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Omar Abo Shama May 2013
The concert was about to finish ..

And now it's her turn ..

With her instrument ..

With her golden saxophone ..

The lights were diminished ..

And she started playing her favorite musical note ..

With her heart that is full of feelings ..

And her closed eyes ..

In her special world ..

The air goes out from her lungs softly like tears ..

And the great audience feels every tone ..

She doesn’t see them ..

She doesn’t hear their clap ..

Only his soul that is around ..

And Only his voice that is heard ..

Then his beautiful smile ..

With tears in his eyes , He said ''You're the best''

Then she looked at her saxophone ..

And remembered years ago ..

At one of their nights ..

During one of their phone calls ..

- You know babe , I adore the Saxophone ..

- Really ?

- Yeah , it's my favorite instrument ..

- Hold on ..

- What's this noise around you ?

- Nothing just my family ..

- Hmmm , didn't they sleep ?

- No , gonna call you after sometime ..

- Ok no problem ..

And after sometime he called her back ..

- Now tell me what will you do when you get a saxophone ..

- Haha , I really don't know but I've never thought about having one before ..

As they used to do , He started telling her a story before sleeping ..

She doesn't care about any stories ..

She just loves listening to his voice ..

She stays silent ..

To listen and feel ..

Every single word ..

And while listening , The call was over ..

She did a call again and again ..

No answer ..

She called his home ..

No answer ..

Again and again ..

No answer ..

The phone was ringing away from his sleeping house ..

Without his family noise that didn't exist ..

Among a lot of people ..

In his crushed car ..

Between his dead body ..

And

*That New Golden Saxophone
RAJ NANDY Apr 2016
THE  SAXOPHONE STORY
          BY RAJ NANDY

The Saxophone is perhaps the most expressive
instrument next to the human voice.
Was made by Adolphe Sax, a Belgian, through
a deliberate choice!
He wanted to offset the tonal disparity, -
Between the string, wind, and brass instruments,
with musical clarity !
He felt that the strings ones were overpowered
by the wind instruments.
While the wind instruments got overblown by
the brass ones instead !
Now what would happen if the best qualities
of these three instruments types,
Could in a fusion blend and coalesces into a single
instrument type ?  
So finally at the age of 20 years, in March Eighteen
Hundred and Thirty Four,
Adolphe Sax created a magical instrument for the
World to hear and adore!
It had the power of the brass, the flexibility of the
strings, and the woodwind’s variety and tone;
Which got christened after Adolphe Sax as the
SAXOPHONE !

Adolphe’s famous composer friend Hector Berlioz
in Paris City,
Gave this new instrument wide publicity!
In 1844 the Sax was presented in the Industrial
Exhibition at Paris;
And subsequently got patented on 20 March 1846.
It soon got adopted by the Bands of the French Army.
Making other instrument makers to become green
with envy!
The Sax was 80 years old when it became part of the
musical instruments of the Jazz Band.
A small bore mouth piece was created to suite the
varying tonal qualities required by Jazz.
Initially, 14 different sizes of Sax was created by
Adolphe.
Today only five types are in use for us to hear and
see;
The Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass and the Baritone
Saxophone.
They now form a part of our Jazz music's backbone!
                                                      - By Raj Nandy
FOOT NOTES :
Adolphe Sax (1814-1894) , son of famous musical instrument maker
Charles Joseph Sax of Belgium. Woodwind Instruments = Flute, Clarinet, Bassoon etc. Brass Instruments = Trumpet, Tuba, Cornet etc. String Instruments  = Violin, Guitar, Harp, Banjo etc. The Saxophone today has become the very backbone of Jazz Music!
** ALL COPY RIGHTS ARE RESERVED BY: - RAJ NANDY
Those who have read my Story of Jazz Music in Verse, are likely to like this true story also. Best wishes, -Raj.
RAJ NANDY Sep 2017
Streets of the city has recently bathed, with a sudden hour
long mid-Summer's rain.
Romeo trudged down the empty street, towards his lonely
pad located on a terrace.
He had nothing to call his very own, excepting his dear old
Saxophone!
The crowd in the hotel applauded as he played, since he played
with empathy like every other day.
He had met his Juliet briefly once, those were the moments of
a happy trance!
The saxophone has countless musical notes embedded inside, -
For our Romeo to play them out night after night.
Yet so many Romeos like him shall slowly fade away;
And the saxophone shall play their dirge at the end of
the day!  
                                                         -By Raj Nandy, New Delhi
I love to watch you play
Hear the sweet notes drift out of your saxophone
A lovely melody

You don't always see me
I listen all the same
Such lovely skill
escaping in the form of sound
coming out
of that wonderful saxophone

Maybe it's not the sound
That enchants me so
But the handsome player
Whom I get to call my own

My gorgeous love  
Smart and talented to the end
<3
I love my saxophone playing boyfriend, It's nice to date fellow musicians, even if the instruments vary.
Paul S Eifert Jan 2013
I can't play no saxophone
but I can hear it played.
Sometimes it's a lady sighin;
sometimes it's a workin man.
But when it is an orphan cryin
I wish I could hold that child
and play.

I can't hold that child
in these ***** hands of mine.
I can't stop his cryin.
I can hear it way down here
on the sidewalks of the streets he's a child of.
Why, Lord, can I hear that saxophone
but never play?
Micah Fagre Oct 2014
the planets. the peaches.
pruned. picked. for the reaches.
the centuries. a second to the eternities.
you can have it. say laugh when. you hear the jazz note.
the voice of all that i spoke. the saxophone.
like dialing digits of truth. on the telephone.
come on. say one and two. up and down. the diversity in one single crown.
upon the ears of sound. it's the heart's listening device. toss it like rice.
at a wedding. human genes get paired up. and twisted.
so simple. it comes in flavors of licorice. red and black.
off and on. check the track. when the needle skips.
we find all these differences.
let me bring it back. for diversity.
zeroes and ones. spread the spectrum. across high and low frequencies.
it's so easy. let the record speak. can you stay on beat.
the principles of the high. the sincerity of the meek.
whatever lies between. is one or the other. blended across the centuries.
and all mothers. give birth to the last. man to the first.
follow that. discussion of high low.
mid ranges get blown. saxophone pace the flow. get pricked by the tweeters.
soul from the bass feeders. save the appetite. for the words that i write.
and then speak. you you. not me. splitting hairs. atoms. quarks. and light.
beams. like a smile. across a broad spectrum. either off. always on.
high low. then get gone.
RAJ NANDY Jul 2017
THE LEGEND OF HOLLYWOOD IN VERSE
Dear Readers, I have tried to cover the salient features of this True Story in free flowing verse mainly with end rhymes. If you read it loud, you can hear the chimes! Due to the short attention span of my readers I had to cut short this long story, and conclude with the
Golden Era of Hollywood by stretching it up to the 1950's only. When TV began to challenge the Big Screen Cinema seriously! I have used only a part of my notes here. Kindly read the entire poem and don't hesitate to know many interesting facts - which I also did not know! I wish there was a provision for posting a few interesting photographs for you here. Best wishes, - Raj Nandy, New Delhi.  

                 THE LEGEND OF HOLLYWOOD :
                        THE AMERICAN  DREAM
                             BY RAJ NANDY

           A SHORT  HISTORICAL  BACKGROUND
Since the earliest days, optical toys, shadow shows, and ‘magic
lanterns’, had created the illusion of motion.
This concept was first described by Mark Roget in 1824 as  
the 'persistent of vision'.
Giving impetus to the development of big screen cinema with its
close-ups, capturing all controlled and subtle expressions!
The actors were no longer required to shout out their parts with
exaggerated actions as on the Elizabethan Stage.
Now even a single tear drop could get noticed easily by the entire
movie audience!
With the best scene being included and edited after a few retakes.
To Thomas Edison and his able assistant William Rogers we owe the invention of Kinetoscope, the first movie camera.
On the grounds of his West Orange, New Jersey laboratory, Edison
built his first movie studio called the ‘Black Maria’.   (1893)
He also purchased a string of patents related to motion picture
Camera; forming the Edison Trust, - a cartel that took control of
the Film Industry entire!

Fort Lee, New Jersey:
On a small borough on the opposite bank of the Hudson River lay
the deserted Fort Lee.
Here scores of film production crews descended armed with picture Cameras, on this isolated part of New Jersey!
In 1907 Edison’s company came there to shoot a short silent film –
‘Rescue From an Eagle’s Nest’,
Which featured for the first time the actor and director DW Griffith.
The independent Chaplin Film Company built the first permanent
movie studio in 1910 in Fort Lee.
While some of the biggest Hollywood studios like the Universal,
MGM, and 20th Century Fox, had their roots in Fort Lee.
Some of the famous stars of the silent movie era included ‘Fatty’
Arbuckle, Will Rogers, Mary Pickford, Dorothy and Lillian Gish,
Lionel Barrymore, Rudolph Valentine and Pearl White.
In those days there were no reflectors and electric arch lights.
So movies were made on rooftops to capture the bright sunlight!
During unpredictable bad weather days, filming had to be stopped
despite the revolving stage which was made, -
To rotate and capture the sunlight before the lights atarted to fade!

Shift from New Jersey to West Coast California:
Now Edison who held the patents for the bulb, phonograph, and the Camera, had exhibited a near monopoly;
On the production, distribution, and exhibition of the movies which made this budding industry to shift to California from
New Jersey!
California with its natural scenery, its open range, mountains, desert, and snow country, had the basic ingredients for the movie industry.
But most importantly, California had bright Sunshine for almost
365 days of the year!
While eight miles away from Hollywood lay the port city of Los Angeles with its cheap labour.

                        THE RISE  OF  HOLLYWOOD
It was a real estate tycoon Harvey Wilcox and his wife Daeida from
Kansas, who during the 1880s founded ‘Hollywood’ as a community for like-minded temperate followers.
It is generally said that Daeida gave the name Hollywood perhaps
due to the areas abundant red-berried shrubs also known as
California Holly.
Spring blossoms around and above the Hollywood Hills with its rich variety,  gave it a touch of paradise for all to see !
Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903, and during
1910 unified with the city of Los Angeles.
While a year later, the first film studio had moved in from New
Jersey, to escape Thomas Edison’s monopoly!    (1911)

In 1913 Cecil B. De Mille and Jesse Lasky, had leased a barn with
studio facilities.
And directed the first feature length film ‘Squaw Man’ in 1914.
Today this studio is home to Hollywood Heritage Museum as we get to see.
The timeless symbol of Hollywood film industry that famous sign on top of Mount Lee, was put up by a real estate developer in 1923.  
This sign had read as ‘’HOLLY WOOD LAND’’ initially.
Despite decades of run-ins with vandals and pranksters, it managed to hang on to its prime location near the summit of the Hollywood Hills.
The last restoration work was carried out in 1978 initiated by Hugh
Hefner of the ******* Magazine.
Those nine white letters 45 feet tall now read ‘HOLLYWOOD’, and has become a landmark and America’s cultural icon, and an evocative symbol for ambition, glamour, and dream.
Forever enticing aspiring actors to flock to Hollywood, hypnotised
by lure of the big screen!

                     GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD
The Silent Movie Era which began in 1895, ended in 1935 with the
production of ‘Dance of Virgins’, filmed entirely in the island of Bali.
The first Sound film ‘The Jazz Singer’ by Warner Bros. was made with a Vitaphone sound-on-disc technology.  (October 1927)
Despite the Great Depression of the 1930s, this decade along with the 1940s have been regarded by some as Hollywood’s Golden Age.
However, I think that this Golden Age includes the decades of the
1940s and the 1950s instead.
When the advent of Television began to challenge the Film Industry
itself !

First Academy Award:
On 16th May 1929 in the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard,
the First Academy Award presentation was held.
Around 270 people were in attendance, and tickets were priced at
$5 per head.
When the best films of 1927 & 1928 were honored by the Academy
of Motion Production and Sciences, or the AMPS.
Emil Jennings became the best actor, and Janet Gaynor the best actress.
Special Award went to Charlie Chaplin for his contribution to the
silent movie era and for his silent film ‘The Circus’.
While Warren Brothers was commended for making the first talking picture ‘The Jazz Singer’, - also receiving a Special Award!
Now, the origin of the term ‘OSCAR’ has remained disputed.
The Academy adopted this name from 1939 onwards it is stated.
OSCAR award has now become “the stuff dreams are made of”!
It is a gold-plated statuette of a knight 13.5 inches in height, weighing 8.5 pounds, was designed by MGM’s art director Cedric Gibbons.
Annually awarded for honouring and encouraging excellence in all
facets of motion picture production.

Movies During the Great Depression Era (1929-1941):
Musicals and dance movies starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers provided escapism and good entertainment during this age.
“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did. She just did it
backwards and in high heels,” - the Critics had said.
This compatible pair entertained the viewers for almost one and
a half decade.
During the ‘30s, gangster movies were popular starring James Cagey, Humphrey Bogart, and Edward G. Robinson.
While family movies had their popular child artist Shirley Temple.
Swashbuckler films of the Golden Age saw the sword fighting scenes of Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn.
Flynn got idolized playing ‘Robin Hood’, this film got released in
1938 on the big screen!
Story of the American Civil War got presented in the epic ‘Gone With The Wind’ (1939) with Clarke Gable and Vivian Leigh.
This movie received 8 Oscars including the award for the Best Film, - creating a landmark in motion picture’s history!
More serious movies like John Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath’ and
John Ford’s  ‘How Green Was My Valley’, were released in 1940 and 1941 respectively.
While the viewers escaped that depressive age to the magical world
of  ‘Wizard of Oz’ with its actress Judy Garland most eagerly!
Let us not forget John Wayne the King of the Westerns, who began
his acting career in the 1930s with his movie ‘The Big Trail’;
He went on to complete 84 films before his career came to an end.
Beginning of the 40s also saw Bob Hope and the crooner Bing Crosby, who entertained the public and also the fighting troops.
For the Second World War (1939-45) had interrupted the Golden Age of Hollywood.
When actors like Henry Fonda, Clarke Gable, James Stewart and
Douglas Fairbanks joined the armed forces temporarily leaving
Hollywood.
Few propaganda movies supporting the war efforts were also made.
While landmark movies like ‘Philadelphia Story’, ‘Casablanca’, ‘Citizen Kane’,
‘The Best Years of Our Lives’, were some of the most successful movies of that decade.  (The 1940s)
Now I come towards the end of my Hollywood Story with the decade  of the 1950s, thereby extending the period of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Since having past the Great Depression and the Second World War,  the Hollywood movie industry truly matured and came of age.

                        HOLLYWOOD  OF  THE  1950s

BACKGROU­ND:
The decade of the ‘50s was known for its post-war affluence and
choice of leisure time activities.
It was a decade of middle-class values, fast-food restaurants, and
drive-in- movies;
Of ‘baby-boom’, all-electric home, the first credit cards, and new fast moving cars like the Ford, Plymouth, Buick, Hudson, and Chevrolet.
But not forgetting the white racist terrorism in the Southern States!
This era saw the beginning of Cold War, with Eisenhower
succeeding Harry S. Truman as the American President.
But for the film industry, most importantly, what really mattered  
was the advent of the Domestic TV.
When the older viewers preferred to stay at home instead of going
out to the movies.
By 1950, 10.5 million US homes had a television set, and on the
30th December 1953, the first Color TV went on sale!
Film industries used techniques such as Cinemascope, Vista Vision,
and gimmicks like 3-D techniques,
To get back their former movie audience back on their seats!
However, the big scene spectacle films did retain its charm and
fantasy.
Since fantasy epics like ‘The Story of Robin Hood’, and Biblical epics like ‘The Robe’, ‘Quo Vadis’, ‘The Ten Commandments’ and ‘Ben-Hur’, did retain its big screen visual appeal.
‘The Robe’ released on 16th September 1953, was the first film shot
and projected in Cinema Scope;
In which special lenses were used to compress a wide image into a
standard frame and then expanded it again during projection;
Resulting in an image almost two and a half times as high and also as wide, - captivating the viewers imagination!

DEMAND FOR NEW THEMES DURING THE 1950s :
The idealized portrayal of men and women since the Second World War,
Now failed to satisfy the youth who sought exciting symbols for rebellion.
So Hollywood responded with anti-heroes with stars like James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Paul Newman.
They replaced conventional actors like Tyron Power, Van Johnson, and Robert Taylor to a great extent, to meet the requirement of the age.
Anti-heroines included Ava Gardner, Kim Novak, and Marilyn Monroe with her vibrant *** appeal;
She provided excitement for the new generation with a change of scene.
Themes of rebellion against established authority was present in many Rock and Roll songs,
Including the 1954 Bill Hailey and His Comets’ ‘Rock Around the Clock’.
The era also saw rise to stardom of Elvis Presley the teen heartthrob.
Meeting the youthful aspirations with his songs like ‘Jailhouse Rock’!
I recall the lyrics of this 1957 film ‘Jailhouse Rock’ of my school days, which had featured the youth icon Elvis:
   “The Warden threw a party in the county jail,
     The prison band was there and they began to wail.
     The band was jumping and the joint began to sing,
     You should’ve heard them knocked-out jail bird sing.
     Let’s rock, everybody in the whole cell block……………
     Spider Murphy played the tenor saxophone,
     Little Joe was blowing the slide trombone.
     The drummer boy from Illinois went crash, boom, bang!
     The whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang,
      Let's rock,.................... (Lyrics of the song.)

Rock and Roll music began to tear down color barriers, and Afro-
American musicians like Chuck Berry and Little Richard became
very popular!
Now I must caution my readers that thousands of feature films got  released during this eventful decade in Hollywood.
To cover them all within this limited space becomes an impossible
task, which may kindly be understood !
However, I shall try to do so in a summarized form as best as I could.

BOX OFFICE HITS YEAR-WISE FROM 1950 To 1959 :
Top Ten Year-Wise hit films chronologically are: Cinderella (1950),
Quo Vadis, The Greatest Show on Earth, Peter Pan, Rear Window,
Lady and the *****, Ten Commandments, Bridge on the River
Kwai, South Pacific, and Ben-Hur of 1959.

However Taking The Entire Decade Of 1950s Collectively,
The Top Films Get Rated As Follows Respectively:
The Ten Commandments, followed by Lady and the *****, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, Bridge on the River Kwai, Around the World in Eighty Days, This is Cinerama, The Greatest Show on Earth, Rear Window, South Pacific, The Robe, Giant, Seven Wonders of the World, White Christmas, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Sayonara, Demetrius and the Gladiator, Peyton Place, Some Like It Hot, Quo Vadis, and Auntie Mame.

Film Debuts By Rising Stars During The 1950s :
The decade of the ‘50s saw a number of famous film stars making
their first appearance.
There was Peter Sellers in ‘The Black Rose’, Marlon Brando in
‘The Men’, and actress Sophia Loren in ‘Toto Tarzan’.
Following year saw Charles Bronson in ‘You Are in the Navy Now’,
Audrey Hepburn in ‘Our Wild Oats’, and Grace Kelly, the future
Princess of Monaco, in her first film ‘Fourteen Hours’. (1951)
While **** Brigitte Bardot appeared in 1952 movie ‘Crazy for Love’; and 1953 saw Steve Mc Queen in ‘******* The Run’.
Jack Lemon, Paul Newman, and Omar Sharif featured in films
during 1954.
The following year saw Clint Eastwood, Shirley Mc Lean, Walter
Matthau, and Jane Mansfield, all of whom the audience adored.
The British actor Michael Cain appeared in 1956; also Elvis Presley
the youth icon in ‘Love Me Tender’ and as the future Rock and Roll
King!
In 1957 came Sean Connery, followed by Jack Nicholson, Christopher Plummer, and Vanessa Redgrave.
While the closing decade of the ‘50s saw James Coburn, along with
director, script writer, and producer Steven Spielberg, make their
debut appearance.

Deaths During The 1950s: This decade also saw the death of actors
like Humphrey Bogart, Tyron Power and Errol Flynn.
Including the death of producer and director of epic movies the
renowned Cecil B. De Mille!
Though I have conclude the Golden Age of Hollywood with the 50’s Decade,
The glitz and glamour of its Oscar Awards continue even to this day.
With its red carpet and lighted marquee appeal and fashion display!

CONTINUING THE HOLLYWOOD STORY WITH FEW TITBITS :
From Fort Lee of New Jersey we have travelled west to Hollywood,
California.
From the silent movie days to the first ‘talking picture’ with Warren
Bros’ film ‘The Jazz Singer’.  (06 Oct 1927)
On 31st July 1928 for the first time the audience heard the MGM’s
mascot Leo’s mighty roar!
While in July 1929 Warren Bros’ first all-talking and all- Technicolor
Film appeared titled - ‘On With The Show’.
Austrian born Hedy Lamarr shocked the audience appearing **** in a Czechoslovak film ‘Ecstasy’!  (1933)
She fled from her husband to join MGM, becoming a star of the
‘40s and the ‘50s.
The ‘Private Life of Henry VII’ became the first British film to win the  American Academy Award.  (1933)
On 11Dec 1934, FOX released ‘Bright Eyes’ with Shirley Temple,
who became the first Child artist to win this Award!
While in 1937 Walt Disney released the first full animated feature
film titled - ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarf ‘.
The British film director Alfred Hitchcock who came to
Hollywood later;
Between 1940 and 1947, made great thrillers like 'Rebecca', ‘Notorious’, ‘Rear Window’, and ‘Dial M for ******’.
But he never won an Oscar as a Director!

THE GOLDEN GLOBE AWARD:
This award began in 1944 by the Foreign Correspondence Association at
the 20th Century Fox Studio.
To award critically acclaimed films and television shows, by awarding a
Scroll initially.
Later a Golden Globe was made on a pedestal, with a film strip around it.
In 1955 the Cecil B. De Mille Award was created, with De Mille as its first
recipient.

THE GRAMMY AWARD:
In 1959 The National Academy of Recording and Sciences sponsored the
First Grammy Award for music recorded during 1958.
When Frank Sinatra won for his album cover ‘Only The Lonely’, but he
did not sing.
Among the 28 other categories there was Ella Fitzgerald, and Count Basie
for his musical Dance Band Performance.
There was Kingston Trio’s song ‘Tom Dooly’, and the ‘Chipmunk Song’,
which brings back nostalgic memories of my school days!

CONCLUDING HOLLYWOOD STORY  WITH STUDIOS OF THE 1950s

Challenge Faced by the Movie Industry:
Now the challenge before the Movie Industry was how to adjust to the
rapidly changing conditions created by the growing TV Industry.
Resulting in loss of revenue, with viewers getting addicted to
their Domestic TV screen most conveniently!

The late 1950s saw two studios REPUBLIC and the RKO go out of business!
REPUBLIC from 1935- ‘59 based in Los Angeles, developed the careers of
John Wayne and Roy Rogers, and specializing in the Westerns.
RKO was one of the Big Five Studios of Hollywood along with Paramount,
MGM, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Brothers in those days.

RKO Studio which begun with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the ‘30s,
included actress Katherine Hepburn who holds the record for four Oscars
even to this day;
And later had Robert Mitchum and Carry Grant under an agreement.
But in 1948, RKO Studio came under the control Howard Hughes the
temperamental Industrialist.
Soon the scandal drive and litigation prone RKO Studio closed, while
other Big Four Studios had managed to remain afloat!


PARAMOUNT STUDIO:
Paramount Studio split into two separate companies in 1950.
Its Theatre chain later merged with ABC Radio & Television Network;
And they created an independent Production/Distribution Network.
Bing Crosby and Bob Hope had been Paramount’s two biggest stars.
Followed by actors like Alan Ladd, William Holden, Jerry Lewis, Dean
Martin, Charlton Heston, and Dorothy Lamour.
They also had the producer/director Cecil B. De Mille producing high-
grossing Epics like ‘Samson & Delilah’ and ‘The Ten Commandments’.
Also the movie maker Hal Wallis, who discovered Burt Lancaster and
Elvis Presley - two great talents!

20th CENTURY FOX:
Cinema Scope became FOX’s most successful technological innovation
with its hit film ‘The Robe’. (1953)
Its Darryl Zanuck had observed during the early ‘50s, that audience  
were more interested in escapist entertainments mainly.
So he turned to FOX to musicals, comedies, and adventure stories.
Biggest stars of FOX were Gregory Peck & Susan Hayward; also
stars like Victor Mature, Anne Baxter, and Richard Wind Mark.
Not forgetting Marilyn Monroe in her Cinema Scope Box Office hit
movie - ‘How to Marry a Millionaire’, which was also shown on
prime time TV, as a romantic comedy film of 1953.

WARREN BROTHERS:
During 1950 the studio was mainly a family managed company with
three brothers Harry, Albert, and Jack Warren.
To meet the challenges of that period, Warren Bros. released most of
its actors like James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Oliver de Havilland, -
Along with few others from their long-term contractual commitments;
Retaining only Errol Flynn, and Ronald Regan who went on to become
the future President.
Like 20th Century Fox, Warren Bros switched to musicals, comedies,
and adventure movies, with Doris Day as its biggest musical star.
The studio also entered into short term agreements with Gary Copper,
John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Patricia Neal, and Random Scott.
Warren Bros also became the first major studio to invest in 3-D
production of films, scoring a big hit with its 3-D  suspense thriller
‘House of Wax’ in 1953.

MINOR STUDIOS were mainly three, - United Artists, Columbia, and
The Universal.
They did not own any theatre chain, and specialized in low-budgeted
‘B’ Movies those days.
Now to cut a long story short it must be said, that Hollywood finally
did participate in the evolution of Television industry, which led to
their integration eventually.
Though strategies involving hardware development and ownership of
broadcast outlets remained unsuccessful unfortunately.
However, Hollywood did succeed through program supply like prime-
time series, and made-for-TV films for the growing TV market making
things more colorful!
Thus it could be said that the TV industry provided the film industry
with new opportunities,  laying the groundwork for its diversification
and concentration;
That characterized the entertainment industry during the latter half  
of our previous century.
I must now confess that I have not visited the movie theatre over the last
two decades!
I watch movies on my big screen TV and my Computer screen these days.
Old classical movies are all available on ‘You Tube’ for me, and I can watch
them any time whenever I am free!
Thanks for reading patiently, - Raj Nandy.
**ALL COPYRIGHTS ARE WITH THE AUTHOR RAJ NANDY OF NEW DELHI
Styles 12 Aug 2018


secrets at dusk
tasted vigorous as
Coltrane blues

in a smokey nightclub
under mysterious saxophone seas

this style is not my own
but it helps me swim better

I decided to adopt it
curious why it tugs ruthless
on spit fire sleeves

deliciously drowning me free.




forest moons at night

help you drop it all
bags of unwanted programs
flung from broken chimneys

violet threads pass perfect
through kitchen chipped glass

moth wings burning summer up
like her eyelash fluttering innocently on some other guy's cheek

shattering divisions snag
on moonlight betrayal dance

enormous sea hooks chop in
helpless lips seduced
mad quicksilver rush

reserve this room for my only friend

we have private letters to write
on a future night when
god dreams come true.

This is for you.





My only friend.


What weighs heavy is certain light
how it pierces
through troubled waters.

A million traces of faces
lit up in every beam.

One night I felt it bleed through me
using rivers of sun-fire screams.

Volcanic poetry spoke without a sound.

Jim Morrison breaking through doors
under spells of hypnotic waves
wild vibrant shimmering
on multi-colored sheets.

This style is not my own
but it helped me lava streak
across bitter shores.




Now,

my voice strays away.

Gone hunting

a broken well voice
picked up by an old cracked bucket
leaking simple worded wishes

deciding to voluntarily borrow her
stolen forest eyes.

I heard them speak translucent leaf
on a summer day
when clairvoyant kids
heard God speak

on pathways of brilliant blue lake

when sunshine
whispered us
in scintillating ripples

right before our astounded,
washed feet.




I am dripping funeral summer sweat
under tombstone studded trees

smiling while choking in
liquid clouded dark.

Alone but not alone.

Mighty Ghosts of heaven
holding my head up

making sure the Nile
doesn't gush out while
I still cannot even write or speak

turn my notebooks into confetti
nothing describes this mysterious sea

a new species of saxophone waves
has belted its killer wonderland
sound out across an entire broken stage.


*

I can picture us
walking barefoot
on star contacted sand

gazing out
under champion chandelier wonders

walking on Texas Lightning storm colors
bellies full on Rumi soul food

our secret flames
burning up
plastic playgrounds

violating propriety
on some nuclear guarded beach

schools of fish cut
by saxophone hooked seas

blasted by vaults of unwrapped poems
someone else wrote perfect
in our dreams

we hope one day
the unpredictable silence
of simple worded wishes

will help us

extravagantly bloom
new spring leaves
rain stamped on tender delicious works

after winter is done
savagely wishing us dead
we are touched by other worlds.
https://youtu.be/6xcwt9mSbYE

For Drew
Hinata Jan 2015
There's music in my soul,
Only you can make it whole.
Your saxophone calloused fingers,
Tap me inside and out until I sing.
Oh baby, I can feel the notes threatening to pierce me,
Never have I felt so free.
Place your lips upon me like your saxophone,
I can feel it in my soul.
You love is so sweet,
I can feel you play me into a melody.
Hold me like your saxophone,
Hold me that close.
Even when we're fighting,
We make perfect harmony.
Move your fingers on me,
Play me.
Move me to your music, my love,
Take me to all the notes below and above.
You have my love, saxophone player,
You're the only one that can take me there.
Use your music on my soul,
And play me like your saxophone.
Thinking about making this a saga for different instruments, thoughts?
Terry Collett Apr 2014
Evening. It is the close of day. You draw the curtains across the windows of the apartment. The red curtains you bought recently, the colour having attracted you in the shop. You stand and gaze at them; with the finger and thumb of your right hand, you feel the quality of the fabric. Leonard had not liked them when he came, said they were gaudy, made the place look like brothel. He should know, you muse, bringing the fabric to your face, rubbing it against your cheek. Leonard had this terrible habit of thinking his opinion mattered more than yours, more than any others did. As if God, if he existed, had granted him a deeper insight into things than you or anyone else. You imagine him now, that thin moustache, those pale white cheeks, that nose, and those peering eyes. People were surprised when you began going out with him; surprised that you would go out with his sort. Whatever would your parents say, people said. You did not intend to marry him, at least not yet. Maybe one day if no one else turned up, if no other man came along who was willing to take you on. You release the curtains, go to the drinks cabinet and pour yourself a scotch. You sip it, let the scotch flow slowly down your throat, feel the sensation as it reaches your stomach. A warm inner glow begins as you walk to the gramophone, put on a jazz record. You close your eyes for a moment, sip at your scotch, hear the saxophone begin a solo. Leonard hates jazz, says it for the uneducated. Snob, you think, opening your eyes, walking to the sofa where you sit and gaze around the room. He is a snob, you know, but he has other qualities, qualities that outweigh his defects. His ****** prowess for one thing, his ability to spend money on you while out somewhere are both good qualities you feel. You sigh. Sometimes you wish he wasn’t so good in bed, then you wouldn’t miss him on evenings like this, when you know he won’t be coming around. Friday evenings he has chess night. Chess of all things. Moving pieces across a board, when he could be moving you across the bed, you muse. You sip the scotch again. Let the rim of the glass rest on you lower lip. You drain the remaining scotch; get up to pour another. Evening. Night. Morning, they follow so predictably. But evenings are your favourite part of the day. You hate mornings, they are too sudden, too fresh, too expectant. Like selfish children. Waiting there with all their expectations. Nights tended to be dragged out. The time when you couldn’t sleep and would lay twisting and turning, thinking about everything under the proverbial sun. Unless Leonard stays the night, but he seldom does. Goes before that. Has his fill and off he goes leaving you to your night and sleeplessness. Evening is the best part, you muse, listening by the drinks cabinet, as a trumpet goes wild in solo. You feel like dancing wildly, feel like you want to spin and twirl, and throw out your arms and toss back your head as those dancers do you’ve seen. You put down the scotch on the arm of the sofa and kick off your shoes. You begin to dance to the music, let your body unwind, feel your body become alive to the pulse of the jazz, your arms out about you, the hands gesturing like some wild animal. If Leonard were here now he would shake his head and be tut-tuting. But you don’t care because he isn’t here. Just you and the boys in the jazz band on the record. You wish they were here in person. Over in the corner of the room playing their music, watching you dance like some crazy dame. Perhaps they’d expect you to perform, expect you do more than dance. You don’t care; you don’t give a fig. At least you’d have *** and not a boring evening sitting boozing and listening to jazz records. You stop dancing and look around the room. Evening. Just you and the record and scotch. What a combination. ***. You wish you could purchase *** in a bottle like scotch. A pint of *** please. Yes, the tall one with the biceps. You laugh weakly. You sit down on the sofa, sip the scotch. Drain it. Put down the glass on the arm of the sofa. You remember the evenings you became so frustrated with the lack of *** that you were tempted to go out and grab the nearest available man, but you didn’t; too dangerous, especially around where your apartment is. You sigh deeply. All this thinking about ***. You sip the scotch. The saxophone begins a slow solo. The sound makes you feel like *******, slowly, piece by piece, until you are down to the last item and then you would stand up naked and embrace yourself. The sound of the saxophone. The evening. The rising desire to be held, touched, kissed. Where are you Leonard, you louse? You mutter loudly over the saxophone. You begin to unbutton your blouse. Button by button, pretending it is someone else’s fingers doing it. You gaze at the fingers, lick them, imaging Leonard’s face as you lick. You remove the blouse; undo the bra. You stand and unzip the skirt, let it fall to the floor. You stand there in you underwear, letting your fingers take hold of the top and slowly as if other fingers than yours were removing them over your hips. You remove them and drop them on the sofa. Naked. Evening. No Leonard. The pianist begins his slow solo. You embrace yourself, kiss your arm, kiss it and kiss it. Imagine it is another you are kissing. You close your eyes. Evening. You walk to the light switch and turn off the lights. Darkness, you and jazz. You must make love to your self. Love in that way your parents would never understand. Evening. You. Jazz. Solo. Aloneness.
A LONELY WOMAN IS PORTRAYED IN THIS PROSE POEM. COMPOSED IN 2009.
Donall Dempsey Apr 2019
THE SAXOPHONE GOING CRAZY

the smoke appears
to fall up

to the ceiling and then
languidly down blue

it dances to
the shiny saxophone

as if it drunk in
jazz

the cigarette smoke
music made visible

here it is
a spiral staircase

the going up and going down
the one and the same

now here a dissolving double
helix

now again a sudden sketch
of how naked

we will come
to be

entwined with the music
with bodies of smoke

the making and un-making
of us

our laughter and words
floating up to the ceiling

frozen in the air
clinging there for all to see

our love written
in music and smoke

the saxophone going
crazy
mannley collins Feb 2017
The body that I am incarnated in was born in the middle of the very rainy summer of 1939.
My vehicle for life.
All seeing-all smelling --all tasting--all touching--all speaking--all hearing --all sensing --perambulating -singing-dancing-cooking--drinking --painting--******* etc etc vehicle.
Born a few months before the Second World War,with all its nonsensical religiously patriotic and democratically oligarchic and liberally fascistic evil nonsense, started.
Makes me a Rider of the Storm eh?.
Eat yer heart out Jim Morrison!.
Slid out of my mothers womb in the upper room of a brand new house.
Situated on a new street somewhere on a new development on the edge of a 3000 years old walled city in 'gods' own country'--that's what they called it.
Yorkshire!.
First smell I remember,clearly,was rain soaked Lilac and Earth mixed together.
Their scent coming hrough the open bedroom window.
AAAAH rain soaked Lilac.
Second smell was Tobacco from downstairs where my father was anxiously chain smoking.
Then came my first taste.
He,my father,dipped the tip of his little finger into his glass of celebratory Whiskey and poked it into my mouth as I lay there,wrapped in swaddling clothes.
Irresponsibility!!.
Second taste was her warm rich creamy breast milk.
And so my days and nights started.
They told me the name that I was to answer to--as if it was the whole of me.
They told me my beliefs and attitudes and desires and limitations and skills etc etc.
They told me that what I have come to know was my conditioned identity was the real me---but it isn't!..
The lied to me --in innocent ignorance.
My sister taught me to read and write by the time I was 3 years old.
I grew up knowing,deep down, that I was something else.
Not the 'Something Else' that Ornette Coleman played,on his magnificent disc,either.
War raged elsewhere throughout my childhood--mainly across the seas far away.
I watched flight after flight of four engine bombers roar overhead every day ,on their way to drop bombs on children I would never meet.
There was a busy air base 2 miles away from the house I was born in.
Once an injured bomber,coming back from a raid,crashed in flames on two houses at the top of the street I lived in.
I found war to be a hellish and frightening experience.
And along the way I discovered that I couldnt explain to 'myself' who I was, exactly,either.
That my parenters gift of identity was misleading.
I asked 'myself' who or rather what was I?.
By the time I was 3 years I was a ******* from 'Osteomylitis'--or so they told me.
I couldn't walk with massive  left hip joint pain I suffered.
I spent the years from 3 to 6 in a traction bed in a couple of hospitals.
Gobbling down Cod liver oil and Malt for the vitamins--and it worked!!!.
At 6 I learned to walk--YES!!!.
All that pain was left behind.
Thank you Gautama.
My life was suffering but as you supposedly said.
Suffering can be overcome.
And I overcame it.
And I ran and jumped across streams and climbed trees and walked for miles and miles and danced the dance of life.
I foraged for blackberries and wild mushrooms and crabapples and horseradish roots and rosehips and other fruits of nature.
I fell in love with the song of the Yellowbeak--Blackbird to you.
Became enraptured by the smell of wild Roses in the hedgerows.
And I sang and sang and sang and danced and danced and danced.
And all the while I just knew that I wasn't the body that I was incarnated in.
Even though my parenters kept on insisting that I was that body.
And I knew that I wasn't who they had told me I was either.
I knew that I wasn't the conditioned identity of the body that they insisted I was..
At 9 years I passed an exam and won a free scholarship place at a fee paying 'public' school.
My education started in earnest.
Lain and French andAlgebra and Geometry and  expectations of University.
I fell in love for my very first time at around 12 years old.
Raymond was his name.
He taught me how bisexual I was.
I swallowed litres of his body fluids.
Oh how I loved him.
Then after 2 ecstatic years he rejected me because I was a different class to him.
AAAAARGH!.
Then around 14 years the monthly seizures started.
A regular dark descent into unconsciousness.
I experienced the small death of Julius Ceasar and Leonardo Da Vinci.
Back to waking consciousness after an hours out of the body trip into the Astral realms.
Waking with total total amnesia.
With no mind or conditioned identity but both came back within one hour of waking and took over again.
Along with a helluva headache.
But I woke as me--who or whatever that was.
I wasn't who they said I was.
I was me!.
Whatever that was.
Where did I come from?
My purpose in life became to find out what I was and what the source of my existence was.
Teenage life as a rock n roller started beckoned and I embraced party life.
I won cups of silver for dancing very energetically to Bill Haley and Chuck Berry.
I discovered the other half of my bisexuality.
I found girls.
Oh girls how I love you.
and love you and love you.
I started to play trombone at 18 years.
Then trumpet and drums then into my life walked MISS SAXOPHONE and I melted!!!!.
Alto alto wobbly lines of sound poured out from the bell of my alto sax.
I was 23 and toying with buddhism and social alcoholism and playing saxophone jazz(probably badly).
26 and I got married for the first time.
I was playing Free Jazz rather amateurishly by now.
In 1967 I moved to London--became a longhaired hippy--started my own band called BrainBloodVolume--took many doses(literally 1000s) of pure LSD and Mescaline and Psyllocybin and DMT--embraced diet reform--became ordained as a buddhist monk in 1966--played with Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon and the pink Floyd--went to live in the Balearic Islands--Mallorca,Ibiza,Formentera--started to do oil paintings--had a Master Class in Concert Flute playing from Roland Kirk in the dressing room at Ronnie Scotts Jazz Club in London.Became addicted to Macrobiotic Food and Spring Water and puffing Waccy Baccy(always through a Water Pipe..



Its been seventy seven years in this incarnation that I have been wandering the face of this big ball in space seeking the answer to the eternal questions of life.

What am I and where do I come from and what is my purpose?.

And here  is the answer--!!.

I am an individual isness formed solely from a small but equal independent and autonomous portion of the isness of the universe.

Each individual isness is an eternal, small but equal, independent, autonomous,nameless, formless,genderless,classless,casteless,non physical and unconditionally  loving portion of the isness of the universe.

The isness of the universe is the whole of the nature of reality and is the sole source of all existence and is eternal,nameless,formless, genderless,beingless and autonomous and unconditionally loving and is not a 'god' or a 'goddess' or any kind of being.

I live in the joyousness of shared unconditionally loving union with the isness of the universe.
Donall Dempsey Apr 2018
THE SAXOPHONE GOING CRAZY

the smoke appears
to fall up

to the ceiling and then
languidly down blue

it dances to
the shiny saxophone

as if it drunk in
jazz

the cigarette smoke
music made visible

here it is
a spiral staircase

the going up and going down
the one and the same

now here a dissolving double
helix

now again a sudden sketch
of how naked

we will come
to be

entwined with the music
with bodies of smoke

the making and un-making
of us

our laughter and words
floating up to the ceiling

frozen in the air
clinging there for all to see

our love written
in music and smoke

the saxophone going
crazy
Marieta Maglas Mar 2013
It's summertime. The saxophone  jazz
sounds are pirouettetting the waves
to find their own balance. It's a mauve

inner dance in almost everything around.
More exactly, the melodious movable
sounds become soundable movement

needing a reverberation time to dissipate  
the energy. The movement releases its  own
purity to become simple fecundity. The pulsed

sound waves are also old memories  lost in the
natural green. The saxophone  looks  much
more like a Tahitian prince dancing his love

on the sand. The singing mauve sea waves
have a sadness taste at sunset. The last one
is a watery mermaid and he embraces her

while searching the high. The sounds need
touch and life. They need to dematerialize
and to disappear into the universe. The

saxophone  remains a solitaire keeping
safe his evanescent  hermetic equilibrium.
Amber Rush Nov 2015
First I would like to thank everyone for being here today to pay his or her respects to my grandfather Robert Sohm. He would be pleased to see so many of his friends and family here today. Whether you knew him as a husband, father, grandfather, or friend, you probably had the same level of appreciation for him that I did.I would sincerely like to thank all of you on behalf of our family.  While we know that Grandpa is deeply deserving of the love you’ve shown, the outpouring of support we’ve received in recent months, weeks, and days has been truly overwhelming

He  lived a full life and had four amazing children and Seven grandchildren one being myself

His wife Pat is a great women. My Grandpa and Grandma were the ideal team.  I’ve often thought of them as the original power couple.  They were inseparable, and took care of each other for 50 years.
She is a huge part of our family and I hope she knows that we will always be here for her. Sometimes I’d wonder how either of them would ever manage should one go before the other, but over the past few days I’ve come to realize and appreciate that many of you will help take care of my Grandma through the tough times to come.  I know she is in good hands.
I know I'm not alone when I say we are always here for you and we love you
and respect you so much. If you ever need anything please do not forget that.

My Grandpa might not be a super hero, but he's my hero.
He's a soldier who had to conquer many battles in his life.
He's a fighter and someone who loved with all of his heart.
He's the "claw", and a best bud
Someone who may not function like everybody else but is able to bluntly tell it like it is and go the extra long mile to get stuff done one handedly
I wanted him to be the one who walked me down the aisle on my big day.
God has made other arrangements for him.
It's hard loosing someone who's your fatherly figure,

He was a caring person but he knew how to stand up for what he believed in and I think everyone here has a good memory of grandpa that they could share. I think we have all had a piece of us taken away but we can rest easy knowing he is in a much better place. My grandpa was a great man. When I think about him the words that come to mind are: my best bud , the claw, caring, humorous,  storyteller, and family man. These are just a few words that come to mind, but it is impossible to summarize how great a person he was in words.

He was a shoulder to lean on, a friend to rely on, and a rock for our whole family. I think about family values and how they aren’t the most important thing to people anymore. My family has always been close and always stuck together. My grandpa's pride and joy was his family.

My earliest memories of time spent with my grandfather are living at and visiting his house when me and my sister were kids. We would hide in the back room and wait for him then sneak out when we thought the coast was clear and he would come chase us pretending to be the claw.

He might have been stern with us, but Grandpa loved us kids. Family brought joy to his life — and he brought joy to us, in his own, sometimes grumpy, way.

We say that he has gone to a better place — but Grandpa will never truly be gone. He is always with each of us who loved him. It is not for us to think of him as if he was lost from our lives, but rather that we continue forth with him as our companion, celebrating and honoring his life. So I’ll think of him with every class that I take because I knew how much he wanted to see me graduate. Remember how he use to always say how someone wasn't so bright, always making sure I have a jacket when it's cold  yet be the one outside on the deck tanning when it's hot and him betting for football games. I'll always remember how much he loved going to Vegas and seeing his favorite saxophone player Carl. I will Be comforted in the memory of his smile… He’ll be in the small things and the quiet moments, forever by my side. I will miss my Grandpa, and will always be grateful for the time and warm memories I have of him.


We little knew that day,
God was going to call your name.
In life we loved you dearly,
In death, we do the same.

It broke our hearts to lose you.
You did not go alone.
For part of us went with you,
The day God called you home.

You left us beautiful memories,
Your love is still our guide.
And although we cannot see you,
You are always at our side.

Our family chain is broken,
And nothing seems the same,
But as God calls us one by one,
The chain will link again.

Where you were once my sunshine you are now my stars
Martyn Thompson Aug 2011
Hear the bass, grace notes race all over the place
Cymbals paced, hi-hats chase, weaving between the bass
The piano - chords struck with wide spanned hands
Poly-rhythmic, multi-layered sounds in strands

The timbre of reed vibrating against warm metal
Precision; a sixth, a ninth and an eleventh interval
A major, a minor scale; a frantic modal sweat
A small sound for mankind; but a truly giant step

Each note slices through the eclectic beat-drop
Singing and whispering this post-modern be-bop
Multi-phonics scream, like controlled feedback
The seductive saxophone – this weapon of attack

The boundary is stretched, new ground broken
The holy saxophone has never thus spoken
And I pay homage, all my deepest respects
Go to the man who made those giant steps
Jeff Gaines Feb 2019
And now, their desperation and panic sink to an all-new low. They actually begin an attack on my sexuality, my familial relations and even my ability to have an ****** ...

  An ******?

  When you stop laughing, take into consideration that they are also regressing throughout all of this because this dysfunction that they suffer from is deeply rooted in their youth. Thus all the silly name calling and accusations that they could not possibly be able to know or prove and yet they state them as fact, like a child. I.E: A child calling out: "Your mama is a *****". Now those words come flying out from a frightened child when they really have no idea whatsoever about this target's mother. It is just an attempt to hurt. Nothing more.

But in this next bit, you can really see this desperation and panicked choice of subjects to try and use "against me", as-it-were. They don't know what else to do. Their ego is on autopilot, telling their fingers what to type ... and their ego is regressing back to childhood. Thus the childish subject matter.


(Name Deleted) Jeff the TROLL..
Has never and will never reach ****** ****** with either female or male partners.

Has never had a stable and fulfilling love life.
Will NOT and can NOT never ever love anyone UNCONDITIONALLY.
Has never been loved UNCONDITIONALLY by anyone male or female.
Has always been consumed unto bitter and fierce hatred of anyone who has!!.
A deep and bitter jealousy leading to violent hatred consume this TROLL.
Get back under your bridge Jeff.
Any replies from you in future will be deleted unread-even your long overdue apology.
AUM

 0 
 1 reply 
15h

Jeff Gaines  SOOOO MUCH FUN!

Ok, (Name Deleted) ... THAT was your most humorous YET!

Your actions are truly textbook of a person with your deep psychological issues. So ... if you will not read any more of my responses to YOUR trolling, then I needn't worry about you then sending a new volley to this one ... Hum? Good, I'm glad. This is truly getting boring. It's not too challenging to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person ... and a predictable one as well.

Sadly, we both know that your silly, over-inflated ego will NEVER allow you to NOT read something written about you. And you not responding would be a cover for your pathetic attempt to have the last word. (Again, we both know THAT won't happen)

Funnier still, you call me a troll, then go to one of my pieces and begin yet another troll campaign on the same day that you claim to not read any more of my responses.

So, you are trying to say ... "I will continue to troll/bully you, but I will read none of your responses, so I win". (hands on your hips, stomping your tiny foot on the floor, no doubt)

You say you are married? I pity this person ... your behavior is that of a post-pubescent, angry little boy with serious ego and self-esteem issues. Her life must be a living hell, as I would bet money that you are an overbearing control freak with an intense king-baby syndrome to boot. Of course, I could be completely wrong and it is SHE who wears the pants in your household and THAT is why you must come here to find some sense of "control" in your world. But that is all conjecture that I do not wish to even BEGIN to address.

Your need to appear like some type of "guru" or all-knowing person who is better than everyone else is deeply seated, so I think it started very early in your life.

As I've said ... 'TEXTBOOK".

So textbook in fact, that I have decided to make this entire exchange into a piece about trolls/bullies and bullying. But don't worry about that ... I will leave it up long enough for you to read it, leave one of your hysterical troll responses to further prove my observations ... and I will have had the last word.

Then, predictably, you will write something about me on your page, then block me so that I can't respond (thus making your poor, decimated ego feel like it had the last word), which will not only further prove my observations about you, but it will lead folks over to my page to read my piece about you.

It'll be fun!

Now, on to your latest huffing and puffing:

"troll"

Once again, you accuse me of something that YOU are guilty of.

Once again, you are crying about me doing something that YOU did first. (I can't stop laughing about this. Just like a bully to cry and whine when he himself is punched in the nose and doesn't receive the response that he is seeking when HE does the punching!)

*** - Kettle/Gander - Goose, little man.

I am only guilty of responding to your trolling ... which is my right. Because, as is well established, you began this little soiree when you called me an "Unreconstructed alcoholic with no personal sense of shame" in a comment about a piece I had written about a friend that had recently died! Sadly pathetic, indeed.

Then, as I've stood up to you, you have spiraled down, like a burning airplane, in your pathetic child-like name calling and such to the point where you did schoolyard (at best) name-calling ("Electronic ****"? I LOVED THAT ONE!) and attacked my race, my religion and political stances (I picture you, a terrified little schoolboy, trembling in a schoolyard, shouting these things as you wee your pants in fear).

Then. you actually threaten me with physical violence (punching me in the nose). Now ... when NONE of that ridiculous posturing and panic-stricken chest-beating has worked, you take a jab at my sexuality and interpersonal relationships?

You are the one with "No personal sense of shame" here. You are publicly getting more and more pathetic and your ego won't even let you see that! Your imaginary pedestal is way too high, (Name Deleted). The fall from there is really going to hurt you.

Attacking my sexuality, love life and relationships?

Really?

There are few straws left for you to grasp at, huh?

Again, having never met me, something you couldn't POSSIBLY make accurate conjectures about. ANYONE reading this would laugh, knowing where this is truly coming from.

My FAVORITE was the bit about me never achieving an ******! It took me SEVERAL minutes to stop laughing about that one.

How old are you (Name Deleted)? 12 ... 13, maybe?

No matter your actual birth age, these silly claims and insinuations are definitely NOT those of a grown-aged man. They are straight out of the playbook of an early teen. To make such an unfounded accusation is nearly disturbing on SO many levels.

Wow ... just ... "WOW".

You spew them from your imaginary ivory tower, the one that makes you believe that you are above everyone else, so they MUST be facts, right?

And in true (Name Deleted) form, you state them like facts to the public.

A public that can readily see that it is all coming from a wee little man, standing on an imaginary pedestal trying to convince the world that he is a "somebody". You should have taken my earlier advice and just closed your mouth. But it is all too late.

Deep nasal breaths (Name Deleted) ... DEEP nasal breaths.

I've no need to respond to this silly notion with tales of my ****** bravado or adventures, nor my past love life. That is none of your business and a true gentleman NEVER kisses and tells.

Besides, THAT is the action of schoolboys and men who are lacking in the "endowment" department ... as is attacking OTHER men about these issues.

I won't bring my family into this either. (Taking shots at my familial relationships (Name Deleted)? Hmmm, I wonder if this a Freudian confession of your own family issues. But I won't go there. It's a can of worms best left on the shelf, I should think. It does pose some possible explanations for your behavior and persona though, doesn't it?)

So ... I hope you stick to your word and "not read/delete" this so that I needn't respond again. But, (long sigh) I highly doubt that you will. Your life AND your behavior are CONTROLLED by your fully delusional ego.

Watch for my upcoming piece, which will feature this exchange for ALL of the world to see. It will be cut and pasted verbatim, and I will even add a few additional notes.

I'm going to use it to help educate others on how to recognize and handle egotistical, cowardly, wanna-be bullies such as yourself.

Please, allow me to at least thank you for writing all these responses and demonstrating in such a textbook fashion, how your type acts and reacts and even letting us see inside of you a bit, thus letting us see what makes you tick.

And most importantly ... THANKS for the laughs.



This last one is where we can see the bottom of their barrel. As predicted, they can NOT “not read/erase” something that is written about them. Their ego would NEVER allow this. They MUST read and respond because THEY must have the last word. So, we are back to schoolyard names like “**** wipe”, attacking my sexuality and chest beating by attempting to assert that I have somehow “FAILED”. (You see? They HAVE to win, so it is easier to just let them think that they did.) After this, they can only lash out with slurs against my Mother and such. I think I've made my point here.

And now you, dear Reader, will have seen nearly the complete downward spiral of a bully/hater/troll when you stand up to them. I thank them for their 'help” in making this new piece and then show that I am the better man and offer to let them have the last word. I've no idea what that will be, but if you would like to see it, just go to the piece titled “Message To A Friend” (Link in notes below), it will be there soon enough. Their desperation to be dominant is so readily apparent here, it is sad. As I said, they can't help it. Their ego is on autopilot because these issues are so deeply ingrained in their self.



(Name Deleted) To Jeff the TROLLISH LOSER.
WOW so many words just to prove you are a piece of white liberal **** wipe.
You must really hate life with your filthy mouth spewing out
non stop TROLL NONSENSE--as if its a Fight or a Battle to be fought with any stranger just to prove you are a MAN!!!.
WELL JEFF YOUVE FAILED.
YOU are not a MAN but you do have a Male Body.
Never will be a Man.
Always a sexless TROLL.
.
 0 
 1 reply 
13h

Jeff Gaines Well, (Name Deleted), I want to sincerely thank you for all of this. You don't realize it now, but you have helped me to compose something that will, in turn, help other people. It is very admirable. I/we have taken something awful and made it into something positive.

Balance in the universe doesn't get any better than that. Besides, from here, there's not much left but you making verbal attacks on my Mother and such. Even I won't let you reduce yourself to that.

I wish you well. I hope all of your dreams and wishes come true, and moreover, I hope you get the help you need to finally find peace. A peace that will let you stop trying to belittle others with your condescension and bullying demeanor. I truly hope that you can release the tortures that keep you with this agonizing persona. It must be horrible for you.

And again, THANK YOU!

Leave any message you wish after this so that you can sleep well, knowing that you had the last word. I know how important that is to you and your ego, so have it ... as a gift from me to you in appreciation for all of your help here. I promise ... I won't respond. It's all you, Dude. My job is done here.



This one, sent to me on a completely different page/post, involves the “truce”. They did this on the comment section of another piece called “I'm Sorry If You Miss Me” (Link in notes below). They couldn't do this where we had been in our volley, that might appear as a weakness to someone who'd been watching it all.

They offer an olive branch (for all that's worth), but with it, they also offer to take me to enlightenment and save me somehow. None of this is sincere in ANY way. It is once again, them, trying to condescend to me that I am in need of THEIR help. That I am less, and they are more. Just as I described in the beginning of Part I.

(Also note that upon realizing that this has all been an analyzation of them and their behavior, they attempt to spin it around that it is THEM analyzing ME. Once again, textbook predictability)

If for some silly reason, I took this “truce”, they would feel that they have dominated me and nothing would change. As you read it, you will see just what I mean, especially in the way they go on and on about how accomplished they are at 'helping” others and how they can lead me to some new and better existence, as I am such a “sick human being”. The megalomaniac is really showing through here:



(Name Deleted) Dearest TROLL,
TRUCE?

Though you so obviously write vicious TROLL Gibberish you so obviously cant spell the word gibberish correctly.Not very Self referential eh?.
Diminishes your projected self mage of being a 'nice guy' somewhat eh?.
I have analysed your crippling problem and can offer you the only way out of it.
The presence of an individual Mind superimposed in strategic command over all your brain centres in the last hour before birth has led to you being NON Self Realised(which is your problem basically).
You don't know your Cosmic Identity--and the Mind in your head has led you to believe that you are not the Individual Isness but are the Mind created operating device the Conditioned Identity.
This replaces the ID and takes control over the Glucose and Oxygen supply to all Brain centres from the Individual Isness.
Send me a Poste Restante address and I will send you(for FREE)a copy of my only CD--on which I play Alto Saxophone and Alto Clarinet andAmplified C Silver Concert Flute and my wife who is my life companion plays Electric Bass.
We use the name Maneesha which is Sanskrit for Beyond Enlightenment.
The CD which is called 'Rolling Home' is as recorded--every track in one take-no electronic messing around!.
It was recorded under strict Tibetan Tantric rules of performance--I was a Flute playing Pujari in a Temple on the Burning Ghat in Varanasi where I played for Hindu Cremations for 6 years in the 1970s.
The intention is that the listener--you--will become Mindless .According to the sacred texts of the Vedas one must become Mindless as that is the only openly accepted way to reach the final end of Yoga Meditation.
Temporary union with the Isness of the Unverse.
Yes I know you will go off into paroxysms of laughter at my very absurdwritings but I must offer as you are a very sick human being--and your TROLLISH sickness will only get much worser as you age.
I have offered.
You will ridicule me.
Your choice.



And there you have it, dear Reader. A (disturbing) look, into a very disturbed mind. I am not, nor would I ever condone or recommend doing what I have done here. I did this for you. I had the idea while reading one of their demeaning comments on someone's daily. So, when they came to my daily … I put my hook in the water. The best thing you can do is give no reaction. Soon enough, they will go off in search of the attention they so desperately need and leave you in peace. As I have shown you here, engaging them brings a never-ending string of buckets … buckets FILLED with waste-of-time.

All you need to do is keep in mind this one simple thing when they write horrible things in your comment sections, or you encounter one in your life …

Something you are doing, or have done, is SO amazingly awesome, that it brought out ALL that darkness in them!

Just ignore them and they will go find someone else to pick on. Give them an “LOL” and ignore all that follows, or just delete their comment and block them. Your time is limited and so very precious. Don't give one second of it to these types of people. It simply isn't worth it.

Besides … You have MORE amazing things to accomplish!

                   Big Love,
                           ~Jeff
Raj Arumugam Jan 2014
Anne and I were walking
down in the country
when we saw a lake
and a frog at its edge
“Ladies,” it croaked
“Will one of you give me a kiss? –
I was a fantastic saxophone player
and a country witch turned me
into a green frog”


I knelt down and picked up the frog
and threw him in my pocket
and buttoned up
so the creature couldn’t escape
and I resumed walking

“Sue,” said Anne to me
“Are you nuts?
The frog said it’ll turn
into a fantastic saxophone player -
so why don’t you or I  kiss it?”


“Anne,” I replied,
*“it’s you who's nuts
We’d make more money
with a talking frog anytime
than with a  saxophone dummy”
based on an online joke
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2015
poet, or philosopher, it doesn't really matter which is which, or whether the two are indistinguishable, notable in the former scenario, when someone has an eclectic bounty of interest is simply not love-scorned or love-nostalgic, love-idealistic, does it really matter? i was once called a philosopher: a teenage girl said in third person (as if she was a puppet and some-thing was moving her tongue): 'talk to this philosopher'... not in that sarcastic way that philosopher is an misnomer or an abused term of: self-gratifying grandeour, it was quiet genuine, but: imagine my shock... i had an ambition in life, it was to perform a service to thinking: without doing as much as hammering a nail into a plank of wood, that's the ambition of any thinking man: to borderline on telekinesis or telepathy... that was Hegel's modus operandi, his categorical imperative... after all: ego is a metaphysical tool, while thought is its metaphysical canvas... the mere suggestion that a copernican inversion can happen in physics "contra" metaphysics... it's already apparent, any word can behave like a hand touching the sacred object / subject of transfiguration and become something else, even a misnomer can find itself given solace to the user... for now i've forged a belief in the ultimate: away from the absolute in relation to omni in unum - one first has to learn to think, before having to learn to feel... mind you, i don't like the current nietzschean inversion of the cartesian equation: (ego) sum ergo (ego) cogito... esp. among the youtube political commentators, too many examples to give: i'm a classical liberal, i'm a progressive, i'm a liberterian... i don't really like seeing: i am, precede i think... i don't even like the origin-argument of this inversion: i exist for the sole purpose of thinking... after all: i think prior to being, since i can also daydream and not be what my thinking suspects as a possible truth-outcome... that's the nature of the freedom of thought: i don't have to be what i think, i can find thinking to be a pleasure, when the senses do not offer me any pleasure derivative, e.g. eating can sometimes be boring, chewing, chewing, *******... i eat because i need to live: i don't live to eat... i really have under-appreciated Hegel, i should really visit my grandparents for two months and read the phenomenology of the spirit: i'm trying to replicate the saying attributed to him (verbatim), but i doubt that i will, i don't have the patience to sift through all the quotes, but it goes along the lines of: beware oh wordly man, to not be a pawn in a thinking man's game... hence my suggestion of philosophy entering into the realms of telekinesis and telepathy: you get to see things play out and people express the origin story, of your own memetic generation of the original idea... how are poets finally alligned to philosophers? good thing that i studied chemistry at edinburgh university: we return to atoms, words are no longer enough, sure, they are, contrary to the statement...  (why did i under-appreciate Hegel? ah... had my head stuck up heidegger's and kant's *****...

  integration? great!
but i'll meet you halfway...
    i'll eat your fish & chips,
your englush breakfast,
  i won't sing your anthem: god save the queen,
****** anthem, too short,
but i will whistle through:
the british grenadiers' fife & drum...
like i might through la marseillaise...
i'll meet you halfway...
i'm not a former colony member,
commonwealth,
   i'm not some ****- paying bribes
to the british powers
to join in on a world cup of cricket...
this is what happens when immigration
turns sour...
they either lesrn the host tongue,
or they don't learn it...
or they can't distinguish the two:
speak polonaise at home,
speak the hosts' sprechen outside of it...

   if the ******* aren't suspect:
by not being bilingual...
the arab beatles... jihadi john...
          ringo star h'ahmed...
  george ali...
                paul mecca rashid...
oh i'll settle for integration...
but don't you ******* think i'll give
up my mother tongue
for "c.c.t.v." close-ups back home,
home being my private lodge...
like ******* will...
  i'll speak your tongue in public...
but i'm not ******* former commonwealth
****- riddled with a need to play
cricket, "forget" my tongue in order
to compensate for olives
              and sun-burnt bananas!

a former colony ****-**** is about
to dictate the rules for fellow
europeans, on the tram-ride from
Birmingham to Nottingham?
seriously?
        but of course the englishman
will favor the former colony pet bush-monkey
from sri lanka...
since the brit can't really dictate
to a fellow european his superiority
complex... which he can...
with a petted copper skinned
toy-ting...
who brought 'im a korma curry!
nice one, ol' laddy...
        right on the plonker...
                 i'm not finished!
                        i'm just getting started!

gehirnablassen:

perfectly respected immigration,
given that so many english girls just love
the attention their **** minders,
sexually abused,
not really making it as nurses
or... ahem... karaoke superstars
worth the while of britain's got talent
or voice of britain,
or...whatever the ****** show was
that gave birth to one direction...

so a.... brain-drain? good immigration?
the best!

i can sit awhile by myself and count...
1. the sparrows,
2. the swallow,
3. the starlings,
   4. the crows,
5. the magpies,
6. the pigeons,
7. the woodland pigeons
(fatter, with dog collars),
8. kestrels
  (one is enough to begin
the count)...
9. the blackbirds....
10. seagulls... seagulls?! 25 miles from
romford to southend! seagulls?!
this far in-land?! fair enough...
11. a robin...
                   12. goldfinch...
i just sit and watch these birds
in my garden, i sometimes spot
a darting frog in the garden,
i'm more english than the english...
i actually enjoy owning a garden...
the "english" surrounding me
exemplify a bbq. as a luxury parade...
what's so luxury about marinating
some meat, and then grilling it?!
please! enlightend me!

    gehirnablassen...
                   brain-drain immigration,
the type asiatic tiger-mums brag about
at child olympics...
   for the required rubric stature...
******* mothers, basically...

1. χaron χaos - cha-cha-cha       khaos
2. theaetetus - so / ma   letters / syllables:
     graphemes: sz phi theta
      compound syllables (caron s) - Na (sodium)
3. music choice...
       brain damage perturbator ft. noir deco
    virga iesse floruit, gradual of eleanor of
britanny...
4. pride / stubborness (not equal to) honour,
tolerating islam is not the same
as respceting islam...
   german 19th century fascination
with islam...
     θought and φilosophy...
   greek in warsaw, giving him directions,
talks: sounds so much like spanish...
5. england a nation of singletons,
idiosyncracy... social pressures in poland
and even in h'america missing in england
to marry...

1.

chamaleon tongue,                    shape shifter,
bez akcentu w piśmie - więciej akcentu poza pismem
(trainspotting scottish), welsh, cockney,
east london altogether, pakistani english, etc.
e.g. rather, or raver, i.e. not rayver
(someone who parties at night on ecstasy pill)
but ra'ver, like verging on a new discovery,
it's not even the = ~v but is actually v...
english is a chamaleon tongue, you say 'nostic
when you write gnostic, i say diagnostic,
therefore say gnostic, you say 'nome, i say gnome,
as cf. with diagnostic;
then there's the case of the per se:
you say chamaleon - no kappa there apperent, eh?
but there's chappie, chap, chuckles,
no kappa in a millionth chance
to also say nough'ledge for knowledge,
a bit like that gnome of yours...
as i said before: a language without
a written insertion of stressors / distinctions
will produce a massive array of diacritical
stressors / distinctions outside the written format,
but it will also become as complex as to
allow adults with learning difficulties e.g. dyslexia,
and that horrid internet slang of shortcuts:
i ate my 8 when i was late for my disco date
with the cha cha cha melon.

p.s. if there's a hay patch at the beginning, the nasal flute
will ask larry 'the lynx' saxophone to hark it out with rasp
gritting of phlegm... but if it's somewhere else down
the piccadilly line... it will act like a nudist spy and resonate
less than expected; probably mingling with f, i think.
Martin Narrod Feb 2015
Part I


the plateau. the truest of them all. coast line. night spells and even controlled by the dream of meeting again. the ribbon of darker than light in your crown. No region overlooked. Third picnic table to the drive at Half Moon Bay, meet me there, decant my speech there. the table by the restroom block. While the tide is in show me your oyster garden, 3:00p.m. at half-light here in the evilest torments that have been shed.---------------door locked.  The moors. Cow herds and lymph nodes, rancorous afternoon West light and bending roads, the cliffs, a sister, the need to jump. There is nothing as serious as this. There is nothing nor no one that could ever, or would ever on this side come between. Who needs sleep or jokes or snow or rivers or bombs or to turn or be a rat or a fly or ceiling fan or a gurney or a cadaver or piece of cloth or a bed spread or a couch or a game or the flint of a lighter or the bell of a dress; the bell of your dress, yes, perhaps. Having been crushed like orange cigarette light in a pool of Spanish tongues. I feel the heave, the pull; not a yawn but a wired, thread-like twist about my core. Up around the neck it makes the first cut, through the eyes out and into the nostrils down over the left arm, on the inside of the bicep, contorting my length, feigning sleep, and then cutting over my stomach, around and around multiples of times- pulled at the hips and under the groin, across each leg and in-between each nerve, capillary, artery, hair, dot, dimple, muscle, to the toes and in-between them. Wiry dream-like and nervous nightmarish, hellacious plateaus of leapers. Penguin heads and more penguin heads. Startling torment. The evilest of the vile mind. The dance of despair: if feet contorted and bound could move. The beach off Belmont. The hills and the reasons I stared. Caveat after caveat at the heads of letters, on the heads of crowns, and the wrists, and on the palms. Being pulled and signed, and moved away so greatly and so heavily at once in a moment, that even if it were a year or a set of many months it would always be a moment too taking away to be considered an expanse, and it would be too hellacious to be presumptuous. It could only be a shadow over my right shoulder as I write the letters over and again. One after another. Internally I ask if I would even grant a convo with Keats or Yeats or Plath or Hughes? Does mine come close? Does it matter the bellies reddish and cerise giving of pain? Does it have to have many names?


"This is the only Earth," I would say with the bouquet of lilies spread out on the table. Are lilies only for funerals, I would never make or risk or wish this metaphor, even play it like the drawn out notes of a melody unwritten and un-played: my black box and latched, corner of the room saxophone. Top-floor, end of the hall two-room never-ending story, I'm the left side of the bed Chicago and I see pink walls, bathrooms, the two masonite paintings, the Chanel books, the bookshelves, the white desk, the white dresser, you on the left side of the bed in such sentimental woe, **** carpet and tilted blinds, and still the moors and the whispering in the driver's seat in afternoon pasture. Sunset, sunrise, nighttime and bike room writing in other places, apartments, rooms where I inked out fingertips, blights, and moods; nothing ever being so bleak, so eerily woe-like or stoic. Nothing has ever made me so serious.

Put it on the rib, in a t-shirt. Make it a hand and guide it up a set of two skinny legs under a short-sheeted bed in small room and literary Belmont, address included. Trash cans set out morning and night, deck-readied cigarette smoking. Sliding glass door and kitchen fright. Low-lit living room white couch, kaleidoscope, and zoetrope. Spin me right round baby right round. I am my own revenge of toxic night. Attack the skin, the soul, the eyes, the mind, and the lids. The finger lids and their tips. Rot it out. Blearing wild and deafening blow after blow: left side of the bed the both of us, whilst stirs the intrepid hate and ousts each ******* tongue I can bellow and blow.

Last resort lake note in snow bank and my river speak and forest walk. Wrapped in blocks and boxes, Christmas packaging and giant over-sized red ribbons and bows. Shall I mention the bassinet, the stroller, the yard, several rings of gold and silver, several necklaces of black and thread? I draw dagger from box, jagged ended and paper-wrapped in white and amber: lit in candle light and black room shadow-kept and sleeping partisan unforgettable forever. Do I mention Hawaii, my mother dying, invisible ligatures and the unveiling of the sweat and horror? Villainous and frightening, the breath as a bleat or heart-beat and matchstick stirring slightly every friends' woe and tantrum of their spirit.

Lobster-legged, waiting, sifting through the sea shore at the sea line, the bright tyrannosaurs in mahogany, in maple, and in twine over throw rose meadow over-looks, honey-brimming and warehouse built terrariums in the underbelly of the ravine, twist and turn: road bending, hollowing, in and out and in and out, forever, the everlasting and too fastidious driving towards; and it's but what .2 miles? I sign my name but I'll never get out. I am mocked and musing at tortoise speed. Headless while improvising. Purring at any example of continue or extremity or coolness of mind, meddling, or temptation. I rock, bellowing. Talk, sending shivers up my spine. I'm cramped, and one thousand fore-words and after words that split like a million large chunks of spit, grime, and *****; **** and more ****. I might even be standing now. I could be a candle, in England, a kingdom, in Palo Alto, a rook in St. Petersburg. Mottled by giants or sleepless nights, I could be the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty, a heated marble flower or the figure dying to be carved out. I'm veering off highways, I'm belittling myself: this heathen of the unforgettable, the bog man and bow-tied vagrant of dross falsification and dross despair. I am at the sea shore, tide-righted and tongue-tide, bilingual, and multi-inhibited by sweat, spit, quaffs of sea salt, lake water, and the like. Rotten wergild ridden- stitched of a poor man's ringworm and his tattered top hat and knee-holed trousers. I'm at the sea shore, with the cucumbers dying, the rain coming in sideways, the drifts and the sandbars twisting and turning. I'm at the sea shore with the light house bruise-bending the sweet ships of victory out backwards into the backwaters of a mislead moonlight; guitars playing, beeps disappearing, pianos swept like black coffees on green walled night clubs, arenose and eroding, grainy and distraught, bleeding and well, just bleeding.






I'm at the sea shore, the coastline calling. I've got rocks in my pockets, ******* and two lines left in the letter. I’m at the sea shore, my mouth is a ghost. I've seen nothing but darkness. I'm at the seashore, second picnic table, bench facing the squat and gobble, the tin roof and riled weir near the roadside. .2 and I'm still here with my bouquet wading and waiting. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. My inches are growing shorter by the second, cold, whet by the sunset, its moon men, their heavy claws and bi-laws overthrowing and throwing me out. The thorns stick. The tyrannosaurs scream. I'm at the sea shore, plateau, left bedside to write three more letters. Sign my name and there's nobody here.

I'm at the sea shore: here are my lips, my palms (both of them facing up), here are my legs (twine and all), my torso, and my head shooting sideways. I'm at the seashore and this is my grave, this is my purposeful calotype, my hide and go seek, my show and tell, my forever. .2 and forever and never ending. I was just one dream away come and keep me. I'm at the sea shore come and see me and seam me. I'm without nothing, the sky has drifted, the sea is leaving, my seat is a matchbox and I'm all wound up. The snow settling, the ice box and its glory taken for granted. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. The room with its white sets of furniture, the lilies, the Chanel, the masonite paintings, the bed, your ribbon of darker on light, the throw rug **** carpet, pink walled sister's room, and the couch at the top of the stairs. I'm at the sea shore, my windows opened wide, my skin thrown with threat, rhinoceri, reddish bruises bent of cerise staled sunsets. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. I'm at the plateau and there isn't a single ship. There are the rocks below and I'm counting. My caveats all implored and my goodbyes written. I'm in my bed and the sleep never set in. I'm name dropping God and there's nobody there. I'm in a chair with my hands on a keyboard, listening to Danish throb-rock, horse-riding into candle light on a wicked wedding of wild words and teary-eyed gazes and gazers. Bent by the rocking and the torment, the wild and the weird, the horror and everything horrifying. There is this shadow looking over my shoulder. I'm all alone but I feel like you're here.



Part II




I wake up in Panama. The axe there. Sleeping on the floors in the guest bedroom, the floor of the garden shed, the choir closet, the rut of dirt at the end of the flower bed; just a towel, grayish-blue, alone, lawnmower at my side, and sky blue setting all around. I was a family man. No I just taste bits of dirt watching a quiet and contrary feeling of cool limestone wrap over and about my arms and my legs. Lungs battered by snapping tongues, and ancient conversations; I think it was the Malaysian Express. Mom quieted. Sister quieted. Father wept. And is still weeping. Never have I heard such horrifying and un-kindly words.-----------------------It's going to take giant steel cavernous explorations of the nose, brain cell after brain cell quartered, giant ******* quaffs of alcohol, harboring false lanterns and even worse chemicals. Inhalations and more inhalations. I'm going to need to leap, flight, drop into bodies of waters from air planes and swallow capsules of psychotropics, sedatives beyond recalcitrance. I'm requiring shock treatments and shock values. Periodic elements and galvanized steel drums. Malevolence and more malevolence. Forest walks, and why am I still in Panama. I don't want to talk, to sleep, to dream, to play stale-mating games of chess, checkers, Monopoly, or anything Risk involving. I can't sleep, eat, treaty or retreat. I'm wickeded by temptations of grandeur and threats of anomaly, widening only in proverb and swept only by opposing endeavors. Horrified, enveloped, pictured and persuaded by the evilest of haunts, spirits, and match head weeping women. I can't even open my mouth without hearing voices anymore. The colors are beginning to be enormous and I still can't swim. I couldn't drown with my ears open if I kept my nose dry and my mouth full of a plane ticket and first class beanstalk to elysian fields. It's pervasive and I'm purveyed. It's unquantifiable. It's the epitomizing and the epitome. I have my epaulets set for turbulent battles though I still can't fend off night. Speak and I might remember. Hear and it's second rite. Sea attacks, oceans roaring, lakes swallowing me whole. Grand bodies of waters and faces and arms appendages, crowns and more crowns and more crowns and more crowns and more crowns and I'm still shaking, and I'm still just a button. And I still can't sleep. And I'm still waiting.

It is night. The moon ripening, peeling back his face. Writhing. Seamed by the beauty of the nocturne, his ways made by sun, sky, and stars. Rolled and rampant. Moved across the plateau of the air, and its even and coolly majestic wanton shades of twilight. It heads off mountains, is swept as the plains of beauty, their faces in wild and feral growths. Bent and bolded, indelible and facing off Roman Empires too gladly well in inked and whet tips of bolder hands to soothe them forth.-----------Here in their grand and grandiose furnaces of the heart, whipped tails and tall fables fettered and tarnished in gold’s and lime. Here with their mothers' doting. Here with their Jimi Hendrix and poor poetry and stand-up downtrodden wergild and retardation. I don't give a ****. I could weep for the ***** if they even had hair half as fine as my own. I am real now. Limited by nothing. Served by no worship or warship. My flotilla serves tostadas at full-price. So now we have a game going.-----------------------------------------------------------­------------------------  My cowlick is not Sinatra's and it certainly doesn't beat women. As a matter of factotum and of writ and bylaw. I'm running down words more quickly than the stanza's of Longfellow. I'm moving subtexts like Eliot. I'm rampant and gaining speed. Methamphetamine and five star meats. Alfalfa and pea tendrils. Loves and the lovers I fall over and apart on. Heroes and my fortune over told and ever telling. Moving in arc light and keeping a warm glow.

the fish line caves. the shimmy and the shake. Bluegrass music and big wafting bell tones. snakes and the river, hands on the heads, through the hair; I look straight at the Pacific. I hate plastic flowers, those inanimate stems and machine-processed flesh tones. Waltzing the state divide. I am hooked on the intrepid doom of startling ego. I let it rake into my spine. It's hooves are heavy and singe and bind like manacles all over me. My first, my last, my favorite lover. I'm stalemating in the bathtub. Harnessing Crystal Lite and making rose gardens out of CD inserts and leaf covers. I'm fascinated by magic and gods. Guns and hunters. Thieving and mold, and laundry, and stereotypes, and great stereos, and boom-boxes, and the hi-fi nightlife of Chicago, roasting on a pith and meaty flame, built like a horror story five feet tall and laced with ruggedness and small needles. My skin is a chromium orchid and the grizzly subtext of a Nick Cave tune. I've allowed myself to be over-amplified, to mistake in falsetto and vice versa. To writhe on the heavy metallic reverberations of an altercated palpitation. The heart is the lonely hunted. First the waterproof matchsticks, then the water, the bowie knife, crass grasses and hard-necked pitch-hitters and phony friends; for doing lunch in the park on a frozen pond, I play like I invented blonde and really none of my **** even smells like gold.--------------------- There are the tales of false worship. I heard a street vendor sell a story about Ovid that was worse than local politics. As far as intermittent and esoteric histories go I'm the king of the present, second stage act in the shadow of the sideshow. Tonight I'm greeting the characters with Vaseline. For their love of music and their love of philosophy. For their twilight choirs and their skinny women who wear black antler masks and PVC and polyurethane body suits standing in inner-city gardens chanting. For their chanting. The pacific. For the fish line caves. For the buzzing and the kazoos. For the alfalfa and the three fathers of blue, red, and yellow. For the state of the nation. But still mostly working for the state of equality, more than a room for one’s own.-------------------------------------------------------------­------"Rice milk for all of you." " Kensington and whittled spirits."
(Doppelganger enters stage left)MAN: Prism state, flash of the golden arc. Beastly flowers and teeming woodlands. Heir to the throes and heir to the throng.----------------------------------------------------------­--------------- The sheep meadow press in the house of affection. The terns on my hem or the hide in my beak; all across the steel girder and whipping ******* the windows facing out. The mystery gaze that seers the diplopic eye. Still its opening shunned. I put a cage over it and carry it like a child through Haight-Ashbury. At times I hint that I'm bored, but there is no letting of blood or rattle of hope. When you live with a risk you begin at times to identify with the routes. Above the regional converse, the two on two or the two on four. At times for reasons of sadness but usually its just exhaustion. At times before the come and go gets to you, but usually that is wrong and they get to you first. Lathering up in a small cerulean piece of sky at the end turnabout of a dirt road
Connor Jul 2016
And it's difficult to remember something as the very name of Eisenhower
Or flowerbaskets
And tired movies made of silicone and
Aftersex
Or sixteen candles echoing out of an imaginary suite with cigarettes at every table
And green lawns
Barbershop conversation
The reflection of the sun in special trees
Or my best friend Jesus Christ
Or the smell of the theater that one day with the cynics who just got back from a tennis match and barbwire still laced delicately around their thoughts and
Nihilism
And automotives
And priestess Jane or Henry's gloomy doppelganger who reads alternative magazines and loves the aesthetics behind broken glass
And fine tuned musical instruments

It's difficult to remember
Lonesome Fridays smoking on a park bench trying to finish the puzzle
Or synagogues you've never been in
Or insurance
Or newspaper articles detailing the misadventures of Mr. City
(Of course of course! Take your shoes off at the door and make yourself at home)
We're tossing all our sewage into the ocean
that's far from clean as it
LOOKS anymore these days
That's anything
And everything except for the glowing mountains seen faded and wintry behind Apartments and the
"Glorious Mexican House of Spices"
Never been in there either

It's difficult to remember
Times of Mr Twin Sister
Or Joan Jett in the hallway
In a highschool who's psychology classrooms have become a time capsule in the ground/
Or the gentle skinny ******
Wearing Broadway makeup and
Kafka tattooed on his shoulder
I like his hat
He looks at me suspiciously
Or the guy who is yelling his order at the counter when it's quiet here anyways
Or the mariner who has a hobby of the saxophone
Or 1970s *******
Or the sheepskin bikeseat fad that's yet to come but I'm predicting it now!
Or two dollars and twentyseven cents at the beginning of Allen Ginsberg's America
"I've given you all and now I'm nothing"

It's difficult to remember
The Oriental
Sacramento flies
Midnight Moon
Quarter to four
"The Immortalization Commission"
Remodelled hotels downtown
Where mandalas on the floor became a
Tiger lily luminous
And the kimono is yesterday's painting/
Dearest Darling
When I was feeling down!
A staircase in reverse (??)
The sound a kiss makes
It's difficult to remember
Colleen's earrings
Or Washington State
Or air conditioners in Bali
The Indian ocean's daybreak hymn
To Seminyak
Or whatever happened to Steve from the Airplane out of Taiwan
On 3 days awake
Hello Kitty nursing stations
****** (Kubrick's version)
Cardboard taking up half my bedroom
It's difficult to remember until I jot it down and then its a sudden forever
Sunshine Superman in a cafe spontaneous
drawings with someone I just met who has some ******* attitude/
Who hops fences and has feral ideas
People! En Masse! Te Amo!
You're all in wolven liberty
And vague postulators
And holy prostitutes for the dollar
Sad eyed intellectuals
With undergarments made of breakfast cereal/
Seaferry poetry is different from
Trestle in August poetry
Or henna handshakes
Or the Napoleonic era
Sweet Cherry Pie
The tulip's tongue
Garabajal
Cloudy first day of July
Was hotter yesterday
But not too hot

It's difficult to remember
Antiquity
The pale horse Studebaker outside the clinic
With a glossy red trim and **** I wish that was my ride
Andy Warhol's exploding plastic inevitable
Nearsightedness
Angels and their ability to shower with a a snap of their fingers
Distant harp music
Better him than me
Bananas almost ripe
Green aquatic
Reclusive junkies
Palomo's appliances
Questions for the next time
How much I like what you like and how I like that you like what I like
Ahh that's not my bus
I'm trying to get to the city!
That one quote Socrates is known for about knowing nothing as true wisdom
Supermarkets being built on top of liquor stores burned down a while back
Monopolies
Tragedies
"No Love Lost"
THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL
Your guess is as good as mine
Never tried to eat Asian food in Asia
It was all pasta and good cider that tasted like pineapple
Rain hitting the window and I'm
Drowsy again
God Save The Trees!
Curly hair looks good on boys
Torn up blinds
Queer as a three dollar bill
If Bill costs 3 dollars I'm sure he's caught something better safe than sorry
Sage advice
I'm the very model of a modern major general
Golden yen and international currency
Incense in the bedroom and how good it smells
There's my bus! Applying for a better job than the one I got now
But that's how it always is right?
Chasing satisfaction
1007 apt
Porch ornaments
Unique names
Unique style le style
The extra charge on foreign ATMs
Cordoroy polo shirts
Flooding in New York!
When someone's face screams *******
"Slippery when wet"
Dine N Dash
Grass gone yellow
Confidence in dyed hair and capes as long as wedding gowns
But less expensive
Doors that always seem to be locked and I'm wondering 20 year later what's behind them?
Albino animals
White thoughts as clouds or
Abstractions
Weathers nicer in Florida but who cares
Festivities this early in the day
Automatopeia
Do sad orphanages still exist?
Just like the movies
Midnight in mirrors
That sick puppet at the shoe shop used
To know how to really hammer it down
And now he's weak and forgotten
Never heard the words of a true prophet only Oceania
Or the private temple near Apollo Bay
Like Japanese gardens behind that gate
Will I ever see it
Make a proud example outta ya misbehavior
Form without function
Exhausted spiritualism
*** Kettle Black
negative photographs of dark rooms
And there's laughing coming from SOMEWHERE
Essays on kleptomania
Had a bad dream I became a cliche
Surrounded by other freaks and there was a lovely ***** I fell in love with her
We married in Oregon by the sea her name was rosy
***** rosy
Check your mailbox for nails
And what you don't wanna hear/
If you were a vegetable you'd be organic!
Empire
Satirical bubble gum
Satori
Linda Lovelace and her special party trick
That's someone's fantasy
Diamond in the rough
Mister guy with two black eyes frequents the adult playhouse
Hes fully stocked on fishnet leggings
He's too proud to put them on himself but
Has nobody else around
Boo hoo
Swigs back the whiskey and trips down the stairs getting a third black eye in the process
Marion came by with her dog the other day
Wanted her box of clothes back but he loved to sniff them to remember her
But she wouldn't have it

"Honey I'm going to call the police!"

"Ah they don't give a **** they have bigger things to worry about"

"Yeah you got that right shrimp **** enjoy my unwashed *******"

And she never came back again
He started losing the vertebrae in his spine 1 by 1 and you know where this is going
I won't say he was a poor man because he had it all coming to him the *******
But he coulda had a better start if you ask me.

It's difficult to remember
And even more difficult to forget
After the fact

Seagull opera
Giganticism
Portrait of the artist as a young man
Losing one's pencil when the best idea of your life drops down from heaven and into your sorry head
Signs graffitied to have funnier meanings
Cruelty
Impassive
The Loyal Lioness
And Bangladesh has too many kitchens
And not enough dishes
When I was young I used to say Island as "is-land"  
Which is true it is land
But the Europeans probably stole it from somebody else anyways/
I left my future behind
And objects in the mirror are closer than they appear
Im no illusionist
I'm terrified of the cracken
Father feels the same way about
Hotels
Why bother/
This has been going on and on for a while are you tired yet
Is your patience being tested
Mine isn't because this wasn't an all-at-once kind of rambling
It's extremely important to laugh at least
Once a day
Otherwise you'll find yourself a politician
In no time at all
Rockefeller
(         ) Quaint home to die in
I think
Trains create great music
Float on
Sink into yourself
Roses in a crooked alley
That's people
Busy busy busy busy
Let's describe a situationist
I'm not a fan of bright colors on clothes
Your best shade is blue
Bricklayers transcription of Don Quixote to a skyscraper
Rocket thyme
& Garden
Erratic children's
Insomnia
The doorbell repeatedly
Vancouver riots/ I saw that live on the news!
Pictionary with the surrealists
N Dada TV set MC Escher
Antenna
You're in the Twilight Zone now
Dear Ramona
I'm trying to make it up to you
With a brightness only seen when you're ready to see it so please for the love of God don't blame me when it's not appearing
The tapestry hidden
Keep your blankets clean
And avoid hospitals unless you're fine with fishbowls & the halogen
The water gestapo
Storage lockers full of unacted plays and
Antique microwaves
Emitting the nostalgia of the cold war era
And what a waste of time that was /
Walter Wanderleys presence in Autumn universities
The opening of Vivre sa Vie
Salvador Dali's pluvial taxi
Lightbulb epiphanies
Aquariums and their protestors
Zebras in the shade
Two wrongs dont make a right
Elizabethan theater
Saloon shootouts in a fever dream
I lost and bled out all over the rustic wooden floor
A maiden reached out for me and El Paso did play I woke up and pretended nothing happened/
Funerals for bad People who did bad things
My first memory of a cat beneath the mattress
Hello Dolly!
Auditory learning
Psychotherapy
Lillian the landlady lost her ladle and labeled little Lyle as a lair
The Black panther movement
Reading symposium some years ago and
Making note that Phaedo was still my favorite dialogue/
Zen Buddhism
Xoxo xoxo
The day Gypsies were replaced with
Surface ****** appetite
And not the real thing
Newspaper clippings
Hypnotism when all other options are out
Mystical visions of sidewalks
And the love of your life stepping through a door you've never seen
Maybe Yes No I Don't Know
Creature comforts
Che Guevara's problem is that his beard made him too easy to recognize
(Also that little hat!)
Chinese cough medicine didn't work
For long I still wheeze sometimes
Domestic violence thru the wall
Ceiling fan probably doesn't even work!
Dimpled laughter
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
In skytrains to Commercial
Bermuda in her mind
And courtesy in her voice
I'm no Arthur Rimbaud
But you already knew that
Alcazar of Seville
Filling up the shipbottle
Here's your paradise
Now relinquish it as it is
False!
Hare Krishna
Nowhere Fast
El Diablo and the
Portofino loaf left rotting on the countertop
Latin children speak of the sacred viper
You'll hear of it after this but we'll never see what the ******* meant
Heads alternating round the social current
Of my lively city
There's a dog soaking up the rain
And songs are made in honor of
Recent catastrophes
Trials are dealt
Cards cast to the gutter
New York quiets down for the news of another war
You scratch my back I'll scratch yours
Skeleton key
Ballad of the last wailing zoo
THE ATRIUM
Complexity in simplicity
That's how Brainard got me!
Elderly overcoats
Hiding purest LSD
Is a fan of Hawaiian T shirts
And a communist
What if I was a Freemason
Or owned a tanning salon
Faint crimson
What did Marv look like again?
"You're surrounded by people who love you"
Coffee when one needs it
GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY
Tattoos on the wandering man
Oriental chimes and the people who own them
Bus stop regulars
Vines overtaking power lines
The hypnogogic state
Strawberry light softening
The mind
Sister Ray LOUDLY PROCLAIMING
doitdoitdoitdoit
Passing the graffiti n Pluto neon
Halal wide awake another Saturday
Where's the Karaoke
Flashing by here
Those who find comfort in a bridal scavenger hunt
Or expensive beer
And here comes the hooded clown
Clamoring about his favorite
Loudspeaker
Telling me my time is soon and the noise
Drowns out the drowsy bliss
After hour spirits the perfect time for
Writing and trying to read distant Chinese
Indecision on the tip of the tongue
"NOW WHO IS THAT KNOCKING
ON THE CHAMBER DOOR?
COULD IT BE THE POLICE?"

I'm completely off the topic
And into Apartment lobby photosets
Low battery phone calls
Confessions
Nauseated reverb
Trying to see the attachment people got with bingo halls
And moving companies
Ah no luck again
Eve is at it with her showtunes
Halfway methodology
Triage
Paisley headbands left
Distraught on the quivering
Heater
Dwindling sunsets
We're truly disciples of the moon spirit which grants us more energy
(This is according to a drunk I met one night)
Or ***** old men
When the horizon is engulfed with
A winking cinder
Suitcase at the door
Last time
First time
Magician never reveals his fetishes
(They all have to do with bags under your eyes)
Employment office dramas of my friend the one who blinded a social worker
And the one who blamed Islam
And the one whos philosophy entirely consisted of Spooky Action at a
                                            DISTANCE
Parisian riots
Queer youth
Didn't make the team! Jester
'cross the hall who's beard suggests
Ishmeal n car battery n expired vegetables n rain which crosses the line n
***** cranberry n
Poorly fitted suits n
Harsh pigment n incense shops n
Bocca     secret towns
With churches more beautiful than any you'd find in your own city
n the cultural market
Xylophone ear to ear
Soul cleansing starting at only
$89 (with a 6 month guarantee)
Sophie's birthday and her picnic at Victory Park
The nearby bums trying to sell tea mugs and
Loose wires beside gated convenience stores
I'm an Island away attempting a poem
And never bought a scratch n win
Or heard the same song more than seven times in a row or been in a column
Or escaped the washhouse
Invested in a birdcage for next year
Been to a palm reading
Visited Oasis
Smoked salmon
Told anyone else about Montana
Screamed the things I'd like to scream
** Word of the day
Or kissed a lunatic or swallowed the corpse of yesterday
I keep her on my neck until
I'm too anxious to let go
Counting streetlights
Jeans worn in and faded to be sent off to
A lonely caffeine addict
Christmas Eve I'll be reading a postcard from San Francisco
Asking the same questions
My imagination is made of a different material than last week
Now it's the same color as your hair
HEY that's a good pickup line to use in the heart of the Canadian Embassy
Drinking discarded music resembling a sweater you may have said YES to if it wasn't so unsure of itself
And now Mr. Acker Bilk ascends thru the window of an August home
Like a lazy hornet
I'm still lost without identification
Or a nice belt
As happens when one uses a quality item too casually
How did uphill suddenly seem so downhill?
I'll claim a waterfall
For SALE that inevitable Indonesia
Greyhound O another greyhound O another greyhound
I'm fretting too much about not enough
Delayed the Airport and the yellow question

????

II

What if I knew how to read the curb?
Or translate drunken droll
What if I was never tired again and could
REALLY do anything I set my mind to?
What if I was the first cigarette that cured cancer instead of caused it?
What if I could end superstition
And walk underneath any ladder I wanted?
What if I could make it with a young Audrey Hepburn!?
What if I stopped pretending to be a microphone and got on with "it"
What if the grocery store closed later
And I opened earlier?
What if parking lots werent so sad
All the time?
What if gravity simply had enough of exotic birds and specifics?
What if we stopped trying to recreate what is truly lost?
What if foreign children embraced
Wasting time instead of
Midnight starry bicycles
And the antics of a monk
Disguised as a romantic?

There are those that worship God
And those who worship the Sun
And those who worship nothing at all
But I suppose on the last bus
We're all the same exhausted
Voice who can't wait for next pay day
What is an empty bank?
Or authenticity
What is there to prove anymore?
I hope I don't die tonight and regret
Being impulsive for once
You're a smart shadow
And a dull character
Pushing the last of the daisies
Get the lamp to turn on again
Give the pavement something to look forward to with your walk
Be consistent in being inconsistent
If there's a word there's a ***** and a poem for it!
We all oughta worship
Nothing at all except
Clarity
Compassion with ones neighbor who either forgot the pay the electricity bill or couldn't afford to
We're a swimmin
Written between late June to July 13th.
Andrew T Aug 2016
You constructed a towering cathedral out of popsicle sticks
and blue Lego pieces, searching for deeper meaning
through building a foundation from discarded dreams
and stuttered melodies. I listened as you played folk and bluegrass covers on your acoustic guitar, wondering if we would ever cross our arms into a figure-eight on a rainy morning,
in the middle of a fire-fight between the Vietcong
and Francis Coppola.

Remember when we watched “Lost in Translation” and you asked did I feel isolated and anxious around large groups of white people? I wanted to nod, but instead
I smoked green out of an apple and ate the core,
as smoke lingered under my chin. You tapped my shoulder,
stared me down, and forced a grin, as though you knew
my answer would be nothing but manufactured nouns and verbs, gibberish, and Pig-Latin with no room for form, or design.

The sun belted heat rays down on our tired faces, stopping only
when a Mac Demarco song crooned from the boom-box on the
patio table and as we heard the beat and the lyrics,
we took shots of fireball and had a discussion on EDM festivals
and the rise of smartphones capturing moments of racism
and hatred with each video, each picture.

I wanted to read “Kafka on The Shore” to a six tennis players
from my country club, but they were too busy
staging a protest for an increase in minimum wage jobs
and besides Murakami spoke with a thick Japanese accent,
which turned off white people who revered his prose.
A shame you didn’t draw a faux Calvin and Hobbes
comic strip about Susi Derkins finding nirvana
in watching “Game of Thrones” while sleep-deprived
and eating half a bar of Xans. We drank the entire bottle
of Captain Morgan’s and still Drake’s Uncharted story mode
didn’t seem any less fascinating.

Your cousin Bonnie crashed
a white Ford Mustang into the back of U-Street Music Hall
and I cringed as I rode shotgun, the airbag releasing and smacking into my ruddy face, all the life I’d lived gleaming
beneath the shadowy figure I bought last weekend
at the thrift shop on West Broad Street.

You could have come over last Thursday to listen to
me play jazz on the piano for Epicure’s open mic night,
but you were too busy playing saxophone on the veranda
in Georgetown’s Waterfront and anyhow,
you wanted a relationship forged on trust and great ***,
and I could barely get out of my townhouse without
writing a diary entry etched in bone marrow and angel dust,
plus you told me, “I love your imaginary brother.”
And all I have is a teddy bear named Franklin.
You could have come over last Thursday to listen to
me play jazz on the piano for Epicure’s open mic night,
but you were too busy playing saxophone on the veranda
in Georgetown’s Waterfront and anyhow,
you wanted a relationship forged on trust and great ***,
and I could barely get out of my townhouse without
writing a diary entry etched in bone marrow and angel dust,
plus you told me, “I love your imaginary brother.”
And all I have is a teddy bear named Franklin.
You could have come over last Thursday to listen to
me play jazz on the piano for Epicure’s open mic night,
but you were too busy playing saxophone on the veranda
in Georgetown’s Waterfront and anyhow,
you wanted a relationship forged on trust and great ***,
and I could barely get out of my townhouse without
writing a diary entry etched in bone marrow and angel dust,
plus you told me, “I love your imaginary brother.”
And all I have is a teddy bear named Franklin.
Dedicated to my homeys
Alexis Willis Jan 2013
Every noise he makes
every screetching noise he plays.
Louder and louder
i cover my ears.
I close my eyes tight
and think happy thoughts.
Its too loud i said.
All i want is for it to stop.
I cry every note he plays.
I want to bang my head
against the hard ground.
I want to see the blood flow out
as he plays his song.
It hurts to think
i cant even finish this poem.
It becomes more and more loud
even his song cries out for help.
We been through so much
even beaten by a clutch.
Although he plays till night
i am still in fright.
Jo Fo Aug 2013
I saw you there
And the neon signs and your tears
Reflected in your irises
Made you more beautiful
And the alcoholic haze made me believe
If just one night could work
You could come with me
We could have our happy ending
We could leave this life and place
And your dress ****** from engineers schemes
And I love that forgotten woman
More than the orange trees and John
But for our child she gave her life
And I still love her
That Vietnam Bride
a neighbour
plays saxophone
somewhere down the street
it sounds like
they are at
an open window
practicing scales
bursts of pieces
previously mastered
other segments
yet to be perfected
those standard exercises
again and again
with missed breaths
and off-note *******
building in complexity
but slowed down
beyond recognition
with their concentration
no doubt
seething at times
behind closed doors
as fingers refuse
to obey
not moving fast enough
assuredly enough
it should annoy me
it usually would
this distraction
while I try
to read or write
the stumbling repetition
of practice failing
to make perfect
but today
there is a calming
in the familiarity
of it all
Craig Harrison Jul 2014
In the hands of someone talented
The strings of a violin
winds of a flute
keys of a piano
can move you to tears

Just closing your eyes and letting the music flow
you can hear them all
Cello
Viola
Violin
Flute
Clarinet
Saxophone
Trumpet
Harp
Pian­o
In the hands of talent
you can be moved to tears
Brycical Mar 2012
When the wood touches
my lips
my whole body trembles--
           triplet trebles drip quickly
out....


In my head,
I sound nothing
like the spheres surrounding
        the guitar's melancholy,
        mellow below comes above
and I WAIL.....
          sailing these sounds
swaddling the drumbox beat
to  a crescendo
      exercising all the ills
I've swilled and spilled--
           FILLING
the house
              FILLING my self....
radiating away all thoughts
of doubt.
a reminder of the Bird 'Tranes
a reminder of the names
I used to sing......


Silence
seems like such a foreign concept again.
RAJ NANDY Mar 2016
Dear Poet Friends, and all true lovers of Jazz!  Being a lover of Classical and Smooth Jazz, I had composed first two parts in Verse on the History and Evolution of Jazz Music. Seeing the poor response of the Readers to my Part One here, I was hesitant to post my Second Part. I would request the Readers to kindly read Part One of this True Story also for complete information. Please do read the Foot Notes. With best wishes, - from Raj Nandy of New Delhi.


THE STORY OF JAZZ MUSIC : PART-II
               BY RAJ NANDY

        NEW ORLEANS : THE CRADLE OF JAZZ
BACKGROUND :
Straddling the mighty bend of the River Mississippi,
Which nicknames it as the ‘Crescent City’;
(Founded in 1718 as a part of French Louisiana
Colony),  -
Stands the city of New Orleans.
New Orleans* gets its name from Phillippe II,
Duc d’ Orleans , the Regent of France ;
A city well known for its music, and fondness
for dance.
The city remained as a French Colony until 1763,
When it got transferred to Spain as a Spanish
Colony.
But in the year 1800, the Spanish through a
secret pact, -
To France had once again ceded the Colony back!
Finally in 1803 the historic ‘Louisiana Purchase’
took place ,
When Napoleon the First sold New Orleans and  
the entire Louisiana State, -
To President Thomas Jefferson of the United
States!     * (See notes below)

THE CONGO SQUARE :
The French New Orleans was a rather liberal
place,
Where slaves were permitted to congregate,
For worship and trading in a market place,
But only on Sabbath Days, - their day of rest!
They had chosen a grassy place at the edge of
the old city,
Where they danced and sang to tom-tom beats,
Located north of the French Quarters across the
Rampart Street,
Which came to be known as the Congo Square,
Where one could hear clapping of hands and
stomping of feet!
There through folk songs, music, and varying
dance forms,
The slaves maintained their native African musical
traditions all along!
African music which remained suppressed in the
Protestant Colonies of the British,
Had found a freedom of expression in the Congo
Square by the natives; -
Through their Bamboula , Calanda, and Congo dance!
The Wolof and Bambara people from Senegal River
area of West Africa,
With their melodious singing and stringed instruments,
Became the forerunners of ‘Blues’ and the Banjo.
And during the Spanish Era, slaves from the Central
African Forest Culture of Congo,
Who with their hand-drummed polyrhythmic beats ,
Made people from Havana to Harlem  to rise and
dance on their feet!      
(see notes below)

CULTURAL MIX :
After the Louisiana Purchase , English-speaking
Anglo and African-Americans flooded that State.
Due to cultural friction with the Creoles, the new-
comers settled ‘uptown’,
Creating an American Sector, separate from older
Creole ‘down-town’ !
This black American influx in the uptown had
ushered in,
The elements of the Blues, Spirituals, and rural
dances into New Orleans’ musical scene.
Now these African cultural expressions gradually
diversified, -
Into Mardi Indian traditions, and the Second Line.^^
And eventually into New Orleans’ Jazz and Blues;
As New Orleans became a cauldron of a rich
cultural milieu!

THE CREOLES :
The Creoles were not immigrants but were home-
bred;
They were the bi-racial children of their French
Masters and their African women slaves!
Creole subculture was centred in New Orleans.
But after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803,  -
The Creoles rose to the highest rung of Society! @
They lived on the east of Canal Street in the
French Sector of the city.
Many Creole musicians were formally trained in
Paris,
Had played in Opera Houses there, and later led
Brass Bands in New Orleans.
Jelly Roll Morton, Kid Oliver, and Sidney Bechet
were all famous Creoles;
About whom I now write as this true Jazz Story
gradually unfolds.
In sharp contrast on the west of Canal Street lived
the ***** musicians,
Who lacked the economic advantages the Creoles
possessed and had!
The Negroes were schooled in the Blues, Work Songs ,
and Gospel Music;
And played by the ear with improvisation as their
unique characteristic !
But in 1894 when Jim Crow’s racial segregation
laws came into force,     # (see notes below)
The Creoles were forced to move West of Canal
Street to live with the Negroes.
This mingling lighted a ‘musical spark’ creating
a lightening musical flash;
Igniting the flames of a ‘new music’ which was
later called ‘Jazz’ !

INFLUENCE OF THE EARLY BRASS BANDS:
Those Brass Bands of the Civil War which played the
‘marching tunes’ ,
Became the precursors of New Orleans’ Brass Bands,
which later played at funeral marches, dance halls,
and saloons !
After the end of the Civil War those string and wind
instruments and drums, -
Were available in the second-hand stores and pawn
shops within reach of the poor, for a small tidy sum!
Many small bands mushroomed, and each town had
its own band stand and gazebos;
Entertained the town folks putting up a grand show!
Early roots of Jazz can be traced to these Bands and
their leaders like Buddy Bolden, King Oliver, Bunk
Johnson, and Kid Orley;
Not forgetting Jack 'Pappa' Laine’s Brass Band
leading the way of our Jazz Story !
The Original Dixieland Band of the cornet player
'Nick' La Rocca,
Was the first ever Jazz Band to entertain US Service
Men in World War-I and also to play in European
theatre, came later.     (In 1916)
I plan to mention the Harlem Renaissance in my
Part Three,
Till then dear Readers kindly bear with me!

CONTRIBUTION OF STORYVILLE :
In the waning years of the 19th Century,
When Las Vegas was just a farming community,
The actual ‘sin city’ lay 1700 miles East, in the
heart of New Orleans!
By Alderman Story’s Ordinance of 1897,
A 20-block area got legalized and confined,  
To the French Quarters on the North Eastern side
called ‘Storyville’, a name acquired after him!
This 'red light' area resounded with a new
seductive music ‘jassing up’ one and all;
Which played in its Bordello, Saloons, and the
Dance Halls !         (refer  my Part One)
Now the best of Bordellos hired a House Pianist,
who also greeted guests, and was a musical
organizer;
Whom the girls addressed respectfully as -
‘The Professor’!
Jelly Roll Morton, Tony Jackson author of
‘Pretty Baby’, and Frank ‘Dude’ Amacher, -
Were all well-known Storyville’s ‘Professors’.
Early jazz men who played in Storyville’s Orchestra
and Bands are now all musical legends;
Like ‘King’ Oliver, Buddy Bolden, Kid Orley, Bunk
Johnson, and Sydney Bechet.      ++ (see notes below)
Louis Armstrong who was born in New Orleans,
As a boy had supplied coal to the ‘cribs’ of
Storyville !          ^ (see notes below)
Louis had also played in the bar for $1.25 a night;
Surely the contribution of Storyville to Jazz Music
can never be denied!
But when America joined the First World War in
1917,
A Naval Order was issued to close down Storyville;
Since waging war was more important than making
love the Order had said !
And from the port of New Orleans US Warships
had subsequently set sail.
Here I now pause my friends to take a break.
Part Three of this story is yet to be composed,
Will depend on my Reader’s response !
Please do read below the handy Foot Notes.
Thanks from Raj Nandy of New Delhi.

FOOT NOTES:-
New Orleans one of the oldest of cosmopolitan city of Louisiana, also the 18th State of US, & a major port.
Louisiana was sold by France for $15 Million, & was later realized to be a great achievement of Thomas Jefferson!
Many African Strands of Folk Music & Dance forms had merged at the Congo Square.
^^ ’Second Line Music’= Bands playing during funerals & marches, evoked voluntary crowd participation, with songs and dances as appropriate forming a ''Second Line'' from behind.
@ Those liberal French Masters offered the Creoles the best of Education with access to their White Society!
# ’Jim Crow'= Between 1892 & 1895, 'Blacks' gained political prominence in Southern States. In 1896 land-rich whites disenfranchised the Blacks completely! A 25 year's long hatred
& racial segregation began. Tennessee led by passing the ‘Jim Crow’ Law ! In 1896, Supreme Court upheld this Law with -  ‘’Separate But Equal’’ status for the Blacks. Thus segregation became a National Institution! This segregation divided the Black & White Musicians too!
+ Birth of Jazz was a slow and an evolving process, with Blues and Ragtime as its precursor!    “Jazz Is Quintessence of  Afro-American Music born on European Instruments.”
++ Jelly ‘Roll’ Morton (1885-1941) at 17 years played piano in the brothels, – applying swinging syncopation to a variety of music; a great 'transitional figure' between Ragtime & Jazz Piano-style.
++ BUDDY BOLDEN (1877-1931) = his cornet improvised by adding ‘Blues’ to Ragtime in Orleans  during 1900-1907, which later became Jazz! BUNK JOHNSON (1879-1849 ) = was a pioneering jazz trumpeter who inspired Louis Armstrong.  KID OLIVER (1885-1938) =Cornet player and & a Band-leader, mentor & teacher of Louis Armstrong; pioneered use of ‘mute’ in music! ‘Mute’ is a device fitted to instruments to alter the timber or tonal quality, reducing the sound, or both.
KID ORLEY (1886-1973) : a pioneering Trombonist, developed the '‘tailgate style’' playing rhythmic lines underneath the trumpet & cornet, propagating Early Jazz.  SYDNEY BECHET (1897-1959) = pioneered the use of Saxophone; a composer & a soloist, inspired Armstrong. His pioneering style got his name in the ‘Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame’! LOUIS ARMSTRONG (1890-1971) = Trumpeter, singer, & great improviser. First international soloist, who took New Orleans Jazz Music to the World!  
% = After America joined WW-I in 1917, a Naval Order was issued to shut-down  Storyville, to check the spread of VD amongst sailors!
^^ ”Cribs”= cheap residential buildings where prostitutes rented rooms. Louis Armstrong as a boy supplied coal in those ‘Cribs’.
During the 1940 s  Storyville was raised to the ground to make way for Iberville Federal Housing Project.
ALL COPYRIGHTS RESERVED BY THE AUTHOR : RAJ NANDY **
E-Mail : rajnandy21@yahoo.in
My love for Jazz Music made me to dig-up its past History and share it with few interested Readers of this Site! Thanks, -Raj
RAJ NANDY Aug 2017
Dear Readers, I have tried to cover the salient features of this True Story in free flowing verse mainly with end rhymes. If you read it loud, you can hear the chimes! Due to the short attention span of my readers I had to cut short this long story, and conclude with the
Golden Era of Hollywood by stretching it up to the 1950s only. When TV began to challenge the Big Screen Cinema seriously! I have used only a part of my notes here. Kindly read the
entire composition during your Spare Time dear Readers. I wish there was a provision for posting a few interesting photographs for you here. Best wishes, - Raj Nandy, New Delhi.  

                THE LEGEND OF HOLLYWOOD :
                      THE AMERICAN  DREAM
                              BY RAJ NANDY

               A SHORT  HISTORICAL  BACKGROUND
Since the earliest days, optical toys, shadow shows, and ‘magic
lanterns’, had created the illusion of motion.
This concept was first described by Mark Roget in 1824 as  
the persistent of vision.
Giving impetus to the development of big screen cinema with its
close-ups, capturing all controlled and subtle expressions!
The actors were no longer required to shout out their parts with
exaggerated actions as on the Elizabethan Stage.
Now even a single tear drop could get noticed easily by the entire
movie audience!
With the best scene being included and edited after a few retakes.
To Thomas Edison and his able assistant William Rogers we owe the invention of Kinetoscope, the first movie camera.
On the grounds of his West Orange, New Jersey laboratory, Edison
built his first movie studio called the ‘Black Maria’.   (1893)
He also purchased a string of patents related to motion picture
Camera;
Forming the Edison Trust, - a cartel that took control of the Film
Industry entire!

Fort Lee, New Jersey:
On a small borough on the opposite bank of the Hudson River lay
the deserted Fort Lee.
Here scores of film production crews descended armed with picture Cameras, on this isolated part of New Jersey!
In 1907 Edison’s company came there to shoot a short silent film –
‘Rescue From an Eagle’s Nest’,
Which featured for the first time the actor and director DW Griffith.
The independent Chaplin Film Company built the first permanent
movie studio in 1910 in Fort Lee.
While some of the biggest Hollywood studios like the Universal,
MGM, and 20th Century Fox, had their roots in Fort Lee.
Some of the famous stars of the silent movie era included ‘Fatty’
Arbuckle, Will Rogers, Mary Pickford, Dorothy and Lillian Gish,
Lionel Barrymore, Rudolph Valentine and Pearl White.
In those days there were no reflectors and electric arch lights.
So movies were made on rooftops to capture the bright Sunlight!
During unpredictable bad weather days, filming had to be stopped
despite the revolving stage which was made, -
To rotate and capture the sunlight before the lights started to fade!

Shift from New Jersey to West Coast California:
Now Edison who held the patents for the bulb, phonograph, and the Camera, had exhibited a near monopoly;
On the production, distribution, and exhibition of the movies which made this budding industry to shift to California from New Jersey!
California with its natural scenery, its open range, mountains, desert, and snow country, had the basic ingredients for the movie industry.
But most importantly, California had bright Sunshine for almost 365 days of the year.
While eight miles away from Hollywood lay the port city of Los Angeles with its cheap labor.

                        THE  RISE  OF  HOLLYWOOD
It was a real estate tycoon Harvey Wilcox and his wife Daeida from
Kansas, who during the 1880s founded ‘Hollywood’ as a community for like-minded temperate followers.
It is generally said that Daeida gave the name Hollywood perhaps
due to the area's abundant red-berried shrubs - known as
California Holly!
Spring blossoms around and above the Hollywood Hills with its rich variety,  gave it a touch of paradise for all to see!
Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903, and during
1910 had unified with the city of Los Angeles.
While a year later, the first film studio had moved in from New
Jersey, to escape Thomas Edison’s monopoly!    (1911)

In 1913 Cecil B. De Mille and Jesse Lasky, had leased a barn with
studio facilities.
And directed the first feature length film ‘Squaw Man’ in 1914.
Today this studio is home to Hollywood Heritage Museum as we get to see.
The timeless symbol of Hollywood film industry that famous sign on top of Mount Lee, was put up by a real estate developer in 1923.  
This sign had read as ‘’HOLLY WOOD LAND’’ initially.
Despite decades of run-ins with vandals and pranksters, it managed to hang on to its prime location near the summit of the Hollywood Hills.
The last restoration work was carried out in 1978 initiated by Hugh
Hefner of the ******* Magazine.
Those nine white letters 45 feet tall now read ‘HOLLYWOOD’,  has become a landmark and America’s cultural icon,
And an evocative symbol for ambition, glamour, and dreams!
Forever enticing aspiring actors to flock to Hollywood, hypnotized by lure of the Big Screen!

                     GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD
The Silent Movie Era which began in 1895, ended in 1935 with the
production of ‘Dance of Virgins’, filmed entirely in the island of Bali.
The first Sound film ‘The Jazz Singer’ by Warner Bros. was made with a Vitaphone sound-on-disc technology.  (October 1927)
Despite the Great Depression of the 1930s, this decade along with the 1940s have been regarded by some as Hollywood’s Golden Age.
However, I think that this Golden Age includes the decades of the
1940s and the 1950s instead.
When the advent of Television began to challenge the Film Industry
itself !

First Academy Award:
On 16th May 1929 in the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard,
the First Academy Award presentation was held.
Around 270 people were in attendance, and tickets were priced at
$5 per head.
When the best films of 1927 & 1928 were honored by the Academy
of Motion Production and Sciences, or the AMPS.
Emil Jennings became the best actor, and Janet Gaynor the best actress.
Special Award went to Charlie Chaplin for his contribution to the
silent movie era and for his silent film ‘The Circus’.
While Warren Brothers was commended for making the first talking picture ‘The Jazz Singer’, - also receiving a Special Award!
Now, the origin of the term ‘OSCAR’ has remained disputed.
The Academy adopted this name from 1939 onwards it is stated.
OSCAR award has now become “the stuff dreams are made of”!
It is a gold-plated statuette of a knight 13.5 inches in height, weighing 8.5 pounds, was designed by MGM’s art director Cedric Gibbons.
Annually awarded for honoring and encouraging excellence in all
facets of motion picture productions.

Movies During the Great Depression Era (1929-1941):
Musicals and dance movies starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers provided escapism and good entertainment during this age.
“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did. She just did it
backwards and in high heels,” - the critics had said.
This compatible pair entertained the viewers for almost one and
a half decade.
During the ‘30s, gangster movies were popular starring James Cagey, Humphrey Bogart, and Edward G. Robinson.
While family movies had their popular child artist Shirley Temple.
Swashbuckler films of the Golden Age saw the sword fighting scenes of Douglas Fairbank and Errol Flynn.
Flynn got idolized playing ‘Robin Hood’, this film was released in 1938 on the Big Screen.
Story of the American Civil War got presented in the epic ‘Gone With The Wind’ (1939) with Clarke Gable and Vivian Leigh.
This movie received 8 Oscars including the award for the Best Film, - creating a landmark in motion picture’s history!
More serious movies like John Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath’ and John Ford’s  ‘How Green Was My Valley’, were released in 1940 and 1941 respectively.
While the viewers escaped that depressive age to the magical world
of  ‘Wizard of Oz’ with its actress Judy Garland most eagerly!
Let us not forget John Wayne the King of the Westerns, who began
his acting career in the 1930s with his movie ‘The Big Trail’;
He went on to complete 84 films before his career came to an end.
Beginning of the 40s also saw Bob Hope and the crooner Bing Crosby, who entertained the public and also the fighting troops.
For the Second World War (1939-45) had interrupted the Golden Age of Hollywood!
When actors like Henry Fonda, Clarke Gable, James Stewart and
Douglas Fairbanks joined the armed forces temporarily leaving
Hollywood.
Few propaganda movies supporting the war efforts were also made.
While landmark movies like ‘Philadelphia Story’, ‘Casablanca’, ‘Citizen Kane’, ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’, were some of the most successful movies of that decade.  (The 1940s)
Now I come towards the end of my Hollywood Story with the decade  of the 1950s, thereby extending the period of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Since having past the Great Depression and the Second World War,  
The Hollywood movie industry truly matured and came of age.

                        HOLLYWOOD  OF  THE  1950s
Backgroun­d:
The decade of the ‘50s was known for its post-war affluence and
choice of leisure time activities.
It was a decade of middle-class values, fast-food restaurants, and
drive-in- movies;
Of ‘baby-boom’, all-electric home, the first credit cards, and new fast moving cars like the Ford, Plymouth, Buick, Hudson, and Chevrolet.
But not forgetting the white racist terrorism in the Southern States!
This era saw the beginning of Cold War, with Dwight D. Eisenhower succeeding Harry S. Truman as the American President.
But for the film industry, most importantly, what really mattered  
was the advent of the Domestic TV.
When the older viewers preferred to stay at home instead of going
out to the movies.
By 1950, 10.5 million US homes had a television set, and on the
30th December 1953, the first Color TV went on sale!
Film industries used techniques such as Cinemascope, Vista Vision,
and gimmicks like 3-D techniques,
To get back their former movie audience back on their seats!
However, the big scene spectacle films did retain its charm and
fantasy.
Since fantasy epics like ‘The Story of Robin Hood’, and Biblical epics like ‘The Robe’, ‘Quo Vadis’, ‘The Ten Commandments’ and ‘Ben-Hur’, did retain its big screen visual appeal.
‘The Robe’ released on 16th September 1953, was the first film shot
and projected in Cinema Scope;
In which special lenses were used to compress a wide image into a
standard frame and then expanded it again during projection;
Resulting in an image almost two and a half times as high and also as wide, - captivating the viewers imagination!

Demand For New Themes During The 1950s :
The idealized portrayal of men and women since the Second World War,
Now failed to satisfy the youth who sought exciting symbols for rebellion.
So Hollywood responded with anti-heroes with stars like James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Paul Newman.
They replaced conventional actors like Tyron Power, Van Johnson, and Robert Taylor to a great extent, to meet the requirement of the age.
Anti-heroines included Ava Gardner, Kim Novak, and Marilyn Monroe with her vibrant *** appeal;
They provided excitement for the new generation with a change of scene.
Themes of rebellion against established authority was present in many Rock and Roll songs,
Including the 1954 Bill Hailey and His Comets’ ‘Rock Around the Clock’.
The era also saw rise to stardom of Elvis Presley the teen heartthrob!
Meeting the youthful aspirations with his songs like ‘Jailhouse Rock’!
I recall the lyrics of this 1957 film ‘Jailhouse Rock’ of my school days, which had featured the youth icon Elvis:
   “The Warden threw a party in the county jail,
     The prison band was there and they began to wail.
     The band was jumping and the joint began to sing,
     You should’ve heard them knocked-out jail bird sing.
     Let’s rock, everybody in the whole cell block……………
     Spider Murphy played the tenor saxophone,
     Little Joe was blowing the slide trombone.
     The drummer boy from Illinois went crash, boom, bang!
     The whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang, Let's rock...

Rock and Roll music began to tear down color barriers, and Afro-
American musicians like Chuck Berry and Little Richard became
very popular!
Now I must caution my readers that thousands of feature films got  released during this eventful decade in Hollywood.
To cover them all within this limited space becomes an impossible
task, which may kindly be understood !
However, I shall try to do so in a summarized form as best as I could.

Box Office Hits Year-Wise From 1950 To 1959 :
Top Ten Year-Wise hit films chronologically are: Cinderella (1950),
Quo Vadis, The Greatest Show on Earth, Peter Pan, Rear Window,
Lady and the *****, Ten Commandments, Bridge on the River
Kwai, South Pacific, and Ben-Hur of 1959.

However Taking The Entire Decade Of 1950s Collectively,
The Top Films Get Rated As Follows Respectively:
The Ten Commandments, followed by Lady and the *****, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, Bridge on the River Kwai, Around the World in Eighty Days, This is Cinerama, The Greatest Show on Earth, Rear Window, South Pacific, The Robe, Giant, Seven Wonders of the World, White Christmas, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Sayonara, Demetrius and the Gladiator, Peyton Place, Some Like It Hot, Quo Vadis, and Auntie Mame.

Film Debuts By Rising Stars During The 1950s :
The decade of the ‘50s saw a number of famous film stars making
their first appearance.
There was Peter Sellers in ‘The Black Rose’, Marlon Brando in
‘The Men’, and actress Sophia Loren in ‘Toto Tarzan’.
Following year saw Charles Bronson in ‘You Are in the Navy Now’,
Audrey Hepburn in ‘Our Wild Oats’, and Grace Kelly, the future
Princess of Monaco, in her first film ‘Fourteen Hours’. (1951)
While **** Brigitte Bardot appeared in 1952 movie ‘Crazy for Love’; and 1953 saw Steve Mc Queen in ‘******* The Run’.
Jack Lemon, Paul Newman, and Omar Sharif featured in films
during 1954.
The following year saw Clint Eastwood, Shirley Mc Lean, Walter
Matthau, and Jane Mansfield, all of whom the audience adored.
The British actor Michael Cain appeared in 1956; also Elvis Presley
the youth icon in ‘Love Me Tender’ and as the future Rock and Roll
King!
In 1957 came Sean Connery, followed by Jack Nicholson, Christopher Plummer, and Vanessa Redgrave.
While the closing decade of the ‘50s saw James Coburn, along with
director, script writer, and producer Steven Spielberg, make their
debut appearance.

Death During The 1950s: This decade also saw the death of actors
like Humphrey Bogart, Tyron Power and Errol Flynn.
Including the death of producer and director of epic movies the
renowned Cecil B. De Mille!
Though I have conclude the Golden Age of Hollywood with the 50’s Decade,
The glitz and glamour of its Oscar Awards continue even to this day.
With its red carpet and lighted marquee appeal and fashion display!

CONTINUING THE HOLLYWOOD STORY  WITH  FEW TITBITS
From Fort Lee of New Jersey we have traveled west to Hollywood,
California.
From the silent movie days to the first ‘talking picture’ with Warren
Bros’ film ‘The Jazz Singer’.  (06 Oct 1927)
On 31st July 1928 for the first time the audience heard the MGM’s
mascot Leo’s mighty roar!
While in July 1929 Warren Bros’ first all-talking and all- Technicolor
Film appeared titled - ‘On With The Show’.
Austrian born Hedy Lamarr shocked the audience appearing **** in a Czechoslovak film ‘Ecstasy’!  (1933)
She fled from her husband to join MGM, becoming a star of the
‘40s and the ‘50s.
The ‘Private Life of Henry VII’ became the first British film to win the American Academy Award.  (1933)
On 11Dec 1934, FOX released ‘Bright Eyes’ with Shirley Temple, who  became the first Child artist to win this Award!
While in 1937 Walt Disney released the first full animated feature film titled - ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarf ‘.
The British film director Alfred Hitchcock who came to Hollywood later;
Between 1940 and 1947, made great thrillers like ‘Rebecca’, ‘Notorious’,‘Rear Window’, and ‘Dial M for ******’.
But he never won an Academy Award as a Director!

THE GOLDEN GLOBE AWARD:
This award began in 1944 by the Foreign Correspondence Association at
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Two fine films: The Lost City and Blood Diamond.
I joined Blood Diamond during a village massacre
and said to my wife A gun in every home.
Those devils would think twice
before razing the village and seizing the boys.

A well-regulated militia.
The local militia the most interesting moment
in a strong film with motive (economic, emotional), action (chases,
      fights) and a ****, sexless love story.
Use of violence by the local militia for a limited purpose: protect the
      community, the young
from the janjaweed. The crop from the ****.
Limited scope and defensive posture
but armed and coordinated, cooperative, the men (and the women)
      side by side.
Warriors at the gate, you will not run, you will not bargain.
Just violence = limited scope, defensive posture.

Great music. Cuba, Africa.
The Lost City, when the communists tell the club owner under threat
      of violence
No saxophones in the band. The saxophone!
Invented by a Belgian--Look what the Belgians are doing in the
      Congo!
When the state's violence is turned against the citizenry
for non-violent acts.

This quiet neighborhood, July,
undergirded by violence, force. That's a given--
any farmer, custodian, EMT will tell you that.
Without just violence
Gandhi's scope, and King's, might be vanishingly limited,
negligible (but not non-existent)?
                                                  ­     Regarding King
the matter is simple -- he was non-violent but dependent upon
federal force to counter the South's violence.
No doubt without the larger force, the non-violent would be
      overwhelmed by southern violence.
Here, non-violence was a tactic, not an ethic.
Gandhi, however, had no violent partner to protect him from the
      British. Or did he?
1. There was the potential violence of the population, which Gandhi
    restrained but could release which the British feared, and
2. It was the restrained (limited scope) violence of the British that
    allowed Gandhi to exist rather than be extinguished--this restraint
    was a (British) cultural imperative (limited scope) as well as
    emanating from Britain's view of India as a protectorate and
    valued citizen of the United Kingdom (defensive posture).

What about violence or threat of violence to compel compliance with
      community
as in mortgage foreclosure, driving without license, drug possession.
Perhaps it is necessary violence to maintain orderly commerce, the
      common space, and preempt bad behaviors associated with
      otherwise neutral, private acts.
The defensive posture is the common good; the limited scope is
      forgoing deadly force.
But the citizen, too, must maintain a disciplined, armed non-violence,
in case the state (the janjaweed) engages in an unjust, autoimmune
      violence.
Hence, a gun in every home.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
LJ May 2016
Tethered at the end
with no hope to amend
seduced each other to appease
your love flow in me with ease
Darling, don't look back on you
The days when the rainbow was lifeless
The ultraviolet was in hues of grey
The sunrise reflected back on the skies
The multitude of sorrowful rainy clouds
All cried out and behind our front
My soul laid and screamed aloud

NOW
The shell of the loneliness undone
Chase of the summerly winds donned
The day beckoned with clarity
All hate erased, our love not charity
Un-crippled chase, the healed ails
Un-rippled wavelets,currents and sails

THEN
I unmask the casket
Claim the frozen confusion called life
On this walls are our sacred scripts
The prints that reads indelible
Of how our love nurtures the nests
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
i can't believe i came across this today,
but i am certain did...
   an experience so vague i couldn't believe,
i actually experienced dyslexia,
call it quasi call it pseduo... but it was very
much akin... from the book's narrative...
but not from the footnotes, i read the footnotes
at perfect cognitive speed, but perhaps
returning to the narrative i did experience
a slack of the + (add) of how words are
dissected and quickly put back together...
  yes, that other arithmetic with very little
breathing room, yes, that thing without
a soul... the word... or god...
    i turned custard brain, fudge...
     i felt like watching the gymnastics at
the para-olympics... and if i was going for a cheap
joke / english black humor i'd probably
laugh at that... but since this is the most
perfect ideal, i can't only make that comparison.

and so it was, i sat there doing nothing productive,
nothing... counting sheep to encourage
day-dreaming...
       so i said: 'i'll read a book', like i might do
on the whim in my grandparent's house
(one of the many reasons i decided to be "canadian" -
and establish a firm belief in bilingualism -
since if i didn't speak the tribal tongue
i wouldn't be rummaging in my grandfather's
library... and stealing books from him...
  well, exporting them to england, where he said
on my last visit: your library is bigger than
mine, isn't? well... it can fill a double-bed
   and be stacked at about 300cm up...)
    maybe the fact that being immersed in the tribe:
polish on the radio, on the television,
the fact that i can be without the internet for
weeks on end and have no quick-canvas outlet for
my earned tongue is the reason i could read
Kraszewski's* Dei Ira / bozy gniew / god's wrath...
    (there is too much subtle differences between
capital iota and little-town lambda -
   or why iota had to have the dot above it, anyway) -
so dei ira looks better... which is why i'm
not orthodox about using capital instances all the time...
   what a whirlwind...
         but prior to that i was watching
a david jacoby film - love is the devil: study for
a portrait by francis bacon...
                                         and all i could think of:
what marvel, to have a **** shoved up your ***
and speak so beautifully...
  have such a vast array of narratives...
     i can only assume that experiencing **** ***
gives you the other man's **** shoved into
your mouth that acts like a tongue and speaks
      so many truths as could be possible,
as in Freudian dream: when a woman wears a hat...
a talking ****** on her head from slurping
at the vaginal grotto of another woman...
     such a marvel though, homosexuality, esp.
the type of homosexuality that has art to express
rather than a civil partnership, civil rights...
  i mean, i could watch this stuff for days and never
yawn or need to watch protests and marches...
  just the image of what is best described
   john william waterhouse's
   painting hypnos and thanatos...
      i can't help but see it like that...
         francis plays the female role, his model the evident
dominant male... and sure, francis having his
**** punctured for what could be best described
as diarhhea either side of the equator does so...
it's as if he is eloquent enough / intelligent to allow
this to happen, for another man to speak through
him somehow... the model's phallus in francis' ****
becomes the model's tongue in francis' mouth...
    which becomes the stage for hypnos and thanatos...
in that francis' tongue becomes a phallus in
the mind of the model: and it whispers him nightmares
in his sleep... a vicious cycle indeed...
           that's the homosexuality that's highly regarded
by me, not the confetti functional type that
    exploits science and social norms and can no longer
lend itself to art, to transcending the taboo...
      with homosexuality divorced from art...
i can't see anything profound by gays from now on...
i really can't... if there is no art in this deviant
love, no art is worth being expressed by this
once glorious realm that has grovelled into the gutter...
so let's start once more: with Onan!

and everyday i awake wake with only one identifiable
fear: will i not write a single verse as of today?
it's not a case of a single day encapsulating my
fear, but that that crux day: furthered into a silence
that can't compensate the act of writing with
anything, other than sleep... i just can't seem
to smarten up concerning this very rational phobia...
    and having said that: here is the incision mark
denoting an interlude, and how: what are originally
intended to be of enso quality, cannot
   stand up to the biological tick-tock of needing
the loo...
     and do i think o'keefe's music foundation
by children is so much better than the original
done by tool concerning the song forty six & two?
yes, yes i do... just look at the kid on the bass guitar,
the fact that bass guitar is allowed to state a layer
of cake just above drums to set the rhythm
means the rhythm guitar doesn't have to solipsistic
******* and scale the everest of solo...
   it can remain in the rhythm section,
actually be worth a rhythm,
   the guitar doesn't need to overload into a solo...
the vocals belong to that domain...
   as long as the bass guitar is allowed to be heard
(unlike in metallica) - then i must be tone deaf!
revise me!
                    jazz knew the importance of every instrument,
and the need to be spontaneous, but also
the need to be anti-synchronisation,
  and therefore anti-muddle tsunami of:
all together now!
            n'ah, **** that **** (yes, the Vulgate is
coming along, i like the pooch, i don't care what things
i might say, the rude growl-bark is coming along:
so we can admire him licking his *****, and for no
other reason he's coming):
as in the birth of sexes... which the animals don't
seem to comprehend that much intently...
                 i can't like my ******* or **** one off...
but i know i can abstract a woman into
a hand and just pretend it's me doing the ****
crap with her... than myself included,
   or as i might add: never drink or *******
before the mirror... soon enough your reflection
becomes a bit odd, not because of what you do,
but because you hide so much perplexity before
you in Lucifer's daylight with which
  the moon Narcissus governs the moods...
that you start to look at your actual shadow
   with more clarity and fact...
  looking in the mirror is the reverse of looking
at your shadow under a street-lamp at night...
the mirror sort of becomes a shadow...
             the form becomes a bit (ha ha, what
an exagerration) vague... i look into
a mirror and i am but looking into shadow...
                   and i can't exactly recognise the eyes,
or make our geometric approximations
of a skull...
                      it's not even a case of a poor Yorrick
blah blah.
    or as the new governing body put it:
there are to be no mirrors contained within
the gates of Pandemonium...
        each to his own shadow, each to his own abstract...
   for the shadow will be deemed the new mirror...
   the new found glacier of, yes:
when salt water freezes, comes pure white floating
on the oceans... but must you freeze fresh water
and there's this matrix...
as in icecubes...
       dropping from a vendor machine...
and i knew i shouldn't have digressed so much,
but then again, if there was no ****** tick-tock
       rebellion, i probably wouldn't have revealed this much...
with ancient lore...
    who'd use the word Pandemonium these days,
if you're merely trying to call it: the Houses of Westminster...
well sure, accusation due: i prefer
a bunch of kids feeding me a nostalgia over a song
i heard aged 14... such is the power of the song 46 & 2
done to a... wait wait...
  i was talking about bass guitars and jazz...
(i could never get to like rap...
            i liked when the blacks deconstructed classical
music, but they did after: i'll never like,
mainly people of blackies and that general fanfare
of rap feeding tribalism) -
          the greatest aspect of jazz:
that on some recordings there's a chance to hear all
the instruments having a solo moment...
you'll hear a quintent solo:
  the piano, the drum, the saxophone, the horn,
the double-bass solo... each doing a solo...
not some erectile dysfunction of rock music from the 1980s...
i mean: each one will do a solo...
  and **** me, that's grand... and given there's no vocals
makes it all the better... but where, the ****, can i hear
jazz music being kept with such high regard as i
might find mozart pickled and even mummified
     to suddenly rise again and compose like i might hear
it on classical.fm... maybe acid jazz killed it...
   i can't seem to hear of one place where i can hear
the range of jazz music i have in my collection...
which probably mean's i'm lazy and don't fiddle about
with the radio fm and am channels... to "look" for jazz...
  i'm all applause though: jazz allowed for
deconstruction of classical music and paved the way
for the current state of polyphony in plateau...
    meaning: too much drum, too much ump-pst-ump-pst...
   jazz paved the wsay from orchestra,
   and yes, maybe because it was too impromptu
as it was necessary, that there was no jazz composer...
  there could have been no jazz script... no pre
           to what was otherwise alway and only: uno...
a once...
    sure Thelonious Monk did use an orchestra at some time...
  but if only someone decided to do a solipsism
and write out jazz like mozart wrote out
      concerto... but no... jazz descending from on high
and invoking african villages could never do to
its practitioners the deadly fate of breeding a jazz
composer...
                   it was the communal idea, the musketeer
unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno:
   you could never allow a silent dictator like
a mozart dictating to a throng of people contained
within an orchestra... which later made the once
silent dictators very very vocal... speeches in Munich
alike...
           the fact that jazz has no script,
and the fact that if someone tries to play a Miles Davis
from script... is completely an ***...
     put him on a donkey (backwards)
                     donning a sanbenito and lynch him
to the nearest traffic junction to **** louder than
a car klaxon... that will do the trick...
       they did bother to script led zeppelin though...
    maybe it was the stiff competition that did it:
jazz. airy... breezy... but what a quick moment it was...
i'm almost jealous of the beat poets experimenting
with jazz musicians... but then i'm not:
i like to think of them as parasites...
   you know... those things feeding of spontaneity...
parasites... or dare i say: plagiarising leeches...
plagiarisng what? well, not the content, the context:
feeding of jazz spontaneity... not working from
old composers like Milton or Dante...
thank god for Ezra Pound and Sylvia Plath.

seems i have a ****** for a larynx...

perhaps i just seem to mean: i am a firm believer
in bilingualism... perhaps that's based on
some sort of religiosity,
    and let me tell you: it's born with
a schismatic nature, siamese, but not like a
siamese twin, in that it really needs a surgeon...
  it's a nucleus that's inherently schismatic...
i can't blame the english nation being
so lazy in its multicultural ethos,
i quiet like it: i don't live in a ghetto...
but forgetting my native tongue just so i could
sing a national anthem with conviction?
na'ah, that's not me...
            we'll come to Kraszewski's rex piast
in a minute, and it really was a genuine
experience of placebo dyslexia,
the one on the other side: should i have written
zilch...
      i believe in something quiet Canadian...
i don't believe in isolated communities,
   or ghetto tactic... i am a firm disciple of the advent
of bilingualism: forget the *** for just one day,
your genitals won't suddenly drop off with
gangrene scabs... you don't need a doctor
to say that...
                i mean: bilingualism as a concern
for incorporated culture, and the culture you were
born in... why can't these people just care to juggle
three testicles?
                   oh, elaphantisis got in the way...
sure, two oranges and a watermelon: makes sense...
no!
      have mutual respect, you come to me sprechen
Piast i'll speak Piast to you...
   well: given that polish and polish aren't that far apart,
i'd feel inclined to utilise
           idiosyncratic lingo...
   lingua genesis...
                children are so much easier to utilise than
angels: they have yet to experience anything at all
on the Socratic basis...
            so if i talk Piast to me, you will know what
i'm talking about?
     it doesn't matter if you do... i chose to be
a library, rather than an encyclopoedia of immigrants...
    there's not need to test me on general knowledge:
the stuff i "know" already gives me membrane...
     i respect both the culture of my birth and the skin
i am sometimes told to make sure is called tattoo,
and what i see before me, and quiet frankly:
i see nothing before me... a turban here,
    a sausage & mash there, a pint of guinness there,
noodles elsewhere... all in all: globalisation
and the elements: earthquakes... torandos...
   there isn't much to see in a poly-ethnic society...
there are too many major changes taking place
in a pyramid of non-ethnic ascriptive
         non-this-and-that pawns...
  it's not even painful: just a bit disgusting to watch...
  and yes i have access to a voult of monochromatic
society:
   you know how many ethnic minorities i spotted
in a train station in Warsaw? three...
two asians and one black woman...
              i haven't experienced the cold winters in Poland:
but i knew there was a limit...
         only about three apaches in a crowd of
albinos... which doesn't translate as:
    i was somehow content, it just meant
that most signs in Warsaw are written with a bilingual
bridge of Polish... and Ukranian Cyrillic...
plenty of Ukranian Mecca-bandits, for sure,
     but that's the end of the line with what
western Europe is doing to itself...
        every time i come back from Poland
i'm smeared with a rainbow of variety,
   it's either: i want to **** all these girlies
or i want to **** them... mostly the former,
  but you get the picture of experiencing the alternative
of the western experiment: since marxist economy
was "doomed" or simply expected to fail...
the economy finally seems reasonable with safety
for the old and the pension plans...
that marxist-culturalism had to emerge... if we are not
on the same dough plan of being content with a table and
a chair: might as well say we're all prone to don
a ******* afro.
                ***** are naturally curly, no?
going back "home" is always a weird experience, i tend
to read books there... like Kraszewski (who,
even the locals **** as being an unbearable bore
and joke that Joyce is easier read)... with his dei ire...
my grandfather just dropped it into my hands
as an experiment, thinking i wouldn't read it...
    well, in terms of translation Kraszewski is a myth-broker...
no one would read him,
  meaning: i'm kind of grateful that poles
seem to sorta: not exist, when it comes to citing examples
that include modernity and the history being
formed... i could sorta believe it if i were Estonian
or Lithuanian, or from Liechtenstein...
          but we're talking about a place with a large
enough population to be a major player in some
wordly conflict... Poland isn't that small...
    but yet it appears like it appeared from
the 18th century onwards... a state partitioned...
    and what i love about remaining tactifully bilingual?
i can talk about my native in a "colonial" tongue...
hence the " " definition: self-acquired...
             that's why i became spastic-fantastic reading
Kraszewski's rex piast - nothing came in,
i lost all trace of syllable construction, i read the books
so slowly i had one page done in about 10 minutes:
prolonging my musing of world powers, thrones
and crowns on a toilet...
        *******... another interlude.

can anyone see the, dodo project? i really just see a dodo project, yes: eine dodo projekt... i'm white, i'm male: can i be allowed to express these nouns in a pronoun, or am i schizophrenic prone? it seems i c
Silverflame Aug 2016
Flute
Elegant, fragile
Captivating, enticing, comforting
Cleansing your soul, intensify your spine
Alluring, controlling, compelling
Powerful, sophisticated
Saxophone
I wanted to create something different, so I decided to give a diamante poem a try. Perhaps not the best, but it sure was a lot of fun.
I play both flute and saxophone, so I thought it was a great idea to "compare" them, in this kind of poem.

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