Hella business
Got hella *******
Poppin double bottles
With a couple of mistresses
Stellar mistreatment
Here's the key
Lock em in the cellar
Forever their memory lies
But a troubling mystery

Hysteria erupting
Like waves gushing
From the tip of my *****
My genius is better
I'm the King here's my scepter
Now watch the teeth
You worthless Queen
Or I'll stifle them screams

I **** ******* on trampolines
Motion sickness?
Overdose on Dramamine
Slave to the magnitude
Of my impressive **** munching
Exploring deplorable nether-regions galore;
Can't touch me you got nothing
Broke *******
Grind your brain like morning coffee beans

Shame is a word just outside the boundaries
of my fabulous vocabulary

Oh, am I contrite?
How trifling
Check my charm I'm enlightening
Enigmatic and igniting sporadically like lightning
Magically radical voyaging down
                                                           down
                                                  down the rabbit's hole
Inciting excited riots to light fires spark fuses and chew on live wires
You do not frighten me.
Delivering excruciating asphyxiation to every pwn'd n00b
Is my modus operandi
And this is my magnum opus

I have Tourette's

Conceive these merriments of abhorrent mental abortions
Precisely concise and incisive concocting incoherent comatose monstrosities to flatten your lifelines
Conduct these ensembles of debauchery and narcotics -
I'm fascinating;
Crippling your mind like a lobotomy and tripping the light fantastic through bombarding planes of consciousness
I'm on acid thraxXx'd the **** OUT and faded
Levitating fading and oscillating in time while inflating my ego

But lets be realistic
the caliber of my linguistics is intrinsically aesthetic
but none too altruistic
Untrue!
Be reasonable lest I demand be-headings on grounds of treason
Its not hard for me -
It's profound, the sound of suffering;
I'll swallow your soul
'Tis the season!

Inference for instance -
****-hand upturned to oceans of incessant peasants
Pestering to ****** and fluster your festering ****-hole
Exact my revenge; begin phase mayhem
initiating total brain annihilation
interring bodies posthaste with skilled persistence
And sporting in poor taste
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

You who peers through eye of the pyramid-
Would you be so kind as to interpret my footprint at face-value?
Do you take me for a fool yet seek prophets reaping profits?
Listen to them sleep, baaah-ing away like flocks of little sheep
My hearts not on my sleeve but I have a trick or two up there;

Now bow before my marvelous flow
As I behold my throne whilst throwing bows and exposing hoes.

For an hour and a half I sit on the floor
holding a piece of shaped cardboard.
I turn it round and round to show all side
while holding a paper plate of paints.
He holds the brush like he holds his pencils
                           “wrong.”
He pays attention to the cartoon at his lap
and sporadically looks at the tip of the brush.
Colors are scattered with no rhyme and reasons
and brush strokes are seen without hesitation.
He paints and paints and saps his little energy
to make a Christmas present for his little sister.

I met Neal Cassady last night in a waking dream sitting across from me with his back turned to the noise; the bar was loud. He repeatedly leaned forward and asking if I wanted a smoke.
        He looked just like Neal, talked like him. I hated and admired him just like I would the real Neal Cassady. His mind was incredible; beyond the worries of mortality, no thoughts or pains of hubris. He had the candor that I lacked only because I hadn't the nerve to jump first. When I asked him if he truly was the great Cassady, he stared at me from across the table with a wry smile; patted his breast pocket down, leaned back and said as he turned with precision out of his chair,
        "Let's go for a smoke".
        Such practiced determination, he was already outside before I had put on my coat. Of course I had no cigarettes of my own, he had expected me to bring one for the both of us. But I for one expected him to procure an entire carton by the time I was outside; one bent cigarette from every Saintly being at the bar.
        And what a bar! Great young gone gals; dressed in short skirts and long autumn coats; wool scarves around their necks and under chins beneath cold steel eyes. Ahh, forever young the white dresses and mistresses of the college bar.
        By the time I had opened the door and exhaled my first breath of the crisp night air, Neal was playing the part of locomotive engine with a German couple who were smoking and pretending to be Parisian. The three of them were standing in formation of a triangle on the edge of a stone staircase with a railing leading down into a steep lawn with Neal’s back facing the moon. It was all arranged in a perfect geometric mandala of overlapping Platonic solids.
        As I approached the cloud, Neal was recounting the tale of a nurse he had lain in the backseat of her father's station wagon in Nebraska in the heat of the afternoon sun. The German man was stocky and ill-dressed for the weather. He told me later that his name was Heinrich, but I did not believe him even though I knew he had nothing to hide. The woman whom I believed to be only his girlfriend told me, with a thick German accent, that her name was Deline. I believed her. She was well-dressed for the weather and smoking heavily; style is everything.
        "They've graciously offered to roll us a dozen", Neal expelled between great gusts of smoke, a boyish grin smeared on his face by the thousand red lips and wet ***** of passed consequence. Even in the light of a single lamppost coming through the haze that billowed forth from the three talking chimneys, I could still see a sheen in Neal's eye. The sort of sheen that implied hooliganisms. The sort of sheen you see before a person flies off the handle. The exact sheen you see before you wake up tomorrow in the late light of the afternoon, wondering who the Hell took your hand last night and jumped into total darkness with you. That is, if there was somebody around to take your hand.
        I liked Neal.
                He had a style about him that reminded me of a dark velvet curtain. Once you had passed through that curtain in your business casual attire, you witnessed the burgundy coloured stain of truth. There was no backpedaling after that; your chains would knot up and you would fall off the ride if you tried.
        The German couple looked around at their surroundings and the both of us with a degree of boredom. I had seen them earlier in the bar, they looked bored then too. Neither had spoken to the other once and I was beginning to feel like we were exasperating them.
        “Who cares? They offered to roll us a dozen” I thought. What did it matter how Neal got them to do it, they've offered twelve cigarettes and now they belong to us.
        Deline handed Neal and I six cigarettes each; they were magnificently rolled.
        “Goodbye, then! Thank you for your business”, Neal said and slid down the railing to the lawn below, lighting his cigarette mid-slide. I had just lit mine and started after him down the staircase. I turned around and spoke clumsily with a cigarette bobbing at the corner of my mouth,                      
        “Yes… thanks”, and left without another word.

        Neal walked with sporadic intensity; arms often stabbing out into the blanket of night; legs that would walk straight and stiff but then bent and fast with sudden changes as if he was preparing to spring off into the evening of speckled lampposts and smoke. His head bobbed West to East, North to South, and all Axis’ between X, Y and Z. The more I stared at this character whom I called Neal the more I thought of him as an illusion of my own delusions. When I had finished that thought, Neal had spun around and laughed a good hearty and honest laugh; he seemed to have read my mind and proceeded to flick the space between by eyebrows with his thumb and *******. The pain was real enough. This Neal must be real, unless I had gone full mad with lunacy. We blasted off down the avenue which connected the college bar to the dormitories and the library after that.
        Beyond the avenue laid the cozy valley of goodnight downtown with all it’s lights of sodium pearls below and us upon the hill top looking down with eager intensity. Neal gave another rounded laugh and stared with mad eyes above my head and pointed straight up into the sky at Sirius.
        “Tonight, yes yes, we go out. Not just out, my dear friend, but up. Yes yes, to the great up-and-over. Beyond the next stop we absolutely must climb.”

         I don’t know what mad beast had possessed me that evening but I followed this ghost; this great memory of romantic America into the heart of the infinite night.
        “Good gal Deline”, said Neal

        “Who?” I replied
        “Nimble fingers, strong hands for the German working class” he said, “Great gone gal. Good gal. Fine gal by all standards of beauty and sleek german ingenuity”
        “Hmm”, I responded inhaling my cigarette deeply. The Germans were just fine at rolling, but the tobacco was all American. It was harder and harder for me to physically keep up with Neal. He kept speeding off sporadically twenty feet in front of me, sometimes stopping and spouting at young folks asking for cigarettes. 

        “But you’ve already got one” They would say

        “Yes yes, but it’s for when I’m not smoking one is why I want one”, Neal would answer as he trailed off further and further down the road. They thought he was mad, but they all smiled nonetheless.

        My curiosity was brimming. Who was this mad man? Who was this loon impersonator of the American night? I could not stand by my idle silence and unquestioning.
        “What’s the plan tonight?”, I asked

        “What plan? No good plan. Only great plan and great plain rising higher and higher and we will be up all night but on top of the world for we must climb up and up forever until we can climb no more, and then after we can climb no more then we must climb a little further for life itself is nothing more than an infinite climb ever higher and why not get there faster than all the rest?”

        I had stopped walking and Neal’s voice echoed and vibrated the walls of the stairs between the library and the meal hall. His voice was like that of mountain that had slid beneath the ground reborn into an endless peak above.
“Jailbird Cassidy. Great bellowing Cassidy all energy and no direction, but getting there in no time just the same Cassidy”, I thought to myself.
“I trust you Neal”, I had said out loud.
“Not yet! First great big night time breakfast for you and me, for one can not climb without a good energy and good rounded stomach digested of food and stories.”

You grip my throat sporadically, erratically – not often.
And trickle in through passages and pores I can’t defend.
Treacle through fingers.
But you avoid me too, and I hate it just as much.

I wait for your hand to loosen,
I breathe cool air,
Then I feel your absence.

Your gloopy venom is addictive.
I tasted you once, and now my tongue yearns,
And eats itself –
It flickers and twists and spits its serpentine-self out. In vain.
A vague, dull shadowy lustre remains,
Undulating under baited breath,
For another foul injection.

In reality I fear you. I despise you. I hate you.
If you’d only never return,
I could spit you out forever,
And tongue sweeter, healthier, more benign stuff.
No more swilling,
No more idiosyncratic sways upon social norms,
High Society and empty smiles that stifle natural intentions.

You are a disease, and far from untreated.
You are the last drag, the last hit,
The very last dose that no one actually wants.

I rebuke myself wholeheartedly
At even entertaining the idea of having you in my company. Yet there you are –

In every message, in every ransacked draw,
In every turned out rucksack, every old coat pocket,
Every ***** shirt, every unstitched button,
In every visitor’s news, every car back-seat,
Every dusty notebook, every empty fruit-bowl,
Every old, long-unseen smile, every dowsed fire,
Every man woman and child I sit across the table from.

There you are. Somehow. In some form.
Turning my sweat cold like cheap wine,
In what is otherwise an already disturbingly depressing
Struggle to maintain some kind of equilibrium or serenity,
Let alone with your smug mug cropping up scornfully uninvited.

You ****** me before I recognise you.
Helping yourself to the food on my plate with a wink,
While I do nothing as if handcuffed, and chained at the soul.
Then I move to eat.
Hand to fork.
Fork to mouth.
And it tastes of you.
It reeks of you.
And if I were anything but human,
I’d spit you out onto the kitchen floor,
Stamp on the bile you’ve stolen from me,
Burn you with kerosene,
And wage a third world war on the very concept of you ever existing.

But I am a human.
And moments later you have me
‘******* and thinking of death’
As coy and Marvellian as you like.

I indulge in full-knowing paralysis,
Lapping up your unvanquished honeyed venom,
With a voraciousness that redefines Lovesick –
Giving it a whole new meaning
Going beyond the epitome of disgust.

Enslaved, you have me smash myself against the ceiling.
And eat myself over again from within.
Consuming me like the fire I found you in.

You have me rage and conspire against those I don’t know.
But I will conspire against you one-day.
You have me hate others, but I will forever hate you.
You have me search my soul and grate it upon street corners
And the pavement of city-centres,
While you gleefully, whimsically **** my past
Or polish vain, rose-tinted hopes that without you
I’d know were futile and unjust –
Until I ruin them myself, knowing all the while
That you are the author of my unnecessary devastations.

But I will smash your green demonic skull into obsolescence
In some back-alley where none will find your
Bubbling frothing corpse.
You will be utterly repudiated even by the rats.
And the flies will drop you,
Iota
By
Iota,
Onto the tracks at Dalston to be rendered into absolute oblivion.
And I will go, a man unshackled, about my business –
Whether it be of importance or not,
It will be with a conscience cleansed.

But for now, vile sham of an emotion that you are,
I do your inglorious bidding.
Zombified and putrid, my actions smell of you.
They reek of you.

You intoxicate what should be left alone
And endured with silence and rapidity.
Yet you elongate these private, personal trails torturously,
In some sensational Cold War.

It goes without saying,
The world would be well rid of you.
Yet godlike, you endure the ages
Just as we endure you.

Perhaps Keats was too afraid to admit it –
You are the original
La Belle Dame Sans Merci.
Pluto’s daughter in persistent disguise.
To be seen presently
‘******* and thinking of death’.

Sometimes poetry doesn’t happen. One needs more space to work things out, to play around with what you’ve got until you know it well, have felt its worth, weighed it up and reckoned it.

You go somewhere a little known. The location is not a complete surprise, but time and circumstance newly fashion its affect. Is it really eight years since last you were here? Then it was late autumn, now it’s summer’s end.

It’s sad my driving worries you. You drive with me, in a state of constant anticipation, making sure the speed is legal, the line of car to the road is straight. Often, your left hand reaches involuntarily for the door-handle restraint. The more I try to be steady, the worse it seems to become. But today I hand you the keys before you can ask: so that we may start this journey well. Since early morning the sun has shone, and as we head north the clouds assume great floating forms, magisterial, ermine-cloaked.

I like to watch you when you drive. I think it’s the pleasing proportion of your seated self, the body and limbs often motionless in their purposeful position. I look at your profile, the flow of your hair hiding your ears, the cleft and point of your chin, your nose I love to stroke with my nose, the wide mouth whose lips don’t fit my lips when we kiss, and this morning a warm glow on your left cheek.

We have become so careful you and I, with what we say and the way we say it. Politeness, attention to detail, purposeful decision-making, we both make allowances, keeping the conversation airborne, the tone steady, the content ‘of interest’.

After ninety miles it’s good to get out the car, good to get out in a village now bypassed by the main road, a quiet place. A church rises above the village and like a former coaching inn next to its gates faces down a wide street of 18C houses. Scattered variously there are a few unusual shops – wooden toys and metalled stoves. Here we prepare for the next stage of this journeying. On bicycles we’ll take minor roads to the coast.

At the top, after a steep climb out of the village, there it is: the sea. Since childhood that sighting moment has remained special. There’s a lifting of the spirit. The day remains fine, but a cool wind from the land is soon at our backs (you take care not to be cold and wear a scarf around your neck and ears). After just a few miles, we turn gratefully onto a very minor road where cycling becomes a pleasure. Passing vehicles are occasional and we are not continually pressed hard to the kerbside by speeding traffic. We could ride companionably side-by-side, but we don’t.

There is time to look about, to take in the dip and fold of fields and hedges, the punctuating farms and their ribbons of road. A fine manor house rises out of a forest of trees climbing in coniferous ranks to a limestone escarpment. On the breast of a hill we come upon a tapering stone tower that assumes the point from which the rolling landscape’s perspective flows. There’s a combine at the edge of a field and later its grain ‘tender’ heavy-laden meets us on a narrow bend. At a former mill a weir, where the greenest of green shade over water is too vivid not to photograph. Passing a row of cottages an elderly couple, sitting on their front porch, smile at our friendly wave. Above, swallows dart and spin.

A main road interrupts this idyll, and after a long straight ride with the sea a distant backdrop, we arrive at a coastal village overwhelmed by its recumbent castle. Lunch is eaten in a quiet corner of an ancient churchyard. Crows gather on the stubble in an adjacent field. We sit on a bench in the sunshine, though a cloudy afternoon beckons in the west. Later inside the church, where one of the northern saints is laid to rest, an unsteady light plays variously across the stone statues of the sanctuary.

Distance and a head wind begin to strain the calm confidence of the morning. Perhaps we have come too far and expect too much of ourselves? It is cheering though to beat the rain back to the car six miles hence.

Ten miles further up the coast the tide has retreated across a horizon-reaching expanse of sand and mud; it leaves a narrow causeway to an island beyond. It is a long way to its disappointing village full of car-borne visitors, attendant dogs and tired children. There, a little apart from these tourists, we sit to look out upon a further but tiny island where another northern saint found solitude. Wading into the cold sea he would face the setting sun as it fell into the folds of distant hills: to pray until dawn.

You are so tired when we reach the hotel. You are so tired. Our en suite room holds an enormous bed and a large long bath. From its window just a slice of sea can be seen in a gap between houses. I insist, for your sake, on immediate food and soon the strain on your pale, day-worn face begins to disappear and some colour returns as you eat. I catch your eyes smiling – for a brief moment. Oh, your green eyes, my undoing, so full of a sadness I have never fathomed. How often my memory returns to another room where one afternoon, newly married, we were the dearest lovers. In its strange half-light I caressed your long nakedness over and over, my hands and body visiting every part of you – and your dear face full of peace and joy.  

As dusk falls we walk down the village’s only street to view the sand and sea. Then to bed and hardly a page turned before you seek the sleep you need. I soak gratefully in the large bath. After engaging in a ‘difficult’ book for a few minutes, I soon turn off my light. But I am restless and the bed is hard. So I begin to reassemble the day moment-by-moment, later to dream strangely and sporadically until dawn breaks.

Carrie walked down to Fell street through the park. He leaned upon his faithful cane which was split, splintered, and water logged from being left out on the back porch in the rain where he sat every night before bed. His free arm swung by his side, his hand spread wide open, letting the sun warm his palm. His other arm was constricted with his muscles tight as his hand gripped the polished wooden ball handle. Carrie's skin seemed to envelop the ball there was so much of it. The cane and Carrie were one whenever they walked together.
He passed the Japanese Tea Gardens. He had been there many times. He remembered the strong taste of the green tea he had been served and how energized he felt after his third cup. He remembered the sturdy wooden table and chair he sat on while over looking the crystal clear koi ponds, the seaweed underneath the water reaching up to the sun for nutrients like the hands of the long dead. He remembered how the children had gathered near the water as mothers watched them feed the fish food they were not to be fed, anxiety cramping their smooth skin as they watched to make sure they didn't slip in. The waitresses were all so gentle, so quiet, caring for whatever Carrie had wanted. In that solitary moment, he had felt like a newly appointed king, the 5 acres of garden his domain.
The gates were closed for the day, with many frowning tourists sitting on the steps that lead inside. Carrie figured they had been confused by the times but yearned to tell them if they stood on the street, they could still see the ancient replicas the blood red pagodas, stone lanterns, bamboo stalks, and cherry blossom trees which were just beginning to bloom. There was so much one could see from the street. But, Carrie trudged past them, figuring they would not understand an old man trying to show them beauty from afar.
A long line of benches stood before Carrie after he passed the garden. He sat down next to a young, Chinese couple. They both held a map and were looking at it upside down and sideways. Carried smiled. They were speaking rapidly, laughing sporadically, turning the map around and around in a circle as if they were both at the helm of a sinking ship. He wondered what they were so confused about - had they never read a map before? But then, he realized, they were probably on vacation and in love, maybe even on their honeymoon. He laughed, thinking, They're confused about everything.
A few minutes passed and soon the young couple was gone. Carrie sat with the cane between his legs, both of his hands drooped over the handle. In front of him, like a painting, were London plane and Scotch elm trees lined up in symmetrical rows and the Rideout Fountain. Carrie could see the water was still except for when a light breeze brushed over the water or a child threw a hand full of coins in to make a wish. Their hair reflected the bright rays of the sun. The sky was empty, save a few scattered flying birds going to where Carrie knew not where.
He closed his eyes and listened only to the sounds around him: tires rolling along the smooth concrete road; people chattering behind and in front of him; a door closing; the rustling of leaves from a sharp gust of wind; a car horn; a sneeze; two lovers embracing, their kisses sounding like the steps of kitten paws in the sand. Carrie opened his eyes and cast his gaze aside to the left. There was another old man. His back was bent, his cane was worn, and his legs wobbled with every step, much like Carrie's. The man was alone and dressed in a heavy grey sweater, a pair of beige trousers, and simple brown shoes. Carrie wondered where this man was going and at such slow pace. Why was he alone? Who had he been with before? Where was he coming from?
Carrie then realized he was leaning so far forward from the bench, he almost fell off. He ****** his cane out, catching himself, and pushed himself back. He looked around to see if anyone had noticed his mistake. Twenty or so asian people were crowded like sardines inside of the bus stop terminal. They all looked to be avoiding the sun, uninterested in whatever Carrie looked to be doing. The 44 roared by, stopped in front of the crowd, where they all laughed, giggled, and preceded to jumble in. Carrie looked over his shoulder, sure someone was right there keen to make a comment, but there was no one. He sighed, relieved. Being old and falling down with no way to get yourself back up was one of Carrie's biggest fears. The other, of course, was spiders.
Once Carrie reorientated himself, he looked up to see where the other old man was. He was gone. Carrie stood up, his knees shaking slightly. He jammed his cane down to steady himself and took a step forward. His eyes strained from the sun, which was beating down on him now, hotter than it was before. He took a slow step forward, then another, and then another. Once he got in the rhythm, his mind didn't have to focus on it as much. He could let it wander to wherever it wanted to. Sometimes, he let it wander to death, sometimes to past lovers, and sometimes to his late wife, Patty, but never very long on her.
He stopped to catch his breath and wipe his brown. Next to him stood a dark lime green statue of a lion. It was miniature and sun stained. The teeth were dull and the eyes were blank. It was very beautiful and Henry realized he had never seen a lion in the wild, only at the zoo. He wondered if they were any different out in Africa or wherever they were the most and if they roared the same. The one's he had seen at the zoo were sluggish and lazy; almost depressed. He could see why, being cooped in there all day long with only your wife to talk to.
"That wouldn't be so bad," thought Carrie, "To be trapped in a cage with the one you love. That's marriage, isn't it? Isn't that love?"
A cough startled him out of his meandering, love provoked thought. Sitting on a bench across the street where the apple cider press statue stood, was the old man Carrie had seen before. He was hunched over, fishing something out of his bag. Carrie wavered back and forth, watching the old man. A noise rustled behind him and Carrie slowly turned his head to see what it was. Two children were running around the fountain, splashing water at one another.
"Nothing to speak of," grumbled Carrie, "Wasting water all the same."
Carrie turned back around and saw that the man had pulled out a shiny, red and green apple. The man bit into it slowly, taking his time as he broke the outer skin of the apple so the juices spurt into his mouth. Carrie's stomach rumbled when a hard gust of wind hit his back, forcing him to step forward. He put out his cane and felt the peg slide and grind over the rough concrete. A man behind him reached out to help, but Carrie waved him away, mumbling that he was fine and that he didn't need any help. The man on the bench hadn't paid him any notice. The apple in front of him was all he needed. Carrie walked to the other side of  apple cider statue opposite the man and sat down roughly, for the man looked up from his apple a little wide eyed and a little annoyed. Carrie smiled awkwardly at him, but it came out more like a frown. The man relaxed his face, slowly letting it become blank while a line of apple juice rolled down over his lip. He licked it up, coughed, and went back to studying the intricacies of the half-eaten apple.
The mans face, Carrie saw, was *** marked and dented, like a car that had just been through the worst of accidents. His eyes were barely visible behind what seemed like hundreds and hundreds of creases, wrinkles, chicken's feet. The man's bulbous nose was an obvious sign that he was or had been a serious drinker. It was swollen and red, drooping from the mans face like a glob of honey that just wouldn't fall. The lips were creases of an old pair of jeans that had been left out in the sun. Though Carrie couldn't see his hair because the man wore a large, dapper styled hat on his head, he wouldn't doubt there wasn't much of anything under there. The old man was anything but beautiful, but Carrie, who had been staring at the man out of the corners of his eyes while pretending to look at the apple cider statue, could not look away. He was utterly fascinated with how the man held himself. Why was he so ****** interested that apple? Had he never seen one before? Carrie then thought the man was homeless, so he must be crazy, but when he had walked over before, Carrie hadn't smelled the usual musty musk that homeless people give off. He had smelled like nothing, usually meaning he slept in a bed and showered regularly. Then, in the midst of Carrie staring at the man's unbelievably shiny brown loafer, he said something.
"What you looking at there?" asked the man. He was hiding his ragged face behind the apple. A few pieces fell to the ground below. Carrie could see the bite marks were mere nibbles, like a rabbit had been eating it.
"Hm...I...uh," stammered Carrie. He looked up into the sky, trying to spot a bird to hide where his gaze truly had been, then looked down at the ground. There was a tiny pebble that resembled a hermit crab. He focused on that until the man asked the same question again.
"Were you staring at me, my friend?"
My friend, Carrie thought, He thinks I'm his friend? How on Earth did we get to there? I barely know him. I'll say something. He paused. Well, say something!
"I was staring at your apple there," Carrie mumbled, "It's a very nice looking apple."
"It's very tasty," he nodded, looking back it, admiring the colors of the skin that had yet to be bitten in. "Would you like some?" He stretched the half-eaten apple out to Carrie.
"Oh," Carrie laughed, startled, "I'm fine. Quite full." He patted his stomach.
"Are you sure? It's almost dinner time."
Carrie looked the man up and down, then smiled, "I'm fine. I ate just earlier."
"Oh really, where did you eat?" The man inched forward on the bench and rested his eyes on Carrie, waiting for an answer. Carrie's lip quivered with the thought of having to come up with a quick lie. The man had placed the apple back in his bag and was completely focused on Carrie's lie.
"Well, you see, there's a great place up past Lincoln Way toward the beach. I go there all..."
"Lincoln Way!" exclaimed the man, "You can make it all the way up there!"
Carrie was flattered. He could walk far past Lincoln way and up any of the side streets, if he had the energy, but had never been congratulated for the fact. Carrie shifted back and forth in his seat, blushing for being thought of so highly.
"With this cane," Carrie said, tapping the ground with the end, "I can go almost anywhere."
"Wow. Where'd you get it?"
"My son gave it to me when I first started showing signs of getting old," said Carrie, "It was kind of like a joke at first, but then, I really needed to start using it, and I've been attached to it ever since."
"That's nice," the man nodded, "I bought mine for 50 cents down at Salvation Army. You know the one on 3rd?"
Carrie said that he did.
"Spent 50 cents on this thing four years ago and it has taken quite a beating, but still, it works and looks fine as you can see."
"Doesn't look so bad."
"Well thank you, I appreciate that."
The two of them paused, looked each other up and down, then found something other than themselves to look at. Carrie noticed the soft lines of the man in the statue twisting the cider press and how his muscles were as detailed as a real man's. He had never seen so much physicality in a statue before. It really looked like this man was pressing apples in front of his eyes. Carrie was at a loss at how one captured that feeling of true action in stillness. He looked up to where the statues face was and saw that the eyes were cast down to where the press was tightening. He thought maybe the man was thinking if he stared to where he was working, he would twist harder. The statues hair was soft and smooth in the sun. Carrie followed the statues legs down, past the flat stomach and taught ab muscles, to the feet which were pressed into a large stone so to get more leverage. The veins on the feet were almost pulsating with blood and strength. They seemed to rise and fall with what Carrie imagined would be the mans heartbeat, if he had one. He didn't quiet understand why the man was had to be naked, but figured it was for the sake of art. Carrie was not an artist, but with the free time that was allowed to him by growing old, he was starting to appreciate what he saw, feel it a little more often, then when he had no time at all when he was young and busy. He wasn't sure which he enjoyed better: being old and feeling more or being young and always with something to do.
The man had let his eyes wander from Carrie, to the small statue of a boy. His mouth was pressed up to the spicket where the apple juice was being pressed from above. He imagined the statue of the man above the boy was his father or at least he wished that it was. The boys skin was very smooth and reflected the sun softly up back into the mans face. He looked closer at the face of the boy and saw that it was a silent kind of contentment. The man took out the apple from his bag, took a bite, and offered it again to Carrie.
"Take a bite," he persisted, "Sitting in front of this statue, looking at this little boy drink up that apple juice has to be getting you thirsty."
"I'm really fine," said Carrie, smiling uneasily.
"Come on. You don't gotta' worry about me."
Carrie paused, really thought what he was so scared about, and then admitted that was only uncomfortable because of this stranger's hospitality. He hadn't obliged a kind gesture in a long time.
"Alright," he said, "I'll have a bite."
"There you go!" The man handed the apple over to Carrie.
He took a bite and let the cool juices jump into his mouth. A small dribble ran down his cheek, where he quickly wiped it away with his sleeve. He didn't want to look like a slob, much like the man had looked when he first began eating it. Carrie looked down at the apple, nodded, and handed it back to the man.
"It's," he started, still chewing, "Very good. Thank you...I'm sorry, I don't know your name."
"Symon," he said, taking a bite of the apple, which was almost gone, "Symon with a Y."
"Thank you Symon."
"You're welcome..." he paused, "I never did get yours."
"Oh," he laughed, "I'm sorry. I'm Carrie."
They both reached forward and shook hands. Carrie hadn't sat with another man and talked with them since he'd buried Patty. After that, it had grown hard to shake hands with anybody he knew. Maybe it's easier with him because he's a stranger? Carrie thought, Maybe I should meet more strangers? Probably go and get yourself killed. That's a funny thought. I never thought I'd go by getting murdered. I always figured I'd let time take me, rather than the hands of another. He doesn't look like a killer anyway. He's got to be older than me. He's definitely slower. Look at his hand shaking. Your hand doesn't shake. Does it? Carrie looked down at his right hand which was resting on the handle of his cane. Solid as a rock, Carrie mumbled to himself, As a rock.
"What was that?" Symon blurted, eyeing Carrie, "Where'd you go?"
"Just thinking."
"Bout' what?"
"Whether my hand was shaking or not."
"My hands shakes all the ****** time. It's like one of those kitchen timers or chattering teeth you twist, it goes for a while, and then eventually goes off, but me, never. No, never this hand never stops shaking. Got a ******* mind of its own."
Symon raised his right hand so Carrie could see. Sure enough, it was shaking like a leaf in a tree ready to fall off. The shake wasn't violent, but definitely noticeable next to a hand that was still. It was more a buzz than anything else. Carrie couldn't imagine Symon writing his name down and coming out eligible.
"How do you write your name? Does it get all messed up?" Symon looked at him, then looked away. Carrie froze, realizing he may have just asked a very touchy subject.
"Huh?" Symon asked, looking back. "I got something in my eye real quick. I didn't even hear what you said."
"Oh," Carrie stammered, "What I said was..." Symon cut him off.
"I'm just joshing yah!" Symon shouted, "Course I can write my name! Whenever I put pen or pencil to paper, the shake usually calms down. Don't know why, but it does. I never ask que

The Rules of Online Dating Poem
(8/5/2014)

Rules start the moment we decide to do online dating.
You can't choose Christian Mingle, because things get too spicy there.
You can't choose JDate, because they all want to sign pre-nup's.
You can't choose Plenty of Fish, because who wants to date a fish?
... I mean, I'm pretty sure that's illegal in most countries.
Grindr is great, but we're talking about the rules of online dating... Dating.

Now, OkCupid is where it's at.
Okay see here, you need a username.
Something quirky.  How about 'Quirky?'
Oh, that's taken, so add numbers!
The website suggested 'Quirky 69' ... okay, maybe no numbers.
Quirky_Cat, because everything on the internet is better with cats.

Let's move on to selecting several profile pictures.
Dust off your digital archives, and find one from that time you tanned.
Ever take a funny photo eating food?  Perfect, feed it to your fans.
Is it Halloween?  Because I'm thinking Headless Torsoooo!!!
Annnnd for good measure, let me take a selfie.

The hardest part is answering the match-making questions.
My soul is searching for its soul mate, and there can only be one.
It's like the heart hunger games.  
Who can shoot their compliments with the precision of a bow and arrow,
right through the wall of cats I've accumulated from being single so long?
The first one to make me feel so alive I want to die,
but not before devouring a pint of ice cream, wins!!

SO ANSWER THESE CRUCIAL QUESTIONS:
1, Is astrological sign important to you in a match?
YOU BETTER NOT BE A GEMINI
2. Are you a cat person or a dog person?
I DON'T DATE CAT-DOG HYBRID PEOPLE, JUST BE A PERSON PLZ
3. If you turn a left-handed glove inside out, it fits?
MY ****
4. Would you be willing to meet someone from OkCupid in person?
IF YOU ANSWER NO, *** ARE YOU DOING HERE
That concludes today's question answering.  
Stay tuned for rules on writing the self-summary.

Rule #1 - Bang your head on the keyboard for 12 minutes.
This is a mandatory, required start to every OkCupid profile.
Rule #2 - Use a lot of cliches
Don't worry if you don't know any, just copy some from someone else.
Rule #3 - Say you are bad at writing self-summaries in your self-summary
That's a good one.
Rule #4 - Say what you are good at... which duh, is your writing skills.
I mean you have a liberal arts degree after all.
Rule #5 - Tell them you are a real person, not fake.
Some folks need to hear this to get over the imaginary people they dated.

Rules require structure, and structure is built by bullet point lists.
So first bullet point, favorite books:
- Quickly go find the titles of everything you had to read in high school.
Second bullet point, favorite movies, and variety is key here:  
- Include musicals, rom coms, at least one low-budget indie film,
    a foreign film or two, and throw in a few Disney flicks for good measure.
Third bullet point is what will make or break you, music:
- For gay men this will mean you're only allowed to pick female divas, so...
To the tune of 'Kokomo' by The Beach Boys.
There's Britney and Whitney, ooh I wanna take ya,
to Rhianna, Madonna, ooh and then there's Robyn.
But Queen Bey, J. Monae, Miley, and Christina,
Katy Perry, and Coldplay, because they count anyway.
Cher, and Cher, and Cher, and Cher, and Cher.

Alright alright.  We've had our fun, but now it gets serious.
The profile is going to ask us to advertise ourselves like products.
Of course we are going to comply.
5 foot 6.  145 pounds.  Brown hair, Hazel eyes.
Bi-lingual and knows how to use a tongue.
Annual income?  More like outgo, as in out goes my money.
Do I use drugs?  Only if they're free.
Do I diet?  As in drink diet soda, as opposed to regular?
Slightly hungover on Sundays.
Can send more pictures of cats I wish were my pets, upon request.

Alright, start stalking people for endless hours,
sending messages sporadically.
Good news!  We're ready to do online dating.

But...  what if I don't really know what I want?
Maybe online dating isn't for me.

In my absence
My mind has been doing back-flips,
back-spins and hand-springs.

They really should be called head-springs.'

Off a spring board I began vaulting.
Trying to spin, tumble, turn des pairs
of thoughts stuck in the landing area

Threw a little french in there for ya.

Grasping at hysteria asymmetrically with sanity
must be stronger than anxiety. Like a glass coat, it blankets me
however you can see to the core, translucent rings of a tree.

Walking the balance beam
between life and suicide sporadically.
Being pushed on both sides by a jet stream

Surviving is a pipe dream because we are all dying.

Once again I am on the floor. However,
I am implored to look forward by poetic neighbors.
All I gotta do is knock on their door and they'll gladly give me a cup of esprit de corps.

*More french, Au revoir

"Wala pay sulod atong sako Nay.”*

Sack of rice is empty
Stomach rumbling mercilessly
Mind is hazy, breathing sporadically
Cold porridge is a feast.

“Go home!” says Mama sternly
Frantic, frightened, panicky
Rocks hurled, bullets fly
Blood splatters; running aimlessly

We dodge our way to safety
Cold porridge is a feast.

“I will not,” I say adamantly
She looks at the sack mournfully
Empty. Devoid of sanity.
Cold porridge is a feast.

“We’ll get some soon. Don’t worry.”
“I don’t believe you.”
I feel weak, I am crabby
I’m staying despite this misery
Cold porridge is a feast.

Childlike will, piety of soul
Purity of intention, pursuit of living whole

Cold porridge is a feast.

1
The jack tree, framing the museum gate
was an eyeful, with fruits from top branch to roots,
reminding  a lush woman, pregnant and languid,
expectant, beaming a smile, what else could be
a better fertility symbol, gladdening one's heart!
2
He sees her, Lila,waiting under the jack tree
Lila, a fixture, highlighting jack tree's abundant fertility,
on a juncture of present and past, symbolizing
what is left inside the walls of the museum
only the bits we came to know sporadically,
stashed away for curious eyes, a puzzle for us always.
Everything flows in to one, yet remains in fragments!
3
He knows Lila will turn the corner,
now or later and go in to the museum,
standing in a lovely garden
full of past waiting for her
he guesses someone else too, accompanies her,
A lover? Perhaps not, his heart consoles,
only a dim figure, he could see
in his repeated dreams of her.
4
He ingeniously attempts, different ways to see her,
in points of time and different points of view.
Lila, he feels is a girl, he may fall in love with,
but the fact is that she is in mystery's wrap,
the play of Maya -illusion- in matter
that realization wakes him up to awareness,
of himself, many things that count.
On the lonely roads of university campus,
she walks looking in to a past,
she wants to leave behind or retrieve?
Following her far behind, from a clearing
in the forest of a time past, he thinks about,
the time they were together,
now, she becomes a symbol,
to explore the secrets of the past, himself, life.
5
A name with dimensions, Lila is,
the Sanskrit word for play, the cosmos is engaged in,
the dance he would do life long,
but there would be walls erected, like the time they were together.
He thinks being together has significance, if only you count so,
Lila is in the scheme of things that moves universe too,
he learns to detach Lila from her physical form.
6
Lila in the universe is the dancing atoms,
the stars dying and being born in other universes.
While reciting poetry on stars and* 'multiverse'  
he feels the flow of life. Lila is the flow of energy unlimited,
Lila, takes over body, mind and consciousness.
7
Lila smiles at him as he walks to her,says she:
"Waiting for you here, took me to the unknown, waiting for ages,
I am curious, is it you looking at me or a past fragmented?
I feel your eyes playing with my body mind and beyond"
She didn't say she is imagining things. Now, all that matters is this.
They gravitate towards each other.He is pleased at the light emitted
They both are fascinated by the jack tree full of fruits,
life forms of nature and nebulous energies that navigate,
going back and forth has become a habit for all of us.

A big bang in every nucleus, inviting big crunch, that creeps in,
Lila and he walked in, the doorman in the museum smiled

I walk into my office/abode, closing the door behind me. It's 9:00 PM. Well, 9:03 PM. I sit down at my desk and open my laptop, placing a tall glass of diet cola on the mouse pad next to the computer as a make-shift coaster. Three ice cubes float in the bubbling blackness. I've found two ice cubes won't make your beverage cold quickly enough, while four ice cubes will overpower it — water it down. You can't have that. It's got to be three ice cubes.

I open up my word processor to a new document. I've got to write something — this blank rectangular expanse has haunted me for long enough. I type some gibberish, then delete it. What do I want to write? I remember reading somewhere you're supposed to write what you like.

I minimize the page and open the Internet. No new emails. I could watch **** for a bit. I've always preferred the "amateur" videos because the people in them resemble actual people. You know, the guy's a little overweight, and the girl's got excessive arm hair, or a weird mole. He mounts her from behind, sweating profusely. Their bodies jiggle for ten or fifteen minutes. There's no eye contact, but you can tell they're in love. The TV's on. The guy looks up at it sporadically. Maybe makes a face at the cell phone he's filming his ******* on. The picture quality is low, and the audio is pretty tinny, but you can usually make it out all right. I saw this one video of a guy and a girl getting it on and some other dude was there filming it. You could tell it was an amateur video because she was kind of weird-looking. But, like, did he ask his buddy to come back to the motel with this chick he picked up and film them *******?

No, I can't get behind all that glossy, glamourous, professional ****. There's too much Botox and plastic surgery. They look too good. And it's all fake, too. These people have *** for a living. Watching them go at it, it just feels empty. They're not really into it. And I don't know if seeing guys with twelve-packs and ten inch ***** invokes a certain inferiority complex in me or what it is, but I know I just don't care for it.

Okay. Back to the writing. Now, what do I like to write? I like action movies, so... how about... a serial killer. No, a contract killer. So it's a serial, contract killer who... but there has to be some sort of conflict. Okay, a serial contract killer who falls in love with... but there needs to be something that makes it unique. Something unique that sets it apart. So how about he... or she?... she falls in love with...

I wonder if I have any new messages on Plenty of Fish. Maybe that cute brown-haired Asian-looking girl responded to me. What does "D2F" mean?

No, she hasn't. Well, when did I send the message? Yesterday night? Let's see when she was last online...

Today, at 4:13 PM.

Ah.

Well, maybe she just didn't notice it.

Yeah. That's it.

Maybe the target falls in love with the killer. Maybe they meet early on and they hit it off or something at some swanky soirée. And then... she's hired to **** him. Or her. Yeah, that could be interesting: a lesbian contract killer. Never seen that before. But she's got to be hot. Yeah. Not like the monster Cameron Diaz played in that movie... Monster. But who hires her? Her husband? Yeah, that might work. But would he **** her for being a *****? Or maybe... she stole something from him. Some money. Or she found out he's a criminal, and she's gonna squeal.

Lesbian **** is interesting. Especially when they use the strap-on thing. But I don't know why they **** on it first. I mean, it's just plastic. Maybe they know it's mostly going to be guys watching it. Who knows.

But seriously, why would that cute Asian girl not respond to my message? Her profile did say "msg me :)", after all. Her profile said her favourite book is Fight Club. I think she meant the movie. I wrote "haha ya brad pitt is the shiiit". I don't know. I never know what to write in those messages. I always feel obligated to say something about their profile so they know I didn't just look at their pictures.

I'm good-looking, aren't I? I've had girlfriends. I've had *** a bunch of times. I haven't had *** in a while, but... okay, so I don't have a six-pack, but I go to the gym. I just get so anxious with all those muscly dudes walking around. Maybe I should get a private trainer.

I need more diet cola. No, wait — no more soda. Maybe all that aspartame is messing with my head. Anyway. Back to the contract killer. How many pages do I have? Six. Well, the average movie is about a hundred minutes, and if one page equals one minute in screen time, I'm only... oh look, I got a new email.

Stef341 has responded to your message.

"not my type, sorry"

Huh.

Well, whatever. Fight Club is a stupid movie anyway. How are Brad Pitt and that other guy supposed to be the same guy? That doesn't make any sense.

Back to the script. I need a title. Every good movie has a good title. How about The Lesbian Killer? No, that's too risqué. Nothing with lesbians in the title. This is a serious movie. With a lot of passion. Maybe a *** scene or two. Whatever, I'll just call it The Contract Killer. Starring Cameron Diaz.

Travelling by foot in whatever weather
I took to walking the gardens' route,
With single lens reflex camera
Still able to take the sort of pictures
That stop the eyes from wandering.
Photos in black and white
Where contrasts given a subtlety
Slowly revealing the depths
Of the familiar.

And into the park
Where rain, recently fallen,
Drenches the lens with jewels
Dropping from tree and cloud,
Sporadically,
Catching the light
With its rainbow spectrum
And collecting moments
Of nature's splendour
Into unnoticed places.

Love Mary ***

Bluebell Lucy danced in fantastic flames, taught by shamanic figures
  when the winter nights grew tiresome
  and lonely boys ran passionately in village streets
She stood on ancient structures and sang her song with uttermost vigor
  even after mild paranoia sets in, she stands statuesque
  breathing harmonic, listening intently to the cloud's chatter
Her cobalt lashes flickered adroitly when she scanned the sky atop her locks
  and let the coming rains wash through that azure mane
  until the kiss of eternal gratitude arrived from a stray bird
On cobble stone paving, her heels were worn and dampened, she nimbly strides
  how beautiful it is to see a spirit so free
  and the obstinate world yields to her alone
Loosely, Lucy with a cerulean aura, gathers the injured and feral in alabaster arms
  she is yagé and the world hallucinates because of her
  a subtle enlightenment she gives to onlookers and thieves
Camu Camu sprouting from the wells she digs with bare hands in midnight moonlight
  her compatriots, the beasts of lost tribes, look onwards
  and she wails a verse on hemerocallis singular sensation
The flower that she is, a wild one that grows sporadically to enhance the beauty of existence
  and everybody incomprehensible in thoughts when she speaks
  because she is love when love had died so many suns ago

Drawn on strings of moonlight visions are whispered in love notes and poetry
Future brushstrokes on the echoes of eternity
Enigmas in candid but if you look closely
Sun petals
Soft tempos
Giving solace and solstice to the sun-kissed and weary
Delicate and hardly above skylines and kiss me’s
Daydreams and the uncanny act of tripping on galaxies never lasts through the laughter and the sadness in the symmetry

Despite the next level of genesis in trinity
Stands the heretic consumed with the brevity of setting free
Amassed and exhumed the expanses of longevity
Sporadically bloomed now the tragic is ahead of dreams and shivers in the night
Unparalleled and strung by kites and carousels and river streams
Never made of sense in seems the abstract is the kin that breathes in metaphors and similes
Terraforms and then it leaves entranced within lost reverie

Such is love and loss and finding peace

And across the stars I’m still finding me

Driving down the road
I experienced the glow
Of daytime's luxurious light
That was until it became night

Now that night has happened
A light follows me from the darkness
It pervades my rear view mirror
It's blinding magnitude magnifies upon reflection
The light intimidates me

Like the time
I didn't know what to say
And you had nothing to say
So we went our separate ways

Traveling alone
The light seems brighter
It's constant peering presence disturbs me
I feel this condemning nightlight is my jury

Like the time
The ****** I injected landed me in jail
I used it to sedate the voice that I failed
When you saw my love and bailed because I'm male

I drive lonely and high
There's an exasperated sigh
When the lights gets closer
I feel it may bring closure

Like the time
You entered my vehicle
To protect me from the light
I confused your compassion for love
I felt so stupid
When foolish fits me like a glove
I feel so putrid
The odds of someone being gay are slim
So why when my hopes are dashed
Must I crumble into idiotic ash?

My eyes grow larger
As death's sights grow smaller
And death's light grows taller
My mistakes create magnification
And I begin to drive erratically
When you are my love's activation
I continue to die sporadically

I searched for these words up in the attic
with narrow ribbons of enlightenment streaming
through all-too-small windows
igniting the drifting dust specks on fire,
and on the streets in the gutters
that were gloom-spattered with murky water lunging
towards the grated storm guards
as if they were salvation.
I scrounged through soaked and disintegrating cardboard boxes
bearing the letters L O S T A R T S
and old, musty and molded trunks
that had broken locks and missing keys.
I dug them out of  soft-cloth linens, carefully selected them
from heaping mounds of scrap
-like sifting through a junk yard-
to find those precious bits of silver,
sweet iridescent bubbles
encasing so delicately words like
"language" and "cellar."
I gathered these knic-knacks and baubles
and I alighted them with utmost care
through winding black back streets in my little burlap bag
to my borrowed safe-haven room. And without
turning on the lights,
the door was shut and stopped and I was perched
with great secrecy,
cross-legged upon my bird's nest of a bed,
daintily extracting each little orb
and examining them and all their wonder.
Tri-dimensional little things, that, no matter how you turned them,
seemed always to be a bi-dimensional halo of pale, golden light.
They shone, each minute embryo, like an old-time city lamp,
before such evil things as electricity came
and robbed them of a candle's beauty.
And its core, as is true with humans, is its most glorious aspect.
There is a transparent ocean in there,
with roiling waves that spin the currents
and coax every particle to circulate.
And caught in the eye of that undersea tornado are flecks of glitter,
so tiny that you would not be aware of them at all
were it not for the magnificent glimmer that they sparked,
magnifying and throwing back the fainter glow
of that ethereal encircling band.
Pixies that danced at the autumn festival.

I found these words for you,
broken and perfect and shining,
and collected them on a shelf where I could view them
before I handed them over to you.
I collected them with you in mind.
Can’t you tell?
I found words like “lustrous” and “lust”
because they reminded me of you.
I arranged them sporadically,
and smiled to see “alabaster princess”
sitting unintentionally before my eyes.
And how you are my Alabaster Princess.
But oh dearest-mine, be wary of how you find these words.
Use them sparingly, and do not tarnish them.
Keep them like nuns keep themselves: ******.
If you must write them,
then write them in pretty hand-made inks,
and decorate each letter with dips and swirls, each letter a flourish.
And if you must utter them,
say them quietly, and in simple complementary sentences.
You can be Kennedy for a day,
or speak softly and let them be their own big stick.
Keep them uncommon, like you are uncommon,
and know when the repetition of weaker words can make them herculean.
Guard these words with all your strength:
with that sword hanging deftly on your wall,
with that letter-opener on your kitchen table,
with that pocket knife in your favorite pair of jeans.
Those words will save us one day,
once the world has reverted back to an aristocracy.
With that noble face of yours and this clever brain of mine, love,
we’ll con them into making us their master,
gold and land or no.
even if the sole things we own are our names.
And we’ll teach them again how to speak,
with all the sweetheart mightiness of poetry that speech was intended to have.
And we will learn to bow with all the eloquence of B.C. bible writing.
Machiavelli never saw rulers like us.

We’ll cry like the Devil on a Sunday morning
for the alteration in our names from D’evil,
and whomever first declared “they’re there yonder to get their ***!” shall know my wrath
(although that may have been me).
Parlez vous Français?
Non.
These words that I pillaged
from the mouths of great stone grave monuments,
I hope that you will remember them well.
I hope that you will pour over them
and gaze at them in all of the bedazzled stupor that I did.
And once upon a time,
when children loved to read
and sought the same type of affection that I have at last found in you,
when even the Greek gods were playing with pens and devising an alphabet,
I sat there on rocky shore, seasoning with saltwater,
drawing with my toe under the waterline,
your face.
Pretty as a picture,
and worth a thousand words.

Waning  dappled  moonlight mantles
the margin at the wild-wood edge
Stiff tufts of summer dried grass spears
sporadically sway — raking against
the  scarlet  poison  oak  leaves
gently sweeping away the moonlit silence
airing the sounds of velvet antlers rubbing
barkless mountain willow trunks bare

Subtle nuances constantly animate
twilights rhythm;  heaven flickers
upon a dark umbrage of forest pillars
softly as a candlelight’s  fluttering  glow
evanescing  half way  across  the  sky;
the  sparse  illumined  clouds  stream through
the lambent halo around the rutting moon
fleeting in the blink  of  sleepless eyes

and like the silent touch of a talisman,
transfixed eyes are entranced by all
the  restless  night  disrobes,
captured and cocooned by the seeker’s
awakened senses

An erratic,  familiar feral bark peals haughtily;
a pack of maturing spring pups yip, bellow and shriek
in youthful pursuit;  the howling report back,
ignited by the scent of a rabbit's paling squeal,
aroused by the pulse of brother wolf
rippling deeply through their blood

The dried grass game-trail crackles towards the ridge top:
an aging full moon is not enough skylight
to see beyond a seeker’s stirring silent reverie
the coyote choir’s sudden reveling echoes rekindling
an extraordinary sheltering intimacy within;

bending slithers of moonlight into a dull moonlight mantle
but I can feel its weight breaking me ,... forlorn I can't physically
reach out to touch them in an absolving moment  —
understanding love was always the purpose of being ,...

futilely repining — I  can't  face  myself  alone  again


            harlon rivers ... October  2019                                                  

.

I can't walk in
flowered printed heels
I've watched you study yourself in
the mirror
steady neck leading down to
gentle shoulders and halcyon hands
sour ideas filling my brain I'm
imagining my hands
sweetening your concerned
soft-muscled legs
into certainty
bronze-brown strands of curly hair
on dark grey seats
I sense dancing trees behind me
and savor the beautiful bitterness
of abyssal secrets
on my saccharine tongue
your collar bones are silken
and veiled with Taurus-led
misunderstandings.
mine are always veiled with
uncertainty and
sporadically veiled with
you

Hex Birthright in Hellenika

The Celestial Spirit of Vernarth began to walk through the Castellum del Horcodising, after the parapsychological regression in the conclusive auction and purge of him. He was looming at the Horcondising Keep; here all toilet modules, food, and medicines were well equipped, except for the inks and writing papers that were totally exhausted. Here you can see his mother Luccica, who was in a position to scribble and write on an upstairs deck, and in the other hand, she had a rosary of liberation, which anonymously appears before her purging in the presence of the protervative spellings that still wander through the cells and bedrooms of the Castellum del Horcondising. Her mother is seen twisted over the voices that polished the eight moons that she had designed for her son Vernarth from the very machicolations of the Castellum, but now with a rosary of liberation. It was clearly seen in the leaves written by her, which said that “My son abandoned his weapons, now in fluids of holy water, symbolizing real chimeras by the projections, to those who read his life verses in our Castellum, in Gaugamela and Patmos ”. Vernarth, mostly Hellenic, awaits to manifest healings for all creation, dumping water from moon storms on Rhodes, and lighting Matacan wall light at the door of the Messiah stand.

Vernart says: “my adolescent look, she has to be reborn with that of my father Bernardolipo; a whole Chamberlain, making himself free and a supporter of the baronies that were part of the servants of my servants…! Although now to climb his cabinet I have to raise my knees higher before his amplified step, calling us all and trying to be closer to a new bell to call us to dinner, as an entity of pride of architecture defined by his pen, ink, and white sheet that I mention. The mother I have to mention; My mother Luccica, rests not condemned or corrupted before her flesh, rather perfectly united to her spirit that envelops her free of sin, so that her company would be of complete solitude in our Castellum, we will continue to be in conformity with the spirit because our mansion is a beautiful spirit of vicissitudes, life, and peace, that our esplanade holds hunger and coldly indifferent to loneliness, cooling and pleasing the company of its own cold, rising from the first rays of the day, as well as rising from the first pinches of graduated ink, agreeing in the corrals where my father already lived according to his life among debtors, mortifying what he has not been able to mount on his steeds that inhabit his senses, leaving not so far to greet them in the mornings free of errors of not greeting, even When the minimum space is left to think of him as a joint-heir. Because the laments sob and others are born in the virginity of the light of the world with other lines Luccica can scarcely write, writing her co-age spirit, manifesting itself foolishly in suffering perfection; manifesting itself as everyone's delight, although ringing with anger at not freeing itself from glorious freedom. Not all sing to the tune of the disability of putting the strength of the grapheme of posterity, rather we blind ourselves by putting hope, but of patience that we arm ourselves by losing our courage to have it. Our will is of the magnitude of saints when doubt and fear entertain us, according to all the things and purposes that irreversibly will surprise us. I do not know where I have to walk here in this tower ?, because I know that myths of the unknown will fall according to the fact that I am his son, being the first-born of all men in the world, speaking of who among many intercede before tribulation or anguish, that strips me of all spirit still asking for it and justifying that I keep talking about them, but that I have been gone for a long time. For this reason, venerated mother, wake up from this frozen cell of the courtesy tower, because I am jealous and I believe that neither death nor life will fill the dead suspended in your room, which support more lives with their angels adorning their bindings and paragraphs, with principalities that are increasingly so distant more than imminent to come to please you. When your name is tried in real vices to increase, they are being stripped of the sons of the principality in which they shine from afar, but with our feet dancing on despotic brilliance, and not of the hollow that still does not fill my heart for you”

Emerging from the last lights of the Castellum del Horcondising, Vernarth bids farewell to his reign, leaving his mother Luccica in the company of three Angels who mined him with the amber mistletoe, of sallow light. However, she will remain frosted on her desk with ink at night and by day, so that when the day ceases, she will draw ink from the darkest night to continue writing that she can already be without Him! Near the Halleniká Necropolis in Rhodes, a statue of Peltasts stood, shielding the site where the “Vas Auric” Auric Medallion would sporadically rest, which came between the bilges, now inside the Eurydice. It came predestined with sacred amber garments alloyed, to make up for the between Peltast mediators who guarded them, to deliver it to its Commander Vernarth.

The Apostle Saint John says: “The Sephardim like us in exile did not see reasons restored in our union and tradition, we resembled a diaspora that did not derive voluntarily, according to events that occurred in my case in Judah at the hands of the Romans. The Alexandrian Jews form on my part certain Israelites dispersed in my prayers, leaving us where the radiance of our faith makes sense and dispensed power to us. My economy is to create the furniture that will inhabit laborious houses in the Staurós histos, even among those Jews and mercenary soldiers, freeing themselves from prejudices and clothing that represented them alone and fragile, being sensible by the diaspora. The world separates itself from the matter cell, clinging to the consciousness of the unity of dispersed Mosaicism as a sacrificial cult, to cater to those who write history more distant than a synagogue without a Rabbi. When bad winds blew there, they often made the situation worse for those scattered in a foreign land. At the end of the Hellenistic era, we had Jews in Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Phenicia, Pontus, north of the Black Sea, Cappadocia, the rest of Asia Minor, Egypt, and Cyrenaica, Carthage, Greece, Macedonia, and Italy. Now I in Rhodes with the Vas Auric, to trace the true effigy of Judas Thaddeus, my co-religious in pursuit of an intellectual and theological religious activity of edifying centers of prayer and universal unification, here in the Necropolis of Hallenikka, where some Davidian Psalm will be in more regions of here documented in precession, and as a reciprocal religion to Hellenic situationism. Its religiosity is felt, it even remains open in proselytism that causes the indefiniteness of the half-convert and that implies a risk for the identity of the Jewish religion as the support of a people with not a little original conscience "

He sings The Delphic Sibyl: “He bears the crown of thorns of the Coronation of Jesus, which also happened in the Praetorium, and as in previous cases to the scene represented in the corresponding neutral. In Eritrea Stauros, rather Herophile, if chaste and Delphic clairvoyant and apologetic, her vernacular artery made her a native of Marpeso, Troyana-Troade. As in fantasies of being the daughter of a Nymph and a Shepherd. Her elegy was escorting her to the Duodecim Evangelii, from Samos she is docking towards Patmos at the foundations of the Megaron. With the same polygon of the Sistine Chapel, in the quattrocento, where Vernarth had assistance in the parapsychological Regression of the Quattrocento Duodecim Evangelii, announcing that Vernolatry would be part of his Apologetic life, inspiring prophecies with the Iaspis Parables, commending scholarship after the grave that He was in the forest of Apollo Smintheus, returning to his origins in a sinkhole in Mount Coric. The idiomatic cross was its interlaced fractal, with threads and kashmar pole, surrounding the crossed palisades with linen threads, and Koiné to display the cross in the hestion or towards the Staurós or cross, in the capital event of the material instrument of execution for the man who falls into no man's land "

Technical issues
Malfunctioning wires
The power sporadically
Comes, then expires
As quick as the rains
In cascades upon town
Serenade me to sleep
As they crash all around
And depart to the chirping
Of crickets in thickets
Of dense foliage
As the canopy glistens
Bejeweled in the dews’
Opalescent sun rays
As the colobus leap
To and fro as they play
On display is a wilderness
Otherworld bliss
And the people as natural
Components subsist
Off the land that has nourished them
Centuries old
Now a part of their story
Mine set to unfold

My dear, I assure you, this was not my deed. No, my dear, I am innocent. I awoke this morning from a genius dream to darkness, as my windows were covered with grayed curtains from my mother’s gold childhood. I stepped out onto the terrace without notice of the body. Perhaps it was not there yet. However, doctors soon established the lady had been dead for more than thirteen hours. I was not aware of her presence the entire time I took eloquent drags from my cigarette, only noticing the smell of the pollen-filled wind and, now I know, mistaking the sound of her blood hitting the concrete tiles as a mild shower from the south. Had I been aware of her presence, I’d have saved her, separated the handle from the clench of her body, and called the authorities. I’d have cried if only I remembered how. I’d have made love to her while I was still alone. Let her rest in ecstasy.
          Do you understand now, my dear? Do you understand the good that lies within me? I am not a man of killing; perhaps somewhere, a man like me is, but not I, dear friend, not I. Do you believe me? My God, if only the officers believed me. Instead they tied my hands behind my back and forced my lips shut so that I can not even yell of my innocence, all while dragging me into a cellar that now I must call my home because of an action I did not commit. That I did not commit! That I would never dare to commit! Atrocious, they call me. Atrocious, I call them for engraving lies into my brain, fragile to dementia but not to crime. No, never to crime.
         My dear, please note, they say I am who I am not. Devils! They paint pictures of a filthy man unrecognizable and insist it is me. *******! I have felt my skin tingle in manners unimaginable and a sensation of a new body rise within me, a new body whose deeds I have no control over. I am not the producer of this crime. I am innocent. This was my only confession to the officers who came into my apartment due to the neighbors’ complaints of screams unlike those of ******* coming from somewhere near my establishment. Indeed, I found, along with my new workmates, a bloodied woman looking down to the floor, lipstick mouth and tired eyes, impaled. Horrific! Was written on the notepad of the chief of police. Now I am strained on electrical mattresses, obliged to believe what I never would have dared to believe, obliged to reminisce my last taste of self-government: as I stood in the doorway of my terrace along with five police officers realizing they were not prepared for this grotesque imagery, I became aware of a fragile young woman, perhaps in her early 20s, hanging upside down with a rotten handle sticking from her mouth. Indeed, around her disentangled body were the satin sheets of my bed, drenched in her brown substance that shimmered in the snug afternoon sunlight. The officers hurriedly disregarded this fact and focused on the removal of the woman’s body from the handle, only to have her legs detach and fall onto the wet concrete. An officer yelled. Another grimaced. I giggled, watched, focused, determined. Upon further distant inspection, I observed that the handle had been ferociously inserted into her soft, delicate genital, forced through her dry ******, passing along the large and small intestines, only to finally pierce her stomach and come back up through her mouth. The beauty of the crime was terrifying.
          The beauty of the crime is terrifying. It is a blissful poem written by finesse, workmanship, delicacy. There is no manner for this legendary craft to be produced by me: I am a sufferer of mediocrity and its dreadful boredom. The father of the crime was a genius, the one I have always dreamt of being. Now, my friend, since my last day of freedom, I have no beauty to witness anymore. Confined, I befriend insects whose exoskeletons allow for strength and resistance to remain a part of them. I am incompatible to these powers; I am innocent. At many times, I howl for a touch at night; I awake with cut nails and scars between my thighs. Guards insist on restraining me. They sabotage me until I see Hell. Then, I am finally able to stay calm. No more do I sporadically feel my skin tear from my bones as if it were attempting to evaporate from me as a slight sting overcomes these unfamiliar ligaments. They ask me how? They ask me why? I remain silent fore I do not recall how or why. I remain silent fore I desire to know how or why. I desire the brilliance of the unspeakable act. Unspeakable in its grandeur; unspeakable in its cruelty. The filthy man the officers paint now becomes attributed to the crime’s brilliance to me. I see him more everyday. He wanders in mirrors and speaks to me when I am not aware of time and presence.
        However, disappointed, I remain with no explanation for the officers but that sunsets are composed of separations of wavelengths that shine differently onto each ray of existence than onto any other globular star. And, as this occurs, the identical wavelengths spray themselves among the individuals who are most vulnerable to hysteria in order to reflect themselves in unsuitable manners. That is how my mother explained to me the illness her womb inflicted onto my sacred hemisphere. That is how I began to call the foul insects who dared to climb into my cellar, my sole companions.

I have eyes of glass, you say,
Like a Victorian stuffed animal.

Your eyes betray your anguish
Strained or swimming.

Carnal snarl
Canines for ripping

Curiosity killed the cat,
How evading and paradoxical
When it is plain we are animal,
Grappling bodies.

When your eyes swim with pain and confusion
Regularly and sporadically
I am left at sea, afraid of water
Seaweed choking despair,
You are too busy drowning
To hold my hand

I am but fingertips
Sliding under

Drowned

“Cold…dark, January no doubt. Crystallized gasps hold in the air, indiscriminately juggling between transparency, and opacity. Inhale and cringe as the stifling breeze moves deep, penetrating bone. Shell shocked in a state of disarray, wheezing, and coughing, as the cruel chill proves too much. Hold fast, buckling against bus stops, feeding off the warmth from sewers as they cough up hot, rancid steam. Bathing in the fumes, collecting sweat. Step out from sanctuary to discover that bitter wind that eastern wind, which carries with it a victimizing frost, designed to paralyze movements, to stagnate the course towards salvation. Stumble…fall to the blank canvas bellow, imprint on it the vague outline of the carcass, then move on, holding high, beyond that cold, dark, January.”

Blankness, complete and utter blankness, no smile, no course stare, just blankness, complete and utter blankness.

“Does anyone have any questions or comments? No? All right, you may take a seat Mr. Ryier.”

Is it mockery? Am I the victim of some vast highbrow jest? Is this a period of intentional silence, one designed to brew up this self-doubt roaming about my mind on a destructive and wholly unnecessary cycle?”

“Next up…we have, Mrs. Kennison, reading another poem, I believe. Is that correct?”

“Yes Mrs. Fiordine, It’s called Grasshoppers.”

“Wonderful title, but would you please head to the front of the class to start. Mr. Ryier, did your…piece, have a title?”

“Yes ma’am, ‘Incendiary Delusions On The Effect Of A Cold Temperament’.”

“A bit wordy. We’ll go with cold, dark January. Pay attention now though, Mrs. Kennison is about to begin.”

This woman, this mentor, whose name I can, but won’t recall, I loathe her, and the ability she fosters not just in herself, but others. That thing that has her speak falsehoods with a smile, and to act pleased when riddled with agonizing pain. A monstrous creation she is, and just as Dr. Frankenstein, she yearns for the day when she can cast down her aspersions onto a vacant shell before here, breeding her cruelty into the hollow mind, knowing one day it will come forth, a wholly more monstrous creation, destined to march along a dotted path, until coming across their own pupil, or kin.

“Grasshoppers…they hop…hop right along, in and out of my life, just like David. David, that man I loved, that fleeting hopeless soul, that 28 to my 16, that hold me down, take my pristine, that tie me up, finger licked clean. Where, why, how could you be born with wings, why could I not tether you, or lock you in a cage? David, oh David, my fleeting grasshopper.”

Them, they show excitement, applause, ragging applause. Me, I’m stuck debating the poetic merits of statutory ****, and the indignant need for teenage girls and boys to listlessly portray their life and love as some haphazard, poorly assembled recreation of a renaissance era romance. True love is dead; it died when you let a 28-year-old finger your *******.

“What a stupendous piece Mrs. Kennison! Evokes such images in the mind. Provoking me towards an entangled and banned place of thought. Truly stupendous.”

I want to hit a woman for the first time in my life. Should I? No doubt I shouldn’t. Still, temptation has a way of overwhelming logic. Clenched fist…white knuckles, second thought, dropped hand.

“Best of the day, no doubt Mrs. Kennison. Clear you knew what you were doing. Are there any questions, comments? Yes, Mr. Unner?”

“I believe the piece had a lot of merit. It was clear that this poem, in particular, had a sense of clarity…I guess I’m trying to say I liked it. I liked it because it seemed you knew at least where it was going, and what it was going to be.”

Try harder perhaps, she’s be bound to fall right into your lap, light up with a playful squeeze, bow down, and suckle from her knees. Delusions of enlightenment at the realization of a hardened ****, stuttered compliments of a flirtatious nature, elevating a worthless stock. Holding a vigil to a fictional ****** locked in-between the realms of fantasy and ****, negligent minded to the forthcoming, inevitable scorn.

“I don’t agree, to me, the piece seemed as though Beatrice was trying to perpetuate the delusion men have of being able to break a naïve, young girl’s heart.”

“Superb point Mr. Arden, though it isn’t up to the artist to define the message, that responsibility lays with the reader.”

The girl, Kennison, this newly appointed poetic iconoclast, she breaks her proud stare with the teacher, and glances over at Mr. Arden, Ralph, with a doting look. Mr. Unner, Charlie, not happy with this, not one bit. His heart was broken; he had fallen in and out of love in less than 30 seconds.

“Another comment from Mr. Unner, what is it you have to say?”

“I retract my earlier statement, it was foolish. I hadn’t gone deeper than surface level. The poem is nothing, it’s a forgery mimicking the talents of someone gifted, someone capable of writing something of worth. What we have here is a case of blonde hair, crooked teeth.”

“Charlie!”

“Mrs. Kennison, please, you must stay calm during a critique, Mr. Unner has his right to an opinion. Mr. Arden, something to add?”

“Yes Mrs. Fiordine, I believe what we actually have here, is a brilliant piece, something so wise, so grand, that it goes beyond second, third, forth glance, it transgresses the boundaries of scholastic worth. It is an insurmountable achievement.”

“I’m sorry Mr. Unner, I know you’d like to make another comment, but we simply have too many pieces left to go. Time just won’t allow for it. Please, take your seat Mrs. Kennison.”

Marching casually, soaking up complimentary looks like *** and candy, the anointed artist holds high, perched on her plateaued vanity. Contemplate laying down a foot in the isle. Disrupt the whole parade. Good will holds me back; move on as the teacher gets things on track.

“Mrs. Enid, please, go forth and delight us with your work.”

The girl walks up, hunched, biting her lip raw. Tremors, pulse through her like shivers, sporadically giving her movement odd twinges. She stands, before her peers, terrified by their eyes, holding on the cusp of cruelty. She feels ugly. She looks ugly.

“I’m here, though vision may not allow for it. Take me in, wholehearted, in a look, in glance, just don’t glare. Don’t beat me down with your beady eyes, holding me accountable for your own lack of vision, believing my person, my appearance, to be some misfortune cast onto you. It’s my damnation. It’s my curse. I struggle with it; you just need to avert your eyes. Is that what I’ve become though, someone to look away from. If so, hold me accountable, **** me for my looks, scorn and belittle me, just glance my way, and don’t treat me like I’m not in the room.”

“Amanda, that was really great. A great poem. Now…questions comments. Yes, Mr. Arden?”

“Boo…go weep yourself to sleep, dreaming about what it’d be like to not look like a monster.”

“Charlie!”

“I’m sorry Mr. Fiordine, but her face, and the ugliness carried on it, that was all in her poem. I think that makes it fair game.”

“Any other comments…”

“Boo…”

“Please, stop, whoever did it. This is not the place for such cruelty.”

There it was, the teacher’s out. The avoidance of on property bullying, through the acknowledgment of not an end to the torment, but rather a delay, it was brilliant…in a cowardly sort of way.

“Amanda, you may take a seat…would anyone else like to share?”

Clumsy, her feet seem to stick together as she makes her way towards the desk in the back corner of the room, away from people, away from the windows, away from the light. The hierarchy notice, they’re weary of her positioning, fearful of the dreadful, inevitable fall from grace, a fall which would bring them to that place, the spot at the back of the room, where no one goes, and no one looks.
It sits there, at the back. No one knows whose there, whose listening. They just know the occupants aren’t wanted.
A young man stands before the class; he speaks from a page in a monotone voice, barely accentuating his alternating rhyming scheme.  There’s a stop, people screaming. A trail of blood pooled up in a low in the floor, it’s origins lie with Amanda, in that space at the back of the room, that place no one looked, no one wanted to go, that cold, dark, January.

Dusk and dust envelop this intriguing Amish couple,
as she watches through the windshield of her parked car.
She's been observing sporadically for well on seven weeks,
as they've taken the old relic of a house
from disrepair to today's refurbished splendor.
It will be their home.

Away in the adjacent field, his straw hat barely visible,
an elder guides a team of Belgians five across
from the furrows of the tract toward the dying sunlight.
She follows them with her eyes, marveling their magnificence
and his unassuming control of their power.
They are the source of the dust.

Outside the house another Amish woman, perhaps
their mother, unhanging clothes, while a baby
plays upon a blanket on the ground. Black bonnet on her head,
flowing soft blue dress, and bib apron, she works
serenely as the sun melts warmly down the western sky,
leaving in its wake the dusk.

Dwindling moments of a day that mark a turning point
for the young couple and their unseen spectator.
For them a place to make a loving home amongst
their brethren and for her a revelation in her life.
She's committed once again to love's entanglements.
Dusk and dust have claimed another.

The Last Kiss

Since Nan died the black dog circles, the scent of grief in its nostrils, waiting, sensing my vulnerability.

Regret sits heavily on my shoulders, for words said and not said, for journeys not taken, for wasted opportunities, for unsaid goodbyes.

Denial prods me unexpectedly, the reality hard to accept, where is she?

Self pity nags at me, an indulgence not to be tolerated, but it creeps in.

Remorse visits me; could I have done more to ease her mental pain?

Loneliness engulfs me in the quiet times, the darker hours; activity and light loosen its hold.

Anger irks me; it arrives sporadically without real reason.

These emotions, relentless, unyielding, almost my constant companions, take turns to envelop me in a dark mantle called grief, which must be worn, sometimes pushed aside, but never removed, a reminder of the debt which is owed, and paid out of love, with copious tears, but hard to bear.

Life is not the same since Nan died, but she is embedded in my mind, where I go she goes, etched deeply is the memory of our last kiss as she lay still and cold.

The thought of it horrifies me,
Even more so than what death entails,
It forces me to sporadically awaken.

I visualize myself taken away to a cold grotto,
Where I'm violated by strangers
And alienated, rather than uplifted,
For an unknown duration of time

I knew what might happen,
The consuming fervor,
My behavior will not be understood

Haven't I alienated myself all along?
Was it not I who voluntarily auditioned
For the infamous role of the outcast
As well as the acclaimed role of the golden child?
The critics may write their reviews of my performances

My petite hands peruse
Through the drawer's treasure,
The prescription pill bottle is
Considered as a future reference.

(c) 2014 Brandon Antonio Smith

8/2/14

I offer you my apologies, Esther
for I had to **** her.
She was a poet, you see,
and she was consuming you,
corrupting you,
turning you inside out,
b a c k w a r d s
so that
when you screamed,
your mouth let loose a torrent of letters that sprayed the walls in ink, left them soaked for days
and when you cried,
your eyes wept love letters in Shakespearean verse and suicide notes in Hemingway prose
and when you sang,
you did so sporadically, your voice breaking—into irregular cadence and—rhythm—in the middle—of your—sentences—
and when you were silent
it was because you were too busy pleasing her, dreaming up things that didn’t exist, obsessing over some poem that wouldn’t let you sleep.
And so I had to save you, Esther
she was turning you into a poet, you see,
and I had to save you.
I’d offer you my condolences
but I doubt you’d take them
after I wrapped your poem around her neck
and tore out her inky guts
and gouged out her sleepless eyes
and shoved her under my bed
so that I could smell her carcass as I slept
and know you were saved.
So I offer you my apologies, Esther,
for I had to **** her.
She was a poet, you see, and she was killing you.

How to approach something so intangible, with little cellular to describe to my nerves
How to make verbal something so emotional, based on psychology and civil construction
How to perceive myself appropriately despite the eroding drips that pierce progress and old photos I cling to with such immaturity
These questions all are for the same goal, that progression of the self, all those substantial, cerebral, sensual and societal realisations that I yearn for
And yet... I sit, making delusional dreams come true in screens, I sit, making deep intellectual arguments for causes that aren't my own, I sit, researching complicated **** ups and ****** withs the powerful inflict in their attempts to balance a system born broken and biased
Screens are our new ****** it seems, as we reject religion our screens let us forget that the world continues around us, or encourage us not to care
And I come to this self consciousness, this ironic hypocritical reprehension
Because I really enjoy what all these creative minds and years of work and beauteous ideas have given me, but with the same hypocritical tone, despise my compulsion to stare into pixels

As I indulge this self awareness, I know I will continue with the same mental obesity of consumption tomorrow
And there will be no hypocritical self evaluation, just self involved enjoyment
Until the moments come when I am left alone with my mind
Self conscious, reflective, feeling as the time has been lost, but my mind is too tranquilised with pixel and poster representations of reality to notice
This won't change but...

Maybe if I take some time to turn pages rather than press buttons, and stare at sunsets rather than screens
That self evaluative journey I've ignored and returned to sporadically in the reflective yet warm darkness would be less intimidating
And if nothing else, on those days where reality lies next to me filling my cerebral stomach with the undeniably existential
I might feel a bit better about those days lost to other people's stories

Weary is the wanderer who travels with no true destination,
Hesitant is the past he's abandoned home,
Unconscious is his pursuit with no avail,
Forgotten is her memory as he treads sporadically; endless turmoil.