Let me tell you what I want….

I want to read Somerset Maugham and Aldous Huxley and Leonard Cohen and Mary Oliver
I want to hike bits of the Appalachian Trail and take long walks in the hills around Snowdonia
I want to ride about in the DC Metro and the London Underground
I want to explore small towns and big cities
I want to eat lunch in quaint little bistros and have dinner at the table in my yard
I want to browse through antique stores and fancy boutiques
I want to play with dogs and rub their bellies
I want to take long drives without a destination in mind
I want to waste an entire Sunday at home talking about everything and doing nothing
I want to build a fire and watch a movie
I want to sit on the couch and sip tea

Most of all, I want to do these things with you

Don't let your addiction take this away
With all the bits of my heart….

Sue Venir loved Hugh Biquitous, but he was unreliable, so she confided this to her friend, Di Namic who confirmed he’d been seen with Penny Farthing and Miss Chevous. Then she ran into Ken Tucky, who’d just broken up with Jen Erator, and was known to hang with Mel N. Choly. Together, they and Dan Ube went to a party thrown by Perry Winkle at the house of Dana Point.

Con Valescence introduced Sue to Marine Layer who asked Mr. Tucky to join the conversation, and they’ve been conversing ever since. Lou Kemia couldn’t make the party as he was ill. This was confirmed by Nick Knack who’d been informed by Conrad Alert.

Penny Saver left early, heading over to the home of I. Stan Bul, who was throwing a celebration in honor of Hazel Nuts and Grant N. Aid, who were to be married by Will Power, though Miss Givings, his former girlfriend, did not approve. Celebrants included Buzz Saw, Ma Larkey, Ben E. Diction, ***** Pack and of course Ann I. Versary, who deemed it worthy of being remembered. Tom Foolery was always good for a laugh, which was appreciated by Art I. Face, Dee Vice and Tess Osterone.

Some chose to dine alfresco, notably Flora Fauna, Heidi **, and Ed U. Cate. Barb Ituate was a downer, though Ma Larkey tried to cheer her up, watched by Cliff Hanger who wanted to see what happened, until a dispute arose between Ana Conda and Ann Ticipation, who’d both been vying for the attention of Billy Goat.

Meanwhile, in another part of town, Terry Dactyl was in a dispute with Billy Club over Lilly White because of something Miss Conception had reported after hearing from that duo, Caesar Salad and Reuben Sandwich.

Junior Mints tried to mollify the situation with sugary statements, but was interrupted by Yuri Nal, who said he had to go, and then left with Jay Walking and they were off to congregate with Diane Tomeetya.

At the next table General Jive held court in a warlike mood,  that Cary Cature tried to lighten.  With them were Tex Arcana, whose accent was amusing to Bill Collector, Al Gorythm, Tim Buktu and Marv E. Lous, who always had a great time wherever he went.

By then, Bobby Pin, the luscious seamstress, had given up on Peter D. Out, after seeing him clowning around with Butch Wax and Slim N. None, all of them malcontents and disrupters.

In walked Daisy Chain, newly arrived  from the Southern Hemisphere, along with Sydney Australia. Klaus Trophobic had initially agreed to travel with the two of them, but said he had to stay at home. Frank O’Phile overhead this and confided to Phil O’Sophically that there is sometimes merit to such position.

The restaurant was owned by Ty ****, managed by Chuck Wagon, with the food delivered by waiters Clay *** and Terry Aki , assisted by busboyTara Misou.

The next morning, everyone gathered at the home of Dawn Patrol, who was there with her new husband, Earnest Money, after divorcing Perry Mutual. Deb Enture was her maid of honor.  Nick O’Time was nearly late to the party, driving in with Stu Debaker, via a shaky Uber driver named Manuel Shifting.

Al Acrity was his usual sunny self, but not when Den O’Thieves interrupted his conversation, which was shut down by Kay O.

Sherman Oaks and Van Nuys were late, having gotten mixed up on the location. Cliff Hanger was worried about the falling stock market, and as a result was getting drunk with Jack Daniels. Stan Dup was his usually assertive self, but was overshadowed by the always munificent Cy Pres.

Claude Hopper was dressed in yesterdays’ styles, but that didn’t matter to Dov Tail who  was going into business with Matt Chabox, known for his incendiary personality. They had two other partners to round the group out, **** Ular and Ben E. Fit.

Gar Gantuan loomed large, and was unstable when paired with Mo Mentum, who said in such situations, they needed to involve Otto Matic.

Terry Cloth was wrapped around Jan U. Ary, ogled by Barbie Queue and Coleman Lantern.

All the expectations
All the preparations
Each year that comes
It could have been
Happy daydreams
Reality, I cope
I still long for you
Knowing you as no other
I bring you flowers
My sweet Cate
Three were born.
Two remain.

‘Puts Me to Work’ echoes through the house,
Cate Le Bon’s voice bouncing off the walls.
I can almost see it, storming down the hallway,
Barging out of the bathroom.

This floor is ******* freezing.

I can see my reflection in the shiny wood;
A circle of condensation that grows and shrinks
As I breathe in and out.

‘But I know that you’re there,
‘cause you’re making it hurt.’

Entire galaxies are swirling in the shaft of setting sunlight
Streaming through the broken blinds
At right angles, sharp and sudden.
Solar systems shift and spiral,
Exploding every
Time I take a breath.

A lake is forming by my chin.
I wonder if it is clear and wet
Like swimming,
Or white with froth and paste
Like winter.

I stop wondering when the shivering becomes me.

‘It puts me to work . . . puts me to work.
It puts me to work . . . it puts me to work.’

The song has been repeating for an hour now.
I used to really like the end.
Something like forty-five-minutes-ago.

I wonder if the battery will die soon.

I wonder not if I will die soon.
Preoccupied with galaxies and spirals and the little spot of condensation
Forming and unforming as I breathe.
With the frozen lake I feel cold enough to be skating across
In these baggy shorts and this tattered t-shirt
From a Nirvana show last century.  

The battery doesn’t die, and Cate Le Bon comes racing around the house again.

I close my eyes and sigh.

I

A Genesis! The Exodus, the Exodus!
A departure from all terrestiality
Always immoral and depraved, bathed in filth, in self-loathing
Abattoir of our souls, it entrenches us

Also, we too must be of the same make
And bear with our corpses the same proceedings, the same caliber
Allowed to their subversive candor,
All that broke the Carthaginians upon their own passage
Across the peninsular pathways

S'il in our conquest we find, however, that the pachyderms have run aground,
Vous must aggregate our conscious thought
Plaitcate the ravenousness within the heart of victory.

II

Bring victory, the winged harbinger of the conquest,
Beg for tyrannical proclamations: the end of man, the end of men,
By now, the greater of the concepts is lost to its own devices, devices,
Belching out smoke, that bend the corpses upon their backs.
By wrenching from their life a sense of purpose,
Byproductively, they feed heroic romanticisms of combat.

Brought yet upon these fields, there lies no stranger enemy
But that of the tide
Being self-effacing, masochistic,
Belittling, She breaks herself upon the shore, ravaging the bodies of
Both, Playing as ******* and as subservient

III

Come! Wave upon Wave upon Frothing
Crest, to shores of golden enfrenzied ******
Calmed by the liquid of our ***** *****
Charging forth as we
Charge forth armies upon the field of slaughter
Callously, for you, our gilded monarch
Can you see? They cannot see, and we hope to elucidate your presence, they
Cannot comprehend or fathom what they
Cannot see.

IV

Ceaseless now the charges
Come further upon the front
Crashing 'gainst the openings of each
Clangor and madness
Coalesce to form death

Dripping anew with sanguine libations
Drawn fresh from naked lambs, freshly cut for their country
Dionysian warriors return,
Desire forming their mental undulations

Effortlessly they overtake their feminine fortunes
Effacing their identities, removing from them with their clothing, the
Entirety of their selves.

V

From carnal conquest they rejoice,
Flaunting the destruction they wrought
Flinging husks of women about the room,
Foisting these shells on other patriarchs

Given no choice, they return to fields of battle
Godspeed, gods' will, and god-granted
Gaian soil is retreaded by their sodden flesh.

VI

Hellish, infernal is their presence
Having lost no measure to revelry or rest, neither
Halting nor slowed, the march quickens in time with their lustful bellows
Hastened to madness by infinity
Harkened back to prisons of mental anguish by their creators
How proud they are, the Old Gods,
Hacking away the pounds of flesh to reveal the
Haphazard construction to their instruments of torture.

VII

Into the bloodshed, into the fiery cavernous opening of the crusade
Ignited by righteous scraps of cloth and metal
Ignobly formed into crudely significant, textured shapes
Iconoclasts to their own ideals
Idyllic in their self-mockery.

Jabbering like hellbeasts, the warriors drive into the flesh of the conflict
Jettisoning armaments in the process, their
Joie de vivre having been lessened by mechanical limits.
Jocular slaughter synthesized with demonic cries.

Kapellmeisters to the symphony of death,
Keeping in the rhythm of mutilation, counterpoints of steel clashing against breastplates, giving shape to a
Kleptocracy of life.

VIII

Languishing now in the refuse of the struggle,
Laden with corpses, the warriors remain restrained by fatigue
Lurching through the mud, calling out feebly with voices
Long since bellowed to pulpy masses of throat tissue.

Masses of flesh crawling across the fields of strife,
Macerated ground, weak and shifting, struggles to support the
Multitude of half-corpses now in eternal respite upon the bloodied pasture.

IX

Now broken with regret and shame they collapse
Nestled into the marrow of the fallow earth,
Needing only rest in the cooling tendrils of dirt and blood that trickle across them.
Né de nouveau, their trek leads them towards the grave
Necrosis having taken hold in their limbs,
Nascent corpses, they subside with grave finality into a dead collective.

X

Opaque irises await those who uncover the un-burial mound
Oafish sockets containing them like marbles
Open to the elements, decaying with their corporeal encasement, shaded by
Oaken leaves that remain unfallen, while
Obsequious maggots go about their task of cleansing the remains

Paralyzed in the final moments of their mortal coil, the bodies lay stagnant,
Pacified only by the removal of sentience.
Pagan rituals surround such corpses, and the intrepid discovers
Patiently await the arrival of some necromantic spirit.

Quasi-instinctively, the pioneers of the superterranean mausoleum
Quell their fears and remove the bodies from their conclusive locale,
Quantifying their deaths by the armaments and metal carapaces upon them.

XI

Reeling across the path, weighted by the bodies,
Returning, the archaeological presence brings a pall over society, which
Remained reticent despite the presence of such suffocating solemnity
Repressed by its own intent

Solitude is given no quarter, and the bodies
Strung up like scattered marionettes
Silently serenade the town with a deafening cacophony.

XII

To Hell their souls desperately charge, frothing about the shackles of undeath
Torn from corporeal existence, yet unable to
Transgress the mortal plane
Torturous paradox!
Torment the fallen of Carthage's vestigal might no more
Traducer of the human condition
Tragedy is loosed at thy whim
Try not the patience of demi-gods of wrath and bloodshed.

XIII

Undulating by the beckoning of the wind,
Un-beautiful, un-ironed, the shrouds of the coffins
Under grey sky hang softly like leaden sheets
Unaware of the gravity beneath the few inches of oak
Un-aesthetically masking the dead warriors' forms

Visceral is the movement of the procession,
Vermicular, they wind a course to the peak of the foothill
Vehemently the priest urges them onwards, although he is
Visibly ill on this occasion of the anti-hero.

Warlike, the battle up the ***** claims the lives of those already claimed
Wastrels left to rot in the carcass of a long-dead conflict,
Wanting nothing more than solace eternal.

XIV

Xenophobes of the Inferno fear the inevitable presence of these
Xoana, false representations of humanity.
Xanthic is their fear, for inside the malebolges themselves
Xanadu is sought for those of the fallen soldiery.

Yet funerary proceedings dictate descent for these souls, and the coffins
Yaw slightly in the wind, disturbed by the
Yanks of the ****** rabble who bear their weight.

XV

Zeus himself presides over the ferrying of these souls,
Zion awaits them, their final collective fate at hand,

Yet slowly it turns its back upon them,
Xenophanes mocks from his post,
Wailing, they fall
Velocity increasing infinitely,
Until they see no more the lustrous light
Trapped eternally in dark
Stabbed with betrayal and fear, their souls
Run amok, fleeing from the source of their anguish
Questioning existence.
Periodically in the abyss, the helpless aggregate conscious is
Overwhelmed with memory of Paradise
Now to them denied for eternity.
Mephisto remains, their only companion,
Leeching from them the final vestiges of hope now left within, once
Kept hidden to protect the warriors, now
Jabbed and pummeled to death.
In this state of perpetual umbra
Heaven so distant, now only faded, as if on parchment,
Gained by the souls is a sense of locality, once
Forgotten but now reattained, and
En masse, the group instantly
Derives that they have returned from beyond the mortal plane, the terra once again
Collates beneath their soles, and the collective decides they must return
Before the open sun, to bear themselves
Against the gods, against sanctity itself, and thus they cry:

Abbie hailed a yellow top cabbie

Brenda had a sister in-law named Glenda

Cate ran late on her first date

Delly ate seven bowls of lemon jelly

Edwina drove to the town of Catalina

Fran burnt her finger on the very hot frying pan

Gwen had a strong yen to go and see her aunty Jen

Hope bought her husband a towing rope

Isobel fell under the magician's spell

Joann took her mother on a holiday in a caravan

Kylie went to the dentist with her brother Wylie

Lesley liked listening to Elvis Presley

Marcia enjoyed eating a freshly baked focaccia

Nell saw a turtle coming out of his shell

Olga lived at the top end of the river Volga

Primrose had a Pinocchio nose

Queenie knitted a multicolored beanie

Ruth could never tell the whole truth

Stacey loved playing dress ups with her friend Tracey

Tilly behavior was always rather silly

Una bought a house in the suburb of Yagonna

Verity wanted to be a well known celebrity

Winifred never stopped taking about Alfred

Xena was presented with a court subpoena

Yale told her teacher a tall tale

Zealand ventured out into the bushland

Still sorely missed.
Daydreams about what might have been.
Pain is distant and so close.
A shard of glass pierces as my mind reviews
The glass is hidden in the years which dull.
The pain of the shard is new as first.
Sweet girl what should have been.  
Already you see my father.
My mother is watching for you with tired eyes.
Sweet Cate, treat them well.
You are old enough to care for my parents
With loving heart.
My years add for us to meet.
I will look for you when I join, but
Don't expect too soon.
I've my chores here to do.
Love you, Sweet Cate.

catherine is in blue
and bandages her finger with grass and a feather
her mother is sure she took on grace whilst in the womb
who is first and and yet an afterthought?
catherine is bleached
between girls breathing rococo and the washing machine that doesn’t distinguish the separation of her name or fabric
ever maid
where does she go and you begin?
that brother has the ocean compressed in his eyes
and it’s the ships that go by in the night
that make her as penitent as the Magdalene
catherine is moving
and if she takes on the sun it’s best to leave some in Catalonia
if she carves herself in flesh
she should do so herself

Poets with whom I learned my trade.
Companions of the Cheshire Cheese,
Here's an old story I've remade,
Imagining 'twould better please
Your cars than stories now in fashion,
Though you may think I waste my breath
Pretending that there can be passion
That has more life in it than death,
And though at bottling of your wine
Old wholesome Goban had no say;
The moral's yours because it's mine.
When cups went round at close of day --
Is not that how good stories run? --
The gods were sitting at the board
In their great house at Slievenamon.
They sang a drowsy song, Or snored,
For all were full of wine and meat.
The smoky torches made a glare
On metal Goban 'd hammered at,
On old deep silver rolling there
Or on somc still unemptied cup
That he, when frenzy stirred his thews,
Had hammered out on mountain top
To hold the sacred stuff he brews
That only gods may buy of him.
Now from that juice that made them wise
All those had lifted up the dim
Imaginations of their eyes,
For one that was like woman made
Before their sleepy eyelids ran
And trembling with her passion said,
"Come out and dig for a dead man,
Who's burrowing Somewhere in the ground
And mock him to his face and then
Hollo him on with horse and hound,
For he is the worst of all dead men.'
We should be dazed and terror-struck,
If we but saw in dreams that room,
Those wine-drenched eyes, and curse our luck
That empticd all our days to come.
I knew a woman none could please,
Because she dreamed when but a child
Of men and women made like these;
And after, when her blood ran wild,
Had ravelled her own story out,
And said, "In two or in three years
I needs must marry some poor lout,'
And having said it, burst in tears.
Since, tavern comrades, you have died,
Maybe your images have stood,
Mere bone and muscle thrown aside,
Before that roomful or as good.
You had to face your ends when young --
'Twas wine or women, or some curse --
But never made a poorer song
That you might have a heavier purse,
Nor gave loud service to a cause
That you might have a troop of friends,
You kept the Muses' sterner laws,
And unrepenting faced your ends,
And therefore earned the right -- and yet
Dowson and Johnson most I praise --
To troop with those the world's forgot,
And copy their proud steady gaze.
"The Danish troop was driven out
Between the dawn and dusk,' she said;
"Although the event was long in doubt.
Although the King of Ireland's dead
And half the kings, before sundown
All was accomplished.
"When this day
Murrough, the King of Ireland's son,
Foot after foot was giving way,
He and his best troops back to back
Had perished there, but the Danes ran,
Stricken with panic from the attack,
The shouting of an unseen man;
And being thankful Murrough found,
Led by a footsole dipped in blood
That had made prints upon the ground,
Where by old thorn-trees that man stood;
And though when he gazed here and there,
He had but gazed on thorn-trees, spoke,
"Who is the friend that seems but air
And yet could give so fine a stroke?"
Thereon a young man met his eye,
Who said, "Because she held me in
Her love, and would not have me die,
Rock-nurtured Aoife took a pin,
And pushing it into my shirt,
Promised that for a pin's sake
No man should see to do me hurt;
But there it's gone; I will not take
The fortune that had been my shame
Seeing, King's son, what wounds you have.  --
'Twas roundly spoke, but when night came
He had betrayed me to his grave,
For he and the King's son were dead.
I'd promised him two hundred years,
And when for all I'd done or said --
And these immortal eyes shed tears --
He claimed his country's need was most,
I'd saved his life, yet for the sake
Of a new friend he has turned a ghost.
What does he cate if my heart break?
I call for ***** and horse and hound
That we may harry him.' Thereon
She cast herself upon the ground
And rent her clothes and made her moan:
"Why are they faithless when their might
Is from the holy shades that rove
The grey rock and the windy light?
Why should the faithfullest heart most love
The bitter sweetness of false faces?
Why must the lasting love what passes,
Why are the gods by men betrayed?'
But thereon every god stood up
With a slow smile and without sound,
And Stretching forth his arm and cup
To where she moaned upon the ground,
Suddenly drenched her to the skin;
And she with Goban's wine adrip,
No more remembering what had been.
Stared at the gods with laughing lip.
I have kept my faith, though faith was tried,
To that rock-born, rock-wandering foot,
And thc world's altered since you died,
And I am in no good repute
With the loud host before the sea,
That think sword-strokes were better meant
Than lover's music -- let that be,
So that the wandering foot's content.

i find the children of immigrants born in a foreign land,
learning the inorganic tongue
parallel to the organic compartments
of schizoid conditioning, in the haystack of splinters,
the perpetual contradiction -
the unsure waves without a final
commencing tide -
i find these children the most bothered
to hear the coin flip, two sides  exposed: to be asked
whether the integration process was fulfilled
and the organic tongue was cut off
with the question: in what language
do you think? these children who are
in the cultural poverty of the jihad
who only speak cursor singled out words,
who have to welcome a cultural identity
by relinquishing one of their parents,
who's parents never taught them bilingualism
as an asset rather than a source of complaints,
who would sometimes dearly impress themselves
with inorganic points of view that might
**** their parents - like the cultural cleansing
of long forgotten welsh or gaelic: this among other
signals of a loss of posterity - forced into a smouldering
cauldron of ease, that's hardly at ease -
i find these children the most stunted culturally,
bringing no identity, no pride of distinction
that could empower all of us -
for the best they can bring... is a cookbook;
perhaps the sole reason for the failures of
marcus garvey was precisely that - the ancient
tongue turned numb, then turned to gangrene,
and slid from behind the ivory gates -
there's that: the need for an organic symbiosis
with the origin, but perhaps by then,
the west indies were too appealing to be left
for other settlers - but as all musings go -
there are many unknowns - the ancient tongue
perhaps shed, but the tongue given proved to
be too restrictive in its original guise: for the whip
and the exploitation led to a linguistic rebellion
of creating a unique people-owned dialects,
people were given a phonetic manna - for their
own safeguard, to deviate from all manner of
orthodoxy intended for the education of
"civilised" classes - which only proved the instability
of the english tongue, the existence of phonetic
approximations with beautiful orthography,
but a harrowing due to this beauty by certain
obstructive forces of the perceived tongue silent,
encoded by the 26 digits, inflamed by many laws
of particularised pronunciation: which established
english as an almost universal tongue on earth:
the lingua franca - a language that has no conceptualisation
of exhausting heat of noon and siestas,
of stressful nocturnal living expected for the friday
and the saturday every week, rather than everyday
usual - so if i were to write out all the particularised
pronunciation examples i'd be here all day - if only
but a few evolutionary traits upon inheritance of
the latin alphabet were allowed for the english language,
there'd be less bewilderment at having to excavate
deep into the caves of memory, the echoes shouted
from the depths of these caves would not actually
resonate as echoes do, but would be sharp and distinct:
one of each; or as they say of the y from the tetragrammaton:
the vowel modulator, invokes vowel-morphing:
ply (i)                               as one example
                                          and the first h being the vowel
stabiliser,
                 oh                       poker      
                 eh                       extricate (ex-tree-cate /
tri                                        bi),
and to stress a basis for kabbalah, once all theories
of worded expeditions become exhausted, as either
accomplished or never-to-be accomplished, e.g. utopia,
the only thing remaining to do is to check the limits
with these atoms in simple syllable compounds,
where a safeguard is kabbalah - not so much a mention
of elocution as the intended process of inquiry,
but apart from meaningful prefix syllables like
pre-, pro-, con-, a-, super-, trans-, meta-, ortho- etc.,
i see what optical dissections guide me back into
the realm of meaningful words:
the second h is reserved for laughter, the only
consonant that allows the freedom to laugh, given
laughter has to be expressed by one consonant
and at least 2 vowels, and no other consonant allows this
to happen.