedged in my teeth,
and your scabbed over heartstrings will be powerless against me.
I am an expert at running, at hurting, at ‘maybe’s.
Don’t love me.
When you ask me for something more,
I will tell you that I am not ready, because I never will be.
Chances scare me, and trusting someone so much will always be risky.
I will tell you that I am not in the right place for your Commitment,
for your future Heartbreak,
and you will tell me that you understand but you’ll stick with me,
and fire will consume everything.
Don’t love me.
I can’t even go a few years with a friendship before
burning it all for at least a few evenings, but we’ll always rebuild the
rickety ashes of the bridges we’ve passed.
Don’t love me.
I’m only saying it for your safety.