In my working days world,
Outside little birdies do swirl,

With wings and songs saying,
Wee birds in trees are playing,

But my blue drab or grey suit,
That chains me to my roots,

With only windows to imagine                                          
A world so colourful, tangible,

Is shroud, only wrap of clothes,
Yet little birds, so downy robed,

And within my comely, demise,
See how brightly birdies do fly,

As I shudder, muted, wintering,
O how wee birdies can sing.

In my working days world,
Outside little birdies do swirl,

With wings and songs saying,
Wee birds in trees are playing,

But my blue drab or grey suit,
That chains me to my roots,

With only windows to imagine                                          
A world so colourful, tangible,

Is shroud, only wrap of clothes,
Yet little birds, so downy robed,

And within my comely, demise,
See how brightly birdies do fly,

As I shudder, muted, wintering,
O how wee birdies can sing.

(Sonnet)*

In my working days world,
Outside little birdies do swirl,

With wings and songs saying,
Wee birds in trees are playing,

But my blue drab or grey suit,
That chains me to my roots,

With only windows to imagine
A world so colourful, tangible,

Is shroud, only wrap of clothes,
Yet little birds, so downy robed,

And within my comely, demise,
See how brightly birdies do fly,

As I shudder, muted, wintering,
O how wee birdies can sing.

Put your thumb in the middle and separate the pages,
your gonna have some fun, I guarantee it sages!
put it to your face and look into the side,
now turn your head up and face to-ward the sky,
now bend your wrist and flap it and follow it along,
chirp, chirp, tweet, tweet sing the birdies song!

Run around the room and zoom-zoom Mr. Birdie,
now bend your wrist and flap it and follow it along,
chirp, chirp, tweet, tweet sing the birdies song!

run around in circles and make ‘em really wide,
remember your flying like the birdie in the sky!
now bend your wrist and flap it and follow it some more,
chirp, chirp, tweet, tweet watch the birdies soar!

round and round you go, flap the book to make a sound,
really fast, let it go, watch it flutter to the ground!
keep yourself zooming now you are Mr. Birdie,
when you play with books you can feel a little nerdy!
jump to the ground and make yourself a nest,
it’s time for all the birdies to get a little rest!
everybody drop and line up right along,
chirp, chirp, tweet, tweet we sang the birdies song!

(Sonnet)

In my working days world,
Outside little birdies do swirl,

With wings and songs saying,
Wee birds in trees are playing,

But my blue drab or grey suit,
That chains me to my roots,

With only windows to imagine
A world so colourful, tangible,

Is shroud, only wrap of clothes,
Yet little birds, so downy robed,

And within my comely, demise,
See how brightly birdies do fly,

As I shudder, muted, wintering,
O how wee birdies can sing.
.

For years I've been building my nest
Stick after stick nice and pressed

I finally get my nest built with small repairs on the way
Watching my little naked birds growing and gaining adult feathers everyday

As time goes my little birds are ready for Eagle Academy
They have their ups and downs what can I say they are boys guaranteed

Soon my little feathery birdies are growing like weeds
They begin to find mates some good and some not to proceed

I soon teach my little ball of feathers how to fly
They start catching their own food flying high

Soon my beautiful nest has become smaller
I start to lose my falter

My little birdies have grown into perfect eagles
I just sit and shake my head how can all of this be legal

Now that little nest I built stick by stick
Is so empty that it feels extinct

I continue to keep the nest cozy and warm
Just incase they run into a bad storm

My beautiful birdies have grown up and started a nest of their own
Now I feel all alone

They say farmer’s son will learn to take care of seedlings;
smith’s son will learn how to forge and beat the iron;
baker’s son will learn how best to bake
to conquer best the market…

They say some birdies grow up knitting nests;
***’s foals grow up carrying loads;
cubs grow up learning how to roar most

to scare most the jungle…
The blood brothers2 were brought up
like sibling cubs of the lion
as if Mesopotamia was forest.


On birth day3 they learnt to blow lives out of bodies as candles;
a witness will tell how a citizen was received
by Mukhabarat4 waiters
one of such days,
and describe conviviality at Saddam’s
where the evil has born the arch evil5,
and where they learnt the art of making people yell!

At bees biting babies6 Uday was taught to find rejoice;
at parents wearing Adam’s garment7
in front of children
his father’s great power was worth of praise! 8
and he burnt to rule like father or more!



Would the Maker of the Heaven and Earth hold the fit
at the fate of Nahle Sabet9, the cake thrown to swine?
Would Mucius’s10 soul hold the fit
at the fate of Saad Abd al-Razzek Nihaya11
whose medals and stars were made spots
fit to throw to bin after the half of his life
hurled down from the sky?
Would the pearl Ilham Ali al-Azani12 be thrown like dirt to bin,
father’s fear of Allah tried,
and shot like a sneaking thief,
and the abu sarhan 13 stay without a prize,
and cause more devastations in the garden of Allah?

1. The lion and his cubs: Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti and his two sons Uday Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti and Qusay Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti. - 2. The blood brothers: The criminal brothers. Though crimes committed by Uday, the first born of Saddam Hussein, have been the most reported by media, his young brother was not less cruel. In April 26, 1998 he ordered Colonel Hassan al-Amri to ****** on a grand scale at Abu Ghraib, Iraq’s largest prison, and more than 1,500 prisoners were all massacred the next day. – 3. On birthday: Reports say that Saddam’s sons received pistols as presents on their birthday! – 4. Mukhabarat: Saddam’s secret police. – 5. Where the evil has born the arch evil: such is the description of Saddam’s house. He taught criminality to his sons, and his first born became crueller than father. Uday told Latif Yahia, his body double, whenever he seemed weak or squeamish as a child his father would beat him with an iron bar and then force him to watch videos of prisoners being tortured. – 6. Bees biting babies: This is one of the tortures applied: naked children in a room with a bee hive, being stung hundreds of times, and their parents were forced to watch behind glasses! -7. Parents wearing Adam’s garment: men forced to **** their wives in front of their horrified young children! - 8. His father’s great power was worth of praise: First you note the irony. Uday told Latif Yahia, “Just wait until I become president. I’ll be crueller than my father ever was…” - 9. Nahle Sabet: A pretty architectural student. The girl resisted and rejected Uday publically; he threw her naked to his pack of wild dogs which ripped her to pieces while he watched, drinking champagne and laughing! Here is the testimony by Latif Yahia: «It was the look he was sporting on a crisp, dry winter day in 1987 when he drove around the campus of the University of Baghdad looking for action (for women to ****). He caught sight of Nahle Sabet, a pretty architecture student from a respected middle-class Christian family he’d noticed when he occasionally attended classes. He cruised past her slowly now, honking, trying to get her attention. She refused to even look in his direction. Two days later Sabet was a few blocks from her family’s home in a Baghdad suburb when a Mercedes sedan screeched to a halt on the sidewalk in front of her. Two men in dark suits got out and identified themselves as secret police. They told her she was wanted at headquarters for questioning and led her into the car. Headquarters turned out to be a farm Uday owned several miles from Baghdad. The frightened girl was hustled into a drawing room, where Uday sat at an antique desk. “You’re very lucky,” he said. “I’ve chosen you as my new girlfriend.” “You’re insane,” Sabet stammered. “I want to go home!” “Strip her,” Uday ordered his guards. The burly men pounced on her and ripped at her clothes until she was cowering naked on the floor. Uday towered over her, unrolling his favourite wire cable. “First I will beat you. Then, if you’re good, I’ll allow you to please myself and my men.” It took Uday and his men almost three months to break Sabet’s spirit. Then Uday was tired of her. Her face was ruined; her body was a mass of bruises. He had the guards take her out to the kennels where he kept his attack dogs. He’d told the keepers several days before to stop feeding them. Nahle Sabet was then smeared with honey and tossed into the kennels, where all evidence of the crime disappeared.» – 10. Mucius, (Gaius Mucius Scaevola): God of bravery and heroism in Ancient Roma. – 11. Saad Abd al-Razzek Nihaya: An Iraqi army officer decorated for bravery in the Iran-Iraq War but that didn’t help him or his new wife. Uday saw the couple walking together, took the girl to a hotel suite. She pleaded with him not to defile her - she had only been married yesterday. Uday beat her until she was ****** then ***** her. Then they heard a long, piercing scream, then silence. The girl had jumped from the seventh floor. Her husband cursed Uday, and he was soon sentenced to death for ‘insulting the president.’ – 12. Ilham Ali al-Azani: Uday always slept with the winner of the Miss Iraq contest. But when attractive student Ilham Ali Al-azami won she turned him down. Uday abducted Miss Iraq to his palace. He ***** her over and over again and then as ‘punishment for her defiance’ allowed all his bodyguards to **** her for an entire week. Then Uday circulated a rumour that the girl was a **** and let her go. The girl’s father, a devote Muslim, was so ashamed that he killed his own daughter. When the aging father appeared at Uday’s palace Uday had the old man shot.- 13. Abu sarhan: Uday seemed proud of his reputation and called himself abu sarhan, Arabic for "wolf".

Excerpt of Gallows Bird in Heaven, http://www.amazon.fr/Gallows-Bird-in-Heaven-ebook/dp/B005JKMW66

Source of the note: www.meritummedia.com, visited 2013/05/19

It's a Thursday evening
and over par for the course I'm sitting
in a sandtrap.
The lie is bad,
I'm  buried next to a watering hole
in the wall.
I can't get out.
The half truth is I'm a drunk
a sea of sorrows.
Even the dolphins, I shed no mercy.
The real truth is I'm ***
anchored to a barstool,
barnacles from the dead sea
hanging on the four legs.
If this bar stool ever came to life
the voice would bubble to the surface,
get me to dry dock.
How fortuitous the wind in my sails,
finding every sandtrap
and waving at the mothballs.
Blind to letting the barnacles take it's course.
Corrosion creeping up on me, like its
relative.
Who cares about the long lost voice
or the red ants at his picnic.
Or if Uncle lost his strokes he never had.
Did someone say shipwreck?
I order another double,
with fire in my eyes,
adding another burn to my stomach.
I look at the bartenderess
and my eyes don't lie.
She's my type.
My head tilts this way and that.
I see people starring back at me.
If only they knew how the ball bounces.

Logan Robertson

12/21/2018

Mary plants stems of roses
Happy is her sensuous senses.
Rosy roses reddish ,yellow
Dribbling dews on petals glow.
Sandy was her piece of land ,still
Mixing humus made she fertile.
Grow up mango, cashew trees now
Hellish heat around falls low.
All the birdies, human beings with
Rolling breeze’s blessing grew forth.
Nurture Nature for our future
Save our culture agriculture.
Greenery is her granary giving
Honey, money, feeling pleasing.
Waves on beaches softly recede
Crawling ripples crippling proceed.
Do you know? lives here sustain
Only through eternal restrain.
Gain for all lies where interactions
Divine hold our honest actions
=============================

When winter's glaze is lifted from the greens,
And cups are freshly cut, and birdies sing,
Triumphantly the stifled golfer preens
In cleats and slacks once more, and checks his swing.

This year, he vows, his head will steady be,
His weight-shift smooth, his grip and stance ideal;
And so they are, until upon the tee
Befall the old contortions of the real.

So, too, the tennis-player, torpid from
Hibernal months of television sports,
Perfects his serve and feels his knees become
Sheer muscle in their unaccustomed shorts.

Right arm relaxed, the left controls the toss,
Which shall be high, so that the racket face
Shall at a certain angle sweep across
The floated sphere with gutty strings--an ace!

The mind's eye sees it all until upon
The courts of life the faulty way we played
In other summers rolls back with the sun.
Hope springs eternally, but spring hopes fade.

Everything is so big.
The people, the places, the things.
Even the words.
What does "discipline" mean?
Ow!
Why did you hit me?
Did I do something wrong?
Oh, I'm not allowed to draw on the walls?
But I want to color...
I want to draw the green lollipops,
The ones with brown stems.
What did mommy call them?
Trees?
So big!
They tower over me like the sky over the earth.
I go outside to play under the skyscraper trees.
Birdies soar from branch to branch,
Just out of reach,
Like my toy airplane flies over my imaginary village
Where I am the president.
Oh look, little eggs!
Baby birdies not yet torn free from their shell cells.
Mommy said I was in an egg once.
I wonder where storks live,
And how they carry such a giant egg!
Wait, does that make the stork my mommy?
Mommy says it's time for a nap.
But I want to play!
All day, every day!
There's no other way;
I'm a kid, I must play.
But mommy's in charge,
And she says it's not okay,
So instead I lay
In bed for an hour,
Though it feels like all day.
I awake to bright light,
My eyes wide, like a child's always are.
Mommy says we're going on an adventure,
Taking a trip to a magic man
Who heals people with his own two hands.
I ride in the back in my special seat
Of mommy's giant, wheeled robot.
I'm still waiting for it to transform.
She puts on my favorite music.
It makes me want to
Row
Row
Row
My own boat down a stream.
We finally get to the magician
And I'm still humming to my songs.
I walk in
And see fishies in a big box filled with water.
Mommy calls it their house,
Where the fish families live and grow up together.
I hear my name, called out by a stranger.
I'm not supposed to talk to strangers.
I don't move,
But mommy pushes me towards the man
And through a big door.
I squeeze my mouth shut and look at my feet.
I must not speak to this stranger.
I'm wondering if I can trust him
When he brings me into a room
With duckies on the pale blue walls.
There is a table in the middle of the room.
The stranger tells me to sit on it.
I don't move.
Mommy repeats the request,
And with the pain in my bottom
Still alive and tingling,
I sit, cringing.
The stranger leaves (thank goodness)
And the magician in a white mask
(To hide his identity I bet)
Comes into the room.
He asks mommy some questions,
And then I feel cold hands
On my back, face, tummy,
And I wonder
What magic powers he is using on me.
He turns around and I smile at mommy,
But it changes into a frown and wider eyes
When he turns back with a
Long,
Pointy,
Shiny,
Metal
Stick.
Maybe it's a knife.
Mommy says I should stay away from knives
And other pointy things.
But then this magician makes his wand disappear.
Into my arm.
With the pain searing through me,
I scream.
Not a magician or a healer,
A threat, trying to hurt me.
Mommy tries to calm me down,
Tell me it's okay.
But it's not okay, and I scream on.
More strangers in white file in and hold me down.
I think they're going to take me away,
Or **** me with their daggers.
After what feels like forever, it stops.
They let me go,
And I exchange my screams for tears.
We leave the room.
I stagger out, exhausted.
Back at the fish house,
A stranger gives me a lollipop.
I throw it on the ground.
I do not trust strangers.
Not at all,
Not anymore.
Mommy picks it up and tries to hand it to me.
I won't take it.
I turn to leave and she catches up to me.
She hands me another lollipop.
I hesitate, but take it.
I do love sweets.
What kid doesn't?
I get back in the car,
******* on my sucker,
And fall asleep in my special seat.
The transformer stops, at some point.
Mommy brings me inside and tucks me in,
And I lose consciousness completely.
After a day like today,
I guess naps aren't so bad after all.

I had this thought when I was younger,
That I had to know who I was and who I wanted to be,
By a certain time in my life.
That, when a stranger asked me to tell them about myself
I should have a designated answer in the form of linguistic description.
Full disclosure of self.
I'd listed in my mind hobbies, character traits, intellectual preferences.
All things that, when put together,
Would produce a vision of who I was as a person.
I was a complete profile from top to bottom.
Inside and through.
Adding to and refining back qualities of what made me as I went along.
Fine tuning the presentation of me to society.

I thought I had it down.
Picked through with a fine tooth comb.
No boring aspect refurbished, no overbearing flaw unchecked.

Then one day
I was in a place that housed people milling around,
Same as any other day.
And as I sat next to a fountain feeding some birds,
Like I was prone to do on the pleasant weathered days.

A little boy came up an sat down next to me.
I didn't think anything of it and just smiled at him.
He lingered beside me for a few minutes.
And I noticed he seemed to be staring at me
With a quizzical look on his sun bright face.
I continued to dole out pieces of my left over lunch
And he giggled just a slight.
Now I was curious to know why this little guy
With anything at all to do other than sit next to me,
Was laughing.

I finally turned toward him intent on asking what was so funny,
When he stated before I could utter a word

"You're the nicest lady I ever saw"

I was initially a little gobsmacked as to the bold declaration.
It made me snort a bit.
Shaking my head, I pondered to him

"What would make you say that?"

He innocently replied with a grin that...

"You feed the birdies and they don't even say thank you. That makes one a really nice lady! "

Well color me stupefied there.
This little boy, in his little statement, awed me.
He didn't know me or who I was or where I've come from
And in just that one action he witnessed of me
Feeding those little flying creatures,
He determined me a nice person.

And it swelled me more intensely than any praise over an achievement,
Any congratulations of a job well done,
Any compliment of artistic ability.

And as he got up to run off to wherever he came from,
I sat there contemplating...

Of all the things I thought of myself up until this point,
Just being myself with no preconceived notion or projection,
I felt more transparent in that little boys observance,
Than anything else in my whole life.
That led me to wonder why in the world I had bothered
To ever worry about and plan around who I wanted people to see me as.
I began thinking all of my preparing and analyzing,
All of the forethought I put into me as a person.
Kind of went out the window.

Because if a complete stranger could see through me so easily,
With just a mindless action like that,
Then what did people really see beyond my presentation,
Of me?
Not that who I projected myself to be was false, just honed
To show the best parts of me always.
But then, what are the best parts of me which other people rarely see?
Maybe the things about myself I thought of as "works in progress"
Were already fully bloomed and beautiful already.
Maybe I was just so conditioned to think they weren't?

So as I laid on my couch later that night
And aimlessly thought of the events of the day,
I made a plan to have no more plans.
To keep my list of everything about me I had written over the years,
But put it somewhere only to serve as a reminder to me.
I'd try, from here on out, to just be me
Freely.

The only regret I had of that encounter though,
Was that I didn't get to tell that little mind changer

Thank you...


*© NDHK