Don't listen to me, I'm a copy too
I'm nothing that should be considered original
I'm nothing worth building a statue over
I'm nothing that can't be replaced
If I get hit by a bus
Just pull someone else of the street
Put them in my clothes
You'll hardly notice the difference
I think my parents will like someone they won't have to feel guilty towards
They ******* me up
They know it, too
My brother'll like someone that's not trying to put him down all the time
I'm still in the process of ******* him up
He knows it, too
You could all just throw my dead, stinking, toxic body in the back
Feed me to the dogs

Let's mosey in the other extreme, let's say I'm unique
Or you are
They won't let us be different
If the commonwealth start listening
They'll **** us
Out of fear
What else they can do?
If we threaten them with consciousness among the masses
We got to go
It's nothing personal
I'll never have a Swan Song day
I'll never have a woman that I love
I'll never get to die peaceful in bed
I won't get to see the kids I never had grow up
But I'll have the benefit of having the memory of a fresh life

Doesn't sound like we have much of a choice, does it?
Conform, jump through the hoops, sell our soul, give yourself up
Or you live your life not giving in
And they decide you can't stick around
You're given the people funny ideas
I'm sure they'll **** you or me
If we're too free
They already got rid of Bobby, John and Martin
I guess that's why Jerome went into hiding
He gave too much hope and courage to people

You can either rot from the inside
Or you die young
Because, maybe one way or another they get you

I like to believe they don't though

Imagine this, as you lay bleeding from the three holes in your chest
With that last word of hope or love or divinity or whatever you want to call it on your lips
You sit and you think
It was all worth it
I don't regret anything
Because
Unlike them
I can still taste her lips
Unlike them
I can still hear the music
Unlike them
I can still see the endless fields of rye, the forests, the amazons, the rivers, the mountains
Unlike them
My eyes still smile
Unlike them
I laugh
Unlike them
I dance to my own music

And as the blood that retains it's anima leaves my veins
I smile
Because I'm not like them
And I realize
So I'm grateful
And I notice
All the little scared people look so cute in their mislead, unshaped, self-righteous indignation

Here are the names of my lovers,
The women I sleep with, whom
I use, like they use me.
Spent, they discard me, for when their pleasure needs
Satiated, they climb aboard another man.

What they do not know,
Is that in my mind, in my ears,
everywhere,
I did not let them, or you go,
We are still romping,
For I
Take them as needed.

I need them all,
For my pleasure needs, like my unshaped heart,
Addictive, endless.

If your is name is here, I do not
Apologize.

Pink
Adele
Lilly Allen
Anna Nalick
Bess Rogers
Beyonce
Brandi Carlisle
Cat Power
Colbie Callait
Duffy
Eva Cassidy
Evanescence
Alison Sudol
Fiona Apple
Florence Welch
Grace Potter
Ingrid Michaelson
You
Joni Mitchell
K.D. Lang
Kate Nash
Kate Voegele
Leona Lewis
Lizz Wright
Madeline Peyroux
Marie Digby
Mary Wells
Norah Jones
Regina Spektor
Sara Bareilles
You
Sara Haze
Taylor Swift and Tracy Chapman
Tristan Prettyman
Vanessa Carlton

So many others, used so long ago, I can't remember the faces,
Which can't be googled.

Use them hard, use them often, more than daily.
Bluntly, I tell you
Your name is on my list,
Even if I do not disclose it.

fortunate dreams, folded within security and affluence
a laundry pile of capital
you’ve tried and succeeded
prosperity, wealth, Constitutional rights in abundance
American dreams lay thriving, slithering between your fingers like sludge
nice sludge though
snow crystals rest upon the sludge, decorating it for the holidays

barren attempts to take hold of opportunities, you didn’t really try
efforts lay unmade, like the bed he shared with you
penniless
inferior in the corner of the kitchen
last night’s events crawling across the tile towards you
running over stains and chips, creating unshaped perfect squares
a city on fire; flames stumbling in the breezes

You are no black widow, you are far worse.
No remorse nor will to better your ways.
You bruise and contort, cast off and coerce
Until another, unshaped, gives their praise.
I am torn more by your guile, not regret.
To lie through teeth much sharper than what's there,
Is riddling and insulting, just bet
I won't be here when your guilt's made aware.
You shrink my worth with my name in your voice,
To be unmoved by poor, swayed lives that prove.
Alone, you roam and give in to poor choice,
And desert the ones who swore were unmoved.
I've never seen one's mind so strongly strung,
And one's paltering heart so wrongly flung.

The Process

There is the notion, the urging.
The first spilling, the self-congratulatory
Commencement ceremony for
The process.

Then there is the first short-pause,
a quick-freeze hibernation. Then,
The bubbling,
The querying, the special fear,
What have I started?
Where is it taking me,
Am I properly undressed for doing
T  he process?

A new vocabulary,
an arm extended, but distended,
Words are all angled puzzled,
Capable of unity, but first,
Unshaped but swollen,
By the process.

Hatching, head-aching,
words arrive rushed, but disordered,
Confused by the process.

{The exception has it own character.

One kingly, run-on sentence birthed,
After silent labor, a full poem, fully dilated,
A shocking head of hair, full developed,
So fast does "it" fall onto the paper
The obstetrician arrives too late
To process.}

The exception, exceptional.

The normal, normative.

Twenty four hours of labor,
False starts, much screaming,
Painful joys, hardly seamless,
This process.

Distractions the enemy,
Compulsion the master,
As you choreograph the work,
In loving servitude to
The process.

You the doctor, insert probes,
Looking for the tumors, the out of ordinary,
For normal flesh is not of interest as part of
The process.

Finally, you do exhale,
With unique the pleasure, of the longest sweetest
Female ******.
The breathing less labored,
Tho whole, sensing a diminish-meant to convey
That completion is the end of part of you,
The near-end of the continuum, lessened but continuing
The process.

Sun rays roll down the green grass & ochre weeds
Yellow, bitter, flowers, litter the hillside
Long red rays turning pink as split figs
Orange as hot coals, blue as the ocean
Then the bustle of twilight, such noise
Streaking headlights fade into receding redness
Carrying their sound with them, down the road
Figures, sillouhetes, wander by me, quiet conversations
Wind stirs their outlines, rustles their clothing, their hair
Bringing me the scent of dust, of split juniper
Darkness descends, but it cannot ***** out street lights
Or the flourescent floodlights, glaring artifical brightness
Or the blinking red eyes of radio masts
I'll peddle back now, chased by headlights
Down black asphalt roads, black as the night
Radiated heat, gathered from this boiling day
Sweat pouring down my face, into my eyes
Breath tearing at my chest, blood racing through veins
I have to outrun the night, to make it on time
To that quiet destination, a little room on the second story
With a chair, a desk, a shelf full of unread books
A yellow notepad, a pen that doesn't work so well
Arrowheads and unshaped stones, a bullet on the dresser
My grandpas old knife, a symbol of the ****** Mary
Your charms that you carelessly left behind
A small tiled room with a shower to stand under
Watch it drain away, dirt & soap, all of it
A face stares back at me, changed, distorted
A reflection in the mirror, a reflection that was me

We find between well loved pages
Why do all our hearts beat for them
I grew up with 2 loving parents
Shaped by 4 loving hands
1 half crazy hands
But love all the same
So why do i feel you
Harry, oliver, frodo,
Why do i know...
I guess we all have our abandoment issues
I guess lonely is something we all relate too
I guess i know you
In the back of my mind where we are all
Unshaped, and learning to be brave.

The landscape blurs often
as poets go about their business
crafting metaphors of unexpected delight
in forests of jangled words and visuals
unable to contain their excitement
at having conquered that crystallised
moment of love, hate and everything else
in a frozen sliver of time
inescapable from their minds excursion
into unknown unshaped lands.

Not all succeed in this endeavour
most try, few unable
to melt the metal in a crucible of colour
sound, taste or touch, to smell
emphasis and cocktail curiosity
bringing the best to the fore.

The newcomers tremble at the awe
of maestros watching their work
and dissolve in disasters.
There is the odd one that unknowingly
write splendid poetry
and when noticed and heaped with praise
often springboard into showcasing talent.

Reading the works of the masters
is always good. If they think it
is good then it must be good.
So many footsteps to follow and learn.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

You are a doll,
too pretty, too arresting.
But you are mass
that demands shaping,
and my fingers are not accustomed
to one such as you.

I press too hard
and sculpt too much.
You are too soft
for my fervid hands.
My own prints roughen you up.
I am anxious.
You should be
as you are.
You are an unshaped doll,
demanding familiarity.

I draw back.
I don't know how to draw back.
My fervid hands are arrested.
Too soft, too much, too hard.
You are pretty but I am anxious.

I can't sculpt you.
My prints are too rough
to be familiar.
I am too unaccustomed.
You should be as you are,
without my prints.
I am not a doll.

for l.r.
*091718

A tiny bundle covered in teddy-printed pyjamas,
He fidgets restlessly on the panel of the giant machine,
Preparing him for the scan is my most basic task of the day
Yet the most annoying one, because I cannot get away
Till he is asleep enough to not be afraid
Of entering into the mouth of that daunting cave,
Treating a child is so very difficult I feel,
No matter how detached you try to be and see
him as a "case", how do you neglect the truth that,
A being not abled enough to even climb out of the cradle,
Has to parent a disease that gnaws at him day after day?
I shake off such aberrant emotions and join his coaxing mother,
I know what she would really wish for at the moment would be,
To scoop him into her arms and lull him off to sleep,
But she has to be the rock she never wanted to be,
The baby had moved the last time, this one has to be error-free
So, allowed by her to take his cannulated hand in my gloved one,
I give the magic drug a carefully measured plunge
Into veins that are too little to bear such brunt,
Yet have been forced to endure this pain that can never be considered
Fair!
We two women watch over him, transfixed,
Noting his every sigh, his every twitch-
The Mother, anxious, cupping his now limp hands only with
The embrace of her eyes,
And I, the Doctor, though following my medical instinct, watching for
His breaths, with each chest rise,
Also find myself enchanted by the mysterious state this child is in,
Is it a state of dreaminess? Or of dreamlessness?
Is he floating into a dark endless sky? Or is he navigating between
Silver-illuminated stars?
What is the meaning of the half smile on his face?
Is he envisioning a world where he is happy,
Sans needles making insensitive designs into his vulnerable skin,
Sans masked doctors promising they wouldn't make him cry,
Sans missed school days and birthday parties,
Sans heated fevers creeping into his bones each night?
Minutes pass and we are broken out of our respective reveries
His fingers have started to weakly trace the red beams of light,
His voice has begun to coo indistinct chatter still unshaped by civilisation,
Its tone and urgency getting louder and surer,
And before he begins to frantically search for his caregiver,
A little more magic will be needed before completion.
I re-enter the glass cabin and inject again into his system,
A last few moments of painlessness and oblivion,
The gaze becomes dazed again, the smile reappears,
His mind comfortably wanders back
Into a calm nothingness and silent, numbed peace.
"The scan has concluded without event", I make a file note,
While the images on the screen begin to light up with disease.

And humans enjoy pain. Because even when they are perfectly happy they always dig for what they don't want to find. First letting others tear you down, then you finish unconsciously tearing yourself down. Finally you're so unrealistically happy that you want to know all the negatives, Foolish human.

You want to remember error after error marring life. And knowing you can't turn back time you make yourself angry, you make yourself hurt with knowledge that even if you could-you wouldn't have changed a thing. Yet you smile that bittersweet smile as you look back. There's no voices, it's just you. Tearing yourself apart. Because that's what you've learned. That's what you do best.
Ignorant human

Why didn't you know? You're a meat coated skeleton made of stardust. Like thousands more. You aren't the only little human. There's more-there will always be more. Time cannot erase what it's shaped. Time cannot change another souls' will to make unforeseen mistakes. Mistakes that harm.
And you're marred. Marked by time. Marked by those mistakes. Aged.
You angry, insecure, foolish, ignorant, little human.

And even if you smile-Once more with this quaking pain you've brought on yourself. You chose this. And although all is forgiven and forgotten by those souls. You will always remember. You will alway regret. But you've been shaped-cannot be unshaped. You cannot turn back time. Once a raindrop falls it into the puddle it cannot come back out for as it fell time passed and the seconds aren't coming back.
So now you accept it, although it hurts you remember
Little idiotic human

And so now you have sunlight with shadows,
Nights with moonlight, happiness with agony, and life with death.
You're haunted. Filled with self hatred.
And you,
you're just a sick human who enjoys pain

I was an unshaped sculpture, wet, raw and transparent.
As is death behind a fallacious smile.
I knew nothing of intemperate stars
That appear every night, And fade in a matter of hours.
To reappear on a nightly basis.
Till there is no night anymore.

Perhaps my vision is blurred
For all these packs of little gifts I receive everyday pills.
Pink, bone-white, orange and blue.
Wherein witches, no singing, scream lullabies to my ears.
But so does this world seem to fade in and out
Till there is no night anymore.

I look for lost meanings in a rose bucket like a life-long challenge.
I look for drought in children of the sombre clouds in my neighbourhood
That lay on the storm-beat shrubs as midday approaches.
To cover up the clumsy repetition of early mornings.
But oh darling! One day there is no night anymore.
Flirty gestures, handsome men and outbursts of tears
Will turn to ancient words in hardcover manuscripts.
Through which we continue to live a dreamlike life!
Dispensed from life itself and made to live in a glass box.
Transparent, still, with ****** reeks on its windowpanes.
And the blood stains remain, till there is no night anymore.
9.02. 17

Whenever you try to do a
"Cut and Paste"
of your faces in life;
It deletes the originals,
Giving all imitations;
It limits to your
Shadow faces
To be  unshared faces;
To be  unshaped faces;
To be  unshaded faces;
It is your mirror
facing
one towards the ugly;
the other, as the  elegant.
*
BY
WILLIAMSJI MAVELI
williamsji@yahoo.com
www.williamsji.com

so-in-time-so-inside or
as inside so in time
the plasma of thoughts far away
there in the spaces without meaning
the sprouts of faceless darkness
and systoles without time
I step from one silence into the other
and unshaped my body sings
I am babysitting my heart while the light loses its weight
on my shoulder
time is a pocket and I can hear only my blood

the luxury of mending this piece with that one
I am so complete when I am my feet
sometimes I don’t need a name
no need for one way roads
when quietly the dark sprouts me
and the days pass
without complaining

A pure soul remains a pure soul, and a soul that loveth, loveth from infancy.
We're all born to start a life and something new but not all that get to finish it.

Many do but few does finish well with a broad smile and not a sigh.
Even at point of death,  they smile wide enough because , not only for themselves, for others and the tomorrow's people.
It's also only the few who view the span of life past, present and future:  as a twig woven of others of different material but weaves theirs to suit what is woven and what is to be woven.

What shall we say then, is it of the desire of men to shape destinies of souls of men.
Or to see them unshaped and lives ruined...

Always know when it's your call you will not fail

Winter is stirring beneath my skin
Clutches my bones, tells me I'm cold
Head sinking down, down it goes below
Growing up, growing old
I iron out my creases but I can't stop the fold

And each year I get better at it
This thing called living, carrying my own skin
But each year still feels like drifting
The clock strikes and I am somewhere
All things new, all things, they just go

Holding life by the frays, unraveled threads
Weave and follow
I follow
And find
Other knots to untie

And somewhere, someone says hello
Greetings, passings, goodbyes and we go
Dreaming of infinite versions, you again
Unshaped entity that flickers like a flame in the darkness
Lighting my way, on and off and on and on
As one we grow

Can we experience
existence
without reference
to the body..?
Is this frightening..?
Or is it real freedom..?
Our bodies simply
are thought's boundaries
which corral
the multitudinous flow
of inner thoughts and
sensations and
of outer perceptions..
All of these mind things
are temporary shape-ings
of our true nature:
an infinite and
unshaped Existence...

evening comes by the lake
reflecting the cloud and trees
my mind also a mirror of all things

i saw the google car today
i hear the crane coarse cry
once and then again
he starts this time every night

on the dock
a man made four square thing
surrounded by its opposite
the water so unshaped unformed

a fish jumps at the flies
then another and another
there are countless ripples
too far away to hear but not to see

darker now
the redbird’s song joins in
that last of the day birds to sing before the dark

swallows in the air slide and swoop and glide

the crane again
each creature an instrument
singing to the dying day

but what about the google car
it drives itself you know
i called my aged mother and explained to her as i drove past it
amazing how the world is changing

the bullfrog has joined us now
and the bat replaces the swallow
darting ever here and there
i wish him luck since his meal is devouring me

but the google car
what is it devouring?
technology devouring man and nature

i sit here in the midst of wilderness
with my laptop, wifi card and cell phone
am i connected of just swallowed?

there is no car and driver any more
the car is the driver
or is it that the driver is the car?

the crane again
in the background the traffic of the interstate
so prevalent and ubiquitous that it seems to not exist

because everywhere and nowhere are the same
there can be no thing, no thought, no word
without something outside it to define it

and what defines us
our skin?
or are we now beyond that

with the laptop etc extending my reach
i can share all this right now
with just the click of a send button

but still something is missing
i wish a bag of bones were here
so we could talk

converse in that old fashioned way
like old men on the bench
outside a country store

what would we say, that bag of bones and i?
all this and more, much more
and there would be silence without discomfort
to punctuate the meaning of the words
outside to their inside
defining them

a tree frog joins the chorus
just for once
but i know he will not be able to resist
hearing again and again
how beautiful he sounds

night creatures now
my laptop screen am unresistable attraction
to the tiny bugs
beating themselves mercilessly against it

so dark now
i cannot see the keyboard
only the screen
and woe, i never was one to type
without looking at the screen

smashed a mosquito now
feeling so powerful

a star appears
but it is only a jet
coming my way

what is it bringing
to this cyborg scene
gobbling up the gas and air
heating up the globe

the night is so alive
sound increases
inversely proportioned to the light
bullfrog again

and now the first time cricket
or is it cicada
lying in the ground for all those years
waiting to be resurrected
like the spiritus mundi
slouching toward bethlehem to be born

We coulda been anything that we wanted to be
but our unshaped dreams
saw us in smokey cinemas
or waiting for VHS rewinds
to learn songs or follow twists
as humans wrestled with being flawed,
at the dark end of the street,
facing the devil
or dodging foam in a fake speakeasy

Feel the good cheer,
like they say in the poem

you resurrected me!
I was a lifeless cadaver.
You were impelling energy.
My love, you replenished me.
I was a dry, barren desert.
You were the salty sea.

My love, you defined me.
I was a blank page.
You were flowing calligraphy.

My love, you restored me.
I was broken, scattered pieces.
You were adhering epoxy.

My love, you molded me.
I was unshaped, static clay.
You were expressive artistry.

My love, you filled me.
I was an empty cup.
You were a light Chablis.

My love, you created me!
I was a ******, white canvas.
You were the brilliant da Vinci.