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Nat Lipstadt Jun 2013
Why Men Cry in the Bathroom

For so many reasons.
I will tell you the why.
I think you know,
Or perhaps, you think you know.

Men are always O.K.,
Even when not.

We expect the worse,
Accept the worse,
Nonetheless,
We are forever unprepared.

Wearily, we cry,
In the bathroom, in private,
Lest sighs slip by,
We be unmasked,
Early warring, strife signs warning.

Copious, tho we weep
Before the mirror confessor,
It is relief untethered,
Unbinding of the feet,
An uncounting
Of beaded rosaries,
Of freshly fallen hail stones,
Of night times terrors
By dawn's early edition's light,
and welcomed.

But look for the mute tear,
The eye-cornered drop,
*** tat, that never drops,
But never ceases formation and
Reforming, over and over again,
In a state of perpetuity of reconstitution,

The tippy tear of an iceberg revealing,
And I see you peeping, wondering,
What is beneath


Look for:
the torn worm-eaten edges of spirit,
thrift shop bought, extra worn,
grieving lines neath the eyes,
where the salt has evaporated,
discolored the skin.
worry lines,
under and above,
browed mapped, furrowed boundaries.
the laugh line saga,
where better days are stored,
recalled, as well as recanted,
publicly, privately.

Why just men?

I don't know,
Perhaps,
it is all I know.


Jan 6, 2013
your effusive and lengthy comments are each a poem in their own right.  

Tinkered with June 22, 2013
With a push from Bala,
A serial peeper, thank God!
PrttyBrd May 2017
There was music in his voice
as he whispered his name in ancient tones
straight through my core

My spirit danced
as it basked in familiarity
and pain

I could feel the music reconstitute
a desiccated heart
as it regenerated belief in people...in him

In an instant, I knew what I was once sure of
I knew that, sight unseen, I was bonded
with a soul born in tandem

Circumstance be ******
there will be love
for I already loved you

The second your name sung to my essence
and I realized...

you loved me
52917 ©
hsyclara Jan 2019
Movie credits descend and sink
to the bottom of the tv screen;
Admire the time travel of a blink,
repositioned on the bed, not keen

Expired pills; motivating my pulse
Hands shifting; trying to keep up
and end this life which by day gets worse
Free this defunct soul and succumb

And in that moment,
the silent tear that doesn't cease formation;
i have surrendered, time is in halt
The sadness salt, in a state of reconstitution,

But death wasn't part of the victory
She was another night of bedridden dreary
Pre-measured mentality
part anxiety
part agony;
retaining me as an emissary
to unearth my mystery

where do my nightmares trail?
who fogs my thoughts at night?
who tallies off my breaths?

So yes, those pills;
those expired ******* pills
did not give me the answer
Instead, i woke up to another whisper
12.01.2014
the curling smoke
from warming fires
rise into the slate
gray sky of the
Beqaa Valley

sheaves of
rising prayers
expire in twisted plumes
dissipating into the
gloom of an ever
looming winter
overcast

refugees from
the Arab Spring's
uncivil wars
gather for warmth
around waning embers,
smoldering in the underbelly
of the lowliest bottom of rusted
steel drums, tended
with scavenged debris
some thought better
suited to fortify the
faltering hovels of
last resort

the fires
join us in
communal rings
straining the
tenuous links of
brotherhood, the
politics of men
assiduously tear
asunder

we count ourselves
among the fortunate,
blessed exiles recused
from the acrimony
of desecrated cities,
welcoming the
residencies of
bewailing lullabies
of colic infants, the
searing hunger of
stunted children and the
incomprehensible babble
the elderly eloquently
speak in tongues
of a desperate
exasperation

our nagging impotence
swaddle us in ambivalent
inabilities to master circumstances
profanely denigrating our humanity

privation is
our daily bread
the bitter manna
feasting on the
animosity the banquet
of rancor generously
prepares for
peace starved
pilgrims

in these
refugee camps
the cold cuts deeper
hunger pangs
grow sharper

our blighted dignity,
vanished livelihoods,
and the presence of
recently interred
loved ones trudge
through our mean
encampment as
fully enfranchised
citizens in our
distressed
kingdom

what was lost can
never be recovered
our homeland leveled
yet doors still stand open
silently pleading all
to cross a new
threshold

the full restoration
of our hope,
the reconstitution
of our flagging
humanity, the
spark of the
holy spirit
willfully uniting us
in the salvation
of reconciliation
is nigh

we are
the divine children
stoking the embers
tending the fire
that light pathways
through the cold
darkness of a
broken world

Oh come
Emmanuel,
dwell among us
Oh come
Emmanuel
ransom once
again the
poor captives
of Israel….

Selah

Music Selection:
L'Accorche-Choeur, Ensemble vocal Fribourg
Veni Veni Emmanuel

Everywhere
Christmas
2013
jbm
Blessed Christmastide Greetings
to all beloved HP friends
peace and prayers
to all
love, jimmy
...And as we move,
so too does the mind.
Shaped by divergence.
Rendering the oncoming landscape
for our poor pathetic little mind's
to comprehend, whilst true,
natural fertility is shed,
dropped to the ground,
recognized as little more than
detritus, lost to the process
of reconstitution.

As interpretation seems to be prone
to spinning, so too does our willingness
to become dizzy. Blaming disorientation,
never lack of focus.

Only what's in front of us can
slow the onset of nausea;
instead we choose to consume
the calamity, pridefully ignoring
its immensity.
Finding ourselves bent over,
heaving up what's left of the carcass
we're all devouring.
Giving back to that which we all spurn,
the nutrients of survival.

I can't stand the made up plight of man.
The maladies we allow to
overwhelm us daily, simply because
the grind, the acceptance is better
then the stand, the resistance.

All I see anymore are walking effigies,
doing as they're told, becoming exactly
what they were cast to be.
Succumbing to the malevolence
of playwrights whose power
only exists because you've given it
to them.
You're becoming their form of social
interaction.
Now you're stuck between two cameras,
but you can't be bi-focal.

"Faith needs no form of refuge."
jim fry Nov 2010
even change, is now changing
and we grasp
for anchors

i feel, as if
surfing a wave
tunnel vision ahead
assurances,
absent
riding,
faith

There are others I’ve connected with, surfing the same front. Some have confidence, some feel protected, whilst others seem adventurously excited or propelled by absence of another accepted option. Each day, the media reflects what I have already felt, experience and life are reorganizing, a soup of energetic reconstitution.

in these least stable times,
we dance
on shifting sands

I note that some have already acclimated to the next age, busy integrating and finding new creative powers. I seek to surround myself in their energies, to assimilate peace, and comforting encouragement.

the world i knew, has ended
as each day
fades
into
night

in next dream
we commence, crafting
dreamscapes

just for today
i’ll paint
what i feel
feeling
what i paint

creative projection
**projecting creation
2006
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2020
unique: in that the great cancan o'
h'americana spandex english...
          is littered with acronyms...
             a minor observational point...

also... that there's a europe
as confined to scandinavia...
there's most certainly western europe...

a southern europe...
             although... clogging up the "detail"
with spain... reconquista
   and not the shame...
               a barricade of goths...
                            leftover in the bizarre
gesticulation of a history...
and at: a history...

                 that the italians
                                    cannot be the heritage
of ancient rome: given
the cappuccino is a "nuance"...
  otherwise the greeks are bankrupt...
their history worth of envy is
being exhausted...

                  there's a western europe...
there's a... southern europe...
               but of an eastern europe...
such a piquant vogue of vocab that has
to cherry-pick into existence
an estonia and the latvians...

               central, europe?
                      all that is germany...
beside the fact that prussian-germany...
and the prussians could be bundled
up with the other baltic states...

little o' czech republic...
      a minor ally poland...
                    some alleviated circumstance
of an oriental allure within
the confines of russia...

             it breaks my heart
to see england unfathomable...
               currently without a near
perfect engagement strategy...
      coming to the fore with a headache
of diamond-studded gills...
        that there are
bipartisan "rats" and the ship is
sinking...
    otherwise the provincial aspect
of weeding out...
detestable aspects of cosmopolitanism...

that London could be treated as:
London-London... rather than London-England...
because of the great yawn
of the heliocentric adventure of sci-fi fun...
i.e. what is the copernican west?
what is the copernican east?

       perhaps a return to some sort of
language formality...
to escape with a poetry is hardly
a reconstitution of the soul
to a modern letter: dear sir... yours faithfully...
or a very modern hello! kind regards!

europe as a claustrophobia...
             it's such a limiting delight of...
that there somehow was...
a premeditation...
    to **** with premeditation allows the status:
******...
but to **** by accident is a "mere":
homicide...

              such grave consequences...
the culprit and the tool: but also the thought
involved...

but is there something self-deprecating
about english humour?
a pride of borrowed history...
unlike the interlude of non-existence
bound to Poland...
        this... castrated figment of my old
imagination...
                rule britannia referring
to a period prior to the empire and a ref.
to an english-spanish exchange...

then again...
   how did the spanish: then not the spanish...
create... a post-racial south america...
the tinged copper and auburn
lure of the delight...
there must be "something" sobering
bout an anglo-saxon realism...

that there's a tinge of taming the viking
horde... there's no share
in "grief" should the west arrive
at being licked by a mongolian
extract of prose...

           but always the very
formidable tow of the culprit cog
and:  **** in machina...
              easier to posit a god-phantom
ex-, as that gravity in extension orbit
linear of Pluto...

              postcards from Saturn... anyone?
otherwise, this... simply...
the english have exhausted the concept
of world... of geocentrism...
            
but then the forever soap-opera demand
of the local affairs...
how heliocentrism abides by a breath...
side by side with geocentrism
of the soap opera...
              to have to heave
a concern for the stars and the moon cycles...
this finite basis of a rooting...

        that the forerunner of / for the h'american
presidential candidacy
looks simply bored.... or rather...
unexpecting... while the first lady
is so glued to reciting the autocue
like a evil...
wild-eyed and pure ergonomic...
  a jeffrey dahmer seems to
have a more sedated glee of the eyes...

the first lady is... poison of the soul...
her eyes are cobweb knitting fatamorgana...
bringing to the table of
the arrogance of multiculturalism...
it's hardly a heritage incorporated...
there's the breaking of bones
in how to move forward...
at least the food served by the indians
or the turks has made it
as a pop staple on the high street...
it's very common to want to learn
a disguise of... the incoming horde...
the reception party will be glad
at being fed...
                               chimichurri:
give me curry... a loose translation...
                  
what am i to offer these isles when...
what all these others...
arrivals make such...
  pronounced additions to a life worth living...
turkish barbers... indian takeaways...
such prominence...

a work ethos in the shadows...
a shadow for a body...
a reconciliation with the body-work
of father...
i am forever to test the hobby market...
these formidable words like:
pineapple... like mango...
       some variation of "foreign" inventions...
never the placid anglo- prefix
titillating the paranoia: non-bilingual schizoid...

a dozen europes and a historical agony
surrounding the base narrative "primordial":
of...  i dare say... byzantine-&-darwinistic...
that the byzantines reworked a more
fashionable period before... settling for the laurel
before the shock & awe of the ottoman conquest...
or that darwinism is as much
a lesson in history as it is a lesson in biology...
that... the latter... is...
such a stereotypical predominance
of expected behaviour...

that the former is a... overt over-simplification
of a desire for work, wheat and time...
or a designation of space...
it's not that darwin is not a dickens...
but at least... the world is still inaccurate
with a dickensian take on:
with this here england...
arriving at the 20th century...
cricket players being dubbed...
fancifully: the tourists...
shouldn't all english people have
that affix?

                      there's that...
as there's also...
                  the copernican revolution
has been made impossible by someone as far removed
as william burroughs...
who insist... the ancient egyptians knew
of the heliocentric demands...
that the geocentric model was backward
thinking... that the ancient greeks
were the only people to ever think:
and we have only moral plagiarism to mind...
and a plagiarism of eureka!
or that thinking can escape
the narrative and riddle the heights
with spontaneity...

    this prolonged... western european...
admiration for a people that are currently...
made into an economic scrutiny *******-riddling...
imagine my disconcerting: hier und jetzt!

the wooden stairs are creaking...
there's a strain most unfathomable...
like that associated with a cavern...
and a man's eye having to invest in making
a bridge a reality...
that history is a reflective tool...
nothing sinister or military in nature...
a beer could be considered warm ****...
a bucket-load of camel spit...
should i guise it as such?

           to heave a beginning...
somehow i can't find... a work-around
of a western europe...
spain is still catholic...
             ireland... well... whatever...
the same self-depreciating humour
is to be expected...
          anything serious...
forward moveable and come along
has to be littered with that...
fable of the protestant work ethic...

it's impossible to have a father
who's an underpaid technician in the field...
whereas... mongrel romanians
are elevated to the status of
manager...
           pitch-perfect: ethno-central...
on the continent where
there are: "some differences"...
   zu liben unter deutsche wie deutsch'...
well... to live among the english
is to have to forever retain an otherness...
a foreign attitude of...
down the line... the capacity to...
integrate with a cousin or two being
towed...
if you knew a thing or two about
immigrant poles...
they're not very... forthcoming...
they are so hard riddled on the integration
project...
there is no in-group preference
other people a priori stress...

so... fallacy and fake number 1...
       so much for reading a milan kundera
essay...
in the context: that newspapers are
to be read!
   it's impossible to concern oneself
with the concept of a newspaper as
aligned with: not being read...
force-fed turkey glut and baron fat...

         help the pope to sing!
                        it's not like...
there wasn't a shortening reaction
phase to re-orientate the dynamism of: future "lore"...
europe is such a little place...
made even oh so much more tiny...
provincial... solipsistic...
by these island-dwelling folk that
the english tourists care to concern themselves
as being...

that the english language
is thoroughly recognised as the lingua franca
of old...
to tease learning some arabic or mandarin
is a question of aesthetic...
old fool and bigger than the lost "little"
of a worship...
such gravity... concerning the names...
Angevin...
                Merovingian... Capulet...
           Stuart... Windsor...
    my own sorrow: this common name...
           well...
                        all crippling demands...
big or small...
                   hell... there are bigger onces...
there's no known house of David or or Solomon...
such a borrowed gesticulated at...
the shadow drawn...
                   i forfeit!
from the ant people that abide...
to the swollen eye sore of blindness i tow:
a recreational soviet pact of: me's stealing Siberia!
borys!
I’ve entered the Inner Passage

Thought of as the safe route to Alaska
Protected by friendly coves and sheltered bays
Shields voyagers from the uncertainties
Of the tectonics of a heaving Pacific

The Inner Passage
A compass point of
Jack London’s imagination
Spinning fantastic adventure yarns
of audacious Sea Wolf sailors
And rugged fortune seekers
Answering the call of the wild

The Inner Passage
Fraught with hidden shoals
And submerged rocky promontories
Lay just below the water line
Jutting on the steep banks
Of a glaciated mountain lined sea

The Inner Passage
Precludes an easy escape
To the boundless freedom
Of the open seas
One cannot sail away
One must firmly
grab the wheel
Guide the rudder
map the terra firma
Of a misconstructed life
The hazards and mishaps
Buried in the unconscious sands of the mind
interred to protect the heart
From the walking ghosts
Springing to life
Emboldening
The daily aches of living

The Inner Passage
Seemingly the safe route
Yet the hidden shoals
The ship wrecks
crews of stranded castaways
Call out for recovery, resurrection,
Watchfulness and recognition
Careful navigation is required
To salvage the wreckage
Rescue the unfortunate victims
Of the disasters and gales
I engendered along
my life's journey

The Inner Passage
A promise of rebirth
Reconstitution, recovery
“Can a man enter the womb again?”
The Gospel writer asks.
This inner passage may yet
Deliver me to a reinvigorated life
Let me uncover
What lies deep
In my tell tale heart
Let me tame
the mighty beasts of the sea
That rule the fathomless waters
Of my tumultuous emotions
May Thy Will and a better course
Heal my restive soul
My I finally free
my grounded vessel
From the false sanctuary
Offered by shallow shoals
Freeing me to dive deep
Into the hidden reefs
Of my heart and mind

May this pilgrim make good progress
May I accept life on life's terms
May I practice a well considered
engaged stewardship
May I never arrive at a staid place
And become wholesomely satisfied
with a serene state of being

The Inner Passage
Indeed a difficult voyage
Is underway
a new course mapped
I will pass through
The dark ranges where the
Commanding heights of
Fear, anger, resent and regret
Become nothing more
Then the precipitous peaks
Of a harmless silhouette
Fading away into the mist
Of yesterday's twilight

The Inner Passage
Aboard the Kennicott
Near Ketchikan, AK
8.22.19
jbm

Michael Nyman
The Piano
a note made on the Kennicott...
Zac Walter Sep 2016
Faint smell of waste. Rotting garbage, feces and human body order. The room reeked of an intolerable stench. Cracked eggshells, molding lettuce, slices of beefsteak tomatoes, month old used coffee grounds, and a pair of peed on gym socks among countless other smelly disgusting things like cat ****.
"Close the ******* garbage can"
' it stinks as much as your guilty conscious'
My hand flung forward with indecision, still closed into a fist. What was I striking? I couldn't see and didn't want hurt myself like so many times before. Schizophrenic, pleaded with with myself. Time slowed to make room to for chaotic thoughts. Slow motions, knuckles seeped into a black goo. Other hand flat, slapped at the abyss. The darkness grabbed me by both hands and dragged me into myself.
A full moon and a tender loving voice. Blackness.
A brewing fire floating above a swimming pool like the eye of a pyramid where deities danced. Everybody I saw under its light gazed towards the idealization of eternal salvation. I stared at the pool, fire, pyramid and its constituents. Blackness.
A maze of hallways. Red-brown brick, vinyl, some glass looking down at the pool where children baptized themselves while parents drank the poison of cultural self-identification.
'At least they know who and where they are'
I took a right, then a left then two more rights down a endless spiral. Blackness.
In angry reconstitution, my mind-state formed lists of things to be furious about. These lists of things were all in plain sight.
'An obvious case of nearsightedness'
The whole room had changed from how i once remembered. The bed was moved as well as the bed stand. Clothes scattered and materialistic shrine of self destroyed. The aura of the room had gone from blue to green. I pledged with violent resolution to solve my issues. Until I smelt the room poisoned with pheromones unlike mine. Until I dropped to my knees and felt somebody i loved and despised. Her smile greeted me while, simultaneously, my heart erupted like an early morning thunder shower. I always loved those type of showers.
... This isnt finished yet. Just a beginning of a short story. Also copyrighted btw.
'Melia Jun 2021
bend over
bend backwards
lean over
yell these words from life
all different and quite the same
i'll live until I perfect your name

i walk endlessly around my brain tunnels
reconstitution of my puzzle pieces
my life is the whole framed and the game

of the tunnels i fall into the deepest ones
and try to transcribe
work that was never supposed to be mine

i will spend the rest of my lives
perfecting your name
letting my teeth touch, quick
a greeting for your Name's
arrival on my lips, a meeting
9 to forever

you get me out of my brain
i have learned to fully love
these days
nivek Sep 2019
demolition

demolish

take apart

reconstitution

recycle

construction

construct

constructive.

— The End —