Poetry, from Old French poetrie, from Latin poeta. A poet. From Greek poetes, from poein, to make, to compose, to create. A poet is a creator, building monuments of rhetoric, weaving billowing sails from threads of silken meter and coarse emotion. A poet sculpts, beginning with a shapeless block of half-thoughts and minute desires, cutting away with broad strokes of his hand, felling the hammer of intention. A poet adds sturdy nouns to build form and places verbs to build shape. He flicks his wrist and sends torrents of adjectives flowing over stanzas like sandpaper, smoothing and refining. If, then, poets are Pygmalions, then poetry is Galatea, evocative our most earnest desires and

crafted in such likeness of our greatest excellence that we bow our minds to its persuasions and give of our vitality to its worship.

She always liked how I did her laundry. Truth be told, I liked doing her laundry, too. I would guess at what she was doing by her laundry. I would look at the grass stains, the caked-on mud, and the mysterious bodily fluids and fantasize scenarios about what she did to get such soiling. She was busy. Always creating dirty laundry.

I would always smell her laundry, as much a part of the process as detergent or setting the length of the spin cycle. Ah, the spin cycle.

Even the nefarious stains, each with their own tell-tale olfactory clues, could not mask away her own womanly scent. How would I describe it? Her scent is she. As real as the train approaching when you’ve been tied down to the tracks, yet as elusive as a unicorn. As much to do with the real world as a cloud, yet when I smell she, I smell life on Earth—evolution, foraging, mating, and natural selection. I smell the intangible of joy. Like the tesseract, it cannot be categorized within the limitations of mere human sensorium. It is victory, submission, defiance, conquest, and surrender all rolled into one.

It is she.

I lift one of her very personal items to my face and inhale deeply. I am with her when I do this. I am lifted; I leave, out-of-body, coasting on the pleasure of my forebrain. The second cranial nerve has allowed me to appreciate her beauty. The eighth cranial nerve has allowed me to harmonize to her song. But my first cranial nerve is a gift from God. Pheromones blow me into a singularity, all places and one simultaneously. I am drunk with her scent.

She. Just the word, with its digraphical phoneme…

Pheromones and phonemes. She. With its unvoiced fricative, my vocal chords don’t even vibrate until I get to the long ē. But it is worth the wait. It is when the angels join the chorus of my pleasure.

I sit atop the washer, sorting and smelling, separating and sniffing. When I think I have exhausted all of the odorifics contained thereon, I let it slip through the open door to join the others. The t-shirt with its musky tale of mammalian exertions. The scarf, sure to be ruined by the machine, with the alchemy of its man-made perfume concocting with the fragrance of she a bouquet of marriage between her and the rest of the world and all its wonders, not the least of which is the wonder of herself.

On second thought, I reach back in to retrieve the previous olfaction delight. I have not exhausted it, and I bask one more time in the fragrance of lovely, of feminine, and of implied symbiosis with me.

I appraise her other clothing, piece by piece. The bend of her knee here, the flex of her elbow there. Pivots that separate her sinews and pumping muscles. Rhythmic tightening and relaxations, glistening with the thinnest layer of moisture that sparkles magically on her faint hair. Bodily functions contained within a working model of woman, sculpted from fulfillment. I dream of these sinews and pumping muscles atop myself, and both of us atop this very washing machine. Machinations and machines come together today because it is wash day.

I reach for a towel. It is a heavy towel and it is not even dirty. It will conflict with the delicates; it will upset the balance of the rotation. It is on purpose: I want an uneven load. I place a detergent packet into the machine, to wipe the slate clean, to start over, to deliver to me the next generation of sensory enchantments. I push the right buttons.

I disrobe.

The machine is an old one. It is not level, again, on purpose. I can feel the warmth on my bare buttocks as it begins its cycle of operation. I become aroused. If she were to walk in now, she would see it plainly.

She knows the game. She enters and feigns surprise, then outrage. She approaches me tenuously, testing each step as she does. Her livid expression undergoes devolution into one of lust. The machine is rumbling in its excitement. My arousal becomes stronger, crying for help. She disrobes, letting her things drop methodically and silently to the floor, staring into my eyes the entire time. Sex isn’t with genitals, it is with the brain.

It is with the soul.

She wants to join me during the machine’s excitation phase. Nude, a word that only portrays beauty, is not correct; she is naked, the better word, because it is the name that promises action. She steps up on a footstool and then throws one leg over my lap. Next she is sitting on top of me, insertion completed in one fell swoop. Deftly. I am surprised at her moisture. Again, the wrong word. She is wet, the name for love.

In the next phase of the machine’s cycle, there is a plateau during which it maintains a continued churning agitation. My anticipation builds, as we await the next phase. The thin layer of moisture on each of us is now the only thing between us. Alternating movements and alternating current both conspire to initiate in each of us the next phase of the cycle. The machine pauses. It is a spinal pause in us, as well, like that one moment on the roller coaster where the chain that drags the cars up the first and highest hill disengages in preparation for the headlong rush into the lake of adrenaline below. Chink, chink, chink, chink…then… the moment for which I have waited.

The spin cycle.

My friend, the heavy towel, creates the uneven load. The bespoke footpads, upon which the machine sits unevenly, partner with the towel. If the water-filling of the machine was the excitement and the agitation the plateau, the spin cycle is our climax. Woman and man and machine are one, as centripetal battles centrifugal and undulation and reciprocal pumping become cohorts. And that smell, she, wafts up to engulf us. Not just she, however, but us.

The spin reaches its peak as do we, and once again I am submerged within muscles and sinews and soul.The machine is frantic, the woman is ravenous, and the man is desperate. The sum greater than the addition of the parts.

There is a physiological reckoning in us when the machine now experiences its final phase, its spin down. It is a resolution, as we collapse in our own spindown. When all of the torque is spent, so are we. All is quiet—woman and man and machine.

I look down to regard the clothing she had removed before. I look back up toward her and she smiles.

“Very dirty clothes,” I say to her. They promise another laundry day.

We had a tradition, in our shabby college apartment. There a single blank wall inside, stretching from one bedroom door to the next – maybe eight feet in diameter – with an ugly metal utility box to the side. We liked to hide this wall in creative ways: with a tapestry, then another, then a holiday ensemble, complete with cut-outs or wrapping paper or whatever matched the occasion.

The latest occasion was St. Patrick’s Day, but it was stretching toward mid-April. Easter was approaching. Maybe we would have time to decorate for it. Maybe not. Finals were also approaching, and we were all beginning to wear thin with the stress. Still, the wall had rapidly become an annoyance to walk by. It stood almost mocking – like a reminder of the past I was trying to forget. I wanted to take it down.

I started with the sparkly green clovers, artfully tilted together at the center of the wall. They were made of construction paper, and the first one ripped when I tried to peel it off. I carefully undid the back taping, trying not to tear the decoration further. Maybe I could re-use them next year. The decorations had cost a pretty penny, more than I could afford at the time. I didn’t regret the purchase, though.

I remember putting the whole thing up a few hours before our party was to start, with my roommate crying in her room about her latest worst-thing-in-the-world-of-the-week. She was like that. It was always one thing or the next, this or that. Right now, it was a speeding ticket. I could never understand the logic – how someone could get fed up about something so minor as a speeding ticket. I wish I had the luxury of worrying about details like did.

I went back to work, slowly taking the clovers down until only the center strip of the wall faced me. It was bruised and ugly in spots, and I remembered why we wanted to cover it up. It wasn’t so bad from far away, but close-up I could see all the dirt and stains.

My eyes trailed the pattern forehead level dents, created that one time my friend Nick drunkenly attempted to handstand against the wall. As the dents indicate, it hadn’t gone so well. I remember laughing though – genuinely laughing – unlike the forced smiles exchanged these days. No. In that moment, we were still best friends. In that moment, we were happy.

Next, it was time to rip down streamers – alternating shades of light and dark green. The streamers wouldn’t be worth storing, so I threw them away.

I remember Nick playing with them at a pre-game a few weeks earlier. Twisting them up as tight as he could without breaking the strands, then watching them come apart. I had been leaning against the wall, casually observing his work, when he turned to me.

“Promise me we’ll stay best friends forever,” he had said, his eyes suddenly wide and serious, without the casual laughter they had held before. He got like this when exceptionally drunk – all mushy and sentimental – and the best thing to do was humor him.

“Nothing could tear us apart," I remember replying. I remember meaning it too.

All in all, the wall took around two hours to put up and around twenty seconds to strip down. Back to where we started, just me and the ugly white. Pink splotches decorated the barren mess too, along with the handstand dents and dirt and stains from God-knows where. The whole thing was imperfect and gross; I already wanted it gone. We didn’t even own the apartment, and would probably have to pay for damaged paint or whatever.

Something about the wall bothered me though, in a dark, disturbing way. I couldn’t put my finger on why, but the disgust ran deeper than the unsightly appearance or reminder of impending paint fees. The wall looked mocking almost, laughing like it knew its stains had ruined the appearance. Like it knew just how much it bothered me.

---

I ordered a new tapestry a day later, a fading pattern to different shades of blue. We hadn’t hung blue on the wall before, and the thought made me happy. Blue was comforting. Blue was new. Blue would be here in approximately ten to fifteen business days. All I could do was wait.

Meanwhile, the wall was becoming worse. I began to avoid it, when I could. I resided on campus most of the day, or spent my time in my bedroom, with it out of sight. The hard part was the in-between: those thirteen steps from my bedroom to the apartment door. I could handle those thirteen steps, at the beginning. Each day I would wake up and prepare myself to confront the wall. It became a battle.

As the days went on, facing the white got harder and harder. Sometimes I would lose to its hateful gaze. I cowered in my room instead – terrified – while trying to think of creative excuses to email my professors.

Sometimes the problem was getting back in. I would sit in our apartment hallways for hours on end, trying to build up courage. Occasionally I’d sleep in my car.

Throughout the wait, I tried to maintain normalcy. At least, as much as I could. Because I was not crazy. I know I sounded crazy, but I was not crazy. Okay? I needed new paint, not therapy. I just needed the wall gone. At the sixteenth day since ordering that new tapestry, I called the shipping company.

I remember hearing the words backordered and I remember hearing screaming. It was deafening; wretched and terrible, filled with vulgar words –

“FUCK YOU, YOU PIECE Of FUCKING SHIT, YOU DON’T CONTROL ME, YOU –“

“Ma’am? MA’AM. Is everything okay!?”

It was only when the police rushed in that I realized: I was the one screaming.

I think the incident scared my roommates, because they began treating me like I was breakable, like they were afraid to set me off. Whispers and hushed conversations, abruptly halting when I entered the room. Hesitancy before asking me questions. Words thrown around, like “trauma” and “PTSD” and “neurotic.” Things like that. They thought I didn’t notice.

They spread the word to our friends, though, because breakdowns make for juicy gossip. More than ever, I felt alone. Nick kept his distance, too. A part of me began to hate him for that – for not defending me after everything. So much for forever. Yet, through it all, I kept my promise to him.

My mom called earlier today, a week and a half later. I had not left my room for approximately three days. But I hadn’t wanted to worry her. So, when she asked how I was doing, I told her I was great. I didn’t tell her that I was failing three classes, because then she’d worry about my scholarship. I didn’t tell her that I felt empty, that the wall was killing me a little bit more every day. I didn’t tell her about that night or about Nick and how we were slowly falling apart. Maybe I should have. Maybe things could have changed.

Instead, I listen now from my bedroom as my roommates entertain friends in the living room. They have the stereo on – some throwback songs from when we were kids. I can’t tell how many people are here, but I can hear the excited chattering, the laughter. Their happiness seeps through the walls. My chest tightens.

I’m lying on my bed, too afraid to make a sound. God, what if they don’t know I’m here? What if they do? I can’t leave my room because of the wall, and even without it my sudden presence would make the situation too awkward.

I can feel my heartbeat rising. I pick out Nick’s voice from the rest. It hurts. Here all my once friends are, going about life like I never mattered in it. Maybe that’s harsh. Maybe it was my fault –

(Promise me you won’t go to the police. It was a mistake. If you care about me at all you’ll keep this to yourself. Please)

– maybe I should have been selfish. Maybe I should have never agreed to keep my mouth shut. Oh No. Maybe I never should have told Nick I’d keep my mouth shut.

I can feel my pulse through my throat. My hands are shaking and I feel trapped – I feel trapped and the world is closing in – my chest feels light and my head feels heavy and I can hear them joking outside my door, joking and having fun and it’s all too much and I can see him, I can feel the too long glance and that brush of cracked fingertips and I can see myself brushing it off like nothing at all –

Somehow I end up on my hands and knees. The world is silent except for my breath and the beating music of the pregame on the other side of my door. Don’t Stop Believing is on. I can hear the room singing it.

Don’t Stop, Believing, they chime. Hold on to that feelin’ –

It’s the end of the song, a crescendo to the final notes. Everyone is off pitch. I fall to my side, rolling to face the ceiling.

Streetlights, I hear. peopleeeeeee – they hold out the word, changing keys. It’s the last line, and then the room goes silent. I hear them shuffling around, gathering their things before heading to the bars. I continue to stare at the ceiling.

Ceilings are nice, I decide. They don’t get messed up and spilled on by people. They stay blank – the perfect white. Untouched by our human messes. Walls let us ruin them.

I feel calm, after they leave. Detached, almost. There’s a heaviness in my bones, like the apartment itself has faded into nonexistence. Like it all was just a dream.

But it wasn’t a dream. This was real. It was all so fucking real.

Mechanically, I feel myself standing, and I feel my blood pounding in my fingers. There’s ball in my chest, slowly churning hotter and hotter.

I walk over to the kitchen cupboard, and pull out a toolbox. My mom insisted we keep one, though we never used it. There’s a hammer inside, and I feel the weight of it in my hands.

I think of Nick. I think of our promises.

(Promise me you won’t go to the police.)

He’d been the one to find me. It was his house, after all.

(Promise we’ll be best friends forever)

Best friends. That’s what he introduced me as – his best friend. I remember the elation of hearing him say it. I had never had a best friend. But that’s what he told his dad we were. Best friends. I had a best friend.

I turn and face the wall. It truly was hideous. I look. I feel the hammer. The wall cracks like lightning, before I realize what I’ve done. The hammer lies on the floor.

It feels good, I realize, and then suddenly I’m attacking the wall, and metal is hard and adrenaline is flooding in and I can’t stop, I can’t stop I cantfuckingforget because I see them in the wall – I see Nick’s dad and I see him lock the door and it’s all so wrong and I see Nick and his face when he realizes what his dad did and I see those terrified eyes – itwasamistake it was a mistake please don’t tell the police it was a mistake –

(Take it, that's right, just like that, baby)

(Stoppleasestop PLEASEFUCKING STOP)

(SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH AND TAKE IT YOU GOD DAMN SLUT) –

And somewhere along the lines I’ve dropped the hammer because it isn’t enough and I need to feel this - I need him to feel this.

The wall is turning red on the edges of where I hammer it so I grasp onto a cracked part and rip because this fucker is coming down and there’s so much red – God, there’s so much red but I need to keep going I can’t stop going –

And the world begins to blur. I steady myself, and I blink. The apartment is silent again. The wall is a scarring of browns and cracked white, a midsize hole tinged with the scarlet. I can feel myself fading.

Through the hole, I see my bedroom. On my desk is a mirror, and I catch sight of my reflection. I see my features, the light hair, dark eyes. The too big nose. Somehow, these parts don’t add up to me. To who I am. I don’t recognize this reflection. I can feel something wet drip on the edge of my nails.

Maybe this is who I was once. Before Nick. Before the wall. But this girl is dead.

I feel a pull, dragging at my conscious. I close my eyes, and let it take over.

I'd like to say, it was magic

Or divine intervention

Perhaps

It was

Still, as Joseph was stabbing

My ass with yet another

hormonal injection

I failed

To rejoice

When the doctor called

To proclaim

My pregnancy, I believe

I heard angels sing, or

Was it warning

No matter

I believed

Morning sickness was nothing

Compared to birthing

Holy (kinda funny)

Shit

And my reward for all

This hard work

A baby

Born purple

Looking to

Not to me

His mother

But, heaven

These violent delights

Have violent ends

Blood calls to blood

It knows no friend

It spreads like fire

Every thought it devours

Until in the end

It knows no bounds

These violent delights

With their violent ends

Seduce our mind

Appeal to our primal selves

Just instinct,no logic

Just red,no clear head

It brings just destruction

A cycle with no end.

We know we should stop

But in truth we can't

Violence is addictive

And we like the pain

We lie for it

We beg for it

We even pay

We are now its slaves

We can't quit the game

You see pain is real

In a world full of fakes

This is its appeal

And all that it takes.

"Assets, loopholes and write-offs," I quiver,

when Mistress Accountant demands my attention.

"Big bottom lines, a charitable giver,"

I say with abandon, to heighten the tension.

She replies, tempting, sultry and dirty,

"On your knees, boy, and kiss my 1040."

They told me to write

a simple poem

about when I lost my innocence.

Now I have to ask them

what kind of world we live in

for there to be such a thing,

a thing that makes someone lose innocence.

Something in this world

that causes people to fall

from the childlike innocence

that used to encompass us all.

Or did it really,

ever reign

over a naughty child,

who would never behave?

Because now I have to ask you what innocence is,

what defines it,

what drives it,

and what’s within

your heart that makes you ask

when I lost my innocence.

Oh, I tell you it was long past!

Because we did not lose our innocence

when we reached adulthood,

or when we left the mother’s nest,

neither when the girls became women,

or when the boys became men.

No, we lost innocence

the very first time we sinned,

and knew it.

At that moment all innocence was lost,

and we could feel our bones crawl

with fear of what mommy had to say

when she found her fallen, broken vase.

Since that moment,

we knew sin.

And that took away

all sinlessness,

all innocence.

Sinlessness is innocence,

and therefore I know none of you have it.

So now I have to ask you

if you truly remember

when you lost your innocence,

or if you’re happy to move past it?

Because truthfully I tell you,

that for me it is a shame

that us wicked humans

love playing the game.

That game of sin,

the throwing of dice,

just wasting our lives

on foul malice.

Humans love their sin.

How awful that does sound.

But it is true,

for I know most of you do, too.

No matter how hard you’ve tried

you mess up,

you fall down.

It’s human nature

that just none of us have

that innocence depicted

before Eve and Adam.

The true, last question lies

silent, untouched.

Now let me ask you,

prepare for the punch.

Here I ask

if you really care

for all the bad stuff you do,

or if you love sin’s flare.

If you actually feel the guilt

that brews inside,

or if you just push it down,

all troubles aside.

Because this is important,

yes, it really is,

whether you love your sin,

or hate it deep within.

This is what causes us to fail,

the sin of the world

and its hard,

blinding veil

that covers the eyes

of so many of us,

not allowing us to see

past the evil of lust,

of lies, of anger, of deceit,

all things we’ve been victim to,

or perpetrators of, too.

All evil things that truly we do.

But brother, sister,

I have good news!

There is forgiveness

in this world, too!

All you must do is speak out,

take action.

Forgive one another, repent,

in spite of all infraction.

Knowing that not one human has innocence,

we are all sinners alike,

the only difference is our reactions

to the sinfulness that's alive,

if we love it, or hate it,

ditch it, or embrace it.

Innocence? No,

none have it, not one.

For all of you have known sin,

and all of you have done at least one

mistake that caused you to fall

from the innocence that

does torment us all.

Because innocence was lost

long ago,

on that first apple bite

that caused so much sorrow.

So all of our stories

should be the same,

everyone sharing

the same type of shame

of having had sinned,

of falling from innocence.

The demons surrounded me grasping and pulling at me. I sat still trying to ignore them, since apparently I was the only one who could see them. I know I'm not alone trying to remain calm as monsters are slowly pulling me apart. Somehow they don't, they can't get past my thick skin, I grew it three times thicker once you left me. It's harder to let people in since you floated away. The funny thing is the demons aren't here because of you, no they're here because of me. I somehow summoned them to my side by trying to help everyone. I tore myself apart trying to help everyone remain.

I'll always remember that day

When I cried

Because I couldn't do something

Because you refused to help

You refused to help me

Because you didn't want me to be

Helpless

And I get that now

But then I didn't

It tore me apart that you refused

To help me

And yeah eventually

You kind of had to help me

But you helped me determine a list

A list of things to try if this happened again

And guess what

I still use that list to this day

Well not as much

Because one of those websites were shut down.

I remember when you and her sat me down

And gave me a box of tissues

You went on and on

About what was going to happen

And that was probably one of the worst days

Of my entire life

I cried and cried

And I still cry to this day

That was before the furniture changed

That couch which I sat at that time

Is long since gone

I wonder how many tears fell on that couch

That day

Because of those five words

I wonder if they

Ever collapse

Under the weight of all those lives.

I remember that day only a year later

In which everyone came over

And tried to be comforting

I remember constructing something

Something I'd tear apart and throwaway later

Maybe I was making it

Not because I wanted it

But because making something

Relieves the pain.

I remember that one year

When no one could stay

When everyone was stabbing each other

In the backs

Over barely half a year

I wrote nearly 500 poems

I was so stressed out by my situation

I wrote more poems

Than the days I wrote them in

I don't want to go into detail

I don't want to go to deep into that again

None of us do

Ever again.

Now I sit wondering what will be next

Who next will walk away

Or be swept away by the tidal wave of life

I can't change what any of us will become

Just hope that we'll all survive

Do you ever question

Who will survive

Because not everyone will

That is a fact

Someone you know

Will trip and fall

And might not get back up

Might is the key word

Please for my sake

Don't be like me

Grab them

And pull them back up

You don't want to be

Sitting still

While the demons try to pull at you

To move please.

He picked me up

I felt his hands surround me

His fingers moved slowly

Across my spine

Beautiful words left his lips

I could feel his breath on my skin

I thought I would be his forever

After a while he started looking around

He eventually walked away

And never looked back

Typical