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.

The courtesan and poet Zuo Fen had two cats Xe Ming and Xi Ming. Living in her distant court with only her maid Hu Yin, her cats were often her closest companions and, like herself, of a crepuscular nature.
      It was the very depths of winter and the first moon of the Solstice had risen. The old year had nearly passed.
      The day itself was almost over. Most of the inner courts retired before the new day began (at about 11.0pm), but not Zuo Fen. She summoned her maid to dress her in her winter furs, gathered her cats on a long chain leash, and walked out into the Haulin Gardens.
      These large and semi-wild gardens were adjacent to the walls of her personal court. The father of the present Emperor had created there a forest once stocked with game, a lake to the brim with carp and rich in waterfowl, and a series of tall structures surrounded by a moat from which astronomers were able to observe the firmament.
      Emperor Wu liked to think of Zuo Fen walking at night in his father’s park, though he rarely saw her there. He knew that she valued that time alone to prepare herself for his visits, visits that rarely occurred until the Tiger hours between 3.0am and 6.0am when his goat-drawn carriage would find its way to her court unbidden. She herself would welcome him with steaming chai and sometimes a new rhapsody. They would recline on her bed and discuss the content and significance of certain writings they knew and loved. Discussion sometimes became an elaborate game when a favoured Classical text would be taken as the starting point for an exchange of quotation. Gradually quotation would be displaced by subtle invention and Zuo Fen would find the Emperor manoeuvring her into making declarations of a passionate or ****** nature.
       It seemed her very voice captivated him and despite herself and her inclinations they would join as lovers with an intensity of purpose, a great tenderness, and deep joy. He would rest his head inside her cloak and allow her lips to caress his ears with tales of river and mountain, descriptions of the flights of birds and the opening of flowers. He spoke to her ******* of the rising moon, its myriad reflections on the waters of Ling Lake, and of its trees whose winter branches caressed the cold surface.

Whilst Zuo Fen walked in the midnight park with her cats she reflected on an afternoon of frustration. She had attempted to assemble a new poem for her Lord.  Despite being himself an accomplished poet and having an extraordinary memory for Classical verse, the Emperor retained a penchant for stories about Mei-Lim, a young Suchan girl dragged from her family to serve as a courtesan at his court.
      Zuo Fen had invented this girl to articulate some of her own expressions of homesickness, despair, periods of constant tearfulness, and abject loneliness. Such things seemed to touch something in the Emperor. It was as though he enjoyed wallowing in these descriptions and his favourite A Rhapsody on Being far from Home he loved to hear from the poet’s own lips, again and again. Zuo Fen felt she was tempting providence not to compose something new, before being ordered to do so.
      As she struggled through the afternoon to inject some fresh and meaningful content into a story already milked dry Zuo Fen became aware of her cats. Xi Ming lay languorously across her folded feet. Xe Ming perched like an immutable porcelain figure on a stool beside her low writing table.
Zuo Fen often consulted her cats. ‘Xi Ming, will my Lord like this stanza?’

“The stones that ring out from your pony’s hooves
announce your path through the cloud forest”

She would always wait patiently for Xi Ming’s reply, playing a game with her imagination to extract an answer from the cinnamon scented air of her winter chamber.
      ‘He will think his pony’s hooves will flash with sparks kindling the fire of his passion as he prepares to meet his beloved’.
      ‘Oh such a wise cat, Xi Ming’, and she would press his warm body further into her lap. But today, as she imagined this dialogue, a second voice appeared in her thoughts.
      ‘Gracious Lady, your Xe Ming knows his under-standing is poor, his education weak, but surely this image, taken as it is from the poet Lu Ji, suggests how unlikely it would be for the spark of love and passion to take hold without nurture and care, impossible on a hard journey’.
       This was unprecedented. What had brought such a response from her imagination? And before she could elicit an answer it was as though Xe Ming spoke with these words of Confucius.

“Do not be concerned about others not appreciating you, be concerned about you not appreciating others”

Being the very sensible woman she was, Zuo Fen dismissed such admonition (from a cat) and called for tea.

Later as she walked her beauties by the frozen lake, the golden carp nosing around just beneath the ice, she recalled the moment and wondered. A thought came to her  . . .
       She would petition Xe Ming’s help to write a new rhapsody, perhaps titled Rhapsody on the Thought of Separation.

Both Zuo Fen’s cats came from her parental home in Lingzhi. They were large, big-***** mountain cats; strong animals with bear-like paws, short whiskered and big eared. Their coats were a glassy grey, the hairs tipped with a sprinkling of white giving the fur an impression of being wet with dew or caught by a brief shower.
       When she thought of her esteemed father, the Imperial Archivist, there was always a cat somewhere; in his study at home, in the official archives where he worked. There was always a cat close at hand, listening?
       What texts did her father know by heart that she did not know? What about the Lu Yu – the Confucian text book of advice and etiquette for court officials. She had never bothered to learn it, even read it seemed unnecessary, but through her brother Zuo Si she knew something of its contents and purpose.

Confucius was once asked what were the qualifications of public office. ‘Revere the five forms of goodness and abandon the four vices and you can qualify for public office’.
       For the life of her Zuo Fen could not remember these five forms of goodness (although she could make a stab at guessing them). As for those vices? No, she was without an idea. If she had ever known, their detail had totally passed from her memory.
       Settled once again in her chamber she called Hu Yin and asked her to remove Xi Ming for the night. She had three hours or so before the Emperor might appear. There was time.
        Xe Ming was by nature a distant cat, aloof, never seeking affection. He would look the other way if regarded, pace to the corner of a room if spoken to. In summer he would hide himself in the deep undergrowth of Zuo Fen’s garden.
       Tonight Zuo Fen picked him up and placed him on her left shoulder. She walked around her room stroking him gently with her small strong fingers, so different from the manicured talons of her colleagues in the Purple Palace. Embroidery, of which she was an accomplished exponent, was impossible with long nails.
       From her scroll cupboard she selected her brother’s annotated copy of the Lun Yu, placing it unrolled on her desk. It would be those questions from the disciple Tzu Chang, she thought, so the final chapters perhaps. She sat down carefully on the thick fleece and Mongolian rug in front of her desk letting Xe Ming spill over her arms into a space beside her.
       This was strange indeed. As she sat beside Xe Ming in the light of the butter lamps holding his flickering gaze it was as though a veil began to lift between them.
       ‘At last you understand’, a voice appeared to whisper,’ after all this time you have realised . . .’
      Zuo Fen lost track of time. The cat was completely motionless. She could hear Hu Yin snoring lightly next door, no doubt glad to have Xi Ming beside her on her mat.
      ‘Xe Ming’, she said softly, ‘today I heard you quote from Confucius’.
      The cat remained inscrutable, completely still.
      ‘I think you may be able to help me write a new poem for my Lord. Heaven knows I need something or he will tire of me and this court will cease to enjoy his favour’.
      ‘Xe Ming, I have to test you. I think you can ‘speak’ to me, but I need to learn to talk to you’.
      ‘Tzu Chang once asked Confucius what were the qualifications needed for public office? Confucius said, I believe, that there were five forms of goodness to revere, and four vices to abandon’.
       ‘Can you tell me what they are?’
      Xe Ming turned his back on Zuo Fen and stepped gently away from the table and into a dark and distant corner of the chamber.
      ‘The gentle man is generous but not extravagant, works without complaint, has desires without being greedy, is at peace, but not arrogant, and commands respect but not fear’.
      Zuo Fen felt her breathing come short and fast. This voice inside her; richly-texture, male, so close it could be from a lover at the epicentre of a passionate entanglement; it caressed her.
      She heard herself say aloud, ‘and the four vices’.
      ‘To cause a death or imprisonment without teaching can be called cruelty; to judge results without prerequisites can be called tyranny; to impose deadlines on improper orders can be thievery; and when giving in the procedure of receipt and disbursement, to stint can be called officious’.
       Xe Ming then appeared out of the darkness and came and sat in the folds of her night cloak, between her legs. She stroked his glistening fur.
       Zuo Fen didn’t need to consult the Lu Yu on her desk. She knew this was unnecessary. She got to her feet and stepped through the curtains into an antechamber to relieve herself.
       When she returned Xe Ming had assumed his porcelain figure pose. So she gathered a fresh scroll, her writing brushes, her inks, her wax stamps, and wrote:

‘I was born in a humble, isolated, thatched house,
and was never well versed in writing.
I never saw the marvellous pictures of books,
nor had I heard of the classics of earlier sages.
I am dimwitted, humble and ignorant . . ‘

As she stopped to consider the next chain of characters she saw in her mind’s eye the Purple Palace, the palace of the concubines of the Emperor. Sitting next to the Purple Chamber there was a large grey cat, its fur sprinkled with tiny flecks of white looking as though the animal had been caught in a shower of rain.
       Zuo Fen turned from her script to see where Xe Ming had got to, but he had gone. She knew however that he would always be there. Wherever her imagination took her, she could seek out this cat and the words would flow.

Before returning to her new text Zuo Fen thought she might remind herself of Liu Xie’s words on the form of the Rhapsody. If Emperor Wu appeared later she would quote it (to his astonishment) from The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons.

*The rhapsody derives from poetry,
A fork in the road, a different line of development;
It describes objects, pictures and their appearance,
With a brilliance akin to sculpture and painting.
What is clogged and confined it invariably opens up;
It depicts the commonplace with unbounded charm;
But the goal of the form is of beauty well ordered,
Words retained for their loveliness when weeds have been cut away.

”Life is like a horizon and we are just like that bird, who madly chases that one fancied point where the sky kisses the ocean; and even after a hard try, wonders why he still couldn't reach up to that point. Only to realize, the horizon is mere a deceiving illusion, and the fancied point does not exist. But alas! The bird has already lost and there is no way back or forth.”

& now I know we share Oscar Peterson in common
I want to love you all the more,
till the world ends
Let our beloved rain fall
Let our days howl of our Ginsberg
Plath, Eliot & Dylan
& others, more obscure
Let us buy that Edward Hopper
we both love
& let us sleep in your car
out on the Yorkshire Moors
You're the milk in my coffee
Let me be the billboard
you advertize our love on
lets be breathless metaphors
of each other
the quotation marks
around each others words
high on the ******* of stars
& always read
each others poems
drag each other to open mics
& drink too much
let's make Cupid jealous
of the fiery arrows
we use to stab
one another
if it doesn't work out
& make the Angels
jealous of our heaven
if it does
lets be a restless breeze
that blows
through the world
& stirs each leaf
with our words
lets just be us
fellow hermit
fellow poet
Soulmate
that's
the word

Dedicated in part to Iva and Terry and their ever lasting love

First to describe what it is made from and then what it ultimately is and what it means
I will just be able to give description in part it is too great for any one person to do justice to it I choose
To use what some may call and object used in ceremony by unlearned superstitious people but you will
See this has none of that going on but I ‘am hunting big game in that regard maybe you are setting in a
Chair in your house apartment yes but also you are on a planet suspended in space a space that an
un manned space ship Voyager is on a trip of exploration one day it will pass from our galaxy the Milky
Way and go into many galaxies but it will never come to an end because its journey is carrying it into
Infinity one of the stars is a hundred times bigger than earth they are more numerous than the sand on
The sea shore but it is said that God knows them each and every one by name David said we are
Fearfully and wonderfully made my point is we are spirit and flesh the flesh perishes daily but the spirit
Is Renewed daily this all goes into the qualities and perfected ingredients that make up the amulet I’ am
Writing about here is a couple of human examples this is what can happen when you see the real truth
About the body and spirit Dr Albert Schweitzer was from High German society his credentials include
Theologian, Musician, Philosopher, Physician, and medical missionary and his home was in a safari tent
In the African jungle one of his many visitors was the actor Hugh O’Brian after this meeting Hugh went
Back home and sold his big pretentious car bought a used one and modeled his life after Schweitzer this
Great man came to realize what he really was not the outer that passes away but he was immortal and
Understood solidly what that meant our trouble with the Arabs is their identity problem they fret at
Deadly levels about the glories of the past and what as a nation they contributed in mathematics
Language now they reproach themselves and then the disgraceful aspect they are ruled by the west
Again they should take pride in their heritage and within the frame work of the given reality they could
Be great benefactors through the oil riches that were put in their hands and by changing their moral
Compass to the spirit they could amaze the modern world and the other human content in this amulet it
Can’t be discussed without bringing Lincoln into it from the humblest beginnings he became a towering
Giant his words blaze with grandeur significance and other worldly wisdom when it happened I don’t
Know while swinging an axe or while reading by candle light he fused his small life into the great current
That is flowing eternal his accomplishments superceded that of his backwoodsman’s life by eons I finish
With that part of the amulets fascinating qualities now if I follow what I discussed with my wife which
Was so painful several times I was interrupted by tears and was not able to be audible one of the things
Was widowhood I speak in particular about Iva recently certain influences have passed into my life it
Plays out here dreams joys love is unquestionably the most powerful force we can ever know I
Tried to lay the ground work that the flesh is limited but by the spirit we can now and in the future will
Override the sad state of affairs of living in this body that imprisons us restricts us because
We are now in this physical life there was a great quotation of course out of date now because of
Refrigeration but it said God gave us memories so we could have roses in December this I do know that
Spiritual connection does exist between us and our lost loved ones but that the flesh is so dense
And insensitive the connection is poorly or nonexistent my words speak of the beauty of the spirit
Nothing is impossible to it so we have to reconnect the broken by imagination my unaltered thought it
Will always be this truth what was will always be its Ida birthday this week the room only glows slightly
The music is soft and from eternal shadows Terry steps forth this magical moment is provided by purist
Love they join in tender embrace the flood of years together and apart breaks over them it’s like he only
Left moments ago Terry has lost little things that use to bug her but now there are new ones look at
Him not one thing has changed except all that is better but he got that way by divine aid on the other
Hand she has grown into this beautiful woman of grace and softness that glows with character it’s his
Time to be envious but she knows she got that way by doing it one day at a time love tumbles down a
Richer measure than the music can ever do new promise is born deep within each heart that was
Beating Stronger the longing ever so briefly was short circuited in powerful arms he seemed to carry her
On air as they swayed to other worldly rhythms there isn’t a clock where love is concerned because love
Is timeless it is placed on a steadfast but oh so flimsy when it comes to physical endurance if we were
Only able to see love as God sees it is it not the shimmering living picture that is from the bottom of the
Floor to the ceiling within is the telling vibrancy a currency more valuable than all others nothing else
Can take two very different lives and create one that streams bliss and longing a selflessness that stirs
And moves hearts to heights of appreciation a otherwise place of only rumor and place of tall tales but
Here between two people cherished thoughts are visible touching and powerful built by stones hewn
From quarries that reach back before time and have a future that is without end building materials of
Feeling emotion faith and honor all else would only be fables nothing could be that sure and have
Such endurance pillars of fire that burns and its end is in purification the arching unfamiliar to one
Looking from the outside but for the two in the center when the countenance of another can melt you
With a look and when eyes are locked together has the power to make the whole world fall away
Nothing else exists or should exist love has a bridge unseen the other side holds spectacle splendor
Fulfillment laughter romance announced in royal castles on the highest hills not even the richest can
Purchase what Terry and Iva have it is secure guarded and promised by He who is all love widowhood is
A robber but his plunder is of truth but the riches outweigh this temporal division and though
Sorrow as keen as it is makes loss into wellsprings where denial exists then courses unknown open and
You love the departed even more than before ever greater waves reach that other shore you have
Heaven then you feel this rapturous deep wave’s made noble by the caldron that has tears that over
Time Become far more valuable than diamonds and swells of emotional dreaming of a future day all that
We long for in life are constant gift to the departed these truths are mighty in force between Terry and
Iva for her birthday visit and the sweetness of parting with the statement see you ihasta manana in
English it means see tomorrow the tomorrow that now are seen through tears but then joy and rapture
Hugs will be without this divide the surging racing of the most clear and beautiful river will be surging in
Our hearts your hardship is harder than mine because I dwell in pure love and you must contend with
Human l life that isn’t clear and free thoughts are muted where here they burst and grow as you are
Taking in a great harvest where on earth you must be content with a small garden here your forehead is
Always shining for two reasons such wondrous thoughts occur continuously and His glory shines from
The throne brighter than the noon day sun when you walk in the sunshine and it touches you know that
Part of it is me touching you it can’t be as powerful as when its starts because earth regrettably has
A diffuse system so see it as when I use to kiss you tenderly if I didn’t say it I was saying thank you
For being mine and that you will be mine forever now that is half true be well my beloved my eyes are
Ever on you as the French say not goodbye but Au revoir it means till we see each other again and I do
Know all the languages and French is the language of love in my mind you appear in all the loveliest
Places in Arabian nights on the shore of the St. Guadalupe River that has the most shinning waters like
Your smile that is like day light dawning or in the lovely foots hills of the Sierra Nevada the Brazos River
Country because with you in them they are the picture of my beloved rest with the peaceful knowledge
It won’t be long now I have it on good account now the streets of gold then the gold in the streets will
Blend with our golden hearts which we refined in life and death by the High blaze we truly gave up all
That tarnished the gold now only the purist golden love is all that remained I love you

I had to stop writing last night around two I got to sleepy I had to delete a half a page it was just like
Writing a report it was lifeless when I came back to write I prayed that Christ would cleanse me with his
Blood so what I write would be truly pure it worked because I was broken by tears hard to see the keys
That way but I wouldn’t write any other way now the amulet grows dark because it is a living reality stop
Here if you are easily wounded I wrote already about my home Fremont California in night thoughts I
Described the shooting death of a teenager on a bike in broad day light a distance up the street we lived
On just because he was Mexican and just a week later a Mexican mother missed her ride at midnight to
Go an work at a nursing home her teenage daughter went worth her because she was afraid I know the
Place this happened very dark a man I say a man he had human features let say he got out of his car
Picked up a fallen tree limb and beat them both to death as they screamed into the cell phone to their
Helpless relatives yes the amulet shows a dark ominous Black like an ink well was knocked over and the
Ink rushed over the face your reaction is disbelief stunned a disconnection occurs that same thing
Happened before but on a grander scale in the garden when our first parents fell the same thing
Happened a darkness covered the globe leaving natural light unaffected but men and women’s minds
Were darkened they could do everything as before but they could only practice unrighteous acts as seen
When Cain slew righteous Abel there was a way to connect and do right but like to day most just strayed
farther and farther from true right living only the coming of the pure one that would be slain and by this
Sacrifice only could you have your mind freed and you by the spirit can walk free and please the most
Holy one He was beaten to the point you could only tell He was human because He stood upright and
Had limbs it was brutal but that was the cost to purge the vile disease we all suffer from that bleeding
Broken lamb was taken from that cross and His resurrection cast a new light over the whole earth the
Amulet glowed take cotton white clouds white snow and your getting how white and pure the amulet
Became this is in the heart of every soul that is redeemed it is the Holy Spirit it is shining and will shine
Into that perfect day don’t continue without it you rob your own soul of everything that is clean and
Decent and it will fill that ache in the heart that desires something all those that chase the next drug
High or the next conquest of another human how pathetic and it grinds those that practice it into a
Powder of Shame and guilt and a destination that only will end in flames why would anyone be that
Careless with Their own soul when there is a Heavenly Amulet waiting for you

i imagine pulling over at a canyon
seeing the day they took all the pictures
off the wall when she died
i stop for a picnic on a scar
from getting too close to the junk
but you made it and making it is all that matters
i see the ends of your hands
as 15th century cartography talks to the hierarch
a promise of platitudes
flat and lacking grandeur
how on that plane it knows
when you turn them over
like pages of a book
and secrets pour out
they don't tremble like they used to
haven't had an earthquake in years
not even a tremor
not even happenstance could stop me
from gawking at the pile up on 64
how outwardly looking
in you don't look like a "wreck"
your hands remind me more
of a car crash without the quotation marks

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

Quoted by George Carlin comedian

Psychic spies from China
Try to steal your mind's elation
And little girls from Sweden
Dreams of silver screen quotation
And if you want these kind of dreams
It's Californication

It's the edge of the world
And all of western civilization
The sun may rise in the East
At least it settles in the final location
It's understood that Hollywood
Sells Californication

Pay your surgeon very well
To break the spell of aging
Celebrity skin is this your chin
Or is that war your waging

First born unicorn
******* soft ****
Dream of Californication
Dream of Californication

Marry me girl be my fairy to the world
Be my very own constellation
A teenage bride with a baby inside
Getting high on information
And buy me a star on the boulevard
It's Californication

Space may be the final frontier
But it's made in a Hollywood basement
Cobain can you hear the spheres
Singing songs off station to station
And Alderaan's not far away
It's Californication

Born and raised by those who praise
Control of population everybody's been there and
I don't mean on vacation

First born unicorn
******* soft ****
Dream of Californication
Dream of Californication

Destruction leads to a very rough road
But it also breeds creation
And earthquakes are to a girl's guitar
They're just another good vibration
And tidal waves couldn't save the world
From Californication

Pay your surgeon very well
To break the spell of aging
Sicker than the rest
There is no test
But this is what you're craving

First born unicorn
******* soft ****
Dream of Californication
Dream of Californication


By Anthony Kiedis / Michael Balzary / John Anthony Frusciante / Chad Smith
Californication lyrics © MoeBeToBlame

They told me
We weren’t meant to be together
That I’m too possessive and
You’d swallow me whole

They told me
That I could never be with you
That I’m too linear
That you’re four times anything I could ever be

And I know
For I’ve seen the way you reach out so wide
In hopes of capturing enough of this world inside
How your wings beckon so many near
So you can cradle them and whisper in their ear

How you’re out of my league
Because I’m just a speck in this world
You manage to hold yourself together
And I often get unfurled

Mark my word
We’re not so different
You and I

Your sleek curves have embraced
The words of Shakespeare a thousand times
All I ask is that somewhere between your lines
There is room for me

I will fit into whatever spaces you let me
Loving you means a family of five
For you, I’d leave my favorite contraction behind
You’re used to start and end relationships
But for you, I’ll take all the time

I want to wake up in the morning
And feel you wrapped around me
To gaze up and have your smile lines
Be all that I see.

I’ll be there for you when you can’t keep everything together
To wipe your tears
And rearrange your letters
I swear I could make it better
If there was you and I

Never be afraid to make me laugh
Even if over time I ask you to stop
And I tell you you’re making me look older
Just brush that off.
I really do love the wrinkles that you’ve put around my mouth
And when I look at them I see tiny quotation marks
That remind me of all the things I have to say
And that all of those things I say are important enough
For you to quote me on
And as more time passes and those tiny wrinkled quotation marks
Get bigger and bigger and start to blend together around my lips
They’ll look more like parenthesizes
And I’ll really, really love those too
Because they’ll remind me that when I used to have to say, “I love you”
I’ll know that I love you is always implied.

do any of you get a rush of elation
starting from that first notification
that sense of peer validation
from a selfie with a random quotation?
it fills me with so much frustration
that i can't go a single days duration
without posting content for admiration
each time needing more and more adoration
with each and every notification
for my self-esteem's preservation

The words caged within are not to be discussed.
Our minds and hearts are heard and seen through these words, by the deafened and the blind.
No one dares to intrude with caged words.
If set free, they're personal and presumptuousness alluring..
The dilemma still unsolved.

i always favoured Händel (see the hidden γραφεμη variation of the a diaeresis - some simply sprech Hendel, also not the aesthetic mimic symbiosis with sigma - aesthetically it is written Σσς, so too it should be written Εεη - with the variations of epsilon - η - written conclusively, as with the variation of sigma - ς - the remnant, a last resort - the greeks don't believe the tetragrammaton twins of the symbol H anyway, they already laid new pavements for the road ahead, ridiculing the old testament with fanciful quotation, so that man could imbue a godliness rather than the filth of prophetic warmongering in the desert, sacrificing children to a bear like Elisha, the new testimony and the clean prophet, beware the wolf in sheep clothing, sheep equating itself to Nazarene cleanliness, but the wolf inside that will be worthy a tri-summation of interests - before universal education in the Victorian era, when finally enough horses were used up and machines took over, and people were allowed to be escorted into the cinema of uncovered phonetic encoding - taught literacy - but to no avail, having squandered that on acronym shortenings... multifaceted digressions ensue, as i am true to the purpose of suddenly injecting venomous imagery into this whole crescendo of the new regime, nightwatchman every over day, to save myself the pointless stimulus of drinking - let's leave the realm of italics and regroup with the points already made...

what a glorious night yesterday's was, by me saying,
well, there is still over an hour left to include yesterday's
night as today - the heavy Baroque organs of thunder,
interchanging with brilliance of lightning -
7,000 accounts of lightning flashing in a square mile,
perhaps more - there was me, reminiscing what i missed
about Freddy Kruger in the original version of
a nightmare on Elm's street, the 2010 revamp made it
plain (i thought Freddy was a bit of a loser compared
to the other horror icons, like Jason, Michael, Pinhead),
but then it dawned on me... he, was, a *******!
the former two were mutes, hefty mutes, bodybuilding
mutes, bulls, charging, dragging around them a gravity
of pure animal, a bit like a lion hunting although without
the growling - if only lions had cat eyes,
but lions don't have serpent eyes, their pupils are more
mammalian than cat eyes, bonsai, Asian squint, inverse,
serpents in fur - their pupils dilate proportionately
to small pupil, large pupil, not vertical Asian squint in
leather... anyway... what a night to watch a horror movie...
the big brainstorm before the referendum,
morning's newspaper and the newspaper *the times
in revamp mode of the tabloid the sun with
a Shakespeare quote: i to the world am like a drop of
water (or, whatever, water is precious, Shakespeare
is about as much a schooled sneeze / quotation in
comparison), that in the ocean seeks another drop -
told you, the times is just a revamped tabloid version,
it's under the same umbrella group - the only two
opposition newspapers with credentials in England
are the guardian (the left) and the daily telegraph
(the right) - i can see now why Freddy seems pathetic
but is more frightening - it's the ****** talking,
the nursery rhyme jingle - that's the freaky part -
but in the same night i expressively enjoyed
t.v. caviar of Versailles, no critical essay mind you,
just noticing this strange pair of aristocratic ladies,
fakes, a mother and a daughter, what's revealing
is that the girl has no interest in the king, this
builder is eyeing her up, whistles, and loving it,
she has not desire for aristocratic **** *******
of her cousin who's courting Louis XIV brother
Philippe, the gardener ex-soldier (a Socratic type)
warns him, he's asked by the builder, what the hell you
doing here? oh, i'm trying to see the garden more clearer.
he ain't though, he's questioning the entire hierarchy,
later on the same builder puts a pink rose in a bucket
and lowers it down to the garden promenade
where the same pair mother and daughter are walking,
the girl engages... she isn't aristocratic in the least!
she's more interested in frolicking in the hay with
a builder than some king or prince... the mother is poor,
she knows all the salon politics, she basically wants
her daughter to get herself a pension by ******* the king
and bearing him a *******, but there's a scene where
the daughter asks late at night... what are you doing?
the mother replies... writing letters... now you'd expect
that to mean letters in the style of Voltaire or de Montainge,
but by letters she means A B C, D E F... she's illiterate!
an aristocrat and illiterate? how else to control the
masses so long ago if not keeping them illiterate
content with fables from Plato's shadow puppet metaphors?
later the mother becomes frightened that the motto
Louis XIV emphasises (appearances are power -
deception = poker-hand perception, bluffs the higher up
you go), she's walking alone through the corridors of
Versailles and starts chatting up the court inquisitor etc.,
Fabien Marchal - he ain't exactly the aristocratic type,
she's already seeing the failures of her daughter
and the failures of too much information being passed down
to her about how to catch the eye of the king - god i love
this show, Philippe taking an ancient form of a selfie
looking into a little mirror before charging on his horse,
the power struggle, Louis flicks some porridge
onto Philippe, Philippe flicks some back,
Louis shoves a whole bowl of it on Philippe's head,
Philippe ****** on Louis, a wrestling match after:
you might have ****** on a brother's head...
but i ****** on a king's head. so why **** this entire
notion from Detective Comics and Edward (e)Nigma
******* all the brains out from a television set?
the idea of a bulls-eye is still out there - just have to know
what to glue yourself to;
but never mind that, to give closure to this whole
random escapade -
vote leave, reason? three houses of parliament in Brussels,
not a single member is elected by the public,
they're all self-appointed or appointed by connections.
vote remain, reason? cheap cigarettes from Romania,
Bulgaria and Poland - under new regulations they might
not be so cheap, i might have to resort to e-cigarettes.
probable outcome? Europe is already failing, it seems
that the idea of the free-movement of people doesn't
really apply to member states, but to non-member states,
esp. those outside Europe - the stigma born from
the grand European expansion of ~2005 fuelled the problem,
free movement of post-British Empire peoples, yes,
movement of member states in the political union? no,
no one from California and go to New Mexico,
but Mexicans can go to Washington, what a ****** up
logic - the prophesy of a revived Roman Empire is a bit
daft - and if i really did have an illegitimate child,
at what age does paying child support end? 16 or 18?
i wasn't married, i asked about the contraceptive pills,
but still the hot-bun shoved under my pillow to think about...
i'm positive that's when the buzzing in the left
hemisphere of my brain will end, and a grand L.S.D. trip
will appear in the sky, like a big Christmas mince pie -
ask me then, it's been 9 years in, i might have a break,
but until then i'm contemplating juggling Joyce with
Burroughs, and telling you... you know what i'd really like?
hearing Händel messiah in German... singing opera
is English is so so horrid, i love the opera never mind,
i was inspired by the section:
opernchor - weil von mann kommen tod -
to want to hear it in German - and trying to write German
using English grammar, and translate it, is like
a little-Oedipus fable, not as bad as mother and son,
no gauging of the eyes, more like the standard practice
in Arabia with marriage between 2nd or 3rd cousins -
and D.N.A. quick-tests in Iceland, who i'm praying will
win if the vote is to leave, fairy-tale Leicester City,
a country with the same population, 330,000;
not to mention Gudmundur Benediktsson's ******
that beat any South American gooooooooooo(h)'l /
enlarged spelling of ~gall, and so on and so forth bladder
or blah blah blah blah blah.

sleeplessly
embracing
you

Opening sentence comma
semicolon full stop.
Next few lines lost to editing.
Sentence fragmented dot dot dot
exclamation mark.
Vague obscure reference
to personal experience.
Quotation marks hyphen
colon question mark.

New paragraph.
Assonance with dissident dissonance.
More lines lost.
Closing line
end of poem.

Loony Tunes

Bugs Bunny is my favorite rabbit,
watching him became my habit.
He was smart, funny and two steps ahead,
his popularity was very widespread.
His best friend was Daffy Duck,
he never did have the same luck.
Rabbit season, duck season,
rabbit season, duck season,
watching them, I needed no reason.
Speedy Gonzales was so very quick,
this fast mouse was also a *****.
Owned his own pizza place,
won a gold metal, at the local rat race.
Yosemite Sam was a short tempered man,
killing Bugs and Daffy was always his plan.
He's a liar, a cheat and a sore loser,
maybe he should have been a drug user.
Tasmanian Devil was a tornado of destruction,
he never needed any kind of introduction.
Foghorn Leghorn never saw a negative situation,
I say, I say boy was his favorite quotation.
Pepe Le Pew was a French skunk,
women loved his smelly *****.
Marvin The Martian was from Mars,
his laser gun would leave you with scars.
Tweety was an antagonizing canary,
lived with Granny, and flew like a crafty fairy.
Sylvester was Granny's pet cat,
him and Tweety always went *** for tat.
Road Runner was so very fast,
said beep beep as Wile E Coyote he passed.
Never fell for those Acme supplies,
getting blown up was his ultimate demise.
Porky Pig was just happy to be included,
the, the that's all folks, is how this will be concluded.

the construction industry is filled with Englishmen... well, let's just say the management and bricklayers, and from i hear it's a ****** management, they think it's cheaper to loan a crane than to install one... as i heard, a typical construction site of has about 30 Englishmen tops, a construction site population of about 400... i might be exaggerating, but i heard it first hand, and i've seen it, well 10 years ago it was a bit different, but the cracks were already showing - how one Brit undermined another Brit, dehumanised one ethnicity using another's desperation / exaggeration of rewards: by lowering wages of the former's.

only a casual inference of the vote -
it's one thing pushing away the psychology
of the collective into the recesses of Hades -
even further into Tartarus -
well, you can see Tartarus from here -
the Titans are above us, Luna, and Helios,
Jupiter and Saturn and Mars - we rise
from this place, at least with faithful command
to whatever childish ambition -
psychology can shove collective psychology
of a populace into theory - that calm resolve
of reason, the unconscious and its archetypes -
but to concern oneself with passions,
that's also necessary - side with the "enemy"
to understand them, and then see past the fog...
in a fashion magazine... citation:
if we block free movement, and experienced
Polish or Bulgarian seamstresses cannot come
into the country, it is not obvious how they will
be replaced - "we couldn't have grown the business
without the help and support of these killed people,"
says designer *Christopher Raeburn, who
wasn't able to find similarly experienced Brits
in London (pedantic note, the dittoing of that quote
should belong to me, i'm assuming direct contact
with the designer and the writer of the article,
ditto quotation starts with third party members,
people like me, not with the person interviewed
and the interviewee - i now understand how
dittoing works in English in terms of quoting
someone - in means as above, but by another person;
but i'm sure the quote was passed as word-of-mouth,
so the person who's first to pass a quote shouldn't
immediately use " " marks, he's not a third-person
encapsulation of a newspaper article, this isn't
a novel - simple math: origin (0, on an axis of
x, y, z), person who first encounters the origin-al
notes it with precision 'the sun will come up
tomorrow' - after that a person who encounters
'the sun will come up tomorrow' will then pass
the message down as: "the sun will come up tomorrow",
and then the dittoing cascade appears - the way
gossip spreads - it's not exact - it's ~truth -
people add to it, change it, overhear it and modulate
it - only the first person from the naked origin
should be allowed to ditto the quote - i.e. use
the " " marks - the second person directly citing
the origin makes a single layered membrane encapsulation -
after that it's a repeat of two layers, with the second
layer ably fluctuating, hence not loss of the origin
but a polymer of interpretations - Odysseus said of me:
'Homer' cited the 'Trojan war', we cite "Homer" and
the "Trojan war" as 'Odysseus' said, myth making in ambiguity
or the gossip factory, but given the sequence
0, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2... nth
a, 'a', "a", "a", "a", "a", "a", "a", "a", "a"... nth we all have a
chance to cite something from the third person,
after all, isn't fiction's limit based on the third person?
the pedant in me had to mule over this to get some
alcohol frenzy from it... and hey! i did).
it wasn't immigration to be honest, the racist smears
were a smokescreen... look at it this way...
the English Civil War... a friend of mine at university
once said: 'no great nation emerges without a civil war',
i could have written something in excess of that
but then i'd be writing as a third person " " inventing it
and almost treating it as my own, which is a no-go
zone - but from scraps you get the idea - go home,
things are about to get ugly between our civil partners...
and it doesn't boil down to wages as such,
Brits love the fact that Swedish students come to
the Norfolk fields for strawberry harvests, or whoever...
you know what i think it is? London urbanity got
to the vein of countryside folk, or Manchester being
overshadowed, actually globalisation ensured that
only capitals are "representative" of each nation
(inverse the dittoing, that's insinuating a passing-on
from an abstract, like Sartre's notation of "ego" meaning:
imitate me in between each "ego" with my narrative) -
they're not, but the golden nugget in my reasoning
is primarily concerned with You-Tube Sensations -
you name them: eat a tablespoon of cinnamon
and then sniff a ***** sneaker - film it, earn a billion -
become a unit of advertisement, sell it, bin it,
record your life, people binge on it, earn a windmill -
Vlog Blog Bog Sven and Fjoorn - remember when
children were employed in Victorian England?
this isn't between a Brit and a Bulgarian - this **** is
about a Brit and a Brit, hindsight: the English Civil war...
one Brit is saying, deep in the countryside:
you know what, there are people in urban environments
that teach their children that milk comes from
supermarkets and not cows, there's a borderline between
milking a cow and ******* on a part of a woman's
body overly sexed up - this has nothing to do with migration,
well, party it does, it want labourers to understand
a master, some ******* Bulgarian who speaks one
sentence of English gives about two nanoseconds trying
to understand authority - it's not demeaning to him,
he's told what to do, and off he goes and does it and
daydreams about his family reaping the benefits back home...
but employ someone proficient in the language,
who understands it, who has leisure time in it,
and you get a different picture dear Oliver - please sir,
can i have some more? no! back to work you filthy
little Beatnik! it's the self-worth pride, the self-sustaining
pride of nations - the people are saying: did we reduce
our youth to write video biography entries that only
tell other young people to buy the stuff they're advertising,
and all of them have become so fragile as to write poetry?!
well... better think again! minus the influx of migrants...
the doctor that relocated the upper-part of my index
was Hungarian... if it weren't for him... i'd probably have
to use a door to pull it back in...
and i understand what they're saying: i'm not racist... but...
my own countrymen have become so ******* lazy
i have to disguise my racism against other ethnic races...
because if i don't... it's back to Cromwell and the
Parliamentarians of the Square Table.

Sorbian, meaning, tickling the armpit of Germany
in terms of what's the desired encoding;
the variations of person:
            čłowjek (upper sorban)
               cłowjek (lower   "    )
     čovjek (croatian)
                           člověk    (czech')
człowiek (polish)      clawak (polabian)
              człowiek (kashubian)     človek (slovak)
                                 człowiyk (silesian)
         чoлoвік (ukranian).

' well, there is a little misunderstanding with the
  czech caron e (ě), mind this later.

yes, the peasants spoke more softly
compared with urban sharpening of accents,
so that you knew that in urban areas South
London has hardly Hackney Cockney,
and never Richmond, like Essex never spoke
good Yorkshire -
                             so they sharpened the letters
and that translated into involving accents
to later be abused -
                             the recipe? yes,
i was cooking Ukrainian Borscht today -
apart from the fact that Borscht isn't exactly classified
as a soup, a Borscht is a *Borscht,
   it transcends the category of being a soup,
just like rosół transcends the same category of being a soup,
           it's a very fine version of what is otherwise
chicken soup -
                            and as a critique of western cuisine?
why are all western soups like puree? they have
snot consistency, they ever never see-through -
they're all ******* creamy, like toddle-pulp of mauled
faeces - as if a bird feeding its chicks with regurgitated
products - eastern soups are see through,
floating bits you can see, a bit like the sea turned into
a Narcissus clarity. let me tell you,
the nurses love hearing the answers to the questions:
do you do any exercise?
                 yes, i walk everyday, once a week a take on
the miles.
             do you smoke?
        i try to fit within a packet of 20 a day.
do you drink?
                   only on alternative days.
        do you eat your five-a-day necessary ration
of fruits and vegetables?
          i don't like fruits... i avoid them...
vegetables? sure.
the basic ingredients of an Ukrainian broth?
        carrots, beetroots, celery, parsley root,
potatoes, leeks, fibre: green broad beans,
                   mushrooms,
                         red borscht concentrate
           white borscht concentrate for the sourness -
garlic.
                             (base? chicken, salt to taste).
well, coming back to the czech variation of the word
person... i feel there's a need to somehow find
diacritical uses coherent -
                                  i can only see it as
the nakedness of the original phonta (variation
on quanta: a specified sound being encoded with each
letter) -
                      it's diacritical marks akin to punctuation
marks and a few mathematical deliberates -
                  e.g. caron:
                                                        z
                                                      š
the z is invited to be applied to the s to make a shush
stress -
                                       arms wide open looking to
the sky for manna from heaven -
soon enough and y and j were confused with
yaks, tetragrammatons and some Spanish conquistadors
named Jesus - whether jumping or yanking the
shortest straws while sitting in a kayak -
or as Jacky said yards ahead if himself -
                   for every Jew there's a yew tree blossoming.
              there should be a rule of law stating:
only such and such diacritical marks to be applied
to vowels, and such and such marks to be applied to
consonants - but, evidently, this is not the norm -
             these are not merely unconscious accepted
aesthetic consideration, when i was being taught
French at school, i was never taught that
    ê (circumflex e) does as much damage to pronunciation
as does the è (grave e) - i.e. the circumflex is binding
the two letters in-between the stressed vowel,
while the incisor e with è cuts the word off when it's used -
              so the caron (mathematically more than? i.e. >)
  asks pleading to the skies for a letter to balance on?
   and the circumflex looks to the earth to find the seashells
and pebbles?
                             as in less than? i.e. <     ?
i rose above language, i rose above spelling because
i decided i could say to Bukowski's claim of genius:
tie your shoelaces before you talk to me:
simple as simply said: whatever lessons in life
i have to learn i'll learn them by my own accord -
               being drunk in Europe is the norm,
as is prostitution -
               last time the police booked me for drinking
i wasn't there... last time i talked with the Bulgarian mafia
i went back to get my debit card back,
            the **** showed me a wallet with 100 or so more
credit cards, i said: none of these are mine...
          the police cruised pretending law abides to the
standard imposed by politicians...
                   prostitution is fair game, but
keeping the girls contrary to self-employment is abhorred....
            me? i just don't do the dating scene,
should i be harrowed from that hide & seek of western
society's women woefully fishing? can i?
i can't be bothered with the games and the Geisha.
                       - you reach the proper level of appreciation
when you start to ridicule your heroes -
                                  you overpower them,
there's no point brown-nosing them with excess over-quotation,
you brown-nose them for a while, but then the gimmicks
begin... and they know it to be true:
    i' peg down Mr. B like anyone critical of getting an
education: learn to spell, and punctuate, and tie your shoelaces.
       you can't let them get away with it... those dumb-*****,
you can't: we all have a sad story...
    does anyone give a ****? m'eh... probably not.
it's the part when he says he read philosophy
but never bothers the ideas behind into a narrative:
                                   with him your end up *******
before Sophia rather than ******* her...
                        you have to **** her at some point...
                  no point ******* women and simply
******* before the deity -
                  better nothing ******* women and not
******* before the deity of worded fertility -
i was brown-nosing him for much too long...
                 whatever he said in his defence,
i'm aiming to capture the imagination akin to ****** addicts.
                      and that's hardly a feat to undertake.
so yeah, punctuation marks and some mathematical marks
above the Latin... Greek went wholly toward the Cyrillic -
oddly enough a Persian, Cyrus, entombed it into the strength
it possesses, rather than some Saint...
                                        so if i'm a loser at considering
myself a citizen of the world... what is Syria to me?
                                               Syria to me being Anglo-Slav
is:                    when Ramses destroyed Syria...
            don't come here with Westminster, please don't,
leave it out in the open with the paedophiles...
                                            i'm a citizen of England,
not of this world: you keep concerns over Syria where
you're at... if i can't be a citizen of thee world in a world
of globalisation, don't include me!
                                    diacritical marks, punctuation
alongside mathematical Copernican -
                                             yes, umlaut and the colon:,
what's the list? an extra oh... the latter phrase for
          omicron.
                                               Boršč or z z (zed zed)
             or h h (tricky, hay hay? ****** ******?
                               hatch hatch?)
            evidently the pronounced: shoo!
                                                        stinker that one:
given z morphs into h when given s or c...
                                i guess it's easier with      šč,
                   a.k.a.           shch...
and the most frequently asked question in English?
(by the middle class), how do you pronounce this?
                   you know why gangsters don't attack
educated people?
                           they love the fact that people made
the effort to learn reading and curtail other peoples' efforts
in changing perceptions -
                  for me it was always about being taught bad
French and rewriting the laws of stress -
                       i'll never understand the caron on vowels:
sure, the French makes it assured to make the circumflex
and the grave accenting above vowels synonymous...
  &

“Americans” prefer two
and then one within;
The "British" think one is splendid
and two within –
as for the rest of the world,
I think,
we’re pretty easy on this

You subtly strum soft passionate symphonies of pathos
and are wordless in casual relapse
to canals of bliss
and carnal bane-
Schisms of cannibalism eat at my soft humanity
with cries of animalism-
that are ****, animated in oil.

I consume you on dull nights
because you are there no matter what
And I hate the way you purse your lips
a stenosis of encapsulated disapproval
even pursed in pleasure
Your closed eyes give away more than
any assuming part of fleshy eyelids
slits of white shine as unfaithful mirrors
reflecting my own narcissism.

Afterward in comfortable silence-
two quotation marks still hang naked
trapped in the smell of sweat,
wrapped elaborately around
            "I love you"
standing like an alabaster sentinel
but acting more as a crossing guard,
dictating my need

I personally
Love food comas;
And cookie periods,
And gumbo
Exclamation marks!
The're the best!
And semicolon pies,
Oh man...
And peach cobbler
Parenthesis,
They're perfect
With scoops
Of delicious vanilla
Question marks
With a drizzle
Of caramel
Quotation marks,
Oh no!
I'm going
Into an
Anaphylactic shock
From the forward slash
And back slash
Layered lasagna,  
I'm going comatose!
Quick! make me some alphabet soup!
© okpoet

Appearance of the New Courier
(with namesake "Georgia Ives")
flew into the courtroom
faster than Bold face WingDings!

After the judge opened
the waxed sealed envelope stamped
with the official legal imprimatur
sound of silence filled the courtroom.

After perusing highlighted principle details,
a noticeable con jug gay shun
didst Impact countenance of attired judge.

Recess announced at authority decree
(spelled out with quotation marks high
lighting dotted i's and crossed t's)
figuratively a nouns sing moratorium
for those accused of run on sentences,
split infinitives, then versus than...
incorrect usage of ellipses, et cetera.

The justice of supreme court
critically espied quotation marks
(underscoring reductio ad absurdum
Times New Roman regulation)
against stiff penalty asper those
who commit rhetorical perturbations!    

This lenient fiat occurred immediate
by innocent omission of a colon,
which subsequently, naturally,
and immediately affected
every future jury presiding over
a defendant applying incorrect punctuation!

A favorite comma cull anecdote
often repeated by my late english
grammar (a palliative to me psyche
despite the multi-generational
difference in age) happened
when she celebrated twenty  
and counting punctual marks, whence time
in utero came to an end period.

Many question marks still abound
as per the specific circumstances
of this generally uneventful birth,
only that she seemed to dash
from the womb (of her mother –

mine great grandmother christened
Latina Greco) with a pointed
exclamation declaration
of independence while ****** constitution
adorned with supposedly shimmering
invisible golden braces
and a full set of teeth.

Somewhat averse to authoritarianism
and mores of assuming the sir name
of the groom, she maintained nom
de plume affixed on her birth certificate.

If born that way today, and ready
to pledge marital vow, would
probably follow the common custom
and hyphenate name of beau similar
to newlyweds of this day and at this very moment.

Back in those days though,
town’s folk exclaimed with
pointed superstition that a baby born
after being bracketed nine months

within the womb (which seemed
like an eternal sentence), and equipped
with the means to chew would
most likely experience little colon difficulty.

As a dignified divine dowager,
she willingly shared her cradle
to graveside tidbits (populated
with many wisecracks and
marked quotations from a life
that spanned more than a century21.

Smart as a whip or pin
(the latter term somewhat out of vogue),
this independent woman
(who married into nobility

from humble roots) frequently evinced
el shaped lips when the un
suspecting recipient ensnared
of her harmless ingenious pranks.

Aside from what many considered
childlike antics (which characteristic
salient trait appealed to this grandson),
she excelled at verbal adroitness

and could spin a jesting lightly
mocking pun, which seemed
to quiver with an invisible
apostrophe shaped blackened barb.

Though privileged per parochial parents,
her inherited empire and peers, the people
of the proletariat class felt
figuratively parenthetically
included as persons of concern
to this genteel dame.

She exemplified and wore that moniker
noblesse oblige with utmost
august excellence, and whenever
the need or wont arose to address
the madding crowd (this
crowned empress) resorted
to non-verbal communication ala semaphore.

Her lily-white hands (most often
remained sheathed in Palmolive
clad ding silken gloves - exuded
a faint patrician touch) partitioned

the air with arabesques accentuated
with sign language for those
among the teeming masses
unable to hear or in fact deaf.

Regular adherence to being grammatically
(yet not necessarily politically) correct
witnessed the air being sliced with even
less familiar punctuation symbols
such as the emdash, en-dash.

Even doctorates of English and
strict task masters (whose
frowning scowls strongly resembled
semicolons when even minor indiscretions,
infractions, transgressions, et cetera
with english language observed)

never found fault with this
former bohemian, whose rhapsodic,
melodic, linguistic voice ameliorated
dark memories from dereliction dis
played by former queen.

She also received the treatment of
a champion lyricist, whereby every lyre
(got set on fire) from utterance akin
to a choir of hells angels, yet this

chanteuse voice rang thru the
azure vault causing the small hairs
of the spine to experience a pleasant
electric shock therapy.

royals mistake the tears cried over animals, esp. those wild and not petted, as if they were man’s added 1 to a million ‘ stones in minature form of the sandy: see that singleton quotation mark? it’s different pause from comma semi-colon or hyphen, it’s the ironic pause - almost compounding the two words.*

i skullhead i,
i the skullhead, i,
no more a body than a maxim,
i the tomb in stone
but in body a bone,
i skullhead i,
i the skullhead,
no more a body than a maxim -
why will not death wilt
before engaging in the lives or mortals?
why will death meddle in mortal amorousness
when it will not meddle in a death of a god?
**** you death!
meddle elsewhere! who are prone
to breathe the same air as you;
interesting lives make less
of a library than libraries readily mothering
the lives hardly lived but nonetheless written...
eager ***** in section 1,
less eager ***** in section 1.5
mature ***** in sectiont 2 of being crazed
by crosswords and those dumb books
written by young men who "diverged from living"
given horse was replaced by motorcycle...
and feet were replaced by horse later replaced by
ferrari... vroom vroom...
and affordable life in london by saudi arabia investments;
let's wave to our mothers...
we'll be the ones on the premier red carpet
for sure...
it doesn't matter... i prefer opera to cinematic raqqa...
and i prefer theatre to conversation.

If you ever die
If you ever die from me
Looking at my longing eyes
In guise of a mystic veil
Dead drop at the twilight hours
White longish fangs
Of the piercing moments
Will unfurl its wings of fire
Setting sail in an invisible gondola
At long last to carry you home
To the isle of your birth

Even if you ever die at all from me
I will stand upon the deck of noontide
All alone in my aloneness, all alone
Staring vaguely at the rushing gondola
Surfing invisibly away from me
Tearing apart the veil of grazing mist
At the twilight hours casting spell on me
To diminish myself into you
And with you I too diminish away
From you, all away from you
In a shroud of love and longing
As if you never died away from me
In my longing eyes for you, only for you

And like The Prophet beloved
Prophesying on the blue mountain
From his never ending well
Of wisdom depthless and deathless
I will remember you as silently
As the sound of scorching darkness
And I will remember your heart
As saying for ever to me, only to me:

“A little while,
A moment of rest upon the wind,
And another woman will bear me."

(The italic quotation is from Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet)

I am not confused simply busy
Now leave before I get grizzly.

Whatever do you mean?
I am here under strict orders
Of spontaneous curiosity
And I demand to know your work!

There is no work, only pieces.
I am a man of completion, not creases.

You are a mule molding in mire!
Old as rules and just as amusing.
I can see very clearly that this is
A pile of stones playing with
A pile of paper!

By my own universal exclamation!
I could not find a greater quotation,
If I remain as rocks, this is my notation.
One stone for each adoration.

Adoration? I see nothing of the sort
Only lines and space and ink and air
And breath and fire and ash and an
Old man with far too many abandoned
Projects.

Where do you see this fire?
Of yearning and burning, I do tire.
I have wheeled through many a choir,
Each lie is a life and each man a liar.
Now, do you understand my profession?

Not in the slightest,
You could be a blacksmith for all
I want.
My young vision has cast fishnets
On your old hands and we find you
Are not a sea creature,
Not a fish
A bird
Trash
A man
An oracle
A mortal
Nor a machine.
How am I to pull together this puzzle
When the only pieces i may use,
Are the ones that were never there?

Your every word,
Every comma,
Every full stop,
Every quotation,
And every other punctuation-
They destroy my demons.

"There was never silence. Always was an endless buzzing of nonsense in my ear.

But you, as I realize now, were not talking about the absence of sound.

You were talking about the soul.
The silence of the soul.
The absence of peace.

Pain.

I've come to think that humans, as a race, cannot write about the subjects that bring them joy."

- Alyssa Rose©

Just a little excerpt
From a little collection of sentences,
Yet the impact knows no bounds.

Every poem that you write (at least the ones I've read),
They hold so much truth.
As dainty as your name,
Yet so much power they brew.

"People we will never meet,
Faces we will never see.
Unbeknownst to us,
Wandering aimlessly."

-Alyssa Rose©

The -words- above
And the l e t t e r s-
My exact thoughts last night,
8 days to December.

Once I get a hold of what you convey,
I find myself unable to let go;
Because the meaning that I discover,
Is not just what I portray.

When I read your work,
I feel at peace;
Like all the chaos within me
Has finally been eased,
Because you, Alyssa-
Are one of my only escapes.

And as I write this piece,
You don't even know
That someone like ME-
An average teenage girl,
Takes so much inspiration
From YOU❤️

Things About Me That Are Exponentially Special:
1. The cadence of my speech
2. The love that I have to give
3. The way that I can make someone feel like they are the only person in the room
4. My imagination
5. My innate ability to get **** done
6. My tattoos
7. The very large birth mark on the inside of my right lower leg
8. I've never had cavities
9. Never broken any limbs
10. The platform I've created and stood behind
11. Bama. Philly/NYC. Chicago.
12. I've been loved really quite abundantly by men, even if they were the wrong men.
13. My parents are in a loving sustainable marriage
14. I have two brothers. In order to survive I spent all of my time with them. Video games. Sports. Adventuring. I lived a double life of gaming and playing dress up or entertaining myself with my imagination because I didn't have a play mate.
15. Because of this I consider myself to be a pretty singular individual
16. I thrive as a born leader in group settings without even meaning to
17. I can radiate at any moment and bring people to me
18. I'm very emotionally sensitive and temperamental
19. I founded a film festival right out of college
20. I moved away and left everything behind twice before the age of 25
21. I feel the most me with colorfully customized hair and stiletto nails
22. I dress in a different style according to my mood every single day
23. I never do my make up the same way twice
24. I think I might be pretty good at social media
25. I held a camera in my hands and made incredibly specific barbie videos of the world around me and found my way back to it
26. I have dabbled in just about every artistic medium
27. My mother and I could not be more different. And in some ways, similar
28. I greatly admire my father but also narrow my eyes at times.
29. I speak up when no one else will.
30. I have close friends all over the US.
31. I have traveled most said places in US
32. I feel the need to go travel abroad
33. I think I might have finally found "my person"
34. Unless its a direct quote or word, any time I use quotation marks--I delete them. Something feels discrediting or mocking about them
35. I have had *** with men of various ethnicities, and I love that so ******* much.
36. I'm a better me when I have time to work out every day
37. I'm learning to find moments to sit still and meditate once daily
38. I'm a total ******* and its all pointed inward
39. When I was a kid I played out intense sketches with friends where I would be assassinated in said sketches
40. I've been going through a phase lately where I think 99 percent of people are full of ****. I realized tonight while washing my face that although this might be true (totes is) that fear may also be internally within me.
41. Before a big project, I become very self loathing and dark. Fear of it never being realized grips me very tightly. I do not show this to others.
42. I tried to **** myself a few times when I was a teen.
43. I had never done hard drugs until I moved to Chicago
44. I like what I like and don't ever apologize for it. I just am exactly who I want to be.
45. I'm good at the many things that I do, and when I just believe that--I can set any crowded room on fire.

Things About Me That Are So Many Levels Of Not Special:
1. I am white
2. I am a woman
3. My family is very wealthy
4. I'm straight
5. I've never had *** with a woman
6. I've had my heart absolutely broken in half several times
7. I've broken hearts absolutely in half several times
8. I've lied
9. I've cheated
10. I was a clepto as a teen, not because I didn't have money but because I loved the rush and stuff.
11. I've said hateful things
12. I feel trapped by my parents at times
13. I'm an artist
14. I'm "poor" (quotation marks!)
15. When I speak, I often think as I am speaking that I don't make any ******* sense
16. I tell myself more often than I should that I'm not intelligent
17. I've forgotten the valuable education I learned in high school
18. I nod and agree when I don't understand
19. I was molested when I was 15
20. I should read more
21. For being a filmmaker, I really need to step up my film watching game
22. I'm very impatient
23. I tend to hurt others without even meaning to. But half the time I make up the hurt in my head
24. My paranoia is crippling
25. I have so much I want to do and often overwhelm myself to the point I don't get it done
26. I have blonde hair
27. I'm 5'7
28. I'm thin
29. Its hard for me to let go of the past
30. I loved high school
31. I liked college
32. I've been abused by a boyfriend
33. I pick fights with new lovers to test them
34. I worry about things other people would never even think of
35. When a relationship ends, I grieve for a long time
36. I've been cheated on
37. Men have tricked me into thinking they were someone else because they wanted me so much
38. When I show my inner demons I worry they will retreat, Marilyn Monroe complex
39. I think really cruel things very casually in my mind about myself at least once a day, I don't know where this stems from
40. I obsess over the details and lines in my face. This is a recent endeavor. I hate it.
41. I can tell exactly how tired I am because of this.
42. Spending money on getting my work noticed
43. Wishing for more
44. Never settling or choosing
45. Getting in my own way and thinking the rest of the world is out to get me when they are the lead character of their own story.

I am not period(.)
nor apostrophe(')
I am important
dashed immortality(......)
my ashes will remain and feed
someone(,)
if only a slug sloothing in comma days(,,,,,)
on the side of a freeway overgrown
with wildflowers and **** around
an exclamation mark(!!!!)
a mark of quotation(")
I decay and feed
the next generations
semicolon(;) seed;
If I have any say (period.)

Take lessons from a dying man
Give thought to the living.

Color, she dislike me
Absence, common thought
Grotesque, always
Rotting stench and dirt are friends

And in a new way I'm collapsing again, reciprocally
Forever
I'm passed that all though (though dem' thoughts always be wit' meh)
It's no more (though, still)

And now the keyboard takes over! HIT each STROKE with PASS-I-ON!
Now my fingers no longer belong to me! LINK finger and mind (without anything else)
Now my mind no longer is in existence! I'm one with these words! (quotation contraceptive)
Now truth is here to tell it's lies to destiny and me

End

Cryptic quotation offer shattered self-esteem
No solace for the personality flaws
Not quite the proclivity for annihilation
Yet, every stab at the paper breaks new teeth
Curious is the looker who looks through filtered eyes
Even still, there is no need to protest
An awkward moment of exaggeration
Or a sardonic belittling of subterfuge
Coordinated to change the sided nature of self
Crowned by the masses so intimately
But without a shred of deeper connection
And the line grows longer but no one knows why
Blind are bridge jumpers who love high numbers
Just like you never hear of lone sheep
Is everything so tragic…