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196 lb
average male weight
ego not included

156 lb
average female weight
although one spoken sentence hits like a ton of bricks

20 lb
unsaid words,
searing, left in your throat

10 lb
“It won’t happen again”
guns for vocal chords

40 lb
a dead car battery

25 lb
for every bullet he left inside her spirit

a scale says 167 pounds
body mass measured
heavy heart unaccounted

19.30 g
roughly the weight of a wedding ring
she’s seen three removed from three different fingers

1.5 g
enough for six rotations
enough to feel zero

1.5 oz
enough for a shot
take six to feel a hundred

10 million tons
the weight of a star

10 million tons
the thought of her

we are loaded
dense
filled

made-to-break
paper-made
carbon-bounded
­heart-strung
fire-resistant

the weight we carry is not the
numbers on the scale
we are much more than the pounds we gain
the aches that we hold
the tears that did not fall

living with a hallowed heart does not make it any less heavier

these light words were not meant for these paper limbs
gravity could care less

we are pressured
felt
squeezed
until broken
forevermore

built strong
lasts shortly
bulldozed by just one fallowed swoop
we are demolished

you could build your vessel as ravenous and as merciless as you can
only to be held down by the world
we are defied

measured
counted
hated
loved
we are
For those among us who lived by the rules,
Lived frugal lives of *****-scratching desperation;
For those who sustained a zombie-like state for 30 or 40 years,
For these few, our lucky few—
We bequeath an interactive Life-Alert emergency dog tag,
Or better still a dog, a colossal pet beast,
A humongous Harlequin Dane to feed,
For that matter, why not buy a few new cars before you die?
Your home mortgage is, after all, dead and buried.
We gave you senior-citizen rates for water, gas & electricity—
“The Big 3,” as they are known in certain Gasoline Alley-retro
Neighborhoods among us,
Our parishes and boroughs.
All this and more, had you lived small,
Had you played by the rules for Smurfs & Serfs.

We leave you the chance to treat your grandkids
Like Santa’s A-List clientele,
“Good ‘ol Grampa,” they’ll recollect fondly,
“Sweet Grammy Strunzo, they will sigh.
What more could you want in retirement?

You’ve enabled another generation of deadbeat grandparents,
And now you’re next in line for the ice floe,
To be taken away while still alive,
Still hunched over and wheezing,
On a midnight sleigh ride,
Your son, pulling the proverbial Eskimo sled,
Down to some random Arctic shore,
Placing you gently on the ice floe.
Your son; your boy--
A true chip off the igloo, so to speak.
He leaves you on the ice floe,
Remembering not to leave the sled,
The proverbial Sled of Abbandono,
The one never left behind,
As it would be needed again,
Why not a home in storage while we wait?
The family will surely need it sometime down the line.

A dignified death?
Who can afford one these days?
The question answers itself:
You are John Goodman in “The Big Lebowski.”
You opt for an empty 2-lb can of Folgers.
You know: "The best part of waking up, is Folger's in your cup!"
That useless mnemonic taught us by “Mad Men.”
Slogans and theme songs imbibe us.

Zombie accouterments,
Provided by America’s Ruling Class.
Thank you Lewis H. Lapham for giving it to us straight.
Why not go with the aluminum Folgers can?
Rather than spend the $300.00 that mook funeral director
Tries to shame you into coughing up,
For the economy-class “Legacy Urn.”
An old seduction:  Madison Avenue’s Gift of Shame.
Does your **** smell?” asks a sultry voice,
Igniting a carpet bomb across the 20-45 female cohort,
2 billion pathetically insecure women,
Spending collectively $10 billion each year—
Still a lot of money, unless it’s a 2013
Variation on an early 1930s Germany theme;
The future we’ve created;
The future we deserve.

Now a wheelbarrow load of paper currency,
Scarcely buy a loaf of bread.
Even if you’re lucky enough to make it,
Back to your cave alive,
After shopping to survive.
Women spend $10 billion a year for worry-free *****.
I don’t read The Wall Street Journal either,
But I’m pretty **** sure,
That “The Feminine Hygiene Division”
Continues to hold a corner office, at
Fear of Shame Corporate Headquarters.
Eventually, FDS will go the way of the weekly ******.
Meanwhile, in God & vaginal deodorant we trust,
Something you buy just to make sure,
Just in case the *** Gods send you a gift.
Some 30-year old **** buddy,
Some linguistically gifted man or woman,
Some he or she who actually enjoys eating your junk:
“Oh Woman, thy name is frailty.”
“Oh Man, thou art a Woman.”
“Oh Art is for Carney in “Harry & Tonto,”
Popping the question: “Dignity in Old Age?”
Will it too, go the way of the weekly ******?
It is pointless to speculate.
Mouthwash--Roll-on antiperspirants--Depends.
Things our primitive ancestors did without,
Playing it safe on the dry savannah,
Where the last 3 drops evaporate in an instant,
Rather than go down your pants,
No matter how much you wiggle & dance.
Think about it!

Think cemeteries, my Geezer friends.
Of course, your first thought is
How nice it would be, laid to rest
In the Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey.
Born a ******. Died a ******. Laid in the grave?
Or Père Lachaise,
Within a stone’s throw of Jim Morrison--
Lying impudently,
Embraced, held close by loving soil,
Caressed, held close by a Jack Daniels-laced mud pie.
Or, with Ulysses S. Grant, giving new life to the quandary:
Who else is buried in the freaking tomb?
Bury my heart with Abraham in Springfield.
Enshrine my body in the Taj Mahal,
Build for me a pyramid, says Busta Cheops.

Something simple, perhaps, like yourself.
Or, like our old partner in crime:
Lee Harvey, in death, achieving the soul of brevity,
Like Cher and Madonna a one-name celebrity,
A simple yet obscure grave stone carving:  OSWALD.
Perhaps a burial at sea? All the old salts like to go there.
Your corpse wrapped in white duct/duck tape,
Still frozen after months of West Pac naval maneuvers,
The CO complying with the Department of the Navy Operations Manual,
Offering this service on « An operations-permitting basis, »
About as much latitude given any would-be Ahab,
Shortlisted for Command-at-sea.
So your body is literally frozen stiff,
Frozen solid for six months packed,
Spooned between 50-lb sacks of green beans & carrots.
Deep down in the deep freeze,
Within the Deep Freeze :
The ship’s storekeeper has a cryogenic *******
Deep down in his private sanctuary,
Privacy in the bowels of the ship.
While up on deck you slide smoothly down the pine plank,
Old Glory billowing in the sea breeze,
Emptying you out into the great abyss of
Some random forlorn ocean.

Perhaps you are a ******* lunatic?
Maybe you likee—Shut the **** up, Queequeg !
Perhaps you want a variation on the burial-at-sea option ?
Here’s mine, as presently set down in print,
Lawyer-prepared, notarized and filed at the Court of the Grand Vizier,
Copies of same in safe deposit boxes,
One of many benefits Chase offers free to disabled Vets,
Demonstrating, again, my zombie-like allegiance to the rules.
But I digress.
« The true measure of one’s life »
Said most often by those we leave behind,
Is the wealth—if any—we leave behind.
The fact that we cling to bank accounts,
Bank safe deposit boxes,
Legal aide & real estate,
Insurance, and/or cash . . .
Just emphasizes the foregone conclusion,
For those who followed the rules.
Those of us living frugally,
Sustaining the zombie trance all these years.
You can jazz it up—go ahead, call it your « Work Ethic. »
But you might want to hesitate before you celebrate
Your unimpeachable character & patriotism.

What is the root of Max Weber’s WORK ETHIC concept?
‘Tis one’s grossly misplaced, misguided, & misspent neurosis.
Unmasked, shown vulnerably pink & naked, at last.
Truth is: The harder we work, the more we lay bare
The Third World Hunger in our souls.
But again, I digress.  Variation on a Theme :
At death my body is quick-frozen.
Then dismembered, then ground down
To the consistency of water-injected hamburger,
Meat further frozen and Fedex-ed to San Diego,
Home of our beloved Pacific Fleet.
Stowed in a floating Deep Freeze where glazed storekeepers
Sate the lecherous Commissary Officer,
Aboard some soon-to-be underway—
Underway: The Only Way
Echo the Old Salts, a moribund Greek Chorus
Goofing still on the burial-at-sea concept.

Underway to that sacred specific spot,
Let's call it The Golden Shellback,
Where the Equator intersects,
Crosses perpendicular,
The International Dateline,
Where my defrosted corpse nuggets,
Are now sprinkled over the sea,
While Ray Charles sings his snarky
Child Support & Alimony
His voice blasting out the 1MC,
She’s eating steak.  I’m eating baloney.
Ray is the voice of disgruntlement,
Palpable and snide in the trade winds,
Perhaps the lost chord everyone has been looking for:
Laughing till we cry at ourselves,
Our small corpse kernels, chum for sharks.

In a nutshell—being the crazy *******’ve come to love-
Chop me up and feed me to the Orcas,
Just do it ! NIKE!
That’s right, a $commercial right in the middle of a ******* poem!
Do it where the Equator crosses the Dateline :
A sailors’ sacred vortex: isn’t it ?
Wouldn’t you say, Shipmates, one and all?
I’m talking Conrad’s Marlow, here, man!
Call me Ishmael or Queequeg.
Thor Heyerdahl or Tristan Jones,
Bogart’s Queeq & Ensign Pulver,
Wayward sailors, one and all.
And me, of course, aboard the one ride I could not miss,
Even if it means my Amusement Park pass expires.
Ceremony at sea ?
Absolutely vital, I suppose,
Given the monotony and routine,
Of the ship’s relentlessly vacant seascape.
« There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea,
And I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates. «
So said James Russell Lowell,
One of the so-called Fireside Poets,
With Longfellow and Bryant,
Whittier, the Quaker and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.,
19th Century American hipsters, one and all.

Then there’s CREMATION,
A low-cost option unavailable to practicing Jews.
« Ashes to ashes »  remains its simplest definition.
LOW-COST remains its operant phrase & universal appeal.
No Deed to a 2by6by6 foot plot of real estate,
Paid for in advance for perpetuity—
Although I suggest reading the fine print—
Our grass--once maintained by Japanese gardeners--
Now a lost art in Southern California,
Now that little Tokyo's finest no longer
Cut, edge & manicure, transform our lawns
Into a Bonsai ornamental wonderland.
Today illegal/legal Mexicans employing
More of a subtropical slash & burn technique.

Cremation : no chunk of marble,
No sandstone, wood or cardboard marker,
Plus the cost of engraving and site installation.
Quoth the children: "****, you’re talking $30K to
Put the old ****** in the ground? Cheap **** never
Gave me $30K for college, let alone a house down payment.
What’s my low-cost, legitimate disposal going to run me?"

CREMATION : they burn your corpse in Auschwitz ovens.
You are reduced to a few pounds of cigar ash.
Now the funeral industry catches you with your **** out.
You must (1) pay to have your ashes stored,
Or (2) take them away in a gilded crate that,
Again, you must pay for.
So you slide into Walter Sobjak,
The Dude’s principal amigo,
And bowling partner in the
Brothers Coen masterpiece: The Big Lebowski.
You head to the nearest Safeway for a 2-lb can of Folgers.
And while we’re on the subject of cremation & the Jews,
Think for a moment on the horror of The Holocaust:
Dispossessed & utterly destroyed, one last indignity:
Corpses disposed of by cremation,
For Jews, an utterly unacceptable burial rite.
Now before we leave Mr. Sobjak,
Who is, as you know, a deeply disturbed Vietnam vet,
Who settles bowling alley protocol disputations,
By brandishing, by threatening the weak-minded,
With a loaded piece, the same piece John Turturro—
Stealing the movie as usual, this time as Jesus Quintana—
Bragging how he will stick it up Walter’s culo,
Pulling the trigger until it goes: Click-Click-Click!
Terrestrial burial or cremation?
For me:  Burial at Sea:
Slice me, dice me into shark food.

Or maybe something a la Werner von Braun:
Your dead meat shot out into space;
A personal space probe & voyager,
A trajectory of one’s own choosing?

Oh hell, why not skip right down to the nitty gritty bottom line?
Current technology: to wit, your entire life record,
Your body and history digitized & downloaded
To a Zip Drive the size of the average *******,
A data disc then Fedex-ed anywhere in the galaxy,
Including exotic burial alternatives,
Like some Martian Kilimanjaro,
Where the tiger stalks above the clouds,
Nary a one with a freaking clue that can explain
Just what the cat was doing up so high in the first place.
Or, better still, inside a Sherpa’s ***** pack,
A pocket imbued with the same Yak dung,
Tenzing Norgay massages daily into his *******,
Defending the Free World against Communism & crotch rot.
(Forgive me: I am a child of the Cold War.)
Why not? Your life & death moments
Zapped into a Zip Drive, bytes and bits,
Submicroscopic and sublime.
So easy to delete, should your genetic subgroup
Be targeted for elimination.
About now you begin to realize that
A two-pound aluminum Folgers can
Is not such a bad idea.
No matter; the future is unpersons,
The Ministry of Information will in charge.
The People of Fort Meade--those wacky surveillance folks--
Cloistered in the rolling hills of Anne Arundel County.
That’s who will be calling the shots,
Picking the spots from now on.
Welcome to Cyber Command.
Say hello to Big Brother.
Say “GOOD-BYE PRIVACY.”

Meanwhile, you’re spending most of your time
Fretting ‘bout your last rites--if any—
Burial plots on land and sea, & other options,
Such as whether or not to go with the
Concrete outer casket,
Whether or not you prefer a Joe Cocker,
Leon Russell or Ray Charles 3-D hologram
Singing at your memorial service.
While I am fish food for the Golden Shellbacks,
I am a fine young son of Neptune,
We are Old Salts, one and all,
Buried or burned or shot into space odysseys,
Or digitized on a data disc the size of
An average human *******.
Snap outta it, Einstein!
Like everyone else,
You’ve been fooled again.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2016
preliminary explanation

before i really begin the project i have a few scatterings
of thought that made me do this, without real planning,
a different sort of impromptu that poetry's good at,
less Dionysian spur-of-the-moment with an already
completed poem entwined to a perfect ensō,
as quick as the decapitation of Mary Boleyn with the
executioner fooling her which side the swing would
be cast by taking of his hard-soled-shoes -
i mean this in an Apollonian sense - i know, sharp contrasts
at first, but the need to fuse them - i said these are
preliminary explanations, the rest will not be as haphazardly
composed, after all, i see the triangle i'm interested it
but drawing a triangle without Pythagorean explanation
i'm just writing Δ - i'll unravel what my project is
about, just give me this opportunity to blah blah for a
while like someone from an existential novel;
what beckoned me was the dichotomy of styles,
i mean, **** me, you can read poetry while in an awkward
yoga position, you can read it standing up, sitting down,
eating or whatever you want - obviously on the throne
of thrones taking a **** is preferred - the point being
what's called serious literature is so condensed for
economic reasons, font small, never-ending paragraphs,
you need an easy-chair and a bottle of cognac to get
through a chapter sometimes - or at least freshly mowed
grass in a park in summer - it's really uncomfortable because
of that, and the fact that poets hardly wish upon you
to be myopic - just look at the spacing on the page,
constantly refreshing, open-plan condos, eye-to-eye -
but it's not about that... the different styles of writing,
prose and the novel, the historical essay / encyclopedia
or a work of philosophy - what style of writing can
be best evolutionary and undermine each? only poetry.
poetry is a ballerina mandible entity, plastic skeletons,
but that's beside the point, when journalism writes history
so vehemently... the study of history writes it nonchalantly,
it's the truth, journalism is bombastic, sensationalist
every but what courting history involves -
a journalist will write about the death of a 100 people
more vehemently than a historian writing about the Holocaust...
or am i missing something? i never understood this dichotomy
of prose - it's most apparent between journalism and history...
as far as i am concerned, the most pleasurable style of
prose is involved in the history of philosophy, or learning per se,
but i'll now reveal to you the project at hand -
it's a collage... the parameters?

the subject of the collage

it weighs 1614 grams, or 3 lb. and 8 7/8ths oz.,
it's a single volume edition, published by Pimlico,
it's slightly larger than an A5 format,
3/4 inches more in length, and ~1 centimetre in
width more, it has a depth of 1 and 3/4 inches in depth,
a bicep iron-pumping session with it in bed -
i was lying with this behemoth of a book
in bed soothing out a semi-delirium state
listening to Ola Gjeilo's *northern lights

and flicking through the appendix, and i started thinking,
no would read this giant fully, would they?
the reason it's a one volume edition is because
the only place you'd read such an edition would
be in a library, at a desk, and you'd be taking snippets
out from it, quotes, authentic references points
for an essay, esp. if you were a history student,
such books aren't exactly built for leisure, as my arms
could testify... after the appendix i started flicking
through as to what point of interest would spur me
onto this audacious (and perhaps auspicious)
act of renegading against writing a novel (in the moment,
in the moment, i can't imagine myself rereading plot-lines
after a day or two, adding to it - that's a collage too,
but of a different kind - and no, i won't be plagiarising
as such, after all i'll be citing parallel, but utilising
poetry as the driving revision dynamic compared
to the chronologically stale prose of history) - i'll be
extracting key points that are already referenced and not
using the style of the author - the book in question?
Europe: a history by Norman Davies prof. emeritus
at U.C.L. - the point of entry that made me mad enough
to condense this 1335 page book (excluding the index)?

point of incision

Voltaire (or the man suspected of Guy Fawkes-likes spreading
of volatility in others) -
un polonais - c'est un charmeur; deux polonais - une
bagarre; trois polonais, eh bien, c'est la question polonaise

(one pole - a charmer, two poles - a brawl, three poles -
the polish question) - mind you, the subtler and gentler
precursor of the Jewish question, because the Frenchman
mused, and not a German, or a Russian brute...
and i can testify, two Polish immigrants in a pub,
one senior, the other minor, one with 22 years under
his belt of the integration purpose, one with 12 years,
the minor says to the senior about how Poles bring
the village life to cities, brutish drunkards and what not,
it was almost a brawl, prior to the senior was charming
a Lithuanian girl, before the minor's emphasis on
such a choice of conversation turned into idiotic Lithuanian
nostalgia about the disintegration of the Polish-Lithuanian
commonwealth, primarily due to the Polish nobility.

10,000 b.c.

looking that far back i don't know why you even
bother to celebrate the weekend -
i mean, 10,000 years back Denmark was
still attached to Sweden,
England was attached to France,
and there was a weird looking Aquatic landmass
that would become a myth of Atlantis
in the Chronicles of Norwich,
speedy ******* Gonzales with the equivalent
of south america detaching itself from Africa...
mind you, i'm sure the Carpathian ranges are
mountains. they're noted here are hills or uplands,
by categorising them as such i'm surprised
the majority of Carpathian elevations as scolded
bald rocky faced, a hill i imagine to have some
vegetation on it, not mountain goats with rock and roof
for a blacksmith in a population of one hundred...
at this point Darwinism really becomes a disorientating
pinpoint of whatever history takes your fancy,
Europe - mother of Minos, lord of Crete,
progenitrix / ******* and the leather curtains
of Zeus's harem (jealous? no, just the sarcasm
dominates the immortal museum of attachable
****** to suit the perfect elephant **** of depth
the gods sided with, by choice, excusing the Suez
duct tightening of a prostate gland... to ease the pain
upon ******* rather than *******); mentioned by Homer
the Blind tooth-fairy, the Europe and the bull,
Europoeus and the swan, same father of wisdom to mind,
on the shores of Loch Lomond -
attributes a lover to the bull, Moschus of Syracuse,
who said earring Plato cured him of where the ****
should not enter even if it shines a welcome
in the disguise of Dionysius... revisionists bound to Pompeii
named Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens Veronese
and Claude Lorrain revived the bulging bull's *******
and her mm hmm mm, too gracious my kind, hehee...
Phonecians from Tyre and Io - so too the Sibyl of ****** -
and unlike the great river civilisations of the Nile,
the Ganges, soon to be the Danubian civilisations
and gorged-out-eyes-that-once-sore-colour-but-lost-sight-of-
colours-­after-seeing-the-murk-of-the-Thames...
soon the seas overcame civilisations of the rivers,
as Cadmus, brother of the thus stated harlot said:
i bring you orbe pererrato - hieroglyphics of the cage,
but not an owl or a hawk inside it -
so let's perfect speaking to an encoding by first
rummaging into learning how to procure the perfect
forms of counting - i say left, you say I, i say right
you say II, left right left right, what do you say?
VI. bravo! the Hellenic world just crossed the Aegean
and civilisation bore twins within the cult of a lunar-mother,
Islam of Romulus and Remus, a she-wolf
a canine of the night - according to another -
tremulae sinuantur flamine vestes - or so the myth goes -
a cherished phantom of what became the fabled story
of sole Odysseus with his ears open and the remnant
sailor's ears waxed shut - as if the bankers of this world,
revelling in culprit universal fancy than nonetheless
bred the particular oddities - lest we forget,
the once bountiful call of the sirens to the oceanic
is but a fraction of what today's sirens claim to be song,
a fraction of it remains in this world, the onomatopoeia
of the once maddening song, the crude *******
arrangement of vowels bound to the jealous god's
déjà vu of the compounding second H.

from myth to perpetuating a modern sentiment

you can jump from 10,000 b.c. to the Munich Crisis
of 1938 - 9 with a snap of the fingers,
imitating quantum phenomenons like gesticulating
a game of mime with Chinese whispers necessary,
if Europe is a nymph, Naples her azure eyes,
Warsaw her heart, Sebastopol and Azoff,
Petersburg, Mitau, Odessa - these the thorns
in her feet - Paris the head, London the starched collar,
and Rome - the sepulchre
.
or... die handbuch der europaischen geschichte
notably from Charlemagne (the Illiterate)
to the Greek colonels (as apart from Constantine to
Thomas More in eight volumes, via Cambridge mid
1930s)... these and some other books of urgency
e.g. Eugene Weber's H. A. L. Fisher's, Sr. Walter Ralegh,
Jacob Bronowski... elsewhere excavated noun-obscurities
like gattopardo and konarmya had their
circas extended like shelved vegetables in modern
supermarket isles, for one reason or another...
prado, sonata sovkino also... some also mention
Thomas Carlyle (i'd make it sound like carried-away isle,
but never mind); so in this intro much theory,
how to sound politically correct, verifiable to suit
a coercion for a status quo... Europe as a modern idea,
replacing Imperum Romanun came Christendom,
ugly Venetian Pirates at Constantinople,
Barbarossa making it in pickled herring juice
in a barrel to Jerusalem... once called the pinkish-***-fluff
of Saxony, now called the pickled cucumber,
drowning in his armour in some river or Brosphorus...
alchemists, Luther and Copernicus were invited on
the same occasion as the bow-tie was invented,
apparently it was a marriage made for the Noir cinema,
beats me - hence the new concept of Europe,
reviving the idea of Imperium Romanun
meant, somehow including Judea in the Euro
championship of footie gladiator ***** whipped
narcissists, rejecting the already banished Carthage
(Libya / Tunisia by Cato's standards) and encouraging
the Huns, the Goths and the even more distant Slavs and
Vikings to accept not so much the crucifix as
the revised spine of the serpent but as the geometry of
human limbs, well, not so much that, but forgetting
Norse myths of the one-eyed and the runic alphabet
and settling for ah be'h c'eh d'ah.
dissident frenche stink abbe, charles castel de st pierre
(1658 - 1743) aand this work projet d'une paix perpetuelle
(1713) versus Питер Великий who just said:
never mind the city, the Winter Palace... i have aborted
fetus pickles in my bedroom, lava lamps i call them.
the last remaining reference to Christianity?
Nietzsche was late, the public was certain,
it was the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713, with public reference
to the republica christiana / commonwealth was last made.
to Edmund Burke: well, i too wish no exile
upon any European on his continent of birth,
but invigorate a Muslim to give birth on it
and you invigorate an exile nonetheless:
Ezra expatriate Pound / sorry, if born in eastern
europe a ***** Romanian immigrant, pristine
expatriate in western Europe, fascist radio has
my tongue and *****, so let's play a game:
Russian roulette for the Chinese cos there's
a billion of them, and no one would really mind
a missing Chow Mein... chu shoo'ah shaolin moo'n'kah!
or a cappuccino whenever you'd like to watch
classic Italian pornographic cinema with dubbing
with nuns involved... Willaim Blake and his
stark naked prophesy, pope pius II (treatise 1458)
even though Transylvania, Tharce and Hungary
shared the same phonetic encoding with diacritical
distinctions like any Frenchman, German,
or Pole at the Siege of Vienna (1683)
to counter the antagonising Ottoman - i swear historians
do this one purpose, juggle dates and head-of-state figures
prior to entering a chronology - they must first try out
a ******* carousel before playing with the toy-train...
broadcasting to a defeated Germany public, T. S. Eliot
(1945) ****** import to into Western Germany
and talk of the failing moral fabric, China laughing
after the ***** intricacies of warfare of trade,
what was once wool we wished to be silk...
instead of silk we received vegetarian wool, namely
hemp, and Amsterdam is to blame... nuke 'em!
that's how it sounds, how a historian approaches
writing a history from the annals, from circa and
circumstance and actual history, foremost the abbreviations,
the fishing hook standards, the parameters,
the limits, and then the mathematics of history,
one thing culminating into another... contra Lenin
N. S. Trubetskoy, P. N. Savitsky, G. Vernadsky
Russian at the perks of the Urals - steppe Tartar shamans
or salon pranced pretty **** boys? where to put
the intoxicant and where to put the mascara... hmm,
god knows, or by 21st calculations, a meteor;
they say the history of nations is a history of women,
then at least the history of individuation
and of men who succumb to its proliferation
is astoundingly misogynistic.
Seton-Watson, among the the tombstones too reminded
of remarkable esteem and accomplishment
with only one gravedigger to claim as father...
as many death ears as on two giraffe skeletons
stood Guizot, men of many letter and few fortunes,
or v. v., incubators of cousin ***** and none the kippah
before the arrogant saintly diminished to
a justly cause of recession, ha ha,
by nature's grace, and with true advent of her progression
as guard-worthy pre- to each pro-
and suggested courteous of the ****** fibre,
oh hey, the advent of masqueraded woofing,
a Venetian high-brow, and jealousy out of a forgotten
spirit of adventure that once was bound
to hunting and foraging... forever lost to write  history of
a king dubbed Louis the XIV...
crucibles and distastes for the state to be pleased,
once removed from Paris, forever to Angevin womb
accustomed once more, at Versailles released -
as cake be sown so too the aristocratic swan necks
for worth of mock and scorn - and the dampening rain
rattle the blood-thirst of the St. Bartholomew's Day
slaughter, to date, the rebirth of Burgundy,
of Anjou, and with the dead king presiding, to be
of no worth in judging himself a king before god or pauper...
saluer Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville!
that i might too in stead rattle a few bones prior to burial
with the jaw that will laugh and chatter least
had it been to my kingly-stead a birth so lowly.
then at least in satisfactory temperament i procure a
judgement of the noble like of a *****
for an hour's worth of pistons and jarring tongues...
as if from a nobleman then indeed as if from a *****,
for who sold Europe and said: Arabia, if not the
Frenchman, the Englishman, the Spaniard?
the former colonial conquests served you not enough?
i imagine the reinstatement of Israel like
the Frankish states under Philippe-August...
precursors to a cathedral dubbed Urban the 2nd's..
there were only Norwegian motives in the Ukraine
and the black sea... Israel to me is like plagiarism
of the Frankish states of the middle-east, with Europe
slightly... oom'pah loom'pah mongolian harmonica.
some said Rudyard Kipling poems,
some said Mr. Kipling's afternoon tea cakes -
whichever made it first on Coronation St.
some also say the Teutonic barbecues -
it was a matter of example to feed them hog
and cannibalise the peasants for ourselves,
a Prussian standard worth an army standard of
rigour - Ave Maria - letztre abendessen nahrung -
mein besitzen, wenn in die Aden, i'd be the last
talking carcass...
gottes ist der orient!
gottes ist der okzident!
nord - und sudliches gelande
ruht im frieden seiner hande.

germany's lebensraum, inferiority and classification,
inferior slavs and jews, genetics and why my
hatred of Darwinism is persistent, you need
an explanatory noting to make it auto-suggestive
for Queen & Country? diseased elements,
Jewish Bolshevism, Polish patriotism,
Soviets, Teutons, the grand alliances of 1918
or 1945? Wilsonian testimony of national self-determi
howard brace Oct 2012
Stood rigidly to attention either side of the hearth, the two bronze fire-dogs had been struggling to maintain that British stiff upper lipidness, which up until earlier that evening had best befitted their station in life... indeed, for the last half hour at least had become brothers in arms to the dying embers filtering through the bars of the cast-iron grate, passing from the present here and now, having lost every thermal attribute necessary to sustain any further vestige of life... to the shortly forthcoming and being at oneness with the Universe... only to fall foul of the overflowing ash-pan below.  This premature cashing in of the coal fire's chips could only be attributed to the recent and prolonged thrashing from the Baronial poker... and a distinct lack of enthusiasm from the family retainer, whom it appeared, required spurring along in a like manner... and while unseen mechanisms were heard to be engaging, then resonating deep within the Hall... that unless summoned... and quickly, the housekeeper had little intention of making an appearance of her own choosing and re-stoke the Study fire while the BBC Home Service were airing 'Your 100 Best Tunes' on the wireless, leaving the heavily tarnished pendulum to continue measuring the hour.

     An indistinct mutter and snap of a closing door latch sounded in the immediate distance as the unhurried shuffle of domestic footsteps... not too dissimilar from those of Jacob Marley's spectral visitation to Scrooge... echoed ever closer along the ancient, oak panelled hallway without.  Their sudden cessation, allowing the housekeeper ingress to  the book lined Study, was by way of sporadic groans from unoiled hinges, door furniture that voiced the same overwhelming lack of attention as that of the fire-grate set in the wall opposite and presumably, from the same overwhelming lack of domestic servitude.
                                        
     "Had his Lordship rang...?" the Housekeeper wailed dolefully, giving her employer what might casually pass for a courteous bob... and in lieu no doubt, of Marley's rattling chains, padlocks and dusty ledgers... "and would there be anything further his Lordship required..." before she took her leave for the evening.  The notion of a sticky mint humbug warming the cockles of his ancient, aristocratic heart gave her pause for thought as she rummaged through her pinafore pockets, then thought better of it, after all, confectionary didn't grow on trees...  In bobbing a second time she noticed the malnourished, yet strangely twinkling coal-scuttle lounging over by the hearth, whose insubstantial contents had taken on an ethereal quality earlier that evening and had now transferred its undivided attention to the recently summoned Housekeeper, who was quite prepared to offer up a candle in supplication come next Evensong were she mistaken, but the coal-scuttle's twinkle bore every intimation of giving what appeared to be a very suggestive 'come-on' in return... and had been doing so since she first entered the room... 'and did she have any plans of her own that particular evening', the coal-scuttle twinkled suavely, 'perchance a leisurely stroll down by the old coal cellar steps...'  Now perhaps it was the lateness of the hour which had caused the Housekeeper's confusion that evening, or perhaps an over stretched imagination, brought on through domestic inactivity, but it wouldn't take a great deal to hazard that a lingering fondness for Gin and tonic played no small part towards her next curtsey, which she did, albeit unwittingly, in the unerring direction of the winking coal-scuttle.

     With the household keys as her badge-of-office, jangling defiantly from the chain around her waist, the housekeeper began inching back the same way she came, back towards the study door and freedom... and back into the welcoming arms of her 1/4 lb. bag of peppermint humbugs and the pint of best London Gin she'd had to relinquish prior to 'Songs of Praise...' and which was now to be found... should you happen to be an inquisitive fly on a particular piece of floral wallpaper... half-cut, locked arm in arm with the bottle of Indian tonic water and in the final, intoxicating throws of William Blake's, 'Jerusalem...' hic.

     "Ha-arrumph..." the elderly gentleman cleared his throat... "ah Gabby" he said, lowering his book and placing it face down upon the occasional table set beside him.  The flatulent groan of tired leather upholstery made itself heard above the steady monotony of the mantle-piece clock as he stood and chaffed his hands in the direction of the bereft fire, "Oh! I'm sorry your Lordship, then there was something...?" as she maintained her steady but relentless backwards retreat unabated, the double-barrelled bunch of keys taking up a strong rear-guard action and away from the well disposed coal scuttle... "and was his Lordship quite certain that he required the fire stoking at such a late hour..." she dared, "perhaps a nice warming glass of port and brandy instead" gesturing towards the salver, long since tarnished by the half hearted attentions of a proprietary metal polish... "and would he care for..." then thought better of offering to plump the chair cushions herself, having discovered Mort, the household mouser in the final stages of claiming them as his own, deftly rearranging the Victorian Plush with far more than any noble airs or graces.

     "Poor Mrs Alabaster, you will recall Sir, I'm sure..." a pained expression crossed the Housekeepers face as she collided with a corner of the Georgian writing bureau and bringing her to an abrupt halt... "her late Ladyships lady" she continued, indiscreetly rubbing her derriere, "whose services your Lordship dispensed with at the onset of last Winter, shortly after the funeral, God rest her late Ladyship... when you made her redundant... and how she's been unable to find a new situation ever since on account of her lumbago flaring up again, seeing as how it's been the coldest January in living memory", which in all likelihood meant since records began... "and SHE didn't have any coal either... or a roof over her head for all anyone cared... begging yer' pardon, yer' Lordship", letting her tongue slip as she attempted yet one more curtsey... "and it's wicked-cruel outside this time of year Sir, you wouldn't turn a dog out in it..." and how ordering the coal used to be Mrs Alabaster's responsibility...

     "Oh no, Sir", as she unsuccessfully stifled a hiccup...she would be only too delighted to rouse the Cook, especially after that dodgy piece of scrag-end they'd all had to suffer during Epiphany, but it was only last week that the Doctor had confined Cookie to bed with the croup... "as I'm sure your Lordship will recall..." as she attempted a double curtsey for effect, the despondent coal-scuttle now all but forgotten, "that below-stairs had been dining on pottage since a week Friday gone... and it tends to get a little moribund after almost a fortnight your Honour... and that Mrs Cotswold's rheumatism was still showing no signs of improvement either by the looks of things... and was having to visit the Chiropodist every fortnight for her bunions scraping... and how she's been advised to keep taking the embrocation as required".

     As a young woman, any disposition her grandmother may have had towards sobriety or moral virtue had quickly been prevailed upon by the former Master's son taking intimacy to the next level with the saucy Parlour Maid's good nature.   Shortly thereafter, having been obliged to marry the first available Gardener that came along, she was often heard to say "a bun in the oven's worth two in the bush" for it was with stories 'of such goings-on'  that made it abundantly clear to the Housekeeper, that it was far more than old age creeping up... and that if she didn't keep her wits wrapped tightly about her, as she threw a sideways glance at the winking philanderer... then who would.

     As for the Gardener, "well... he couldn't possibly manage the cellar steps at this late hour, yer' Lordship, wot' with the weather being the way it is right now Sir, seasonal... and him with his broken caliper... and bronchitis playing him up at every turn, even though his own ailing missus swore by a freshly grown rhubarb poultice first thing each morning", but oddly enough, "how it always seemed to work better if the young barmaid down in the village rubbed it on, especially around opening time..." even his brother, Mr Potts Senior, ever since their Dad passed away... "God rest his eternal soul", as she whirled, twice in as many seconds, a mystical finger in the air... had said how surprised he'd been to discover that it could be used as a ground mulch for seed-cucumbers... it was truly amazing how The Good Lord provided for the righteous... and even as she spoke, was working in mysterious ways, His Wonders to Behold... "Praised-Be-The-Lord".

     And how the entire household, with the possible exception of Mrs Alabaster, her late Ladyships lady, who doggedly refused to be evicted from her 'Grace n' Favour cottage...' the one with pretty red roses growing around the door, that despite a string of eviction notices from the apoplectic Estate manager... had noticed what a fine upstanding Gentleman his Lordship had steadfastly remained since her late Ladyships sudden demise... "God-rest-her-immortal-soul..." and may she allow herself to say, "how refreshing it was to have such a progressively minded and discerning employer such as his Lordship at the helm, one filled with patient understanding and commitment towards the entire household..." much like herself...

     Fearing an uncontrollable attack of the ague, which invariably took the form of a selfless and unstinting dereliction to duty and always flared up at the slightest suggestion of having to roll her sleeves up and do something... which incidentally, was the first mutual attraction by common consent to which her parents, some forty years earlier had discovered they both held in tandem... and "would his Lordship take exception..." feigning a sudden relapse as she gestured towards the nearest chair, were she to take the weight off her feet... she plonked herself solidly upon the Chippendale before his Lordship could decline... "perhaps a recuperative drop of brandy" she volunteered, "just for medicinal purposes", she swept her feet onto the footstool, then crossed them with a flourish that would have caused Cyrano de Bergerac to hang up his sword... "the good stuff, if his Lordship would be so kind, in the lead-crystal decanter... over in the corner by the potted plant", she caught sight of the adjacent cigarette box, also tarnished... "just to keep body and soul together, may it please 'Him upon High'..." and just long enough to brave the coal cellar steps and refill the amorous scuttle... "if only it were a little less chilly", she gave an affected cough... on account of her diphtheria acting up again, she felt sure that his Lordship understood...  Moving over to one of the book lined alcoves, the elderly Gentleman lifted several tomes from the shelves... 'My Life in Anthracite', an illustrated compendium' "to begin with, I think... followed by... hmm!" 'The History of Fossil-Fuels, a comprehensive study in twelve breath taking volumes' "and we'll take it from there" as he threw the first on the barely smouldering embers...

                                                      ­     ...   ...   ...**

a work in progress.                                                        ­                                                         1859
Martin Narrod May 2015
Martin Narrod  just now
I started working on a comment in response to "Filling A Bottle With A Tundish"

Sadly I must admit, that even for an American with a college degree, who is a self-proclaimed non-Philistine that grew up in a suburb of Chicago, IL. Where I'm from I've been told is much like some parts of Sussex(I believe it's Sussex), my friend Lili Wilde described it to me on an occasion.

So I must say martin, that for having a voracious appetite for language, language of all sorts, from **** to sin, to cinephile to cynosure, pulchritude to tup, exsuphlocate to masticate, irate, irk, perfervid, wan ewes thwapping their tails, nearly stridulating like the cricket in the thistle. The advanced undulate troche of domesticated shadows, and the sesquipedelien dulciloquent surreptitious diction and other floccinaucinihilipilification and tomfoolery about.

martin, please do tell me what a 'Tundish" is? If you haven't yet, there is a phenomenally interesting reverse dictionary, entitled onelook.com/reversedictionary , and quite contrary as it may seem, and for all the Virginia & Leonard Woolf I enjoy reading, especially his somewhat innocuously underrated novella he wrote, I also read with extraordinary gratitude Ted Hughes's The Birthday Letters, Take of a Bride Groom, The Complete Works, Sylvia Plath's Unabridged Journals, Ariel, Johnny Panic, Ariel, and other poems by writer Richard Matthews. I am still unfamiliar with this word, Tundish. Online dictionaries don't give the best explanation.

As I was mentioning earlier. The OneLook Dictionary-Reverse, will let you for example, search: beach sand. And in response it will give you up to thousands and thousands of word which relate to those two words, together, seperately, and opposing each other. Such as: water, swell, wave, arenose, peat, dirt, seagull, Pacific Ocean, suntan, bikini, The Beach Boys, vitrify. It's very fun indeed. From one Martin to another, I hope you'll stay in touch. I'm excited about your work!

Best Regards

Martin

P.S. The text below is the original message I typed before learning that my presumptions of you being Anglican were correct. Have a great day!

Another Martin, YES! How exquisite, I've never met another one. I have so many questions I barely know where to start. I love marigolds, nose-bags with oats, and as I started feeling the essences if equus and what lurking prurient pedagogy for the didactic zoology that took me and the mind of me to wonder perhaps if though I am quite certain(though not 100%) that your native tongue is English, but using that ridiculous skill-set of immense benality I seem to someone have, am I wrong for asking dear Martin, are you from Scotland or Wales, or maybe even from a country where you learnt English as a native tongue but it's your secondary language?

As aforementioned, there are a plethora of questions that this runnel of sludge and dross that've now arisen in the turpidity of your antiquary of delightful speech. To whomever invited me to play along in the debauchery, and dance merrily with merriment, mine younger docile succubus's slendering beside me, puking up their tissue paper and vegetable soup, so that my pretty girls can fit into Size 2 TuTu's, and learnedly imprison themselves into the tatterdemalion of portentously lurid self-****** and abuse. , and the opprobrious trollop-gossip the gaggle of my skinny victim women eschewing food groups, in order to appeal to my conservative eyes, thrice the child's wild idling to absorb the rancor of their stoic and noisome sedentary lifestyle in the polluted sudatorium that I myself don't use, but that these nonparticular Philistines would serve as Surf & Turf with glazed Christmas Hams for the Hebrews to eat, and another sad storm surge on another deserted quay of sea sands, and our vessel and our deserters, worshipping the Virunga, sacrificing the ghost skeletons of the million year old ape. So I ask you. If even you're capable of expressing yourself under the maddening yet advesperating evening listening to Miles Kane and The Arctic Monkeys, followed by listening to Black Sabbath play Fairies Wear Boots while we drink our childhoods free of the rod and **** the war out of our teenage girlfriends. And in the morning when awoken by the sound of Sopwith Camels arriving on the early, frost-strewn milky, azure-banded stripes of moonlit ecstasy that make for this unquantifiable gesture of succinct believers driving in Summer get stopped for blowing a rice-white swiveling consortium of dishonest affair rivaling ****** addicts, with hummus, plastic bags, and forks in their sphincters, while they autoerotically asphyxiate themselves in a plastic knockoff Mickey Mouse hat, and a Pirates of the Carribbean bandana wrapped around the ***** eyed nightmare of having unsuccessfully sedated a 400-lb crabby, Lowland living-room Silverback Gorilla. More than a primate and a prostate exam. It's like posthumously straining to push tingling 119° Vaseline through the grey and white coffee stirrers which spilled all over the floor while I was saying goodbye to our daughter, while also explaining to you why it's so important to me you love me back enough so that everyone has enough of a grasping glint at understanding yourself, that in managing to reason the arithmetic of such a conundrum and confusing calamity, a phone call free of dial tone happens to be surrendered to an independent Christian organization of the state while myself and my wife's two sons, our sons, Thomas and James, have enough free time from complaining to hire an attorney to disclose the arraignment reiterated by both legal council, city council, and the Screenwriters Guild of counsellors struggling from methamphetamine addiction.

Peace Be With You.

Martin Narrod
martin.narrod@gmail.com
Response to Filling A Bottle With A Tundish by Martin
Cat Fiske May 2015
I have no voice,
Because I have been vomiting up pills each and every morning,
getting into my old anna habits you may say,

I don't wanna live on an ADHD diet,
the pills **** with me,
I'm 174.0lb please,

I am a little heavy,
but it's to the point where,
I was 220,
and I could barely breath,
when I had a panic attack,
so my mom is helping me lose weight,
but pills that make me starve myself,
are ones I wanna do without,
so I ***** each day before I eat,
after I consume the pills,
because she won't let me get off them,
you think im crazy,
but I've lost my weight the way I wanted to,
changed my eating styles,
getting rid of the junk food,
eating healthy,
trying to get over some of my sensory issues,
without having to take a ******* ADHD pill for the last month,
I've lost more weight doing that,
then skipping a meal because I had no hunger,
due to medication,
But I'm being healthy about it,
But I'm also not,
because I told you,
I ***** my pills everyday,
so I'm losing my voice,
like I did,
*In my elementary school days,
NOTE: I am not vomiting my pills, I am just yelling at my mom over them, why I have no voice, But I'd love to of lost my weight the right way, and I have gotten desperate enough to do that, but still she refuses, so, I can really get off my meds, plus I need them even more now I have a concussion, but I just want to do it the right way, not just the way bc I am taking pills and they have a side effect that's helping me out with another thing. but I thought it be a good way to compare my feeling on weight loss and how they're different from before, I am also a over/binge eater. so I have problems with that. eating is something I do to cope with things so its not good, so I am trying to stop eating and cutting and burning and all those things at once when I am upset, and its very hard. I've been making people food when I'm upset. but that cost a lot of money so I cant keep doing that.
Lucanna  Feb 2013
Revenge.
Lucanna Feb 2013
If I ever see you again
I'll spat insults and hope they
Spray on your aviators
like the bugs that squashed against
my windshield the last time
I drove away from you

If fate destroys me
and I am in the same pub one night
as your wormy self
I'll tell you how you're the most
arrogant, vapid, shallow, womanizing,
******* male mascot
I've ever had the disgust to know

I'll slap you hard across the face
Oh and not like Scarlett O'Hara,
you demon darling
No crushing kiss will follow
and I'll mean vengence
vile will seep through my mouth
instead of the sweet saliva
I let you taste
long ago

If I ever hear your voice
or see your mocking manequin
among my tele again
With disgraceful force
I will lift that 50 lb set
and propel that ******* screen
across the state
The way your black static apology
shattered the brightness
that used to reside
within
me

If I hear of you
one more dispicable time
I'll grow bombs maticulously
within my empty core
and time them so perfectly
that all of your dysfunctional doormat
confidants
will explode the second they come near me
and their manipulative cells
will burst
and be burried among the soil
of ***** words
you whispered in my ears

****, if I ever see you again
I'll shatter every martini glass around me
and down a fifth of fireball
and breath venomous fire
and burn you, you beastly boy
And I'll pretend beauty amongst you
and walk away, a tall glass of water
That could diffuse
that angry licking fire
that is swallowing you up

When I see you again
I won't acknowledge your existence
and I'll be dressed to the nines
and I won't do a ******* thing about it
Because you aren't worth a sentence within this stanza

But I know I am.
I would give anything to have the last say, but I wouldn't...not myself.
equitube May 2019
On the south side of kelso if it's there that ya choose to go
Well if its there ya go then ya just gotta know bout a man named tweaker joe
Now tweaker, he's a scrapper and if ya go down on his door
Don't you worry about wakin him up. He aint slept since 74
Well he's weird, weird tweaker joe
The weirdest tweaker in South Kelso
Weirder than a three toed frog
Stranger than a five eared dog

Now tweaker hes a scrapper and he likes his shiny things
And he likes to see what fun he has by the chaos that he brings
He got a custom BMX bike with a flashlight on the grill. He got 32 lb of brass in his pack, he got a dope bag in his shoe.

Well he's weird, weird tweaker joe
The weirdest tweaker in South Kelso
Weirder than a three toed frog
Stranger than s five eared dog


NOW Friday bout a week ago Tweaker scrappin cars. But at the end of the alley sat a cop named Thurman and ooh dat cop looked ******

Well he cast his light upon joe cuz Thurman had a plan
Tweaker joe learned a lesson bout messin with a future Sherriff man


Well he's weird, weird tweaker joe
The weirdest tweaker in South Kelso
Weirder than a three toed frog
Stranger than s five eared dog


Well the 2 men took to runnin and hes dragged down to the jail
Joey looked like a wrung out tweaker with a couple of teeth left

Well he's weird, weird tweaker joe
The weirdest tweaker in South Kelso
Weirder than a three toed frog
Stranger than s five eared dog

Well he's weird, weird tweaker joe
The weirdest tweaker in South Kelso
Weirder than a three toed frog
Stranger than s five eared dog
This is quite regional to South Kelso WA but it's funny. I premiered it at karaoke last night but forgot a newly written verse
twenty years later
marking two decades
I pause to think about
life’s trajectories

I know exactly
where I was
who I was with
what I was doing

I can’t say the same
with any assurance
about the location of
my current disposition

twenty years ago today
I was manning my
FT Info post
on the 18th floor
of WTC too
bashing away
on a clunky laptop
authoring a proposal
for an urgent sales call
at Lehman Brothers

when the blast went off
the concussive ******
rose through the building
like a undulating express train

i felt it enter my feet
bubbled up my legs
tangoed my coccyx
off its seat
shook my heart
clamored my arms
jumbled my brains

"*** was that!"
the lights blinked
then came back on
Patty said
“this is serious”
I said “yeah,,,
I’m busy....
go check it out”

the sirens sounded
but we still had power
i beavered away on my
LB solution

Patty came back
and the PA system
announced a mandatory
evacuation of the building
i put the finishing
touches on my
smart LB pitch
hit print and
off I went

in the hall
smoke was
leaking from
the elevator doors
wisps tickled the
ceiling
the lights
dimmed again
only emergency
illumination
lit the shivering
building

the stair wells
were clogged
with 104 floors of
workers slogging
downward

i was running
late for my
appointment
with big deal
destiny

i cut and dashed
my way downward
into the spiraling
morass

slicing past
the slow moving
old folks, nudging
recklessly inhibited
handicappers

i was running late
i was conscious of
expending time
as i flashed
by screamers
and hysterical
ladies twisting
ankles on bent
high heels
flopping
down the narrow
dim lit stairwell

i was out in
a flash

i emerged on the promenade
of the intercontinental hotel
a mass of shattered
glass sparkled in the
court below

a curious man
rousted from
his hotel
workout
stood next to
me in perspiration
tainted tees
shorts and
sneaks
flakes of
snow
drizzled down
onto his hairpiece
he said something
about the Pentagon
and concluded with
“this was bad'
and slipped away into
a squall of flurries
i took him
for CIA

my investigation
concluded
i had to make time
to be on time
i jogged
through the
swelling mass
of gagging trundlers

their face, running
noses and drooling
mouths splashed
in black paint soot

i was late
but i was making
good time
as i pushed up
Greenwich Street
a parade
of fire trucks
honked and blared
a salute to my
diligent march

arriving at my
destination
building security
whisked me away
"buildings closed
didn't you hear
the WTC was
bombed”

my analog
phone binged
“jimmy, where
are you?
are you alright?
the WTC was bombed?
why didn’t you call?
I’m so worried.”

My wife was tearing.

“I got an important
sales call. I’m doing
deals.  

I’m on my way...

Should i bring home
some Chinese from
Top Dik?”

Music Selection:
Clash: Rock The Casbah

jbm
2/26/13
Oakland
Dr Sam Burton  Oct 2014
S H E
Dr Sam Burton Oct 2014
S H E


She softly came into my life without her crown

To whisper, to shed light and to turn me upside down

As soft music, she spoke through her pictures

And once I saw them, I adored her features

Something is daily pulling me to her marvellous cave

To appreciate her fountain of beauty  to which I crave

She gave me something I won't lose

Even if I drank too much *****

She gave me something to keep in heart

So that we won't ever part

Something I look at and see her in mind

Then slowly move to heart to bind

Now that I am totally stunned and sedated

It is too hard for me to be eliminated.



Sam Burton ©



Today is Sunday, Oct. 5, the 278th day of 2014 with 87 to follow.

The moon is new. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mars and Uranus. Evening stars are Mercury, Neptune, Saturn and Venus.



In 1876, the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, now Texas A&M;, opened. It was the first public higher education institution in Texas.

In 1883, the Orient Express train made its first run.

In 1895, the U.S. Open men's golf tournament was first contested. It was won by Horace Rawlins.



A thought for the day:



You can become a winner only if you are willing to walk over the edge. -- Damon Runyon





QUOTES for the day:



It is the desire of the good people of the whole country that sectionalism as a factor in our politics should disappear...

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

He serves his party best who serves his country best.



Rutherford B. Hayes



You're dealing with the demon of external validation. You can't beat external validation. You want to know why? Because it feels sooo good.





Barbara Hall, Northern Exposure, Gran Prix, 1994



“So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.”

Peter Drucker



"A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning."



Billie Jean King



POETRY





AEDH Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven



W.B. Yeats


Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

About this poem


"Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" was originally published in Yeats' collection "The Wind Among the Reeds" (John Lane, 1899).

About W.B. Yeats


A poet and playwright, Yeats was born in Dublin in 1865. He received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1923. Yeats died in France in January of 1939.

*
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience.


This poem is in the public domain.
Distributed by King Features Syndicate







Vocabulary

"Bona fide" is used to mean good faith, sincerity. It is the evidence of one's good faith or genuineness -- often plural in construction; evidence of one's qualifications or achievements.

Health and Beauty



Pumpkin Seeds



Have you ever toasted pumpkin seeds at Halloween? Don't wait until the holiday to eat them. Pumpkin seeds are a great source of iron, zinc, calcium, and magnesium, and area also high in omega-3. One handful a day makes a big difference.





CHINESE FOOD

In Canada, Thanksgiving is just over one week away. As an alternative to turkey, how about serving Cantonese Roast duck for Thanksgiving dinner?



Cantonese Roast Duck



By Rhonda Parkinson



Author Deh-Ta Hsiung writes: This is the duck with a shining reddish-brown skin seen hanging in the windows of a good Cantonese restaurant.

Serves 10 - 12 as a starter, or 4 to 6 as a main course. (Note: total preparation time does not include the time needed to dry the duck before cooking).

Ingredients

    One 4 1/2 lb (2 kg) oven-ready duckling
    2 teaspoons salt
    4 tablespoons maltose or honey
    1 tablespoon rice vinegar
    1/2 teaspoon red food coloring (optional0
    about 1/2 pint (280 ml) warm water
    For the Stuffing:
    1 tablespoon oil
    1 tablespoon finely chopped spring onion
    1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger root
    1 tablespoon caster sugar
    2 tablespoons Chinese rice wine (or dry sherry)
    1 tablespoon yellow bean sauce
    1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
    2 teaspoons five-spice powder

    Prep Time: 30 minutes
    Cook Time: 60 minutes

    Total Time: 90 minutes

Preparation

Clean the duck well. Remove the wing tips and the lumps of fat from inside the vent. Blanch in a *** of boiling water for a few minutes, remove and dry well, then rub the duck with salt and tie the neck tightly with string.

Make the stuffing by heating the oil in a saucepan, add all the ingredients, bring to the boil and blend well. Pour the mixture into the cavity of the duck and sew it up securely.

Dissolve the maltose or honey with vinegar and red food coloring (if using) in warm water, brush it all over the duck - give it several coatings, then hang the duck up (head down) with an S-shaped hook to dry in an airy and cool place for at least 4 - 5 hours.

To cook: preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. (200 degrees C./Gas 6). Hang the duck head down on the top rack, and place a tray of boiling water at the bottom of the oven. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees F. (180 degrees C., Gas 4) after 25 minutes or so, and cook for a further 30 minutes, basting with the remaining coating mixture once or twice.

To serve: let the duck cool down a little, then remove the string and pour out the liquid stuffing to be used as gravy. Chop the duck into bite-sized pieces, then serve hot or cold with the gravy poured over it.

Courtesy of Deh-Ta Hsiung.

JOKES



Skeleton in the closet



A very large, old, building was being torn down in Chicago to make room for a new skyscraper. Due to its proximity to other buildings it could not be imploded and had to be dismantled floor by floor.

While working on the 49th floor, two construction workers found a skeleton in a small closet behind the elevator shaft. They decided that they should call the police.

When the police arrived they directed them to the closet and showed them the skeleton fully clothed and standing upright. They said, "This could be Jimmy Hoffa or somebody really important."

Two days went by and the construction workers couldn't stand it any more; they had to know who they had found. They called the police and said, "We are the two guys who found the skeleton in the closet and we want to know if it was Jimmy Hoffa or somebody important."

The police said, "It's not Jimmy Hoffa, but it was somebody kind of important."

"Well, who was it?"

"The 1956 Blonde National Hide-and-Seek Champion."



Quick Quotes



"It was different when we were kids. In second grade, a teacher came in and gave us all a lecture about not smoking, and then they sent us over to arts and crafts to make ash- trays for Mother's Day." --Paul Clay

---

"We should have a way of telling people they have bad breath. 'Well, I'm bored...let's go brush our teeth.' Or, 'I've got to make a phone call, hold this gum in your mouth.'" --Brad Stine

---

"Doesn't it bother you when people litter? The most creative rationale for throwing an apple core out the window is 'It will plant seeds for other threes to grow.' And, of course, our highways are lined with apple trees--right next to all the cigarette bushes." --Nick Arnette



Republican or Democrat?



A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am." The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be a (political party)." "I am,"replied the man. "How did you know?" "Well," answered the balloonist, everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "You must be a (political party)." "I am,"replied the balloonist. "How did you know?" "Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You've risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met but, somehow, now it's my fault."



Birthday Gift

A husband went to buy a birthday gift for his wife. Some friends had been invited over that night to celebrate her fortieth, and he wanted to get something special. At the store he spotted some cute little music boxes. One blue one was playing "Happy Birthday."

Thinking they were all the same, he chose a red one and had it gift-wrapped. Later, at dinner, he gave it to his wife and asked her to open it...

When she lifted the lid, out came the tune to "The Old Gray Mare, She Ain't What She Used to Be!"



Blonde Convention



80,000 blondes meet in the Kansas City Chiefs Stadium for a "Blondes Are Not Stupid" Convention. The leader says, "We are all here today to prove to the world that blondes are not stupid. Can I have a volunteer?" A blonde gingerly works her way through the crowd and steps up to the stage. The leader asks her, "What is 15 plus 15?" After 15 or 20 seconds she says, "Eighteen!"

Obviously everyone is a little disappointed. Then 80,000 blondes start cheering, "Give her another chance! Give her another chance!" The leader says, "Well since we've gone to the trouble of getting 80,000 of you in one place and we have the world-wide press and global broadcast media here, gee, uh, I guess we can give her another chance." So he asks, "What is 5 plus 5?"

After nearly 30 seconds she eventually says, "Ninety?"

The leader is quite perplexed, looks down and just lets out a dejected sigh -- everyone is disheartened, the blonde starts crying and the 80,000 girls begin to yell and wave their hands shouting, "GIVE HER ANOTHER CHANCE! GIVE HER ANOTHER CHANCE!"

The leader, unsure whether or not he is doing more harm than damage, eventually says, "Ok! Ok! Just one more chance -- What is 2 plus 2?"

The girl closes her eyes, and after a whole minute eventually says, "Four?"

Throughout the stadium pandemonium breaks out as all 80,000 girls jump to their feet, wave their arms, stomp their feet and scream...

"GIVE HER ANOTHER CHANCE! GIVE HER ANOTHER CHANCE!"





Have a super nice Sunday!
Hana Gabrielle  Jun 2015
LB
Hana Gabrielle Jun 2015
LB
You were right about
How all the grey
Might affect my stormy heart
But all the rain has helped me grow
and I keep my shoulders back now
Michael Hoffman Aug 2013
I was walking my big Ridgeback Mr. Brown
across the Starbucks parking lot
when this little white poodle started yapping
from the rolled-down window of a brand new Mercedes.

Mr. Brown responded like shot from guns
and before I knew it
he was scratching at the Mercedes door
eager to make friends with the poodle.

Then the Mercedes owner came running out of Starbucks
spilling latte all over his substantial stomach
What the ****…..!?
Look at those ******* scratches!
Do you know how much it costs
to fix a car like this?
I’m suing you and your big ******* dog !

Not wise, sir, I responded…
to be so aggressive with someone you don’t even know
and who has a 110-lb. African Lionhound
on the end of his leash.

I might be a whacked-out Vietnam veteran
with a hairtrigger temper
or a gang member
or maybe I'm just a senior citizen
with an extremely protective service dog.

Well, he said, his belly shaking,
look at my **** car.
I am looking at it I said
and handed him the keys to my ’68 Shelby Cobra
parked and shiny right nearby.
Take mine, I said
it’s more fun to drive.

— The End —