Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
zebra Oct 2017
Here is a primer on the history of poetry

Features of Modernism

To varying extents, writing of the Modernist period exhibits these features:

1. experimentation

belief that previous writing was stereotyped and inadequate
ceaseless technical innovation, sometimes for its own sake
originality: deviation from the norm, or from usual reader expectations
ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm

2. anti-realism

sacralisation of art, which must represent itself, not something beyond preference for allusion (often private) rather than description
world seen through the artist's inner feelings and mental states
themes and vantage points chosen to question the conventional view
use of myth and unconscious forces rather than motivations of conventional plot

3. individualism

promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense of the communal
cultivation of an individual consciousness, which alone is the final arbiter
estrangement from religion, nature, science, economy or social mechanisms
maintenance of a wary intellectual independence
artists and not society should judge the arts: extreme self-consciousness
search for the primary image, devoid of comment: stream of consciousness
exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde

4. intellectualism

writing more cerebral than emotional
work is tentative, analytical and fragmentary, more posing questions more than answering them
cool observation: viewpoints and characters detached and depersonalized
open-ended work, not finished, nor aiming at formal perfection
involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself and not the ostensible referent

............
Expressionism

Expressionism was a phase of twentieth-century writing that rejected naturalism and romanticism to express important inner truths. The style was generally declamatory or even apocalyptic, endeavoring to awaken the fears and aspirations that belong to all men, and which European civilization had rendered effete or inauthentic. The movement drew on Rimbaud and Nietzsche, and was best represented by German poetry of the 1910-20 period. Benn, Becher, Heym, Lasker-Schüler, Stadler, Stramm, Schnack and Werfel are its characteristic proponents, {1} though Trakl is the best known to English readers. {2} {3}

Like most movements, there was little of a manifesto, or consensus of beliefs and programmes. Many German poets were distrustful of contemporary society — particularly its commercial and capitalist attitudes — though others again saw technology as the escape from a perceived "crisis in the old order". Expressionism was very heterogeneous, touching base with Imagism, Vorticism, Futurism, Dadaism and early Surrealism, many of which crop up in English, French, Russian and Italian poetry of the period. Political attitudes tended to the revolutionary, and technique was overtly experimental. Nonetheless, for all the images of death and destruction, sometimes mixed with messianic utopianism, there was also a tone of resignation, a sadness of "the evening lands" as Spengler called them.

Expressionism also applies to painting, and here the characteristics are more illuminating. The label refers to painting that uses visual gestures to transmit emotions and emotionally charged messages. In the expressive work of Michelangelo and El Greco, for example, the content remains of first importance, but content is overshadowed by technique in such later artists as van Gogh, Ensor and Munch. By the mid twentieth-century even this attenuated content had been replaced by abstract painterly qualities — by the sheer scale and dimensions of the work, by colour and shape, by the verve of the brushwork and other effects.

Expressionism often coincided with rapid social change. Germany, after suffering the horrors of the First World War, and ineffectual governments afterwards, fragmented into violently opposed political movements, each with their antagonistic coteries and milieu. The painting of these groups was very variable, but often showed a mixture of aggression and naivety. Understandably unpopular with the establishment  — denounced as degenerate by the Nazis — the style also met with mixed reactions from the picture-buying public. It seemed to question what the middle classes stood for: convention, decency, professional expertise. A great sobbing child had been let loose in the artist's studio, and the results seemed elementally challenging. Perhaps German painting was returning to its Nordic roots, to small communities, apocalyptic visions, monotone starkness and anguished introspection.

What could poetry achieve in its turn? Could it use some equivalent to visual gestures, i.e. concentrate on aspects of the craft of poetry, and to the exclusion of content? Poetry can never be wholly abstract, a pure poetry bereft of content. But clearly there would be a rejection of naturalism. To represent anything faithfully requires considerable skill, and such skill was what the Expressionists were determined to avoid. That would call on traditions that were not Nordic, and that were not sufficiently opposed to bourgeois values for the writer's individuality to escape subversion. Raw power had to tap something deeper and more universal.

Hence the turn inward to private torments. Poets became the judges of poetry, since only they knew the value of originating emotions. Intensity was essential.  Artists had to believe passionately in their responses, and find ways of purifying and deepening those responses — through working practices, lifestyles, and philosophies. Freud was becoming popular, and his investigations into dreams, hallucinations and paranoia offered a rich field of exploration. Artists would have to glory in their isolation, moreover, and turn their anger and frustration at being overlooked into a belief in their own genius. Finally, there would be a need to pull down and start afresh, even though that contributed to a gradual breakdown in the social fabric and the apocalypse of the Second World War.

Expressionism is still with us. Commerce has invaded bohemia, and created an elaborate body of theory to justify, support and overtake what might otherwise appear infantile and irrational. And if traditional art cannot be pure emotional expression, then a new art would have to be forged. Such poetry would not be an intoxication of life (Nietzsche's phrase) and still less its sanctification.  Great strains on the creative process were inevitable, moreover, as they were in Georg Trakl's case, who committed suicide shortly after writing the haunting and beautiful piece given below

................
SYMBOLIST POETS
symbolism in poetry

Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that deliberately extended the evocative power of words to express the feelings, sensations and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness. The open-ended symbols created by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) brought the invisible into being through the visible, and linked the invisible through other sensory perceptions, notably smell and sound. Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98), the high priest of the French movement, theorized that symbols were of two types. One was created by the projection of inner feelings onto the world outside. The other existed as nascent words that slowly permeated the consciousness and expressed a state of mind initially unknown to their originator.

None of this came about without cultivation, and indeed dedication. Poets focused on the inner life. They explored strange cults and countries. They wrote in allusive, enigmatic, musical and ambiguous styles. Rimbaud deranged his senses and declared "Je est un autre". Von Hofmannstahl created his own language. Valéry retired from the world as a private secretary, before returning to a mastery of traditional French verse. Rilke renounced wife and human society to be attentive to the message when it came.

Not all were great theoreticians or technicians, but the two interests tended to go together, in Mallarmé most of all. He painstakingly developed his art of suggestion, what he called his "fictions". Rare words were introduced, syntactical intricacies, private associations and baffling images. Metonymy replaced metaphor as symbol, and was in turn replaced by single words which opened in imagination to multiple levels of signification. Time was suspended, and the usual supports of plot and narrative removed. Even the implied poet faded away, and there were then only objects, enigmatically introduced but somehow made right and necessary by verse skill. Music indeed was the condition to which poetry aspired, and Verlaine, Jimenez and Valéry were among many who concentrated efforts to that end.

So appeared a dichotomy between the inner and outer lives. In actuality, poets led humdrum existences, but what they described was rich and often illicit: the festering beauties of courtesans and dance-hall entertainers; far away countries and their native peoples; a world-weariness that came with drugs, isolation, alcohol and bought ***. Much was mixed up in this movement — decadence, aestheticism, romanticism, and the occult — but its isms had a rational purpose, which is still pertinent. In what way are these poets different from our own sixties generation? Or from the young today: clubbing, experimenting with relationships and drugs, backpacking to distant parts? And was the mixing of sensory perceptions so very novel or irrational? Synaesthesia was used by the Greek poets, and indeed has a properly documented basis in brain physiology.

What of the intellectual bases, which are not commonly presented as matters that should engage the contemporary mind, still less the writing poet? Symbolism was built on nebulous and somewhat dubious notions: it inspired beautiful and historically important work: it is now dead: that might be the blunt summary. But Symbolist poetry was not empty of content, indeed expressed matters of great interest to continental philosophers, then and now. The contents of consciousness were the concern of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and he developed a terminology later employed by Heidegger (1889-1976), the Existentialists and hermeneutics. Current theories on metaphor and brain functioning extend these concepts, and offer a rapprochement between impersonal science and irrational literary theory.

So why has the Symbolism legacy dwindled into its current narrow concepts? Denied influence in the everyday world, poets turned inward, to private thoughts, associations and the unconscious. Like good Marxist intellectuals they policed the area they arrogated to themselves, and sought to correct and purify the language that would evoke its powers. Syntax was rearranged by Mallarmé. Rhythm, rhyme and stanza patterning were loosened or rejected. Words were purged of past associations (Modernism), of non-visual associations (Imagism), of histories of usage (Futurism), of social restraint (Dadaism) and of practical purpose (Surrealism). By a sort of belated Romanticism, poetry was returned to the exploration of the inner lands of the irrational. Even Postmodernism, with its bric-a-brac of received media images and current vulgarisms, ensures that gaps are left for the emerging unconscious to engage our interest

......................

.
IMAGIST POETRY
imagist poetry

Even by twentieth-century standards, Imagism was soon over. In 1912 Ezra Pound published the Complete Poetical Works of its founder, T.E. Hulme (five short poems) and by 1917 the movement, then overseen by Amy Lowell, had run its course. {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} The output in all amounted to a few score poems, and none of these captured the public's heart. Why the importance?

First there are the personalities involved — notably Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams {6} {7} {8} {9} — who became famous later. If ever the (continuing) importance to poets of networking, of being involved in movements from their inception, is attested, it is in these early days of post-Victorian revolt.

Then there are the manifestos of the movement, which became the cornerstones of Modernism, responsible for a much taught in universities until recently, and for the difficulties poets still find themselves in. The Imagists stressed clarity, exactness and concreteness of detail. Their aims, briefly set out, were that:

1. Content should be presented directly, through specific images where possible.
2. Every word should be functional, with nothing included that was not essential to the effect intended.
3. Rhythm should be composed by the musical phrase rather than the metronome.

Also understood — if not spelled out, or perhaps fully recognized at the time — was the hope that poems could intensify a sense of objective reality through the immediacy of images.

Imagism itself gave rise to fairly negligible lines like:

You crash over the trees,
You crack the live branch…  (Storm by H.D.)

Nonetheless, the reliance on images provided poets with these types of freedom:

1. Poems could dispense with classical rhetoric, emotion being generated much more directly through what Eliot called an objective correlate: "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." {10}

2. By being shorn of context or supporting argument, images could appear with fresh interest and power.

3. Thoughts could be treated as images, i.e. as non-discursive elements that added emotional colouring without issues of truth or relevance intruding too mu
...............
PROSE BASED POETRY
prose based poetry

When free verse lacks rhythmic patterning, appearing as a lineated prose stripped of unnecessary ornament and rhetoric, it becomes the staple of much contemporary work. The focus is on what the words are being used to say, and their authenticity. The language is not heightened, and the poem differs from prose only by being more self-aware, innovative and/or cogent in its exposition.

Nonetheless, what looks normal at first becomes challenging on closer reading — thwarting expectations, and turning back on itself to make us think more deeply about the seemingly innocuous words used. And from there we are compelled to look at the world with sharper eyes, unprotected by commonplace phrases or easy assumptions. Often an awkward and fighting poetry, therefore, not indulging in ceremony or outmoded traditions.
What is Prose?

If we say that contemporary free verse is often built from what was once regarded as mere prose, then we shall have to distinguish prose from poetry, which is not so easy now. Prose was once the lesser vehicle, the medium of everyday thought and conversation, what we used to express facts, opinions, humour, arguments, feelings and the like. And while the better writers developed individual styles, and styles varied according to their purpose and social occasion, prose of some sort could be written by anyone. Beauty was not a requirement, and prose articles could be rephrased without great loss in meaning or effectiveness.

Poetry, though, had grander aims. William Lyon Phelps on Thomas Hardy's work: {1}

"The greatest poetry always transports us, and although I read and reread the Wessex poet with never-lagging attention — I find even the drawings in "Wessex Poems" so fascinating that I wish he had illustrated all his books — I am always conscious of the time and the place. I never get the unmistakable spinal chill. He has too thorough a command of his thoughts; they never possess him, and they never soar away with him. Prose may be controlled, but poetry is a possession. Mr. Hardy is too keenly aware of what he is about. In spite of the fact that he has written verse all his life, he seldom writes unwrinkled song. He is, in the last analysis, a master of prose who has learned the technique of verse, and who now chooses to express his thoughts and his observations in rime and rhythm."

.............
OPEN FORMS IN POETRY
open forms in poetry

Poets who write in open forms usually insist on the form growing out of the writing process, i.e. the poems follow what the words and phrase suggest during the composition
984

’Tis Anguish grander than Delight
’Tis Resurrection Pain—
The meeting Bands of smitten Face
We questioned to, again.

’Tis Transport wild as thrills the Graves
When Cerements let go
And Creatures clad in Miracle
Go up by Two and Two.
Stephanie Cynthia  Nov 2013
Maud
I hate the dripping dark hollow behind the little wood;
Its tips a cursed maroon with a blood-red heath.
I think I praised and lamented it too soon;
Before seeing its scent; I saw already its stray mystical death.

My crown is torn, outraged by florid winds and scorn;
Like a tangled old roots of the windblown thorn;
I shall feel scanty by my own poetry,
And throw it about, duly, like a static little joke.

I shall let my heart grow dull and illiterate;
I shall not taste joy, no more, in any clear--flowery fate.
I shall seek everything bitter, and not sweet;
Even not pure as the honey of a bee; for it shall be plain.

I shall curve and bend any straightforward light;
I shall harass it, and blind it--as if my ghost’s dead soul is very not here.
Ah, where is but Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
Perhaps she is astray in my memory still, and not by my side.

I feel relieved so soon as glanced at her beside me;
She owns still that full lips like a perniciously tasty moon;
She is adorable like the flower of heaven itself;
She strikes me again when away, and tosses me about when near.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud;
Tame me again with thy rain of laugh;
Saint me once more like a fresh young bird;
Come to me now, and return my unheeded love.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud;
And kissing her forehead takes me back to that day;
A day of myths, a day of agile swans and storms;
An ornate time of hatred; a whirl of bitter fate; a dust of sorrow.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud;
And again I was alive in this tale, with a burning heart;
On one eve of tears, a mischief, and a wan poetry;
I caught about shadows in which there was no soul of Maud.

I could only see the stones, lying ghastly about the fireplace;
Ah, Maud, are you but still haunting those whimsical moors?
Their strange murmurs but I cannot hear;
But still they consume me, ah, I am scared;
I wish they would be gone soon, I wish you were but here.

These storms were amusing but peculiar;
They are bizarre, but intelligent and stellar;
And calling thy name out but breathes into me strength;
Ah, but should I be here, and bear away thy image alone?

Ah, and thou wert in but nymphic and lilac dream;
And my heart was still not massaged by the tender storm;
For it meant thee, and hungered but for thee only;
And in the midst of love had it longed, and yearned for thee.

Ah, where is but Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
Her with her childish eyes and rounded head of bronze,
With her rapturous steps and wild glittering aroma,
With her atrocious jokes, and a wintry secret touch?

But still she was not anywhere about;
She dissolved like one romantic bough of soda;
And within a rough joke, she would be but gone;
And now the storm returned, but I was wholly on my own.  

Ah, and now the striking storm is mounting the earth;
Should I write alone and chill myself by the green hearth?
For I hath nothing to console and lengthen my parched logs;
I shall wait outside and drift about yon wintry bog.

Ah, where is but Maud, Maud, Maud;
Maud with her heart-shaped face and bare voice aloud;
A voice that soaked my senses and craving throat;
Maud but teased me and left me to that joke.

Where is but Maud, Maud, Maud and Maud;
Maud, the goth princess within my ancient poetry;
Who but remained symmetrical and biblical in her vain torments;
Who but stayed sturdy and silent; amidst her anger, and vain fellows’ arguments.

Listen to me. I am but full of hatred.
I am neither a gentleman nor a well-bred;
I, who is just a son of an infamous parson;
A malleable son; with a bleak aura of a putrid spring.

I, one who crafted ingenious jokes;
But interminable as they always are;
I made Maud sit still as I held my woodwork;
While she perched herself on yon bench, gazing at dispersed starry stars.

Maud the shadow in my pale mirror;
At times she ceased at morns, but retreated at night;
On her brother’s sight she fled in horror;
But on mine her smile turned me bright.

Maud was idle, sparkling, vibrant, and tedious;
Her heart was free and not marred by stupor.
She was the sun on my very bright days;
She made me startled; she always left me curious.

Maud the green of the farm, the red of the moon;
Without her everything would spring not and remain odious;
Everything would be bleak and stayed tedious;
Ah, but still I could not own her, though I was her saviour.

I was a farmer and perhaps still am;
Perhaps that’s why her mother ditched me with shame.
Maud said she had not places like home;
Her house was the mere shallow--and gratuitous throne.

Maud came often down and agitated;
Her mood shadowy, she cried and cried too aggravated;
I caressed her back, and placed my palms on her white knees;
She told me stories whenever no-one else would see.

She wanted not to mount the throne;
She giggled often, at our country escapade;
She loved my cottage, she sweetened my thin grass;
Even those apple trees had then her eyes, which sprayed tough, lonely seas of green.

Maud took to hymn and dear children’s little songs;
She was popular always among the talkative throngs.
She would love to dance and wiggle and turn around;
While village pupils gathered to sing a noble sound.

Ah, but when the mirthless prince arrived;
With white horses and swords of a knight;
Maud was swallowed every morning, all through day and night;
Maud was no more seen by my side.

I thought I was not alive, for dreams were unreal;
If they had been, then they I’d have want’d to ****;
But seeing Maud not gave me fretful chills;
I often woke up tensely, within a midnight’s shrills.

Ah, where is but Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
Maud my bumblebee and my delicate little honey.
I kept waiting for her behind the rustic brook;
I fetched my net and fished by my old nook.

Ah, and where is Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
My eyes were still and my chest could no more speak.
I wearily fancied she had been kidnapped faraway;
She would be jailed in a sore realm, and would no more be back here.

Ah, for had she been lost, then I had lost my ultimate pearl;
For there would no more be magic, there would be no more of her;
No-one would so restore my original spring;
Perhaps there would be no spring at all, and I would suffer in summer.

And I would lose anyway--my lyrical, elusive demon;
For Maud had always been elusive herself.
She wore that evil smile and thin laugh;
As I told her tales of fairies that she loved.

As I am fond of magical poetry and dramas;
Maud too used to read them with genuine personas.
She was my epic fanatical little devil;
She liked tropical cold and a faithful Mephistopheles.

I should be Faust, as she once said;
For had I fair hair, yet a bald head;
She said like Faust, I was cleverly amusing;
But to me, like Mephistopheles--she was unusually entertaining.

She danced before me a beautiful ballet;
She was young and keen to levitate as a ballerina;
She crafted me limericks and such fair lines of sonnets;
She made earth my heaven, and my melodies a twin cantata.

Ah, and where is Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
I need my butterfly amongst this wheezy curdling cold.
I need my lover to soothe my chained hysteria;
I need to get out of here, and feed my love with her charms.

Ah, but where is Maud, Maud, Maud, is not she here?
I was then screaming in my solitude, could she but not hear?
I could speak not, no more--sore and wounded by this snowstorm;
I crept sick and weak like a dumb old worm.

She was not even heard of upstairs;
While I was dying here as a roaring beetle.
I hath almost lost all my creative flair;
I felt tormented and neglected and nearly feeble.

Ah, but a story like this is not such a fable;
So at that time I did shun sadness and seek a warm ending;
But indeed, to escape fate the poor were perhaps not able;
And the farmer’s son shall never be a king.

And ‘twas the nobles’ right to be idyllic;
To be deemed far then fairly righteous.
My charms were trivial, and so was then my wit;
My prayers were too parted and despaired; no matter how rigorous.

I kept my work along the countryside;
I toiled all night and behind fierce daylight.
I hoped Maud would see me back one day;
But what I found was to my dismay!

Ah, Maud, for she was now engaged;
To that pathetic creature the cursed morn brought about;
And parties arranged, voices too raised;
The union was now what people had in thought.

Onto my shoulders my head kept sinking;
I killed myself nearly, for my irksome defeat in this rivalry;
A rivalry that failed to transgress vital destiny;
A rivalry I could not even bear to think.

But again, this love had always been everything;
And thus Maud’s union would equal my death;
One night I crept out of my bed;
I had in hand a keychain and a net.

The soldier was infused by sound sleep;
And into Maud’s grand chamber I crept;
Everything was pink and quite neatly kept;
But woke I her not--as I heard her breast breath slowly.

She was tremendous still--in beauty;
Maud in her splendour; so young and free.
Ah, she was free but not free, I fathomed;
I looked at her over and over again.

I looked at her violet bed and comfort net;
Ah, my Maud too ****** and temptingly red.
She was too abundant in her young and chaste soul;
Ah, I could not imagine how she would soon be one else’s.

Long did I stand; ‘till morning streamed back again;
Still I remained unmoved; I stared at my darling in vain.
I jumped startled as the door opened;
And showed me the horror of the Queen!

‘Come, ye’ fool’, she voicelessly instructed;
Her face emotionless as these words emanated;
‘And embrace thy very fate’, to the handcuffs me she directed;
‘For daring look into my dame’s immaculately flawless chamber’.

She pointed thereof--a black gun at my chest;
It would soon burst out and tear my vest;
And even fly me straight to death;
So drifted I, without further haste nor breath.

Those poor soldiers imprisoned me there;
A cellar room at the top of filthy stairs;
I stayed awake only for grief and tears;
And most of the time I laid about sleepless and stared.

I grew skinless as my bones squinted;
And laughed at me with their sordid might;
Flies were about me, bending onto my rotten pies;
And slices of meat left out by sniggering guards.

I hit my head on witnessing Maud’s cold marriage;
‘Twas on a Saturday on the castle’s rain-wetted field.
I heaved myself onto the windowsill and saw;
How the couples were blessed and sent thereby back.

I could not see Maud’s face and fleshy cheeks;
But didst I feel her discarded tears;
Marred and defiled her lovely fits;
Though just those innate, and not out there.

I struck the lifeless paint with my bare palms;
Now the walls were tainted; they smelled like my blood.
Time passed and desire for Maud was never killed;
I’th missed her every day, since then, and perhaps always will.

But my love for Maud was never probable;
I was decent, honest, but indeed not preferable;
I was not even preferable by fate, as thou might see;
Fate who is neither truthful; nor frankly urges us to lie.

I often laid hopeless by the moonbeam;
Until night came and eyesight grew more and more vulnerable.
I waited ‘till it was dark and left to day no more gleam;
Then took my journal of Maud’s jests and read her affable poems.

I turned around--and would disgrace my bed still;
I was plain starved but had no desire to be properly fed;
Of a dream of death I grew instantly pertinacious;
And of my future tomb I grew fonder--and yet rapidly curious.

Ah, but my sweet Maud, Maud, Maud, and Maud;
And deliriously she somehow became pregnant;
But remorse said she kept the souls of two;
And fatefully could not make them both perfect!

I indeed plain prayed for Maud’s survival;
I cared not whose sons they might be;
Ah, but the twins were still sinning babies--as I comprehended,
For they were formed not from cells of mine!

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud,
And during those last days she was cautiously ill;
And a drive of cholera had again grown widespread;
But she was not maddened; by it she was not marred.

She was sickened by temper still;
And the prince found dead, she grew more terrifyingly ill;
She had a pure heart, so she flourished not over the beast’s death;
Nonetheless, he remained the father of yon sickly offspring.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud,
I was duly growing perfectly anxious;
She was to give birth--ah, to those little ignoramuses;
And within a little chord in one or days of two--she would do so.

But without a father to care for her notorious sons;
And even I was locked away, and could not do so;
I was terrified, I was horribly undignified;
To learn this stern reality we were so sullenly faced with!

Ah, not now! I could not too believe my ears!
Maud and her children were dead--they’d been stillborn;
Before they left Maud alone to receive her fate;
Her locksmith would not come; he had another due in a nameless town.

By the time he arrived my darling had gone;
Perhaps she was now shimmering in heaven;
Enchanting her children with her enormous spells;
Narrating stories no plain human could ever tell.

Even in heaven my love would perhaps be famous;
Her tenderness would make other angels jealous;
And angered by envy, they would gather and complain to God;
How an earthly soul could be more vivacious than their heavenly were.

Ah, but where is Maud, Maud, Maud;
Maud and her chain of songs that were never to be broken;
Maud and her familiarity with gardens and blue lilies;
Maud and her immaculate pets of birds that still sweetly sing.

Ah, but where is my darling, my darling, my darling;
My eternal ocean, my hustling flowerbed, my immortal;
My poem, my enchanting lyric, my wedding ring;
My novelty, my merited charm, my eternal.

And now she was longing for her grave, as I’d been told;
For I’d been told by the dimmed torches and fuss and mirthless air outside;
By the endless wandering and the prince’s wails and wordless screams.
Ah, my Maud had now migrated from her life--but attained her freedom!

And he was thus unworthy of being in her heaven;
Her heaven where there would be me, her true love;
And thus he would be glad to greet his fires of hell;
He would marry an evil angel there--and make himself again full.

But I’d be with Maud, Maud, Maud and Maud;
I’d be again with my gem, indefatigable little darling;
Whose voice was unsure, whose poems were never known;
But ‘twas enough that they’d been known to me, her secret--ye’ dearest lover.

So took I, that spinning penchant and a circle of strings;
The edges I matched to the chains on my ceilings.
I braced myself for my very own fiery death;
But again, I’d be with Maud and death would no more, aye, be sad.

Thus the above poem was done by my spirit;
But with the same token and awe of genuineness and wit;
I feel tired--I shall close my eyes, and thus enjoy my heaven now;
For my wife and starlings are all waiting for me to-morrow.

It is now nighttime in heaven;
And there is indeed, no place on earth lovelier;
I gaze into my wife with a loving madness;
Her cheeks sweeter still, than any proudest swiftness.

I shall take my vow of marriage tomorrow;
My proud wife sitting in yon angelic chair by my side.
I shall cradle, then, those white little nuptial fairies;
They are Maud’s children’s, but lithe and gracious and bow to me in chaste mercies.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud, she is but all mine now;
I am still surprised now, as sitting by this heaven riverside.
One even grander than the one I’d had beside the lake;
Which I often farmed when I had needs to bake.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud, she is a ghost but as ever lively;
We are both dead but she boldly remaineth lovely;
I know she is worthier than serene jewels or mundane affairs;
And still she is worthier all the same, than any other terrific palace--or heir.

Ah, Maud, Maud, Maud, and this war is but all over now;
Thus let us dream dead of the exciting tomorrow.
We shall see life and our children grow;
We shall witness delight--and miracles none ever knows.
Mateuš Conrad  Nov 2016
i. & ii.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
i.

for the past few weeks i've been doing an experiment,
thankfully philosophy allows such things,
of course, they're deviations from what i'm used to
in chemistry, they're less, what's the word?
spectacular - but they are nonetheless experiments,
and that's the beauty of being grounded in some sort
of science (trinity of biology, chemistry and physics
and that's the limit, beyond this there are only
pseudo-sciences)... medicine? that's the tsarina of
learning: like any tsarina: gets down and *****,
and yes: mathematics is the genteel queen.
philosophy on the other hand seems like a vagabond
in learning, never really pieced together,
never really sentenced to a single direction:
and for that matter, thought can become less narration
that stretches into the sort of philosophy that Sartre
embodied with his novel, and more into thought becoming
experimental...
you might be wondering what the experiment consisted
of... well, over the weeks i've been sadistic unto myself,
it's to do with trying to figure out the modern curse
that's the 3D's: debt, depression, dementia.
                i can't fall asleep without a bottle of whiskey
cigarettes, sleeping pills and music playing in the background:
which would make me a terrible partner, anyway.
   beyond that though, for weeks i repeated a pattern,
i fell asleep to the *hellraiser ii: hellbound
soundtrack
by christopher young...
       day-in-day out: as if to pressurise the idea that
the faculty of dreaming could be censored in the same way
that thinking is censored in liberal speech
eroding people's vocabulary, **** included.
     what i mean by that: every day i woke up with 15 minutes
of despair, then the zenith came after i lay in bed
for 4 hours and felt too many leeches ******* at me...
   those 15 minutes of despair were always there,
but then i usually got up and went about my daily business...
i admit that whiskey could be to blame,
anyone could argue the alcohol-is-bad argument,
but arguing as R. D. Laing might have that it's
also a sedative if you don't include social adhesion to loosen
the tension of going out and dancing:
then i don't see the point of saying it's all bad.
         sleeping pills (i found) are not 100% active without
what the prescription states that you should do:
i exceed limits, but then i write during the night -
            create a balance and i'm sure any insomnia
might be made minimal... anyway:
so i've been doing this roundabout experiment,
listening to the above album while falling asleep,
but then yesterday i decided to fall asleep listening to
godspeed you! black emperor's album F♯ A♯ ∞,
and guess what the experiment proved:
  i felt little or no anguish for 15 minutes,
obviously the usual groggy of a pseudo-hangover,
  but that doesn't mean staying in bed for 4 hours
because you feel **** about life 'n' all...
                   as already stated there's what we call
a cartesian dichotomy, that somehow altered mental
states cannot be translated into a physicality -
depression in this sort of language becomes lethargy -
people never seemed to connect the dots that
state the monism of everything having a pairing either
side of Humpty-Dumpty sitting on the ergo fence
asking about a flying omelette... ergo is a variation
of what precipitates... depression = lethargy...
the purest kind of what i know (i have enough psychiatric
literature to redeem myself from what would
be deemed quack-medicine with their quack doctors) -
some say that taking the vitamin B12 supplement
could help you: or that weak digestion is to blame, too.
i would be quack doctor if i was in a position of power,
and since i am not really earning anything from my
"poems", what sort of power can i abuse? trust -
but then again these are thought experiments,
           i first experiment on myself, then note down
the observations i have accounted for.
               so what will my unconscious eat today while
i switch off my consciousness? i was thinking of
the cure's disintegration album,
         perhaps that's why i did weeks of falling asleep
to a horror movie soundtrack, to later move into
neo-prog "rock" and then into 80s goth melancholia...
    i'd say that pop ****** melancholics off...
and such a nicer word for depression...
                   it's not even close to compression and has
nothing to do with aviation or the Netherlands...
     melan, melan: ah! melanism - a certain darkness,
    choly -         condition of darkness...
       and that star of Bethlehem appeared at night...
man of sorrows, well that's just blatant;
           but for all the romanticisation about darkness
and the mysterious moon and all the insomnia,
i still prefer the anti-cartesian explanation of actually
creating the proper answer to what has become
a dichotomy between the physical sciences and
the pseudo sciences, given that ergo is a precipitation
then for the two opposite to become inseparable
depression must be equal to lethargy: which is a variation
of the grander genus (family): metabolism.
               is this the point where i re-quote that famous:
doctor! heal yourself!
                                      well, if there's anything to go by
i have in my mind, given my life a prolonging in a way,
what was it... amitriptyline?
                                         the new ******* for
the respectably prone to citizenship's serenity of leaving
other people to their own demises -
  i mean, look at all the teetotalers: hyperactive bunnies
with too much energy that translated into things like
the infamous pyramids and the doubly infamous chimneys.

ii. the danish girl

i would have never thought that the transgender movement
had such a puritanism about it,
such platonism - nearing martyrdom;
who could have thought?! i only managed to see the film
today... i'm a sentimental ******* and i was choking
on not crying at the end of the film
here was a true representation of an artist,
         there's he (einar wegenar): a successful local
artist, within the confines of Copenhagen,
modestly famous: primarily because of having
perfected a technique and sourced it in a childhood
memory that keeps haunting him,
    thus he keeps repeating it, although with slight
alternation to refresh it, but no photograph to work
from, hence my previous statement:
  memory is the best cinema or arts' gallery (this
is not a universal statement, memory doesn't always
heal, or fascinate or have the ability to revitalises itself
or become the most potent "hallucinogenic" experience);
and then she's there (gerda wegener), also
painting, but more in line with paying the rent
rather than appeal, rich people needing portraits to
hang on the walls of the future of their lineage
        in years to come so someone might boast:
that was my ancestor, who founded the first bank
of Copenhagen sort of stories -
and all she wants to do is be an artist like Einar;
and she keeps coming back from galleries with her
works and they never give the critics any appeal
at being original - they have a suggestive generic
quality to them: precisely because they've been painted
for money. art is cruel in that way,
  when critics reduce producing art like they might reduce
being a cashier in a supermarket on the basis of:
job done... then comes the offense from the artist.
the beauty of this film is the platonism that soon explodes,
the near innocence... i really don't know how
the transgender movement borrowed from this:
all those Baphomet ******* with too many parts,
silicon chests and ***** and what not?
       this is one of the finest forms of defamation -
these days the transgender movement is so sexually
potent it doesn't really deserve what can only appear
as a self-imposed crucifixion...
              this story predates the unearthing of the nag
hammadi scripts, it's intuitively bound to what was
unearthed in 1945...
      einar sees the desperation of gerda, he knows
that he'll simply remain a local artist,
    bound to a square mile of earth, local, provincial
even... what he decides on is best expressed
by Marilyn Manson's lyrics: now i'm not an artist
i'm a ******* work of art
.
        how can not this resonate further into the film
if not by this motto:
it is a consecration of a memory, to invert it and
un-seize the moment long ago experienced and now
fuelling art, or the repetition of a safe technique established.
one man's frustration and a woman in a cage:
the potential seen - then a sudden bursting of madness,
the evident anti-cross -
                                  to say he had reached his limits
and she was kept frustrated and under-appreciated is
blatant enough, this self-sacrifice for a woman to
find her subject, was all too evident when she utters
the words that: the student overcomes the teacher,
and that's the whole story,
                       he has to walk into the canvas,
     in whatever way imaginable, and what a better way
than on a whim to escape the dreariness of parties
   by dressing up as a woman, after gerda's model
is late so she can continue a painting and einar
has to step in and wear a few female garments...
       to later realise the Dionysian consequence:
                                  only to the utmost excess, from here.
this could hardly be a propaganda movie for
the transgender movement... the "propaganda"
aspect ends when you hear children imitating this
artistic "prank" in today's society...
      it wasn't a prank in the slightest: but a profound
expression of love between two artists...
          outside of art the whole transgender movement
is still only ***** and silicon **** of Thailand's lady-boys:
that's not reality?        
although i actually did choke with nearing to cry
in the closing scene...
    unlike the Christ story... there was no resurrection.
so hans and gerda travel to the place where
einar depicted the landscape in his revisions,
       and both of them are standing there
        and it's ****** pulverising with so much depth
upon being so little when reduced to a canvas
but because you see the painting first, do you later
see the landscape with more emotion...
     and i thought to myself: gerda will recreate
the landscape in her own eyes, she'll what he saw
and what he gave up for her to paint him in his
transformative (transfigurative) state of becoming
lili elbe...
                     that's why i was about to cry -
     that she could put lili aside, and return to /
resurrect the memory of einar the locally famous
artist... that she would apply the same technique in
painting lili / einar but turn her attention to
landscapes... as if to imply that both of them became
reunited before all the madness of life came chasing them
into extremes.
          to my dissatisfaction? after the film ended
and before the credits started rolling... postscriptum facts
after these true events... she continued to paint
lili / einar as she did, which prompted her to fame
on the Parisian estrade; after seeing that, written down?
tears? what tears... i'm actually thankful that i choked
on them and didn't do an outburst necessarily...
thank **** i wasn't watching the film alone!
     i know that i might have invoked a sense of:
rough around the edges with this description, but i'm hoping
it's abstract enough to make the film more potent:
filling the blanks with images;
still, this was used for a transgender movement?
                                                did he make it plainly obvious
that this was a transcendental transgender iconoclasm?
         it's the platonic element in it that steers this whole
story, away from what 21st century movements regard
as prototype for their ******.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2015
sample precursor: there are three binding directions of a chemical group (e.g. CH3) to the benzene ring - the ortho-, the meta- and the para-... but i'll ask a different question: what is copernican north what is copernican east a copernican west or a copernican west without a "flat-earth" / how else to read / navigate a 2D map going from point (a) via vector (c) to point (b) along the short-cut of the hypotenuse - which, isn't a short-cut, but the logical conclusion of walking neither the middle path nor the right path, but the logical path? we're no astronauts... we didn't see the proof... we can only entertain the "idea" of a 3D object we live on, but we're still strapped to a "flat earth" in order to navigate... endless stories of how GPS tech. fooled people off the edge of a cliff... "flat earth" is no reverse psychology ploy... i'm no ******* astronaut... i never stood left right or center on the moon to have the foggiest sense of admiration for that awe-balancing moment that leaves so many deluded in it being otherwise: first come first served, last come: what's there's to serve that last man if not merely the drudge-report of a commute? besides... trans- and cis-, why are people borrowing from chemistry and attaching gender to what is exlusive to chemical compounds? look at them... pop chemistry... cis-trans isomerism... fine, let these people have that... my new n.e.w.s. (north, east, west, south): orthography, something clearly missing in the anglophone world (no diacritical markers, i and j do not count)... ergo? orthography = east... paranormal = west... since the west is obsessed with either aliens or hush-hush military projects... now... both north and south are meta- coordinates... on the basis, on the basis of what? two words really work well to establish a foundation: from ars poetica? metaphor (borrowed from a change of mind - meta- and -phren - mind, a change of mind, all mental illnesses are changes of the mind, alternatives to alleviate the stranglehold of the commune of the greater picture known as society)... but... there's also metaphysics... which is in the interest of philosophy... how else not to explain the obvious, how else to treat both the reader / audience as the well informed genius(es) but mistreat them as would be grander genius(es) if the socratic endeavour of "pretense ignorance" was not to be established? it's a hard juggle... east is already well established in orthography, west in paranomal... literally: metaphor - a change of mind, literally metaphysics - a change of groundwork physicality of things... a rock remains a rock in either "heaven" or in "hell"... metaphysically there seems to be a direct translation... this is why i'm terrible at crosswords, this whole puzzle structure of either working from a direct definition to the word itself, some random geographical posists, some historical posits, some outdated out-of-vogue words related to specified period idiosyncracy, a tinge of the therausus... my current crossword is an interchange: meta-phor, meta-physics, meta-phot, meta-physics and on and on it goes: even with the isolated prefix of meta-, if i return to the words: as they are... would: denoting a change of thinking (state of mind) or... denoting a change of physics, i'm met with metaphysics, i.e.: a branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles... sounds like a priori physics, yet all i can fathom if i wrestle this word to its casual use: isn't it a posteriori physics?! the what comes after physics? i should think that most people understand metaphysics on an a posteriori basis rather than an a priori basis... hence the question: what happens when we die? last time i checked: death happens last... birth happens first... any question-worthiness (according to heidegger) should begin at: the beginning rather than begin at the end, in the same way that all questions should be sought in a medium of predating the dates of events, rather than with a spirit of hindsight, hindsight belongs to the "what if" of history in that dynamism of expressed time... on the canvas of an infinitely expanding space: we seem to be riddled by a very cul de sac concept / expression of time: our quill - given that ****** didn't learn from napoleon when it came to russia... perhaps finding out what copernicus found out: "we" figured: get me off this ******* celestial carousel where i can't even feel the dizzy immediate of a ferris wheel! again: i'm terrible at crosswords, sudoku? no problem... but words: if not gushing out of me, waiting like a lizard predator for a linear narrative spew? count me out... i don't play with words, i use words... i'm a wordsmith, hence the ethnic origin denote: słowianin: slav - i don't know where these west-saxon punks derived their etymology from: słowo = word... *****-liquor juice teens thought it was: oh fo' sho' smart... still: metaphor, metaphysics... metaphor... metaphysics... disgruntled with the immediate compound readied for pop use... meta-physics... the vector is the prefix... why do philosophers push metaphysics so much, but in turn rely on the crutch of metaphor? to change their mind, if metaphysics is an abstract theory with no basis in reality, then the schizoid / metaphorical mind is an abstract in an abstracted theory of the mind - which has "no" knowledge of reality, or rather: "reality" excludes such a mind from ever absorbing an expression in it... a schizophrenic can't explain the reality of a person who can solve crossword puzzles... just as someone who solves crossword puzzles with a fear of alzheimer's: who treats the fatty tissue that's the brain as a muscle... given that the cells of alzheimer's disease are killer proteins... proteins as the antithesis of white blood-cells that feed of fat tissue... after all: what else could the brain be if not fat and water? slow burner... first the sugars, then the more complex carbohydrates, then the fat: last? the proteins... the process of starvation... you want up? you want down? again: metaphysics / metaphor... ta meta ta phusika... the things after the physics... so what's with the inverted: prior things? hence people associated a life after death... hence how philosophers have to escape into the poetic realm to quickly change their minds on the definition... a change of mind is much easier than a change of what physicality entails... most spew metaphors but keep on course... after all: given the genesis of the metaphor, a metaphor is just a tool, a humble stop-off pause... born from humble poetics: it's only a literary tool, it's not some grand pillar of morality associated metaphysics, which nonetheless dictates: first principles come last and last principles come first... here's my crossword puzzle: metaphor, metaphysics, meta-alpha, meta-beta, metaphor and the meta-alpha, metaphysics and the meta-beta... etc. etc., i will not solve this crossword puzzle, even though it doesn't look like a crossword puzzle... it's a narrative crossword puzzle, i'm just looking for the sort of fixed point people associate with prime words: red, left, blue, right, up, fox, dog... words of readied vocabulary, readied vocabulary dissociated from puzzled vocabulary... i want to established a fixed permanence of the dissociated close proximity grounded in the meta- prefix of the words meta-phor and, meta-physics... i'm starting to find this impossible, given how the words have dissociated themselves from the grounding in the meta- prefix... phor alias phren (mind) and the whole gush of isolated metaphysics of beginnings: meta a priori vs. meta a posteriori - and of course: meta a- apriori... hell if i can't solve crossword puzzles: since i already have a crossword puzzle in my head... what am i to do? try writing pop?! a dog does what his master orders, a jester tells a joke his king would find amusing... i'll just treat this enclave of an audience as a bunch of people subscribed to ulterior forms of voyeurism (dissociated from pain / pleasure gratification, esp. that of a ****** nature).

.you know like in latin you had the interchangeable tongue twisters æ and œ? well... english resurrected one more... au... oh stralia... auntie; ******* hell i've been speaking this since aged ate and i still can't get my tongue into that phonetic plughole... or what's that onomatopoeia for: it really hurts? awe... nah... aw... aw... well no cute kitten about to say aww.

well it began with the usual... i wish i didn’t...
sitting in the autumnal garden
drinking coffee and eating a nicotine croissant,
watching the fog recede into nothing
while the earth showed its naked cleavage
after what seems like centuries of arcane dryness
befitting a story of an egyptian idol...
then the panic set in...
what to cook?! what to cook?!
my mother is away visiting her parents in poland,
who celebrate the feast of all saints with the usual
tackle formidable in poland:
forget the paris fashion week, forget the london fashion week...
forget the next gucci advert...
all the action happens in poland’s annual all saints’ fashion week...
through the cemetery (ahem) cat walks
(more like death on rollerblades donning a tutu
and looking fatter than size 0 models)...
because that’s when the fur coats are worn,
the make-up is heavier and everyone comes
to discuss the materialistic jealousy of a small town...
it is a small town after all...
death knocks with all the nine cat’s lives just to prove
the point...
anyway, so i’m the head chef, and in panic
i search for a recipe... i’ve only got pork on the ready
in the recognisable frozen state...
but i also have shrimps... tiger prawns...
so i look through the usual suspects... thai green curry...
ah ****! no coconut milk!
what’s it going to be? prawn korma curry
(better mild than hot i say, with all this maple syrup
and honey colours about... talk about decay),
active ingredients? chilli powder (1/2 tsp), cinnamon
(1/2 tsp), turmeric (1/2 tsp) and ground almonds (2 tbsp),
there ready... looking suntanned my gorgeous twirls of seabed manure...
enough to spare my father making himself sandwiches (i always
disguised my “dyslexia” by associations... sandy witches...
the t broke the barriers and the floods entered)...
with toasted nannies / au pairs... relatives of some sort...
then onto writing my father’s invoices:
project plaistow hospital and some housing development near
the city airport... beckton we call it... backwards and forwards
stink crowned with drinkers regurgitating on the pave...
now that is a *******... recycling centre or horse manure?
then to tesco... for the nightcap...
oddly enough tesco has become a friend of mine once more,
i divorced the turkish shop, they added 10 pence to the polish beers,
now i’m on the sedative medication of this bottle bavaria beer
and whiskey... 1 quid for the former... 10 quid for the latter -
i’ve sold my soul! never mind...
then to the beacon that’s home... it’s night... it’s spooky...
it’s essex: that non-touristy place in england people with passports
never dare to visit, shambles.
well one thing came out true... none of the above though:
you ever consider the theory of the aeroplane syndrome in writers?
you know, like with rock stars you get the full package,
you get the aeroplane and the retrieved delay of the engine mushroom,
but with poetry (which is competing with music,
philosophers just wait in that queue for the cheese, wink, whine and wrinkle)
you only get the sound... that delayed mushroom...
you see the poet but never hear him...
it’s a typical delusion i’d call parallel or even adjacent to narcissism,
you walk down the street and the closest you come
to someone recognising you is a stranger uttering out: ‘hey richard!’
‘name’s matt mate.’
‘oh... sorry.’
it’s this aeroplane syndrome theory... it’s perfectly acceptable...
you have the image but don’t have the delayed sound...
you have the delayed sound... but you only get a photograph...
you have the english national health service mental health unit crisis...
and then you have people shunning intellectualism
trying to cure people by burning / not reading philosophical books;
the day ends with drinking and reading
an article about keith richard’s antics in the sunday times’ supplement
and the thought: well i gave her a stabbing chance
at feminism... she thought the active ingredient in anti-contraception
pills was placebo... she phoned and gave birth to me...
i said abort... you’re no post-teen mum at university, you won’t be...
******* was great but i’m not that much of a match from a cosmopolitan magazine quiz
(as duly taken on my way from st. pestersburg to moscow to see
metallica play), plus there are no roofing jobs in scotland...
the scots have mountains already... there’s no point building
scratched sky skylines with mountain ranges nearby...
so even though i went to a catholic school...
i did my first redemptive act by reading about gnostic heretics...
and not getting confirmed being the second...
i would have not taken first communion... but playing the xylophone
at the nativity play was too much fun...
plus it is the only salvador dali bit of the story...
after that you have st. sebastian...
plus you see where this is going... the greeks translated
the tetragrammaton into the gospels
of st. matthew, luke, mark and john...
and the romans were duped into the legality of
things... first name, second name, confirmation name...
surname.
Nigel Morgan Nov 2012
After the painting by Leonard John Fuller

I had promised I would arrive in good time for afternoon tea with Edith and the Aunt. Angela was nervous.
     ‘Edith scares me,’ she said. ‘I feel a foolish girl. I have so little to say that she could possibly be interested in.’
      She had sat up in bed that morning as I dressed. She had frowned, pushed her hair back behind her ears, then curled herself up like a child against my empty pillow. I sat on the bed and then stroked the hand she had reached out to touch me. She was still warm from sleep.
     ‘They are coming to see you,’ she whispered, ‘and to make sure I’m not fooling about with your mother’s house.’
‘I’ve told you, you may do what you like . . .’
‘But I’m not ready . . . and I don’t know how.’
‘Regard it as an adventure my dear, just like everything else.’
‘Well that had been such an adventure,’ she thought. ‘When you drive off each morning I can hardly bare it. It’s good you can’t see how silly I am, and what I do when you are not here.’
        I could imagine, or thought I could imagine. I’d never known such abandon; such a giving that seemed to consume her utterly. She would open herself to this passion of hers and pass out into the deepest sleep, only to wake suddenly and begin again.

Angela felt she had done her best. They’d been here since three, poked about the house and garden for an hour, and then Millicent had brought tea to the veranda. Jack had promised, promised he would look in before surgery, but by 4.30 she had abandoned hope in that safety net, and now launched out yet again onto the tightrope of conversation.
         Edith and the Aunt asked for the fourth time when Dr Phillips would be home. How strange. she thought, to refer to their near relative so, but, she supposed, doctor felt grander and more important than plain Jack. It carried weight, significance, *gravitas
.
       Angela hid her hands, turning her bitten to the quick nails into her lilac frock, hunching her shoulders, feeling a patch of nervous sweat under her thighs.
       ‘He’s probably still at the Cottage Hospital,’ she said gaily, ‘Reassuring his patients before the holiday weekend.’
      She and Jack had planned to drive to St Ives tomorrow, stay at the Mermaid, swim at ‘their’ bay, and sleep in the sun until their bodies dried and they could swim again.
       ‘How strange this situation,’ she considered. ‘Edith and the Aunt in the role of visitors to a house they knew infinitely better than she ever could.’
       The task ahead seemed formidable: being Jack’s wife, bearing Jack’s children, replacing Jack’s mother.
      Edith was thinking,’ What would mother have made of this girl?’ She’s so insipid, so ‘nothing at all’, there wasn’t even a book beside her bed, and her underwear, what little she seemed to wear, all over the place.'
      Edith just had to survey the marital bedroom, the room she had been born in, where she had lost her virginity during Daddy’s 60th party – Alan had been efficient and later pretended it hadn’t happened – she was sixteen and had hardly realised that was ***. Years later she had sat for hours with her mother in this room as, slipping in and out of her morphia-induced sleep, her mother had surveyed her life in short, sometimes surprising statements.
      Meanwhile the Aunt, Daddy’s unmarried younger sister had opened drawers, checked the paintings, looked at Angela’s slight wardrobe, fingered Jack’s ties.
      Edith remembered her as a twenty-something, painfully shy, too shy to swim with her young niece and nephew, always looking towards the house on the cliffs where they lived.
     They were those London artists with their unassorted and various children, negligent clothes and raised voices. The Aunt would wait until they all went into St Ives, for what ever they did in St Ives – drink probably, and creep up to the house and peer into the downstairs windows. It was all so strange what they made, nothing like the art she had seen in Florence with Daddy. It didn’t seem to represent anything. It seemed to be about nothing.
       Downstairs Angela knew. The visit to the bathroom was just too long and unnecessary. She didn’t care, but she did care, as she had cared at her wedding when the Aunt had said how sad it was that she had so little family, so few friends.
       Yet meeting Jack had changed everything. He wanted her to be as she was, she thought. And so she continued to be. All she felt she was this ripe body waiting to be impregnated with her husband’s child. Maybe then she would become someone, fit the Phillips mould, be the good wife, and then be able to deal with Edith and the Aunt.
        That cherub in the alcove, how grotesque! As Edith droned on about the research on her latest historical romance, Angela wondered at its provenance. ‘Daddy ‘ loved that sort of thing, Jack had told her. The house was full of her late father-in-law’s pictures, a compendium of Cornish scenes purchased from the St Ives people. She would burn the lot if she could, and fill the house with those startling canvases she occasionally glimpsed through studio doors in town. She knew one name, Terry Frost. She imagined for a moment covering up the cherub with one of his giant ecstatic spirals of form and colour.
       The chairs and the occasional tables she would disappear to the loft, she would make the veranda a space for walking too and fro. There would be an orange tree at one end and a lemon tree at the other; then a vast bowl on a white plinth in which she could place her garden treasures, rose petals, autumn leaves, feathers and stones. There might be a small sculpture, perhaps something by that gaunt woman with the loud voice, and those three children. Angela had been told she was significant, with a studio at the top of Church Lane.
       Edith had run out of experiences regarding her monthly visits to the reading room of the British Museum. She was doing the ’ two thousand a day, darling’, and The Dowager of Glenriven would be ‘out’ for the Christmas lists. The Aunt had remained silent, motionless, as though conserving her energies for the walk through the cool house to the car.
       ‘Oh Darlings,’ Jack shouted from the hall, ‘I’m just so late.’ Then entering the veranda, ‘Will you forgive me? Edith? Aunt Josie? (kiss, kiss) Such an afternoon . . .’
       Surveying the cluttered veranda Angela now knew she would take this house apart. She had nothing to lose except her sanity. Everything would go, particularly the cherub. She would never repeat such an afternoon.
      She stood up, smoothed her frock, put her arms around Jack and kissed him as passionately as she knew how.
This is the first of my PostCard Pieces - very short stories and prose poems based on postcards I've collected or been given from galleries and museums. I have a box of them, pick one out at random - and see what happens!
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2017
.how does philosophy and psychology differ? well. psychology was spawned from having to focus on the "need" of a "learning" for writing: speak comes easy, writing, not so much. psychology is so easily spoken, philosophy isn't, philosophy is like a child talking to an adult when psychology / sophistry comes into play /
    refrain... how do i rephrase this statement?
      ah! philosophy is like a child talking to a child...
psychology is like an adult talking to a child...
psychology is a supertition of knowledge...
philosophy? a fear of knowledge.
  knowledge does not make happy people,
or gullible talkative types, either.

... the birth of psychology contra philosophy... the when sophia over-powered the philosophers with too many observation cues... maxims and aphorisms... la rochefoucauld & nietzsche... it began with a dialogue, it maintained itself in a solipsistic monologue... it ended up as advertisement slogans: maxims and aphorisms.... cute observations: seen, "seen" but never tested... i've seen the ugly side of psychology... it's psychiatry... the big pharma carousel and slurred sedative spreschen... try getting a slurred sedative spreschen out of me... i'll sock you... i'm this: )( close to the itch of throwing a punch, i almost forgot what implies: peace... me dancing on old college's (edinburgh) roof while listening to: the shins, new slang... that was peace...
  that was me: rooftop, night, moon,
and the lingo of limbs floating freely off my torso
and at the same attached to it...

       i once cared about a "double" chin...
i grew a beard,
stopped worrying about: when will i learn
the violin... fiddled with my beard
for a while and figured: not now,
not ever...
                much much more gracious
than fiddling with ***** hair...
after all: a beard is very much akin
to ***** hair...

          jordan peterson and the old testament...
right...
       if ever a cain...
  siberia looks like the ideal prison...
after all god said, or "said": let him walk off his sins...
hard to walk off your sins when caged...
siberia? perfect training ground...
all that ******* being sold, cain? a vegetarian...
abel? sacrificed animal flesh...
paradox... so... god... expected us...
to remain hunter gatherers?!
  cain was thinking ahead!
he sacrificed fruits and veg. and...
cain was like: we better start thinking about
morphing into an agricultural society!
god praised abel, the neanderthal hunter gatherer...
cain was like: but look! look! wheat! bread!
we can feed more people!
god said: hunter gatherer! abel! win win!
cain paid homage to god
via fruit & veg...
abel... via kosher blood sacrifices...
now... either i'm just plain stupid...
or god is a really bad fiction....
written up by circumcised men
who never learned to *******:
since: the obvious impediment restriction...

cain was a veggie... abel sacrificed animals...
mea culpa somnum... send this whole
died on the cross
          ergo saved ergo ergo
my fault ******* to sleep... i'm tired of this mantra
like an eskimo is bored of ice...
i'm bored of listening to semitic proverbs...
   i'm bored of their rubrics...
their: "fate-warnings",
their superstitions... a semite will forever remain
a semite for me: kippah-***-tonsure...
or a camel-jockey brigade... lucky them they settled
on a once grand mountain range
of Sahara that was the bed for oil...

oh look! wow! i can think for myself!
wonderful...
               which is what i always thought
would become reality...
i'd watch a video...
not comment,
                 and write a rebuttal...
                  which would fall on deaf ears...
or that sacred minority report...
i'll face it if you face it:
the monotheistic god of the semites...
is as ridiculous
as the poloytheism of the pagans...
      the monotheistic god of the semites
is just too... pristine...
     give too many omni- prefixes
to a being and he becomes, boring...
like superman...
                  and to still preserve intellectual
integrity within the ontological omni-
zoo?
                              hey! feel free!
       i much prefer to believe in a "god"
of a limited circumstance...
                  as the will of creation? sure: omni- etc.,
but as a spectator in the back of the minds
of the "created"? cameo presence...
hence not omni- etc.,
                  after all: free will is free will...
and it requires no divine intervention
in order for it to be proved...
  however bad it happens to be upon
embodiment...
    god was never a source of intervention...
the jews begged prayed lampooned for
that sort of god...
did it fare them well? i don't think so...
god was always a cameo for me...
   something i could rely on...
in terms of finding my grand jurisprudence
libra... when the human sense of justice
would disintegrate...
and i'd be met with the west saxon mantra
of: innocent until proven guilty...
or a jimmy saville...
  i was wronged,
no one will believe me,
fair enough...
                     at least i've found some source
of compensation,
for the time being,
before i believe: not to be reunited
with the dead loved ones...
but before i believe to stand
in the grand court of judgement...
with king Solomon as the prosecutor
.


do what the english language does, it uses
hyphens to create compounds...  just do this:
            object-object...
   would i **** it?                depends on the follow-ups
that constrict the two-way "system"
of re-appropriation
            with the german language...
it really is the new: north south east west
"copernican" discussion...
    the **** am i supposed to do
(as a male) with an object
     that's not object=object... because it isn't...
      or object≠object: well? because it
clearly isn't...
                      ****, bro?
                       can i get a hotdog instead?
yeah yeah, extra onions on top...
                            but write it out in
that natural **** schizoi fashion
    as post-german compounds... hyphenated,
but instead include the following variations...
      and put them up for a narcissus inspection
and ask: are they chiral?
               stress-free is a compound word...
           but it's easier with an object-object
compound... 'cos' then you can **** around with
object-object... object=object...
             object≠object...
                                object~object...­
                       object≈object...
                           and   object≡object...
it's close proximity, i gather, so it's hard to
orientate yourself as you might with 1 + 1 = 2...
                      but it's in english, and english is
prone to try and forget the norman conquest
and rekindle itself as: with a germanic origin,
and all that custard that modern german
looks like: i'd be sooner wearing sun-glasses than
actual optic magnifiers if i was found
reading german krupahunddoughchew...
                               or the likes of this fake example.
true transgender? it happens in the ≡ category...
the binary...
       it means: even though you're male
   and can't fulfil the female role of a reproductive
****** capacity... i'd still *******...
    joke's on me...
                 but otherwise? apart from the starting point
in the english language...
      the hyphen and compounding words
as is the "vogue" standard...
               so working from object-object...
and then including the stated variations
                       of a dualistic **** by dichotomy...
         ah man... i'm just talking about
how english is trying to resurrect its saxon
ancestors... what with creating these hyphenated
words... you're going to shove some
      other mathematical symbol in between
the two stated words and think of
                                  some grander schematics...
the death of the university coincided with
the death of the asylum...
                               evidently 2 + 2 does equal 4...
         but it's still a case of working
from object-object...
                            object/subject-subject/object?
north, east, west, south...
                      what the ****?!
                        we have modern neanderthals
roaming this place, and they're faking
  the status **** sapiens... that the hell can
evolve from that?
                    clear and bite-sized truth acknowledgement:
we're **** schizoi... split brained...
                     we've reached a stage where
we're not modelled by a multiplication impetus,
but an obelus impetus (÷)...
                       western society figured...
as **** similis: we have a billion chinese and
a billion blue indians of the raj...
                                why should we be bothered?
                isn't that the case of what's happening?
unearthing the nag hammadi library
                               and the whole transgender movement?
oi! where's the vatican! get those cardinals off their *****!
                                 white, red, purple, black.
pope, cardinal, bishop... priest...
           sure sure... brown....                          monks.
but we're losing a fight against neanderthal islam...
                   come your hungry, your oppressed...
your first cousin ******* retards.
                                         i know i'm taunting,
i'm taunting with a reason: neanderthal islam....
                 so much for history and gloating about it
citing the ottomans; thing is... i have lost the ability
to fear death... i'm actually teasing it, more and more,
day after day, after yet another day...
                          it's a bit like the reverse process of
castration... i'm feeling up pigs' genitals, saying:
      oh look! this porky can sign in #A!
                               quick! to the castrato oink corp!
yep... etymology... the alternative to reading
history.
To me eternity lies in thy eyes,
and thy rejection my demise.
If so but accept and heal me likewise;
whilst shun and stab my sore heart, otherwise.
Thou hath always been to me a surprise;
Though a doubtful, but sparkling surprise,
So any dejection of thine shall be odd,
And a thousand times bitterer than a cold rapid retort;
For thou art pure; and sometimes too pure and fine
As how thy immortal soul stayest still, and growest not old
And in toughness and roughness is to remain,
So long as thy dried flesh shall age, and afford;
And with such songs so prolific as prayers
By friendly laudations like bewitching storms
Thou shall forever stay, and newer grow fader
And in such coldness thou shall offer me warmth;
Beside yon raging fire, and about thy manly arms,
Thou shalt but lull and cradle me like a baby-
until sleep comes and whispers dreams onto me,
Thou shalt be far more tender and smart-
Unlike that ungrateful preceding heart,
Which claimed to be civil, but uncivil,
United but then left my unsuspecting heart apart;
So unlike thee, who is but a smart little devil
Thou who earnestly tempted my soul, and lured my blood
Thou returned my blushes, and caught away my heart
Ah, and now-whenever I thinkest of thee,
All pain and gloom shall revert to oneness,
But how still I know not, as whose days remain but a mystery
For everything in which is at times barren and colourless;
But when alive, they are just as simple
as those brief dreams of thine and mine,
With a love but too sufficient, majestic and ample
Delicately shall they turn troubled and unseen,
But caring and healing and blinding and shaking,
taking turns like oceanic birds which go about
swimming and singing and strumming and swinging,
like a painting of prettily sure clarity-but unseen,
or perhaps a pair of loving, yet unforgettable winds.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do,
To thee towards whom my hardened heart-again, turns soft,
To thee whom my delirium is all kept safe and true,
To thee for whom I canst feel never reproach-and only love,
And to thee-ah, to thee, thee only-by whom
the grandeur of the blue sky shalt melt;
Ah, thee! And betwixt thy gaze,
All fictitious sunsets shalt perhaps become wet-
Just like those azure spirits in thy fair eyes,
Sometimes too indignant but unquestioning,
and too pure-as to whom even the Devil hath no lies;
To thee only, to whom this enduring love is ever assigned,
And forever, even its temptation be mine, and only mine,
Like unforgivable sins, which are sadly left unatoned
In its eternity standing still like a statue;
beside its wrathed, and bloodied howling stone
And to thee merely, to whom this impaired heart shall ever return,
As it now does, with cries and blows that makest my heart churn
And canst wait not 'till the morn, for on morns only,
thou shalt creepest down the stairs, and stareth onto me,
Often with eyes full of questions;
Questions that thou art too bashful to reflect,
So that turn themselves later on, into emotions,
Which withereth and dieth days after, of doom and neglect.
Ah, but still I loveth thee!
For this regret makest me but loveth thee more and more,
and urge my soul greater, to loveth thee better-than ever before.
For 'tis thee who yet stills my cry, and silences my wrath;
The one who kills my death, and reawakens my breath.
Thou on whom my love shall be delightfully poured,
A love as amiable as the one I hold for dearest Lord,
A love for thee, for only thee in whom I'th found comfort,
A comfort that is holier than any heaven, or even His very own divine abode;
Thou art holier than the untouched swaying grass outside,
Which is green, with greenness so handy and indulgent to every sight,
Thou who art madder than madness itself,
But upon Friday eves, makest my joy even merrier,
And far livelier-than any flailing droplet of rain
Showering this earth's clustered soil out there,
Which does neither soften nor flit away my pain
But makest it even worse, as if God Himself shan't solicit, nor care
Like any other hostile love, which thou might kindly find, every where.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do,
To thee towards whom my hardened heart-again, turns soft,
To thee whom my delirium is all kept safe and true,
To thee for whom I canst feel never reproach-and only love,
And to thee-ah, to thee, thee only-by whom
the grandeur of the blue sky shalt melt;
In my mind thou art the lost eternity itself,
And by its proud self, thou art still even grander,
For thou makest silence not any more silence,
but joy, in return, even a greater joy.
Ah, thee, thou who the painter of my day,
and the writer of my blooming night.
Thou who art the poet of my past,
and the words of my courteous present.
Thou shall ******* flirty orange blossoms,
And cherish its virtue, which strives and lives
As a most sumptuous, and palpable gift-
Until the knocking of this year's gentle autumn.
Ah! Virtue, virtue, o virtue-whose soul always be
a charm, and indeed a very generous charm-
to my harmonious, though melancholy, *****.
Ah, thee; o lost darling-my lost darling of all awesome day and night,
My lost darling before starlight, and upon the pallid moonlight,
My lost darling above the reach of my sight, and height;
Thou art still a song-to my now tuneless leaves,
and a melody to their bottomless graves,
Thou shalt be a cure to their ill harmony;
Thou art their long-betrayed melody.
And even, thou art the spring
my dying flowers needst to taste,
fpr being with thee produces no haste;
and or whom nothing is neither early, nor late;
And whenst there be no fate, thou shalt be
yon ever consuming fate itself-
And by our inane eyes, thou shalt makest it
but adorable and all the way strong,
For thou, as thou now do, nurture it better
than all the other graciousness among;
Thou art the promise it hath hitherto liked; but just
shyly-and justly refuted, for the bareness of pride,
and often inglorious resistance-all along.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do,
To thee towards whom my hardened heart-again, turns soft,
To thee whom my delirium is all kept safe and true,
To thee for whom I canst feel never reproach-and only love,
And to thee-ah, to thee, thee only-by whom
the grandeur of the blue sky shalt melt;
Ah, thee! Even in undurable haste, thou art still like a butterfly,
fast and rapid flowing about the earth and into the sky;
Thou who art grateful not for this earth's soil;
Thou who saith 'tis only the sky that canst make thou feel.
Thou who cannot sit, thou cannot lay,
but on whose lanes thou always art secure,
as though from now thou shalt live too long
And belong to this rigorous earth
to whom our mortal souls do not belong.
And as to its vigour, death cannot be delayed,
and words of deadness shalt fast always, be said.
Ah, yet but again, I cannot simply be wrong;
for thou art immortal, immortal, and immortal;
To death thou art but too insipid and loyal;
that willing it not be, to take thy soul into its mourning,
and awkward prayers so scornful and worrying.
Thou who needst not be afraid of death;
for breath shalt never leave thee, and thou shan't breath.
Unsaid poems of thine are thus never to remaineth unspoken,
and far more and more thoughts shalt be perfectly carved, and uttered;
Unlike mine; whose several mortal thoughts shalt be silenced, and unknown
And after years passed my name shalt be forgotten, and my poems altered.
But thou! By any earth, and any of its due shape-thou shalt never be defaced,
and whose thoughts shalt never, even only once-be rephrased,
for thou art immortal, and for decades undying shalt be so;
And to life thou remaineth shalt remain chaste, and undetached;
as the divine wholeness whenst 'tis all slumped and wretched,
and white in unsoiled finery, whenst all goes to dirt and waste;
For grossness shalt escape thee, and stains couldst still, not thee fetch.
To every purity thou shalt thus be the best young match;
Ah, just like my mind shalt ever want thee to be;
but thou art missing from my sight-ah, as thou art not here!
Our paths are far whenst they are but near,
and which fact fillest me still, with dawning dread and fear
Unfortunately, as in this poem, my words not every heart shalt hear;
And to my writings doth I ever patiently retreat, the one,
and one only; whom to my conscience so dear.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do,
To thee towards whom my hardened heart-again, turns soft,
To thee whom my delirium is all kept safe and true,
To thee for whom I canst feel never reproach-and only love,
And just to thee-ah, to thee, thee only-by whom
the grandeur of the blue sky shalt melt;
How fate but still made us here and meet,
That clue shall never makest me blind, and forget!
Now blighted I am, by dire ungladness and regret,
for having abhorred, and slighting thee too much!
For should I still cherish thee before my mortal death,
and be bitter and testy not; much less grim or harsh.
For fate is what fate is, as how love is just it looks;
and God's doings cannot be wrong; and true and faithful
as words I found crafted, and deciphered in old books.
Ah, and God's blessings are to arriveth in time,
and to taste whose due I indeed needst to be patient.
Be patient t'wards the love on which I climb,
ah, as for me-and whenst the right time cometh-
thou shalt be my sole wealth; so dear and sufficient!
And so for thee, no matter how thou hath my heart now torn,
Still I canst, and shalt reward thee not-with scorn;
for thou art my fate, my path, and my salved destiny;
For of which I am assured, definite, and convinced-
with all my degrees of humble pride, and vivid certainty-
Ah, darling, and thou art my humbleness, but also too many a time-my vanity;
For whom I shan't go and venture but anywhere-
As long as thou stayest and last-verily and for yon whole eternity, by me.
aj heatherly Nov 2012
Only in my dreams,
where the butterflies are aflutter,
Can I find the warm, smooth surface,
to something so much grander than I could ever imagine.

Your hills,
your valleys,
your rivers,
your lightning,
the beauty unsurpassed.

The glow of the lights,
down the street corridor,
flakes falling, sticking,
straight to your hair.

Wrapped in my warmth,
I hold on tight,
To what I know,
the only truth in this world.

Every moment,
two beats,
fresh again,
and together in time.
I want this moment to last forever.
This moment, I not yet know.
Will I ever know you...
Could I ever find you, see you, feel you, my truth.

*I don't know who you are.

But I love you. More than you yet know...<3
©Anthony Heatherly, 2012
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2018
.i cannot do justice to Hölderlin's invocation of Hyperion, but i also have no intention to, but i'll begin with, what isn't regarded as a pristine, classical constellation:

it begins with a punt volant,
on first observation,
   ・
      which descends in brightness
         ano teleia -
romanic interruption of the added
comma beneath it,
like a tail dragging the head along...

    the constellation?

        a dismembered man,
a crooked pentagram,
and a trinity of sorts...

                              .          .        
    ­                               .    
                                           .
        .

                       .

                                       .

this, the dislodged man,
with a trinity of stars floating
outside of him...

the trinity is faint...
when you first spot the ano teleia
star with its brightness...
yet that is a mishandled
pentagram...

which brings me to the argument,
some people send their DNA
to companies that
discover their genetic makeup,
i also read a newspaper article
that stated:
why bother?
you genetic make-up
also consists of what
you gravitate to,
culturally...

    so... i'm reading an article
on Hyperion...
and then i follow several links...
all i know is that the Vikings
were the founders of
Kiev...
                
   and to get to Kiev from Norway...
you have to go past the land
i was born in...

   then working from an article
on Emperor Julian, the Apostate...
then onto an article on Mardonius...
then on the article on the Goths...

Goths?
  Swedish "vikings"...
  who had established settlements
in the region of Poland were
i was born,
by 250BC...
                  
   so... why would i cling to
Nordic folk songs,
or their revisionism,
if i... suddenly hear a song,
and react with goosebumps on
my cheeks from hearing it?

or what about the remnants
of Scythia?
           boiling in my veins?

that newspaper article was right,
i don't need to send off my DNA
sample to companies,
i can read my DNA from the culture
i'm migrating toward!

     Hyperion,
i have abandoned the Athenian gods
of Olympus,
i've looked elsewhere,
to the mountain that became
the pit of Tartarus...
look back at Uranus, and sampled
the wintry perfumes of Gaia...

          swam in the ***** of Pontus...
and i have...
seen how both the gods,
and the titans...
   are the source of etymological
classification,
unlike what the judeo-christian tranditions
teach...
Adam didn't name the birds
and the animals from an a priori
posit / advantage point
of some obscure inheritance...

        first come the grander things...
man conjures up the existence / non-existence
of either gods, or titans...
to spin the wheel and gain etymological
momentum!
            
of what became the ****** of the affair
between Helios and Gaia...
    however true...
   or untrue...
      there is still an etymological foundation
for the existence of said
names...
   the names / not beings...
that spawn more names to be attributed
to such miniscule things
as flies, centipedes and pebbles...

from the word Uranus, comes the word
Helios,

from Selene comes the word
which coincides
the words Pontus, Oceanus, Poseidon,
and subsequently the
moon's influence of the tides...
the... παλίρροιες (palirroies,
siblings of the furies, the rivers,
and all other nymphs)...

      but however ridiculous applying
these nouns is...
they are rigid evolution
of words, formerly grunted,
or expressed in a barbaric way...
these are the words first defined...

Gaia probably became perfected
when there occurred a syllable
arithmetic... well... "arithmetic" is a lose
term of addition...
    the syllable g'ah! g'ah!
combined with i'ah!
                            
stealthy *******, this Jewish god,
he knew it all along...
hide in the letters,
hide in phonetics,
hide long until...
there's a second Belshezzar moment
in history...
when he's seen a second time...

i see him!
the surd H and the laughter
instigator H of the tetragrammaton...
you sigh when you write AH...
you express a vague awed-surprise
when you write OH...
    H represents the breath...
and the soul...

i see him!
i write too much to not be able
to dis-guide you from doing likewise...
the breath enter with an AH
and an OH...
   ah as in wonder with a surprise,
oh, as in counter: so i was wrong?

ooh... like something is teasing
you...
    uh? as in an element of disgust...
but?
HA?
       the point...
the point being?
laughter...
                    how else can you
express laughter,
if not balancing on the Jewish
definite article,
i.e. HA, i.e. HA-shem (the-name?),
how?!

but the Greeks were of some use...
their names of Titans and
Greeks?
   etymological boot-camps...
what we began with,
and, ultimately,
what we return to,
not for bowing, prayer,
belief...
but?
            *momentum
...
    
we already that Zeus is actually
Thor,
   who's father, Odin,
is Uranus...
                    so, technically...
Zeus is Thor...
                     Prometheus is Loki...
etc. etc. etc.,
      point being...
these similarities, these correlations?
they're not, they're not,
plagiarisms...
                        they would be plagiarisms,
if they had similar etymological
beginnings...
they're not plagiarisms,
because even now,
not everyone on this earth is a bilingual
entity that could
support a globalist agenda!
      if bilingualism was rife,
then the liberals could have their
globalist "unity"...
              but since bilingualism is the lesser
half of the polymath...
    no...
              isolated communities
have isolated ideas...
they look as if they were plagiarisms
now... but then?
   the only globalist artifact left these days,
the Socratic argument for
universal, convergent purposes -
and particular, divergent practicalities...
these religions were not
plagiarisms...
   do you really think that
plagiarism is a pulverizing motivational
tool for the perpetuation
of a people's existence?
   i don't think so...
                      plagiarism doesn't drive
people...
it's just a strange coincidence that
there are similarities that could be conceived
as plagiarisms...
but then again...
****... me and this Mongol share
a very similar physiognomy...
  and... oh ****... we're standing up-right...
have five limbs...
   and we use fire to cook food...
yeah... the religious plagiarism issue is
really suspicious...
we weren't, ever, to make a similar conclusion...
since we all, supposedly led a mass
exodus from Africa...
     like **** we did...
     perhaps...
               but the story doesn't begin
with an origins...
   more... what happened in what
became localized eventualities of segregation...
hey... i might have, 100 year... ha ha!
yeah right... to write my own narrative...
i don't like the antithesis of
doubt: of the perfected plethora of
the antithesis of both faith & denial...
     i like my rainbow plethora of doubt
to "counter" faith & denial...
   given that i also don't like
the pseudo-schizophrenic dichotomy of
faith, contra denial.
- makes for a more exciting
content of the heart... what? doubt;
doubting Thomas
  with a heart like a sinking stone,
and fire in his eyes,
                    a, second Belshezzar.
Where Shelter Aug 2018
my second fight today with god

the first involves gods correctable errors of judgement

the second,
am asked to deliver a eulogy for someone
I never met and no is not in the range of acceptable answers

alone and misperceived as forsaken, despite calls and poems
glorious and galore, I was slow to realize, now fast,
was I meant to be
her here,
where shelter,
the first, will always now be
too late

you break off pieces for the needy, forlorn,
the ones you might of loved, it’s costly for
both the giver and the forgiven, but I am the unforgiven in giver,
a redeemer failure, the question mark and the short dotted flat line,
uniquely marked human,
the Cain marker forehead now forever a
carved minus sign, meaning I am lessened, lesser and
insufficient was

read out loud, an old soft tender, inspired by hers,
a missive sweetness tinged with affection, writ by a human savior who did not
do a good enough job, nonetheless,
everyone slaps my back later saying beautiful bespoke,
and when you going home, stay a few days, she’d appreciate

a thank you smile but can’t, though the dead will follow you,
that goes unsaid, but you will know
grander grief yet, as guilt continue-us,
and the tune playing non-stop stop isn’t yours,
but you spoke it  to her once as a justification explanation,

it was true but a nile river-red-colored plague
that added to her dissatisfaction, come disastrous for one  
who didn’t ever get to leave egypt

guess i’m admitting its my fault
not gods;
so I let the  ******* off the hook on this one,
but I’ll get even I swear, it/he, nah,
SOB
just laughs,
but this will be one of life’s allusions
I will recall and wonder when will that tune cease,
but get no answer from nobody


that tune?

<>

Go 'way from my window
Leave at your own chosen speed
I'm not the one you want, babe
I'm not the one you need
You say you're lookin' for someone
Who's never weak but always strong
To protect you an' defend you
Whether you are right or wrong
Someone to open each and every door
But it ain't me, babe
No, no, no, it ain't me babe
It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe

Go lightly from the ledge, babe
Go lightly on the ground
I'm not the one you want, babe
I will only let you down
You say you're lookin' for someone
Who will promise never to part
Someone to close his eyes for you
Someone to close his heart
Someone who will die for you an' more
But it ain't me, babe
No, no, no, it ain't me babe
It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe

Go melt back in the night
Everything inside is made of stone
There's nothing in here moving
An' anyway I'm not alone
You say you're looking for someone
Who'll pick you up each time you fall
To gather flowers constantly
An' to come each time you call
A lover for your life an' nothing more
But it ain't me, babe
No, no, no, it ain't me, babe
It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe


by Bob Dylan
farewell babe

12:48 pm a blustery Saturday
Hal Loyd Denton Jul 2013
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

— The End —