"What does it feel like to be borderline?"

I have never been able to explain BPD in a way that satisfies me. What I experience becomes trivialized by attempting to put words to it. Words are so direct and they are so obvious, and they aren’t even close to capable of capturing the complexity and the mystery that is BPD. But I can try.

It feels like black and white and nothing in between.
Every thing, every person, every place – they are either good or they are bad. I am either good or I am bad. Constantly changing, never the same. Good girl, bad girl. Good self, bad self. Good friend, bad friend. Good mother, bad mother. I hate you, don’t leave me.

It feels overwhelming.
I don’t feel sadness, but anguish. I don’t feel upset, but hysterical. I don’t feel joy, but ecstasy. I don’t feel anger, but fury. Not love, but infatuation… obsession. It’s exhausting to feel so much. Relationships are endless cycles of love and hate and pain and bad habits that I can’t seem to break no matter how hard I try. Every new face that enters into my life is someone who is capable of abandonment, and it has become so much easier to shut the world out than to invite heartbreak into my home with open arms.

It feels empty.
At the core of my being, I am nothing. I’m an empty shell surrounded by the chaos that is my emotional havoc. Remove my emotions, and I am flat lined. Remove them and I no longer exist. No direction, no sense of self, no core identity. At the peak of an emotional breakdown, I am everything. I am every negative emotion in existence and then some. And I’m so alive with fury, with desolation, with misery, and with so much pain. When it becomes too much for my body and mind to handle, it disappears in such an eerie way that I’m left questioning whether or not what I just experienced was real. I switch back and forth from being too alive that it physically pains me, to being consumed by nothingness. Nothingness is sitting alone on my kitchen floor in the middle of the night wondering whether the chill I feel on my shoulder actually exists or not. Nothingness is staring off into space for an hour wondering when my body will allow me to exist again so that I can move.

It feels confusing.
Like not knowing the answer to a series of questions. Who am I? One question I feel that I should know the answer to, yet… nothing. My favorite color is yellow, because that’s what it was when I was a child. Decisions are impossible – how do you decide anything without a stable sense of identity? I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell you what I wanted for dinner tonight, but that’s because I was trying to decide if I’m the type of person who likes Mexican or if I’m the type of person who likes Italian. I wake up each morning with a new definition of who I am, only to be let down by myself each night for not living up to the me that I decided to be that day.

It feels needy.
Endlessly, and hopelessly needy. I need to be appreciated. I need to be validated. I need to be wanted. I need to be loved. But I need these things in a way that is so much more than anyone is capable of giving me. It feels like such a small favor to ask – to be loved by those who are supposed to love me. But no one seems able to meet my expectations. It leaves me pathetically wondering whether or not anyone is capable of caring about me in a way that makes sense to me. And although I already know the answer, I still need to be loved so desperately that I search for it with everything that I have. It’s endless messages and too many phone calls. And it’s the knowledge that my actions are only perpetuating the likelihood of abandonment, but I need love so ******* badly that I have no choice but to continue.

It feels irrational.
Being capable of thinking rationally only makes the irrational behavior so much more miserable. The knowledge that behaving in reaction to emotion is irrational does not make me any less likely to do so. I’m constantly walking towards a cliff, muttering to myself, “Don’t do it, you’ll regret it.” Only to fall off the edge anyway. And every time I fall feels unimaginably more painful than the time before, but I don’t know how to stop.

It feels bright.
When I love, it is the single brightest thing I’ve ever felt in my entire life. It’s so bright that it burns my eyes in a way that makes me see a life that I could have never imagined on my own. Without my darkness, I am on top of the world. Ecstasy is just as intense an emotion as misery, except that for me, it’s coated with anxiety and fear. I never quite know what to do with happiness, and before I have the chance to really enjoy it, it’s gone.

And it feels like being lost.
Lost in loneliness, lost in the vacillation of my emotions, lost in the insanity of knowing absolutely nothing about myself. My emotions are a language that I cannot speak, and they are winning the war that I am struggling to fight.

A series
of short puffs
from a rekindled
cigarette expertly put out
on the half
reminds you of your
fastidiousness
now you feel like **** as you look
at the wreckage site
of a desk that
is your own doing
       That is what you do.

While your ego
floats like the unmelted
coffee you put in cold water
Hardly dissolvable
to anything normal
missing anything temporal
You lash out once more
waging a war
with a nation
of thoughts
You kick the furniture
to send the dust flying
       That is what you do.

You attempt to sheathe
an intricate wound
patterned on your
knuckle, as detailed as the
dystopia of your
own human agenda that
can be trivialized by just
"I haven't been myself lately"
when somebody asks
because you're afraid
they might see
you find it
                hard
          to
  belong
Slowly, the dust resorts to settle
on the bedroom floor
       And so do you.

We sipped boulder rock from refrigerators doors
and watched the heavens hand out food stamps with IBM logos.
“ode to Mehmet” we sang, and licked the Mossberg—
fixating on the blue collar philosophy that lived in our empty wallets.

Trash cans filled with water bottles stared at us to find our essence—
the one we had lost while being fed quintessential American idioms
in state-of-the-art classrooms sponsored by slaves and Popol Vuh blood.

Six million years of human existence trivialized down to a single sentence—
* Man loved God, man wrote, man conquered God, and now man loves science* —
scribbled on SmartBoards afforded by fire burning from Prometheus’ female liver.

Trees sing with oxygen no more for the sake of making paper,
and eyes soak in the words on paper for the sake of making paper.
Trees make the avenue but the future holds an Avenue of no trees—
… for in the land of the free, anything but freedom ain’t free.

I saw an old man crying at
the precipice of his sanity,
ten stories above the sea,
and the world at his feet, a helo-deck:
a principality that had the worn out lay of home.

So trivialized.
So fantasized.
So immobilized.
Transmitting pirate-radio-waves eternally.

Seized the tower.
Hoisted the flag.
Crowned the queen.

"I've no blood right, only a passport," he said. "But do have the right mindset: I can't leave, we're so dangerous. Don't be a stranger now, we'll never be this dangerous again..."

I read the book of Samuel
I read the story of the Israelites
Of how they rejected God
“We want a king!” they demanded
“We want to be like other nations”
Rejecting God’s kingship.

The same God who brought them up
Out of the ******* of Pharaoh
Out of slavery in Egypt
The same God who gave them victories
Over many nations and wars
The same God who had fed them
For forty years in the wilderness
Same God who had proved
Beyond reasonable doubt
That He is the King of kings
A Lord above all lords
They chose to downgrade!

I was swept away in a mind journey
As I thought of how it must have felt
To be rejected by your own children
Repudiated by your beloved
Disowned by the very people you love.

My heart bled!
The heartbreak was unimaginable
The pain was excruciating
As my mind pointed fingers of accusation
I couldn’t find befitting words
“Foolish Israelites!”
“Unrepentant idiots!”
“Stubborn generation!”
And as my mind went awry
Heaping insults on God’s people
Raining accusations on them
Judging an imperfect people as myself…

His still small voice whispered
“You are all the same”
“You have done worse”

Then it struck me
Like a lightening of a million volts
I am the Israelites
I am the very people of God
I am the same ones I condemn
I have betrayed God repeatedly
I have chosen sin above my maker
My iniquities know no bounds
I have trivialized His blood
I have made a mess of the cross.

I am the “foolish Israelites!”
I am the “unrepentant idiots!”
I am the “stubborn generation!”
My heart melted into tears
Shame covered me like a cloud
My head was bowed in ignominy.

Unable to speak or move
I lay there, weeping at my wickedness
No words were spoken
But I felt His arms embrace me
In acknowledgement of my repentance
I never deserved it
But He loved me nonetheless.
I pointed one finger at them
But three pointed back at me!


© Raphael Uzor

I am searching for my lost shaker of salt…I love salt. It’s true, I add salt to anything. I’m wondering what that says about me.

Sometimes when you’re alone in the middle of the night,it’s okay to distract yourself by singing Jimmy Buffet and blending up some frozen margs….(TIP: if you close the pantry door and put a towel over the blender, you can barely hear it so it won’t wake anyone up when you decide to make margaritas @ 2am– you’re welcome).

I’m distracting myself from the razor calling my name. I’m doing everything I can tonight to not regress into a bawling 5 year old or a psychotically angry teenager. So if that means making frozen margaritas on the floor of the pantry and singing Jimmy Buffet…well then “That’s the best I can do right now…”

I don’t know…sometimes I think I’ll just stop all of it. Therapy, talking, writing, reaching out at all, breathing…I mean, is there really a point in verbalizing your feelings of hopelessness and defeat when you’re just going to be dismissed or trivialized? Is it better to just shut up & pretend, to half-smile till you die, rather than reach out? As I’ve always said, why express needs that will never be met. Childish needs and fears that have no right to exist in my adult head.

Why…why…why…why in the world should I embarrass myself by speaking aloud all of this fear inside my head only to be told that it’s okay to have this need, or that need, but there’s no way for it to be met. I don’t get that. And it only makes me hate myself more for “needing” anything in the first place. Ah, the sordid talk of self-hatred. But is that what this is about now? Maybe…but maybe not. Maybe it’s more like shamefully wallowing in self-pity on the pantry floor.

Jimmy Buffet is singing, “Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame, but I know, it’s my own **** fault.” "It’s YOUR fault, Nita. No one else’s. How long are you going to hold this grudge against the host body, Nita? When will you realize that you can’t change the past…you can’t change how he feels about you now, Nita. Too bad. Get over it. It is time to move on.”

I have completely misplaced my gratitude and love for life and I am searching for it….I am desperately searching for it here in the middle of the night…I am looking all around. I am reaching far down into the bottom of my gut, the base of my soul, the deepest place in my heart… God! This weakness! This weak depressed worthless woman! I can’t stand her! Give it up girl! Stop with the wretched self-pity, the craving for normalcy…just stop with the whining, “Why the hell don’t I get to be like everyone else?” Just stop! I have been brought to my knees, shaken to the core. I have forgotten who I really am.

My whole life, I have been straddling this teeter totter, pressing my feet back and forth, seeking the balance I have never been able to find… God!! ******! I feel flushed and panicked and my head is spinning. I am screaming inside, “Please help me. Please come to me now and stay. Please stay with me in this place of darkness, this place of no hope or light.” (as if)

Nita takes a break to wipe away the never-ending flow of tears, blow her nose, and blend another round of margaritas for one! More salt… Cheers!

Feelings…feelings…feelings. They assault me like ****** fire, the bullets ricochet off of their unsuspecting target and slice open my thighs, my hip, my side…red, angry slashes. I have been hit again. I am walking around wounded, scarred, stunned. I’ve been told not to judge these feelings, or attach to them. They are neither good nor bad, Nita. Open the door to the pantry, Nita, and invite them in for coffee and cookies…get to know them, no matter how hostile they seem. All of them? There’s not enough room here. The guilt, as pure and raw as sugar cane, comes to show me the terrible things I’ve done, the shameful places I’ve been, the faces of those I have harmed. The rage! It cannot be quelled or quieted. The overwhelming smothering rage hits me square in the chest after I have removed my bullet-proof vest. I feel the sharp shrapnel piercing my skin, reaching the very core of me. You self-righteousness woman…you selfish, bitter woman…

I can’t control it. I can’t think or reason my way out. I can’t figure out how to fix it, or breathe through it. I feel the blood draining out of me, warm and cold at the same time; the bitterness, the anger, the badness, it drains out of me and soaks into the soft cotton of my clothing. The patterns speak to me: You are weak, Nita. You are a lesser person, negative, selfish, dramatic, needy. How I loathe you, girl…

A knock on the door bringing yet another guest? Shame…welcome one of my oldest and best friends. Shame…she is always there for me…there is always room for her. She sits next to me and slides her warm calloused hand over my shoulder and down my chest… just as he used to do. Her hot breath hisses in my ear, “You are nothing without me. You cannot speak without me. You cannot breathe without me, write without me, feel without me. Without me you are neither interesting nor desirable. Without me by your side you cannot cope or deal with anything. You are mine and I am yours. You are nothing without me. I am your secret. This is our secret. I will keep you safe. I will keep your secrets.” My dearest friend. I offer her a drink and she begins to bandage my wounds…our secret, our secret. I lean into her, my oldest friend, and I let her hold me, even as she cruelly speaks my biggest failures aloud to me. She knows what I deserve. She is mine and I am hers.

Here we sit together and alone, my friend and I… Wasted away again in Margaritaville….she is searching for a sign of worth…strength…purpose…will…of anything that resembles life…but she didn’t find it.

I must say
those of arts
writers and painters
so often trivialized
too often

how ironic then
for those who sweep us under
since we--
of words and lines
however similar or not
--are not the ones at expense.

Where's the magic
neither seen nor experienced
in reality,

and where's the escape
from your homes of present
but from us?
the minds who labor away
without showing
but upon the page, sheet or canvas.

She lays out her heart
On her sleeve  
Both sleeves
As the red
Carpet is rolled
Out for royalty
Whether for
Honor or dishonor
But always
For ceremony

It beats in polyrhythms
Under and on her
Many layered epidermis
Whose layers
Perhaps only a mystical
Archeologist could
Analyze
The complexity of an
Ancient undecipherable book
              
Created by years of damaging
Neural and spiritual
Pathways by absorbing
The essence of her
Personal peace pipe
Which is bereft of the
Essential factors found
In thousands of years of
Dream religion

She fancies herself
A new breed of
Shaman perhaps
A connection broken
At an unknown time
In her spirit
But felt strongly
And deeply as
Phantom pain
Evident in her
Crystal ball
And stargazing

A remnant of
A long lost tribe
A tapestry of
Religions
Trivialized
Pop cultural  
Spirituality
And superstition

Her motives
Misplaced and obscure
But definitely from
A healing source
But the channels are
Eroded and indefinable
Bastardized by

Extraneous channels
And alien sources
A trickle of water
In a dry river bed
All muddled into
This enigma and

Multicolored tapestry
Which is often
Misunderstood
And underestimated
Protected by the
Thick epidermis
And hard to follow
Cardiac polyrhythms
Revealed when her
Many layered tongue
Lashes out and cuts deep

Not intending to control
And manipulate
With leadership
Origins perhaps in the
Shaman or tribal leader
But definitely
Out of place and time
Since their true essence
Has been lost through
Her Westernized
Industrialized
And hyper-capitalized mind

And scattered to the four winds.

What conclusion should i draw,
from this ambiguous relationship
Of our failed romance
Of your persistent messages 
Uncertain of what to do 
my heart cold like stone 
With my mind like a sponge 
And my lack of control
I miss you sometimes 
In the peak of the winter
When the heat of the summer
Melted saints like a sinner 

I made haste with my affections
And you wasted no time
To uncover a secret
Left for only seduction to find 
And I let you unravel 
Passions I held under guises 
As caution blew steadily in the wind
yielding pleasant surprises 
We held our heads above water making peace with the silence 
Of our now heavy hearts 
And ever questioning minds

Yet we continued on down 
towards blissful confusion
To a book without words
To a rhyme without reason 
to our own presumptions
About the meaning of an instant
When just getting by 
Was such a heavenly blessing
With thoughts of equilibrium 
bringing tears to my eyes
After a sequence of movements later trivialized
But beneath each breath drawn 
with great consideration 
Lay your careless tongue
and malicious intentions 
With Your endless doubts 
Trapped in webs of confusion 
I followed your lead towards this path of destruction

Sitting beside you
Beneath a watery sunset
I felt your soul swimming onward towards the depths of the sea
While your body was left there
alone, next to me 
I felt disconnection between the rocks and the waves 
I felt more than just ecstasy in those few summer days 
I no longer look for answers or meaning in life's episodes 
I merely ask for solitude 
After its over

I.

On the surface easily gliding,
  are my hands. I keep on the table
  an ajar carton of cigarettes. Then slowly
  becoming in my pocket, taking form of a hand,
  a crumpled cinema ticket when straightened,
  ironed by plainsight, walks with lines, the end credits roll lasciviously like an estranged lover
   whose face I can almost touch.
  When let go of closure, air thins and I move
  secretly with fluency. This is how objects
  escape my grip.

II.

  In front of the eatery, a transit.
  I had a dream once in a depthless sleep,
  a figure in stilts studded with guilt.
  The face next to me, disquieting the music
   of currencies, naked in sound as the truth shaved
   like a beast. The nearby tarmac resounds with
   another throng of absence. As a substitute
   for beings shackled to duty,
   the oncoming woman assumes theirs,
   borrows their faces of dreariness and ***** a thousand times like white sheets harassed by
   the wind through opened windows.

III.

    Define space as a venue for collision.
    Say when a red-haired woman straddling
    a duffel bag and myself confused as a peripatetic.
    She ascribes her presence to my footing
    and from where she left off, I take form
    of her expired movement.
                     Found strangeness is that space
    is what happens when remembered. But hold no
    bearing and rear contrivance,
     trying to be bold by definition -- space solicits
     the in-betweenness and then transmutes
     an occurence,
             say the volatile shape of a hand when
    clutching and releasing, the fugitive manner of
    feet when avoiding puddles, the unsolicited
    reticence of a troubling question.

IV.

            A man carries a take away and is now
     amongst the populace, waiting under a shed,
     housing a familiar language. Home.
    
      But first, trivialized. Haggles with the cab driver,
    trying to transact a being angled towards home.
    They agree to a fault, money's perfume clinches  the fingers and is given to a calloused hand.
             Air once stale, is now succulent with the
      resonating memory of a child's excited laughter,
      and is now presumably waiting behind a gated
      home. Like the palm of the hand, the number
         of times the vehicle trundles within
     the nearby avenue is the force it enkindles
        with rest. He is home,
     unloosens his clothing. Like a fine specimen
          freed from a vitrine.

Quantified to the last--
Every freckle, each fluttering lash.

To the debt of necessity I am tethered;
I can't afford life's priceless treasures.

Calculated: now are numbered
Even that which philosophy wonders.

My love, my life, my ambivalent faith:
Measured out to the hundredths place.

Reproduced for mass consumption--
Trivialized by the deduction.

Weigh my heart, buy my soul,
Celebrate the dream you stole.

My independence is a self-diagnosed mental illness that is the root of my ego. I cannot begin to list the variability of how necessary others are to my existence. Sometimes I still need a mother or a father. Sometimes I still need you, but do not spoil me with anything but my freedom and your love. I would like to be spoiled, but in spoiling me you must tell me to scream in rebellion at you. Spoil me with freedom to pursue what you may think silly. Spoil me with a lack of a leash to let me continue imagining my independence. But please do not let my imagined independence be contagious. Understand that I am no more independent from you than my cells are from mitochondria, all of which you have given to me. The breath in my lungs that allows my yells to echo in the canyons and the lungs that hold it belong to you, and there is gratefulness to you that I fear is ineffable. But the thoughts in my head belong to me and I cannot apologize for this, but I can say that I will give you my feelings of unconditional love, those are yours. You gave me those at birth and I will return them like borrowed sweaters. My emotions, my strife, my capability to learn and grow and reach the tops of literal and hypothetical mountains: I owe these things to you. The farther my distance from your doorstep and more people I have seen give themselves, I have never seen one give as much as you without expectation for reward. There is a world established and grown purely from the lines on your fingertips. Each thought in your head that you trivialized was responsible for the creation of millions of lives to come. Even if your saliva tastes bitter from years of ******* on the pits of the regrets you have swallowed, do not forget that you have grown flowers in your stomach from nothing but stomach acid. You are capable of everything. You are ineffable, I do not fear this. To describe my mother would be to see the eye of the storm wink at my destructive worries. To describe my mother would be to describe the universe taking the shape of bird whose clipped wings could not stop its flight. Impossible. I have a bone to pick with language, it cannot capture the most important things…But, Mother, I will not pick your bones. Your lips may be chapped and your eyes may be tired, but your legs are still capable of dancing. Let the rhythm move your aching bones and grow happier as you grow older. It should not be any other way.

Snow falls quiet on the empty street
Beneath gray skies with no hint of sun.
Valentine’s Day
And one crow alone on a telephone wire.

An artificial day and of no importance,
Commercialized, trivialized and often ignored.
No doubt that’s why the box is empty.
The crow caws once and flies away.

And yet remember that through the skein of wires above your head
Calls go back and forth looking for friendly ears.
Notes are written, torn up and begun again.
Words clot in pens. Eyes search the snowy streets,
looking for you. Always
Looking for you.

Prayers 830/2022
The findrompscar of egintoch kilmarge verdure veraciloquence bemoaning with pleionosis and sharpened vesicles of the seminative enthralled belletrist of novalia conquered by fallow vestiges of revalorized conations of orchestras of mathesis girdled by the hebephrenia of ecphonesis debauched in flombricks of the macadamized pathway of alloreck demand an invictive supercherie of skelder never a pilgarlick of pisteology deturpated by delitescent romage and gadarene gadabouts of the frigoric scaramouches of ruffianized kenodoxy blaring with semaphores of megalography in the sondage of plebeian reboant rebuses of qwasthink ennobled by the noema of the noosphere glorified by roundabout circumlocution because the reiterative gabble of those who neglect the omphalos of the noosphere always reticulate false cantered pretense because of constative uncertainties always asterongue in their longiniquity from the gangues of the heapstead of the realistic tropes of surreal tropology. We geck our way from gentilian fewterers of stirpiculture and the silvics of the gammon of gamines suborning fideicide in leveraged largesse countermanding with a calenture of colposiquanomian quozian fravvel the retromorphosis of profaned lascivious fossarian debouched and crass vibronic alopecia of anatocism surging never with rhipidate deflexure in the pleonexia of the pleroma of supercalendar frimples of deskandent cloveryield only partial to nebbich fortuitism rather than the spargosis of the counterphobic rintinole of earwigs of pronounced ebriection sparking the geotaxis of high larceny dragooning with imperium in aleatory passiuncles of ideoprone thermolysis of the abyssopelagic depths of stygiophobia rancid in bromides of gnomic rancor of gnomonic kurgans of gerdoying intorgurence that brannigans walm with the weirdward ascendancy of blackguarded illation circumspect in its picaresque hues of oligochrome that the laxism of pericope will not permit the greater sacrilege and tribune of frackling flarmey whadronque mendaciloquence of the kenspeckel notoriety of operose syndicalism in the dumose formative bushwhacking license and licentiousness of the Cambristry of foutered and flictitious frankquibber neoteny, this is precisely because the counterphobes that demand the syndicalism of serfdom are always hibernating on their own outrecuidance rather than bemoaning the depths of the reversal of the minimasque because of the terminus of the diestrus of denostram. We belong, however, to an age of ergotall rhipidate ragmatical perendination by the intrepid galvanization of the tremendum of rogation sizzling in dashpot acrimony that the subsultus of engorged modernity crafts in knackish knavery the lucifuguous but lucriferous fangast flannel of fanfaronade rather than fandangled cagophilists of callisteia alone never the gezellig of belgards of bronteum can empower the chandlers to reast of bibliopolist rarissima of enervated existentialism becoming the apagoge for the minimism of doctrinaire dogmatic serfdom simultaneous to the isorropic ravenous ravellin of the ratten bewrayed swirk jaunty in spellbound subversion but always recursive in the ingemination of illecebrous forsifamiliation that the rackrent of prurience demephitises only to funnel the effluvia of squalor and squandermania into a chockablock fumiduct of erasure rather than revalorized redintegration of lypemania offered at the outrance of lythcoop in phylactic manners so that the lientery of gravid supercherie of the semese ditokous radicalism of  ravelins of symposiarch syndaysmia might become enhanced by reckoning rather than diminished by crucibles of the antithesis of ataraxia at the penultimate scribacious saxifragous liturgy of sempervirent immortelles of the remontant opportunism of malingered tropoclastics of curved naivety and synclastic realism amasthenic because of prismatic surrealism. Amen

B. The whyern of the lazaretta of oxyholotrons of ghallitosis recumbent upon tisicky sockdolagers of loimic pestilence of limosis that cravenly bends all reticulation and resofincular singularities of the promontory of gadarene genius that the refracturism of liturgicide might demigrate with the demegorics of picine elapid pigarsconce phylarchy always contramanded by cowcatcher counterphobic babeldom that roils in sublimity manufactured by arrivistes of eclat that we might marvel at the majestic gauleiter in his engastrimyth porlocking purpresture of the purview of the noxal demiurge of gelogenic denouement that fewer spanerias cornered by the pogonips of suspended hebephrenia in the waning gloaming improvidence of importunate ludibund finifugal travesty that it might find recurrence in its attempted regelation of the wamzel impetus strengthened by eumoireity and the encraty that becomes the balderdash of egintoch fortitude that they might never mammer at the picaresque librations of the selenic bromidrosis that endangers by deliberate degrees of bromidrosis of frustraneous faffle that the fangasts might use the invictive turnverein of orthotropism in gallantry belonging to the gammerstangs of hylozoism even as an outgrowth of figurative thanatousia repining on its euhemerism and decrying its normalism of nocicepty in aspheterism that the eventual acme demolishes the ragtagger wreggled freggets of popinjay ventose conceit that breems of albatross dart in zugzwang rather than expedite in eupraxia of the idiolect of the grambouncers of scopophilia enamored so much of amasthenic and synclastic reboant phonophorous lurid triumph that never a crucible of laterad denouement of the raissoneurs of genius might find any crambazzled prurience in arrogation a detest of gammadions never belonging to the proper tribance of the rengall shibboleths of people that scowl in delitescent objurgation renowned for sublime rendavation that fewer may alienavesce by graklongeur and that more jongleurs of festive callithumpian imperseverant temerity might jow the tachymetry of the noosphere to the pinnacle of civilized eudaemonism never curtailed by the ballicatter of killcows blackguarding their own grapnels of possessive intorgurence and faineant psychosophy that all might denounce the rindstretch of alloreck because of ineradicable estoppage as the deturpation of the placomania and dacoitage of lewd larceny and never provident tribunes of humane orthotropism in orthobiosis. Amen

C. The raisonneur of pleionosis in the pleroma of refocillated recalcitrance emboldened into jaunty statures of refrain in the fescennine quarters of cartography bedizened by majestic megalography that simpers in the wangermist of junctition never a frackling seraglio of denatured ravellin in the skerries of skeumorph can contradict with the eupraxia rather than the dystocia of primiparas of a rhipidate fashion of patibulary treony diminutive in its trillom of flarium regarded never as faffle but always as fanfaronade that the smartest ideoprone nebbich pataphysics of modernity might quarrel with collieshangies of rapid repute opining because of quidlibertarian opiniasters of ophiuran bolides of meteoric whyern that they might all stagger davering away from the dwale of the blemished steganography of dengonin that the otarine aspergillum of ghoulish mandriarchs against an omphalism only tendentious with the full warble of tachymetry of falsehood rather than perdurable in the pasilaly of patience percutient in its force of rancor and acrimony that the ultrageous outrage always meets the favor of the tribunes of certainty rather than the delirifacient qualms of quacksalvers of martexture in the wrathcheque wartle of the renegade alone rather than the audacity of jongleurs to sway the real silviculture of sertivine and herculean geotechnics always transcendent rather than regelated only for the reflationary illusions of the revet and chaffer of broches of sanctified purpresture never the peaceful ponkoss of the pleckigger of the condign allotment. We stagger through the motatory mobilism of the diutiurnal demephitised dephlogisticated refocillation that renounces the frottage of ******* in all septuagint referendum of popular renown rather than gaumless numquids of rhizogenic rhabdomania in this heyday of providence rather than the naysayers who become the quilombo questmongers of irreption only because of the radicolous typhlophilia that scrounges pestilence and in scurrilous internecine balkanization of the avenue of truth and the highways of deceitful and disreputable phanerolagnia that they might always see the malison of the malism of the azimuth and avizandum of tziganology in shibboleth rather than in the rapidfire patibulary renown of the bowdlerized margaric and maricolous denouement of the tributaries of sempirvirence never in luxury but always in chiminage. Amen

D. Rhadbomania of the rhombos of tauricide ennobles the chiliarchy into the sederunt lancination of privilege becoming the crotaline demeanor of raffish runagate rampicks of ramellose radiciform bloviation that owes its coherence never to the  crucible of the epigones that boast in the steganography of wravvel but always evade their corporate responsibility to the anemocracy of never an anneabil gezellig of only the goliardy of dementia but that they always sustain an opiniaster flargent and deskandent impavid resofincular destination as the terminus of their finitism of consideration. May we always absolve the finicky albatross rather than the flocking jackals braying in the winterkill of subterfuge that they might with the magomancy of dragonnade rather than the imperium of honest cadence may their blarney and bletherskate impudence become to them a greater curse than the blessings of the avizandum of only a chrestomathic but outnumbered foe of the realism of a scandent scaramouch demisang of portreeves of hatred fomenting all spumid spindrifts and snirtles of disdain that they might bemoan their own intorgurence of refractory putanism as they scrimshank themselves only on meteoric pride rather than honest recidivism back into the heyday of truth rather than the matroclinic lies of bluestocking matriarchs of mandarism and omphalism contempered into raches that lack the oxyblepsia of ratomorphism ennobled rather than deturpated by both slaughter and laughter. Amen

E. Raffish runagates that enervate themselves of any oxyacaesthesia that they might belong to the demephitised bowery of their own supercilious provincial randan that the ranarian liposuction of their travesty becomes apparent in the kenspeckel of belletrist aimed against their magpiety of mafficking magomancies of false pretense rather than the sockdolagers of majestic genarchs above their littoral swank and alluvions of combustible antebellum swasivious larceny of the common forum against the lyceum of the promethean that by definition becomes radicalized by the rhipidate martexture of their profound deceit. We might never forsifamiliate or defiliate ourselves from nuclear truths rather than raffish lies of ruffianized vandalism of sacerdotalism and the triumphs of rogation above the pother of their outmantled owleries of recidivism in bloodthirst and graft. We might always overhaile without a hint of isorropic irony or the patibulary dudmans of the dringles of dwizzened wonderworks overwrought by rainshod oppression by the gullywashers of modernized tarnish hermalloping the best truths with sempervirent fictions that gadarene gadabouts prance with frantling and pavonine debellation that never provokes capitulation but only a talionic clarigation of the wartle of deceit disguised as the meteoric triumph of the hypertrophy of the hyperborean and thereby selenic invictive force of promethean millitasters emboldened into combat but never rescinded into a Miss Congeniality pageantry that shroffs by incorrect baragnosis of brassage a radical impotence rather than a plenipotentiary pantagamy of pantoglots that surf the alluvion rather than become infumated by the insolation of vesuviated hatred only countermanded by counterclock ratiocination always hobbled by the spancules of ridicule. Time is the behest of eternal alveolate synergies rather than the turgid muck of the jabberwocky of sublime elitism that is often parodied by the peenge of the thole of tauricide roaring in the winds of paravented elitism that scaramouches of skelder and the consequences of their impudence in only schadenfreude of perendination might they meet a whadronque end at the terminus of their own wrathcheque in their estrapade of the interrex rather than the eupraxia of their common objective in objectivism that finally regards with supreme truth the elements of neovitalism that buoy rhizogenic and seminal seminules of hylozoism combined with ratomorphism that we might all be astounded when the roostery outmantles the owlery because of the oxyacaesthesia that only the gubbertushed crapehangers disown in their minimifidian minimism against dogmatic lurches of triumph against the headlong deceit of hamshackled commitments of the spargosis of the colporteurs of only the most plebeian considerations rather than the most promethean samizdats that survive because the biognosy of bionomics is tautochronous to the fascinations of a newfangled isonomy between the bibliopolist of rarissima and the henchmen of the politicide of the polyacoustic babeldom of conclamation that tries desperately to cadge and roodge through diestrus the selachostomous sondage of the clastic mereology of love beyond any trivialized notions of macadamized macarism or worse the opportunism of the portreeve gauleiters of vandalized schadenfreude disregarding the ****** of a gamboling frescade with the hypaethral heavens bequeathing the glebes of plebania with a pleroma rather than a pleonexia. The pasilaly of consequentialism in the reference of doxography that might never faint by the cordial resofincular dimensions of  corrugated wizened and dwizzened dringles of pataphysical naivety that is an objurgation of negativism rather than an elevated triumph of the aqueducts of the irrigation of all novantique by the paragons of lolloping swank in the proper pleckigger notarized by the plackiques of the semaphores of the ennobled wrepolis never craven in its eustress that finally the fangasts of temerity rather than the harridans of the bloodthirst corruption of the boweries of graft eviscerated by the providence of the esquivalience of naivety that they might understand the synclastic relativism of our times magnifies the mesmerism of the siderism finally stellized enough to outmantle the pothers of fumatorium and erase the frinterans of spendthrift pismirism from the hallowed sacrarium of the modern liturgy rather than the archaeolatry of the bethels of lewd tradition empowered by footloose philandering and venal venereal valetudinarianism that itches to foreclose on every mortgaged contract of family that they might be defiliated by the timmynoggies of sin rather than redacted by the greater good of the enosimania of those that find findrouement neither a rubricality nor a qualm but rather the axiomatic fulfillment of the toil of graklongeur never feckless in its ascendancy against the tidal destruction of selenocentric arrogance of ludibund nescience that frolics only in the carapace of naive novantique rather than the egestuous realization that the crapehangers of shibboleth are useless because the apikoros are defiled by their flargent disbelief rather than ennobled by their fidelity to the agapism of a favored century over the declension of the fatalism of finifugal aghast and rantipole negations of the malaise of only the malapert reconnaissance of the scepsis of dubiety rather than the optimistic omphalism of synclastic and amasthenic centuples of redintegrated happenstance becoming peremptory novelty in the novantique of the proper pleckigger of reverence in the paravent against the umbrageous sabotage of the listless in liturgy and the intorgurent disdain of liberticide. May God reckon upon the Earth a newer triumph that never in sheepish bleats davers in periblebsis because of predatory galvanization of instinct and the worst shibboleths of the pilgarlick pigsconce of blatteroons of nescience in their firm commitment to hylicism that can easily find apagoge never only in the aphemia of aphnology of the anacusic irrecusable enmity of those that despise halidom because of the groundling fascination with only volcanic lavondeurs rather than the narthex of lavaderos that scavenge all florilegium for the tombstone of truth and the resurrection of the lively anacampserote of the optimistic escape of those persecuted by estoppage and redstrall into the frontier of harmony and the syndicalism of centripetal serendipity. Amen

I'm told to smile more
To hide my misery behind my teeth
To keep my troubles to myself
My reputation must stay intact
I have to be pleasant
Because that's the way I am perceived
I am told to show more but show less
Eat more but eat less
Work more but get paid less
I'm told not to worry because someday it'll be fine
I get trivialized because of my ***
Because I have to act accordingly
Be gracious and welcoming
I get judged before I even say a word
And checked into a lesser category
I agree to things as if they have power over me
But you only have power over yourself
I want things to change
But I'm told to smile more

I can categorically list the number of times you have been misused, unheard and trivialized. And as much as I might write about you, you are not a metaphorical representation of the moon or the sun, and my pen doesn't help. You are real flesh and bones, and the real you craves for coffee on Sunday summer mornings and likes sitting alone sometimes. You too crave for ***, with people whom you have just met and you also forgot my birthday once. You are not perfect, of course, you are not perfect, but you are not a gross indecency either. You are truly and finally someone I can love and my love demands to be written down on the most beautiful sheets of paper I own. My love demands to be handwritten on postcards that I have collected over the years for this moment and sent over the distances. But you see my love is also a little selfish and narcissistic, and since we are not in a brilliant and beautiful relationship, you are just another story I can tell myself before going to bed. One of those stories that demand to be told again and again.

Mama told me
Beauty laps at my skin
And youth is wasted
By my ingratitude

But I was too tired to see it
I was 23
Now I'm 25
And I've died a thousand times
Over
By this point.

That night
I blew the candles
Like I was supposed to
Greeted the guests
Shared cake with them
Under a sky so
Swollen with stars
So burgeoning with promise

Then I walked them to their cars
Gave hugs and thanks
Like I was taught.

But mama never taught me
That niceties are only
Skin-deep
That happiness
Is as cosmetic as my cover girl concealer
And I can apply it to
My skin to
Cover the blemishes of
My pain
Carved between my
Freckles
Scars that
Hang under my eyes like
Eternal exhaustion.

Yes,
I was alright that night.
Alright, being relative
Which just
Meant that I was suffering
A little less.

A term that meant
That a Pabst and some
Hard lemonade and
My birthday champagne
Would ease.

It meant that my inhibitions
Would soften my
Anguish
And my sharp edges
Would rounded
Into lovely
Curves
Soft enough for a man
To touch.

And I did.
I let that man touch me
On my happy day.

For so long I have
Trivialized my own
Pain, pretending it
Didn’t exist
Burying it into
My darkest recesses
Hiding it in my mattress
And under my pillows.

You see,
I have built walls
Even too high for me
To climb.
So I sat there
On my birthday
With the candles
And the lights
All turning, turning
Red cups luring
Us into a suspended
Stupor.
All bellies bloated with
Good company.

Ah, how nice it was.

That night
I watched
My life through
The window
Outside
Like I could see
Happiness
Painted on my
Face
While inquietude
Sat in my
Chest
Strangling my
Progress
The sadness
Plaguing the
Recesses of my
Mind

I grieved:
“I’ve made it so
Far,
So please
Don’t go back now.”

I inhaled
Deeply
And allowed myself
To be drowned by my own
Breath,
And I blew.
And I said
Happy birthday to me.

Out of the edge
The very corner of my eye
In the free-standing vitrine
Assembled under plexi
with various small pieces
all 1800s
In what at that time was
a richly coral walled gallery
Deliberately
A small marble bust
Yes I’m calling you out
Although I don’t know your accession number
and you’re no longer on view
Nor will be
any time soon
for that matter
You took advantage
You waited until my very last
moment’s attention
and as I turned my head away
a quick trick
the head turns
A flash of movement
Or movement is how I understood it
Because that’s what my brain
told me it was
You know that I saw this
of course
since you did it on purpose

At the time I told you to cut that **** out
NOT FUNNY
Or words to that effect

I thought that that’s
how you must handle such things
And I still do
It’s childish

Yet it only comes to mind now
That you must have done this countless times
To so many
The contexts endless
Though it must get old
But you
are old

It would be nice to know when it started
And why
this parlor trick
For I’d never felt watched or scrutinized
or judged

by objects on display
which is what you are
Particularly in this gallery

you went straight to
“provocation”

Perhaps you meant
“help me”
but I doubt it

One imagines that anything would eventually get sick
Of being looked at
Heads leaning in for a closer
examination
You’re such a
little thing
which may be part of the problem
It could feel like a curse
to forever be a
lapis lazuli ormolu encrusted vessel
for the rest of eternity
It never occurred to me.
I never thought what must it be like?

Trivialized to surfaces.
Put on the shelf.
To fall out of history.
I should have understood more quickly
of course

I remember hearing
that an old drawing done of myself
had been on view in a gallery
without my knowing
without anyone bothering to mention it besides a vague
throwaway
aside
made well after the fact
like a tossed cigarette ground into the sidewalk
outside a dull party

I don’t remember the image
but some part of me was hanging on some wall nonetheless.
Had it done anything untoward
to some poor **** walking past?
An alchemical interruption?
I certainly hope so.
Confound dominion.
Assail the event horizon of metaphysical politesse and proprieties.
Defy a petty corporeal quarantine of sorts.

To throw off this mantle
if for just one split second.

I used to think the world was round
That everything is circular and never ending,
That our lives are recyclable and have no meaning
That all that dies lives again
That every year will be followed by another
And another forever or so I believed
BUT THEN, I realized that the world is flat
I realized that we are moving in a definite direction
That has a beginning, a middle and an end
That there is profound meaning in every little thing I do
Every thought, every sign and every movement
Headed towards an ending that is not to be trivialized
Everything is new and each day to be cherished
Never to be seen again
There will be an ending, a day of reckoning
When everything that has mattered will be judged
When all of our actions and thoughts and deeds
Are brought forth to be examined and sorted out
By Good and by the Bad
On that day, Jesus will come and gather us up
Into his arms to save us from crumbling soil
We will destroy ourselves as men are wont to do
So that there will be no recycling, no new beginning and no new day
There we will be delivered at the ends of the earth
Just as the explorers once believed it was so
With only our souls on our back and nothing more
There is an ending to our time on this earth I feel

I know it when I look up to the sky and into the light
And see His hands cupped and reaching down
Beckoning like a comforting friend
Reaching to gather us up to Him close
And save us from ourselves and our useless knowledge
That in the end means nothing! Everything will come to a halt!
At the feet of the Almighty where it once began
And only He knows what will happen next.