Love her like
She's the raging sea,
Unrestrained and dark and deep.
And you crave her touch
Through aching pores
As you slowly drown in sleep.

Love her like
She's the tender storm,
A lovely shade of grey.
Like with every whiff
Of breath she takes,
She's taking yours away.

Love her like
She's the silent clouds
With calmness floating by.
Like you'd want to make
Sweet love to her
Under the moon's apocalyptic eye.

Love her like
She's the blazing fire,
And you lust the candied pain.
Like she's the disease
That swallowed you whole
And you'd like to die again.

When her gentle touch
Makes your chest explode,
And your addiction is your girl.
Promise you'll love her
Through hell and back,
Or don't you dare love her at all.

I am the deep, the sky in reverse
I have what you seek, for better or worse

I am the blue of infinite depth
I've swallowed the crews and cleared the decks

You are afraid or maybe intrigued
Of the place where you played and also was freed

Kiss me now like you did before
Give me your vow and the ocean is yours.

Two young boys in corduroys
             were playing with a ball.
Two young boys heard one strange noise,
             coming from the hall.

The boys stood still, well, still until
              the door swung open wide.
And a ghostly chill and a real ghost, Bill,
              were heaved the heck inside.

The brave boy stood, as the brave boy would,
             and said, "Hey, listen Bill!
We're here to hear you, not to fear you.
              Tell us what you will."

The other boy wheezed and sneezed then seized
              and vomited on the floor.
He shook his brain. He felt insane.
               Nothing was real anymore.

"Ghosts are real?! They're ******* real?!?!?!"
               he cried and shook and feared.
For nature's laws were gone because
               a ghost had just appeared.

And on that night of fear and fright,
               the brave boy had his thrills.
And the other one was ******* done
               and swallowed fifty pills.

A rose in the middle of December is what I saw outside. Instantly, I connected this odd occurrence with my life. The thought hit my thoughts like a ton of bricks. That is what I am, I had thought to myself. That describes me.

As I looked out my living room window on a sunny, but freezing, Saturday afternoon, I was surprised to see this solitary rose that had bloomed on my mini rose plant.  Providing me with a few salmon colored roses each season of its bloom, without fail this plant regrows again and again in my garden. I first planted it there since forever ago, or so it seems.

Usually, such a flowering occurrence should be no big deal, nothing major or out of the ordinary. Certainly, I would not find this as something really noteworthy to write about. Rose plants do that kind of thing all the time.

But it was frigid cold outside, and the middle of December.

What a strange, yet amazing thing to behold! Maybe there is a proper explanation for it, but I don’t care. The petals were just as colorful as ever when really they should have wilted awy from the cold. All the other flowering plants in my garden surely did! It didn’t really make sense, but its presence was pretty awesome.

I eagerly went to find my camera to take a picture of my sweet, little rose. The grass was dotted with tiny patches of snow to show that-yes indeed-winter is really only days away from its official entrance. Plant activity and growth really should be over. Isn’t that right? I know we have had some warmer days during the previous month, but the icy cold seemed to have come to stay for a while. It surely defies logic to think of blooming flowers on such days.

I often look for “God moments”, as I call them, in which God gives me something to hold onto that reveals His love to me. Not looking for anything earth shattering, I see often see God in the little things, in the details of life. And I don’t even always look for such things, for sometimes I doubt God really cares or really is that effective in my life. You see, that is not uncommon for someone who deals with chronic depression. I learned early on in life that nobody is there for you, not really. I know Christians aren’t supposed to feel this way, but if I can be bold to be honest, I am. Often, I just think I’ll get by on my own. If I can’t get by on my own, I often try to put up with it instead of turning to God for help.  But lately I was feeling desperate.

Suffering with depression all of my life, and with managable anxiety, the thought of the approaching Christmas had been especially difficult for me. I know that people are “supposed to” feel uplifted with the holiday, but I was not. To reveal this is a source of shame to me, and I have learned to mask such uneasy feelings, trying to fake it for the sake of showing the world that I really am OK inside. It is like I expect everyone to look at me and say, “What’s the matter with you, loser!”

I knew I could find two things that would appeal to me—Christmas music and lights. Yet the music that I often love could not do it for me. The lovely Christmas lights, shining in the dark of night, didn’t matter either. I was feeling dejected, and I was growing weary with life—again. When not obligated to go anywhere, I felt like hiding from the world, feeling safer from anxious thoughts by myself. And as safe as I tried to feel in my comfort zone, this was frightening to me. This did not feel like living to me.

Is this how I am going to live out the rest of my pitiful life? This was one of my kinder thoughts.

I usually get through Christmas OK, making the best of it, but my losses often feel bigger than my blessings. In 1998, I lost an estranged brother to suicide. In 2005, I lost a father to Alzheimer’s, a few weeks after Christmas. In 2007, my mother had to spend Christmas in a nursing home recovering from major surgery. That year, I struggled through that season with very hopeless feelings, for my mother was in jeopardy of never walking again. She spent almost half a year in that place—a woman with sever scoliosis, and chronic back pain, who cannot stand for very long. In my hopelessness, I seem to forget the miracles in my life, for my mom’s return home seems like one to me.

I also see my father’s experience and death from Alzheimer’s as something far more than a tragedy. For many years, I avoided my father, wanting really nothing to do with him. Grudges surely seem larger than life over time, and although I wanted to forgive my father and seek reconciliation, fear often stood in the way. Even though my dad grew remorseful for how he raised his children, it took my brother’s suicide for me to find forgiveness for a man I thought never supported me or believed in me. For over two years, while my dad was ill and dying, the bond between us grew into something special. I know from personal experience that even in the difficult times, there are larger purposes involved.
  
No doubt, I have been provided with some huge challenges in life. Thankfully, I always pulled through when I surely felt that I would crumble into pieces. I clung to my faith in God, even when that faith felt like dying embers in a fire, for it seemed to be all that I had. Nothing else worked. Nothing else satisfied for very long. And when it did last, I wanted more and more, like a drug addict looking for his next fix.  

I have often been plagued with self doubt. What is my purpose in this life? Why am I here? I knew I was not alone in this thinking, reminding myself that I am not the most unique person in my suffering. So I searched the internet, a convenient source to turn to when you can’t seem to face people, and the world.  

Not wanting to live or value your own life is a horrible state of mind that I would not wish on anybody. I have relied on a depression medication since my brother died, and still do, but there had to be something more to help me. Deep down inside, I did not want to die, but I didn’t know how to live either. The heart of the matter was that in my worst bouts of depression, I was just so broken inside. I survived enough to go through the motions, but I felt like I was losing the battle—and really did not want to win the war anyhow.

I still remember the “God moment” I had when I was in London, England in August of 2011. At that time, life felt like an adventure as I went on my very first overseas trip to Europe. I have yearned to go to Europe since childhood. It was a Sunday morning in London, and a religious program was on. From what one man was saying on TV about his experiences, my ears perked up and I hurriedly scribbled some things down on a pad of my hotel paper before I forget some of his statements that stood out to me.

During my short stay in London, I was experiencing a cold. I wanted to feel Gods presence as I felt the swallowed up feeling of being a stranger in a faraway place. As intruiged as I was,  in the huge, bustling metropolis, I admit I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. I find big cities as places in which people pass others with no concern other than to go about their way. London was fascinating, but I am a suburbanite, for sure!

The things this man was saying on TV really impacted me at the time, and I now carry that scrap of paper around with me in my wallet. Little did I know that a few months later that these statements would help to pull me through from reaching into despair. That despair began a few months after that trip when I was quite sick with the flu, twice in a row, and feeling very isolated and weary.

Sometimes, we have to get into that place where all there is is God.

It is not that I did not believe in God. I did not think God believed in me.

Sometimes, we grow best in hard times.  

All my crooked crutches and phony props, as I call them, weren’t working. If the computer wasn’t taking up much of my free time, television was numbing my senses from the stark reality that life felt empty for me. Where was God? Logically, I knew I had no reason to be bitter, for I knew the answer. I felt so far away from Him, helpless and hopeless—yet I clung to this hope—God never moved at all. I was the one who walked away, but like the prodigal son in the Bible, God would be waiting there for me with a joyful expectation. I truly believe that even though I often wonder how God puts up with me.

It has been a long time—if ever—that I fully trusted in God alone. Yes, I believed in Him, and trusted in Jesus as my savior, but I often held back. I was still so angry and hurt about the past. Why didn’t God rescue me from such a horrible childhood? Why was I bullied in school? Why didn’t I have a better family? Why did loneliness and insecurity plague me as it did? Why wasn’t I beautiful? Why didn’t I have a better life? Why this and why that. Even though I logically knew better, in my hurt and wounded soul, life felt like a big, horrible mistake. God must have not cared about me. I may not have consciously acknowledged it, but my actions proved otherwise.

We live in a world where you got to be stronger, you got to be better; you got to be tougher; you got to be faster; you got to be more successful. The media pounds this into our brains all the time in many different forms. How many of us feel like we can never measure up? I am sure I am not alone in feeling the inadequacy. Yet I could not concentrate on anyone else’s pain when I was so wrapped up in my own.

A rose in the middle of December—I put it all into proper perspective. What a fragile looking thing, but an enduring one! It symbolizes to me the invincible, indelible human soul in the midst of an often perplexing world. When all around seems bleak, when life takes a toll on you, that remains unscathed, untouched by the trails we often have to face.  When we die, I wholeheartedly believe, it will be the only true thing that remains of us. When our bodies decay into dust, our souls will be like that rose, brilliant and beautiful.    

Besides myself, there are two groups of people, near and dear to my heart, which I could compare to that symbolic rose in my garden. My current job is working with special needs students, usually with autistic children and young adults. I worked 19 years in a bland office job, and could not ignore the constant nagging feeling to get the courage and desire up to do something more fulfilling with my life. With fearful, but bold determination I thought: It’s now or never.  Maybe it was not the wisest thing, but it felt so freeing to say to my boss, “I think I quit”, without another job to back me up. I basked in the encouraging applause of many co-workers who wished they had the guts to do the same, but soon the panic set in.

What do I do now? What can I do now?

Never working with children before, I felt a call to work with them, and I absolutely have a greater sense of purpose. Many of these children cannot talk. Many of them cannot walk. Many of them accept people just as they are, for I believe they want the same in return. Their lives teach me what really is important in life—and that is compassion.

Other than children, I also love the elderly, sensing their desperate need for love and compassion. Forcing myself to get my mind off my own troubles, I heeded my pastor’s call to not simply “go to church” but to “be the church”. I knew I had talents. I knew could open my mouth and carry a tune. From what I went through in my life, I knew I had the compassion. After all, I dealt with my dying father in a nursing home. With a nursing home ministry in my church, and a nursing home right across the street, it was obvious—there are others out there that need hope and they need love. So what was my excuse?

In this world that expects you to be stronger, better, tougher, faster or more successful, there are those that live in the world that they don’t fit any of these categories. But yet they are here. They exist. Can they be ignored? The answer is surely, yes, and they often are.  Perhaps, the world is uncomfortable with them, does not know what to do with them. They don’t fit into the false demands for perfection. They don’t fit into push and shove to get ahead of everyone else, but they remind us, sometimes to the point of discomfort, how fragile the human condition often is.  

Lately, I have had such a hunger that food cannot satisfy. I yearned for a peace, one that only God can provide me with. I found two uplifting stories on the internet of people who struggle on and whose lives defy the idea of a perfect world. One of them was about an Australian man, Nick Vujicic, who was born without arms and legs. He was picked on at school because he was perceived as a freak, as someone who did not seem to have any real chance at living a normal life. And he was angry that he did not look like, or function like, most everyone else. At about the age of eight he wanted to end it all, thinking he had no purpose in life. He eventually gave his life to Christ, and now lives a full life, reaching out to others with his incredible story of hope and perseverance.

Another woman, Joni Eareckson Tada, continues to amaze me. She is a quadriplegic from a diving accident gone horribly wrong. Her story touches many people with her hopeful attitude and her amazing faith in Christ. She, too, wanted to die when she thought her life had no more meaning. Recently, she has even fought breast cancer and chronic pain that has added to her decades of struggles with immobility.  She touches so many lives with her honesty about her suffering, giving people hope in times that seem hopeless.            

I wanted what these two people had. No, I did not want their afflictions, but I wanted to be able to reach out to others and touch their hearts, as well.  I wanted that faith, desperately, a faith that will not back down in the face of fear, in serious doubts, deep sadness, and pain. These people had little choice but to turn to God. The alternative was utter bleakness, a lack of purpose, and a slow death. But they defied the odds and etched a life out of faith, helping countless others to endure their struggles and to find meaning in life. There were plenty of times when I did not pray to reach out to a God that I gave my heart to many years ago. I bought into the belief that God was as inadequate and ineffective as I was feeling.    

Sometimes, we have to get into that place where all there is is God.

It is not that I did not believe in God. I did not think God believed in me.

Sometimes, we grow best in hard times.  

With plenty of tears, I cried out to God. It was a gut wrenching cry of someone with nothing to give but a broken heart. I wanted that kind of faith, and I meant that with every fiber of my being. Deep inside, my faith wasn’t gone. It never really left me, but only God had the ability to grow it, to prosper it, and to produce “life” back into my life. The battles might have felt overwhelming, at times, but I have always been a survivor. In spite of heartaches, and from what they actually teach me, I can be an encourager to others. Instead of just wanting to make everything go away, I can look forward to new chapters in my life.  

I know there will still be times when I will struggle to want to face another day, yet with my faith in God, I can.

So a rose growing outside may be not a big deal. Writers and poets have seemingly exhausted the topic, hailing it the most precious of flowers, the most perplex, with such lovely fragility, yet sheltered by stinging thorns. My inspiration to write on the same subject may not be unique, but as a rose blooms, and its glorious petals unfold, so does my story. I admit I hesitated to finish writing this, not sure I wanted to expose these things about my life. It takes a lot of guts to admit how imperfect you are in a world that seems to shun or poke fun at such things. But if I can encourage even one person, who has similar struggles, I will gladly try to be an encouragement.    

For almost a week now, existing in a stark contrast of its surroundings, that little rose remains, cold winter weather and all. Every day since, for about a week now, I continue look for it outside and find it going against the grain.  All the other flowers in my dormant garden are long gone. It will be gone eventually, but I am still enjoying my “God

years ago
i was consumed
in the deep abyss of depression.
i had been there before
and had always managed
to dig my way out.
but this time i got lost
in a maze, each turn dragging me further
into Hell.

so many unresolved thoughts plagued
the chasm of my mind.
i wanted to die,
not to **** myself,
for i couldn't be that selfish
to hurt my family in that way.
but i prayed selfishly
to be put out of my misery.
a prayer i felt unanswered
for months on end.
i tried to hide
this darkness
from those closest to me,
isolating myself.

in a defense mechanism sarcastic tone,
i smirked to a friend
that all i really wanted
was peace.
she encouraged me to pray.
i responded honestly,
"i'm not sure prayer works for me
because i've lost faith."
as if God only answers to those with faith.
she told me
that i might need to see results to believe
but that i should
give it a shot anyway
and stick with it.
i brushed it off.

the next morning,
i woke up with my normal
(worse than normal, at that time)
negative thoughts, you're ugly, fat, unworthy ...
(that's the censored, more kind version of my thoughts)
to which i argued in my head,
be kind.
silly i know.
then my friend's words resonated
"give it a shot."
so i quickly prayed a simple prayer for peace
in my mind, body and in my soul.
of course, i didn't feel any different at the time,
but i drug my heavy laden body out of bed.
forced myself to workout and went to work.

my first client that day was new to me.
hiding behind my work mask,
i presented myself professional
with my usual introduction.
she returned the favor
with a look of odd fascination.
so i continued with
"have i worked on you before?"
hoping i hadn't absentmindedly
not recognized a former client.
she responded "no, but you are Liz, right?"
i confirmed and proceeded to my room.
after scoping out the surroundings,
she commented on one of my paintings
on the wall, of an Angel.
it's an abstract.
some people don't see it.
then she asked ...
if i was a believer.
caught off guard
i responded "excuse me?"
she said, "do you believe in Jesus?"
not accusatory or even with aggression,
but a simple question, with dancing eyes.
i said, yes, more out of fear,
with my current frame of mind, at the time.
i was fragile and trying desperately
to hold it together.

i left her to ready herself for therapy
and took the opportunity
to regain my composure,
securing my guarded mask.
when i began therapy
she sighed and said
"i felt in my heart
that you were the right therapist for me,
because i can feel your kind heart."
i asked "did someone refer you to me?"
with suspicion, and narrowed eyes.  
she responded "no. Jesus gave me your name."
she told me how she relied heavily on prayer
and that brought her to see me.
i **** you not.
i brushed off her words
as any sane
(even in depression)
person would.

she was not easy to work
as a large body
that was hard as stone.
but my thoughts began to shift,
i swallowed an emotional lump in my throat.
in that moment, i realized,
i felt privileged to be working on her,
for her to have sought me out
on a quest from Jesus, or so she believed.
a peace i'd never experienced before
washed over me, cleansed me, anointed me.
in that moment, i felt clean, light.

afterward she gave me a huge hug
with an exaggerated pause
and whispered in my ear,
that prayer was the only reason
she was alive.
it felt like no other hug i'd received before,
so tender, sweet and sincere.
so i asked myself
"was this a sign?"

from that day forward,
i found my way back.
navigating the maze.
it didn't happen all at once
but each step, each turn
lead me out of the abyss of darkness
and toward the light of harmony and peace.
and though, i still slip occasionally,
i recall that spiritual experience.

I am lonely, not lonely

the choice up to now
has been mine

I will slip away
(at will)
into the recesses
of small shops
of empty rooms
or quiet spaces

to avoid her touch
or his gaze
or their judgement
our subconscious desires.

But all swallowed up

deep in the belly
of fog, of smoke
a vast, impenetrable

night sky

suddenly the
all-encompassing fear
grips me

washes over
so suddenly

I realize
I have not lived at all

that I am
suddenly
(forcibly)
the only one left.

Down a long, winding road
that trudges on endlessly
into the fading silhouette of trees
and broken sidelines

dim headlights

I am lonely, not lonely.

I hate the dripping dark hollow behind the little wood;
Its tips a cursed maroon with a blood-red heath.
I think I praised and lamented it too soon;
Before seeing its scent; I saw already its stray mystical death.

My crown is torn, outraged by florid winds and scorn;
Like a tangled old roots of the windblown thorn;
I shall feel scanty by my own poetry,
And throw it about, duly, like a static little joke.

I shall let my heart grow dull and illiterate;
I shall not taste joy, no more, in any clear--flowery fate.
I shall seek everything bitter, and not sweet;
Even not pure as the honey of a bee; for it shall be plain.

I shall curve and bend any straightforward light;
I shall harass it, and blind it--as if my ghost’s dead soul is very not here.
Ah, where is but Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
Perhaps she is astray in my memory still, and not by my side.

I feel relieved so soon as glanced at her beside me;
She owns still that full lips like a perniciously tasty moon;
She is adorable like the flower of heaven itself;
She strikes me again when away, and tosses me about when near.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud;
Tame me again with thy rain of laugh;
Saint me once more like a fresh young bird;
Come to me now, and return my unheeded love.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud;
And kissing her forehead takes me back to that day;
A day of myths, a day of agile swans and storms;
An ornate time of hatred; a whirl of bitter fate; a dust of sorrow.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud;
And again I was alive in this tale, with a burning heart;
On one eve of tears, a mischief, and a wan poetry;
I caught about shadows in which there was no soul of Maud.

I could only see the stones, lying ghastly about the fireplace;
Ah, Maud, are you but still haunting those whimsical moors?
Their strange murmurs but I cannot hear;
But still they consume me, ah, I am scared;
I wish they would be gone soon, I wish you were but here.

These storms were amusing but peculiar;
They are bizarre, but intelligent and stellar;
And calling thy name out but breathes into me strength;
Ah, but should I be here, and bear away thy image alone?

Ah, and thou wert in but nymphic and lilac dream;
And my heart was still not massaged by the tender storm;
For it meant thee, and hungered but for thee only;
And in the midst of love had it longed, and yearned for thee.

Ah, where is but Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
Her with her childish eyes and rounded head of bronze,
With her rapturous steps and wild glittering aroma,
With her atrocious jokes, and a wintry secret touch?

But still she was not anywhere about;
She dissolved like one romantic bough of soda;
And within a rough joke, she would be but gone;
And now the storm returned, but I was wholly on my own.  

Ah, and now the striking storm is mounting the earth;
Should I write alone and chill myself by the green hearth?
For I hath nothing to console and lengthen my parched logs;
I shall wait outside and drift about yon wintry bog.

Ah, where is but Maud, Maud, Maud;
Maud with her heart-shaped face and bare voice aloud;
A voice that soaked my senses and craving throat;
Maud but teased me and left me to that joke.

Where is but Maud, Maud, Maud and Maud;
Maud, the goth princess within my ancient poetry;
Who but remained symmetrical and biblical in her vain torments;
Who but stayed sturdy and silent; amidst her anger, and vain fellows’ arguments.

Listen to me. I am but full of hatred.
I am neither a gentleman nor a well-bred;
I, who is just a son of an infamous parson;
A malleable son; with a bleak aura of a putrid spring.

I, one who crafted ingenious jokes;
But interminable as they always are;
I made Maud sit still as I held my woodwork;
While she perched herself on yon bench, gazing at dispersed starry stars.

Maud the shadow in my pale mirror;
At times she ceased at morns, but retreated at night;
On her brother’s sight she fled in horror;
But on mine her smile turned me bright.

Maud was idle, sparkling, vibrant, and tedious;
Her heart was free and not marred by stupor.
She was the sun on my very bright days;
She made me startled; she always left me curious.

Maud the green of the farm, the red of the moon;
Without her everything would spring not and remain odious;
Everything would be bleak and stayed tedious;
Ah, but still I could not own her, though I was her saviour.

I was a farmer and perhaps still am;
Perhaps that’s why her mother ditched me with shame.
Maud said she had not places like home;
Her house was the mere shallow--and gratuitous throne.

Maud came often down and agitated;
Her mood shadowy, she cried and cried too aggravated;
I caressed her back, and placed my palms on her white knees;
She told me stories whenever no-one else would see.

She wanted not to mount the throne;
She giggled often, at our country escapade;
She loved my cottage, she sweetened my thin grass;
Even those apple trees had then her eyes, which sprayed tough, lonely seas of green.

Maud took to hymn and dear children’s little songs;
She was popular always among the talkative throngs.
She would love to dance and wiggle and turn around;
While village pupils gathered to sing a noble sound.

Ah, but when the mirthless prince arrived;
With white horses and swords of a knight;
Maud was swallowed every morning, all through day and night;
Maud was no more seen by my side.

I thought I was not alive, for dreams were unreal;
If they had been, then they I’d have want’d to ****;
But seeing Maud not gave me fretful chills;
I often woke up tensely, within a midnight’s shrills.

Ah, where is but Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
Maud my bumblebee and my delicate little honey.
I kept waiting for her behind the rustic brook;
I fetched my net and fished by my old nook.

Ah, and where is Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
My eyes were still and my chest could no more speak.
I wearily fancied she had been kidnapped faraway;
She would be jailed in a sore realm, and would no more be back here.

Ah, for had she been lost, then I had lost my ultimate pearl;
For there would no more be magic, there would be no more of her;
No-one would so restore my original spring;
Perhaps there would be no spring at all, and I would suffer in summer.

And I would lose anyway--my lyrical, elusive demon;
For Maud had always been elusive herself.
She wore that evil smile and thin laugh;
As I told her tales of fairies that she loved.

As I am fond of magical poetry and dramas;
Maud too used to read them with genuine personas.
She was my epic fanatical little devil;
She liked tropical cold and a faithful Mephistopheles.

I should be Faust, as she once said;
For had I fair hair, yet a bald head;
She said like Faust, I was cleverly amusing;
But to me, like Mephistopheles--she was unusually entertaining.

She danced before me a beautiful ballet;
She was young and keen to levitate as a ballerina;
She crafted me limericks and such fair lines of sonnets;
She made earth my heaven, and my melodies a twin cantata.

Ah, and where is Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
I need my butterfly amongst this wheezy curdling cold.
I need my lover to soothe my chained hysteria;
I need to get out of here, and feed my love with her charms.

Ah, but where is Maud, Maud, Maud, is not she here?
I was then screaming in my solitude, could she but not hear?
I could speak not, no more--sore and wounded by this snowstorm;
I crept sick and weak like a dumb old worm.

She was not even heard of upstairs;
While I was dying here as a roaring beetle.
I hath almost lost all my creative flair;
I felt tormented and neglected and nearly feeble.

Ah, but a story like this is not such a fable;
So at that time I did shun sadness and seek a warm ending;
But indeed, to escape fate the poor were perhaps not able;
And the farmer’s son shall never be a king.

And ‘twas the nobles’ right to be idyllic;
To be deemed far then fairly righteous.
My charms were trivial, and so was then my wit;
My prayers were too parted and despaired; no matter how rigorous.

I kept my work along the countryside;
I toiled all night and behind fierce daylight.
I hoped Maud would see me back one day;
But what I found was to my dismay!

Ah, Maud, for she was now engaged;
To that pathetic creature the cursed morn brought about;
And parties arranged, voices too raised;
The union was now what people had in thought.

Onto my shoulders my head kept sinking;
I killed myself nearly, for my irksome defeat in this rivalry;
A rivalry that failed to transgress vital destiny;
A rivalry I could not even bear to think.

But again, this love had always been everything;
And thus Maud’s union would equal my death;
One night I crept out of my bed;
I had in hand a keychain and a net.

The soldier was infused by sound sleep;
And into Maud’s grand chamber I crept;
Everything was pink and quite neatly kept;
But woke I her not--as I heard her breast breath slowly.

She was tremendous still--in beauty;
Maud in her splendour; so young and free.
Ah, she was free but not free, I fathomed;
I looked at her over and over again.

I looked at her violet bed and comfort net;
Ah, my Maud too ****** and temptingly red.
She was too abundant in her young and chaste soul;
Ah, I could not imagine how she would soon be one else’s.

Long did I stand; ‘till morning streamed back again;
Still I remained unmoved; I stared at my darling in vain.
I jumped startled as the door opened;
And showed me the horror of the Queen!

‘Come, ye’ fool’, she voicelessly instructed;
Her face emotionless as these words emanated;
‘And embrace thy very fate’, to the handcuffs me she directed;
‘For daring look into my dame’s immaculately flawless chamber’.

She pointed thereof--a black gun at my chest;
It would soon burst out and tear my vest;
And even fly me straight to death;
So drifted I, without further haste nor breath.

Those poor soldiers imprisoned me there;
A cellar room at the top of filthy stairs;
I stayed awake only for grief and tears;
And most of the time I laid about sleepless and stared.

I grew skinless as my bones squinted;
And laughed at me with their sordid might;
Flies were about me, bending onto my rotten pies;
And slices of meat left out by sniggering guards.

I hit my head on witnessing Maud’s cold marriage;
‘Twas on a Saturday on the castle’s rain-wetted field.
I heaved myself onto the windowsill and saw;
How the couples were blessed and sent thereby back.

I could not see Maud’s face and fleshy cheeks;
But didst I feel her discarded tears;
Marred and defiled her lovely fits;
Though just those innate, and not out there.

I struck the lifeless paint with my bare palms;
Now the walls were tainted; they smelled like my blood.
Time passed and desire for Maud was never killed;
I’th missed her every day, since then, and perhaps always will.

But my love for Maud was never probable;
I was decent, honest, but indeed not preferable;
I was not even preferable by fate, as thou might see;
Fate who is neither truthful; nor frankly urges us to lie.

I often laid hopeless by the moonbeam;
Until night came and eyesight grew more and more vulnerable.
I waited ‘till it was dark and left to day no more gleam;
Then took my journal of Maud’s jests and read her affable poems.

I turned around--and would disgrace my bed still;
I was plain starved but had no desire to be properly fed;
Of a dream of death I grew instantly pertinacious;
And of my future tomb I grew fonder--and yet rapidly curious.

Ah, but my sweet Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
And deliriously she somehow became pregnant;
But remorse said she kept the souls of two;
And fatefully could not make them both perfect!

I indeed plain prayed for Maud’s survival;
I cared not whose sons they might be;
Ah, but the twins were still sinning babies--as I comprehended,
For they were formed not from cells of mine!

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud,
And during those last days she was cautiously ill;
And a drive of cholera had again grown widespread;
But she was not maddened; by it she was not marred.

She was sickened by temper still;
And the prince found dead, she grew more terrifyingly ill;
She had a pure heart, so she flourished not over the beast’s death;
Nonetheless, he remained the father of yon sickly offspring.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud,
I was duly growing perfectly anxious;
She was to give birth--ah, to those little ignoramuses;
And within a little chord in one or days of two--she would do so.

But without a father to care for her notorious sons;
And even I was locked away, and could not do so;
I was terrified, I was horribly undignified;
To learn this stern reality we were so sullenly faced with!

Ah, not now! I could not too believe my ears!
Maud and her children were dead--they’d been stillborn;
Before they left Maud alone to receive her fate;
Her locksmith would not come; he had another due in a nameless town.

By the time he arrived my darling had gone;
Perhaps she was now shimmering in heaven;
Enchanting her children with her enormous spells;
Narrating stories no plain human could ever tell.

Even in heaven my love would perhaps be famous;
Her tenderness would make other angels jealous;
And angered by envy, they would gather and complain to God;
How an earthly soul could be more vivacious than their heavenly were.

Ah, but where is Maud, Maud, Maud;
Maud and her chain of songs that were never to be broken;
Maud and her familiarity with gardens and blue lilies;
Maud and her immaculate pets of birds that still sweetly sing.

Ah, but where is my darling, my darling, my darling;
My eternal ocean, my hustling flowerbed, my immortal;
My poem, my enchanting lyric, my wedding ring;
My novelty, my merited charm, my eternal.

And now she was longing for her grave, as I’d been told;
For I’d been told by the dimmed torches and fuss and mirthless air outside;
By the endless wandering and the prince’s wails and wordless screams.
Ah, my Maud had now migrated from her life--but attained her freedom!

And he was thus unworthy of being in her heaven;
Her heaven where there would be me, her true love;
And thus he would be glad to greet his fires of hell;
He would marry an evil angel there--and make himself again full.

But I’d be with Maud, Maud, Maud and Maud;
I’d be again with my gem, indefatigable little darling;
Whose voice was unsure, whose poems were never known;
But ‘twas enough that they’d been known to me, her secret--ye’ dearest lover.

So took I, that spinning penchant and a circle of strings;
The edges I matched to the chains on my ceilings.
I braced myself for my very own fiery death;
But again, I’d be with Maud and death would no more, aye, be sad.

Thus the above poem was done by my spirit;
But with the same token and awe of genuineness and wit;
I feel tired--I shall close my eyes, and thus enjoy my heaven now;
For my wife and starlings are all waiting for me to-morrow.

It is now nighttime in heaven;
And there is indeed, no place on earth lovelier;
I gaze into my wife with a loving madness;
Her cheeks sweeter still, than any proudest swiftness.

I shall take my vow of marriage tomorrow;
My proud wife sitting in yon angelic chair by my side.
I shall cradle, then, those white little nuptial fairies;
They are Maud’s children’s, but lithe and gracious and bow to me in chaste mercies.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud, she is but all mine now;
I am still surprised now, as sitting by this heaven riverside.
One even grander than the one I’d had beside the lake;
Which I often farmed when I had needs to bake.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud, she is a ghost but as ever lively;
We are both dead but she boldly remaineth lovely;
I know she is worthier than serene jewels or mundane affairs;
And still she is worthier all the same, than any other terrific palace--or heir.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud, and this war is but all over now;
Thus let us dream dead of the exciting tomorrow.
We shall see life and our children grow;
We shall witness delight--and miracles none ever knows.

Hiding the hurt, hiding the pain
Hiding the tears that fall like rain.
Saying I'm fine , when I'm anything but,
This ache In my soul rips at my gut.
My skin is on fire, I burn from within
The calm on my face is an ongoing sin.
The world must stay out, I've built up a wall
My fragile lie will collapse should it ever fall.
Loneliness consumes me, it eats away the years
Until my life is swallowed by unending fears.
Waiting for someone to see I wear a mask
And care enough to remove it, is that too much to ask?

So, this was written to an unnamed ex a while ago. I ran across it the other day, and I might publish it in the collection I'm currently working on. To me, this is more than just a letter, it's a piece of prose. It's a pouring out of the soul in a way that few people take the time to do. Obviously written at a very rocky time in a previous relationship, I enjoy the clarity of thought that's displayed (not as an egotist, but as a stylist), and I enjoy the allusions and illustration. I'm proud of it, if not for the source or the outcome, then for the product of my turmoil. If I were to classify it? I'd label it, now, as a study of the mind. Enjoy it, and, as always, I welcome your comments and criticisms!

-###-

                Before I say anything else, I want you to know that I love you deeply, and truly. I would give anything to make you happy, and I'd do anything you ever asked me to. I don't ever want to hurt you, and I don't ever want you to be unhappy.
                But I am unhappy. I sleep next to a woman I can't touch until she won't notice, who won't - or can't, I still can't figure out which - show me the affection I crave; and when I try to explain to her the physical and mental stress this puts me through, she doesn't understand or doesn't care (still can't pin that one, either).
                I once took a "Psychology of Affection" class. Evidently, the emotion we call "love" is a conglomeration of a number of different, smaller emotions. Chiefly among them are attention and affection. Attention was always defined by my professor as "the willingness of one to give their focus in degrees, and the blatantness with which they are willing to display that focus." He went on to explain that when one is willing to give their focus but not to display it, or willing to make a display but not to give it, then an imbalance is affected, and either one or both members of a relationship become unhappy. And degrees of happiness become apparent when degrees of willingness are shown.
                In our case, I think, I am both willing to give you my attention, and unafraid to do it regardless of place or time; therefore, I think I give you a very high degree of attention. How do you think you score? How do you think I'd score you?
                Affection works on the same principle: willingness to give, and the ability to do so in a way that is apparent to the other party. Along with these two, though, Affection has a third variable: frequency. The combination of these three and the balance that must be kept determines the amount of affection given, and received at an intellectual level.
                I am entirely certain that I have been willing to show you ample affection in any venue, I am quite capable of showing you my affection in a plethora of ways, and I have done so (in innumerable combinations) with staggering frequency, despite the lack of reciprocation that should have left me hopeless.
                Well, right about now, I'm starting to feel hopeless. Any relationship requires two very basic things, hon: cerebral and physical interaction. An intimate relationship, therefore, requires an amount of intimacy in both cerebral and physical interactions. In addition, any relationship, intimate or otherwise, requires equal participation in all areas to continue over any extended period of time.
                I have been trying for God knows how long, to make this explicitly clear to you: I do not receive enough affection or attention from you for me to stay happy.
                I've laid a foundation in a universal truth for you; you have the science of our interaction at your fingertips, now. You understand what I understand, so I'm going to be as forward as I can in addressing this situation.
                In order for me to stay satisfied with our relationship, the amount of affection and attention I get HAS to change. I am, currently, both mentally and physically distressed, and I am at a breaking point. I have tried multiple times to get you to change: I've tried being subtle and hinting at things I like you to do - things I'd like to see more frequently from you; I've tried being abrasive, being a **** - telling you what I don't like, and why; I've tried being manipulative - guilt-tripping you into thinking or acting differently; I've tried (God, have I tried!) to be truthful and sweet and kind - to tell you, up front, what pleases me and what doesn't in the un-charged air of plain discussion. Any, and all (!), of these methods have been met with selfish stubbornness. I have tried, very hard, to convince myself that it's just been me. That it's something I have, or haven't, been doing. That me flipping out so often is just me freaking out. That none of my state of mind has anything to do with you. I dread putting any of the blame on you because...I worship you, I don't want your flawless image tainted by these things! But, at this point, I've done so much, and tried so hard to get you to change, to open up to me, to act (just act!) like you want me in your head and heart and *****. But you've been stubborn and you refuse to change...and it is driving me away.
                I don't want you to drive me away. I know you love me; I'm convinced you think I improve your life. And I'm convinced you improve mine in so many ways. But there is an imbalance.... I've done as much as any man can be asked: I have been kind, gentle, sweet, gracious, caring, selfless, and loving; but I cannot be these things when you will neither receive them nor give them back. My emotion, my spirit, and my love are being swallowed up in a void, and I can feel the light in this relationship fading. I can't stay in this if I'm the only one showing how I feel. If you don't love me, anymore, tell me. But I can't stay here and not know. I can't give you so much of my heart, and not get anything in return. It's my turn to be selfish.
                I am banking on the hope that you want this to work, honey. I am praying to God, Almighty that you would rather change how you act than give me up.
                I have never given anyone I've been in a relationship with an ultimatum before. Maybe that's why I've been hurt so badly before. But I'm not going to sink this ship myself. I'm giving you an honest chance. I want this, more than anything. I want you more than anything! I don't care that we don't earn enough for food, yet. I don't care that you spend oodles of time with your friends; I don't care about anything you do with your life except this. This one thing will solve so many of our problems, you don't even realize!
                My peace...my serenity with our relationship and with you as my partner in life, depends, solely, on how you behave towards me. There aren't enough Josephine Collective concerts or pills, or parties in all the world that will make me feel like you love me more than you showing me your **** self. I NEED this. It is essential to my functioning as your lover and your friend; I can't love a stone. And I can guarantee you, right now, that if you can put aside your insecurities, put aside your "awkwardness" argument, put aside your doubt that I would ever, EVER, turn you away or leave you alone, and just show me every minute of every day that you love me, I would never worry again. Reassure me with a kiss. Say "hello" with a kiss. Warm up by scooting closer. Cool down by throwing off a blanket - not pushing me away. Act like you can't keep your hands off me. There will be no nights where I ask you distressing questions; there won't be times when I'm offended by your going somewhere without me; I will not get upset when plans get upset. If I knew in my heart of hearts that you loved me and you'd make sure I knew it when you saw me, then there wouldn't be room for doubt.
                But right now...I don't know whether you love me or whether you're just going through the motions. My thinking is "if she loved me, she'd show me." But you don't show me. You know this as well as I do! One passionate kiss every couple of weeks is not showing me. A wag of the hips a couple times a month doesn't show me. Part of the psychological validation for committing to a relationship is the fact that your partner's body is yours to use. And it should be a willing use! I am a male. Three-fourths of my interaction with society is conducted physically, or visually. I need to see and feel that you love me. And that's not very much to ask from you, is it? And it's not awkwardness. You've shown me plenty of times that you're not abnormally awkward. And it's not shyness; you've been perfectly happy to make a scene in front of others before. It's not ***, either. *** isn't what trips me up. I'm fine without *** as long as I know you'd give it if you could. If I was confident that you'd jump my bones before I ever suggested it, then it wouldn't be an issue. But I'm not confident. Hell, I could go another three months if I got a BJ now and then.... I'm tempted to say it's pure selfish stubbornness, but I know that's not true. I think you're afraid of something. Maybe of opening up - spilling your guts - for me. Maybe you've been hurt a lot worse than I realize? There are so many possibilities. But you're the only one that can let me in, baby.
                I know it's not your way. That's evident enough from all my failures. But this is beyond "my way versus your way," now. This is essential to our being together. I love you, selflessly and shamelessly; but if I am going to be happy with you, I need to know you love me back. This isn't an option, anymore, dearest. You have to change. I need to know on a daily, hourly, moment-to-moment basis that you prefer me over anything else...period. My heart is breaking because I can't tell if you love me back. So, I'm going to make this easy on you. I've brought this up to you before - multiple times, actually. Each one just as memorable as the next. Each one serious enough to tell you that something has to change. But you don't seem to get it. You don't understand that this is paramount to my happiness...essential to my functioning; and you don't get that yet. You've asked me to do multiple things differently; I have changed how I act - who I am - to cater to your peace and happiness, and I am happy to do so. I have asked this one thing of you and you won't do it? I have asked this one thing because it is the one thing that I need to change. I've told you that. But the day after, and the week after, and the month after I bring this up, nothing changes. I can't handle that. I can't handle that I can be so willing to make you happy...to change my thoughts and actions through my own will to make your life simpler, less worrisome, happier and easier; yet you are so unwilling to grab your own mind and make it behave as you choose to ease my mind and my heart and give me that little validation I need from you so I can tell myself that I am your whole world the way you're mine!
                I will always love you. Always.
                But I can't be with someone who can't show me they love me.
                This is your ultimatum: Change. Put me in your mind. Think about the things you do that make me happy, and do them. Physically connect with me. Touch me on a regular basis. Visually connect with me. Get my attention, and hold it every day. Act like you are my woman the way I try to be your man. And do it now. You do not get a week or a month or a year. I am out of time. I can't wait on this any longer. If you want me here, hold me here with your own two arms.
                If you can't hold me, then I won't stay.

-###-

Something that fits
In my palm
Something you don't
want to stomp on
With those feet.
Something so small
I don't know
What it's called
Something so bright
As a
Sweet
Apple
That I wonder
If this something
Is allowed
to be
Swallowed
I pick it up
With my
Tiny fingers
I pop it in
My mouth
Like
what
Mom does
With these things
She calls "pills"
And I swallowed
Then I could not breathe,
And I panicked
Coughed
It stuck in my throat,
Turning me the color
Of the toy
That's
In my throat
And then
Remembered
What it was
Called.

As my body ebbs and flows
With the beat, beat, beat
Of your bass
My eyes wander through
The crowd.
Smiling faces swallowed
By the sound.
We are wild and free
Flowers in the storm,
Clutching tight to
Our beautiful petals.
Shaken and stirred
By a world that does
Not understand.
We are unperturbed.
Pick us, pluck us,
Plant us where you may.
For one day you will see
The undeniable glory
That this beat and this life
Possess.
We are wildflowers
Swallowed by the sound.

I heard you blister
You swarmed as the daylight broke
Cross distant lands, tattered
Tumultuous, flayed
Burrowing deep into rot

You’ve beaten the broken
You’ve flayed the dead silence
Into a gutter-mouthed cry
Of humanities darkest

Raging a storm
So long
You’ve swallowed hell and heaven whole

Nothing is left anymore

When you spit out the darkness
You bare your soul
And I can see
Hate has swallowed you whole

Raining meteors
across the sky
straight into my mouth

I swallowed a star
and as my body burned
i listened to the stories

Stories from across the
galaxies and frozen space
tales and fables of grandeur

Such like the emptiness of
and the loneliness of
the stars in space

I swallowed a star
and as I passed on
tears fell

For i was the stars
first only and last
loved friend

the day I finally caught the sun
between my lips
was the day i was set free
from the iron cage
with its iron bars,
that crushed my arms
and shattered my lungs.
i closed my eyes
and let the golden flames
drip down the back of my throat
and coat my tongue like honey.
i felt it spread through
my chest,
felt the thing i
had been chasing
for years
and years
and years.
i watched as the inky blackness
that had suffocated me
for so many silent nights
bled from my fingertips and
sunk into the dirt,
staining the daisies
and wilting the poppies.
a golden bead
slipped
down my cheek,
and i wondered
why my tears
had never tasted so
sweet.
sitting down with the sunflowers,
i watched the cotton candy
clouds
float across the baby blue sky,
and began writing about
the day i swallowed the sun.

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!

They leave a bad taste,
Bitter on the tongue;
The words I never said.

They fluttered around,
Desperate to escape,
But I swallowed them whole.

I love you,
I hate you,
Please don't go.

I swallowed them,
but it sickened me
to keep them contained.

The woman in the window
  Looks out beyond the glass
Beyond the reach of her whispers
  Befogged upon windowpanes glance

Farther  than  the  bounds
  Her own breathe imbues
Out of reach her long fingered touch
  Tracing her murmurs on looking glass dew
Grasping for the shadowed artifacts
  Only time does nonchalantly drift past

Perched alone upon a cloud of silence
  Her thoughts eddy in soundless swirl
Spinning like dizzying shadows
  Swallowed by a thirst for light

The other side of window beckons
  Only she knows she’s looking out through a sigh;
Seeing no one familiar looking back ―  
  For what hidden jewels within abide

She dreams of dancing leafless by daylight
  Twirling beneath the whispering willows sway
Just a step away from being free
  Just a step away from feeling alive

With first step beyond imprisoning hesitation
  Crossing over the threshold of a dream
Through a liberating portal outside the glass
  Just on the other side of the windowsill ...


                  Jesse e Stillwater

Sympathy I feel for those who haven’t seen what I’ve seen, and for those who have felt what I’ve felt. The embodiment of my regret, shining with all the light once saved me, now engulfs me in torment of my mistake. As I orbit in harmony with the rotation of a green star, that is much more than just a green star, I ponder what my life would be if I still had my green star. I know that in time, this green star that means everything and more to me, will collapse and perish, but we will only be able to see the star frozen in time, that very instant before it collapsed, desperately clinging to one single moment. I still cling to that moment, the moment I saw my soul break free from the chains that I thought would hold me down perpetually, in her eyes. I don’t quite know how it happened, I wasn’t looking for it, I wasn’t on the make, it was the perfect storm, I said one thing, she said another, and the next thing I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my days in the middle of that conversation. It’s painful to admit that I ruined the most precious friendship I’ve ever had, which tends to sting more when she was the only genuine friend I’ve ever had. I prefer solidarity most of the time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t long for a companion every now and again, but lately that desire grows stronger and stronger, holding on to the memory of the companion I once had and lost. My life on Earth, my past life, would be considered prosperous; I was one of the top aerospace engineers in the world, which is a very time consuming and painstaking practice, but exploring the unknown territories of the universe had always been my passion. I didn’t have much of a family, my mother and father passed away when I was 22 years old, and my brother and I severed ties shortly after the death of our parents, and I had not desire nor time for a significant other, let alone the willingness to dedicate my life to another person. I always believed that I embodied the definition of misplacement, I never seemed to fit in any particular group of people, nor with any other person, really, I enjoyed getting lost in the sea of my thoughts, riding the waves, pondering ideas, asking questions that can only be answered in theory, which essentially renders me incapable of interacting with others. However, being your own best friend can sometimes lead to psychotic thoughts of self-loathing, and eventually the last straw broke the backbone of my perseverance, and I convinced myself to commit suicide. Originality and pretentiousness ****** me, demanding myself to end my life a way no one else’s life has ended, and my imagination spiraled into a storm, brainstorming my own demise. My most recent endeavor at the time was to manufacture a personal bubble that would sustain in space, and condensing a spaceship into the size of a smart car was the threshold between my pathetic life of this planet, and self-destructive glory. After a year of an extremely unhealthy intensity of research, my talisman of my soul, my most cherished invention, my cosmic coffin. I traveled from my home in Anchorage to the highest point in Alaska, Mount McKinley, and inserted my body comfortably inside my space bubble and proceeded to ascend into my eternal salvation, ascending towards achievement of my life’s dream, ascending the edges of space, where no human has ever occupied in history. The butterfly feeling in my stomach, caused by the sheer joy I felt, is probably the closest feeling I had ever felt at the time to true love, the irony of my affection for death. As I slipped past our atmosphere and found myself floating closer towards the stars and planets, I sat down and enjoyed the galactic show of entropy before me, and after a while the visual melody put me in a hypnotic state, and before I knew it I was being stated down by a saucer shaped spaceship with luminous blue lights encompassing the round edge of the ship. I felt my capsule gravitating towards and entering the ship through a small hole on the underbelly of its structure, that appeared to look like a portal. As I passed through the light I was being observed by a feminine looking blue creature, with bright green eyes that sparkled like emeralds in the moonlight, and long, luscious blonde hair, straight and smooth as silk. She was tall, which I realized as I stood up out of my capsule, about an inch taller than my six foot frame, with long, skinny fingers and decently big webbed feet, and a long slender tail hanging down from her backside that wasn't quite long enough to touch the ground. She had shiny, scaly skin that had a deceptive rough appearance in texture, but felt soft and smooth when her hand reached out to embrace mine, and she said, "Hello, I am called Elora, what are you called?" Still in shock, the only awkward response I muttered was, "Eric" and she asked, "Why are you here Eric?" As I regained my quick wit I declared, "Does anyone know why they're here?" She smiled, exposing her sharp white teeth and proposed, "Well, you can help me find out." I think it had something to do with the adrenaline rush caused by the mystery and uncertainty of the situation, but I caught myself grinning, I didn't even realize I was smiling, it was an odd, unfamiliar feeling, but I was madly attracted to this blue angel from the stars. I spoke to her about my life on Earth, and my elaborate suicide plan, and she explained to me that she abandoned her home planet Eridani to conduct galactic research, and that she was from the Altair race. She elaborated on how life on Eridani did not satisfy her, and that she would spend her life roaming around nebulas, exploring galaxies, researching stars, and documenting her experiences. She showed me a star that she claims as hers, a green star called Zohra, which was her favorite star because she said she could only feel happiness when looking at it, to which I said, “It reminds of your eyes” and she looked at me and seemed flattered. She loved that star, her eyes lit up brighter than the star itself when she would stare at it, hypnotized at the sight of it, which I cared little to notice because I couldn’t look away from her. I couldn’t quite understand how someone could be so invested in something like that, something that just sits there spinning and spinning, peacefully participating in the orchestra of the universe. I think she was so fascinated by this object because she felt the same disconnect from others of our kind. The lonely, outcast feeling connected us, ironically, and we carried on intriguing conversation for what felt like an eternity, and I only wish that conversation could've lasted longer. I found in Elora what I had not found in any human being, she understood me, to the point where I was convinced she had mind reading abilities, and her understanding me didn’t diminish her interest in me, like what usually happened to me on Earth. I found happiness in her company, I found salvation in her embrace, I found unparalleled beauty inside and out, and I found myself in our friendship.  As time slowly rolled on my affection for Elora grew increasingly unbearable, and eventually the realization dawned upon me that I had to inform Elora of my feelings for her. We were accelerating towards the Crab Nebula, and I noticed the blurred blue light in the center, wrapped around by streams of red and yellow light, holding the blue heart in the center together. Elora was to me what the red and yellow streams were to the integrity of the Crab Nebula, without those streams, without Elora, my soul would fall apart and disburse, just like the blue light in the center of the Crab Nebula. When I turned, looked her square in her eyes, her gorgeous eyes that were accented by the light emitting from the Crab Nebula, those eyes that pull you in and leave you in a trance, those eyes that display the beauty of nature condensed into two little spheres that seemed to effortlessly gaze inside my soul, breaking down every single wall that I have ever built up to hide myself from other people, and uncover everything I so desperately attempted to hide deep down, and I said to her, “You are the only reason I’m still alive, the only reason I still want to live, the only other soul that accepted my lost, broken soul, you are the most amazing, most beautiful creature born from the stars we now roam around, I tried to die to see what heaven is like, but heaven can wait, because there is nothing more I want than to be with you until the day my soul slips away from my body, I am madly in love with you Elora.” I poured my heart and soul out to her, bleeding out every ounce of passion and love and sophistication to her, exposing every bit of my emotions, leaving me naked and defenseless before her. Different scenarios raced around my head about how she would respond, and she glanced down at the ground, looked back up at my blank face, and she said, “My people do not love, we do not believe in love, and we cannot love. Love, no matter how polarizing it may seem, always fades in time, everything fades in time, love fades in time, ideas fade in time, you will fade in time, I will fade in time, in the end, nothing is perpetual.” My heart sank down into my stomach, and right at that moment I grasped the idea of why they call it “falling in love” because I landed harder than I could even fathom, I did not know that such powerful emotional sorrow could physically hurt so bad. I dropped down to one knee, and the streams of tears ran from my face and splashed down on the ground, like delicate little glass beads shattering as they made contact with the surface, shattering like my heart and soul. The pure agony and embarrassment of staying with the love of my life, whom I had just made an absolute fool of myself in front of, was enough to crush any man’s esteem, so the only rational option I could think of was bail towards my space bubble, and go as far away as I possibly could from the light that saved me. With every inch of separation between her and I, my heart and soul grew sour and stone cold, and new theories to rationalize my reaction and actions that followed. As a child I went to an amusement park, and I was particularly frightened of a certain attraction that lifted you straight up, a couple hundred feet, and dropped you straight down, and now I realize that my fears of love are comparable to this ride. I was so mortified by the ascension, which precedes love, that I could never enjoy the thrill of the fall, even though this time the safety harness didn’t soften the landing. I came to the conclusion, after years of thought, that I could not blame Elora, it was who she was and there was nothing she could do to change that, and instead of accepting the fact that she did not love me, I cowardly abandoned the only thing in my life that I gave a **** about, I ran away from the only other being in the universe that could make me smile the way she made me smile. After years of solidarity and self-loathing I realized that I would much rather spend my life with Elora, even if she didn’t love me, as opposed to regressing back to my lonesome life, only surrounded by a vast, more captivating scene. The only reason I am still alive is because I have not given up hope that one day I will find Elora again, and I will beg for her forgiveness, and hopefully I will be able to cherish every precious moment I spend with her. I solemnly believe that the slim chance will occur that I will once again see that face, gaze into those eyes I once did, and curse my old self for being foolish enough to leave her. I am not certain, but I can only hope that she is at least indifferent to encountering each other once again, but if she denies me I cannot blame her, because after all it is my fault for my impulsive escape. But for now I wander as a nomad amongst the stars that form constellations that all remind me of Elora, watch the planets rotate, and reminisce on the time we shared together, the time I took for granted, time that I consider to be the most precious moments of my life’s experience. I spend most of my time roaming around Zohra, which was where she and I parted ways, in hopes that one day she will return to her favorite star, to find me right there waiting for her, however patience has not served me well, and my actions which I so deeply regret caused her to abandon the star which she claimed as hers, the star that radiated happiness upon her, the magnificent star that embodied her in beauty and essence, to avoid the thought of me leaving her, which is justifiable because she was probably very flustered by me scrambling to leave her after my episode. I rotate around Zohra, observing its physical qualities, seeing Elora’s face every single time I look upon its surface, but one day the light exiting the pores of the planet grew significantly brighter, and Zohra began rotating and shaking at a phenomenally fast speed, and I witnessed Zohra swallow itself in a supernova, creating a black hole. I interpreted this to represent the death of the hope I had to once again see Elora, or maybe time had taken her like time had taken her beloved star. I allowed myself to succumb to the irresistible force from the black hole, and the death of hope I had to once more see the angelic face of my love, swallowed my space bubble and my hollow body occupying it, to the point of no return, where I can no longer regret what I had done to her, because in time, my love for her destroyed me.

I sit on the step
And draw
The cold around me
Like a blanket,
Savouring the numbness
And the heat
That begins within.
Swallowed by the night
Drunk on wine
And stars.
Hot tears on cold cheeks.
Seasoning for
Chapped lips
Stinging
Bringing fresh tears.
I take refuge
In the silence,
Under the gaze of
Sympathetic eyes.
My friends.
My constant companions.
Drunk on wine
And stars.

Set of cave genes If you could read... pluri freedoms of the dark light of ignorance teach understand that breathe under the Naturality Natural Nature is not necessary to have an understanding heart and store on their empty heads of knowing ancient rain where wisdom possess. If dance on every grain of chickpea for each foot plant what could a plant obey; foot, Plant, and Plantation...

Resulting in kingdoms on my animals, fungi, plants, and protists, media freedom as a seed to reach our evolutionary lack of ceased hopeness...

First  Ellipsis Angle loneliness"God felt Chained"

Chained down by dragging the last link of its multiple arcane freedom in which transfigured recent swings where he collapsed with the latter being of himself whose life lies lifeless alive but lost. The latter that child not to know and deprived of nascent freedom that will never be born and come knowledge in our genome of Independence.

When the caveman thought to be a complement to the world is enslaved by the mystery of lost in himself... The born and born, never dies, that's so naive and innocent... is still full unaware of their free will, rather it is he who must re-literate and be a living part of the ancestral genome Cavernario component. Oh Heavenly Lord of the steppes I look because more of you today without having lived what you lived, as he would have played with my gaze to succor and keep you had fallen into the fangs of an animal, or you had fallen on the glacier cliff where he has separated you from your Clan Cave.

Emancipation means to be always innocent, my blood runs through yours,
I read and understand any phenomenon of deprivation exist without you lack wisdom satiate if all your generations crushed by the ignorance of falling subject will be well, me and my being I take my precognitions as a tormented child's worst nightmare before about sleeping. Sixth Papal almost, almost kneel before the creation of memorizes creation. This prerogative Lord lives Bread’s God Minor remaining....of whose iconography will not leave this fifth fraternal dimension will not come, if not more will enter the latter end of absolute solitude... and shorter than the last thousand years of Neandertal.


Cavernary Political and Ellipsis:

On a day of gentle wind and tense rain proclaiming Clan joined, they all shouted running, the ground shook and the children slept in terror... the 10 infants who were talking about the Sign from above, but the nines they crossed his arms remaining to create solidarity roof that protects the man in your imagination...
The eighth child of the clan ran quickly into the arms of his mother and she imagined how far, how far would never come... uncharacteristically who came with his brother seventh had in their hands the word of entertainment of Being, to be a plaintiff political all of braiding them together with lines enabling the hermit may decide that creation is a mass of lines of certain fashions together, everything sings like the slightest cyclamen dew on the line pointy rough fallen fungus. All arms folded on the upper porch of the Vatican Macario in Franconia, saying that many who unite in their fevered requests large modern man ceased to be autonomous when it came out of their caves and charnel pit.

Ran all she enjoyed doing that almost without knowing whether or not they fall...
Ran because of every day the sun ahead of them a lesson for a man of the future...
They are running to be released the day of his birth chained to stars of light, to carry him to his mother and father, sneaking to his brothers.

Brother worn eleventh birth to her existence as another being evolved Eukaryotic: Surely those provided beings of cell membranes rhizomes reflected in higher liberty lives purged of ectoplasm walk without a discounted subsidiary. Shakespeare in Helsingor appeared immune to a blood brother to all that limits the Draconian feel in the pinnacles drawn 700 greened steeds. From the deepest swoon in the underworld subway Helsingor, follow the prevailing souls presided over by the great ear of the hard sandcastle, stressed hard Ghosts of Stratford upon Avon.

Freedom plague spits words of pancreatic poisoned exordium, spits verses of confusion disorders without permission, without solid bass sound without liquid sea that resists mad edges followed by solid sound...
But smaller stones give priority to conjugate final sentence and noble verses Guardian
to mission how important would Liberation:

Maybe it's a synonymy of Astral Solar...
It is not Solitude, is a free nation that has its own kind prosecutor's office for even when Euthanasia closes your eyes to the astral, will run the stones of the Sea of joy believing that neither you dare if there is no healthy grass to clarify the rainy day terror.


Reverse walk creeks aggravated birds feet, walking great playful ruse.
Reverse run my comrades preparing festivity meals with chandeliers and singing lay plenary., Singing Avenue pine port Firenze, Second run subtracting minutes and hours the minute is enough for me with your face in my arms to recognize your longevity anathema times oblique faces for lip-smacking hailstones Templars.

In 1297 in northern Italy nearby rural families migrate to chalky Venice, Perugia came the exiles walked to find their independence south of the Iberian Peninsula. They were so atoned as in the echoing flutes, harps, zithers, and harpsichords field temperate; They invited the blunting of intemperate monocordio.

Golden Chariot Carrenio

The golden carriage carrying them came without a single space rather than inheritances acquired goldsmiths of ancient noble and chaste solid shine. Carrenio; the coachman wore on his left arm bracelet thousand mobile travel without stopping to drink more water and to feed their horses. After revamping its gold pieces bartered by a slave who was getting Carrenio Christians fleeing the Romans. Well, they fled as far as the plains of great earthly squandered his memory and that end of the end should come.

How am away from my land more I learn it's back to her,
There is no ground for the first time, but that which is foreign
Carrenio of Perugia and sensed that ****** was Jewish ashes,
Luther King black paste of burnt forest,
Mandela and Biko Ogre garage from Victorian Empire,
Gandhi in his humility is always put behind the Sun
to figure out the small
Tagore trashed my heart caressing the entire universe uncorrupted
Hölderlin together in the cabin waiting for his mother at Zimmerman,
That my beloved Borker forest should shine gold teeth with black resin,
Theresa of Calcutta was eaten and swallowed all diseases lepers knowing good taste proverbial dessert psalm,
Jose Miguel Carrera was more than a trench, clay bullets in each of his temples where he received
To be doubly Lonco is to be halved, lacerated by lay his head on his land, not galloping on his back throngs of wit and hope out Nazareth trembles when an F-16 diluted ***** covering landless caravans Heritage continues to lead the people killed but the mosque wall has been Fe Erecta.
Helena plenipotentiary Kowalska at Vilnius, Faustina Divine Mercy Diadema
The agonizing deprivation of millions of people with cancer in every continent of private well-being analgesic, weighed down by increased pain, almost as strong as the Master Hammered Golgotha, so it was that Joshua has cancer always to slow it down on us. Benigno whether metastasis, malignant albeit benign finance.
The death of an innocent little angel devoured by the beast remains as a fluff hairless sardine in the jaws of a shark baron.
Khalil Gibran writes that with both hands to support the reviewer behind in Bicharri and bohemian Paris,

Salvador Allende Gossens was born since he was deceived by his parents who would heal politics, would rather dig their ancestors in their brains scattered in the currency in face seal or tail of.

Frei Montalva that today has to receive the Macro Augusto Heaven their arms, their sorrows, and regrets, although his worst military executioner.

Legion is an offshoot of liquid central gray material, which defers well done becoming but not defeated, it is the decree of the divine threshold space Living or ceases to live, that failure does not exist, it is the postponement of success - success.

The Genocide September 11 in New York was a ritual, who produced was a small wrath strength of the Rotary world, as the camshaft is upset in the history of trying to make more alphabet in schools where the flag hoisting and found scholars in West and East, so they can learn more than reading of both unlettered, lip and water to possess it to write with it. The worst disaster is read with the memory that will never happen... I write my greatest need with lipstick and my greatest need I write eagerly to participate. Yesterday I passed by a boutique and buy lipsticks that are closer to the language, written with the mouth and not the hand. !

Freedom, debauchery, libration, drawer, Bookstores..! Carrenio..: he said see I'm right! Raise and educate has a great synonymy with autonomy because the ancestors wrote everything that deprived them and made them fear, but do not have to eat the autumn gives me to dress the return of spring, bread orchid, and cineraria. Hence by that inner syllabic singing hunger sated that sought sheet to sheet rid of everything until the end of the book as the encounter between night and day without considering oblivious to anything or anyone on the track window swing wind, wind seeping.


It was old Zeus or Hera of Antique,
Cavern to house geometric polyphonic, angular seeds to create fashions kiss kissed everything that any vertical plane does not fit with the closed horizon
For hands and angels, Hebrews the inner soul of every carpenter and stonemason shrunk, wash their eyes and cheeks with songs of vibration and idyllic comfort,
Everything resembled and sounded Bethlehem 2.0 deities choirs sweeping grasslands,
The similarity of this clairvoyant child is born in a cave...
Rising motherly free Soliloquy Papini sitting to the right of ruminant cattle,
So archaic that to be born is not born in a clinic mega Cristus but hundreds of kilometers and hundreds who are born with the undergirding whispers and servitude being.
Where the multi gray impetuous born star is a healthy gauze story in the present tense... this angelic child grows by Miriam washes his feet in a belligerent abolished stone. His father must wash their hands on a stone which is where measured his ecclesiastical mystical stature, stone Madonna to heal his feet where he leaves to free himself, to free us... Marble gamete fémina vault, where he sleeps without knowing whether it is due, the ***** fell from the sky.
How wise is the Wise, it makes permissible for much more than two thousand years we stone quarry wheel and wheel, homily, and blessing to not wake at night to sleep startle middle and uphill.

Me of the referent of antiquity is not me of today is polished cobble stone,
Useful weapon quarry road there and backtrack to have blisters stone and soft thoughts under my pillow soft stone as a whole.

If you're ****** private living and have a free soul choosing coexist, then you are low in the cemetery on a tombstone of heresies.

Neolithic early 4500 after Hildegard von Bingen and his entourage and prowled full and channeled, swooning in her swoon with flowers in his hands and his followers planting forests on top of Stonehenge.

Carrenio says...: you see I'm right, we coexist, I die like the worst ****** cancer and then put a tombstone Stonehenge conspire in my honor black pain prayers of Salisbury. It blooms in vibrant red rubies that detonate in chromaticity and life. The stream itself is exceeded the aquatic plant Macarenia.

Call us and civilize us, outdated as far as my tired feet though I come not ashamed to see my new tracks.

Carrenio says...; see I'm right Joshua has traces of gold from other Caterpillar shod feet. Antique everything is prescribed according to their legacy today is Lent Pro that came before it was Lent vestige Pentecost came to be a nickname of the mystery of the passion in less than a rooster crows.

Beside it is the mystery of the disappointment of stubborn demon, which helps you all carry the cross, but not the entire load. Fire and Light at dawns where the splendor born...


Genome Freedom, even today every centimeter of my witness of each component, if the basic origin of the signs of the primitive world, is that we have lost the bark of the lexicon, which does not allow us to understand the meditations to ask for something, not You need to ask something. Today genome is requesting something because thousands of people who asked for millions of years, now it's time to cater to them. They were wrapped in cloth shroud of spiritual sacredness, today cemeteries mega dance their souls leave no sleepers both much grass on their heads not yet sullied by the puppet Azrael.


Impossible not to decorate the rocks forged empires that fall into the rubble, they bring 476 d. C., a new opening Middle age freedom of travel both in history thousands of years begins a new axis Golden Carrenio’s Chariot.

Carrenio Wagon

This great colossal ship Carrenio time is a timber that holds the sky, a beam that does not faint or distended thousands a. C, and the old age of King's large musings that were forgotten. It is astride ship millennium, their history of oppression has seen in the wheel, instrument wise rolling like a wheel before 5, 000 years ago, here  We fought and prostrated to distant lands millennium after millennium him away.

Golden Chariot is the structure that freedman us to enforce a new life on earth, even the Gods prided themselves move the stars to constellations called her noble Auriga sailing in full the Universes and Cartwheel Galaxy or cart Wheel. As if to say that when the Universe and its own mythology, were visited between them inch by inch by wherever they shine.

Carrenio mask and frame used had strength, temper, and tittle. When the first libertarian squall of antiquity came closer, Rome was already small and nobles populate what is a quote, Piccola. The executioner always frightened and starts out of his own wickedness. Markos Botsaris as did in Greece, and surrounding towns Messologhi remote, they were free more than tuned in massif Arankithos high wind. He was riding to Kanti once again with the golden rider Etrestles of Kalavrita. According to the Chronicle that came from distant millennia has envisioning promote its neighbor's heroic to free Messolonghi of ****** wars. All this I saw with his own eyes Carrenio, every thousand years styling with Etrestles, cleaned their nostrils so that new breed of horses to thrive,

Avignon, in the necropolis, witnessed as Azrael was cleaning his wings Jade antipopes, another story begins... even he seeks to candela who can read this story, and who can provide it from hand to hand cutting semicolons who disclosed.


Second  Ellipsis Angle  New Era:

Ara released the ropes throwing a big ship, History makes a man is at the center of the world. Revolutions, thinking, communication, and especially vindicate man in his right-libertarian. artists with their creations flowing all over the world, mutating classic Renaissance to abstract overlook. Family appearing welfare and needs. A ramble and so many broken laws. Mankind is distracted l film and theater artist of tradition. Art now has sound and movement, then social and political revolutions are industrial that unite everyone behind the pivot deployment of social classes.


Everything evolves until we get tired of doing so. It rests and then continues. This is modern reality, we wrote about the history of events on facts that have never been told. The world has tired all the Eras, but each pause time that has happened has been recharged, nothing finished if not started again. After so many wise lawyers, clergy plunged into great towers bound books. Is evident again can not read or understand. Our realities are missing valid without knowing I close and then open another door. human and civil rights, fair wages, so excessive autocracy monarchy. Freeman can walk along the paths, even if they were trenches.

Zephyr soft murmur which clutters in the Irises by Van Gogh, the painter is the biggest star trek, called with his feet images and colors that would make his own liberty to live naturally insane. And many others Brueghel "Triumph of Death" that roam the countryside, perhaps a medieval piece of Tarskovski; Andrei Rublev in futile painters decorating steps in the fontano chignon Androniko Monastery Moscow, extinct Rublev 70 years, Tarkovsky 54.

Early ellipsis - Campo dei Fiori in Rome to see die at the stake Giordano Bruno by order of the Holy Inquisition. The irruption of the Inquisition, but their feet are touching the flowers, the seasoned cassock continues to haunt the universe of Faith Dominica Trastevere, it is seen to lectures on how to be bold with the informers and the Whistle Blower dies without shade in spring, you resist the star on the asphalt on the magical island of holiness.

Carrenio says: Come I'm right, we can not read, because the brutality of the Cosmos is manure per ton weathered in the backyard of the aristocracy. I will continue with respect and crosed in Crete. Lila Kedrova means the fear of bunk bed tied to her bed and is free in foreign lands leg. Queen insular matriarchy, she lives more than any Greek Goddess, waiting for his Adonis, to fill out honors. Win an Oscar but lost to Zorba, he loses his house but won a Tony Awards. How many women teach us that to win you have to give everything to lose his brains, and thus count as the lost number remains to be retained. Zorba whines in her arms, she moans in the arms of her husband Zeus Steve, proof of a new era. Onyx for his tomb, plate of this great tragedy.

On the evening of December 14, 1964, attended the premiere. Soul of Carrenio was with them but was denied his attendance at the banquet, finally running out and watching the glasses lips and stoles spent his neck.

                                          
          ­                      Numbered Mysterious Death
                                                  Mané

If I have to feel floe on my feet and cold in my prayers will be the Dark Glory. What is slimming rays of the day, everything smelled of silence, maybe it was Kennedy, or better was The Mané.

Closure of my glory suffers the wind...
Flowers lying silence my soul alight,
Thick square displays the song of my voice...
When they speak Quadratils one to one order their
Spirituous voice.

And the spirit singing fiber of my heart told me:
Never you say I Exist ¡ not exist because they do not exist!
Only face daily the different reflection of your body
In front of yourself with another face and another body...

I want to talk with the thought
And this same subtract my little silhouette,
Lavishes wingless bird that flies only in their theology...
That is the duty and melt with my look,
Solid colors components
Crunching the altars of heaven retaining its pale warmth of anorexia.

Yellow Glory hair good event...
If you receive yellow lights, plus I do not sing my own game here in my empty veins,
Yellow my heart...
Yellow my heart
Yellow my collective heart.

They are run by large green and sunny meadows, children who had Mane in this major milestone in its last gasp. Now she is the mother of his children; it up and them in the last temptation of the mystery of death.

Carrenio keeps rolling, the brightness offered his Golden wagon to the ground. Gold grooves ago, and looking at where it realizes that it's landmass light mud. Since he felt whispers from the confines of time he had never felt as if you were finishing your journey or the world. It raining years and years and continues because nobody mends the mysterious death Numbered.

Heaven and Earth did not hold, the bottom fell precipitously pocket Lord and denied several times uncontained. She shivered in the World and the rooster crowed several times to never be heard or the Pentagon.

He is walking and knees bent,
we embraced by the golden chariot and oxen nor held
we bent us all lying on his knees,
up shoulders not hear from where came the bad grace of his departure,
numbered all the time of complaints of how then she would come,
It is unknown who would be but brought wine in his hand on the crispy mask
We ran from side to side and nothing was real

Everything seemed to sing in the chapel on a sad day,
But I hear loudly like Latin and watchfulness,
Those who know his mystery is no stranger to them
They all look but transgress the sin of silence.

Carrenio still absorbed in the hallway,
Angulo ellipsis she comes winged like a star burning tar,
A high speed to give us the new
No garden can deprive greet in speed visit
Dome comes, it comes on the eve of the new moon.

Numbered Widow mysterious,
Mané is a land of golden color and no celestial whoever wants in his cell,
A breath test, and feeding the Toffy and his henchmen
That sustaining more lively detail, there is no one that can not be targeted

It was modern, it was night, it was his torn life as an accomplice of his exile abandonment in his allegory of tender dismissal. Carrenio achieved so say goodbye to the beams of light that told him of the mysterious death Numbered. He sat on the roadside and drank some wine. Then dry with his handkerchief his neck, and have never wanted to experience such an event in a toast ever drunk.

Third Ellipsis Angle  of  New Era

Independence of Chile, it concerns Mapuche atingent case. Araucania pound, then 1818 central Chile. In Brief, Earth makes free an entire nation. His naive and primitive braves inhabitants emancipated themselves from all sides, they came to save a people who were just following where nobody can reach. Independence of the United States separates us for approximately 42 years, breaking up owners of nowhere. Industrial Abolitionist and South Slaver and Agraria. The biggest event that more than 640, 000 men and fallen activists planted safely from repression fields.

In Chile all rule resembled this secession in today's Araucano man prays for his fallen by almost more than 3 centuries in Chilean lands of Araucanía’s men. Lautaro genius and his supporters the heart of Pedro de Valdivia ate; Map ever made to your battle mapping Tucapel. "Initiation and final symbol occurred after 282 years of fierce war" and Mapuche land forever their independence from the Spanish Empire Captain-General important in foreign lands never subjected to foreign rule would eat.

The Machis and Loncos make supplications in native forests falling on them pollen on its back as if nothing out 10 times better...

To Libertas strengthen in the west is necessary to push the limits of the earth beneath his tongue and penance for the greedy entangled in the lines of bloodied sky, rebellions Chieftains death-defying all together at the edge of a cliff. 1769 The Pehuenches led by Lebian Cacique, joined the Mapuches razing Yumbel and Laja, the most peaceful Huilliches also joined mass alerting perhaps innocent people land blood-stained war and the Mackay Luchsinger.

No doubt portals military rebellion trigger blood, where they opened a tip and swords in the past. Here's reading concern is that the succession is timeless time, a sword without a sword, but on the tip of her blood is seen where there were herds and warriors crushed by their own footsteps. Here the phenomenon of freedom begins; Humanity runs treading his own footsteps, to save his family from a threat, but not strange forces that force you to use your defenses, because in the groves populate many helpless souls with his sword unused at the expense of being forced to use.

Freedom genome; It aims to reach where it has not come without looking back,
Chalices pour out is where the troubadours do not cuddle her close looks like time, singing while watching the changes are not of a new life


Heaven star,
Come to me,
I ask a sign to see them arrive,
Because I want to thus been dragged
Being together Eager to feel...
Those respites without being comforted
going to the mouth of the serpent.

About the Garden,
My home is to put my love,
He has to put the days imagining close...
To enjoy yourself is nonexistent...

Oh, my house tormenting me...!
Because in it I feel your smell
They are alone lights
Where I would wait for me to be in the dark...

In the coming future,
You will not see or hear my anger...
Perhaps my happiness nor peace praying
As the spear in the hands of the perpetrator.

You know a storm of whispers
I do sow your name in the wilderness,
It's because my judgments of hope
They mount up arable land deposited in my frenzy
Misled by a love which is my love.

But you never understand,
Because time has invaded my dwelling,
Invading my brain to give
It has invaded my choosing to love...

On the grass path,
Every time I move away from you,
I turn to see if you have not been...

Love came,
And I think that leaves us alone to avail ourselves
Ranging in our time...


But I can not resist his silence,
For my house want the noise of its action,
Why keys to the gates that serve my understanding.

Tramples my heart the fragmenting oddities into smaller pieces,
Your answer that call.

Tur love be like if I had created...
As if only you had appreciated your beautiful creation.

Do not destroy your work expresses in his mystery give life to your dreams!
Man aiming better earth, ask some of you to join your dreams...

! Your wife of this land does not procrastinate your misfortune,
I discover far peaceful landscapes like an echo in the spring,
As large and deep as your forgiveness for loving me more


It tells the Earth to the Sun in its perky tear benefactress of new opportunities as good and healthy smile rainbow on the back of Oviedo sheep valleys of freedom of Pietrelcina life.

To be continued…

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first
Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast Abyss,
And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That, to the height of this great argument,
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
  Say first—for Heaven hides nothing from thy view,
Nor the deep tract of Hell—say first what cause
Moved our grand parents, in that happy state,
Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the World besides.
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
  Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was whose guile,
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equalled the Most High,
If he opposed, and with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud,
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy th’ Omnipotent to arms.
  Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew,
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded, though immortal. But his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him: round he throws his baleful eyes,
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay,
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate.
At once, as far as Angels ken, he views
The dismal situation waste and wild.
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
Such place Eternal Justice has prepared
For those rebellious; here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set,
As far removed from God and light of Heaven
As from the centre thrice to th’ utmost pole.
Oh how unlike the place from whence they fell!
There the companions of his fall, o’erwhelmed
With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns; and, weltering by his side,
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and named
Beelzebub. To whom th’ Arch-Enemy,
And thence in Heaven called Satan, with bold words
Breaking the horrid silence, thus began:—
  “If thou beest he—but O how fallen! how changed
From him who, in the happy realms of light
Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine
Myriads, though bright!—if he whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
And hazard in the glorious enterprise
Joined with me once, now misery hath joined
In equal ruin; into what pit thou seest
From what height fallen: so much the stronger proved
He with his thunder; and till then who knew
The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those,
Nor what the potent Victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent, or change,
Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed mind,
And high disdain from sense of injured merit,
That with the Mightiest raised me to contend,
And to the fierce contentions brought along
Innumerable force of Spirits armed,
That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven,
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost—the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power
Who, from the terror of this arm, so late
Doubted his empire—that were low indeed;
That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall; since, by fate, the strength of Gods,
And this empyreal sybstance, cannot fail;
Since, through experience of this great event,
In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war,
Irreconcilable to our grand Foe,
Who now triumphs, and in th’ excess of joy
Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven.”
  So spake th’ apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair;
And him thus answered soon his bold compeer:—
  “O Prince, O Chief of many throned Powers
That led th’ embattled Seraphim to war
Under thy conduct, and, in dreadful deeds
Fearless, endangered Heaven’s perpetual King,
And put to proof his high supremacy,
Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate,
Too well I see and rue the dire event
That, with sad overthrow and foul defeat,
Hath lost us Heaven, and all this mighty host
In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as Gods and heavenly Essences
Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns,
Though all our glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallowed up in endless misery.
But what if he our Conqueror (whom I now
Of force believe almighty, since no less
Than such could have o’erpowered such force as ours)
Have left us this our spirit and strength entire,
Strongly to suffer and support our pains,
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire,
Or do him mightier service as his thralls
By right of war, whate’er his business be,
Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire,
Or do his errands in the gloomy Deep?
What can it the avail though yet we feel
Strength undiminished, or eternal being
To undergo eternal punishment?”
  Whereto with speedy words th’ Arch-Fiend replied:—
“Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering: but of this be sure—
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil;
Which ofttimes may succeed so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
His inmost counsels from their destined aim.
But see! the angry Victor hath recalled
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
Back to the gates of Heaven: the sulphurous hail,
Shot after us in storm, o’erblown hath laid
The fiery surge that from the precipice
Of Heaven received us falling; and the thunder,
Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep.
Let us not slip th’ occasion, whether scorn
Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe.
Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light,
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves;
There rest, if any rest can harbour there;
And, re-assembling our afflicted powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our enemy, our own loss how repair,
How overcome this dire calamity,
What reinforcement we may gain from hope,
If not, what resolution from despair.”
  Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate,
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim th’ ocean-stream.
Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,
Deeming some island, oft, as ****** tell,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind,
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.
So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay,
Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence
Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others, and enraged might see
How all his malice served but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn
On Man by him seduced, but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured.
  Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature; on each hand the flames
Driven backward ***** their pointing spires, and,rolled
In billows, leave i’ th’ midst a horrid vale.
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,
That felt unusual weight; till on dry land
He lights—if it were land that ever burned
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire,
And such appeared in hue as when the force
Of subterranean wind transprots a hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
And leave a singed bottom all involved
With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole
Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate;
Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood
As gods, and by their own recovered strength,
Not by the sufferance of supernal Power.
  “Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,”
Said then the lost Archangel, “this the seat
That we must change for Heaven?—this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid
What shall be right: farthest from him is best
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor—one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reigh secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
Th’ associates and co-partners of our loss,
Lie thus astonished on th’ oblivious pool,
And call them not to share with us their part
In this unhappy mansion, or once more
With rallied arms to try what may be yet
Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell?”
  So Satan spake; and him Beelzebub
Thus answered:—”Leader of those armies bright
Which, but th’ Omnipotent, none could have foiled!
If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge
Of hope in fears and dangers—heard so oft
In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge
Of battle, when it raged, in all assaults
Their surest signal—they will soon resume
New courage and revive, though now they lie
Grovelling and prostrate on yon lake of fire,
As we erewhile, astounded and amazed;
No wonder, fallen such a pernicious height!”
  He scare had ceased when the superior Fiend
Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield,
Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,
Behind him cast. The broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening, from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.
His spear—to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great ammiral, were but a wand—
He walked with, to support uneasy steps
Over the burning marl, not like those steps
On Heaven’s azure; and the torrid clime
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire.
Nathless he so endured, till on the beach
Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called
His legions—Angel Forms, who lay entranced
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th’ Etrurian shades
High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed
Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o’erthrew
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcases
And broken chariot-wheels. So thick bestrown,
Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
He called so loud that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded:—”Princes, Potentates,
Warriors, the Flower of Heaven—once yours; now lost,
If such astonishment as this can seize
Eternal Spirits! Or have ye chosen this place
After the toil of battle to repose
Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find
To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the Conqueror, who now beholds
Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood
With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon
His swift pursuers from Heaven-gates discern
Th’ advantage, and, descending, tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf?
Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!”
  They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung
Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch
On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread,
Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake.
Nor did they not perceive the evil plight
In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel;
Yet to their General’s voice they soon obeyed
Innumerable. As when the potent rod
Of Amram’s son, in Egypt’s evil day,
Waved round the coast, up-called a pitchy cloud
Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
That o’er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like Night, and darkened all the land of Nile;
So numberless were those bad Angels seen
Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell,
‘Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires;
Till, as a signal given, th’ uplifted spear
Of their great Sultan waving to direct
Their course, in even balance down they light
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain:
A multitude like which the populous North
Poured never from her frozen ***** to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
Forthwith, form every squadron and each band,
The heads and leaders thither haste where stood
Their great Commander—godlike Shapes, and Forms
Excelling human; princely Dignities;
And Powers that erst in Heaven sat on thrones,
Though on their names in Heavenly records now
Be no memorial, blotted out and rased
By their rebellion from the Books of Life.
Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve
Got them new names, till, wandering o’er the earth,
Through God’s high sufferance for the trial of man,
By falsities and lies the greatest part
Of mankind they corrupted to forsake
God their Creator, and th’ invisible
Glory of him that made them to transform
Oft to the image of a brute, adorned
With gay religions full of pomp and gold,
And devils to adore for deities:
Then were they known to men by various names,
And various idols through the heathen world.
  Say, Muse, their names then known, who first, who last,
Roused fr

High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth or Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised
To that bad eminence; and, from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue
Vain war with Heaven; and, by success untaught,
His proud imaginations thus displayed:—
  “Powers and Dominions, Deities of Heaven!—
For, since no deep within her gulf can hold
Immortal vigour, though oppressed and fallen,
I give not Heaven for lost: from this descent
Celestial Virtues rising will appear
More glorious and more dread than from no fall,
And trust themselves to fear no second fate!—
Me though just right, and the fixed laws of Heaven,
Did first create your leader—next, free choice
With what besides in council or in fight
Hath been achieved of merit—yet this loss,
Thus far at least recovered, hath much more
Established in a safe, unenvied throne,
Yielded with full consent. The happier state
In Heaven, which follows dignity, might draw
Envy from each inferior; but who here
Will envy whom the highest place exposes
Foremost to stand against the Thunderer’s aim
Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share
Of endless pain? Where there is, then, no good
For which to strive, no strife can grow up there
From faction: for none sure will claim in Hell
Precedence; none whose portion is so small
Of present pain that with ambitious mind
Will covet more! With this advantage, then,
To union, and firm faith, and firm accord,
More than can be in Heaven, we now return
To claim our just inheritance of old,
Surer to prosper than prosperity
Could have assured us; and by what best way,
Whether of open war or covert guile,
We now debate. Who can advise may speak.”
  He ceased; and next him Moloch, sceptred king,
Stood up—the strongest and the fiercest Spirit
That fought in Heaven, now fiercer by despair.
His trust was with th’ Eternal to be deemed
Equal in strength, and rather than be less
Cared not to be at all; with that care lost
Went all his fear: of God, or Hell, or worse,
He recked not, and these words thereafter spake:—
  “My sentence is for open war. Of wiles,
More unexpert, I boast not: them let those
Contrive who need, or when they need; not now.
For, while they sit contriving, shall the rest—
Millions that stand in arms, and longing wait
The signal to ascend—sit lingering here,
Heaven’s fugitives, and for their dwelling-place
Accept this dark opprobrious den of shame,
The prison of his ryranny who reigns
By our delay? No! let us rather choose,
Armed with Hell-flames and fury, all at once
O’er Heaven’s high towers to force resistless way,
Turning our tortures into horrid arms
Against the Torturer; when, to meet the noise
Of his almighty engine, he shall hear
Infernal thunder, and, for lightning, see
Black fire and horror shot with equal rage
Among his Angels, and his throne itself
Mixed with Tartarean sulphur and strange fire,
His own invented torments. But perhaps
The way seems difficult, and steep to scale
With upright wing against a higher foe!
Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench
Of that forgetful lake benumb not still,
That in our porper motion we ascend
Up to our native seat; descent and fall
To us is adverse. Who but felt of late,
When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear
Insulting, and pursued us through the Deep,
With what compulsion and laborious flight
We sunk thus low? Th’ ascent is easy, then;
Th’ event is feared! Should we again provoke
Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find
To our destruction, if there be in Hell
Fear to be worse destroyed! What can be worse
Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemned
In this abhorred deep to utter woe!
Where pain of unextinguishable fire
Must exercise us without hope of end
The vassals of his anger, when the scourge
Inexorably, and the torturing hour,
Calls us to penance? More destroyed than thus,
We should be quite abolished, and expire.
What fear we then? what doubt we to incense
His utmost ire? which, to the height enraged,
Will either quite consume us, and reduce
To nothing this essential—happier far
Than miserable to have eternal being!—
Or, if our substance be indeed divine,
And cannot cease to be, we are at worst
On this side nothing; and by proof we feel
Our power sufficient to disturb his Heaven,
And with perpetual inroads to alarm,
Though inaccessible, his fatal throne:
Which, if not victory, is yet revenge.”
  He ended frowning, and his look denounced
Desperate revenge, and battle dangerous
To less than gods. On th’ other side up rose
Belial, in act more graceful and humane.
A fairer person lost not Heaven; he seemed
For dignity composed, and high exploit.
But all was false and hollow; though his tongue
Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were low—
To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds
Timorous and slothful. Yet he pleased the ear,
And with persuasive accent thus began:—
  “I should be much for open war, O Peers,
As not behind in hate, if what was urged
Main reason to persuade immediate war
Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast
Ominous conjecture on the whole success;
When he who most excels in fact of arms,
In what he counsels and in what excels
Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair
And utter dissolution, as the scope
Of all his aim, after some dire revenge.
First, what revenge? The towers of Heaven are filled
With armed watch, that render all access
Impregnable: oft on the bodering Deep
Encamp their legions, or with obscure wing
Scout far and wide into the realm of Night,
Scorning surprise. Or, could we break our way
By force, and at our heels all Hell should rise
With blackest insurrection to confound
Heaven’s purest light, yet our great Enemy,
All incorruptible, would on his throne
Sit unpolluted, and th’ ethereal mould,
Incapable of stain, would soon expel
Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire,
Victorious. Thus repulsed, our final hope
Is flat despair: we must exasperate
Th’ Almighty Victor to spend all his rage;
And that must end us; that must be our cure—
To be no more. Sad cure! for who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallowed up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated Night,
Devoid of sense and motion? And who knows,
Let this be good, whether our angry Foe
Can give it, or will ever? How he can
Is doubtful; that he never will is sure.
Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire,
Belike through impotence or unaware,
To give his enemies their wish, and end
Them in his anger whom his anger saves
To punish endless? ‘Wherefore cease we, then?’
Say they who counsel war; ‘we are decreed,
Reserved, and destined to eternal woe;
Whatever doing, what can we suffer more,
What can we suffer worse?’ Is this, then, worst—
Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms?
What when we fled amain, pursued and struck
With Heaven’s afflicting thunder, and besought
The Deep to shelter us? This Hell then seemed
A refuge from those wounds. Or when we lay
Chained on the burning lake? That sure was worse.
What if the breath that kindled those grim fires,
Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage,
And plunge us in the flames; or from above
Should intermitted vengeance arm again
His red right hand to plague us? What if all
Her stores were opened, and this firmament
Of Hell should spout her cataracts of fire,
Impendent horrors, threatening hideous fall
One day upon our heads; while we perhaps,
Designing or exhorting glorious war,
Caught in a fiery tempest, shall be hurled,
Each on his rock transfixed, the sport and prey
Or racking whirlwinds, or for ever sunk
Under yon boiling ocean, wrapt in chains,
There to converse with everlasting groans,
Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved,
Ages of hopeless end? This would be worse.
War, therefore, open or concealed, alike
My voice dissuades; for what can force or guile
With him, or who deceive his mind, whose eye
Views all things at one view? He from Heaven’s height
All these our motions vain sees and derides,
Not more almighty to resist our might
Than wise to frustrate all our plots and wiles.
Shall we, then, live thus vile—the race of Heaven
Thus trampled, thus expelled, to suffer here
Chains and these torments? Better these than worse,
By my advice; since fate inevitable
Subdues us, and omnipotent decree,
The Victor’s will. To suffer, as to do,
Our strength is equal; nor the law unjust
That so ordains. This was at first resolved,
If we were wise, against so great a foe
Contending, and so doubtful what might fall.
I laugh when those who at the spear are bold
And venturous, if that fail them, shrink, and fear
What yet they know must follow—to endure
Exile, or igominy, or bonds, or pain,
The sentence of their Conqueror. This is now
Our doom; which if we can sustain and bear,
Our Supreme Foe in time may much remit
His anger, and perhaps, thus far removed,
Not mind us not offending, satisfied
With what is punished; whence these raging fires
Will slacken, if his breath stir not their flames.
Our purer essence then will overcome
Their noxious vapour; or, inured, not feel;
Or, changed at length, and to the place conformed
In temper and in nature, will receive
Familiar the fierce heat; and, void of pain,
This horror will grow mild, this darkness light;
Besides what hope the never-ending flight
Of future days may bring, what chance, what change
Worth waiting—since our present lot appears
For happy though but ill, for ill not worst,
If we procure not to ourselves more woe.”
  Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason’s garb,
Counselled ignoble ease and peaceful sloth,
Not peace; and after him thus Mammon spake:—
  “Either to disenthrone the King of Heaven
We war, if war be best, or to regain
Our own right lost. Him to unthrone we then
May hope, when everlasting Fate shall yield
To fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife.
The former, vain to hope, argues as vain
The latter; for what place can be for us
Within Heaven’s bound, unless Heaven’s Lord supreme
We overpower? Suppose he should relent
And publish grace to all, on promise made
Of new subjection; with what eyes could we
Stand in his presence humble, and receive
Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne
With warbled hyms, and to his Godhead sing
Forced hallelujahs, while he lordly sits
Our envied sovereign, and his altar breathes
Ambrosial odours and ambrosial flowers,
Our servile offerings? This must be our task
In Heaven, this our delight. How wearisome
Eternity so spent in worship paid
To whom we hate! Let us not then pursue,
By force impossible, by leave obtained
Unacceptable, though in Heaven, our state
Of splendid vassalage; but rather seek
Our own good from ourselves, and from our own
Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess,
Free and to none accountable, preferring
Hard liberty before the easy yoke
Of servile pomp. Our greatness will appear
Then most conspicuous when great things of small,
Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse,
We can create, and in what place soe’er
Thrive under evil, and work ease out of pain
Through labour and endurance. This deep world
Of darkness do we dread? How oft amidst
Thick clouds and dark doth Heaven’s all-ruling Sire
Choose to reside, his glory unobscured,
And with the majesty of darkness round
Covers his throne, from whence deep thunders roar.
Mustering their rage, and Heaven resembles Hell!
As he our darkness, cannot we his light
Imitate when we please? This desert soil
Wants not her hidden lustre, gems and gold;
Nor want we skill or art from whence to raise
Magnificence; and what can Heaven show more?
Our torments also may, in length of time,
Become our elements, these piercing fires
As soft as now severe, our temper changed
Into their temper; which must needs remove
The sensible of pain. All things invite
To peaceful counsels, and the settled state
Of order, how in safety best we may
Compose our present evils, with regard
Of what we are and where, dismissing quite
All thoughts of war. Ye have what I advise.”
  He scarce had finished, when such murmur filled
Th’ assembly as when hollow rocks retain
The sound of blustering winds, which all night long
Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull
Seafaring men o’erwatched, whose bark by chance
Or pinnace, anchors in a craggy bay
After the tempest. Such applause was heard
As Mammon ended, and his sentence pleased,
Advising peace: for such another field
They dreaded worse than Hell; so much the fear
Of thunder and the sword of Michael
Wrought still within them; and no less desire
To found this nether empire, which might rise,
By policy and long process of time,
In emulation opposite to Heaven.
Which when Beelzebub perceived—than whom,
Satan except, none higher sat—with grave
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed
A pillar of state. Deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat, and public care;
And princely counsel in his face yet shone,
Majestic, though in ruin. Sage he stood
With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look
Drew audience and attention still as night
Or summer’s noontide air, while thus he spake:—
  “Thrones and Imperial Powers, Offspring of Heaven,
Ethereal Virtues! or these titles now
Must we renounce, and, changing style, be called
Princes of Hell? for so the popular vote
Inclines—here to continue, and build up here
A growing empire; doubtless! while we dream,
And know not that the King of Heaven hath doomed
This place our dungeon, not our safe retreat
Beyond his potent arm, to live exempt
From Heaven’s high jurisdiction, in new league
Banded against his throne, but to remain
In strictest *******, though thus far removed,
Under th’ inevitable curb, reserved
His captive multitude. For he, to be sure,
In height or depth, still first and last will reign
Sole king, and of his kingdom lose no part
By our revolt, but over Hell extend
His empire, and with iron sceptre rule
Us here, as with his golden those in Heaven.
What sit we then projecting peace and war?
War hath determined us and foiled with loss
Irreparable; terms of peace yet none
Vouchsafed or sought; for what peace will be given
To us enslaved, but custody severe,
And stripes and arbitrary punishment
Inflicted? and what peace can we return,
But, to our power, hostility and hate,
Untamed reluctance, and revenge, though slow,
Yet ever plotting how the Conqueror least
May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice
In doing what we most in suffering feel?
Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need
With dangerous expedition to invade
Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault or siege,
Or ambush from the Deep. What if we find
Some easier enterprise? There is a place
(If ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven
Err not)—another World, the happy seat
Of some new race, called Man, about this time
To be created like to us, though less
In power and excellence, but favoured more
Of him who rules above; so was his will
Pronounced among the Gods, and by an oath
That shook Heaven’s whole circumference confirmed.
Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to learn
What creatures there inhabit, of what mould
Or substance, how endued, and what their power
And where their weakness: how attempted best,
By force of subtlety. Though Heaven be shut,
And Heaven’s high Arbitrator sit secure
In his own strength, this place may lie exposed,
The utmost border of his kingdom, left
To their defence who hold it: here, perhaps,
Some advantageous act may be achieved
By sudden onset—either with Hell-fire
To waste his whole creation, or possess
All as our own, and drive, as we were driven,
The puny habitants; or, if not drive,
****** them to our party, that their God
May prove their foe, and with repenting hand
Abolish his own works. This would surpass
Common revenge, and interrupt his joy
In our confusion, and our joy upraise
In his disturbance; when his darling sons,
Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall curse
Their frail original, and faded bliss—
Faded so soon! Advise if this be worth
Attempting, or to sit in darkness here
Hatching vain empires.” Thus beelzebub
Pleaded his devilish counsel—first devised
By Satan, and in part proposed: for whence,
But

And it's difficult to remember something as the very name of Eisenhower
Or flowerbaskets
And tired movies made of silicone and
Aftersex
Or sixteen candles echoing out of an imaginary suite with cigarettes at every table
And green lawns
Barbershop conversation
The reflection of the sun in special trees
Or my best friend Jesus Christ
Or the smell of the theater that one day with the cynics who just got back from a tennis match and barbwire still laced delicately around their thoughts and
Nihilism
And automotives
And priestess Jane or Henry's gloomy doppelganger who reads alternative magazines and loves the aesthetics behind broken glass
And fine tuned musical instruments

It's difficult to remember
Lonesome Fridays smoking on a park bench trying to finish the puzzle
Or synagogues you've never been in
Or insurance
Or newspaper articles detailing the misadventures of Mr. City
(Of course of course! Take your shoes off at the door and make yourself at home)
We're tossing all our sewage into the ocean
that's far from clean as it
LOOKS anymore these days
That's anything
And everything except for the glowing mountains seen faded and wintry behind Apartments and the
"Glorious Mexican House of Spices"
Never been in there either

It's difficult to remember
Times of Mr Twin Sister
Or Joan Jett in the hallway
In a highschool who's psychology classrooms have become a time capsule in the ground/
Or the gentle skinny ******
Wearing Broadway makeup and
Kafka tattooed on his shoulder
I like his hat
He looks at me suspiciously
Or the guy who is yelling his order at the counter when it's quiet here anyways
Or the mariner who has a hobby of the saxophone
Or 1970s *******
Or the sheepskin bikeseat fad that's yet to come but I'm predicting it now!
Or two dollars and twentyseven cents at the beginning of Allen Ginsberg's America
"I've given you all and now I'm nothing"

It's difficult to remember
The Oriental
Sacramento flies
Midnight Moon
Quarter to four
"The Immortalization Commission"
Remodelled hotels downtown
Where mandalas on the floor became a
Tiger lily luminous
And the kimono is yesterday's painting/
Dearest Darling
When I was feeling down!
A staircase in reverse (??)
The sound a kiss makes
It's difficult to remember
Colleen's earrings
Or Washington State
Or air conditioners in Bali
The Indian ocean's daybreak hymn
To Seminyak
Or whatever happened to Steve from the Airplane out of Taiwan
On 3 days awake
Hello Kitty nursing stations
****** (Kubrick's version)
Cardboard taking up half my bedroom
It's difficult to remember until I jot it down and then its a sudden forever
Sunshine Superman in a cafe spontaneous
drawings with someone I just met who has some ******* attitude/
Who hops fences and has feral ideas
People! En Masse! Te Amo!
You're all in wolven liberty
And vague postulators
And holy prostitutes for the dollar
Sad eyed intellectuals
With undergarments made of breakfast cereal/
Seaferry poetry is different from
Trestle in August poetry
Or henna handshakes
Or the Napoleonic era
Sweet Cherry Pie
The tulip's tongue
Garabajal
Cloudy first day of July
Was hotter yesterday
But not too hot

It's difficult to remember
Antiquity
The pale horse Studebaker outside the clinic
With a glossy red trim and **** I wish that was my ride
Andy Warhol's exploding plastic inevitable
Nearsightedness
Angels and their ability to shower with a a snap of their fingers
Distant harp music
Better him than me
Bananas almost ripe
Green aquatic
Reclusive junkies
Palomo's appliances
Questions for the next time
How much I like what you like and how I like that you like what I like
Ahh that's not my bus
I'm trying to get to the city!
That one quote Socrates is known for about knowing nothing as true wisdom
Supermarkets being built on top of liquor stores burned down a while back
Monopolies
Tragedies
"No Love Lost"
THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL
Your guess is as good as mine
Never tried to eat Asian food in Asia
It was all pasta and good cider that tasted like pineapple
Rain hitting the window and I'm
Drowsy again
God Save The Trees!
Curly hair looks good on boys
Torn up blinds
Queer as a three dollar bill
If Bill costs 3 dollars I'm sure he's caught something better safe than sorry
Sage advice
I'm the very model of a modern major general
Golden yen and international currency
Incense in the bedroom and how good it smells
There's my bus! Applying for a better job than the one I got now
But that's how it always is right?
Chasing satisfaction
1007 apt
Porch ornaments
Unique names
Unique style le style
The extra charge on foreign ATMs
Cordoroy polo shirts
Flooding in New York!
When someone's face screams *******
"Slippery when wet"
Dine N Dash
Grass gone yellow
Confidence in dyed hair and capes as long as wedding gowns
But less expensive
Doors that always seem to be locked and I'm wondering 20 year later what's behind them?
Albino animals
White thoughts as clouds or
Abstractions
Weathers nicer in Florida but who cares
Festivities this early in the day
Automatopeia
Do sad orphanages still exist?
Just like the movies
Midnight in mirrors
That sick puppet at the shoe shop used
To know how to really hammer it down
And now he's weak and forgotten
Never heard the words of a true prophet only Oceania
Or the private temple near Apollo Bay
Like Japanese gardens behind that gate
Will I ever see it
Make a proud example outta ya misbehavior
Form without function
Exhausted spiritualism
*** Kettle Black
negative photographs of dark rooms
And there's laughing coming from SOMEWHERE
Essays on kleptomania
Had a bad dream I became a cliche
Surrounded by other freaks and there was a lovely ***** I fell in love with her
We married in Oregon by the sea her name was rosy
***** rosy
Check your mailbox for nails
And what you don't wanna hear/
If you were a vegetable you'd be organic!
Empire
Satirical bubble gum
Satori
Linda Lovelace and her special party trick
That's someone's fantasy
Diamond in the rough
Mister guy with two black eyes frequents the adult playhouse
Hes fully stocked on fishnet leggings
He's too proud to put them on himself but
Has nobody else around
Boo hoo
Swigs back the whiskey and trips down the stairs getting a third black eye in the process
Marion came by with her dog the other day
Wanted her box of clothes back but he loved to sniff them to remember her
But she wouldn't have it

"Honey I'm going to call the police!"

"Ah they don't give a **** they have bigger things to worry about"

"Yeah you got that right shrimp **** enjoy my unwashed *******"

And she never came back again
He started losing the vertebrae in his spine 1 by 1 and you know where this is going
I won't say he was a poor man because he had it all coming to him the *******
But he coulda had a better start if you ask me.

It's difficult to remember
And even more difficult to forget
After the fact

Seagull opera
Giganticism
Portrait of the artist as a young man
Losing one's pencil when the best idea of your life drops down from heaven and into your sorry head
Signs graffitied to have funnier meanings
Cruelty
Impassive
The Loyal Lioness
And Bangladesh has too many kitchens
And not enough dishes
When I was young I used to say Island as "is-land"  
Which is true it is land
But the Europeans probably stole it from somebody else anyways/
I left my future behind
And objects in the mirror are closer than they appear
Im no illusionist
I'm terrified of the cracken
Father feels the same way about
Hotels
Why bother/
This has been going on and on for a while are you tired yet
Is your patience being tested
Mine isn't because this wasn't an all-at-once kind of rambling
It's extremely important to laugh at least
Once a day
Otherwise you'll find yourself a politician
In no time at all
Rockefeller
(         ) Quaint home to die in
I think
Trains create great music
Float on
Sink into yourself
Roses in a crooked alley
That's people
Busy busy busy busy
Let's describe a situationist
I'm not a fan of bright colors on clothes
Your best shade is blue
Bricklayers transcription of Don Quixote to a skyscraper
Rocket thyme
& Garden
Erratic children's
Insomnia
The doorbell repeatedly
Vancouver riots/ I saw that live on the news!
Pictionary with the surrealists
N Dada TV set MC Escher
Antenna
You're in the Twilight Zone now
Dear Ramona
I'm trying to make it up to you
With a brightness only seen when you're ready to see it so please for the love of God don't blame me when it's not appearing
The tapestry hidden
Keep your blankets clean
And avoid hospitals unless you're fine with fishbowls & the halogen
The water gestapo
Storage lockers full of unacted plays and
Antique microwaves
Emitting the nostalgia of the cold war era
And what a waste of time that was /
Walter Wanderleys presence in Autumn universities
The opening of Vivre sa Vie
Salvador Dali's pluvial taxi
Lightbulb epiphanies
Aquariums and their protestors
Zebras in the shade
Two wrongs dont make a right
Elizabethan theater
Saloon shootouts in a fever dream
I lost and bled out all over the rustic wooden floor
A maiden reached out for me and El Paso did play I woke up and pretended nothing happened/
Funerals for bad People who did bad things
My first memory of a cat beneath the mattress
Hello Dolly!
Auditory learning
Psychotherapy
Lillian the landlady lost her ladle and labeled little Lyle as a lair
The Black panther movement
Reading symposium some years ago and
Making note that Phaedo was still my favorite dialogue/
Zen Buddhism
Xoxo xoxo
The day Gypsies were replaced with
Surface ****** appetite
And not the real thing
Newspaper clippings
Hypnotism when all other options are out
Mystical visions of sidewalks
And the love of your life stepping through a door you've never seen
Maybe Yes No I Don't Know
Creature comforts
Che Guevara's problem is that his beard made him too easy to recognize
(Also that little hat!)
Chinese cough medicine didn't work
For long I still wheeze sometimes
Domestic violence thru the wall
Ceiling fan probably doesn't even work!
Dimpled laughter
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
In skytrains to Commercial
Bermuda in her mind
And courtesy in her voice
I'm no Arthur Rimbaud
But you already knew that
Alcazar of Seville
Filling up the shipbottle
Here's your paradise
Now relinquish it as it is
False!
Hare Krishna
Nowhere Fast
El Diablo and the
Portofino loaf left rotting on the countertop
Latin children speak of the sacred viper
You'll hear of it after this but we'll never see what the ******* meant
Heads alternating round the social current
Of my lively city
There's a dog soaking up the rain
And songs are made in honor of
Recent catastrophes
Trials are dealt
Cards cast to the gutter
New York quiets down for the news of another war
You scratch my back I'll scratch yours
Skeleton key
Ballad of the last wailing zoo
THE ATRIUM
Complexity in simplicity
That's how Brainard got me!
Elderly overcoats
Hiding purest LSD
Is a fan of Hawaiian T shirts
And a communist
What if I was a Freemason
Or owned a tanning salon
Faint crimson
What did Marv look like again?
"You're surrounded by people who love you"
Coffee when one needs it
GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY
Tattoos on the wandering man
Oriental chimes and the people who own them
Bus stop regulars
Vines overtaking power lines
The hypnogogic state
Strawberry light softening
The mind
Sister Ray LOUDLY PROCLAIMING
doitdoitdoitdoit
Passing the graffiti n Pluto neon
Halal wide awake another Saturday
Where's the Karaoke
Flashing by here
Those who find comfort in a bridal scavenger hunt
Or expensive beer
And here comes the hooded clown
Clamoring about his favorite
Loudspeaker
Telling me my time is soon and the noise
Drowns out the drowsy bliss
After hour spirits the perfect time for
Writing and trying to read distant Chinese
Indecision on the tip of the tongue
"NOW WHO IS THAT KNOCKING
ON THE CHAMBER DOOR?
COULD IT BE THE POLICE?"

I'm completely off the topic
And into Apartment lobby photosets
Low battery phone calls
Confessions
Nauseated reverb
Trying to see the attachment people got with bingo halls
And moving companies
Ah no luck again
Eve is at it with her showtunes
Halfway methodology
Triage
Paisley headbands left
Distraught on the quivering
Heater
Dwindling sunsets
We're truly disciples of the moon spirit which grants us more energy
(This is according to a drunk I met one night)
Or ***** old men
When the horizon is engulfed with
A winking cinder
Suitcase at the door
Last time
First time
Magician never reveals his fetishes
(They all have to do with bags under your eyes)
Employment office dramas of my friend the one who blinded a social worker
And the one who blamed Islam
And the one whos philosophy entirely consisted of Spooky Action at a
                                            DISTANCE
Parisian riots
Queer youth
Didn't make the team! Jester
'cross the hall who's beard suggests
Ishmeal n car battery n expired vegetables n rain which crosses the line n
***** cranberry n
Poorly fitted suits n
Harsh pigment n incense shops n
Bocca     secret towns
With churches more beautiful than any you'd find in your own city
n the cultural market
Xylophone ear to ear
Soul cleansing starting at only
$89 (with a 6 month guarantee)
Sophie's birthday and her picnic at Victory Park
The nearby bums trying to sell tea mugs and
Loose wires beside gated convenience stores
I'm an Island away attempting a poem
And never bought a scratch n win
Or heard the same song more than seven times in a row or been in a column
Or escaped the washhouse
Invested in a birdcage for next year
Been to a palm reading
Visited Oasis
Smoked salmon
Told anyone else about Montana
Screamed the things I'd like to scream
** Word of the day
Or kissed a lunatic or swallowed the corpse of yesterday
I keep her on my neck until
I'm too anxious to let go
Counting streetlights
Jeans worn in and faded to be sent off to
A lonely caffeine addict
Christmas Eve I'll be reading a postcard from San Francisco
Asking the same questions
My imagination is made of a different material than last week
Now it's the same color as your hair
HEY that's a good pickup line to use in the heart of the Canadian Embassy
Drinking discarded music resembling a sweater you may have said YES to if it wasn't so unsure of itself
And now Mr. Acker Bilk ascends thru the window of an August home
Like a lazy hornet
I'm still lost without identification
Or a nice belt
As happens when one uses a quality item too casually
How did uphill suddenly seem so downhill?
I'll claim a waterfall
For SALE that inevitable Indonesia
Greyhound O another greyhound O another greyhound
I'm fretting too much about not enough
Delayed the Airport and the yellow question

????

II

What if I knew how to read the curb?
Or translate drunken droll
What if I was never tired again and could
REALLY do anything I set my mind to?
What if I was the first cigarette that cured cancer instead of caused it?
What if I could end superstition
And walk underneath any ladder I wanted?
What if I could make it with a young Audrey Hepburn!?
What if I stopped pretending to be a microphone and got on with "it"
What if the grocery store closed later
And I opened earlier?
What if parking lots werent so sad
All the time?
What if gravity simply had enough of exotic birds and specifics?
What if we stopped trying to recreate what is truly lost?
What if foreign children embraced
Wasting time instead of
Midnight starry bicycles
And the antics of a monk
Disguised as a romantic?

There are those that worship God
And those who worship the Sun
And those who worship nothing at all
But I suppose on the last bus
We're all the same exhausted
Voice who can't wait for next pay day
What is an empty bank?
Or authenticity
What is there to prove anymore?
I hope I don't die tonight and regret
Being impulsive for once
You're a smart shadow
And a dull character
Pushing the last of the daisies
Get the lamp to turn on again
Give the pavement something to look forward to with your walk
Be consistent in being inconsistent
If there's a word there's a ***** and a poem for it!
We all oughta worship
Nothing at all except
Clarity
Compassion with ones neighbor who either forgot the pay the electricity bill or couldn't afford to
We're a swimmin

Now these clouds
the cold mean greys
sideways rain, the north lands I remember
the drowning choke of smoke and fire
traveling the dark road to your home
the black and spark of stars
we watched through the night
before the killing dawn
before the foggy cold that held us down
the clinch and grasp a slow stinging wasp
gone the fragrant hum of bees
the honey meadow petals.

Only a fleeting summer - we gathered
now swallowed in the autumn thunder
the bruising cold of November.

Hues of violet
As the azure meets the reddened sun
Sparse deflated clouds
Floated quiet as into each other, the colours run

Lavender streaks
Trail far into the horizon
Tracking the sunset
As the hour struck seven

Purple gladioluses
Bowed to the evening sea breeze
As if mourning the departure
Of the day's warmth with silent pleas

The orb finally sank
Beyond my sight could reach
Disappeared from here
But rising over someone else's beach

Last dregs of light
Slowly swallowed, giving birth to indigo
This night would last long
Before the first rays of tomorrow...

red - her lips tasted of wine and blood and all the pain she felt in her heart. she was driven by wild passion and survived solely on her intensity and strength. each breath she took was like fire; so absolute, so empowered.
orange - her hair was crafted from the bright ashes of a phoenix, kindled with streaks of gold. she always seemed to be her own lick of flame from the embers that burned in her heart to the coals that touched her soul.
yellow - her smile was light at your darkest hour, sunshine after a rainstorm. inspired by everything and nothing at all. she was the sun personified, the epitome of radiance.
green - her eyes were so deep and magnificent and ethereal, while still lit with puerility. she could look at you with those eyes and show you that she cared so passionately for you, no matter your mistakes or your faults.
blue - her skin drowned in an ocean of tears, storm after storm, each wave wracked her body. she trembled with heartrending sobs, each breath heavier than the last. her sorrow painted the depths of her, unseen to those who had not genuinely looked into her eyes.
purple - her organs were stained an ugly shade by the darkness she consumed. her hunger was insatiable. she filled her mouth with poison and swallowed it with a smile on her face. the air traveled from her bruised lungs, through her macerated throat, and out her smiling, stained lips.

“You know the worst thing I ever saw?” He asked.

I sighed to myself, took another gulp of beer and fixed him with a look of half-interest. He was drunk. A complete ****-up and a bore when he's drunk. I don't know why I drink with him. That said, he probably thinks the same.

“What's that?”
“Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard.”
“Ye-what?”
“Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“The homeless. Right.”
“I'll get us another drink.” he says, “then I'll start where I left off.”
“Oh, good.”

He comes back with two bottles. We drink and we start talking about football. We're just about getting by before he raises his palm to his face.
“Aw, ****. I forgot, yeah. The worst thing I ever saw. I never told you.”
“You did. Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“Yeah yeah, but that doesn't really say much, does it? You're probably wondering to yourself why that would **** me off so much?”

Not really. He's the type of no-action, all-caring, bleeding heart that sits on his fattening **** every day, 'liking' rhetorical captions over pictures, and signing petitions to axe some ***** politician or other.
“I guess. Shoot.”

He shoots.
“I wanna burn down the churches. Seriously. Stupid ******* religious folk. I bet they go home and post pictures up of themselves, all busy in the soup kitchen, ladling minestrone into some poor *******'s styrofoam bowl.
“They'll never touch them. Always at arm's length. You don't wanna breathe in the pathogens of the anti-people...”
He slurred a little, went to carry on, but took another gulp of beer instead.
“What does that have to do with bedsheets over the benches in the church yard?” I took a gulp myself, this time watching him with a little more interest. Probably just because he looks like he could spew at any moment.
“You're not letting me finish...”
He finishes his beer, gets up, almost bumping into his piano-***-keyboard. He's off to the fridge again. I have a look around while he's out of the room. I can hear him ******* in the kitchen sink.

I've seen the place a million times before but it always has a whole bunch of new **** tacked up on the wall or else bundled in the corner. He's no hoarder, just gets bored and throws out all the stuff he bought the year before.
There's a framed picture of himself on the wall, cradling his Fender as if he's a master of the arts. It's signed, too.
I've seen him play. Probably will tonight. Wouldn't be surprised if he's written a protest song called: bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. The old **** can't even hit an F major with regularity.
He'd decided to put up his vinyl sleeves on the wall like a 17 year old would with an array of **** pop-punk band posters.
Blink and you might think he's the new John Peel or Phil Spector. Stare, and you'll realise he's twice as crazy, yet half as talented and half as interesting to listen to.
His room is like a CV to show to interesting, young indie women. Shame he's hitting forty now,and hasn't been to a club in about 3 months.
Last time we went he just sulked in the corner and got too drunk. He cried in the smoking area about his job before going round and asking attractive girls whether they think he's too old to be out. Most didn't even bother to give an answer. Probably best.

He comes back in with more beer.
“A-anyway...” He says, groaning a little like an old man as he settles back into the chair. “As I was saying...” he sloshes beer on the carpet, rubs it in with the heel of his shoe. He spits on the mark and then rubs again.
“What I was saying was that the church would be a whole lot more useful to the homeless if it was burned down. A condemned building is a whole lot more useful than being looked down on by holier-than-thou, middle-class, white Christians.
“They go home after an hour, bolt the church doors, and then watch TV in their brand new conservatories that they spend several thousands on. Just give the losers a place to shoot up and sleep in safety. That makes sense, right?”
“I guess so.”
I couldn't think of a change of conversation. So I just drank some more and pulled out a cigarette. It's nice to smoke inside for a change.

“It's a ****** ******* awful thing. If people were actually religious, they'd throw open their ******* doors for everyone. It's what Jesus would do, right?”
“Right.”
“He'd have all the **** in his bedsit, piled in like sardines, spreading TB like wildfire.”
“And that's a good thing?”
“Well, it can't be any worse, right? Sleep's important. I learned that the hard way.”

He didn't learn it the hard way. Not really. He's a self-motivated, self-harming insomniac. He spent his teenage years listening to bad music and staying up too late ******* over his French teacher. I should know, I mostly did the same.
He hit the **** pretty hard during college. Never really looked back until recently. ****** him up worse than you'd reckon. He couldn't sleep without the stuff. Man, if you'd have seen the poor guy whenever he couldn't get hold of some for the night. Eesh.

“...you know what I mean though? I'm sick of charity. Those fun-runs you get. A load of women in pink pretending that they care about breast cancer, before posting a million and one pictures up of them in ankle warmers and a kooky hat...”
“**** of the Earth.”
“Yup. Right up there with the women who have 'mummy' as their middle name on Facebook.”
“Yeah.”
“Honestly though, it's the laziest form of charity. Throwing a couple old, mouldy bedsheets out on some bird-**** bench made of wood and ancient farts...”
“It is pretty lazy.” I drank some more.

It was getting late. We swallowed three temazepams each, moved onto the cheap shiraz once we ran out of beer. We leant back in our chairs, barely talking and letting Tame Impala supply the conversation for us.

“You know what?” I ask, pretty much out of nowhere. His eyes have narrowed. He's not sleepy, just ****** on ***** and tranquillizers. He takes a moment.
“Huh?”
“From what you were saying earlier... you know, about the bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, why don't you?”
“Why don't I what?”
“Burn it down.”
“The church?”
“Well, you go on about being lazy and ****. Here's your chance. Help the homeless. Break the locks, pour the petrol, take out a few bottles of wine if you find any...”
“Now?”
“I guess so. Homeless folk are dying of pneumonia out there. Not a second can be wasted.”
“I dunno. I didn't mean I had to do it. I was just saying...”
“I guess they were just saying too.” I felt like I was being a ****, so I changed the subject to women I haven't laid.

I stumbled home leaning on my bicycle all the way. Daylight was just about visible off in the distance. I passed two homeless guys on the way back, gave one of them a fiver, the other one my big mac and the last of my cigarettes (well, leaving a couple for myself).
They said thanks, god bless you, etc, etc. I carried on walking.

I woke up the next afternoon with a mouthful of sand and in desperate need of a hangover ****. I hadn't shaved in about two weeks and there were dark circles under my eyes. I thought about going out to the diner for a full breakfast, but strange people were beyond me.
I ordered a pizza full of meat and grease and garlic sauce instead. I text him to see if he wanted to come over and nurse the hangover with a little ****. Watch a film. Get drunk again. He still smokes it on special occasions, and this ******* of a hangover was pretty **** special.
No reply, and I end up rolling up a joint for myself, smoking it by the window and watching the magpies peck around the grass. It's nice out.

The pizza guy comes. He's holding the pizza up like a map, calls out in a bored sort of voice: “Hello sir. I've got a large Palermo Pizza here, with a side of chicken strips and a can of Dandelion and Burdock?”
I say yes and he hands it over.

I tip him with the coins still left in my wallet from the night before, and he sheepishly says he picked up my post for me as well.
I look down at the pizza I'm holding, and there's a few envelopes that look suspiciously like bills, rival takeaway leaflets, and the local paper. I say thanks, give him the best sort of smile I could, and then close the door.
I turn on the TV. I forgot the England match was on. I turn over to something more interesting. There's nothing, so I switch back over. Before I open up the pizza, I take the paper. A small-town existence, nothing ever happens, but I could do with a new job.

The front page is on fire. A church has been burned down in the early morning. A forty-something man has been arrested and then taken to hospital for severe burns to the face. A load of children's art has been lost, along with countless Bibles, prayer cushions, and vaults of cash.
“****.”
I read through the article. The whole place was gutted. Nothing could be salvaged. Nothing could be redeemed. In the corner of the picture, through the red, green, and blue dots, I could just make out some bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.

While you were away,
My words seem to fall on deaf ears.
Unvoiced mutterings that fall out in droves,
Burning rants swallowed back in singes and sears...

While you were away,
Time was stagnant; a viscous puddle.
Hours only stretched longer,
The second hand jabbing its ferocious needle...

While you were away,
The clock drove me insane.
Ticking my life away in literal seconds.
Losing sand grain by grain...

While you were away,
And when it's all quiet and dark,
I could hear my heartbeat...
Awaiting the new day to make its mark.

While you were away,
My words seem to have lost their meaning...
As if they were stuck in limbo,
Unanswered calls that keep on ringing...

While you were away,*
I am but a little lost foal...
Because whenever you're away,
I am never whole...

For all the people who tell me I can't be a feminist

My feminism ruins my chat up lines
So much so that you couldn't call them that
I feel pathetic, ironic
Less of a man
Because I haven't touched a girl without her permission
Girls spill their drinks on me in clubs (with no apology), boys don't
Boys ask permission before they touch my entertaining hair
I love women, they're better to be around
I'm not gay, bi maybe but don't stick labels on me
Actually girls do that to me all the time
Literally, they rub their wet hands on my clothes
And stick stickers on me like I'm an object
But no a man is not objectified
Male equals misogynist
Equals creep
I can't criticise a woman's actions, thats sexist
They're in the struggle
This makes me wish I was a girl
I want informal privileges
I'm a ****** is that clear by now?
I don't know if I can **** a girl with my *****
With all of HIStory behind me

I suffer under patriarchy, but not like you do
I understand even non feminist girls,
Or bad feminists,
Still products of this gut wrenching, repulsive system
I'm crying now, an emotional wreck
My mates, some female, will tell me not to act like a girl
But that joke isn't funny anymore
It's too close to home and it's too near the bone
(or *****)
Literally the **** in my trousers is a curse I can't control
An animalistic cage that traps me within expectations
As I write outside a club, three people grab my hair
One male, so I'll take back the generalisation that they ask first. He didn't.
Girls look cold out here
They've come out like this for me
And I shouldn't feel guilty but I do
In the club I'm genuinely objectified
Girls get slurs, sexually abusive labels, they're human there
I'm literally shoved aside like a door by girls eager to look hot at the bar
The only feminist in a room full of chicks

I tolerate this because I love women
Is that sexist?
Is that gay?
If so that's very disappointing
But I've masturbated to **** involving girls
Is that sexist?
Female friendly ****
****** **** - Is that sexist?
I'm academic, I 'get' the gender binaries
Transcend sexuality labels - Is that arrogance?
Why don't these ******* love me?
Note the ironic slur
(Males can be ******* too)
So maybe I'm just the *****
But...I'm sorry
This is poetry, or prose dressed up like it
Emotional inadequacy dressed up like it
I've seen like minded men dispense with the term 'feminism' in pursuit of popularity
That tears me apart because women do the same
I'm not gay
I'm not gay
Stop with the labels
**** me with a strap-on if you have to
Get us back
But I'm not submissive, just overly dedicated
It'll hurt because my **** is virginal
Pure
Sure, I'm a feminist
But stop with the labels
This has become obscene
Put me on page 3 and call me a hero

I'm being sexist here
By noticing gender
Real feminists, please improve me
Fake feminists, how dare you use my views against me?
If I wasn't ugly I wouldn't be a feminist
(Product of my environment and all that)
Like you but with a rather different inferiority complex
As I said, please love me?
Or at least, let me be your friend because the average boy repulses me
Maybe we have at least that in common?
These men cause me to
Try to emasculate me
Women too even but it's understandably rarer
Though on the rise in our modern age
As feminism "succeeds"
But this is my pathetic emotional venting
My male sense of self importance
Or am I too harsh on myself?
Ok so I'll self aggrandise
I transcend your petty, completely logical movement
Look at yourself in the mirror
Metaphorically
(I'm fat too, and some girls make me feel the pain of it)
Yeah I'm a feminist ally
But I'll school half of you

"You've" made me leave the club now
I can't look at these amazing women the same way they want me to anymore
But by 'you've' I mean 'I'VE'
The emphasis is on me to remain rational,
Calculating (my chances with who in the club),
Hardy,
The breadwinner
The one with the jeans
Look, I'd wear a dress if it wasn't for the connotations
Ramifications
I'm ahead of my time, let's agree on what we can
I'm on your side can't you see?
I'm big, I could hurt you and I hate myself
For representing what could be
What is
What my brothers do behind my back
(Because my sickly chivalry would have me try my hardest to pummel these ******* into the ground to protect the damsel in distress)
But I'm not a violent person
As I text, I cant go back into the club but to say goodbye
to my female friend who I came out with alone despite the ****** undercurrent
I half notice two men try to charm this girl
I hear echoes of 'This Charming Man'
(Later I will go and stand on my own, leave on my own, go home, cry and want to die)
These ******* 'gentle' men

But here I'm being arrogant
Self indulgent
Assertive
Typically 'male'
I see a fight break out
The women aren't allowed to be involved
Their voices are drowned out though they push themselves between combatants
Men, we are responsible for wars
**** all of you (*some)
I'd trade social and political male privilege for free 'freedom from guilt'
I'd trade my **** away so I'm not called one callously
(You could even use it as a ***** if you wanted, but its not as big as the shop-bought alternative)
And the funniest thing is, I think my words are important
Think I can say all this and be a controversial,
Exciting
Challenging figure
Asserting my intellectual dominance
Now that's ironic
Ironic to the core that eats at me
That makes me feel like your plaything
Because these ironic jokes like me calling you ******* are too close to home, too near the bone
The bone I gave away, possibly to you (but it hardly matters)
I'm too 'above it all' to be loved or to love faithfully (like Morrissey?)
But all I ask is for your love

That's all I ask
For me to **** on the **** of your respect and trust
Like I did my mother, using her for milk
For sustenance
So my kind survives
And now I go back to the wild,
To the looks that barely notice me as they smash or glance off me
That label me a pig
Or a creep
Or a ****, a *******
Or a gay,
Or a man
Or a feminist

---

So next thing I know I'm with a load of girls again
(Rugby playing girls my mate knows)
I'm the only 'lad' (Irony really hurts)
I'm told my presence makes them claustrophobic
I give them five minutes
(Because my male voice counts for nothing when deciding on a club)
I tell them I'm a feminist
The more honest way out than pretending I'm gay
Its OK now
Thanks, labels.
I swallowed and dealt with the rejection because I'd just had this emotional vent
Thanks vent
And thanks girls for trying to make me feel small and unwelcome at your table
Because it makes me better
Makes me stronger (like men desire to be)
Only I was a step, a poem, a vent ahead this time
So I wasn't crushed or pierced under your high heel
High horse
You weren't willing to flip the tradition on its head and buy my entry to the club
When I couldn't pay
But it's OK.
At least you were real with me
And I'll be there in spirit
In my dreams
Checking you out while you buy drinks
Then wake up and hate myself again

Tears were in my eyes when the girl said that to me
But I, like a true misogynist,
Fought them back and remained a gentleman
Polite and robotically rational
Pliable
But really, how painfully ironic are these semantics?
To 'fight' emotion
To 'fight' honesty?

Like men do, because we're all the same

I magine Icarus
C reatively carving his dream
A **** the soft features and
R idges as strong as his beliefs, lays
U nderneath an innocent soul
S tranded in a fantasy.
            Icarus
Flying towards the heavens
Embellishing the sky with pearl like wings
Caressing Icarus, soaring passionately.
His own hero in his eyes.
            Icarus
Glances up, suddenly hypnotized
By the gleaming sphere of light.
The innocent splash-
Tasting the bitter, revolting sea.
Swallowed whole without notice
With the sound of silence as
Icarus now soars freely with the angels.