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Edna Sweetlove May 2015
This is a prose tale about the great superhero, SNOGGO
(as told in the first person by SNOGGO to his amanuensis, Edna)

*'You can't have "Jew",' I said.
'Why not? It's a perfectly good word. Are you anti-semitic or something?'
'Jew has a capital J,' I said.
'Not necessarily. I've used it before.'
'Not with me you haven't. There's the dictionary. Look it up.'

Jumbo grudgingly picked up the Shorter Oxford and looked up "Jew". He sniffed loudly, slammed the dictionary shut and removed the tiles from the board. His replacement word was a sodding disaster.

'That's twenty-four points you've cost me with your nit-picking, you *******,' he said through gritted yellow teeth, his flabby body shaking with rage. 'The J was on a triple letter score.'

I sneered derisively and laughed long and loud, making Jumbo froth at his ugly fat nostrils with anger.

'Watch this and weep, Jumbo,' I said, playing out all seven of my tiles onto the board to create a stunning word: UNZIPPED. 'The Z's on a double letter score and it's all on a triple word score, so that's 90, plus 50 for playing all my tiles, 140 in total and the end of the game,' I declared in triumph. Jumbo was caught with 14 in his hand (remember: he still had the J) and thus I, the great SNOGGO, became Greenwich Scrabble Champion for the 25th year running. Not only that: but 25 consecutive defeats in the final for Jumbo.

Jumbo roared in frustration as he saw his hopes of taking the coveted 24ct gold "Queen Anne" cup away from me, SNOGGO, dashed to the ground yet again. And, by centuries old tradition, 25 consecutive victories meant the priceless cup was now mine to keep for ever. Jumbo's scream of uncontrollable, incandescent rage could have been heard as far away as the Vanbrugh Hill Municipal Waste Disposal Centre.

'******* you for all ******* eternity,' he bellowed unsportingly as he waddled out of the cheering hall. In so doing he flouted the gentlemen's convention of always staying to take part in the closing ceremony. He missed seeing me, the great SNOGGO, receive the shining gold cup from the gnarled hands of the Lady Mayoress, the Hon. Mrs Snotte-Wragge, who whispered in my ear 'Fancy a quick **** later, back at the mayoral parlour, SNOGGO dear?' For the fifth year in a row I told her to go and get stuffed as I didn't go for ugly old bats with arses on them like a double-decker bus.

Later that evening, as I sat in the splendid Georgian surroundings of Snoggo Manor, cradling the gold cup and admiring the row of 25 Championship certificates on the walls of my elegant dining room, finishing off my second bottle of Bollinger Grand Cru '89 and stuffing my 18th oyster down my happy throat, I heard a knock on the door. Who could that possibly be at nearly midnight?

It was Jumbo, my fat defeated foe. He looked downcast. 'SNOGGO,' he said, 'I've come to offer my apologies for my inappropriate behaviour earlier. You deserved to win, you are the finest scrabbler in all of Greenwich. I have come to offer you the hand of friendship and to invite you to my humble home for a midnight snack to celebrate your stirring victory.'

'Jumbo,' I replied, 'that's uncommon civil of you, old man. And your timing is excellent, as I've just finished my apéritif and was on the verge of kicking Mrs SNOGGO, my new 17-year old Thai mail order wife, out of her hammock to make my supper. So what's on the menu, squire?'

'Well,' said Jumbo, 'I was thinking of pâte de foie gras - naturally made by Mrs Jumbo using our own force-fed geese, with a bottle of Château d'Yquem '78 to start with. Then perhaps a kilo of blood-red filet mignon avec pommes frites, washed down with a rather good magnum of Brouilly '99. Then there's Mrs Jumbo's famed cheeseboard with a tumbler full of vintage port, followed by a dozen crêpes suzettes, a few petits cafés, a monster Armagnac and a giant Havana each.'

I considered the proposed menu carefully before replying. 'Sounds quite good to me, Jumbo,' I declared, glancing over his shoulder at the Bentley waiting outside. I could just see the peaked chauffeur's cap of the diminutive Mrs Jumbo peering myopically over the leather-covered steering wheel.

And so, having told Mrs Snoggo to tidy up a bit whilst I was out, I went off to dinner with Jumbo. In all our 25 years of Scrabble rivalry I had never once set foot into his house, so I was eager to check out what sort of lifestyle he enjoyed. Once inside Jumbo Villa, I cast my eyes over the luxurious furnishings with an expert eye, evaluating their immense worth and rarity with incredible perspicacity and knowledge.

'Not a bad pad you've got here, Jumbo,' I conceded. 'Not in the same class as Snoggo Manor, of course, but still ****** impressive.' He was visibly flattered by my compliment.

'A glass of sherry while we wait for Mrs Jumbo to serve us?' queried Jumbo jovially. I sniffed at the huge portion of delicious amber nectar appreciatively. 'Lustau Amoroso Bodega Marquès de Mierda '42?' I guessed instinctively. Jumbo nodded. '******* spot on, SNOGGO,' he admitted in stunned amazement.

I took an enormous gulp and felt the alcohol hit me like a slam in the abdomen from Cassius Clay's butcher and more vicious brother. The room spun and I closed my eyes in resigned delight.

When I came to I found myself hanging unclothed in chains on the wall of a dank cellar. My head was pounding and I felt distinctly below par. I looked over my shoulder and beheld Jumbo standing there with a sjambok in his hand. He was stark ******* naked, naked as the day he was born, and I have never seen anything so repulsive in all my life (with the sole exception of that incredible day when, as a child, I caught my paternal grandparents bonking on the Persian rug in the Great Hall at Snoggo Manor on Christmas Eve). Jumbo’s huge pendulous ******* sagged over his bloated fat belly, which itself hung so low his genitals were mercifully hidden from my view. He was a ******* monstrosity.

The tiny Mrs Jumbo stood to the rear of the cellar, also naked, pallid and with her public hair died a shocking pink. She was a skinny freak, a vision of *** Hell. I noticed the tattoo on her belly. It showed a depiction of the crucifixion which I felt was in dubious taste, especially with Jesus sporting an enormous *******.

What I, the wonderful SNOGGO, suffered in the next few hours was truly indescribable, so I will only summarise it. After a seemingly endless whipping from Jumbo (assisted by Mrs Jumbo, but her puny lash strokes were almost pleasurable), accompanied by their combined frenzied cries of demented hatred and loathing, I was forced to suffer the supreme humiliation. Jumbo mounted a set of fine Regency library steps, positioned his Hellish lumpen body behind me and unceremoniously inserted his tiny ***** into my outraged ****. Oh the shame! Oh the shame!

‘O Jesus Christ help me!’ I yelled in rain and pain. And suddenly a voice spoke unto me. 'O great SNOGGO,' it intoned, 'thou needst not suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune so needlessly. Only have faith in me, the great loving Jesus, and I shall give thee strength to deal with thy ******* awful tribulations.'

It was a miracle! SNOGGO could and would be saved! Quickly I mumbled a couple of Ave Marias remembered from my youth as a leading mutual masturbator in the chapel choir, and I silently promised a quick twenty thousand quid to the local faggotty priest ******* fund, and my chains fell to the floor with a blast of heavenly thunder. Halle-*******-luliah!

'Right, Jumbo you fat ****,' I snapped, 'you have ******* had it.'

And with one mighty blow of my right arm I smashed him against the wall. His huge hideous body crumpled as he slid to the floor, blood oozing from his fat gob. I gave him a ****** good kicking in the face and in the heart region and shortly he went to meet his maker, with a sickening grunt and expulsion of *****.

Then I turned to the horrified naked ugly skinny tattooed Mrs Jumbo and said: 'OK, *******, where's my ******* supper?'

She shrugged and headed upstairs to prepare the meal I had been promised by Jumbo earlier, as I was seriously hungry by this stage. Little did she know I would be obliged to put her out of her misery later. Or if she were lucky, I might offer her a position as unpaid toilet cleanser chez moi.

Yes, it was yet another stunning victory for the fabulous SNOGGO, thanks to timely divine intervention for which I am very much obliged.

And don't forget my luscious 17-year old Thai mail bride would be waiting to give me a really good ******* once I got back to Snoggo Manor. Either that or I would give her a good belting and send her back to her grotty poverty-stricken village with a demand for a full refund, chop chop.
Mike Essig  May 2015
Amanuensis
Mike Essig May 2015
I do not write these thoughts
only because I love you. I do.
But I cannot create perfection.
It is your spirit calls them forth.
Your eyes flutter them into being.
Your lips smooth and polish them.
Your fingers shape and craft them.
I'm just the simple monk who writes
them down and returns them to you
as an offering to your inner beauty.

~mce
Smitten
Michael Marchese Oct 2021
How does he keep
Finding pieces to write
They can pay him
A pittance
And still he’d recite
What he’d rather leave buried
Prefer go unheard
Introversions
Keep turning
The unwritten word
To the vanishing
Verbal
No longer
Preserved
In internal
Immortalized
Me
Exclusivities
Shared only when
I’m in moody
Declivities
Or if so prompted
To humor requests
Or else leave me
The blanks
And I’ll fill in the rest
Filmore Townsend Mar 2016
even though, blood become
               word. and the body
          continues to have to
     metabolize when slumbering,
till a future becomes
        some moved on
                                  parallel universe.
          (mahogany-stained oak grip;
                          she’s the better
               adventure, so don’t slip)
         and the Long Dark sweatings,
                     unusual;
             brambled-feet still stink.
     (it would snow
          in a raging roar)
        wonder, can the crazy
                      be smelled?;
        wonder, does the risen body
                      require metab.?;
        wonder, did he catch a ghost
                      between his teeth?
and now [SELF-DENTISTRY 101]
                     hold on –
         watch this guy
             pull his own tooth.
   (i’m too white
     to keep this a-flow)
but Paul spoke the red, (amanuensis,
    main-saint diggin’ the schizos)
and,            but wait,
       “Jesus spoke in red,” a lone
         cowboy sang.
and colorblind, remember
        and,
                  hold up,
     guy is still working
                that tooth –
     some paper towels,
     pair of pliers,
     someone to hold the light.
             “So I don’t get blood
                 all over my buddy’s bed,”
               [brake]
      “That was a long nerve.
           You hear it pop?”
               [brake]
           “If I was straight white-boy,
                   this’d be easy,”
               [brake]
   but what can follow.
hfallahpour May 2016
I wish I could be an amanuensis
of your voiceless remarks
Mike Essig Apr 2015
From the pellucid
night sky,
a waning half-moon
spills frozen light
on writhen branches
of forlorn trees.
Two owls
hoot conversation.
A distant coyote
attempts to join in.
I am the amanuensis
of early morning:
if I do not
write this down,
no one will know;
this useless,
frigid beauty
will disappear
unnoticed
with the dawn.
  - mce
Ken Pepiton Aug 25
titles are clickt attention tuners, seek weak
- signal feint clicks and shush and beepx#$%

etaoin shrdlu - typesetter's apprentices shoveled
off cast lead type, using coal shovels, strong
Allie Oop characters - the medium of us,
we saw our selves in print on newsprint.

Öotzi, myceleum aware bearer of information,
fallen through time, to leave us thinking, how
hard has life been, upto now
.
Weirdly wise, the ever sense we can remember,
strengthening positions holding
satisfied minds, valencing
made common sense,
happy and free is better
than any other degree
of happy, free as a ***
in L.A. on Fourth Street, hip
to the Four Square ******* Mission,
east of Broadway, north of Central Market…

then, to now, fifty years,
then to my first child, was ten years,

now, my youngest granddaughters are turning ten,
and taking part in the ongoing recovery of all clean

thinking, sifted corn and sorted beans, dried seeds
from the sweetest watermelon contest, and best
squash for bottles. best for bowls, all good seed
we save for next year, every year, always

remember, once nobody knew anything,
but making better ways to stop hunger,

then war was one of the ways that worked
for winners, and for some survivors not involved,

but witnessing the scavenging, paid trade goods
for trophies taken from the putrid dead, before
the story tellers and tale bearers went their
separate ways, letting the news be as it may.

The medium we live and breathe in, now as living
text included by all faith's accounting systems,
whereby our very thoughts and intentions,
must be judged, very serious conscience,
book of life including metadata
and instance of idle word and waste time,
pure and mere psyence psighing consci-uses
ready and willing to let peace be made,
fixing firm foundations at each watering station,
corner stones and local quarrymen, towns

formed from prosperity on rails, full on wha-who
time flies past right now

progressive proof, a town like ours is now classic,
project mainstreet 2025, valenced on Main Street,
moral authority of the old town councils,
social servants steeped in social ordering craft,

The Stepford Wives, Ai all love that, and Lucy,
ai ai ai, so many, Frankenstein, and the fat forties,
coders living in freemind anarchical choice, like bugs.
ARPAnet spiders rode wireless before wireless was,
MAGA. Pre-Levittown Craftsman Homes,
from Sears, delivered t
o the rail head, lo, a hundred years ago,

and now, the whole cold world, is empty,
when we see it on TV, from L.A. on a Sally Ann
Chromebook with a Starbucks Loyalty Cookie,
allowing T-1 bandwidth, yeah,

accept

Most of modernity is permanent,
only now is better because to get here,

one stepping, one daying, one time on
a magic loom, as a thread, picking up motes
so fine, super fine dust twisted in during dying

so the colors feel inviting, come find how
we pass the bar, where judgement begins,

we give account down to those secrets held
in our core experience knowings used, amateur

first times are only chances more often than not,
never know, when a particular stream meanders,

how many times does one cross the river
of no return, and see Robert Mitchum and
Jane Russell, on a raft with a kid thinking
something's not right,…

There was no upriver going on a raft,
we knew that from time with Huck'n'Jim,

back before the nth degree insanity hit,
minority reports, pulled from trend bots,

you'd best believe believe's a verb,
and love is, too, so do it, love to learn,

no lie holds any truth, never did, never
was a time when a lie that saved a life,
lost otherwise, that essential untellable
whys
secret agent man mind set from TV,
YouTube views virally sort attentions…

spin casting, bait perceiving, front face
sensory array, bad boy squint, tight smile,
mere hint of amusement, thinking, something

Blockbuster was a thing, things changed,
vhs hold hordes of reflected light transcended
on to magnetic tape with short fidelity,
for high fidelity consumer camcorders

the time from technicolor to home video,
in my generation, effectively raising the bar

as far as production standards used in the ruse,
set all skepticism aside, unloose your credulous

child like soul, tender child self, so good, too bad
good does not pay, save to those initiated in the art

of freereading and writing things hearable, listen,
nothing, eh? No white noise, fans, transformers,
no chainsaws,
with that whine
of a Stihl Dylan loved, once repaired
by a chronicle entity, who worked
at that chainsaw shop, at that time,
and knew the music of a Stihl,
so he would notice the quiet, then,
- chain broke…
wind in trees, pine soft, crickets and frogs,
and sometimes a bat, even coyotes, way off
as the world spins toward tomorrow again.

Who told you you gotta serve some body?
What would you do if the truth made you free?

Where would it be if this were the answer?

When you pray, expect the consequences,
immediately after you know the law,
the law is canceled, all a major lie,
for ever sense manstealing paid.

Train up a child by his stature at two,
he becomes a useful servant, worthy
of great honor on the field of glory,
as our side celebrates hate, pushing back
harder, pushemback harder, break that line

High jinx, glory years, sacred first to learn,
programing is mostly balance weights
and measures, cost to do, cost to undo.
Cost to think it done, without me.

What is the genre for periods
of preparation for a redo of an old war,

a political-religious agreement
under which business is conducted,
continuously as the believers multiply,
as believing children are reared to leave
being the why for the orders how come

we need to work to fix the flaw in us all
for the all mighty, all merciful?

How, indeed, did it come to pass,
that those in fine conditions,
gilded and bejeweled boxes
of old bones and napkins and shards of alabaster,
said
certainly the very anointing for burial alabaster box,
got t' be, right, just waiting for your guide to find,

very precious, only six other fragments have been
made publically known, the power, the faith sink,
like a battery, believe it or not, the pitch in faith,
hold, sticky, used
has moved a mountain of alabaster chips,
since we started doing tours with the kids,

we pay a different one each time, seven lads,
sons of those three sisters, who inherited the box,
and fought about it until the peace maker was called,
he broke it all down,
free, Google Voice to Verizon, across eight time zones,
like we are in the same room, but day and night,

anyway, peace maker, old backslider hardened artist,
living on tech time earned on a bet about ever learning,
gets a bit in each fractal shard of that old anointing
on and on, some times, good grows, and corruption,
proceeds to gain U, the mind meld experience,

a Taylor Swift Opera from the Future NOW!

Yeah, I know a guy, in the works, managing
the spending opportunities, keeping juices
works with concentrates, original intensity,
all mental, leg-al legal regally legal
just a touch,
a taste,
fact of the ruliad, once conceived and comprehended,
wind in the face, gasp and wish it were, as we may
say we can imagine, using an ego function, I-magi,
- how wide are we sideways? As a we?
Grown up, and dementia free, just think it clear
as one of those movie eternity porches, stoical
pillars of wisemen not forgotten, ai know them,

as curious boys knew their teachers, ai know Plato,
big lunk, broad beam ox of a man, with a following,

amanuensis scribal trainees, hanging on every word,

now, in modern database solutions to 640K sort fields,
we adapt the magic fractalling praxis used to shatter,
viz, first license to say, videlicet,
the afore mentioned alabaster box, empty
of its storied ointment for the burial to be,
shattered at the tone, 60 cycle hummm,
ordinarily out of sync, if you think about it, but
we need not, it was so long ago, and you know,

abide is a positioning command from a will,
abide with me is a request, however saying we,
abide with ye forever, if I were in the whosoever.
I would think the thoughts alive, at least.
The whosoever who heard the knocking,
and said, sure, I heard you knocking and said
to myself, what if this once it was you, and wow,

I must admit,
in the ruliad realm
of possibility, the math works.




All boys in those days, idly sayd
that'll be the day, guy like me
wished to be like in the movies, in
the gang, singing cowboys on the range,

eeipee ai yay, real old, cast iron men
made in the imaginations of those,
made to pay alliegiant attention,
mandatory civics classes, and
current events, sponsored
by Breck, and eventually
only her hair dresser knew…

until from nowhere, the world blooms
with silver foxes far beyond compare,

since she was just seventeen, and we knew
what that means in Arizona, so we waited,
too, long, who knows,
we got a new mind,

the act of worship, the verb, knowing,
it does seem simple at first, lieving be. Okeh.
Share it where it hurts.
Caroline Shank Nov 2020
There are things that I have done.  There are songs that
I have sung.  The Beatles
said it best.

I have been pregnant twice.
It was a long time ago.  Now
my grandchildren are grown.

I have held a few jobs. I did
them well.  My bosses were
pleased.  Well not Tim. He
was a *******. But Joyce was Amazing.

I have been friends with
wonderful people.  All except a few have left of no accord.

I am lonely in old age, barren
of thought. Yet still I write you
my phantom friend.  I hug
myself and long for the cigarette days.  The nights of Tia maria
and wine.  Do you still put
your lips around the bottle?
You said not to spill a drop.

The summer's by the lake.
My tan self at home in the
suburb of my youth and
middle age.  I was startingly
free and loud in laughter.

Everything in my plot of
Summer smelled of you.
Years ago when you lied
lovingly so as to keep me
in the cocoon of your
conversations.  I was
unfooled. I remain in the
mind of Narcissus, your
willing amanuensis. X the
night of unremembering
all these years of you.

Caroline Shank

— The End —