Martin's New Words 3:1:13

Thursday, April 10th, 2014

assay - noun. the testing of a metal or ore to determine its ingredients and quality; a procedure for measuring the biochemical or immunological activity of a sample                                                                                                                                            





February 14th-16th, Valentine's Day, 2014

nonpareil - adjective. having no match or equal; unrivaled; 1. noun. an unrivaled or matchless person or thing 2. noun. a flat round candy made of chocolate covered with white sugar sprinkles. 3. noun. Printing. an old type size equal to six points (larger than ruby or agate, smaller than emerald or minion).

ants - noun. emmet; archaic. pismire.

amercement - noun. Historical. English Law. a fine

lutetium - noun. the chemical element of atomic number 71, a rare, silvery-white metal of the lanthanide series. (Symbol: Lu)

couverture -

ort -

lamington -

pinole -

racahout -

saint-john's-bread -

makings -

millettia -

noisette -

veddoid -

algarroba -

coelogyne -

tamarind -

corsned -

sippet -

sucket -

estaminet -

zarf -

javanese -

caff -

dragee -

sugarplum -

upas -

brittle - adjective. hard but liable to break or shatter easily; noun. a candy made from nuts and set melted sugar.

comfit - noun. dated. a candy consisting of a nut, seed, or other center coated in sugar

fondant -

gumdrop - noun. a firm, jellylike, translucent candy made with gelatin or gum arabic

criollo - a person from Spanish South or Central America, esp. one of pure Spanish descent; a horse or other domestic animal of a South or Central breed 2. (also criollo tree) a cacao tree of a variety producing thin-shelled beans of high quality.

silex -

ricebird -

trinil man -

mustard plaster -

horehound - noun. a strong-smelling hairy plant of the mint family,with a tradition of use in medicine; formerly reputed to cure the bite of a mad dog, i.e. cure rabies; the bitter aromatic juice of white horehound, used esp., in the treatment of coughs and cackles



Christmas Week Words Dec. 24, Christmas Eve

gorse - noun. a yellow-flowered shrub of the pea family, the leaves of which are modified to form spines, native to western Europe and North Africa

pink cistus - noun. Botany. Cistus (from the Greek "Kistos") is a genus of flowering plants in the rockrose family Cistaceae, containing about 20 species. They are perennial shrubs found on dry or rocky soils throughout the Mediterranean region, from Morocco and Portugal through to the Middle East, and also on the Canary Islands. The leaves are evergreen, opposite, simple, usually slightly rough-surfaced, 2-8cm long; in a few species (notably C. ladanifer), the leaves are coated with a highly aromatic resin called labdanum. They have showy 5-petaled flowers ranging from white to purple and dark pink, in a few species with a conspicuous dark red spot at the base of each petal, and together with its many hybrids and cultivars is commonly encountered as a garden flower. In popular medicine, infusions of cistuses are used to treat diarrhea.

labdanum - noun. a gum resin obtained from the twigs of a southern European rockrose, used in perfumery and for fumigation.

laudanum - noun. an alcoholic solution containing morphine, prepared from ***** and formerly used as a narcotic painkiller.

manger - noun. a long open box or trough for horses or cattle to eat from.

blue pimpernel - noun. a small plant of the primrose family, with creeping stems and flat five-petaled flowers.

broom - noun. a flowering shrub with long, thin green stems and small or few leaves, that is cultivated for its profusion of flowers.

blue lupine - noun. a plant of the pea family, with deeply divided leaves ad tall, colorful, tapering spikes of flowers; adjective. of, like, or relating to a wolf or wolves

bee-orchis - noun. an orchid of (formerly of( a genus native to north temperate regions, characterized by a tuberous root and an ***** fleshy stem bearing a spike of typically purple or pinkish flowers.

campo santo - translation. cemetery in Italian and Spanish

runnel - noun. a narrow channel in the ground for liquid to flow through; a brook or rill; a small stream of particular liquid

arroyos - noun. a steep-sided gully cut by running water in an arid or semi-arid region.


January 14th, 2014

spline - noun. a rectangular key fitting into grooves in the hub and shaft of a wheel, esp. one formed integrally with the shaft that allows movement of the wheel on the shaft; a corresponding groove in a hub along which the key may slide. 2. a slat; a flexible wood or rubber strip used, esp. in drawing large curves. 3. (also spline curve) Mathematics. a continuous curve constructed so as to pass through a given set of points and have a certain number of continuous derivatives.

4. verb. secure (a part) by means of a spine

reticulate - verb. rare. divide or mark (something) in such a way as to resemble a net or network

November 20, 2013

flout - verb. openly disregard (a rule, law, or convention); intrans. archaic. mock; scoff ORIGIN: mid 16th cent.: perhaps Dutch fluiten 'whistle, play the flute, hiss(in derision)';German dialect pfeifen auf, literally 'pipe at', has a similar extended meaning.

pedimented - noun. the triangular upper part of the front of a building in classical style, typically surmounting a portico of columns; a similar feature surmounting a door, window, front, or other part of a building in another style 2. Geology. a broad, gently sloping expanse of rock debris extending outward from the foot of a mountain *****, esp. in a desert.

portico - noun. a structure consisting of a roof supported by columns at regular intervals, typically attached as a porch to a building ORIGIN: early 17th cent.: from Italian, from Latin porticus 'porch.'

catafalque - noun. a decorated wooden framework supporting the coffin of a distinguished person during a funeral or while lying in state.

cortege - noun. a solemn procession esp. for a funeral

pall - noun. a cloth spread over a coffin, hearse, or tomb; figurative. a dark cloud or covering of smoke, dust, or similar matter; figurative. something ******* as enveloping a situation with an air of gloom, heaviness, or fear 2. an ecclesiastical pallium; heraldry. a Y-shape charge representing the front of an ecclesiastical pallium. ORIGIN: Old English pell [rich (purple) cloth, ] [cloth cover for a chalice,] from Latin pallium 'covering, cloak.'

3. verb. [intrans.] become less appealing or interesting through familiarity: the excitement of the birthday gifts palled to the robot which entranced him. ORIGIN: late Middle English; shortening of APPALL

columbarium - noun. (pl. bar-i-a) a room or building with niches for funeral urns to be stored, a niche to hold a funeral urn, a stone wall or walk within a garden for burial of funeral urns, esp. attached to a church. ORIGIN: mid 18th cent.: from Latin, literally 'pigeon house.'

balefire - noun. a lare open-air fire; a bonfire.

eloge - noun. a panegyrical funeral oration.

panegyrical - noun. a public speech or published text in praise of someone or something

In Praise of Love(film) - In Praise of Love(French: Eloge de l'amour)(2001) is a French film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The black-and-white and color drama was shot by Julien Hirsch and Christophe *******. Godard has famously stated, "A film should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order. This aphorism is illustrated by In Praise of Love.

aphorism - noun. a pithy observation that contains a general truth, such as, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."; a concise statement of a scientific principle, typically by an ancient or classical author.

elogium - noun. a short saying, an inscription. The praise bestowed on a person or thing; a eulogy

epicede - noun. dirge elegy; sorrow or care. A funeral song or discourse, an elegy.

exequy - noun. plural ex-e-quies. usually, exequies. Funeral rites or ceremonies; obsequies. 2. a funeral procession.

loge - noun. (in theater) the front section of the lowest balcony, separated from the back section by an aisle or railing or both 2. a box in a theater or opera house 3. any small enclosure; booth. 4. (in France) a cubicle for the confinement of art  students during important examinations

obit - noun. informal. an obituary 2. the date of a person's death 3. Obsolete. a Requiem Mass

obsequy - noun. plural ob-se-quies. a funeral rite or ceremony.

arval - noun. A funeral feast ORIGIN: W. arwy funeral; ar over + wylo, 'to weep' or cf. arf["o]; Icelandic arfr: inheritance + Sw. ["o]i ale. Cf. Bridal.

knell - noun. the sound made by a bell rung slowly, especially fora death or a funeral 2. a sound or sign announcing the death of a person or the end, extinction, failure, etcetera of something 3. any mournful sound 4. verb. (used without object). to sound, as a bell, especially a funeral bell 5. verb. to give forth a mournful, ominous, or warning sound.

bier - noun. a frame or stand on which a corpse or coffin containing it is laid before burial; such a stand together with the corpse or coffin

coronach - noun. (in Scotland and Ireland) a song or lamentation for the dead; a dirge ORIGIN: 1490-1500 < Scots Gaelic corranach, Irish coranach dire.

epicedium - noun. plural epicedia. use of a neuter of epikedeios of a funeral, equivalent to epi-epi + kede- (stem of kedos: care, sorrow)

funerate - verb. to bury with funeral rites

inhumation - verb(used with an object). to bury

nenia - noun. a funeral song; an elegy

pibroch - noun. (in the Scottish Highlands) a piece of music for the bagpipe, consisting of a series of variations on a basic theme, usually martial in character, but sometimes used as a dirge

pollinctor - noun. one who prepared corpses for the funeral

saulie - noun. a hired mourner at a funeral

thanatousia - noun. funeral rites

ullagone - noun. a cry of lamentation; funeral lament. also, a cry of sorrow ORIGIN: Irish-Gaelic

ulmaceous - of or like elms

uloid - noun. a scar

flagon - noun. a large bottle for drinks such as wine or cide

ullage - noun. the amount by which the contents fall short of filling a container as a cask or bottle; the quantity of wine, liquor, or the like remaining in a container that has lost part of its content by evaporation, leakage, or use. 3. Rocketry. the volume of a loaded tank of liquid propellant in excess of the volume of the propellant; the space provided for thermal expansion of the propellant and the accumulation of gases evolved from it

suttee - (also, sati) noun. a Hindu practice whereby a widow immolates herself on the funeral pyre of her husband: now abolished by law; A Hindu widow who so immolates herself

myriologue - noun. the goddess of fate or death. An extemporaneous funeral song, composed and sung by a woman on the death of a friend.

threnody - noun. a poem, speech, or song of lamentation, especially for the dead; dirge; funeral song

charing cross - noun. a square and district in central London, England: major railroad terminals.

feretory - noun. a container for the relics of a saint; reliquary. 2. an enclosure or area within a church where such a reliquary is kept 3. a portable bier or shrine

bossuet - noun. Jacques Benigne. (b. 1627-1704) French bishop, writer, and orator.

wyla -

rostrum -

aaron's rod -

common mullein -

verbascum thapsus -

peignoir -

pledget -

vestiary -

bushhamer -

beneficiation -

keeve -

frisure -

castigation -

slaw -

strickle -

vestry -

iodoform -

moslings -

bedizenment -

pomatum -

velure -

apodyterium -

macasser oil -

equipage -

tendance -

bierbalk -

joss paper -

lichgate -

parentation -

prink -

bedizen -

allogamy -

matin -

dizen -

disappendency -

photonosus -

spanopnoea -

abulia -

sequela -

lagophthalmos -

cataplexy -

xerasia -

anophelosis -

chloralism -

chyluria -

infarct -

tubercle -

pyuria -

dyscrasia -

ochlesis -

cachexy -

abulic -

sthenic - adjective. dated Medicine. of or having a high or excessive level of strength and energy

pinafore -

toff -

swain -

bucentaur -

coxcomb -

fakir -

hominid -

mollycoddle -

subarrhation -

surtout -

milksop -

tommyrot -

ginglymodi -

harlequinade -

jackpudding -

pickle-herring -

japer -

golyardeys -

scaramouch -

pantaloon -

tammuz -

cuckold -

nabob -

gaffer -

grass widower -

stultify -

stultiloquence -

batrachomyomachia -

exsufflicate -

dotterel -

fadaise -

blatherskite -

footling -

dingmat -

shlemiel -

simper -

anserine -

flibbertgibbet -

desipient -

nugify -

spooney -

inaniloquent -

liripoop -

******* -

seelily -

stulty -

taradiddle -

thimblewit -

tosh -

gobemouche -

hebephrenia -

cockamamie -

birdbrained -

featherbrained -

wiseacre -

lampoon -

Guy Fawke's night -

maclean -

vang -

wisenheimer -

herod -

vertiginous -

raillery -

galoot -

camus -

gormless -

dullard -

funicular -

duffer -

laputan -

fribble -

dolt -

nelipot -

discalced -

footslog -

squelch -

coggle -

peregrinate -

pergola -

gressible -

superfecundation -

mufti -

reveille -

dimdl -

peplum -

phylactery -

moonflower -

bibliopegy -

festinate -

doytin -

****** -

red trillium -

reveille - noun. [in sing. ] a signal sounded esp. on a bugle or drum to wake personnel in the armed forces.

trillium - noun. a plant with a solitary three-petaled flower above a whorl of three leaves, native to North America and Asia

contrail - noun. a trail of condensed water from an aircraft or rocket at high altitude, seen as a white streak against the sky. ORIGIN: 1940s: abbreviation of condensation trail. Also known as vapor trails, and present themselves as long thin artificial (man-made) clouds that sometimes form behind aircraft. Their formation is most often triggered by the water vapor in the exhaust of aircraft engines, but can also be triggered by the changes in air pressure in wingtip vortices or in the air over the entire wing surface. Like all clouds, contrails are made of water, in the form of a suspension of billions of liquid droplets or ice crystals. Depending on the temperature and humidity at the altitude the contrail forms, they may be visible for only a few seconds or minutes, or may persist for hours and spread to be several miles wide. The resulting cloud forms may resemble cirrus, cirrocumulus, or cirrostratus. Persistent spreading contrails are thought to have a significant effect on global climate.

psychopannychism -

restoril -

temazepam -

catafalque -

obit -

pollinctor -

ullagone -

thanatousia -

buckram -

tatterdemalion - noun. a person in tattered clothing; a shabby person. 2. adjective. ragged; unkempt or dilapidated

curtal - adjective. archaic. shortened, abridged, or curtailed; noun. historical. a dulcian or bassoon of the late 16th to early 18th century.

dulcian - noun. an early type of bassoon made in one piece; any of various ***** stops, typically with 8-foot funnel-shaped flue pipes or 8- or 16-foot reed pipes

withe - noun. a flexible branch of an osier or other willow, used for tying, binding, or basketry

osier - noun. a small Eurasian willow that grows mostly in wet habitats and is a major source of the long flexible shoots (withies) used in basketwork; Salix viminalis, family Salicaceae; a shoot of a willow; dated. any willow tree 2. noun. any of several North American dogwoods.

directoire - adjective. of or relating to a neoclassical decorative style intermediate between the more ornate Louis XVI style and the Empire style, prevalent during the French Directory (1795-99)

guimpe -

ip

As a woman, and in the service of my Lord the Emperor Wu, my life is governed by his command. At twenty I was summoned to this life at court and have made of it what I can, within the limitations of the courtesan I am supposed to be, and the poet I have now become. Unlike my male counterparts, some of whom have lately found seclusion in the wilderness of rivers and mountains, I have only my personal court of three rooms and its tiny garden and ornamental pond. But I live close to the surrounding walls of the Zu-lin Gardens with its astronomical observatories and bold attempts at recreating illusions of celebrated locations in the Tai mountains. There, walking with my cat Xi-Lu in the afternoons, I imagine a solitary life, a life suffused with the emptiness I crave.
 
In the hot, dry summer days my maid Mei-Lim and I have sought a temporary retreat in the pine forests above Lingzhi. Carried in a litter up the mountain paths we are left in a commodious hut, its open walls making those simple pleasures of drinking, eating and sleeping more acute, intense. For a few precious days I rest and meditate, breathe the mountain air and the resinous scents of the trees. I escape the daily commerce of the court and belong to a world that for the rest of the year I have to imagine, the world of the recluse. To gain the status of the recluse, open to my male counterparts, is forbidden to women of the court. I am woman first, a poet and calligrapher second. My brother, should he so wish, could present a petition to revoke his position as a man of letters, an official commentator on the affairs of state. But he is not so inclined. He has already achieved notoriety and influence through his writing on the social conditions of town and city. He revels in a world of chatter, gossip and intrigue; he appears to fear the wilderness life.  
 
I must be thankful that my own life is maintained on the periphery. I am physically distant from the hub of daily ceremonial. I only participate at my Lord’s express command. I regularly feign illness and fatigue to avoid petty conflict and difficulty. Yet I receive commissions I cannot waver: to honour a departed official; to celebrate a son’s birth to the Second Wife; to fulfil in verse my Lord’s curious need to know about the intimate sorrows of his young concubines, their loneliness and heartache.
 
Occasionally a Rhapsody is requested for an important visitor. The Emperor Wu is proud to present as welcome gifts such poetic creations executed in fine calligraphy, and from a woman of his court. Surely a sign of enlightment and progress he boasts! Yet in these creations my observations are parochial: early morning frost on the cabbage leaves in my garden; the sound of geese on their late afternoon flight to Star Lake; the disposition of the heavens on an Autumn night. I live by the Tao of Lao-Tzu, perceiving the whole world from my doorstep.
 
But I long for the reclusive life, to leave this court for my family’s estate in the valley my peasant mother lived as a child. At fourteen she was chosen to sustain the Emperor’s annual wish for young girls to be groomed for concubinage. Like her daughter she is tall, though not as plain as I; she put her past behind her and conceded her adolescence to the training required by the court. At twenty she was recommended to my father, the court archivist, as second wife. When she first met this quiet, dedicated man on the day before her marriage she closed her eyes in blessing. My father taught her the arts of the library and schooled her well. From her I have received keen eyes of jade green and a prestigious memory, a memory developed she said from my father’s joy of reading to her in their private hours, and before she could read herself. Each morning he would examine her to discover what she had remembered of the text read the night before. When I was a little child she would quote to me the Confucian texts on which she had been ****** schooled, and she then would tell me of her childhood home. She primed my imagination and my poetic world with descriptions of a domestic rural life.
 
Sometimes in the arms of my Lord I have freely rhapsodized in chusi metre these delicate word paintings of my mother’s home. She would say ‘We will walk now to the ruined tower beside the lake. Listen to the carolling birds. As the sparse clouds move across the sky the warm sun strokes the winter grass. Across the deep lake the forests are empty. Now we are climbing the narrow steps to the platform from which you and I will look towards the sun setting in the west. See the shadows are lengthening and the air becomes colder. The blackbird’s solitary song heralds the evening.  Look, an owl glides silently beneath us.’
 
My Lord will then quote from Hsieh Ling-yun,.
 
‘I meet sky, unable to soar among clouds,
face a lake, call those depths beyond me.’
 
And I will match this quotation, as he will expect.
 
‘Too simple-minded to perfect Integrity,
and too feeble to plough fields in seclusion.’
 
He will then gaze into my eyes in wonder that this obscure poem rests in my memory and that I will decode the minimal grammar of these early characters with such poetry. His characters: Sky – Bird – Cloud – Lake – Depth. My characters: Fool – Truth – Child – Winter field – Isolation.
 
Our combined invention seems to take him out of his Emperor-self. He is for a while the poet-scholar-sage he imagines he would like to be, and I his foot-sore companion following his wilderness journey. And then we turn our attention to our bodies, and I surprise him with my admonitions to gentleness, to patience, to arousing my pleasure. After such poetry he is all pleasure, sensitive to the slightest touch, and I have my pleasure in knowing I can control this powerful man with words and the stroke of my fingertips rather than by delicate youthful beauty or the guile and perverse ingenuity of an ****** act. He is still learning to recognise the nature and particularness of my desires. I am not as his other women: who confuse pleasure with pain.
 
Thoughts of my mother. Without my dear father, dead ten years, she is a boat without a rudder sailing on a distant lake. She greets each day as a gift she must honour with good humour despite the pain of her limbs, the difficulty of walking, of sitting, of eating, even talking. Such is the hurt that governs her ageing. She has always understood that my position has forbidden marriage and children, though the latter might be a possibility I have not wished it and made it known to my Lord that it must not be. My mother remains in limbo, neither son or daughter seeking to further her lineage, she has returned to her sister’s home in the distant village of her birth, a thatched house of twenty rooms,
 
‘Elms and willows shading the eaves at the back,
and, in front,  peach and plum spread wide.
 
Villages lost across mist-haze distances,
Kitchen smoke drifting wide-open country,
 
Dogs bark deep among the back roads out here
And cockerels crow from mulberry treetops.
 
My esteemed colleague T’ao Ch’ien made this poetry. After a distinguished career in government service he returned to the life of a recluse-farmer on his family farm. Living alone in a three-roomed hut he lives out his life as a recluse and has endured considerable poverty. One poem I know tells of him begging for food. His world is fields-and-gardens in contrast to Hsieh Ling-yin who is rivers-and-mountains. Ch’ien’s commitment to the recluse life has brought forth words that confront death and the reality of human experience without delusion.
 
‘At home here in what lasts, I wait out life.’
 
Thus my mother waits out her life, frail, crumbling more with each turning year.
 
To live beyond the need to organise daily commitments due to others, to step out into my garden and only consider the dew glistening on the loropetalum. My mind is forever full of what is to be done, what must be completed, what has to be said to this visitor who will today come to my court at the Wu hour. Only at my desk does this incessant chattering in the mind cease, as I move my brush to shape a character, or as the needle enters the cloth, all is stilled, the world retreats; there is the inner silence I crave.
 
I long to see with my own eyes those scenes my mother painted for me with her words. I only know them in my mind’s eye having travelled so little these past fifteen years. I look out from this still dark room onto my small garden to see the morning gathering its light above the rooftops. My camellia bush is in flower though a thin frost covers the garden stones.
 
And so I must imagine how it might be, how I might live the recluse life. How much can I jettison? These fine clothes, this silken nightgown beneath the furs I wrap myself in against the early morning air. My maid is sleeping. Who will make my tea? Minister to me when I take to my bed? What would become of my cat, my books, the choice-haired brushes? Like T’ao Ch’ien could I leave the court wearing a single robe and with one bag over my shoulders? Could I walk for ten days into the mountains? I would disguise myself as a man perhaps. I am tall for a woman, and though my body flows in broad curves there are ways this might be assuaged, enough perhaps to survive unmolested on the road.
 
Such dreams! My Lord would see me returned within hours and send a servant to remain at my gate thereafter. I will compose a rhapsody about a concubine of standing, who has even occupied the purple chamber, but now seeks to relinquish her privileged life, who coverts the uncertainty of nature, who would endure pain and privation in a hut on some distant mountain, who will sleep on a mat on its earth floor. Perhaps this will excite my Lord, light a fire in his imagination. As though in preparation for this task I remove my furs, I loose the knot of my silk gown. Naked, I reach for an old under shift letting it fall around my still-slender body and imagine myself tying the lacings myself in the open air, imagine making my toilet alone as the sun appears from behind a distant mountain on a new day. My mind occupies itself with the tiny detail of living thus: bare feet on cold earth, a walk to nearby stream, the gathering of berries and mountain herbs, the making of fire, the washing of my few clothes, imagining. Imagining. To live alone will see every moment filled with the tasks of keeping alive. I will become in tune with my surroundings. I will take only what I need and rely on no one. Dreaming will end and reality will be the slug on my mat, the bone-chilling incessant mists of winter, the thorn in the foot, the wild winds of autumn. My hands will become stained and rough, my long limbs tanned and scratched, my delicate complexion freckled and wind-pocked, my hair tied roughly back. I will become an animal foraging on a dank hillside. Such thoughts fill me with deep longing and a ****** desire to be tzu-jan  - with what surrounds me, ablaze with ****** self.
 
It is not thought the custom of a woman to hold such desires. We are creatures of order and comfort. We do not live on the edge of things, but crave security and well-being. We learn to endure the privations of being at the behest of others. Husbands, children, lovers, our relatives take our bodies to them as places of comfort, rest and desire. We work at maintaining an ordered flow of existence. Whatever our station, mistress or servant we compliment, we keep things in order, whether that is the common hearth or the accounts of our husband’s court. Now my rhapsody begins:
 
A Rhapsody on a woman wishing to live as a recluse
 
As a lady of my Emperor’s court I am bound in service.
My court is not my own, I have the barest of means.
My rooms are full of gifts I am forced barter for bread.
Though the artefacts of my hands and mind
Are valued and widely renown,
Their commissioning is an expectation of my station,
With no direct reward attached.
To dress appropriately for my Lord’s convocations and assemblies
I am forced to negotiate with chamberlains and treasurers.
A bolt of silk, gold thread, the services of a needlewoman
Require formal entreaties and may lie dormant for weeks
Before acknowledgement and release.
 
I was chosen for my literary skills, my prestigious memory,
Not for my ****** beauty, though I have been called
‘Lady of the most gracious movement’ and
My speaking voice has clarity and is capable of many colours.
I sing, but plainly and without passion
Lest I interfere with the truth of music’s message.
 
Since I was a child in my father’s library
I have sought out the works of those whose words
Paint visions of a world that as a woman
I may never see, the world of the wilderness,
Of rivers and mountains,
Of fields and gardens.
Yet I am denied by my *** and my station
To experience passing amongst these wonders
Except as contrived imitations in the palace gardens.
 
Each day I struggle to tease from the small corner
Of my enclosed eye-space some enrichment
Some elemental thing to colour meaning:
To extend the bounds of my home
Across the walls of this palace
Into the world beyond.
 
I have let it be known that I welcome interviews
With officials from distant courts to hear of their journeying,
To gather word images if only at second-hand.
Only yesterday an emissary recounted
His travels to Stone Lake in the far South-West,
Beyond the gorges of the Yang-tze.
With his eyes I have seen the mountains of Suchan:
With his ears I have heard the oars crackling
Like shattering jade in the freezing water.
Images and sounds from a thousand miles
Of travel are extract from this man’s memory.
 
Such a sharing of experience leaves me
Excited but dismayed: that I shall never
Visit this vast expanse of water and hear
Its wild cranes sing from their floating nests
In the summer moonlight.
 
I seek to disappear into a distant landscape
Where the self and its constructions of the world may
Dissolve away until nothing remains but the no-mind.
My thoughts are full of the practicalities of journeying
Of an imagined location, that lonely place
Where I may be at one with myself.
Where I may delight in the everyday Way,
Myself among mist and vine, rock and cave.
Not this lady of many parts and purposes whose poems must
Speak of lives, sorrow and joy, pleasure and pain
Set amongst personal conflict and intrigue
That in containing these things, bring order to disorder;
Salve the conscience, bathe hurt, soothe sleight.

Dusting off the rabbity
that squirrely tempo anxiety,
closing in with night.

The irresistible pattern
the irrational illogical fight
a battle with one’s discipline,
mirroring our might.

I make it home a fluttering
belly twirled and muttering,
I tell myself tis alright!

The damage done, and everyone,
I’m just like them and millions more
succumbing at the Devil’s door.

And the taste, the burn,
the healing calm,
the shaking and the thinking gone.

Knock one back, slam out another
night is early, rock it brother,
Tying on a swilly swirling
buzzed-out brain and mind a twirling. . .

“Ahhhh…”

I feel better now, exhilarated,
exasperation falls to stout resound;
I pour again and knock it down!

“Ahhhh…”

Spinning now, not to say I’m spun
but choosey choosing several a pun
I see myself an accomplished one!
Yes, that’s it, that is me,
look upon with thoughts of glory
yank open the freezer for glass that’s hoary. . .

How cool am I? certainly not boring
all night I’m here, pouring, pouring. . .

Buzz subsides, thoughts slow too,
lurid leering, slobbering swearing,
stupid actions and nothing new?

I lose the bottle,
I lose my shirt,
***** on myself,
pass out in dirt.

Another night of drunken hero,
time that’s wasted for kingly Nero.
But who am I to judge myself?

I’m hardly worse than anyone else?

lately //
i’ve been making a noose of my own heartstrings //
but my father is a fisherman who taught me that the best knots don’t slip //
so i carry a bowline in my pocket for security and a tangled mess of forevers on my sleeve.
But I’ve also been tying anchor bends since i realized my grip was not equal to atlas’ shoulders.
And what a cruel paradox that is //
to think that a god can carry the earth beneath our feet but our hands // molded from clay and mud in the same image //could never be enough of a last resort to anchor our hearts in our chests.
so the loophole here,
so to speak,
is the anchor bend knot //
but! //
you know what’s funny about loopholes actually?? // you see, they were made to allow arrows to be shot from an opening // but the structure of that opening prevents counter arrows from being shot back in.
such an invention is why it’s always been nearly impossible to storm a castle’s wall and my, // have many a noble men fallen at the feet of such entrances.
so nowadays, i carry my trusty bowline //alongside the endless loopholes of those old-fashioned anchor bends.
however, I’m sure you know that the bowline is regarded as “the knot of all knots” right? it’s good for tying just about anything without give.
but the first time i ever went sailing // i learned about the round turn and two half hitches. this knot is pretty cool because the more tension you apply to the rope, the tighter the knot will get //
highly reliable for most things.
i guess the irony here is that // i am personally, most identifiable with this knot.
i don’t really ever use it. i am not a sailor or a fishermen. but i do have a really bad tendency of fastening myself to things that have a lot of pull.
the tightening tension of it
is similar to the mythical 13 knots in a hangman’s noose and what an incredibly genius stroke of engineering.
to think that the masterful art of knot-tying comes down to the basic idea that a knot will hold under tension is simply and utterly graceful without fault.
but here’s the thing;
as soon as i learned to tie a knot that won’t slip,
i taught myself the hangman’s knot:
a knot that essentially slips, but still holds merciless tension around its victim.

i’ve been tying nooses with what causes me the most pain.
with what bleeds the most love //
but as the one and only descendant of my father, the great fisher king,
i am starting to learn that if the knot slips,

you cut the line and start again.

if you can find c. g. jung writing an answer to the biblical Hiob, i can be found writing this... or as the Lad Bible states: be your superficial you... so when she's not her superficial self... you can just play the awkward monotone speaking caveman that you weren't before she played you that superficial card of hers to tone down your interests.

you know why i'm fascinated with schizophrenics?
primarily because they are concerned with
an inorganic medical condition,
there are, absolutely, no reasons to suggests they
are organically prone to premature degeneracy,
they are what the Alzheimer old man calls an angel,
and what the "angel" experiences from time to time...
to cite a non-typical schizoid experience -
a splinter in the mind?
when i wrote my previous poem, i was listening
to the song *the parting glass throughout,
on and on and on... the rhythm took over...
and when the "poem" was finished i retracted myself
into my room and first played auld lang syne
(with lyrics and English translation)...
                           and then... the pure instrumental
of knee-deep-bagpie... bagpipes, sure, horrid,
screeching drowning-lungs of magpie
cackling cut short into a carbonated highland water...
     oh don't worry, what this comes down to
is personal experience, such negations of ease
are not like the black plague, or a.i.d.s.,
they don't come into contact with purely-riddle
human incompetence... it takes more than that...
certain conditions are not viral...
you can't interpreted them as political malevolence
akin to a political movement... primarily because
the numbers don't add up...
                    the complexity of thought is
the complexity of regarding the mind as an abstract
of the brain, given the brain has no accuracies
concerning abstraction when stated against being automated
to a pair of kidneys... i too wish for a La La Land sometimes...
but that's not the reason people allow ***** donations...
     but you know, it really gripped me,
i wrote that poem, listening to the parting glass,
and felt nothing, nothing... because i was so
formulated to write what i wrote...
  i wrote the last bit, walked into my room,
and played the second version of auld lang syne...
the royal scots dragoon guards pure instrumental...
   and you get to weep these cold tears
after an insomniac cold shivers getting warmer with whiskey...
              and whimper and bite your bottom lips...
because you're hardly a woman fainting
and the drama isn't in you...
               and it's actual tears...
people laugh and cry saharan tears, meaning: it never
rains over it...   i see Sahara as the ancient version
of the Himalayan mountain range, suddenly reduced
because god is fickle and well, aren't we all?
           if any of us are alive to read or speak such
encodings... there will be a desert made from
the Himalayas that will be called the Himalaya -
but that's really being optimistic.
       there used to be mountains, mountains in
north Africa, Gandalf! but they crumbled in deserts!
where once a mountain range, subsequently a desert...
where now a desert, once a mountain range.
can i please get a taxi to leave this current
history and Darwinistic revisionism of it as telling
us ape Adam had more psychology about him than
Charles XIV? i want to hear the geological version
of Darwinism! but am i hearing any of it? n'ah ah.
       so yes, upon hearing the scotch dragoon guards
pipe a full whiskey sodden breath into the
         bagpi - i heard the word counter to my scrambled
narrative... king... king?!
                   which is what's bewildering about
a medical term deemed premature dementia...
   it's an organic impossibility...
but given society is an inorganic organism
and all our socio-political mechanisms aren't exactly
organic, there might be some sense in this piquant
dabble in an auditory hallucinogenic experience -
which, evidently, people find frightening,
since they occupy defining their thinking with
hearing so much, and when seeing a homeless man
think so little...
                     logic? a particular arrangement of words
that does not provide kind rubrics for the testimony of
the many...
                    i can hallucinate this auditory "addition"
and competently go on my daily business,
or my nightly business finishing a bottle of scottish amber...
some people cannot...
                 what i see it western society predicating
their poor knowledge of Alzheimer's as if searching
for some genius to explain what happens to the abstract
functions of what the brain represents
                 in terms of how the brain and abstraction
can't be cleanly separated, i.e. to treat the degeneracy
of the brain as succumbed to, but not succumbing to
the elaborated foundations of the "brain"
within the trans-physical functions of the "brain"
within a framework of memory, vocabulary, memory.
people first attribute the brain with too much
           concern for abstraction when in fast the driving
force for abstraction is the now-vogue zeitgeist
"psyche does not exist" -
                            and when the brain degenerates like
a heart or a kidney can... people start to freak
out propping out a Frankenstein revival that brain
cannot in-act upon...
                                 they told us the brain is fat...
          then they tell us only 0%, or fat-free yoghurts are
good... isn't the case for the epidemic of dementia
due to the fact that we're censoring fat?
what feeds the brain? fat! what are we censoring from
our diets? fat! fat free ******* yoghurt!
                             where does the modern epidemic
stem from? censoring fat! you anorexic ******* morons!
  you know why i put extra fat in the way i cook
meals, you know what orthodox cooks tend to
like a sizzle of a lump of lard? brain food...
     and yes, some call it eating a lot of nuts...
well then... fry me a ribs-eye steak on a handful of
cashew nuts you crazy *******!
            this is what drives me crazy concerning
auditory hallucinogenic experiences...
there are no drugs that you could ever sell that people
would buy to experience an auditory hallucination...
primarily because people made thought
   an auditory experience...
                  that's the norm, i'm not talking Walt Disney
here... and people enjoy music because it feeds the heart
in a way averse to images that feed the libido
or dreaming...
    the point being, my "hallucinatory" experience lasted
for less than a second... some ***** on l.s.d. trips
for half a day because he finds modern movies boring
and finally gets to appreciate cubist contortion
mechanisations... i can do more damage with a second's
worth of "auditory" hallucination than that little
hippy can do away with 12 hours, and only end up
writing a haiku thinking he can suddenly conjure up
spirits of Shinto like some Gilgamesh *** Bruce Springsteen;
then he shaves his hair and travels to Mongolia
to learn the index against the lips motorboating
harmonica... and i end up saying: thank you;
cos it wouldn't be twangy without that kind of a tranquiliser
to stabilise excitement beyond encoding sounds.
          i can tell you how ******-up my internal
narrative has become, so i'm defeatist,
here's how it looks like when i get agitated...
               writing on a white flag...
      oh look: wavy! wavy! i'm waving it...
going boats full of nuts and bananas!
             you ever hear the story of a psychiatrist
jumping on a table and barking when a conscription
  cadet tried to fake being mad?
      she did what i just wrote and asked H. Clinton
to reiterate on the campaign trail.
                    inauguration 2017:
   i solemnly swear, that H. Clinton barked like a ruffian
poodle on the campaign trail.
  beside the point though, schizophrenia is an inorganic
manifestation of an actual organic degeneracy -
it's a negation-of-ease for dangerous people...
     people who probably have a music taste outside
the top 40 best selling albums (let alone singles)...
                   and they're quick to pick up on this grey area
concerning premature depression...
                it's trendy these days... people who are melancholic
are people who are like Homer, wrote the Odyssey
went blind from making too much heroism from
      the cannibalism at the gates of Troy and couldn't
handle telling a single lie after having written such an epic...
   or as Virgil convened: Paris didn't escape,
Aeneid did... no one knows what happened to Paris,
       probably choked on a raisin or something:
it's ancient history, if you're not going to talk about it
in a callous manner, then be prepared for careless mannerisms:
pout, **** *** cheek, shelfie!
               what i am seeing is this quote:
a butterfly on the Galapagos Islands... a Tornado in
Colorado... the poetics of quantum physics,
or misplaced potentials of counter-quantifiable
simultaneous counter-interpretations...
    the butterfly effect? under the umbrella corporate
otherwise known, from ancient times: a metaphor.
hey, we started reading into hydrocarbons,
there's no way to talk easy for us...
                           for all my love for one inspiration,
i lost my love for him when he said that not tying your
shoelaces (i.e. spelling) was because he thought it was
indoctrination... you know who i mean: Mr. Chow Chewski...
   spelling? that's like tying your shoelaces!
         question is... who would ingest a hallucinogenic
drug that didn't utilise the multi-coloured world to
an excessive amount to be prescribed, say, an U.V.
phosphorescent spectrum of seeing... when, given all
that... sound occupies this realm of b & w?
               who could create an auditory hallucinogenic?
can you imagine it?
                             most people with a weakened cognitive
membrane would go nuts... as the case has been proven
many a times...
        but given the fact that no such hallucinogenic exists,
or that "auditory" / cognitive hallucinations are
disregarded even though Descartes stressed this
   notion of a substance / thought, and an extension /
       sensual disparities with regards to cohesive uniformity,
i.e. regarding over-stressing a particular sense
      and never reaching a former cohesion...
           can only mean a circumstance later described
by Kant within the framework of the noumenon -
    i.e. perhaps you've seen too much, but heard too little...
perhaps you've tasted too much, but had barely a sniff of
                  more...
        the original thought when exposed to a cohesion
of uniformed senses, experiencing a discohesion of
             a presupposed sensual "uniformity",
returns back into a form of thought, i.e. an extension...
                only because the thing in question is a
presupposition, not a supposition that can be countered
with a proposition, i.e. since we all made mistakes
presupposing, we have become prone to propositions to
suppose otherwise... in terse terms: invent politics.
so what i termed "auditory" and "hallucination"
and conflated them in a prefix of cognitive-, in consolidation
i meant to say that: once all presuppositions (thoughts)
disappear by the miraculous ape that man either is
or wishes himself to still be... and we deem to say:
   reality...                 we only have suppositions (extensions)
               that appear...
                         by the miraculous ape that man never
was and wishes himself to nonetheless be:
  in that consolidatory ref. to the last trinity of Cartesian
thought: substance - in the former the formation
of will... in the latter the complete lack of it -
                              to the simpler scenarios,
we already have knowledge of prisons and asylums...
            because internalising such possible scenarios
never leaves the many to be grafting such possibilities
with enough calm as to persevere for the sole purpose
of understanding, as what point can a noumenon-unit
enter the argument if not from a reflex
                       as this continued narration explains...
none of this was reflected upon...
reflection in such circumstances usually means weaving
a machete at your neighbour...
                                  the noumenon-unit
the ping-pong factor in all of this is a reflex action...
         not a reflective action...
               i am no king no more than i am a pauper...
   now imagine if i tripped for 12 hours on l.s.d.,
having extracted so much, from an "auditory" "hallucination",
that, in the realm of the mind, is neither a minute,
nor a second, nor a nanosecond...
               it's unitary equivalent is simply that of: a word.

(I Could Not Knot a Knot.)

My tale is one of tortuous frustration,
when two ropes caused me aggravation,
and my every effort resulted in a situation
that left me in a state of angry indignation!

Oh, what a knotty problem I had got,
when I found I could not knot a needed knot!
Though needing help on how to knot a knot,
no one I knew, knew how to knot my needed knot!

I had two short ropes - which I’d a need to knot,
and which I’d knot together with a special knot,
but it never worked, for the knot did not knot,
and my knot came undone!  I felt such a clot!

Firstly, I took the ropes, which I twisted tight
together, but still the end result, was not right,
for when I tugged, the knot, not only fell apart,
but showed no sign of a knot!  Making a fresh start,

I took one rope, and placed it firmly under
the other.  This was so easy, I did wonder
if my actions should have been reversed,
for it too fell apart!  Oh, how I cursed!

Seems tying knots is not for faint hearts,
for any knot, that’s not knotted, soon parts
when it’s put to the test!  That I’m not a knot
expert, you can tell.  Truly, my forte is not

that of being very good at tying knots,
for I do not understand what knots
need, to keep them from falling apart!
Tying a knot right, right from the start,

is important, and that’s why my knot
was  not reliable, but why I did not
understand.  Yes, I’ve tied many knots.
but they’re knots known as Granny Knots.

Other knots are what folks call a Slip Knot.
Then there’s the Turk’s Head - a special knot,
as is the Cat’s Paw, Clove Hitch,and Bowline.
Truth to tell, - none of these resembles mine!

Then there’s a Timber Hitch, which is a knot
that truly puzzles me, and not an easy knot to knot!
There’s many other knots, that need the greatest skill,
such as the Hangman’s Knot - a knot that’s made to ****!

Whilst the sheepshank?  That’s a tricky one to see!
So many knots, but they’re not knots for me.
Methinks of all the knots, the one true knot for me,
is the “Lover’s Knot”, which I have tied successfully!

Rhymer. April 24th, 2018

Book One


Prelude:

As Romans before them, they built the city upward—
layer ‘pon layer as the polar caps receded
layer by layer—preserving what they could, if someday
the waters may recede back into the former polar
ice caps; restoring the long inundated coastlines.


Home:

A man sat upon a tall pub stool stroking
his ginger beard while grasping a pint loosely
in his other hand. An elderly gent stood
next to him. The older gentleman noticed
that the ginger bearded man’s pint sat almost
quite near the bottom of its tulip glass.

A woman with eyes of amber and hair
as chestnut strolled through a vineyard amongst
the ripening grapes full of juice to soon
become wine. She clutched a notebook—behind (10)
thick black covers lay ideas and sketches
to bring the world to a more natural
state—balancing the wonders and the merits
of technology apace with the allure ‘n’
sanctity borne to the natural world.

When the ginger bearded man finished the
final drops of his stout, another appeared
heretofore him—courtesy owed to the elder
gentleman. “Notice dat ye got d’ mark
o’ a man accustom amid the seas,” (20)
he inferred; gesturing the black and blue
compass rose inscribed inside a ship’s wheel,
imbedded into the back of the ginger
bearded man’s weathered right hand.
                 “I have crewed
and skippered a many fine vessel, but I
am renouncing my life at sea—one final
voyage I have left inside of me:
one single terminal Irish-Atlantic
voyage t’ward home.” (30)
“Aye d’ sea can beh cold
‘nd harsh, but she enchants me heart. Ta where
are ye headed fer d’ place ye call home,
d’ere sonny boy?”
     “’tis not simply a where,
‘tis a who. Certain events have led me
to be separate from my wife. For five
eternal years I have been traveling—
waiting to be in her embrace. The force
of the Sea, she, is a cruel one. For (40)
it seams: at every tack or gybe the farther
off I am thrown from my homeward direction
to stranger and stranger lands… I have gone
to the graveyard of hell and the pearly gates
of (the so called) heaven; I have engaged
in foolhardy deals—made bets only a
gambling addict would place. All to just be
with Zara. I am homesick—Zara is my
home—it doesn’t matter where (physically)
we are located, my home is with Zara. I (50)
was advised to draw nigh the clove of Cork
and wait; wait for a man, but I was barely
given a clue as to who this man is,
only I must return him this:” the ginger
bearded man held out a dull silver pocket watch
with a frigate cut into the front cover
and two roses sharing a single stem
swirling upon themselves cut into
the back.
   “Can it be? ‘Tis meh watch dat meh (60)
fat’er gave t’ meh right before he died…
I lost it at sea many a year ago.
It left meh heartbroken—fer it was meh only
lasting mem’ry of him… Come to t’ink I
was told by a beggar in the street—I
do not remember how long ago—dat
I would happen across a man wit’ somet’ing
dear t’ meh, and I’d accomp’ny dis man
on a journey, and dis man would have upon
‘im d’ mark of a true sailor…” (70)
    “Dear elder man,
my name is Abraham; the mark you see
represents the control that I have on my
direction—thought it appears the Sea retains
some ascendancy… Yet now, it appears,
the Sea is upholding her bargain—though
a bit late... Do you, by chance, own a vessel
that can fair to Colorado?—all across
this mist’d island no skipper ‘ll uptake
my plea; they fear the sharp wrath of the Sea (80)
or (if they have no fear) simply claim my home
‘is not on their routes…’ i’tis a line I’ve
heard too often. I would’ve purchased a vessel,
but the Sea, she, has deprived me completely
of my identity and equity.”

Zara, with her rich chestnut hair sat upon
a fountain in a piazza—her half empty
heart longing to savor the hallow presence
of Abraham, and stroke his ginger beard…
Everyday she would look out at the sea (90)
whence he left…
     All encouraged her to: “forgo
further pursuit”; “he is likely deceased
by now”—his vessel (what left) scuttled amidst
the rocks of Cape Horn, yet Zara could feel
deep-seated inside her soul he is alive;
Alive (somewhere) fighting to return home.
Never would Zara leave; never would she
abandon post; she made that promise five
years ago as Abraham, ‘n’ his crew,
set out on their final voyage; and she (100)
would be ****** ere she broke her promise—a promise
of the heart—a promise of love. Abraham
said: “You are my lighthouse; your love, it, will guide
me home—keep me from danger—as long as you
remain my lighthouse, I’ll forever be
set to return home—return home to you.”

Out from Crosshaven did the old man take
steadfast Abraham en route to his home.
Grey Irish skies turned blue as they made their
way out on the Irish Sea, southwest, toward (110)
the southern end of the Appalachian Island.
The gentle biting spray of the waves breaking
over the bow and beam moistened the ginger
bearded face of Abraham; his tattooed
hands grasped the helm—his resolute stare kept him
and the old man acutely on course.
A shame,
it struck the old man, this would be the final
voyage of Abraham… he: the best crew
that the old man had ever came across; (120)
uncertain if simply the character
of Abraham or his pers’nal desire
to return home in the wake of five long
salty-cold years—a vassal to the Sea
and her changing whim. Never had the old
man seen his ship sail as fast as he did when
Abraham accorded its deck—each sail
set without flaw: easing and trimming sheets
fractions of an inch—purely to obtain
the slightest gain in speed; the display warmed (130)
the heart of the old man.
        And thus the elder
gent mused as he lightly puffed on his pipe
while sitting on the stern pulpit regarding
at Abraham’s passion to return home
(as he calls her):—maybe dis is d’ reason
d’ Sea has fought so hard, and lied, t’ keep
Abraham from returning home… Could not
bear t’ lose such fine a sailor from her
expanses—she is known t’ be quite a jealous (140)
mistress…
      But for all Abraham’s will and passion,
the old man insisted for the fellow
to rest; otherwise lack of sleep would cause
the REM fiddler to reap his debt—replace
clarity of mind with opacity.
Reluctantly stalwart Abraham gave
in and retire below deck—yet the old
man doubted the amount of rest that he
acquired in those moments out of his sight. (150)

For the days, then weeks, in the wake of their
departure from the port-island Crosshaven,
the seas were calm as open water can:
gentle azure rolling swells oscillated
and helped impel the vessel forward. The southern
craggy cape of the Appalachian
Island pierced the horizon. Like a threshold
it stood for Abraham—a major landmark;
the closest to home he had been in five
salty long years—his limbo was beginning                               (160)
to fade, his heart slowly—for the first time since
he left port in eastern Colorado—
started to feel replete again. The Great
Plains Sea—his final sea—he would not miss
the gleam of his lighthouse stalwart on shore.




Book Two

Oracle:**

Upon a beach, Abraham found himself alone—gasping
in gulps of moist air like that of a new born baby first (10)
experiencing the breathe of life; he felt as if he
would never become dry again… the salt burning his skin
as it crusted over when the water evap’rated
into the air; Abraham took the first night to rest, the
next day he set to make shelter and wait for a rescue
crew; out he stared at the crashing waves hoping for a plane
or faint form of a ship upon the horizon…days and
nights spun into an alternating display of day then
night: light then dark—light, dark, light, dark, grey, grey, grey…

Abraham (20)
gave up marking the days—realized the searches are done—
given up after looking in the wrong places (even
he did not know where he was…) the cold waves and currents took
him to a safe shore away from his ship and crew, in a
limp unconscious float…
From the trees, and what he could find on
the small  island, Abraham occupied himself with the
task of building a catamaran to rid himself of
the grey-waiting.
Out he cast his meager vessel into (30)
the battering surf; waves broke over his bows and centre
platform—each foot forward, the waves threatened to push him back
twofold… Abraham struck-beat the water with the oars he
fashioned; rising and falling with the energy of the
waves; Abraham stole brief looks back with hopes of a van’shing
shoreline—coast refused to vanish… his drenched arms grew tired;
yet he pushed on knowing he would soon be out passed the
breaking waves; then could relax and hoist sail; yet the waves grew
taller—broke with greater power… Abraham struck-beat the
water with his oars—anger welled—leading to splashes of (40)
ivory sea-froth instead of the desired progress
forward; eventually, his arms fell limp beyond the
force of will… waves tumbled him back to shore as he did the
first night upon the island…
Dejected Abraham lay
in the surf that night—the gentle ebb of the sea added
to insult, but hid the tears formed in the corner of his eyes—
salt water to salt water… the next day Abraham took
inventory of damage: the mast snapped in multiple
places, the rudders askew—the hulls and centre structure (50)
remained intact; the oars lost (or at least Abraham cared
not to search); over the next weeks he set to improve
the design and efficiency of his vessel—the first
had been hurried and that of a man desperate to leave;
the bare minimum that would suffice—he set to create
a vessel to ensure his departure from the des’late
accrue of sand and vegetation; Abraham laboured
to strengthen his body—pushing his arms further passed the
point his mind believed they could go—consuming the hearty,
protein-rich, mollusks, and small shellfish he could find inside (60)
tide pools or shallows—if lucky, larger fish that dared the
nearby reefs.
Patiently, Abraham observed the tides and
breaking water; he wanted to determine the correct
time to set off to ensure success—when the waves would not
toss him back to the beach; the day: a calm clear day—only
within few metres of soft beach did there exist any
breaking waves, and those that broke were barely a metre high;
loading provisions upon the vessel, Abraham bid
farewell to the island (out of wont for the sustenance (70)
it gave not for nostalgia) grasping his oars, he set forth
to find open sea—where the waves do not break and set you
gingerly on foreign shore(s); Abraham paddled passed the
first few breaking waves, his heart pounding with hope—he stifled
the thoughts (celebrate when the island is but a subtle
blue curve upon the horizon); as the island began
to shrink in his vision, the sky to his back grew darker…
the waves started to swell—moguls grew to hills—Abraham
stroked up and rode down; the cursèd Island refused to shrink…
if not begin to grow wider… stroke by stroke Abraham (80)
grew frustrated—stroke by stroke frustration advanced into
anger—stroke by stroke anger augmented into fiery
beating of the water!—Abraham struck and struck at the
Sea—eyes closed—white knuckles—trashing!—unsure which direction
he paddled…sky pitch-black, wind blowing on-shore Abraham
bellowed out to the Sea in inarticulate roars of:
hatefrustrationpitydesperationheartache!
Towards
Abraham’s in-linguistic roar, the sky let out a crack
of authority! a wave swept the flailing Abraham (90)
into the ocean—cool water only heated the rage
in Abraham’s mind—his half empty heart only wanted:
to sail home, become whole  again—sit under and olive
tree and stroke the chestnut hair of Zara as she drifted
off to sleep on his chest while he would whisper sweet verses
into her ear… Abraham’s rage, beyond reason, forgot
the boat and all clarity, he tried to swim away from
the cursèd island—scrambling up waves only to tumble
back with their breaking peaks—salt, the only taste in his mouth;
churning his stomach to *****; his kidney’s praying he (100)
would  not swallow anymore… his gasps stifled any curse
Abraham’s head wished to expel onto the Sea—yet she
swore she heard one final curse escape his lips! at that the
Sea tossed Abraham (head first) into his ghost-helmed vessel—
all went dark for hostile Abraham…

Contemplating back
at his rage—knowing the barbarian it makes of him,
Abraham peered into the band inscribed into his
ring-finger and saw the knot tying him to Zara—shame
at his arrogant-uncontrolled-fury sent Abraham (110)
into a meditative exile inside of his mind
(within the exile of the island…) in his mental
exile Abraham spun into deeper despair at his
two failures—even more at the prospect of failing the
vow he professed onto Zara: return home—home from this
final voyage, grow old with her on solid ground, never
to die apart and cause the pain of losing a loved one
without the closure of truly knowing the death is real,
to die by her side white, white with the purity of age…
Abraham’s destitution turned inward—his fury, the (120)
lack of control, the demon he becomes when rage surges
through his muscles; equiping him with untamed strength without
direction or self-possession—so much potential, yet
no productive way to use it… Abraham’s half-full-heart
burned, ached with passion and anguish—all desire
focused on home, his return, but the mind’s despondency
and insistent ‘what-ifs’ kept poor Abraham prostrate in
his mental cave—all his wishing for anger and vi’lence
to force his will, it did more to retain him upon the
cursèd island than bring his heart closer to fulfillment: (130)
his long awaited home…
Out of his mental exile did
Abraham’s irises dilate and contract with blinding
illumination—self-pity is not what make things happen—
it would only serve to anger Zara—nothing other
than I can be to blame for my continued absence; I
am stronger than that!—looking at the tattoo in his hand,
he remembered the reasons for the perennial brand—
the eight-spoke ship’s helm: the eight-fold-path—I must cut off my
desire for anger to be the solution and focus (140)
on the one path to Zara—the mind can push the body
further than the body believes is possible—the star:
the compass to guide me via celestial bodies
to where my heart can see the guiding beam of my lighthouse!

As the water birds lifted from the morning tide,
I found myself being lifted from an unconscious
state to the dictionary by four unfamiliar syllables

like the many poets before me, searching for
the meaning of nomenclature. Interestingly enough,
it could have been me on the other side of a poem

that I would come back to after sundown: an old,
scientific word who first appeared in 1610,
whose roots grew, naturally, like the hidden

interests of a loved one, from the Latin
nomenclatura (the assigning of names).

But instead, I ended up on this side of the poem,
sitting before an empty screen and a dictionary
in a Yankees ball cap and denim t-shirt, slowly

piecing together a poem about a 17th century novel
while trying to include the sudden interest of my
loved one: French parenting literature on healthy

eating, all while slowly tying the loose ends
of a poem without meaning together.

Something happened this morning
when I awoke to you lightly breathing.
It was sublime.
My chin rested on your shoulder
the skin so soft on my cheek.
I couldn’t help but kiss the sweetness.

On nights when I sleep alone
it does not matter how many blankets
wrap my restless body.
I wake cold.
Nothing is as warm as your arms.
Like that of a Texas breeze
on an August night.

I can only think to kiss
your unshaven face.  
The kisses are planted gently,
first your cheek,
then your temple,
and your forehead,
when I come to the tip of your nose
you stir slightly,
but I cannot stop.
I want it more then
the ocean waves need
the shoreline to crash upon.

Looking at your face
I smile at the odd way we met.
With a breath of *** and an intoxicated
grin we spoke.
“I don’t like you”
“Yea? Well I don’t like you first!”
Like children picking
on their first crush.
Tying to fight back the giggles.
Our childish ways still
run strong.

In your absence I sit
and watch the ticking minutes
laugh at my uneasiness.
Hours with others
are mere minutes with you.
The clocks envy
our cherished time
and tick-tock more rapidly
when we are alone.
All our time
would never be
enough.

When we get lost in each other,
the way the lonely roadrunner
looses himself as he runs
up and down
the oak covered hills,
it is love at its best.

This morning
when the soft breathes
you took woke me
and my chin rested upon
your shoulder,
something happened.
As the kisses fell
and your eyes continued to sleep;
I realized that this
is where I belong.
Drifting slowly  
into love with you.

We both promised ourselves
—drinking our blood,
tying up the knot
in the name of sisterhood
but you ***** them
like it was a bad food

Well you see the thing to understand is poetry is a gospel to the world.
At first you feel as if it is oppressive chains tying you down to the soiled earth with every simplistic tick tock.
That is at least until you discover this world has no rules for an adventurer of free verse.
Your words now flow like an expeditious brook as long as you use metaphors with pretentious words.  

However rules exist it is plain to see.
Some poems go aabb.
Those are simple ones to find.
Those are the ones stuck in your mind.

Now one more step, aabbc.
Those are a little more artsy.
You draw your crowd in.
Get under their skin,
And finish a little bit different.

And now it's time for set number three.
One that can simply astound.
The great, magnificent abab.
Those make a poet nearly profound.

There are  couplets, sonnets, and monoryhms.
And now for the last one, all in good time.
I wanted you all to hear them like chimes,
But all that I had I left you in these lines.

Across the ocean, you meant nothing to me.
You were a destination, a photograph, a wish.
You plagued my winter woes with your heatwaves,
jumping into creeks in your underwear while I wrapped myself in another blanket, cold Canadian ice princess.
You slept under stars in close contact with beautiful nature, beautiful life, beautiful people, while I stared at them, upside down, from my window.
And then the big dipper dumped you into my lap, head on my chest so you could feel my heart beat and I could tangle my fingers in your hair.
Photographs aren't supposed to come to life.
Beautiful smiles and messy blonde hair are for fantasies and dreaming and rainy days, and not for my bed or my guitar or my lips
But there you were.

For two weeks I thought and rethought and plagued my heart with goodbye is coming. He will fly away from me. We are not birds meant to be caged
We are wanderers, nomads, free-spirits who need no tying down or tying knots,
And I want to tie myself to your bed post with barbed wire because it hurts that much to leave you anyway.
But you leave me.

And there you weren't.

There you weren't as I made up my mind that it's okay to love a nomad, as long as you're one too.
And it's okay to love a bird of flight, just build yourself some wings and follow
But I was mistaken, I was wrong and I was three steps behind you.
Because when you said "I'll see you later" you didn't mean later
You meant get out.
And I still don't know if you're scared or if you just don't want me,
You don't ******* want me.

High as the plane that brought you here to leave me, I stand lace clad, smoke screened and alone.
High enough to feel my lungs contracting with each breath that made my tongue taste less and less like yours,
High enough to feel my knees click where you held them once,
One time,
Because that was all it took.
I couldn't get high enough to stop retracing the lines that your fingers made up and down my sides as you felt the curve of my body for the first time.
My limbs were barren, cold, antarctic as you left them when you took your warm, summer hand away.

So I turned the shower up all the way, until it burned enough to feel like I was boiling my skin, baptizing your sinful touch off of my innocent body.
I burned my arms and legs until they cracked.
They cracked from dryness, even after I wet them with my tears,
And my first,
fourth,
tenth glass of wine.
And I threw the bottle against my bedroom door.
Watched it smash,
Wished it was me.
I'll clean it up later.

rumour has it mirrors shatter
at the thought of you having your fathers eyes
I hope you know that if you're looking for a sign
you might find it tying to choke out one last goodbye
at the end of the night
you'll find it wherever home is
I know you hate the smell of smoke
but cigarettes are all I know
so I'm asking you to put up with it
you have every reason to be furious
but I'm hoping you'll take deep breaths and see
how calm they make my blood stream
I only started smoking to ease the pain
it was that or a needle to the vein
a bullet to the brain
too much going on up there anyways
it all just needed cutting out
so cigarettes just made sense
I talk about them in the past tense
but the one between my fingers seems to disagree
open your eyes and see
through all the smoke and mirrors lies me
a double entendre for how things used to be
and how they are currently
the writing is on the wall
in every ****** love song lies a promise
to make the next one stronger
and they keep promising that but the time between gets longer
and all of a sudden the bands broken up
and the symbol of love you used to **** to
is broken like the bond of your parents love
I love you is an apology
forgiveness is given with every similar reply
I love you means that I forgive you
for being broken and for breaking me
because picking you out in a crowded room
is something I've become accustomed to
god I can't stop thinking about the look in your eyes
on that night in July with fireworks in the sky
the last time I remember you saying goodbye
because I shattered at the thought of you having my fathers eyes


smoke and mirrors
06/22/14
9:10am
j.s

We are afraid of tying knots.
Now, my brothers weren't fond of Boy Scouts, but those aren't the kinds of knots I'm talking about.
Our parents got us velcro shoes growing up (something about not wanting us to be overwhelmed with tennis shoes)
And that, perhaps, was the moment that started everything.
We could no longer trip on loose laces as we ran our races,
Our parents couldn't see our disappointed faces as we fumbled getting ready for school.
It was the perfect contribution to the flawed illusion that the human institution should be prevented from failing.
Oh, yes.
In my lifetime, cordless telephones were placed in every house because we did not want to untangle our own messes anymore.
Failure doesn't hurt as much when it is invisible.
We wanted wireless, no-strings-attached luxuries with no side effects.
But there were effects that couldn't be seen
(how could they until we were older than teens)
Because the end effect was this:
a generation that shirks responsibility
we have anxiety
because our parents didn't let us face our fears when we were young
we are jobless, loveless, purposeless
because we still haven't realized that everything has its opposite
love - lust
success - failure
happiness - sadness
peace - anger and commotion
you see?
there are full-grown adults living in the basements of their parents
watching **** from an illuminated screen
a no-strings-attached commitment to a video that will never require a vow or a promise;
so many see the term "settling down" as "kicking up dust" of a dull life "confined to a four-inch screen."

we've seen our own parents cut the ties
now living separate lives
better that way, but millennials can't fight
for love or for kids or for dreams
because their caretakers' examples couldn't teach
the right way to do a marriage
the right way to commit
we are shirking responsibility--

because we don't want to fail.

still as afraid of tying knots
as we were in kindergarten.

I was drowning.
Underwater.
Fighting for air,
fighting to swim.
Drowning, underwater.
Something held me down,
Something kept me from taking a breath.
Drowning, underwater.
I tried to float, but always sank.
I tried to breathe, but always choked.
Drowning, underwater.
I had no escape.

But you saved me.

You cut me loose.
Taught me how to swim,
taught me I could breathe.
Inhale, exhale.
Taught me I could smile,
taught me I could laugh.
You showed me kindness.
You showed me happiness.
When I found you,
I found me.
You gave me life,
you gave me purpose.

But you changed your mind.

Was I not enough?
not smart enough
not pretty enough
not skinny enough
not **** enough
not happy enough?

Was I too much?
Did I ask too much?
Did I care too much?
Did I love too much?
Did I need too much?
Did I hurt you?
Did I scare you?

Why were you so ******* afraid

Afraid of change
afraid of unknowns
afraid to let me in
afraid to feel what we felt
afraid of distance
afraid of trying
afraid to love me
afraid to let me love you
afraid of the future
afraid of us
afraid of this happiness
afraid it wouldn't last

But I needed you.

Now I'm drowning.
Underwater.
Fighting for air,
fighting to swim.
Drowning, underwater.
You're holding me down,
You're keeping me from taking a breath.
Drowning, underwater.
I'm trying to float, but I'm sinking.
I'm trying to breathe, but I'm choking.
Drowning, underwater.
There is no escape.

But I can't forget you.

Your words grab my ankles,
tying me to the ocean bottom.
I'm kicking and fighting,
but your touch paralyzes me.
I'm crying for help,
but your memory suffocates me.
No one sees me,
no one hears me,
no one saves me.
You don't save me.
Drowning,
Underwater.

But I still love you.

Miguel is a boy of mystery. His whole life has been a disturbing whirlpool of broken memories. His home's a train wreck, his family has vanished, his life lays in waist... Since the day Miguel was born, its gone unseen by no one of his sinister and baneful behavior. Miguel's own family could not bare the sight of him. By the age of 9 he had been put up for adoption several times. Along with scaring away any hope of accumulating a friend. Even neighbors felt the need to move through pure gut feeling something wasn't right with this young boy...but why?

   Well, the answer lives with a man named Michael. Michael was Miguel's Father. Michael lived a life searching that in which we all seek, riches, the big house, the life of a celebrity. Given the mere fact Michael was simply a fry cook, his dreams looked distant and impossible to achieve. That being said he was ready for a change, no matter the circumstances... One day, Michael was walking home from work when he stumbled across a woman in the doorway to an abandoned building. Not any ordinary woman, a beautiful woman. Her beauty wasn't like anything he had ever seen before. Her cheeks blushed, her voice could sooth a giant, and her eyes glimmered through the moonlight. Covered head to toe in jewels, in Cashmere, in Prada... The woman without hesitation snatches the attention of Michael. Her voice so soothing, so soft spoken, it's hard to feel anywhere else but in your own paradise simply being in her presence. 
   "Michael..." The woman whispers. 
   "Michael...Follow me." She says.
Michael so drawn to her beauty he obeys without the smallest of responses. Walking through the doorway into the abandoned building still manipulated by her beauty she brings him to a room. This room seems to have been abandoned for years. Torn wallpaper, carpet stripped leaving nothing but broken concrete. Although sitting in the center of the room sits a table and two chairs. 
   "Sit." The woman Says with authority. 
The man obeys taking into consideration this new tone of voice. She sits as well, directly in front of him. 
   "I, know you Michael." She says with a smile. 
   "I've been following you for some time." She continues.
Michael sitting in confusion he remains silent. 
   "Speak not if you must, It's only postponing your destiny Michael." She finishes with another smile. 
   "My, my destiny?" The man asks. 
She continues to smile gazing her beautiful eyes into his for a few moments. 
   "Yes my love. Your destiny. I have arranged something for you that you cannot pass up." 
Michael's life has him in such a deep depression he cant fathom on passing up the words of what seems like an angel. 
   "What do you have in mind?" He quickly Replies. 
   "Simple, whatever you want my love." She Replies. 
Michael Sits in silent for a second Not really understanding what is being presented to him. Although at this time he comes to terms he doesn't care, change is change. 
   "I accept anything you have to offer, beautiful." He replies with confidence. 
   "You, will live from this day forward wealthy. I can supply you with a house and enough money to live comfortably for the rest of your days." She offers. 
   "Is it that easy?" He asks  
   "No, you must in return Inflict my religious beliefs into your first born child." She says. 
Michael, not really sure what that means, accepts her deal, for she seems like an angel of the sky. Well, as for Michael he lives his life as planned, Wealthy, happy, Full of adventure. He even finds himself an amazing girl who he falls in love with. They even get married. Now, however, things get more difficult.

   They find out together they are having a baby boy. Yes, the greatest gift to any man or woman they think is about to happen to them. Michael's wife having no difficulties through the pregnancy goes into labor. After 6 hours of labor Miguel is born. He is healthy as can be. Miguel's mother on the other hand has surprisingly gone into shock. Hemorrhaging Viciously in her brain. She is quickly put into emergency surgery. With her life in danger they begin to operate. She, does not live to see another day. After doing an exam on her body trying to solve what caused her to hemorrhage, they find something very odd. During the birth of Miguel she suffered three broken vertebrates, and her ****** had been severed. Not being able to explain the cause, life goes on. Michael is devastated at the loss of his wife. The visions of raising a baby boy together have been wrecked. As devastating as it was Michael was forced to accept it and continue on, raising Miguel on his own. It wasn't much after Miguel's birth that Michael really started to realize something wasn't right.

   Miguel had no emotions. Although medically they could not find a single thing wrong with him, he still remained motionless. His eyes seemed as a portal to oblivion. No smiles, laughs, or anything. Once again as odd as this was Michael was forced to persevere on his mission to raise Miguel on his own. Until Miguel learned to walk. Once this happened Michael started to get overwhelmed. As his Miguel was a walking nightmare. Miguel had killed three of their animals within a months time. Things were looking to get out of hand. No matter how much Michael tried to discipline him, Miguel did not listen. Michael couldn't get a babysitter to watch him for any longer then a few minutes without scaring them off. The babysitters would leave startled, leaving Michael with responses such as "He won't stop staring at me" or "when he is around me the hair on my neck stands up." Miguel had become such an outrage Michael lost custody of him just two days after his third birthday. Miguel had driven His father to the point of insanity. Michael tried to suffocate Miguel and end this misery once and for all, but he could not. Miguel had grown too strong even by age three.  Everyone hated Michael for it and Miguel was taken from him leaving Michael now in prison. Michael at that point realized that woman was not an angel, but the devil in disguise, soon after he committed suicide. What others don't know is Michael knew something they didn't. Something so evil, so sinister, that it would ruin many more lives to come. More and more the people started to realize something wasn't right. He bounced from home to home, leaving every home in complete disarray. He was the talk of the town. He was referred to as the "Devil's Child" or "Miguel From Hell."

   The city was angered by the boys effect in the community and knew something had to be done. The council knew the boy had to be murdered. If only this same council would have seen it as Michael did, when he did. Things would of never gone so far south. However the town started planning in the dark for their attack. They didn't want the boy to catch any wind of this whatsoever. So one night as he was asleep in his foster bed the city made the building evacuate, quietly. All but Miguel had evacuated the building and at this time they said their prayers and begun. Six men volunteered, to enter the building. Holding rope, gasoline, and faith. They grab the boy holding him down on the bed tying him up. The boy begun to rage, but he wasn't quit strong enough to escape the six men. After tying him up and leaving him inside they lit all four corners of the building at the same time. Watching it burn to the ground. Once they thought it was finally over, the body was never found...

-Joseph B Schneider

When you don't want to say it in words, let your actions do the talking. And we're talking about celebrities' relationships here. It seems that the words 'we are just good friends' is also passe. Nowadays, even a selfie with your lovely other half says it all. So, while the media can hound the actors everywhere they go for that one quote to admit to their relationship, the B-Town folks choose to do it in their own style. Most commonly, they walk hand-firmly-in-hand to events, parties and premieres — pretty much confirming their 'couple' status. Recently, Salman Khanmade a grand entry at Preity Zinta-Gene Goodenough's wedding party with Romanian model/actress Iulia Vantur and everyone went into a frenzy. They didn't walk in hand-in-hand, but well, that day doesn't seem too far away. Though at a recent event, when asked about his marriage plans, Salman siad, "It's between me and my fans." Iulia too shared on her phto-sharing profile that she's "in no hurry to wear her wedding dress." Here is taking a look at other celebrities who walked the red carpet together, and soon after walked down the aisle.

Despite the strong buzz about a relationship brewing between Bipasha Basu and Karan Singh Grover during the shoot of 'Alone', both actors kept mum about the reports. It was only when Karan was promoting his second film that he conceded that Bipasha 'is special and very dear' to him. Every time the media questioned them, the two actors consistently kept quiet about their relationship. At the same time, they never shied away from posting pictures of them, while going on their holidays.

Even when reports of their wedding plans made news, the couple at first denied them but soon confessed that April 29 was indeed the day on which they were tying the knot.

Yuvraj Singh and Hazel Keech

Indian cricketer Yuvraj Singh annouced at teammate Harbhajan Singh's wedding with Geeta Basra last October that Hazel Keech was the woman he'll spend the rest of his life with. A month later, when they went holidaying in Bali, he popped the question with a ring and she accepted. The two are said to be tying the knot later this year.

Kareena Kapoor Khan and Saif Ali Khan

While the public may not remember 'Tashan' best known for Kareena Kapoor Khan's size zero figure, she and Saif Ali Khan would never like to forget this film. It was during the Greece schedule of this film that the two fell in love. Though reports of their affair made news, they remained non-committal to the media. Until they walked the ramp together for her friend designer Manish Malhotra at a fashion event in 2007. That was the first time Saif told the media that they were a couple. Later, he even got her name inked on his left arm. The tied-the-knot on October 16, 2012.

Maanayata and Sanjay Dutt

Married twice before, Sanjay Dutt made known that Maanayata was the woman of his life when he walked in with her at an awards function in January 2007. A few days later, on January 11, 2007, he told a tabloid that he and Maanayata had a secret wedding at his house on November 19, 2006. However, after the news spread like wildfire, he went in denial mode. Their registered marriage in Goa on February 7 a year later became the subject of controversy, as they weren't residents of the state. A couple of days later, they solemnised their marriage vows as per Hindu rites.

Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma

When the reports of Anushka Sharma and Indian cricketer Virat Kohli being a couple appeared, the two went in overdrive denying the news through their spokespersons. It was Virat who first revealed the relationship when he tweeted after watching her film, "Just watched #NH10 and I am blown away. What a brilliant film and specially an outstanding performance by my love @AnushkaSharma. SO PROUD:)" Even as they continued going steady, they didn't concede their relationship to the media until they walked in haathon-mein-haath at a fashion event July 2015.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-brisbane

Everyone in me is a bird.
I am beating all my wings.
They wanted to cut you out
but they will not.
They said you were immeasurably empty
but you are not.
They said you were sick unto dying
but they were wrong.
You are singing like a school girl.
You are not torn.

Sweet weight,
in celebration of the woman I am
and of the central creature and its delight
I sing for you. I dare to live.
Hello, spirit. Hello, cup.
Fasten, cover. Cover that does contain.
Hello to the soil of the fields.
Welcome, roots.

Each cell has a life.
There is enough here to please a nation.
It is enough that the populace own these goods.
Any person, any commonwealth would say of it,
"It is good this year that we may plant again
and think forward to a harvest.
Many women are singing together of this:
one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine,
one is at the aquarium tending a seal,
one is dull at the wheel of her Ford,
one is at the toll gate collecting,
one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona,
one is straddling a cello in Russia,
one is shifting pots on the stove in Egypt,
one is painting her bedroom walls moon color,
one is dying but remembering a breakfast,
one is stretching on her mat in Thailand,
one is wiping the *** of her child,
one is staring out the window of a train
in the middle of Wyoming and one is
anywhere and some are everywhere and all
seem to be singing, although some can not
sing a note.

Sweet weight,
in celebration of the woman I am
let me carry a ten-foot scarf,
let me drum for the nineteen-year-olds,
let me carry bowls for the offering
(if that is my part).
Let me study the cardiovascular tissue,
let me examine the angular distance of meteors,
let me **** on the stems of flowers
(if that is my part)..
Let me make certain tribal figures
(if that is my part).
For this thing the body needs
let me sing
for the supper,
for the kissing,
for the correct
yes.

Can you tell me
please
which way now is home
I used to know, my dear
The way was clear
There was no fear

Tying my walking shoes
I knew I needed to get clear of here
thought I'd find
all that was dear

The road though, it is narrow
The cliff it is shear
My balance is
woozy

Can you tell me my dear

which way is home
which way do I go from here,
I think I oughta know
But the hills they are wavering
The ocean is in turmoil
The mountains are slick
far too dangerous

The desert has no mercy

I know something and with this knowledge
I think I must be cursed
I think I have it
Peace & Home
goes and comes
and comes and goes.

Don't ever ask me what am I, an ancient story
of a battle lost to remain in the realm of the sublime,
unmitigated grief that visits, again and again,
reminding the journey of pain though galaxies,
far of yore to the days of present.

In a moments of desperation I discover  the bard,it could
be rather told thus, he meets me at last, as was his wont
Bard, celestial lover, before my eyes you appear thus:
I see you holding in your hands a magic lyre, so rare.
that goes on strumming non- stop, to bring birds, the tunes,
that lives in far parts of the universe,even unknown  to most,
they do vary,have colored feathers;memories living in
different layers of my consciousness,always buzzing like a beehive.

I am the single, magic , potent, word, a mantra
that in it's kernel carries the , seeds of eternal, "I am that"

I hear the speakings of the words,that brings to life
experiences of different kinds,on their beaks some one
carries ripe fruits, the result of long days of sweat and tears.
Each fruit has a flavor distinct,each word carries a seed
that will grow to be a mighty tree,many birds would roost.

Bard you are a wonder,tying past and future with one string
of a lyre converging in the heart beat of the ebullient present,
you easily transcend the three, and every other dimension
of time that mingles in your heady brew,unrivaled it stands.

What is death, I ask.
What is life, you ask.
I give them both my buttocks,
my two wheels rolling off toward Nirvana.
They are neat as a wallet,
opening and closing on their coins,
the quarters, the nickels,
straight into the crapper.
Why shouldn't I pull down my pants
and moon the executioner
as well as paste raisins on my *******?
Why shouldn't I pull down my pants
and show my little ***** to Tom
and Albert? They wee-wee funny.
I wee-wee like a squaw.
I have ink but no pen, still
I dream that I can **** in God's eye.
I dream I'm a boy with a zipper.
It's so practical, la de dah.
The trouble with being a woman, Skeezix,
is being a little girl in the first place.
Not all the books of the world will change that.
I have swallowed an orange, being woman.
You have swallowed a ruler, being man.
Yet waiting to die we are the same thing.
Jehovah pleasures himself with his axe
before we are both overthrown.
Skeezix, you are me. La de dah.
You grow a beard but our drool is identical.

Forgive us, Father, for we know not.

Today is November 14th, 1972.
I live in Weston, Mass., Middlesex County,
U.S.A., and it rains steadily
in the pond like white puppy eyes.
The pond is waiting for its skin.
the pond is waiting for its leather.
The pond is waiting for December and its Novocain.

It begins:

Interrogator:
What can you say of your last seven days?

Anne:
They were tired.

Interrogator:
One day is enough to perfect a man.

Anne:
I watered and fed the plant.

*

My undertaker waits for me.
he is probably twenty-three now,
learning his trade.
He'll stitch up the gren,
he'll fasten the bones down
lest they fly away.
I am flying today.
I am not tired today.
I am a motor.
I am cramming in the sugar.
I am running up the hallways.
I am squeezing out the milk.
I am dissecting the dictionary.
I am God, la de dah.
Peanut butter is the American food.
We all eat it, being patriotic.

Ms. Dog is out fighting the dollars,
rolling in a field of bucks.
You've got it made if you take the wafer,
take some wine,
take some bucks,
the green papery song of the office.
What a jello she could make with it,
the fives, the tens, the twenties,
all in a goo to feed the baby.
Andrew Jackson as an hors d'oeuvre,
la de dah.
I wish I were the U.S. Mint,
turning it all out,
turtle green
and monk black.
Who's that at the podium
in black and white,
blurting into the mike?
Ms. Dog.
Is she spilling her guts?
You bet.
Otherwise they cough...
The day is slipping away, why am I
out here, what do they want?
I am sorrowful in November...
(no they don't want that,
they want bee stings).
Toot, toot, tootsy don't cry.
Toot, toot, tootsy good-bye.
If you don't get a letter then
you'll know I'm in jail...
Remember that, Skeezix,
our first song?

Who's thinking those things?
Ms. Dog! She's out fighting the dollars.
Milk is the American drink.
Oh queens of sorrows,
oh water lady,
place me in your cup
and pull over the clouds
so no one can see.
She don't want no dollars.
She done want a mama.
The white of the white.

Anne says:
This is the rainy season.
I am sorrowful in November.
The kettle is whistling.
I must butter the toast.
And give it jam too.
My kitchen is a heart.
I must feed it oxygen once in a while
and mother the mother.

*

Say the woman is forty-four.
Say she is five seven-and-a-half.
Say her hair is stick color.
Say her eyes are chameleon.
Would you put her in a sack and bury her,
**** her down into the dumb dirt?
Some would.
If not, time will.
Ms. Dog, how much time you got left?
Ms. Dog, when you gonna feel that cold nose?
You better get straight with the Maker
cuz it's coming, it's a coming!
The cup of coffee is growing and growing
and they're gonna stick your little doll's head
into it and your lungs a gonna get paid
and your clothes a gonna melt.
Hear that, Ms. Dog!
You of the songs,
you of the classroom,
you of the pocketa-pocketa,
you hungry mother,
you spleen baby!
Them angels gonna be cut down like wheat.
Them songs gonna be sliced with a razor.
Them kitchens gonna get a boulder in the belly.
Them phones gonna be torn out at the root.
There's power in the Lord, baby,
and he's gonna turn off the moon.
He's gonna nail you up in a closet
and there'll be no more Atlantic,
no more dreams, no more seeds.
One noon as you walk out to the mailbox
He'll ****** you up --
a wopman beside the road like a red mitten.

There's a sack over my head.
I can't see. I'm blind.
The sea collapses.
The sun is a bone.
Hi-** the derry-o,
we all fall down.
If I were a fisherman I could comprehend.
They fish right through the door
and pull eyes from the fire.
They rock upon the daybreak
and amputate the waters.
They are beating the sea,
they are hurting it,
delving down into the inscrutable salt.

*

When mother left the room
and left me in the *******
and sent away my kitty
to be fried in the camps
and took away my blanket
to wash the me out of it
I lay in the soiled cold and prayed.
It was a little jail in which
I was never slapped with kisses.
I was the engine that couldn't.
Cold wigs blew on the trees outside
and car lights flew like roosters
on the ceiling.
Cradle, you are a grave place.

Interrogator:
What color is the devil?

Anne:
Black and blue.

Interrogator:
What goes up the chimney?

Anne:
Fat Lazarus in his red suit.

Forgive us, Father, for we know not.

Ms. Dog prefers to sunbathe ****.
Let the indifferent sky look on.
So what!
Let Mrs. Sewal pull the curtain back,
from her second story.
So what!
Let United Parcel Service see my parcel.
La de dah.
Sun, you hammer of yellow,
you hat on fire,
you honeysuckle mama,
pour your blonde on me!
Let me laugh for an entire hour
at your supreme being, your Cadillac stuff,
because I've come a long way
from Brussels sprouts.
I've come a long way to peel off my clothes
and lay me down in the grass.
Once only my palms showed.
Once I hung around in my woolly tank suit,
drying my hair in those little meatball curls.
Now I am clothed in gold air with
one dozen halos glistening on my skin.
I am a fortunate lady.
I've gotten out of my pouch
and my teeth are glad
and my heart, that witness,
beats well at the thought.

Oh body, be glad.
You are good goods.

*

Middle-class lady,
you make me smile.
You dig a hole
and come out with a sunburn.
If someone hands you a glass of water
you start constructing a sailboat.
If someone hands you a candy wrapper,
you take it to the book binder.
Pocketa-pocketa.

Once upon a time Ms. Dog was sixty-six.
She had white hair and wrinkles deep as splinters.
her portrait was nailed up like Christ
and she said of it:
That's when I was forty-two,
down in Rockport with a hat on for the sun,
and Barbara drew a line drawing.
We were, at that moment, drinking *****
and ginger beer and there was a chill in the air,
although it was July, and she gave me her sweater
to bundle up in. The next summer Skeezix tied
strings in that hat when we were fishing in Maine.
(It had gone into the lake twice.)
Of such moments is happiness made.

Forgive us, Father, for we know not.

Once upon a time we were all born,
popped out like jelly rolls
forgetting our fishdom,
the pleasuring seas,
the country of comfort,
spanked into the oxygens of death,
Good morning life, we say when we wake,
hail mary coffee toast
and we Americans take juice,
a liquid sun going down.
Good morning life.
To wake up is to be born.
To brush your teeth is to be alive.
To make a bowel movement is also desireable.
La de dah,
it's all routine.
Often there are wars
yet the shops keep open
and sausages are still fried.
People rub someone.
People copulate
entering each other's blood,
tying each other's tendons in knots,
transplanting their lives into the bed.
It doesn't matter if there are wars,
the business of life continues
unless you're the one that gets it.
Mama, they say, as their intestines
leak out. Even without wars
life is dangerous.
Boats spring leaks.
Cigarettes explode.
The snow could be radioactive.
Cancer could ooze out of the radio.
Who knows?
Ms. Dog stands on the shore
and the sea keeps rocking in
and she wants to talk to God.

Interrogator:
Why talk to God?

Anne:
It's better than playing bridge.

*

Learning to talk is a complex business.
My daughter's first word was utta,
meaning button.
Before there are words
do you dream?
In utero
do you dream?
Who taught you to ****?
And how come?
You don't need to be taught to cry.
The soul presses a button.
Is the cry saying something?
Does it mean help?
Or hello?
The cry of a gull is beautiful
and the cry of a crow is ugly
but what I want to know
is whether they mean the same thing.
Somewhere a man sits with indigestion
and he doesn't care.
A woman is buying bracelets
and earrings and she doesn't care.
La de dah.

Forgive us, Father, for we know not.

There are stars and faces.
There is ketchup and guitars.
There is the hand of a small child
when you're crossing the street.
There is the old man's last words:
More light! More light!
Ms. Dog wouldn't give them her buttocks.
She wouldn't moon at them.
Just at the killers of the dream.
The bus boys of the soul.
Or at death
who wants to make her a mummy.
And you too!
Wants to stuf her in a cold shoe
and then amputate the foot.
And you too!
La de dah.
What's the point of fighting the dollars
when all you need is a warm bed?
When the dog barks you let him in.
All we need is someone to let us in.
And one other thing:
to consider the lilies in the field.
Of course earth is a stranger, we pull at its
arms and still it won't speak.
The sea is worse.
It comes in, falling to its knees
but we can't translate the language.
It is only known that they are here to worship,
to worship the terror of the rain,
the mud and all its people,
the body itself,
working like a city,
the night and its slow blood
the autumn sky, mary blue.
but more than that,
to worship the question itself,
though the buildings burn
and the big people topple over in a faint.
Bring a flashlight, Ms. Dog,
and look in every corner of the brain
and ask and ask and ask
until the kingdom,
however queer,
will come.

Your colors are so heavy, how dare I, I cannot sleep. Years inundated under, through skin coils, marigold fields. Yellow crocuses, orange California poppies. Moors of cattle ranchers, yokes of oxen. Plasticine uber-confidence, silky white-skinned testubular thrice people harmonies. Blisses of contagion, contagious bliss. Wrists and incisors, tying down in a bedroom, waking up to live harps and choruses. You dance like you're so alive, but I'm so alive I can't dance. Or breathe. Or knead my fists of earthen wears, or sell my soul completely. I drove off a cliff last night, but the four foot fall ended neatly. The plateau authors my chance to sew my bright, beyond- my fortunes. But the hour before I fall asleep, seems to be the greatest torture.

Monster
Trianna POV
It took me time to accept what I was being pushed into. Ever since I was young, my mother and father told me that one day, I might grow to hate myself. I know, what parents tell that to their child right? But they saw no point in lying to me. It was going to happen. I was going to hate myself.

I am half-vampire.

Not because of my mother, not because of my father. It was my paternal grandfather.

It was a miracle my father got none of the vampire symptoms. It was the best miracle. My grandparents were one of those unbelievably fated couples in the world. A vampire and a human fell in love and got married and had my dad. They were prepared to have to deal with a vampire child, but, miraculously, it did not happen. My father came out normal, as normal as any human could ever be. It was not surprising; he had more of my grandmother’s genes. Eventually, my father met my mother, fell in love and got married. I came along. That’s how the equation works right?

They had nothing to worry, for they were both human. However, something was not right. When I was 3, my eye color changed. The color was nothing like my parents’. Their eyes were a nice shade of hazel and dark brown. Mine, was green, dark, forest green. As a kid, my treats weren’t sweets. They were blood, small droplets of blood from my parents. But by the time I was 7, my parents and grandparents helped me grow an addiction to lollipops, making me turn to them whenever I had a craving attack. For blood that is. But craving attacks were rare, very rare. I was only a half-vampire anyway.

As the days passed, I grew into a teenager, my parents and grandparents aged, except my grandfather. My grandmother long got used to the fact that my grandfather would not be able to age with her. After a while, I found it weird that my father was starting to look older than my grandfather. Things all went well, until the night before I turned 18.

It was taboo.

All a taboo.

I really hated myself now.

No one saw it coming. So we didn’t make precautions.

I killed them. I killed my parents. I didn’t even know what happened. I couldn’t even remember. I only remembered that I was enjoying a movie on television with my parents alone at home as my grandparents were out for a friends’ gathering dinner or something. And the next thing I remembered were my parents, lying in their own pool of blood, not breathing. My hands and face, stained with blood. My grandfather tried to stop me but feeding me his blood, but it was too late. It was all too late. I held onto my grandfather’s bitten arm and lay there, just staring at my parents. The clock struck midnight and everything turned black.

I woke up the next morning in my own bed, an urge to puke filled my guts as I rushed to the toilet to throw up. Nothing came out, just regurgitation. I looked up in the mirror, and blinked. I blinked again, harder this time, making sure I was not hallucinating. My eyes were, green, not dark green, but a lighter shade. I pulled the side of my mouth to reveal my canine teeth. They were sharper than before. In a state of shock and panic, I ran down the stairs, where I knew where my family would be. The moment I reached the first floor, I saw my grandparents outside, in the backyard.

I hesitated to move. Someone tell me the nightmare I had was not real.
“G-Grandpa?” I murmured. My grandfather turned, making my grandmother do the same. My grandmother had a tear-streaked face and a handkerchief in her hands. My grandfather looked the worse ever since I knew him. I swallowed hard before walking closer to them, and I noticed two coffins being laid on the ground.

Tears fell down my cheeks as I realized who those two being laid there were.

“Grandpa… Tell me this isn’t real…” I struggled to believe what was happening in front of me. My grandfather held onto me before I could collapse.

“Trianna, please don’t be like this…” he pleaded.

I knelt in front of my parents’ tombs and bid them a last farewell before they were being cremated. The fire was burning away so many memories. I almost wanted to walk into it, almost.

“I’m sorry…” I whispered under my breath and said a deep prayer. I lifted myself up from the ground and dried my tears. Walking to my grandparents, I gave them both a tight hug before my grandfather could go on another trail of apologies about how it was his fault I am what I am now. Worse, I am not a pure. And that is making things so hard for us to decipher. It was something none of us wanted. However, I had to blame myself. And I blamed myself, a lot. But I never mentioned anything about my parents ever since my 18th birthday. I wanted to escape.

For one year, we continued to stay at that same house. And every day without fail, I would walk to the backyard where my parents were cremated and kiss the ground, apologize then do whatever I had to do for the day. I stayed away from school which my grandparents obliged. I doubt anyone is ready for me to have a sudden craving attack again and start ******* the blood out of my classmates since my cravings were stronger now. I used to only have to **** on lollipops whenever I see blood. But now, I had to have a lollipop in my mouth 24/7, considering the fact that we are in fact staying amongst humans, and most probably have to for the rest of my life, and I start wondering how long my life would be.

To start things anew, my grandparents decided we needed to shift to a new state. If we continued to stay in that place, as they assumed, would be bringing me way too much pain. I had no opinions; I just needed to follow them wherever they wanted to go. However, I did mention there was not much need to actually move, I was over the whole blaming myself about my parents’ death thing… I think.

We settled down in a small town called Kingslet based in the United States, where Grandpa once lived with his family. I heard that that town was secluded, but definitely still populated with humans, moreover, rich humans. And probably some vampires.

We moved into a cottage that my grandfather bought over from an old friend. And when I said old friend, I meant like, a really really really old vampire friend of his who happened to want to move away to another town with his family. My grandfather drove a van that he had rented from near the place where our private plane landed to the location where we were destined to live. Upon arriving, my jaw dropped. That isn’t a cottage, more like a mansion, for goodness sake. Alighting from the van, I took one breath and knew it was the signal for me to be ******* on lollipops again. I took one out from my backpack and opened it before popping it into my mouth.

“The smell getting to you already? That’s fast.” My grandfather, who was obviously already immune to the smell of blood, chuckled.

“Shut up.” I mock-glared my grandfather and smiled as I helped with moving the luggage into the house. Being half-vampire, for the moment, was not half bad. I get extra super strength, a cliché vampire gift. I did my own research of my own kind. We get super human strength, sense of smell increases and super human speed. But I figured maybe because I was only half-bred, I wasn’t sensitive to the sun, nor to garlics, or crosses. I consider myself lucky.

Entering the cottage, I placed the luggage on the floor before taking a look around the place. The place was really not bad. It was huge, comfortable and very cozy. My grandmother would definitely love it here. Well, she would be the only one hanging around the house 24/7. I don’t really want my 75 year old human grandmother wandering just anywhere she wants alone. High chances are that she was going to get hurt or something. But touch wood. And true enough, my grandmother was already taking her place on one of the sofas furnished in the living room by the fireplace, smiling at my grandfather.

“It’s wonderful here, Xavier dear.” She complimented.

Both grandfather and I smiled at her then at each other.

“Glad that you like it here, Katrina darling.” He said to my grandmother, making me quiver at their sweetness, but it was not like I was not used to it. “Come on Tri, let’s start moving the things.” He turned to me and suggested. I nodded with a smile. As we were at moving, I was told my room is on the second floor, in which I get to choose between three bedrooms, and the other two would become any room I want them to be, and that most likely means I would be having the whole second floor to myself. This really doesn’t sound so bad. I picked the biggest room, and poked my head in, realizing that the bed and all were already furnished perfectly. It must be grandpa. He knows me really well. Too well.

I threw both my luggage onto my bed and opened them, revealing my clothes and all my other belongings and started unpacking. First, my one and only family photo left after grandpa decided to keep the rest away from me at our old home. He only allowed me to keep one, the one we took when I was 15, in which I really don’t look much different compared to the present me. Staring at the photo, I wished so much that they were still here with me. It didn’t matter if we were going to move either way, as long as they were here, things would be perfect. I quickly put the picture frame at the side of my bed before I could actually start crying my green orbs out again. I proceeded with the rest of my unpacking and once I was done, I had also finished my lollipop. Being lazy to open another open, I chose to leave the empty lollipop stick in my mouth and chew on it instead.

Heading downstairs with my headphones hanging around my neck and smartphone, I hopped onto the longest sofa that was facing the wide screen television, switched on the television and started to channel surf, deciding to figure out the town’s frequency, hoping they have my favorite music and drama channels.

“Trianna!”

I heard my name coming from behind me, before turning to my grandmother. She merely shrugged at me, so I pouted at her and responded to my grandfather. “Yes, grandpa?” turning to meet gazes with him. I instantly felt a bunch of papers being shoved into my hold.

“What is this?” I asked, flipping through the pieces of paper, which I realized had my name and identification number printed everywhere.

“Your new school registration confirmation. I have already settled everything for you. And you are reporting to school the day after tomorrow, on Monday.” My grandfather said, taking a place next to my grandmother as they cuddled up.

“Isn’t this a little bit too soon?” I frowned. I really did not hate school. I just hated the fact that if I have to hang around humans, I have to deal with my control over my craving. It’s stressful and tiring.

“You are not getting away with anything this time, Trianna. It’s been a year since you last went to school. And the sooner you go out there to train, the better. Eventually, you will need to walk out of the house.”

Crap. I struggled to find another excuse. And light bulb!

“What about this and this?” I pointed at my eyes first, then my teeth.

“Don’t fret about it. I’m stocking up on your contact lenses for you, and your lollipops. Plus, your teeth aren’t obvious either, those lollipops are grazing them off.”

“But-!”

“Trianna!”

I bit my lips, “Yes grandpa…” I knew there was no way I can argue further. My grandfather was right; I have to deal with this someday, somehow anyway. Why not just go out there and face the music, get it over and done with? He had already obliged to me for a year, it was my turn to listen.

Dinner was spaghetti with carbonara, my grandfather’s best cuisine. Nothing beats this. It was my favorite behind lollipops. After dinner, it was sliced fruits and television. Once I felt I had my fair share of the night, I kissed my grandparents goodnight.

Third Person POV

After Trianna headed up to her room, her grandmother frowned.

“What’s wrong, Katrina?” Trianna’s grandfather asked, caressing his wife’s cheeks.

“Xavier, don’t you think it’s a little too harsh on Trianna? Making her go to school now? Go out there with the humans?” she questioned, as worried as her face portrayed her to be.

Xavier sighed. As much as he did not want to risk his one and only precious granddaughter, he had to. “Katrina, we have to let her go. She is very unlike me. If we don’t let her go, we will never have our answers about her. I know I promise to ask my friends more about Dhampirs. I will. But Trianna still has to go. I cannot protect her forever.” Xavier let out another sigh, “I don’t even know for sure, if she is a Dhampir.”

Trianna POV

The morning sun shone on my face indicating the new day. I struggled to open my eyes as I lifted myself off my bed. I stretched uncomfortably and yawned. This new bed sure needs some getting used to. After combing and tying up my shoulder-lengthed dark brown wavy hair, I washed myself up before heading down to the first floor.

“Good morning Grandpa. Good morning Grandma.” It was a habit to greet. A good one, I know. It was pancakes for breakfast, I could totally smell it since I was upstairs. Popping my head into the kitchen, I took another deep breath.

“Pancakes?” I asked, excited.

“Bet you smelt it the moment you woke up.” He laughed.

“Not exactly, but when I was upstairs, yes.” I chuckled along, moving to hug him.

“Good morning Tri.” He greeted, hugging me tightly.

“Where’s Grandma?” I bobbed my head around, not seeing her anywhere in sight.

“In the backyard trying to do some exercise.” He answered.

You are seriously letting a 75 year old woman do exercise alone in the backyard. Call yourself the best husband in the world. Creep.

I ran towards the backyard and saw my grandma doing some stretches to the morning radio slowly. Like literally, really slowly. I skipped over to greet her, shocking her a little before I pounced slightly to hug her and give her a daily dose of her morning kiss. Sensing that my grandfather was almost done with the pancakes, I led her back into the house and sat her down on her seat at the big round dining table. After helping my grandfather with laying the table, we three finally sat down for breakfast.

Picking up the maple syrup, I poured enough to cover my pancakes before placing my block butters on them, melting them and coating the pancakes. Love them this way. The silence during the meal was perfect, until my grandpa decided to break it.

“So,” he coughed slightly, “Any plans for today?” he asked, looking straight at me.

“No… Why would I have any plans made in a new town?” I asked, avoiding eye contact with my grandfather because I knew exactly where he was getting at.

“Why don’t you take a walk around the new town?”

I cursed under my breath. I think I forgot to mention. My grandfather’s vampire gift, was reading minds. That was exactly why, he knows me very well. ***** to be me, sometimes.

“Sure, doesn’t sound like such a bad idea before the start of school?” I replied. I was not out of my mind. But since I had already promised to go to school, there should not be a problem with just walking around town and try to get used to humans one day earlier. “Are you two coming with me?”

Grandpa nodded and said that he had already suggested to grandma about taking a walk around town, to let grandma know the place better as well as get to know a few faces around us. He felt it wasn’t nice to not greet if you are new in town.

After getting changed into a simple tee and shorts matched with my favorite pair of converse shoes, I hung my headphones around my neck again, plugging the end into my phone and opened one lollipop to pop into my mouth before heading out. The smell was already overwhelming at the door. Thanks, you pathetic piece of body. But if grandpa could get used to it, so will I. I saw my grandfather picked out his favorite hat and placed it on his head and I smirked. At least I can handle some sun.

Walking around town, we got to know a few people. Like Uncle Tyler, owner of the Italian restaurant along the streets, and a few other people around my grandma’s age or slightly younger. I merely greeted and smiled at them, not knowing what to say. Sadly, my grandpa had to introduce himself as my grandmother’s son. Very heartbreaking, to me at least. My grandparents long foreseen this and had been mentally prepared, I really sal

Do you feel better now?
Now that you think you've figured me out?
Found out what makes me tick?
One hand clasped around my throat.
The other tangled in my hair
Pulling my head back so I'm forced to look in your eyes
So you can control me
So you can make me love you
Red marks on the backs of my thighs
A strict set of rules so you'll never worry
Punishment and reward
Equal gratification
All those things you want from me
That you can gain from tying my wrists together
Leaving rope burns across my stomach
Alone in a room
Exposed and waiting for you to come back
And love me
Just like I did to you
But in such a different way
You say that you're dominant
And that I'm the submissive one
Yet you want to jump right in
And I'm going to consider our options
Because your inexperience
Doesn't blend well with my needs
You can't collar me just to say you did
You have to mean it
And you don't know what it means to mean it

I mashup me, myself, and thee: Part II

Excerpts from my poems about poets, poetry and the process of composition. In chronological order, from the earliest to the most recent.
---------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­----


The three poems went about their business,
Bringing heaven to earth,
FYI, even Angels can't be everywhere, so,
God invented poems to do his ***** work,
Cleansing souls.

They rode in~out of town on a prankster wave,
A cheering throng was not around,
But a singular poet saw, recorded the vision,
And thus, this nameless poet,
Below unmasked, unsealed,
Cleansed one more soul,
And that soul, this soul, as required,
Paid it forward.
~
Nothing produced from this place
where routine means the gorge tastes bile,
When surcease is welcome relief,
Where dancing on ice in bare feet
Is step one to ripping your chest open by your own hands,
The toxins thus released rejuvenated by salted air,
Can be finally be transcribed onto paper
And realized.

Warn them once and then begin, you,
Get serious, delve, with hurricane unambiguity,
to torrential words upon the unsuspecting,
let them taste the rawness, only the truth provides,
let them know salt tears so briney,
They will flee this place, n'er to return.
~
One day she intro'd me as her fav poet,
To which I acknowledged by addressing her as
My number one fan,
Which seems to have stuck,
so I acknowledge her as such,
And always add a polite, respectful, winking,
Yes ma'am!
~
Like this new day,
there are always
new poems

Like last night's sunset,
day's efforts reviewed,
a special light,
a yellowed marker,
highlighting a few deserving

Take them home,
kiss them goodnight,
rest them in the poetry file
that is no file,
but a large fabric box where
sewing tools once stored

How appropriate and
how happy that makes me.
~
Yo! Yo!
Remember your first real high,
That moment
No absolution, no return.
That moment
When you admitted, confessed,
to yourself:

I am
Forever forward,
A home-grown poet.
I am
Soul enslaved to words.
The alphabet - My oxygen molecules,
I am both,
Addict and dealer
A ****** poet

Yo! Yo!
So you do recall,
The exact moment,
God-spark-within, ascendancy gained
You lost control,
Wept words instead of tears!
A ****** poet ******!

Yo! Yo!

Sophie's Choice.
You chose writing over breathing,
Worshiper of the purest pleaure,
******* in deep the smoke-high of
Head-nodding discontented contentment
Stealing anything you saw
For to satisfy the need, the craven
Craving.
****** poets!

Yo! Yo!

Don't you're ever sleep?
Hear that the city, the state,
Gonna methadone your kind
In a special program
Teach you only language to sign.
**** poets!

I am a ****** poet.

The first step taken.
Admission.
Poetry is my default rest position,

My drug of choice.
~
Have you noticed here

Each poet declaims his fellow
The better one, his teacher,
From whom they shall learn and gather up
Inspiration

Gonna run for Congress,
My first bill, Poetry-care,
Will make it a requirement that
All citizens must contribute,
Exchange once a day
To this peaceful place,
Even just a syllable, a single letter,

K?
~
Literally my eyes see words awaiting coordinating,
Poems flying by, needing plucking,
How a child eats his morning cereal,
His rituals informing, of the man yet to be,
How our bodies lay, hair unbrushed,
Tying us into a conjoined knot...

No matter that plain words are my ordinary tools,
With them I shall scribe the small,
Cherish the little, grab the middle,
Simplicity my golden rule,
Write they say, about what you know best,
Surely in the diurnal motions,
The arc of daily commotion,
Do we not all excel?
~
The ice of poetry,
glassine smooth
but
charged hardness,
hits you, ****** you,
unexpected snowball in the face,

the fire of poetry,
cherished phrase, a patois,
comfort food when
whole winter skies
swallow you bleak

mutual contradictions of poetry
savaging the soothed ego,
revealing the raging id

what's in a word anyway?
~
Please Pop, pick wise,
the life and lies, the faces and disguises,
I will need employ to achieve success
in the eyes of my reading beholders,
who own the liens on my soul
because of the promises I believed,
when you sang me
glowing lullabies of my future days,
how everyone would love my stories,
my poems, someday...
~
Place your ****** hands upon thy chest.
Let them melt thru and come to rest,
Inside, the battle ongoing, under thy breast.
Watch, eyes open, knowing, fearful.
Swiftly, with no hesitation, from within,
Rip open your body, exhaling the best,
And the worst of what you got.

The cool air rushes in,
Stirring the inside stew of:
Infected grime, shameful desires,
Secrets that should not have been exposed,
The ***** stuff that you alone know exists.

Contact with the atmosphere makes
Self-pity dies, blue blood turn red,
The TNT tightness explodes,
Ashamed, you have only one escape hatch.

Now, you are ready to write.
~
My life is on the boring side,
So welcome gents to look inside,
The surfed sites, the emails, hardly slimy,
But stay the fk away from my poetry!

Tis obvious from your midnight editing,
That my wordily, working body has been discretely
Simonized,
My data,
Googlized,
My poems,
Scrutinized,
A comma, a colon, a verb, out of place, capsized,
Little threads kept in door jambs, their alteration,
Your snooping presence, a confirming revelation
~
Where I write, here, all comes so easy,
Every glance a poem formed,
Every phrase a title to a poem served,
Every conversation overheard and those wind-lifted brought,
A seed, a germ, a word~worm hooked to the pole crook of
My finger saying, see man, time to get more ink and paper,
Go and catch us a few poems for dinner

The snapper weakfish word colors are
Running past my-by the thousands,
We will need a basket to catch but a fraction
Of what you see, more than more enough to share,
Only Happy Poems for all

It is this rhyming way I view the wold,
That is my freedom, is my-present essence,
How the poems come, how thy flow,
Peaking, I cannot berate, rarely eat,
Sleep a thing of the past (as you be aware, beware)
There is poetry in simply everything.
~
But if my aura be a comfort insufficient,
Let this surprise poetic gift awaiting your arrival,
Give you rest, from crying surcease!

For when the who, the why of me interrogatory posed,
Describe me in a brevity I ne'er possessed, say:
He was just a poet, and I,
Just, his lover, number one fan.

This truth eternal, never to change.
~
But I am open to learning, the arduous task
Of raising a teenage daughter,
After I have my head examined

Though I am just a bunch of eclectic electrons,
I got powers a few, like making life's happiness
Hearted happier, encouraging your forays into
You-know-what,
And when tables turn, a hasty retreat you beat,
For imaginary cappuccinos and poems we will meet,
Comparing notes on who felt lousier when...

But what I can do 100% is assure you
There is no lone nor lonely daughter extant,
Your voice not just clear but soft-edged,
For I have poetically adopted you,
Here and now, assuming you sign on the
.............................................................­line
~
Take these words at plain face,
and look not askance
at this fair warning,
for I am but a tragic,
empty vessel for you to fill,
you are the raconteur,
me, just a  
poet poseur extraordinaire,
street urchin, word merchant,
all my verbally, wordly goods expropriated
from the wind,  where your scattered thoughts
lie about, carelessly,
unattended
~
Guiltless in life, we but survived,
Hurting no one, no thing,
Yet, here we lie, ignored, unattended,
Yet, you fail again to see our connection?
You do not recognize us?

We are the shells, the husks of you,
Your poems unread, you labors unpreserved,
All wasted, for unless they are read, they die,
As you will too.
Some fast, by water, some slower, time-eroded,
All, ended, by drowning in the Sea of Who Cares!
~
What sourced this elegiac distich,
Too many poets, fully disclosing their downbeat, aroma of defeat?

The world is in a **** mood, not one of us, got nothing
Good to say, seems that love storms ripping hearts
With no trace of mercy, the radio has elected nonstop
Taylor Swift and Jonas Bro's
Just to make the point!

It is so easy to feel ******,
When the sun is unshining, elegant distich, **** me.

Thinking back, getting a good idea,
Found some long necked Corona overlooked,
Turn on the tv, pretend I'm a real cowboy,
And for god's sake, shut down poetry,
Good Bye Poetry, for the rest of the day.
~
once upon a time,
a traffic light rainbow,
stopped n' go, was a word design,
demarcated visions of spun sugar,
bodegas sold me
magic beans by the pound,
masterminded into cups of delight,
treasury's bounty overflowed,
now, dregs drain, sink stained,
as are my writing utensils,
my ink stained, us-less, fingers

come visit me, unknown stranger,
let us exchange fluidity, barbs,
a contest of kissing, eye lashing
wit ands shared vision stashing,
and together, once more,
write with our feet,
while holding hands,
becoming once more
poets of the street.

Only, come quickly.
~

But reading thy cries, an exercise,
Teeth-gnashing frustration.
It brings no relief.

So sad girl,
Write till you are righted,
May be it will snow on July 4th,
And tho unnatural,
So is thy grief.

Nonetheless, write me write me all about it,
Right us,
For tho snow falls, its loveliness,
Makes the heart rise up in gladness!
~
She brings me coffee in bed.
I propose a violin accompaniment.
Some babka, with nice-crumbly-in-bed
Streusel topping,
A concerto we could make!

Her derision snorted so loud,
The mollusks on the beach
From their shells come out.

"Good luck with that,
Put that fantasy on
Your **** poetry site,
Cause that is the closest you will ever get!"
~
For she will be my heroine for all time,

These words to expand with rhyme and verse,
T'is a welcome task, one familiar, but anew,
Each dawn each dusk, a daily trust, a love poem diurnal-birthed,
As if god created the world, but left upon completion,
With a grievous thirst, a new notion, he did burst.

He created the Eighth Day, for celebration of his
Most cherished invention, the idea of love.
This is where, the secret writ Eleventh Commandment occurs,
Love thy Poetry Gods, Honor them with daily verbs.
~
Officer...you should see me gut a

Poem,

Slice its belly open,
Sometimes straight, sometimes Askew,
Feed the gulls them
****** insides on the dock, by-moonlight,
Can ya cut me some slack?

Mmm, I see here in your license,
You are a disabled guy,
A **** poet ******,
Who often does his best work
Legally all alone in the HOV lane,
So I'm gonna let you off this time
Just with a warning!
~
We can share words, we can grant tiny easements,
We can weep with you unseen tears,
We can etsy you little homemade gifts
Like this.

That you can take and keep, and break out in time of need knowing full well that these words will not spoil nor rancid turn, cannot be out grown,, or torn, or rent asunder in anyway for once they are shared
They are irrevocable.
~
When you write,
It as if you write upon our
One skin,
For I am your tablet,
Your sole/sol/soul composition.

So stop kissing me
and
Write upon us.
~
This will not be the hardest poem I e're wrote,
But if there is no inspiration
For you to smote,
And armpits refuse to provide perspiration,
To source juices for a new creation,
Try this trick,
I promise you
No one will lick your ice cream cone,
Nor mistake you for Leonard Cohen,
But when you are done,
You will be High Priest of
Hello Poetry for the rest of the day!
~
You think you can write?
Then employ  a word outside your comfort zone,
Go it alone,
And write four sentences that will make
The hopeful reader stand up and
you twice as much, and shout

Hallelujah
*******.

Work. Poetry is work. Hard work.
Don't fret. But, think on it. Have the sweetest dreams.
In the morning, when you but awake,
A poem will be aborning in thy mind,
And dare I say it, you will find a new freedom
In free verse.
(I know you will slip in a rhyme or two,
I can't help but do it too)
~
Had myself forgot,
That a poem needs a
Frame of jungle gym sounds,
An aural aura resonance unbound.
Purposed to make the heart lift
Your ears say:

Say what!

It needs a tune,
An internal music,
It needs a lilt!
A cadence, that both
Marches and swings,
Even when'd urgent dirge
grief pours forth.
~
This Sabbath day you fog-hide
Your gift of bay and beach
So quiet implore, beseech,
Keep the sailors safe,
And your poets saved.

I ask much.
But I ask for all of us,
There are so many such
That are booster-chair needy
That I am succumbed, overwhelmed,
Enormity fearsome needs help even from a deity.

Small words, big hopes.

If you cannot grant it,
Won't wait for intervention,
Do it myself, answer prayers one and all,
Best I can, starting now with this
Po-hymn.
~
I used to sleep
With pen and paper on my nighttime table.
Nowadays, my iPad tablet rests upon my chest,
Not only does it keep me warn,
It takes my poems from within, Fresh Direct,^
Edits, credits, and delivers them to your door,
While I'm still sleeping.

Which is why they come at all hours.
It is also why they call them,
Love's Labour's Lost saving devices.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
**So I spend my cold, hard time
laying down cold hard verse,
Can't stop, cause it's my daddy's dying curse.

I am both: Addict and dealer, a ****** poet ******.

Anthea bade me tie her shoe;
I did ; and kissed the instep too:
And would have kissed unto her knee,
Had not her blush rebuked me.

Pretty rich girl, softly dreaming, 
a woman is so newly waking
no use at all for dad’s financing, 
consumed by flesh that is desiring 
of wanton flows that force such rousing
to be taken far from here for using 
by men unfazed by city counting.

Then sudden blackness o’erwhelming, 
all sound and vision swiftly clouding
strong arms unseen and grasping 
to sweep her off her feet and making
sense of ropes around her tight’ning, 
with her arms together jerking
forcing back to ankles spreading
with ballgag muffled screaming 
she should now be strongly fighting 
instead there is a wild arousing.

Stripping cutting all that’s hiding 
until she’s held quite naked finding
that there’s a hood that’s closing 
round her head and isolating
from any sense of air that’s cooling
and rampant need that’s now arising
she feels excitement in so being
where she feels no fear abiding.

Put down hard after easy lifting
a lid above her slamming
the sound of engine starting 
spinning wheels now are speeding 
bound in dark she’s left a-lieing 
with mouth that gives no screaming
instead a wet arousal finding 
knowing of her inner needing.

****** rising almost blinding 
fighting, writhing, needing tying 
her tortured form now pounding
forcing every sinew twisting
with such unsought pleasure giving 
this wanton **** who has such thinking
of brutal taking and ill using
by men she should be hating.

How could juices start their flowing 
as crude hands began their probing 
carrying to places far unknowing.
Rough voices talking of their doing, 
arguing ransoms for demanding
then finding her with wet arousing 
cruel laughing at her needing
until there comes a sweet dividing 
of her eager self though darkening
roughly forcing them by wanting 
that she is newly there for taking
captors now in forced confronting.

There can now be no disguising 
that this is life not fantasizing 
these coarse brutes so crudely using
think they’re forcing her submitting 
now she wants them by satisfying 
her every silent wanton needing 
of each to feed obscene desiring.

An iron bed prepared for keeping 
till the time of ransom paying 
fully tight is now her strapping
legs apart, wide spreadeagling
ignoring all her protests mewling 
but her bucking body thrusting 
makes her needing so enticing
till they give her what she’s wanting.

There is now for each unseen taking
a welcoming and wet demanding 
so there can be no inflicting 
that but which is urgent wanting
opening each hole for filling 
not once or twice but oft repeating
taking turns in fully using 
till they are all quite lost in spending.

With captive bound there’s no sating 
screaming begging ne’er abating 
always there is more demanding 
screaming all despite her gagging
each time her body hits climaxing
fighting , dragging now and forcing 
wearied jailers for more pleasuring
ignoring all their worn protesting
incessant in her primal wanting
who is using whom in this not knowing
when captors should be really scaring
but they have never known such needing
standing round and jointly fearing
of chewing less than was their biting
with this nymphomaniac in bareing.

Words in anger, muffled voicing 
some with reason in conferring
then a quick release of bindings 
a body hot for blanket wrapping 
with a fiesty female grappling
cursing now her wild desiring
yet unstilled with needy struggling
tossed in the car for rapid driving 
some miles back by unknown routing
while in the trunk much banging
till on daddy’s doorstep dumping 
ransom now in quick forgetting
as captors with relief escaping
while pretty rich girl leans back smiling
anticipating her next kidnapping.


From my Francesca Anderssen Poetry collection: **** Verse (Amazon)

MY HOOLIGAN IS READY TO BE LAID TO REST



YOU SEE, I TOLD YOU ONE DAY, THAT I USED TO FANTAISIZE ABOUT

TAKING A KID, BECAUSE, I LIKED THE LOOK OF THEIR MOO COWS ON FRONT KNEE

AND THE SHIPS ON THE BACK KNEE, AND I USED TO GO OUT AND GRAB THE KIDS

YA KNOW SCARING THEM, AT THE MALL, AND I CAME UP TO A FORT, IN LAKE GINNINDERRS

AND SCARED SOME KIDS INTO THINKING, I WAS GOING TO KIDNAP THEM, AND I WAS GOING TO THE

TOILET TO WAIT FOR A KID, AND I MIGHT HAVE ONCE BEEN KNOWN AS A PHEDAPHILE TO PEOPLE

BUT I AM REFORMED, NOW, YOU SEE, I USED TO FANTASIZE, ABOUT TYING THEIR MOO COW AND SHIPS

AND SQUASHING THEM TO THE GROUND, I WAS MENTAL, AND REALLY, I HATE THESE VOICES TRYING FOR

ME TO KEEP THESE THOUGHTS IN MY HEAD, I WAS A REAL MEAN DUDE, I WALKED AROUND SCARING KIDS,

MY ADULT DIDN’T WANT TO DO THIS, MY KID DIDN’T WANT TO EITHER, AND BECAUSE I COULDN’T HANDLE DAD’S

DISCIPLINE PATTERN, IT WASN’T HIS FAULT, BUT HE KNEW NOTHING ABOUT THIS, I HEARD THIS VOICE SAYING

DON’T EVEN TRY TO MESS WITH BIG BAD BRIAN, HE’S NOT LIKE US, NO WAY, NO FEAR, ONE KID, SAID I WAS ONE OF THEIR MOB

AND DAD THOUGHT I WAS NICE, CAUSE BACK THEN I WAS A COWARD, WHO NEEDED HELP TO GET WHAT I WANT IN LIFE,

YOU SEE I GRABBED THESE KIDS, BECAUSE, OF MY LAST TWO LIVES TRAGICALLY TAKEN AT AGE 8, AND THE KIDS

WHO KILLED MY LAST LIFE AFTER GREAME THORNE, WHICH WAS A CAT, WHERE I WAS RUN OVER BY A SCOOTER

I WAS GRABBING KIDS EVERYWHERE, I FELT A REAL BUZZ BY DOING THAT, YOU SEE I GOT AN ERECTED ****

FROM IT, I WANT YOU TO KNOW, THIS COULD EFFECT ME HELPING PEOPLE IN THE FUTURE, BUT AS I REMEMBER

WALKING AROUND THE TOILETS WITH ROPE AND GRABBING KIDS AND THIS MADE THEIR PARENTS MAD, I DIDN’T AND

STILL DON’T KNOW, WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED, IF I CARRIED OUT THIS FEAT, MATE, I WANT THIS, WHICH IS MY HOOLIGAN

TO BE LAID TO REST, IT IS WRONG TO DO THIS, I WASN’T GETTING WHAT I WANT OUT OF LIFE, SO I TOOK IT OUT ON THE KIDS

BY HASSLING THEM BY TYING UP THEIR MOO COWS WITH THEIR SHIPS, THEY SCREAMED SAYING AHHHHHHH!, THE CRAZY PERSON

HAS GOT ME, I SAID, YEAH, I AM A CRAZY PERSON, AND YOU ARE COMING WITH ME, SO COME HERE KID, AND WE WILL COOK

YOU ON THE STOVE, AND HAVE FRESH TASTY KID FOR DINNER, I WANT TO BE A KIDNAPPER, NOTHING MORE AND NOTHING LESS

AND EVERY TIME I SAW KIDS ANYWHERE, I WOULD CHASE THEM, YA KNOW FOLLOWING THEM AROUND, MAKING THEM JITTER

ONE KID SAID, TO ME, WHY THE **** ARE YOU FOLLOWING, AND I THINKING IF I LOOK CRAZY, I WILL LOOK LIKE I AM TRYING TO SCARE HIM

BUT REALLY I WAS PLAYING A SMALL GAME WITH THEM, TRYING TO GRAB THEIR MOO COW AND SHIPS, AND TIE THEM UP TOGETHER

AND I WAS HAVING A FIELD DAY, I AM COMMITTING NO CRIME, WELL, THAT IS WHAT I THOUGHT THEN, DAD MIGHT HAVE THOUGHT HEV WAS HELPING

BUT BY TRYING TO HAVE THE LAST WORD, MADE ME FEEL REALLY HYPED UP WITH GRABBING KIDS, I AM NOT BLAMING DAD, ACTUALLY, I AM BLAMING

NOBODY IN HINDSIGHT, IT WAS MY SILLY SCHITZOPHRENIC DELLUSIONS, THAT ARE THE REAL CULPRIT, YOU SEE, THINKING IT’S ALRIGHT TO GRAB OR

SCARE YOUNG CHILDREN, I FEEL MY HOOLIGAN, CREEPING BACK INTO MY BODY, BUT, HE WAS A DELLUSIONAL HOOLIGAN, AND I HATE WHAT THAT HOOLIGAN DID

IT MAKES TED BUNDY A GOOD GUY FOR DYING AND KIDNAPPING ME, BY MAKING ME TIE MYSELF UP, AND FANTASIZING ABOUT TYING BRENDAN UP AND

MAKING BRENDAN HYPE ME UP, BY SHOWING HIS BIG ADULTS KID LEGS, WITH HIS MOTHER AND FATHER, EVEN IF I WENT TO JAIL, FOR A WEEKEND

AND I WENT TO PROBATION HEARINGS FOR 1 YEAR, I LEARNT THAT KIDNAPPING KIDS CAN BE FATAL FOR ME, SO AS I LEFT THE PROBATION FOR THE LAST TIME

I DID MY FAMILY PERSON THING, BY GOING TO GLEBE PARK ALA CARTE, TO LISTEN TO THE MUSIC, BUT I LEARNT, CANBERRA HATED ME FOR THE KIDNAPPING THOUGHTS

AND THIS MADE ME SCARED TO EVER GRAB ANOTHER KID AGAIN, AND MY PARENTS PUT ME ON MEDICATION, AND I AM STILL ON MEDICATION, AND

THE THOUGHTS WERE GOING AWAY, BUT I DID VOLUNTEER WORK AS YOU KNOW, AT THE RAINBOW, COOKING, VACCUMING, AND ALSO CREATIVE WRITING

AND THAT LASTED 3 YEARS, AND MIND YOU, I ALSO DID A BIT OF BUSH WALKING, KOSCIUSKO AND JERVIS BAY, TUMUT AND MANY OTHERS, I WAS A REALLY

POSITIVE PERSON, AND THE PSYCHIATRIST, TRIED TO REDUCE MY MEDICATION, WHICH WAS A MISTAKE, I KILLED MY CAT, THINKING IT WAS THE DINGO THAT

KILLED AZARIA, I DON’T WANT TO BE JUDGED FOR THIS, I WAS SICK AND PLACED ON THE FAT DRUG, THE FAT DRUG, GIVING ME NO ENERGY, SLOWLY KILLING ME

AND GIVING ME NASTY LOOKUPS EVERY TIME I TRIED TO WORK, AND I WORKED AT AINSLIE VILLAGE, AS A HOUSE CLEANER, BUT LOOKING AT MY HOUSE, I WAS LIKE

ANY MAN, DOES A GREAT JOB HOUSE CLEANING FOR OTHERS, AND LETTING HIS OWN HOUSEWORK SLIP, I DON’T WANT TO GET EVICTED, BUT I AM GETTING HELP

IN CLEANING, BY DUO SERVICES, MAYBE OTHER POOR PEOPLE CAN GET THE SAME SERVICES, CAUSE I GET SPRING CLEANS AS WELL, GIVE OTHER PEOPLE A HAND

I GOT FUNDING, BUT WHY CAN’T YA RICH *******, INSTEAD OF COMPLAINING ABOUT POOR PEOPLE’S HOUSES, TRY AND HELP THEM CLEAN IT, DON’T BE RICH *****

BE THEIR FRIENDS, NOW, INSTEAD OF BEING A HOMELESS ***, I AM A WRITER AN ARTIST AND A YOUTUBE ENTERTAINER, I AM DEALING WITH MY VOICES

BUT THE FEAR IS THERE, CAUSE I UPSET A LOT OF DUDES, I AM SORRY, THAT I AM NOT PERFECT, EVERYTHING I DID IN THE PAST, IS IN THE PAST

OK, ONE GOOD THING THAT CAME FROM MY CHILDHOOD, WAS THE D OF E AWARD SCHEME, I GOT BRONZE AND SILVER, AS WELL AS MY MATES GETTING ****** WITH ME

MAKING ME FEEL I WAS A SCHOOLIE, WHETHER THEY WERE JUST BEING NICE OR NOT, I STILL THANK THEM,

OK BYE DUDES

Dear Body;

I really didn't think we were going to make it this far.
We just stood out too much.
Remember the first time someone talked negatively about your eyes? Your skin, hair, legs, arms?
Remember the time when we had to use your weight as data in math class? I think that's when I first started resenting you.
I began working you tirelessly, trying every crazy new diet, working you until you almost broke.
I didn't listen to you. I ignored you when you were tired, or hungry, or you just needed a break.
I rewarded you when you became a little smaller and scolded you when you became a little bigger.
I'm sorry.
They wanted me to hate you. They wanted me to hate myself.
To carry this weight of shame and embarrassment that did not belong to me.
Or my neck, or my arms, or my shoulders...which were always tense with fear.
Eventually...a ***** gets tired!!
Why should I punish you for being as you are?
That goes against everything I believe in.
We deserve better!!
Enough is enough *******!!
We've been through a lot...a lot.
Yes, I understand you might be tired, but we've only passed the first lap of the race.
I'll keep pushing you a little harder than I have before.
But this time, I'll listen to you. I'll feed you, and give you breaks when you need them.
I know you can handle , you're a tough *****.
I know you.
Its taken me 15 and 1/2 years to figure you out, but I understand you now.
And we're gonna be okay. Even if it's only just for today. Were gonna be okay.
Before I go, I want to thank you...
Thank you for letting me play piano and strum a ukulele, for allowing me to write poems and stories.
Thank you for letting me laugh and smile, letting me engage in mischievous things, having fun.
Thank you for telling me when something is dangerous, or I might get hurt. Knowing when I need to leave, back away, or that my body can't handle something.
Thank you for letting me hold and comfort the ones I love. Allowing me to be generous and compassionate.
Thank you for assisting me during tests, helping me retain knowledge and receive all A's.
Thank you for sometimes allowing me to do crazy things, and to sometimes be a little destructive and wild. You're always open to tying new things.

Thank you for being you.

I promise to listen to you from now on, I promise to celebrate you instead of shame you.

I promise that we're gonna make it. We'll be okay.

Let me fly


                              Quick cut the rope tying us together
                           And I soar on the wind's wings.
                       You can't feel my heaviness
                   Up, higher and higher until
               My sails until I start to lift
           Let the breeze creep under
       On the ground as you go.
    Trailing me behind
Sprint ahead

So, along comes Love, who brings Passion, and Desire. Love ends up tying me up, Passion blindfolds me, while Desire takes control. Now we are ready to role. These ladies forced my hand, no plans to console. Love keeps touching my heart, has a strong hold. Passion is a work of art; touches my soul. While Desire has her *** up, legs are spread apart; trying to take control.  Love keeps on tempting me, such a tease. Passion keeps begging pretty "please", while she's on her knees. Desire won't listen, But she's dying to be pleased. They blowing my mind; I'm not talking a breeze. Loves so distracting, to busy multitasking. Passions is upset, didn't like my reactions. Desire is still her, looking for some action. Love, left with Forgiveness, and Passion left with the Compassion. Desire left  me for much stronger attractions. It doesn't matter, all three, were just distractions. Rather post it on Hello Poetry, probably get better reactions!

slipping past conscience actions.
diving into the idea that maybe things will go
                                                              ­                         the way that i've hoped.

now all that is left to do is extract the expectations,
& i'm left stranded.                 my mind is smashing into the bottom
of a self created abyss that leads towards the truth that
to exist is to perceive. i watch my choices extend themselves
into my future, into how i see myself.


no reflection showing worth.

through adaptation i made comfort
in the dark.
the clouds came in, and decided to stay;
lingering in the sky, just barely out of reach.
they are so low, and i'm solo.

i don't.
i don't need.
i don't need this.
i don't need this anymore.

so i'll make up reasons to leave.
push myself further and further away from what others define as love.
whereas my dictionary is full of lies,
and the truth is,
i don't really mind.

i twisted and turned;
running as fast as my bones would allow.
i'm a little exhausted--
but i'm too tangled to care.

and all this time
i thought
except me.
accept me.

i never wanted to kiss her lips,
just hold her hand
maybe kiss her cheeks because she suited a gentler kind of treatment
something softer and more delicate, quiet;
quieter than the constant raging storms inside my stomach,
inside my mind
(never my heart)

those plump lips
she bit them raw when nervous, and they swelled
blossomed ruby as she looked at me
like she knew this wouldn't last
her eyes remained doughy and mellow
when i met her gaze.

my smile stung as it stretched the lines left by winter's bite
and split them open once more.
she brushed the blood beads away with her fingertips
with a touch so reverent that, for a moment, i thought
maybe she felt as though she were touching rosary beads instead,
and i held my breath to stop myself from chasing her
touch, and pressing her down into the mattress

unholy, chasing pleasure.
both agnostic, but she was much more pure than i;
chivalries always in mind, i wanted to preserve that.
there's always been something inside me
that presses down the animalistic urges with
a conscience caught on consideration and something akin to courtly love-
i wanted to woo her before i pursued her

but i never got further than pressing my lips to her forehead,
wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
i laced my fingers with hers but avoided tying any knots.
i am not a man to be bound,
too free-spirit, too restless, too claustrophobic;
a few months in and i was choking on the ghost of a future;
she kissed me first and i suffocated on the phantom of her hopes for us:
a future that didn't yet exist,
and i didn't want it to.
i never kissed her; i never let her kiss me again.

we tangled fingers over the duvet
the television a background noise to our unsteady breaths,
shallower
than my love for her
i enjoyed her quiet affection like one might enjoy curling into a blanket when cold and ill.
i wanted her smiles, i wanted to fill her memories with goodness
so that she never need feel hopeless, like all men are the same
so that she had something to smile about when she looked back on us;
once the bitterness of our breakup had left her mouth-
whenever that eventual end would be-
she could savour the taste of our sweet, slow-burn, love affair
and be reminded that not all love is true love, but nor is all love heart breaking

i broke her heart anyway.

nobody ever taught me how cruel kindness could be.