Teenage girl, lost in the world
asked her little brother if she could borrow his pencil sharpener
"*****, aren't you a little old for coloring?" He teased and gave her the sharpener.
With a faint smile she replied: "Maybe, but I like the color red."

a.c.

The eraser erased my bad habits
While the pencil drew in new ones
The glue stick glued on a whole new face
As the scissors cut away my background and past
The ball point pen then made the changes permanent
While the colored pencils shaded in my body
The calculator changed my way of thinking
As the sharpener grazed over my rough edges
Finally, the ruler
I had to measure up to your standards
Now me and you
We walk, talk and think the same
Two moving as one
I don't even know who I've become
What I was before
You've changed me more than you'll ever know

born in illusory chains
gnarled metal
encrusted in my broken skin
the copper colored dust
of rusted steel
infectiously envelopes

shaving off antiquated layers
of fundamentalist religion
encrusted for generations
unpeeled until raw
an unsophisticated method
unveiling
ancient lodged glass shards
colored with deceit

brought before their court
interrogated
unfathomably skewered
an eerie salem witch trial
in modern times

barbarically they shun me
banished
i wander aimlessly
smelling the rotten decay of deceased community
as splinters pierce my feet
from the crooked wooden plank
i walk alone now

an unfathomable inner ache
kindled a residue within
igniting a wildfire from the darkest shadows
uncontainably erupting
i dance savagely
naked in the orange moonlight
and in every shaded edge
lit my soul ablaze

i am a nomad sheep
‘tho not one of their color
no pasture to contain me
no shepherd i can follow
theological safety nets
no longer there to catch me
bohemian-like
i plunge

free falling
plummeting
stripped wide open
magically
fearlessness
reverses gravitation

floating
untethered
i soar amongst
apricot tinged clouds
my skin still wet from rebirth
and rise with the flaming coral sun

you cannot destroy me
i twisted in your decrepit pencil sharpener
and with fresh mettle
cut through the chains that bound

you can have my ego
but you cannot have my soul

dismantling domestication
transcending limitation
wildly untamed
i fly

©2016janetaylor

I lost my sharpener blade recently
In tall, thick blades of grass.

So I guess there is something else out there,
A second unknown nature.

And I hope it's trying to save me
Because I'm not trying to save myself.

Mr. Shmirnoff could not fall asleep
For his mind was focused on nothing but his jeep
He walked into his kitchen with the hope of a solution
As he saw the pills the ones next to the lotion

He took a few too many thirty minutes later
His mind was spinning in circles like a 3rd grader
He figured he might sharpen his pencils before he lie down to sleep
He approached his sharpener he took a quick leap confused as a purple sheep and what came next was gory and ignorant because he put his finger in the sharperener out of confusion and tore it he still was loopy

And his finger became droopy as he confused his finger for a pencil his mind was woozy and soon enough he was losing so much blood and then he finally understood what was happening the blood dropped low as it stopped on his toe oh what a mess he made he finally took his finger out and said "Oh hell no!" The room was soaked in red his nerves were dead and shortly after that he entered into his bed

Finally resting with a finger mostly destroyed his ring was broken just like his previous joy and he finally fell into a slumber as he dreamed of some lumber that he had see on Tumblr.

They used to like me
but now I just get used
once or twice in year
I felt pointless

I guess I was dull
Not young and mechanical
Until you made me feel sharp
I guess you steel little bits of me

But if my life is short I’d rather give you my all
They call me a #2
Makes sense you must be number one

But I notice I am not the only one you make feel sharp
You really go around
I guess I am more dependent on you than you were on me .
And now I know they aren’t the only ones who used me .

“i haven’t seen her in years,”
said the hospital bed,
“though i’ve seen many others,
who sobbed violently like her,
who sunk into me like a young, rusting anchor.
who could not get comfortable in one position or
one mindset or
one truth.
i have felt them dig in their heels
and try to ache and and fight and
scream, just quietly enough not to wake their roommate.”

“i remember their shapes,”
said the hospital bed,
“how their voices rose slowly like a far-off ambulance siren,
how their faces fell when they remembered the emergency
was right here.
i have been kicked, punched,
clung to, held on to,
as if gravity switched suddenly and they feared
yet another aspect of the universe was against them.
i’ve seen ***** sheets and i’ve seen clean ones. i’ve
seen boys with tattoos on their faces and
razor marks on their arms. i’ve seen pain.
i’ve seen girls who wouldn’t turn off the lights,
girls who couldn’t turn off the lights,
girls who had turned a light off once and never wanted
to do anything else. i’ve seen pain.

i’ve felt love before
more often than the lovers thought they loved,
more strongly than the fighters thought
they could fight.
in shaky hands folding down blankets
more carefully than they have all week
in heads that flop ungracefully onto
pillows, securely,
fulfilled.
in the slow turn of a hospital bracelet
around a pale wrist,
in large, golden brown hands,
inspected through tear-blurred eyes,
through scratched glasses,
picked up off the floor after discovering
force won’t carry a ring of thin plastic
as far as you thought.

i hear change in whispers,
good night, good luck,
in hushed acceptance, in ‘yes,
i really am here’. in
screams that send nurses in panic only to find
you were laughing. in numbers,
in ‘five hundred milligrams,’
in ‘three gained pounds’, in
‘one more day’.

i hear shock, i hear fear,
in echoes of parents’ voices,
‘why here? why now?’
i have heard and seen and felt all of them.

but she,”
continued the hospital bed,
“hasn’t been in here in a while.
i haven’t heard her whisper
to her roommate about what she did
‘that night’, i haven’t seen her
sneak away from her pile of pajamas
as if she didn’t just hide something there,
i haven’t heard her empathize
with a pencil sharpener.

it’s been so long,
it’s hard to imagine,”
said the hospital bed,
‘i hardly remember  her'.
if only the hospital bed knew
that she could hardly remember
herself from then either,
if only it knew she hadn't stopped
fighting once she left
if only it knew
how she felt when they said
she only needed to go to therapy
every other week.
it felt like progress,
and it felt like hope,
and no one better than
a hospital bed
could understand that.

The four fundamental forces:
Zeus, Aphrodite, Ares (or Mars), and Adam and Eve.

                            <<0>>                                          >> 0 <<

             Electric field induced by             Electric field induced by
            a positive electric charge            a negative electric charge

"Deutsch thinks that such 'jumps to universality' must occur not only in the capacity to calculate things, but also in the capacity to understand things, and in the closely related capacity to make things happen. And he thinks that it was precisely such a threshold that was crossed with the invention of the scientific method. There were plenty of things we humans could do, of course, prior to the invention of that method: agriculture, or the domestication of animals, or the design of sundials, or the construction of pyramids. But all of a sudden, with the introduction of that particular method of concocting and evaluating new hypotheses, there was a sense in which we could do anything. The capacities of a community that has mastered that method to survive, to learn, and to remake the world according to its inclinations are (in the long run) literally, mathematically, infinite. And Deutsch is convinced that the tendency of the world to give rise to such communities, more than, say, the force of gravitation, or the second law of thermodynamics, or even the phenomenon of death, is what ultimately gives the world its shape, and what constitutes the genuine essence of nature. 'In all cases,' he writes, 'the class of transformations that could happen spontaneously--in the absence of knowledge--is negligibly small compared with the class that could be effected artificially by intelligent beings who wanted those transformations to happen. So the explanations of almost all physically possible phenomena are about how knowledge would be applied to bring those phenomena about.' And there is a beautiful and almost mystical irony in all this: that it was precisely by means of the Scientific Revolution, it was precisely by means of accepting that we are not the center of the universe, that we became the center of the universe."

Danger comes from the root bad brakes and bald tires. Chain saws
      and wildfires. Poisonous
ideologies, housecleaning chemicals and toiletries. Powerful
      industrialists, alcoholic fathers.
Invasive species, illegal immigrants. Concentration camps, attention
      deficit disorder.
Performance phobia, identity enhancements. Pleasure, applause.
      Quiet moments, walking and
talking war buddies. Electoral politics, marriage and divorce. Pest
      exterminator, Yeats seminar.
Love affair, pencil sharpener. Whatever, matter. Ionic and covalent
      bonds, republican hairstyle.
Events in their mere chronology.

"What is a typical place in the universe like? Let me assume that you are reading this on Earth. In your mind's eye travel straight upwards a few hundred kilometers. Now you are in the slightly more typical environment of space. But you are still being heated and illuminated by the sun, and half your field of view is still taken up by the solids, liquids and **** of the Earth. A typical location has none of those features. So, travel a few trillion kilometers further in the same direction. You are now so far away that the sun looks like other stars. You are at a much colder, darker and emptier place, with no **** in sight. But it is not yet typical: you are still inside the Milky Way galaxy, and most places in the universe are not in any galaxy. Continue until you are clear outside the galaxy--say, a hundred thousand light years from Earth. At this distance you could not glimpse the Earth even if you used the most powerful telescope that humans have yet built. But the Milky Way still fills much of your sky. To get to a typical place in the universe, you have to imagine yourself at least a thousand times as far out as that, deep in intergalactic space. What is it like there? Imagine the whole of space notionally divided into cubes the size of our solar system. If you were observing from a typical one of them, the sky would be pitch black. The nearest star would be so far away that if it were to explode as a supernova, and you were staring directly at it when its light reached you, you would not even see a glimmer. That is how big and dark the universe is. And it is cold: it is at that background temperature of 217 Kelvin, which is cold enough to freeze every known substance except helium. And it is empty: the density of atoms out there is below one per cubic meter. That is a million times sparser than atoms in the space between the stars, and those atoms are themselves sparser than in the best vacuum that human technology has yet achieved. Almost all the atoms in intergalactic space are hydrogen or helium, so there is no chemistry. No life could have evolved there, nor any intelligence. Nothing changes there. Nothing happens. The same is true of the next cube and the next, and if you were to examine a million consecutive cubes in any direction the story would be the same."

The 5 colors of sadness:
disappointed, didn't get what was wanted
confused, don't know what to do next, where to go
lonely, no one to love or be loved by
sorry, unable to help or change what happened
depressed, can't get out of bed, want to **** self

"Unless a society is expecting its own future choices to be better than its present ones, it will strive to make its present policies and institutions as immutable as possible. Therefore Popper's criterion can be met only by societies that expect their knowledge to grow -- and to grow unpredictably. And, further, they are expecting that if it did grow, that would help. This expectation is what I call optimism, and I can state it, in its most general form, thus: The Principle of Optimism -- All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge. Optimism is, in the first instance, a way of explaining failure, not prophesying success. It says that there is no fundamental barrier, no law of nature or supernatural decree, preventing progress. Whenever we try to improve things and fail, it is not because the spiteful (or unfathomably benevolent) gods are thwarting us or punishing us for trying, or because we have reached a limit on the capacity of reason to make improvements, or because it is best that we fail, but always because we did not know enough, in time. But optimism is also a stance towards the future, because nearly all failures, and nearly all successes, are yet to come.

As I think of things to do I do them.
Thing by thing I get things done.
That's how my father and his father did things.
I guess my mother and her mother did things that way too.

Sometimes I'm driving and I think how my father and his father drove
      too.
There was weather and they had problems. There is weather and I
      have problems.
Time exists only in the human mind. But if the mind exists, time exists.
Joy everywhere. Joy at birth. Joy at death. All joy, all times.

they (yeah, the paranoid pronoun, esp. in how it's used for abstract coordinates, concretely? conformists) decided it was easier to fill a psychiatrist's gob with my presence, and for psychiatrists to pay the mortgage with someone who they termed schizophrenic, forgetting the fact that the person in question was bilingual - odd how humanists confuse bilingualism with schizophrenia, maybe a coin flip later and we'd get biphrenic? that's pushing it, but it just might work to describe an atom evolved into a human form... basically in two places at the same time: confederacy of archaeological theology - and by being in two places, behaving differently in each stated sphere of observation... that's it though! theology translates as archaeology in science, excavating the designation of the argument of the spider and the spiderweb, the perfect yoga instructor, one position fits all... because scientific positivism is dead... it's dead... we're experiencing a transition into scientific negativism, mainly because there's a plumber's conundrum of a blocked fact-machine... which turned out to be a fat-machine... we're just hearing the same ****, over and over again.

i never knew it, but when humanism was born
it came across the challenges of
Darwinism (Aristotle's footnote),
with all due respect for humanism
though,
             humanism gave us
the most apathetic formulation of
any faith at all...
and do you see a rebellion happening
anywhere concerning this?
i see a bunch of ****-naked Amazonian
nomads singing the huh? huh?! song...
esp. when they see safety-hats and
tractors... me? i live in the
outer suburbs of a Greek city-state...
when you're walking down the
street and see a bare chested driver
of a tractor, and a loser (me) drinking beer
while the police pass by in their cruiser
and don't give a ****... well...
welcome to the Fe (iron) Fe Fe feral land...
(almost a sneeze, but not quiet)
metro-****** pinkies anywhere?
no... root that **** into your brains
you urban wankers... stay there,
rot... keep up the debauchery of
Beckton's recycling centre...
oh sure, keep the theatres open,
with Simon & Garfunkel applause of song...
like ballerinas and fat operas needed
an exercise regime...
Darwinism is brutal enough,
it's brutal, it's not pretty,
looking at it from a creationist perspective
you'll only get brutality from it,
only an Zimbabwe born englishman would
care to champion it... oh look!
a monkey ******* a ferret!
i cried today... my female cat was inspired
when a squirrel started doing gymnastics
on my garden fence, one paw tucked against
its chest... i haven't seen a squirrel in my
garden for a while, i've shown her a hedgehog
once, but a squirrel? try catching a squirrel!
it's like catching the ******* of a mosquito
wearing boxing gloves... or Zeno...
i cried my eyes out, by a squirrel...
acrobatic rats that hate throngs...
the simplest of things bring the greatest of joys,
and a consistency in thinking about
death make the simple assurances of mortality
so much more appreciated...
of course i think about death... why wouldn't
i? so this homeless man has a tent...
they're dragging them in, he says:
i haven't done anything wrong...
the military-industrial complex isn't secular at all...
psychiatrists are the complex's priests...
they're looking for subjects to ensure they earn
while giving oral *** to pharmaceutical companies...
and that's the *cul de sac truth -
no, wait... humanism's religious doctrine is
Darwinism, can't deviate from that,
keep a kettle and a sun on the same timescale,
i'm Caribbean lazy though...
you with beer and joint, me with beer and another
and another beer and an Apache echo impression
of echoing-yawn,
we have evolved past mating calls of animals...
all we have are warring calls... la la la for simplicity...
or in verse of new Zealander Haka:
                           ****, have no funny lyrics...
where was Darwinism when mating calls became
subtle and we exchanged mating calls for warring chants?
where was Darwinism then?
you telling me i have to own a watch, a mansion,
a nice car and enough money for a child's private
education to make one at all? pretty subtle
and all the more less colourful... you can ask me:
where was god when the Holocaust happened...
i'd reply: where was a decent joke?
apparently Moses died from laughter...
now i'm stuck with having to proof read
the first print of my book... that's going to be
agonising... i hate rereading my work...
and aren't we in a standing still position,
on an escalator, or the journalists are gullible,
i mean they're worse than pigs, they're eating
regurgitated facts... they're the ones that always
end up saying: if it ain't broken, break it...
that's their magnum opus fixation, and
the recycling bin... that's what they're there for,
i bet you a hundred quid that Putin's tears
would have turned into diamonds if they fell
on St. Basil's onion domes...
all these ****-incubating-real-emotion
calculators of the English parliament are worth
a psychiatric sketch show... punchline?
you ain't ever ever getting out, ha ha!
Darwinism is cruel, and people sort of like
the whips of a static history, sometimes they come back
to the 17th century and make a television program,
sometimes they have a chance encounter
to cite something from the only century that can
be experienced with anatomical dissection skill:
namely the 20th, or to be accurate, the 2nd half
of the 20th century... most of the time they haven't
the foggiest about history these days,
they're either electron-clouds of electron-orbits,
ping-pong between these two conceptions...
they're always pro-neutral (proton-neutron
centre) - and indeed the tetragrammaton invested
in Ke$ha... ka-ching! sz sh sharpener of wit...
got to love tactical pop, or the caveman ontological
obituary of buying alkaline batteries...
i bought alkaline batteries last year,
which technically makes me a caveman...
compact disks make me a caveman...
books make me a caveman... i'm a ******* caveman!
drag my woman by her hair...
what a great Darwinism provides,
we're all comparatively stone-age...
i love how we just made all history between that
into cf. snippets, and how the caveman attitude
is supposedly a ****** pill to supercharge our
attitudes into beastly thumps and gurgles and
elbows up the **** thrills...
Darwinism is cruel, Darwinism is currently the
theology of humanism... but once upon a time
the religious aspect (or in humanism's behaviour prescription)
was ascribed to one hour on Sunday...
now we're sorta stuck in a church, 24 / 7...
now we're all our own ritual makers...
we have the holy communions of buying a certain
type of coffee in a shop, or it's called curry Friday
and Saturday takeaway randomisation,
gathering the ready-meals Sunday to Thursday...
everyone having the busiest of lives...
if religion is dead, then i must be a nun.
i don't think Darwinism actually attacked theology...
some people are proper pranksters with
the notion that Darwinism attacked theology,
some get to play Jesus in some biblical theme park...
what i think Darwinism damaged, primarily,
is history... if journalists keep spanning
historical references from here & now and
that greatest ontological excuse: caveman once,
Chanel model no. 2, we'll surely sell many
more shaving equipment tools and sanity pills as we go
along into 24h / insomnia society...
me? i'm out... i'll be keeping my imagination
honed toward the Faroe Islands, along with my sanity.

Life used to be simple
A box of crayons was all you’d need
Everyone had some
And shared with all
When you got older though
People would take your crayons
Without permission
And never return them
Turning your 24 pack into a 16 pack
Or that cool 96 with the sharpener in the back
To just a box with a sharpener on the back.
The people who used to be your friends
Are now just the ones who took your crayons
Or brought back half a crayon
No one ever said life was easy
But childhood was supposed to be right?
A box of crayons
made life fun
and worthwhile
at least for a little while

there is this girl
she's my pencil
her heart is my pencil tip
her eyes are my sharpener
once I broke her heart
and all my poetry left undone

I never got to thank you
Mister electronic pencil sharpener
I never got to thank you
Mister mechanical pencil
I never got to thank you
Mister dull pencil, because your eraser still works
And mister pencil without an eraser, because you’re still sharp

They are but words on paper
graphite on wood

Today I'm being good
they let me off the naughty stair

that's fair.

when I'm not being good
I am being good in a
naughty way

Well
that's what I say,

school reports,
end of term torts,
words on paper
all escape me
when
I'm with her

that's fair too.

There are some evenings…

You just happen to tilt you head back and dusk is already right in front of your face.

Sometimes it’s just you, sometimes, some dude taps on your shoulder and while pointing straight upward he goes “Hey…look at that!”

And of course you’re gonna look, ‘cause what’s to see is just not real.

The sun is suddenly more than a big ball of flaming gas, the clouds more than some vapor. This red hot blood spread across the sky seems to come right from your veins.

You gaze into this huge scenery and you realize that it’s taking everything away. No more endless commute to your office, no more ******* for your missing pencil sharpener, no more reports, boss, todesangst… ****… for what it’s worth girls don’t even have ***** anymore.
Right that moment, it’s all burning along with the clouds and slowly sinking.

Then you just have enough time to blink twice and it’s dark already. Daddy Sun is gone to his other family.

You’re still there though, staring at nothing, feeling your existential mess creep back up your spine, cramped between the pencil sharpener and some girl’s *****.

What are you supposed to do then?

You’ve just been the enlightened Zen monk from the movie for a full minute, and now papa’s gone home, you’re back to your old whiny self. **** it up.

How are you supposed to return to your everyday’s plasma screen craving and internet **** when you feel you’ve just been dumped by the Sky itself?

I mean… how are you supposed to survive a sunset?

The blood boils inside my veins, heating every road in my bloodstreams corrupting my nervous system until there's an earthquake.
How can I save myself when rescuing myself means dying?
Surviving
that's all we try to do.
But when living is so hard and dying is so easy it makes me wonder,
why are we still breathing when a knife, a safety pin, a pencil sharpener blade can take it all away?
It seems we're addicted to pain.
Whether in the form of trying to escape or trying to get by
and I can't figure out which is worse.

-k.d.

Packaged in plastic I was,
On the shelf waiting to be bought
I don't know how long I was there
But ill never forget the day I was picked from the rest.

I was taken home,
unwrapped and placed in a bag.
Taken out in middle of class
Stuck a pencil inside me
N began twisting within
My teeth grinding the wood
Of a number two
Revealing the lead
He would solemnly use
  
          Those were the happy days
                  Then came a time;
                          A time of darkness

Removed the ***** that held me
Put me between his fingers
N ran me down his gentle skin
As I parted the skin, he twitch
As he began to leak.......

owning a pencil
must come with a sharpener
or skills, and a blade

Once there was a Cup
And inside the cup there was a Dragon
And the dragon shrank to the size of a pencil sharpener
And inside the pencil sharpener there was a needle
And the needle grew to the size of a chopstick
And I used it to clean my ears
And Ive been hearing better ever since.

With my newly clean ears
I realised that
I'd heard the poem all wrong.
What it really said was...

Once there was a Hat
And inside the hat there was a wagon
And the wagon shrank to the size of a bottle opener
And inside the bottle opener there was a beetle
And the beetle put on some lipstick
And I used the lipstick to help me speak more clearly.
And I've been speaking more clearly ever since.

This sharpener blade
Pressed on my skin
Drawing blood as I breathe in.
The scars will not fade
And the scars will not lie
About the story of my life.
The sickening felling I get afterwards
I know that this is no good.
There I  one thing that vegetable
One thing that makes me think
And that is the heartbeat
Which tells me that I'm alive
I cannot escape the feelings
Of never being good enough
I cannot escape the feelings
Of wanting to let go of life.
I'm desperate but still I can't accept
This life is just too hard to handle
So many people think I am strong
But they can't see the tears that fall.
I'm not good enough for life
I'm not good enough to stay alive.
With this cold blade pressed to my skin
I can feel the blood oozing
This lets me know I'm alive
That's the last thing I want to be.

Stencils and pencils
Sharpener mishaps
Doodles, scribbles
Scrambling shades
Blending sketches
Running axis points
Spherical shadows
Tinting hints and hues
Pencilled portraits
Cruel crooked eyes
The bendy nose
Philosophical muse
Artistically inspired
Shading and fading
Realistically amused
Fused within reality
Surreal tuned vices  
Meet-ups and sit ups
Outlines freakily patched

I see all kinds of lovers:

The young and the happy

The old and the cold

Ones that don't quite match up

Ones that live to love perfectly

Ones that live to not be lonely

Ones with nothing better to do

Ones with nothing but time

And then some with no time at all

And they all look picturesque and pretty on the outside;

but I can't help feeling sorry for them all.

Then I look away and feel sorry for myself.

Before taking out a clean sheet of paper,
I hold before the blue of the window
a freshly-sharpened pencil pointing toward heaven
and blow the imperceptible dust
from the needle-tip
before getting down to business.
For in life’s long journey
few things afford greater satisfaction
than turning the crank
and powering the cylindrical burrs
of a mechanism which sharpens
the dulled mind of a yellow number 2 pencil.
In the silver pencil sharpener
I witness the marriage of utility and beauty
—a model for art and a purpose for life
celebrated each morning before this small altar.

If I were a month, I’d be September.
If I were a day of the week, I’d be Thursday.
If I were a planet, I’d be Saturn.
If I were a sea animal, I’d be coral.
If I were a piece of furniture, I’d be a bookshelf.
If I were a gemstone, I’d be a sapphire.
If I were a flower, I’d be bougainvillea.
If I were a kind of weather, I’d be a crisp autumn wind.
If I were a color, I’d be auburn. (much like my hair)
If I were an emotion, I’d be wonderstruck.
If I were a fruit, I’d be a pomegranate.
If I were an element, I’d be air.
If I were a place, I’d be a field of wildflowers in Scandinavia or a bookshop in Northern Italy.
If I were a taste, I’d taste like sweet and bitter black tea.
If I were a scent, I’d be the smell of freshly baked goods.
If I were an object, I’d be a pencil sharpener.
If I were a body part, I’d be freckles.
If I were a song, I’d be Thoughts of Flight by Edmund.
If I were a pair of shoes, I’d be **bright purple converse.

"Hey mom",
I say.
"Can you go get me another pencil sharpener?
Mine...
Umm,
It broke."
"Sure thing."
She says.
She comes back with a set of 12 small ones.
"You break yours all the time,"
She says,
"Will this do?"
"Thats perfect."
I say,
And I walk away to my room.
All this time,
I've been using led pencils.

Laughs and screams,
Smiles and tears
A newly found love,
And "the boy I was gonna marry heartbreak".

You yell at your parents,
Hit your little brother,
And for what?
Because your mad at some high school boy,
Who couldn't keep it in his pants?

You should be yelling at him...
But ohh no...
You could never do that.
"It was a mistake."
He says,
"I love you, and I promise I'll never,
Ever, ever, ever do it again."
And then tops it off with a dazzling smile,
And runs his fingers through your hair,
Kisses your cheek,
And says,
"I gotta run, love ya babe."

Yeah...
He's gotta run...
Run to your bestfriends house,
Because he's bangin' her tonight.

Liar.

Ooops...
He did it again.
It was an accident..
Again.

But you forgive him,
Because you love him,
And he "loves" you.

You throw your friend to the side and proclaim,
"Its all her fault!"

But then one night when yall are hanging out,
He goes to the bathroom,
And leaves his phone sitting on the bed.

BUUUZZZZ

New text message,
From some girl named Brittany?
"Who the hell is Brittany?"

Not thinking,
You open the text.
It says,
"We gotta talk, now."

"Why is this chick wanting to talk to MY man?",
You think to yourself.

"What's going on."
"It broke..."

"What broke?"
"The ****** you idiot."

"What do you mean?"
"I'm pregnant."

There it is.
He did it once again,
And ******* up big time.

Can you forgive him?
There's physical,
Living,
Evidence this time.

You do what any rational teenage girl would do...
You throw a tantrum,
Scream "I hate you.",
And run home to daddy.

You tell daddy...
Daddys mad.
He runs out of the house,
Gets in the truck,
And races down the road,
Without a word.

You go up to your room,
Because what else can you do?

You go to your desk,
And see your drawings,
A beautiful art,
Thats always been your outlet.
But hows it gonna work for you this time?
What are you gonna do?
Draw him on top of the name Brittany,
With his **** in the middle of the A?

You sling everything off your desk.
The pencil sharpener hits the wall,
And breaks,
Leaving the metal blades exposed.

You pick it up,
And begin to draw.
But this time,
There isnt any pencils,
And there isnt any paper,
Just metal and skin.

You hack away at your teenage soul,
Going through your "emo" phase,
Wanting to feel normal,
And trying to make a time machine,
With your blood as the key,
To get rid of all the hurt he had caused.

"How did you handle the pain of all that?"
People at school ask when the word gets around.
"Drawing is my outlet."
You say,
And then walk away,
Pulling down your sleeves,
So your broken teenage soul is encased in last years sweater.

A teenage soul.
At 13,
So alive,
So new.
By 18,
Its dead.

pyramid, is that short of pencil-sharpener, an unmovable object, a Nevada experiment... (prolonged pause, also intended for a humidity of the questioning affect). quiet frankly you're making us look quiet silly give the mammalian status of sapiens; ****'s sake, Pythagoras spent a whole eternity contemplating a hypotenuse looking at the chiselled mountains of Giza - reputation wise you give monkeys a bad slogan - i.e. we evolved, evolved to build a temple of perpetual death: each slab housed the body of a labourer, and inside we just found a lot of poisonous powder ruminating to find the only basis for encrypting the whole affair, metaphysical borders, metaphysical by which i mean, due to Egyptology we have the museum-state that's Egypt, and the real life assertions without mint-condition comic book cults of mausoleum-states, known as Libya, Sudan and Israel; on that basis, a chicken and egg question, within etymological parameters, what came first, museum or mausoleum? see, history can be a Tchaikovsky affair, given etymology a dense shortening - a solid, rather than a **** when it comes to nationhood and patriotism and adherence to.*

a U.F.O. could have landed and we'd still
be printing dollars bills and admiring
that **** montem, seriously, bring out
a pencil sharpener, we need to revise Mont Blanc,
more like Mont Bonkers - a white kite hey hey **!
**** retardo and a *** and
a singalong that Napoleon never spotted:
the Ramones with pet cemetary - that's how it's
in Englanf (no speel or spelling mistake,
impromptu arcadia, banishing the surds stemming
from Hay, or a needle in the stack),
a tombstone for each house what would have been,
the riddle of life with the priority of death
having seconds - the nørden of Newcastle will know,
that the soofern fairies are all Arab or Tsar pawnbrokers
or transvestites (as they respected Kenneth Rexroth,
but Proust incubated in only two volumes
just ain't for me).

"You're so thin, what's your secret?"
It isn't cutting out carbs,
My secret isn't a diet in a magazine,
My secret is hidden under baggy sweaters,
My secret is the scale hidden under clothes in my closet,
My secret is exercising until I pass out,
My secret comes from feeling fat every second even when I'm being begged to gain weight by doctors,
My secret is placing my entire self worth on a number and the belief that others judge me by the same numbers,
My secret is a voice that is always yelling at me, telling me I take up too much space and need to be sick to be acceptable,
My secret is looking in the mirror at all the weight I think I've gained since the last time I looked, an hour before,
My secret is the desire to slice my fat right off,
My secret is the hidden food in my dresser that I told my mom I was taking for lunch,
My secret is hidden at the bottom of toilet bowls,
It's an empty laxative package,
It's fainting every time I stand up too fast,
It's numbers. It's all numbers. Calories. Pounds. Kilograms. Clothing sizes. Calories. Inches. BMI. Calories. It's counting, recounting, then deciding I don't desire it anyway.
It's striving for the lowest number, to have the lowest number, to be the lowest number,
My secret is comparing myself to everyone I see and always thinking I'm worse,
My secret is turned down coffee dates, parties, and sleepovers because there will be food there,
My secret is the word "fat" carved into my inner thigh with a blade from a pencil sharpener,
My secret hides behind every "no thanks I'm allergic" "I'm vegan" "I can't have gluten" and "I already ate",
It's being told curves are beautiful and nobody wants to date a skeleton but still not being able to believe it,
My secret is paranoia that everyone is trying to make me fat,
My secret is having nightmares of eating an almond then waking up with a racing heart and panicking,
You want to know my secret?
My secret is in the tenth grade my bmi was lower than my age,
My secret was tears shed in hospital beds,
My secret is being begged by everyone I love to just have a bite,
My secret is being afraid of eating fruits or drinking water because I think it'll make me fat,
My secret is getting on scales then off of them then on them then back off and still not trusting it,
My secret is a constant demand to be thinner with no point that will ever be enough,
My secret is that the only curves I want are the curves my ribs would make poking through my skin,
My secret is squeezing my fat until my nails pierce my skin,
My secret is feeling like I'm being suffocated by my own body,
My secret is dizzy days and cold skin,
My secret is that even through years of therapy I can't get the same amount of satisfaction from any person or accomplishment as I can from losing weight,
My secret comes from every hit from my mom, from every nasty word spoken by the girls who thought I wasn't good enough, from every guy's touch I didn't ask for,
I didn't get thin due to having willpower,
I got thin from becoming powerless
to a mirror that will never tell me I'm good enough until I'm dead.

Counting
Saving
Stashing.

How many will work?

Or! Maybe I can
disassemble
my Pencil Sharpener.

Or better yet,

Knit a long,
Skinny,
Scarf.

Where to hang it though?

Perhaps I could take a
Too Hot
Bath,

And sit till it's cold.

Maybe...
Weigh myself,
Until I'm satisfied

That'd do it too.

I found the class fish wrapped in single-ply
tissue and pencil sharpener refuse,
her poinsettia-sunset scales picked clean,
gathered in a Styrofoam cup. Her coral
fins crumbled, leaving rough edges like split
chalk or hopscotch gravel. Her last ocean
was the cover of a Nat Geo from
1995. Easing my fingers
beneath the matchstick spine, I deftly walked
to my desk, and laid her on construction
paper. I casted her slivered ribcage
in glue before I poured the scales, hoping
she'd triumphantly flick some harmless fire
when she woke, but she just laid there, shining.

____________________­____________________

­Mommy,

I know you always try your best,
I try to pass all my tests,
but I can't pass anything but math,

and the problems we have I don't know how to solve,
because I'm working with numbers that don't work in the context of the problem we've been having,

and I'm trying my best each and every day,
to just spell my name correctly,
C-A-T-H-E...what comes next,

I don't remember,
Now I feel dumber than my little brother,
I can't read anything harder then a **** and Jane book,

is this why  at school,
by everyone each and every everyday,
I'm ignored and overlooked,

Mommy,

I never want to see you cry,
and every night I don't see it,
but I hear it,

and I hear you pray for me,
pray for someone to help your child in the ways your not able to,
because you can't always help me,

Mommy,

I know you don't deal with everything very well,
and sometimes when you yell,
it becomes more than shouting,

you and daddy fighting,
yelling about me,
every single day,

I hide in my room and cry,
because when I didn't I worried about getting hit,

for not paying attention,
or my homework,
or doing the things i constantly was told to stop doing,

Mommy,

I couldn't help it half the time,
So I cried when I came home from school,
Because everyone picked on me,

kids beat me up on the bus,
people took my stuff,
and recess and lunch were worse,

Mommy,

they put me in the corner all alone,
because I had allergies,
But everyone just thought I was a bad kid,

Everyone hated me,
No one wanted to play with me or be my friend,
no one could even be nice to me for a minute,

Mommy,

I peed my pants everyday,
two to three times a day too,
because people scared me,

and eventually I out outgrew this,
but my nails disappeared,
as did my voice,

Mommy,

I come home everyday and I cry and scream,
and that's the only noise I ever made,
for all of second grade,

my communion pictures make me cry,
because I look so sick,
at the time I just wanted to die,


Mommy,

I was in third grade,
when I know I had self harm for the first time,
Did it in the middle of class,

and no one said anything to me every time,
I pulled my teeth out,

Or the time I stuck my finger in my pencil sharpener,
closed my eyes and turned,
so my nail came off,

and maybe they would let me get out of that class room,
because every day that year was brutal,

Mommy,

I was still in third grade,
when I stopped eating,
wasn't a hard thing,

with my ADHD diet,
and the thing you never know,
that me and Daddy just keep to ourselfs,

Mommy,

when I fell off my sled,
I really fell off the deck,
and that's how I broke my leg,

Daddy saw me jump,
and I wish he was the one who missed it,
and you had to of seen it,

Mommy,

I didn't wanna live,
that was after my 8th birthday party,
you came and yelled at me in front of my only friend,

and she didn't even go to school with me,
and you chased me around the house yelling,
making her uncomfortable,

I thought I lost all my friends,
I honestly didn't know what I had left,

Mommy,

do you see why no one has ever come over since,
why I stopped having birthday parties,
stopped everyone from being near me,

I only wanted people to treat me well,
I only ever hoped for that,
I never asked for all the pain that I've gone though,

Mommy,

You always told me I was scared of men,
But I've seemed to always have anxiety and Depression,
Since I was a little kid,

Mommy,

I thought a boy loved me,
I opened my heart to another man other than the one who made me,
Loved him more then I loved the god we prayed to every Sunday,

Mommy,

I cried,
The night I let him **** me,
Because I had no where else to go,

Because Home,
Was no ******* home,

because the abuse
became too much to bare,

Mommy,

Look at my scarred body,
I dare you,
Don't try to fix me with your prays,

I don't need you to cry another night over me,
I don't want you to have to go to your mother and cry because of me,
I just want you to see,

Mommy,

Look what the world's done to me,
look what the world's done to your daughter,

from the nail biting, teeth and hair pulling little girl,
who then starved herself & tried to die by jumping and eating peanuts,

Mommy,

I've only gotten worse,
because I've taken up burning,

writing all the hateful things on my,
chest, legs, arms, breast,

Just to scorch my skill off,

Mommy,

I never cut myself till I was in 8th grade when I learned what self harm was,
and I didnt think I was doing it,

I just started talking paper clips and things that scratch the surface of skin,
I didn't ever think it get deeper then the top of skin,

Where I'd see my blood drip out from under paper clip,
I soon used other things to get the job done faster,

Mommy,

just look at my skin,
touch my skin,

do you believe it now?
like they had to do in the bible for Jesus when he returned from the dead,

see i'm as dead as the living dead come

Mommy,

I came back to stay forever,
and not pick up and leave for days,
not telling you where I have been,

Mommy,

every mark was never from you,
It was from those who brought us apart,
trying to take my from you,

Mommy,

every ounce of blood in my body came from you,
you never gave up on me,
even when I have given up on me and you,

Mommy,

I hate this school,
I told you think from day one,
I want the damage they did to be un done,

I want to feel free again,
I wanna feel like I can be happy again,

Mommy,

I haven't been happy for a while,

and even though I have not smiled for years,
in that same time,

I haven't seen yours appear,

Mom,

as the days, weeks, months and years passed,
the steps between us became miles that put u in a heaven leaving me,
under the sea level,

I just was to reconnect,

But things that break can't always be fixed,

so I write you at 16 years old

But

Dear mommy,

I've been trying to reach you since I was 6 years old,

we've lost 10 years of our lives,
because people wanted to make us hate each other,
and fight,

but I will write you one last thing,

my apology can't be worth more than this,

Dear Mother

I love you,
**please believe it

Blood stains covered my art supplies
You didn’t believe in that artistic risk though
It wasn’t too long before my sharpener laid in in your trash can

You picked my pills and I off the tiled floor
I thought i’d be the one who’d be flushed
But it was the pills that drained down the toilet

You always grabbed my hands as they craved color
That familiar purple stain my skin wore too well
You bought me a fidget cube to fiddle with my tensions

You took everything I loved from me
Every form of devilish comfort
Alot more than I could ever do for myself

"Abscission of Eschewal”

If I am still, I can hear the voices.

Chimes of advices, softly spoken, coronate in neon in my peripherals. Messages, abscissas from the x-axis of words and sounds, just parallel, float their fog of transmission to me.

“Touch that wall,” a voice’s suggestion nudges as I crookedly gain my balance by clutching the flat surface of this white wall, one fourth of the surfaces confining the contents of a tight enclosure. Just under the ventilation shaft, the wall is vibrating. The voices are louder near vibrations.

The enclosure, with every surface bleach white, is a bathroom, a corner taken at the edge of the convenience store off the four lane highway by the high school.

Its sink compacts spotless metal into its design, and the crafting lines visibly run parallel upon in its surface, reflecting generously to the bags under my eyes. The soap dispenser’s cubic structure cut into a visitor's vision like the blade of a pencil sharpener, showing every pixel and every angle of my face inside it.

Feint grooves dig into the wall in the shape of a triangle and a pair of scissors. Opposite that wall, a door with no handle stands; in the place of the handle rests only a circular lock. Behind the door, I hear a sigh, a winded slurp, the kind joggers give after high speed exertion on a morning run.

I hear the air rush, hitting the nostrils.

I hear a whimper.

I push the door open, slowly, and the hinge pops in intervals as it wedges open.

In front of me, a stool sets with a touch screen phone running on top of it, and a limp woman curls in a ball upon the floor, facing the bathroom. Her eyelids are missing.

A video plays of her on the touch screen phone on the stool. In a Skype window, she, a brunette girl with duct tape wrapped around her mouth, flickers in the thick black mire of what appeared to be another lavatory with a single fluorescent light with faulty wiring blinking a white glow upon her matted, unwashed hair. A black frame and darkness outlines her figure, filling the rest of the room. Her eyelids are missing in the video, just as her eyelids are missing in person, but she grasps to consciousness in the video, and she turns her eyes frequently with nervous twitches, wheezing and whimpering in the Skype window on the phone.

“Incoming call, 785-135-1581,” a white screen with green buttons interrupts.

I touch “Accept” and pick up the phone.

When my ear touches to the phone, I hear heavy breathing.

“No breeding, Jonas.” a male voice whispers.

“How do you know me?” I ask.

“Mating. They want to keep you from it,” the man continues.

“I won’t let that happen,” I assert.

“This was in protest, the first. Eyes open, so they can see,” the man says on the phone.

The male voice I heard on the phone, The Heavy Breather, inhales and exhales.

“Are there anymore?” I ask.

“I didn’t need anymore. Find out about her. See for yourself.”

I check her wallet.

I see credit cards, visas, and a 5x7 with her standing behind a podium in a lodge in a small town with a banner behind it, and a picture of a man racing on foot, crossing a finishing line with an arm outstretched in front of another racer to prevent him from finishing.
On the banner, a slogan reads, “Keep unborn and unflowered: cleanse the youth.”
Seated before her in the lodge are several lawyers, doctors, and town leaders conversing, smiling, and greeting.

“Look what they’ve done, colluding together, excluding us.  Leaving us alone. Partying while we suffer. Those in The Colluded of the Equinox kiss their wives and girlfriends and children in public they hoard and tell it all to us, flaunting their miscreant deeds. They hide in shadows and do every wrong thing, but they only rarely do wrong in public, and they are never together at the same time. They keep hidden company. They rejoice in their evils, oppression. We live not more than a few miles from them, wherever we live at anytime. We live with them. One sin from an unlucky man is worse than a thousand sins from a lucky man. Is that it? Is an unlucky Christian worse than a lucky atheist? They spew their mantra: 'It’s so much worse than you think.' They tell you you’re not what you think, that everything you know is wrong. 'Submit,' they say. You know what I did? I did what I wanted. This woman on the ground before you is what I wanted.”

“All this to stop from reproduction? This society…” I ask.

“I hate it, also. Be it willing or unwilling conspiracy, it is still conspiracy, high crimes, ” The Heavy Breather responds.

“Crimes before whom?” I question.

“I don’t know,” The Heavy Breather admits.

“I know some. First, they stare. Peeping in your windows, following. Then, records, whole security camera videos, receipts in stores, gone…written in ink that disappears. Records of existence...gone.Wherever you were, you were never there. That’s what they want for you, to delete every backed up conversation, memory, and recollection, so they can instill new things. I shopped in stores, and the devices were amnesiacs,” he recounts.

The woman on the floor moans and stirs, but she settles again feebly.

"They can't get rid of all that at once," I interject.

“No, but they keep scraping the little details of life away, proof of life, covering them up. They have cleaners, cleaning up our little spills of progress and success. Witnesses, like the devices they own, are amnesiacs." The Heavy Breather asserts.

"Even if the electronics are wiped clean, they must have seen us at stores or parking lots, somewhere. They can think for themselves and put it together, right?" I ask.

“Those that remember us have no incentive to continue those memories. The Colluded of the Equinox brainwash. Married people are telling the ***** not to get married. They force celibate priests, figures in white hoods.
The Colluded of the Equinox force people like quivering lures, closing doors until the only ones left are of seclusion and chastity. They are in all religions, hierarchies, in every ruling body, replacing reproduction with work, with ‘purpose,’“ he continues.

The body on the floor twitches as I hear the Heavy Breather grunt on the phone.

“These are their protocols. These are the Colluded’s motives. The Colluded condemns displays of affection, physical acts of love, reproduction. The Colluded controls the population. The Colluded tells the women to focus on each other and obey advertisements’ models of how they should behave and look…conformed and emotionless. The Colluded are survivalists, locking the reproductive organs of selected citizens to save money and keep control. The Colluded use the magnetism of credit cards to lock your urethra…the tingle you feel when you sit down on your credit cards in your wallet…it lowers your ***** count,” he growls.

“The answer came to me. 'Write your message on her insides,' said the sentence that was scrawled within my closed eyes in neon. It should read: ‘She threw us a stone instead of bread, the way corrupt people do.' You can go, now. I have work to do,” he suggests.

I heard a motor crank on the phone.

“Should I expect the authorities here?” he asks as the sound rumbles in the background.

“Carry on. I didn’t see anything,” I reply.

I grab the cell phone from the stool, press the 'End' button, put it in my pocket, and walk out of the bathroom, pushing the woman on the floor with my foot on my way out far enough from the door to close and seal it in front of her, nodding to the convenience store clerk as I push the glass door open and walk out into the street, cranking up my car and leaving to the open road.

her soul
my wall
whittle
whittle
by the
age..

You hurt, and you come to me.
It is a common mistake,
But can prove to be a lethal one.

I will tell you,
Day upon day,
Night after night,
That your life will not get better.
Has not. Cannot. Should not.

You rip me from a pencil sharpener,
Or from the thing you use to shave your legs.
You hate me,
Want to throw me out,
But no longer does it matter.

I see your tears an I absorb them.

Your face is so ugly when you cry.
You are beautiful,
And you give me the power to destroy that.
I love taking everything you care about,
Away from you in a singular moment.

You are sitting on the side of the bath tub.
I am in your hand, already sharp and poignant.
You lift me, and I get excited.
This is my time, I shout.
But will you survive it?

You are playing a game of Russian Roulette, my child.
I am a dangerous vice to keep hidden.
Your parents don't know,
Seeing as you wear sweatshirts even in the dead of summer.

The unforgiving letter on your wrists falls on deaf ears.
Considering that the only people who know,
Would not dare confront you.
They think they are protecting your friendship.
At that, I laugh.

You are no longer in control of your hand.
You follow me along the outlines on your arm.
And I am your instinct.
It is only a matter of time before you cut a little too deep,
And scare the hell out of yourself.

One question remains.
Why do you turn to me?
As some source of peace or escape?

I only give you partial pleasure,
For when I hit your skin,
I go knock on the doors,
Of my friends the Endorphin family.

However, they are getting older,
And the son Dopamine can has a curfew to make.
He will only stay present for so long.

You find yourself longing for more time with them.
So the next day, you cut again,
And you hate it.
But without fail, you still find relief.

I am a vicious cycle.
Soon enough your suicide note will be written in red.
Whether you hoped to die or not.

Your life is not your own anymore.

(10/25/12)

The black days of history that many do not know
And many refuse to accept - of how the black man
Helped AMERICA to be the greatest country yet.

They was brought here as slaves because the
Color of their skin !
But their minds was never searched to see
What lied within.

Every ethnic group that came to the states
Had many a hardship that they had to face.
Every race that came was given a derogatory name
Which they had to accept and had felt the shame.

But they all contributed to this great nation of ours
Which is now known as the greatest power.
These are just a few facts of what the blacks
Had given to this nation, and many of these
Became part of our salvation.

FACTS: )1)  john love- invented the pencil sharpener in 1897
2) Joseph lee -invented a bread making machine that mixed
The ingredients and kneaded the dough in 1895
3) Thomas l Jennings was the first African American to receive
A patent in 1821 which was for a dry cleaning process.
He used the money earned from his patent to purchase
Relatives out of slavery and support abolitionist causes.
4) madam c.j. walker (1867-1919) daughter of a former slave
Who suffered hair loss in her twenties and created hair care
Products , and allowed her to open a factory and school to
Train hundreds of black women to be economically self sufficient
And become one of the first female millionaires in U.S. history.

There is still something that burns in my heart
And when I think of it -it tears me apart
Of all the people  in this great nation
That have been put to the ground
There lies one race that still lives
Way below the poverty line and
The government says there doing fine.

The “AMERICAN INDIAN”  who had
Most all treaties broken and of this the
Government hasn’t spoken.

Many families of five and more
Living in a shack without a door
Just a blanket to stop the wind
To me this is a crying sin.

The Indian charities having to buy
fifty five gallon drums for water
And many of them on “back order”.

I know that I started writing this poem for the blacks
But on the Indian nations - I can’t turn my back.
We have to help one another, for we’re all
Sister and brother.

GOD BLESS US ALL

© L . RAMS

Sadness is an orange pencil sharpener,
Twisting the pencil.
Shaving off the edges.
In a painful - sometimes unbearable - manner.
Sadness is an orange pencil sharpener,
Shaping the pencil into something better.