The water’s new
Purpose is to carry the old salmon into the Earth.
To harbor the young, watch them grow,
Show them the ways and streams of life.
It brings them with current’s flows
Down the river where the flow recycles.

After the offspring are born, their body recycles
Into the river where the new glimmering fish swim up stream in a new
Trail. A river that curves like a beaten path pushes down on the fish when it flows
Underneath the soil and Earth.
This is where the lowest forms of life
Live in the dark and cold but always grow.

As I age, I grow
When I die, my body recycles.
I realize that I know how to love life.
I will come back replenished and new.
My body is one with the Earth,
My spirit roams and flows.

I am the river in the morning rays of sun that flows,
I am the blooming golden sunflower will grow,
I am the animal of all different shapes and sizes that belong to the Earth.
I live because of the recycles,
Like the grass that is long and not new.
I am all of nature’s life.

Soft, mossy grass that I step on is pulsing with life.
It moves and flows
In and out of the old and new.
With its knowledge it learns to grow.
It creates, destroys, and recycles
Land, rivers, oceans, and the Earth.

My sun streaked curls lay gently on the Earth
As I hear the ground race and scurry with life.
The past turns, contracts, and recycles.
A faint thunder of the brook is heard as it bends and flows.
Here in the trees, I have watched the young fledglings grow,
I let myself go, as I turn my body in and turn old to new.

The sun comes up new and warm. It heats the Earth
As it grows in the sky and brings the plants to life.
When the sun goes down, the moonlight flows and the sky recycles.

One scarlet tear, makes it clear which drops from her cheek to the ground which burns away as acid, toxic, became lifeless in an instant
Emotions of any kind, are to ruin ones mind, ones soul from something more beautiful, clean and without any malicious intent,
Ruining what's best in us, corrupting inner peace with disturbance,
Free from bonds or feelings one would live alike the the moon; Elusive, with a cycle which turns and decides to recycles once again,
But what would be a life, free from the trouble of emotions, heartache
pain and agaony, happiness and glee with experiencess worth more than a soul could ask for, wish to be repeated, forming what is YOU,
Would it be a curse ? A blessing ? Would it be wise to purify onesself,
All these questions remain unanswered, as the world spirals it's transient, lifely joyful axis around our golden shining star, the sun,
Purity comes sinfree, cut from temptations of every meaningful term,
Then it would mean to give up anything, everything in solace, simply to remain free from an act or even a thought of unrighteousness,
Empathy would be lost in a purgatory of pure furies which knows no heart, or mercy for this matter, a life spend alone is an answer to this,
Oh servant, will you burn away like the flower in the heat of summer by achieving this purity you strive for just to call yourself better ?
After all, the joy of emotions is for all to experience
After all the love of light is for all to bear

~ Umi

"The question should not be in what ways writing and utterance trope each other, but how both are involved with number. Without relating the technology of writing to number (as opposed to sound or drawing), it is impossible to discuss it meaningfully as an aspect of versecraft."

          Courage to write and courage to not write. Read
          The great poets and highly accomplished letters
          Of leaders. Yet the war and the book have lives
          Of their own. Vacuum house, analyze mankind.
          His idea of himself. Ideas subsumed by
          Better ones unite people in melting pots.
          I watch from my little bowl of nuts. Watch
          The one red squirrel and the many gray.
          Watch the nuthatch pair, platoon of chickadees.
          Here is what I say: When we can go
          From planet to planet on nothing but air,
          Leaving behind a drop of water,
          No burger bags blowin’ in the sun,
          I’ll love my sons, and my dogs will be happy.

"What is needed is a way to pry apart the polar, mimetic fiction that undergirds discussions (even sympathetic ones) of writing and versification, and see how we can relate writing to measure. Roy Harris’ investigations into the origin of writing make this connection possible."

          Electronic millennium. A long silence
          Wouldn’t hurt. Not that the national debate
          Should cease, it should proceed, passionate
          And furious. Those who have studied the matter
          And have something to say should write cogent
          Opinion pieces on the totalitarian
          Tendencies of minaret Islamists,
          The terminal contradiction of advancing
          Democracy with the unitary military.
          George Washington would not have approved
          And even Lincoln vacillated between
          The practicalities of preserving union
          And the ideal of freeing slaves. The president
          Carries his burden of matter, the physics
          Of existence cannot change our aloneness
          Or the butterfly’s importance, the very
          Last insects at the screens of August.
          It is life we face and death we meet.

"He argues that the origin of writing did not lie in the drawing of figures, or attempts to imitate speech, but in the recording of number. According to Harris, the oldest ‘writing’ that we have, like that on the 11, 000-year-old Ishango bone, is in ‘lines.’ The surface is scored with rows of short, parallel strokes, which probably served a numerical function. We still use such scoring systems today on occasion."

          OK, different strokes. But reading North’s poems
          And his predecessors’ in which noun and verb
          Are so far separated by modifiers,
          Post-positioned prepositions, diversions
          Into ditches, gardens, heavens, I don’t know
          What to do laugh or put the book down and eat
          Several cookies. In other words, anything goes,
          There truth resides. 1/3 life in suburbs,
          1/3 on the subway, and the last third
          On the mountain. A fourth hallucinating
          In heaven. That’s how it goes. You get what you believe.
          Bones in mud. It’s always possible I suppose
          That for nine months analogous or symmetrical
          With gestation our souls wander call it limbo,
          Doing the limbo and harassing the living
          With unanswerable questions, finally accepting
          Free molecular rent in a cubic meter
          Of interstellar space, a rose hip.
         
"Harris speculates about counting by scoring:"
'What is relevant for our present purposes is the fact that counting is associated in many cultures with primitive forms of recording which have a graphically isomorphic basis... The iconic origin of such recording systems is hardly open to doubt: the notch or stroke corresponds to the human finger...'

          Partridgeberry, mugwort, mats of raspberry,
          Cranberry, bearberry, autumn eleagnus,
          Autumn Nocturne, Autumn Leaves, the changes
          To the tunes and the scientific names.
          When it doesn’t matter what you do
          You’re probably doing something new.
          That’s a woodpecker. That’s a moth. I’m bounded
          By my surroundings, I feel at home.
          Could be Schenectady. Could be Troy.
          One of many small cities in which to
          Await my anonymity. Be specific.
          Not asphalt but impermeable surface.
          Not trees but mature stems. Quercus rubrus—
          Quality veneer. Into such a garden
          Have a victor and a fool penetrated.

'In short, the rows of strokes are graphically isomorphic with just that subpart of the recorder’s oral language which comprises the corresponding words used for counting. It makes no difference whether we ‘read’ the sign pictorially as standing for so many fingers held up, or scriptorially as standing for a certain numeral.'

          In a crowded world every action results
          In an equal and overwrought reaction.
          Yet, all the energy recycles
          And there is not one thermal unit more or less
          When all is said and won. Even when the tribes
          Were isolated behind mountain ranges
          And rushing rivers, they sought each other out
          For trading and for taking. Humanity
          Is lonely. Humor is the only remedy
          And going to your daily discipline
          The only way past Monday. Join the torrential
          Flow of words, emotion, wit and erudition.
          It is embarrassing to see a good writer
          Work himself into a lather, having
          Something to say. A system of beliefs
          To illustrate, characters dressed accordingly.
          Gardens and wilderness in which to wander.
          A cave with a view. The plumbing problem never
          Resolves. But we will do what we can and
          Some things we shouldn't because that is human.

"Along with other evidence, this leads him to argue that the invention of writing–or the division of writing and drawing into separate functions–occurred when the graphic representation of number shifted from the token-iterative system that appears on the Ishango bone, to type-slotting."

          Electricity is occult enough for me.
          Excessive classifying could be fascist!
          Yet how else can one organize people
          Into contexts. By their associations.
          Family, work, habits, each assigned
          A day of the week, moon of the month.
          Poets rhyme, jazz musicians count time.
          There is more than one way to make war. By
          Declaration, by punishing offenses
          Against the law of nations, by granting letters
          Of mark and reprisal, by making rules
          Concerning captures on land and water, by
          Suppressing insurrections and repelling invasions,
          Erecting forts, magazines, arsenals,
          Dock yards and other needful buildings. Today
          I face the blank page between the finished pages.

"Harris gives the following example of what he means:"
'The progression from recording sixty sheep by means of one ‘sheep’ sign followed by sixty strokes to recording the same information by means of one ‘sheep’ sign followed by a second sign indicating ‘sixty’ is a progression which has already crossed the boundary between pictorial and scriptorial signs.'

          When my grandmother considered it favorable
          That I would be a writer, she had in mind
          Clear commentary from which many people
          Would derive meaning. No such luck. My writings
          Are like the flicking tail of that flycatcher,
          And I am the flycatcher, weighing but an ounce.
          My grandfather’s rough-hewn peasant chairs
          Are well known by my sons though they never knew him
          And the chairs were not hewn, just owned by him.
          One is in a corner of the room and two
          Are scrimmaged around a computer screen.
          Computers post-date him and cars post-date
          His father and so on. If the grid collapses,
          The crops fail and the roads close, some will be forced
          Across boundaries among boulders, naming snakes
          And stars according to memory.
          They will be hungry, mortal and strong.

'A token-iterative sign-system is in effect equivalent to a verbal sublanguage which is restricted to messages of the form ‘sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep...’, or ‘sheep, another, another, another...’, whereas an emblem-slotting system is equivalent to a sublanguage which can handle messages of the form ‘sheep, sixty’.Token-iterative lists are, in principle, lists as long as the number of individual items recorded. With a slot list, on the other hand, we get no information simply by counting the number of marks it contains.'
"When this change occurred it opened ‘a gap between the pictorial and scriptorial function of the emblematic sign’, which had been previously inseparable in the counting represented by rows of slashes."

          No book I know tells if blue cohosh
          Caulophyllum thalictroides—a barberry—
          Is edible. Other barberries are
          But that blue berry looks risky to me.
          And May-apple—Podophyllum—other
          Than the fruit itself which is definitely
          Sweet. So I read, not sure of myself.
          There is a patience with which to wait out anger,
          And a patience with which to endure ignorance.
          The job is everything. It is freedom
          And purpose and religion. It is acceptance
          And shelter and sustenance. Last night
          We were watching Tweet’s show: groveling before
          The rich pharisee’s judgements. I said no
          Amount of money could make me grovel
          Before that guy. His toupe’s gayer than his lisp.
          But who am I? You think bullets won’t ****?
          I’m the guy they put before a wall and shoot
          Then eat lunch. But that feeling passed quickly.

"This semiological gap, made writing possible because it meant that signs could be manipulated to ‘slot’, or identify, anything whatsoever. The open-ended quality of the scriptorial sign was a necessary precondition for the development of writing systems."

          Lately I’ve been copying wholesale
          From the great poems, lines and ideas not my own
          Or owned by all? It’s ok, I can be ignored
          Or appreciated in a future city,
          By a future shore. The honest man can
          Only recognize what he loves and point to it.
          That Borges poem called In Praise of Darkness.
          Emerson and snow. A meditation
          That bumps serenely, with acceptance,
          Between things and thoughts. It is said one should
          Know for whom, to whom one is writing.
          These are letters to those who love letter writing.

"As Harris points out, no writing system is accurately phonetic. Even the alphabet only highlights certain phenomena in the speech stream. The reason for this is that alphabetic writing did not begin as a simpler or more accurate way to record speech than other writing systems, but as an easier way to write."

          A possible cancer had taken me
          To the edge of my endurance. Pokeweed,
          Poisonous, became attractive. Red stems
          And juicy black berries. I had packed warm clothes
          And pain killers. Why the warm clothes if this
          Was to be my last walk? To die in comfort
          Without a fly’s buzz. Overlooking a ravine,
          Sea of mountains, dawn. But it proved a false alarm.
          Now Sunday will be a holy day of plant
          Identification. Nothing better
          Than lying in leaf litter, skin drying
          To a taut drum. Ravens stay away!
          Until cougar’s had his fill! Instead
          I showed the boys pokeweed growing among blackberries
          And taught them the differences and uses.

"Through a radical reduction in the number of signs, the alphabet simplified the scriptorial system in and of itself. The evolution of writing therefore may look like this: simple forms of counting preceded the complications of pictorial representation, which in turn led to simplification of the writing system in cultures that adopted the alphabet."

          I was running uphill, parallel to
          The Taconics extending northward into
          Vermont (I find Vermonters in their jalopies
          Annoying but admire them for planning
          To arrest the president for war crimes) when
          I happened upon a flock of cedar waxwings—
          Said to be a gentle and politic bird—
          Sharing—very orderly—dried frozen grapes
          On the vine. (Rose hips, buckthorn, ash, pokeweed.)
          I tried one, too, the two seeds in my mouth
          Keeping me company down the mountain.
          I see no downside whatsoever
          To compensating for global warming,
          Constructing the green energy economy.
          New inventions may facilitate
          Our transportation to other planets.
          Yesterday a young man, Barack Obama,
          Won Iowa. I’m hopeful he will
          Articulate an international vision,
          A world order in which each neighborhood’s
          Good as another. I have no particular
          Love for writers; they’re a dime a dozen.
          But so are chickadees and I love them!

"Discussing the power of inscriptions of number, Harris points out:"
'Counting is in its very essence magical, if any human practice at all is. For numbers are things no one has ever seen or heard or touched. Yet somehow they exist, and their existence can be confirmed in quite everyday terms by all kinds of humdrum procedures which allow mere mortals to agree beyond any shadow of a doubt as to ‘how many’ eggs there are in a basket or ‘how many’ loaves of bread on the table.'

          True, nature would be a stern, unforgiving
          Mistress too, and man is but her right hand
          Acting on her command. How cold! How hot!
          The individual doing what he loves or not.
          Trees and cities. Herons, hawks. What we fail
          To govern in ourselves, nature will.
          We caught the killer and his gorillas,
          Now let’s go home, let the “innocent” choose
          Up sides. A good thing was done but the tyrant
          Should’ve been undone through global governance.
          Writing is divination using rhymes
          And estimations. Words like mammals
          Come near your sleeping head. Last night I emerged
          From the hum of our refrigerator
          Under a hazy, phaseless moon. The peepers
          Were an exact expression of my happiness.

"Or, one might add, for how many stanzas there are in a poem, or lines in a stanza, or stresses, feet, or syllables in a line, or occurrences of particular syntactical or grammatical patterns, and so on. As every serious student of versification has always understood, versification is about counting language."

          5:30-6 write poetry,
          6-7 ****, shave and shower, stretch
          Then get dressed, 7-7:30
          Clean house, 7:30-8 drive to work
          8-6 work (except Monday and Friday
          Work 8-4, basketball 4-6)
          6-7 drive home, shop, help make dinner
          7-8 eat dinner, read paper,
          Watch McNeil-Lehrer News Hour,
          8-9 play trumpet, study plants, type poems
          9-10 watch TV Mon: Murphy, Cybil,
          Tues: Frazier, Grace, Wed: Roseanne, Ellen,
          Thurs: Seinfeld, Friends, Fri: go out to dinner,
          10-11 read, except Tues watch
          NYPD Blue, Fri: Friday Night Lights,
          11 sleep. I could send this to the networks,
          Get a gizmo in my box. I hope my
          Schedule won't be interrupted for war.
          My dentist asked had I seen this morning’s
          Press conference, didn’t it just scare the ****
          Out of you. I said your bill is what scares
          The **** out of me. But here I am, writing
          And the sphere’s still turning. Or should I say
          Burning. As long as you write one poem per day
          You’ve left a little litter in the world.

"The reason to write verse is less to score the voice than to imbue words with the magical quality of counting. That is why meter, or measure, is at the heart of debates over all verse forms, including free verse."

          Vigorous wind, voracious ocean,
          Many merciless hard frosts, hurricanes.
          The bed of a human, its smell and warmth
          36 teeth, 46 chromosomes, 2 feet, a loose dime,
          61 summers, some soot, some sand,
          Thunderstorms. I wake up to a lightning strike
          And my dream incinerates. When they say
          Life is but a dream, that’s what they mean.
          The writer working hard, telling the story
          Of what happened yesterday or yesteryear,
          A man’s born to a country not his choosing,
          Let labor flow like capital, of mere being!
          Pomegranate juice, broccoli, arugula,
          Brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower,
          Collard greens, kale, radishes, turnips,
          Garlic, leeks, scallions, onions, 2 lbs
          Swordfish, tomatoes (8 medium),
          3 cups almonds, carrots, a sweet potato,
          Winter squash, cantaloupe, mangoes, watermelon.
          2 daily writing exercises,
          50 words on any subject: complaint, headache.
          The imagination applies a
          Countervailing pressure to reality.
          Writing badly is the best revenge.

"Number is one of the creative grounds of poetry, and the idea that writing grew out of counting is the missing link in studies of the graphic in versification. It is almost uncanny that lines of verse look exactly like the most primitive ways of counting–parallel scorings that can be numbered."

          What you do to one side of the equation
          You gotta do to the other. Isolate
          The variable. Combine like terms. Metaphors
          And analogs are reduced to least common
          Denominators. Multiply through (parentheses).
          Write a new equation after each operation.
          Inscribe neatly. Check your work. Imagine
          That if you’re wrong, the astronauts burn.
          Change the signs which will avoid going
          The wrong way down the number line. Zero
          Is the middle of your universe.
          There it is, calm, comfortable as an egg
          On a spoon. That is, before possibilities
          Become probabilities. This is just
          Another equation manipulated
          With opposable digits. For at the ends
          Of your guns is the earliest calculator
          A magical machine which converts
          Numbers to words and words to numbers,
          Measures the mists, frequency and wavelength,
          Of the material penumbra.

"Verses are countable in exactly the way that token-iterative digits are countable, from either end of the sequence. Each one indicates only its singularity, not a number. Every poem in lines effaces, or predates, the distinction between writing and drawing in the same way as the lines on the Ishango bone."

December 25 - 28, 2010


Stuck in Miami, Florida, because of bad weather in NYC.
Composed after reading the poetry of Campbell McGrath, who lives in Miami.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
­
electric pinpricks of
unfamiliar red and green lights,
bedroom traffic guidance
courtesy of a stranger's
tv and cable box,
an emblematic totem tonight,
of my physical dislocation,
reminders that I'm enslaved
by weather machinations.

I lay, resting uneasy,
in a strange bed,
one night too many,
snow storming in my head
snow storming up north aplenty,
a blizzard of ruminations are
my white coverlet,
while stuck in Miami.

faraway drifts have
force fed and freed
an imprisoned restlessness,
a multipurposed, slashing.

Miami midnight incision has
let out the bad humors,
let in an unfamiliar odor -
lechón asado,
which texts my Pharisee nostrils
in Cubano,
words muy ironico,
a single waking thought,
"who ya kidding?"

Everglades rain
imported from California,
recycles on rooftops,
thrumming a heart beating,
syncopated, watery refrain,
a regifted heavenly present.

the sound waves mark
as a barely undulating wave,
inside this super soaked brain,
that transforms wine into water
and scan lines into these letters,
"who ya kidding?"

all this exponential signage
of this NYC boy grousing, are his
defrocked muses annoying,
with a serenading blizzard
of one trick pony repetitions,
coronets trumpet his unmasking,
this essay, a revelation,
a product of their
harmonious discordancy.

a single note crowns his head
as he weeps whole food
organic, non-recyclable tears,
products of his new inquistional,
a self-inflicted interogatorial,
"who ya kidding?"

compiler of an
occasional talented catch phrase,
strung'em together like
cheap pearls,
pretensions of literary acumen
once populated his Id,
articles of spilled word *****,
but Florida rain has cleansed
his Northern haughty pretensions,
with an injection of truth serum,
a pharmaceutical wonder of
a local poison labeled,
"who ya kidding?"

A day laborer, nothing more,
rise up at five, brown bagged,
a client of Mammon's *****,
soul sagged, life hagged,
a sum of cultural cliches,
a cell phoned baby boomer,
a would be millennial,
constructed of paper mache,
who on occasion,
has been known to say,
"Let's play poetry today."

the poseur chokes
on this new poison,
delivered by unhappy stance
by the arrows of his
current misfortune
for he now suffers from
the deadly disease of
"compare and contrast."

a slim book of poems
of Campbell McGrath's
(his phraseology,
a veritable theology)
shoos the blues traveler,
over to a funhouse
where an honest magic mirror
cuts him down to size.

his poetic aspirations,
a residue of self-infatuation,
are summarily dismissed by
the truly gritty, quick justice
of a master poet's
"who ya kidding?"

so watch how a would-be
poet disappears,
in a barrage of bullets marked,
nevermore,
his dignity, more than hobbled,
his cheek, gone, gobbled,
his juice, a currency unaccepted,
his holiday present,
a ceasefire of conjugation,
a cornucopia of declinations

dare I ever write again?
who indeed, am I kidding,
other than myself?
I am an addict, not a poet.

The world spins in reverse in light of the sun burning out
Slowly spinning, slipping into a state of satisfactory self destruction
No one to let it know it's waiting on doom
Or make it feel like the end is coming sooner than what is already planned
The moon continues to fade
The sea is still wading, bringing in the wait upon the sands
Not wanting, or needing, being it simply does
And everything that burns it's little light inside lives and recycles and breathes an air of infinity

MANILA, Philippines - The public knows me as the Father of Philippine Franchising but what is hidden from the public eye is that I am a father of five sons and a daughter. This fact became very real to me again recently when my youngest son, Sam Gregory, got married.

Like I said, I have five sons and all of them are achievers and successful in their respective fields. My eldest son, Sam Benedict, for example, has a master’s degree from Kellogg and works for a top American company. My fourth son, Sam Christopher, on the other hand, got his master’s degree from Oxford and used to work for a top British conglomerate.

When my other sons got married, I was happy and proud as I could be; but when Greg got married I have to admit that there was a certain tug in my heart realizing that my little Sam was finally leaving the nest. I am not the sentimental type, but I guess every parent has a special place in his heart for his youngest.

But don’t get me wrong, Greg is no pushover. Being physically small, he did have his share of bullying when he was in school. But Greg knows how to deal with his problems. He befriended a number of his bigger classmates and that solved his problem in a snap. He may be small but he has a big heart.

Greg is idealistic and principled. He usually volunteers for civic and charitable activities and contributes to fund drives for disaster victims. My wife and I have accepted the fact that every time there is a typhoon, we can expect our cupboards to be cleared of canned goods and our cabinets purged of old clothes, which Greg would donate.

He follows traffic rules and regulations even when there’s nobody watching and even if following is not convenient for him. He saves energy. He recycles. He even convinced me and my wife not to use narra wood flooring in our retirement home.

Being a careful planner, he is the most prepared among our family for the “Big One.” But what I find most admirable is that he keeps two emergency kits in his car in case he finds himself in a situation where he might need to help others.

Greg is also romantic, creative and dedicated. When he was studying in Beijing, he would organize a virtual date with Charmaine Haw (who would eventually become Mrs. Sam Gregory Lim), who was in Manila. They would watch the same movie on the web and Greg would order movie snacks, which he would send to Charmaine’s house. The couple would also have virtual dinner dates where Greg would order similar meal courses, which would be delivered to Charmaine’s house and then they would chat via Skype while having dinner.

When the time came for Greg to buy his engagement and wedding rings, he refused to let us — his parents — help him. He used his own money despite being the one among his brothers who could least afford it, being the least salaried employee among them. He did this as a symbol of his love and commitment to Charm.

But when the wedding came I insisted that it should be a grand wedding.

To guarantee a great party, we made sure to have great food, a great place and great companions. Being an avid sci-fi fan, Greg already had an idea of a unique garden wedding. He wanted to transform the New Grand Ballroom of the Marriott Hotel into the forests of Avatar. To do this, the wedding stylist had to import a collection of trees, hanging plants, shrubs, flowers and other plants. The images projected on the giant 15-meter panoramic LED screen added to the reality of the scenery. It was a unique and original “garden setting” and was certainly a sight to behold and remember.

For the food, Greg was at his meticulous best to make sure that the evening’s feast was memorable. The dinner opened with a mouth-watering appetizer, lemon-spiced pan-seared scallop with tomato cucumber timbale in creamy ginger soya sauce followed by Manhattan clam chowder with cornbread dumpling. For the main course, we had the beef tenderloin prepared by the master chef of Cru Steakhouse of Manila Marriott Hotel, sea bass with roasted shallots, dauphin potatoes in perigourdine and mustard herb sauce.

The espresso-infused tiramisu and the white chocolate cheesecake with mango salsa served with piping-hot coffee completed the culinary feast.

With 800 guests, I would have to admit that we did splurge a little. But we also wanted the wedding reception to be an opportunity to thank the people who have been a part of our family. These are our relatives, friends and associates who have inspired, mentored and helped mold my children to be what they are today.

To my youngest son, Greg, and my new daughter, Charmaine — quoting from the Vulcan salute of the Star Trek saga (of which Greg is a big fan) — may you both live long and prosper!

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses

http://www.marieaustralia.com

Hi I'm Leah Waughtal. Yeah, The GH Makes An F Sound, Its Kind Of Weird. What Do You Mean I'm Not On The Class List? So There Are Two Freshman Biology's? And The Rooms Are Side By Side? Both First Block? And There Is A Typo On My Schedule... So I Have To Go All The Way Down To The Counseling Office, But What If I Miss The Bus To Central, And All My Friends Are In This Class, And I-

Stop.

I Know That Look. I've Been There. That Scared ****-less Smile. That Cocky Half Step Into Adolescence. You Were Just A Big Fish, In A Small Pond, But This. This Is An Ocean, And You Feel So, So Little Again. I Know 'Freshman Advice' Is Trending On Twitter, And You've Seen Every Jab At "Knowing Your Place", And "Staying Out Of The Way". We Act Like We Run This School, But We Really Don't. And You Can Thank Our Administrators For Teaching Us That. We're Still Learning. And You Have Every Right To Remind Us Of That. Like The Human Body That Recycles Itself, Every Skin Cell, And Drop Of Blood, Regenerated, A High School Does The Exact Same Thing. Every Four Years, We Are Recycled. After We Graduated As Seniors, There Will Be No Evidence Of Our Existence, So You, Yes You, Are Our Legacy.

Maybe You Don't Want All To Be Doctors, Or Lawyers, But I Can Meet Eyes Out There, And Say Its Safe. We All Wanna Make A Lot Of Money Someday. So Make It Easy On Yourself, Put The Effort In Now. The Path Starts Here, Inside This Room. You Were Built For Both Beauty, And Greatness. Give The Seam & Stitch Of Your DNA Something To Hold On To. You've Got Wonder Tattooed Into Your Skin, You've Got Valor In Your Fingertips,  You've Got Power Lining The Insides Of Your Pockets. You've Got It In You. Don't Let Anyone Tell You That You Don't.

We, You&i;, Are The Middle Children Of History, Raised By Television Sets To Believe We Will Be Rock-stars, And Millionaires Someday. So No One Better Mess With Us, Because There Aren't Enough Hours In The Day To Finish All The Dreams We Will Accomplish. So Look Up, & Remember These Stars, Because Sparks Meet Inside You, And They Died To Become You.

And Yes, There Will Be Times When You'll Swell With Self Made Pressure. But Believe Me, There Won't Be Any Popping. You Were Made To Bend Without Breaking. Stop Being Terrified Of Your Own Potential, You've Got Undiscovered Talents Waiting Inside Yourself. Don't Bite Your Tongue Too Many Times, Or You Might Swallow Yourself Whole. Speak Up For What You Believe In. Don't Be Afraid Of Being Noticed. There Is A Place For You Here.

& Any Time That You Feel Like There Isn't, I'm Here. Find Me In A Hallway, If You Need Someone To Tell You That Everything Will Be Okay. Or If You Just Want Somebody To Hold Your Hand For A Second. Or Even If You Just Need Help With Your Physics Assignment.

This Isn't The End. No, This Is Something Else Entirely.

This Is Just The Beginning.

I've got the January blues,
The Monday heaviness,
A kind of Tuesday Sadness.
I've got the Wednesday empties,
The Thursday lonelies,
And a Friday full of Madness.
Saturdays are cold and grey
While Sundays seem to slip away,
And the week recycles into blandness.

yesterday may have been my birthday.

you need two hands, two feet,
a multiplication table
an abacus to count my years,
each finger, worth a decade.
each toe, perhaps, a century.

birthdays.

a point of inflection,
a point of opportunity,
a present presents itself,
to rewrite history.

a second coat of paint,
gift-wrapped in weak excuses.
how I lied, how I ain't,
grimm-fated fairy tales
somebody else created.

invisible suits of gold-cloth
worn to my party of
past rewrit and
future foretold.

one single thought,
memory,
seizes my heart,
as I fall to my knees.
cracks my temperate ease,
renders open the
woof and weave
of recycled deceptions,
causing all to be revealed
when asking myself

what if the poetry ceases?

you know prostrate?
you have tasted grief?

have you not but
a singular pain,
one act,
one deed,
one memorization,
act of cowardice,
act of desertion,
mistake made, taken,
for which
forgiveness
can never
be given,
be faked,
attained?

do, does, did.

let me then this day,
win the birthday lottery,
let floods of relief from
daily chores not drown me,
chauffeurs to drive,
masseurs to massage,
cooks to cook,
les délicieuses friandises to sweeten life,
please keep theologians, logicians,
philosophers on retainer,
even historians, those future fortune tellers,
if needed, unnecessary explanations -
or just satisfactory rationalizations.

none know,
or can provide,
still and yet,
a year round
a priestly sacred chord,
to grant relief,
absolution,
songs of hallelujah,
erasers of the ache of
perpetuity worry.

those ancient pains,
grow fresh daily,
the loss of one element
of my body,
prevents my primal knot
reasonably to be untied,
everything should be permitted
on my birthday, no?

this day, these days
breathe through words,
molecules of vowels,
stem cells of consonants,
the fabric, the tissues of life,
veins are a dictionary
of corpuscles,
red blood cells are
nouns of nutrients.

this day, these days,
the infection of my soul
is tempered, kept at bay,
tamped down from the
full flowering
of white blood cells
of rhyme, verse,
and asking myself

what if the poetry ceases?

though the bones creak,
snap, crackle and pop,
the body they carry, the heart
eccentric~centric: tire shop patched,
yom kippur white resurrected this day,
for morning, afternoon
and evening prayers,
and the last one special,
spoken standing.

thrice daily poetry I recite,
roses red, violets blue,
my marrow transfused.

though my prayers likely refused,
the poetry act immolates
the fringes of my disease,
for which the common cure
is not currently invented....
so I ask myself

what if the poetry ceases?

be assured, I am told
scientists hard at work,
on the forgive n' forget drug.

meantime,
take a bubble bath in
rosemary and mint,
trap and tap some words,
into your cell phone bone,
the poetry heat, scented waters,
provide aspirin relief.

through this poem,
on one day annual,
I am relieved, relived,
the muses, the Devils
all herein, feted, and sated

gone for few moments
concerns, worries of
exposure today,
agnostic's foxhole of hell
is dis-remembered,
the gloss returns,
the faux dispatched,

ain't birthdays grand?

yet, I cannot help but ask

what if the poetry ceases?

what rhymes with
Sorrow?
mmmmm.

could it be
Morrow?

bath drains,
rosemary and mint odors dismissed,
the Argentine disparu,
the Spanish Medievalists,
the Neo-Raphaelites,
all dispatched,
didn't they have birthdays too?
didn't you know,
Hey Michelangelo!
the Renaissance come
and gone,
nobody tole ya?

t'is the day
my sweet city recorded my
naissance in the
Hospital of the Flowers
on Fifth Avenue.

the 'crats put the datum
in the bureau with the
night creams and
the statistics
as follows:

on this day + a few,
seven or twenty decades ago +
a few centuries, some blackbirds,
a question was born,
and an ache that is
sometimes relieved,
by a poem~song.

though do not celebrate,
t'is a day to calibrate,
review, edit, tinker,
rewrite, often a stinker.

yet, but,
always one thought recycles:

**what if the poetry ceases,
how will I breathe?

A flash of light upon the sky
and dinosaurs were gone.
In a universe that knew them not,
and held no memory to live on.

Of ourselves our human kind,
we think the universe holds us dear.
Through time and vastness of it all
so doubtful it knows we're here.

So many things come and gone
forever changing it still evolves.
Too short is our human existence
to see how all of this resolves.

We think our kind important
a central purpose for it all.
But the universal scale of things
serves to remind our place is small.

We will never know its purpose,
and may never know if there was plan.
But rest assured my fellow humans,
our path will be as the dinosaurs
when the universe recycles man.

So today, I just had some sort of epiphany. It's weird because I get these sort of things when I am in the weirdest places. And that weird place for me is inside a plane. Near the window seat, not quite ,but the soft sunlight hits me in the right way and I feel pleased.  I had coffee before I boarded so it had the effect I needed to behave quite cheerfully. Oddly enough today I did not go through my all too familiar episodes of inability to function normally, submerge jn a lake of hopelessness or just hate everything and anything all at once. Though to be quite fair my stomach feels strange again maybe be cause of the cold drink I had or the influence of feeling panic every single morning (an uncontrollable fear that usually starts before I get depressed, I may add) or maybe both. It's so amusing how my mind works to be honest. I started observing people in the plane, the ones beside me and the ones who are going back and forth to stow their stuff or whatever.  Then this sudden thought about my depression laced my mind like a orange streak during sunset. I thought exactly this "Hey I don't feel so sad or miserable despite of barely having an hour of sleep after the tedious packing last night. This is good—this is great." And I just found it strange because there were times when I longed for the tide of melancholy—that despicable depression every time I am in the normal mood. At first, I was almost certain I have gone insane. Or totally depressed. Or both. I mean who wants to be ******* depressed all the time and then go through emotional calm and then the ******* cycle recycles itself like trash made to look pretty but when consumed gets to become trash again. Who ******* does? But I also realized I must have come to this sense of familiarity with the pain that drove me to the edge for almost a month now. It really becomes your home when you lose sense of yourself and the only thing comforting you is that very pain which have wrecked your home.

And all too suddenly, these thoughts just made me half hysterical half teary-eyed. Because at that moment as I waited for the plane to ******* trace the runway already ( I get impatient, yes) I felt grateful. The word really is grateful. Not even happy, delirious or euphoric. Just a hell lot of gratefulness. I find myself thanking this moment of just grasping happiness even if I know for sure I'll probably get depressed tonight again (as per usual). Before I'd get hyper and just laugh like there is nobody to mind me but I never felt this thankful ever. I started looking back to those moments of happiness where I get to believe in greater things again. Where I'd worry for a second then dismiss it saying "Ah this hardly matters, so ***** it." After being drenched in so much unexplainable pain and going through this high and low almost everyday, I've come to a conclusion that I never really appreciated those moments of peaceful glee as much as I am at that moment. And I thought hat could have never been possible if I wasn't crying myself for nights, being vulnerable and seemingly weak to a bunch of people, admitting to myself that I was losing interest in life itself. It was like going through a warzone unarmed but after the trail has left the danger, you start feeling a wave of relief—a recovery after the storm.

When I started accepting the fact that I am a person with a high tendency to get depressed, I also came to accept that I've always been a sensitive person. It hardly ever shows, to be quite honest. I can appear to people as uncaring or too self-absorbed or reserved but it's only because I **** at the art of self-expression. Really, since 1995. I'd keep it all to myself although inside I am shattering. And people would have no idea because I NEVER SHARE. But ever since I was a child, I'd get these instances of melancholy simply because I can see other people (who I should not even care about) twist in pain or I'll see so much injustice that it makes me feel indignant or I can see something is wrong with someone the moment I talk to them. Things just affect me in ways that I could never understand. Add to that is my defining characteristic of being a ******* introvert. My introversion has given way to me becoming a highly introspective person. So I'd think about life a lot, question life a lot, wonder why we are as we are and some existential **** like that.

I hated all the pain I went through these past few weeks. I am a person who is independent and knows herself completely. But when depression hit me, I was clouded in a mist of ambiguity. I dont know anymore who I was, I could not understand y emotions, i could not feel happy when I am doing the things that I love. It just ****** me into a black hole. There were times that sleep was my only remedy. Partly because I wanted to escape the loneliness, the anxiety, the self-loathing and my entire body refusing to cooperate and partly because I felt tired all the ******* time and even if I slept for an entire day, I would still feel the same when I wake up. But today, I felt happy that I went through all of them. Even if there was one time that I gagged my mouth with pillow because I was about to scream in so much pain— (thank god I was alone in the room) and afraid that I might scare the other dormers away. That night as my eyes felt like rivers ,I swore that I will not let this control me. I swore that someday I'll find out why the hell this happened to me. And then I cried even more because even when all that pain was overpowering me, I still had a little hope left in me. I felt like I found a fragment of myself again. That somehow I wasnt totally *******. It was absolute contradiction but at that time I existed in between the two polar opposites of myself.

Depression is like being on the edge of a very steep cliff. You're about to fall, constant fear stops you but beneath your feet, you see wonder from beyond. You see possibilities. You see a town from somewhere far where there is so much life. You see a forest from afar and it seems so wonderful you start believing in good things again.I've  come to remind myself that I had a family, I had friends but most importantly, pain is a great wake up call. I thought love is a great unconquerable emotion. I severely underestimated pain and how it can change people. Pain brings wounds that either scar us for life or bring a different perspective. I'd say I've seen the worst possible side of me when I got depressed. It was scary and it makes you hate yourself. You get repelled because it's dark and ugly. But on the flip side, I saw how pain has made me see that after all that, I could make it. In fact, everyone can. I also peered into the mind of depressives and it was extremely helpful since I have good friends who have been cursed with this disease (they were suicidals even). I'd lack the understanding when they shared their experiences to me before but now I was slapped in the face for even considering to call them selfish or cowards. They are not. I feel like I need to tell people this because depression can only be understood when you have been there. People have different ways of handling pain which my mom likes to call 'pain threshold'. Some have it deeper, some can only contain pain in few doses. I wanted to give each and everyone who had ever been depressed a big hug because nothing is worse than losing meaning in life. And my heart goes out to each and everyone of us who caged all that pain and somehow moved forward despite the odds. Quite honestly, I would have preferred being hit by a car and be confined for more than a month than go through all that sadness and meaninglessness where hell is walking right inside you/strong desire to want to give up on life altogether/strong desire to be shaken off by society as an outcast and that won't even matter. You'd literally want to do anything just to take away all that hopelessness and misery. But at the same time you're too tired to do anything. Most terrific **** I have been so far, just ******* terrific.

*I wrote the first part of this entry when I was on the plane going home. Tonight, I finished it with a heavy heart. I am depressed again despite being with people that I love most and engaging in lovely talk with them just a couple of hours ago. My emotions are being strung along by someone other than myself. My distractions are no longer working—I might need new ones.  As I looked back to parts of this entry I realized that this condition gives me brief chances where everything is peaceful. I just hold on and wait for those chances. I've seem to tolerate this better now and my mood swings reveal a general pattern of anxiety first, normalcy then on to depression. Sometimes there are specific times, sometimes it's all random. This has been unnecessarily long but I have only been comforted by two things during my depression: music and writing. Although to be quite honest, writing can also cause me to be more depressed as I have lost my energy and motivation to write even when the other side of my brain cries in frustration because I do love writing so much. Music on the other hand gives me a lot of hope for some reason and a form of escape from all the unwanted thoughts. Some songs do make me more melancholic but my interest in music has changed ever since I started getting depressed.

Stares down the worst nightmare
Frustrates your favorite reality show
Cannot be contained by a wall
Is a blend of church and state
Contains 50 years of Star Trek
Drives on the right side of the road
Rarely says “Hold on, slow down!”
Is no longer gender-specific
Sometimes prays en español
Allows girls to play football
Can be painted, sung or rhymed
Was born in the days of Hamilton
Celebrates the strong and the weak
Exists as a circle inside a triangle
Hears a whisper in the dark
Often survives the winter alone
Recycles its creation with glee
Worships a blue-eyed God or none
Wrestles its problems in private
Respects its gray-haired flag
Avoids front page truth
Imagines a rainbow during a storm
Invites a homeless woman to dinner
Permits free speech as protest
Welcomes immigrants from Syria
May be terminally happy
Calls the zoo a favorite place
Hums the sound of crickets at night
Put the words in Whitman’s mouth

© Lewis Bosworth, 2016

A woman's body spikes and hikes
It glows like sun to a man on heat
the very body that spins and pikes
It bears and nurture a seed's seat

A woman body is tender and meek
It houses the ***** crazed rods
the very body that recycles eggs
It's the mother of the earth odds

A woman body ages rapidly
It's bosoms burst and sag with age
the very body that speak mercilessly*
with milk that flow with abundant sage

A woman body knows the cycles
It rolls every month with pain
the very body that roars in circles
*The up and downs of a woman bargain

night comes with waves of perfume
the trance of flowers is quiet and only
the winds can touch the secret of trees, still
sleeping under the apple trees gives one deeper dreams
when darkness hunts me I remember
your empty hands against the form of light
how you struggle to find the archaic tune
the chronicles of the invisible unfolding
my mind recycles thought from sprout to seed
the vesper bell plunges the crickets,
the roundness of the heart deeper
into the hour of the dark

Here's how I think
that life goes -
the first moment
of conception
is like a cycle
of the four seasons,
spring, summer, autumn, winter,
or like the cycle
of the moon,
or like the cycle
of a wave,
attack, sustain, decay, release,
or like the cycle
of the turning earth
in a day,
so this moment
cycles and recycles
and grows and grows
into an entire life,
and I think
the whole universe
operates this way,
of course
I could be wrong.

people should really stop ridiculing this medium of communication, and abusing it to serve out market square profanities against people while trying to sell kilograms of apples and shrimps... don't people realise this is a resurrection of the wild west? there are no laws here, there are no publicist authorities telling us: profit above niche interests... you really want a world where only something akin to the Da Vinci Code comes to your eyes' mesmerisation unglued from that sloppy version of sleep: in the s.e.m. when given the epileptics' digest by the television producers? this is play-dough! we have the ultimate authority - the software within software... all these software brands are also slaves to the hardware companies... please don't let them undermine the content within the content, because that recycles itself back toward the context within the context: i'm only using a computer, not a ****** kettle to make tea.

the argument bypassed all hierarchies of power,
                and it was done in the realm of the shadow people,
    long was the established
authority of man, in that democratic  babble -
until someone resorted to anarchistic measures
and said: well - allpoetry.com is a ******'s pleasure
garden of Pavlov, wattpad.com doesn't allow
                                                           ­                            ctrl c / p,
                 and elsewhere a truest
democratic expectation was
written out, against all established
lumberjacks of print,
   there, it was written,
lay the gambit - two cruise ships set off:
   become rich or die trying,
or...
               speak the truth against
a billion or two people and die not wanting
         a silver-spoon up your ***...
but i still can't believe that *incubus
released their seminal morning view
album in 2001; ****! i was 15 then,
an album of my youth...
                        such that music ages
like wine... apart from classical / literati
music kindred of Bach -
               the 20th century phenomenon
music as enjoyable as alcohol,
        no stiff-necktie princes readied for
louse agitation sitting in an opera theatre
for too long: grit and grime:
the down-to-earth passe that was actually
an impasse in terms of: can't ignore this
outlet.
             there's freedom where you can
find it,
                  sometimes facebook.com
allowed minor computer coding,
   the stroked-out ambiguity of
the zoological enclosure of <u> ending with </u>
for something being underlined,
but it's still all software, the hierarchical priest
that's a chef, but not the hardware wired
slaughterhouse attendee or the butcher -
i still find it bewildering that journalists
treat the medium that's electronic as a form of
surrealism, unreal, psychiatric worthy investigation...
well: dope,
                     people die from interacting on this
quick-action translated into real life "t.v.",
              journalists are basically writing us off
and whatever the internet provides goes against
their famous revolution of the printing press...
they can't stomach democracy of the internet,
they prefer to peer for the autocracies of
their belittling tabloid conglomerates of a Hussein;
they can't stomach freedom,
they can't stomach free enterprise: with or without
a care to have a family, pay the extortion that children
surmount to...
                         they are like priest, in the grey suited
attire of authority that's beyond
       distinguishable...
                                    opinions spewed like
regurgitated kebabs on an Essex dance floor after too
many shots of warm *****... without even a
chance for a dialectical horizon...
                     little fears, little people.
sure, i can be the village idiot: i did the opposite
of people outside of a eugenic background of
Shakespeare or Beckett households do,
    simply outside keeping the motto, if not
merely the motivation to be blunt flints -
i.e. great-grandfather was a doctor, grandfather was
a doctor, father was a doctor, i am a doctor...
embarrassing, this "noble" form of ******...
                doctors and lawyers are alike...
     if you want to know where the neanderthals are
these days? i'll tell you, there, where i pointed
at with the inbreeding of inter-generational "improvements"
but keeping the family name attired in a certain
profession...
                                    to be honest, for all that blah blah
of Darwinism (never stance it off against theology,
                      any -ism isn't a -logy, the former
attires itself with words but simply dictates images)
               we're less bio-diverse than we think we are,
        i call it the ****** plateau, nirvana unplugged
said it better, but i find the hard case of social mobility
          being immovable in terms of
                         a Francis Shakespeare imitating his
great great great, great great grandfather
                                 or a Michael Faraday
                                 Jr. Jr. Jr. Jr., Jr. Jr.
                           securing a patent on a Dyson light-bulb...
****** happens all the ****** time,
               it's just the socially acceptable ****** that
doesn't require rammstein to write a song
         entitled Viennesse Blood
                                            (6-    -en- -ease:
         6 denoting the Welsh ***** to you and ****** to boot,
                                     and the universal *******)...
                                                      ­ was i shocked when
i heard about this story? i could have been...
                                           but then i've been reading
the mentality of the culprit that's kindred of the Marquis
de Sàde (alternatively Sadé... i.e. eh?)
                       and i figured: have you seen how local
  and uninformed the people surrounding the case are,
                  they would have hardly known that
a plebiscite was taking place...
               two carrots a beetroot and a cabbage broth
in their eyes translated the civilised world's shock...
                  but that's what's shocking about
our modern world: you can truly become a barbarian these
days by treating modern, socially progressive / civilised
          antics or behavioural patterns with an
anti-social tinge of revision: basically stating the truth:
      and truth is the newest form of brutality (oddly enough),
incubated by the phrase: brutal-honesty...
              so evidently that's counter to: civilised-deceit.

Listen to the winter wind
Hear the cold on nature's breath
Get inside before the moon
Or you will surely catch your death

There's nothing for protection
When winter wind comes through
It's nature against your will to live
You'll lose, that much is true

The desert is a harsh place
With heat that matches hell
But the cold you feel in winter
Will do you in, so fast as well

It's a land of extreme harshness
A place where you can surely die
It's a place so full of beauty
It's enough to make you cry

In summer you are melting
In winter frozen hard
You may ask why I stay here
The answer's easy pard'

I live here for adventure
I'm a cowboy through and through
I share my life with Mother Nature
I guess, it's just the thing I do

I'm gonna die here in the desert
But, not because of winter wind
I'll die here for one reason
So I can come back again

The desert, she recycles
Takes what's here back home
I'll die out here in the desert
But, until that time....I'll roam

All representations of life and death cross
To create a duel meaning
Holding the farthest folds of time together
Seam to seam.

A contradiction to being
The reality to burn through my own
My mind welded tight to refuse it.

A hole finds its way to my center
Eat away at me, will you?
My knowing and my conformity.

Take together the farthest folds of my mind
Tie them
Seam to seam.

As life is said to be too short
I cannot speak my complaints
Fore I have only experienced a fragment of 16
Cut from the whole of what I am to be.

The flower in me buds and wilts
Exposing a vibrancy of colours
But one force takes the importance of all.

Light
To signify the moment of opening my eyes
The first birth of my existence.

The fade is subdued until the light reaches its end
The end beyond death
Where the white of the lily glows bright
Because life lives beyond the physical deterioration
Commonly accepted by reason.

To break these boundaries of understanding
I stand with one foot in each ground
The light in my left side
Signifying my birth
Rebirth and rebirth.

The life constantly recycles itself in me
Coming to the surface in a new skin each time
The lily means Easter
A new beginning

Before my first fragment of living
I came to my first renewal of being
Halfway across the world
A resurrection to the arms of who I now call my family.

This sunday of Jesus' Easter
Was taken to the use of my own
This sunday
I took my first breath
As Lily.

The light opened my being to life
A new life
With each came a new contradiction.

The petals that once were lain so gently on my skin
Fell away
Laced together with fine strings of me
My growth, my knowledge, my understanding.

A continuum of time
Slowly taking its destructive path
Finding its way to my center.

The right side of me
Which I have not forgotten since spoken of
So many existences ago
Takes footing in reality.
The happenings of death
Necessary to take its toll before birth
Rebirth and rebirth
Leads the light in me to falter
To take cover amongst the shadows.

But as a renewal of life blooms the bud once wilted
These deaths call strongly to me
The lily of life
Represents equally a devotion to the departed.

Fragments of my being were experienced in deprivation
Losing the light a lily so desperately depends on
Moments taken advantage of
Where the death digs deeper into me
It closes in on my center.

Repeatedly the light recedes far enough
My left side falls weak
I grow in dependence of what little left of me stands tall
My right sides firmly planted in the grounds of death.

Seemingly an end to all I have once known
The lily drops its last petal
I close my eyes.

My center is open
Exposed
And in me
...

A new light is revealed
A new bud is in bloom
A new being of me has been born
Reborn and reborn.

The white light radiates new strength
New knowledge
New understanding.

As I am raised to stand tall
To set my left foot down
To take footing in the light
But I find balance.

I realize that I cannot stand at all
Without the right foot planted firmly in death
In what has led me
To all that I am
And am to be.

My mind expanded beyond any reason once reached
Filled with contradiction
And a new lily's light.

Finally,
I am able to see the farthest folds of my mind
To find them tied tight once again
Seam to seam.

Back row torn, penetrated, yet warm
Butts and lit butts pressed against it.
Circular limbs transport my clients.
Curved triangle, scythe, ends the ride.

Behind a circle sits the controller,
abusing the engine, my heart, me.
Each passenger, client, friend, family,
hurts, helps, hinders, never ending well.

A big metal box recycles me.
My corpse gives birth to another,
so another controller may ride me.
Never ending, since model T, I roll.

Burn me alive,
End it all now,

I’m tired of the world,
I want to crawl back into my shell,

Of ignorance and bliss,
Before feeling overcame everything,
And my mind could manage and stall,

The unending dread,
The unending pain,
That recycles through my body,
And mental membrane,

Temporary relief,
Doesn’t last long,
Seeping into my bones,
Polluting my core,

Essence,
Lack of presence,
Take me away,
Bury me down low,

Erase me from existence,
Free from my soul.

The lore recycles and continues
All things end
And many begin again
This is why tradition fades like sin
And centuries lose themselves within
Moments of unforgivable issues
And we assume ourselves with misuse
And limit ourselves with disbelief
And consume ourselves in fisheye lenses
Like we knew ourselves to be prey to predators
And lure ourselves into traps of pleasure
And confuse ourselves through various measures
We dilute our blood with foreign entries
And we speak til we're blue in face and ******
And rue our own birth and death cuz
We blew ourselves into this mess
We drew ourselves this reckless verse
And ***** ourselves on every turn
But there is a light beyond the stars we think we know
There is a distant life we knew upon infringing our own birth stone
And anguish may be what we think is answers wrapped in shrouded homes
But the truth is that our treasures live beyond time and distance and dismemberment
And though the angel cries that she's asleep, she's too awake to compensate
She's so alive her blood boils thin and she thinks she might die this very day.

Visible to the naked eye
The trim trio in sky, of all
In triangular circle
On endless mission

Imposing Sun,
Impressive Moon,
Well composed Earth,
Fertile nuclear family
  
Round and round on rounds
The duo around the tiara;
The flaming fulcrum,
Feeding heat and light
  
The cute unmanned moon    
The night lamp in the sky
Playing hide and seek
Sheltered by mother earth
  
Earth on its daily rounds
Moon on monthly shuttles
Revolving pair round the Fire
Count their infinite time

Indispensable cycles
Indefatigable circus
Infallible life recycles
Inscrutable obscure force
Who knows?
Only super soul can witness

Disjointed flashbacks
and coincidences
--regurgitating, bubbling up
surfacing--
faint aftertaste
lingering then fading

Episodes disentangle and defy
Chronology
Without cause or consequence

They return to me like
Sand to the ocean
--dispersing and settling
dislodging and rearranging--
Separate scenes of specificity
Activated by change circumstance
Stirring sensations once
Lost to the churning tides of
Time and Space

Engaging emotions once forgotten
Now set free by the
Endless eb and flow,
Dissipating

Memories, thoughts, dreams
Rising up from and
Returning to
The Void

Exchanging

Manifesting haphazardly
Ever-awakening
The tapestry of
Experience unfolds
Threads of Time and Space
Unravel
And as the pattern
Recycles
The forms change
but the substance stays
the same

This day, it was different than all the others,
And today I was lagging slowly at best.
Different than when I had leapt from my mother.
I found myself looking for some place to rest.

Dismayed by my reason for dragging behind.
I questioned my soul for its hidden reason.
Found sheltered behind my own eyes did I find..
Answers as old as the turning of seasons.

A smile to my face from the answer so deep.
The fight I'd not known going on in my soul.
Came calmly the words, "It is time; you must sleep."
And then something strange inside me closed a hole.

You may ask the reason but I do not care.
All that once gripped me in this world is now gone.
All such worthless answers on me do not bear.
All I look forward to is just moving on.

The very gift I could never really see.
HE rewarded to me at the day of birth.
And as I joined others in HIS memory.
I looked for a place to return to the earth.

I pulled back the cover of green in this space.
There I could see the ground teaming with new life.
And as the warm calm spread from my feet to face.
Disappear did all the worries, fears and strife.

The blue of the sky took a hue I'd once known.
Part of a world I'd forgotten existed.
Desires and thoughts that I once called my own.
From this weary body quickly uplifted.

You now pain for what you believe I have lost.
But this state of grace you could not understand.
You suffer to keep what is worthless at cost.
Until the true Master takes you by the hand.

NO! Don't weep for me; you must weep for yourself.
'Cause my empty body is all that remains.
The Master recycles; down to every cell.
These feelings more awesome than I can explain.

One day you will be called to your final rest.
No matter the end, we are all none the worse.
You will understand my words; there is no guess.
For every man, rich or poor, comes the same course.

What matters is kindness to all that you shared.
A heart you uplifted in this earthly realm.
To a broken soul did you ever show care?
The worthless burdens of the world overwhelm.

The closest you can get to HIM is through love.
These words are not mine but the Master's alone.
HE watches us all from HIS place well above.
Helping the lowly though HE sits on a throne.

So while in this plane of existence you hold.
Inculcate the thought I have placed in your mind.
You don't know your call time, whether young or old.
Go forward spread love, for there is no rewind.

Godspeed.

My mother’s addiction is a shapeshifter—
It takes on so many forms it’s rumoured
that nobody knows its true face
It’s a master of disguise
it hides itself behind thin lipped smiles
and tired eyes—
It changes so often it’s hard to tell
if it ever recycles old forms
I frequently ask myself if I would
recognize her if I did not have her eyes
If we didn’t share a body for 7 months
would I know the sound of her heartbeat
even when she’s disguised as a dragon
—sober is the shape she fails to hold the longest
the edges between make believe and reality
blur almost as quickly as they form
It’s easier to be a flame than still water
so she burns down everything in her path

At home we don’t dare say the word addiction
we walk on eggshells like her cover will crumble
at the slightest vibration from the floorboards
—we glide through the hallways like spirits
there’s no need for a haunting here
ghosts already roam in the walls
you hear wailing more often than silence—
I’m beginning to think Halloween is my favourite holiday
because it’s the one day of the year
people can look into this haunted home
and they don’t judge me for what they see
behind closed doors
—I’ve never been one for haunted houses
but maybe it’s because I’ve been living in one
for 22 years without a break
I wish to escape from my own house of horrors
so why would I pay to enter somebody else’s
Instead I put on devil horns
and watch movies where there’s always a final girl
wondering if it would be worth my soul
to make a deal with the devil
so my mom can stop shapeshifting
so my brother can sleep at night
so I can finally breathe, even just for a moment

—my mother’s addiction is a shapeshifter
I hope someday soon I can see what she truly looks like
I have been living with a stranger for so long
I’ve forgotten what it feels like to recognize
the people you love

Visible to the naked eye  
The trim trio in sky, of all  
In triangular circle  
On endless mission  
  
Imposing Sun,  
Impressive Moon,  
Well composed Earth,  
Fertile nuclear family  
  
Round and round on rounds  
The duo around the tiara;  
The flaming fulcrum,  
Feeding heat and light  
  
The cute unmanned moon    
The night lamp in the sky  
Playing hide and seek  
Sheltered by mother earth  
  
Earth on its daily rounds  
Moon on monthly shuttles  
Revolving pair round the Fire  
Count their infinite time  
  
Indispensable cycles  
Indefatigable circus  
Infallible life recycles  
Inscrutable obscure force  
Who knows?  
Only unseen soul can witness

You-the night-the day
she-the day-the night,
or just the fair pulse
somewhere in the air the hollow howl

She feels it in her bones. Yes. She feels
whatever shall be: a blinding ambiguity
The morning recycles dreams.
laundry crushed on the river stones
women are crying and washing
Oh, she wishes to air the night of your body,
to pull you out of your death.

The shadowy flowing of now
pierces her eyelids with your cellophane smile
her cells rustling: you-you-you
even screaming like a yo-yo
to be heard backwards
till the Big Bang

Mashing Up Book Store Titles Again...


The Boys in the real Harry Potter Wand
The Girls Who Made America Hermione
I Wrote This for You and Only You (sure)
Pontius Pilate recycles the end of time

The Last Pope is hiding out on Oak Island
You are my identity group breaking ground
And it’s all the better if you like trains
For you alone are my identity group

Women writers breaking the mold trailblazing
Second feminist wave decolonizing

12 am eastern time,
these sheets of mine have long soaked up your scent
the A/C vent recycles old summer dust
and Nautica Blue
and you.

eddys

sound eddies around my ears
radio sound
pounding hammer sound
the water of two days ago
eddies in ghostly markings left in the sand
energy eddies around me
camellias of all colors and styles eddy through pine trees
their dead blossoms eddy
amidst the detritus of pine needles and dry branches
the talk of friends, their voices full of wonder,
eddies through the tree branches that reach into the blue
flowing in, inundating, eddyfying
creeping into the lowest spaces
crawling over weirs into emotional wells
churning, then eddying
as the ebb begins dragging everything loose with it
everything unnecessary with it
pulling the teeth out of the mouth of God,
to keep,
to treasure
to remember the eddys
each in turn.

c. Roberta Compton Rainwater, 1998-2009/2017


streams

a dry leaf dances in the stream as it eddies around the stones,
crosses the hilltops, careens off of trees immersed in it.
the stream moves fast and cold after the rain.
I hear it all around me,
the prayersong it composes and decomposes,
recycles and rebirths every moment. It delights
in the light, moves the light across lichened stones,
smoothes it through my hair and across my face.
everything moves with this stream;
there is dance, here is dance,
yonder is dance.
dance and song reverberate
in my heart
as I sit on the rocks in the midst of the stream.
it reaches up and over me, whelming some of me,
cleaning most of me.
above the valley, I am cleaned and Loved into Being.

c. Roberta Compton Rainwater, 2004-2009/2017