I really don't believe in run-on sentences, heck just add a comma every once in a while and make it flow smoother than butter, sweet butter churning the summer heat with just you and your grandma sitting out back under the porch top listening the the silent hums of the red wood trees, and what beautiful trees they are; some days I just go out and lie in a hammock and stare at those beautiful trees all afternoon, feel God's warmth radiate down my spine all peaceful and quiet, but quiet with a prescience of course, ah and what a crazy prescience it is, I mean just the other day I was out at the local grocery mart picking up some bananas and milk- that's right I'm the person that makes a twenty minute trip so that I can have fruit mixed in with my cheerios- and any who that Margret Matlin walks up to me and says "girl the good Lord put you on my mind recently", now surely I won't go into detail (if I told you everything Ms. Matlin had to say you'd be here till the next full moon-two years from now), but it was quite the comforting little moment...now I do believe I was telling you why I don't believe in run-on sentences...

As a teacher, I constantly comment on and correct my students for their tendency to overuse run-on sentences causing unnecessary confusion for the reader with constant, consecutive clauses and confusing prepositional phrases strung together without a chance to catch a breath, leading the reader to lose track of the original thought with which the author started before running on and on and on with that repetitious, repeated, redundant rhetoric that remains largely, hugely overstated causing skepticism of the authority of the author who tends to lean on hyperbole and repetition to prove his points rather than clinging to concise, consistent controlled thoughts with clear beginnings and endings by which the reader may understand and follow the intent of the author rather than wandering around on rabbit trails through endless ramblings and explanations that tend to hop around the main issues and bound into thickets of misunderstandings which frustrate the reader encouraging him to high tail it out of that particular work of literature and leap into something more concise that does not ramble on and on with repeated repetition, rendering him unable to remember the writer's original point and perspective causing him to have to return again and again to the original point of the sentence before it rambled on into those clauses and prepositional phrases becoming a run-on sentence.

The sputtering, spouting drops of rain have kept up their pitter-patter-pitter-patter pattern pitting man against nature as the surrounding and engulfing mist flutters, flows, and flocks through the brazen backwater backyards, the laughably unoriginal gray tile roofs that mar the far-reaching skyline: marching one-by-one incessantly like an ambiguously-sided army down the neighborhood streets in painted-on streaks; the animosity that one feels towards such a view can be shared alone by those who crazily, almost crudely crave the sunlight like it's heroin, those who spit on the mere idea of suburbia as though it was a morally wretched thief trying to steal away the close contentment of the countryside or the haphazard harangue of harping noise within the city limits, and especially those who bitterly mock a cloudy day and blame it on things well out of their control: the flow of the mist is to simulated by the flow of the mind, the love of all that is natural and divine, the meditation of Mother Earth and Father Time in an amalgamation of a fuzzy, breathing sky and the ebb and flow of the pitter-patter-pitter-patter pattern that haunts these streets like a spirit or a sprite, mischevious in their mystery yet helpful in their haunting; this false dichotomy of man and nature only serves to bring the two together in ethereal hues.

While reflecting back upon the mess that has been 2016, not only am I reminded of the utter despair and physical and mental suffering which I endured that resulted in this being —by far— the absolute worst year of my life —beyond any other— and believe me, there have been many, especially when I was married to my second ex —the disgusting vile abusing monster that he was— yet I digress; in addition to the aforementioned pain, heartbreak, sadness, and difficulties, there have been several positive aspects which I must not forget: first and foremost, the ten books —seven poetry collections, two short story collections, and my nonfiction tour de force The Downfall of American Corrections that examines how prison privatization, mandatory minimum sentences, and the abandonment of rehabilitation in favor of retribution and incapacitation have destroyed an already precarious and inefficient system— I wrote and published; my success in expanding my literary horizons beyond my printed publications to the Twittersphere where I have become addicted to hashtag games and micropoetry in addition to having penned numerous blogs not only for myself but also new clients who I have garnered via various online blogging sites and word of mouth; and my new poker buddies with whom I play several times a week are fun and have brought newfound positivity into my life.

I sit here and watch the dice betray me for these cold blooded bastard-children that surround me with superior strategy and otherworldly dice rolls with shallow anger that makes me feel foolish but instead rejecting it I embrace it and go for mutually assured destruction giving all my cards to the child who never robbed me, never betrayed because those other two are vile conquerors who plunder my chance of victory with no sense of gamesmanship or respect for elders or just sense a good time because victory at all cost has become the modus operandi for the gamer children, born with a controller in hand and mic in mouth spewing vitriol and exacting words meant to cut at the opponents psyche which does because they're smart and experienced at this warfare but what they ignore is I'm unbalanced and willing to seek vengeance against my brethren to right their wrongs, to my perspective, and the joy I glean from their demise is sweet but brief as we move on to the real world where games are silly and I look foolish, where the heart slows to normal and the bitter loss verse children looks ridiculous in retrospect but the fact of the matter is, fuck those bastards and their superior strategy at the cost of my enjoyment which I care deeply about.

It started out as a dare to write a sentence two hundred and twenty two words in length but turned into a lesson of perseverance, of being long winded, of truly saying nothing while saying everything, all the whilst contemplating why take such a dare to begin with when there must actually be better things to accomplish during that time such as texting, running, walking, reading, cooking, cleaning - heaven forbid, and even writing meaningful non run-on babble yet I couldn't help myself as the gauntlet of a dare was before me, staring at me, taunting me to indeed undertake it, and complete it before the time allotted ran out and all attempted was just a fleeting notion and wasted effort toward apparently an unattainable goal due to a lack of focus on my part contributing to the guilt of not completing this or any other task or chore which stood before me during that time in which the dare was attempted leading to an utter collapse in self confidence and spiraling into a state of procrastination and possibly progressing to an ice cream and cake eating binge to which I am honestly not proud of as I willingly take the time and effort to complete this task laid before me to indeed write a two hundred and twenty two word sentence.

The water told me something, and I wanted to repeat it but my mouth is the wrong shape, all full of teeth and pink insides of cheeks ending in these lips, nubile and nimble, but pursing, like a string drawn, sealing in and out saliva and sounds, and I wanted to say the water, what it said, the rhyming words it uttered, muttered over and over on its way down and down, if I could say, could say the words it said the hushing rushing broken by little babbling burbles, burps of sounds, lyric and watery, made of s’s and p’s, like the sound it makes when, salty, it trips over the shore again and again, when it lingers there, rubbing away at the rocks, gently, gently, smoothing them, shush, shush, shush, slurp slosh shush shush and when it streams up and cuts through soil making tittering and tinkering sounds like gurgling gargling, then smashing, shouting, raging, ravishing when it finds an edge and falls over plummeting in a rush, rush, and then, hungry, bashing crashing, a cacophony, as it hits itself, full in the face burying itself, in itself, and shouting all about it, I want to tell you, I do, because it felt really felt like something that should be repeated like something that should have a word, a name. 

Something I have kind of sort of noticed about myself is that I seem to have a habit of asking someone for their permission before I do something, at the time, obviously, it seems to me that it is perfectly normal and logical, and that there is absolutely no abnormality linked to the fact that I seem to have picked up the very odd habit of always needing permission to do something before it is done; whether it is asking my mom if I can go see a movie with a friend, asking a teacher if I can go to the bathroom, or asking a friend if it is alright if I text them later; of course, let me explain that not all of these are necessarily a reason to concern, until I take into account the number of things I have not done because either someone else told me I should not, even though I thought I should, or I was too afraid to ask, and therefore deemed the activity of my choice unimportant no matter how important to me it actually was; also, please, allow me to add that this has also made it necessary for me to justify to myself everything I need to do, even if I am not asking for permission, which has caused me significant stress. 

They rode into the sunset together, a befitting ending to a most beautiful love story, one that cannot be found in books, but is like the one passed from generation to generation, read by fortune tellers in coffee, set as an example even after the subject is long gone, a love story that knows no boundaries, neither the physical ones, as distance is never an issue where real love is concerned, neither emotional, for people really in love do not need words, or Skype for that matter, to communicate –they can say through silence a lot more that they could though a thousand words, and when you meet that special someone who can make you feel all jittery inside, who can give you butterflies in your stomach, a person who can inspire such love story as described above, then the only thing that you should do is grab onto them, but more importantly, grab onto that feeling, be sure not to lose it even in the worst of times, even when the world comes crumbling down, or diapers invade your bedroom, be sure to grow with the person you love, and not apart, share the blessings and joys, as well as sorrows, do not give in to despair, meanness or selfishness, and you will be rewarded with life’s most wonderful gift –love.