whenever all is said and done. I've lived my life and taken chances and if
some were strange by standards that were less important than my needs,
then I guess I could be crooked, evil, bent and twisted, looking down upon
the strings I tried to pull. But I see the strings extending up and down
and never ending as we dance around our selves and jerk  to all the tunes
that only  we hear and the voices only we fear each inside an island all
alone. But the contact that we do make, as we give and take abuse, stays
and its value only multiplies. Yes I'm alone, but not forgotten, for each
comes and sees me often, sitting on a seat beside my bed, and we laugh and
reminisce about a life that once was bliss before an act of passion made
us part. Of course they'll always be together, but their bond is made of
leather not the flesh and blood it used to be. They're still full of life
and healing, but it has a different feeling and only for the few that seek
their sort of pain and pleasure when they merge and give into insistent
urgency that lives for seconds at a time. For pain and pleasure are the
twins that slightly out of focus spin around us till we finally understand
that everything that gives us pleasure also gives us pain to measure it
by, and I also realize...that all our lives we love illusion, neatly
caught between confusion and the need to know we are alive.
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Eric Wincentsen
267@ef.gc.maricopa.edu
Glendale Community College,
  Glendale, Arizona

  "I believe in Women's suffrage. Women may suffer as much as they want."
                     -The great, Godlike Eric Wincentsen

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