Wait; don’t pull the sheets, just yet
Give me a moment to breathe, to let the last tear fall
A broken heart still lies on an unmade bed

Let the smoke clear of the red stained cigarette
It’s funny, how even in daylight, a whisper darkens all
Wait; don’t pull the sheets, just yet

What is love, if not an exciting game of roulette?
Time played its hand; better place a bet, fate now holds the ball
A broken heart still lies on an unmade bed

To be fair, it wasn’t all blood, tears and sweat
Who was the winner who was the loser? It was far too close to call
Wait; don’t pull the sheets, just yet

Tell me, would I be easy, to write off as a love lost; to forget
Or do you, like me, spend sleepless nights, for a late night phone call
A broken heart still lies on an unmade bed

Don’t close your eyes, there isn’t much to regret
I’m not ready yet, to release my breath; for the curtain call
Wait; don’t pull the sheets, just yet
A broken heart still lies on an unmade bed

-പ്രിയാന്ഷി ദാസ്‌

Not trying to change you
Contain you
Or save you
Intentions are only
To learn
What unmade you...

Unmade...
And unmade...
And unmaiden
And bade you
Be bladed and crazed,
Come with irons and chains
And enraged
You engage me
And muses are played

And we sway and we stay
For a minute
Away
And we think of each other
I know it someway

My unmade bed reminds me of my unmade head before you left and now all I see are stars and reasons why I can instead of why I can't and what love truly means and why when I fell asleep last night I was happy to wake up and I noticed the beauty in my breathing and how I want to laugh forever. I stretched and felt the cold tile on my toes and it tickled and I wanted to dance to music I hadn't heard before strings and drums and guitars and maybe I could learn the guitar and I could play music for someone else that didn't end in tears from locked up fears instead that just ended in a long melody that never truly ended and just played in the background reminding you to smile. I saw colours I hadn't seen before blues reds bright whites luminescent lights shining so bright I had to blink one two three times to not see spots but I had my eyes open and for the first time I wasn't tired and I wanted to keep them open for as long as I could soaking in everything I couldn't see until now. The world looked so clear outside, I felt for the first time like I was real and someone somewhere could reach out and touch me. If this is life I get it now I get why writers write why birds fly and why bunnies hop and dogs bark and why the sun rises and the moon talks and why clouds look like the most comfortable space in the entire universe. I get why you had to break my heart. I was already broken my whole life before you, and only now I feel complete, after being shattered.

He began with all living things
On the first day of anti-creation
Killing all; be they beggars or kings
No judgment just pure negation

On the second day lights went out
There was no longer night nor day
Only darkness was present throughout
Not a shadow not a tinge of grey

All this darkness destroyed vegetation
Photosynthesis ceased to take place
Everything was beyond devastation
Gasping and lacking in grace

The fourth day destroyed solid ground
He made sure every rock all the stones
Would sink and not ever be found
No one would ever unearth old bones

On the fifth day the clouds were unmade
Rain reunited the sea with the sky
In a marvelously heavy cascade
So the second last day went by

On the last day he reversed creation
Of Heaven and Earth in one blow
It was much easier than damnation
And God sat there and enjoyed the show.

He sits up from the unmade bed
Feels the chill of the night air
The sting of whisky in his head
The ten dollar ***** no longer there

Lives his life, selling from his car
Staying in one cheap motel each time
He used to think he would go far
But this job stripped him of his prime

He used to have a wife, so long ago
But he walked out on her, and his son
Thought he would be rich, he never wanted to know
Now he has only regrets for all he has done

No one has any money to buy anymore
The prices keep on getting higher
He coughs, then he spits on the floor
He wishes he could find just one buyer

As he ****** the whiskey inside of him
The ***** mirror reflects his sorry state
Wishes that he never took this job on the whim
But he can't go back, it is far too late

Packs the suitcase and it is time to go
Finding another poor town to drive to
Business might pick up, it's been too slow
If no one buys, he will drive on through

Until he stops for more cheap whiskey to drink
Until he picks up another ten dollar *****
Deeper into this life he will continue to sink
Hoping to still find the final big score

Rivers of Babylon flows on biceps
Hairly face, pin nose of unmade make up
Sparks beauty in her lonely sky face
Which suitors commit adultery in words

For wishes of closeness, I wish in millions in one day
Time only divide us, but our soul are conjugated
On a plain of misty air, how beautiful and sad it is
Our wishes drown us onto the path of loneliness

Did you see loneliness my love ?
But why I can't see it my love ?
How about our God ?
I am in your vast blue sky,
and every night I am sleeping in your warm heart

Filling the gap that resides in me
For all my breathe belongs to you
My days of soil and unsoiled cloaks you in me
I love your hands...دست های تو را دوست دارم for they are divine

In it does the words of love burn like the sun
Making the lonely persian jasmine smile
As the gulf waves secret writing on your heart
I Belteshazzar love the writing till the end of my life

Solemn steel avouch with sun and water
Yet the loose their beauty crying to the air for help
Humans without their eyes are still beautiful
So their loneliness become a persian jewelry

Written by
Martin Ijir

by simply watching 'don't call me crazy'
with regards to mental health... a bbc3 documentary.

i find a few pointers, apart from the fact that i've learned
English to a standard that i could
be misjudged as a native, what with african psychiatrists
   and the history of England as  a postcolonial nation...
     the problems of premature depression
and other divergences from the "norm"
  (or is that a tu-dum tss... "the norm"?
i never know how to tell the joke a proper
way, so many jokes are mothered
by punctuation, i don't know
how many there are that aren't) -
so aside from that... the fact that i'm
faking being British... if you have any grievances
against me: you'd better me Ukranian
or Lithuanian... otherwise? *******.
yes, i know the Poles did terrible things,
Vlad wasn't the only person ready to
do sadistic **** on people by impaling them
on sharpened-wooden poles...
   and you thought the crucifix was bad...
but oh look... the artists inserted a peddle-stool
so he could stand while on the cross...
rather than actually: hang from it.
talk about a woman faking an ******.
then again: he was all kissy-kissy with
a centurion having cured the ravaging libido
of his "demon possessed" daughter who
had a hot bagel flirt under her skirt for him...
or as i say: **** a prostitutes
           **** for an extra ten quid: the sigma
of how many ***** that thing has seen
turns your tongue into a dagger...
that's where i have seen my salvation:
   not in the eucharist or degrading symbols
of a godly stature.
       no, the point is:
this misapprehension of where the origin of
thinking resides...
  the true materialists posit the origin of thought
in the brain... but, honey-bee, the brain
is preoccupied with its materialistic responsibilities...
to shoot adrenaline when bungee jumping...
why think it isn't already preoccupied with anything
but thought? the brain doesn't think
no more than the heart might... or your *******
wetted or your phallus becoming *****...
there's no point in ascribing thought to the brain,
even if you abstract the source of thinking
toward the brain as a *mind,
     the suggestion parallels what the brain does,
and what the brain isn't...
   as with the notion of god...
          ridiculous for most people:
or also ridiculous when man is taught to stress
his "individuality"...
                               both seem on equal footing
to be considered phantoms, but the individual is
more of a phantom than god...
                             and as Diogenes of Sinope found out:
you'll find god and the Archimedean eureka
quicker than finding an honest man -
who takes a candle at noon into a market square?
     ah: that famous lunacy...
but in the beginning the word was with god,
       yes, because when we started we only said ooh ooh!
and made those frightening monkey faces to
war off evil spirits and the Arabic third eye, evil.
   Darwinism created historical fiction...
           a bit like science fiction, but instead of looking
forward, historical fiction is looking back,
toward a time when people struggled against
the elements, and had no sense of having to think
given their actual pentagram equilibrium was tuned
into what was around them...
                   the senses could never deviate from
the world of shouting down a cave and hearing echo,
it's only when thought emerged and conceived words
   that the dubiousness of simple musing:
chicken or egg first? created auxiliary sense perceptions...
   we have left the sensual world...
           for we have "enriched" our lives with
thinking, the byproduct of which is what scared me
about this bbc3 documentary... that all mental
illness stems from allow thought to automate itself...
      in other words having no moral compass...
in other words: not having read a single book
   and learned a process of equating thinking with
narrating... as a sensible option to what others tend
to do (the innovators), and allow narration to be a void...
into which they pour all their thinking to
fill that void... with, say, Thomas Edison and the lightbulb...
Isaac Newton and gravity...
it's just scary that people can allow automated thinking,
     made even more evident that counters
the punitive transgender pronoun scenario
   that only focuses on the pronouns: he, it, she.
these youngsters in the documentary are dealing with
submitting to a pronoun focus of: i, it, you.
                      in some vague sense of a religiosity,
that they cannot allow cogito ergo sum into their minds,
a possessiveness of body, that later translates
into an identification with the mind: which is -
well, if you're going to posit the origin of thinking
in your brain, which isn't even there - you mind
as well posit the mind, seeing how the soul
is argued against primarily through our mortal condition.
   is the eye the window to the soul?
  and the brain merely a paraphrasing of that statement?
perhaps...
              but i wouldn't be too worried
             as Walter Benjamin was about art in the age
of mechanical reproduction... i'd be worried
that art is bound to the morgue of psychiatric institutions...
that art is not a term that suggest the origins of
   such ailments:
due the original lack of it in such places:
  but that that it was never there... and that finding
art can be therapeutic is why art can be scolded
               and establishment art is nothing more
than the pinnacle of us, having abused words,
waging fewer and fewer words, can't produce
    a work of beauty... merely a work that occupies
a space.
                art = space...
          that's the statement these days...
being oversaturated with scientific assurances has created
this insurgence of over-competence or making
art not art in a sense timelessness, as in Dante's
comedy isn't equal to space,
            but that it's equal to timelessness...
    or a statue by Donatello...
                          these days art = space...
because it's not going to be timeless... it was once
the iconoclasm in metaphor of: the lion of Judea...
          Lucifer as the morning star...
                         it will not be timeless because it
has been reduced to the establishment's aesthetic
of tracey emins' unmade bed... or
       damien hirst's the physical impossibility
of death in the mind of someone living -
i never said these things aren't art... some people
said cubism would never be art compared to
surrealism... but shove a triangle into Pythagoras'
head and you get some sort of mathematics...
              it's based on that principle...
what wouldn't work in the case of hirst would be
to put a cancerous tumour into a plastic cage...
people would associate it as some sort of atomist
representation of a nanometre worth's of some
larger thing... i do appreciate the fact that big
art works... it needs so much face to embody
the fact that you are to think about it...
                         and not to have a **** over it:
it's art that's anti-arousal and more and more
and more about how to juxtapose it in your mind,
always to abstract the brain as the mind
   and to never appreciate the idea of having
to source thinking as solely endemic to the brain...
the brain is busy, the heart is busy...
            we have perpetuated an outer-body
experience throughout our time since the time when
we first acquired the phonos of thought...
                 and it is a peculiar "sound", thought...
a dance memorable to actually having a hope in
possessing a soul... even after all sturdy things
shrink into the obsolete, and even vegetable.
but the piece i'm referring to?
     kinda paradoxical... given that a shark would
probably eat you... but then again counter-paradoxical
given the fact that most shark-attacks
     make the shark refrain from eating you,
but merely nibbling on you and leaving you alive
albeit nibbled on... maned... with scars...
so i get the part where the shark is in fact:
an impossible death to conceive... only for the lucky few.
  apart from the fact that the shark is caged
like a prehistoric mosquito lodged in amber...
              woodland gold, amber...
  that's the literal interpretation...
                                 but it's still a moving piece,
modern art isn't crap at all... it's just something you
don't get an ******* over...
            take any still life and apply a cognitively
based chemical reaction: stimulate a narrative...
in that famous phrasing, connect the: dot dot dot(s).
    become, in that almost ridiculous sense:
     a Sherlock Holmes... but all that died was about
a minute's worth of your attention...
this is what's fuelling revising a need for television,
big static things... my personal favourite?
that Tate Modern installation by richard holt -
hand on heart: about 3 times...
              i felt like a mosquito drawn into that:
ah the bright shiny light... 180º and a glass ceiling...
that's all it was...
                   art in the age of mechanical reproduction
has to almost ridicule man, or at least ridicule
the idea that he can become an individual,
    as was the ridicule of man that he could become
a god...
               sooner or later any attempt at individualism
becomes trendy, vogue, and magnetises and
monetises a need to mimic, replicate... one punk today:
20,000 punks tomorrow...
       /
           but that sort of mincing is mostly associated
by the bewilderment of our own success...
                           it's almost like a we're engaging with
a sabotage process: deliberately trying to undermine
ourselves by staging a variety of "anti-social" endeavours
we promised ourselves upon a belief in the "individual"...
      modern pieces of art debunk that myth,
it's that modern art pieces require so much space that
gave them the most adaptation prowess over, say,
a puritan's concept of art, as in a Turner painting...
           classical art can be put into a Florentine market
square and be passed by quiet casually,
because it provides an assurance - it forbids engaging
in an iconoclastic vigil, it's an assurance of the past
and how golden it was... but a modern sculpture
in a busy place where many people congregate
without first allowing it the asylum of an art gallery
and people will treat it as a chance to hone on it,
vandalise it, or steal it and sell it from scrap metal...
       modern art requires an asylum to be accepted,
an art gallery is an asylum where people with
good intentions enter and leave appreciating something
that, to the pleb, would get a rotten egg thrown at it.
    and as with regards to how i phrased something
earlier? how philosophy talks of the logos
     that doesn't see the phonos: or the dichotomy
between actual sound, and sound ascribed a
optically-phonetic disparity encryption:
deepened by a self-styled aesthetic of the "ruling elites"...
          and in the beginning the word was with god...
we're merely licking the toes of such a possibility...
         and just you try to bypass the orthodoxy of
encoding sounds with queer spelling...
                     you, in a sense, learn two-languages
with every single one you learn...
   how to say it and how to write it...
                              and then there the how you hear it
and how sometimes you hear different lyrics to
the ones sang...
                         a bit like the Chinese,
who, upon reading the English translation were
bothersome to get rich quickly after seeing
too many matchsticks in ideogram translated as merely
Li Po; i'd too go bananas and become frustrated
and retaliated by getting to Einsteinian grips with
the mathematical alphabet that bore Li Po... i.e. 1, 0
through to 9.
      ah yes... philosophy that doesn't appreciate
grammatical words, or in that sense credible for a biologist
not necessitating a genus to ease any argument,
to actually further it... or to play ping-pong...
   grammatical words are equivalent to the subconscious
given we tend to write some a sense of fluidity...
the unconscious? schematics akin to triangles...
  "images" or rather shapes...
                             beginning with Δ: isosceles...
later varied to the Γ triangle of Pythagoras...
          and as far as we got, a respectability to
not conjure up a square as worthy of encoding a sound...
nearest being the H... and that turned out to
be much ha ha ha.
                   still... i can't come to grips with these teenagers
in the bbc3 documentary talking about
automated thinking! i'm not denying it, i'm not
doubting it... it's just a question:
          how could such a pronoun muddle come about
that you discourage ownership of all your mental
activity? and instead leave a rampant kindred of an
abandoned snail's shell body to wreck havoc?
   it's almost like a a want to refuse to use words...
or encode words... rarely are people told
that the eyes are used as encoding organs...
                   but that the tongue knows no filters...
what the eye ingests... the tongue sometimes can't
digest... and vice-versus... that what the eyes digest
the tongue can't ingest: hence the rebellion
against contrary political ambitions -
   the ears? well: the ears are allocated the heart as
a partner... the tongue and eyes are entwined...
but the ears are allocated the heart...
                     you tend to feel words more than
hear them... because by the time the tongue
represses combining itself with the eyes to
that elevation of thought... your body becomes
autocratically synchronised to a sort of music
of heightened of unanimous response...
             well, it's not exactly a fetish watching such
documentaries.. iconoclasm in metaphor...
  i swear i wrote this before... how philosophy avoids
grammatical genuses... and how all too
ambivalent poetically equivalent nouns and verbs
are to hide our imperfections that precipitate from
art... iconoclasm / anamorphosis in metaphors...
                         camaïeu in allegory...
                   divisionism in pun...
                                       chiaroscuro in imagery...
gestural abstraction in onomatopoeia...
                     just some examples, and none necessarily
     convincing - as ever... this is my excuse
for i am always bound to say language is Alcatraz
   and my escape from Alcatraz is bound to metaphors,
fo

Lizbeth stood in front
of the tall mirror
inside her mother's wardrobe  

she was wearing
a short black dress
her hair was tied
in a bun at the back

I stood watching her
uncertain why
we were in her parents' bedroom
and why she was *******
her mother’s clothes
hanging on hangers inside

I looked around the room
a big bed made tidily
a chest of drawers  
a built in cupboard
a picture on the wall
opposite the bed
of some country scene
and above the bed
a huge crucifix
made from wood
with a plaster Christ

look at this one
Lizbeth said

I looked at her hand
taking out a long red dress
she held it up
then put in front of herself
and turned to face me

what do you think?

it's a bit gaudy
I said

shall I try it on?

no I can see
what it would
look like on you
I said

she sniffed it
she must bathe
in **** scent
Lizbeth said

she did a spin
holding the dress
against her
how do I look in it?

she's taller than you
it'll fit her better
I said

not so sure
Lizbeth said
hold this

I held the dress in my hand
she unzipped her black dress
at the back
and pulled the black dress
over her head
and stood there
in a white bra and *******

give it here
she said
and taking the dress
she put it on
her own black dress
was on the floor
here zip me up
at the back
she said

I zipped her up
at the back
watching the straps
of the white bra disappear
as I zipped her up

she turned on the spot
and looked at herself
in the tall mirror

well? how do I look now?

well at least
it's longer
than your own black dress
I said

it came to her ankles
she looked down at it
yes too ****** long
she said
unzip me Benny
she said

I unzipped her
seeing the strap
of the white bra
come back into view

she pulled the dress
over her head
and put it back
on the hanger

she stood there
in bra and *******
how do I look now?

undressed
I said

do you like me
like this?

I feel kind of
uncomfortable
you standing like that
I said

why do you feel
uncomfortable?

what if your parents
come home now
and see you like this
and me here with you
and you in your underclothes?

she smiled
guess they'll feel
uncomfortable then
she said

I picked up her black dress
best out it on
I said

now?

yes now

my parent's bed is over there
all made up and fresh
and waiting for us
she said sexily

I stood holding
the black dress in my hand
where are your parents?

out some place

when will they be back?

don't know

best get your dress on
and out of their room
I said

what about my room?
the bed's smaller
and unmade
and the room's untidy
but we can still
do it there?

I heard voices from downstairs
is that them back?
I said in a low voice

Lizbeth pulled a face
**** me yes
let's get to my room
and so she put
the red dress back
in the wardrobe
and shut it up

and we rushed across
the landing to her room
and shut the door
behind us

I looked around her room
it was as she said
untidy
the bed unmade
books
LPs
soiled washing
over the floor
and the curtains unopened

that was kind of close
she said

yes
I said

downstairs the voices
were loud
and a row seemed
to be going on
but Lizbeth seemed unconcerned
standing there
in her white *******
and bra
holding the black dress
gazing towards
the unmade bed

but I had other problems
swimming around
inside my teenage head.

the gallon of arizona green tea that you only drank a fraction of.
the salt and pepper potato chips you meant to eat, but only did so in the dream i had last night.
the unmade bed that was still unmade when you flew back home, the one i still cannot bring myself to make.
the dyed green hairs i keep finding around the house.
the way you always pronounced 'mosquito' as 'mosk-it-toe' on purpose, and how you pronounced my cat's name 'sullumun' instead of 'solomon' on accident.
the partially closed closet door from the morning i drove you to the airport.
the faint smell of your sweat on my pillow left because of your hyperhidrosis.
the flannel you wore and the longsleeve shirt you doused in your aftershave, that is three sizes too big for me to realistically wear.
the empty taco bell cups in my car from your fourth day here.
the empty shopping bags from our impromptu mall trip.
the polaroids you really wanted to keep, but we couldn't find when you packed.
the pieces of you that you never meant for me to keep that i keep piecing together as though, like an alchemist, i could make you appear again though i cannot, and you are not here, you are gone.

Lost, within the vast expanse of time and space,
in the never ending story that is life.
Lost, with no sense of direction, and no star to guide,
haunted by fear, and blinded by pride.
Lost, in the darkness forever searching
for a time that will never come.
Lost, in false friendships, don't know who to trust,
open your secrets, then left in the dust.
Lost, with many decisions still left unmade,
things long forgotten that lead you astray.
Lost, in your thoughts unable to bare,
adrift in confusion found unaware.
Lost, amid the sea of lies and clouds of deceit,
endlessly drifting into the unknown.
Lost, in the carefree world of the past,
not sure of your future, unclear of your path.
Lost, yet your flame still burns,
just wait, the tables will turn.

This morning I sat contemplating the wrinkled sheets of
my night of restless slumber-
I thought of the possibility behind contacting you and being
denied or sitting here and believing in the multi-verse theory.

When I was younger I took comfort in the thought of different
worlds which equate to multiple plausible outcomes.
I thought that if it rained here,
out there, another me would enjoy a sunshine bliss.
And so, by that logic, there is a universe in which you answer
positively, negatively,
one which we never met
and another which we are together from the beginning.
If so, does that mean this universe is the one of regret?

I am staring at my undone bed fully aware it won't make itself,
but I can't help and ponder that in another universe things once
broken put themselves together.
However, of action and inaction,
of to be and not to be;
this world demands and answer.
Thus this morning I make my bed quite early and wait for a reaction.

lacking all doubt choices unmade we scream
into the noon the sum of all our fears
not caring much about the weight of dream

on every several head until the beam
of milky light reveals the open tears
lacking all doubt choices unmade we scream

not only terrified but eyes agleam
with anger so this long hard tale of years
not caring much about the weight of dream

has caught each up in both the milk and cream
and blended in the message of our cares
lacking all doubt choices unmade we scream

all of our secrets in one clouded stream
while all around we feel the touch of stares
not caring much about the weight of dream

in middle day when the truth reigns supreme
denying mercy in the moveless airs
lacking all doubt choices unmade we scream
not caring much about the weight of dream

The smile of the white bloom, in my crown
its fragrance spreads across galaxies of neurons,
none can fully imagine the scene, I haven't seen
it's stellar design baffles humans, resists exploration.

On single file pass days and nights, indefatigable
rainbows are made and unmade, making clouds
blush and hoping for  bridges across them,
why, even the universe dances to the tunes we play

Ever  at ease, I walk silently past the blue mountains,
of remembrance, mostly love created, a miracle!
At times a poet, a scientist,a  cosmologist,or a mystic in solitude
finds the need to "stand and stare"wonder, speaks in metaphors.

Looking st the fireworks sky manages, I hallucinate,
an astronaut I become, who knows nothing about time
one wished to live in timelessness for ever and when,
that dream comes true, loses within and be nothingness.

the sun hid behind the clouds
causing the 9am sky to be a dusty blue
with rays of sun peeking through every now and then
it was mid-winter and the air was crisp
it smelt of the new year, full of hopes and dreams, love and life
the two of them were found sitting at a little table at a room-large restaurant
in the crowded, busy city center
she wore a pale yellow shalwaar kameez
with a light brown pashmina shawl draped around her narrow shoulders
to protect her from the frosty wind which blew back her dupatta
he still had sleepy eyes and unmade bed hair
she'd dragged him out of bed a little too early
it had been a long night, and it had taken a lot of strength to leave his blanket in the early morning hours
but looking at her eccentric face right now made him realize he'd leave anything to be with her right now
she asked him what he wanted to eat
and he was pulled out of the trance, staring into her green-brown eyes reflecting in the morning sun
"jo tum kaho" he smiled that little side smile at her, letting her order for him
the smile she had fallen in love with on the very first day
8 months ago, in the middle of summer when fate intervened and crossed their paths
she called the waiter and ordered two cups of chai and asked him to bring her parathas straight off the stove
"and keep them coming!" she yelled after the waiter who walked a few steps away to the tiny corner kitchen wide enough for a single man, maybe two
"keep them coming?" he looked at her, a little skeptical
"trust me on this one" she smiled widely at him, "if you can't eat them, i will"
that made him laugh, he knew she wouldn't be able to handle more than two
but he just smiled & nodded, anything she wanted, anything she desired, he couldn't help but grant her
she kicked off her khussas and scrunched her knees on the plastic garden chair
closing her eyes and inhaling the winter air
he looked at her and thought to himself
she is my breath of fresh air
and somehow, call it a sixth sense, she noticed his eyes on her
"kya dekh rahey **?" she pouted her lips
"bus...tumhey" he laughed
she hid her face in her dupatta
"stop it!" she giggled
he leaned over the table and pulled her dupatta away, lowering his voice as he said
"you're beautiful"
she caught her breath, lost in his mahogany eyes- strong, protective, loving
the waiter interrupted them, placing their order on infront of them
"yay. khaana's here! she yelled
to be honest, she was thankful it had come
she felt embarrassed by the grip his gaze had on her
and she was a little hungry too
she reached for a paratha, immediately pulling away and ****** her fingers
"it's too garam" she made a face
he split the paratha, unflinching, and gave her half
"i'm still stronger than you." she said
"i know." he made a kissy face at her
she wanted to reach over and kiss his pouting lips
but she she pretended as if she as unconcerned and began her food
a paratha and a cup of chai later she put her hands on her stomach
"i'm full"
he looked at the three parathas infront of them, the waiter bringing the fourth as per the order
he shook his head
"tum bhi na."
he told the waiter to parcel the rest of the food as he took the last sip of chai
the caffeine worked its way through his body and he stretched away the sleep
"you're full? chalo, okay, i had planned on ordering gulaab jamuns for dessert. i guess i'll have to eat them alone."
her mouth opened in shock, then, realizing he was joking, she smiled cheekily
"i always have space for a gulaab jamun or two."
he laughed, wondering how she managed to make him fall deeper in love with her as the moments passed
they sat under the shade of the gulmohar tree and ate their dessert in silence
taking in the beauty of the weather, of the city, of each other, of the moment
and as the sun reached for the sky, higher and higher
she reached for his hand
gentle, kind, warm
her touch sent a buzz through his body
"i love you" she whispered
he could only stare at her delicate pink lips as she spoke
realizing he had found within her an everlasting future
he smiled at the thought
he'd never thought he'd fall in love with such a silly, gulaab jamun-loving girl
but now, it seemed like she was the only star in his night sky
his shooting star
his hope
**his love.

Mirror mirror, on the wall
Who's the fairest of them all?
Waiting there, proud and tall

Here I'm stopped in my tracks
Before me now, the mirrors cracked
All the different me's stare back

Smothered by the sight of these
I'm losing count of all I see
Who's the reflection, them or me?

My sanity is wearing thin
Their reaching now to pull me in
Not my fault, but still a sin

How do they all fit inside?
Brought to life with every lie
Am I crazy? I can't decide...

How am I supposed to feel?
My body's what they aim to steal
What is false and what is real?

Each of us wants control
But only one can have that role
If I lose, am I still whole?

Each of them is me in part
All of us were one to start
Somehow I've all but fell apart

So how do I put us back together?
Is there hope for one so severed?
Am I stuck this way forever?

No one can see what's gone amiss
Perhaps there is no fixing this
The real me, I will surely miss

I guess it's not so bad a trade
Someone else steps up when I'm afraid
My mind is more than a little frayed
That's what it is to be a girl unmade

On this winter morning
I’m daydreaming
of warm summer daysprings,
blue lake glistenings,
butterscotch skin,
heartbeat quickenings,
and unmade decisions behind blue eyes.

I'm still afraid.
That maybe I have been unmade, like clay back to sand.
Shadows still holding my hands.
A focal point, a keystone. Like a god on a telephone.
How should my life be if only it was minus me?
What good has come from my being? what is it I'm not seeing?
Questions linger in my mind. I'm out of breath and out of time.

My memories wash into shore. Caring me out to see the sea that is me.
Maybe ill recreate myself, as something not so sweet this time.
The sharks below begin to swim. This time I know ill win.

Fragrant rain
legends of decaying days
pools of darkness
isolated moments
clean white skin
manicured hands
and stylish stubble
in an unmade bed.

for you was i created, by you am i unmade
five by five, what you've left of my mind
and i don't think it's a fair trade
but five by five is not near enough time
for these scars to go from inflict to fade

for you was i created, by you am i unmade
hour by hour, i fold my mind and forget
you smile at me, undeservingly, and say:
'don't get upset, don't fret, it's just a threat, my dear-
don't get saucy; get stupid, you're just a pet; lay here!'

for you was i created, by you am i unmade
bruise by bruise, it happens too soon
-these marks are not always displayed
much like confetti; my psyche is strewn
pattern on the floor in the shape of a blade

+--|-|>>>>>>>

{for you was i created, by you am i unmade}

In a bedroom in small-town Pennsylvania,
you’ll find an unmade bed,
a pile of clothes on the floor—
clean but not folded,
open drawers and dusty shelves,
a desk in the corner of the room
with pictures laid across it.

When I caught my first fish at six.
I held it at arm’s length by the fishing line
to avoid the slimy scales,
a frown on my face from being forced
to sit silently in the cold.

When my family went to Marco Island,
my sister and I, sifting sand for the best seashells
in our matching swimsuits and hats.
Mom and dad’s fights forgotten in our fun.

High school graduation
posing with my best friend since first grade,
diplomas in one hand and an extra cap held between us
because not everyone survived all four years.

Move-in day at college,
sitting on my raised bed with a grey comforter
and two decorative pillows the color of cotton candy.
Sweat on my brow from southern humidity
and moving furniture without the help of a father.

The pictures are merely snapshots
that lack the full story.

How I learned what it meant for love to fall apart
when I was eight years old.
My sister warned me before it happened,
told me what a divorce was.
I mistook her for joking until they called us upstairs.
Dad cried when they told us, but mom held her tears
until the day he left. The sounds of her cries
escaping from behind a closed door.
“This doesn’t mean we don’t love each other.”
But that’s exactly what it meant.

How I was taught by my father that love is conditional,
and I repeatedly needed to prove myself
through good grades and unquestioning obedience.
Forced to stay home to spend time with the family,
sitting wordlessly on the couch while he watched TV.
Made guilty for wanting to spend time with friends
because that somehow meant that I was a bad daughter.
It’s funny—I never asked myself if he was a good father.

If you look harder at the bedroom,
you’ll find journals filled with bitter words,
screws from disassembled pencil sharpeners, loose razors, and Aquaphor,
food wrappers stuffed in hidden places,
a closet brimming with junk and pairs of shoes,
evidence of a story untold. Until you.

(Circa 2008)

I wonder of living in a life, in a home,
scattered with open books rewriting the future as it unfolds.
With no empty picture frames and nothing wasted on a blanket of dust.
Bliss, relaxation, and a comfort you can trust.

Two toothbrushes and an unmade bed fit for the sweetest.

And no matter what, knowing that everyday is the best day of my life.

Regret. The act of doing something and feeling remorse later on; the act of wanting to take something back; the act of wishing something didn’t happen. I regret ever making the joke that when my sister and I fought; it was like World War 3. I regret not telling my brother how much he meant to me and how proud I was that he was serving our country. I regret falling in love with a man that would be forced to go into the military.

Ayden received the letter in the mail two weeks ago, informing him that he would be expected to be at the airport, to involuntarily serve our country. Something bad was going to happen. Something no one was prepared for. We were only eighteen, just seniors in high school since our birthdays took place in the summer. We had been dating one year. The thought of him going half way around the world to fight in a war that came out of nowhere, scared me half to death. It wasn’t just the fact that I was losing my boyfriend who I was incredibly in love with; It was the fact that all in one day, I would be losing my boyfriend, and my best friend. No one to share my secrets with, no one to wrap me in his arms and tell me that everything was going to be okay. Just like he had done the night before when he had finally worked up the courage to tell me what had happened. My jaw hit the floor, my eyes watered up, and I may or may not have started trembling. We had been sitting on the couch when he squeezed my hand a little tighter.

“I have to tell you something.” He said.

I turned toward him with a smile on my face, which quickly faded when I saw that his own eyes had started to tear up.

“What’s wrong?” I asked immediately.

“In a week, I won’t see you. I don’t know for how long, I don’t know when I’ll be back.” He started to explain.

“Where are you going?” I asked impatiently.

“I don’t know.”

“You have to know.”

“There’s going to be a war.” He said. “A big one.” He whispered.

“There was a draft?”

He nodded his head slightly.

“When did you find out?” I asked.

“About a week ago.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t know how.”

“You didn’t know how?” I whispered.

“Ava. This hurts more than if I was breaking up with you.” He said. “I’ve wanted to tell you. I have. But I didn’t know how. How do you tell someone you’re completely in love with, that you’re going off to fight in a war? That you don’t know if you’ll be coming back?”

“You certainly don’t hide it from that person.” I whispered.

“I might not be coming back.”

“Don’t say that.” I interrupted. “Don’t ever say that again.”

I let a few tears slip down the side of my cheek. He raised his hand to my face and slowly swiped them away with his thumb. He pulled me closer into his arms and kissed my forehead.

“I love you.” He whispered into my ear.

“I love you too.” I said.

Those were the last words we said to each other a week later while standing in the airport. His parents were there too .He had already hugged them and his dad had ushered his mom out to the parking lot in order to keep her from having a panic attack. Ayden and I had stood there awkwardly for a few minutes. After all, what do you say to someone when there’s a possibility you might not ever see them again? That had been when he out of nowhere grabbed me and pulled me against his chest. Wrapping me tightly in his arms, I buried my nose into the sleeve of his jacket and savored the sweet scent of his cologne.

I stood in the window of the airport, watching planes take off after he had given me a final hug and had left to board the plane. Already, I felt like I had something missing from me. Like there was a big hole in my heart. I felt empty. After some time, I decided I should probably go home.

I didn’t cry myself to sleep last night like I thought I would’ve. Instead, I just lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling, not knowing what to think. Tomorrow would be so much different than all my other days at school. No one to hold my hand while walking down the hallway, no one to go out to lunch with, and no one to look forward to so bright and early in the morning. After what seemed like forever, I drifted off to sleep, images of Ayden appearing in my dreams.

The sound of my alarm clock woke me in the morning. And all at once, it hit me, everything that I had been thinking of before drifting off to sleep the night before. Everything that had happened yesterday hadn’t been just a dream. It had been reality and it was finally starting to set in. I threw the covers off of me and started my day like any other, minus the ‘good morning beautiful’ text that I had been so used to receiving.

When I was finally ready for school, I grabbed my keys and headed out the door. The weather fit my mood perfectly. Cloudy, dark, damp, awful weather. Unlike most days that usually occurred here in California. I was used to the sun, the nice warm breeze, not this ‘Seattle like’ weather. Driving to school, I wasn’t sure if the raindrops falling on my windshield made it blurry to see, or if it was my own tears welling up in my eyes. I pretended for it to be the first option, all the while knowing it was the second. Staying strong had been one of my traits. When things got tough, I wasn’t one to run from my problems. No, I faced those dead on. Mom always said I got that from Dad.

It’d been a long time since I’d last thought about him. He was tall, strong, and stubborn. He died serving our country. Maybe that’s what scared me most about Ayden having to go fight. I’d experience death through the military too many times in my book. My grandpa had served our country and had also died in military combat, then Dad. Maybe, it was just my family. Luck just didn’t play on our side. When my brother was finally old enough to join, he surprised us all at dinner one night.

“Have you thought anymore about that business degree you want to get?” Mom had asked.

“Well, yeah. Actually, no. I’ve decided against the business degree.” Ethan had said.

“Honey, you’re almost ready to graduate. You’re changing your mind in the blink of an eye and at possibly, the last minute?”

I had sat silently, not saying a word. Ethan had told me a few months before what he’d been thinking. He knew my opinion, but didn’t know Mom’s. I wasn’t happy with what he was deciding, but I was almost willing to support him. We were close, and I didn’t want to lose him like I had lost Dad, who I’d also been so close to.

“I want to join the military.” He said quietly, and calmly.

I remember Mom’s reaction almost perfectly. She didn’t say a word at first, just looked down at her plate. When she lifted her head a minute later, tears had begun to form in her eyes, ones she blinked away quickly, not letting them spill over onto her cheeks.

“When did you, decide this?” she asked quietly.

“I’ve thought about it for a long time. My choices were either, business, or military.” He explained. “And Mom, the business thing just isn’t working out.”

“Of all things to choose.” She whispered.

She shook her head slightly and I saw a tear fall onto the table by her plate.

“Mom, things are different these days. It’s not like when Dad fought.” He explained. “Ava supports me.” He slipped.

Mom’s head snapped up and looked at me. My head bent down, looking at the spaghetti on my plate.

“You knew?” she asked quietly.

I said nothing. Absolutely nothing. Telling Mom that I had known his decision all along wasn’t part of the plan when the three of us sat down for dinner that night.

“I thought there were no secrets in this house?” she asked.

“There isn’t.” Ethan chimed in. “Anymore.” He whispered.

Mom breathed in a deep breath and let it escape.

“Ethan, I love you. And I support whatever you choose to do. You know that. But I am telling you right now, I will be ****** if I lose another important man in my life.” She said, sternly, while looking deep into his eyes.

“Dad would’ve wanted this.” Ethan said, plainly.

“I know.”

And with that, she had excused herself and left the table. Walking down the hallway, I heard her sniffle a couple times.

The fact of those two simple words stung but as the saying goes, “the truth hurts.” Mom was a runner. She was the one who would always run from her problems instead of confronting them. The one thing that she had always said and will continue to always say, she didn’t want Ethan going into the military. Ever since Dad had died, she’d stuck to her word. Even though, we all knew Dad would’ve wanted Ethan to follow in his steps and be a commanding officer, it’d be the one thing Mom would continuously disagree on. I guess you could say I was the same way. After Ayden had told me that he had been signed for the draft, my breath had caught and I had the same reaction as Mom would’ve had. I would’ve wanted him to do anything, anything, besides go into the military. But I guess it was different this time. No one really had a say in who was on the list and who was absent. My bad luck had just started to shine through.

School dragged on. As normal. But it was different now. Ayden wasn’t there to hold my hand. He wasn’t there to greet me after my classes, wasn’t there to walk me to my car, wasn’t there to just be in my presence. It was like he had died. And just the thought of that alone, brought tears to my eyes. I wasn’t the only one whose boyfriend had been called off for the draft. No, there were others, but none of those other couples had been like Ayden and I. We weren’t just a couple. We weren’t just homecoming king and queen. No, we were best friends. I’d known him since first grade when he’d transferred to my elementary school. I had been the one assigned to show him around the school. We became friends, and later on, best friends. Freshman year of high school, Ayden and I had gone to homecoming together. Not as a couple but just as friends because neither of us had a date. Sophomore year, we had gone together again. Not because we didn’t have a date, but because we wanted to go with each other. I’ll never forget that night, because that was the night Ayden had told me he wanted to be more than friends. I had never actually thought about being more than just his friend until he had brought it up. That night, I didn’t just fall in love with a guy; I fell in love with my best friend.

The final bell rang for school to be dismissed. Once again, I felt emptiness inside while walking through the hallway. Blurs of kids rushing past me kept me from allowing my tears to spill over onto my cheeks, but that was the only thing that stopped them. After getting into my car, I put the key into the ignition but didn’t start it; I didn’t even turn the key. I put my head in my hands and took a deep breath. In my head, I thought, “One day down.”

After sitting for a few minutes in my quiet car, and letting other vehicles exit the parking lot, I finally turned the key and started my car. Hearing the soft music come on the radio, I turned it down so I could only hear the engine running. Putting my car into reverse, I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going to go. I just wanted to drive. Halfway home, I changed directions and headed to what seemed like my second house, my best friend’s house.

I knew his Mom would be off work by now and would be there to let me in. I found it ironic, as I always have that when you’re in a hurry to get somewhere; you stop at every red light possible. Red lights, stop signs, and slow moving cars in general were the only obstacles in my way that afternoon. Finally, when I was out of the traffic and almost to Ayden’s house, I pushed my foot a little harder on the gas to gain some speed. Driving up over the gravel road, I could see in the distance his Mom’s small car parked in the driveway; along with Ayden’s. Just seeing it there, gave me false hope that maybe this was all a dream and he was actually at his house, waiting for me.

Pulling into the driveway, his Mom came out onto the porch. Ayden lived in a house that you see in the movies. A tall, white one with a wraparound porch, the swing out front. I loved spending time in that house. Putting the car in park, I slowly got out and walked up to the porch.

“How did it go?” his Mom asked.

I shrugged my shoulders, while walking up the stairs. She pulled me into her arms and hugged me. Rubbing my back, she whispered,

“It’ll be okay. He’ll be coming home sooner than you know it.”

“Can I just go up to his room?” I asked.

“Of course.”

She released me from her arms and I opened the screen door to head inside while she remained on the porch. I walked up the stairs and to the right. Ayden’s door was closed. That was unlikely. He never kept his door shut just for the sake of it being shut. It was always opened. I pushed it open and walked inside. All his stuff was where he had left it. His bed was unmade, his closet doors standing open. I walked to his closet and ran my hands over his shirts, His scent filled my nose and I just wanted him home. I grabbed a button down, blue and white, thin striped shirt. He had worn it to school a couple times. I put it up to my nose, taking in faint bit of cologne that you could still smell on it, even after it going through the wash. I walked over to his bed, sitting down on the edge. With his shirt still pressed close to my face, I breathed in a heavy breath and let everything go. The tears started coming and I didn’t stop them. I started sobbing but I didn’t care. It seemed like everything that I’d ever loved, was gone. Because technically, it was, for the time. Ayden leaving to go fight in a war half way across the country scared me more than life itself, and hurt more than if he had broken up with me. I felt alone, even when there were dozens of people around me. I felt as if Ayden was dead when he was actually alive and well, as far as I knew. He’d only been gone one day and it felt like three years. Losing Ayden to the war efforts showed the true meaning in the saying, “you never really know what you have until it’s gone.” But really, the truth was, I knew what I had. I knew exactly what I had. I just took it for granted and didn’t think I’d ever lose it. And now all I wanted was Ayden back in the same country as me, back in the same house as where I was. In his room, watching a movie, playing a game, anything. That’s all I wanted at that exact moment.

I jumped up out of my sleep, my heart beating faster than a race car zooming around a track. I looked at my alarm clock, the red digits glaring, 2:33 back at my face. I swallowed and took a few more deep breaths before kicking the covers off and walking to the bathroom. I turned the light on and splashed some cool water over my face. Looking up into the mirror, I took one final deep breath and walked back to my room. Grabbing my phone from my nightstand next to my bed, I unplugged it and ran my finger over the touch screen. Reaching Ayden’s name, I touched the screen where it said to call. Holding the phone up to my ear, I waited for Ayden’s voice to answer. After about five rings and silence, his voice answered through his voicemail.

“Hey, it’s Ayden. I’m a little busy at the moment, but leave a message, and I’ll make sure to get back to you.”

My tears broke out all over again, my already swollen eyes releasing more sobs. I pulled my covers up to my chest and buried my face in them. My sobs grew a bit louder, and I heard footsteps coming from outside my bedroom door. I tried to stop, and after sniffling a couple times, the white door opened slowly.

“Honey,” Mom said, coming over to the bed.

“I can’t do this, Mom.” I sobbed.

She pulled me into her arms and rested her chin on my head while softly rubbing my back.

“It gets better.” she whispered. “It gets better.” she paused. “I promise.”

“I don’t know.” I said.

“I do.” she replied. “I went through this. You seem to keep forgetting. But I went through this exact same thing.”

I took a deep breath. “How long?” I asked. “How long does this last? This loneliness, this emptiness?”

“Too long.” she whispered.

She pulled me into her arms even more, holding me tighter, until I slowly laid down on my bed, my tears falling to my pillow. She sat on the edge of my bed, rubbing my back. It reminded me of all the times when I had been sick and she’d s

back then, when communism was
heralded on the fifth of may
to glorify work,
you had old people dump coffee
beans into the river because
no one told them what to do with it,
you had unselfish atheism back then,
you were encapsulated as a species,
fully noble to be categorised as
**** sapiens; but now you're not;
we're all artists now,
spare time writing wonders,
full time displaying unmade beds
in former power-stations of vast spaces...
i guess in order to provoke thought...
after all, congested spaces breed
claustrophobia, a display in an economised
space like that is no comparison to a
large open space where you sort of
have to attract thinking
about the most debased work imaginable
to be considered in the realm of being, a
qualifiable work of "art"... well, what do you expect,
qualifying an unmade bed as art will
give you insight into newtonian causality
(i know, einstein muddled it a bit):
to qualify an unmade bed as art akin to
the statue of david will eventually
quantify an expression of art in another
medium exponentially, namely poetry;
modern visual art is the reason why
we have an exponential increase in
poetic output - if the beauty in visual art is
missing or is abstract or just plain ugly,
people will turn to the 26 signatures
to simply un-imagine what's being plated,
by the time we return to the grander aesthetics...
well, by the time anything is accomplished,
people will have to re-imagine the body
by salvaging it from *******,
and poetry will have to depose what advertising
does to the phonetic units, with so many
fonts and copyright trademarks whatever.

And so here today I say goodbye
at your graveside in the rain
all the mourners they have gone now
its just you and me again

The scars of your sudden passing
no-one will ever see
like a thousand shards of glass
driven deep inside of me

The only evidence of you being here
is the unmade bed you left behind
And memories of the love we made
and of our bodies intertwined

So many things will go unsaid
so many dreams go unfulfilled
So many rooms are darker now
That you lights not there to fill

My world is much more empty now
without your gentle grace
As I close my eye's the tears come
at the memory of your face

I wish I could have been there
to be with you at the end
To cradle you within my arms
my lover and my friend.

Our time together was our secret
and one that will be kept
None will ever know the "other man"
at your graveside stood and wept.

O, the Horror! Halloween Poetry!

Halloween Poetry: Dark, Eerie, Haunting and Scary poems about Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Werewolves, Reanimated Corpses and "Things that go Bump in the Night!"



Thin Kin
by Michael R. Burch

Skeleton!
Tell us what you lack...
the ability to love,
your flesh so slack?

Will we frighten you,
grown as pale & unsound,
when we also haunt
the unhallowed ground?



The Witch
by Michael R. Burch

her fingers draw into claws
she cackles through rotting teeth...
u ask "are there witches?"
… pshaw! …
(yet she has my belief)



Vampires
by Michael R. Burch

Vampires are such fragile creatures;
we dread the dark, but the light destroys them...
sunlight, or a stake, or a cross ― such common things.

Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings,
we shrink from his voice.

Centuries have taught us:
in shadows danger lurks for those who stray,
and there the vampire bares his yellow fangs
and feels the ancient soul-tormenting pangs.
He has no choice.

We are his prey, plump and fragrant,
and if we pray to avoid him, he earnestly prays to find us...
prays to some despotic hooded God
whose benediction is the humid blood
he lusts to taste.



Styx
by Michael R. Burch

Black waters,
deep and dark and still...
all men have passed this way,
or will.

Charon, the ferrymen who carried the dead across the River Styx to their eternal destination, has been portrayed by artists and poets as a vampiric figure.



Revenge of the Halloween Monsters
by Michael R. Burch

The Halloween monsters, incensed,
keep howling, and may be UNFENCED!!!
They’re angry that children with treats
keep throwing their trash IN THE STREETS!!!

You can check it out on your computer:
Google says, “Please don’t be a POLLUTER!!!”
The Halloween monsters agree,
so if you’re a litterbug, FLEE!!!

Kids, if you’d like more treats this year
and don’t want to cower in FEAR,
please make all the mean monsters happy,
and they’ll hand out sweet treats like they’re sappy!

So if you eat treats on the drag
and don't want huge monsters to nag,
please put all loose trash in your BAG!!!

NOTE: If you recite the poem, get the kids to huddle up close, then yell the all-caps parts like you’re one of the unhappy monsters, and perhaps "goose" them as well. They'll get the message.



It's Halloween!
by Michael R. Burch

If evening falls
on graveyard walls
far softer than a sigh;

if shadows fly
moon-sickled skies,
while children toss their heads

uneasy in their beds,
beware the witch's eye!

If goblins loom
within the gloom
till playful pups grow terse;

if birds give up their verse
to comfort chicks they nurse,
while children dream weird dreams

of ugly, wiggly things,
beware the serpent's curse!

If spirits scream
in haunted dreams
while ancient sibyls rise

to plague nightmarish skies
one night without disguise,

while children toss about
uneasy, full of doubt,
beware the Devil's lies...

it's Halloween!



Ghost
by Michael R. Burch

White in the shadows
I see your face,
unbidden. Go, tell

Love it is commonplace;
tell Regret it is not so rare.

Our love is not here
though you smile,
full of sedulous grace.

Lost in darkness, I fear
the past is our resting place.



All Hallows Eve
by Michael R. Burch

What happened to the mysterious Tuatha De Danann, to the Ban Shee (from which we get the term “banshee”) and, eventually, to the Druids? One might assume that with the passing of Merlyn, Morgan le Fay and their ilk, the time of myths and magic ended. This poem is an epitaph of sorts.

In the ruins
of the dreams
and the schemes
of men;

when the moon
begets the tide
and the wide
sea sighs;

when a star
appears in heaven
and the raven
cries;

we will dance
and we will revel
in the devil’s
fen...

if nevermore again.



Pale Though Her Eyes
by Michael R. Burch

Pale though her eyes,
her lips are scarlet
from drinking of blood,
this child, this harlot

born of the night
and her heart, of darkness,
evil incarnate
to dance so reckless,

dreaming of blood,
her fangs ― white ― baring,

revealing her lust,
and her eyes, pale, staring...



Like Angels, Winged
by Michael R. Burch

Like angels ― winged,
shimmering, misunderstood ―
they flit beyond our understanding
being neither evil, nor good.

They are as they are...
and we are their lovers, their prey;
they seek us out when the moon is full
and dream of us by day.

Their eyes ― hypnotic, alluring ―
trap ours with their strange appeal
till like flame-drawn moths, we gather...
to see, to touch, to feel.

Held in their arms, enchanted,
we feel their lips, so old!,
till with their gorging kisses
we warm them, growing cold.



Solicitation
by Michael R. Burch

He comes to me out of the shadows, acknowledging
my presence with a tip of his hat, always the gentleman,
and his eyes are on mine like a snake’s on a bird’s ―
quizzical, mesmerizing.

He ***** his head as though something he heard intrigues him
(although I hear nothing) and he smiles, amusing himself at my expense;
his words are full of desire and loathing, and while I hear everything,
he says nothing I understand.

The moon shines ― maniacal, queer ― as he takes my hand whispering

Our time has come... And so we stroll together creaking docks
where the sea sends sickening things
scurrying under rocks and boards.

Moonlight washes his ashen face as he stares unseeing into my eyes.
He sighs, and the sound crawls slithering down my spine;
my blood seems to pause at his touch as he caresses my face.
He unfastens my dress till the white lace shows, and my neck is bared.

His teeth are long, yellow and hard, his face bearded and haggard.
A wolf howls in the distance. There are no wolves in New York. I gasp.
My blood is a trickle his wet tongue embraces. My heart races madly.
He likes it like that.



Sometimes the Dead
by Michael R. Burch

Sometimes we catch them out of the corners of our eyes ―
the pale dead.
After they have fled
the gourds of their bodies, like escaping fragrances they rise.

Once they have become a cloud’s mist, sometimes like the rain
they descend;
they appear, sometimes silver like laughter,
to gladden the hearts of men.

Sometimes like a pale gray fog, they drift
unencumbered, yet lumbrously,
as if over the sea
there was the lightest vapor even Atlas could not lift.

Sometimes they haunt our dreams like forgotten melodies
only half-remembered.
Though they lie dismembered
in black catacombs, sepulchers and dismal graves; although they have committed felonies,

yet they are us. Someday soon we will meet them in the graveyard dust
blood-engorged, but never sated
since Cain slew Abel.
But until we become them, let us steadfastly forget them, even as we know our children must...



Polish
by Michael R. Burch

Your fingers end in talons—
the ones you trim to hide
the predator inside.

Ten thousand creatures sacrificed;
but really, what’s the loss?
Apply a splash of gloss.

You picked the perfect color
to mirror nature’s law:
red, like tooth and claw.

Published by The HyperTexts



Siren Song
by Michael R. Burch

The Lorelei’s
soft cries
entreat mariners to save her...

How can they resist
her faint voice through the mist?

Soon she will savor
the flavor
of sweet human flesh.



How Long the Night (anonymous Old English Lyric)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song...
but now I feel the northern wind's blast ―
its severe weather strong.
Alas! Alas! This night seems so long!
And I, because of my momentous wrong
now grieve, mourn and fast.



The Wild Hunt
by Michael R. Burch

Near Devon, the hunters appear in the sky
with Artur and Bedwyr sounding the call;
and the others, laughing, go dashing by.
They only appear when the moon is full:

Valerin, the King of the Tangled Wood,
and Valynt, the goodly King of Wales,
Gawain and Owain and the hearty men
who live on in many minstrels’ tales.

They seek the white stag on a moonlit moor,
or Torc Triath, the fabled boar,
or Ysgithyrwyn, or Twrch Trwyth,
the other mighty boars of myth.

They appear, sometimes, on Halloween
to chase the moon across the green,
then fade into the shadowed hills
where memory alone prevails.



The Vampire's Spa Day Dream
by Michael R. Burch

O, to swim in vats of blood!
I wish I could, I wish I could!
O, 'twould be
so heavenly
to swim in lovely vats of blood!

The poem above was inspired by a Josh Parkinson depiction of Elizabeth Bathory up to her nostrils in the blood of her victims, with their skulls floating in the background.



Nevermore!
by Michael R. Burch

Nevermore! O, nevermore!
shall the haunts of the sea
― the swollen tide pools
and the dark, deserted shore ―
mark her passing again.

And the salivating sea
shall never kiss her lips
nor caress her ******* and hips,
as she dreamt it did before,
once, lost within the uproar.

The waves will never **** her,
nor take her at their leisure;
the sea gulls shall not have her,
nor could she give them pleasure...
She sleeps, forevermore!

She sleeps forevermore,
a ****** save to me
and her other lover,
who lurks now, safely smothered
by the restless, surging sea.

And, yes, they sleep together,
but never in that way...
For the sea has stripped and shorn
the one I once adored,
and washed her flesh away.

He does not stroke her honey hair,
for she is bald, bald to the bone!
And how it fills my heart with glee
to hear them sometimes cursing me
out of the depths of the demon sea...

their skeletal love ― impossibility!



Dark Gothic
by Michael R. Burch

Her fingers are filed into talons;
she smiles with carnivorous teeth...
You ask, “Are there vampires?”
― Get real! ―
(Yet she has my belief.)



Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.


Athenian Epitaphs (Gravestone Inscriptions of the Ancient Greeks)

Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
― Michael R. Burch, after Plato


Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell?
Only the sea gulls in their high, lonely circuits may tell.
― Michael R. Burch, after Glaucus



Passerby,
tell the Spartans we lie
lifeless at Thermopylae:
dead at their word,
obedient to their command.
Have they heard?
Do they understand?
― Michael R. Burch, after Simonides



Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch

Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact and who thus endure
harsh sentence here―among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes, will gleam blood-red
at last when sunset staggers to the door
of each white mausoleum, to inquire―
What use, O things of erstwhile loveliness?


Reclamation
by Michael R. Burch

after Robert Graves, with a nod to Mary Shelley

I have come to the dark side of things
where the bat sings
its evasive radar
and Want is a crooked forefinger
attached to a gelatinous wing.

I have grown animate here, a stitched corpse
hooked to electrodes.
And night
moves upon me―progenitor of life
with its foul breath.

Blind eyes have their second sight
and still are deceived. Now my nature
is softly to moan
as Desire carries me
swooningly across her threshold.

Stone
is less infinite than her crone’s
gargantuan hooked nose, her driveling lips.
I eye her ecstatically―her dowager figure,
and there is something about her that my words transfigure
to a consuming emptiness.

We are at peace
with each other; this is our venture―
swaying, the strings tautening, as tightropes
tauten, as love tightens, constricts
to the first note.

Lyre of our hearts’ pits,
orchestration of nothing, adits
of emptiness! We have come to the last of our hopes,
sweet as congealed blood sweetens for flies.

Need is reborn; love dies.



Deliver Us ...
by Michael R. Burch

The night is dark and scary―
under your bed, or upon it.

That blazing light might be a star ...
or maybe the Final Comet.

But two things are sure: your mother’s love
and your puppy’s kisses, doggonit!



the Horror
by Michael R. Burch

the Horror lurks inside our closets
the Horror hides beneath our beds
the Horror hisses ancient curses
the Horror whispers in our heads

the Horror tells us Death is coming
the Horror tells us there’s no hope
the Horror tells us “life” is futile
the Horror beckons, “there’s the Rope!”



Belfry
by Michael R. Burch

There are things we surrender
to the attic gloom:
they haunt us at night
with shrill, querulous voices.

There are choices we made
yet did not pursue,
behind windows we shuttered
then failed to remember.

There are canisters sealed
that we cannot reopen,
and others long broken
that nothing can heal.

There are things we conceal
that our anger dismembered,
gray leathery faces
the rafters reveal.



Duet
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, Wendy, by the firelight, how sad!
How worn and gray your auburn hair became!
You’re very silent, like an evening rain
that trembles on dark petals. Tears you’ve shed
for days we laughed together, glisten now;
your flesh became translucent; and your brow
knits, gathered loosely. By the well-made bed
three portraits hang with knowing eyes, beloved,
but mine is not among them. Time has proved
our hearts both strangely mortal. If I said
I loved you once, how is it that could change?
And yet I watch you fondly; love is strange . . .

Oh, Peter, by the firelight, how bright
my thought of you remains, and if I said
I loved you once, then took him to my bed,
I did it for the need of love, one night
when you were far away. My heart endured
transfigurement―in flaming ash inured
to heartbreak and the violence of sight:
I saw myself grow old and thin and frail
with thinning hair about me, like a veil . . .
And so I loved him for myself, despite
the love between us―our first startled kiss.
But then I loved him for his humanness.
And then we both grew old, and it was right . . .

Oh, Wendy, if I fly, I fly beyond
these human hearts, these cities walled and tiered
against the night, beyond this vale of tears,
for love, if it exists, dies with the years . . .

No, Peter, love is constant as the heart
that keeps till its last beat a measured pace
and sets the fixtures of its dreams in place
by beds at first well-used, at last well-made,
and counts each face a joy, each tear a grace . . .



Horror
by Michael R. Burch

What I ache to say is beyond saying―
no words for the horror
of not loving enough,
like a mummy half-wrapped in its moldering casements
holding a lily aloft.

No, there are no words for the horror
as a tormented wind howls through the teetering floes
and the cold freezes down to my clawed hairy toes ...

What use to me, now, if the stars appear?
As I moan
the moon finds me,
fangs goring the deer.



Strange Corps(e)
by Michael R. Burch

We are all dying, haunted by life―
dying, but the living will not let us go.
We are perishing zombies, haunted by the moonglow.

With what animation we, shuffling, return
nightly, to worry Love’s worm-eaten corpse,
till, living or dead, she is wholly ours.

We are the dying, enamored of “life”―
the palest of auras, the eeriest call.
We stagger to attention ... stumble ... fall.

We have only one thought―Love’s peculiar notion,
that our duty’s to “live,” though such “living” means
night’s horrific wild hungers, its stranger dreams.

We now “live” on the flesh of eroded dreams
and no longer recoil at the victims’ screams.



Love, ah! serene ghost
by Michael R. Burch

Love, ah! serene ghost,
haunts my retelling of her,
or stands atop despairing stairs
with such pale, severe eyes,
I become another pallid specter.

But what I feel
most profoundly is this:
the absolute lack of her kiss,
the absence of her wild,
unwarranted laughter.

So that,
like a candle deprived of oxygen,
I become mere wick and tallow again.
Here and hereafter ...
gone with her now, in the darkest of nights, the flame!

I lie, pallid vision of man―the same
wan ghost of her palpitations’ claim
on my heart
that I was before.

I love her beyond and despite even shame.



Eden
by Michael R. Burch

Then earth was heaven too, a perfect garden.
Apples burgeoned and shone―unplucked on sagging boughs.
What, then, would the children eat?
Fruit indecently sweet,
redolent as incense, with a tempting aroma ...



Outcasts
by Michael R. Burch

There was a rose, a prescient shade of crimson,
the very color of blood,
that bloomed in that garden.

The most dazzling of all the Earth’s flowers,
men have forgotten it now,
with their fanciful tales of apples and serpents.

Beasts with lips called the goreflower “Love.”

The scribes have the story all wrong: four were there,
four horrid dark creatures―chattering, bickering.
Aduhm placed one red petal in Ehve’s matted hair;

he was lost in her arms
till dawn sullen and golden
imperceptibly streaked the musk-fragrant air.

Two flared nostrils quivered, two eyes remained open.

Kahyn sought me that evening, his bloodless lips curled
in a grimacelike smile. Sunken-cheeked, he approached me
in the Caverns of Similitudes, eerie Barzakh.

“We are outcasts, my brother!, God quickly deserts us.”
As though his anguish conceived in insight’s first blush
might not pale next to mine in Sheol’s gray realm.

“Shining Creature!” he named me and called me divine
as he lavished damp kisses upon my bright scales.
“Help me find me one rare gift to put Love’s gift to shame.”

“There is a dark rose with a bittersweet fragrance
as pungent as cloves: only man knows its name.
Clinging and cloying, it destroys all it touches . . .”

“But red is Ehve’s preference; while Envy is green.”
He was downcast a moment, a moment, a moment . . .
“Ah, but red is the color of blood!”

Disagreeable child, far too clever for his own good.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)



No One
by Michael R. Burch

No One hears the bells tonight;
they tell him something isn’t right.
But No One is not one to rush;
he lies in grasses greenly lush
as far away a startled thrush
flees from horned owls in sinking flight.

No One hears the cannon’s roar
and muses that its voice means war
comes knocking on men’s doors tonight.
He sleeps outside in awed delight
beneath the enigmatic stars
and shivers in their cooling light.

No One knows the world will end,
that he’ll be lonely, without friend
or foe to conquer. All will be
once more, celestial harmony.
He’ll miss men’s voices, now and then,
but worlds can be remade again.



Bikini
by Michael R. Burch

Undersea, by the shale and the coral forming,
by the shell’s pale rose and the pearl’s white eye,
through the sea’s green bed of lank seaweed worming
like tangled hair where cold currents rise . . .
something lurks where the riptides sigh,
something old and pale and wise.

Something old when the world was forming
now lifts its beak, its snail-blind eye,
and with tentacles about it squirming,
it feels the cloud above it rise
and shudders, settles with a sigh,
knowing man’s demise draws nigh.



Ceremony
by Michael R. Burch

Lost in the cavernous blue silence of spring,
heavy-lidded and drowsy with slumber, I see
the dark gnats leap; the black flies fling
their slow, engorged bulks into the air above me.

Shimmering hordes of blue-green bottleflies sing
their monotonous laments; as I listen, they near
with the strange droning hum of their murmurous wings.

Though you said you would leave me, I prop you up here
and brush back red ants from your fine, tangled hair,
whispering, “I do!” . . . as the gaunt vultures stare.



Contraire
by Michael R. Burch

Where there was nothing
but emptiness
and hollow chaos and despair,

I sought Her ...

finding only the darkness
and mournful silence
of the wind entangling her hair.

Yet her name was like prayer.

Now she is the vast
starry tinctures of emptiness
flickering everywhere

within me and about me.

Yes, she is the darkness,
and she is the silence
of twilight and the night air.

Yes, she is the chaos
and she is the madness
and they call her Contraire.



Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch

You come to me
out of the sun―
my dark twin, unreal . . .

And you are always near
although I cannot touch you;
although I trample you, you cannot feel . . .

And we cannot be parted,
nor can we ever meet
except at the feet.



East End, 1888
by Michael R. Burch

Past darkened storefronts,
hunched and contorted, bent with need
through chilling rain, he walks alone
till down the glistening cobblestones
deliberate footsteps pause, resume.

He follows, by a pub confronts
a pasty face, an overbright smile,
lips intimating easy bliss,
a boisterous, over-eager tongue.

She barters what she has to sell;
her honeyed words seem cloying, stale―
pale, tainted things of sticky guile.



A rustle of her petticoats,
a flash of bulging milk-white breast
. . . the price is set: a crown. “A tip,
a shilling more is yours,” he quotes,
“to wash your privates.” She accepts.
Saliva glistens on his lips.



An alley. There, he lifts her gown,
in answer to her question, frowns,
says―“You can call me Jack, or Rip.”



East End, 1888 (II)
by Michael R. Burch

He slouched East
through a steady downpour,
a slovenly beast
befouling each puddle
with bright footprints of blood.

Outlined in a pub door,
lewdly, wantonly, she stood . . .
mocked and brazenly offered.

He took what he could
till she afforded no more.

Now a single bright copper
glints becrimsoned by the door
of the pub where he met her.

He holds to his breast the one part
of her body she was unable to *****,
grips her heart to his wildly stammering heart . . .
unable to forgive or forget her.

Originally published by Penny Dreadful



Evil, the Rat
by Michael R. Burch

Evil lives in a hole like a rat
and sleeps in its feces,
fearing the cat.

At night it furtively creeps
through the house
while the cat sleeps.

It eats old excrement and gnaws
on steaming dung
and it will pause

between odd bites to sniff through the ****,
twitching and trembling,
for a scent of the cat ...

Evil, the rat.



Temptation
by Michael R. Burch

Jesus was always misunderstood . . .
we have that, at least, in common.
And it’s true that I found him,
shriveled with hunger,
shivering in the desert,
skeletal, emaciate,
not an ounce of fat
to warm his bones
once the bright sun set.

And it’s true, I believe,
that I offered him something to eat―
a fig, perhaps, a pomegranate, or a peach.

Hardly the great “temptation”
of which I’m accused.

He was a likeable chap, really,
and we spent a pleasant hour
discussing God―
how hard He is to know,
and impossible to please.

I left him there, the pale supplicant,
all skin and bone, at the mouth of his cave,
imploring his “Master” on callused knees.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)



Role Reversal
by Michael R. Burch

The fluted lips of statues
mock the bronze gaze
of the dying sun . . .

We are nonplused, they say,
smacking their wet lips,
jubilant . . .

We are always refreshed, always undying,
always young, forever unapologetic,
forever gay, smiling,

and though it seems man has made us,
on his last day, we will see him unmade―
we will watch him decay
as if he were clay,
and we had assumed his flesh,
hissing our disappointment.



Excelsior
by Michael R. Burch

I lift my eyes and laugh, Excelsior . . .
Why do you come, wan spirit, heaven-gowned,
complaining that I am no longer “pure?”

I threw myself before you, and you frowned,
so full of noble chastity, renowned
for leaving maidens maidens. In the dark

I sought love’s bright enchantment, but your lips
were stone; my fiery metal drew no spark
to light the cold dominions of your heart.

What realms were ours? What leasehold? And what claim
upon these territories, cold and dark,
do you seek now, pale phantom? Would you light

my heart in death and leave me ashen-white,
as you are white, extinguished by the Night?



Liar
by Michael R. Burch

Chiller than a winter day,
quieter than the murmur of the sea in her dreams,
eyes wilder than the crystal spray
of silver streams,
you fill my dying thoughts.

In moments drugged with sleep
I have heard your earnest voice
leaving me no choice
save heed your hushed demands
and meet you in the sands
of an ageless arctic world.

There I kiss your lifeless lips
as we quiver in the shoals
of a sea that endlessly rolls
to meet the shattered shore.

Wild waves weep, "Nevermore,"
as you bend to stroke my hair.

That land is harsh and drear,
and that sea is bleak and wild;
only your lips are mild
as you kiss my weary eyes,
whispering lovely lies
of what awaits us there
in a land so stark and bare,
beyond all hope . . . and care.

This is one of my early poems, written as a high school sophomore or junior.



The Watch
by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight spills down vacant sills,
illuminates an empty bed.
Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates
wan silver circles, left unread
by its companion—unmoved now
by anything that lies ahead.

I watch the minutes test the limits
of ornamental movement here,
where once another hand would hover.
Each circuit—incomplete. So dear,
so precious, so precise, the touch
of hands that wait, yet ask so much.

Originally published by The Lyric



Keywords/Tags: Halloween, dark, supernatural, skeleton, witch, ghost, vampire, monsters, ghoul, werewolf, goblins, occult, mrbhalloween, mrbhallow, mrbdark

Published as the collection "Halloween Poems"

They started off
As nothing more
Than interstellar dust

And then they pulled together
And shone bright in the void

Then they burst
Into a fiery nebula
Of multielemental radiation and dust

And over and over again
They were made and unmade
Beautiful galaxies shining endlessly
In that silent vacuum

And they formed solarities
And became little blobs of magma and gas
And they spun around
Crashing and breaking
Merging and making

Until one day they cooled
And all was calm over the muddy, uniform
Three foot deep sulfuric waves

And one day
They became a red film
But this time
Instead of being made or unmade
They made and unmade themselves

And as they made themselves again
They missed a thread in the genes
And they changed

And over and over
They made these mistakes
But each error they learned from
Each wrong step made them stronger
Each bad guess made them smarter
Each wrong look made them more beautiful

And so they grew
From a film to a blob
From green string to trunks
From swimming rays to Jurassic terrors
From frightened mice
To graceful, awkward, weird-looking, insane, and genius apes

And the time between changes
Kept getting shorter
First coordinated sounds
Then scratched in clay
Then limestone mountains
And one day
They looked around
And realized they had the planet

And as the billenia of the galaxies
Lapsed into the millions of life
Lapsed into the millennia of the young apes
Lapsed into the centuries of the modern species
Will lapse even further

And they looked all around
And they saw this change

And they imagine
And discover
And create
And live

And one day
They will make for themselves
A pair of metal wings
And a tail of pure energy

And they will fly up
And dance amongst the stars

SON
1
making love to make our son I kiss her eyes as if God were inside her
2
my wife gave birth to my son on the floor of the house I built
3
he keeps me up all night ***** on my sleeve feverish cries for his mama until dawn lifts the heads of sunflowers
4
forget poetry going out jazzed our winter born boy needs his diaper changed her ancient *** me house cleaning singing lullabies like a dove
5
wild iris sway as he wades downstream singing
6
one God many stories holding you our son walking the blue earth breathing away the pain with friends
7
amazing the ups and downs my son chasing ducks Sunday eating together my friend’s cancer battle my wife’s selfless moan
8
playing with candlelight my son burnt his finger I warned him
9
shower eat help my son memorize the constellations pay bills watch my wife sleep
10
worried about rats eating wallboard in the dead of night I get up cover my son
11
my son refuses to wear a raincoat in the summer rain
12
in his 2nd grade family drawing: my son gladday ready his mom hugging him me head in the clouds our cat smiling
13
when rains make bitter grass green with laughter my son springs from the winter of his room with his shedding dog and new baseball yelling to his buddies “Wait up!”
14
late afternoon October sycamore shadows blowing elm my son his dog me
15
after days of acid rain the lost sun comes promising heaven sent birds and boys' voices
16
dragged my son up the mountain to watch the meteor shower sons and fathers everywhere I hope
17
my best friend’s grave she loved singing my son asleep now she’s waving grass wildflowers
18
in a vacant lot my freckled face boy floats at the happy end of his 99¢ kite


19
the science of mystical seeds restores your left brain faith in everyday miracles like noisy boys climbing the music of old trees
20
if we could come back her a book of flowers our son blades of grass me the invisible wind
21
6 to 6 deep plowing then wall-to-wall screaming kids a leaky roof the old tractor my darling one naked notebooks full of dreams
22
sling shot boys kick red and gold leaves swirling down the street of locked doors at the tired end of Indian summer
23
my sons reaches for falling snow trampling veined leaves with footloose laughter fearless of winter's night the certain bones
24
true I care more than my son when he plays baseball
25
the orange tree my son planted today will fruit after we’re long gone
26
the bus driver brags about her son’s first home run wishes she could have been there
27
putting flowers on mother’s grave my son holds my hand
28
when night rises I yearn when my son comes home I relax when you sing I surrender
29
WTC on t.v. my son’s face a cloud of tears
30
his father beat him black and blue her husband her their sons their sons
31
the eyes told me that I’d play catch with his sons long after he thought breathed
32
I argued with my son explained the rules he still did what he wanted
33
my boy swaggers down Main St. sure he'll live forever
34
in the back seat good boys brag about good girls what they wanna do with them
35
sleepless until my son comes home late then finally I turn over
and rest
36
the light in my son’s words the silent stones of his tears
37
quiet room unmade bed boys playing in the rain stupid poems awful silence

38
all the dawns evening storms lovely ******* good talk tickled son blow plumeria drift
39
when the stone of night rises I a thief of songs yearn for the music of a woman's light
40
I don't get it gone son lost lover sick friends joyless graying unkissed ******* blood
41
half her half me our son didn't know where to go when she moved out
42
when I'm memory my son might think of me when he's gone I'm only a poem or two
43
bombs hunger lacklove prodigal son abandoned fields come down God get back to work

1.

dear feminism,
do i think of women
when i write to you?

why do i personify?

angry at an unjust world,
angry at injustice in ourselves,
have i been taught to fear you?
ignore inequity of fears?

or hide  
in the shadows of your salty curves
speaking soft with sycophantic tilt?

was this what mother meant,
portending talk of therapy
two decades in advance?

a bouy on three waves,
i crash against protuberances too:
limp didactics on avoidance for the victims,
waking in continuums of shrugging crime.

sameness differs in utopias --
every latent gut avers the right to spill.
despite the lissome quell forgetfulness contains,
my proper sphere will leave me
deafened in a wrack-dry
tidal echo--
'Fairness' stains clear beauty dark
as my imagined egos drown at last
from down our oceanic well of shame.

sacrifices fade,
i cannot write...
i write, and fail,
defined by sediment cliche,
reading women authors out of obligation ..odd desire,
and so in dim medieval-fashion
miss
the trail of monoliths erected
for a craven ease

2.

dear civil rights,
why were you taught
through prisms of boredom?
my voiceless reading left you to your rage,
while i communed with glossy nature,
private leaves.

how dare i clap your back
"congratulations"
at your tidy givens  granted
scars were open past my seeing,
and bleed still

while right here, empathy dies, now

dreams are bombed,
grafted to infected faculties
to wallow tended in a garden of injustice
erudite and dead,
i **** a bit i tell myself then stuff my face with food,
cover breath with smoke
and sleep in sour ignorance
no courage left to care.
blind grins bouquet the status quo
of rotted stems, discarded roots

i bury you with homeland fear
the killing silence filled with just intentions
for tomorrow

3.

dear feminism,
you speak for me, too--
my genderless ear attunes

cathartic sweep of ills
scaled beyond your other selves,
sexing into common chosen songs

no fearful tremble
at a mainstream backdrop reprimand--
to be a good gender,
--this gender not that gender--
gestate bigotry of symbol wombs,
cut ripe to cater to unquestioned whim;
no violent selfhood requisitioning
to closet inner innocence in pain

contractions shock in further waves
i midwife simple hope i hope
true fairness you have nursed in seeing death


4.

dear punk **** feminism,
marginal i ask as i perform
unstructured sutras on my heart
exemplar of a meta-freedom
burning in the core of threaded ages strung--
how then life without your voice,
vast silence unobserved,
the hidden anti-*** persisting
in our gender-theory--theorizing sterile norms--
sweet pulsing concupiscence
in our every waking breath
a pollinating zephyr tease toward
celebrating every feotal bathtub bliss --
unbridled ideologies unleashed
unmade into opining din

5.

dear temperance,
i vote you cherished
whirlwind
singing endless through the ageist ridicule
apparent failure in the civil warrior's eye
dogma blinks
denial of the rights you suffered for
but underneath compassion all along
i rally in your family's younger gaze
staring down,
questioning the steady rhythm of a whiskied fist

6.

dear feminism,
have i been taught to celebrate you?
have i been taught to fear for you?
have i been taught to treat you as a woman?
why do i personify you?
like some Sophia cybered up atop the forums of our age

blind and failing
i would be dust as well
like any rightful fading into dust
be swept along with all coercive screenings,
fear-born silences
immune to reason and the reasons of the heart--
rather than to live forgetting
letting go the questions giving rise to equals in a discourse
revising what it means to ask the meaning of


#
dear feminism,

when you are gone..
i for one will sing you
hope

to protest bigotry
a raging tranquil step
of care-filled voicing

dare an upward sloping arc
a dream becoming shared
to overcome
attain
inspired by once unfamiliar names

i will still be here,
the angry feminist
burning in my flagging underwear

brightest outrage at injustice
your deeper loves, fairness
selfhood honored
as if written in the stars
or ancient shorelines
-- you will not be gone

Means of production for
repetition of an old proposition.
More for more's sake,
each against each other.
All on the take.
A fight to be "self-made."
So, come,join the staid.
Share or care, compassion.
All are in America; unmade.