Hello snorer, I hope you didn't sleep any poorer
when I stayed up all night typing this not-poem
I meant you no harm, but I had to stay up
Because I couldn't make music out of your obnoxiously loud cacophony of windpipe crap, er "music".  Time to not-pretend to absolutely hate your snoring under the guise of being perfectly okay with it for the sake of setting the tone a bit nicer to all who must hear it, so they can BEAR to, for otherwise it would be absurd.  Not as absurd as anyone hating to have aural drills applied to all their chakras all night, but still absurd enough to get a chuckle out of me (I hope it didn't wake your fine specimen here). It was never my intent, though it was always my ethical concern (if only everyone could be as reciprocal as you and I).   Oh, my not-pretend hatred is very thinly veiled.  I wasn't totally defeated by your snore-sound armies so that I couldn't type words, but I may have lost some of my desired effect due to the sometimes wincing distraction they caused to my piece of mind at this or that time when I needed it the most (even though I was awake, which is no crime if snoring at night and keeping me that way isn't).

Well, I did ask you if you'd mind if I typed,
I did tell you that you could tell me if its quiet purr of clicks would bother your precious sleep
But I never felt a need to be concerned, because whenever I
was typing, I heard you snore, and whenever I was in the heights of
some new discovery or epiphany, your sharp sudden thunderstroke of near death
corrugated metal vibrating in the torrent of some sudden gale force gust of wind.

These were signs to me of your restful sleep.  So I simply didn't worry about your sleep.  I was certain that my electronic beeps were every now and then music to your ears, just as they were to mine.  This is because in the midst of these I heard you snore, and when you snored, I took you to be asleep.

Ah but then again, then again, these are fanciful constructions which simply say that what is wonderful for me should be just fine and dandy with you, at a bare minimum, and on those grounds of very unsymmetrical attitude about right and wrong I would have to begin my music tirade of words as well.  But I don't view justice and propriety along such selfish lines as these.

What I see is that duplicity is your thesis.  I have anecdotal accounts which are marvelous to behold first hand, but the details of the absurdities cannot be done justice in the language of men, for the intensity of such insanity can only be borne lightly by the frailest frayed ends of my sanity for having lived through your acoustically maddening inanity.

You didn't ever admit to me that my noises were not music to YOUR ears.  Indeed  you claimed never to be bothered by them because you never voiced up against them.  I suppose you might as well voice up against them in the street as well if it turns out not all of you snorers-go-a-viking types like to hear my mouse clicking away like a tapping noises on a metal plate in your skull.  Sorry if it is another non-snorer-who-must-stay-up-late-and-so-be-occupied person whose nocturnal joys were misinterpreted as direct assaults on the dignity, spirit, or just basic mental viability of your wounded snoremonster troop of anti-late-stayer-uppers, because in fact, we used to be sleep-at-night-entities like you, but that was before you showed up, thoracic marching band in tow.  Marching bands are musical also, to some people.  And for some all hours of the night are perfect for a marching band.  Who am I to tell them otherwise.  

Well let me know the next time a marching band is given special permit to come through your neighborhood at night, and I'll be glad to point out to you the first Snorer'sville, because only they should be expected, in all justice to live with the macroscopic manifestation of their personal narcissistic paradises.

Let you all go to your own place and form your own nation, and see if you can consistently demand everyone else find music in your ****** and accursed racket!  But until then I expect some of you will have to take the damage returned by the growing number of people who are very much tired of living under the horrors of your infliction upon us, your demonic and evil tyranny of mind-crushing hate that is your ****** noise.  We will do yoga and breathe, and stretch, and some light calesthenics to relax and seek some focus and composure, whenever our spirits require, and this will be unchallenged by you so long as you are asleep, and it will be unchallenged by you so long as you are awake too.  For in the latter case you are already awake (and so still are we, usually) while in the former case it is far quieter than your snoring, both in its valleys and peaks.  And moreover it has not kept you up, but in fact I have noted that you wake yourself up with your own music when it reaches a certain crescendo.  

Unless you want to say that those crescendos are some sort of involuntary complaint about MY crescendos of spirit, when I start typing about 20% faster than normal, with perfect focus and accuracy while reaching an aesthetic pleasure approaching ****** as I realize that it is almost unerringly in the midst of such an experience that I hear your crescendo resound. And since it was no more intended to be a distraction for me, then surely my music must have also gone undetected by your ears, as well as your spirit. Or is it fairer to say it was the very cause of your crescendo, or at least its inspiration?

Therefore I needn't worry that it is I that is keeping you up, even if for only brief stints at a time, especially by comparison to my all-night vigils.  Not so, but it is you who are so enraptured by my occasional laughs or giggles as I edify my weary, sleep-deprived mind on some bit of morale boosting entertainment.  With headphones on of course.  It's also courteously plugged into the computer to prevent my favorite bit of Judas Priest from hurting your ear drums, or else overstimulating your music appreciation centers, which are verily attached to your ear-drums by a nerve bundle (and what nerve you all have there).  This means I've spared you too much distraction from any already-abundant music of the spheres effect you may be savoring which might have emanated from my bumbling around in the dark (to keep the lights out of course, after all people are sleeping).

Yes but that is a minority of you perhaps, who would lie about that and in fact who ought to say that our nocturnal emissions are not what you'd call restfully mind-relaxing crickets in the dead of night with an occasional hoot in the distance...  But they are a minority, the rest of you are so definitely in good faith.

But then why do I always run into those of your tribe who have strange and unethical habits, such as destroying others' lives by ruining their one perhaps most preciously personal and inalienable need second only to air and water, and that is sleep.  It is, in terms of acute necessity, in many ways more needed than food, though in the long term food catches up.  But food catches up only because not eating food is a  lot like not getting sleep, but just a lot more intense on the body when it drops to some critical point because we know from experience it is on raw nerves that we can go for a while in search of food, but if the food can't be found (perhaps because of our lack of sleep ruining our cognition in some way), then we will not eat, nor sleep, because we'll be dead.  

But either way, we'll be dead, for lack of sleep kills, both directly and indirectly, if suffered over a short time and/or in a diluted form over a long time.  That would be poetically commensurate to the sadistic similitude of the types of snoring sounds with the types of ways to die from being deprived of sleep according to two modes (acute and chronic), over many keys of incident, accident, lost opportunity and ill-stared fate, all of which can be mapped in some way back to that auditory persecution of our very souls of which your kind are in some swelling numbers quite proud.  Just think of all the car accidents, work accidents, altercations, fits of rage, inability to concentrate well or sometimes at all, and other life-damaging conditions of the mind, and also of the body, which accrue from lack of proper and healthy sleep at night!

Good thing for most of you though, right?  Because surely our music is also sweet, and I really hope I've inspired many to face this need for equality, and be on their guard against any unjust whining or groaning from those who seem in point of fact to value their sleep just a good deal more than they value anyone else's.  Not only because they really really love to get those zzz's but because they think that in the natural order of things, before people suddenly went mad and evil, people went to bed and slept well even partly BECAUSE of this brachio-esophageal orchestral lullaby.

But we'll be on our guard against those complaints, because we know you have plotted to take to the streets against us to defend your noisiness-all-night-every-night rights.  So we'll be on guard to defend ours, TO THE LAST FIBER OF OUR BEING.

Because you insufferable ******* are cruel, and cruelty no one should abide.  No one in my world, in my society of people, will be allowed to inflict cruelty on another person, nor be callously prejudicial in their own favor when injuries do occur because of their actions merely on the grounds that the damage it causes coincides with the fulfillment of a need on their own part, even while that fulfillment is of a need which is obstructed from satisfaction in the other part, and by THAT VERY SAME REASON, so that your sleep depends on keeping others awake.  UNLESS you can somehow con or coerce them into developing some form of Stockholm Syndrome and confuse the torment you inflict upon them with a sign of your love and wonderfulness to be around.

Yes, I know you hear me typing now, through your well-behaved proxy.  I feel it. If not he per se, then in a parallel universe not too far off, there's a version of him who does.  Perhaps not the one I know now, on day one of having moved into this room, but perhaps one represented in this universe by someone who has found himself in some sort of circumstances found later on during his stay, this mixed with the fact that familiarity breeds contempt... He'll start making some righteous demands of some kind, and I might not be in a such a good mood about that due to lack of proper sleep, and this will coincide with said contumacy against my own rights (such as to breathe, type, surf the net, or do other nocturnal things other than snoring which might keep others up).

As to that last point in parentheses, snoring is an activity which you perform in conjunction with your getting sleep, and it therefore means not well for your notion of fairness to say things as they are, and simply say the truth, which is that your getting sleep deprives others of theirs, but it can be logically deduced.

It can also be logically deduced that the don't give flying **** if you don't like the fact that we don't like your ear-**** night after night, which is a good name as any, but should perhaps at times be amended to body-demolishing soul-****** of a mortally sinful nature, and with an ethical incongruity to good character of a person to maintain it, all the more to sings its praises to us and call it "good poetry".

I think it's beautiful
The way your hands are sturdy and calloused
Not the gentle softness illustrators are known for
These hands have felt real art
Built from the ground up
Days of mixing, moulding and texturing
Breathing life into deathly white parchments

I think it's beautiful
The way your arms are slender yet firm
Dusky brown skin holding rippling strong muscles
Strengthened slowly
through years of bullying and soul searching
Their unsymmetrical realness known not
For their harshness
But for the gentle notes they strum
Weaving elegantly with the quiet moving pictures on screens

I think it's beautiful
The way your shoulders always stand strong
A declaration demanding the eyes of every being in sight
Their angled rigidity know to be surprisingly nimble
An immovable pillar for the melting of your body
A constant transformation into unknown characters

The hidden bumps of tired hands
The rough ridges of calloused skin
The angled sharpness of chiseled bones
Hidden works of art
Flitting secretively under the armor you wear
The priviledge of their appearance
But a few can bear

The night arrives, wicked and sentimental
It gives birth to morning, unforgiving but gentle

And the moon gives women their claws
As mother earth opens her jaws
And swallows whole all the phalluses
The rich men and their palaces

And broken seashells look like fragments of planets
We may have no mystery, but we still have magnets

And the knowledge of the old gets passed on to some
As the rest of the planet comes undone
And the drunkards are eager to play their roles
As the martyrs wait to save their souls

The flame that survived the storm
Deviates from the norm
A pariah born
In unsymmetrical form
Only when it burns out
Will an apocalypse come
Calling all you monsters
Unite as one

He loved the texture beneath his fingers, contorting folding
it into intricate forms. What was singular undefined,
now had purpose other than what it was before.
He would tear it clean, not displaying its violation that
its purity had been contaminated.
Weaving imagery into a form from what was a newly
developing formation. His thoughts were now as seen
before the eyes, yet when he was finished the beauty before
his eyes lingered for minuscule moments.

Then with the lighter fluid he would caress its form subtly
with this liquid, where once ridged edges they now wept in
collapsing embodiment of the features that defined its complexity.
And with but a finger and thumb, what could have been,
what was before him. But now struck igniting like
a momentary sun, a match lingered as if he was teasing this
inanimate object that feared neither its creation nor its demise.

He waited till it descended like a coffin knowing it was
about to be snuffed out from existence feeding on the
nourishment of this splinter until he felt it crave the flesh
which held upon it. Casting it on his creation,
it was dominated instantly in a flame that gorged
on its new found nourishment. Within moments his creation
and light were expended from this moment and all that
lingered in its place was a pile of grimy ash.

Where beauty had stemmed into creation, now there was
nothing but scarring of what was once adorned in this place.
He looked upon the world as unconditioned edges that
needed smoothing out in his own ideological view of the world.
To his eyes all was rough thoughts, and even more evading
unsymmetrical reflections of what needed straightening out.
Utilising his passion for formation he delved into the creation
of humanity, and with his still hand he decided to appreciate the
human form.

How with subtle tweaks it could be contorted in too a formation
of intricate beauty, not the stale silhouettes that graded his
sight, every motion like drones of imperfection.
He had to see what a rough endeavour would bear.
Either fruit, or a piece of artistic endeavour that would lie
crumpled disowned on the floor below.
It wasn't as easy as he had anticipated the cuts sublime but
flesh tethered to oblivion is nothing, and with each laceration
it became more of a farce than of creation.

He In frustration even though they had whimpered out there
last plea hours before he lunched at this vacant tapestry
ripping into it with the frustration, expelled source material
all over his being. He knew that this was collateral damage,
and for beauty to be formed there were going to be some
cuts that were to deep to mend. So with a sullen heart,
he cradled this fallen realization,that he needed to heed his own thoughts.

He put it in an old shopping trolley and ignited this fallen work, 
standing there feeding the congregation of two opposites.
What once was, now soot on charred grass below.
And to grade himself in books on contorting flesh and anatomy.

Needing ways that he could numb and silence flesh,without losing
the spark that wielded such beauty as it still breathed,
helping him with his creational form.
Time was evident on his further attributions, he had learnt as
one should in future accomplishments. One should learn from
past errors (mistakes) and the first was an abortion of realization.
He needed to find the inclination point where it would be how
his vision needed to be climaxed into form.

With this he had constructed a square metal frame with
segmented stages. Where he could divert this form from
humanity to his desired form.
He could not have just anyone, types or stereotypes.
One may ponder where his persuasion. Not overly skinny
or bigger proportions. For they would either tear from
the strain, or unable to contort to the desired and needed
formation of his vision that needed form.

But patience is a virtue and though it took time, he was able
to attain the needed instruments of creation.
Time was the essence he pondered, and it worked.
The frame was adjustable to expand or decrease the needed
distance and form. Now ready, so much time had passed,
but perfection isn't a clock that stays still, perfection is a movement
of time gradually showing us the motion of before now and after.

His untorn pieces, needing those of no tattoos, of no piercings.
As this would blemish his art, and either contort of split in a
time utter most delicate movements. His fingers were static
his mind as sharp as his tools to motivate this intricate
melody. He wore a ceremonial mask, as this wasn't something
to be taken lightly respect for the form and that of who
was being given this opportunity. In the background soft
instrumental music to expand his muse.

Knowing now where cuts would not induce the death of
this piece. Realizing a wrong furrow could just subjugate
this to a crumbled mess, no longer useful to him or life.
Bones were bent over time so not to break, but to contort
to his new form. Drips hung like tears, feeding the will
to live, even though they wanted to die. He furthered this
creative moment, finding himself smiling underneath
his mask.

Feeling alive again, this was his moment of creative mastery.
He started to peel flesh, this had to be in one sitting due to
the delicate time frame. What was pliable would become brittle
in form. ruining what had taken months to achieve.
The system he had set for this moment, a fine spray of
antibacterial moisturizing seeds of mist. Tt just the right level
so not to make the flesh tear or dry out and break.

It was finished, his art was realized. Now he had to display it.
But as with all creations an audience was needed.
So he cradled it gently, knowing this location would be vacant.
Calling the press on a throw away phone.
He called it, "Human Evolution" even thought it was
anything of the sort. And as cameras flashed, the world saw
his creation. And the horror of his mind contorted from reality.
On what fulfilment was contorted from perfection to this
origami muse of humankind.

Tears of Joy littered his hands, his fingers now shaking with
the anticipation that what was now done, could be done again.
When the news faded and where skin was folded,now there
was just a person. A contorted remembrance of what
humanity can achieve. Tears flow like floating paper boat
on a stream, this one hasn't sunk yet. But this was one of
many creations to come, for what is the body if not art
to be gazed upon.

The Venetian Red fish
Slithers through the magentic sky,
Sniffing the violence of electromagnetic vibrations,
I, behind the branchia, spur her/him on,
Far away, the sight of thunder rumbling and static,
Feeling the inky indigo of the mirage of toothy desire.
Hearing cold textures of slippery fishy scales,
Tasting the black velvet Jesus, Elvis, and Nixon,
Our banner.

Oh, that can’t possibly happen said Jonah,
As he was enveloped by exactly that,
A piercing cacophony of clashing color
That resolved itself into the image of his ex.
No more, no more.

The red fish jumped the river Stix,
Halting at the 7-11 from hell.
A seventh circle infernal Powerball anyone?
A hellish scratchie tempts my soul.
But my lucky number is a binary: 1-oh,1-oh, 1-oh.
That’s hell for you, unsymmetrical.

Needed, perhaps a chance encounter,
with an itinerant puzzle person
Would they sort the senses and find truth?
Could that help or should it?
He winks and I don’t believe her.

A stolen kiss thrown
At the 2018 Little League Playoffs at Southaven, Mississippi
Still echoes in their brain pans and mine too.
The dull stylus of dangerous thrills
scratched my pancreas as Jim shoveled his lunch.
But I have better manners than that.

In the chaotic magentic atmosphere,
I mount my scarlet stead,
and move on-- as you should too.
Adieu. Adieu. Adieu.

I wanted to write about how the curve of your smile made me tense inside, the way his harsh words echoed inside my memory. But the only thing I could seem to muster up the courage to write were things that were vague and dishonest.
I shelf my feelings for the sake of becoming someone else. For the sake that some day I will be worth something, to someone- anyone at all. You spoke your words to me and I listened to them like a poet, unsymmetrical and all relating. I felt dead again.
My heart had trouble calming that night as I danced your words around the edges of my mind, back and forth and over again hoping to hear from you. Hoping to understand this language in your mind that I don't seem to comprehend too well. You're often not too english. More so metaphors and undertones of sarcasm. Of off handed remarks and cynicism. I can never read you.
I want to blame it all on you. That the hurt that lies within my heart is all because of you, but the blame is on me. Though I am not the only innocent one. Your words a thousand scars upon me. Your words a skipped disk stuck in the CD slot, constantly reiterating in my mind. I don't know how to read you anymore.
You were once the person that held all my secrets like they were gold and you let me understand things in ways no one else did. You just listened- but now I realized you were just awaiting the moment at the bridge of my words to jump off. Onto something more fruitful that was to your liking. I've never felt good enough.
So I take the long distance road maps to destinations I haven't seen and I look at every option before I decide to travel again. You were the road less traveled. You were the cornerstone of every decision I had made. The land-mine for my insecurities. I let you trip me up. I didn't even try to catch myself. I let you trip me up- somehow I'm still falling.
Still awaiting at the foot of your words and the edge of your thoughts for something, anything to guide me home again. I feel lost inside your love. The distant river has overflown and I've forgotten how to swim again.

“Good morning, love,” you whisper.

It has always been the sweetest sound I always hear before I formally open my eyes for the new morning. I could not imagine, waking up one day not to hear your voice beside me. It is like a melody of hope and love that even my imperfect days become brighter and sunnier. A chilly morning always lulls me with your mint breath that puffs like a cloud of smoke in my face every day.

How I could forget, the way you undress me with my favorite red Elmo shirt and teases me for my unsymmetrical body. I hate it when you laugh at me, comparing me to the human body systems you have studied in your Science class. I hate myself being half-naked and shivers in front of you but you always pull me in your chest and incubate me like a baby. That makes me feel safe and enough.

Your fingers then begin to wander around my body starting from my head down to the end like a thin map, locating the bones you have not known. You have memorized the number of ribs, the hiding-place of my moles, the width of my waist, the length of my thighs, and the weight of my brain when I lose myself in the fantasy you make. I know you will kiss me after that. A warm, obsessive kiss as if I belong to you. Like I am only made for you. You own every little thing about me as you sealed every edge of my body with your lips and hands.  

In this room, you always play your favorite Taylor Swift’s song on your phone and sing it to me foolishly, in out of tune while looking me in the eye. You would ask me to sing it with you the best line of the song: you are the best thing that’s ever been mine. This makes me laugh, blush, and even makes me cry in such unfathomable bliss I feel every time we do this. I forget the things that make me scared and worry. I want to hold you forever like what you did whenever I fall head over heels for you.

You are not actually my type. I never dreamt of loving the exact opposite of me. You hate the smells of books and will never pull me in a bookstore just to read George Orwell’s or Harper Lee’s. You have never been to art galleries or even museums to look for paintings and sculptures. Mostly, you never read my paper-scented poems and short stories peppered with similes and metaphors. Those things make you fall asleep. But, you always show up and try to understand my world.  

Our story is nothing but a cliché.

Sometimes, we both sail through the angriest storms that left us unguarded. There were days that our rooms were jam-packed with simple misunderstandings that ended up with spicy arguments. Those nights, when we sleep against our backs with wet pillows and separate blankets. We fixed things, though, before the sunlight peeks through our curtains. We entwined our hands again. New and fresh like there is no scar at all. In the next months it’s been always benn the same. We usually run in circles – a cycle that we never break.

The room succumbed into the silence that was once smeared with laughter and dreams. The heavy tension surrounding us, expanding more each day. From our bed to tables. The distance between our hearts stretched to a distance beyond our reach. I do not recognize you anymore as you have metamorphosed into another being. A different stranger.

As much as I want to save you from drowning, you were already trapped in whirlpools. I firmly hold the thin string of hope to battle it out against the current. I pulled myself together and swam harder, as fast as I can do. I can already feel fatigued. Without a word, you unlatched your hand and let yourself adrift farther away from me.  

I was lost. I traveled all alone in the cold sea, looking at the sky. That made me realized that I was already defeated in this battle before it had started.
____________

My head spins like hell. All things are blurry and indistinct. I am staring at my phone waiting for a text message to pop up. I notice the dried red rose on the vase. The books on my shelf are dismantled and seem like some are missing or misplaced. The printed shirts and my pants are scattered on the dusty carpet. I caress my much-loved red Elmo shirt as if I am searching for a lost memory. I drink the last glass of beer, staring blankly at my phone.

Funny how all these stuff occupy every space in my room yet it still feels so empty without you in it. I forced myself to stand on the floor and decided to open another bottle of beer.

“Good morning, my love,” I regretfully whisper to your absence.

I listen beyond the night fatigue
Nature sounds barely dinner
The country road are quiet

History looks forward to me
Filling moments of silence
I search old memories
For the various stages of me

Hazel eyes closed
Find darkness that is deeper than
And cold starless sky
Infinity allows my identity disappear
I am little me
Full of unsymmetrical scars
And superhero dreams
Fearless

Little me
Traveling down forest laden roads
On a sunny summer day
With my grandpa

Little me
Kissing razor shadows
Hope, sharp and stinging
Young soul, so solitary
Longing for the void

Little me
Wondering why
I have to live
With all my pain
Buried under
Her rage and pain

Little me
The insignificant adult
Drawing strength from
Despair
And poetry from death

Calls wet stones
Glimmering in Sandy dreams
Come back to this shade of reality
No real lesson learned
Just traveling back and forth
As the pendulum of personal history swings

I have never loved my flaws
                  my tiger stripes
                  my large forehead
                  my imperfect skin
                  my unsymmetrical bones

But he loves them
       he admires them

He told me that I don’t have to be perfect
                     I don’t have to be insecure

He makes me feel the beauty of loving and be loved
He makes me admire myself.

Please do not become someone
that I have to see as a stranger.
please do not make me have to pretend
like you meant nothing to me,
because you did.
please don't let me be
a stranger
when I know you better than anyone else.
I know your laugh,
your smile, and how unsymmetrical
it really is.
don't make me
have to tell people that we are strangers
while you look at me,
knowing that with this mouth,
I used to declare
I love you.
don't be a stranger,
that I cannot even look
at.
don't be a stranger
that takes my breath away
when we bump into each other,
when I acce]idently tough your chest,
knowing what it looks likes underneath
don't make me,
a stranger.
when I can recognize
your voice
from across
the room.