stuttering sam - blurb

walking contradiction - v1

i am a walking contradiction, an affliction of the mind cuz there’s never enough time for balance.  the dance between opposing sides, opposite views and two highly charged poles.  wishing to be told which way to turn in an intersection that yields both ways.  i walk the walk and talk the talk depending on the day.  i confuse people with my correct usage of grammar when i'm not dressed the part.  i play a starving artist on tv, but in real life i'm an athlete who works out just to eat. i slur words while i drink for further annunciation, i create from a slate, blank with innate trust, till the words combust from inside my ribs and out my gut onto the page, cuz i crave to communicate in such a way, i won’t play with your emotions unless i have to, not afraid to come after you if you won’t listen. 

the river

The river carries its collection of ice dancers

With the chivalry of a knightly offering

Cascading on, the crystals collide with the grace of a chandelier stirring

In the breeze, of a southern summer, far from a season remembered

The sun offers a glimpse of the time past, warm in its memory

A reflection of hues, a history of horizons harboring exquisite sets to mourn

Sparkling on the frozen veneer like sequence proud on a dress adorned

Clad for the occasion, delighted to have been invited in such distinguished company

flickering thoughts

Flickering thoughts flash like movies not yet documented, whose dramas have played and played out, un-rehearsed, raw, and uncut.  Scenes spark with dialogue you wish you had encountered, lines you would have articulated had you been prepared. 

Attempts and failures plague with haunting delight from a script you work to deny each time it arrives.  Talking to yourself as if you’re actually directing this drama. The production of being discovered all while discovering you has been the extent of this plot.  Plotting to climax at the imax in 3-D the day after avatar.  Turning yourself blue, cuz you haven’t stopped to breath through your motions, the pictures you’ve derived on the slides that continue to race like powerpoint, unneffectively. 

All because you see, you can stop the slideshow and the make believe. The scenes don’t have to haunt you if you don’t want them to.  You can choose the characters and create the context with each dawn of the new day. The past is just that, past….and long gone with all the old re-runs.  No more Saturday afternoon matinees or reality marathons.  Stop running from the guy that always has an ax in that deep dark closet, turn the light on before you tip toe into the empty room, and don’t creepin' in there when you know you are just looking for trouble.  Cuz those of us on the outside, screaming at the big screen, can’t help you when you don’t see it for yourself.  We frustratingly hold our hands out into the air wanting to shake you, but we know in the end that you’ll have to figure it out on your own or else find yourself buried next to the token blond…who of course, already got the ax.

Make a pact, to let it go…the past, and the future.  This isn’t star wars or futurama, another storyline to manifest your dramatic episodes, all because you can’t let go of the heightened fever, your thermometer rising as the plot thickens all before the fist commercial break. 

Awareness before all this ensues will help you to lessen the addiction of constant distraction, predictions of conversations that may or may never even happen.  What could you do with all your time if you weren’t so pressed to stress over all that may never even be?  Could you see with a pair of eyes that actually illustrates clarity?  How bout the inner voice you could hear when you clear the static on the blaring stereo playing in surround sound 24/7?  Would you even recognize the beat, thumping peace within you awaiting your presence and your silence?  

Let go, let go, let go, you are not those movies, you are not this show.  You are a gift awaiting inspiration, growth, maturity, vision, opportunity, but only if you are able to see past the nonsense that surrounds us.  The commercial version of how we should live.  Give your dreams a real glance, because those passions can actually be more than just a hobby. 

Even if you‘re told otherwise, each of us has our own talents, hunger...drive.  It may hurt a little it may even take some strength, but from what I’ve heard, the stinging of regret is far worse than taking the leap and letting yourself fall.  Get back up and fall again, the greatest of our kinds were the best at getting back up to their feet.  Those heroes ate their cheerios or something like it, just like us.  They breathed the same air and basked in the same sun.  Looking down the same barrel of a loaded gun that tempted failure, yet they had the courage to push it aside.  Not for pride or for fame, but for passion, fervor and need.  Heed their power of intention, take up a collection of prophetic prayers and play your cards right.  Your deck, your game, your fight.  I don’t care where you came from or who put you on this planet, we all have a mission to pursue what so few have been brave enough to take on. 

Create on your canvas, stretched out, the skin that covers your amazingly complex system.  In thanks and gratitude for what you’ve been given.  Shifting focus onto yourself, because in reality you’re no good to anybody without moving yourself forward in the direction you’re intended to sail.  Even if you can’t swim… dive in and cool off, from the heat on the streets blazing up from the concrete.  The sweltering air that suffocates in the thickness of the summer, humidity from the sweat that falls from all those sweating their pay check or their pray check. 

To buy what, happiness?  Well there sure isn’t plenty of that to go around, cuz look around, what do you see?  It sure ain’t happiness.  I see frustration and pain, poverty and mass production.  I see a lot of people focused on what they don’t have.  With the miracle of life that is their own embodiment and they see nothing.  Nothing good…no wake up to say thank you, all for a new day.  No thanks to the sun, the stars and the moon for all that they do.  No thanks to the mountains, the oceans, the trees for all their memories and absurdly abundant forgiveness. 

Instead we have stress tests because life is hard and for some, just not worth living.  Giving up their heartbeat for a chance to see if it is actually better on the other side.  Yet heaven could be here on earth, if we unwrap the gift of the present each morning, like Christmas, or Kwanza, or Chanukah or whatever the hell it is you celebrate, like a birthday, each day. 

We all have our haunts, our past, our affliction, but as we’ve learned over the years, there is no boogie man in the closet, it’s just a story that we told ourselves long ago and we choose to keep getting scared.  More frightening would be if we sat back and threw it all away, because of our fears, because of our need to be locked down to the things we’ve been told all our lives… and we believed. 

Crush the old vhs tapes and the sorry dvds, write a fresh screenplay that depicts a land where taking things for granted is impossible.  The characters all take responsibility for their actions and make choices for the greater good.  They could also come with the perception that there is no other time than this, to act, cuz tomorrow may never come. 

Where they could “be all they can be”, without a slogan from the army, because what else is there really?  They could be programmed to understand that it is all up to them and they would in fact take advantage of each breath well breathed.  This isn’t utopia, this is the potential, these choices, in us, are just that powerful.  

my muse

She shows up like she’s never left
Seducing without reason, but rebellious rhyme
Tempting my heart to beat beyond measures
Sending fantasies wittingly above the clefs

She stays a while, makes herself at home
Stunning me to trust she’ll stick around this time
Stroking my conceit, leaving me high on her glory
Soothing the angst that’s her surrogate in my time spent alone

She sweats sunshine and exhales stardust
Sauntering about in magic and mystery
Moving me to tears I don’t even recognize
Swallowing passion like poison, drunk on her lust

She shields me from the scent of fear
Shelters from the flight of failure
Harboring my hopes with angelic grace
Staging promises to nurture and revere

She smiles with scintillation, her eyes evoke serenity
Senses flattered by an adoration dismally unrequited
Escaping through the same door she meandered in
Slipping through my fingers clenched desperately

Nothing on my own to salvage
Unaccompanied in my own despair
Accepting friends in fear and failure
Gripped by the claws of a mindless binge

A blank page without ink, taunts me to a familiar shame
The pen settled near the page, too heavy for my hand
A lost appetite abandoned, nevermore forgotten
A broken heart all the wiser, she is not to blame

My goddess
My love
My soul
My dear

I sit and linger for your coveted return,
Longingly…
Devotedly, I will let you back in

if you can

If you can, you must
And if you can’t….trust
That there’s a will and a way to play the game to save face
Replace all the damage done, see the lives won, loves lost
Those who came across true passion from words and worlds passed
Mysteries crashed, timeless echoes from masters, who had all the answers
Of how to survive and thrive on honest energy, loving daringly
The person within who was created divine
From a place we can only find when we take the time to let go
And grow into natural beings, and be for the believing
Take no survivors, for it is us we are killing, shilling for shilling
Our actions speak volumes, voicing how come
We just can’t break free from our demons
Our reasons to hide or bribe our guides
Our distractions, our lackadaisical reactions
To coming to grips with the gifts we’ve been given
Despite the prisons we lock ourselves in
Afraid to bust open the cell walls of our story
Our delusional glory, the good and the evil, the comedy, the tragedy,
Our play playing out, our minds caught in deserts drought
Of monotonous manifests, socialized disenchantment
The way we were taught and all that we bought
The systems, the lies, the uttered cries we will never forget
As we regret getting lost on this set of our own show
Our lives being told by a narrator who doesn’t know
You, a director who never met
Yet, he knows all the jokes
Listen, as he provokes this all to stop the madness, stop searching for happiness
Create it as it was given, hidden in blessings of talents worth addressing
Motives worth unfolding, years of hidden holdings
Drop the façade, wad up the script, the costume, your false lips
And meditate on a new beginning, levitate beyond these sold out endings
Make a mark worth making, strike a path worth creating
Open your heart to your dreams and your soul to your drive
Act on salvation, be patient in your creation
You came from a purity worth recognizing, a perfection worth glorifying
Remind yourself of your divinity and the infinity of the power you hold
Working in accordance with life’s true goals
This is your warning, your wake up from death’s mourning
Open your eyes to the possibilities imaginable, the pursuits available
Neglect is not an option, regret, only a past emotion
Make yo’ momma proud, step beyond the crowd
And unfold the wings desperate for air, the petals awaiting unanswered prayers
For sunshine and lust, the harmony that has been hushed
Begin…today, right here…now
If you can, you must…and if you can’t…trust.

breath of awareness – for the american lung association

Don’t know what you got until it’s gone, as joni mitchel would say. A play on words that can’t be heard until they’re the last. The last word or the last verb: to breath. Just a breath of fresh air that we forget is so vital. A sign of sincerity in the recital. Gratitude toward each inhale as a reminder that our lungs are still fighting. A job that goes unrecognized as we unfamiliarize ourselves with their existence. Or until they stop working that is.

The chest rising and falling in a remarkable fashion. Without choice, without voice they do the job they’ve been given. Twenty thousand times a day, on average, they obey without contemplation, or compensation. They show up on time and punch in before we ever know they’ve arrived. A loyalty we might not ever understand, cuz we forget to give praise, or even a raise for a job well done. A promotion on the notion of life well breathed.

Maybe stopping to smell the roses or the hint of rain in the spring air. The suggestions that go unmentioned. The moments that go unnoticed. The exhale lost in a startling breeze, the howling wind in the bending trees. Still nothing. Ignorantly…we don’t know, nor do we perceive, what we got until it’s gone.

We pollute are lungs and take each breath further for granted. Disenchanted by the gift of each gasp. Each powerful inhale as the oxygen is transferred to our bloodstream, like a mountain stream offering life to all its tributaries. Without boundaries it gives, gives, gives and we just take, take, take our lungs, our air, our breath for granted. Like we’ve actually been granted the right to do so.

Choking on smoke we invite in. Standing in the cold, shivering for one more drag. Unconsciously…obviously. Otherwise why? Why would we poison our position on survival? For a revival not until the hospital when we finally wake up. Crushing what we’ve been so fortuitously granted, by the heels of our own shoes. Tossing them out the windows as if they were worthless and now we’re breathless. Not stunned, not taken a back, just breathless. Because we couldn’t see the gift in us.

Many are denied this gift without ever taking it for granted. Without ever dragging denial into their lungs. Still they battle disease. For those people, often children, we should be ever more pleased. That we’ve been blessed and give our best to recognize what we’ve got before it’s gone. Before it’s our last, or before it’s a struggle. Before we are coughing into our fists in a fight to stay alive. Before we drown our allowance and forfeit our hand we’ve been given. We should stop and listen.

To the life in each breath. Watch it rise and feel it feed our bodies. In each exhale revere the genteel expulsion of waste without haste to cleanse our systems and keep us running smoothly, or just …running. A jog or a stroll, a race or a marathon. We have a lot to be thankful for. Be mindful, don’t destroy. Your body’s not a toy to disregard when a new one arrives. Be grateful, you are alive….and breathing.

Cherish what you got before it’s gone. joni mitchel without a song. Whistling a new tune. A skip in the step. Breath thanks…so fresh and so clean, clean…consciously, purposefully, just breath for awareness, breath for justice, breath for the peace in all of us.

baby steps

Baby steps. The best we can do. The conscious awareness coming apart like glue in a torn seam of an ideological dream. The sticky mess of trying to be health conscious, environmentally friendly, socially aware and poetically PC.

I eat organic, don’t ingest flesh, no dairy… I shop locally. I reduce my carbon footprint, recycle even my sweater’s lint, bring my own bags so I don’t have to choose paper or plastic, respectfully. Wear elastic on occasion, not sure where those sweats came from. China I presume, with all of the rest. Can’t tell you how old she was, or him, working the sweatshop or steam press.

I prefer to buy fair-trade, but I’m lost on all the options. Plus my bank account can only afford so much natural consumption. Isn’t this the reason that all Walmart’s were created equally? To make us feel less guilty about buying products in bulk at a fraction of the price of the corner store’s, or the mom and pop’s. Speaking of which, are they even still with us? Or did Target’, erect a massive parking lot right on top? Crushing their family business, the customer relationships, the personal connection; the feel good emotion of buying something from someone you can actually trust. Well let’s not harp, cuz that all seems well behind us.

Now we just have baby steps to move us toward tracing the root of our expenditure. Maybe even letting go of the idea of leather furniture. Making choices based on needs not wants, educated decisions not spurred by impulse. Often leading to that short high followed by the inevitable low of buyer’s remorse. Spending what we haven’t earned then blaming the card companies for losing a match we thought was surely a win/win situation.

They have us all pegged and we keep playing the game…we are herded like cattle and don’t even notice until we are plopped at our desk buried under all the mess that we got ourselves into. It’s not the game, it’s the player…and we’re the ones getting played.

So that’s why we take baby steps to crawl our way out. To open our eyes and act responsibly, with conviction to re-write the rules. Instead of acting like fools who candidly take the convenient route, cuz we just can’t fit it into our crackberry schedules to do right. Turning a blinds eye to being wronged because it’s a better deal. We’d rather eat hormone injected meat cuz it’s the one on sale. Only to save up for really important shit like lawn ornaments and ridiculous trinkets, cuz sometimes we’re just that simple. Simply stupid, and overtly uneducated, or just plain ignorant.

It’s not that we don’t have the truth, it’s that we don’t wanna hear it. Trace back your burger, your tennis shoes, your juicy couture. How do you balance fashion whore and funding failing farming practices? All cuz it tastes good, cuz you might get laid if your laces lay that special way in those tight ass shoes you thought nobody else had.

Might we see what we’ve succumbed to? Ads fed to us as part of our daily balanced diet. Chillin’ like lunchboxes watchin’ windows into yet another hot mess’s life. Reality television sucking the life outta us like a swollen tick, too thick to cut itself off at full. Instead feeding a frenzy of toxicity all because “forgetting to pay attention” is socially acceptable. In fact, the absolute norm to conform to.

Those of us who stop for a moment to take a breath or to live without the live feed of the tv are the overwhelming minority. Choosing to hold onto the moments we’ve been blessed with instead of shredding them like useless documents.

I killed my tv and I rarely surf the world wide web just to pass the time. I find that big news like Haiti will catch up to me through word of mouth. A route by which we seem to forget about. I miss out on some of the banter, the ins and outs of characters that those around me are inviting into their homes each night. The plight with “the situation”, real world’s new season, or the nightly news covered by sensationalism.

I prefer to read books and to learn. To try to take back all my moments lost. When I still tossed them into the air and kissed them into the winds like acquaintances that I wouldn’t miss if I never saw again. Now I enjoy holding hands and getting to know the time that I have, before I quickly jump to second base or third with slurred words distracted by beauty, or lust, or thoughtless obsession. All I have in my possession now is this, this second, this single heart palpitation, to connect to the drive. Nothing contrived, just simply natural and renewable energy.

Solar power, the same source that feeds the flowers. Vitamin D that nourishes me like photosynthesis converting sunbeams into breakfast. I seek as much to live off the land, to take from the trees their stories, the ocean its wonder, and the mountains their mystery. To honor the abundance that surrounds me.

I sooth in moonbaths in hopes to brighten my future. Let stars dance into my kitchen through the windows I’ve left open for them. Send prayers up to the heavens, mostly “thank you’s” and “IOU’s”. I play in the rain, allowing each drop to refresh and cleanse me, an amenity day spa’s can only envy.

We seek outwardly, when all the gifts are within. Want more, but sometimes all we need is right before us. We can’t hear the call of the wild because we’re tuned into the wrong channel. Missing the boat on glorious waves because we’re trapped in a raft wearing a puffy ass vest. Protecting ourselves from letting go and trusting the guides who might just know. How to win or at least play it right, to withstand the fight or just stand a chance to come out with having glanced at opportunity. The way it should be.

Let’s march…in baby steps. That may be all we can muster. To get us closer to finding our own piece to play. Rules not dictated, but annunciated by us, individually, courageously. From off the beaten path, where we now stand, outside the box, where our next turn may not yet be visible on google maps. Give yourself a clap or a high five, close your eyes and just… drive. Out into the sunset where the horizon will melt into your lap blissfully. The world will be at your hands and you’ll land exactly where you were supposed to be. All along….through the tiniest…. most well intended… baby steps.

for the record

It’s not all the time that I tell you what you mean to me and it’s not at all that I do it purposefully. I just forget to announce it vocally, because I hear it on the inside all the time. like when I see you and I remember how much I missed you all along. When I lean into your smell and melt into your smile.

When I know I won’t see you for a while, I feel a little lost, cuz I get used to you being around, real easy. Cuz you ease me into a familiar I have never known, a comfortable like it was supposed to be, an effortless synchronicity of you finding me. All the way across an ocean and into another time, once upon you came into my life, ironically, unrealistically.

Yet I believed in you from the first time we actually spoke, I knew there was a little hope that you would be the one that I could adore, for more than just a little while. You make me smile wider than I ever thought I could. You invented the scent “ridiculously innocent”, only to come back the next season with “mischievous deliciousness”.

You make me excited to wake up in the morning, and for all the mornings I wake up alone, I definitely know the difference. I don’t jump at the chance to take on the day. Cuz I wanna travel all over with you, or even just have coffee. I wanna have long unending conversations about nothing, just to hear you talk. I wanna walk under the stars with you and name every one of them individually. I want to make you proud one day and shower you with gratitude all for you believing in me.

I want the world, for you first, then for us. I want you to become the astonishingly exquisite woman that I know and trust. you are most beautiful in the moments that you know you are amazing and that’s who I want to marry, maybe one day. Cuz I love you all the ways, even when I forget to tell you. I feel you deeper than a dramatic love that insists on broadcasting re-runs. I love you authentically, in a one of a kind, cannot be duplicated kind of way. From your toes to your nose and all the way to the back of your head, you are my heart, my love. Just for the record, I said it.

26.2

Polluted, disheveled hair, exhaust dis-coloring his face, the soot in his nails thick from clinging to his unrelenting past. Ingesting fumes from the only constant he knows, now, his corner. His shirt reads 26.2, finisher. Yet he didn’t cross that finish line, earning a time, recorded unconsciously on a micro-chip. Hand-me-down triumphs of races glorifying determination. Perhaps his mind trickles with thoughts of a moment he might have cared about such accomplishments.


The shirt on his back is hardly a trophy of glory, instead a red cloth to hang from his square, gaunt shoulders. He may have told her that he loved her when he had the chance. Yet, happenstance, lead him to this block, with this sign: “hungry and homeless”, nevermind the loneliness of dropping out of existence. Lacking persistence or the wherewithal to hang on, not withdraw from life’s marathon, or the rat race to stay on pace with what it is we should all be running from. Or towards, like they have us thinking, where several of us are on the brink of, just that, dropping out. Where goals are confused with ladders and raises and steps and benefits. We get locked into being comfortable because the discomfort of being a drop-out, sends fear slithering down our spines, where we can taste the disappointment or resentment oozing from the pours of those around us that just don’t understand.

Our man on the corner had some courage, or just no choice? Did he lose his voice on what he wanted to be when he grew up? Did he trade his passion for a bottle filled with empty promises? How do you really get to a place where offering nothing more than an eye sore is your perpetual daily existence? A waste of space, to take the place of a life full of smiles and laughter and authentic tears that remind you of all that truly matters.

Had he said “I love you” and taken the opportunity to be a dad, he might be in a better situation. Instead embarrassing his daughter, his family, to shame, leaving her to blame herself because he wasn’t man enough to step up to the plate. Batting for her was never his forte’, but he had extra innings to tie the score and couldn’t even do it.

If it wasn’t the bottle it was failure, regret and greed that stood in his way. Never feeling like he was the man he’d imagined, so he couldn’t establish something he wouldn’t live up to. No fortitude to deny his own disease to please anyone but himself. Now misplaced, alone, vulnerable…exiled from a past that he lost with all his possessions.

For us, he’s a representation of what we could be. A hero we envy or a zero disgusting us, to lose our appetite. We feel sorry for his circumstances and can’t help but glance in his direction as we drive by creating stories around his sign and demeanor, wondering what it truly was that got him there. We sometimes give a dollar, but not without pondering whether the proceeds will be spent on just another fix. When we don’t give, we have parables of jesus haunting us as we drive past. And we argue back, “well, thy neighbor should get a job!, or at least kick the habits that keep him bound to these tricks.”

We’ve lost trust in his sincerity cuz we can’t see honesty in eyes dark and dull, sunken deep with charcoal. No sparkle to reflect memories of a life more human, more digestible. Delusional to suppress the, him in all of us, the drop out, the lost, the lonely. The carefree or the care-less. Where 26.2 means nothing, and determination isn’t trendy, it’s breaking away from safety, and sitting on your own corner with your own sign, begging for forgiveness, shaking a cup full of change, cuz isn’t that what we all need. If not change of position, change of vision, change of perception, or change of emotion. Change worth making, if not for a dollar, for each regret, ignored, stepped over, left, hardened on the pavement.

for lee

you have taught me how to love you
in a way that i could only learn
by watching you love me.

stuttering sam

* if only I could stutter like sam and turn these rhymes into remixes, i’d beatbox off these beatniks hip lookin shades, fading in and out of hop, brewing and fermenting my own formula, straining the pulp, fiction for a reason to focus on the non, discrimitory against divisions, decisions awaiting revision, music television, mtv, qvc, home shopping without credit or credibility, credentials crumbling beneath commercials, vehicle for change, on that dollar, bills to be paid, attention granted in vain, Gloria estefan’s fame, i'm gonna live forever, like a diamond, awaiting an “i do”, drops on the grass, smoked like a dragon, puff - puff – give, my brother, from another mother, like weaved extensions of our past and our future.

if only i could stutter like sam and turn these rhymes into remixes, i’d blink two extra times to clear my vision like tourettes, rocking out to a new scene, to be seen, foreseeing a day when it didn’t matter, the chit or the ch-ch-chatter, on the ladder, just to climb, clinging to each rung, strung from the locks of a fairytale, once upon a time, this moment, to survive, i had to bribe my ego to let go of all that kept us apart, the distance between the heart and the soul, the goal to stand on top of a mountain and scream, “i made it!”, not cuz i created it, but cuz conquering it…created me, so i could stutter like sam and turn these rhymes into remixes, just to grab the attention of my forgotten self, less the dress, the makeup, after waking up from the dream worth catching, stretching my arms out to wrap them around the stranger, dangerous to only me, imperative that i embrace her, the her like a ship or a storm or the land that i love, sick to a thermometer, rising out of revelry, celebrating the inauguration of a new queen, l-a-t-i-f-a-h in command, attention, demanding honest intentions, invent a new you that has forgotten your past, due like a library card, books stacked unread, unopened, a birthday present forgotten.

if only i could stutter like sam and turn these rhymes into remixes, i’d honor my imperfections like the 32nd flavor, with a sharpened razor i’d slice through all the bull-hish and get to the real shit, show my stut-stut-stut-stuttering self off, cuz i’m the only one i’ve got, to live for, to be brave for, for i simply CAN be something i’m not, derived from an impassioned heart, ache like a stomach, gut instinct, glutton for punishment, melted resentment, beyond what i’ve been taught, blank slate to be drawn, characters fallen like pawns, waking up to a new dawn, a new day, a way laid out long before i even arrived, not contrived like the rest, puffy chests rising and falling to false breaths, taking granted for grace, amazing revelations passing in the breeze, trees swaying in truths going unseen, sunscreen blocking rays of justifiable beauty, penetrating our skin too deeply, burning our ability to shine.

if only i could stutter like sam and turn these rhymes into remixes, i’d commit crimes that got me committed, to walk the walk, following the lead of my own energy, to double dog dare me, to do it, just like nike, to jump, to take the leap, cliché like an expected forte or crescendo, as the plot thickens, stirring the mix, adding agents, pulling tricks, outta hats, white bunnies running off course, to be studied, me 101, the new major, a general of my own division, captain of my own team, where there is an i, cuz there can’t be a we without me knowing me, stripping down from the outside in, naked like the juice, freshly squeezed, no imitations, surpassing limitations, all natural fruit, rh-rh-rhyming my way to my roots.*