Like a psychotic docent in the wilderness,
I will not speak in perfect Ciceronian cadences.
I draw my voice from a much deeper cistern,
Preferring the jittery synaptic archive,
So sublimely unfiltered, random and profane.
And though I am sequestered now,
Confined within the walls of a gated, golf-coursed,
Over-55 lunatic asylum (for Active Seniors I am told),
I remain oddly puerile,
Remarkably refreshed and unfettered.  
My institutionalization self-imposed,
Purposed for my own serenity, and also the safety of others.
Yet I abide, surprisingly emancipated and frisky.
I may not have found the peace I seek,
But the quiet has mercifully come at last.

The nexus of inner and outer space is context for my story.
I was born either in Brooklyn, New York or Shungopavi, Arizona,
More of intervention divine than census data.
Shungopavi: a designated place for tribal statistical purposes.
Shungopavi: an ovine abbatoir and shaman’s cloister.
The Hopi: my mother’s people, a state of mind and grace,
Deftly landlocked, so cunningly circumscribed,
By both interior and outer Navajo boundaries.
The Navajo: a coyote trickster people; a nation of sheep thieves,
Hornswoggled and landlocked themselves,
Subsumed within three of the so-called Four Corners:
A 3/4ths compromise and covenant,
Pickled in firewater, swaddled in fine print,
A veritable swindle concocted back when the USA
Had Manifest Destiny & mayhem on its mind.

The United States: once a pubescent synthesis of blood and thunder,
A bold caboodle of trooper spit and polish, unwashed brawlers, Scouts and      
Pathfinders, mountain men, numb-nut ne'er-do-wells,
Buffalo Bills & big-balled individualists, infected, insane with greed.
According to the Gospel of His Holiness Saint Zinn,
A People’s’ History of the United States: essentially state-sponsored terrorism,
A LAND RUSH grabocracy, orchestrated, blessed and anointed,
By a succession of Potomac sharks, Great White Fascist Fathers,
Far-Away-on-the Bay, the Bay we call The Chesapeake.
All demented national patriarchs craving lebensraum for God and country.
The USA: a 50-state Leviathan today, a nation jury-rigged,
Out of railroad ties, steel rails and baling wire,
Forged by a litany of lies, rapaciousness and ******,
And jaw-torn chunks of terra firma,
Bites both large and small out of our well-****** Native American ***.

Or culo, as in va’a fare in culo (literally "go do it in the ***")
Which Italian Americans pronounce as fongool.
The language center of my brain,
My sub-cortical Broca’s region,
So fraught with such semantic misfires,
And autonomic linguistic seizures,
Compel acknowledgement of a father’s contribution,
To both the gene pool and the genocide.
Columbus Day:  a conspicuously absent holiday out here in Indian Country.
No festivals or Fifth Avenue parades.
No excuse for ethnic hoopla. No guinea feast. No cannoli. No tarantella.
No excuse to not get drunk and not **** your sister-in-law.
Emphatically a day for prayer and contemplation,
A day of infamy like Pearl Harbor and 9/11,
October 12, 1492: not a discovery; an invasion.

Growing up in Brooklyn, things were always different for me,
Different in some sort of redskin/****/****--
Choose Your Favorite Ethnic Slur-sort of way.
The American Way: dehumanization for fun and profit.
Melting *** anonymity and denial of complicity with evil.
But this is no time to bring up America’s sordid past,
Or, a personal pet peeve: Indian Sovereignty.
For Uncle Sam and his minions, an ever-widening, conveniently flexible concept,
Not a commandment or law,
Not really a treaty or a compact,
Or even a business deal.  Let’s get real:
It was not even much in the way of a guideline.
Just some kind of an advisory, a bulletin or newsletter,
Could it merely have been a free-floating suggestion?
Yes, that’s it exactly: a suggestion.

Over and under halcyon American skies,
Over and around those majestic purple mountain peaks,
Those trapped in poetic amber waves of wheat and oats,
Corn and barley, wheat shredded and puffed,
Corn flaked and milled, Wheat Chex and Wheaties, oats that are little Os;
Kix and Trix, Fiber One, and Kashi-Go-Lean, Lucky Charms and matso *****,
Kreplach and kishka,
Polenta and risotto.
Our cantaloupe and squash patch,
Our fruited prairie plain, our delicate ecological Eden,
In balance and harmony with nature, as Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce instructs:
“These white devils are not going to,
Stop ****** and killing, cheating and eating us,
Until they have the whole ******* enchilada.
I’m talking about ‘from sea to shining sea.’”

“I fight no more forever,” Babaloo.
So I must steer this clunky keelboat of discovery,
Back to the main channel of my sad and starry demented river.
My warpath is personal but not historical.
It is my brain’s own convoluted cognitive process I cannot saavy.
Whatever biochemical or—as I suspect more each day—
Whatever bio-mechanical protocols govern my identity,
My weltanschauung: my world-view, as sprechen by proto-Nazis;
Putz philosophers of the 17th, 18th & 19th century.
The German intelligentsia: what a cavalcade of maniacal *******!
Why is this Jew unsurprised these Zarathustra-fueled Übermenschen . . .
Be it the Kaiser--Caesar in Deutsch--Bismarck, ******, or,
Even that Euro-*****,  Angela Merkel . . . Why am I not surprised these Huns,
Get global grab-*** on the sauerbraten cabeza every few generations?
To be, or not to be the ***** bullgoose loony: GOTT.

Biomechanical protocols govern my identity and are implanted while I sleep.
My brain--my weak and weary CPU--is replenished, my discs defragmented.
A suite of magnetic and optical white rooms, cleansed free of contaminants,
Gun mounts & lifeboat stations manned and ready,
Standing at attention and saluting British snap-style,
Snap-to and heel click, ramrod straight and cheerful: “Ready for duty, Sir.”
My mind is ravenous, lusting for something, anything to process.
Any memory or image, lyric or construct,
Be they short-term dailies or deeply imprinted.
Fixations archived one and all in deep storage time and space.
Memories, some subconscious, most vaporous;
Others--the scary ones—eidetic: frighteningly detailed and extraordinarily vivid.
Precise cognitive transcripts; recollected so richly rife and fresh.
Visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory reloads:
Queued up and increasingly re-experienced.

The bio-data of six decades: it’s all there.
People, countless, places and things cataloged.
Every event, joy and trauma enveloped from within or,
Accessed externally from biomechanical storage devices.
The random access memory of a lifetime,
Read and recollected from cerebral repositories and vaults,
All the while the entire greedy process overseen,
Over-driven by that all-subservient British bat-man,
Rummaging through the data in batches small and large,
Internal and external drives working in seamless syncopation,
Self-referential, at times paradoxical or infinitely looped.
“Cogito ergo sum."
Descartes stripped it down to the basics but there’s more to the story:
Thinking about thinking.
A curse and minefield for the cerebral:  metacognition.

No, it is not the fact that thought exists,
Or even the thoughts themselves.
But the information technology of thought that baffles me,
As adaptive and profound as any evolution posited by Darwin,
Beyond the wetware in my skull, an entirely new operating system.
My mental and cultural landscape are becoming one.
Machines are connecting the two.
It’s what I am and what I am becoming.
Once more for emphasis:
It is the information technology of who I am.
It is the operating system of my mental and cultural landscape.
It is the machinery connecting the two.
This is the central point of this narrative:
Metacognition--your superego’s yenta Cassandra,
Screaming, screaming in your psychic ear, your good ear:

“LISTEN:  The machines are taking over, taking you over.
Your identity and train of thought are repeatedly hijacked,
Switched off the main line onto spurs and tangents,
Only marginally connected or not at all.
(Incoming TEXT from my editor: “Lighten Up, Giuseppi!”)
Reminding me again that most in my audience,
Rarely get past the comic page. All righty then: think Calvin & Hobbes.
John Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year old boy,
Subject to flights of 16th Century French theological fancy.
Thomas Hobbes, a sardonic anthropomorphic tiger from 17th Century England,
Mumbling about life being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
Taken together--their antics and shenanigans--their relationship to each other,
Remind us of our dual nature; explore for us broad issues like public education;
The economy, environmentalism & the Global ****** Thermometer;
Not to mention the numerous flaws of opinion polls.



And again my editor TEXTS me, reminds me again: “LIGHTEN UP!”
Consoling me:  “Even Shakespeare had to play to the groundlings.”
The groundlings, AKA: The Rabble.
Yes. Even the ******* Bard, even Willie the Shake,
Had to contend with a decidedly lowbrow copse of carrion.
Oh yes, the groundlings, a carrion herd, a flying flock of carrion seagulls,
Carrion crow, carrion-feeders one and all,
And let’s throw Sheryl Crow into the mix while we’re at it:
“Hit it! This ain't no disco. And it ain't no country club either, this is L.A.”  

                  Send "All I Wanna Do" Ringtone to your Cell              

Once more, I digress.
The Rabble:  an amorphous, gelatinous Jabba the Hutt of commonality.
The Rabble: drunk, debauched & lawless.
Too *****-delicious to stop Bill & Hilary from thinking about tomorrow;
Too Paul McCartney My Love Does it Good to think twice.

The Roman Saturnalia: a weeklong **** fest.
The Saturnalia: originally a pagan kink-fest in honor of the deity Saturn.
Dovetailing nicely with the advent of the Christian era,
With a project started by Il Capo di Tutti Capi,
One of the early popes, co-opting the Roman calendar between 17 and 25 December,
Putting the finishing touches on the Jesus myth.
For Brooklyn Hopi-***-Jew baby boomers like me,
Saturnalia manifested itself as Disco Fever,
Unpleasant years of electrolysis, scrunched ***** in tight polyester
For Roman plebeians, for the great unwashed citizenry of Rome,
Saturnalia was just a great big Italian wedding:
A true family blowout and once-in-a-lifetime ego-trip for Dad,
The father of the bride, Vito Corleone, Don for A Day:
“Some think the world is made for fun and frolic,
And so do I! Funicula, Funiculi!”

America: love it or leave it; my country right or wrong.
Sure, we were citizens of Rome,
But any Joe Josephus spending the night under a Tiber bridge,
Or sleeping off a three day drunk some afternoon,
Up in the Coliseum bleachers, the cheap seats, out beyond the monuments,
The original three monuments in the old stadium,
Standing out in fair territory out in center field,
Those three stone slabs honoring Gehrig, Huggins, and Babe.
Yes, in the house that Ruth built--Home of the Bronx Bombers--***?
Any Joe Josephus knows:  Roman citizenship doesn’t do too much for you,
Except get you paxed, taxed & drafted into the Legion.
For us the Roman lifestyle was HIND-*** humble.
We plebeians drew our grandeur by association with Empire.
Very few Romans and certainly only those of the patrician class lived high,
High on the hog, enjoying a worldly extravaganza, like—whom do we both know?

Okay, let’s say Laurence Olivier as Crassus in Spartacus.
Come on, you saw Spartacus fifteen ******* times.
Remember Crassus?
Crassus: that ***** twisted **** trying to get his freak on with,
Tony Curtis in a sunken marble tub?
We plebes led lives of quiet *****-scratching desperation,
A bunch of would-be legionnaires, diseased half the time,
Paid in salt tablets or baccala, salted codfish soaked yellow in olive oil.
Stiffs we used to call them on New Year’s Eve in Brooklyn.
Let’s face it: we were hyenas eating someone else’s ****,
Stage-door jackals, Juvenal-come-late-lies, a mob of moronic mook boneheads
Bought off with bread & circuses and Reality TV.
Each night, dished up a wide variety of lowbrow Elizabethan-era entertainments.  
We contemplate an evening on the town, downtown—
(cue Petula Clark/Send "Downtown" Ringtone to your Cell)

On any given London night, to wit:  mummers, jugglers, bear & bull baiters.
How about dog & **** fighters, quoits & skittles, alehouses & brothels?
In short, somewhere, anywhere else,
Anywhere other than down along the Thames,
At Bankside in Southwark, down in the Globe Theater mosh pit,
Slugging it out with the groundlings whose only interest,
In the performance is the choreography of swordplay and stale ****** puns.
Meanwhile, Hugh Fennyman--probably a fellow Jew,
An English Renaissance Bugsy Siegel or Mickey Cohen—
Meanwhile Fennyman, the local mob boss is getting his ya-yas,
Roasting the feet of my text-messaging editor, Philip Henslowe.
Poor and pathetic Henslowe, works on commission, always scrounging,
But a true patron of my craft, a gentleman of infinite jest and patience,
Spiritual subsistence, and every now and then a good meal at some,
Sawdust joint with oyster shells, and a Prufrockian silk purse of T.S. Eliot gold.

Poor, pathetic Henslowe, trussed up by Fennyman,
His editorial feet in what looks like a Japanese hibachi.
Henslowe’s feet to the fire--feet to the fire—get it?
A catchy phrase whose derivation conjures up,
A grotesque yet vivid image of torture,
An exquisite insight into how such phrases ingress the idiom,
Not to mention a scene once witnessed at a secret Romanian CIA prison,
I’d been ordered to Bucharest not long after 9/11,
Handling the rendition and torture of Habib Ghazzawy,

An entirely innocent falafel maker from Steinway Street, Astoria, Queens.
Shock the Monkey: it’s what we do. GOTO:
Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey/
(HQ music video) - YouTube//
www.youtube.com/
Poor, pathetic, ******-on Henslowe.


Fennyman :  (his avarice is whet by something Philly screams out about a new script)  "A play takes time. Find actors; Rehearsals. Let's say open in three weeks. That's--what--five hundred groundlings at tuppence each, in addition four hundred groundlings tuppence each, in addition four hundred backsides at three pence--a penny extra for a cushion, call it two hundred cushions, say two performances for safety how much is that Mr. Frees?"
Jacobean Tweet, John (1580-1684) Webster:  “I saw him kissing her bubbies.”

It’s Geoffrey Rush, channeling Henslowe again,
My editor, a singed smoking madman now,
Feet in an ice bucket, instructing me once more:
“Lighten things up, you know . . .
Comedy, love and a bit with a dog.”
I digress again and return to Hopi Land, back to my shaman-monastic abattoir,
That Zen Center in downtown Shungopavi.
At the Tribal Enrolment Office I make my case for a Certificate of Indian Blood,
Called a CIB by the Natives and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The BIA:  representing gold & uranium miners, cattle and sheep ranchers,
Sodbusters & homesteaders; railroaders and dam builders since 1824.
Just in time for Andrew Jackson, another false friend of Native America,
Just before Old Hickory, one of many Democratic Party hypocrites and scoundrels,
Gives the FONGOOL, up the CULO go ahead.
Hey Andy, I’ve got your Jacksonian democracy: Hanging!
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) mission is to:   "… enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. What’s that in the fine print?  Uncle Sammy holds “the trust assets of American Indians.”

Here’s a ******* tip, Geronimo: if he trusted you,
It would ALL belong to you.
To you and The People.
But it’s all fork-tongued white *******.
If true, Indian sovereignty would cease to be a sick one-liner,
Cease to be a blunt force punch line, more of,
King Leopold’s 19th Century stand-up comedy schtick,
Leo Presents: The **** of the Congo.
La Belgique mission civilisatrice—
That’s what French speakers called Uncle Leo’s imperial public policy,
Bringing the gift of civilization to central Africa.
Like Manifest Destiny in America, it had a nice colonial ring to it.
“Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent,
Allotted by Providence for the free development,
Of our yearly multiplying millions.”  John L. O'Sullivan, 1845

Our civilizing mission or manifest destiny:
Either/or, a catchy turn of phrase;
Not unlike another ironic euphemism and semantic subterfuge:
The Pacification of the West; Pacification?
Hardly: decidedly not too peaceful for Cochise & Tonto.
Meanwhile, Madonna is cash rich but disrespected Evita poor,
To wit: A ****** on the Rocks (throwing in a byte or 2 of Da Vinci Code).
Meanwhile, Miss Ciccone denied her golden totem *****.
They snubbed that little guinea ****, didn’t they?
Snubbed her, robbed her rotten.
Evita, her magnum opus, right up there with . . .
Her SNL Wayne’s World skit:
“Get a load of the unit on that guy.”
Or, that infamous MTV Music Video Awards stunt,
That classic ***** Lip-Lock with Britney Spears.

How could I not see that Oscar snubola as prime evidence?
It was just another stunning case of American anti-Italian racial animus.
Anyone familiar with Noam Chomsky would see it,
Must view it in the same context as the Sacco & Vanzetti case,
Or, that arbitrary lynching of 9 Italian-Americans in New Orleans in 1891,
To cite just two instances of anti-Italian judicial reach & mob violence,
Much like what happened to my cousin Dominic,
Gang-***** by the Harlem Globetrotters, in their locker room during halftime,
While he working for Abe Saperstein back in 1952.
Dom was doing advance for Abe, supporting creation of The Washington Generals:
A permanent stable of hoop dream patsies and foils,
Named for the ever freewheeling, glad-handing, backslapping,
Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force (SCAEF), himself,
Namely General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man they liked,
And called IKE: quite possibly a crypto Jew from Abilene.

Of course, Harry Truman was my first Great White Fascist Father,
Back in 1946, when I first opened my eyes, hung up there,
High above, looking down from the adobe wall.
Surveying the entire circular kiva,
I had the best seat in the house.
Don’t let it be said my Spider Grandmother or Hopi Corn Mother,
Did not want me looking around at things,
Discovering what made me special.
Didn’t divine intervention play a significant part of my creation?
Knowing Mamma Mia and Nonna were Deities,
Gave me an edge later on the streets of Brooklyn.
The Cradleboard: was there ever a more divinely inspired gift to human curiosity? The Cradleboard: a perfect vantage point, an infant’s early grasp,
Of life harmonious, suspended between Mother Earth and Father Sky.
Simply put: the Hopi should be running our ******* public schools.

But it was IKE with whom I first associated,
Associated with the concept 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I liked IKE. Who didn’t?
What was not to like?
He won the ******* war, didn’t he?
And he wasn’t one of those crazy **** John Birchers,
Way out there, on the far right lunatic Republican fringe,
Was he? (It seems odd and nearly impossible to believe in 2013,
That there was once a time in our Boomer lives,
When the extreme right wing of the Republican Party
Was viewed by the FBI as an actual threat to American democracy.)
Understand: it was at a time when The FBI,
Had little ideological baggage,
But a great appetite for secrets,
The insuppressible Jay Edgar doing his thang.

IKE: of whom we grew so, oh-so Fifties fond.
Good old reliable, Nathan Shaking IKE:
He’d been fixed, hadn’t he? Had had the psychic snip.
Snipped as a West Point cadet & parade ground martinet.
Which made IKE a good man to have in a pinch,
Especially when crucial policy direction was way above his pay grade.
Cousin Dom was Saperstein’s bagman, bribing out the opposition,
Which came mainly from religious and patriotic organizations,
Viewing the bogus white sports franchise as obscene.
The Washington Generals, Saperstein’s new team would have but one opponent,
And one sole mission: to serve as the **** of endless jokes and sight gags for—
Negroes.  To play the chronic fools of--
Negroes.  To be chronically humiliated and insulted by—
Negroes.  To run up and down the boards all night, being outran by—
Negroes.  Not to mention having to wear baggy silk shorts.



Meadowlark Lemon:  “Yeah, Charlie, we ***** that grease-ball Dominic; we shagged his guinea mouth and culo rotten.”  

(interviewed in his Scottsdale, AZ winter residence in 2003 by former ESPN commentator Charlie Steiner, Malverne High School, Class of ’67.)
                                                        
  ­                                                                 ­                 
IKE, briefed on the issue by higher-ups, quickly got behind the idea.
The Harlem Globetrotters were to exist, and continue to exist,
Are sustained financially by Illuminati sponsors,
For one reason and one reason only:
To serve elite interests that the ***** be kept down and subservient,
That the minstrel show be perpetuated,
A policy surviving the elaborate window dressing of the civil rights movement, Affirmative action, and our first Uncle Tom president.
Case in point:  Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman & Metta World Peace Artest.
Cha-cha-cha changing again:  I am Robert Allen Zimmermann,
A whiny, skinny Jew, ****** and rolling in from Minnesota,
Arrested, obviously a vagrant, caught strolling around his tony Jersey enclave,
Having moved on up the list, the A-list, a special invitation-only,
Yom Kippur Passover Seder:  Next Year in Jerusalem, Babaloo!

I take ownership of all my autonomic and conditioned reflexes;
Each personal neural arc and pathway,
All shenanigans & shellackings,
Or blunt force cognitive traumas.
It’s all percolating nicely now, thank you,
In kitchen counter earthen crockery:
Random access memory: a slow-cook crockpot,
Bubbling through my psychic sieve.
My memories seem only remotely familiar,
Distant and vague, at times unreal:
An alien hybrid databank accessed accidently on purpose;
Flaky science sustains and monitors my nervous system.
And leads us to an overwhelming question:
Is it true that John Dillinger’s ******* is in the Smithsonian Museum?
Enquiring minds want to know, Kemosabe!

“Any last words, *******?” TWEETS Adam Smith.
Postmortem cyber-graffiti, an epitaph carved in space;
Last words, so singular and simple,
Across the universal great divide,
Frisbee-d, like a Pleistocene Kubrick bone,
Tossed randomly into space,
Morphing into a gyroscopic space station.
Mr. Smith, a calypso capitalist, and me,
Me, the Poet Laureate of the United States and Adam;
Who, I didn’t know from Adam.
But we tripped the light fantastic,
We boogied the Protestant Work Ethic,
To the tune of that old Scotch-Presbyterian favorite,
Variations of a 5-point Calvinist theme: Total Depravity; Election; Particular Redemption; Irresistible Grace; & Perseverance of the Saints.

Mr. Smith, the author of An Inquiry into the Nature
& Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776),
One of the best-known, intellectual rationales for:
Free trade, capitalism, and libertarianism,
The latter term a euphemism for Social Darwinism.
Prior to 1764, Calvinists in France were called Huguenots,
A persecuted religious majority . . . is that possible?
A persecuted majority of Edict of Nantes repute.
Adam Smith, likely of French Huguenot Jewish ancestry himself,
Reminds me that it is my principal plus interest giving me my daily gluten.
And don’t think the irony escapes me now,
A realization that it has taken me nearly all my life to see again,
What I once saw so vividly as a child, way back when.
Before I put away childish things, including the following sentiment:
“All I need is the air that I breathe.”

  Send "The Air That I Breathe" Ringtone to your Cell  

The Hippies were right, of course.
The Hollies had it all figured out.
With the answer, as usual, right there in the lyrics.
But you were lucky if you were listening.
There was a time before I embraced,
The other “legendary” economists:
The inexorable Marx,
The savage society of Veblen,
The heresies we know so well of Keynes.
I was a child.
And when I was a child, I spake as a child—
Grazie mille, King James—
I understood as a child; I thought as a child.
But when I became a man I jumped on the bus with the band,
Hopped on the irresistible bandwagon of Adam Smith.

Smith:  “Any last words, *******?”
Okay, you were right: man is rationally self-interested.
Grazie tanto, Scotch Enlightenment,
An intellectual movement driven by,
An alliance of Calvinists and Illuminati,
Freemasons and Johnny Walker Black.
Talk about an irresistible bandwagon:
Smith, the gloomy Malthus, and David Ricardo,
Another Jew boy born in London, England,
Third of 17 children of a Sephardic family of Portuguese origin,
Who had recently relocated from the Dutch Republic.
******* Jews!
Like everything shrewd, sane and practical in this world,
WE also invented the concept:  FOLLOW THE MONEY.

The lyrics: if you were really listening, you’d get it:
Respiration keeps one sufficiently busy,
Just breathing free can be a full-time job,
Especially when--borrowing a phrase from British cricketers—,
One contemplates the sorry state of the wicket.
Now that I am gainfully superannuated,
Pensioned off the employment radar screen.
Oft I go there into the wild ebon yonder,
Wandering the brain cloud at will.
My journey indulges curiosity, creativity and deceit.
I free range the sticky wicket,
I have no particular place to go.
Snagging some random fact or factoid,
A stop & go rural postal route,
Jumping on and off the brain cloud.

Just sampling really,
But every now and then, gorging myself,
At some information super smorgasbord,
At a Good Samaritan Rest Stop,
I ponder my own frazzled neurology,
When I was a child—
Before I learned the grim economic facts of life and Judaism,
Before I learned Hebrew,
Before my laissez-faire Bar Mitzvah lessons,
Under the rabbinical tutelage of Rebbe Kahane--
I knew what every clever child knows about life:
The surfing itself is the destination.
Accessing RAM--random access memory—
On a strictly need to know basis.
RAM:  a pretty good name for consciousness these days.

If I were an Asimov or Sir Arthur (Sri Lankabhimanya) Clarke,
I’d get freaky now, riffing on Terminators, Time Travel and Cyborgs.
But this is truth not science fiction.
Nevertheless, someone had better,
Come up with another name for cyborg.
Some other name for a critter,
Composed of both biological and artificial parts?
Parts-is-parts--be they electronic, mechanical or robotic.
But after a lifetime of science fiction media,
After a steady media diet, rife with dystopian technology nightmares,
Is anyone likely to admit to being a cyborg?
Since I always give credit where credit is due,
I acknowledge that cyborg was a term coined in 1960,
By Manfred Clynes & Nathan S. Kline and,
Used to identify a self-regulating human-machine system in outer space.

Five years later D. S. Halacy's: Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman,
Featured an introduction, which spoke of:  “… a new frontier, that was not,
Merely space, but more profoundly, the relationship between inner space,
And outer space; a bridge, i.e., between mind and matter.”
So, by definition, a cyborg defined is an organism with,
Technology-enhanced abilities: an antenna array,
Replacing what was once sentient and human.
My glands, once in control of metabolism and emotions,
Have been replaced by several servomechanisms.
I am biomechanical and gluttonous.
Soaking up and breathing out the atmosphere,
My Baby Boom experience of six decades,
Homogenized and homespun, feedback looped,
Endlessly networked through predigested mass media,
Culture as demographically targeted content.

This must have something to do with my own metamorphosis.
I think of Gregor Samsa, a Kafkaesque character if there ever was one.
And though we share common traits,
My evolutionary progress surpasses and transcends his.
Samsa--Phylum and Class--was, after all, an insect.
Nonetheless, I remain a changeling.
Have I not seen many stages of growth?
Each a painful metamorphic cycle,
From exquisite first egg,
Through caterpillar’s appetite & squirm.
To phlegmatic bliss and pupa quietude,
I unfold my wings in a rush of Van Gogh palette,
Color, texture, movement and grace, lift off, flapping in flight.
My eyes have witnessed wondrous transformations,
My experience, nouveau riche and distinctly self-referential;
For the most part unspecific & longitudinally pedestrian.

Yes, something has happened to me along the way.
I am no longer certain of my identity as a human being.
Time and technology has altered my basic wiring diagram.
I suspect the sophisticated gadgets and tools,
I’ve been using to shape & make sense of my environment,
Have reared up and turned around on me.
My tools have reshaped my brain & central nervous system.
Remaking me as something simultaneously more and less human.
The electronic toys and tools I once so lovingly embraced,
Have turned unpredictable and rabid,
Their bite penetrating my skin and septic now, a cluster of implanted sensors,
Content: currency made increasingly more valuable as time passes,
Served up by and serving the interests of a pervasively predatory 1%.
And the rest of us: the so-called 99%?
No longer human; simply put by both Howards--Beale & Zinn--

Humanoid.

Dear Whiny Fat *****,

Stop whining you fat *****.

I don't find your curve(s) beautiful as it falls short of feminine,
breast and hip bring forth lust like a tray of holiday cookies,
helpful internet sayings are fatty ***-deurves
you devour them,
greedy mouths pointed teeth digging in to every bit of it because why work hard when you can talk loud?
Why go for a jog when you can misquote Marilyn?
Why choose the salad when the big mac's just as beautiful?

It's not
I do not envy gluttony,
I do not envy sloth,
I do not lust for them.

double zero may not be attractive but throwing a 2 in front of it is fatty-icing on the cake,
so talk about "oppression" while you scoff down more than Ebo and his family have had in a week,
starvation and desperation dancing intertwined tip-toeing around his house,
he wakes up one morning to his sons tears because all he's had is a slice of bread
while you decide to treat yourself to an ice cream ***' you didn't supersize today

You can call me an *******,
let molten words flick from your tongue,
lace'm with lava and let them fly
but at the end of the day you only have yourself to blame

i. when I was young, I was never complimented. I never felt good enough and it hurt and somewhere along the line I began complimenting everyone because I was never complimented and I never wanted anyone to hate themselves the way I did. just because I call a girl pretty does not mean I want in her pants.

ii. we live in a country where a gay poet spoke at obama's second inauguration, where five openly gay senators serve, where all fifty states have had a gay elected officer in some capacity, so if I were to be gay, what's the problem with a relatively unknown sixteen year old girl from a relatively unknown town in a relatively unknown state being gay?

iii. do you want me to be gay? do you want a better, more socially acceptable reason to make fun of me? is my weight not enough?

iv. I was taught the term fluidity by my best friend Alyssa. she firmly believes that sexuality is a spectrum, like many other things. I have a different view on sexuality because I see it as a spectrum, not something that's set in stone.

v. I like making people happy, I like completing people, I apologize a bit too frequently and I was taught how to accept people.

vi. just because I call a girl pretty does not mean I like her. just because I say a dog is cute does not mean I want with the dog. just because I say a painting is pretty does not mean I am going to **** the painting.

vii. aesthetic is a very important word.

viii. there are three kinds of attraction, aesthetic, romantic, and ******. just because you have one does not mean you have all three. just because I like the way something looks doesn't mean I am going to have *** with it.

ix. sexuality is an Identity. not a YOUdentity.

x. I'm not gay, but if I were, trust me, I wouldn't go for such a whiny little *****.

.
                            A hard-on
                        doesn't  count
                      as personal  gro
                     wth.If  you  want
            ­         to  hear  the  pitte
                       r - patter of littl
                       e feet,  I'll put s
                       hoes on my cat.
                       This isn't an off
                       ice , it's hell wit
                       h florescent lig
                       hting.How do I
                       set a lazer prin
                       ter to stun? I m
                       ajored in Libera
                       l arts. Will that
                       be for here or t
                       o go? Too many
                       freaks, not eno
                       ugh circuses.  I
                       have a comput
                       er, a ******* a
                       nd pizza delive
                       ry .Why should
                       I leave the hou
      se? Stress is wh   en you wake up scr
eaming and you re    alize you  haven't  fal
*** asleep yet. I like  dogs  too .  Let's  exch
  ange recipes.  And   yo u r      c r y b a b y        
    whiny- assed   o      pinion      is?      Al 
      low me to intro       duce my selves.

She yelled out her back porch and into the alley as if one calling home the hogs. “Johnny! Johnny! You get home for supper! John—nyyy! You spend all day in that godforsaken tree that you’re gonna grow branches! Johnny, get home now!”

Up in his friend’s tree house, Johnny slammed his card down from his good hand that he was planning to win from. “****! She always does that to me”, he complained. “Just when I’m right in the middle of—“

Zack laughed. “Your ma’s voice carries down the whole neighborhood—practically to China!”

Everyone laughed. Iris’s daughter, Violet, said to her mom. “Grandma and Dad always butted heads.” She loved when her mom told stories of her childhood, especially when it was amusing.  

Iris’s good friend and neighbor, Bree, asked Iris, “I bet you never thought in a million years that she’d eventually be your mother-in-law”

“No, I sure didn’t”, Iris answered. “I am just glad that she liked me!”

Everyone laughed. Telling that small tale took her back to 1961 when her and her twin brother Isaac—known as Zack to most everyone—would hang out together with his best friend, Johnny Lindstrom. Because Iris was like one of the boys, she fit perfectly in the mix. Zach and she were fifteen and were referred to in good humor by their father as “double trouble”. It was that summer that they lost their dear dad, Ray Collier, and memories of him became as precious as gold. If it wasn’t for her brother and his friend, Iris be lost. Hanging out all day—from dawn til dusk—with Zack and Johnny was her saving grace.  Her mother was glad to have them out of her hair, not enforcing their chores very much.

“I was a tomboy to the fullest”, Iris told everyone. “I had long, beautiful blonde hair that I put back in a pony tail, and the cutest bangs, but I didn’t want to be seen as girly. I wore rolled up jeans and boat shoes with bobby socks, tied the bottom of my boyish shirt in a knot—but I guess I could still get the boys to whistle at me. I think it was my blonde hair that did it.”

“Oh, Mom”, Violet said, “You were beautiful and you know it! Such a gorgeous face!” She’d seen plenty of pictures of her mother when she was younger. Both Iris and Zack were tall and blonde. Zack’s hair could almost turn white in the summertime.

“Were beautiful?” Iris asked, giving Violet a concerned look, her hands on her hips in a playful display of alarm at her daughter’s use of the past tense. She may have been an older woman now, but she didn’t think she has aged too badly.

“Are beautiful”, Violet corrected herself. She leaned over and kissed her mom on the cheek. Iris was nearly seventy, and she aged pretty gracefully, and she was content with herself.  

They all sat in the living room sipping wine or tea and eating finger food. It was a celebration, after all—or just an excuse to get together and have a ladies night out. Not only had Iris had invited her daughter and friend, she had her sister-in-law—Zach’s wife, Franci—and her daughter-in-law, Rowan, married to her youngest son, Adam.

“Weren’t you going to marry someone else?” Bree asked Iris.

“Yes”, Iris responded. “We all wouldn’t be sitting here right now if I did. My life would have been very different.”

“A guy named Frank”, Violet stated. “I used to joke that he was almost my dad.”

Iris said to Violet, “Ha…ha. You know it took both your father and I to make you you. Everyone laughed at how cute that this mother-daughter duo talked. Iris went on, “I actually went on a couple of dates with your dad when I was seventeen. I was starting to get used skirts and dresses and went out of my way to look really nice for guys, but it was just high school stuff. After I graduated, I met a guy named Frank Hautmann, and we were engaged within several months.”

“What happened to him?” Rowan asked.

Iris sipped her tea and seemed a bit melancholy. “We did love each other, but it just didn’t work out. I know he eventually married and moved out of state. I ran into John about two or three years later, and everything just clicked. His family moved several miles away once we all graduated, so being best friends with Zack kind of faded away for him. But once I saw him again, we were really into each other. We took off in our dating as if no time ever lapsed. Soon we were married, and that was that.” There was an expression of “aww” going around the room in unison.  

Bree stood up and raised her wine glass. She announced, “Here’s to true love!” Everyone lifted their glass or cup in response.

Franci stood up next to have her own toast. She said, “Here’s to my husband and father of my three, handsome sons being declared officially cancer free, to Violet’s little bun in the oven soon to be born and also to my *****-in-law, Iris, for finally finding that pink pearl necklace that she thought was hopelessly gone forever! Cheers!”

“Cheers” everyone echoed and sipped on their wine or tea. “That’s some toast and makes this get together even more meaningful”, Iris complemented Franci.

Almost eight months pregnant, Violet restricted her drinking to tea. Her mother was so thrilled that she found out Violet was having a girl. It was equally wonderful that Iris’s beloved brother had recovered from his prostrate cancer, for throat cancer had taken their father’s life when they were young. So really finding the necklace that her mother gave her many years ago—that was misplaced while moving seven years ago—was just the icing on the cake to all the other news.    

Iris said, “My brother being in good health and my daughter having her baby girl is music to my ears. It trumps finding that necklace that I never thought I’d ever see again—even though it was the most precious gift my mother ever gave me.”  

At age thirty-five, Violet had suffered two miscarriages, so having a full-term baby in her womb was such a relief. It would be the first child to her and her husband, Paul, and the first granddaughter to her parents. Iris had three children altogether. Ray was named after her father, and then there was Adam and Violet. Only Adam and Rowan had any children—two sons, Adam Jr. and Jimmy. Ray and his wife, Lorene, lived abroad in London because of his job, and they had never wanted any children.  

“What name have you decided on?” Rowan asked Violet.

All eyes were on Violet who had quite a full belly. “Paul and I have agreed on a few names, but we still aren’t sure.” She turned to her mom and said, “Sorry, Mom, we won’t be keeping up the tradition.”

Iris was puzzled. “What tradition?” she asked.

Violet smiled. “I know it’s not really a tradition”, she admitted, “but didn’t you realize that your mother, you and I all have flower names?”

Everyone laughed at that observation. “That’s hysterical!” Bree noted. “Flower names?”

“That’s news to me” Iris said, not getting it.

“Me, too”, Franci agreed.

“Okay”, Violet explained to her mother “Grandma was Aster, you are Iris and I am Violet. Get my drift?”

The others started laughing, but Iris never even thought of this connection. She responded, “Well, my dad’s nickname out of Aster for my mom was Star.  I never thought of her name as something flowery but more heavenly…I guess. And I never thought of Iris as the flower—more like the colored part of the eye comes to mind. And Violet was my favorite name for a girl and also my favorite color—purple—but you can’t really name your daughter, Purple.”

The others laughed again. Everyone began to get more to eat, mingling by the food.  The gathering lasted for almost two hours, and eventually lost its momentum. Meanwhile, everyone took turns passing around the strand of beautiful, light pink pearls that Iris displayed so proudly in its rediscovery. It was a wedding gift from her mother in 1971, and Iris was painstakingly careful with it, swearing she’d never lose it again. She’d make sure of it. She prized it above anything else she owned, for she had no other special possession from her mother. Her sister got all of their mother’s items of jewelry, for Aster always felt it was the oldest girl’s right to it and this other sister gladly agreed.  Aster was never flashy or showy, and didn’t desire much. Her mother’s wedding ring, silver pendant necklace and an antique emerald ring from generations ago in England was all she wanted. Anything else was up for the grabbing by her two younger sisters.  

Iris learned the hard way to be mindful and not careless about her jewelry. An occasional earring would fall off and be lost, but any other woman could say the same thing. There was only one other incident that happened when she was a teenager that she never shared with anyone other than Zack. If she would confide in anyone, it would be him. Not even her husband knew, and she wasn’t going to tell anyone now. It was too embarrassing to share in the group, especially after tale of the pink pearl necklace that went missing.  

Bree told her, “Keep that in a safe or a safety deposit box—somewhere you know it won’t form legs and walk away.”

“Oh, ha, ha”, Iris remarked, flatly. “I don’t know how it ended up boxed up in the attic with my wedding dress. I sewed that dress myself, by the way. I guess too many hands were involved packing up things, and I am sure I did not put it in that box. Tore this house apart while it was stuck in the attic. Tore that apart, too.”
  
“And yet you didn’t find it until now”, Rowan stated. “It is as if it was hiding on you”.

“Well, I wasn’t even really looking for it when I found it, Iris said. “I was just trying to gather things for my garage sale, and thought of storing my old dress back in the closet. Luck was on my side. It’s odd that I didn’t find it earlier… but it sure did a good job of hiding on me.”

“Like it had a mind of its own”, Franci said, winking, “and didn’t want to be found.”

“Yeah”, Iris agreed. “It was just pure torture for me thinking I may never lay eyes on it ever again. All I had were a few pictures of me wearing it. I was convinced it was gone. ”

After a while, Iris’s friend, sister-in-law and daughter-in-law left one by one, but Violet remained with her mom.  They went in her bedroom to put the necklace back in its original case and in a dresser drawer —or at least that is what Violet had thought.

Iris placed the necklace into the case and handed it to her daughter. She told her, “I’m sure you’ll take good care of it.”

Violet’s jaw dropped as she sat on her parent’s king-sized bed. “Oh, Mom—no!” she exclaimed. “You can’t do that! You just found it, so why? Grandma gave it to you!”

Iris sat down beside her daughter. “I can give it to you, and I just did”, she insisted. “Anyway, it is a tradition to pass down jewelry from a mother to her firstborn daughter. And since you’re my only one, it goes to you. Someday, it can go to your daughter.”

Violet had tears in her eyes. She opened the box and smoothed her fingers over the pearls.
“Mom, you won’t lose it again. I am sure you won’t!”

“Because I’m giving it to you, dear. I know I can see it again so don’t look so guilty!” Violet gave her mom a huge hug, her growing belly pressing against her. The deed was done, for Violet knew that she couldn’t talk her mother out of things once her mind was set.

Iris shared with her, “You know that when I was born—Uncle Zack, too—my parents thought they were done with having children. My sister and brother were about the same level to each other as me and Zack were. It was like two, different families.”

Iris’s sister, Miriam, known to everyone as Mimi, was fifteen years older than the twins, and Ray Jr. was almost thirteen years older. Being nearly grown, Mimi and Ray were out on their own in a few years after the twins were born. Mimi married at nineteen and had three sons and two daughters, very much content in her role as a homemaker. Ray went into the army and remained a bachelor for the rest of his life.

“I never knew I was any different from Mimi or Ray until I overheard my Aunt Gerty talking to my mother”, she told Violet. “I mean I knew they were much older, but that was normal to me.”

“What did she say?” Violet had wondered.

“Well”, Iris explained, “I was going into the kitchen when I stopped to listen to something I had a feeling that I shouldn’t be hearing.”

Her mother was washing dishes, and Aunt Gerty was drying them with a towel and putting them away. Gerty said in her judgmental tone, “You’ve ended up just like Mother. You entered your forties and got stuck with more children to care for. How you got yourself in this mess…well…nothing you can do about it now. Those children are going to wear you down!”

Gerty was two years younger than Aster, and considered the family old maid, never walking down the aisle, herself.  She prided having her own freedom, unrestricted from a husband’s demands or the constant needs of crying or whiny children.

Aster replied to her sister, with defensive sternness, “Yes, I’ve made my bed and I’m lying in it! Do you have to be so high and mighty about it?”

“I couldn’t even move”, Iris told Violet. “I was frozen in my tracks. Probably was about eight or nine—no older than ten. I heard it loud and clear. For the first time in my life, I felt unwanted. It just never occurred to me before that my mother ever felt this way. Now I heard her admit to it. She didn’t say to my aunt that she was dead wrong.”

Iris’s mother came from a big family—the third of eight children and the oldest daughter—so she saw her mother having to bring up children well into her forties and older, and it wasn’t very appealing. Her mother never acted burdened by it, but Aster probably viewed her mother as stuck.

“That’s terrible. I don’t have to ask if that hurt.  I can see how hurt you are just in telling me”, Violet told her with sadness and compassion. “I don’t remember Aunt Gerty. I barely remember Grandma. She wasn’t ever mean to me, but she seemed like a very strict, no-nonsense woman.”  

“Oh, she was, Iris admitted. “I don’t even know how her and my father ever connected—complete opposites. Unless she changed from a young, happy lady to hard, bitter one. I don’t know. You would have loved your grandfather, though, Violet. He liked to crack jokes and was fun to be around. My mother was so stern that she never knew how to tell a joke or a funny story. Dutiful—that’s how I’d describe her. She was dutiful in her role—she did her job right—but I began to realize that she wasn’t affectionate. Except for your Aunt Mimi—their bond was there and wished I had it. Mimi was more ladylike and more like a mother’s shadow. Their personalities suited each other, I suppose.”  

Iris pulled out an old photo album out of a drawer. There was a black and white, head and shoulders portrait of her mother in her most typical look in Iris’s childhood. She had a short, stiff 1950s style bob of silvery gray hair and wore cat eye glasses. Not a hint of a smile was upon her lips—like she never knew how.

“Do you really think Grandma resented you and Uncle Zack?” Violet asked.

Iris responded, “Well, I’m sure my mother preferred having one child of each and didn’t wake up one day and say, ‘I’d like to have twins now’. I mean, she had a perfect set and my mom liked perfection. That’s all it was going to be—at least she thought. Nobody waits over a dozen years to have more. If my mother really resented getting pregnant again, now she had to deal with two screaming babies instead of one.  Must have come as quite a shock and she was about to turn forty.”

“It’s a shame, but woman have children past that age”, Violet pointed out.

“Sure, and some wait to start families until they have done some of the things they always wanted to do. But if I was to ask my mother if she wanted children that time in her life—which I never dared to—I think she’d have wanted to say, ‘not at all.’”

“It’s a shame”, Violet repeated. “Grandma should never have treated you two any differently.” Iris wasn’t trying to knock her mother, but Violet felt the need to be very protective for her against this grandmother that she barely remembered. Aster has been dead since Violet was six-years-old, and she had a foggy memory of her in her coffin, cold to the touch and very matriarchal in her navy blue dress.

Iris admitted, “I knew Mimi was her favorite, and I was my father’s favorite because I was the youngest girl. Zack and I we

A Bountiful Sky for Foolish Old Men

early up, haunted-stoked~woked by a multilingual sky,
an impish childish creation of an immature god,
inconsistently incapable, of making up his moody mind,
whiny then smiley, cloudless besotted, morphed
into crystalline blue of a well behaved in Sunday best,
warming the souls of the begotten and the misbegotten,
the hardened and the poetic souls, tho he laughs at
himself, for he too is both, curmudgeon and a mr. softee,
whiny child in rapid aging body, wearing of discovery
of new places for to ache, pains that don’t fit med scales
of 1~10, unless it is the Richter Earthquake formulation.

despite all, his eyeballs seethe, immaculate degeneration still
allows the seeing of broad brush paint strokes of the team of
angelic artistes that do the detailing of the palette above,
how!
they, love their big bold brushes that sky swipe atmospheric
residue into 31 Baskin Robbins flavors, with swirls of caramel
chocolate butterscotch that make the man’s complaints whisked
into who-cares-a-**** anyway ice creamery reverie and all
that other stuff disbarred from the aborning morning clarity of
“good morning ole man, where’s my coffee” diurnal tuning that
the women hums, reminding those in the earshot crowd of one,
that s’mores and chores, tasks and at lasts, dogs need walking, gardens watering, cushions  plumping, evening dishes moving from dishwasher onto wallpaper-covered shelves, geese-away-chasing, and loving poetry
by a poetoftheway scribbling…




8:01 AM Frieday, Jun 30

We should throw a party and then
Dump a Trump
Give Trump lumps
Make him jump.
Drag him over the same kind of bumps
He dragged us and laughed at us.

Dump a Trump!
Deserves a massive thump;
He’s a whiny grump!
Dump a Trump!
Anyone who has the name of Trump
Should kiss our collective ****!

We should get together and just
Dump a Trump
Oust that schlump
To the city dump.
Treat him like he treated those before
And send him home on a city bus.

Dump a Trump!
Deserves a massive thump;
He’s a whiny grump!
Dump a Trump!
Anyone who has the name of Trump
Should kiss our collective ****!

Let's call a convention and
Dump a Trump!
He’s a festering clump
As dim as Forest Gump.
New Yorkers call him a stupid ****.
We hope all see that he is finally busted
That his former shine is obviously rusted.

Dump a Trump!
Deserves a massive thump!
He’s a whiny grump!
Dump a Trump!
Anyone who has the name of Trump
Should kiss our collective ****!

"People with dexterity and good timing are O.P.! NERF THEM! OMGOMGOMG!"

******-Angry girl took over last night. She is explosive with rage and it is fierce and uncontrolled. She physically and verbally abuses the little girl inside of me, and although she is not a threat to anyone but us, she does like to verbally abuse Dear Therapist, via email. Sometimes a few months will go by without her taking over, sometimes only a few weeks, but she has been present since Monday, relentlessly torturing the rest of us. She wants to die. She cannot handle the pain, the past is overwhelming and she knows of no other way out. She strongly believes that Dear Therapist manipulated the 5 year old into trusting him, and then once he declared victory of getting the untrustable to trust, he decided he could just take off and not be there for her. And Angry Girl HATES Dear Therapist for that! Because after all these years of independence and never relying on anyone to help or “be there”, now the baby who cries for Dear Therapist’s help at night, drives us f#%king crazy!

Not only did ******-Angry girl cut me last night, she sent some emails to Dear Therapist. Emails that were discovered today when I checked my sent file. ******-Angry Girl wants to cut the whiny baby out of my body. She hates her. She wants Dear Therapist to go away. She hates him too.

Below is an excerpt from the emails sent to Dear Therapist. It’s ******-Angry Girl’s anger that scares me. She will **** me…it’s only a matter of time. She won’t stop until it happens. She has no will to live she wants only to escape the endless pain.

Angry ****** Girl: I am not fearful of death. ******* welcome it! Hope u enjoyed ur vacation! Thanks for caring and taking my "fear" seriously" (huge amounts of dripping poisonous sarcasm!) Ur so great and I'm so nothing! So I shouldn't be missed! and I guess ur "best" doesn't include calling me bk n 24 hrs- does it? For future reference, get a ******* back-up! There will be times when the "crazy" clients can't wait for a week to ******* deal w/a "non-existent" fear!!! **** u and ur ******* rose colored glasses! I'm not afraid of ******* dying! Dying will be a ******* relief!!! **** that man! **** that sorry man who calls himself Dad! He ******* Ruined all of it! ******* hate u! I ******* hate u and ur ******* "stay present"! U ******* stay present in my body every ******* nite! I ******* told u it was bad! But as usual, u blew me off "it’s only 3 emails" no big deal" **** u!!! It may not be a big deal to u, but it was a huge ******* deal to me!!! But **** it! Obviously that wasn't impt to u! Becuz I don't matter! Nothing here that can hurt me right now!?!?U go ahead and believe that - w/ur rose colored glasses on, dear therapist- becuz he will **** me. And when he does, don't ******* preach "theresz nothing that can hurt u right now, Nita" nothing. Ur so ******* wrong about that! In fact, I'm offended tht u even said it! How contradictory of u! "ur fear is real to u- I've nvr said it isn’t" Really? That's not what ur ******* saying now!? I hope when I'm dead u don't preach that **** to someone else. I hope if someone else comes to u and tells u he's going to **** her u ******* think about me and what happened to me- and ******* believe it! Becuz it IS real right the **** now!!!! It is ******* real!!! This could not have worked out better! ******* ***** is aware that u don't hear her now- so she won't tell anything! We are done- I can cut her out of her misery! Finally!!!

It will never stop. There is no way it will ever stop. I am discouraged and hurting. There is no escape. There are no answers. There is nothing but this endless pain. And he doesn’t care. I tried to tell him, but he doesn’t listen. It’s worse when he’s gone. And he can kiss my *** with his “Put it in a safe container” – HELLO!!!! There’s no way to contain it! It’s like trying to put pour rain back into a cloud! Why the hell can’t he see that? There’s no way to ‘check’ the pain at the door when I ******* leave his office! It’s ******* Hotel California! There is no escape! I cannot leave.

I think about you.
I think about you hard.
I didn't like your attitude;
it left my image of you marred.
You were immature,
sometimes a nasty ****.
But there’s a thought about you
that’s a real perk:
It might be naughty,
it might be sick,
but I find my thoughts turn pleasant
when I think about your ****.

You annoyed me day and night,
and drove me a bit crazy.
There are some things that  I remember
that I wish were hazy.
Your voice was whiny,
your habits loathsome.
You smoked and stayed up late;
I'd wish that I was lonesome.
Except for that bit about you--
the key that fit my lock--
it’s what I miss about you.
My dear, it’s just your ****.

You talked too much.
You weren’t very bright.
I pretended I was listening
as you rambled on all night.
You didn’t pay the bills.
I mostly cooked the food.
Our stupid arguments
left me in a foul mood.
But even when my thoughts
about you were at their meanest,
I somehow changed my view
when I thought about your *****.

There’s no way to separate
you from your biggest asset.
So though you looked like trouble,
in every single facet,
I tolerated much--
more than I’d like to remember--
because of my strange attraction
to your firm and friendly member.

You aren't the first to walk these roads.
These lonely, gravel trails  covered in broken glass and nails.
Every time a rickety car breaks down and fails
it leaves it's wreck along the side of highway,
just watching the traffic pass them by.
They are monuments to every effort we have made and given up on.
They are why you MUST try.

Whether you live in a town or a city,
there are going to be some pretty ****** moments in life.
It takes a lot of strife to get a small amount of satisfaction
but the chain reaction
of doubts and down 'n' outs
is drowned out by the radio static and
I don't mean to sound dramatic but
I understand.

I just want you to know
you're not going to go on your own this time.
Every moment spent crying is time that could better spent trying.
If I told you I don't have these moments,
well, I'd be lying.
Because I've felt the color drain from my face
as I try to remember the last place I left my courage
because it's not at arm's reach this time.
Sneers and eyerolls draw spirals around me
like I'm at ground zero of an M.C Escher painting.

I can rephrase suffering so many ways.
But at this pace, I still can't outrun my own thoughts.
I find my courage at last
but there is no sticking place to ***** it to,
so I just say "***** it."
I can't say I knew it would end this way,
but if all this poem comes down to
is a whiny teenager trying to be edgy
than I guess I...

"Do you have the time?"
"It's a quarter past seven"
"My house is on fire"

Wish I was Daniil
Writing absurd poetry
But I am not him

Wrote her a haiku
It was a bad idea
Did it anyway

1
Shh…the rain cooed, calming the flood that rages
Still a concern…or was
Now placed upon the wetted soil
Transfigured, blessed in holy oils scented with cinnamon.
#2
I grasp at the compass that Donne reassured,
Tragic to find it etched in notes
Of the Song of Swans:
It may commune beneath a firmament of birds
Yet, it seems divided in this steely sky—the color of wrathful swords—
I sniff: it smells of cinnamon.
#3
I am drawn by the scented bliss, anointed in general
That is, with the rest,
But somehow, cologned, it’s too sweet, too new
Now a criminal to laws of ancient Hebrew.
To the iron clouds, the necks will bend,
To turn from he who smells of
Cinnamon
That is, with the rest.
#4
Yet, they do not smell
Nor peel back its bark lest it poison the oil
As rain poisons soil,
And ignore, as they do, when rain is to come,
The oil is fragranced evil with cinnamon.
#5
And though I complain, clack to the mud
It, too, smells of cinnamon,
And so we’re the same.
#6
“****” is my cry. “**** them to their hell,”
Burn the concrete buildings, tear away social offal
That, with some entreaty, seems to plague us all! Why so much Injustice?
Who are you? A God? What makes one lump of clay
A clod, the other a home? Upon the heads of refused beings
How do you stand so tall? You can’t lest your empire fails
While the seesaw of suffering hoist up the side of wails
And smoke the vital oxygen,
Scowls, the first impression
Worried not about advancing goals but living day to day,
The things that move metabolisms, world-wide, subject to pay,
Wasting our lives not in 9-to-5s but looking
And failing to find
And toting excess and praising their holders
While blaming the others born from behind
Partitions drawn in world wars started for oil
For money, for wealth, both so glutted and glutting pride a nation wide
While its cells are tinged with cancer,
Both sides of false dichotomy claiming they have the answer, to answer the question
Of recidivism, the poor and they are to live or get along, dangling the carrot so high
It goes above their dreams, and it’s so blurry that it’s hard to tell
What exactly one pursues,
Or race, religion,
Of a woman’s place in the is to see how absurd such a question should be,
Here is a question that seems appropriate: why are differences discouraged,
Who says what is better but the powers that be
Lenses shaped for us to see only those things specifically made
To make the made untouchable,
And they do it, and will not stop, we’re left with no hope
But from where pleasure is wrought: drugs and sedatives that
Blunt the mind that worries, sober, replacing them until they’re over
But without any solution; a bandage to a bandage
Since a sober mind that cognizes problems can’t possibly solve them in the same state
Of mind.
A lust for love with no genuine conception,
*******, deflowering with cold, stony hearts
Fostered in a day and age where manipulation is more inescapable means
And less insidious art,
So broken by our broken dreams and forced to walk without contention
Compromising on who we are
No struggle to help make us strong
A simple shrug to carry on,
While the most powerful blood, the fire in our veins is given, given, given
To those we think we love,
While we sit dreaming and falling in love with love
Always coddling the scars, where the blood and sinew were streaming
Until they are closed and pink, taut and empty like a drum
Still yearning to beat the same rhythm again,
Needing to learn before synchrony may happen
And two drums may beat to the other’s tune,
Feeling some pulse that holds us feet from decay
All the warmth and butterflies
Come in a zephyr smelling of fetid, carrion meat
That makes true affection
Feel like maggots in the skin
And we leave to new horizons, akin in their process:
Where they end, where they begin.
And yet we’re so weak in every regard, being the forge of our own fortress’ petard
Sade-masochists that run, run, run away
Feeling as though we’re cast to sea, waiting for the problem to deal with itself
A shining light house on a miserable horn
Hides by our back, the shore receding out, and even in the darkness
The vastness of the sea, there’s still the light cast ‘cross the sky
With the same, though fleeting, periodicity.
And I can do nothing, least, nothing of worth
Being as I am, a whiny little white boy with middle class struggles,
Well-fed, well-cared for, and some domestic unrest
But I am minor, mediocre at best,
And have never had the muscles, the mettle, put truly to the test.
So I can only complain beneath the anthill of my worries
And all my attempts to make any change are thwarted by my failings, my comfort
My life,
Doing drugs, self-medicating because it’s the best I can come up with
Spiraling beyond uncontrollable until it is no longer
Me whose spinning down to destruction,
That was something of the past
Now, I truly have nothing to grasp
And I kick and I scream and I try and I try and I try
But look in dismay at any hope I may have for people to change, yet their conduct belies
A sense or desire to be anointed enspiced
Since the general oil has seemed to suffice, and that’s not enough, but I just want some change
Some honesty, but I can’t find it, I know not what I feel
All this angst piling up, like a chapter in the life of Holden Caulfield:
He’s my ******* idol since I pressed with all this
Stupidity with no venue but complaints
And this is doing nothing, this ******* poetry, neither solving nor affording comfort
Back to me. It is art and no one cares
It has no voice, save the face-value point
And I want meaning, and so I try to make it knowing full well
The intention is demeaning, but not in my writing
Its filthy fingers touching on everything that I’d like to achieve
Legitimately, but it’s all conditioned
It’s breakdown is imminent  
If only I knew how accept
Oils scented with cinnamon.
I wish I was different, or acted upon it, instead of just ******* in the lines
Of a sonnet,
Or that others may smell of their own fragranced oils
Then trifles, then problems may seem something
Of little toil
But, but, but, where am I to go, where do I begin?
I’ve gone in circles, where I stopped I’ll start again
And I’ll never escape because…
#7
Shh…the rain cooed, calming the flood that rages
Still a concern…or was.
In due time the sun will do as it does:
Show us what is, is soon to be what was.
The nature of me, with little consistency, is grasping for a dawn
I see it coming up
Now that I’ve smelled the breeze
Of cinnamon.

1: "She won't touch your stuff because she doesn't want to do anything." Including but not limited to getting out of bed, meeting your friends, talking to you, watching a movie, or hanging out with you. All she'll want to do is lay in bed, staring at the ceiling the entire time because she's too tired to do anything.
     #2: "She'll probably forget you borrowed money from her." And she'll forget your birthday, your anniversary, her birthday, and whether or not she had even eaten at all that week.
     #3: "She's a cheap date." More than likely, it's because she doesn't want to be there, she just wants to lay in her bed until she dissolves away into nothingness, until everyone who knew her just forgets about her. Because the minute that she climbs out of bed, her insecurities are buzzing in her ears and clawing at her throat, making her feel like she's drowning in her own lack of self-worth.
     #4: "She probably doesn't want to meet your family." Because she's terrified that they're going to judge her, that she won't be good enough for them. Because she knows that once she leaves the safety of her room, that she has just been served on a silver platter, a target painted on her back in bright, neon colors; once she leaves her room, it's okay for everyone to judge her, for them to say terrible things about her, for them to use her like one uses a ******.
     #5: "She will probably get drunk and you can have *** with her." She'll get drunk easily, because of all of the meds she's on, and then you can have *** with her and it's okay, right? Because she's drunk and she can't say no, because she's not thinking straight, because she's drowned her sorrows in alcohol and that's what she gets for being sad, right? Because she is nothing more than an easy ****; that's all she is and all she'll ever be, right?
     #6: "You can get free drugs!" She'll realize that she's missing some of her anti-depressants, that some of her painkillers are gone, and that you're the only one who would have taken them, but she won't get angry. After all, she's just being selfish to think that she's struggling and needs them. After all, who needs anti-depressants when she has you?
     #7: "She has poor memory and a short attention span." Because the minute that she focuses on something, that gives it the opportunity to hurt her. Because the minute that she remembers one thing, all of the bad memories come flooding back. She'll just plod along through life, wondering whether it's Monday or Friday, if she has school today or has to go to work, if she has even eaten a single bite of food that day.
     #8: "She won't talk that much." Instead, she'll sit there and listen to you talk, and she'll find a way to turn your words against her. She'll find a way to twist your words into a criticism about her, about how she's not good enough, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. She'll just keep on listening until the words that you never meant to be referred to her infect her insides with their ugliness, staining her skin red with her own blood and her cheeks with her own tears.
     #9: "She'll pamper you because she's sensitive." She'll give you everything you ever wanted because she never had someone do that for her. She'll buy you that new game you were wanting as an apology; every time you receive a gift, there's an apology hidden inside of it that you made her too scared to talk about! "Here's that new Xbox game you wanted": I'm sorry I'm hurting; "Here's tickets to that basketball game you talked about": I'm sorry that I'm not good enough; "Here's a new watch": I'm sorry that you have to sit here and watch me die!
     #10: "It'll make you look better." Because she's just a charity case, a way for someone to look better; she's just like a case of make-up or cologne. You put her on and you immediately look better. You'll drag her around on your arm like a bag; she'll just make you look perfect, won't she? It'll be so easy.
     Until you have to start hiding the steak knives in your house and hide all of the meds, keeping them locked up as you lay in bed wondering if she can manage to drown herself with the water in the sink, worrying that you might wake up and find her dead body laying on the ground.
     Until you start having to be careful what you say, because every negative word you say becomes another slit on her wrist. Until you start to have to take away every sharp object, every rope, every sheet, every cushion, because who knows what she could do with those? Who knows what kind of harm she could inflict on herself with that?
     You can romanticize the pain that she lives through every day, pretend that she's just being a whiny little girl and that it can't really hurt that bad. You can sit there and watch as the tiny grains of sand in the hourglass inside of her broken heart dwindle down to zero, leaving her an empty husk. You can sit there and watch, and say it was supposed to be easy, but you can't ever say that you were a hero.
     This is what depression really is, and you ******* signed up for it.

A fresh page,  
Ripe to ****,  
To fill with  
Thoughts, emotions, rage  

A lot of poets  
are egotistical wankers  
who think they  
can write,  
but can't.  

I hate reading poetry,  
I love my poetry,  
Am I a narcissist?  
I hope not.  
I don't like narcissists.  

I can't write,  
What am I thinking?  
'Sometimes life is not a  
Cake walk served up  
On a silver spoon'  
Don't write poetry, Josh.  
You can't do it...  

I'm not a poet.  
I listen to baby  
**** metal and  
Watch My  
Little Pony -  
I have long hair and  
I like rainbows.  

The sticky-note on  
my wall says:  
"Bah! Stanzas!"  
Another one says  
"Welcome to the  
Honorary Magical  
Unicorn Squad"  
So....  

I started writing  
with intent,  
I defenestrated it,  
though...  
It is on the ground  
outside my window.  
I should go pick it up.  
I mean...  
It is cold outside.  

I don't know...  
Sometimes...  
You just have to  
let intent die and  
go with words  
that don't rhyme  
and express emotion,  

I'm not poetrying,  
right now.  
I'm talking to a  
red notebook, with  
thoughts reading  
'I must show this to  
my brother and post  
this on a site with
people I don't know  
that will hopefully  
'upvote' my poem'  
It feels good  
not to be deep,  
To just turn my  
brain off and  
Write because what  
the **** else am  I
gonna do at  
3'o'clock in the morning  
on Sunday.  

I'm a 13 year  
old boy, I probably  
will be whisked off  
to church with my  
mother at 7 am.  
I have a party  
today I need  
to go to.  

The boy I have  
a crush on will be  
there, and so will  
alcohol, so you  
know what that means.  

Oh god,  
That sound manipulative...  
What the ****, Josh.  

Today I wrote  
something that was  
a couple tiers above  
Infant Annihilator lyrics.  
About ****** newborns,  
Why didn't I  
Cry?  

I described very  
vividly what I thought  
would happen in that  
situation with  
everything too,  
Including the baby's  
internal organs,  

I don't like my  
thoughts  
I'm a coltcuddler,  
I'm a furry  
I think about  
My Little Pony and  
Asian businessmen  
who teleport instead  
of taking the bus to  
work.

My friend went  
to the school  
dance as Gamzee  
Or someone else.  
She's in some weird  
fandom... But I can't judge.  
I went as a rainbow  

I can't come out as  
Bisexual her or else  
some **** redneck  
kid will want my  
*** and head  
on a post on his lawn  

******* Josh...  
Why couldn't you  
have been born  
a bisexual girl...  
Everyone likes  
bisexual girls.  

Don't tell anyone...  
But I like the  
way I look when  
I'm dressed as a  
girl. I'm being  
a drag queen for  
Halloween, and my  
friend, Kady, did my  
makeup for practice.  
I am beautiful as a girl.

There's this boy  
In the high school  
who dresses up as  
a girl, but isn't gay.
His name is 'Kailee'  
He is beautiful.

They played 'Come on Eileen'  
at the school dance. Kady  
and her friend, Trinity, were  
doing the Patrick and Sam  
dance from 'The Perks Of Being  
a Wallflower' I was supposed  
to be charlie but  
they stopped the music  
before I was supposed  
to come in...  
**** Commies...  

Some of you have  
stopped reading.  
Some at 'Baby ****'  
Some at 13 year old boy'  
Some at 'Boy I have
a crush'  
**** everyone who  
stop reading  

Josh  
You shouldn't *******.  
Josh  
You shouldn't read ****.  
Josh  
You should stop being  
such a little whiny  
pathetic brat.  
I hate myself  

"Give up on your  
dreams, kiddo,"  
"But...no..."  
Don't hang in there.  
*******.  
****.  
Yourself.  
You stupid ****.  

Y'no  
I want to write a book,  
Call it 'The Raft'  
About a girl  
named 'V' and  
a boy named  
Isaac  

Isaac is a real person.  
I loved him.  
He didn't love me.  
I cried.  
He didn't comfort me,  
though  
He was home  
I was home  
It was 11 at  
night on a  
school night.  

Y'no,  
I read a lot of  
gay ****.  
The best  
story was  
a scotch on the rocks.  
Scotch blows,  
Gets ******,  
*****,  
And gets a boyfriend.  

I want a boyfriend,  
I just don't think  
Austin is gay or  
bisexual.  
I hope he is...

If I had a cigarette
for every time a teacher, parent, or loved one told me I was worthless,
I'd have enough cigarettes
to clear my head.

And that's it,
that's all I need to do.
Maybe if I could clear my head and get some ******* sleep I could stop being so worthless.
Just give me a break, and something to distort reality and I'll be fine.

Friends have often asked me what's my drug of choice.
They say they've seen me ******, tweaking, drunk, numb, but they can't tell which I enjoy most.
My answer hasn't changed since I started using.
My answer simply remains: anything that gets me high.
Anything that allows me to think in a different way,
anything that mercifully allows me to not think is my drug of choice.

I'm sick, I have a disease, but I don't need your help.
I don't sleep or eat, but I don't need your help.

When I am told things like,
“The adult part of you needs to step it up and return …This has to happen NOW!”
                                                                      - it feels like everything that’s going on inside of me…
                                                                                   the pain,
                                                                                        the nightmares,
                                                                                             the helplessness,
                                                                                                 the hopelessness,
                                                                                                      the anger,
                                                                                                            the sadness,
                                                                                                                  the fear…
                                                                                                                                    isn’t even real.
It makes me feel like I’m so inadequate and a failure and over-dramatic. It makes me feel like you think it’s all in my head and I have the power to just stop all of it and if I would just “step up” and use that power – I’d be HEALED! Yea Me! And I wonder why I don’t feel that way – why I still feel so much pain. Because of your invalidation I doubt my feelings, what happens to me, because I “choose” this because I want to feel this way. I must be a stubborn ridiculous drama because I can’t just “summon” the adult to take over when ****** chick’s in charge. "Just figure it out, Nita! You’re such a whiny baby…come on! Get over it! Deal with it…” That’s what it sounds like. AGAIN! I’ve told you that there are times when I CAN do it – but there are just as many times I can’t!

I am not asking you to ‘understand’ it – or say you ‘understand’ it – that’s not possible. But it isn’t that easy to just “summon the internal ‘rational’ Nita”– and it’s overwhelming and it feels like a boulder has fallen on top of me and there’s no strength to lift it off. And I don’t want to die – but I fear every night that the ****** angry Nita is going to **** me… that one night, she is going to be in charge, and the ‘tools’ I have presently are not going to work, nobody is going to be ‘available’ and it’s going to be the wrong night…and it’s going to be my last night. That’s real to me. Let me say this again. I DON’T WANT TO DIE! ME! I DON’T WANT TO DIE! But she does – because it doesn’t stop. And she can’t make it go away nor will she relinquish control. Not right now. Let me say this again, too: I do NOT expect you to understand how horrific it really is those nights.

                                           You couldn’t possibly because :
                                                         1. You aren’t ‘living/experiencing’ it.
                                                         2. If you did understand, you wouldn’t tell me to “step it up
                                                            and take charge” because you would understand that it isn’t
                                                            even possible to do that.

I know that you have tolerated my pain for a long, long, very long time. And I am immeasurably grateful. I do feel the love and acceptance in your compassion and hope and commitment to our friendship. However, at the same time I feel so disconnected from you and unsure how to respond to such feelings. I wish I knew why and how to fix that. And I know that all the ‘pain and fear’ is not going to let up any time soon and I am so exhausted I don’t know how much more I can survive, or if I even want to. It’s so depressing that some days I cannot even move and I want to die just to get some relief!

Tonight the pain in my head is excruciating – it travels down the back of my neck into my abdomen – and nothing touches it. I desperately want to hurt myself tonight. It will make it stop – at least temporarily. I bite the inside of my lip until blood flows – trying not to do further damage.
There are voices all talking at once now, and at this moment, I don’t know if I will be here tomorrow, or if I am what state of mind I will be in.

I am so lost right now. I have tried to believe that it won’t always be this way but I feel so depleted and hopeless. I cannot take care of myself right now. I want to be alone but when I’m alone, with no one to distract me, or talk to me, the piercing truth of my reality cuts into my heart and burns through my soul. I am so drained I cannot even think straight. My heart aches….this is the roughest patch I’ve hit and I can’t believe I’m still alive.

The pain I feel is unexplainable. I’m so tired and frustrated and I feel like it’s all just too complex to deal with. Too multifarious for me to understand…and the therapist would say, “It’s not, it’s so common and understandable, and you can do this…just keep on keeping on.” But he’s wrong. Clearly he doesn't understand…I can assure you…I am dying more every day.

Oh, wait, I’m a “survivor”, right? I forgot. I have tried to collaborate my shattered thinking to form some rational simplicity from my emotional intricacy. I’ve tried to understand. But my mouth forms words my brain is unable to process. What I do understand is that the human mind and body shields a child from the horrible truth so the child can survive. She can survive but not realize how she has been shaped, altered, wounded, until she grows up to become a woman and it gets so bad that she feels like she’s nothing, nobody, worthless. I understand that because I had no idea how much he really shaped who I am today. I feel nameless, fragmented, unlovable because I cannot love myself. He cut me into pieces…so many pieces I don’t know which pieces belong to “me” and which belong to “him”. I cannot sort through them.

See, now I am afraid that the only way I see this working for me is to shut down completely. I really do not know how else to do it, the “feelings” are just too big and overwhelming for me right now. I barely make it week to week, day to day, really. I do not have a good support system in place right now. So much is happening inside of me and I don’t want to rely others, I don’t want to “count on” others for support…

I’m struck by how little my life has become. I am afraid and I can’t even tell anyone. Afraid and overwhelmed by what goes on inside my head and my body. So big, so real, so much stronger than what is outside of me. So sharp…I feel it, cutting me, stabbing me, with its serrated razor-sharp pieces. It’s painful…

the director of my life
didn't watch enough
romantic comedies

Original Title: the Haunting

I feel lost remembering looking at you in tears
heartache at the memory
Why do I torture myself by listening to the last song
that had you sobbing
and it broke my heart to see?
I can still picture the color of the walls dark orange
the hot humid night in Honduras
on the front patio of the orphanage

I remember the morning you were laying in bed
when you told me you had had enough
We had sold or given away everything
Returning home to the States with $1000 in my bank account
Thank God, for my stepdad..still had a place to stay

Tears stream down my face
Hard to see the notepad as I write

****.

I look up at the sky..first full moon night
Who, exactly up there decide I should be born human?
I thought you were supposed to be a Good God...
What curse did I deserve for you to let me feel this pain?

In the background:
Roette: "Yeah, it must have been love but it's over now.
It was all that I wanted, now I'm living without.
It must have been love but it's over now,
It's where the water flows, it's where the wind blows."

and yes the wind blows...well more like it *****!

Broken, did i break you?
Was I so cruel?
Never meant to hurt you but the road to hell is paved with good intentions

Was it my silence or..
the burning lust I could never quell
..which I wonder at times if it will not lead me to hell...
and worse to a hypocritical Christian..the judgement on those who know the truth
is much more severe than those who have not heard.

Martika sings in the background:
  "when you tear temptation call..
    it's your heart that takes the fall"

The irony of it is
it started as a dream for us
one to share for the rest of our lives
I cared about you...listened to you
You were there to hold me in my dark moments
wipe away the tears
We danced, we had fun...
Years later when you were telling me how much I had changed...
you reminded me that when we first met..I sang to you at the beach on a starry night
Trapped in the romance and I was so far gone
Funny how different we were then almost twenty years ago
You had such high hopes for me
I changed from telling you I would never darken the doorway of another church to a full-time missionary
--15 years later I realized who you needed was a man I could never be

The wolf tattoo I got after the divorce
was because I never wanted to be so nice
or vulnerable again

You were so beautiful in that wedding dress
the way your eye shone
at the moment we were happy and it all looked like a promise

It's hard lesson when heartache becomes real enough
that it is an burning ache in the center of your chest  

This is an open wound
It feels like the pen should be writing gangrenous vile dark grey/green ink
as it lets the poison out

**** it.
   Time for another **** and a sip of wine
   Enough of this romantic ****

J Geils Band...singing about how love stinks..
music to my ears

Does make me wonder why
I let this internal drama play out
or worse get the better of me

And the songs go on
Brett Michaels - Love *****
Lily Allen sings smile - along with a video of her paying some guys to beat up her boyfriend

Not entirely sure..and maybe it's because it's one of the first times I have done this
But listening to other peoples anger and misery damnably helps
--and it amuses me that she got the cheating *******'s *** kicked

Cheating is the one thing I never did
though my ex would argue the point and call **** my mistress

Strangely, I will always admire her for giving so much
and how truly she was committed
Though it stings when she said she did it for God and not me

I know how deeply I hurt her
Yet I don't know if she will ever undertand the sacrifices I made and just how hard I tried

Somehow at the moment
Getting ******* is more fun that whiny assed *******
...and there's something to be said for some good **** and two buck Chuck

Love for  a human (and yes there are times I wish I was an alien..god knows that is how I got treated all the way through high school)
Reminds me how you make a statue
Simply carve away all that is not the statue

So it is with us
   what we must learn about love is as much what it is not
   as it is what we think it is
or what we think it should be...

I so want to write something deep and profound to impress everyone
Which it is the best time the write the last line and to...
           STOP

Look at the grass grow,
look at the spirits flow,
look at the sun glow,
look at your sons go.

Look at the rip tides,
look at the grey skies,
look at the black flies,
look in your own eyes.

Look at the hurricanes,
look at those in pain,
look at the pouring rain,
look at those showered by fame.

Look at the burning coal,
look into the black hole,
look deep into the soul,
look at the world as a whole.

Corporate conquerors conquer the economy.
Seven sickos ****** with ******.
Honest Al has no honesty.
Endogamy?

Some poor sinner selects to sin.
Whiny woman want to win.
Crazy killers **** their kin.
Fin?

No! Lets keep the show going!
Skies are clear, but it is snowing.
Rowing, flowing, with the stream,
is this all a dream?

A dream?
Awaken me!
I scream!
I flee...

I'm floating on a stream,
crying in a dream,
waiting to be seen,
by you.

See me,
hug me,
kiss me,
love me.

Hate me,
shun me,
as long as you loved me,
then I can die,
I can dream,
in peace.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Let me explain.
This poem is about sleeping, dreaming,
the failure of my inadequacies in poetry to heal.

Three years after its birth, it is exactly what I am feeling this day.
It is long rambling and you won't stay for the whole movie.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Erudition is perdition,
dreaming in words, accursed,
death to the visionaries,
release from visitations
of over-staying, unwelcome guests,
Johnny Cash, Jesus,
Forefather Jacob, Bobby Dylan
and their whiny,
smug-smiled missives
on behalf of the
all knowing, dream invader powers,
who
just-happens-to-be-know-it-alls.

These guys,
sub rosa angels,
electioneering,
hand shaking  
you into dreams
that make you wonder              
unceasingly  

I have renounced chants n'
dreams that
wander                              
meaninglessly

so if there is no
repeal of the stupification
of the human condition,
just invent words that  fool
willful and mostly please
nobody

don't ask and don't tell,
then we can agree
that a life,
its peculiar
Hallmark Card of grief,
cannot be
disambiguated

yours is yours,
different from mine,
single poems cannot solve
multivariate equations,  
un-blow mind sensations
that circumnavigate my mind    
as I edge along the
borderline tween the
United States of self-realization,
and a State of Mexico
drug-induced, seductive and
self-administered pat down,
a colorless, tasteless, dreamless
evening in the company of
a rest-once-and-for-all,
sleeping pill

Repudiate yourself,  
privately you
hyperventilate,
but others willing to borrow
those surfeit of rapid
misunderstood breathes,
stored in brown paper bags,
that will be divided
most ingeniously by the
Misappropriation Committee
for wordy oxygen tanks,
desperate for refilling

Recant, Renege,
Renounce, Repeal,
Repudiate, Retract,
I herby foreswear
all previous poems, please
Return them

Back, send them,
so, I can end them,
desist any new arrival of vaniloquence,
direct 'em to  the trash box of inconsequence

My wrongful w-rightings
are now cashiered,
my cool is in mourning,
my plateau is flat but
upsided downded,
words drownded,
both sides now, spring silent

Tried to swim to safety,
to Spanish Harlem
but no hablo espanol,

In Miami, they done me in
for the crime of
insufficiently thin,

In Ghiradelli Square
they deemed me too blond
not 'ciscan enough
yet, in Frisco fairness,  
done deported me,
making me to choose
tween Los Angeles and/or
Orange County

So, poet poseur, where you gonna run too?

My better half sleeps,
my left half weeps,
so conditions normal.

Satan laughs,
offers me ***** or poetry,
knowing full well that having
foresworn, addictive wordmongering, liscentiousness
that a single letter
would stupor me into a
drunken poetry slam at
St. Paul's Church,
into Satan's collection box
of wordy sinners,
where lost souls, ex-poets,
prevaricate
vainly, in hopes
that anyone will let them
transubstantiate
in order to avoid their
expiration date
on Stub Hub

surrendered the master key,
turned in my ID badge,
opened inner sanctum no more,
poetry boy is ratiocinated,
peril dispatched, swear that I've
excommunicated the voices
determined to disintermediate

the compromise I've reached,
help is contraindicated,
ex-officio is my new grace state

please, devices decontaminate,
otherwise, poems disintegrate,
excoriate them, don't wait,
to disassociate'em, insufficient,
remove them from hard drives,
yank'em one and all!

let the diet begin,
no more food for thought,
no more dreams
wrought and recorded,
permit the ambient calm
of the still of the night
that engulfs,
to harmonize with the flatline
dreamless sleep that the
mind monitor machine
etchingly, quietly records

let hours of research
be rewarded,
by my imbibing the product of
laboratory pharmacological
fine tuning

***** S.,
what outrageous ego
let me suppose that in
mine own words,
I could improve upon
your lovelies,
with now bland homilies,
recitations of my anomalies

What id sexed my brain,
was I completely insane,
to imagine that I could
improve upon:

"and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the
thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,
'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.
To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream:
ay, there's the rub"

Finished: Nov 27, 2010 4:44 AM

I don't care
if I ever write
another poem
about love
                    ...or angst.

                                For the twenty seventh time today
                                            I read of a love
                                         "unlike any other".

You know the one -
                  butterflies
                  goosebumps
    ­              can't breathe
                  best friend
                  life partner kind of love.

YES, YOU KNOW THE ONE!
Most of us do.
I've had seven myself.

                                But that's the power of love.
                               (Not the Huey Lewis meets
                                Celine Dion kind of love.)
                                    The reality twisting
                                   emotionally blinding
                                        omen erasing
                                         kind of love.

Where sixty percent of lovers
who were one hundred percent sure
they were different than everyone else
found some of the others
at the "Whoops I did it again" Prom
and started over
at the new, less improved dance
trying to forget the previous ones.

                         Some of them will have the courage
                                    (or loss of memory)
                          to say how unique it is........again.

It makes one man weep, and another man sing.
And inevitably,
                 the third man will write about it.
                 Much to our unoriginal,
                 bad after-taste,
                 and at the very best "Isn't that sweet",
                chagrin.

Sentimental geysers
of sincerest and irrepressible corn,
temper your naivety
and ponder your muse of passion
before you unveil puppy love
in the face of those who have bravely ridden the Rottweiler of amore'...
                                                    and­ even been bitten by it
                                                              ­          once or twice.

Consider your thoughts on love.

Then reconsider your angst about its failings
.

               How dare you have dread
                    if you haven't yet removed twenty five calendars
                         from the wall!?

It is a whiny *** of irony that reeks of 13 year old experience, hairless underarm machismo,
blatant high school drama posing as relevance, and that left over bottle of your dad's
cologne or favorite aunt's vanilla container you knew wouldn't be missed,
while you stained the olfactory neighborhood three blocks at a time.

                                                     The genuinity of youthful angst
                                 holds the credibility of a hairpiece
                                                       ­             on a televangelist.

         This anxious cloak of writhing distress
must be earned as a veteran,
                                    where only the scars of war
get a Purple Heart.
                You can't just say you have it.

Angst is rewarded to
the single mom who lost her job
     and has four children to feed,
and to the man who has to figure out
     how to hide the diaper
     he never thought he'd have to wear,
and to the parent who holds a dying child,
and the senior citizen who can't remember
     where they live,
and the solitary soul who truly has no one.......
     no one to call
     in the darkest moments of their life.

The "poor me", single pimple, concert's sold out, boyfriend #17 *****, inconvenient day
is wanting in qualifications, and we are irritated to hear your blathering interpretation of it.
We will hear you when your words come with bandages.

I don't care
if I ever write
another poem
about love...
                     because it has been done
                  and no one has ever gotten it right...
or angst
               ...because I am unworthy of the reward.

I think I will just write about
what other people shouldn't write about.
There is no end in this.

It's life that does
The killing

And nothing is ever fair

And I feel deformed
And trapped

And I'm standing over there

And I think I have
Alot of problems

And I don't know why

And sometimes I'll just cry

I look up at the sky

I hate that my left side
Is stronger than my right

And I'm tired of trying
Why do I even bother
Why do I even fight

And my head is on the right side
Of my body

Not in the middle
Where it is supposed to be

I guess it *****
To be me

And I walk here
And walk there
People blab and blab
But few really care

And I lift weights
Go to phsyical therapy
But nothing changes for me

My left back still
A bit larger than my right

And I don't know
Whether to
Laugh or cry

I certainly can
Be a lonely
And miserable guy

I am not who you see,
I am me
The Clumsy, dorky, sometimes ******
The one who will try to make you feel
When you cannot feel anymore,
The one that will stand up for you,
When you are limp, on the floor.
The person that will make sure,
Your information is correct.
Sometimes to be a pain in the ****.
The one who will cook, but only if its
For her and another, or more.
But never for herself.
The one that tries to give the best advice,
But never asks for them to listen.
Sometimes she thinks she is male,
For always wanting to be right.
But at the same time, she is female.
Whiny, crabby, always up in your face.
She is indecisive, she doesn’t know half of the time.
Her name is Chelsea.
She is pretty cool.

It’s past 2 in the morning and the only thing holding you two together is the group chat a classmate administrate because both are you (and others, of course) are generally in the same group for this semester but you are split in classes but you have two that are the same together. An assignment is due to be emailed that night and he just got back from god knows where and you’re a tad curious (maybe more) because during old times, he would tell you the things he do simply because you were the best company and the both of you complement each other. He said that he was going to pull off an all-nighter and you can’t help your fingers from typing down a witty response.

The nostalgia taking over you as you shot bullets of reply to him because he was doing the same. Soon enough it seemed as though you two were the only ones alive in the group along with a few other irrelevant comments to your bickering. His last message was an icon of a high five and you purposely left him hanging and close the application in your phone. With a soft chuckle, you shook your head and continued reading the poetry book you recently bought.

He knows you like the back of his hand, and it just hit past well about 4 in the morning and you’re still awake. What do you know it? A message from him- asking why you left his last message on the group chat hanging. That personal conversation went on as if you were in the past again; as if he wasn’t dating your ex-best friend, as if you weren’t hurt being left because it was that play where the two of you were the main characters with an unattached past. Your story is the type of love where you’re best friends and you know you get a bit giddy when it’s way beyond your bedtime. You’ve been involved with writing poems after you were left to be on your own and this idea was blown to you.

You send him a poem of which you wrote but you give him under a pseudonym so he wouldn’t know it’s by you. He said that it was deep and probably something he doesn’t think he can ever reach in an emotional level of expressing. It hit you. He was the perfect critic for the other poems you wrote. So you gave him a few more and it happened. He asked you if you’ve written any. Could this be the chance for you to finally prove to the only boy you’ve been stupidly pining on that you’re doing sort of well and that you just need him to subconsciously be the muse of your work?

You make a deal. 5 poems and he guess which is yours. He whines that 5 is too much as you’ve already given him others before. You really wanted him to read what else you still have so you reduced it to 3 and he grudgingly accepted (like the little whiny boy you have grown to love him to be). You gave him one about your ex-boyfriend, another about a boy you were infatuated with and lastly, one about him. And you waited. You waited for what it seemed like hours when it was just a petty 10 minutes. He narrowed it down to the one of him and the other boy. You guessed he would have let go of the one about your ex-boyfriend because he was there when he hurt you.

The paranoia seeps into your soul wondering if his could feel the one you wrote about/for him. Finally, he chose the one you wrote for the other boy because he rather sort of knows about that short amount of time where you really thought you really could like him. You hadn’t realised that you were holding your breath the whole time he was deliberating which to choose. A voice spoke in your mind telling that you should be grateful that he chose the one you wrote for the other boy as if he had chosen the one you wrote for him, what excuse behind that story are you going to make up?

And with that, the conversation of your writing opened up to a whole new request. He asked what else have you written about and you said just about your past and your broken family and such. He knows how bad the situation with your family is so he asked if you had written about the new spectacles you started wearing at the beginning of the semester because your vision gradually went from 20/20 to blurred lines during your current time in college. You perked, what to write about these glasses, you asked. He joked saying anything, but it has to include his name.

You were intrigued with the idea and agreed. He retracted saying that he was just joking as how do you put a name in a poem anyway. You just told him you’ll think about it but after saying that, you grabbed your pen and paper and began writing. He wanted it to be about your glasses and inclusive of his name, then you’ll give him just that. Your conversation lasted until dawn and believe it or not, you fell asleep first and missed your morning class at 8. When you woke up, a message from him (sounding as if he’s snickering at you) asking where you were.

Oh, the heavy weight of lying. You told him that you weren’t feeling well and that you’re going for the afternoon class at 2 instead (not with him).

After that class finished at 4 p.m., you sent him the poem you wrote for him the other night. He said that it was really good but he never questioned about him. You really wanted to prove that you could take up the challenge of writing a poem and having his name. You said, “You wanted a poem with your name, so here you go” and he was dumbfounded (as you quite expected). “But I don’t see my name anywhere”.

You told him that the beginning letter of every two lines spelt his name. His reaction was one you’re to treasure.

It was a bittersweet ending to your little fantasy story as that will be the last you’ll hear directly from him for months to come.

My eyes smell sleepy, he, refusing to depart,
But there is coffee on the nightstand,
The odor, infiltrating the dozy brain's heart.

Annoyed with each other,
They shout and fight
Like teenage siblings Commissioners at the SEC,
Arguing over bathroom monopolization,
The tongue stays sidelined, feigning net neutrality.

The bed smells empty,
For the **** has crowed,
Yogi David commands your presence
At Saturday morning Eight O'clock yoga services.

To get to his Sinai on time,
Early departure, an FAA requirement,
Car, ferry and foot you will deploy,
In the winter, special skis and snowshoes,
That blessed by his mantra,
Enable you to walk on water.

In the kitchen there is sisterly conversation,
Yes, puttering and muttering and discussing,
Sister's grown child texting, he's making the pilgrimage
To see Mama, alone, unexpectedly,
Six hours driving.

Friends and countryman,
That is how you spell t-r-o-u-b-l-e

Sleepy master dwarf refuses to concede,
Says when kitchen noises retreat,
Back to him you will supplicate,
They (the other dwarfs and body parts),
Have a big convention to better communicate..

Departure comes without a kiss,
But not without complaint,
She always says I love you first,
Which is natural,
She being a girl.

Now the bladder starts to whiny~chatter,
What about me, what about me,
Don't you love me, and me rhymes with P!
While the stomach quietly snores
Have been well-fed
but a few hours before,
He dreams of some more....macadamia crusted s'mores...

I could verse you more,
No problem that's for sure,
But you got the point:
**The morning smells.

Some are shrill and some whiny,
Some are deep and hoarse or smarmy.

Some sing, and others scream,
Some are lazy, some are keen.

Some are there to comfort and to reassure. Or there to ridicule and to exacerbate an emotional sore.

Mine are, mostly, the latter type.

Dear Mister Splee, I have a story for thee.
A man of humble attire, went fo’ a walk on a dull wire.
Skilled he kept balance, with nothing but a lance.
With a great long stride, he made it to the other side.

Back he went from one side to the other,
he grabbed nineteen polar bears and a ladder.
He carried them across just for fun.
Amazingly it was all at once not one by one.

The whole audience,awed with just a glance,
While monkeys surrounded and began to dance.
He dropped the ladder down, until it reached ground.
And the monkeys climbed up, pouring tea in a cup.

The polar bears climbed down with elegant ease.
I swear one of them sneezed.
But skilled he kept them balance, with nothing but a lance.
The acrobats were on the trapeze, they looked humbly appeased.



Thirty elephants all whiny and giddy.
Climbed the ladder all silly nilly.
Rhinos and Tigers performed ballet.
I hope you might get to see their performance someday.

The monkeys now on tightrope now hung,
By their tails they now flung.
The humble man on tightrope did sat,
collecting the teacups into his hat.

The elephants dove from the top,
into a pool, splish, splish, splop! splop!
O how I wish fo’ you to see the Tigers dancing.
O how I wish fo’ you to see the Rhinos prancing.

A lion or two just fo’ show,
Jump through hoops caught on fire
And a smile caught my eye from the man on the wire
He jump off, down the ladder.

He walked up to me, with glee
and told me to “tell this to Mister Splee:
Come visit me O’ Mister Splee
This circus was designed just for ye”

I told Mister Splee
And a tear rolled down his cheek
Sadder than he could be
He said: “That circus has long since been dead.”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                        A­ Bee Upon my Knee

                                  A Rhyme for Brave Children
                                     From a Whiny Grownup

A bee upon my knee
It hurt’ed me
It stung me with a sting
And died, poor thing

Gilded cage so small and tiny
Even singing comes out whiny
Stinking of fake fresh and piney
Tis the season
Leaking water warm and briny
With good reason

Christmas cheer and glasses toast
Loved ones smile and laugh and boast
I sit perched upon my post
A tinsled column
Invisible reluctant host
A heart that's solemn

A longing for a love so distant
The melancholy is persistent
A smile could erase it in an instant
On a face cherubic
For my heart is not resistent
It's theraputic

So that smile that is perfection
Is mirrored in my own reflection
Without a thought about rejection
Hallucinations
About the subtlest inflection
In Salutations

Surrounded by the merrily intense
With drunkard tendencies immense
A bar with all accoutrements
They pound tequila
Drinking away the sacraments
Oh yes, I feel ya

Merry time with old Kris Kringle
Guests all lubed enough to mingle
Mistletoe hangs and sleigh bells jingle
Gifts homemade
Tables adourned and glasses tingle
Gold brocade

Still I sit all caged and flightless
Blind to joy all sad and sightless
Drink could make it hurt a mite less
I'm going backward
Laying here all limp and lifeless
Broke and fractured

Surrounded by the fake and vexing
Artificial and quite perplexing
Reality they are rejecting
The devil may care
Bellies bare and muscles flexing
Lost underwear

So ******* dancing to the jukebox
Lost alone here in the boondocks
There is no snow upon the rooftops
Ahead they forge
Find a room before that thing pops
It's so engorged

Neighbor ***** all dressed in orange
Wearing gold to make the poor cringe
Stripping time to fill her syringe
I'll be her hinderance
Still too drunk from her last binge
Faulty remembrance

Ridding riff raff from the party
People still drunk on Bacardi
Noxious gasses burp and farty
With toilets makeshift
Worn out makeup on the smarty
She needs a facelift

Time to let the people go
Too tired to keep watching the show
Drinking hard and walking slow
Verbose yet listless
Honey I don't want to know
It's not my business

they will smoke cheap, borrowed cigarettes.
they will drink cheap, borrowed *****.
and they will stay miles away.
and they will experience the most complex emotions.

writing small town songs,
dealing with cheating girls
              and
****** bags and godliness.

they will play at veteran bars.
they will play at festivals.
and they will flicker.
and they all will dissolve.

living at home with mom.
dealing with whiny girls
                and
******* and defense mechanisms.

We share blood you and I,
and have shared
golden pocketed memories, sticky ice-creamed fingers
back seats,smelly packs of cheese and onions crisps
and jokes about the two in the front arguing over directions,money- us.
Yet we couldn't be more polarized,
Your a young soul but your older,
you used to whisper scandalous grown -up things
and I  would swallow your information as gospel.
Under sapphire skies,
I'd follow you around just wanting your attention
and I know now how annoying it must have been
to have a whiny little sister wanting you to play Barbies.
And I won't lie,
I love you most days and hate you the rest
for all those times you'd beat me up(really just a punch)
and pronounce  me the Loch-ness monster and call me  fat.
It'll always be Love/Hate with you and I
I'm the chalk and your the cheese
but you make me laugh until my sides ache
and I know you love telling me the news of your latest exploit.
There's a camaraderie well that implied,
I've got your back and you've got mine.
we table tennis tease but we both draw a line
and we won't cross it.
because we share blood you and I,
despite nurture over nature
or blood is thicker than water
know this big brother
I love you as a person.

I sometimes wish I was more like J. The whole world helps support her, feels sorry for her. She can cry. She can convince people to think what she wants them to think. She holds an enormous amount of power. She convinces people that she is delicate and they do things for her- like D helping her with the FBI job and her professor practically re-writing her Fulbright essay in an intellectual way. Her writing just isn't as organized, but she seeks help and people want to help her.

Me on the other hand-- I do more for people. When I ask them for help, they aren't really useful. I don't know how to talk to the right type of people or how to get ahead. I always knew that J would thrive with just the right opportunities- because she is highly capable.

I just don't do things well enough. Grades ******. Professors don't know and don't care about me. People think I am intense and pushy and controlling. She is all these things to me, and she sometimes makes me intense, but then to the outside world she is sweet and delicate.

Men are attracted because of the way I look, which is pretty but not stunning or gorgeous. In the end, they always leave me for someone more attractive and more chill.

J's ex however thought she was the ideal woman even after they broke up. He wanted to get back with her but did not. It kind of hurt me to hear that because now I know why he kept emailing her after they broke up- he actually was in love with her. She mattered. She was sweet and cultured and delicate.

The guys who left me, left in a heartbeat. They stayed for a while, chasing my tail. Then suddenly found something better and left. Never returned an email, and I was the one with the broken heart who felt dumb and foolish. If you are not going to be stunning like Angelina Jolie, or really attractive, then it's just not enough to be pretty enough and have a high ****** appeal. You need to be calm, ooze positivity and radiate happiness and good energy. You need to be organized and successful at little things. You need to be calm. For those like me in pain, we gotta work harder.

I hate telling J anything about myself, either positive or negative. When I tell her anything that I am sad about or hurts me, she dismisses it so easily. She also doesn't take criticism well. She immediately points to the fact that I have a lot of flaws too.

C was good to J. An intellectual who wished to impress her, he assisted her with her papers, talked to her professors, visited her at E.

I never meant enough to the men I loved. I thought I was lucky to have experienced love three times, but what does it mean when you make sacrifices repeatedly, where you try to change yourself into the way you think a man wants you to be, to love earnestly and madly- and for it not to be reciprocated at all? J is a very lucky girl. She thinks her life was ruined because G chose me over her for my looks. He left me so easily in the end. If I was prettier and my life was more put together- he'd have stayed.

She easily hurts me with her words, they cut daggers into me. They leave me perplexed. She has an insurmountable amount of power over people.

I have confided in a couple people about her, K and S. I hope it's okay. She drives me crazy. Lo thinks I am a mad-woman. I don't want to be a mad-woman.

I have so much pain and anguish inside me, that it just seeps over. Cup of pain is too much to bear. All the intensity I permeate is because of the pain. I want to become less intense. This is my first week of trying to become less intense.

Step 1: I will not tell anyone about my problems with J.
I will only write about them and talk to R, Ch or a therapist about it.

Step 2: This week, I will work on obtaining a therapist.
I need to apply for medicaid properly with all documentation.

Step 3: Study for Algebra 2!
Test on Wednesday- if you get this tutoring gig, more will open up to you.

Step 4: Wake up early so I can sleep early.

Step 5: Apply for jobs.
I gave up on it because I expected the P.O. job. I did horrible on the interview, so chances for a second interview would be a miracle. Getting a job will help me become happier.

Step 6: Talk to priest at English church for spiritual guidance & for help to control vices and add calmness.

Step 7: Meditate at the gym and stretch for 30 minutes before running.

Step 8: Get a mentor, join groups, attend the right kinds of events, make new friends.
Your whole life and issues cannot center around J. She has moved on, she lives with two roommates. She has Lo & the Asians, two close roommates who are a lot of fun and smart, and she has a good relationship with her dad, and she has D and her co-workers.  She has moved out of her house and moving on with her life. She comes back and accuses me of things and hurts me. I on the other hand, have befriended people who are "stuck" like me at home: Ro who is a struggling alcoholic, Ch who repeatedly -after I pleaded with him to stop- asks me what I am wearing and talks to me about us making out, Ka who is smart but a friend of J's ex C. I was formerly also friends with two Indian guys, one who ended up leaving me because he was in love with me, and another who I called the police on for stalking & harassment. I don't judge any of these guys, instead they talk to me because I am pretty-- but I talk to them because deep down they are also intelligent people who are socially or psychologically struggling like me. Still, the right opportunities only come in the right situations- so it's important that I place myself in them.

Step 9: Keep exercising.
Building up your endurance for running is awesome because it will be good for your lifestyle, but also help you train for future jobs like P.O. & F.B.I. Keep doing 5Ks and then build your way up.

Step 10: Dare to show weakness.**
Allow people to see your weakness so they can help you, without being depressed or whiny. Be yourself. Be fierce. Work hard. No man is an island. Even though my pain makes me want to be completely independant, I need a lot of help. Be humble. A lot of people have helped my family. Show gratitude for what you have.

Words,
*******,
I still don't know how to use them,
How to use words to do my bidding,
Or something like that, you know, whatever,
So that I can tell everyone,
Or anyone,
Or no one, I guess,
At least so I can tell myself, remind myself
That I know who I am.
Or at least what I am.
To some extent.
Sometimes.
Maybe.
****.

Sometimes I feel like I'm in hell.
I'm not.
But I'm not in heaven either,
Whatever that is anyway.
I've been stuck in purgatory for eras,
Driving on and on but going nowhere
While the radio plays music I almost almost enjoy,
Cue twenty more by Styx!
******* get me out of here,
I keep stretching and stretching and feeling the burn,
But it never gets better.
But it never gets worse.
Most of the time.

Your ring tone was the only one that was different,
And every time it rang I jumped, and my stomach twisted, and my heart pounded
All at once, and my fingers twitched,
Stretching to the phone as I rolled my eyes,
Pretending like I didn't care, like dude, whatever, bug off.
I cared. Obviously. Or I mean, maybe it was obvious. I don't know.
I picked out the song for your ring tone because I liked it,
And I liked you, so it fit, that's all.
But now when the tune plays, over and over,
Recognized, familiar,
Formidable,
I feel sick.
**** you.

There's a boy I know who's smart,
Really smart, as smart as some people believe I am,
Which is apparently pretty ******* scholarly sometimes.
He's smart in the softest and most modest of ways,
With a wide, goofy, middle-of-nowhere smile.
It would make anyone else look stupid.
It makes him look like the biggest **** genius I've ever seen.
**** Einstein, this dude trumps all.
And we talk, small talk, loud laughs,
Exchanging witty puns and pop culture references.
Well, he does most of the exchanging.
I just smile and nod and agree,
And maybe I've never felt more stupid in my life.

My friends and I all went to this party last night.
We did some crazy ****, man, you should have been there.
Yeah? That's nice. Sounds really ******* cool. Thanks for the invite.
I do this to myself, though.
No car, no license, no social skills.
All I've got for company is a television and a basket of ***** clothes.
What a party, I'm telling you.
Well, sorry I couldn't make it, I guess.
All this technology and still I don't communicate.
Or when I do, it's the wrong time, wrong person, wrong thing to say.
So instead, I sink into my bed,
Laptop slowly burning a hole through the sheets,
Soon the heat will reach my thighs, but who needs legs anyway?
Sometimes the phone rings and it's not you, halleloo.
Sometimes it's my own hero with an offering,
A movie, a party, just a chat on the phone, anything, anything,
Anything to save me from drowning in my own, self-constructed pity party.
He's really my best friend. Thank god for him.

This was going to be about my sexuality.
Or lack there of, anyway, hardeeharhar.
Just one of those ******, whiny, common exploratory things,
Or whatever.
So here's something, still not about my nonexistent, and unwanted, thanks, *** life,
But on topic now, I think. Or not, maybe. Whatever.
My life is like solitaire. Everyone's is, I'm sure,
Or at least I hope, so I'm not the only one frustrated as hell with
Living. Or just existing.
Solitaire is dull and simple but keeps me busy enough, distracted enough,
But sometimes, even though I line up all the cards right,
There's some I still can't get to,
And as I get down to the last few cards,
I realize that there's no way I can win,
Because sometimes winning was never an option in the first place.
Sometimes you just find yourself stuck,
Sometimes you just lose.

This was supposed to help me vent,
Help me let out all the same old frustration, you know -
Why can't I just be a normal guy
Who gets a normal boyfriend
And then ***** said normal boyfriend into a mattress and has a **** good time?
Well all that flew out the window a long time ago,
If it was ever in the building in the first place,
And not just sprawled out dead on the toilet seat. *******.

It came upon a Christmas eve not so long ago
A beast deformed in stature, walked out from the snow
It’s eyes were sharp and wild, jagged teeth like shards
It went from house to house leaving hoof prints in the yards.
Glancing into windows warm with light and life
It was here to reconcile an old and bitter strife
It had a bag that screamed and cried as it dragged it on the ground
An awful thing just an awful thing, to have to hear that sound
It threw its nose into the air and began to sniff and snort
This demon was on to something but what I can’t report
In the bitter cold, you could smell it’s breath of rot and discontent
The chains that draped its frame, made its spine look broke and bent
The wind it howled in vain to warn the people of this beast
It’s cries went unregarded as people sat before their feast
The demon ceased its searching when it came upon my house
I did my best to hide and stay as quiet as a mouse
I walked back into the shadows in the corner of my room
Voiceless, breathless, terrified what was this thing of gloom
I heard it leap onto the deck and drop its sack upon the floor
A resounding thud caked in mud, it wasn’t crying anymore
I left my room and crept down the stairs to see if it got in
Hoping it wasn’t that demon who they said would eat my skin
It stood before the fireplace, the front door was opened wide
I don’t know how this thing got in but I had nowhere left to hide
It turned its face from the fire with a scowl you’d have to see
The demon had a quarrel alright and the quarrel was with me
It pulled out from the pocket of its robe all blacked and charred
A burning piece of paper then it handed me its card
The card read only “Krampus” before I felt it’s claws upon my throat
Now I’m in a bag with other kids set for some other place remote
We were bad and didn’t listen to our parents and their orders
We broke a lot of rules and disrespected borders
Now ole Krampus has us and he’ll probably sell us off as food
This is what you get if you’re whiny, mean, or rude
Now have a merry Christmas and do as you’ve been told
Lest you wind up in a demons bag being dragged upon the road