At the top of a hill in a land far away,
stands a seedling alone; its leaves quietly sway.

It has nowhere to hide from the blistering sun;
there's no shield from the winds that frequently run.
Empty land – there isn't a bush nor a tree nearby.
It grows there all alone, but it is getting by...

On the nights full of rain and frightening lightning,
through a quiver of fear, it would stay there fighting:
"I want one day to grow to a big, mighty tree
with a trunk wide and strong that no wind could bend me!"
Its small roots would absorb murky water from storms
and by morning it smiles as a new leaf bud forms.

Leaf by leaf, day by day, this small seedling gets bigger.
Twig by twig, year by year; to grow large it is eager.

On occasion it would get a visit or two:
cheerful birds from the sky would come down to say Hi,
and a fluffy white rabbit would drop by, out of habit;
friendly ants, butterflies, and at night fireflies—
all would merrily chatter but too soon all would scatter.

With a smile, the seedling would request them to stay
but would always hear back: "I must be on my way!"
One day, curious, it asked: "On your way, where to?"
"To the woods down the hill, full of trees just like you!"
"Full of trees just like me..." no one heard it whisper
rustling leaves, as the air around it got crisper.

Leaf by leaf, day by day, it still grows but looks small.
Twig by twig, year by year; it's alone, after all.

Having grown tall enough, the seedling now sees it—
past the field down the hill—the one place all birds visit:
a majestic forest stretching wide—a green sea!
—with tall pines, mighty oaks, and other grown trees.

What a beautiful sight! It just can't turn away!
Wishes strongly the seedling, to be there one day.
It dreams of gentle sounds running through the lush crowns,
of the comforting shade that the woods surely make.
Stretching branches—now long!—
wishes it to belong...

Leaf by leaf, day by day, cries the seedling...
"Unfair!"
Twig by twig, year by year;
"Why do I grow out here?"

Very lonely, the seedling remains on the hill,
casting shadows dark, broad, keeping leaves very still.
Hoping that through the years, it will stop being sad,
and will once again notice that this place isn't bad.

It is there for a reason not easily seen:
for the birds and rabbits, it's a sheltering tree.
When they stop to say Hi, coming down from the sky,
they are looking for shelter from a summer day's swelter
or a comforting shoulder on the days that are colder.

Leaf by leaf, day by day, now an oak, it's grown tall.
Twig by twig, year by year; it's alright, after all.

On a very nice day, after cold driving rain,
in the grass, not too far, it saw something bizarre—
the sight so peculiar and oddly familiar—
a seedling so tiny it looked almost funny!

But the sun was hot—scorching, to the seedling's misfortune.
And the leaves were trembling, their form too much resembling
of the oak's lonely past. Stretching branches, lush, vast,
it protected the youngling that was, clearly, struggling.
In the comforting shade, it could stay unafraid.
                                              *
At the top of a hill in a land far away,
grow a seedling and oak; their leaves quietly sway.

Dear seedling, one day you will grow
but for now you're tucked into a blanket of snow
seedling, don't lose hope
because one day you'll be a grand oak
and you'll be able to touch the sky
you just need patience, seedling
you're far from passive
it takes a lot of power to sprout through the dirt

Seedling of Life
Sink your toes into the earth
Drink, like a babe upon the breast of its mother
Earth is your mother
Your shelter
Grow young seedling, Grow
Reach your long wooden arms up
Touch the sun
Feel the warmth
The world is your family

I have thrown words to the wind
Like pollen, I wished they would fall
On a fertile page and slowly grow.
Some may fall short and just be a
Moment then gone.

Those words that have blown in
The wind, and landed on paper
Nurtured from seedling, They have
Grown fruit of sentences, as the
They become ripe the words flow.

Like seedling of just  words they
Have been etched to a page, grown
To what is now seen today, what
You read now is that which was
Once just a word now a sentence
And more what once was in the
Wind now grown.

I

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
  For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
  When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
  And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
  In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
  And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
  So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
  With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
  Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
  With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,
  Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
  A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
  “That fellows got to swing.”

Dear Christ! the very prison walls
  Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
  Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
  My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what hunted thought
  Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
  With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
  And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
  By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
  Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
  The brave man with a sword!

Some **** their love when they are young,
  And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
  Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
  The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
  Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
  And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
  Yet each man does not die.

He does not die a death of shame
  On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
  Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
  Into an empty place

He does not sit with silent men
  Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
  And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
  The prison of its prey.

He does not wake at dawn to see
  Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
  The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
  With the yellow face of Doom.

He does not rise in piteous haste
  To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes
  Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
******* a watch whose little ticks
  Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not know that sickening thirst
  That sands one’s throat, before
The hangman with his gardener’s gloves
  Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
  That the throat may thirst no more.

He does not bend his head to hear
  The Burial Office read,
Nor, while the terror of his soul
  Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own coffin, as he moves
  Into the hideous shed.

He does not stare upon the air
  Through a little roof of glass;
He does not pray with lips of clay
  For his agony to pass;
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
  The kiss of Caiaphas.


II

Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,
  In a suit of shabby grey:
His cricket cap was on his head,
  And his step seemed light and gay,
But I never saw a man who looked
  So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
  With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
  Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every wandering cloud that trailed
  Its raveled fleeces by.

He did not wring his hands, as do
  Those witless men who dare
To try to rear the changeling Hope
  In the cave of black Despair:
He only looked upon the sun,
  And drank the morning air.

He did not wring his hands nor weep,
  Nor did he peek or pine,
But he drank the air as though it held
  Some healthful anodyne;
With open mouth he drank the sun
  As though it had been wine!

And I and all the souls in pain,
  Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot if we ourselves had done
  A great or little thing,
And watched with gaze of dull amaze
  The man who had to swing.

And strange it was to see him pass
  With a step so light and gay,
And strange it was to see him look
  So wistfully at the day,
And strange it was to think that he
  Had such a debt to pay.

For oak and elm have pleasant leaves
  That in the spring-time shoot:
But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
  With its adder-bitten root,
And, green or dry, a man must die
  Before it bears its fruit!

The loftiest place is that seat of grace
  For which all worldlings try:
But who would stand in hempen band
  Upon a scaffold high,
And through a murderer’s collar take
  His last look at the sky?

It is sweet to dance to violins
  When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
  Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
  To dance upon the air!

So with curious eyes and sick surmise
  We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
  Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
  His sightless soul may stray.

At last the dead man walked no more
  Amongst the Trial Men,
And I knew that he was standing up
  In the black dock’s dreadful pen,
And that never would I see his face
  In God’s sweet world again.

Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
  We had crossed each other’s way:
But we made no sign, we said no word,
  We had no word to say;
For we did not meet in the holy night,
  But in the shameful day.

A prison wall was round us both,
  Two outcast men were we:
The world had ****** us from its heart,
  And God from out His care:
And the iron gin that waits for Sin
  Had caught us in its snare.


III

In Debtors’ Yard the stones are hard,
  And the dripping wall is high,
So it was there he took the air
  Beneath the leaden sky,
And by each side a Warder walked,
  For fear the man might die.

Or else he sat with those who watched
  His anguish night and day;
Who watched him when he rose to weep,
  And when he crouched to pray;
Who watched him lest himself should rob
  Their scaffold of its prey.

The Governor was strong upon
  The Regulations Act:
The Doctor said that Death was but
  A scientific fact:
And twice a day the Chaplain called
  And left a little tract.

And twice a day he smoked his pipe,
  And drank his quart of beer:
His soul was resolute, and held
  No hiding-place for fear;
He often said that he was glad
  The hangman’s hands were near.

But why he said so strange a thing
  No Warder dared to ask:
For he to whom a watcher’s doom
  Is given as his task,
Must set a lock upon his lips,
  And make his face a mask.

Or else he might be moved, and try
  To comfort or console:
And what should Human Pity do
  Pent up in Murderers’ Hole?
What word of grace in such a place
  Could help a brother’s soul?

With slouch and swing around the ring
  We trod the Fool’s Parade!
We did not care: we knew we were
  The Devil’s Own Brigade:
And shaven head and feet of lead
  Make a merry masquerade.

We tore the tarry rope to shreds
  With blunt and bleeding nails;
We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
  And cleaned the shining rails:
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
  And clattered with the pails.

We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
  We turned the dusty drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
  And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
  Terror was lying still.

So still it lay that every day
  Crawled like a ****-clogged wave:
And we forgot the bitter lot
  That waits for fool and knave,
Till once, as we tramped in from work,
  We passed an open grave.

With yawning mouth the yellow hole
  Gaped for a living thing;
The very mud cried out for blood
  To the thirsty asphalte ring:
And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair
  Some prisoner had to swing.

Right in we went, with soul intent
  On Death and Dread and Doom:
The hangman, with his little bag,
  Went shuffling through the gloom
And each man trembled as he crept
  Into his numbered tomb.

That night the empty corridors
  Were full of forms of Fear,
And up and down the iron town
  Stole feet we could not hear,
And through the bars that hide the stars
  White faces seemed to peer.

He lay as one who lies and dreams
  In a pleasant meadow-land,
The watcher watched him as he slept,
  And could not understand
How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
  With a hangman close at hand?

But there is no sleep when men must weep
  Who never yet have wept:
So we—the fool, the fraud, the knave—
  That endless vigil kept,
And through each brain on hands of pain
  Another’s terror crept.

Alas! it is a fearful thing
  To feel another’s guilt!
For, right within, the sword of Sin
  Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
And as molten lead were the tears we shed
  For the blood we had not spilt.

The Warders with their shoes of felt
  Crept by each padlocked door,
And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
  Grey figures on the floor,
And wondered why men knelt to pray
  Who never prayed before.

All through the night we knelt and prayed,
  Mad mourners of a corpse!
The troubled plumes of midnight were
  The plumes upon a hearse:
And bitter wine upon a sponge
  Was the savior of Remorse.

The **** crew, the red **** crew,
  But never came the day:
And crooked shape of Terror crouched,
  In the corners where we lay:
And each evil sprite that walks by night
  Before us seemed to play.

They glided past, they glided fast,
  Like travelers through a mist:
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
  Of delicate turn and twist,
And with formal pace and loathsome grace
  The phantoms kept their tryst.

With mop and mow, we saw them go,
  Slim shadows hand in hand:
About, about, in ghostly rout
  They trod a saraband:
And the ****** grotesques made arabesques,
  Like the wind upon the sand!

With the pirouettes of marionettes,
  They tripped on pointed tread:
But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
  As their grisly masque they led,
And loud they sang, and long they sang,
  For they sang to wake the dead.

“Oho!” they cried, “The world is wide,
  But fettered limbs go lame!
And once, or twice, to throw the dice
  Is a gentlemanly game,
But he does not win who plays with Sin
  In the secret House of Shame.”

No things of air these antics were
  That frolicked with such glee:
To men whose lives were held in gyves,
  And whose feet might not go free,
Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
  Most terrible to see.

Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
  Some wheeled in smirking pairs:
With the mincing step of demirep
  Some sidled up the stairs:
And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
  Each helped us at our prayers.

The morning wind began to moan,
  But still the night went on:
Through its giant loom the web of gloom
  Crept till each thread was spun:
And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
  Of the Justice of the Sun.

The moaning wind went wandering round
  The weeping prison-wall:
Till like a wheel of turning-steel
  We felt the minutes crawl:
O moaning wind! what had we done
  To have such a seneschal?

At last I saw the shadowed bars
  Like a lattice wrought in lead,
Move right across the whitewashed wall
  That faced my three-plank bed,
And I knew that somewhere in the world
  God’s dreadful dawn was red.

At six o’clock we cleaned our cells,
  At seven all was still,
But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
  The prison seemed to fill,
For the Lord of Death with icy breath
  Had entered in to ****.

He did not pass in purple pomp,
  Nor ride a moon-white steed.
Three yards of cord and a sliding board
  Are all the gallows’ need:
So with rope of shame the Herald came
  To do the secret deed.

We were as men who through a fen
  Of filthy darkness *****:
We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
  Or give our anguish scope:
Something was dead in each of us,
  And what was dead was Hope.

For Man’s grim Justice goes its way,
  And will not swerve aside:
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
  It has a deadly stride:
With iron heel it slays the strong,
  The monstrous parricide!

We waited for the stroke of eight:
  Each tongue was thick with thirst:
For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
  That makes a man accursed,
And Fate will use a running noose
  For the best man and the worst.

We had no other thing to do,
  Save to wait for the sign to come:
So, like things of stone in a valley lone,
  Quiet we sat and dumb:
But each man’s heart beat thick and quick
  Like a madman on a drum!

With sudden shock the prison-clock
  Smote on the shivering air,
And from all the gaol rose up a wail
  Of impotent despair,
Like the sound that frightened marshes hear
  From a ***** in his lair.

And as one sees most fearful things
  In the crystal of a dream,
We saw the greasy hempen rope
  Hooked to the blackened beam,
And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare
  Strangled into a scream.

And all the woe that moved him so
  That he gave that bitter cry,
And the wild regrets, and the ****** sweats,
  None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
  More deaths than one must die.


IV

There is no chapel on the day
  On which they hang a man:
The Chaplain’s heart is far too sick,
  Or his face is far too wan,
Or there is that written in his eyes
  Which none should look upon.

So they kept us close till nigh on noon,
  And then they rang the bell,
And the Warders with their jingling keys
  Opened each listening cell,
And down the iron stair we tramped,
  Each from his separate Hell.

Out into God’s sweet air we went,
  But not in wonted way,
For this man’s face was white with fear,
  And that man’s face was grey,
And I never saw sad men who looked
  So wistfully at the day.

I never saw sad men who looked
  With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
  We prisoners called the sky,
And at every careless cloud that passed
  In happy freedom by.

But there were those amongst us all
  Who walked with downcast head,
And knew that, had each got his due,
  They should have died instead:
He had but killed a thing that lived
  Whilst they had killed the dead.

For he who sins a second time
  Wakes a dead soul to pain,
And draws it from its spotted shroud,
  And makes it bleed again,
And makes it bleed great gouts of blood
  And makes it bleed in vain!

Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb
  With crooked arrows starred,
Silently we went round and round
  The slippery asphalte yard;
Silently we went round and round,
  And no man spoke a word.

Silently we went round and round,
  And through each hollow mind
The memory of dreadful things
  Rushed like a dreadful wind,
And Horror stalked before each man,
  And terror crept behind.

The Warders strutted up and down,
  And kept their herd of brutes,
Their uniforms were ***** and span,
  And they wore their Sunday suits,
But we knew the work they had been at
  By the quicklime on their boots.

For where a grave had opened wide,
  There was no grave at all:
Only a stretch of mud and sand
  By the hideous prison-wall,
And a little heap of burning lime,
  That the man should have his pall.

For he has a pall, this wretched man,
  Such as few men can claim:
Deep down below a prison-yard,
  Naked for greater shame,
He lies, with fetters on each foot,
  Wrapt in a sheet of flame!

And all the while the burning lime
  Eats flesh and bone away,
It eats the brittle bone by night,
  And the soft flesh by the day,
It eats the flesh and bones by turns,
  But it eats the heart alway.

For three long years they will not sow
  Or root or seedling there:
For three long years the unblessed spot
  Will sterile be and bare,
And look upon the wondering sky
  With unreproachful stare.

They think a murderer’s heart would taint
  Each simple seed they sow.
It is not true! God’s kindly earth
  Is kindlier than men know,
And the red rose would but blow more red,
  The white rose whiter blow.

Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
  Out of his heart a white!
For who can say by what strange way,
  Christ brings his will to light,
Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
  Bloomed in the great Pope’s sight?

But neither milk-white rose nor red
  May bloom in prison air;
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
  Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
  A common man’s despair.

So never will wine-red rose or white,
  Petal by petal, fall
On that stretch of mud and sand that lies
  By the hideous prison-wall,
To tell the men who ***** the yard
  That God’s Son died for all.

Yet though the hideous prison-wall
  Still hems him round and round,
And a spirit man not walk by night
  That is with fetters bound,
And a spirit may not weep that lies
  In such unholy ground,

He is at peace—this wretched man—
  At peace, or will be soon:
There is no thing to make him mad,
  Nor does Terror walk at noon,
For the lampless Earth in which he lies
  Has neither Sun nor Moon.

They hanged him as a beast is hanged:
  They did not even toll
A reguiem that might have brought
  Rest to his startled soul,
But hurriedly they took him out,
  And hid him in a hole.

They stripped him of his canvas clothes,
  And gave him to the flies;
They mocked the swollen purple throat
  And the stark and staring eyes:
And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud
  In which their convict lies.

The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
  By his dishonored grave:
Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
  That Christ for sinners gave,
Because the man was one of those
  Whom Christ came down to save.

Yet all is well; he has but passed
  To Life’s appointed bourne:
And alien tears will fill for him
  Pity’s long-broken urn,
For his mourner will be outcast men,
  And outcasts always mourn.


V

I know not whether Laws be right,
  Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
  Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
  A year whose days are long.

But this I know, that every Law
  That men have made for Man,
Since first Man took his brother’s life,
  And the sad world began,
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
  With a most evil fan.

This too I know—and wise it were
  If each could know the same—
That every prison that men build
  Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
  How men their brothers maim.

With bars they blur the gracious moon,
  And blind the goodly sun:
And they do well to hide their Hell,
  For in it things are done
That Son of God nor son of Man
  Ever should look upon!

The vilest deeds like poison weeds
  Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
  That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
  And the Warder is Despair

For they starve the little frightened child
  Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
  And gibe the old and grey,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And none a word may say.

Each narrow cell in which we dwell
  Is foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
  Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
  In Humanity’s machine.

The brackish water that we drink
  Creeps with a loathsome slime,
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
  Is full of chalk and lime,
And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
  Wild-eyed and cries to Time.

But though lean Hunger and green Thirst
  Like asp with adder fight,
We have little care of prison fare,
  For what chills and kills outright
Is that every stone one lifts by day
  Becomes one’s heart by night.

With midnight always in one’s heart,
  And twilight in one’s cell,
We turn the crank, or tear the rope,
  Each in his separate Hell,
And the silence is more awful far
  Than the sound of a brazen bell.

And never a human voice comes near
  To speak a gentle word:
And the eye that watches through the door
  Is pitiless and hard:
And by all forgot, we rot and rot,
  With soul and body marred.

And thus we rust Life’s iron chain
  Degraded and alone:
And some men curse, and some men weep,
  And some men make no moan:
But God’s eternal Laws are kind
  And break the heart of stone.

And every human heart that breaks,
  In prison-cell or yard,
Is as that broken box that gave
  Its treasure to the Lord,
And filled the unclean *****’s house
  With the scent of costliest nard.

Ah! happy day they whose hearts can break
  And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
  And cleanse his soul from Sin?
How else but through a broken heart
  May Lord Christ enter in?

And he of the swollen purple throat.
  And the stark and staring eyes,
Waits for the holy hands that took
  The Thief to Paradise;
And a broken and a contrite heart
  The Lord will not despise.

The man in red who reads the Law
  Gave him three weeks of life,
Three little weeks in which to heal
  His soul of his soul’s strife,
And cleanse from every blot of blood
  The hand that held the knife.

And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
  The hand that held the steel:
For only blood can wipe out blood,
  And only tears can heal:
And the crimson stain that was of Cain
  Became Christ’s snow-white seal.


VI

In Reading gaol by Reading town
  There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
  Eaten by teeth of flame,
In burning winding-sheet he lies,
  And his grave has got no name.

And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
  In silence let him lie:
No need to waste the foolish tear,
  Or heave the windy sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved,
  And so he had to die.

And all men **** the thing they love,
  By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
  Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
  The brave man with a sword!

Lone seed,
nestled in the dirt.
Calling for rain to soothe
its parched skin.

Lone seedling,
finding foothold...
To brave billowing gusts
that threaten its conviction.

Lone tree,
rooted deep.
Set in its ways.
Change is but dream.

Lone fruit,
falls to the earth.
Defenseless and vulnerable.
Bearing the promise of
life and change
within feeble flesh.

Lone purpose.
To learn, embody
and pass on
the baton of possibilities
so that change...

Comes to fruition.

Red bean bun and meat bun you always share
With me when we were young
When we sat at the sidewalks and
Watched the world passed us by
Talking different things under the sun.

Red bean bun and meat bun you lovingly gave
To me when you prepared to leave town
When from seedling you you grew into a tree
Testing your wings to fly like a bird
Wanting to see the whole universe.

Red bean bun and meat bun now you shared
With me when you came back home
When my heart fluttered to welcome you
At the same time crying when you found her
Realizing that you only treat me like a lil sister.

They took my songs
They took my books
Tried to steal my dreams
To make me like them
But they missed a fragment
Barely a seedling
And left the earth
A fertile foundation
For a new imagination
Nation
I watered it and let it grow
Let it go
And now I know
It is beautiful
And beyond their corporate control

Bodies have limited shelf life.
they are not entities in their own right.
They are like a suit of clothes,
put them on--wear them for a while,
take them off--throw them away.
They are used as a vehicle for the Isness
but they are not the Isness.
The Individual Isness is a small but equal,independent,individual,nameless,
formless,genderless and non physical being formed from the Isness of the Universe.
You are the Isness.
Bodies are conscious but do not have consciousness.
Only the Isness has consciousness.
You are the Isness--and are unable to be your true nature,
because you have given control over your brain centres to the Mind
and you are defining yourself by identifying with the Mind created Conditioned Identity as yourself.
the body is a fusion of two seeds at conception- brought into seedling state in the womb.
The seedling is brought to become the mighty tree of ****** existence in the mulch of a life lived,
watered and fed according to taste or custom or commonsense
or so-called expert advice.
Like the flower and the fruit on the tree-- all bodies grow from seed--live a period of time-- wither and die.
Bodies exist as the human vehicle for all Isnesses,female or male equally,of any of the five skin colours,to travel through each lifetime
until the individual Isness they carry fulfills Isness realisation,
until the Mind dies,until the Conditioned Identity dies.
If you miss realising your true nature as the individual Isness  in this life
then  you MUST come back and try again--whoever you are.
There are NO exceptions to this rule--.
birth  life death rebirth--the system is paramount.
The Wheel is ever turning.
Until the next time around.
Bodies come and go--bodies come and go
karma chamelions as George says.
Until Isness realisation is achieved the process of
birth-life-death-rebirth goes on its merry way--lifetime after lifetime after lifetime ad infinitum.
The wheel turns and the empty bodies burn on
the funeral pyres  of a thousand Varanasis worldwide.
Sleek shining dogs seizing scraps of cooked meat,
crunching on a tasty thigh bone,
Doms laugh at their insouciance and daring.
Existence provides every possible bit of information you could need for reaching the state of existential realisation of your nature as an Isness.
Existence also provides every possible distraction you need
for avoiding reaching the state of existential realisation of your true nature as Isness.
You the Isness have to choose.
Between either self realisation or eternal mind games.
The Isness is a small but equal individual,independent,nameless,
formless,genderless and non physical Isness made from a small portion of the Isness of the Universe--incarnated lifetime after lifetime in order to realise,existentially,your nature as the  Isness--or NOT, as your choice may be.
And it is your choice.
Isness are the small portions of the Isness of the Universe-- integrating, atom for atom, into the shape of physical bodies,
like fingers in a glove or a favourite winter topcoat.
We become the Isness of the Universe,written small,  incarnated in a human body if only we can let go of the falseness of
Minds and Conditioned Identities.
If not we stay as confused humans--la luta continuata.
You,the confused Isness, are the one who exercises the choice.
Isness or Conditioned Identity?.
You cant be both--no way.
To be or not to be?.
These are the eternal questions.
What  am I?.
Why am I here?.
The answer lies inside--in existential beingness.
It is the easiest "hard" work youll ever encounter.
No one can do the work involved for you.
No one can give you a free pass.
No one can "grace" you,the Isness,into realisation of your nature..
No one can forgive you anything--except you.
No one can wipe out your accumulated Karma--good or bad--except you by living a life generatin neutral Karma.
No becoming a "budda".
No becoming an "enlightened one".
No becoming a"christ"
No becoming a priest.
No becoming a prophet.
No becoming a pope.
No becoming a lama.
No becoming a rabbi.
No becoming a"sheik"
No becoming a prosletyser of any "religion" or "god" or "goddess".
No expert.
No becoming a child of god.
No monarch.
No dictator--elected or otherwise.
No military leader.
No "mystic".
No "son or daughter of god".
No "wise one"
Nobody!!!
No one  but you,the Individual Isness can dissolve Mind and Conditioned Identity.
Only you--and you alone-the confused Isness incarnated in  the Mind and Conditioned Identity  controlled body you pass through life in--can create neutral Karma.
The internal struggle goes on until it ends.
Only you,the confused Isness,can let go of identifying with the
Conditioned Identity as the "real"self.
Grasping at the conditioned belief you are the Mind and Conditioned Identity guarantees you will not reach Isness realisation.
Letting go of the conditioned belief that you are Mind and Conditioned Identity guarantees you will realise your true nature as an Isness.
Deconditioning through reconditioning
Does the rain fall upwards?.
Does violence bring peace?.
Does the sky exist?
Does anyone "save" anyone else?.
Does it all matter you may ask?.
After all existence is totally indifferent whether
you or anyone realises their true nature as Isness or not.
Until you do realise your nature as an individual Isness--
that's when the real fun begins!!.
There are NO "gods" or "goddesses" to gift you with this state.
Never have been any "gods" or "goddesses".
Never will be any "gods" or "goddesses.
There is only the Isness of the Universe"behind it all".
Not the intellectual "creation" of "poets"--with all their middle class narcissism--and piteous weak  Conditional Love.
Trying to appear as a "deep sensitive poet"
when all that they can do is scribble strings of
meaningless associated fine sounding words.
No life .
No passion.
No truthfulness.
Just deadness and truth.
Spoken from inexperience.
Meanwhile the Isness of the Universe sleeps and snores
while the world bursts into flames around us.
And we are culpable in choosing to stay ignorant.

www.thefournobletruthsrevised.co.uk

Reckless, in a cloud of bloom
Ocean salt from seeping wounds
Eroded sands and mindless chats
Raised eyebrows, and an empty hand
My pulse, waves of emanating pain
In the troughs, is the space
You placed your absence within

Fortresses of shy encounters
Built around memories of happenstance
My cloudy speech and murmurs of nonsense
Infiltrate the speck of soil that still remains
Barren land, and you, a seedling of perseverance
Have found an impossible way
To grow
In my aching heart

Seed soaking
dark soil of days
split apart, shed the self
you've planted
touch the earth, so clinging
brush the dirt
your freedom singing

When your creator took her crayon box
That day she thought to draw you all alive,
She found a certain green to sketch your locks,
Another green to show you grow, you thrive;
A green of richest thought unlimited,
A green to match the green of your creation,
A green to go, to boldly forge ahead,
A green for lands of peaceful meditation;
  The Greene King, standing proud with all his queens,
  Jack-in-the-green, surrounded by his trees;
  A thousand other shades of other greens;
  The greenness of the deepness of the seas;
And I, I fall and marvel at the light,
A million greens, like fireworks in the night.

That day she thought to draw you all alive
She drew your outline, sketched you, and refined
And shaped your eyes, that surely saw arrive
The laughing people in the frame behind,
The humans, dogs and kittens, trailing plants,
Who fill your background; all you love are here
Around you in the middle of the dance,
And as you watch, still more of them appear
  Beyond your face within the frame advancing
  Children and relatives and loves and friends
  Holding their merry hands in merry dancing
  Extending off beyond the picture's ends;
I know your other folk would say the same:
It's such an honour dancing in your frame.

She found a certain green to sketch your locks,
A deeper green, a perfect green attaining;
And now another from her crayon-stocks;
Refreshing and repeating what's remaining:
She bleaches it and tries another shade
Then leaves it for a while and grows it out,
Returns it to the colours that she made
Begins to work again, and turns about;
  And why this careful labour to provide you
  With perfect colours captured in your hair?
  She knows your colours mirror what's inside you,
  Eternal greens within you everywhere;
And still beneath, the ever-growing you
Shall dye, and yet shall live with life anew.

Another green to show you grow, you thrive;
Out from the snow the snowdrop breaks in flower.
Who could have called this sleeping bulb alive?
Yet buried patiently it waits its hour,
Counting the snowflakes slowly settling
Their weight upon the heavy earth above;
One day its Winter changes to its Spring.
Who can predict the power of life and love?
  Hope that at last the final frost is dead.
  Faith that the Winter dies and Spring shall rise.
  Love for the life that up through blades has bled.
  Joy to a hundred children's waiting eyes;
For every hour it slept beneath the ground,
A thousand wondering eyes shall gather round.

A green of richest thought unlimited.
I try to say I love you every day:
I know I keep repeating things I've said.
Perhaps I'll try to phrase another way:
Suppose I counted all the money ever
From now until when Abel risked his neck
With my accountants, who were very clever,
And wrote it on a record-breaking cheque...
  It wasn't half your empathising, was it?
  Your thoughts are treasured more than bank accounts;
  The bank won't put your loving on deposit.
  And could they take it, given such amounts?
The jealousy of cash makes misers blind,
And who needs money when you have your mind?

A green to match the green of your creation!
She took her time in sketching out your features,
Shading you well, and, drawn with dedication,
You took the pen she gives to all her creatures
And set about some drawing of your own,
Filling the art with arc and line and shade,
Showing your work the care that you were shown,
And making them as well as you were made;
  And much as life your drawing hand was giving,
  Another life from deep within you drew:
  A life, not merely likeness of the living,
  So separate, yet such a part of you:
Who finds your baby-picture on the shelf
And smiles and finds you, showing you yourself.

A green to go, to boldly forge ahead,
Should shine on traffic lights for every person.
If you should find a colour in its stead
That stops you-- not an arrow for diversion,
To Edmundsbury, Hatfield and the North,
Or any other place that's worth the going--
But rather reds that block your going forth;
If traffic signals freeze your days from flowing,
  Your life is green and you deserve the green.
  And if you try to go about your day
  And greens are coming few and far between,
  And reds and ambers blare about your way:
If so, I pray your days to hold instead
All green, and never amber, never red.

A green for lands of peaceful meditation.
You call: Come stand upon my sacred ground,
Come sit and breathe the peace of contemplation,
Come feel the grass beneath, the lilies round,
Come sleep, come wake, and drink the quiet waters,
Come to the maytree, blackbird, waterfall;
Come know yourselves the planet's sons and daughters.
The people pass and pause, and still you call:
  It's waiting for you when you ask to try it:
  Peace (and the air) cannot be bought or sold.
  You'll never gain it if you try to buy it:
  It's not an asset crumpled fists can hold.
All that you have is nothing you can lose;
You stand on sacred ground. Remove your shoes.

The Greene King, standing proud with all his queens,
Guarding a land of oaks and aches and cold.
It's not a normal place, by any means,
This island of the oldest of the old,
Where bow the ancient oak and ash and thorn
In homage to a figure on a hill;
Deep in the hills where Wayland Smith was born
You stand, an English body, English still.
  For odes and age and air and ale have filled you,
  Made you their own and promised you belong;
  And since their homesick longing hasn't killed you,
  I think you'll be returning to their song;
Come, take your time, and sit and drink with me!
What say you to another cup of tea?

Jack-in-the-green, surrounded by his trees,
Had given birth to leafy life aplenty,
He'd introduced his firs by fours and threes,
And sowed his seedling cedars by the twenty;
The field was filled with trunks and twigs and roots,
The soil was sound and fertile, and the fall
Would fill the forest floor with growing shoots,
And none but Jack was there to watch it all
  Until you came to wander through this field,
  To walk within the ways within the wood;
  Your mind was brought to peace, your spirit healed,
  The forest given form and blessed as good;
Jack-in-the-green will wonder all his days:
your presence never ceases to a maze.

A thousand other shades of other greens:
"Leaf", "emerald", "sea", "bottle", off the cuff;
"Viridian" (uncertain what it means),
But there's so many. Names are not enough.
Yet, in another life, your maker might
Have picked you out among primeval glades
To work as keeper of the rainbow's light
And in another Eden name the shades;
  If so, the planet's poets will rejoice
  That, given life together with a name,
  The colours sing a stronger, clearer voice,
  And every hue will never seem the same:
Each of the shades looks loving back to you,
Its namer and the one who made it new.

The greenness of the deepness of the seas:
A home to fish of many a scaly nation.
Follow the shoals; the smallest one of these
Swims as a fishy summit of creation.
Yet every one's indebted to the shoal,
All subtle in their difference from the rest:
A fish of friends, a member of the whole,
A mix of traits, a taking of the best.
  So you and those of us you love so well
  Will grow along with other friends' increase,
  Required ingredients in the living-spell:
  Each person brings a necessary peace.
The level-headed people mix with mystics,
And both are living mixtures of holistics.

And I, I fall and marvel at the light,
This changing light that grows throughout the years,
Extinguished not by hardship nor by night
Nor foolishness nor sadness nor by tears.
When we were separated by the sea
I wished myself amidst your myriad days.
My wish was mirrored in your missing me;
Your maker joined our wishes, joined our ways;
  She placed our hands on one another's heart,
  And you and I began a lifelong learning
  Of one another, like a magic art
  Whose telling grows with every page's turning,
And holds our friendship as a growing bond
Till seventy years old, and still beyond.

A million greens, like fireworks in the night.**
I fear this sonnet never can be done.
So many colours burst upon my sight
I cannot tell the tale of every one.
But I can tell how vast excitement fills me
When all the flying sparkles fill the sky;
I want to tell the world how much it thrills me
To hold you close, reflected in your eye;
  I want to tell in all my earthly days
  And yet beyond, of what you mean to me;
  I want to say I love the myriad ways
  Of what you are and what you'll grow to be;
These counts combining made the building-blocks
When your creator took her crayon box.

“Love does not exist”

“Love is ****”

“Love is just a word that we make up in our heads to fill our infinite emptiness”,

Is what I say to myself. As if I could drill these beliefs into my head, subliminal messages to soothe my cracked and flaking heart.

These lungs are my own personal generator fueling my skull

Turbines working overtime

Maybe love is the only tangible idea within this existence

Maybe I am just scared

So I bury the idea under the earth, waiting for the tree roots to weave themselves throughout my love

And sprouting a small, delicate oak tree. And one day, it will grow.

And like all flowers or trees, this seed will need water

and plenty of sunshine

Check back soon to resume and consume
every tight-lipped, slack-jawed fool in the room.

See, it's all what you know
as the fires start to grow
and the future burns slow.

Keep your eyes on the ceiling,
and your antenna feelers feelin',
for when your senses stop reeling,
you will finally start believing.

Kick-back to the basics,
not too far from the basement,
and close enough to show
that **** really isn't basic.

It's another mid-west, ******,
******-up freak show.
Another evening drinking whiskey
with the seedling's peep-show.

So, it's time to relax and relapse
into acidified broken synapse.

The lights keep flickering
and the couples keep bickering:
“*****, I am not above homicidal snickering.”

I steer clear of these diversions,
and wander past the sermons,
just to chew up all the crooked talk
and spittle out inversions.

I shovel mockery to hypocrisy,
pin-***** the empty *****
whose passions lack predicates,

and in the background, I'll be complexifying my medic-kit:
ketamine, morphine, ecstasy;
marijuana, mushrooms, LSD.

Watch those ******* jitter-bug college *****
procreate while sloppy drunk,
but keep an honest eye
on the flies that will rise above –

then fall back down in existential angst, like:
“Dear God, why must I be free?
Oh, God! Why is every universal eye on me?
I'm just another acid war veteran,
sneakin' through these gutters
with pestilence and bitter sin.
When they reach the promised land
of golden clouds and holding hands,
I'll be underground with the slugs and the spider band.”

Yet here I sit, sick of sippin' poisons with illiterates.
So, let the skies fall and the buildings crash,
as you stand on the wall with a fist full of cash.

I'll be on the front lawn,
picketing for dawn,
while the night around me slowly ambles on.

A seedling drops,
Watch it grow.
See it flourish,
Observe it age.
It grows old,
Withered, unnoticed.

A seedling drops...

My mushroom was watered by your  juices
fertilised the head grew in your dampness.
the seedling grew in anticipation, would it
seed in needed spaces or would it be launched
to the gravity of its surroundings and fall cold.

Could this eclipse of growth be sustained, or
in the throws of becoming dehydrated in the
over gratification  of over consumption wither
in needed times and never reach its potential of
what was needed. But become withered in momentary
over indulgence and go limp in the field of warmth..

This once proud mushroom ever reaching new heights,
Its stalk standing once tall but now faltering and lying
motionless where once it stood tall. that warm space
waiting, wanting its seeds to flourish in this damp
place. Know all but dried up, waiting for another flourishing
head to seed its dampness where the other fell silently limp.

In the dark, windy eve shines stark an orange light
Crisp and warm, caressing the wood curves gently; no fight,
The harsh burn breathes life to the embers, now shining bright,
A veil of smoke falls gently, hazy is the night.

Now traveling up the stock, whose polish: iridescent,
Up to the paling, rugged cheeks whose glow: florescent.
In the blue moonlight, his eyes shine pleasant,
Enjoying the taste, thought, life, love; vibrant.

Sitting in a weathered chair, creaking wood, rocking back to and fro,
He sat still, thoughtful, as pristine as wax, as delicate as snow.
Taking drags in the dark, the orange relax, a seedling starting to sow,
The stem broke the soil, words forming in his mouth, questions starting to sough.

He looked up from his stupor, sharp minded, clear and concise,
A solution to his problem, no matter its cause, had broken the ice.
Now he stood tall, elated, anxious, worried his words would suffice,
Then he sat back down, rewarded, confident his ideas would entice.

When I was thirteen, I had a running coach.
He was short, lean, and muscular.
An Italian man
with a whistle hanging around his neck,
farmer's tan, and below his black widow's peak
sat silver aviators, propped upon his shiny beak.
I ran miles and miles a day, but,
no matter how much I'd run
he never followed. He always trusted me to
stride my roads and lift my knees high
during the kick at the end of the races
against myself.

"If you want to run
you gotta drop that baggage," he'd laugh
between sips from his water bottle
as he towered over little me,
panting and red. We both stood
tall under the blazing sun.
I couldn't comprehend exactly what he meant,
I mean, I told him,
"I have ultra-light, top-of-the-line shoes,
compression shorts and athletic toes,
a hairless chest for maximum speed,
sweat running rivers down my spine,
legs that never exhaust, and,
above all, Coach,
a spirit that can move mountains." His response,
silence and a smirk.
Who was he to teach me about running?

"You're weighing yourself down boy,
you gotta drop that baggage."
It was his motto for me
every time my time would increase,
because, you see, when running,
increase is bad. Except for hills.
I can still hear his voice in my head,
"Uphill, increase exertion."
He never ran with me, he just told me to go.
He showed me the route and I did as expected,
six days a week, sometimes three miles, sometimes ten,
day after day, again and again,
shoulders hunched and me out of breath,
"runners high," they called it.

I hated running, I hated my coach,
I didn't understand why
anyone would want run to anywhere.
Not now. Now, I love it.
It has become my hobby, a specialty
for when one grows up,
your body is built for it, and your mind
has been ready to run since junior high.
It starts as a seedling, when you're barely able to walk,
and by the time your cardiovascular system
has been assaulted by packs of tobacco
and rolled marijuana, it blooms green.
That's when you realize:
Running is easy.

And coaching?
Don't even get me started on how easy that is.

The mystery of Life, the mystery
Of Death, I see
Darkly as in a glass;
Their shadows pass,
And talk with me.

As the flush of a Morning Sky,
As a Morning Sky colorless--
Each yields its measure of light
To a wet world or a dry;
Each fares through day to night
With equal pace,
And then each one
Is done.

As the Sun with glory and grace
In his face,
Benignantly hot,
Graciously radiant and keen,
Ready to rise and to run,--
Not without spot,
Not even the Sun.

As the Moon
On the wax, on the wane,
With night for her noon;
Vanishing soon,
To appear again.

As Roses that droop
Half warm, half chill, in the languid May,
And breathe out a scent
Sweet and faint;
Till the wind gives one swoop
To scatter their beauty away.

As Lilies a multitude,
One dipping, one rising, one sinking,
On rippling waters, clear blue
And pure for their drinking;
One new dead, and one opened anew,
And all good.

As a cankered pale Flower,
With death for a dower,
Each hour of its life half dead;
With death for a crown
Weighing down
Its head.

As an Eagle, half strength and half grace,
Most potent to face
Unwinking the splendor of light;
Harrying the East and the West,
Soaring aloft from our sight;
Yet one day or one night dropped to rest,
On the low common earth
Of his birth.

As a Dove,
Not alone,
In a world of her own
Full of fluttering soft noises
And tender sweet voices
Of love.

As a Mouse
Keeping house
In the fork of a tree,
With nuts in a crevice,
And an acorn or two;
What cares he
For blossoming boughs,
Or the song-singing bevies
Of birds in their glee,
Scarlet, or golden, or blue?

As a Mole grubbing underground;
When it comes to the light
It grubs its way back again,
Feeling no bias of fur
To hamper it in its stir,
Scant of pleasure and pain,
Sinking itself out of sight
Without sound.

As Waters that drop and drop,
Weariness without end,
That drop and never stop,
Wear that nothing can mend,
Till one day they drop--
Stop--
And there's an end,
And matters mend.

As Trees, beneath whose skin
We mark not the sap begin
To swell and rise,
Till the whole bursts out in green:
We mark the falling leaves
When the wide world grieves
And sighs.

As a Forest on fire,
Where maddened creatures desire
Wet mud or wings
Beyond all those things
Which could assuage desire
On this side the flaming fire.

As Wind with a sob and sigh
To which there comes no reply
But a rustle and shiver
From rushes of the river;
As Wind with a desolate moan,
Moaning on alone.

As a Desert all sand,
Blank, neither water nor land
For solace, or dwelling, or culture,
Where the storms and the wild creatures howl;
Given over to lion and vulture,
To ostrich, and jackal, and owl:
Yet somewhere an oasis lies;
There waters arise
To nourish one seedling of balm,
Perhaps, or one palm.

As the Sea,
Murmuring, shifting, swaying;
One time sunnily playing,
One time wrecking and slaying;
In whichever mood it be,
Worst or best,
Never at rest.

As still Waters and deep,
As shallow Waters that brawl,
As rapid Waters that leap
To their fall.

As Music, as Color, as Shape,
Keys of rapture and pain
Turning in vain
In a lock which turns not again,
While breaths and moments escape.

As Spring, all bloom and desire;
As Summer, all gift and fire;
As Autumn, a dying glow;
As Winter, with nought to show:

Winter which lays its dead all out of sight,
All clothed in white,
All waiting for the long-awaited light.

As the sky does its thing and pours down upon me;
I feel it wash away the pain, with hope of light to see.
The clouds will soon break and the sun will soon shine;
With just enough time to feed my new life.
Like a seed within the ground, I lie and wait for that chance;
To put down some roots and speak of only one I romance.
Like a flower I'll rise, to breathe this new life;
When you look upon the new me, you too shall see.
The laughter you'll hear,
With whom I hold dear;
The smiles you'll see,
and how grand life can be.
All bundled up;
In the new me...

We have with us a tree
We've planted and will grow
We've sat under it for years
Yet it's still awfully low.
One day it will bear fruit
That will call us dad and mom
And together we'll share the shade
From a tree that once sat in our palm.

============================================================
Try to do today something, which you have never done before
May be a mischievous act of nosy, posy or cozy, less or more

Remember a bud has a lot of pain in expanding to be a flower
But that's the real energy she inherited from the seedling hour

Written by
~~~Jawahar Gupta~~~

W.H.O has poisoned the vaccine
against fertility of African girl
African boy mother and father
it his now hovering around
the third world geographies
using its satellite mouths and arms,
ringing alarms over the coming tetanus
only to trap the ignorant one
into its infernal of injections
for nothing but permanent sterility,

WHO has no sympathy
for the folks in the poor world,
Nicaragua, Mexico and Kenya
being already depopulated
by ills in history
it still goes ahead
to inject sterility
into their bodies
while pretending
to be in war on tetanus,

wars, slavery and deliberate castration
of the captured slaves
for fitness to royal gladiator
has already made Latin America
and her sister Africa
to suffer fate of the times
in the curse of underpopulation
then still WHO is insidious
in her racist moves
to depopulate the poor world
through her imperial arsenals
in the name of vaccinations
against imagined tetanus
is a sly ploy in single,

W.H.O is sterilizing daughters
of Africa and the poor world
in the age width of 15 to 50
a sure bracket for fecundity
for no other reason
but global Afro-phobia
or universal racism,
or who knows the whole deal
other than the orchestrator
of the anti-human orchestra,

Ebola is already foot loose
on its deadly mission
to wipe out the Negroes
as the imperial powers that be
are armed to the teeth
to confine it in Africa
the way they have already done
to confine cancer and impish ***
in poor Africa,

W.H.O leave Africa alone
to sire and sire,
to fill their land
for a half of Africa
is under dearth of emptiness,
five million square miles of Mauritania
has less than ten million people
a thousand square miles of Turkana
has a hundred thousand turkanas,
Sahara desert is sparsely populated
Namibia and Botswana are cursed
with the spell of humanilessness,

the ***** has no other work
but to plant the human seed
the womb has no other work
but receive the human seed
while the ******
has a royal duty
to germinate the human seed
and these are Godly duties
as the breast of a woman
feeds the seedling
at no cost,

W.H.O leave us alone
to be lame and crippled
late us be wounded
with gangrenous wounds
Like the ****** ulcers
that opportune on ***,
for Tetanus you are fearing
is not terrible as ***,
we better have wounds
and children
other than being barren
in danger of foreign reign,

W.H.O you are in arms
with your fellow bigots
to legalize and empower
Homosexuality in Africa
this being a strategy enough
to jab the ribs of African humanity
a deadly sucker punch
off the right pedastle
of tyranny of numbers,

W.H.O have you ever seen
an African burial of the barren?
listen I tell you, I am aware
you know not,
burying of the barren and the sterile
is the most black ritual
most pale in the world,

give birth Africa! give birth
give birth to twins
in the prime of your childhood
before you go to cities
give birth, and give birth,
children and only children
are the glory of our poverty,
children pulled China out of poverty
they are pulling India out of poverty
as France is stranded on which way out
as it gambles and gambols in stupidity
with free money for the second child,

W.H.O! I know you are foolish as a stone
but I will leave you with pearls of wisdom
from the Bukusu people of Kenya,
that; even if you are foolish
Foolish and stubborn like a stone
but I am as hungry as a hyena
i am sure you have heard.

Au(Or)al Tune
When (O)ppo(u)rtun(e)ity knocks –
            Ah, pour that tune into me
               n(O)t
just write or speak
            but
                        /zIg:zAg/
            gut--
                        --teral mut--
            --ter yarns
                        With
Mouth-churn--
--ing-beat-lick--          
                        --ings.


Half-grown seedling ([her]bal:e(X)ssen(10)ces)
                                    into sm(O)ke
adolescent (O)re worn from being p(o)(o)r—
                      it was nE(X)CESSary for:
battles
birds
beats
b(O)(O)ks
bottles
bucks
b(O)nes
boys
bei­ng(bad)


sm(O)ke-rings w(ear)y with surr(end)er      
      stripped
            v(O)wel
                    for
                       v(O)wel
thr(OU)gh the yawn: (O)nly
            “(O)h.”

             (O)h
              … foll(O)ws

                        the
You’re w(or)th-knowing-ONLY-(O)nce
            type of l(i)ke.
VERSE/VERSUS: the
You’re-w(or)th-knowing-AT:LEAST-(O)nce
            type of l(i)ke
VERSE/VERSUS:
                        for (u)s

it’s the worst type of verse
                        when it’s
            them:VERSUS:us
                     (verses)

likewise -- (O)r worse --
it should really be about//
      a bad in (u)s: Y(O)U:ME


(O)h after a
                        kn(O)ck
(O)h after a
                        t(u)ne:://
(end)-verse
for worse – it’s an
(end)-versus-us
                        type of verse.


(O)ppo(u)rtun(e)ity
            pouring
            ringing e(X)cesses
like
                     ear-worms to
                     hear words to
                     heat hearts.

Ah::rest that mouth-verse onto me.
            (restful//fluster)
Ah::rest that mouth
            (silent//listen)
soulless gall(O)w r(u)ng
lipless v(O)wel sl(u)ng
            like
ARTS::between::STARS
            then
VOICES RANT ON::into::CONVERSATION
            then
PAYMENT RECEIVED::yet::EVERY CENT       PAID ME

worst-verse:
           Y(O)u//like hanging
                        your dipTH(O)NGS
on (O)pportun(e)ity’s d(O)(O)r
            like
                        sm(O)ke-rings
            like
                        being(bad)
            like
                        Y(O)U:ME
            like
                        (O)h. n(O).

(end)-verse:
worst-verse:
            L(I)ttle.Kn(O)wn.V(O)wel::
            n(O)(O)se big for (u)s

            ALL.

In memoriam
C. T. W.
Sometime trooper of the Royal Horse Guards
obiit H.M. prison, Reading, Berkshire
July 7, 1896

I

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
‘That fellow’s got to swing.’

Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some **** their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty space.

He does not sit with silent men
Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
The prison of its prey.

He does not wake at dawn to see
Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
With the yellow face of Doom.

He does not rise in piteous haste
To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats,
and notes
Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
******* a watch whose little ticks
Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one’s throat, before
The hangman with his gardener’s gloves
Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may thirst no more.

He does not bend his head to hear
The Burial Office read,
Nor, while the terror of his soul
Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own coffin, as he moves
Into the hideous shed.

He does not stare upon the air
Through a little roof of glass:
He does not pray with lips of clay
For his agony to pass;
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
The kiss of Caiaphas.

II

Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,
In the suit of shabby grey:
His cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay,
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every wandering cloud that trailed
Its ravelled fleeces by.

He did not wring his hands, as do
Those witless men who dare
To try to rear the changeling Hope
In the cave of black Despair:
He only looked upon the sun,
And drank the morning air.

He did not wring his hands nor weep,
Nor did he peek or pine,
But he drank the air as though it held
Some healthful anodyne;
With open mouth he drank the sun
As though it had been wine!

And I and all the souls in pain,
Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot if we ourselves had done
A great or little thing,
And watched with gaze of dull amaze
The man who had to swing.

And strange it was to see him pass
With a step so light and gay,
And strange it was to see him look
So wistfully at the day,
And strange it was to think that he
Had such a debt to pay.

For oak and elm have pleasant leaves
That in the springtime shoot:
But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
With its adder-bitten root,
And, green or dry, a man must die
Before it bears its fruit!

The loftiest place is that seat of grace
For which all worldlings try:
But who would stand in hempen band
Upon a scaffold high,
And through a murderer’s collar take
His last look at the sky?

It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!

So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.

At last the dead man walked no more
Amongst the Trial Men,
And I knew that he was standing up
In the black dock’s dreadful pen,
And that never would I see his face
In God’s sweet world again.

Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
We had crossed each other’s way:
But we made no sign, we said no word,
We had no word to say;
For we did not meet in the holy night,
But in the shameful day.

A prison wall was round us both,
Two outcast men we were:
The world had ****** us from its heart,
And God from out His care:
And the iron gin that waits for Sin
Had caught us in its snare.

III

In Debtors’ Yard the stones are hard,
And the dripping wall is high,
So it was there he took the air
Beneath the leaden sky,
And by each side a Warder walked,
For fear the man might die.

Or else he sat with those who watched
His anguish night and day;
Who watched him when he rose to weep,
And when he crouched to pray;
Who watched him lest himself should rob
Their scaffold of its prey.

The Governor was strong upon
The Regulations Act:
The Doctor said that Death was but
A scientific fact:
And twice a day the Chaplain called,
And left a little tract.

And twice a day he smoked his pipe,
And drank his quart of beer:
His soul was resolute, and held
No hiding-place for fear;
He often said that he was glad
The hangman’s hands were near.

But why he said so strange a thing
No Warder dared to ask:
For he to whom a watcher’s doom
Is given as his task,
Must set a lock upon his lips,
And make his face a mask.

Or else he might be moved, and try
To comfort or console:
And what should Human Pity do
Pent up in Murderers’ Hole?
What word of grace in such a place
Could help a brother’s soul?

With slouch and swing around the ring
We trod the Fools’ Parade!
We did not care:  we knew we were
The Devil’s Own Brigade:
And shaven head and feet of lead
Make a merry masquerade.

We tore the tarry rope to shreds
With blunt and bleeding nails;
We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
And cleaned the shining rails:
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
And clattered with the pails.

We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still.

So still it lay that every day
Crawled like a ****-clogged wave:
And we forgot the bitter lot
That waits for fool and knave,
Till once, as we tramped in from work,
We passed an open grave.

With yawning mouth the yellow hole
Gaped for a living thing;
The very mud cried out for blood
To the thirsty asphalte ring:
And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair
Some prisoner had to swing.

Right in we went, with soul intent
On Death and Dread and Doom:
The hangman, with his little bag,
Went shuffling through the gloom:
And each man trembled as he crept
Into his numbered tomb.

That night the empty corridors
Were full of forms of Fear,
And up and down the iron town
Stole feet we could not hear,
And through the bars that hide the stars
White faces seemed to peer.

He lay as one who lies and dreams
In a pleasant meadow-land,
The watchers watched him as he slept,
And could not understand
How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
With a hangman close at hand.

But there is no sleep when men must weep
Who never yet have wept:
So we—the fool, the fraud, the knave—
That endless vigil kept,
And through each brain on hands of pain
Another’s terror crept.

Alas! it is a fearful thing
To feel another’s guilt!
For, right within, the sword of Sin
Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
And as molten lead were the tears we shed
For the blood we had not spilt.

The Warders with their shoes of felt
Crept by each padlocked door,
And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
Grey figures on the floor,
And wondered why men knelt to pray
Who never prayed before.

All through the night we knelt and prayed,
Mad mourners of a corse!
The troubled plumes of midnight were
The plumes upon a hearse:
And bitter wine upon a sponge
Was the savour of Remorse.

The grey **** crew, the red **** crew,
But never came the day:
And crooked shapes of Terror crouched,
In the corners where we lay:
And each evil sprite that walks by night
Before us seemed to play.

They glided past, they glided fast,
Like travellers through a mist:
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
Of delicate turn and twist,
And with formal pace and loathsome grace
The phantoms kept their tryst.

With mop and mow, we saw them go,
Slim shadows hand in hand:
About, about, in ghostly rout
They trod a saraband:
And the ****** grotesques made arabesques,
Like the wind upon the sand!

With the pirouettes of marionettes,
They tripped on pointed tread:
But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
As their grisly masque they led,
And loud they sang, and long they sang,
For they sang to wake the dead.

‘Oho!’ they cried, ‘The world is wide,
But fettered limbs go lame!
And once, or twice, to throw the dice
Is a gentlemanly game,
But he does not win who plays with Sin
In the secret House of Shame.’

No things of air these antics were,
That frolicked with such glee:
To men whose lives were held in gyves,
And whose feet might not go free,
Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
Most terrible to see.

Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
Some wheeled in smirking pairs;
With the mincing step of a demirep
Some sidled up the stairs:
And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
Each helped us at our prayers.

The morning wind began to moan,
But still the night went on:
Through its giant loom the web of gloom
Crept till each thread was spun:
And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
Of the Justice of the Sun.

The moaning wind went wandering round
The weeping prison-wall:
Till like a wheel of turning steel
We felt the minutes crawl:
O moaning wind! what had we done
To have such a seneschal?

At last I saw the shadowed bars,
Like a lattice wrought in lead,
Move right across the whitewashed wall
That faced my three-plank bed,
And I knew that somewhere in the world
God’s dreadful dawn was red.

At six o’clock we cleaned our cells,
At seven all was still,
But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
The prison seemed to fill,
For the Lord of Death with icy breath
Had entered in to ****.

He did not pass in purple pomp,
Nor ride a moon-white steed.
Three yards of cord and a sliding board
Are all the gallows’ need:
So with rope of shame the Herald came
To do the secret deed.

We were as men who through a fen
Of filthy darkness *****:
We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
Or to give our anguish scope:
Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.

For Man’s grim Justice goes its way,
And will not swerve aside:
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
It has a deadly stride:
With iron heel it slays the strong,
The monstrous parricide!

We waited for the stroke of eight:
Each tongue was thick with thirst:
For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
That makes a man accursed,
And Fate will use a running noose
For the best man and the worst.

We had no other thing to do,
Save to wait for the sign to come:
So, like things of stone in a valley lone,
Quiet we sat and dumb:
But each man’s heart beat thick and quick,
Like a madman on a drum!

With sudden shock the prison-clock
Smote on the shivering air,
And from all the gaol rose up a wail
Of impotent despair,
Like the sound that frightened marshes hear
From some ***** in his lair.

And as one sees most fearful things
In the crystal of a dream,
We saw the greasy hempen rope
Hooked to the blackened beam,
And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare
Strangled into a scream.

And all the woe that moved him so
That he gave that bitter cry,
And the wild regrets, and the ****** sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.

IV

There is no chapel on the day
On which they hang a man:
The Chaplain’s heart is far too sick,
Or his face is far too wan,
Or there is that written in his eyes
Which none should look upon.

So they kept us close till nigh on noon,
And then they rang the bell,
And the Warders with their jingling keys
Opened each listening cell,
And down the iron stair we tramped,
Each from his separate Hell.

Out into God’s sweet air we went,
But not in wonted way,
For this man’s face was white with fear,
And that man’s face was grey,
And I never saw sad men who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw sad men who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
We prisoners called the sky,
And at every careless cloud that passed
In happy freedom by.

But there were those amongst us all
Who walked with downcast head,
And knew that, had each got his due,
They should have died instead:
He had but killed a thing that lived,
Whilst they had killed the dead.

For he who sins a second time
Wakes a dead soul to pain,
And draws it from its spotted shroud,
And makes it bleed again,
And makes it bleed great gouts of blood,
And makes it bleed in vain!

Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb
With crooked arrows starred,
Silently we went round and round
The slippery asphalte yard;
Silently we went round and round,
And no man spoke a word.

Silently we went round and round,
And through each hollow mind
The Memory of dreadful things
Rushed like a dreadful wind,
And Horror stalked before each man,
And Terror crept behind.

The Warders strutted up and down,
And kept their herd of brutes,
Their uniforms were ***** and span,
And they wore their Sunday suits,
But we knew the work they had been at,
By the quicklime on their boots.

For where a grave had opened wide,
There was no grave at all:
Only a stretch of mud and sand
By the hideous prison-wall,
And a little heap of burning lime,
That the man should have his pall.

For he has a pall, this wretched man,
Such as few men can claim:
Deep down below a prison-yard,
Naked for greater shame,
He lies, with fetters on each foot,
Wrapt in a sheet of flame!

And all the while the burning lime
Eats flesh and bone away,
It eats the brittle bone by night,
And the soft flesh by day,
It eats the flesh and bone by turns,
But it eats the heart alway.

For three long years they will not sow
Or root or seedling there:
For three long years the unblessed spot
Will sterile be and bare,
And look upon the wondering sky
With unreproachful stare.

They think a murderer’s heart would taint
Each simple seed they sow.
It is not true!  God’s kindly earth
Is kindlier than men know,
And the red rose would but blow more red,
The white rose whiter blow.

Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
Out of his heart a white!
For who can say by what strange way,
Christ brings His will to light,
Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
Bloomed in the great Pope’s sight?

But neither milk-white rose nor red
May bloom in prison-air;
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
A common man’s despair.

So never will wine-red rose or white,
Petal by petal, fall
On that stretch of mud and sand that lies
By the hideous prison-wall,
To tell the men who ***** the yard
That God’s Son died for all.

Yet though the hideous prison-wall
Still hems him round and round,
And a spirit may not walk by night
That is with fetters bound,
And a spirit may but weep that lies
In such unholy ground,

He is at peace—this wretched man—
At peace, or will be soon:
There is no thing to m

El oro, cuando lo golpea, brilla.


I want to stand at 3,082 meters
On the overlook above Machu Picchu — close
Enough to the edge so my timid toes
Flirt with wild columbine and teeter

On white granite stones laid centuries ago.
Speak to me the way the Andes
Breathe cumulus clouds phthalo blue. Seek
Answers in the form of temples. Slow

Down time in the Room with Three Windows —
Hanan-Pacha: bless my fears with conviction.
Kay-Pacha: reject this earth’s mundane affliction.
Ukju-Pacha: watch my seedling-soul as it grows.

Move with me in cyclical certainty from ruin
To reverence, beyond what words can measure —
Even the old Peruvian proverb for treasure.
Our trials make us mountains among humans.

I am a plant.
I am a thistle.
                   Cirsium arvense.
                           Creeping thistle.
When you first see me I am a beautiful, colourful flower. But if you come closer, you will notice two things.
1. I can ***** you. My needles are few and nearly invisible, but very sharp.
2. I am not ONE flower. I am a cluster of a hundred tiny flowers.
            I am possibility.


My opportunities were not the best when I was a seedling.
                The ground was dry and the sun burning.
However, as the forest around me, the sunlight that hit me directly lessened. The rain made the ground more fertile.

The ground is still too dry. I need more moisture to live. It is difficult to see the sun at all through the dense trees.  I wish I could at least see a little bit of the sun.

I am a plant.
I am a thistle.

Be patient.
     His heart is guarded and he has built walls around himself to keep others out. He deflects with humor and light words, he deflects by always being “okay”, he deflects by comically dunking on you—but one day his dams will break and his walls will crumble. You need to be patient for the day that this will happen. You need to be patient for the day that he will truly let you in, let you peek at his raw emotions, let you marvel at his strengths and weaknesses. Maybe it will not happen all at once, maybe it will happen as slowly as a river carves a canyon out of rock. You must be patient with him.

Be kind.
     He needs kindness like we all need air to breathe. He might not always think so, but he needs kind words, encouraging messages, thoughtful gestures. He needs kindness, the world hasn’t shown him enough of it.

Be compassionate.
     He pretends he doesn’t need these kind, gentle touches and kind, gentle words but he does. He is a desert parched for soft rainfall—give it to him. Be compassionate when he opens up about his mental health, his deepest fears, his family, and those who he loves. He is a man who loves deeply, and you must love deeply too. He is a man who cares deeply, and you must care deeply too.

Be understanding.
     He carries a lot of pain and a lot of tragedy—he has been dealt bad hand after bad hand. But he is trying. He is growing. He is making progress. Be understanding of his needs and his journey, be understanding of him.

Be resilient.
     He will try to shut down his feelings and shut out the world—it’s his tried and true way of survival. Don’t leave him just because he needs to do a hard reset on his emotions. Don’t leave him just because he seems like he’s okay. Don’t leave him just because he’s quiet when it rains. Don’t leave him just because he tries to push you away in his silence. Be resilient and never ending in your reassurance of him. Remind him quietly, or loudly, that he is yours and you’re not leaving.

Be honest.
     You must continually be honest because he’s been lied to, too many times. You must be honest and forceful whenever he refuses to accept compliments, because his truth about himself is poisoned by the pain he’s carried around in his lifetime. You must be honest with what you’re feeling, he just wants to help you and he cannot read your mind. You must be honest in letting him in. You must trust him and be honest in return.

Be yourself.
     He has no tolerance for fake smiles, fake feelings, or fake people. He has no need or want for mistruths, half-spun lies, or false claims. He needs authenticity. He needs someone who is genuine. He needs someone who said what they said and did what they did...maybe someone with the ability to know if they were wrong but not lie about their missteps. He needs someone who will show him all of their highs and lows, someone who will be unafraid of who they are, someone who will proudly be who they are instead of who they think he wants.

Be strong.
     He has been strong for everyone else for far too long. He needs someone to lean on, someone to support his aching arms, someone strong enough to share the weight he carries. He needs someone that will allow him to feel as deeply as he needs to, to be as weak as he needs to be. Be strong and be bold—for he is strong and bold, and needs the same to thrive.

Be hungry.
     He has a hunger for life, for laughter, for enjoyment, for smiling, for telling stories, for eating at his favorite Mexican places, for playing his favorite games. He has a bottomless hunger for affection, for great hamburgers, for passion, for art, for beautiful words, for learning new things, for dogs & cats, for white chocolate mochas, for jokes. You must be hungry enough to keep up with his appetite.

Be protective.
     He has been hurt too many times and he needs shelter from the world. He still cares so readily, so openly, and still gets hurt time and time again. Be protective of his sweetness, his softness, of his gentle moments. Be protective of his weaknesses, his shortcomings, of his darkest moments. Keep them safe, hold them close to you and protect them. Keep him safe, hold him close to you and protect him.

Be ready. Of course be prepared, but also:
   Be ready to laugh. He is the funniest man I know. He uses humor to show those around him that he cares. He uses humor to show those around him that he’s okay. He wields humor like a knight wields a sword to protect himself and others. Be ready to laugh, but be ready to see through his humor.      
     Be ready to adventure. He needs adventure. He needs little adventures throughout the days and months in trying new things and going new places. He needs big adventures to draw him out of his comfort zone, to take him to new cuisines and maybe new countries.
     Be ready to love. You will fall in love with him and his ocher eyes and calloused hands and strong shoulders. You need to be ready, because whether that love happens all at once like summer storm-clouds pour rain on cornfields or whether it grows slowly from a seedling to a honeysuckle vine twining through your heart and squeezing it, you will fall in love with him and you must be ready.
     Be ready to wake up early. He is a morning person and he wants someone to fix him/help him fix/help him pick breakfast. He is a morning person that wants to roll around in the sheets and play with your hair and skim his hand up and down your arm while you’re half awake. He is a morning person who wants to listen to music to start his day even though he almost never sings in the shower. He is a morning person by necessity who has come to love it by nature; try to get up and see sunrises with him, try to get up and share the breakfast table with him, try to get up and see him first thing in the morning with sleep in the corner of his eyes and a deep rumble in his chest.
     Be ready to listen. He has so many stories in his mind, in his eyes, and on his tongue that need to be told. From the stories of his day, the jokes of his coworkers, the songs he loves, the recipes he watches, the feelings he shares, the games he loves, right down to the things he doesn’t say aloud...he needs someone ready to listen.

Be steadfast.
     He needs commitment. He needs a white picket fence and a dog and two or three children. He needs someone to always hold his hand and stand by his side. He needs someone unafraid of his darkness. He needs someone steadfast, brave, loyal, etc. He needs someone to call his home. He needs someone who will look a storm in the eye, adjust her sails, and drop her anchors where she stands.

Be good.
     Actually, be better than good. Be better than great. He only deserves the best this world has to offer. Too often he is Atlas carrying his pain, others expectations, his past, his deep desires, and the world on his shoulders. He deserves the best to stand beside him and remind him he doesn’t have to be alone. He deserves the best of women to hold him through his lows and soar with him on his highs. Be yourself, but be the best version you can be. Because he deserves only the best this world can give him.

Sometimes I hunger for pain -
it's better than feeling
          e m p t y.
Floating away while desperately
trying to cling onto what's left.

Air slips through my fingers
and it smells of you
-- the musk of your past,
because I'm not ready to
leave you behind.

Yet you're soaring away
-- wings beating steadily.
And soon you'll be a
speck in the sky.

I'm forever grounded
-- you planted me,
never bothered to water me
and left me here to wither
                                                    
                      *-lf-

At first I thought it was nothing
For you to plant that small seedling
Not knowing what it was
Waiting for it to grow
I suddenly felt
This great urge to know

I picked up a rose and searched for you
Place after place, day after day
The rose starts to shrivel and wither

It seems like the seedling you've sowed
Has sprouted to something yet unknown
To my surprise you've planted a heart
But you never cared for it
You left it alone
As it also withered