If love is selfless, I do not know love,
Nor do I reap its benefits.

I eat upon it sordidly
Waiting to see what is to become of me.

And true, it is, that love may be,
Selfless, pure, in all it's dignity

For I not know the love that is
In all entirety, a selfless bid.

But wash upon me the shores of gold,
The wanderings of the new and old.

I want love as what it is,
To reap its plenty benefits.

To find the urge of knowing when,
Dying is better than losing a friend.

No force of nature, no divination of the corners
Nor the tea leaves, spread out loosely
Conveying chaos in their spiral form
Nor your heart line, dipping down deeply
Into the territory of water, selfish and wandering
Nor your telling Capricorn birth
Ruled by rigid grounding, your father the earth
Nor the eight of swords, repeated in every reading
Blindfolded and reaching forward
None of these can deter the velocity of my falling
Towards the pull of your body's gravity, refractory
Freed from any other want or need than the divination of your sheets
I'm puppet on a string, held low above your lust's steady flame
Leaning down low, dipping my toes into your karmic fire
Transported to a future drenched in the color of your gaze
Regardless of hexed hematite or rabbits foot
Lost sight of all pink candle and rosehip, all mundane and esoteric
My soul is yours, to save or spend sordidly
To toss into the shallow waters of the fountain of fate

The outer heart is dense
Made for nothing but defense
But every now and then, something pierces
But when it’s repairing the damage done
What of that which overcomes
It is constantly breaking through, creating lesions
So little the reparations mend
What little alive left to tend
When the tissue is dead and sordidly forgotten
Death will come from all that it's abandoned
Heartbeats constant yet instable
Will bring anyone down to their knees
Heartbeats that become unable
To liberate, only condemned to defeat
The outer heart shall rot and expose
What once was too precious to behold
Is now fighting until its last breath
Ill-prepared and defenseless still
Oft fueled by only pure will
Through all the abuse that the inner heart will suffer
None worse than sabotage by the love of another
Heartbeats lapsed, confused and fleeting
Destroyed after all it had found
Heartbeats faint, profuse bleeding
Drowning in pools on the ground

© 2015 Neal Emanuelson

A.
Alphabetic Avalanche! An Avidly Artwork Appraising Adonai Alphabetically. And Also Awaken All Asleep Amidst Advancing Avenging Armies.And Acting As Agent Against Agony And Aches

B.
Beware, Because Boosting Breaks Bond By Bringing Barriers Between Brothers.But Brilliantly, Bible Basically Balance Brawls, Battles Between Bloods. Be Born-again.

C.
Curse, Carnal-living, Chaos, Commotion, Catastrophe, Carnage, Causality, Certainly Cleared.Courageously Christ Carried Cross to Calvary Creating Captivating Convivial

D.
Daily Deepen D Deliberate Demarcated Distance Dug for Devil D Deceiver.Devourers, Darkness & Demons.Diligently Despise Denominational Drape

E.
El-Shaddi Effortlessly Evaporates Every Enigma & Enemies.Ending & Exodus Evil Exacerbating Entities.Everthing is Everything in Elohim.

F.
Faithless Fellowship Fabricate Flippant, Feeble Followers.Faithful Fellowship
Factually Flourish Fantastically

G.
God's Grace Grants Great Galvanizing Gift & Glory.Giving Generally Generates
Greatness.God is Gracious.

H.
How Has Hatred Helped Humans? Habitual Happiness Hedges Hatred, Healing Hazardous Hiatus Harming Human race

I.
Impeccable Insight Into Immaculate, Immortal & Invisible God. Instigate Intriguing Illumination Inside our Inner being

J.
Jesus Christ the Just Judge, Jam Jungle Justice.Jailed Jeopardy, Jabbed Jezebel's Jinx & Juju Jolting Jealous Jesters

k.
Koinonia Keeper, Keenly Keep Kneeling before the King of Kings.Keep Knocking on Kingdom's door

L.
Listen, Learn, Light-up, Look Lively. Let Love Liquidate Loathsomenes. Least Little, Lowlife, Lazy Loathers Labouring Lengthily Limits your Level

M.
Morning-Star, Most-High, Messiah, My Majesty, Mentor, Master, Maker, Mountain Mover, Merciful-One ,Milk & Maintain My Ministry

N.
Nobody Needs Negative Nonconformists Nearby. Nevertheless, Neglect Notorious, Nonsensical, Narrow-minded Notions from Nihilist Nicely

O.
One Overcome Obstacles, Only by Obeying Our Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Overall ruler Outcomes Of Obedience Outshines Offerings, Oaths & Other Opponents.

P.
Proper Preparation & Plans, Plus Patience & Persistence Protrude Powerful, Progressive Prayer Performance.Prayer Penalise Problems

Q.
Quickly & Quietly, Quench Queasy Qualms, Quarrels & Quacking Quibblers.

R.
Religionists Removing Restitution Rarely Recognise Real Repentance. Returning Reports Remains Relevant Revelation Regarding Repentance

S.
Since Saviour's-blood Saves & Sanctify Souls, Sinners Seeking Salvation Sacrificially & Sordidly, Should Stop Searching. Selah

T.
Thanksgiving Through Tough Times, Turns Trials, Terror, Temptation & Tribulations To Testimony

U.
Understanding Urges Us Unto Universal Unity. Unfortunately its Unattainable.

V.
Vengeance Vented Via Venomous Violence Vaguely Visualises Victory. Value Virture

W.
With Worthy Word We Warn Women, Walk Wisely When Working With Watchful Workers

X.
Xeric

Y.
You're Young; Yield Yourself to Yahweh

Z.
Ziplock Zeitgeist Zapping Zombies (Zealously Zonked). Zoom into the Zenith Zone.Zero letters remaining

We had years marked full of innocence, full of childish dreams.  Often at times in the middle of night I’m hit with a wave of nostalgia, I can touch it with my fingertips and depict a full scene in my head when we were young, still creating stories, constructing our future and how we’d be under the same roof with a rustic atmosphere bound to it.  I remember how we would often grow teary eyed and angry when we went a day without speaking words to each other or how our communication was lost to the business of young students, and how we’d be so content seeing one another again.

But now too often I think of the past and look back with a heavy amount of misery, bound to it the voice of love you spoke to me with promises tied in, of how we would live with one another, how we loved one another.  

But that was all before our demons had caught hold of us and molded us into adults, had twisted our future into impossibilities and worries, had drained the innocence out of our pores and had us lose our heads to time and labor.  As the years rolled on by, we had started to forget each other, to forget the secrets we shared and the language we created for one another – we had forgotten what it was truly like to be sordidly in love.

I look back on it now, and how we had grown estranged; and yet we both realize it, we both realize that the purity that dwelt within our hearts has diminished, that you had become a pure adult and I had followed soon after.  Often you tell me how exhausted you are, how you wish life would grab hold of you and knot your final breath, how it would deafen you from the happiness you once had.

Often I tell you how I can barely feel anything between us, how the demon perched upon is has far more presence than our childhood dreams, and how, in the end, the fingertips we once held together, are now far more separate than tip of the sky and the depth of the ocean.

In the opalescent shroud
Of this brisk autumn night
I find myself gazing sordidly
At the rippling waters of a river.

As I stare deeper and deeper
Into the dancing lights of the water
My mind spins and wonders.
Pondering my existence and worth.

Within these reflecting pools
I see myself dissected,
My being strewn across
the steady yet constant flow of time.

All the past's pains appear
As a thousand slings and arrows.
I see nothing but devastation
within these flowing waters.

Until, I'm struck with a seething revelation
that burns in my troubled mind.
That the waters of time will always flow forward
And it's direction will never change.

We are all just debris within these waters
Flowing toward a distant horizon never to be seen again
Never to be remembered.

Yet still how the Mind would by Conscience clear
As Pickled Brains could those Sooted Clouds mop
If Facts extolled by such Roomed Degrees fear
The Elder-of-Age; Check deserve his Crop
That by addends of his Résumé, form
Match sordidly less to his Passion burn
And plomb much Skin; Past Generation's norm
Make less easy for Child Labours in-turn
Unless hammered - again - wax this *** Refuse
To sacrifice your Male for Image spent
Soon Locks will rust; In best Demand abuse
By plucking the Peacock's Magnificence.
Can you Comprehend? This Well-Minted Voice
Ask for Pile's Honest; Beg for your Fine Choice.

The mirror, consistent bystander, a defiled savior that returns
An arid eyeful of the misery masquerading in skin
The promises, unturned in the ragged nails
Of hands amongst the worn blades, desiccated with blood.
Night prefaced by sleep endeavors to hold a zephyr to never wake
Keeping a window parsed with misguiding lexis when solitary
Escapism writes itself on panes in palls of a routed exhale
The walls, sordidly stained with parody of preaching truths
Openhanded to the sheer erosion of missing self-misuse
And as the dawn reveals the path out redemption's door
The fetter of morning's mourning reminds its prisoner of its tethered grip.

©  2013

at Henry Kline Boyer Elementary School

As a Halloween costume,
one year during early grade school,
my father got the brilliant idea
for his sole son to be dressed
with one of a kind getup.

Missus Shaner
(the talon clawed, shriveled
relic of a dinosaur,
who taught fifth grade)
gave me first prize,
and subsequently felt so convinced
about authenticity of this kid
being “privileged white trash”,
she notified another kid
dressed as a janitor
to dispense with me
in the school dumpster.

The sanitation disposal company
drove me (and subsequently
dumped yours truly
among the real *******
in the dumpster)
to nearest landfill
loaded with all kinds of junk
such as food scraps, recyclables,
and soiled diapers.

Over a short span of time,
the detritus commingled
into one noxious brew
of a despicable fly haven,
whereby jiggling lifelike maggots,
jumpstarted, lunched, and nursed putrescence
re: reeking and teeming vibrantly
with yum zuck for a swamp thing,
I seemed to be metamorphosed
into sewer rat as if by some cruel hoax.

Nothing prepared, neither sickened
nor violated senses
of smell, sight, taste, and touch
to the maximum factor
intolerant of odoriferous odious stench.

Each pestilential assault
issued an appalling refrain
courtesy Fiona Apple's:
The Idler Wheel Is Wiser
than the Driver of the *****
and Whipping Cords Will Serve You
More than Ropes Will Ever Do.

Before mine myopic bespectacled eyes
(smarting from constant comet drubbing irritants
(which glasses – rather bifocals –
caked with smudge good as naught),
stayed wide shut from inundation
of said corrosive gaseous shaped
oxbow lake comprising wreath like wisps.

Liberty vis a vis in sight
envisioned visibly threatened offshoots
of tendril spikes; snaking sneakily,
sordidly slithering silently,
yet straightaway as a scene
from some spooky sideshow
or “haunted house”.

This ugly slop
splashed upon mine formerly
pristine academic uniform
appeared near identical
to the grub hub (the lunch lady served)
splattered sundry speckles
sans sundry detritus,
which found me writhing with nausea.

Thee nasty muck and mire
found this formerly introverted boy
transformed into a sponge bobbing
squarely panting creature
from the black lagoon,
whose skinny sea legs  
sought semi-solid surface
to stand upright position amidst
variegated flotsam and jetsam.

Dishabille appearance acquired
a fresh splattered coat of rancid slimy
green eggs and ham with bacon
covered gangly arms
(among other bit pieces of moldy clothes,
food and iconic library oddment)
ricocheted unpredictably as trash truck
violently shook up and down
all night long en route on this highway to hell
found me thunderstruck
(before being buried alive in Moyer’s Dump),
which toxic brew would be declared
a Super Fund Site
and shuttered in the near future.

Once Robert Hall wardrobe
affixed with a capitalone fancyfeast
of grateful dead road ****,
kickstarter from some automotive contraption,
and plenti of fish heads
(with thine square pants
trimmed with lovely bones),
I felt indistinguishable
from regular riffraff riding shotgun.

When random trucker parked and stopped,
the awful bin laden made ready
to empty contents within the mountain
of olfactory noxious material.

A thought occurred,
that now might be the golden
(or rather **** steeped) opportunity
to extricate myself
from morass of mish mashed,
spud nicked linkedin kindled juggernaut,
icky first class bric a brac.

at Henry Kline Boyer Elementary School
interestingly enough landed me a grubhub grab bag.

I rooted thru poetry anthology of mine,
and came across an unpublished poem
by one obscure poet (me), whose trademark
wit and wisdom hallmark
cardinal characteristics
of posthumous fame and fortune
largesse most likely
tabby bestowed upon grand kittens -
appended courtesy Facebook
since none of my two (both
twenty something aged) darling daughters
opted to be fruitful and multiply.

Courtesy brainchild of dear old dad
(actually when alive
and in his prime, he happened to be spunky
as an overgrown lad),
unanimous assent between him and mother
(she also when young, his junior by a tad)
both agreed their quiet natured son
(yours truly plus younger sister)
best be outfitted as *******.

Anyway, as a Halloween costume,
one year during early grade school,
my father got the brilliant idea
for his sole son to be dressed
with one of a kind getup.

Missus Shaner – long since gone to dust
(the talon clawed, shriveled
relic of a dinosaur,
who taught fifth grade)
gave me first prize,
and subsequently felt so convinced
about authenticity of this kid
being “privileged white trash”,
she notified another kid
dressed as a janitor
to dispense with me
in the school dumpster.

The sanitation disposal company
drove me (and subsequently
dumped yours truly
among the real *******
in the dumpster)
to nearest landfill
loaded with all kinds of junk
such as food scraps, recyclables,
and soiled diapers.

Over a short span of time,
the detritus commingled
into one noxious brew
of a despicable fly haven,
whereby jiggling lifelike maggots,
jumpstarted, lunched, and nursed putrescence
re: reeking and teeming vibrantly
with yum zuck for a swamp thing,
I seemed to be metamorphosed
into sewer rat as if by some cruel hoax.
Nothing prepared, neither sickened
nor violated senses
of smell, sight, taste, and touch
to the maximum factor
intolerant of odoriferous odious stench.

Each pestilential assault
issued an appalling refrain
courtesy Fiona Apple's:
The Idler Wheel Is Wiser
than the Driver of the *****
and Whipping Cords Will Serve You
More than Ropes Will Ever Do.

Before mine myopic bespectacled eyes
(smarting from constant comet drubbing irritants
(which glasses – rather bifocals –
caked with smudge good as naught),
stayed wide shut from inundation
of said corrosive gaseous shaped
oxbow lake comprising wreath like wisps.

Liberty vis a vis in sight
envisioned visibly threatened offshoots
of tendril spikes; snaking sneakily,
sordidly slithering silently,
yet straightaway as a scene
from some spooky sideshow
or “haunted house”.

This ugly slop
splashed upon mine formerly
pristine academic uniform
appeared near identical
to the grub hub (the lunch lady served)
splattered sundry speckles
sans sundry detritus,
which found me writhing with nausea.

Thee nasty muck and mire
found this formerly introverted boy
transformed into a sponge bobbing
squarely panting creature
from the black lagoon,
whose skinny sea legs
sought semi-solid surface
to stand upright position amidst
variegated flotsam and jetsam.

Dishabille appearance acquired
a fresh splattered coat of rancid slimy
green eggs and ham with bacon
covered gangly arms
(among other bit pieces of moldy clothes,
food and iconic library oddment)
ricocheted unpredictably as trash truck
violently shook up and down
all night long en route on this highway to hell
found me thunderstruck
(before being buried alive in Moyer’s Dump),
which toxic brew would be declared
a SuperFund Site
and shuttered in the near future.

Once Robert Hall wardrobe
affixed with a capital one fancy feast
of grateful dead roadkill,
kickstarter from some automotive contraption,
and plenti of fish heads
(with thine spongy bobbing square pants
trimmed with lovely bones),
I felt indistinguishable
from regular riffraff riding shotgun.

When random trucker parked and stopped,
the awful bin laden made ready
to empty contents within the mountain
of olfactory noxious material.

A thought occurred,
that now might be the golden
(or rather **** steeped) opportunity
to extricate myself
from morass of mish mashed,
spud nicked mine
linkedin kindled juggernaut,
icky first class bric a brac.