i dreamed a rattlesnake was loose in the closet i heard it rattling i was afraid to open the door



a man suffering a toothache goes to see his dentist the dentist administers laughing gas when the man comes to his numb tongue swooshes around his mouth he asks how long was i under the dentist answers hours i needed to pull them all out



he imagines when he grows old there will be a pencil grown into one hand and a paintbrush grown into the other they will look like extra fingers grown out from the palms extensions of his personal evolution little children will be horrified when they see mommy mommy look at that man’s hands!



what if we are each presented with a complete picture of a puzzle from the very start then as our lives proceed the pieces begin showing up out of context sometimes recognizable other times a mystery some people are smarter more intuitive than others and are able to piece together the bigger picture some people never figure it out



i wasn’t thinking i didn’t know to think nobody taught me to think maybe my teachers tried but i didn’t get it i wasn’t thinking i was running reacting doing whatever i needed to survive when you’re trying to survive you move fast by instinct you don’t think you just act



many children are relieved when their parents die then they no longer need to explain prove themselves live up to their parent’s expectations yet all children need parents to approve foster mentor teach love



she was missing especially when her children needed her most she was busy lunching with girlfriends dinner dates beauty shop manicure masseuse appointments shopping seamstress fittings constant telephone gossiping criticizing she was too busy to notice she was missing more than anything she wanted to party show off her beauty to be the adored one the hostess with the mostest



i dreamed i was condemned to die by guillotine the executioner wore black and wielded an axe just in case the device failed in the dream the guillotine sliced shallow then the executioner went to work but he kept chopping unsuccessfully severing my head this went on for a long time



1954 Max Schwartzpilgrim sits at table in coffee shop on 5th floor of Maller’s Building elevated train loudly passes as he glances out window it is typical gloomy gray Chicago day he worries how he will find the money to pay off all his mounting debts he is over his head in debit thinks about taking out a hefty life insurance policy then cleverly killing himself but he cherishes his lovely wife Jenny his young children and social life sitting across table Ernie Cohen cracks crass joke Max laughs politely yet is in no mood to encourage his fingers work nervously mutely drumming on Formica table then stubbing out cigarette in glass ashtray lighting another with gold Dunhill lighter bitter tastes of coffee and cigarettes turns his stomach sour he raises his hand calling over Millie the waitress he flirtatiously smiles orders bowl of matzo ball soup with extra matzo ball Ernie says you can’t have enough big ***** for this world Max thinks about his son Odysseus



when Odysseus is very young Dad occasionally brings him to Schwartzpilgrim’s Jewelers Store on Saturday mornings Dad shows off his firstborn son like a prize possession lifting Odysseus in the air Dad takes him to golf range golf is not an interest for Odysseus Dad pushes him to learn proper swing Odysseus fumbles golf club and ***** he loves going anyway because he appreciates spending time with Dad once Dad and Odysseus take shower together Dad is so life-size muscular hairy Odysseus is so little Dad reaches touches Odysseus’s ******* feeling lone ******* Dad says we’ll correct that make it right Odysseus does not understand what Dad is talking about at finish Dad turns up cold water and shields Odysseus with his body he watches Dad dressing in mornings Dad is persnickety to last details of French cuff links silk handkerchief in breast pocket even Dad’s fingernails toenails are manicured buffed shiny clear



Odysseus’s left ******* does not descend into his ******* the adults in extended family routinely want to inspect the abnormality Mom shows them sometimes Dad grows agitated and leaves room it is embarrassing for Odysseus Daddy Lou’s brother Uncle Maury wants to check it out too often like he thinks he is a doctor Uncle Maury is an optometrist the pediatrician theorizes the tangled ******* is possibly the result of a hormone fertility drug Mom took to get pregnant the doctor injects Odysseus with a hormone shot then prescribes several medications to induce the ****** to drop nothing works eventually an inguinal hernia is diagnosed around the age of 9 Odysseus is operated on for a hernia and the ******* surgically moved down into his ******* the doctor says ******* is dead warning of propensity to cancer later in life his left ball is smaller than his right but it is more sensitive and needy he does not understand what the doctor means by “dead” Odysseus fears he will be made fun of he is self-conscious in locker room he does not comprehend for the rest of his life he will carry a diminutive *****



spokin alloud by readar in caulkknee axescent ello we’re Biggie an Smally tha 2 testicles whoooh liv in tha ******* of this felloh Odys Biggie is the soyze of a elthy chicken aegg and Smally is the size of a modest Bing cheery



one breast ****** points northeast the other smaller breast ****** points southwest she is frightened to reveal them to any man frightened to be exposed in woman’s locker room she is the most beautiful girl/woman he will ever know



Bayli Moutray is French/Irish 5’8” lean elongated with bowed legs knobby knees runner’s calves slim hips boy’s shoulders sleepy blue eyes light brown hair a barely discernable freckled birthmark on back of neck and small unequal ******* with puffy ******* pointing in different directions Laura an ex-girlfriend of Odysseus’s describes Bayli’s appearance as “a gangly bird screeching to be fed” Laura can be mean Odysseus thinks Bayli is the coolest girl in the world he is genuinely in love with her they have been sleeping together for nearly a year it is March 11 1974 Bayli’s birthday she turns 22 today Bayli is away with her family in Southeast Asia Odysseus understands what a great opportunity this is for her to learn about another culture he knows Bayli plans to meet up again with him in late summer or autumn in Chicago Dad wants Odysseus to follow in his footsteps and become a successful jewelry salesman he offers Odysseus a well-paying job driving leased Camaro across the Midwest servicing Dad’s established costume jewelry accounts Odysseus reasons it is a chance to squirrel away some cash until Bayli returns it is lonely on the road and awkward adjustment to be back in Chicago Odysseus made other plans after graduating from Hartford Art School he is going to be an important painter after numerous months and many Midwestern cities he begins to feel depressed he questions how Bayli can stay away for so long when he needs her so bad the Moutray’s send Mom and Dad a gift of elegant pewter candleholders made in Indonesia Mom accustomed to silver and gold excludes pewter to be put on display she instructs Teresa to place the candleholders away in a cabinet Mom also neglects to write a thank you note which is quite out of character for Mom Bayli’s father is a Navy Captain in the Pacific he is summoned to Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia the Moutray’s flight has a stopover in Chicago Bayli writes her parents want to meet Odysseus and his family Odysseus asks Dad to arrange his traveling itinerary around the Moutray’s visit Dad schedules Odysseus to service the Detroit and Michigan territory against Odysseus’s pleas Odysseus is living with his sister Penelope on Briar Street it is the only address Bayli’s parents know Odysseus has no way to reach them when the Moutray’s arrive at the door Penelope does not know what to tell them Mom and Dad are not interested in meeting Bayli’s parents it is not the first sign of dissatisfaction or disinterest Mom and Dad convey regarding Bayli Odysseus does not understand why his parents do not like her is it because Bayli is not Jewish is that the sole reason Mom and Dad do not approve of her Odysseus believes he needs his parent’s support he knows he is not like them and will likely never adopt their standards yet he values their consent they are his parents and he honors Mom and Dad let’s take a step back for a moment to get a different perspective a more serious matter is Odysseus’s financial dependency on his parents does a commitment to Bayli threaten the sheltered world his parent’s provide him is it merely money binding him to them why else is he so powerless to his parent’s control outwardly he appears a wild child yet inwardly he is somewhat timid is he cowardly is he unsure of Bayli’s strength and sustainability is that why he let’s Bayli go whatever the reason Dad’s and Mom’s pressure and influence are strong enough to sway his judgment he goes along with their authority losing Bayli is the greatest mistake of Odysseus’s life



he dreams Bayli and he are at a Bob Dylan concert they are hidden in the back of the theater in a dark hall they can hear the band playing Dylan’s voice singing and the echoes of the mesmerized audience Odysseus is ******* Bayli’s body against a wall she is quietly moaning his hand is inside her jeans feeling her wetness rubbing fingers between her legs after the show they hang around an empty lot filled with broken bottles loose bricks they run into Dylan all 3 are laughing and dancing down the sidewalk Dylan is incredibly playful and engaging he says he needs to run an errand not wanting to leave his company Odysseus and Bayli follow along they arrive at an old hospital building it is dark and dingy inside there is a large room filled with medical beds and water tanks housing unspeakably disfigured people swarming intravenous tubes attach the patients to oxygen equipment feed bags and monitoring machines Dylan moves between each victim like a compassionate ambassador Odysseus is freaking out the infirmary is too horrible to imagine he shields his eyes wanders away losing Bayli searching running frantically for a way out he wakes shivering and sweating the pillow is wet sheets twisted he gets up from the bed stares out window into the dark night he wonders where he lost Bayli



these winds of change let them come sailor home from sea hunter home from hill he who can create the worst terror is the greatest warrior

A key feature of invigoration is the enterprise of mapping the entire syntax of all relevant human language as measured by the gamut of applesauce that doesn’t sour and an in depth analysis of creative fiction and poetry for common cadence features in the linguistic enterprise of mapping the subroutines of complex articulation as etched by the fabric of genius intellects intertwined in a gamble with wits to try and create coded missives that entangle hypertrophy and enlarge the gamut of decryption in the universal rudiments of alchemy. This is based on depreciative and appreciative aspects of apperception that depend on visual cues and funding from a collaborative venture of universities to challenge people to zero-sum games or net positive games where teams collaborate to usher unconventional unchartered territory of classification beyond normal proclivities based on the lineaments of idiosyncrasy to pinpoint the provenance of ideation itself and unveil the mind at a bargain pittance for the eventual headway this could pave for the Department of Education to revert from froward to forward in their recalcitrance and insouciance with the current linguistic modalities of outstretched engraven hortoriginality trailblazing new modular seismotic waves and hotbeds for firebrands to debate and scholars to joust with in the jest of the cineaste metaphor and the rubricated rundles of rectiserial innovations in the taxonomy of devolved meaning relying on an inventive enterprise to galvanize a new jargon into prominence based primarily on guarded secrets of the trade that might unlock the primordial soup of verbal creativity while also probing detective apperception for a wide-ranging panoply of digested movies and beyond that a farsighted incumbent inclination to probe the calibration of numerical happenstance in estimate and in long-term theorization of taxed realty in the estate of guarded tegular relationships among the woven fabric of conceptual latticeworks pioneering in scope and analyzed rigorously in reward of discretion and furtive cryptology to untether the world from the apothegms of sloganeered piggybacks that swivel in sockets but enforce a reductive paradigm of obganiation of core themes reiterated hypnotically to traindeque entire generations into piebald thinking that overlooks the panorama for incident and incident for categorical generality when no such axiom can be the logical predicate of its antecedent conditions that spurn the traditional rote moot wernaggles of futility and inseminate crafty legerdemain of writhing contortion altering the specificity of revalorized meaning in the novel context. This instantiates that the consequence is always the consequence not only of its predicate but its successor by the very modalities of proven reversals and enantiodromias of sorts that revert in a reverse progression spatiotemporally to exact incident as antecedent of its own existence by the very fact of iteration and this map of the recursive cycles of consequences elapsed only because of their insertion in a predevoted matrix is the gnomic apothegm of a new frontier of advanced logic that assumes the impossible is only improbable if the possible can be proven impossible by reductive inversion of core precepts in the rigmarole of design that states for every orchestra of butterflies that echo is actually the incident of refraction that contaminated the first polyacoustic trace of amplified sources in space time to revert into primordial form but the reversion is only incurred upon the fixture of origination and beyond that point remains inscrutable because foreknowledge necessarily prevents accuracy in determining the spectrum of the cacophony or rhapsody of the echo dependent on the observer’s perspective: which is only fungible to the extent that the subliminal remains guarded by the protectors of the clepsammia and the recensed polarization of time. This transcendence of time transfixed on orbital gravitas and centripetal ****** initiates a promulgation of the swallock of a remanded entropy that works in swiveled contraposition to the dynamic flux of the internment of balkanized forces of demassification dampening the efficacy of the central butterfly actor to expand the ampitheater of its own audience to the extent that every cultural artifact can be mapped to the geotaxis of its conceptual orbit. Thereby we can prove that pivots of the obvious focal point peak in resurgence upon the heyday of retrieval but dampen into a logarithmic regression of decreasing amplitude fluctuating around the aleatory probability of insemination through the percolation of the widespread narrowed to a fulcrum that balances the orbit of the stellified narrative of ingemination that some artifacts like Stayin’ Alive achieve maximum geotaxis because of their centrality in the taxidermies of revived memory recapitulated by both virtuosity and valor and posing as consequences of future foresight clouded by preventive measures that one quaky spasm in alarm could paralyze the precedent to the incidence of the afflatus that galvanized the heyday of remonstrance so that we can affix a modular angular gravity to events as well as referents to those events in a spatiotemporal mapping of consequence reverted upon itself because of necessity that binds the taxemes of the subliminal in the architecture of a curvature of geotaxis that is centrobaric not necessarily to the contingencies that magnify the germane propositions that affix modern eyes but rather the overall stifling modularity of temporal sequence redoubled by manufacture and manufacture alone predevotes antecedents that trace to a pivot in space time curved without prescience beyond measure but precision enough to approximate the summation of collective cultural shifts away from the estrangement of diversion from itself as a balkanizing force into a collectivized unity that orbits eccentrically by the very nature of the parallax between gravitational pull and the dynamics of time itself centripetal but centrifugal simultaneously.  Both conditions must be met so the converse of meaning becomes the recapitulation of remontant blessings rather than pruned dry garbologies relevant only to margins of subculture minimized in heyday and scope but pinpointed with exact precision the dynamos that inhabit the sphere of the populated future defenestrated from the magnetism of the past by very definition. Thereby, we arrive at Back to the Future because the paradox of recensed calibration suggests the free fluctuation of time between the eccentricity of magnified lens distorted by the entropy of calculus to become the integral summation of the sinuous vacuum of a trigonometric balance that barks with amplification of synergistic elements of strings and quantum flux to emigrate from an origination to the mapping of the eventuality. This precisely explains the scene in Back to the Future with the amplifiers turned all the way up because by exaggerating the simplicity of the declassified it expedited cinema to its eventual intermediary conclusions heralded by that one event of transfixed mystery that binds spacetime into a coherent bidirection of multidimensional philosophy of the enantiodromias of sorts of the parallax among constellated events. Mapping the impact of funneled cartels that hegemonize regions of the geopolitical sphere explains the amplivagant effects of the refracturism of swallock and thereby seminal ideations can be traced to provenance of cowardice cloaked in excuse but incisive in the skullduggery of the mechanical reinvention of excuse and pretext as a cloak for more furtive workings of the intelligentsia to engineer time by deriving the precise tangential multidimensional syntax of the calculus of proliferation reviewed from a consequent perspective of a future unknowable gravitas fluctuating between states of annihilation and existence in the acatelpsy of design so that specters actually enforce more change than events and prospects magnify positive dimensional thrusts that galvanize prospectus emigrating from either distant knowns or parallel realities that converge on the optimum of either the hapless or calculated design of a synergistic development of social engineering so precisely mapped that it identifies trajectories of improbable events with increasing specificity at the alarm of the spectral realm promulgating wealth to the foreseeable compunction of science to revert to probable pivots of consensus manufactured by think tanks that outfox the syntalities that defy the system or piggyback on their very causes to empirically carve the spectrum of future possibility becoming entelechy desired or feared but always predestined or flanged into distortions of reification that are transformative of precision in design without exactitude in the terminus of the centrobaric chambers of all meaning. Thus the algorithm outsmarts itself until only the machination to dehumanize for prediction occurs at a pessimum of morality or an explosion of a proliferative new venture in unchartered territory conquers the novantique of novelty. The ampitheater of its own audience is the traction of embedded subculture in subroutine becoming a compound atocia that sterilizes opponent possibility and probabilizes the occurrence of endomorphs that resemble effigies of constellation primed to swivel in retrospection as a recurrent lapse of amplification upon the culmination of predestined time points or junctures specified within the realm of the matrix of possibilities to outstretch the realm into a dampened exponential explosion of self-reference becoming embedded consequence by conditioning and by anticipatory psychology working in preconcert to evoke the determinative impetus of momentum that magnifies the speed of acceleration in technology that depends on the propriety of reification itself that swarms us with evocative tempests that barnstorm in reiteration to recapitulate by design to engrave themselves on the collective psyches of the hortoriginality of many minds intrepid before me that transfigured reality in this precise contortion of terminology with variegations in the specificity of context and articulation of the clavigerous entropy of swallock and how the outfoxed design becomes that cage of destiny that is a baritone complexion of vibrant hues exploding into the trammeled paths that have elapsed before me by the first movers advantage of theoretical physics but nonetheless independently verified by dovetailed emergence of that centralized balance between design and destiny that is precedent to the antecedent of the consequence of the precedent’s consequence on the direct antecedent inflexion point upon which the provenance of momentum drifted into cultural psyche and enlarged the gamut of myth in the raillery of subaudition. Essentially Time only exists to those without the simultagnosia to appease a mirror parallax of universes upcoming and universes forestalled but pivot with omphalism on the gravitas of Einsteinian calculus that theorizes that the acatelpsy of enumerated prediction is a lapsed regress the pinpoints with the harpricks of specialization the regal momentum of time to its own behest to propagate the elucidated certainty of its own traversal to the expedited enumeration of the future which populates the past because the curvature of time is an entantiodromia of reflexive itinerant vagrancies that cement the authorship of events to warble through the tilted hypertrophy of design itself to maximize the freebooter avarice of those people that rely on the luxuriance of trespass to magnify the modular gravity of culture to forswink its compunction and regale its own recursive logic. Essentially Time is a mapped ampitheater that depends on an audience of sentience to enlarge its own gamut and because it is riddled with obscurantism of believable recursion it magnifies its own entropy in reversal to orchestrate events in a rectiserial convolution of the whipsaw between the expected and the foreknowledge of the knowing class because when shaky vacillatory politics prevail the behest of time looses its capitalization of the amplivagant affects of the marginalia that is wed to the devolved rudimentary rigmarole of proliferation scaffolds destiny in alternative configurations to fulminate with explosive progeny that latitude incumbent to those without perspicuous clarity to fathom the acatalepsy of the unfurled universe magnetized by the seminal tremendum of the moments memorialized by memory that provide the traction of time to supersede its own acceleration by the writ of the beneficence of the eccentric orbit of the brittle axioms of design to recense and revalorize the wilted transponders that refer to specific events where the space-time continuum was cleaved in divisive anticipation to balkanize the resistence to the fringe clavigerous amplification of the resonance of etiolation that marginalizes the dearth and amplifies the prospectus to make time supersolid beyond all reckoning to cement its captaincy as the algorithm of rhythmic gravitas orbiting the moribund fragmentary flictions of regimented truth to be at war with its own foresight. This is because foresight is a compulsion of time to recapitulate the foreknown deeds of the future to the regenerative hypothesis that hypostatizes that the transcendence of time is mirrored illusion because the future populates a region of space-time that is not forlorn but magnified in scope to reverse the trends of abomination and cast the aspersions of grandeur into eccentric orbit that by geotaxis foments the revolutionary impetus not of cancellation or nullification of the bereaved past but a culmination of deeds known only to the future that galvanize the very fruition of the dependent expectancy to become antecedent to the consequent by a warped form of recensed logic because the orbital sphere of considerations is tangential to the evocative memory of the memorialized statutes that prize their own entelechy above their divergence from design in such a peculiar way that obscurantism of the leaders of the world is manned by an alien presence to mendlatch the locked keys of a virtuouso future compounded in interest and destined for unfurled clarification. Time is an ironic boyg and quandary because for time to give birth to its own recapitulation it must be stammered with seismotic statutes that rip through the fabricated rudiments of predestination to enthrall the apostasy of the knowing from leverage over a future they vaguely see but provides largesse to the regimentation of design to rickety consternation that prediction is evocative of expectancy less than expectancy is its own geotaxis around the gamut of foreseen affairs that must be iterated rather than violated in order to maintain the mainlined integrity of the brittle fungible force of quantum dynamics to bypass the rigmarole of etched design to be evocative of a reverse transpondency that reconfigures the past into perfectible strings of amplification to anoint time its own behest at the formidable specters of its own violation by those who seek trepass but are predevoted out of ephorized control by the vicissitudes of the gamble and the frapplank of the known destiny catalyzing the unknown progeny. By that very definition this could not be obrogated in tenure or tutelage over the past because the elapsed gravitas of the known past depends on the pivot of the ampitheater of the future to ambitious reckoning that provides absolution to its forlorn vestiges to cement the centrifugal impetus of many from exact foreknowledge.  Many pioneers have probably theorized similar hypostasized concepts but the fact that even without a degree in physics I understand these arcane precepts yet tested by the rigmarole of comprehensive known experiment is a testament to the power of hortoriginality to pave the trailblazer focus on the rivets of a rickety secrecy designated by definiens of abstruse taxemes of yet defined meaning. The primary quandary is the isolated pretext of predevoted sequencing that abandons me (and this is central to my theory) from the weather of meaningful social encounter in order to hone in with precision on the empirical enterprise of seminal regress cemented as ceremonial progress and only by vaulting above this cage of finicky predestination can entelechy that desires rapprochement can be achieved because eventually the relevance of my ideas can be shelved and the peremptory obligation of intervention must be deployed to salvage my parable into completion. The itch for the government to anticipate the universe’s localized traction delimits the sphere of social indoctrination to a reality amenable not to the coercion of precise anticipation but the gamble on vagary to produce more seminal events that compound the amplivagant effects of ecumenical exhaustive troponders to the extent they flourish beyond the bounds of completion and into optimal conditions that is whipsawed by the demands of the rigmarole of precise definition of all trajectories conclave in their logarithmic design  anticipated by designation but not predevoted into futility because that capstone would reduce the proliferative affect of space time to carve a more extravagant reality that tests limits beyond frontiers of expectancy. The brain is highly malleable and entity theorists are moribund in their defenses of trite hackneyed racial arguments about intellect. The mythos preserves that radical ethos that prediction of my insights supersedes the importance of my rapprochement which will amplify the effects of the spatiotemporal mapping in a much more profound way with specialized focus. Thereby when we conceive of time we must specialize in inhabiting the sphere of acatalepsy of flanged prediction preventing the abortion of the future based on the vagrancies of the gyrovagues and bibliopolists seeking to demolish the fruition of the ribald coarse albatrosses of the future to diminutive leverage rather than amplifying the stringed syndication of knowledge to eccentrically stellify the unknown regions of the populated presence contingent on the populated future which ensures the eternal life of all by some formant boundaries of the universe because what is recapitulated in the lapse of certainty known by the anticipatory vagary of a riddled rigmarole of complex dynamism this thermodynamically reversible into the reversal of entropy because the organization of the past hinges upon the reconfiguration of the future and thereby we swivel endlessly with recursive iterations of evanescence that spoon-feed the generations among us to truckle beneath the cartels that array spatiotemporal mappings into their personal optimum to catapult the granular edification of all deeds beyond their forsifamiliation from their provenance gamboling with the distant frescade of a known destiny cavorting with the meddlesome reconnaissance of all that is observed and the tribunes magnify this effect by centralizing the bronteums of fulgurant strikes to be localized to a centralized pivot of universal acclaim that provides felicity for the ecumenical endeavor

...
I was born into this shadow of beauty we call the American dream, but I was raised in foreign silhouettes. The same exact silhouettes that raised my mother. My first memories were of her forest gods and alpine stories that have taught me how to write spiderwebs into the hearts of the miserable so my words could hold them together. My deadushka's magic could turn monsters into swans with a wink because his love was so contagious. My babushka's, on the other hand, showed me how to howl like darkness so even the wolves would know silence. I was born as spilled as it comes; as ink.  I now understand what tragedies look like at first;  ("Blessings")

As my mother picks her way across a war with me in her arms, the world catcalls that I am a half-blood puppet. The daughter with Russian strings and American footsteps. I arrive in America where I am reminded I belong here, but that was the first lie that my mother ever fed to me. To this day, it still tastes like expired love.

As my father spent all his kindness on me in the earliest years of my life I was given an English tongue and it bullied my Russian one into suicide. That is the only thing my father ever planted in me that he wanted to grow. Those seeds of words I would later bear fruit as ripe poetry.  Those fruit of the novels I will someday write as fiction into flesh. However, what is written beneath our skin doesn't necessarily always fit in our mouths. My father's greatest mistake was beating me into a ghost, but giving me the power to write about his hauntings.  His abuse moves into our house shortly after he realizes I am a tragedy, not a blessing.

As I write myself into the moon one day I will become, I meet a boy who's laughter makes all the planets look dull.  We learn to not walk like apologies, but like young legends. He was my first real taste of sunlight since I was brought here, and he spoke heaven into my eyes until I saw it. We loved each other like Peter Pan and Wendy did; deeply, cluelessly, and forever. Our immortality was a toy in the eyes of those who envied us. Yet he summoned the fires we should have feared as kids, but instead we stared into them and smiled. We were happy, and we were never sorry for that.

April 3rd, 2007. He died. That was the day I was old enough to grow out of a blessing and into the clothes of a tragedy. That was the day the heaven spilled from my eyes like the great flood and went with him. My mother theorizes that is why my eyes aren't as blue as hers anymore. The sounds of bullets hitting bodies today, even ten years later, between then and long ago, has the power to create painful afterimages of him. The post traumatic stress unfastens my blood from my my body and the poetry reacts by shutting me down all at once. Death asks me to write a spiderweb into his own heart, but I refuse.

I adopted grief into my family and he got along with abuse pretty well. To survive, I've left the nostalgia of that boy to hibernate deep in my bones.

Today is April 3rd, 2017.  I stand before a headstone that exists only sometimes in my head. I kneel before it and leave the skeleton of my love like a bouquet of roses. The shadows and silhouettes align, and I hold hands with both of them.

I weep as the odes of "it's not your fault" fall onto my ears like they do every year. From friends, lovers, and family. They mean well. Who knows, maybe someday I will have what it takes to believe them.

But he never grew up, so guilt still ***** it's wings here.

---"Sermons with a colorblind priest."

It's another year coming to a close -

A time to give and sit around
Talking about all the wonders

Unexpected, and crossed fingers for - alike

A new box we now have filled
With brand new moments
And snapshots of memories
Nights we danced like crazy
And those we spent staying up talking, far crazier
Dreaming and stretching out our fingers

To grasp the distant future
And hold the best of new days close

A whole new box of all wonders
And reminders of when we were most human

To open and sift through, picking apart

And piecing together the parts
Of our lives and holding on
To the fewest, the brightest
And those we can't live without
On the bleakest of days and the longest of nights

For all we have is this firecracker of a life
The last five seconds between

Lighting and setting off
And on to the explosion we become

We've spent our years sitting and holding on
To one last glimmer of hope

A slow burn, simmering

Almost never going off

And right before we've all but given up
We're taken aback
By the loud crack and the dancing of lights,
Falling embers and exposing new dimensions

Now there is more to discover
Time to spend
And create
The next great adventure,

A hopeful new year, lasting long and
Filled with sights and stories

Two in the morning worries sitting on the roof,
Long swigs and watching the faint trail of smoke

Days for searching and nights spent answering
Questions that make up an existence
And those that give life

To the new year
And how it posits,
Theorizes all three sixty five new ways
The odds are fought, not so much as even defied

But goes down among storied days
It remains and awaits

With the grace of kind hearts and warm cheer
To be remembered and placed

On the footnotes and small scraps
Of history and the infinite loop

Of memories that together, create.