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Alex S Jan 2017
Take me back to Chelsea please
Where the flossed and glossed smile at me
And everyone’s kind to an open mind
That’s materialistic in design.
Where locals embrace me all open armed
Whenever I’m crinkling cash in my palms.
So eject me fast from this boorish ******
And take me back to Chelsea please.

Take me back to Chelsea please
Outside the city’s financial squeeze
Where mummy and daddy pay the cheques
For my escargots and Ready Brek.
I’ll wield through the system with the family name
And use all the power of my local fame.
Oh, to live life without la joie de fees
Come take me back to Chelsea please.

Take me back to Chelsea please
To put my social norms at ease.
I miss my measly excuse of friends
Who constantly ***** to make amends
For their failed entrepreneurial careers
Their dialect a hodgepodge of gobbles and sneers.
I long for their monotonous wheeze
So take me back to Chelsea please.

Chelsea, Chelsea you’re all I adore
From the A308 to the A304.
You’re the sole nirvana I can’t bear to depart,
Your femmes fatales know the paths to my heart.
But you will always have the its lock and key
So Chelsea: come and take me back please.
Don Bouchard Dec 2011
Around the table,
Literacy discussion turned elitist...
Bemoaning some poor Johnny,
Son of a plumber who does not read
Beyond the practical need,
And has no desire to.

I stopped to check my sense of what I had just heard...
Was transported to a prairie farm;
Thought of my Father, then in his eighties
Who felt no need and no sense of loss
For not having read Shakespeare nor Kant
For missing Milton's Paradises and Hemingway,
For by-passing Black Elk Speaks and C.S. Lewis.

Every morning, he read his Bible;
Some nights he read the mail's
Motley collection of literature:
Ads and politicians and fanatics,
Demanding money and his time,
But mostly money.

"I don't have time to read!"
He'd shout when I suggested a novel.
What literature he had was in his head,
Poems memorized when he was a boy
In a two room school, or
His own lines, written as a young man,
Describing work and friends
Long distant now, but still alive
In memory.

Dad taught me how to read
In different literacies and different texts:
Nuances of sky to read the weather -
What chill or storm or drought was on its way
("Storm's coming, boys! Let's get that hay!");
Cows and calves and bulls,
(Which one was sick or well, dry or bred);
Ways to diagnose mechanical ailments
("Start with the easiest options first");
Metals, to know which welding rod applied
("Aluminum sags, and cast iron cracks");
Grain, rolled crisp between hard hands,
(a test of ripeness);
Cement, to blend the perfect mix,
("Clean gravel/sand, no dirt, not too much water!);
Conservation,
("Always keep some grain on hand" &  
"Keep your fuel above half-tank").

So many literacies...
Dad, the Master Reader of them all...
No wonder he'd no time for books.
What is literacy?
These words came in response to a conversation I overheard at the University of Minnesota, in which a group of wealthy White female educators despaired a the plight of the under-educated, unwashed masses of people outside their privileged island of higher education. #Commonpeoplefeedyou!
gray rain Jul 2016
Issues that don't effect you is like
The news in another country.

We don't need to get involved
To know what's going on

But want to know to stop it
Occurring again

Or to reduce the increasing amount
Of ignorance, globally.
Liam C Calhoun May 2016
The smoke circled halo,
Bent smiles and summoned demons,
Brimstone come a reverent silent
And obeyed sort of way.

I let my left eye avoid.

I’d let my right dream,
As I munched skewered calf,
Innocent, slaughtered, salivated
And my only excuse – Survival.

Toe-to-toe with
Home-field advantage
I nodded from shadows
To the one who scented venom;

Lace tucked slightly thigh,
She’d wink and hours later,
The demon would meet the Devil
And she’d devour –

All I’d known,
All I’d ever know
And all we’d ever be.
Another life, but for some reason, I remembered that smoke filled room under arrogance tonight; maybe it's my obsession with neon.
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