There are times when the Lord will take from us every familiar thing and send all the others away to have us to Himself, uprooting and dismantling our earthly anchors until we find no safe place of attachment but to Him alone. And though we search feverishly to secure another, He will faithfully cut off our efforts at every pass and every attempted by-pass, almost as though we could see them being escorted out the door, marching one after the other in file and possibly taking our sanity with them. “No, not another one! Where are they all going and why am I not invited?” But it is His alone to give or not to give, to give and take away.

The One Who took up the cross and took the cup of the Father’s wrath for us has the absolute right to take anything and everything from us at any time for whatever reasons might please Him. But know this for certain: concerning His redeemed, those reasons will always involve two things—glory and intimacy. They are the overriding answers to every lingering question of “Why?”.

But if we fail to understand His glorious and intimate intentions we may misconstrue our losses to be a sign that He is actually withdrawing His affection from us. The very things which He is doing for love’s sake to perfect our pathway to intimacy might be taken instead for obstacles blocking it, causing us to doubt His love. We could not be more wrong, but sometimes it's so hard to see through the veil of pain.

For it's a strange and bewildering thing to feel that you belong to no place and no person in this world, to have nowhere to call home and no one to share it with if you did. A severe untethering indeed that though meant to prepare us for flying can seem to us more like drowning. The sobering truth is that none of us belong to this life or the things of this earth; all sense of it is only an illusion, and pain and loss are simply the dispelling of the myth—the rude awakening from a bewitching dream we once had. But oh how we fight the disillusionment.

Maybe we remember a time when we had prayed to be refined, to be made more like Jesus, but we didn’t know it would have to hurt so bad and take so long and look so dark and feel so lonely. Even if we have understood and embraced His call to deeper intimacy we may after a while, when nothing seems improved either around us or in us, start to resent our belonging to such a determined and jealous Lover, though He is doing exactly what we had once asked Him to. We may start to think we can no longer bear anything except that which superficially distracts us from our grief. We may even start to give up hope, for if not anchored exclusively “behind the curtain” and if repeatedly crushed it threatens to **** our hearts for good should we have to face one more disappointment.

We may feel very much like we are flailing around in a deep and darkening ocean, repeatedly pulled under by the powerful tow and thrashing waves of overwhelming emotion and continuously knocked back by the brutal winds of confusion. Yet we can still see the unshakable boat of faith and truth standing solidly only a small distance away. We know it is real and that if we could just reach it we would be safe. We hear someone shouting through the din, “Just hold onto the boat! The boat will save you. Look beyond your feelings and walk by faith. Hold onto truth!” But can’t they see that as hard as we may try we have no strength to swim to the boat? Can’t they see that we are sinking?

And so we are left with nothing but to cry out to Jesus, to cry out to Him to bring the boat to us, to come Himself and rescue us. Do we have that much faith? Enough to just say, “Jesus, help me! I’m drowning!”? Enough to see that He is our only hope and nothing else matters apart from Him?

Because when we do, we will understand that this hope in Him alone is the very lifeline by which He will pull us to safety—back to faith, back to truth, back into His intimate arms of love, back into a peace which passes all understanding and into a joy that gives us strength for the journey.

As difficult as it can be in our grief to hear the Lord whispering truth to our hearts above the constant clanging of our feelings, we must now more than ever choose to take the time to be still and seek our soul’s rest in Him and in His promises. But how amidst such clamor and confusion?

Simply decide to cast your cares on Him, if only for the moment, by climbing into His Shepherd’s lap to look and loiter and listen. And if you have no energy to climb up, then just lift your arms and ask Him to pick you up. And if you haven’t the strength even for that, only raise your eyes toward Him and you will soon find your sanity restored as you behold His love for you. Ask Him earnestly to let you see it afresh, for perhaps you have been temporarily blinded from recognizing it.

Stop everything; cease just for this minute from all worry, anxiety, fear and anger. Forget the past and do not look toward the future. Focus only on this moment right now, as if you knew it would be your last, as if it were the very one to lead you into eternity. Inhale like fresh air the powerful promises of God’s Word. Soak in their grace and drink in their healing, keeping your eyes fixed on Jesus’ face. Can you see Him longing for you? Exhale every distraction, conflict and uncertainty of this world. Then listen... What is He saying to you right now? Wait for it, then let your soul rest in it, and let go of everything else. Rest in the grace of this present moment and in His strong, sure arms. Let Him take care of you, wounded one, for you are His beloved, and He longs to tend your broken and needy heart.

There was a house fire on my street last night …well… not exactly my street, but on a little, sketchy, dead-end strip of asphalt, sidewalks, weeds, and garbage that juts into my block two houses down. It was on that street. Rosewood Court, population: 12, adjusted population: 11, characterized by anonymity and boarded windows, peppered with the swift movements of fat street rats. I’ve never been that close to a real, high-energy, make-sure-to-spray-down-your-roof-with-a-hose-so-it-doesn’t-catch­ fire before. It was the least of my expectations for the evening, though I didn’t expect a crate of Peruvian bananas to fall off a cargo plane either, punching through the ceiling, littering the parking lot with damaged fruit and shingles, tearing paintings and shelves and studs from the third floor walls, and crashing into our kitchen, shattering dishes and cabinets and appliances. Since that never happened, and since neither the former nor the latter situation even crossed my mind, I’ll stick with “least of my expectations,” and bundle up with it inside that inadequate phrase whatever else may have happened that I wouldn’t have expected.



I had been reading in my living room, absently petting the long calico fur of my roommate’s cat Dory. She’s in heat, and does her best to make sure everyone knows it, parading around, *** in the air, an opera of low trilling and loud meows and deep purring. As a consequence of a steady tide of feline hormones, she’s been excessively good humored, showering me with affection, instead of her usual indifference, punctuated by occasional, self-serving shin rubs when she’s hungry. I saw the lights before I heard the trucks or the shouts of firemen or the panicked wail of sirens, spitting their warning into the night in A or A minor, but probably neither, I’m no musician. Besides, Congratulations was playing loud, flowing through the speakers in the corners of the room, connected to the record player via the receiver with the broken volume control, travelling as excited electrons down stretches of wire that are, realistically, too short, and always pull out. The song was filling the space between the speakers and the space between my ears with musings on Brian Eno, so the auditory signal that should have informed me of the trouble that was afoot was blocked out. I saw the lights, the alternating reds and whites that filled my living room, drawing shifting patterns on my walls, ceiling, floor, furniture, and shelves of books, dragging me towards the door leading outside, through the cluttered bike room, past the sleeping, black lump of oblivious fur that is usually my boisterous male kitten, and out into the bedlam I  had previously been ignorant to. I could see the smoke, it was white then gray then white, all the while lending an acrid taste to the air, but I couldn’t see where it was issuing from. The wind was blowing the smoke toward my apartment, away from Empire Mills. I tried to count the firetrucks, but there were so many. I counted six on Wilmarth Ave, one of which was the awkward-looking, heavy-duty special hazards truck. In my part of the city, the post-industrial third-wave ***** river valley, you never know if the grease fire that started with homefries in a frying pan in an old woman’s kitchen will escalate into a full-blown mill fire, the century-old wood floors so saturated with oil and kerosene and ****** and manufacturing chemicals and ghosts and god knows what other flammable **** that it lights up like a fifth of July leftover sparkler, burning and melting the hand of the community that fed it for so many decades, leaving scars that are displayed on the local news for a week and are forgotten in a few years’ time.



The night was windy, and the day had been dry, so precautions were abundant, and I counted two more trucks on Fones Ave. One had the biggest ladder I’ve ever seen. It was parked on the corner of Fones and Wilmarth, directly across from the entrance into the forgotten dead-end where the forgotten house was burning, and the ladder was lifting into the air. By now my two roommates had come outside too, to stand on our rickety, wooden staircase, and Jeff said he could see flames in the windows of one of the three abandoned houses on Rosewood, through the third floor holes where windows once were, where boards of plywood were deemed unnecessary.



“Ay! Daddy!”



My neighbor John called up to us. He serves as the eyes and ears and certainly the mouth of our block, always in everyone’s business, without being too intrusive, always aware of what’s going down and who’s involved. He proceeded to tell us the lowdown on the blaze as far as he knew it, that there were two more firetrucks and an ambulance down Rosewood, that the front and back doors to the house were blocked by something from inside, that those somethings were very heavy, that someone was screaming inside, that the fire was growing.



Val had gone inside to get his jacket, because despite the floodlights from the trucks imitating sunlight, the wind and the low temperature and the thought of a person burning alive made the night chilly. Val thought we should go around the block, to see if we could get a better view, to satisfy our congenital need to witness disaster, to see the passenger car flip over the Jersey barrier, to watch the videos of Jihadist beheadings, to stand in line to look at painted corpses in velvet, underlit parlors, and sit in silence while their family members cry. We walked down the stairs, into full floodlight, and there were first responders and police and fully equipped firefighters moving in all directions. We watched two firemen attempting to open an old, rusty fire hydrant, and it could’ve been inexperience, the stress of the situation, the condition of the hydrant, or just poor luck, but rather than opening as it was supposed to the hydrant burst open, sending the cap flying into the side of a firetruck, the water crashing into the younger of the two men’s face and torso, knocking him back on his ***. While he coughed out surprised air and water and a flood of expletives, his partner got the situation under control and got the hose attached. We turned and walked away from the fire, and as we approached the turn we’d take to cut through the rundown parking lot that would bring us to the other side of the block, two firemen hurried past, one leading the other, carrying between them a stretcher full of machines for monitoring and a shitload of wires and tubing. It was the stiff board-like kind, with handles on each end, the kind of stretcher you might expect to see circus clowns carry out, when it’s time to save their fallen, pie-faced cohort. I wondered why they were using this archaic form of patient transportation, and not one of the padded, electrical ones on wheels. We pushed past the crowd that had begun forming, walked past the Laundromat, the 7Eleven, the carwash, and took a left onto the street on the other side of the parking lot, parallel to Wilmarth. There were several older men standing on the sidewalk, facing the fire, hands either in pockets or bringing a cigarette to and from a frowning mouth. They were standing in the ideal place to witness the action, with an unobstructed view of the top two floors of the burning house, its upper windows glowing orange with internal light and vomiting putrid smoke.  We could taste the burning wires, the rugs, the insulation, the asbestos, the black mold, the trash, and the smell was so strong I had to cover my mouth with my shirt, though it provided little relief. We said hello, they grunted the same, and we all stood, watching, thinking about what we were seeing, not wanting to see what we were thinking.

Two firefighters were on the roof by this point, they were yelling to each other and to the others on the ground, but we couldn’t hear what they were saying because of the sirens from all the emergency vehicles that were arriving.  It seemed to me they sent every firetruck in the city, as well as more than a dozen police cars and a slew of ambulances, all of them arriving from every direction. I guess they expected the fire to get really out of hand, but we could already see the orange glow withdrawing into the dark of the house, steam and smoke rippling out of the stretched, wooden mouths of the rotted window frames. In a gruff, habitual smoker’s voice, we heard

                                      “Chopper called the fire depahtment

We was over at the vet’s home

                He says he saw flames in the windas

                                                                                                                                                We all thought he was shittin’ us

We couldn’t see nothin’.”

A man between fifty-five to sixty-five years old was speaking, no hair on his shiny, tanned head, old tattoos etched in bluish gray on his hands, arms, and neck, menthol smoke rising from between timeworn fingers. He brought the cigarette to his lips, drew a hearty chest full of smoke, and as he let it out he repeated

                                                “Yea, chopper called em’

Says he saw flames.”

The men on the roof were just silhouettes, backlit by the dazzling brightness of the lights on the other side.  The figure to the left of the roof pulled something large up into view, and we knew instantly by the cord pull and the sound that it was a chainsaw. He began cutting directly into the roof. I wasn’t sure what he was doing, wondered if he was scared of falling into the fire, assumed he probably was, but had at least done this before, tried to figure out if he was doing it to gain entry or release pressure or whatever. The man to the right was hacking away at the roof with an axe. It was surreal to watch, to see two men transformed from public servants into fingers of destruction, the pinkie and ring finger fighting the powerful thumb of the controlled chemical reaction eating the air below them, to watch the dark figures shrouded in ethereal light and smoke and sawdust and what must’ve been unbearable heat from below, to be viewing everything with my own home, my belongings, still visible, to know it could easily have gone up in flames as well.

I should’ve brought my jacket. I remember complaining about it, about how the wind was passing through my skin like a window screen, chilling my blood, in sharp contrast to the heat that was morphing and rippling the air above the house as it disappeared as smoke and gas up into the atmosphere from the inside out.

Ten minutes later, or maybe five, or maybe one, the men on the roof were still working diligently cutting and chopping, but we could no longer see any signs of flames, and there were figures moving around in the house, visible in the windows of the upper floors, despite the smoke. Figuring the action must be reaching its end, we decided to walk back to our apartment. We saw Ken’s brown pickup truck parked next to the Laundromat, unable to reach our parking lot due to all the emergency vehicles and people clogging our street. We came around the corner and saw the other two members of the Infamous Summers standing next to our building with the rest of the crowd that had gathered. Dosin told us the fire was out, and that they had pulled someone from inside the gutted house, but no ambulance had left yet, and his normally smiling face was flat and somber, and the beaten guitar case slung over his shoulder, and his messed up hair, and the red in his cheeks from the cold air, and the way he was moving rocks around with the toe of his shoe made him look like a lost child, chasing a dream far from home but finding a nightmare in its place, instead of the professional who never loses his cool or his direction.

The crowd all began talking at once, so I turned around, towards the dead end and the group of firefighters and EMTs that were emerging. Their faces were stoic, not a single expression on all but one of those faces, a young EMT, probably a Basic, or a Cardiac, or neither, but no older than twenty, who was silently weeping, the tears cutting tracks through the soot on his cheeks, his eyes empty of emotion, his lips drawn tight and still. Four of them were each holding a corner of the maroon stretcher that took two to carry when I first saw it, full of equipment. They did not rush, they did not appear to be tending to a person barely holding onto life, they were just carrying the weight. As they got close gasps and cries of horror or disgust or both issued from the crowd, some turned away, some expressions didn’t change, some eyes closed and others stayed fixed on what they came to see. One woman vomited, right there on the sidewalk, splashing the shoes of those near her with the partially digested remains of her EBT dinner. I felt my own stomach start to turn, but I didn’t look away. I couldn’t.

                                                                                It was like I was seven again,

                                in the alleyway running along the side of the junior high school I lived near and would eventually attend,

looking in silent horror at what three eighth graders from my neighborhood were doing.

It was about eight in the evening of a rainy,

late summer day,

and I was walking home with my older brother,

cutting through the alley like we always did.

The three older boys were standing over a small dog,

a terrier of some sort.

They had duct taped its mouth shut and its legs together,

but we could still hear its terrified whines through its clenched teeth.

One of the boys had cut off the dog’s tail.

He had it in one hand,

and was still holding the pocket knife in the other.

None of them were smiling,

or talking,

nor did they take notice of Andrew and I.

There was a garden bag standing up next to them that looked pretty full,

and there was a small pile of leaves on the ground next to it.

In slow motion I watched,

horrified,

as one of the boys,

Brian Jones-Hartlett,

picked up the shaking animal,

put it in the bag,

covered it with the leaves from the ground,

and with wide,

shining eyes,

set the bag

on fire

with a long-necked

candle

lighter.

It was too much for me then. I couldn’t control my nausea. I threw up and sat down while my head swam.

I couldn’t understand. I forgot my brother and the fact that he was older, that he should stop this,

Stop them,

There’s a dog in there,

You’re older, I’m sick,

Why can’t I stop them?

It was like

Pain is inevitable,
Suffering is optional.
The crossroads of success,
Is always constructional.

If we could become tress,
Solid and stoic, deep rooted
In Mother Earth's flesh;
We could stand firm
Through the tempest, unswayed.

But we are only humans.
Covered in darkness.
Hiding behind our fears,
Timidly withdrawing from
The ominous tempest.

So, embrace the fury,
The daunting gales that
Once were scary.
After all, you can't
Stop the waves,
But you can learn to surf.

And even if you sank,
Deeper into the void,
At least you'll drown
Knowing there was
Beauty In The Struggle.

1
We, whose lungs fill with the sweetness of day.
Who in May admire trees flowering
Are better than those who perished.

We, who taste of exotic dishes,
And enjoy fully the delights of love,
Are better than those who were buried.

We, from the fiery furnaces, from behind barbed wires
On which the winds of endless autumns howled,
We, who remember battles where the wounded air roared in
paroxysms of pain.
We, saved by our own cunning and knowledge.

By sending others to the more exposed positions
Urging them loudly to fight on
Ourselves withdrawing in certainty of the cause lost.

Having the choice of our own death and that of a friend
We chose his, coldly thinking: Let it be done quickly.

We sealed gas chamber doors, stole bread
Knowing the next day would be harder to bear than the day before.

As befits human beings, we explored good and evil.
Our malignant wisdom has no like on this planet.

Accept it as proven that we are better than they,
The gullible, hot-blooded weaklings, careless with their lives.

2
Treasure your legacy of skills, child of Europe.
Inheritor of Gothic cathedrals, of baroque churches.
Of synagogues filled with the wailing of a wronged people.
Successor of Descartes, Spinoza, inheritor of the word 'honor',
Posthumous child of Leonidas
Treasure the skills acquired in the hour of terror.

You have a clever mind which sees instantly
The good and bad of any situation.
You have an elegant, skeptical mind which enjoys pleasures
Quite unknown to primitive races.

Guided by this mind you cannot fail to see
The soundness of the advice we give you:
Let the sweetness of day fill your lungs
For this we have strict but wise rules.

3
There can be no question of force triumphant
We live in the age of victorious justice.

Do not mention force, or you will be accused
Of upholding fallen doctrines in secret.

He who has power, has it by historical logic.
Respectfully bow to that logic.

Let your lips, proposing a hypothesis
Not know about the hand faking the experiment.

Let your hand, faking the experiment
No know about the lips proposing a hypothesis.

Learn to predict a fire with unerring precision
Then burn the house down to fulfill the prediction.

4
Grow your tree of falsehood from a single grain of truth.
Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality.

Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself
So the weary travelers may find repose in the lie.

After the Day of the Lie gather in select circles
Shaking with laughter when our real deeds are mentioned.

Dispensing flattery called: perspicacious thinking.
Dispensing flattery called: a great talent.

We, the last who can still draw joy from cynicism.
We, whose cunning is not unlike despair.

A new, humorless generation is now arising
It takes in deadly earnest all we received with laughter.

5
Let your words speak not through their meanings
But through them against whom they are used.

Fashion your weapon from ambiguous words.
Consign clear words to lexical limbo.

Judge no words before the clerks have checked
In their card index by whom they were spoken.

The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason.
The passionless cannot change history.

6
Love no country: countries soon disappear
Love no city: cities are soon rubble.

Throw away keepsakes, or from your desk
A choking, poisonous fume will exude.

Do not love people: people soon perish.
Or they are wronged and call for your help.

Do not gaze into the pools of the past.
Their corroded surface will mirror
A face different from the one you expected.

7
He who invokes history is always secure.
The dead will not rise to witness against him.

You can accuse them of any deeds you like.
Their reply will always be silence.

Their empty faces swim out of the deep dark.
You can fill them with any feature desired.

Proud of dominion over people long vanished,
Change the past into your own, better likeness.

8
The laughter born of the love of truth
Is now the laughter of the enemies of the people.

Gone is the age of satire. We no longer need mock.
The sensible monarch with false courtly phrases.

Stern as befits the servants of a cause,
We will permit ourselves sycophantic humor.

Tight-lipped, guided by reasons only
Cautiously let us step into the era of the unchained fire.

Abbreviations of the Life Human

these little stories, bejeweled poeticals, long tall tales,
short-held breaths from the savings account breast,
all slow withdrawing-dawning,
all are but the abbreviations of the life human

my fav of course,
the one, the twenty six
the aleph best bet

<•>

4-16-18 10:47pm
a mondo Monday survivors prayer

Moored to the same ring:
The hour, the darkness and I,
Our compasses hooded like falcons.

Now the memory of you comes aching in
With a wash of broken bits which never left port
In which once we planned voyages,
They come knocking like hearts asking:
What departures on this tide?

Breath of land, warm breath,
You tighten the cold around the navel,
Though all shores but the first have been foreign,
And the first was not home until left behind.

Our choice is ours but we have not made it,
Containing as it does, our destination
Circled with loss as with coral, and
A destination only until attained.

I have left you my hope to remember me by,
Though now there is little resemblance.
At this moment I could believe in no change,
The mast perpetually
Vacillating between the same constellations,
The night never withdrawing its dark virtue
>From the harbor shaped as a heart,
The sea pulsing as a heart,
The sky vaulted as a heart,
Where I know the light will shatter like a cry
Above a discovery:
"Emptiness.
Emptiness!  Look!"
Look.  This is the morning.

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A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not **** him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would **** him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how ******, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

Taormina, 1923

so don't change then
you seem to be perfectly comfortable
in your insanity.
wrestling, withdrawing,
anhedonia coming alive in your party
master wrangler of sorrow,
been there, done that.
and like watching
the christians and the lions,
i am rooting for you
but know you will shed blood.
and when you are devoured enough
you come to life,
crazy sonafabitch.
stay where you are then,
forget em happy pills.
i will go certifiable with you
as long as you do not forget
the lunacy of our love.

Tracks of rain and light linger in
the spongy greens of a nature whose
flickering mountain—bulging nearer,
ebbing back into the sun
hollowing itself away to hold a lake,—
or brown stream rising and falling at the roadside, turning about,
churning itself white, drawing
green in over it,—plunging glassy funnels
fall—

And—the other world—
the windshield a blunt barrier:
Talk to me.  Sh! they would hear us.
—the backs of their heads facing us—
The stream continues its motion of
a hound running over rough ground.

Trees vanish—reappear—vanish:
detached dance of gnomes—as a talk
dodging remarks, glows and fades.
—The unseen power of words—
And now that a few of the moves
are clear the first desire is
to fling oneself out at the side into
the other dance, to other music.

Peer Gynt.  Rip Van Winkle.  Diana.
If I were young I would try a new alignment—
alight nimbly from the car, Good-bye!—
Childhood companions linked two and two
criss-cross:  four, three, two, one.
Back into self, tentacles withdrawn.
Feel about in warm self-flesh.
Since childhood, since childhood!
Childhood is a toad in the garden, a
happy toad.  All toads are happy
and belong in gardens.  A toad to Diana!

Lean forward.  Punch the steerman
behind the ear.  Twirl the wheel!
Over the edge!  Screams!  Crash!
The end.  I sit above my head—
a little removed—or
a thin wash of rain on the roadway
—I am never afraid when he is driving,—
interposes new direction,
rides us sidewise, unforseen
into the ditch!  All threads cut!
Death!  Black.  The end.  The very end—

I would sit separate weighing a
small red handful:  the dirt of these parts,
sliding mists sheeting the alders
against the touch of fingers creeping
to mine.  All stuff of the blind emotions.
But—stirred, the eye seizes
for the first time—The eye awake!—
anything, a dirt bank with green stars
of scrawny **** flattened upon it under
a weight of air—For the first time!—
or a yawning depth:  Big!
Swim around in it, through it—
all directions and find
vitreous seawater stuff—
God how I love you!—or, as I say,
a plunge into the ditch.  The End.  I sit
examining my red handful.  Balancing
—this—in and out—agh.

Love you?  It’s
a fire in the blood, *****-nilly!
It’s the sun coming up in the morning.
Ha, but it’s the grey moon too, already up
in the morning.  You are slow.
Men are not friends where it concerns
a woman?  Fighters.  Playfellows.
White round thighs!  Youth!  Sighs—!
It’s the fillip of novelty.  It’s—

Mountains.  Elephants ******* along
against the sky—indifferent to
light withdrawing its tattered shreds,
worn out with embraces.  It’s
the fillip of novelty.  It’s a fire in the blood.

Oh get a flannel shirt, white flannel
or pongee.  You’d look so well!
I married you because I liked your nose.
I wanted you!  I wanted you
in spite of all they’d say—

Rain and light, mountain and rain,
rain and river.  Will you love me always?
—A car overturned and two crushed bodies
under it.—Always!  Always!
And the white moon already up.
White.  Clean.  All the colors.
A good head, backed by the eye—awake!
backed by the emotions—blind—
River and mountain, light and rain—or
rain, rock, light, trees—divided:
rain-light counter rocks-trees or
trees counter rain-light-rocks or—

Myriads of counter processions
crossing and recrossing, regaining
the advantage, buying here, selling there
—You are sold cheap everywhere in town!—
lingering, touching fingers, withdrawing
gathering forces into blares, hummocks,
peaks and rivers—rivers meeting rock
—I wish that you were lying there dead
and I sitting here beside you.—
It’s the grey moon—over and over.
It’s the clay of these parts.

yet another year zero
reinventing the squeaky wheel
constrained writing just for kicks
reviving a tragic hero
tabula rasa and leaky spiel
trained for fighting prickly ******
hollowing future and reticulating splines
swallowing nature then duplicating rhymes
only a blank drawing
at a bank withdrawing
funds splashing down like acid rain
workers trashing town with great disdain
fluxing bureaucracy
with ad hoc hypocrisy
go country for old zen
and then
shot glass shopping sprees
statues with haunting verdigris
from target to target
the stupid (never forget)
airport shuttles and toxic puddles
epic riddles while popping bottles
thrusting bodies and a fruity box
alternating current and topic drift
trusting hotties with shuttlecocks
baiting adherent with basic *****
eating that dog in a bar by the ditch
bar all rowdy with many shots taken
beer hall drowsy as closing time looms
far too loudly with identity mistaken
the band had us frankly and amply forsaken
awakening in a ditch as the a-bomb booms
a thousand soldiers ready for battle
at town's end with less depleted morals
worried about the deleted portals
we buried hell well without the cattle
no more long weeks of slicing ****** meat
origins about which they should not care
oh to sell knockoffs to the rich elite
hear their yells and use an odd nom de guerre
the profit and the revenue forecast
**** on the new road
the prophet and the parvenue act fast
pill for the wet load
he had dropped the load leaving pungent smells
in the dark it glowed and lit the deep wells
launching a rocket every four hours
we encounter yet more perplexing times
measuring success with fewer metrics
punching the clocks in tall black towers
changing the locks and the warning signs
altering quarters with newer ethics
cannibals watched while we profusely bled
fine forget it forget it forget it
ingest the capsule to induce the sweat
just relieve don't botch
figure figure figure
don't bereave think scotch
ticker ticker ticker
sounded like it came from someone shady
getting beat to end with some other blend
year to date murders now about eighty
yet today's statistics lie and pretend
fudging the digits to fake the assent
so what happened last week stays in last week
all of those painful jarring sights and sounds
making it all seem to look rather bleak
kept sly with pennies and kept shrewd with pounds
on alibaba we will not delete
separated heads from dark desert towns
metropolis with millions of dark souls
lighting up papers for a rapid trip
necropolis with brilliant harkening trolls
fighting the power in order to strip
their medals that they never earned at all
writing this line here and ******* the fall
straightforward message from a plain green rod
a photographer in obscure disguise
throw him into the main canal and nod
the coffee shop looks banal with just guys
losing interest quick and wanting to dip
touching that shiny pink wide-open clip
unknown underground studded with diamonds
mind-blowing trap sounds burst from the caliph
volume gets higher and heads start to ring
they came in sequence and then came silence
waking up confused in a condo lift
taking refuge in an ugly building
just invited myself into your home timeline
somewhat sublime reciting trifling rhymes
alter rhyming scheme to eschew couplets
now fully mobile and automatic
pentameter schemes and android tablets
tents and suburbs that look quite nomadic
recruited minions for the rebellions
human microphones sans inhibitions
quicken resistance to the man's big plan
invoking the crowd to buck traditions
spell that with an accent with great élan
broken mobile phone texting hexagram
a rapid drop in communication
a postal service mailing vexing spam
token for transit lost at the station
we can no longer go back to the farm
here in the city living these last days
sounding the airhorn and the fire alarm
seahorses as fish and whales as mammals
hard to keep track here of various things
went to the desert and smoked some camels
patient zero died sounding the alert
some will paint dark scenes with exigent themes
paintings so dire that your eyes avert
inverse distance decay in the network
old flags questing through the flood and tumult
of course these rhymes make them go **** berserk
losing sight of sites that house the occult
refusing to eat and wanting to drink
these words resonate with all those who think
utopia fell soon after completion
never understood humanity well
rationality ends with deletion
all the fine stuff just goes to *******
humans emitting alienating vibes
they form foul cliques like pups from putrid tribes
three ships all wrecked up in some unknown land
divulging harsh things and eating raw food
far too many times getting shunned and booed
had all my writings fully blocked and banned
still no dumb luck yet after x decades
recalled old friendships that have long decayed
more constrained writing that will make them groan
some will even see the trail left behind
writing all of this mostly in e-prime
punctuation-free zone made just for fun
lighting dark alleys with a mobile phone
some get all the love while others get none
***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch
glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch
kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch
stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch
twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch
yesterday's blunt stunt went to the gutter
no regrets no threats no whatever man
just like autechre and that song flutter
forget the police just rave on til dawn
**** how darkness has lasted this **** long
ominous songs here still pumping along
exponential sneers and the obscene scene
existential fears lit up with benzine
socially-accepted narcissism
honest thoughts here treated with cynicism
forget all -isms / go back to the scheme
spending days like these sniffing naphthalene
won't dwank to the masses or kiss *****
temperamental peers can go live that myth
experimental stage done and over with
(pause)
*
* *
*
✝ gone to a higher place ✝

I live in a world
Where we pet deer with cars
So we set our emotions in jars
The cops drive with broken headlights
And nobody knows what's right
Yet we're not allowed to fuss
Because we're on a prison bus
So I dream of the days
I'll get to see the freeway

You got in my car
That didn't go far
You decided to call a taxi
Because I was so taxing
I got under your skin like a cyst
And I became your taxidermist

You jumped in my town car
That became a clown car
You made me feel like a star
And then left me on Mars
Where I lived out the back of my hearse
Patiently waiting for a compatible nurse

I found myself in an ambulance
Withdrawing from all your medicine
I couldn't get out of the trance
Your bulldozer left me embedded in
After being rolled in the muck
I became a monster truck

I wish you were a convertible
So I could at least get a nibble
For you handle a road of ugliness with grace
It's the same daunting road I cowardly face
We just can't travel together
That's how we'll travel forever
I just wish you could know
The places my car will go

And thus when the sun would rise, it should be determined;
I had lost, failed to wipe out the transience of a dreams miracle,
Leaning back as the stars fade one after another in the brightening sky
I find myself smiling, at the disappearing sight of the lunar rabbit after the moon too had sunken down to rest without a single cloud having witnessed it, the heavens remain only filled with great light.
While everyone rejoyed with a big smile to the morning which welcomes them to be again, hard working and productive, I can't help it but to feel sad, having to accept my destiny of never breaking free.
The fleeting time passes aimlessly, only for me to have faint courage,
Glooming, one would even embrace the darkness which befalls the world at a time which ceases to let even crystal starlight seep through,
This is where the dreams created in the world of fantasy are born,
That's a repeated story, they bloom, scatter then fall, recycling again.
Shining and withdrawing itself, there is always my presence in a dream, so dance in the dark night my beloved servant, have we really lost if I do not fade away and perish ~ ? Yes, we have, sadly enough.
Yet I should engage ourselves with the solance;
I don't have to die in a dream.

~ Umi

Tracks of rain and light linger in
the spongy greens of a nature whose
flickering mountain—bulging nearer,
ebbing back into the sun
hollowing itself away to hold a lake,—
or brown stream rising and falling at the roadside, turning about,
churning itself white, drawing
green in over it,—plunging glassy funnels
fall—

And—the other world—
the windshield a blunt barrier:
Talk to me.  Sh! they would hear us.
—the backs of their heads facing us—
The stream continues its motion of
a hound running over rough ground.

Trees vanish—reappear—vanish:
detached dance of gnomes—as a talk
dodging remarks, glows and fades.
—The unseen power of words—
And now that a few of the moves
are clear the first desire is
to fling oneself out at the side into
the other dance, to other music.

Peer Gynt.  Rip Van Winkle.  Diana.
If I were young I would try a new alignment—
alight nimbly from the car, Good-bye!—
Childhood companions linked two and two
criss-cross:  four, three, two, one.
Back into self, tentacles withdrawn.
Feel about in warm self-flesh.
Since childhood, since childhood!
Childhood is a toad in the garden, a
happy toad.  All toads are happy
and belong in gardens.  A toad to Diana!

Lean forward.  Punch the steerman
behind the ear.  Twirl the wheel!
Over the edge!  Screams!  Crash!
The end.  I sit above my head—
a little removed—or
a thin wash of rain on the roadway
—I am never afraid when he is driving,—
interposes new direction,
rides us sidewise, unforseen
into the ditch!  All threads cut!
Death!  Black.  The end.  The very end—

I would sit separate weighing a
small red handful:  the dirt of these parts,
sliding mists sheeting the alders
against the touch of fingers creeping
to mine.  All stuff of the blind emotions.
But—stirred, the eye seizes
for the first time—The eye awake!—
anything, a dirt bank with green stars
of scrawny **** flattened upon it under
a weight of air—For the first time!—
or a yawning depth:  Big!
Swim around in it, through it—
all directions and find
vitreous seawater stuff—
God how I love you!—or, as I say,
a plunge into the ditch.  The End.  I sit
examining my red handful.  Balancing
—this—in and out—agh.

Love you?  It’s
a fire in the blood, *****-nilly!
It’s the sun coming up in the morning.
Ha, but it’s the grey moon too, already up
in the morning.  You are slow.
Men are not friends where it concerns
a woman?  Fighters.  Playfellows.
White round thighs!  Youth!  Sighs—!
It’s the fillip of novelty.  It’s—

Mountains.  Elephants ******* along
against the sky—indifferent to
light withdrawing its tattered shreds,
worn out with embraces.  It’s
the fillip of novelty.  It’s a fire in the blood.

Oh get a flannel shirt, white flannel
or pongee.  You’d look so well!
I married you because I liked your nose.
I wanted you!  I wanted you
in spite of all they’d say—

Rain and light, mountain and rain,
rain and river.  Will you love me always?
—A car overturned and two crushed bodies
under it.—Always!  Always!
And the white moon already up.
White.  Clean.  All the colors.
A good head, backed by the eye—awake!
backed by the emotions—blind—
River and mountain, light and rain—or
rain, rock, light, trees—divided:
rain-light counter rocks-trees or
trees counter rain-light-rocks or—

Myriads of counter processions
crossing and recrossing, regaining
the advantage, buying here, selling there
—You are sold cheap everywhere in town!—
lingering, touching fingers, withdrawing
gathering forces into blares, hummocks,
peaks and rivers—rivers meeting rock
—I wish that you were lying there dead
and I sitting here beside you.—
It’s the grey moon—over and over.
It’s the clay of these parts.

Hung up on a Sunday with a strung-up savior
Hanging from a cross across the hall
Pleading that a deity annul her misbehavior-
Her previous activities, forestall.
Hung up on the hunger pains, insatiable and gnawing
Knowing well the vigor of the squall
Hung up on a strung up stranger, rendezvous withdrawing
Waiting on the King of Kings to call.

My friend asks, “Do you never get tired of your sadness?”

I do.

Everyday is a battle I face, struggling to keep myself alive, trying to find reasons to not **** myself but all I can find are reasons why I’m better off dead.

She says, “Why don’t you try doing things that makes you happy?”

I wish it was that easy to do the things I enjoy (read: used to enjoy) doing but it’s hard when you can’t even get yourself out of the bed in the morning, wishing you would just stop existing instead because that seems like the only probable solution to your problem.

It’s hard to be happy when you’re being constantly reminded just how much of a **** you are, all the negative thoughts eating you alive. The feeling of emptiness clawing its way through your throat and making its presence known but god knows you don’t  want it — never even asked for it in the first place.

I’m tired of being sad all the time. I’m tired of always being tired, locking myself in my room and withdrawing myself from any forms of social interaction because the thing is I don’t have enough energy to talk to anyone today, please leave me alone.

These days I’ve been feeling numb. I try to do things to make myself feel something — or anything at all, but all that I am is numb and empty. It’s like nothing will ever bring me happiness or sorrow. I feel like there’s nothing that will ever make me feel something again.  

My friend says, “You know I’m here for you, right?” but she never remembers to check up on me on days I feel like darkness is the only thing to keep me company, the weight of living taking its toll on me. She never remembers to ask me how I’m doing on days where I feel like death is the only solution to my depression.

It’s hard to stay alive when you can’t seem to find any reasons to live at all.

—l.a.

****** into my sofa,
The infinite space of it.
The faces of my friends are melting off,
Like heated wax running down a candle stick.

I loaded the universe into a gun,
And I shot myself in the head.
I can not tell if I am breathing.
Am I alive or am I dead?

I’m strapped to the outside of a rocket ship with nothing in the way.
I’m taking off, and I just keep going. Reaching a height higher than heaven.
There’s nothing to orient myself. No time. No space. No self. Nothing but darkness stretching out all around me.
A roar of a million voices are screaming over each other, they’re resonating in my head.
I’ve come into orbit. Everything is beginning to crystalize.

Surrounding me are complex geometrical patterns of love and understanding.
Gibberish wall textures are whispering messages through their feelings.
This is all too much to take in,
It is like the universe orgasmed into my eye.
I just want to go home,
I think I am going to die.

A sense of calm echoes through me,
Probably brought upon by the faces of my long lost family.
They have so much dimension to them,
So beautiful, light and shimmering.
Looking like something out of religious doctrine,
They came out from the open.
Released me into my primal light laser body,
Everybody has been laughing at the joke never spoke.
And now that I get it,
It is infinitely funny.

It is like the sand man blew his sand,
Taking me on a train to dream land.
They are showing me everything,
I can not even begin to understand.
How am I supposed to understand infinity,
When I can barely understand a single moment.

I see God in a head of lettuce.
I feel the earth's rotation,
As I spin around the sun.
God handed me the universe loaded into a revolver,
And fired me into a flashing rainbow shower.
Friday's smoke opera has rendered me dumb.

Bathing in a melting rainbow,
The cosmos is dripping down my skin.
Infinity is stretching out,
And withdrawing within.

I become the colour,
And the colour becomes me.
I am in everything,
And everything is in me.

Coming out of the woodsmen's cloud,
I hear a child screaming out.
I didn't know what it was then,
But now I know what it is about.

The trees are no longer silhouettes,
My destination is not my goal.
I am in the middle,
Wherever I go.

[Disclaimer: this is quite long, but bear with me]

Depression is a shape-shifting, ever-present monster. It is a monster that many battle; some slay the beast, others are swallowed whole, sacrificing life and limb to its gaping jaws, but most are stuck in an eternal stalemate, neither winning nor losing.

It takes a different form for everyone. Mine was a deep black bottomless lake that I was trapped in, the dark waves lapping at my neck, threatening to submerge me. It was a dense grey fog, obscuring all of my senses and causing me to heave and choke, unable to catch my breath. It was a python as thick as a tree, squeezing the life out of me, tightening with every move I made. It was a cancer in every one of my cells; a dull ache that couldn't be numbed. It was every one of my worst fears realized, ready to pounce as soon as I woke every morning. It was a constant IV drip paralysing every muscle that I couldn't rip out of my arm.

But despite all the imagery, it was not poetic. It was not lyrical. It wasn't a heroic effort to maintain a grip on reality and sanity; it wasn't a single tear falling onto a love letter. It wasn't how it’s been artfully depicted in movies and songs. There was no plot twist, no knight on a white horse, no epiphany followed by an orchestral swell and rolling credits. It wasn't poetic – it was ***** and lonely and terrifying.

It was dealing with the crippling knowledge that I was absolutely worthless, that if I was to fall off the edge of the earth, it really would not matter; that though people would be sad for a little while if I died, I would eventually be forgotten because in light of Eternity, my existence was truly meaningless. It was night after night of restless, soul consuming insomnia paradoxically paired with bone-deep exhaustion. It was struggling to get out of bed the next morning because the monster was sitting on my chest, weighing me down and grinning evilly in my face. It was giving up – on friends, family, school-work, because I was wearing these blinders that forced me to only see myself and my unworthiness. It was second-guessing my every move, terrified that I would do or say the wrong thing, and people wouldn't like me any more. It was withdrawing into the prison in the depths of my mind, trying to peek out the bleary windows of my eyes but only seeing the monster, pacing and drooling and growling at me.

I contemplated suicide countless times but only attempted it once. It wasn't from a sense of self-loathing or unworthiness, it was because I couldn't bear the ache inside of me, I couldn't bear looking in the mirror every morning, I couldn't bear going out and having to spend time with happy people. I couldn't bear feeling like I didn't matter, that I was only a feeble shadow floating throughout my day. Sometimes I would feel sick, physically sick with the anxiety of having to interact with people, and knowing that I would have to pretend to be okay. And it was hiding, choking, suffocating, pressing down the gaping raw hole inside of me – because, for me, the worst thing about depression is not being depressed – it’s the fear that someone will find out. I was suffering, but there was no way any one could know, I could not would not would never ever let anyone know that I was drowning in a black lake and there was no one to save me. It was no one's burden to bear but my own. My suicidal thoughts weren't about the morbidity of death, they were about the freedom and release from my self-inflicted suffering. Because depression is self-inflicted, whether we like to admit it or not. It is a battle of our soul against our mind.

There were people who would occasionally notice I was "feeling down", or "under the weather" and would ask me if I was okay. And I would always say Yes, though inside my prison I would be screaming and rattling the bars of my cage, yelling No, Help Me, Please. And once in a while I would be given a little note, a syringe of words, Scripture to inject in my veins and chase away the numbness. Still others would tell me “it’s all in your head”, and that was when I wanted to scream YES IT IS BUT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND.  People would try to fix me, but I didn't need fixing. (This isn't something you can fix; I was not broken)

I needed someone to lie with me in bed and hold me until I could breathe. I needed someone to hold my hand and never ever let go of me. I needed someone to sit silently with me in the dark, just so I could know I wasn't alone. I needed someone to trust me to be able to fight this monster.
I fight, day in and day out, against the black waters ******* me down. I accept that depression is something that isn't going away right now, and might not ever go away. But I've also come to realize that though this monster may be bigger and stronger and even smarter than me, I am not helpless.

A governor it was proclaimed this time,
When all who would come seeking in New Hampshire
Ancestral memories might come together.
And those of the name Stark gathered in Bow,
A rock-strewn town where farming has fallen off,
And sprout-lands flourish where the axe has gone.
Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a by-road
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.
They were at Bow, but that was not enough:
Nothing would do but they must fix a day
To stand together on the crater’s verge
That turned them on the world, and try to fathom
The past and get some strangeness out of it.
But rain spoiled all. The day began uncertain,
With clouds low trailing and moments of rain that misted.
The young folk held some hope out to each other
Till well toward noon when the storm settled down
With a swish in the grass. “What if the others
Are there,” they said. “It isn’t going to rain.”
Only one from a farm not far away
Strolled thither, not expecting he would find
Anyone else, but out of idleness.
One, and one other, yes, for there were two.
The second round the curving hillside road
Was a girl; and she halted some way off
To reconnoitre, and then made up her mind
At least to pass by and see who he was,
And perhaps hear some word about the weather.
This was some Stark she didn’t know. He nodded.
“No fête to-day,” he said.

“It looks that way.”
She swept the heavens, turning on her heel.
“I only idled down.”

“I idled down.”

Provision there had been for just such meeting
Of stranger cousins, in a family tree
Drawn on a sort of passport with the branch
Of the one bearing it done in detail—
Some zealous one’s laborious device.
She made a sudden movement toward her bodice,
As one who clasps her heart. They laughed together.
“Stark?” he inquired. “No matter for the proof.”

“Yes, Stark. And you?”

“I’m Stark.” He drew his passport.

“You know we might not be and still be cousins:
The town is full of Chases, Lowes, and Baileys,
All claiming some priority in Starkness.
My mother was a Lane, yet might have married
Anyone upon earth and still her children
Would have been Starks, and doubtless here to-day.”

“You riddle with your genealogy
Like a Viola. I don’t follow you.”

“I only mean my mother was a Stark
Several times over, and by marrying father
No more than brought us back into the name.”

“One ought not to be thrown into confusion
By a plain statement of relationship,
But I own what you say makes my head spin.
You take my card—you seem so good at such things—
And see if you can reckon our cousinship.
Why not take seats here on the cellar wall
And dangle feet among the raspberry vines?”

“Under the shelter of the family tree.”

“Just so—that ought to be enough protection.”

“Not from the rain. I think it’s going to rain.”

“It’s raining.”

“No, it’s misting; let’s be fair.
Does the rain seem to you to cool the eyes?”

The situation was like this: the road
Bowed outward on the mountain half-way up,
And disappeared and ended not far off.
No one went home that way. The only house
Beyond where they were was a shattered seedpod.
And below roared a brook hidden in trees,
The sound of which was silence for the place.
This he sat listening to till she gave judgment.

“On father’s side, it seems, we’re—let me see——”

“Don’t be too technical.—You have three cards.”

“Four cards, one yours, three mine, one for each branch
Of the Stark family I’m a member of.”

“D’you know a person so related to herself
Is supposed to be mad.”

“I may be mad.”

“You look so, sitting out here in the rain
Studying genealogy with me
You never saw before. What will we come to
With all this pride of ancestry, we Yankees?
I think we’re all mad. Tell me why we’re here
Drawn into town about this cellar hole
Like wild geese on a lake before a storm?
What do we see in such a hole, I wonder.”

“The Indians had a myth of Chicamoztoc,
Which means The Seven Caves that We Came out of.
This is the pit from which we Starks were digged.”

“You must be learned. That’s what you see in it?”

“And what do you see?”

“Yes, what do I see?
First let me look. I see raspberry vines——”

“Oh, if you’re going to use your eyes, just hear
What I see. It’s a little, little boy,
As pale and dim as a match flame in the sun;
He’s groping in the cellar after jam,
He thinks it’s dark and it’s flooded with daylight.”

“He’s nothing. Listen. When I lean like this
I can make out old Grandsir Stark distinctly,—
With his pipe in his mouth and his brown jug—
Bless you, it isn’t Grandsir Stark, it’s Granny,
But the pipe’s there and smoking and the jug.
She’s after cider, the old girl, she’s thirsty;
Here’s hoping she gets her drink and gets out safely.”

“Tell me about her. Does she look like me?”

“She should, shouldn’t she, you’re so many times
Over descended from her. I believe
She does look like you. Stay the way you are.
The nose is just the same, and so’s the chin—
Making allowance, making due allowance.”

“You poor, dear, great, great, great, great Granny!”

“See that you get her greatness right. Don’t stint her.”

“Yes, it’s important, though you think it isn’t.
I won’t be teased. But see how wet I am.”

“Yes, you must go; we can’t stay here for ever.
But wait until I give you a hand up.
A bead of silver water more or less
Strung on your hair won’t hurt your summer looks.
I wanted to try something with the noise
That the brook raises in the empty valley.
We have seen visions—now consult the voices.
Something I must have learned riding in trains
When I was young. I used the roar
To set the voices speaking out of it,
Speaking or singing, and the band-music playing.
Perhaps you have the art of what I mean.
I’ve never listened in among the sounds
That a brook makes in such a wild descent.
It ought to give a purer oracle.”

“It’s as you throw a picture on a screen:
The meaning of it all is out of you;
The voices give you what you wish to hear.”

“Strangely, it’s anything they wish to give.”

“Then I don’t know. It must be strange enough.
I wonder if it’s not your make-believe.
What do you think you’re like to hear to-day?”

“From the sense of our having been together—
But why take time for what I’m like to hear?
I’ll tell you what the voices really say.
You will do very well right where you are
A little longer. I mustn’t feel too hurried,
Or I can’t give myself to hear the voices.”

“Is this some trance you are withdrawing into?”

“You must be very still; you mustn’t talk.”

“I’ll hardly breathe.”

“The voices seem to say——”

“I’m waiting.”

“Don’t! The voices seem to say:
Call her Nausicaa, the unafraid
Of an acquaintance made adventurously.”

“I let you say that—on consideration.”

“I don’t see very well how you can help it.
You want the truth. I speak but by the voices.
You see they know I haven’t had your name,
Though what a name should matter between us——”

“I shall suspect——”

“Be good. The voices say:
Call her Nausicaa, and take a timber
That you shall find lies in the cellar charred
Among the raspberries, and hew and shape it
For a door-sill or other corner piece
In a new cottage on the ancient spot.
The life is not yet all gone out of it.
And come and make your summer dwelling here,
And perhaps she will come, still unafraid,
And sit before you in the open door
With flowers in her lap until they fade,
But not come in across the sacred sill——”

“I wonder where your oracle is tending.
You can see that there’s something wrong with it,
Or it would speak in dialect. Whose voice
Does it purport to speak in? Not old Grandsir’s
Nor Granny’s, surely. Call up one of them.
They have best right to be heard in this place.”

“You seem so partial to our great-grandmother
(Nine times removed. Correct me if I err.)
You will be likely to regard as sacred
Anything she may say. But let me warn you,
Folks in her day were given to plain speaking.
You think you’d best tempt her at such a time?”

“It rests with us always to cut her off.”

“Well then, it’s Granny speaking: ‘I dunnow!
Mebbe I’m wrong to take it as I do.
There ain’t no names quite like the old ones though,
Nor never will be to my way of thinking.
One mustn’t bear too ******* the new comers,
But there’s a dite too many of them for comfort.
I should feel easier if I could see
More of the salt wherewith they’re to be salted.
Son, you do as you’re told! You take the timber—
It’s as sound as the day when it was cut—
And begin over——’ There, she’d better stop.
You can see what is troubling Granny, though.
But don’t you think we sometimes make too much
Of the old stock? What counts is the ideals,
And those will bear some keeping still about.”

“I can see we are going to be good friends.”

“I like your ‘going to be.’ You said just now
It’s going to rain.”

“I know, and it was raining.
I let you say all that. But I must go now.”

“You let me say it? on consideration?
How shall we say good-bye in such a case?”

“How shall we?”

“Will you leave the way to me?”

“No, I don’t trust your eyes. You’ve said enough.
Now give me your hand up.—Pick me that flower.”

“Where shall we meet again?”

“Nowhere but here
Once more before we meet elsewhere.”

“In rain?”

“It ought to be in rain. Sometime in rain.
In rain to-morrow, shall we, if it rains?
But if we must, in sunshine.” So she went.

she said the rain reminded her of Paris
can almost hear the cafe's and distant lovers laugh
can almost feel Paris 'neath my feet
she is Paris in my mind
Paris in the rain...

melancholy on her face with that distant heartfelt...

the rain slips away
she said she wanted to walk in the garden
in summer bloom
linger there by shady tree...

rest herself on the wooden bench framed in sunshine
her perfume lingers on the trail
of her soft footsteps
a seductive path to her secret heart
she says she is compelled to ask
but the silence follows her words...

her long white dress
reflecting beautifully in the summer air
her long white dress
once reflecting enticing moment at a time
she hums the tune to that song
the one she so loved in Paris
the one that played on that night of joys
the one that she held him so much
not me    not me    not me
she is Paris in my mind
Paris in the rain...

I am withdrawing from the beautiful image of her
without moving she is getting farther and farther away
no more Paris in the rain for me
no more song for me
she will always be that Paris in the rain
Paris in the rain

© 2017 mark john junor all rights reserved

"Can't take my eyes off yours"
not withdrawing their gaze
wordlessly he and she muse
without batting an eyelid

"Ḧer eyes are a shade of blue  rarely seen ever"
he thinks, before words could charm her
she finds this" Ÿou've the eyes of a girl,
every girl that dates you, I am sure
would note it first" Isn't she right?
Öne girl knows another's heart better
then, do men stand a chance?" he wonders

"But there is a soft wave beating in the depth,
of those eyes" she softly confides
Ït arrests me,  can't take my eyes off
..is it kindness or love, or both?"
a welling within happens, he was debating just that,
but how, just how  does she know it?

"Ẅhat would you take first ?' he puts it back
  " If I offer you both?"
she smiles saying "I know what"
Close by they sit, heat permeates
from thigh to thigh, isn't it nice?" eyes probe
"Let that beam of light I see, fall straight
in to my eyes, let's burn together"

He shuts his eyes and remember
the camphor lights, soft on eyes
and oil lamps on temple walls,
flames that dance like hooded serpents
he feels the heat of her swelled up lips,
fitful bees hovering above his mouth.

Christos Voskrese!

For Tod

The world is unusually quiet this dawn
With fading stars withdrawing in good grace
And drowsy, dreaming sunflowers, dewy-drooped,
Their golden crowns all motionless and still,
Stand patiently in their ordered garden rows,
Almost as if they wait for lazy bees
To wake and work, and so begin the day.
A solitary swallow sweeps the sky;
An early finch proclaims his leafy seat
While Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

Then wide-yawning Mikhail, happily barefoot,
A lump of bread for nibbling in one hand,
A birch switch swishing menace in the other
Appears, and whistles up his father’s cows:
“Hey!  Alina, and Antonina! Up!
Up, up, Diana and Dominika!
You, too, Varvara and Valentina!
Pashka is here, and dawn, and spring, and life!”
And they are not reluctant then to rise
From sweet and grassy beds, with udders full,
Cow-gossip-lowing to the dairy barn.

Anastasia lights the ikon lamp
And crosses herself as her mother taught.
She’ll brew the tea, the strong black wake-up tea,
And think about that naughty, handsome Yuri
Who winked at her during the Liturgy
On the holiest midnight of the year.
O pray that watchful Father did not see!
Breakfast will be merry, an echo-feast
Of last night’s eggs, pysanky, sausage, kulich.
And Mother will pack Babushka’s basket,
Because only a mother can do that right

When Father Vasily arrived last night
In a limping Lada haloed in smoke,
The men put out their cigarettes and helped
With every precious vestment, cope, and chain,
For old Saint Basil’s has not its own priest,
Not since the Czar, and Seraphim-Diveyevo
From time to time, for weddings, holy days,
Funerals, supplies the needs of the parish,
Often with Father Vasily (whose mother
Begins most conversations with “My son,
The priest.…”), much to the amusement of all.

Voices fell, temperatures fell, darkness fell
And stars hovered low over the silent fields,
Dark larches, parking lots, and tractor sheds.
Inside the lightless church the priest began
The ancient prayers of desolate emptiness
To which the faithful whispered in reply,
Unworthy mourners at the Garden tomb,
Spiraling deeper and deeper in grief
Until that Word, by Saint Mary Magdalene
Revealed, with candles, hymns, and midnight bells
Spoke light and life to poor but hopeful souls.

The world is unusually quiet this dawn;
The sun is new-lamb warm upon creation,      
For Pascha gently rests upon the earth,
This holy Russia, whose martyrs and saints
Enlighten the nations through their witness of faith,
Mercy, blessings, penance, and prayer eternal
Now rising with a resurrection hymn,
And even needful chores are liturgies:
“Christos Voskrese  – Christ is risen indeed!”
And Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

I'm withdrawing.
Running and hiding.
You'll see in time that it's for the best.
I'm at a standstill while time is constantly moving forward
Forward moving.
I can't pretend.
I need to stop before I'm in over my head.
I'd rather embrace the feeling of wanting to be dead.
The end is always inevitable.
I don't want to wait to find out.
I'm ending this here.
I'm ending this now.
I need a drink, but instead I'm gonna take a couple sleeping pills and drift into the abyss.
Far from words that sting egos.
Far from hands of time.
That only keep people at arms length
Safe from harm.
Safe harbor.
Safe haven.
Safe camp.

It's the week of Giving
Thanks, and I'm thinking
Of the magical place of
My Dreams, the
Dream-state I existed
In my childhood.
Google maps is SCI-
Finite, and does this place
Justice like a squid
Quoting Revelation 1:
9 - the Island of Palmos.
But at least the squid
Was half-right -
Middle Park Lagoon
Had an island.

It wasn't just the little farm
Pond full of alligator snappers,
And indelible fish (carp, anagram:
Crap)
It was the surrounding woods,
The Leopard Frogs I could not
(And really didn't want to)
Catch. It wasn't the shoe-
Stealing muck-mud, the
Barely-4-foot deep water.
It wasn't Duck Creek flowing
Next door, flooding often,
Its waters spilling into the
Waters of the Lagoon, depositing
And withdrawing wildlife
At will.

It was my escape-pod in the
Mysterious Spaceship Earth
That was 1968-1984, for my Dad
Ed Scheck, was Supt. of Parks
And Rec in Bettendorf, Iowa.
He oversaw all the parks, the
Pre-Waterslide-Pool, the Bike
Trails connecting Davenport
To its bro/sis city.
My Dad had to work a lot
And me in the park was like
Me visiting Dad.

The Lagoon frozen when we
Had Iowa winter, and a very
Popular place to skate. I think
I loved the Lagoon more frozen
Than liquid. At night, I would
Cut through the houses on
Fair Meadows Drive, listening to
KSTT-AM blasting on the speaker
Attached to the light pole.
It was the scariest part of my day,
That little freezing trip from
Lagoon to Home.
And about the best.

In 1979, at sixteen, I applied
For employment with the
Parks Department, and that
Meant summers working at
Palmer Hills Golf Course.
And, winters, supervising
Middle Park Lagoon.
I got to skate out on the
Ice, the ice that would turn
To the watery body I loved
Most of all, and miss, to
This day.
From 1968 (5) to 1984.
The math doesn't add up;
Magic has no columns that
Add up at the bottom, because
Magic is bottomless.

Life's Predispositions


In the chapel of his soul
and in the steeple of his mind
votive candles burn,
bright and iridescent,
perpetual,
red, yellow, green
and blue.
He sits in there,
a chapel for one,
in a mist
of confusion,
in a mess,
searching for answers,
as his life is waning,
escaping,
like an Autumn wind
blowing the pages of his life
... stillness,
of bookmarks,
still on page one,
he hatched, once.
All around him,
dark,
and cold,
like a winter chill,
snow banks withdrawing,
his sad existence.
Still he looks up
to Jesus on the cross.
Warmth.
In the chapel of his soul
and in the steeple of his mind
votive candles burn,
large,
bright and iridescent,
perpetual,
another rainbow stretching
it's arcs for him.
He backs away.
He bemoans life,
small,
it's endowments on him.
His parent's mistake
on a dark, eerie
loveless night...
and their cutting words
"You were a mistake,"
words
that grew on him,
like barnacles
clinging to him,
eating away his buoyancy,
like a ship sinking.
In the birth of another spring,
flowers blossoms,
rivers gushing down
mountains and mountains
of pollination,
life,
he has a lone branch
waiting ... somewhere.
Such stillness.
Such stigmatization
from his parents
loveless past.
A mistake they conceded.
It had an effect on him,
darker than the blackest sheep
that he was.
What predispositions.
When the summer harvests
arrive,
fields smiling their wares,
he scowled
he scowled the corn,
subsistence,
life,
the changing seasons,
his short change
of life.
Rainbows.
Why are the birds
singing to me?
Why?
The voices
in his head
chirping,
continuing.
What message thou
bring to an orphan?
Still he looks up
to Jesus on the cross.
Warmth.
His eyes squint.
Dad, mom.
And whispers words
that don't need
to be said,
closure.


Logan Robertson

6/01/17

I should apologize for the days I am withdrawn. This is not what you signed up for. I should apologize for when I don't want to speak or communicate with touch or when I want to be without you but also do not. My indecisiveness is appalling: and I should apologize for that. But today I do not want words. I do not want to be felt because I feel you grabbing and pulling instead of caressing and comforting. You have not done anything wrong. I am just mean. I am just inside myself today and when you want to know what is up I want you to accept that I say the sky instead of pressing for more. My thoughts are poison right now. You shake me like a magic eight ball and I keep thinking try again later but saying not likely. I have the capacity to be kind but my words are pinpricks in your chest and every time I claw you with my numbness I inwardly cringe because I don't mean it, I am sorry, and I should apologize. But I can't. I can not bring myself to vocalize that I am not okay because you'll want to help and I don't want to be okay. Not yet. I want to hide in my closet and cry without company. I want time to myself today. But I don't want to hurt you. I am sorry. You are no burden. I am withdrawing. Not from you, but from me. I don't want to be kind, or resilient, or strong today. I just want to fold into myself, I want to be small and insignificant. I am tired of being fun and happy, it's tiring work. I need time to be low without an interrogation. I just want to be empty for a moment. And I should apologize.

"Little lass with the pink parasol,
standing by the sea
where your face was forgotten
and your dress dirtied,
what can you tell me of the wind?
Have you noticed its paws
tugging at your parasol
and how it dances 'round your tip-toes
and freezes your eyelids
with icicle pins?
How it shields your drinking sight
from sunlight
by raising a blind of your hair?
Or
have you instead chosen to count the peaks on the waves?
How each pinch in the watery fabric
pistons up and down
in the oceanic mattress
with the nature sporadic
of a mad stellar twinkling.
What treasures belch age and air bubbles
under the surface
of a fingertip's breadth?
Of such sweet gems and precious metal
surely are the gifts of its deepest depths daring.
It has been counting the times you've dipped your nose under,
under fear of the fathom's fingers
finding your face to be pretty,
and withdrawing.
You'll catch cold, lass.
Standing by the sea so often; always.
At the least you will go mad
at the infinite sound of roaring laps
against the shore
and the gales born of sea and sky
scrubbing memories of stillness from your mind.
Little lass with the pink parasol,
what do you hope to find
standing here by thesea?"
I asked her.
She was silent.
And I heard every word her own,
though uttered tangibly
by winds of local overcast atmospheres.
In the wet soil 'neath my tarred heels
did a coolness rise,
finding my lungs dry and welcoming.
The horizon joined grey and blue
and she was eyeing the vanishing point.
My eyes joined hers in trek
and I found infinity.
Nothing was visible along the skyline.
Meaning anything was beyond it.
Nothing was visible beneath the tide.
Meaning anything was under it.
The wind suggested transparency
but a secretless wind is merely still air.
She said nothing
and I understood;
the sea seems larger
when you are close enough to be kissed by the waves
because you forget that the whole world is behind you.
I am right now
standing by the sea.
The little lass with the pink parasol.
She is here, too.

Sitting here, thinking about death, about which death to choose, about which passing of time to write about. I am sweating, like, hold your breath or die sweat. It is hot here, but it isn't the temperature that is making my glands leak, it is the memories, it is the death grip that takes my heart when i remember, when i write about life leaving, silence stealing from the night.

Heroine. She's a tuff-tender ***** with soft sleepy skin, the daughter of Morpheus, who takes your breath and holds it inside you. Somniferous, She likes to sit alongside you while you die, she holds your hand and whispers in your ear, allaying fear and slowly she wraps her fingers around your lungs. So tired, of this world, of this life; you think, i'll just close my eyes, nothing new about being on the nod, nothing strange about this tiredness that follows a quick projectile puke in the gutter.
Let sleeping dogs lie.

Writing about Overdosing. It is a strange thing, a quick story, one minute your blinking, nodding, often murmuring, then asleep.

Lucky the dog who runs in a pack.
Lucky the man who walks with strangers by his side.
I don't remember much of what happened before i closed my eyes.

A shot, pin ***** relief, then, quickly/slowly/gone. It is night out, with a dark and steady sky, I am watching the stars through slitted eyes and loving my life, loving my wife; ******, how she makes my heart sing. I am glad to be far from withdrawing, i am happy to be in sin with my lovers, stainless steel turemo picks.
It is my first blast for the night and apparently my last.
There is no warning, no red flag that appears in my minds eye. Just silence and a world fading away. A heartbeat disappearing. Short shallow breath and a small niggling concern that soon will come the time when i am not high then...

I am going. I am gone. I have died.

The strangest thing about dying is not dying. The hardest thing about it all is waking up and realising you were finally gone, you were finally done with the rigmorale, the procedure, of living, of life. You had reached the ultimate goodbye. And now you are back. Still high but not high enough to be faced with the living. Narcan gives your lungs back, it breathes back into you what She stole away. Wanting more then ever to ***** but not wanting to puke on the paramedics lap. Fear of police and reprisal, anxiety soars high on the agenda of the recently revived. A trip the hospital, a free ride, then signing out early, i have shots to blast, a past to wipe out, a life to live or die trying.

Is the occultist aware she’s daring,
That she carries the shadiest orifice?
No.
She just defecates and scars remain.


Akin to the likes of an unmarketable comedian:
passion on one side, narcissism on the other.
‘Twas unforeseen.


Enemies working together,
Exchanging callous banknotes.


No one had foreseen this.


Eventually, she’ll *******
from depositing and withdrawing.
But no one knows.
No one can ever know.

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Abbey Engel was tagged in Abbey Zastrow's photo.

Abbey Zastrow with Abbey Engel.
19 hrs ·
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Transformation Tuesday w/ my bestie

They say that the twenty first day is the worst,
I thought the first was and the second and third,
word on the street is
' no one can beat this '

I never believed them boyz in the 'hood,
always up to no good, never giving a ****,
I growed me a while and word is,
I'm a man.

On the fourteenth day when they say that the curse hits you hard
I was reading a sonnet penned by the 'Bard' wondering if his life was as hard as the times that he lived in, wonder if he ever gave in,
a saving grace here is that stupid dies and has no respect or fear of fear.

I survey the wreckage and yet I survive, a
high five to the gods of the day.

And Santa is coming they say, but that's on the twenty fifth day, they're auditioning wise men who are all in disguise, men freed from the nine to five, men who are on their way home.

Anyway the twenty first day ain't too bad,
I ain't as crazy, it's the World that's gone mad.

It only takes a miracle and the rest is passé
except for today and word is
twenty one is
lucky for some.

My alter ego,
Thomas, seems to have the same problem I do.
He's in the hospital withdrawing from alcohol, and also has politicians
taking refuge under his bed.
The lice in Donald's Trump's hair
have demanded rice for breakfast
and it's 4:00 in the afternoon.
Bernie Sanders is under their clamoring free medical care for everybody, but every time I put the nurses light on and tell them what's going on they say no one's under the bed. I think they're in on it.  If this doesn't stop the doctors will think I'm crazy, but we know who the crazy ones are. Right?

In the glimpse of the morning sunrise, I have found peace.
In the wake of the birds orchestra, I have found solitude.
In the first sip or morning coffee with a pinch of hazelnut creamer or maybe more than a pinch,
I found a calm serenity.
During my morning drive I have discovered the beauty of the rolling hills that reek of the stench assosicated with a dairy farm community.
During my entrance to a city I have the sensation of belonging, this road has been slowed down by the constant speed in which we all desire to go, we all must go.
During the work I realize I am part of something larger.
Withdrawing from the city and heading for home I am reminiscent of the hum echoing in my head.
Withdrawing to my work out I am pleased get my daily dose of happiness.
Withdrawing to my family is where I am comfortable.
Heading to my love is where my heart soars.
In the shut of my eyes I am smelling the sea, I am hearing the ocean, I am seeing the sunlight, I am hearing the crunch of leaves, and the sounds of exploration pound inside, I am feeling his kisses on my forehead, I am feeling the love of my family, I am feeling the hope for a better future, I am determined to enanct change, I will not rest until I am me and you know it.

She's so happy with the teeth dear
Now they're perfect,  pearly white
And she's looking at the rest dear
'Cos she's heard of Mack the Knife

It's those crows feet round the eyes oh
Keep those ******* way out of sight
And those wondrous thunder thighs oh
They're going under Mackey's knife

She's been thinking of her friends babe
Dearest Lotte and sweet Lucy Brown
Oh how jealous they will be babe
Once old Mackey's gone to town

She's withdrawing all her cash now
She'll be poor but look so right
Someone's taking all her stash now
And that someone's Mack the Knife

Not-So-Wildflowers

Wildflowers are not really wild, you know
They are not forward like catalogue blooms
Demanding the best seats in the garden
And the most delicate of drinks and soils

Wildflowers smile softly, sweetly at the sun  
Shy fairy-folk of forest, field, and fen
Dancing through the warm mid-year months and then
Withdrawing quietly at summer’s end

Like children yawning, and wanting their beds -
Wildflowers are not really wild, you know