Somebody is shooting at something in our town --
A dull pom, pom in the Sunday street.
Jealousy can open the blood,
It can make black roses.
Who are the shooting at?

It is you the knives are out for
At Waterloo, Waterloo, Napoleon,
The **** of Elba on your short back,
And the snow, marshaling its brilliant cutlery
Mass after mass, saying Shh!

Shh! These are chess people you play with,
Still figures of ivory.
The mud squirms with throats,
Stepping stones for French bootsoles.
The gilt and pink domes of Russia melt and float off

In the furnace of greed. Clouds, clouds.
So the swarm ***** and deserts
Seventy feet up, in a black pine tree.
It must be shot down. Pom! Pom!
So dumb it thinks bullets are thunder.

It thinks they are the voice of God
Condoning the beak, the claw, the grin of the dog
Yellow-haunched, a pack-dog,
Grinning over its bone of ivory
Like the pack, the pack, like everybody.

The bees have got so far. Seventy feet high!
Russia, Poland and Germany!
The mild hills, the same old magenta
Fields shrunk to a penny
Spun into a river, the river crossed.

The bees argue, in their black ball,
A flying hedgehog, all prickles.
The man with gray hands stands under the honeycomb
Of their dream, the hived station
Where trains, faithful to their steel arcs,

Leave and arrive, and there is no end to the country.
Pom! Pom! They fall
Dismembered, to a tod of ivy.
So much for the charioteers, the outriders, the Grand Army!
A red tatter, Napoleon!

The last badge of victory.
The swarm is knocked into a cocked straw hat.
Elba, Elba, bleb on the sea!
The white busts of marshals, admirals, generals
Worming themselves into niches.

How instructive this is!
The dumb, banded bodies
Walking the plank draped with Mother France's upholstery
Into a new mausoleum,
An ivory palace, a crotch pine.

The man with gray hands smiles --
The smile of a man of business, intensely practical.
They are not hands at all
But asbestos receptacles.
Pom! Pom! 'They would have killed me.'

Stings big as drawing pins!
It seems bees have a notion of honor,
A black intractable mind.
Napoleon is pleased, he is pleased with everything.
O Europe! O ton of honey!

If I said my heart was a cyanide laced pomegranate,
would that make its expressions any less ******?
If I said falling in love was like throwing yourself off a cliff on a winter night and drowning yourself tumbling through the air blind like a bag of kittens, but I was quoting Kierkegaard,
would that make it any less of an awkward melodrama?
If I told you the western blocks blind attacks on the other,
kinda resembled Freud's account of the mother
of a miscarriages melancholia,
is that a condoning or a condemnation?
if I translated every meta-narrative of class relation, oppression, wage slavery, state violence, suppression,
into anthropomorphic allegories for a myriad of psychological phenomena,
would I be an academic or a shinto miko?
[and would the world be any better?]
if I superimposed on the geographical topology,
the political and then the existential,
would I have a sandwich?
Or a lasagne?

the robber sneaks into
my space of illuminating
sadness
trying to piece together
the things that make me
tick
soon enough he thinks
he has it figured out
placing screws in the abyss,
knowing that if I tock he did
something
wrong
i want to tell him that
nothing will work
no matter how hard
he tries
my hands are broken and nothing
will ever
make them tick again
as much as they can try
as much as i'm already turning my
cogs to start again
the robber takes my broken hands
but just for a bit
"let me borrow them" he says
when he brings them back they are
rusty and used
i want to tell him that it hurts to tick,
how just because i was condoning
the robbing; i wasn't accepting it.
but i don't say a word
i just croak a broken tock
and let him rob me
all over again

Down on the South side a
tube ride away,
out in the Borough
where some people stay and
some people say,
it's a nice place, a
well-lit place, a somewhere
to sit and deep think place.

but

there's another side, a ride back in time
when the streets were caked in
horse **** and grime and the urchins
searching for somewhere to stay,
some nicer place
on a much nicer day.

And the Stew houses
but no stew inside,
known to children and
no place to hide,
Goose, oh goose
let my children go loose,
cries far away from
the Borough today.
js

The following text is taken from 'Goodreads' reviews of John Constable's 'The Southwark Mysteries'.


'For tonight in Hell, they are tolling the bell
For the ***** that lay at The Tabard
And well we know how the carrion crow
Doth feast in our Cross Bones Graveyard.'


In 1107, the Bishop of Winchester was granted a stretch of land on Southwark Bankside, which lay outside the law of the City of London. The Bishop controlled the numerous brothels, or 'stews'in the area, but the prostitutes, known as 'Winchester Geese', who paid the Bishop licence fees, were nevertheless condemned to be buried in unhallowed ground. For some 500 years, the Bishop of Winchester exercised sole authority within Bankside's 'Liberty of The Clink', including the right to licence prostitutes under a Royal Ordinance until Cromwell and the Puritans shut down the bear-pits, theatres and stews of Bankside's pleasure quarter.

In 1996, those working on an extension to the Jubilee line of London's underground, unwittingly began to dig up the bones of the outcast dead of Southwark, extimated to number 15,000, and John Constable began writing the Southwark Mysteries and later became part of a campaign to preserve part of the cemetery as a memorial garden.

I can't resist pasting in an article from the Daily Telegraph that appeared after the performance of the Southwark Mysteries at Shakespeare's Globe and Southwark Cathedral on Easter Sunday and Shakespeare's birthday, 23rd April 2000:

The Sunday Telegraph, May 14th 2000

"DEAN REJECTS CRITICS OF 'SWEARING JESUS' MYSTERY PLAY

A religious play staged in an Anglican cathedral has provoked fury after it featured a swearing Jesus and Satan wearing a phallus.

The Southwark Mysteries was produced by Southwark Cathedral and Shakespeare’s Globe in south London as part of the capital’s 'String of Pearls' Millennium celebrations. It mixed ***** medieval scenes with modern imagery and referred to bishops engaging in homosexual *** with altar boys and priests visiting prostitutes. The character of Jesus, who rode onto stage on a bicycle, was shown apparently condoning a range of ****** activities, while Satan told scatological jokes and ordered Jesus to 'kiss my a*'. At one point Jesus was admonished by St Peter for his swearing and responded: 'In the house of the harlot, man must master the language.' At another, Satan, played by a female actor, strapped on 'a huge red phallus' before using it to beat his sidekick, Beelzebub.

The play was written by John Constable, who said that he had deliberately wanted to challenge Christians. 'Profanity is a theme of the play', he said. 'The point of it was to explore the sacred through the profane. ' Mr Constable said he had worked closely with Mark Rylance, the Globe’s artistic director, and the Dean of Southwark, the Very Rev Colin Slee, who conceived the idea of a joint production to mark William Shakespeare’s birthday falling on Easter Day. He said the clergy had made a number of suggestions about the content, but he had not acted on all of them. 'They did ask me to make sure that Satan did not wear the phallus in the presence of Jesus, which I did', he said.

The first section of the play, which contained much of the ***** material, was staged at the Globe, and the final part, 'The Harrowing of Hell' in the cathedral. 'Colin Slee was very robust in keeping me on the straight and narrow', Constable said. 'The play is a new version of the traditional medieval Mystery plays, which were religious in nature but accepted human imperfections and took place in a carnival atmosphere. It seemed to be well received by most people who saw it.'

But one member of the audience, Simon Fairnington, has condemned the play as 'disgustingly offensive', saying that it 'revelled in the glorification of vice'. In a letter to the Dean he complained: 'Had the play been a purely secular production, one might not have been surprised at its treatment of Christian belief. What was dismaying was that it was sponsored and performed in part within a Christian cathedral. The cynical part of me wonders whether this is simply a sign of the times, and the way the Church of England cares about its Gospel and its God.' Anthony Kilmister, chairman of the Prayer Book Society, said: 'This is not the sort of play that should be performed in God’s house. It is quite disgraceful.'

But the Dean, who was the centre of controversy a few years ago when he allowed the cathedral to be used for a Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement celebration, defended the play. The performance was in keeping with traditional Mystery plays and 'portrayed graphically the life and history of the area' which was 'where the seamier side of life was to be found', he said. 'The message was that even the worst sins are not beyond redemption', he added.

Most of the audience responded positively to the underlying message of mutual forgiveness. Like the Dean, many accepted Satan’s *****, blasphemous words and deeds as part of the Mystery Tradition. The theologian Jeffrey John was of the opinion that, despite some obvious heretical tendencies, Constable was presenting 'remarkably orthodox Christian teachings going back to the first century AD'. Constable’s Harrowing of Hell is closely modelled on a play from the medieval York Cycle. His version shows Jesus’ spirit of forgiveness triumphing over the letter of The Law. Jesus’ ultimate 'Judgement' is a verse paraphrase of Matthew 26: 35-45.

  JESUS
  My blessed children, I shall say
When your good deed was to me done.
When man or woman, night or day,
Asked for your help, your heart not stone,
Did not pass by or turn away,
You saw that, in me, they too are One.
But you that cursed them, said them nay,
Your curse did cut me to the bone.

When I had need of meat and drink,
You offered me an empty plate.
When I was clasped and chained in Clink,
You frowned, and left me to my fate.
Where I was teetering on the brink,
Did bolt and bar your iron gate.
When I was drowning, you let me sink.
When I cried for help, you came too late.

  RESPONSE
  When had you, Lord, who all things has
Hunger or thirst, or helplessness?
Had we but known God a prisoner was
We would surely have sought to ease His distress.
How could God be sick or dying? Alas!
When was He hungry, thirsty, or homeless?
How could such things come to pass?
When did we to thee such wickedness?

  JESUS
  Dead souls! When any bid
You pity them, you did but blame.
You heard them not, your heart you hid.
Your guilt told you they should be shamed.
Your thought was but the earth to rid
Of them I am now come to claim.
To the poorest wretch, whate’er you did,
To me you did the self and same.

Subsequently you resent thee,

for the loathing that you hide.

No condoning, just corroding,

as it's spiraling inside.

Subsequently you resent thee,

for the answers I sustain.

Condescending, your pretending,

that your mending hearts of pain.

Contradicting and deflecting,

all your negligence in vain.

While I'm condoning without showing,

beneath I see where truths remain.

I guess I should start by saying that I do have a lot of bias against the competition because of things that have absolutely nothing to do with the contest or the way it was judged. They got my poems wrong. This basically meant that I was going to be playing with a large handicap of some sort. As it turned out, they let me perform the two poems I had prepared, but for the one that they didn't count on me performing, I would not get an accuracy score. Each poem could earn up to 20 points: 12 are on your performance, and 8 on accuracy. I would not get those eight points, or otherwise, 20% of the possible score I could earn in the contest. To put it simply, I had been disqualified.
So with this heavy thought on my mind I performed my pieces. Despite an air of confidence (which was severely diminished for once) I performed badly, terribly in fact. I could very well say that both pieces were at the worst they had ever been. I went up on stage at the end and had to fake a smile as the awards were given out and it took every ounce of my being not to throw away the "congrats, you participated" diploma they gave to everyone. I did not have fun. The second I found out my poems were wrong, I turned to mother and asked to leave. My mom and the people running the contest convinced me not to go, but I'm still not sure if that was a good idea or not. In all seriousness, I could not have fun. All that work, all that effort, was for nothing. It wasn't anybody's fault and that's perhaps the most infuriating thing of it all. There was no way to prevent this. It just happened. I got ******* over. Good, long, and hard. So what was I to do? My mom commented that I was doing the right thing by staying, and I suppose that's true. My school has never participated in Poetry Out Loud before, and even if I don't compete again, just knowing what it's like will be incredibly useful for the person that goes on next year. This is where I stop apologizing for myself and start making actual criticisms because I want you to understand that most of these negative points came long after I was done feeling sorry for myself/pointed out by my mother. And the first and most crucial of them all is that I would've never won.
Even if they hadn't ******* up my poems, even if I performed them perfectly, even if I made every eye in the house swell with tears and every mouth grin with laughter, I would've never won. They weren't looking for any of that. They weren't looking for emotion, they weren't looking for original interpretation, they weren't looking to get a response from the audience. They just wanted us good little boys and girls to go up on stage in our nicest clothes and recite famous poems in as traditional, unoriginal, and boring way as possible. Two of the winners, the guy who won third and the girl who won first, were, by my and my mother standards, some of the worst acts of the entire show. The boy recited "Charge of the Light Brigade" with his hands folded at his stomach and his voice in a monotone to make deaf preacher snore, and yet, somehow this is of merit! There was a mexican guy who put so much feeling and emotion into poems, that, normally seem like dreary contentious ramblings of arrogant poets, but now jump off the page and offer meaning that you didn't even realize were there. He got nothing. In short, I felt like the winners, and the overall values the contest propagates, are not what this competition should be about.
Poetry in the modern age is viewed as a dusty, unimportant art form that once meant something but now is something you read in English class as a child and never take outside of the classroom into the real world. Poetry Out Loud furthers this belief. Instead of embracing the fledgling arts of Slam Poetry and Dramatic Reading, Poetry Out Loud squashes it in favor of continuing a more "traditional" interpretation of poetry recitation. They put emphasis on meter, plainness, and calm; traits that, in all honesty, puts audiences to sleep and reminds them of boring days spent in English listening to the dronings of their teacher. Poetry is not dead, and while the people running Poetry Out Loud may know this, the methods they use to try and make the world realize this are unproductive at best. I am ashamed to say that this is how such a great opportunity is squandered. The fact that such a large (and growing) organization, with as much fame and ample rewards as it possesses, turns on the very art form its trying to protect  is shameful, but I doubt it would want to change if it were to hear my cries.
Poetry Out Loud isn't about furthering the art of poetry, it's about forcing the works of so perceived "great poets" on kids. They offer a $20,000 scholarship as the grand prize, but really, if you wanted to bring truly great poets into the fold the joy of competing would be reward enough. This contest shouldn't be about other people's poems, it should be about our own. The original work of this generation, performed the way the we intend, will produce performances infinitely more meaningful and insightful than anything that is being done now. During this whole competition, I viewed it not as a measure of my poetic ability but instead of my acting talents. Theater kids dominate this competition, but as the title suggests, this is not "Thespians Out Loud", and emphasis needs to return to the creation of original poems and the entertaining performance there of.
Poetry is something completely unique to any other art form, it is nearest anyone has ever come to exactly writing down real language, with its many idioms, tricks, habits, faults, and mannerisms; and Poetry performed aloud is a near perfect as written art can get. I submit that Poetry Out Loud is not what it claims to be, and although I cannot fault it for poor ambition or malicious intent, I cannot say that I will be condoning it any more, especially the message it sends to young poets, their teachers, and society as a whole.

Conservatives cannot admit
that the White Nationalists were wrong
"But what about Black Lives Matter.
But what about the Alt-Left.
But what about what Fox News said.
But what about what our ******* cartoon of a president said."

Think for yourself.
You are feeling bad for Neo-Nazis.
They killed people.
They have a history of killing people.
They would **** everyone that isn't white.

This country has become disgusting.
A large portion is defending the actions of terrorists.
White Nationalists, ISIS--
They are, literally, the same.

You cannot be peaceful
when it comes to Nazis.
By sympathizing with them,
you are condoning them and creating more.
The only good **** is a dead ****.
Be a ******* person,
think for yourself,
recognize true evil
when you see it,
you brainwashed *****.

How ironic to not seek the tools yet drool on them
To see the instruments and break down like a phlegm
How naïve of us to use the gym as an excuse
To prolong it, as if it were drug use

Some call it dopamine others call it clarity
Most see an opening to showcase their barbarity
Called less of a man to those "better off"
Called less of a woman to those showing pictures with their sweater off
Lust driving companies to show children compromised
We see these plaything while revenue boosts the enterprise
Anime, video games, novels and Tv
Nothing seems too extreme for these mediums
Beheading, shredding, **** and made "Dream-like"
Topics have been explored beyond their tedium

**** is accessible and Ai makes your dream man
Merge yourself with your idol beyond the imagination of a regular Stan
Be praised for wearing Japanese ******* and condoning said behavior
Treat somebodies feet pics like your very own savior


The beast wins not with wit, but with a pattern
To catch us in the act frozen still like Saturn
Internet connections show us the milky way
And your hands remain adamant, your mind filthy

The beasts doesn't care of November, nor valentines or about your crush
It waits to clamp you, and turn you into dust
Too ashamed to seek humanity, too far gone to find morality
Repeated until insanity, Your mouth blurting profanities

And yet we blame the beast when our relationships end or we cant break a ***** habit
Then try to pray to catch up to the Sabbath
Why Lie to the beast and to ourselves?
To those who use their hands or run to cheap hotels
Is ******* more worthwhile than redemption?

The beast is with me as I type this, judging my every move
It laughs, uses slurs and denying my attempts to improve
It lives in you, no matter how content you are with your sexuality
And does its all to destroy your Mentality

Mike Marshall  Patriotism

The politicians have been milking the patriotism cow for some time, at the same time they want to ignore veterans' needs. As soon as some citizen on the street or representative in Congress or the white house starts espousing patriotism, a big red flag goes up in my mind. "Patriotism" is the first refuge of carpetbaggers, and it trips my gag reflex.

True patriots are not shouting their esprit from the rooftops or in front of microphones. True patriots are quietly doing patriotic things and they ask for no recognition for doing what seems natural and necessary.

Our alleged leaders get us into wars that are unnecessary and often detrimental to our own best interests. Our soldiers, sailors, and airmen do their bidding, right or wrong. They do so without asking for anything from us except support. And we can support the soldiers without necessarily condoning the leaders who put them in harm’s way, and often forget about them when they come home, unless it's election time. Then these same self-gratifying idiots bring out the flags and thump their chests.

Let's remember the flag is merely a cloth with a design on it that represents some very great and lofty goals, including the right to express our opinions, our dreams, and our dissent. We cannot lessen the worthiness of those goals by burning a red white and blue piece of fabric or kneeling during the playing of our national anthem. But we can damage those aspirations and the symbolism of our flag and anthem by denying our fellow humans the right to express them.

Let's focus instead on upholding those things we believe in. Let's buy a meal for a homeless person. Let's make sure our neighbor does not have to choose between eating and buying needed medicine or health care. Let's ensure children don't have to go hungry. Let's endeavor to provide an affordable education to all of our children because that secures their future and the future of this country. The thing I have the least time to consider is whether or not some human is burning a flag or taking a knee somewhere. And standing for the anthem doesn't make you a patriot any more than wearing a cowboy hat makes you a cowboy.

Each verse of The Star-Spangled Banner ends with "O'er the land of the free." Both the flag and the anthem symbolize the freedoms our forefathers gave their lives for. Why? Because they valued those principles (freedom of speech, etc.) so highly. Freedom of expression is freedom of speech. That was decided hundreds of years ago. I would defend anyone's right to freely express themselves. That means they can stand, kneel, squat, sit, lay down, or stand on their heads. But I will never defend any person's right to suppress the very rights that our flag and anthem symbolize.
I reject the divisiveness of Trump and every other small mind that does not understand or appreciate how freedom of speech actually works and is actually represented by our flag and anthem.
The ultimate disrespect to our country, to our flag, to our national anthem, to our founding fathers, and to the soldiers who suffered for us to protect our right to take a knee is to deny the absolute freedom of speech embodied in our Constitution.

People take ownership
of your words
your memories
and make them
theirs
  
Subtle shifts
in intonation
detail and substance
Not untrue
not really a lie
but not yours
Not anything that
has your essence in it
And they weave you
into them
through those fond
‘remembered’ words
and false
fabricated moments

Taking something
from you
labelling it
in their own hand
blotting the ink
dry with integrity
absent or not
they parade
that part of you
appropriated
Like a head on a stick
a scalp on a belt
or a heart on a sleeve
depending on their need

And you can’t reclaim
something stolen as softly
and stealthily as that
it would be churlish
it would be cruel
Perhaps their desire
to have you
as a jigsaw piece
of their making
in their sky
is the greatest compliment
and is worth
becoming part fiction
condoning a myth

it was tragic day in glenelg adelaide when the beaumont children were killed

and i can say, when greame thorne was thrown to the sharks and killed

he was reincarnated as grant beaumont, the youngest of the beaumont children

who was a bright little kid, who loved to catch the bus with his two  eldest sisters

and glenelg was the place they went, and they loved the beach there, for it was

very nice to swim in, but on australia day 1966, they disappeared and were killed

and they were seen no more, and despite me saying, grant beaumont was reincarnated

into the body of myself, brian allan and since that day, i have thoughts of those kidnappings

from greame thorne and grant beaumont, and brian allan was locked  in a broom closet by two

stupid bullies and i hear voices of people condoning bullying and i hear voices i might kidnap

brian in a minute, why am i grant beaumont and greame thorne, because in 2004 i was psychotic

saying 60s music has satanical messages, which were these two tragic days in 1960 and 1966

i remember when we were taken, but my mind was a blur, when we were murdered, you see

i was suffering when grants feet were ******* in this man’s shed but it was hard for me to get out

you see brian allan used to tie himself up around canberra worrying people around canberra

and started to tie himself up again after going to adelaide for the second time in 2012 and

and a year after, i was sent to the psychotic episodes and i had voices of greame thorne being thrown

to the sharks and i entered glenelg beach which was the woden psych ward, and that was a vision

of grant beaumont entering the world and in 1966, he disappeared and was killed, and the soul of

cronus became scared of the world, yeah, i was scared that everyone was going to tease me and kidnap me

i know these kids are dead and yes, i want the world to remember them, but as far as the soul goes

greame thorne and grant beaumont is now brian allan and brian allan is suffering since these kidnappings

forcing the former life of albert waldron who was a famous footy star, but because the soul needed to understand

the criminal sides, but brian allan hates the idea of being a bad guy, he prefers to be a good guy

but i hear voices from australia of strange people looking tough and evil, the sixties  was a tough year for

the soul of cronus