Who Am I?

I am a boy and a man.
I am a son, a brother, a cousin, a nephew, and a grand child.
I was a boyfriend, a fiancé, a husband, and an in-law.
I am a bachelor.
I am surrounded and abandoned.
I am a family man and a loner.

I am a homemaker and a handyman.
I wear the apron and the tool belt.
I am a neat freak and a slob.
I am an amateur contractor and a contracted amateur.
I am a dumpster diver, a recycler, and a decadent waste.
I am a glutton, a scavenger, and a scrapper.

I am a friend and an enemy.
I am fun and an annoyance.
I am a lover and a hater.
I am creepy, cruel, and harsh.
I am tender, loving, and inviting.
I have a foul mouth and tender lips,
Drenched in jagged, soft-serve words.

I am a painter, sculptor, draftsman, sketcher, character designer, photographer, graphic designer, fashion designer, kitbasher, customizer, and crafter.
I am a reader, a writer, and a poet.
I am the Jail Baby, Ryan & Lisa, The Phoenix, The AntiFather, and The HEYMAN!
I compose symphonies of visual and intangible imagery.
I bring form to thought.
I destroy,
I create.
I am an artist.

I am a geek, nerd, freak, and otaku.
I have been punk, goth, prep, white trash, and metrosexual.
I wear glasses,
But only as a sick joke.
I am beautiful and ugly,
Clean and *****.
I am unique.
I am predictable.
I have changed, but am still the same.

I am a techie,
An electronic ******.
I am cutting edge and old school.
Digitally signed and sealed.
I am analog and obsolete.

I am an adrenaline addict.
I can chill, maybe slow,
But never relax.

I am blue collar, tradesman, and service industry.
I am peon and ****** on.
Oh, but I have done the ******* too!
I have been hired and fired,
Bought and sold.
I have worn the uniform,
I have said, “**** the man!”
I am the proletariat,
I am in charge.

I am a student, dropout, and teacher.
I am class clown and teacher’s pet.
I have learned, forgotten, and taught,
But never learned my lesson.
I don’t listen to what I’m told,
But always do what I tell.

I am a genius,
I am an idiot.
I have intelligence, but often lack the intel.
I am naïve, but wise.
I am right and wrong.

I have philosophies and ideas,
But no religion.
I have desecrated and blasphemed,
Prayed and praised.
I have lusted, envied, and coveted.
I am guilty and innocent,
Pure and soiled,
Good and bad.

I am a driver and a passenger.
I am an explorer and a shut-in.
I am wild and free,
Caged and stifled.
I was warmly wrapped in my blanket,
But burned through it.

I have rode, climbed, and conquered.
I  stood still.
I jumped in.
I have fallen and been defeated.

I have been abroad,
I have been nowhere.
I have drifted.
I have settled.
I have led and been led.
I have been in and out,
Here and there,
Around and AWOL,
On the run and trapped.
But, not everywhere.

I have applied,
I have procrastinated.
I have worked my fingers to the bone,
I have slept it off.

I have fought and fled.
I have quit.
I have endured.
I am a winner and a loser,
A champ and a chump.

I am fake,
I am real.
I have lied, cheated, and stole.
I have been honest, fair, and generous.

I am selfish and selfless.
I am a gift giver, gift wrapper, and gift taker.
I am a thief and a philanthropist.

I am insecure and confident,
Confused and absolutely sure.
I am proud and ashamed.
I am complicated and convoluted,
But simple to please.

I have blind faith and guarded suspicion
I have secrets,
But lie rarely.
I accept everyone,
I trust nothing.

I have pointed the finger,
Only to turn it on myself.
I have held grudges and forgiven.
I have trusted and misguided.
I have been Judas and Jesus.

I am a maniac,
I am sane.
I have been strong and weak.
I can keep it together,
But prefer to break it apart.

I have bled.
I have healed.
I have been abused and neglected,
Coddled and protected.

I have been kissed and punched;
Hunted, wanted, and arrested,
Ignored, overlooked, and invisible.

I have loved and lost,
Lived and learned.
I am a soldier of misfortune and opportunity.

I have blended in.
I have stood out.
I have stood up.
I have backed down.
I have been backed into a corner.
I have all the space in the world.

I have seen, interpreted, and perceived,
I have ignored, dismissed, and been blind.
I hunger, want, and need…
I am satiated and content,
But never at peace.

I have been misunderstood and underestimated.
I have been put down, put up, pushed away, and let in.
I have been known,
But never entirely.

I have raged, cried, smiled, trembled, and laughed.
I have been depressed.
I have been happy.
I have been suicidal. I have felt death.
I have been lost and found.
I have been broken, then fixed,
Stitched, yet glitched,
Scarred, but whole.
I am alive.


I took the chance,
I let the moment slip.
I walked the straight and narrow,
I ran down the road not taken.
I dream; some whole, some shattered.
I go with the flow, but don’t let the waves take me.

I am shards and reflections,
Machinations and reactions.
I am translucent pieces and parts,
Assembled and disheveled.
I am the big picture still focused on the details.

I am the sum total of heredity and experience.
I am not,
I am more.
I am everything and nothing.
I am a walking contradiction.
I am human.

I tried to be you,
But didn’t know what that meant.
I am me,
It’s all I know.

Who are you?

Did you know that into the last glass of water that you sipped?

A dinosaur one day, may have bent down and dipped

A scaly tongue to quench his thirst

Or even lumbered in feet first


As he and his primeval pal recreated

In the prehistoric stream of this life-giving liquid

Which revives the lives today of all women and of men

For it’s the very same water now, as it was way back then.
  

How can it be that you and me,

Drink the same water again, that they did back then?

Well it’s no fluke or chance of creation

Take a look at this cycle for a simple explanation


The sun warms the ocean and this causes evaporation

Vapours condense into clouds, this causes precipitation

That’s rain to you and me as it falls down from the sky,

But precipitation is not the only reason why


Our streams fill and sometimes overflow,

Becoming rivers as they grow,

Liquid life in poetry of motions

Rivers turn to seas, ebb and flow into the oceans.

  
For the sun doesn’t just affect the seas and the ocean,

It heats the leaves of our trees and this causes transpiration

Because vapour also rises from the trees,

Clouds form and may even freeze,


In these clouds tiny droplets bounce around,

Fun for them but not for us on the ground

For when they hit each other, they stick together

And this has repercussions for our weather



What goes up must come down

And soon rain or hail will fall on every town

With storm and sleet on every street and gutters overflowing.

Rains lash, puddles splash and before long it’s snowing.


The levels rise in all our lakes,

But then thank God, the cloud breaks

The sun warms the ocean this causes evaporation

And he begins his work again to feed a thirsty nation.

  
We survey the Earth, water end to end

But it’s the same ole water, recycled again and again

Water, water is everywhere but less than 2% is drinkable,

Preserve, conserve and do take care, because pollution really is unthinkable.

Where to begin to save our water, is plain to see, it all begins with you and me.

Recycler
By Steven L Herring

Picked it up
Took it down
Let it go
And it ripped right out of me
Every time
Leaving me empty inside
Just barely alive
And oh so numb
I don't even know
How many times
I probably almost died
Shoulda
Woulda
Could
But couldn't hide
To myself
And everyone else
I lied
And lied
And lied
So ******* numb inside!
And drowning myself in sorrow
Stuck in a rutted rage
And a lame *** digital cage
Project defeat self and isolate
Eyes dilated
Thoughts mutated
Into something unknown
Trudging on and on and on
Into infinite finality
And death was my only future reality
My King a bottle
Hurtling full throttle into a
friendless
Bottomless
And endless void

I was the long face
I was the dead end…
and I'm glad I got the ******* that train
Deuces!

What is the air breathed in by the millionaire?
The same as inhaled by the slum-dweller?
The monopoly on air is great!
Or imagined?

A false dichotomy, a false pretense,
a logical fallacy, a paradox and contradiction. Linguistic sounds murmured and mumbled by orators and curators.

The breath of life is the worlds most beautiful gift, but also a mundane commodity,
It is in a perpetual state of being unwrapped and re-wrapped,
Transported by logisticians,
Prepared by makers,
Packaged by designers,
Consumed by the user,
Expelled by the waster,
Salvaged by the recycler,
Reminder of our life,
Reminding us of our mortality
Which we so frequently forget.

Breath is without choice,
We are unforced,
We flow the atoms inside us
Which our lungs are built to contain,
But particles need to be expelled.
As all good things must come to an end,
So must the ego we wish to contain.

Nature's masculinity is all too powerful, dominating the global hemisphere. His spheres of influence are enermous and his allies volatile.
Fire, metal, lightning, magma, stone, thunder.

An awesome feat,
We have learnt to harness electricity,
The ecstatic delight,
The shock of wonder,
We are galvanised into apathy,
Wired on our technology,
Device on finger,
We have yet to integrate the complex organic with the intricate artifical.

The technology of air is a great invention, invented by an invisible nothingness, an empty void of silence, a chasm of infitissimal unmeasurableness.
We have yet to harness this ancient element.

As we race about and fulfill our desires,
Humans, thought to be different,
No, we are a microcosm of repetition, a chain reaction, a catalyst of a parralel universe.

We have created our own branch of nature,
We are a branch hanging off the trunk
Our own pecking order,
We are not elemental isolates from the land which we once grew on.
Diamonds are made from carbon.
Flesh from cell.
Cell from atom.
Interconnected, neural and galactic.
The microscopic projections playing through our planetary minds:
Sharp as the claws of beasts.

The tiger rattles its chains,
Exuding its own glory,
Its notoriety known amongst
The lesser kingdom dwellers.
Is it moral to cease the latters' lives early on, severed by the hand of sentient and intelligent conciousness?

The grand old question proposed by philosophers.
To **** or to be killed?
To live or to die.
War or peace?
Answers and binaries, we rush in attempt to answer both,
The sedate and the anxious professors will philosophise,
Knowledge will reach the masses,
Ignorance remains.

Time will pass and death will come to all of us,
Mortality an unstoppable force,
an unstoppable ticking,
A machine in the clockwork of nature,
A cog that has been inhabited by life,
An abstraction colonised by thinkers and doers,
All on the same trajectory of the unknown.
Powerless and hopeless civillians, grasping and clinging desperately on an immense rocketship,
Fighting for survival.
Are we preparing for a greater good or a we headed into the dark oblivion?

The corporations too - perceived as more powerful -
Know they have land and
Ownership of property,
Exerting their will
In an extravagant and
Flamboyant fashion.
A luxurious and pompous display,
A model for citizens to admire

Sooner than we know,
The invisible does become visible,
The curtains are opened.
Even denyers become believers.
The windows of facades,
To be scratched. Will be clawed.

We lament and count our losses,
But the trees remain grounded,
Roots are always shifted,
Loggers cut down beasts of beauty,
All too common, there are all too many treefellings.
Her presence is sparse and dense.

We raise, we grow and then we prepare and consume.

Is it so strange we do this to eachother when we do this to nature?

In a internation that worships success and scolds failure, how can the failure be allowed to live?
He is at the mercy of the lucky,
he is at mercy to dissaproval,
he is at mercy to mockery.

The air she does not distinguish between worthy and unworthy, she gives lovingly to children of the earth.
Is it not time love ourselves to love eachother and love her back?

Is it much more powerful to imagine utopia than to disdain dystopia?
We are a dusty age that Mother blows away with her strength of love.

We forget her might,
Her fury, her will.
She: more powerful than all of us.
The earth can crack,
The skies will burn,
The seas will flood.

Our might is remembered by historians,
Our strength is revealed through leaders,
Our vulnerability is exposed.
Our secrets are brought to light.

We are as evil the land.
Life lived in the grey.

the recycler man asked.
Did you learn about anything , say?  precious on
your way to the dump?
Did you see , perhaps, briefly, maybe
one thing, a glimpse of tin or aluminum
as you sped all along the Highway 57
or County road 439? ...that you may have thought appealing?
that to the more common man,
might have seemed like junk or garbage or
insignificant. Did you build another's confidence
perchance along the way? Or find his stash of cans?
Did you notice ? Did you notice?
Did you?  gold is right there,
in another's trash ,
How the meanings were so raw
and you passed right by,
rushing to die.Well, I can give you 1
cent on the pound for all the gold and silver
you accrued. For your bank account , though,
and insurance, I gave you a wife, and your children.
Eternity, was then and infinity , recycled
again and again.  
Go back to the end
of the line.

Whilst sitting- smoking- in a lifeless cemetery,
a thought passes my mind- so momentarily:
'Soon it will be me; that's for certain, surely.'
I wonder- if I'll know the luxury of being buried
or if the wilderness will feast upon my flesh.
I wonder- if my bits and pieces will be thresh-
ed into the damp soil beneath my corpse
by little teeth and a few heavy rainstorms.
At least I will feed the despised swarms
of maggots and resource recycler's of the world.
See- what else could this body be good for?

Carboniferous Tree
Heavy with Water
Pregnant with Seed

Diamond holder
Recycler of Dreams
My other Mother

Beneath your Beams
Blows Harmonica
While Dinky the Dog

Does the Howling for me

ol' jackie boy never fails...
bring me a litre of bourbon:
i'll try not to drink it all...
it's not even about pistons
and the sharpening of tools...
i'd love to cuddle some
more... but...
owning cats opened my eyes
to what's doubly-worth cuddling...
something furry...
although...
once i blunted my fingertips more
so than... expected...
on a brick wall...
i figured... if i take a feel of some
bricks... touching a woman's naked
body would allow me to
transcend the purpose of this otherwise
ugly itch of a: sacrificial lamb
at the altar...
Bertrand Russell's history of western
philosophy is still my no. 1 book...
well... Stendhal's the scarlet & the black...
oddly enough: only after i watched a
movie adaptation
starring Ewan McGregor as Sorel
and Ms. Weisz... oh i forget...
i just finished watching Mare of East-town...
my god...
apparently old age is hell for women...
she wasn't much to look at
when she starred in Titanic...
but look at her now!
she looks like am armchair...
comfortable as well-worn leather...
i'lll rarely mention anyone famous who isn't...
subsequently: also... dead...
but... this fiend of a woman is aging like
a man...
she's having all these pronounced features
of new discovery detailing her face...
like a Julian Moore...
Kate Winslet is aging like a man...
she's becoming more attractive with age...
must be a pseudo-Faustian pact of sorts...
of note...
one my favourite maxims of my
recently deceased grandfather...
'there are no ugly women...
there are only... neglected women...'
look at me... throw me into the arms of some
bulgarian ******* all bulging like
a beached whale...
i'll **** anything that moves...
but then again: no... i don't want to
break a tendon... i don't want a crane to work with...
i like the concept of the spine...
there's a beached whale voluptuous -
sexed up parabolas of curvature...
revising cubism...
and then there's just an eating disorder
the antonym of... anorexia...
oh i spotted two on my bicycle run through
the city... daddy-long-legged spider-esque
"things"...
but i am inclined to believe it:
there are no ugly women...
there are only neglected women...
derelict houses of leftover **** squat-ers...
- so as bicycle from the tease of distance
of the m25 through to st. paul's cathedral...
passing little Bangladesh of Ilford...
Manor Park... Forrest Gate...
it's not until reaching the sq. mile and brick lane...
there are no ugly women...
there are only neglected women...
the odd chance of a borrowed bicycle
and a solipsist with a fever to itch my
fist... while i reprimand myself
and: slow, down... on the anger against
this... giggle-traffic...
so i scratch my head: although i have no
itch... i'm just trying to calm down...
that's why i love the concept of creating
my own momentum...
even though... a horse at full gallop...
with the added thrill of teasing a wheelchair
and feeding through tubes...
i never had a fancy for cars...
a double-decker bus, yes...
there are no ugly women...
only... neglected women...
i wish it was like it was...
                  we could fiddle: fool spaghetti...
take each other on a turn...
even though... i can't supply a detail of
a body-count that might be...
somehow: competition savvy akin
to homosexual hook-up culture...
i speeded via Soho and found nothing
of what i expected from Amsterdam...
i want to... i "want" to... to hell with your wants...
i love women for the very fact
that i can't have them...
it's like having pets...
this much i can understand...

looks like i don't have the sort of money to
keep one on a pretend leash...
who conjures up a leech on a leash?
but ol' jack never fails...
jack is not expected to fail...
if jack fails... all else fails...

i've never seen so much of Loon'doon
as i have... only recently...
i could... venture into the countryside...
eh... why bother?
i want to be a tourist of a different kind:
i want to read into faces...
as they pass me by...
i want to read these faces
sometimes with protruding details...
sometimes without... even though...
they are... Somalian artefacts...
or...

               that's what i'm allowed to
confiscate: gravitate towards...
junctions of anger at woman...
as they come sooner rather than later:
recede...
i could be bitter and juiced-up for:
enough's a while: a while too prolonged...
she has ordained herself chess-master
and i'm merely scribbling...
it's not me... plumber... banker...
surgeon...             invest in a year that never
comes... conquest for the concern of words...

cold heartened visceral conquest of "man"....
at some point there was a narrative...
at some point it made: "sense"...
i'm trapped in a speedy assumption...
well only the teenage girls notice
me: as i, and they, know,
no better!

              the iron maiden cusp of time...
there are no ugly women
in this world... there are only neglected..
types, typos...
i truly want to be in love:
with love, again...
how... "something" or "nothing"
has to be this...

contrampl-
             cintrapleusised,,,
centralize-...
evil advent...
                   not counter...
no... compontranlised...
shuffling details of an envelope...
compartments...
i know there's a word...
    compartmentalised....
   i'll sooner
grit out: onomatopoeia than...
           compartmentalised.....
i too might take grief on the spelling...
round and round around Hyde Park,,,
a concept of a sinking sink....
grief of a foretold sheering of a Hyena "wool"..

it's not like English is impossible to leech of lurn...
it's just... it's own...
my own... beginnings... lost ends...
someone's end... beginning proper...
it's just tiresome to be...
noticed... by no other that 16 year old school girls...
"****" just undermines my masculinity...
then again: "maybe" it doesn't...

give me something furry...
i'll be sooner to cuddle it as sleep-prone than...
the naked piglet...
the roughage-recycler or sorts...
why-reach "beyond":
pivots on h'irish mafia...
i'd be sooner death than tell a...
grief of off a lie...

i want to be in love with women
like i might have been:
been given the pardon of youth's excuses...
that half: the least expecting demand of..
it will hardly become quizzical should i...
or any other: "progress e.g." make...
she needs ingesting...
she needs... foetal brain-drain...
i get it... poo'et... i write for... what?
procrastination?
              you sell me a ******* van gogh...
i tell you: it's not so bad..
jerking off...
i tell you... i sometimes put on latex gloves
when i write... when i ******* i start imagining
an elephant's ****.... to make reemphasis of
came the mammoth...
came some... space...
                  
once upon a time: i loved women...
once upon a time it was not as nearly impossible to
gratify them...
since that time.... since...
i want to... invest myself in imagining
a unicorn... i really do...
but then again... i loved women as much
as i will reiterate:
there are no ugly women...
there are only neglected women...

women akin to:
sooner i **** my sister than i wed you
as: most-stranger posit... gene safe... replenish basin...
it's not fair...
this crux of a stone-heart-entombing...
i want the wild nights of Barcelona...
the... whatever might have mattered in St. Petersburg..

i want you to love me... unlike a dog tied to  a leash
sort of love...
forget you... forget me...

i want to love women...
then again... i'm better loving up the demands
of ******!
look at me... if i were teasing the desire
for a mothering... cringe?

/brandon tatum is one of two guys
I'll probably never have a beer with...

past the already generous helping
of *****, all that's left
of me is a pickled chilly...

hot in the head, soft in the groin,
and somewhere in between:
levitating limbs...

hard not to regress back to tribalism
ploughing through former efforts
to establish the beacon
of nations, denationalised,
or rather, demonarchised...

but back to the transcendental menu...
OK OK, past colour,
"imaginary" borders and...
globalisation means a freedom
of the movement of goods,
id est from the cheapest to...
and the robbing of talent...
for the good of the ominous populace
subermged in a tsunami
of apathy...

you can play the race card,
which is a black privilege...
couldn't tell me apart from a German
a swede or a Lithuanian...
when asked, I always own up
to being german...
a fetish like latex like any other...

playing the race card is like playing
the joker card
from a deck of cards
    that have set rules not established...
namely taking a joker card
from a deck of cards,
that consist of only joke cards...

see, I can merge into the zebra
concussion of a hunting lion,
that collage of hiding the biologically
weak, or intellectual prone to arson,
every,  single, time,
when asked on the British Isles
I joke with Indu Irish mongrels
about pedigree...
and am never a Pole, but a German...
Old Saxon,

I can chameleon the rest of the conversation,
for no greater good,
nor for any minute ill;
motto? sami, swoi...
   back where I was born I play
the tourist card, in central London
I play the country boy card...
                    in Essex I play the feral card...
in Paris I played the mute's card...
             the rest of other people's antics
seems ****,  and monodimensional...

you can play the poker card
only when using a deck of cards
with four kings, four queens, four
jacks etc.,
   the persistent commentary reflects
a sort of people, playing the joker card,
using a deck of cards
that constitute of only jokers...

       it's not even a boredom,
but the tedium of the lost surprise,
at least with boredom you can
finally attach a comfy chair to your ***
and admire a sunset...
but with a tedium of lost surprise...
the persisting mosquito biting...
like almost everything in film these days,
of fiction,
post-plagiarism ...
        namely that the viewer
     already knows the plot,
he knows the plot because the plot
is so disengaging and has been so blatantly
repeated that guess-work takes over
waiting in suspece,
playing the startled suspect...
alas, dear Watson...  

and poetry can hide behind
overt technicalities,
literary bureaucracy of an Ikea
put-together manual,
       less botanical I agree,
and it can hide behind an Antoinette
corset... came pride & prejudice,
ergo? must have come:
  POMP & CIRCUMSTANCE...

    25ml of ***** makes no sense,
kosher glug from the slit neck of
a bottle, might make me look like
a *** rabbi... but at least that's
a 50-70ml range of question,
followed by an apple-mint chaser...

I can appreciate the transcendental
menu of nation ethnicity etc...
but this headache came crashing
in on the grounds of St. Thomas'
non-canonical gospel...
      can't exactly transcend grammar...
on a blank doesn't mean it's
within confines of a formal / informal
conversational structure...
          on a blank i have a pink
elephant tugging the godhead
of flies by the name of Belzeebub...

             I can forsake all tattoos
and heritage...
        maybe these trans...
whatever you call them,
could do something productive,
become bilingual...
   and riddle in fractions
a movement away from Greco-Latin
etymology the words of germanic /
slavic roots, at hand,
with no clear etymology?

          guess work schlang...
pick n mix... a gamble...
          given whatever die zeitgeist...
roulette vocabulary...
          there was a time and place
with imagingy friends...
too many technical words in
the vocab. system,
      much akin to niche, planet U-2398v4...
noun category exhausted...
    came the yawning void
recycler...
                   this movement akin
to the political class of PiS...
    or the grieving twin...
                                
      it's almost funny how this should
be debateable...
       imagining the solipsistic world
of the upper echelon of the medical
profession... a surgeon denounces
title Dr. and by Herr is merely addressed...
like shouting past the gates
of Tartarus...
                            
                        ­  yet this debate
has gained public interest,
if not public demand, if not a civic
seriousness...
      in times when laws are past
frivolously, do many eyes turn away
from law itself, in search for
more frivolous affairs...
upon Samson's and upon Atlas'
hinges the crumbling world,
once more decided to spin
into amnesia...
     yet some perverted act,
unanswered lodged into
                    Alzheimer glitching...

by law itself I mean: orthodox
jurisprudence...
                    a return to
oculus per oculus logic,
not the turn the other cheek
rose blushed cought with a hand
lodged in the cookie jar...
   the more frivolous laws are
passed, the more of a joke
inacting genocide becomes;
and it becomes, and it becomes...
and this: the diabolical ferment,
a god as weak as not dead,
is a god that still believes
in the historically immune man...

already having missed the mark,
scared of a needle puncture,
craving fetish of a machete cut...
     such frivolous laws...
while the titans stand over
such establishment with neither
tear nor suffocated laughter...
brooding in the alchemy of shadows
a scheme worthy
of the daughters of Brahim,
the mistresses of puppeteering
as guided, by their mother Karma.