Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Sylvia Plath  Jun 2009
Tulips
The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anaesthetist and my body to surgeons.

They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage ----
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free ----
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down,
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their colour,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I hve no face, I have wanted to efface myself.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.
Anthony Williams Jul 2014
You licked your lips
I lip synced to you
you licked your stamp
I felt I might be cornered
you stamped your gift
I'm stuck on you
we got stuck in
strokes
smoothing down
you stamped your mark on me
delivered
lips to lips
striking
we stuck to it
no
we aren't stuck with it
but on each other
tampering
peeling off
licking our lips
by Anthony Williams
matt  Oct 2014
eyes
matt Oct 2014
they say that eyes are the window to the soul and if thats so why do we hide them as to not let them show we dip are head and dont make contact. souls connect contract and become compact smoothing and soothing windows to the soul. the eye is beautiful true but to few its a weapon bent on harming you. some eyes attack at your mind tricking you over time into keeping a calm peace of mind until its time to strike you. these eyes can leave you battered and bruised all kinds of abused and feeling used. if i look at the soul and see something artificial in those holes that are the so called souls we need to see not with are eyes but are minds or we will be blind and leave are hearts behind.
I haven’t done this in a while
Is it silly to be nervous?

My door bell rings
My heart speeds
Mother calls “Daisy!”
And I realize she means me

I haven’t done this in a while
Is it foolish to be restless?

I take the steps one by one
Being sure not to topple down
The door creaks open and
I can see him standing there now.

I haven’t done this in a while
Is it odd to jump into his arms?

He smiles at me and my mother
He answers questions from my father
Everything is perfect
But I can’t help but fidget.

I haven’t done this in a while
Is it wrong to want to run?

We leave the house and walk down
A path of many flowers
I’m unsure what to think
But I find myself counting the hours.

I haven’t done this in a while
Is it childish to hold his hand?

I get into his car
Smoothing my skirt and catching breaths
He pulls out something for me now
And my heart takes a rest.

I haven’t done this in a while
Is it alright to try to kiss him?

I smell the Daisies, white and lush
Loyally loving and so gentle
Does he know I cherish them such?

Not just for the name we share
Or the thorns they lack unlike roses
Not for the simplicity of their petals so fair
But for the meaning behind them

Loving, loyal; so gentle, so innocent

I haven’t done this in a while
But I think I can handle it now.
Nat Lipstadt Mar 2019
letter to elana

for the poet elana bell

~

in a different cafe,
on a Manhattan streetscape where once, years earlier,
violence was the purview of West Side Story gangs,
ruling their internecine non-intersectionality territorial blood lines supremely

nowadays, violence replaced by the frenetic
noises of Lincoln Center theater goers,
student dancers, actors, musicians and poets joining the throng
of those who sup and run,
all hearing their own frantic
curtain calling, saying, announcing,
music dance voices words require your obeisance,
needy for a mutual worshipping reassurance fiat that:

life can be made transcendent
if even for just 90 minutes or 120 pages,
or a 3 minute poem reading


this city of millions requires billions of poems that spoon stirred  
and yet, almost always fail, to squeeze, all of the human essence that is in its ultimate source, clarifying nyc tap water,
containing the storied remnants of a hackable continuous,
single human stanza cell osmosis - a blockchain like no other

two poets sit side by side each in their own lapsed dreams,
she, a published poet of prize and rank, ^
he, a rank amateur whose only prize is his unpublished anonymity,
poetry, is his just a nightly soul cleansing,
an imported remnant of his Marrano piyyutim ancestry

one turns to the other,
in the inexplicable daily crazy miracle
of city fashionistas

in a city where stealing a parking spot, or the
forced squeezing creation of a subway seat space
where physics proves none exists,
are oft the roots of slashing and stabbings faithfully reported
on the 11 o’clock news,  
and trust and/or other encouraging words
are seldom heard and even less demonstrated,
the make-no-eye-contact of Camus’s L’Etranger anomie is the
normative, paranormal, paralysis cloak of we city separatists

“Can you watch over my electronics and stuff?”

Sure says the grayed and grizzled,
an all life long veteran of nyc,
judged to be trustworthy
based on a few seconds of being upsized and downsized,
a car wash (exterior only) perusal
despite a
“no direction home, like a compete unknown, a rolling stone,”  
this signage, yellow star permanently chest-affixed,
conveniently ignored, as it seems impossible
thieves don’t look like me,
don’t likely in their possess,
a distinguished head of gray hair (yeah, sure)

a thank you reward of (or did I imagine it) a lean-in,
a momentary head on a shoulder,
the chit chat now grows earned and earnest,
she confesses her cardinal poetry profession,
eliciting an ‘Oh Boy’ utterance from the poet
of a thousand names
and a thousand textual emendations

a fastidious nyc boundary is brief crossed for one short meal,
till the end when time sensitized IMRL intrudes and
the showtime calls out,
if not now, when? if not me, then who?

I read her poetry later in the praying supine first position of
three AM, and laugh with delight, at the contrast and no compare,
the styles clash and tho the stories told
are both writ in the aleph bet script,
there ends the Ven diagram overlap and
into the night’s coming of a Elvisian blue suede coverlet,
we both disappear, and if not for this recording,
history says, you old man confused, never happened,
just an imaginary poetry ink blot dream breaching...

~

postface:
another poetry book is no longer homeless,
comes to shelter upon my shelf, close to Angelou, far from Whitman,
now all the book’s nooks eyes collectively
reassessing the new old-owner, parsing his syntax,
undecided if his readership is worthy of them,
concluding that all these books are the
man’s owned roughened stones,
to be placed by human hands on the
serpentine curvature of his literary tombstone,
and until all stones fully read,
they all agree,
will they and he
be fully freed,
smoothing his legacy’s edges
Feb. 21 -March 5, 2019
NYC
another true story

^ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elana_Bell
John Milton  Jul 2009
Comus
A Masque Presented At Ludlow Castle, 1634, Before

The Earl Of Bridgewater, Then President Of Wales.

The Persons

        The ATTENDANT SPIRIT, afterwards in the habit of THYRSIS.
COMUS, with his Crew.
The LADY.
FIRST BROTHER.
SECOND BROTHER.
SABRINA, the Nymph.

The Chief Persons which presented were:—

The Lord Brackley;
Mr. Thomas Egerton, his Brother;
The Lady Alice Egerton.


The first Scene discovers a wild wood.
The ATTENDANT SPIRIT descends or enters.


Before the starry threshold of Jove’s court
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
Of bright aerial spirits live insphered
In regions mild of calm and serene air,
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
Which men call Earth, and, with low-thoughted care,
Confined and pestered in this pinfold here,
Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being,
Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives,
After this mortal change, to her true servants
Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats.
Yet some there be that by due steps aspire
To lay their just hands on that golden key
That opes the palace of eternity.
To Such my errand is; and, but for such,
I would not soil these pure ambrosial weeds
With the rank vapours of this sin-worn mould.
         But to my task. Neptune, besides the sway
Of every salt flood and each ebbing stream,
Took in by lot, ‘twixt high and nether Jove,
Imperial rule of all the sea-girt isles
That, like to rich and various gems, inlay
The unadorned ***** of the deep;
Which he, to grace his tributary gods,
By course commits to several government,
And gives them leave to wear their sapphire crowns
And wield their little tridents. But this Isle,
The greatest and the best of all the main,
He quarters to his blue-haired deities;
And all this tract that fronts the falling sun
A noble Peer of mickle trust and power
Has in his charge, with tempered awe to guide
An old and haughty nation, proud in arms:
Where his fair offspring, nursed in princely lore,
Are coming to attend their father’s state,
And new-intrusted sceptre. But their way
Lies through the perplexed paths of this drear wood,
The nodding horror of whose shady brows
Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger;
And here their tender age might suffer peril,
But that, by quick command from sovran Jove,
I was despatched for their defence and guard:
And listen why; for I will tell you now
What never yet was heard in tale or song,
From old or modern bard, in hall or bower.
         Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape
Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine,
After the Tuscan mariners transformed,
Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed,
On Circe’s island fell. (Who knows not Circe,
The daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup
Whoever tasted lost his upright shape,
And downward fell into a grovelling swine?)
This Nymph, that gazed upon his clustering locks,
With ivy berries wreathed, and his blithe youth,
Had by him, ere he parted thence, a son
Much like his father, but his mother more,
Whom therefore she brought up, and Comus named:
Who, ripe and frolic of his full-grown age,
Roving the Celtic and Iberian fields,
At last betakes him to this ominous wood,
And, in thick shelter of black shades imbowered,
Excels his mother at her mighty art;
Offering to every weary traveller
His orient liquor in a crystal glass,
To quench the drouth of Phoebus; which as they taste
(For most do taste through fond intemperate thirst),
Soon as the potion works, their human count’nance,
The express resemblance of the gods, is changed
Into some brutish form of wolf or bear,
Or ounce or tiger, hog, or bearded goat,
All other parts remaining as they were.
And they, so perfect is their misery,
Not once perceive their foul disfigurement,
But boast themselves more comely than before,
And all their friends and native home forget,
To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.
Therefore, when any favoured of high Jove
Chances to pass through this adventurous glade,
Swift as the sparkle of a glancing star
I shoot from heaven, to give him safe convoy,
As now I do. But first I must put off
These my sky-robes, spun out of Iris’ woof,
And take the weeds and likeness of a swain
That to the service of this house belongs,
Who, with his soft pipe and smooth-dittied song,
Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar,
And hush the waving woods; nor of less faith
And in this office of his mountain watch
Likeliest, and nearest to the present aid
Of this occasion. But I hear the tread
Of hateful steps; I must be viewless now.


COMUS enters, with a charming-rod in one hand, his glass in the
other: with him a rout of monsters, headed like sundry sorts of
wild
beasts, but otherwise like men and women, their apparel
glistering.
They come in making a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in
their hands.


         COMUS. The star that bids the shepherd fold
Now the top of heaven doth hold;
And the gilded car of day
His glowing axle doth allay
In the steep Atlantic stream;
And the ***** sun his upward beam
Shoots against the dusky pole,
Pacing toward the other goal
Of his chamber in the east.
Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast,
Midnight shout and revelry,
Tipsy dance and jollity.
Braid your locks with rosy twine,
Dropping odours, dropping wine.
Rigour now is gone to bed;
And Advice with scrupulous head,
Strict Age, and sour Severity,
With their grave saws, in slumber lie.
We, that are of purer fire,
Imitate the starry quire,
Who, in their nightly watchful spheres,
Lead in swift round the months and years.
The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,
Now to the moon in wavering morrice move;
And on the tawny sands and shelves
Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.
By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,
The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim,
Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:
What hath night to do with sleep?
Night hath better sweets to prove;
Venus now wakes, and wakens Love.
Come, let us our rights begin;
‘T is only daylight that makes sin,
Which these dun shades will ne’er report.
Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport,
Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame
Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame,
That ne’er art called but when the dragon womb
Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom,
And makes one blot of all the air!
Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,
Wherein thou ridest with Hecat’, and befriend
Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end
Of all thy dues be done, and none left out,
Ere the blabbing eastern scout,
The nice Morn on the Indian steep,
From her cabined loop-hole peep,
And to the tell-tale Sun descry
Our concealed solemnity.
Come, knit hands, and beat the ground
In a light fantastic round.

                              The Measure.

         Break off, break off! I feel the different pace
Of some chaste footing near about this ground.
Run to your shrouds within these brakes and trees;
Our number may affright. Some ****** sure
(For so I can distinguish by mine art)
Benighted in these woods! Now to my charms,
And to my wily trains: I shall ere long
Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed
About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl
My dazzling spells into the spongy air,
Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion,
And give it false presentments, lest the place
And my quaint habits breed astonishment,
And put the damsel to suspicious flight;
Which must not be, for that’s against my course.
I, under fair pretence of friendly ends,
And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,
Baited with reasons not unplausible,
Wind me into the easy-hearted man,
And hug him into snares. When once her eye
Hath met the virtue of this magic dust,
I shall appear some harmless villager
Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear.
But here she comes; I fairly step aside,
And hearken, if I may her business hear.

The LADY enters.

         LADY. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,
My best guide now. Methought it was the sound
Of riot and ill-managed merriment,
Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe
Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds,
When, for their teeming flocks and granges full,
In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,
And thank the gods amiss. I should be loth
To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence
Of such late wassailers; yet, oh! where else
Shall I inform my unacquainted feet
In the blind mazes of this tangled wood?
My brothers, when they saw me wearied out
With this long way, resolving here to lodge
Under the spreading favour of these pines,
Stepped, as they said, to the next thicket-side
To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit
As the kind hospitable woods provide.
They left me then when the grey-hooded Even,
Like a sad votarist in palmer’s ****,
Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus’ wain.
But where they are, and why they came not back,
Is now the labour of my thoughts. TTis likeliest
They had engaged their wandering steps too far;
And envious darkness, ere they could return,
Had stole them from me. Else, O thievish Night,
Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end,
In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars
That Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps
With everlasting oil to give due light
To the misled and lonely traveller?
This is the place, as well as I may guess,
Whence even now the tumult of loud mirth
Was rife, and perfect in my listening ear;
Yet nought but single darkness do I find.
What might this be ? A thousand fantasies
Begin to throng into my memory,
Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire,
And airy tongues that syllable men’s names
On sands and shores and desert wildernesses.
These thoughts may startle well, but not astound
The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended
By a strong siding champion, Conscience.
O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope,
Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings,
And thou unblemished form of Chastity!
I see ye visibly, and now believe
That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill
Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,
Would send a glistering guardian, if need were,
To keep my life and honour unassailed. . . .
Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
I did not err: there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night,
And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.
I cannot hallo to my brothers, but
Such noise as I can make to be heard farthest
I’ll venture; for my new-enlivened spirits
Prompt me, and they perhaps are not far off.

Song.

Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv’st unseen
                 Within thy airy shell
         By slow Meander’s margent green,
And in the violet-embroidered vale
         Where the love-lorn nightingale
Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well:
Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair
         That likest thy Narcissus are?
                  O, if thou have
         Hid them in some flowery cave,
                  Tell me but where,
         Sweet Queen of Parley, Daughter of the Sphere!
         So may’st thou be translated to the skies,
And give resounding grace to all Heaven’s harmonies!


         COMUS. Can any mortal mixture of earthUs mould
Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?
Sure something holy lodges in that breast,
And with these raptures moves the vocal air
To testify his hidden residence.
How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night,
At every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness till it smiled! I have oft heard
My mother Circe with the Sirens three,
Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades,
Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs,
Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul,
And lap it in Elysium: Scylla wept,
And chid her barking waves into attention,
And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause.
Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense,
And in sweet madness robbed it of itself;
But such a sacred and home-felt delight,
Such sober certainty of waking bliss,
I never heard till now. I’ll speak to her,
And she shall be my queen.QHail, foreign wonder!
Whom certain these rough shades did never breed,
Unless the goddess that in rural shrine
Dwell’st here with Pan or Sylvan, by blest song
Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog
To touch the prosperous growth of this tall wood.
         LADY. Nay, gentle shepherd, ill is lost that praise
That is addressed to unattending ears.
Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift
How to regain my severed company,
Compelled me to awake the courteous Echo
To give me answer from her mossy couch.
         COMUS: What chance, good lady, hath bereft you thus?
         LADY. Dim darkness and this leafy labyrinth.
         COMUS. Could that divide you from near-ushering guides?
         LADY. They left me weary on a grassy turf.
         COMUS. By falsehood, or discourtesy, or why?
         LADY. To seek i’ the valley some cool friendly spring.
         COMUS. And left your fair side all unguarded, Lady?
         LADY. They were but twain, and purposed quick return.
         COMUS. Perhaps forestalling night prevented them.
         LADY. How easy my misfortune is to hit!
         COMUS. Imports their loss, beside the present need?
         LADY. No less than if I should my brothers lose.
         COMUS. Were they of manly prime, or youthful bloom?
         LADY. As smooth as ****’s their unrazored lips.
         COMUS. Two such I saw, what time the laboured ox
In his loose traces from the furrow came,
And the swinked hedger at his supper sat.
I saw them under a green mantling vine,
That crawls along the side of yon small hill,
Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots;
Their port was more than human, as they stood.
I took it for a faery vision
Of some gay creatures of the element,
That in the colours of the rainbow live,
And play i’ the plighted clouds. I was awe-strook,
And, as I passed, I worshiped. If those you seek,
It were a journey like the path to Heaven
To help you find them.
         LADY.                          Gentle villager,
What readiest way would bring me to that place?
         COMUS. Due west it rises from this shrubby point.
         LADY. To find out that, good shepherd, I suppose,
In such a scant allowance of star-light,
Would overtask the best land-pilot’s art,
Without the sure guess of well-practised feet.
        COMUS. I know each lane, and every alley green,
******, or bushy dell, of this wild wood,
And every bosky bourn from side to side,
My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood;
And, if your stray attendance be yet lodged,
Or shroud within these limits, I shall know
Ere morrow wake, or the low-roosted lark
From her thatched pallet rouse. If otherwise,
I can c
Tawanda Mulalu  Mar 2015
Biltong.
Tawanda Mulalu Mar 2015
The last thing the Poet feels of her is the distinctive taste of biltong. It lingers. She had bought two packets at the café.  Their last kiss is made just before the airplane announces itself with a great roar of being. He watches it swallow her and turn her into a memory. And then the plane flies away. He can’t find a silver lining in the plane’s path, so he instead focuses on the gentle return of normality to his skin. Every centimetre that was previously pressed to his Muse is smoothing its goose bumps. The Poet’s heart goes back from verse to prose, just as how it was before she became the subject of his pen.

He turns to say an awkward “dumela” to the Muse’s grandmother. She responds with the tone of a grandmother greeting a boy who has just been making out with her granddaughter in front her: “dumela.” It probably doesn’t help that his hair isn’t combed. It probably doesn’t help that they have not met before. The Poet then asks the Muse’s brother for a ride to school. Now that the Muse is gone, it is time for him to begin studying for the colourless exams that were the subject of his existence before her. The Muse’s brother nods in agreement, and he walks out of the stale atmosphere of the airport with her family. The summer sunshine somehow manages to feel uninspired.

The journey from the airport stretches out like a goodbye that ought not to happen. It is slow, painful, and filled with empty promises of hope from her family. Her brother says she will visit during the Christmas season. The Poet knows she won’t- she can’t- but he has enough novels to keep him company.  They are riding in the same little red Volkswagen that often picked her up from school. If time is simultaneous, she is sitting next to him.

The car is full; time has only one direction, and its wheels stops in front of the school gates.

He says his farewells, closes the car door, and limps to the library to start working on maths equations with his classmates. He barely opens the library doors, barely greets his classmates, and with barely practiced nonchalance, barely explains that his Muse went off to another country. He picks up his scientific calculator and clicks open his pen to attack a math problem. Hours pass in numbers that stubbornly refuse to make sense in place of her. The Poet solves a problem, and then he doesn’t. He asks for help, and then he doesn’t. He laughs with his classmates, and then he doesn't: they have to go home now for lunch.

The Poet cannot go home. He has to wait for his mother to pick him up. He decides to walk out the school gates to eat at the Chinese restaurant. It is placed conveniently outside the school. He orders some dumplings and some noodles, and then tells the waitress that he is going to buy a newspaper at the filling station while he waits for his meal.

At the filling station counter are packets of biltong hooked onto a stand.
Yum.
Mateuš Conrad  Mar 2019
7,254
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2019
.how did the political "debate" ever become surmount to include musicians? from what i've seen? of the KEXP radio session...  Ashish Vyas had the most fun from the session... i always admired the bass players more than those ****-offs running out of rhythm guitar sessions... bass, a tier above the drums... masturbator-grand-master-soloist... i guess this is one of those nights where i drink more than i write... elephant's ******* choking me to come... oh well... not even a Decalogue will save me... the political art is no art to begin with, curtains... all i'm seeing if curtains... and households filled with retired personel... and curtains... curtains but not blinds... it's abhorrent to have to listen to music with hushed bass guitar... notably metallica... apart from devil's dance and... where's the bass guitar? the rhythm guitar section overpowers the music... fine fine, have your solo *******, but don't silence the bass guitar with the rhythm guitar, i need to hear the drums translated via the bass guitar into the rhythm guitar... solo guitar and vocals all you want... it's like... the lessons to be learned from jazz, when all the fire prime instruments are allowed to solo... went, "missing"... i need the bass, man... frantic bass & drum genre type of music will not do lollipops for me... what was the alternative? dub-step? well... vex'd & distance... burial... who were the others? i don't remember... don't make me cite skrillex: white privelege man! yeah... at least with rabbit teeth missing, doing that well known party trick! i don't like bands that have a knack at an over-emphasis of the rhythm guitar, who neglect the bass guitar... it's so counter the jazz-inheritance... tool: grand bass, red hot chilli peppers, silverchair... i need that smoothing out layer of sound that manifests itself in a bass... a layer of sound just below the rhythm guitar and a tier above the base (not bass) of the african drum borrow... bāß... base (not bass)... yes, it's not supposed to look pretty: a phonetic antithesis... as most "things" in english...

             mind you... did i mention how heidegger
has a foot in the door?
       oh... i didn't? did i?
     the reflexive and the reflective quadratic...
the reflex of conscience "vs."
the reflectiveness of consciousness...
       heidegger:
                  language - only if speech has acquired
the highest univocity of the word does it become
strong for the hidden play of its essential
   multivocity (as withdrawn from all "logic"),
of which poets and thinkers alone are capable,
in their own respective modes and their own
directions of sovereignty.

  of the few lyrics i've entertained these passing
"days"?
             the black keys: lonely boy -
              i got a love that keeps me waiting...
borrowing from Kafka i guess:
      in that case, i’ll miss the thing by waiting for it.
   no?
   guess there's no "oops" where these words
come from...
              
    with the "passive" circumstance of the faculty
of memory...
                two tiers of memory:
the reflexive memory type,
the scholastic rubric type...
  1 x 4 = 4, a + b + a +c + u + s = instrument =
counting... etc.,
            that's the reflexive memory type...
a scholastic rubric...
      dyktando...
but memory also occupies
the reflective parameters...
          which involve personality...
a sort of memory dissociated from schooling,
and more, associated with:
disinhibiting any chances of succumbing
to dementia's grinding machine
of the mortal circus...

  the reflexive memory storage bank is
the buffer...
the "placebo": nay... the safety mechanism...
but... too much education,
too much pointless education,
and the erosion of the reflective memory
storage bank: this is not a buffer,
this is not a something equipped with
a "safety mechanism"...
        given that a self is perpetuated
within the confines of
a constant conflict with the "self"...
   a and italics / the and "ambiguity commas"...

well, there's always a place to start...
i find of like philosophy as being
a rigour associated with a satisfactory
form of vocab.,
       namely?
i can use the associated words bound
to a sentence with confidance...
unlike a ****** fiction writer,
sometimes dabbling into loan words
from a thesaurus, to, invoke:
an intelligence superiority...
  don't worry...
  when people lend themselves
to use a thesaurus, having exhausted
their adjective knowledge... it shows...

come on... a background in chemistry nouns?
3,5-methylhexane... you think?
that's the remains of a saxon past in english...
in chemistry...
germans spell like dr. faustus to begin with,
they, compound...
        the remains of a germanic past in
the current state of english shrapnel still
lives... in chemistry...
        hydrocarbons...
                  usually met with a hypen:
hydro-carbons...
       siebentausendzweihundertvierundfünfzig
(7,254)...
well, very german: what a waste of not employing
punctuation marks (', -) when it came
to the caterpillar 189, 819:
methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl...isoleucine,

Me­thionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylleucy­lphenylalanylalanylglutaminylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylgluta­mylglycylalanylphenylalanylvalylprolylphenylalanylvalylthreonylle­ucylglycylaspartylprolylglycylisoleucylglutamylglutaminylserylleu­cyllysylisoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucylglutamylalanylgly­cylalanylaspartylalanylleucylglutamylleucylglycylisoleucylprolylp­henylalanylserylaspartylprolylleucylalanylaspartylglycylprolylthr­eonylisoleucylglutaminylasparaginylalanylthreonylleucyl arginylalanylphenylalanylalanylalanylglycylvalylthreonylprolylala­nylglutaminylcysteinylphenylalanylglutamylmethionylleucylalanylle­ucylisoleucylarginylglutaminyllysylhistidylprolylthreonylisoleucy­lprolylisoleucylglycylleucylleucylmethionyltyrosylalanylasparagin­ylleucylvalylphenylalanylasparaginyllysylglycylisoleucylaspartylg­lutamylphenylalanyltyrosylalanylglutaminylcysteinylglutamyllysylv­alylglycylvalylaspartylserylvalylleucylvalylalanylaspartylvalylpr­olylvalylglutaminylglutamylserylalanylprolylphenylalanylarg inylglutaminylalanylalanylleucylarginylhistidylasparaginylvalylal­anylprolylisoleucylphenylalanylisoleuc…

or just read the end of james joyce's ulysses
or jean-paul sarte's iron in the soul...
you do have to insert shrapenl punctuation
into this word...

but these are the last remains of the english language
being associated with a germanic origin:
compounding words...
             esp. in chemistry...
                

as any drunk would state,
to suffice...

    what was it that the luftwaffe
prescribed for the night raids
on London?

   and what did isis fighters
be prescribed?

    amphetamines?
n'oh!
   (minus the extended omega:
oooooo enough time
for a katy perry song,
an afternoon shower,
a slap in the face,
and then a few punches,
hey, jerking off became
boring)...

   so the british,
and a few polacks doing their
r.a.f. bit beat the germans
because?
   oh... **** no...
they were ingesting
an impediment factor,
durg, ****,
drunk, numb-skulled...

    we're talking counter
measure to the "enchanced"
mensch...
    high on amphetamines...
insomniac, but still going...
i guess the loci of
the amphetamine adventure
had to relocate to the anti-ego
focus of the phallus
in the variation of viagara...

****...
i care more for my giggles
and a friar tuck physiognomy...
seriously...
   it's more important than mere
gymnastics of
a freudian "metaphor"...
  ha ha...
   i guess conversation is
also allowed...
   try keeping that up...
given that most men are
******* into a solipsism...

     date nights... m'ah ah ha ha ha...
i figured that i don't
need french intellectuals to
redefine absurdity,
or german philosophers
to "redefine" existentialism,
i just needed to leech
off an nativistic english
"public"...

                      what the ruling
class spews:
   i reinterpret...
                  simple, 1 + 1 = 2...
crux, numbers,
   bounce back...
echo...
     compliment to the language...
as i stood in the shower thinking...
well isn't modern gaming
slightly "ingenious"...
money piggy...

or... reversed...
    provided the unlimited time
of experience...
no constraints,
just a game within a game,
like sims 3: making a sim
play a video game...
wormhole paradox
      and a brain shattering moment,
a jolt,

         these modern "free" games?
well... at least if you
do not invest in them,
are... games mostly associated with
time...
time is the game...

   whoever gets ****** into
the money laundering schemes
of these games,
forgot to read the cheat walkthroughs
akin to final fantasy VII,
because of homework,
and... Saturday mornings.

   **** air guitar:
here's to air drumming to posit
a point...

          the allies drunk their pint
of whiskey, slightly debilitated,
without the circumstance of feeding
a feeling of superiority,
the germans over-inflated
their superiority complex with
amphetamines...

         ergo?
    i'm either proper drunk, or just plain dumb,
or... it's related to listen, repeat,
listen, repeat: katy perry
  (sucker for POP!)....

      never mind...

games used to be fun,
games used to lead to a completion,
tenchu, that was fun,
final fantasy VII...
but this current,
money-sucker of an experience?
well... sure...
now games have reached
an anti checkmate conundrum
which it is...
because, the games are "free"...

           apparently time,
is perceived as a non-commodity...
tell that to someone stuck
in traffic...
      time: the "elder" flimsy
              construct of relativism...

try not giggling
while exchanging whislting to
either the british grenadier march song,
and the french la marseillaise...

   it's like eating pork liver with onions
fry funny...
    or at least a stew of chicken
hearts... tight tender little *******...

but modern gaming is just that...
ingenious counter measure
to the old school variation
of gaming,
    games... without fiction,
games, without script...
    continued perpetuation
of engagement "syndrome"...

     thank god,
i'm pretty sure that if i went beyond
owning a PS1,
i wouldn't have spotted this,
and have a narrative subsequently,
for the worth any sort
of compromise...

ergo? i drink...
   eh... i need to dumb down...
it wouldn't be fair otherwise...
it's not so easy,
to acquire a culture,
a psychology,
a mentality,
   and then...
     to ****... (grimmace, burp,
         snigger) it all away...

**** me, the flute always
gets me...
          i mean...
every time i hear that flute...
my feet at rambling,
itching to tap along...

   well of course it wasn't
the ******* jazzy clarinet,
was it?!
  tell that to the broad
who perfect a *******...
see if she comes back
as smart,
as smart to comply with
the intricacies
of playing, the ******* clarinet.

p.s.
aud lang syne: the only song,
of all time...
shakespeare seems
pale by comparison,
"side-note"...

          broad vs. brode,
******* giggles in the afternoon.
Nigel Morgan  Oct 2012
Dress
Nigel Morgan Oct 2012
She had hung it up from the mantelpiece in her bedroom, so when he entered the room there it was. It was suddenly lovely and he immediately imagined her body flowing into it, flowing from it. Standing close to the dress he brought his fingers to the fabric, touched gently, stroking then, as though it already held her form and substance.
 
Stepping past thoughts of her that so stirred his body he entered the pattern of the dress. It was a meadow in southern Ontario. July, when already the sun had bleached the profusion of grasses: water chestnut and papyrus sedge. He had stepped from the untidy veranda, past the pond, and down the rough track between the fields unmown, uncut, left fallow. As he entered the breaks of woodland between these swathes of grassland, deciduous leaves, dry and brittle from the summer's heat, were strewn on the path, and between the trees clumps of bramble bushes with berries of red and blue, black and purple.
 
There was no wind. The only sounds an underlay of crickets, his footfall, and the sharp mournful cries of geese on the now distant pond.
 
He saw her like an apparition standing motionless at the woodland’s  boundary; her dress at one with all that surrounded her. When he came close and placed his hand on her shoulder he could smell the sweet dry earth mingling with her body's sweat, a hint of her *** as he placed his cheek against the shower of printed pollen amongst the leaves on her back.
 
Back in the late afternoon bedroom he heard her move about in the kitchen, and the spell broken, he turned away and went downstairs.
 
Several days later, as they prepared for bed, she slipped the dress on. As she stood in the lamplight smoothing it against her flanks, adjusting its fall across her *******, he felt himself faint that such a thing of beauty could be a joy forever . . . and beyond.
A further piece from my collection of prose poems 37 Minutes.
Polar  Jun 2018
He
Polar Jun 2018
He
He speaks the language of flowers
Quietly toiling in his garden
Digging, raking and smoothing soil,
Gently coaxing nature to match his vision.
He knows the bees, spiders, beetles, worms and earwigs
Regarding them as friends.
He follows seasons, moon and stars
As others do people
Enthralled at the changes they bring.
He listens as the birds sing
Watching with joy as
Fledgling take wing.
Midnight  Mar 2018
Everything
Midnight Mar 2018
So sweet
So tender
Your hands
On my skin

Tracing
My collarbones
Smoothing
My hair

Your lips
Softly brushing
Breathing
On mine

So warm
Your chest
Pressed firmly
Onto mine

This time
I'm right
I feel
Complete

This time
I feel
The beauty,
Everything.
And this makes up for all the times I felt nothing, all the times I thought something about me was broken.  I was trying all the wrong places, but this time I found the right one.  Thank you for helping me feel it all.  Everything.
Pablo Silva Apr 2015
The deadly air of autumn’s blow
Empowered winter’s cold to flow,
But spring’s warmness began to grow,
Releasing summer’s smoothing glow.

     It started out as a mer gaze,
     Bringing my lonely heart ablaze,
     We were lost in a lovely maze
     Surviving the long autumn days.

     Can we handle the freezing cold?
     The one that wraps us close and hold
     Unto each other like glimmering gold
     As time stops, turning us into winter’s mold.

     We slit in half, when spring arrived,
     As I believed love was thrived,
     I felt you had my heart revived
     But it was clear you were contrived.

     Now summer begins to boil down,
     I can see all your endless frown,
     You indeed fooled me like a clown,
    So I watch our affair slip, drown.

Summer was to bring us together,
But spring showed we’re light as feather,
In winter we were twined with tether,
Did you enjoyed autumn’s weather?
Meghan Doan Jan 2015
When your best friend is too far away, a part of yourself stays with them.
I am missing limbs.

I am missing soft, blonde hair and dainty fingers and curved hips.
I find myself unable to balance when her inner ear stretches too far from mine, and I can no longer hear her thoughts no matter how far I tilt my head, lean toward the window. She is not here, and I don't know what she's thinking, can't hear her breathing heavily on nights that I still can't fall asleep in her house, television flickering on my side of the bed until the sound stops and the light shines blue.
On the nights I can't fall asleep in my own bed away from home, I watch her favourite show and try to wonder which parts she likes best,
Which parts remind her of us.

I wake up on Wednesday mornings, too grown up for eighteen, too little to be alone, too scared to be responsible.
I make my coffee and drink it alone, I wonder who is making hers because I know how she likes it and they won't make it right, they won't make it perfect.
And she deserves perfect.
I wonder how many people made her coffee wrong during those eight months.
I hope she's sleeping in.

My best friend is a turtle dove, with a stationary heart and pretty words to get me through lonely days in my temporary home.
Her voice is always soft on the phone, it is softer in person but still through crackling speaker it is more calming than any replacement I have tried to find for her here.
She flutters from place to local place with warm smile and sparkling eyes reminding people of their worth and importance. She doesn't know her own.

And she tells me not to worry. I am always worried.
Because I am not a dove, I am a black swan who has never found a permanent residence, not even in a person.
I fly from feeling to feeling looking for acceptance as unconditional as the way that someone who knows every horrible thing you've ever done can still love you like you're perfect.
Nomadic birds, as I've researched, fly as far as they must to find whatever it is they're looking for, no need for a home, just a crash pad on each coast for days when they are tired of wandering.

I wish I knew what I was looking for, so I could find it close to her.

But I sit on the bed, trying to read a map and I realize that I can only see the left half because her side of my bed is empty.
She has never slept here.
I twist my sheet in knots thinking, there is someone on my side of her bed and her side of mine has been empty for six months since I left.

No one ever tells you that when you leave half of yourself with someone, you don't just lose your balance and your vision.
She carries around my entire right side,
And now I can't read the expression on anyone's face, cold dark stares are all I can see.
My heart can't send my brain the words to any new songs so I stare at my piano and wonder why it isn't making any music.
The entire world is black and white
until I answer the phone,
and her voice swims into my ear like liquid gold.
It drips from the receiver, smoothing over my shoulder, covering the right side of my body until I am whole again, if only artificially, temporarily.
And she says,
"I am always with you."

— The End —