Your eyes resemble a kaleidoscope
But I suffer from being color blind
It’s unfathomable how you could cope

The ending was a rapid, rising slope
Leveling out, and suddenly declined
Your eyes resemble a kaleidoscope

You ascend it like a splintering rope
Limp hands are raw and bloody from the grind
To begin your descent to losing hope

Your eyes resemble a kaleidoscope
But my thoughts are not evenly aligned,
At the moment, I'm just an isotope

I hope that you know, this isn't me, nope,
The roots of my thoughts became intertwined
When windows clear, roots will elope, I hope

It’s unfathomable how you could cope
I promise you should never feel confined
Selfishness is not pure, unlike the pope,
A black hand shielding my kaleidoscope

They were over and he knew it. They were over and she didn't. The little things- the transitional touches when turning a corner, the frequency of smiles, the speed of walking, all were altered. He picked up on mammorisms and the change in habitual tendencies of their relationship. It was the the kinds of things that your best friend wouldn't understand and would not pick up on. If you were to describe them, your friend would say you were overreacting and being paranoid, but he felt it so deeply that being around her at all was a challenge in itself. Standing next to her was a tease. Any where away from her was a place of halfhearted denial. He knew what was true and consciencely chose to live a lie. In this way, he convinced his mind that he was being true to himself. Being away was a sovereign from the misery of watching their relationship crumble, without having to be there to watch it happen.
He had always been close with Ashley from physics class. When they were younger, he had always looked up to her. Although they were the same age, she seemed mature, and had only dated guys in grades above her. This, as it usually goes, had made him want her more since she appeared to be so untouchable. Because she was so far out of his league at the time, he didn't notice when she began to become more in his range of possible girls to date. As time went on, and the older boys had gone away to college, she made the decision to lower her standards. He, at this point, was already with Jessica, so Ashley never really came to mind. In a parallel universe, a shift of earth's poles, or maybe simple karma, the situation had been reversed. Mike was the one who was off limits, while Ashley was alone and considered her new options.

Jessica was surprised when Mike turned down her offer to get frozen yogurt after school. Even though the weather was starting to cool, it was still part of the pattern the two of them had created during the routine school week. She walked home like usual, thinking while she observed the neighborhood scenery that often went ignored. Life had always been easy; there had never before been a reason to rate and rationalize how events in her life were going. She had always driven through her life as if she were running on a track. There was never a reason to look back or time to think when you were supposed to move forward. However, for a reason she couldn't break down into worded thoughts, Jessica felt as if all her organs had settled in the bottom of her stomach and were colliding into eachother. With this uneasiness came a heightened sense of awareness, and thoughts became detailed with more edge to them, instead of the rounded, unfocused mindset she usually posessed. This wasn't like being upset over a bad test grade, or because of a scraped knee. This was a hopeless, worthless feeling, as if the sun beating down her was there just to burn her scalp, and the trees next to the sidewalk were there to shield any blue in the sky. It was the first time that Jessica had ever felt rejected.

The sign of Diberto's was a shiny, glittering red. It was obvious to the returning public that it had recently been redone to replace it's maroon, rusting previous one. Although most people didn't care to notice the new sign, some were surprised by the nostalgic vibe it gave off. A reminder that bright and new is the in, and old and used is the out. Certain individuals find it difficult to appreciate old, worn out objects. They fail to see the "vintage" in it. I'm not talking about the vintage that is suddenly well known and liked. I mean the classical, standard type... before everything had to be a glossy, pastel white or a metallic, deep red. Becoming smarter is not connected with age all the time, however wisdom is. The deep knowledge, almost extinct of knowing. Not only thinking you know, but having a belief so bottomless and undeniable that you'd base every decision of your life on it. Eighty year old men don't necessarily obtain this wisdom. It has to do with being born with an old soul, and learning enough through your life to unlock the potential your mind has. It's one of those things where either you have it or you don't, and she absolutely didn't.
School had started once again. The stale familiar scent of the halls sarcastically welcomed it's students back. She walked through the halls, looking straight ahead, with the exception of a wave or a smile here and there in response to a friendly face.

The goldfish swim in sacks of plastic wrap
A child sticks his finger in the cheese
The fish falls through his grasp onto his lap
And parties in his joy of dodging seize
Away from house and pretzel cousins though
Not much enjoyed through life away from home
Although the ocean is from long ago
He longs for living in his natural dome
One day the goldfish plans his quick escape
And dreams of oceans filled with snack foods high
At pizza aunts and uncles he will gape
And spend his days until is bound to die
The goldfish quickly saw his soggy end
When cracker mixed with water learned to blend

You should choke to death on a cactus spike,
Instead of helping your mom says sike
You die with false hope and disappointment
That would give me wholehearted enjoyment

I wish on you an ocean of static
Electric bolts of torture, So it's not automatic
Your pretty hair turns a fried mess
Under water, no one hears your distress

It would give me the greatest pleasure
If a beast with height too tall to measure
Took you as their meal after hibernation
Limb by limb, an amputation

Where do you go after hell?
I caste on you an infernal spell
Of living your death after death
In the exhale of coffee breath

Missing someone
Is regreting
the time spent that you let fly
Missing someone
Is either obsessively returning to the places
Or being compeltely unable
Missing someone
Is finding their presence
In the most innocent, unrelated places
Missing someone
Is keeping that repulsive birthday present
In the focal point of your room
Missing someone
Is being alone when you're alone
And being alone when you're not
Missing someone
Is being jealous of yourself
In old photos positioned next to the person
Missing someone
Is the day you know what to value
When a whole mall to yourself would have no gratification

Just a thought.......

Doodles of geometric shapes clear my head. They give dimension to my thoughts, and an image of them I can see on paper so I know they're there. The perfection of a cyclinder, the symmetry of a square organizes my thoughts into basic shapes. Boredem lays itself on my paper, along with brutal enemies happiness and sadness. All emotions go into a shape that looks three dimensional, but really is contained in a jail of ink and tree.
The lack of emotion can be seen on paper as well. It's its own feeling, and in this way it becomes something it's not. Although contradictory, it can exist on a piece of paper, therefore it must be. A silent remember that something exists up there, even if it can't be put into words. Not everything can be talked out, how do animals deal with themselves? We humans think we're so strong, when meanwhile animals can keep everything to themselves and life goes on for them, always a fight for survival. We succumb to our own weaknesses.

The clutter of his mind
Spun with thoughts
Or
Rather
Ceased to spin at all

Whizzing so fast
With velocity so great
That they clung
Plastered to the walls

Once initiated
It was hard to slow down
A train
A suicide jumper

Reflexes habitual
An airplane taking off
With engines of force
Reaching an altitude to glide

But rather than glide
His thoughts stall
Mind and soul
In a sudden descent

The Obligation to be Happy
By Linda Pastan

It is more onerous
than the rites of beauty
or housework, harder than love.
But you expect it of me casually,
the way you expect the sun
to come up, not in spite of rain
or clouds but because of them.
And so I smile, as if my own fidelity
to sadness were a hidden vice—
that downward tug on my mouth,
my old suspicion that health
and love are brief irrelevancies,
no more than laughter in the warm dark
strangled at dawn.
Happiness. I try to hoist it
on my narrow shoulders again—
a knapsack heavy with gold coins.
I stumble around the house,
bump into things.
Only Midas himself
would understand.

I like how Pastan says that people expect happiness from her "casually". I think this is true of most people. Since a main goal in life is the pursuit of happiness, people who are unhappy are generally considered unfulfilled, instead of accepted for who they are. Pastan talks about her faux happiness and how the strives to put on a good show for the people surrounding her. Instead, her "fedality to sadness" keeps her from being what people assume everyone should be. Her reference to Midas, or a god who would turn everything he touched to gold, signifys how she is expected to be perfect. She assumes that Midas himself had hardships in his life too, but common knowledge is that he was perfection.

Three Pieces From 1st Quarter

Chattel

Judge Wilner had a decision to make. Was it the store owners fault for the distribution of these things or was it the fault of the consumer with bad intentions. What were the regulations on this, anyway? What law ever stated that it is illegal to sell someone's dignity, and put it in the posession of somebody else?

In the old days, this species of a store was easy to come by. Unlike today, where it tends to be an underground business, an individual's dignity was hardly ever their own. Unless, of course, you were a king or queen, sometimes a noble here and there. If you were a peasant, your dignity was bought in part by the rich. Dignity in whole is expensive, but like a stock, parts of you could've been sold to various individuals. If you were a woman, your dignity was owned by a man. And if you were a slave, your dignity wasn't on the market, because it never existed. With time, the distribution of dignity was thrown underground by the constitution and other such acts, but legal limits have yet to be put on it.

The death of the prosecuter's client's daughter was a direct connection between the selling of her dignity and her lack of resiliency. Sure, the person who bought it abused it until all self respect dissolved into thin air. But he had paid full price for it and, legally, it belonged to him. There have been cases like this before, where the individual can bounce back from such a sale and create new dignity to work off of. Considering it is not impossible, why should anyone be persecuted? The judge made the final decision to throw the case out of court.

We're taught in the bible that Eve came from the rib of Adam, and that she was basically his underdog. She followed his orders and she lived for him. Adam set standards for her and she did her best to meet them. Lilith came before her, and was a goddess considered to be evil. Adam commanded her to do something she opposed to, and for this reason she left the Garden of Eden. She is overlooked in the bible and considered evil for disobeying Adam. What isn't known about her, however, is that Adam made the mistake of failing to purchase her dignity. He was under the impression that because she came off vulnerable (naked in an unknown new world), she would listen to him. His thoughts were contradicted, and when creating Eve, he knew better than to make that mistake again. This time, he took sole ownership of her dignity, purchasing it from a serpent who owned a store, knowing it would someday roll in big money.

As you can see, this practice has been acceptable since human kind began. How could the justice system tamper with culture, tradition, and human way? Judge Wilner faced issues equally debatable as this one on a daily basis. In a way, that's what his job description was; The combination of morals, ethics, and laws (moral/ethical or not). Although his conscience told him that his ruling was wrong, he knew he had no other choice. He was to follow the law, and his personal opinion had little say in the outcome of this case. As with the majority of government workers, he turned a blind eye.





One Person's Trash is Another's Treasure

“Would you like some tea?”
“I would. Thank you.”
“Careful. It’s hot.”
“I usually prefer iced tea.”
“Mmm. I don’t have any.”
“Maybe I can put ice in this tea.”
“But that’s what I’m saying—I don’t have any cubes.”
“Sorry.”

He couldn't drink this tea. It was hot. Hot means scorching of the tongue. As a child, he had been diagnosed with sipa, a rare medical condition that didn't allow him to feel pain. This didn't bother him. In fact, most things didn't as he didnt feel them. He could feel touch, he could feel emotion pain, but physically he couldn't comprehend what this sensation of pain was like. What bothered him was the awkward situations he was put in on a daily basis. In example, is it easier to seem rude to a job interviewer or to share an unfathomable medical condition with them in the first five minutes? Rejecting tea wasn't a considerably bad situation. Try turning down invites for paintball gunning as a kid or being unable to try out for any sport. Or going to the beach, because sand would get into his eye and scratch his cornea without him noticing. Pain may seem negative to most, but many lack appreciation for it and view it as a means of survival.

As a child, he had taken some pride in his disease. He pretended to be superman, and would jump off the swing higher than any of the other children could. When playing "mercy" he would always win. The other kids took awe when he was able to perfect a belly flop at the local pool, without crying afterwards. He had always viewed himself as tough and accepted, rather than a kid with a genetic disease who would suffer from many dillemnas growing up. It wasn't until the end of middle school, when the ability to withstand pain lost its shock value to kids on the playground, that he began to question. What was this thing they called hurt? What was it about this sensation that brought people to tears and made them scream in agony?

pain- physical suffering or distress, as due to injury, illness, etc.

He couldn't help but wonder if one day he would have cancer consume his body and not know it. Would he be on the floor dead from a heartattack without feeling the slightest symptom first? Life could be taken from him before he'd have any inkling of what was about to happen. It's not that he had a fear of the unknown like many anxious people do. It was one hundred percent reasonable, and maybe even probable, that the fears he posessed would come to be true. That left him with two options. Either he could live his life in fear, or he could use his disease to his advantage, like everyone else saw it. Knowing optimism usually wins, he chose the later of the two.



Life Behind Bars

The night I killed myself was the first time I had proof of her with this meat packing guy. I figured this must be my hell, my punishment for committing a sin in ending my own life. I am a bird; it's an instinct for me to want to fly free. Instead, I am confined to a metal cage, held down by my past. I had hope that I'd be stored away in a garage somewhere where I would be forgotten. Perhaps my wife and this monster could go on vacation and forget to feed me for a week. Maybe I could even catch some kind of bird disease and leave the world untouched with my presence. The feeling wouldn't be too foreign to me, considering she moved on fast. What I can't learn to accept is that she moved on before I was gone, and that her leaving me would have been inevitable. As a human, I believed my purpose was being the breadwinner, and having her to depend on me. The money I brought home brought us food, it paid the bills, and it didn't win her affection. Looking back, I realize I had no specific purpose, and I was confined to a similar cage as I am now. In this way my human life and bird life coincide.

I could try to fly away into the shimmering endless sky, aimlessly, forgetting my past and concentrating only on my next nest, my next twig of berries, or my next getaway plan from a predator or recreational bullet. I used to go hunting. I didn't even have a reason to shoot a bird. I swear I would've played videogames if I knew the detrimental effects the pull of a trigger causes to small animals such as myself. As much as a cage shields me from the outside world, being free would let me run from my mistakes and guilt. Instead, I am forced to rest in her palm, literally in the palm of her hand, and pretend as if I don't like it. I don't want to want her; it's a strange division between my conscience, subconscience, reality, and fantasy. Where does the line between each really begin?

One day I broke loose and flew around the house. It was the perfect plan to escape. If I had just kept quiet and waited for him to come home, I could've broke free through the door before he knew what had hit him. This was the game plan, until my jealousy and rage kicked in. My bird heart, which already beat a good 900 times a minute, accelerated to a whopping 1000. Instead of fleeing the scene, I made the imulsive decision to shit on his head. It was great. It truly was for the next few hours as I tweeted happily to my and rang bird songs throughout the house. He called me a few vulgar words which only made it better. And then I was back to square one, missing my opportunity because of a human emotion. A bird with the mind of a human. That's hell in itself. I was getting no where through my anger and desire for revenge. That's when I recognized, in the middle of a triumphant chirp, that I had to forgive her for what had transpired if I ever wanted to truly be free as a bird.

Ignorance

What does security speak of?
incoherently trudging
Across squares of hardened earth
Formed by limbs unseen.
In a world of a sense
that goes beyond the standard five

Language,
That we humans have the curse being instilled
He sees the world around him
But is blind to it all
shades of awareness
Looking through the wrong end
of a telescope

Clovers, rusty around edges
Rotted and worn from the oil of hands
Searching for the treasured quadruple leaf,
Impeccable defect?--
A blue eyed being

Abandoned leaf,
Betrayed by creator
Live free or die?
Not an option.
Veins of skin like cells,
Physique of a spider web, skeleton frail

Lacking a voice,
Nature succumbs to it's surrounding
Alive..
and then the inevitable.
Laughing on it's grassy grave
While the security,
Man
Speaks of the beauty he sees in this day