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Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun
Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

It was silent. His body sunk into the earth.
His soul long gone from there. He had died
A gun upon his arms.

When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid

He had died with a home that his dream would
live on.

Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Later they had told us he had died with courage
and valor.

Ains a year say a prayer faur me
Close yir een an remember me

The shots continue he fell by the
tenth.

Nair mair shall a see the sun
For a fell tae a Germans gun

A ******* grasped in his stone
cold hand

Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

He saw a line of faces, brown, black
and white. Some were smiling others,
crying

Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

His body sunk into the cold, wet ground
As God opened his arms, for a boy
drenched in blood.

Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun*

A group waited in the wings. Soldiers
from many places. Who fought to keep
their shores safe.
Thank You
Camellia-Japonica  Jun 2014
Caul
Draped like a long forgotten shawl
my dreams lie in my mind, covered with a caul.
No second sight was afforded my disillusionment,
my deluded, discarded dreams.
Brittle decaying hope.
Tattered remnants of youthful vigour cling vine like
to my mind. Was I ever that happy?
Or is that an illusion also.
Born of the caul, as a charm to be deemed unable to drown,
so, that's why I failed.
I watch my past on fast forward, skipping to the present.
Strange word present, meaning: the here and now, or a gift.
My dreams are nightmares, my present is no gift.
My nightmares are the gifts of my present
© JLB
18/06/2014
Ellen Joyce  Jul 2013
The Caul
Ellen Joyce Jul 2013
There is a place inside my mind
where flower petals twist and wind
a quilt to softly bind
five children borne of hope and love;
my precious ones growing free of
the lows and limits of this life -
from shameful shadows roaming rife.
Mothers dream clings to fragments of normality
to ease the longing smacks cracks in her sanity.

She taught each child to hear the ocean through shells;
and yet none were ever more than wasted cells.
She sang them lullabies from a rocking chair;
and yet the womb was stripped bare, no children there.
Her love for them so strongly she expressed
and told them of the beauty they possessed;
yet despite that full heart, she was not blessed.
She gave the kind of kisses to chase their fears away;
yet her fearful heart pangs from the longing everyday.
She could do a job where the work is never done;
yet she'll never here the call she longs to hear -
Mum.

The pain and the sorrow that I write of,
is not borne of pity, but borne out of love.
Donall Dempsey Aug 2016
YADA TASHY ( "Originator Stone" )

Outside the first snow falls.

Her wounds are photographed.

Spoken of.

Described in detail.

Technical.

The overhead microphone
takes it all in.

Being dead she is
more naked

than she ever was.

Stripped of her
humanity.

She had ceased to be
who she used to be.

She is now
merely a cadaver.

The autopsy can not tell
her name.

She is Kuzuku.

Her mother called her
KuKu.

She had been born
with a caul.

KuKu was pregnant.

She was going to call
the child if it was a girl

. . .Yuki.

She couldn't conceive what
she would call it if a boy?

It was always going to be
a girl.

She liked candyfloss
and her hair up.

Now her hair is down.
It touches her shoulders.

As if her hair were
still alive.

The autopsy
wound by wound

tells of the hell
of her dying.

The voice is
deadpan.

Mechanical.

The coroner
breaks for coffee.

Bitter.  Black.

"Ya da!"
as the Turks say.

"...with nothing..."

*

Kuzuku was named after the flowering plant/rampant ****. Her mother always drank a tea made from it. Only her mother called her her pet name; "Kuku!" Her blacker than black hair always seemed like a living entity in itself as it danced upon her shoulders or splashed over her clavicles. She always wore off the shoulder dresses or tops even in winter cold. I once told her she had the cutest clavicles( "rekishi no naka de kawaī sakotsu" )in history which....always made her laugh. I told her she had well tempered clavicles and she laughed even more when the pun was explained to her. She had been born with a caul...a red caul. She it was who told me the Turkish tale or the Yada Daşı and of the Yadachy.

She had just met the man who would eventually stab her to death and she was greatly in love with him and his culture.

All these little scraps of humanity could not be disclosed by the autopsy which could never tell of how beautiful she was and what a joy she was to be around.

Her death was a horror tale told by a friend of a friend of a friend and hard to comprehend or believe.
Yada Tashy (Turkish: Yada Taşı; Bashkort: Йәй Ташы, Azerbaijanese: Yada Daşı, means "Originator Stone" or "Rain Stone") is a legendary folkloric substance said to be capable of summoning rain. For many centuries, it was the single most sought-after item in Turkic folk legends. Yada Tashy was a central symbol to the mystical terminology in Turkic mythology, symbolising interference to and control over natural phenomena.

Yadachy (Turkish: Yadacı/Yadaçı) in Turkic tradition, were men believed to have an inborn supernatural ability to protect their estate, village, or region against destructive weather conditions, such as storms, hail, or torrential rains. It was believed that the souls of these men could leave their bodies in sleep, to intercept and fight with demonic beings imagined as bringers of bad weather. Having defeated the demons and taken away the stormy clouds they brought, the protectors would return into their bodies and wake up tired.

Yadachy of an area usually fought together against the attacking Yadachy of another area who were bringing a storm and hail clouds above their fields. The victorious Yadachy would loot the yield of all agricultural produce from the territory of their defeated foes, and take it to their own region. Although Yadachy could be women and children, most were adult men. Their supernatural power was thought to be inborn. In many regions it was regarded that the Yadachy were born with a caul—white or red, depending on the regional belief. The mother would dry the caul and sew into a piece of garment always worn by the child, such as a pouch attached under the child's armpit. Adverse weather such as a storm or hail could devastate crop fields and orchards, and thus jeopardise the livelihood of farmers in the affected area. A role of Yadachy, according to folk tradition, was to lead storms and hail clouds away from their family estates, villages, or regions, to save their crops. A Yadachy could take the storms and hail clouds over the territory of another Yadachy to destroy its crops. The other Yadachy would fly up to confront the bringer of bad weather, and there would be a fight between the Yadachy.
Ellen Joyce Jun 2013
My memory beats in rhythm with my heart.
Spilling out snapshot flashes of life like a flick book's muffled cries.
Controversial plastic shell, elastic strap, stick insect mattel covetted for months
until Santa dropped it down the chimney,
almost as fast as she sprogged and regained her figure
- the original scrummy yummy mummy set to spread low self esteem.

My daddy said anyone can crank out a kid like she did,
as my mother ground her teeth to protest on behalf of her traumatised frame.
Strange, I almost became one of the lost - before I grew cells and self,
another fragile foetus swinging on a noose
from gallows where once a ****** failed to stayed closed.
Little life curled tight self soothing sings al na tivke iredem bim'nucha

My memory beats in rhythm with my heart
as I lie beneath my shroud of sadness filled with down shrinking from the light of day
I want to tell you that I love you,
that my heart brays, beats, bleets, breaks, aches for you.
My soul, spirit, self thrice chorus al na tivke iredem bim'nucha
as waters flow from deep to deep
where danger dances and solace is sought
from beyond the fruitless orchards and willows weeping
branches reaching out for you.

My memory beats in rhythm with my heart
surrounded by madonna, ***** and all betwixt
spheres of life protruding, pronounced, announcing themselves;
in streets where bundles, terrors, cherubs, banting, brat and bairn alike
shriek, scream, squeal, shout, squalk, squabble, sing
in a cacophony that makes my heart weep and ache in longing
to sing to self in solitude al na tivke iredem bim'nucha.

My memory beats in rhythm with my heart
pulsating thoughts, dreams, hopes of you through the whole of me.
Brought to my knees I seek wisdom, guidence, strength to let you go.
The river is waiting for you, you who I hold tight in my caul
trying to trust, seeking strength to hakshev le'ivshat haga'lim
holding the thought of you,
the love of you,
the hope of you
tight in my arms crooning my lullaby of lament
al na tivke iredem bim'nucha
Translations
When I wrote this poem to express the letting go of the babies much loved but never to be I thought of a song actually from the Prince of Egypt, a film I first watched in Hebrew, so I looked it up.
al na tivke iredem bim'nucha
hush now be still love my baby dont cry
hakshev le'ivshat haga'lim
sleep while you're rocked by the stream
Ken Pepiton Mar 2023
Genesis
****** and his cities,
Peleg the earthquake,

cities of crafts and exchange

waste disposal, chaos control
ordinal first to last sequence
father, physical strong, less curious
mother, fragile smaller, more observant.

Plural spiritual entities, Elohim, watchers,
applications of reason, reporting events.

Balance demonstrated with spinning
and flipping throwing things,
fitting thing piece to piece cunning spun
framing weaving
loose and taut, twanging
whistle, whine howl yells bells song

Eventual progress, time out of mind, slow
and steady,
patient, put down, put up, leaning, pushing
pulling, windwise rushing in, to fill the empty

Mind, imageless, no holds, no solidity,
all is spirit, no atoms even, perhaps, not even,
quarkish pairs of ups or downs that spin
on points in ever after solid state called
Heaven, the firmamental place where none was.

Higg's Field.
Unknown known matter and energy, we know.
We know something power enough to seem matter,
exists,
beyond our individuated mind's grasp.
Okeh.

Spread so as we may imagine, when itself began
with the initial edges, or edge, it would be, inside
any bubble-edge is inside,
they say outside is unimaginable

flat out planed point of anything
pounded thin as any bubble wall,
-blood-brain boundary, shocking discovery

yes, as with point spreads stretched to firm
mental plotted points of possible otherness,

ways one may be seen divided
duty-wise. Needful news.

Drink water from your own cistern,
save rain water for washing hair,
keep the spider in the spout,
to catch most matter washed
from the roof over our minds vidroning view

Googlized minds, in Disneyified Meta Cognosis,

we arrived at our destination,
and they have clouds of cotton candy.

- must be all vain, all is vanity, that's fair.
- Ecclesiastes, my old ****-rod-*****-point
pain on my backside,
such as Moses saw of Him whose name is as the Dao,
the name that may be said is not Ha Shem,
the side that may be seen is not His, you see, the hole,
not the whole,
and once that is filtered through, a certainly tangled web,
where in it seems,
Jews, in cultural roles granted, now, bat und bar mitzvah,
no veiled ****** similarities to the Handmaid's Tale.

No weeping over spilt milk,
never cry wolf.
Never speak of the devil, for … what speak we in,
when worshipping and praising and praying is supplicant
pose, supposed to induce holy awareness of mathematical me.

What might be the odds, set
taking all bets,
in spirit and in truth, as held in the wedom we acknowledge,
you and me, we agree, we become maker of this bubbling state,

we boil the cauldron, wear the caul of the first born-
we take the fat from the caul of the liver, and offer the smell,
to the unspeakably named reality we make believers build
in times of plenty, we make beautiful things together,

we call dreams retellings, but the tellings flow from deeper wells.

We are more ant-ish than sheepish,
we are more horse-ish than wolfish, in the wild.
We are more dog-ish than cat-ish, in civilized spaces.

Nurture native natal ground boundary of any wedom,
go beyond,
in quest of all we failed to grasp, the wind we fit to words,
and hold the gathered sheaves , in fists,
this is it,
why one how come to become. We be. Alwise, always willing

to envision further than we think men by right may see,
the tree the fruit was forbidden from,
bade the birds imbibe, and the elephants and monkey's too,

certainly, imagine, the plan got out of hand, it was
mandatory
in the garden walled off speck of life,
pre concepts weyeken called cells.

E= okay, rebalance all you respond with

who says what C equals, at my scale, in a mind,
in or out of the body, I can not say, significantly
different from saying, I can't say,

see, set, mindtimespace, spacetimemind, point. A.
Daily bread, liquidity.
Ellen Joyce Jun 2013
I placed you in a boat of pinks and blues with a smooth white satin sail and let you lie beneath the sky so pregnant with infinite possibility that the night might tear at anytime and unleash a loveliness so heavenly it would turn us to a pillar of sugar and whip us up into candy floss beehives for the angels to play dress up with.  We are the multicoloured whispers, each one a syllable in the cacophonous swishhhhhshhhhhshing melody of the dewdrop chiming, petals kissing rhyming, intertwining of all that is beautiful uniting in the crescendo of the wind.  The soft sensations of angels breathing warmth on skin, shimmering shadowing of the ripples in the satin of a sail brought to life as if to hail the glory of the universe.  Water and wind and the will of the world gathers momentum and movement to wrench down to the depths of our heart and I feel the unfathomable maul to our caul and begin to tear us there in the place that has held us for so long.  There is no flood of blood pooling at my feet on the just forming glistening path being marked with frost and crocuses and the knowing that you are not here but that we are still we.  You are drifting into the inbetweens, where reality is a ***** word and your story, our story still unfolds in the pitter patter merry dance of keys and tongue beating our being into a rocking chair and a lullaby.  I have dreamed you almost to life, and though not alive, we are five.
This is a scrap, snippet, fragment of something that's been sparking for sometime and is in need of a quiet space and time!
From love's first fever to her plague, from the soft second
And to the hollow minute of the womb,
From the unfolding to the scissored caul,
The time for breast and the green apron age
When no mouth stirred about the hanging famine,
All world was one, one windy nothing,
My world was christened in a stream of milk.
And earth and sky were as one airy hill.
The sun and mood shed one white light.

From the first print of the unshodden foot, the lifting
Hand, the breaking of the hair,
From the first scent of the heart, the warning ghost,
And to the first dumb wonder at the flesh,
The sun was red, the moon was grey,
The earth and sky were as two mountains meeting.

The body prospered, teeth in the marrowed gums,
The growing bones, the rumour of the manseed
Within the hallowed gland, blood blessed the heart,
And the four winds, that had long blown as one,
Shone in my ears the light of sound,
Called in my eyes the sound of light.
And yellow was the multiplying sand,
Each golden grain spat life into its fellow,
Green was the singing house.

The plum my mother picked matured slowly,
The boy she dropped from darkness at her side
Into the sided lap of light grew strong,
Was muscled, matted, wise to the crying thigh,
And to the voice that, like a voice of hunger,
Itched in the noise of wind and sun.

And from the first declension of the flesh
I learnt man's tongue, to twist the shapes of thoughts
Into the stony idiom of the brain,
To shade and knit anew the patch of words
Left by the dead who, in their moonless acre,
Need no word's warmth.
The root of tongues ends in a spentout cancer,
That but a name, where maggots have their X.

I learnt the verbs of will, and had my secret;
The code of night tapped on my tongue;
What had been one was many sounding minded.

One wound, one mind, spewed out the matter,
One breast gave **** the fever's issue;
From the divorcing sky I learnt the double,
The two-framed globe that spun into a score;
A million minds gave **** to such a bud
As forks my eye;
Youth did condense; the tears of spring
Dissolved in summer and the hundred seasons;
One sun, one manna, warmed and fed.
Evan Stephens  Oct 2023
Caul
Evan Stephens Oct 2023
Someone I could kiss
Has left his, her
             tracks
             A memory
            Heavy as winter breathing
            in the snow

-Elise Cowen


A white cloud caul brooms back
from the blue jeans baby above,

& a lemon blotch veil settles
over a moss-pocked branch facet.

Slow and chilly the afternoon
peels into memory fingers -

pleasant and strange, like sugar
stuck under the tongue.

I audit odd thoughts:
ephemeral *** reflections

are gauzy in the middle distance,
trapped in a basin of lost things;

grief is colossal, a leviathan
washed in from yesterday

to blight the snubbed beach slant.
In between are a thousand thousand

blacknesses between starry points...
Speckled with desire, I am witness:

the blanching cloud caul is broken
& a day-head blooms from a glass.
To-day, this insect, and the world I breathe,
Now that my symbols have outelbowed space,
Time at the city spectacles, and half
The dear, daft time I take to nudge the sentence,
In trust and tale I have divided sense,
Slapped down the guillotine, the blood-red double
Of head and tail made witnesses to this
****** of Eden and green genesis.

The insect certain is the plague of fables.

This story's monster has a serpent caul,
Blind in the coil scrams round the blazing outline,
Measures his own length on the garden wall
And breaks his shell in the last shocked beginning;
A crocodile before the chrysalis,
Before the fall from love the flying heartbone,
Winged like a sabbath *** this children's piece
Uncredited blows Jericho on Eden.

The insect fable is the certain promise.

Death: death of Hamlet and the nightmare madmen,
An air-drawn windmill on a wooden horse,
John's beast, Job's patience, and the fibs of vision,
Greek in the Irish sea the ageless voice:
'Adam I love, my madmen's love is endless,
No tell-tale lover has an end more certain,
All legends' sweethearts on a tree of stories,
My cross of tales behind the fabulous curtain.'

— The End —