i never really knew nonchalance
until approximately twenty minutes into ever
having had the pleasure
of your existence
alongside mine.

"i'll have to teach you how to surf"
you mentioned casually, sounding perfectly genuine-
which alone was enough to startle me
knowing you were leaving the country
before the water would ever be warm enough

the far rockaways?
my mind's eye gave a grimace and half a laugh at the thought-
but my affections were melting through your fingers.

you stopped us abruptly on the sidewalk,
halted all conversation
and crept up
(as if you had a hundred times)
on to some random brooklyn woman's stoop
and ripped a few leaves off of one of her plants.

i stood idle, feeling warmer suddenly,
trying to disguise any semi-shocked expression i may  or may not have emoted..
and watched as you returned
with the most unmistakable grin
and two sleepy little leaves in your palm.

without hesitation you began chewing on one,
while handing me mine
and i listened as you detailed the experience with an ecstatic moan of pleasure.

"mint?"

i knew it was a mint leaf,
obviously, somehow
but still asked anyway

i don't remember if you confirmed,
feeling so bewildered by the strange glowing glory of you
but i ate it obediently,
as if it were naturally in my personality
to never question eating an unfamiliar plant
from the unfamiliar hand of a man
whom i was most unfamiliarly falling in love with.

~INFINITE
Drugs guns attempts and ****** one roll off this urban griots tongue, I'm a sun from the slums that chased redrum funds, I walked the dark path of prison and gore, stopped at the end, then walked back to the beginning to become a verbal detour pointing man women and children in the right direction before the feel the heat and go through spontaneous combustion. The lemniscate ink spiller swings his pen back and forth to counter decapitation scythe swings courtesy of the reaper. I'm a five star general from New York, I was fantasizing on owning islands like rourke, I know the life well chefed ye for color coordinated residuals, ya know that **** that'll make ya lean or have a bobby b jaw with dilated pupils. in order to educate I have to spit with no filter, the life i lived was similar to helter skelter, it wasn't war for race it was war for boy or the contents of a Pyrex being burnt to a gooey paste. I got more friends dead than alive, so i use phonics mixed with Ebonics verse to explain the pain of sending kites to men bidding forever or the pain of following a hearse to release doves and throw flowers over the casket of eternal resting brothers. Money came in...so did those nine elevens saying another life came to an end. The facade doesn't show the downs of the game, you see the foreign wips, the chics, hear about all the chips, high grain ammo and xtra clips, you don't see mothers crying holding daily news clips explaining how her son died because of chips chics and foreign wips, they don't see the cheddar spent on retainers to prevent predict felons from becoming three time losers, The streets don't come with a fine print, it leaves out the particulars.

Infinite the poet 2014

~THE REB
Behind the madness I came to a conclusion of the humen world. The streets caged me in bars with no ability to pull comfort of a drink together with equality in communication with society. Understanding the diversity of life in corners made me believe struting my fist was the way of life. There were no hands to hold onto tomorrow. No space in alleys to run but to dead end vortex duplicity. Uniform authority confined my freedom to be humen. An animal to sociaty but I did no crime. Just to get from one ave to the blv these popo's be trippen down my ****** lines to the creases over my thieghs. Feeling for a high by touch to get that high in a remote area of their private sources. Age nine I stood in the ghettos near home. What I thought was a dream of doom I wome to a high with tracks down my arms proving this confusion. Colors to claim, and colors to flag, I kept pushing away congregations of street wars and bet on my own revolutionary independence. Pistol on my inner thigh I tred lightly in a walk of shame. I found no glory till one day my tears fell on paper. On the walls of East Chapmen Ave California were monumental master pieces of anger and sadness from one end on the wall to the other... I felt something twitch in me... Inspiration of something unfamiliarly bright over the darkness. And for each time I enter back home to family, there was rebirth, and I could not conceive knowledge until one day, the madness got me. I took that pen, and wrote the illustrations of my lack of pigment on every line.. These demons left me in wilderness. No caution about what life had ahead for me. I knew nothing beyond these streets. I lost the innocence in my adolescnce. All the agony and weakness and fears I had hidden for so long, later became exuberant effect. If there was no God, if he didn't love me.. my existence wouldn't have been standing here today to speak behind the madness.

(INCREDIBLE INK- TEAM JAGUAR HAWAII)
© S.T. Rebel of Eden

I tell you My body aches to leave this room, see what is beyond these four striped walls.

You say that all I need is in here, there’s no reason to go
.
I tell you I feel like a bird in a cage, let me out so I may sing
.
You say my voice sounds fine in here, so sing on.
I tell you my eyes are turning to dust from whirling around in circles trying to find something unfamiliarly new.
You say stop rolling your eyes
.
I tell you my limbs feel heavy attached to me, that my shoulders can not bear the weight of my discombobulated thoughts anymore.

You say then solve the puzzle.

I tell you I need to remove a piece of the puzzle for it to be complete.
You say then remove it and move on
.
I gently open the door and see past the four striped walls.

Falling .



You are light ,
Very light

You thought you wouldn't ,
but you did
Signed up for change, for chance
Cautiously placed your trust
Into what is yet to unfold
And the emptiness that was in your heart
Is now filled

Filled with lightness
Weightless warm space

You are free ,
and unfamiliarly well
For we are One
Beyond impression of separation
And the energy of unconditional love
Even given outwards
Is generated from core

Thus loving another
Ignites the love of Self

You thought you'd never give in
But it just seems more freeing now
To surrender, as opposed to resisting
And so you fall
Because there was never anything holding you back in the first place

Occultist fires, sharp toothed saw
You rub your eyes til I go blind
I failed the grade, unfamiliarly

The black goat came to stay,
In this place no one dared to witness

I stood on both sides of that old barn door
This is my one move to you,
This is violence, my own owed servitude

Blank check devotion
Black eyes gleaming with rage
Total darkness of a well

Tearing down what light had built
In fevered dreams of pure crimson silk

Forget this admission
It serves but one

Never come back, you
Run run run

her heart beat at an unfamiliarly fast speed
as she picked the small container
up off of her nightstand

hot tears raced down her face
as if they were racing to reach
the finish line of her shirt collar
as if it were a life or death competition
they poured down in long, hot drops
and she tried to wipe them away
but it was useless

everytime she wiped a bunch
of tears from under her eyes
a new bunch would form
and continue the competition

her soft, sunkissed hands
trembled with the container in them

she lifted it up to eyelevel with her
but even then the thick stream of tears
blocked her vision
and she could only make out
the faint colors of the container

without a second thought
she inhaled one final breath
and shut her eyes

the white bottle cap
twisted open in her hands

and little pale pills
trickled down her throat

her heart beat at an unfamiliarly slow speed
and she went out with a small thud
and a smile gracing her face

I see lines of you in the silhouettes of the scurf of a world without you
I hear your voice calling my name:
In empty hallways,
Serenades,
And odes written on deathbeds,
Declaring that your final words should "I love you"
And as I lie dow unfamiliarly in a bed without you,
I curl up and imagine that you are here,
And as I drive back to you-- home, across dark landscapes,
The headlights of the oncoming traffic reflect off my glasses and beam through dark air,
And your voice calls my name one final time in the lonely hotel room behind me

My eyes have always been open
Open to where I am
Open to who I am with
Open to the flows of the world,
Flows that I could never fully comprehend,
The complexities dance in front of my eyes
Mirrored in my mind
Filling it with swirling thoughts;
Never fully sunken in, and yet seen
Unseeingly.

Flows that I cannot comprehend
Continue to surround me
No matter how many flows etch into my flesh
Eyes open, mind overflowing.

The love that stares me in the face
Seen
Unfamiliarly familiar
Unseeingly
Irreplicable in my heart
Swirls endlessly in my thoughts
In and out of consciousness
It was never etched into my flesh.

I hid the bodies
underneath my ***** laundry.
The clothes I wear are always stained.
It's good. Gives me no reason to stay out of the mud.

A stranger put the skeletons in my closet.
A stranger broke up the bones
to put them in a box on a shelf.
It was simple.

Time would allow her to forget.
To cut her hair,
to visit some doctors
so they could change her cheekbones.
To dress in clean yellow dresses
that smelled like springtime.

In time, in time.
Those dresses would end up in the pile of ***** clothes,
and springtime would retire into a
never-looked-at corner
behind wooden doors,
where light enters through a thin crack, but is dissappointed,
when it has nowhere to shine.

Boney strangers stare at each other
through a panel of reflective glass:
their movements, opposite of each other.
Their hands plunge into deep pockets
and emerge with brass keys
to a wooden door,
with a crack
from a hatchet.
So unfamiliarly familiar.

Ready to flood that room with light,
ready to iron out the wrinkles in the clothes,
ready for the light's beams to reach all the corners
so that maybe something will grow.

And,
one day,
ready
to open the box
that sits alone on the dusty shelf,
and hold the dry, cold hands
of the skeletons in my closet.

I know the names
and some pictures

of your friends, unfamiliarly
we would greet each other

there are no words
to share your wonder

We want to, but we can't
explain, we don't want to explain

because already while conceiving
every onset misses your essence

I have to accept
to be confused

struck
every time, and forever

you are wherever
on my mind

Words To Love: Burgeoning🐝🌲🌿🍃🍄

It is July, year twenty twenty.
Summer sky has not been great.
One often wants what one can’t get.
There has been thunder, lightening,  storm, wimd, rain -
Even hale!  Yet,
Garden and the forest burgeon:
Rhododendrons broadened,
Sprouting unfamiliarly on roadside margins;
Upward, outward, inward, downward;
Grasses verdant, vari-colored,  
All hail to the weather god!

Fruits and bees, the reckoned with, the seasonal
Thinned out, not come as usual;
Normal berries, for example  -
Disappointing!  Very!
Fewer berries.  N’eer a berry.

Yet,
One must admit
This burgeoning is overwhelming;
Branch, bough, shoot, each flabbergasting.
Burgeoning is such a warming, loving, word.
Nature’s silent, secret growing. going on unheard,
Spectacularly self-effacing.

Words to Love: Burgeoning 7.10.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Arlene Nover Corwin