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DJ Thomas  May 2010
Gift Wrapped
DJ Thomas May 2010
We each have a voice and life, it is how we use them not how we might!  

Stop glaciers melting
Huge population movements
Death of progeny


The small reductions in carbon emissions being targeted for 2020 or 2050 - are thought to little to late to slow global warming.  The melting polar ice and glaciers together with our changing weather patterns are now fact. The resulting loss of river systems and rising sea levels will mean the desertification or flooding of agricultural lands and famine, then the migration of populations - starting with the skilled and rich seeking safety, to escalate into the terror of armed bands
warring over water, food, women and land.

By 20 20
Lets hope for twenty twenty
A 20 20


There is now the thought that the huge physical change wrought by global warming can be charted by the escalation in earthquake and volcanic activity.  And that this may eventually trigger huge eruptions in the American and Asian continents,
destroying civilisations to create a planetary volcanic winter.

Again fire and cold
The cycle repeats itself
Destroying nature


Was there a civilisation in deep history before the flood, prior to and during the last ice-age?
This has been researched and written about in great detail during the last twenty years
and many now believe it already proven by scientific review of documents and
thousands of archaeological finds, also by scientists having used the exactness
in the astronomical alignments of ancient monuments
to recalculate there greater age.  

Dead sold souls herd us
Lost mindless finger puppets
Vapid witless words


Sadly, the majority put their reliance and faith in
the actions of lawyer-ed politicians, most of whom evidence
a fixation on their own welfare,  selfish self-glorification needs
and an unwillingness to rock-the-boat once in power*

Politicians thwart
Party politics deafen
Propaganda’s herd


Putting off all radical action required until after the next election.  
Many have gifted away the necessary legal control and power to take national radical action
to a political or trade grouping of nations - in effect retaining only national rights
to go to war, put up taxes, borrow and spend monies.

Please no rhetoric
Complete local transition
Forget politics


We each have a voice and life, it is how we use them not how we might!

Living we give voice
So one voice might yet be heard
All being, believe!


We are left holding our eco-inheritance and children’s future in the palm of our hand.
Please let our love and imagination drive us each forward to make change.


Biosphere a greenhouse 
Target the impossible
Please gift some life soon?


So, we each of us have hard personal choices to make, which will encompass both positive and negative
benefits in terms of our time, lifestyle, health and wealth.  I chose to base my choices solely on how it
might benefit the eco-system and the lives of our children.

My choices are grouped under five headings: transport, food, home, lifestyle and further action. They are:
-  

Transport: Rail; Bus; Coach; Bike;
(I pass woods in bud - a Red Kite hunting twisting, unhurried moments).  
To give up ownership of electric / motor vehicles
and to avoid air travel where possible.


Highly vaporous.
Emissions farting -
barrelling vipers
.

Food: To eat meat/fish only once a week at most;
(Slaughteramas greed - industrial carcase-ed meals. Sheep full of cancer)
To study fast methods of vegetarian cooking; buy local organic foodstuffs;
visit local farmers markets and farm shops; grow my own when possible
and help friends establish vegetable/herb gardens.
To not ever feed, cleave and eat!


Fat shopaholics,
a deadly consumerism.
Cancers meat to eat


Home:   A cottage sized for me, friends and neighbours,
overlooking a wooded valley and trout stream.
Like me a little untidy and basic
.

Crossing the shallows
trout fingerling feed at dawn
White dots steep hill path

Dusk - eight painted queue
river paired mare and foal
Foliage lined dark black


Well positioned to capture the morning sun, airy and light.  
Yet insulated to stay cool or warm. With easy access to mountain bike trails
and long distance bus routes, plus several end-of-line train stations
in energetic cycling distance over the mountains


A differing beat
Quickly fading doubled steps -
pulling separate


Life Style:* A thinking poet mountain biker, living organic
not part of the great noisious noxious ribbons of hurtling tired.

Pressured paced life -
impossible  commitments.
Organic living


Further Action: *I intend to give up meat not because of the terrible cruelty involved in ten billion or more animals
being slaughtered every year to feed the human race, but due to
: 1)  animal farming being a major factor in the burning of 50 million year old rainforests at a rate of one and half acres per second to generate huge volumes of greenhouse gases, destroying the richest habitats on Earth and a principal source of oxygen; and 2)  that these billions of farmed animals
are themselves a major source of greenhouse gases
.

Burning rainforests
Feeding to cleave open and eat
Subsistence farming


With ongoing intensive fishing, the world's fisheries already in crisis and climate change,
it could be that we will run out of wild-caught seafood much earlier than 2030!


Conserve energy -
and natural resources
Don’t waste foolishly


Each of us might have a different view of what globalisation is,
for some this word encapsulates the dangers of our global fast food culture, omnipresent brands,
popular culture, changing diets and the growing use of packaged processed foods
.

Freedom to act sought
Globalisation's curses
Octopus suckers!


For many it is the illegal international trade in endangered species of flora and fauna,  
second only in value to the $350 billion a year global drug trafficking trade that now services
perhaps more than 50 million regular users of ******, ******* and synthetic drugs
.

The label 'globalization' can cover the: spread and integration of different cultures;  
industry moving to low per capita income countries; sweatshops supplying this seasons branded goods
to retail outlets worldwide;  complex international interleaved financial trading instruments being developed
by banks and financial institutions to trade worldwide, create profits and pay huge bonuses, without risk to themselves
.

Globalisation -
orchestrated profiteers,
betting our losses


Many see globalisation as being the beneficial spread of free trade, liberty, democracy and capitalism,
involving the efficient allocation of resources and capital through the spread of technology.
Unelected international bodies and institutions such the World Bank actively promulgate globalisation,
a '‘world government’ promoting close economic ties between nations
.

Enculturation
Our sad indoctrination
Globalization
  

The anti-globalisation movements dislike the corporate and political nature of globalisation,
protesting the resultant harm done to the biosphere, a more rapid and extensive deterioration of the environment
and the unintended but very real consequences of globalisation: the erosion of traditional culture
resulting in social disintegration; a breakdown of democracy; the spread of new diseases;
changes in diet; increasing poverty.
.

I view globalisation and it's propagation as leading to the final destruction
of the world's cultures and civilisations by locked us into a
dogmatic world political doctrine secured through
trade and political alliances of states, institutions
and corporations that remain hell bent on
imposing this world governance. Such
that individual countries governments
cannot consider making substantive
radical change to avert the planet
being pushed into a natural cycle
that will end the human race
.

Caged in Fools World
The people hear heroic call  
Each one a hero
!

The peoples and cultures of the world need perhaps just one western country to
break the legal chains of globalisation and adopt a radical economic regeneration program
designed to make the total transition to a dynamic culture of localised
clean communities centred on the individual not competition*  

Only one tool
National taxation for -
economic change.


Here I begin discussing how global, regional and national economies might
be based on the growth of small organic local economies.
not the repeated foolishness involved in chasing lower cost base manufacture -
each time at great cost to the economy it has migrated from!
Then a further culture becoming totally reliant
on the transport of foodstuffs and goods -
I can here you saying
:

"Oh **** this guy is -
talking about change, changing -
the world we live in!"


Yes, I am and do we have a choice?  But such change will be organic and involve business
in the restructuring and regeneration of economies till we share green economies.  
In small part his is already happening slowly!


Unlock taxation,  
survivals powerful tool.  
Needed now for change!


This is why we need to consider doing something that many of today's
plutocrats, economists, bureaucrats and politicians, would dismiss out of hand or
discuss endlessly in terms of perfectly competitive markets, perverse economic incentives etc


Major solution
National taxation change
Human extinction



WORK in HAND

This haiku sequenced eco-haibun is an ongoing project being penned day-by-day by many that care and take action. Your reactions are all welcome, thank you


**Take back control now.  
Cease all squabbling, achieve act - decisively!

Globalisation's, global control cut away.
Diversity sought

Promote well being.  Act with imagination -
for ecology!

Creating employment -
with local utilities, local food and transport

Incentivise tax,  to create local benefits.
Gain prosperity

Income taxation -  value added tax, aged -
dangerous mistake

Local licensing.  Lead don't follow excuses.
Saviour taxation

Imaginative - energy, food and transport -
local licensing

An alternative - energetic strategy,
greening business

Organic foodstuffs - out compete processed food.
Life promoting health

Healthy government - a healthy population. 
Zero income tax!

Locally taxed - by distance it travelled -
and category

Products bar coded.  Point of agreed production -
and category

Local added tax, by distance it travelled -
and category

Local energy, initiatives supplant.  
Replacing at risk

User energy, capture and storage.  
Eco-dwelling plan

Local water works,  supplanting initiative.
Replace the at risk

User water need.  Capturing and storing half.
Securing supply

Communications, local initiatives.
Protecting our needs

Local healthy food, life saving initiative.
Planting guaranteed

Sort unemployment, local work available.
Agriculture base

Radical transport - initiatives needed.
Change made possible

Season’s colours blur - in ageing contemplation
chilling warm breezes

Ganges dried mud - dust
Armed hungry thirsty tide
Generations despair,  lost

Our politicians -
squabble condemn progeny.
Flee panic and die

HAIKU SEQUENCE FINISHED

HAIBUN PROSE BEING ADDED
Day by Day
This haiku sequenced eco-haibun needs prose and additional haiku added day by day.  Contributing comment and reactions considered for inclusion...

copyright©DJThomas@inbox.com 2010
Julian Sep 2020
I famigerate without taciturn timidity the straits of a straightened jury-rig of nesiote narrowbacks harping the accordion zest and zeal of the plenilune consuetude of a scrivello infamy sprung into the rows of rip-tide acclaim hamstrung by the decline in fastidious upkeep of the timberlask vesicles that avoid the phenakism of prismatic reformation fundamental to transmogrified simpers of dismal saturnine darkness encroaching on the parallax of realms within the dominion of the Almighty for the omniety of the usucaption of the fruitful prune in the priggish afterglow of a noontide eclipse bereaved of whispering retreat in the hallowed wasms of stiltanimity becoming an entreaty to ecumenical barbs of propriety selected without intimacy to folksy bibliopolists but rugged in sterling tribute to the true vine of the appointed ways of sacerdotal triage among a roughshod vanity of a derelict world marveling at otiose rejoinder rather than true spasms of tragedy flickering in the recessive alleles of a careworn culture. The travesty of Beirut is the bromide of current leapfrogs of sentinel lust and malapert destruction forming an ironclad camaraderie with chocolate-box langlauf disasters wed uxoriously to the penury of the brackish version of the catadromous bailiwick of despotic nescience pregnant with sophrosyne redemption at the cusp of a plaid perfunctory quip of quisling intimations of the sketchy provenance of humdingers of comestion lurking in the plodding prowl of a ribald wiseacre of a beckoned billow of trinkochre welded into a conscientious blarney that awaits the popinjays that sculpt brittle redshort fictions into awakened carapaces of a limacine reduction of impoverished fulmination into the neatly sworn footprints of a geotaxis shuddering with magnetism only in spectacle without the overhailing zeal of vintners who specialize in curtailed wine drawn from Caiaphas and soaked with the muddy turgid Siloam as avenues toward the repentance of asunder becoming marginalized as a whimper of taciturn choleric war receding not even into an audible delope as the masterful chryselephantine assault of cryptic auditions in the theater of effete refuge sink into the pelagic oblivion of a remarkable blister festering into inconsequence as the rebarbative emoluments to tattered travesty hearken a battle-cry yet emanated in the reprehensible bulwark of the gerendum of a poised plastered humility aggrieved with such friction turgid on rollicking magpiety that even the larceny of brutish renegades of triumph sink beneath the brevity of accident rather than the fortitude of globalized turpitude weakened by the improper demarche of fuliginous homeless depredation of innocent bystanders flocking to the harvest of war found in insight rather than the perfunctory bromidrosis of the macroscian enmity of hidden maleficence spawning a credenda that is spayed on arrival in the faineant zoolatry of a spelunkers’ madcap dash to flex the filigrees of turmoil in resentment of the amicable truces of a God who never tempts and a lurking lie that never itches for trigger-happy hapless rebukes because the skittish skirmish of futilitarian repose is a scoundrel of the profligacy of errant weakness blinkered by the humdrum din of deafening semaphores of provocative thornbush on the threshing floor of cowardly imposture president of all affairs of spirit and all renegades of caitiff megalography of forgotten oblivion despite the curglaff of vindictive and never vindicated assaults on the integrity of the birthright of Lebanon to wager a presumptive gamble of trifling retribution for the alacrity of suspicions eloping with forbidden mistresses in the humdingers of flackey rather than the troudasque harbinger of a lunacy impugned by a restive triumphant fallow time seasonable for a litany of pretenses demassified for a liturgy of seances with eldritch commiseration in the saw-toothed serration of selachostomous bravado wielded by likely or unlikely culprits of ravenous ruin shepherded by the guilty cardinal sins of the complicity of explosive vanity marauding on the ruins of a fortress debased by pettifoggery of internal excuse rather than the wrath of provocative ire in the irksome cauterized wounds of the inured to deliver spectacular reticence despite such grievous diacope. Evil gilderoys of maleficence carve the sapwood of the periphery to aimless subversions miscarried by the modern atrocity of glamour memorialized as a sound-byte underminnow of a roaring rhombos rip tide as stocks wavy at the curvature of edgy demarche despoil the denuded wasteland of cultural despondency a wagtail to the impudence of famigerated affronts that deserve a sterling recompense wielded by the onerous and operose burdens of a prone decubitus of aboriginal bread seeded from Heavenly realms dissipating into the roars of blinded conflagration too meek to even exist on the ramshackle hillside of a barnstorm of aggression powerless to encapsulate the nexility of unspoken allegiance to destruction rather than the halidom of consecrated marriages balking at the caulked provisions of a slugabed monolith of craven capers on the recesses of abeyance in the interregnum of a time where famous people communicate with me. How can such a charismatic bravado of lurking presidency stoop to the denizens of usufruct in licentious latitudes on the outskirts of consideration even pretend anymore that the vacuum of effluvium (Gal 6:7) can be mocked and milked into the row of centuries blistering through the calenture of apprisal and heaved awakening as the zephyrs of the Occident meet temporal juncture with the coenesthesia of a hibernating trumpery formed by the turnverein of listless lethargy billowing through fumiducts of siphoned lavaderos of hypogeiody that the underground spasms of cacophony could marvel at the historic emergence of a magnate with the most powerful magnetism of God shepherding the true flock John 10:27 because he is willing to be the good shepherd and potentially die for his sheep John 10:11. Remember, whenever you hear a Queer Studies Radical Feminist bloviate on emasculated sardanapalian posture John 8:44 and even though personified as a masculine titan of bulwarks of immense otiose wilted inkburch shielding the world from true meaning, the maskirovka of the Devil is present in the dark trespasses of personal abandon among the wilderness of many marsupial jackals of martles wagtails to an invictive proclamation of invulnerable sappy sopanaceous filibusters against hefty sinew forged the bony fragments of the charnels lost to brief epitaphs never mourned in threnodies worthy of remembrance that the departed died with us and live again through us whether in Heaven as participant or on Earth as an acting battalion of the skullduggery of the mystique of shimmers of God acting on Man’s behalf 1 Col 1:15-16. That the firstborn of all creation obtains supremacy through the finalisms that I seek as the captain of trailblazing untrammeled roads we are reminded of the narrow and wide gates expanded by the explosion of thought that trespasses into the hidebound ratchet of a reasonable bleat becoming a harsh outcry of justice for Lebanon that they feel so powerless in implosion what could aggrieve potentate civilizations to the precipice of global maleficence in destruction. Swarming for alveolate hominid hominism as an outgrowth of alienation by design polarized spectral dangles at jaundice flamestun by the ordeal of oppositive barnacles to the chryselephantine habituation of a masked menace of Procrustean authority to muzzle the free license of armamentariums of a latent man keen to the kenspeckel visibilia that we might have punctuation in the poised primiparas of a hearkened unprecedented in modern history that the traipse of lapse is no longer the tenure of mindless calculation of authoritarian gabble sentries of a mobilized fleet of embodied human ignorance but a foisted sprite of whangams of apothegm that deserve in their gnomic respite from the phenakisms of a philogeant kumbaya assertive in its treony of radical compassion for those who dwell in tentpoles of revelry bound not to the covenant that sent us into light and sparkling in hidden obsolescence that the fulgurant words of Mount Horeb (Sinai) are both immaculate and without trace of sin because Acts 17:30 declares a powerful truth lost to the twinges of time that issued peremptory governance of my theology but through remission I admit the grievances of septiferous blockades of ponderous plodding nescience haunting the spectral aubades of paeans to a high-flown sun darting through galactic space apace of the velivolant sails of divine wind that come in the spree of recompense authored by the vines to which all roots belong rhizogenic and immutable because the demarches of time forget the marches against the cauterized grime of new-world suspicions of aleatory fickle gubernatorial proclamations that issue reverb more than sprinkle flanged atrocity in the sight of the holy ramparts of an active double-edged God who reminds us of our many witnesses but provides not a single latchkey of escapism resident to many hapless homes of the drunken sing-song rhapsody nullifying the psychotaxis of the motatory miserly Draconian charades of Leviathan grasping the tridents of warp-speed revisionism in a benighted world overrun by mandarist fictions that fumigate a pasteurized control of cultural malcontent in situations of dearth infested by the concentration camps of China that remain unheralded in brumal and brutish indoctrination spared from worldwide outrage by the tribunes that are complicit more in malfeasance than they are celebrated for the herald of heinous bletcherous crimes of abecedarian abligurition anointed in waste rather than refined like unquenched slakes of eternal water so that no man can thirst hungry for the daily bread without returning to the providence of God awakened. Recalcitrant by the impudent quislings of repugnasket flarmeys of advenient flummoxed besieged clairvoyance I bask and beaze on the light that never fades because of the brackish whisk of a barnstorm of allegiance that is contumely to a bromide society listless in inferiority of intellect to my former streaks beyond jejune reiteration of the Jehu mentality against the canine fate of Jezebel and her faltered ministry of ewnastique waged as battalion gore of a trifling musket of an aboriginal swim through the oceanic gaze of peerless eternity squirming because of flagging resolution among the spandrels of incommunicable largesse lolloped extravagantly not just for the spoils of hyped pedigree but also a chamade to Heaven to enlist the purblind vestiges of a crambazzled Earth rejuvenated in adolescent esprit rather than callow eclat against the outrecuidance of whimpered miserly conscientiousness that exists in a shorter frame of reference than the provident dashes through a furlough of time and ancestry to cobble together a lapidary bristling excoriation of the tumescent squabbles of mystique brave enough to rarefy the humid pasteurization of a mannequin kenspeckel still-frame jilt of jostled infamy brusque in its curt envies borne of still-born promenades of a whasper between the youthful ligony and the intrepid soul of a collective warrior debased by the adscititious participant to elegant effronteries of the newfangled intellectual vogue that is the grombang of the tralleyripped hamshackle of ostentation meeting mirrored paralysis in sheepish ewnastique creations meddlesome in their ironic frizz of recursion as I lounge on the habits of creation by intelligent lurches of design that appointed the demarcations of all creatures and the mysterious bridge between the missing links that remain elusive to the flombricks of the misery of epigenetic rhizogenic imparlance of desuetude cringing at foresight littered with the disaster of ravished hindsight blushing at the limpid degeneration of the vapid varnish of benighted ligony rather than heroic strides of stoic-epicurean compromise in the apolaustic pursuit of the one eternal God present in rebellion but never the temptress of mendacity and mendaciloquence because the tug I have on speed is ratifying a cauterized casualty in the spumid betrothed wicked snuffs of extinguished furor for a time beyond barnstormed racloir rugged origination and faulty phenogenesis that escorts mythos into actionable litanies of the awakened breed scoffing at the inkburch of “Electrolytes”-wernaggle that besets the queer fascinations of a warped generation. The pytherian swank of artrench embodied in the recocted rendevation of hypetrophy in hubris swaddled by the reductive dranger polluting the realm of compliant complicant complaints of the ashowel of albatross astroud in the hibernaculum of langlauf rather than the ultramontane fiduciary tether to the estrockentch rather than the laureates of plevisable courage found in truest shades of vinsky not the subhastation of a gaslighted galvanization of purebred classy swivels of opportunism nor the ravenous incubus appetite for usufruct in subversion belongs to the behest of an insular nesiote flexing the flux of subversion as the candid posies of saccharine immodesty become relegated figments of the everlasting age of promised propriety rather than rigid stultimathy of hackencrude virtues of virtuosos that marvel at troudasque wonders occluded by the girlcott of Team Biden and his militarized soldiers of desiccation of trumpery and the faucets unbounded by swanky concealed epithets of regaled rentgourge by a hapless objection of the runic destruction of apothecary leniency becoming of the betokened emblazonry of scrimshank in every perfuncturation but embodiment of character shouldered by every chasm of power erected in demolition of the warped egintoch radicalism of the submerged wernaggles of the hopeless minority swimming with autodimplage few have to bear but the truest flock of God heeds my voice and has the sapience to spare themselves of contumely and invective to hearsay of invictive triumph beyond radioglare swirk to renege the musical providence of the chamades to the asterongue I often take for granted by immunifacient degrees of the foretold encroaching upon the crux of a pivotal and pivoted destiny not distant from cordial providence. The sweedle of epigones for the risctender of obligation to subvert the coryphaeus with the rigmarole of gentincture borrowed from the Gates’ formulaic effleck of perverse warbles of collectivized contrition for abetted cultural pederasty limpid in its achieved objective of the crudenzy borrowed from a lacking impediment to arentrum belonging to the knowledgeable happenstance of the glorified dengonin is a denostram that forestalls the agelasts behind porsters of culture rather than legitimate mainlined contamination of wellsprings of fliction of paranoiac enthusiasm might swim in kinkativy blinkered blind piebald girouettism but never dauntless in sematic entrenchment of robust dilettantism as the swaddled corrugation of time into centripetal ****** against centrifugal modernism that alienates propriety while estranging by vacuous vacuums the outspoken progeny of the surviving age beyond the Jay and Silent Bob travesty that manifests as a glower of menacing Bushian invention to tarnish with ****** mythos the drapes of a defenestrated realism of the flinkers of sheepish indignation against many drakstings of intonorous sclerotic mandibles of crackjaw chockablock annihilation of core precepts and institutions indelible from the face of a quixotic entreaty of a ragged intrusion of ageotropic monoideism above the secular-clerical fidelity of honest witness borne of triumph and tribulation festooning the nativist hyperbole into a useless effigy of mountebank imposture silly in precision and purblind to gallantry. Yet I must kisswonk rather than truckle under such ponderous pretense because of a sertivine certainty in the thickets of prudence rather than the tomfoolery of humgruffin impudence scaffolds me to a post-modern ****** that shanks through prisons of guilt and burrows an interrogation of reality supreme over all complaint that the virtuosity of the Gifted (the elect flock that comprehends my volcanic diatribes against mandarism and stomachs them without sardonic pastorauling insults of passerby vicissitude) will spare many nations of awakened perjury against human instinct in the fitness of nations to denigrate the populist squalor of lurid and livid ewnastique wernaggles of the listless buttress against my formal modesty encouraged in all affairs even in aggrieved humility belonging to intimidation rather than spawned jostles through the rumpus of shunamitism that might rankle a later age.  Yentrified morality is a personal flapdoon against the promiscuous pederasty of freewheeling ophelimity and the lurking narquiddity of the traindeque of donnist hedonism to hijack my psychedelic tolerance into an unwarranted and inadvisable sanction into the netherworld of the frinterans of cultural modality that curdact religion into a cosmetic cosmogony rather than a soldiered infamy becoming a beacon on a towering hill growing in solidarity with the pleonasm of existence itself which surpasses crude formulas that already abide by the riches of decorum too much to be admired as trigger-happy fools run the asylum of domesticated irony and the librettos to downfall rather than the wassails of “The Man” becoming more masculine in featured charisma rather than defiled against Leviticus among others who preach belonging to nuclear creed without fission but for true rapprochement to the fusion of the treony with legitimate gripes of unsung complaint among the masculine minority. The traindeque of a baseline complaint aggrieved by the kilmarge carapace of stiltanimity for the hackencrude resentment of the inkburch of illiteracy is a profligate degeneracy lurid in hyped enmity that the envied entreaty becomes the despotic shadow masquerading in shadows blossoming into the full wisdom of the mature sophrosyne heart eager to pour out blessings upon a conservation of recycled epitaphs becoming hearsay in a rebarbative convolution of redacted rigmarole incendiary to whittled henpecks of political engineering but never vapid in their flagging insistence upon an ecumenical toleration of the brooks of modernity and compromise upon which much felicity is aggrandized and permuted against the spoilsport frinterans who encage a dodgy moralism in wilted etiolated jaunty pedigree that espouses the maudlin grievous and ghastly ghouls and sprites that haunt the fictional hobgoblins of the Potemkin Village that finds usury convenient and perjury even more facile for the glib facetious engineers of modalities of hatred unsung by the ribald witwanton “I got a Solution...You’re a ****…South Carolina What’s Up” crowd that never marvels at ingenuity or rarely attempts it in the summit of the climacteric jaundice of hidebound whemmles of ridicule sparring against spartan flagitious wiseacres of genocide of ideation for the revelry of armed missives denatured by raw promotion of the questionable ethics of a flavork of needed slakes of unquenchable desire swarming us with daily temptresses not of wayward women but the disarmed pretense of a lapidary rejoinder to a long expatiation or harangue against hackencrude curdles of rowboat injustice masquerading as sentinel savory destruction of the towering edifice of proclamation. There is great menace in the casuistry of sophist philogeant philocubists dicey with destiny for mincemeat puppetry against sciamachy for the gallionic rise of gammadions in the craven lore of baseline pasquinade rallied to the insuperable causes of tribal shibboleth anointed by secular totemisms of fracture and fricative hisses of lineage that amount to pleonasms of brassage rather than mystagogical mystique of the prestige of human fraternity that shatters paradigms of creed and invites an honest vestige of Noble Savages to roam the Earth yet again unencumbered by lugubrious welters of misnomer and malapropism wagered by artifices of guileless supremacy that is cursory prima facie neglect of even the sororal duties not of sophomoric glib facetious cowardice of backbited backlash of venom militarized for the desuetude of entertained visagists sculpting *****-nilly their version or verdict of decisive apartheid when we should all rally behind the united frontier of the chosen flock in the chosen generation to truckle beneath the pews not of ignorance aggravated by the polluted kilmarge egintoch puritan barbs against publicity choices I now regret (as an emolument to an incredibly euphoric track with a poor miserly message to the enchanted flock inoculated from such diversions) because alighted upon the quenched thirst of salvation I will be judged more harshly as a teacher James 3:1 than the rest of my flock but gifted with the gratuitous salvation carved from the chiselers of ribald infamy capering around with dacoitage and ladronism of the bomans of unsuspecting quixotic caprice I must reckon with the burden of ghoulish shadows on the spectral imprint of my eternal soul relishing in vicarious splendor yet bereaved of quintessential love 1 Cor 13:4 that is necessary for the nuclear conclamation of vibrant hues of resplendent and refulgent providence necessary not from a dynastic perspective but from an aimed providence that alerts dynamism rather than chides with mimes of useless schadenfreude carved from the prestidigitation of the wicked condemned in Galatians 6:7 for the mockers of sanctanimity accorded upon me as gratuity that no man can boast my elite ears and my astute wonderworks of imagination qualified me for prophecy and among the most mesmerizing prophecies registered to fulfillment that the world has ever yet witnessed because the watershed isn’t a bridgewater for the chavish of ignoramus hatred congealed into thrombosis but the narrowed gate enlarges to encompass the swath of man amenable to the flocks that escort me into permanence rather than regale the tridents of a hedonism that elected me clairvoyant at a cost of immaculate splendor registered to the holy clergy of the Sacred Catholic Church and the broader Ecumenical Endeavor that tries to be a seamstress and bridge elemental divides inherent to divided approaches to liturgy which flex their strengths in times of robust fortitude rather than become a subhastation to the vestiges of the pilgrimage to false tabernacles erected by people cozened into charlatan endeavors by the pernicious and persnickety whiplash of Least Common Denominator subversion of widely heralded sentience and sapience enriching the lot of human ambition rather than stoking useless conflagrations of refracturism accorded to the swallock of primposition of the hackneyed hackencrude that swivels with the odious ornery pretense of overtures not to apertures and lychgates of the true abiding Heaven felt on Earth by many Christians whether in sobriety or not without the evil maleficence of a misguided donnism of narquiddity for the grambazzles of aged recklessness aborning on vacant responsibility that is rickety in its magnanimity of absolution because of the ulterior chase for bottom-line top-dollar oligochrome foisted by the cartels that blind true spiritual insight from ever reaching the magnitude of ambition required to shape mountains of revolution among the tertiary squabbles of a conversant Earth open to the troudasque gallop into yield and cloveryield for repcrevel reforms the paludism of the swamp remains skittish about conforming to because objectivism is a renegade of perspicuous light blinkering in hubris and gourmandizing the hinderbaggle of cosmetic pollutions aggravated by the plevisable articles of envy and TLDR politics to “Electrolyte” logic that is a sad recursive wernaggle of the useless buffoonery of humgruffins of tatterdemalion spate rollicking in the magpiety of a timid consentient faltering myth of unanimity among the beleaguered rainbows of many lugubrious tears showering bickering blasphemy upon the mockery of God for the pleasantry of self-aware sheepish resignation that professes only that any form of meritocracy is existentially unfounded only because the beehive elected its progeny the scepter of the ironclad kingdom that wages war against idolatry and serenades heaven with luxury simultaneously. We are all shepherds of providence and there is power enough in collective prayer that we don’t fiddle around with bodewash in mistaken identity but riddle the persnickety blemish of the fastidious critiques of biting sarcasm as a tantamount blasphemy and a criminal repartee of sardonic cloys of inanity foisted above truth. The peevish breedbates who scour my evidentiary pillar of chiseled vertebrae of unbroken bones of solidarity with oikonisus will be sorely disappointed in their truthful audits of my true perception because in every single case it exonerates me from the pulpit of menacing idiots who scrawl random gabble in attempts to sound smart while reeking of iniquity wrought by the gavels of predevoted inferiority of complexion and attitude that gravitates them to an insensate benumbed transmogrified bailiwick of an appalling atrocity of mythomaniacal myths spurned by consensus among those who prize my grandeur above the superstitions of the illiteracy of the rancid rankle of otiose stupidity writhing its own sheepish envy of arbitrary dislike motivated by feminist aggressors waging warfare on turf I already conquered by swaying the intelligentsia to beckon my cause rather than pillory me on a false scaffold of frinteran abuses of the nyejays of bernacle that junediggle in the taradiddle of the nanciful excoriation of my leaden corpse weighed down by the witchcraft of connivance trayning its own delicate myths while avoiding scrutiny for appalling contumely that deserves an audience more suited for fracklings of treony belonging to the trinkochre of the rising alienation and suicides among perverted gay indoctrination that is a scourge on the planet because it willfully denies with its portentous hibbles the regaled wisdom of the culminated age against renegades of apostasy and for the behemoths of true monumental change that sizzles in savory circles among the vanguard only to alarm the Status Quo hijack of my entire endeavors as a covert crusade to use wrecking-ball fashion tactics to cosmetically incisively and insidiously perform a harprick of surgery upon a blameless countenance only for being a thorn to wragatek wragapole slavery which wages war against universal salvation because it gripes with inkburch and circular pleonasms about the most obvious glaring lies and feasts upon the serrated edge of the capers of hatred that frolic in meadows too skittish to enter the barbarian fortress of my forested residence robust in fortitude and glowering with a menacing contempt for runaround psychobabble that obganiates the obelisk of the moribund crusade to make normative ethics effeminate and to enthrone inviolable women’s speech as supreme to any male objections like the Cristiano Ronaldo accuser that came forth 8 months after #MeToo one of the most dishonest campaigns in modern history enthroned by Hollywood elites in gammerstang insurrection against pay-gap ethics done manipulatively with the sapwood of mendaciloquence like Blasey Ford whose physiognomy reeked of maudlin pretense that was so ornery in how obvious of a maleficence the intrepid Abortion Agenda has over the minds of selfish women who prefer ecbolic second-term abortions to the servile gripes of primiparas building new life rather than tearing down the scaffolds of new generations. Hominism deserves its rise because-in increasing numbers-men are derelicted by society and coerced into vapid tallespin enslavement that ridicules itself with the perjury of soul to the soulless vanity of recursive cycles of benumbed narquiddity found in “****** Hero” among other atrocities littering the human fascination with the hinderbaggle of our polluted age verging on totemic blistering hegemony of a few rotten apples corrupting the vagrant ingenuity of the forgotten champion who ushered in a new era of candor in the attempted interregnum of the United States government because I Am Hollywood got the name correct considering how many memorials there are to me in the movie industry. The junediggles of sc-ha-den-freud-e which is as deliberate of a German pun as JUDEn JuDEN which shows the German language is as farsighted as you can get and why many of my neologisms have a German tinge to them. German is an elegant language with botched syntax but a peerless repertoire of vocabulary and even though I love French, the Germans are smart because their language is smart not just because of petty arguments of pedigree which are specious at best. Being dontolesque with  the zenkidu of rengall nauclatic mythos is an artful degree which accords nominal prestige to licentiates while excorifying the obvious metaphors of sunblind logic that scours the scorched Earth of internet diatribes of sophistry and dethrones the Marcie Biancos of the world “Heterosexuality is officially OVER...K Bye” with her 145 IQ and a Stanford Degree in Queer Studies (A professed atheist by her own Twitter admission) with the warped logic to equate a heterosexual relationship for a woman as ******* to patriarchy. For someone that well-studied in literature she sure is a dumb-*** and I will demolish the syntagma of those that root against me for Status Quo preservation in the official interregnum of Saturdays during the Trump Presidency. We need an official referendum on the ideas of termagant illogical anti-egalitarian poison that derives from a deracinated worldview that doesn’t contextualize how powerful language is at shaping thought because if the entire world were Anglophonic every single country on Earth virtually would see immediate dividends in terms of intellectual creativity and limber with concepts and percepts because it is no accident the most successful empire in History the United Kingdom, was favored because of its shibboleths of Shakespearean creativity draped with flairs of the irreverent while gilded by God to be a majestic commonwealth. England and France monopolized a huge majority of history by no accident because although English might be a slightly keener language the French culture of salons of freewheeling intellectual enlightenment gilded the 17th and 18th centuries into absolution despite the Panglossian epithets of Voltaire who was ironically dissuaded from religion because of the All Saints Day 1755 Lisbon Earthquake and Tsunami. We need to be vigilant against encroachments of perceived shibboleths and more keen on an affirmative meritocracy that favors the poor and blesses the meek in their poverty and inspire ambition among them to join the coteries of refinement in thought sometimes harder to achieve with crackjaw lollops in pleonasmic languages that fail to articulate with nexility or forceful wit the true abstractions that govern the pataphysics of the unknown. Language is so decisive over human thought that it is incumbent upon every language to refine its vocabulary to trayne compendious verbiage and trim the hedges of global reform to invite the curiosity of the age to favor all creeds and languages of Abraham and the diverse progeny of a variegated panoply of majestic feats common to all parlance and capacity beyond just the Anglophonic snare because the world needs not a chicanery of blustering churlish buffoonery but an Almighty respect for the consanguinity of all to God’s blessed creation that he inseminated by his deliberate hands to enrich the world with diversity rather than cleave the world with piecemeal skeumorphs of radical propaganda that opposes the modern and post-modern egalitarian streak. One wrong must be corrected, however, the underrepresentation of Hispanics in the media and in film because this grave error is much more pervasive than the ******* LGBT inclusion narrative because these days the lollygags of fashionista odalisques with Obelisks to Baal get more say over the common decorum than the marginalized bronteum of the  rich and vibrant Latino culture which is squelched by the poverty of media and Hollywood representation. Synectics showcases how a henpecked aim at the synaesthesis of culture congregated around our Almighty Father blessed among the nations who adhere to the progeny of Abraham can be more blessed when working together rather than tribal with nepotism and aristocratic in sustained affronts to the elevation of affirmative meritocracy to the forefront of discussion rather than the froward backlash of benumbed narquiddity because the synallagamatic nature of complexity needs to be devolved with industrious ambition to all cultures and the savory flair of the vogue needs not merely a wednongue fascination with an eventual terminus of crudenzy but a sustained intellectual reformation on all fronts to standardize the English language through Hollywood and the Music Industry so that the dragnets of appeal etch a permanent trace into the engraved souls of the true flock John 10:27 are consecrated in divine purpose to reverse the Babylonian Diaspora of confused and conflated purpose that stunts the raltention of humane course and the proper pataphysical syncrisis of an evolved mundane temperament that transcends the circular traps of circumlocution common to the milquetoast industrial titans who winsomely charm with toady gestures the elitism of a moribund philosophy of intellectual thought delegation to elevate the common rhetoric to reach new pinnacles in both tribune and political gamesmanship because higher standards are required even when they surpass some common understanding so that every ambition becomes a conclave for the goal of human unity solidified by the truth of the kerygma and proclaimed to all creation as the culminated synclastic reformation of the idea of indulgence and the propriety of regaled moderation that appeases the common decorum with a shared vested interest in Latin America especially which is besieged by the cultural tenets of obrogated specialization and denigrated by the common myths of warped phenogenesis which should be debunked as a wasm of hypocrisy limited because its callous tentacles lack the charismatic fulgurant equipment of future generations to bear the operose burdens of a quintessential time of harmony united by the hymns for God by God to appease the sentries in Heaven and the celestial realms that exist for our merriment more than our detriment. The sprauncy have the  frikmag to recognize the spuria of apocryphal heresies that encourage kinship above matriotism and shared fortitude for intellectual valor rather than “*** talk TLDR” hashtags abounding on the turf of the insensate wernaggle of clueless charlatans wiggling through life not because they were borne into slavery but because they choose to be Helicopter Parents of “Baby Shark” rather than token mantelpieces of enlivened culture shimmering with radiation of Gods glory as cemented in Colossians 1:15-16 because the firstborn of all creation lives in some form in the ligature of Christ 1 Cor 12:12 because there are so many talents that exist in our variegated world that the mastery of expertise in dominions of conversant fluency will abet the variegated crops of a draped humanity corrugated on its own ironies for the delicate sizzle of beatific felicity multiplying itself in centupled design over centuries to overcome hinderbaggle while realizing the fictions of some drawflark. The strigine world concedes to this upstart rooster maybe considered a parvenu of dearth but luxuriant in riches boundless to all that draw near to the kerygma of Christ and feast on his daily bread found throughout liturgy because we should listen to people like Cardinal Timothy Dolan who is exceptionally astute (perhaps an understatement) to guide us on a regenerative rather than degenerative pathway towards universal attempts at salvation that broach a new decorum bridged by aliens to select chosen emissaries to bridle the fissions of repartee reserved for the forlorn that balk at ambition rather than relish a new era of seditious determination against the determinist fallacy and for the mental health of those coping with autodimplage and sheepish regrets and persnickety articles of remorse because all the world deserves our consolation and desperate attention rather than the trumpery of the circus masquerade of marauding agitprop which congeals into thrombosis of toxicity as the vast majority of Democrats refuse to even hear Trump speak when he is discussing discursive solutions to enigmatic quagmires,for, if more people listened to Trump they would be disabused by the specious claims of his misogyny and white allegiances because his candor is brilliant and despite the prominent advocacy of Biden who has considerable prestige in my memory, we deserve a bipartisan syncretism that unites the world and unifies the country away from the swerve of salacious mythos and towards a rambunctious magpiety of solidarity against the secular humanism of a defunct piety to Marxist feminism which is a crudenzy among the awakened men around the world increasingly alienated by the hackencrude of wednongue illiteracy even trumpeted by the vanguard as panacea when it is a comestible form of poison. We need visionary unity where there was once toxic divisive balkanization of exclaves of limited foresight clashing with new wave awakening to the persecution of illumination itself for not a rigid hierarchy but a flexible structure of inclusion that adjusts to cultural expectancy and modifies the traindeque that strands many in institutionalized poverty especially in Latin America and India and obviously Africa too. The stegophilists of language should herald the aubade of the chavish of redintegration over the squawk of din of squabbles of internecine redacted revisionism beleaguering our lyceums with toxic agitprop even at the highest institutions of learning who balk often at the recycled auditorium of useful thought because their venal tilt is complicit in squelching freedom of thought and our schools should open early so that zig-zag-zoom politics around feldtrounds who are eagerly outnumbered by the patrons who police thought become agentic not with outspoken treacheries but inseminations of intimation to hint at the spectral mystagogical reality we are all members of despite hurdles that beset the hemiteries of odalisques who seek inertia rather than mobilization. The ribald underminnow of transparency is a carcinogen of the rampant siege of Status Quo coarse hypocrisy for tentative flings with cadged cloyed saturnine professions of the landmines of atrocious miscarriage as I soldier on in the causes of the poor and the forlorn to become enriched by the glory that God delivers with munificence so that all might be enriched by the emanations of the true vine and in distaste of error I rebuke the armada of belittled armamentariums of the cantonment of deep-state breedbates boiling over potboiler frikmag that exists as a transcendent obscurantism flowering in decisive times to warp the contextual footprint of a life served in the service of all the oppressed people as a kind of Moses figure raised by the elite and fighting for the criminally oppressed and the ****** of mediagenic hyperbole is dissatisfied by my glowering spectacles because they dismount from the equipoise of the righteous gallop towards ecumenical solidarity at untimely punctuations of juncture superseding the flictions of frikmag dethroning my righteous valor and provident sanctanimity to prowl like predatory wolves the fathers of the casuistry of mendaciloquence to accentuate the stridor of inopportune squalor of the selachostomous regimes of teetotaler totalitarian freebooters who prevent bootstraps from manufacture as they gradgrind the world into ergonomic insufficiency while I provide a Kamacho-like galvanization to the broader world that favors the consanguinity of all animate sentience to the aboriginal vine of the universe that plays with the toyed cadge of oppositive support but lends credence to a more evolved view than the crudity of encapsulated travesties inserted with jaundice against the lyceum of freedom of thought and the celerity of headless horseman galloping in partial interregnum to crown the strobic stridor of the stiver of the steven of contarianism engineered for walloped ringleaders of the renegades of heresiarch sedition in their odalisque oaths to Pagan dieties carved from the sapwood of gullible Illuminati naivety that professes allegiance to the worst whangam ever invented Baphomet and his faked cronies of ewnastique free-for-all diminutive crags in the renown of dawning light becoming cagey struthious structuralism embedded in sclerotic wasms of the wanhope of a nullified message becoming a sacred creed to the attentive while the lilt of the otiose drawl in serpentine convolution a ribald pleonasm of circular circumlocution that provides locomotive linearity rather than leapfrogged slogmarches into the province of the territorial alignment of kinship against the partisan hollertrap and the stigmatophilia of obsessive persnickety popinjay beadledom the last stronghold of the rickety resistence to this Saturday interregnum which presides over the better part of the intelligentsia if not the common pedestrian parlance because hortatory weights cannot be described in any other way than metagnostic flickers of Yellow Submarine vandalism of a pristine living animation of the humane spirit that prizes the plight of the poor and the blarney and blench of unjust opprobrium faced by the institutionalized bailiwick of flictions of gammadion gallionic posture when in fact they register as seismic entities engraved upon my Christian conscience that strictly welcomes the emigrants to truth from whatever consecrated virtue they originate from because all are capable of the same light and the same compassion of a beatified humanity rather than the relish of deep-state castophrenia which belies its own ribald gay mockery on live TV as not a single twinge of ****** attraction overtakes me in matriotic sardanapalian effrontery of a hollow but sadly hallowed vainglory of the hierodules that bury the coffers of patriotism in a sad LGBTQ graveyard of landmines that demonstrate a complete disregard of the nuclear family and should be decried as an outcry against redefined Christianity bolted to unshakable irrefragable beliefs in the constitution of man and women wed together in one monogamous flesh with the occasional cuddle of close tithes to the ******* of friendship as the slavery of sin in Leviticus 20:13 falls to the wayside because this patriotic lewdness is a vapid fatuous derangement that is a new low for the United States attempt to inoculate China from religious accord with the broader world and should be seen as a Chinese maskirovka worthy of the heaviest disdain and I will disavow America if it continues to bandy the tripwires of Chinese boondoggles under the American banner and pretend its pretense isn’t lagging under its own bletcherous abecedarian elementary fallacy of psychobabble oblivion of dark saturnine brusque termagants of tatterdemalion cloaks of the selfsame illusion of a desperation of China to wreck the United States economy and inseminate Florida, Arizona and Texas especially with the Coronavirus to swing the election in Biden’s favor with or without US Complicity to expedite the course of a virus which sees no resurgence in any other civilized country in the world while the heroic Russians, Germans, Israelis, French, British and true American Christians banish the barristers of bad taste as an acerbic poison on the wellsprings of a flagitious flag I would kneel for in the knells of disgrace if the pompous and completely inoculated missives of Buttigieg ******* continue to roam shepherded by deep state elitism to wreck the opportune moment of religious revival for petty reasons of chryselephantine gambit and gimcrack for institutionalized poverty which my ambition is to heal completely by sacerdotal deeds and consecrated prayers in the Lord whose peace surpasses the temporal despair of senectitude and comforts the grievances of the aggrieved because Galatians 6:7 is no more true than the fatuous display of muscular idiots waving American flags for turpitude rather than flogging very perverse Gay men in the streets which might be a more fitting outcome even though I must remove the plank in my own eyes first to see the irony of the detested. The doytin is no longer misguided by the nanciful derision of the vociferous clangor of the venal Gates mafia militia wrecking ball vaccination Bezos crew in Medina which is a mettle I can’t match when you own every citizen in the world in a few square miles of nesiote territory the denizens of conquest besieging religious sanctity with profane outbursts of corruptible linchpins on the public lynch of the strepsis of periblebsis that vitiates commonwealths of supreme sputtering regimented clairvoyant superlative alabaster wealth of the isangelous protectorate of the supreme God that supervises his careworn flock into the storge against the scourge of prosodemic stigma stained in bleeding heart liberal bathed tears of pseudoautochiria of Jim Morrison glaring in the face of the triads that Killed Him in the French Connection ******* of 71’ that outnumbered his hobohemia of loyal jewish bohemians livid in the rhapsody of nurture rather than enfeebled by the unfurled destiny of the Soul Kitchen he foresaw to his own pitiable demise at probably the hands of strangulation because no autopsy was performed. Although repetitive Transparent is a real anthem for oracular mystagogical transcendence a mandatory hymn for the ryseolagnus of the poetic verve of a new wave swooning the cordial progressive of atmospheric oneness with the primordial vine and the vintners that congregate on populated soil to feed a desolate destitution of synoecy or synaesthesis in the syncretic rhapsody of the subfocal ageotropic plenilune yet saturnine lugubrious toil of those that shovel through the albatross of ewnastique recapitulation to the same tired “Its got what plants crave, it’s got electrolytes” wernaggle of the hopelessly dismal inkburch of illiteracy crawling like a Hyacinth House on a vacant graveyard turf guarding the legionaires of rapid-fire zig-zags through a serpentine curvature of the ligaments of fabricated space warped through prismatic lenses of aperspectival time aspiring for ventriloquial enamored rapture upon Earthly parallax with tapestries of refulgent cascading wandering wonder that meditates its own lucubration with careworn tutelage against the wasms of dying oleaginous swelters of redshort opportunistic vultures swooping with Raven’s claws against the odometer of viewership surpassing records in unspeakable wisdom that crowds out the crambazzle toonardical wreffelaxity of the tiresome nuisance of ornery brawn muscled into a formidable triage in vengeance for Jim Morrison’s scripted eviction from Earth either by poisoned ****** or by  Asphyxiation by the French Connection avenging RFK and the cultural revolutions of 67’ in Haight Ashbury and the widespread percolation of treacheries fathomed to the most obvious degree in showmanship that it bristled as an affront so severe that even the patronage of Paris wasn’t immune to infiltration. His threnodies will always be sung with Triumph that the hallowed day of a monumental soul eluding the darkness of purgatory into the welcoming aborning light of the noontide progeny of eternal ataraxia awaited him in the stagecraft tub of blasphemy bellowing ratcheted warnings that not even the palatine grasp of a potentially divine being was inoculated from the deep dark chasm of nefarious skullduggery for boasting so widely and openly of his professed foresight to glamorous to be hidden as the beacon of virtuosity that galvanized a generation to flout the  futtocks of a keelhauled vision of sanitized purblind mortality that the fear of death rarely crossed the mind of the greatest fearless poet of an entire epoch that we may pray that Jim Morrison feasts in Heaven atoned for his sins and is at peace with God now. The substratose congeniality of marginalia on the outskirts of pederasty in cultural miscarriage owned by hierodules boundless in their lurid debaucheries that they might be remanded for being custodians of hostage to a prolific nescience  reaffirming their dying posture in the extinction of sardanapalian coverthrow of repcrevel camorras of ladronism and dacoitage always cauponate in imbibed throes of lewd AstroTurf outrecuidance glowering at sanctity with a bereaved psychobabble divorced from the purebred empiricism of true giants of industry that are almost insuperable in their extortion that their darkness in deeds of Kobe Bryants assassination do not go unpunished at least in Los Angeles. His untimely death as with many others registered on the Richter Scale because Come Clean perverts from Kansas City wanted San Francisco to win to clean the mops of janitorial revenge of the subturbary rickety foundations of a flailing moral compass so wicked in arbitrage that no subreption undetected would flourish among capernoited vigilantes of poached titanism and illuminism scarring the vestiges of enigmatic encroachment upon untouchables daring the frights of the Living Daylights of scurrilous rebukes so scathing in their menacing depiction of negligent bromides of token sacrilege and scarred sacrifice of a scarecrow example of how the prosodemic scourge of befuddled turgid pristine transmogrified heralds scampered away with pseudoautochiria that afflicted Jimi Hendrix suspiciously as well. My support is behind the justice warriors aggrieved by the Beirut explosion because they deserve a vindictive outcome that quells the quislings of atrocity of the popinjay beadledom of the unspeakable tremors of seismotic popples of unrest warranted in Lebanon the homeland of Keanu Reeves a saint among men for his peerless grace and agraceries of the smog of myth evanescence becoming perdurable swings of the humdingers of berated jaundice becoming the prerogative of the revenge of a city leveled to the ground by suspicious skullduggery and I am surprised they lay dormant for this long in their protracted grievance over the ghoulish frights of one of the most unheralded major events in recent memory. We need to highlight the plight of Lebanon so that world leaders are frightened even of intimidated people tranquilized by terror rather than enlivened by the propriety of redacted rejoinders that serve the ulterior mission of a Titanic bravery that never sinks beneath the sumptuary treacle of grombang grambazzle and supercherie of the supercalendar of poignant repined repose derailing an emolument to ecumenical solidarity. Lets highlight Lebanon as an inexcusable trespass worthy of some mighty reckoning if not a riveted war but at the very least a devastated twinge of outrage.
They have institutions which are to reveal to us information, for a price.
Information, as if it is hidden; secret.
Inquisitive minds will always seek deeper understanding;
they will use the available resources to seek out accurate and unbiased information
so as to formulate a personally relevant worldview and thereby,
Philosophy.

They have institutions to reveal to us what it is that is already known
as opposed to kindling the spark of curiosity that got us here in the first place.

Information is our birthright as Humans in an era of interconnection such as this.
Intellectual Inurement Institutions are Abominations to such a creature of Reason.

To solve this perpetual problem;
Learn how to teach yourself
then educate yourself about your curiosities.
Follow the spiral; go where no one has been.
Come back with something.
Share it. Profess it.

Then delve back again into the unknown.
In this chapter, the researcher reviewed the opinion of some past and recent writers on the subject and also added their own ideal under the following sub-headings:
- Conceptual frame work
- Theoretical frame work
- Empirical frame work
- Summary

2.1. CONCEPTUAL FRAME WORK
CONCEPT OF ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN

The concept zoological garden is a form of ex – situ conservation, which primarily involves keeping of animals alive outside their natural environment for aesthetic educational researches and recreational purpose (Varadharajan and Pythol 2000). Nigeria is blessed with abundant wildlife species which needs to be properly managed in a sustainable basis to prevent depletion (Opara et –al 2010). Hence the need to adapt strict management of resources, repopulation of endangered species and conservation of wildlife park and zoological garden and management strategies (Ajebede et – al 2010).
Throughout history, human have given value to other species of animals as means of entertainment, education and spirituality in addition to being source of food and clothing (front 2011, 69) collecting and exhibiting and exhibiting animals originated from Ancient Egypt where private collection were reserved for the higher class population as a symbol of wealth and power (wearing and jobberns 2011, 19 – 50). In the 1900’s, zoo’s based themselves as conservation movement, with focus on scientific study of endangered species. In the beginning of the 20th century, zoo became an attraction of mass audiences (Beardworth and Bryan 2001, 88). By the late 1900’s there was a shift in the natural of zoo with public attitude and interest changing nature and conservation, with concern for ecosystem and awareness as they protect endangered species (Wearing and Jobbern 2011, 50.

ROLES OF ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN
(Mason 2011, 189) reveal that the roles of zoo are:
a. Educating people about animals.
b. Conservation of endangered species
c. Safeguarding the welfare visitors
d. To generate revenue
e. Providing visitors facilities such as catering and merchandising
f. Re – introducing captive breeding into the wild and carrying out zoological and veterinary research to improve animal welfare in the wild and in captivity.
On the other hand, zoos served as scientific research, for example, zoologist learn more about animals habit and diseases by studying them in zoos studies of animals living kin zoo, together with examination of those that have died have provide zoologist with information about the structure and function of animal bodies (Usher M.B 2000). Keeping wildlife animals in captivity bring visitors from different parts of the world for different purposes such as to provide sources of recreation in the city, to provide biological specimen to constitutes, a learning resource for secondary school, colleges, and universities. It also provide employment and game reserve, provides sources of protein revenue, esthetics recreation, education and scientific values (Presley 2001). The captive animal propagation is one way of encouraging growth of depleted wildlife species population and so properly planned program of zoo establishment and development is considered as one of effective method for conservation of wildlife (Okpiri 2005). Educational environment study and conservation of the  environment have become a subject of major importance all over the world, not only from the point of view of preventing population, but also from the point of conserving water supplies by protecting water shed, conserving soil, vegetarian and Fauna. (Comphell 2007). Comphell also stated that conservation zoos can provide an important facility for research at both pure and applied levels in both the field and laboratory in colleges and universities. Bigot (2000) emphasized that the primary function of zoo curators is to make visit a leaving experience. The attention and effort given to wildlife conservation and tourism in both state and federal levels have been noted.

CONCEPT OF TOURISM
According to UNWTO 2020 defined as the study of man away from his usual habitat. Activities of a person traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes, tourism contributes to specie conservation, communities project in developing countries like: Nigeria, environmental education, awareness and economies development (Klutzy, 2000). Filton et al (2000) reported that 20 – 40 percent of international tourism is related to wildlife. In Nigeria, tourism contributed 3.3 percent of total GDP in 2011 with forecast of a 10.8 percent increase for 2012 (WTTC 2012). Smith et al (2012) recognized the role of wildlife tourism as building breeding species management and influencing visitor’s behavior for the benefit of wild animals. Fibs (2007) underscored the value of zoo visitors and their feedbacks for the planning and designing of zoo and more importantly to decision making in zoo management by showing on – going treads. He therefore stands to reason that visitors’ preferences should be seriously considered by policy makers and management of zoo and other similar institutions. An area in which visitors’ preference is highly important for a zoo in particular is choice of animals desired. Woods (2000) observed that humans have definite preference for different species of animals. Knowledge of visitors desires in terms of animals and the features that make the animals appealing will assist zoo management in animal acquisition and also in development of education and interpretation programs listening physical features, behavioral characteristics as factors influencing animals preference (Wood 2000, Wentworth 2012). Wild tourism can be described as tourism undertaken to view and or encounter non – domesticated animals in captive, semi – captive or in their natural environment (CRC 2001, Newsome et al 2005). According to Durbary (2004), it could be non consumptive such as viewing, photographing and fishing.

CONCEPT OF ZOO AND EDUCATION
In zoo and education, a study by Patricia et al 2007 states that conservation and education are key elements in the mission statement of zoos. A survey conducted by the Association of zoo and aquarium (AZA) reveals that the general public rate conservation and education as the most important role of zoo (Frasers and Stickler 2008). Zoo primarily deals with three aspects of conservation practice i.e practice, advocacy and research. Conservation practice entails captive breeding, species rein-introduction programs, species survival plans and the use of zoo revenue for conservation programs in wild. Conservation advocacy include: public engagement, promoting awareness, advocacy, stewarding and fund raising events and schemes, a good example of which is like “Adopt animal scheme at most modern zoos”. Moreover, conservation research is conducted on wildlife biology, population dynamics, animal behavior, health and welfare and there are also publications generated by zoos animals care captivity. The preservation of animals in zoos makes it easier for more people to see them.
As well, zoos have been used to preserve various endangered species. However, zoos have become powerful educational tool for many scholars, biologists and researchers (Falk and Dierking 2000).  Individual who visit a zoo get the rare opportunity to examine the relationship between man and animal (Wagoner and Jenson 2010). Students can learn a lot about certain animals that might not be locally available. Many specimen and animals (Wagner and Jensen 2010) argue that zoo makes it possible for researchers to conduct their studies, for instance, researchers can use caged animals to make various observation about wildlife or animals. The acquired knowledge can be used to support the survival of the wild animals in their natural habitats. It is therefore agreeable that zoos have an important educational role in every society. This because, learning is ever – changing process (Falk and Dierking 2000). In the 1970’s the primary educational target for most American zoo was elementary level children. The idea was that building understanding would lead to appreciation which would eventually produce a generation that was concerned about wildlife and the environment (Wheatly 2000). Wheatly emphasized that although children are still a primary audience, zoos are extending themselves to reach many others audience that can make difference in action today. This initiative includes the membership, governance and employee of zoo.

CONCEPT OF ZOO AND CONSERVATION
In zoo and conservation, according to Max – Planck Gesell Chaft (2011), Zoology garden breeds animal from threatened populations and and thus makes greater contributions towards biodiversity conservation. According to UN (2020) on global biodiversity warned that 1 million species are at risk of extinction with decades, putting the world’s natural life support system in jeopardy. Unfortunately, loss of plants and animals habitat leads to from species extinctions and loss of diversity from ecosystem. Fortunately, not all of the extinctions occur at once. Conservation action may still be able to save threatened species (John M et al 2016). At October 2010, meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan, delegates discussed a plan to reduce pressure in the planet’s biodiversity. Key targets include expanding coverage of protected areas, halving the rate of loss of natural habitats, and preventing extinction of threatened species. Species whose habitat is severely threatened, however, the outlook is so bleak that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the US Endangered Species Act and the CBD (Article a) recognize that In-Situ conservation action (ie, in the species natural habitat) will need to be combined with Ex-Situ approaches, such as captive breeding in zoos, aquariums and so on (Conde et al 2011).

THE THEORETICAL FRAME WORK
The animal welfare and management (Dakin 2001) is a state of being that can be measured, recognized that its ranges from very poor to very good, introduces the concept of coping, allow measurement separate from moral consideration and refer to feeling as well as physical and psychological health. The definition of welfare that we use also emphasizes that it relates to an individual and thus welfare can differ between different members of the same species, even when exposed to the same condition (Horsey et al 2009). In the case of zoo animals, which have often come from very heterogeneous background, individuals may vary greatly in this previous life experiences and this can influence their ability to cope with certain challenges, by using each animal as its environment and thus an individual’s welfare can be measured.
There are also some species – specific characteristics that have evolved to enable animals cope with different, environment and thus we should also consider welfare at the species level; such species level adaptation could relate to dietary needs, hearing sensitivity, thermo-regulatory needs and so on. The theory of evolution by natural selection, first formulated in Darwin’s book “On the origin of species” in 1859, this theory states Organisms change over time as result of changes in heritable physical or behavioral traits. Changes that allow an organism to better adapt to its environment will help it to survive and have more offspring. The physical and behavioral changes that make natural selection possible happen at the level of DNA and gene, such changes are called Mutation. “Mutations are basically the raw materials on which evolution act. Pobiner said, mutation can be caused by random error in DNA replication or repair, or by chemical of radiation damage. According to Chinaka (2019) in the book concept of evolution, Charles Darwin proposed the concept of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution. The main postulates of Darwinism are:
1. Geometric increase: According to Darwinism, the populations tends to multiply geometrically and the reproductive powers of living organism (biotic potential) are much more than required to maintain their numbers.
2. Limited food and space
3. Struggle for existence
4. Variation etc
Both natural animal populations and those in captivity are subject to evolutionary forces. Evolutionary changes to captive populations may be an important, but poorly understood, factor that can affect the sustainability of these populations. The importance of maintaining the evolutionary integrity of zoo populations especially those that are used for conservation efforts including rein-introductions is critical for the conservation of biodiversity.
Greater appreciation for an evolutionary perspective may offer important insights that can enhance the reproductive success and health examples and associated strategies that highlight this approach, including minimizing domestication (ie genetic adaptation to captivity), integrating natural mating systems into captive breeding protocols, minimizing the effects of translocation on variation in photoperiods and understanding the interplay of parasites and pathogens and inflammation. Captive populations can adapt rapidly to captive environments through demonstration, in which human impose artificial selection in order to increase the prevalence of desired traits in the domesticated population.
For domestic animals, human breeders choose to breed only those individuals that thrive in the captive environments, leading to trans-generational changes that result in a population that is adapted to breed and survive in the conditions imposed by the breeders. Among captive population of animals, zoo populations are unique in that they are maintained to educate the public regarding wildlife and their habitat or to preserve critically endangered species through captive breeding and reinforcement program. Although assessment and preservation of genetic diversity is a top priority for most conservation breeding programs, fundamental to these goals is the maintenance of the genetic variation of these captive populations (Lacy 2009). Whether used to further educational or conservation goals, it is critically that these captive population are representative of the natural populations from which they are desired (Ashley et al 2003). However, maintaining captive population, such that they are reflective of the wild phenotype of the animals, can be challenging in zoos because of the mismatch the environments that the zoo population is originally from and the captive content in which they are been housed. Hendry et al 2015 carol et al 2014, for example, solitary animals with large territories that only encounter sexually mature counterparts during estrus may be housed in proximity of their mate year round, potentially leading to the behavioral issues, including ****** aggregation or ****** incompatibility. Other stressor can exist in captive environments for which animals are not adapted, including the acoustic environments, physical substrate and even availability of food (Morgan and Tromborg 2007). Minimizing the mismatch between the natural environment and the captive environment and they should limit the decline and poor performance of captive populations (Hendry et al 2011; Carrol et al 2014). Captive environments are very different from the wild and can impose different selection pressures that can lead to genetic adaptation in the captivity that affects behaviors (eg: temperaments; MC Douglas et al 2006), morphology (eg; size, skeletal morph metric O’ Regan and Kitchener 2005); and reproductive output (eg; age at ****** maturity, letter size). In particular populations of species with short generation times will adapt more rapidly to captivity than those with long generation time (Frankham 2008).
Social learning theory is the idea that children from observing. According to the learning theory, learning is based on social interaction with the environments (Nwamuo et al 2006). As children walk around the zoo, they are exposed to words and concepts. It also encourages dialogue between parents, siblings, friends and zoo guards (Jessica 2014)  visiting the zoo help the children and other visitors to understand the importance of taking care of the environments as it has a significant impact on lives and welfare of animals and importance of conservation and animal care which will never be forgotten. According to (Nwamuo et al 2006) social learning theory plays a big role in how people and especially learn. There are four elements to social learning theory including:
• Attention: Children can’t learn if they aren’t focused on the task. Students who see something unique or different are more likely to focus on it, helping to learn just as in zoo.
• Retention: people learn by internalizing information later when we can recall that information later when we respond to a situation in the same way which we saw.
• Reproduction: in the way we are able to reproduce our previously learn behavior or knowledge when it’s required. Practicing our response in our head or in action can improve the way we response.
• Motivation

Operant conditioning of behaviors theory of B.F Skinner, enclosure design and environmental enrichment strategies have all been suggested to improve the welfare of zoo animals by reducing stereotypical behavior and rein-introduction success of wildlife species. (WAZA 2015). Thus, the use of these strategies has important consequences for zoological collections. Despite the recognition and wild-scale implementation of such strategies, however, concerns around global zoo animal welfare remain and behavioral pathologies are common in many species. (Luhrs 2010) using operant conditioning, some of the barriers to delivering positive welfare experiences through holistic behavioral management strategies to zoo animals and make recommendations for institutional approaches towards improving zoo animal welfare using examples of Abnormal Repetitive Behaviors (ARBs) through targeted behavioral management.

EMPIRICAL FRAMEWORK
According to P.A Anadu (2000) on his study wildlife conservation in Nigeria: problems and strategy a case study of wildlife reserve of University of Benin, the major treats to nature conservation in Nigeria and he reviewed critically the measures adopted for the protection of wildlife. According the study, the major problem includes habitat degradation (through uncontrolled logging, agricultural projects, industrial plantations, highway and urban development’s and exploitation for fuel wood) over hunting and poaching.
He suggested that to protect wildlife include the creation of more game reserve, enactment of wildlife laws, signing of international treaties and manpower development. According to his research through interview with about 10 workers or staff of the wildlife reserve, the major treats to the area include poaching and hunting, indiscriminate feeling of forest trees, low funding, inadequate game laws and weak enforcement of the existing legal provisions.
It is suggested that the Federal Government should intervene more positively in favor of conservation by creating more national parks and assuming joint responsibility with the states for formulating wildlife laws. Furthermore, the role of nongovernmental organizations in influencing conservation policies and mobilizing public opinion will be cruial in different years ahead.
In the journal “A synopsis of wildlife conservation in Nigeria by Timothy A Afolaya  2009, this article emphasized the recent developments in the overall conservation program in Nigeria as it describes the important role which wildlife is playing in helping to feed the nation, in creating employment opportunities, in education in research, in recreation and in local medicine. Inadequately of Nigerian wildlife legislation and of the trained manpower to protect and manage the wildlife resources are among the crucial wildlife management problems identified. It is also stressed that the basic information for effective management is often lacking where Nigerian wildlife reserved are concerned. It also stressed that the main problems facing wildlife conservation in Nigeria include poaching, over exploitation, lack accurate data, bush burning that destroys wildlife habitat. There is adequate reliable database to facilitate forestry planning and development. Weak forest policy and implementation, forest policies lacks legal backing and hence its enforcement is difficult. The Nigeria forestry policy Act, 1937 is subsumed in the National Agricultural Policy of 1988. Forest tariffs are relatively low and are not revised frequently penalties under most laws are low and seldom enforced. It suggested that Nigeria forestry policy act should be reviewed or renew and encourage the government to implement the policies adequately and enforce penalties on the offenders.
Jonathan (2009) in his own study animal wildlife conservation under multiple land use system in Nigeria reveals that out of 6 selected zoological garden and game reserves in six geopolitical zones in Nigeria. The situation of wildlife in Nigeria is nevertheless different. Except in the Yankari, upper Ogun and Kwiabaha, Game Reserves and the Kainji lake National park, little efforts have been made to protect the Nigerian animal wildlife resources from human pressure and wide spread extinction. To many, what remains of the wildlife animals are best seen in the few state owned zoological gardens in Nigeria?
However, because most indigenous large animal species including Elephant, Buffalo, Chimpanzee, Gorilla, Rhinoceros, Leopard and Ostrich have not been able to reproduce in the various zoological garden so far, the hope to conserve this animals are brittle.
According to his work, animal wildlife is a declining resource in Nigeria because of unplanned land use practices. For example, land uses in game reserves are often conflicting and contradictory for land uses, timber extraction, hunting; food crop production and settlement are simultaneously going on in game reserves with little or no control measures and with no management plans. The excessive demands for land these conflicting uses have greatly disturbed the ecosystems involved, thus making the survival of the wild animals uncertain. Specially, the problems of wildlife conservation in Nigeria are:
a. Poaching
b. Indiscriminate burning of the vegetations
c. Uncontrolled grazing activities in the reserves
d. Intensive logging for domestic and industrial uses
e. Users rights on the reserves enjoyed by the traditional owners of the land before reservation
f. Lack of adequate fund to manage the reserve
g. Ineffective legislation
h. Lack of trained manpower
i. Urban sprawl
j. Infrastructural development of roads, electric and telegram lines and irrigation schemes.
k. Lack of modern enclosure or caging
l. Inability of animals to breed within the captive environment.

He then emphasized that the picture for Nigerian animal wildlife depends on the nation’s ability to conserve what is left either in their natural habitat or at least, in zoological gardens. The game reserve should be reduced to manageable numbers while state governments should win public sympathy through adequate conservation publicity and the provision of sufficient vehicles and personnel to manage the game reserves. The policy of land use in game reserves should be conducted on:
a. The number and species of animals hunted per year
b. The population of animals species in the game reserves and their habitat sustainability
c. The endangered and extinct animals species and specific reasons for the decline in their population
d. Human problems peculiar to each reserve and ways of minimizing them.
e. Establishment of rein-introduction programs.

SUMMARY
The establishment of zoos in a society is premised partly on the idea of bringing man close to wild animal’s species (Yager et al 2015). This establishment has various roles to play in the ecosystem and all endeavors of life. The role of zoological garden as well as wildlife conservation is as follows:
1. Education: zoos are established for the preservation of animal to make it easier for more people to see them and learn their characteristics and habitat. Zoo animals are used for specimens both for secondary schools students and tertiary institution as well as teaching the public the benefit of wildlife. A survey conducted by the Association of Zoos and Aquarium (AZA) reveals that, the general public rate conservation and education as the most important role of zoo (Fraser and Stickler 2008).
2. Conservation: of endangered species to avoid extinction of such animal.
3. Tourism:  it serves as a centre of tourism as people from different parts of the country visit to learn about nature at their leisure.
4. Generating revenue for the government as well as provides employment opportunities individuals etc
Most problems encountered in Nigerian zoos include:
• Poaching
• In availability of breeding species
• Lack of trained personnel’s
• Lack of fund by the Government
• Lack of infrastructure and conservation facilities.
Austin May 2016
Clock arms ***** upward
while the sleepers lie in their beds
thoroughly wet dreams
soak the ***** thoughts in their heads
Mothers obsessed with 7:00 am alarms
rush their ***** teenagers to designated stops
while a rising yolk shines bright
in eyes of sleepy pupils who wait for
a ******* on wheels
to shuttle them to institutions
addicted to #2 pencils
EFFECTS OF CHILD ABUSE ON PERFORMANCE OF PRIMARY SCHOOL IN KAPYEMIT WARD, TURBO CONSTITUENCY, UASIN-GISHU COUNTY.





BY
ERICK NYAKUNDI
KIS/03013/14




A RESEARCH PROJECTSUBMITED TO THE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY IN THE PARTIAL FULFILMENT FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF SOCIOLOGY



MAY, 2014

DECLARATION

I, the undersigned, declare that this project is my original work and that it has not been presented in any other university or institution for academic credit.

Signature...............................................­..... Date...................................
ERICK NYAKUNDI
KIS/03013/14






SUPERVISOR
This project has been submitted for examination with my approval as university supervisor
DR. W. O. ABUYA
Signature..................................................­.. Date....................................




DEDICATION
I dedicate this work to my Dad, Mom, my sister Lydia and my lovely brother Dun who contributed in one way or another to make this project to be successful.


















ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to thank all individuals who contributed and sacrificed their time towards completion of this project.
To my supervisor, for the guidance and support in the development of this research project, His advice and criticism made this project what it is.
Thanks to colleagues and friends for their suggestions, advice and encouragement. To all of you may God bless you abundantly for your tireless effort.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents Page
DECLARATION i
DEDICATION ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
LIST OF TABLES vii
LIST OF FIGURE viii
ABSTRACT ix
CHAPTER ONE 10
STUDY OVERVIEW AND STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 10
1.1 Background of the Study 10
1.2 Research Questions 13
1.3 Research Objectives 13
1.4 Justification of the Study 13
1.5 Significance of the Study 14
1.6 Scope of the Study 15
1.6.1Assumptions of the Study 16
CHAPTER TWO 17
LITERATURE REVIEW 17
2.1 Introduction 17
2.2 Common Forms of Child Abuse 17
2.2.1 Child ****** Abuse 17
2.2.2 Physiological or Emotional Abuse 17
2.2.3 Physical Abuse 18
2.2.4 Child Neglect or Abandonment 18
2.2.4.1 Physical Neglect 19
2.2.4.2 Educational Neglect 19
2.2.4.3 Medical Neglect 19
2.2.5 Child Fatalities 20
2.3 How Child Abuse Affects Academic Performance 20
2.3.1 Child Abuse and Academic Performance 20
2.3.2 Child Abuse and School Image 23
2.3.3 Child Abuse and Dropout Rate 25
2.4 Strategies that Schools can Employ to Curb Child Abuse 26
2.4.1 Role of Public Regulation 26
2.4.1.1 Nurturing and Attachment 27
2.4.1.2 Social Connections 27
2.5 Theoretical Framework 27
2.5.1 Learning Theory 28
2.5.1.1 Relationship with the Study 28
2.5.2 Family Dysfunction Theory 29
2.5.2.1 Relationship with the Study 29
CHAPTER THREE 30
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY 30
3.0 Introduction 30
3.1 Site Description 30
3.2 Research Design 30
3.3.1 Target Population 30
3.3.2 Sample Size and Sampling Procedure 31
3.4 Description of Research Instruments 32
3.4.1 Research Instrument 32
3.4.1.1 Questionnaire 32
3.5 Data Collection Procedure 32
3.5.1 Validity and Reliability of Research Instruments 33
3.5.1.1 Reliability of Research Instruments 33
3.5.1.2 Validity 33
3.6 Data Analysis and Presentation 33
CHAPTER FOUR 35
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS 35
4.0 Introduction 35
4.1 Background Information 35
4.1.1 Age of the Respondents 35
4.1.2 *** of the Respondents 35
4.1.3 Education Level of the Respondents 36
4.1.4 Marital Status 36
4.2 Specific Information 37
4.2.1 Effects of Child Abuse on Academic Performance 37
4.2.2 How Child Abuse Affects Dropout Rate of Students in School 38
4.2.3 Proposed Strategies that Schools can Employ to Curb Child Abuse 41
CHAPTER FIVE 43
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 43
5.0 Introduction 43
5.1 Summary of the findings 43
5.2 Discussion of the Findings 44
5.3 Conclusion 45
5.4 Recommendations 46
REFERENCES 47

LIST OF TABLES & FIGURES
Table 3.1 Target population 32
Table 3.1 Sample size 33
Table 4.1 Age of the Respondents 36
Table 4.2 *** of the Respondents 37
Table 4.3 Education Level of the Respondents 37
Table 4.4 Marital Status 38
Table 4.5 Effects of Child Abuse on Academic Performance 38
Table 4.6 How Child Abuse Affects Dropout Rate of Students in School 40
Figure 4.1 Views of the Pupils on Abuse 41
Table 4.7 Proposed Strategies that Schools can Employ to Curb Child Abuse 42





















ABSTRACT
Child abuse is the physical, ****** or emotional maltreatment or neglect of a child or children. The consequences of child maltreatment can be profound and may endure long after the abuse or neglect occurs. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of child abuse on school performance in Primary Schools in Kapyemit ward, Uasin-Gishu County. The objectives of the study were: To assess the impacts of child abuse on academic performance; to determine the effects of child abuse on schools image, to identify the impacts of child abuse on pupil drop out rate, to investigate the effects of child abuse on pupil transition rate. The study employed a survey study design. The study targeted 160 respondents which includes; 5 Head Teachers, 40 Teachers, 70 Pupils and 35 parents of which a sample size of 48 was obtained from using 30%. Purposive sampling technique was used in selecting the head teachers while simple random sampling technique will be used to select the teachers, Pupils and parents who formed the respondents of the study. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used as data collection instruments. Data was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively and presented in form of tables, percentages and frequency. The study helped in the understanding of the effects of child abuse on the school performance, the realization of the roles parents and teachers play in the curbing of child abuse among pupils and raising awareness on the same.

CHAPTER ONE
STUDY OVERVIEW AND STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
1.1 Background of the Study
Child abuse is the physical, ****** or emotional maltreatment or neglect of a child or children. The consequences of child maltreatment can be profound and may endure long after the abuse or neglect occurs. The effects can appear in childhood, adolescence, or adulthood, and may affect various aspects of an individual's development (e.g., physical, cognitive, psychological, and behavioral). These effects range in consequence from minor physical injuries, low self-esteem, attention disorders, and poor peer relations to severe brain damage, extremely violent behavior, and death. In extreme cases, child abuse affects the performance of schools in the affected region (Daniel, 1978).
Performance refers to how students deal with their academic studies and how they cope with or accomplish different tasks given to them by their teachers. Performance is also the ability of a school to portray a good image which can influence the public (Decastro, 1978). There are several factors that influence the performance of a school at large, however, there is a critical factor that most researchers have avoided to discuss, and child abuse has been a crucial factor that has contributed to children’s dismal performance. Apart from children’s personal intelligence, child abuse is among then key factors contributing to poor performance of learners. Child abuse can lead to school dropping, emotional trauma or can even be fatal, hence destructing or even terminating the educational ambitions of a child. (Harris, 2005)
Worldwide, according to World Health Organization (WHO, 2000) approximately 40 million children are subjected to child abuse each year. According to Human Rights Watch (2001) about 30% of all severely disabled children relegated to special homes in the Ukraine died before they reached 18 years of age. UNICEF estimates that two million children died as a result of armed conflict during a recent 10-year period and that another six million were injured or disabled. In Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, over 6.5 million children annually are exposed to unwanted ****** materials over the internet; over 1.7 million of these report distress over exposure to these materials. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department for Children and Families (DCF) define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or other caregiver that results in harm, potential for harm, or threat of harm to a child. Child abuse can occur in a child's home, or in the organizations, schools or communities the child interacts with. Each year, approximately one million children around the world are introduced into commercial ****** exploitation despite this problem; these developed countries have put measures to curb the vice. Rehabilitation schools have been formed and introduction of counseling centers as well. Despite the prevalence of child abuse in this developed nations they narrowly affect the academic performance since there are organizations put in place to curb the situation e.g. child associations, guidance and counseling institutions, and school based counseling programs (Giles, 2001)
Concern for victims of child abuse in Africa expressed by the African network of the International Society for The Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN) which gave five main presentations of child abuse: child labor, street wandering, ****** abuse, child battering and abandonment (Elma, 1977). Child labor according to the international labor organization (ILO), about 10 million children less than 15years in Africa are in formal employment, working long hours with poor pay and are exposed to substantial health hazards. Wandering of children refers to children, usually unkempt and with delinquent propensities, living rough in town. The reasons for children taking to the street remain poorly understood particularly in relation to factors in the child rather than parental hostility and economic (Dubowitz, 2002)
****** abuse is another. For example, arranged under-age marriages are common in some parts of the continent and doubt was often expressed as to whether a young girl fully gave consent to being betrothed (Galdsone, 1965). Prevalence rates in Africa are very difficult to ascertain because of the fear of disclosure by victims and lack of proper documentation. Most of the girls by reasons of shame fear or surprisingly respect for their usually older perpetrators. Physical battering is also eminent. Physical abuse of children is widely claimed to berate in the third world; however, there are anecdotes from east Africa skeletal frame or localized body areas of all first attendees aged 0-12 years at this hospital during the four-year period 1 January 1987 to 31 December 1990 (Garbarino, 1975). Sixty-nine of these reports reveals evidence of multiple bone fractures wither without evidence of rib or skull fracture. Abandonment of children to roam around the streets in what we call street children is also eminent in Africa, though valid and adequate information on abandonment are difficult to obtain due mainly to failure of offending parents to show up out of guilt, shame, judicial repercussions or a combination of these. However, some euro-American missionaries identified inter alia breech birth. (Erickson, 2003)
Child protection measures in Kenya are currently not implemented effectively and fully (Galdstone, 1965). Compliance with such legislation would increase if the magnitude of the problem and better knowledge about the factors that put children at risk was available. Additionally, involving stakeholders, especially agencies charged with protection, as well as involving affected children, will highlight the issues and thereby promote adherence to protection policies. Kenyan children, child activists and children organizations are pinning their hopes on the implementation of the Children’s Act to improve the lot of the nation’s youth. The Act, which came into effect on 1 March 2002, puts in place full safeguards for the rights of the child. Its passage was a giant stride in harmonizing the national laws with international agreements which Kenya has signed such as the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 2002)
There is hope that the new legislation will dramatically change the inattention, neglect and abuse towards child rights. The Act outlaws any form discrimination of children, and forbids Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), child prostitution, and child labor, among other forms of abuse. The Children’s Act has immensely improved the lives of many Kenyan children plagued with high illiteracy levels, frequent **** cases and child labor since it guarantees children the right to health and medical care, provision of which is the responsibility of the parents, the extended family and the government (Erickson, 2005).
Cases of child abuse in Uasin-Gishu region have been so eminent in the recent years ((Kenya Media Report, 2004). In the year 2010 and the year 2011, there was a program started to rehabilitate this behavior. This problem is clearly evident when you first arrive in Eldoret town, it is among the towns in the country with the highest number of abandoned children who keep on moving from one Centre to another seeking help from passersby. Parents have developed behaviors of abandoning their children and deliberately sending them to the town so that they can benefit from their borrowing. So to say this has led to child labor in this region. High profile cases of school dropouts have been recorded regarding the environs of this region. Young school children from different locations in Eldoret converge in town to persuade people to offer them financial assistance. Some attend school in numbered days and decide to spend some good number of days out of school.
The communities and societies around tend to assume this situation and term it as norm. A few who might seem concerned lack cooperation from the rest. This has adversely affected the performance of most of schools, hence leading to poor living standards of the people and a poisoned future of a young citizen. The problem has affected learners in regions like many areas in Uasin-Gishu County. It has really affected child development and affected their attendance and performance in school. Little intervention measures has been taken to advocate the holistic development of the children. It was to this reason that the researcher conducted the research in the named above region
1.2 Research Questions
The study was guided by the following questions;
1) What is the effect of child abuse on the academic performance of students in Kapyemit Ward?  
2) What are some of the proposed strategies that schools can employ to curb child abuse?
1.3 Research Objectives
The study was guided by the following research objectives;
1) To identify the effect of child abuse on the academic performance of students in Kapyemit Ward.
2) To identify proposed strategies that can be employed to help curb child abuse.
1.4 Justification of the Study
It is becoming increasingly difficult to separate child abuse prevention into separate categories. For instance, strategies on the societal level include increasing the “value” of children, increasing the economic self-sufficiency of families, discouraging corporal punishment and other forms of violence, making health care more accessible and affordable, expanding and improving coordination of social services, improving the identification and treatment of psychological problems and alcohol and drug abuse, providing more affordable child care and preventing the birth of unwanted children.
Very little analysis has been done to estimate the total cost of preventing child abuse and neglect or the long-term social costs of not preventing it. There is now a move to situate child abuse and neglect within the continuum of intervention which addresses multiple aspects of family behaviors. The efficacy of tackling portions of the problem of child abuse apart from broader societal needs is not known. And, perhaps prevention can only come in tandem with efforts to reduce poverty, improve health care and make children’s issues a national priority. However, despite these constraints, evaluations of prevention programs can be improved by coming to terms with definitions of key varia
NELSON MANDELA, NUMBER 46664 IS DEAD; EULOGICALLY ELEGIZING DIRGE FOR SON OF AFRICA, HOPE OF HUMANITY AND PERMANENT FLAME OF DEMOCRACY


Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya; aopicho@yahoo.com)

Nelson Mandela, South Africa's anti-apartheid beacon, has died
One of the best-known political prisoners of his generation,
South Africa's first black president, He was 95.
His struggle against apartheid and racial segregation
Lead to the vision of South Africa as a rainbow nation
In which all folks were to be treated equally regardless of color
Speaking in 1990 on his release from Pollsmoor Prison
After 27 years behind bars, Mandela posited;
I have fought against white ******* and
I have fought against black *******
I have cherished the idea of a democratic
And a free society in which all persons live together
In harmony and with equal opportunity
It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve
But if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die,

Fortunately, he was never called upon
To make such a sacrifice
And the anti-apartheid campaign did produce results
A ban on mixed marriages between whites and folks of color,
This was designed to enforce total racial segregation
Was lifted in 1985
Mandela was born on July 18, 1918
His father Gadla named him "Rolihlahla,"
Meaning “troublemaker” in the Xhosa language
Perhaps  parental premonitions of his ability to foment change.
Madiba, as he is affectionately known
By many South Africans,
Was born to Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa,
a chief, and his third wife Nosekeni *****
He grew up with two sisters
In the small rural village of Qunu
In South Africa's Eastern Cape Province.
Unlike other boys his age,
Madiba had the privilege of attending university
Where he studied law
He became a ringleader of student protest
And then moved to Johannesburg to escape an arranged marriage
It was there he became involved in politics.
In 1944 he joined the African National Congress (ANC),
Four years before the National Party,
Which institutionalized racial segregation, came to power
.
Racial segregation triggered mass protests
And civil disobedience campaigns,
In which Mandela played a central role
After the ANC was banned in 1961
Mandela founded its military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe
The Spear of the Nation
As its commander-in-chief,
He led underground guerrilla attacks
Against state institutions.
He secretly went abroad in 1962
To drum up financial support
And organize military training for ANC cadres
On his return, he was arrested
And sentenced to prison
Mandela served 17 years
On the notorious Roben Island, off Cape Town,
Mandela was elected as South Africa's first black president
On May 10, 1994
Cell number five, where he was incarcerated,
Is now a tourist attraction
From 1988 onwards, Mandela was slowly prepared
For his release from prison
Just three years earlier he had rejected a pardon
This was conditional
On the ANC renouncing violence
On 11 February 1990,
After nearly three decades in prison,
Mandela, the South African freedom beacon was released
He continued his struggle
For the abolition of racial segregation
In April 1994,
South Africa held its first free election.
On May 10,
Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first elected black president,
Mandela jointly won
The Nobel Peace Prize
With Frederik de Clerk in 1993
On taking office
Mandela focused on reconciliation
Between ethnic groups
And together with Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
He set up the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)
To help the country
Come to terms
With the crimes committed under apartheid
After his retirement
From active politics in 1999,
Madiba dedicated himself
To social causes,
Helping children and ***-AIDS patients,
His second son
Makgatho died of ***-AIDS
In 2005 at the age of 54,
South Africans have fought
a noble struggle against the apartheid
But today they face a far greater threat
Mandela he posited in a reference to the ***-AIDS pandemic,
His successor
Thabo Mbeki
The ANC slogan of 1994; A better life for all
Was fulfilled only
For a small portion of the black elite
Growing corruption,
Crime and lack of job prospects
Continue to threaten the Rainbow Nation,
On the international stage
Mandela acted as a mediator
In the Burundi civil war
And also joined criticism
Of the Iraq policy
Of the United States and Great Britain
He won the Nobel Prize in 1993
And played a decisive role
Into bringing the first FIFA World Cup to Africa,
His beloved great-granddaughter
Zenani Mandela died tragically
On the eve of the competition
And he withdrew from the public life
With the death of Nelson Mandela
The world loses a great freedom-struggleer
And heroic statesman
His native South Africa loses
At the very least a commanding presence
Even if the grandfather of nine grandchildren
Was scarcely seen in public in recent year

Media and politicians are vying
To outdo one another with their tributes
To Nelson Mandela, who himself disliked
The personality cult
That's one of the things
That made him unique,
Nelson Mandela was no saint,
Even though that is how the media
Are now portraying him
Every headline makes him appear more superhuman
And much of the admiration is close to idolatry
Some of the folks who met him
Say they felt a special Mandela karma
In his presence.
Madiba magic was invoked
Whenever South Africa needed a miracle,

Mandela himself was embarrassed
By the personality cult
Only reluctantly did he agree to have streets
Schools and institutes named after him
To allow bronze statues and Mandela museums
To be built
A trend that will continue to grow.

He repeatedly pointed
To the collective achievements
Of the resistance movement
To figures who preceded him
In the struggle against injustice
And to fellow campaigners
Such as Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Luthuli
Or his friend and companion in arms
Oliver Tambo who today stands in Mandela's shadow,
Tambo helped create the Mandela legend
Which conquered the world
A tale in which every upright man
And woman could see him
Or herself reflected,
When Prisoner Number 46664 was released
After 27 years behind bars
He had become a brand
A worldwide idol
The target of projected hopes
And wishes that no human being
Could fulfill alone,
Who would dare scratch?
The shining surface of such a man
List his youthful misdemeanors
His illegitimate children
Who would mention his weakness for women?
For models
Pop starlets
And female journalists
With whom he flirted
In a politically incorrect way
When already a respected elder statesman?
Who would speak out critically?
Against the attacks
He planned when he headed the ANC
Armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe
And who would criticize the way
He would often explode in anger
Or dismiss any opinions other than his own?
His record as head of government
Is also not above reproach
Those years were marked by pragmatism
And political reticence
Overdue decisions were not taken
Day to day matters were left to others
When choosing his political friends
His judgment was not always perfect
A Mandela grandchild is named
After Colonel Muammar Gaddaffi
Seen from today's perspective
Not everything fits
The generally accepted
Picture of visionary and genius,
But Mandela can be excused
These lapses
Because despite everything
He achieved more than ordinary human beings
His long period of imprisonment
Played a significant role here
It did not break him, it formed him
Robben Island
Had been a university of life for Mandela once posited
He learned discipline there
In dialogue with his guards
He learnt humility, patience and tolerance
His youthful anger dissolved
He mellowed and acquired
The wisdom of age
When he was at last released
Mandela was no longer
Burning with rage,
He was now a humanized revolutionary
Mandela wanted reconciliation
At almost any price
His own transformation
Was his greatest strength
The ability to break free
From ideological utopia
And to be able to see the greater whole
The realization
That those who think differently
Are not necessarily enemies
The ability to listen,
To spread the message of reconciliation
To the point of betraying what he believed in,
Only in this way could he
Serve as a role model
To both black and white humanity
, communists and entrepreneurs,
Catholics and Muslims.
He became a visional missionary,
An ecclesiast of brotherly love
And compassion
Wherever he was, each humanity was equal
He had respect for musicians and presidents
Monarchs and cleaning ladies
He remembered names
And would ask about relatives
He gave each humanity his full attention
With a smile, a joke, a well aimed remark,
He won over every audience
His aura enveloped each humanity,
Even his political enemies,
That did not qualify him
For the status of demi-god
But he was idolized and rightly so
He must be named in the same breath
As Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama
Or Martin Luther King
Mandela wrote a chapter of world history
Even Barack Obama posited
He would not have become
President of the United States
Without Mandela as a role model,

And so it is not so important
That Mandela is now portrayed
Larger than life
The fact that not everything
He did in politics succeeded is a minor matter
His achievement is to have lived
A life credibly characterized
By humanism, tolerance and non-violence,
When Mandela was released
From prison in 1990,
The old world order of the Cold War era
Was collapsing
Mandela stood at the crossroads and set off in the right direction
How easily he could have played with fire, sought revenge,
Or simply failed; He could have withdrawn from public life or,
Like other companions in arms, earned millions,
Two marriages failed because of the political circumstances
His sons died tragically long before him
It was only when he was 80 and met his third wife,
Graca Machel,
That he again found warmth,
Partnership and private happiness,
Setbacks did not leave him bitter
Because he regarded his own life
As being less important
Than the cause he believed in
He served the community humbly,
With a sense of responsibility
Of duty and willingness to make sacrifices
Qualities that are today only rarely encountered,

How small and pathetic his successors now seem
Their battles for power will probably now be fought
Even more unscrupulously than in the past
How embarrassing are his own relatives
Who argued over his legacy at his hospital bed
Mandela was no saint
But a man with strengths and weaknesses,
Shaped by his environment
It will be hard to find a greater person
Just a little bit more Mandela every day
Would achieve a great deal
Not only in Africa
But in the bestridden geographies
Epochs and diversities of man,

In my post dirge I will ever echo words of Mandella
He shone on the crepuscular darkness of the Swedish
Academy, where cometh the Nobel glory;
Development and peace are indivisible
Without peace and international security
Nations cannot focus
On the upliftment
Of the most underprivileged of their citizens.
Meena Menon Sep 2021
Flicker Shimmer Glow

The brightest star can shine even with thick black velvet draped over it.  
Quartz, lime and salt crystals formed a glass ball.
The dark womb held me, warm and soft.  
My mom called my cries when I was born the most sorrowful sound she had ever heard.  
She said she’d never heard a baby make a sound like that.    
I’d open my eyes in low light until the world’s light healed rather than hurt.  
The summer before eighth grade, July 1992,
I watched a shooting star burn by at 100,000 miles per hour as I stood on the balcony  
while my family celebrated my birthday inside.  
It made it into the earth’s atmosphere
but it didn’t look like it was coming down;
I know it didn’t hit the ground but it burned something in the time it was here.  
The glass ball of my life cracked inside.  
Light reflected off the salt crystal cracks.  
I saw the beauty of the light within.  
Nacre from my shell kept those cracks from getting worse,
a wild pearl as defense mechanism.  
In 2001, I quit my job after they melted and poured tar all over my life.  
All summer literature class bathtubs filled with rose hip oil cleaned the tar.  
That fall logic and epistemology classes spewed black ink all over my philosophy
written over ten years then.  
Tar turned to asphalt when I met someone from my old job for a drink in November
and it paved a road for my life that went to the hospital I was in that December
where it sealed the roof on my life
when I was almost murdered there
and in February after meeting her for another drink.  
They lit a fire at the top of the glacier and pushed the burning pile of black coal off the edge,
burnt red, looking like flames falling into the valley.  
While that blazed the side of the cliff something lit an incandescent light.  
The electricity from the metal lightbulb ***** went through wires and heated the filament between until it glowed.  
I began putting more work into emotional balance from things I learned at AA meetings.  
In Spring 2003, the damage that the doctors at the hospital in 2001 had done
made it harder for light to reflect from the cracks in the glass ball.
I’d been eating healthy and trying to get regular exercises since 1994
but in Spring 2003 I began swimming for an hour every morning .  
The water washed the pollution from the burning coals off
And then I escaped in July.  
I moved to London to study English Language and Linguistics.  
I would’ve studied English Language and Literature.  
I did well until Spring 2004 when I thought I was being stalked.  
I thought I was manic.  
I thought I was being stalked.  
I went home and didn’t go back for my exams after spring holiday.  
Because I felt traumatized and couldn’t write poetry anymore,
I used black ink to write my notes for my book on trauma and the Russian Revolution.
I started teaching myself German.  
I stayed healthy.  
In 2005, my parents went to visit my mom’s family in Malaysia for two weeks.
I thought I was being stalked.  
I knew I wasn’t manic.  
I thought I was being stalked.  
I told my parents when they came home.  
They thought I was manic.  
I showed them the shoe prints in the snow of different sizes from the woods to the windows.  
They thought I was manic.  
I was outside of my comfort zone.  
I moved to California. I found light.  
I made light,
the light reflected off the salt crystals I used to heal the violence inflicted on me from then on.  
The light turned the traffic lights to not just green from red
but amber and blue.  
The light turned the car signals left and right.  
The light reflected off of salt crystals, light emitting diodes,
electrical energy turned directly to light,
electroluminescence.  
The electrical currents flowed through,
illuminating.  
Alone in the world, I moved to California in July 2005
but in August  I called the person I escaped in 2003,
the sulfur and nitrogen that I hated.  
He didn’t think I was manic but I never said anything.
I never told him why I asked him to move out to California.  
When his coal seemed like only pollution,
I asked him to leave.  
He threatened me.  
I called the authorities.  
They left me there.
He laughed.  
Then the violence came.  
****:  stabbed and punched, my ****** bruised, purple and swollen.  
The light barely reflected from the glass ball wIth cracks through all the acid rain, smoke and haze.
It would take me half an hour to get my body to do what my mind told it to after.  
My dad told me my mom had her cancer removed.
The next day, the coal said if I wanted him to leave he’d leave.  
I booked his ticket.
I drove him to the airport.  
Black clouds gushed the night before for the first time in months,
the sky clear after the rain.  
He was gone and I was free,
melted glass, heated up and poured—
looked like fire,
looked like the Snow Moon in February
with Mercury in the morning sky.  
I worked through ****.  
I worked to overcome trauma.  
Electricity between touch and love caused acid rain, smoke, haze, and mercury
to light the discharge lamps, streetlights and parking lot lights.
Then I changed the direction of the light waves.  
Like lead glass breaks up the light,
lead from the coal, cleaned and replaced by potassium,
glass cut clearly, refracting the light,
electrolytes,
electrical signals lit through my body,
thick black velvet drapes gone.  





















Lava

I think that someone wrote into some palm leaf a manuscript, a gift, a contract.  
After my parents wedding, while they were still in India,
they found out that my dad’s father and my mom’s grandfather worked for kings administering temples and collecting money for their king from the farmers that worked the rice paddies each king owned.  They both left their homes before they left for college.  
My dad, a son of a brahmin’s son,
grew up in his grandmother’s house.  
His mother was not a Brahmin.  
My mother grew up in Malaysia where she saw the children from the rubber plantation
when she walked to school.  
She doesn’t say what caste she is.  
He went to his father’s house, then college.  
He worked, then went to England, then Canada.  
She went to India then Canada.  
They moved to the United States around Christmas 1978
with my brother while she was pregnant with me.  
My father signed a contract with my mother.  
My parents took ashes and formed rock,
the residue left in brass pots in India,
the rocks, so hot, they turned back to lava miles away before turning back to ash again,
then back to rock,
the lava from a super volcano,
the ash purple and red.  


















Circles on a Moss Covered Volcano

The eruption beatifies the magma.  
It becomes obsidian,
only breaks with a fracture,
smooth circles where it breaks.  

My mom was born on the grass
on a lawn
in a moss covered canyon at the top of a volcanic island.  
My grandfather lived in Malaysia before the Japanese occupied.  
When the volcano erupted,
the lava dried at the ocean into black sand.  
The British allied with the Communist Party of Malaysia—
after they organized.  
After the Americans defeated the Japanese at Pearl Harbor,
the British took over Malaysia again.  
They kept different groups apart claiming they were helping them.  
The black sand had smooth pebbles and sharp rocks.  
Ethnic Malay farmers lived in Kampongs, villages.  
Indians lived on plantations.  
The Chinese lived in towns and urban areas.  
Ethnic Malays wanted independence.
In 1946, after strikes, demonstrations, and boycotts
the British agreed to work with them.  
The predominantly Chinese Communist Party of Malaysia went underground,
guerrilla warfare against the British,
claiming their fight was for independence.  
For the British, that emergency required vast powers
of arrest, detention without trial and deportation to defeat terrorism.  
The Emergency became less unpopular as the terrorism became worse.  
The British were the iron that brought oxygen through my mom’s body.  
She loved riding on her father’s motorcycle with him
by the plantations,
through the Kampongs
and to the city, half an hour away.  
The British left Malaysia independent in 1957
with Malaysian nationalists holding most state and federal government offices.  
As the black sand stretches towards the ocean,
it becomes big stones of dried lava, flat and smooth.  

My mom thought her father and her uncle were subservient to the British.  
She thought all things, all people were equal.  
When her father died when she was 16, 1965,
they moved to India,
my mother,
a foreigner in India, though she’s Indian.  
She loved rock and roll and mini skirts
and didn’t speak the local language.  
On the dried black lava,
it can be hard to know the molten lava flickers underneath there.  
Before the Korean War,
though Britain and the United States wanted
an aggressive resolution
condemning North Korea,
they were happy
that India supported a draft resolution
condemning North Korea
for breach of the peace.  
During the Korean War,
India, supported by Third World and other Commonwealth nations,
opposed United States’ proposals.
They were able to change the U.S. resolution
to include the proposals they wanted
and helped end the war.  
China wanted the respect of Third World nations
and saw the United States as imperialist.  
China thought India was a threat to the Third World
by taking aid from the United States and the Soviets.  
Pakistan could help with that and a seat at the United Nations.  
China wanted Taiwan’s seat at the UN.
My mother went to live with her uncle,
a communist negotiator for a corporation,
in India.  
A poet,
he threw parties and invited other artists, musicians and writers.  
I have the same brown hyperpigmentation at my joints that he had.  
During the day, only the steam from the hot lava can be seen.  
In 1965, Pakistani forces went into Jammu and Kashmir with China’s support.  
China threatened India after India sent its troops in.  
Then they threatened again before sending their troops to the Indian border.  
The United States stopped aid to Pakistan and India.
Pakistan agreed to the UN ceasefire agreement.  
Pakistan helped China get a seat at the UN
and tried to keep the west from escalating in Vietnam.  
The smoldering sound of the lava sizzles underneath the dried lava.  
When West Pakistan refused to allow East Pakistan independence,
violence between Bengalis and Biharis developed into upheaval.  
Bengalis moved to India
and India went into East Pakistan.  
Pakistan surrendered in December 1971.  
East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh

The warm light of the melted lava radiates underneath but burns.  
In 1974, India tested the Smiling Buddha,
a nuclear bomb.  
After Indira Gandhi’s conviction for election fraud in 1973,
Marxist Professor Narayan called for total revolution
and students protested all over India.  
With food shortages, inflation and regional disputes
like Sikh separatists training in Pakistan for an independent Punjab,
peasants and laborers joined the protests.  
Railway strikes stopped the economy.  
In 1975, Indira Gandhi, the Iron Lady,
declared an Emergency,
imprisoning political opponents, restricting freedoms and restricting the press,
claiming threats to national security
because the war with Pakistan had just ended.  
The federal government took over Kerala’s communist dominated government and others.  

My mom could’ve been a dandelion, but she’s more like thistle.  
She has the center that dries and flutters in the wind,
beautiful and silky,
spiny and prickly,
but still fluffy, downy,
A daisy.
They say thistle saved Scotland from the Norse.  
Magma from the volcano explodes
and the streams of magma fly into the air.  
In the late 60s,
the civil rights movement rose
against the state in Northern Ireland
for depriving Catholics
of influence and opportunity.
The Northern Irish police,
Protestant and unionist, anti-catholic,
responded violently to the protests and it got worse.  
In 1969, the British placed Arthur Young,
who had worked at the Federation of Malaya
at the time of their Emergency
at the head of the British military in Northern Ireland.
The British military took control over the police,
a counter insurgency rather than a police force,
crowd control, house searches, interrogation, and street patrols,
use of force against suspects and uncooperative citizens.  
Political crimes were tolerated by Protestants but not Catholics.  
The lava burns the rock off the edge of the volcano.  

On January 30, 1972, ****** Sunday,  
British Army policing killed 13 unarmed protesters
fighting for their rights over their neighborhood,
protesting the internment of suspected nationalists.
That led to protests across Ireland.  
When banana leaves are warmed,
oil from the banana leaves flavors the food.  
My dad flew from Canada to India in February 1972.  
On February 4, my dad met my mom.  
On February 11, 1972,
my dad married my mom.  
They went to Canada,
a quartz singing bowl and a wooden mallet wrapped in suede.  
The rock goes down with the lava, breaking through the rocks as it goes down.  
In March 1972, the British government took over
because they considered the Royal Ulster Police and the Ulster Special Constabulary
to be causing most of the violence.  
The lava blocks and reroutes streams,
melts snow and ice,
flooding.  
Days later, there’s still smoke, red.  
My mom could wear the clothes she liked
without being judged
with my dad in Canada.  
She didn’t like asking my dad for money.
My dad, the copper helping my mother use that iron,
wanted her to go to college and finish her bachelors degree.
She got a job.  
In 1976, the police took over again in Northern Ireland
but they were a paramilitary force—
armored SUVs, bullet proof jackets, combat ready
with the largest computerized surveillance system in the UK,
high powered weapons,
trained in counter insurgency.  
Many people were murdered by the police
and few were held accountable.  
Most of the murdered people were not involved in violence or crime.  
People were arrested under special emergency powers
for interrogation and intelligence gathering.  
People tried were tried in non-jury courts.  
My mom learned Malayalam in India
but didn’t speak well until living with my dad.  
She also learned to cook after getting married.  
Her mother sent her recipes; my dad cooked for her—
turmeric, cumin, coriander, cayenne and green chiles.  
Having lived in different countries,
my mom’s food was exposed to many cultures,
Chinese and French.
Ground rock, minerals and glass
covered the ground
from the ash plume.  
She liked working.  

A volcano erupted for 192 years,
an ice age,
disordered ices, deformed under pressure
and ordered ice crystals, brittle in the ice core records.  
My mother liked working.  
Though Khomeini was in exile by the 1970s in Iran,
more people, working and poor,
turned to him and the ****-i-Ulama for help.
My mom didn’t want kids though my dad did.
She agreed and in 1978 my brother was born.
Iran modernized but agriculture and industry changed so quickly.  
In January 1978, students protested—
censorship, surveillance, harassment, illegal detention and torture.  
Young people and the unemployed joined.  
My parents moved to the United States in December 1978.  
The regime used a lot of violence against the protesters,
and in September 1978 declared martial law in Iran.  
Troops were shooting demonstrators.
In January 1979, the Shah and his family fled.  
On February 11, 1979, my parents’ anniversary,
the Iranian army declared neutrality.  
I was born in July 1979.
The chromium in emeralds and rubies colors them.
My brother was born in May and I was born in July.

Obsidian—
iron, copper and chromium—
isn’t a gas
but it isn’t a crystal;
it’s between the two,
the ordered crystal and the disordered gas.  
They made swords out of obsidian.  





Warm Light Shatters

The eruption beatifies the magma.  
It becomes obsidian,
only breaks with a fracture,
smooth circles where it breaks.  

My dad was born on a large flat rock on the edge of the top
of a hill,
Molasses, sweet and dark, the potent flavor dominates,
His father, the son of a Brahmin,
His mother from a lower caste.
His father’s family wouldn’t touch him,
He grew up in his mother’s mother’s house on a farm.  
I have the same brown hyperpigmentation spot on my right hand that he has.

In 1901, D’Arcy bought a 60 year concession for oil exploration In Iran.
The Iranian government extended it for another 32 years in 1933.
At that time oil was Iran’s “main source of income.”
In 1917’s Balfour Declaration, the British government proclaimed that they favored a national home for the Jews in Palestine and their “best endeavors to facilitate the achievement” of that.

The British police were in charge of policing in the mandate of Palestine.  A lot of the policemen they hired were people who had served in the British army before, during the Irish War for Independence.  
The army tried to stop how violent the police were, police used torture and brutality, some that had been used during the Irish War for Independence, like having prisoners tied to armored cars and locomotives and razing the homes of people in prison or people they thought were related to people thought to be rebels.
The police hired Arab police and Jewish police for lower level policing,
Making local people part of the management.
“Let Arab police beat up Arabs and Jewish police beat up Jews.”

The lava blocks and reroutes streams, melts snow and ice, flooding.
In 1922, there were 83,000 Jews, 71,000 Christians, and 589,000 Muslims.
The League If Nations endorsed the British Mandate.
During an emergency, in the 1930s, British regulations allowed collective punishment, punishing villages for incidents.
Local officers in riots often deserted and also shared intelligence with their own people.
The police often stole, destroyed property, tortured and killed people.  
Arab revolts sapped the police power over Palestinians by 1939.

My father’s mother was from a matrilineal family.
My dad remembers tall men lining up on pay day to respectfully wait for her, 5 feet tall.  
She married again after her husband died.
A manager from a tile factory,
He spoke English so he supervised finances and correspondence.
My dad, a sunflower, loved her: she scared all the workers but exuded warmth to the people she loved.

Obsidian shields people from negative energy.
David Cargill founded the Burmah Oil Co. in 1886.
If there were problems with oil exploration in Burma and Indian government licenses, Persian oil would protect the company.  
In July 1906, many European oil companies, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and others, allied to protect against the American oil company, Standard Oil.
D’Arcy needed money because “Persian oil took three times as long to come on stream as anticipated.”
Burmah Oil Co. began the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. as a subsidiary.
Ninety-seven percent of British Petroleum was owned by Burmah Oil Co.
By 1914, the British government owned 51% of the Anglo-Persian Oil Co.  
Anglo-Persian acquired independence from Burmah Oil and Royal Dutch Shell with two million pounds from the British government.

The lava burns the rock off the edge of the volcano.
In 1942, after the Japanese took Burma,
the British destroyed their refineries before leaving.
The United Nations had to find other sources of oil.
In 1943, Japan built the Burma-Thailand Railroad with forced labor from the Malay peninsula who were mostly from the rubber plantations.

The rock goes down with the lava, breaking through the rocks as it goes down.
In 1945. Japan destroyed their refineries before leaving Burma.
Cargill, Watson and Whigham were on the Burmah Oil Co. Board and then the Anglo Iranian Oil Co. Board.  

In 1936 Palestine, boycotts, work stoppages, and violence against British police officials and soldiers compelled the government to appoint an investigatory commission.  
Leaders of Egypt, Trans Jordan, Syria and Iraq helped end the work stoppages.
The British government had the Peel Commission read letters, memoranda, and petitions and speak with British officials, Jews and Arabs.  
The Commission didn’t believe that Arabs and Jews could live together in a single Jewish state.
Because of administrative and financial difficulties the Colonial Secretary stated that to split Palestine into Arab and Jewish states was impracticable.  
The Commission recommended transitioning 250,000 Arabs and 1500 Jews with British control over their oil pipeline, their naval base and Jerusalem.  
The League of Nations approved.
“It will not remove the grievance nor prevent the recurrence,” Lord Peel stated after.
The Arab uprising was much more militant after Peel.  Thousands of Arabs were wounded, ten thousand were detained.  
In Sykes-Picot and the Husain McMahon agreements, the British promised the Arabs an independent state but they did not keep that promise.  
Representatives from the Arab states rejected the Peel recommendations.
United Nations General Assembly Resolution181 partitioned Palestine into Arab and Jewish states with an international regime for the city of Jerusalem backed by the United States and the Soviet Union.  

The Israeli Yishuv had strong military and intelligence organization —-  
the British recognized that their interest was with the Arabs and abstained from the vote.  
In 1948, Israel declared the establishment of its state.  
Ground rock, minerals, and gas covered the ground from the ash plume.
The Palestinian police force was disbanded and the British gave officers the option of serving in Malaya.

Though Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy supported snd tried to get Israel to offer the Arabs concessions, it wasn’t a major priority and didn’t always approve of Israel’s plans.
Arabs that had supported the British to end Turkish rule stopped supporting the West.  
Many Palestinians joined left wing groups and violent third world movements.  
Seventy-eight percent of the territory of former Palestine was under Israel’s control.  

My dad left for college in 1957 and lived in an apartment above the United States Information services office.
Because he graduated at the top of his class, he was given a job with the public works department of the government on the electricity board.  
“Once in, you’ll never leave.”
When he wanted a job where he could do real work, his father was upset.
He broke the chains with bells for vespers.
He got a job in Calcutta at Kusum Products and left the government, though it was prestigious to work there.
In the chemical engineering division, one of the projects he worked on was to design a *** distillery, bells controlled by hammers, hammers controlled by a keyboard.
His boss worked in the United Kingdom for. 20 years before the company he worked at, part of Power Gas Corporation, asked him to open a branch in Calcutta.
He opened the branch and convinced an Industrialist to open a company doing the same work with him.  The branch he opened closed after that.  
My dad applied for labor certification to work abroad and was selected.  
His boss wrote a reference letter for my him to the company he left in the UK.  My dad sent it telling the company when he was leaving for the UK.  
The day he left for London, he got the letter they sent in the mail telling him to take the train to Sheffield the next day and someone from the firm would meet him at the station.  
His dad didn’t know he left, he didn’t tell him.
He broke the chains with chimes for schisms.


Anglo-Persian Oil became Anglo-Iranian Oil in 1935.
The British government used oil and Anglo-Persian oil to fight communism, have a stronger relationship with the United States and make the United Kingdom more powerful.  
The National Secularists, the Tudeh, and the Communists wanted to nationalize Iran’s oil and mobilized the Iranian people.
The British feared nationalization in Iran would incite political parties like the Secular Nationalists all over the world.  
In 1947, the Iranian government passed the Single Article Law that “[increased] investment In welfare benefits, health, housing, education, and implementation of Iranianization through substitution of foreigners” at Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.
“Anglo-Iranian Oil Company made more profit in 1950 than it paid to the Iranian government in royalties over the previous half century.”
The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company tried to negotiate a new concession and claimed they’d hire more Iranian people into jobs held by British and people from other nationalities at the company.
Their hospitals had segregated wards.  
On May 1, 1951, the Iranian government passed a bill that nationalized Anglo- Iranian Oil Co.’s holdings.  
During the day, only the steam from the hot lava can be seen.
In August 1953, the Iranian people elected Mossadegh from the Secular Nationalist Party as prime minister.
The British government with the CIA overthrew Mossadegh using the Iranian military after inducing protests and violent demonstrations.  
Anglo-Iranian Oil changed its name to British Petroleum in 1954.
Iranians believe that America destroyed Iran’s “last chance for democracy” and blamed America for Iran’s autocracy, its human rights abuses, and secret police.

The smoldering sound of the lava sizzles underneath the dried lava.  
In 1946, Executive Yuan wanted control over 4 groups of Islands in the South China Sea to have a stronger presence there:  the Paracels, the Spratlys, Macclesfield Bank, and the Pratas.
The French forces in the South China Sea would have been stronger than the Chinese Navy then.
French Naval forces were in the Gulf of Tonkin, U.S. forces were in the Taiwan Strait, the British were in Hong Kong, and the Portuguese were in Macao.
In the 1950s, British snd U.S. oil companies thought there might be oil in the Spratlys.  
By 1957, French presence in the South China Sea was hardly there.  

When the volcano erupted, the lava dried at the ocean into black sand.
By 1954, the Tudeh Party’s communist movement and  intelligence organization had been destroyed.  
Because of the Shah and his government’s westernization policies and disrespectful treatment of the Ulama, Iranians began identifying with the Ulama and Khomeini rather than their government.  
Those people joined with secular movements to overthrow the Shah.  

In 1966, Ne Win seized power from U Nu in Burma.
“Soldiers ruled Burma as soldiers.”
Ne Win thought that western political
Institutions “encouraged divisions.”
Minority groups found foreign support for their separatist goals.
The Karens and the Mons supported U Nu in Bangkok.  


Rare copper, a heavy metal, no alloys,
a rock in groundwater,
conducts electricity and heat.
In 1965, my Dad’s cousin met him at Heathrow, gave him a coat and £10 and brought him to a bed and breakfast across from Charing Cross Station where he’d get the train to Sheffield the next morning.
He took the train and someone met him at the train station.  
At the interview they asked him to design a grandry girder, the main weight bearing steel girder as a test.
Iron in the inner and outer core of the earth,
He’d designed many of those.  
He was hired and lived at the YMCA for 2 1/2 years.  
He took his mother’s family name, Menon, instead of his father’s, Varma.
In 1967, he left for Canada and interviewed at Bechtel before getting hired at Seagrams.  
Iron enables blood to carry oxygen.
His boss recommended him for Dale Carnegie’s leadership training classes and my dad joined the National Instrument Society and became President.
He designed a still In Jamaica,
Ordered all the parts, nuts and bolts,
Had all the parts shipped to Jamaica and made sure they got there.
His boss supervised the construction, installation and commission in Jamaica.
Quartz, heat and fade resistant, though he was an engineer and did the work of an engineer, my dad only had the title, technician so my dad’s boss thought he wasn’t getting paid enough but couldn’t get his boss to offer more than an extra $100/week or the title of engineer; he told my dad he thought he should leave.
In 1969, he got a job at Celanese, which made rayon.
He quit Celanese to work at McGill University and they allowed him to take classes to earn his MBA while working.  

The United States and Israel’s alliance was strong by 1967.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 at the end of the Third Arab Israeli War didn’t mention the Palestinians but mentioned the refugee problem.
After 1967, the Palestinians weren’t often mentioned and when mentioned only as terrorists.  
Palestinians’ faith in the “American sponsored peace process” diminished, they felt the world community ignored and neglected them also.
Groups like MAN that stopped expecting anything from Arab regimes began hijacking airplanes.
By 1972, the Palestine Liberation Organization had enough international support to get by the United States’ veto in the United Nations Security Council and Arab League recognition as representative of the Palestinian people.
The Palestinians knew the United States stated its support, as the British had, but they weren’t able to accomplish anything.  
The force Israel exerted in Johnson’s United States policy delivered no equilibrium for the Palestinians.  

In 1969, all political parties submitted to the BSPP, Burma Socialist Programme Party.
Ne Win nationalized banks and oil and deprived minorities of opportunities.
Ne Win became U Nu Win, civilian leader of Burma in 1972 and stopped the active role that U Nu defined for Burma internationally
He put military people in power even when they didn’t have experience which triggered “maldistribution of goods and chronic shortages.”  
Resources were located in areas where separatist minorities had control.

The British presence in the South China Sea ended in 1968.  
The United States left Vietnam in 1974 and China went into the Western Paracels.
The U.S. didn’t intervene and Vietnam took the Spratlys.
China wanted to claim the continental shelf In the central part of the South China Sea and needed the Spratlys.
The United States mostly disregarded the Ulama In Iran and bewildered the Iranian people by not supporting their revolution.

Obsidian—
iron, copper and chromium—
isn’t a gas
but it isn’t a crystal;
it’s between the two,
the ordered crystal and the disordered gas.  
They made swords out of obsidian.


Edelweiss

I laid out in my backyard in my bikini.  
I love the feeling of my body in the sun.  
I’d be dark from the end of spring until winter.
The snow froze my bare feet through winter ,
my skin pale.
American towns in 1984,
Free, below glaciers the sunlight melted the snow,
a sea of green and the edelweiss on the edge of the  limestone,
frosted but still strong.    
When the spring warmed the grass,
the grass warmed my feet. 
The whole field looked cold and white from the glacier but in the meadow,
the bright yellow centers of those flowers float free in the center of the white petals.
The bright yellow center of those edelweiss scared the people my parents ran to America from India to get away from.  
On a sidewalk in Queens, New York in 1991, the men stared and yelled comments at me in short shorts and a fitted top in the summer.  
I grabbed my dad’s arm.

























The Bread and Coconut Butter of Aparigraha

Twelve year old flowerhead,
Marigold, yarrow and nettle,
I’d be all emotion
If not for all my work
From the time I was a teenager.
I got depressed a lot.
I related to people I read about
In my weather balloon,
Grasping, ignorant, and desperate,
But couldn’t relate to other twelve year olds.
After school I read Dali’s autobiography,
Young ****** Autosodomized by Her Own Chastity.
Fresh, green nettle with fresh and dried yarrow for purity.
Dead souls enticed to the altar by orange marigolds,
passion and creativity,
Coax sleep and rouse dreams.
Satellites measure indirectly with wave lengths of light.
My weather balloon measures the lower and middle levels of the atmosphere directly,
Fifty thousand feet high,
Metal rod thermometer,
Slide humidity sensor,
Canister for air pressure.

I enjoy rye bread and cold coconut butter in my weather balloon,
But I want Dali, and all the artists and writers.
Rye grows at high altitudes
But papyrus grows in soil and shallow water,
Strips of papyrus pith shucked from their stems.
When an anchor’s weighed, a ship sails,
But when grounded we sail.
Marigolds, yarrow and nettle,
Flowerhead,
I use the marigold for sleep,
The yarrow for endurance and intensity,
toiling for love and truth,
And the nettle for healing.
Strong rye bread needs equally strong flavors.
By the beginning of high school,
I read a lot of Beat literature
And found Buddhism.
I loved what I read
But I didn’t like some things.
I liked attachment.  
I got to the ground.
Mushrooms grow in dry soil.
Attachment to beauty is Buddha activity.
Not being attached to things I don’t find beautiful is Buddha activity.  
I fried mushrooms in a single layer in oil, fleshy.
I roasted mushrooms at high temperatures in the oven, crisp.
I simmered mushrooms in stock with kombu.
Rye bread with cold coconut butter and cremini mushrooms,
raw, soft and firm.  
Life continues, life changes,
Attachments, losses, mourning and suffering,
But change lures growth.
I find stream beds and wet soil.
I lay the strips of papyrus next to each other.
I cross papyrus strips over the first,
Then wet the crossed papyrus strips,
Press and cement them into a sheet.
I hammer it and dry it in the sun,
With no thought of achievement or self,
Flowerhead,
Hands filled with my past,
Head filled with the future,
Dali, artists poets,
Wishes and desires aligned with nature,
Abundance,
Cocoa, caraway, and molasses.

If I ever really like someone,
I’ll be wearing the dress he chooses,
Fresh green nettle and yarrow, the seeds take two years to grow strong,
Lasting love.
Marigolds steer dead souls from the altar to the afterlife,
Antiseptic, healing wounds,
Soothing sore throats and headaches.
Imperturbable, stable flowerhead,
I empty my mind.
When desires are aligned with nature, desire flows.
Papyrus makes paper and cloth.
Papyrus makes sails.
Charcoal from the ash of pulverized papyrus heals wounds.
Without attachment to the fruit of action
There is continuation of life,
Rye bread and melted coconut butter,
The coconut tree in the coconut butter,
The seed comes from the ground out of nothing,
Naturalness.
It has form.
As the seed grows the seed expresses the tree,
The seed expresses the coconut,
The seed expresses the coconut butter.
Rye bread, large open hollows, chambers,
Immersed in melted coconut butter,
Desire for expansion and creation,
No grasping, not desperate.
When the mind is compassion, the mind is boundless.
Every moment,
only that,
Every moment,
a scythe to the papyrus in the stream bed of the past.  

































Sound on Powdery Blue

Potter’s clay, nymph, plum unplumbed, 1993.
Dahlia, ice, powder, musk and rose,
my source of life emerged in darkness, blackness.
Seashell fragments in the sand,
The glass ball of my life cracked inside,
Light reflected off the salt crystal cracks,
Nacre kept those cracks from getting worse.
Young ****** Autosodomized By Her Own Chastity,
Nymph, I didn’t want to give my body,
Torn, *****, ballgown,
To people who wouldn’t understand me,
Piquant.

Outside on the salt flats,
Aphrodite, goddess of beauty, pleasure and fertility and
Asexual Artemis, goddess of animals, and the hunt,
Mistress of nymphs,
Punish with ruthless savagery.

In my bedroom, blue caribou moss covered rocks, pine, and yew trees,
The heartwood writhes as hurricane gales, twisters and whirlwinds
Contort their bark,
Roots strong in the soil.
Orris root dried in the sun, bulbs like wood.
Dahlia runs to baritone soundbath radio waves.
Light has frequencies,
Violet between blue and invisible ultraviolet,
Flame, slate and flint.
Every night is cold.

Torii gates, pain secured as sacred.
An assignation, frost hardy dahlia and a plangent resonant echo.
High frequency sound waves convert to electrical signals,
Breathe from someone I want,
Silt.
Beam, radiate, ensorcel.
I break the bark,
Sap flows and dries,
Resin seals over the tear.
I distill pine,
Resin and oil for turpentine, a solvent.
Quiver, bemired,
I lead sound into my darkness,
Orris butter resin, sweet and warm,
Hot jam drops on snow drops,
Orange ash on smoke,
Balm on lava,
The problem with cotton candy.

Electrical signals give off radiation or light waves,
The narrow frequency range where
The crest of a radio wave and the crest of a light wave overlap,
Infrared.
Glaciers flow, sunlight melts the upper layers of the snow when strong,
A wet snow avalanche,
A torrent, healing.
Brown sugar and whiskey,
Undulant, lavender.
Pine pitch, crystalline, sticky, rich and golden,
And dried pine rosin polishes glass smooth
Like the smell of powdery orris after years.
Softness, flush, worthy/not worthy,
Rich rays thunder,
Intensify my pulse,
Frenzied red,
Violet between blue and invisible ultraviolet.
Babylon—flutter, glow.
Unquenchable cathartic orris.  

















Pink Graphite

Camellias, winter shrubs,
Their shallow roots grow beneath the spongy caribou moss,
Robins egg blue.
After writing a play with my gifted students program in 1991,
I stopped spending all my free time writing short stories,
But the caribou moss was still soft.

In the cold Arctic of that town,
The evergreen protected the camellias from the afternoon sun and storms.
They branded hardy camellias with a brass molded embossing iron;
I had paper and graphite for my pencils.

After my ninth grade honors English teacher asked us to write poems in 1994,
It began raining.
We lived on an overhang.
A vertical rise to the top of the rock.
The rainstorm caused a metamorphic change in the snowpack,
A wet snow avalanche drifted slowly down the moss covered rock,
The snow already destabilized by exposure to the sunlight.

The avalanche formed lakes,
rock basins washed away with rainwater and melted snow,
Streams dammed by the rocks.  
My pencils washed away in the avalanche,
My clothes heavy and cold.
I wove one side of each warp fiber through the eye of the needle and one side through each slot,
Salves, ointments, serums and tinctures.
I was mining for graphite.
They were mining me,
The only winch, the sound through the water.

A steep staircase to the red Torii gates,
I broke the chains with bells for vespers
And chimes for schisms,
And wove the weft across at right angles to the warp.  

On a rocky ledge at the end of winter,
The pink moon, bitters and body butter,
They tried to get  me to want absinthe,
Wormwood for bitterness and regret.
Heat and pressure formed carbon for flakes of graphite.
Heat and pressure,
I made bitters,
Brandy, grapefruit, chocolate, mandarin rind, tamarind and sugar.
I grounded my feet in the pink moss,
paper dried in one hand,
and graphite for my pencils in the other.  



































Flakes

I don’t let people that put me down be part of my life.  
Gardens and trees,
My shadow sunk in the grass in my yard
As I ate bread, turmeric and lemon.
Carbon crystallizes into graphite flakes.
I write to see well,
Graphite on paper.  
A shadow on rock tiles with a shield, a diamond and a bell
Had me ***** to humiliate me.
Though I don’t let people that put me down near me,
A lot of people putting me down seemed like they were following me,
A platform to jump from
While she had her temple.  

There was a pink door to the platform.
I ate bread with caramelized crusts and
Drank turmeric lemonade
Before I opened that door,
Jumped and
Descended into blankets and feathers.
I found matches and rosin
For turpentine to clean,
Dried plums and licorice.  

In the temple,
In diamonds, leather, wool and silk,
She had her shield and bells,
Drugs and technology,
Thermovision 210 and Minox,
And an offering box where people believed
That if their coins went in
Their wishes would come true.

Hollyhock and smudging charcoal for work,  
Belled,
I ground grain in the mill for the bread I baked for breakfast.
The bells are now communal bells
With a watchtower and a prison,
Her shield, a blowtorch and flux,
Her ex rays, my makeshift records
Because Stalin didn’t like people dancing,
He liked them divebombing.
Impurities in the carbon prevent diamonds from forming,
Measured,
The most hard, the most expensive,
But graphite’s soft delocalized electrons move.  






































OCEAN BED

The loneliness of going to sleep by myself.  
I want a bed that’s high off the ground,
a mattress, an ocean.
I want a crush and that  person in my bed.  
Only that,
a crush in my bed,
an ocean in my bed.  
Just love.  
But I sleep with my thumbs sealed.  
I sleep with my hands, palms up.  
I sleep with my hands at my heart.  
They sear my compassion with their noise.  
They hold their iron over their fire and try to carve their noise into my love,
scored by the violence of voices, dark and lurid,  
but not burned.  
I want a man in my bed.  
When I wake up in an earthquake
I want to be held through the aftershocks.  
I like men,
the waves come in and go out
but the ocean was part of my every day.  
I don’t mind being fetishized in the ocean.  
I ran by the ocean every morning.  
I surfed in the ocean.  
I should’ve gone into the ocean that afternoon at Trestles,
holding my water jugs, kneeling at the edge.  














Morning

I want to fall asleep in the warm arms of a fireman.  
I want to wake up to the smell of coffee in my kitchen.  

Morning—the molten lava in the outer core of the earth embeds the iron from the inner core into the earth’s magnetic field.  
The magnetic field flips.  
The sun, so strong, where it gets through the trees it burns everything but the pine.  
The winds change direction.  
Storms cast lightening and rain.  
Iron conducts solar flares and the heavy wind.  
In that pine forest, I shudder every time I see a speck of light for fear of neon and fluorescents.  The eucalyptus cleanses congestion.  
And Kerouac’s stream ululates, crystal bowl sound baths.  
I follow the sound to the water.  
The stream ends at a bluff with a thin rocky beach below.  
The green water turns black not far from the shore.  
Before diving into the ocean, I eat globe mallow from the trees, stems and leaves, the viscous flesh, red, soft and nutty.  
I distill the pine from one of the tree’s bark and smudge the charcoal over my skin.  

Death, the palo santo’s lit, cleansing negative energy.  
It’s been so long since I’ve smelled a man, woodsmoke, citrus and tobacco.  
Jasmine, plum, lime and tuberose oil on the base of my neck comforts.  
Parabolic chambers heal, sound waves through water travel four times faster.  
The sound of the open sea recalibrates.  
I dissolve into the midnight blue of the ocean.  

I want to fall asleep in the warm arms of a fireman.  
I want to wake up to the smell of coffee in my kitchen.  
I want hot water with coconut oil when I get up.  
We’d lay out on the lawn, surrounded by high trees that block the wind.  
Embers flying through the air won’t land in my yard, on my grass, or near my trees.  





Blue Paper

Haze scatters blue light on a planet.  
Frought women, livid, made into peonies by Aphrodites that caught their men flirting and blamed the women, flushed red.
and blamed the women, flushed red.
Frought women, livid, chrysanthemums, dimmed until the end of the season, exchanged and retained like property.  
Blue women enter along the sides of her red Torii gates, belayed, branded and belled, a plangent sound.  
By candles, colored lights and dried flowers she’s sitting inside on a concrete floor, punctures and ruin burnished with paper, making burnt lime from lime mortar.  
Glass ***** on the ceiling, she moves the beads of a Palestinian glass bead bracelet she holds in her hands.  
She bends light to make shadows against  thin wooden slats curbed along the wall, and straight across the ceiling.
A metier, she makes tinctures, juniper berries and cotton *****.
Loamy soil in the center of the room,
A hawthorn tree stands alone,
A gateway for fairies.
large stones at the base protecting,
It’s branches a barrier.  
It’s leaves and shoots make bread and cheese.
It’s berries, red skin and yellow flesh, make jam.
Green bamboo stakes for the peonies when they whither from the weight of their petals.
And lime in the soil.  
She adds wood chips to the burnt lime in the kiln,
Unrolled paper, spools, and wire hanging.
Wood prayer beads connect her to the earth,
The tassels on the end of the beads connect her to spirit, to higher truth.
Minerals, marine mud and warm basins of seawater on a flower covered desk.  
She adds slaked lime to the burnt lime and wood chips.  
The lime converts to paper,
Trauma victims speak,
Light through butterfly wings.  
She’s plumeria with curved petals, thick, holding water
This is what I have written of my book.  I’ll be changing where the poems with the historical research go.  There are four more of those and nine of the other poems.
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret,Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)
This year has had plethora of public worries in Africa over broken English among the young people and school children. It first started in the mid of the last months  in Nigeria, when the Nigerian government officials displayed public worry over the dying English and the strongly emerging slang known as pidgin English in Nigerian public offices and learning institutions. The same situation has also been encountered in Kenya, when in march 2014, Proffessor Jacob Kaimenyi, the minister of education otherwise known as cabinet secretary of education declared upsurge of broken English among high school students and university students a national disaster. However, the minister was making this announcement while speaking in broken English, with heavy mother tongue interference and insouciant execution of defective syntax redolent of a certain strong African linguistic sub-cultural disposition.
There is a more strong linguistic case of broken English in South Africa, which even crystallized into an accepted national language known as Afrikaans. But this South African case did not cause any brouhaha in the media nor attract international concern because the people who were breaking the English were Europeans of non British descend, but not Africans. Thus Afrikaans is not slang like the Kenyan sheng and the Nigerian pidgin or the Liberian krio, but instead is an acceptable European language spoken by Europeans in the diaspora. As of today, the there are books, bibles and software as well as dictionaries written in Afrikaans. This is a moot situation that Europeans have a cultural leeway to break a European language. May be this is a cultural reserve not available to African speakers of any European language. I can similarly enjoy some support from those of you who have ever gone to Germany, am sure you saw how Germans dealt with English as non serious language, treating it like a dialect. No German speaks grammatically correct English. And to my surprise they are not worried.
The point is that Africans must not and should never be worried of a dying colonialism like in this case the conventional experience of unstoppable death of British English language in Africa. Let the United Kingdom itself struggle to keep its culture relevant in the global quarters. But not African governments to worry over standard of English language. This is not cultural duty of Africa. Correct concerns would have been about the best ways and means of giving African indigenous languages universal recognition in the sense of global cultural presence. African languages like Kiswahili, Zulu, Yoruba, Mandiko, Gikuyu, Luhya, Luganda, Dholuo, Chaka and very many others deserve political support locally as well as internationally because they are vehicles that carry African culture and civilization.
I personally as an African am very shy to speak to another fellow African in English or even to any person who is not British. I find it more dignifying to speak any local language even if it is broken or if the worst comes to the worst, then I can use slang, like blend of broken English and the local language. To me this is linguistic indicators of having a decolonized mind. It is also my hypothesis that the young people who are speaking broken English in African schools and institutions are merely cultural overtures of Africans extricating themselves from imperial ploys of linguistic Darwinism.
There is no any research finding which shows that Africans cannot develop unless they speak English of grammatical standards like those of the United Kingdom and North America. If anything; letting of English to thrive as a lingua franca in Africa, will only make the western world to derive economic benefits out of this but not Africa to benefit. Let Africans cherish their culture like the way the Japanese and the Chinese have done, then other things will follow.
Victor D López Dec 2018
You were born five years before the Spanish Civil War that would see your father exiled.
Language came later to you than your little brother Manuel. And you stuttered for a time.
Unlike those who speak incessantly with nothing to say, you were quiet and reserved.
Your mother mistook shyness for dimness, a tragic mistake that scarred you for life.

When your brother Manuel died at the age of three from meningitis, you heard your mom
Exclaim: “God took my bright boy and left me the dull one.” You were four or five.
You never forgot those words. How could you? Yet you loved your mom with all your heart.
But you also withdrew further into a shell, solitude your companion and best friend.

You were, in fact, an exceptional child. Stuttering went away at five or so never to return,
And by the time you were in middle school, your teacher called your mom in for a rare
Conference and told her that yours was a gifted mind, and that you should be prepared
For university study in the sciences, particularly engineering.

She wrote your father exiled in Argentina to tell him the good news, that your teachers
Believed you would easily gain entrance to the (then and now) highly selective public university
Where seats were few, prized and very difficult to attain based on merit-based competitive
Exams. Your father’s response? “Buy him a couple of oxen and let him plow the fields.”

That reply from a highly respected man who was a big fish in a tiny pond in his native Oleiros
Of the time is beyond comprehension. He had apparently opted to preserve his own self-
Interest in having his son continue his family business and also work the family lands in his
Absence. That scar too was added to those that would never heal in your pure, huge heart.

Left with no support for living expenses for college (all it would have required), you moved on,
Disappointed and hurt, but not angry or bitter; you would simply find another way.
You took the competitive exams for the two local military training schools that would provide
An excellent vocational education and pay you a small salary in exchange for military service.

Of hundreds of applicants for the prized few seats in each of the two institutions, you
Scored first for the toughest of the two and thirteenth for the second. You had your pick.
You chose Fabrica de Armas, the lesser of the two, so that a classmate who had scored just
Below the cut-off at the better school could be admitted. That was you. Always and forever.

At the military school, you were finally in your element. You were to become a world-class
Machinist there—a profession that would have gotten you well paid work anywhere on earth
For as long as you wanted it. You were truly a mechanical genius who years later would add
Electronics, auto mechanics and specialized welding to his toolkit through formal training.

Given a well-stocked machine shop, you could reverse engineer every machine without
Blueprints and build a duplicate machine shop. You became a gifted master mechanic
And worked in line and supervisory positions at a handful of companies throughout your life in
Argentina and in the U.S., including Westinghouse, Warner-Lambert, and Pepsi Co.

You loved learning, especially in your fields (electronics, mechanics, welding) and expected
Perfection in everything you did. Every difficult job at work was given to you everywhere you
Worked. You would not sleep at night when a problem needed solving. You’d sketch
And calculate and re-sketch solutions and worked even in your dreams with singular passion.

You were more than a match for the academic and physical rigors of military school,
But life was difficult for you in the Franco era when some instructors would
Deprecatingly refer to you as “Roxo”—Galician for “red”-- reflecting your father’s
Support for the failed Republic. Eventually, the abuse was too much for you to bear.

Once while standing at attention in a corridor with the other cadets waiting for
Roll call, you were repeatedly poked in the back surreptitiously. Moving would cause
Demerits and demerits could cause loss of points on your final grade and arrest for
Successive weekends. You took it awhile, then lost your temper.

You turned to the cadet behind you and in a fluid motion grabbed him by his buttoned jacket
And one-handedly hung him up on a hook above a window where you were standing in line.
He thrashed about, hanging by the back of his jacket, until he was brought down by irate Military instructors.
You got weekend arrest for many weeks and a 10% final grade reduction.

A similar fate befell a co-worker a few years later in Buenos Aires who called you a
*******. You lifted him one handed by his throat and held him there until
Your co-workers intervened, forcibly persuading you to put him down.
That lesson was learned by all in no uncertain terms: Leave Felipe’s mom alone.

You were incredibly strong, especially in your youth—no doubt in part because of rigorous farm
Work, military school training and competitive sports. As a teenager, you once unwisely bent
Down to pick something up in view of a ram, presenting the animal an irresistible target.
It butted you and sent you flying into a haystack. It, too, quickly learned its lesson.

You dusted yourself off, charged the ram, grabbed it by the horns and twirled it around once,
Throwing it atop the same haystack as it had you. The animal was unhurt, but learned to
Give you a wide berth from that day forward. Overall, you were very slow to anger absent
Head-butting, repeated pokings, or disrespectful references to your mom by anyone.    

I seldom saw you angry and it was mom, not you, who was the disciplinarian, slipper in hand.
There were very few slaps from you for me. Mom would smack my behind with a slipper often
When I was little, mostly because I could be a real pain, wanting to know/try/do everything
Completely oblivious to the meaning of the word “no” or of my own limitations.

Mom would sometimes insist you give me a proper beating. On one such occasion for a
Forgotten transgression when I was nine, you  took me to your bedroom, took off your belt, sat
Me next to you and whipped your own arm and hand a few times, whispering to me “cry”,
Which I was happy to do unbidden. “Don’t tell mom.” I did not. No doubt she knew.

The prospect of serving in a military that considered you a traitor by blood became harder and
Harder to bear, and in the third year of school, one year prior to graduation, you left to join
Your exiled father in Argentina, to start a new life. You left behind a mother and two sisters you
Dearly loved to try your fortune in a new land. Your dog thereafter refused food, dying of grief.

You arrived in Buenos Aires to see a father you had not seen for ten years at the age of 17.
You were too young to work legally, but looked older than your years (a shared trait),
So you lied about your age and immediately found work as a Machinist/Mechanic first grade.
That was unheard of and brought you some jealousy and complaints in the union shop.

The union complained to the general manager about your top-salary and rank. He answered,
“I’ll give the same rank and salary to anyone in the company who can do what Felipe can do.”
No doubt the jealousy and grumblings continued by some for a time. But there were no takers.
And you soon won the group over, becoming their protected “baby-brother” mascot.

Your dad left for Spain within a year or so of your arrival when Franco issued a general pardon
To all dissidents who had not spilt blood (e.g., non combatants). He wanted you to return to
Help him reclaim the family business taken over by your mom in his absence with your help.
But you refused to give up the high salary, respect and independence denied you at home.

You were perhaps 18 and alone, living in a single room by a schoolhouse you had shared with Your dad.
But you had also found a new loving family in your uncle José, one of your father’s Brothers, and his family. José, and one of his daughters, Nieves and her
Husband, Emilio, and
Their children, Susana, Oscar (Ruben Gordé), and Osvaldo, became your new nuclear family.

You married mom in 1955 and had two failed business ventures in the quickly fading
Post-WW II Argentina of the late 1950s and early 1960s.The first, a machine shop, left
You with a small fortune in unpaid government contract work.  The second, a grocery store,
Also failed due to hyperinflation and credit extended too easily to needy customers.

Throughout this, you continued earning an exceptionally good salary. But in the mid 1960’s,
Nearly all of it went to pay back creditors of the failed grocery store. We had some really hard
Times. Someday I’ll write about that in some detail. Mom went to work as a maid, including for
Wealthy friends, and you left home at 4:00 a.m. to return long after dark to pay the bills.


The only luxury you and mom retained was my Catholic school tuition. There was no other
Extravagance. Not paying bills was never an option for you or mom. It never entered your
Minds. It was not a matter of law or pride, but a matter of honor. There were at least three very
Lean years where you and mom worked hard, earned well but we were truly poor.

You and mom took great pains to hide this from me—and suffered great privations to insulate
Me as best you could from the fallout of a shattered economy and your refusal to cut your loses
Had done to your life savings and to our once-comfortable middle-class life.
We came to the U.S. in the late 1960s after waiting for more than three years for visas—to a new land of hope.

Your sister and brother-in-law, Marisa and Manuel, made their own sacrifices to help bring us
Here. You had about $1,000 from the down payment on our tiny down-sized house, And
Mom’s pawned jewelry. (Hyperinflation and expenses ate up the remaining mortgage payments
Due). Other prized possessions were left in a trunk until you could reclaim them. You never did.

Even the airline tickets were paid for by Marisa and Manuel. You insisted upon arriving on
Written terms for repayment including interest. You were hired on the spot on your first
Interview as a mechanic, First Grade, despite not speaking a word of English. Two months later,
The debt was repaid, mom was working too and we moved into our first apartment.

You worked long hours, including Saturdays and daily overtime, to remake a nest egg.
Declining health forced you to retire at 63 and shortly thereafter you and mom moved out of
Queens into Orange County. You bought a townhouse two hours from my permanent residence
Upstate NY and for the next decade were happy, traveling with friends and visiting us often.

Then things started to change. Heart issues (two pacemakers), colon cancer, melanoma,
Liver and kidney disease caused by your many medications, high blood pressure, gout,
Gall bladder surgery, diabetes . . . . And still you moved forward, like the Energizer Bunny,
Patched up, battered, scarred, bruised but unstoppable and unflappable.

Then mom started to show signs of memory loss along with her other health issues. She was
Good at hiding her own ailments, and we noticed much later than we should have that there
Was a serious problem. Two years ago, her dementia worsening but still functional, she had
Gall bladder surgery with complications that required four separate surgeries in three months.

She never recovered and had to be placed in a nursing home. Several, in fact, as at first she
Refused food and you and I refused to simply let her waste away, which might have been
Kinder, but for the fact that “mientras hay vida, hay esperanza” as Spaniards say.
(While there is Life there is hope.) There is nothing beyond the power of God. Miracles do happen.

For two years you lived alone, refusing outside help, engendering numerous arguments about
Having someone go by a few times a week to help clean, cook, do chores. You were nothing if
Not stubborn (yet another shared trait). The last argument on the subject about two weeks ago
Ended in your crying. You’d accept no outside help until mom returned home. Period.

You were in great pain because of bulging discs in your spine and walked with one of those
Rolling seats with handlebars that mom and I picked out for you some years ago. You’d sit
As needed when the pain was too much, then continue with very little by way of complaints.
Ten days ago you finally agreed that you needed to get to the hospital to drain abdominal fluid.

Your failing liver produced it and it swelled your abdomen and lower extremities to the point
Where putting on shoes or clothing was very difficult, as was breathing. You called me from a
Local store crying that you could not find pants that would fit you. We talked, long distance,
And I calmed you down, as always, not allowing you to wallow in self pity but trying to help.

You went home and found a new pair of stretch pants Alice and I had bought you and you were
Happy. You had two changes of clothes that still fit to take to the hospital. No sweat, all was
Well. The procedure was not dangerous and you’d undergone it several times in recent years.
It would require a couple of days at the hospital and I’d see you again on the weekend.

I could not be with you on Monday, February 22 when you had to go to the hospital, as I nearly
Always had, because of work. You were supposed to be admitted the previous Friday, but
Doctors have days off too, and yours could not see you until Monday when I could not get off
Work. But you were not concerned; this was just routine. You’d be fine. I’d see you in just days.

We’d go see mom Friday, when you’d be much lighter and feel much better. Perhaps we’d go
Shopping for clothes if the procedure still left you too bloated for your usual clothes.
You drove to your doctor and then transported by ambulette. I was concerned, but not too Worried.
You called me sometime between five or six p.m. to tell me you were fine, resting.

“Don’t worry. I’m safe here and well cared for.” We talked for a little while about the usual
Things, with my assuring you I’d see you Friday or Saturday. You were tired and wanted to sleep
And I told you to call me if you woke up later that night or I’d speak to you the following day.
Around 10:00 p.m. I got a call from your cell and answered in the usual upbeat manner.

“Hey, Papi.” On the other side was a nurse telling me my dad had fallen. I assured her she was
Mistaken, as my dad was there for a routine procedure to drain abdominal fluid. “You don’t
Understand. He fell from his bed and struck his head on a nightstand or something
And his heart has stopped. We’re working on him for 20 minutes and it does not look good.”

“Can you get here?” I could not. I had had two or three glasses of wine shortly before the call
With dinner. I could not drive the three hours to Middletown. I cried. I prayed.
Fifteen minutes Later I got the call that you were gone. Lost in grief, not knowing what to do, I called my wife.
Shortly thereafter came a call from the coroner. An autopsy was required. I could not see you.

Four days later your body was finally released to the funeral director I had selected for his
Experience with the process of interment in Spain. I saw you for the last time to identify
Your body. I kissed my fingers and touched your mangled brow. I could not even have the
Comfort of an open casket viewing. You wanted cremation. You body awaits it as I write this.

You were alone, even in death alone. In the hospital as strangers worked on you. In the medical
Examiner’s office as you awaited the autopsy. In the autopsy table as they poked and prodded
And further rent your flesh looking for irrelevant clues that would change nothing and benefit
No one, least of all you. I could not be with you for days, and then only for a painful moment.

We will have a memorial service next Friday with your ashes and a mass on Saturday. I will
Never again see you in this life. Alice and I will take you home to your home town, to the
Cemetery in Oleiros, La Coruña, Spain this summer. There you will await the love of your life.
Who will join you in the fullness of time. She could not understand my tears or your passing.

There is one blessing to dementia. She asks for her mom, and says she is worried because she
Has not come to visit in some time. She is coming, she assures me whenever I see her.
You visited her every day except when health absolutely prevented it. You spent this February 10
Apart, your 61st wedding anniversary, too sick to visit her. Nor was I there. First time.

I hope you did not realize you were apart on the 10th but doubt it to be the case. I
Did not mention it, hoping you’d forgotten, and neither did you. You were my link to mom.
She cannot dial or answer a phone, so you would put your cell phone to her ear whenever I
Was not in class or meetings and could speak to her. She always recognized me by phone.

I am three hours from her. I could visit at most once or twice a month. Now even that phone
Lifeline is severed. Mom is completely alone, afraid, confused, and I cannot in the short term at
Least do much about that. You were not supposed to die first. It was my greatest fear, and
Yours, but as with so many things that we cannot change I put it in the back of my mind.

It kept me up many nights, but, like you, I still believed—and believe—in miracles.
I would speak every night with my you, often for an hour, on the way home from work late at
Night during my hour-long commute, or from home on days I worked from home as I cooked
Dinner. I mostly let you talk, trying to give you what comfort and social outlet I could.

You were lonely, sad, stuck in an endless cycle of emotional and physical pain.
Lately you were especially reticent to get off the phone. When mom was home and still
Relatively well, I’d call every day too but usually spoke to you only a few minutes and you’d
Transfer the phone to mom, with whom I usually chatted much longer.

For months, you’d had difficulty hanging up. I knew you did not want to go back to the couch,
To a meaningless TV program, or to writing more bills. You’d say good-bye, or “enough for
Today” and immediately begin a new thread, then repeat the cycle, sometimes five or six times.
You even told me, at least once crying recently, “Just hang up on me or I’ll just keep talking.”

I loved you, dad, with all my heart. We argued, and I’d often scream at you in frustration,
Knowing you would never take it to heart and would usually just ignore me and do as
You pleased. I knew how desperately you needed me, and I tried to be as patient as I could.
But there were days when I was just too tired, too frustrated, too full of other problems.

There were days when I got frustrated with you just staying on the phone for an hour when I
Needed to call Alice, to eat my cold dinner, or even to watch a favorite program. I felt guilty
And very seldom cut a conversation short, but I was frustrated nonetheless even knowing
How much you needed me and also how much I needed you, and how little you asked of me.  

How I would love to hear your voice again, even if you wanted to complain about the same old
Things or tell me in minutest detail some unimportant aspect of your day. I thought I would
Have you at least a little longer. A year? Two? God only knew, and I could hope. There would be
Time. I had so much more to share with you, so much more to learn when life eased up a bit.

You taught me to fish (it did not take) and to hunt (that took even less) and much of what I
Know about mechanics, and electronics. We worked on our cars together for years—from brake
Jobs, to mufflers, to real tune-ups in the days when points, condensers, and timing lights had Meaning, to rebuilding carburetors and fixing rust and dents, and power windows and more.

We were friends, good friends, who went on Sunday drives to favorite restaurants or shopping
For tools when I was single and lived at home. You taught me everything in life that I need to
Know about all the things that matter. The rest is meaningless paper and window dressing.
I knew all your few faults and your many colossal strengths and knew you to be the better man.

Not even close. I could never do what you did. I could never excel in my fields as you did in
Yours.  You were the real deal in every way, from every angle, throughout your life. I did not
Always treat you that way. But I loved you very deeply as anyone who knew us knows.
More importantly, you knew it. I told you often, unembarrassed in the telling. I love you, Dad.

The world was enriched by your journey. You do not leave behind wealth, or a body or work to
Outlive you. You never had your fifteen minutes in the sun. But you mattered. God knows your
Virtue, your absolute integrity, and the purity of your heart. I will never know a better man.
I will love you and miss you and carry you in my heart every day of my life. God bless you, dad.
You can hear all six of my Unsung Heroes poems read by me in my podcasts at https://open.spotify.com/show/1zgnkuAIVJaQ0Gb6pOfQOH. (plus much more of my fiction, non-fiction and poetry in English and Spanish)
PIRO  May 2018
This is Nigeria
PIRO May 2018
This is Nigeria

This is Nigeria; presidency turns sick leave.  

This is Nigeria; one-sided democracy.  

Double standard constitution, everything is dazy.

This is Nigeria; police bus be calling crowd.

Enter and become cowed.  


This is Nigeria; best graduating student gets a thousand naira.

This is Nigeria; I hope we can differentiate between private and public institutions.

Lackadaisical attitudes everywhere, except religion institutions.

This is Nigeria; over a year strike in our foremost sector but it's  a norm.

Corruption; a living form.


This is Nigeria; education is dull.

This is Nigeria; economy problem is solved by increased school fees.

Such government still gets a second term. Madness; it's our liss.

This is Nigeria; lot of resources but we still pray for light.

Food, security and rights.


This is Nigeria; lecturers give grades anyhow.

This is Nigeria; Animal is swallowing money.

In a government with the main aim of fighting corruption, it's funny.

This is Nigeria; politicians changing parties.

Playing with our lives like they're *******.


Peter Oyebanji (PIRO)
#ThisIsNigeria
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
the Islam of Malcolm X isn't the Islam of today... it isn't really the prescription of Nietzsche had before the Heraclitus flux took sway and said: waterfall or lottery... it really, really, really doesn't matter. the Islam of the 1960s isn't the Islam of today... too tinged with Sieg Heil... although less the Ave Caesar salute and more akin to: who's up for ****, *******? the Islam has changed... if i was wise enough i'd have converted, to mind you... but i thought: putting my faith by only having a library of only one book... i thought... n'ah... that's a bit extreme, can i at least have a comic book strip to add to that massive library? no? oh well, no, sorry, at least one book mentions several authors who tried to imitate but failed on the last hurdle, at least i can revise that, and completely erase the two extensions that borrowed from Hinduism; 'cos' like it ******* mattered.. don't test me, i'm anticipating death like  suicide-vest child... come on! let's start the Slavic crusade!

perhaps it's not about not thinking certain thoughts,
or feeling certain emotions...
but perhaps it just is...
i say, we need the Sophists these days to
apply the fishing-net tactic to deciphering or
simply selectively reflecting our vocabularies...
strait-jacket vocabularies are there in plain sight...
i mean... wait a minute...
i jumped from jazz into pop music on the headphones,
from Miles Davis' *kind of blue
defining
moment of the flamenco sketches right into the bog
of one direction - so i guess this is where
the antidote for art being too subjective comes in...
well, they sorted that problem already...
objectivity in art is around us as we speak,
it means "artists" that are manufactured,
art in the age of mechanical reproduction
(Walter Benjamin), it means more props than artists,
the problem got solved, it means reaching an
autocratic plateau of plugging in and sharing
a non-individualistic stream of emotion,
the opposite of democracy is autocracy, it isn't
despotism... i don't know why democracy doesn't
understand that it's ugly sister (autocracy)
is the enemy and not a Genghis Khan style of government...
democracy in the form of autocracy is a failed
attempt at Utopia... it suggests the system is perfect...
it means the institutions go about their daily business
like children in the playground who ******* and wet
themselves (the bankers), and still not one does anything
about it... what was once a demo tape of a indie band
becomes an automatic big seller big grosser E.P.,
just because the tragedy came, and they drove the touring
bus off a bridge in Sveeden... *******...
you ain't fighting dictators, you're fighting your change
from democracy into autocracy... where things
seem so perfect they can hardly ever change,
they're automated, they're not demographically sound...
sure, i'm the clown, i'll juggle a few big words around...
but in term of art? well, pop music has reached
the limit of what "philosophers" argued against...
to be frank... jealousy got to them that argued
for counter-productive constraints...
now they rebel against this objective construct of
artists in the shadows, writing text and tune and needing
some amateur to perform... and where do you
seek their rebellion? in the subjectivity they once
argued against: that famous Rage Against the Machine
protest against the X-factor...
so wait, first you argue against the subjectivity
of the artistic expression, then you postulate the non-existence
of the self: countered as the dasein for all subjectivity,
then you miss artistic objectivity with the karaoke
and what comes as the **** utopia with French
euthanasia tourists in Switzerland and Belgium...
you missed the argument you favoured, i.e.
artistic objectivity, i.e. performers, not people who write
the hit singles, Hiroshima Karaoke,
well, aren't we all objective now, that we have to source
our feelings in the expressions we once made angst against?
odd, isn't it? you never knew how well established
the counter argument became...
it's pop culture, it's evidently going to become viral...
but you see the power of subjective art...
it spreads like an infection, no point arguing against it...
objectivity in art is already a well established
virus, it doesn't really bite into your soul,
it bites, but you just get the odd body chicken ****...
that's what i mean about how a self-assured-without-a-self
democracy morphs into autocracy...
the fake Utopia of the well-established social
institutions actually being bankrupt, starting
with the post-colonial charity companies,
lying sharks and interest rates at 2000% per annum
i'm starting to think of Islam... leeches and hypocrites...
so your pointless critique of the subjectivity of the arts
became your most sling-shot friction strained weapon
to aim at the industry of art objectified,
in the age of mechanical reproduction true art = dodo...
it's on its way out... i hardly think that
50 years from now you'll find someone as idiotic
as me writing poetry for the love of the **** thing...
you'll get Utopian plateaus, anaesthetic democracy in
the realm of humanism, and hanging over you
autocracy... immovable foundations, cos' everything's
just perfect, time to invade another Libya where
some genius ensured the people knew their place
and who kept order on the pretence of
keeping weapons of mass destruction and
dog leashes... but there you will be ****-strapped going
huh? i thought subjectivity in art was bad?
n'ah mate, that's the only thing that made art good...
you got your ******* Karaoke, live with it!
the English Renaissance of the 1960s ain't coming back,
even if you gave Belfast back to the Dublin crew...
i say we need another Protagoras to get
the vocabulary inflation up to speed...
i say devalue the words self, ego... and make the
psychologists bums..
i say devalue the words nation, british and hamburger
to make the anglophile influence on Europe
a bit like sniffing a mortar of ******* off a penny...
i say reestablish the virtues of Japanese feudalism,
scare depressed teenagers with the words:
your only way out is by Hara Kiri.
something must come from a poem like this...
i have rage... you reason with it...
i'm not going to reason a calm into my heart with the words
i just wrote... n'ah... n'ah n'ah... that ain't happening...
it only took one needle in a haystack to give me prompt...
the ailments of subjectivity in art...
that got me, bull's eye reddened mad...
you ain't turning me into Darwinian grey matter!
this is democracy at its most despotic...
let me try democracy first, before i join the legion of dentists
with happy middle-class lives in autocracy...
can't blame ****** in this guise of organising people,
'cos' there just ain't no ******...
that got me hot wired and hired to argue...
first they say: art deserves no subjectivity...
fair enough: 1 man draws a rhombus a 1000 men draw a square...
but now that we can finally see objectivity being applied
to art, we only get pop: **** jazz, classical, rock and speedy-indie...
we get manufacture... as you once hated those with
personal intention to add to the democratic demographic,
now you turn against them for disturbing the status quo...
well, happy are those that come to the sun's repeat jargon
and happily doubt the roundabout...
because criticising art as subjectively orientated
really spared you art having ascribed objectivity to its cause
of attaining mechanical reproduction,
and the subjective placebo... neither thinking nor feeling
anything deeper than nervous yoga twitching dances...
spare me the ******* details if you come up with
a more accurate historical pinpoint.
W. H. Auden  Jun 2009
The Quest
I. The Door

Out of it steps our future, through this door
Enigmas, executioners and rules,
Her Majesty in a bad temper or
A red-nosed Fool who makes a fool of fools.

Great persons eye it in the twilight for
A past it might so carelessly let in,
A widow with a missionary grin,
The foaming inundation at a roar.

We pile our all against it when afraid,
And beat upon its panels when we die:
By happening to be open once, it made

Enormous Alice see a wonderland
That waited for her in the sunshine and,
Simply by being tiny, made her cry.

II. The Preparations

All had been ordered weeks before the start
From the best firms at such work: instruments
To take the measure of all queer events,
And drugs to move the bowels or the heart.

A watch, of course, to watch impatience fly,
Lamps for the dark and shades against the sun;
Foreboding, too, insisted on a gun,
And coloured beads to soothe a savage eye.

In theory they were sound on Expectation,
Had there been situations to be in;
Unluckily they were their situation:

One should not give a poisoner medicine,
A conjurer fine apparatus, nor
A rifle to a melancholic bore.

III. The Crossroads

Two friends who met here and embraced are gone,
Each to his own mistake; one flashes on
To fame and ruin in a rowdy lie,
A village torpor holds the other one,
Some local wrong where it takes time to die:
This empty junction glitters in the sun.

So at all quays and crossroads: who can tell
These places of decision and farewell
To what dishonour all adventure leads,
What parting gift could give that friend protection,
So orientated his vocation needs
The Bad Lands and the sinister direction?

All landscapes and all weathers freeze with fear,
But none have ever thought, the legends say,
The time allowed made it impossible;
For even the most pessimistic set
The limit of their errors at a year.
What friends could there be left then to betray,
What joy take longer to atone for; yet
Who could complete without the extra day
The journey that should take no time at all?

IV. The Traveler

No window in his suburb lights that bedroom where
A little fever heard large afternoons at play:
His meadows multiply; that mill, though, is not there
Which went on grinding at the back of love all day.

Nor all his weeping ways through weary wastes have found
The castle where his Greater Hallows are interned;
For broken bridges halt him, and dark thickets round
Some ruin where an evil heritage was burned.

Could he forget a child's ambition to be old
And institutions where it learned to wash and lie,
He'd tell the truth for which he thinks himself too young,

That everywhere on his horizon, all the sky,
Is now, as always, only waiting to be told
To be his father's house and speak his mother tongue.

V. The City

In villages from which their childhoods came
Seeking Necessity, they had been taught
Necessity by nature is the same
No matter how or by whom it be sought.

The city, though, assumed no such belief,
But welcomed each as if he came alone,
The nature of Necessity like grief
Exactly corresponding to his own.

And offered them so many, every one
Found some temptation fit to govern him,
And settled down to master the whole craft

Of being nobody; sat in the sun
During the lunch-hour round the fountain rim,
And watched the country kids arrive, and laughed.

VI. The First Temptation

Ashamed to be the darling of his grief,
He joined a gang of rowdy stories where
His gift for magic quickly made him chief
Of all these boyish powers of the air;

Who turned his hungers into Roman food,
The town's asymmetry into a park;
All hours took taxis; any solitude
Became his flattered duchess in the dark.

But, if he wished for anything less grand,
The nights came padding after him like wild
Beasts that meant harm, and all the doors cried Thief;

And when Truth had met him and put out her hand,
He clung in panic to his tall belief
And shrank away like an ill-treated child.

VII. The Second Temptation

His library annoyed him with its look
Of calm belief in being really there;
He threw away a rival's boring book,
And clattered panting up the spiral stair.

Swaying upon the parapet he cried:
"O Uncreated Nothing, set me free,
Now let Thy perfect be identified,
Unending passion of the Night, with Thee."

And his long-suffering flesh, that all the time
Had felt the simple cravings of the stone
And hoped to be rewarded for her climb,

Took it to be a promise when he spoke
That now at last she would be left alone,
And plunged into the college quad, and broke.

VIII. The Third Temptation

He watched with all his organs of concern
How princes walk, what wives and children say,
Re-opened old graves in his heart to learn
What laws the dead had died to disobey,

And came reluctantly to his conclusion:
"All the arm-chair philosophies are false;
To love another adds to the confusion;
The song of mercy is the Devil's Waltz."

All that he put his hand to prospered so
That soon he was the very King of creatures,
Yet, in an autumn nightmare trembled, for,

Approaching down a ruined corridor,
Strode someone with his own distorted features
Who wept, and grew enormous, and cried Woe.

IX. The Tower

This is an architecture for the old;
Thus heaven was attacked by the afraid,
So once, unconsciously, a ****** made
Her maidenhead conspicuous to a god.

Here on dark nights while worlds of triumph sleep
Lost Love in abstract speculation burns,
And exiled Will to politics returns
In epic verse that makes its traitors weep.

Yet many come to wish their tower a well;
For those who dread to drown, of thirst may die,
Those who see all become invisible:

Here great magicians, caught in their own spell,
Long for a natural climate as they sigh
"Beware of Magic" to the passer-by.

X. The Presumptuous

They noticed that virginity was needed
To trap the unicorn in every case,
But not that, of those virgins who succeeded,
A high percentage had an ugly face.

The hero was as daring as they thought him,
But his peculiar boyhood missed them all;
The angel of a broken leg had taught him
The right precautions to avoid a fall.

So in presumption they set forth alone
On what, for them, was not compulsory,
And stuck half-way to settle in some cave
With desert lions to domesticity,

Or turned aside to be absurdly brave,
And met the ogre and were turned to stone.

XI. The Average

His peasant parents killed themselves with toil
To let their darling leave a stingy soil
For any of those fine professions which
Encourage shallow breathing, and grow rich.

The pressure of their fond ambition made
Their shy and country-loving child afraid
No sensible career was good enough,
Only a hero could deserve such love.

So here he was without maps or supplies,
A hundred miles from any decent town;
The desert glared into his blood-shot eyes,
The silence roared displeasure:
looking down,
He saw the shadow of an Average Man
Attempting the exceptional, and ran.

XII. Vocation

Incredulous, he stared at the amused
Official writing down his name among
Those whose request to suffer was refused.

The pen ceased scratching: though he came too late
To join the martyrs, there was still a place
Among the tempters for a caustic tongue

To test the resolution of the young
With tales of the small failings of the great,
And shame the eager with ironic praise.

Though mirrors might be hateful for a while,
Women and books would teach his middle age
The fencing wit of an informal style,
To keep the silences at bay and cage
His pacing manias in a worldly smile.

XIII. The Useful

The over-logical fell for the witch
Whose argument converted him to stone,
Thieves rapidly absorbed the over-rich,
The over-popular went mad alone,
And kisses brutalised the over-male.

As agents their importance quickly ceased;
Yet, in proportion as they seemed to fail,
Their instrumental value was increased
For one predestined to attain their wish.

By standing stones the blind can feel their way,
Wild dogs compel the cowardly to fight,
Beggars assist the slow to travel light,
And even madmen manage to convey
Unwelcome truths in lonely gibberish.

XIV. The Way

Fresh addenda are published every day
To the encyclopedia of the Way,

Linguistic notes and scientific explanations,
And texts for schools with modernised spelling and illustrations.

Now everyone knows the hero must choose the old horse,
Abstain from liquor and ****** *******,

And look out for a stranded fish to be kind to:
Now everyone thinks he could find, had he a mind to,

The way through the waste to the chapel in the rock
For a vision of the Triple Rainbow or the Astral Clock,

Forgetting his information comes mostly from married men
Who liked fishing and a flutter on the horses now and then.

And how reliable can any truth be that is got
By observing oneself and then just inserting a Not?

XV. The Lucky

Suppose he'd listened to the erudite committee,
He would have only found where not to look;
Suppose his terrier when he whistled had obeyed,
It would not have unearthed the buried city;
Suppose he had dismissed the careless maid,
The cryptogram would not have fluttered from the book.

"It was not I," he cried as, healthy and astounded,
He stepped across a predecessor's skull;
"A nonsense jingle simply came into my head
And left the intellectual Sphinx dumbfounded;
I won the Queen because my hair was red;
The terrible adventure is a little dull."

Hence Failure's torment: "Was I doomed in any case,
Or would I not have failed had I believed in Grace?"

XVI. The Hero

He parried every question that they hurled:
"What did the Emperor tell you?" "Not to push."
"What is the greatest wonder of the world?"
"The bare man Nothing in the Beggar's Bush."

Some muttered: "He is cagey for effect.
A hero owes a duty to his fame.
He looks too like a grocer for respect."
Soon they slipped back into his Christian name.

The only difference that could be seen
From those who'd never risked their lives at all
Was his delight in details and routine:

For he was always glad to mow the grass,
Pour liquids from large bottles into small,
Or look at clouds through bits of coloured glass.

XVII. Adventure

Others had found it prudent to withdraw
Before official pressure was applied,
Embittered robbers outlawed by the Law,
Lepers in terror of the terrified.

But no one else accused these of a crime;
They did not look ill: old friends, overcome,
Stared as they rolled away from talk and time
Like marbles out into the blank and dumb.

The crowd clung all the closer to convention,
Sunshine and horses, for the sane know why
The even numbers should ignore the odd:

The Nameless is what no free people mention;
Successful men know better than to try
To see the face of their Absconded God.

XVIII. The Adventurers

Spinning upon their central thirst like tops,
They went the Negative Way towards the Dry;
By empty caves beneath an empty sky
They emptied out their memories like slops,

Which made a foul marsh as they dried to death,
Where monsters bred who forced them to forget
The lovelies their consent avoided; yet,
Still praising the Absurd with their last breath,

They seeded out into their miracles:
The images of each grotesque temptation
Became some painter's happiest inspiration,

And barren wives and burning virgins came
To drink the pure cold water of their wells,
And wish for beaux and children in their name.

XIX. The Waters

Poet, oracle, and wit
Like unsuccessful anglers by
The ponds of apperception sit,
Baiting with the wrong request
The vectors of their interest,
At nightfall tell the angler's lie.

With time in tempest everywhere,
To rafts of frail assumption cling
The saintly and the insincere;
Enraged phenomena bear down
In overwhelming waves to drown
Both sufferer and suffering.

The waters long to hear our question put
Which would release their longed-for answer, but.

**. The Garden

Within these gates all opening begins:
White shouts and flickers through its green and red,
Where children play at seven earnest sins
And dogs believe their tall conditions dead.

Here adolescence into number breaks
The perfect circle time can draw on stone,
And flesh forgives division as it makes
Another's moment of consent its own.

All journeys die here: wish and weight are lifted:
Where often round some old maid's desolation
Roses have flung their glory like a cloak,

The gaunt and great, the famed for conversation
Blushed in the stare of evening as they spoke
And felt their centre of volition shifted.

— The End —