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Bouazizi’s heavy eyelids parted as the Muezzin recited the final call for the first Adhan of the day.

“As-salatu Khayrun Minan-nawm”
Prayer is better than sleep

Rising from the torment of another restless night, Bouazizi wiped the sleep from his droopy eyes as his feet touched the cold stone floor.

Throughout the frigid night, the devilish jinn did their work, eagerly jabbing away at Bouazizi with pointed sticks, tormenting his troubled conscience with the worry of his nagging indebtedness. All night the face of the man Bouazizi owed money to haunted him. Bouazizi could see the man’s greasy lips and brown teeth jawing away, inches from his face. He imagined chubby caffeine stained fingers reaching toward him to grab some dinars from Bouazizi’s money box.

Bouazizi turned all night like he was sleeping on a board of spikes. His prayers for a restful night again went unanswered. The pall of a blue fatigue would shadow Bouazizi for most of the day.

Bouazizi’s weariness was compounded by a gnawing hunger. By force of habit, he grudgingly opened the food cupboard with the foreknowledge that it was almost bare. Bouazizi’s premonition proved correct as he surveyed a meager handful of chickpeas, some eggs and a few sparse loaves. It was just enough to feed his dependant family; younger brothers and sisters, cousins and a terminally disabled uncle. That left nothing for Bouazizi but a quick jab to his empty gut. He would start this day without breakfast.

Bouazizi made a living as a street vendor. He hustles to survive. Bouazizi’s father died in a construction accident in Libya when he was three. Since the age of 10, Bouazizi had pushed a cart through the streets of Sidi Bouzid; selling fruit at the public market just a few blocks from the home that he has lived in for almost his entire life.

At 27 years of age, Bouazizi has wrestled the beast of deprivation since his birth. To date, he has bravely fought it to a standstill; but day after day the multi-headed hydra of life has snapped at him. He has squarely met the eyes of the beast with fortitude and resolve; but the sharp fangs of a hardscrabble life has sunken deep into Bouazizi’s spleen. The unjust rules of society are powerful claws that slash away at his flesh, bleeding him dry: while the spiked tendrils of poverty wrap Bouazizi’s neck, seeking to strangle him.

Bouazizi is a workingman hero; a skilled warrior in the fight for daily bread. He is accustomed to living a life of scarcity. His daily deliverance is the grace of another day of labor and the blessed wages of subsistence.

Though Allah has blessed this man with fortitude the acuteness of terminal want and the constant struggle to survive has its limits for any man; even for strong champions like Bouazizi.

This morning as Bouazizi washed he peered into a mirror, closely examining new wrinkles on his stubble strewn face. He fingered his deep black curls dashed with growing streaks of gray. He studied them through the gaze of heavy bloodshot eyes. He looked upward as if to implore Allah to salve the bruises of daily life.

Bouazizi braced himself with the splash of a cold water slap to his face. He wiped his cheeks clean with the tail of his shirt. He dipped his toothbrush into a box of baking powder and scoured an aching back molar in need of a root canal. Bouazizi should see a dentist but it is a luxury he cannot afford so he packed an aspirin on top of the infected tooth. The dissolving aspirin invaded his mouth coating his tongue with a bitter effervescence.

Bouazizi liked the taste and was grateful for the expectation of a dulled pain. He smiled into the mirror to check his chipped front tooth while pinching a cigarette **** from an ashtray. The roach had one hit left in it. He lit it with a long hard drag that consumed a good part of the filter. Bouazizi’s first smoke of the day was more filter then tobacco but it shocked his lungs into the coughing flow of another day.

Bouazizi put on his jacket, slipped into his knockoff NB sneakers and reached for a green apple on a nearby table. He took a big bite and began to chew away the pain of his toothache.

Bouazizi stepped into the street to catch the sun rising over the rooftops. He believed that seeing the sunrise was a good omen that augured well for that day’s business. A sunbeam braking over a far distant wall bathed Bouazizi in a golden light and illumined the alley where he parked his cart holding his remaining stock of week old apples. He lifted the handles and backed his cart out into the street being extra mindful of the cracks in the cobblestone road. Bouazizi sprained his ankle a week ago and it was still tender. Bouazizi had to be careful not to aggravate it with a careless step. Having successfully navigated his cart into the road, Bouazizi made a skillful U Turn and headed up the street limping toward the market.

A winter chill gripped Bouazizi prompting him to zip his jacket up to his neck. The zipper pinched his Adam’s Apple and a few droplets of blood stained his green corduroy jacket. Though it was cold, Bouazizi sensed that spring would arrive early this year triggering a replay of a recurring daydream. Bouazizi imagined himself behind the wheel of a new van on his way to the market. Fresh air and sunshine pouring through the open windows with the cargo space overflowing with fresh vegetables and fruits.

It was a lifelong ambition of Bouazizi to own a van. He dreamed of buying a six cylinder Dodge Caravan. It would be painted red and he would call it The Red Flame. The Red Flame would be fast and powerful and sport chrome spinners. The Red Flame would be filled with music from a Blaupunkt sound system with kick *** speakers. Power windows, air conditioning, leather seats, a moonroof and plenty of space in the back for his produce would complete Bouazizi’s ride.

The Red Flame would be the vehicle Bouazizi required to expand his business beyond the market square. Bouazizi would sell his produce out of the back of the van, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood. No longer would he have to wait for customers to come to his stand in the market. Bouazizi would go to his customers. Bouazizi and the Red Flame would be known in all the neighborhoods throughout the district. Bouazizi shook his head and smiled thinking about all the girls who would like to take rides in the Red Flame. Bouazizi and his Red Flame would be a sight to be noticed and a force to be reckoned with.

“EEEEEYOWWW” a Mercedes horn angrily honked; jarring Bouazizi from the reverie of his daydream. A guy whipping around the corner like a silver streak stuck his head out the window blasting with music yelling, “Hey Mnayek, watch where you push that *******.”

The music faded as the Mercedes roared away. “Barra nikk okhtek” Bouazizi yelled, raising his ******* in the direction of the vanished car. “The big guys in the fancy cars think the road belongs to them”, Bouazizi mumbled to himself.

The insult ****** Bouazizi off, but he was accustomed to them and as he limped along pushing his cart he distracted himself with the amusement of the ascending sun chasing the fleeting shadows of the night, sending them scurrying down narrow alleyways.

Bouazizi imaged himself a character from his favorite movie. He was a giant Transformer, chasing the black shadows of evil away from the city into the desert. After battling evil and conquering the bad guys, he would transform himself back into the regular Bouazizi; selling his produce to the people as he patrolled the highways of Tunisia in the Red Flame, the music blasting out the windows, the chrome spinners flashing in the sunlight. Bouazizi would remain vigilant, always ready to transform the Red Flame to fight the evil doers.

The bumps and potholes in the road jostled Bouazizi’s load of apples. A few fell out of the wooden baskets and were rolling around in the open spaces of the cart. Bouazizi didn’t want to risk bruising them. Damaged merchandise can’t be sold so he was careful to secure his goods and arrange his cart to appeal to women customers. He made sure to display his prized electronic scale in the corner of the cart for all to see.

Bouazizi had a reputation as a fair and generous dealer who always gave good value to his customers. Bouazizi was also known for his kindness. He would give apples to hungry children and families who could not pay. Bouazizi knew the pain of hunger and it brought him great satisfaction to be able to alleviate it in others.

As a man who valued fairness, Bouazizi was particularly proud of his electronic scale. Bouazizi was certain the new measuring device assured all customers that Bouazizi sold just and correct portions. The electronic scale was Bouazizi’s shining lamp. He trusted it. He hung it from the corner post of his cart like it was the beacon of a lighthouse guiding shoppers through the treachery of an unscrupulous market. It would attract all customers who valued fairness to the safe harbor of Bouazizi’s cart.

The electronic scale is Bouazizi’s assurance to his customers that the weights and measures of electronic calculation layed beyond any cloud of doubt. It is a fair, impartial and objective arbiter for any dispute.

Bouazizi believed that the fairness of his scale would distinguish his stand from other produce vendors. Though its purchase put Bouazizi into deep debt, the scale was a source of pride for Bouazizi who believed that it would help his profits to increase and help him to achieve his goal of buying the Red Flame.

As Bouazizi pushed his cart toward the market, he mulled his plan over in his mind for the millionth time. He wasn't great in math but he was able to calculate his financial situation with a degree of precision. His estimations triggered worries that his growing debt to money lenders may be difficult to payoff.

Indebtedness pressed down on Bouazizi’s chest like a mounting pile of stones. It was the source of an ever present fear coercing Bouazizi to live in a constant state of anxiety. His business needed to grow for Bouazizi to get a measure of relief and ultimately prosper from all his hard work. Bouazizi was driven by urgency.

The morning roil of the street was coming alive. Bouazizi quickened his step to secure a good location for his cart at the market. Car horns, the spewing diesel from clunking trucks, the flatulent roar of accelerating buses mixed with the laughs and shrieks of children heading to school composed the rising crescendo of the city square.

As he pushed through the market, Bouazizi inhaled the aromatic eddies of roasting coffee floating on the air. It was a pleasantry Bouazizi looked forward to each morning. The delicious wafts of coffee mingling with the crisp aroma of baking bread instigated a growl from Bouazizi’s empty stomach. He needed to get something to eat. After he got money from his first sale he would by a coffee and some fried dough.

Activity in the market was vigorous, punctuated by the usual arguments of petty territorial disputes between vendors. The disagreements were always amicably resolved, burned away in rising billows of roasting meats and vegetables, the exchange of cigarettes and the plumes of tobacco smoke rising as emanations of peace.

Bouazizi skillfully maneuvered his cart through the market commotion. He slid into his usual space between Aaban and Aameen. His good friend Aaban sold candles, incense, oils and sometimes his wife would make cakes to sell. Aameen was the markets most notorious jokester. He sold hardware and just about anything else he could get his hands on.

Aaban was already burning a few sticks of jasmine incense. It helped to attract customers. The aroma defined the immediate space with the pleasant bouquet of a spring garden. Bouazizi liked the smell and appreciated the increased traffic it brought to his apple cart.

“Hey Basboosa#, do you have any cigarettes?“, Aameen asked as he pulled out a lighter. Bouazizi shook the tip of a Kent from an almost empty pack. Aameen grabbed the cigarette with his lips.

“That's three cartons of Kents you owe me, you cheap *******.” Bouazizi answered half jokingly. Aameen mumbled a laugh through a grin tightly gripping the **** as he exhaled smoke from his nose like a fire breathing dragon. Bouazizi also took out a cigarette for himself.

“Aameem, give me a light”, Bouazizi asked.

Aameen tossed him the lighter.

“Keep it Basboosa. I got others.” Aameen smiled as he showed off a newly opened box of disposable lighters to sell on his stand.

“Made in China, Basboosa. They make everything cheap and colorful. I can make some money with these.”

Bouazizi lit his next to last cigarette. He inhaled deeply. The smoke chased away the cool air in Bouazizi’s lungs with a shot of a hot nicotine rush.

“Merci Aameen” Bouazizi answered. He put the lighter into the almost empty cigarette pack and put it into his hip pocket. The lighter would protect his last cigarette from being crushed.

The laughter and shouts of the bazaar, the harangue of radio voices shouting anxious verses of Imam’s exhorting the masses to submit and the piecing ramble of nondescript AM music flinging piercing unintelligible static surrounded Bouazizi and his cart as he waited for his first customers of the day.

Bouazizi sensed a nervous commotion rise along the line of vendors. A crowd of tourists and locals milling about parted as if to avoid a slithering asp making its way through their midst. The hoots of vendors and the cackle of the crowd made its way to Bouazizi’s knowing ear. He knew what was coming. It was nothing more then another shakedown by city officials acting as bagmen for petty municipal bureaucrats. They claim to be checking vendor licences but they’re just making the rounds collecting protection money from the vendors. Pocketing bribes and payoffs is the municipal authorities idea of good government. They are skilled at using the power of their office to extort tribute from the working poor.

Bouazizi made the mistake of making eye contact with Madame Hamdi. As the municipal authority in charge of vendors and taxis Madame Hamdi held sway over the lives of the street vendors. She relished the power she had over the men who make a meager living selling goods in the square; and this morning she was moving through the market like a bloodhound hot on the trail of an escaped convict. Two burly henchmen lead the way before her. Bouazizi knew Madame Hamdi’s hounds were coming for him.

Bouazizi knew he was ******. Having just made a payment to his money lender, Bouazizi had no extra dinars to grease the palm of Madame Hamdi. He grabbed the handle bars of his cart to make an escape; but Madame Hamdi cut him off and got right into into Bouazizi’s face.

“Ah little Basboosa where are you going? she asked with the tone of playful contempt.

“I suppose you still have no license to sell, ah Basboosa?” Madame Hamdi questioned with the air of a soulless inquisitor.

“You know Madame Hamdi, cart vendors do not need a license.” Bouazizi feebly protested, not daring to look into her eyes.

“Basboosa, you know we can overlook your violations with a small fine for your laxity” a dismissive Madame Hamdi offered.

Bouazizi’s sense of guilt would not permit him to lift his eyes. His head remained bowed. Bouazizi stood convicted of being one of the impoverished.

“I have no spare dinars to offer Madame Hamdi, My pockets are empty, full of holes. My money falls into everyone’s palm but my own. I’m sorry Madame Hamdi. I’ll take my cart home”. He lifted the handlebars in an attempt to escape. One of Madame Hamdi’s henchmen stepped in front of his cart while the other pushed Bouazizi away from it.

“Either you pay me a vendor tax for a license or I will confiscate your goods Basboosa”, Madame Hamdi warned as she lifted Bouazizi’s scale off its hook.

“This will be the first to go”, she said grinning as she examined the scale. “We’ll just keep this.”
Like a mother lion protecting a defenseless cub from the snapping jaws of a pack of ravenous hyenas, Bouazizi lunged to retrieve his prized scale from the clutches of Madame Hamdi. Reaching for it, he touched the scale with his fingertips just as Madame Hamdi delivered a vicious slap to Bouazizi’s cheek. It halted him like a thunderbolt from Zeus.

A henchman overturned Bouazizi’s cart, scatter
Three years ago today Muhammad Bouazizi set himself on fire igniting the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia sparking the Arab Spring Uprisings of 2011.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
only a scouse inhabitant could have pointed it out (merseyside english / liverpool) to no better comparison.

i'd love to have the salt & pepper dilemma
between low alcohol sessions and
high ******* session, just did the low
alcohol sessions and laughed, after having
become equipped with marijuana "abuse"
starving / fasting, never gearing for chips
and munchies...
the streets of london look a lot different
walking about high & hungry
rather than jokey and as a jockey of an
imaginary horse...
god made sanity and soberness an ivory tower
that was not worth defending
unless for manual tasks... all other tasks
were never ready for the multipliers of human presence,
not all of us would hammer a nail
for all the scratches of a vinyl disk if all were able.
indeed the scouse lad knew it,
languages that clung to latin were left historically
naked, without diacritical marks,
instead they delved deep as to upkeep the latin
they forced the closure of grammar schools
along with coal mines...
and what they earned was not a sense of categorisation,
english slosh tongue said the 18th century
happened akin to the abhorrence of moral relativism
by socrates to make stab in the eye a ******,
to thus say bronze age was but a hundred years...
keeping latin naked as it was by the abhorred
conquered land of the romans due to its bad weather
may have made a milton or a shakespeare arable...
but because of a certain type of censoring not ever used,
what became beautiful in other european tongues
became the ugly spelling of the english tongue,
what became stress marks of "accent" for the french,
and german, romanian and polish,
there was none of that in english, instead
we became accustomed to aesthetic "marks", that
were "marks" because there were no actual examples
for a clear rubric... instead we received too many examples,
the particulars of why we wrote the and said a sharpened v
in written form v'eh off veer...
there are no unitary aesthetics marks other that words
themselves... rather than what we have in terms
of unitary diacritical marks of akin umlaut...
there's no where else to go... the Minotaur has caught
up with us and our shadow! there's no labyrinth to further
our heaving lung to cheat both silence and breath! there's isn't!
it's the end... not using diacritical marks on units
only creates aesthetics of multiplying units
where they are multiplied: riddle... mirror...
                 keep, kettle, leer, pass, throttle, amiss.

(the syllables are not perfectly connected,
therefore much of "coining the phrase"
with prefixes anti- con- un- sub-
being endeared into your vocabulary,
then again clearly, accenting and aesthetics
compare to reach a parallel,
never leave it naked i say, never leave it naked,
for fear of reprisal of that which ought
be buried still alive, and with clear
acuteness for certain letters appropriating
there is no originality in the british tongue
for origins of the a - z under virgil
who originated the letters to the plagiarism
of grecian theology with the trojans
moving from turkey to italy -
therefore you become akin to other european
nations enacting a parasitic semblance
for the simple reason of ease coupled
with the many "loop holes" of the tongue,
or you reach absolution with the missing diacritic
as reasons for the modern acronyms: l8r, o.m.g.,
b.a.e., i.r.l.... all of this crap is a byproduct.)

but to say latin is dead, you must recreate the latin
alphabet with an ethnic particularity of a modulation
that might be compared to the migration of goths /
huns / vandals... to say 'latin is dead' and keep the
latin a without a modulation to craft an ą,
is a darwinian heresy that demands counter-evolution;
there's hardly one coliseum in london, although
i admit plenty of football stadiums;
still the evolutionary need is still necessary
and consistent, because it's not the case of the three
wise monkeys seeing, hearing saying no evil...
if this phonetic geometric is to survive and the crucifix
not be a vanity shield of artists due to the wrathful lamb,
it will need to specify whether it's gaelic english,
welsh, australian, london based, come home county based,
arizona or texas draw.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
given the history, all our predecessors held dear,
given the history,

well... i'm starting to think that utilising
italics meant an enumeration,
meaning that utilising italics
gave us non-differentiated stresses everywhere
and on each letter

by that i mean: people italicised entire words to
leave the stresses of individual letters to a continued monopoly,
italicised words meant not adding the acuteness of
stressed correspondance (post-code) to a letter, like é added to e...
it's running out, the monopoly of literacy - but the last
Bastille is on diacritical marks - è, or i ate it / cut it short,
walked from the movie theatre before it ended,
when i collage - ah! ****! found the erzett! ʒ -
the ß of minding a borrowing of ř! in that poem of mine...
woodland bořki - to replace the rz sound akin to ż -
i was looking in the wrong place, looking to stitch
in a plagiarism from Czech - but there it is, the equivalent
of schafres S (ß), the schafres R (ʒ); ha!
to simply change the aesthetic, and i have:
woodland boʒki.

see Communism rising its ugly head with the intelligentsia
once again? ***** pepper shaker shaker, prep talk moan shake
once more... never believe socialist utilitarianism,
the English are the masters of that... never believe it though...
the English, by definition? the utilitarianism bit is correct,
but they also follow the carrot bit of the stick... the carrot
is evidently the capitalistic motto: a Caribbean cruise.

but what this poem really means?
i really feel like punching someone in the face,
preferences like with Middle Eastern
appearances, while Sodomising
western values of politically coerced into
democratic robots... it really feels like that...
wanting to punch someone in the face,
and oddly enough it feels good just thinking
about it rather than actually doing it -

the universality of the Cartesian phrase -
non-factual, never factual, never to be factual,
the Iranian volleyball team taunting
the Polish volleyball team,
if a terrorist attack happens in Poland,
i'd be surprised if piglets fly further than plumbs,
and we get French braids on beards rather than
the hair plantation - of the lowest caste
i obviously emigrated -
i had some intelligence to shine through,
to a degree agreeable more or less,
remember i'm working on fame from
the basis of myth (a marathon) as in endurance,
rather than on the basis of being photogenic
(which i'm not) and the short-lived held breath
100 metres... the Olympics is really a barometer
of life otherwise... the Iranians are really fond
of getting braided beard from Poland...
i guess the English are too impolitely politely nice...
Thesaurus Rex would solve a all rhyming clues
with its catalogue of synonyms -
also... i'm a poet, critics of poetry in English
know jack-**** from Jack the Ripper...
i did't steal the language, i merely epitomised it
differently, you merely wrote an analogous epitaph
that was so ******* boring everyone applauded
when you spoke it the sake at a funeral
as you spoke it on a Bar Mitzvah... oddly enough
western society is lactose intolerant the year round,
but when someone dies the fondue set is out,
everything orange including the Essex
suntan is out and oiled to a greasy joke
that only gets a pig's grunting worth of encore.
it's odd, but the best way to write poetry without
English teachers telling you left is left
is by imagining someone being punched in the face,
bleeding nose squished cherry -
it's the violence that we're not allowed that we're told
about about our ancestors who freely exercised,
it's harsh... you're tingling with the anticipated wait for
expressing it, in the end you're turned into an atom
bomb of passive aggressiveness;
a bleeding nose squished cherry - even so, you want more,
more, more, you want the actual ferocity of the act,
not some cinema ****** of passiveness...
there are thieves around us, ghosts, not real thieves
wanting your belongings of handbags,
i mean the real sinister thieves... in one generation
the people of Empire and colonialism were turned
into the people of Globalisation and brothels...
well the brothels bit is currently debated whether
slaves ought to experience paid pleasure,
or whether slaves should just serve warm macaroons
for bourgeoisie opinions to be debated a Tartar stakes,
i.e. never really leaving the saloons of Gucci skirts
and the cancan dance of indivisible politics.
SE Reimer Dec 2015
Re-written today... dusted off and delivered, to our beautiful friends, the Chambers...

Ron, Nathan, Ian, Jill...

We know... you can't see us... but you are not forgotten!!  The Reimers remember... we are here... with you in this room, now... as is your Margie!!  

___________

remember her with us, as you read and hear these words.  it is good to remember... to never forgot... a cycle of life, brought full circle, best in remembrance.  and this makes remembering perhaps the most important facet that defines, sets us apart as humans, best captured in this thought, "in forgetting the past we cease to be and bring hope forward for the future. and so we remember... for we must never forget!” this is why we line our shelves, our walls with them, and visit inscribed stones behind fences.   you are not forgotten, Margie Chambers!

~

posted first in the Christmas season of 2014,  the original post script remains and speaks of my original motivation in writing this, but events this year prompt my re-post, if nothing but as a reminder to all of us to look beneath the surface with intentionality and to see the pain that many walk in daily.  though they will shield it from uncaring eyes, they are likely to let in those who show they truly care.  and is not this, the truest, the finest, the greatest of Christmas gifts we could give such a one?

~

it is a storm approaching,
not the tempestuous kind;
of driving rain or whirling wind,
but a storm all the same;
a mingling of sorts,
a marriage that blends,
my joy with my tears;
my hopes and my fears,
of life and of death,
of all that has come,
with what has not yet;
where photos and albums,
and letters and cards;
are all we can touch,
of what has gone by.
 
yet there's a tree to light,
there are gifts to wrap,
there are cards to send
to loved ones dear;
while the hug that we wish,
the one we most want,
it's the one we can't give,
caught... in its grip;
this our loss has us,
ties us in knots.
for memories and laughter,
their kindest words,
and shouts of joy;
these are fading away,
and yet... are all that remain.
uninvited to the table,
these call in the park,
at Sunday Mass
and the post office,
but especially the back porch,
when it is quiet after dark.
these join us at parties,
where thoughts of our missing,
join the gay, happy greetings;
and on Christmas morn,
when gifts lie unopened;
their chair empty still,
at dinner... a space,
no one ever will fill;
in their place is a candle,
a scent we know well,
a light we'll not crush;
it's the closest we'll get,
to their presence we so miss.

the storm on the inside,
one that no one else sees;
as they stroll down the street,
as they shop merrily;
our hearts beat... quietly,
inside we are breaking,
this storm threatens to drown;
but no one will save us,
because no one's around;
who ever would notice,
or  knows how to care?
its the cry of our heart
that no one can hear.
our tears brushed aside,
hoping no one can see;
this storm it is raging,
raging wildly in me.

i looked for a card,
my thoughts to express,
but the cards in the store
say nothing like this,
no words such as "weeping",
or "anguish" are found;
no topics like "lonely" or "angry",
in the Christmas card aisle.
so just how to reconcile,
my juxtaposition?
how can I quell,
this sense of foreboding
that i know all too well?
truth is...  i cannot!
i must go through
with this marriage.
and pray that some day,
soon... i can hope,
that i will awaken,
to see sunshine again;
and consider these memories,
not nightmares, but friends.

~

post script.
"blessed are those who morn, for they shall be comforted"  Matthew 5:4


*these are so many among us who mourn, in particular at what are otherwise joyous occasions.  for these ones, Christmas only adds to the acuteness of their pain.  for them, Christmas is a storm they know is coming, a time when they must prepare for, battening down the hatches of their soul, so they are assured their grief does not leak out on the joy of everyone around.  my advice for us all- know who walks near you well enough to reach out to them, give them a shoulder to weep on, share your tears with theirs. assure them you have not forgotten.  repeat the name of their loved one, a name they long to hear others speak.  for most of us, this name is one you cannot say too often. speak in the present tense of their loved one for they are not lost, they are still present and very much a part of the grieving one's life.  as just one of many examples, remember... a mother who has lost her only child is still a mother.  it is a title that she still bears, coming with all the burden, yet without any future benefit, these having been stripped away. love her, hold her, be shelter for her heart in the coming Christmas storm.
SE Reimer Dec 2014
~

it is a storm approaching
not the tempestuous kind
of driving rain or whirling wind
but a storm all the same
a marriage of sorts
of joy and of tears
of hopes and of fears
of death and of life
of what has come
with what has not yet
where photos and albums
and letters and cards
are all we can touch
of what has gone by.
 
yet there's a tree to light
there are gifts to wrap
their are cards to send
to loved ones dear
when the hug that we wish
the one we most want
is the one we can't give
this our loss has tied us in knots.
for memories and laughter
their kindest words
their shouts of joy,
these fade away
yet they’re all that remain
these join us at the table
these call in the park
at Sunday Mass
and post office,
but especially the back porch,
when it is quiet and dark.
they join us at parties
where thoughts of our missing
joins the gay, happy greetings
and on Christmas morn
when our gifts lie unopened
their chair is empty still
at dinner there's a space
that no one else will ever fill
in its place is a candle
a scent we know well
a light we'll not extinguish
perhaps it is the closest we can get
to their presence we so miss.

the storm on the inside
one that no one else sees
as they stroll down the street
as they shop merrily
our hearts beat hard but quietly.
inside we are breaking
this storm threatens to drown
yet there is no one around
who can save us
who ever would notice
or even know how to care.
its the cry of our heart
that no one can hear.
our tears brushed aside
hoping no one can see
this storm it is raging,
raging wildly in me.

i looked for a card
my thoughts to express
but the cards in the store
say nothing like this
no words such as weeping
or anguish are found
no phrases with lonely or angry
in the Christmas card aisle
so just how to reconcile
my juxtaposition?
how can I quell
this sense of foreboding
that i know all too well?
truth is, i cannot
i must go through
with this marriage
and pray that some day
some day soon, I can hope
that i will awaken
to see sunshine again
and consider these memories
not nightmares, but friends.

~

post script.
"blessed are those who morn, for they shall be comforted"  Matthew 5:4


*these are so many among us who mourn, in particular at what are otherwise joyous occasions.  for these ones, Christmas only adds to the acuteness of their pain.  for them, Christmas is a storm they know is coming, a time when they must prepare for, battening down the hatches of their soul, so they are assured their grief does not leak out on the joy of everyone around.  my advice for us all- know who walks near you well enough to reach out to them, give them a shoulder to weep on, share your tears with theirs. assure them you have not forgotten.  repeat the name of their loved one, a name they long to hear others speak.  for most of us, this name is one you cannot say too often. speak in the present tense of their loved one for they are not lost, they are still present and very much a part of the grieving one's life.  as just one of many examples, remember... a mother who has lost her only child is still a mother.  it is a title that she still bears, coming with all the burden, yet without any future benefit, these having been stripped away. love her, hold her, be shelter for her heart in the coming Christmas storm.
Life of a man in poverty is pure experiment,
It effortlessly starts in the morning on each day
Swaddled in acuteness of despair and hope,
Hoping to pass on food for breakfast and lunch
Without test of agony in hunger pains;wistfullness
As drive for opportunity of super is forcefully atomic,
Projecting for bliss in posterity without education,
As paranoia of a merchant awaits disillusionment,
Pumping into regular snags from fortune creation,
As economic powers that be fix final nails
to the coffin, in which rests twist of fate,
Hoping for global relations to succor the times
As self reinforced poverty fetters all experiments,
Happening to be in the pauper’s laboratory,
Converting everything all into poverty’s turf.
Andrew Rueter Mar 2018
You grind off my fingerprints
To remove my identity
Putting your finger to my lips
The silence will better me
You're a predatory anemone
That can look ahead of me
Sensing the dread in me
Slicing me splendidly
Despite my defended pleas
You ruthlessly rend me
To bring about an ending
To that ring you were lending
So our lives will stop blending

You break my heart
Then sow it back together
You stop and start
Leading me on forever
As I fall into darkness
Only seeing your face
Is this just a dark test?
Or is this a futile race?
I move like a shark rests
When you can't be replaced

I am paralyzed
By your hazel eyes
Catching the gaze of mine
Through a maze of lies
And my ways of crime
Are infantilized
By your infanticide
Roller coaster ride
Of which I must abide
Because this lust of mine
Convinces me rust is fine
And to ignore passing time

You make me want to live
You make me want to die
I have everything to give
Instead I reluctantly fly
Through the dark clouds looming
Formed after you cut through me
With the acuteness of your beauty
And the bullets you were shooting
That I attempted to dodge
And denied their existence
I want you to live in my lodge
Yet I always meet resistance
Hal Loyd Denton  Nov 2012
Wonders
Hal Loyd Denton Nov 2012
Wonders of place read what one writes about a place now that he is far away by years and distance the
Flavor and tone it draws and evokes acuteness vividly portrays common tasks and experiences a
Richness pervades thoughts weighted and robed in love it is stirring imaginative and it speaks to all
And entreats you to take a similar excursion fields play grounds schools homes that overwhelm by the
Slightest recall we need these times of refreshing and we lose sight of their value these buried treasures
Lay just below the surface easily bridged but their worth invaluable reminisce yourself into folds of soft
Mellowness it will enrich your life presently this one thing that can be carried forward in extraordinary
Ways the first effect it had on you and the way it made you feel is and always will be you they talk about
The time it takes for light from distant stars to reach us once you were engaged in this innocents that
Traced time and space and people so many are now lost to us they live in the entirety of who you and
They are just beyond the jumble of this present state we live in they Say God lives in the eternal now
He is in the past present and future isn’t it possible for us to know that in a precious degree since we are
Made in his image all it takes and there are different ways but just close your eyes and drift with just the
Smallest indication you will roll and speed back to those times that were cherished with family the
Clouds belie earth’s surface at times the heaven’s treat us to measureless wonder with mystery it
Disengages the time line can become lost moments untie in a seamlessness we truly go to another place
While part of us stay in its natural place go forth in freedom dear friends hurts will fail to follow you can
Taste of sweet waters no bitterness will invade your thoughts you are immortally strong for a time you
Get a foretaste of the future you are bound to infinity weightless ageless without form you are pure
Thought unlimited but for the first time truly engaged exhilaration floods the real you that has never
Been exposed before the sluggish physical now only powerful spirit rears its head back thunderstruck
Your senses explode you expand you rule time and go backwards or forwards gifts out of reach before
Now present themselves in simplicity and untold beauty handle riches that were lost in the fall now
Reclaimed you are able to shake the dust from them they have set in dark stores awkward denseness of
Humanity held you at bay now from this time you know what you will miss if you continue to sell you
And your life with God short ecstasy of fulfillment will be lost wonder will be replaced with the truth and
Fact of one who has squandered riches untold all for miserly living that has been aliened with a fallen
Foe you deserve more and it is your birthright but you take the chance of losing it all you are more
Valuable than you know believe that and correct your course your true home is beyond the stars don’t
Sell out for the illusion that is this temporal world
brandon nagley May 2015
This convalescence eases on slowly,
Coy acuteness craves the longing contentment!!
No resentment, as I walk high heel to booted lace!!!

Creditor, to whom Didst thou pay thine debt?
Or is thy debt still owed?

Curiosity is crowched beneathe the delinquency of fendid demagogues!!
Mortar of temples and synagogues,
You chief cornerstone!!!
You guru with no  home,

Curvature of decadence delineates your demeaning haste,
Open up taste the taste, and heed thy view!!!

A must programmed to turn muteable,
A mourner for me and you.

Omniscient angels raistheth me above the mountains peaks,
Where the strange instruments are observable,
And lovers are loveable,

As your kin she will be to be more than distraction!!!!
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
some would say that Ashley Montagu was mad..
actually everyone would, eating Chomsky,
then again the English forgot to trill ρ -
for a row row - it's pronounced hollow -
an evolutionary step in the wrong direction -
my learning of English as a language was
incubated by learning history, when i returned
from incubating it, i had no novel,
three years in Edinburgh (said Eden borough)
and i never went to the fringe festival...
nights when i prefer drinking than writing,
my mother is a housewife, i'm guessing
your mother is an aspiring sociologist,
for you the world is a treadmill on max speed,
for me every day means i am kept counting snails...
it's slow... they never bothered the man
where feminism never encouraged perpetuation...
i said i needed cushions, you said i needed stones...
here's a stone with Magdalene, throw it...
throw it at your will... i never had ******* dysfunctions
with ******... THINK ABOUT IT!
why didn't i have ******* dysfunction with ******
but i had them with you? actually, don't think about it...
you might hurt yourself... you probably will.
i swear on the zenith of mount Sinai...
this woman is an Everest... let her freeze to death,
i will not clamour a house to such heights
establishing her as a worthwhile continuum -
the English made the R glutton, forgot to trill it,
the French harked it, rhapsody became hark
po see - we call it the phlegm lettering -
so why did the English on purpose drop the trill
of the tongue rattling? the French kept the harking,
but the English forgot to trill the trrrrrrrrr illion words
unsaid, why? one of those days when drinking is
more pleasurable than writing,.. i kept the narrator
in the laboratory under tight inspection...
he said no characters deviated...
well, there were characters, but nothing
compared to Ivan, Achilles, generic types ready
to start families... the fortunate without none types...
that trilled r is not imagery of bouncing,
it's a case for a drum-roll pendulum...
now i know why i feel so alien in London,
London is an alien entity in England, compared
to Newcastle, or Hull... it's a hallucination...
it's not there... three years and i never went to the Fringe...
theatre land *******... my mother is a housewife,
time's slow slow for me, i don't have the
attachment of keeping up, halfway between
homeless and a monk... i really don't think about
a life like Rousseau's... i prefer the drink...
i just minded the fact that the English once
trilled their rho, then lost it...
that that French still hark their rhos like
rhapsodic fugitives fighting asthma...
it really doesn't matter...
atheism is not that crucial, it's not even that
severing in severance of follow-up engagements...
atheism isn't scary... it's pretty pointless
when you take up a fight against both God
and solipsism.. popularising atheism is a fight
more in the care to erase solipsism than it is to
erase god... atheism meaning an: en-grouping
is more a case of involving an individual
in its affairs, that it is to take affairs with god...
obviously militant atheism failed,
there's no consensus agreed upon to involve
anything but the crowd, the crowd is unnecessary...
politics knows this, the crowd is subterfuge...
the eloquent measure of saying things as they are:
sabotage... this night in particular?
not a lively night, not an inspirational night...
just a night for heavy drinking.
they're looking as much for the solipsist as they are
seeking god... the Gemini of artefacts,
twins introspective that constantly mingle
and never leave a still-life concern for a canvas and a
brush stroke... a second later another baby is born,
we get to keep the shapes, and we get to keep
reminding ourselves that: there are fewer and fewer
stories to tell... replaced by paparazzi epilepsy
of the flash... text when it was once narrative-form...
we forgot the bonfire narrative...
we replaced it with images, flashing images...
for a minute there i was sure we could maintain
encoding sounds, however cryptic and difficult
in the arrangements of letters...
but as i am assured there days, this wasn't to be:
we favoured images, ideograms without skeletons,
and slowly, but surely, we started to speak less
and less, or if speaking we started to experience
the attack of dementia on rhetoric...
there was a meteorite in us... we dampened
intelligence to a chop of the guillotine...
we really did undermine encoding sounds,
we really did undermine encoding sounds...
we really did undermine encoding sounds,
our undermining of encoding sounds created
the parallel of phonetic encoding that gave way
to digital acronyms and :)... this is the desecration
of the temple that would have been built...
this                                     "
is but a butterfly... but a butterfly in a tornado...
when we speak of a lack of painting on canvas,
when we speak of copyrights of handwriting
digital with us universally trapped in
Times New Roman, we speak of what's being defiled...
you can draw a moustache on a Mona Lisa...
it doesn't matter, the Mona Lisa will smile
through it more empowered... but when you desecrate
encoding sounds, not having applied diacritical
acuteness / sharpening the chisel... you have
simply allowed for a wholly immune form of former
escapades into the Caribbean scythe of harvesting trade...
soon the post-office will oblige its status of former
use as neccessary redundency,
soon the serpent eating its own tail will come into view
like a tumble-**** of where competition leaves us:
the last rat begins to gnaw at its own flesh,
the N.H.S. is gone via the Japanese oops,
old age is a problem of advancing sciences,
humanism got ***** for being too human
and not centimetre wide-enough for journalistic
sensibility that kinda wished for dictators even
though it criticised them...
sooner or later our world will become more
two-dimensional that what our immediate
ancestors experienced: a three-dimensional world...
that three-dimensional world will be no more...
reading futurism of the 20th century is like
soft-core ****... 21st realism is so far removed from
these prophets it's like watching communism reinvented,
only worse... the dogma of fierce competition and
enforced individualisation has not prepared us for
nations the size of China, or India...
at least in India street children can meet their Gulliver Oliver
for adventure among the Delhi slums:
put the rich under the microscope, and the poor
under the telescope... you'll hardly find a savanna's worth
of antelopes grazing on the workings of Patchwork Armstrong.
as any working man said: feminism is boring,
well, it's not exactly boring, i come home and my wife
is arguing with me, she says she earns more than me
and that i can't transition into being a house-husband
because the professional historians are restoring knowledge
of the Ice Age that doesn't fit into our Monday to Friday
work pattern paying the rent... no landlords in the stone
ages... evolutionary conscripts we were, by the mammalian
glands were actually insect glands...
in this metropolis few would claim a mammal to be hot blooded...
scurvy lizard tongues worshipping the Idol Babel;
it was never necessarily an architectural feat...
it culminated in what we talked about,
how we sang... you could out-build the pyramids
with the Eiffel... any time you wanted...
but given the wrist-mirror of Chinese ideograms
in matchstick translation... what came was not only
the height of the Dubai sky-scrappers...
but also the tongue that spoke... wheelchair bound
with two tonsils worth of wheels...
it sorta forgot rhyming, and rhymed to
yeah, mm, yeah... gotta ***** my *****
to get a score...
   yeah, mm, yeah... i'd love to endear that masochism
of white girls getting even with their fathers as
to why the black man tilled the cotton fields...
but i'm sorta like... got mouth-***** by the Prussians...
got **** treatment by the Russians...
cut off my genitals cut off by the Austro-Hungarians...
mm, ye'ha! cowboy in the sand gotta make a
camel cry.
akr Sep 2014
A man must walk with a certain swagger when alone,
Falling sharply through all the corridors of the world,
Unaffected, thinking of the women who may receive him.

This, the Fall and the tangle: the acuteness of past days brought to their brittle end.

No more time is granted for all your half remembered mornings' dreams then before the heart's ready sacrifice, heel bone's tread.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
some claim it's an aesthetic, others claim it's the mystery of lawlessness, because in all honesty: upper-case Q could be written in lower-case as ǫ, rather than q, all too familiar is ρ (rho) - and there is no law suggesting any convention should be kept to a model of standardisation... hence the dichotomy experienced by dyslexics to the familiar argument: why the disparaging phoneticism from optical aesthetic, why write that and then only say 'y'? much of modern English borrows from the seemingly unnecessary h insertion borrowed from Hindu... dhal... the aesthetic insertion of a surd-letter into an otherwise convenient phonetic-encoding... although either an umlaut or a macron is missing above the a to prolong it; and depending on your aesthetic palette... i'm already advocating a change to sz & cz by stressing the replacement using the caron: š / č... in English the equivalent is bound to words like shrapnel and chatter.

as anyone would say *idiot
, i'd say tuman,
that's because:
                          when syllables are inconvenient
i'd stress that, and write túman...
if i were saying swamp, i'd be right
in also saying bägno - obviously
there are distinctions, akin to punctuation
marks, diacritical marks are effectually
"punctuation" marks, well... inccissions
embedded in words;
these aren't rhetorical assertions, they're
biased on the basis of optometry.
then i might add: with a straw
                      alternatively słomką...
otherwise the noun słomka, i.e. straw,
wheat shaft... a shaft hollowed out
and as Polish girls know all too well:
snakebite (at English universities,
half beer, half cider, a head of
                            blackcurrant juice),
but back east it's just beer and raspberry juice
concentrate: funny... where's the rhapsody?
if the ą is used at the end of the word
then there's an intended action involving
the stated thing... but it's not a universal
statement, just this particular instance...
it's odd, i wake up from my Alaskan vigil
and realise i didn't take my sleep-synthetic
requirements to go to sleep during the night
and wake up during the night...
  that means i'm annoyed, putting it mildly.
words that shoot into my head like sunrise...
newspapers are the bearable versions of Proust,
   bypassing publishing houses can allow
for diarrhoea talent, and no to constipated
critically acclaimed blah blah...
    it's 8:36 in the morning and i don't know why
it's ****** beautiful... everyone's so content
with being busy, doing something, anything,
everything... it's that critical moment in autumn
when the leaves on trees have lost the stalemate
with ******-twisting winter frosts,
   and fall into the ***** of death and rot...
and then these random words enter my head,
words i either forgotten to use or are too obscure
to use in the first place, polish slang...
e.g. kumam, i understand -
     p'stro, a condescending consideration
     for explaining something worth contempt
to the other, but not the self, i.e. the magpie attitude.
   i can't help myself, seeing English *******
on by lazy ***** with :) and :( and acronym talk
i feel i have to provide an antidote...
  the ' in p'stro?         bulging / building up,
there's no p in any language with a syllable
distinction worth a diacritical mark...
   and now it's 8:42 in the morning, and i have half
a litre of whiskey to sniff... should i?
what's Copernican west to Copernican a.m.?
   gentlemen only drink in the afternoon...
yep, and Ben Hur drank in the morning for
the calories awaiting the chariot races...
ha ha... i'd love to see a drunk goldfish...
    but it's fun like that... so many serious people out
there who learned the Pink Floyd march of
the hammers... i don't think i can take a bishop
with a bishop's attire seriously...
                   or a skinhead Buddhist monk...
they're all baldy baldy vaseline hoping for the sheen...
can any authority be taken seriously?
       now i'm truly bullshiting...
i lost this one word in my head... sieve:
motyl, butterfly,
           ćmá, moth (that's a slingshot need
          for acuteness on the a, slingshot is the stress on
the c, and the stress on the a is the actual missile,
   oh, by no means is this orthodox),
  język, tongue / language,
  ozór, edible cow tongue: very tender
in creamy horseradish sauce accompanied with
Silesian gnocchi...
            Q is the acute version of K & C,
i.e. what would otherwise be deemed é to an e.
   wolny, a penalty kick / someone who's free,
  wapń, calcium...
                  what i'm basically saying is that we encounter
so much vocal poverty in this world,
so many words are disused or underused or simply
abandoned...
                        someone weeps over a disused building
weathered by the elements...
   i see an opportunity to engage squatters,
or in the case of words: poets.

— The End —