A Concession of Love
She followed the travel and the antique shows
on PBS all through the Sunday lull,
his couch’s better half. With upturned eyes
let him zap over to the NFL
taking her book up, asking that the volume
be kept down. Though she couldn’t hold her interest
wholly aloof from the barbaric game—
surprising dad with a gasp, Gaw that dude’s fast!
She’d look back at her novel with a glance…
Then marvel at the fans and their face paint.
She wanted to know just why the referee
had thrown that flag. And frowned ambiguously
at the vainglory of a touchdown dance.
Hoisted her eyebrow at the extra point.
Reference
Rekindled from an OED, a word
from long ago “jangala,” a dry, dry
land, a desert, flourishes to the green wood
jungle has come to depict in her day—
lapsed as her gaze off to another book
so for its cover. She reads silent at
the PC on her elevated desk
amid the printed volumes to check out.
How better embody that little-heard
fountain Wisdom than surround oneself
with her spines? Delicate as usage, hard
as sense to fix, one can only imagine
her orderly and tidy as these shelves—
going home, her hair in the wind undone.
The Super-id
The sea
ever wagged by its tail.
It’s all continuum, seals playing
out into their horror of an orca’s play
with little mind for manners, appearance,
“plasticity,” the business
of the sails of cloud
stacked like the coasts’ glass mountains,
these Aeolian beings, drawing from it
fertile rain, shimmering nets
and devastating storms. Great
unselfconsciousness swims
between one’s hunger and another’s
from deep memory
clear to the shallows of our shellfish.
And our muck, threatening its copious
data of marvels. And unmasking me,
boy wizard on the shore
of the ponderous metaphor.
To My Problem
“Symptoms, symptoms,”
said the therapist, halfway into
another session. “It’s good of you
to talk about them. Shortness
of breath and temper. Irritableness.
Obsessive compulsive. Insomnia.
Erratic spending.”
I don’t know
how professional it was
of my Doctor Strangelove,
though it certainly had a psychological effect
on him at last to come unhinged
and just lay it all out—
“Mr. Steffen,” with a deep sigh,
“underlying all this chaffing,
there is some little stone somewhere in your shoe.”
I've written you letters
with no address for the envelope
with my thinking it out,
how to unravel your skein
of sudden desires and a tilted past.
I've come away from psychologists,
from groups and meetings
with certificates and tokens saying I could
overstep your molehills—
only again day after day to find myself
lulled in the elevations of attitude,
on the islands of prickly fruit
grousing about the prices, the wait,
bearing my teeth at others
with their deplorable hair and manners.
Only to have them—What'syour problem?—invoke you anew
and remind me
everybody drinks the same water.
With your sniff dreaming a rib bone
from the takeout bag being kicked around
by the wind, snapping at
the wind's hand, biting your fingernails,
drifting again into the blind spot
of your oncome; with your
dispersal of asking, flirt, maker
of No… Huh-uh… Get lost…
Should I only try again
author of the shrug, again and again—
to the break of sunlight
out of nights and days of rain
so here and there an afternoon
I am filled
and you vanish
like water
into the green flag of the grass.
Recipient of a 2021 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, Michael Steffen’s poems have appeared in publications, including, The Boston Globe, The Concord Saunterer, The Dark Horse, The Lyric and Poem.
scare yourself back into existence
angels laugh at the
ache in your heart
they taste the blood
in your fear
they help you tie the
rope around your neck
and find the sturdiest
tree in the town
it is your unwillingness
to step beyond these
mortal thoughts that
confuses everyone
why be tied to just what
they want you to know
expand your brain
into the darkest hole
you can find and scare
yourself back into
existence
give the world all
your secrets
break these chains
and never be afraid
of falling down
but never think anyone
will ever help you back
up
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
a frantic phone call to my mother
i remember taking my mother's
diaphragm into show and tell
one day and said i used it in
the sandbox in the backyard
to sift the sand
there was a frantic phone call to
my mother from a horrified teacher
my mother had no clue what
i had done
i figured i was getting an early
start at being a standup comedian
of course, it was the 80's and
we had no clue how to actually
encourage an active imagination
in a child back in those days
they were too busy trying to get
me to understand conformity
and division
i was already reading at a college
level and no one understood what
made my mind tick
none of them ever did until i got
to high school and found an english
teacher who knew immediately i
was way beyond anything he had
planned in his class
so, he told me to go write a book
of poems and show him what i was
working on
best teacher i ever had
----------------------------------------------------------------------
abandoned buildings
i sometimes find
myself drifting off
mid-conversation
these days
i'll hear an old
massive attack beat
in my head and start
thinking about doing
drugs in my youth
abandoned buildings
the cemeteries and
open fields where we
would count the stars
and give them better
names
and it's not that those
days were better or
more open or free
they just held a sense
of a better possibility
than these days
stuck in a digital world
of faceless souls and
juvenile criminals
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
the dotted line
engulfed in flames
trembling hands
and a dotted line
a little scotch used
to calm these nerves
now it takes more
than anyone should
comfortably drink
in public
it's not every day
you're signing away
the right to live
but you understand
this is the best for
everyone involved
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the horizon looks bleak
i used to mark
the days on a
calendar with
a marker
now i do it
with blood
the horizon looks
bleak and then i
see a mirror
haven't shaved
in years
no reason to ever
love me screams
like a woman in
danger
i have prepared
for my death since
i was a child
the life goals i was
allowed to pursue
have all been
checked off
now i just need
a sunset
a trusty shotgun
and a little music
to send me home
J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know where the bodies are buried. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at The Rye Whiskey Review, The Beatnik Cowboy, Dumpster Fire Press, Misfit Magazine and Horror Sleaze Trash. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
Departure's Price
To feel what isn’t there
is all I need this far
into a one-night adventure,
daylight now ends.
Wanting her to tell me nothing,
except lies that would convince
a clock to move forward
to no return or a pause
at the precise or
rumored false step
any love demands more
than once...
Around which we skirted,
skilled as puppets
who can do little more
than entertain
even when the applause
is neither obsequious
or false.
And now the price of
departure, a tax
wanton drinking and lust begets,
awaits with receipt...
As we linger in a paid for bed
without the energy for lies,
I check messages
that say nothing.
While she watches,
showing no emotion,
a copy of me,
trying to figure out
long after the last kiss
how to get out of this
with a grace we both lack.
Knowing this was a mistake
and the new day only
a chance to make more.
K2
Driving to the airport, its nearly dawn
turbulent dark skies and dim tiny stars
my lone company- the radio's low.
Trying to make sense why so much has gone
awry or failed to transpire so far.
all faith submerged , lost to the undertow.
where life seizes you and then flings you down
until you’re prostrate on knees or the floor
someone shouting ten and you’re counted out.
I'm driving to a new start and new town.
It wasn't love K, you closed all the doors
I kept knocking still, with all of my doubts.
K, I see your face with its vague sad hope
its goodbye tears, it wasn't love but close
Beginnings
Do not ask me of others, let’s start fresh.
As if we were rare seedlings in the spring
sprouting promises with our sweetest thoughts
rooted deep beyond earthly wants of flesh.
Beyond true love’s lost dark imaginings
pale jealousies , tides of mistrust wrought.
Let ardor beckon, wondrously new
we’ll be its play things, puppets in a dance.
outside the present to postpone regret
by giving love each day its place, yet true
to ourselves, mocking fate’s uneven chance
diving to we know not, and come out blessed.
So let’s begin, without a sin or stain
after I ask you this-what is your name.
Her Blank Canvases
Home dining alone or with one who cares
she claims she’s happier since the divorce
won’t marry again even in a dream.
When asked if she still paints, I’m made aware
passing fancies and hobbies run their course
as does a lover lost in the midstream.
Where I drowned in drink after she left me
to go to Paris with a man she thought
loved her and did till the money ran out.
While I stayed servant to the tapestries
of color and wild imaginings caught in a canvas awash in reckless doubt.
When I say I still paint, there’s dead silence
ah there’s much that dies without violence.
Truncated Affair You can kiss each of my tattoos,
she said,
if you buy me one.
I asked about
the scar on her cheek.
She was silent,
not wanting me
near wounds,
healing or unhealed.
We made love,
our confidence
misplaced in
a bed where
excitement’s rush
& its dichotomy
to both discover and hide
were the wrong guides
to entwine us
past the
temporary.
She was precious,
much as she denied it
when sober, which
was rare.
Each morning,
pouring me coffee,
she'd do two lines,
check mgs,
leaves me 2 poems
someone else wrote
a disquieting challenge
I never clearly won
or lost.
When we traded kisses,
I'd win every time
it didn’t count.
Real or imagined,
her smile is always enough
to earn her tattoos.
Trouble came
in a script for a movie
she began to think
was us...
In real time
arguments, complications,
violence, plot twists
to an ending.
Predictable,
even with all the
rewrites.
Her goodbye,
open ended evil,
made truth out of the lies
in the disconnected
thoughts of her
I can't disconnect
from now,
unable to sleep
i'm no longer awake
without some cost.
Imagining only
her ink stained body again
leaving mine unmarked
with its sweat
almost clean enough
for purgatory.
Mother looks exhausted
…..And she works
Nowhere, some say
Neither at any
Administrative workplace
Nor any I/NGOs
No job; nothing, she does.
Yet, she wakes up
Always early in the morning
Along with cock’s doodle -doo
And, the whole day and late night
And in sun, in rain,
She accomplishes
Something;
Called, household chores
Cause, She, a Mother,
Who beholds a golden
Future for her offspring
She has no such thing
As OFFICE TIME
And, A Housewife,
An identity all provide
And exhausted,
She always looks
Multiple times than any
Office goer
As her eyes awake like
Owl over the night
And hands unrest like
A machine
Cause, A golden future
As she beholds
For her offspring.
Be conscious and
Considerate
And read and interpret
Your mother’s eyes,
You see
Tears rolling down
Yet, smile on face
And exhausted
Yet, loaded with affection
As your achievement is
Her satisfaction
So, she cares
Upbringing you
The best way
Because, as a golden future she
Beholds
For her offspring
Though her work is not recorded
In any administrative office
Yet she is uncelebrated,
Unsung hero
Behind her offspring,
As a golden future always she
Beholds
For her offspring.
Poet Sushant Kumar
Bio: Sushant Kumar B.K. is a Nepalese poet, educator and freelance writer who resides in Gulariya, Bardiya, Nepal. He has MA degrees in English Literature from Central Department of English, Tribhuwan University(TU) and Political Science from Kathmandu Central. At present, he has been pursuing his third master degree in Public Administration. He teaches at Janasewa Multiple Campus, Baidi, Bardiya. He is also the principal of Bageshwory Secondary Boarding School, Gulariya, Bardiya, Nepal. He writes poems in English and Nepali language.
He has attended writing workshop jointly organized by Fulbright Nepal and Dignity Initiatives, Kathmandu, Nepal. His poem “An Age of Paradox” has been published in An International Anthology, Pandemic Poetry 2020, and his poems are featured in The Kathmandu Post, The Himalayan Times, The Gorkha Times, My Republica, Indian Periodical(India), Grey Thoughts(USA), The Piker Press (USA), Borderless Journal(Singapore), Williwash WordPress (Nigeria), Sindh Courier(Pakistan) ,Seto Pati, Sahitya Post, Shabdasopan, Central Khabar and Firewordsdaily . He can be contacted at bksushant26@gmail.com.
People who see me must think I’m eccentric, emotionally disturbed, or lonely. People who speak with me have told me that I’m an obnoxious, good-for-nothing bastard, a nasty prick, but I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks. I don’t even care who reads this damned notebook. My name, Andrew Tremper, is right on the cover for all to see.
It all started about nine years ago. I was shacking up with this girl who was what they call a “modern dancer.” We lasted a little under a year together. Her name was Miriam and she went to some artsy-fartsy college up in New England to study THE DANCE. When she returned to New York she joined a dance company called Dervishing Divas. I met her at a performance on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
I was confused. I’m an educated man and I know what a dervish is—it’s spinning around, out of control. But the Divas didn’t spin. Hell, they barely moved. For over an hour all they did was lift a leg or move an arm or twitch their head every few minutes while electronic music slammed into our eyes and pulsing lights irritated our eyes. The Dervishing Divas sucked, but Miriam looked awfully good in her low-cut leotard, and I could see that she had the rounded buttocks of a thoroughbred horse.
I don’t even remember how I got to a Dervishing Diva performance or where I heard about them, except that back then I used to make the rounds of a lot of inexpensive arts events because there was always lots of women and I was posturing as an arts enthusiast, a good looking, well built arts enthusiast. Hell, I remember the night I nailed Miriam. I had to put up with hours of her artspeak about how the Divas don’t dance, they manipulate movement and shit like that. Well, let me tell you, she moved like a worm with a match under it later that night and a lot of nights that followed.
When she finally skipped out on me, the bitch left me a going-away present—a life-size cardboard cut-out of myself. On a note pinned to its crotch, she said she had it made because talking to the cutout was the only time she could have an adult conversation with me, expose her feelings without being ridiculed, cut-off, or ignored. The note said a helluva lot more than that, it was a freakin’ manifesto, but you get the idea. It was a real artsy exit, don’t you think? And probably the highlight of her creative career. I mean, just imagine all the thinking, planning, and execution involved in trying to make me feel like a complete shit.
I was going to throw the damned thing out, but I grew sort of attached to it. She did pick a pretty decent photo of me to enlarge in cardboard, although I’ve always thought of myself as somewhat taller than I am. Standing back to back with the cutout proves we’re both the exact height, five feet ten and three-quarters of an inch. That sonofabitch dancer nailed me down to three-quarters of an inch. In her manifesto, she predicted I’d keep the life-size cutout because I was so in love with myself. Miriam was wrong. I kept it to show the other broads I bang the monument of obsessive love given to me by a former member of the Dervishing Divas. The girls I take up to my apartment all seem to be impressed, so I guess Miriam’s cruelty backfired on her. How’s that saying go about a last laugh?
I kept the cardboard cut-out of myself inside my apartment for about three or four years. It made its world debut at a stupid party thrown by a woman I was involved with who lived in Hoboken. The point of the party was that no one could speak. Everybody had to write these responses, keep them in their pockets, and then show them to other guests when communication was desired. We were kind of like idiotic mimes without makeup. I feel like an ass even admitting that I’ve attended parties that, but hey, in a time of wildfire viruses, artsy babes are the most liberal and liberated, so I played the game to win the prize. Sue me. It’s better than sitting home and choking the chicken in front of adult video rentals although that, too, has its moments.
I cut up a few garbage bags and wrapped them around my cardboard cut-out that I named Sir Andrew. As I pulled the plastic around Sir Andrew’s head, it felt as if I was trying to suffocate myself, which is ridiculous because I don’t hate me. I pulled the plastic off Sir Andrew and decided to take him outside in all his glory. I figured I’d allow other people to enjoy twice the pleasure of our handsome face.
I had to carry my cardboard cut-out of myself down to the PATH train station at Thirty-third Street. PATH trains are subways that link New York City with New Jersey, and man did I get some bizarre reactions to carrying a life-size cut-out of myself under my arm as I crossed the state line beneath the Hudson River. I dug the attention.
The reason why I decided to take Sir Andrew—I’m just plain old Andrew—to the party was because I’ll be damned if I’ll spend my time writing out silly shit on slips of paper just to appease some piece of ass. If they want me to be silent at a party, fine, they can talk to my life- sized cardboard cut-out, Sir Andrew. He won’t answer them back.
Sir Andrew was the hit of the party. A gorgeous redhead even slipped me her phone number when her hostess wasn’t watching because she wanted to hook up with the “creative genius” that had turned the party’s conceit into what she said was a new art form, for some crap like that, yet all I did at the party was smoke some pot, down glasses of great cognac that the label said was made by monks, and eat like a pig. Whenever anyone approached me with their little fuckin’ witty remarks on paper I’d shrug, shake my head, and point to Sir Andrew, who I propped up in a corner of the living room. So there you have it, the secrets of a creative genius. My mother used to yell at me that if I kept my mouth shut people wouldn’t know how stupid I was. I guess the old bag was right. Anyway, tragedy befell me and Sir Andrew later that evening. I had planned to spend the night with my girlfriend, but she caught me making out with the redhead in the bathroom and pitched a fit. That’s when the silent party turned into screams. I told her to shut up and stop running the integrity of her party, to pull something out of her fuckin’ pocket for me to read if there was something she wanted to say.
The redhead immediately ran off and shortly afterward my girlfriend kicked me out of her apartment. I grabbed Sir Andrew and staggered my way back towards the PATH station. I was really loaded; that bitch should not have driven me out of her home. Before I even made it over to the subway, a Hoboken cop gave me a summons for pissing in the street. I think I even accidentally sprayed a bit on poor Sir Andrew.
I had a hard enough time navigating through the streets and train turnstiles, but with Sir Andrew tucked under my arm it became damn near impossible. My cardboard cut-out smashed into telephone poles, parked cars, fire hydrants, as well as other pedestrians, and was nearly decapitated by closing subway doors. By the time we arrived home, Sir Andrew was bent, ripped, crumpled, and stained. He looked exactly the way I felt. He slipped out of my hands as I flopped onto my bed.
When I woke up the next afternoon the first thing I saw was Sir Andrew, face-up on the floor, next to my bed. He looked scary. It was as if I was looking in a mirror at a decaying, diseased image of myself. My first impulse was to crush my cut-out and toss it into the garbage, but the idea of trashing myself like that was too disturbing. That was when I realized how attached I’d become to the fuckin’ thing.
I couldn’t keep the cut-out, but I wouldn’t throw it out either, until I could replace it. That’s when I remembered walking past this porno palace right off of Times Square that advertised they could make life-sized cut-outs from photos, although the sample displays were all these gross-looking naked people with bloated breasts and shriveled shlongs. They reminded me of my first experience at a nudist beach. I was about fifteen years old and was expecting to see all these incredibly hot babes jiggling about, playing volleyball, stretched out in the sand flashing more than just a smile. What a disgusting shock to discover that the nudists were mostly guys, middle-aged or even older and the women on the beach looked like my Mom’s friends, or like our neighbors.
Anyway, I set up a timer on my camera and took fresh portraits of myself in my favorite outfits, and picked out the best one. The guy at the porno palace couldn’t believe that my balls weren’t at least hanging out through my zipper. He charged me eighty-seven dollars and change and did a beautiful job. When I picked it up I noticed something quite interesting. My cardboard facial expression had a really strange look to it. I’ve since heard it described as compassionate, concerned, thoughtful, and affectionate. The truth was that my expression was affected by total anxiety. It was the first time I had ever used my camera timer, the first time I ever took pictures of myself and I didn’t think I was going to pull it off. I was too embarrassed to ask someone to take multiple portraits of me because they might think I was some kind of conceited, narcissistic bastard.
I liked having the new, updated version of Sir Andrew with me. Because of Saint Andrew’s success at the Hoboken party, I decided to regularly ferry it out in public. And let me tell you, it attracted and engaged more female strangers than if I had been walking the most adorable puppy in Manhattan. I did notice, however, that when talking with these curious and inquisitive women they seemed to be paying more attention to my cardboard face rather than to my real face that was sputtering out words of charm and profundity.
The first question I was always asked was, of course, why do I have a life-size cut-out of myself? My answer would vary according to the appearance of the inquisitor. If guys asked me I would usually say something like my girlfriend is going out of town and couldn’t bear to be without me for even a day, so she forced me to clone myself so I could travel everywhere she went. Or I would feign shock that they hadn’t heard about the terrorist attack in Florence and that they needed an immediate model to replace the recently exploded statue of David, so I was on my way to Federal Express Sir Andrew to the Italian authorities, you know, stuff like that.
When young women asked me the same question my response was dependent on how they looked. If I wasn’t attracted to the questioner I’d give them the same answer I gave the guys. If the woman looked like she had potential, I’d say something romantic like I was on my way to launch this cardboard representation of myself into the Hudson River, not unlike a Viking funeral pyre, because my dreams of trying to connect with true love had died, or my response would be something humbly humorous, like I decided to invest all my negative traits into this cut-out and was on my way to burn it in a sacrificial fire of repentance and purification or some shit like that. You get the idea.
Funny thing, it turned out women didn’t invest any of my negative traits into Sir Andrew- –they did the exact opposite. Sometimes I’d bang babes that I swear were more in love with my cardboard self than with me. I remember one girl insisting that I prop the cut-out by the bed and keep the lights on so that she could see Sir Andrew while we did the nasty. There certainly are a lot of freaks out there, but freaks are the most fun in bed.
Sir Andrew was pretty good for me in more ways than just the babe department. I never needed a scale. When I’d start to pork up a little all I had to do was compare myself with the cardboard stud and it would force me to keep myself in check. I had to maintain the same handsome and appealing appearance as Sir Andrew because my worst nightmare would be that one day I’d be cruising the streets with Sir Andrew and no one would recognize that it was a life-sized cut-out of me. Call it vanity if you want, but I call it a fight against nostalgia. I don’t ever want Sir Andrew to -represent my glory days—he must be representative of the here and now.
I take Sir Andrew with me almost everywhere I go these days. Aside from his talent for attracting women, I discovered that he also supplies me with peace and safety when I travel home to Manhattan after working in one of the sleaziest neighborhoods in Brooklyn. All the fruitcakes, psychos, and homeless assholes seem to fall instantly in love with Sir Andrew. I just lean back in my subway seat, close my eyes, and hold up the cut-out like a shield while some lunatic mutters away at it instead of pulling out a knife or hassling me about money. They tell the cardboard all about their wildest and sickest thoughts, experiences, confessions and actually seem to find comfort from that stupid look on Sir Andrew’s face.
But the truth is, I’m starting to get a little pissed over all the attention paid Sir Andrew. Why the fuck does everybody love him so much? Why is he more important to people than I am? I mean, if I don’t take care of him, protect him, he could easily be destroyed because he’s so goddamned fragile even a little moisture could melt his compassionate smile into a sneer and ruin him! Ruin us!
What started out as a gimmick to attract attention to myself has really boomeranged into a gimmick that diverts attention away from me. Sometimes I feel like I’m the prop and that my cardboard image carts me around to help me keep in touch with the rest of humanity. To be honest I guess I’d like to be more like Sir Andrew. I’ve noticed that I have a tendency to sprinkle profanities and slang into my speech in order to bolster my image as a strong man, but Sir Andrew is completely silent and no one, man or woman, has ever questioned his strength or manliness. And he really seems to be able to help people with their problems because he listens to them and stares them in the face when they’re talking to him.
In some ways I sort of admire Sir Andrew, but it’s kind of hard to change when your role model is yourself.
Mark Blickley grew up within walking distance of the Bronx Zoo, He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. . His latest book is the text-based art collaboration ‘Dream Streams’ (Clare Songbirds Publishing House). His videos, Speaking in Bootongue and Widow’s Peek: The Kiss of Death, represented the United States in the 2020 year-long international world tour of Time Is Love: Universal Feelings: Myths & Conjunctions, organized by esteemed African curator, Kisito Assangni.
Love
Love is what rules the world
Love is the basis for relationships
Love is what you feel for your boyfriend and girlfriend
Between husband and wife as well as
even a thief feeding his family.
Buddha and Christ were men who left a legacy of love
But I am only trying to keep perfect relationships
I don’t know why all people are running after money.
Money can't give happiness to you.
Happiness should be inside you so know these
things, if money could give happiness why do people suffer from illness and disease and problems money cannot settle?
I know that I could live without materialistic things.
You also can become non materialist like me in your life
Why can’t you live like me with no desire and no pain in life
We came here naked and go out naked so let’s live
Today as our first and last day of life. Death may come at any time so let’s welcome death. Let's have no fear, all things of the
world are supernatural, all thinking and imagining is omnipresent and omnipotent
Whether you are a God or a devil depends on your behavior
Let’s live seeing the perspectives of all
living beings and non living beings of the world. This love is benevolent, let's have that type of love for all without any bias. All living and non living creatures are equal
Let’s listen to the pain of all so
we will have a mind without fear, without any problems.
Let’s end selfishness and greediness
and be happy with what we have
In this is the meaning of life: you are me,
I am you, you are the other, others are beings like us, beings can survive without killing others for our own benefit.
You are perfect, let’s live like
that then God will be happy
Remember one who has hope has everything, has all things. Let’s hope till our last breath remains.
Live as happily as you can then nothing of this world can stop your happiness.
Be extra in living, live as a perfect dozen. Let’s erase tension and other unnecessary division. You are equal to all others, no class no bias no property, no matter. Sagelike, live in a perfect manner. Live life sweetly and freely always.
Enjoy, relax, be cool, be kind and be patient.
I only see love and power rule the world. Power lets us make a difference. Love could be the key material of the world. So let’s try to create smooth and kind love.
For all of you are spirit and spirit are you, so be the best of best like God.
Become the best and most excellent, be enlightenment. Be crazy, live madly.
Not sadly. Every season has a fixed time so let’s love forever all things of the Universe.
Be happy not sad, not afraid. Be patient.
Vincent Hollow’s poetry collection Swan Songs of Cygnus: The Weight of Black Holes
Vincent Hollow’s The Weight of Black Holes
The Weight of Black Holes is a science fiction story that is written in a unique form. An astronaut signs up for a one-way mission into the furthest reaches of space. In order to go on the mission, he has to have body enhancements throughout his entire body to keep it from breaking down. Although he will have no human contact or companionship, he will have a computer to talk with and to help him through the mission. The astronaut composes love poems to his love who has vanished throughout his mission. This is quite the interesting read for the sci-fi lovers out there.
