Hey guys. This isn't truly a poem but a paper I wrote for English class. I wanted to share this view with people and this is the only vehicle I knew to use. So here it is. I hope you enjoy it.
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The amplifiers were turned up to ten. The young and fresh crowd looked at us with anticipation.

What were they waiting for? As the music began I noticed the subtle movements and growing tension in

the crowd. Men shook their heads and we shook ours in a violent duet between the crowd and

performer. Women and men flailed their limbs as they awaited the ******. We knew when it was

coming; they did not. When we decided to let it all go I witnessed something crazy! There was a brief

pause in the music and when it began again we kicked it into overdrive. We shook our heads with a

more frantic pace. We jumped about like madmen. The crowd erupted; it became its own entity. You

could feel the heat and power of this new creature. We were locked in a violent psychic-sphere of

crazed young teens and when the ****** was over there seemed to be a sense of relief and happiness

in the crowd. Had my after school hobby become a healing agent, even if only temporary, in society?

This papers purpose is an attempt at piecing together the phenomena of catharsis by merging

philosophy, psychology, history and spirituality.



First, to understand the psychology of catharsis we must think back to the roots of this behavior. Since

human life has existed we’ve formed crowds for various reasons. The first reason held the sole purpose

of protection. Tribes of people, men as hunters and women as gatherers, teamed up for the benefit of

human survival. Erich Fromm says that “the meaning of life is not to be found in its fullest unfolding but

in social service and social duties; that the development, freedom, and happiness of the individual is

subordinate or even irrelevant in comparison to the welfare of the state.”(Fromm, 1947, page 51) This

states that a crowd is actually very necessary to the function of human life. The second reason crowds

gathered was in form of revel, shamanistic healing and worship of deities (Ehrenreich, 30). Men and

woman would often enter trances, speak in tongues and become involved in a collective ecstasy while in

worship of their God. In later years, politics, entertainment and rebellion or protest was a main factor in

the gathering of people (Ehrenreich, 102). People gathered at Festivals that were in the midst of being

suppressed and would dance in mockery of their Kings or leaders.



What exactly is catharsis? Catharsis is a purging of emotional tension brought out in a crowd through

the viewing of a tragedy or tragic play. In the article “The Power of Catharsis” Kearny says the following

More specifically he (Aristotle) defined

the function of catharsis as 'purgation of pity and fear'. This comes

about, he explains, whenever the dramatic imitation of certain actions

arouses pity and fear in order to provide an outlet for pity and fear.

The recounting of experience through the formal medium of plot,

fiction or spectacle permits us to repeat the past forward so to speak.

And this very act of creative repetition allows for a certain kind of

pleasure or release. In the play of narrative re-creation we are invited

to revisit our lives — through the actions and personas of others — so

as to live them otherwise. We discover a way to give a future to

the past. (Kearny 1)

I figure that, even though he states that it is a purgation of pity and fear, it could also be involved with

many other suppressed emotions. Take my introduction for example. These kids were not releasing

pity and fear, they were releasing their angst! They were releasing their desire for competition.

They were making up for the violent feelings of agression they felt in their body that had been

suppressed by society for so long! They were revolting! Could catharsis also be used to purge other

emotions as well such as ****** suppression or communicative issues?





How would one come about actually attempting this catharsis that I speak of? We need to first look at

some ways in which people have controlled crowds in the past and realize that crowds form by

themselves but often look for leadership due to what Nietzche called that “herd mentality.”

In the article “Seducing the Crowd” by Urs Staheli it mentions that repetition is a key factor in beginning

to control the crowd. (Staheli, 69) This means that through repetition you can get the crowd to side with

your beliefs. The crowd could begin to think about what your suggesting and potentially be swayed by

the other people that are now following your ideas. It could also be repetition of body movements as

well. What better vehicle is there to sway a crowd than music? It’s repetitive in instrumental and lyrical

form!



Another way to “******” a crowd is to act like a madman! Specifically how I stumbled upon this in

the first phenomena place.

The leader himself is possessed and hypnotized by the ideas

and visions he holds, obsessed to such an extent that he cannot rationally exercise

control over the crowd. Instead, he devotes himself to fascinating the

crowd by more ecstatic means.8 He often resembles a madman but fascinates

by the mere power of his determination. What distinguishes the leader from

the rest of the crowd is his will alone, not any particular intellectual capacity

or a superior morality. (Staheli, 68)

The theory is that through mythological story telling or acting tragically and in a spectacle, we can

actually release negative emotions and potentially even heal neuroses or psychic ailments. Later in the

article he goes on to say that a shaman was actually documented to have cured a woman with a blocked

birth canal and in labor by telling her a story about a warrior trying to exit a cave that had monsters on

the outside trying to get in.

The function of a shaman is to heal his tribe. He uses drugs or plants to change his state of mind and

then by going over to the other side of reality he invokes spirits that help to heal.

In the séance, the shaman led. A sensuous panic, deliberately evoked through drugs, chants,

dancing, hurls the shaman into trance. Changed voice; convulsive movement. He acts like a

madman. These professional hysterics, chosen precisely for their psychotic leaning, were once

esteemed. They mediated between man and spirit world. Their mental travels formed the crux

of the religious life of the tribe. (Morrison 1967 pg. 71)

This shows an ecstatic crowd dancing and chanting while one man acts out a tragic spectacle. Through

this spectacle the shaman acts like a madman. This causes wild emotions within the crowd and allows it

to release their built up and suppressed emotions. Also, the dance and chants bring them to a feeling of

unity and oneness!



One may not believe in the spiritual shaman because of their own beliefs about God and religion. Some

may not believe in the other world that parallels our own.  It is a skeptical concept without a doubt and

there are probably many people who disagree with the legitimacy of the shaman. Is there a way that we

could think of the phenomena in a psychological sense rather than strictly spiritual? The answer lies in

Carl Jung’s theory of the unconscious mind and dream therapy as well as in Nietzche’s philosophy on art

and aesthetics.  



Carl Jung believed that there is a conscious mind and an unconscious mind. The conscious mind is the

everyday mind that occurs in waking life. It is rational and helps us survive. The unconscious mind can

be found in dreams or whenever you experience a déjà vu (Jung 1964 21).  He also believed that through

the study of dreams you could heal certain aspects of your psyche that have been altered by neuroses.

Symbols and archetypes make up dreams and the unconscious, and often you will find that archetypes

appear in the form  of people. Jung believes that through living in society that men and women have lost

touch with their feminine or masculine characteristics depending on their gender. Dreams can help us

get back into union with these lost roles through connecting us with our anima(female) or animus

(male) through symbols in our dreams or unconscious minds. Jung wrote that when society was

formed people took on roles and caused a dissociation in their psyche and caused a duality rather

than a unity when they suppressed one side of their mind.  He mentioned that at all times the

unconscious mind is connecting us on a psychic level.



How does this tie into shamans and catharsis? It seems like something completely different all together

right? My theory is that the shaman or crowd leader brings forth a forgotten union of the masculine and

feminine forces in the universe. Nietzche believed that there are two polar forces that are natural in this

world and in art. These forces are given the names of deities in his book “The Birth of Tragedy.”

The first is the Apollonian force that is masculine. This force in art governs form and dreams. The

Apollonian artist directly takes ideas from his dreams and brings them to life whether it is in form

sculpture or poetry. Apollo appears through an oracle often in tragedy or in visions of the waking life.

The second force is the Dionysian which is feminine. This force governs intoxication, revel and ecstasy.

Dionysian artists are improvisers and dancers and are usually tragic figures. Nietzche believed there are

three different types of artists: Apollonian, Dionysian and the fusion of both (Nietzche 1872 14). This

latter artist is what I believe the shaman is.



Through connecting these polarizing forces he fixes the psychic neuroses in his own mind. He becomes

a unified artist, or a magician of duality. The shaman, as stated above, takes drugs to intoxicate himself.

Often the drug of choice is wine or alcohol though it could be hallucinogenic drugs as well. This tied with

repetitive revel is the Dionysian side of the spectrum and also helps draw the crowd’s attention through

spectacle and repetition. Everybody is ecstatic and experiencing the collective vibrations of the crowd.

Through his intoxication he is able to go into the unconscious mind and produce dream symbols in

reality! The crowd follows the leader into this unconscious mind and brings back forgotten wisdom of

mythology and archetypes. This is the Apollonian side of the spectrum because it deals with the

unconscious mind and dream images. It also could be this “other world” that traditional shamans speak

of. Now the psychic duality is merged and a tie is formed between the masculine and feminine forces of

nature! People feel at one with themselves and the crowd and the societal suppression is vanished

briefly. All the neuroses caused by the suppression fades away in the ecstatic revel. This is the appeal of

the rock concert. Notice how many leading figures of rock bands have androgynous features and

shamanistic nature. This is because they have fixed the psychic neuroses in their own mind and become

at peace with the masculine and feminine duality of their psyche.



Stumbling upon this phenomena in my rebellious youth was very eye opening. Ever since I have been  

very excited about this theory and I’ve been trying to piece it together. It seems to be coming along

further and further in my study of this. What exactly this ancient wisdom is; I don’t entirely know. I

do know that I have witnessed this in reality and the subject is interesting and fascinating. My theory

still has a lot of work before it is completed but I think that within this article I’ve given a decent

amount of history about the topic as well as my own thoughts. Whether this phenomena is true or

not, we can leave that up to the psychologists and philosophers to decide, though I think many may

agree. Either way, catharsis surely does exist and it is a fun way of entertainment as well as a

therapeutic option for many stressed out individuals out there

What is a Legacy
What's the equation that leads to the sum that is
A
Human
Life
The curtain draws as it must and
when it's done...
We spill out of this "Life" a grocery bag of idiosyncrasies, neuroses, hypocrisies, and other I-sees
What are we in the end but broken pieces of a puzzle we leave for others to assemble--who cares if the pieces fit.
Someone found a Kind word here
Another a Generosity
A memory of a Lie
Proof of a Cruelty
Acts of Humanity by a human being acting...
Who knows me well enough to define my Legacy?
Who else but "I"

Spill some wine on the season--
He's walking home at 1 am
And full of well gin and reasons
     for both staying and leaving
and dripping orange lamplight
He thinks he'll try and dry out
                                     (sure)
Try sinking in ideas and a couch
                      on his back lawn

Same old thoughts just circle
     overhead in lazy patterns
Synced with beats made by cars passing
   on the street at 2 am.

It's a passion play he's caught in
Passing days with failing stances
Whilst the nights keep passing faster
   into blue-black blurs like bruises.
Open lids to empty coffins
With those thoughts' befuddled movements
--And he's introduced again

And it gets a little lonely
     sitting on that couch with only
     empty bottles and neuroses
     for to break that pattern up
     with another worn out pattern--

For to keep him in cold company.

moment to moment
we are the sum total of
our chemicals

we think of ourselves
we think of others
as an average of our
time and spacial synergy
an anatomical amalgam
a biological brine

frankensteins with
personalities, commonalities and
unique agendas
sprinkled with neuroses that
range from microscopic to
catastrophic, whether
chemical reaction or
hyperbolic extraction

you can choose to
canonize or demonize
as long as you can
recognize
the flesh and the blood
versus the fantasized

The inverse of error
A metaphorical math
Because I rhyme so sick in season
You can call men Sylvia Plath
You can call me Sylvia Plath
Spilling verses accidental
Spilling blood like pen and paper
Give me rock paper, scissors—construction
Philosophy of metaphors—the reciprocal of destruction
Creation in deviation
Multiplication in meditation and mesmerizing memorization
Mad in the head, but I’m a mat-hatter for love
'A zombie by neuroses
A zombie by drugs
But on those pharmaceutical
Cause cut **** is for thugs
(3% probability
Is in the margin of error
How many times have we ******
And would you even care?
Oh, despair. The plague of a woman-
Slick wit like slick ****
And you can call these rhymes grimy
Because I’m cleaning your eyes with it.)

You don't love
me;
you love the
tip of the iceberg
that is your idea of me;
the sugar-coated mute
leading herds
of unfinished sentences
down the copious hills
of his insecurity;
the nice little writer
whose constant attempts
at legendary one-liners
are as hit-or-miss
as a sitcom still airing
far past its prime.

I possess three biomes,
or, rather, three networks
of personalities and identities.
I am much more than
the Jack Macfarland archetype
lip-syncing to Cher in the one
gay bar in town, tyrannically
governing your wardrobe,
possessing a razor-sharp wit
cast toward the backs of his community
in the form of an outdated punchline-
my work on that show
lost its Willful relevance
and Graceful naivete
years ago.

I am of the generation
fed media saturation
three four-hour meals a day,
who ingested cardboard cadavers
as if they were mother's milk
and internally mutated their
thoughts and desires
to fit the compact time frame
of 30 minutes
to settle the series' worth
of traumas and neuroses
while making it home for dinner
to stay tuned for what's
next in the lineup.

Speaking as a casualty of this
inevitable chain of events,
I regretfully declare that even
those who have seen
every episode of myself
for the past six seasons
are still light years away
from the room full of faces
unencumbered by euphemism.

I pulled back the thicket
Brambles and thorns
Bordering my mind
Inch by inch
To let you slip inside

Hi

I hope you don't mind
The pestilent storm of neuroses
The angry winds whipping around
Eroding my cognition

(They all say
I ought to stop overthinking

They don't know the half of it)

Pardon the mess
The litter of apprehensions
Flotsam and jetsam of rumination
Tangles of tangents
Smog of chimeric thoughts
Sticky rambles festering in the corner
Acidic drizzle
Of obstinate wayward tunes
Insecurity and fear
Eating into the pillars and foundations

If you don't mind terribly
The clatter of sleet
The noisome fumes
The skittering vermin
The sheer clutter
That would make packrats shake their heads

If you don't mind
At all
Would you stay?

There is no cure, no fix, no magic spell.
I am an aberration, as you know.
I never promised you a villanelle.

You cannot trap the ocean in a shell.
You feed the roses blood to make them grow.
There is no cure, no fix, no magic spell.

It does get bumpy on this carousel.
The ride is all extremes of high and low.
I never promised you a villanelle.

I was the aberration, you could tell.
I ******* my neuroses in a bow.
There is no cure, no fix, no magic spell.

I think it's safe to say you know me well
in all my many masks, but even so
I never promised you a villanelle.

Let me pin my ragged heart to your lapel.
If it's truly what you need, I'll let you go.
There is no cure, no fix, no magic spell.
I never promised you a villanelle.

sweeps across the floor
like the hem of a rag
on a doll-faced *****
as the lights are dimmed
in this picket-fenced Attica.

To him, the raindrops taste like whiskey
so who's to blame him
for being a drunkard?

He will not take such condescension,
and so he shall pass it onto you
like a hot potato;
just say the third-degree burns
came from hugging the stove.

For you, life is not a Lifetime movie
looking at your bruises in the mirror
to a Celine Dion power ballad;
the days are a beach of intenstines
set alongside waves of toxic waste,
the moon now a mood ring
sitting atop the knuckles
of your vengeful king.

This decade of brutal purging,
atonement for sins not yet committed,
has felt as consuming
as his figure those Thursday nights
when he's stalking for his property,
and you're close-mouthed
under the bed,
looking through barely a slab
of this virtual reality,
at the iron-****** giant
who would nurse your neuroses
if he'd stop bashing your face in.

Your expectations for the outcome
laced with Disney Princess satin
arrange themselves in a cross-legged noose
(the "O" stands for optimism),
for all this atonement
must be the beaten path
to the Garden of Eden.

You should just remember.
The men still pulled the lever,
licking the flames
as Joan of Arc sang her finale.

Well, my feet, they feel like
Saggy sacks of soggy moss;
As if they went for a hike
And suffered some Great Loss.

And the thorny feelers
Penetrate Barefoot Monkees.
Is loathing made of mirrors?
Is every girl a tease?...

Good G-d my stomach hurts! --
Your Divine Justice, blessed.
My vessel is vibing hertz
As it bears The Distress:

But, if I make my feet
Acknowledge more smiles than frowns;
And my Neuroses cease to bleat
While I analyze nouns...

Is there a New Normal?
Grace from benevolent gods?
Or will Hope choke, fade in Stealth
As Blind eyes miss her nods?

Goodbye
Disgusting excuse of a friend
A confidant
I used to hold such confidence in,
Now a sickly
Pseudo relationship.
You and I
A Despicable desert dry
Duo
I can't spend another second
At this pathetic pretending
That you can offer anything to anyone
But a narcissistic notion
And a nerve-racking
neuroses of the mind
The universe is out to get you
I curse my oblivious self
I had forgotten you are the single
Cohabiter on Earth
Ah, yes
You are undefeated
At the blame game
I've tried to hold honor in defeat
But, I don't have an ounce of energy left
For your egotistical world
You unhinged
Dark gate
You let your steed of self-obsession
Out to stampede the sincerest hearts
You don't even see the *****
Destruction
You deal out
From your deprived reciprocity
Alcohol, your only ailment
Your **** filled words
Tossed out lament and futile
This is where we go our divided way
I will not claim even a freckle on your face
As a friend
I will not look back
Nostalgia is not necessary
I will detach myself from your
Leach like misery
And I'll slowly build strength back
A blood flow of enraged fierceness
Has circulated through my core
And it will be as if
I never had any bit
Of me
Belonging to you
Friend, now foe
Farewell

indigo dusk spreads across
inexhaustible country sky
torn wet clouds stretched blue at twilight
a big-chested wind comes howling off the lake
dissecting our immortal kiss
as the pink sun meets her planet-doom
leaking on my balcony like a falling curtain
blessed with an affinity for moonlight
lingering drinking pale wine
we took baths in lukewarm vanity

she is a long legged sorceress smoking a cigarette
half awake because i've got the covers again
goose bumps crowd onto her little bare *******
dewy legs sliding among mine
rousing my bones and heart alert
as the bright sun dances silent
like a new carnation dragged from bed
bringing a giant unscrambled sunrise
across my section of heaven's blue sea
but is mercifully eclipsed by the cream-skinned
breast of a purified failed angel
exploring the feather-soft mountain of my body

we drank cointreau in the early morning
against the collage of saxophones
expanding among criss-crossing body odors
and thin magic on my lipsticked neck
i'm gaining strength over my neuroses
all my fear and doubt disappears into joy
no longer huddled in paper misfortune
reintegrated with ecstasy
in the smoky labyrinth of her eyes
as her fingers light as dreams
draw complex patterns in the flesh
of my back and buttocks
like secrets written on wet paper
none of it       was            real        before          this           moment

I read the Bible, totally
To consecrate me.
I read Castaneda avidly
To elevate me.
To teach myself to speak
I wrote poetry.
To calm my neuroses
I performed musically.

The sky above me
The earth below
So much about this world
That I do not know.
I am definitely an animal
But not so very wild.
Yet not so very different
Than I was as a child.

I learned all the verses
They taught me in school.
I tried to heed the warnings
Not grow up as a fool.
I memorized the advice
From those who seemed to care.
I counted all my blessings
And did not forget to share.

It’s not always easy
The lessons from school.
It takes a lot of courage
To live by the Golden Rule.
When life doesn't go right
As it will to all good men,
I remember all the good I did
And then do it all again.

The sky above me
The earth below
So much about this world
That I do not know.
I am definitely an animal
But not so very wild.
Yet not so very different
Than I was as a child.

“When people move-when they travel-they look at where 
they come from,
not where they’re going.” -Martin Amis, *Time’s Arrow

*

Let us now take this chance

to praise those dancing demons 
of ambition,
whose feigned clairvoyance 
of fortune
and exactitudes of fame

burn as the smell of smokey fallow 
to the new-retired mare.



Travel, and all its takeoffs,

all its energies in skidding towards

an unopposed truth, makes its mince

by outlining all we ever look for

but leaving the chalkdust prints

of what we fail, at first, to find.



Yes, spaces contrary to the familiar exist
Carnivore cities of grind and result

cascaded above the floodwalls that save

the vagrant’s midnight search.

Coastal clearings of pacific civs,

best kept secrets where trees are still planted

and further kinds of nowhere that you never expected

to simmer with all the prospects of bored and implacable youths

who pine to efface the status quo, which ,after all, is quite the average,

is quite like “HOME”



Though I suppose, we eventually find

whatever space can be considered our own

when everyone grows up and stops

pretending they read Burroughs,
have a lot more going on, or are a lot less busy
than they make out over infrequent coffee meetings
(where it is also admitted

that they brew their own hot beverages,
or tell their own jokes)

Somewhere in the near-space continuum where Travel has

become for us what essentially differentiates
the commonplace in nature from 
that most human of neuroses,

the acceptance of a willing to improve the conditional.



And so to Ambition, and its fiery fops who make us refute

steadiness, accountability, the routine of the resolute

Who let our ships of sanctimony attack

implied with the luxury of steering back.

Corroding off in wreckless control
Repeated lines stretching infinitely in ambiguity
Sharp muscle relaxant mistakes
As we career off the road
Into a ravenous singularity
We are unforgiving, cynical yet synthetically joyous
Quick to pardon
Whipped with a gold leash
Delicate, leaves, Celtic music
Rubik's cubes in our throats
We're ready to let love in, willing
Nova tech, drunk masks and indication
Indignation, we clutch, we fail
Partial to conditions
Stones out of focus

Accelerate
Engines bleed borders
You are the free way
Impotent with quartz remnants
Ruins to our fantasy
You hide history
Covered in my burrow
Braking until necks break & bags burst
Powdered hair, liquid lips
Let's drive home
Go beyond the limit
Break each others bones
And crush our entities
Suffocate on suffixes
Her explanation acquits the doubt
As we appear closer than we may actually be
Industrial stacks stretch towards invisibility
Letting go of their concentrate
Gelatin mind
levitate into connection

Cups turned upside down
Entrapping ego in near vacuum
Aqua ducts bouncing off feline eyes
2 & a 4
Perfect air in a foreign atmosphere
Spinned on axis, ways to conduct
Your supply
Secede madness
Eternal order
Lungs sharply inhale with uncertainty
Hydroplaning your attempts at adultery
Decision was never your thing
Unmoving at every turn
Passion with objects
Reactions flicker between humility

It gives gifts
Your skin melts to the touch
Chocolate in magma
Molten sound deafens drench
Jealous mess, dividend
Hugging and dripping black with stability
Back, holy scripture written with integration
Sealed with treachery, acetate photography
Capturing clear innocence
Boredom and sinfulness
Spiked militant
Pencil drawn neuroses, veil
Bow down to schematics, we're radar
Sonar structure solar
It's all part of the process

☺♥☺♥☺♥☺♥

The worst will be found toward the end of the book
When you’re scanning the lines of a weighty anthology.
Centuries have shaken what works can be shook,
and what’s old is refined – and I make no apology.

Angst-ridden ramblings, so fashionably bleak
Start appearing somewhere past the middle, I fear
With those modernist psyches, whose raggedly weak
and depressing confessions sling mud in the ear.

Like the scribblers of Suicide, brimming with bile
or the autodestructive self-pitying ******,
whose quaint observations enshrining the vile
are a crime against life – and an art for the loser.

You ideologues, with your axes to grind,
propagandizing causes in militant styles
ought to  stay in the hills, where the struggle is defined,
and spare us the old dialectical wiles.

The Feminist scribe, with her *** for a mouth,
Ever pressing her case, for fallopian reasons
Grows saggingly sterile. Her muses fly south
with the passing of harvests and goddessless seasons.

Absurdists, surrealists, and nihilist mystics
whose hymns to destruction make glory of chaos
should leave the black humor to God and ballistics.
Your poems, like Judas, are bound to betray us.

The Freudian flirt (whose neuroses abound),
And the Jungian shamans (their animas, too),
ought to rest on their couches. Why should they be found
By the wellsprings of Spirit, whose guidance is true.

The art-lover’s lines gild a frame around Knowledge.
Their poems are like an art history course.
As they flit past the idols they studied in college
their name-dropping odes are a grand tour-de–force.

Sixties drug-revelers, love beads a-jingle
And brothers dashiki-clad, howling at Nixon
no longer strike chords in my soul. Not a single sitar lick
nor visions of hippie-chick *****.

You rhymers and rappers of rhythms in sample
Whose words like a kick-drum send shock through old Whitey
Now cease from your chanting. The genre is ample.
Your gangstering paeans are too fly-by-nighty.

Revived Roman legions, who relish things Latin;
Your martial convictions inspire the hero.
But while you are looking for cities to flatten,
remember – old Julius was nobler than Nero.

The theme of World Peace –  this crops up near the ending:
a desperate hope for New-Agers and liberals,
who cherish a dream of reality-bending
Through networking, magic, and energized crystals…

But what can be shaken shall perish, forgotten.
Anthologies show us that truth is enduring.
All praises and laurels shall prove misbegotten.
The Word become flesh is the most reassuring.

So I leave the anthology, closing its cover.
Three-quarters at least seemed like nonsense to me.
Yet still, I admit, I’m a poetry lover.
Let time do its work and in future – we’ll see…

Is it dawn or dusk
I can't tell
But I feel competent
I know what lies ahead

Cocktail parties
And bar-stool nights
It's no longer Main Street
It's the Nile

When the amulet of ringlets
From my eyeball glass
Makes me tumble evermore
Into the damp, dark streets

Another binge
Another ******
Another lavish fee
For yet another shoddy ghost

But it eases my loneliness
Boosts my confidence
Entices my fantasy bone
Relaxes my harried soul

Got to purge this moral anemia
Splurge on all academia
Just to feel the surge
That makes the brain waves flow

But this merry go round and round
Don't stop when the music does
My rock bottom is an ocean
Swirling to the siren's call

I've tried everything
Under the sun
But neuroses can't be cured
When you're under someone's thumb

I put it all on the shelf
Hid the corkscrew and the belt
Just to gnash it open with my fangs
Releasing all those hunger pangs

Cause I can't live for laundry lint
Or wait for the big accident
I know better than to read a tragedy
When my palette's clean

Spirits in this glass
Help me rid those in my life
I've got reasons of the flesh
But mostly of the mind

Took so many blows from the outside
I'm poor at heart
I'm dominated by
The lack of vine inside

I need to stimulate my senses
To simulate my defenses
Swimming with the sharks
Against these high tides

Don't want to be nobody's public charge
My reprieve came early
My sentence fastened like a bag of bricks
My caretaker's not waiting by the pearly gates

So just let me be insulated
Let me keep warm
Ignore those violet stains on my shirt
Ignore this violent strain in my voice

Undernourished an inhuman
They all want revelation with good endings
But when it's 4AM, every hour of every day
You start to hold tight to these newborn dreams

So easily familiar, so wretchedly out of reach
Praying for bonanza or ultimate decay
You can't settle for anything else
So you rather hold your breath and wait

The mouse and the bat
Protruding through that hole in the wall
It's always little animals
No dinosaurs

I keep snapping my fingers
Making signs of a deluded cross
Cause I ain't got no gravy train
And I ain't got no St. Helen

Guess I'll remain on the porch
Travel through the marshes of the storm
Asked for blood to transform my fears
But they gave me Mut's duped and heavy tears

They all want heaven on a stick
A cornucopia of tricks
I'm just trying to survive
The next twenty minutes

It's always
"Did she jump or was she pushed?"
But no one really cares
It's a cold case for the books

In the dark night of the soul
You're just a relic to behold
Stuck in the bell jar
Like an innocent monster

The world's on crack
And it's not all it's cracked up to be
So I'll wallow in my 96 proof blood
This straight Apple Jack's the only savior I see
(It's all a royal harem's conspiracy)

as conscious mode,
vague aboutness, it stales romance
in metaphysic stench, this telic sense,
unlike the comfort of a family nest
my locus drifts on wind
i'd rather culture in a jar
on the counter (no secrets there) or even cellared
responding to the world's response, anthophilous
com][part][mental-mania
warehoused too for sticky label stigma-sized
cover-glint akin with stamp of human frailty, resource that i am,
far from pink and snow banana plants
no inward passion of a chimpanzee in chains
though i assume the name
pan troglodytes applies to me as any species, or much more,
riddled with neuroses, caves every each to steal away from being seen,
from open goals to shade concerns, rotted fancies
manifestering the soil by the laundy-bin abysm--
commode in time, this musa media mind
so urgent in its pseudostemming scour
will flower unsterile and so find its fruit
with bunching finger fronding infloresce
and write about it in the bloom

I'm frustrated.
And.
Scared of tomorrow.
Cause it never turns out.
Like.
I want it to.
It just keeps keepin on.
While my head slowly
constricts itself into a
mad obsession with stuck.

1.     I have to stop when I catch myself mentally titling poems about how you and I do not belong together.
2.     Doomed like your mother, doomed like your father—don’t think it, don’t think it—loneliness is my birthright, loneliness is my bride.
3.     This is a mania, this is a phobia. Tag your neuroses and track them, keep track of them.
4.     Remember  _, think what happened to _.
5.     You speak of your friend like she’s dead.
6.     She is dead, though, only wakes up now and then to bury herself.
7.     What do you mean?
8.     I mean she reaches out with one arm from her shallow grave, and she buries herself. Great fistfuls of dirt.
9.     But?
10.   But she was not a huntress.
11.   And so?
12.   And so it got the best of her.
13.   Well, you tell me what I ought to see
                when I self-perceive
                       Would you lie to me?
14.   No, you’re a truth-teller, heart-sweller.
15.   The Age of Huts, man, I never had it in me. I’m all ravens and bell-jars.

if you went back in time
and found my eighth grade self

you would find long sleeves
pulled way down her arms
and you might notice
she was hiding something
that she got awfully tired of hiding
and tired of stares when she wasn't

i'll give you a hint
my ninth grade self
had bright red scars
seared into her shoulders

my tenth grade self
was still finding leftover
pink horizon lines from
safety razors on her thighs

my eleventh grade self
found all her skin remarkably
pale but her coping
mechanisms still unhealthy

and my twelfth-grade self
she was the weakest one of all
just had the strongest
jaw to hide behind
and enough self-confidence to
stretch thin across her neuroses

but if you could go back
and find my eighth-grade self

please tell her
something for me
she won't believe it
but i just have to tell her

that in four years she will buy
the most beautiful sleeveless
white dress with navy lace
and she will wear it with
sneakers and bruises on her knees
a smile the overexposed
color of her insecurity

and nobody
will say a
**** thing
about her scars
bleached into
a memory.

gentle                                        but kind, your
touch                                         sends shivers through my veins,
down                                         my spine, across the plains of my
skin.                                          you are
careful,                                      as though i might be startled and
run away.                                 you're wary, and with good
reason,                                      because i am restless and a flight
risk.                                           i am the whipping wind and the weighted
anchor,                                     the concurrent push and pull, rise and
fall                                            of the churning tide. your fingertips slide across
my                                            skin. my gut rolls and twists, tightly coiling, injecting my
body                                         with venom and excitement and lust and longing. you
ignite                                        my neuroses and sparks fly; firecrackers bursting against a
clear,                                         star-lit July canvas. splatters of paint
coat                                           the world and my sight blacks out for light years and milliseconds
all at once.                                i shiver but bite it back, revolting against the warm
chill                                           clutching at my bones, vying for survival.
powerless                                  to you, even when i know in my heart i have to
accept                                       that there is nothing to become of
us, no                                        more than the dance of two partners at a
masquerade                             whose fates are only temporarily entwined. thread tickles my wrist,
i laugh,                                     and i hold my tongue. i hold back
every ******* word,                like it's a dam about to burst and sweep away everything,
devastating                              the entire world. my words could
destroy                                     what i have gained, what i have settled for, what i have
done.                                        what have i done? .  .  . but the words slink back
inside,                                      always on the brink, never to be heard or
seen.                                        i wish to see you gone, like the sun to the moon and like the moon to the sun.                                        yet there was comfort,
knowing you'd return.          knowing that you'd
always                                    circle back around, constantly on each other's tails, a
thrilling chase.                       the end is nigh, the sky is burning red, the world is on
fire.                                         flames lick the tips of my toes, race up my arms, and
ashes                                      of my safety net tumble and glide
down, all around me.            hazards surround me. i am a
hazard.                                  you are a road block and a shortcut, one i find myself led to in
temptation.                            let me free, guide me home, be
the one -                                 or perhaps, maybe... no? the
bittersweet goodbye,             the final tears - i hope- will be
freed                                       in five months time. five months is not even a
moment.                                not when you're praying that time
slows, crawls, halts.              the harder i cling, the further away
you go.                                   your fingers leave my wrist,
leaving                                  behind lilac string as a reminder. my heart
collapses                               on itself. five months is not enough. the twenty
seconds                                 were not enough, not even as you
touched me.                         shaken, fighting laughter and fears and
tears,                                     watch me shove it away. the
inevitable                             only comes around, only is real, when you're forced to
face it.                                  and i will not accept that you're gone until you're finally, actually
gone.

Image
In a nation full of mirrored meanings
Losing the plot to the points made by editors
With the front to cover-up
The dots and dents
That differentiate one doe-eyed one-day wonder
From another

Not too difficult
Then
To discern from where our demons are derived

The motivation behind our mothers' mockery
All too often a fearful fantasy
That this will be a permanent reality
A lonely destiny of separation
In sanity

Choosing challenge as our champion
Causes less respect than one might expect to receive
From those persons whose pretence it is
To adore independence

In fact they abhor the idea
That they might not
Have got a clue
What's best for you

It's all so clear to them that the fix is a daily change
Lies in a variety of lipsticks
And the new best-dressed latest range
Of thigh-thwarting
Waist-winning
Sin-free super-fad foods
That nourish your neuroses
Whilst simultaneously stifling your spirit

While your mind is on your midriff
You're not wondering if the government have gained their votes
Through the generous use of their
Accumulative groins

And you are much less likely to ponder the particulars
Of the power plants you pass
If every article you read
Is ready to remind you
Of the importance you should place
Upon the proportions of
Your ***

From dawn until dusk
To the sweat, dripping musk;
From attacks of musth
To that One Golden month.

Rising solid in the dawn--
As the bronzed Ego of Purpose--
Mustering self-esteem's brawn
Cools my trademark Nervose Verbose

But do appointments, notes,
Lectures, hecklers, and Beckers,
Distract the mind that dotes?
The Heart Desperate for Nectar?

Hah! such defensive thoughts....
Fallacies of Neuroses.
Just polishing my doubts,
Vainly "pleasing" my unease.

Monday's mundanity
Fails my lie of character--
Left with Insanity
Railing lines under pressure

And then, faces--balance blurs
Into downed neurons
Where not nobody cares to
"Think about the children!"

I see you do the things
you do with a hidden grace
that burns the ineptitude
from my limbs like a match,
smoldering underneath
my lips like a whispered word.
Chasing pride and happiness
through my veins like a shot
of whiskey. Warm, embracing.
Fire scarring the fields of
neuroses from my mind.

what did I ever do to you?

Guess you’re just a past,

from high school and the boys,

forget me and the rest.

Every new one says

“How could he do that to you?

You’re amazing, you’re great, you’re the best”

but they do the same as the last.

Someone out there who will handle my neuroses?

My jealousy, my protective, my

distrust and inability of sleeping?

For now I’ll slip into a sun-soaked summer coma

I’ll forget you and remember alcoholic nights

puffing sweet-scented smoke into clear air;

Fine with me if you don’t want to see

pink cheeks and light brown hair.

It's through my constant neuroses,
That I think they all oppose me.
And I know all along that its completely wrong,
But a better performance to live out this song.
Inspired by music that's born out of heartbreak,
I wander how much more that my soul can take.
Becuase my greatest fear without a doubt,
Is being the one that's always left out.
For I always have to keep in touch,
Because for others that just is too much.
Of an effort to try and really care,
They prefer it simply that I'm not there.
A burden I know it, it's clear when I show it,
Another chance for me to just blow it.
It's clear that the neurosis that's in my head,
Just won't go away until I am dead.
But death is for cowards who refuse to fight,
That can't see it's darkest just before light.
So I'll keep on fighting until the very end
Because although I'm neurotic I still have some friends.

It had to come up at some point
And now we're leaving
For the garden
Intangible
Interchangeable
Infinity times eight

Operating on sleep mode
Missing out on everything
Tiring being yourself
But it isn't that big of a deal

It had to come up at some point
And now we're leaving
For the garden
Intangible
Interchangeable
Infinity time eight

They won't get it
I'm not so sure if
Then again
We all have our up's and down's
I mean
If you want
You can
If not
It's okay

It had to come up at some point
And now we're leaving
For the garden
Intangible
Interchangeable
Infinity time eight

Never, once
Occasionally
I'll blame myself
Then I see
That you see
Idiosyncratic neuroses
I feel, I hear
Once in a blue moon
And accept
The faults
And different points of view

It had to come up at some point
And now we're leaving
For the garden
Intangible
Interchangeable
Infinity times eight

Tendriled nightmares coil
Writhing blind knots
Restrict my inner vision
Peripheral blurred neuroses lurk
Morbid melodramas spin symbolisms
Of a tragic ending
Beyond the memory of moonlight
plaintive note of hope recedes
In the saturnine breeze
I am Lost to lower oscillation
Vestigial presence of the divine
Inert
My racing pulse thrums a dirge
for the waning day

You are the fulcrum
Levo mihi per vestri lux
The arbitration of angels
My inner spirit luminesces
Hope regains her tenuous place
I turn my tearstreaked face
To the memory of light

Amo Deus perficio lux
EGO mos orior iterum

TL Boehm
052608

Lift me with your light
Like God's perfect light, I will rise again

I never really liked Hugh Grant,
'til I saw him in "About a Boy",
It's not as weird as it might sound;
This lonely kid likes to hang around
And play with Hugh Grant's toys.

Wait, I didn't mean THAT! I meant CD's,
And he teaches Hugh about life...
Hugh's a loner & his life's a mess,
The kid's mum is SO depressed,
Thus their neuroses fit like peas.
(in a pod)

See, jerks in school chase the boy each day,
‘Cause he wears old, hippie clothes.
One day he hides at Hugh Grant’s pad,
Listens to music that’s kind of rad,
So he shows up every day.

Hugh and the lad start hanging out
He buys him trainers, shows him what to wear.
But soon, the kid wants Hugh for a dad,
And though it makes Hugh selfishly sad,
He kicks the poor kid out.

"Killing me softly" is the Mum's fave song
So the other kids beat him up.
In a school concert, Hugh sings along.
The mom is thrilled and cooks some Tofurkey,
Hugh joins the crowd; Thanksgiving is quirky,
And Rachel Weisz picks him up.

She’s got a son who’s kind of ******,
Over his Mum’s divorce and he tries to be Goth.
He roughs up the boy and mom is stunned,
'Cos Hugh Grant lied about having a son
So she tells him it’s a no go.

In the end, Mum doesn't commit suicide,
Though the kid DOES waste a duck,
With a loaf of Mum's 10 lb., whole wheat bread.
Everyone laughs and it clears their heads.
Mum & Boy and others get glad,
And the boy's mum finds him a new dad

Rachel forgives the boyish Hugh,
After seeing his good deed.
He loves the kid, the mum and her.
Everyone gathers for Xmas at Hugh’s’;
He wears a paper hat and agrees:

He's no longer an island and needs other folk.
The Boy gets a pal and Mum no longer sulks.
Everything is saved by the new Hugh Grant,
And at least he doesn't wear LEATHER PANTS!

A black cat hesitates.

With my friends filtered, cascading sheets of Jameson, the path fills me Warning the porch of presence.

Continue to sleep. I will go away to the city and work in the folded webs of my skin.

Is it you who functions when I sleep?

A breakfast for champions, my dear remove the flakes of sincerity.

With your hair hidden by my hands away from the window's critics, my boots loosen and the knots twitch less against the thin layer of resting protocols.
Tools to sedate my neuroses.
The glitter of chrome fails in my camera's lens. A failure to assure my hopes not to climb into my throat.

Answering machines. Counting few pennies which were several.

It is not you or the grey cat stealing from me.
In cups, I plot the orange cat's plans.
Visiting his memories this way for answers about a future.
Revealing to us all, my ideas should stay in your stomach.

I loved you for seven seconds.
My heart stolen on the eighth.
Weeks passing and bringing the rosary to a withered end.

The work-day is over.
I walk. Fainting on the bridges, on top of stone pathways once glowing

Blinking my eyes. Only the impression I close them, it hangs in my head.
My hands fumble for the lives I've touched correctly.
Night falls, I notice it. My eyes close and open in the aluminum.
Yeast and a burred edge meet me in reflection.

Parallel tragedies. You heal mine and I see yours.
Raise your hand. Show me how it moves against the ceiling.

Very sedated. Insane to feel so happy without proper dosages.

https://youtu.be/ozARuJ92vkQ

There is no cure, no fix, no magic spell.
I am an aberration, as you know.
I never promised you a villanelle.

You cannot trap the ocean in a shell.
You feed the roses blood to make them grow.
There is no cure, no fix, no magic spell.

It does get bumpy on this carousel.
The ride is all extremes of high and low.
I never promised you a villanelle.

I was the aberration, you could tell.
I ******* my neuroses in a bow.
There is no cure, no fix, no magic spell.

I think it's safe to say you know me well
in all my many masks, but even so,
I never promised you a villanelle.

Let me pin my ragged heart to your lapel.
If it's truly what you need, I'll let you go.
There is no cure, no fix, no magic spell.
I never promised you a villanelle.

There you lie sleeping
Cherubic face
My eyes, my cheeks
My neuroses
I whisper in your ear
sweet one
words of love
And affirmations

So untouched and pure
Yet time will take its toll,
   that I know
The world will break you
   and taint you
And you will soon be mine no more

You will forget these moments
when I hold you
and guide you, singing
songs that fade into dark
songs I hope remain
imprinted on your heart

Here you lie sleeping
precious one
Your eyes, your cheeks
Your spirit
I whisper in your ear
despite my fears
words of peace
and contentment
Sleep on