How Long the Night
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa early 13th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song ...
but now I feel the northern wind's blast—
its severe weather strong.
Alas! Alas! This night seems so long!
And I, because of my momentous wrong,
now grieve, mourn and fast.

Originally published by Measure

Keywords/Tags: Old English, Middle English, Medieval English, long night, lament, complaint, alas, summer, pleasant, winter, north wind, northern wind, severe weather, storm, bird, birds, birdsong, sin, crime, fast, fasting, repentance, dark night of the soul, sackcloth and ashes, regret, repentance, remonstrance



Three Roundels by Geoffrey Chaucer

I. Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain green;
for your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain.

By all truth, I tell you faithfully
that you are of life and death my queen;
for at my death this truth shall be seen:
your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.



II. Rejection
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it’s useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.

I'm guiltless, yet my sentence has been cast.
I tell you truly, needless now to feign,—
Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it’s useless to complain.

Alas, that Nature in your face compassed
Such beauty, that no man may hope attain
To mercy, though he perish from the pain;
Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it’s useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.



III. Escape
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean;
Since I am free, I count it not a bean.

He may question me and counter this and that;
I care not: I will answer just as I mean.
Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean.

Love strikes me from his roster, short and flat,
And he is struck from my books, just as clean,
Forevermore; there is no other mean.
Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean;
Since I am free, I count it not a bean.



Rondel: Your Smiling Mouth
by Charles d'Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch

Your smiling mouth and laughing eyes, bright gray,
Your ample ******* and slender arms’ twin chains,
Your hands so smooth, each finger straight and plain,
Your little feet—please, what more can I say?

It is my fetish when you’re far away
To muse on these and thus to soothe my pain—
Your smiling mouth and laughing eyes, bright gray,
Your ample ******* and slender arms’ twin chains.

So would I beg you, if I only may,
To see such sights as I before have seen,
Because my fetish pleases me. Obscene?
I’ll be obsessed until my dying day
By your sweet smiling mouth and eyes, bright gray,
Your ample ******* and slender arms’ twin chains!



Spring
by Charles d’Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch

Young lovers,
greeting the spring
fling themselves downhill,
making cobblestones ring
with their wild leaps and arcs,
like ecstatic sparks
struck from coal.

What is their brazen goal?

They grab at whatever passes,
so we can only hazard guesses.
But they rear like prancing steeds
raked by brilliant spurs of need,
Young lovers.



Oft in My Thought
by Charles d'Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch

So often in my busy mind I sought,
    Around the advent of the fledgling year,
For something pretty that I really ought
    To give my lady dear;
    But that sweet thought's been wrested from me, clear,
        Since death, alas, has sealed her under clay
    And robbed the world of all that's precious here―
         God keep her soul, I can no better say.

For me to keep my manner and my thought
    Acceptable, as suits my age's hour?
While proving that I never once forgot
    Her worth? It tests my power!
    I serve her now with masses and with prayer;
        For it would be a shame for me to stray
    Far from my faith, when my time's drawing near—
         God keep her soul, I can no better say.

Now earthly profits fail, since all is lost
    And the cost of everything became so dear;
Therefore, O Lord, who rules the higher host,
    Take my good deeds, as many as there are,
    And crown her, Lord, above in your bright sphere,
        As heaven's truest maid! And may I say:
    Most good, most fair, most likely to bring cheer—
         God keep her soul, I can no better say.

When I praise her, or hear her praises raised,
I recall how recently she brought me pleasure;
    Then my heart floods like an overflowing bay
And makes me wish to dress for my own bier—
    God keep her soul, I can no better say.



Winter has cast his cloak away
by Charles d'Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch

Winter has cast his cloak away
of wind and cold and chilling rain
to dress in embroidered light again:
the light of day—bright, festive, gay!
Each bird and beast, without delay,
in its own tongue, sings this refrain:
"Winter has cast his cloak away!"
Brooks, fountains, rivers, streams at play,
wear, with their summer livery,
bright beads of silver jewelry.
All the Earth has a new and fresh display:
Winter has cast his cloak away!

Note: This rondeau was set to music by Debussy in his Trois chansons de France.



The year lays down his mantle cold
by Charles d’Orleans (1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch

The year lays down his mantle cold
of wind, chill rain and bitter air,
and now goes clad in clothes of gold
of smiling suns and seasons fair,
while birds and beasts of wood and fold
now with each cry and song declare:
"The year lays down his mantle cold!"
All brooks, springs, rivers, seaward rolled,
now pleasant summer livery wear
with silver beads embroidered where
the world puts off its raiment old.
The year lays down his mantle cold.



Wulf and Eadwacer (Old English circa 960-990 AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My people pursue him like crippled prey.
They'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack.
We are so different!

Wulf's on one island; I'm on another.
His island's a fortress, fastened by fens.
Here, bloodthirsty curs roam this island.
They'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack.
We are so different!

My thoughts pursued Wulf like panting hounds.
Whenever it rained, as I wept,
the bold warrior came; he took me in his arms:
good feelings for him, but their end loathsome!
Wulf, O, my Wulf, my ache for you
has made me sick; your infrequent visits
have left me famished, deprived of real meat!
Do you hear, Eadwacer? Watchdog!
A wolf has borne our wretched whelp to the woods.
One can easily sever what never was one:
our song together.



Cædmon's Hymn (Old English circa 658-680 AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, let us honour      heaven-kingdom's Guardian,
the might of the Architect      and his mind-plans,
the work of the Glory-Father.      First he, the Everlasting Lord,
established      the foundation of wonders.
Then he, the Primeval Poet,      created heaven as a roof
for the sons of men,      Holy Creator,
Maker of mankind.      Then he, the Eternal Entity,
afterwards made men middle-earth:      Master Almighty!



Westron Wynde
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa 1530 AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Western wind, when will you blow,
bringing the drizzling rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms,
and I in my bed again!



This World's Joy
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa 14th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Winter awakens all my care
as leafless trees grow bare.
For now my sighs are fraught
whenever it enters my thought:
regarding this world's joy,
how everything comes to naught.



Pity Mary
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Now the sun passes under the wood:
I rue, Mary, thy face—fair, good.
Now the sun passes under the tree:
I rue, Mary, thy son and thee.



Fowles in the Frith
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The fowls in the forest,
the fishes in the flood
and I must go mad:
such sorrow I've had
for beasts of bone and blood!



I am of Ireland
(anonymous Medieval Irish lyric, circa 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I am of Ireland,
and of the holy realm of Ireland.
Gentlefolk, I pray thee:
for the sake of saintly charity,
come dance with me
in Ireland!



Sumer is icumen in
anonymous Middle English poem, circa 1260 AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Summer is a-comin’!
Sing loud, cuckoo!
The seed grows,
The meadow blows,
The woods spring up anew.
Sing, cuckoo!

The ewe bleats for her lamb;
The cows contentedly moo;
The bullock roots,
The billy-goat poots ...
Sing merrily, cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo,
You sing so well, cuckoo!
Never stop, until you're through!

Sing now cuckoo! Sing, cuckoo!
Sing, cuckoo! Sing now cuckoo!



Whan the turuf is thy tour
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
When the turf is your tower
and the pit is your bower,
your pale white skin and throat
shall be sullen worms’ to note.
What help to you, then,
was all your worldly hope?

2.
When the turf is your tower
and the grave is your bower,
your pale white throat and skin
worm-eaten from within ...
what hope of my help then?



Ech day me comëth tydinges thre
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Each day I’m plagued by three doles,
These gargantuan weights on my soul:
First, that I must somehow exit this fen.
Second, that I cannot know when.
And yet it’s the third that torments me so,
Because I don't know where the hell I will go!



Ich have y-don al myn youth
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I have done it all my youth:
Often, often, and often!
I have loved long and yearned zealously ...
And oh what grief it has brought me!



Are these the oldest rhyming poems in the English language? Reginald of Durham recorded four verses of Saint Godric's: they are the oldest songs in English for which the original musical settings survive.

The first song is said in the Life of Saint Godric to have come to Godric when he had a vision of his sister Burhcwen, like him a solitary at Finchale, being received into heaven.  She was singing a song of thanksgiving, in Latin, and Godric renders her song in English bracketed by a Kyrie eleison:

Led By Christ and Mary
by Saint Godric of Finchale (1065-1170)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

By Christ and Saint Mary I was so graciously led
that the earth never felt my bare foot’s tread!

Crist and sainte marie swa on scamel me iledde
þat ic on þis erðe ne silde wid mine bare fote itredie

In the second poem, Godric puns on his name: godes riche means “God’s kingdom” and sounds like “God is rich” ...

A Cry to Mary
by Saint Godric of Finchale (1065-1170)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I.
Saintë Marië Virginë,
Mother of Jesus Christ the Nazarenë,
Welcome, shield and help thin Godric,
Fly him off to God’s kingdom rich!

II.
Saintë Marië, Christ’s bower,
****** among Maidens, Motherhood’s flower,
Blot out my sin, fix where I’m flawed,
Elevate me to Bliss with God!

Original

Saintë Marië Virginë,
Moder Iesu Cristes Nazarenë,
Onfo, schild, help thin Godric,
Onfong bring hegilich
With the in Godës riche.

Saintë Marië Cristes bur,
Maidenës clenhad, moderës flur;
Dilie min sinnë, rix in min mod,
Bring me to winnë with the selfd God.

Godric also wrote a prayer to St. Nicholas:

Prayer to St. Nicholas
by Saint Godric of Finchale (1065-1170)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Saint Nicholas, beloved of God,
Build us a house that’s bright and fair;
Watch over us from birth to bier,
Then, Saint Nicholas, bring us safely there!

Sainte Nicholaes godes druð
tymbre us faire scone hus
At þi burth at þi bare
Sainte nicholaes bring vs wel þare



The Rhymed Poem aka The Rhyming Poem aka The Riming Poem
anonymous Old English poem from the Exeter Book, circa 990 AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

He who granted me life created this sun
and graciously provided its radiant engine.
I was gladdened with glees, bathed in bright hues,
deluged with joy’s blossoms, sunshine-infused.

Men admired me, feted me with banquet-courses;
we rejoiced in the good life. Gaily bedecked horses
carried me swiftly across plains on joyful rides,
delighting me with their long limbs' thunderous strides.
That world was quickened by earth’s fruits and their flavors!
I cantered under pleasant skies, attended by troops of advisers.
Guests came and went, amusing me with their chatter
as I listened with delight to their witty palaver.

Well-appointed ships glided by in the distance;
when I sailed myself, I was never without guidance.
I was of the highest rank; I lacked for nothing in the hall;
nor did I lack for brave companions; warriors, all,
we strode through castle halls weighed down with gold
won from our service to thanes. We were proud men, and bold.
Wise men praised me; I was omnipotent in battle;
Fate smiled on and protected me; foes fled before me like cattle.
Thus I lived with joy indwelling; faithful retainers surrounded me;
I possessed vast estates; I commanded all my eyes could see;
the earth lay subdued before me; I sat on a princely throne;
the words I sang were charmed; old friendships did not wane ...

Those were years rich in gifts and the sounds of happy harp-strings,
when a lasting peace dammed shut the rivers’ sorrowings.
My servants were keen, their harps resonant;
their songs pealed, the sound loud but pleasant;
the music they made melodious, a continual delight;
the castle hall trembled and towered bright.
Courage increased, wealth waxed with my talent;
I gave wise counsel to great lords and enriched the valiant.

My spirit enlarged; my heart rejoiced;
good faith flourished; glory abounded; abundance increased.
I was lavishly supplied with gold; bright gems were circulated ...
Till treasure led to treachery and the bonds of friendship constricted.

I was bold in my bright array, noble in my equipage,
my joy princely, my home a happy hermitage.
I protected and led my people;
for many years my life among them was regal;
I was devoted to them and they to me.

But now my heart is troubled, fearful of the fates I see;
disaster seems unavoidable. Someone dear departs in flight by night
who once before was bold. His soul has lost its light.
A secret disease in full growth blooms within his breast,
spreads in different directions. Hostility blossoms in his chest,
in his mind. Bottomless grief assaults the mind's nature
and when penned in, erupts in rupture,
burns eagerly for calamity, runs bitterly about.  

The weary man suffers, begins a journey into doubt;
his pain is ceaseless; pain increases his sorrows, destroys his bliss;
his glory ceases; he loses his happiness;
he loses his craft; he no longer burns with desires.
Thus joys here perish, lordships expire;
men lose faith and descend into vice;
infirm faith degenerates into evil’s curse;
faith feebly abandons its high seat and every hour grows worse.

So now the world changes; Fate leaves men lame;
Death pursues hatred and brings men to shame.
The happy clan perishes; the spear rends the marrow;
the evildoer brawls and poisons the arrow;
sorrow devours the city; old age castrates courage;
misery flourishes; wrath desecrates the peerage;
the abyss of sin widens; the treacherous path snakes;
resentment burrows, digs in, wrinkles, engraves;
artificial beauty grows foul;
                                             the summer heat cools;
earthly wealth fails;
                                enmity rages, cruel, bold;
the might of the world ages, courage grows cold.
Fate wove itself for me and my sentence was given:
that I should dig a grave and seek that grim cavern
men cannot avoid when death comes, arrow-swift,
to seize their lives in his inevitable grasp.
Now night comes at last,
and the way stand clear
for Death to dispossesses me of my my abode here.

When my corpse lies interred and the worms eat my limbs,
whom will Death delight then, with his dark feast and hymns?
Let men’s bones become one,
and then finally, none,
till there’s nothing left here of the evil ones.
But men of good faith will not be destroyed;
the good man will rise, far beyond the Void,
who chastened himself, more often than not,
to avoid bitter sins and that final black Blot.
The good man has hope of a far better end
and remembers the promise of Heaven,
where he’ll experience the mercies of God for his saints,

freed from all sins, dark and depraved,
defended from vices, gloriously saved,
where, happy at last before their cheerful Lord,
men may rejoice in his love forevermore.



Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar [1460-1525]
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest in bounty and in beauty clear
and in every virtue that is held most dear―
except only that you are merciless.

Into your garden, today, I followed you;
there I saw flowers of freshest hue,
both white and red, delightful to see,
and wholesome herbs, waving resplendently―
yet everywhere, no odor but rue.

I fear that March with his last arctic blast
has slain my fair rose of pallid and gentle cast,
whose piteous death does my heart such pain
that, if I could, I would compose her roots again―
so comforting her bowering leaves have been.



Now skruketh rose and lylie flour
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa 11th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Now skruketh rose and lylie flour, // Now the rose and the lily skyward flower,
That whilen ber that suete savour // That will bear for awhile that sweet savor:
In somer, that suete tyde; // In summer, that sweet tide;
Ne is no quene so stark ne stour, // There is no queen so stark in her power
Ne no luedy so bryht in bour // Nor any lady so bright in her bower
That ded ne shal by glyde: // That Death shall not summon and guide;
Whoso wol fleshye lust for-gon and hevene-blisse abyde // But whoever forgoes lust, in heavenly bliss will abide
On Jhesu be is thoht anon, that tharled was ys side. // With his thoughts on Jesus anon, thralled at his side.



Adam Lay Ybounden
(anonymous Medieval English Lyric, circa 15th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Adam lay bound, bound in a bond;
Four thousand winters, he thought, were not too long.
And all was for an apple, an apple that he took,
As clerics now find written in their book.
But had the apple not been taken, or had it never been,
We'd never have had our Lady, heaven's queen.
So blesséd be the time the apple was taken thus;
Therefore we sing, "God is gracious!"

The poem has also been rendered as "Adam lay i-bounden" and "Adam lay i-bowndyn."



I Sing of a Maiden
(anonymous Medieval English Lyric, circa 15th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I sing of a maiden
That is matchless.
The King of all Kings
For her son she chose.
He came also as still
To his mother's breast
As April dew
Falling on the grass.
He came also as still
To his mother's bower
As April dew
Falling on the flower.
He came also as still
To where his mother lay
As April dew
Falling on the spray.
Mother and maiden?
Never one, but she!
Well may such a lady
God's mother be!



IN LIBRARIOS
by Thomas Campion
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Booksellers laud authors for novel editions
as pimps praise their ****** for exotic positions.



Brut (circa 1100 AD, written by Layamon, an excerpt)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Now he stands on a hill overlooking the Avon,
seeing steel fishes girded with swords in the stream,
their swimming days done,
their scales a-gleam like gold-plated shields,
their fish-spines floating like shattered spears.

Layamon's Brut is a 32,000-line poem composed in Middle English that shows a strong Anglo-Saxon influence and contains the first known reference to King Arthur in English. The passage above is a good example of Layamon's gift for imagery. It's interesting, I think, that a thousand years ago a poet was dabbling in surrealism, with dead warriors being described as if they were both men and fish.



Tegner's Drapa
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I heard a voice, that cried,
“Balder the beautiful lies dead, lies dead . . .”
a voice like the flight of white cranes
intent on a sun sailing high overhead—
but a sun now irretrievably setting.

Then I saw the sun’s corpse
—dead beyond all begetting—
borne through disconsolate skies
as blasts from the Nifel-heim rang out with dread,
“Balder lies dead, our fair Balder lies dead! . . .”

Lost—the sweet runes of his tongue,
so sweet every lark hushed its singing!
Lost, lost forever—his beautiful face,
the grace of his smile, all the girls’ hearts wild-winging!
O, who ever thought such strange words might be said,
as “Balder lies dead, gentle Balder lies dead! . . .”



Deor's Lament (Anglo Saxon poem, circa 10th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Weland knew the agony of exile.
That indomitable smith was wracked by grief.
He endured countless troubles:
sorrows were his only companions
in his frozen island dungeon
after Nithad had fettered him,
many strong-but-supple sinew-bonds
binding the better man.
   That passed away; this also may.

Beadohild mourned her brothers' deaths
but even more, her own sad state
once she discovered herself with child.
She predicted nothing good could come of it.
   That passed away; this also may.

We have heard that the Geat's moans for Matilda,
his lady, were limitless,
that his sorrowful love for her
robbed him of regretless sleep.
   That passed away; this also may.

For thirty winters Theodric ruled
the Mæring stronghold with an iron hand;
many knew this and moaned.
   That passed away; this also may.

We have also heard of Ermanaric's wolfish ways,
of how he held wide sway in the realm of the Goths.
He was a grim king! Many a warrior sat,
full of cares and maladies of the mind,
wishing constantly that his kingdom might be overthrown.
   That passed away; this also may.

If a man sits long enough, sorrowful and anxious,
bereft of joy, his mind constantly darkening,
soon it seems to him that his troubles are endless.
Then he must consider that the wise Lord
often moves through the earth
granting some men honor, glory and fame,
but others only shame and hardship.
This I will say for myself:
that for awhile I was the Heodeninga's scop,
dear to my lord. My name was Deor.
For many winters I held a fine office,
faithfully serving a just lord. But now Heorrenda
a man skilful in songs, has received the estate
the protector of warriors gave me.
   That passed away; this also may.



The Wife's Lament
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I draw these words from deep wells of my grief,
care-worn, unutterably sad.
I can recount woes I've borne since birth,
present and past, never more than now.
I have won, from my exile-paths, only pain.

First, my lord forsook his folk, left,
crossed the seas' tumult, far from our people.
Since then, I've known
wrenching dawn-griefs, dark mournings ... oh where,
where can he be?

Then I, too, left—a lonely, lordless refugee,
full of unaccountable desires!
But the man's kinsmen schemed secretly
to estrange us, divide us, keep us apart,
across earth's wide kingdom, and my heart broke.

Then my lord spoke:
"Take up residence here."
I had few friends in this unknown, cheerless
region, none close.
Christ, I felt lost!

Then I thought I had found a well-matched man –
one meant for me,
but unfortunately he
was ill-starred and blind, with a devious mind,
full of murderous intentions, plotting some crime!

Before God we
vowed never to part, not till kingdom come, never!
But now that's all changed, forever –
our friendship done, severed.
I must hear, far and near, contempt for my husband.

So other men bade me, "Go, live in the grove,
beneath the great oaks, in an earth-cave, alone."
In this ancient cave-dwelling I am lost and oppressed –
the valleys are dark, the hills immense,
and this cruel-briared enclosure—an arid abode!

The injustice assails me—my lord's absence!
On earth there are lovers who share the same bed
while I pass through life dead in this dark abscess
where I wilt, summer days unable to rest
or forget the sorrows of my life's hard lot.

A young woman must always be
stern, hard-of-heart, unmoved,
opposing breast-cares and her heartaches' legions.
She must appear cheerful
even in a tumult of grief.

Like a criminal exiled to a far-off land,
moaning beneath insurmountable cliffs,
my weary-minded love, drenched by wild storms
and caught in the clutches of anguish,
is reminded constantly of our former happiness.

Woe be it to them who abide in longing.



"The Husband's Message" is an Old English (Anglo-Saxon) poem from the Exeter Book, the oldest extant English poetry anthology. The poem may or may not be a reply to "The Wife's Lament," another poem in the same collection. The poem is generally considered to be an Anglo-Saxon riddle (I will provide the solution), but its primary focus is persuading a wife or fiancé to join her husband or betrothed and fulfill her promises to him. The Exeter Book has been dated to 960-990 AD, so the poem was written by then or earlier. The version below is my modern English translation of one of the oldest extant English poems.

The Husband's Message
anonymous Old English poem, circa 960-990 AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

See, I unseal myself for your eyes only!
I sprang from a seed to a sapling,
waxed great in a wood,
                 was given knowledge,
was ordered across saltstreams in ships
where I stiffened my spine, standing tall,
till, entering the halls of heroes,
           I honored my manly Lord.

Now I stand here on this ship’s deck,
an emissary ordered to inform you
of the love my Lord feels for you.
I have no fear forecasting his heart steadfast,
his honor bright, his word true.

He who bade me come carved this letter
and entreats you to recall, clad in your finery,
what you promised each other many years before,
mindful of his treasure-laden promises.

He reminds you how, in those distant days,
witty words were pledged by you both
in the mead-halls and homesteads:
how he would be Lord of the lands
you would inhabit together
while forging a lasting love.

Alas, a vendetta drove him far from his feuding tribe,
but now he instructs me to gladly give you notice
that when you hear the returning cuckoo's cry
cascading down warming coastal cliffs,
come over the sea! Let no man hinder your course.

He earnestly urges you: Out! To sea!
Away to the sea, when the circling gulls
hover over the ship that conveys you to him!

Board the ship that you meet there:
sail away seaward to seek your husband,
over the seagulls' range,
                 over the paths of foam.
For over the water, he awaits you.

He cannot conceive, he told me,
how any keener joy could comfort his heart,
nor any greater happiness gladden his soul,
than that a generous God should grant you both
to exchange rings, then give gifts to trusty liege-men,
golden armbands inlaid with gems to faithful followers.

The lands are his, his estates among strangers,
his new abode fair and his followers true,
all hardy heroes, since hence he was driven,
shoved off in his ship from these shore in distress,
steered straightway over the saltstreams, sped over the ocean,
a wave-tossed wanderer winging away.

But now the man has overcome his woes,
outpitted his perils, lives in plenty, lacks no luxury,
has a hoard and horses and friends in the mead-halls.

All the wealth of the earth's great earls
now belongs to my Lord ...
                                He only lacks you.

He would have everything within an earl's having,
if only my Lady will come home to him now,
if only she will do as she swore and honor her vow.



Lament for the Makaris [Makers, or Poets]
by William Dunbar [1460-1525]
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

i who enjoyed good health and gladness
am overwhelmed now by life’s terrible sickness
and enfeebled with infirmity ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

our presence here is mere vainglory;
the false world is but transitory;
the flesh is frail; the Fiend runs free ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

the state of man is changeable:
now sound, now sick, now blithe, now dull,
now manic, now devoid of glee ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

no state on earth stands here securely;
as the wild wind shakes the willow tree,
so wavers this world’s vanity ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

Death leads the knights into the field
(unarmored under helm and shield)
sole Victor of each red mêlée ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

that strange, despotic Beast
tears from its mother’s breast
the babe, full of benignity ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

He takes the champion of the hour,
the captain of the highest tower,
the beautiful damsel in her tower ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

He spares no lord for his elegance,
nor clerk for his intelligence;
His dreadful stroke no man can flee ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

artist, magician, scientist,
orator, debater, theologist,
must all conclude, so too, as we:
“how the fear of Death dismays me!”

in medicine the most astute
sawbones and surgeons all fall mute;
they cannot save themselves, or flee ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

i see the Makers among the unsaved;
the greatest of Poets all go to the grave;
He does not spare them their faculty ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

i have seen Him pitilessly devour
our noble Chaucer, poetry’s flower,
and Lydgate and Gower (great Trinity!) ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

since He has taken my brothers all,
i know He will not let me live past the fall;
His next prey will be — poor unfortunate me! ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

there is no remedy for Death;
we all must prepare to relinquish breath
so that after we die, we may be set free
from “the fear of Death dismays me!”




Unholy Trinity
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Man has three enemies:
himself, the world, and the devil.
Of these the first is, by far,
the most irresistible evil.

True Wealth
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

There is more to being rich
than merely having;
the wealthiest man can lose
everything not worth saving.

The Rose
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The rose merely blossoms
and never asks why:
heedless of her beauty,
careless of every eye.

The Rose
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The rose lack “reasons”
and merely sways with the seasons;
she has no ego
but whoever put on such a show?

Eternal Time
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Eternity is time,
time eternity,
except when we
are determined to "see."

Visions
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Our souls possess two eyes:
one examines time,
the other visions
eternal and sublime.

Godless
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

God is absolute Nothingness
beyond our sense of time and place;
the more we try to grasp Him,
The more He flees from our embrace.

The Source
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Water is pure and clean
when taken at the well-head:
but drink too far from the Source
and you may well end up dead.

Ceaseless Peace
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Unceasingly you seek
life's ceaseless wavelike motion;
I seek perpetual peace, all storms calmed.
Whose is the wiser notion?

Well Written
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Friend, cease!
Abandon all pretense!
You must yourself become
the Writing and the Sense.

Worm Food
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

No worm is buried
so deep within the soil
that God denies it food
as reward for its toil.

Mature Love
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

New love, like a sparkling wine, soon fizzes.
Mature love, calm and serene, abides.

God's Predicament
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

God cannot condemn those with whom he would dwell,
or He would have to join them in hell!

Clods
by Angelus Silesius
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A ruby
is not lovelier
than a dirt clod,
nor an angel
more glorious
than a frog.



A Proverb from Winfred's Time
anonymous Old English poem, circa 757-786
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
The procrastinator puts off purpose,
never initiates anything marvelous,
never succeeds, and dies alone.

2.
The late-deed-doer delays glory-striving,
never indulges daring dreams,
never succeeds, and dies alone.

3.
Often the deed-dodger avoids ventures,
never succeeds, and dies alone.

Winfrid or Wynfrith is better known as Saint Boniface (c. 675–754). This may be the second-oldest English poem, after "Caedmon's Hymn."



Franks Casket Runes
anonymous Old English poems, circa 700
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
The fish flooded the shore-cliffs;
the sea-king wept when he swam onto the shingle:
whale's bone.

2.
Romulus and Remus, twin brothers weaned in Rome
by a she-wolf, far from their native land.



"The Leiden Riddle" is an Old English translation of Aldhelm's Latin riddle Lorica ("Corselet").

The Leiden Riddle
anonymous Old English riddle poem, circa 700
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The dank earth birthed me from her icy womb.
I know I was not fashioned from woolen fleeces;
nor was I skillfully spun from skeins;
I have neither warp nor weft;
no thread thrums through me in the thrashing loom;
nor do whirring shuttles rattle me;
nor does the weaver's rod assail me;
nor did silkworms spin me like skillfull fates
into curious golden embroidery.
And yet heroes still call me an excellent coat.
Nor do I fear the dread arrows' flights,
however eagerly they leap from their quivers.

Solution: a coat of mail.



He sits with his harp at his thane's feet,
Earning his hire, his rewards of rings,
Sweeping the strings with his skillful nail;
Hall-thanes smile at the sweet song he sings.
—"Fortunes of Men" loose translation by Michael R. Burch



Fairest Between Lincoln and Lindsey
(anonymous Middle English poem, circa late 13th century)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When the nightingale sings, the woods turn green;
Leaf and grass again blossom in April, I know,
Yet love pierces my heart with its spear so keen!
Night and day it drinks my blood. The painful rivulets flow.

I’ve loved all this year. Now I can love no more;
I’ve sighed many a sigh, sweetheart, and yet all seems wrong.
For love is no nearer and that leaves me poor.
Sweet lover, think of me — I’ve loved you so long!



A cleric courts his lady
(anonymous Middle English poem, circa late 13th century)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My death I love, my life I hate, because of a lovely lady;
She's as bright as the broad daylight, and shines on me so purely.
I fade before her like a leaf in summer when it's green.
If thinking of her does no good, to whom shall I complain?



The original poem below is based on my teenage misinterpretation of a Latin prayer ...

Elegy for a little girl, lost
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

. . . qui laetificat juventutem meam . . .
She was the joy of my youth,
and now she is gone.
. . . requiescat in pace . . .
May she rest in peace.
. . . amen . . .
Amen.

NOTE: I was touched by this Latin prayer, which I discovered in a novel I read as a teenager. I later decided to incorporate it into a poem. From what I now understand, “ad deum qui laetificat juventutem meam” means “to the God who gives joy to my youth,” but I am sticking with my original interpretation: a lament for a little girl at her funeral. The phrase can be traced back to Saint Jerome's translation of Psalm 42 in the Vulgate Latin Bible (circa 385 AD).

party zone with johnny brown, tribute to jon engish


johnny’  how are you going dudes and welcome to this very special tribute

to one of our most popular entertainers, jon english and our first jingler is pam

pam’  i am wandering through the hall of fame and i see so many things

but nothing was better than when i met jon english

he had songs like hollywood 7 and six ribbons, how ace

and jesus christ superstar and the great performance hairsprsy

you see, jon, your the greatest man that i have ever met

and mate heaven is a waiting you to fly up on your jet

jon english, mate, is a great man

singer and actor of stage and screen

i was not born for against the wind, yo

but jon english is all together now with all his great stuff

johnny’  ok thank you pam and now here is peter with his great jingle

peter’  you see he was travelling for miles miles

everyone thought he was cool

you see all the strangers and his close friends said jon your rad

you see i wonder if jon english ever went to hollywood 7

or is it just a song to sing about forever

and is jon english a great actor or what

i remember watchig all together man, that was funny oh yeah

and against the wind was one of his most serious roles

ya see jon english is our man and his name in heaven goes up in lights

everyone is invited to his opening shows up there, pretty cool aha

he will play a 3 hour concert on first night and 1 hour in the second

jon english will charge for the concerts about 7 bucks a night

which makes it 14

johnny’  thank you peter and now here is john with his jingle

john’  if i *** a singer like jon english is

i will sing the songs that made him famous

you see i will sing six ribbons with so much class

and hollywood 7 will show so much class

i will start by singing yesterday was a memory

it might have been when rock and roll never forgets

forgives and regrets making it all together now

and if i had made it to the number 1

i will buy a jon english album to learn about the many songs he sang

johnny’  thanks john and now here is red tape to sing hollywood 7

red tape’
She came in one night from Omaha, worn out
'Cause she never could sleep on trains
She took the bus to Hollywood
Lookin' for a room in the pourin' rain
With her hair so blonde and her eyes so brown
She thought she'd take this town and turn it upside down

Well I was livin' in a hotel just off Sunset
She moved in across the hall
And she said she'd be a movie star
And waited every mornin' for the ca-all
So I asked her in to share a drink
But she hardly had the ti-ime
A call might come tomorrow
She had to learn her li-ines

On Hollywood Seven
Rooms to rent till your name goes up in lights
Oh-oh Hollywood Seven
You can dream your dreams for seven bucks a night

Well, the months went by without a job
The money that she saved was nearly spent
So she started bringin' strangers home
Tryin' to find a way to pay the rent
Well she'd sit down and drink my coffee
With nothin' much to say-ay
Just busy rehearsin' in her mind
The scenes she'd never play-ay

On Hollywood Seven, rooms to rent
Till your name goes up in lights
Oh-oh, Hollywood Seven
You can dream your dreams for seven bucks a night

Well I found her there one mornin'
When she didn't come for coffee when I ca-alled
She'd gone and brought the wrong one home this time
There were crazy lipstick marks up on the wa-all
Now she's goin' back to Omaha but not the way she'd pla-anned
There'll be no crowd to cheer her on, no welcome home, no ba-and

On Hollywood Seven, rooms to rent, till your name goes up in lights
Oh Hollywood Seven, you can dream your dreams for seven bucks a night
On Hollywood Seven, dreams to rent, till your name goes up in lights
Oh-oh Hollywood Seven, you can pay your dues for seven bucks a night

johnny’  and now dudes let’s sing jesus christ superstar


everyone who performed’ jesus christ superstar

your mate jon english is coming up to join ya

jesus christ superstar

and when he arrives there will be a big a party like you have never seen

you see i miss you jon, you are too good to die

but up there in eternity there is no flies

and the music is hot and you are great

up in eternity you feel like you made sacrifice

jesus christ superstar

your mate jon english is coming up to join ya

jesus christ superstar

and when he arrives there will be a pig party like you never seen

and now as we move up to the top of the world

you are planning to sing hollywood 7 oh yeah

why would a room be 7 bucks a night jon english

only you will know

jesus christ wuperstar

your mate jon english is coming up to ya

jesus christ superstar

and when he arrives there will be the biggest party like you never seen

joihnny’  thanks dudes and now here is seven year old katie whyslat singing six ribbons

katie’    


if i were a minstrel, i’d sing you six love songs

to tell the whole world of the love that we share

if i were a merchant i’d bring you six diamonds

with six blood red roses for my love to wear

but jon english was a simple man a great entertainer

so i will take those six ribbons to tie back my hair

if jon english didn’t die, it will not be as sad

he will still be singing great songs oh yeah

but the bad news he did die, the great entertainer

so take me six ribbons for eternity to share

johnny’   thank you everyone for putting on a great show

and thanks for wearing jon english wigs and  now let’s lift up our voices

and sing

for jon english was a very good person

for jon english was a very good person

for jon english was a very good person

and so say all of us

and so say all of us

and so say all of us

for jon english was a vert good person

and so say all of us

johnny’  whether it’s the hollywood 7 or jesus christ superstar

or against the wind or even all together now

jon english was a very good fellow

and he made each party great

johnny’   catch ya later dudes

Kaiser Clown

borrowed shoe:
stolen foot.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

auf die frei zungen ich kennt -
   (of the three tongues i know) -
ich kennt zwei
    und kennen eine:
    (i know two and know of one):

auf die frei: ich lieben dieser
                        äußerst
(of the three: i love this utmost)...
                      
    in my youth i spent a good deal of time
watching Disney's Robin "fox" Hood
cartoon in German, somehow it rubbed off
on me...

      i was never born with anything even remotely
resembling the love of the English language...
can there be a love akin to the Anglophile
that excludes the love of the language?
i love everything English except for the language...

each day i'm slowly planning my escape
into womb of the mother of the isles that
was first spoken in Saxony...
         tired Bavarians? tired Pomeranians?
but the Saxons were a landlocked people
who gave them the courage and adventurous
spirits to claim the seas with more than
oars and steer the winds with
sails?

      English didn't come to me as some
poor Romanian kid listening to current pop music
or back then, early 1990s... movies from Hollywood...
i didn't want to speak gimmicks...
i was ****** into the deep-end of speaking this
tongue by starting off a mute...
even with the influences of cartoon network
none left a too great impression on my ears
as the German version of the Disney cartoon
of Robin Hood...

   even after watching the English version many years
later... i can still hear the German dubbing
and i can't escape it...

auf die frei zungen ich spre(s)chen es
mit ein konkurs auf substantive...
(of the three tongues i speak it
with a bankruptcy of nouns)...

        at least i have made progress with predispositions
and conjunctions:
i am better coordinated...
but how... how can one be an Anglophile
without a love of the language?
i can adore the way the English care for
the countryside... how traffic is managed...
how taxes are collected how foreign cultures
can slowly integrate and everyone can feel
somehow, seemingly at home:
even if the natives do not for a while...
but without a love for the language
i cannot be a true Anglophile...

                the beauty of Shakespeare disintegrates
when a simple German neo-folk is played to me...

   in der zwölften stund (sage vom untersberg)

- in der zwölften stunde -
at the twelfth hour
- wenn die raben fliegen um den berg -
when the ravens fly around the mountain
- tun sie lautstark kunde -
they loudly proclaim
- von des kaiser macht und tagewerk -
the emperor's power and legacy
- solang der kaiser schlafet -
as long as the emperor sleeps
- tief drunt' im dunklen bergensschloß -
deep down there in the dark mountain *****
- solang fliegen auch die raben -
the ravens will fly
- hoch über seinem marmelschloss -
high above this castle of marble...

   no words in English, and their meaning make much
for... however simple they might be in German:
the simple fact that... they're spoken in German!
das: sie sind gesprochen im Alt...
    
it is only natural that i sought out the origins of
the English tongue in German,
as much as i am not interested in the etymology
of designated word:
i could never be this youth exposed to too much
English culture wishing to sing pop songs
or utter single line pin-pointers from
films: ehrilch mein schatz,
   ich tun nicht ein pflege
   (frankly my dear,
    i don't give a **** / care)
    or... ich wille wieder (i will be back)...

so the indentations of learning English in a later
developmental stage of language acquisiton
didn't rub off on me: as it does on people
with accents of their mother tongue
who never lose it... and merely culturally appropriate
English as a spoken tongue of culture
and not a "cultured" tongue...
native tongue: a shape-shifting accent
of an educated "class"...
    even today! West Ham was playing Everton,
Toffees... ******* Scousers... Liverpool dwelling folk...
two younglings asked me to speak to one
of the managers who took their banner away
expressing disgruntlement with
how the football club was being managed...
huh?! am i still in England...
i have an easier time understanding Scots
than i have understanding anyone from
Manchester or Liverpool!
i can't understand them!
maybe that's why the Scots are like the Irish:
they come from a proud literary history...
oh... i spoke to an Irishman today at
the football game... woke up at 3am to come
to the game... i understood him perfectly...
i can understand a Scot and an Irishman...
i wouldn't be able to tell you an Irishman
from a North Irishman...
but i could tell you decipherable English
of the Scot and the Irishman from
an undecipherable, local, "polyglot"
mishandling of the English language with
such local accents and idioms as that of
Liverpool or Manchester...
can't understand the *******: even if i tried...

obviously i can't relate to a love of Russian...
as they might say in Poland:
better 6 years of **** rule: by fire...
than the subsequent how many decades it was
under the rule of the Soviet rule: by ice...
a slow burn of war is more demoralising
than a quick stretch of spandex and all hell
and all fury and all hearts united
than this scuttling of rats and shadow-bullets
shot from shadow-pistols!

of course i would naturally side with the Germanic
side of my upbringing:
i have no itch for rekindling any Russian brainwashing!
and i know that the Germanic side of "things"
has become a breeding ground for feral creature-oids
that resemble as best cuckoldry and at worst
the shadiest parts of the ***-scenes in Amsterdam...
but... bone-headed Russians and their
pride... that Russian pride... it's one of those intoxication
liquid i want to drink any of!

hmm...
   perhaps because i know English as a utility,
there's nothing romantic in it for me:
i buy bread with it, i ask: i used to ask for directions
in it, i ask someone in that conventional
formal way how they are and hope for the less *******
that most Americans reply with: how all is dandy
and it's all Texan blue above and not
the grey of the island skyline...

i did think for a moment: i should haven taken a step
further and attached myself to Swedish...
or Norwegian...
but then that's what a German would do...
as an Anglo-Slav it was only natural for me to succumb
to the allure of German...
the natural dynamo...
i fall on German and the German falls on Swedish...
or Danish...
**** knows who the Scandinavians fall on for
inspiration... the Finns?!
after all: the Finns are somewhat Scandinavian:
more Inuit people than...
        
one is a tongue one learned: or, was rather thrown
into learning...
but it's unlike a learning from it being passed on...
no one passed English down to me...
i'm a first generation immigrant...
i learned the tongue in the same time
as my parents learned it...
unlike all those 2nd generation immigrants
who were born in this land
and learned this tongue outside the dynamic
of their parents learning the language:
the only difference being...
i kept the mother tongue, the native, intact...
by refusing my parents' claim that:
if i only spoke English at home,
the English i acquired from being schooled
in the English educational system...
if i forwent me speaking my native tongue
to them: their English would somehow improve...
that they would, somehow, miraculously not have
a foreign accent!
as a child i picked up three majors things...
Catholicism wouldn't take me... i might have been
baptised without my consent...
but i had all the necessary obligations to
give or not give my consent when it came to confirmation:
i haven't been confirmed... i head too many
Gnostic Heresy texts as a teenager...
their idea that somehow i would mistreat my native tongue
in order for them to gain something for it...
like most Pakistani 2nd generation children...
perhaps, maybe... a few slip through the netting...
who still pride themselves on knowing Urdu...
most? with their loss of the mother tongue pick up
their own idiosyncratic accents within the confines
of English: they are literally children robbed
of bilingualism by their parents...

i mastered it and by mastering it found it with
shortcomings that only the tongue i was born
with could expose...

today this alpha looking male sat next to me on the train
and spread his legs... smiling... listening to music...
**** me mate... how much spreading do you need to do?
what i found:
poetry, best read when commuting...
i'm building up a complimentary package for a friend
of mine... she sent me macadamia nut shells
and dried pineapple and honey and...
a feather... i said to her: i will not send you anything
before i compliment a feather you sent me with a feather
of my own... i went cycling two days prior
and: imagine my luck! some magpie... ELSTER...
was either shedding her feathers or was in a fight...
i picked up about half a dozen ELSTERGEFIEDER...
magpie feathers...
on the train... you're better off reading a book
of poems than a newspaper...
the optics are much more clarifying...
none of the claustrophobia and oczopląs
               of a tightly-knitted (printed) column or opinion
paragraph... spread out text...
  poetry books as an alternative to reading newspapers
in transit... that's how i imagine "it"...
once upon a time newspapers were tightly knitted
beyond the scope of the printed paragraph:
it would require the solitudes of Sundays
to sit in calm and quiet and read them...
these days: that tabloid press with headers
and exploding wordings for the newly acquired
people of literacy: the addition of pictures...

nothing new, therefore nothing old...
mein herzenskummer ist was giBt
                   der Sonnenaufgang seine
      rinnsal auf schüchtern farben...
und! unt!
        der Sonnenuntergang seine
    busen-auf-verkörperung:
                auf: das nie vergeht!

                   how easily the displaced spiders...
turn to new architecture of the spider web
should their former and no sooner
than sooner: distraught with the havoc
of a man's quill of fingers having to differentiate
walking into a spider-web confusing it
with: are my eye-lashes camel's now?!

some shifts at work are terrible,
esp. when working with two females...
everything is wrong...
even telling after-work jokes is wrong...
talk of fish fingers... loads of ketchup...
that's wrong too...
top it all of this one is joking about the other
and the other is lesbian
and she has a new girlfriend
and fish-fingers: well... i am a man and i never
equated the smell of ****** with fish...
i know that tadpoles and ****...
but never fish... fish fingers... *******...
ketchup? i joked: that time of the month?
no laughter... no laughter...
if women are joking about their horrid ****
i better not be asked to, ******* joke!

better working with mute men on zombie mode...
i'm already a year behind having my social medial
stalked... sure... they can stalk me when they
figure out my middle name and some Slovak
diacritical markers... not until then...
just because i look silly when ice-skating
and everyone has seen the video doesn't
mean i'll give up my internet presence so easily: so...
i have a project aligning myself to German
so close to my heart i can find it forgiving...
to desire in the heart-of-hearts
to: **** this tongue enough to speak it when drinking!
because i find that Wilhelm was sort of right...
about how Germany was no empire
expect something on the continent
that gobbled up a part of
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth...
because the Germans were an established people
and there was no sailing spirit in them...
after all: one might be inclined to think they
wanted to upkeep the romantic, familial orientation
of Christianity...
but the powers, the colonial powers at be...
whether the French the English or the Spanish...
who does, Christianity belong to, these days?
one might have asked the same question
before Christianity spread to the Nord Lands...
prior to its prior occupation with the Syrians
and North Africans and the Greeks...
Romans as a side joke?
who are the current mass of Christianity if not
the former colonies of the English
the Spanish and the French?
i know of Christians in South America from
the cross being dumped by the Spaniards with
vain hope... vain hope of the French in Africa...
and the English in Africa... and North America...

at least the Germans didn't... spread this...
Christianity might be allocated to about 12 individuals
within the confines of a single generation...
beyond that? money-grabbing money-laundering:
a religion with only the sole focus on LOGOS
while reading up on Zhuangzi you have several
other, dutiful terms to meditate on...
i might have been smitten by Hindu thinking before
being doubly smitten by Taoist dialogues...
one still remains a categorical imperative...
outside the realm of dialogue:
the best way you can help the world is
to help the world forget you and you in turn forget
the world...
obviously i'm doing X and counter-X...
i'm writing... by extension of writing i "want"...
or is that: "i" want to be remembered...
but thinking is no telekinesis nor is speaking
any telepathy...
             i speak... like today... i get this oddity of looks...
first she asks me: oh what should i reply
to my friend... just been to a Hen-do...
strippers? oh sure... there were strippers...
first time married? no... second... so what's the ******* point
of a hen-do? cluck x2 laid eggs x4?!
  
so her friend sends me a photograph of her newly bought
dress... laces... or whatever the ******* call
a would-be reimagined-curtain...
i tell her: she could pull it off... if she was a size 0...
the lace could really add dimension and curves to
a thin body...
to hide the skeleton...
but you know what would work for her?
a meringue dress...
you know the type? a one piece...
cut just above the ***** line...
simple: smoothed over... no patterns...
all the way from the cleavage to the feet...
so then she shows me her wedding dress...
it cost her £130 while her friend paid over £2000...
exactly what i was describing...
she just sent an AWW and tried to deflate the question,
or simply avoid it...
yeah... she looks like a flayed torso...
because... SHE's fat...

           eat all you want and as much (perhaps)
but at least burn it off...
if there's no work in the fields:
then there's no work in the fields...
but there's enough rubber burning on the bicycle
to escape the monotone drudgery of
urban living... as i found today,
upon Hook Lane cycling up to Chigwell Row...
there's no need to eat excessively...
no comfort in all that fat without
a leather chair or enough warm clothing...

treating people as these existential morons:
conceptualizing the non-existence of free-will is one thing,
another: to debrief them: life is without agency...
a choice-less Darwinism where
jelly-fish are somehow automated: sprouts:
well... no other life could or would ever be!
people without free-will is one thing:
the shackles of the dynamic of choice...
one choice sets you free, subsequent choice shackles
and inescapable binary of freedom-no-freedom...
science governing the flip of a coin...
but... people, robbed of any sort of agency?!
of self-authority over themselves:
so, so easily mangled and mishandled leaving
their fate unto... no fate: double sure...
unto others?!
i watched a few horror movies in my lifetime...
none seem as horrifying as this +mundaneness
of the horrible leftover: forgotten...

i must have a Germanic attitude toward these matters...
i was born into the living spirit of the ****** tongue,
the membrane in situ staging the conflict
of Rome vs. Greece...
or Germany vs. Russia...
i see no end to it...
i was born from the Germans trying to burn out
the Jews from "my" lands
while the Russians trying to subdue the flames
all the while...
i was still borne from a history that required
a solitary antagonist...
less so an protagonist of solitude...
either way: i was going to slither my way through...
like water like serpents...
wie wasser wie schlangen...

mein herz bricht aus hungrig flammen
als ich stürzen blind Samson's
already toppled temple
            
i know i that i will not write the sort of beauty
that's poetry that's everything that's
Zbigniew Herbert's
Godly Claudius
the Game of Mr. Cogito
Mr. Cogito observes his face in the Mirror
the Seventh Angel
   (my favourite of the angels listed?
Dedrael - the apologist and cabalist)
   to name but a few of the poems...

it brings such relief that i can't bring such
beauty into this world: perhaps if my mind was
not muddled by the utility of English
and my romance with German -
perhaps but only perhaps:
i don't even know why i started to write poetry:
maybe it was my lowest ebb
psychotic running on steam and pretend
legs between Edinburgh, Glasgow,
London, Dover, Athens, Belgrade,
Katowice...
                    walking into a bookshop buying
a copy of Rumi's verses...
buying Dostoyevsky's the Brothers Karamazov
and, just by chance... Bukowski...
what was so supposedly special and hiding
within the poetry of this man?
absolutely nothing: i was mad enough
to try it then and to keep at it:
not really knowing why...
  
compared to Zbigniew Herbert i write trash:
perhaps i read too much fiction,
even autobiographical prose: prose in general:
i don't know how to shut up the ten mouths
on the tips of my fingers but
i know how i can seem menacing
on a shift at work... hood pulled over my head
leather gloves squeezing each knuckle
asked by the atypical extroverted woman
whether something is wrong...
pulling my hood up, smiling, yet still being
compared to the grim reaper...
jokes aside: someone is counting the time...

a welcome break from Knausgaard...
this little safe-haven of poetry read in transit...
finally! something that's not mine
and not in English!

that's the terrible difference between men and women...
going to the Fulham shift i was sitting
behind three women... i'm guessing two were
newly arrived brides of war from Ukraine
who also picked up a Thai-surprise bride...
birds sound chirpier and more pleasant to talk
to... sitting behind them reading my little poetry
book... with a magpie's feather for a bookmark...
the women talked... about?
photographs... filters... instagram models...
plastic surgeries of people wanting to look
like their photographs...
impossible dreams! dreams of women...
and some womanized-men...
on my way back... same book same bookmark
and a young man sat down next to me...
put on some decent music i could
make out through the headphones...
angled his horizon to look over my shoulder
as to why i was reading a book with so much
open space and so little words...
not any fiction, not some constipated prose
of imaginary conversations...
and i could feel his leg pressing against mine...

perhaps i am not gay but i can't imagine
being friends with a woman...
i truly can't... there's either *** for me: with women...
or there is friendship with men...
with each man i meet i can achieve this
transcendent: otherwise unpackaged will
of subduing and seduction that only a woman
can provide me... but a conversation with a woman
is painful: at least for the majority of times:
there might be a special place for a woman
who might not necessarily:
but is probably older than me and shares
the same sentiments as me...
probably lives far away and thinks that hand-writing
is like exposing herself all naked...
will go out of her way to send me a feather of a bird
from over 3000miles away...

while i will send her a necklace with a single amber
stone on it... or i will send her a crab's pincer with a hole
drilled in it and ask her to buy some leather-string
to have herself a second necklace...

at work Stephanie the supervisor had to make it adamant
for me alone to know that i would be her Alpha...
whatever the hell that meant...
Alpha... well yeah... because i do try to ensure that
everyone is treated fairly...
the Asians boys of Bangladesh and Pakistan caved it...
this work or this cold of England
finally bit them...
     it's an unrewarding work if you don't have
an escape plan, like i do...
i'm always flying to other pursuits outside of this
work... customer service... being polite to people
that might not be polite to you or simply ignore you...
but even my standards i thought they were
taking it too far...
but i made a pact with them...
they took out a bottle of Jack Daniels and poured
out shots... if there's going to be a snitch among
us... it will be the man who does drink...
so when asked if i'd like a shot i replied: why not!
the weather calls for it... whiskey to warm up!
mixer? oh no no... straight!
plus... you can't mix Jack Daniels with Fanta, can you?
a few new colts were bullied into peer pressure
of silence, asked if they wanted a drink: said no...
me? i had a drink... i'm not snitching...
well i did when Stephanie was coming round
when i just said: nothing about the drinking...
but if there are 7 of us standing in one place...
but i'm the only one giving any customer service
by giving directions and good-evenings while
they're just standing talking to each other,
having a good time? apparently some people still
can't internalise being drunk for their own
self-amusement, drinking is somehow: getting together...
clearly these boys haven't been alone
and drank a litre of whiskey each and every single
night for months on end...

what really bugged me is when they took out a spliff
and smoked it between the four of them...
even as the customers were coming to see
Tottenham beat Fulham 1 - nil...
oh for ****'s sake... it's one thing having a cheeky sip of
whiskey on a cold day to warm up...
but to also smoke marijuana on a shift?
in full view and easily scented air of winter
before customers?
these guys don't want this ****** job...
thank god none of them are either bus drivers
or train drivers or plumbers for that matter!
maybe doctors who forgot to take out a pair of
scissors from a patient's body when
the patient is getting stitched up?

the worst i ever did was drink the night before
and sobered up on my way to work...
ah... not to mention that one time this
girl tried to scout her paranoia from prior relationships
with abusive alcoholic boyfriends onto me:
a man she just met... pampered with an array
of chemicals whether that be a cologne or this alcohol
containing face spray...
who i later tried to sooth by bringing her my homemade
weisserwein... cloudy... like any weisserbier...
chirpsin'... 3 way conversation conspiracies...
until the lie stood on dwarf's legs rather than stilts...
and to think: no i wasn't thinking seriously about
getting into a relationship with her...
she tried to get me fired for "apparently" drinking
on the job! a person she just me...
neurotic ******* *****... it's good that i showed her
what she would never, ever... get...

the difference between men and women...
the shift finished... prior to finishing we already knew
that there was some major ****-up on the tube...
the signals went down...
no Circle line, no Hammersmith & city services...
no services on the District line
from East Ham to Earls Court...
ergo? you'd think there might be a northbound
service to Edgware Rd. from Putney Bridge...
nope... Earls Court is a 4 x 4 junction...
sure... there was the southbound service
from Putney Bridge to Wimbledon...
and whatever service that's a station after
Earls court toward Richmond and Ealing Broadway...
as i'm guessing from Upminster to East Ham
and from one station after Earls Court
to Edgware Rd....
this girl was supposed to come with me
to Stepney Bridge from either Romford or Chadwell
Heath for the shift...
i was 15 minutes late because i felt like getting some
tea and an almond croissant...
she was? an hour late...
by the end of the shift when the transport invonvenience
was building up we went for our debrief
and she was all irritated in the eyes
when she wanted to get an Uber to Hammersmith
or whether it was she thought about going
without telling me: where that would cost her £50+
quid...
                  so when i told her...
i'm not going down the Putney High Street rail connection
because: (a) look at the ******* congestion
of the crowd and (b) i don't need to go to *******
Waterloo because that's ******* south of the river...

mmm hmm mmm... what, should we do?
i told you... i'm either walking or getting the bus 220
to Hammersmith...
debriefing over: she stayed behind for banter
and all the things that hinder an extrovert,
esp. a female extrovert... un-decisive, fatalist,
everything just ******* happens by some whisper
from astrology...
    Aquarius said to Libra that the waters were
about to spill... i ****** off from the stadium
like a hart... shook hands with the managers
thank you goodnight... as i was walking out
toward Hammersmith some young stewards were
shuffling really quickly it all looked very much like
they might be scratching vinyl...
i asked... you heading to Hammersmith?
yes yes... see! that's i like to see!
male to male camaraderie...
we have this unconscious motif of: from *****
you came to ***** you shall return...
it's a bit senseless to go to war these days...
less senseless when you're trying to get from
point A to point B...
there was about 40 of us running for the bus...
amongst us? 1 woman...
***** AHOY!
   obviously i left this girl behind...
her other option was asking one of the managers
to giver her a lift... ******* free-loader...
by the time the manager would have clocked out
all the other parties i would have wasted an hour...
just to get a lift... and then what?
stranded with her? even though we weren't going
to the same point B?
   i left with the *****-mentality... happy too:
because i could read my poetry book in the prized
possession of solitude... and no solitude...
because given the hour... something freakish was
bound to happen on the train or tube...
and it did... some proper English boys talking about
not wanting to take a nightcap in Romford heading
all the way to Shenfield joked when this guy started running
down the train carriage...
and those SKANKS so drunk who were blocking
the doors: subsequently delaying us
subsequently not catching their train blah blah...

well... just as today happened: talking so freely to men,
boys, young men, first point of "concern" / conversation?
establishing "taboos" or habits...
you smoke? you drink? first time you got drunk...
when did you start smoking marijuana first?
and then a natural progression into...
so... what music do you like... just... so naturally?
with women? even with Francesca,
this butcher boy of a lesbian...
it's a cul de sac sort of conversation...
she only talks about herself,
even today i received a text from her...
i broke up with Natalie... broke up i.e. she met her
on Tinder... she stayed round her house
for three nights... Natalie made her lunch for
work one time... cooked dinner another time...
4 days and nights they dated... already broke up...
there you go... Tinder-dating-shoplifting hearts...
window-shopping romances...

free market capitalism? sure... but not when
capitalism overstretches its influence
and we're worse off than the despairing existentialist:
PHILOSOPHERS of the 19th... the precurosor
fabric... i'd say the 20th century existentialist
philosophers had it easier...
but anyone in the 21st century, thinking, even remotely:
would be hard pressed not to express something
of substance bugging all of us:
no great war, no great upheaval,
proxy wars, the Thespian dictatorship over all
the other arts (with the exception of pop music, perhaps)
and the journalistic juggernaut of the quickened
availability of almost anything and nothing...
the free market of capitalism having invested
in creating this... Frankenstein in pieces...
this IKEA ******* LEGO model of a Frankenstein:
but at least Frankenstein bothered to construct
the entire monster rather than creating this
shattered Pandora's box... left in pieces and in
some realisation of a Copernican West...
in a Copernican East... Copernican "west"?
there's a "west" without a setting sun?!
up in outer space?
                         capitalism all fine and dandy:
but not outside the realm of a couple worrying about
how many kettle and toasters sets they will
have to buy during the year or even the wardrobe
needs revisions, or whether it might be worthwile
to change the wallpaper in the living room,
or what movie to watch on a date night at the cinema...
all of that is gone when the free market made
us profile ourselves... with some of us being pushed
so far as to fake cubist like pictures of ourselves
and subsequently implement plastic surgery to
double-fake ourselves...

the shrapnel-shelving-of-self...
it's like people are a library with no alphabetical order:
free market on psychology, morphed beyond
any concern for dreams: if there were any
as the luxury of the Freudian rich...
this... what happened to historiology in the modern
sense as stressed by Heidegger?
a study of history of the people by the people
or at least by individuals... morphed into this grotesque
pop psychology: archeological mapping back
to the primordial Pharisee of Ape and Aping...
farce: Darwin's Curtain of History...
   will we ever remember the beauties and horrors
of centuries from the 16th to the 19th?
no... everything of said years is nil: null...
because the ape's origins quickly morphed into
the man hunched over a microwave adamant in his
belief that... the carbon footprint of producing
a kilogram of chicken meat somehow, somehow would
"save the planet" than producing a kilogram
of tomatoes... given that a kilogram of tomatoes would
only yield a fraction of the necessary calories
than a kilogram of meat... and still the growing
of one kilogram of chicken would cost the planet
less than growing a kilogram of tomatoes...
who needs tomatoes in winter?!
eat, your, ******* root vegetables! carrots boyo! carrots!
but chickens don't need solar energy, nor suntans,
nor greenhouses... chickens cluck just as much
in winter as in summer... and eggs are a year round
product... plus you only need a barn in winter
to keep chicken!
tomatoes rot... chickens? they grow old and die...
until they grow old they still produce eggs...
and when they die? you eat them...
you can't exactly call a chicken rotten if it isn't already
days X already dead, can you?
it might not be as fresh... but...
ugh... no wonder

Zbigniew Herbert: from mythology (of Rome) -

   in the end only the superstitious
neurasthenics carried in their pocket a little figurine
made from salt, resembling the god of irony;
since then there wasn't a greater god.

then the barbarians came, they too greatly prized
the idol of irony.
           they pounded it with their heels and sprinkled
it into their dishes.

no clay-monster of the Levant can intimidate
me now!
not armed with these words:
let us witness the great divorce of man from woman!
let us watch!
pray... let us be brothers and friends and
secretly wishing we were lovers:
in the thinning air... let us talk about the strange
glow above the Thames hanging over Kew Gardens
as if: as i said to him:
as if the sunset still claiming an eye
in the night...
      what woman? what woman could i share
this romantic conversation with?
my interaction with women is so blatant so cold
so forced to claim the male in me and the woman
in her that it's only ******...
oh sure... i was going to the brothel...
but i was coming home already late...
i had two pairs of socks on, drawers, trousers...
a tank-top a shirt gloves and a thick coat...
by the time i would get out of all those layers
and have a quick shower...
half an hour i would have paid for would have become
nothing more than 15 minutes...
not enough time to get a hard-on
of being in the mood...
i already had more than ***...
a conversation... and no woman has yet to actually
provide me with one...
perhaps we are not in the trenches...
but men have always managed without women...
for as long as time knows...

a shift prior... at West Ham... ******* guy with a bald
head and a face as endearing as a plump baby
we great with a handshake that turns into
a thumb against thumb contest and a hug
tells me that i should come and find him at Cavern Cottage
and he'll sort me out with some free food...
hey presto i go and find him
i get a free steak and ale pie...
i know it's a one off...
    we already get discounts for burgers from the burger
van... but it's nice to give a reminder when
being invited...

     we do our rounds in the park...
among the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshi who at first
thought i was British when asked:
oh no... i'm not British... an Anglo-Slav at best...
from that lineage of Anglo-Saxons...
the Saxons who came among post-Rome rule
Britain and mingled or not mingled
with the local Celtic and Welsh and Britton populace...
i'm the second wave that didn't make it
because the British Empire collapsed
and the eastern Europeans were not too dearly minded
in the history of the British Empire...
but they know that i'm from Poland
so when asked: where are you from? there...
and "there"... but i've been living here since i was
7 so there's no "born and bred" argumentation
with me and those in your ethnic stratum
concerning any anti-Pakistani villification
of those in the "upper-castes"... blah blah...
they know... while the three of us walked around
this 40 year old Yugoslav woman
who escaped the Yugoslavian collapse of
circa 1992... starts talking as i switch her around
so she can have a walk with us to warm up her legs
from standing stiff still...
where are you from? oh... here...
i'm not going to tell her what i told the boys...
not after she deflects my attraction to her
by paying more attention to the Pakistani boy
of 20... i'm closer to her age...
but... then she does this sick thing of asking
me to hold her empty cups of tea that
have an unused teabag in it and some dried milk...
oh... right? i'm going to be your waiting boy?

******* testing women... this woman is past her prime...
i know it she thinks she can "test" my patience
by me being her ******* pet-shop-boy?!
fine! fine...
the more and more i talk to women
the more i find them diametrically opposed
to any sort of psychologically asexual universalism of:
ecce ****...
                 women have: and will have to...
sexualize everything from Aristotle to Zeno...
there was once a maybe female version of Aristotle if
only the: give me the drill... i need a bigger hole to see through:
these eyes aren't large enough...
if only there wasn't an oppressive patriarchy...
the oppressive "patriarchy" of autistic geniuses?!
oh... that one... the sort of men cowering
from female sexuality?
  wow! how oppressive!
                    magnificently oppressive!
we all should be so magnificently oppressed by the man
who discovered the wheel by meditating
the O(micron) - what came first?
the wheel or the omega, or was it the sun?
if Prometheus brought down fire... by teaching man
that scratching flint against flint could illuminate
the cave and give man a second womb of poison-fire...
before the forests turned to ash...
before Pompeii's negative of a whiplash of history...

i tried loving women... i loved them for:
the many months i would rather not use
the fingers of both my hands for...
    absolutely un-relate-able creatures...
what *** beside that of female would whisper in
man's heart to leave their minds without
reason to stage the Trojan War
                        or bring architecture to kneel:
like Xerxes: but the madness of Xerxes was rather
beautiful wanting to lash the Aegean into submission
rather than that little Pharaoh ***** who might
have said: best to chisel down a rock face
and glue together sand with egg-whites and spit
into bricks and polish up a craggy mountain:
lest we forget: from a lineage of a people
that once said: let us "reinterpret" the mountains!
pyramids...
                at least the South American tribes invented
the pyramid as an altar... not a tomb...
but we're no smarter than they were dumber:
the myopic-vision strategy of the vantage point
of: what came prior... with hindsight...
but hindsight only works in reverse...
the unmistakeably irreversible past
within the confines of the motto: the terrible
has already happened!
  
                       and some variation of the historically
terrible isn't already happening,
on some microscopic level?
                           not if / not yet?!
                                             hardly...

poetry is air and not the prose of water...
i am stranded between wanting to breathe air
and at the same time more in need to drink water:
no wonder i cannot rest with merely breathing air...
if only i were to breathe air and leave my efforts
with so much nuance as to allow others to breathe
the same air... alas i am like that saying of Heraclitus...
i'll pour you a glass of water
i have prior to drank... leave it for you to drink a day
later: it will not be the same water that i have drank...
i wish i could write like these words might be air...
but it's... aqua post scriptum et plus aqua
post scriptum ad fluenta...

                    verschließen dein augen:
    sehen wieder... immer wieder:
                               bis: es gibt
                             nicht freude:
noch aufschub träumen...
                              kalt silber-rasierer
                                 schneiden auf
mondklären... nacht als auch wirklichkeitstoff.

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret,Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)
This year has had plethora of public worries in Africa over broken English among the young people and school children. It first started in the mid of the last months  in Nigeria, when the Nigerian government officials displayed public worry over the dying English and the strongly emerging slang known as pidgin English in Nigerian public offices and learning institutions. The same situation has also been encountered in Kenya, when in march 2014, Proffessor Jacob Kaimenyi, the minister of education otherwise known as cabinet secretary of education declared upsurge of broken English among high school students and university students a national disaster. However, the minister was making this announcement while speaking in broken English, with heavy mother tongue interference and insouciant execution of defective syntax redolent of a certain strong African linguistic sub-cultural disposition.
There is a more strong linguistic case of broken English in South Africa, which even crystallized into an accepted national language known as Afrikaans. But this South African case did not cause any brouhaha in the media nor attract international concern because the people who were breaking the English were Europeans of non British descend, but not Africans. Thus Afrikaans is not slang like the Kenyan sheng and the Nigerian pidgin or the Liberian krio, but instead is an acceptable European language spoken by Europeans in the diaspora. As of today, the there are books, bibles and software as well as dictionaries written in Afrikaans. This is a moot situation that Europeans have a cultural leeway to break a European language. May be this is a cultural reserve not available to African speakers of any European language. I can similarly enjoy some support from those of you who have ever gone to Germany, am sure you saw how Germans dealt with English as non serious language, treating it like a dialect. No German speaks grammatically correct English. And to my surprise they are not worried.
The point is that Africans must not and should never be worried of a dying colonialism like in this case the conventional experience of unstoppable death of British English language in Africa. Let the United Kingdom itself struggle to keep its culture relevant in the global quarters. But not African governments to worry over standard of English language. This is not cultural duty of Africa. Correct concerns would have been about the best ways and means of giving African indigenous languages universal recognition in the sense of global cultural presence. African languages like Kiswahili, Zulu, Yoruba, Mandiko, Gikuyu, Luhya, Luganda, Dholuo, Chaka and very many others deserve political support locally as well as internationally because they are vehicles that carry African culture and civilization.
I personally as an African am very shy to speak to another fellow African in English or even to any person who is not British. I find it more dignifying to speak any local language even if it is broken or if the worst comes to the worst, then I can use slang, like blend of broken English and the local language. To me this is linguistic indicators of having a decolonized mind. It is also my hypothesis that the young people who are speaking broken English in African schools and institutions are merely cultural overtures of Africans extricating themselves from imperial ploys of linguistic Darwinism.
There is no any research finding which shows that Africans cannot develop unless they speak English of grammatical standards like those of the United Kingdom and North America. If anything; letting of English to thrive as a lingua franca in Africa, will only make the western world to derive economic benefits out of this but not Africa to benefit. Let Africans cherish their culture like the way the Japanese and the Chinese have done, then other things will follow.

.too dumb, it would seem, to evolve into a bilingualism, but then... somehow, miraculously, able to dictate censoring the origins story, while at the same time dictating a counter to identity politics, while simultaneously working around a trans-grammatical feud with: what's involved in the geographic region of donning underwear... well **** me! so the atypical English man, who's turning into a complete and utter, ****... allows me to smoke a cigarette in the street... but has a problem with me smoking on my private property?! has a problem with me being bilingual calling me a schizophrenic?! but he doesn't mind a Pakistani grooming gang from operating in the north of England?
look who's looking for some long lost allies? not me! there's so much i can do to integrate... but i can't just, erase, a knowledge of a language i said my first syllables MA MA in... you be the pretty boy... English, man... learn a second language, or keep your ******* on a tight leash! because i'll fight... i'm actually hoping for  fist fight... after i put out cigarette stumps on my knuckles? i don't care about winning or losing... i'm a sadist... i enjoy pain! no, you don't get to tell me to erase the tongue i said my first syllables in... teach a **** to fry you a battered cod next time!

so... the idea of integration
is fine...
while i'm some ****
instrument of insurgence?
but not when i'm a ******...
who says...
sure...
i'll learn your language...
your ******* tongue...
i'll learn it...
i'll even learn to practice the profanity,
much agreed upon,
of eating fish & chips
on Friday night...
    oh you're ******* pushing it...
you're pushing it!
you want me, to,
forget, ever speaking,
a single word,
of my native tongue?!
WHAT?!
you have to be ******* with me
right now...
you, expect, WHAT?!
WHAT?!
    how about you get off your
lard greased *** and learn a language
yourself?
guess why Western, your
so prized Western Europe
is experiencing a migrant crisis?
ever heard, how...
Belgians speak better English
than the natives?
  it's like they have
an imbedded
        coercion with the English tongue...
**** me...
they must have conquered these
lands prior!
the Norwegians speak better
English than the English!
wait... or **** on me...
vikings! it must have been the vikings!
guess what...
why do the migrants do not come
to "eastern" Europe?
well done,m sport...
just shy of the Urals
in terms of a geography class...
you want an: east is in the east,
and the west is a vaguely defined term...
whether in Copernican
terminology or, otherwise...

no, ******, i can dance dance dance
like a can-can ponce all night long!
i'll do it for free to boot...

no, the English people didn't vote
to leave the European union
with a fear of the Turks...
former colonies...
these wankers hated the notion
of the A8 coming over...
they doubled down
on Romania and Bulgaria
joining the party...

  the Turks were never the problem...
plenty of Turkish shops,
and god save the barbers to boot!

good for the "eastern" Europeans...
not speaking a *****-tongue
of English...
            they only arrive on the Western
shores because.
English?
         pristine... perfected even...
outside the confines of these,
**** grand isles of beauty and
perfection...
         and don't mind if i do...
shock multiplied by awe,
whenever a school trip took place...

the Belgians speak better English
than the actual English...
and have a diacritical neutrality
to boot...
         well **** me!

                      ain't that, something?!
no... English isn't a secondary
language necessary
to be spoken in a nation that's
past or south of Berlin...
  no necessary...
          the usage of English is,
a gateway "drug"...

but if the English, "think",
that i'll be properly integrated
into their culture,
while: speaking their native
language and respecting their culture
and whims is not enough,
and that i'll have to forge a pact
with myself to forget or rather,
erase the language i was born with?

how are your matriarchs of
Manchester doing?
  why do i ask?
   i'll sooner cut my **** off and
then **** on it...
before i speak a word of English
in my household,
or for that matter,
"integrate" by erasure...
  
  you best be ready to cut my tongue out...
which is why...
how can a Welshman be
deemed an esteemed creature
of kept pride...
if he doesn't speak a word of
the "hiding" tongue?
the Belgians speak a better English
than the ******* English!
whether or not they still
retain speaking Flemish is beside
the point...

               what cause for whatever there
be a need to make, a cause,
if the Welsh are not speaking
Cymru,
and the Irish are not speaking Gaelic?!
you don't make an argument
in a language that
has left Europe's west flank...
******* its way through
being easily speakable,
and semi-integrate-able;
thank god the majority
of the Polacks do not speak,
even a majority riddled
tourist majority English...
   and they don't...
even in places like in Warsaw...
it's like banging
their heads against
a brick wall when it comes
to the Muslim, wealthy tourists...
no hope in sight...
but no...
i will rather retain my native
tongue,
and respect the culture of
the English, than allow myself
to "forget" my native tongue
of Urdu... let's say...
and then turn around,
and abuse the native culture....
calling it... debased...
no!
you don't come against my
tongue, and then expect
me to remain neutral...
    but if you do...
you come, dictating what the rules
of integration are?
i'll be there...
telling you,
where you went wrong...
not everyone likes
the culture that England
entertains...
but everyone likes
a citation using the English
tongue, with however
horrid diacritical disorientation...
and i will give a part of me, up,
to, "integrate"...
take my language away?
you might as well blind me
and cut my tongue off...

   no... i'm telling you...
smarten up...
  how about you learn a second
language?
rather than discriminating
against bilingualism like
it's a schizophrenia?!

.oh ****! now i remember, now i remember that other school of English thought... pragmatism! everything is so rational these days, no wonder that so many mental illness diagnoses exist... apparently every deviance of, "success" is, "magically" worthy of psychiatric scrutiny... but then you get psychopaths in the upper eschallance of society... and they're immune to psychiatric scrutiny... so much for pragmatism... whatever that means these days... what?! e-scha-llan-ce... usher-lance?! oh right, ****, i was going for an adjective... echelon... my adjective? feeling up to the level / rank within an organization, and subsequently, perfecting stated rank with robust, pompousness and erudition, matching up to a pedantic exercise within the confines of either, grammar, or, diction; my bad. see... i don't get it... i could somehow couple up the ancient Greek concept of the Stoic school, and the Epicurean school (of thought)... it became crystal clear... but... but when it comes to the English school of thought? i can't make the logical-leap of a worded multiplication concerning the schools of: egalitarianism, and... pragmatism... maybe i'm just *******... but i... i sometimes can't come at a worded equals sign, or at least: a mutually inclusive / mutually exclusive sharing processor of looking at both attempts to revise 1 + 1 = 2... then again, i'm not bothered... English liberalism doesn't bother me... the English were never libertarian in letting go... who are the English? they have their equivalence among the Prussians... but, yes... i was looking for this noun, this last remaining school of thought from the Anglophone world... i was thinking... what goes well with the cognitive spaghetti that exfoliates egalitarianism? ****... what else? pragmatism! so help me god, i can't concede making this dualism of ideas, perhaps contradictory, perhaps not, as i did with classical thinking... stoicism and Epicurean school i can justify... but the English, somehow complimenting within the realm of pragmatism, and egalitarianism?! good luck, i can't do it.

currently i only identify two schools
of thought in English...
i might change my opinion
in the future...

how, just how petrified people
are of exploring dialectics,
the fear stemming out
from... having opinions that
do not deserve questioning,
such blatant solipsism...

but i do identify two schools
of thought from the English
speaking world...
o.k. three... ****...
four...

egalitarianism...
egalitarian idealism...
unitarism...
utopian-ism...        

****... four, five...
how many in total?

scholasticism, in general...

  there's one more...
i'm sure there's one more...
it's related to egalitarianism...

what's the word i'm looking
for?
a morphed liberalism
of: one freedom can eventually
over-compensate
another statement of freedom
and deride the former liberty
with a... ore ******-up
liberty...

but there was another mode of thinking,
i'm sure of it...

you know that people
are afraid of experiencing dialectics,
when they have to phrase
their opinions:
but these are my personal
opinions...
   yep... stated in a public sphere...
why is it that i don't
make videos?
      your freedom of speech
is one thing...
mine? constricted to the comment
section...
   this? an extension of thought,
since i'm bashing a blank piece
of "paper"...

what was the other root of the English
school of thought?!
no... it wasn't universalism...
England, given the stated terms...
is a covert communist state...
a subdued communist state...
a dubiousness from the empirically
tested experiment...
where did Marx and Engels
concentrate their observational
capacities if not in England?
weird...

  communism originated in England
under, said, sociological observations,
was tested in Mongolia...
and then returned via Russia to
Eastern Europe...

*****... gets to my head...
it might come to be two days later,
but i'm sure i wanted
to work with another school of thought
from the English demand
for the egalitarian take on things...

looking at the English,
i see a people burdened by a desire
to make "things"... fair...
          i see people teasing Utopia...
a people who haven't experienced
a momentary transition period
of a quasi-Utopia of communism....
within the countries that
received the Bolshevik mantra
and not the Marshall Plan payout...
even Sweden (neutral, source of inspiration
for the Nazis) and Switzerland
received Marshall Plan funds...

       but the English...
              what an oddity...
oh i don't imply a demeaning
interpretation...
       but the English are teasing
a revival of socialism...
you know how many archetypical
human emotions socialism curbs?
you can't do it unless
subjected to foreign rule...
given the current Brexit agreements:
now's your chance...

but socialism really did originate
in this fine, fine land...
Marx didn't look alongside
Engels outside of England...
they looked at Liverpool...
and children being employed...
German children had Krampus...
English children had
work in the factories...

this probably is an over-simplification
of history, but all the details
are there...
personally?
i find English existentialism
(if there is such a "thing")
over-powered by Darwinism's
over-simplifications...
Darwinism, having killed modern
or pre-modern history,
having to expand beyond
our known, and kept history...

a big bang theory i can deal
with...
i can congest it into a subscript
of words, via a conceptualization
of atoms...
and bigger atoms,
suns... protons, neutrons,
planets...
and electrons...
lost in the realm of sub-atomic
particles and antimatter...

but when i go back to Poland?
you know what i don't hear much of?
overly simplified existential
explanations pivoting on
nothing, but Darwinism...
in England it's all Darwinism,
and not much more...
i guess when Einstein disproved
Newton,
the only thing motivating
English culture boiled down
to focusing and pivoting on Darwin...

outside of England?
you know how important Darwin
is?
          in Poland... Mickiewicz...
a poet...
                         Copernicus...
            a astronomer...
            and in Russia?
Dostoyevsky...
          Tolstoy...
                     Mendeleev,
Tchaikovsky,
Rasputin,
                      Prokofiev­,
Bulgakov...
        Kandinsky...
               Anna Andreyevna...
Chekov...
                      how much is
Michael Faraday worth these
days in England,
if you're going to celebrate
only the scientists
and shove every artist
into the shadow of Shakespeare?!

i really shouldn't drink
*****...
                       i go crazy crude,
mad and... it's *****!
       you can't mellow out like
you could mellow out with
ms. amber, of the Scottish highlands!

you know what's more intimidating beside speaking of a personal detail in the life of a person you know? speaking of a universal truth; there's nothing more intimidating that giving reference to a common fact of referencing life, one limb of the triad crumbles into a suckling squid... revealing the sparring partners you get to: well, you juggle with three *****, you puppeteer two.

i could understand english humour -
sure, the black comedy "tact" -
but then the anglophone world was
overtaken with comedy -
the last tier before the final bow of
downfall - the one prior comes in
the form of a "fascination"
with culinary escapades -
   prior to the last resort of humour
comes the culinary escapade -
i once understood english humour,
more than was worth since it was
reinforced by canned laughter -
but there was something to be had...
these days? maybe english humour
imploded: and it attacked its worst
ally: ***.
   make fun of ***, you're making
fun of life...
     and how isn't english humour
not peppered with too-overtly
sexualised jokes? jokes by children
of divorcees...
  tell you what: life's short,
you're *****, see a ******* before
you see a psychiatrists...
cheaper, and you get the full
workout... after all, vietnam made
the war zone pocket sized...
            i don't understand english
humour... it's beyond political satire...
these people are pushing the absolutely
wrong buttons...
  i remember watching this
video in trafalgar sq., these two white
kids, bouncing a basketball -
      then one bounces the ball
off the head of a black guy,
and the white boy is so "jokingly"
apologetic...
                  what happens next?
the black guy smashes a glass
bottle over the white boys head...
the white boys is hit unconscious:
**** me, that was funny!
            the anglophones have
really ******* the genre of comedy...
i can call them anglophones -
  speaks not good english,
but he overshadows about 100+
anglo boys in his roofing job...
     my father...
    the english are slackers in
the industrial industry: which is why
it's filled with slavs and romanians,
but at least they do their job
and never bother going to the gym...
the english ponces?
do a ****** paper-fiddling job
and then hit the gym...
            horse-hoof lickers.
          i was once acknowledged
as speaking spaghetti english:
yes, but when my father questioned me,
he didn't mind me not having
learned the full alphabet:
what am i, a trained puppy?!
         now he lives with his father,
with his father having divorced his mother
and living with a thai ****** breeding
chickens...
        guess my loss in the "friendship"
case of "affair".
            the english have actually
exhausted the genre of comedy,
they're not funny anymore...
    they're pathetic...
         i'll joke the next time i sucker
one's head off the clock into
the unconscious minutes...
          the english overdid comedy
by a mile, they're as about funny as
a donkey-riding rider alongside the
remaining three-horsemen...
slouching toward jerusalem...
                   the fact that the english
are telling are joke: reiterating that they
are: seems rather troubling.
   i don't want to know its a joke unless
i actually laugh, a comic telling me
"it's" a joke is rather troubling...
             why have the english changed
from a culinary fetish to a joke
fetish over a decade?
         ****** food makes for a good joke...
oh yeah, me, beta-male,
  when all the best restaurant cooks
are male...
                    i still will not get an english
joke: the so-called *nuance" is
only a *nuisance -
     there's a threshold of acceptable
nuance in comedy, after a while it's like
lying: thinking you'll get away with it...
it's called: "being" subtle...
when in fact you're a vermin nibbling
on the edges of peoples' patience...
  after all you stop excusing the self-excusing
comics who want to catch themselves
excusing themselves and retire with
a backlog of canned-laughter lax.
                   no point in comedy:
if someone laughs for me.
          what's the point of comedy if
i am not the one to spot the self-imposed
prompt for a laugh?
   what am i? a ******* windowlicker who
laughs when taking a **** holding
his pecker?!
                      you conniving little
******* wanks...
                              i have to say:
the big laugh comes prior to the creeping
weep...
              no, i forgot you being "intricate"
in "nuance" -
  nuance is gone, baby, nuance is gone,
we're dealing with subversion,
and the last word ascribed is "nuance"...
i always said the english as perfecto
two-faced actors: they lie telling the truth,
as they tell the truth, while lying.
        next time i trust them with a hamster
i'll ask just more than a vet nurse...
and i don't mind pakistanis -
i just mind the english pakis -
the anglo pakis - pakistanis are fine with me,
i event managed to grit to an invite
by one muhammad to admire his
crocodile farm in kenya -
  anglo pakis? hate them like i hate
my acne skin... i'm thirty and at the ends
of puberty, yet still: the explosion of
hormones... might as well be a down syndrome
kid: l'oreal should look into extracting
down syndrome genes to make the face cream...
******* never age:
mother's aged 80, and he's shy of 35.
            n'ah, the english did comedy once,
they did it well, they didn't have to ****
off canned laughter obstructing me from
laughing at what i found funny...
   they took the complacent communist rule of:
****** laugh when all other idiots
ought to laugh...
that black guy in trafalgar sq. smashing
a glass bottle over the white guy that bounced
the basketball off his head was funnier
to watch...
         comedy these days is not
nuanced... there is no nuance:
what you hear is what you get:
   and the english way of a dog curling up
its tail between its legs and running away
is not gonna work...
                     what you said is what you
meant: given that blah blah bi bi blee boo
was intended to translate into:
         can you get me a tonne of glue?
the origins of comedy are not based upon
excuses of nuance: comedy can only
be excused by canned laughter:
not nuance.
               politics is nuanced:
if you drag comedy into this cesspool of
nuance: you're not exactly riding
a horse fully shoed into the sunset of
laughter...
   politics is nuanced:
you can't expect comedy = politics -
    to thus express: oh, we're just misunderstood
akin to politicians: nope, we're just lying
is not going to cut it...
          the best jokes are from a people
who say jokes the least:
after all, the omnipotent psychology says:
the most nervous person at a party
tells the most jokes...
    guess western society has had
its turns...
                    first they make comedy
intelligent, then they make cooking mundane,
then they make comedy excusable,
then they make wacky dishes,
     then they make comedy "nuanced",
then they get a glass bottle smashed
over their heads...
          then they make a case for
the microwave...
           and then the once ha ha become an aah...
     that sigh of relief...
         watching this spectacle:
slayer's behind the crooked cross -
   not the jews, but the greeks invented
sado-masochism of the northerns -
the greeks painted the jews as irrational -
   even though the archeological findings
disprove the greeks' little "messianic" story...
i still find english humour naked, lacking,
you can only push nuance to a certain
sisyphus moment in time,
  before sisyphus decides to give it a rest,
and toils no more, and never allows
the stone to roll up the hill,
   and interludes with pondering...
        after all: thought is never a medium
of futility... it being: the ultra-verb,
it being the omni-limb...
                             these days we know
that the englishman is no longer funny...
because his jokes are overtly plagiarised
by "excusing" himself with giving
a nuanced explanation: rather than a punchline:
comedy has a limit: on how intelligent
is can become... children laugh at calamity
short-scripted:
    do you think adults ask for a long-scripted
"base" for giggles, when the narrative prior joke
ends up being so mundane,
to be only backed up canned laughter?
euro trash, sure, but what an island of trash
to back it up...
      i love intelligent tragedy...
the english invented "intelligent" comedy:
people laugh at this sort of crap
by a mimic format: everyone knows its not
funny: then again: by laughing at it
it's peacocking to impress...
                   there's no intelligent comedy...
people who laugh at "intelligent" comedy
are bystanders, eaten up by canned laughter.