Shortly after 3pm on September 29, 31-year-old Olivier Rousteing strode through the shimmering, fleshy backstage area at Balmain's Spring 2017 Paris Fashion Week show. Along the marble hallway of a hôtel particulier in the 8th arrondissement, long-limbed clusters of supermodels were gamely tolerating final applications of leg-moisturiser, make-up touch-ups and minutely precise hair interventions from squads of specialists as fast and accurate as any Formula 1 pit-stop team. The crowd parted as Rousteing swept through.

Wearing a belted, black silk tuxedo and a focused expression that accentuated his razor-sharp cheekbones, Rousteing resembled a sensuous hit man. Target identified, he led us to the board upon which photographs of every outfit were tacked.

We asked him to tell us about the collection (for that's what fashion editors always ask). "There is no theme," said Rou­steing in his fast, French-accented lilt. "No inspiration from travel or time. The inspiration is what I feel, and what I feel now is peace, light and serenity. I feel like in my six years here before this, I have tried to fight so many battles. Because there is no point anymore in fighting about boundaries and limits in fashion. Balmain has its place in fashion."

And the clothes? "There is a lot of fluidity. A lot of knitwear, lightness, ponchos. No body-con dresses. But whatever I do, even if I cover up my girls, it is like people can say I am ******. So this is what it is. I think there is nothing ******. I think it is really chic. I think it is really French. It is how I see Paris. And I have had too many haters during the last three years to defend myself again. So, this is Balmain." And then the show began.

Star endorsements

Under Rousteing, Balmain has become the most controversial fashion house in Paris. Rousteing has attracted (but not bought, as other, far bigger houses do) patronage from contemporary culture's most significant influencers. Rihanna, all the Kardashians, Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé, Justin Bieber – a royal flush of modern celebrity aristocracy – all champion him.

Immediately after this show, in that backstage hubbub, Kim Kardashian told me: "I thought it was very powerful…I loved the sequins, and I loved all the big chain mail belts – that was probably my favourite."

Yet for every famous fan there is a member of the fashion establishment who will sniff over coffee in Le Castiglione that Rousteing's crowd is declassé and his aesthetic best described by that V-word. The New York Times' fashion critic Vanessa Friedman reckoned this collection appropriate for "dressing for the captain's dinners on a cruise ship to Fantasy Island". At least she did not use the V-word. When I once deployed it – as a compliment – in a 2015 Vogue menswear review that declared "Rousteing is confidently negotiating a fine line between extravagance and vulgarity", I was told that Rous­teing was aggrieved.

The fashion world's ambivalence towards Rousteing is a measure of its conflicted feelings towards much in contemporary culture. Last year Robin Givhan of the Washington Post wrote of Balmain: "The French fashion house is always ostentatious and sometimes ******. It feeds a voracious appetite for attention. It is anti-intellectual. Antagonistic. Emotional. It is shocking. It is perfect for this era of social media, which means it is powerfully, undeniably relevant."

Since joining Instagram four years ago Rousteing has posted 4000 images and won 4 million followers. The combined reach of his audience members and models at this Balmain show was greater than the population of Britain and France combined. Balmain was the first French fashion house to gain more than 1 million followers, and currently has 5.5 million of them.

Loving his haters

As digital technology disrupts fashion, Balmain's seemingly effortless mastery of the medium galls some. Last year, the designer posted an image of a comment from a ****** follower to his feed. It read: "Olivier Rousteing spends more times taking selfies for Instagram than designing clothes for Balmain." Underneath, in block capitals, he commented "i love my haters".

Rousteing can be funny and flip – doing a video interview after the show, I opened by asking, tritely, how he felt. He replied: "Now I feel like some Chicken McNuggets with barbecue sauce, and then some M&M;'s ice cream."

When at work, however, that flipness flips to entirely unflip. The previous evening, at a final fitting for the collection, Rousteing had paced his studio, his face a scowl of concentration, applying final edits to the outfits to be worn by models Doutzen Kroes and Alessandra Ambrosio. The 30-strong team of couturiers working in the adjoining atelier delivered a steady stream of altered dresses.

"We are ready," he said from behind a glass desk in a rare moment of downtime. "This a big show – 80 looks – and I want a collection that is full of both the commercial and couture. But it's smooth too. All of the girls are excited about the after-party and interested in the music. And eating pizza." In the corridor outside Gigi Hadid – this season's apex supermodel – was indeed eating pizza, with gusto.

The fitting went on until far beyond midnight; Rousteing, fiercely focused, demonstrated the work ethic for which he is famous. When he was studio manager for Christophe Decarnin, his predecessor at Balmain, the young then-unknown was always the first in and last out of the studio. Emmanuel Diemoz, who joined Balmain as finance controller in 2001 and became chief executive in 2011, says that his hard graft was one of the reasons he was chosen to succeed Decarnin.

"For sure it was quite a gamble," says Diemoz. "But we could see the talent of Olivier. Plus he understood the work of Christophe – who had helped the brand recover – so he represented continuity. He was a hard worker, clearly a leader, with a lot of creativity. Plus the size of the turnover at that time was not so huge. So we were able to take the risk."

Clear leader

Which is why, aged 24, Rousteing became the creative director of one of Paris's best known – but indubitably faded – fashion houses. In 2004 it had been close to bankruptcy. In 2012, Rousteing's first full year in charge, Balmain's sales were €30.4 million and its profit €3.1 million. In 2015, sales were €121.5 million and its profit €33 million. Vulgarity is subjective; numbers are not.

Rousteing, who is of mixed race, was adopted at five months by white parents and enjoyed an affluent and loving upbringing in Bordeaux. "My mum is an optician and my dad was running the port. They are both really scientific – not artistic. So I had that kind of life. Bordeaux is really bourgeois and really conservative, I have to say."

After an ill-starred three-month stint at law school – "I was doing international law. And I was like, 'oh my God, that is so boring'" – he did a fashion course that he managed to tolerate for five months.

"I found that really boring as well. I just don't like actually people who are trying to **** your dream. And I felt that is what my teachers were trying to do."

Obsessed with Gucci

Following a three-month internship in Rome – "also boring" – Rousteing became fascinated with Tom Ford's work at Gucci. "I was obsessed, obsessed, obsessed. Sometimes the press did not get it but I thought 'this is like genius, the new **** chic'. Obsessed, full stop."

He wanted to work there – "that was my dream" – but applied to every fashion house he could, and found an opportunity to intern at Roberto Cavalli. "They took me in from the beginning. I met Peter Dundas [then womenswear designer at the brand] and he said you are going to be my right hand – and start in four days."

Rousteing counts his five years in Italy as formative both creatively and commercially, but when the opportunity came to return to France in 2009 he leapt at it. "Christophe said he liked my work and that he needed someone to manage the studio. So two weeks later I was here. I loved Balmain at the time, when Christophe was in charge. It was all about rock 'n' roll chic, ****, Parisian. And he was appealing to a younger generation. You can see when brands become old but Balmain was touching this new audience. I always say Christophe's Balmain was Kate Moss but mine is Rihanna."

When Decarnin left and Rousteing replaced him, the response was a resounding "who?". His youth prompted some to anticipate failure.

"It was not easy at all. Every season I had the same questions." Furthermore, Rousteing (who has said he thinks of himself as neither black nor white) was the only non-white chief designer at a Parisian couture house. In a nation in which very few people of colour hold senior positions, his race may have contributed both to the establishment's suspicion of him and to his powerful sense of being an outsider.

'Beautiful spirit'

As he began to build a personal vernacular of close-fitted, heavily jewelled, gleefully grandiose menswear – fantastical uniform for a Rousteing-imagined gilded age – for both women and men, that V-word loomed.

"They asked, 'But is it luxury? Is it chic? Is it modern?' All those kinds of words. But you know there is no one definition [of fashion] even if people in Paris think there is. And, I'm sorry, but I think the crowd in fashion are those who understand the least what is avant-garde today."

In 2013 Rihanna visited the studio, met Rousteing, and reported all with multiple Instagram posts. "You are the most beautiful spirit, so down to earth and kind! @olivier_rousteing I think I'm in love!!! #Balmain." :')"

Rousteing met Kim Kardashian at a party in New York – they were drawn together, he recalls, because they were both shy – and was promptly invited to lunch with her family in Los Angeles.

An outsider in the firmament of old-guard Paris fashion, Rousteing was earning insider status within a new, and much more influential, supranational elite. He points out that Valentino, Saint Laurent and Pierre Balmain himself "were close to the jet set of their time. What I have on my front row is the people who inspire my generation".

From them, he learned a new way of doing business. "I think it was Rihanna and the music industry that first understood how Instagram can be part of the business world as well as the personal. But in fashion? When we started it was 'why do you post selfies? Why do we need to know your life, see you waking up, see you working? Why don't you keep it private'. And I was like 'you will see'."

Rousteing cheerfully declares his love for Facetune – "I don't have Botox but I do have digital Botox!" – an app that helps him airbrush his selfies and tweak those ski-***** cheekbones.

Reaching new population

From his office around the corner from Rousteing's, Diemoz adds: "When Olivier first proposed Balmain use social media, our investment in traditional media was costing a lot. Here was an alternative costing less but bringing huge visibility. It has been successful, quite rapidly…we decided to be less Parisian in a way but to speak to a new population. A brand has to be built around its heritage but we are proposing a new form of communication dedicated to a wider group of customers."

The impact of that strategy became apparent in 2015, when Rousteing and Balmain were invited to design a collection for the Swedish fast-fashion retailer H&M.; Within minutes of going on sale – and this is not hyperbole – the collection, available at vastly cheaper prices than Balmain-proper, had completely sold out. In London, customers fought on the pavement outside H&M;'s Regent Street branch. "Balmainia!" blared the headlines.

You have to move fast to get backstage after a Balmain show. I was out of my seat and trotting with purpose even before the string-heavy orchestra at the end of the catwalk had quite stopped playing Adele.

Rousteing had taken his bow merely seconds before. Still, too slow: I ended up in a clot of Rousteing well-wishers stuck in a corridor blocked by security guards. A Middle Eastern woman against whom I was indelicately jammed looked at me, laughed, shook her head, then said: "We pay millions for a fashion house – and then this happens!"

In June, Balmain was bought for a reported €485 million by Mayhoola, a Qatar-based wealth fund said to be controlled by the nation's ruling family. As so often with Rousteing-related revelations, some declared themselves nonplussed. "Why Would Mayhoola Pay Such a High Price for Balmain?", one headline asked. Yet Mayhoola, which acquired Valentino four years previously for $US858 million, might have scored a bargain.

Clothes key to revenue

Despite its huge, Instagram-enhanc­ed footprint, Balmain is a small, lean and relatively undeveloped business. Most luxury fashion houses today – Chanel, Burberry, Dior, et al – will emphasise their catwalk collections for marketing purposes but make most of their money from the sale of accessories, fragrances and small leather goods like handbags and shoes. One of the big fashion companies makes a mere 5 per cent from its catwalk clothes.

At Balmain, by contrast, clothes bring in almost all the revenues. If Balmain had the same clothes-to-accessories ratio as its competitors, its overall annual income could be more than €1 billion ($1.4 billion).

The company is moving in that direction. New accessory lines are in the pipeline. "Now we have to transform that desire into business activity," said Diemoz. "Sunglasses, belts, fragrances, the kind of products that can be more affordable."

The first bags should be available in January, as will a wider range of shoes, and then more, more, more.

Six days after his show, on the last day of Paris Fashion Week, I returned to the Balmain atelier. Apart from two assistants, Rousteing was the only person there – everybody else had gone on holiday to recover from the frenzy of preparing the show, or was busy selling the collection at the showroom around the corner.

Rousteing sat behind his desk in the empty room, wearing slingback leopard-print slippers, sweatpants and shades. "I am not even tired! I am excited. Because there are so many things happening – and I can't wait."Read more at:www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses | http://www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-adelaide

Late nights in your car, listening to turnover and drinking coffee.
For the longest time I was that girl in the Paramore shirt and converse.
Eventually you asked me my name and to be friends.
Friends didn't last long due to the fact that we clicked instantly.
From music to mannerisms we were in sync.
When I think of you, I smell coffee and cigarettes.  
I feel warm knowing I'll always have your jacket and arms to keep me warm.
I'm always cold because I know we're both terrified to lose each other.
But when I started to drift from you for the first time, you didn't say anything because you didn't want to be over-barring.
After a while you caved and finally told me you missed me.
But what I miss, is the way it feels when you hugged me and i breathed in your scent.
When you touch me, I have no thoughts, all I hear is complete silence.
I'm always nervous but more calm than ever with you.
You know my struggles and have seen my scars but still tell me its okay and I'm beautiful anyways.
I like the way your eyes light up when you talk about the new sextape single; your smile is contagious.
You say I make you jealous when I talk about all the boys who've touched me,
But no one is more jealous than me when I think about all the girls you've held and told THEM that you LOVED THEM.
I don't think I can handle us being "friends" much longer.
Every time I'm with you I go to grab your hand but never reach it because I'm scared for your hand to slip out of mine.
I never thought of my future because I'd rather be dead, but if you're with me, being alive doesn't sound too bad.

Apples
Apple Sauce
Apple Juice
Apple Cider
Apple Pie
Apple Jam
Apple Butter
Apple Turnover
Apple Muffin
Apple Bread
Apple Crisp
Apple Salad
Apple Cake
So many yummy things to make
But only question is how long does it take'
for them to bake
Oh apple i want you in my tummy
only because your so yummy

by Matashdy

I store at an isolated mark that stood lonesome among the words that were written around the board.
To divert myself from the alien eyes that tore the flesh from my
body.
They dug at my vulnerability.
An odour of discomfort defended it.
My eyes stayed stiff on the meager mark.
To hold my pride strong.
I locked my weakness in the darkness of my mind.
It was no prison.
My mind was a mental asylum.
Crazy thoughts raced around helplessly.
They slashed every enemy besides it’s trusted companion of anxiety.
My head dove into my hands.
They vibrated sending shivers down my body.
Their hierarchy of judgement nipped at my ear.
Or did it?

I was defeated.

The bell jangled and I jumped.
I raised my head in a daze a final time.
I studied the classroom and saw my classmates with their blank faces.
No heads turned.
No whispers heard.
Just people who omitted all around them.
The light shifted when I recognized I was the judge. I caused the war. It’s a battle I lost to myself. The hardest battle of all.

When I think back now to when I was little (to when I was young)
The words "I love you" I don't think were ever spoken, not in our house anyway (now I could be wrong)
It would have been something silly to say
That was something you'd only hear in a Hollywood movie
Between glamorous movie stars, glamorous people
It wasn't part of our reality
If you were feeling anxious about something and needed comforting
You'd be told not to worry, that you were being silly
You'd be given a hug maybe or 'a treat' something nice
Usually something sweet, a biscuit and a hot cup of sugary tea or cocoa
A chocolate sweet if there were any
You'd be allowed to stay up late and watch the late shows on TV
Me! I was always a terrible worrier just like my Mom
Food most often was the comforter, the soother, the remedy to all
(Some say our relationship with food is the closest relationship we ever have in Life).

Yea! I don't think the words "I love you" were spoken where we grew up
Our parents they loved us as best they could
But they didn't have the words, the words to say it
It was strange...it was almost like they were forbidden to.
Of course, you could love your neighbor alright and your neighbor's neighbor
And your neighbor's neighbors neighbor's neighbor
And all the feckin' neighbors in the whole feckin' world
But the one thing you couldn't, you mustn't do
Was love yourself, this was the Big No No, the Big taboo, the Great Evil
It was the one thing you must never do,
And every Sunday at church, the priest way up on his pulpit
He'd never tire of telling us
How evil and selfish and bad the Self was
And all the bad things it got up to
Yea, your neighbor was always better than you were
Put your neighbor above yourself always
Love your neighbor and you'd be alright
That was the message loud and clear.

                               2

So, so we got treats instead of words of love when we were little
On Friday nights when Dad would come home from work and the pub
He'd always have with him lovely Apple Turnover buns
And a bag of crisps for each of us
And so, we'd all sit there together in the evening in front of the telly
After the maelstrom of the school week with  its lessons and scary teacher
Trying so hard to understand and get your homework done,
And despite all we'd laugh and enjoy the TV shows
And this... this was Love, us all just sitting there with our buns and munching our crisps just watching the TV together
Knowing we belonged and that we were loved kind of...as best they could
And that we had a couple of days off, days of freedom
Before we'd have to go back to school again,
It didn't get any better than this.

And when we'd be going down the country to see our Uncle John
My Dad would always stop off to visit a pub
And he'd get us a Club orange and a packet of crisps
It couldn't get any better than this... this was Love
The lovely sweet taste of that fizzy Club orange juice
And those wonderful salty cheese and onion flavoured (potato) crisps or maybe salt and vinegar flavour
Or later on, lovely smokey bacon flavour,
As we'd sit there Dad would be talking to the barman or some of the locals
But we didn't care what was being said, it didn't matter to us
It didn't get any better than this
This was heaven... this was Bliss.

Sometimes during the summer months before we could get summer jobs
Maybe it'd be raining outside and we'd be stuck indoors and bored
But then Mum would up and say "I know I'll make some chips"
Now Mum's chips were really something special, they'd be lovely big chunky potato chips, hand cut
And maybe she'd have beans in tomato sauce with them,
And maybe there'd be a good film on in the afternoon
Well, this was it, nothing could top that, a good film and a plate of Mum's big chunky chips and beans
Sometimes she'd even make these lovely mince beef pies
With minced beef and flour and onions, salt and pepper on them
And they were really something else
It couldn't get any better than this... and this... this was Love
(I can still remember the kind of meals we ate
And my Mum in the kitchen, and my Dad).

                            3

It's how people grow up in the end I suppose
They find someone inspiring, some teacher or book that makes a strong impression on them (if their lucky)
Or a partner who broadens their horizons, makes them question things and expands their vision of life and all its wondrous possibilities
But what if you don't find those good books, those inspiring teachers
Those voices that'd offer you a better vision of tomorrow and what this life could be
What if you only found bad books, bad books purporting to be good
That'd rob you and leave you lost and desolate, fearful and confused
What if some of your teachers turned out to be alcoholics
That some even done away with themselves
What if the people you met were even more lost than you were yourself...

And you'd go to a job interview and the man, he'd look at you and say
"So, what are your aspirations in Life, what are your values, your goals, where do you see yourself a few years from now ?"
And you'd look back at him blankly, Aspirations! Values! Goals!
What are these words, what's he talking about...
What am I looking for in Life ?
To have some fun I suppose...maybe (if having fun was still legal now as an adult)
Fun!!! Whatever that was now ?
Or to get drunk and stay drunk, escape this grim world I'm in somehow
What am I looking for ?
You tell me...I don't know, what is there
For all I knew I may as well have said
"A Club orange and a packet of crisps".

                              4

Now the faces they have all faded away, the voices too, have all gone
There's only me here alone in this room
It's Friday evening and I've got a readymade dinner from the supermarket
Just need to pop it in the oven for a few minutes
And I got a Dvd from the Dvd store,
So I sit there and eat my dinner, I savour every bite
But still it doesn't last very long
And I can lick my plate but it doesn't make any difference
I can lick it all I like
But I can't make it last, and I can't bring them back again
Those people that are gone;
And the food, it doesn't taste the same, doesn't taste as good as it tasted back then
And the movies too, their not like the ones we used to watch...

When I die it'll probably be like that movie Citizen Kane, at the end his last words "Rosebud"
The name of his beloved childhood sleigh
He used slide on in the snow,
I'll say on my death bed "I too have a memory of Love and Joy, Yea!
A Club orange and a packet of crisps".

Dearest Britni,

I was warmed by your thermal tub, the belly of your indiscretions and the way you held those mule-hearts
in plastic jars beneath the cupboard where your favorite cups and coins were kept.  The magic beat of your fingertips made my skin jump crazy out of my shirt and pants.  I wonder if the turnover has always been this way for you, meaning to say, when the trips always ended did you take back the second pillow into the other room, where your ivory curtains opened, and did you feel the need to lock the door to your bedroom.

The word, 'house guest' implies less visitation privileges than actually took place.  I believe it was more of an involved visit.  There were certainly visitation privileges but there was also visitation writ.  I had to keep my jeans clean.  There were no shoes allowed in the bed.  And extracurricular activities were kept to their time tables-- that is to stay that spontaneity occurred only when it fit into the time table.  I was never much for making you lunch in the morning.  It has always been difficult for me to think of the meals before they happened, though I knew what was in every drawer, every closet, every cabinet.  The insides and outs of a decade of dreams.

In short time I became mesmerized with the perfect patterns in your arms and on your legs.  I could crook my head in a way to look at the sunset from under your arm or stand on a chair to look down at the top of your head.  And then one day you told me I was weird.

This time I wanted to be fulfilled.  I did not want to miss a thing.  I made sure to slide my fingers in between your toes, I squeezed the bottoms of your feet with the bottoms of my feet.  There are many recitals, many performances, and even more personal encounters that cannot be recalled to mind, but I am sure they happened.  If I had the opportunity I would attempt to pick your nose again.  Something I did every chance I had though you abhorred it.  To lick the side of your face, the bottom of your chin, the interior of your armpit, the lengths of your legs, and the rims of your lips-- I lived our life to the fullest.

All interactions were encouraged.  We played in sunlight, in nightlight, during day showers, and ate by the seaside.  We traveled to four states, two lakes, and two oceans.  We drove in excess of 20,000 miles, received fifty-seven parking tickets, five speeding tickets, thirty-five thousand two hundred eighty four compliments, fifty-two salutations, fifteen, "you're an adorable couple," three hundred complimentary access, two free tickets to a museum exhibition, took over one hundred fifty flights between the two of us, and received your father's permission.  We slept in showers, swam in baths, and drank from swimming pools.  We shared the bathroom, the bed, and the kitchen sink.  I memorized how many times you rolled over when sleeping, and you told me what I talked about in my sleep.  I knew the five places you lived at and the four places you wanted to.  We danced in nightclubs, in bars, in schoolyards, in back seats and bedrooms, and ballrooms.  There were fifteen black tie events, one wedding, and over two hundred concerts.  I wrote over fifty thousand poems made over three hundred paintings, and took somewhere around twenty-eight thousand pictures.  I once took you to breakfast every morning for a week and dinner every night.  I bought you one hundred twenty six cups of coffee, fifty-two cocktails, and one Shirley Temple.  I only had to help you change clothes thrice, but I helped you undress over a thousand.  I always remembered to lift up you hair if I helped you put on a jacket, and never made you walk on the street side.

There were over 2,000 bands and artists I introduced you too.  You taught me about fashion, about photography, about being a good person.  We sang in the shower, sang in the car, whispered before falling asleep.  I sent you dozens of flowers and you watered them all.

In my favorite yellow chair I do not have any regrets or any wants.  I fulfilled a life time in two years.  I was an upstanding gentleman, always.  And then out of the blue you didn't want me to touch you anymore.  One time in an airport in DC we ran 48 terminals to see each other again.  You taught me not to be afraid of flying, that it's important to be myself.  And when it ended the first time I wrote you two letters a day for three months.

Tomorrow when I wake up I will make the bed, put the music on, smoke a cigarette, then take a shower.  Afterwards I will get dressed, grab my belongings and go get four shots of espresso like I have been doing every day for the past five years.  Everything will be the same.  At the end of the day, after work, after listening to a plethora of music, talking to a plethora of people, I will not talk to you.  After two years two years and 2,163 phone calls, I will not talk to you for two days in a row.  I will lay in my bed and count the mews, but I miss the weight on the mattress, the heat of your whole, the temperature of your voice, and the redolence of your perfume, but I will have no regrets when I rollover thrice, to the right, to the left, and to the right.

She chokes on her apple turnover
Leaving a cloud of powdered sugar
That would stop Marlon Brando in his tracks.
Instead of cleaning up the dust,
She starts to swirl her fingers around in it
Until various shapes start to emerge.

She says it doesn't feel like there are clouds in the sky anymore
That maybe it's because she hasn't been keeping her chin up enough,
Admitting that optimism never quite suited her.
So instead, she says she'll make her own patterns
And test out realism for a while
Since she figures that realism is the only mindset that
Allows her something tangible to hold onto
When she's drowning in a false sense of security.

“The autopsy will confirm no trauma to the body
no foul play”

Face down in the river
whose name means forked tongue
A crow investigates
where water frowned in flotsam
face down—muddied
hair, mustachio
jeans and striped tee
whose--

“name has not been released pending...”

...His loves
tattooed on upper arm

“Coroner awaiting the next of....”

He'll wait a while
for “Mom and Budweiser” to finally check in
He may have...

“He may have been... ...a resident of
The Cozy Care Home”

where he paid for the care
questioned the cozy whose agent demurs—

“The turnover here is just so rapid... steady current of guests
No one ever noticed....”
“...this is Jacqueline Henry with WBSH News”

“The autopsy will confirm...”
First of the month
to town on a mission
Just a short hop
from stone to stone
from day to day
from rock to a hard place
Looking for a short cut
to Tasty Cakes, bologna
Wise Chips and a 40
cross the gurgling,
glinting light and liquid laughter

...This river has a forked tongue...

...a resident
...a resident
who paid to get missed
who one week before
on the easy way of an April day...
Knocked down, gasping
knocked down
and yanked through his forty-eight years pulled through panic
by lean muscle of current
wishing for something...
for someone
to hang on to!
The autopsy will confirm

This river lies

coffee stain memories (an aging love)

our dozen or so mugs,
all white, her color of choice,
accumulating stains of black-brown coffee
that the dishwasher poetically concedes,
a decade plus of drinking, now, oh-now,
****** and can’t be removed

the lips of some are chipped,
the lips of some are chapped,
but they remain employed
for first coffee is a demonstrable
affectation of affection that losing
would be costly

but one of us soto voce, quietly whispers
the radical ionized idea,
shouldn’t we replace,
this should-not is an update, a cognition of
a bridge too far,
both agreeing, both conceding the symbolism,
the heart acknowledges a momentary thrombosis,
for the losing turnover is a winless loss
messaging in and about,
an aging staining love losing

~
A no ki tov tuesday poem

Why the blue
face many reasons over
that chip?
It hurts how long do I have?
No other color to think about
All of the chewing excursions
Blue chip muncher seasons

The summer high-priced
The liaison scoop hot
Her lips dipsy
The different vibe
crispy
That one chip trend all depends
What star shape chip demand
Bow Wow parade
Dressed like
the blue tinted car
chip
  Did you feel the vibe?
Not just any tribe
let's all describe

Blue chip paired
subscription just chew on

Each lip part of
you I liked
Don't block my
chips confidentially

The party consequently
Went chip disappearing
That salsa tortilla chips
What a coincidence
Someone kissed and chewed
her and went pew ugh
Hallelujah honeydew
BMW Chips sigh
So salty talk beamer
Blue chips ahoy to me
Blue sky Sailors high
Drinking blueberry
coffee why?

Sticker Blue Church
group
Don't break the chip
promise
Don't cheat
My lips need and want
someone to kiss
The advertisement
B-Blue C-Clue
K-Kisses **** fishes
Not the Black/Blue
The kickboxing
Chips made the
centerfold
with his boxers
Blue chip tailgating
Debating those keypunches

Venting out with her chip
What was in those chips?
They were
both running
for their lives
Where are our wifes

Terra Cotta, she
dressed Ms. Senorita

Doing Hawaii
hula hoops
kiss motives crunchy
The competition
dipped Men grumpy
The Sienna smile eating
The garden of
  (Eat-In)  

The Gulf of Mexico
Doing the Salsa*
Ms. Eden
One chip was lip
depended
The French kiss
Sleeping beauty
ballerina
No-one really
didn't know
what to do
The back-back
neck kiss

The Robin bird
Changed Blue-breasted
Lower Lip arrested
He's the
sucker for
her  Blue chips_*
Why did the
corn yellow he became
  The blue ***** Jazzy
She's eating chips in
the sunray just chill
They were rubbing
their nose taking in
**** color lips
Simply kissed
balanced

So Co-depended
Or so lip offended
By one best collection
chip
French kiss
the plea is the
kiss of the sea
She is his kiss
Or press the
kiss with his
Blue chip to be his
he is the key

Bed and bite chip
  all new
breakfast tip
Read someones
lip demeanor
regardless so
it's minor
Only the blue-chip
was happening to you
To the very end of
your lip

So cleaned up vacuum kiss
Skinny diet dipping not
over my lip
So chipper I will
meet my Skipper

(Apple Dip) New Yorker
He's the blue-chip tipper
computer chips

Blue chip kisses
It was the biggest
turnover, come over
The Apple jubilee
blue chip kisses
To be called the
lip-sucker Please ladies
calm down
Take one chip

((The Addiction))
Of her garden
of earth, blue-chip birth

Over the ridge, round the bend.
Through the weeds and palm trees,
lies the trail that never seems to end.

There you’ll see the stones,
for hobbling and hopping over the creek.
But be careful, many tend to turnover
On those who wish to seek.

Now comes the scent.
Exotic and enthralling.
Whisping through the air aimlessly.
Like the dandelion seeds that have gone and went.

Then there’s the waterfall.
Mystic, wonderful and serene.
My oasis, my sanctum, my serenity

It was when the anklet started fraying,
When I knew you’d never come back.
Maybe you’re body will return,
But you are lost,
And I am broken.
We weren’t always.
You were a psychology major,
And I worked at a deli.
We filled our daily mochas
With ignorance,
But of course,
It was topped with whipped bliss that was creamy and sweet and rolled down my throat like lava drooping down its volcanic fortress.
I rather be sick of you
Than missing you.
I can’t forget the turnover I felt
When the illuminating dancing flower maids in the streets of Boston turned gray.
You’re news stomped out,
They slapped me hard,
They grabbed you by your luscious mane
And dragged you away.
I know as time gets older it grows people out of shells,
Forcing their old skin to remain behind,
For it no longer has a purpose,
But I never thought your fresh soul
Would shed off your anklet too.

Being able to race through the maze
that makes up the human mind
Getting deeply entwined
slowly getting ****** in by the itnrest we find
The constant turnover
of topics you bring to our mind.

Helping me lose grip of reality
I start to feed the power of immortality
As the idea of time vanishes from my mind.

Creating some sort of cosmic vibration
that send shivers down my spine

I'm so lucky to call you mine.

You the definition of fine
Meaning, "of very high quality"
As stated in the dictionary of our time.

But, not everything can be defined
Somethings are simply indiscribable,
like the beauty you help people find
In all the cracks of their broken minds.
Helping us understand
The perfectness of imperfections.

You bring the sunshine in the day
and refelt on the moon at night
Forever spreading your light.

An inspiration to humanity
that you bring so naturally
Showing, some kind of meaning to life
Proving, that even a nihilist
can give meaning to life.

Leading by example
You break through the boundaries
of the impossiblities
That we so easily create in our heads.
Slowly giving life to a new generation.

So trust me when I say this
-because it's not just me-
That can forse
The legacy
You were born to be

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 20, 2017)

My headquarters are full of tennis *****, basketballs and boxing gloves, figuratively speaking. Literally there are only golf *****
in the bureaus of CEOs. Maybe a horse.

Field offices are loathe to make apologies or analogies
while they’re swinging for the fences. But I had a boss once

who was known for his sucker punch.
I took it on the chin until I threw in the towel.
It was par for the course but he was sidelined for it,

ultimately thrown out of the game. His biggest insult
was asking me if I knew what a football looked like.

At the worst of it, I had a famous football player
in my corner. He literally ran interference during play.
I was dancing in the end zone.

But the sticky wicket was my choice to be an office caddy
in the first place instead of a canto girl.

Where did I drop the ball, not keep my eye on the ball?
Was I lightweight at the turnover?

Grandstand hollers are definitely in my wheelhouse,
my proverbial slam dunk. I can throw my hat in the ring,
square off and go the distance.

I’ve had my years of first down bad plays.
I’ve learned some lessons of the game.

There is no such seventh inning, there is no homestretch.
Everything is under the wire but the wire itself.

You are the only ringer to the winner and the loser.

I keep throwing myself out there like a Hail Mary
which is why I’m evermore a ball in their court.

How hard could it be
To turnover a new leaf
Get a new lease
Watch and just feel it
As another leaves
Stealing off with my sanity
Well I blame idiocy
From the ruins we flea
Like falling leaves
Trailing the wind
Into the swells of the sea
Like little me
Huddled beneath
Frayed velvet cushions
Making out with hard liqueur
Smooth as your words
Burning me like your lips
Tongues slipping easily
Through sour teeth
Sharp as blades
You cut me open
With nothing but a kiss

If Dexter's Parents had not divorced and he had not moved away with his mother,
Who was beautiful as I recall, today would have played out or worked out or turned out
Differently. Very differently, considering that little twist in my six-degrees of separation base pattern
Hapt seventy-years ago, or so,
----
Watch starlings, if you have starlings, or watch congregations of kippers on Netflix.
Their steering is on auto. Do you agree? Then we are in Agreement, which is an odd place to find one's self in the midst of so great a cloud of witnesses.
-----
'e goes a gain a ginning, grinning all the while
Aye, and radioman turned on just
Now listen -Radio Mumbai

I meant, you and I agree schools of sardines and flocks of gulls are all on auto-pilot-propulsion-maintenance programs,
Right?
I thought so. The code in a gnat must be so much more elegant than the vast terabytes of programming in the GPS constrained self-drivers evolving on earth. Gnats never collide and are nearly impossible to hit, unless you have bat tools, which you don't. Nobody wrote that gnat code, right?
Of course not, evidence of programming only appears to be programming, evidence of design only looks like design it's not design. Right? So says Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, and all the people so called to win the battle for the minds of **** Sapiens Augmentatious, lest, as the confusion of Babel subsides, those minds should begin to reason together more clearly in light left after the lies standing on men's minds are revealed inferior to what our senses sensationally acknowledge. Whew. Long thought.

I meander, but you do as well. That is how things flow.
Not over immovable objections, around.

One life that was connected to mine in boyhood friendship was severed about half-way through my sixteenth year.
He died. I don't remember how. Alcohol-related, I can imagine. I did not attend the funeral, though some acquaintances did; one of whom was later my lover. She is dead now as well, too late to tell me anything. She had a baby less than a year after I returned from Vietnam, more than nine months later. That is a heavy thought, but not one I think does much good now.

So little of history is noted. So few lives function to trigger generational unctions that devolve into wars against imbalance, iniquity, slavery and death.
Fraternity, Egality, ******* *** the mob all riled-up, burn , baby, burn.
Whole people die in history's whims,
If whims they were.

Rebellions…

Watch the starlings steer through 4-d patterns eternally random,
fueled by bugs they convert to food for the soil itself.
Their life is their work and they do it beautifully. As one.

Can Boeing-Raytheon-L3 et al build a self-propelled, self-refueling drone that can fly at top-speed, maneuvering millimeters in each direction from other self-propelled, self-refueling drones while dropping their payloads without a single friendly-fire crash, ever?

Starlings don't **** on each other.

If war-profiteers could build such things, would you watch such things perform and wonder at the minds that built them, or deny such minds played any role from concept to creation, and ask who authorized development and deployment of such an expensive fertilizer distribution system that fertilizes wild weeds as well as gentled weeds?
Which would you say: "Wow, how did those get made, who paid?" or "Wow, look what billions of years and energy alone can do against absolutely insurmountable odds and impossible physics, with chaos and corruption always on the job?" Holy entropic bad moon.

Are ye not more precious than starlings, or sardines, or gnats. Would a sense pertaining to immediate locational proximity, evident in birds and fish and bugs, not be apparent in Adamkind, at least as a metaphor regarding benefits gained in knowing where you are relative to your own environment, regardless of any sense of personal purpose?

I can see it in the fact that we can agree, for good or ill.

As generations mature and regenerate, might there be patterns in the tumbling of the powerful and the powerless populations. Patterns depicting group or herd preservation by fully mentally equipped populations of mature and maturing Adamkind are detectable. Facts now overflow the cup of knowns. These are those days when knowledge is increasing and increasing and increasing to the point of being a destructive force in tightly closed minds.

Name dropping, rather than restating, Helen Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"(1966), Bertrand Russell, "The Problems with Philosophy"(1912), Pankaj Mishra, "The Age of Anger"(2017).

These three books and some browsing of names and titles the authors drop, have spurred me over the top of a rise I had not seen coming. My path had become gradually uphill without my noticing. I was interested in other things and ignoring notices from my body that oxygen stores were being depleted more rapidly than current inventory of red blood cells and nurse lymphocyte-bots can recycle the quadra-monthly disassembly turnover, H2O stores for sweat heat-dispersal systems and plasma regeneration and digestion of what little remains to be digested are now at "caution, think about stopping" levels. But I saw that from the top I might see to the top of the next rise before I chose the downhill part of my path. The down hill path determines the uphill path.
In the desert, you can see trails marked in many ways, mosses grow in least-heat zones created by angular location relationships with the sun. Breezes whisper into shade puddles by ever slow slight temperature inequilibria shifting some heat to the triggering of my sweat system.

If you were compelled to reason about every step you take in life as if it were your responsibility to regulate and control every function of your flesh vehicle in which you abide in relationship to all around you that you could harm or that could harm you, you would be mad. {mad?} illusion of reality

assumes reality is friendly here. I'm okeh
with that improbability aside,

implied as self explicatory and unfolding life…
examined,
for what its worth in words redeemed may be,
in the future, when this is what they thought,
you think, and I say know,
I thought this,
on a bet. Or an oath, depends on the fret.

Crazy mad, but angry auch. That would be unfair, because you don't know how to do what you are being compelled to do. Reports of persons who can control ****** functions not commonly consciously controlled are easily found. Such persons spend their time so countering the rolling rhythms beat by heart doors slamming shut and swooshing open in response to electricity, that, we, Adamkind, have yet to truly understand. We've no need, that which concerns us was
to be perfected, not by us.

If my use of Adamkind offends you, the reality of my benefits, wrought from my comprehension of my relation to Adam, will likely make me your enemy, in your own mind, not mine.
Ax'em, do they love po' o'hate rich?

Believe one chance in practically infinity of current evolutionary-nontheistic thought being the way things must be, then multiply the number of times you make that bet by the number of insects on earth or even by the number of mitochondria in your kidneys.

Ignoring life's delicate imbalances in light of what can be known today, breaks our minds's ability to agree perfectly. The social dichotomy that seems to arrange adamkind's affairs over eons and eras: rich and poor, have and have not, mean and meek, is ego-driven, self-benefit seeking and not part of the original program.

Contemplate the sweet influences of Pliades, silently questing the truth of hope and matter. There is more power in this stream.

Chapter end.

I've always preferred finding out what time it was by looking at the watches of strangers,
Preferably on a morning carriage where the forgotten time difference from fading holidays meet the eternally shaken bracelets
Strangers, on their way to an oversized office smelling like old tea and leftover birthday cake.

My eyes, moving from one being to the next,
wondering if they woke up in their own bed.
Disparate attires or obedient consumerism, smells of cologne and *****, unironed shirts and loose ties,
Remains of a night too quickly ended or of a morning that started off wrong.
Strangers, burning the courage to face the dread of small talk talk and mindless tasks.

A half hour turnover of faces, smells and stories,
Strangers, unknowingly sharing their lives with me.

At this point in time everyone is just a separate entity with all different views and different thoughts of life. We're all connected technologically rather than personally. We share cyberspace but not each other.  We're distracted by the things that aren't important. When we call out to our leaders about life threatening measures, we are just shoved aside.  Tomorrow could be the day, the day where we are all together, not in space, but on earth.  We're all worried about our place on earth and the job we'll serve rather than worrying about ourselves and how to improve.  We're just being the pawn in the modern kings game.  Without our duty, our tears, our sacrifice, or the sweat we put into his method, the king's goblet will spill. When the goblet spills its wine, maybe the light of existence will prevail.  Existence shouldn't be us handing ourselves over to blindingly agree, to turnover for the king and what HE thinks is right.  We should turn ourselves over to ourselves. The purpose of man shouldn't be for him to be pawned.  The modern king isn't one person but a court, telling us what to think, to feel, to express, and how to simply just be.  They demand and expect us to believe what isn't real. What is real is right in front of us, the earth, the trees, the sky, the poverty, the greed, the self-righteous, and most importantly ourselves and each other.  When do we see the court looking onto our plate and making sure it's full? Where's the right to stand-up for what you think is not only right but wrong?  The thoughts of these swine have taken over and I'll be ****** to see it take me.  Take my arms, my legs, and my voice but I'd rather die before you try to stop me from thinking twice.

Do not disdain
the mundane
eternal language
of now.
You must
understand that.
The common
is the exquisite.
This is a vivid
new morning.
Flowers open.
Women turnover
in familiar beds
to regard
their lovers anew.
Everything desires
to begin again
just as it was.
Do not disdain
the exquisite intimate
or you will be
lashed to the past
by a rawhide braid
of dead words.
Take joy in what
you are offered.
Flourish where your
seeds have fallen.
Love your world.

  ~mce

My bed is double functional
I use it to make love on
And it is where my mind becomes extracted from my body and goes to planes of potent virtuosity
Where the sheer sound of self-reflection is an incredible pleasure
The body, a conveyor of material wants and superfluous desires is left behind in puzzled abandonment
But the mind does not lament
It blasts out of the squaller of the western world and all of its heavy reliance on demystified theatrics and the attempts of restoring a cleavered generation gap
The mind’s finesse and savage grace carry it to a hypnotic river of awareness and comprehension
The river bed is self-continued
The latency stage is over, all indications point forward to end the played out injustice of self-deprivation , run with fluidity and quit the life of a spectator
Then, pool into the communal crown
Where we are all holy royal
Where we are all enrolled enthusiasts of freedom from one’s own shackles of doubt and shame
The corrupt coercion is out of favor and now we've assembled without the fear of involvement
For we've been in play since we crawled out of the womb
But it is now that we have decided to speak
And this drastic turnover is first and foremost and idea, no more no less
Not a law
Not a war
Not a religion
Not and organization or a political party
It is an idea to let the mind wander and find independence
Independence from the body, the world and all the smoke and mirrors that pollute it daily
Then grab the vibrations of positivity in terms of thought and action then touch with an extension of personality
So go, live in your uptight, delightful, tangible world and dispel this theory
I’ll stay here sitting astride this moot point
      -Tommy Johnson

Mary, the daughter of some parental friends, is on her high-school-senior college-tour and my mom (on Face Time) told me their plans called for them to be in New Haven over the weekend.

Mom, “Would you mind taking an hour to give her a campus tour?”
I rolled my eyes saying, “I barely know the place myself.”
She waited silently with obvious, parental patience.
“I’ve got a TON of homework,” I pleaded.
“I’d owe you,” she said, encouragingly.
I sighed, struggling with my new and heavy burden, “ALL right,” I groaned.

Mary and I know each other from hospital events we couldn’t avoid (her dad is an emergency surgeon) but we’ve never hit it off.

I take some pride in being able to talk about anything - from football to politics or movies to fashion but Mary’s one and only interest is guys.

Mary’s one of those girls who HAS to have a boyfriend - like there’s a municipal ordinance requiring one - and just about any guy will do. She didn’t even have to particularly like them but they had to be Instagram pretty.

So any time I’d see her (we didn’t go to the same school) she’d have a Tom or Ed or Frank in tow, filling that boyfriend requirement and due to the high boyfriend turnover rate, she’d constantly and embarrassingly flirt with other potential boyfriends right in front of Mr. Now. It was enough to shame my gender.

A typical Mary conversation:
“Are you dating anyone?” She’d ask.
“No,” I’d admit.
“You’re just shy,” she’d say, “You just need to put yourself out there.”
She was positive and encouraging, even in the face of increased competition.
“I used to be shy,” she revealed. Which I doubted very much.

Anyway, once they (her Mom joined us) were certified vaccinated, we got a student volunteer for a real Yale tour. I love the “Harry Potter” look of old campus. (COVID restrictions limit where visitors can go).

I find I already have a sense of “ownership” here and I secretly hope she ends up somewhere else. I waved as they drove off, wishing her a bucket of instagram smiles.

Oh listen little one,
For I have something to say,
Your words and actions,
have affected me in many ways.

Do you not see,
it's from you I run,
myself I hide,
Your character I shun.

How can you think,
for whatever reason,
you can act like such,
and expect no treason?

Are you too blind,
are you fooled by self thought?,
to see your true self,
and how you rot?

In ways you are nice,
and so quickly evil,
like two sides of a coin,
absolutely mental.

Your arrogance,
and your ignorance
make you who you are,
and the mask you wear.

Why such lies,
to win false praise?,
why act one way,
never to be brave?

Your malicious,
and manipulative nature,
make me isolate myself,
hide from your character.

Always for approval,
you forever seek,
as the way you are,
none shall you receive from me.

If there is one side,
there is another,
One you know well,
One you cannot cover.

It's in your nature,
to be a hypocrite,
though you cannot change it,
you blindly accept it.

It's from this I run,
It's from this I hide,
never can I stand,
One with two sides.

Push it down I try,
Force to forget,
I make my attempt to accept,
over and over again.

No success,
never a victory,
you're still the same,
and forever will be.

I hear your hateful words,
even when you do not speak,
that rend the heart,
and steal its beat.

You're eyes are cold,
to match your piercing glare,
a broken soul,
lost in judgemental stare.

Hopefully one day,
you shall see,
when we say,
"that's what we mean".

Reflect on yourself,
see the damage done,
Your hand stained red,
by cold blood.

And turnover shall you,
a new leaf,
and try to then,
live life in peace.

Before corona, nursing homes residents were being killed,
naked elderly lying in hallways unattended to for hours,
staff watching as resident says they will get out of bed,
can't and does anyway only to fall straight to the floor,
medications being placed on the floor before being put into
resident pill caddy dispensers, medications being put into
resident drinks then those drinks given to other patients,
food trays delivered on he laps of residents, so staff can do
two things at once, for other residents, food trays dispensed
from a few inches off the ground food tray carriers so
pestilence must get into food, staff continually not doing
their jobs or abusing, lying about residents in any way they
can think of, medical staff purposely lying to and not
treating residents, on and on, residents not being allowed to
see outside doctors in order to actually get treated, staff
physically abusing residents during medical treatments as
retaliation for complaining, medical treatments and drugs
ordered by doctors not administered.  For the N.H. makes
most it's $ on intake and when the resident leaves, so staff's
job, to **** them as quickly as possible to increase turnover.

So covid's also a cover-up of that.  Like before pandemic,
Nursing Home residents, and now staff, are genocided,
42 % of all virus fatalities occur there.  This is also a
Hitlerian eugenics program.  Also healthcare facilities, meat,
poultry packing plants, prisons, densely packed businesses,
are concentration camps, workers are forced to work, catch
covid, give it to others, die, our schools are the same now,
genocide of kids and staff, all for ****'s re-election effort.
For, still, the purposeful non-use of the DPA by **** of
Utin, not nationalizing the manufacture, distribution of PPEs,
good testing, which would save taxpayers 100's of billions of
dollars overspent now on gouged prices, 100's of thousands
of their lives, continues, as he preaches his 'covid schmovid'
policies at his super-spreader of disease rallies, murdering
repubs.  Yet, again, ****'s Admin. is trying to steal food
from the mouths of babes and give it to billionaires, cutting
food-stamps, S.S., giving handouts to wealthy.  Now, Utin's
****, head of the republican bi-polar global conspiracy of
unpowers that unbe, is paying Utin, head of the totalitarian
conspiracy and the global oligarchy, with Russia's inclusion

in the G7, etc., for Utin's paying bounties to Taliban to ****
our military.  Grandpa, dad, brother, son, all military except
me, a military family, can't believe ****'s such a traitor,
instead of a Commander-In-Chief.  Every minute another
citizen perishes from pandemic needlessly, why? Why in this
land of American dreaming, where we put men on the moon,
have Space Forces, are we not able to mass-manufacture,
distribute masks and to accurate testing to limit the spread
of virus?  How can our businessmen, politicians not solve
this now?  "...We(e),...", can't beg, must we in 2020?  Also,
the 'Bob Woodward interviews' with **** prove he knew
about how serious covid-19 would be in 2-20, and said the
opposite to staff, country. He calls our military "suckers",
"losers", he called John McCain "not a hero".  Recent reports
by our intelligence community, FBI, reveal that Heir Mueller
should've declared that the **** international crime family
"had colluded in the Russian conspiracy to steal the election
of 2016 for him", that, "Heir Mueller failed to follow the $
trail of ****'s, which would have proven him and his crime
family did many more crimes than were investigated", that

"Russia's doing the same, and will worse, now, during the
rest of the election cycle and the **** Admin. is not just
doing nothing to stop Russia, they're actually aiding the
hacking of this election".  His niece, Mary Trump has stated
that, "all of what the public knows about him and his
failings is accurate, and he's even much worse".  He's been
keeping security, other Gov't staff at his hotels for months
straight, even when he's not there at the cost of 100's of
millions of your tax dollars.  More victims of his **** and
****** assault history are coming forward to report those
crimes against them.  He invited the Taliban to have a Gov't
Summit at Camp David right before the 18 th anniversary of
the attacks on 9-11-01, that were purposely not prevented by
king george and his ****, cheney, like **** purposely didn't
prevent the corona virus from becoming a pandemic here, it
was canceled by his staff at the last minute.  He just said,
upon hearing we've over 200,000 dead from covid, and over
6 million cases, that, "we should test less, then we'd have
less cases, we're doing fine, the end of corona's just around
the corner.", while he effectively does little to less.

Now, the deaths top 230,000 and over 7 million cases, we've
4 % of the world's population, yet, 25 % of virus cases, why?
**** just told the country a week ago, he "may not accept
the outcome of our elections in a month, 'cause mail in ballots
are a scam, if he losses, election was rigged by democrats".
His admin. are already talking to States where republicans
control the State Legislature and can choose to dispense with
the popular vote by replacing it with a set of electors they've
chosen in advance, and will say "they represent the will of
the people, instead of the elections results".  He also has
threatened that "there will be violence in the streets if he
doesn't win", etc..  The candidates for President just had their
first debate, a one ring circus, made so by the carnival barker,
****.  He refused to follow rules, continually interrupted
Biden, pathologically lied as usual.  'Time is longer than twine',
and 'to err is human, to forgive, divine'.  It's unforgiveable,
n'er forgettable.  Joe's not only persisting in reminding our
nation who "..we(e),.." are and can be, also that we're citizens
of a great Union. Inspiring, Biden's campaign rises, uplifts.
We all can, must stop this madness now, vote early, GOTV.

Overthink
Overthought
What am I
To get over?
She is the real Durden
Everything that I am not
But an apple turnover,
Spickle and spackle
Listen to the crinkle
And the crackle,
What plays the mind
If the records
No longer spin,
Retreat retreat retreat
On repeat
No baffle
To this wiffle
Waffles in the AM,
Pockets empty
There is nothing to collect
Unemployed dreams
I question the sparkle,
The sweet of the sprinkles
This life long ago wrecked...

APAD16 - 006 © okpoet

we slow-dance to Turnover in the living room
while cars roar past and ambulances wail.
backlit by the yellow glow of a dimmed lamp,
we whirl endlessly, choking back melancholy.

“would you come here and spin with me?”

visions of the past still haunt
our periphery, but we cling
to hope, enduring even at the end of a rope,
waiting for our chance to catch the next breath.

“i’ve been dying to get you dizzy.”

your tears collect, mourning dew,
slipping insistently down your cheeks.
i kiss the salt streams and sing quietly,
lips pressed like a seal against your ear.

“find my way up into your head...”

the needle scratches against the LP.
aimless, we twirl in unspoken rapture,
hearts thumping to the very beat
that sets our feet to turning.

“...so i can make you feel like new again.”

limbs taxed by atrophy, we collapse
once again into the bed, light-headed,
giddy. dazed with joyous, ephemeral bliss
to flit through another sensuous tryst.

I started from the bottom,
isolated in an endless pit of darkness.
The barriers i faced within myself,
caged my desperate soul
in a collection of fearful,
baseless insecurities.
turnover
I danced the bandages loose from its tight binds around me.
It's not that i'm no longer afraid.
It's that i wasn't afraid to be scared anymore.
I learnt to ignite a spark
into a fire -
bursting in a confetti of passion,
my body is use
to express.
i will no longer have this toxic suppressed.
fear?
fearless.

( FAH )