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Nigel Morgan Nov 2012
As a woman, and in the service of my Lord the Emperor Wu, my life is governed by his command. At twenty I was summoned to this life at court and have made of it what I can, within the limitations of the courtesan I am supposed to be, and the poet I have now become. Unlike my male counterparts, some of whom have lately found seclusion in the wilderness of rivers and mountains, I have only my personal court of three rooms and its tiny garden and ornamental pond. But I live close to the surrounding walls of the Zu-lin Gardens with its astronomical observatories and bold attempts at recreating illusions of celebrated locations in the Tai mountains. There, walking with my cat Xi-Lu in the afternoons, I imagine a solitary life, a life suffused with the emptiness I crave.
 
In the hot, dry summer days my maid Mei-Lim and I have sought a temporary retreat in the pine forests above Lingzhi. Carried in a litter up the mountain paths we are left in a commodious hut, its open walls making those simple pleasures of drinking, eating and sleeping more acute, intense. For a few precious days I rest and meditate, breathe the mountain air and the resinous scents of the trees. I escape the daily commerce of the court and belong to a world that for the rest of the year I have to imagine, the world of the recluse. To gain the status of the recluse, open to my male counterparts, is forbidden to women of the court. I am woman first, a poet and calligrapher second. My brother, should he so wish, could present a petition to revoke his position as a man of letters, an official commentator on the affairs of state. But he is not so inclined. He has already achieved notoriety and influence through his writing on the social conditions of town and city. He revels in a world of chatter, gossip and intrigue; he appears to fear the wilderness life.  
 
I must be thankful that my own life is maintained on the periphery. I am physically distant from the hub of daily ceremonial. I only participate at my Lord’s express command. I regularly feign illness and fatigue to avoid petty conflict and difficulty. Yet I receive commissions I cannot waver: to honour a departed official; to celebrate a son’s birth to the Second Wife; to fulfil in verse my Lord’s curious need to know about the intimate sorrows of his young concubines, their loneliness and heartache.
 
Occasionally a Rhapsody is requested for an important visitor. The Emperor Wu is proud to present as welcome gifts such poetic creations executed in fine calligraphy, and from a woman of his court. Surely a sign of enlightment and progress he boasts! Yet in these creations my observations are parochial: early morning frost on the cabbage leaves in my garden; the sound of geese on their late afternoon flight to Star Lake; the disposition of the heavens on an Autumn night. I live by the Tao of Lao-Tzu, perceiving the whole world from my doorstep.
 
But I long for the reclusive life, to leave this court for my family’s estate in the valley my peasant mother lived as a child. At fourteen she was chosen to sustain the Emperor’s annual wish for young girls to be groomed for concubinage. Like her daughter she is tall, though not as plain as I; she put her past behind her and conceded her adolescence to the training required by the court. At twenty she was recommended to my father, the court archivist, as second wife. When she first met this quiet, dedicated man on the day before her marriage she closed her eyes in blessing. My father taught her the arts of the library and schooled her well. From her I have received keen eyes of jade green and a prestigious memory, a memory developed she said from my father’s joy of reading to her in their private hours, and before she could read herself. Each morning he would examine her to discover what she had remembered of the text read the night before. When I was a little child she would quote to me the Confucian texts on which she had been ****** schooled, and she then would tell me of her childhood home. She primed my imagination and my poetic world with descriptions of a domestic rural life.
 
Sometimes in the arms of my Lord I have freely rhapsodized in chusi metre these delicate word paintings of my mother’s home. She would say ‘We will walk now to the ruined tower beside the lake. Listen to the carolling birds. As the sparse clouds move across the sky the warm sun strokes the winter grass. Across the deep lake the forests are empty. Now we are climbing the narrow steps to the platform from which you and I will look towards the sun setting in the west. See the shadows are lengthening and the air becomes colder. The blackbird’s solitary song heralds the evening.  Look, an owl glides silently beneath us.’
 
My Lord will then quote from Hsieh Ling-yun,.
 
‘I meet sky, unable to soar among clouds,
face a lake, call those depths beyond me.’
 
And I will match this quotation, as he will expect.
 
‘Too simple-minded to perfect Integrity,
and too feeble to plough fields in seclusion.’
 
He will then gaze into my eyes in wonder that this obscure poem rests in my memory and that I will decode the minimal grammar of these early characters with such poetry. His characters: Sky – Bird – Cloud – Lake – Depth. My characters: Fool – Truth – Child – Winter field – Isolation.
 
Our combined invention seems to take him out of his Emperor-self. He is for a while the poet-scholar-sage he imagines he would like to be, and I his foot-sore companion following his wilderness journey. And then we turn our attention to our bodies, and I surprise him with my admonitions to gentleness, to patience, to arousing my pleasure. After such poetry he is all pleasure, sensitive to the slightest touch, and I have my pleasure in knowing I can control this powerful man with words and the stroke of my fingertips rather than by delicate youthful beauty or the guile and perverse ingenuity of an ****** act. He is still learning to recognise the nature and particularness of my desires. I am not as his other women: who confuse pleasure with pain.
 
Thoughts of my mother. Without my dear father, dead ten years, she is a boat without a rudder sailing on a distant lake. She greets each day as a gift she must honour with good humour despite the pain of her limbs, the difficulty of walking, of sitting, of eating, even talking. Such is the hurt that governs her ageing. She has always understood that my position has forbidden marriage and children, though the latter might be a possibility I have not wished it and made it known to my Lord that it must not be. My mother remains in limbo, neither son or daughter seeking to further her lineage, she has returned to her sister’s home in the distant village of her birth, a thatched house of twenty rooms,
 
‘Elms and willows shading the eaves at the back,
and, in front,  peach and plum spread wide.
 
Villages lost across mist-haze distances,
Kitchen smoke drifting wide-open country,
 
Dogs bark deep among the back roads out here
And cockerels crow from mulberry treetops.
 
My esteemed colleague T’ao Ch’ien made this poetry. After a distinguished career in government service he returned to the life of a recluse-farmer on his family farm. Living alone in a three-roomed hut he lives out his life as a recluse and has endured considerable poverty. One poem I know tells of him begging for food. His world is fields-and-gardens in contrast to Hsieh Ling-yin who is rivers-and-mountains. Ch’ien’s commitment to the recluse life has brought forth words that confront death and the reality of human experience without delusion.
 
‘At home here in what lasts, I wait out life.’
 
Thus my mother waits out her life, frail, crumbling more with each turning year.
 
To live beyond the need to organise daily commitments due to others, to step out into my garden and only consider the dew glistening on the loropetalum. My mind is forever full of what is to be done, what must be completed, what has to be said to this visitor who will today come to my court at the Wu hour. Only at my desk does this incessant chattering in the mind cease, as I move my brush to shape a character, or as the needle enters the cloth, all is stilled, the world retreats; there is the inner silence I crave.
 
I long to see with my own eyes those scenes my mother painted for me with her words. I only know them in my mind’s eye having travelled so little these past fifteen years. I look out from this still dark room onto my small garden to see the morning gathering its light above the rooftops. My camellia bush is in flower though a thin frost covers the garden stones.
 
And so I must imagine how it might be, how I might live the recluse life. How much can I jettison? These fine clothes, this silken nightgown beneath the furs I wrap myself in against the early morning air. My maid is sleeping. Who will make my tea? Minister to me when I take to my bed? What would become of my cat, my books, the choice-haired brushes? Like T’ao Ch’ien could I leave the court wearing a single robe and with one bag over my shoulders? Could I walk for ten days into the mountains? I would disguise myself as a man perhaps. I am tall for a woman, and though my body flows in broad curves there are ways this might be assuaged, enough perhaps to survive unmolested on the road.
 
Such dreams! My Lord would see me returned within hours and send a servant to remain at my gate thereafter. I will compose a rhapsody about a concubine of standing, who has even occupied the purple chamber, but now seeks to relinquish her privileged life, who coverts the uncertainty of nature, who would endure pain and privation in a hut on some distant mountain, who will sleep on a mat on its earth floor. Perhaps this will excite my Lord, light a fire in his imagination. As though in preparation for this task I remove my furs, I loose the knot of my silk gown. Naked, I reach for an old under shift letting it fall around my still-slender body and imagine myself tying the lacings myself in the open air, imagine making my toilet alone as the sun appears from behind a distant mountain on a new day. My mind occupies itself with the tiny detail of living thus: bare feet on cold earth, a walk to nearby stream, the gathering of berries and mountain herbs, the making of fire, the washing of my few clothes, imagining. Imagining. To live alone will see every moment filled with the tasks of keeping alive. I will become in tune with my surroundings. I will take only what I need and rely on no one. Dreaming will end and reality will be the slug on my mat, the bone-chilling incessant mists of winter, the thorn in the foot, the wild winds of autumn. My hands will become stained and rough, my long limbs tanned and scratched, my delicate complexion freckled and wind-pocked, my hair tied roughly back. I will become an animal foraging on a dank hillside. Such thoughts fill me with deep longing and a ****** desire to be tzu-jan  - with what surrounds me, ablaze with ****** self.
 
It is not thought the custom of a woman to hold such desires. We are creatures of order and comfort. We do not live on the edge of things, but crave security and well-being. We learn to endure the privations of being at the behest of others. Husbands, children, lovers, our relatives take our bodies to them as places of comfort, rest and desire. We work at maintaining an ordered flow of existence. Whatever our station, mistress or servant we compliment, we keep things in order, whether that is the common hearth or the accounts of our husband’s court. Now my rhapsody begins:
 
A Rhapsody on a woman wishing to live as a recluse
 
As a lady of my Emperor’s court I am bound in service.
My court is not my own, I have the barest of means.
My rooms are full of gifts I am forced barter for bread.
Though the artefacts of my hands and mind
Are valued and widely renown,
Their commissioning is an expectation of my station,
With no direct reward attached.
To dress appropriately for my Lord’s convocations and assemblies
I am forced to negotiate with chamberlains and treasurers.
A bolt of silk, gold thread, the services of a needlewoman
Require formal entreaties and may lie dormant for weeks
Before acknowledgement and release.
 
I was chosen for my literary skills, my prestigious memory,
Not for my ****** beauty, though I have been called
‘Lady of the most gracious movement’ and
My speaking voice has clarity and is capable of many colours.
I sing, but plainly and without passion
Lest I interfere with the truth of music’s message.
 
Since I was a child in my father’s library
I have sought out the works of those whose words
Paint visions of a world that as a woman
I may never see, the world of the wilderness,
Of rivers and mountains,
Of fields and gardens.
Yet I am denied by my *** and my station
To experience passing amongst these wonders
Except as contrived imitations in the palace gardens.
 
Each day I struggle to tease from the small corner
Of my enclosed eye-space some enrichment
Some elemental thing to colour meaning:
To extend the bounds of my home
Across the walls of this palace
Into the world beyond.
 
I have let it be known that I welcome interviews
With officials from distant courts to hear of their journeying,
To gather word images if only at second-hand.
Only yesterday an emissary recounted
His travels to Stone Lake in the far South-West,
Beyond the gorges of the Yang-tze.
With his eyes I have seen the mountains of Suchan:
With his ears I have heard the oars crackling
Like shattering jade in the freezing water.
Images and sounds from a thousand miles
Of travel are extract from this man’s memory.
 
Such a sharing of experience leaves me
Excited but dismayed: that I shall never
Visit this vast expanse of water and hear
Its wild cranes sing from their floating nests
In the summer moonlight.
 
I seek to disappear into a distant landscape
Where the self and its constructions of the world may
Dissolve away until nothing remains but the no-mind.
My thoughts are full of the practicalities of journeying
Of an imagined location, that lonely place
Where I may be at one with myself.
Where I may delight in the everyday Way,
Myself among mist and vine, rock and cave.
Not this lady of many parts and purposes whose poems must
Speak of lives, sorrow and joy, pleasure and pain
Set amongst personal conflict and intrigue
That in containing these things, bring order to disorder;
Salve the conscience, bathe hurt, soothe sleight.
1.

From our
safe windows,
we crane our necks,
rubbernecking
past the slow
motion wreckage
unfolding in Homs.

We remain
perfectly
perched
to marvel at
the elegant arc of
a mortar shell
framing tomorrows
deep horizon,
whistling through
the twilight to
find its fruitful
mark.

In the now
we keep
complicit time,
to the arrest
of beating hearts,
snapping fingers
to the pop
of rifle cracks,
swooning to
the delicious
intoxication of
curling smoke
lofting ever
upward;
yet
thankfully
remain
distant
enough to
recuse any
possibility
of an
intimate
nexus
with the
besieged.

2.

From our
safe windows,
we behold the
urgent arrivals of
The Friends of Syria
demanding
clean sheets
and 4 Star
room service at a
Tunisian Palace
recently cleaned
and under new
management
promising a
much needed
refurbishment.

The gathered,
a clique of
this epochs
movers and shakers,
a veritable
rouges gallery of
ambassadorial
prelates, Emirs and
state department
bureaucrats
summoned
with portfolio
from the
darkest corners
of the globe.

They are
eager to
sanctify
the misery
of Homs,
deflect and
lay blame
with realpolitik
rationalizations,
commencing
official commissions
of inquiry,
deliberating
grave considerations,
issuing indictments
of formal charges for
Crimes Against
Humanity
while
remaining
urgently
engrossed
in the fascination
of interviewing
potential
process servers
to deliver the bad news
to Bashar al-Assad
and his soulless
Baathist
confederates,
if papers
are to be
served.

Yes, the diplomats
are busy meeting
in closed rooms.

In hushed circles
they whisper
into aroused ears,
railing against
Russia’s
gun running
intransigence
and China’s
geopolitical
chess moves.

Statesmen
boast of the
intrepid justice
of tipping points
and the moving poetry
of self serving tales,
weighing the impact
of stern sanctions
amidst the historical
confusion of the
asymmetrical
symmetries
of civil war.

Caravans
of Arab League
envoys roll up
in silver Bentleys,
crossing deserts
of contradictory
obfuscations,
navigating the
endless dunes
with hand held
sextants of
hidden agendas.

The heroic
Bedouins are
eager to offload
their baggage
and share
on the ground
intelligence from
their recent soirées
across Syria.

They beg
a quick fix,
the triage of a
critical catharsis
to bleed their
brains dry
of heinous
recollections,
pleading
release from a
troubled conscience
victimized by
the unnerving paradox
of reconciling
discoveries of
perverse voyeurism
with the sanctioned
explanations
of their respective
ruling elites.

The bellies
of these
scopophiliacs
are distended;
grown queasy
from a steady diet
of malfeasance
an ulcerated
world parades
in continuous loop;
spewing the raw feeds
of real time misery;
forcibly fed
the grim
visions of
frantic
fathers
rushing
the mangled
carcases
of mortally
wounded
children
to crumpled
piles of smashed
concrete that were
once hospitals.

We despondently
ask how
much longer
must we
look into
the eyes
of starving
children
emaciated from
the wanton
indifference
of the world?


3.

From our
safe windows
we wonder
how much
longer can
the urgent
burning
ambivalence
continue
before it
consumes
our common
humanity in
a final
conflagration?

My hair already
singed by the
endless firestorms
sweeping the prairies
of the world.

How can we survive
the trampling hoards,
the marauding
plagues of acrimony
fed by a voracious
blood lust aspiring to
victimize the people
of Homs and a
thousand cities
like it?


4.

From my safe
window I stand in witness
to the state execution of
refugees fleeing the
living nightmare
of Baba Amr.

The ****** of innocents,
today's newly minted martyrs,
women and children
cornered, trapped
on treacherous roads,
mercilessly
slaughtered and
defiled in death
to mark the lesson
of a ruthless master
enthralled with the
power of his
sadistic fascist
lordship.

I cannot avert my eyes
marking sights
of pleading women
begging for the
lives of their children
in exchange for
the gratification
of a sadists
lust.

My heart
is impaled
on the sharp
spear of
outrage
beholding
careening
children mowed
down with the
serrated blades
protruding
from marauding
jeeps of laughing
soldiers.

I drop
to my knees
in lakes of
tears
reflecting
a grotesque
horror stricken
image of myself.

My eyes have
murdered my soul.

The ghastly images
of Homs have chased
away my Holy Ghost
to the safety of a child's
sandbox hidden away
in a long forgotten
revered memory.


5.

From my safe window
I seethe with anger
demanding vengeance,
debating how to rise
to meet the obscenity of
the Butcher of Damascus.

The sword of Damocles
dangles so tantalizingly close
to this tyrants throat.  

The covered women
of Homs scream prayers
“may Allah bring Bashar to ruin”

Dare I pray
that Allah trip the
horsehair trigger
that holds the
sword at bay?

Do I pick up
the sword
a wield it
as an
avenging
angel?

Am I the
John Brown
of our time?

Do I organize
a Lincoln Brigade
and join the growing
leagues of jihadists
amassing at the
Gates of Damascus?

Will my righteous
indignation fit well
in a confederacy
with Hamas and
al-Qaeda as my
comrades in arms?

Do I succumb to
the passion of hate
and become just
another murderous
partisan, or do I
commend the power
of love and marshal
truth to speak with
the force of
satyagraha?

I lift a fervent prayer
to claim the justice
of Allah’s ear,
“may the knowing one
lift the veil of foolishness
that covers my heart in
cloaks of resent, cure
my blindness that ignores
my raging disease of
plausible deniability
ravaging the body politic
of humanity.”

6.

Indeed,
physician heal thyself.

I run to embrace my
illness.

I pine to understand it.

I undertake the
difficult regimen
of a cure to eradicate
the terrible affliction.

This
pernicious
plague,
subverting
the notion
of a shared
humanness
is a cunning
sedition that
undermines
the unity of
the holy spirit.  

The bell from
the toppled steeples
still tolls, echoing
across the space of
continents and eons
of temporal time.

The faithful chimes
gently chides us
to remove the wedge
of perception that
separates, divides
and undermines.

Time has come
to liberally
apply the balm
that salves the
open wounds
so common to
our common
human condition.

The power of prayer
is the joining of hands
with others racked
with the common
affliction of humanness.

Allah,  
My eyes are wide open,
my sacred heart revealed,
my sleeves are rolled up,
my memory is stocked,
my soul filled with resolve,
my hand is lifted
extended to all
brothers and sisters.
Lift us,
gather us
into one
loving embrace.

Selah


7.

From the safe
windows of
our palaces
we live within
earshot of
the trilling
zaghroutas
of exasperation
flowing from
the besieged
city smouldering
under Bashar’s
symphony of terror.

Our nostrils
fill with the
acrid plumes
of unrequited
lamentations
lifting from the
the burning
destruction
of shelled
buildings.

Our eyes spark
from the night
tracers
of sleeking
snipers
flitting along
the city’s
rooftops.

The deadly jinn
indiscriminately
inject the
paralysis of
random fear
into the veins
of the city
with each
skillful
head shot.

These
ghoulish
assassins
lavish in their
macabre work;
like vultures
they eagerly
feast on the
corpses of their ****,
the stench of bloated
bodies drying in the
sun is the perfume
that fills their nostrils.


8.

From our
safe window
we discern the
silhouettes of militants
still boldly standing
amidst the
mounting rubble of an
unbowed Homs
shouting;

Allah Akbar!!!
Allah Akbar!!!
Allah Akbar!!!

raising pumped fists,
singing songs
of resistance,
dancing to
the revelation of
freedom,
refusing to
be coward by
the slashing
whips of a
butchers
terrible
sword.


9.

From my
safe window
my tongue laps
the pap
of infants
suckling from
the depleted
teats of mothers
who cannot cry
for their dying
children;
tears fail
to well from
the exhaustion
of dehydrated
pools.

10.

From my
safe window
my heart stirs
to the muezzin
calling the
desperate faithful
from the toppled
rubble of dashed
minarets.

We can
no longer
shut our ears
to the adhan
of screams
the silent
voices that echo
the blatant injustice
of a people under siege.


11.

From my
safe window,
I pay
Homage to Homs
and call brothers
and sisters to rise
with vigilant
insistence
that hostilities
cease and
humanity be
upheld,
respected and
protected.


12.

From my safe
window
I perceive
the zagroutas
of sorrow
manifest as a
whiling hum,
a sweeping
blue mist,
levitating
the coffins
from the rubble
of ravaged streets.

The swirling
chorus of
mourning
joins my
desperate
prayers;
rising in
concert
with the
black billows
of smoke
dancing
away
from the
flaming
embers
of scorched
neighborhoods.


13.

From my
safe window
I heed
the fluttering
wings
of avenging
angels
furiously
batting
as they
climb
the black
plumes,
lifting from
the scattered bricks
of the desecrated
city.

It is the
Jacob’s
Ladder
for our
time;
marking
a new
consecrated
place
where
a New Adam
is destined
to be formed
from the
pulverized
stones of
desolation.

14.

From our
safe windows
we peer into
resplendent
mirrors
beholding
the perfect image of
ourselves
eying
falling tears
dripping blood,
coloring death
onto the
blanched sheets
of disheveled beds.


15.

From our
safe windows
our voices are silenced,
our words mock urgency
our thoughts betray comprehension
our senses fail to illicit empathy
our action is the only worthy prayer


16.

From my
safe window
I hear the
mortar shells
walking toward
my little palace,
the crack
of a ******
shot
precedes
the wiz of a
passing bullet
whispering
its presence
into my
waxen
ear.


17.

From my
safe window,
my palms scoop
the rich soil
of the flower boxes
perched on my sill.
I anoint the tender
green shoots of  the
Arab Spring
with an incessant flow
of bittersweet tears.

Music selection:
John Coltrane
A Love Supreme
Acknowledgment

Oakland
2/28/12
jbm
Sleepless Dec 2015
Going through my asks
This girl wants a trade
He wants a detailed dog
But they don't want to pay

I haven't made a dime
There are too many requests
"I'll pay you next week" please,
You're just like all the rest

Commissions, commissions
You give me so much stress
What started out as one small sketch
Has turned into a mess

Oh commissions, commissions
It's enough to make me blue
You people have to understand
I need the money too!
To the tune of Jingle Bells
Please remember your artist friend in December. It's really not an easy time for them
Nat Lipstadt Feb 2018
honor: “you stumble where gods get lost”

honor,

still the tattoo being drawn on my senses,
unresolved and demanding
solution or surrender,
acknowledging, that I am not poet enough

tho y’all keep diverting me with poem commissions,
half started but will freezer keep until Jacob’s angel and I
have wrestled this honor notion to the ground for good,
which means once and forever

Patti’s words distinctly heard:
“you stumble where gods get lost”
and that’s what the poetry is for,
to word wrestle until the resolution revelation shines
and someone cries out uncle, father, son, are we not all
samed and shamed when we wrestle with honor


will you know honor when it presents itself?

a man keeps his word and another honors them both
with a monthly sum that says friendship is a promise kept

a father texts to a son in trouble “got your back” that elicits
a return verse of “I love you;”. that’s love, not honor cause someone remembers their immigrant father’s hell going slowly by and this poem and that memory revived, that’s honor

(******* tears on my phone screen, a ****** pain @6:53am
on sabbath morn; no body invited the interlopers;  not me anyway)

honor is not a parade or not the kind on my mind today: the honor that gets you medaled that’s all about brotherhood,
that’s a different kind of honor I understand but not what I’m
about right wright write now

looking for small acts, small doses, nearly invisible to the naked
eye, indeed, ya need a scrunched up squint to detect the honor that I need so desperately seek to theorem proof that,
even I got some

one of you wrote me, I am nothing.
one of you wrote me,
that they are all busted up on the boulevard of broken dreams.

trusting a stranger thru his crazier poems with depreciation and overwhelming sadnesses,
is that honor?

my rsvp (how could I not), is that honor?

honor sought in the small necessities which are more important than small kindnesses wrought from love: those come easy natural

necessary necessity, the word itself bleeds pressure on the soul; but i don’t mean paying your bills, burying your parents and such stuff;


honor is in the unnecessary:  where actions defeat uncertainty, honor is stepping up when no one calls out need

honor is the first step the hand extended and the concomitant
electric shock that traverses two hands in a shake that obviates
unnecessary words
like thank you

which why gods stumble, get lost, they only get praise conferred
but honor belongs only to us humans,
to give honor.
that’s power gods don’t got,
why they oft get lost

so thank you for staying with me this far,
you honor me by listening to an old man
seizing up when his mind asks him direct

did you live with honor,
and tho the summing up s’ain’t over,
(lol laughing, at the ain’t autocorrect),
at least now I know what to count,
what counts,
doing the unnecessary unasked
in small ways, a quieter doing good,
honor needs two and starts when you say hey
hey you...


*7:36am Saturnday  2+10+18
Shabbat Shekalim
writ without disguise
I sat across from a man made of millions.
From his shiny black patent shoes to his dolphin patterned socks,
and his slicked back gray blonde hair, a color so elusive
Midas himself would find fault with designating blame,
I saw treachery.
If character were based on dress I would assign worth every time.
But people don't work that way: you must listen to what they say.
When he mentioned God and fate in the same breath as commissions and unlimited potential financially,
I went back to the socks.
Imagining the dolphins desperately trying to find someone else's socks,
someone less driven by green pieces of paper easily set aflame by
a deranged individual, someone like me,
who would not be so ludicrous, but entertained the notion,
would have more idealistic pure thought framing.
While the world runs in bounding strides to freedom from debt, from loans, from taxes, and money....stuff,
so that every "thing" materializes as a personal possession
and retirement happens at the unseemly age of 35,
but who will provide a home for the dolphins?

I would not throw my socks away as soon as the threads began to bare.
I would find some cerulean blue thread and weave in the ocean.
Tim Eichhorn Jun 2014
I have met Masters and OGs
within joint commissions.
While my dear, Granddaddy Purple’s
spending my tuition.

But, it was merely a Blue Dream
at blunt ceremonies.
While Hindus and Afghans breed in
holy matrimonies.

Look at all of Mary Jane's strains,
I want to be like them;
stuck pondering my bud's embrace
and all’the broken stems.

Reuniting the Skywalker's
was quite like the Death Star
far out, in space and burns fast like
Sour Diesel’s quick car.

I rode the Pineapple Express,
then I hit the Train Wreck.
Lights out! The conductor demands
that we have our pipes checked.

Look at all of Mary Jane's strains,
I have plenty of them,
still pondering my bud's embrace
and all’the broken stems.

My bud's came less often and I
became less credible.
I told my bud Bubba that we
should switch to edibles.

“But, you can't eat these sweets unless
the treat's gradual high
stops your bud’s from disappearing.
You need me to get by!”

Where are all of Mary Jane's strains?
I need some more like them;
losing the embrace of my bud’s
and all’the broken stems.

All my buds have vacated me.
All that's left is Reggie
and Mid, who aren't like my kind buds;
they’re leaving me edgy.

I’m hanging with Mid and Reggie
hoping they'll come around
But now, even they’re gone, and I
have lost what was once found.

The strains of Mary Jane are gone.
I can't live without them!
I dream to see my bud's once more
and all’the broken stems.
A comedic view of a "pothead" thought process.
Danny Valdez Dec 2011
I can never  seem to warm up
these days.
Its freezing all day
my feet like popsicles
pale, white, and frozen.
Winter is really
hitting Arizona
Its
wet
gray
painful
Ian Curtis and Hank Williams weeping in the black clouds above
walking to the bus stop
my freshly shaved bald head
numb from the cold.
The pomp
the greasy combed hair
gone.
Since my pin-up girlfriend
the Marilyn to my Elvis
packed up and left.
The week before Christmas.
I can't say I really blame her
I can't say she didn't try
She stuck it out a good while there
She left because I cant hold down
a job
and because
I caught her going behind my back
with another man
that combed his hair too.
Secret conversations
with a guy that had what I didn’t
Vintage wool suits
An apartment in New York City
And exotic antiques.
No matter how handsome a ***
eventually
he doesn’t stand a chance.
She used to joke about it even
“Ya know, you’re lucky you’re so handsome.”
when we both knew most woman would be leaving.
I forgot to tell her
good looks only get you so far
and they don’t last very long.
But I got a job
actually
started it the day she left for Tucson.
It’s a place that represents small business office suppliers
paper, ink toner, pens, pencils.
They get small offices to ditch the corporate
staples office max kinkos office depot
and go with small business suppliers instead
stimulate the local economy they say.
It’s a cool gig
pays high commissions and is a real quiet place.
It sits in a business district that’s right next to
an artificial lake
a big winding one
going around medium sized lakeside houses
with tiny docks and tiny boats.
It’s so close
Its just right there
out the backdoor
next to the radio blaring AC/DC
outside it’s like an entire other world
not Arizona.
green waters
thick green grass
little green *****
from the green headed
mallard ducks.
There’s pairings of them all over
a lady said they mate for life.
Those mallards
they give all that fake stuff life
they make it real.
On our smoke breaks we all go out there
most everybody just stands
and smokes on a little back porch area.
laughing, joking, telling stories
putting the cigarette butts neatly in a coffee can.
sometimes I’ll walk away from the group
and stand at the green/blue water’s edge
staring at the concrete shelf of the fake lake
just beneath the water
the real dirt
concealed beneath the murky blue/green mixture.
And everyday
I miss her
a little bit
less
and a little bit
less
with every
fake wave
that rolls in.
I just gotta warm up
winter has really hit Arizona.
Fresh off the typewriter, tonight.
onlylovepoetry Jun 2019
head to toe kissing


I   the mundane

moonlight madnesses, a possessive noun,
commissions gravitational pulls that disobey and obey
laws of interstellar loving. The antique modalities once and forever, forever laying still, stilled in places of antiquities and historical need, are thundershower and hail rudely reawakened, the undertow of
pull and push, the yanking hands  of need for others, for others,
it’s the explosive-knowledge, the opening of the old kitbag of perpetual principles, that crazy head to toe kissing is no less necessary, more so, than the computation of the total breaths mundane, unnoticed even now as I write of them, that we will count from that very first, in deed, they are one and the same, like the same
kisses given from head to toe

II   the profane

at the first, the body insists, I am but a long haul trailer, no taxi me,
cargo and passengers, are my quatrain accompaniments,
traveling companions boon, my own toons, too soon disembarked,
songs of parents and lovers, children and others, your visage passed
without your permission, but with your happy encouragement,
to generations that will see things that futurists dare not
even mention, but the profane urge to warn them all, kisses from head to toe, elevates, and overcomes...so when most of my names dusted with forgetfulness, lost in the waves, my scorching soft lips will be recalled just as an airy flight of light brushing upon a newborn’s eyelids just at the moment of birth.  A rustling more felt than heard, the ****** and bruised carrying body will sensate and instantly forget, but nonetheless transmit genetically, that the profane of birth and life renewing can be only washed away, when past and future, recalled and recreated, kisses from head to toes, dripping with softening saltwater tears, a chemical organic reagent of creation,
inside the histories of head to toe kissing

III  the insane

so when, somewhere, some place, a man’s body prepares  
tous ses adieux, his memory foolishly sane and strong,
his wasted paper bag container ship, rust bucketed,
crinkled and wrinkled, skin folding in on itself, hanging to bones
by stretched sinews and tendons that no longer tend to business,
loosened and gangly, they hang on barely to the bare nakedness of
evolutionary processes, mostly not, offset, by the tenderizing effects of kisses, from invisible attendees,  unconscious they,
willingly and unwillingly, offering farewells in actuality...
head to toes, noses to belly buttons, tatted, tattered, and still tasted by dying cells.  It’s insane to think it’s even possible  one retains each and all, but he does, those few given, those few  millions he gave away for cheap belly laughs and poems, decade upon decade accumulated are the totality of him, all of them free and sealed in kisses from head to toes
a perfect fare thee well love poem to add to the pastures lying fallow on mountain ranges of kisses from heads to toes...June 3, 2019
onlylovepoetry Jul 2023
“Words are beautiful, but emotion is divine” (patty m)

~these are the divine words of a beautiful soul, patty m~


this Missouri grandmother writes and I am willfully, duty-bound,
to comply for she commissions a poem with every insightful pithy and
ever one of her dear hugs, of which these is no limit and each one a treasure of a gratitude that flows contra-directionally, surpassing given-grace and lawful gravity, for all of her words flow simultaneously north and south, heavenwards, and earth planted, east / west, magnetic poles attracting divinity wherever it can be found
and all I can do is proffer

just one more only love poem, which is the blessing and the curse the lord blessed me with, love is  beautiful and it is divinely originated in each of our humble hearts, plucked from trees and fed to us wherever fruit of the fields grows, shaped like sweet and **** berries…not all that is divine, of necessity to be beautiful, words, them too, a mixed blessing, vulnerable and subject by the abuse of human weakness and fragility…but this much I assure myself with confidence,
and you too,
her words, well,

limitless, her every poem is hand woven, unhid, in the fooling
plain earthenware that the potter’s wheel created,
all gifts to each of us;

But my fragility mandates I speak slow and hesitantly of things beautiful that contain the white glow sparkler light of divinity, for I have attracted and deserved many failures, far greater than the rarer success, so my knowledge yet oft suspect, is mostly merely well imagined but know this:
her skill,
her expertise
her intimate comprehension
within the beautiful and divine expressions of her kind appreciation she deigns to share…words like a mighty, beautiful like a powerful Missouri river, driven by all specie of love…but none more powerful, more divine than that of a loving womanly grandmother


this, yes, only a love poem to be sure,
for the beautiful,
The Divine Miss (Patty) M.
Chris Slade Nov 2020
At this time of my life
I find myself wearing hats…
I’m not happy with my head you see,
In short, being able to see it
it just doesn’t thrill me.
Not through those depressing, disappearing strands.
So it’s that time - It’s hat time!

Hats are warm, comforting things;
take it off and, for a while at least,
it feels still there - a phantom hat.
Not quite as spooky or worrying
as a phantom arm or leg - after that
severed limb thing, but right there!
It really is that time - It’s hat time!

My Grandma Lamplough,
that’s on my mother’s side,
was an avid knitter of things to order,
She was even a freelancer for Jaeger…
matinée jackets, mittens, cardies, pullovers
But in later days mostly just tea cosies.
If there was no immediate customer in mind…
“Everybody needs a cosy and one size fits all”
she would say… and anyway,
commissions were rare for cosies back in the day

She’d wear it boldly herself
with handle and spout slots front & back, proud
She’d start the next one and announce
to every visitor right out loud…
”Hey…Do you want a cosy for your ***?
Mr Watling, the milkman, he had quite a lot!
But then he showed up every day!
A quart is it Mrs L?… and yes, I WILL have a cosy today!

Me? I’ve never fancied a toupee, wig
or go in for a Bobby Charlton tribute gig ….
I’ll be happy just to settle for a beret,
news boy or Fedora… to hide the offending pate
and avoid the comb over till a later date.
Meanwhile I’ll maybe settle for Grandma’s cosy special?
My Grandma was a cosy knitter extraordinaire!
Left Foot Poet Feb 2018
commissioned by and for those
who constant comment on my
            poems, my indenture


moi,
handy with verbal weapons,
cut down a few trees for my necessities,
duels or dams, written Odyssey long and Tombstone OK quick,
who was it said, I lay down verse cause it’s my daddy’s curse?

why it was me and thus the free and easy flowing from the obligatory urges, cannot be disobeyed or disturbed, ignored,
this one, inherent, so fast comes the flow steady, unbending,
the six easy pieces come up half heads and three tails

it is just dictation from the *mental musing committee
and  as far as they’re concerned, they’re the tator and I’m the tot, the
dic who just has to get it down like I knowed it complete
before they decided to speak it

ain’t deprecating and ain’t saying that a thousand or more poe’s ain’t time used well, but this one has a pale, almost Elizabethan white powdery dusted pallor, caused it spilled out in 10 minutes
with no time to get tanned or tamed

to the skilled individuated commentators
who Tennessee volunteer their skill, sight, their time, unbidden to savvy and to savage say what they see beneath the surface,
a place I’d prefer not to visit or even, just hang,
lest I find out what the heck I actually meant!

hats off to the reactors and the actors
who write their own lines
pithy and for pity sake,
hot and cold, youthful and old,
who speak without long considered pauses
and so often write in two lines the summary
of hours labor and the product of decades,
of the good and bad, the thirty one flavors in my mind stored

hats off to the gallant and the uncredited uncrowned,
who are the validators and the gladiators who enter the arena with but a short sword and yet subjugate the army of
the many verses and see close up and offer freely their
heart warming frostings over my écritures

you gladden an old man’s heart,
by the hearth, and egg him on
asking without asking for but one mort~more,
with the unintentional inspired commissions
that their comments instigate

you lay and slay me down repeatedly
and I ‘m held harmless
but not wordless for so oft have I exclaimed:

anything you say can and will be used by me
in the court of poetry**

the next to the bottom line is this:

those who comment commend condemn are the extenders
and should claim legit the greater credit

<•>
2/20/18 2:00 ~ 2:10am.

writ in a single seating without hesitation and consideration
the sojourn a quick ten minutes and with thanks and bowed head to all that commentate on my given words, a hearty god bless and accept my pitiful thumbs up for annotating isn’t a skill in my possession or my permitting; thank god for emoji's and icons and
XOXOXO's
WE SOW FUTUTRE CALAMITIES

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya; aopicho@yahoo.com)

We sow the seeds of future calamities
In our capricious commissions and omissions
We put ourselves centre stage with ego
Not minding how much we mar
The future comfort in our mad scramble
For power and material glory
A wham Pam Pam in which we are carried
Far much away to verge of self-destruction
Cutting the woods to glow fire of selfish fame
Balancing our character on the tri-vicious
Pillars of sycophancy, snobbery and selfish hypocrisy
Looking at the clouds with scold not knowing
Is the cradle of deep blue suits and fibres
In its sympathetic micturations on matter below
The nonchalant oceanic human locomotive soles
Our deeds are full of vagaries as we jostle
To change the world before we change ourselves
The tired world is soon to change the capricious humanity
Hugo Feb 2020
Invite me to a masquerade held in a large hall
Most guests would be in suits, those you can see
Almost all are dark males, all quite are tall
All can't dance , because all of them are me

Few in this hall are some of my peers
One of me in a mask basks in their wonder
To them this mask is wise,and one without fear
The face behind though is foolish a coward and a blunder

Few in this hall are some of my enemies
One of me in a mask delights in their distaste
To them this mask promises violence with energy
Behind is the face of exhaustion and no anger to trace

Few in this hall are some of my mentors
One of me in a mask  indulges in their praise
To them this mask is one of potential and future
Beneath lies the face marred by failure and laze

Few in this hall are some past lovers
One of me in a mask savors their longing
To them this mask is a story with a knight and a tower
But beneath Is the face of a lier gifted with talking

Few in this hall are my fellow Christians
One of me in a mask flaunts his humility
To them this mask is of true religious commissions
The face behind long faced spiritual sterility

The last in this hall are my family
I face them with half a mask of strength
To them the strong half mask, and the true half face of apathy
The half mask hides a face exhausted with it's life's long length
Honestly I'm not even sure if this counts as a poem😁
Nat Lipstadt Mar 2014
alliteration
delving delusory,
a literati shun
thy commissions,
galore,
the line goes around the
corner

Entrusted.
write us a prayer -
as if I were thus worthy

t'is a delusion
which is worse than
Illusion
my fingers command me -
not I, them
I scribe inky,
they write what they deem
the most unfitting fulfilling

thy requests
more crosses to bear,
this Jew has walked the
Via Dolorosa
then, and again,
now

oh yes delve delve
with archaic *****
turn over earth unsubstantiated
long time un~disturbed

"bring us your truths
in whatever form
they spill from you"


Thus, they command me, Lord

"Go back to living,
like it used to be.
No more tortured soul
to slow you down"


Thus, they command me, Lord

sleep restful,
feet bathed,
Pavorotti  & Pachelbel
comforted,
let it go,
live the fleeting,
well,
drink the wine,
wafer, taste,
Jew,
but stay away from the confessional

don't
delve into your own
thesaurus
when opened,
one can vision
right through us

don't
delve in to the recesses
thankfully receding, eroding,
except for the enlightening flashbacks
that stone cold come with no
forewarning

don't
let the sin memories
of ancient words,
black gold bubble up
with the first striking of the blade

Delve
(excavate your soul deep)
Not

I did not come this poem to write
I did not come to repeat
Solomon's poem,
nothing new under the sun

don't,
daunting
wish to delve into my delusions,
my original sin
the deceit
the conceit
I am unique
I am original

but let us weave as I best could
diagrammed prayers
as the sun rises over my eastern river
for it the seventh day,
the sabbath day,
which the commandments
commend as the day to remember and

to keep it holy.
Six days you shall labor,
and do all your work,
but the seventh day is a Sabbath
to the LORD your God.
On it you shall not do any work,
you, or your son, or your daughter,
your male servant, or your female servant,
or your livestock,
or the

sojourner
who is within your gates.
For in six days the LORD
made heaven and earth, the sea,
and all that is in them,
and rested on the seventh day.
Therefore the LORD
blessed the Sabbath day
and made it holy.


no delving today
I will observe thy reader's,
all of them my teacher's,
commandments
rest easy,
spill no truths this day

but on the new born morrow
I shall fresh
delve and sin again
and write them
joyful hymns
to sing
on the profane workweek,
for my torture,
my spilled and soiled truths
shall be
re-presented
to joyous comfort

and then,
I shall sojourn among them
I did not cone to write this poem.
It came and I mere mortalized, transcribed it,
for it too,
just a sojourner.
Then after thus commanded,
the boy,
rested.
With so many tears from living these years
Pains shedded cuz I was breaded
As a young hustler
Made from a struggler in the nutsacks of my father
But why bother
Me swimming in the Galaxy where other suckas like me
Was destined to this world
For the painful swirls that's soon to curl
Me back into a fetal position my ambition
Is to crush the hidden commissions lynching
Til they dead and gone Im feelin' strong
Off of that **** same ol song different day
Feelin' like Malcolm holding the AK
Destined for doomsday
No words to say
My silence invoke violence check the appliance
In the kitchen cookin' up spells for the gospels
Its god-spells lady liberty ringin' the bells of hell
Reachin' for my wooden shells where all the pain dwells
And you can tell by the smells of a demons cartel
How art thou? takin' a bow to my problems that vowed
No mercy to my hidden energy see my enemies
Surroundin' me with much artillery them shells
Knockin' my ghost out of a shell o well
And I'm still chasin' bail made to fail
A curse for my next birth welcome to a new world
Transformed into a pearl my minds trapped in the
underworld
How many wanna travel with me to the lost mysteries
Of the Egyptian dynasty see ?****** like me
Evadin' reality to get caught up in the penitentiary
Also the cemetery while the gangs flurry
In a hurry so we quick to get buried
Leave our families in tears for many years
****** dying for whips and
chains
when we used to die from.whips and
chains??
Got dang things done change don't act strange
I know ya feel me from death my eternity
To see my enemies burn eternally so much little to see
In the world painted with past blood soils
Of war spoils I'm a stay with heat until my skin boils
Over two hundred degrees making epiphanies
So when ya see know Yosef climbing for freedom See
I'm a lock down from the pain that surrounds
Paying taxes I'm feelin' closest to the abraxas
None could tax us I'm kicking in the factors
Goetias burning in to turn me in
To a nother being far from a human seeing
Beyond a galaxy a far shining my mental like a star
A lost slave tryna to behave but I can't and I won't
Til my spirits come and taunt hunt
Down the wickedness
Sick of this life ain't a bliss I'm giving a kiss
From the slugs invested heavily heated and protected
Check the rounds selected as I kick it
Chaos I'm shattering thangs and strains
Things remains the same cuz I'm feelin' so much **** pangsss..
extasis Apr 2010
Try men's souls. Provocative mind-whip how you soothe me. I scorn modern poetry...not because it is truly bad or truly good. It just makes me feel as if my pores are ever-expanding with clicking, skittering, masses of insects.

Black shiny minuscule monstrosity.
Beautiful in gritty grotesque.

A lamb lights upon the searing dark-light torch...**** them all with glee

No pity or remorse towards humans humanity human nature,
we are disgusting creatures until I cease thinking about us.
Then we are interesting and subject to more discovering and journeying.

Take the child and expose it to everything at once; it shrivels and mumbles distant screams of flaming cliches combined with a burning shot of plasmatic soul searching. How would we approve of such?

Inside the black brown shriveled parchment child-casing: The other children are ignorant. My crooked cracked being shivers disgustingly. I hate them instantly. Not hate. A rigid viscous feeling. Rip apart the sublime ape. She-he in all splendid obsession. Strive, then, no more to ape the emblems of the spirit that was, but evoke anew that spirit in modern life.

I, we trust none. Drama drama dramatic dramatically dramatical in all appearances, but truly flat-line non expressionist.

I love only once.

Burn them and their wicked kindness.
I will soothe my satisfactions and live love only once.

My Muse is the riptide chainsaw hackslash terror of our generation. Reveling in the natural ones. The rocks  scrape phrases up of graves and trees wickle waveringly with pleadings of insane sleeps.

How beautiful is nature. That it can reduce us to nothing at all and raise us upon our grandest delusions.

I love to despise of women's voices. Androgyny is revelation worthy. Epiphany causing in romanticism.
I love to desire my emotional and mental consumption.

she is grandeur made flesh
epiphany constituted within reach
glorious
*******, you sweet, sweet *******
this soul will rest
not mine, not ours
it will take rest and tendril itself through all

love commissions such things
what ****** soul
She I Cannot Resist
I can't seem to organize this one properly, and it may seem hard to understand, but it requires multiple readings and analyzing...which some people don't feel like doing.

I wrote this for a very androgynous woman that I loved dearly, but she was very insecure about herself and closed herself off from me because she wasn't sure what to do with someone who loved her more than anything.

I wrote this during my time of despairing over the fact that she wouldn't let me close.
In my dream I was again twenty four
out on the town and doing much more than ever before
and doing it very well,I might add.
Am I bad or what?

You really do not have a clue
as to things I dream of things I do and that's all good
I don't think that you, would like me as much or as well
if you stepped off the safety and dropped into the hell I inhabit.

But *** for tat if ya want some  o' that
you've got to be a delinquent
a teenage,old age tearaway,
a dream a day keeps reality away
and an apple in bed is better than a bullet in the head
or a 'Glasgow kiss'

How I miss those mad fights in back alley nights when the sun went off and disappeared
knocking out teeth and biting off ears and howling in rage when taken off to Barlinnie
and locked into a cage,
and then rehabilitation into a suitable product to be let out into an unsuspecting,unproductive,stuck up,shut the **** up,keep your head down half drunk nation of halfwits and half promised promises,the premse of which is we'll give you employment and if you're looking for fun or enjoyment you'll have to look further afield than the field where your tent is and how contented you'll be.

You'll see the future before you, before we then ***** you, out to high street agents who work on commissions from her majesty's prisons.
You'll hardly have time
to do any more time for you won't commit any more crime you'll be fixed up,mixed up with cocktails of hormones and shot full of honesty to be as honest as any one free,
and what will it mean when you're not mean any more?
open a door for a lady,well maybe
or smile at a baby.well maybe
give up your seat on the bus or the train and to make sure that you paid you will pay once again for a ticket you don't need.no more drugs,no more **** so you count the rosary beads and you'll wonder how wonderful everything can be.
can you see it all unfold as your bright future is told in case conferences and committees and everyone pities the lamb back in the pen
where the wolves and their teeth have injected a sense of morality,belief in your veins and you won't play any more games with dodgy credit cards or slip over back fences through unguarded entrances and make any appearances in courtrooms before magistrates who in any case are full of frustrations that they can't sentence everyone to death like they did in the old days
Oh yes
we'll change your ways and you won't recognise even though with your eyes you will see
what we
can do
when we shoot you
Barlinnie is a well known(notorious) prison in Scotland
A Glasgow kiss is a headbut to the face.
..and before you ask..never done jail time never kissed Glasgow style.
Nigel Morgan Mar 2014
This is a place that brings out the best in people, she said with confidence born of practice in convening such gatherings. It is a place apart, he thought, certainly. It was difficult not to look out of the window where the unleafed trees swayed and swayed in the wind. He had felt very solitary all day. Throughout his journey here he’d been on another journey, a little in the past, and its images had enveloped him. He had often returned to a moment during a stop on that journey in the beautiful gardens of Hestercombe where, in the seclusion of a tall shrubbery she had suddenly turned to him and kissed him with a need and a passion that was beyond anything he had ever known. And it had coloured everything that came to pass ever after.

Later, when he had brought her to this place apart they had lain on the spring grass amongst the daisies and read poetry about the river not half a mile away in the valley below them. It was all and more than he could ever have imagined.

But now there was the business of creativity to attend to, that relentless business of finding the right tone and subject for the reading public. He was amongst writers, people for whom words dominated thoughts and generated incomes and reputation. There was a confidence here, not only in those directing this seminar, but in the participants. It was written all over their body language and the way they dressed. The casual jacket, the well-cut blue jeans, the open-necked (but striped) shirt, a lot of black, bright tights (there was a striking turquoise set against a short black dress printed with white hearts), the women’s clothes mostly loose, the men’s clothes tighter fitting and more confining. And those all-important accessories, the bags, the tablets, the so-large diaries and notebooks, a bewilderment of scarves servings as emblems of their colourful selves. He had worn a simple black suit and dark green shirt and felt in such colourful company suitably anonymous.

Introductions were unnecessary (as everybody seemed to know everyone else) but the unnecessarily long CVs where prizes and awards, publishers and broadcast work, current projects and commissions were rolled out, variously. He was thankful that he was introduced as a new voice, a discovery from last summer’s festival and was here because his work embraced other creative journeys than those with words. He was here to share with these confident and successful writers a different viewpoint on the creative process where things rather than abstractions led narrative.

Although the directors of this seminar had their own agenda it was suggested that the assembled company might begin with an open discussion about the writing life. It was proposed that we should share not so much our own experiences at first, but what we considered was a necessary state from which to write. Inevitably and rightly this led to the role of reading, the necessity of reading, but reading in the new climate of the media storm, the instant access through technology, the over-saturation and stimulation of culture, the back-slapping banality of social media. Personal contact with one’s audience through readings and talks was a lively issue. The assembled were all proven writers, they all knew how to do it, but the publishing world and the media were changing the goal posts, rethinking the playing field and the game itself. There was a distinct feeling of unease about personal and financial futures. Just how does one sustain the creative way of things after the third book when the landscapes of literature seemed to change as for a traveller watching the scenery from a railway carriage? The romance of writing was being undermined and some writers felt soiled by the demand for public visibility. Some wanted to write books and be left in peace to do it.

Throughout all this open-ended discussion he had stayed silent, observing, word gathering, filling pages of his notebook with word-bites from these wordsmiths.  It was interesting how the assembled represented several common styles within new writing: poetry, but not as we know it poetry, the performance stuff; science fiction (those taking part were careful to use the Attwood distinction of possible SF and completely impossible SF); new nature was in attendance; fiction-verité, the stuff of raw truth and seemingly possible lives; the fictional biography was popular, regarded as a useful fall-back (there’s usually one hiding amongst most authors’ oeuvres); teenage fiction seemed a flourishing and free from angst genre (I don’t think very hard about what I write, said a 20-something with a four book contract, I read what’s out there already, and search the internet ).  

This definitely wasn’t in any sense of the word an academic seminar. Aesthetics and technical jargon were gently ridiculed by the directors who had had plenty of practice in sending up the stuff of creative writing courses. Hanif Kureishi’s recent declarations on such university degrees being ‘a waste of time’ were largely welcomed, though there was some defence evident (probably from those who had benefitted from such programmed and often supportive study).

Talk generally, not personally was the message. What are the general observations we can gather? You’re out there working in this volatile world of the written word, where are we at, and where are we going? Is there a developing vision? It was time to get off the fence, he thought, and bring something to bear on the discussion, which he could tell was reaching a necessary conclusion – time for a break. He suggested we might be mindful of those books and writing in any medium, which had and did enrich us. Imagine, he said, you’re about to leave home for this seminar and before the taxi arrives to take you to the railway station you have 3 minutes to find a book (and maybe it is of your own making) that you hold like you hold in your heart the imagined life of a dear friend you seldom if ever see. What comes into your mind right this minute? This book you choose you’ll hide from us all. You’ll put it at the bottom of the bag. It’s a secret word-gift, wherever it came from. It’s not there to impress us but to keep its owner warm at night when sleep is difficult (as he admitted he did not sleep well the previous night). I see writers, he said, as part of a community of the imagination, and this community through our various abilities and experiences fashions word-gifts. We do the best we can to make them well and good, to have a reality albeit an imagined reality, and if we think of our work as gifts containing the lives and experiences of even partially imagined others, no matter what we craft will have a right quality and purpose, and maybe a true presence.
Never eat humble pie
I will tell you the reason why
they never give you commissions you see
most just expect it.. boy they take the ***

Don't go to the Co's like that
stick that in your pocket ,,, your cap
don't you go in too smart
he will think you are a prat

Remember to stand straight
and for god's sake don't look at him
this could be a promotion or demotion
never eat humble pie and don't look at him

By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris
Matthew Suarez Jun 2012
Often I am silent, but only so I can hear whats missing,
I defer to silence only to catch the rhythm of the beat within my heart,
born blessed with smarts but yet, in the same token, cursed, with no motivation to embark,
so while my procrastination commissions the dark,
my potential resembles a motor assembled, with no ignition to start,
audibly, my inspirations petition for light,
yet fears that my voice will be imprisoned for life surface as my mind serves as platform for this fight.
a work in progress. First time ever writing a poem out of my own free will and not as an assignment. To call me a "beginner" would be a huge understatement so any *Constructive Criticism*  is greatly appreciated.
abecedarian Mar 2018
two suede secrets

a blue violin plays instrumental come-ons with flamenco hints,
various pleasures merge, a three lane highway becomes a
county road with slow and steady the unposted speed limit
I am well and full accompanied and accomplished


and I am alone

my hands laurel my temples, my head is crowning,
laughing from the pleasure given to me to give to me,
snare drum solitary keeps my time, my two palms say psalms,
guttural and cultural, my emissions, emptying my commissions,


and I am alone

a-poem came with this morn to mind, and pleasure me, it did;
music and flesh, words and tissue untested but harmonizing,
hands prancing on strings of sterling silvered guitar body mine,
shouting glory glory, am risen am fallen, salved, soothed,


I am alone, refreshingly happy, my poem *******


and and and
both of us will die in due course, dead unread, alone together


3/17/18 9:05 AM
John F McCullagh Dec 2011
She started out some years ago

the wife of a friend of mine.

The lady’s name was Lisa,

and she was a Florentine.

Through all of my commissions

She followed me through time.

Lisa Gherardini

had a shy and secret grin.

I remember when she sat for me,

the light was perfect then,

But something less than perfect

Was the aspect of her eyes.

She had a stigmatism

That my art could not disguise.

Last night, lying there with Salai

my apprentice and my love.

I looked into his eyes

and was inspired from above..



I hurried to my studio

And burned the midnight oil

This time Salai sat for me

in the same pose as the girl.

.

The result I deem perfection,

I will keep her till I die..

I’ll never sell this mystery girl

That has my lovers’ eyes.
P.O.V is Leonardo DaVinci. In My interpretation Leonardo is a artistic genius and a gay man.
From cold wickedness and sly pack more magnums
Than PI Infamous wise guy see the world's cry
From a Thousand yard stare light year glare none can compare
My flows a magnet hard not to get attracted
Thoughts subtracted from the rhymes abstracted
This ain't an act or a tactics my southpaw be raw
Outlaw living out dramas with out laws
Invoke perdition from the hidden commissions
Y'all still wishin'
Upon a star snake bezel shinin' cane like Jafar
Yo I wonder if they know who we are
Braced into my race now they getting a taste
Of an intellectual toxic waste get sprayed like mase
Ya loosin' sight tryna fight the might
As my cells excite off of a dope write soon to snipe
All the hype got more mack skills than Dolemite
Bringin' back down from the Htown we ******* up
Without the driver I'm
liver
Learn from my past mistakes cuz I grew wiser
shireliiy Oct 2015
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espace-prevention.ch
Francie Lynch Nov 2018
They never understand;
Or ever comprehend
The severity of my decision.
I'm convinced I have control,
Yet those I dearly hold,
Keep hold on their derision.

I know I'll find remission
For commissions and omissions;
My love was never so cold.

She'll say I never loved her;
There always was the other
Stopping us from growing old.
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2016
when god heard Lennon sing "Imagine,"
it/he/she filed a complaint
with the Human Rights Commissions,
a grievous hurt claimed,
needing omission,
hurtful words, the spirit opined,
his repute, civlly defamed

a direct attack on his divine permissioning
and though his unverifiable existence,
a poor excuse for such a
sid vicious exercise
re his persistence,
he needed humans

the song to excise,
punishment suitable be arranged,
to assuage his hurted feelings,
canons of political correctness
demanded it be whiteout erased
as if history did not matter,
those visible  tracks of his trade

no atheist or agnostic here,
having had too many disputations,
face to face confrontations,
about the damnable ironic games
It plays upon "his" human dolls,
by this manic~depressive curmudgeon,
from up above & his vapored flighty humors,
sans rationality,
for god was supplied with omnipotence
but too minuscule an impotent allotment
of the untold power of the
sensibility of the five mortal sensible senses,
the all-in reasons or rhymes,
the electric grid
making humans superior, the ability

to imagine

Imagine a power
so wonderful,
an all-in everything

I am God of myself,
when I imagine

Imagine I wrote this


and then,
         I did

imagined that your crinkly eyes laughed
when your read this,

and then,
         you did.


imagine that
Sunday 7:38am
Ils sont assis dans l'ombre et disent : nous jugeons.
Ils peuplent d'innocents les geôles, les donjons,
Et les pontons, nefs abhorrées,
Qui flottent au soleil sombres comme le soir,
Tandis que le reflet des mers sur leur flanc noir
Frissonne en écailles dorées.

Pour avoir sous son chaume abrité des proscrits,
Ce vieillard est au bagne, et l'on entend ses cris.
À Cayenne, à Bône, aux galères,
Quiconque a combattu cet escroc du scrutin
Qui, traître, après avoir crocheté le destin,
Filouta les droits populaires !

Ils ont frappé l'ami des lois ; ils ont flétri
La femme qui portait du pain à son mari,
Le fils qui défendait son père ;
Le droit ? on l'a banni ; l'honneur ? on l'exila.
Cette justice-là sort de ces juges-là
Comme des tombeaux la vipère.

Jersey, le 7 mai 1852.
Wk kortas Dec 2016
If you observe occurrences in Nature
(The way a stone ripples the water,
The arc of a cormorant descending toward its prey)
You will note a precision in the movements
Which is utterly Pythagorean in its pattern
(Not that the natural world is without its inconsistencies;
The progress of a conflagration, for example, seems entirely random.)
It would seem that such a thing is good;
No, more than that, entirely holy,
All that is necessary and sufficient to prove beyond doubt
That which is equally necessary and central to our belief:
A plan--His plan--which governs all things under the sun.
Such notions, I have found to my considerable dismay,
Do not sit well with viceroys and archbishops,
Who have a vested interest in the maintenance of certain mysteries
(To be fair, they are not evil or necessarily even impious;
They are men, nothing more or less,
And have to navigate perilous, unmapped straits
Between the secular and the sacred; at their appointed time,
They will have their own commissions and omissions to answer for.)
Nevertheless, none of us can escape the certainty
That the root of our faults can be found at our own doorway,
And I cannot deny that the attempt
To reduce God’s works to a schematic of formulas, diagrams and triads
And then, preening and squawking as a peacock,
Trumpet the results to the world
(As if the mystery of faith would be no more
Than a handful of equations and charts)
Is simply the manure of arrogance, the flotsam of sinful pride.
I have had, these past few weeks,
Considerable leisure to pray and reflect;
My thoughts have not drifted, curiously enough,
To the great and sweeping, the grand and all-encompassing
(Perhaps that is due to the whys and wherefores of my current predicament, Perhaps due to the narrow window of my enclosure),
But rather to the most pedestrian of things:
The clarion of the wind in the trees prior to a brief summer storm,
The lover’s dance of the hummingbird and the lupin,
And I am comforted (and, I confess, a bit amused)
By the notion that Our Savior may take a moment from his labors
To watch them as well.
Brother Juniper appears courtesy of Thornton Wilder's novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which is as fine a novel as has ever been forgotten.
Memories are often unkind to me
and Time after all time when time has the time, that's also unkind.

The bowmen on Olympus target us, fire their arrows through the mists of our morning when the shadows sleep still on the pale ground, I rise until the red scent of poppies fills my senses with fear, with fear comes that silence, come closer my dear, 'all the better to see you'

Wings that once flew lay shredded, embedded in my eyes are the commissions of days,
nothing stays the same except the same and the same's not the same as it was.
Icicles drip their tentacles slowly onto my cheeks,
he who seeks must be prepared for the worst.

I am cursed
I am cursed by the one breasted Amazon, who with crossfire looks shoots hooks of longing into my heart.

The silence is where the fears meet the shadow that lay in the mists on the pale ground, no sound.

Time with its memory is no friend and could never be, my back's to the wall now but it could have been different,
don't ask how,
I just know.
Wk kortas Dec 2021
Unlike the feted Ebenezer, our intangible visitors
Are not necessarily seasonal in nature,
Nor do they waft into scene
As the result of our direct malfeasance
(Sometimes the case, to be sure,
But more likely they are the stepchildren
Of our omissions rather than our commissions)
Coming among us not through wanton transgressions,
But the upshot of our mortality
And its associated failings,
And as they glide translucently among us
In this season where the darkness comes so early
(Yet the light clutching the western horizon
For an imperceptibly longer time each day)
Their presence may be somewhat more benign
If we are able to undertake the act
Of forgiving ourselves.
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2022
a long time ago,
when poems fell

from my mouth like easy tears &
excited eyes revealed more hid
in the cracks of city sidewalks,
just trying remember/recall all the
airy compositions that flew from the
inhabited urgent pulsing of creativity
from/of a living duopoly, heart + head,
was ironical, the greatest challenge;


it was easy to give my excess to
nurture the young ones, bend their
path to higher plains, testing resolve,
my wingspan span so lengthy room,
to tuck, hold, encourage even lend
to the raw, the preternatural talented,
my self-pleasuring, a weedy high (five);

nowadays, there is little now in my day,
pinpricks of light suggest, but the juices
fail to follow the lead, leashed, restrained,
s t r a i n i n g, to believe my words possess
3V’s - validity, value and vividness deserving,
scraps are heaped in the corner awaiting my
incineration, permanent~premature incarceration;


wondering, who will nurture me now,
cloak me in arm-round-shoulders and murmur
sage wisdom snippets, refill, reattach my quill
to the paper with no time or space interference,
but I wait not for your soft & silent rejoinder;

whatever I can draw from an infernal and infertile
weakened pulse, is this meager complain, I once
gave freely to others, who can - who will - payback?
those who gave nurture understand its healing  prowess,
so I beg & ken you, nurture me, in my old age, give me
commissions, order me to compose, I daren’t disobey…


Sat Dec 31 2022
LPOTY
Bogdan Dragos Dec 2019
as usually
not much going on at her place

“Why did you
insist
on coming here?” he
whined

And she watched him with
scrutiny. “What? You don’t like
it?”

He looked around. “To be honest,
your hobby scares me. You
design dolls and
plushy toys for a
living. They even watch us
as we ****. I can’t
stand this place, and don’t know how can you...”

She stood from
the bed
walked over to a pile of plushy toys
dug in for a brown hippo
and reached up its ***
and her hand
returned with a small bottle
of brandy

“****,” he said.

She tossed him the bottle.

He caught it.

“Right,” she said. “Now, why
don’t you
enjoy your treat and keep
some company to
Mr. Big Walrus there in the corner
while I get
back to work. I’ve some
commissions to honor.”

He opened the bottle
smelled it
Nodded at her and
went into the corner of the room
where Mr. Big Walrus
awaited
warm and fuzzy
don't get comfortable

they're going to line us up and
use us all for target practise
to
get their eye in and as we're dying
they'll tie us to a barbecue and
skewer us into kebabs.

Eyes
in the mortuary and on the slabs
keeping tabs on dead men and
their valuables

for it's waste not want not
he wants what we've got
and they've got the
time on their side
and they make omissions
set up commissions
give out concessions but
cede ****** all.
Universe Poems Jul 2022
Venice enjoyed great wealth
Underlying the stability economic power Resiliency
A trading empire base
Eastern Mediterranean,
Stretching into northern Europe and Asia
Wealth encouraged innovation,
cultural diversity nation
The trade of spices and exotic goods
Venice became,
a technology centre for printing fame
Visual arts broadened by publication,
Venetian printers
Also engaged as map-making thinkers
Nautical sea routes and ports
Venetian trade all courts
Fifteenth century,
more books printed in Venice,
than any other European city
Diversity
Contemporary
Venetian life
Mirrors of the printing industry,
Numbers high
Ancient text
Greek history
Jewish history,
and translations Arabic works mystery
Peter Burke noted,
Venice was a centre of information venture,
about the East linked travels,
of merchants and others unrevealed
Simply an expression of economic social,
and a political system
A framework of prosperity
The secret of continuing stability,
was found in critical points,
of flexibility within the hierarchy
Great significance of the arts
Despite political power,
being reserved for the,
hereditary patrician class hour
Citizenship played a powerful role,
in the tower
Civil Service goal
Among institutions scuole-lay,
responsibility way
Deeply religious confraternities
Large cases extremely wealthy places
Providing activities,
what we would think of today,
as Social Services public way
Five important scuole grandi,
hundreds of scuole piccole,
size and influence far from minimal
Linked to trades including painters,
or to foreign groups in the city
without waiters
Commissions for artists,
scuole important role,
maintaining social cohesion,
right up to naval supremacy,
which underwrote,
the power and prosperity vote
Fred Wilson,
African American,
West and Islam mention
Late sixteenth century
Well over a hundred years
Prior to the fall of Constantinople tall
Until the last quarter,
admiration for the Turks,
as the social system,
seemed to grant them,
equal measure of works
Mehmet very much enjoyed readings,
from ancient historians,
such as Laertius, Herodotus,
Livy and Quintus Curtius,
and from chronicles of the popes,
and Lombard kings
Kritovoulos of Imbros quotes
What matters here is less a question,
of the objective truth,
or otherwise of the claim,
than of how Mehmet’s identity,
was being fashioned in the Venice lane
At the time,
Vespasiano da Bisticci wrote of Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino
He was ever careful to keep intellect
and virtue to the front
Learning something new every day,
going forward to catalogue,
his patronage of the arts,
architecture and the music lecture
Deep knowledge of classical authors stay
Venice had traded slaves,
since at least tenth century days
Most were Christians,
quite often described as Tartars,
or Circassians from the area,
of the Black Sea
Fall of Constantinople
Decline in the Black Sea slave trade
It did not die out,
they simply worked for the Ottomans bout
Sixteenth century numbers increased
European attitudes turned against slavery
Enslavement of fellow Christian bravery
An increase in Ottoman power,
Late fifteenth century,
one thousand black slaves,
traded annually in Venice days
By 1600 Venetian slavery died out
Demand for Portuguese Spanish Dutch British,
and French colonies,
as well as the Muslim states all rates
Free slaves and they,
could continue to live in Venice,
not having to work as domestic servants,
for perks and observance
Turks and Germans,
promoted the imagery of black people entering, into Venetian popular culture,
and has never really,
left it in paintings or art culture
Fred Wilson mentioned in his chapter,
testifies to this rapture
The representation of the world of Islam,
takes a specific form
Venetian artists,
seem to shield away,
from representing contemporary,
Ottoman society
Ottoman figures are found,
in Venetian art
In the heart of Venice
the lived environment,
no images of the Ottoman world
Plentiful images
of the early Christian world,
of the Holy Land
If only they would paint,
the real heart of grand
Not in the Ottoman Empire land,
but in the empire of the Mamluks,
the other eastern Mediterranean,
Islamic culture land,
based in present-day Syria and Egypt Ptah
Venetian artists,
representing the trials,
and victories of the early Christian Church Imagined them against a partly factual,
and partly made-up preach
A background of architecture,
and non-Christains,
in Mamluk costume
What happened to recognition,
in history before the vacuum


© 2022 Carol Natasha Diviney
Cunning Linguist Sep 2022
I’m surfing on this cosmic wave ~
Yeah boiii just a ****** slave to the game
Can’t get -more- saves less you play
But still I stay fresh
When I’m slaying all the freshmen
And eating their flesh
It’s the best source of refreshment

I’m replenished
With this system
hell to the yes I’m so digestive
**** I’m spitting, need a breath mint
Got that fire I will ingest it
til I regurgitate the excrement
my mic presence is heaven sent
(Don’t question/ no quenching) it
GG Allin ain’t got nothing
on Reidums Donovan

Don’t like my frequencies
Well switch the channel then
I’m murdering these beats
Stacking bodies in the FEMA bins

Stay tuned, watch the news
The crisis has become apocalypse
The consciousness is not nonsense
Wait shush, we cannot talk bout this

My third eye prism beams
simply shining in iridescence
In present tense that means
We just gon cater to this nemesis
While in essence the power
steady reigns all pre(isdents/cedence)
To the loss of innocence in a sense
Extradimensional omniscience

Got us steeped in a schism
which we cannot process yet;
This mental prison got you locked up in
Religion, sports, and politics
A House divided cannot stand
You people cannot understand
It’s all a sham Endgame
it’s equal to the fall of man

It’s not happenstance it’s bad romance
the parasitic old humans
Take every advantage
heavy chance
they can devils advocate  ~ first glance
Waging global management
amongst its residents
With malevolence

And violence unto others
On behest of these
caricatures of governments

You simply must not succumb
to this Big Brother ****
Bound by strings they all just puppets
on that false worship business
Til you’ve ascended to the mothership
You’ll Spin this gold like Rumplestiltskin *****

For this debt we owe but will instead
offer up our children
Cause they soul been sold off to the Vatican
The rapture will not matter then
Bcuz it’s all projected hologram
To unite a global front
Ignited by these hostile reptilians

Illuminati making trillions
****** hosts for these archons
Primo minions;
Unlimited energies not believed in
-To the zenith
by our calcifiying pineal glands
Can’t perceive it

History outlines these diabolical plans
By Albert Pike from the mid 1800’s
Highest level Freemason
But you won’t see this in the curriculum
Trilateral commissions
funded by that Epstein grift, sacrificing kids
And suiciding those who think or speak dissent
To the *** trafficking ring
run by Billiam and Hilly Clinton

Bush for really did 9/11
& In 2012 the world ended
Mandela effect got me feeling impressed with
The lack of woke minds
aligned with the paradigm shift
The macrocosmic mother knows
consumerism is *******
but satanic panic gives us all a chip
For they cannot purchase;
without the mark of the beast
In either the Hand
or their forehead
Heads bonkers
Mind is swamp
Matrix gardener
Not stoppin
Knobs sloberred
Snake-charming
Chop-blockin
Beer-swillin
Tax-paying
Pencil sharpenin
Summer loving
Puffin sumthin
Cop-prompting
****-farming
God-fearing
****-knockers
Timothy hill Aug 2017
Complexion are her direction they are full of perfection.

You might think differently mind your selection.

For she is art made of prime definition.

You need a handful of commissions too get in and see her convextion.
Peepin' the people walking earth givin birth
To nothing but pain and misery seems to worse
To many thoughts dry mentally dead
Ridin' the hearse
As the times progresses on im see haters sergin' on
Many a lessons demons get the testin' to keep me under  possession
But I broke the strong hold barred and eventually took a charge
From my mental being plugged out I dug
Without a shovel still didn't have the love  
Spread colossal my wings and soar above
To keep at a high frequency so negavity
Cant see me or lock me into a subliminal penitentary
I get defensive if I feel the devilry surroundin' me
Like bars of steel slavery cage around my mind
I'm takin' on mankind genuine as I decline
Every invention made into profit commissions
They doing more harm disguised as charm soon to get a
Lynching...




Cuz .....nobody's smilin' nobody's smilin' x2
Every day sins keep us wildin' x2


Now that the guns n butters are laid so many gettin' played
Like an accordion I'm all back like Dorian
Yates it's never too late to seal your fate
Come on down soon to be judged and rate
By the eternity hidden in another reality
Major entity I enter into the core better yet the center
I realized I'm a sinner made far from a winner
Feel like my thoughts in a blender hearts growin' tender
I'm feelin' December in the middle of winter
My body enters into a state of mind known as the shivers
Once I get the delivers from universal linguistics
Hard to miss it most really wanna become a statistic
To this world since I was branded I couldn't stand it
This world use to be beautiful until.I see the evil
Machine cuttin' down things but don't worry nature
Finna sing and take another form of a spiritual human being
Destructive wafare soon to be deaths siblings
Meanwhile.....

Nobody's smilin' nobody's smilin' x2
Everday sins keep us wildin' x2

— The End —