Sometimes I feel like quantum mechanics - like I belong in the quantum realm because I behave uniquely in accordance to the every day laws of life as you understand them.

New York City,
Said the same by masses
Yet reflected upon
Uniquely by individuals
To some it's just a place to visit
And they would never live there
To others,
New York is a haven
A shoppers delight
An amusement park
The city so nice they named it twice
Those who are lucky enough
To have been to New York
You always have at least
One crazy story
The definition of crazy being,
"Possessed by enthusiasm of excitement"
Meaning,
"This one time I was in Bushwick
And I gave a guy directions,
Then he invited me to a cannabis cup.
It was crazy."
Or there's this other definition
Of crazy meaning,
"Fooling or impractical. Senseless"
Crazy New York stories often
Associated with the second definition
Usually involve a homeless person
And urination
Whose ***** it is,
Well that's another story
I can sum up my New York
Story in a minute
If you live here
That's all strangers ask you anyways,
"Where you from friend?"
So I've rehearsed my story a bit
I've gotten pretty good
At expeditiously answering
The questions that follow,
"So what made you
Move to New York?"
"So do you go
To school for it?"
"Where do you work?"
And,
"Do you have
A cigarette?"
My answers,
"I followed a group of friends
To document their experience
As rising musicians
Eventually “Train Robbers”
Was formed and I
Shot an abundance of videos of those
Said musicians busking.
They would preform inside of
60 miles per hour subway cars,
Finish a song or two
Collect the loot
Then bail
Hence, “Train Robbers”.”
I’m mostly self-taught
In the fields of film making
Writing,
Photography,
As well as guitar,
The guitar you can tell
After months of watching
Then later re-watching
In the editing room
These musicians,
Counting up all that easy money
Stacking all the ones
Then forcefully folding
The *** of bills
Into their pockets,
I too then started to play guitar
On the subway.
And no, I don’t have
A cigarette.”

We met in a crowded room.

Your dark skin shone
as a contrast to your pale teeth.
Neither of us said a word,
but our bodies did speak.

You glanced in my direction
and my breath went cold.

I thought of what it might be like
to dive deep within,
really deep within,
what makes you
uniquely
imperfect.

If for one second
we could truly know one-another.
What a wonder it would be.

We could swim with the thoughts
inside each other
and be truly free.

I want to be immersed
in all that you are,
so that one day
together you
and I
can
be
1


11/26/2012

We are called out for the mission
To give of love without condition
Some are called to the foreign land
But all are to be his feet and hands
Where words fall silent, love speaks
To find a home is what the heart seeks
Our own homes can be the mission field
Our towns and communities to be healed
Preach with conviction, with peace, not rage
The voice of a prophet and wisdom of a sage
They will see your joy and how it is portrayed
In the face of persecution, you stand unafraid
If they question, they are open
If they are open turn them not away
Pray for them and with them
I will break their hearts of stone
Until they beat for me alone
Each of us has a mission should we accept it
Something to reach out right where we are
At work, in town, or riding in your car
Each gifted uniquely for a special role
And what a gift to uplift another human soul
To care for the widows and orphans
The forgotten and the oppressed
The stranger and the refugees
To work and know the work is blessed
Each of us is on a mission to do the work of God
Just don't expect the whole world to applaud
Sow the seeds of faith and hope
The seeds of charity and love
The wisdom of God was spoken
Like an echo from above

Pretend you are a book,
Being opened from time to time;
Your pages being flipped,
They tell a comic, story, or rhyme.
Satisfy your readers, and always get them hooked
You can be anything, and today you are a book.

Journal entry
May 7, xxxx

She knows I love her, my creature. Of course she does.
There are still secrets between us; there might always be. We haven't decided.
You see, some lovers- they reach a point- where they dance that silent dance, and wordlessly through looks and smiles, will decide that some secrets will always be secrets. Others say everything, and find strength in doing so. We're not there yet. And so, some things remain unspoken.

A secret I keep from her now is- I know what she is, yes, but I can't help but think of her as the opposite sometimes. A thing not with dove wings and a halo, like the paintings, but a creature with thick, rubbery wings. Heavy horns sitting on her head. There is something uniquely dark about her.

There is so much I still don't know. There is a heaven, is what she's told me. It isn't as beautiful as you think, she says. When I ask her if there is a God, she looks away. And I know there is something in my question that brings her pain. She has never answered the question.

She still walks to her lake. (Yes- it's hers now.) She visits it often.
She does it at night, when I'm asleep. But I wake easily in her presence. I've caught her walking towards the wood. I know it's the lake she goes to. It must be. I've never followed her.

She thinks she hides it well. But I can tell there is a rage. You visit your lake in secret, and what would you have to hide, if not the fact that over there you must be inflicting yourself with some violent ritual. Something I should not see. You must have some kind of terrible thing inside of you. Divine grief, or envy, something that must be gnawing at your heart. I can see it in your eyes.

Why won't she tell me? I worry sometimes that I'll never be allowed to help her. I suffer with these thoughts, and she doesn't say a thing.

There are silences like arrows, aimed at you, meant to **** you. Meant to maim the heart. But not hers.
Her silence is the kind that hurts to look at, because you know it isn't a choice. The more I **** the more her throat seems to tighten. It's as if she wants to tell you everything, but physically can't. As if telling you was an arrow. As if telling you her truths and her fears would

  **** her


I want to know why she goes to the lake, I do. I want to know what happened before. What is God to you, what has he done? Tell me please, even if I am not enough, even if I am just the rabbit you tell your sorrows to. I may be from another world, I may be the animal unable to ever understand your pain, but my ears are long and my eyes are big and I will listen and watch you intently. I love you.

Sometimes I think I'm too small. How could a thing like you choose a thing like me? The thought used to **** me. I'm learning not to spiral. Even if you won't help me. I have to stay strong. I have to show patience.
Yes, if she wants to keep her secrets, then keep her secrets she must. I worry about her, but what can I do. I can only be patient. I can only do what I can. I can only love her until she decides to bloom before me.

My angel who howls by the moonlit lake.
I will wait for you.

American Sermon**

I am uniquely privileged to be alive
or so they say. I have asked others
who are unsure, especially the man with three
kids who’s being foreclosed next month.
One daughter says she isn’t leaving the farm,
they can pry her out with tractor
and chain. Mother needs heart surgery
but there is no insurance. A lifetime of cooking
with pork fat. My friend Sam has made
five hundred bucks in 40 years
of writing poetry. He has applied for 120
grants but so have 50,000 others. Sam keeps
strict track. The fact is he’s not very good.
Back to the ******* the farm. She’s been
keeping records of all the wildflowers
on the never-tilled land down the road,
a 40-acre clearing where they’ve bloomed
since the glaciers. She picks wild strawberries
with a young female bear who eats them. She’s being
taken from the eastern Upper Peninsula down
to Lansing where Dad has a job in a
bottling plant. She won’t survive the move.

A lone wolf finds his pack then makes tracks in the snow by the light of the moon
The pack moves with urgency they need to hunt
An unknown source has been hunting with such force, leaving a ****** trail in it's wake
They must not make a mistake their food supply has been threatened.

The pack presses on deeper into the forest, further than they have been before
They used to have more than enough food, but lately everything has seemed to change
In fact even patterns in nature seemed to have been altered, for one thing there have been
more full moons than normal.

The youngest wolf was thinking to himself, could there be a connection between the full moon
and the dwindling food supply, an unknown creature like those humans talk about around a
campfire, an abominable Snowman or werewolf or something else.

The young wolf shakes off those thoughts, they are just story's after all, right
I better not let my imagination run wild, I  am no longer a cub
He rounds a bend in the woods, he looks back he sees that once again got separated from his pack, He was about to turn around and go back to where he last saw his pack, when he heard a strange sound like a half howl, half cry, half scream he felt compelled by curiosity, ignoring his hunger.

He glanced quickly at the moon, it is a full moon, He continued to go toward the sound.
He heard a ear splitting scream, he saw an old cabin in the distance. it looks like it had been
long abandoned could that be where the sound is coming from , The pack had always expressed that he is kind of reckless, but he just could not ignore the sound or the urge to investigate

He quickly approached the cabin, the sound grew louder there was no doubt the sound came from here. He saw an open door, against  his better judgement  he went inside, he slowly approached than suddenly stopped and stared at the sight before his eyes.
The moonlight shone through a window and the man standing before the window was morphing before his eyes, The man/creature had eyes like a wolf, scales unlike anything he had seen before, it was changing before his eyes, it's skin part man part beast was opalescent and shimmered under the moonlight it's colors kept changing like a chameleon effect, yet uniquely different.

He kept watching until the transformation was complete know transformed into something form the tales of man, something resembling a mythological beast. He felt awe and fear at the same time. He would not have believed it if he had not seem it with his own eyes, The transformation of man to beast under the light of the full moon.

There were so many hues, I thought it was art.

The colours blended together
in a way I could never understand,
but the confusion and mystery intrigued me.

The frame; so well built, so beautiful;
strong, and carved so uniquely;
bridges and bumps, cracks and dents;
ancient detail and scars.

My eyes wander,
drifting aimlessly,
only to soon find myself lost;
thoughts in different directions.
Landscapes of green, blue, gold;
black starless skies,
and sunny mornings.

A picture framed on the wall,
but I don't feel a thing
if I can't touch.

I guess I was wrong.
I thought it was art.


(NJ2014) © All Rights Reserved.

Jumping into the deep end,
let them find me now shattering all illusions and intruding on the why and how and where am I? but here still thinking deep.
In sleep there is a limitless draft to fill this cup and oftentimes I overflow into another dreaming, if another dream can thus protrude from this my dreaming overload and if all roads lead to one, which one and where?
I care to take a coffee, cake and break this fast, this endless task, this is a time to sit and make new plans.
This man's no friend to man not beast nor forest tree and in his singularity, uniquely and this one and only never lonely in his own company
is me.

Pieces of our hearts
fit together like a
jigsaw puzzle;
each piece fitting
uniquely to us.
yet somehow
someone managed
to break us appart.

Began with an emotionless admittance of a fact of attraction
I never imagined that even this would happen
But then emotionless admittance because emotional satisfaction
Desires I didnt remember could feel different in action
Fact is hearts never had to have
hope, to hope, to happen

I already knew that affection runs in all directions
but to realize that for it to be tinted ****** did not mean it was an infection,
that essentially it was all aimed at knowing your perspective and introspection,
and has become the spectacular insight that
between two people so alike and different as you and i,
this weird state of existence in ****** desire and friendship,
is beginning to be the exceptional exception to my age old misdirection.

I dont know if its just because you were there for the discovery
but i think for sure it has to do with your desire to discover me

so
when i begin to remember
how uncertainty and smiles slipped
across your skin the same way
blue silk did,

How uniquely i get to discover
the willingness to take leaps of faith
in my seeking faithless friend

How remarkably shocking it is
to see you lay yourself bare before me
and that you, to me
are such much more than half naked.

I get to see you.
I get to know more of you
than i ever have before
I get to discover so much more of who you are
when your plush pajamas hit the floor

Face the truth.
Face the reality.
As you send some flowers too, the girl who loves you.

Recognize her.
Just surprise her.
Write a poem of two, to the girl that loves you.

Nothing amazed a woman to know of her importance to her man.
Here she will understand just why you call her woman.

So hold her hand.
Don't be a timid man.
Hiding behind a created image.

Say it out loud.
Even explain it to your child.
Why you do what you do?
For the woman that loves you.

So deeply.
So completely.
So sweetly.
So uniquely.

I am confident because I am a woman,
Not a reflection of someone else’s desires,
Not an object to be shaped by their whims,
But a vibrant force, grounded and inspired.
They think they own my beauty,
As if it’s theirs to claim and consume.
But I’m the storm that shakes their ground,
A force of nature, bold and unbound.
Each scar I bear tells of my fight,
A testament to strength and might.
I rise like fire, daring and bold,
Defying limits they’ve tried to mold.
I honor the woman in my own mirror,
Her spirit unbroken, her vision clear.
If my independence stirs their unease,
Let my truth rise like a tempest, swift as the breeze.
I refuse to fit into their narrow confines,
Living authentically, where my spirit shines.
As free as the winds that weave through the trees,
With aspirations that soar beyond their pleas.
When their illusions begin to crumble and fall,
They lash out like shadows, but I stand tall.
Their approval was never my measure of worth;
I’ll reflect on this journey with pride and mirth.
Finding strength in each “no” that I dared to speak,
In every chain I shattered, in every dream I seek.
My path is my own, uniquely defined;
I am here—embracing the fire in my mind.
With courage as my compass and hope as my guide,
I’ll honor my story, with nothing to hide.

I see you
sniffing the patches of sunlight you sit in
before sleeping with the spirits,
dreaming of the rain you'll never feel.
Outside of the windows
where you observed the decade
the gulls moved inland.

Perched uniquely
above the boiler room of the world,
Slave to nothing but your surroundings,
You watch the nameless go by,
Watch the nameless go by,
And when they cease to live,
You'll cease to die.

There's a looking glass
In front of my face
And I'm Dorian Gray
This ersatz me does so deface
My imperfections
The only thing that makes me
Uniquely debased
Not just a notion
Forward in motion
But the corporeality behind
This simulacrum, not mine alone
The property of the hive mind
The collective consensus reality
Because I'm only as fallible
As everyone lets me be
I smashed the charlatan
With my fist and then
Vain as me it no longer was
Cracked and splintered it sat
Upon the linoleum floor
But still it implored
Smiling, smiling like a villain
Its eyes made contact with mine
And that's all that need be said
"If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me"
As it showed me what I'd never be
This simulacrum, all that you see.

It's time
Is what my jazz teacher yelled over Rupert Holmes singing yes I like pina coladas
and as I stretched my ligaments trying to mold my body into a new shape
in the back of my mind I asked "Am I ready?"

because

I don't feel ready.
I like it here, where I'm safe
no choices
no thoughts
no judgments
no fear
but no matter how numerous the mistakes
I must remember
there's only so many excuses a person can make

so no more excuses

It's time
to contribute to the chaos,
scream at the stars for every false promise,
sing for those who don't have a voice,
be wise when dealing with precarious choice,
grin at the world and give it my faith,
exist as I am,
begin in this breath anew,
free myself from my own expectations,
cherish the individual and the crowd; for they each have worth,
fail and enjoy every moment of it,
laugh because this is it and it is I.

get rid of the plans

I've been tired for too long,
reluctant,
unsure.

It's time
for an existence centered around love
It's time
to accept this life as it is: uniquely mine

I refuse to lose myself again
in the drifting fog that leaves me guessing at what shape I am

It's time
to live.

In a world that constantly praises similarities of classes of people I find no space to be me
I am confined to this box of mediocrity where being like everyone else is awesome and being different is not okay
It's unfair that I am frowned upon because I fail to conform to modern perceptions of who I should be or what I should do or what I should wear
I may not look like you, I may not talk like you and I definitely may not act like you
But that's okay, I am who I am and you are who you are
Imagine if all snow flakes were the same or all spots on a Dalmatian had the same pattern, there would be nothing interesting about it
Enjoy being different
Have fun challenging the status quo
You were born to be different
You were born to stand out
In this identity crisis that the world is currently going through, embrace what makes you who you are and be uniquely you, a Shining Star!

This is my first train ride
and I'm absolutely mesmerized.

You meet a special breed of people
living in uniquely passionate ways.
Saying I'm inspired by their kind
is standing in a blizzard naked and saying
"I'm cold."

The thrill they give me is more
powerful than words can capture,
though I'll try to do my best
like photography with distorted aperture.

I want to write vagabond on a name-tag
and slap it mercilessly on my chest
as a gorilla beats his pounding heart
like a drum before the last stand.

I ditched my seat and found an empty car
to escape the commotion and strum my guitar.
Slowly, people followed and joined me,
I felt like Moses dividing the sea.

I can hardly sing and barely play
but as they listened I felt as if
I was singing the sound of the rain,
washing away the mud in their smiles.

Six people are sleeping on the floor.
Beside me, their silent presence is igniting.
I want to dance in their zeal;
let it burn me, in hopes that the scars will never heal.

Maybe I'm over romanticizing this moment
but I can't squelch the raw audaciousness.
It's in their eyes, and in their laughs,
and in the way they form sentences.

It's burrowed itself into my heart.
In this moment, I feel so alive,
this passion cannot die, the traveler's immorality,
I have become the wanderer's infinity.

*m.w

I am a woman.
I was born uniquely me.
Maybe I'm too short, too weird, too smart,
have too large of a hand, **** or heart
Maybe I'm inconsiderate, selfish, or blue,
have plenty of contradictions or I'm not always true
but everything that I am, everything that I do is me.
I am not a toy nor gadget.
My body's not a temple nor Play-Doh.
I am no Barbie. I am no Mrs. Potatohead.
I am me.
A person that loves and is loved back.
**Purely me.

We sat on the carpet in the bedroom
and I pulled between us that family heirloom,
a sea chest belonging, at one point, to some
grandfather or another, and we began
an apparently curtailed version
of the usual routine.
I wondered if that meant dire things
for my fate; as if all the events of my life
would be half as eventful, or if
there would be half as many of them, God forbid.

I can’t recall a particular atmosphere,
except that it was dim, and I guess
the old sea chest contributed
a bit of worn charm. And that same afternoon
I did burn some incense, but it could barely be smelled.

She asked, occasionally, for my involvement.
Tap one of these. Lay your hand on that.
And, uniquely in my life, I got the semblance
of controlling my destiny.

Soon enough, a picture began to form.
The five of cups: miserliness, a bearded man dressed royally,
alone atop a treasure trove, his children and former lovers
elsewhere, in loving penury, without a thought
for dear old stingy dad. The two of swords: some duality
out of the past, a war - always - between reason and love, and
how much I cherished them both. An awkward young man
who loved casually, without forethought and almost
without reason, and the brain he was far too proud of having
to use responsibly.

Finally, we reach the one in the center, and once again
I am required to invest some of myself in this card.
I hold my hand on it and am asked to imagine what it might be.
It is the Hermit. Her favorite, she explains.

He means a journey, alone. How alone, exactly?
Under normal circumstances, alone is a metaphor.
One can be alone in spirit, being not understood.
But you and I have been having arguments, and so
the implication is not lost on me.

How alone? And what journey? And to what end?

I imagine them, these arcana,
major and minor. They are collected
around a coffee table, for their weekly tea.
The Hermit holds up a pair of worn sandals
and a volume of sad amateur poetry -
the price of certain journeys -
the Lovers, their backs turned to one another,
produce a pitiful summary of a joint bank account.
The High Priestess takes from her tea cabinet
a samovar full of old dried blood, and pressed flowers
(lilies and lovers’ thistles)
and they all laugh and laugh and laugh
because they are not mortal, like us.

Don't you realize what you let go
What you let out your door stroll
Don't you know, another one you won't find
It was something amazingly strang, a one of a kind
You didn't object, you didn't give chase
From your mind will it be that easy to erase

When you gaze into the fire's dying embers
Will all those moments not be remembered
But I guess it didn't mean that much
Or tighter you would of clutched
With your actions you made it clear
You just watched it disappear

Was your vision so impaired
That you seen it like smoke in the air
Past love gone bad, it left you stolid
She left your heart frozen solid

Sadly my love you couldn't return
A strongly guarded  heart, only I got burned
But one harsh day you might see
You lost something uniquely special......me

©Pauline Russell

Streaks of orange and golden pageantry,
like a chariot driven by cavalry,
in an orb made of opulent armory,
delighting everyone with your supreme scenery.

Uniquely made with fire and fury,
reaching us in eight minutes of undue hurry,
can’t get me out of bed this early, even
as your warmth is as pleasant as poetry.

Adorning the blue sky with white colored pastels,
seeking adoration for you by those blooming sunflower petals,
wake me up inside so I can draw you a mural,
maybe beam me up a vast canvas,
so I can paint one as splendidly supernatural.

A uniquely unique me,
Is all I wanna be!
When you can be so special,
Why waste your own potential?

When I can move my ears,
And growl (although it's queer)
And choose how loud to ****
--consider it a type of art

When I can hiccup-****-sneeze,
And appreciate blue cheese
And laugh and chortle and guffaw
--all my friends stare in awe.

When I can recite so many words,
(It doesn't mean I'm a nerd)
And snack 20 times a day
--don't judge okay...

When you can do all that,
Why feel the need to act?
Please just accept the fact
You are you and that's that!

Forthright in my chosen stance
Deliberate in the steps I dance,
I seek to make my time fulfil
Attainment, while I wish no ill,
To others who would tread my path,
(though this may cause some friends to laugh),
“Uniquely” is the phrase I use
To walk the walk of life I choose.
So different from the milling herd
To make some other choice….absurd!
Forthright is my chosen stance
Therein, I dance the dance…. I dance.

Marshalg
“Foxglove” Taranaki NZ.
16 November 2013

Stately stone mountain's pride,
steep granite peak, seat of vultures,
single lush tree uniquely shaped by winds,
stand atop like a mysterious symbol,
big, round, purple sun, in poetic candor,
like enlightenment, rises behind it;
a sight words can't contain.

Far far down,
in the middle of the grappling green,
the blue jewel, a lake in meditation,
hidden in the thickets, hanging down
in to the water plane, cunning eyes
in hundreds, of black-spotted wild alligators.

A doe and her fawn,
stand at the edge of the lake, driven by thirst,
her both ears perked up listening,
before stepping in to the water to see,
if everything is in order.

Nature, mother kindness
stand guard to all her children,
non interfering,
what now will happen
depends upon  laws
governed by karma,
decided by the action that triggered
the sequence, long back
and not easy to discern.