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ConnectHook Feb 2016
by John Greenleaf Whittier  (1807 – 1892)

“As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits which be Angels of Light are augmented not only by the Divine Light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood fire: and as the celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same.”

        COR. AGRIPPA,
           Occult Philosophy, Book I. chap. v.


Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow; and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.


                                       EMERSON

The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east; we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, —
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd’s-grass for the cows;
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows;
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold’s pole of birch,
The **** his crested helmet bent
And down his querulous challenge sent.

Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag, wavering to and fro,
Crossed and recrossed the wingàd snow:
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

So all night long the storm roared on:
The morning broke without a sun;
In tiny spherule traced with lines
Of Nature’s geometric signs,
And, when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below, —
A universe of sky and snow!
The old familiar sights of ours
Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,
Or garden-wall, or belt of wood;
A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,
A fenceless drift what once was road;
The bridle-post an old man sat
With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;
The well-curb had a Chinese roof;
And even the long sweep, high aloof,
In its slant spendor, seemed to tell
Of Pisa’s leaning miracle.

A prompt, decisive man, no breath
Our father wasted: “Boys, a path!”
Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy
Count such a summons less than joy?)
Our buskins on our feet we drew;
With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,
To guard our necks and ears from snow,
We cut the solid whiteness through.
And, where the drift was deepest, made
A tunnel walled and overlaid
With dazzling crystal: we had read
Of rare Aladdin’s wondrous cave,
And to our own his name we gave,
With many a wish the luck were ours
To test his lamp’s supernal powers.
We reached the barn with merry din,
And roused the prisoned brutes within.
The old horse ****** his long head out,
And grave with wonder gazed about;
The **** his ***** greeting said,
And forth his speckled harem led;
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,
And mild reproach of hunger looked;
The hornëd patriarch of the sheep,
Like Egypt’s Amun roused from sleep,
Shook his sage head with gesture mute,
And emphasized with stamp of foot.

All day the gusty north-wind bore
The loosening drift its breath before;
Low circling round its southern zone,
The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.
No church-bell lent its Christian tone
To the savage air, no social smoke
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.
A solitude made more intense
By dreary-voicëd elements,
The shrieking of the mindless wind,
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,
And on the glass the unmeaning beat
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.
Beyond the circle of our hearth
No welcome sound of toil or mirth
Unbound the spell, and testified
Of human life and thought outside.
We minded that the sharpest ear
The buried brooklet could not hear,
The music of whose liquid lip
Had been to us companionship,
And, in our lonely life, had grown
To have an almost human tone.

As night drew on, and, from the crest
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank
From sight beneath the smothering bank,
We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back, —
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art

The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;
While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.
The crane and pendent trammels showed,
The Turks’ heads on the andirons glowed;
While childish fancy, prompt to tell
The meaning of the miracle,
Whispered the old rhyme: “Under the tree,
When fire outdoors burns merrily,
There the witches are making tea.”

The moon above the eastern wood
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood
Transfigured in the silver flood,
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine
Took shadow, or the sombre green
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black
Against the whiteness at their back.
For such a world and such a night
Most fitting that unwarming light,
Which only seemed where’er it fell
To make the coldness visible.

Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed;
The house-dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat’s dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger’s seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons’ straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.

What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north-wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire’s ruddy glow.
O Time and Change! — with hair as gray
As was my sire’s that winter day,
How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to still live on!
Ah, brother! only I and thou
Are left of all that circle now, —
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone.
Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still;
Look where we may, the wide earth o’er,
Those lighted faces smile no more.

We tread the paths their feet have worn,
We sit beneath their orchard trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o’er,
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
No step is on the conscious floor!
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,
(Since He who knows our need is just,)
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own!

We sped the time with stories old,
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told,
Or stammered from our school-book lore
“The Chief of Gambia’s golden shore.”
How often since, when all the land
Was clay in Slavery’s shaping hand,
As if a far-blown trumpet stirred
Dame Mercy Warren’s rousing word:
“Does not the voice of reason cry,
Claim the first right which Nature gave,
From the red scourge of ******* to fly,
Nor deign to live a burdened slave!”
Our father rode again his ride
On Memphremagog’s wooded side;
Sat down again to moose and samp
In trapper’s hut and Indian camp;
Lived o’er the old idyllic ease
Beneath St. François’ hemlock-trees;
Again for him the moonlight shone
On Norman cap and bodiced zone;
Again he heard the violin play
Which led the village dance away.
And mingled in its merry whirl
The grandam and the laughing girl.
Or, nearer home, our steps he led
Where Salisbury’s level marshes spread
Mile-wide as flies the laden bee;
Where merry mowers, hale and strong,
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along
The low green prairies of the sea.
We shared the fishing off Boar’s Head,
And round the rocky Isles of Shoals
The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals;
The chowder on the sand-beach made,
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot,
With spoons of clam-shell from the ***.
We heard the tales of witchcraft old,
And dream and sign and marvel told
To sleepy listeners as they lay
Stretched idly on the salted hay,
Adrift along the winding shores,
When favoring breezes deigned to blow
The square sail of the gundelow
And idle lay the useless oars.

Our mother, while she turned her wheel
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,
Told how the Indian hordes came down
At midnight on Concheco town,
And how her own great-uncle bore
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.
Recalling, in her fitting phrase,
So rich and picturesque and free
(The common unrhymed poetry
Of simple life and country ways,)
The story of her early days, —
She made us welcome to her home;
Old hearths grew wide to give us room;
We stole with her a frightened look
At the gray wizard’s conjuring-book,
The fame whereof went far and wide
Through all the simple country side;
We heard the hawks at twilight play,
The boat-horn on Piscataqua,
The loon’s weird laughter far away;
We fished her little trout-brook, knew
What flowers in wood and meadow grew,
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down,
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay,
The ducks’ black squadron anchored lay,
And heard the wild-geese calling loud
Beneath the gray November cloud.
Then, haply, with a look more grave,
And soberer tone, some tale she gave
From painful Sewel’s ancient tome,
Beloved in every Quaker home,
Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom,
Or Chalkley’s Journal, old and quaint, —
Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint! —
Who, when the dreary calms prevailed,
And water-**** and bread-cask failed,
And cruel, hungry eyes pursued
His portly presence mad for food,
With dark hints muttered under breath
Of casting lots for life or death,

Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies,
To be himself the sacrifice.
Then, suddenly, as if to save
The good man from his living grave,
A ripple on the water grew,
A school of porpoise flashed in view.
“Take, eat,” he said, “and be content;
These fishes in my stead are sent
By Him who gave the tangled ram
To spare the child of Abraham.”
Our uncle, innocent of books,
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,
The ancient teachers never dumb
Of Nature’s unhoused lyceum.
In moons and tides and weather wise,
He read the clouds as prophecies,
And foul or fair could well divine,
By many an occult hint and sign,
Holding the cunning-warded keys
To all the woodcraft mysteries;
Himself to Nature’s heart so near
v That all her voices in his ear
Of beast or bird had meanings clear,
Like Apollonius of old,
Who knew the tales the sparrows told,
Or Hermes, who interpreted
What the sage cranes of Nilus said;
A simple, guileless, childlike man,
Content to live where life began;
Strong only on his native grounds,
The little world of sights and sounds
Whose girdle was the parish bounds,
Whereof his fondly partial pride
The common features magnified,
As Surrey hills to mountains grew
In White of Selborne’s loving view, —
He told how teal and loon he shot,
And how the eagle’s eggs he got,
The feats on pond and river done,
The prodigies of rod and gun;
Till, warming with the tales he told,
Forgotten was the outside cold,
The bitter wind unheeded blew,
From ripening corn the pigeons flew,
The partridge drummed i’ the wood, the mink
Went fishing down the river-brink.
In fields with bean or clover gay,
The woodchuck, like a hermit gray,
Peered from the doorway of his cell;
The muskrat plied the mason’s trade,
And tier by tier his mud-walls laid;
And from the shagbark overhead
The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell.

Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer
And voice in dreams I see and hear, —
The sweetest woman ever Fate
Perverse denied a household mate,
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less
Found peace in love’s unselfishness,
And welcome wheresoe’er she went,
A calm and gracious element,
Whose presence seemed the sweet income
And womanly atmosphere of home, —
Called up her girlhood memories,
The huskings and the apple-bees,
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails,
Weaving through all the poor details
And homespun warp of circumstance
A golden woof-thread of romance.
For well she kept her genial mood
And simple faith of maidenhood;
Before her still a cloud-land lay,
The mirage loomed across her way;
The morning dew, that dries so soon
With others, glistened at her noon;
Through years of toil and soil and care,
From glossy tress to thin gray hair,
All unprofaned she held apart
The ****** fancies of the heart.
Be shame to him of woman born
Who hath for such but thought of scorn.
There, too, our elder sister plied
Her evening task the stand beside;
A full, rich nature, free to trust,
Truthful and almost sternly just,
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
And make her generous thought a fact,
Keeping with many a light disguise
The secret of self-sacrifice.

O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best
That Heaven itself could give thee, — rest,
Rest from all bitter thoughts and things!
How many a poor one’s blessing went
With thee beneath the low green tent
Whose curtain never outward swings!

As one who held herself a part
Of all she saw, and let her heart
Against the household ***** lean,
Upon the motley-braided mat
Our youngest and our dearest sat,
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,
Now bathed in the unfading green
And holy peace of Paradise.
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill,
Or from the shade of saintly palms,
Or silver reach of river calms,
Do those large eyes behold me still?
With me one little year ago: —
The chill weight of the winter snow
For months upon her grave has lain;
And now, when summer south-winds blow
And brier and harebell bloom again,
I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
I see the violet-sprinkled sod
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak
The hillside flowers she loved to seek,
Yet following me where’er I went
With dark eyes full of love’s content.
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills
The air with sweetness; all the hills
Stretch green to June’s unclouded sky;
But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should be nigh,
A loss in all familiar things,
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.
And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I hold?
What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust with me?
And while in life’s late afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule,
The master of the district school
Held at the fire his favored place,
Its warm glow lit a laughing face
Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared
The uncertain prophecy of beard.
He teased the mitten-blinded cat,
Played cross-pins on my uncle’s hat,
Sang songs, and told us what befalls
In classic Dartmouth’s college halls.
Born the wild Northern hills among,
From whence his yeoman father wrung
By patient toil subsistence scant,
Not competence and yet not want,
He early gained the power to pay
His cheerful, self-reliant way;
Could doff at ease his scholar’s gown
To peddle wares from town to town;
Or through the long vacation’s reach
In lonely lowland districts teach,
Where all the droll experience found
At stranger hearths in boarding round,
The moonlit skater’s keen delight,
The sleigh-drive through the frosty night,
The rustic party, with its rough
Accompaniment of blind-man’s-buff,
And whirling-plate, and forfeits paid,
His winter task a pastime made.
Happy the snow-locked homes wherein
He tuned his merry violin,

Or played the athlete in the barn,
Or held the good dame’s winding-yarn,
Or mirth-provoking versions told
Of classic legends rare and old,
Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome
Had all the commonplace of home,
And little seemed at best the odds
‘Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods;
Where Pindus-born Arachthus took
The guise of any grist-mill brook,
And dread Olympus at his will
Became a huckleberry hill.

A careless boy that night he seemed;
But at his desk he had the look
And air of one who wisely schemed,
And hostage from the future took
In trainëd thought and lore of book.
Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he
Shall Freedom’s young apostles be,
Who, following in War’s ****** trail,
Shall every lingering wrong assail;
All chains from limb and spirit strike,
Uplift the black and white alike;
Scatter before their swift advance
The darkness and the ignorance,
The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth,
Which nurtured Treason’s monstrous growth,
Made ****** pastime, and the hell
Of prison-torture possible;
The cruel lie of caste refute,
Old forms remould, and substitute
For Slavery’s lash the freeman’s will,
For blind routine, wise-handed skill;
A school-house plant on every hill,
Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence
The quick wires of intelligence;
Till North and South together brought
Shall own the same electric thought,
In peace a common flag salute,
And, side by side in labor’s free
And unresentful rivalry,
Harvest the fields wherein they fought.

Another guest that winter night
Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light.
Unmarked by time, and yet not young,
The honeyed music of her tongue
And words of meekness scarcely told
A nature passionate and bold,

Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide,
Its milder features dwarfed beside
Her unbent will’s majestic pride.
She sat among us, at the best,
A not unfeared, half-welcome guest,
Rebuking with her cultured phrase
Our homeliness of words and ways.
A certain pard-like, treacherous grace
Swayed the lithe limbs and drooped the lash,
Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash;
And under low brows, black with night,
Rayed out at times a dangerous light;
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face
Presaging ill to him whom Fate
Condemned to share her love or hate.
A woman tropical, intense
In thought and act, in soul and sense,
She blended in a like degree
The ***** and the devotee,
Revealing with each freak or feint
The temper of Petruchio’s Kate,
The raptures of Siena’s saint.
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist
Had facile power to form a fist;
The warm, dark languish of her eyes
Was never safe from wrath’s surprise.
Brows saintly calm and lips devout
Knew every change of scowl and pout;
And the sweet voice had notes more high
And shrill for social battle-cry.

Since then what old cathedral town
Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown,
What convent-gate has held its lock
Against the challenge of her knock!
Through Smyrna’s plague-hushed thoroughfares,
Up sea-set Malta’s rocky stairs,
Gray olive slopes of hills that hem
Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem,
Or startling on her desert throne
The crazy Queen of Lebanon
With claims fantastic as her own,
Her tireless feet have held their way;
And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray,
She watches under Eastern skies,
With hope each day renewed and fresh,
The Lord’s quick coming in the flesh,
Whereof she dreams and prophesies!
Where’er her troubled path may be,
The Lord’s sweet pity with her go!
The outward wayward life we see,
The hidden springs we may not know.
Nor is it given us to discern
What threads the fatal sisters spun,
Through what ancestral years has run
The sorrow with the woman born,
What forged her cruel chain of moods,
What set her feet in solitudes,
And held the love within her mute,
What mingled madness in the blood,
A life-long discord and annoy,
Water of tears with oil of joy,
And hid within the folded bud
Perversities of flower and fruit.
It is not ours to separate
The tangled skein of will and fate,
To show what metes and bounds should stand
Upon the soul’s debatable land,
And between choice and Providence
Divide the circle of events;
But He who knows our frame is just,
Merciful and compassionate,
And full of sweet assurances
And hope for all the language is,
That He remembereth we are dust!

At last the great logs, crumbling low,
Sent out a dull and duller glow,
The bull’s-eye watch that hung in view,
Ticking its weary circuit through,
Pointed with mutely warning sign
Its black hand to the hour of nine.
That sign the pleasant circle broke:
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray,
And laid it tenderly away;
Then roused himself to safely cover
The dull red brands with ashes over.
And while, with care, our mother laid
The work aside, her steps she stayed
One moment, seeking to express
Her grateful sense of happiness
For food and shelter, warmth and health,
And love’s contentment more than wealth,
With simple wishes (not the weak,
Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek,
But such as warm the generous heart,
O’er-prompt to do with Heaven its part)
That none might lack, that bitter night,
For bread and clothing, warmth and light.

Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out.
Down the long hillside treading slow
We saw the half-buried oxen go,
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their straining nostrils white with frost.
Before our door the straggling train
Drew up, an added team to gain.
The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes
From lip to lip; the younger folks
Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled,
Then toiled again the cavalcade
O’er windy hill, through clogged ravine,
And woodland paths that wound between
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed.
From every barn a team afoot,
At every house a new recruit,
Where, drawn by Nature’s subtlest law,
Haply the watchful young men saw
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
And curious eyes of merry girls,
Lifting their hands in mock defence
Against the snow-ball’s compliments,
And reading in each missive tost
The charm with Eden never lost.
We heard once more the sleigh-bells’ sound;
And, following where the teamsters led,
The wise old Doctor went his round,
Just pausing at our door to say,
In the brief autocratic way
Of one who, prompt at Duty’s call,
Was free to urge her claim on all,
That some poor neighbor sick abed
At night our mother’s aid would need.
For, one in generous thought and deed,
What mattered in the sufferer’s sight
The Quaker matron’s inward light,
The Doctor’s mail of Calvin’s creed?
All hearts confess the saints elect
Who, twain in faith, in love agree,
And melt not in an acid sect
The Christian pearl of charity!

So days went on: a week had passed
Since the great world was heard from last.
The Almanac we studied o’er,
Read and reread our little store
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score;
One harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes, a book forbid,
And poetry, (or good or bad,
A single book was all we had,)
Where Ellwood’s meek, drab-skirted Muse,
A stranger to the heathen Nine,
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,
The wars of David and the Jews.
At last the floundering carrier bore
The village paper to our door.
Lo! broadening outward as we read,
To warmer zones the horizon spread
In panoramic length unrolled
We saw the marvels that it told.
Before us passed the painted Creeks,
A   nd daft McGregor on his raids
In Costa Rica’s everglades.
And up Taygetos winding slow
Rode Ypsilanti’s Mainote Greeks,
A Turk’s head at each saddle-bow!
Welcome to us its week-old news,
Its corner for the rustic Muse,
Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
Its record, mingling in a breath
The wedding bell and dirge of death:
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale,
The latest culprit sent to jail;
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
Its vendue sales and goods at cost,
And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street,
The pulse of life that round us beat;
The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow;
Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
And all the world was ours once more!

Clasp, Angel of the backword look
And folded wings of ashen gray
And voice of echoes far away,
The brazen covers of thy book;
The weird palimpsest old and vast,
Wherein thou hid’st the spectral past;
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow
The characters of joy and woe;
The monographs of outlived years,
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,
Green hills of life that ***** to death,
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees
Shade off to mournful cypresses
With the white amaranths underneath.
Even while I look, I can but heed
The restless sands’ incessant fall,
Importunate hours that hours succeed,
Each clamorous with its own sharp need,
And duty keeping pace with all.
Shut down and clasp with heavy lids;
I hear again the voice that bids
The dreamer leave his dream midway
For larger hopes and graver fears:
Life greatens in these later years,
The century’s aloe flowers to-day!

Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,
The worldling’s eyes shall gather dew,
Dreaming in throngful city ways
Of winter joys his boyhood knew;
And dear and early friends — the few
Who yet remain — shall pause to view
These Flemish pictures of old days;
Sit with me by the homestead hearth,
And stretch the hands of memory forth
To warm them at the wood-fire’s blaze!
And thanks untraced to lips unknown
Shall greet me like the odors blown
From unseen meadows newly mown,
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond;
The traveller owns the grateful sense
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare
The benediction of the air.

Written in  1865
In its day, 'twas a best-seller and earned significant income for Whittier

https://youtu.be/vVOQ54YQ73A

BLM activists are so stupid that they defaced a statue of Whittier  unaware that he was an ardent abolitionist 🤣
You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.

From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel?         Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to **** children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!
R Saba Oct 2013
all my life and all my goals
fade away
in your presence, dear doubt
i falter

all my time and my efforts
slip down from my shoulders
in your presence, dear doubt
i am only weighed down
by the future

dear doubt
i ask you
to spare me from the harsh light
keep me in the soft dark
asleep

painted on, this mural
time and time again
referred to as history
i'll live within those lines
if only, dear doubt
you'll spare me

all my life, all my goals
all my time, all the tolls you hake taken
i have paid

all my efforts, my breath
all my cries and my threats you have taken
i have paid
time and time again

in your presence, dear doubt
i am only weighed down by the future

in your presence, dear doubt

i falter
I thought this might be a song but it turned into a poem so whatever
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2022
i know that just by drinking i will not feel good
with myself, i need to write something:
drinking alone never made much sense...
drinking when partying and socialising...
drinking when going to night-clubs almost:
almost always failing to pick up girls...
**** me... at my lowest i still managed to flirt
with a girl, kiss her dance with her...
   i even walked her to the bus-stop...
before she asked me what i did:
i said i was unemployed... i sort of forgot to say
that i was a poet in the making...
perhaps that's why i don't think i'm an alcoholic:
although... in a week's worth?
    i probably drink... how many units is a bottle
of whiskey?! 40... 4 x 7 =... ****... 3 x 7 = 21...
add a 7... that's 28... then add a zero...
i drink close to about 300 units of alcohol per week...
ha ha... and on the bottles?
   it reads: chief medical examiner for England
suggests that adults do not exceed drinking no more
than 14 units per week...
ha ha ha...                             ah ha...
i have a worried mind... i already said to myself:
like Prometheus... i'll sacrifice my liver to salvage
my mind...

and i'm willing to sacrifice years of my life into
my mortality's "winter" for the current ride...
i know the risks... i'm just really worried about being
constipated... and... eternity... eternity is a dawn
with a night before a day...
it's scaring me... should all of it be true...
well... the thought started scary... eternity?!
while all these insects live only days...
with infanticide and the neunormen

new-norms and old-taboos...
and then back to new-taboos and old-norms...
some people think time is linear... given history...
some people think time is cyclic...
we read history with a grain of salt and hindsight
and repeat our mistakes...
i? i think time is a sea-saw...
we're like a tide... a tide comes in...
a tide goes out... sometimes we appear
spectacular... like at the height of the Roman Empire
of the zenith of Greek intellectual curiosity...
then we fall back... allow for barbarian invasions...
what was spectacular about Ancient Greece
became Byzantine: i.e. bureaucratic...
muddled... the only great aspect of Byzantine
culture was the chants...
oh sure... the Greco-Judeo pact did undermine
the Latin influence...
the New Testament is a testament of the Greco-Judeo
pact: to undermine the Roman Empire...
no?

     it isn't? oh... come on... the myths because over time
myths: given time...
go along the pyramid "scheme" of:
mythology "<" history "<" journalism "<"...
          aha! now poetry comes to the fore...
which way are we going to go? "<" or ">"?
  what a wonky looking L... or Γ (gamma)...
then again... maybe it's one of those weird
"Copernican" Vs....
   right... how now: write the plural of vvvvvv...
without the apostrophe that's also
suggestive of v's... i.e. V owns a lawnmower?
right... move the apostrophe along... Vs'...
because... it's not versus: hence no vs. <---
  the full stop...

to reiterate: i learned to constrain my frustrations
on Samuel Beckett's Watt...
i remember one sunny afternoon
lying in a park and laughing from frustration
at the complications of the language...
laughing out loud: getting a wave hello from a small
boy walking back from school with his mother...
i wasn't laughing at anything particular
or for that matter universal, just the per se...

how else? vs' or vees or vvvvvvv etc.?
plenty of v v v v v v v
                 < < < < < < < <
                > > > > > > > > > ?

we haven't moved that much from the ancient
world... where letters had a duality of being used
as phonetic encoding symbols and mathematical
constants after all...
VI + IX = XV
    6 (b) + 9 (P) = 15 (IS)

now i would to being an alcoholic is i simply
drank to drink...
but i'm writing... i need creative juices...
if i'm not jerking off to pictures of mature
women... Ava Lauren... come on...
it's a Porsche of a body...
i don't need to watch anything... just the photograph
and i leave the rest to the imagination:
although compared to the cinema of memory:
the cinema of my imagination lasts at outbursts...
sure... if i were simply drinking...
to "cope": drinking before a mirror
and falling asleep with a hand placed in a bucket
of water to wet my bed...
yeah... then i'd join some A.A.... ahem...
midday "group therapy session"...

but i'm busy... well into the morning hours...
scribbling like "mad" like... the monk who wrote
the Codex Gigas...
       me? devil or my own ego? i like my garden...
only today before my expedition i offered
two plums to my neighbour and my mother...
i brought these kind fallings in my hand outstretched
in my palm... washed... obviously...
but i didn't usher in any confusion:
no conflation of knowledge
regarding: what's good (universal)
   with what's evil (particular)... hello!
                       Greco-Judeo conspiracy...

wow! Δ delta... that's not the "letter"
Pythagoras worked with... is it?
   he was working out why either L or Γ
have either \ or / missing respectively, no?
          but delta? Δ? that's an isoscoles...
now... i dare to wonder: akin to Heidegger:
  question-worthiness arises from a spontaneity...
questions asks themselves...
people just need to find them...
this is but one example...

you know when you're sitting in a garden...
and you hear a shoom echo in the sky...
but can't see anything...
right... there's a jumbo-jet flying over your
garden... you hear it first...
seconds later you see you...
**** the chicken and the egg dynamic for normal
people saluting the mantra of passive
curiosity...

what came first?
Δ or the triangle?! that's a big question:
a question that Wittgenstein could only appreciate...
since he wrote so sparingly:
but i have to admit... his stance on tautology:
the thesaurus... mine: on thesaurus rex...
and the dictionary omnibus...
                          i want to repay Samuel Beckett
with the same frustrations he poured onto me...
this is my revenge... i want to fry brains and then:
freeze them...
            
what came first? Δ (the letter) the sound...
Da da da or the triangle?
my guess is: ****... i've already answered it...
with what?! the use of ******* pyramids...
but how Δ morphed into D and how did the pyramids
become abstract "all of a sudden"?
ah... the glory days of Greek intellectual curiosity...
its genesis... oh too suddenly ***** by:

the myth of the origins of Rome...
the Aeneid: a Trojan holiday in Tuscany after the fall
of Troy...
    
but no... i couldn't simply drink and pretend
to look into a mirror...
i wish i could have been a painter:
then again: no...
i can't leave "****" to abstracts: to some "suppose so...."
"suppose" he "thought" this blah blah blah-*******...
ever get "*****" by a South African
with ****-friction that was so bad
you thought you were getting circumcised
of putting your phallus inside an enlarged earthworm's
mouth-gut?
    i have... it's not a pleasant experience...
knock-knock on wood... ****... not wood:
knock-knock on bone: i.e. my forehead...
               what a terrible **** that was...
and she was raised in society... a teacher at some
boarding school... all boys...
******* cocoon ***... in the dark...
under the bed-sheets... never... ever! again!
but at least i now know what a slightly timid
beached whale of a ****-blonde stereotype looks
like...
           dry ***** are the worst...
seriously: it felt like ****...
on to occasions i had problems with getting a hard
on with prostitutes...
this one time: fair enough...
it was my first time having a *******...
obviously i was nervous...
but when i was... ahem #metoo "*****"...
i was as hard as a fiddle...
   what the **** did she spike the food with?!

well.. what's done is done... Johnny Depp was believed:
a fully documented affair...
ah... this conflation on the basis of the word AND...
it's not like "he" said: and you will know
the difference between either good or evil...
that "we" will know the difference between
good AND evil... knowing our ontology:
we'd be prone to entertain good as evil...
and evil as good... in the latter instance:
the more lasting, entertaining prospect...
               aligned with our hoarding sentimentalities...

Kierkegaard was onto something...
but he just didn't have the bilingual or the "autistic" /
"schizophrenic" focus to drill the baron of 90
into a corner and establish grandiose architecture...

it's one bad "thing" after another...
the fact that i might be drinking and not scribbling:
an opportunity wasted...
but the fact that i can't find the right sort of music
to listen to while i scribble...
hell... if i could write in silence...
but it usually takes one song...
a song passed down...
BRYGADA KRYZYS - to co czujesz, to wiesz:
Crisis Brigade - what you feel, is what you know...
sampled from an album from 1992...
Poland... i never imagined them being
so bilingual... how did i arrive at the song choice?
i was revisiting Edinburgh trying to get back together
with my ex-Russian lass...
  failure... she was already on a "different " path...

three nights in a hostel... left to a ****** couple...
i was only "scouted" when talking to some Slovak...
i got drunk and my English veneer drooped...
**** me... i had a wild night in Cracow
a day after...
i was fending myself from this waggling tongue
taxi driver who caught me
squeezing at my "major-phlegm" residue tool
trying to find an alley-way...
scary story... teenage girls not invited...

but i was in a hostel with this couple from Warsaw...
best name for a capital anywhere...
compare War-Saw with Bang-****...
ha ha... so she was this tall girl...
pristine like a ballerina...
played netball or whatever the hell tall girls play...
we were roaming Edinburgh and we
came across a charity shin-dig
and i exclaimed: oh.. what a nice acoustic (guitar)...
immediately... she retorted:
i hope you return to Warsaw and find
a nice girl for yourself...
i.e.                      not her?!

what a hyper-democratic reality we're all living in
right now...
   i'm not going to see her again...
i can see her like i can see my great-grandad...
a shadow... a figment of my imgation: almost...
"almost" being the fact that she recommended
this song for me: feeding me this idiotic self-worth-sence
delusion of comparative "literarture":
i'm John Peel...
  but my speciality is outside the realm of
the English speaking world...

wasn't today spectacular?
   it sort of began... "it sort of": began with me cringing
at an accident waiting to happen...
some white-van man was exiting a Tesco carpark...
too high... too high... jeeze!
sraped his ladder clean: proof off of this roof...
helped him out... became a 5 minute part-time
traffic warden... he ease back...
i picked up the pieces... you alright mate?
we had it sorted...

then on a whim... roughly... from Havering Road
to Edgware Road?
****... if i was going to cycle down Oxford St...
i would be cycling with a copy of Ovid to read in Hyde
Park.... instead? i cycled via Central London...
Chancery Lane: just before Holborn... and *******
Holborn Circus...
**** me... London looks weird without a tube-map...
it's 4-D geography...

if Donald Trump was playing 4D chess...
then i'm orientating myself around 4D geography...
on a bicycle... having formerly used
the buses and trains and the tube of London...
to hell with that load of trans-Atlantic *******...
sure sure...
you say one more ******* thing
along the lines of SLAV(e)... say it...
say it's "etymologically" sound...
say it... now that you have? ****** ****** ****** ******...
not the same?!
you have a problem? i don't have a problem...
i can tell the difference between a Somalian
a Nigerian and a Kenyan?
we're? having? spelling? issues?

English "public intellectuals"; them!
you add that ******* epsilon to the word Slav-
and? i'll just cut off the suffix -an
from the word GERMAN...
           ******* filth! GERMS!
    **** or ****** is not an isolated
instance... but then again: i trust the Russian
to use their bayonets more than i trust them
to use their tongues...
and that's wrong... since... they could readily
people the shadow-people of the shadows
of people...

    i've been ******* for quiet some time....
i'm ready to pounce... bite at something pulsating...
i ask the song i'm listening to on repeat:
what's my problem?
i can't say ******...
but some English ******* can add
an E to my ethnicity and equate me
to SLAVE... what etymological guarantee
does he: GERM...have?
                            i'm currently in the process
of eradicating a rat from my house...
GERMANIC PEOPLES ARE VERMIN...
THEIR WOMEN ARE EASY TARGET ****...
what?!

the "situation" is a lot different from what
it was under the deconstruction of the Soviet Empire...
now all i see... the deconstruction of
the Capitalistic hegemony...
hell... i bet that even Vietnam is on board!

Slav(e)?! NIGGERNIGGERNIGGERNIGGER...
what he **** are you going to, do?!
sure... you're not a racist..
you're just an etnicist! ETHNICIST!
inter-racial biases: Russophobia:
all Russians are "bad": when they say they are...
you...

   sie fickin rattekeimemesch.....

'__'
'
'     ''      Li - i.e. fire... as a trigram
'
__'       ******* toaf-face "smile":
to suggest "fire"...

i completely abhor leaving poems began one evening
and not finished:
squatting thoughts enter this abandoned housed...
and i can't strain my desire to keep
with the concept of Ensо̄:
                                                  エンソー

a poem completed in one sitting: i'm not a novelist:
i'm a "poet"... i don't have the luxury to retain
days and days on a composition:
what i start i must finish... i can't allow myself
this luxury of a novelist...
hit the iron while its hot comes to mind...

mind you: what's the difference between a proverb
and a maxim?
    i think that... maxims are conjured up whims...
half-truths... statements without justifications
or if they are grounded in any justifications:
they are for French ballrooms
for Confucian strict MING obligations...

                        maxims are untested truths...
maxims are: to say the least: not proverbs in that
they are hardly mystifying...
like this Slavic proverb:
   better a sparrow in your hand than a dove
upon your roof...
      oh: i know what that means...
better your own happiness than the happiness
of your household: and not out of selfish reasons?
if you are content... the contenteness can seep out
of you... and into the household...
why? you have a ******* sparrow in your hand...
who cares about a dove on your roof?

problem... i forgot what i was writing about yesterday...
i made notes:

- Mashiter's Hill
- King Rat
- щ "vs.": -ść                       me?!
invent a letter?! ha?!


well... i was so close so close to finishing...
Godsmack is touring... i think i'm going to try to get a ticket
for one of their gigs...
they're currently my favourite rock band...

Mashiter's Hill... oh... this little hill with a park...
i can walk up it and i usually drink a beer on
one of the benches... from it...
i have a pristine panorama of London...
   me? i'm at the utmost north-eastern tip of Greater
London...
                  it's London and it's "London"...
anything outside of the A406 is hardly anything beside
the Home Counties...
i wish other English people would cut the Essex
folk some slack... esp. the women...
     to me they're nuns...
or... as i recently found out... i'm unapproachable by
women... unless they're really drunk...
i'm just recounting what i hear:
a ******* will tell me i'm beautiful
a drunken woman in her 40s will tell me i'm ****...
do i make any moves on that?
    hardly... i like su doku puzzles: not headaches
caused by women...

but only yesterday i did a 50+ mile journey there
and back to Edgware Road to... hmm...
drink a Thai beer...
                    there's no point having a cycling session
less than the length of a marathon...
i stopped off at Chadwell Heath and bought myself
some fish sticks (45% Surimi - Alaskan *******,
   Hake and some crab) - of the 16 in the packet
i gulped down 14... it's such a bad idea
to cycle that sort of distance without having eating
anything... toward Edgware Road i was cycling
in a trance... literally i was honing in on an abstract
black hole as an ink blotch just ahead of me...
   but coming back? the low sugar levels kicked in...
i lost concentration... ah... i'm burning fat resources...

well... i tried cycling drunk once... Francis Bacon
painting-esque sort of bruising... never again...
but that didn't stop me from cycling...
in heavy traffic...
    on top of Mashiter's Hill i admired the distance
i covered... oh look... cycled past the Docklands
and Canary Wharf... went past the Shard...
all the way up to Hyde Park...
tomorrow i'm going to repeat the journey...
maybe i'll get a chance to meet up with Dan
and he might sneak me in to watch some Pearl Jam...
i was sent a text today about a possible shift...

**** me... hierarchies... SIA licensing...
no stewards welcome...
              fair enough, no problem read my reply...
i'd love to see that band... but i'll cycle there anyway
and maybe get a whiff of the music...

king rat? yeah... that one...
    i'm currently working on getting rid of a rat in my kitchen...
had to removed all the foods from the cupcoards
near to the ground...
  smart *** *******... or fatherfucker...
either Oedipus or Electra... either way...
i have smart cats...
but i never thought i'd have a smart rat...
falling asleep feels sort of weird...
    it's not like having a parasite in your body...
i have a rodent in my house...
   the party starts circa 12am... it starts moving...
i tried cheddar in mouse traps...
i.e. why do i think this rat is smart?
         well... em...
                (s)he doesn't simply eat the cheese
and doesn't get caught...
   (s)he ***** off with the mousetraps!
             i had to buy / replace the mousetraps
with rat traps... basically guillotine equivalent machinery...
if that "thing" snapped at my fingers
i think i'd be left with a broken finger, or two...
but what sort of rat takes the cheese
and the mousetrap with it into the darkness
of his hiding Eden?!

            i'm reluctant to use rat poison...
i'm sort of hoping for a Robespierre's clean cut...
snap... i don't want to **** the poor ******
by snapping its snout... i want to **** it
by crushing its neck... i don't want it bleeding from
its snout: to dead...
            sure... i'd love the Disney adventure
of Mickey... but if it only ate the food... but chewing
on cables... i have a ******* washing machine
and a dishwasher... it starts chewing on that:
i'm ******... smartest rat i've ever encountered:
courtesy of my Nigerian neighbour performing some
voodoo rituals at night leaving food
in the garden thinking he was feeding pigeons...
even one of my cats brought me two dead younglings
after catching them...
i know a rat is a rat and a mouse is a mouse...
mice are timid... rats? the i.q. shoots up...
****'s sake... it's not enough to take the cheese
and not get caught... it also has to take the trap
with him... what? knowing rats...

even if its tail was caught... it'd chew it off...
   it would mane itself in order to scuttle into shadow
and dust into a future...
two songs come to mind:
Pearl Jam vs. Ghost: RATS...
                  of course i prefer the former...
but a rat's a rat... and a washing machine is a washing
machine... i feel bad about killing it...
please don't let me use poison pebbles...
but?

   **** me... last point... right... the English point
about "too many vowels" in the ****** lingo?
sure... well... if the Serbs could incorporate the Latin J...
i think i can make a bypass...

what's rat in ******? szczur...
exactly... what instances allows me to...
first of replace the Z with H and use it in Ing-leash?
CHeap... ****... but not together...
the idiosyncrancy of the tongue that belongs
to itself...

but there's an alternative... borrowed from Cyrillic...
personally? i don't mind using it...
spares me "details"...
i know that Hebrew hides letters:
notably vowels... like diacritical marks...
i know certain languages hide letters...
this is perfect...

   щur = szczur...
                  less consonants for you?! happy?!
there are plenty of words that couple
the SH+CH / SZ+CZ dynamic...
щotka: brush...
          ah... i can do away with SZCZ via (щ)...
but there's a doubled conundrum...
with a word like:

sincerity: szczerość....
          see... i can do away with the "excesses" of Z)
щero

but even Russian Cyrillic doesn't have
a compounding... diphthong...
****... we're not talking about diphthongs... are we?
diphthongs require two vowels...
we're not talking about vowel "transgenderism"...
we're talking about 3 consonants merging...
so...
   it's not a diphthong... not that i care to look
for the SHCH curiosity... but i haven't found
a name for it...
   but we're talking about letters without diacritical
markers... well... "technically":
you could...

                         šč-        
                                     but that doesn't appear in Czech...
only in ****** and Russian...

                     šč- = щ
          
           yes... the prefix hyphen is necessary...

because that's exactly my point:

   dość!                   enough!

where: šč- = щ does exist?
                 -ść = ?          yeah... there's not Cyrillic equivalent...
i would have to invent a letter!
and i don't have the capacity to just conjure such
a letter up...

i've mentioned this before: it's annoying me...
the etymological crux of falsehood...
among the Anglo-Saxons...
that the etymological root of Slav is written
with a missing "e" via "slave"...
sacred words? niggerniggernigger...
hard to giggle?! the extra G too much?!
i'm offended, too...
           let me relay this message to the Russians...
they might rough up some UPA Ukranians...
no matter... better warring among "ourselves"
than having foreign influencces...
Communism was only born out of Pan-Slavism...
we tried... we failed: good to know we failed...
now the western world is playing the fools' bargaining
chips... i'm just looking on and thinking:
it's just a matter of time... before there will come
a canyon, a crater from what would otherwise
dispel the dinosaur's and leave us with
nothing but crocodiles and serpents...

i'm looking for ingenuity in creating a letter...
akin to

šč- = щ
                                                                ­ -ść = ?          
                     i want
more wounds to lick... or rather:
i want a single mum's dog to lick m knuckles...
i want to listen to more Godsmack: pretend angry...
i want anger: i want furore:
i want energy... i want sweets...
i don't really think i need that much fibre...
that much fat... that many high-tier carbohydrates
to take more time to break down:
i think i need to look for a different brothel...

all the Chinese ideas... but written without ideograms...
without ******* traffic colours...
why is it green and not blue to imply: GO!
blue? water?!
           then again... makes sense...
"sense"... i feel autistic by now...
mix blue with yellow... what do you get? green?
two-birds with one stone motto...
              
i can't just create a letter... on the spot...
it will take years to counter the Cyrillic prefix
with a Pollack suffix...
   like my inability to paint the fence...
i just can't do it...
              i'm painting a fence... i'm not painting
a worth of canvas...
i can't: i'll blame it one the roses...
but the roses are not the problem...
the painting itself is the problem...
                    
       all the Chinese ideas...
but... without the ideograms...
written in Katakana... or best.. in Hanguel...
without the ideograms...
"emoticons"...
            death is not a respiting fellow;
death is a harrower of an inevitable harvest.

i just wrote a corruption of what i should
have believe in with
a contending contentment.
Marilyn O Dec 2020
She called out severally
And cried out bitterly
Wishing for a hand,
To untie the band.

The bars stood still,
And stole her skill
Leaving her in pain,
With nothing to gain.

Darts stroke her mind,
Deep enough to bind
And sculped her sight,
With strings of fright.

The past was awake,
Sharpening its old hake
And spreading its sheets,
Engulfing her in ****.
Don't be a prisoner of your past
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2018
so i'm sitting there,
in front of the t.v.,
fresh as a daisy,
             moist like a ****:
wondering...
    this flat white coffee
advert is really something...
i remember times when
i used to order an:
americano with milk...
      apparently a flat wife...
white is an non-fancy
way of saying: just pour
some milk into it...
        too bad they don't
serve a rich white...
   huh-what's-that?
        double cream instead
of milk...
      but this advert
gave me flushes...
     i started fidgeting in
my seat, getting all hot & bothered
at the McMathematics...
   so she's selling a flat white,
or rather, she explains it as (verbatim):
two thirds coffee, a third milk,
   and a third milk-foam
...
i would seriously have a problem
with that: if i didn't cut
my thumb off to make it
a complete fraction...
   that's why i used to ask for:
an americano with milk...
            so what's a cappuccino?
afro white? frizz white?
i'm a feral creature living on
the outskirts of London...
  language is hardly a way
to cage me...
   at least i found a medium
i can ****...
   and it's gagging
               for more of my
   antics...
                   and that shouldn't
even become an abstract of
a person for the person
           on the receiving end...
McMathematics: four thirds
equal a whole and not 4/3,
           i.e. 2/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 1;
it must mean there's a free
muffin to go along with
the fla- white (hyphen
so you prolong and ****
that sound like u b
            experiencing a brain
hae-mo-rr-hage:
                or talk like Dorry);
trill baby, trill:
                       call a hedge
the Hague via hage...
       háge háge háge...
            and hike with a hake
down the end of your fishing line
(hay'k, stutter,
                   snap:
                              ha   -k- 'eh?)
also know as
the haka: in social
sciences that's:
cultural incorporation,
rather than appropriation;
but then again:
who am i to sharpen someone's
pencil?
    if this is the closest i'll
ever get to sky diving?
   **** it:
                               free fall!

— The End —