i can't imagine a better maxim for a marriage:

   when both of you are young...
and... instead of being
these "star-crossed lovers" -

with a rubric
                  of the thwart(ing)...

to marry: when both are still in love with life...

                    from a nation-state into
the ***** of a diaspora...

what a fine word...
   the mass-influx of hyping around
the otherwise, fake:

       migrant workers...
like the current argument for
british sovereignty:
we will not have any of the bureaucracy
from Brussels...
but, we, will! have...
those romanian fruit & veg pickers!

it's hardly a joke:
more like a choke...
                    what's the difference between...
leaving one part of the country
for another: part of the same country...
and then... being daring enough...
to leave the country: thoroughly...
and have to learn a new language?

dual-citizenship...
go back? stay here?
hmm... i'm not really fond of speaking
or writing in ******...
the germans dissolved...
the russians too: dissolved...
i'm pretty sure that language can
remain intact... as it is...
under the law & justice party...
once they focus on the breeders
with tax-free incentives...

Chicago! what a fine diaspora hub
for the ****** "expatriates"...
good thing i never made it to
h'america: in stripes...

the friends of my youth...
most of then? crimminals...
        the nicknames we had for each
other:
i remember being taunted as being
an... "angol"... because my father wasn't
their father and wasn't part
of laying down the foundations
of "bones" for the dockland light railway...

i left a nation: still in its infancy...
and to its infancy i will drink!
but as a language: not a people...
not a geographic location...
a metaphysical manifestation:
if the word be a faustian signature...
yes, my lord... i see the pinching
itch of the natives squandering it...
like it should not have been...
a frederick hohenstaufen II experiment
in a nunnery on Sicily...
mute children... raised by nuns who didn't
speak: pretending...
to see... what language was genesis primo!

my allegiance is to the tongue...
it might allude to the fife and drums...
but dealing with the rascal
who deems...
that god save the queen be treated
with irreverence...
i'm not as daft and yobbish to glare
with a hydra giving birth to an extension
of its neck-load girth...

give me! the british grenadiers' fife & drum...
and i'll show you le marseillaise!
i have long ago pledge my allegience
to the tongue...
              
because? well... to be honest...
under all the supression from the...
(a) herr meisterstuck:
         the day:
        
        the prussians... "forgot"...
they were jumbled up with the lithuanians
as the last pagans of europe...
and then they decided: whatever it
was that they decided upon...

i hear some russian... i hear a down syndrome
person talk...
it's all lovely and sing-along...
but it's hardly by strict obligation
to the latin script... is it?
i have to nibble at pitty-worth jokes
to aid my...

diaspora: involuntary mass dispersion
of a population from its indigenous territories...
last time i checked...
i was born into a city famously known
for its practice in metallurgy...
i was the never-to-be grandson
of Die Krupp ambitions!
    i would leave my hometown and...
well... there was Warsaw...
or the... brain-drain train "elsewhere"...
from a nation into the grand...
vacuum of the diaspora...

except in england...
       the no. 303... most of which settled
in either Scotland or... Stratford-upon-Avon...
elsewhere... some other... "elsewhere"...

well...
   given that i have had had a choice...
ha ha! comma? sir?! that that?
      given that i have had - had a choice...
well... imagine... perhaps there's something
about Fwench... but i'm chosing sides...
it's not in Norwegian...
so... b'leh b'leh b'leh... b'leh...
                      
               i just have to borrow some german...
speaking this... hybrid saxon having
buggered enough afghanistan-esque brit druids...
the zeppelins were always dropping...
soap-bubbles...
          i tease oh god...
i tease... but this music is so... so...
oh so delight-ful!

                   die könig im gelb!

ah... to marry: when both are in love with life!
terrible affair: should... "life" somehow
matter: to disappear...
this love a suffocation for the best ****
they had in... ever...
and there's nothing of what life is concerned
with...
either children or... being infertile...
but to be in love with life...

the russians can't proclaim a diaspora...
then again: the "mafia"...
i've heard of an italian mob-esque...
      disposition... subsequent undercurrents
to boot...
an... irish mafia?
bothersome details...
         i still pledge my alliance to a Dickens
over a a Shakespeare...
because...
by chance... i might find some poetry
in the prosaic? by Shakespeare alone:
i'm... "expected".... aren't i?

bad news from York-and-the-shire...
Rotherham... and the... prefix ****-
   and the suffix -stani "debate"...
                   do you even know
how... let's not go there...
to term a bogus inconvenience of...

'what the hell is concerning you...
to fathom from cloud-9 a ****** notion of...
being out-bred?!'

an economic war... is a slow war...
it takes time...
it would take the amount of time...
to turn a once proud town focused on
metallurgy into rubble...
some stayed... some moved to warsaw...
some... played: a joker hand de facto...

i am: this... subtle... p.s. curiosity...
had i only come to breed...
rather than to otherwise...
nuance... allegiance...
zu die zunge?! alles!
             die menschen?
                     jeder seine haben!
             die schwach wind und der flagge?!
ist: die schwach wind: und der flagge: nein?

perhaps there's a stressor
of impetus in german that's not allowed
in english...

     ich bin hier für die sprache...
              
it must be translated... such it being:
oh such a wonderful... phrase...

   to marry... when both... are in love... with life...

zu heiraten... wenn beide...
                           sind im liebe... mit leben!

art-*******-and-funky-funky...
parsley-sage-rosemary-thym­e...
        what? thyme? there's a phi or a theta
to posit... instead...
you took the Dubliners' route of: paddy...
tad... and toink!
                'ucking scoundrels!

i will call... the greek-chinese ideogram...
I(ota) the key... and... "thereabouts"...
a keyhole of O(micron)...
it's an id: representation...

                 squashed: yes: 0... for better...
"graphics"...
    
to be young... and to share a half of both:
of being in love with life...

       Φ = the key enters the keyhole (I, O)...
    Θ = the key is turned... (Io)...
         Ψ = the door is opened...

        enough... Beijing "abstract" concerns...
for anyone?
       what's the abstract of rotation?
                                   oh... i guess: 'micron!

so much for abstracts as: only from boing-boing-xin...
some letter can qualify to be
apprehended in ideograms...
B - bossom or a fudge-yeast-byproduct
of a full ***...
              etc. or... Φ, Θ, Ψ...
       now by adding the brackets...
and time has a geography...
from the height of mythology...
to the depths of journalism...
that's... a vector:  (Φ, Θ, Ψ)...

     it's a key... a door... a keyhole...
                            an opening... n'est ce pas?!
hey! let's complicate it further
with: mr. squint... chop-sticks...
dragons... live vermin sushi...
    and counting dry grains of rice...

i'm not: Česlav Miloš...
to begin with... Czesław Miłosz was...
a Lithuanian...
because Copernicus wasn't ******...
"because and because"...
                     sides... all this talk of:
"allegiance"...
**** it... it's a cosmopolitan allegiance
to... the commonality of tongue...
shared to the point...
when... old fictions wrestle with me
and i'm confined to my own cubic...

for english is a language i can
entertain...
allow... yes... this parasite can erode
its host's cranium und...
                                  grauangelegenheit...
it was never... so imposing...
as a german tongue or a russian tongue...
therefore and thereby?
      an easily qualified tongue-donor
with the expanse of thought:
a complete and utter brain-drain on...

now...
there's a difference...
the english will not know it...

there's the nation... and there's the diaspora...
can the english... claim h'america...
or canada... or... australia...
as a nation-extension toward the confines
of a diaspora?
no... i don't think so...

that: quintessential inconvenience of
being merely: english...
   more prone to a local geography...
a devonshire... a derbyshire...
               someone of york...
  lost in new york...
                    a people with...
an imploded seance of diaspora...
    from the humble little island...
to: whatever fraction that was supposed
to make one impose on...

had i just been Irish... and "somehow"
forgotten my Gaelic...
or been that Welshman and no longer
with any Cymru...
well then...
but i come willing because...
      beside the mother and father...
the maternal grandmother and -father...
who will i speak my "native" and "mother"
tunge / zunge to?
          
i rather imagine marriage:
as when both of them are in love with life...
and in love that being said:
a little tale o' whittle england:
make it big in h'america...
        
         this... the most complete...
antithesis of a diaspora...
                    or rather: what lingua franca
was... and what l'inglese is...
and how: even if arabic tried...
and even if: mandarin would hope for...
well... hardly...
jackie chan kung fu and muhammad:
english is more popular than islam...
**** it up: camel jockey!
oh sure... they're "muslim"...
conflicting opinions... once:
speaking in english "arrives"...

                   i'm here: to turn up the volume...
because... i might as well have been
born in estonia... and speaking... estonian...
and never having left estonia...
been very much happy for the euro
and the... thumbling russians... somehow...
"retreating"...
well... if the russians are retreating...
they're: trying to revise being
an indo-european mongrel with...
accents of scandinavia concerning
the founding fathers of Kiev...
and them being russians:
what the hell do we do with the ukranians...
and the mongols that settled and became
tartars?!

yeah... the russians are on the retreat...
    this little island that... hopes for a diaspora...
instead... shuckles...
it has to settle for a h'american empire...
an australia... a new zealand...
ogh! mein! gott! no expatriate diaspora!
no tea with mussolini typo excursions!
mein gott! v'er vill youz goez?!

         zee f'ikkin moonz?! on a sputnik flarez?!
light up baboon *** numero uno:
then whisper among the fwench...

yes... very much brilliant...
         to be alive... and to marry so young...
and be helped: so young...
and not be thwarted...
   'coz crazy bunnies had the best ***...
great: to be alive, so young,
and married: and married to each other
and at the same time: having life marry you
to love it: to be together and married
to a love for life:
and... just... somehow...
having a co-dependent... of reciprocated
self-interests...

                            even in poland...
a soviety satellite...
with concrete chicken-shacks... ah yes:
that... "once upon a time"...
better the ******* state as my landlord
than some grubby liquorice ****** 3rd party:
libertarian "full dislocusre of mammon's
expression of par-tay"... sort of *******!
give me the state, the grey-suit and the gimps!

or? shackle me up for a stipend
working the sloughterhouse...
to boot... a house filled with 20 dobermans...
and 5 rottweilers...
i'll slaughter your cows... for the steak chops...
as long as i have the dogs to cuddle
and imagine myself doing the greater:
cosmic-karma-good...
the dogs... the harem of dogs...
no... women need excuses...
the dogs!

                 hell... a woman would require...
anniverseries... flowers... pinnace for a tsunami...
crumbs... what's a loaf of bread?
details... something to be minded as:
once being a plughole...
blah blah... hands for cushions...
        
              plus... women can't drink...
let her everything else: apart from the whiskey...
if she really wants to drink...
tell her to sober up on some Stendhal or
some Balzac... but don't let a woman
try to outcompete a man drinking...
she can drink...
but not... in that most... ugly: crab-feast
of... "detail"...

the english man... england...
h'america, australia... new zealand...
oh... wait... you were hoping for a diaspora...
weren't you?
yeah... clearly i didn't find an affair of
the imitation of greece...
took charge of the latin script...
inverted the mediterranean sea...

i speak your language: doesn't imply
i've shed the "ethno-nationalist" tattoos of "d.n.a."...
for a people to have made it bitter...
with the teutonic order over access to the baltic sea...
what's the baltic sea?
it's like the black sea...
the baltic sea is about as useful as...
well... the danes and the norwegians
held the toll and price of passing...
just like the turks or the byzantines held
the key of the bosphorus...
the baltic... is a "sea"...
just like the black sea is a "sea"...

did you know... there's a caspian sea?
yeah... it's a "sea"... more like... a lake would
be so much better...

the english could be akin to the arabs
from 200 years ago...
instead: sitting on a tonne of salt...
and waves...
and open horizons...
while the arabs sat on camel ****...
sand... and dinosaur juice...
and materialistic leprosy and limp-****
viagara palm tree impromptu...

sure... the lottery ticket of the past,
oh the most glorious past times...
        nothing lasts forever...
       so it seems...
            here's me celebrating Dickens
to the last... breath... because...
keeping up with speaking my native
language: when there are no
prussians, no russians...
           no austro-hungarians...
and there are only...
ukranians and lithuanians readying
to guilt-trip me over the failures
of the polish-lithuanian commonwealth?!

in this language i can...
ale... nie... w... tym!

"Lie beneath the galaxy in a cathedral silence,
Stay up till the Sun dives behind arid eminence."

Out there in the seething cold sun,
The glint blinding all that I could see,
Light headed, drowsy for a lack of air,
Disconnected from all that to me dear,
And disconcerted of all that came prior,
Or was about to ensue..
.
I found myself ✓

When Zuo Fen woke day was well advanced into the Horse hour. In her darkened room a frame of the brightest light pulsed around the shuttered window. A breeze of scents from her herb garden brought sage, motherwort and lovage to cleanse the confined air, what remained of his visit, those rare aromatic oils from a body freed from its robes. Turning her head into the pillow that odour of him embraced her once more as in the deepest and most prolonged kiss , when with no space to breathe passion displaces reason in the mind.
 
The goat cart had brought him silently to her court in the Tiger hour, as was his custom in these summer days when, tired of his women’s attention, he seeks her company. In the vestibule her maid leaves a bowl of fresh water scented with lemon juice, a towel, her late uncle’s comb, a salve for his hands. Without removing his shoes, an Emperor’s privilege, he enters her study pausing momentarily while Xi-Lu removes himself from the exalted presence, his long tail *****, his walk provocative, dismissive. Zuo Fen is at her desk, brush in hand she finishes a copy of  ‘A Rhapsody for my Lord’. She has submitted herself to enter yet again that persona of the young concubine taken from her family to serve that community from which there seems no escape.
 
I was born in a humble, isolated, thatched house,
And was never well-versed in writing.
I never saw the marvellous pictures of books,
Nor had I heard of the classics of ancient sages.
I am dim-witted, humble and ignorant,
But was mistakenly placed in the Purple Palace . . .
 
He loves to hear her read such words, to imagine this fragile girl, and see her life at court described in the poet’s elegant characters. Zuo Fen’s scrolls lie on his second desk. Touching them, as he does frequently, is to touch her, is to feel mystery of her long body with its disregard of the courtly customs of his many, many women; the soft hair on her legs, the deep forest guarding her hidden ***, her peasant feet, her long fingers with their scent of ink and herbs.
 
He kneels beside her, gradually opening his ringed hand wide on her gowned thigh, then closing, then opening. A habit: an affectation. His head is bent in an obeisance he has no need to make, only, as he desires her he does this, so she knows this is so. She is prepared, as always, to act the part, or be this self she has opened to him, in all innocence at first, then in quiet delight that this is so and no more.
 
‘A rhapsody for me perhaps?’
‘What does Liu Xie say? The rhapsody is a fork in the road . . .
‘ . . . a different line’, he interrupts and quotes,’ it describes people and objects. It pictures appearance with a brilliance akin to sculpture or painting.’
‘What is clogged and confined it invariably opens. It depicts the commonplace with unbounded charm.’
‘But the goal of the form is beauty well-ordered . . . . as you are, dearest poet.’
‘You spoilt the richness of Lui Xie’s ending . . .’
‘I would rather speak of your beauty than Xie’s talk of gardening.’
‘Weeding is not gardening my Lord.’
 
And with that he summons her to read her rhapsody whilst his hands part her gown . . .
 
Over the years since he took her maidenhead, brusquely, with the impatience of his station, and she, on their second encounter deflowered him in turn with her poem about the pleasure due to woman, they had become as one branch on the same tree. She sought to be, and was, his equal in the prowess of scholastic memory. She had honed such facility with the word: years of training from her father in the palace archives and later in the mind games invented by and played with her brother. Then, as she entered womanhood and feared oblivion in an arranged marriage, she invented the persona of the pale girl, a fiction, who, with great gentleness and poetry, guided the male reader into the secrets of a woman’s ****** pleasure and fulfilment. In disguise, and with her brother’s help, she had sought those outside concubinage - for whom the congress of the male and female is rarely negotiable. She listened and transcribed, then gradually drew the Emperor into a web of new experience to which he readily succumbed, and the like of which he could have hardly imagined. He wished to promote her to the first lady of his Purple Chamber. She declined, insisting he provide her with a court distant from his palace rooms, yet close to the Zu-lin gardens, a place of quiet, meditation and the study of astronomy.
 
But today, this hot summer’s day, she had reckoned to be her birthday. She expected due recognition for one whose days moved closer to that age when a birthday is traditionally and lavishly celebrated. Her maid Mei-Lim would have already prepared the egg dishes associated with this special day. Her brother Zuo-Si may have penned a celebratory ode, and later would visit her with his lute to caress his subtle words of invention.
 
Your green eyes reflect a world apart
Where into silence words are formed dew-like,
Glistening as the sun rises on this precious day.
As a stony spring washes over precious jade,
delicate fishes swim in its depths
dancing to your reflection on the cool surface.
No need of strings, or bamboo instruments
When mountains and waters give forth their pure notes . . .
 
Her lord had left on her desk his own Confucian-led offering, in brushstrokes of his time-stretched hand, but his own hand nevertheless, and then in salutation the flower-like character leh (joy)
 
‘Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart’.
 
Meanwhile Xi-Lu stirred on the coverlet reminding Zuo Fen that the day was advancing and he had received no attention or conversation. It was whispered abroad that this lady spoke with her cat whom each afternoon would accompany his mistress on a walk through the adjacent gardens. It was true, Zuo Fen had taught Xi-Lu to converse in the dialect of her late mother’s province, but that is another story.
 
Lying on her back, eyes firmly shut, Zuo Fen surveyed the past year, a year of her brother’s pilgrimage to the Tai Mountains, his subsequent disappearance at the onset of winter, her Lord’s anger then indulgence as he allowed her to seek Zuo Si’s whereabouts. She thought of her sojourn in Ryzoki, the village of stone, where she discovered the blind servant girl who had revealed not only her brother’s whereabouts but her undying love for this strange, ungainly, uncomfortably ugly man who, with the experience gained from his sister’s persistent research had finally learned to love and be loved in equal measure for his gentle and tender actions. And together, their triumph: in ‘summoning the recluse’, and not one alone but a community of five living harmoniously in caves of the limestone heights. Now returned they had worked in ever secret ways to serve their Emperor in his conflict against the war-lord Tang.
 
She now resolved to take a brief holiday from this espionage, her stroking of the Emperor’s mind and body, and those caring sisterly duties she so readily performed. She would remove herself and her maid to a forest cabin: to lie in the dry mottled grass of summer and listen to the rustle of leaves, the chatter of birds, the sounds of insects and the creak-crack of the forest in the summer heat. She would plan a new chapter in her work as a poet and writer: she would be the pale girl no longer but a woman of strength and confidence made beautiful by good fortune, wise management and a generosity of spirit. She needed to prepare herself for her Lord’s demise, when their joyful hours living the lives of Prince and Lady of Xiang, he with his stallion gathering galingales, she with her dreams of an underwater house, would no longer be. She would study the ways of the old. She would seek to learn how peace and serenity might overcome those afflictions of age and circumstance, and when it is said that love’s chemistry distils pure joy through the intense refinement of memory.