I was afraid to swallow food when I was eleven. I lived on licking peanut butter from a spoon and yogurt. One time I went to Dorney Park with my friend and I got fries to not seem weird. I buried as many as I could into the paper ketchup cups. My friend's mother gave me a funny look. My father put cream of wheat in front of my face and I would shake, terrified he wanted me dead. I would eat a cracker until it was liquid and then spit it out. I would sneak my grandfather's Ensure milkshakes for when he had cancer just so I didn't become malnourished. This lasted for two months. Doctors didn't know it was  mental. They wanted to remove my tonsils. One day, I just gave in and thought "if I die, I die." The first solid thing I swallowed was a piece of boiled chicken. I screamed with joy at the dinner table. No one truly understood what that was like for me.

Elementary School. The house of worship for mothers and fathers. The house of rejection if you were a big-nosed dweeb like me. Where I grew up there were more fields then houses, people living far and few between. I was fortunate enough to live in that small middle class development along with that one other upper class development in the lower parts of town where all of the snotty little brat faces of the world lived. Their father's were teachers, lawyers, or anesthesiologists. Their mother's were bored lonely housewives who worked in retail. They hardly disciplined their children because their children were inherently perfect. And I? Was not.

Getting onto the school bus and walking down the narrow black aisle which always felt sticky under my purple Velcro sneakers felt like walking the green mile. I got head shakes no from the left and head shakes no from the right. This went on and on until the bus driver would yell "just sit down already!" One time, a girl I sat next to, with an esteem higher then deserved, rolled her eyes and licked her Hawaiian juice stained lips before commenting to my peers on how she was sitting next to the "fat girl." Ironically, I was thinner then her. Imagine that.

Gym. Need I say more? Yes, I was the last one picked to be on your team. You would all moan and groan too when I came awkwardly shuffling my feet, head down, towards your hyperactive tawny bodies. If I was feeling feisty that day I would shout "shut up!" to my crush when he would critique my jumping jacks.

When it was my turn to read aloud, my class snickered at how I pronounced my R's. They wrote on my birthday poster that I spoke funny. They pulled me from class to tell me I couldn't read. I was released back into the wild in a week when the teachers stopped listening to the children's plea for my departure.

Yearbook signings. I thought I was safe to ask the nerd to sign my yearbook. Let me tell you, I have never seen a face so disgusted as I did that day!

Aw, yes. Exclusion, and repulsion, had become the gravy to my mashed potatoes. Where I went sure enough so did rejection. My resolution? Be as quite as a mouse. Be as transparent as a ghost. Did it work out for me? I don't know. Here I am writing all by my lonesome on the computer, as quite as a mouse and transparent as a ghost on the topic of rejection. You tell me.

When she goes to bed early

When I can awake before her to watch her breathe

When I can travel to distant lands, pointing out the cloud shadows on mountains

Windows down, inhaling all of the enchantments of the forests, and of course the smell of wet road

When we frolic through cornfields

When we frolic downhill to the cool blue waters of the pebbly streams

When the waves of thunder roar and lighting strikes, and she screams

Movie Friday, hot buttered popcorn and red velvet seats

The lights that dim in accordance to the screen

When she says I am pretty unexpectantly

Stacks of fluffy golden pancakes, slathered in rich maple tree cream

The sound of his tires breaking hard against the tar, feet marching on gravel

I know he is coming to hug me

When the birds are chirping to alert me it is day and the night did not kill me

I live yet another bright shinny morning

When my mother asks me if I would like tea

When the doctors tell you your all healthy

Root beer floats in icy glass mugs, with just the right amount of each

Rain on sheet metal

Wind chimes blowing in the Spring breeze

Fall time fires, crackling, glowing against the burnt orange trees

Season of the Witch, songs of the 1960s

Festivals of which I could never attend, but could dream

Wines and cheeses and revealing dresses, kisses to please

Coffee and loose talk, lavender earl grey tea

Crepes and scrapple, God have mercy!

And lots of money.

He goes out to buy the wine

Details are insignificant

I said red, but I prefer white

"Not too sweet, not too dry."

"Will it make you happy?" he offered but not a wet eye

As I inscribe the lifeless rituals of my heart onto my paper thin spine

I can only be so generous

And so I reply with a look of mischief

Flickering his light with a smile

Tub I float in

Shoulders soaked in

Chemicals with water

Bones they ache, breasts by the month very tender

Contemplating how to contribute my patronized wonder

Make it worthwhile, swirls of patchouli bath bombs fizzing in every thought

Submerged like a mermaid, but tangled in the seaman's net so is her heart

Is it at all possible to not be self-loathing

Ha! A poet in denial...

The sun sets, feeling useless

World is spinning, feeling nauseous

Olive without its pit

Snow days brought about strawberry cake

A cardboard house

She brings coloring books to the waiting room, but all I can do is wait

Snow days brought about rounds of chess by candlelight, sleeping child by our side

And threats of "leaches," she is improvising her suicide

But why?

The water drains, a porcelain gulp to the sewer

Take the content and cement it when wet

To the happy dreams of a woman who refuses to believe she has grown, she grew

And now is lost in her thoughts of what to do

The whining, the whining!

Diffusing yellow paint from my pores

"Acid is acidic," chalk it up to the drawing board

Sick all of the time-yes! "That is why I can't work!"

Yellow, yellow

Burnt, seeping leaking guts!

My physical anguish bears the burden on us all

The trio sings their psalms of anger throughout the corridors

Cope king master

Strong-willed, now the hook is bent on the door

"Discipline" they mutter

She screams "SORRY!"

But all I hear is "I want more"

I want more

I want more

The neighbor turns up his TV

Lives on the second floor

After getting his share of red wine at the store.

When I was in kindergarten

I would sing Donovan to myself

I would sing Mellow Yellow

As a way to soothe my homesick blues

Because when I raised my hand in the air at my little desk

The other peeps would hush me and say “oh, give it a rest.”

But, but...

I mumbled to myself “I have ideas..”

I had this fourth grade teacher

Who resembled a frog

She had no neck to support her bog

And had moles growing around her two meaty logs

I felt like a spy, got a peek inside her purse, I saw what gave her that “croak”

There's more to this teacher that proves she was just a joke

Like the time I wrote a story about a turkey who collected rocks from around the world

I paced around my grandmas room

Brainstorming my thoughts

Into a metallic pink Talkgirl

It took the whole day

But in the end it was graded as too long

It was 2 pages in its full entirety!

I mumbled to myself “ I liked my ideas..”

In middle school I had a diary

For feelings and such

I stated literally that it was the end at the end of the book

My teacher thought it meant I was suicidal, this she took

I mumbled to myself “I...don't remember my ideas.”

A college professor told me to write a narrative on a life event

I took that opportunity

To tell a tale about a car crash to vent

He said I was “talented”

But the F spoke otherwise

I mumbled to myself “what is an idea?”

All they do is make me cry.

Where there is science

Needs there be a God?

And where there is a society

Needs there be anymore morality?

In the Ferris wheel world we live in

Colored with its multispectral picturesque pigmentation's

I sit upon a pondering observation, but really more of a sweeping generalization and an inherited love to gloomily complain

Hear me out...

We fail to appreciate daily the vividness of the objects we sit in

Desensitized to the tones of which has become as dull as construction paper, as once the preschooler played with

Our spirits and minds are wound up tightly around the coils of our own human concoction

Anxious for the mail to come, for the bus to arrive

Underpaid, overtaxed, and sleep deprived

We drag around and about our fleshy imprintations, flashing our traits and genetic mutations, all of which are being put to the test to withstand our cognitive humiliations

How are we tolerant of such daily lackluster regime?

And judgment, of media-influenced communicative speculations

A practice preached that reads a voice but bears no face to be seen

What such quality is of this reality and who holds their own responsibilities?

Mother Earth has inhabited the chaotic to be neurotic, and quite obscene!

On top of volcanic proportions

A mountain of material (a hoarders dream)

And accomplished occult leaders scheme!

How we have nurtured the delusions of every man that he can become his soda can dream

With such ignorance and little logic

Have we succumbed to the abrasive winds and radioactive rain

“Keep the windows down!” and let it drizzle on our laminated brains.

Could this have caused a chemical reaction that makes us more susceptible to radical lies then to radical change?

We might be on the outside looking in

But this, we quickly forget.

And look the other way, with stiff necks.

Ignoring how we are spiritually in debt

And harvesting the last of our rights

In attempt to claim back what we sacrificed

Operating under the illusions of lights

To encourage big wealth and bad behavior

We don't want to see what is across the street, so we buy curtains

Why do you not want to know your neighbors?

An escaped sigh and frustration with an acceptance of my own selfish self-preservation

Leave my now municipal water filled mouth

So, I turn the spoon in my cup and with my other hand place my chin on its palm and ask

“what is this.....egocentric life for?”

I think its a boring realism

That ages us

Seduces into the four corners of “sins.”

Are these universal laws here to trick us or to expose us?

To a greater-seeing eye

For what does it want to see?

A breakdown in our humanity

To understand our man-made theories

Perhaps to aid our humilities

Is it magic?

Are these alien galactic therapeutic tactics

Placed on us in hopes to soothe our inevitable Big Bang births from infection

To prevent our destinies from being swallowed into nothing

As if nothing wasn't something!

To the jaded skeptical youth

To the optimistic blonde-haired indigo children

They may question alike

A demand to understand

The intricate properties of this tangible, triangular, prismatic life

Are we grabbing onto the dark side of light with helping hands of an infinite proportion; so hot, so magnificently bright

To which we abide to in the middle of the night?

In sleep we are pulled by the gravitational waves, washing into each other's consciousness

Partaking in kaleidoscopic dances with one another, some of which include prophetic plays

It is a curious subject, dreams and astral flight

I know I tried to journal my brains leak of DMT's cosmic sights

While on the bed, I am barely breathing

All for the promise of a nirvanal high

Nervous of the unknown, now I am heaving

But the love for this quest is crucial, and intrinsic

There are explanations beyond scientific expectations

To the inner truth

There are minds-not at rest

That work hard to comprehend and untangle the complex puzzles of our research analysis

Sometimes discovered while sitting next to your father-in-law, in a lawn chair, under the moon

And to contribute, as a double-blind study, when I can

I will drink the earths brew

The decision to lay down thereafter I will pursue.

My ego picture will surely be a substance made up of a black mucoid clay

Reminiscent of a View-Master that sat out for months in the rain

And thus, after such devotion to my own philosophies

And being the subject of my own hypothesis

I can say that the last nesting doll is inside of the same one

We are inadvertently polishing the rocks for evolution

Expanding and contracting, as one passes another awakens

I find myself subconsciously altered in a realm that could be parallel to this one while under the influence of a Guidant kind

And may I have the credibility as the right to explain

Could you accept my trip to another plane?

This is a sad fact.

Looks like the toxins of the country have finally eaten away our  brain

It looks like our culture has succumbed to its decay

I showed my daughter music from the 60s and compared it to music today

Without much thought or hesitation, she had agreed

Music back then rocked

Music today sucks

This is a real problem

Music was life for me

And music influenced much of that life I was living, still am of course

Maybe we should copy the ways in which music was composed to get it back again?