LUCKY 13 BIG TRIP DIP
From the 12th diary entry of Stewy Lemmon's childhood adventures.

This week my whole family, Smoochy and I, all headed off by car, to the annual big city fair on Friday the 13th. Some people believe an unlucky day of the year and an unlucky number for most. It was a big trip for the whole family, which took about two hours and twenty-five minutes to get there. But, we all still looked forward to it coming around each year, despite the long drive.

I had been to the big city fair, for every year that I can remember. My parents have been going there, every year since they were my age. I thought, 'Man, they must be old now, maybe one hundred and two years old or even a lot more'.

The food stalls were packed full of snacks and different makes of cakes and all kinds of different, yummy-in-your-tummy things, for us kids to eat.

There were stalls selling: Creamy Caramel Cup-Cakes, Limited Edition Lollipop Layered Lamington's and even some, short, swirly, Shortbread Slices. Even, my mum and two, much older, identical, twin sisters, Emma and Jemma, had set up their very own food stall. They, were selling heaps of my colourful creation named, 'A Colourful Take-Away Fruit-Blast In A Bag'.

They, were even selling, clear plastic cups along with a spiral-shaped straw.

But, only for the people, who emailed me for the secret, Jiggy-Jiggy Side-Kick Creation instructions, which was in my third diary entry named, 'Water off a Ducks Back'. Only then, will you remember what the plastic cups are for and how to perform the all important, Jiggy-Jiggy.

There were so many fun rides at the annual big city fair, for all of the kids to enjoy. Like the dodgem cars, a jumping castle and the pirate ship, 'my favourite ride of all time'. I loved sitting at the very back of the pirate ship because, it made me feel really funny in the tummy.

Towards the end of the day, my dad, had bought a ticket in the, Big city annual lucky dip first prize, surprise raffle. He had never been lucky in the big city raffle, all of the previous years before. So, this time, he didn't pick his usual lucky number 7, but instead he picked number 13 and guess what? 'He won the first prize surprise'.

We all went to see what the first prize was, at this year's annual lucky dip surprise raffle. It was a family holiday to thirteen of the world's most colourful cities. The whole family screamed, with joy. But, I then slapped my face a little and said to myself, 'Is this another dream of mine'? 'Nope! this one's for real', mum told me, with glee.

The day had arrived, for the start of our colourful, lucky-dip, big 13, city trip adventure. We had, packed all our bags and I even put in my dad's trusty, fancy, far out, funny binoculars and my very, super, sporty, single-shot, stylish slingshot. Just in case, I needed them both on our exciting city adventures.

My two, much older, identical, twin sisters, Emma and Jemma, had packed their bags full of makeup, creams and a hair styling dryer. While, Lemmy, had his bag packed by our dear mum, Flo, along with her own. While, dad went to his unusually built and outrageously painted, backyard, outback, shed and gathered his tools and paint brushes for the trip.

We headed to the airport, to start our first leg of our adventure to London England. On the first day, we went to visit the queen, in her very large house named, Buckingham Palace. The palace guard's face's didn't move one bit. Even, when dad, tried to make them laugh, with a funny joke or pulling faces at them, to make them smile.

Then, off we went, to see Big Ben. It was built years ago along the river Thames. We, then went to see some old rocks called, Stonehenge. Nobody knows exactly, why they were made. Their just placed, all alone, located in the middle of a large field, gathering moss and all still on show.

We then took a ferry ride across the English Channel and hopped off in the Netherlands. We all stayed in the very colourful city of Amsterdam. Mum, loved all of the beautiful flowers and my two, much older, identical, twin sisters, Emma and Jemma, especially loved trying the, unusual sweet cakes and drinks in the many cafes all spread about town. While dad, Lemmy, Smoochy and I, really enjoyed riding the bikes along the paths, on the side of the long and winding canals.

Then, we went to the beautiful, but cold country of Norway. We stayed in the capital city of Oslo. We took a boat ride through the icy fjords and I even thought, I saw that whale that winked at me, on that adventurous day out at, Slip-Slop-Slap Bay.

We then went by bus up north to see the Aurora Lights. Wow! what a sight. It was like daytime, even at ten thirty at night.

I even thought maybe, Stefan Pettersson from North Poland the ski instructor at Shivermytimbers Ski Lodge, lived close to here.

Next city was Paris the city of lights in the country of France. We went up the Eiffel Tower and I pulled out dad's fancy homemade binoculars from my bag and had such wonderful views of the city and then took a taxi for a ride through the streets of Paris and even went under the historical Arc of Triumph. Then we all went to see the great artwork and sculptures at a place called the Louvre. We saw a serious painting of a sad lady named Moaning Lisa; at least that's what I think the tour guide said.

The next morning we boarded a small plane and landed in the very watery city of Venice in Italy. I thought we were going to land on water, just like Buck the Duck does back at the small village pond. The city is surrounded by water and everyone travels by a small boat called a gondola which weavestheir way through the water canals and under all the old bridges. Smoochy even climbed up into the top left-hand side pocket of the Italian man sailing the boat, to get a better view. The food was so colourful in Italy, like the spaghetti, pizzas and delicious and colourful gelato.

Egypt was our next adventure stop and we went to the ancient city of Cairo. The very old Pyramids were out of this world, with precision angles and stones that fitted together ever so well. A cruise on the long Nile River was very exciting to see as well. It went from one end of the country to the other, but we only travelled on it for a mile or so.

Then off to Thailand and to the capital city named Bangkok, the busiest city of them all. There were cars, taxis, two wheeled motorbikes and funny three wheeled colourful ones called

Tuk-tuks. There was traffic and people everywhere we went and a lot of confusion by the Lemmon's when trying to cross the busy streets. We even visited some very old Buddhist Temples in the countryside and had some lunch that was extremely hot stuff, which made us all, puff. They gave us bread and water to cool our mouths down afterwards. Mum said, oh what a colourful and spicy city it is, and I love there ancient culture and friendliness of their people.

Off to the big red and easy going country of Australia tomorrow. We visited a place in the middle of nowhere called Alice Springs, which was in the Northern Territory of Australia. The next day we climbed up a rock named Uluru that was a sacred area for Aboriginals, the original inhabitants of Australia. We took a trip to a beautiful area up north of the Northern Territory called Kakadu National Park. Where we saw big red kangaroos, crocodiles and even some emus. One kangaroo even to try and box dad, but dad ran away and said, ‘He would fight him, but he forgot his gloves’.

We then headed off to China and the island of Hong Kong. What a very old and colourful city it was, with so many colourful buildings to see. In the large harbour we saw painted fishing and food boats cruising around.

Brazil Rio de Janeiro was next and we even saw the famous Carnival, with people dancing to a very cool beat. All dressed up and having the best party of all time. Down on the beach people were swimming and surfing and lying about in the sun. We even went to see a football match with USA v Cameroon playing, oh so well, for the winner would get its hand on a large world cup. We also saw a very large statue of an important man perched on a mountain.

USA was the last country to visit before our adventures would come to an end. We landed in Los Angeles and went straight to the magical kingdom of Disneyland. We did a day tour of Universal Studios where they make all the great movies.

Off to Nevada we drove and stayed one night in the ever so bright Las Vegas, oh what colourful sites we saw from our seventeenth floor suite hotel window. There were so many colourful casinos stretched out as long as you could see which light up at night alright. Dad even said you could see the lights from outer space. The next day we took a flight over the Grand Canyon in a Hot Air Balloon. We saw beautiful waterfalls and even saw people on donkeys riding down far down below.

New York was our last city to visit; it was especially dad's favourite city, because his ancestors had lived there for years, before coming to live in our village of Shimmerleedimmerlee to start a family, all those years ago.

The Empire State Building was an historic tall building that even once had a gorilla on top making a movie. Statue of Liberty was so fun to climb up and see all the lights of New York from across the Hudson River.

We took a horse drawn carriage ride in Central Park and even saw a memorable garden for the ex-Beatle John Lennon.

While travelling the New York subway to get to Soho we saw some great graffiti artwork sprayed on council approved walls.

The next day we were heading back home, which is nestled amongst the trees on a hill, in a little country village, called Shimmerleedimmerlee.

A COLOURFUL FRUIT BLAST        
From the 1st diary entry of Stewy Lemmon's childhood adventures.            
            
Hi, my name is Stewy Lemmon and I’m your normal, everyday, friendly, country boy, who lives about 2 hours away from the big city lights. My family’s home is nestled amongst the trees on a hill in a little country village called, 'Shimmerleedimmerlee'.

It's located just a little north west from the famous town of Bearfeet Ridge. Famous of course, because of the mysterious and rarely seen yellow tailed bear family, that is said to inhabit the nearby treed mountain range. The town's people have even given the rarely seen bear family sightings, a nickname called, 'Bearfeet Yellow Tales'.            
              
My family is made up of one much younger brother, named Lemmy; two much older, identical, twin sisters named, Emma and Jemma, and my proud parents, Archie and Flo.            
              
On Christmas day this year, I received a pet mouse as one of my presents. I quickly named him Smoochy, after he suddenly jumped up and kissed me on the cheek, then fell into my top left-hand side pocket. From that moment on, I knew that Smoochy and I, would have such fun times and great adventures together.            
              
This Christmas afternoon was especially hot, so my Mum Flo cut up some healthy and yummy assorted fruit for the family, as a snack and placed it on the table, which was placed in between, the two large trees in the backyard.

I especially love bananas, apples, oranges, grapes and lots of watermelon mixed together in my bowl. I named this creation 'A colourful fruit-blast'. It’s so much fun to eat, although, my little brother Lemmy only likes bananas in his bowl, with a dash of sweet honey.            
              
My two much older identical twin sisters named, Emma and Jemma, love to eat only green celery sticks and plain yogurt on hot days. Smoochy also ate some of my delicious, colourful fruit-blast and even drank a little of my icy, strawberry flavoured, thick shake, through his very own, home-made straw.

My Dad Archie, is very handy at making things out of wood, metal and even plastic and loves to paint unusual designs on whatever he makes. Dad does all of his, building and painting in his unusually built and outrageously painted backyard, outback shed.            
              
So, after he had some of Mum's afternoon fruit snack, Dad built a mouse house, for my grouse, new pet, mouse called, Smoochy. Dad even hand painted it with such colourful flair, from using his artistic nous. But, when I placed Smoochy, into his newly painted, mouse house, the paint wasn't dry enough, and he got yellow paint all over his, oh-so-cute tail.  
  
After my Dad Archie, had finished the grouse, new pet, mouse house, he thought, what could he make for me, as a New Year’s Eve surprise present. He quickly thought of a great idea and headed off to his, unusually built and outrageously painted, outback, backyard shed.            
              
Dad was busy for days, coming and going from his backyard shed and snoring so loudly, while taking short naps on our backyard hammock.            
      
Also, Dad kept taking pieces of Mum's colourful fruit snack, but only very small amounts at a time, from her ever so clean kitchen. Then, sneaking it all back into his, very hard to say shed. You know, the one in the backyard.  
  
My Dad had finally finished building my surprise present, just in time for New Year’s Eve. Then, because we were hosting a party at our house, at about 11.50 pm, my entire family, neighbours, friends, Smoochy and I were all waiting outside, in the backyard for the clock to strike 12.00 midnight.
  
With only 10 minutes to go my Dad, rushed off to his, you know where. Yes that's right, his unusually built and outrageously painted, outback, backyard shed and brought out my surprise. You will never guess what it was, for it was radically recycled, rather refined, remarkably robust and really red. Have you guessed correctly? Anyone? No? Okay, I will tell you what it was. It was my very own really red, reusable, retro rocket.            
              
When I saw the rocket that my dad had built for me, I was over the moon with happiness and I had a smile on my dial, that felt like it was almost as long as about a mile.            
    
All of a sudden, all of my family members, neighbours, friends and I started screaming out 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1. We all shouted out together, at the top of our voices HAPPY NEW YEAR. Then my Dad helped me light my, really red, reusable, retro rocket surprise and we both stood back, to see it take off and fly into the sky. My Dad told me, it was especially built to create, a fireworks display in the night sky and then return back to us. All so we could reuse it again, for next year.
  
All of a sudden, it took off so high into the night sky, I thought my new, radically recycled, rather refined, remarkably robust, really red, reusable, retro rocket surprise, was going to the moon and may never come back down to earth.            
              
But then we heard a loud bang, the top of my rocket separated from the main body of the rocket and exploded into bright colours all over the night sky.            
              
After a while though, my entire family, our neighbours and our friends, felt things dropping onto their clean party attire. People had red blobs on their backs; yellow splats on their shirts and even some on their skirts; small orange flecks on their faces and a few people had small black bits, dropping into their top, left-hand side pockets.            
    
"It's my colourful fruit snack, coming down from the night sky", yelled Mum. So she went searching through the crowd for my Dad. When she found him, he was chuckling with laughter.

He told us all, ‘That he had packed the radically recycled, rather refined, remarkably robust, really red, reusable, retro rocket, full of Stewy's favorite fruit. Also, because fruity, firework explosives would really make the sky, so much more colourful to the eye, and ever so tasty in our mouths’.
              
My Dad wanted to make as many colours as he could for the fireworks display. He used some of Mum's colourful fruit, which included, apples, bananas, watermelons, grapes and oranges.            
              
Even Smoochy was getting hit by the furiously flying, fast falling, fantastically funny, fabulous family fruit by Flo, through the small gaps, in his newly built, freshly painted, grouse, pet mouse, house. It was the best surprise I have ever seen, come out of that unusually built and outrageously painted, backyard, outback shed.            
              
Oh, what a fun and tasty New Year's Eve party we all had, on that, oh, so wonderful and colourful fruit blast of a night, in my little country village of 'Shimmerleedimmerlee'.

SORE BARE FEET WITH YELLOW TAIL        
From the 2nd diary entry of Stewy Lemmon's childhood adventures.          
          
Its been almost two weeks now, since our unforgettable funny night of the colourful fruit falling down on us. So, I decided to take Smoochy for a walk through our village and then up and over the town's nearby grassy green hills.          
           
When all of a sudden, I noticed a strange, gigantic and really colourful object in the near distance. I picked up Smoochy and put him in my top left-hand side pocket. I then took off my thongs and raced like the wind, towards this strange, gigantic and really colourful thing.          
           
As we got closer, I realised what I had come across. It was a gigantic and colourful, hot air balloon. Maybe, it had crashed on top of our town's grassy green hills, that very morning. I yelled out, ‘Hello is anyone in there’? But, not a squeak or holler of noise, came out of that gigantic and really colourful hot air balloon.          
           
I was curious to have a closer look inside, so I took Smoochy out of my top left-hand side pocket and put him nearby. I climbed up into the hot air balloon with bare feet and all, to see what it was like, inside my incredible find.          
           
Whilst looking straight up towards the blue sky, I saw the hot air balloons large engine, that once it was switched on, would make a huge fire. A fire which you could imagine, would make you ever so warm. All of sudden, a gush of wind took hold of the gigantic hot air balloon and it started to take off.          
           
I yelled out to Smoochy to help me, but quickly realised, he was only a grouse, new, pet mouse and would not understand me. The balloon started to bounce down the hill and was nearing the edge. Smoochy had jumped onto the end of a dangling rope and was hanging on by the skin of his teeth, while I was hanging on, for my dear young life.          
           
I screamed out to Smoochy, ‘Start climbing up the rope and don’t be scared’. Finally, Smoochy made it into the balloons basket and popped straight into my top, left-hand side pocket where he felt safe, once again. So, maybe Smoochy does understand me after all. The hot air balloon was getting higher and higher and further away from my home, heading towards the famous Bearfeet Ridge mountain tops.          
           
Ouch Ouch Ouch, I yelled out to Smoochy for help, again, again and again. Because, when I was running in bare feet, towards the strange, gigantic and really colourful object, I stepped on some prickles and it didn't at all, feel like funny feet tickles. I carefully pulled them out, one by one; all those pointy, painful prickles that were making my bare feet sore.          
           
I had an idea to get us off this fast moving hot air balloon. I pulled out my very super, sporty, single-shot, stylish slingshot from my back pocket and put one of those pointy, painful prickles into place on the slingshot that had been stuck in my feet.          
           
Bang, my first shot made a hole in the balloon and it started to drop down slowly over the treetops. But then, with an almighty, Thump, it stopped with a jolt and came to a complete and sudden halt.          
           
The dangling rope Smoochy had used to climb in with me, had tangled around a tree branch. It had miraculously landed, the hot air balloon right on top, although, on a very steep angle. I stood up and wiped the sweat off my brow and thought, ‘Wow, what a fun ride'.          
           
I climbed over the edge and onto a large limb and started to climb down carefully, branch by branch. Then, I heard very loud moans and growls coming from way down below. As I looked down, I felt excited and very lucky, but at the same time, I felt very nervous deep down inside.          
           
Smoochy, had peaked his head out and started to tremble, for what we were seeing had to be, that 'mysterious and rarely seen, yellow tailed, bear family'. Which a few older towns' people, have claimed to have seen.          
           
But the bears were looking, oh so very hungry, patient and keen. Then from afar, I heard people yelling out, 'Don’t move Stewy, stay where you are, for we’re almost there'.          
           
It was my Dad Archie and Sergeant Bill Stilrite from our local police station. Luckily, Dad had seen Smoochy and I, with his trusty homemade, fancy, far out, funny binoculars through the small, round shaped, backdoor window of his unusually built and outrageously painted, outback, backyard shed.          
           
He couldn't believe it, when I jumped into the balloon and it started to move. So, he had raced to his car and yelled out to my Mum Flo, ‘Call the local police now, on 000 and don't be slow’. Then my Dad started following us by car, from well down below.          
           
The police Sergeant Bill Stilrite along with my Dad, had both managed to follow us, in their very fast cars, right up until we came to a complete and sudden halt. The screaming of my Dad and Sergeant Bill Stilrite, had scared off the mysterious and rarely seen yellow tailed, bear family, making them all bolt.          
           
Now, safely back home and with an amazing, gigantic and really colourful hot air balloon tale to tell. I just don't know if my family and folks, will ever really believe that Smoochy and I saw the mysterious and rarely seen, yellow tailed, bear family, oh well.          
           
At least Smoochy was there and knows our adventures were fun and for real. Hopefully one day, I will write some books, about my childhood fun adventures and then, just maybe, try to sell them, for a buck or two.

SILLY SEASON, SLIPPERY SLOPES AND SOME SNOW SLUSH    
From the 7th diary entry of Stewy Lemmon's childhood adventures.    
       
WOW, it was already Christmas Eve. It goes to show, 'time flies when you're having fun', for winter was amongst us again. This year's weather was awfully cold, with the temperature dropping to only two degrees, it was freezing outside. I said, to my parents, 'it seems to be a silly shkeason for this time of year, and without any real good reason'.    
     
My dad, had gathered some wood for the open fireplace, that he had made for us inside. We then all sang songs and ate our multi coloured marshmallows, straight off the wooden sticks, to make us feel yummy, once inside our tummy.    
     
My mum Flo, said, with her cheeks as red as a rose, from the heat of the fire, which was making her cheeks glow. 'Do you want to go to the snow, for a couple of days'? We could have so much fun, in the white, cold snow'?    
     
So, the next morning, Dad packed up the car, with ski's, gloves, boots, jackets and even some ski chains for the slippery wet road tar.    
     
Mum, packed some food, drinks, our tooth brushes and even a hair brush and a comb. Then we hopped into the overloaded car, and headed off west in search of the white, cold snow.    
     
We finally arrived at the Shivermetimbers Ski Lodge, and the manager Monty Lopez, was there to greet us, and gave us the keys to our regular ski lodge. It's a funny job, by the way, for a bloke that can't even ski, due to vertigo, unbalanced and all.    
     
Once inside our weekend ski lodge, we quickly lit the enormous fireplace, which was built, smack in the middle of the very large lounge room.    
     
Mum and Dad had their own bedroom, my two much older, identical twin sisters, Emma and Jemma, had the ski loft, while my little brother Lemmy, Smoochy and I had the fold-out bed, that popped out from under the couch.    
     
Early next morning, we all ate bacon and eggs and drank hot chocolate, except for dad, who preferred his hot cup of tea.    
     
After breakfast, the manager Monty Lopez, told my Mum, Flo and my two, identical twin sisters, that they can have, free ski lessons down the back tracks, for an hour or so.    
     
     
But after only about, ten or fifteen minutes, with the, Shivermetimbers ski instructor, Stefan Pettersson, who was from North Poland, they just simply gave up.    
     
Not just because, every time they tried to stand up, all three of them kept falling flat on their backs. But, because Stefan Pettersson, could not speak a word of English, unlike his distant English speaking cousins in South Poland.    
     
I'm sure he was a great ski teacher, but maybe, needed to learn the language of the South as well. Then he could explain to the tourists, from English speaking countries, what he needed them to do, to stay on their feet.    
     
Meanwhile my Dad, along with his old and very funny friend, Trevor Thomas Timberlake, whom Dad has always called Triple T for short, were hiding in the retreat's garage, making another Christmas surprise.    
     
While Smoochy, Lemmy and I were trying to peek in and see what they were doing, we heard loud noises like, Boom, Buzz, Bang, Clunk, Clink, Clank, Smack, Swat, Slap and even Heave-**.We couldn't wait to see what they had made for us, after all of that noise.    
     
As we were walking back to grab a soft drink and bite to eat, BANG the garage doors opened, and that's when we saw our Christmas surprise.    
     
For it was Trevor Thomas Timberlake, dressed up in a very colourful Santa outfit. But, if you think that was funny, 'who do you think was pulling Santa's even more colourful sleigh'?    
     
It was the manager Monty Lopez's, eight very small pet Chiqaua's. They didn't look like they were that strong, to pull Santa's sleigh and Dad's old and very funny friend, Triple T.    
     
All of the kids and I were so pleased. I even noticed Smoochy, with a bit of a glee. Santa Trevor and his chosen helpers, my two, identical twin sisters Emma and Jemma, gave out the presents, to all of the children that were staying at the,'Shivermetimbers Ski Lodge'.    
     
Later that afternoon, my mum, had made a big barrel of fruit snacks for everyone to share. We were all about to start to eat, when all of sudden, we heard an almighty big crash.    
     
For Monty's eight very small pet Chiqaua's, were spooked by my grouse new pet mouse named, Smoochy. He had startled them all and made Triple T's Santa Sleigh, stack right into the table. With the fruit barrel sitting on top, the big crash had tossed the barrel of fruit, onto the ground and it rolled down the slippery snow ski slopes.    
     
Everybody rushed over to see all of the mess. But it actually turned out to be quite good looking, more or less. Because, Mum's fruit snack, had all spilled out and had created a really cool, very cold and quite a colourful, rainbow snack in the snow.    
     
I named that accidental creation of a mess, 'The Sensationally Spilt Rainbow Snow Snack on the Slippery Ski *****'.    
     
We had all decided to head back to our family's very large shack and have chicken nuggets with tomato sauce of course, instead of Mum's colourful fruit snack.    
     
In the morning, we went and saw the mess from the night before. My Dad and Triple T had come up with a clever idea, They had made some square wooden boxes, in such quick style.    
     
We gathered up all of the mess and packed it all into the wooden boxes. Then we made some very cool, fruit coloured, solid snow bricks. We were going to make some igloos out of the colourful bricks, and try and spend a whole night sleeping inside them.    
     
It wouldn't be that cold inside an igloo, we thought. Eskimo's do it all of the time, and they don't seem to catch that many colds.    
     
When morning had come, we had awoken to find the very cool, fruit coloured, solid snow bricks, had all melted away and we were lying in, not so very cool, fruit coloured, soggy, snow slush.    
     
We laughed and cried and hurried inside to get ourselves dried. I called that creation, 'The very cool, fruit coloured bricks, that just didn't stick'.    
     
Mum said, gather up all of that, not so very cool, fruit coloured, soggy, snow slush, and I will create you a new all time favourite, colourful fruit creation.    
     
She had put the slush and the fruit into several ice trays, and had placed solid sticks over each block and made them stick out a bit, from each of their ends. She then, cut holes in the middle of some plastic cups and placed the cups, on one of the ends.    
     
After a while, our very cool, frozen fruit delight, was ready to bite. We all had one, and yelled out yum, good on ya Mum. For, not only did the cup catch the melting ice, it also caught any fruit that fell off the side.    
     
I named that creation, 'Colourful Ice-Drips & Fruit-Drops in a Cup'. That's my Mum for you, always likes a good clean mess.    
     
Dad said, what a great idea, and that we should all listen more often to our Mums. Then, my Mum joked, 'if only your dad would listen to me more often'.    
     
That night, I was back in my fold-out bed, that popped out from the couch, I slept like a bug in a rug. Even Smoochy, crawled into bed, and gave me, an ever so tight hug, on our very last night, of our silly season, ski holiday trip.

COOL TENTS WITH HOT FOOD
From the 10th diary entry of Stewy Lemmon's childhood adventures.

Finally, the day Smoochy and I had been waiting for had arrived. It was Saturday the 7th of March. The day we were heading off to the, 89th Boy Scouts & Girl Guides, combined World Jamboree. The jamboree was held this year in the Nevada desert in Las Vegas, USA.

My dad Archie, was the local scout leader for the Shimmerleedimmerlee 1st scout group and my mum Flo, was second in charge of the Barefeet Mountain 3rd Girl Guide group. Mum's friend was the Barefeet girl guides leader and she was named, Miss Alice Springs. Dad was making the trip with other local scout leaders and 11 of us boys. Mum and Miss Alice Springs were taking 11 girls from the local Barefeet Mountain girl guide group, including my two much older identical twin sisters, Emma and Jemma. Also coming along was my much younger brother, Lemmy and of course my grouse pet mouse, Smoochy.

Dad has been in the local boy scout group since he was very young and his father, John Lemmon, my grandfather, was also in the same scout group when it first began, all of those years ago.

There were boy scout and girl guide groups from all over the world attending the big camping and adventure event. People from far away places like Norway, France, Egypt, Australia, Holland, England, Brazil, Thailand, Hong Kong, Italy and of course the host nation, the United States of America.

Every group, brought with them their home nations own colourful flags and individually designed tents, based on their countries culture or famous landmarks. It was like having all of the countries of the world, all in the one place at a time.

The boy scout and girl guide group from Thailand had a tent that looked like a Buddhist Temple and also had an outdoor kitchen where they would make, such great tasting, but ever so hot and spicy, food from.

The Egyptian guys and girls had a massive high tent, that resembled the world famous giant Pyramid of Giza. It must of taken them ages to make the angles so perfectly straight and with extreme precision.

Holland's tent was a large and fully operational, colourful windmill. It, even had it's very own water tank. The windmill tent was painted with colours and designs that even impressed my very artistic dad.

He said, 'He might even have to redecorate his unusually built, outrageously painted, outback, backyard shed and use some of the bright paint colours and fancy designs the boys and girls had done'.

The next tent was very big and long from the boy scout and girl guide groups of, Australia. It had been designed to look like the, Sydney harbour bridge. But it didn't have a roof to protect them from the weather, while they slept shoulder to shoulder, across the wooden bridge road. But, like most Aussies with relaxed and casual attitudes they said, 'She'll be right mate, Rain, Hail or Shine'.

The guys and gals from Italy, had a tent that was leaning over to the right, just like the, famous Leaning Tower of Pisa. They assured us all that it wouldn't fall over. 'Trust us, they said'.

Hong Kong had a very long tent that was based on the colourful, cultural inspired dragon. It had a lot of tent pegs on either side, to keep it's ever winding position in place. It was the most colourful and coolest tent of all. But at the same time, the most scariest tent of them all.

England's tent was based on the very historic, Tower of London. It even had two very serious looking guards on patrol out front, made out of paper mâché.

Norway's tent was in the shape of, a Vikings fighting helmet. It had, two large horns coming out from the left and right hand sides. It looked like a raging bull, in a bizarre sort of way.

Brazil came up with a giant yellow and green football, based on their national sport and colours of the country, for its design. All of us just hoped, 'It didn't get a sudden hole in it and start to knock over all of our tents, just like a giant pinball game'.

France went for a super, duper structure, that was wide at the bottom and became thinner towards the top. It was in the shape of the Eiffel Tower, of course. It was the tallest tent at the jamboree camping grounds and provided the best views from atop.

While the host nation the USA decided to honour the, Native American Indians. They, had a large tent resembling an original and colourful Indian Teepee, with a hole at the top. The scouts and girl guides from, the USA, sent out messages to everyone nearby, using the old, but still very effective, smoke signals way of communication. They said, 'Who needs the Internet, Facebook and Twitter, when you can send messages and cook a meal on a fire at the same time'?

After looking at all of the great tents made by all of the participating nations, we sat down to eat. Everybody had made a favourite dish from their home country. All the girl guides from Australia made the famous and delicious dessert cake called, Pavlova. But, it wasn't any ordinary Pavlova, for it was in the shape of the very large outback rock named Uluru. Which, by the way, is located in the middle of Australia, near a place called Alice Springs.

So my mum's friend has a very famous name indeed. The girl guides from Australia named this creation, 'The Alice Springs Rock'.

The Egyptians had made a dessert out of shortbread, that took them hours to make. Each piece of shortbread had to be skilfully cut, with exact precision or the creation just wouldn't stay in place. It was named, 'Pastry Plate of Pharaoh's Perfect Pyramid'.

The Italian Boy Scouts, prepared a series of huge leaning pizzas stacked on top of each other, on very acute angles, just like their tent. They named their creation, 'The Leaning Tower of Pizza'.

The host nation of the USA, made some yummy hotdogs with tomato ketchup, mustard and cheese. They made the hotdogs, pop up from each end of the roll and placed wooden sticks on either side to look like American Native Indians were rowing their canoes.

Norway had created a tasty snack made with salmon and biscuits which looked like little boats flowing down the Fjords. Also the impression of large rocks in the water that were in fact meatballs for all.

Thailand had served up several spicy dishes, including the famous Pad Thai dish with chicken and the hot soup named Hot and Sour with Prawns in Thai you pronounce it as Tom Yung Goong. It was so yummy in the tummy the dishes from Thailand.

In the Brazil kitchen they made us their nations famous Churrasco or BBQ. It uses a variety of meats like pork, beef and chicken which was cooked on large metal skewers stuck into the ground and roasted with the embers of the charcoal.

France baked up some crescent shaped flaky pastry named the Croissant. They added some great tasting almonds to a few, while some others had dried fruits such as sultanas, raisins and even apples.

Holland had an assortment of plates consisting of Gouda and Edam cheeses with mayonnaise and mustards and other plates had a rich variety of fruits, freshly cut meats and nuts placed upon them.

Hong Kong had very traditional Chinese meals prepared for all to enjoy. They had everything from fried rice, to Chinese noodles to my dads all time favourite Peking Duck, so when he saw the duck he said he was in luck. Also they had a plate full of Dim Sums and a Hong Kong favourite snack called egg tarts and another of my dads favourite drinks named milk tea.

Finally England had whipped up my Friday night special, which is Fish n Chips with tomato sauce. It was so good that a lot of the other nations said they would make it for their families, once they got home.

In the morning we had such great fun and adventure while trying every nations favourite sport or recreation. We started by having team races on the river in Native American Indian canoes, Norwegian Viking ships, Italian Gondolas, Egyptian river boats and Chinese dragon boat races in the nearby river. The winning order was Hong Kong 1st, Italy came in 2nd and third of all was Egypt.

We even had competitions to see who could do the best smoke signals and we even had fun rope climbing events to the top of the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning tower of Pisa, and walking and climbing events up the Pyramid of Giza and the Sydney Harbour Bridge tents.

Then some countries had a football game after lunch with teams from Brazil, England, Italy and France playing for the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides World Cup golden trophy. Brazil beat England in the final 3-1, to hold up the golden cup.

Some other nations had bike riding races, which Holland won with ease. Australia did really well in the boxing competition. Everybody laughed when Smoochy came out 1st, wearing a pair of boxing gloves, before they brought out a plastic blow up of their mascot wearing gloves "Big Red" the boxing kangaroo which was placed near the ring for good luck.

Thailand dominated the Judo and the USA couldn't be stopped in the 100m sprints and also the mixed basketball matches. So overall, everyone had such a great time and we all loved the tents, food and different sports to watch and perform in, from all of the world.

The week went so fast and it was sad to say goodbye to all of our new friends from all over the world, but we promised that we would stay in touch either by using smoke signals or the new generations way, which is either by Facebook or Twitter.

YELLOW TAIL MOUSE TALE  
From the 9th diary entry of Stewy Lemmon's childhood adventures.  
 
This week, I had the best surprise present since Christmas Day, when I received my new grouse pet mouse named, Smooch. But the surprise didn't come from my parents, Archie or Flo, for it didn't even come from my little brother Lemmy's mouth. It wasn't from the mouths of my two much older identical twin sisters, Emma and Jemma, either.  
 
Believe it or not, it came from the mouth of my mouse, named Smoochy. Yes that's right, he does speak and he told me about his remarkable life story, since birth.  
 
It began when, I was feeding him some of my Mum's delicious afternoon treat. Do you remember the one that I named, 'a colourful fruit-blast'? Smoochy said, 'wow!, I love your Mum's food, it reminds me of my Mums magical dessert creations, she used to make for me, before I came to live with the you and your family'.  
 
I was gob smacked, when I heard Smoochy, actually having a conversation with me. I now knew 100%, that I wasn't dreaming or hallucinating, when I thought, Smoochy spoke to me. Just like the time on the seashore with the whale, and the fairy floss at the seaside resort named, Slipslopslap Bay. Also the time during the circus, while we were holidaying at the big top park circus, named Rolling River Retreat.  
 
Smoochy, told me about his parents, who's names are, Slippy and Sloppy. He also said, 'that his birth name is actually, Poppy, but he didn't mind being called,Smoochy. His name I had given him last Christmas. He said, 'it's grouse for a mouse to have a cool nickname, in the world of humans'.  
 
He also added, that in the animal world most creatures, don't even speak. Except for some mice, a parrot, and he was also led to believe, maybe even the odd Dolphin, swimming around the ocean.  
 
Smoochy, told me, 'how he and his parents Slippy and Sloppy, ended up at the local pet shop, in my local village named, Shimmerdimmerlee, when he was only about 2 years old'.  
Smoochy' said, 'that his parents, used to travel around the globe, with the very colourful and world famous circus troop name, 'Mr. Kazoontite's and his Marvellous, Magical, Mysterious and Musically Minded Misfits'.  
 
They both used to appear in an act, with the circus's ventriloquist, who's stage name was, 'Mumbling Murray the Mouth of the South'.They would pop their heads out of his top, left and right hand side pockets, of his jacket, and pretend to speak in English.They could also speak, a bit of his native language called, 'Ogbogolo'.  
 
When Mumbling Murray, opened his mouth and spoke, they would only be grinding their teeth together, to get the cheese out of the gaps of their teeth. But, the crowd thought it was funny, so they just kept doing it, for every act, over several years.  
 
Then one day, my Mum was having a baby, it was me. So, I was born in a big top circus and was looked after, ever so well by my parents and all of the other circus workers. Then one day, Mumbling Murray had to go back to his home country, to look after his sick sister.  
 
Mumbling Murray, had just finished the circus tour, near our village and decided he should take my parents and I to the local pet store. He thought, 'maybe they can be cared for, by a new loving family'.  
 
While living in the pet store, we noticed, with utter amazement, a very colourful parrot, talking in English. So Smoochy's Dad, answered him back, and the parrot almost fell off his perch. He spun around, about 3 times in a row. He then yelled back to my Dad, 'did you say that'? Yes, I did indeed, replied my dad, with a very proud smile on his face. Wow, said the parrot, 'I thought I was the only non human, who could speak'.  
 
Smoochy's Dad told the parrot, who's name was Polly, by the way, 'that he and his wife Sloppy, had learnt to speak English, from the ventriloquist acts performing with Mumbling Murray, the Mouth of the South, and the world famous circus troop named, 'Mr. Kazoontite's, Marvellous, Magical, Mysterious and Musically Minded Misfits'. They, in turn, taught their only son, Smoochy, mouse language. during the day and English at night, before he went to sleep.  
 
As for my Mum Sloppy and her magical dessert creations she used to make for the family. It was the best mixtures of sweet and colourful ingredients anyone could ever imagine. She used to go looking for snacks that were left on the floor under the seating area after the end of each nights circus performance. She would find things like salted popcorn with a touch of butter, a variety of different coloured chocolate, Neapolitan ice cream, orange Jaffa's and an assortment of lollies. It was so fun eating it all in a large dessert bowl after our main meal.  
 
Gee I miss those days and miss my mum and dad so much, Smoochy (Poppy) told me. So the next day I mentioned to my parents that I really need to go to the loc pet shop to get something really important for Smoochy. They said what do you need? Dad said I have built you a new pet mouse house for your grouse new pet mouse Smoochy and I even hand painted it with such colourful flair using my artistic nous.  
 
What else does Smoochy need, asked my mum. I said it is something that everyone needs in life and can never be replaced. So my parents said ok, tomorrow morning we will go down to the village pet shop and try and find what is so important for you and your grouse pet mouse Smoochy.  
 
Here we are Smoochy, at the pet shop that took you and your parents in a few years ago. Let's go and have a look for you mum and dad together. We saw slimy snakes, sticky spiders, floating frogs, flirting fish, droopy ducks and even timid turtles. Then all of a sudden we spotted several mouse houses.  
 
Smoochy was quietly saying, "Hello mum and dad are you here", even I was yelling out, Slippy, Sloppy, are you here. Then Smoochy spotted his parents in a mouse house which was stacked up on the top of a shelf full of books, towards the back of the pet shop.  
 
Hello son, how have you been and how did you and your new friend know we were living here? Smoochy told them that his new friend Stewy, knows that he can talk and I told him of my early years of life and what had happened to us all.  
 
I then yelled out to my parents, "I've found what Smoochy needs, we have found his real parents right here in Shimmerdimmerlee's village pet shop. Mum and dad said ok, you can have the two much older mice, so Smoochy has a mum and dad like everyone should have in their lives, even though they aren't his real parents.  
 
So back home we went and welcomed Smoochy's mum and dad, Slippy and Sloppy to their new grouse pet mouse house and even showed them dads unusually built and outrageously painted outback backyard shed.  
 
It was a hot afternoon, so we also slid down the "Terrific Triple Tumbling Tremendously Turning Travelling Tubes" to the village pond and introduced Buck the Duck to Smoochy's mum and dad.  
 
Smoochy and I have decided to keep his families secret to ourselves for now. It's ok that my mum and dad don't believe what I say on some occasions, because at least I know what the meaning of family means deep down inside, for myself but also for my friend and grouse pet Smoochy and his loving mum and dad.

We used to play, Like really play
Not like the games we play today
Technology is taking over our games
Nothing will ever be the same
Colourful minds being taken away
Colourful minds now fading to grey
Suppressing the inner being wild
Taking the dreams from many a child
Take away this dreary technology
Give our children their right to be free

In this age of global uncertainty, clothes have become a kind of panacea for a growing number of consumers. Designers are responding to the political upheavals of the past year by injecting some much-needed humour into women’s wardrobes. Browns CEO Holli Rogers is already predicting that spring’s sartorial hit will be Rosie Assoulin’s smiley-face T-shirt. This cheery number, which reads "Thank you! Have a Nice Day!’" neatly sums up the jubilant mood of the coming season.

The logic goes that turning up the dial on the fun, the colourful and the crazy is the sartorial equivalent of Michelle Obama’s "when they go low, we go high" mantra. We may not be able to control the chaos of world events, but we still rule our own style.

It’s no coincidence that a cartoonish aesthetic, of the sort you’d find if you rifled through an eccentric child’s dressing-up box, was in plentiful supply on the spring/summer 2017 runways. Alessandro Michele’s army of Gucci geeks displayed growing swagger in garish get-ups that ran from fuzzy crayon-coloured furs featuring zebras to tiered, tinsel-y coats that rivalled Grandma’s Christmas tree.

It was a similar story at Dolce & Gabbana, where sumptuous eveningwear was loaded with pasta and pizza motifs, and drums became bags, while Marc Jacobs tore a page from a psychedelic colouring book, covering clothes with the childlike scrawl of the London illustrator Julie Verhoeven. Even ardent minimalists would have to admit that these playful looks have potent pick-me-up power.

For Anya Hindmarch – whose empire is built on feel-good fashion – all this frivolity is nothing new. "An ironic, lighter and more irreverent approach has always been my thing. People love beautiful objects and increasingly, they want to show their character – that’s the point of fashion," she says. "Customers today are more confident with their style. There aren’t so many rules. It’s about putting a sticker on a beautiful handbag and not being too precious about it."

What’s surprising is who is consuming this cartoonish style. Though there’s no real rhyme or reason, says Hindmarch, often it’s older clients who are investing in the maddest pieces – like her cuddly, googly-eyed Ghost backpack that has also been spotted on Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner.

The same is true of the customer for the Lebanese designer Mira Mikati’s emoji-embellished styles. Though her fans run from twenty to fiftysomethings, at a recent London pop-up one of Mikati’s most ardent buyers was an 87-year-old. "She tells me that whenever she wears my clothes people stop her on the street. They smile. They start conversations. She literally makes friends through what she wears."

Mikati began her career as a buyer, co-founding the upscale Beirut boutique Plum, before launching her own line some four seasons ago – largely out of frustration at the sameness of the mainstream collections. "I wanted to create something fun and colourful but easy to wear – that you can add to jeans and a white T-shirt, but that’s also a conversation point."

Her clothes, worn by Beyoncé and Rihanna, are certainly that: pink parrot-appliquéd trench coats, scribble-print hooded tops and dresses clad with a family of monsters who spell out her Peter Pan ethos in scrawled speech bubbles that read "Never Grow Up’" The antithesis of normcore, these designs take their cue from her children’s toy trunk and the Japanese pop art of Takashi Murakami – who returned the compliment by donning one of her patched bombers.

Mikati is clearly onto something. According to Roberta Benteler, who founded online fashion emporium Avenue 32 in 2011, it’s the cartoon aesthetic that’s really piquing women’s desire right now.

"Anything that looks like a child’s drawing or a toy sells incredibly well," she says. "Brands like Mira Mikati, Vivetta and Les Petits Joueurs inspire the impulse to buy because they’re so eye-catching. You have to have it now because there’s a sense you won’t find it anywhere else."

The exponential rise of street-style stars and the social-media machine that now propels the fashion industry also plays a part in the popularity of these playful looks.

"Designers are creating for the online world and customer," continues Benteler, who cites the Middle Eastern consumer as a big investor in these niche eccentric designs. "People find escapism in fashion and more than ever they need something to cheer them up. These are clothes that stand out on Instagram, and for designers that translates into sales."

In practical terms, in an effort to beat the warp speed of high-street copying, designers are differentiating themselves with increasingly intricate and artisanal styles that are harder to mimic. Just because these pieces have a childlike sensibility doesn’t mean they’re not beautifully crafted.

"My aim is create a handbag that you can keep as a design piece," explains the accessories designer Paula Cademartori. One of her most successful designs – the Petite Faye bag, which comes in a whole rainbow of configurations – takes more than 32 hours to create at her Italian studio. "Even if the styles are colourful and speak loudly, they’re still sophisticated," says Cademartori, whose brand was recently snapped up by the luxury goods group OTB. It can pay to be playful.

One man with a unique insight into the feel-good phenomenon is Marco de Vincenzo, who combines his longstanding role as leather goods head designer at Fendi with creating his own collection. "When we first created the Fendi monster accessories for bags we were simply playing around," he says of the charms that still loom large some three years on. "The most successful designs are created without pressure, through play."

His own-line debut bag features an animalistic paw. ‘It’s about creating something new and different for women to discover,’ he explains. "You buy something because you love it, not because you need it. Fashion is like a game – it has to excite."

When it comes to distilling this childlike abandon into your wardrobe, take cues from super style blogger Leandra Medine, who balances madcap pieces, such as her first collection of colourful footwear under her MR By Man Repeller label, with plainer, simpler ones. "It’s all about wearing your clothes with joy, and having fun, but not looking ridiculous," says Cademartori. "You don’t want to look like an actual cartoon."

It’s advice that chimes with that of Anya Hindmarch. "I love the idea of wearing a super-simple Comme des Garçons jacket and a white shirt with a really fun bag to mess it all up a bit." It’s a failsafe formula for dressing your way to happiness.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses

I drink aurora till my thirst satiates.
Eyes shut, I drink till the gulf widens whilst every spark in me is painted dull
Till no eye sees vividness in the flittering of butterflies,
Till throbbing fades and rumbling becomes melodic,
I drink till  my covertness is colourful,  
Till my eyes redness is painted
For bereft I am but I'm a fighter, a believer
I drink aurora till my soul is filled
Till transcendency becomes my fortune
And then I'll dance not in colours, but colourful my immortality would be.

He'd been conceived in Flamborough, so his little sister assured him some eleven summers ago, which was a tad hard for Rocky to swallow, she was a whole eighteen months his junior and then some... and at that age, well... what did she know, she was only a kid, "on this very rock" River insisted, kicking her heels in delight, "next to this very rock pool" they were both sitting beside, "one sunny afternoon eleven years ago..." and that was how he came by the name of Rocky... she taunted as the rest of the colourful story unfolded... and that she had it all on the best possible authority... although the more she thought about it, had she meant concealed... she wasn't quite sure now, it was all so very confusing at her tender age but thought it sounded close enough not to matter too much and that she would just wait and see which way the wind blew.
        
     It was conceivably an ill wind that blew no one any good that day, especially if you were a boy and just happened to be sat by a rock pool next to your little sister...  Having just taken a well earned drink from a neighbouring rock pool, Sockeye the floppiest Springer Spaniel this side of the Pecos decided that he was going to dig a hole and that he would be digging it deep, then changed his mind mid-dig and decided to have a more down to earth back scratching wriggle instead... then promptly flopped over and slid into the hole... life was sweet.  Now covered from nose to tail with every species of deceased shore life usually found frequenting the high water mark Sockeye, in a blinding flash of canine inspiration judged it would be in everyone's best interest were he to have a really good shakedown which always appeared to go down well on these occasions... and give everyone a good peppering, just so they could see exactly what they'd been missing all their lives.  

     "A rock of all places, for goodness sakes..." and what's more, it was this rock, "Yuk..." he jumped up and wiped his palms on the back of his jeans in disgust, then onto his tee-shirt, then sat back down again and began exploring his left nostril in quiet contemplation before finally jambing his hands back into his pockets... what in Heaven's name had his parents been thinking of..? what on earth was his little sister talking about..? and more to the point, what in fact did conceived mean..?  these were the questions that were uppermost in Rocky's mind as he poked an exploratory stick into the rock pool...  a baby crab marooned by the tide scampered sideways beneath a large pebble and stuck one beady eye out at him... Rocky's sister, seemingly in a world of her own, much like the baby crab sat on the edge of the noteworthy rock kicking her heels, an innocent smile curled the corners of her mouth as she quietly hummed a little song of tuneful bliss to herself and considered what further mischief she could possibly pass her brother's way.

     Rocky tossed a piece of driftwood over his sisters shoulder at a nearby flock of seagulls, squabbling over what appeared to be a discarded bag of fish and chips... Sockeye, simply knowing that his little master wanted to play a game of fetch gambolled after the stick, his ears flying courageously in the still Summer air and burst, amid a melee of feathers into their midst, only to romp back moments later, the stick all but forgotten in the excitement but now proudly sporting the derelict bag of leftovers and the odd splash of guano, his tail lolloping magnificently from side to side... and for the moment at least, leaving the fratching seagulls wheeling noisily overhead and to go about their daily business without further interruption... as for Sockeye, it had been a no contest situation.

     After fourteen years of valiant endeavour his father... Red, so named for his vivid shock of wiry hair, was still engaged in man's eternal struggle to win his significant other half's approbation with the manful art of deck-chair assembly, beach barbeque and other significant gentlemanly pursuits, all while strutting his manly stuff, sporting top of the range beach wear in accordance with the social etiquette of the previous decade... his masculine paunch slumping gallantly atop his waistband...  

     After the same fourteen terms of domestic servitude and the same thirteen identically overlooked anniversary cards a certain someone had no intention of allowing another certain someone to forget so much as one of them... his better half, so she insisted would ride rough shod, administering her own brand of justice at every given opportunity, in much the same way you'd brandish a royal-flush on poker night... or better still, a loaded revolver... and that she personally carried the burden of every ill-fated card that Lady Luck had dealt strung about her neck like Adam's original sin on Judgement Day.  

     Red much preferred the shorter, more condensed name of Rock for his son, rather than the longer more protracted Rocky, as he struggled with the wood and canvas lounger badly trapping the mound of his thumb in the process, "Aaargh...!!!" plunging his throbbing hand deep into the cold, soothing rock-pool "aaah...!!!"   Still marooned by the tide, the baby crab stood poised and ready for action as it considered giving this latest intrusion a good offensive nip, then hang on spitefully as it gave Red the final withering once over with the same baleful eye it had successfully used earlier.

     Acknowledging her husbands misfortune with a perfunctory grunt as she rummaged in her beach-bag for the thermos, she refused to be drawn in where thumbs were concerned right now, after all with his DNA sequencing she was convinced he could probably grow a new one within the month... whilst Tina, well... she was just plain worn-out... but still rejoiced in telling anyone who cared to lend a sympathetic ear in her direction... and who in turn was more than happy to listen to the woes of others and went somewhere along the lines of... 'and had she heard any more of poor Mrs Dorey's lingering martyrdom recently..? you know, the downtrodden lady who lives in the next street but one... and how they would all miss her when she was gone... and how she couldn't wait...' and as rumour had it, neither could her husband...

      Feigning to be otherwise engaged, Tina... as her husband, now blowing frantically on his mangled thumb, stumbled backwards over the half erected lounger and with a spine jarring "Ooomph...!!!" landed squarely in Sockeye's subsiding earthworks... professed total disassociation with the entire fiasco as she plunged her nose even deeper into the overdue library book she'd purposely brought on holiday for just such an occasion, making it perfectly clear that she was a tourist and furthermore, planned to stick with the same itinerary once they returned home... and that while she was here, she did not under any circumstances wish to be disturbed, the notice was clearly displayed hanging from the door handle... but if anyone should, then whoever it was did so at their own peril... and she was keeping score... although a mangled thumb she luxuriated, with the same roguish smile curling the corners of her mouth as the one normally found playing around her daughter's... was equally as heart warming.

      All Tina wanted was one week of uninterrupted peace and quiet in Flamborough, preferably with a certain someone out from under her feet then spend what might pass for several undisturbed hours sitting quietly by the rock pool comparing notes on eye makeup and the feminine merits of pedicure with the little crab who, still marooned by the tide was now sat busily knitting four pairs of matching leg warmers in the cool, still water but that was only if that certain someone... a shrill  "AAaargh...!!!" somewhat more desperate than the first, ****** itself upon the as yet unaggressive afternoon as it gyrated across the warm Jurrasic rock and recoiled out to sea... "now where was I", twisting her book uppermost "oh yes..! someone was going to pay..." only now it was going to be sooner rather than later, but only if that certain someone didn't finish the seating arrangements before the Sun disappeared and drift into some backstreet tea-room before all the lemon cheesecake sold out, or was that she reflected, simply too much to ask.

     It was his Surname that Rock found so objectionable, or it had been right up until his little sister's enlightening disclosure, now it was both names Rocky disliked, it would have been far kinder had Rock Salmon been sandwiched between sliced bread and given to Sockeye... who's solemn duty, from the first mouthful to the very last, was to gaze up beseechingly from beneath the kitchen table  and devour anything that passed his way, even the postman had to be quick about his business or have his arm follow the mail through the letter box... then Sockeye would just smack his lips and help himself to seconds.  

     All Rocky's mum had thought about for the last fourteen years was seconds... every last solitary one of them since she'd suffered with an infection of matrimonial neurosis which had deprived her of common sense and her maiden name, from Chovey to that of Salmon and how with hindsight she should have taken an Aspirin instead, wedlock she asserted was everything the name claimed to be and was without doubt the worst move she'd ever made... and what's more was seen as a bad move in whoever's wedding album you just happened to be paying your condolences to.

     Rocky would never be so fortunate on that score, unlike his sister he was stuck with Salmon for good, his grandma-Ann by all accounts had been dead set against the union from word Go and saw his father as someone who would always be out of his depth in whatever rock pool he found himself in, swimming against the tide as it were, rather than going with the flow... and it appeared that Rocky, almost eleven years into a life sentence, was about to flounder in the same murky undertow as the rest of the Salmon family... only he couldn't swim.

     "There"! her husband exclaimed "all finished... better late than never eh', who fancies trying it"? his wife luxuriated over the words 'better late' and wondered whether her new earrings, her latest acquisition would complement formal mourning attire.  Red dusted off the palms of his hands with the certain knowledge of a job well done and cautiously took one step back, looking with justifiable pride at the outcome of his manly exertions of the last two hours, this was what holidays were all about he declared, one man pitted against insurmountable odds...  His wife meanwhile was getting to grips with more odds of her own than you could safely expect to shake a stick at... her husband being one of them.  

     Having gathered her offspring with the promise of verbal earache if they didn't... and finished packing the beach-bag, Tina finally located Sockeye peering out from the shade of an adjacent rock, wisps of feathers poked tellingly from the corners of his mouth, his tail beating mischievously on the shingle decided in one further blaze of canine brainstorming, as Tina attempted to slip his collar on that a game of tag would just about round the day off nicely... Tina then devoted the next ten minutes chasing him amid unrestrained salvo's of cheering from the rest of the family... then bid goodbye to the little crab who, still marooned by the tide waved a friendly pincer in return... and trusted that she wouldn't have too long to wait for the next rising tide back home, then she slid off the rock with a corrosive... "the deck-chair attendant would have shown you" she snapped "and don't forget the deposit when you take them back" then double checking that she landed squarely on his foot she marched past, her floral sun hat jammed resolutely on her head at what she considered a jaunty angle with her equally jaunty, angular children scrambling in hot pursuit, back in the direction of their lodgings.  

     "Woof "..? said a bewildered Sockeye, bringing everyone to an abrupt halt... and with paws the size of place-mats, he wasn't going anywhere he didn't want to... he hunkered down with a look of hurtful accusation on his face, "oh yes you are my lad"! said his mistress "I've met your sort before" and knew exactly where to place the toe of her dainty size-5 as Sockeye, digging his heals in even further created swathes of canine furrows up the beach, leaving her husband the unwitting holder and in sole possession of the overlooked guest-house keys... and somewhat resigned to clean up his own masculinity and dismantle the recently assembled, now redundant deck-chairs by himself... as for Tina, well... she'd had quite enough excitement for one day thank you very much.

     Morning register was always the worst he thought, as they trooped back along the shingle beach, Rocky making surprisingly good furrows of his own... but the rest of the class loved it and saw it as the highlight of each day... Rocky's form teacher, despite showing a brave face was always hard pressed to avoid bursting into hysterics every time she worked her way down the register to the letter 'S' and would attempt to bypass it altogether, jumping from 'R' to 'T' and just prayed that no one else had noticed, but it hadn't taken the class very long to point out her oversight and... "please Miss" they'd all chant "we haven't had Salmon all week" and while the rest of the class were having convulsive fits, Rocky would elbow the lad sat at the next desk in the ribs... and promptly get one hundred lines for his trouble... thank goodness it was school holidays.  Why couldn't they have been given respectable names like Seymour Legge, Rock wondered, who sat over by the window or perhaps the teachers pet, Anna Prentice or even, Robyn Banks at a pinch, but definitely not what they'd been given and certainly not Salmon, they were the most hilarious names he could imagine and if someone was looking down on them right now he thought... then they had a very unique sense of humour indeed and Rock said so... "why" his little sister asked sweetly, "what's wrong with River Salmon".

                                                      ­                         ...   ...   ...*

a work in progress*                                                        ­                                                              240­6

Into the wonderment of your autumnal mind.
Where the skin of your grief sheds its leaves.
Is the song of your sea bound into colourful light?
The Shepherd breaches the flock of your dreams,
And the pastures breathe a sigh of relief,
As your tears of morning dew
Glisten the parched landscape.
Does your bouquet of *****
Lay wistfully in the wilderness?
The skies of blue that reside in your eyes
Serenades the coming of the tide,
Harvesting the fruit of our labour of love.
Is this a wind of smile that turns into a voyage of valiancy?
A flock of thoughts liberated with a cry of exclamation
As your fears of autumn blue
Are exiled into the rapacious wind.

the film plays
a 1950's film
I am lost for a moment;
dancing to the blues and looking into the eyes of a lover -they're grey.
grey eyes. grey skin. grey lips. grey ballroom.
grey. grey. grey. -everything is grey.

But his eyes are a deep grey with light specks,
and the tiles on the floor are patterned with different shades,
and he is dressed with dark grey attire
-but he is the most colourful thing I have ever seen.

In a colourful world you would think things would be complementary;
but the more colourful it appears, the more black and white it is;
the carpet is red, just red, the walls are white, just white,
his eyes are brown. Just brown.
but in this film his eyes are grey -light, grainy, grey.

There's grey in his eyes,
and there's grey all around me,
but my, I seem to have gotten lost;
his eyes are the most colourful things I've ever seen in my life.

the film stops.

(Nicole Joanne) all rights reserved

At times I heard the songs of the giants
who opted to sing for a glass of wine!

Like Omar Khayyam would sing to the grove of vine,
while singing their lullabies they wouldn’t mind,
defying the bloomer stars in the moonlights
gladly treading on the black alleys of the night.
Didn't they budge, didn't they bend to pick up  
a potion of the sea, billowing in the dark?
But they opted out, just for a glass of wine!

To paint a glimpse of that gorgeous Saqi
till now they shun, lending the sun a paintbrush,
‘cause "if only it was colourful enough,” yet the sun
paints the enduring shades of the blue yonder.
But they turned around—just for a glass of wine!

The moon hanging low over the ocean took a pause.
The earth weighed down so deep is brimful!
Every sunrise paints new, loves to shine on once more
That delved-deep earth vintage taste, cooled in age-old,  
now close by the hands breathe in, full of warm south.
Yet they opted out—just for a glass of wine!

Even the time is speechless, ask me not but why.
Still keeps an ear bent on the wall of the leaning sky.  
Nor those who pop out with an inside scoop are ever drunk.
Nor they leak out, it’s a sea off the sea or Abe-Hayath.
It ain’t that small, it is the deathless spring of elixir!

Colourful candle
Your flame flickers
I inhale your sensual scent
You create a magical mood
Poised for rest and relaxation
Or the real romanticism
Of a perfect enchanted evening

The hallowed turf is a six-seasonal
always one step ahead on Earth.
So exceptional a land is out of the box
acutely drawn down the Moon
and sublimely unique is written in stone!

A patch of land every star loves to touch
so much so the Mintaka know they can mirror
the pyramid on the surface of the earth
but not the tucked away zenana here
the planetary gem, the earth's gold dust:
Matches the lead Prophet's birthplace!

Open and globular star clusters
up above the mundane Himalayas peak look
diagonally into Sylhet down the Meghalaya stardust
eying on for a shortcut to Earth's gold dust
that only gushes out elixirs Abe Hayat.

Lovely sought after by the water nymphs
that won't tarry scurrying to the waterfront of paradise
in Ma, the space between, while the waxing moon
takes a waning pause only to roll down and croon
in deep tranquil, thaws the midnight moonlit blue pond
amidst silhouetted bamboos, the sun after a night pause,
there it blooms new again bathing in the morn!

Boarding in such a serendipitous moment, they dream,
carried out just these hidden elixirs in their pitchers
before Queen Fathima The Queen of Heaven.
Perfectly spherical she zeroes in the cosmic loop
and spills in the open sea one more colourless scoop
without a pinch of salt there the sunrise and set troupe
pause and lay in once again the most colourful swoop.

Up above heaven's Saal Saabila River
on the empyrean Moon, she hops on one foot
and down the evergreen Earth's spring dips a toe
without a shadow without a footprint, tone on tone
ties both worlds forever in bloom!

Blow the wrap off, score a preserved geometry
somewhere in Sylhet, even the Hebrew King David here
would offer his thousand and one melodic symposium
and King Solomon princely his whole affluent shebang.
'Cause the prevailing sun from heaven this time
could roll down on a palm simply like a handful of earth!

Oh, what will it land in Sylhet, the pearl of the earthy depth?
Art in light, the spark from the Earth's foundation stone?
Eyes gaze on so firm like the solid sky yet surge like kite
in the air looking here over a truly pristine drop of water
with the ocean is inside until it shows up down the blue sky
though rainbows oft pop out tantalising every looking eye!

The fairy that ascends then is a stealer no hand can touch
seven colours shine on a patch of blue unspoiled untouched
took on a meaning for Sylhet in a handful of earth
matching the soil of Makkah the centre of the Earth
the birthplace of the lead prophet Muhammad (PBUH)!
One who is in the know hops on the foundation stone
and rose to heaven in the Night of Ascension.

How a regular soil mirrors the very pivotal one?
The labyrinth is out of this world, relates to Queen Maab
let alone a native maestro that no genie can describe!
Every atom loves to discover the meaning of that
it knows the constant vibrations of the never-ending dance
keeping it on its toe the choreography comes from outside.
The feet are most polished and motions are butterfly dance,
still the canvas is blank, light one more candlelight!

Light a candle in Sylhet I wonder here the moonlight
spills through even into an atom's black canvas and the sun
lovely drops down on a handful of earth on the flipside!
Meet here the open future shows up at the Earth's hub
the moon's anew rallying to the untouching-sea
the Indian subcontinent's corner to the ancient wind!

Go with the southern breeze on play with the sun
here it colours the wind, gives it its Midas touch
and strikes a deal to part a silhouetted cloud.  
That a beauty spot raises the eyebrows of the day on a high,
on the shining face of the golden Bangla in broad daylight!

Hark the morning birds, follow singing deep in the midst
mellifluous-shrills fill the air unveiling the dream scenes!
Ah, the deep footed earth how mystique,
every morning the sun off the heaven's hill
lays in a new diaphanous gold-light-rug beneath it,
only to loose its colours in a colourless magic
let alone painting its footprint!

Every time is new numerates the bounties of our land
craving to sip in a dew-potion on our blossoming rose
cirrus clouds dancing over the seas here they drop
banish the midday blues singing the deep sea's song!

Nestled amidst the Rivers Surma, Kushiara and Monu
perched on the shades of the trees, each one is a canvas.
Returning melodic birds crescendo by the downstream  
hail from the autumnal breeze on the upstream.
Six seasons rebound alike leap and swing on the trees
unpacking their intricate and mesmeric fluid designs
often make a meal of the obvious and work of art alike!

Stunned angels on their way heaven taking one more sunset
potted in the starry bowl look back here at the wee hours.
They can hear pianissimo on this preserved perennial land
it never falls asleep is awake with a perfectly round
360-degree circle of spiritually impowered dynamos
dead but live on a different level Dervishes
keeping an ear on the hallowed Sylhet's ground.    
A deep-seated truth, rock-solid Shilahatta in Sanskrit
clothed in an enduring vesture minted Sylhet loops in
with the Hebrew Bible's Shalet, a ruler, a shield!  

A little drop makes the mighty ocean
likewise with one single word on the lips,
the maestros' great epics begin to be told.
Just with a mundane handful of earth
pristine Sylhet's masterpiece begins to unfold.

With the whole ball of wax keeping us onboard
lo, before the face of the Earth, it unveils the mirror!
With the whole nine yards on her least hold
believe it or not, Sylhet is cherry-picked chosen by God!

(0)
Fly perfectly straight and high, and show the fly
out of the fly-bottle on your way.
Rise to victory, far above the blue sky,
and reap the reward: the opening of paradise!

The road ahead is clear and open this way,
with things small and big growing and disappearing up this way.
You will see sunrises and sunsets waxing and waning,
with mention of the moon and stars in the dark.
Be mindful as you sway, it's got to be laser-sharp.
There is no hard shoulder on this highway,
miss it by an inch and risk losing everything forever!

There is hope, there is light up high
pick up your paintbrush, just like the sun does
goodness knows how it sneaks in, right in the black
canvas of the night, painting the first light
lo, it shows up in heaven, the candle of the daylight.

As long as there is a man and a woman,
never give up, our canary bird can fly
rosy or not, the nest in every morn nets a sunrise!

(1)
A woman indeed plucks up the courage
she never had to look up to the stars
be it for the guide or the light in the night.
Fathima herself was the full Moon every night
is thanks to her Godsent innate light.

With it, she can bask in the full spread of the pi
on top of its short decimals mounting high
constantly as if countless stars in the sky.

The time and space under the sun
and that under Fathima's light
are far apart from each other
yet they coexist side by side.

As she points out,
"A circle is masculine
while pi is feminine."

Pi forms the circle with fine prints,
decimal dots continue to spring,
sprawling trillions of new digits,
the bandwagon is still increasing.
Connecting the dots is an untouched dream.

The full moon pi picture is veiled,
unseen at large, yet in short, 3.145 it can live!

(2)
Fathima flies her lock of hair
in the lurking air of the transcended pi
the primitive feminine does that,
no wonder she is God's secret feminine opus!
An immeasurable black hole lies in between
the short and transcended pi, running like a river,
dancing anew on every riverbank
in the many curls of Fathima's jet black hair.

She lent out a hair to the planet earth
and crossed over like a silhouette
without spilling out the colour
of the transcended end of the pi.
The earth takes it in the core in her heart
as if it would keepsake it forever.

Weaving the pi in Fathima embeds two hairs ties one
perfect circle at the back and one at the front of the universe.
Inside each hair the earth is finest fluid in the core
none is as deep as high as proportionate a perfect flow.
No time is as revealing no music is as sweet in this orb
no force is as mighty nor as prevailing a true giant
causing gravity and the heat at the earth's core.
Matter and spirit mix free in the play both wax lyrical
thanks to the pure resonance of 'Qun Be' the word of God!

(3)
The way to the earth's core is exposed to none other
save the Angel of Death the lucky one.

See both sides of the one lofty sky swathed in countless stars  
but the day and night render through still remains an unseen one  
Terra is shalet zeroed in Fathima is heaven on earth!  
Up in the sky-high bank turning the starry bowl upside down
Fathima took no star nor a pearl diving deep down the Arab water,
the brightest luminary came after Muhammad (PBUH),
in veil from the Night of Measures and into the flipside in the night
she's gone without lifting the veil but left her penetrating mark.

Few could find the shortcut contemplating on a blank canvas
the Moon looks down into the abyss down the sea eyes on far
for a mirror in the bottom on the as above so below matter
since Godsent Fathima touched on the all-inclusive primitive water.
The sun gets caught up in the very water dew she raised in the sky
the ancient fold of time still unfurls with the sun-kissed flowers
for the new hands yet the fingerprint on the sun remains only her!

Azrael heads to Fathima around the year 632 after death
touches down in Medina on his usual thin earth he steps.  
But this time a little mundane dust couldn't be thicker
he keeps descending deep down to the earth's centre
following from Medina but the angel locates her
inside the perfect circle a closed geometric figure.

(4)
Fathima is the female headline her secret is not all known
when she used to visit the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
he would stand up for her hold her hand and kiss it
and seat her on his seat, she would do the same to the prophet
when he would visit her like they did know each other
in and outside the spheres of heaven and earth!

She is the embodiment of the infinite feminine variations
the first spiritual woman created following God's word Qun.
Her is the mother tongue of the ever diversified feminine lingua
no one woman on her own can rhyme with her alone
she has no peer her rhetoric is unique like none other.
The galactic run from planet to planet up on the starry ladder
climbing high up the mountain heaven yet streams out like oval
off their rock bottom stone until that unleashes the final run
in perfect circle delving into the rhythm of the loop at the centre
made of Fathima's hair charged by 'Qun' God's uncreated word.  

Prophet David can sing on the bank of the river
and can see the fish are jumping to him out of the water.
The masculine is open form, eye on everywhere,
but not her the woman is in juxtaposition her
all-inclusive schema supplanting the details rest only on her.
She is the unseen world within the world at best imagine her!
Guess, through this inwardly open door who might disappear?
It's nature before the scientist on ultimate discovery of the matter!  

Aligning with her down the rainbow up high the land absorbs
the grooming sky looking on the running rivers within her.
Her words spread through like the smart cloud that flies far
over the lands and valleys but not even the wind none other
gets a sniff of the potion and melody it caries until that rain down
without a hurdle without a visual she moves on at the target
such a soul needs no after death lift from the angel of death.

Before Azrael Fathima loses an arc of the circle then and there
so not the earth but giant Azrael can take the pressure!
Marked by a fluid discharge since then she is cooling this fire
In Shaa Allah God willing when she ajars it, it will be elixir!  

(5)
Draw a straight line, but it won't be perfect
it keeps bending, fly straight touching the sky
the flight path won't look like a straight line
it would be like the crest of a crescent moon
like curve touched the sky, like climbing up
atop the pyramid is not going high straight on
it goes up from the widespread seked slopes.

Moves in golden ration 1.618 not the full two
and gets the designing formula flawlessly full
micro to macro all levels all the way to the true north!    

Fathima being the original feminine eyeing at her
she can tap in the knowhow of naturally feminine nature.
And discovers the immanent pattern - the world
is pre-designed and measured is never a coincidence.
The creatures' creativity, scientist's science
is to follow, discover working formulas like phi and pi.

Play along it works until an unknown hour strikes
comes with accurate knowledge dead on time
numerically correct never miss taking a life away
as if it was calculated beforehand before the birth.
A newborn is born for a limited time
already set but no one knows when it goes up  
is a deadlock clock but it isn't so shrouded
in the blueprint of the creatures' grand design
there the clock ticks safe and sounds it never dies!  

(6)
Fathima hailing from the other side of the pool
eyes on the ever live pre-design side of the creation!
Then its corporeal face was only a water drop,
the primitive one looks see-through it has dead zero
knowledge of its lively other side of the pool.
She comes closer and perfectly mirrors both sides
that shines through on her reflected face on the water.
An absolute new image that livens up the dead part
Bang - Big Bang! The corporeal world gets the spark
explodes out from the very first drop of the water!

Fathima's appearance was miraculously instrumental
God reveals nature the finite and infinite, 0 and 1,
future in the present and the death and life in play!
Nature follows suit it just saw the perfect role model
banged out but only to its corporeal set
it aspires to be with its infinite reality yet!

Fathima leaves the door open constructing a perfect circle,
hardly straight, took the mixed bag of countless variations
she zooms into the abyss irrational portion of the first matter,
the primitive water drop and aces the circle with her hair
that nothing can equate throughout the corporeal world.
Done the math discovering the zero starting point at the bottom.
The ocean of digit numbers, the DNA of all things material
banged out of it, still, the zero is numberless irrational!

(7)
All things, within oneself and in a set constantly vibrate,
strive to align with the enduring reality of itself.
The atom vibrates to reach out to its immortal portion
that doesn't die and is in the know of its lower base.
The planets are in a defined circular orbit, accurately measured
just the apex on top of their dynamic pyramid the pyramidon
is tucked away; they too have an irrational portion in the circle.

With the finest spin, they zoom in the spacious universe,
in part and like the sun outside the constellations round they go
never miss a target line yet to re-discover Fathima's perfect circle
the origin of their digital essences' breakthrough
the door to their transcended destination de jour.
Lo the matter turns the last stone pulsing across the cosmos
the mortal horizontal spread, the spirit returns home.

The earth has a line in its swansong it has a place in paradise
it's not here to stay for good neither to perish forever!

Matters form and break without losing the rope,
it's not to paint the shades of the eternal blue
but to ace an irrational portion in the circle
at the heart of the earth, as above, so below.  
The deep the high the perfect circle
up and down the centre of gravitation for all!

At even and at odd the vibration within the matter is fluid
somewhere is parched there the arch matter must make a splash.
Far away on that dark beach, the full-fledged sea of the matters
outpours its billowy potion with the Moon on the frontline
from deep within the physical world's most glowed up firefly!

(8)
The seven seas swell up smoothly into the moonlight-dip
oh, the waterless Moon at the core is still fasting.
Led by time the sweet swan punting along the waves
streams down the watery inner circle of the planets.
Until stuck in the Moon no water in the last waterfront
but paradise is on the other side of the pool!  

The sun dips away into the night
while the eve baths in the shades of pink and gold,
the dazzling hues soon turn to taupe.
Drawing down painting the picture in full colour
only to find the time is up on the halfway,
yet to print a colour copy of the night!
The other unseen half is passed down to the Moon
tiptoeing in slow motion in the depths of the night
barely keeping the head afloat in a fathomless ocean
of shades of black hails from where knows no one.  

The sun enkindles the moon half-lit keeping itself away
amid shadows as if comparing the shades now it knows
a Mehrem a veiled female is ahead not to look on or
compared to that the sun has no light or true are both.

Wrapped in the eternal night beneath its black mole
once the moon on the front approaching most close
directly down to the centre of the earth eyes on
over that inlaid string hairy black perfect circle
never did it turn back the same gaze is still on
orbiting around the earth in synchronous rotation.

(9)
The never-ending night is becoming a night indeed
it's coming to an end so soon in our time.
In Shaa Allah I will see it with my eyes before I die
in the Night of Measures in an odd night in Ramadan
Fathima from the transcendental end of irrational heart
will turn on top of the curve opening for the first time
a 9-degree angle in the circle at the centre of the earth.

Instantly the leading force, time will get the first sniff
of the other world, so peaceful heart-melting serene.
Rapturous time feeling an ounce of the enduring peace
for the first time cutting all the corners with ease
will be propelled into its yet uncharted golden mean.
Scurrying to the peaceful abode time will be on its wings
across the globe, people will be stunned seeing
how first the times pass from then on incredibly quick!

Fathima, the first spiritual woman on duty, will start
pulling her hair back off the circle at the centre
Juxtaposed in between the worlds of here and hereafter.
She will take back every inch of it, the heavenly bodies
will feel the pinch of her every little subtle pull
that too is a boon helping them perfect their circle.

(10)
Soon she opens it just 9-degree wide at first
the Moon will see a glimpse of the first drop of water.
Without it, it's living perched without the water of life
that's destined to rain down soon and the Moon
back into its original pond shall revive!
Mapping the pi's whole infinitesimals playground
finally, Fathima will turn the circle upside down
on the dot the stunned sun shall rise in the western sky!

By now under Fathima's hair's shaded closed circle
it must have sailed far over the blue sky in the other world.
Billowing with the breeze over the sea of uncharted water
and stacking to the brim with all that it could discover
humbly stood like a cloud in that corner of the sky.

The time is finally ticking fast to rain down with love
paradise's welcoming schema rendering in waterpaint drops
on the Moon over the sea of matters, that's most glowed up firefly
ah, finally can break the fast sipping in a drop of elixir!
It's their heavenly adopted, Miʿrāj performed, primitive water.
The Moon with the seven seas will leave off the corporeal shell
gliding gracefully with this stately water nymph as if it never dies
and will make a splash plopping into the pond of paradise!  

For the matter ultimately is water and its extent is sound
Fathima will fetch it the water of life and take it to the next life!
Oh, the matter shall do both die and revive with Israfil's sound
the cloud will fly out of the dead water on the ground,
like the earth with chorus songs of the rain revives.
When that a melodious nymph in the water makes waves
see paradise is here the Moon over the sea can't take off its eyes.

(11)
Hang on though they all set ready on their horizontal span  
to pull in such a fluid yet colourful descending like a rainbow swan.
First chaste Fathima will evaporate her hair's perfume away
that's yet lingering in the water warming it up to its premium
no crowd then can see where this heady, fragrant cloud will fly!
There are the momentum and delights where that will alight.

Israfil might then blow his trumpet swooning the world away
the secret will remain a secret exception is said in the Qur'an.
A strange sound will silence the chorus of the innate digits
collapsing the floating cosmos bubbling on their music.  
The corporeal circle will collapse as if there is no base no pi
the melody of the first word Qun means Be will still be loud
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious so how can we all expire?

Israfil too will play his reviving trumpet pure mellifluous
and In Shaa Allah numerically perfect Fathima will rise
amidst the resonant Qun as like she did in the beginning
when except prophet Muhammad (PBUH) there was nothing!
Now the earth once zeroed in beneath her hair will follow her
the stunned terra will discover Fathima took her hair away
only to shift the constellation up onto the upper world!

The old songs of the planets the chorus of the digits will revive
from the zero bases in the core the digital panache that dance
planet upon the planet as if they are always at the perfect hertz.

Indeed that is yet to come, the arts of the fine layers
opening from the irrational pi, the finest one is to flower
when Fathima will unloop her circled hair at the centre
piercing the very immanent irrational cut
that no creation can fathom only the loving creator Allah
will turn odd to even in between the here and hereafter
then the ocean stuck in deep salt shall turn to enduring potion!
The As-Sirat shall turn to be the bridge to paradise
the body shall revive with the enduring soul forever
and with ah Fathima couple shall enter paradise In Shaa Allah
with the rhapsody 'all praise is for Allah' Alhamdulillah!

All is not what it seems
Because I was an atheist
Long before I realized I was God,
But that was much, much later
Then, at that time, I succumbed
To the lurid but exciting depths
Of freedom, the joy of love and danger
Of searching and of knowledge,
Embracing every moment;
I surrendered to ungovernable impulses
That invoked within my very existence

Still to realise the true extent of this
It's perhaps best to start before the beginning
Before the earth embalmed me
A time when Cyparisse had not
Yet set root in my belly
Nor made sap of my blood
A time when it was possible to speak
To Panza's donkey when I thought of Zanzibar
A time when the vagrancy of my soul
Had not yet embarked
On its erratic itinerary
Plunging me eventually
Into the bright light
Of tainted and squalid reality

Like oscillating libraries, noise oppressed,
Contradictions of dreams
Suddenly I took flight,
With violent wrenches of imagination
In Persia being worshipped
Beneath the moon by Gods;
Caressed by those impetuous charms
A dazzling vision
I thought of death the only sister of charity
Whose dark night has no malevolence;
Black and white, silences that migrated
In sonorous symbolism took control
Shimmering like a painting of a sorrow

Streaked with unashamed colours
A single tear from a promethean candle
I would move to lick the stain of destiny
That pillar inhaling its black perfumes
Like a communicant on his knees.
Exiled in reality, I saw what I had never saw
Or only thought I saw now condemned
To see what has never been seen

Words corralled themselves in my mind
Writhing maggots on a corpse
Wriggling for position waiting to be pronounced
How they flew, taking wings
Hovering for an instant above the page
Hunting out the detritus of man
To feast upon the putrid flesh of misery
I too went searching
For my ancient feast; for Zanzibar

However hideous pages
From the note book of the ******
Imprisoned the words, stampeded the search
Scattering it in many directions
Shattering blue-white eyes
A castrated country, century, impotent, impure
Like politics, the ******* that can be purchased by coin
Like so much bread in the market,
A thousand profanities became the popular song
But silence is the real language of the fool

For he alone bears witness to what he feels
Misfortunes not understood, weeping the popular ballad
Morality and law, parades of red robed Judges
Carcasses, a circus for carrion crows
Yet like a cannibal the dead were still buried in my belly
The gloss of reason hiding madness
Like so many veneered fronts in a proud precinct

Paraded in full view, silence is demanded and got
The words wither, fake time continues,
To count the unrelieved falsehood the chimera of life;
Reason did not imprison me
My life being not heavy enough
Was allowed to take flight
To float above the reasoned realm
Revelations of the truth realised only by detachment
Devoured my mind increased my errorless purpose
The search for Zanzibar

Accepted values; valued only;
Because of this acceptance
Are accepted as value
Thus accepted in silence
The fools resign themselves
To a false reality
One that nails them to a poisoned cross

In the gardens of the dead
Like rowed tulips that
Gardeners know how to match
I found myself, among those who had gone
Remembered yet forgotten
Whose edifice unlike their lives
Reached not upwards but down.
I smelt the scent of unknown things
The perfumes of eternity that histories bind;
Intensity, a murmur; gurgle, as in a child
Yet extreme its aberrations
Like celluloid hand that
Had never known toil
Or wiped sweat from a brow
Laughed yet grimaced
Its smile a crimson smear
The sorrow that it felt
A burnished hand upon its nakedness
To see its enshrouded presence in such a garden
One well stocked and growing
Caressed my being with its glee
To turn white feel the touch
Of its venomous fingers upon my flesh;
Its purpose, to prevent any search for Zanzibar

The stench of death
Then cast its' new
Yet antediluvian gaze
Upon its purpose
Odour of grave
Faraway nonexistent
Yet it is perfume to those
Who feast upon its scent
Moistures mingling with the air
Its common purpose
Floating like un-forgiveness
Its atmosphere ozone sans holes
Its meaning ever present
Its' outcome to halt
The search for Zanzibar

And so the stencils of oriental scribes
Like black shadows overpowered my reason
Floating high above, adrift on an expanse of darkness
However, presently that azure ink
Raised its curtain before my very eyes
Revealing the stage, the illuminated stage
On which I was to set my drama
Where the phantoms of my imagination
Would enact their mysterious mysteries;
A poetic alchemy

Then a golden spark of pure
Nocturnal light blinded me
In an instant I saw, observed
The sun drown in its deathly sea
Its healing wings spread
Fear would see it rise again
Still searching for that fatal flaw, happiness
How many lives do I need?
How many existences will it take?
Incarnations a hundred times
Searching for Zanzibar.
Awakening to continue to
Live the saddest of my dreams

Furtive footsteps through Cimmerian landscapes
Ah such enchantment, do you understand?
Ah such a charm, listen to its undying echo
Feel its charge, that siren call
Cosmic summons, the vagrancy of mind
That caresses the imagination
Whose tender touch can place you
At the apex of the universe
Can lead to Zanzibar.


And so the subtle and foolish tortures
Inflicted upon me by I, my quest began
One that would ascertain, take centre stage
Make an unheard appearance of a philosophy
That, I am everyone and everyone else is me
Eventually at some point
In time and space we are all one
All linked, for we are condemned
Yes condemned to live these lives
This is why the dead have dreams
Dreams about the tyrants and demons
Of other lives of who they were;
Who they have yet to become.
Nourished on half truths,
Forever pulling at the thread
The rotted rags of reason
Those tattered twines
Unravelling the stitching of reality
Of hallucinations, empty illusions
And tarnished dreams create a constant struggle


Therefore for every conscious thing
That happens in the world
There must be a responding reverberation
Within the human soul
Let us put a halt to the calls
For the death of imagination
And demands for imagination to be silent
Such absurdities
For imagination is the true door to reality
For only in imagination
Can there be a bearable act
Of self examination
It is memory that hurts
More than the imagination
Always prefer the imaginary to the real
Imagination is neither an exit
From our nightmares nor
An escape from reality
But the place we are all trying to get to,
Zanzibar its shared images
Its story, its own life a new reality.


Mysteriously in the midst of unknown
Mazagran landscapes I feel
The full impact of fleeting visions
Without the limitations of space or time
Feel the act of experiencing their reality
This requires no explanation, no proof
Either together or separate
Because simply they are,
Judgement, condemnation
Punishments are gone
There is no cleansing a world
Without consciousness
Landscape devoid of people
'La Lune' growling in the orchard of the sea
Calypso again one or ten
Eucharis, tempest or temptress
Take both the meaning and the experience
Taste the tear drops of the sun
Telemachus searching, searching
Zanzibar

The idol, tentacles undulating
Vibrations of collective knowledge
The blank face, featureless
Touching around the domain of Atlas
Speaking in a thousand different tongues
Moving but still, blocks my path
Disturbs the line of imagination
Makes reality quiver
Dream flowers sway in its cosmic wind.
Yet Alhazers' iridescent arch allows
The steerage of my passage
Without pious pilgrimages to empty silences that
Contain an eternity of tears
Who graciously offers coverage
For the echo of footsteps
Allowing the magic moments to come


Robbed of sunlight, artificial night shines
Its deception attempting to secure knowledge
Of a future unknown, winning only it's unattainably
Offering instead knowledge of the past
Master of silence, offers only knowledge
Of invaded consciousness
Bedlam of paradise where Eros and Pan
In congress sleep, close at Zanzibar.


Lifeless beauty that lives everlasting
Time that reason cannot change, only help.
O enchanted torture you have stolen
The taste from my mouth
Masked I against the spectre of reality
Proclaimed the age of 'hasashin'
The creator of recollections, maker of memories
Possessor of impulse giver of echo
That rings in the ear
Cloud cast its surroccoian shadow
Air tinged with the aftermath of fire
Floating in an Asian wind, so subtle
Like a breath suddenly the sound of song
Of dance rents the solitude
Silence is slashed like a canvass screen
Happiness pours forth unconfined
Unfettered, both faces of Kandinsky as one
I extinguish the light, turn to the wall
Gazing upon its Janis face
My eyes behold the giver of pleasure.

Then I found myself in an extraordinary place
Whose skies where made of crystal glass
Water of the enchanted land was blue-grey
Bridges zig-zagged its shimmering domes
I stared as masts and parapets came to life
Its people, musicians sporting
Tangerine and white livery danced
The air filled with the sound of their music
Then as if from nowhere a light hit my eyes
Blinking, this apparition was gone
Can I not always believe what I see
Just because I see what I believe
The inhabitants at once became spectres
Engulfed in thick clouds of smoke and sulphur
Erinyies roamed, inflicting madness
A circus of the macabre sped past
Its symbols of death fluttering frantically
Around this false and fragile world
Suggested children, like creatures in an imagination
Were made ready for their rebirth
By the touch of the poets pen
A thousand Cheribino

In another, swirling sonorous scenes
Stormed the citadels of my mind
Marched through my imagination
Mab engulfed the long closed
Cemeteries of my thought allowing me
To see the dreams of others
Like precious pearls prised from their shells
Their visualisation so intense
Joy overcame me at once
Then a swarm of kisses descended upon me
Like a regiment of famished men
Feasting for the first time
I freely gave myself as the main course
In the most beautiful of banquets
In another, yielding to these seductions
I was enraptured by portraits of beautiful young men
Which appeared to be on the point of speaking
They were most mysterious their intrinsic
Charm so beautiful, stimulated desire
Whose assuagement was so pleasurable
That it might be called pure ecstasy
A perfect pleasure which had never before existed
Entirely individual and new

Thus upon the horizons of my mind
Had been shed a mysterious light
In which I now saw everything bathed
I was summoned by the Prince
Knowing dreams have no limits
I obeyed his call
For a long time failing to set
Foot on the shores of reality
Drinking from the wells of magic
While angels danced on grassy slopes
Disturbed by flames
The stars shot out their fragrance

Sweet smelling; blue abyss
On I went to the court, the court of the Prince of
Poets, a visitor to life
There I spat out the bit of liberty
Embraced the Prince
Courtesans mocked me, ridiculed
Laughed and taunted me
Their jibes merely part of
Their own deluded reality, not of mine
They did not serve my purpose
Dressed as they were
In meaningless words
Clothed in phrases of falsehood
They tried to make me compromise
There was fire burning in my eyes
Vivid dreams were eating up my mind
They wouldn't let me be
There were dead men lying
By the sides of the road
With daylight in their eyes
I saw villages under the sea
I stood at Galactic central point
Watched the earth burn
They did not know
The way to Zanzibar
Could the Prince show me?

However each morning I awoke
I found myself in a purgatorial fog
I roamed lost the alternative harbour
For my soul still distant
The Prince, I discovered, existed
In a twilight world of mysterious ailments
He denied his feelings
Such denial only immersed him
In maintaining the world of external restraints
It created emptiness, a vacancy
Filled by material concerns
I pleaded with him
The emerald gene came down
Soon the leaves of grass
Whispered another order of existence
Strangeness of sensation
Intoxication of vision
Unhinged for mortals
And as the sound increased one cannot
Describe what else it is that has been
I viewed a world transparent
Devoid of illumination within which
Was never a sea or land
Then the prophets were ******
For they were all liars
And I saw the most beautiful flower
Unfolding out of its own roots
For such a flower cannot
Unfold other than it does
I stood on the threshold of Orcus
I met Abbas Effendi the Gene without a name
Bab, Upanishads spilled music in my ears
Called to me in the most spectacular of colours
It was wonderful for the colours
Were like my dreams, red, black and green
I witnessed the three, sometimes as one
Other times as two, again and again
The self eternal and inseparable sons
Of Shakyamuni caressed me with their thoughts
Their music and colour moved about me
In ecstatic rhythm like the peaceful
Waves of the ocean as upon a shore
I read the sentences of silence
Breathed the perfume of never fading flowers
Walked in cherry blossom snow
Heard Hafiz reciting in the night
I saw for the first time
The unfinished likeness of others.

Then one day the Prince
With a sweeping theatrical and
So to speak, allegorical flourish bowed
Called me an exiled angel
Said the time had come to travel
To leave the images of naked heels
Imprinted in the clay
We wondered
Then as if by magic, suddenly the shadows
Of houses, halls, and a church
Emerged like enchanted islands in a fairy tale
The spiritualised forms of civilisation
I was approached by a graceful youth
Draped in cobweb lawn
He was pale, delicately beautiful
Spanish looking, but his name was Alexis Sonyeuse
Whose family it was said was
Related to the French Emperor Napoleon
It was also rumoured that he had
Had a tempestuous affair with the Bishop of Monaco
And once slept with his half brother Julian Apollinaire
When he spoke he was at once original
Delicious, moving, droll and discreetly melancholy
Listening to him was like breathing
The perfume of wondrous flowers
But the scent of datura hung about him
Paralleling his every movement
  Another youth, Edmond also greeted me
He was a young man with aristocratic features
A complexion pink, like a girls
And a bearing at once charmingly gracious
And audaciously insolent
His shirt was strange, the lining
A peculiarly orange colour
A flame coloured taffeta
Like the petticoats of a *****



They looked at me
Furtive glances emanated from their eyes
Training a profound stare upon my person
The two youths took me to 18 Avenue de Friedland
There two boy servants
Adoum and Outhman greeted us
Spinario's lay about its confines
Frezans caressing them
As they touched their feet
A hundred echansons moved
With dazzling delicacy dispensing dreams
In drops from crystalline cups
Here I witnessed the tragic faces of the population
Urnings, cleaning in the midst of anarchist trials
The room a fiery red, stained with light
The caress of forgotten thought
Like the thickness of a sorrow
Musicians playing on broken strings
Crimson ******, who defied the King of Naples
We moved past wretches
Like Virgil, but Danteian
Saw the usurers heard the rustling
Of lute strings the clinking of grey paper
Observed in this Minatare's lair
The purchase of a twelve penny dagger
Liberty of speech meeting its great reckoning
In a little room, Ingram the poltergeist
Of misfortune was there
Dead Scythian, who ever loved you
Loved you as you might, loved you at first sight.

This was a new and exciting world
Whose environs were populated
By the most mysterious and colourful of people
I was introduced by the two youths
To a suicidal young painter who
Was rebelling against his class
He was a somewhat forced intellectual
With an over quixotic passion for equality
Still he was warm, kind and impulsive
Poetry, he made it known
Had opened his mind to the invisible
Beside him was a painting
Exemplifying a new kind of observation
In a style absolutely faultless
Each structure clear, each brush stroke
Falling exactly into place
Inscribed in the top left
Corner were the words
"Quod me nutrit me destruit"
An introduction to himself of a tall youth
Whose eyes possessed a constant
Vagrancy of desire
Who seemed at once, for one so

She said, ‘You are funny, the way you set yourself up the moment we arrive. You look into every room to see if it’s suitable as a place to work. Is there a table? Where are the plugs? Is there a good chair at the right height? If there isn’t, are there cushions to make it so? You are funny.’
 
He countered this, but his excuse didn’t sound very convincing. He knew exactly what she meant, but it hurt him a little that she should think it ‘funny’. There’s nothing funny about trying to compose music, he thought. It’s not ‘radio in the head’ you know – this was a favourite expression he’d once heard an American composer use. You don’t just turn a switch and the music’s playing, waiting for you to write it down. You have to find it – though he believed it was usually there, somewhere, waiting to be found. But it’s elusive. You have to work hard to detect what might be there, there in the silence of your imagination.
 
Later over their first meal in this large cottage she said, ‘How do you stop hearing all those settings of the Mass that you must have heard or sung since childhood?’ She’d been rehearsing Verdi’s Requiem recently and was full of snippets of this stirring piece. He was a) writing a Mass to celebrate a cathedral’s reordering after a year as a building site, and b) he’d been a boy chorister and the form and order of the Mass was deeply engrained in his aural memory. He only had to hear the plainsong introduction Gloria in Excelsis Deo to be back in the Queen’s chapel singing Palestrina, or Byrd or Poulenc.
 
His ‘found’ corner was in the living room. The table wasn’t a table but a long cabinet she’d kindly covered with a tablecloth. You couldn’t get your feet under the thing, but with his little portable drawing board there was space to sit properly because the board jutted out beyond the cabinet’s top. It was the right length and its depth was OK, enough space for the board and, next to it, his laptop computer. On the floor beside his chair he placed a few of his reference scores and a box of necessary ‘bits’.
 
The room had two large sofas, an equally large television, some unexplainable and instantly dismissible items of decoration, a standard lamp, and a wood burning stove. The stove was wonderful, and on their second evening in the cottage, when clear skies and a stiff breeze promised a cold night, she’d lit it and, as the evening progressed, they basked in its warmth, she filling envelopes with her cards, he struggling with sleep over a book.
 
Despite and because this was a new, though temporary, location he had got up at 5.0am. This is a usual time for composers who need their daily fix of absolute quiet. And here, in this cottage set amidst autumn fields, within sight of a river estuary, under vast, panoramic uninterrupted skies, there was the distinct possibility of silence – all day. The double-glazing made doubly sure of that.
 
He had sat with a mug of tea at 5.10 and contemplated the silence, or rather what infiltrated the stillness of the cottage as sound. In the kitchen the clock ticked, the refrigerator seemed to need a period of machine noise once its door had been opened. At 6.0am the central heating fired up for a while. Outside, the small fruit trees in the garden moved vigorously in the wind, but he couldn’t hear either the wind or a rustle of leaves.  A car droned past on the nearby road. The clear sky began to lighten promising a fine day. This would certainly do for silence.
 
His thoughts returned to her question of the previous evening, and his answer. He was about to face up to his explanation. ‘I empty myself of all musical sound’, he’d said, ‘I imagine an empty space into which I might bring a single note, a long held drone of a note, a ‘d’ above middle ‘c’ on a chamber ***** (seeing it’s a Mass I’m writing).  Harrison Birtwistle always starts on an ‘e’. A ‘d’ to me seems older and kinder. An ‘e’ is too modern and progressive, slightly brash and noisy.’
 
He can see she is quizzical with this anecdotal stuff. Is he having me on? But no, he is not having her on. Such choices are important. Without them progress would be difficult when the thinking and planning has to stop and the composing has to begin. His notebook, sitting on his drawing board with some first sketches, plays testament to that. In this book glimpses of music appear in rhythmic abstracts, though rarely any pitches, and there are pages of written description. He likes to imagine what a new work is, and what it is not. This he writes down. Composer Paul Hindemith reckoned you had first to address the ‘conditions of performance’. That meant thinking about the performers, the location, above all the context. A Mass can be, for a composer, so many things. There were certainly requirements and constraints. The commission had to fulfil a number of criteria, some imposed by circumstance, some self-imposed by desire. All this goes into the melting ***, or rather the notebook. And after the notebook, he takes a large piece of A3 paper and clarifies this thinking and planning onto (if possible) a single sheet.
 
And so, to the task in hand. His objective, he had decided, is to focus on the whole rather than the particular. Don’t think about the Kyrie on its own, but consider how it lies with the Gloria. And so with the Sanctus & Benedictus. How do they connect to the Agnus Dei. He begins on the A3 sheet of plain paper ‘making a map of connections’. Kyrie to Gloria, Gloria to Credo and so on. Then what about Agnus Dei and the Gloria? Is there going to be any commonality – in rhythm, pace and tempo (we’ll leave melody and harmony for now)? Steady, he finds himself saying, aren’t we going back over old ground? His notebook has pages of attempts at rhythmizing the text. There are just so many ways to do this. Each rhythmic solution begets a different slant of meaning.
 
This is to be a congregational Mass, but one that has a role for a 4-part choir and ***** and a ‘jazz instrument’. Impatient to see notes on paper, he composes a new introduction to a Kyrie as a rhythmic sketch, then, experimentally, adds pitches. He scores it fully, just 10 bars or so, but it is barely finished before his critical inner voice says, ‘What’s this for? Do you all need this? This is showing off.’ So the filled-out sketch drops to the floor and he examines this element of ‘beginning’ the incipit.
 
He remembers how a meditation on that word inhabits the opening chapter of George Steiner’s great book Grammars of Creation. He sees in his mind’s eye the complex, colourful and ornate letter that begins the Lindesfarne Gospels. His beginnings for each movement, he decides, might be two chords, one overlaying the other: two ‘simple’ diatonic chords when sounded separately, but complex and with a measure of mystery when played together. The Mass is often described as a mystery. It is that ritual of a meal undertaken by a community of people who in the breaking of bread and wine wish to bring God’s presence amongst them. So it is a mystery. And so, he tells himself, his music will aim to hold something of mystery. It should not be a comment on that mystery, but be a mystery itself. It should not be homely and comfortable; it should be as minimal and sparing of musical commentary as possible.
 
When, as a teenager, he first began to set words to music he quickly experienced the need (it seemed) to fashion accompaniments that were commentaries on the text the voice was singing. These accompaniments did not underpin the words so much as add a commentary upon them. What lay beneath the words was his reaction, indeed imaginative extension of the words. He eschewed then both melisma and repetition. He sought an extreme independence between word and music, even though the word became the scenario of the music. Any musical setting was derived from the composition of the vocal line.  It was all about finding the ‘key’ to a song, what unlocked the door to the room of life it occupied. The music was the room where the poem’s utterance lived.
 
With a Mass you were in trouble for the outset. There was a poetry of sorts, but poetry that, in the countless versions of the vernacular, had lost (perhaps had never had) the resonance of the Latin. He thought suddenly of the supposed words of William Byrd, ‘He who sings prays twice’. Yes, such commonplace words are intercessional, but when sung become more than they are. But he knew he had to be careful here.
 
Why do we sing the words of the Mass he asks himself? Do we need to sing these words of the Mass? Are they the words that Christ spoke as he broke bread and poured wine to his friends and disciples at his last supper? The answer is no. Certainly these words of the Mass we usually sing surround the most intimate words of that final meal, words only the priest in Christ’s name may articulate.
 
Write out the words of the Mass that represent its collective worship and what do you have? Rather non-descript poetry? A kind of formula for collective incantation during worship? Can we read these words and not hear a surrounding music? He thinks for a moment of being asked to put new music to words of The Beatles. All you need is love. Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away. Oh bla dee oh bla da life goes on. Now, now this is silliness, his Critical Voice complains. And yet it’s not. When you compose a popular song the gap between some words scribbled on the back of an envelope and the hook of chords and melody developed in an accidental moment (that becomes a way of clothing such words) is often minimal. Apart, words and music seem like orphans in a storm. Together they are home and dry.
 
He realises, and not for the first time, that he is seeking a total musical solution to the whole of the setting of those words collectively given voice to by those participating in the Mass.
 
And so: to the task in hand. His objective: to focus on the whole rather than the particular.  Where had he heard that thought before? - when he had sat down at his drawing board an hour and half previously. He’d gone in a circle of thought, and with his sketch on the floor at his feet, nothing to show for all that effort.
 
Meanwhile the sun had risen. He could hear her moving about in the bathroom. He went to the kitchen and laid out what they would need to breakfast together. As he poured milk into a jug, primed the toaster, filled the kettle, the business of what might constitute a whole solution to this setting of the Mass followed him around the kitchen and breakfast room like a demanding child. He knew all about demanding children. How often had he come home from his studio to prepare breakfast and see small people to school? - more often than he cared to remember. And when he remembered he became sad that it was no more.  His children had so often provided a welcome buffer from sessions of intense thought and activity. He loved the walk to school, the first quarter of a mile through the park, a long avenue of chestnut trees. It was always the end of April and pink and white blossoms were appearing, or it was September and there were conkers everywhere. It was under these trees his daughter would skip and even his sons would hold hands with him; he would feel their warmth, their livingness.
 
But now, preparing breakfast, his Critical Voice was that demanding child and he realised when she appeared in the kitchen he spoke to her with a voice of an artist in conversation with his critics, not the voice of the man who had the previous night lost himself to joy in her dear embrace. And he was ashamed it was so.
 
How he loved her gentle manner as she negotiated his ‘coming too’ after those two hours of concentration and inner dialogue. Gradually, by the second cup of coffee he felt a right person, and the hours ahead did not seem too impossible.
 
When she’d gone off to her work, silence reasserted itself. He played his viola for half an hour, just scales and exercises and a few folk songs he was learning by heart. This gathering habit was, he would say if asked, to reassert his musicianship, the link between his body and making sound musically. That the viola seemed to resonate throughout his whole body gave him pleasure. He liked the ****** movement required to produce a flowing sequence of bow strokes. The trick at the end of this daily practice was to put the instrument in its case and move immediately to his desk. No pause to check email – that blight on a morning’s work. No pause to look at today’s list. Back to the work in hand: the Mass.
 
But instead his mind and intention seemed to slip sideways and almost unconsciously he found himself sketching (on the few remaining staves of a vocal experiment) what appeared to be a piano piece. The rhythmic flow of it seemed to dance across the page to be halted only when the few empty staves were filled. He knew this was one of those pieces that addressed the pianist, not the listener. He sat back in his chair and imagined a scenario of a pianist opening this music and after a few minutes’ reflection and reading through allowing her hands to move very slowly and silently a few millimetres over the keys.  Such imagining led him to hear possible harmonic simultaneities, dynamics and articulations, though he knew such things would probably be lost or reinvented on a second imagined ‘performance’. No matter. Now his make-believe pianist sounded the first bar out. It had a depth and a richness that surprised him – it was a fine piano. He was touched by its affect. He felt the possibilities of extending what he’d written. So he did. And for the next half an hour lived in the pastures of good continuation, those rich luxuriant meadows reached by a rickerty rackerty bridge and guarded by a troll who today was nowhere to be seen.
 
It was a curious piece. It came to a halt on an enigmatic, go-nowhere / go-anywhere chord after what seemed a short declamatory coda (he later added the marking deliberamente). Then, after a few minutes reflection he wrote a rising arpeggio, a broken chord in which the consonant elements gradually acquired a rising sequence of dissonance pitches until halted by a repetition. As he wrote this ending he realised that the repeated note, an ‘a’ flat, was a kind of fulcrum around which the whole of the music moved. It held an enigmatic presence in the harmony, being sometimes a g# sometimes an ‘a’ flat, and its function often different. It made the music take on a wistful quality.
 
At that point he thought of her little artists’ book series she had titled Tide Marks. Many of these were made of a concertina of folded pages revealing - as your eyes moved through its pages - something akin to the tide’s longitudinal mark. This centred on the page and spread away both upwards and downwards, just like those mirror images of coloured glass seen in a child’s kaleidoscope. No moment of view was ever quite the same, but there were commonalities born of the conditions of a certain day and time.  His ‘Tide Mark’ was just like that. He’d followed a mark made in his imagination from one point to another point a little distant. The musical working out also had a reflection mechanism: what started in one hand became mirrored in the other. He had unexpectedly supplied an ending, this arpegiated gesture of finality that wasn’t properly final but faded away. When he thought further about the role of the ending, he added a few more notes to the arpeggio, but notes that were not be sounded but ghosted, the player miming a press of the keys.
 
He looked at the clock. Nearly five o’clock. The afternoon had all but disappeared. Time had retreated into glorious silence . There had been three whole hours of it. How wonderful that was after months of battling with the incessant and draining turbulence of sound that was ever present in his city life. To be here in this quiet cottage he could now get thoroughly lost – in silence. Even when she was here he could be a few rooms apart, and find silence.
 
A week more of this, a fortnight even . . . but he knew he might only manage a few days before visitors arrived and his long day would be squeezed into the early morning hours and occasional uncertain periods when people were out and about.
 
When she returned, very soon now, she would make tea and cut cake, and they’d sit (like old people they wer

The Frog That Took A Giant Leap For Their Kind"  
 
Forever being laughed at for not being able to leap  
Always last in the frog army sport, called ‘Jumping over the Jeep’
The little jump frog was embarrassed to belong to such an army  
So he packed his things and headed off on a long journey  
He crossed all over, the large wetlands of Florida USA  
Even made a makeshift home, made out of some hay  
After feeling a very warm heat, from about a mile away  
He came across some steps, but when climbing, they began to sway  
Frightened by a loud bang and an almighty explosive roar  
He hopped inside the nearest room, via a big white door  
Then, all of a sudden, he felt his feet, effortlessly lift off the floor  
Floating past a small window, he couldn’t see the earth, anymore  
After a while, the room hit the ground, with an almighty thump  
Looking out, he saw a strangely dressed man, pray and then jump  
He followed the man and went on down a few gigantic steps  
After making his biggest ever leap and without special effects  
Luckily, the frog was caught on camera, so became the first of his kind  
To reach the faraway moon and take a great leap, if you don't mind.  
 
 
 
"The Hare That Looked Out Of Place"  
 
The local country fair had arrived in town  
But one animal was looking angry and down  
For the farmworker had placed the hare at the fair  
With another breed of animal, without any care  
He looked out of place, while sitting in the dog pound  
To the hare it felt more like a very scary hunting ground  
One child yelled out, "That's a very small doggy, Mummy"  
No it's not, said Mummy, but it'll make the dogs meal taste so yummy  
She ran to the ticket seller and said, "There's a hare out of place"  
He said, I think your hair is fine madam, but here's some gel, just in case  
When the farmer found out, he ordered the workers to quickly catch it  
And to make sure there's no more hares where the dogs will sit.  
 
 
 
"The Sheep That Escaped From The Bars"  
 
The large family farm was not really up to par  
Because the farmer would keep the sheep behind an iron bar  
They wanted to escape from behind the metal brass  
And wander about and eat more of the fresh green grass  
Eating packaged food was not treating them well  
But they were getting upset tummies and not feeling that swell  
So they hatched a plan so they could graze on the vast land  
A billy goat agreed to fetch a plank of wood and give them a hand  
In return he would get all the leftovers of the sheep's fake food  
So one by one they took the plunge and escaped for a better mood  
The goat had a ball opening and then eating so much more  
And the sheep could be heard for miles, laughing Baa-Baa galore.  
 
 
 
"The Monkey That Lost His Grip"  
 
His name is Chip and he just can't get a grip  
He has to hold on tight for the entire round trip  
His friends in the troop said he wasn't very hip  
Always having to wear a parachute with a safety clip  
He tried to branch out one day, but fell and hurt his hip  
Then one day he got up early and decided to leave without the equip  
Now the monkey named Chip was so brave and he ran with a skip  
And he swung from branch to branch without any major slip  
His friends were in awe of his huge lunges and gave no more lip  
So from that day forth, everybody said he had great grip to do his solo flip.  
 
 
 
"The Cheetah That Wished For No Spots"  
 
Cleaning his teeth using long green grass as dental floss  
The healthy Cheetah often wished he had no more spots  
He was tired of hearing, while playing Hide n Seek, the sound,  
Of his animal friends yelling, "We give up, for you can't be found"  
He thought, maybe he could wash away his camouflage dots  
By soaking himself for a while, in some warm water and soap in pots  
It might be a long shot to remove those game wrecking blots  
But at least his friends would have fun playing in Africa's back lots  
No said his friends, you were born with all of them  
And after all, your spots make us all different, Amen  
So stay like you are and we will find you one day  
But never ever try and wash those unique spots of yours away.  
 
 
 
"The Zebra That Painted Her Stripes"  
 
She looked in the river and saw her reflection  
Her skin colour made males look in another direction  
For her colours were not really that bright  
With her body stripes painted in black and white  
So the next day the lady zebra decided to get a makeover  
By getting colourful paint and brushing it all over and over  
Now she felt like a beautiful diamond of a gem  
And maybe others would take notice, especially the men  
But the day she went back to her favourite watering hole  
Everyone thought she belonged on a merry-go-round pole  
Then it started pouring down, the hail and the wet rain  
And washed off all her colourful paint down the drain  
She wasn't that sad when she heard the laughter of other zebras  
For she was now world famous, from all of the tourist cameras.  
 
 
 
"The Mouse That Was Forever Getting Trapped"  
 
The poor little mouse was forever getting himself trapped  
He couldn't stop from smelling the cheese, even when wrapped  
His concerned mother told him to visit a hypnotist  
To try and help him get off cheese, you get the gist  
If he gets trapped again, he might not be able to tell the tale  
Because if the help he receives fails, his face will turn pale  
So let's hope this short tale of some very sore mouse tails  
Helps the other obsessed cheese loving females and males  
Can the poor little mouse keep away from the snap?  
Let's all hope that he doesn't forget, after taking a quick catnap.  
 
 
 
"The Panda That Got Bored Of Giant Plain Bamboo"  
 
Sitting under the tree eating gigantic bamboo stalks, sat a cute Panda  
But eating one thing all day long was boring for the cutie named Sandra  
So the workers at the zoo tried to change her diet to see what it would take  
They tried strawberries, oranges, pizza, meatballs and even rib-eye fillet steak  
But none of this food worked, to make Sandra the cute Panda, less bored  
The workers were confused why the delicious food was simply ignored  
She started to lose weight and became very agitated  
Quickly the zoo staff asked for help, but really they had to be educated  
For pandas only eat bamboo and not much of the world's fine food  
By just adding a bit of spice would've changed her boring mood  
They hurried back to the zoo kitchen to prepare a spicy dish  
Chopping and stewing and even adding a few drops of relish  
Sandra loved the change in her daily food of bamboo  
And was happy again chewing on her new tasting food at the zoo.  
 
 
 
"The Owl That Didn't Give A Hoot"  
 
When the sun went down and the moon came out  
Some owls could be seen in the trees hooting about  
But a strange noise one owl gave, was worse than a toot  
For the owl, for some reason, didn't give a hoot  
This strange sounding owl instead, made more of a screech  
A sound that the English owls have never been able to reach  
For this different style speaking owl, is on holidays from afar  
And his spoken language is so unusual to ours, by far  
The other owls wanted to know how to screech like this alien bird  
For they were so bored, with only knowing how to speak one word  
So they all took quick language classes to learn how to French speak  
And their guest also learnt to belt out a bit of a hoot, from his foreign beak.  
 
 
 
"The Spider That Stood Too Tall To Crawl"  
 
A large daddy long leg spider named Paul  
Had such long legs he stood too tall to crawl  
He looked like a gigantic monster, standing way up top  
All other spiders who saw him, would come to a complete stop  
Frozen in their tracks, insects would free fall and dive  
And go so low between his legs to hopefully survive  
The spider himself would get a face full of cobwebs  
As he walked so tall into his own hand made project  
Enough he thought, and off he went for a professional opinion  
The doctor said, he had a name for his rather tall condition  
It was called nothing at all, you are like this on earth  
For all daddy long leg spiders are like this since birth  
So he was told to bend down more often, stretch and do some exercise  
And to watch out for that high floating killer insect spider pesticide.  
 
 
 
"The Elephant That Couldn't Make A Trunk Call"  
 
While playing a game of elephant soccer together  
Using a coconut for a ball which was as light as a feather  
The elephant herd had finally ran out of pace  
One player named Noel didn't stop until he fell flat on his face  
When he got home later that night after his great fall  
He tried, but couldn't make his routine long distance trunk call  
But nothing came out and he went into shock  
Noel the elephant thought he had swallowed a rock  
So off down the road to the local doctor he went  
Also complaining about his loss of his favourite flowers scent  
The doctor first said, it could be all in your mind  
But after shinning a light he saw what it was, well down behind  
For it was the coconut the herd had been playing with before, with Noel  
After a tickle on the trunk, Noel shot it out and somehow scored a goal.  
 
 
 
"The Koala That Was Always Bare"  
 
Kyle the Koala loved to just sit in the trees and eat his leaves  
The tourist would come and take photos without having to pay any fees  
But he once took a peek at one of those friendly tourist's cameras Polaroid  
He saw some family pets wearing fashionable clothes and was rather annoyed  
For you see, Kyle then noticed, that he was always totally bare  
Dogs with jackets and cats with gloves, but he had nothing at all to wear  
So he decided to make all of the paparazzi pay for their shots  
When he saved enough money, he dressed up with the lots  
He purchased some pants, a hat and T-shirt and a colourful woolly scarf  
He felt more natural and not as bare, but mainly because, he made all of the tourists laugh.  
 
 
 
"The Rabbit That Stared Into The Light"  
 
When Warren the rabbit went out on the town  
He wore a lucky tail, pinned all the way down  
Hiding from cars, buses and motorbikes driving past  
Then hurriedly crossing the road, hoping not to be the last  
For if you were left behind, you'd be all alone to cross again  
And be able to have the strength to not look into the lights of the men  
But on this night he kept on staring straight into the light  
His mother always told him, to wear sunglasses at night  
The car stopped and out stepped the driver and along with his passenger  
Warren couldn't move even a bit, luckily for him, it was just a messenger  
The driver picked him up and placed him on the other side of the road  
Thanks, he said to himself, next time I might've got no respect, like that man showed.

Mumbai is rich, Mumbai is poor.
Mumbai is fast, Mumbai is slower.
Little bit sweet, and little bit sour,
Sometimes it’s hot but not too more….

Mornings are energetic and evenings are electric.
Noons are lazy but Nights are crazy
And any one you ask he always say “M busy”
Dude, life in Mumbai is not so easy

There is lot of Masti with little bit of Maska
Welcome to the city that can’t live, without Bollywood Chaska

From cooker whistles to the traffic jam horns,
From steaming tea kettles to breaking nut-betels
From telephone rings and doorbell brings.
There are people connecting through Blackberry pings

Where there’s little time to spare for kids
People here spend their lives on bids
Here you actually pay your travel fare by meter
But milkman mixing water is not a cheater!

Sev puri and bhel puri are all Mumbai chaat
Relishing it with spicy chutney is no easy art
From pop-corn to ice-cream, all sold on cart
Mumbai o Mumbai, you’re always close to my heart

Where local trains usually run on time
And violently rushing for a seat is not a crime
Here 3 PM for lunch and 12 AM to dine
People face hardships, but still say “it’s fine”

From Mt Mary in Bandra to Mumba Devi in Town
And ISKCON in Juhu to Haji Ali in Mumbai’s Crown
Faith runs deep as the Arabian Sea
But people don’t hesitate to pay early darshan fee.

Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati and Bengali
Everyone forgather celebrate Id and Diwali
Holi is colourful and Christmas is cheerful
Spend some time here and your life will be un-forgetful

Billionaire to baggers, all found in this city
Be careful dude, this place is a bit witty.
Overall this dream-world is huge but pretty
Mumbai o Mumbai you’re wonderful city.

I.

No, don't go now. Please
don't go now; the fog is creating ghosts
out of people and we're breathing clouds out of our mouths.
Tell me about that time when you held your breath
under the lake for six years and still survived;
tell me how if I do that, it'll never work.
I'm not a sea God
any more.

II.

My knees tell better stories than my tongue
ever did, please don't; wretched hive harangues
the mind in a plague, can't you see I'm holding you down
and telling you you're all I ever wanted,
you're all I ever wanted; your head is the stuff of dreams
you're all I ever wanted; you can put your arm
right through me and only feel mist;
I am fog. I'm creating ghosts out of you.

III.

Make it up to me in a rainbow of hues of grey;
at the end of it I'm holding my ribs open. I've never
been more colourful and sad at the same time.
You're the mirrors to my house; stay
has always sounded better than don't go

yet neither seems to work anymore.

My eyes are just a translation,
For you to understand my mind,
For you to see the colors speak,
My thoughts are a foreign language,
And when you're around my eyes, my thoughts,
They get a whole lot more colourful....

From Alan Lomax to the commercial art and now the money machine.

At the turn of the century; when sound recording 1st became available to the masses, recording a song was an opportunity for folk to reach out; and tell the world something up front and personal.
It meant that people were able to put themselves on “The record” A way of leaving a permanent audio statement, an epitaph, an audio sound bite immortalising ~ life, mood, emotion captured and bottled for all eternity.
(A medium that conveyed messages from artists and storytellers of all kinds)

A recording was also a great addition to "The family album" something more tangible, a window to a real person, with a real life, a message and a point of view; a legacy, a blast from the past.
Few people expected sound prints to be re-designed, homogenised, formulated, copied, repackaged and that art and the message would be played over and over again by new artists in the form of "cover music" or that the style of the messages would become secularized, seperated into distinctive groups, or constrained by an elite clique or commercial genre.
Labelling and streamlining art & music mostly benefits the commercial art & music industry; and no longer the artists and creators.

I've no problem with good business, or the multi-billion pound industrys that have gained commercial success.

However the process of mass homogenisation, product synthesis, marketing, streamlining and then packaging fashion, sound and synthetic culture to sell a product, leaves very little room for creative people to just be creative.

A medium originally open to many for self expression, a historical record, an archive, a voice, a personal message;
Is now just a vehicle for advertising and perpetuating a genre of nonsense, so much so that there is now more white noise immortalised than messages.

To re-cap ~ I Think that creativity and expressionism; like story telling conveys moods and messages from the present and past!
Artists and musicians should have the opportunity to create and produce more information than they copy; thus creating a richer more colourful tapestry, whilst not devaluing the message of their predecessors!

Purcy Flaherty.

Strip into segments the colours of life
At the birth of my sons, loving my wife,
Like the moment of truth when, whilst shivering clear,
I went eyeball to eyeball with that, which I fear.
Like the time when the engine went dead in the plane
And I ditched in the pines to confirm the insane.
When my Father collapsed and died in my arms
And childhood departed with God and his Psalms.
When I first kissed a girl’s soft velvety lips
And felt, with wild rapture, my hands on her hips.
Discovered ripe apricots fresh from the tree
Taste sweeter than nectar collected by bee.
Felt the presence of death compellingly near
Though the body was wracked, the thinking was fear.
Climbed impossible peaks that I dreamt I perceived
To weep the hot tears in a life’s goal achieved.
Laughed loud and long with the wind in my hair
Yet cried when an enemy lost to despair.
Pondered the mystery of what’s round the bend
Concluded beginnings are part of the end.
Compiling the rules to maintain my space
Lie in keeping the oddballs out of my face.
Clasping friends, so few, to my breast
Embracing the true and to hell with the rest.
Committing my time to my one darling wife
And thanking the Gods for this colourful life!*


Marshalg
Sitting in the long summer grasses
3 Decemeber 2012

All is not what it seems
Because I was an atheist
Long before I realized I was God,
But that was much, much later
Then, at that time, I succumbed
To the lurid but exciting depths
Of freedom, the joy of love and danger
Of searching and of knowledge,
Embracing every moment;
I surrendered to ungovernable impulses
That invoked within my very existence

Still to realise the true extent of this
It's perhaps best to start before the beginning
Before the earth embalmed me
A time when Cyparisse had not
Yet set root in my belly
Nor made sap of my blood
A time when it was possible to speak
To Panza's donkey when I thought of Zanzibar
A time when the vagrancy of my soul
Had not yet embarked
On its erratic itinerary
Plunging me eventually
Into the bright light
Of tainted and squalid reality

Like oscillating libraries, noise oppressed,
Contradictions of dreams
Suddenly I took flight,
With violent wrenches of imagination
In Persia being worshipped
Beneath the moon by Gods;
Caressed by those impetuous charms
A dazzling vision
I thought of death the only sister of charity
Whose dark night has no malevolence;
Black and white, silences that migrated
In sonorous symbolism took control
Shimmering like a painting of a sorrow

Streaked with unashamed colours
A single tear from a promethean candle
I would move to lick the stain of destiny
That pillar inhaling its black perfumes
Like a communicant on his knees.
Exiled in reality, I saw what I had never saw
Or only thought I saw now condemned
To see what has never been seen

Words corralled themselves in my mind
Writhing maggots on a corpse
Wriggling for position waiting to be pronounced
How they flew, taking wings
Hovering for an instant above the page
Hunting out the detritus of man
To feast upon the putrid flesh of misery
I too went searching
For my ancient feast; for Zanzibar

However hideous pages
From the note book of the ******
Imprisoned the words, stampeded the search
Scattering it in many directions
Shattering blue-white eyes
A castrated country, century, impotent, impure
Like politics, the ******* that can be purchased by coin
Like so much bread in the market,
A thousand profanities became the popular song
But silence is the real language of the fool

For he alone bears witness to what he feels
Misfortunes not understood, weeping the popular ballad
Morality and law, parades of red robed Judges
Carcasses, a circus for carrion crows
Yet like a cannibal the dead were still buried in my belly
The gloss of reason hiding madness
Like so many veneered fronts in a proud precinct

Paraded in full view, silence is demanded and got
The words wither, fake time continues,
To count the unrelieved falsehood the chimera of life;
Reason did not imprison me
My life being not heavy enough
Was allowed to take flight
To float above the reasoned realm
Revelations of the truth realised only by detachment
Devoured my mind increased my errorless purpose
The search for Zanzibar

Accepted values; valued only;
Because of this acceptance
Are accepted as value
Thus accepted in silence
The fools resign themselves
To a false reality
One that nails them to a poisoned cross

In the gardens of the dead
Like rowed tulips that
Gardeners know how to match
I found myself, among those who had gone
Remembered yet forgotten
Whose edifice unlike their lives
Reached not upwards but down.
I smelt the scent of unknown things
The perfumes of eternity that histories bind;
Intensity, a murmur; gurgle, as in a child
Yet extreme its aberrations
Like celluloid hand that
Had never known toil
Or wiped sweat from a brow
Laughed yet grimaced
Its smile a crimson smear
The sorrow that it felt
A burnished hand upon its nakedness
To see its enshrouded presence in such a garden
One well stocked and growing
Caressed my being with its glee
To turn white feel the touch
Of its venomous fingers upon my flesh;
Its purpose, to prevent any search for Zanzibar

The stench of death
Then cast its' new
Yet antediluvian gaze
Upon its purpose
Odour of grave
Faraway nonexistent
Yet it is perfume to those
Who feast upon its scent
Moistures mingling with the air
Its common purpose
Floating like un-forgiveness
Its atmosphere ozone sans holes
Its meaning ever present
Its' outcome to halt
The search for Zanzibar

And so the stencils of oriental scribes
Like black shadows overpowered my reason
Floating high above, adrift on an expanse of darkness
However, presently that azure ink
Raised its curtain before my very eyes
Revealing the stage, the illuminated stage
On which I was to set my drama
Where the phantoms of my imagination
Would enact their mysterious mysteries;
A poetic alchemy

Then a golden spark of pure
Nocturnal light blinded me
In an instant I saw, observed
The sun drown in its deathly sea
Its healing wings spread
Fear would see it rise again
Still searching for that fatal flaw, happiness
How many lives do I need?
How many existences will it take?
Incarnations a hundred times
Searching for Zanzibar.
Awakening to continue to
Live the saddest of my dreams

Furtive footsteps through Cimmerian landscapes
Ah such enchantment, do you understand?
Ah such a charm, listen to its undying echo
Feel its charge, that siren call
Cosmic summons, the vagrancy of mind
That caresses the imagination
Whose tender touch can place you
At the apex of the universe
Can lead to Zanzibar.


And so the subtle and foolish tortures
Inflicted upon me by I, my quest began
One that would ascertain, take centre stage
Make an unheard appearance of a philosophy
That, I am everyone and everyone else is me
Eventually at some point
In time and space we are all one
All linked, for we are condemned
Yes condemned to live these lives
This is why the dead have dreams
Dreams about the tyrants and demons
Of other lives of who they were;
Who they have yet to become.
Nourished on half truths,
Forever pulling at the thread
The rotted rags of reason
Those tattered twines
Unravelling the stitching of reality
Of hallucinations, empty illusions
And tarnished dreams create a constant struggle


Therefore for every conscious thing
That happens in the world
There must be a responding reverberation
Within the human soul
Let us put a halt to the calls
For the death of imagination
And demands for imagination to be silent
Such absurdities
For imagination is the true door to reality
For only in imagination
Can there be a bearable act
Of self examination
It is memory that hurts
More than the imagination
Always prefer the imaginary to the real
Imagination is neither an exit
From our nightmares nor
An escape from reality
But the place we are all trying to get to,
Zanzibar its shared images
Its story, its own life a new reality.


Mysteriously in the midst of unknown
Mazagran landscapes I feel
The full impact of fleeting visions
Without the limitations of space or time
Feel the act of experiencing their reality
This requires no explanation, no proof
Either together or separate
Because simply they are,
Judgement, condemnation
Punishments are gone
There is no cleansing a world
Without consciousness
Landscape devoid of people
'La Lune' growling in the orchard of the sea
Calypso again one or ten
Eucharis, tempest or temptress
Take both the meaning and the experience
Taste the tear drops of the sun
Telemachus searching, searching
Zanzibar

The idol, tentacles undulating
Vibrations of collective knowledge
The blank face, featureless
Touching around the domain of Atlas
Speaking in a thousand different tongues
Moving but still, blocks my path
Disturbs the line of imagination
Makes reality quiver
Dream flowers sway in its cosmic wind.
Yet Alhazers' iridescent arch allows
The steerage of my passage
Without pious pilgrimages to empty silences that
Contain an eternity of tears
Who graciously offers coverage
For the echo of footsteps
Allowing the magic moments to come


Robbed of sunlight, artificial night shines
Its deception attempting to secure knowledge
Of a future unknown, winning only it's unattainably
Offering instead knowledge of the past
Master of silence, offers only knowledge
Of invaded consciousness
Bedlam of paradise where Eros and Pan
In congress sleep, close at Zanzibar.


Lifeless beauty that lives everlasting
Time that reason cannot change, only help.
O enchanted torture you have stolen
The taste from my mouth
Masked I against the spectre of reality
Proclaimed the age of 'hasashin'
The creator of recollections, maker of memories
Possessor of impulse giver of echo
That rings in the ear
Cloud cast its surroccoian shadow
Air tinged with the aftermath of fire
Floating in an Asian wind, so subtle
Like a breath suddenly the sound of song
Of dance rents the solitude
Silence is slashed like a canvass screen
Happiness pours forth unconfined
Unfettered, both faces of Kandinsky as one
I extinguish the light, turn to the wall
Gazing upon its Janis face
My eyes behold the giver of pleasure.

Then I found myself in an extraordinary place
Whose skies where made of crystal glass
Water of the enchanted land was blue-grey
Bridges zig-zagged its shimmering domes
I stared as masts and parapets came to life
Its people, musicians sporting
Tangerine and white livery danced
The air filled with the sound of their music
Then as if from nowhere a light hit my eyes
Blinking, this apparition was gone
Can I not always believe what I see
Just because I see what I believe
The inhabitants at once became spectres
Engulfed in thick clouds of smoke and sulphur
Erinyies roamed, inflicting madness
A circus of the macabre sped past
Its symbols of death fluttering frantically
Around this false and fragile world
Suggested children, like creatures in an imagination
Were made ready for their rebirth
By the touch of the poets pen
A thousand Cheribino

In another, swirling sonorous scenes
Stormed the citadels of my mind
Marched through my imagination
Mab engulfed the long closed
Cemeteries of my thought allowing me
To see the dreams of others
Like precious pearls prised from their shells
Their visualisation so intense
Joy overcame me at once
Then a swarm of kisses descended upon me
Like a regiment of famished men
Feasting for the first time
I freely gave myself as the main course
In the most beautiful of banquets
In another, yielding to these seductions
I was enraptured by portraits of beautiful young men
Which appeared to be on the point of speaking
They were most mysterious their intrinsic
Charm so beautiful, stimulated desire
Whose assuagement was so pleasurable
That it might be called pure ecstasy
A perfect pleasure which had never before existed
Entirely individual and new

Thus upon the horizons of my mind
Had been shed a mysterious light
In which I now saw everything bathed
I was summoned by the Prince
Knowing dreams have no limits
I obeyed his call
For a long time failing to set
Foot on the shores of reality
Drinking from the wells of magic
While angels danced on grassy slopes
Disturbed by flames
The stars shot out their fragrance

Sweet smelling; blue abyss
On I went to the court, the court of the Prince of
Poets, a visitor to life
There I spat out the bit of liberty
Embraced the Prince
Courtesans mocked me, ridiculed
Laughed and taunted me
Their jibes merely part of
Their own deluded reality, not of mine
They did not serve my purpose
Dressed as they were
In meaningless words
Clothed in phrases of falsehood
They tried to make me compromise
There was fire burning in my eyes
Vivid dreams were eating up my mind
They wouldn't let me be
There were dead men lying
By the sides of the road
With daylight in their eyes
I saw villages under the sea
I stood at Galactic central point
Watched the earth burn
They did not know
The way to Zanzibar
Could the Prince show me?

However each morning I awoke
I found myself in a purgatorial fog
I roamed lost the alternative harbour
For my soul still distant
The Prince, I discovered, existed
In a twilight world of mysterious ailments
He denied his feelings
Such denial only immersed him
In maintaining the world of external restraints
It created emptiness, a vacancy
Filled by material concerns
I pleaded with him
The emerald gene came down
Soon the leaves of grass
Whispered another order of existence
Strangeness of sensation
Intoxication of vision
Unhinged for mortals
And as the sound increased one cannot
Describe what else it is that has been
I viewed a world transparent
Devoid of illumination within which
Was never a sea or land
Then the prophets were ******
For they were all liars
And I saw the most beautiful flower
Unfolding out of its own roots
For such a flower cannot
Unfold other than it does
I stood on the threshold of Orcus
I met Abbas Effendi the Gene without a name
Bab, Upanishads spilled music in my ears
Called to me in the most spectacular of colours
It was wonderful for the colours
Were like my dreams, red, black and green
I witnessed the three, sometimes as one
Other times as two, again and again
The self eternal and inseparable sons
Of Shakyamuni caressed me with their thoughts
Their music and colour moved about me
In ecstatic rhythm like the peaceful
Waves of the ocean as upon a shore
I read the sentences of silence
Breathed the perfume of never fading flowers
Walked in cherry blossom snow
Heard Hafiz reciting in the night
I saw for the first time
The unfinished likeness of others.

Then one day the Prince
With a sweeping theatrical and
So to speak, allegorical flourish bowed
Called me an exiled angel
Said the time had come to travel
To leave the images of naked heels
Imprinted in the clay
We wondered
Then as if by magic, suddenly the shadows
Of houses, halls, and a church
Emerged like enchanted islands in a fairy tale
The spiritualised forms of civilisation
I was approached by a graceful youth
Draped in cobweb lawn
He was pale, delicately beautiful
Spanish looking, but his name was Alexis Sonyeuse
Whose family it was said was
Related to the French Emperor Napoleon
It was also rumoured that he had
Had a tempestuous affair with the Bishop of Monaco
And once slept with his half brother Julian Apollinaire
When he spoke he was at once original
Delicious, moving, droll and discreetly melancholy
Listening to him was like breathing
The perfume of wondrous flowers
But the scent of datura hung about him
Paralleling his every movement
  Another youth, Edmond also greeted me
He was a young man with aristocratic features
A complexion pink, like a girls
And a bearing at once charmingly gracious
And audaciously insolent
His shirt was strange, the lining
A peculiarly orange colour
A flame coloured taffeta
Like the petticoats of a *****



They looked at me
Furtive glances emanated from their eyes
Training a profound stare upon my person
The two youths took me to 18 Avenue de Friedland
There two boy servants
Adoum and Outhman greeted us
Spinario's lay about its confines
Frezans caressing them
As they touched their feet
A hundred echansons moved
With dazzling delicacy dispensing dreams
In drops from crystalline cups
Here I witnessed the tragic faces of the population
Urnings, cleaning in the midst of anarchist trials
The room a fiery red, stained with light
The caress of forgotten thought
Like the thickness of a sorrow
Musicians playing on broken strings
Crimson ******, who defied the King of Naples
We moved past wretches
Like Virgil, but Danteian
Saw the usurers heard the rustling
Of lute strings the clinking of grey paper
Observed in this Minatare's lair
The purchase of a twelve penny dagger
Liberty of speech meeting its great reckoning
In a little room, Ingram the poltergeist
Of misfortune was there
Dead Scythian, who ever loved you
Loved you as you might, loved you at first sight.

This was a new and exciting world
Whose environs were populated
By the most mysterious and colourful of people
I was introduced by the two youths
To a suicidal young painter who
Was rebelling against his class
He was a somewhat forced intellectual
With an over quixotic passion for equality
Still he was warm, kind and impulsive
Poetry, he made it known
Had opened his mind to the invisible
Beside him was a painting
Exemplifying a new kind of observation
In a style absolutely faultless
Each structure clear, each brush stroke
Falling exactly into place
Inscribed in the top left
Corner were the words
"Quod me nutrit me destruit"
An introduction to himself of a tall youth
Whose eyes possessed a constant
Vagrancy of desire
Who seemed at once, for one so

A vista
spiels with neon
Non-essential conversation repeating
Humanity hovers at the entrance
In this shopping centre every need seems urgent
Mouths pause their chatter
To sip at coffee or chow down burger
Gestures are reinforced with nail polish,
jewellery on many fingers
and small change passing across counter tops

In here the weather is neither warm nor cool
and everything seems designed to stimulate my mediocrity

Reflection in the shop-front is on sale at bargain price
but today I cannot afford to buy on impulse

I turn away to blend
With colourful  blah


MChallis © 2009 (reworked 2014)

We are born free people, yet there are always restrictions.
We choose if we want to break them, whether with facts or through fiction.
Whether on walls using diction,
Or any crawl through confliction.
And no amount of chains and barriers
Will restrain us, no contradiction.
We understand we’re not on ice,
That there’s always going to be friction.
As expressers, fighters, artists, world changers
It comes from an Italian word, meaning scratch.
Look at it again and a whole new world
Has hatched.
The term graffiti, referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient graves or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Use of the word has evolved to include any graphics applied to surfaces in a manner that constitutes vandalism.
75% of people think its vandalism.
Toronto spends one million a year on graffiti removal.
When artists get back in the game, they haven’t given their approval.
Why don’t you use that money to feed the thousands of poor in society?
Instead of worrying about the art that the citizens need to see.

I never got A’s in elementary school art.
Getting marked on art still sounds like you need to be smart.
But graffiti doesn’t have to mean anything,
Not every letter is a symbol.
There are complications too but it can also be simple.
Almost every kind that I saw on the streets
Took a soft place in my heart, eventually turned concrete.
Let me reel back to grade 10 when I actually took art courses
In the media arts classroom I was taught people as my sources
Banksy, JR, Sofles, Katsu, Kidult, Shepard Fairey.
After my first graffiti assignment I understood clearly
What would happen if you brought a spray paint can near me.
The reason for graffiti is a simple one,
Not always about rebelling, or having fun.
Every artist craves to paint in his or her own way.
And all of us have messages that need to be portrayed.
Like, I was here, I’m alive, let me leave my mark.
This city is mine too, and I want to give it my spark
I belong, I have a voice, and I crave to make a change
These walls are too voiceless when it comes to the speaking range
My love for social justice brings in political ties
Through graffiti one can tell what country thrives with lies
It gives any surface a story, makes it come alive.
Change the system if you strive, until justice is revived.
To try to help the oppressed,
The shapes and lines were mine,
But they’re the ones on the line,
And to sit and do nothing would be an even bigger crime.
I even changed my initials to KKB
The B is for Banksy, its everywhere you see me.
My email has a Banksy, my Twitter did too.
Graffiti is my life, though you already knew.
Humanity is lost within the walls that we made
Graffiti brought it back to me,
And like the ocean did I wade.
Inside the political aspect that structures our brains
And the society that gives us money to drain
All the false information and the things we don’t need
Gives me hope to find these messages written on the streets
Sometimes freedom of speech isn’t so free at all.
But if Facebook deletes posts, documentaries have biased calls,
There’s another way of speaking, even if we fall,
I love how it’s not typical; no tag is the same.
Its breathing life on the walls, not stuck in a frame.
It stands out.
Stands outside of a museum where you always have to pay.
To see something that may or may not catch your attention right away.
That makes your head sway,
Give you some kind of reaction, moves you to action.
Not something you have to think hard about,
There’s little analysis needed, a splash merrily seeded.
Its urgent, its in the moment, for realization.
Once the message has been received, it’s an artist’s confirmation.
I integrated graffiti as a part of my every day life, including school
Drew it in math projects, French presentations, writer’s craft essays, it was my arts night welcome sign tool.
I will carry this with me through university
And it’ll take me further in the arts industry.
When you walk by graffiti in the street, do you ever take the time to notice it? Like, really notice it? Do you ever think about the person behind the spray paint can? Writers are not only being underappreciated for their talents, but they’re being harassed, looked down on, all for no reason. Do you know any of their stories? Do you know what thoughts and feelings sprayed out of the can when the paint hit the wall? Do you ever think about the history behind the art? To breakdown the styles of graffiti, here’s a simple introduction. There are tags, the simplest forms of graffiti. A signature. There are stencils. There are stickers, also known as slaps. Wildstyles are also used, and they’re more intricate, more colourful, and harder to read. It’s a particular style of writing developed in New York City. A piece is one that takes time an effort, and requires more than three colours. A blockbuster is used to cover the most space in the least amount of time. And a heaven is a piece that’s put in a hard to reach area, like the tops of tall buildings or on freeway signs. There’s the style bubble, old school, brush, abstract, bombings, whole car, ignorant, landscape, realistic, billboard, cartoon and sharp as well.
A sense of tranquility seeps into my veins every time my marker hits the paper, full of energy, full of hope. Starting graffiti was a way to combine my passion for speaking out against oppression and my love for the arts. Even though my work is not displayed on the streets, it has the same style, and it may not have the same effect but it counts as an escape for me. It doesn’t make me a graffiti artist, and some would even argue that doing canvas work kills the purpose of graffiti but I always want my work to make an impact on people no matter which way I do it. It’s something I love to do, and anyone can take that any way they desire. There are stereotypes that I’ve had to battle, but in the end, I know my true intentions. I don’t need to make a name for myself. I don’t need to create a reputation for myself either. True, this is not real graffiti, but that’s as far as I choose to take my fascination. I do it because of the escape it provides for me, the sense of freedom, and the sense of power in my markers.
These are the little movements of writers, all of us trying to get at revolution. Art is not supposed to be limited in frames. That’s why to me, the streets are some of the biggest forms of freedom – do as much as you like, however you like, all free. The poor and rich all have to see it. No one can avoid the message. It is not only artistic expression; it’s a protest. A scream of anger and emotion aimed towards public spaces. Graffiti artists did not start the war, they just respond to defend our vision of what graffiti and society should be: free. A battle against commercialism and a way of saying ‘no’ to materialism and society’s over consumption.  To the government, you are not the only ones who own these cities. What about the rest of us that do not exist until we leave a mark of our own? This is a game of action and reaction, if you will.
Taking care of our society is our obligation. That means changing anything harmful to us with every mean possible. Graffiti seems to offend a majority of society but if we took the time to appreciate and understand, a lot of good can be done if we turned the negatives into positives. So if we aimed for change and acted on it, especially with art, we’d be much less stressed. More often, we’d just remember, to stay blessed.

In India pongal is the best festival
It is not a mere ritual
We celebrate it in January
It is very very customary
It lasts for three days
Bhogi,sankranti and kanuma are the days.
On the first day we have a holy bath
Thinking that it sets us on the right path
Early in the morning we sit around the bhogi fire
Thinking it is the demon Ravana’s pyre
We put on a new and attractive attire
Dreaming life is a joyful boat shire
Children make wreaths of cowdung
Throw them into the fire like a gold ring
The villages are full of colourful bullocks
We sing folk songs taking neem sticks
The bride groom leaves for the mother-in-law’s house
The bride waits for him wearing a new saree and a blouse
Father-in-law gives the groom a costly gift
Mother-in-law makes a sumptuous feast
Younger sister-in-law teases the groom
The bride and the groom confine to the room
Mother prepares delicious dishes and pickles
Father goes to the farm worshipping the sickles
On the last day we go to the temple fair
I hope I made the happy pongal very clear
Yours sincerely,
JVL NARASIMHA RAO

I could tell you,
But you’d laugh at me.
Because it is bare, raw and pure.
You gloat on the preservatives.
You discard the genuine.
Listen to me, my friend, there is a part of the world, where even a bulb is never, ever, witnessed in real, but reel of the sanskrit Cartoon slots. The peppy  and ‘lone B-grade Cartoons .
Filled with Flesh.
The stories of tantric mantras, with a sliver of diminishing hearth,
on the
Dimensions and depth of the Yoni in the resin of shellac
on the Immaculate ceremony,
In a woodpecker hole just underneath the sealed power of the Yakshini who truly screws it up if you have taste of her once.
the one who harbingers drunk loners of Kavadiyattom alley after 3:20 am.
She takes them to the crown chakra of palm trees.
Shows them the world.
she pushes them off the crown and the falcon falls in endless spirals of a inhuman push that pushes the concrete innards to a danlgling mass of amoebic copulation.
Breath comes back.
It is a big nauseating gag of Kumbhakarnan's long sadya that lasted for half a decade.
Of the soma saras that made the entire India go, ga-ga and believe they've seen the god.
But not one nor any saw the same face, colour, shape or even vibe of the god they had seen alone.
They agreed in unison that all their hallucinations of beautiful humans in Flower UFO s and high-tech cloning, were a vital hair in the nostril of the cosmos.
They made, each a god out of their genuine mix of memories.
Or in the, priest's ways,
Hence, the 2.3 Billion populous of the country had the same, well, odd Spiritual benefactors.

Keeping it all aside, lemme be honest, I'd follow many a fairy god-mother but give my milkey teeny tooth to the special one.
Hinduism tells you God is omnipresent.
Hinduism tells you God is within you.
It also says, there is no God.
The clipper to snap off the confusion of this, lies in the same cheap stained-yellow cliche of love. It entails everything. You, me, animals, plants, cosmos, vibes, thoughts, dreams and the universe.
It tells you to live with your body mind and soul.
From Kamasutras that teaches sense.
The excitement, control and breakthrough of it.
Like tao did under his exposed roof without the sacred dung of from Hindu Land.
This is the secret of a rumoured Mohini,
Of her 1000 per hour ******* during the her/ his/ its 352 incarnations.
which was the reason for Big bang.  
Amidst the sultry scant of the voluptuous *******,
Their skin,
a vernacular reflection of a dusk on the Japanese gold beaches, And the mounts,
firm and glowing with the rusty shade of pharaoh’s Gold anklet.
The gooey glaze of yesterday’s glamour in the wink of a gay galore.
Paulo Ceolho’s Holy Communion with God,
Or like the Japanese Tengaman says,
Or rather screams,
That all it it takes is a little *******.
So, yes.
That precise art of attaining a consciousness, from where your mind was
Afloat
Wild
Free
Satiated
By yourself
You’ve just consumed the essence of you
Your Ojhas
And the tiny matter that teaches the universe
Of a Shunya.
That, momentary sense of lapse of your body mass,
Or the breakthrough into your eye of the crown.
Only to join the mundane bustle of the 10,00 speakers on all four
JBLs, Boses and Pioneers live looping the zillions of sanskrit mantras under one roof.
In your Ear drum.
A synechdoche of the Gods and their jacuzzi of amphetamine bubbles.
Splashed from a white Elephant's bejewelled Snout, which has the
crowned ring in your pineals.
Secret lies under
the rotten bone chip of Hussain Sagar
deep under the ***** green lake,  
drowning the rainbow Buddha in the city of slimy immortal maggots on ham.
Open your eyes.
For the Gods will
Else
Cut your eyelids off
to show you that
the city's shardminds await you.
roaring
Playing close to the fire demons of Redland
A nail close to your wide open lid-less
White flowing eye.
Hear the city scream.
The deafening chaos,
In unison,
Intoxicating their venomous fruits
of the delirious worlds
Or simply put, divine prayer and offering
for
the Omnipotent,
Omniscient
And the
Om.
Shunya.
Or the cyclic abyss of meaninglessness.
But,
Like, the wilted azures
that seduced those flies,
From a far far away,
To come the praise the combs of their bellies,
Filled with the red from the omnipotent, dead, weak and evil
In one little fly belly.
They came from the
land called Lullaby.
To go there
from here,
But, first,
bear the Weasleys' infamous extendable ears and heed me now, for I say twice and See him Come.
The snake, the tangy smell of goated black rub and blueness.
Siva shouldn't come?
Not yet. A little DMT more in the brain and perhaps the spark will happen.
Better than the potions of those gigantic forest priests.
No, Heed me, now.

3 Dodos Walk-afar,
And, take the lone left-laden log
the one that is,
limitless Long
loyal and  let alone
By those
languors which
Killed
Lord Leopard Loot'.
While,
Lord's Lass
Lays lolled lambs,
Lolled ‘long le ******,
Leech on the laiden log,
leading to Lord Lava,
Yes.
The bridge of Casilii Po.

Of the Lord.
Guarded
By these bubbling bellies with a drop of the world's make.
Assassins.
the Fly, flies.

retain the scarification of theolden curse,
Older than the rocks underneath this gurgling lava,
On which reincarnation steams.

As destiny should have it,
the astrologers had seen,
3 centuries back
That at a Sphinx’s Wedding,
a war of Vision,
will break.
It will
Bring the Stars
Out of those melting blue nightsky of Neruda's wails;
And the diabolic estrangement inflicting Eagle,
From Meena’s vibes,
that rubbed of a distinct scent of Malabar embedding a little of everybody in the village,
on its Kasavu lines posing
at the focus
of Sahib's Ferguson or Baker.

The gold turned white.
A liquid white, like that of the sap,
For that,
***** on a parrot green rubber plant
And work your fun with the white gluey milk,
fragrant than the sap
Like the  Ylang Ylang buds freshly kissed by the drooly dew,
sealed away
elegantly in a crystal Indigo bottle by the pen stand.

One that glitters if you look at its surface, but smells of naphthalene ***** in the sink
in
that
creepy trailer in
mid salem night of the tut.
Colourful.
This is colorblind.

White is motile.
White is wriggling.
White is life.
With a **** of Eve’s fabric-less
Skin.
White is divinity
feeding you excess of everything,
With an tenfold over dosage injected intravenous, by a silver-haired-glow-in-the-dark-dodo-cupid;

She is divine.
**** Her.
**** her on a Pyre.
**** her innards on a fire.
inflame the bubble
of her her oily effluent you found on the toilet seat
Instil in her, the seed of your sodomic occult,
Not by compassion, but through a hiss and sting
of the
flawless venom of the diabolic.  
Then. Disinfect your fruit that you flicked off the paradise.
And bellow to the blowing gurgling below.  
A reign of ****  nihilism,
moaning the mood-swings-of-a-98-year-old-menopausing-Bhairavi of the Indian Aghora Tales;
And Shelly, fueled in his undiminished hearth with the help of his impetous West Wind,
dreaming lucid,
on a flight in the sky for one week,
with Lucy’s sewing  sequined buttocks,
Stinging their luminescent, lactating, lustrous skin,
Like a tatto machine, lifting rays into the epidermis
So that it roasts, burns a soot and neonifies the only colour
A shade of
The rave, rainbow-red karmas of human existence,
Its little greedy quantas waltzing around the matter
And of its unleashed illuminations
That fuel the same vessel in the universe,
infamously known as,
the
black hole.
Uggh!!

Colourful and soft
Hearts, stars and polka dot
Pull me on when it turns cold
Entangle me, don’t fold

Woollen, netted or cotton
Worn at the bottom
Warm, cosy and neat
That’s how I keep your feet

I am always in two’s
You can wear me with shoes
Wear me wherever you like to
But take me off when you enter the loo

Please don’t get me wet
Even I stink when I sweat
Don’t misplace my twin
It will break my heart and that’s a sin

I won't  let your feet turn cold
I will be there when you are old
I am comfort, I am the best
Used in north, south, east and west.

I am stretchy, I am a sock
I ease your feet for a run or walk
If I take the back seat
Numb, tanned and torn feet.

So pay my parents well
Don’t let your feet swell
I promise to serve you
I know you need me too.

-Zainab Attari

All is not what it seems
Because I was an atheist
Long before I realized I was God,
But that was much, much later
Then, at that time, I succumbed
To the lurid but exciting depths
Of freedom, the joy of love and danger
Of searching and of knowledge,
Embracing every moment;
I surrendered to ungovernable impulses
That invoked within my very existence

Still to realise the true extent of this
It's perhaps best to start before the beginning
Before the earth embalmed me
A time when Cyparisse had not
Yet set root in my belly
Nor made sap of my blood
A time when it was possible to speak
To Panza's donkey when I thought of Zanzibar
A time when the vagrancy of my soul
Had not yet embarked
On its erratic itinerary
Plunging me eventually
Into the bright light
Of tainted and squalid reality

Like oscillating libraries, noise oppressed,
Contradictions of dreams
Suddenly I took flight,
With violent wrenches of imagination
In Persia being worshipped
Beneath the moon by Gods;
Caressed by those impetuous charms
A dazzling vision
I thought of death the only sister of charity
Whose dark night has no malevolence;
Black and white, silences that migrated
In sonorous symbolism took control
Shimmering like a painting of a sorrow

Streaked with unashamed colours
A single tear from a promethean candle
I would move to lick the stain of destiny
That pillar inhaling its black perfumes
Like a communicant on his knees.
Exiled in reality, I saw what I had never saw
Or only thought I saw now condemned
To see what has never been seen

Words corralled themselves in my mind
Writhing maggots on a corpse
Wriggling for position waiting to be pronounced
How they flew, taking wings
Hovering for an instant above the page
Hunting out the detritus of man
To feast upon the putrid flesh of misery
I too went searching
For my ancient feast; for Zanzibar

However hideous pages
From the note book of the ******
Imprisoned the words, stampeded the search
Scattering it in many directions
Shattering blue-white eyes
A castrated country, century, impotent, impure
Like politics, the ******* that can be purchased by coin
Like so much bread in the market,
A thousand profanities became the popular song
But silence is the real language of the fool

For he alone bears witness to what he feels
Misfortunes not understood, weeping the popular ballad
Morality and law, parades of red robed Judges
Carcasses, a circus for carrion crows
Yet like a cannibal the dead were still buried in my belly
The gloss of reason hiding madness
Like so many veneered fronts in a proud precinct

Paraded in full view, silence is demanded and got
The words wither, fake time continues,
To count the unrelieved falsehood the chimera of life;
Reason did not imprison me
My life being not heavy enough
Was allowed to take flight
To float above the reasoned realm
Revelations of the truth realised only by detachment
Devoured my mind increased my errorless purpose
The search for Zanzibar

Accepted values; valued only;
Because of this acceptance
Are accepted as value
Thus accepted in silence
The fools resign themselves
To a false reality
One that nails them to a poisoned cross

In the gardens of the dead
Like rowed tulips that
Gardeners know how to match
I found myself, among those who had gone
Remembered yet forgotten
Whose edifice unlike their lives
Reached not upwards but down.
I smelt the scent of unknown things
The perfumes of eternity that histories bind;
Intensity, a murmur; gurgle, as in a child
Yet extreme its aberrations
Like celluloid hand that
Had never known toil
Or wiped sweat from a brow
Laughed yet grimaced
Its smile a crimson smear
The sorrow that it felt
A burnished hand upon its nakedness
To see its enshrouded presence in such a garden
One well stocked and growing
Caressed my being with its glee
To turn white feel the touch
Of its venomous fingers upon my flesh;
Its purpose, to prevent any search for Zanzibar

The stench of death
Then cast its' new
Yet antediluvian gaze
Upon its purpose
Odour of grave
Faraway nonexistent
Yet it is perfume to those
Who feast upon its scent
Moistures mingling with the air
Its common purpose
Floating like un-forgiveness
Its atmosphere ozone sans holes
Its meaning ever present
Its' outcome to halt
The search for Zanzibar

And so the stencils of oriental scribes
Like black shadows overpowered my reason
Floating high above, adrift on an expanse of darkness
However, presently that azure ink
Raised its curtain before my very eyes
Revealing the stage, the illuminated stage
On which I was to set my drama
Where the phantoms of my imagination
Would enact their mysterious mysteries;
A poetic alchemy

Then a golden spark of pure
Nocturnal light blinded me
In an instant I saw, observed
The sun drown in its deathly sea
Its healing wings spread
Fear would see it rise again
Still searching for that fatal flaw, happiness
How many lives do I need?
How many existences will it take?
Incarnations a hundred times
Searching for Zanzibar.
Awakening to continue to
Live the saddest of my dreams

Furtive footsteps through Cimmerian landscapes
Ah such enchantment, do you understand?
Ah such a charm, listen to its undying echo
Feel its charge, that siren call
Cosmic summons, the vagrancy of mind
That caresses the imagination
Whose tender touch can place you
At the apex of the universe
Can lead to Zanzibar.


And so the subtle and foolish tortures
Inflicted upon me by I, my quest began
One that would ascertain, take centre stage
Make an unheard appearance of a philosophy
That, I am everyone and everyone else is me
Eventually at some point
In time and space we are all one
All linked, for we are condemned
Yes condemned to live these lives
This is why the dead have dreams
Dreams about the tyrants and demons
Of other lives of who they were;
Who they have yet to become.
Nourished on half truths,
Forever pulling at the thread
The rotted rags of reason
Those tattered twines
Unravelling the stitching of reality
Of hallucinations, empty illusions
And tarnished dreams create a constant struggle


Therefore for every conscious thing
That happens in the world
There must be a responding reverberation
Within the human soul
Let us put a halt to the calls
For the death of imagination
And demands for imagination to be silent
Such absurdities
For imagination is the true door to reality
For only in imagination
Can there be a bearable act
Of self examination
It is memory that hurts
More than the imagination
Always prefer the imaginary to the real
Imagination is neither an exit
From our nightmares nor
An escape from reality
But the place we are all trying to get to,
Zanzibar its shared images
Its story, its own life a new reality.


Mysteriously in the midst of unknown
Mazagran landscapes I feel
The full impact of fleeting visions
Without the limitations of space or time
Feel the act of experiencing their reality
This requires no explanation, no proof
Either together or separate
Because simply they are,
Judgement, condemnation
Punishments are gone
There is no cleansing a world
Without consciousness
Landscape devoid of people
'La Lune' growling in the orchard of the sea
Calypso again one or ten
Eucharis, tempest or temptress
Take both the meaning and the experience
Taste the tear drops of the sun
Telemachus searching, searching
Zanzibar

The idol, tentacles undulating
Vibrations of collective knowledge
The blank face, featureless
Touching around the domain of Atlas
Speaking in a thousand different tongues
Moving but still, blocks my path
Disturbs the line of imagination
Makes reality quiver
Dream flowers sway in its cosmic wind.
Yet Alhazers' iridescent arch allows
The steerage of my passage
Without pious pilgrimages to empty silences that
Contain an eternity of tears
Who graciously offers coverage
For the echo of footsteps
Allowing the magic moments to come


Robbed of sunlight, artificial night shines
Its deception attempting to secure knowledge
Of a future unknown, winning only it's unattainably
Offering instead knowledge of the past
Master of silence, offers only knowledge
Of invaded consciousness
Bedlam of paradise where Eros and Pan
In congress sleep, close at Zanzibar.


Lifeless beauty that lives everlasting
Time that reason cannot change, only help.
O enchanted torture you have stolen
The taste from my mouth
Masked I against the spectre of reality
Proclaimed the age of 'hasashin'
The creator of recollections, maker of memories
Possessor of impulse giver of echo
That rings in the ear
Cloud cast its surroccoian shadow
Air tinged with the aftermath of fire
Floating in an Asian wind, so subtle
Like a breath suddenly the sound of song
Of dance rents the solitude
Silence is slashed like a canvass screen
Happiness pours forth unconfined
Unfettered, both faces of Kandinsky as one
I extinguish the light, turn to the wall
Gazing upon its Janis face
My eyes behold the giver of pleasure.

Then I found myself in an extraordinary place
Whose skies where made of crystal glass
Water of the enchanted land was blue-grey
Bridges zig-zagged its shimmering domes
I stared as masts and parapets came to life
Its people, musicians sporting
Tangerine and white livery danced
The air filled with the sound of their music
Then as if from nowhere a light hit my eyes
Blinking, this apparition was gone
Can I not always believe what I see
Just because I see what I believe
The inhabitants at once became spectres
Engulfed in thick clouds of smoke and sulphur
Erinyies roamed, inflicting madness
A circus of the macabre sped past
Its symbols of death fluttering frantically
Around this false and fragile world
Suggested children, like creatures in an imagination
Were made ready for their rebirth
By the touch of the poets pen
A thousand Cheribino

In another, swirling sonorous scenes
Stormed the citadels of my mind
Marched through my imagination
Mab engulfed the long closed
Cemeteries of my thought allowing me
To see the dreams of others
Like precious pearls prised from their shells
Their visualisation so intense
Joy overcame me at once
Then a swarm of kisses descended upon me
Like a regiment of famished men
Feasting for the first time
I freely gave myself as the main course
In the most beautiful of banquets
In another, yielding to these seductions
I was enraptured by portraits of beautiful young men
Which appeared to be on the point of speaking
They were most mysterious their intrinsic
Charm so beautiful, stimulated desire
Whose assuagement was so pleasurable
That it might be called pure ecstasy
A perfect pleasure which had never before existed
Entirely individual and new

Thus upon the horizons of my mind
Had been shed a mysterious light
In which I now saw everything bathed
I was summoned by the Prince
Knowing dreams have no limits
I obeyed his call
For a long time failing to set
Foot on the shores of reality
Drinking from the wells of magic
While angels danced on grassy slopes
Disturbed by flames
The stars shot out their fragrance

Sweet smelling; blue abyss
On I went to the court, the court of the Prince of
Poets, a visitor to life
There I spat out the bit of liberty
Embraced the Prince
Courtesans mocked me, ridiculed
Laughed and taunted me
Their jibes merely part of
Their own deluded reality, not of mine
They did not serve my purpose
Dressed as they were
In meaningless words
Clothed in phrases of falsehood
They tried to make me compromise
There was fire burning in my eyes
Vivid dreams were eating up my mind
They wouldn't let me be
There were dead men lying
By the sides of the road
With daylight in their eyes
I saw villages under the sea
I stood at Galactic central point
Watched the earth burn
They did not know
The way to Zanzibar
Could the Prince show me?

However each morning I awoke
I found myself in a purgatorial fog
I roamed lost the alternative harbour
For my soul still distant
The Prince, I discovered, existed
In a twilight world of mysterious ailments
He denied his feelings
Such denial only immersed him
In maintaining the world of external restraints
It created emptiness, a vacancy
Filled by material concerns
I pleaded with him
The emerald gene came down
Soon the leaves of grass
Whispered another order of existence
Strangeness of sensation
Intoxication of vision
Unhinged for mortals
And as the sound increased one cannot
Describe what else it is that has been
I viewed a world transparent
Devoid of illumination within which
Was never a sea or land
Then the prophets were ******
For they were all liars
And I saw the most beautiful flower
Unfolding out of its own roots
For such a flower cannot
Unfold other than it does
I stood on the threshold of Orcus
I met Abbas Effendi the Gene without a name
Bab, Upanishads spilled music in my ears
Called to me in the most spectacular of colours
It was wonderful for the colours
Were like my dreams, red, black and green
I witnessed the three, sometimes as one
Other times as two, again and again
The self eternal and inseparable sons
Of Shakyamuni caressed me with their thoughts
Their music and colour moved about me
In ecstatic rhythm like the peaceful
Waves of the ocean as upon a shore
I read the sentences of silence
Breathed the perfume of never fading flowers
Walked in cherry blossom snow
Heard Hafiz reciting in the night
I saw for the first time
The unfinished likeness of others.

Then one day the Prince
With a sweeping theatrical and
So to speak, allegorical flourish bowed
Called me an exiled angel
Said the time had come to travel
To leave the images of naked heels
Imprinted in the clay
We wondered
Then as if by magic, suddenly the shadows
Of houses, halls, and a church
Emerged like enchanted islands in a fairy tale
The spiritualised forms of civilisation
I was approached by a graceful youth
Draped in cobweb lawn
He was pale, delicately beautiful
Spanish looking, but his name was Alexis Sonyeuse
Whose family it was said was
Related to the French Emperor Napoleon
It was also rumoured that he had
Had a tempestuous affair with the Bishop of Monaco
And once slept with his half brother Julian Apollinaire
When he spoke he was at once original
Delicious, moving, droll and discreetly melancholy
Listening to him was like breathing
The perfume of wondrous flowers
But the scent of datura hung about him
Paralleling his every movement
  Another youth, Edmond also greeted me
He was a young man with aristocratic features
A complexion pink, like a girls
And a bearing at once charmingly gracious
And audaciously insolent
His shirt was strange, the lining
A peculiarly orange colour
A flame coloured taffeta
Like the petticoats of a *****



They looked at me
Furtive glances emanated from their eyes
Training a profound stare upon my person
The two youths took me to 18 Avenue de Friedland
There two boy servants
Adoum and Outhman greeted us
Spinario's lay about its confines
Frezans caressing them
As they touched their feet
A hundred echansons moved
With dazzling delicacy dispensing dreams
In drops from crystalline cups
Here I witnessed the tragic faces of the population
Urnings, cleaning in the midst of anarchist trials
The room a fiery red, stained with light
The caress of forgotten thought
Like the thickness of a sorrow
Musicians playing on broken strings
Crimson ******, who defied the King of Naples
We moved past wretches
Like Virgil, but Danteian
Saw the usurers heard the rustling
Of lute strings the clinking of grey paper
Observed in this Minatare's lair
The purchase of a twelve penny dagger
Liberty of speech meeting its great reckoning
In a little room, Ingram the poltergeist
Of misfortune was there
Dead Scythian, who ever loved you
Loved you as you might, loved you at first sight.

This was a new and exciting world
Whose environs were populated
By the most mysterious and colourful of people
I was introduced by the two youths
To a suicidal young painter who
Was rebelling against his class
He was a somewhat forced intellectual
With an over quixotic passion for equality
Still he was warm, kind and impulsive
Poetry, he made it known
Had opened his mind to the invisible
Beside him was a painting
Exemplifying a new kind of observation
In a style absolutely faultless
Each structure clear, each brush stroke
Falling exactly into place
Inscribed in the top left
Corner were the words
"Quod me nutrit me destruit"
An introduction to himself of a tall youth
Whose eyes possessed a constant
Vagrancy of desire
Who seemed at once, for one so

Went to my ancestor's home on a Spring season that year..
On a Holi day in the land of Chanchadari
A peaceful morning in Hoshiarpur, the doors to Himalaya
Happy Holli day!! The kids shout with cheer
Holi Hai! Holi Hai! Lets play Holi!!!

He woke up early morning that day..
With a bucket of colored water waiting for me
I stepped outside my grandpa's door
In a split second I was soaked in a coloured water…
From head to toes… red, orange, yellow, purple… the colors of Holi…
Ohh It's a Hoi Hai day alright…
Lets play Holi … Lets play Holi..

Hails spring with ecstasy and joy!
The trees smile with their sprout
of tender leaves and blooming flowers,
The land of beauty and greatness,
India, witnessing color of happiness and peace.
Nation come alive to enjoy the spirit
A celebration of color- Holi!
An experience of content, harmony and delight.

Holi colors of red, green, yellow and countless.
A day's canvas - a riot of colors.
Lively crowd running, dancing, playing
Rainbow of colors, Lets play Holi and splish and splash!!
Lets play with the frenzy colors .. play on Holi Hai day….

I am dreaming of playing with colors with you
It is the Holi celebration after all.
I can't play inside my home, the carpets will get tainted,
I cant' play it in the yard, the grass and outer walls will get painted.
I thought I would go to the secret garden of ours,
and play with you Holi hai day …
It's a colourful day just you and me..
In love on Holi Hai day…. Lets play Holi..

Hello Friends & Happy Holi to all my hello poetry friends ,Writers & Family..
May this holi brings you and your family a very bright, colourful joyful holi, With love of   Peace, happiness , prosperity & success in Every ones life..
Today writing this letter by expressing my Feeling for one my favourite Indian festival, I know it is strange but this is what my excitement is all about.. what you like the most express it by Writing or enjoy it!!
Holi is a religious festival of the Hindus. Though, it is most popular in India, it is celebrated in every corner of the world as a Festival of colours.
Today describing you the importance of the different colors(Gulal) of holi festival which significance your face life with a different colorful world!!.
the face behind your colour are followed below:
Auspicious Red Colour bright the love of happiness
Divine Green colour binds you in the life of prosperity
Forever Blue color bleed your soul in a Blissful world
Pretty orange color mild your Elysian mind as a silence peace
Beautiful Pink color scents intriguing  personality of life
Sunflame yellow color kisses your beautiful moment of time!!.
Well colour is a beautiful life were you experience the beauty of joy, beauty of passion, beauty of love , beauty of everything that you will experience in this festival !!.come once and get yours new experience of life  ....Thank-you..

There it was on the calendar, Saturday May 11,2013. Big red circle around the date and written in black pen in the middle…SPELLING BEE. Plain as day, you couldn’t miss it. One of the biggest days of the school year for geeks and nerds alike.





Today was the day. In two hours, The 87th Annual Cross Cultural Twin Counties Co-Educational Public School Spelling Bee, would begin.  This was a huge event in the history of Thomas Polk Elementary School. It would be one of the biggest, if not THE BIGGEST in the history of The Twin Counties.



There would be twenty-one schools represented with their best and brightest spellers. The gymnasium would be full of parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and media representatives. Yes, invitations had been sent out to both of the local papers in The Twin Counties, and both had replied in the affirmative. Real media, in Thomas Polk Elementary School, with a shared photographer….the big time had come to town.



Inside the gymnasium, work had been going on all night in preparation of the big event. The Teachers Auxiliary Group had set up bunting across the stage, purple and white of course, for the school colours. The school colours were actually purple and cream, but, there was a wedding at Our Lady of The Weeping Sisters Baptist Church later, and they had emptied the sav-mart of all of the cream coloured bunting and crepe paper. So, white it would be.



It looked spectacular. There were balloons tied to the basketball net at the south end of the gym. It wouldn’t wind up after the last game, so something had to be done to hide it. Balloons fit the bill. There was three levels of benches on the stage for the competitors, a microphone dead center stage and two 120 watt white spot lights aimed at the microphone.  Down in front, was a judges table, also covered in bunting and crepe, with a smaller microphone sitting in the middle. There was a cord connecting it to the stage speaker system, taped to the gym floor with purple duct tape, just to fit in. Big time, big time.



The piece de resistance sat at the right side of the judges table. An eight foot high pole, with an electronic stop watch and two traffic lights, donated from the local public utilities commission, in red and green. The timer had been rigged up by the uncle of one of the competitors, possibly to gain an advantage, to help keep the judges honest in their timings. Besides, it looked fancy, and it had a cool looking remote control.











The gym was filled to capacity. One hundred and Seventy Five Entrants, visitors, judges and media were crammed into plastic chairs, benches, and whatever lawn chairs the Teachers Auxiliary were able to borrow, that weren’t being used for the wedding at the Baptist Church. It was time to begin….



The three judges came in from the left of the clock, and sat down. The entrants were all nervously waiting on stage on the benches. The media representatives were down front, for photo opportunities, of course.



Judge number one, in the middle of the table clicked on the microphone in front of him and turned to the crowd. In doing so, he spilled his water on his notes and pulled the duct tape loose on the floor in front.



“Greetings, and welcome to the 87th Annual Cross Cultural Twin Counties Co-Educational Public School Spelling Bee.” There was some mild clapping from the family members, along with a few muffled whistles and two duck calls from the back. The weak response was due to the fact that most of the parents either had small fans (due to the heat), donated from the local Funeral Home, or hot dogs and beer (from the tailgating outside), in their hands. Needless to say, it was still a positive response.



The judge carried on…”Today’s competition brings together the top spellers in the region of the Twin Counties to do battle on our stage. All of the words used today, have been selected from a number of sources, including Webster’s Dictionary, from our own school library, Words with Friends from the inter web, keeping up with modern culture, and finally from two books of Dr. Suess that we had lying around the office. Each competitor will get one minute to answer once his or her word has been selected. We ask that you please refrain from applause until after the judges have confirmed the spelling, and please no help to the competitors. We now ask that you all turn off any electronic media, cell phones, pagers, etc. so we can begin”.



He then turned to the stage and asked all competitors to remove their cell phones and put them in the bright orange laundry basket, usually reserved for floor hockey sticks. Each student deposited their phones, all one hundred and thirty-seven of them in the basket.  We were ready to start.





“Competitor number one…please approach the microphone and state your name and your school” said Judge number two. Judge number two would be in charge of calling the students up, it seemed. She was the librarian at Thomas Polk. She had typical librarian glasses, with the silver chain attached to the arms, flaming red hair, done up in a bee hive uplift, just for the event, and was called Miss Flume. She was married, but, being the south, she was always addressed as Miss.



The first student advanced to the front of the stage. She had bright pink hair, held in place with a gold hairband, black shoes, and a yellow jumper. She looked like a walking number 2 pencil. The two duck calls came from the back of the gymnasium along with scattered applause. All three judges turned and looked to the back, and then turned to face the young girl.



“My name is Bobbie Jo Collister, I am a senior at Jackson Williams School of Fine Arts and Music”. “Thank you Bobbie Joe” said Miss Flume. Bobbie Jo, smiled nervously and put on her glasses. “Your word is horticulture” announced Judge number one, “horticulture”.  Bobbie Jo took a breath and without asking for a definition, usage, root of the word or anything, just ripped through it without fail in three point two seconds, according to the mammoth timepiece at the end of the table. After conferring, the judges clicked on the green street light and she sat down, amidst more duck calls and clapping.



Student number two went through the entire process as did students three through eight. Each one had glasses, no surprise there, and were all dressed in monochromatic themes. Together, they looked like a life sized box of crayolas ready for a halloween party. Each child spelled their words correctly and were subsequently cheered and applauded.



Student nine then approached the microphone, stopping about a good seven feet short and three feet right of it. “My name is Oliver Parnocky” squeaked the lad. “I go to George W. Bush P.S 19 and am a senior.” Miss Flume, grabbed the small mike in front of her and said “Oliver…put on your glasses and move over to the microphone.” She leaned into the other judges, and said “He goes to my school, he doesn’t like wearing them much, and he’s always outside at recess talking to the flagpole after everyone else has come inside”.



“Oliver, please spell Dichotomy” said Judge number one. Judge two started the clock and they waited….and waited…then out burst this voice….DICHOTOMY…D I C H O T O M E E, , no, wait..D I C K O….****!” The crowd erupted in laughter, Oliver was busted. The judges conferred, and after informing poor Oliver they had never heard it spelled quite that way with an O **** at the end, they triggered the red light and Oliver left the stage to sit in the audience with his folks.



The next three kids, all with glasses, like it was part of an unwritten uniform dress code for the day, all advanced and sat down. The next entrant, number thirteen, luckily enough stood from the back and struggled down to the front of the stage. There were gasps and some snickering from the crowd. She was taller than the previous competitors,  and a little more pregnant as well. “Please state your name” said Miss Flume. “My name is Betty Jo Willin and am a senior at

Buford T. Pusser Parochial School”. At this announcement there was a cheer of “Got Wood at B.T. Pusser” from the crowd. The judges turned, asked for silence and the offending nuns returned to their seats. “Miss Willin, how old are you exactly?” asked Judge number one. “Twenty Two sir”. “And you say you are a senior?” “Yes sir” came the reply. Betty Jo was shuffling a bit as the pressure on her bladder must have been building standing there in her delicate condition. After conferring, judge number one said “That sounds about right, your word is PROPHYLACTIC”. The few people in the crowd that knew the meaning of the word laughed, while the rest continued eating their hot dogs and drinking their sodas and beers. “Please give a definition sir..I don’t believe I know that word”. The judges looked at each other with a definite “I’m not surprised” look and rattled off the definition. When she asked for usage, the judges really didn’t know what to do. Should they give a sentence using the word or explain the usage of a prophylactic, which regardless would have been too late anyway.

After a modicum of control was reached, she attempted the word, getting all tongue tied and naturally messing it up. The red light was triggered and she left the stage.



More strange outfits, bowties, hair nets, jumpers, clip on ties, followed. It looked like a fashion parade from Goodwill and The Salvation Army rolled into one. Most attempted their words and were green lighted onwards to the next round, while those who failed, were red lighted back to the crowd and the tailgate party in the parking lot. As each competitor was eliminated, the betting board that was being manned outside by one father was updated with new odds and payouts.



The first round was approaching an end with only three kids left. “Number nineteen please approach and state your name” said Miss Flume. He plume of red hair was starting to sag and was sliding slowly off of her head due to the humidity in the gymnasium.



Number nineteen came forth, glasses, tape across the bridge like half of the previous spellers. He was wearing the most colourful shirt that any of the judges had ever seen. It was not from Dickies, they surmised. “I go to J.J. Washington P.S 117 and my name is Mujibar Julinoor Parkhurloonakiir”. The judges froze. He obviously was new to the district. They had never heard a name like that before, ever. Not even in Ghandi. This was a powerful name. There had been sixteen cominations of Bobby, Bobbie, Billie, Jo, Joe, Jimmy, Jeff, Johnson and Jackson prior to Mujibar. Stunned, judge one asked “Son, can you spell that please?”

Mujibar, not sure what to do, spelled his name, unsure of why he was being asked to do so. “Thank you son” said Miss Flume. The odds on the betting board in the parking lot changed right then.



“That boy is gonna win fer sure” said Jimmy Jeff Willerkers. Jimmy Jeff ran the filling station two concessions over and had fifty bucks on his nephew Bobby Jeff, who had already flamed out on “yawl”. “How was he supposed to know  it had something to do with boats?” asked Jimmy Jeff. “That Mujibar is gonna win…jeez, he’s been spelling that name for years….anything else is gonna be easy breezy.” The odds went down on Mujibar and the money was flying around that parking lot faster than the rumour that the revenue people were out looking for stills in the woods.



“Mujibar…please spell SALICIOUS”…asked the now red pancake headed Miss Flume. Doing as he was told, Mujibar, spelled the word, gave the root, a definition and a brief history of the word usage in modern literature. Judge number one was furiously scribbling down notes, and trying to figure out how he would get a bet down on this kid before round two started.



Entrant number twenty from Jefferson Davis Temple and Hebrew school advanced which brought up the final entrant from round one. “Number Twenty-One please advance to the front of the stage”. After adjusting his glasses, after all he didn’t want a repeat of what poor Oliver did, he approached. “My name is C.J. Kay from William Clinton P.S 68” Judge one, confused by the young man’s name asked him to repeat it. “C.J. Kay” said C.J. “What is your full last name boy, you can’t just have a letter as your last name….what is the K for?” “Sir, my last name is Kay”, said C.J. “It’s not a letter”. “It most certainly is son…H I J K L…rattled off judge one. “It has to stand for something, you just can’t be CJK, that sounds like a Canadian radio station or worse yet, one of them hippy hoppy d.j fellers my granddaughter listens to. What is the K for?”. C.J said sir “My name is Christopher John Kay… not K, Kay” and then spelled it out. This only confused judge one more than he already was, and the extra time figuring out his name was doing nothing to Miss Flume’s hairdo.



“Christopher John….please spell MEPHISTOPHOLES “ said Judge one, after realizing he was never going to find out what the K was for. The crowd was getting restless and wanted to get to the truck to get re-filled and change their bets. C.J. knocked it out of the park in 2.7 seconds…”faster than Lee Harvey Oswald at a target shoot in Dallas”, one man said.



After a ten minute break, to get drinks, ***, re-tape some glasses and prop up Miss Flumes ruined plumage round two was set to begin. This went faster as the words were getting tougher, although randomly selected, judge one was inserting a few new words to keep his chance of winning with Mujibar alive. PALIMONY, ARCHEOLOGY, PARSIMONIOUS, TRIPTOTHYLAMINE , and many other words were thrown at the competitors. Each time the list of successful spellers was reduced, and the amount of clapping and the duck calls were less.

The seventh round began with just Mujibar, B.J. Collister and C. J Kay left. Before the round began the judges reminded the crowd that the words were random, and to please keep the cheering until the green light had been lit. There were more duck calls at this announcement and very little applause. Jerry Jeff was still manning the betting board, the tailgate barbeque was done, and there was only about thirty people left in the gymnasium.



The balloons on the basketball net had long since lost their get up and go, and were now hanging limply like coloured rubber scrotums and were flatter that Miss Flumes hair, which incidently, was now starting to streak the right side of her face from sweat washing out the dye. She was beginning to look like an extra in a zombie film with a brilliant orange red streak across her forehead.



“C.J.” said judge one, “please spell ARYTHMOMYACIN”. C.J. gave it a valiant effort ,but unfortunately was incorrect and the red light sent him off to the showers. This left B.J. Collister and the odds on favourite, Mujibar. The crowd was down to twenty seven now, Bobbie Jo’s folks and Mujibars immediate family.



Round after round were completed with neither one missing a word. Neither one blinked. It was a gunfight where both shooters died. These two were good, and it was never going to end. Judge one leaned over and told the other judges, “we have to finish this soon….I’m due at the wedding over to the Baptist church for nine o’clock to bless the happily marrieds and drive them both to the airport. They’re off to Cuba for their honeymoon.” The others agreed…”C.J. please spell MINISCULE said Miss Flume”. She did so, without a problem. This caused judge one to yell out “Holy Christmas” just as Mujibar got to the microphone. Thinking this was his word, he started as the judges were giving him his word. Seizing the opportunity to end it…judge one woke up judge three who red lighted poor Mujibar, ending his run at spelling immortality. “Sorry son, you tried, but, today a Mujibar lost and a B.J won.”. Before he tried to correct himself, knowing what he had just said didn’t sound quite right, Miss Flume congratulated both finalists and began the award presentations.



Thankfully, next year the eighty eighth version of The Annual Cross Cultural Twin Counties Co-Educational Public School Spelling Bee will be in the other county. Now the job of sorting out the cell phones in the orange basket begins. By the way, Betty Jo Willin had a boy …you can just guess what she named it!

Dear Poet Friends, this poem was composed as a tribute and praise
to the Creator of heaven and earth way back in the year 2008, & was posted on ‘Poemhunter.com’. The Creator’s handiwork has inspired Poets, Artists, and Humans alike since the dawn of our
civilisation, and shall continue to do so for our future generations! Hope you like this poetic composition. I will be grateful if you comment only after having read the entire poem.  Thanks, - Raj

VISIONS OF THE VAST BLUE EMPYREAN
                * BY RAJ NANDY*

       '’The heavens declare the glory of the Lord,
        The sky proclaim His divine handiwork!’’
                                                   - Psalm of David.

(I)
The SKY is a multidimensional manifestation of God's
creation,
A translucent blue canopy above all and one.
The sky has inspired humans for centuries to aspire
and dream, -
To seek His blessings and guidance from above;
And shall continue to do so for centuries to come!
The sky beckons and lures with its mystical spell;
Making humans with leaping aspirations to try out
and reach, -
Those frontiers where the sky is the unlimited limit of
all our hopes, aspirations and dreams!
The sky, lush, luring, luminous, and sweet, -
Invites, entice, and fills us with a sense of wonder!
How God-like in appearance, and almost human in
its expressions!
The sky has remained as a silent witness to the birth
of our planet,
Since God created the firmament and the heavens,
before creating the Earth.
The sky, a silent spectator since eons past,
Shall continue to see the fading away of old stars;
And formation of baby galaxies in a cosmic drama of
His creation,
Lying beyond the comprehension of Mankind!
While we try to delve His secrets with our space probes,
Which we can neither fully comprehend nor unravel;
And shall only continue to wonder and marvel!

(II)
The blue sky continues to inspire and even melts,
While its blue translucence silently seep into the
Poet's heart,
As he sits to reflect and shape his thoughts,
And the vast expanse of the ethereal sky,
Stretching his mind with future dreams and
visions!
While the azure blue begins to flow through his
veins, and gets transmitted through his pen, -
To convey his exalted thoughts and deepest feelings,
in poetic lines and verse, -
Which becomes the Poet's sole mission.
And at night when the Poet meditates, he catches a
falling star,
And writes a poem on it and keeps it in his pocket, -
Saving it for a rainy day!
And during the silence of the night, when the hours
grow dark and deep,
And the sky gently droops and drips;
The poet wakes up to write, and writes to sleep!

(III)
The sky flows on to the canvas of the Painter,
As he tries to depict its varied complexions and moods,
With his limited colours, shades and hues,
Flashing and spilling his canvas with touches of tints
and tones,
To captivate the capricious, transient and fanciful moods,
which the sky adorns!
The deep blue empyrean is at times blissful and sublime,
Changing from a radiant, opulent, and iridescent, -
To threatening, cruel, and violent;
Both devastating and destructive as the sweeping
tornado or a hurricane!
Yet when God decides to paint the Aurora Borealis those
magical Northern Lights, -
Those glowing diaphanous curtains of waving, swirling
streamers of lights,
With its red, green, blue, violet, and luminescent spell-
binding shades;
How can any artist foolishly dare to compete or replicate
His celestial art?
For the Auroras are a reflection of His live real time
handiwork, -
Which shall never diminish or fade!

(IV)
The crystal blue arch of heaven, a glorious canopy
cover over our head,
Blesses us with the much needed shade;
From the tormenting and scorching rays of the
relentless Summer's sun.
With its varying layers of passing clouds, -
As the sun completes its diurnal rounds!
Those high cheerful cirrus and cirro-stratus clouds
of the Winter sky,
The meditating alto-cumulus and alto-stratus clouds
of medium heights;
And those upward swelling, ambitious clouds of
cumulonimbus, -
Carrying the thunder bolts and lightning of the great
Zeus do confound us!
And finally those low sheets of stratus clouds of the
rumbling monsoon sky;
Bringing incessant rain and lightning darts, -
Flashing like a whip lash across the sky and the earth!
With the speed of sound always lagging behind that
of light, -
Thus thunder bolts always follow those blinding flashing
darts of dazzling blue lights!
While the good Earth absorbs it all like some suffering
soul,
And forever regenerates itself to transcend its
tormenting plight!

(V)
The clouds floating like fluffy wool of cotton and
the downs of white goose feathers,
Adds dimensions, visual depth, definition and a sense
of perception;
For the human mind to behold and meditate, -
Those vast measureless depths of the infinite space!
The clouds with its varying forms and shapes,
At times like the ice cream cones with vanilla
tops and wisps of cream;
Keep floating across the cerulean blue, forming
and melting, -
From one nothingness into another,  below the
arched vault of the heavens!
And at times the clouds coalesce to dissipate as
gentle rain,
With rhythmic beats, or follow some wild musical note,
Lashing against the earth like a dancer in trance!
While it brings down the cool aqua, the very elixir of
life to earth.

(VI)
The sky is held captive by its own void of eternal
silence.
As nature's mirror, it reflects and also shows us a
glimpse of the infinite!
While the night sky by itself exhibits a wondrous
sight,
With the sentinel stars shining like a living hymn
written in light!
And the ebony treasure vault of heavens hold the
sparkling and glittering countless gems;
Of pearls of lily white, rubies with red sheen,
And galaxies shimmering like hyacinth of purple
light!
The sky envelopes the earth all around in an elusive
embrace of unconsummated love!
But each night, in hope and expectations the Sky
adorns itself, -
With diamond necklace and pearls of milky white,
Woven round its dark black flowing stresses;
Casting longing looks towards the beloved Earth,
To whom she is attracted from her very birth!

(VII)
The sky despite its wide range of colourful
spectrum and moods,
Forever retains its pristine colour of azure blue,
behind its gray and somber clouds.
Each morning the sky presents us with a clean
blue slate,
Where nothing ever remains written or etched!
Inspiring humans to make a new beginning,
Before time runs out and it becomes too late!
Yet the sky never forgets to reflect the arched
rainbow over its brow,
Once the thunder clouds and storms dissipate!
Keeping our hopes and aspirations forever alive;
And impelling us to strive in all our endeavours
and to excel!

(VIII)
The sky remains as a revelation of God's immaculate
handiwork.
The blue welkin, God's treasure trove, with its
capricious moods,
Sometimes furious, sometimes iridescent, but by nature
divinely sublime!
The sky a recurrence of happenings, with its speckled dance, -
Of colours, cadence, and of light and shade,
Giving us a taste, smell and feel of eternity, -
Which appears as real, though illusory and ephemeral!
Transcending all our scientific formulas, speculations
and intricate *******-up logic;
Since many mystical and unknown energy forms exist in
our sky and space,
Beyond the realms of Quantum Physics , String Theory,
the Higgs Field and Relativity!  * ( see Notes below)
And forces can even be made to emanate from the human
mind and soul and to transcend, -
To blend with those vibrations in the celestial spheres of
the Divine!

(IX)
The sky shall forever remain a source of exhilaration
and exhortation for mankind, -
And as an exaltation of God's divine and lofty thoughts!
The sky also remains as our ultimate frontier, -
Stretching the dimensions of human consciousness,
Till our consciousness learns to merge with the Divine;
To become one and to blend, under the blue vault of
our blissful Empyrean!
                                                       -  by RAJ NANDY, NEW DELHI

(*NOTES: The five different versions of the String Theories know as the 'The M- Theory' of Quantum Physics, which tries to explain the origin of all things through the vibrations of nano strings. The latest discovery of the Higgs Field, which is said to add mass to subatomic particles; are our humble and insufficient efforts to understand God’s mysterious creation of the universe and space!)
      (ALL COPY RIGHT ARE WITH THE AUTHOR ONLY)

The only proper way to be a conversationalist is to convince yourself that you’re boring. If you can strip back the hard shell of the ego, and look down on yourself from the eyes of an apathetic God, you will likely (and hopefully) see just how boring you really are. It isn’t a sin to be boring, in fact there are many advantages to honest self-depreciation.

The main advantage, is the way you approach a conversation. “Interesting” people find it difficult to silence the affected score-keeper that dominates their internal dialogue and ruins any chance of an honest and engaged conversation. It is the voice that reminds you to show interest with your body language, and keep a dumb happy gaze laser pointed into their eyes. This dialogue is obsessed with authenticity and genuine conversation, and therefore a natural sociopath.

Luckily, you are the stunning definition of boredom, an extracted dictionary cut-out of un-interesting, and nobody could possibly give a rats-*** what you have to think—least of all the Voice that controls the inner-dialogue. That Voice has packed it up to find a more interesting vessel…maybe the person standing across from you in conversation. 


Because you are so boring, and they are the Oxford personification of intellect and fascination, you should pay careful attention to what they say—no time to worry about how they’re perceiving your reaction to whatever it is they’re saying. You are too busy to notice what sort of body language you may or may not be using to validate their half of the conversation. Instead, your time is spent carefully hanging on their every word, digesting it and projecting the whole bit into a colourful scene in your imagination. Instead, you’re too lost in the excitement of their infinitely more interesting life and impossible wealth of knowledge offered to you with each word that they speak. Instead, you are actually listening to the words that come out of their mouth and not the ones that speak to you from the inside of your own mind.

This is what it means to be in conversation. This was the point of our social nature. And in a world of needy social-media junkies grabbing at the cuffs of potential ‘followers’ and ‘likes’ and trendy passer-by’s, the last thing anyone needs is the high-pitched whine of another “interesting” millennial.

Lucky for you, you boring sack of yawning sloths, that you aren’t interesting too.