profile for Lena's character

>>>>it's very real.


frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or self-injuring behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars (excoriation) or picking at oneself affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days chronic feelings of emptiness inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights transient, stress-related paranoid ideation, delusions or severe dissociative symptoms frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or self-injuring behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars (excoriation) or picking at oneself affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days chronic feelings of emptiness inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights transient, stress-related paranoid ideation, delusions or severe dissociative symptoms frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or self-injuring behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars (excoriation) or picking at oneself affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days chronic feelings of emptiness inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights transient, stress-related paranoid ideation, delusions or severe dissociative symptoms


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Mandatory Spring Poem

the infinite springness regenerates for some
doubt, cycles despair and loneliness. A new
start to something old. Winter is an excuse
without sun and skin; spring they will ask
why you are sad again. why are you sad
again. Do the violets not move you nor the
dewdrops defuse the lead-heavy hours? Are
you lonely for someone - I miss the sadness
in everyone. I need to begin a chemical
routine, like a flower soaked in pesticide
on a beautiful spring day in Tennessee.

Kim. A Poem.

To a woman enviable: an enumerated critical recapture and corresponding poetic defense. My gift to you, curious pantheist. The present. How sad even here I cannot conquer self-obsession. How very right you are. How very right indeed.



***

Accusations:

1. overrated beauty
2. rude cultural savant
3. pretty bitch



"You are just as beautiful and smart as you think you are. You just grossly overestimate how much we all care."

*****

KIM. A Poem.

If a woman offered me a trade - existence -
I'd trade existence, deliver her assumed
convictions. To a doorstep doomed threshold-
less, nobody opens, therefore nobody
could claim the present. Past lives - you've
had several, I understand - dissolved with
a solution of time and taste. Yet nothing
solved unwritten words - unwritten words
remain unerased.

Woman, I'd bask in the fuzz of your stable
love. Men they leave me, yours stay freely.
My disposition's dark where yours is cheery.
My beauty chokes without depression, my
IQ strands me from convention. As a novelty
I'll be dismissed, whereas you forever
enjoy the gift of...not having people abandon
you when enigmas are lifted.

To reveal what? A baseless woman without
so much as anything to do but
make up lies and
present them true.

You win, Kim. You won.
I'd trade with you.
but you'd shun the
chance to be me. Rather
see me exposed, sans
fancy clothes and pretentious
prose. Deceptive simple

rhyme scheme, a dream I
had was reduced to

no dream.

Winter Upon Us: In-Between Season

Grad school demands precise composition, my kin creates constant thought-patterns bordering imbalance. Rough requirements - erudite, emotional - encase my poem-process, locked-up sentiments with no expression. Depression - a condition well-serviced by Fall. To remember Spring - to remember to begin again. A poem from another today, for inspiration, for hope, for looking forward to Saturday...




"Spring and Fall"

to a Young Child


   Margaret, are you grieving
   Over Goldengrove unleaving?
   Leaves, like the things of man, you
   With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
   Ah! as the heart grows older
   It will come to such sights colder
   By and by, nor spare a sigh
   Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
   And yet you will weep and know why.
   Now no matter, child, the name:
   Sorrow's springs are the same.
   Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
   What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
   It is the blight man was born for,
   It is Margaret you mourn for. 

-Gerard Manley Hopkins

theophany

this poem is about the boy who broke my heart.








watching the yard from my backdoor
i noticed my gardenia had
yellowed. flicking my cigarette
to a pile nearby i stepped
closer for a better look. looking
at the base i saw a weed in
the pot. touching the withered
petals i became sad. feeling
desperate i yanked the weed from
the soil.

unfortunately the roots of both had gotten tangled underground.
due to my neglect and preoccupation with theophany.
i held the weed in my hand and the gardenia dangled from its roots.
some dirt got on my shoe.

reacting intuitively i ripped the
plants apart. gasping with surprise
i heard some organs crunch. holding
back tears i realized my gardenia
had died. dropping the plants on the
ground i wiped my hands of debris. seeing
her damaged i went back inside. wanting
to simplify my life i decided to
leave her out there.

unfortunately her death robbed me of my only ally.
i didn't realize it at the time.
i will join her again someday in dust and mud.
my gardenia.
and i. 

pure and white petals like

windmills on warm

june nights

bugs are biting my skin but

i remember you still felt nice.

The Poem You Have Been Waiting For (for what?)

note 1: a new meaning for each viewing/a new meaning each time you read it. Repetition does not imply verbatim duplication. Subtle differences between/betwixt repetitions generate meaning. Omission and inclusion of parenthetical or slashed letters, words, and phrases renders a new reality. This piece is meant to be read several times; please intuitively or experientially omit and include bracketed entities to your liking. Of course, you could read it just once, but since the world is always in flux, it is unfair to enforce the words we use to describe it a static existence.
note 2 (*some of one*): An icon, a caricature of the deity never captures its Pure Reality, just fragments of infinity. 
We miss you. -A, L, & B.
 
& I do too.




(Let me [first]) E/elaborate with a sad tale from my own life(.)/(-)
s/Second let me distinguish between a
sad tale and a sad life.&a sad tale from a (sad) life.
asad tale from asadder life. Falling-ladder-like. (Let me)
welcome (t[w]o) the abyss.
(we)/come
back, to me
wel(l then)come back to me, misery came
back to me. Alone to face ([a] face of[f])
reality:


-the coward pursues
banality,

the muse inspires
conditionally–

while gods maneuver marionette strings
and still claimed to me
“neutrality.”

prayer for forgiveness. (5&2)

oh god i replaced
the clean
to be more like you
and god
i displaced loose things
for love.
common people do
not stop
speaking, oh god i
never
ask why you seized my
fervor
and substituted
textile.
revised commitment
won’t soothe
growing fires i see
as just
static. ecstatic
to be
alive but greeting
some death.

when i turned five years
old, two
demons in the form
of sage
whispered eternal
cycles.
since then all i’ve done
is lie.

together that’s a seven.
sevens
multiply.

Second

We are both second
s apart, thrown together
for minutes a day.
The space next to first or
the time it takes for

Hope to evaporate
from my childish daydreams.
Doodling playgrounds for my
invisible companions.

For a second I thought
for a second thought to
become primary – it’s not
as hard as you thought.

It takes a lot
to smile these days.

For a smile it takes
a lot these days.

Cut Four.

(((resolved)))

watery deserter

salient rides of car.
carrides.

The air thickened with presence, with promise
and pot; each mile thins lush space,
infertilizing time as if the extra seconds would
change anything.
If anything,
they just change just one thing:

the delay of
saturation, pink and smiling last night.
Today: salted, rolling.

ha ha sound

ha ha sound.
if there is a joke to be made
it is on you.

ha ha sound.
if and only if.