In this day and age where everyone is busy with their lives, whether trying to climb the corporate ladder, stuck doing errands, or simply glued on television screens, dating seem to be something that you can avail of by a simple click of a button.

Immaculate Chains

All my sexual days I am a virgin

Eunuched by habit, not by choice

I wear the cloth of my lovelessness

Whitely, they say with a cross

Hanging from my neck

Like a noose, but it is not this

That kills. Strapped to my waist is

A rope that could. Its girth

Is a halo of thread binding up the mess

Of me: austere ribbon,

It keeps my pious shift

In place, my tummy

Hourglass – slim

And time is cruelest to a woman at vespers

Strangled at the crux

Where her womb lies

Entombed,

She is handmaid

To no man.

At the hour of twilight

She hymns,

And hymns alone.

Read People Read

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?


 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
[X] 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
[X] 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
[X] 6 The Bible - God (the whole thing)
[X ] 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
[X] 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
[] 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
[X] 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

[ X] 11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
[X] 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
[X] 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
[X ] 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
[X ] 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
[X] 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
[X ] 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
[X ] 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
[ ] 19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
[X ] 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

[ ] 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
[ X] 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
[X ] 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
[ X] 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
[X] 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
[X] 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
[X ] 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
[X] 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
[X] 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

[X ] 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
[X] 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
[X] 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
[X ] 34 Emma - Jane Austen
[X ] 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
[X] 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
[ ] 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
[X ] 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
[ ] 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
[X] 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
[X] 41 Animal Farm - George Orwellx
[X] 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
[ X] 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[ ] 44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
[X ] 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
[X ] 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
[X ] 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
[ X] 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
[X] 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
[ ] 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
[ ] 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
[X] 52 Dune - Frank Herbert
[ ] 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
[X ] 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
[X ] 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
[ ] 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
[X] 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
[] 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
[ ] 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
[X ] 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[X ] 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
[X ] 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
[ ] 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
[ ] 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
[X] 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
[X ] 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
[X ] 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
[X] 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
[X ] 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
[X] 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
[X] 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
[X] 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
[X] 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
[ ] 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
[X] 75 Ulysses - James Joyce
[X] 76 The Inferno - Dante
[X] 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
[ ] 78 Germinal - Emile Zola
[X ] 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
[X ] 80 Possession - AS Byatt
[X] 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
[ ] 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
[X] 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
[X ] 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
[X ] 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
[ ] 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mxistry
[X ] 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
[ ] 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
[X] 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
[X ] 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
[X ] 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
[ ] 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
[X] 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
[X] 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
[ ] 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
[ ] 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
[X] 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
[X] 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
[X] 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
[ ] 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Keep Me Warm With Your Blank Stares

You'd expect it to happen

Not in the open, but in a shower, perhaps,

Where boys and beauty settle down together

As seed does to soul, water to skin, silently,

Without ceremony, under one's very breath

Boys  are too beautiful to let live

I get randy just thinking it

I cannot tell exactly how it starts

As though moments before I am overcome

By some devilish scheme: a puppet

With strings for life. My heart rushes

Up my throat, poised as though ready to burst

In my mouth. My eyes smear everything a brilliant

Crimson and I see the screeching of skin

Feel the music of bones snapping in my hands

Or grinding against my teeth

Or sometimes I just swish a blade, and push it

Through an artery wound like rope around a neck

Squirting, a bloody rainbow opens like a fan

People around see and are struck simply

By such murderousness, like the old woman

In church, who bequeathed tissue paper

To wipe my lusty face with. I bring my own

Thank you, twirled softly around a kitchen knife

I am possessed of so much love

Enough for all those boys to stay warm in

Instead, the bloodbath is always cold and sweet

But even I am growing tired of this constancy

And end up asking boy after butchered boy

Having killed countlessly

Did I really possess you all?

Cosmopilitan Chat Which I Do Not Do

If a man wants you, nothing can keep him away. If he doesn't want you, nothing can make him stay. Stop making excuses for a man and his behavior. Allow your intuition (or spirit) to save you from heartache.

Stop trying to change yourself for a relationship that's not meant to be. Slower is better. Never live your life for a man before you find what makes you truly happy. If a relationship ends because the man was not treating you as you deserve then heck no, you can't "be friends". A friend wouldn't mistreat a friend.

Don't settle. If you feel like he is stringing you along, then he probably is. Don't stay because you think "it will get better." You'll be mad at yourself a year later for staying when things are not better. The only person you can control in a relationship is you. Avoid men who have a bunch of children by a bunch of different women. He didn't marry them when he got them pregnant, why would he treat you any differently? Always have your own set of friends separate from his. Maintain boundaries in how a guy treats you. If something bothers you, speak up. Never let a man know everything. He will use it against you later.

You cannot change a man's behavior. Change comes from within. Don't EVER make him feel he is more important than you are. Even if he has has more education or in a better job. Do not make him into a quasi-god. He is a man, nothing more nothing less.

Never let a man define who you are. Never borrow someone else's man. If he cheated with you, he'll cheat on you. A man will only treat you the way you ALLOW him to treat you. All men are NOT dogs.

You should not be the one doing all the bending... Compromise is two way street. You need time to heal between relationships. There is nothing cute about baggage... Deal with your issues before pursuing a new relationship. You should never look for someone to COMPLETE you. A relationship consists of two WHOLE individuals. Look for someone complimentary...not supplementary.

Dating is fun... Even if he doesn't turn out to be Mr. Right. Make him miss you sometimes... When a man always know where you are, and you're always readily available to him ~ he takes it for granted. Never move into his mother's house. Never co-sign for a man. Don't fully commit to a man who doesn't give you everything that you need. Keep him in your radar but get to know others.

Scared of being alone is what makes a lot of women stay in relationships that are abusive or hurtful: Dr. Phil says... You should know that: You're the best thing that could ever happen to anyone and if a man mistreats you, he'll miss out on a good thing. If he was attracted to you in the 1st place, just know that he's not the only one. They're all watching you, so you have a lot of choices. Make the right one. Ladies take care of your own hearts.

Rants From The Relunctant Homecoming Queen

On the Absence of Victory and Defeat

When is it possible to say that one has won in the game of love? There is no basis for victory. Everything is subject to self-pity or glorification, the acceptance and denial of reality. Not one person can narcissistically claim himself a victim or an aggressor in a given event, for each is a fool of emotion and among fools, there is no leader, no guarantee that one's vulnerability is less than others'.

There are no victories, only uncertainty and regret. Conquest and subjugation may only be established between parties playing the same battlefield, under the same rules. Love, in all its purity, cannot be considered strife, nor can it be categorized as objective. The degree of affection between two people, regardless of their attachment to one another, would always be inclined towards imbalance – one loving or needing the other more.  Ungoverned as people are in love's subjective rules of engagement, so to speak, love becomes an abstract connotation with the complexity of endearment, doubt, and remorse.  People persistently believe in love as the ultimate goal, yet flee at the slightest hint of anything resembling commitment.  Passionate individuals over-whelmed themselves with self-imposed delusions of attraction, only to later deflate their own emotions with cynicism or insecurity. Human frailty and orientation towards committing error may be attributed for the perception of relationships as entities which could have been made better, the results of action or lack thereof.  Lovers ceaselessly remain wanting of desirable traits, while the self-continuously chastises and criticizes the inner workings of its persona. Happiness is negligible in the light of pain, confusion and misery, in the sorrow and rejection of separation, and against lofty, unrealistic convictions on love.

In this day and age, it is quite unfortunate to find people who derive pathetic sense of pride from their success in surviving relationships unscathed because of their dexterity at breaking hearts. Paradoxically presumptuous and cowardly, such individuals shroud their loneliness with an armor of PRETEND STRENGTH and invincibility, the latter coming from the need to deny their emotions and assert themselves as a means of coping with pain and loss. Such self-absorption derives such persons to undermine the essence of love and relationships. In their rush to escape situations that call for the humble acceptance of reciprocal defeat and lowliness, they become oblivious to the fact that love has never been an issue of emerging victorious or defeated.  They forget that relationships are supposed to involve partnerships which seek to provide the best for the self, and more importantly, the other person involved.  Love should never be about rising above or sinking below a loved one – it has always been meant to surround two people with passion so strong, it would enable them to be but one soul experiencing all things as a single being. 

The essence of love and existence, therefore, is not self-preservation, but rather, the submission of the self in a commitment that knows no individual defeat or victory. In love, each must be prepared to die a little to himself, his pride, and his desires, to offer part of himself as a willing sacrifice for a cause that knows not to the boundaries of time.  Although full loyalty and commitment are necessitated by relationships, it is only when two lovers are mature enough to realize the importance of both intimacy and personal space that their love will be able to transcend mere attraction and fondness.  For as much as love is not an issue of issue of victory or loss, it is also not about placing everything on the line, in the so-called "name of love". Oftentimes, knowing how to give unconditionally is as consequential as being aware of when to stop giving, when to cease running after a loved one, and when one must put an end to making a big a fool of himself for a futile cause.  In so many words, a part of one's own heart and soul must be protected and made to stay intact in the uniqueness of its nature and experience, in order for the self to retain its identity even after loyalties have been severed.  This is not to say that a single soul must disjoin itself in order to cater to its needs and those of its soul mate. Rather, this implies that loving another person demands loving oneself enough in order to be able to forego desire and happiness for the sake of the other, in the knowledge that such an act grants the self a true hold on the meaning of love.

In totality, love is not a battle, for to determine victory or loss in such would be to undermine its sanctity. Love for the self and for the others must, in its very essence, be able to draw out the beauty in each person, such that each one sincerely hopes for the very best for the other, regardless of the pain that such desire entails. At that state of unconditional devotion, there should no longer be any need to qualify success or failure, for the intensity of love, as well as the fear of loss and loneliness, serve as the common, unifying factor between two souls made one.

Now ask yourself this question: Are you the type who is ready to take the fall?

UNDER THE STAIRS

As minutes walked on, deep pockets of sleep started at the back of my eyes, enlarging, expanding until they threatened my grip on reason and consciousness. My head felt so heavy upon my shoulders that I was doubtful if it was my head at all. It weighed a ton. It didn't occur to me how feeble my struggle was in the face of this enemy. This enemy who offered me a state of insensibility that seemed such a sweet escape to oblivion.  I was tempted. My eyelids were drooping down, obscuring my view of the tree and the front door. I was certain I just needed to know where they came.  Only then I could finally give in. yet, moments later, sleep already won over the self, leading me by the nose to some place different from the cold wall and top base of the stairs. My head was haphazardly tilted to one side, my lower back numbed to excess, my feet cold and my mind in anarchic disconnections. I was in a deep stupor and at the mercy of my dreams. In dreams, I have often known, lucidity was a lost, absent gift. 

 

In this space, I felt the wings of the wind, the rush it gave me as it ran against my skin, sprinting from my arms and legs.  And I wanted to run forever just to feel the exhilaration that it gives me. Yet in pseudo-reality, a perpetual black cloud of anxiety continued to hover overhead. There was no arousal of recognition, yet the air grew heavy with the weight of it. I turned then to see a pair of white birds. It seemed a normal sight, but my stomach began to churn nervously until a shot thundered through the air, shattering the idyllic atmosphere that had barely started to envelop the space. I squinted my eyes to see the trespasser. A huge, beefy man with a holster strapped to his side and a gun in his hand. He was laughing, letting out loud roars of hilarity that made me inexplicably angry. When I turned back to see what had befallen the love birds, I was stunned. The two were bleeding, but only one had an apparent wound. As I shuffled closer, I was inextricably amazed and a little afraid of what I saw. The wound was profusely bleeding, but the harmed creature seemed to feel no pain. Instead, one looked incredulously healthy as the other, except for the crimson spots on their once pristine feathers. You wouldn't even know they've been shot at. 

 

However, I noticed something different. There was a wicked gleam visible in their eyes – a nasty sheen of malice and viciousness, even making them shine brighter. They started poking each other, their sharp beaks digging deep, the webbed feet coming up in the air to kick and injure. It was vile. The attacks demonstrated a nauseating display of cruelty to the self and to the opponent. They were bathing in an obscene parody of love, except that their embrace spelled death and destruction. And everywhere they went blood spurted, turning the battlefield into a graveyard. The space obliterated any reminder of the living world and I felt like someone suffocating and drowning without a lifeline in sight.  A desperation seized hold of me, strangling my neck like a hangman's noose. I knew I should have stopped them. But I couldn't even trod near them until the battle reached a crescendo, and so I, in my blotched self trembled at the edge to await the victor. 

 

The space started to fall away. It was stripped layer by layer, pulled from the sides of my brain. I was blinking the mist of sleep from my eyes, trying to ascertain what had pulled me from my alternate universe. I stood up rubbed my eyes, walked across the room to sleep.