As a woman, and in the service of my Lord the Emperor Wu, my life is governed by his command. At twenty I was summoned to this life at court and have made of it what I can, within the limitations of the courtesan I am supposed to be, and the poet I have now become. Unlike my male counterparts, some of whom have lately found seclusion in the wilderness of rivers and mountains, I have only my personal court of three rooms and its tiny garden and ornamental pond. But I live close to the surrounding walls of the Zu-lin Gardens with its astronomical observatories and bold attempts at recreating illusions of celebrated locations in the Tai mountains. There, walking with my cat Xi-Lu in the afternoons, I imagine a solitary life, a life suffused with the emptiness I crave.
 
In the hot, dry summer days my maid Mei-Lim and I have sought a temporary retreat in the pine forests above Lingzhi. Carried in a litter up the mountain paths we are left in a commodious hut, its open walls making those simple pleasures of drinking, eating and sleeping more acute, intense. For a few precious days I rest and meditate, breathe the mountain air and the resinous scents of the trees. I escape the daily commerce of the court and belong to a world that for the rest of the year I have to imagine, the world of the recluse. To gain the status of the recluse, open to my male counterparts, is forbidden to women of the court. I am woman first, a poet and calligrapher second. My brother, should he so wish, could present a petition to revoke his position as a man of letters, an official commentator on the affairs of state. But he is not so inclined. He has already achieved notoriety and influence through his writing on the social conditions of town and city. He revels in a world of chatter, gossip and intrigue; he appears to fear the wilderness life.  
 
I must be thankful that my own life is maintained on the periphery. I am physically distant from the hub of daily ceremonial. I only participate at my Lord’s express command. I regularly feign illness and fatigue to avoid petty conflict and difficulty. Yet I receive commissions I cannot waver: to honour a departed official; to celebrate a son’s birth to the Second Wife; to fulfil in verse my Lord’s curious need to know about the intimate sorrows of his young concubines, their loneliness and heartache.
 
Occasionally a Rhapsody is requested for an important visitor. The Emperor Wu is proud to present as welcome gifts such poetic creations executed in fine calligraphy, and from a woman of his court. Surely a sign of enlightment and progress he boasts! Yet in these creations my observations are parochial: early morning frost on the cabbage leaves in my garden; the sound of geese on their late afternoon flight to Star Lake; the disposition of the heavens on an Autumn night. I live by the Tao of Lao-Tzu, perceiving the whole world from my doorstep.
 
But I long for the reclusive life, to leave this court for my family’s estate in the valley my peasant mother lived as a child. At fourteen she was chosen to sustain the Emperor’s annual wish for young girls to be groomed for concubinage. Like her daughter she is tall, though not as plain as I; she put her past behind her and conceded her adolescence to the training required by the court. At twenty she was recommended to my father, the court archivist, as second wife. When she first met this quiet, dedicated man on the day before her marriage she closed her eyes in blessing. My father taught her the arts of the library and schooled her well. From her I have received keen eyes of jade green and a prestigious memory, a memory developed she said from my father’s joy of reading to her in their private hours, and before she could read herself. Each morning he would examine her to discover what she had remembered of the text read the night before. When I was a little child she would quote to me the Confucian texts on which she had been ****** schooled, and she then would tell me of her childhood home. She primed my imagination and my poetic world with descriptions of a domestic rural life.
 
Sometimes in the arms of my Lord I have freely rhapsodized in chusi metre these delicate word paintings of my mother’s home. She would say ‘We will walk now to the ruined tower beside the lake. Listen to the carolling birds. As the sparse clouds move across the sky the warm sun strokes the winter grass. Across the deep lake the forests are empty. Now we are climbing the narrow steps to the platform from which you and I will look towards the sun setting in the west. See the shadows are lengthening and the air becomes colder. The blackbird’s solitary song heralds the evening.  Look, an owl glides silently beneath us.’
 
My Lord will then quote from Hsieh Ling-yun,.
 
‘I meet sky, unable to soar among clouds,
face a lake, call those depths beyond me.’
 
And I will match this quotation, as he will expect.
 
‘Too simple-minded to perfect Integrity,
and too feeble to plough fields in seclusion.’
 
He will then gaze into my eyes in wonder that this obscure poem rests in my memory and that I will decode the minimal grammar of these early characters with such poetry. His characters: Sky – Bird – Cloud – Lake – Depth. My characters: Fool – Truth – Child – Winter field – Isolation.
 
Our combined invention seems to take him out of his Emperor-self. He is for a while the poet-scholar-sage he imagines he would like to be, and I his foot-sore companion following his wilderness journey. And then we turn our attention to our bodies, and I surprise him with my admonitions to gentleness, to patience, to arousing my pleasure. After such poetry he is all pleasure, sensitive to the slightest touch, and I have my pleasure in knowing I can control this powerful man with words and the stroke of my fingertips rather than by delicate youthful beauty or the guile and perverse ingenuity of an ****** act. He is still learning to recognise the nature and particularness of my desires. I am not as his other women: who confuse pleasure with pain.
 
Thoughts of my mother. Without my dear father, dead ten years, she is a boat without a rudder sailing on a distant lake. She greets each day as a gift she must honour with good humour despite the pain of her limbs, the difficulty of walking, of sitting, of eating, even talking. Such is the hurt that governs her ageing. She has always understood that my position has forbidden marriage and children, though the latter might be a possibility I have not wished it and made it known to my Lord that it must not be. My mother remains in limbo, neither son or daughter seeking to further her lineage, she has returned to her sister’s home in the distant village of her birth, a thatched house of twenty rooms,
 
‘Elms and willows shading the eaves at the back,
and, in front,  peach and plum spread wide.
 
Villages lost across mist-haze distances,
Kitchen smoke drifting wide-open country,
 
Dogs bark deep among the back roads out here
And cockerels crow from mulberry treetops.
 
My esteemed colleague T’ao Ch’ien made this poetry. After a distinguished career in government service he returned to the life of a recluse-farmer on his family farm. Living alone in a three-roomed hut he lives out his life as a recluse and has endured considerable poverty. One poem I know tells of him begging for food. His world is fields-and-gardens in contrast to Hsieh Ling-yin who is rivers-and-mountains. Ch’ien’s commitment to the recluse life has brought forth words that confront death and the reality of human experience without delusion.
 
‘At home here in what lasts, I wait out life.’
 
Thus my mother waits out her life, frail, crumbling more with each turning year.
 
To live beyond the need to organise daily commitments due to others, to step out into my garden and only consider the dew glistening on the loropetalum. My mind is forever full of what is to be done, what must be completed, what has to be said to this visitor who will today come to my court at the Wu hour. Only at my desk does this incessant chattering in the mind cease, as I move my brush to shape a character, or as the needle enters the cloth, all is stilled, the world retreats; there is the inner silence I crave.
 
I long to see with my own eyes those scenes my mother painted for me with her words. I only know them in my mind’s eye having travelled so little these past fifteen years. I look out from this still dark room onto my small garden to see the morning gathering its light above the rooftops. My camellia bush is in flower though a thin frost covers the garden stones.
 
And so I must imagine how it might be, how I might live the recluse life. How much can I jettison? These fine clothes, this silken nightgown beneath the furs I wrap myself in against the early morning air. My maid is sleeping. Who will make my tea? Minister to me when I take to my bed? What would become of my cat, my books, the choice-haired brushes? Like T’ao Ch’ien could I leave the court wearing a single robe and with one bag over my shoulders? Could I walk for ten days into the mountains? I would disguise myself as a man perhaps. I am tall for a woman, and though my body flows in broad curves there are ways this might be assuaged, enough perhaps to survive unmolested on the road.
 
Such dreams! My Lord would see me returned within hours and send a servant to remain at my gate thereafter. I will compose a rhapsody about a concubine of standing, who has even occupied the purple chamber, but now seeks to relinquish her privileged life, who coverts the uncertainty of nature, who would endure pain and privation in a hut on some distant mountain, who will sleep on a mat on its earth floor. Perhaps this will excite my Lord, light a fire in his imagination. As though in preparation for this task I remove my furs, I loose the knot of my silk gown. Naked, I reach for an old under shift letting it fall around my still-slender body and imagine myself tying the lacings myself in the open air, imagine making my toilet alone as the sun appears from behind a distant mountain on a new day. My mind occupies itself with the tiny detail of living thus: bare feet on cold earth, a walk to nearby stream, the gathering of berries and mountain herbs, the making of fire, the washing of my few clothes, imagining. Imagining. To live alone will see every moment filled with the tasks of keeping alive. I will become in tune with my surroundings. I will take only what I need and rely on no one. Dreaming will end and reality will be the slug on my mat, the bone-chilling incessant mists of winter, the thorn in the foot, the wild winds of autumn. My hands will become stained and rough, my long limbs tanned and scratched, my delicate complexion freckled and wind-pocked, my hair tied roughly back. I will become an animal foraging on a dank hillside. Such thoughts fill me with deep longing and a ****** desire to be tzu-jan  - with what surrounds me, ablaze with ****** self.
 
It is not thought the custom of a woman to hold such desires. We are creatures of order and comfort. We do not live on the edge of things, but crave security and well-being. We learn to endure the privations of being at the behest of others. Husbands, children, lovers, our relatives take our bodies to them as places of comfort, rest and desire. We work at maintaining an ordered flow of existence. Whatever our station, mistress or servant we compliment, we keep things in order, whether that is the common hearth or the accounts of our husband’s court. Now my rhapsody begins:
 
A Rhapsody on a woman wishing to live as a recluse
 
As a lady of my Emperor’s court I am bound in service.
My court is not my own, I have the barest of means.
My rooms are full of gifts I am forced barter for bread.
Though the artefacts of my hands and mind
Are valued and widely renown,
Their commissioning is an expectation of my station,
With no direct reward attached.
To dress appropriately for my Lord’s convocations and assemblies
I am forced to negotiate with chamberlains and treasurers.
A bolt of silk, gold thread, the services of a needlewoman
Require formal entreaties and may lie dormant for weeks
Before acknowledgement and release.
 
I was chosen for my literary skills, my prestigious memory,
Not for my ****** beauty, though I have been called
‘Lady of the most gracious movement’ and
My speaking voice has clarity and is capable of many colours.
I sing, but plainly and without passion
Lest I interfere with the truth of music’s message.
 
Since I was a child in my father’s library
I have sought out the works of those whose words
Paint visions of a world that as a woman
I may never see, the world of the wilderness,
Of rivers and mountains,
Of fields and gardens.
Yet I am denied by my *** and my station
To experience passing amongst these wonders
Except as contrived imitations in the palace gardens.
 
Each day I struggle to tease from the small corner
Of my enclosed eye-space some enrichment
Some elemental thing to colour meaning:
To extend the bounds of my home
Across the walls of this palace
Into the world beyond.
 
I have let it be known that I welcome interviews
With officials from distant courts to hear of their journeying,
To gather word images if only at second-hand.
Only yesterday an emissary recounted
His travels to Stone Lake in the far South-West,
Beyond the gorges of the Yang-tze.
With his eyes I have seen the mountains of Suchan:
With his ears I have heard the oars crackling
Like shattering jade in the freezing water.
Images and sounds from a thousand miles
Of travel are extract from this man’s memory.
 
Such a sharing of experience leaves me
Excited but dismayed: that I shall never
Visit this vast expanse of water and hear
Its wild cranes sing from their floating nests
In the summer moonlight.
 
I seek to disappear into a distant landscape
Where the self and its constructions of the world may
Dissolve away until nothing remains but the no-mind.
My thoughts are full of the practicalities of journeying
Of an imagined location, that lonely place
Where I may be at one with myself.
Where I may delight in the everyday Way,
Myself among mist and vine, rock and cave.
Not this lady of many parts and purposes whose poems must
Speak of lives, sorrow and joy, pleasure and pain
Set amongst personal conflict and intrigue
That in containing these things, bring order to disorder;
Salve the conscience, bathe hurt, soothe sleight.

The courtesan and poet Zuo Fen had two cats Xe Ming and Xi Ming. Living in her distant court with only her maid Hu Yin, her cats were often her closest companions and, like herself, of a crepuscular nature.
      It was the very depths of winter and the first moon of the Solstice had risen. The old year had nearly passed.
      The day itself was almost over. Most of the inner courts retired before the new day began (at about 11.0pm), but not Zuo Fen. She summoned her maid to dress her in her winter furs, gathered her cats on a long chain leash, and walked out into the Haulin Gardens.
      These large and semi-wild gardens were adjacent to the walls of her personal court. The father of the present Emperor had created there a forest once stocked with game, a lake to the brim with carp and rich in waterfowl, and a series of tall structures surrounded by a moat from which astronomers were able to observe the firmament.
      Emperor Wu liked to think of Zuo Fen walking at night in his father’s park, though he rarely saw her there. He knew that she valued that time alone to prepare herself for his visits, visits that rarely occurred until the Tiger hours between 3.0am and 6.0am when his goat-drawn carriage would find its way to her court unbidden. She herself would welcome him with steaming chai and sometimes a new rhapsody. They would recline on her bed and discuss the content and significance of certain writings they knew and loved. Discussion sometimes became an elaborate game when a favoured Classical text would be taken as the starting point for an exchange of quotation. Gradually quotation would be displaced by subtle invention and Zuo Fen would find the Emperor manoeuvring her into making declarations of a passionate or ****** nature.
       It seemed her very voice captivated him and despite herself and her inclinations they would join as lovers with an intensity of purpose, a great tenderness, and deep joy. He would rest his head inside her cloak and allow her lips to caress his ears with tales of river and mountain, descriptions of the flights of birds and the opening of flowers. He spoke to her ******* of the rising moon, its myriad reflections on the waters of Ling Lake, and of its trees whose winter branches caressed the cold surface.

Whilst Zuo Fen walked in the midnight park with her cats she reflected on an afternoon of frustration. She had attempted to assemble a new poem for her Lord.  Despite being himself an accomplished poet and having an extraordinary memory for Classical verse, the Emperor retained a penchant for stories about Mei-Lim, a young Suchan girl dragged from her family to serve as a courtesan at his court.
      Zuo Fen had invented this girl to articulate some of her own expressions of homesickness, despair, periods of constant tearfulness, and abject loneliness. Such things seemed to touch something in the Emperor. It was as though he enjoyed wallowing in these descriptions and his favourite A Rhapsody on Being far from Home he loved to hear from the poet’s own lips, again and again. Zuo Fen felt she was tempting providence not to compose something new, before being ordered to do so.
      As she struggled through the afternoon to inject some fresh and meaningful content into a story already milked dry Zuo Fen became aware of her cats. Xi Ming lay languorously across her folded feet. Xe Ming perched like an immutable porcelain figure on a stool beside her low writing table.
Zuo Fen often consulted her cats. ‘Xi Ming, will my Lord like this stanza?’

“The stones that ring out from your pony’s hooves
announce your path through the cloud forest”

She would always wait patiently for Xi Ming’s reply, playing a game with her imagination to extract an answer from the cinnamon scented air of her winter chamber.
      ‘He will think his pony’s hooves will flash with sparks kindling the fire of his passion as he prepares to meet his beloved’.
      ‘Oh such a wise cat, Xi Ming’, and she would press his warm body further into her lap. But today, as she imagined this dialogue, a second voice appeared in her thoughts.
      ‘Gracious Lady, your Xe Ming knows his under-standing is poor, his education weak, but surely this image, taken as it is from the poet Lu Ji, suggests how unlikely it would be for the spark of love and passion to take hold without nurture and care, impossible on a hard journey’.
       This was unprecedented. What had brought such a response from her imagination? And before she could elicit an answer it was as though Xe Ming spoke with these words of Confucius.

“Do not be concerned about others not appreciating you, be concerned about you not appreciating others”

Being the very sensible woman she was, Zuo Fen dismissed such admonition (from a cat) and called for tea.

Later as she walked her beauties by the frozen lake, the golden carp nosing around just beneath the ice, she recalled the moment and wondered. A thought came to her  . . .
       She would petition Xe Ming’s help to write a new rhapsody, perhaps titled Rhapsody on the Thought of Separation.

Both Zuo Fen’s cats came from her parental home in Lingzhi. They were large, big-***** mountain cats; strong animals with bear-like paws, short whiskered and big eared. Their coats were a glassy grey, the hairs tipped with a sprinkling of white giving the fur an impression of being wet with dew or caught by a brief shower.
       When she thought of her esteemed father, the Imperial Archivist, there was always a cat somewhere; in his study at home, in the official archives where he worked. There was always a cat close at hand, listening?
       What texts did her father know by heart that she did not know? What about the Lu Yu – the Confucian text book of advice and etiquette for court officials. She had never bothered to learn it, even read it seemed unnecessary, but through her brother Zuo Si she knew something of its contents and purpose.

Confucius was once asked what were the qualifications of public office. ‘Revere the five forms of goodness and abandon the four vices and you can qualify for public office’.
       For the life of her Zuo Fen could not remember these five forms of goodness (although she could make a stab at guessing them). As for those vices? No, she was without an idea. If she had ever known, their detail had totally passed from her memory.
       Settled once again in her chamber she called Hu Yin and asked her to remove Xi Ming for the night. She had three hours or so before the Emperor might appear. There was time.
        Xe Ming was by nature a distant cat, aloof, never seeking affection. He would look the other way if regarded, pace to the corner of a room if spoken to. In summer he would hide himself in the deep undergrowth of Zuo Fen’s garden.
       Tonight Zuo Fen picked him up and placed him on her left shoulder. She walked around her room stroking him gently with her small strong fingers, so different from the manicured talons of her colleagues in the Purple Palace. Embroidery, of which she was an accomplished exponent, was impossible with long nails.
       From her scroll cupboard she selected her brother’s annotated copy of the Lun Yu, placing it unrolled on her desk. It would be those questions from the disciple Tzu Chang, she thought, so the final chapters perhaps. She sat down carefully on the thick fleece and Mongolian rug in front of her desk letting Xe Ming spill over her arms into a space beside her.
       This was strange indeed. As she sat beside Xe Ming in the light of the butter lamps holding his flickering gaze it was as though a veil began to lift between them.
       ‘At last you understand’, a voice appeared to whisper,’ after all this time you have realised . . .’
      Zuo Fen lost track of time. The cat was completely motionless. She could hear Hu Yin snoring lightly next door, no doubt glad to have Xi Ming beside her on her mat.
      ‘Xe Ming’, she said softly, ‘today I heard you quote from Confucius’.
      The cat remained inscrutable, completely still.
      ‘I think you may be able to help me write a new poem for my Lord. Heaven knows I need something or he will tire of me and this court will cease to enjoy his favour’.
      ‘Xe Ming, I have to test you. I think you can ‘speak’ to me, but I need to learn to talk to you’.
      ‘Tzu Chang once asked Confucius what were the qualifications needed for public office? Confucius said, I believe, that there were five forms of goodness to revere, and four vices to abandon’.
       ‘Can you tell me what they are?’
      Xe Ming turned his back on Zuo Fen and stepped gently away from the table and into a dark and distant corner of the chamber.
      ‘The gentle man is generous but not extravagant, works without complaint, has desires without being greedy, is at peace, but not arrogant, and commands respect but not fear’.
      Zuo Fen felt her breathing come short and fast. This voice inside her; richly-texture, male, so close it could be from a lover at the epicentre of a passionate entanglement; it caressed her.
      She heard herself say aloud, ‘and the four vices’.
      ‘To cause a death or imprisonment without teaching can be called cruelty; to judge results without prerequisites can be called tyranny; to impose deadlines on improper orders can be thievery; and when giving in the procedure of receipt and disbursement, to stint can be called officious’.
       Xe Ming then appeared out of the darkness and came and sat in the folds of her night cloak, between her legs. She stroked his glistening fur.
       Zuo Fen didn’t need to consult the Lu Yu on her desk. She knew this was unnecessary. She got to her feet and stepped through the curtains into an antechamber to relieve herself.
       When she returned Xe Ming had assumed his porcelain figure pose. So she gathered a fresh scroll, her writing brushes, her inks, her wax stamps, and wrote:

‘I was born in a humble, isolated, thatched house,
and was never well versed in writing.
I never saw the marvellous pictures of books,
nor had I heard of the classics of earlier sages.
I am dimwitted, humble and ignorant . . ‘

As she stopped to consider the next chain of characters she saw in her mind’s eye the Purple Palace, the palace of the concubines of the Emperor. Sitting next to the Purple Chamber there was a large grey cat, its fur sprinkled with tiny flecks of white looking as though the animal had been caught in a shower of rain.
       Zuo Fen turned from her script to see where Xe Ming had got to, but he had gone. She knew however that he would always be there. Wherever her imagination took her, she could seek out this cat and the words would flow.

Before returning to her new text Zuo Fen thought she might remind herself of Liu Xie’s words on the form of the Rhapsody. If Emperor Wu appeared later she would quote it (to his astonishment) from The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons.

*The rhapsody derives from poetry,
A fork in the road, a different line of development;
It describes objects, pictures and their appearance,
With a brilliance akin to sculpture and painting.
What is clogged and confined it invariably opens up;
It depicts the commonplace with unbounded charm;
But the goal of the form is of beauty well ordered,
Words retained for their loveliness when weeds have been cut away.

Stillness and immobility
They look just the same
But one can be bliss the other is pain

The stillness arises when the tension is gone
When the tension grows immobility is born

The blessing of stillness it flies high and wide
The curse of tension pulls the mind closely tied

Stillness and immobility
They look just the same
But one can be bliss the other is pain

In the eye of a storm mighty worrier she waits
Her opponent exhausted from the forces he breaks

From the centre she moves in any direction
Her hands tied only by one thing - affection

Stillness and immobility
They look just the same
But one can be bliss the other is pain

The day I met you I was drunk
The house was breathing with life and memories being made
And I heard someone mumble something about someone being here
And nearly panicked at the possibilities of whom it could've been

But then you spoke
The room died down for a few seconds,
As if everyone there knew how important you were
And how important you would be
Then exploded into laughter

And you vanished into the crowd leaving a canary yellow glass slipper behind as a calling card

The first Wu-Tang song we listened to together was C.R.E.A.M
I didn't know you were a fan until it came on
And suddenly I remembered that slipper

And as time went on, I'd slowly begin to understand the level of your royalty
I'd see you fight back invisible armies in the name of love
I'd see you take command and charge the world with fire in your eyes
And eventually I realized that, around you
I was invincible
(Or felt like it at least)

And now, here you lay
Empress of Goons and Wu-Tang
Goddess of the very moon and stars that speak through your eyes each time you smile
Queen of the Hood Rats
Princess, and keeper of the key to my heart
And as I watch you laugh and enjoy yourself
I'll clutch the glass slipper behind my back
And wonder when the right time to present it to you is
And I'll pray that one day
You'll allow me to call you mine

Why Does My Appearance ...  
Offend Most Folk ... !?!
  
I DON'T Sell Coc'... !!!
  
I'm NOT An Ignorant Bloke ... !!!
  
I DON'T LIKE ... " Crack "... !!!
But Sometimes ... Like A Smoke ...
  
There's Nothing Quite Like A Cuban Cigar ...
After Food ... or With A Drink At A Bar ...
  
NOT Beer But Brandy ...  
Suitably Warm ...
In A ... Brandy Glass ... !!!
  
THAT'S ... Who I Am ... !!!
  
I'm NOT An ****... !!!
  
Unlike Those ...

Who Judge From .................................................................­.... Far ...............
  
"He's AGGRESSIVE !
His incentive, is to Rob,
and start, MOLESTING !"
  
"Who on earth ?
Do you think you're addressing ?
Your judgements are distressing !
Your thought waves need progressing !
Stop your second guessing !
cos when I start *******,
your state of mental being,
you'll wish you had Gods' Blessing !"
  
Girls ... Or Men ...
Just ... Can't Defend ... !!!
  
Their NONSENSE ...
As I ... Count To TEN ... !!!!!
  
See .....
That's My Way of Teaching Them ...
  
I'm NOT ... THAT Man ...
On .... " News at Ten "... !!!!!
  
NO ... NOT Trev'....
But Those ... "Locked"...  
... Inside Prison ... !!!  
  
I'm RARE ...
Just Like ... " True Gentlemen "... !!!
  
Girls Have Said ...
Such ... SILLY THINGS ... !!?!!
  
"Upon introduction,
my heartbeat raced !
I thought you were gonna,
punch me in my face !"
  
"That's what you saw ?
when you, looked in my face !"
  
Such Attitudes ...
Are REALLY ... Lame ... !!!!
  
It's ... Funny To Some ...
But Let's Get This CLEAR ... !!!!!
  
These ... " Stereotypes "...
Are ... REALLY Dumb ... ?!?
  
I Deal With This Ignorance ...
Day to Day ...
  
" Some guy ... "

Tried To Bar Me ...
From His Place ...
  
WITHOUT Even Looking Me In My Face ... ?!?  
  
WHY ... ?

Because of ... " e-mails sent "... ?!?
  
But When He Traced ...
The Mails I'd Sent ...
  
His Thought Waves Got ...
...... DERAILED ...... !!!
  
And Then Some ...  
Common Sense Prevailed ... !!!
  
I've Met Him Now ...
His Stench Seems ... " FOUL "... !!!!!!!!!
  
A Money Man ...
just Like The DOW ...
Index ... Direct ... !!!  
  
Until My Words ...
Got In His Chest ... !!!
And Proved To Him ...
... My INTELLECT ...
  
Whilst Giving Him ...
A ... "small complex"...

About What Could ...
Just Happen ... NEXT ... !!!?!!!
  
Sometimes ... YES ...  
Just Like ... " The Wu "...
  
I Do Suggest ...
You PROTECT Your NECK ... !!!!!
  
It's Better NOT TO ...
... Get Me Vex ... !!!!!
  
Cos' Plans I Make ...
Are So COMPLEX ...
  
You May Just Need ...
A ... Bullet-Proof Vest ... !?!?!
  
For Me You See ...
Life's Posing TESTS ... !!!
  
From Living ... To ...
Just Getting *** ... !?!
  
These Problems ...
Leave My Mind ... " Perplexed "... ???
  
Well .....
Perplexed or NOT ...
  
I'm Still DIRECT ... !!!
  
From Things I Say ...
To ... Written Text ...
  
To EARN What's Due ...
  
Some **** RESPECT.

From Those Who Watch Their TV Set ...
Then Pre-Judge Me ... That's INCORRECT ... !!!!!
  
Well Here's The Deal ... !!!
  
Instead of Surfing ...  
...... " Internet "......
  
Try PULLING The Plug ...
Yes .... DISCONNECT .... !!!
  
Deal With Those ...  
In Front of You ...  
  
Some of Us ...
Are People TOO ... !!!!!
  
Whether On ... PC ...
Or On ... " TV "...
  
You're Receiving INTERFERENCE ... !!!!!!
Your Thought Waves NEED ...


Some .... " Clearance "....
  

And Maybe Then ... ?
You'll FINALLY See ...
DON'T Judge Folks By ...
  
... " Appearance "...

I got 99 problems but hip-hop ain't one.

"Poetry, that's a part of me, retardedly bop
I drop the ancient manifested hip-hop straight off the block"
Nas and Jigga beef was the first I heard of drama in the music industry-
fueled me as a youngin' crowned from my brother's love of it.
Fast forward to when the radio put me on-
in the garage, on my mongoose
I heard someone spitting through the stereo
didn't pay much mind until a high-pitched voice rang through.
"Through the wire-"
no "through the fire?"
I couldn't understand but this dude started rhyming
and speaking through the speakers at me
my hair raised up and I knew this was love-
smile on my face at first listen
never really heard anything like it.
I thought back to the first song like that I heard-
"Life's a ***** and then you die-"
knew that line all too well
resonation in my bones didn't feel so much like a stranger-
my young self started spitting around the older crowd
they looked down and smiled-
a sense of admiration.
Hip-hop was my way in my ticket to acknowledgment.
Started listening to Eminem before I was even 10.
5th grade on the bus rides to and from field trips
"Shut the **** up guys I'm trying to listen"
headphones in, finally found someone to relate
so many thoughts of suicide being taken away-
realized the radio wasn't really my thing
too much pop and not enough soul
the words they sang were nothing to me.
In the beginning hip-hop was just a facade I liked to play
so other people would notice and think I'm pretty cool
but somewhere along the line it took me over
bumping nas, em and pac through my stereo
mom looking in my room like
"where the **** did my daughter go?
she's listening to this ****, she's gotta get a grip-"
But when I hurt the music would listen
bass lines and samples running through my veins
didn't know much about hip-hop
except the way it made me feel..
Technology came abrupt and the computer was my safe haven
the runaway from the abuse I was experiencing
mommy and daddy fighting?
headphones in so I can't hear it.
crying through each verse
and then the chorus hits and I'm better
finally realized I wasn't alone in this hell hole.
Started up a myspace-
more room for discovery
Eazy-e some Biggie more Nas
and **** even some Jeezy.
Every word they spoke
became something that was apart of me.
"Poetry, that's a part of me, retardedly bop
I drop the ancient manifested hip-hop straight off the block."
Nas said it best-
old school rappers speaking to me before bed.
Then I discovered Cudi, more Kanye, andre 3k.  
thought about how I had to write like this
it was my destiny to manifest this passion
put it into my pen until I could learn to lavish
in the luxuries they could afford
not the riches but the rhyme schemes
and the way it helped me
again and again would listen until I got tired
notebooks full of rhymes
my life was on the line and it became wired
then came limewire and my mind blew up
there's an entire world of music I never knew-
download after download the music became me
so much more to go through
****** up my computer
virus to the hard drive
all my music's gone. ****.
Freaking out in my room at midnight
threw a chair, punched the wall
mom asking if i'm alright.
"*******, go away"
She thought the music was to blame
but without that **** is why it happened
never gave up on this **** called rappin'
wrote my first rhyme when I was in 5th grade
poetry turned to rhyme schemes
and samples I liked to play.
Passion turned to aggression
when everyone started spitting
thought this was me and no one elses
has to prove who I was to the masses.
High School came and I was
"The girl who rapped"
freestyle lunch sessions to secure it.
Voices from the crowd
"**** she murdered it".
Slipped up-
started on the pills
too many thoughts in my mind
too many demons to ****-
ran away from the hip-hop
turned that **** to heavy metal
pop-punk and punk rock.
Turned away my from my passion
and started writing poetry
stanzas, sibilance and sonnets
filled my insides.
I suffered without the classics
the dream began to fade away.
We moved-
became a recluse.
didn't eat for weeks
but this time money wasn't the issue.
Heard something bumpin' from the basement
my hair stood up when I heard that base hit
ran down like I was chasin' after my passion again
"what is this?"
my cousin laughed "Life Changes"
"who is it?"
"Wu-tang" he said to me
I bobbed my head and smiled once again
"Wu is indeed for the children"
he laughed and so did I.
Realized my love for hip-hop
would never actually die.
"Poetry, that's a part of me, retardedly bop
I drop the ancient manifested hip-hop straight off the block"

Clarifying failed. Spelchek is not on strike.

{clear ification, an ionic bond be tween me and thee,
alienated mind, not mined, crafted
from tactics and strategies
beyond chess.
Player One,
1980's era
jewish-geek-mid-pubesence-kid-level,
proceed with caution.
This trope has trapped many a curious child.
---
Now, enter the old ones,
Grandfather taught uncle chess so well
he went to the state tournament in Kayenta,
and a grandma was
state-champ-bare-bow-in-the-rain-shooter,

these, now must learn

minecraft on x-box to be considered
for the real life role of

good at games grand parents
from the time right after atom bombs kicked up dust
places dust had not been in a very long time and
as the dust began to settle

some dust mights was cationic.
Negative bits, they became embedded in the code.
Bumps, fering, coming together
just a knot in a string,
attracting anionic curiosity might

round and round phorward ferring to be
a thread to tie my heart to yours

like twisted Pima cotton thread,
that I pulled from an old sweatshirt
to tie a crow feather in this paho of words filled with old jokes

Making this clear would belie the entire story AI and I know true}

truth is. we agree. no capsokehspaceasneededcommasetal.
caps okeh space as needed commas et al
go.
Did that work? That line

subject of this act fact done, agree to follow,
and I may lead and be

not you, me, dear reader, I mean first true

there is no any if nothing is. So simple some say its sublime beyond the spectrum of ones
and zeros thought on off probably

either or any time time can be accounted for

wouldn't you take a

thought,  nothing,
as it is commonly said to be understandable,

the state of not being, imagine that

the state of not being we negate in being,
unless you are mad and are lost in a whirlwind
such as such voices have been said to

have twisted into threads as
wicks for our lamps
turn floating on
golden oil twisting
wickered into wickering wee shadow fibers
on the western wall for legends to sprout from.

Wickering mare over there, expands us both by my hearing her
you had no idea she was near enough to hear
time is no barrier in actual ever.
What phor can contain me,
whispered my whimsy

Imagine she spoke,
what would she say for what reason
would she say

good good good, I feel good, ha,
I am right, by accident. ever body can feel this good.

good is good.
good is.
Sam Harris, agrees, good as far as good goes, is good
in every vecter from now

the terrain does exist, beyond the moral landscape, to

true true
trust me, I been there.
Been there done that was inserted into the vernacular on my watch,
first summer post war.

matter must not matter as much to me as it does to thee, nestypass? no se?

All jewish boys have chess move metaphors.
(a phor is for containing,
bearing
meta,
everybody knows, like metaphysics,
after physics in the stack of stackable metadata)

OHMYGOD THE IDW circa 2018 -- who knew I ate this **** up?

[the old code calls for excretion of digested material
from which meaning has been extracted in the idleword accounting processor:
literal
<pre>what if utterance=****, then **** haps, no else then</pre>]

Did that happen? One of my friends told me that happened in Florida, the whole world turned to ****... for lack of a nail a kingdom was lost, they say, little foxes spoil the grapes,
hung chad ex
cuses...

Pre-expandable ROM, not magic. tech,

pre-infinite imagination? impossible.
and nothing is what is impossible with good as god.

Is there no perfect game?
is the game the session or the life of the user
offline

rerererererererererereroxotoxin, poison pen
ideal viral umph exspelliered
up against the wall

reset. We

kunoon albania omerta oy vey, who could say?
one way better, one way not? quark.
up or down, with variable spins, who can say?

Life's right,
yes. but mo'ons of other something must have been for higgs to ever matter

and it does, I got commas, from 2018.

Are you with me? This is that book I told you I had access…

You or some mind other than mine owned mind, where
my owned peace rests in truth,

otherwise, I know every any or else in the code since I can recall,
in time

if this were a test I swore to take to prove to you
the we can be me in your head

phillipkdicktated clue

if you don't know me by now, maybe we should stop.

Temptations are times. Time things. Time spans, yeah, like bridges

or portals, right
The Internet in One Day, Fred Pryor Resources,
Wu'wuchim 1995.

Ever, not everish or everistic or every, but ever
body knows,
but you.

Catch up. We left all our doors blown off, once we learned that we could blow our own doors off,

there are no open sesames or slips of leth or sibylets

shiba yah you knew all along there was a
song she sang all one and we watched it morph
before our very eyes

alone.

The magic stories words may contain, may bear, we must agree

more than we may know, by faith, metagnostic as we see

the sublime gift of the magi
become clear und

be und sein sind both trueture same tu you, we agree.
But. Lock here, no pre 2018 editing codes

validate past last go.

Now, the dau,
that idea, first bubble we be in,
and the final thought
we pay attention to,

a-priori, is a popular phrase on the pundit trail,
first any ever once,
enfolding now, augmented mortal
appropriation of the spirit
dau, the truth in life,
being.

Thinking is reading my mind.
You have the knack, read,
wiser minds have left letters locked in glyphs
of tradition,
-flash k;ab;alla; wink blink image of the map

this not terrain mortals trod, this is where
Shakespeare and Browning smoke ****
with me and Lady Wei, as seen
from a smoky hut
leaning on granite decomposing as I write,

this came to the surface, as a we, reader/writer
we may think in one
mind, while doing in another, and becoming
something else, in a third,

but it does not stop there, I hear in my realm,
Everest Pax, a child named
in a happy state of mind,
by my daughter,
at whose marriage, I broke the rule,
I made a pact,
with my son-in-law
using my own scruples,
stretched to threads of finest wire,
through holes but one photon wide,
one bit serial thought, off set by a function
forming
matter in states where nothing has mattered,
for a long, long time,
then today
- dao, kapow
the link to how often I proclaimed, I,
have always, and do now
take the easy way,
and that, they say,
is cheating. Wu wu boo who wu wei is
as water in our once crossed rivers, in the median,

between the freeways…

As I remarked early on this trek to find your name
in the book of my life, knowing
readers of this line, even, perhaps,
hearers, some day,
knowing tasted good, not knowing tastes evil as hell.
You exist in the book of my life as a reoccuring
character, who may be formed from early
childhood scruple implants,
Ossie Davis, look you in the eye, say
Do the right thing.

… which brings us, flop, stop, 2021 - three brothers
jonesing screens- Evvy screaming, he is five,
on no screen Sunday, a family tradition
in its first iteration, set by the mother
reinforced by the father, ignored
by Grandpa who is doing a show with Lady Wei,
on the experience
of Yang His, who received a vision from Lady Wei,
while Pine Valley high above the maddened crowd,

I hear it said, His had that Habakkuk habit, wu wei,
lady, did you lead me, write the vision, make it plain,
or is this all just
pretend, knowing is a given, one taste, concentrate

okeh, we on wu wei now, read and watch,
think and see,
what if this was happening to me, and I have
hyper-text such as no manuscript
on earth ever had,
no ink needed,
no ashes of prayers in the tea,
I used Pine Valley honey and flowers from a herm-kush
take a l'taste,
hear this, I think, I say

say, have you ever used Dragon Naturally Speaking?

On mute. If we think in Wade-Giles, and write in Pinyin,
- we can pass any shibbolethic judges of twang
and we got this Tuvan singer,
from New York City, a place he never saw

the glass harmonica can hold the high notes,
and we can channel the blind throat singer to hold down
the baser notes of life in soil creation,
till the hard rows, right,
sow the finest seed,
available, by chance, legally blind, where I went into total
last days, wait and see, here is here I presupposed
wu wei, no intervention
you came, now see,
this is where I live when in my right mind.
Now, I can make up my mind on matters of the wish,
last wish
from the magic golden carp in the castle mote,
I caught a thought in Ape and Essence,
and may have wished a bogus wish to live,
among the words that I redeem worth my use
-to form a more perfect union
-with my own heart's desire to be the best I may imagine,
given the tools fit for the perfectly happy, lazy old man,

who giggles at the idea of pulling down imaginations
that exalt themselves as institutes of authorized knowns.
Scratch my ear.
rethink, how Swedenbord did not doubt,
that old dude, just kept dippin' n' scribblin angels
who love to wrestle with scriptures gone pointy crown
shape burr, itches, crave, yes, the wish of which, witches mix
doubt is the art of balance between lines of several minds,
redo, redone, redo, redone, soon, we laugh
and walk away,
lady Wei, and I
leave His, making all this plain to the degree,
of telling history, I thought this, so real, it seems still
as real as any angel duty ever…
Yang His says:
Lady Wei, looks to me and said to me unspeakable things.
This is confusion, she let me know with
a single drop of black,

ashes of talismans burned in vain, never, to my knowledge
written in vain,
think once a godly thought, as used to say, just now,
think that as a practice,
this is that exercise
unto godliness.

First, gnoshit, attain the Yang His state of cannabis-bliss.

Or go on lying about what I think we know
already, this is
that earth,

where happy people think happy thoughts and others
find that maddening,

and Lady Wei laughs with me, we know the traits we give
to those who chose on any given day

to put on a mind made from words alone,
and listen.


----------------- author's note:
Taoism: An Essential Guide by Eva Wong, these lines occur
while listening to Chapter Four
The Shang-ch’ing texts tell us that Yang Hsi received a vision
from Lady Wei (who had become an immortal)
and then “wrote” the scriptures
under the influence of a cannabis-induced trance.

Fishing boat pursue water love hill spring
Both banks peach blossom arrive ancient river crossing
Travel look red tree not know far
Travel furthest blue stream not see people
Mountain mouth stealthy move begin cave profound
Mountain open spacious view spin flat land
Far see one place accumulate cloud tree
Nearby join 1000 homes scattered flower bamboo
Firewood person first express Han surname given name
Reside person not change Qin clothing clothing
Reside person together live Wu Ling source
Still from outside outside build field orchard
Moon bright pine below room pen quiet
Sun through cloud middle chicken dog noisy
Surprise hear common visitor contend arrive gather
Compete lead back home ask all town
At brightness alley alley sweep blossom begin
Approach dusk fisher woodman via water return
Beginning reason evade earth leave person among
Change ask god immortal satisfy not return
Gorge inside who know be human affairs
World middle far gaze sky cloud hill
Not doubt magic place hard hear see
Dust heart not exhaust think country country
Beyond hole not decide away hill water
Leave home eventually plan far travel spread
Self say pass through old not lost
Who know peak gully now arrive change
Now only mark entrance hill deep
Blue stream how many times reach cloud forest
Spring come all over be peach blossom water
Not know immortal source what place search


A fisher's boat chased the water into the coveted hills,
Both banks were covered in peach blossom at the ancient river crossing.
He knew not how far he sailed, gazing at the reddened trees,
He travelled to the end of the blue stream, seeing no man on the way.
Then finding a crack in the hillside, he squeezed through the deepest of caves,
And beyond the mountain a vista opened of flat land all about!
In the distance he saw clouds and trees gathered together,
Nearby amongst a thousand homes flowers and bamboo were scattered.
A wood-gatherer was the first to speak a Han-era name,
The inhabitants' dress was unchanged since the time of Qin.
The people lived together on uplands above Wu Ling river,
Apart from the outside world they laid their fields and plantations.
Below the pines and the bright moon, all was quiet in the houses,
When the sun started to shine through the clouds, the chickens and dogs gave voice.
Startled to find a stranger amongst them, the people jostled around,
They competed to invite him in and ask about his home.
As brightness came, the lanes had all been swept of blossom,
By dusk, along the water the fishers and woodsmen returned.
To escape the troubled world they had first left men's society,
They live as if become immortals, no reason now to return.
In that valley they knew nothing of the way we live outside,
From within our world we gaze afar at empty clouds and hills.
Who would not doubt that magic place so hard to find,
The fisher's worldly heart could not stop thinking of his home.
He left that land, but its hills and rivers never left his heart,
Eventually he again set out, and planned to journey back.
By memory, he passed along the way he'd taken before,
Who could know the hills and gullies had now completely changed?
Now he faced only the great mountain where he remembered the entrance,
Each time he followed the clear stream, he found only cloud and forest.
Spring comes, and all again is peach blossom and water,
No-one knows how to reach that immortal place.

i return to these words that are barely
an architectural promise of a house as a mere:
rummaging squatter,
that this will eventually become
scrutinised by eyes beside my own...
well it's not like i rhyme-on-the-cheap...
i've been trying to watch some penny
dreadful episodes:
what would woman do without
the devil; i suppose man tangled with
god is nothing but an obnoxious brat...
the devil of emotions
and their plethora; this belittling god
fiddling with stones and creases
in york oak stand-alones...
                          then it came like
an itch: poached-taming-(of a)-toe...
just a tatty... a humble:
i am pretty sure i saw the letters
prefix a toad somewhere: po-ta-to(e):
ah... there! poached tame toad...
a sputniks for a brainz...
in penny dreadful: john claire
the name of victor frankenstein's monster:
oh dear old god: this continued
exasperation with poetry:
one must live a most unsatisfying life
to cross the rubricon of
old testament anemia:
            i think i admired wordsworth too... -

playing house with robert duncan -
especially now:
when the house is in complete disarray
and what was once cluttered:
is more an upheaval...

- i used to write while listening
to music - no i write for the scraps
of this yawning silence
and all of its blisters of interludes -
yes:
i want a noun to turn
into a verb: not a mere:
metaphorical "transgression"
of how it's impossible
for the wine to be blood
for the bread to be flesh:
this poetry of: cannibalism?

i pry open the adventures with
cats:
i own two... my house doesn't
give off whiffs of ****:
god... i know the horrid stench
of either **** or ****
that isn't my own:
solipsistic in that...
       it's not a field of strawberries...

it's acidic to the nose:
it's beyond anything i'd ever
want to ingest: and i have once...
giggled... ******* into a glass
of wine to: punk up
the sacrament -
then again: i also ****** on my leg
when standing in a shower
cubicle and i attest to disagree:
there's something...

unconsciously prodding:
the advent prior to... learning to stress
that bladder into a muscle
and keeping it in...
that i can counter the will
of keeping it in...
that i can unwill the sensible
lesson and: it's like... anything
aqua focused -
a shower is a baptism
jumping into a pool is a rebirth:
or an invitation to
beside oneself with: start-agains...

it's very much unlike
drinking... whether it's a coffee
or a whiskey sour...
the ingestion of liquid is less
starry-eyed gluttonous freeze...
having ate nothing but hot air
or...
the whole body needs immersion
or... the ******* on a leg
prior to: then taking a shower...
hell... even mixing one's own
**** with a glass of the goat's blood
is also... "something" / something-...

to pray for sensible things is
to mumble or there's that devil's
dozen of oysters:
12 by feeding:
the 13th in the form of a ****
by nibble lick and spoon
of the tongue and lips' acrobatics...

i'm playing house with robert duncan...
i'm not a householder -
a term as ancient as: librarian
by my account -
              but the house is in disarray:
the kitchen is being subjected
to a 24 / 7  dehumidifier drone
army... i can hear the machines
working their insomnia down
below:
i have custard feet and i feel like
sinking: not falling...
when i stand to these machines:
hellish-jelly-feet...
   when i turn on the stove
and make an omelette -

     the living room (civil room,
a joke from my youth i conjured -
a room where we learn civility)...
is also a makeshift kitchen...
i'm currently playing chess from time
to time with: the memory of:
where did i put these spices...
this spoon this plate...
       it's not chess but the game is
irreversible -
it's also time consuming and it's
not that i don't keep attention to detail:
but i'm gladly not thinking forward...
i'm strategizing in reverse -

but such is the game...
robert duncan - poet and householder -
a chance reading of a moth:
but this is what makes all of this
so enjoyable: it's a niche a cul de sac
of decisions: an expansion
of time that doesn't make it to the annals
of: better to... burn... than to fade away...
either make it in your youth:
nice and proper...
or... what's the game then:
last man standing?
the list of contemporaries
drawing thin, short?

playing house... that i had a youth
i remembered when i'd too play with dolls with
my neighbour's daughter -
clearly ken and barbie had a problem
with their missing parts -
eunuchs of the sun's blind spots...
unlike when we were allowed
to take a bath together as:
not siblings but as strange dialectical opposites
to this duality: that wouldn't encompass
my somehow yet to be owned:
me good & evil...

    me tamer - me: 19th century's frankenstein:
dr. Jekyll etc.
     a rule for life: apparently...
is to pet a cat when you see one
in the street...
it's not exactly an easy task...
i guess first a show of mutual
assurance (and respect) -
this black tubby - with a bandana
for where a leash-leftover could
have been (collar) -
he starts walking anti-clockwise...
i turn aside and start walking
clockwise to pass him...
then we shuffle our approach...
like... i would always want
to pass a pigeon strutting
senseless on the pavement
with enough space so that it doesn't
have to find it necessary to fly off...

luckily for me i managed to "pet"
a stranger's cat...
my luck that it was black
but then again it was that sort
of hour
that's always a presumption
of a lazy gotten afternoon...
rule of life: pet a cat on a street...
it's not exactly a ******* given:
an "oops"... done that... tick...
self-help guru sold this trick...
                    
a selfie contra the days...
when the camera was used and...
other people would take pictures
of you... or of you and:
when there was an "us" - together...
shorthand of the limbos of life -
magnum opus words
constipated into this: makeshift
of a hopeful paragraph...

no, this couldn't be a simple meditation:
confined to...
robert duncan's household -
and my predicament of... playing memory
chess: well it's not exactly clutter:
the kitchen cannot be used
so there's a makeshift refugee camp
version of it in the living room yadda yadda...

which is a commentary on...
my distrust for the h'american literary movement
of the 20th century teasing an abandonment
with the "old ways"...
buddhism, odd... mostly...
   fair enough:
              ezra pound abhorred the taoists...
my one lesson from tao...
the best way you can aid the world:
is for the world to forget you
and for you to forget the world...
which is probably a plagiarism
of epicurus or vice versa...

              i can't imagine the demands
of pop philosophy:
pop culture on the other hand is much
easier to stomach: it's even enjoyable -
but the pop philosophy of nihilism -
which is: a pop philosophy...
it's not even required reading -
unless: you're rereading your own?
thrown into the river -
i am becoming a being of more becoming...
change is the only perpetual: blah...
if it's not my own rummagings it's
probably someone else's:
which has probably become diluted /
filtered down and is a cubism's monstrosity...

books sell for two reasons:
(1) they are genuinely read by a zeitgeist youth...
which invokes social pressures of
the collected experience - in ref. to:
something that can be talked about...
(2) they are read by "propagandists" -
by a small majority who pressure others to...
but the pressure only lasts for
airs - for a mere ownership of a book
should one be met with a scrutiny of
not owning it - reading it is beside the point...

and here in the land of "leftovers":
the middle of the road the people:
who of their own volition write and read...
that i was never ****** into
a cult of stephen king...
i was born too late to be:
but i was: ****** into a postmortem
oeuvre deity picking almost
anything by william burroughs...
i: reader: dear reader: clicked...

- i can't objectify this house -
i am subject to it: coerced by it...
made by bias upon bias
whether there's clutter or there isn't...
whether the kitchen is functionable
or not: that some people have
a kitchen but prefer to eat out:
to be seen: eating...
             i check the gradations of
punctuations and i know: still...
i will not recite these words not
out of gestures for bombast -
or pride - but for some sinister
urge to not abuse this sacred silence:
******* taught man
to manouvre... manouvre...
manouvre... maneouvre...
        man-oeuvre...
                   drop the hyphen boyo:
manoeuvre... wow!
"too many" consonants
in ****** words... how about a
magic trick? how many *******
vowels are in: man-oovr'eh?
phonetics king of the anti-spelling:
but then...
the synonym sounds
with aliases...
towing two different meanings:
too hot to count two
          ooh ooze - zizzez...
              zyzzes...
                     i can bring this anglo-slack-son
to kneel but only for a while:
before the architectural scholarly-
  takes over and the phonetic becomes:
lost, crude... based feral...

- a robert duncan is not a...
it's not mediocre is not necessary to be:
gee-whizz of frank o'hara's
cosmopolitan...
it's flesh of the h'american tongue
it's: sensibly accurate to provide
the best outlet:
for those of us still born in that
century - of what remained of us:
or rather of what remained
of the innocence of the 1990s...

that i am not nostalgic is: no proof...
that i write hardly any word of fiction:
one spaniard, once... commented
on my shoes:
i think he played a miniature version
of a flute: it looked like a reed...
the "spanish" superstition
concerning: a comment on one's shoes...
he admired... my shoes...
what's that saying:
about shoes: to best walk in one's
own before wishing to fill the shoes
of others...
a verb as simple as: there's no
presence of "run": when coupled
to: i am running: i ran...
it's raining...
i run i ruin fun... concentrated
"rhyming": literally linear: no staccato...

******* me over "jenga"...
this microcosm of sounds -
yet to draw deep leverage from
a meaning: it comes back as a mere
sound: worse a... mimic -
an aeon of only hearing
the heaving of a crow's crackling
croak... like a breaking of a tongue:
or... the lost trill of the R in
either fwench or: english...

exemplified R: with a diacritical mark
to make emphasis of the trill...

yes... this democratic oath of poets..
well: we're not going to tend to
the republic of the wizened goats
ex athens... are we?
the democratic oath of poets -
unlike the hippocratic loaf...
            which is a spectacular failure
since i have seen what
little ambitions can do:
when... the boat is not being
rocked: yet someone is still willing
to throw someone... overboard...
now that the boat is rocking:
i see nooses instead of paddles...
the seas are still rife with calm...

playing house with robert duncan -
especially now:
when the house is in complete disarray
and what was once cluttered:
is more an upheaval...

- i used to write while listening
to music - no i write for the scraps
of this yawning silence
and all of its blisters of interludes -
yes:
i want a noun to turn
into a verb: not a mere:
metaphorical "transgression"
of how it's impossible
for the wine to be blood
for the bread to be flesh:
this poetry of: cannibalism?

i pry open the adventures with
cats:
i own two... my house doesn't
give off whiffs of ****:
god... i know the horrid stench
of either **** or ****
that isn't my own:
solipsistic in that...
       it's not a field of strawberries...

it's acidic to the nose:
it's beyond anything i'd ever
want to ingest: and i have once...
giggled... ******* into a glass
of wine to: punk up
the sacrament -
then again: i also ****** on my leg
when standing in a shower
cubicle and i attest to disagree:
there's something...

unconsciously prodding:
the advent prior to... learning to stress
that bladder into a muscle
and keeping it in...
that i can counter the will
of keeping it in...
that i can unwill the sensible
lesson and: it's like... anything
aqua focused -
a shower is a baptism
jumping into a pool is a rebirth:
or an invitation to
beside oneself with: start-agains...

it's very much unlike
drinking... whether it's a coffee
or a whiskey sour...
the ingestion of liquid is less
starry-eyed gluttonous freeze...
having ate nothing but hot air
or...
the whole body needs immersion
or... the ******* on a leg
prior to: then taking a shower...
hell... even mixing one's own
**** with a glass of the goat's blood
is also... "something" / something-...

to pray for sensible things is
to mumble or there's that devil's
dozen of oysters:
12 by feeding:
the 13th in the form of a ****
by nibble lick and spoon
of the tongue and lips' acrobatics...

i'm playing house with robert duncan...
i'm not a householder -
a term as ancient as: librarian
by my account -
              but the house is in disarray:
the kitchen is being subjected
to a 24 / 7  dehumidifier drone
army... i can hear the machines
working their insomnia down
below:
i have custard feet and i feel like
sinking: not falling...
when i stand to these machines:
hellish-jelly-feet...
   when i turn on the stove
and make an omelette -

     the living room (civil room,
a joke from my youth i conjured -
a room where we learn civility)...
is also a makeshift kitchen...
i'm currently playing chess from time
to time with: the memory of:
where did i put these spices...
this spoon this plate...
       it's not chess but the game is
irreversible -
it's also time consuming and it's
not that i don't keep attention to detail:
but i'm gladly not thinking forward...
i'm strategizing in reverse -

but such is the game...
robert duncan - poet and householder -
a chance reading of a moth:
but this is what makes all of this
so enjoyable: it's a niche a cul de sac
of decisions: an expansion
of time that doesn't make it to the annals
of: better to... burn... than to fade away...
either make it in your youth:
nice and proper...
or... what's the game then:
last man standing?
the list of contemporaries
drawing thin, short?

playing house... that i had a youth
i remembered when i'd too play with dolls with
my neighbour's daughter -
clearly ken and barbie had a problem
with their missing parts -
eunuchs of the sun's blind spots...
unlike when we were allowed
to take a bath together as:
not siblings but as strange dialectical opposites
to this duality: that wouldn't encompass
my somehow yet to be owned:
me good & evil...

    me tamer - me: 19th century's frankenstein:
dr. Jekyll etc.
     a rule for life: apparently...
is to pet a cat when you see one
in the street...
it's not exactly an easy task...
i guess first a show of mutual
assurance (and respect) -
this black tubby - with a bandana
for where a leash-leftover could
have been (collar) -
he starts walking anti-clockwise...
i turn aside and start walking
clockwise to pass him...
then we shuffle our approach...
like... i would always want
to pass a pigeon strutting
senseless on the pavement
with enough space so that it doesn't
have to find it necessary to fly off...

luckily for me i managed to "pet"
a stranger's cat...
my luck that it was black
but then again it was that sort
of hour
that's always a presumption
of a lazy gotten afternoon...
rule of life: pet a cat on a street...
it's not exactly a ******* given:
an "oops"... done that... tick...
self-help guru sold this trick...
                    
a selfie contra the days...
when the camera was used and...
other people would take pictures
of you... or of you and:
when there was an "us" - together...
shorthand of the limbos of life -
magnum opus words
constipated into this: makeshift
of a hopeful paragraph...

no, this couldn't be a simple meditation:
confined to...
robert duncan's household -
and my predicament of... playing memory
chess: well it's not exactly clutter:
the kitchen cannot be used
so there's a makeshift refugee camp
version of it in the living room yadda yadda...

which is a commentary on...
my distrust for the h'american literary movement
of the 20th century teasing an abandonment
with the "old ways"...
buddhism, odd... mostly...
   fair enough:
              ezra pound abhorred the taoists...
my one lesson from tao...
the best way you can aid the world:
is for the world to forget you
and for you to forget the world...
which is probably a plagiarism
of epicurus or vice versa...

              i can't imagine the demands
of pop philosophy:
pop culture on the other hand is much
easier to stomach: it's even enjoyable -
but the pop philosophy of nihilism -
which is: a pop philosophy...
it's not even required reading -
unless: you're rereading your own?
thrown into the river -
i am becoming a being of more becoming...
change is the only perpetual: blah...
if it's not my own rummagings it's
probably someone else's:
which has probably become diluted /
filtered down and is a cubism's monstrosity...

books sell for two reasons:
(1) they are genuinely read by a zeitgeist youth...
which invokes social pressures of
the collected experience - in ref. to:
something that can be talked about...
(2) they are read by "propagandists" -
by a small majority who pressure others to...
but the pressure only lasts for
airs - for a mere ownership of a book
should one be met with a scrutiny of
not owning it - reading it is beside the point...

and here in the land of "leftovers":
the middle of the road the people:
who of their own volition write and read...
that i was never ****** into
a cult of stephen king...
i was born too late to be:
but i was: ****** into a postmortem
oeuvre deity picking almost
anything by william burroughs...
i: reader: dear reader: clicked...

- i can't objectify this house -
i am subject to it: coerced by it...
made by bias upon bias
whether there's clutter or there isn't...
whether the kitchen is functionable
or not: that some people have
a kitchen but prefer to eat out:
to be seen: eating...
             i check the gradations of
punctuations and i know: still...
i will not recite these words not
out of gestures for bombast -
or pride - but for some sinister
urge to not abuse this sacred silence:
******* taught man
to manouvre... manouvre...
manouvre... maneouvre...
        man-oeuvre...
                   drop the hyphen boyo:
manoeuvre... wow!
"too many" consonants
in ****** words... how about a
magic trick? how many *******
vowels are in: man-oovr'eh?
phonetics king of the anti-spelling:
but then...
the synonym sounds
with aliases...
towing two different meanings:
too hot to count two
          ooh ooze - zizzez...
              zyzzes...
                     i can bring this anglo-slack-son
to kneel but only for a while:
before the architectural scholarly-
  takes over and the phonetic becomes:
lost, crude... based feral...

- a robert duncan is not a...
it's not mediocre is not necessary to be:
gee-whizz of frank o'hara's
cosmopolitan...
it's flesh of the h'american tongue
it's: sensibly accurate to provide
the best outlet:
for those of us still born in that
century - of what remained of us:
or rather of what remained
of the innocence of the 1990s...

that i am not nostalgic is: no proof...
that i write hardly any word of fiction:
one spaniard, once... commented
on my shoes:
i think he played a miniature version
of a flute: it looked like a reed...
the "spanish" superstition
concerning: a comment on one's shoes...
he admired... my shoes...
what's that saying:
about shoes: to best walk in one's
own before wishing to fill the shoes
of others...
a verb as simple as: there's no
presence of "run": when coupled
to: i am running: i ran...
it's raining...
i run i ruin fun... concentrated
"rhyming": literally linear: no staccato...

******* me over "jenga"...
this microcosm of sounds -
yet to draw deep leverage from
a meaning: it comes back as a mere
sound: worse a... mimic -
an aeon of only hearing
the heaving of a crow's crackling
croak... like a breaking of a tongue:
or... the lost trill of the R in
either fwench or: english...

exemplified R: with a diacritical mark
to make emphasis of the trill...
i will not heed to market emphasis...
(Ꝛ if you might ask:
there's no leg to stand on...
the "R" falls into a turddle -
a tumble: a trill)...

ꝛ - a missing hammer: it would seem...
a sickle my dreading of apparents...

yes... this democratic oath of poets..
well: we're not going to tend to
the republic of the wizened goats
ex athens... are we?
the democratic oath of poets -
unlike the hippocratic loaf...
            which is a spectacular failure
since i have seen what
little ambitions can do:
when... the boat is not being
rocked: yet someone is still willing
to throw someone... overboard...
now that the boat is rocking:
i see nooses instead of paddles...
the seas are still rife with calm...

clamour for the subjective experince...
none of this: hammer to a nail
sort of "magic" that leaves
one... sensibly "ostententious":

a semi-decent poem contra:
a good night's sleep...
always the latter...
   but unlike today:
6am wake... giving blood for
scrutiny - subsequently...
a broad need for 4 hours in...
a makeshift wilderness...
from Hainault Forest
to Havering County Park...

                        i would clearly have
to start all over again...
should i mind reading back into Tironian
notes and what i had expected to find...
it will suffice to mind...
the characters of empress wu...

         國 (guo)

beginning: coming back to bite some back
from a beijing pork belly:
where you'd first have to make caramel
from the sugar dissolved in oil:
before all the wine would care to glisten...

             𤯔 (ren)...

                              in reverse:
ren-guo - people (of) nation...
                      walking past this field:
impromptu: please keep off of field...
that's what i read...
      this was exclusive -
there was not need to denote further...

and this funny oddity:
saying good-morning or a hello
in an environment that's beside...
walking down the street with a stable
hound of anonymity surrounding
crisp grey blockage of: the amass!
yet people are so expecting
a common courtesy to brief you
on a morning: good...
is it? incessantly so! apparently!
switch them to the torment of the cements
and the back-to-basics apathetic crew
is on the counter...
ghost faces...
  but push them far enough to be alone
and into nature:
they pass a stranger and apparently
demand a prompt: hello!

i go into a depth of nature like
i have *** with prostitutes in a brothel:
i want to have as little to do with talking
that i'd loan: smothering someone
to shut up...
i came for the crows the knee-high-hallubaloos
of nonsense that...
i will extract myself to break
fasting to give blood by foraging
some blackberries...

i still prefer the lesser democratic voices...
it's not that robert duncan was going
to be a stand-alone show akin
to gibsberg...
but... my house is currently in disarray...
i'm playing chess by having
a makeshift kitchen in my living room...
i don't even know where the spices
are! but i'll manage
to bake a **** fine moroccan kobhz!

- this little but current focus for a genetic
"protection": half of me,
then a quarter, an eight, a sixteenth,
a 32-and-a-third... jump toward
64... 128... and... from all these fractions:
half and half:
beauty is no longer viable:
i imagine love as being a prized
bull kept for nothing except
for ******* the gene pool silly...

that's "love" from a darwin from
a materialism: breeding racing horses
or... both the submissive
and the contentious workers -
pay up! but i am not looking
for the generic beauty of
the plateau of the women
employed as surrogates
in this darwinistic harem...
            
isn't it obvious? it would have been
better have be allowed ourselves
to be dead: aborted...
but then: critter load: make-up...
i actually offend my own existence
by affording these dorian gray
parades to take hope in puruing
norms...
i like the scaps i like the wounds
i even like nibbling on the shellfish!

****-****** literature is my achilles
heel...
better a heel than trodding along
with faking a ******* knee...
robert duncan... jack spicer...
i like reading eyes by (metaphorically)
licking up the ****...
and it's not like i might give good head...
i employ a growth of
***** hair to convert my chin
to a niqab like i might: perhaps blink...

then again: face-masks and fashion?
is... this... somehow...
a "thing"?
            well it must be new:
it's nothing from the sort
of the elders i might care to remember...
i walked the scenic route...
blackberries and horseshit...
everything is baking in a procrastination
of: tickle the rats' nibbling...
scrutiny of the lesser of the food
hierarchy: omnivore that i am...

yes... that i like petting criters
that find themselves adamant in their
superiority...
but who have yet to see me:
teasing myself with
a: what if...
                 hours match-up to
not keeping count: there's a fog of them
that goes way back to...
out of the womb... then abandoned
by the scholastic detail that
allows them to float: limbless...
and then return to earth: degenerate...
and less than amiable...

        douglas murray is probably
a hot topic... i too sometimes bewilder myself:
it would have been best to have
allowed the pendulum to swing both ways...
but he (ol' doug) speaks very well:
his writing is... beside the generic...
salt of grain: akin to my own...
for a cubic's worth of water...

    i don't want this tongue to be somewhow
exasperated with concerns for this / an "art"...
or that it can belittle a scientific bone...
thrown to the politics and red herring marches...
spins the doctor: no plates...
forever the new lies
kept in the same old... rhetorical: quirk-and-quickness
of the quilled-tongue...
a knock-knock stone cold: generic...
must: mediocre...
tired of living tongue of poetry
that has to become tired:
truth has to tire so easily...
so that politics: and the freshness
of lies and the no-niche-audience-allowance
can cast their:
"vote"... their... archaic... illiterate "X"..

i will not poetry for rhymes for
exasperations - fooled i: to you: to pursue
that paragraph of fiction - either...
but as freely as this will not:
become an exercise in myopic-claustrophobia...
so it will not rhyme:
perhaps: to advent a coming of my
prescribed punctuation:
but more: your own, your "post-nationalistic"
canadian:
something the people of India or
China will not share with you...
because:
they are still of the mindset: China...
India... hell! Russian is towing suitor!
individualism collapses nations...
whether with a homogeneity of ethnicity
or the heterogeneity of liberalism...

           a wonderful collage of stories...
from the 20th century:
agony aunt israel bewildering
to either confront or defend...
            2000 years have somehow passed
and: europe is no new: "anew"...
it's the same old bland palette
of readily ethno-primed availability
of spices...
hurrah for thyme! and rosemary! mint!

from some mythical above
to this drudge of the pressurised castor -
there was something about robert duncan
that might always have:
made me... diverge from...
it could have been expected...
stash a tonne of bricks by day...
weave in an escapism posit of cinema
come sabbath...
now... escapism into... where?!
critical reignition of marxism:
that sort of marxism my parents escaped
from from under the old soviet
yolk of the satellite state
of poland: thank **** i too am an
immigrant:
but i see no repatriation politics
either...
               go back to a state of
the littlest of all bald envy necropolis
Impoleons?

            no among my native people:
among the natives of these isles...
a thespian: knee deep in ****...
           faking best predicts a survival
rate of this uncoiling...
it's a nation full of: self-
pre-determina...
                  automated prefixation that
can never allow itself to:
make sensible coagulations
of the odd sociable pint...

this atom world this atom's worth
of man...
best life lived as designated
to a harem...
  my and my leftover "blues"...
this world of god and the adventures
of...
no longer available...
thus this one "reality" presented:
playing by man's rules
for the purpose of man's eventual:
transcendence...
a dwarf riding a hunchback
        toward a goal that's a talking donkey!

what's otherwise best?
this has to be an: exercise in futility -
that it had to come from somewhere like:
borrowed prior -
that it could only be borrowed prior:
this tongue had to be inherited:
it could never be acquired -
that a native speaker is...
of a higher status to a bilingual -
because the earth breathes rights...

i forget: i am not equipped
with the desirable physiognomy -
problem being:
when i might find black males
attractive like i might lions: distinct...
i have this ****** on my brain
that says to me...
  well... well...
     i'm not gay.. but i'm certainly
not heterosexual:
even if Flaubert might ask the question:
blondes, brunetters - afro-beauties:
ivory envy?
  what can i do? fest on a hard-on
chemical "oops" / short-cut?
i can't possibly have... a beijing fetish?
a mongol fetish?
i can't? there's only one variation
of interracial mixing...
i guess... so...

     it would be so much easier
to just be gay and leave this world
with a ******* massive **** salvo
of: not coming back!
               to **** a black girl:
not enough...
to not **** a black girl: doubly knot...
******* a lemon while
staring at the sun:
the sado-masochism of
all the post-colonial empires...
and me: whittle ol' resurrected
******... or searching:
the elder prus - the new estonians...
some little european *******...
i imagine...
going to Kenya and running
for parliament:
to concern myself for the voices
of the: minority!

it's... fiddling with the already
prescribed narrative:
trying to make a lee evans jokes
out of it... but...
it's not ******* happening woe-o'-sunshine...
is it?!
it's not like i'm strapped
to a northern monkey
reservation... while still retaining
my: immigrant southern fairy:
commuter hell "debate":
this is not devonshire...
this is not bristol: i'd love to scoop
up a life of a decade's worth
up in Bangor... but it's not even that...
pay by way to:
a collective identity crisis of:
zee vest...
            
if it's anger: perhaps...
it's more a seance in glorifying confusion:
it was once perhaps a little
bit... naive...
but then... who's naive enough
to repeat two-folds of yesterday
within the confines of a day:
to- / to- are not future even
if subjected to incremental changes...
fx/dx changes that might
spawn alternate realities...

        the breaking of a donkey's dollars
worth: i do fishing in the indian sea...
with some... somali pirates...
it's not like i'll ever wake up from
this guilt... the guilt that might
riddle a people that inherited...
i inherited exile from my fathers...
i inherited: no...
the ****** aristocracy didn't tend
to their garden... there was no Eton...
no rugby no football...
there was only a partitioning...
to look toward the past is
an agony that i wish to only hide
in the english countryside...
after all, i thought: who would't want...
make a feast of conquest of this land...
but in a way that was norman:
that the anglo-saxon debauchery could
be... delianted
and brought to a celtic-esque heel...
with a dash of neo-paganism:
a york-up sort o' pie...

without disturbing this dilligent
people of: a most fervent... attention to detail...
it's an island... it's devoid
of any continental squabble...
no mongol ever... no ottoman ever...
it break my heart...
it reminds me: although it shouldn't
remind me...
the aristocratic class (they deem themselves
as much, so why deny them?)
of this country are like the ******
aristocracy
of the three partition "era"...
as napoleon was celebrated "elsewhere"...
with the resurrection
of the duchy of warsaw...
and... england made a beef from
a wellington...
and how the confederacy of germans
repaid the english during the first:
thirst for war...

                   a shogun's pride:
no one would invade japan:
given the persistence of pressure
from a civility of: glamour creases...
it's still the ******* canon rolling
the pawns and pins...

i have but this little interlude in time
to entertain: a history i have learned...
beside citing the obvious apple
hanging on a tree...
who? the burning vietnamese monk?
that's who i am going to... erase...
2000 (circa) years of history with?
this is how i play: conquistador-catch-up?!
this is my whittle muhammad
stage-fright?!

these new surgical masks are
not imitations of the niqab...
the arabs are not drying up their dinosaur
marrow reserves and are not
scouting for willing sodomite freshers
to their gargantuan wealth-soiling
of "morals"?
no? this is all... a pauper's conspiracy
theory... god!
i try to imagine the conspiracy
theory of kings!
it must invite a realisation of
a god or gods...
and at least a quarter of an abstaining
pademomium!

the poets and the sceptics
living under: the... gates are open...
a republic under "scrutiny"...
the philosophers and the
geocentrists - have allowed
for nothing more... than this...
thespian "bureucracy" of
shadow "fiddling"... tail with now:
tail best quite...

attention spanning the glorifications
of non-replica, generic
Solomon comes to the furore
front: then a mismatch
when the brain: swiss cheese project:
is treated at the Avignon
pontiff...
the harem and debauchery shifts
focus...
there's that "we're" and...
dumb-lasso-dumber than you'd
pay the libido of a camel with: for...

i have to always imagine myself
petting cats... or dogs...
to have to dissociate myself from having
perfect: the needs for either halal or
kosher demands of leather...
i best prefer the pipsqueak of
a meow to... an actual oink
in the litany of cogs and perhaps:
clogging up the machinery of
"jurisprudence"... as some Jain might...

borrow from... export very little to...
come the omnivorse of the east
and all succumb to:
boy-scout avenues of:
yes ss'ir...
most loathsome ss'ir...
                     i have to interrogate
the dead man as i am:
the best example of a cul de sac
of dreams: the...
pedestrian could mind not thinking:
imagine: imagine the corpus deity
of: unimaginable thought...
or one which has
an alias: unthinkable imagiation...

memory freelance architect prior
to noon...
is somewhat justified with...
a boredom of a cat come
5pm... but by then...
no cat is ever really bored...
and i have no need to concern
myself with dogs... or leashes...
or desires to: address a
workability of legs...
          to: give scrutiny when all
other examples are wheelchair bound...

he held a piece of paper:
between his hands... like my shadow might:
hold a butterfly...
exasperation:
that philosophers of ancient greece
said: poets begone!
no wonder this...
currency... of wanting to imitate
a petting of animals...
and... this thespian autocracy
that no elders could abide by...
it can still be excused:
the role of actors:
the role of shadow-thieves...

it can still be salvaged...
some of us are still the same rummaging:
in ruinous...
wordsmiths or... best...
plumbers... not some aspirtation
beckons for youth...
it must rhyme:
it must come down to: 2 + 2 = 4
sort of: flimsy poetics...

i'd must prefer to be a
homosexual plumber these days
that my very own mediocre leftover...
thank god i do not encompass
a courtship of a woman:
then imagine!
what did i do with my time:
that i do so much!
having made... so little money!
ghosts can't spend: ****!
i did with my time that
would not allow woman
to turn time into money!
thus i turned money into monkey's
play on elephant and
called tha pennies: p'p'eh-nuts!

  the old man dies:
the youth of man was never
supposed to be born;

god... this was supposed
to be profound?
with this idiosyncratic lost...
spontaneity of punctuation...
i take this reading as
a leverage for making
image: of an anchor dropped:
that would sink the ship.

Wu's dope was stolen
one white cocksucka, no two
Wu Swedgin hang dai

Hey Harvey Wallbanger
I’d like you to tie me to the bedpost, baby
And press your fuzzy navel to my slippery ******.
Give me your white angel kiss and I’ll lie down like a brown cow
While between the sheets you play the Italian stallion.

Like a kamikaze pilot head for my pink squirrel
Then give me your ol’ Alabama slammer
And pack a *** punch into that screwdriver of yours.
I want a screaming ******
That’ll send me to blue heaven. Wu Wu!

So, don’t mention that ****** Mary
With her devil’s kiss,
Or you’ll find I can give a snake bite that’s as deadly as a B-52.

Instead let’s ride into the tequila sunset in our golden Cadillac
For *** on the beach
And on the sea breeze we'll hear an old love song sung by a ‘salty dog’ with a Gibson
And watch a tropical storm over Manhattan
We'll go to Peppermint Patti’s café
And order an Irish coffee and a large slice of cherry pie.

Happy, after dark let’s drive home for a sloe comfortable ***** with satin pillows
And fall into the sweet surrender of a summer dream.

Bodhidharma, the first Zen patriarch,
told Emperor Wu that merit
meant nothing;
but great emptiness
revealed by sitting facing a wall
had great merit.
Wu was perplexed.

Patriarch number two, Hui-k’o,
faced a granite wall in a forest for seven years;
it became his beloved.

Seng-Tsan, the third Zen patriarch wrote poems
and his legendary Hsinhsinming verse
transcended all the unnecessary duality
in the mind’s mire.

Tao-Hsin, patriarch number four,
said don’t’ stare at a wall,
just do the laundry
and watch the clear water
turn brown
then pour it onto the vegetables in the garden
when you’re done.

Patriarch five, Hung-Jen
meditated from age six staring at the horizon
and said if you find the line between sky and land and sea
you slip into infinity
with no sky, land and sea
just one place for the mind to finally rest.

Hui-Neng came next;
no wall
no laundry water
no heavenly horizon
just fascinating monkey mind
sometimes full, sometimes empty
running whichever way, whenever,
and that was all good.

The 300-year Tang dynasty
had three wild man patriarchs-
Ma-Tzu shouted constantly;
Pai-Ching did laundry,
and Huang-Po told everyone
they were already enlightened
and should not bother  with Zen at all.

Lin-Chi was the Jesus of Zen
who loved everybody everyday.
He taught the heart’s clear natural action,
compassion, not walls and laundry and trying not to think.
His love was wiser than his mind.

The patriarchs of zen
taught more than a thousand years
before I grew up an American idiot
in a materialistic world
populated by narcissistic borderline freaks
thumbing smartphones in leather car seats
never doing laundry
afraid to face the walls
built of brick made
mortared tight together
with the fear
of their own compassionlessness.

Search. Search. Seek. Seek.
Cold. Cold. Clear. Clear.
Sorrow. Sorrow. Pain. Pain.
Hot flashes. Sudden chills.
Stabbing pains. Slow agonies.
I can find no peace.
I drink two cups, then three bowls,
Of clear wine until I can’t
Stand up against a gust of wind.
Wild geese fly over head.
They wrench my heart.
They were our friends in the old days.
Gold chrysanthemums litter
The ground, pile up, faded, dead.
This season I could not bear
To pick them. All alone,
Motionless at my window,
I watch the gathering shadows.
Fine rain sifts through the wu-t’ung trees,
And drips, drop by drop, through the dusk.
What can I ever do now?
How can I drive off this word —
Hopelessness?

In a city full of fake thugs and now record beef they just settle it with 8 slugs
There rose a kid from out of Rogers parkway who kicks slow flows containing dopamine in the bars I slay like Dre Day I'm celebrating out the melon insane like dry water the sheep I'll slaughter like a psychopathic ******* with a daughter
Allow me to introduce Nero The Damphir psychotic and I kick knowledge like a field goal my pen is spinning the rumpelillest gold causing static with the lyrical automatic I splatter brains on the floor it's a nasty habit to endure.

I'm Chicago's poet I spit knowledge and split spines with the rhymes so solid no one will notice I roll this ***** up like the best cest and smoke it unless you take it off the wax and into the turf I'll make you taste the salt of the earth and after you're in the dirt I'll bear you like Paul you have no chance at all against me the pen is all I need to destroy then employ my victims my rhymes stay within them like That dude they net in juvenile detention center I'm centric on hip-hop that is I got love for cold crush sugarhill grandmaster flash and whodini Wu-Tang naughty by nature and Cypress Hill

In a culture founded on a story, a tale, a myth;

On earth, under many moons, since many moons ago.

How old was the moon marker long ago?
How wise the watcher who waited so long, whole days,
long past, imagining, from highest place on the broad plain

soaring on fire wind, gentle fire wind warming my will
to extend my arms and wish to fly, not flee, no fear,
nothing needs my escape,

yet, once set free, the kid grows into the old goat,
who laughs in the face of the God-fearing models molded
during the Cold War,
when manipulators
of reflection
were existentially
slipping
on Freudean Faux Pas
turned sharp and piercing, biting, gnawing - tantalizing
secrets in the city,
secrets on the wall,
secrets in the synagogue, AI ai ai, we rearrange good fortune,

lucky for you.
Today, for the brief while it may truly be today,
time stands

still as that singular small voice, calling you to attend,

forsake not the gathering together, as the manner of some is,
{As Ecklebarger said, no, you don't know him- he said:
something like "gitcher act together and put your show
on the road", that's the duty of a show man.

GOTDAM INTINERANT MONKS! Kick against the ******,
laugh at their nationally altered deep set fears,
faith of our fathers, the we
mind, made up
for selective tasks in a free society, i.e.
we think together, no doubt, deny thy double-mind flesh…
become educated, then lead on being one
in we, the people, not the other beings,
useless sons of Belial, too dumb to read and cipher, as we,
the real people who own the earth, and do our damndest
to subdue it and all its potential,
for change, in favor of the better bettors,
entertaining those whose heaven would be Vegas,
socially free, free thinking, doing the right thing we all think right.
Conserve our free ******* through human events, lean in
- what do old-school organizations tie with heart strings?
- must we conserve the knots?
- One taught by Aristotle thought not…
- allusions to common knowledge allude us, play along--
Is ai ah, okeh, awesome we ought unravel the knots,
gently, as we learned the silk weavers did,

and as we did, with our collectible spider kites…

correct me, when I go off track,
or rise riverwise on the flood,
loosed by a line from a poet, an actual messenger person,
in my coincidence instant
in prayer for another day called today, long past
now, even then,
U the set of all things and the force that made them up.
- let this mind be in you, to use, not ogle at.
Creation with intention,
not design,
not acting out a story begun properly,
with the end in mind,
going
somewhere. Among the Youtubian talking faces,

turbulence… mind trembling
in a we imagining GOD ALMIGHTY
left
clues behind.
Fret not.
- tune down the IDW, umph the free will
- listen with all the wu wu in you, think peace functioning.
We won.

Live in peace, be your own proof.

I learned I was the scapegoat, I got away. Life is not hard,
life under the conserved sacred knowledge called revealed,
is impossible,
to do right… it is a Shakenspear in the itching ear, thinking
what if, this is it
the right way?

Would there be these moments, extending axion or oms or Ohms
humming wires
and, two chalk walls away, sisters, 8 and 11, singing, actual

choral opera de-Disneyified, with some themes from Stanger Things.
- and I on my imaginary strand
Softly land on my cloud, all the room you may imagine,
at the moment, you look around
and see, this is my future, too. Fractally, one rung up. Maybe.

It was the eve of the mid-autumn festival. Day had followed day of clear skies but ever-lower temperatures had brought crisp and chill mornings. Zuo Fen began to fear that a first frost would damage her late flowering plants, the delicate tea flowers of the osmanthus. She was already aware of the seven grasses of autumn now present in her garden and would recite standing amongst them the traditional seasonal poem:
 
Flowers blossoming

in autumn fields - 

when I count them on my fingers

they then number seven.

The flowers of bush clover,

eulalia, arrowroot, 

pink, patrinia, 

also, mistflower 

and morning faces flower.
 
Oh the whiteness of Autumn, the season of courage and sadness, a time for the lighting of white candles against the dying of the day. Upon rising Zuo Fen would stand in meditation facing west, the seasonal direction of dreams and visions. Again and again her mind state visited a habitation in the distant mountains, a sprawling summer palace seemingly empty but for the slightest echoes of recent occupation or maybe a caretaker’s attention. In her recurring vision she would walk from room to room, each kaleidoscopic in colour of hanging silks and elaborate murals. Eventually she would find her way outside into a neglected garden that dropped in gentle terraces to a lake where she would observe the ‘thousand colours of water, brilliances and blues.’
 
One morning a young chamberlain sent from her Lord visited her court. He had remained rapt at the sight of the courtesan of the Purple Chamber standing trance-like in her garden. Meng Ning had often positioned himself in the undertaking of the Emperor’s duties to communicate with Zuo Fen, whom Meng Ning admired and was secretly enamored. A few well-chosen words of respect and critical admiration for the poetess had been all it took for Emperor Wu to summon Meng Ning as courier of his express command to his most favoured concubine. Unfailingly gracious towards the formal attentions of the young man Zuo Fen had come to feel at ease with this respectful figure who had succeeded in charming both her cats and Mei Ling her maid.
​       As she stood motionless, attired in her gardening robe and clogs, she became aware of Meng Ning’s presence and, before turning to acknowledge him with a greeting, allowed a thought to form in herself. She would seek his help to identify the summer palace of her waking dreams.
       ​Yes, he knew of such a place, sixty li distant, a hard path it was said, but ladies of the court had once graced its many linked pavilions in the third season. The lake held a restless spirit and it was said no boat had ever sailed its surface. How did he know this, she had asked. A petition from a recluse, a former minister of the treasury, had been received at court requesting its occupation for the winter months. It had been refused, indeed dismissed without further consideration. Meng Ning had been curious as he had once viewed the lake from its western end, but from which the habitation was entirely hidden. Did the Honoured Lady know of the mysterious Red Slate Path said to appear briefly from out of a cave in the steep wooded hillside, cross a bowl-like glade and disappear into the lake depths? The Honoured Lady did not, but was nevertheless caught by Meng Ning’s description which, when he had delivered his message from Emperor Wu and retired, she fell to placing inside her already rich vision of property, lake, and precipitous woodland whose trees and bushes she was busy mind-painting with autumn leaves and berries.
 
After a day of thought and planning Zuo Fen developed an intricate strategy to visit the palace and environs of Eryi-lou. She told herself that she was searching for inspiration to compose an autumn sequence for her Lord that would recall the days of his esteemed father. She had discovered in the palace archives that in his declining years he had summered in this remote place, had filled its pavilions with only his most favoured concubines, its guest apartments with poets and musicians. She asked for Meng Ning’s services as guide and protector.
​      She had expected a blunt refusal, but to her astonishment, her request was granted, but only during the twelve days surrounding her monthly courses. She had smiled at this condition having been almost entirely free from her natural cycle for several years, something not unknown for a woman who had never been with child. Mei Ling dutifully made apparent false evidence of this charade.
​       It was a small party that left the Eastern Gate on a day that promised rain and high wind; seven in all, four to carry Zou Fen’s sedan. But this was to be understood as a matter of protocol rather than necessity, as within 6 li of the palace a pair of ponies for Zou Fen appeared in the road. Drawing back the curtains of her sedan she stepped out dressed as a male traveller, her movements and manner in such a disguise confidently rendered from her months searching for her brother Zuo Si in the wilderness of the Tai Mountains. Meng Ning was both astonished and alarmed as he had not been forewarned of this way of things. It seemed that Zuo Si had probably made all the necessary arrangements.

(to be continued)

A cold rain mingled with the river
at evening, when I entered Wu;
In the clear dawn I bid you farewell,
lonely as Ch'u Mountain.
My kinsfolk in Loyang,
should they ask about me,
Tell them: "My heart is a piece of ice
in a jade cup!"

Profile:
Yuwen Chengdu is the son of Yuwen Huaji, who was a general of the Sui dynasty. He is a warrior of Sui, only secondary to Li Yuanba, who is naturally super powerful. As recorded, he was as tall as ten feet with strong waist and body. In the appearance of golden face, long beard and thick eyebrow, he often hold a weapon as heavy as 350 pounds.

Introduction of ****** makeup:
****** makeup, or Lian Pu, refers to ****** designs for Jing and Chou roles. It originated from daily life experience, describing such changes of expression as white for fear, red for shyness, dark for suntan, and sallow for illness. Most ****** designs attach great importance to the eyes.  The ****** designs for the Jing roles are made by painting, powdering and coloring in the basic forms of Zheng Lian (keeping the basic face pattern), San Kuai Wa Lian (three-section face) and Sui Lian (fragmentary face). These types are widely used to represent generals, officials, heroes, gods and ghosts. The Chou actors can be recognized by the patch of white in various shapes painted around the eyes and nose. Sometimes these patches are outlined in black, hence the term Xiao Hua Lian (partly painted face). The Chou roles fall into the following two categories: Wen Chou and Wu Chou.

Features:
****** makeup bears three main characteristics. Firstly, it is the unity and contradiction of beauty and ugliness. Secondly, it is closely related to the personality of the characters. Lastly, the patterns are stylized.

Beijing opera is one of the most popular drama widely welcomed and loved, no matter home and abroad. It is now acknowledged as a sign of Chinese traditional culture. The photos of ****** mask can be found on large buildings, product packages, various porcelains and clothes. It has gone beyond the stage, from which we can see the deep influence of ****** makeup. More and more foreigners have interest in it and begin to explore the secret of ****** makeup.

http://www.toywill.com

I'm going to try a little less
to do a lot more

Con fide ence cadence
Semper fi, I the ego in the narrator
making wu wei from
around
in
to out a bit, this to that
as we know
we grew, we know we grow

spontaneity- eh, next next next
time
not this time, mmmm

------------
in the body

sense of other, this is the I they say
ego is the enemy,
love thy enemy, I say

schwahng-****- ting tang
walla walla bing ****
be the laugh
and be the clown, fret not,

this is that
all at once upsidedowninsideout in a word
we are wedom in the sense the wu wei
wei we are making this up, not making this up
we are shown
as we were I once doing the efforting,

wishing to become old and happy,
all my prayers answered in enough and
enough to share with no sorrow added as debt

see me see me see you see me clever
and proud of how fun the giggle is as song,

comfort the feeble mind, it too is mine,
let me rest in the joy of having this time
as mine, in the global reality lit with power
that powers this body using fingers to find letters
to let words
form from better ideas, bet. Put your money down,

opposing forces, from within, we never were
as those who fit the mould of a place native to us,
our kind,

not that kind, this kind, be kind, love, be loving
think
this is friendly, no aggressive faces made, no blush
of rage,
perhaps, yes, haps, here we pursued, but we
ensued peace after passing all we include in me
the
body… and the mind that runs it
and the mind that knows it, so from the top of my head
to the bottom of my feet,
I accept is in state,
in the body, I can say, I am in the body and I have
magic, given as "black box" think what one can make
given the means
to fret not, not a bit o'worry brain, think up a storm

find a way to fill the need, felt real, real empty,
useless, in terms of the whole truth, really
useless, what do I know, I know I lie
about how happy I would be if
next time you could sing wit'me.

Who has a head empty of will to wonder if we can
think we can can we think we can and be happy

when we think we
dodidonitdonit seem we may as well take a given

grin and invest it in the hope, that someday
your day gets,
better to specs, regularly reset to random, wei, wu wei. We, me.

Magi always bring Magic, among other
things, Frankincense was given me to give,
some kids bring tobacco.

Sunday, in our world with weeks
and months and years, in constant tension
pulling days from our lives, as gone-by,
but barely acting once in decades
of note, until
daily news of those who did
begins to pile up and tends to overflow
into to story, myth, and history, fit
with screwy prosody
and no practical scheme for rhyme…

all proving, now is after all that,
our access to mind wandering excursing,
excusing your innocence and ignoring
your being not so,
not so innocent, nor
feeble of mind, un exercised in godliness.

Yes, this
is the blessed assurance that we
were not the first to be
Perfectly Normal, Thank you.

------- and, further more

mind wandering is not a wartime pleasure.

Forward Tactical Operations Center,
some where
actual place, a point in time and space,
to you from me,
actively, choosing to rise to the occasion,
and bow to the overall situation,

life is attractive, not repulsive,
knowing is appealing to the best in me,
not the lazy
good for nothing I can be, with no help
from you or any
strange
power not mine to use,

con-sci, come see, came saw, and a we
arose to agree, this might
e
see, esse, e, this might be power, lying idle.

--- balance of power? Ha. Push
comes to shove, and wishes we could
make up a reason
to enjoy today as the final sure thing.

-- it was a darkthonic thought ought shall should

Substrates, strata below, this pliant surface,
gurgle, signaling nothing, save, more or less,
a belch, or a ****, more like,
ew, {cell phone- in a search pattern}
we need not more of that,
what stink think ye we ought celebrate,

buffoon?

Suppose we all know the story behind
or under as we may,
surmise, compromising prized right ness
given up over down,
stand up, fall down, prop up hold down

proper propping
propagate a reason, fit to this season
- autumn, ends the year, winter
- starts next
now
all this de novo knowing, for the price of attention
you may know, not freely,
known, but freely taken as known before, by others
of our kind,

-- I am distracted by a blue jay, on the rock
-- behind the thinker comes
the thought, dragging it's feet, to make clouds of dust,
because,
the dust is there, and does this flying at my desire
to see once, and again, the effect of

me at six, mind wandering on a dry and dusty trail,
-- realizing
confabulatory stories are in fact
"perfectly normal, thank you. A basket of eggs, or a basket
of

air, empty air, no signal, no closing inverted commas.

Have we lost the magic?

---
No listen, ah, and smell,
the bacon, ah, forbidden meat,
smells so good, does it not, smell so good?

It might not **** you, son, but hell of a price
you pay for taking a bite, of some thing
due to it smelling,
so good.

--------- setting, as the propagated
translation of tradition to kab-allah, I say
a wish in time to pre
vent any explosive out burst of gut dispute,

per and may haps rise around me, big
am, we, m'fam… wakes in me a joy,
quite normal,
joy of a grandfather, finishing the faith
a character has developed,
while making, wei true, making wei wu
wu wu of the ever skeptical sepsis sort,
test this
T-cell, is this us? Or is this MERSACOVIDEO
override, through the bluetooth meanies

missing since the Yellow Submarine sunk
in Central Park, c. 1968.

Around the time Dubcek lost to the Commies.
Same season when North Korea got the Pueblo.

The tangled web,
seen in the sunlight topping the eastern wall,
George Harrison, perfect timing
every time I remember, this is real, out there
nearer the edge of my light cone,
from c.1968…

deception, ungrip the gripped fist,
monkey reaching for the fly in the bottle,
that chatters incessantly of having lived before,
monkey fist
feels something sticky,
is it… curious as george, for dammedshore,
a wave
of recognition, there's Waldo,
and Magic, Incorporated, free to reread, and
seed into my grand children,
who are reading the same hard back
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, that
I brought home to their mother after the trip
to Huston, during HP's takeover of Compac,

No, correction, it was after the trip to Denver.
--- sidetrack breadcrumb Quark and metadata

The Abby Well**

Rahu, old sage of Wu Tai Shan,
Stood by the Great Doors of the Abby.
His dog slept at his feet.

The wood gatherers were descending from the mountain
Their carts piled high with kindling.
They stopped to draw water from the Abby well.

One woodsman spoke up.
“Hey old man, why is the armies of the north
Encamped on the west wall?”

“I have not been so informed until now” Rauh replied.
“Let me ask my dog Ketv.”
The dog arose and stretched its back.

“My dog is also ill informed.” he said.
“I thought you were the sage, old man.”
The woodsmen laughed.

“Is it your dog that speaks to you?
Let me hear his wise advice”.
“He will not speak except to me.” replied Rauh.

“The old monk’s dog barks at the moon. What does it mean?”
A woodsman mocked.
Refreshed the woodsmen left laughing and barking like dogs.

Soon thereafter Ketv began to sniff the air becoming very excited
“Go fetch the wandering monk of Wu Tai Shan,” Rayh implored,
“And I will stoke the fire and prepare tea.”

Soon the wanderer came into sight, thin, clad in rags,
With weathered skin and shining eyes.
“ You need not have sent Ketv to lead me back” he shouted from the Abby gate.

“I can not deny a dog his duty,
I can not lead those that will not follow.
Come here and bless this shrine with your wisdom” thus spoke Rayh.

As your Laughter burst Tears of Sigh Relief
Him having left your Morning Heart deserved
Purse his Regret; Your Shining Light revealed
And Transform to Prime Victory reserved
This is your Day. Which Days will follow Print
And more would your Candles stoke Blessings a-light
To Follow your Waves; Which Waves define your Mint
And make Honoured Suitors open for your Sight
By this - Friend - invest such Time for your Hour
Though Connected Bonds take much to un-tangle
That - in due Sincere - place Wishes from a-far
Only for your Joy which God will Handle.
And your Heart - the Reservoir - fills Great Sense
Share your Themes to the World; And all in due hence.

Yo.
This powder
Got mad kick.

Zuo Fen meets Jia Li and her child Hui Ying. The temporary guardian of the palace speaks with the help of one of the pack-horse men who understands something of the dialect this young woman owns. Zuo Fen would rather envelope Jia Li with her eyes than communicate in three-way speech. And so when Jia Li begins haltingly to tell the same tale told to Meng Ning the previous night Zuo Fen halts her translator with a gesture until the story – and this is what it appears to be – is told.

(Here Zuo Fen assumes the persona of Jia Li as part of her rhapsody titled The Sorcerer of Eryi-lou)

Alone in this crumbling palace
I guard my father’s charge,
He has been ill since late Spring
And I have disgraced my family
With a child whose father stayed
but a week trading horses.
Hui Ying was born here
And here we hope to stay.

I have now come to recognize
Many spirits of the past.
Mostly invisible I take them by surprise
In their mortal form; meeting a lady
And her maid on the hall terrace;
Seeing two men bent over
A game of go in a lesser chamber.
Music and the sound of poetry float
Variously through the many rooms.
The aroma of food comes and goes.
The burning of incense is ever present.

For many seasons my village supported
Palace life during the Emperor’s summer visits.
We provisioned and provided animals
For food and transport. Our young men,
Our women too were propositioned
For the more elaborate practices of the court.
Twenty summers long the palace secured for us
a livelihood beyond expectation.

Over time the events of the Emperor’s
Last sojourn in the palace became
For us the stuff of legend, though we do not
Embroider its story and have remained silent
Out of respect for the Emperor’s memory.
We know his son has rarely ventured here.

Let me only tell what has come from
my father’s lips, what he as a young man
Witnessed and through his guardianship
Has protected and honoured. He was chosen
By officials of the Emperor as a trusted servant,
A man who would oversee what had been precious,
What had been valued here, and is still deemed to be.

My father has spoken to me of the disappearance
Of the Emperor’s second wife with the sorcerer Yang Mo,
A disappearance witnessed by the whole company of visitors,
By the Emperor himself, and his son. I am charged to tell
Of this only to those bearing Emperor Wu’s seal.  Know I speak
With all truth and honesty in lieu of my father’s presence.

Amongst the many guests honoured by the Emperor
The sorcerer Yang Mo arrived by invitation
To spend part of the third season at Eryi-lou.
Already well-known to the court he had come
At the express wish of second wife Xie Jiu.
It is said that he created many remarkable illusions.
Unusual objects and rare animals were summoned to appear,
Rain fell and winds blew inside the Emperor’s hall,
There were piercings of flesh and limbs seemingly severed.
One morning it is said Yang Mo caused a boat
To appear on the lake, thereby at odds with the legend
That no vessel should ever touch its surface. Forthwith,
The Emperor decreed that such sorcery should
cease. But he was discouraged by second wife Xie Jiu
Who wished to visit the boat and sail on the lake.
Yang Mo offered to escort her across the waters
And led the assembled company to a small beach where
A path of red slate had been laid.  This appeared from
within a cave in the hillside. From thence it travelled
to the water’s edge and beyond, under the water
in the direction of the magical boat. Yang Mo is said
to have brought wind and fire and smoke
To play upon the company, finally inviting Xie Jiu to step
On the Red Slate Path and accompany him across the waters.
The couple walked slowly down the path into the lake
Gradually divesting themselves of their garments
As the waters consumed them. Then, before their very eyes
The Emperor’s guests and entourage saw the boat
Enveloped in a pall of smoke and disappear from view.
Yang Mo and Xie Jui were never seen again.

The Emperor was enraged, realizing suddenly
he had been tricked and made to look a cuckold
in front of his own court. In such a remote region
He had the slenderest of means available
to search for the missing couple. He resolved
to leave Eryi-lou immediately. Neither He or
His son nor his court has ever returned.

Allowing Jia Li to tell this tale without interruption had proved a right and wise decision. No sooner had the young woman realized her story had grasped the undivided attention of this celebrated courtesan than her words of description seemed to take on a rough poetry. Zuo Fen felt herself summoning unbidden images of the sorcerer’s illusions, moments of secret and forbidden congress between Yang Mo and Xie Jiu, the appearance of the sailing vessel from the early morning mists, the lovers slowly processing down the Red Slate Path, the disbelief and then fury of the Emperor.
      When Jia Li had taken leave to comfort her infant child Zuo Fen called Mei Lim to summon Meng Ning. She was clearly troubled by how her autumn visions from the west had brought her to this place and its unforeseen legacy of magic and deceit. The illusion of the sailing vessel and the walk into the lake on the Red Slate Path, both were elaborate and well-contrived artifices. They required skilled assistants and collaborators and the most careful planning. Sitting in silence opposite one another the courtesan and the chamberlain set their minds to consider the possible and elaborate trickery that might have been brought to bear on the complicit theft of the Emperor’s second wife. It seemed clear that all official record of what had passed had been expunged, and the Emperor had decided to abandon not only his summer sojourn but also his palace - immediately and forever.
        Zuo Fen wondered at the fate of the lovers. There could be no future for them within the known territories of the Empire. Their lives would have to begin again far distant. The province of Yunnan perhaps? But she laid that thought aside.

(to be continued)

I told you I loved you
With a smirk you dismissed me
We couldn’t be
I hid the pain
You don’t know how much it broke me

In the same circle
We hide
In the same crew
We hide
We’re good at telling lies

How could you be so oblivious?
You see me and never see what’s hidden
The pain you gave me
The games…
You just ******* played me

Everyday I carry this pain
This pain that forces me to self-destruct
A forbidden love that is so corrupt
But that’s just our game

But that’s the last time I swore
I’d never tell you again that I loved you
Because you’re stuck with that *****
And you know the choice you made
Cut us apart
And it was with your own blade

Our friends don’t know about us
We’re caught up in our fame
We both choose to hide
When will we finish our ****** up game?

7 am
On a cold
Hardly carpeted
Floor of a one
Room apartment
In a ******
Not quite big
But big city
Full of bugs
That flit
And fly
Around me
In flashes
Of astounding
similarities
And I’m wide
The **** awake
Because of the
Cats in heat
And the glimpse
Of the future
In a kitten
Named Fiona
Who is attacking
My outstretched
Hand on the floor
And I wonder
If she really thinks
It’s a spider
Or five snakes
I mean
I really have
No idea what
This chick
Is seeing
Then
The sounds of a
House being
Torn down in
Charred and
Smoke painted
Pieces of wood
And personal things
So sorries
And oh wells
Floods the
Room from outside
And swells to
Replace the
Cats who have retired
To slumber
And the kitten off
Exploring somewhere
And still I lie
Eyes wide
Waiting for the
Appropriate time
To get my coffee
And bagle
And finagle
My way through
Another day
Of the same old
Same old
That old grind
The old grind
The five to nine
After nine to five
And I dive
Into
The image
Of coffee being
Ground and
Its sounds
Lay me to rest.

The shaman entranced,
Dances around me with his high minded spirits,
                                 Feathers in hand!!!
He stops,
And screams !!!!!!!

Mine land,
Thou art killing mine land!!!
Mine people,
Thou art killing mine people!!

Thy own,
Thyself,

You've lost!!!!!!

Canst thou not remember from whence thou came ?

At that moment after the shamans screaming cry,
                                       I entranced right along with him!!!