PASSION PLAY

Ayad Gharbawi




Location: Desert Shore, Bitterly Cold Night, next to strong waves from the ocean.
Characters: Man ((M) and his Lover, a Woman (W).

----------------------------------------


W: “Search as I forever do, in manifold ways unknown, I seek but to love thee, and the meagre goodness from Life, with steely ardour - my armour faithful.”
M: “Alone I may be, and still, yes I love thee; these days heavy are and beset I am by burdensome trivialities, but I remain trusting, though my corner so narrow remain.”
W: “My Love! Your speech I hear aloud and thine lips I live within and yet, my Love, all Solitude I am. Man! I am unaided! In this journey of sinful thorns, my love, in this unforgiving journey, this blurred odyssey, I stand alone”.
M: “This trial you speak of, but I do know of it well; so, listen then: within the strength of trusted togetherness we can plough on, though everlasting harm shall do its spiteful tricks, warm to our united truth shall we remain.”
W: (Surprised) “O! My love! This thought I cannot hear! My life, my destiny, is but mine. And all have their own solitary roads of jagged rocks to embrace, like it we or not. We heartbreaking earthly sad beasts, either fiercely clutch at integrity, or we do let it go to perish away.”
M: (Confused) “My Love! I do hear, I do hear. But when Times decide on burdening us, what then can we achieve? To face Reality within the frail arms of solitude is to ignore, to refuse the severe threats of repulsive grins.”
(Silence)
M: (Passionately) “O! My sweet! Only in us, can we envelope, through joined, clasped warmth can we be as one united! The screams that so truly are meant to slice us off, only we, our Unity, can destroy. For mine eyes can only find sleep in your ears, and it is so - for otherwise nothing and no one can be.”
W: (Angry) “My Passion too is bubbling for thine bewildered ears. Am I not your soul? Do we not suffer as one? Do we not reflect as one? Am I not your lover true? Is not our warmth not weighty to our fickle bones?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “But, Lover, this much ought I to formally declare unto thee: For our eyes, and all eyes, envision unequally at one another. Till eternity, in its casual, indifferent flicker, snatches at us all wretched mortals, the gazes from lords to paupers remain veritably mismatched. O my passion! My woeful heart! These words I thunder forth defines love unfeigned, and what mine eyes do pour out unto thine ears is authenticity true.
(Silence)
W: (Passionately) “What joined mem’ries you choose to caress may possess thee, but your exactness for what love is to you, doth not dwell in mine mind. What tears, what weepings you do, fall stormily upon thine own soul’s wildernesses. You choose to be chained by changing visions and indefinite sentiments of light weight – though so poignant at the moment they veritably are?”
M: (Inquiring) “My love! I cherish thee; where hast thou been in thine mind, for now ye talk of that truth you relate to in your heart. Your pronouncements, what depths I do feel! Can it perchance be that my passion has strayed our winds far from me?”
W: “No, my love! Why is anger, I feel, lush on thine tongue?”
M: (Surprised and Frightened) “Anger! I am too distant from that affliction! But yes, I feel my words make only for unstable murmurs in my breath.”
W: (Quietly) “Then, do tell me, lover, who do your murmurs betray - myself or yourself then?”
M: (Quietly) “Perhaps so, perhaps so. But my anxiety wilfully demands of me to eradicate your vision.”
W: (Firmly) “You answer naught from my undemanding question. Or, are mine meanings too violent for you? What aches thee?”
M: (Passionately) “My sweet! In so many moments, I created mysterious planets for thee! Bizarre worlds of contrasts and opposites and musical words of antiquity and sensual ravines. My love! I, my soul, my life, my inner deepest breath, tempted as I am by Fates’ inscrutable cruelties to ashamedly yield, I have yet always expressed to mine eyes’ heart, though they be in bleak darkness, to faithfully fight without pause all shades of vice and still yet - with loving integrity; I have stood with arms of righteousness and love for thee up and never down! Yes, sincere good and venal ill remain joined in life for all to feel, but you knew it was not for me to disentangle them. And so, I pronounce unto thee, still, and yet ever and ever more, my love for thee, though still beholding a thousand mountains before me, I remain sturdy for thee; I remain undisturbed by burly laws, and by exotic dictums, I stand fierce and unhurt, save in your absence.”
W: (With Sadness) “My beloved, your vivid voice stabs the falsehoods for thee, and I say unto thee, unto thee your excessive and unreasonable chains, and for myself my unreasonable and extreme chains remain.”
M: (Shocked) “But I burden thee with no steely chains, nor verbal fetters! For naught I produce for thee save grace, passion and freedom to love for us both to be in Unity Sacred! Dost thou embrace my visions as ‘shackles’, then ‘tis better we agree to class that which we are as but madness! Hear me, for my tears now must truly change their colours!”
W: (Determined) “Your feverish hands clutch only upon mine erratic wings!”
M: (Anger) “Never! Never! For I clutch only to destroy all malevolence; as for thee, Lady of the purest, untouched, guarded, secluded Ponds, I seek to unshackle for you the scattered, scared shadows that yearn for thine sovereignty. And what is this ‘sovereignty’ but our Sacred Union? What curse deemest you I impose? Do you equal my purest passions with atrocities? Murmur unto mine ears, your clearest love for me.”
W: “Ah! You enquire of me my ‘sincerity’ for thee? What demands!”
(Silence)
M: “I see naught but heaving forests of love betwixt us, and yet, you discover my words being ‘demanding’?”
W: (Drily) “Perchance, your visions are indistinct and ever more blurred, through these years cannot be ignored.”
M: (Begging) “My love! All mine life, though it be lengthy, I fought most venal tyranny, and for this moment, you question my righteousness?”
W: (Indignantly) “I have been plunged into seas hostile and I have plunged in a thousand miles of inert minds troubled beyond conceivable comprehension and I have yet to have my Right for my own greedy, ravenous flesh to be vigorously and forcefully embraced by sensuality and serenity. Yes, I do love thee, and yet in our union, as in all unions, I have been adorned with naught, save snickering, gossiping scenes of festive *****, games, chatter and farewells, themselves festooned within silly and sincerely stupid smiles and frowns, and shallow tears and never ending ludicrous chatter unworthy of monkeys conversing. I have met programmed rows of pats, respect and all other so-called decent intents and gestures, but, where, lover that you are of mine, where does my personal heart, throb and manically vibrate, save in your heavenly imaginations?”
(Silence)
W: (Quietly but Determinedly) “My love! I truly thee love and with passions, I tell you, of proportions of precise exactitudes; in your eyes I have witnessed symphonies of exquisiteness; and, I of thee ask: where dwelleth your own love for myself in thine body?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “Do you recognise the changing structures that form this, that I name ‘My Love’? In my solitude eternal, I do evermore and always do pause, and be pensive, and be thinking of questions, such as ‘where’, ‘why’, ‘when’ ‘how’, and ‘which’ should be my path; I am forever and ever more searching, seeking the heavens of every corner, and the irritable tempests, within my changing self as they themselves do try to seek me, and we forever, through inconceivable murkiness, do try to assemble the everlasting entirety of these disorganized puzzles into some measure of comprehensible cohesion that ‘I’ am. That is how the ‘I’ you love is forever changing and thereby formulating itself, and within all these meandering passions, and endless errors, where am I to feel thee? Where? And where do you seek me? In which land? In which forest? You trivialise my beingness as you focus upon my lands as being that which so effortless to find, and yet, you are much too distant from an understanding of my conflicting, emerging civilisations.”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) If the utterance ‘Never’ is pathetic for thee, then allow me to introduce you to my latest heart: for it screams out that single, protracted utterance! Never! My love, these winds of raging wraths, both within and outside by flesh, must and can only be annihilated by mine own sincerities – were I not to play against my own self. My uncontrolled desires and, yes, thirsty manic passions can only be tempered and thoroughly satiated to the utter brim, by mine own loving, sources of pleasure, my own uncontrollable ecstasies. As for the rest of ****** pleasures, my own erroneous words, speeches and utterances can only be severed and sliced by my tranquillity.”
M: (Resigned) “I hear thine words. Do not abandon me. Do not destroy our civilisation of justice.”
W: “What we share, the bonds, are enjoyment. Listen though to mine lips: enjoyment is what - when it is to be compared with convulsive ecstatic quivers of satisfaction?”
M: (Puzzled) “And what of all our journeys to attain that unity? For all that, is it to be of mere insignificance? And if that be your truth, for what then did we toil and labour for unity of minds and bodies?”
W: (Laughing) “Did you understand from Life itself, that here it was, grandly to proclaim its furtive faces unto thine own awaiting face?! “
M: (Baffled) “It was so far too plain and vastly clear unto me these sceneries we faced before our loving bodies.”
W: “Yes, and I too, did see them with thee. Our four eyes, did see unity for that flicker of time. How true you speak! But, time clocked on, I saw you as you stood there, moving nowhere, unawares that it was your duty to squash onwards whatever vile breaths faced us.”
M: (Desperate) “And did I not? Did I abandon thee in these crushing paths?”
W: (Accusing) “No, you did not. Never, once did you abandon me. I ask of thee; for what sense do we feel a need for a continuation of these gruelling marches? For unity? For love? Or, is love unity? Was that and is this our reason for us to carry on with these shackles?”
M: “For assuredly, yes, and more yes, I tell thee! Toil and gruelling dawns, and unbearable evenings and the whitest of nights are all for the sacred attainment of that heavenly summit of joy I name as blessed ‘Love’.”
W: (Assured) “And, Sire, what if my nerves, blood and ****** hunger tell thee in truth that we, all of us, need no longer, and need never in truth, to undertake these paths, for we find naught that nourishes us at the blessed summit of your definition of what ‘Love’ is?”
M: (Confused & Sad) “So, I falter here and now upon understanding your speech; do I reason from thee that our loving days in unity are frivolously bygone now?”
W: (Calmly & Gracefully) “Do the wandering birds, and do the blind bats, and do the reckless storms, and do the blindly, raging waves and do the supremely arrogant oceans eternally march on in but one direction only with the savage passage of time within their particular lives? You did pronounce that you built planets for our unity; well then, did you not view how planets endlessly revolve along the same path?”
(Pause)
W: (Calmly & with Dignity) “For, Sire, I am not as a Planet - could you not feel that throughout our journeys? You endlessly query and question ‘who’ it is that ‘I’ am? Well, I speak this much on myself; I am as the birds, and the bats, and the storms and the waves and the oceans.”  
M: (Angry) “Woman! I can only then tell of thee that you are naught but feuding clutter and violent disarray!”
W: (Unconcerned) “Those are your words. Not mine. Speak for what you wish, Sire.”
M: (Angry) “And I stand here, before thee, in anger – nay, more, more! In fury!”
W: (Laughing) “For what? For the deeds that created but sticky, and grimy grains of sand for the undoubted pleasure our eyes?”
M: “And so you label our truths, our love so much! Fair indeed, you speak, Woman of Justice.”
W: (Arrogantly) “Man! Express your delights for your own delights. And, alas, there the circle and reality ends – and it ends only for you. That is one morsel of truth for you to ponder. What we ‘created’ and what we ‘loved’ was never and never, ever be the same for you as it is for me. Are you a sincere believer that your personal vision is the same sight all other seeing creatures envision?”
M: (Angry) “Woman, you enrage me! Your arrogance is drenching thine rags.”
W: (Sarcastic) “Tis the Man with no reason who allows his breath and words to be a veritable cesspool of fuming stenches!”
M: “But I, that I am, no longer can define your contours?”
W: (Pointedly) “Precisely, Man, precisely. Perhaps, now you have come closer to the vulnerable shores of reality!”
M: (Confused) “Do you express that you are ever varying and so for that reason there is not a one unified you?”
W: (Calmly) “For we are all ‘varying’, to borrow your word – if you do so allow me, Sire. There was never ‘unity’ of soul, nor mind, nor self, nor of any one personality. This, I desire, that you may understand.”
M: (Aghast) “Then if that be your truth and then, are we naught but multitudes of ever changing confusions, Lady of the Desert?”
W: (Calmly) “Yes and no! For those who are muscular and full of fertile vigour in their flesh, and in their intellects, and those that are severely and strictly scholastic, then they do need and they can succeed in time, in their never ending struggle to bring together the mutually antagonistic factions of that which constitutes our beingness. And, as for the dense brained soulless beings, then, it is equally veritably true that, a descent into madness can be rapidly produced, since from their erratic constituents, they cannot attract together these antagonistic and mutually-hating emotions in some vision of cohesion, and thus mayhem can be fashioned.”
(Silence)
M: (Calmly) “So, pray do tell me, where does Love and Justice and Truth and Morality stand in your universe?”
W: (Serenely) “That has been mine desire to hear the words being produced from your lips, Man!”
(Pause)
W: “So, now perhaps, your sight may be getting clearer, for your question is certainly apt. Foremost, we pathetic mortals, we the be are forever slimy specks of sand that  crumbles, must necessarily seek to survive and flourish within whatever forest, desert, meadow we find ourselves cast upon.”
M: (Startled) “At what cost, Woman? At the expense of Morality?”
W: (Rapidly) “Yes and no.”
M: (Shocked) “Horrendous! How can you spout out such filth?”
W: (Quietly) “Restrain your stupidities, and give more room to your intelligence, Sire.”
(Silence)
W: (Gracefully) “In times of trouble, what can Man do when he be forced to embrace evil, even though he finds the act of the embrace loathsome, but he does what he does for the truth of his vital existence to continue. Only when he need never embrace vile, and then allows himself to commit the act, then he is for certainty to incur the everlasting wrath of God. Evil is thus never one truth to be utterly rejected, perchance you may now see. ”
M: (Calm but Tired) “I follow your words and their ideas therein.”
W: (Gracefully) “When you talk to me on Man and everlasting, conflicting changes within that self-same creature, I tell you with all the earnestness that I possess, of what God has scattered and endowed upon me; for this beast, we all call in unity Man, this creature has far too many a numberless number of mutually self-contradicting, distrusting, loving, hating, inspiring and a never ending number of feelings and emotions that are in constant flow and change – as in any rapid river descending unto its eventual destination, which in its case, is the sea, while in our case, it is Death itself for sure.”
M: (Despair) “And how can this beast ‘love’ anyone within this welter of confusion?”
W: (Rapidly) “He cannot!”
M: (Rapidly, Begging) “But Man and Woman do love with bristling passions! Do you deny that, Woman?!”
W: (Calmly, eyes downwards looking) “Yes, and no. Since the beast has needs, based on his vastly intricate constituents, to ‘love’ his fellow beast, he imagines and believes

PASSION PLAY

Ayad Gharbawi




Location: Desert Shore, Bitterly Cold Night, next to strong waves from the ocean.
Characters: Man ((M) and his Lover, a Woman (W).

----------------------------------------



W: “Search as I forever do, in manifold ways unknown, I seek but to love thee, and the meagre goodness from Life, with steely ardour - my armour faithful.”
M: “Alone I may be, and still, yes I love thee; these days heavy are and beset I am by burdensome trivialities, but I remain trusting, though my corner so narrow remain.”
W: “My Love! Your speech I hear aloud and thine lips I live within and yet, my Love, all Solitude I am. Man! I am unaided! In this journey of sinful thorns, my love, in this unforgiving journey, this blurred odyssey, I stand alone”.
M: “This trial you speak of, but I do know of it well; so, listen then: within the strength of trusted togetherness we can plough on, though everlasting harm shall do its spiteful tricks, warm to our united truth shall we remain.”
W: (Surprised) “O! My love! This thought I cannot hear! My life, my destiny, is but mine. And all have their own solitary roads of jagged rocks to embrace, like it we or not. We heartbreaking earthly sad beasts, either fiercely clutch at integrity, or we do let it go to perish away.”
M: (Confused) “My Love! I do hear, I do hear. But when Times decide on burdening us, what then can we achieve? To face Reality within the frail arms of solitude is to ignore, to refuse the severe threats of repulsive grins.”
(Silence)
M: (Passionately) “O! My sweet! Only in us, can we envelope, through joined, clasped warmth can we be as one united! The screams that so truly are meant to slice us off, only we, our Unity, can destroy. For mine eyes can only find sleep in your ears, and it is so - for otherwise nothing and no one can be.”
W: (Angry) “My Passion too is bubbling for thine bewildered ears. Am I not your soul? Do we not suffer as one? Do we not reflect as one? Am I not your lover true? Is not our warmth not weighty to our fickle bones?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “But, Lover, this much ought I to formally declare unto thee: For our eyes, and all eyes, envision unequally at one another. Till eternity, in its casual, indifferent flicker, snatches at us all wretched mortals, the gazes from lords to paupers remain veritably mismatched. O my passion! My woeful heart! These words I thunder forth defines love unfeigned, and what mine eyes do pour out unto thine ears is authenticity true.
(Silence)
W: (Passionately) “What joined mem’ries you choose to caress may possess thee, but your exactness for what love is to you, doth not dwell in mine mind. What tears, what weepings you do, fall stormily upon thine own soul’s wildernesses. You choose to be chained by changing visions and indefinite sentiments of light weight – though so poignant at the moment they veritably are?”
M: (Inquiring) “My love! I cherish thee; where hast thou been in thine mind, for now ye talk of that truth you relate to in your heart. Your pronouncements, what depths I do feel! Can it perchance be that my passion has strayed our winds far from me?”
W: “No, my love! Why is anger, I feel, lush on thine tongue?”
M: (Surprised and Frightened) “Anger! I am too distant from that affliction! But yes, I feel my words make only for unstable murmurs in my breath.”
W: (Quietly) “Then, do tell me, lover, who do your murmurs betray - myself or yourself then?”
M: (Quietly) “Perhaps so, perhaps so. But my anxiety wilfully demands of me to eradicate your vision.”
W: (Firmly) “You answer naught from my undemanding question. Or, are mine meanings too violent for you? What aches thee?”
M: (Passionately) “My sweet! In so many moments, I created mysterious planets for thee! Bizarre worlds of contrasts and opposites and musical words of antiquity and sensual ravines. My love! I, my soul, my life, my inner deepest breath, tempted as I am by Fates’ inscrutable cruelties to ashamedly yield, I have yet always expressed to mine eyes’ heart, though they be in bleak darkness, to faithfully fight without pause all shades of vice and still yet - with loving integrity; I have stood with arms of righteousness and love for thee up and never down! Yes, sincere good and venal ill remain joined in life for all to feel, but you knew it was not for me to disentangle them. And so, I pronounce unto thee, still, and yet ever and ever more, my love for thee, though still beholding a thousand mountains before me, I remain sturdy for thee; I remain undisturbed by burly laws, and by exotic dictums, I stand fierce and unhurt, save in your absence.”
W: (With Sadness) “My beloved, your vivid voice stabs the falsehoods for thee, and I say unto thee, unto thee your excessive and unreasonable chains, and for myself my unreasonable and extreme chains remain.”
M: (Shocked) “But I burden thee with no steely chains, nor verbal fetters! For naught I produce for thee save grace, passion and freedom to love for us both to be in Unity Sacred! Dost thou embrace my visions as ‘shackles’, then ‘tis better we agree to class that which we are as but madness! Hear me, for my tears now must truly change their colours!”
W: (Determined) “Your feverish hands clutch only upon mine erratic wings!”
M: (Anger) “Never! Never! For I clutch only to destroy all malevolence; as for thee, Lady of the purest, untouched, guarded, secluded Ponds, I seek to unshackle for you the scattered, scared shadows that yearn for thine sovereignty. And what is this ‘sovereignty’ but our Sacred Union? What curse deemest you I impose? Do you equal my purest passions with atrocities? Murmur unto mine ears, your clearest love for me.”
W: “Ah! You enquire of me my ‘sincerity’ for thee? What demands!”
(Silence)
M: “I see naught but heaving forests of love betwixt us, and yet, you discover my words being ‘demanding’?”
W: (Drily) “Perchance, your visions are indistinct and ever more blurred, through these years cannot be ignored.”
M: (Begging) “My love! All mine life, though it be lengthy, I fought most venal tyranny, and for this moment, you question my righteousness?”
W: (Indignantly) “I have been plunged into seas hostile and I have plunged in a thousand miles of inert minds troubled beyond conceivable comprehension and I have yet to have my Right for my own greedy, ravenous flesh to be vigorously and forcefully embraced by sensuality and serenity. Yes, I do love thee, and yet in our union, as in all unions, I have been adorned with naught, save snickering, gossiping scenes of festive *****, games, chatter and farewells, themselves festooned within silly and sincerely stupid smiles and frowns, and shallow tears and never ending ludicrous chatter unworthy of monkeys conversing. I have met programmed rows of pats, respect and all other so-called decent intents and gestures, but, where, lover that you are of mine, where does my personal heart, throb and manically vibrate, save in your heavenly imaginations?”
(Silence)
W: (Quietly but Determinedly) “My love! I truly thee love and with passions, I tell you, of proportions of precise exactitudes; in your eyes I have witnessed symphonies of exquisiteness; and, I of thee ask: where dwelleth your own love for myself in thine body?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “Do you recognise the changing structures that form this, that I name ‘My Love’? In my solitude eternal, I do evermore and always do pause, and be pensive, and be thinking of questions, such as ‘where’, ‘why’, ‘when’ ‘how’, and ‘which’ should be my path; I am forever and ever more searching, seeking the heavens of every corner, and the irritable tempests, within my changing self as they themselves do try to seek me, and we forever, through inconceivable murkiness, do try to assemble the everlasting entirety of these disorganized puzzles into some measure of comprehensible cohesion that ‘I’ am. That is how the ‘I’ you love is forever changing and thereby formulating itself, and within all these meandering passions, and endless errors, where am I to feel thee? Where? And where do you seek me? In which land? In which forest? You trivialise my beingness as you focus upon my lands as being that which so effortless to find, and yet, you are much too distant from an understanding of my conflicting, emerging civilisations.”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) If the utterance ‘Never’ is pathetic for thee, then allow me to introduce you to my latest heart: for it screams out that single, protracted utterance! Never! My love, these winds of raging wraths, both within and outside by flesh, must and can only be annihilated by mine own sincerities – were I not to play against my own self. My uncontrolled desires and, yes, thirsty manic passions can only be tempered and thoroughly satiated to the utter brim, by mine own loving, sources of pleasure, my own uncontrollable ecstasies. As for the rest of ****** pleasures, my own erroneous words, speeches and utterances can only be severed and sliced by my tranquillity.”
M: (Resigned) “I hear thine words. Do not abandon me. Do not destroy our civilisation of justice.”
W: “What we share, the bonds, are enjoyment. Listen though to mine lips: enjoyment is what - when it is to be compared with convulsive ecstatic quivers of satisfaction?”
M: (Puzzled) “And what of all our journeys to attain that unity? For all that, is it to be of mere insignificance? And if that be your truth, for what then did we toil and labour for unity of minds and bodies?”
W: (Laughing) “Did you understand from Life itself, that here it was, grandly to proclaim its furtive faces unto thine own awaiting face?! “
M: (Baffled) “It was so far too plain and vastly clear unto me these sceneries we faced before our loving bodies.”
W: “Yes, and I too, did see them with thee. Our four eyes, did see unity for that flicker of time. How true you speak! But, time clocked on, I saw you as you stood there, moving nowhere, unawares that it was your duty to squash onwards whatever vile breaths faced us.”
M: (Desperate) “And did I not? Did I abandon thee in these crushing paths?”
W: (Accusing) “No, you did not. Never, once did you abandon me. I ask of thee; for what sense do we feel a need for a continuation of these gruelling marches? For unity? For love? Or, is love unity? Was that and is this our reason for us to carry on with these shackles?”
M: “For assuredly, yes, and more yes, I tell thee! Toil and gruelling dawns, and unbearable evenings and the whitest of nights are all for the sacred attainment of that heavenly summit of joy I name as blessed ‘Love’.”
W: (Assured) “And, Sire, what if my nerves, blood and ****** hunger tell thee in truth that we, all of us, need no longer, and need never in truth, to undertake these paths, for we find naught that nourishes us at the blessed summit of your definition of what ‘Love’ is?”
M: (Confused & Sad) “So, I falter here and now upon understanding your speech; do I reason from thee that our loving days in unity are frivolously bygone now?”
W: (Calmly & Gracefully) “Do the wandering birds, and do the blind bats, and do the reckless storms, and do the blindly, raging waves and do the supremely arrogant oceans eternally march on in but one direction only with the savage passage of time within their particular lives? You did pronounce that you built planets for our unity; well then, did you not view how planets endlessly revolve along the same path?”
(Pause)
W: (Calmly & with Dignity) “For, Sire, I am not as a Planet - could you not feel that throughout our journeys? You endlessly query and question ‘who’ it is that ‘I’ am? Well, I speak this much on myself; I am as the birds, and the bats, and the storms and the waves and the oceans.”  
M: (Angry) “Woman! I can only then tell of thee that you are naught but feuding clutter and violent disarray!”
W: (Unconcerned) “Those are your words. Not mine. Speak for what you wish, Sire.”
M: (Angry) “And I stand here, before thee, in anger – nay, more, more! In fury!”
W: (Laughing) “For what? For the deeds that created but sticky, and grimy grains of sand for the undoubted pleasure our eyes?”
M: “And so you label our truths, our love so much! Fair indeed, you speak, Woman of Justice.”
W: (Arrogantly) “Man! Express your delights for your own delights. And, alas, there the circle and reality ends – and it ends only for you. That is one morsel of truth for you to ponder. What we ‘created’ and what we ‘loved’ was never and never, ever be the same for you as it is for me. Are you a sincere believer that your personal vision is the same sight all other seeing creatures envision?”
M: (Angry) “Woman, you enrage me! Your arrogance is drenching thine rags.”
W: (Sarcastic) “Tis the Man with no reason who allows his breath and words to be a veritable cesspool of fuming stenches!”
M: “But I, that I am, no longer can define your contours?”
W: (Pointedly) “Precisely, Man, precisely. Perhaps, now you have come closer to the vulnerable shores of reality!”
M: (Confused) “Do you express that you are ever varying and so for that reason there is not a one unified you?”
W: (Calmly) “For we are all ‘varying’, to borrow your word – if you do so allow me, Sire. There was never ‘unity’ of soul, nor mind, nor self, nor of any one personality. This, I desire, that you may understand.”
M: (Aghast) “Then if that be your truth and then, are we naught but multitudes of ever changing confusions, Lady of the Desert?”
W: (Calmly) “Yes and no! For those who are muscular and full of fertile vigour in their flesh, and in their intellects, and those that are severely and strictly scholastic, then they do need and they can succeed in time, in their never ending struggle to bring together the mutually antagonistic factions of that which constitutes our beingness. And, as for the dense brained soulless beings, then, it is equally veritably true that, a descent into madness can be rapidly produced, since from their erratic constituents, they cannot attract together these antagonistic and mutually-hating emotions in some vision of cohesion, and thus mayhem can be fashioned.”
(Silence)
M: (Calmly) “So, pray do tell me, where does Love and Justice and Truth and Morality stand in your universe?”
W: (Serenely) “That has been mine desire to hear the words being produced from your lips, Man!”
(Pause)
W: “So, now perhaps, your sight may be getting clearer, for your question is certainly apt. Foremost, we pathetic mortals, we the be are forever slimy specks of sand that  crumbles, must necessarily seek to survive and flourish within whatever forest, desert, meadow we find ourselves cast upon.”
M: (Startled) “At what cost, Woman? At the expense of Morality?”
W: (Rapidly) “Yes and no.”
M: (Shocked) “Horrendous! How can you spout out such filth?”
W: (Quietly) “Restrain your stupidities, and give more room to your intelligence, Sire.”
(Silence)
W: (Gracefully) “In times of trouble, what can Man do when he be forced to embrace evil, even though he finds the act of the embrace loathsome, but he does what he does for the truth of his vital existence to continue. Only when he need never embrace vile, and then allows himself to commit the act, then he is for certainty to incur the everlasting wrath of God. Evil is thus never one truth to be utterly rejected, perchance you may now see. ”
M: (Calm but Tired) “I follow your words and their ideas therein.”
W: (Gracefully) “When you talk to me on Man and everlasting, conflicting changes within that self-same creature, I tell you with all the earnestness that I possess, of what God has scattered and endowed upon me; for this beast, we all call in unity Man, this creature has far too many a numberless number of mutually self-contradicting, distrusting, loving, hating, inspiring and a never ending number of feelings and emotions that are in constant flow and change – as in any rapid river descending unto its eventual destination, which in its case, is the sea, while in our case, it is Death itself for sure.”
M: (Despair) “And how can this beast ‘love’ anyone within this welter of confusion?”
W: (Rapidly) “He cannot!”
M: (Rapidly, Begging) “But Man and Woman do love with bristling passions! Do you deny that, Woman?!”
W: (Calmly, eyes downwards looking) “Yes, and no. Since the beast has needs, based on his vastly intricate constituents, to ‘love’ his fellow beast, he imagines and believes

And when I met that girl in San Francisco
Off a dusty little pier
with rotting wood
and squawking seals
And screaming bayside wind

She caught me off-tropics
and danced with the grace
of a palm tree
lines between the quaked
concrete
off telegraph avenue
On an obscuring Sunday morning

and no
she didn't go
to church or any silly thing
like a temple or synagogue
She said those were no places
for god

God was the trees

We smoked cigarettes and got off to each other's
carcinogenic practices
oxidizing a little faster in conjunction with hopeful
Formaldehyde
Deriding the formalities
of small talk and trivialities

She liked her guitars with nickel-wound strings
I with nylon
But I couldn't play songs
that sounded any good with them
while she could
and did.

and girl did it ever sound good

She'd laugh at the contests on the radio
while we drove on a half-moon
to half-moon
full and whole of ourselves
We'd stopped in the lobby of a cheap motel
And waltzed to background
muzak
wacked out of our minds
Sniffing in deep huffs of subliminal
divinity
Understanding
loving
that mind-numbing
monotony

muzak...
ppsh.
Who ever really listened to that?

And then she left
at the end of one fine winter day
in a cloudless sky I waved
watched her plane
skip off
towards the edge of a pale blue horizon
back south
to warmer climes
to wherever she truly stayed
The tugging on my heartstrings
chimed grotesque in
precise
D minor.

The kid whose mom always prefaced his introduction with "he's a little shy". He wasn't shy, he was careful, careful from an early age to speak only the most particular of words after seeing how it was a careless choice of words that tore his parents apart. This was the kid who could hear his father yelling and his mother crying but lacked the courage to leave his post at the bottom of the stairs and give his mom a hug. He knew that was all she really needed.

He knew from an early age all he required for a sound nights sleep was a hug and kiss from his dad. This is the kid who would stay up, wordless, into the night wondering if he was safe. As the evening waned and the hours passed he'd never think that his dad forgot. Daddy never forgets. It became his mantra and as he fell into a deep meditative state he would have the same dream as he ever had on those hug less nights. Waking up the next morning he could always recall that warm blanket of a hug because after all, daddy never forgets..

Be the kid who held his hand over his heart during the morning pledge but never volunteered to say it over the speakers because he hated the sound of his own voice. His teacher would bring it up at parent teacher night but his mom always stood up for him "he's just shy". Upon returning home they would ask how his day was and he would smile, shrug, and fall into them, simply awaiting that embrace.

Be the kid who, when his parents finally divorced, never asked them what happened. He never asked them because what if his words had the same effect? Words were lava and if you fell into them you would die. So instead you choose life. On walks home from school, hopping from stone to stone, you never squished an ant or trashed a nest, you cried for the first time when your dog died because nothing ever loved you like he did. He never said a word yet he understood you better than anyone ever did and the thought of coming home and not seeing him basking in the sunlight under his favorite spot in the living room made you bawl.

That night you would have a dream about heaven, place where you could visit in your sleep, a place where upon opening ones mouth sunbeams burst forth hot enough to bask in but never enough to burn.

Be the kid whose most anxious night was spent at that first middle school dance. Boys and girls dancing and the compulsion within him to do the same was palpable. Sure he could have danced alone but He didn't want to dance alone. He wanted to dance with that little girl sitting down by the Coke machine. The one with the frilly dress down to her knees, red band in her hair, and bangs that begged the question "where do i get me one of those. You should be this kid because he actually paid attention when his parents were watching their old movies. You would walk up to that girl and without a word look down into her eyes and for a moment forget why it is that you walked over, but when you finally came too you'd remember that scene from that old black and white movie and put your hand out just like Humphrey bugarr did - at least you think that was his name.

Be this kid because while everyone else was awkwardly moving and swaying like branches in the wind you knew how to hold someone. You knew how to have a conversation without words and this night you two were writing novels. What song was playing? No clue, she'll get mad at you one day for not remembering and you'll be surprised when it was something as stupid as 'I want it that way'.

This is the kid whose favorite nights were spent in her car after driving you home. This is the same kid who when she told him she loved him all he could think was "how can I see you so well when the porch light isn't even on?” She says again, hey - you silly goose, did you hear me? I said I love you. Be this kid because you weren't stupid like everyone else and said "I think I love you too". You grabbed her face and kissed her and for that moment both your worlds stood still. Stagnant in that pregnant pause, just before you broke, you’d catch her gaze and simply smile, warm as heaven.

Be this kid because you would never have a problem with people not liking you. You were far too observant to fall into that trap. Everyone hated the bullies and just called them jerks. The class clown was entertaining but everyone said he was dumb. The girls in the lunchroom seemed never to have anything nice to say about Jennifer and Lindsey and you couldn't even finish your lunch because you just wanted to slam your hands on the table and yell "no Sam, he doesn't like you. Maybe you should actually let him talk instead of complaining about how you don't like his friends. Next time you see him don't beg him for his jacket because, ****, it’s really cold at the skating rink in December. He told you he was taking you to the rinks, why didn't you bring your own **** jacket?

But you would never actually say that, because people would label you judgmental. Rather, remain in peace as the quiet kid because no one could ever put a label on you with any certainty. Sure they could say you were mean, more likely they would say you're weird, but you had loyal friends. Friends who upon hearing that would ask "Really? He's weird? Why is he weird hmm?” Their rebuttal was always "I mean...I dunno, he just really weird, I guess". You would never give them an actual reason to hate you. The meanest things they could ever say about you would be opinion. Opinions are like really *******. Full and generally well rounded, but in the end it was the real stuff you were after.

Be the quiet kid because your silence would show strength. When she breaks up with you through oceans and sands miles away over the phone you won't say a word. She won't be able to see the look of devastation in your eyes and she'll feel terrible for doing it. She would tell her friends that you were so strong. "He didn't yell he, he didn't argue, he didn't ask me if there was another guy, he didn't even cry". Yeah. You cried. But she would never know how much.

Be the quiet kid who always meets someone else. The quiet kid who will draw in strangers because they can feel his energy, they're figuratively and literally moved by it. They sit down next to you across the bench and introduce themselves with a perfectly innocent "whatcha reading?” Which you think is a dumb question because the words “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” were clearly printed in large yellow text on both the front and back covers. Simple trivialities.

Be the quiet kid because the quiet kid will become a quiet man, a quiet man who people could always turn to as their rock. You are stable, you are certain, and you always display your emotions because how else would you speak?

Be the quiet kid because the quiet man will have quiet children, and their children will be quiet and the children after them will be quiet too. Be the quiet kid because you and all your quiet children will never forget to give your kids their goodnight hug.

it's not the large things that send a man to the madhouse

a woman, a
tire that's flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard...

it's not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he's ready for, or
******, ******, robbery, fire, flood...
no, it's the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse...

not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left ...

The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can **** quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
license plates or taxes
or expired driver's license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink's stopped-up, the landlord's drunk,
the president doesn't care and the governor's
crazy.

light switch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill's up and the, market's
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it's
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.

then there's always ***** and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they're
your friends;
there's always that and worse;
leaky faucet, Christ and Christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm's on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a car wash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady's purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and China and Russia and America, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
***, except maybe one to **** in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

so be careful
when you
bend over.

Lungs filled up
with
questions questions questions.
Like in the pool as a child,
How long can you hold your breath?

Held under,
Burning pushing screaming
You've got to hold your breath.

The fraction left not choked out
by the uncertainties of the future
is weak, fatigued, and plagued by
doubt.

Minuscule trivialities become juggernauts
crushing the remains of structure.

When will I reach the surface?
What do I have left?
When can I breathe again?

Mirror Opposite

I am what I am?  What am I?  Hedonist, Activist, Devil, Bodhi, Perverse Geek?  I am what I am.  

I am violent tempered but always happy. I am sickened by the worlds decay but delight in the cause of the infections that lead to that same decay.  Opposite ends of the same slide rule.  I ask myself daily; “Self, what are you today?’  The response is never the same and always confusing. I am what I am.

I AM, isn’t that what God said in Genesis?  Was God indecisive too?  Fool, you are not a god!  But, I do believe a god rest in each one of us.  

I am pleasure.  Who doesn’t like to find pleasure?  Come to me.  The sweet, sweet embrace of another, the moisture of the kiss, the exhilaration of the something new, dangerous and palpable, that causes an alkali sensation to rise from your throat.  

I am what I am and that’s all that I am.  Are my forearms as big as Popeye’s?  And, just what caused that deformity anyway?  Surely not *******, as the midnight comics suggest or we would all be his brothers.  

I am Buddha.  My inner being screams in disgust at being reborn again and again and again.  I know how to break the wheel of karma but, that Ferris wheel holds wondrous deprivations along the way and who am I to not try on one or two of those hungry ghosts.  

I am Fey.  My wings clipped and banality killing me slowly.  Where is my golden acorn to plant under a full moon to renew my magic?  I am attracted to hell and repelled by a chorus of angels.  If there is really nothing better then cloud-sitting in heaven then why bother, Give me Valhalla.  At least in Valhalla  you could get good tickets to a fight.  I am a mirror.  

I reflect what society tells me while struggling against the media-ocricy that streams into my sensory organs like polluted waves from the Valdez.  A elephant seal of anarchy covered and drowning in my own conservative opinions.  

I am female hear me roar.  If for no other reason then being told that, however in touch, I can not be a feminist.  I pay homage to Aphrodite upon her shell, Dianna by her stag?  O.K. Maybe not a feminist.  How about sexist, or racist, or bigot or xenophobe?  Maybe.  

I am  Worm fodder.  I wish to believe in another world after this but hide behind science and its violently anonymous creator.  When dead will we all lie quiet as the grave in out grave as the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms get in my guts no doubt.  Would that be so bad?

I am the shade of Inubus and Quatezecotyl, Crowly and Repoche.  Lapping up their words and making a **** pile of their experiences.  What am I?  

I am what I am.  Silent when I should be loud, and an abomination when I need to be beautiful.  Polar opposite made flesh with a grin.  

What am I?  I am a Questioner.  There is no knowledge that can withstand time.  Every question is correct and every answer is wrong.  How do I know what is truth.  Is there really TRUTH or just Memorex.  

I am a Seeker of arcane thoughts and novel philosophies.  Everything has been said.  But, can it be said in a manner that makes sense at this point at this time grasshopper?  How many licks does it take to get to the center of the tootsie pop?  I want to know!  

I am the Thinker. Elbow on knee, hand on chin.  Why did they **** Copernicus?  Was it really just for a heliocentric universe or something much more political?  ROY G BIV are the colors of the rainbow but what if we could see ultraviolet and infrared?  What if I stood inside the rainbow would it be back as all the colors mixed?  I am what I am.  

I am the Adventurer.  Sword in hand and cod piece attached correctly.  I head out in search of what I question and seek and think about.  How else would you find your own truths.  Truth, not beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  If every grain of sand is an universe unto itself then I wish to explore each and every one to delve into their faceted trivialities and pillage the knowledge from them.  

I am an organic being content to take over a new world each night in my dreams and complacently ignore my biological clock counting down to unknown oblivion.


Wolff

There are places I have found. There are places that I have gone. People give strange looks with laughter in their eyes when a child walks off on her own into where the ground is not covered with cigarette butts and nothing is paved. Because of them, I go more often and I laugh louder. I have many of these places that are just for my brain and me to inhabit for a while. When I find a less temporary escape from the sickening truths of my own humanity, probably in an UFO, I hope to find others like me tagging along with the aliens that comes to destroy us. And we will all be laughing our ***** off; we saw this coming and packed our thoughts in airtight containers. For now, my thoughts are packed in a backpack with music, a hammock, and some seltzer water. I am walking to get out of here. I find myself getting lost in cornfields and peeing in the woods. It’s rejuvenating. Fresh air and headaches are a perfect match.
                    I am sitting, swinging, hanging from the dancing trees of the crack ******* forests. I think about how every time I chase a squirrel it attacks me. They are fluffy and cute but they want to get inside my house; they want to pry away at my poorly assembled pieces. I’m so unused to that attention and curious affection. I think about my subtly strange mannerisms and my lack of cautious paranoia. These things have had a tendency to intimidate, to make people leave the crowbars in the basement and eliminate any sort of prying. My attributes are intimidating to all but the squirrels. They only seem to see them as weakness. I am still swinging, but my hammock is slipping from the branches now, clinging onto them, a child to its mother. The instructions told me it could hold up to four hundred pounds but even I can hardly hold the weight in between my shoulders. Heavy thoughts are pulling me down. Ropes are slipping more and I can already feel my *** getting sore from this drop. But I do not get off. I keep swinging. My brain is telling my legs to move, my heart is screaming “Save me,” but my legs are not replying. I stay on this hammock, praying that my legs will pull me off before I fall to the ground. I am afraid of being even near to this littered ground. I want the heights. I call for help but only a sigh leaves my mouth. There is no one around to save me anyways. I chose a place in the woods; I chose a place that could grant me the illusion of seclusion…an escape from the trivialities taken too seriously. I cannot wait for someone because this slipping will not even wait for me. I will crash if I do not save myself. I try to coast and the swings get shorter and shorter until they have stopped and I am stationary. In moments I will have more broken parts than I can count.
                     I lie there silent, unmoving, not thinking any longer. Only waiting...finally, I hear snaps of the branches falling and breaking. The ground came up fast. It punched me. It crowded me. It abused me like a misguided lover. I do not wish to be in its arms any longer. But the ground is holding on to my bones, pulling me in. I hit it hard. The drop was farther than I expected. I have no feelings anymore. My nerves have shut off. I am scared. Someone take me some place safe, some place sound…no, take me some place wild. Lying on my back, numb and careless, my eyes are glued to the blueness of the sky above me. I am so relaxed. I hear screaming. I see blood, but I don’t feel pain. I don’t want to know what’s going on, I keep my eyes staring straight up at the view. I ignore everything but the wind-shaped clouds. My mind is gone, lost like all the rest of time. It wore away because I remembered too many times how my father’s hands smelled of sawdust and how they felt like the sandpaper he that used to make it. I try to avoid addressing the situation at hand, things are turning redder. My eyes are filling with blood and it is hard to see. I think about life and the lack of it. All it is really is just memories, without those the only thing that exists is right now. Which doesn’t exist anymore, it’s a different second, and now another. Life is nothing but the time we are losing. Maybe this view of the tree tops framing the sky will be the last thing I see, or maybe I will lay below them again tomorrow. I am glad that everyone must die. It is more beautiful that way.
                          I gulp, a gust of air fills my stomach and it feels like floating. I am still lying down. The smells of illegality, fire, and cut grass fill my ears just like music. Everything mixing together, all into one entity. I am the only thing alone, still lying on my back in the middle of some trees. The same trees I have been crowded by for all of these years, but dug up and replanted on the other side of the country. All of a sudden, I hear something pop. It is the elevation still stuck in my head, the headache I couldn’t defeat. The pain persists and all throughout my head the places and the people that I had made my home were telling me to stay. I am glad that I did not. There is no place or person who could carry my weight. I am my own constant. I am on the ground, just another fallen leaf,  and I am finding a place inside my brain in an attic of ideas where I can peruse the shelves and maintain my insanity. No matter if I am here or elsewhere, I must maintain. They will not make me sane, I won't have it.  Even the pain I feel now, sticks jabbing into my ribs and fear everywhere else, will not be enough to dull me.
                     I had dipped off the path to find myself away from what was familiar and now it pounds in my head, the lack of altitude. Without it my brain doesn’t know what to do. I am worried what I will become when I am alone here. I hear the chapel bells chime in, four rings and then they fade away. I still hear it ringing in my ear, though minutes have passed since it sounded…
                  Ringing…
        Ringing…
Ringing…

“H­ello?”
“Finally you pick up your phone, I’ve left three voicemails today…are you okay?”
“…”

Family life.

Great aruments and debates
concerning mundanities
and trivialities -
the all-conquering
world of pettines
and , of course,
the taken-for-granted
comforts and cosiness.

In warmth beneath the insulated drywall
I curse my gooey insides
for not being as solid
as the lamented linoleum
moreover, I wish I didn't need
to declare such trivialities but
I do

Her presence is superfluous and your demeanor is vindictive, and you can’t hold her close enough to pass the hours with any more trivialities. Your allusions to Eos mean nothing to her comfortably deaf ears. Her smile drips with poisonous innocence and she’s reaching for you, and oh no, you’re doubled over again, and she’s rubbing your back, and you’re clutching at your insides and you just want to hurl them at the wall and redefine expressionism. Transgressions displayed in a mason jar atop the fireplace mantel, like the ashes of some dead relative who stopped mattering when the estate paid out and your dad blew it all at the casino again. With a knock and a bump, the skeletons come tumbling out of your closet; their bones crumble into dust on your carpet. You've lost track of how often this happens but you think the carpet looks better grey anyway, and she’s still looking up at you. Those eyes so much like a child, riddled with naivety and wonderment, like you’re the perfect picture of Eden. It’s 5am and you can’t see the room through the smoke, and she can’t hear the cries for help over her utopian illusion of This Is All We Need. You were never one for cathexis and you hope she can’t see the blood on the walls, or the blood(lust) on your hands. She has the uncanny ability to not know, despite your nuances. She’ll never read into your mind the way she reads the words you carve into the trees and the sand and the snow. Every articulation of Truth is just refracted through her pretty little head and sent spinning into the abyss. The sun is rising and you wish she’d leave, but your shift in weight and your sideways glance is subjective to her and she promises to stay.  So instead you make bets with yourself over whether your body falling from a 30 story building, or the rising sun, will reach the horizon line first.

"That's it! I'll take it to the scissors myself!"
Mangled, wrangled, tangled mess,
meandering tendrils coil and cross, clump.

Split ends,
knots so impossibly tied the eagle scout is left bewildered,
sun damage: fried, frizzled, frazzled, frayed.

Broken teeth in a gasping comb,
choking brushes enveloped in the furling mess,
hairspray, fruitless, face it:
(Another) Bad Hair Day.

"That's it! Today's the day!"
The call is made, the appointment scheduled,
you sit and wait.

X's mark the calendar, the day is nigh,
your do's judgement day is at hand.
It's time to settle this.

The day before, you wake up,
absentmindedly getting dressed, drudging through routine,
mirror's the last thing you see.

Crusty eyes suddenly open wide,
as split ends seal and knots unfurl,
sun damage heals and combs sing ceaselessly.

The day is met with a new life,
and the dark days of yore seem like a past life,
as this sunny day seems like all there is.

You laugh at what now appears to be such trivialities,
"Twas a bad hair day! And merely so!"
You allow yourself such a shallow deception.

Your hand grabs the phone, your fingers make the call,
your voice makes the cancellation--
"How could I have been so foolish to resort to such measures?!"

You hang up and scoff at yourself,
a hearty laugh in jest at such hastiness,
tossing and swishing your luscious mane to and fro.

You allow it to slip through your fingers,
on the cusp of the cure,
as the bad hair days truly outnumber the good (you know it to be so).

For the next day will come--
You'll greet the mirror with that heart-wrenching sigh,
in visible anguish at the chaotic mess that encroaches upon your head.

          Don't let a good hair day fool you;
                                                        make the call.

any poet will tell you
any honest poet
will tell you,
the most difficult thing to do
is write about
them,
a good poet will tell you
it is cheating,
a bad one
nothing at all
inspiration?
a muse?
those are not needed
a poet is affected
by the smallest of trivialities

‘’why the hell is jeopardy still on?’’

‘’I asked for extra pickles on this
sandwich,
and there is no mustard on here’’

by the Yankees winning the series,
again,
a poet is driven by more
than the presence or absence of
love,
god,
***,
music,
money in the bank
his day will be molded
by the smallest of trivialities,
you turning off your lights,
the presence
or absence
of the sun,
a single mom crying in Toledo,
down to her last drop,
a homeless pet,
braver than you
or
I
by war,
or lack of it,
by a new president,
or an old one,
a poet is affected
by the smallest of trivialities
so be careful
when you shut off your lights

that pending job(no particular order)
getting qualified to apply to pending job
writing for Excal.
actually doing work, and well
absorb more literature
produce those short story ideas, novel(s)
decisions are made after confronting the no. 3
rearrange room when home next

bulk up there scrawny
where am i living next year
friendships, both new and old, the you know why's
who took my deodorant!
ease the knots in my back
eat energizing foods
a normal sleeping pattern, at least for a couple months

a job after the summer
location and change
declaring my stream
that ****** POLS assignment
an overall comfort
i'm not far off form 20
and i want something to show for it
a personal standard, not to wave but have
why exclude poetry from the list?
written and read
guts to be a musician of any sort
to routinize the gym, or not to? not to.
don't **** away money
a glass of water

cable for my bedroom
switch desks from home and school
a desperate need for space, choking taut
4:18 am is no time to be conscious today
does an inspirational soul exist
i risk time rather than action, too often
do i show THAT poem to HER
***? must i consider thee at all?
how okay am i with my laziness?
how okay is laziness

bringer of bad news, sorry bud, no can do
laser eye surgery
to scoff or bow to the notion of a Happy Medium
too pompous, too cynical?
it's too late for one
a vehicle, real bad
boxers, needed new
materialistic detachment
africa and the world
children?
how do i function in this universe, do i?
hand eye not so great, kind of a klutz
remember everything (faces, time, self) better
do i get promoted?
does anything matter?
will it later?

Don't get me wrong;
I count it all blessing,
This one track mind,
The endless company.
I always deliver what they come seeking:
That sharp taste of thrill in the ceiling of their mouths.

I suppose every life has its ups and downs.
Each person their silver,
Each person their cloud.
But I have inhaled the heavens deep into my lungs
And they have made me sick.
They drift, seemingly, wherever they please.
I can tell you this:
I have never tasted the same cloud twice.
Each second they grow.
With each gust they float
Away from the moment's cares and all its trivialities.

I can still hear them,
Well-meaning enough to make me doubt my sanity,
'You are built for speed' -now go where we tell you.
'You are full of surprises' -that we planned meticulously.
I am stuck in this groove and it is nothing I can dance to.
The DJ has fallen asleep
And I am slowly blending into the wallpaper.

The first time I heard them screaming
It was like wedding cake and cannons,
Like listening to your son speak his first word
And recognizing it as your name.
They love what I do.
I hate how I do it.

I dream of stretching my long body across the sky,
Taking flight like a paper dragon,
Chasing rooftops and mountains,
Rolling down hills as soft as a mother's cheek.
There are words I long to write on the horizon
In script as wide as it is deep.
There is so much more i have seen than i have smelled.
There are screams I can give you
That wave their arms like white flags,
Waiting to be plucked from gardens
Just outside my reach.

I have been burying my anguish in the hearts of wooden trusses.
They push back against me when I am feeling down.
'Chin up, there go those screams again.'
They taste nothing like cake.
One more 3 minute episode.
I have been showing you reruns of smiles for the past two years,
Have you noticed?
But who is the servant to question the master?
I will keep my head down,
Drive the track I've been given,
And pretend I still enjoy the sunrise.

I wish I could keep from sleeping.
The dissonance of waking to the same routine
Is Schoenberg to my ears.
Every night it's the same thing:
My eyelids kiss this day goodbye
And it is some glorious tomorrow,
When I will finally get my chance
To scream.

I am sitting, swinging, hanging from the dancing trees of the crack ******* forests. I think about how every time I chase a squirrel it attacks me. They want to get inside my house; they want to pry away at my poorly assembled pieces. I’m so unused to that attention and curious affection. I think about my subtly strange mannerisms and my lack of paranoia. These things have had a tendency to intimidate, to make people leave the crowbars in the basement and eliminate any sort of prying. My attributes are intimidating, but the squirrels only seem to see them as weakness. I am still swinging, but my hammock is slipping from the branches now, clinging on to them, a child to its mother. The instructions told me it could hold up to 400 pounds but even I can hardly hold the weight in between my shoulders. Ropes are slipping more and I can already feel my *** getting sore from this drop. But I do not get off. I keep swinging. My brain is telling my legs to move, my heart is screaming “Save me!” but my legs are not replying. I stay on this hammock, praying that my legs will pull me off before I fall to the ground. I am afraid of being even near to this littered ground, I want the heights. I call for help, only a sigh leaves my mouth. There is no one around to save me anyways. I chose a place in the woods; I chose a place that could grant me the illusion of seclusion…an escape from the trivialities taken too seriously. I cannot wait for someone, this slipping will not wait. I will crash if I do not save myself. I try to coast, the swings get shorter and shorter until they have stopped and I am stationary. In moments I will have more broken parts that I can count.

I lie there silent, unmoving, not thinking any longer. Only waiting...finally, I hear snaps of the branches falling and breaking. The ground came up fast…it punched me. It crowded me. It abused me, like a misguided lover. I do not wish to be in it's arms any longer. But the ground is holding on to my bones, pulling me in. I hit it hard, the drop was farther than I expected. I have no feelings anymore. My nerves have shut off. I'm scared. Someone take me some place safe, some place sound…no, take me some place wild. Lying on my back, numb and careless, my eyes are glued to the blueness of the sky above me. I am so relaxed. I hear screaming. I see blood. But I don’t feel pain. I don’t want to know what’s going on, I keep my eyes staring straight up at the view. I ignore everything but the wind-shaped clouds. My mind is gone, lost like all the rest of time. It wore away because I remembered too much about the times my father’s hands smelled of sawdust and how they felt like the sandpaper he used to make it. I try to avoid addressing the situation at hand, things are turning more red, my eyes are filling with blood. I think about life and the lack of it. All it is really is just memories, without those the only thing that exists is right now. Which doesn’t exist anymore, it’s a different second, and now another. Life is nothing but the time we are losing. I am glad that everyone must die, it is so beautiful.
I gulped, a gust of air filled my stomach and it felt like floating. I was still lying down. The smells of illegality, fire, and cut grass filled my ears just like music. Everything mixed together, all into one entity. I was the only thing alone, still lying on my back in the middle of some trees. All of a sudden, I heard something pop. It was the elevation still stuck in my head, the headache I couldn’t defeat. I had dipped off the path, away from what was familiar and now it pounds in my head, the altitude. Now without it my brain doesn’t know what to do, I only worry what I will become. I hear the chapel bells chime in, 4 rings and then they fade away. I still hear it ringing in my ear, though minutes have passed since it sounded…
Ringing…
Ringing…
Ringing…
“Hello?”
“Pick up your phone, I’ve left three voicemails today…are you okay?”
         "....."

it’s simply awesome
how much energy
is spent to document
the newness of the news
    no matter how repetitive
    may be the words of the reporters

the hype needs to be built
no matter whether right or stilted
driven by fear the topic might be wilted
a minute later

and half an hour later
you hear the same with minor variations
adorned with various speculations
so that the viewers may get the illusion
it’s NEW – though it is old,
    and just repetitive

an endless loop of hyped-up trivialities
     of who did what and when and why
     maybe with whom   or not
makes you aware that even new banalities
rarely include what really matters
to the majority of people on this globe

Mechanically, he turned and stepped away.
Though there remained a symphony to say,
the audience was obviously tired.
The orchestra was weak and uninspired.
And so he wandered up the street, and down,
through all the dry vernacular of town.
A thousand trivialities he passed
until the sidewalk brought him home at last.
He summited the dim and creaking stair.
He sank into the thrift store easy chair,
closed his eyes, and waited for her face.
She smiled at him. Then darkness took her place.

There was chatter reflecting off the water just like the moon. The Milky Way was swimming with us, wrapped in algae and moss. We had no swimsuits, only spontaneity and laughter. We were far away from trivialities where there was no light pollution, you could see so far outward into everything. We were not looking up, we were looking out at what we are part of. Light, so much light. When our thoughts were finally chilled like iced lemonade, we ran through bushes and flailed in the mud to the car. We drove. Once sitting on our bed, a delicious thought bubbled into reality.
              We discussed it, unanimously deciding on this nights adventure...we'd enjoy the first rays of the morning while seating comfortable at Sacajawea Peak.
              Eager legs kicked and finally slept…too soon later, a buzz of a telephone awoke us, then another. I bounced out of the covers and to the kitchen to prepare a hurried breakfast of peanut butter and fruit roll ups for us, nutrition was priority. Then the clock blinked 3 AM.
Whines squeaked from tired mouths, but excitement prevailed. We packed into our seats and struggled to keep our eyes open, but the drive was bumpy and our sore butts kept us from forgetting the purpose of our trip. We were there to make our lives radical, and you can’t sleep in moments like these. 4 AM screamed at me, we had to hurry. I plowed my way up that mountain as the sun painted the tips of the mountains red. We crossed streams, tripped on rocks, marveled at climate change and the disappearance of the snow we had skied on just a week before. As the incline increased to nearly vertical, we met up with the mountain goats. Their tiny hooves danced on the faces of cliffs and I stood on the trail not more than a meter away. They smiled at us, said good morning, and we went on our way, huffing it up the face. As the sun’s light began to engulf the sky, we watched as the snow capped ridgeline shined pink and gold. A mountain shades us but as we reach the peak, the sun splashes our face, I felt godly. The sun has risen, and so have we. This is why we are alive; this is why we are happy. The valley below us still dozes, and we sit on top a mountain wide-awake. There is no item I could ask for that could ever give me this happiness. I do not climb mountains so that the world can see me, but so I can see the world…and it is so beautiful.

the time we spend
on sorting trivialities
one should not always
see as wasted

it can be a reprieve
     or an escape
from life‘s important questions
that tend to overwhelm us
now and then

solving our little problems
helps us establish
the much-needed illusion of order
in our life
encouraging us
to tackle bigger questions