1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

2
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and
vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of
the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the
earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and
increase, always ***,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of
life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not
my soul.

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.

Welcome is every ***** and attribute of me, and of any man hearty
and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
less familiar than the rest.

I am satisfied - I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the
night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy
tread,
Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels swelling the house with
their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my
eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is
ahead?

4
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and
city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old
and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss
or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news,
the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is *****, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with
linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.

5
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to
you,
And you must not be abased to the other.

Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not
even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over
upon me,
And parted the shirt from my *****-bone, and plunged your tongue
to my bare-stript heart,
And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my
feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass
all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women
my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap’d stones, elder, mullein and
poke-****.

6
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see
and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the
vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the ******* of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out
of their mothers’ laps,
And here you are the mothers’ laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for
nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and
women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken
soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

7
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know
it.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and
am not contain’d between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and
fathomless as myself,
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,
For me those that have been boys and that love women,
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,
For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the
mothers of mothers,
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
For me children and the begetters of children.

Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be
shaken away.

8
The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies
with my hand.

The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,
I peeringly view them from the top.

The suicide sprawls on the ****** floor of the bedroom,
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol
has fallen.

The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of
the promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the
clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,
The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-*****,
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous’d mobs,
The flap of the curtain’d litter, a sick man inside borne to the
hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his
passage to the centre of the crowd,
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
What groans of over-fed or half-starv’d who fall sunstruck or in
fits,
What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and
give birth to babes,
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls
restrain’d by decorum,
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances,
rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the show or resonance of them-I come and I depart.

9
The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready,
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,
The armfuls are pack’d to the sagging mow.

I am there, I help, I came stretch’d atop of the load,
I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other,
I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps.

10
Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-****’d game,
Falling asleep on the gather’d leaves with my dog and gun by my
side.

The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle
and scud,
My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from
the deck.

The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,
I tuck’d my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time;
You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.

I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west,
the bride was a red girl,
Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking,
they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets
hanging from their shoulders,
On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his
luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride
by the hand,
She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight locks
descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach’d to her
feet.

The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and
weak,
And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,
And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d
feet,
And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some
coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting piasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d north,
I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean’d in the corner.

11
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.

Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth
bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their
long hair,
Little streams pass’d all over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the
sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending
arch,
They do not think whom they ***** with spray.

12
The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife
at the stall in the market,
I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down.

Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,
Each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is a great heat in
the fire.

From the cinder-strew’d threshold I follow their movements,
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms,
Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so sure,
They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.

13
The ***** holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block swags
underneath on its tied-over chain,
The ***** that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady and
tall he stands pois’d on one leg on the string-piece,
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over
his hip-band,
His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hat
away from his forehead,
The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of
his polish’d and perfect limbs.

I behold the picturesque giant and love him, and I do not stop
there,
I go with the team also.

In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as
forward sluing,
To niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object missing,
Absorbing all to myself and for this song.

Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what
is that you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and
day-long ramble,
They rise together, they slowly circle around.

I believe in those wing’d purposes,
And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me,
And consider green and violet and the tufted crown i

wants to be my friend, for I am poet-woman nineteen.

she is sweet but sad. super sad.

a good poet who wants to guide me.

but there/theirs is the odor, not faint, of wants wanting,
the pus of corruption behind the curtains,
the Wizard-ess of Oz's
special blackout curtains.

seen how easy, how her illusions,
my medium rare rejections,
morph into her delusions,

and her delusions devolve into
her conspiracy theories.

"SHE will be my mentor, poetess lover, teacher for no charge!"

my parents thinks it's great, she wants (to be) skin in my game.

my parents will find this poem accidentally, exactly,

how I do not want
to be skinned alive.

for I am poet-woman nineteen and still! now, long past
the point of being fooled, the point of no return.

and see no point,
have no intention,
of returning to either valley

no more con the my mind into letting my body
be-fused.^  

that ain't me babe.

maybe all i need to stop this pain is a little motrin.
maybe all i need to stop this bleeding is a band-aid.
maybe all i need to stop this screaming are some ear plugs.
maybe all i need to stop this drowning is a life raft.
maybe all i need to stop this agony is a little numbness.

numbness...


it wears off,  doesn't stop the pain only holds back the flood gates
of sleepless nights and screaming hearts, bloodshot eyes and rejections knife.
just long enough for me to catch a glimmer of hope, a mirage
in the Sahara, so beautiful yet so cruel.  
just as i get close enough to taste
a sweet tomorrow,
the desert sun sets.
and i'm still bleeding,
and you're still
gone.

maybe all i need to stop this searching is a little less hope.

I hateth th' song of th' grass outside;
and t'eir blades t'at swing about my feet
like fire. How unfeeling all of which are-
did t'ey really think I wouldst ever be tantalised
by t'eir sickly magic? Such a gross one-
demanding, rapacious, parasitic!
Even I am fed up with t'eir proposals,
and ideas t'at t'ey fervently throw
in th' hope t'at t'ey canst corrupt my dreams,
my feelings-ah, yes, my sincere feelings,
and secure, t'ough imaginary, dreams.
Oh, and my comfortable desire as well!
My rosy desire-which at times canst tiringly
petrify me-ah, unbelievable, is it not? Th' fact
t'at I am so satiatingly, and daringly, petrified
by my own desire-and reproved by th' one
whom I am astonished at, praise, and admire;
How pitiful I am! How horrific and tragic!
I hath knitted my sorry without caution,
I was too immersed in vivid glances
and disguises and mock admiration.
Perhaps it hath been my mistake!
Eyes t'at blindly saw,
ears t'at wrongly judged!
Lies t'at I forsook,
tensions t'at I undertook!
Oh, how credulous I am-to vice!
Mock me, detest me, strangle me!
Stop my sullen heart from breathing-
as I hath, I hath spurned my darling-
oh, I hath lost my love!
How sorrowful, tearful-and painful!
And how I hath lost my breath; for cannot I stop
my feet from swimming and tapping
in t'is fraudulent air, gothic and transient
With poems t'at no matter how mad,
but nearly as thoughtful and eloquent,
I shalt still remain doleful and sad,
for my love for him is indeedst thorough-
and imminent; No matter how absurd he fancies
I am, and how he looketh at me oftentimes
with twigs of governing dexterity;
but most of all, shame.
I hath no shape now.
I hath lost, and raked away,
my elaborate conscience;
I hath corrupted my conciseness,
I hath wounded my sanguinity,
originality, and thoughts even, of my poetic
soul-of my poetic bluntness and sometimes
rigid, creativity.
I am an utter failure.
I am a mad creature; I am maddened by love,
I am frightened by virtue, I despise and reject
truth. I hath no sibling in t'is world of humanity,
ah-yes, no more sibling, indeedst,
neither any more puzzles of fate
t'at I ought to host, and solve;
I deserve nothing but fading and fading away
and give up my soul, my human soul-
to being a slave to disgrace
and cordial nothingness.
I belongst not, to t'is whole human world;
T'is is not my region, for I canst, here-
smell everything sacrificed for one another
and rings of delightful and blessed laughter
which I loathe, with all th' sonnets and auguries
of my laconic heart. Oh, I am misery!
I am evil, evil misery!
I, myself, equal tragedy; I am a devil,
a feminine and laurel-like devil-
just like how I look,
but tormented I am inside,
as a cursed being by nature and God Almighty
for never I shalt be bound to any love;
and engaged to any hands
in my left years and in th' afterlife outright.
I shalt have never any marriage within me,
any marriage worthy of talks, parties,
neither anything my wan heart desires;
like sweets with no sweetness,
or dances with no music.
No human love should ever
be properly conducted by me,
I am incapable of embodying
a unity, I am destined to be with me.
To be with me only-ah, as sad as it is,
as vague as how it sounds, or it might be.
O, and how I should love, emptiness!
Any loss should thus be romantic to me:
Just how death already is;
my husband is death,
and my chamber is his grave.
I shalt, night and day, sing to th' leaves
on his tomb,
ah-as t'ey are alive to me!
Yes, my darling reader! To me, t'ey are living souls,
t'ey open t'eir mouths and sing to me
Whenever I approach 'em with my red
bucket of flowers; lilies t'ey eat, ah-
how romantic t'ey look, with tongues
slithering joyfully over th' baked loaves I proffer!
T'eir smell of rotting flesh my hug,
meanwhile t'eir deadness my kisses!
T'eir greyness, and paleness-my cherry,
and t'eir red-blood heath my berry!
So glad shalt I becometh, and shimmer shalt my hair-
and be quenched my buoyant hunger-
beneath th' sun, with my hands, t'at hath
been aborted for long, robbed of whose divine functions
Laid in such epic, and abundant rejections
Brought into life again, and its surreal breath
But t'is time realistic, t'ough which happiness
shalt be mortal, as I perfectly, and tidily knoweth
and as I flippeth my head around
And duly openeth my eyes, I shalt again
be sitting in th' same impeccable nowhereness,
nowhere about th' dead lake, with its white-furred
swans, ghost-like at t'is hour of night-
Wherein for th' rest of my years should I dwell,
with no ability and desired tranquility
t'at canst once more guarantee
my security to escape.
T'ere's no door-yes, no door, indeedst,
to flee from th' gruesome trees,
t'eir putrid breath solitary and reeks of tears,
whilst t'eir tangled leaves smell strongly
of vulgarity and hate.
I hate as well-th' foliage amongst 'em,
grotesque and fiendish art whose dreamy visages,
with sticking tails wiping and squeaking
about my eyes, t'ough as I glance through
thy heavens, Lord, gleam like watery roses
before t'eir petals swell, fall, and die.
Oh-so creepy and melancholy t'ese feelings are,
but granted to me I knoweth not how,
as to why allowed not I am,
to becomest a more agreeable mistress
to a human-a human t'at even in solitude
breathes th' same air, and feels all th' same
indolent as me, by th' tedious,
ye' cathartic, morn.
Ah, and shalt I miss my lover once more
And t'is time even more persistently t'an before,
For every single of his breath is my sonnet,
and every word he utters my play.
He is th' salvation, and mere justification
I should not for ever forget,
just like how I should cherish
every sound second; every brand-new day.
My heart is deeply rooted in him;
no matter how defunct-
and defected it may seem,
as well as how futile, as t'is selfish world
hath-with anger and jealousy, deemed.
How I feel envy towards t'ose lucky ones,
with lovers and ringlets about t'eir palms,
so jealous t'at I cringe towards my own fate,
and my inability to escape which.
How unfair t'is world is sometimes-to me!
Ah, but I shalt argue further not;
I shalt make t'is exhaustive story short-
I am like a nasty kid trapped in th' dark,
without knowing in which way I should linger,
'fore making my way out and surpass her.
She is a curse-indeedst, a curse to me,
t'ough at th' moment she is a cure-but to him,
but she is all to forever remain a bad dream,
which he should but better quit,
she shalt subdue my light,
and so cheat him out of his wit.
She is an angel to him at night,
but at noon he sees her not,
she is an elegant, but mischievous auroch
with ineffectual, ye' doll-like and plastic auras
She is deceit, she is litter, she is mockery;
She hath all but an indignant, ****** beauty
She does not even hath a life, nor
a journey of destiny
She hath not any trace of warmth, or grace,
and most of th' time, at night
It is her agelessness t'at plays,
she ages but she falsely tricks him-my love,
into her lusted, exasperating eagerness;
t'ough colourless is her soul, now,
from committing too much of yon sin
She still knoweth not of her unkindness,
and thinks t'at everything canst be bought
by beauty, and t'at neither love nor passion
canst afford her any real happiness.

Ah, my love, I am hung about
by t'is prolific suspense;
My heart feels repugnant in its wait;
uncertain about everything thou hath said
As thou wert gentle but mean to me;
despite my kindness, ye' mistaken shortcomings
as I stood by th' railings th' other day, next to thee.
Ah, thee, please hear my apologies!
Oh, thee, my life and my midday sun,
a song t'at I sing-in my bed and on my pillow,
last week, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
I am, however, to him forever a childlike prodigy-
shalt never he believeth in my tales,
ah, his faith is not in me,
but I in him.
How despicable!
But foolishly I still love him,
even over t'is overly weighing injustice
on my heart-
ah, still I love him, I love him!
I love him too badly and madly,
I love him too keenly, but wholly passionately.
I love him with all my heart and body!
Oh, Kozarev, I love thee!
I love thee only!
For love hath no more weight, neither justice
within it, if it is given not by thee;
I was born and raised to be thine,
as how thou wert created
and painted and crafted-by God Almighty,
to be mine. As I sit here I canst savagely feel, oh,
how painfully I feel-yon emptiness,
t'is insoluble, inseparable solitude
filled not with thy air, glancing at
th' deafening thunder, rusty rainbows
With thee not by my side.
I fallest asleep, as dusk preaches
and announces its arrival,
But asleep into a burdened nightmare,
too many fears and screams heightened in it,
ah, I am about to fallest from smart rocks
into th' boiling tides of fire beneath my feet.
I wake into th' imprudent smile of th' moon,
and her coquettish hands and feet
t'at conquer th' night so cold.
She is about to scold me away again,
'fore I slap her cheeks and send her back
to sleep, weeping.
I return to my wooden bench, and weep
all over again, as without thee still I am,
barefooted and thinly clothed amongst
th' dull stars at a killing cold night.
Th' rainbow is still th' rainbow,
but it is now filled with horror,
for I am not with thee, Kozarev!
Oh, Kozarev, th' darling of my heart,
th' mere, mere darling of my silent heart,
even th' heavens art still less handsome
t'an thy images-growing and fading
and growing and fading about me
Like a defiant chain, thou art my naughty prince,
but th' most decorous one, indeed;
thou art th' gift t'at I'th so heartily prayed for
and supplicated for-over what I should regard
as th' longest months of my life.
O, Kozarev, thou art my boy,
and which boy in th' world
who does not want to
play hide-and-seek in th' garden-
like we didst, last Monday?
Thou art my poem,
and thus worth all th' stories
within which. Thou art genial,
cautious, and beneficent. Thou art
vital-o, vital to me, my love!
I still blush with madness at th' remembrance
of thy voice, and giggle with joy and tears
over yon picture of thee; I canst ever forget thee
not, and sure as I am, t'at never in my life
I shalt be able to love, nor care for another;
thou art mine, Kozarev, thou art mine!
Thou art mine only, my sweet!
And ah, Kozarev, thou knoweth, my darling,
t'at the rainbow is longer beautiful
tonight; and as haughtiness surfaces again
from th' cynical undergrowth beneath,
I am afraid t'at t'eir fairness and brightness
shalt fade-just like thy love, which was back then
so glad and tender, but gets warmer not;
as we greet every inevitable day
and tend to t'eir needs,
like those obedient clouds
to th' appalling rain, in th' sky.

Ah, but nowest look-look at thee! Thy innocence,
t'at was but so delicate and sweet-
like t'ose bare, ye' green-clustered bushes yonder,
is now in exile, yes, deep exile, my love!
I congratulate thee on which, yes, I do!
I honestly do! For thy joy and gladness
doth mean everything to me,
'ven t'ough it means th' rudest,
th' eeriest of life; t'at I shalt'th ever seen!
But should I do so? T'at is a question
I canst stop questioning myself not.
Should I? Should I let thee go
and t'us myself suffer here
from th' absence
of my own true love-
and any ot'er future miracles
in my life?
I think not!
Ah, and not t'at there'd be
any ot'er mirages in my love,
for all hath been, and shalt always be-
united in thee! O, in thee, only, Kozarev!
For I am certain I love thee,
and so hysterically love thee only,
even amongst th' floods-ah, yes,
t'ese ambiguous piles of flooding pains,
disgusting as blood, but demure,
and clear as my own heartbeat;
I love and want thee only,
as how I dreameth of,
and careth for thee every night,
t'ough just in my dream,
and in life yet not!
Ah, Kozarev, I am thy star,
just like thou art mine-already,
I am fated and bound to thee,
and thou to me.
Thou art not an illusion,
neither a picture of my imagination.
Thou art real, Kozarev,
thou art real-and forever
shalt be real to me;
thou art th' blood,
t'at floweth through my veins,
thou art th' man,
t'at conquereth my heart-and hands,
thou art everything,
thou art more t'an my poem
and my delicate sonnet,
thou art more t'an my life
or my ever dearest friend.

Probably 'tis all neither a poem,
nor a matter of daydreams;
perhaps still I needst to find him,
t'ough it may bringst me anot'er curse,
and throwest me away
and into anot'er gloom.
Ah, Kozarev, thou-who shalt never
be reading t'is poem, much less write one
Unlike thou wert to me back t'en;
Thou art still as comely as th' sun;
Thou art still th' man t'at I want.
Even whenst all my age is done;
and my future days shalt be gone.

Floating above the rifts of apperception I glaze over the gaudy faucets of imagined vector thrusts in hibernation by the lucubration of space-time materialized crystal in the somber beats of fetched farrago of choice slices in delicate hums of hemmed balance rantipole only in ethereal importance but otherwise supersolid above the sprauncy vagrancy of dilettantism. We shout a clarion virtuosity so that the conclamation of neovitalism conjures upon a spell of lapse and regress a motive for further crystallization of epidemiology into harmony with syndicated admonition sleek in design and parceled into renown by feats of completion rather than slugabed gregarious fountains of wasted ingenuity bleeding from the vacuum of an empty hearth in a hospitable dwelling otherwise cleared of imperfection. Right now, I levitate with transcendence with an approximated eidetic memory that is the surgical vibrancy of renewal rather than the chameleons of hidden talents buried by the walls of Jericho sounding tocsins of alarm that the anointed favor of choice destruction is only an encircled rapture of rhapsodies of confluence found in axiomatic truths ribbed with the futtocks of seaworthy but cauponate recidivism into the donnybrooks of apocryphal revelation preceding the whimsical fall of cascading permanence just as gravity so ordained it. We breathe the life of the ethereal numinous spirit of isangelous repute because we navigate the exquisite cobweb of reconciliation to surpass all understanding in peace what would be a miscegenated carcass of war otherwise apart from the incidental apartheid of the drones of causality ignoring the antecedent reality too much to register fathomed streaks of preventive endeavor because of the scars of a scrappy schlep of the rampicks of ecbolic servitude to moth-eaten star-crossed lovers of the mean menagerie of gutless succor renowned only in tepid rejections of harbingers bequeathed in succession but ignored because of the procession of “Billie Jean” politics.

   The citadel aflame with controversy buttresses carnality by witless contaminants of hidebound scaldabancos of ineffable destitution so craven in eisoptrophobia for their hypostasized indolent fatuousness of capitulation that they are but a minor punctuation in the largesse of centuries to favor audacity in candor over the prevarications of catastrophe to dented human pride against humane dictates of theodicy in fatalism that predestination experimented with its own vaulted verve to find permanent solutions engraved in the agrapha of time to solidify the redintegrated truth of God’s divine stewardship above the quisquilous deism of former regnant centuries of blench and blandishment. We revolt at the specter of rot only when the effluvia of disgust elevates the visceral reality above the utilitarianism of recycled prim nuisances of noisome lineage that yet balk because they are bereft of attention but not a vacant talent and therefore should the subsidies of man surpass the ignorance of appearances he will shrug of the demur of the scrimshank and sharpen his scrivello in the service of redemption found through cultivated prowess of gardens beneath where rivers flow above a cubic centurion of embattled visages of the heavens becoming the rampart for the vestigial clarity of Secret Masters to foresee the bypass that heals decadence and rebukes the formalism of puritan endeavor to sweat with exhaustive patience over the gossamer intertesselations of a ripe reality rather than a groveled fragmentary world shattered too much by exigent metanoia to mount the crenellated catchpole of vigilant enmity towards the stew of listlessness found in epigone and farce more than in organic fortunes. We flip the upheaval of society to squander our proportionate degrees of wealth on the necessity created by dire quandary which enamors by interrogations of pulchritude the verisimilitude of participle ivory dalliance of etched canvasses of simultagnosia for the librations of the liberated rings of betrothed liberation despite profound lurches of the mistetches of ignorance presiding dismally over the hulked disdain of glamborge rather than resselenque.

     The winter is a poor porcine glut of ciconine swelters because the prickly obtuse recoil of the delopes of caution find their permeable balance with a sort of photographic photosynthesis that braves the dearth of reprieve for the reprisal of nostalgic deeds found in the docimasy of riveted reflections because the preordination of God is the superlative champion of the witeless grandeval protectorate of infinite concepts guarded from the parvanimity even of the most strident minds squabbling over the braseros and battues of history as though those funereal stains of lachrymose regret outweigh the traditions of vaunted human progress because they are finicky about importunate pleas of subsidiary injustice rather than fulminations of the modern rebuttal to the disclaimers of an uneven history that shepherds the doubts of nihilism into ripe fruition at the expense of very expensive moral rot for the codlings of urbacity and mendaciloquence used to foment that tribalism of totemic justice. We see in Penuel the wrestling match of specters and heroic giants documented on the ageless pages and we notice the ironic twinges of struggle that kneaded the propriety of gentilian privilege that ultimately fostered an insurrection against chosen bravado among those that sear with zeal beyond the yordim afflictions of yobbery because the Jewish heart is stronger than any calamity even if it departs from the reverence of the colporteurs of the integrated syncretism of the attempted monolith that beseeches polyphiloprogenitive growth in mindset rather than in testy abeyance of forbearance because of known scrutinies into the tropology of wilted facts remanded by curious historicity that crumples without disdain when we memorialize the erasure of scepsis by modern standards of thaumaturgy.

    The minauderies of growth are a repositioned tacit allegiance to the untold fanfare and hearsay immunized against the broach of facetious levity to buoy discordant hearts above fumatoriums of relentless ignorance because coherent masterwork can be cobbled without such lapidary toil and toll on sincere affectations of wizened brevity. The seismic precautions for the forefathers of incidental convergences between expectancy and crystallized history are an ironic intortion of priorities because the heralds and tribunes matched the peerless foresight with the gerrymandered figments of apartheid between the imaginary and the real so that the delicate synchrony of events could unfurl a riveting carapace from the shells of protection even in amiable squalor for its impenitent attrition on the volleys of sensible rumor becoming fashioned in covert bedazzled errors in judgment leading to the triumph of the eventual civilization over the futtocks of the burial of the former trekleador of zenkidu belonging to provincial cadasters found so tucked in the hedges that discernment of frikmag would be an indelible scourge on the biognosy of the diagnosed endeavors that elapsed into remediated circumstances that brave the depths of deontological violation for the breadth of apportioned loaves and two swanky fish earning a place among the miracles of transcendent liberation from articles of decree imperious by sardonic disdain becoming nullified by the histrionics of a delicately staged orchestra that cements human achievement.

       We relish the frescades of a ruffled autumnal reminder of flourish above pothers of the screed of admonition swamped by nostalgic backtracks in the séance with ultimatum of design and the impregnated and carnal lusts of a world pitched in darkness with guarded lambent lights fomenting a perjury against tact for the deliverance of freedom in tacit agreement with owleries that every bonanza be tithed in their favor regardless of hibernation of spoilsports or their subsidiary remarks on indelible quills of invented manufactured realities we crave with desperation rather than cower from in requited nescience urging us to depart from affairs and stagnate the loyalty of fealty above the limber of utility mobilized above levities for solemn remarks and rejoinders. Promulgated above the robotic rubble of staffage haywire in wiredrawn contemplative resonance of tremulous subterfuge vestigial but immediate to the yardsticks of reprehensible malarkey, is the barnstorm for erratic dimples sauntered by the saunas of shelter above the chaos of ruined ginnels for the gimcracks of auxiliary duty to service, is the glorification of the sultry intimations of legions of remonstrance in guarded decorum about sunken atrocities lapsed in memorial to the incumbent brunt of sockdolagers of justice returning revenants from the bridewell of historical internment. The symphily of orchestras to cineaste symposiasts of surquedry in impudence beyond the brays of betrayal is the aborning mythos of regimented perceptions of a world that when magnified by minutiae appears starkly contrast to the gapped gubbertushed reality of the average patron of the arts to such an extreme gulf of receptive understanding that the qualia are dovetailed only in the swink of careful kisswonks to certify certitude itself when all the fragments coalesce into subjoined harmony to the substructures of inherent conscientiousness. The miracles at work that are vesicles and vessels for the swage of imprint above the loyalty of the imprinted tribunes of the fluminous is how hidden protrusions can emerge so victorious over popularized glazes on the pastures of a farmed culture itching for timmynoggies of innovation but only finding the etched remarks of pristine imagos of heroism dwindling in motivation to surpass the imaginative leaps accustomed to a newfangled laziness that bedazzles the guzzle of crowds but not the discrimination of the crowded morass of incompletion found in mosaics missing enigmatic philters of intoxicated love for the profound. So to be intermediary as a custodian for artistry we must cozen the wheedled imaginations not of the relic but the archaeologist that discovered the embedded prisms of attentive scrutiny for glinting sunshine inherent in troves of surpassed excellence beyond parochial sympatric blandishment of donnism rather than a resselenque that floats above demeanor to usher the cosseted age of treasure above the glib brocards and florews of past success.

      Immanent to the provisions of God as decreed from a syncretic reconnaissance of the pitiable gulfs that separate boundless divine love from the clavigerous potential for scrappy sympatric affiliation to **** through the barnstorms of internal comestions of conflated priorities we are ourselves prismatic in the indulgence of a tasty life sprinkled with zest rather than tempered with the vengeance of retorted animosity that we knead the pottery of ironclad resistance to a metallic conduit of pruned fulminations of unguided intuition so that the natural accord supersedes the goad of materialism for the sustenance of antiquity beyond its heyday for vital gains against the tauricide of panic and frenzy. The linchpin of all realistic attempts at the sympatric symphily of civilization is a guided remorse through the torment of affliction that sizzles without anteric barbs as it measures through engrenage how to pilot the vehicles of prosperity through the minefields of contingency that invisibly bequeath new hurdles and inestimable obstacles that collude surreptitiously to fulminate measured controversy against the backbites of restrained equipoise created by polities of the macadamized fabric of a welded smithy of a universe that with ubiquity proclaims above the senseless the harvest of conjugal repartee in sensible pride against militant bastions of incidental prejudice for a careen against the flyndresques of danger and the flyndrigs of glaikery alike for a humane spurt of enlightenment to tower peerlessly in supervision of entelechy created by esemplastic unity in apolaustic purpose. We cannot be puritans engaged in a pilgrimage to a palimpsest of priggishness because the daring elements of adventurism are necessary ingredients to catalyze the supply-chain of the innate gluttony of ego-seeking endless balance with a natural sustained biognosy that prizes biocentric harmony above bibliognost scepsis so that the enthused can flock with liberty divorced from libertinism. The ultimatum is a war between hedonism wed with donnism against eumoirety and self-restraint and this battle will be waged on the indolence of a future of cordslave tethers to interrogation of privy conceptualism hamshackled by the gradgrinds into the neat nexility of precise conformity that blacklists the samizdat because the genizah profoundly twists the already jumbled jengadangle and provides a junediggle of procession and ceremony rather than pomp without substantial grit embedded in the showmanship of a reality in need of a fourth-wall.

        It is ironic how we bewrayed our stewardship of the planet as a plenipotentiary sentience waged against the vesicles of instinct but more fundamental to this tattered but pregnant psalm is that the stronghold of our future is the tenacity of filial duty to enthrone the household with husbandry and restraint as an emolument to divine justice that sparkles opalescent in its own redacted notions of gravity imperfect in the taradiddles of science but refined by the eclat of the combustible syncopation of a reiterative trope of realism combined with surrealist caprice to henpeck affectionate violation above inviolable screeds of blood sport rather than conjugal affections afforded to the brood and the feast of the flocks that rein supreme over all things but exert inclement justice over the cattle and chattel of civilization itself. The minkumpf against the sacrilege of a prioritized kosher is to abhor the suffering rather than embrace the penitence of perceived but specious sacrifice which is an ornery thorn on the stained conscience of the yobbery of both the apikoros and the obedient because to attenuate all suffering even of instinctual beings we anneal our hearts to a glorified compassion that supersedes the relegated relics of pushful genuflection by succedaneum of sacrifice waged against the docile whangams of otiose theodicy. The filibusters against the regnant complexity of regalia that is a sprauncy poivrade with terpsichorean flairs to transmute the intimations of hibernated perfidy into finicky transmissions for the riometers that accord orbific merit in a lackluster time enchant the rollicking audience of this auditorium of the prevenance of the conquered universe bracing for the camorra of the insipid entreaty of defalcated casuistry—the prominent exchequer in hoodwinked political agitprop that forges ironclad allegiances to flimsy facades of the verisimilitude of dignity with recalcitrant but incondite bruits of venom militant against secular apostasy—that the fitful arrivistes that swim in dire dearth will be welcomed into the reconciliation of all time with a tempered lurid glint of revelation bounded by sunken albatross of hype unbounded with a peace insurmountable in prestige rewarded only with the highest reservations.


    On 3-1-2020 when I penned my philosophy—even at a slowpoke margin of crafty precision above rapid empirical faucets of folly—I was entirely selfsame with the autotelic engravings of the smoldering aboriginal talents within that many can swing through by tenacity for enormous plaudit but a flagrant majority will apprehend with flippant scollardical tenets of rebuke and remain honest in their appraisal only in meek resignation of parvanimity.
Consider the postulates of rarefaction whittled into a vehement zeal against the prostitution of our species to the anteric cycles of residual molds of dingy spectacle mired by the tyrannical towers of supercilious squirms of revamped novelty rather than enhanced by the freebooters of dirigisme that borrow from time the behest of philandered flairs divorced from the cadges of secular instinct and enthroned by the qualms of engineered virtuosity that is stark, barren but peerless in its outstretched clamor for luxuriant sprees against the silentium of grandeval asylum incurred by the flippant filigrees of recalcitrant modernism endangered by the irredentism of the future upon the whimsy of the present-minded momentary glare of rapture.  This impending architecture of nimble but subservient endeavor is a pinprick rejoinder against the wernaggles of prepossessed fountains of configured animosity against the stapled heed of a modality of trayned invictive invectives against the plodding course of fustilugianation that swerves in apathy of autopilot junediggle to emanate the surrender of epigone to the raktendure of the synaesthesis of the attuned perception of all superimposed minutiae delegated by calculated design into a synclastic focus on veiled caprice that is vaulted above the choppy and sketchy verdure of remiss perception to stellar continuities rather than mundane knickpoints of stodged blurs that magnify syncretic qualia into baseline congruity rather than staid torpefied resignation of the visage of thunder without the pangs of the widely vituperated lightning that bequeaths all certain notions but flouts the tortious saboteurs of the prim trucage of brittle fundamentalism.

     As the flawed paragon of a picaresque youth punctuated by vibrant plumage of self-wrought tropophilous usucaption of remote groomed frontiers of desolate luxury but buoyant morale into the ballasts of a nimble usufruct that hikkles yet still against still-framed thilloire--fatuous in endearment only to the polity of the waterdrip of craven but gravid disingenuous flickers of lambent cloaks of perfidy—that earned its birthright by meditative fruition rather than prodigal tallespin of indolent frapplanks of a vicarious personage rather than an autotelic haecceity showcases the folly of heterodyne inclinations meeting an impasse of accidental dislodgement. The interregnum between the spurts and sprees of luxuriance is a staid pause between continuities of afforded parlance becoming stapled demographic solidarity affixed to a strident gallop of effortful pushes against the tenacity of the slumberous wicked hibernation of vetust magpiety without hieratical internment because youthful industry beats hackneyed bludgeons of wiseacres of a stilted manufacture of steamy nostalgia for lickerish moments that dignify but undermine moral virtues but splash anointed and sometimes disjointed favor upon the congeners to a rabid escapade of a heedless love frowning on the girdles of the prim balderdash of heralded jolts dim on levity and puffed with elusive contextualized control of libidinous serrated defilement because the crotaline **** outmantles the sweedled limber of exploitable folly. The cosseted reality of wheedled gourmands of continuous perception rather than the Gaussian blur of the protean invention of stitches in time that obscure rather than magnify the supernal levity inherent to most artistry is a linchpin of lenient gravitas that levies the lavaderos of ripe perception into annealment.
Excuse the bravado of the gait of winnowed forks in a bronteum for heralds of megaloscopy fastened to the macroscian reality of indelible filigrees of countermanded controversy becoming its best behest in the sempiternal flowering of burgeoned demonstration rather than illustrious overhang of drab slabs of manufacture rather than organism that should be interposed between the constellated concepts of both apperception and the aggrieved counselors to obtuse obsessions that are an improper tutelary for a designated reprisal of the once profane now immediately gratified by ramshackle tenets of a guarded sublimation of the tenets of post-modernism into a sustained force of the internalized tabernacle of haecceity shepherded into exuberance by the manumission of spirit from the ******* of purblind scalds of defamation that incurs the penalty of flippant privation. The refuge the Lord provides is not contingent upon the vagaries of deliberation nor the calculus of oversight but the remontant amaranthine glower of a listed deed becoming an eternal reminder that a dismantled and disjointed world fathoming only remorse rather than the trudge of gentility against the headwinds of brunt asperity will always flout the successor rather than atone for the failure of the imponent condition that constellates around rudimentary drivel grubbing the momentary out of avarice for allotted merchandise rather than glommed magnets to amoeba sentiments for the kisswonk of ulterior motive beyond dungeons of desperation that lurk ghoulishly with spectral frights at the disfigurement of morale created by errors askew rather than a contagion of righteous valor.

   Ask the heedful servant if the captaincy of reneged commitment owes homage to dutiful instruction or whether it is a balking corpse of necrosis accorded to the omphalism of brutish carnal repose in times of sedentary silt siphoned in spelunked rijuice for preordination is a predominant specter for a world scared scurrilous and skittish in a diatribe against the very notion of tribal screeds embedded in the sedimentary heft of traditionalism above the pother of vacillation commended to the apikoros but counterfeit fiat system of a ruddy governance without a supreme magistrate. Now lets venture into the territory of visagists as we envision the swanky subversion of impoverished and nebbich visions of oligochrome that fixates on belabored but dead notions of rigid propriety and levitate above those concerns with a querulous transcendence that never wernaggles about the profaned irrelevance of burlesque tropes of sidereal friction but instead memorializes the thermolysis of permeable endeavor above staid countenances of imposture that lurk in the shadowy penumbra of the connivance of persona above the archetype of the tutelary guardian spirit that through windlass and sometimes deliberation affixes nobility to even the pedestrian in order to assize its proper proportions to granular ironies expounded into megalography transformative by the very rivets of its supersensible existence and cohabitation with histrinkage among human taboos.

   The handiwork of a permeable race prone to exacerbated proclamations of prerogatives bulldozed by the rapid percolation of insoluble quandaries to the gripes of the feast of foofaraw sometimes shelters our otherwise regnant concern about the plenipotentiary God that observes all latent affairs without the paramours that conflate vivid carnality with appeased luxury and superimposes a crafty system of seismic shifts in rantipole dances with numinous flux rather than dissipated militant suppression of the fracklings of dissolute pollution which swirk in their dastardly desperado endeavors to corral the entire monoliths that guard each province into a winnowed rumble of rubble by tarnish of Tyre rather than by the upstart rejoinders of Canaan. Every creature which has the capacity to perceive language is afforded benedictions by the overhailing force of the hypaethral heights of superlative ingenuity founded in the bolted speculation of the endearment of all to tropological seesaws embattled against the hearsay of nyejays that contaminates the telmatology of the ecosystem of revivalism rather than buries the leaden debts of the disjointed revenants of past prominence into recycled irrelevance for posterity rather than for anything but a machination of a clockwork apple rigged for a rotten worm to swindle the sweet delicate tempests of unforeseen disaster to perjuries against financial solidarity.

The spinsters of sardonic drollery underscore the imminence of an incondite cutthroat collapse blackguarded by the hucksters of incontinence grubbing every fetched noisome notion and congealing a bonnyclabber of desiccated mildew that proves vestigial when the victors of time earn their joyous serenade to the pinnacle of the totem of jaundice slits in wavy endeavors for the participles of sejungible syntax of the ephorized furor to outlast the draksteng of droned dereliction manned by half-baked spies of ulterior recitals for imprinted vicissitude in supremacy in synquest for frizzlounges rather than the pedestrian circulatory system of careworn polity. We vaporize the petty hatred of sympatric regelation that neuters the virulence of motivated impediments to the draconian surge of asperity that sinks temporal haplessness as a regaled blasphemy that crowns only the ringed betrothal to spumid serrated halts in slick superstition that is a buggery to the idea of insectivores devouring the erratic chantage of germane germs that pauperize rather than even blind the deafened to be a crutch to vehicular homicide. Melismatic sennet is a dirigible of immense herculean sinew without the traces of vestibulary retches of kisswonked grisly tepid intimidations of eccedentesiasts by the radioglare of wizened corrugations in thanatism that exhort the avatars of narquiddity over the natural departure of revenant souls back to their temporary hostility to crass lifeless decarnate immediacy that slinks with foibles magnified by vertiginous heights of scollardical reputes rigged by the rijuice of the plackiques of meaningless spoils for swashbuckler bonanza borrowed from serrated vengeance exacted in prominence to provide false avenues of extenuation to malefaction that is confidant to the panopticon of exemplary dimples meager in the largesse of the composite realism of a sizable imprint on megalography that outlasts impertinent excuses for dangerous trout swimming against the mobilized selachostomous frizz of sharks gathering to avenge disclosure with insolence and gravid atrocity of incisive surgical evisceration of attempted depositions that falter by innumerable facets of countenance that belie ultimate realism and the perdurable construction of a sturdy hive of bibliognost revelry.

     Even with the blaring sennet of majesty inundating my piecemeal perception with the marstions of flarium that is an efficacy in a flaccid world of otiose pretenses limpid only in folly but contraplex in ironic skewbald skerries of grubbed destination that is the terminus of karezza despite the maledictions of vehement guarded betrayals that conjure up lurid noisome virility against the gamines and gallywows that populate interstellar fictions of virtu rather than mundane pragmatica that astound with the resselenque of contaminated skeumorphs of latent fracture belonging to a skeletonized ossified reification of farce above historicity in seemly seamless countenance with overwrought princely stature deserving integrity to ripples through sparkling opalescence. The vapid insularity of the self-contained mythos of appeased groundlings is based on the rhizic and rhizogenic fracklings destitute in predicative flares to swelter above stratospheres of the illimitable into the dwelling of the highest serenity inherent to the pacification of truth to neglect its egregious errors of mistetches of a ripened pachyderm of bravery in times of austerity and now a reclaimed notion of sempiternal charades swimming above the punitive draksteng of dranger that is enlarged by acclimated attempts at foiled raltention hikkling against its own superior forces of galvanized preterition to elide over screwball insanity of derangement in this virtual paradise of inhabited souls belonging to former times congregating on the pasture of the evanescence of now for all eternity having the optative condition of incarnation above the ferules of the stagnant brevity of oversight in heavenly realms by postulate but not confirmed by regal logic.

     The troponder of the flickered lambent niceties of polity is a countenance that piggybacks on simpered jostles of negligent engrenage to appease sworn enmities among beatific havens for certitude swarmed by the fisticuffs of darbied bridewells of desiccated drainage traversing the distant disdain for the gravel of cemented slits of stilted pragmatica that is a gavel of atrocious estoppel mediated by heroic heresiarchs against pitiable betrayal for forceful remedies in acclimated servitude to the groans and groaks of a life of remorse and dearth rather than the glut of luxuriance in forbearance to its own intorted mirrored ironies that etch infinity with every scrawled rejoinder to austere ploys of checkered rumbles of threat and exigency posed by the clairvoyant hypocrites who benefit greatly by the design of the omphalism above the frays and brays of corporate dogmatism slowly outmoded by vibrant plumages of heteronormative originality beyond petty chantage. A hesitation overcomes the bluster of bravado as the restive earnest concerns of tribulation beset the minauderies of divine affection to reaffirm the teachings of the Gospel so that future generations genuflect beneath the altar of the ultimate stroke of sociogenesis and the blood ransom of suffering that promoted the human latitude and liberty against incarcerated throngs of virtue over caesaraproprism accorded to genuflection beneath denarii rather than absolution by tether to the eternal vine of sensation of the supersensible entelechy of all valiant insurrections against defective polities and renewed policies.

     We thus seek a transdimensional bridge between the morphean virtu of rudimentary alchemy of propitiation divulged by leverage and the teeming rambunctiousness of fiduciary tribes to the ultimate duty of man to consummate the future of eternity even in slowpoke mannerisms that sidle through rigors of entelechy and assize the masterwork of tutelage above the circumforaneous entrenchment of glut above the mastery of the subtle subaudition that beleaguers an adept conflagration of harnessed human ignorance staid in the incarceration of exotic virtues of freewheeling sapience never vulnerary to hospitable concerns that entrenches the verisimilitude of a refracted justice to reign over the stultification of a primitivism inherent to man and not man alone.

If you look at me again
I’m gonna’ have to ask you why
There’s a distance in your gaze
Like the fading mist of the morning sky

If you stay quiet like you do
I’m gonna’ have to ask you why
There’s a silence in your life
Like the end of a sad goodbye

“I love you more than you love me”
Yeah, there’s the answer to my questions
“I love you more than you love me”
Yeah, there’s the hint behind the rejections

It’s not true baby
It’s not true
You know I love you
I swear I do
But I can’t love someone like you do

If you believe what you just said
I’m gonna’ have to ask you why
There’s a fear in your voice
Like someone confronting a lie

If you leave me without a reason
I’m gonna’ have to ask you why
There’s a feeling in your words
Like the weariness of an unhappy sigh

“I love you more than you love me”
Yeah, there’s the answer to my questions
“I love you more than you love me”
Yeah, there’s the hint behind the rejections

It’s not true baby
It’s not true
You know I love you
I swear I do
But I can’t love someone like you do

If I give you more
Then I won’t be the man you love
If I give you more
Then I will lose what I’m made of
You don’t love me more than I love you
It’s just that I can’t love the way you do

“I love you more than you love me”
Yeah, there’s the answer to my questions
“I love you more than you love me”
Yeah, there’s the hint behind the rejections

It’s not true baby
It’s not true
You know I love you
I swear I do
But I can’t love someone like you do

I am trying to let things off my chest
It's about time i realize
not all of us are mean't for true love and all that.
I read somewhere "
we define love
by what we experience."

It's safe to say,
What has been so clear so far
is that passionate love
That i used to dream off
Doesn't apply to me.

Nor the kind of soft love
that can exist between two people
who want to share their lives.
I don't have that either

What i do have
Is a list of rejections.
All this time ,I've been blaming myself
Thinking I am the problem
But not anymore
I am a totally awesome person.

I just wasn't meant to share that
Romantic passion with anyone.
I am making peace with that.
I really am.

I'll divert all that energy
That was seeking and looking around
for "Real Love",
To things that will build me up
or help me achieve my dreams
Be a blessing to other people.

Not all of us
Are destined for romance
Not all of us have that One person
We are waiting to find.

I just wanna live my life happy
Doing all the things that are necessary
Having an impact with the world.
I'll share that passion.
That,I know I can do.

It's not about the ghosts or the demons
The heartbreaks and rejections
It's about the happiness and contentment
Not minding what you've imperfected
What you're scared of doesn't matter
As long as you know that you'll be better
Head up, stay strong
and never give it up all

A question remains
unanswered;
whereas
An answer is being
questioned too !
A mind remains
unaccepted;
whereas
A body makes another
rejection too !
*
By
Williamsji Maveli

Email:
williamsji@yahoo.com
Thursday, 31.01.13 @2217 hours

It never ends, fragments of visions collapsing upon themselves painfully. Her swollen eyes opening, and bursting with orange fire. Then closing just as fast. In between those agonizing seconds she sees everything. Thousands of years cycling over and over. Visions of visions within visions.


Cassandra saw her city razed to the ground. The wall which once stood firm against the onslaught of enemies crumbling with the ravages of time. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again she saw her own grief. Her cousin had fallen in battle. She closed her eyes again, and scratched at her itchy eyelids.



Ten weeks passed without a blink, not even a fraction of an opening. She was disciplined, but the longer she fought the more her eyelids would burn. One blink to ease the agony and she was forced to see her father’s skin. A purple mass of dead flesh bubbling swelling, exploding, and rotting, with maggots squirming in out and around till flies formed and flew away. Another corpse left out in a burning city. One among many denied a peaceful death. Buildings crumbled to dust, the bodies became one with the earth. Cassandra cried without opening her eyes. Her father stroked her long soft curls, whispering reassurances. “It’s all right my child.”


Another three or four weeks passed. She had become blinder than Tiresias the blind prophet. Unable to recall if that was a story she had heard, or would hear in the future.  She sobbed spilling each and every sorrow she could. Every tragedy yet to come. Her father smiled gently placing a warm cloth upon her brow. “Shush my child these nightmares will fade soon enough.”


The young girl opened her eyes again. This time a years’ worth of history unfolded. She saw soldiers gathering arms. Battlements born of the Bronze Age burning with righteous rage. Steel blades clanging against bronze shields in preparation for war. Boats fully loaded departed.


She closed her eyes once more. It would be another two months before she opened them. In the meantime she pleaded with her father to leave the city. Day in and day out begging, sobbing, and screaming until she was sent away.


It was becoming harder and harder to keep her eyes closed. There was a burning force aching to escape. She managed five more weeks until she could bare the pain no longer. As her new sisters bathed her pale dry skin with the sweetest scented oils the young girl recited all that she saw and felt.


The first footfalls of the first soldier’s feet to touch the beach. The feel of the sand as it swirled in, out and around the soldier’s sandals. The general howling commands. The green eyes hungry for battle. The faces contorted in controlled rage. All that intensity burning under the once civilized façade. She closed her eyes again.


Cassandra sat silently in exhaustion, as the sisters slowly brushed the knots out of her long brown hair. They brought her a blindfold, which allowed only a small comfort. This time she only managed to resist for two weeks. The vision came upon her with such force that she cried out and collapsed.


Now the city was burning. Citizen screamed as they ran in terror. Brave men rushed forwards to be impaled on the spears of other brave men. Arrows swallowed the moonlight picking at the earth and scavenging for some bare flesh to devour. Blood ran like red rainwater. Streets streamed thin crimson pools diluted by warm summer showers. The stench oh, the stench, it made Cassandra ***** up chunks of soggy bread and half-digested beef mixed with red wine and stomach acid, while she tried to force her eyes to close.


Finally, she closed her eyes again. The sisters tried to sooth her sorrows, to no avail. Within a years’ time the young girl lost the ability to close her eyes. Cassandra eyeballs slowly burnt out until there was nothing left but charcoaled eye sockets. By the next year she could no longer speak. Cassandra became paralyzed by the futility of her existence.


In her mind the war had come and gone. The sieges were no longer an issue. She no longer felt the urge to cry for the dead. What was, will be, and what will be cannot be undone. What cannot be undone has already happened. Apollo had cursed her. Her beauty had enraptured him, her wit had charmed him, but her will had enraged him.


She was only thirteen with brown eyes and long hair of rare quality, soul so powerful that almost anyone who met her could feel its energy. She shamed the gods with her purity, and unwillingly ensnared their affection.


At first Apollo came with strong arms and tender words. Wooing to the point of painful pleasure. Her eyes could not handle such radiance. His skin burned as his chariot burned. Hair golden flames, skin solar yellow, eye orange as the sun. Each kiss burnt like the worse fever, taking her against her will, savaging her sanity. As if, as if being a god gave him the right to take such liberties.


Apollo viewed her early rejections with whimsy, believing them to be some cute token of her modesty. A god can afford to wait, after all eternity was on his side. After the first hundred no’s his affection gave way to anger. Until his desire could not bear rejection any longer.


At last he cried out to Cassandra. “I will have you or else.”


With a firm but fiery hand he swept her up.  Forcing his mouth against hers. Parting her pursed lip with his powerful tongue.  He shoved his tongue into her mouth, until tears streamed down her cheeks. She could not resist with words, because her mouth was occupied, so she took the only action she knew available to her.


She bit down as hard she could. Lava spewed from Apollo’s lips, roughly singing the inside of her mouth. Without realizing what was happening she swallowed. Her skin began to glow, tiny childlike limbs lengthened and tightened. From her eyes radiated the most powerful light ever seen by man or god. For a moment Apollo cowered beneath the awe of her power, stumbling backwards to the ground dumbfounded.


Regaining his composure he slapped her aside. Scowling in rage “How dare you. You. You worthless *****.”


Her lips parted now of her own volition. Her voice raged with a deep and powerful resonance. “How dare you, you whimpering fool.” The power still flowing inwards filled her with confidence. “I see you for what you are. A tool, a man made invention.” The radiance of her skin was slowly fading. “I see too much now.” She cried out in an ******* fury. A smile crossed her lips. “I see what will become of you and your ilk.”


With strength previously unimagined the young girl thrusted her small hands out throttling Apollo’s throat. He trembled in fear. “You cannot hope to contain the power of me. I am generations incarnated. Passing power from one age to the next. I will not be enslaved.” Her skin began to blink, her voice loss much of its force. “I am Cassandra, and you a merely a passing phase. I will tell the world of all I have seen.”


The last bit of godly energy faded from her skin. Cassandra collapsed. “I still see it all, and you will never touch me again.”


Apollo brushed bits of earth off his person. “See all you want, I care not.” He lunged for her. A flash of thin white light flung him back.

Confused, Apollo rose. Glaring he screamed “You may see all now. It is a gift my blood has given you, but soon it will become a curse. For no mortal wishes to believe that the fates have already written their story. They will ignore you, and in doing so you will find that this power you have gained will be for naught. Thus will be your curse to see all, with no power to stop it.”


Cassandra’s eyes opened wide, seconds split into eternity. She felt the passing of all those around her. She felts time’s stench and rot all around her. Her skin would wrinkle to a certain degree but she would be eternal. She saw cities rise and fall. Some to rise again others to be forgotten. She saw herself seeing each of these visions again and again. She lived her immortal life over and over, events unchanged be anything she said.


The only real comfort was that she saw Apollo wither away. As the old gods fell to ruins weakened by the rationality of new gods, then the rationality of structured reason. Then came the rise of something new and better. Reason with abstraction, abstraction with order, a cycle of energy which emboldened and empowered man. She chuckled.
“Go away little godling.”
And like the little thing he was, Apollo ran.
Her father shushed her, wiping the tears from her face.
The sisters bathed her; singing songs of love and adoration.
Troy fell under the onslaught.
Apollo came and went again.


Cassandra’s eyes opened wide closed and open wide once more, seconds split into eternity. She felt the passing of all those around her. She felts time’s stench and rot all around her. Her skin would wrinkle to a certain degree but she would be eternal. She saw cities rise and fall. Some to rise again others to be forgotten. She saw herself seeing each of these visions again and again. She lived her immortal life over and over, events unchanged be anything she said.


The only one real comfort was that she saw Apollo wither away. As the old gods fell to ruins weakened by the rationality of new gods, then the rationality of structured reason. Then came the rise of something new and better. Reason with abstraction, abstraction with order, a cycle of energy which emboldened and empowered man. She chuckled.
“Go away little godling.”
And like the little thing he was, Apollo ran.
Her father shushed her, wiping the tears from her face.
The sisters bathed her; singing songs of love and adoration.
Troy fell under the onslaught.
Apollo came and went again.

It doesn’t hurt that you chose her. She’s prettier than me, smarter than me, not broken like me. Her smile is bright like the sun, her eyes are as blue as the sea, and her laugh is like the melody of the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard. She’s your favorite book, and I’m just a page of it. She’s really the obvious choice.  I’m happy for the two of you, honestly.  Sometimes I see you holding her, and it looks as if you’re scared to let go. I see her smile up at you, and I can just tell that she’s lost in your eyes. I’m glad that you found love.  It doesn’t hurt that you chose her, but you wanna know what does? The fact that I almost had you. You almost loved me. You held me like that, and I smiled at you the same way she does now. But something happened, and suddenly you’re all I can think about, when to you I’m just a distant memory.

My heart was build of stones
Layered by tons of stings and thorns
Soaking with venomous bloods of red indian scorpions
Pumping through the veins
Once again
Being with me lead your life's adorn?
Trust me, your hopes will die in pain of torns.

It was a Wednesday,
the postman in glorious blue,
a horrific thin letter
in your mailbox.

Across the street
the plump woman watched,
you tore it open,
birthday present in June.

Rejections, maybe.
But no. Instead
black words
said something other.

Happiness crashed upon you,
jumping up, up and down
as if on a trampoline,
a fire, smothering the dark.

Accepted.
You called it a creative wave,
rising, frothing wildly
and falling again.

Through the rejections and all the hate,
Just before your faith crosses the Pearly Gates,
Though allegedly claimed impossible by the Fates^,
taps you on your weary shoulder - "Hi,
could you help me, no one else is ...” -
the lonely voice of your soul-mate^^.

^Rumour has it those Greek hags have stock options
in the military-industrial complex, the cosmetics industry,
and favour Eris's 21st century avatar called Consumerism.

^^Your soul is not a super-market produce,
For feckless mass appreciation or consumption.
Your soul is a dauntless beautiful sapling, that
'the one' will rescue from its interminable fire,
and nurture it, till it blossoms and glows.

A bird lived its life lonely,
None came for its help,
It kept hunting for fruit pulp,
Considered relations and family unholy.

When its mother lived on difficulty,
Other relative birds, treated it a person of mediocrity,
Refused to follow generosity without partiality,
To keep them safe, pretended their incapacity.

Elder sister of the lonely bird kept threatening,
About the future inabilities and loneliness,
For a family life, kept telling it undeserving,
Told it would face disappointments without liveliness.

Life kept the lonely bird, lonely,
The bird never cared about it,
It had its mother with it,
Life went lively & happily.

Lonely bird had a fear in its thought,
What happens, in loneliness if I am caught?
It felt severe anguish and fear,
On occasions, its heart fell in tear!

Its elder sister, treated it with disrespect,
In spite of it being, an aspiring intellect,
Life of lonely bird remained downward,
It got itself ready for situations untoward.

The lonely bird kept struggling and thriving,
With its ambition and goals put its life driving,
Going remained really impossible & tough
The path to dream remained very rough.

Its fellow birds, remained happily settled,
For lonely bird, things looked to be tangled,
It was skilled, opportunities remained disabled,
With rejections, life continuously growled.

The lonely bird wanted to turn phenomenal,
Didn’t look out to happiness personal,
It did not have family,
In its wealth remained, being hit poorly.

Life went downward with pause,
It was on long term ambition and cause,
The bird turned itself a hungry beast,
To put it away from loneliness, at least.

If none is there, to take care,
I would die! I would die!
For a worldly mission, if I dare!
Of loneliness, I would never cry!

Elder sister of lonely bird threatened,
You were born a layman
Will die an orphan!
Because you are a madman!

The lonely bird, responded for it in life,
I was born a layman,
Will fight for my mission like a madman,
Will die always fighting world evils as a spearman.

There was ring! There was a ring!
It was named Bhagat Singh!
It told me life is lived on its own,
Others shoulders are used at time of funeral.

There was an alarm! There was an alarm!
The name was Abdul Kalam,
It told me Always be the unique you,
Even if world wants to change you everybody else.

Loneliness sometimes hit it like thorn,
Nothing could make it torn,
Through difficulties it was born,
It lived life to make this world adorn.

Loneliness turns out ubique,
I am not alone! I am not alone!
I am an unshakable stone,
I am unique! I am unique!

To look, or not to look: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to forsake
The entertaining of such fanciful thoughts of love or lust
Or to pursue them against all odds of a benign response,
And by seeking, obtain? To look: to see:
Maybe more; And by a sight to find
In the glitter of an lined eye the interest and wanting
That impels said actions; ‘tis a reciprocation
Devoutly sought. To look: to see:
To see: perchance to lose: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that subtle glance what times may follow after
Whether the ice is broken or the heart instead,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of a choice to peek;
For who would bear the hurt of a scornful return,
A finding that the goddess is a medusa,
A turning of the fancies to stone,
A realization of disinterest, a knitting of the brows
A frown’s beginnings on a face so fair,
When she herself might her peace make
By refraining to meet the intended’s eye? Who would want
To face a rejection that is in all chance,
But for the regret that comes with a chance not taken,
Leaving what could be as what could have been
Forevermore, which makes us turn
And face the one to one million
Than never to face it at all?
Thus fear of rejections makes regretters of us all,
And thus the resolve to be one of a million
Is weakened by weighty o’erthought,
And an attempt to contemplate her soul through her eyes
With this regard are abandoned,
And lost to remain as fanciful thought.

It was hardly a JFK moment but if, like me, you remember what you were doing when you first heard a Spice Girls track, it may be hard to believe two decades have elapsed since the girl group released their debut single, Wannabe, in the dying days of John Major’spremiership. Together with Oasis, Blur and Blair they heralded a new dawn for Britain - selling millions of records while they were at it - before embarking on what turned out to be a lengthy hiatus just four years later. There was a brief reunion in 2007-8 but the question now is: how, if at all, will they mark their 20th anniversary this summer?

Sitting opposite me in a London hotel bar in Leicester Square, just across from where she co-hosts the Breakfast show on Heart FM withJamie Theakston, Emma Bunton - the one formerly known as “Baby Spice” - makes no secret of her hope that the “girls” (now all in their forties) will get their act together.

“We adore each other. There’s so much we’ve been through. I would love to do something,” she says. “I think we’d all quite like to do something, but it really is figuring it out. We all have such different lives. Mel B [Melanie Brown, formerly Scary Spice] lives in America. We’ve all got different managers.” Not to mention the fact they are all mothers now and their busy schedules include commitments such as school plays, which makes finding time for a reunion even harder.

It’s natural to wonder, too, if any jealousy simmers beneath the surface. Victoria Beckham’s star has risen exponentially since the group broke up, with her marriage to former footballer David, their children and her fashion line keeping the profile of the erstwhile Posh Spice higher than those of any of her former bandmates. Bunton insists she’s delighted for her though.

“When a friend does that well it’s incredible. She’s just hilarious and I know exactly what she’s thinking just by looking at her,” she says. “I see pictures and I go, ‘I know what she’s thinking about!’ I’m very lucky because I know the fun, sarcastic, brilliant other side to her as well.” The fact that Beckham invited Bunton to choose a dress for her 40th birthday in January would appear to support the picture she paints of their friendship.

When “Baby” joined the band in 1994 she was almost young enough to be in a school play herself. Now she has two babies of her own - Beau, aged eight, and four-year-old Tate - with her fiance, the singer Jade Jones, to whom she has been engaged since 2011. Although she could pass for 30, her woollen shawl, floral Kooples shirt and the glasses that frame her face give her the look of an elder stateswoman of pop.

“Wouldn’t that be amazing?” she agrees when I suggest a one-off gig at Wembley Stadium. “Fingers crossed. That’s something we’d really love to do.” While we talk, a phone rings in her bag. It’s Geri Halliwell, formerly known as Ginger Spice. Bunton ignores it. “I’ll speak to her after and tell her you suggested it,” she says of the concert idea.

Meanwhile there is her new early evening live TV show to focus on. In BBC Two’s Too Much TV, she pairs up with Rufus Hound, Sara *** or Aled Jones, reviewing and previewing what’s on the box. Her years of experience as a radio host have come in handy here, but the programme itself has reportedly suffered some disappointing audience figures.

Still, Bunton is pleased to be forming a female double act with ***. The phrase “Girl Power” - which she defines as “supporting one another in everything you do” - was famously central to the Spice Girls’ brand and is something she continues to draw on. “For me, it started with seeing my mum going back to college at 40, starting karate at 40. She just kept growing and I’ve really fed off that,” she says. “I want to grow as much as she did and still is. She was my first role model. Jade is brilliant, it’s just we [girls] have had to push a bit harder. As girls we’ve pushed things forward.”

Bunton was born and raised as a Catholic with her younger brother in Finchley, north London. Her parents worked hard to provide for their children but separated when she was about 11, which she struggled with. (“I don’t like change too much,” she says.) Until her father, a former milkman, recently moved to Ireland, she would visit him every Sunday. Privately educated at the Sylvia Young Theatre School in London, she was granted a scholarship when her parents could no longer afford the fees.

Though not one to dwell on failure, even she began to question herself when the rejections kept coming. “You’d think, ‘I’m just not good enough,” she says. It wasn’t until she auditioned to become the fifth member of the Spice Girls that her big break arrived. She was asked there and then to move in with the others in Maidenhead - and the rest is nineties pop history.

Part of the Spice Girls’ selling point was their girl-next-door image. While it could not be said that *** was removed from the equation - theUnion Flag dress Halliwell performed in at the 1997 Brit Awards left little to the imagination and many of Brown’s leopard print outfits were an exercise in cleavage-display - *** appeal was not the main draw. Yet even if looks weren’t the focus (wasn’t it all supposed to be about fun, girl power and attitude?) Bunton hasn’t always felt secure about her body image.

“Obviously [body shape] is such a big thing in this industry,” she says. “I’m 5ft 1in so I feel that sometimes being curvaceous is harder to carry off because I’m so short. But I’m comfortable. I’ve always been that kind of way. In the industry it is becoming a bit more difficult because everybody is so slight, it’s quite unbelievable. I don’t know how they do it.”

When she first joined the group she felt relaxed enough about her appearance, but went through “probably a very short stage when everything hit and there were pictures everywhere and you think, ‘Do I look OK?’” This faded, and having children has helped stop her worrying about this. “It’s something I just don’t take on board as much because I can’t,” she says. “But you’re being pictured every day or papped, so obviously there’s that pressure of hoping to look half decent in pics.”

Reflecting on how motherhood has transformed her, she goes on: “I used to be very self-absorbed, I’m sure, worrying about what I was going to wear to the next event or whether my roots were done,” she says. “I’ve changed as a person.”

So what about that long engagement? Will she ever get round to tying the knot? She and Jade will need their heads knocking together before they do, she says. “If we do, we’ll definitely elope,” she adds.

Career-wise, she remains ambitious. She has a small part in the forthcoming Absolutely Fabulous movie and would like to sing and act more, as well as branching out into comedy (she’s already been involved in Comedy Central’s Drunk History).

Pop culture doesn’t cast out the over-40s these days, so there’s no reason to think she won’t stick around. Nobody, after all, puts Baby in a corner.Read more at:www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-2015

My minister said
Two Sundays ago, that
"Christmas will always disappoint."
It was jarring,
Unnerving.
A minister said such a thing?

But wait, keep listening.
You'll see it makes sense.
You'll see it's true.

The Jews were expecting
A king to overthrow the Romans.
They expected trumpets blaring,
A white horse carrying
Their savior.

They got a helpless baby
Heralded by shepherds
And the bleating of sheep,
Born of a poor peasant woman
In a poor peasant town
In a poor peasant barn
Of a poor peasant inn.
How disappointing.

We expect the family to be together
We expect love and happiness
During the Christmas season.

We did not expect
Financial troubles
Marital problems
Stress at work
College rejections
Fighting with the kids
Arguing with the parents

The tree didn't get decorated
Until December 21
The outdoor lights
Are still in boxes.
Advent was supposed to
Prepare us.
But we're not ready yet.

Christmas will always disappoint,
But the baby will not.

Christmas is a beginning.
Christmas is hope.

There is always hope in children.
They are the future.
Hope, most of all
Is in the child of God.

It is hope.
The "good part"
Is yet to come.

We plant seeds in Christmas
With the expectation of the future.
Jesus grew up,
Like babies do.
He changed the world.
He changed the individuals.

He fed the hungry
He gave sight to the blind
He comforted the beggars
He brought justice to the Temple
He taught his followers
He drove out the demons
He loved the sinners
He reached out to the outcasts

He lived with us
He walked with us
He loved us.

And we killed him.

But that wasn't going to stop the baby
The child we placed our hope in on Christmas.
He came back from the dead
And performed many miracles.

Then he left
But promised to return.
And so we wait
With the hope given to us
By a baby
On the most disappointing Christmas of all.

But he left us a gift
Not wrapped in paper and string
But fire.
He have us the Spirit
So that we'd have guidance and comfort
And we'd never be alone.
So we can act as he did.
We can feed the hungry,
We can comfort the beggars,
We can reach out to the outcasts.

And as they wait with the hope from the baby
We can give them the same gift
So they can continue the baby's work.

Christmas is disappointing
But the baby is not.
The baby is Jesus
And he gives us hope.
Of life and life beyond death
And of love for all people.
For then, for now,
And forever.

One by one,
The words abandoned
But the pain never did.
One by one,
The days passed,
But the longings never diminished

Moments after moments
I died,
But my love for you lived
Rejections after rejections
Gave wings to my motivation
They landed some place afar from here

Nights after nights dawned
But the nightmares continued to last
Long after I had opened my eyes
Preacher after preachers
Gave their doctrines,
I was repulsed farther
From any religious entity

Pages after pages,
Were stained with my ink
But the mind never felt
Any relief
Words after words were said,
My heart still died thirsty

With an unfulfilled wish to seek
An understanding in someone's eyes

they said he should submit this
make submissions and do readings
this is the way it’s been done
for many years
but he didn’t really want to
a couple of rejections left him weary
and he’s a writer not a performer

the contests say “all styles and subjects”
but surely they have criteria
not this one
not this one
this one
the all inclusiveness is a lie
the judges know what they want
he wished they’d be up front and specific
but it’s all about the entry fee
they pretend to be seeders
offering everyone a chance
to grow and bloom
but they’re actually weeders
quickly quashing poems
rubber stamped with doom
they never really stood a chance
because it’s all about the entry fee

“Don’t self publish”, they said
“You’ll regret it”
he did the design and layout anyway
“Can ‘we’ make changes to the cover?”
who the hell is “we”?
this is his book?
sure he wanted sales
that’s what publishing is about
but sink or swim
he wanted his book, his way
especially his first book
and he’s a stubborn *******

the internet is accommodating
this IT age makes it easier
the process has been long
with glitches and obstacles
doubt and procrastination
but the would be destination was worthy
available at amazon

My heart is black
it has no reflection
but reveals my thoughts,
my pain and rejections.

My heart is black
and my blood runs cold.
I remember the past
back when I wasn't as bold.

My heart is black
my patience is thin.
Where are you God?
Why can't I win?

My heart is black
yet your light shines.
The cure for my darkness
sent from the heavens divine.

My heart is black
but our friendship grows.
I see the light
come on lets go.

5'9
115 pounds
runway, of course
the face of an alien
but a seven digit paycheck

isn't it strange?
how media can obsess over someone
who looks like they're from outer space
we see them as an object

they are supposed to walk and look pretty
nothing more, nothing less
we never wonder how many hours they had to workout
in order to get that thin and still remain healthy

how many rejections they got
"face is too round"
"drop 10 pounds then we'll talk"
"learn how to walk first"

they are pushed to their limits
so let's treat them as more than just an object
because they're real people too
please realize that

Like a joker I looked
Being laughed and teased
No retaliation or rejections

Being a clown is what I'm good at
but deep down
This clown, mind.

2AM                                          
I am assaulted with emotion at the notion of closing my eyes               
            my drunken blackouts are the only peace I seem to find     deprived of my liquid therapy I sink into my thoughts      
              ignoring atrocious reality brings no solace to a villain caught  

                                   3AM
paralysed within myself calling out from my empty shell
              a stranger inhabits my skeleton but I'm yet to hear alarm bells
my identity's gone missing but all the poles are poster-less
                          suffocating on small talk I'm lost in exquisite sadness

                                                            4AM­
do my eyes of infinite tragedy hold the same tone of desperation?
          dead detached peepers resemble marbles glossy from sedation
privately frantic for acknowledgment of my internal death
                        fearful you see my demise but see no value in my breath

                                                         ­                              5AM
           mother dearest placed me on the curb for a foreigners collection       unworthy of a garage sale I squat amongst the household rejections
       amidst disheveled furniture a crusty mop makes my acquaintance
I suppose the oppression of my despair made it less contagious

                                                     ­                                                          6AM
whoever claimed sunrises bring hope never tried stimulants
                the ***** smeared sky bears as much nausea as I implement
such is the tacky masochistic cycle of damnation
                                  give me my slice of death and pray I don't awaken




                                     i
  grieve
                                                 my
                                                                ­ whiskey
                                                                ­                                  as
                                     i
  grieve
                                                  my            ­   humanity

(His Side)
I once heard this story about a couple of kids. There was a boy. And there was a girl. They shared a class. And the boy noticed her. And he watched, because that’s what he was like. He saw her laugh, they way she talked with teachers and her fellow students, and her big, round eyes. Sometimes, the boy would get really lucky and she would talk to him. He was amazed by her intelligence. By her humor. He fell for her even more. And those were the days. They would play cards in class and laugh along with the other students. They talked about things happening around them, about water balloons, and boring things that they made interesting. And they helped each other through the small things, and that was nice.
As summer came in, they continued to talk, but less so. The girl always asked about how he was. And he had the same answer every time. A mundane and dismissive response. Because he has heard that question so many times, he thought it wasn’t worth answering. He knew that people never cared, they only asked how him how he was to hear him say “Alright” or “Fine”. So that’s what he always did. And the girl grew impatient. And the boy began to realize that this question was more than he thought. She was actually asking. Actually caring. She wanted to know, unlike his parents, teachers, and friends. He answered sometimes with different answers. He was cautious, never very brave.
Then the talking diminished. He was scared, scared that he would be hurt. He felt like it was one sided. He didn’t want to pressure her with his crush and he didn’t want to be pushed away. So he cut his losses, and he went back into his shell. Like he was before he met this wonderful girl. And he fell back into the lull of no talking unless spoken to.

       Then school came back. Summer was over, just like that. And he was still alone. Always watching, always lonely. And then he saw her, in the same type of class. Everyone was out standing in the field, waiting for class to start. And there she was. And she brought him back in all over again. Her smile, the way she talked with teachers and students, her amazing eyes, her cute nose, and as he learned, her beautiful personality. And he waited. And waited. And finally, the moment happened. He talked to her again. And it was nice.
They started talking again after that. He realized he didn’t like being alone. He missed her so much. They saw each other a lot more and talked even more. He again, he fell even further in love with her. And then she offered to take him somewhere. A lake to watch the sunset. And he agreed, because he wanted to break from his shell.
They drove to the lake, laughing and singing the entire way there. And they brought their music down with them. They sat down by the water, skipping stones and watching the beauty drift by. And everything felt right to the boy. And just as the sunset drifted out of sight, he kissed her. Their first kiss. And it was nice.
So after that, it was “official”. They were dating. And they talked all the time. And they went out together. Like one night, where they picked a dark field from random and watched the stars go by. They laughed sometimes and sat together in silence other times. Their hands clenched together throughout it all. So they were happy and together. Some nights they laughed and some nights they cried. The crying nights were not bad, they helped a lot. They found each other. They both realized that the good things to outweigh the bad things, but vice versa the bad things don’t ruin the good things or make them unimportant.
There are so many things this girl did for the boy without even realizing it. She helped him. He now talked to his family and friends with ease. No more shell. Not broken anymore.
His college plan was to join the military. Because that’s what he thought was right. He didn’t like his life so he decided to try and let others benefit from it. So he chose military, for the high death rate. He was too cowardly to do it himself. But with her, he felt needed. Wanted even. Something to live for. So he changed his mind. He wanted to help people.
I hear that they are still together to this day. Still crying and still laughing. And the boy is still discovering, day after day of being with this girl, how much he can love her. How brave she is. He can never leave her because he never wants to, he can’t. He’s done it before and it wrecked them both. That would tear him up inside. So they stay, for each other. And they are happy.

(Her Side)
There was a girl.  She wasn’t anything special, just a girl. And there was a boy.  She never paid him any attention – he wasn’t much to pay attention to.  But somehow, someday, that changed.  It could have been the smile he wore, the way he carried himself, or the confidence he radiated when he walked in the room.  She believed it was watching him perform.  He was one of the school play’s lead roles, and his voice.  His voice. It carried that smile.  The very first word he exclaimed to the audience seemed to be all hers.
Life went on as normal: school, that class they shared, spending time with her friends.  It all seemed to be perfect, but no one knew how low she was; the tears only came at night.
The end of the school year brought water balloons.  A water balloon fight she organized, to be exact.  And he talked to her. He made her smile.  She never would have guessed that those ****** water balloons could’ve brought them together, but they did.  They talked every day, and she looked forward to the end of the day when they would play cards together. It wasn’t long before he told her how he really felt.  But she was scared.  She didn’t know how she felt.  She couldn’t remember how it felt to really feel.  
They resolved to a friendship, one she thought was strong.  She counted on seeing his name come up on her phone everyday as the summer progressed.  They spent some time together and, among the talking, she felt more confused, but she also felt safe.  There was finally someone she could talk to and someone who made her laugh.
She really cared about him.  Maybe, she thought, I could give this a shot.  But it wasn’t until after he left her house that day did she realize she should have kissed him.
As the regret sunk in, so did the feeling that she really wanted something more than their friendship.  After that day, she asked him to come over, to go out mini-golfing, to join her for the sunset.  She tried so hard; she was surer of her feeling now than she ever had been before.  But the rejections came.  She thought nothing of it at first.  It was just his dad saying no, or he had plans, but the reasons started to sound more like excuses.  And they kept coming.  She thought she was trying too hard, was too overwhelming.  Then his messages stopped coming.  When they did, they were brief and never satisfying.  She ******* up.  She was too needy.  He lost interest.  What else was there to think? But she thought about the times he told her he loved her smile, and she couldn’t understand what she had done wrong.  What had changed.  What made him pull away.
She went back to crying herself to sleep each night.  She would check her phone, hoping maybe she just missed it, but knew there was nothing there.  The cracks slowly started forming again.  She wondered how she could’ve been so blind so as to not see it coming.  It was obviously her fault, there was no other explanation.  She just missed him.  Did he miss her too?
Weeks passed, and the cracks eventually gave way.  She did everything she could to keep busy and not let it show.  She couldn’t show her friends – they would never understand – and, after all, the whole thing was her own ******* fault.  Loneliness ate away at her, just like time slowly consumed the remains of summer.
School started, and she was forced to see his eyes again.  But his eyes were on someone else.  He was a stranger to her now, and now she thought she knew his reasoning behind leaving her.  Because she wasn’t beautiful.  She didn’t interest him.  She didn’t have anything special about her.  And he knew that as well as she did.  His eyes were on someone else.  Why wouldn’t they be? It was obvious to her.
It seemed that everywhere she went she was tortured by his presence.  Then he started talking to her again, instead of ignoring.  She looked for every opportunity, until she found one.  She couldn’t get too close though; falling wasn’t allowed.  
Shortly after, he was on stage again.  Memories flooded back, and she couldn’t help but be pulled in like last time.  His voice was there.  Endearing and brave.  And his smile.  She was sure it was meant for her.
They talked more and more, and eventually his eyes turned away from the other.  She took another shot.  She wanted more than anything for it to work.  It did. He said yes to the sunset.  The last sunset she watched that year by the lake, and it didn’t have to be alone this time.  They talked as the colors faded.  And then he kissed her.
That night left them inseparable.  She loved him, and he gave his love in return.  Happiness had returned to her life.  She had someone to share with, to pass the long hours with, and to hold close to her.  He was beautiful.  He was hers.  And they were finally happy.  Together.

i would compromise
--i compromise. i appear to i mean,
with peace-demeanor customized for show
paraded there and there, obeisant nonsense
in a confidence of meek to render compliments
crowding infancies of all

for the sake of art
i bend my frame about cliche
to have a human dragon claim
"the real persists unknown"
and gather at a sacred dolmen
fascinating morals sung beneath the stars and sun--
you said there was a butterfly
tasting at my skull, shaking with uncommon music too..
its skinny, immigrant feet abuzz
within the world they called a One, wings on pause, my eyebrows in flight.

a blanket iris cries warmth
in clusters hung ripe, filming over all
a native ceremonial, falsepolitik
i pluck at them atop a fence
obscure for comforts masking truth
discarded, found, fashioned
into furniture for candled houses
built with children's sons
where families try to see
a clearing in the warping
mirrors saddled with a dripping time no illustration comprehends
. wooden beams help it rise and dim,
the sunny lie, genuinely fake,
authentic trick of aeons hidden in the true
-- growing young, stemming back
to foil brighter undiscoveries for otherwisely
patient basements full of heirlooms,
sheik dining areas all
nodding over cheap wine we still manage to squint up at nothing at
in apple layers
symbolizing tidy crimes invented ceaselessly,
serving existential voids--
grace, fall, stumble catch
acquired tones of oak or berry--
other fruits would do, or none,
as i still feel
praised by your rejections --
when indifference gains a sweetness
like a novel vengeance won
i am indulging villainy
workshopping staling norms,
garden dark as cultivated loam.
where i am words
mooding intellect to torment,
faun complexity awry

I became your favorite obsession
I wondered if my last hour had come.
I am not alive until you called,
In an hour or two my cell phone becomes as hot as I am.
Take me, break me, I can’t be obedient,

I want to feel whole again…
without looking over my shoulder.
Oh my wounded and troubled heart
My soul is in deep anguish,
Without this forceful conquest

Within my eyes, jealousy wedge deep
Because of my self-critical thoughts,
My early rejections, my feeling, thoughts and action:

Our grandmother’s words came to be fulfilled
“An old fashion botheration,
   My indulgence from my past,
This led to an old fashion romance,
That wasn’t resolved then or now.

Take this kiss from my lip
And in return take off your glasses
and let me see your weary eyes
You are not wrong, my jealousy is a disease

If life had be kinder to us,
I would have been yours,
And you would have been mine.
I would have been the slave to you,

I stood by the window, and stare down at couples walking by
holding hands and I thought about them and I think about us:
Making further plans and I waved my hand to them
and smile because love is a lie.

heart of darkness encounter of lies
I have paid my dues, I settled my tithes.

How can I tell my heart to stop loving him?
I became his favorite obsession, now he’s mine
Take me, break me, I can’t be obedient,
I want to feel whole again, my friend

My wounded and troubled heart,
My soul is in deep anguish,
without this forceful conquest
So why do I weep in my sleep?

My God of refuge, what was the hidden truth?
I played with fire, and now I am burnt.