Seeing her laugh

Is a celestial event

Her presence pure joy

That feels heaven sent

Having her close

To touch hold and kiss

Is the shooting star

That granted my wish

Her body I cherish

I would free of her pains

As the truth of my truth

And healed in summer rains

We break from the clamor

To be alone to be at peace

For the night is our parlor

Where the clamor may cease

The night sky it watches

Blessing two into one

In her soul I see riches

White and gold as the sun

Incarnated anew with pale flesh- the platonic idea of woman. True is that word to both form and spirit. I know, you know, and thee know the thousand natural triumphs your flesh is heir to. One knows that victory of 3 pillow cushions neatly stacked. You know there are hundreds of ways to compare you. I could say your love is like the sea crashing upon the shores of my tepid and forever receding heart. I could compare your affections to the generous and wanton and pregnable longing of the sun. But such metaphors are tricks of language and bear little resemblance to who you are.
You know, I know, and thee know that you’re the backdrop of my life at the burning peak of each morning to the snuffing out of the last light of day. You mutilate me and torture me and then you put me back together better off than you found me. I am your thrall, your dog, your lamenting shaman. I say quiet prayers along your shores. The horrible and wonderful tempest or temptress befall my starkly opposed senses and erode away at the foundations. Greater things await, murmurs of chthonic forces I invite to invade my mind until my mouth foams with anticipatory ardor and my wandering eyes, yet  again, search for yours in the deep. A mass once proud in its world would turn to mud in an instant to join you in yours. To be a part of you, I would let myself be destroyed or at least changed until I am unrecognizable to anyone. You stir my composure with your chaotic forces. A rosy oasis envelops me as I am fed everything from this rare pink-haired nymph with freckles speckled like black stars over a celestial canvas.
I bathe in the glow of your presence every evening. I refract, distort and drag in your light and exhale more darkness. Your ancient, Persian light fills the void of my coal, Nordic cave. This mind reminiscent of Jotunheim melted and burned. You have made me feel every emotion known to humankind. The basis of all my experience, the agony, anguish, and jubilation of my existence.
I fade slowly in your absence. You steal the breath from my lungs through laughter, through rage, through passion, through and through until I am hollow beyond your midst. Like a fire in my breath destroys every doubt. In your eyes, I see a soul of purple and velvet. Your colorful specter bleeds over and embraces me and in that moment of your embrace I felt truly cared for. I felt truly adored by the gods.

Your light is softening my heart

For we are all rainbows

We walk shyly by the river

I feel the earth move and the sky too

While the stars beckon

I wonder if you hear their songs

The whispers in the wind

Like I do

But if you hear none of those things

I don't care

You are loving.

You are kind.

I used to create until my hands ached.

Music rehearsals until my fingers went numb from aiming for perfection,

Painting until my eyes would burn and my wrists would get weak,

Sketched until the fumes of my alcohol ink markers burned their way into my brain.

I would sit at the piano in the front of my home and let the notes find their way out of my mind,

down through my arms,

Out the tips of my fingers,

until they decided we were finished.

I used to spend every spare moment of every spare minute trying to understand how I felt.

Who I was,

Where I would go.

I thought Music would heal me.

I thought art would bring vitality.

I thought putting pieces of myself on paper would make me feel real.

Sometimes it would.

One day I stopped believing it would.

I stopped wanting to create little tokens of my soul to look back at on a rainy day.

Instead of hours spent aiming for perfection of my art,

There are now only hours spent typing out reports,

For eyes who never want to read them.

Hours of wondering if this email found them well,

Or if my message came off too strong.

If my hands start to ache it is no longer out of a want for them to do so.

If my paint brushes find their way into my grasp it is only briefly.

Artistry became a waste of my dwindling energy,

My resources depleted,

My emotions no longer demanding to be understood.

I remember sitting in my backyard on sunny fall afternoons,

Trying to teach myself how to strum a ukulele,

As I absorbed the energy beaming down from the heavens.

The warmth radiated through the sleeves of my orange wool sweater as I would curve my fingers into seemingly impossible shapes,

Hoping if I just tried harder the notes would find their way out of my mind and into the air like they always did so many times before.

Now the notes in my mind are muffled and muted,

The air not as welcoming to their sound.

My contribution to this world was once rooted in my belief that art is essential to being.

That life revolved around the beauty we put into existence.

Where once there was desire to understand emotion,

Now is only the desire to stifle it.

With vigor come the tart dashes smeared over skyflock

Bathed under the loving embrace of our sun’s arms

And before so,

I may have seen into the distant beyond, what I so desperately crave,

And always have craved.

Weren’t you just one of them, the skyflock?

Pink in the face

Prancing around as the wind sways

And I could have sworn I’ll dance with you, too, regardless which melody you’ll sway to

So long as it’s you.

And that laugh, the giggle, lighthearted enough for me to touch

Is it really so easy for it to come out?

With our heads down, and faces close,

I could have sworn you’ll tease me about it, and I’ll ask you to reiterate,

And I could have sworn you’ll change your statement, and I’ll just laugh and keep my wants to myself

So long as it’s you.

Then on the way home, draped beneath the starshine,

I remember it well — how can I forget?

Even as bits and pieces of my memory may fade when I arose —

How can I forget the softness

Of your hands, as I held onto them, and as they held onto mine,

Of your smile as they slipped from mine, and as you strode away and made me wait for you, deep into the night,

Of my “father’s” gaze as he complimented you for who you are

And who you are will never be erased from my mind.

Simple ideals, I possess:

Before the most carnal aspects surge at all

I could have sworn I’d vowed to make you the happiest you could be

And, me?

All that mattered, in this present moment,

Was that, if even for a couple of hours,

Those which felt like mere minutes,

I got to belong to you in the realm of paradise.

I knew the sun would burn me.

I knew the wings would fail.

I knew that every beautiful thing

comes with the chance of hell.

But God, the sky was endless.

And God, the view was worth it.

For a moment, I was weightless.

For a moment, I was perfect.

I could have stayed upon the ground,

kept my feet where they belonged.

Lived a life that kept me safe,

never right, but never wrong.

But I had seen what waited there.

I'd felt the wind against my skin.

And if the price of touching heaven

was the fall that followed it

Then let me fall.

Let the ocean take me.

Let the feathers scatter wide.

Let the world say I was foolish

for believing I could fly.

At least I wasn't watching

from the safety of the shore.

The quiet was heavy, the cycle the same
I’d leave just to crawl right back into the flame.

I missed that cold numbness, the safety of gray,
Until I found reasons to keep you away.
I found someone new who’s just cool as can be,
Who writes me her verses and looks over at me.

She’s steady and genuine, making things bright,
A whole different world in the middle of sight.
I came back tonight just to bid you adieu,
To tell you I’m done and I’m making it through.

There's someone ahead with a genuine smile,
A whole life to build and a long happy while.
So goodbye to the loop and the comfort of blue...
Except... there’s no her. It was always just you.

I dressed up my flaws in the shape of a spark,
Just to see if you'd care while I stayed in the dark.

I want to know a little bit

about a lot of things.

How the stars got there.

Why the ocean moves.

How to fix a broken engine.

How to cook a proper steak.

I want to learn guitar

and get a little better

every year.

I want to fish new rivers,

get lost in new cities,

read books that change my mind

and meet people who piss me off

in interesting ways.

I want to know enough

to ask better questions.

And I want to be old

and still have things

I don’t understand.

There’s something depressing

about the idea

that one day you might decide

you’ve seen enough.

The world is enormous.

There’s too much to learn,

too much to see,

too many roads

I haven’t driven down.

I don’t need to be great

at everything.

I’d just like to be around

for as much of it as I can.

The human mind is a fungus. Our ideas are the spores of the self, and our words carry them into the world like the wind.

Once upon a drive-by dreary
While I pondered weak and weary over a
rolidex for a forgotten whore,
Suddenly there came a tapping as if some fool
gently tapping outside my crib door.
Brothah, said I, or bitch, truly your
forgiveness I implore, but fact is I was
napping and so righteously you came
rapping outside my crib door, but I
was scarce sure that I had clocked
you. Then I peeked out that door—
ghetto there was and nothing more.
Gangsta, said I, thang of evil, gangsta
still, if crip or blood—by that hood
which surrounds us, by that ass that
we both adore, tell me within my
sorrow laden, if in the distant
Aiden I shall clap a fine maiden.
Tell me, is there a forty or
henny drink in Thug's Mansion?
Tell me, I implore.
Quoth Tha Raven, "Get cho' ass out tha door."

The Girl I Never Got to Be
By Misti Pearson
I spent my life in someone's shade,
Afraid of every choice I made.
Two little girls who looked the same,
Yet one got praise, the other blame.
I loved my twin with all my soul,
But never once felt quite as whole.
I watched her shine, I stood behind,
And lost the girl I hoped to find.
She broke my trust in ways so deep,
Left wounds that even time would keep.
I chose forgiveness through the pain,
But never learned to do the same.
Then addiction came and stole my pride,
I hated who I was inside.
I begged for love, I begged to stay,
While slowly giving me away.
I loved a man who once loved me,
And prayed he'd see who I could be.
But every fault became my name,
Each conversation ended in shame.
I learned to whisper, not to fight,
To say he's right when I'm not right.
I swallowed tears, I bowed my head,
And lived inside the words he said.
I thought if he could just forgive,
I'd finally feel I deserved to live.
But love should never make me small,
Or leave me feeling worth nothing at all.
I've buried love, I've buried dreams,
I've come apart along the seams.
I lost my twin, my guiding light,
And wondered who I was at night.
But somewhere underneath the scars,
Beneath the grief and fallen stars,
A woman waits who longs to see
The girl she never got to be.
She loves her home, her quiet nights,
Old Mayberry and porch-light sights.
A little laughter, simple things,
The peace that independence brings.
And maybe I don't know her yet,
But she's a soul I won't forget.
I'll take her hand, I'll let her grow,
And give her love she's never known.
I won't erase the life I've led,
Or live forever by what's said.
My past is mine, but not my fate,
And healing doesn't have to wait.
I can love you and still walk away,
I can miss you and choose not to stay.
I'll find my voice, I'll learn to be,
A woman who believes in me.
So here's to the girl who never knew
That she was worthy her whole life through.
No longer begging love to stay,
No longer throwing herself away.
And if I lose the love I knew,
I'll grieve, but I'll survive that too.
For after all I've struggled through,
I can't keep losing me just trying to keep you

As far as I know only a dead heart in my chest would stop it from beating for you.
When I confess my love to you, our souls coalesce.
And for that I'd settle for no less than us.
Like thrush songbird's in flight,
we fly together, day through night.
Creating pink lurid streaks when we cut through the clouds.
What fun to have begun a life with you if its even but for a moment like a solvent;
and if it were to dissolve and dissipate,
today or tomorrow.
I'd feel no sorrow,
for we could could create such beauty in life's bustle and rush.
Like thrush songbirds we'll fly and chase.
So high, with faith in each other.
Forever as I loved you, Semper fi.

Indifference is somehow worse than hatred. Staring blankly into hollow curtains, my body hums with unrequited pride. Unanswered messages flicker half-starved of recognition. I hold them before their carriers fly them to eternity. The burden holds me in place. The light pouring through the curtains sighs with heavy relief as I am left in a dark room. My diaphragm makes earthquakes, my breath becomes crashing waves upon the shores of endless silence. Nothing can be moved. I feel I’m a final bastion to the swelling tides of oblivion. Waiting for her embrace to seize and lead me— then to leave me adrift always. 

Caught in the spider’s web, I toss and thrash to wriggle free from this woven cradle and dash. 
Every beat of the wings is like a lash 
Lifted wings to dash turned into an open gash. 
Upon my back rests the fulcrum. 
 Harken, thrush! escape, do not fiddle and let your eyes be darkened. Don’t make a sound lest you be found, don’t make a tweet or a twiddle. The web is an impossible riddle, One you had better not attempt. 
From my fate be exempt, leave this accursed slaughterhouse. Go quiet as a mouse, not be another dot in the web like a lethargic louse. 
From insect to insect she feeds, tendrils and spirally fibers are cast along the weeds. 
They catch her unhappy prey, reeling them into the fray to moan and screech, but always to keep. 
She’ll suckle your carcass dry, “a life well lived, little fly”. She’ll hiss , “ “keep your master happy, amuse me,” she’ll pry. “Keep to your logic, hold fast to your lie. In the end I WILL win for every boy must die.” 
Not heeding my cry, the bird is caught by the beauty in its eye and before it can think, he is strewn and outstretched for the spider to drink. Once proud, now screaming and pulsing so loud. He’s a lump of meat soon to be found with a warm web for a shroud.
   Long stretches of time move in a flash. 
My bones turn to twigs, my skin to ash. 
Every grain of truth stirs and twists filling my head with cancerous cysts. There’s no mind to resist, logic fades into mist. 
My brain is poisoned to easily mash. 
No god, no scruple and no master to save its errant pupil. This arcane goddess of night feasts amid my stupor. 
My teeth gnash. The gods laugh. The devil himself would be aghast. My chest is a hallowed gash, a preserved and negligible stash. 

You drew me into you

The moment you entered that room,

Tall and standoffish.

My world stopped,

Those sunrays against you,

Like a movie in slow motion.

I searched for a ring,

When none was found on your left hand,

I watered my budding attraction.

And nipped it in the bud as quickly as I could,

When I learned your heart was for another.

How could I compete with that beautiful flower.

When you helped me with that bowling ball,

And at that hotel room, when you wanted a small talk,

I pined, and re-lived them in the halls of my mind.

When someone said you're not just a handsome face,

You turned to me embarrassed and coy.

I wish I could have said, "Why, yes, of course!"

When you took a jab at my friend,

You stopped yourself when you noticed me,

I'm glad you did but that still made me a little pissed.

When you didn't hold out that elevator door,

I mean you didn't have to rub it in my face.

I've always known my place.

Those moments, mere sliver of time

Unimportant and fleeting to you,

But delightful for me,

even if you didnt see me like I did you.

I wondered, If I wasn't so nervous,

had indulged you in a conversation over that

fake chicken skin, or how that view looked from

that hotel room

Would that have made any difference?

For how could this wallflower interest

A taken and striking man like you?

Everyone

Has seen me

Naked

But no one

Has SEEN me NAKED

Hidden

Waiting

All my very best secrets

Buried

Beyond your wildest dreams

My spirit screams

Making love to my inner animal

In ways no one has yet imagined

I'm perfectly unseen

I don't know you yet.

I don't know where you are, likely at home.

I don't know what you do, likely lie in bed.

And I don't know what you think right now.

I wish I would.

I wish I would know where to look for you.

I wish I knew what you'd like, what you aspire, what makes you smile.

I wish I could find you and tell your we are meant to be.

But I can't.

You're somewhere out there.

You have to be....

Cuz if you aren't this emptiness inside me will never disappear.

It will always pull on me to find you.

It will always remind me that it's there.

Cuz this emptiness fells like there's a piece out there matching it.

This emptiness, I feel it everywhere.

In my hands at night,

when they both feel like they're missing their counterpart.

When they get cold from my open window

and it just feels they're supposed to be wrapped up in someone else's hands right now.

On my waist whenever I come to a stop,

when it feels like a pair of arms should exist out there that match their curve.

When I cook and the idea of being hugged from behind feels so right

I can almost feel it. Just almost.

Anytime I lie down to rest and theres space.

Anytime I go visit my parents and drive alone.

Anytime I achieve something and I wish I had someone to make proud with it.

Anytime I wish It wasn't just me out here.

I wish I could find you.

To share with you.

To dedicate my every step to making you smile.

Because even though I don't know you yet, I am sure it will be all I need.

I'm sure you will be all I need.

Your smile.

I bet it's beautiful and pure.

I bet once I see it, I'll never need any other reward in my life.

It must be. Because I will love you, with all my being.

Your eyes.

I am certain they are a sight to get lost in.

I am certain once I see them, I will fall for you.

I will love them, because they are a part of you.

Your passions.

I know we won't have the same and that's good.

I want to hear you talk about them, explain things to me and get lost in your own thoughts.

Because I will be able to see how happy they make you.

I just wish you were here so bad right now.

Looking over my shoulder, smiling and commenting on this:

"Why you writing this... You already got me!"

How I wish you'd say that right now.

How I wish you would meet me tomorrow.

How I wish we could write our own story.

How I wish I could cherish you.

How I wish I could hold you.

I don't know you yet and maybe that's what scares me the most about this.

You might be out there. But maybe you aren't.

Maybe I am not meant to fill this emptiness.

Maybe I'll never get to know you.

“What was your dream?”

I wish I knew.

But I always had something to do.

Something that needed finishing.
Something that needed fixing.
Something that couldn’t wait
until tomorrow.

There was always another day
to think about what I wanted.
Another year to figure out
who I wanted to be.

So I told myself
I’d get to it eventually.

When things settled down.
When life got easier.
When I finally had a moment
that belonged to me.

But there was always something else.

And before I knew it,
the years had passed me by.

The things I wanted
were buried beneath the things I needed.
The questions I should have asked myself
were drowned out by everything
the world was asking of me.

And somewhere along the way,
I stopped wondering
what I wanted from life
and started wondering
what life wanted from me.

I learned how to keep going.
How to do what needed to be done.
How to get through one day
and prepare for the next.

But I never learned
how to stop long enough
to dream.

And now someone asks me,

“What was your dream?”

And I wish I had an answer.

I wish I could remember
being young enough
to believe the world was full of possibilities.

I wish I knew
what I wanted before life
taught me what I had to do.

I wonder how many dreams
I left waiting for a better time.

How many things I might have loved
if I’d ever had the chance
to find them.

How many versions of myself
I never got to meet
because I was too busy
trying to make it through the day.

And the strangest part
is that I can’t even tell you
what I lost.

I don’t know what those dreams were.

I only know
I never got the chance
to find out.

Because I always had something to do.

And before I knew it…

I was grown up.

the catastrophe had come and gone
but no one was the wiser
inch by fluorescent inch
we surrendered first the setting sun
then plugged our ears to cricket song
and fixed our eyes upon
the ever-burning world

and sip by sip, we supped
the ever-flowing chalice
of hatred
turned wives into wayfarers
husbands into demons
made strangers of our neighbors
and monsters of our heads

until it was unfashionable
to look up and hear and
witness the other world
where we walked with pins and needles
and bristled, and leaned
and fell apart and about ourselves
at an earth most dark and magic

but yet the few remain
who tear off their red sashes
and melt into their fellow man
make love with a desperate need
that wants no veil, and
twinkle at cascades and wildflowers
who sing, cold in night, in winter light, and vernal breeze
as earnest as they can

if there are men they are the last men
going on passion to passion
through the onslaught of the screen

let us make love in those seconds
when the world ceases its burning
and hum our final yearning
until the screen goes out

Thomas Ship. 2024. 04/09/24 15:34 PM. GMT

Note on the poem: written by taking American Batman slang from the 1966 series and incorporating the slang into the poem.

Unlock the door,

Reveal the secret,

Of less becoming more.

Write it in quatrains, or tercets,

But don't show me the pathway

That you took.

Methods and techniques,

All very well and good,

Yet not always proficient.

Quarternary, divided by the Holy Trinity,

Waggishly unearths a discrepancy,

Leaving me dissatisfied.

The lucre of our sleight experiment spoils

Is never enough for us,

Uncovering via those trapdoors won't yield any more than more.

Regalez vous, nous, please take all you need.

Wearing your Tam O Shanter, like you've made a significant score,

Pouring from life's decanter, a switcheroo mimicry,

Rather, you're a phoney lounge loafer.

Criminy and gee-whizz, it's very droll; we've failed at the scientific lam.

Where those winkle dreams, residing like thoughts in a spiralling seashell, persist.

An interface between the nix and the loitering ongoing continuance.

Blundering varmints, haul the skinflint chump in; I wager it's thin.

Hoist him on his own petard, and send 'im above the cowl of carnival eyes unseen.

This caper has reached its final corny novelty.

Open the oubliette for me,

Pull away that benighted shawl,

Let us in!

Splitting apart, denuding,

Appearing out within,

Yet don't tell me how.

Ways through the hailstorm,

Fine and dandy,

But not sufficient.

A quandary, halved by quarternary fractions of the fragmentary,

The Mad Hatter uncovers a dichotomy,

Marooning me unfulfilled.

Clairvoyancy sees all of the fork-tailed petrels, alongside the Albatross, at sea.

Recherche psychology, in a hidden auld compendiary, ever grows more dusty.

Chuckling goodnik, those earworn icky beatniks, a bullwinkle lost in.

Devour the neon Kool-Aid and swallow the electromagnetic airwaves.

Pedigrees of lineage ricochet, a whimsical jukebox of genealogical soundwaves.

That bonanza has become as vogue as it can be.

The loot of their kook aspirations only supplies a natch offering,

From the jaws of complacency, snatched, only to be placed in a pillory.

Shocking pangs of a thief's cape, in disillusion.

Donning makeup outfits of the magician in top hat and tails, Tally Ho,

Chocks Away, Old Bean, it's only a jape, after all.

Nab them; jolly good, you've caught the one-armed bandit.

Discard the disguise,

Show me your face,

Of masquerades.

Sing it in five-four, or six-eight,

But don't tell me the key, or scale,

You used to play it.

Pathways through the dark,

Most pleasing to me,

Can be inefficient.

A paradox multiplied by infinite fractals, of doubly quartered quadrangles.

The insane malefactor unwraps diametrical stratagem,

Casting me asunder, disappointed.

Decoy dropout crooks ought to leave us some jeopardy clues.

Perilous precipice from the maw of the fraught lampoon.

Afoot is the knockout masterstroke: gosh, we've been sassed.

Dressing in fancy dress costumes,

Oh really, you do look and have made a boob.

Ouch, you've been led astray, buster; I'd stay off the juice if I were you.

Good gravy, we're caught in an epoxy of madness; it's a sticky lollipop charade.

Gadzooks, we've been utterly duped.

Double-dizzy merry-go-round, twixt the malodorous fairground,

In a tizzy of diabolisms, hitting two stones with one bird,

Oh, I just want to go home.

They've got belfries in their bats: excruciating predicament, of a flurry of groans, proceeding.

Battered over the head with Punch and Judy quotes, in the jailhouse of alibis.

Ridiculing and flouting the accents of their falsified delinquency.

Dealing with counterfeit specimen statutes in their villainous hosts.

Peel off the facade,

Tell me your name,

Is it legion?

Say it in Babel tongues,

Yet don't say which languages

You've written it.

Signposts in the wilderness,

I thank you,

Navigation was insufficient,

Leading me nowhere and everywhere at once.

Through unequal equalities, simultaneously divided and multiplied, in multifaceted fractures,

Wishing I had not been put on trial.

The Quandary Caper - Form and Style.

Poetic form:

Free verse with absurdist, surrealist and lexical-collage qualities. The poem uses deliberately unstable rhythmic structures rather than a fixed traditional metre.

Stanza style:

Irregular stanzas, predominantly six-line and seven-line blocks, interspersed with longer eight-line passages. The recurring six-line sections act rather like refrains, repeatedly returning to the central paradox of revelation without explanation.

Line-length style:

Highly variable lineation, moving between short, clipped lines and long, expansive, prose-like lines. This produces deliberate rhythmic expansion and contraction.

Metre:

Predominantly free verse with intermittent accentual rhythm. Short lines often carry two or three strong stresses, while longer lines deliberately disrupt regular metrical expectation.

Stylistic classification:

Absurdist epistemological collage / lexical-caper surrealism, combining 1960s American slang, comic-book language, mathematics, science, magic, crime, music, religion and theatrical imagery.

Structural effect:

The irregular stanza lengths, fluctuating line lengths and shifting rhythms mirror the poem's central quandary: **the continual search for an underlying pattern that refuses to reveal its method.**

I wrote this last month - just a bit of silliness. Also, first post here. Hi! 😄

Cheese Louise

Louise was a cheesemaker,
but the neighbors, out of touch,
thought she was too much
of a people-please-maker.

They thought her cheese too chewy.
What a load of hooey,
because she learned her Kraft in
Rapa Nui.

No, she never curd
for thoughts whispurred
by the people upsturrs—
she thought they were absurd.

They called her “Cheese Louise”—
they said her cheese caused a fetid breeze.
Their words lingered and galled her.

No, her blood didn’t curdle
as she got in her girdle.
She did the best she could
’cause she knew her cheese
was good.

Her poor husband Barry
(an apothecary)
was quite precise,
but the day they got married
he came home with head lice.

(It’s important to know:
Barry was quite hairy and—oh!
Sweet Mary!—
found dairy very scary.)

Louise was nice,
she fed their children rice.
They dreamed of South Bend,
where they hoped to transcend.

Set in her wheys,
She found a shop for a song
Barry said she belonged;
For him, she did no wrong.

Louise got back to the grind
and checked in on the rind,
she poured in the rennet—
(’cause, you see, her last name’s Bennett.)

Louise’s cheese was pungent,
but it made a fine unguent,
good for scrapes, minor burns,
and overindulgence.