I sew therefore I am. This is what women do she thought, even with the television on, muttering and flickering in the corner. But its turning on was but a reflex action to being alone when she came down stairs after reading to her child, and the sitting room empty of his presence. Only the cats occupied her chair where she now sat and sewed.

For once her sewing pile had his nightshirt, a tear at the bottom, a missing button. It was old, well-worn, of a light blue stripe. That was what he wore in bed, and, as he invariably read to her each night, she would slip her hand inside the shirt, across his stomach to a place she had discovered at the top of his pelvis that seemed to be there for her hand to rest. One night she had felt the tear and thought, I must mend this.

She knew something of the feminist canon: Rozsika Parker's Subversive Stitch lay browsed but unread on her bookshelf. The impact of the book was enough: that the relationship between women’s lives and embroidery had brought sewing out from the private world of female domesticity into the fine arts and created a breakthrough in art history and criticism. She remembered writing that somewhere in a student essay. But mending clothes was hardly fine art. And then she remembered Sashiko, the ‘little stabs’, that functional stitching of clothes in Japan.

They had met at the station for a 30-mile train journey to a nearby city. It was a blue-cold December day and they had felt warmed by seeing from the train window a covering of snow on the ploughed fields. She had worn her grey coat with the green lining and an indigo blue-pattern scarf, a swinging denim skirt and orange-patterned top. Tights and boots. He: she had forgotten. Funny that, remembering what she had worn, but for the man she was beginning to feel so hopelessly in love with, and by the end of that day, hold in her heart, seemingly, for evermore, she could not remember. His old brown jacket perhaps . . . No, she couldn’t be certain.

He had loved the exhibition. It was an unencountered world, though he had experienced Japan, but not, as he said (at length), the rural fastness of an offshore island where women were loggers and men were firemen. It was the simplicity of the stitch that captured his attention, the running white-cotton stitch on the blue indigo workware, occasionally a red thread on a decorative piece – a fireman’s tunic. This was stitching about mending, reinforcing a worn area by stitching on a new patch, and in doing so novel patterns evolved, so novel that this traditional stitch became an inspiration for Reiko Sudo, Hideko Takahshi, and the cutting edge textile designers of 20C Japan. It was reuse that made sense.

He had loved the names of the stitches: passes in the mountain, fishing nets, the interlaced circles of two birds in flight, woven bamboo, the seven treasures of Buddha.  She remembered the proximity of him, touching his arm to show, and sometimes just to touch his arm – yes, he was wearing that old brown coat. It was before they were lovers, but she was sure then they were in love, and it seemed impossible and quite wrong to be in this large gallery, flowing too and fro, apart then together, apart then together. She thought: he knows how I want to be when looking at such things; I need space. And she supposed he needed space too because the moment they entered the gallery he left her alone. But that coming together was, and remained ever after, a warm thing, and she remembered that day being a little aroused by it being so.

Later, they had walked a short way from the gallery to a tiny cottage-like bookshop he knew, a bookshop full of impossibly large books on art and architecture. He had something to find: The Crystal Chain Letters – architectural fantasies Bruno Taut and his circle by Ian Boyd Whyte. There had been her favourite  Mark Hearld cards and his collaged pictures in the window. She went upstairs and knelt on the wooden floor to take out the books on gardens on the lowest shelves. The winter sun had poured through a nearby window, warming her face till it glowed. But she was already glowing inside. And he came and knelt behind her. He rested his head on her shoulder and she had turned and put her arms around him. They had kissed, a delicate, exploratory, yet to be lovers kiss that had made her feel weaker than she already felt. She knew she would remember that moment, and she had, here on her chair years later, now in a different sitting room from the one she had returned to that evening without him, returning to her husband and children. And she had missed him beyond any measure and written to him the next day, a letter written in her head before she had slept, and then the following morning, with the children at school, she had lain on her bed and calmly touched herself to remember his kiss, their kiss.

We are all so very fragile.
Our sun kissed porcelain faces
are freckled with Achilles heel fault lines and chipped paint.
Shining through to our nervous nervous system and our tendency to over think things.
We hide so much inside of us.
Behind dance less masquerades
Our bodies held together only by cages of ivory bones
cages that cradle the thin winged heart beats of our chest
nervous moths stumbling around inside
knocking books off of shelves and
eating the sweaters that we use to keep our hearts from freezing over.

The autumn wind is cold like sad glaciers
and it's easy to break down at times like these.
Our bones ache and shriek like boiling tea kettles.
Making it hard not to shatter.

We are all so fragile.
Burnt out light bulb fragile.
Frozen lake fragile.
Defibrillated heartbeat fragile.
We are broken branch fragile
chronic alcoholics sobriety fragile.
The middles school girls reaction to the word “fat” fragile
We are the kind of fragile that set off big bangs.
We are, paranoid breakable.
And its got to the point where
we have begun taping up our light leak vulnerabilities
with perceptions of perfection and thoughts of rejection
spending our time in dark rooms as our minds just keep reeling
and trying to shut off feelings and unwind
but we have been over exposed to such ****.
To slides and slides of negative negatives

we used to burst apart with so much light.

but the sun isn't shining honest, the night sky is black
and its raining in all the wrong ways.
We're out of season.
sewing up the holes in our personality
with floods of insecurities and droughts of identity.
damning what matters.

****, its hard to know what matters.

But I am still trying to figure that one out
And the moths are still here
as the pendulum clocks keep ticking
eating the sweaters that we used
to keep our hearts from freezing over.

But we are freezing to the core.
The atoms inside of us splinting into half lives;
we haven't even lived half of our lives
yet we feel so ancient.
The dust piles growing on our slanted bookshelves shoulders
Our bright idea light bulbs flickering,
getting covered up by snowdrifts.

We are gas giants wrapping ourselves into open space darkness
hiding from the bright side of the moon.
Like a black cat superstition we are running from our own precondition
of lying about being ourselves
We pull dark black-hole hoods over our eyes
wincing at the light trails of shooting stars
though we, too, want to be brilliant.
We try to orbit the sun hoping that humanity is a symphony;
that being popular and having the most friends is what matters.
and we can be where the grass is always greener by fitting in and by being mirrors
Even though not being yourself is nauseating.

We can be nauseating, we can be mirrors.

Because we are scared that if we don't
hide who we really are
we may end up like Pluto.
Ostracized for existing.
floating around in space having stare downs with wormholes
A shivering rock entity with a complete loss of identity.

We already are so lost.
Our souls waning and waxing
Rocking back and forth
on wood beams and porches.
like an ADD moonbeam rocking chair.

But now its time to stop in one place and readjust our backbones.

Because I know that we are fragile, I know that.
I know that its hard filling in the cracks that have found their way down our back-stabbed spines
we all have our histories with being dropped and rejected.
But we weren't made to be cardboard box people,
packing tape and labels wrapped in all of the wrong places.
we are boxes full of wormholes into other dimensions
we are full of life and blood and bones,
full of oceans and stardust and daggers
There is so much more to us than our brown paper complexions.
So climb out of those kangaroo pouch caves that you have called home for the last few years
There's no need hiding anymore.
You can be safe in your own skin.
You can climb the Himalayas and scream out as many lightning rods as you want
we will all be listening as you burst apart into thunder claps.
As you bleed yourself into infinity

So, dim the lights

Throw your self at the world
and crash like waves into existence
you are perfect when you are yourself.
Grab that porcelain off of your face
and let your smile super nova fracture into a cosmic grin of constellations.

People will look up to you and be inspired.
A cardboard box rookie sprawled out in the stars.
Lighting up all of our faces with E.T. fingertips.
No longer hiding being reflective eclipses
There's only one person who can tell you who you are.
Only you can speak for yourself.

I know that your fragile
I know that.

We all are..,

It was their first time, their first time ever. Of course neither would admit to it, and neither knew, about the other that is, that they had never done this before. Life had sheltered them, and they had sheltered from life.

Their biographies put them in their sixties. Never mind the Guardian magazine proclaiming sixty to be the new fifty. Albert and Sally were resolutely sixty – ish. To be fair, neither looked their age, but then they had led such sheltered lives, hadn’t they. He had a mother, she had a father, and that pretty much wrapped it up. They had spent respective lives being their parents’ companions, then carers, and now, suddenly this. This intimacy, and it being their first time.

When their contemporaries were befriending and marrying and procreating, and home-making and care-giving and child-minding, and developing their first career, being forced to start a second, overseeing teenagers and suddenly being parents again, but grandparents this time – with evenings and some weekends allowed – Albert and Sally had spent their time writing. They wrote poetry in their respective spaces, at respective tables, in almost solitude, Sally against the onslaught of TV noise as her father became deaf. Albert had the refuge of his childhood bedroom and the table he’d studied at – O levels, A levels, a degree and a further degree, and a little later on that PhD. Poetry had been his friend, his constant companion, rarely fickle, always there when needed. If Albert met a nice-looking woman in the library and lost his heart to her, he would write verse to quench not so much desire of a physical nature, but a desire to meet and to know and to love, and to live the dream of being a published poet.

Oh Sally, such a treasure; a kind heart, a sweet nature, a lovely disposition. Confused at just seventeen when suddenly she seemed to mature, properly, when school friends had been through all that at thirteen. She was passed over, and then suddenly, her body became something she could hardly deal with, and shyness enveloped her because her mother would say such things . . . but, but she had her bookshelf, her grandfather’s, and his books (Keats and Wordsworth saved from the skip) and then her books. Ted Hughes, Dylan Thomas (oh to have been Kaitlin, so wild and free and uninhibited and whose mother didn’t care), Stevie Smith, U.E. Fanthorpe, and then, having taken her OU degree, the lure of the small presses and the feminist canon, the subversive and the down-right weird.

Albert and Sally knew the comfort of settling ageing parents for the night and opening (and firmly closing) the respective doors of their own rooms, in Albert’s case his bedroom, with Sally, a box room in which her mother had once kept her sewing machine. Sally resolutely did not sew, nor did she knit. She wrote, constantly, in notebook after notebook, in old diaries, on discarded paper from the office of the charity she worked for. Always in conversation with herself as she moulded the poem, draft after draft after draft. And then? She went once to writers’ workshop at the local library, but never again. Who were these strange people who wrote only about themselves? Confessional poets. And she? Did she never write about herself? Well, occasionally, out of frustration sometimes, to remind herself she was a woman, who had not married, had not borne children, had only her father’s friends (who tried to force their unmarried sons on her). She did write a long sequence of poems (in bouts-rimés) about the man she imagined she would meet one day and how life might be, and of course would never be. No, Sally, mostly wrote about things, the mystery and beauty and wonder of things you could touch, see or hear, not imagine or feel for. She wrote about poppies in a field, penguins in a painting (Birmingham Art Gallery), the seashore (one glorious week in North Norfolk twenty years ago – and she could still close her eyes and be there on Holkham beach).  Publication? Her first collection went the rounds and was returned, or not, as is the wont of publishers. There was one comment: keep writing. She had kept writing.

Tide Marks

The sea had given its all to the land
and retreated to a far distant curve.
I stand where the waves once broke.

Only the marks remain of its coming,
its going. The underlying sand at my feet
is a desert of dunes seen from the air.

Beyond the wet strand lies, a vast mirror
to a sky laundered full of haze, full of blue,
rinsed distances and shining clouds.


When Albert entered his bedroom he drew the curtains, even on a summer’s evening when still light. He turned on his CD player choosing Mozart, or Bach, sometimes Debussy. Those three masters of the piano were his favoured companions in the act of writing. He would and did listen to other music, but he had to listen with attention, not have music ‘on’ as a background. That Mozart Rondo in A minor K511, usually the first piece he would listen to, was a recording of Andras Schiff from a concert at the Edinburgh Festival. You could hear the atmosphere of a capacity audience, such a quietness that the music seemed to feed and enter and then surround and become wondrous.

He’d had a history teacher in his VI form years who allowed him the run of his LP collection. It had been revelation after revelation, and that had been when the poetry began. They had listened to Tristan & Isolde into the early hours. It was late June, A levels over, a small celebration with Wagner, a bottle of champagne and a bowl of cherries. As the final disc ended they had sat in silence for – he could not remember how long, only from his deeply comfortable chair he had watched the sky turn and turn lighter over the tall pine trees outside. And then, his dear teacher, his one true friend, a young man only a few years out of Cambridge, rose and went to his record collection and chose The Third Symphony by Vaughan-Williams, his Pastoral Symphony, his farewell to those fallen in the Great War  – so many friends and music-makers. As the second movement began Albert wept, and left abruptly, without the thanks his teacher deserved. He went home, to the fury of his father who imagined Albert had been propositioned and assaulted by his kind teacher – and would personally see to it that he would never teach again. Albert was so shocked at this declaration he barely ever spoke to his father again. By eight o’clock that June morning he was a poet.

For Ralph

A sea voyage in the arms of Iseult
and now the bowl of cherries
is empty and the Perrier Jouet
just a stain on the glass.

Dawn is a mottled sky
resting above the dark pines.
Late June and roses glimmer
in a deep sea of green.

In the still near darkness,
and with the volume low,
we listen to an afterword:
a Pastoral Symphony for the fallen.

From its opening I know I belong
to this music and it belongs to me.
Wholly. It whelms me over
and my face is wet with tears.


There is so much to a name, Sally thought, Albert, a name from the Victorian era. In the 1950s whoever named their first born Albert? Now Sally, that was very fifties, comfortably post-war. It was a bright and breezy, summer holiday kind of name. Saying it made you smile (try it). But Light-foot (with a hyphen) she could do without, and had hoped to be without it one day. She was not light-footed despite being slim and well proportioned. Her feet were too big and she did not move gracefully. Clothes had always been such a nuisance; an indicator of uncertainty, of indecision. Clothes said who you were, and she was? a tallish woman who hid her still firm shape and good legs in loose tops and not quite right linen trousers (from M & S). Hair? Still a colour, not yet grey, she was a shale blond with grey eyes. She had felt Albert’s ‘look’ when they met in The Barton, when they had been gathered together like show dogs by the wonderful, bubbly (I know exactly what to wear – and say) Annabel. They had arrived at Totnes by the same train and had not given each other a second glance on the platform. Too apprehensive, scared really, of what was to come. But now, like show dogs, they looked each other over.

‘This is an experiment for us,’ said the festival director, ‘New voices, but from a generation so seldom represented here as ‘emerging’, don’t you think?’

You mean, thought Albert, it’s all a bit quaint this being published and winning prizes for the first time – in your sixties. Sally was somewhere else altogether, wondering if she really could bring off the vocal character of a Palestinian woman she was to give voice to in her poem about Ramallah.

Incredibly, Albert or Sally had never read their poems to an audience, and here they were, about to enter Dartington’s Great Hall, with its banners and vast fireplace, to read their work to ‘a capacity audience’ (according to Annabel – all the tickets went weeks ago). What were Carcanet thinking about asking them to be ‘visible’ at this seriously serious event? Annabel parroted on and on about who’d stood on this stage before them in previous years, and there was such interest in their work, both winning prizes The Forward and The Eliot. Yet these fledgling authors had remained stoically silent as approaches from literary journalists took them almost daily by surprise. Wanting to know their backstory. Why so long a wait for recognition? Neither had sought it. Neither had wanted it. Or rather they’d stopped hoping for it until . . . well that was a story all of its own, and not to be told here.

Curiosity had beckoned both of them to read each other’s work. Sally remembered Taking Heart arriving in its Amazon envelope. She brought it to her writing desk and carefully opened it.  On the back cover it said Albert Loosestrife is a lecturer in History at the University of Northumberland. Inside, there was a life, and Sally had learnt to read between the lines. Albert had seen Sally’s slim volume Surface and Depth in Blackwell’s. It seemed so slight, the poems so short, but when he got on the Metro to Whitesands Bay and opened the bag he read and became mesmerised.  Instead of going home he had walked down to the front, to his favourite bench with the lighthouse on his left and read it through, twice.

Standing in the dark hallway ready to be summoned to read Albert took out his running order from his jacket pocket, flawlessly typed on his Elite portable typewriter (a 21st birthday present from his mother). He saw the titles and wondered if his voice could give voice to these intensely personal poems: the horror of his mother’s illness and demise, his loneliness, his fear of being gay, the nastiness and bullying experienced in his minor university post, his observations of acquaintances and complete strangers, train rides to distant cities to ‘gather’ material, visit to galleries and museums, homages to authors, artists and composers he loved. His voice echoed in his head. Could he manage the microphone? Would the after-reading discussion be bearable? He looked at Sally thinking for a moment he could not be in better company. Her very name cheered him. Somehow names could do that. He imagined her walking on a beach with him, in conversation. Yes, he’d like that, and right now. He reckoned they might have much to share with each other, after they’d discussed poetry of course. He felt a warm glow and smiled his best smile as she in astonishing synchronicity smiled at him. The door opened and applause beckoned.

Toes lead us like thread through each others bodies
Filling empty crevices with our own parts.
Lips stich our breaths together through kisses.
Moans pull us tight unable to detach
Because we are now one together.

I say it in a poem
because I can't say it out loud.
Because                                             I won't.
                                                            Risk
the embarrassment of your
                                                         laughter
                                                      disapproval
                                                         rejection.
I like to be the one
doing the
                                                       Alienating.
I imagine the way
your eyebrows would
furrow together.

The way
you'd find an                                   excuse
                                                        to leave.

The way
                                                        Regret
would feel.
Filling my mouth
with the coppery
taste of blood.

It was the summer of 1954. David Ito was from the only Japanese family we had in our town. I was glad he was my best friend. Actually, he was my only friend. His father moved his family to our small town of Prichard, Illinois when David was only eight years old. That was three years ago.

Only two and a half months apart, I was the older one of our daring duo. I even was a couple inches taller than David was, so that settled it. In spite of being an awkward girl, our differences in age and height made me quite superior at times, although David always snickered at that notion. To me, theses differences were huge and monumental, like the distance of the sun from the moon. To David, that was typical girlish nonsense. He thought it was so like a girl, to try to outdo a boy.  And he should have known. He was the only son of five children, and he was the oldest.

At first, David was not interested in being friends with a girl. But I was Josephine Dunn, Josie they called me, and I was not just any girl. Yet, like David, I did not know if I really liked him enough to be his friend. We started off with this one thing in common.

I knew he was smarter than anybody I ever knew, that is except for my father, a self-taught man. The tomboy that I was, I was not so interested in books and maps, and David was almost obsessed with them. Yet, there was a kindred spirit that ignited us to become close, something coming in between two misfits to make a good match. David was obviously so different from the rest. He came from an entirely different culture, looking so out-of-the-ordinary than the typical face of our Anglo-Saxon, Protestant community, and me, never really fitting in with any group of peers in school, I liked him.

David knew he did not fully fit in. I surely did not fit, either. My brother, Carl, made sure very early on in my life that I was to be aware of one thing. And that one thing was that I did not belong in my family, or really anywhere in life. Mostly, this was because I was not of my father’s first family, but I came after my father’s other children and was the baby, the apple of my father’s eye. But that wasn’t the real reason why Carl hated me.

During World War Two, my father enlisted in the army. He already had two small sons and a daughter to look after, and they already had suffered one major blow in their young lives. They had lost their mother to cancer. Louise Dunn was an important figure in their lives. She was well liked in town and very much missed by her family and friends.
  
Why their father wanted to leave his children behind, possibly fatherless, made no sense to other people. But Jim Dunn came from a proud military family and would not listen to anyone telling him not to fight but rather to stay home with his children. His father fought in the First World War, and three of his great grandfathers fought for the Union Army in the Civil War. It was not like my father to back out of a fight, not one with great principles.  My father was no coward.

Not only did my father leave three small children back home, but a new, young wife. Two years before World War Two ended, he made it back home to his lovely, young wife and family. Back in France, my father was wounded in his right leg. The result of the wound caused my father to forever walk with a limp and the assistance of a cane. It was actually a blessing in disguise what would transpire. He could have easily came home in a pine box. He was thankful, though, that he came away with his life. After recovering for a few months in a French hospital, my father was eager to go home to his family. At least he was able to walk, and to walk away alive.

This lovely, young woman who was waiting for him at home was twenty-year-old Flora Laurent, now Flora Dunn, my mother, and she was eleven years younger than my father. All soldiers were certainly eager to get home to their loved ones. My father was one of thousands who was thrilled to be back on American soil, but his thrill was about to dampen. Once my father laid eyes on his wife again, there was no hiding her highly expanding belly and the overall weight gain showed in her lovely, plump face. She had no excuses for her husband, or any made-up stories to tell him, and there really nothing for her to say to explain why she was in this condition. Simply put, she was lonely.

Most men would have left such a situation, would have gone as far away from it as they possibly could have. Being too ashamed and resentful to stay, they would have washed their hands of her in a heartbeat. Having a cheating wife and an unwanted child on their hands to raise would be too much to bear. Any man, in his right mind, would say that was asking for way too much trouble.  Most men would have divorced someone like my mother, kicked her out, and especially they would hate the child she would be soon be giving birth to, but not my father. He always stood against the grain.

Not only did Jim Dunn forgive his young wife, he took me under his wing like I was his very own. Once I knew he was not my true father, I could never fully fathom why he was not ready to pack me off to an orphanage or dump me off somewhere far away. Why he was so forgiving and accepting made him more than a war hero. It made him my hero. That was why I loved him so much, especially because, soon after I was born, my mother was out of our lives. Perhaps, such a young woman should not be raising three step children and a newborn baby.

My father never mentioned any of the details of my conception, but he simply did his best to love me. He was a tall, very slim and a quiet man by nature. With light brown hair, grey eyes, and a kind face, he looked every bit of the hero I saw him as. He was willing to help anyone in a pinch, and most people who knew him respected him. Nobody in town ever talked about this situation to my father. To begin with, my father was not a talker, and he probably thought if he did talk about it, the pain and shame of it would not go away.

One of my brothers, Nathan, and my sister, Ann, seemed to treat me like a regular sister. Yet, Carl, the oldest child, hated me from the start. As a girl who was six years younger, I never understood why. He was the golden boy, with keen blue eyes and golden, wavy hair, as were Nathan and Ann.  I had long, dark brown hair, which I kept in two braids, with plenty of unsightly brown freckles, and very dark, brown eyes.  Compared to my sister, who was five years older, I never felt like I was a great beauty.

I was pretty young when Carl blurted out to me in anger, “Your mother is a *****!”  I cried a bit, wiped away the tears with my small hands and yelled back, “No, she isn’t!” Of course, I was too young to know what that word meant. When my brother followed that statement up with, “and you are a *******”, I ran straight to my father. I was almost seven years old.

My father scolded Carl pretty badly that day. Carl would not speak to me for months, and that was fine with me. That evening my father sat me upon my knee. “Daddy, what is a *****?” I asked him.

My father gently put his fingers up to my lips to shush me up. He then went into his wallet and showed me a weathered black-and-white photo he had of himself with his arms around my mother. It was in that wallet for some time, and he pulled out the wrinkled thing and placed it in front of me.

My father must have handled that picture a thousand times. Even with all the bad quality, with the wrinkles, I could see a lovely, young lady, with light eyes and dark hair, smiling as she was in the arms of her protector. My father looked proud in the photograph.

He said to me, his expression serious, “whatever Carl or anybody says about your mother, she will always be your mother and I love her for that”. I looked earnestly in his somber, grey eyes. “Why did she go away?” I asked him.

My father thought long and hard about how to answer me. He replied, “I don’t know. She was young and had more dreams in her than this town could hold for her”. He smiled awkwardly and added, “But at least she left me the best gift I could have—you.”  

I would never forget the warmth I felt with my father during that conversation. Certainly, I would never forget Carl’s cruel words, or sometimes the odd glances on the faces of townswomen, like they were studying me, comparing me to how I looked next to my father, or their whispers as the whole family would be out in town for an occasion. It did not happen every day, but this would happen whenever and wherever, when a couple of busybodies would pass me and my father walking down Main Street, or when we went into the ice cream parlor, or when I went with my father to the dime store, and it always made me feel very strange and vaguely sad, like I had no real reason to be sad but was anyway.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


That summer of 1954, I was a bit older, maybe a bit wiser than when Carl first insulted my estranged mother. I was eleven years old, and David was my equal, my sidekick. Feeling less like a kid, I tried not to boss him too much, and he tried not to be too smart in front of me. I held my own, though, had my own intelligence, but my smarts were more like street smarts. After all, I had Carl to deal with.

David seemed destined for something better in life. My life seemed like it would always be the same, like my feet were planted in heavy mud. David and I would talk about the places we would loved go to, but David would mark them on a map and track them out like his plans would really come to fruition. I never liked to dream that big. Sure, I would love to go somewhere exciting, somewhere where I’d never have to see Carl again, or some of the kids at school, but I knew why I had a reason to stay. I respected my father. That is why I did not wish to leave. And David respected his father. That is why he knew he had to leave.

David Ito’s father was a tailor. David’s parents came from Japan, and they hoped for a good life in their new country. Little did they know what would be in store for them. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, their lives, with many other Japanese Americans, were soon turned upside down. David was born in an internment camp designed to isolate Japanese people from the nation once Americans declared war on Germany and their allies. David and I were both born in 1943, and since the war ended two years later, David had no memories of the internment camp experience. Even so, David was impacted by it, because the memories haunted his parents.

There was no getting around it. David and I, as different as we were, liked each other. Still, neither he nor I felt any silly kind of puppy love attraction. David had still thought of girls as mushy and silly, and that is why he liked me. I was not mushy or silly, and I could shoot a sling shot better than he did. David loved the sling shot his parents bought him for his last birthday. They allowed him to have it just as long as he never shot it at anyone.

David Ito, being the oldest child in his family, and the only son, allowed him to feel quite special, a very prized boy for just that reason. Mr. Ito worked two jobs to support his family, and Mrs. Ito took in laundry and cooked for the locals who could not cook their own meals. Mrs. Ito was an excellent cook. Whatever they had to give their children, David was first in line to receive it.

The majority of those in my town of Prichard respected Mr. Ito, at least those who did business with him. He was not only able to get good tailoring business in town, but some of the neighboring towns gave him a bit of work, too. When he was not working in the textile factory, Mr. Ito was busy with his measuring tape and sewing machine.  

Even though Mr. Ito gained the respect of the townspeople, he still was not one of us. I am sure he knew it, too. Yet Mr. Ito lived in America most of his life. He was only nine-years-old when his parents came here with their children. Like David, Mr. Ito certainly knew he was Japanese. The mirror told him that every day. But he also knew felt an internal tug-of war that America was his country more than Japan was, even when he was proud of his roots, even though he was once locked up in that camp, and even when some people felt that he did not belong here.

If David was called an unkind name, I felt it insulted, too, for our friendship meant that much to me. How many times I got in trouble for fighting at school! My father would be called into the principal’s office, and I was asked by Mr. Murray to explain why I would act in such an undignified way. “They called David a ***** ***”, I exclaimed. “David is my friend!”

Because David and I were best buddies, we heard lots of jeering remarks. “Josie loves a ***! Josie loves a ***!” some of the children taunted. And Carl, with his meanness, loved to be head of the line to pick on us. He once said to me, “It figures that the only friend you can get is a scrawny ***!”

In spite of my troubles at school, Father greatly admired David and his father, and he thought that David and I were good for each other’s company. Mr. Ito greatly respected my father, in return, not only for his business but because my dad could fix any car with just about any problem. Jim Dunn was not only a brilliant man, in my eyes, but the best mechanic in town. When Mr. Ito needed work done on his car, my father was right there for him. It was an even exchange of paid work and admiration.

Both my father and David’s father felt our relationship was harmless. After all, everyone in David’s family knew and expected that he would marry a nice Japanese girl. There was no question about it. Where he would find one was not too important for a boy of his age. Neither of us experienced puberty yet and, under the watchful eye of my father, we would just be the best of buddies.

David pretended like the remarks said about him never bothered him, but I knew differently. I knew he hated Carl, and we avoided him as much as possible. David was nothing like me in this respect—he was not a fighter. Truly, he did not have a fighting bone in his body, not one that picked up a sword to stab it in the heart of someone else. It was not that David was not brave, for he was, but he knew the ugliness of war without ever even having to go to battle. Nevertheless, he used his intellect to fight off any of the racist remarks made about him or his family. He had to face it—the war had only ended nine years prior and a few of the war veterans in town fought in the Pacific.      

Because of the taunts David had experienced in school, I was not surprised what David’s father had in store for his beloved son.  Mr. Ito could barely afford to send one child to private school, but he was about to send one. David was about to be that child. When David told me that when school resumed he would be going to a boy’s school in Chicago, my heart sank. Why? Why did he have to go? I would never see him again!

“You will see me in the summer”, he reassured me. He looked at me as I tried to appear brave. I sat cross-legged on the grass and stared straight ahead like I never even heard him. I had a lump in my throat the size of a grapefruit, and my lips felt like they were quivering.

We were both using old pop bottles for target practice. They sat in a row on an old tree stump shining in the evening sun. David was shooting at them with his prized slingshot. I had a makeshift one that I created out of a tree branch and a rubber band.

“You won’t even remember me”, I complained.

“I will to”, he insisted. “I remember everything.”

“Oh, sure you will”, I said sarcastically. “You’ll be super duper smart and I will just be a dummy”. In anger, I rose up my slingshot, and I hit all three bottles, one by one, then I threw the slingshot to the ground. David missed all the shots he took earlier.

David threw his slingshot down, too. “For being a girl, you are pretty smart!” he shouted. “You are too smart for your own good! The reason I like you is because you are better than anyone I ever met in my entire life. Well…not better than my parents, but you are the neatest girl I ever knew in my life!”

For a while, we didn’t talk. We just sat there and let the warm, summer breeze do our talking for us. I pulle

jp (a fellow-poet here at HP) and I were speaking of a popular Asian imagery of the Mind as a Monkey...I mentioned that I would write a poem of how this idea is also embodied in a Chinese legend of the Monkey King...And this is the poem that follows...




Sun Wukong, or the Taming of the Monkey Mind


PART 1
The arrogance of Sun Wukong

Monkey you may think of me
but ordinary I am by no means:
timeless and
of primal forces
from a rock I was born
at the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit
I, pure energy, unrestrained
in perpetual motion

Powers? Ha! you mortals are easily impressed
by miracles and powers
aren’t you, you puny lot?

In one turn I can travel a 108 000 li
I can do numerous transformations
I can cloud travel
and my magic staff that I keep
in the size of a sewing needle when not in use
has similar powers;
and with each hair of mine
I can be an infinity of myself -
though I’ll confess
I can’t make a complete change into human
as my tail just won’t go away

So in all, great deeds I’m capable of;
and I wiped my name off the Book of Life and Death
so I am immutable -
so why am I even talking to you weaklings?
Go climb a tree, you imbeciles!
And stay up there! Don’t descend!




PART 2
The taming of Sun Wukong

And Sun Wukong flies up to the Heavenly Kingdom, styles himself “Great Sage, Equal of Heaven” and there creates tremendous Havoc and Chaos…and even the Jade Emperor, the Heavenly Emperor, has his **** kicked…and then it is that Sun Wukong comes face to face with the Buddha…*


And Sun Wukong screams at the Buddha:
“I’ll kick and I’ll blow  
And you won’t know where you’ll go”

And the Buddha says:
“And who are you?”

And Sun Wukong says:
“You probably haven’t heard of evolution
but I’m the one who went straight to the top –
I can travel anywhere quick and swift
to any part of the immense void or universe”

And the Buddha says:
“Try then and show me
you travel the universe
and back here before me”


And Sun Wukong jumps into thin air
and off he goes into deep space
and emptiness and void
but no matter how far he goes
it seems endless
and it tires Sun Wukong
and then seeing what
he thinks are the 5 pillars
at the end of the universe
he scrawls on the surface:
“Sun Wukong was here!”
And in an instant Sun Wukong is there again
right before the Buddha

And says Sun Wukong:
“See I have travelled to the
end and saw the 5 pillars
and scrawled there my name”

And the Buddha says,
holding up his right palm:
“See, all you have done
is to travel across my palm”

And Sun Wukong sees the words
he had written just before but now miniscule
And the Buddha puts a coronet round
Sun Wukong’s temple
that helps calm the Monkey Mind
that helps still the Restless Mind





NOTE: 180 000 li = 54 000 km or 33 554 ml

woke up not knowing what time it was, looking toward a sewing machine instead of a clock on my desk, still reeling from hypersexual dreams of celebrities, old friends, fast cars, thunderstorms, video games and social experiments, mutual ******* without contact, floating in a nothingness world of bliss, then, thinking about sewing the right way, with seam allowances, wrong and right sides, and cutting out pizza slices from curves, wondering if my forlorn yellow polka dot shirt with the holes in the yoke would look nice as a giraffe, or if it's still worth mending. shades of marigold and dandelion pouring through my hands, buttons touching down on my great grandmother's old flowered quilt, taking their places over the holes. a needle threaded with delicate string weaves in and out 'round the tears, the negative space, the flaws, closing them up, sutures administered on a long forgotten corpse, breathing life with every stitch. open the curtains and it looks like dusk, though i'm sure it's morning: dark clouds, lightning, mist, fog, grey, gloom; promises of a storm, like in my nighttime mirrorimage otherworld of chances never taken, experiences that never, can never, will never, present themselves in reality. taste tests of who you want to be, but without the risk of ruining everything you've worked for. secrets you can keep, burning through eyelids, wanting to get out, but staying just below the thin layer of skin and lashes poised just right, painted and black and reaching toward the heavens, before flaking off into tears that confuse a happy face, slow dancing to the sweetest music, smiling to the words, the motion, the what will comes and the what might happens and being carried away with the love in the room and the sun in the sky and the warmth in the wind. no dreams, no mirrorimage otherworlds, no pretend existences, could ever ever ever be as sweet as these feelings, this love, the beating of twin hearts, the warmth of skin on skin, the colours of sun-shone sea and land irises looking at mine, through me, into places only you can see, only you know, only you've ever been. my comfort, my rock, my anchor in the storm, holding the moon tight in orbit, even when it pulls, even when it wants nothing more than to get in a boat and never see land again. heavy weathered metal from the earth digging deep into the ground under wires and waves and crashes of the sea, tethering the melancholy man in the moon to the only place that makes sense: helping sailors see the way on clear nights, reflecting sunlight from china to the seven seas, shining through dark windows to light up blushed faces of lovers and dewy tangled limbs, twisting sheets and straining steel, singing quiet songs of familiar feelings only we know, never wanting, never needing, to write the lyrics down; they whimper, weep, wail, cry out with passion, from every pore in our heaving entangled bodies before laying down to rest, to visit the nighttime mirrorimage otherworld that will never ever be as real, as sweet, as warm, as this real world life we share.

Ramadan comes with lots of prayers,
Fasting and doing charity,
With the fragrance of heaven,
Which still lingers in our mind,
To Allah alone, we turn our hopes and intentions.
Ramadan does not leave empty handed,
It leaves with a golden handshake in the name of
EID UL FITR.
To celebrate with family and friends,
Reaching out our hearts,
Extending happiness,
Sewing relationships.
What better than a sweet dish
Sev khurmo (vermicelle cooked in milk with raisins almonds and pistachios ),
To hail in oneness,
Joy and prosperity.
Happy Eid Mubarak
To all on Hello Poetry.

Valentino has its red, Versace its Medusa logo, Chanel the tweed that lines dresses and jackets and handbags each season. In the fashion world, these nuances of texture and color, in conjunction with shape, are what help define a brand's identity, what ultimately makes them feel familiar to consumers; they are fashion's version of DNA. Designers carving out their place within the industry will often land on their own set of signatures that are built upon with each new collection—but Patric DiCaprio, the 26-year-old designer of Vaquera, isn't interested in "buy-ability" or recognizable traits. "We are obsessed with keeping people guessing" he says. "We want that to be our thing."

In the three seasons since launching the New York-based brand, DiCaprio has infused Fashion Week with the sort of Dionysian energy once felt at early John Galliano shows. For his Summer/Spring 2016 show, staged at the Church of the Ascension in Greenwich Village, models walked the aisle to the Smashing Pumpkins in baptismal baby-doll dresses and ruffled bloomers, with DiCaprio's boyfriend closing the show in a wedding gown. In February, with new partners David Moses and Bryn Taubensee on board, a debaucherous cast of models dressed in Victorian-meets-club looks danced, lifted their skirts and put their cigarettes out in audience member's drinks at the China Chalet venue in the Financial District.

"Vaquera is about constant reinvention," DiCaprio says of his no-guts-no-glory ethos. "It's about the future; the future of style and clothes, but not in the cliche of futuristic spandex and metallics."

Much like his collections, the designer's path in fashion has been far from linear. Born and raised in Alabama, DiCaprio attended a private Christian school before studying photography at a public university in the South. An internship with DIS Magazine offered him a crash course in art direction and styling, and the opportunity to draw creative fuel from New York—a city that has very much proven to be his creative elixir.

"I felt like I had been underwhelmed for my whole life," says DiCaprio, who moved to the city five years ago and taught himself to sew through YouTube tutorials. "When I first came to New York it felt like I had finally gotten my head above the water and had oxygen for the first time. This place was overwhelming in the best way." DiCaprio spoke with PAPER about his creative approach, his unconventional path to fashion and his idolization of David Bowie.

What sparked your interest in fashion?

I think it's always been about clothes for me. When I was in middle school and high school I was always in bands. I was obsessed with Screamo and David Bowie—the groups that had such strong visual aspects to their work. But I think part of me always felt like I was doing that so I could assume the look. Screamo bands would let me wear the size zero, ultra-stretch white jean. With David Bowie, I wanted to wear the gold eyeshadow; it was always about the look.

How did studying photography lead you to fashion design?

My school was very focused on the craft—the dark room and perfect exposure—but I think I was on the opposite end, I was interested in what was happening in the photo. I left college to do an internship with DIS Magazine and because they're involved in so many creative avenues like photography and styling and art and video, I was able to get a realistic vision of things. The experience [with DIS] made me realize I was less interested in photography and more interested in creating these characters.

When school ended, I moved to New York and and worked with DIS again and then with VFiles in [the archives department]. I'd go through old issues of ID and Paper and Dazed and it taught me a lot about fashion history. I had been removed from all of that when I was growing up, there was no Chanel store in Alabama, there was no Dazed And Confused at the Barnes and Noble in Alabama. Coming to New York I was able to get my hands on the clothes and study these old magazines.

How did you get that initial internship though?

I'm obsessed with Tumblr. I got on it more than eight years ago, and it was a huge part of helping me reach out to people. People that I'm still friends with now—Hari Nef and Juliana Huxtable—I met through Tumblr; they moved to New York before me and motivated me to do the same. So I emailed the team at DIS, and asked if I could show them my photography portfolio—which sounds so funny to say now—and they offered to show me the ropes. They hooked me up with Avena Gallagher, who is an inspiration and has taught me everything I know about styling.

About two years ago I started working for her and became obsessed with styling. I styled Charli XCX for a year—and it was exciting, definitely closer to what I wanted to do but it wasn't exactly it. I wanted to pull specific things—1980's Issey Miyake, but there was no way a no-name stylist like me would be able to get my hands on it. So I bought a sewing machine and started sewing the things I wanted for photo shoots. Vaquera started as an art project that wasn't about wearing the clothes or making something for Opening Ceremony—it was about making clothes that I could then shoot. The final product was the look book.

What made you decide on the name Vaquera?

A few different reasons. I was reading a book by Tom Robbins called Even Cowgirls Get The Blues and it was really informative for me at the time. I was also working in a kitchen as an expediter with a bunch of Mexican line cooks and they had a lot of pet names for me, like "el pato" which is gay slang for f—got, and "little baby doll." They knew I was from the South so they'd call me "La Vaquera" because that's Spanish for cowgirl—even though cowgirls aren't Alabama, it's more of a Texas thing. So I just called the project Vaquera. It seems so arbitrary now, I'm stuck with it for better or worse.

What's been one of the challenges of keeping things future-focused?

I've had criticism from people that it's such a bad business model to reinvent yourself each season, that no one's going to know what to expect from you. Buyers are going to be confused, you're never going to make any money. And I've just been like, "Well, I think we don't have any interest in that." We are obsessed with keeping people guessing—we want that to be our thing. I try my best to keep it a secret until the day of the show and then just let loose.

So we're going to assume you won't be giving any clues about next season's show.

Oh my god, i don't want to give it away! I think people want to see billowy-sleeves but that's out the door. We're doing something completely different. Romantic but a whole different definition of romance.

How has working with David and Bryne changed things for you and the brand?

Last season it was like a whole new brand. We came together through Avena and it feels like we're progressing, which is exciting. I got sick of doing everything alone. For the Spring show I sewed everything, produced it myself, got the location, cast it myself.

And did you collapse after the show ended?

It was a serious problem, it became impossible. I realized I was either going to have to plateau so I could get my life together or I was going to have to find a way to expand the vision. I trust Bryne and David with my life and they understand my vision but have their own ideas. It was a necessary change.

So many designers have expressed concern about the relentless pace of the industry recently.

All these different seasons—pre-fall, couture, designers showing things that are going to be available for purchase the day after the show. That's so scary for people like us who are on our hands and knees in the living room cutting the clothes and can barely get them made in time for the show.

Do you want to stay independent? What are the benefits and detriments, in your opinion?

I think we want to stay independent. I want to make money but I don't want to feel pressure to do certain things. I'm already so sick of that show we just did—already on to the next one. It's like with Demna Gvasalia getting the Balenciaga job: I was so disappointed to see him doing the same thing he did at Vetements at Balenciaga, but then I realized, with all the money that's involved and when you're working with these huge offers, there's contracts. Money complicates things in a way that I think can hurt people's creativity. Maybe you'll make a lot of money for a few years, but you might forget how to make exciting things because you're stuck with the designs that worked well one time. I want to make money, but we want to find different ways of doing it.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-melbourne | www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-adelaide

the cupboard held many things.
the large cabinet sat to the right of drawers full of mystery, climbing the left side and bottom, just big enough to hold small things like paper and office supplies. but it did not hold what most people deemed regular.
the knobs were made of something out of a dream. candy like almost- no,
candy glass. and they paired very well with the midnight brown wood of the cupboard sat in front of them.
the top left drawer held small things. coins and sewing string. the wonderful jingle of coins and the comforting touch of silky yarn drew in the curious searcher. nothing much else sat in this drawer.
the middle one was more unusual than the previous. holding small trophies and metals, why, there were so many! how did they all fit in the shallow drawer? all of them for different things: sports, pie eating, spelling bees, you name it. but the names on the awards were all scratched out. who would do such a thing?
the bottom drawer was sure to hold more promising items. squaring down they open the drawer to find a puzzle. a puzzle with a few pieces missing, but a puzzle none the less. it looked like it was put together right in the drawer, years ago, as the jigsaw was covered in dust. as they try to wipe away the dust, it appears they cannot. the puzzle has no picture, it is merely a grey puzzle, completely grey. how boring! and not even completed! they shut the drawer in confusion and move on.
finally it was time. time for the cabinet. once more the glassy knobs call to them as they open it to see what treasure awaited them. a look of wonder smiles back at them as they open the cabinet, then it drops. a mirror. they were looking at their own reflection! out of all the things it could have been! they turn away from the cupboard, betrayed and upset, and when they turn to look back at it, the
mirror. what was wrong with the mirror? they weren't putting on that face were they? it smiled too wide, and a look of mania shook through the eyes of their reflection. a knife. where? oh wait, no! the smile only grew as the reflection drove a knife into its own neck, velvet blood flowing out as their eyes turned to black, but it felt like staring into the sun. quickly, they slam the door, horrified of what they've seen: their own body mutilated. it felt like something was dying in their chest. but only because it was. a hole sat in their chest where their heart used to sit. it hurt. not much, but it felt like something was leaking out of them. and as they look to find their heart, the realize that it's gone.
quickly and desperately they scour the drawers.
the bottom drawer was first. maybe it was sat on top of the puzzle or the puzzle would give a clue. it didn't matter the reasoning, the drawer was already open and nearly empty except for the missing pieces from before. just as dreadfully grey as the rest of the puzzle. suddenly, the memory leaks out of them. confusion rains down on them as they try to remember where they are, what they're doing, why their chest hurts. the puzzle pieces are no longer grey, but red from the blood pouring out of their chest. why are they bleeding? what are these jigsaw pieces doing here? as they lift it up the red and grey mix, becoming a flesh color, the same as their skin. the pieces fly up and clamp against the hole in their chest, trying to crawl inside. then it clicks, their heart! they kick the drawer shut and the pieces scour across the floor with the deep red of blood, lifelessly. they needed to keep searching! what was the next drawer? ah yes, the middle one!
they always hesitate on the middle drawer. and they hesitate, because they forget what is sat in it. but they think it can't be worse than the last one, right? how foolish they were. they look down and open the drawer and as they see the faux gold and stiff red ribbon they remember. awards. they forgot the awards. suddenly metals of all kind, old and new, bronze and gold, spring up and latch around the throats of their unsuspecting victims. weighing them down as they're choked endlessly. they fall the their knees and the cupboard seems to grow a hundred feet. oh if only they could reach the drawer to shut it! panic runs through their body and the floor sways beneath them, the achievements of others dragging them closer to death and failure, when suddenly the drawer shuts. the metals around their neck (now dented and *****) limply release their grip on their neck as they realize, it was their hand that shut the drawer. it still sat their, burning with grief as they realize, they shut down someone else's achievements. they rub their hands to try to shake off the regret, lingering in their mouth and hands. or was that the metallic taste of blood? when did they start bleeding? then, they get an urge. it pushes them up, up to where the top left drawer is. everything inside them says no, but the regret and pain in their finger tips needs to know what's in the last drawer, needs to feel more pain to replace the guilt. more pain than was already emitting from the hole in their chest and their bleeding hands. more.
as they desperately reach inside the top left drawer again for anything lovely at all, they're left with nothing but pain. as the sewing needles ***** at their fingertips so too does the feeling of greed. the feeling to need money. the elegant cupboard seemed to whisper, "money is everything, you are nothing without money. money is everything, you are nothing without money." over and over again. and in horrifying agony they close the last drawer, the last of they wonder that once filled their body: drained. they step back from the cupboard and it's viscous ways. and glance at the handles again. the very knobs that lured them in.
then, they realized the knobs were not candy like, but more similar to the glazed eye of a man found dead, or of an abusive father, drunk again. they were cold to the touch like the abuse of a mother and spat acid that burned like the tears falling down their face as they realized, the tears were real.
they close the drawers and release their hands in horror as they vow to never touch those nightmarish handles again, running away in fear to realize, they never found their heart. their run turns into a stumble until the suddenly slump over against a wall. the only thing they can think about is the pain, the tears, the cupboard, the drawers, the cabinet, their reflection. and just like that, they're gone.

Thoughts racing,
trying to fill another page of this book with my story,
sewing in new sheets of paper to build some space.
Space between me and the page saying
The End.

Turning the pages, looking back at some from many years ago.
I read about a little girl, happily exploring the world.
She doesn't know about pain or despair.
Just look at her glowing eyes.

Progressing in the story, a few years later.
I watch a little girl, crying, covered by the blanket.
She doesn't want others to see, 'cause they'll just laugh anyway.
In her home, she has no room.
The whole house is filled with her father yelling.
The whole house is filled with her mother crying.
The only place for her sorrow is deep inside herself.
Just look at her puffy eyes.

Skipping a few chapters, years of searching and hoping.
I hear a little girl, laughing loud.
Nobody heard her screams when she needed them.
At least, when she's being loud, they notice her.
Being lost and out of control she hurts others.
When they scold her, they look at her.
Just look at her pleading eyes.

Going through pages of her trying to understand what she's done.
I hear a little girl swearing she'll never hurt anybody else.
She'd rather hurt herself to cope with the severe cold of this world.
So she builds a wall to keep everyone out,
to trap the wrath inside.
But she forgot the fear was already there.
Just look at her empty eyes.

Flipping the pages to read the ones from a few weeks ago.
I see a little girl drowning in tears and self doubt.
Apparently the wall she built long time ago is still standing strong.
A lot of 'Wanted' posters are hung on it from both sides,
but neither can reach through.
Just look at her anxious eyes.

I'm sitting here crying,
hoping my tears will wash away the letters on these pages.
But they won't.

So I'll keep on sewing pages.
Hoping one day I'll read the one about a girl who's come home.
About a girl who tore down the wall,
about a girl who built a place in a house to live in.
Until then I hope to have enough strength to put
space between me and the page saying
The End.

I mashup me, myself, and thee: Part II

Excerpts from my poems about poets, poetry and the process of composition. In chronological order, from the earliest to the most recent.
---------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­----


The three poems went about their business,
Bringing heaven to earth,
FYI, even Angels can't be everywhere, so,
God invented poems to do his ***** work,
Cleansing souls.

They rode in~out of town on a prankster wave,
A cheering throng was not around,
But a singular poet saw, recorded the vision,
And thus, this nameless poet,
Below unmasked, unsealed,
Cleansed one more soul,
And that soul, this soul, as required,
Paid it forward.
~
Nothing produced from this place
where routine means the gorge tastes bile,
When surcease is welcome relief,
Where dancing on ice in bare feet
Is step one to ripping your chest open by your own hands,
The toxins thus released rejuvenated by salted air,
Can be finally be transcribed onto paper
And realized.

Warn them once and then begin, you,
Get serious, delve, with hurricane unambiguity,
to torrential words upon the unsuspecting,
let them taste the rawness, only the truth provides,
let them know salt tears so briney,
They will flee this place, n'er to return.
~
One day she intro'd me as her fav poet,
To which I acknowledged by addressing her as
My number one fan,
Which seems to have stuck,
so I acknowledge her as such,
And always add a polite, respectful, winking,
Yes ma'am!
~
Like this new day,
there are always
new poems

Like last night's sunset,
day's efforts reviewed,
a special light,
a yellowed marker,
highlighting a few deserving

Take them home,
kiss them goodnight,
rest them in the poetry file
that is no file,
but a large fabric box where
sewing tools once stored

How appropriate and
how happy that makes me.
~
Yo! Yo!
Remember your first real high,
That moment
No absolution, no return.
That moment
When you admitted, confessed,
to yourself:

I am
Forever forward,
A home-grown poet.
I am
Soul enslaved to words.
The alphabet - My oxygen molecules,
I am both,
Addict and dealer
A ****** poet

Yo! Yo!
So you do recall,
The exact moment,
God-spark-within, ascendancy gained
You lost control,
Wept words instead of tears!
A ****** poet ******!

Yo! Yo!

Sophie's Choice.
You chose writing over breathing,
Worshiper of the purest pleaure,
******* in deep the smoke-high of
Head-nodding discontented contentment
Stealing anything you saw
For to satisfy the need, the craven
Craving.
****** poets!

Yo! Yo!

Don't you're ever sleep?
Hear that the city, the state,
Gonna methadone your kind
In a special program
Teach you only language to sign.
**** poets!

I am a ****** poet.

The first step taken.
Admission.
Poetry is my default rest position,

My drug of choice.
~
Have you noticed here

Each poet declaims his fellow
The better one, his teacher,
From whom they shall learn and gather up
Inspiration

Gonna run for Congress,
My first bill, Poetry-care,
Will make it a requirement that
All citizens must contribute,
Exchange once a day
To this peaceful place,
Even just a syllable, a single letter,

K?
~
Literally my eyes see words awaiting coordinating,
Poems flying by, needing plucking,
How a child eats his morning cereal,
His rituals informing, of the man yet to be,
How our bodies lay, hair unbrushed,
Tying us into a conjoined knot...

No matter that plain words are my ordinary tools,
With them I shall scribe the small,
Cherish the little, grab the middle,
Simplicity my golden rule,
Write they say, about what you know best,
Surely in the diurnal motions,
The arc of daily commotion,
Do we not all excel?
~
The ice of poetry,
glassine smooth
but
charged hardness,
hits you, ****** you,
unexpected snowball in the face,

the fire of poetry,
cherished phrase, a patois,
comfort food when
whole winter skies
swallow you bleak

mutual contradictions of poetry
savaging the soothed ego,
revealing the raging id

what's in a word anyway?
~
Please Pop, pick wise,
the life and lies, the faces and disguises,
I will need employ to achieve success
in the eyes of my reading beholders,
who own the liens on my soul
because of the promises I believed,
when you sang me
glowing lullabies of my future days,
how everyone would love my stories,
my poems, someday...
~
Place your ****** hands upon thy chest.
Let them melt thru and come to rest,
Inside, the battle ongoing, under thy breast.
Watch, eyes open, knowing, fearful.
Swiftly, with no hesitation, from within,
Rip open your body, exhaling the best,
And the worst of what you got.

The cool air rushes in,
Stirring the inside stew of:
Infected grime, shameful desires,
Secrets that should not have been exposed,
The ***** stuff that you alone know exists.

Contact with the atmosphere makes
Self-pity dies, blue blood turn red,
The TNT tightness explodes,
Ashamed, you have only one escape hatch.

Now, you are ready to write.
~
My life is on the boring side,
So welcome gents to look inside,
The surfed sites, the emails, hardly slimy,
But stay the fk away from my poetry!

Tis obvious from your midnight editing,
That my wordily, working body has been discretely
Simonized,
My data,
Googlized,
My poems,
Scrutinized,
A comma, a colon, a verb, out of place, capsized,
Little threads kept in door jambs, their alteration,
Your snooping presence, a confirming revelation
~
Where I write, here, all comes so easy,
Every glance a poem formed,
Every phrase a title to a poem served,
Every conversation overheard and those wind-lifted brought,
A seed, a germ, a word~worm hooked to the pole crook of
My finger saying, see man, time to get more ink and paper,
Go and catch us a few poems for dinner

The snapper weakfish word colors are
Running past my-by the thousands,
We will need a basket to catch but a fraction
Of what you see, more than more enough to share,
Only Happy Poems for all

It is this rhyming way I view the wold,
That is my freedom, is my-present essence,
How the poems come, how thy flow,
Peaking, I cannot berate, rarely eat,
Sleep a thing of the past (as you be aware, beware)
There is poetry in simply everything.
~
But if my aura be a comfort insufficient,
Let this surprise poetic gift awaiting your arrival,
Give you rest, from crying surcease!

For when the who, the why of me interrogatory posed,
Describe me in a brevity I ne'er possessed, say:
He was just a poet, and I,
Just, his lover, number one fan.

This truth eternal, never to change.
~
But I am open to learning, the arduous task
Of raising a teenage daughter,
After I have my head examined

Though I am just a bunch of eclectic electrons,
I got powers a few, like making life's happiness
Hearted happier, encouraging your forays into
You-know-what,
And when tables turn, a hasty retreat you beat,
For imaginary cappuccinos and poems we will meet,
Comparing notes on who felt lousier when...

But what I can do 100% is assure you
There is no lone nor lonely daughter extant,
Your voice not just clear but soft-edged,
For I have poetically adopted you,
Here and now, assuming you sign on the
.............................................................­line
~
Take these words at plain face,
and look not askance
at this fair warning,
for I am but a tragic,
empty vessel for you to fill,
you are the raconteur,
me, just a  
poet poseur extraordinaire,
street urchin, word merchant,
all my verbally, wordly goods expropriated
from the wind,  where your scattered thoughts
lie about, carelessly,
unattended
~
Guiltless in life, we but survived,
Hurting no one, no thing,
Yet, here we lie, ignored, unattended,
Yet, you fail again to see our connection?
You do not recognize us?

We are the shells, the husks of you,
Your poems unread, you labors unpreserved,
All wasted, for unless they are read, they die,
As you will too.
Some fast, by water, some slower, time-eroded,
All, ended, by drowning in the Sea of Who Cares!
~
What sourced this elegiac distich,
Too many poets, fully disclosing their downbeat, aroma of defeat?

The world is in a **** mood, not one of us, got nothing
Good to say, seems that love storms ripping hearts
With no trace of mercy, the radio has elected nonstop
Taylor Swift and Jonas Bro's
Just to make the point!

It is so easy to feel ******,
When the sun is unshining, elegant distich, **** me.

Thinking back, getting a good idea,
Found some long necked Corona overlooked,
Turn on the tv, pretend I'm a real cowboy,
And for god's sake, shut down poetry,
Good Bye Poetry, for the rest of the day.
~
once upon a time,
a traffic light rainbow,
stopped n' go, was a word design,
demarcated visions of spun sugar,
bodegas sold me
magic beans by the pound,
masterminded into cups of delight,
treasury's bounty overflowed,
now, dregs drain, sink stained,
as are my writing utensils,
my ink stained, us-less, fingers

come visit me, unknown stranger,
let us exchange fluidity, barbs,
a contest of kissing, eye lashing
wit ands shared vision stashing,
and together, once more,
write with our feet,
while holding hands,
becoming once more
poets of the street.

Only, come quickly.
~

But reading thy cries, an exercise,
Teeth-gnashing frustration.
It brings no relief.

So sad girl,
Write till you are righted,
May be it will snow on July 4th,
And tho unnatural,
So is thy grief.

Nonetheless, write me write me all about it,
Right us,
For tho snow falls, its loveliness,
Makes the heart rise up in gladness!
~
She brings me coffee in bed.
I propose a violin accompaniment.
Some babka, with nice-crumbly-in-bed
Streusel topping,
A concerto we could make!

Her derision snorted so loud,
The mollusks on the beach
From their shells come out.

"Good luck with that,
Put that fantasy on
Your **** poetry site,
Cause that is the closest you will ever get!"
~
For she will be my heroine for all time,

These words to expand with rhyme and verse,
T'is a welcome task, one familiar, but anew,
Each dawn each dusk, a daily trust, a love poem diurnal-birthed,
As if god created the world, but left upon completion,
With a grievous thirst, a new notion, he did burst.

He created the Eighth Day, for celebration of his
Most cherished invention, the idea of love.
This is where, the secret writ Eleventh Commandment occurs,
Love thy Poetry Gods, Honor them with daily verbs.
~
Officer...you should see me gut a

Poem,

Slice its belly open,
Sometimes straight, sometimes Askew,
Feed the gulls them
****** insides on the dock, by-moonlight,
Can ya cut me some slack?

Mmm, I see here in your license,
You are a disabled guy,
A **** poet ******,
Who often does his best work
Legally all alone in the HOV lane,
So I'm gonna let you off this time
Just with a warning!
~
We can share words, we can grant tiny easements,
We can weep with you unseen tears,
We can etsy you little homemade gifts
Like this.

That you can take and keep, and break out in time of need knowing full well that these words will not spoil nor rancid turn, cannot be out grown,, or torn, or rent asunder in anyway for once they are shared
They are irrevocable.
~
When you write,
It as if you write upon our
One skin,
For I am your tablet,
Your sole/sol/soul composition.

So stop kissing me
and
Write upon us.
~
This will not be the hardest poem I e're wrote,
But if there is no inspiration
For you to smote,
And armpits refuse to provide perspiration,
To source juices for a new creation,
Try this trick,
I promise you
No one will lick your ice cream cone,
Nor mistake you for Leonard Cohen,
But when you are done,
You will be High Priest of
Hello Poetry for the rest of the day!
~
You think you can write?
Then employ  a word outside your comfort zone,
Go it alone,
And write four sentences that will make
The hopeful reader stand up and
you twice as much, and shout

Hallelujah
*******.

Work. Poetry is work. Hard work.
Don't fret. But, think on it. Have the sweetest dreams.
In the morning, when you but awake,
A poem will be aborning in thy mind,
And dare I say it, you will find a new freedom
In free verse.
(I know you will slip in a rhyme or two,
I can't help but do it too)
~
Had myself forgot,
That a poem needs a
Frame of jungle gym sounds,
An aural aura resonance unbound.
Purposed to make the heart lift
Your ears say:

Say what!

It needs a tune,
An internal music,
It needs a lilt!
A cadence, that both
Marches and swings,
Even when'd urgent dirge
grief pours forth.
~
This Sabbath day you fog-hide
Your gift of bay and beach
So quiet implore, beseech,
Keep the sailors safe,
And your poets saved.

I ask much.
But I ask for all of us,
There are so many such
That are booster-chair needy
That I am succumbed, overwhelmed,
Enormity fearsome needs help even from a deity.

Small words, big hopes.

If you cannot grant it,
Won't wait for intervention,
Do it myself, answer prayers one and all,
Best I can, starting now with this
Po-hymn.
~
I used to sleep
With pen and paper on my nighttime table.
Nowadays, my iPad tablet rests upon my chest,
Not only does it keep me warn,
It takes my poems from within, Fresh Direct,^
Edits, credits, and delivers them to your door,
While I'm still sleeping.

Which is why they come at all hours.
It is also why they call them,
Love's Labour's Lost saving devices.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
**So I spend my cold, hard time
laying down cold hard verse,
Can't stop, cause it's my daddy's dying curse.

I am both: Addict and dealer, a ****** poet ******.

A young lady sashays across the kitchen floor .. Displaying a stunning , red Ball gown , beaming , contrarily to an fro , eager for a compliment from a proud seamstress . A fidgety young boy ,  hand -me -down jacket with slacks being tailored , patches cut , hand sewn at worn out knees ..Darning Papas socks , repairing a tablecloth , custom curtains ,  flour sacks made into napkins , aprons , quilts  and handkerchiefs . A wicker box that belonged to very gifted hands indeed

Twenty-four years remind the tears of my eyes.
(Bury the dead for fear that they walk to the grave in labour.)
In the groin of the natural doorway I crouched like a tailor
Sewing a shroud for a journey
By the light of the meat-eating sun.
Dressed to die, the sensual strut begun,
With my red veins full of money,
In the final direction of the elementary town
I advance as long as forever is.

When I was younger I bit my tongue so hard that all you can see in my mouth is blood and the colour red. They thought it wasn’t severe and just a normal bite but they didn’t know that bite would change my life. My mother brought me to a doctor who she called “stupid”. The doctor told me that in order to stop the bleeding, he will need a thread and a needle, to do the job of putting stitches to my tongue. My mother thought, “Is this doctor crazy? Sewing my daughter’s tongue? Is he serious?”, my mother was worried about the things that are bound to happen to my tongue, that it will connect to my speaking, that I will have a speech deficiency, but that time all I worried about was the pain. Of course, I was young, and kids were afraid of pain. Kids were afraid of bruises, wounds, blood. But they were never afraid of the world, instead, they loved it. But now, I think I see it in a different way. Thinking of all the things that are happening to my life I think the doctor is sending me a different message. A needle, a thread, putting stitches to my tongue, I think this doctor is telling me to shut up. At such a young age, he was warning a little girl who didn’t even know reality yet to keep her mouth shut, does he know that these things would happen when I grow up? That the moment my eyes will be open by reality my entire perspective will change? That I won’t let my voice not to be heard? That my tongue will serve as my gun and my words will be the bullets that can ****? I wondered if he knew, but I also wonder how is he now, where is he. Because I would want to say some words that I didn’t get to say before when I was just a small child who had her tongue held back to prevent her for the words she was about to say.

I would want him to know that I will not keep my mouth shut.

I will not keep my mouth shut because we tell young girls how they should act, what they should wear. Don’t go to the streets in the middle of the night, don’t wear that, that’s too short. Because ever since we were young we already needed validation from everyone.
I will not keep my mouth shut because we teach girls how to prevent being harassed instead of teaching people to stop harassing girls. Because the questions you will get after that are “What were you wearing?”, “Were you drunk that time?”, and that oh so famous line “Maybe you were asking for it.” Did you think I dressed up that night and got drunk because I was waiting for someone to ruin my life?
I will not keep my mouth shut because we still make jokes about ****, we still think it’s funny, we think something that could destroy someone else’s life is hilarious. And you tell us, “Lighten up, couldn’t you take a joke?”.
I will not keep my mouth shut because my clothes determine my consent, the shortness of my skirt will tell you that I want your hands to touch my thighs, my sleeveless top will send you a confirmation that I want your skin to touch the different parts of my body. That I don’t have my own name because you are throwing different ones to me, I never knew my name on my birth certificate was “hot thing.” But then you did it again while I was wearing long sleeves and jeans, what’s your excuse now?
I will not keep my mouth shut because you think that being a woman is an insult, you will shout phrases like “You’re such a girl.”, “You fight like a girl.”, because we are seen as damsels in distress that are always in need to be saved, because we are the weaker ***, right? But why, that when the moment we already fight and be the heroes of our own that makes us less of a woman and more of a man.
I will not keep my mouth shut because when a boy gets harassed you will tell him to “man up, dude.”, because boys are meant to be strong and women are meant to be pretty, because boys should avoid being sensitive and girls should not be powerful, because blue is for boys and pink is for girls, but didn’t it ever crossed your mind that maybe colours and descriptions could be for both?
I will not keep my mouth shut because we always need to be modest, hush, act like a lady, the way of your sitting is not very ladylike, your clothes are not really for girls, your taste in music isn’t fit for a lady like you. Because you see us a delicate flower that you can pick and own all the time. But let me tell you this, we aren’t just flowers, we are fire. And when you play with us,  prepare to be burnt.
I will not keep my mouth shut because all my life that’s what you’ve been telling me, and after that say sorry. Say sorry for fighting for your rights, say sorry for speaking up, say sorry for not being silent. And tell me, does my voice terrify you? I hope it does.
I will not keep my mouth shut and I am not sorry about it,
I will not keep my mouth shut because I can not,
I will not keep my mouth shut and I never ever will.

After our encounter with the crazy doctor, we found another one, the second doctor, and he said, there’s no need for sewing, you will only need to put some ice to stop the bleeding. I think he even gave me a frozen delight. I didn’t get to thank him before and now I want to see him and see what he’s doing. I think he forgot to give me a message before, a message that he was dying to tell but couldn’t because I was only a child, but now I think I know it. I think I heard him say these words to me in my dream last night:

**“Not because you bit your tongue, that doesn’t stop you from speaking. Don’t be silent, speak up.”

O GLAD SHE LEFT THE SEWING BOX
I see it over there
I see it in the sitting room while I'm sat on the stair
A place I often found myself
Sitting in the window shelf
Early hours hearing you screaming crashing tone
Angry sounds and banging doors
Little one I hide
Hope a little deer doesn't lose her little smile
Hoping that the hare is out and gently bounces here
Hoping that the moon still shone and owls still listen hear
Staring up into the moon
Wish you to return
WHAT If SHEs gone
A promise often said
Made a child tremble fear
On being left for others fun
When she is gone the shadows come
WHAT WAS THAT
SHE LEFT THE SEWING BOX BEHIND FOR THE GIRLS
AS THEY MAY NEED IT
WHAT
To slowly stitch up slices  flesh or simply tie a knot
So to LETS STITCH UP our empty hearts
Say no more its done
RIPPED  THROUGH anf torn another night we are through
apart from
HEART THAT SHE MADE
Then broke
WHEN A NEW LIFE she has sort
SHE WANTED another MORE THAN HER CHILDREN and we are older don't need a mother
LETS STITCH UP THE EMPTY of MY HEART THAT CAN NEVER HEAL
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE AN EMPTY SPACE
THAT CAN NOT BE FILLED nor be replaced by any other
CAN NOT BE BRIDGE OR cover
AND WILL NEVER HEAL
SHE IS GONE,
MY LOVELY MOTHER
WHO I COULDN'T BEAR TO BE PARTED FROM
SHE IS GONE
WHY NOT LEAVE MY MOTHER BEHIND
AS WE MAY NEED HER
No I chose you made me choose you asked me and I said
yes go I'm fine
But I meant don't go
I'm dying here.
don't leave please god please don't leave the sewing box lying in the hall
I'll have to take the scissors out and leave a scar for sure
Stitches do not heal scars you are afraid to show
Stitches only make you see all soon I'll have to go
Now leave or im to go
But I may leave no box
Nor in a box shall leave
Alone

An absence reversed
Beheld
Belonging
Fuming lush greenery seemingly
Between the frothing
Soup and lather twinkling
Speaking
"Tradition may act dishonestly"
All and sundry
Trails along merrily
For traditionally
All is how it should be
Belonging to one and only.

Binding
A trade between the thin lines
A baking sheet made sprayed messy
Artists in threes
Shakers of mountains for invisible ease
The truth is simply
Things done traditionally
All-in consuming historically.

Flesh
Released
Is fresh
Relief
Hidden in the fabric's sleeve
A gaping passage of air and breeze
Racing electricity
Breathtaking silk from worms
And worms eaten by birds
Tradition
Sewing the dresses of Empress the third.
Halt
Her plea worth salt and sugar
Still
Like the skater's
Minted odour
Hope
Distances the valleys low dipped to the everlasted rivers
Where a time arrives for eternal celebration.
The embellishments of
Unwavered tradition.

The *** Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat:
If you offer him pheasant he would rather have grouse.
If you put him in a house he would much prefer a flat,
If you put him in a flat then he’d rather have a house.
If you set him on a mouse then he only wants a rat,
If you set him on a rat then he’d rather chase a mouse.
Yes the *** Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat—
And there isn’t any call for me to shout it:
For he will do
As he do do
And there’s no doing anything about it!

The *** Tum Tugger is a terrible bore:
When you let him in, then he wants to be out;
He’s always on the wrong side of every door,
And as soon as he’s at home, then he’d like to get about.
He likes to lie in the bureau drawer,
But he makes such a fuss if he can’t get out.

Yes the *** Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat—
And there isn’t any use for you to doubt it:
For he will do
As he do do
And there’s no doing anything about it!

The *** Tum Tugger is a curious beast:
His disobliging ways are a matter of habit.
If you offer him fish then he always wants a feast;
When there isn’t any fish then he won’t eat rabbit.
If you offer him cream then he sniffs and sneers,
For he only likes what he finds for himself;

So you’ll catch him in it right up to the ears,
If you put it away on the larder shelf.
The *** Tum Tugger is artful and knowing,
The *** Tum Tugger doesn’t care for a cuddle;
But he’ll leap on your lap in the middle of your sewing,
For there’s nothing he enjoys like a horrible muddle.
Yes the *** Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat—
And there isn’t any need for me to spout it:
For he will do
As he do do
And theres no doing anything about it!

What are we doing out here
In the wild wild west
Are you showing me something
Or are we here to rest
We've traveled a long road
But I'm not ready to settle yet

Spider crawling up my arm one day
Blood on my quilt the next
Blood splot on the bathroom floor
Hair chopped off
Cut my finger
Cut that ****

Third eye minds eye know you can open it
**** nugs nudging you toward it
Chugging fluoride gotta know its blocking it

Depression crippling lazy thinking I'm not getting anywhere anymore
Dated a slick-back sexist slug of a human
He haunts me in my dreams
I'm trying to dream big dream of everything
But his face shows me where I've been
His hands done healing flex ****** veins, stop stealing!
His mom sewing his mistakes back together again, stop helping!
His dad fueling the fire again at home, stop procreating!
Its not the job of a lover to raise your significant other
Its not my job to shower you with everything I have day after ******* day when all I get in return is leftover pizza and a sore ******
-SOME PEOPLE DON'T KNOW HOW TO LOVE
IT IS NOT ON YOU TO SHOW THEM HOW
SOME WILL TRY OUT THE MOTIONS WITH OTHER MOTIVATIONS IN MIND
BUT LOVE IS NOT JUST AN ACTION IT IS TRULY A LIFESTYLE
Without love I would be dead
Fill
With intention
Else you're dead
Living isn't that easy
Same struggles every day
Being healthy isn't that easy
Definitely more expensive that way
Being human isn't that easy
Hunting my own spirit day after day

Not wanting
Feeling bad
Not supporting
But loving

I have something to say god ******
And don't dare tell me its just the drugs
We need to start questioning what love is
The lack of it is ******* stuff up
I'm high right now if you didn't know it
If I was sober would the words still come out

You say you love me but you don't support it
But how can you love if you don't understand it
Love is unconditional
Love is support

How are you loving when you try to change it
There is no fixing my humanity
You don't know what makes me happy
No one can be trusted

Love

Choice

Choosing

To be loved

things are not ideal,they never have been.



someone is eating the covers.i think the

time is right.



slowly we clean and tidy.wait for the shop to open.

wait for the table to be moved.this will be the sewing



room.



use all spaces.



sbm.

I'm neither the mirror nor the reflection
I'm neither the presence nor the absence  
I'm neither the fool nor the sage
I'm neither the seeker nor the finder
and
I'm neither the sky nor the cage

I am someone I haven't been
since
I am somewhere in between and something unseen
But if I do know a thing
is that
I am sewing what I am with the not's that I keep clean

(for my brother, Martin)

I have sown the moon in the sky for you
so every night its there for you to see

I have stopped every clock from ticking time away
I have turned the tides back from the shore

I have stopped your world in blue belled Spring
and locked my in the falling leaves of Autumn

So now you can rewind the moments of the world
You can go back, to that one moment of choice

and never find the hose, nor set the engine deadly running
nor send those texts of fond farewells, to friends who looked away

nor write to me with love a comfort letter
for the dreadful loss.

No!
Just you:

the tufted, still blonde cowlick sticking up
the crinkled nose and cheeky smile
those sea blue eyes to drown in
strong brown arms, muscles flexed and toned
wrapped tight around me warm
and alive.


© M.L.Emmett

Larissa Lou McCasky is hurting relapses needs Clyde Eli Moskowitz to stay at her side and more than anything he wants to help her through this difficult time yet there is nothing he can do but watch his most precious angel be devoured in her own flames at first it is drinking he can not keep up with her she drinks until she feels oblivion next drugging she goes back to old destructive ways she practiced after divorce 15 years ago Clyde will not go there with her Larissa stops writing reading her sewing machine sits dormant hairs around her ******* grow long she makes demands he is not capable of giving Clyde is *** addict he reads to Larissa from Yukio Mishima’s Madame de Sade “the more exalted the man the more refined his pleasures” Larissa learns from Clyde then she insists on more goes beyond him buffalo meat is tough Clyde shows her how to cook it with water little lime juice Larissa repudiates his coaching she prefers to chew the meat tough sometimes she hears war drums beating in her heart Clyde owns 3 guns in his house 2 pistols and a shotgun he keeps them hidden from Larissa

2

spirit dog is dog that stays long after dog dies sometimes spirit dog needs to be fed or water left out in case spirit dog is thirsty spirit dog makes you question did you do enough when dog was alive spirit dog dogs you with faint sounds in house dogs you in dreams in bed at night dogs you when you look in face of other dogs spirit dog does not ever leave your side

3

the artist is will always be at odds with him/herself society the system when his/her work becomes viable commercially it becomes corporatized part of the system imagine Nine Inch Nails song Closer lyric “i want to ******* like an animal” becoming elevator music

4

concerning creation establish location characters then sit back let imagination go wild take your time think it through the weirder the better there are no mistakes just pure improvisation

5

what power did her dog Sweeny sanction within Larissa that Clyde could not fulfill? was it Sweeny’s absolute dependency that brought out her nurturing instinct? Clyde needs Larissa yet wants her more than he needs her when spirit dog inside Larissa gets hungry she indulges him

6

Larissa takes to the streets and that’s where real damage commences slow at first old man with worn out $20 bill then young punk who shoves her out penniless with mouthful of *** then biker dude gives her lift unto back of Harley rides her back to clubhouse feeds her rohypnol 13 men pull a train stub out lit cigarette butts on her face and ******* then crack 2 front teeth shoving shotgun down her throat another up her *** and take bets on where the shots will meet they decide instead to leave her naked with no water in the desert Mexicans sneaking across border rescue her escort her to Tucson she finds her way to Clyde’s house begging he stands in doorway sees missing teeth scars on cheeks chin above left eye damage beyond his understanding how to fix feels both fear and tears welling up lies to her tells her he has new girlfriend she knows he’s lying wanders off gets arrested for vagrancy then disorderly conduct then prostitution

7

every author faces the dilemma of how to fix what they have broken if the work is to be original then it must break from convention

8

Larissa Lou McCasky has an epiphany in Pima County jail when she gets out she will find a job sewing or writing or proof-reading maybe all 3 then she will find a dog and after she is settled Larissa will look up Clyde Eli Moskowitz and try her best to win him back and regain paradise lost yet knowing it is unlikely she will gratefully accept whatever comes her way and remember to honor respect spirit dog and vigilantly at times keep him on leash

9

Larissa keeps promise to herself she and Clyde meet at Sky bar it is 3 years since their first meeting she has more gray hair than he her teeth are patched up

LARISSA i’ve missed you Clyde and thought about us a lot

CLYDE i’ve missed you too Larissa you look lovely like good things are happening around you i forgot how beautiful you are

LARISSA chill on the flattery Clyde i’ve found a new dog and named it Eli after you he’s ******* outside see him

CLYDE wow that’s your Catahoula hound that licked my hand on the way in wow where did you find him

LARISSA animal rescue hey Clyde if you don’t mind i’ll just cut to the chase you know i want to come home with you

CLYDE slow down girl one step at a time let’s order some drinks and talk and yes i would love getting back with you

BARTENDER may i help you

LARISSA yes i’d like a Shirley Temple and my friend here can have whatever he wants my treat

CLYDE guess i’ll have what the lady is having

LARISSA you quit drinking too

CLYDE yup starting now with you

LARISSA i love you Clyde i really truly do

I will continue on
With my undying passion
And will continue to smile
Because I contain no compassion

I must find a new house
This one is getting old
I forgot to clean a mess
So now the energy is cold

I must find my new girl
Blonde hair blue eyes
She must not get away
I'll have to tighten the ties

From my truck to the kitchen
Everything in fine
Until you awaken
And realize you are mine

That is when you panic
And try to scream or yell
Little do you notice
You've already entered hell
I live for sight of pain
And will do what I have to
To see your eyes roll backwards
And witness your lips turn blue

I will use whatever device
That brings you the most tears
So you will not forget my face
And I will haunt your fears

Even my touch stings your skin
Imagine how my knife feels
You may cry all you want
But I do not make deals

There is a reason you were chosen
And I am not giving you away
All my senses pointed to you
Which is why you're now my prey

You keep trying to fight back
But that just makes it worse
For I cannot heal your wounds
Because I am not a nurse

I regret the way you died
I didn't mean to stab your heart
It's been 5 weeks and some sewing
But you are still falling apart

I left the house today
I will get over you, but when?
Hey, Blonde hair blue eyes
There you are again

This is now. Now is. Don't
postpone till then. Spend

the spark of iron on stone.
Sit at the head of the table;

dip your spoon in the bowl.
Seat yourself next your joy

and have your awakened soul
pour wine. Branches in the

spring wind, easy dance of
jasmine and cypress. Cloth

for green robes has been cut
from pure absence. You're

the tailor, settled among his
shop goods, quietly sewing.

Like an alien in a spotlight
With her magnifying glasses on
My mother as she worked, up all night
Did invisible weaving till dawn

I would watch her when I couldn’t sleep
Honing in on that hole in the suit
Intently, her concentration deep
Weaving tiny threads enlarged like jute

In other-worldly light she labored
I was afraid she’d lose her eyesight
Watching her focus never wavered
Her face all aglow in the lamplight

Invisible weaving, I inquired
How tediously she plied her craft
Worked for the money that she required
Made the warp and weft of fabric last

Reconstruction, undetectable
No more burn, or tear, or fabric blight
Weaving magic so incredible
Its wound now perfect by morning’s light

She taught me much that I’m still making
From her life that now I’m grieving
Sewing, crocheting and great baking
But never invisible weaving

The picture of her life that mattered
I now see how she toiled so finely
And that the wrinkles in the fabric
Of my own life splayed out so blindly

The vision of my eyes, bedazzled
Incandescent, her face in the beam
Unaware how her mind unraveled
As Depression stole her ev’ry dream

The threads of DNA defining
Who I’ve become I’m now believing
My mother’s hand in that designing
Of my own Invisible Weaving

In honor of my mother, Edla Sylvia Fitzpatrick, on this International Women's Day

I've learned that happiness
cannot be found in the form of a little
purple capsule.
I've learned that Pisa will have to wait until next time.
I've learned that the third mushroom
held in my sweaty palm was not as
big a deal compared to the other two opening my mind.
I've learned that a part of me
died that night where we ****** in a
room with no furniture.
I've learned that life is work and that
the molotov cocktail of Dubrah and eay mac
that came spewing from me left an orange tang
upon the floor.
I've learned that pain is better than numbness
and that jabbing a sewing needle repeatedly in my arm
was an educated decision.
Most importantly I've learned that together we are better than alone.

Outwardly I am a titanium barrier, inwardly, a net of strings hold me together within confining my true self to my mind. The metaphoric needle posed between thumb and forefinger, sewing patch after patch across my ruined skin, holding in the things that threaten to burst. The thread is my self value, thin and dissolving.
Watching in the shattering mirror, who I am, as tears and blood slip past trembling fingers.  Reaching upwards towards light, but I drown in the darkness. I am swallowed by hopeless misery.
Floundering and toiling in the shadows of my own faith and nearly forgotten beliefs.
Sorrow floods me, consuming in a cold fire that doesn’t burn, but freezes to the core.
Refracting shards of light that escape like a song. They fall like a melody from my lips.
While the heat of the world swirls around me in shades of blue and black. I am bruised and ask "why do I hate myself?"
I never have an answer. Only the memories of a life so beyond dysfunctional that I have to resort to story writing to make believe a happy ending, never truly believing in it.

What were these whispered words that squirmed and infiltrated my mind, what are those lost secrets and memories left to fade away. Tormented, still I remain silent. Suffering quietly. Wondering if I'll go down without a fight, or would I take my own life. It is the loss of my humanity. I transcend in definition, no longer resembling who I was.  Silver tears, dripping from the eyes of the moon, as if such a cold distant satellite mourns for and with me.

Fear remains, as it always does, clutching my heart in an iron grasp. Despite the freedom of a new life, my knees are buckling, I’m poised to run, as if there were a place to escape to. Walls arise on all sides. I am locked in a box, where I hide away from the world, and I become, cold and distant as the moon. Fighting myself endlessly.
Hide everything I am from the world, and put it out of sight of myself, I don't dare to confront it.
I ask myself again. "Why do I hate?" I know a vague answer to it this time. I have allowed the evil and cruelty of a despondent life before this one to shape me, even after my resurrection, despite my belief and faith. I had let it consume me.
My heart, a thousand splinters of ice, would once break, even if it was looked at, or touched, cracked and shatter repeatedly. I only watch, making no attempt to heal myself. Content with viewing my own nails clashing with soft flesh that gives way to pain and agony. Slicing into cold abysmal depths, bleeding a metaphoric spectrum of ****** colors into my veins that then spill down the drain of my heart.

I wonder if there is any capacity within me, for the remnants of a shimmering soul to return to hope?   I'd abandoned love and hope for so long, had they dissipated completely. Do I dare to uncover such a startling miserable revelation?
My voice catches in my chest, as I sing halfheartedly for my freedom. To be released from my anguish. My voice not carrying past my lips, stolen by the wind of despair circulating around me.
I had changed, believed myself worthless and ugly. Melancholy, a kaleidoscope of emotions contrasting with one another. Dripping together to create the painting of my life. Magnificent, yet lonely and sad. Like forlorn splatter-paint tears down the side of eroding walls.

I was told once that I was shiny on the outside, and dull on the inside. Gilded. I want to change that. I cannot hide the scars I have been dealt, nor can I conceal the ones I've inflicted to my own body. I remember each slice to the skin with shame. That I had knowingly marred perfect flesh.
"What value could I possibly have if I'm constantly looked down upon?"  I pose questions like this to myself.
Everything they say makes me feel worthless, like I'm not supposed to be here.
Maybe I'm not, I wasn’t supposed to live was I?
“Worthless. Freak. Stupid.”
Do these words define me?
Are they who I am?
I am a shadow, As I sink into the depths of my own insignificance I stare speculatively, emptily up at the opalescent translucence far above me. I’ve always been worthless,  but now I am nameless. I’ve never been to solid in my own emotions, right now I don’t know what to feel anymore. Where and what is joy? What happened to the light?
I dissolve into toxicity and an almost chemical stasis of depression, seeping into my heart with the thickness of sick black tar, dragging me farther than I’ve ever been beneath the surface.

I become nothing, for that is what I presume I always was, nothing. Only a mirage burning holes into the fabric of lonely hearts longing, a haunting memory left to torment into seclusion and sorrow.
An empty shell of what once was a girl with dreams, is all that remains to decay in the dark. While the shudder of sobs dies down into a tempest of self loathing.
An incandescent nightmare, flares out like the petals of a blossoming flower, they unfurl and cover the dystopia of eloquently disfigured words that curl and uncoil, only to surround the wounds of me that pour from a inky black liquid that has replaced the blood in my veins.
The push and pull of the sorrow and hope mixing into the discordant symphony of life. The sound that is the melody of me.

Men my brothers who after us live,
have your hearts against us not hardened.
For—if of poor us you take pity,
God of you sooner will show mercy.
You see us here, attached.
As for the flesh we too well have fed,
long since it's been devoured or has rotted.
And we the bones are becoming ash and dust.

Of our pain let nobody laugh,
but pray God
            would us all absolve.

If you my brothers I call, do not
scoff at us in disdain, though killed
we were by justice.  Yet þþ you know
all men are not of good sound sense.
Plead our behalf since we are dead naked
with the Son of Mary the ******
that His grace be not for us dried up
preserving us from hell's fulminations.

We're dead after all.  Let no soul revile us,
but pray God
            would us all absolve.

Rain has washed us, laundered us,
and the sun has dried us black.
Worse—ravens plucked our eyes hollow
and picked our beards and brows.
Never ever have we sat down, but
this way, and that way, at the wind's
good pleasure ceaselessly we swing 'n swivel,
more nibbled at than sewing thimbles.

Therefore, think not of joining our guild,
but pray God
            would us all absolve.

Prince Jesus, who over all has lordship,
care that hell not gain of us dominion.
With it we have no business, fast or loose.

People, here be no mocking,
but pray God
            would us all absolve.