This English Thames is holier far than Rome,
Those harebells like a sudden flush of sea
Breaking across the woodland, with the foam
Of meadow-sweet and white anemone
To fleck their blue waves,—God is likelier there
Than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear!

Those violet-gleaming butterflies that take
Yon creamy lily for their pavilion
Are monsignores, and where the rushes shake
A lazy pike lies basking in the sun,
His eyes half shut,—he is some mitred old
Bishop in partibus! look at those gaudy scales all green and gold.

The wind the restless prisoner of the trees
Does well for Palaestrina, one would say
The mighty master’s hands were on the keys
Of the Maria *****, which they play
When early on some sapphire Easter morn
In a high litter red as blood or sin the Pope is borne

From his dark House out to the Balcony
Above the bronze gates and the crowded square,
Whose very fountains seem for ecstasy
To toss their silver lances in the air,
And stretching out weak hands to East and West
In vain sends peace to peaceless lands, to restless nations rest.

Is not yon lingering orange after-glow
That stays to vex the moon more fair than all
Rome’s lordliest pageants! strange, a year ago
I knelt before some crimson Cardinal
Who bare the Host across the Esquiline,
And now—those common poppies in the wheat seem twice as fine.

The blue-green beanfields yonder, tremulous
With the last shower, sweeter perfume bring
Through this cool evening than the odorous
Flame-jewelled censers the young deacons swing,
When the grey priest unlocks the curtained shrine,
And makes God’s body from the common fruit of corn and vine.

Poor Fra Giovanni bawling at the mass
Were out of tune now, for a small brown bird
Sings overhead, and through the long cool grass
I see that throbbing throat which once I heard
On starlit hills of flower-starred Arcady,
Once where the white and crescent sand of Salamis meets sea.

Sweet is the swallow twittering on the eaves
At daybreak, when the mower whets his scythe,
And stock-doves murmur, and the milkmaid leaves
Her little lonely bed, and carols blithe
To see the heavy-lowing cattle wait
Stretching their huge and dripping mouths across the farmyard gate.

And sweet the hops upon the Kentish leas,
And sweet the wind that lifts the new-mown hay,
And sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling bees
That round and round the linden blossoms play;
And sweet the heifer breathing in the stall,
And the green bursting figs that hang upon the red-brick wall,

And sweet to hear the cuckoo mock the spring
While the last violet loiters by the well,
And sweet to hear the shepherd Daphnis sing
The song of Linus through a sunny dell
Of warm Arcadia where the corn is gold
And the slight lithe-limbed reapers dance about the wattled fold.

And sweet with young Lycoris to recline
In some Illyrian valley far away,
Where canopied on herbs amaracine
We too might waste the summer-tranced day
Matching our reeds in sportive rivalry,
While far beneath us frets the troubled purple of the sea.

But sweeter far if silver-sandalled foot
Of some long-hidden God should ever tread
The Nuneham meadows, if with reeded flute
Pressed to his lips some Faun might raise his head
By the green water-flags, ah! sweet indeed
To see the heavenly herdsman call his white-fleeced flock to feed.

Then sing to me thou tuneful chorister,
Though what thou sing’st be thine own requiem!
Tell me thy tale thou hapless chronicler
Of thine own tragedies! do not contemn
These unfamiliar haunts, this English field,
For many a lovely coronal our northern isle can yield

Which Grecian meadows know not, many a rose
Which all day long in vales AEolian
A lad might seek in vain for over-grows
Our hedges like a wanton courtesan
Unthrifty of its beauty; lilies too
Ilissos never mirrored star our streams, and cockles blue

Dot the green wheat which, though they are the signs
For swallows going south, would never spread
Their azure tents between the Attic vines;
Even that little **** of ragged red,
Which bids the robin pipe, in Arcady
Would be a trespasser, and many an unsung elegy

Sleeps in the reeds that fringe our winding Thames
Which to awake were sweeter ravishment
Than ever Syrinx wept for; diadems
Of brown bee-studded orchids which were meant
For Cytheraea’s brows are hidden here
Unknown to Cytheraea, and by yonder pasturing steer

There is a tiny yellow daffodil,
The butterfly can see it from afar,
Although one summer evening’s dew could fill
Its little cup twice over ere the star
Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold
And be no prodigal; each leaf is flecked with spotted gold

As if Jove’s gorgeous leman Danae
Hot from his gilded arms had stooped to kiss
The trembling petals, or young Mercury
Low-flying to the dusky ford of Dis
Had with one feather of his pinions
Just brushed them! the slight stem which bears the burden of its suns

Is hardly thicker than the gossamer,
Or poor Arachne’s silver tapestry,—
Men say it bloomed upon the sepulchre
Of One I sometime worshipped, but to me
It seems to bring diviner memories
Of faun-loved Heliconian glades and blue nymph-haunted seas,

Of an untrodden vale at Tempe where
On the clear river’s marge Narcissus lies,
The tangle of the forest in his hair,
The silence of the woodland in his eyes,
Wooing that drifting imagery which is
No sooner kissed than broken; memories of Salmacis

Who is not boy nor girl and yet is both,
Fed by two fires and unsatisfied
Through their excess, each passion being loth
For love’s own sake to leave the other’s side
Yet killing love by staying; memories
Of Oreads peeping through the leaves of silent moonlit trees,

Of lonely Ariadne on the wharf
At Naxos, when she saw the treacherous crew
Far out at sea, and waved her crimson scarf
And called false Theseus back again nor knew
That Dionysos on an amber pard
Was close behind her; memories of what Maeonia’s bard

With sightless eyes beheld, the wall of Troy,
Queen Helen lying in the ivory room,
And at her side an amorous red-lipped boy
Trimming with dainty hand his helmet’s plume,
And far away the moil, the shout, the groan,
As Hector shielded off the spear and Ajax hurled the stone;

Of winged Perseus with his flawless sword
Cleaving the snaky tresses of the witch,
And all those tales imperishably stored
In little Grecian urns, freightage more rich
Than any gaudy galleon of Spain
Bare from the Indies ever! these at least bring back again,

For well I know they are not dead at all,
The ancient Gods of Grecian poesy:
They are asleep, and when they hear thee call
Will wake and think ‘t is very Thessaly,
This Thames the Daulian waters, this cool glade
The yellow-irised mead where once young Itys laughed and played.

If it was thou dear jasmine-cradled bird
Who from the leafy stillness of thy throne
Sang to the wondrous boy, until he heard
The horn of Atalanta faintly blown
Across the Cumnor hills, and wandering
Through Bagley wood at evening found the Attic poets’ spring,—

Ah! tiny sober-suited advocate
That pleadest for the moon against the day!
If thou didst make the shepherd seek his mate
On that sweet questing, when Proserpina
Forgot it was not Sicily and leant
Across the mossy Sandford stile in ravished wonderment,—

Light-winged and bright-eyed miracle of the wood!
If ever thou didst soothe with melody
One of that little clan, that brotherhood
Which loved the morning-star of Tuscany
More than the perfect sun of Raphael
And is immortal, sing to me! for I too love thee well.

Sing on! sing on! let the dull world grow young,
Let elemental things take form again,
And the old shapes of Beauty walk among
The simple garths and open crofts, as when
The son of Leto bare the willow rod,
And the soft sheep and shaggy goats followed the boyish God.

Sing on! sing on! and Bacchus will be here
Astride upon his gorgeous Indian throne,
And over whimpering tigers shake the spear
With yellow ivy crowned and gummy cone,
While at his side the wanton Bassarid
Will throw the lion by the mane and catch the mountain kid!

Sing on! and I will wear the leopard skin,
And steal the mooned wings of Ashtaroth,
Upon whose icy chariot we could win
Cithaeron in an hour ere the froth
Has over-brimmed the wine-vat or the Faun
Ceased from the treading! ay, before the flickering lamp of dawn

Has scared the hooting owlet to its nest,
And warned the bat to close its filmy vans,
Some Maenad girl with vine-leaves on her breast
Will filch their beech-nuts from the sleeping Pans
So softly that the little nested thrush
Will never wake, and then with shrilly laugh and leap will rush

Down the green valley where the fallen dew
Lies thick beneath the elm and count her store,
Till the brown Satyrs in a jolly crew
Trample the loosestrife down along the shore,
And where their horned master sits in state
Bring strawberries and bloomy plums upon a wicker crate!

Sing on! and soon with passion-wearied face
Through the cool leaves Apollo’s lad will come,
The Tyrian prince his bristled boar will chase
Adown the chestnut-copses all a-bloom,
And ivory-limbed, grey-eyed, with look of pride,
After yon velvet-coated deer the ****** maid will ride.

Sing on! and I the dying boy will see
Stain with his purple blood the waxen bell
That overweighs the jacinth, and to me
The wretched Cyprian her woe will tell,
And I will kiss her mouth and streaming eyes,
And lead her to the myrtle-hidden grove where Adon lies!

Cry out aloud on Itys! memory
That foster-brother of remorse and pain
Drops poison in mine ear,—O to be free,
To burn one’s old ships! and to launch again
Into the white-plumed battle of the waves
And fight old Proteus for the spoil of coral-flowered caves!

O for Medea with her poppied spell!
O for the secret of the Colchian shrine!
O for one leaf of that pale asphodel
Which binds the tired brows of Proserpine,
And sheds such wondrous dews at eve that she
Dreams of the fields of Enna, by the far Sicilian sea,

Where oft the golden-girdled bee she chased
From lily to lily on the level mead,
Ere yet her sombre Lord had bid her taste
The deadly fruit of that pomegranate seed,
Ere the black steeds had harried her away
Down to the faint and flowerless land, the sick and sunless day.

O for one midnight and as paramour
The Venus of the little Melian farm!
O that some antique statue for one hour
Might wake to passion, and that I could charm
The Dawn at Florence from its dumb despair,
Mix with those mighty limbs and make that giant breast my lair!

Sing on! sing on!  I would be drunk with life,
Drunk with the trampled vintage of my youth,
I would forget the wearying wasted strife,
The riven veil, the Gorgon eyes of Truth,
The prayerless vigil and the cry for prayer,
The barren gifts, the lifted arms, the dull insensate air!

Sing on! sing on!  O feathered Niobe,
Thou canst make sorrow beautiful, and steal
From joy its sweetest music, not as we
Who by dead voiceless silence strive to heal
Our too untented wounds, and do but keep
Pain barricadoed in our hearts, and ****** pillowed sleep.

Sing louder yet, why must I still behold
The wan white face of that deserted Christ,
Whose bleeding hands my hands did once enfold,
Whose smitten lips my lips so oft have kissed,
And now in mute and marble misery
Sits in his lone dishonoured House and weeps, perchance for me?

O Memory cast down thy wreathed shell!
Break thy hoarse lute O sad Melpomene!
O Sorrow, Sorrow keep thy cloistered cell
Nor dim with tears this limpid Castaly!
Cease, Philomel, thou dost the forest wrong
To vex its sylvan quiet with such wild impassioned song!

Cease, cease, or if ‘t is anguish to be dumb
Take from the pastoral thrush her simpler air,
Whose jocund carelessness doth more become
This English woodland than thy keen despair,
Ah! cease and let the north wind bear thy lay
Back to the rocky hills of Thrace, the stormy Daulian bay.

A moment more, the startled leaves had stirred,
Endymion would have passed across the mead
Moonstruck with love, and this still Thames had heard
Pan plash and paddle groping for some reed
To lure from her blue cave that Naiad maid
Who for such piping listens half in joy and half afraid.

A moment more, the waking dove had cooed,
The silver daughter of the silver sea
With the fond gyves of clinging hands had wooed
Her wanton from the chase, and Dryope
Had ****** aside the branches of her oak
To see the ***** gold-haired lad rein in his snorting yoke.

A moment more, the trees had stooped to kiss
Pale Daphne just awakening from the swoon
Of tremulous laurels, lonely Salmacis
Had bared his barren beauty to the moon,
And through the vale with sad voluptuous smile
Antinous had wandered, the red lotus of the Nile

Down leaning from his black and clustering hair,
To shade those slumberous eyelids’ caverned bliss,
Or else on yonder grassy ***** with bare
High-tuniced limbs unravished Artemis
Had bade her hounds give tongue, and roused the deer
From his green ambuscade with shrill halloo and pricking spear.

Lie still, lie still, O passionate heart, lie still!
O Melancholy, fold thy raven wing!
O sobbing Dryad, from thy hollow hill
Come not with such despondent answering!
No more thou winged Marsyas complain,
Apollo loveth not to hear such troubled songs of pain!

It was a dream, the glade is tenantless,
No soft Ionian laughter moves the air,
The Thames creeps on in sluggish leadenness,
And from the copse left desolate and bare
Fled is young Bacchus with his revelry,
Yet still from Nuneham wood there comes that thrilling melody

So sad, that one might think a human heart
Brake in each separate note, a quality
Which music sometimes has, being the Art
Which is most nigh to tears and memory;
Poor mourning Philomel, what dost thou fear?
Thy sister doth not haunt these fields, Pandion is not here,

Here is no cruel Lord with murderous blade,
No woven web of ****** heraldries,
But mossy dells for roving comrades made,
Warm valleys where the tired student lies
With half-shut book, and many a winding walk
Where rustic lovers stray at eve in happy simple talk.

The harmless rabbit gambols with its young
Across the trampled towing-path, where late
A troop of laughing boys in jostling throng
Cheered with their noisy cries the racing eight;
The gossamer, with ravelled silver threads,
Works at its little loom, and from the dusky red-eaved sheds

Of the lone Farm a flickering light shines out
Where the swinked shepherd drives his bleating flock
Back to their wattled sheep-cotes, a faint shout
Comes from some Oxford boat at Sandford lock,
And starts the moor-hen from the sedgy rill,
And the dim lengthening shadows flit like swallows up the hill.

The heron passes homeward to the mere,
The blue mist creeps among the shivering trees,
Gold world by world the silent stars appear,
And like a blossom blown before the breeze
A white moon drifts across the shimmering sky,
Mute arbitress of all thy sad, thy rapturous threnody.

She does not heed thee, wherefore should she heed,
She knows Endymion is not far away;
’Tis I, ’tis I, whose soul is as the reed
Which has no message of its own to play,
So pipes another’s bidding, it is I,
Drifting with every wind on the wide sea of misery.

Ah! the brown bird has ceased:  one exquisite trill
About the sombre woodland seems to cling
Dying in music, else the air is still,
So still that one might hear the bat’s small wing
Wander and wheel above the pines, or tell
Each tiny dew-drop dripping from the bluebell’s brimming cell.

And far away across the lengthening wold,
Across the willowy flats and thickets brown,
Magdalen’s tall tower tipped with tremulous gold
Marks the long High Street of the little town,
And warns me to return; I must not wait,
Hark! ’Tis the curfew booming from the bell at Christ Church gate.

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

Raindrops splattered across the squeaky window as Lily slipped into a world entirely her own. She found out that the slightly dilapidated beige sofa can provide an alarmingly pacifying dark fortress.
It was the storm in her living room which led her to this point.

Her mother was a peculiar human in the aspect of coping methods. Most would turn to alcohol, but Lily's mother turned to books.

One would think a child of such age possessed great privilege, having such a mosaic of resources on literature, words, and literacy.

Every morning, Lily's mother would slip into a world entirely her own. Some days, her face would hold the cover of a Patrick O'Brian and other sleepy days would entail a bit of nineteenth-century British novels. Whatever the cover, the woman's disposition was also affected.

"Lily, listen to this- doesn't it sound blue?" The woman hoarded phrases from each book, and soon, Lily's mother was an endless world of words. Her mother's affinity for quotes turned into a tasteful obsession. Lily was naive to the abnormalities in associating words with colors; such as ‘nebulous' with orange, and 'surreptitious' with purple. To her, language was rich in color and feeling.

One might also surmise a girl with such enlightenment would take after her progenitor. Lily did not. Though, she was above her class in reading comprehension and competency, the very thought of books sent flashes of buried grudges.

"Everyone needs a therapist. The poor girl's been through so much," they say. 'They' being the individuals at church. After service, the doors would open. Lily would do everything in her power to weave around the sea of meaty vociferous faces. She didn't need their pity. Nothing happened.

'Nothing' meaning... perhaps a little something. Her father died. This, (Lily suspected) was the cause of her mother's book addiction. It must be peculiar for the spectator witnessing the situation from above. As we've stated before: most turn to alcohol.

Years elapsed in which an occurrence she termed, "The Rebellion," began her mother’s book exodus. She was never truly present and Lily desired for her to see the world as it was now- not in a novel or in the pages of fantasy.

The piano rang throughout the room every morning and every night for about an hour. Lily often turned to classical Vivaldi, Yiruma, or a dash of Paganini piano covers. She drank music like a shriveled sponge. Of course, her hobbies would be as far away from books as possible since she believed them to be an obligatory evil.

Tunes danced across her soul like the ghost of a memory almost arising. The voice of a piano carried bursts of purples, yellows, and reds. White and black keys proved unchanging and reliable. Lily latched to the idea.

"I'm going to play her out." The mourning doves cooed in the almost-vacant neighborhood, while two girls of the same height and age were ensconced under a magnolia tree near the street, their legs crisscrossed on grass.

"Too much piano?" Haley asked, plucking a dandelion from its roots while squeezing milky sap from the stalk with her fingernails.

"No, I want to." Lily answered.

A thought crossed her mind. Each book infested mother with unique feelings. Then, Lily deduced there is no such thing as too much piano.











It was quiet in the house as Lily had no siblings and the book-trace rendered mother speechless. Tape recorder near the piano, and fingers at the keys, she began playing au fait on her version of Vivaldi's Spring Season. She kept the imagery of wedding cake and rings in her mind. She introduced the song to her hands by means of segmented versions, leading towards the final masterpiece. Her aural senses acute, listening for the best complimentary notes. Soon, her fingers had written poetry. She liked to think that her left and right hand owned different stories to perform, yet once they met on-stage, they heightened the essence of each other's tales.

Lily played verses countless times until she was out of breath. If someone told her piano was a sport, Lily would concur.












The final piece was recorded on an 'old-fashioned' tape. Heart pounding, she tiptoed upstairs to her mother's hiding place.

"...a thin place where tissue paper separates the material from the spiritual.." the woman greeted Lily. She never looked up from her book.

"Listen, it's white,” the woman voiced hazily. Lily shoved the tape in her face. The mother’s hand reached out from behind the book, feeling the air before finally resting her hand on the plastic rectangle, sliding it into the player

and the music journeyed to her ears.

"Hmmm..." she said. And then all was quiet.










"I've got her." Lily declared in the convenience store on a rainy day.

"With a cake?"

"It was her wedding song. You know- the one playing while the bride walks in."

"What'd she say?"

"Nothing."

"Why can't you just wake her up with some coffee?" Haley suggested as a golden aurora arose from behind the clouds.

Most of Lily’s playing sessions caused her to neglect her own physical well-being. So she rinsed a dusty plastic cup from the cupboard and filled it with water. M&Ms were food Lily associated with her sessions and she couldn't play without developing that deep-rooted Pavlovian response. Finally, in an attempt to be healthier, a plastic water cup was to her right, and M&Ms in a bag were to her left on the piano seat.

But first, a small kick in her belly drove her to a slight guilt. See, she believed in music the way some do religion, and thus, she did what others do when confronted with a critical moment in life.

"I'll bring her out," she began, "and I'll play for the rest of my life. If I can't, I'll give up music forever." She placed her fingers on the keys, completing the oath. And this occurred only because she was twelve and incredulously naïve in the field of religious traditions, that she didn't know that most oaths offered to a deity of higher power involved some form of great sacrifice for a desired result. This meant that her risk was greater than others, as it meant winning or losing it all.

Lily drew a deep breath, filling her nose with the memories of coffee. She began playing. An odd little tune traveling from her brain to the keys before her.










"Remember me, when we lived far away, down in the lonely lighthouse..." her mother chanted and Lily only half listening as she painted the cover of a CD containing her finished piano piece: Coffee.

"The sea air- spill in that lighthouse. The comfort we felt in that lighthouse." Her mother continued absorbing the ink on the pages, "Remember me, when I flew away with that chilling, cold sea breeze..."

Lily clicked the clear cover shut, handing it to the "Collective Works of Julie G." Once again, a wandering hand shot out from behind the cover, searching for the CD. Her mother did not look up.

"Music or an experiment?" she asked

"We'll see." Lily answered.

Her mother raised the CD to her player and inserted the disk, pressing play. Her wandering hand felt a small cup of coffee and as the music played, she sipped it slowly- quite peculiar. Her eyes looking up from the pages as though she were staring at something far away and her face, rubescent.

"Where did you learn to play that?" she said, leaning back and closing her eyes.








Haley and Lily entered a quintessential music store. Guitars lined the walls and classic vinyls were stacked on shelves. Small sleek keyboards welcomed guests as they stepped inside, synchronous to the resonance of a sharp bell.

Lily sped towards the CD section nestled near the corner in the store, while Haley flipped through the pages of violin classics.

"Lily, you're missing something." Haley noted from across the room, flippantly exasperated.

"Coffee didn't work." Lily replied in despair. "I thought I had her, but I didn’t."

Haley walked back towards her friend, new sheet music in hand, "Everyone's heart breaks a little differently and that means every cure must be unique. But there's something we all need- to feel safe. You did that for her."

"Then why is she still gone?"

"Because In order to return, she needs to remember what she lost and she needs to want it again... hold on." Haley held out a piano book in her hands. It was a neat white book with dark blue ink. Lily furrowed her brows.

"Just read it, Lily." Haley urged in the most loving way possible.









She still refused to use the book, diverging more from Haley’s instruction, cajoling her mother by use of classical music, modern music, and healing music. But nothing resolved and it seemed as though her oath to the Greater Deity would not fall in her favor.


It took a graying day for Lily to dig in her backpack and pull out the vile book. Inside revealed crisp white music sheets.

She itched to throw it away, however, something caught her eyes:

Kiss the Rain.

Lily stopped and stared out the window, inhaling to smell petrichor.

"Well, okay then." she reasoned. She pulled out  the piano bench and began finding the first few notes. The rest fell into sight reading. Just as the rain trickled down the living room window, the music trickled into the home's inhabitants' ears. Rain engulfed her soul.

The piece finished with a light touch on the last note. It resounded through the cozy expanse.









"I have something for you, mom." Lily proclaimed, placing the CD in her mother's hand, which then traveled to the player.

The woman failed to look up from her book, only staring into the distant pages as the notes tapped inside her ears. Ever so slightly, her eyes began to close and Lily could see the notes dancing behind eyelids.

"It feels like... rain." she commented. And as the last tickling touch of the last raindrop echoed through the dark room, her mother looked up, smiling at the sound, and her eyes met her daughter's.

"Why, Lily," she said, her voice laced with surprise, "look how you've grown.”

1
Shh…the rain cooed, calming the flood that rages
Still a concern…or was
Now placed upon the wetted soil
Transfigured, blessed in holy oils scented with cinnamon.
#2
I grasp at the compass that Donne reassured,
Tragic to find it etched in notes
Of the Song of Swans:
It may commune beneath a firmament of birds
Yet, it seems divided in this steely sky—the color of wrathful swords—
I sniff: it smells of cinnamon.
#3
I am drawn by the scented bliss, anointed in general
That is, with the rest,
But somehow, cologned, it’s too sweet, too new
Now a criminal to laws of ancient Hebrew.
To the iron clouds, the necks will bend,
To turn from he who smells of
Cinnamon
That is, with the rest.
#4
Yet, they do not smell
Nor peel back its bark lest it poison the oil
As rain poisons soil,
And ignore, as they do, when rain is to come,
The oil is fragranced evil with cinnamon.
#5
And though I complain, clack to the mud
It, too, smells of cinnamon,
And so we’re the same.
#6
“****” is my cry. “**** them to their hell,”
Burn the concrete buildings, tear away social offal
That, with some entreaty, seems to plague us all! Why so much Injustice?
Who are you? A God? What makes one lump of clay
A clod, the other a home? Upon the heads of refused beings
How do you stand so tall? You can’t lest your empire fails
While the seesaw of suffering hoist up the side of wails
And smoke the vital oxygen,
Scowls, the first impression
Worried not about advancing goals but living day to day,
The things that move metabolisms, world-wide, subject to pay,
Wasting our lives not in 9-to-5s but looking
And failing to find
And toting excess and praising their holders
While blaming the others born from behind
Partitions drawn in world wars started for oil
For money, for wealth, both so glutted and glutting pride a nation wide
While its cells are tinged with cancer,
Both sides of false dichotomy claiming they have the answer, to answer the question
Of recidivism, the poor and they are to live or get along, dangling the carrot so high
It goes above their dreams, and it’s so blurry that it’s hard to tell
What exactly one pursues,
Or race, religion,
Of a woman’s place in the is to see how absurd such a question should be,
Here is a question that seems appropriate: why are differences discouraged,
Who says what is better but the powers that be
Lenses shaped for us to see only those things specifically made
To make the made untouchable,
And they do it, and will not stop, we’re left with no hope
But from where pleasure is wrought: drugs and sedatives that
Blunt the mind that worries, sober, replacing them until they’re over
But without any solution; a bandage to a bandage
Since a sober mind that cognizes problems can’t possibly solve them in the same state
Of mind.
A lust for love with no genuine conception,
*******, deflowering with cold, stony hearts
Fostered in a day and age where manipulation is more inescapable means
And less insidious art,
So broken by our broken dreams and forced to walk without contention
Compromising on who we are
No struggle to help make us strong
A simple shrug to carry on,
While the most powerful blood, the fire in our veins is given, given, given
To those we think we love,
While we sit dreaming and falling in love with love
Always coddling the scars, where the blood and sinew were streaming
Until they are closed and pink, taut and empty like a drum
Still yearning to beat the same rhythm again,
Needing to learn before synchrony may happen
And two drums may beat to the other’s tune,
Feeling some pulse that holds us feet from decay
All the warmth and butterflies
Come in a zephyr smelling of fetid, carrion meat
That makes true affection
Feel like maggots in the skin
And we leave to new horizons, akin in their process:
Where they end, where they begin.
And yet we’re so weak in every regard, being the forge of our own fortress’ petard
Sade-masochists that run, run, run away
Feeling as though we’re cast to sea, waiting for the problem to deal with itself
A shining light house on a miserable horn
Hides by our back, the shore receding out, and even in the darkness
The vastness of the sea, there’s still the light cast ‘cross the sky
With the same, though fleeting, periodicity.
And I can do nothing, least, nothing of worth
Being as I am, a whiny little white boy with middle class struggles,
Well-fed, well-cared for, and some domestic unrest
But I am minor, mediocre at best,
And have never had the muscles, the mettle, put truly to the test.
So I can only complain beneath the anthill of my worries
And all my attempts to make any change are thwarted by my failings, my comfort
My life,
Doing drugs, self-medicating because it’s the best I can come up with
Spiraling beyond uncontrollable until it is no longer
Me whose spinning down to destruction,
That was something of the past
Now, I truly have nothing to grasp
And I kick and I scream and I try and I try and I try
But look in dismay at any hope I may have for people to change, yet their conduct belies
A sense or desire to be anointed enspiced
Since the general oil has seemed to suffice, and that’s not enough, but I just want some change
Some honesty, but I can’t find it, I know not what I feel
All this angst piling up, like a chapter in the life of Holden Caulfield:
He’s my ******* idol since I pressed with all this
Stupidity with no venue but complaints
And this is doing nothing, this ******* poetry, neither solving nor affording comfort
Back to me. It is art and no one cares
It has no voice, save the face-value point
And I want meaning, and so I try to make it knowing full well
The intention is demeaning, but not in my writing
Its filthy fingers touching on everything that I’d like to achieve
Legitimately, but it’s all conditioned
It’s breakdown is imminent  
If only I knew how accept
Oils scented with cinnamon.
I wish I was different, or acted upon it, instead of just ******* in the lines
Of a sonnet,
Or that others may smell of their own fragranced oils
Then trifles, then problems may seem something
Of little toil
But, but, but, where am I to go, where do I begin?
I’ve gone in circles, where I stopped I’ll start again
And I’ll never escape because…
#7
Shh…the rain cooed, calming the flood that rages
Still a concern…or was.
In due time the sun will do as it does:
Show us what is, is soon to be what was.
The nature of me, with little consistency, is grasping for a dawn
I see it coming up
Now that I’ve smelled the breeze
Of cinnamon.

I'm a schizophrenic hypocrite
thankfully not in a medical way
i don't have to pop pills everyday
to keep an essence of danger under control
and to stop my head doing backward flips and forward rolls
to curtail bad thoughts and contain OCD
wake up and think "what's happening to me?"
but sometimes i'm full of mazey bomb blasts
and crazy contrasts,
I'm a schizophrenic hypocrite
I say work i'm not even gonna give 50% percent never mind double
but i'll stay just below the warning threshold so i don't really get in trouble,
i do see my sick days as extra days of annual leave
but my bums on my seat most of the year and at least one Eve.
I'm always ducking and diving, i hide and they seek,
but i hit my targets every week.
They can say put down your pens,
strip your pencils of lead,
you can't stop me writing in my head
But you'll sometimes dictate what time i go to bed.
I'm a schizophrenic hypocrite
Nearly every road i walk down i've got a ***** cat friend
there meowing never drives me round the bend
but if me owing then just a letter i'll send.
I’ll rescue  spiders from the bath, without any exception,
But I’ll clean their webs and evict them when I have a house inspection.
Giving up pork, on a parity with pigges at last
But then i broke my faste with bacon for breakfast
Watching lambs a gamboling there frolicking is fab,
but i'll see you on a plate later if i'm craving a kebab.
I'm a schizophrenic hypocrite.
Money and the capitalist structure baffles, no thanks, no ta
but before i go out a quick sub off Ma and Pa.
I'll pay for a taxi, i don't care about the amount,
while checking fervently the statement from my bank account.
Cash cannot be eaten it just gets you into Eton
but i'll rifle through my pockets for pennies to get an eat on
i don't adore you, i'll say your the means to an end
but then i spend some more and ask for a lend.
I'm a schizophrenic hypocrite.
I'll say anarchy  is everywhere, petition and abstain
then  read in the late edition who i think should take the reins.  
I scream smash the system without any regrets
but then start stubbing out where they deem no cigarettes.
I'll say **** big business they are always looting tons
while cutting out Asda coupons to get the soup with croutons.
i'll say **** materialism, to that i am adverse,
"ohh if you want to get me some trainers Mum can you make em Converse? "
I'm a schizophrenic hypocrite
One Saturday i found it hard to move
crying out for water, more than needing food,
stomach emptier than the packets in my pockets
Early winter scribble
spoiled by the ripple of rain,
deadened and dull
on a precious day,
the time I crave
passes through a husk
full of caves.
Each inhabitant curses
and burns
the stagnant soil under their feet,
I want something to eat.
I need to drink.
The cold slab of sink
lures flesh to rest,
unsatisfied
with retched offerings
flung from a scorched earth
so next Friday, a few beers and l I’ll hit the hay
Ten beers later, where’s the MDMA?
And my staunch resolutions go up my nose
Chatting through the night, striking a pose,
Music accentuated, stars sparkling hard
World’s discussed in magic back yards,
Focused and fraught in tumultuous thought
Ten cigs in an hour
An hours too short,
As the morning comes, I start feeling a mess
It slowly disintegrates the treasure in my chest,
Feelings of strength crumble to a feeble frame,
Spears in my head, WHOOPS I’VE DONE IT AGAIN.
You’ll stop this time, I curse and lecture,
Two bottles down next Friday etc etc,
I’m a schizophrenic hypocrite
I remember an uneventful Tuesday when i wasn't working
belly full of rice
and i saw you twice,
two times a day,
on a day in lieu,
time stood still,
smiling at you
i thought i'm gonna have to write about you,
so i park myself in a bar after a joint in Netto carpark
and start using words to build an arc
and if you you do wanna walk in two by two,
can i walk in with you?
Is it this green ride that's getting me high
or the regret i seen in the gleam of your eye
that as soon as we said hi we said bye,
as disappointed as the catcher when he dropped the rye.
If i may be so bold,
if you were cold
i wouldn't hail these stones
i'd pummel Jack Frost until he knows he's lost,
i'll leave all the lights on to hasten global warming
make Obama declare winter a season of mourning,
If you met an iceberg of Titanic  proportions
i'd cut through it quicker than the Ripper does back street abortions.
If you were in prism
i'd try to unrangle the science of triangles
so i could build you a pyramid with all the right angles,
my stomachs in knots;
the most tranquil of tangles.
Then i saw you get out of the lift
and i wanted to play you a rift
until you exposed your midriff
because you set me adrift from chains and shackles
my mind goes crazy and fills with cackles,
i crackle with lightning, my energy heightens
my heart tightens
and not cos of cholesterol
cos i think you're special
and celestial!
I got dreams from naught, my head feels taught,
i prised a lesson from your eyes,
love is the greatest prize.
But now that's gone, all things
pass evolution in transience
faces that were everything lost to balance
blue it merge
but seldom a residual surge
and your bark today was worst than your bite
it said something softly,
i sow the seeds for the sycamore trees
we can carve our names on next summer.
Under an endless stretching sky
you wrote you
and i wrote i,
the lights in our eyes don't lie
they are gateways to the suns inside,
our hearts couldn't hide from this brightening tide.
I'm a Schizophrenic hypocrite
I remember this guy from work, cooed to me
look at the **** on this page 3
he drooled over Nuts magazine like he belonged in a zoo
i bet he frequented strippers too.
He said seen this clip, it's ******* great,
it ad turn a couple of queers straight
it was these two twins with rouge lips being rude,
the way she chomped on her like food
and they defo loved it,there is  no doubt
it's just just ***** Eskimo ******* kissing snouts
and sharing with her sister the joy of getting licked out.
Wonder how they looked in the family car?
giggling about some exciting destination,
like all kids displaying a lack of patience,
“are we there yet” chorused with glee and duality,
dressed in the same clothes to ensure parity.
Ice cream for tea.
Maybe they might be way into drugs
or addled with addiction
lacking hugs
and sore from the friction.
Not liking the glare
feeling scared.
maybe?
He said nar they love it up them baby.
But then,
i have it
about 3 or 4 times a week
after the 5th time of hitting snooze,
or a heavy night on the *****,
or sometimes no beer,
even after a sonnet of Shakespeare
a sudden urge comes over me,
GET THE LAPTOP!
GET THE *******!
Then it's
Japanese teen lesbians spitting,
finger ******* wearing mittens,
****'s ******* Britions,
oap creampies
***** covered eyes
***** flicking,
extreme suction,
**** destruction,
Captain Birds Eye gobbing
Batman ******* Robin,
A ten inch plumber ******* in a kitchen sink drama
Robert de Niro unpeeling Bananarama
Marty doing the Doc
a gimped up Kirk whipping Spoc
Rita  ******* Norris
Gail licking Fizz
Sally doing Dev
and Kevin doing ki.............Kevin, get out of the room.
Back to
a **** doing a ******
a pre op pleasuring granny
two ***** one *****,
then i chuck my muck all over my tunic
flip over and continue reading The Female ******,
I'm a Schizophrenic Hypocrite,
i've gotta split.

I held you tightly in my heart before I knew your name.
I wondered what you'd be like and if we would be the same.
I held you in my stomach as I lay in bed at night.
I felt for every kick and move and smiled in sheer delight!
I held you as you cooed and cried before you learned to crawl.
I held you when you had a bump or took a nasty fall.
I held you as we rocked at night and sang our many songs.
I held you as you walked to me the first time 3 steps long!
I held you when you'd had a fight or when someone was mean.
I held you after you'd been spanked for making quite a scene.
I held you as I prayed for you when you were feeling low.
I held you when you were mad at me because I had said no.
I held you when you let me – as you were growing tall.
I held you less with my arms back then than I had when you were small.
But I always held you in my heart, and on my lips in prayer.
That no matter where you moved or lived, I had you covered there.
When adult friends hurt your feelings I'd want to hold you then
I never saw you grown up – or just as another friend.
But you were always my little child – someone for me to guide
Someone to protect from this vicious world – within my arms to hide.
But something happened the other day that felt like quite a blow
The Lord told me my job was done and that I could let go.
That I could still pray daily for all your hearts to soar
And I could love you from afar and each day love you more.
But the holding on just has to stop – you have your own lives (this I know).
And so with love I write this to you – to tell you I'm letting go.

she held me close and cooed and preened me
and held me safe from the night
from the large and troubling world
that my tiny brain could not comprehend.
those ancient hands
had seen many decades,
the raging waters sought the
liverspotted skin like a flame
seeks a moth to burn
by shining so **** bright.
She gave me dinosaurs
and quarters and
nickels and dimes,
she told me stories
and memories and
the dusty images of long abandoned time.
I sat and sat and listened and sat and
retreated into the shelter of
those far too weathered hands.
though the world was
largely storm clouds
and the incessant shouting of the thunder,
she held me closer,
covered me in her mass and
held me quickly against the oncoming storm of time.
those ancient
weathered hands

"While I sit at the door
Sick to gaze within
Mine eye weepeth sore
For sorrow and sin:
As a tree my sin stands
To darken all lands;
Death is the fruit it bore.

"How have Eden bowers grown
Without Adam to bend them!
How have Eden flowers blown
Squandering their sweet breath
Without me to tend them!
The Tree of Life was ours,
Tree twelvefold-fruited,
Most lofty tree that flowers,
Most deeply rooted:
I chose the tree of death.

"Hadst thou but said me nay,
Adam, my brother,
I might have pined away;
I, but none other:
God might have let thee stay
Safe in our garden,
By putting me away
Beyond all pardon.

"I, Eve, sad mother
Of all who must live,
I, not another,
Plucked bitterest fruit to give
My friend, husband, lover;--
O wanton eyes, run over;
Who but I should grieve?--
Cain hath slain his brother:
Of all who must die mother,
Miserable Eve!"

Thus she sat weeping,
Thus Eve our mother,
Where one lay sleeping
Slain by his brother.
Greatest and least
Each piteous beast
To hear her voice
Forgot his joys
And set aside his feast.

The mouse paused in his walk
And dropped his wheaten stalk;
Grave cattle wagged their heads
In rumination;
The eagle gave a cry
From his cloud station;
Larks on thyme beds
Forbore to mount or sing;
Bees drooped upon the wing;
The raven perched on high
Forgot his ration;
The conies in their rock,
A feeble nation,
Quaked sympathetical;
The mocking-bird left off to mock;
Huge camels knelt as if
In deprecation;

The kind hart's tears were falling;
Chattered the wistful stork;
Dove-voices with a dying fall
Cooed desolation
Answering grief by grief.

Only the serpent in the dust
Wriggling and crawling,
Grinned an evil grin and ******
His tongue out with its fork.

Do you hear those screams, piercing the night? It’s a little annoying sometimes, just when I’m trying to sleep, a shriek tears that delicate fabric of silence, and jolts me awake, once again. I’m not scared of those screams, but there’s something familiar about them, something, about that voice, that dread that cripples my heart-That voice. It belongs to me.                        Sweat rolls down my tiny face, like on a warm summer night, except now every part of me shivers from the cold, on the inside and the outside.

And slowly I start to remember why; why I scream.

The reminder, the memory- It comes. Silently, like a thief tiptoeing into my room. I bear witness unable to move, Still as a rock, I’m smothered by the weight of it, unable to breathe.“Go away”, I try to scream under the weight of a disobedient voice. But it’s no use, the naustalgia is unstoppable.           The coming nightmare whispers silently into my terrified ears, “Shush, enjoy that pain, they say everyone likes it.”And it comes, the pain so painful that death is sweeter. I can’t embrace it, I never will.

 And I’m taken to the past. To the day it all went downhill.

“So many colours!”, I said, as I gaped at the garishly painted wall that I tried to grasp with my gnarly little digits. I was never bored here at the kindergarten, unlike some other muskrats who only bestowed their presence to show off their capabilities to produce saltwater from their eyes and dolphin mating calls from their blackhole-like mouths. Some talent.

It was a sunny summer day and the only thing I didn’t like about it was that every adult complained about the heat -all the time- my mum, my dad and my teachers, everyone. I remember thinking that all these grown-ups were absurd. Sure it was a little hot, but winter was always coming, so it was only fair. Change was constant, but it was such a bright day, why complain at all? I felt exceptionally happy, the whole day was a treat to my imagination laden senses.

Pity, it was such a good day to eat chocolates too.

Another thing I remember about that day was that pesky little boy, who didn't strike me as obnoxious back then, but now I’m retrospect he was really quite a block in the chimney stack. He’d entered class yesterday with the Doraemon pencil that recited generic phrases from the popular kids show, stuffed proudly in his chest pocket. And as he walked to his seat, the sound of his footsteps were punctuated by tiny “oooh’s” and “aaah’s”, as adoring little preschoolers watched the invaluable speaking object reverently. Unable to deal with the sudden adoration prudently, he got ahead of himself as his world fed that ancient balloon- The male ego. He started teaching "art" forms such as scribbling and scratching. And because I was the one sitting next to him, he felt the need to bestow upon me his vast knowledge of the subject. I didn’t really mind this condescension only because the implement he used to teach me was so exquisite. I sat there listening to him till I got bored of him talking about his Daddy and his money.

Then that little bird had started to sing so beautifully, humming at the trees as it sat on our windowsill. Every shrill note out of its little beak sent the "historic" words of that boy deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of my tiny mind. The effect of that simple melody was immediate. I stood up and started to sway slowly to the windowsill. (Even though the things I remember about this make no sense to me now, they are quite an accurate representation of my state of mind at that point.) I loved the little sound that the little birdie made, the memory of it still makes me want to jump and dance. I cooed back to her, “Coo coo(I’m happy too I tried to chirp to her)”. She looked at me quite a while, cocked her head a little to the side and cooed once more before flying off.

She replied!

She understood what I told her and she replied in kind. My wonder making mind went into a mad frenzy. So all the cartoons were true, you could really speak to animals. How I wished, I had a poké-ball! I marched to the teacher in small short joyous steps as she wrote on blackboard and clutched on to the end of her Churidar because my little hands could only go so far.          “Teacher, Teacher”, I squealed in ecstasy, “That birdie spoke to me”          “I’m sure she did, sweetie, now go back to your seat.”, she replied.

Deflated but happy nonetheless, I skipped back to my chair merrily, thinking of little birdies and a magical Pokémon. I remember, I loved how that know-it-all pencilbigmouth kept asking me to tell him what the birdie told me. Even if I hadn’t loved to see him beg,(which I did) it was my little secret, how could I tell him? How would he even start to understand? (Yeah I was being quite the drama queen in my head back then, blame the TV.)

 

 

Here I break apart from my rapture into the past and find that in my subconscious, the memory gets blurry somehow, like the radio running between stations on daddy’s phone, I get snippets of thoughts and feelings as the memory fractures into a thousand pieces.

“Mumma must understand what the birdie said.”
"Pokémon exist."
“Oh! Chocolates! Yay.”
“There’s more, if you want some.”, a gruff voice resounds in my heart.
"More yay."
“Why is he removing his clothes?”
Then suddenly,  I remember the pain- searing hot and burning through me-as clearly as sunlight through trees. Crying and screaming, I tried to escape, but to no avail. There was a big man in front of me now. His lust-crazy eyes, ******* out every piece of my existence. Somehow he was inside me and it hurt, it hurt.

How was he inside me?

Why did it pain so much?

Didn’t he hear my cry?

Stop it.

I couldn’t move, I could do nothing but scream.                                                  He touched me in my softest parts, painfully, pinching me and tearing my skin apart. It was a sea of agony and I was drowning. As I struggled to breathe, the blackness finally took me under. That unconsciousness had saved me and cradled me, lulling me to sleep in its darkness.

It felt like death but crueler, because it let me live.

Looking back I realize, the sun wasn’t bright because it was happy, it was warning me. The day wasn’t bright, it was becoming hotter in foreboding. The bird didn’t tell me it was happy, it told me to fly away, far away.

 

Why are you still making me cry? After all these years, even when you’re asleep behind iron bars. Why are you still here, holding me down in your death clasp.?

Stop it. It hurts.                                                           ­                                                 It hurts.                                                           ­                                                                 ­  I can’t breathe, I’m choking,                                                         ­                          I’m dying.

I’m dyi…..

 

Calm down, I yell at my panicked heart. Slowly inhaling and exhaling, trying to fall back into my dysfunctional sleep, I lay back into my sweat soaked bed and close my eyes. And as the blackness of sleep slowly washes me down under its waves once again, I hear it again, somewhere over the dark horizon.

Stop it! I like this darkness, stop screaming. I sit up once again. I tell myself I’m not afraid of these screams anymore. I ignore the shrieks and the unease growing in me and close my eyes once more. Then I realize that the cries of terror that resound in my ears like a half-forgotten memory, they belong to me.

And once again I start to remember why, why I scream,

And once again the memory comes.

Clinging to the highest branch, the sloth closes her eyes and hangs
The life below scurries and runs never slowing down
The sloth sleeps and eats, aiming for convenience
But the slow life can get dull sometimes, this sloth had a hint of adventure
She considered leaping with monkeys or singing with the parrots
One morning she was in luck, awoke with a wide eyed shock
The worm hole swirled black and psychedelic, the sloth inched her mossy hand towards the hole

Spat out in another jungle, things looked the same at first
Until she saw a giant with a long neck crash through the trees with ease
Followed by his herd sweeping a path towards the clearing
Birds with teeth and orange feathers glided from trunk to trunk
The sloth closed her eyes, maybe it’s a dream?
But rest was far in the past, it was time to abandon her namesake
Shimmying in slow mo along the canopy
She reached out for a long object for a short break
The tree turned around with a friendly face
The tree was a parasaurolophus!

He honked his hello and his friends did too
Then a squawk could be heard from the jungle darkness
The para looked up in worry, snorted warm air through his large nostrils
The sloth had no choice but to hold on tight to the dinosaur’s neck
As he galloped like a horse weaving in and out of trees
This is what it feels like, thought sloth, to move with speed
They crashed through the bracken and waded through pools
Until the para braked and mooed and so the ground shook
The vibrations tickled sloth’s *** belly, what little energy
Toxic leaves gave had all but worn away
She grabbed at ate a random leaf, a giant pronged monster of a leaf
It was tasty. The para’s call was answered by that same deep squawk and coo
And through the undergrowth it burst, a creature with iridescent black feathers and blue specks
Stood as tall as an emu but was built like a chicken
“We have no time to waste, we must make haste!
There is a trike half dead slumped by the lake
If we ride we can reach it in time
And I will feast first on its remains!”

The dinosaur cooed and hopped onto the para’s back
Then he turned around and saw the sloth
Who just lifted her head and smiled weakly, with mouth full of browse
“hellooooooooo?” her eyes opened finally as if just awoken
The dino turned away and slapped the side of his stead’s neck
And off they raced again
At the lake there was another giant
With a collar of ruffles like a Georgian dandy
And a beak like a parrot, flopped open with a blue dead tongue lolling
“Want some?” The dino said to the sloth, holding out some fat he’d torn off
Sloth stuck out her tongue in disgust, the dino just shrugged

“My name is Doe Doe, what on earth are you?”
“I’m Slothie and same could be said for you!”
How they could speak the same language, I do not know
But just go along with me on this one!
Doe Doe munched and chewed and slurped at the Trike’s insides
And cut away a chunk with his makeshift knife
He flicked his head here and there, he could hear danger
And so they rode again, to let the other dromaeosaurs eat their share

He lamented to sloth about his birdlike brethren
They talked about inane subjects and gossiped like hens
They were all a bit stupid and he was too good for them
Sloth fought to stay awake through his verbal tirade
This smartarse bird reminded her of a human

“I want... toooo… shooooow you somethiiiing” the sloth said
Anything would do to change the subject
“Riiiiide over to the … left where the giants made… paths
Theeerrrrrre you will see... a bit black vortexxxx, and that is how I got here
Don’t take your horrrrrrse… because the peoplllle won’t like ittt”
Doe Doe was intrigued and he did as he was told
And finally they approached the now shrinking hole
Sloth clung to his back and he ran, then leaped like a chicken
With his wings outstretched, and found himself in 2011!

In the distance houses replaced trees and no dinos were to be seen
This small pocket of forest hid them for now
But it won’t be long before they’d venture out
Sloth directed him as she clung on still, she took him to the centre of town
They visited shops and cafes and cinemas and there
Doe Doe discovered pizza. He stuffed the gooey cheese dough into his face
Sloth thought it best to stick to bitter fruit and leaves
“What are these animals?” He asked that day, pointing out the humans around him
“These are humans, I learned to live among them but I’m a sloth still
They are apes with not much fur and they make a lot of noise
Often seen with childlike canines who hang onto their every phrase
They give me free food but they’re not good for much else”
Doe Doe agreed, other Balours were also a hindrance
They stole his food and he had to compete
So he found his friend the para, whom he named Dilan
Maybe the 2000s could be fun? After-all they do have pizzas
So Sloth suggested he visit more often, and he did
The end. :3

When I was a windy boy and a bit
And the black spit of the chapel fold,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of women),
I tiptoed shy in the gooseberry wood,
The rude owl cried like a tell-tale ***,
I skipped in a blush as the big girls rolled
Nine-pin down on donkey's common,
And on seesaw sunday nights I wooed
Whoever I would with my wicked eyes,
The whole of the moon I could love and leave
All the green leaved little weddings' wives
In the coal black bush and let them grieve.

When I was a gusty man and a half
And the black beast of the beetles' pews
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of *******),
Not a boy and a bit in the wick-
Dipping moon and drunk as a new dropped calf,
I whistled all night in the twisted flues,
Midwives grew in the midnight ditches,
And the sizzling sheets of the town cried, Quick!-
Whenever I dove in a breast high shoal,
Wherever I ramped in the clover quilts,
Whatsoever I did in the coal-
Black night, I left my quivering prints.

When I was a man you could call a man
And the black cross of the holy house,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of welcome),
Brandy and ripe in my bright, bass prime,
No springtailed tom in the red hot town
With every simmering woman his mouse
But a hillocky bull in the swelter
Of summer come in his great good time
To the sultry, biding herds, I said,
Oh, time enough when the blood runs cold,
And I lie down but to sleep in bed,
For my sulking, skulking, coal black soul!

When I was half the man I was
And serve me right as the preachers warn,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of downfall),
No flailing calf or cat in a flame
Or hickory bull in milky grass
But a black sheep with a crumpled horn,
At last the soul from its foul mousehole
Slunk pouting out when the limp time came;
And I gave my soul a blind, slashed eye,
Gristle and rind, and a roarers' life,
And I shoved it into the coal black sky
To find a woman's soul for a wife.

Now I am a man no more no more
And a black reward for a roaring life,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of strangers),
Tidy and cursed in my dove cooed room
I lie down thin and hear the good bells jaw--
For, oh, my soul found a sunday wife
In the coal black sky and she bore angels!
Harpies around me out of her womb!
Chastity prays for me, piety sings,
Innocence sweetens my last black breath,
Modesty hides my thighs in her wings,
And all the deadly virtues plague my death!

When I was a windy boy and a bit
And the black spit of the chapel fold,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of women),
I tiptoed shy in the gooseberry wood,
The rude owl cried like a tell-tale ***,
I skipped in a blush as the big girls rolled
Nine-pin down on donkey's common,
And on seesaw sunday nights I wooed
Whoever I would with my wicked eyes,
The whole of the moon I could love and leave
All the green leaved little weddings' wives
In the coal black bush and let them grieve.

When I was a gusty man and a half
And the black beast of the beetles' pews
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of *******),
Not a boy and a bit in the wick-
Dipping moon and drunk as a new dropped calf,
I whistled all night in the twisted flues,
Midwives grew in the midnight ditches,
And the sizzling sheets of the town cried, Quick!-
Whenever I dove in a breast high shoal,
Wherever I ramped in the clover quilts,
Whatsoever I did in the coal-
Black night, I left my quivering prints.

When I was a man you could call a man
And the black cross of the holy house,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of welcome),
Brandy and ripe in my bright, bass prime,
No springtailed tom in the red hot town
With every simmering woman his mouse
But a hillocky bull in the swelter
Of summer come in his great good time
To the sultry, biding herds, I said,
Oh, time enough when the blood runs cold,
And I lie down but to sleep in bed,
For my sulking, skulking, coal black soul!

When I was half the man I was
And serve me right as the preachers warn,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of downfall),
No flailing calf or cat in a flame
Or hickory bull in milky grass
But a black sheep with a crumpled horn,
At last the soul from its foul mousehole
Slunk pouting out when the limp time came;
And I gave my soul a blind, slashed eye,
Gristle and rind, and a roarers' life,
And I shoved it into the coal black sky
To find a woman's soul for a wife.

Now I am a man no more no more
And a black reward for a roaring life,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of strangers),
Tidy and cursed in my dove cooed room
I lie down thin and hear the good bells jaw--
For, oh, my soul found a sunday wife
In the coal black sky and she bore angels!
Harpies around me out of her womb!
Chastity prays for me, piety sings,
Innocence sweetens my last black breath,
Modesty hides my thighs in her wings,
And all the deadly virtues plague my death!

Memory

     is  the birth of cool, it is rapture and ignominious spokesmanship unearthed. Packed into a slatted-wood crate, milking the obsession from cash-toting hands. Freeing itself from your bottom lip while life ticks itself away on a digital stock-exchange display. I am down and you are up, and you save pennies while I search for Chrysanthemums and vanilla-scented candles. Scent is my fifth grade spaceship,
     I hide it in my pocket and take it into the forest when the week is over. Adventure is the part of our story that's caught in between complaining about money and having clean sheets. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday my hands mend themselves back from bleach, their crevices cave under bright lights, I go to the garden strip and put dirt on my face, over my shoulders, and on my back. I make a altimeter from an alarm clock, and worry what will happen if your feet should ever touch the ground.
Relief
     is a sarcophagus, the satiny silk chrysalis I weave into invincibility. I make myself a small child with a demon-proof lair, no one comes in, not even you.  I see

     how drugs take out your heart and put you anew, fresh: orange, pink, ultramarine. A wave is a soft gesture for twilight, a slow walk among the greying statue towers, bliss extracted from person to person tedium. How you exclaim about **** music as if your temple home was unfocused by jazz or synth-electro.
     I forgot your room of quiet had no bells, no hope, and no notes of resolve. Tragedy was the desert of your six to sixteen, while I made an opus out of crystal glasses and Cran-Raspberry jars. Then it was the relief, Neptune's hands on your *******, red dots of ecstasy connecting you to a higher vibration. You felt it was time to start exercising. I didn't **** you for modifying your perception of color, degrading in a salt pool- I didn't own your ****** it was just a place I went into to write.
    
    Three years later. I was growing backward, I was sixteen, making you the muse in my doorway, a James Bond goddess unraveling my fingers on her silky skin, except your golden crown was really a turban of snakes, and instead of silk I was groveling underneath you. That was the sweat that Ryan Shultz said I garbled up into two pedestal doves, I aimed by eyes straight at the city of gold, and then inside me shucked out every piece of self-respect and vitrified my spirit, castrating my lips and my tongue for something to come to or come at, he said I lived under pointed stars and that lying isn't a good way to get over past phases of silence.

     A few days ago, it all game back to me, in a random series of songs on an iTunes playlist. One memory from an isolated beach outside a strawberry patch near Santa Cruz, a second, two hands cupped over the ears, my face closing in on her smoothed-out pink bottom lip on an over-exagerated car ride to the San Francisco airport, and the third was the mention of non-vegan banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, a birthday I celebrated several years earlier. All of them in the coda.
    
     Verse four unbelievable. It caught me straying from the next stressor at hand. What's next? I move my cold hands from a keyboard versing strange relapse of mind, or I tear out another page, whip across town, and peel stamps onto a postcard to send.
     They were all tails from a memory. A slowing ghost that cooed at me from far away, beating me up and down, pulling my eyes away from a scent I continually tried to remember.

.i do expect you to become lost in this labyrinth - at least that's what i'd rather say - sleep-deprivation is for "some" reason to escape the mediocre of having catched the "8 hour wink"... or whatever the Minotaur wouldn't call it... because i wouldn't call it a "problem" of "gender-neutral pronouns" either... i would call it a "problem" of noun-acquisition-status of letters; notably in greek and hebrew.

friends of "the" family have been looking
for on fb,
****... the caron S (š) will not do!
i need to use two alphabets that...
did not nurture yiddish into existence!
cyrillic didn't accept hebrew...
it'll have to do...
it wouldn't be enough to simply write
my name in cyrillic...
and no... in hebrew no less!
since the vowels are hidden...
and inserting the proper hebrew vowel...
it still wouldn't matter that...
my surname is missing... the galician germanic
e(ch)lert or the e(sch)lert...
no... but how is one to insert
the right kind of vowel: all in hebrew niqab
harem of diacritical markers subscript...
when... you don't have...
enough letters as nouns as scientific
constants as the greeks... do...
i guess only η (eta) stands out as a sore thumb /
black sheep... but i am bound to be wrong,
in the meantime:
well it's hardly a letter-with-a-noun
inclined akin to alpha (α) -
otherwise all is well...
we use the prefix prime (the grammaton per se)...
and discard the suffix when constructing words...
ergo? a-lpha...
and so an so forth...
till be arrive at...
blasting your ears nearing deafness because:
beethoven's mrs. H is:
music so you have to shout over it!
loud! what?! loud music!
loud music what?! loud music
to shun the "pain"...
oh... see you in one of those classes
when you can write sign-language for the dead
when you've been allowed to write braille!
see you sputnik ****!
yeah, see you deaf in one year divine John!
but you get the promise that's:
not your everyday latin castrato sing-along...
those greeks sure have all the best
science... stabilizers... not a lot of songs
to sing along to... because their letters
are also noun-status: also have noun-status...
otherwise the ol' prefix use...
and the suffix recycling centre...
a word like: matter...
well...
   ματτερ - no... i will not use the greek word...
i'll state... mmm... hm!
mu implies m- and cutting off the -u...
alpha implies a- and cutting off the -lpha
tau implies t- and cutting off the -au...
epsilon implies e- and cutting off the -psilon
rho implies r- and cutting off the -**...
and so... we have the word matter...
and the recycled materials for...
some other words...

hebrews? hebrews do have... noun-status letters...
(א) aleph - what's vogue?
inserting the iota into the omicron that's
the marriage: φ (phi)...
or whether it's the turning of the iota in
the omicron to provide the opening of the door
θ (theta) to see: that light at the end of the tunnel
delta (Δ)... again... it's only aleph we're "investigating"...

the other letter in hebrew with a noun-status?
(ג) g'imel...
another is (ד) d'alet...
(ז) z'ayin...
(ל) l'amed...
(ס) s'amekh... most certainly (ע) a'yin...
(צ) t'sadi...

interlude: what is the distance
between (א) a'leph and (ע) a'yin?
a kametz...

now we can "debate" - noun-status letters...
the greeks are in the same sort of pickle
as the hebrews...
there can be a debate whether...
the greeks have more than:
alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, iota,
lambda, omicron, sigma, upsilon, omega
as noun-status letters...

why? because it becomes silly...
(ק) qof and (κ) kappa...
(ר) resh and rho (ρ)...
(שׁ) and... well... to be honest...
that's heading into cyrillic territory...
and the caron S (ш)...
given (ס) samekh and sigma (σ)...

this always happens to me when i come
across a hebrew...
even if he's old and riddled with dementia...
i see him with his polish bride
and i see a "romanian gypsy"...
the feeling is... strange...
this hebrew is like an old cousin of mine...
but it's always a touch of magic...

i am not good at solving crosswords...
(כ) 'xaf' and chi (χ) -
perhaps i have exagerrated the letter-as-noun
status on some of this greek and hebrew...
tightly-knit bed-fellows...
as the boasting resounds in the labyrinth
of the rise and fall of the roman empire...
and the barbarian attempts to have
settled the lands near the seven hills...
and revived the eagle...
spec-ta-cu-lar failures!

the germans should console themselves
with having a crow on their marching banners...
and polacks should...
satisfy themselves with the unicorn myth
of an all-white bald eagle... albino eagle...
and so the harry potter: minus ***** 'arry
can have their unicorns, swans,
honey-badgers, welsh dragon,
st. andrew's gryffindors... etc. -

name, a name... i need to... change it...
obviously...
no hebrew vowels will be used...
since... their use... is devoid of what's already
concrete usage of diacritical markers
in established letters...
if cyrillic and hebrew is to be used...
and not greek and hebrew:
because... well thank you for the new testament
riddle... let's move... away...
to "greater" / other... things....

i can't use a kametz alpha
a tzere epsilon
a chirek iota
a cholem omicron
or a shurek upsilon (omega)...
so all the vowels will have to by cyrillic...

my... latin, name?
mateusz konrad... let's drop the surname...
let's call it a game of:
ibn... or ben... matthew son of konrad...
and since i don't have a... confirmation name...
what name? i would have chosen: Isidore...
after the saint of seville...
or... Ignatius (of Loyola) -
the only fun part of going to a catholic school
was... learning about the counter-reformation
and writing an essay about it...
and their library was decently stacked...
so... plus plus...

this is but a simple exercise...
first the name in cyrillic...
there will not be a full name in hebrew...
which i'll probably lace with greek...
and it will still make all the more perfect
sense... should it be transliterated back
into anglo-ßaß...
yeah: why i don't have a girlfriend...
with these sort of interests?
i guess an hour with a *******
once a year is enough for me...
and for womankind in the hospice of omni...

just following the laziness
of the russian visa authorities are the embassy...
they didn't translate mateusz into matvei
or konrad into: Дракон...
мат-вей...

these are the sort of idiotic tier-1 level
кaцaпс... working in the russian embassy in Loon'don...

because i was never going to be the матвей
who'd **** an илoнa like the 300 deadly mongrel
saracren mameluks or the spartans... no...
i counter the 7 headed beast on her
with every ****** in that one night
i was making my final goodbyes...
but keeping the mikhail bulgakov novel...
through a repose in Warsaw and...
i finished what, "apparently" i wasn't supposed
to finish...

and she is one of those troubled girls...
every ****** partner that meant anything to her...
she will have a tattoo of that lover
on her body... i know my place on her body...
it's on the right shoulder-blade...
the tattoo is of a dragon...
i know because i've met girls like her...
elsewhere...

even as i was being driven home after taking
my mother for her rheumatoid arthritis check-up,
blood test, x-ray... and the pakistani cab-driver
was talking about all the precautions he needs
these days: video ahead of the bonet for insurance
policy... a camera looking in...
and audio recording on his smartwatch...
because what he said... didn't surprise me...
i once picked up a spanish girl - Tamara in a club...
and she decided to take me home
for a one night stand...
as we were approaching the house she was
sharing with three homosexuals
she decided to jump out of the cab...
and make a runner... i calmed the cabbie:
i'll pay for it...
we tried to later **** the hetreosexual way
with her calling me angel because
of my "erectile dysfunction" under the bed sheets
in that putrid smoke of cocoon ***...
like the birth of a rancid moth embryo and
choking from the heat of dust and alcohol
and... what i am alluding to is that some girls
do jump out of cabs to avoid paying the fair...
i knew what the pakistani cabbie was saying...
she owed him 40 quid...
he filed the whole thing to the police...
she accused him of ****** assault...
the story would have fit...
she run from the cab when he tried to sexually
assault her... but... he did have
that audio recording from his smartwatch...
in the end the girl was fined 700 quid...
which is nothing... compared to...
what's that called in h'america? a false accusation?
slander?
i know that girls jump out of cabs...
to avoid paying the fare...
i drove with one... who did just that...
i guess she was so used to this act that she
forgot i was sitting next to her...

- all the *****... but then all the chem-soup
post-psychiatric *******?
the ***** i can stand...
the pills are just tasmanian devilish when
it comes to catching the perfect
battery insomnia recharge...
and always meeting and respecting
the elder of the group darwinistic:
prat pact... a hebrew...
there always needs to be a yew
a *** in the equation...
no... not some english society
uncle tom worth of a high society rabbi...
i mean a jew that will support
west ham... because...
it's an irrational team...
it can fathom beating chelsea (A)...
but then... "forget" to win against...
for god's sake! Norwich (H)!

i know! i know! joseph conrad took his place!
here's my part anagram!
Mатвей Дракон...

the near non-existent diacritical presence
in the english language...
well... no "surprise surprise" if...
you're starting with
и (i) or rather (ı)...
and what's being the flock of salmon
up the river, being caught?
the j but not (ȷ)... imagine my... "surprise"
that the russians arrived at...
и and ı - in tow... ȷ and the й...
the breve...
parabolla or... my eyes only see
the microscopic details when someone
will simply slurr?

- borrowing from yesterday and...
in the early night of winter standing
in the garden with four potatoes
and something else...
looking up at the sky...
i am used to seeing unusual "things"
in the sky -
i'm not unusual when it comes
to having seen a u.f.o. - fluorescent
and squid like in colour -
but i'm also the sort of person that
would carry a few beers for such
spontaneous encounters -
rather running around like a raving
lunatic armed with a camera
filming the whole thing...
i have no proof: i hope my words are enough...
and if they're not?
well... if it can be seen with a naked eye -
i don't need to blink via a technological
feed and argue about: quality of the picture...

but even i wasn't ready for...
what i saw today...
those are roaming stars? aren't they?
and i really did forget to count how
many moved in the same direction
askew - one by one with equal distance
between them - before the distance between
extended - there must have been more than
10 - i'd say there were around 20!

is this always how things are -
when one contemplates the tetragrammaton?

part anagram? well because the russian
do have a version of the hebrew matisyahu...
but they do not have the german conrad
in their language...
probably as to why the germans do not
really have... a yuri or nikita in their language...
nikita after all sounds more feminine than
masculine - anyone could with hindsight
speak of mr. rocketman's lover of
the same same... as not some russian beau
example of the fairer ***...
but a comrade khrushchev...

- and why wouldn't i call those russians
that work in the russian embassy in Loon'don
кaцaпы? for one... they just type letter for letter:
a mateusz / a matthew is a мaтэусз...
for all "legal" purposes...
they already have the сз = ш...
bureucratic purposes...
and no wonder some are like:
how do you say that?
too many consonants some add...
and i really did think that all of us were
allowed to be fully literate...
that's not the case... blowing my own horn...

having a wet ***** over: because i like my given
names... perhaps that's why i didn't want
the confirmation option of being allowed
to change any of my given names: legally...
to one of my own chosing...
when i was 15 / 14 i didn't even known
or think about a name like Isidore...

when the german name became coupled
with a hebrew loan...
otherwise the russian with the first
being an anagram... drakon -
Mатвей Дракон - it's just a name -
it's my name - what's in a name is what's
precisely not in anonymous names
.666 handles and avatars on the internet...
i can own my face - and i can own my name...
because - i kind of like it...

again: on in russian can the west slavic
C be distinguished from the K... Ц -
and back into the cyst of the western lands...
Ç or what came with sigma's tail...
it's so... boring... to have less the different
sounding letters - given no diacritical markers -
and only the "exotica" of spelling -
all the metaphysics in the world combined
and concentrated in greenwich...
but no real orthography...
i could begin the day by bemoaning this poverty
of the english language...
oddly enough as both the outsider coming in...
the immigrant who became a citizen...
and as the insider coming out and coming in
again on that expatriate spectrum of
working from the thesaurus: IMMIGRANT...
for all the beauty of Macbeth...
i can have to ruse myself to bemoan
conventional english... the formal english...
the antithesis poetica...

but i do somewhat "know" why it's called
a tetragrammaton...
i wouldn't classify any of the letters that make it up
as noun-worthy letters...
the kametz (a) and the tzere (e) are nouns...
and letters... but you don't see them when
the hebrew doesn't exfoliate and is left
crude with "missing vowels" for the gentiles
to read...
saying that... calling ה (he) a noun is pushing it...
as is calling ו (vav) a noun...
or י (yod) - although...
the yod could be allowed a noun-status
as... an apostrophe... or a version of the caron -
but the remaining letters of the tetragrammaton...
are "syllables" in that they are consonants...
and when the tetragrammaton comes face
to face with noun-status letters of its own
universe: g (ג) gimel, d (ד) dalet, z (ז) zayin -
l (ל) lamed, s (ס) samekh, ц (צ) tsadi -
resh? shin? the gates are open to allow the question
in... but when...
there's also siamese Adams aleph (א) and Ayin (ע)
being and nothingness respectively...

what could Islam possibly offer me...
intellectually?
when i once asked a muslim what...

alif, lam, meem                                      meant...
he replied... only god knows...
so i thought... only god?
i must have been talking to one of those muslims
who have arabic overlords...
before they can catch a whiff of the almighty
blah'llah...
ا, لَـ, مَـ
again... greek only touches upon...
the initial - the medial and the final
version of sigma...
isolated you would see the capital sigma...
Σ - which could also be treated as the initial
letter - given that the σ looks more like a medial
form - although it's also initial -
whereby ς is the final form -
almost like the english: 's... apostrophe s -
which could be claimed to be an article of possession...
or the plural article when the apostrophe
disappears - or when the ς altogether disappears
when: the possession is plural:
a teachers' strike... e.g.

no not with a fatha - we have our own diacritical
markers... thank you...
but good question...
so... why is the meem written in an isolated
form in the word - yawm (day)...
but not in a final form?
but i do not write in a squiggly line in this digital
arena... perhaps my language looks simply
written... oh yes, the aesthetic of the arabic script
is always stressed...
but even the hebrews think like the greeks
and the latins... in a way...
nothing has to flow in one river-wry format...
there's no isolated letter... of a letter -
as there's no initial no median and no final
form of it... but there is a "question"
of the hiding of vowels...
for gentiles and muhammadians alike...

- perhaps some will call it the trans-community...
there was once a dead poets' society...
evidently with the rise of de-transitioning...
there's now a nag hammadi library society...
circa 1945 when this library was left unchecked
in the hands of: the children
with too many toys and too many sandpits...
probably that one neu-mecca of san francissco...
at least the dead sea scrolls:
that were unearthed at about the same time...
treated the hebrew far better than
the nag hammadi library treated its children...
and why the former power, the vatican,
didn't step in... to control these text...
as they flew out on a *****-nilly without
herr zensor... herr inquisitor...
i will never know...
the scouts of medicine left... black holes
of having advanced in the field of anaesthetics...
too many toys for the the children
with too many sandpits...

- because i would rather the fascination
with a language... than its immediate...
polyglot acquisition and use...
if i put my head to it... perhaps i could
speak the 7 languages my great-grandfather spoke
before jumping into the Niagara Falls
leaving a postcard sent...
but when i peer into the details...
i quiet like these two trenches of mine...
this english this canvas and my eye toward
the east and the south and semites...
just because english is a language without
diacritical markers...
a language filled with metaphysical dialectics:
but missing any mention of orthography...

a hebrew might hide a vowel...
and write only consonants on street signs
for a gentile to read...
but then the gentiles' languages morphed...
and a vowel became distinct...
there is A that begins the word: ah-men...
but there's also an A that is invoked with a tail
to point and identify a tree, an oak:
dąb...
so much for kametz being hidden...
if there's no 2nd tier "complexity" of kametz...
but there is one for the visible...
A - vowel - a vowel with a tail...
but without a name -
as all letters are - whether vowel or consonant...
in the litany and choir of the castratos
of ancient Rome...

pause with me...
what music are you listening to?
i'm listening to... years of denial - burning sun
(veyl channel) - 1,319 views...
i like to... find the better alleys of my entertainment...
as i can't hate kevin spacey...
not because of kevin spacey...
but because of lester burnham...
or more to the point...
why thomas newman reminds me of a...
reincarnation of Satie...
not a Chopin or a Liszt virtuoso of the piano...
not a when a hammer strikes
a line of 88 nails...
but when a butterfly chances the here and there,
on a shy-loot of a beauty of scarce sounds...
just the same of nostalgia for this era of
movies borrows me from out any new
suspence... as that sort of nostalgia creeping
into people born in the 1960s who truly
admire h'american movies from the 1950s...
even i am to blame when i feed
a nostalgia - more to the point for the technicolour
acryllic glow akin to...
richard quine's 1958 bell book and candle...
but of course scandinavian existential cinema
of a Bergman would be in black and white...
black and white photographs...
but if we're talking movies?
Undogmatic & Kernfeld - thought experiments...
Amanti d'oltretomba (1965)...

i will have to refine the greek to hebrew to greek
similarities...
an Ezra Pound can hide behind counting
matchsticks and reading into chinese ideograms...
when lo and behold! some japanese *******
comes up with a minimalism of the on'yomi...
or perhaps japanese is a language
that fuses elements of braille?
no point question the matter since
the mongols famously didn't come over to Japan
to add to the already Mandarin caste of
the kun'yomi...

but no... these greek letters are nouns...
even though π is equivalent to understanding
the wheel a posteriori: as a circle -
prior to there was only a wheel but no
knowledge of the dynamic of the radius,
or the diameter...
but it's still a prefix weak hardly a noun...
alpha and beta are nouns because they
denote something - prefix category shared -
but... the alpha and the beta male...
even gamma rays...
what's that? π-networks of coming back
to point (0, 0) in terms of:
no more than three powers of seperation between
you and some random from hugh yawn'khh?
my bad...
but η, μ, ν, ξ, π, ρ (ρ requires delta epsilon
and sigma to imply island of Rhodes)...
τ - but this is not China and tau is not Tao...
to tow is... to tow...
φ, χ, ψ... these could be names...
but ψ is like a crucifix for psychologists...
so these are... but at the same time:
are not names...
working from Latin, "borrowed"...
A (or aye)... B (queen bee)... C (i çee)...
D (dye or dry or d.i.y.)... E (eh? vowel catcher
arm no. 1 of the tetragrammaton)...
surd if the other arm... most notably in gujarati...
or not...
but this leftoever ancient Latin:
                                sing along! sing along!
a, be, cee, dee, e, ef, gee, h "hatch" / hay,
i, jay, kay, em, en, o, ***, que queue cue,
Ar, Tee, U, Vee, ekhs (x), why (y), zee or general Zod /
Zed... etc.
do i remember the "correct", french pedagogic
sequences of: letters of the alphabet?
i thought the whole "game" was about
the lexicon? and the lexicon within the lexicon
of the correct spelling?
are there 26 letters in the english alphabet?
there are! mein gott!
do i have to monkey-play-me-harmonica -
monkey-play-me-the-acordeon and tap to play
the drums... really? now?!
there were never going to be any alphabetical
sequence of events...
if i can remember that there are 26 letters:
the order of the pedagogues doesn't matter...
the lexicon matters... one's own vo(gue)-ca-bu-Larry...
short of Lawrence...
and shouldn't i give up my Lawrence Vogue...
i will certainly to remember to give
the "correct" order of what begins
with abc- and ends with -xyz...
this is the inbetween...
please see fit to spot a sparrow or a typo...

becuase if the british are to be proud of their past...
proud in the sense that it is...
fermenting and all this decline of the west "thing"...
of the people that has to "somehow" welcome
a revival... кaцaпы (plural of кaцaп)
is a racial slurr - designated for russians...
by those who had a pseudo-isarel interlude...
of what was known as the polish-lithuanian
commonwealth - of the last european pagans -
who didn't become the prussians
and made the bavarian spirit rigid
and militaristic...

i find this part of history... rather... infantile...
i have been taught a version of history
through the lense of infantalism...
perhaps science-fiction was the serious medium
of literature after all -
all of the past - if it is to be called a past -
is prescribed by zeitgeist -
my contemporaries' suggestion to be an infatile dream!
it must be a version of infantilism!
at least: that's my response in relation to:
the past having any aspect of being worth
celebrated...
me struck dumb being coerced by a...
genetic archieology of a past...
what some of the current people invest in...
mirror mirror: on no wall beside
mirror mirror: my face...
speculum speculum: well! there's always history
as etymology!
i don't like the word faciem...
where does visage come from?
oh... right...

quest to perfect the algorithms to escape
the everyday speculum was prime suspicion:
to speculate...
i guess any search engines requires:
etymological root...

mirror mirror: my void eating face...
my pulpit of vanity -
my valley of aeons...
my detail of the smirk the demonic glee...
of your most greyish glee...
of no concern for celebrated beauty...
or at best: no beauty to be exemplified
and stealing memory having invested
in the memory of cinema...
mirare mirare: comesse vacare visage meum...

now that's rather different...
isn't it? a history lesson with...
a stress for a post-scriptum in-and-out
"epilogues" (misnomer) and a return
from the trivia interlude back into the narrative...
only with an understudy of etymology...

who do i look like? some ******* ***
who would use such a ***** word as epistemology?
"epilogue" is a misnomer in the context when...
there was never a justifiable metaphor...
a misnomer is a metaphor:
for the **** by the ocean of the shore
in the vicinity to claim town status - Dover -
albino cliffs: more or less...
epistemology is a word most frequently used
by people... who read to people...
encyclopedic entries... cyclopes reading...
all that matters is the cwowd: which is the Velsh
variation of: that already numb-R lost trill
of tarantula bit anglo-ßaß...
which didn't require zeppelins or h'american
spaghetti accent westerns of draw and drule
and drawl...

such a minor racial slur when it comes
to the russians... soviets or red barons...
you must have never visited Moscow or St. Petersburg...
**** the right sort of ******-up russian girl...
and... if you're lucky!
she's take you to... the russian versailles!
Peterhof -
the racial slur stills remains...
a thank you matka rosiya...
satellite son over 'ere: the bellowing from Berlin
is like a sudden plague of hyenas attempting...
no... the foxes are imitating the hyenas...
which is which or rather: which is why?
a mutual agreement: reciprocated...
a great a great much decent ****...
for both of us...
the memory still feeds me...
oh no, it doesn't haunt me:
it feeds me... i could only find replicas
in brothels... i would never dare usurp
this catherine this tsarina of my memory...
i would never dare invest my personality in someone
else... she can be married her... 3rd time...
and this might be her 10th repentence...
of an 11th lover...
on this sinking ship: Potemkin i go as one -
reincarnation or no...
i still don't believe: this hindu myth of:
only a fixed number of people were every to be
born... and the rest are the harsh realities
of the base focuses of animals...
as we somehow drag these n.p.c. mysterions with
us... whether strangers or fathers or mothers...
are you not attached to your grandson:
dearest "catherine"?

such is the tyrany of the hindu polygamy
trans-temporal polytheism...
a diadem with a mouth for an eye...
and an eye for a mouth: or what better way
to salvage this grief of being only being 20 and 21
when having met and having to vow to
allow ourselves our each his and her seperate
lives...
at least some people call it:
the house of lords... and the house of commons...
on a much grander scale...
oh i'm pretty sure tsar (ras)Putin is much amused...

as i am now speaking with a borrowed tongue:
someone lent me a tongue -
i desired to speak with it -
imagine this complete lack of horror with regards
to being lent -
when reicarnation comes to the fore...
i agree: with "him": a most disagreeable
metaphor for... whatever it is the hindus truly believe
to be: the most humane form of
being allowed a human: self-consciousness
and a relationship to all those teenage
*****-dear-diary entries of... precursors
to the menapause and... the blue blood gremlins
of the big pharma pills-down...
the big pharma *******...

unless asked... always in uniform before your "majesty"...
as with any decent *******...
god forbid one of them thinks i'm jesus christ...
come back...
but never with these... grey-area maidens...
this "tool" will not be aroused
on the simple signature end contract promise
of: he made it to the finish line of a one-night stand!
where's the finish line of a one-night stand?
the next day? the *******, the *******...
her ******? at least the new generation
have the... cipher password for sexting...
or whatever has become of a good old fashioned
**** your brains out?
via you **** a plum sore tattoo into my pelvis
with your coccyx like a well balanced
african body of ivory beauty?!
you know the type... it looks like butter
in moonlight... like... what's the point of a niqab
in africa?! it's already... a warewolf has come
among the wolves...
and how i miss you, i esp. miss you when
i sit on my windowsill and listen to foxes
mating...
how those ******* squeal yank and bite nothing
but bone having omitted both the flesh
and the fur!
i miss you the most when i sit at night -
and listen to foxes mating;
after all... this is essex... this is england...
foxes at around 1am are my cognac...
beside ms. amber: and you know you'll also
be ******* her when i've had my fill...
but oooh... look at me: oooh...
gravy...
but i've watched! crows don't attempt fucky-fucky
tow-dollar sucky-sucky bangkokh style
during the die... all that is black that's worth
the crow is done in the night...
perverted pigeons during the day!
****-*******-me-into-a-voyeurism of their
greedy insect esque antics of coo coo...
then jump onto the rucksack of a female...
and all those beta-male pigeons... and that: huh?!
moment of bewilderement when he "thinks"
he has cooed like an alpha...
only the memory of you...
and all the prostitutes after you...
which always made imagining ******* you again
all that more simple; there was no кaкaшкa
with them to begin with.

Once more-I am condemned to t'is unmentionable solitude;
And so is my grief-my grief t'at hath been passionately seducing me-of late;
And neither clear dusks, nor vivid twilight, hath helped ease out my mind's servitude;
Even strokes of civil light-to whom I submitteth my visions; on whom I may rest my fate.

Ah, he who was once immortal-and still is,
His suffering is mine-and thus as reeking of malice,
He, who hath the tenderest of charms, and lips;
He, whom my heart abides by, and chooses to keep.

But his whereabouts hath been unknown, and a lie to my whole passage;
Still whenever I roamed yon outside region, he was nowhere within my sight;
He who hath been both sincerity and a malice in his own timeless age;
He who hath been indulged by my morns, and cooed to, by my night's impatient moonlight.

Ah, how canst he be but so unfair?
He left my poetry to myself, within t'is mistaken five-wheeled chair;
I am now anxious, strangely; about my own wealth of poetic torrents;
My mind feels humid, but itself hath been ferociously abused-like the mind of a fiend.

And to him my suffering is dear-for to its shrieks he showeth but contempt;
He laughs at it and locks it away in its misery-with not one drop of shame;
Ah, he is too impulsive to think of farther, and far too lame;
He is too wild-and darkly scented like night; but as well evil, and too slippery, to blame.

Thus I am but pain, and the whole world next to me is fear;
I knoweth I should drifteth away, but my ears, and insides-insisteth on staying here;
As if the crude, lying love were truthful-and easefully sitting near;
And couldst promise to cause me no more tears.

And thinking of thee sheds only more unwanted blood;
And t'is indeed, remains something I wanteth not;
For of which hath been spilled too much, and which hath torn away my heart;
For I shall not any more saint thee; and removeth thee from any further crafted story plot.

And so thou art not to be any farther painted;
For thou hath left any beauty abandoned, and too simperingly hesitated;
Thou made me feel betrayed, and teased my whole, productive solitudes;
Thou sent my glittering heart still; thou faltered my dignity-and more severely, more glorious youth.

Thou tampered with me like thou shalt doth an old proverb;
For thou detestest any poetry; and cursest any defining melodies, or verbs;
Thou tantalized my verses, but mercilessly flew and ran away;
Thou vanished my glimmering worlds; and harmed my cheery authorial days.

And thy accusations of me hath but been too vehement;
Like thou thyself owneth over me a verdurous tyranny;
Thou hath been too proud, whenst thou hath only but a grievous impediment;
And her, who was darkly born as a devil; and in whom there is neither desire, nor humanity.

And like her yesterday, thou art now too proud, and befalleth my private senses of humanity;
As she desired, thou hath now grown selfish, and tender not like before;
Sadly all t'is thou realiseth not, and instead taketh easily as mere profound felicity;
And thy passion hath likewise gone, 'till t'is saddened world ends, and existeth no more.

I am here all madness-madness t'at to its impertinent soul-is brilliant;
Brilliant to t'ose who are blind to feelings, just like his deaf soul perhaps is;
But madness, still I regard-as although infamy, deeply pleasant;
For it shall lead t'is ignored poetry to satisfaction, and widening secret bliss.

But either there is love or not love, shall I respect and be loyal to poetry;
Even though thou chooseth to follow her and forget our whole, significant glory;
I shall keepeth silent, and still be thankful for my taste-and untainted virginity;
I shall be proud of my true doings, and my equanimious love, for thee.

And my love shan't ever be bought at any price, nor even priceless syllable;
As well my triumphant words-for to them, aside from loyalty, nothing more is desirable;
For I believeth rewards are only for them who reserveth, and professeth, loyalty;
And for in every endurance there are charms, and even more agreeable, royalty.

And shalt never ever thou findeth my purity, and love, be tiresomely divided;
For my love is secure, and shall love its beloved all devotedly, and unaided;
My love, as reflected by poetry, is abundant, though sometimes childish-and even soundless;
But still terrific as rainbow, though more silent and tuneless; as one symbol of my loyalty, and truthfulness.

And accordingly, somehow, amongst thy invisibility-I senseth thee still, amongst yon verified air;
Of whose whims I am not afraid; of whose ill threats I was not once scared.
For t'is solitude, and its due poetry I hath undergone-hath deeply had my finest self purified;
For it hath been my friend-and indeed not thee; sadly not thee, for thou thyself hath chosen to be far, and left unspecified.

Like all of those beings, perhaps thou art the one also too silly;
For to love thou stayeth idle, and bothereth not to ever look at-for fear of purifying thy glory;
Thou art still one 'mongst 'em, who claimeth love is no higher than gold;
And thus deserving of me not-for as thou saith-love is trivial, and its seclusion canst be sold.

The Little Bird came a hopping up
And flew into his arms.
She cooed and chirped and occasionally burped
As she snuggled from all harms.

Her eyes so blue and so inquisitive
She searched his face for a smile.
Then saw what she  was waiting for...
Spread across a country mile.

Her feathers so fine and very blond
Flew around when she did move.
As the music began to play and sway
Her body began to groove.

Her love of music, things so fine
Came naturally to her.
When Papa  played his old guitar
It caused her feet to stir.

She laid her head upon his chest
And let out a great big sigh.
All was well in little bird land
That, you could not deny.

Her eyes fluttered closed, her feathers a muss
The face of an angel shone.
Asleep in the arms of her grandpa
Little Bird and him, alone.

Good night Little Lucy Bird.  Sleep tight Princess.

Dear reader,


It won't be long before they electrocute the trees with candy colored Christmas lights. Soon everything will be gone: memories, glances, the year. Every thing will dissolve into nostalgia and our lives will become more patchwork and less hopeful. Soul-crushingly sweet our smiles will be, as we watch that disguised meteorite crash into our existence.

Her name was Reno. Her dad joked he named her so because she was the result of a gamble gone wrong.

I could see the stitching around her eyes start to falter, as tears slipped out like a young nineteen year-old girl, running out of the back of a double-wide. Away. Away from it all. Leaving her father, the mechanic who could only fix things with his hands. Running through a field as shimmering as her nails, touching the tall grass with her short fingers.

"I'm not trailer trash," she said, "I've just had it rough."

Reno could see things others couldn't see. Frequently she painted wrecked cars, and I asked why, to which she explained, "Some accidents are allowed to be beautiful."

I fell for her the way her jaw drops after one of my inappropriate jokes: quickly and with such joy.

She had the same answer to when I asked if she liked movies and if she missed her mom.

"Of course I do, Josh," she looked at me and smiled, "Hey buck, have you ever seen True Romance?"

A woman after my own heart.

We watched Christian Slater shoot Drexl, and, like a bullet to the chest, she placed her hand over my heart.

"My, oh my, are you sure that rib cage is big enough for that thing, Mr. Haines?"

She looked a little like Patricia Arquette, but identical to Michelle Williams.

"Are you aware that you look like Michelle Williams?"

Reno ran her hands up my legs, across my torso, and held her hands at my jaw,"Are you aware of how good of a person you are, John Mayer?"

"Ah, yeah. I've gotten that since high school."

She smiled, looked down and up at me,"No, the part about you being a good person? ...You're the drawing on my wall."

I didn't know what that meant.

"I had this drawing-so terrible-it was of the sunset on our hill in Welling Valley," she looked into me and down, while smiling,"Anyway, the sun would kiss the grass every evening, and one day I thought I'd draw it and keep it in my room. When every thing got ugly with my daddy's drinking, and when he beat me something awful, I wanted something to remind me that the light sometimes goes away but will always be back another day. You're my light, Josh. You're the next day after nineteen years of cussing and drinking."

We made love on my bed, as, through the window, the sun bathed our bodies. Her body was a sculpture and her voice was as soft as her lips. I was terrified.

Pulling her hair back, she stood at the foot of my bed, naked,"Are you scared of little ole' me? You look as white as a ghost."

"No, I've never felt so alive... You're so ******* beautiful."

Reno and I lain in bed while Parks and Rec played on the television. Her index and ******* walked across my chest and stopped as she asked, "Josh, have you ever been in love?"

I touched my fingers on hers, studying them with my eyes, and then I looked at her, "Yes, once."

"What was it like?"

I thought I'd feel pain but instead I smiled, "Fantastic, fleeting, and always a little out of reach."

She cooed, "I can't wait until I think I love you like nobody else."

"Me too."



Sincerely,


Joshua Haines

An army of seagulls, like Amazons
guardedIng  the gate to the harbor.
stopped him and before letting pass,
asked too many probing rude questions
in an impoverished language
dominated by caws and coos
and many other strange sounds.
No human ear can quite easily catch
"a fantastically foolish lingo",
his human mind sitting on
its high perch judged,
"If ever I have to learn this
how would I manage ?"was the anxiety
that made him judge, it seems.

Life in this twilight world of ours
hides full of surprises,on every turn.
He wouldn't be able to compare
one sunrise or sunset with any other
decide which one was better,
by any standard,
Uniqueness remains the greatest problem sans a solution here,
then, how could one surmise humans are superior to animals?

A cute seagull, a girl for sure, had shown a keen interest in him,
(her eyes were beautiful and she smelled really nice
hence the guess, that was corroborated later)
she tried to sit on his left shoulder as he walked forward
and tried to make friends with him, before any other could attempt!
She was eager to fix up a date with him, that evening itself!

"Do you think I am bit fast, abrupt?" she cooed
"Still a ****** at this age, don't you think
it's high time to worry about it, already?"

No expertise he has  to calculate
a seagull's age, *** appeal and what the plumage suggests,
a stern looking seagull, obviously with some leadership role
stylishly lands in front of him, in a bid to impress,  tries to enquire
about some membership card, that seems to be essential
bit exhausted, a humid day it was, he was amused
why should one be worried about the union interests of
the privileged seagulls in the harbor area, "Am I too one?"

That's when he had a suspicion crept in his  mind
is the harbor gate crossing really means that he too is a seagull?

But yesterday was so wildly human, with it's follies all fallen in place
a rumbustious night he spent with his rowdy girlfriend
who insisted that her left breast loves him more than the other
wanted to test her theory then and there, and started to complain
gravity has started to work wrongly on her endowments
"Act fast": she would urge, fully drunk, she was cawing like a bird.

"Aren't these enough evidence to prove, I am not a seagull. Mr.Judge?"
his quivering words, dissolve in the cacophony of disapproving seaguells.

I'm so proud of you,
she said to herself.

A mother and father
laughed in the distance,
embracing a young woman.

School books laid all around her,
but the only friendly face in sight
was her own.

The happy family entered the house,
raving about a show they saw that night.
We're so proud of you,* cooed the mother.
The father beamed with pride.

She crept down the stairs,
and met the happy family
in the kitchen.

The family stared back at her,
as if she did not belong.

Tests and papers with high marks lined
every cabinet, the table, and the refrigerator.
Theater medals and trophies had a glass showcase of their own.

She sighed heavily and went back to her room,
littered with thick books and journals.

I'm so proud of you,
she said to herself,
because no one else would.

“I’m not sure if night is ending or day is beginning.  What time is it?” She asked as she opened the door.

“Its about 2:30” I answered.

She was pacing about slightly bobbing her head as she spoke.

“We're sorry to disturb you beloved.  We're conducting a homeless census. May we ask you some questions?”

“I don’t want to be put away”  she said.  “I have to be outside.”

“We’re not here to hurt you.  We’re here to help.”

"Where do you come from?" Ally asked.

She didn't remember where she was from and was uncertain why it mattered.

She knew she wanted to leave Paterson but was unsure about where she wanted to go.

She kept her eye on the McDonald’s across Market Street.  

"As long as the light is on, I know its still nighttime and I'll have a place to go if the cops kick me out of here."

Here, was this evenings lodging in an ATM vestibule.  

"I can also get something to eat when I'm hungry."

"What time is it?"

"Its about 2:30."    

She earnestly wants to know what time it is.  

"I don't want the people going to work in the morning seeing me sleeping here." she said, "It's embarrassing."

Her papers were scattered on the floor.

She had one shoe on and one shoe off.  A white sock gloved an indeterminate number of other sock layers warming her shoe-less left foot, sufficient protection from the balmy mist of this late January evening.   The orphaned shoe lay on its side in the corner of the Wells Fargo foyer.

White, black and yellow plastic grocery bags filled with the content of her worldly possessions lay atop the shelf housing bank deposit slips neatly stacked in cubbyholes.

A woolen hat circled her head.  Her tiny face shone through the gray skull cap tightly tied under her soft chin.

She looked to be in her 50’s.  She spoke in a pale uneven tempo with a quiet anxious voice.  Her eyes were clear.  Her pursed mouth bracketed by a trinity of long chocolate crescent winkles. The sounds floating from her mouth were gently angelic and the kindness of a tender smile was filled with demure submissiveness.

She swaddled herself in multiple layers of coats and trousers bulking up a waif like frame.  Her outermost cloak, a gray trench coat was secured with a tightly wrapped knotted cloth belt.  The coat was thoroughly soiled by a life of sleeping rough in the urban outback.  The fabric boasted a consistency worthy of an Abercrombie and Fitch oil finished coat.  The bulky layers rounded the frame of her shoulders.  She resembled a small granite headstone.

"Whats your name?" I asked.  She was reluctant to tell us.  “I don’t like my name”.

We gently coaxed her.

“Carmen” she whispered.

“That's a beautiful name.  Its the name of the most beautiful operas ever written.”

“I know.  I’m gonna change my name someday.” she answered.  “I never liked it.”

Ally finished taking the survey, leaving more questions unresolved than answered.  

We gave Carmen a blanket, gloves, a hat.  Some hot cocoa, two sandwiches and a chocolate bar. We implored her to visit our pantry when it opened in the morning for cloths, referrals and food.  She was very grateful; but I don’t think she’ll ever make her way there.

I gave her my phone number; but I don’t think she’ll call.

“You are not forgotten beloved.  You are deeply loved.  Please remember that.” I said cupping her calloused hands within my palms.

“I know” the dainty caged bird cooed with a submissive smile.  

“What time is it?”

As we left Carmen, I wondered how to count a person wishing to remain invisible.

Music Selection: Bizet’s Carmen, Habanera

Maya Angelou: I Know Why a Caged Bird Sings

Paterson
1/30/13
jbm

The first was like a dream through summer heat,
  The second like a tedious numbing swoon,
While the half-frozen pulses lagged to beat
  Beneath a winter moon.

"But," says my friend, "what was this thing and where?"
  It was a pleasure-place within my soul;
An earthly paradise supremely fair
  That lured me from the goal.

The first part was a tissue of hugged lies;
  The second was its ruin fraught with pain:
Why raise the fair delusion to the skies
  But to be dashed again?

My castle stood of white transparent glass
  Glittering and frail with many a fretted spire,
But when the summer sunset came to pass
  It kindled into fire.

My pleasaunce was an undulating green,
  Stately with trees whose shadows slept below,
With glimpses of smooth garden-beds between,
  Like flame or sky or snow.

Swift squirrels on the pastures took their ease,
  With leaping lambs safe from the unfeared knife;
All singing-birds rejoicing in those trees
  Fulfilled their careless life.

Wood-pigeons cooed there, stock-doves nestled there;
  My trees were full of songs and flowers and fruit,
Their branches spread a city to the air,
  And mice lodged in their root.

My heath lay farther off, where lizards lived
  In strange metallic mail, just spied and gone;
Like darted lightnings here and there perceived
  But nowhere dwelt upon.

Frogs and fat toads were there to hop or plod
  And propagate in peace, an uncouth crew,
Where velvet-headed rushes rustling nod
  And spill the morning dew.

All caterpillars throve beneath my rule,
  With snails and slugs in corners out of sight;
I never marred the curious sudden stool
  That perfects in a night.

Safe in his excavated gallery
  The burrowing mole groped on from year to year;
No harmless hedgehog curled because of me
  His prickly back for fear.

Ofttimes one like an angel walked with me,
  With spirit-discerning eyes like flames of fire,
But deep as the unfathomed endless sea
  Fulfilling my desire:

And sometimes like a snowdrift he was fair,
  And sometimes like a sunset glorious red,
And sometimes he had wings to scale the air
  With aureole round his head.

We sang our songs together by the way,
  Calls and recalls and echoes of delight;
So communed we together all the day,
  And so in dreams by night.

I have no words to tell what way we walked,
  What unforgotten path now closed and sealed;
I have no words to tell all things we talked,
  All things that he revealed:

This only can I tell: that hour by hour
  I waxed more feastful, lifted up and glad;
I felt no thorn-***** when I plucked a flower,
  Felt not my friend was sad.

"To-morrow," once I said to him with smiles:
  "To-night," he answered gravely and was dumb,
But pointed out the stones that numbered miles
  And miles and miles to come.

"Not so," I said: "to-morrow shall be sweet;
  To-night is not so sweet as coming days."
Then first I saw that he had turned his feet,
  Had turned from me his face:

Running and flying miles and miles he went,
  But once looked back to beckon with his hand
And cry: "Come home, O love, from banishment:
  Come to the distant land."

That night destroyed me like an avalanche;
  One night turned all my summer back to snow:
Next morning not a bird upon my branch,
  Not a lamb woke below,--

No bird, no lamb, no living breathing thing;
  No squirrel scampered on my breezy lawn,
No mouse lodged by his hoard: all joys took wing
  And fled before that dawn.

Azure and sun were starved from heaven above,
  No dew had fallen, but biting frost lay ****:
O love, I knew that I should meet my love,
  Should find my love no more.

"My love no more," I muttered, stunned with pain:
  I shed no tear, I wrung no passionate hand,
Till something whispered: "You shall meet again,
  Meet in a distant land."

Then with a cry like famine I arose,
  I lit my candle, searched from room to room,
Searched up and down; a war of winds that froze
  Swept through the blank of gloom.

I searched day after day, night after night;
  Scant change there came to me of night or day:
"No more," I wailed, "no more"; and trimmed my light,
  And gnashed, but did not pray,

Until my heart broke and my spirit broke:
  Upon the frost-bound floor I stumbled, fell,
And moaned: "It is enough: withhold the stroke.
  Farewell, O love, farewell."

Then life swooned from me. And I heard the song
  Of spheres and spirits rejoicing over me:
One cried: "Our sister, she hath suffered long."--
  One answered: "Make her see."--

One cried: "O blessed she who no more pain,
  Who no more disappointment shall receive."--
One answered: "Not so: she must live again;
  Strengthen thou her to live."

So, while I lay entranced, a curtain seemed
  To shrivel with crackling from before my face,
Across mine eyes a waxing radiance beamed
  And showed a certain place.

I saw a vision of a woman, where
  Night and new morning strive for *******;
Incomparably pale, and almost fair,
  And sad beyond expression.

Her eyes were like some fire-enshrining gem,
  Were stately like the stars, and yet were tender,
Her figure charmed me like a windy stem
  Quivering and drooped and slender.

I stood upon the outer barren ground,
  She stood on inner ground that budded flowers;
While circling in their never-slackening round
  Danced by the mystic hours.

But every flower was lifted on a thorn,
  And every thorn shot upright from its sands
To gall her feet; hoarse laughter pealed in scorn
  With cruel clapping hands.

She bled and wept, yet did not shrink; her strength
  Was strung up until daybreak of delight:
She measured measureless sorrow toward its length,
  And breadth, and depth, and height.

Then marked I how a chain sustained her form,
  A chain of living links not made nor riven:
It stretched sheer up through lightning, wind, and storm,
  And anchored fast in heaven.

One cried: "How long? yet founded on the Rock
  She shall do battle, suffer, and attain."--
One answered: "Faith quakes in the tempest shock:
  Strengthen her soul again."

I saw a cup sent down and come to her
  Brimful of loathing and of bitterness:
She drank with livid lips that seemed to stir
  The depth, not make it less.

But as she drank I spied a hand distil
  New wine and ****** honey; making it
First bitter-sweet, then sweet indeed, until
  She tasted only sweet.

Her lips and cheeks waxed rosy-fresh and young;
  Drinking she sang: "My soul shall nothing want";
And drank anew: while soft a song was sung,
  A mystical slow chant.

One cried: "The wounds are faithful of a friend:
  The wilderness shall blossom as a rose."--
One answered: "Rend the veil, declare the end,
  Strengthen her ere she goes."

Then earth and heaven were rolled up like a scroll;
  Time and space, change and death, had passed away;
Weight, number, measure, each had reached its whole:
  The day had come, that day.

Multitudes--multitudes--stood up in bliss,
  Made equal to the angels, glorious, fair;
With harps, palms, wedding-garments, kiss of peace,
  And crowned and haloed hair.

They sang a song, a new song in the height,
  Harping with harps to Him Who is Strong and True:
They drank new wine, their eyes saw with new light,
  Lo, all things were made new.

Tier beyond tier they rose and rose and rose
  So high that it was dreadful, flames with flames:
No man could number them, no tongue disclose
  Their secret sacred names.

As though one pulse stirred all, one rush of blood
  Fed all, one breath swept through them myriad voiced,
They struck their harps, cast down their crowns, they stood
  And worshipped and rejoiced.

Each face looked one way like a moon new-lit,
  Each face looked one way towards its Sun of Love;
Drank love and bathed in love and mirrored it
  And knew no end thereof.

Glory touched glory on each blessed head,
  Hands locked dear hands never to sunder more:
These were the new-begotten from the dead
  Whom the great birthday bore.

Heart answered heart, soul answered soul at rest,
  Double against each other, filled, sufficed:
All loving, loved of all; but loving best
  And best beloved of Christ.

I saw that one who lost her love in pain,
  Who trod on thorns, who drank the loathsome cup;
The lost in night, in day was found again;
  The fallen was lifted up.

They stood together in the blessed noon,
  They sang together through the length of days;
Each loving face bent Sunwards like a moon
  New-lit with love and praise.

Therefore, O friend, I would not if I might
  Rebuild my house of lies, wherein I joyed
One time to dwell: my soul shall walk in white,
  Cast down but not destroyed.

Therefore in patience I possess my soul;
  Yea, therefore as a flint I set my face,
To pluck down, to build up again the whole--
  But in a distant place.

These thorns are sharp, yet I can tread on them;
  This cup is loathsome, yet He makes it sweet;
My face is steadfast toward Jerusalem,
  My heart remembers it.

I lift the hanging hands, the feeble knees--
  I, precious more than seven times molten gold--
Until the day when from His storehouses
  God shall bring new and old;

Beauty for ashes, oil of joy for grief,
  Garment of praise for spirit of heaviness:
Although to-day I fade as doth a leaf,
  I languish and grow less.

Although to-day He prunes my twigs with pain,
  Yet doth His blood nourish and warm my root:
To-morrow I shall put forth buds again,
  And clothe myself with fruit.

Although to-day I walk in tedious ways,
  To-day His staff is turned into a rod,
Yet will I wait for Him the appointed days
  And stay upon my God.

"Do not judge them,"
She whispered softly,
"You may be old,
But you have yet to live as well."

And they stared at her,
For the first time in decades,
With eyes wide with wonder.
"But I have seen so many things,
I am certain I know more."

"No,"
Smiled the crone,
Orange eyes twinkling like starlight.
"You know what you know for yourself,
And yourself alone. Your wisdom is yours."

"Shouldn't I make my wisdom theirs as well?"
Cried the playwright.
"They're making too many mistakes, I have to fix it."

And still, the crone continued to smile.
"Their mistakes are theirs to make."
She reached out and placed a hand upon the playwrights' paper.
"Just as your wisdom is yours, their experiences are theirs, and just as valid as yours."
She took the quill from the playwright, and tucked the crow's feather in her hair.
"Allow them to grow without your bias."

"But I don't approve--"
The crone gave the playwright a bright smile,
Though her eyes were dark,
Which ultimately shut them up.

"Your place is not to judge. It is to nurture. It is to guide."
She said softly, though her tone was much more assertive.

"Then let me guide,"
The playwright began.

"There is a vast divide between guidance and control."
The vision of her shimmered, and she took a step back.

"I don't understand."
The playwright held their head in their hands, knuckles white while gripped onto curls.

"And you will not understand until you yourself live."
The old crone cooed, before her image blew away in soft red wind.

And there the playwright was left,
A half written letter filled with judgment and smudged ink,
And no quill to finish it with.
They fell back into their chair,
Glaring at their writing desk.

Whether or not the crone was right or wrong,
They still didn't get their quill back.

I marked where lovely Venus and her court
  With song and dance and merry laugh went by;
  Weightless, their wingless feet seemed made to fly,
Bound from the ground and in mid air to sport.
Left far behind I heard the dolphins snort,
  Tracking their goddess with a wistful eye,
  Around whose head white doves rose, wheeling high
Or low, and cooed after their tender sort.
All this I saw in spring. Through summer heat
  I saw the lovely Queen of Love no more.
  But when flushed autumn through the woodlands went
I spied sweet Venus walk amid the wheat:
  Whom seeing, every harvester gave o'er
  His toil, and laughed and hoped and was content.

She looked at me and said,
"You should **** me
before you love me."
And so I did.

Her hands covered her *******
and she said,
"I want you to guess which breast
my father touched first."
And so I did.

The bones in her hands shifted
as she fixed her hair into a ponytail.
"You're going to promise me that
you're not going to try to fix me.
You're going to promise me, okay?"
And so I did.

Her lips would start bleeding
because when she lied
she chewed her lips.
She said, "I think today
will be the last day I live."
And I asked her for one more.

Dry blood sat on her inner lips
as she kissed me good morning.
Her voice softly cooed,
"I hope that isn't the last time
I kiss you."
And I asked her for one more.

She bled,
"All you write about are girls.
You never write about me.
All you write about are faces
without souls. What about my soul?
Are you going to
******* write about my soul?
Are you going to write another poem?"
And I asked her for one more.

Looking at me,
she ran her fingers
down her hips,
across scars,
and said,
"Too many men look at me
and see what they want to.
They look at me and see
broken picture frames
that they can repair
and put our faces into."

Our hands met
and our fingers grasped
at the pieces of ourselves
that were deeper than faces.
But it was only me
as she whispered,
"Stop,"
licked my cheek
to my ear,
finishing,
"Don't fall in love
with what you
think you see.
Just **** me."

And so I did.
And so I asked her for one more.

Aphrodite - Queen *****,
Slouching.
Elbows resting on glass countertop -
              Go **** yourself.

All you are -
         Is beautiful.
All you are -
         Is perfection.

Can't touch you baby,
     No, not again.
Smiled and cooed,
     Then playing the role of dog in heat,
     Snapped and snarled -
Like I was the crazy one.
     You asked for it.

Sunrise floods through
vertical blinds strong enough to
bleed through thick fingers of my aloe.

Mold grows from soil-top deep into
the root.
I
stretch my arms, wipe
crust from my eyes
just to find
you.
God,
anybody but
you.

Eyes red. You
didn't sleep.
It's been days since you
slept. Your
pile of cups, stained from old coffee, mingling
with cheap liquor
bottles. Lying on the floor like the bodies
in Normandy.
The first thing you
say to me, your
catch phrase, prodding me with bony
fingers, the scars across your
arms like scales.
Shallow pools under your
eyes lingering, you
say "you will not last today."
I
tried to spring to my feet, you
held me down.
"Sleep," you
cooed as my eyelids buckled
I
believed it best I just
lie
down.
"Spend the day in bed," you
said. "It'll be nice," you
say "let me have just one more day."

"I really wish I could love you."
"Don't cry. I'll be okay."

Her cold hands blanketed my cheeks, as warm tears repelled from finger to finger.

I looked at her, as her eyes changed from blue to green to blue again. "I don't want you to die, Reno."

"Dying can't **** me, Josh. I thought you knew better." Her eyes were green again, as her iris exploded into a wave of grey. She blinked and they were blue again, changing the room to an eggshell white. We sat on a naked mattress, in the middle of an empty room, my face resting on her soft shoulder. Only orange, dancing pill bottles kept us company. They'd tip their caps, like a hat, at the end of each song.

We swam in a teal sea, inside of four brick walls. Our mouths didn't move, but our voices travelled through air bubbles.

Doing an underwater backflip, the bubbles broke, "When did you first fall in love?"

Kicking off the floor, towards her, "I was twenty."

"How'd you know?"

"She gave me a cupcake and was trying to light the candle, but couldn't. She kept trying and trying. At that moment, I knew I loved her."

She swam towards me, her legs like ribbons waving at the surface.

"His name was Lee," she cooed as she started to drown, "I was seventeen and he open hand slapped me. I thought that was love. Then, eventually, he started to close his hand and then I knew that it wasn't. It didn't stop me from loving him with everything I had, though."

I reached for her as her legs were being pulled up to the surface. She opened her mouth, "You'll be okay. I promise."

My pillow was soaked by sweat as I sat up and rubbed my eyes. The other side of the bed was empty.  I turned my head to see the bathroom light peeking behind an indecisive door. Getting up, I walked around the foot of the bed and over the blanket dying on the floor. As I grew closer to the bathroom, the sound of retching clawed at my eardrums.

My hand pushed the door until the bronze **** kissed the wall. An alabaster body was on the floor. Reno's face appeared as she wiped her mouth. She flushed the toilet. I walked towards her, kneeled beside her, and hugged her as the sound of suction and spinning water drowned the air.

I whispered in her ear. She picked up head, out of my arms, and smiled, blue eyes and all.

I was 17 the day you frantically tried to stop the blood flow and give me yours. Wearing a coat of grief and guilt you thought to yourself, Did I let her do this? Was this my fault? And how did I not see this coming?

Over and over I was trying to tell you this is not your fault, and I am so sorry that you are weeping, but I was unconscious and your screaming would have masked any poor words I could have attempted to mutter.

And at 1:32 in the morning I watched you grip my lifeless body, praying that the ambulance arrives in time, but they were just lonely words and I had already met God, and the way he looked at me, with the same hunger in his eyes a distraught ****** would convey. And he called to me! He cooed, “Please, please, come baby.” Chanting the unforgivable words that once robbed me of a childhood.

And he has attempted the seven deadly sins-succeeded with five  Lust, sloth, gluttony, greed and wrath. Yet has he been envious for what would be the reason? He is GOD, mighty and royal. And nor has he been filled with pride because his shame is to bone-although it doesn’t show. This is not the god I have been taught to love. He is not mighty. He does not pay for his sins and he cannot be forgiven, for who is he begging to? Filthy and judgmental  He wants me to know judgement day is upon us and only he who has obeyed the false instructions shall be accepted  And he wants me to know: I will not be one of the many.

Feeling *****, I go way down low. There i met the devil; soul crushing and obscene. Obscene as one can be. Someone who truly deserves agony, someone who deserves to burn. I say hello. He shakes his tail and crawls to me. He sniffs. He knows who I’ve met and he knows that I’ve left. I cringe under his abusive eyes. He strikes me-I strike back. I shall not be demeaned underneath this man who shows even god to be angelic. Humor proves to be his second language and his enjoyment comes from the blood of others; the smell of their fear; and their flesh stripped wounds satisfy his obvious lust. There I lie, stripped of my skin and red covered limbs. I allow myself to rise and he allows me to leave. His fun is over-what’s the use of a bag of bones?

Crawling back out i realize; our holy heaven and our flaming hell are only two different versions of evil.

What seems like a decade and what possibly could be-I crawl back to the house my soul no longer lives in. And at 1:34 in the morning I see my mother once again-she has a gun in her palm. Shaking. Crying. We both beg. I cannot stop her. She cannot hear me. Blood. Splattered walls. Two drenched bodies.

Sunrise floods through
vertical blinds strong enough to
bleed through thick fingers of my aloe.

Mold grows from soil-top deep into
the root.
I
stretch my arms, wipe
crust from my eyes
just to find
you.
God,
anybody but
you.

Eyes red. You
didn't sleep.
It's been days since you
slept. Your
pile of cups, stained from old coffee, mingling
with cheap liquor
bottles. Lying on the floor like the bodies
in Normandy.
The first thing you
say to me, your
catch phrase, prodding me with bony
fingers, the scars across your
arms like scales.
Shallow pools under your
eyes lingering, you
say "you will not last today."
I
tried to spring to my feet, you
held me down.
"Sleep," you
cooed as my eyelids buckled
I
believed it best I just
lie
down.
"Spend the day in bed," you
said. "It'll be nice," you
say "let me have just one more day."

As he lay waste her bed , her
Body, body-bed, bed-body
As he lay waste her cushions and
a saree unfurled
As he lay waste in a haste
To **** the marrow out of her
Lay waste her blankets,
And entered the bed which
Wasn’t one of Matrimony
But a bed raised in pursuit of mammon
To sort things , the easy way out
He entered a bed and she too ,
Was entered
Body-bed , bed-body,
As voices cooed and quivered
As flesh writhed and squirmed
Tamed flesh

As pleasure heaved itself
And guilt oozed out
Somewhere, unwary children shouted
Finally, oh finally , passions routed
And people fled , a temptress left
In the temptress’ lair
And though the bed still lay waste
The pillows had a lot to boast,
A reward for the magnanimous host
Young tongues savoured dead flesh
On the largesse of a bed lain waste
In a temple of flesh.

The trees overlapped
overhead creating a warm
cloister.
Harvey's car cooed past
the vibrant green
and sputter-stopped
at the plastic, fishhead
mailbox.
He drove up the grey gravel drive,
hopped out of his car and
with eager stride
headed toward
the door of the widow Prine.
"Hello, Harvey," Mrs. Prine
greeted from behind the screen
in her always-sugary-hushed tone.

"Hey, Mrs--I mean hello, Margaret."

"Haha, you remembered this time.
C'mon in, sweetie."

Harvey's steps matched gentle creaks
in wooden floor.
Pictures of Mrs. Prine's
three children lined the walls.

"That's Mattie, Cindy's baby. My first grandbaby,"
Mrs. Prine beamed.

"She's a cutie."

"Well thank you," Mrs. Prine picked up
some magazines lying on the couch,
"feel free to sit here. Can I get you something to drink?
Some wine, maybe? It's a red."

"Sure, sure. Sounds good."

Mrs. Prine stepped into the kitchen,
as the evening news played at a barely
audible volume.

"Oh Lord. I forgot to put the wine in the
fridge, Harvey."

"That's okay, Mrs. Prine. I can--"

"Margaret."

"Margaret, I can drink it warm."

"How about some ice cubes?"

"That works too."

Mrs. Prine's husband died
driving an 18-wheeler,
six-miles outside of Dallas
two or three years ago.
One of the few times
a sedan won a war
against a big engine.

Her cheek bones
jutted sharply from
her face,
deep crimson lipstick
and light eyeshadow
emphasized her
few deep wrinkles,
as if she wore them
with pride.

They sat sipping lukewarm
red wine, saying nearly nothing--
touching only during commercial
breaks.

When the news ended,
Mrs. Prine grabbed Harvey's hand,
led him to the bedroom,
filled with pictures of her and her husband.

The love they made--
textbook in its precision,
light in its passion--
finished chapter,
Harvey reached for his cigarettes.

"Sweetie, please don't smoke in here."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Margaret."

Harvey stared at her old life's relics,
wrapped his arm around her,
pulled her naked flesh against his,
a summer breeze crawled through
open window,
and Harvey said,

"So, tell me more about your husband."

Mrs. Prine smiled, brushed her hair
out of her eyes,
and with a retrospective sigh,
she began.

THIS:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCHL9b6nBXA



(sonnet #MMMMMMMDCCCII)


Watch Paul McCartney's erm, debut of thence
That soulful number "Yesterday." and they'll
What, eh?  If's not the song itself t'avail,
How 'bout John Lennon's snide remark for sense
To Ringo, was't?  As if there was fr'intents
This rivalry which could not in betrayl
Be satisfied to have Paul up (sans bail?)
Alone on stage where all the girls cooed hence.
As if they did not cry for John in tour,
And that by name, he must begrudge it too?
I'm just a child in sheer compare as twere,
Yet "all grown-up" now to effect, see through
Their boyish ways and fall in love, though's poor.
While "Yesterday's" notes never fail to woo.

22Mar19b