We live in a world of high speed wreckage, so much so that I fear our youth
Have been desensitized to the sight of death and destruction; It's only a
Few clicks away with our media addiction but, that's not what I'm here to
Talk with you about today. No, I think it's time we take a 3 minute break
Of high-speed mentality, to break free of swift reality if only for a moment.
Speaking of moments, I need everybody to close their eyes for a time. No, seriously, close them.
I want to tell you a story that sight cannot settle, no semblance of reality, for
Some things are meant for eyes, others for ears, still yet others are meant
For the mind. For the soul. Let us sail on a ship of sound, a journey, collectively.
Now sit still, and listen.

So what is it we percieve behind eyelids shut tight? Before we fall asleep at night?
On one hand, it is nothingness; no light to comfort us, such a solemn black.
I guess I can't speak for you but, at times I get sad before I sleep. I think back to
Every promise someone didn't keep, all the words I was too scared to speak; or
the whispers my lovers' lips never returned, like "I love you". In short, I
Was lonely. There is something in the act of cutting off sight that leaves me
With a crippling sensation of isolation. But something tells me I'm not the only one
All-too familiar with this sense of suffocation. Somehow I feel as though this is
Shared not only with you, but with the person sitting next to you, and beside them too.
But, I'm not here to depress you, and so let me share some words I once wrote with you;

Lost souls
Drink ink.
But only wither,
With the weather.
Like roses,
Red-
And dead.
But they're beautiful,
You know.

You see, it was a poem I had written around the age of sixteen, and I didn't really get it then but,
"But they're beautiful, you know" was a seed of thought that blossomed in the next few years;
The thought that sometimes the broken things are the most beautiful for they are perfect in the story
That they tell. The story of imperfection; of affection; of sweet affliction; whatever words you
Deem worthy of describing our time here on Earth. Put simply; we are stupid, pointless, silly, exquisite humanity.
Like shattered glass, we can never be what we once were but only arrange ourselves into a magnificent stainglass window,
Allowing the sunlight of our lives to paint a picture of whatever unique self-disciplined blessings we choose to give
And when the sun starts to set, allow me to remind you of this; being along has never hindered the beauty of a sunset over a meadow,
Visible by standing in the treeline on top of a gently rolling hill. And so I dare you, I dare you to live alone, yet married
To the aesthetics of one eye, instead of two. I dare you
to fall in love
with you.

If you haven't already, you can open your eyes now. Our break is coming to a close; soon we'll be back to tweets on twitter
Instead of outside our windows before the sun rises each morning. But after I'm done speaking I hope you can take something with you.
Specifically, the next time you feel like crying yourself to sleep at night; remember this poem. If not in it's entirety, remember just this;
You are stupid, pointless, silly, exquisite humanity and there is not one bone in your body that is not broken or incomparably beautiful.
Know that somewhere I'm out there, hoping that you drift with a smile into sleep.

Her eyes.
That's what gives her away.
A hat worn tightly, meeting the top of her eyebrows.
Thoughts racing.
Thinking she finally figured it out.
What this life is about.
What she turned her life into.
Was it worth it,
The outcome of how things are now?
She asks herself, crowed around the ones that are supposed to matter.
..It doesn't matter.
Just a few chapters of things that go unnoticed.
A few people that come & go without a reappearance.
It could be worse. So I've been told.
Of course it can. & it has.
Little by little. Day by day.
Overlooking what could destory me in the future.
My only regret,
not accepting it when it could have made a difference.

-C.J-

I (Reverie)

Thisbe senses diamonds in the dusk/
Turner protects himself with cozying ash created from the minerals of adoration

The street is a hundred constant cinders
Communicating with mystic language
Repeating itself

While the newsstation weeps
And front yards hold their damp cheeks
Cherishing the child who is now gone

The envisioned tower, embarassed with its Windows n lack of decorations/
Not even the cobwebs will settle in vicinity!

A paranoid Sculpter cant sleep and so takes to Spanish poetry

"You're giving out your tarot cards to
Yusuf what will he do with them!"

A mother says to her child who
Incidentally goes blind in that exact moment

An epitaph for the ashtray sitting precariously on the stainglass table on the porch where an
Empress seeks shelter
Carving at her senses with
Violent monologues about religion
Courtesy her friend

(A stranger to risk,
Some tired dull balloon rises up within her consciousness going higher and higher!)

II (December in Moods)

Mauve temporarily fills the room
Your soft breathing brings an elation
To the dresser at the foot of your bed
I can't rest here beside you
I want to kiss you
And your sleep

The discontent arrives
In shrouded form
You resign yourself to the kitchen watching logging trucks forever heave around the bend of forestry
Threatened with the possibility that they'll lose balance and collide with the house

I visit during Holidays with marigolds and fantasies of Asia
& with sweetness on verge
of imancipation
You kiss my face
attempting composure
As the radio promises
That this Winter will be especially
Frigid.

I apologize for my arrogance!
In losing friends, betraying my past beliefs for
White wine & phenomenology

You recite a foreign anthem with whispers, curious of the mathematics of romance.
Questioning yourself but especially yourself in relation to me.

III (Josephine, Burial)

In contemplation
A dog listens to nearby whistling
Of a young girl home from school/
In six months she'll fall victim to the divorce of her family/
And in twelve months
Accept that her mother had a lot of problems
It isn't her fault
It was never her fault/

In sixteen months she'll chip her front teeth on the coffee table

In three years she'll decide on a better first name
"Josephine"
In four she will legally change it and

In five the previously mentioned dog will be buried
With his owner's favorite scarf

IV (2015)

The August heat causing distant roads to waver in illusion while
A home catches fire

Luckily not my own

I save my mind one night before it loses itself to pure imaginative flow
In midsts of 108 repititions of the Gayatri Mantra
I remember that!
The portrait of a french woman robed in sunset colors is taken off the rotting walls of a Cabin, auburn with evening rain.

Silence!

V (The rosebush blushes while being painted)

Yggdrasil is being renovated a few blocks away & a garden is unable to answer
For its
Unusual poetics

The local raincoat impressionist observes
A fantasy hidden in the soil
Nurturing itself
With percieved
Infant curiosity

Tread through the path of days end.
All I can see, far from reach.
Far above towering mountains, across open seas.
Are self explanatory reflecting images.
Millions if beautiful multicolors if eyes.
The low rumbles if imperfectly sculpted mouths.
So far they can see, so hard they can breathe.
Through an abstract vanity so well protected.

A mirror image matching identically.
To each living, breathing, seeing aspect of me.

So much alike, yet so different.
A beautiful masterpiece of diversity.
Some reflect a perfect double.
While others are like shattered glass.

As I observe closely I see myself through these;
flawed imperfect stainglass windows.
I see you, I see me.

Pondering the thoughts comtemplate...

Through all these beautiful imperfect imagrys.
I ponder the thought of how we came to be.
Only a being, perfect, benevolent, omnipotent.
Could conjour such a creature as thee.
A creature with hands and feet.
With a mind to ponder and think.
And a heart that loves and beats.
Such a stature if conjouration are we.

What are we, why are we here?
We are an anomaly of what we bear.

Humanoid figures symbols of relevance.
Different shapes and sizes.
We are mirrors of one another.
How are we brought to be?

Something phenomenal I see.
Couldn't have been a coincidence.
These are the works of a mighty king.

Divine and with love he made you and me...

To live through his mirror image is;
One of love and tolerance.
Another of being thankful and humble.
His plans of us are his mural.
Walking mirrors like one another.
We are his greatest creation.
A one of a kind masterpiece.

Feelings of positivity flow through me.
As I feel a sense of faith grow In me.
And see his image and character grow through me.
I know what I must do to seek him.

Love him...
Serve him...
Praise him...
Know him...

We are the walking mirrors of one.
King of creation, lord of reflections.

I see now what I must do, what we must do...

Scattered light
mottles through the rank of trees
reigning over the aisle between fields
in royal stainglass arcs of protection.
The wheat is young and green
though stretches tall enough to dance under the influence of wind's song
and conceal
scurrying mouse, hare
and proud breasted pheasant
from hunters gun and farmers dog.
No echoed shots ring out today
only the call of birds
seeking twig and thistledown
to weave chalice cupped homes
high up in the throne of trunk,
out of view
from all but the few
who come to seek solitude.

Leaf lids fluttering
flirtatiously
leaf lips rustling,
uttering,
puckering under windy kisses. Gazing up through their stainglass limbs
a ****** of nature, but only in admiration, not in the strict meaning or sense.
No, not like that.
Some surrendered to the early flash of autumn colour.
Threw in their lot.
Disconnected.
Gentle deaths,
landing softly
be nothing left of them come spring.
Hope they died "the little death" making love to the wind in their own unique way.
Before humanity distroys them.
Little things, these leaves,
leaving the world and
a fool to wonder.

The daylight paraded through the stainglass heart
Clipping the edge of the stairs with dancing hues
The boy tall and fair picked up his bag
Stepped outside with a menagerie of thoughts
Into his world where the alligators were friendly.

He was a flaneur, in the making, after Manet
With the odd misspelling and circumvent
Adding a silky flourish to filtered words.
But was it enough to guarantee sixth form grade?
His propensity for idleness a growing concern.

Getting to the shops, early, before school
The boy bought another pair of white shoes
White was his favourite, a sort of purity.
It helped, this buying of things, to dissipate
The consumption of unending urban terrors.


Love Grandma ***

Looking lovingly at a painting by Constable
With a slow moving stream in the foreground
And a man about to get into a boat,
Salisbury Cathedral in the background
Its magnificent spire rising to meet the sky.

In a hundred years will these monuments
To religion, power, weath still stand stately
Against the incoming tide of the new world
To transmit a meaning?
And if we be spiritual beings where can we fly?

Can we be welcomed, cared for, listened to
In a world lost in fiscal concerns, selfish, predatory.
And a chair to bear our burdens in the quietness
Of an afternoon light,
Carried by the sun through stainglass.

Or on a hillside be humbled by a simple cross
A clunp of earth filled with flowers.
Let us think why and what it is we need
So that those churches owned by power
Wealth and history become owned by us all.

Love Mary ***