Deranged distortions thinking i could contort just right foot red left foot blue twist and turn on trembling tip toes so i might fit into pocket or palm, remain calm if claimed clammed up im bearable woman being rearranged into commercial jingle ring "im good, how are you" stuck in head or throat tote a hoarse smile stinking of another blah facade forlorn forewarn follows fake plant growth in (t)his sunlight promised life to the rubber made grade points plucked like pencil pushing excuses, effort isnt tallied into parking lot anxiety attack lacking attendance peer remembrance of your presence in bleeding nailbeds ****** into sweatshirt smothered eraser faces, forgetful social graces self slap lap up launguage barrier breaks cant breathe without letting words escape race to wring the worry whimpers that echo out of bitten lips split a panicked pulse quicker and louder shout not now mouthy mislead slink in your seat enter dark disengage garble gag on empress embarrass

PASSING STRANGE

Rose, arose & having risen:
...was angry.

'You never call me
by my name

only love & darling.'

'A rose by any other name
would smell as sweet! '
I quoted.

'That's neat! '
she sweetly smiled.

'That's Shakespeare! '
I whispered in her ear

and kissed her
sweet sweet smile.

(Each reflected in the other's eye) .

'Oh, quote me that kiss again! '
she sighed.

'How I do love thee...! '
I cried.

'...let me count the kisses! '
she replied.

My lovely darling

Rose.

*

PASSING STRANGE is from Shakespeare's Othello...when the big guy tells his tales to Dessie and she finds them not only strange but...passing strange. I always thought of a series of inns along a journey...the first was the Ye Olde Strange Inn...then the next one was Ye Really Weirdy Strange Inn...and then surpassing all that... Ye Olde Passing Strange Inn. The Passing Strange of the title refers to the fact that the poem begins with the most strange off the wall wonderful brawl of a row and ends in the most sublime *******!
I had merely asked her(as many times before) 'Do you want a cup of tea, love? ' And all hell exploded until I could understand where she was coming from and kiss it better. Using 'love' in almost every address to a person is an Irishism that is visible to others but invisible to me as...I'm Irish. I don't hear my Irish accent until someone comments on it and its little pecularities. So, my mother would say:
' Make us a cup of tea, love? ' And I say: 'Yeah, love! ' Or a shopkeeper would tell you that that was: '...only a shilling love for all them nice juicy tomatoes love! ' And if you hurt someone, you'd say:
' Sorry, love! ' Or: 'I love you...love! ' It's like spice or flavouring... invisible until it's not there! '
Even if you are unhappy with what a person is doing and tell them in no uncertain terms...so...then the sentence construction is likely to be: 'Ahhhh for fu's sake... love! ' You still put the 'love' on the end of the sentence to show that it is their present actions that you are displeased with and that despite all this they still are your 'love! '
Frieda used to tell me that she loved being my 'love! ' And indeed if I didn't say it she would pick me up on it or ask if I didn't love her anymore! Her full name was Frieda Rose so I would call her so or just Frieda or just Rose or 'Frieda Rose love! ' Try it yourself...it's very hard to be annoyed with someone when you are calling them 'love.' In my part of the country even men would call each other love(in Yorkshire in England they still do as well) and all the normal courtsey and manners are extended to a gentleman as well as to a lady. That's why it's called common courtsey! This can be seen at the end of the Beatles YELLOW SUBMARINE where the guys make an appearance as themselves and not just their cartoons! John is looking worred and Paul asks him: 'What's the matter John, love? '
This time however Frieda went berserk and said 'Don't call me love...I'm not your love! ' It turned out that I had begun to dropp her name more and more and now she was permantently called just 'Love! ' to show how dear she was to me. There was not other word for her except 'love.' She was love itself to me...the very embodiment of the word. Turns out a guy who treated her real bad and cheated on her a lot would always call her love to make it easier for him to cover up his cheating. If everyone was love then he couldn't make a mistake. One day he broke his own rule and called Frieda Rose...Dolly!
Big mistake...they broke up and as he left he told her of his foolproof system of using 'love' for whatever woman he was with. She always hated it after that and until I came along she wouldn't let anyone call her that. She said I said it so differently and it sounded lovely in an Irish accent and I said it like I meant it! That day she had been thinking of him for some reason and all the hurt came back and I just happen to say: 'Do you want a cup of tea, love! '
My stepping into Shakespeare diffused the situation and we started playing around with the launguage and delighting in the words.
Frieda Rose didn't know much Shakespeare until she met me and then it was impossible...not to. just by the process of osmosis you would soak up my passion for the bard. She was just bored and didn't like him anyway but gradually she came to see what I saw in the guy...like.. wow! She gradually soaked up lots of poems and poets and became quite an expert in whom she liked. She had just gotten into the Brownings and this also makes an appearance at the end of the poem.
I brushed back her hair and kissed her on her neck just under her ear and she swooned and sighed 'Oh, quote me that kiss again! ' She was now fully in Shakespearean mode and her feeling and the language got married at the point and out came this lovely natural line. I wish I had wrote it(I only report it!) and I bet Shakey wouldn't have minded coming up with it himself. Today it is still one of my favourite lines of poetry and I still wish I had wrote it. ******* it...she had
out-Shakespeare'd me!
And so I had to write a poem to get my favourite line into it and so PASSING STRANGE came to be. I love reading it even if an audience don't get it or like it that particular night.
It makes me go 'Mmmmmmmmmmm! ' and I get a chance to say:
'Oh, quote me that kiss again! '
Everytime I speak that line...I enter forever the timeless time of that kiss and that's the only moment that exists!

What of that day a came to seattle to visit? What bearing will I let it have on me and on you. We are iregular people and we are drawn tot he familiar sounds of death and resentment. We have no honest intuition to share. If you could see the music in my fingers  you would be scared and asumsed and would cry all at the same time. I feel it as adrum beat in my mind ba ba boom, She said. When did my words and mind and grasp and launguage beome so ******. To think of the world all like this at once, i understand the increasing need for addiction in our youth. I am of the youth! I said it! I am difinitive and a light to all the dark lowley soon-to-die air brethers. They need me, they all need me. See there t is again shittty thought and a ****** exicution. I am rabling again aren't I, you who is reading this, pay attention when I talk to you. It's more about the stream of thought now than the actual quality of my writing. Because good writers are good magicians, right? Good writers don't talk about themselves in such a revealing way. They would be out of a profession, and passion then wouldn't they? They cannot see behind the secenes can they? I understand fully and fully wel that I am incapable of using my mind to the highest capacity. I understand that and I will simply move on from my understanding to the immagined, created hillside in the disutopian future of calky, grainy perception. Where all is understanding the outer demensions and sci-fi **** that scratches at a truth many do not wish to open. Just filling u a page right now I am going to stop.

WHAT THIS ENTIRE WORLDSPIDERWEB IS ABOUT...

The day of the funeral
an intense cold.

The lions roaring
in the zoo beyond

Fluntern Cemetery.

The confluence of
the rivers he loved

obscured from view
as if forever.

The sun too
a milky misty light.

The silence of the necropolis
broken only by an old deaf man

asking all the time:
"Who...is to be...buried here?"

And when he hears, repeats:
"But who is James Joyce?"

Grave No. 1449 is
meant to be temporary

but even in death
he is Ireland's outcast.

His daughter's madness flickers:
"Cet imbécile...what is he.."

Again a roar of lions.

""...doing under the ground
when will he decide to leave!"

Again the deaf man's question.

"He's watching us
all the time."

As indeed he is.
Life but a Work in Progress.

The author leaves
his death

walks abroad
in all his words.

"bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnth­­unntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk"



The last word is the first "thunder-word" of Finnegans Wake as the babble of launguage falls like the Tower of Babel to...begin again.

From page 3…paragraph 3….third word…of Joyce's WAKE.  The first of the ten. . . one-hundred-word “THUNDER-WORDS.”

It is merely a composite word of different languages proclaiming THUNDER!



The last word is the first "thunder-word" of Finnegans Wake as the babble of language falls like the Tower of Babel to...begin again.

*

When he told me about wanting to read The Wake we were passing as it happens the church mentioned at the beginning of the  Wake...or rather...not passing as we were caught in a traffic jam and so were standing still and the church laughing at us in the Dublin sunshine and delighted to be recognised for its prime position in the book.
So I chanted it like a magic spell( the only bit of the book I knew)and joked that the traffic hated Joyce and would do anything it could to escape both church and words.

“riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”

And like a charm it worked and the traffic flowed fluently onward to my homecoming. It was like cutting the Gordian knot with a sword of words.

The next time he picked me up from the airport we were once again stuck in a knot of traffic at the exact same spot and nothing moving...not even the air.

So he smiles at me and says in a great declaiming voice( he of the so soft voice)and the words hung in the air for a moment,,,

“riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”

And sure enough the traffic snarled and flowed under the magic words and let us continue on to home and our hugs and kisses.