pompeii runs through our veins,
hot with the taste of ash & decay.

some of us are fortunate enough to
become ruins; others are ruinous,
sepulchers of epidemics, air-born, contagious.
a disease that could make London a cemetery.

we dress ourselves up like relics, clothed
in silk and gold and gossamer,
as if they could one day be armor.
as if they could bring us safety.
as if we deserve such things when everything we touch rusts.

it takes only twenty-two years for the
average person to realize they are a weapon.
that words are knives and actions are razor blades,
as if to remind the living that we
came into the world screaming—
and we have never been silent since.

we are the Morrigans, the cursed women,
those whose destiny is entwined with death.
we court death, invite her to our dinner table every night,
let her sleep in the guest room, leave the doors and
windows unlocked for her.

death, we realize as women forced to bear
the weight of the dead on our shoulders,
never comes as a thief.
she comes as a lover, smelling of lilac, a grin
too white and too large to be human.

still, we invite her in,
because even death, regardless of form,
makes for better company than the empty dark.

Everything rusts
Everything decays
Entropy at work
The never ending decay of time
Nothing lasts forever
Everything returns to the Earth eventually
Even we are temporary
We are born
And then we begin to age
To decay until our final moments
When we return back to the Earth
We must accept this
Because if we live our lives trying not to age
Trying to beat time
Worrying about the time that has gone by
We will not be able to accept life
If we can't accept that at some point
We all age
We all die
It's just a natural part of living
You can't worry too much about it
When it's your time
You will go
You don't have much control over that
But what you can control
Is how to live your life while you are still alive
And live it to the fullest
Without fear
Without doubt
Moving forward in courage and love
And trying to spread that courage and love
To others as well

The devils foot soldier;
That's what you turned to be.
The one I thought that I could trust;
Confuses my memory.
You water the flower to feed the roots;
Thus only to pluck the petals.
It reminds me of how strong you are;
Strong like crimson metal.

But that metal rusts, and the flower dies after you've shed them limb by limb.
Stripping them down to their naked cores;
And exposing their deadly sins.

We're all like flowers, but don't water the roots if you'll only pluck our petals.
It'll show the ugly truth inside;
Like rusted crimson metal.

                                        Alysia Marie 2015 ©

Morality isolates and fenders bend.
Circumference learns, “half-way” but fails to take the name
“Radius,”
And when she lay a meter nigh
With child, my child;
I still and will feel horribly alone.

Curse my iron fist and rusts the middle knuckle,
When another weeps, not for I, not for you but the gods assumed,
“Heaven,”
And 3 floors above my own;
Tucked lies the pain, regret fills fetal;
I still and will feel horribly alone.

So comes the autumn, the fire prior, “Styx,”
Upon borders that could only separate, “fatherhood,” so partitioned,
“Winter,”
And 3 floors below her own –
A pillar wrought persistence and abandoned, my hedonism;
I still and will feel horribly alone.

Attitude problem.
what social media cannot tell us.
as if you're the center of the universe,
and your feelings does not pass.

Being reactive
you thought, makes you smarter,
Being reactive,
tends to be your bread and butter.

You tend to magnify
those little small things.
but you forget the proper values,
as seen on the rusts of your bearings.

Molecules of two elements, nitrogen and oxygen, comprise about 99 percent of the air. The remaining hoity toity 1% includes small amounts celestial seasoning luxurious riches as argon and carbon dioxide. (Other gases such as neon, helium, and methane are present in trace amounts.) Oxygen is the life-giving element in the air.

Earth's atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon, and 0.03% carbon dioxide with very small percentages of other elements. Our atmosphere also contains water vapor. In addition, Earth's atmosphere contains traces of dust particles, pollen, plant grains and other solid particles.

Even when the air seems to be completely clear, it is full of atmospheric particles - invisible solid and semisolid bits of matter, including dust, smoke, pollen, spores, bacteria and viruses. Some atmospheric particles are so large that you will feel them if they strike you. However, particles this large rarely travel far before they fall to the ground. Finer particles may be carried many miles before settling during a lull in the wind, while still tinier specks may remain suspended in the air indefinitely. The finest particles are jostled this way and that by moving air molecules and drift with the slightest currents. Only rain and snow can wash them out of the atmosphere. These tiny particles are so small that scientists measure their dimensions in microns - a micron is about one 25-thousandth of an inch. They include pollen grains, whose diameters are sometimes less than 25 microns; bacteria, which range from about 2 to 30 microns across; individual virus particles, measuring a very small fraction of a micron; and carbon smoke particles, which may be as tiny as two hundredths of a micron.

Particles are frequently found in concentrations of more than a million per cubic inch of air. A human being's daily intake of air is about 450,000 cubic inches. This means that we inhale an astronomical numbers of foreign bodies. Particles larger than about 5 microns are generally filtered from the air in the nasal passages. Other large particles are caught by hairlike protuberances in the air passages leading to the lungs and are swept back toward the mouth. Most of the extremely fine particles that do reach the lungs are exhaled again - although some of this matter is deposited in the minute air sacs within the lungs. From these air sacs, particles may go into solution and pass through the lung walls into the bloodstream. If the material is toxic, harmful reactions may occur when it enters the blood. Fine particles retained in the lungs can cause permanent tissue damage, as with Coal workers' pneumoconiosis (black lung disease), caused by buildup of coal dust in the lungs, and with silicosis, which is caused by the buildup of silicon dust.

If the air is still, given sufficient time, all but the smallest airborne particles will settle to the ground under their own weight. Their rate of fall is closely proportional to particle size and density.
For example, vast amounts of fine volcanic ash were thrown into the air by the eruption of the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa, in 1883, and again by the Alaskan volcano Katmai, in 1912. In both instances, the finer dust reached the stratosphere and spread around the world high above the rains and storms that tend to cleanse the lower atmosphere. In fact, many years elapsed before these volcanic dusts entirely disappeared from the atmosphere. Since a two-micron dust particle may require about four years to fall 17 miles in the atmosphere, the lingering effect is not in the least surprising.
Dust storms are also prolific producers of airborne debris. Europe is sometimes showered with dust originating in the Sahara. In March 1901, for instance, an estimated total of two million tons of Sahara dust fell on North Africa and the Europe. Two years later, in February 1903, Britain received a deposit estimated at ten million tons. On many occasions, Sahara dust has fallen in muddy rain and reddish snow over much of southwestern Europe. During North America's droughts of the 1930s, dust storms blew ten million tons of dust at a time aloft in the heart of the continent. Occasionally, high winds swept the dust eastward 1800 miles to darken skies along the continent's Atlantic coast.

When the wind strikes the crest of an ocean wave, or a calm sea is agitated by rain or by air bubbles bursting at the surface, the finer droplets that enter the air quickly evaporate, leaving tiny salt crystals suspended in the air. Winds carry these salt crystals over all the Earth. Normally, airborne salt particles from the sea are less than a micron in diameter. It would take a million of them to weigh a pound.
Salt particles play an important part in weather processes because they are hygroscopic - they absorb water. Raindrops usually form around tiny particles that act as nuclei for condensation. Generally, each fog and cloud droplet also collects around a particle of some type at its center. Tiny crystals of sea salt make better condensation nuclei than other natural particles found in the air. Thus, salt particles in the air help make rain.

Dust from meteor showers may occasionally affect world rainfall. When the Earth encounters a swarm of meteors, those meteors that get to the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere are vaporized by heat from friction. The resulting debris is a fine smoke or powder. This fine dust then floats down into the cloud system of the lower atmosphere, where it can readily serve as nuclei around which ice crystals or raindrops can form. Increases in world rainfall come about a month after the Earth encounters meteor systems in space. The delay of a month allows sufficient time for the meteoric dust to fall through the upper atmosphere. Occasionally, large meteors leave visible trains of dust. Most often their trails disappear rapidly, but in a few witnessed cases a wake of dust has remained visible for an hour or so.
In one extreme instance-a great meteor that broke up in the sky over Siberia in 1908-the dust cloud traveled all the way around the world before it dissipated.

Large forest fires are among the more spectacular producers of foreign particles in the atmosphere.
Because these fires create violent updrafts, smoke particles are carried to great heights, and, being small, are spread over vast distances by high altitude winds. In the autumn of 1950, forest fires in Alberta, Canada produced smoke that drifted east over North America on the prevailing wind and crossed the North Atlantic, reaching Britain and continental Europe. The light-scattering properties of this dense smoke made the Sun look indigo and the Moon blue to observers in Scotland and other northern lands.

Wind-pollinated plants are the most prolific sources of foreign particles in the air. This is a problem for people with allergies.

Spores are closely related to pollens. Spores are the reproductive bodies of fungi, which include molds, yeasts, rusts, mildews, puffballs and mushrooms. Tiny spores are adrift everywhere in the air, even over the oceans. Although they resemble pollens in general appearance, spores are not fertilizing agents. Instead, they are like seeds, and give rise to new organisms wherever they take hold. Spores have been found as high as 14 miles in the air over the entire globe. Most fungi depend on the wind for spore dissemination. Once airborne, spores are carried easily by the slightest air currents.

Once, physicians were taught that infectious microorganisms quickly settle out of the air and die. Today, the droplets ejected, say, by a sneeze, are known to evaporate almost immediately, leaving whatever microorganisms they contain to drift through the air. Only a relatively small fraction of microorganism’s human beings breathe cause disease. In fact, most bacteria are actually helpful. Some, for example, convert atmospheric nitrogen into usable plant food. Pathogenic, or disease-producing, microorganisms, however, can be very dangerous. Most propagate by subdivision-each living cell splits into two cells. Each of the new cells then grows and divides again into two more cells. Provided with ideal conditions, populations multiply quickly. Fortunately microorganisms do not thrive very well in the air. Unless there is enough humidity in the air, many desiccate and die. Short exposure to the ultraviolet radiation of the Sun also kills most microorganisms. Low temperatures greatly decrease their activity, and elevated temperatures destroy them rapidly. Still, many microorganisms survive in the air, despite these hazards. Among the tiniest of airborne particles are viruses, which are on the borderline between living matter and lifeless chemical substances.

Earth is the only planet we know of that can support life. This is an amazing fact, considering that it is made out of the same matter as other planets in our solar system, was formed at the same time and through the same processes as every other planet, and gets its energy from the sun. To a universal traveler, Earth may seem to be a harmless little planet in the far reaches of one of billions of spiral galaxies in the universe. It has an average size star of average brightness and is joined by seven other planets — which support no known life forms — in its solar system. While this may be fitting for a passage from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, in the grand scheme of the universe, it would be a fairly accurate description. However, Earth is a planet teeming with vitality and is home to billions of plants and animals that share a common evolutionary track. How and why did we get here? What processes had to take place for this to happen? And where do we go from here? The fact is, no one has been able to come close to knowing exactly what led to the origins of life, and we may never know. After 5 billion years of Earth’s formation and evolution, the evidence may have been lost. But scientists have made significant progress in understanding what chemical processes that may have led to the origins of life. There are many theories, but most have the same general perspective of how things came to be the way they are. Following is an account of life’s beginnings based on some of the leading research and theories related to the subject, and of course, fossil records dating back as far as 3.5 billion years ago.

The solar system was created from gas clouds and dust that remained from the Sun's formation some 6-7 billion years ago. This material contained only about .2% of the solar system's mass with the Sun holding the rest. Earth began to form over 4.6 billion years ago from the same cloud of gas (mostly hydrogen and helium) and interstellar dust that formed our sun, the rest of the solar system and even our galaxy. In fact, Earth is still forming and cooling from the galactic implosion that created the other stars and planetary systems in our galaxy. This process began about 13.6 billion years ago when the Milky Way Galaxy began to form. As our solar system began to come together, the sun formed within a cloud of dust and gas that continued to shrink in upon itself by its own gravitational forces. This caused it to undergo the fusion process and give off light, heat and other radiation. During this process, the remaining clouds of gas and dust that surrounded the sun began to form into smaller lumps called planetesimals, which eventually formed into the planets we know today.

A large number of small objects, called planetesimals, began to form around the Sun early in the formation of the solar system. These objects were the building blocks for the planets that exist today. The Earth went through a period of catastrophic and intense formation during its earliest beginnings 4.6-4.4 billion years ago. By 3.8 to 4.1 billion years ago, Earth had become a planet with an atmosphere (not like our atmosphere today) and an ocean. This period of Earth’s formation is referred to as the Precambrian Period. The Precambrian is divided into three parts: the Hadean, Archean and Proterozoic Periods.

The Earth formed under so much heat and pressure that it formed as a molten planet. For nearly the first billion years of formation (4.5 to 3.8 billion years ago) — called the Hadean Period (or hellish period) — Earth was bombarded continuously by the remnants of the dust and debris — like asteroids, meteors and comets — until it formed into a solid sphere, pulled into orbit around the sun and began to cool down. Earth's early atmosphere most likely resembled that of Jupiter's atmosphere, which contains hydrogen, helium, methane and ammonia, and is poisonous to humans. (Photo: NASA, from Voyager 1). As Earth began to take solid form, it had no free oxygen in its atmosphere. It was so hot that the water droplets in its atmosphere could not settle to form surface water or ice. Its first atmosphere was also so poisonous, comprised of helium and hydrogen, that nothing would have been able to survive.
Earth’s second atmosphere was formed mostly from the outgassing of such volatile compounds as water vapor, carbon monoxide, methane, ammonia, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrochloric acid and sulfur produced by the constant volcanic eruptions that besieged the Earth. It had no free oxygen. About 4.1 billion years ago, the Earth’s surface — or crust — began to cool and stabilize, creating the solid surface with its rocky terrain. Clouds formed as the Earth began to cool, producing enormous volumes of rainwater that formed the oceans. For the next 1.3 billion years (3.8 to 2.5 billion years ago), the Archean Period, first life began to appear and the world’s land masses began to form. Earth’s initial life forms were bacteria, which could survive in the highly toxic atmosphere that existed during this time. Toward the end of the Archean Period and at the beginning of the Proterozoic Period, about 2.5 billion years ago, oxygen-forming photosynthesis began to occur. The first fossils were a type of blue-green algae that could photosynthesize.

Earth's atmosphere was first supplied by the gasses expelled from the massive volcanic eruptions of the Hadean Era. These gases were so poisonous, and the world was so hot, that nothing could survive. As the planet began to cool, its surface solidified as a rocky terrain, much like Mars' surface (center photo) and the oceans began to form as the water vapor condensed into rain. First life came from the oceans. Some of the most exciting events in Earth’s history and life occurred during this time, which spanned about two billion years until about 550 million years ago. The continents began to form and stabilize, creating the supercontinent Rodinia about 1.2 billion years ago. Although Rodinia is composed of some of the same land fragments as the more popular supercontinent, Pangea, they are two different supercontinents. Pangea formed some 225 million years ago and would evolve into the seven continents we know today. Free oxygen began to build up around the middle of the Proterozoic Period — around 1.8 billion years ago — and made way for the emergence of life as we know it today. This increased oxygen created conditions that would not allow most of the existing life to survive and thus made way for the more oxygen-dependent life forms. By the end of the Proterozoic Period, Earth was well along in its evolutionary processes leading to our current period, the Holocene Period,  or Anthropocene Period, also known as the Age of Man. Thus, about 525 million years ago, the Cambrian Period began. During this period, life “exploded,” developing almost all of the major groups of plants and animals in a relatively short time. It ended with the massive extinction of most of the existing species about 500 million years ago, making room for the future appearance and evolution of new plant and animal species. About 498 million years later — 2.2 million years ago — the first modern human species emerged.

Did You Know? The first modern human being was called **** habilis, the first of the **** genus. This species developed stone tools for use in daily life. **** habilis means “Handy Man.” He existed from about 2.2 to 1.5 million years ago. There are earlier species related to modern man, called hominids. The images show the skull shape and probable appearance of **** habilis.

The PreCambrian Period — accounts for about 90 percent of Earth’s history. It lasted for about four billion years until about 550 million years ago. About 70 percent of the world’s land masses were created in the Archean Era, between 3.8 and 2.5 million years ago. Rodinia, widely recognized as the first supercontinent, formed during the Proterozoic Era, about 2.5 billion years ago. It is believed that the oldest human family member was discovered in Ethiopia and lived 4.4 million years ago. It was named “Ardi,” short for Ardipithecus ramidus.

I

If seasons all were summers,
And leaves would never fall,
And hopping casement-comers
Were foodless not at all,
And fragile folk might be here
That white winds bid depart;
Then one I used to see here
Would warm my wasted heart!

II

One frail, who, bravely tilling
Long hours in gripping gusts,
Was mastered by their chilling,
And now his ploughshare rusts.
So savage winter catches
The breath of limber things,
And what I love he snatches,
And what I love not, brings.

Light's patterns freeze:
Frost on our faces.
Light's pollen sifts
Through the lids of our eyes ...

Light sinks and rusts
In water; is broken
By glass ... rests
On deserted dust.

Light lies like torn
Paper in corners:
A rock-pool's pledge
Of the sea's return.

Light, wrenched at the edges
By wind, looks down
At itself in wrinkled
Mirrors from bridges.

Light thinly unweaves
Itself through darkness
Like foam's unknotting
Strings in waves ...

Now light is again
Accumulated
Swords against us ...
Now it is gone.

Art painted, art confined, art denied,
The skin of the canvas cages and congeals the art,
Colours more plumbed than the peacock of paradise,
Yet trapped and tossed about in stormy framed emotions.

In the end it all bleeds away,
The paint dries, decays, and dies,
Faint leaky lines leave behind faded memories,
Life’s canvas rusts on the ground in solemn silence.

Hark now! Unhinge your ears!

Hear now music flowing from elegant veins,
Listen to how the strings pulse and weave the notes,
Watch how the music flies free and completely unconfined,
Those butterfly melodies entwine and in the air flutter and swirl.

Their dance is the ecstasy of a nightingale’s song,
They sprinkle and circle round and round, up and down,
The music of the cello is love’s supple spine, smooth and sensual,
Hear it, inhale it, caress it, sway with it, and be at ease and free with it.

Amber drips from the 60’s-style lamps
on two end tables.
Brassy-orange and bulbous,
they illuminate the tangled tracks.

The light spills onto the floor
like heavy freight abandoning its car.
It spawns the locomotive shadow
cast by my grandmother’s sunken-in couch.

I nestle myself snug between the pillows,
dense and flattened by years of Sundays.
Sundays that bring my father
close to his brother, not a brother at all.

I peer over the edge
and heave a hushed “all aboard.”
Grandma sleeps to unwind
the day’s knot of exhaustion.

Each bone-bleach white fiber frays
from the chemotherapy that robs
her gnarled hands of their strength.
This one-way ticket marks the end of a journey
of a once well-oiled machine.

The exhales of a CSX
spout its peppery breath out in opaque puffs.
I am a conductor, tearing the ticket
of tonight’s traveler.

Rising to my bare feet now,
I sink into the cushion like wet sand.
The train thrusts and in a single bound,
I leap from the ledge and leave my lone passenger.

The cars whir and hum alongside me.
Deafening metallic wind rusts the edge of the rug.
I’m still waiting for her return,
and in denial that it was her last train.

Your presence disgusts me
Rusts me, rips me open and thrusts me
Forcing me to suffocate because you distrust me
No reason to hate, you force the lust in me
Pry open my eyes, tell me I must see
Your life meaning is a lie
Self-centered, heart cold as winter, numbly bitter but you still shine
The devils mentor, deep nail splinter, nauseous jitter but you’re still mine
Expect the worse, immerse yourself first, but your worlds reversed
Tilted, head to the ground, all your smiles turn to frowns
Your brain pounds from the sound of your scream
As your lungs fill with water, just drown and dream
You tell yourself it’s over but it’s not what it seems
The darkest hour of the never ending night sky
The brightest flower, the one that catches your eye
The most sin filled child hiding behind a disguise
It’s all just a lie, we’ll never understand
We live our hell here on earth and pray for heaven in the end

Your presence disgusts me
Rusts me, rips me open and thrusts me
Forcing me to suffocate because you distrust me
No reason to hate, you force the lust in me
Pry open my eyes, tell me I must see
Your life meaning is a lie
Self-centered, heart cold as winter, numbly bitter but you still shine
The devils mentor, deep nail splinter, nauseous jitter but you’re still mine
Expect the worse, immerse yourself first, but your worlds reversed
Tilted, head to the ground, all your smiles turn to frowns
Your brain pounds from the sound of your scream
As your lungs fill with water, just drown and dream
You tell yourself it’s over but it’s not what it seems
The darkest hour of the never ending night sky
The brightest flower, the one that catches your eye
The most sin filled child hiding behind a disguise
It’s all just a lie, we’ll never understand
We live our hell here on earth and pray for heaven in the end

NOTE: I visited a beautiful country garden with spectacular surroundings. In one area of the vast gardens there was a section with birdcages. The birds were very colourful and beautiful but they looked sad. A group of children took great pleasure in screaming and kicking the birdcages. Across from the cages was an open birdhouse where birds could come and feed. That idea of being imprisoned on one side and free on the other inspired me to write this poem.



Hark! Hark! Hark!

Can you hear our croaking cry? Please stop and don’t lark!

Our beaks now harp the songs of lamentations
From deep within our slumbering souls which are walled up in damnation,
But once there was a time,
Yes, there was an Age of carefree wonder and rhyme,
Oh, how we sped across the milky white cloudy miles,
We small band of caged brothers were kings of the skies,
The waves of wind rippled and sang through our feathers
As we danced amongst the trees and mountain heather,
The morning sun would drip nectar and honeydew,
Our music surged with the dawn chorus and to a crescendo grew,
We were the ships of paradise floating upon the golden light,
We sailed through the oceans of the deep blue skylight,

Yet here we are now...

We birds of paradise confined to these narrow dreadful hell’s cells,
O, my brothers, you who watch and stare and yell,
Your kind dared to ensnare us and everyday in pain we play,
Our glorious pride and colourful lustre plucked away,
Where once we flew freely with our brightly shining feathers
Now we hobble upon the grimy ground like tattered orphaned beggars,
Red, green, white and blue
These are the colours that so impress you,
Our rich and radiant plumage now rusts,
Please help us with your love and trust!

You stand and mimic and mock,
Some of you search for stones and rocks,
Outside these bars you prance and poke,
What would it feel for you to bear this prison’s infernal yoke?

Outside our weeping cage,
There upon a tall pole there sits a palace as white as freedom’s pure page,
It is a painted birdhouse built high upon the hilly *****,
How it glows, this home, this bright beacon of hope!
The windows are without bars or glass panes,
In that lovely house slavery is a shame,
The doorway has no lock nor door,
It is a home open to birds both rich and poor,
Birds breeze in and birds breeze out and move freely about,
They flutter in and flutter out,
They sing here, they sing there, they sing everywhere,
They have the freedom of life in the very air.

Is it true?
Was it you?
How could the one who built our cage
Also create the open birdhouse across the hilltop stage?

Look to me and tell me true,
Hey you! Yes, you who kicks my birdcage and chews!
Please look here and not at yonder black crow,
Can you for real cage the rainbow?



©Rangzeb Hussain

1.
Mother, my Mary Gray,
once resident of Gloucester
and Essex County,
a photostat of your will
arrived in the mail today.
This is the division of money.
I am one third
of your daughters counting my bounty
or I am a queen alone
in the parlor still,
eating the bread and honey.
It is Good Friday.
Black birds pick at my window sill.
Your coat in my closet,
your bright stones on my hand,
the gaudy fur animals
I do not know how to use,
settle on me like a debt.
A week ago, while the hard March gales
beat on your house,
we sorted your things: obstacles
of letters, family silver,
eyeglasses and shoes.
Like some unseasoned Christmas, its scales
rigged and reset,
I bundled out gifts I did not choose.
Now the houts of The Cross
rewind. In Boston, the devout
work their cold knees
toward that sweet martyrdom
that Christ planned. My timely loss
is too customary to note; and yet
I planned to suffer
and I cannot. It does not please
my yankee bones to watch
where the dying is done
in its usly hours. Black birds peck
at my window glass
and Easter will take its ragged son.
The clutter of worship
that you taught me, Mary Gray,
is old. I imitate
a memory of belief
that I do not own. I trip
on your death and jesus, my stranger
floats up over
my Christian home, wearing his straight
thorn tree. I have cast my lot
and am one third thief
of you. Time, that rearranger
of estates, equips
me with your garments, but not with grief.

2.
This winter when
cancer began its ugliness
I grieved with you each day
for three months
and found you in your private nook
of the medicinal palace
for New England Women
and never once
forgot how long it took.
I read to you
from The New Yorker, ate suppers
you wouldn't eat, fussed
with your flowers,
joked with your nurses, as if I
were the balm among lepers,
as if I could undo
a life in hours
if I never said goodbye.
But you turned old,
all your fifty-eight years sliding
like masks from your skull;
and at the end
I packed your nightgowns in suitcases,
paid the nurses, came riding
home as if I'd been told
I could pretend
people live in places.

3.
Since then I have pretended ease,
loved with the trickeries of need, but not enough
to shed my daughterhood
or sweeten him as a man.
I drink the five o' clock martinis
and poke at this dry page like a rough
goat. Fool! I fumble my lost childhood
for a mother and lounge in sad stuff
with love to catch and catch as catch can.
And Christ still waits. I have tried
to exorcise the memory of each event
and remain still, a mixed child,
heavy with cloths of you.
Sweet witch, you are my worried guide.
Such dangerous angels walk through Lent.
Their walls creak Anne! Convert! Convert!
My desk moves. Its cavr murmurs Boo
and I am taken and beguiled.
Or wrong. For all the way I've come
I'll have to go again. Instead, I must convert
to love as reasonable
as Latin, as sold as earthenware:
an equilibrium
I never knew. And Lent will keep its hurt
for someone else. Christ knows enough
staunch guys have hitched him in trouble.
thinking his sticks were badges to wear.

4.
Spring rusts on its skinny branch
and last summer's lawn
is soggy and brown.
Yesterday is just a number.
All of its winters avalanche
out of sight. What was, is gone.
Mother, last night I slept
in your Bonwit Teller nightgown.
Divided, you climbed into my head.
There in my jabbering dream
I heard my own angry cries
and I cursed you, Dame
keep out of my slumber.
My good Dame, you are dead.
And Mother, three stones
slipped from your glittering eyes.
Now it's Friday's noon
and I would still curse
you with my rhyming words
and bring you flapping back, old love,
old circus knitting, god-in-her-moon,
all fairest in my lang syne verse,
the gauzy bride among the children,
the fancy amid the absurd
and awkward, that horn for hounds
that skipper homeward, that museum
keeper of stiff starfish, that blaze
within the pilgrim woman,
a clown mender, a dove's
cheek among the stones,
my Lady of first words,
this is the division of ways.
And now, while Christ stays
fastened to his Crucifix
so that love may praise
his sacrifice
and not the grotesque metaphor,
you come, a brave ghost, to fix
in my mind without praise
or paradise
to make me your inheritor.

All these poems entombed in a dying bog-

their death wish come true
mourned by poets in communion
dead muses in abject thread count shrouds
there lay Brute in his "et tu" tu?
there Cesar bleeds for art and politic
a writer's sword rusts in obscure earth

though here, among Himalayan thorns
blossom greens and early orange berries
plucked by blue birds and titmouse
scratching foot-tiny script onto tree moss
read by a literal sway of conscious antenna
archived in depths of a comatose cosmos

-cec

I am in a bad state, physically and emotionally (mostly emotionally) and this is mostly a self healing type of thing. Bear with me. A lot of swearing and some mild crying were involved.

1. For starters, I'd like to say that I am sorry for the current state that we're in. Our friendship has slipped through my fingers faster than any liquid could and left me numb and confused and sort of hung over. I never meant to cause you anger towards me in any way but I guess sometimes these things are meant to happen and there isn't anything we can do about it.
2. I kind of miss your small hands and the way they were always outstretched, ready to catch every drop of disappointment and wonder the world had to give. They were always cold too; maybe from all the icy truths they held. I liked the way you moved them when you couldn't figure out the exact words to say, as if they were your cue cards you couldn't quite read.
3. I don't know if we'll ever speak again or if you will look me in the eye when you walk past me, if you even think of me when you see me. I don't know if you still consider me a mistake or the nights we spent together a mistake the way chopping off my hair with Crayola scissors when I was four was a mistake.
5. When this is over, remember that you are not any less loved: you are still the girl who has looked fear in the face every day and fated, “I do not belong to you.”
6. You taught me that everyone leaves. This is no longer something I can romanticize, I’m not capable of turning this pain into poetry anymore. It’s just sadness. It’s just hurt. It’s just hard.
7. In fifty years when I sit down to write a poem about us, (and I will), I will word the way this situation
panned out, pinpoint perfectly why you are letting go, I will have just enough knowledge to write a funny sarcastic quip about how sorry you should be for losing me, but today I am desperate for some explanations, and the present does not seem comical or ironic— it is Cinderella’s lost slipper sad, a future slipping away because you are scared of the clock chiming midnight, and although in hindsight I will laugh at myself, at you, at this, I will tell my children things like, “Wasn’t I silly?” and they will nod, and tuck my cautionary tales under their skin as little life reminders. Although in 50 years I will call you 5 decades too late, say I'm sorry that I never seemed to say “I love you” at the right time, ask how the years have been, and wonder of all the things that could have been if I'd had the right words. I cannot see the future, and all I am is filled with uncertainty rusting my heart and tainting my hope the way rain rusts metal in the spring, wishing that if nothing else, at least someday I will be able to understand.
8. The past three days have been a rollercoaster of emotions, from the highest elation, to the lowest depression. I hope you're happy, I really do. If nothing else, I hope you think of me and the times we shared and smile a little bit. I hope your wildest dreams come true and I hope you realize you are full of bountiful potential spilling out from every bit of you, even your aura. I hope I'm on your *List of Things That Keep Me Up at Night but in a good way. I hope you actually read Things Fall Apart and make literary connections between the characters in that book and our friendship. I don't even know what I'm saying. I hope you find the words I never could. I hope you wake up one morning and say "I'm going to change the world," because you can. I hope you dance in the rain and not care if your hair gets wet. I hope you get yourself figured out.

trickling down cheeks
the beads of sweat gather on chins
jaw lines glisten
chalk on asphalt
contenders equidistant, soon to be unison
two of them
racing
each reach for the first to get
to the line
a place for few of them
bronze rusts, and silver runs
but nothing like us
off that starting gun
all at a chance
to watch the refs
wave the flags
and decide a winner
go for gold
outside the champion's circle
are shoulders cold
if you don't give it all
you're no pro
you're an amateur
a beginner, 1st in show

Sorrowful, lustful. Youthful folk, with their youth stolen by prideful sages.
Gluttonous for the lives lacking life.
The chain rusts, greedy oppression in the name of a manipulated definition of God.
Guardians of love, care, mercy, freedom creed armed with Wrath!
Envy rules a kingdom with broken wings.
Progression diagnosed with sloth, and fear.
Seven sins, in the life of the righteous race.

Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other Spheares, by being growne
Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:
Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit
For their first mover, and are whirld by it.
Hence is't, that I am carryed towards the West
This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I'almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And tune all spheares at once peirc'd with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell, rag'd, and torne?
If on these things I durst not looke, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was Gods partner here, and furnish'd thus
Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom'd us?
Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They'are present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look'st towards mee,
O Saviour, as thou hang'st upon the tree;
I turne my backe to thee, but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,
Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,
That thou may'st know mee, and I'll turne my face.

Umbrella green rain upset  harmless stripped
And because of thunder children snapped their fingers like jazz enthusiasts

Milk obsessed rats rant and render their own insanity
Passing three winged' angels in the street flowing serenity

Friends are best left in the mind and in the heart
But do not stray too far from them

For loneliness is a cold touch without love or hate
We are lucky to be feeling anything at all

The dead lie still
The weak do too
The strong move
The courageous seek
The other side of

The hill

Music moves underneath the fog of the sun
Near the flower garden the tourists roam free
A minds eye is a terrible thing to waste
Getting to know yourself through sleep is revealing
When is the next time for tea?

Your gibberish speaks things to me
That nothing in this world has ever done
What is the color of genius?
What is the feeling of epiphany?
Where do the dead flowers grow?

Packaged up
Sent off
Read up
The critics scoff

Growing old near the swamp the shanty town sways
Old culture rusts blood brown and neon orange
The bills are on the fridge and being cashed yesterday
Another day passes as the clock strikes 13

A friend brushes past another in a party and they smile
They do not speak for there is history there
Marking calenders for future experiences in all planning aside
There is nothing like chaos to introduce you to yourself

As I walk down the sidewalk, pass the cleaners, I see fiction
Moving under the trees, breathing the sea, I see narration
Talking to the barista, laughing lines, I see dialogue
Shakespeare penned the highest and the lowest of us all
And I think Bukowski was right there with him too

Watch a marble roll down the street
Observe each crack and the path it takes
We are very much the same way
Define your cracks, your bumps, your potholes
And see where they have taken you
See what became of you after the hard times.

This year
Apricots will writhe in the trees
Like a worm on a fishing hook.

The sea is foaming at the mouth,

And we are children
All over again.

trust in the shape of a key,
good god how corny is that?

satisfactorily nonsensical, a Pharisee phrase,
so offal illogical,
it borders on the poetically reprehensible

who has time to state this stuff,
pretend it is worthy of something respectful,
work it into a Nobel Prize awarded script,
nominated for "really bad ****?"

an ordinary hardware key, brass gleamy,
and the squealing grinding noise
heard while a blank progenitor is reimagined,
so so annoyingly ludicrous in this century
of plastic replicators but the noise,
comfortably familiar as a sound of
things being made

run thumb test over the cuts,
as if your thumb should know
what order the points and bevels,
the toothy gap spaces should be,
the correct disorderly order of the teeth

there are very few locks on a farm;
indeed the front door key
has not
been seen
in many a year

what's that you ask?
ok ok - I get it - in harvest time
it is early to bed and earlier to rise,
conclude this mystery key,
red winter wheat needs laying down,
stop your word seeds germinating

there may be few locks on a farm,
everything rusts so quickly anyway,

but stop to comprehend just how many locks
the human body employs  -
at least 613,
maybe many more,
and only one master
for them all

a shiny gleamy thing,
strangely,
its cuts and grooves seem to
spell a word
trust

go figure

1:05am in the city

Who am I? What am I?
It's been a while since I cried
Am I a brain on top of a body?
Just processor performing code?
Well, who wrote the code?
Who wrote it?
It's been a while since I was I
I'm not a brain, I have one
I've got hardware put there by Someone else
Who am I?
I'm a computer running software I didn’t write
I'm a soul interacting with a body, a brain
Whose health I neglect on a reg

What am I?
I'm a decaying accumulation of skin
And blood and bone and neurons
I got neurons in my heart
And that's a good place to start
The heart is the mouthpiece of the soul
My identity gets ******* in the whole
Idea of my performance
And my influence
Like if I sing a song badly, my soul takes the hit
And if I lead my partner astray, the whole of me is ****
The whole of me is ****

There's holes in me
But who put them there?
I combust in small increments
My skin flies off in perfect circles
They're fragments
My heart, it's hiding behind these explosions
Hiding behind them because it causes them
Because my mouthpiece is expressing my hate
My lack of love for myself
Hate is just a word we put on the shelf
It's like darkness and coldness
Describing something through absence
Darkness; the absence of light
Coldness; the absence of heat
If hate is the absence of love I might
Just be the one who beats me
Who defeats me
Who carries my heart, my brain, the rest of me
Tied around my neck on a string that I pull through
Like my body is in captivity

I'm privileged to honor this body that I didn’t make
I'm greatly gifted a brain to maintain
My heart, my body, my brain
They shouldn't be strangling me
They shouldn't be dragged through the dirt
They should be a part of me

I am a soul
I have a mouthpiece
My heart is my mouthpiece
My brain is my hardware
That rusts and which I expend

God help me love me
And Who I am
And Who You are

God, make it so apparent to me in my falling out
That I am a part of the three-legged stool
To Love You before all else
To Love everyone else
And to Love myself
Help me see You accurately
God help me
God help this American switch culture
I am not a machine that functions at the flip
Of a switch
I am a soul, a CVT, a cable that climbs up and down
Depending on the speed of the wheels
And decelerating is okay
And (not but) accelerating is wonderful

I do not go 60MPH because I flipped a switch
I go 70MPH because I climb
I climb
God help me climb
And to falter well
And to suffer well
Humble me in my faltering suffering

Smokey Edge, Georgia.
I Wait in the diner. Not long ago Whites Only.
Now filled with black folks.
Mom would say “persons of color,”
that would include the two Hispanic truckers
and the Chinese cook.
Mom said “don’t go, no need to”.
She’s never been.
Gives me the silent treatment
while murdering Chopin on tortured keys.

Cousin Ed slides into the booth.
Across from me he glistens sweat,
wipes his forehead, grins, squeezes my hand.
“Hi cousin Citygirl, “ and adds “Chocolate au lait”!
Mocking, or teasing, I don’t care.
“Ok, double espresso” I say.

Red on white No Trespassing sign rusts in the grass.
Vine assaulted shack is all what’s left of it,
the Juke Joint where grandpa played
banjo with a bottleneck slide,
making it screech and sing.
Where the women Bess sang and danced.
The one he talked about incessantly,
when he had forgotten who we were.
How he pressed into her, ****** her behind the joint,
how she smelled and laughed and rocked the blues,
how she put her lips to the glass of bathtub gin, just so.

Short crepuscule gives way to night. Mosquitos come thick.
“Listen up Citygirl, hear the sounds, ghost drums and strings.”
I hear grandpa’s banjo, the slide’s screech, Bess sings.
I smell the funk, the sweat, ripe heat, the Blues.
I put my arm around his waist, grind into him
I want him hard, in me, lick his sweat.
He pushes me away, “hear up Citygirl,
I‘m not grandpa and you aint no Bess.”
Cristina Umpfenbach-Smyth  March 2012

Decisions. Decisions.
There is just too much for you to choose.
You see it,
You love it.
You get it,
You hate it.
Pick a **** side,
Enough wasting my time.
You stare at the pictures for months,
and it rusts in your closet for the next trillionth.
What was wrong with it?
Does the glove not fit?
Okay, you know what?
I quit.
I don't need your approval to feel like I'm worth it.
I gave you the Earth,
The next day you wanted mars.
When I gave you that planet,
You demanded the stars.
Go ahead and live an indecisive life you little twit.
I'm so done with you, you indecisive *****.

Flaccid smiles
On placid servile men
Tending to linoleaum aisles
A worthwhile ending
For men beyond mending
Name tag exile
Collecting dust
For every tile
The soul rusts
With each paced mile

There is no need for zippers in the future.
We only use buttons.
Easier to undo,
they require only one swift motion
while zippers require two.
some say we digress,
but we simply resort to practicality.
a zipper can get caught,
a button just falls off.
a zipper can lose teeth,
a button just falls off.
a zipper eventually rusts,
a button just falls off.
But we can always just sew the button back on.
That is why we choose buttons in the future.

I am dressed in iron. Layers of it.
Sweat and blood mingling with tears.

And it rusts.

And erodes.

And crumbles.

And soon, my strong persona
Will be gone.
Or maybe it already is?
I've tried so hard to care for my armor,
But everything decays after a while.

I am exposed.

My fragile body is bare now,
And this glass figurine is crying.

She wants to be wrapped in steel this time. Titanium.
That way, she won't break as easily.
And her tears will no longer clatter on the floor,
Shattering into bright little stars.

They don't deserve to be stars.
They are dull.
She may hurt, but her tears are empty.
She has no tears left.

She gave those away too long ago, and they were lost.

And they were bright.
Wasted.


And she wants to be covered in molasses.
Maybe then, when she finds her tears again,
They will stick to her, and never leave.
Maybe she could use them again.

Reduce Reuse Recycle.
She could save her world, and allow
Other pains
To sleep there.
Absorb them from the creatures
She talks to daily.
Hiding them in her iron.
Steel.
Titanium.
Molasses.


Anything is better than
Glass.

They built a lighthouse,
to warn the ships.
The ships transported the sea.
You professed your love,
with living lips.
Your lips spoke words that buried me.

Tanker ships containing water,
run aground upon the sand.
A human being becomes a monster,
by another human's hand.

The future dies within.
The past is always evaporating.

As the tanker rusts,
so I also must,
until we are but two derelict husks,
filled with nothing but regret.

Once, here was the sea,
voluminous and wet!
Once, I was me,
until the day we met.

the mannequin ax
and Ptolemy tax
the spiraling hang-sling salutes

the left of the just
and the tackiest rusts
that lazily now pass for roots

don't hit me with nots
the velveteen clots
you want me, i need you, please leave

from chaos i'm born
with an evergreen scorn
may death find me with empty up-sleeves

Barometrics (A ****** of Fates)
By Andrew Robinson

[Solo intro]

[Clean Phase I (instr.)]

[Clean Phase II, verse]
At the blistered contacts
At the suit of flies
Come to recover
Come bite to pry

Careful corrosion
Ornate rusts, they run

The rotten circumference
Expire in change
The fade verse subsides
As wounds bleed their age

Lacquer sick on the flesh
Drunken fathoms

Drink me!

[Clean Phase III]
[Distorted Phase I over distorted Phase III]

[Distorted Phase II, verse]
Seeped warp of walls
A sanguine distance
Steeped liquor, combine
An astral chance

With combustion and form
Fevers masked in blood

Calls dissonant pulse
Drag our sour roots
Throats of the rip tide
Choke lecherous grooves

Bore forty knots haste
Set bones with the mud

Come Skye!

[Distorted Phase IV, chorus]
Over the silence
Nerves contract
Over the sun
The waves sing back

From the rubble
I’ll come home, to you

[Distorted Phase II, verse]
Wet mottled and suture
Yet the coursing ache
Brims ******* flotsam
Pulls at our wake

My contour dissolve
Key strokes soak

Color!

Me a new world

[Distorted Phase I over distorted Phase III]

[Distorted Phase IV, chorus]
Over the silence
Nerves contract
Over the sun
The waves sing back

From the rubble
I’ll come home, to you

Cover the oceans
In ashen stars
Cover the night
Our tempest hearts

Somewhere I have a mind
To hold on to!

[Cesura]

[Distorted Phase V, bridge]
She wanes
Wading out the shallow
Of the lights, an engine of ink
‘hind my eye

Due depth
Shake horizon’s fray
Withered wind of the sea
My decay

[Clean Phase III, bridge cont.]

When hell wakes
And manifests the clasp
Of the calloused oil
In my hands

And the blade
I’ll send my pride and crass
Beside my crimes and guilt
Out to shore

With brittle oars

[Distorted Phase IV, chorus]
Over the silence
Nerves contract
Over the sun
The waves sing back

From the rubble
I’ll come home, to you

Cover the oceans
In ashen stars
Cover the night
Our tempest hearts

Somewhere I dream of you
In tides!

Oh, in tides!

[Clean Phase I over Distorted Phase III; slow and fade to end]

An unsound disorder takes host
In a body for years I’ve loved
Memories becoming all but ghosts
Cell by cell with blackness she rusts

In each vessel of her sclera
In each fold of her fine vocals
In each tear of her mascara
The feat of a smile totaled

From a world all but brightening
Living in walls crafted by fear
Each breath, a scream of lightning
New evenings; old muscles speared

The feat of a smile totaled
Amidst an eerie, white speech
In each fold of her fine vocals
A desire for love beseeched