For financial advisors wanting to increase the assets they manage, a number of situations provide tremendous opportunities. These are situations where there is “money in motion,” investable assets now available to be managed.

These opportunities are all put in motion by a “trigger event.” One example is inheriting significant sums from an affluent parent. Another example is the monies provided to an ex-spouse as part of a divorce settlement.

For most financial advisors, the greatest opportunity to capture money in motion is when a successful business owner sells his or her company. Worldwide, the most significant creator of personal wealth is entrepreneurism. Moreover, most successful entrepreneurs are only rich on paper until they sell a portion or all of their companies.

When they monetize the value of their firms, they have investable assets that they often turn over to investment professionals to manage. This scenario is unquestionably one of the very best ways for financial advisors to bring in more assets to manage.

Most Entrepreneurs Want To Be Wealthier

In order to win the investment business of these entrepreneurs, it is useful for you to understand that becoming wealthy was (and is) a core motivation of their business building efforts. In a survey of 513 business owners, a little more than nine out of 10 of them want to become significantly wealthier than they are today (Exhibit 1). Moreover, all of them strongly recognize that their ability to become wealthier is a function of the success of their business.

There are often many reasons business owners want to be wealthier. Taking care of loved ones regularly tops the list (Exhibit 2). The success of the business and their ability to maximize personal wealth is usually instrumental in this regard.

At the same time, about seven out of 10 entrepreneurs said they are interested in doing more to support worthy charitable causes (Exhibit 3). Again, the success of their business and their ability to translate that success into personal wealth can be significant in enabling these business owners to be more philanthropic.

A core motivation for most entrepreneurs is personal wealth creation. This often carries over into how they want their monies invested once they sell all or part of their businesses. It is useful to note that the majority of business owners who monetize their companies are not walking away with hundreds of millions of dollars. Most businesses are small or midsize businesses, and there are often equity partners and possibly investors. This frequently means that the entrepreneurs are looking to have the monies that they entrust to investment professionals grow (Exhibit 4).

Skipping The ‘Fashion Show’

When entrepreneurs have considerable liquid assets after selling their companies, they regularly turn to financial advisors to manage all or a portion of these monies. This often results in a fashion show where a stream of investment professionals vies for the attention (and funds) of the former business owner.

About one in 10 considered a single investment professional. About three out of 10 deliberated between two financial advisors. More telling, about 60% looked at three or more investment professionals.

There are regularly a plethora of factors that go into winning a fashion show. Some of them are money-management-related, such as performance track record and investment philosophy. Sometimes, the deciding factor is chemistry or lack thereof between the financial advisors and the former entrepreneur. It is always preferable to be the singular financial advisor being considered to manage the money.

When only one financial advisor was considered, in every case there was a pre-existing relationship. This is the key to skipping having to compete once the entrepreneur has significant liquid assets to invest.

For financial advisors, the ability to avoid the fashion show as well as dramatically increase the probability of winning most, if not all, of the business owner’s asset management business is to be involved before the sale and endorsed by trusted professionals the entrepreneur is already working with.

It is important to recognize that nearly nine out of 10 successful business owners would like to, at some point in time, sell their companies (Exhibit 6). This provides professionals with meaningful opportunities to help them maximize their personal wealth from the sale. However, only about 15% of entrepreneurs are taking such action (Exhibit 7). This opens the door for many financial advisors to be involved with these successful business owners before the sale.

Getting directly involved can prove exceedingly beneficial for business owners. The most efficacious way to do this is by being recommended by their accountants. While successful business owners will usually rely on a variety of professionals, it is apparent that their accountants are regularly their primary “go to” resource. As so many critical business decisions are entwined with the financials of the company, these entrepreneurs depend on their accountants to help them navigate the possibilities and make wise choices.

Even where financial advisors are not involved before the sale, for most entrepreneurs the advice of the accountants proves to be a key determinant to whom to entrust new liquid assets. Still, the preferred approach is to—often through the entrepreneur’s accountant—have some effective interactions before the sale of the company.

Conclusions

Entrepreneurism is the greatest creator of private wealth. It also produces some of the most significant pools of investable assets. The ability to win investment management mandates from successful business owners who have sold all or part of their companies can dramatically increase a financial advisor’s practice.

Many times, there is a fashion show where investment professionals compete for the newly liquid assets of ex-entrepreneurs. A more effective approach is to build a relationship before the sale. What is often required is for the successful business owner’s accountant to be an advocate for the financial advisor.?Read more at:www.marieaustralia.com/long-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses

They grace our tables

with their elegance and their beauty,

Support us in our careers

as though it was their duty,

They listen to our problems

day after day,

The same old problems,

They´ve been listening to since May,



Chefs, accountants, nannies and councillors

are just a few of their talents.

And when things are hectic

they mostly keep their balance.

And what do they get

when they've worked a long hard day.

I'll tell you something gents

they don't ask for any pay.


So how can we show gratitude for what is clearly so demanding.

Its quite simple

Gentlemen, please be upstanding,

The Ladies

Like modern day knights
we muster around a
table.

We don’t wear shiny armour
we wear suits that are 50% polyester
50% rayon.
Our jousting poles are have been

replaced with
nervously bitten biros,
and on a fuzzy screen the MD appears
speaking from a country where the currency is
colourful

but ultimately worthless.

His voice is delayed giving

and talks of mergers, leverage &
buy outs.

But I fade out like a ghost image in a propaganda film,

doodling hieroglyphics on a pad.

From the window I see workmen digging a
hole and I wonder will they ever reach China?

Paperworks and all the lessons
Sharpened my mind to behold
more and more of that useless knowledge
We would probably never use.

Tests are bad enough.
Marks at the corner teach
us nothing but jealousy.
The adults compare and
judge as much as they want to
And screamed and shouted
cried and muttered.

Exams are anything but better.
You got stuck in a room
Imprisoned
by the tension.
Suffocated
by the
hot headed determination
to strive for the stars.
Inhumanly high.
This isn't hollywood movies
Nothing like the literature essays
'how do we create tension'
the subjects
hold your fate
but you did once told yourself
'I have no life'

So what are we doing here?
Wasting our days
on something so terribly useless.
Insignificant lectures when we know
Accountants hated maths.
Doctors hated biology.
but they are who they are because of
good results.
They will realize
no teachers like marking
stupid homework.
They hate the red crosses
And so do we.
Exams doesn't teach us
how to be a good person.
how to cope with beasty bullies..
how to survive
on our own.
It doesn't show any real talents
nor your low (high) IQ
It's just a pain in the ****
You have to deal with before
you became wrinkled, grey
fuzzy and old.

Accountants hover over the earth like helicopters,
Dropping bits of paper engraved with Hegel's name.
Badgers carry the papers on their fur
To their den, where the entire family dies in the night.

A chorus girl stands for hours behind her curtains
Looking out at the street.
In a window of a trucking service
There is a branch painted white.
A stuffed baby alligator grips that branch tightly
To keep away from the dry leaves on the floor.

The honeycomb at night has strange dreams:
Small black trains going round and round--
Old warships drowning in the raindrop.

When your creator took her crayon box
That day she thought to draw you all alive,
She found a certain green to sketch your locks,
Another green to show you grow, you thrive;
A green of richest thought unlimited,
A green to match the green of your creation,
A green to go, to boldly forge ahead,
A green for lands of peaceful meditation;
  The Greene King, standing proud with all his queens,
  Jack-in-the-green, surrounded by his trees;
  A thousand other shades of other greens;
  The greenness of the deepness of the seas;
And I, I fall and marvel at the light,
A million greens, like fireworks in the night.

That day she thought to draw you all alive
She drew your outline, sketched you, and refined
And shaped your eyes, that surely saw arrive
The laughing people in the frame behind,
The humans, dogs and kittens, trailing plants,
Who fill your background; all you love are here
Around you in the middle of the dance,
And as you watch, still more of them appear
  Beyond your face within the frame advancing
  Children and relatives and loves and friends
  Holding their merry hands in merry dancing
  Extending off beyond the picture's ends;
I know your other folk would say the same:
It's such an honour dancing in your frame.

She found a certain green to sketch your locks,
A deeper green, a perfect green attaining;
And now another from her crayon-stocks;
Refreshing and repeating what's remaining:
She bleaches it and tries another shade
Then leaves it for a while and grows it out,
Returns it to the colours that she made
Begins to work again, and turns about;
  And why this careful labour to provide you
  With perfect colours captured in your hair?
  She knows your colours mirror what's inside you,
  Eternal greens within you everywhere;
And still beneath, the ever-growing you
Shall dye, and yet shall live with life anew.

Another green to show you grow, you thrive;
Out from the snow the snowdrop breaks in flower.
Who could have called this sleeping bulb alive?
Yet buried patiently it waits its hour,
Counting the snowflakes slowly settling
Their weight upon the heavy earth above;
One day its Winter changes to its Spring.
Who can predict the power of life and love?
  Hope that at last the final frost is dead.
  Faith that the Winter dies and Spring shall rise.
  Love for the life that up through blades has bled.
  Joy to a hundred children's waiting eyes;
For every hour it slept beneath the ground,
A thousand wondering eyes shall gather round.

A green of richest thought unlimited.
I try to say I love you every day:
I know I keep repeating things I've said.
Perhaps I'll try to phrase another way:
Suppose I counted all the money ever
From now until when Abel risked his neck
With my accountants, who were very clever,
And wrote it on a record-breaking cheque...
  It wasn't half your empathising, was it?
  Your thoughts are treasured more than bank accounts;
  The bank won't put your loving on deposit.
  And could they take it, given such amounts?
The jealousy of cash makes misers blind,
And who needs money when you have your mind?

A green to match the green of your creation!
She took her time in sketching out your features,
Shading you well, and, drawn with dedication,
You took the pen she gives to all her creatures
And set about some drawing of your own,
Filling the art with arc and line and shade,
Showing your work the care that you were shown,
And making them as well as you were made;
  And much as life your drawing hand was giving,
  Another life from deep within you drew:
  A life, not merely likeness of the living,
  So separate, yet such a part of you:
Who finds your baby-picture on the shelf
And smiles and finds you, showing you yourself.

A green to go, to boldly forge ahead,
Should shine on traffic lights for every person.
If you should find a colour in its stead
That stops you-- not an arrow for diversion,
To Edmundsbury, Hatfield and the North,
Or any other place that's worth the going--
But rather reds that block your going forth;
If traffic signals freeze your days from flowing,
  Your life is green and you deserve the green.
  And if you try to go about your day
  And greens are coming few and far between,
  And reds and ambers blare about your way:
If so, I pray your days to hold instead
All green, and never amber, never red.

A green for lands of peaceful meditation.
You call: Come stand upon my sacred ground,
Come sit and breathe the peace of contemplation,
Come feel the grass beneath, the lilies round,
Come sleep, come wake, and drink the quiet waters,
Come to the maytree, blackbird, waterfall;
Come know yourselves the planet's sons and daughters.
The people pass and pause, and still you call:
  It's waiting for you when you ask to try it:
  Peace (and the air) cannot be bought or sold.
  You'll never gain it if you try to buy it:
  It's not an asset crumpled fists can hold.
All that you have is nothing you can lose;
You stand on sacred ground. Remove your shoes.

The Greene King, standing proud with all his queens,
Guarding a land of oaks and aches and cold.
It's not a normal place, by any means,
This island of the oldest of the old,
Where bow the ancient oak and ash and thorn
In homage to a figure on a hill;
Deep in the hills where Wayland Smith was born
You stand, an English body, English still.
  For odes and age and air and ale have filled you,
  Made you their own and promised you belong;
  And since their homesick longing hasn't killed you,
  I think you'll be returning to their song;
Come, take your time, and sit and drink with me!
What say you to another cup of tea?

Jack-in-the-green, surrounded by his trees,
Had given birth to leafy life aplenty,
He'd introduced his firs by fours and threes,
And sowed his seedling cedars by the twenty;
The field was filled with trunks and twigs and roots,
The soil was sound and fertile, and the fall
Would fill the forest floor with growing shoots,
And none but Jack was there to watch it all
  Until you came to wander through this field,
  To walk within the ways within the wood;
  Your mind was brought to peace, your spirit healed,
  The forest given form and blessed as good;
Jack-in-the-green will wonder all his days:
your presence never ceases to a maze.

A thousand other shades of other greens:
"Leaf", "emerald", "sea", "bottle", off the cuff;
"Viridian" (uncertain what it means),
But there's so many. Names are not enough.
Yet, in another life, your maker might
Have picked you out among primeval glades
To work as keeper of the rainbow's light
And in another Eden name the shades;
  If so, the planet's poets will rejoice
  That, given life together with a name,
  The colours sing a stronger, clearer voice,
  And every hue will never seem the same:
Each of the shades looks loving back to you,
Its namer and the one who made it new.

The greenness of the deepness of the seas:
A home to fish of many a scaly nation.
Follow the shoals; the smallest one of these
Swims as a fishy summit of creation.
Yet every one's indebted to the shoal,
All subtle in their difference from the rest:
A fish of friends, a member of the whole,
A mix of traits, a taking of the best.
  So you and those of us you love so well
  Will grow along with other friends' increase,
  Required ingredients in the living-spell:
  Each person brings a necessary peace.
The level-headed people mix with mystics,
And both are living mixtures of holistics.

And I, I fall and marvel at the light,
This changing light that grows throughout the years,
Extinguished not by hardship nor by night
Nor foolishness nor sadness nor by tears.
When we were separated by the sea
I wished myself amidst your myriad days.
My wish was mirrored in your missing me;
Your maker joined our wishes, joined our ways;
  She placed our hands on one another's heart,
  And you and I began a lifelong learning
  Of one another, like a magic art
  Whose telling grows with every page's turning,
And holds our friendship as a growing bond
Till seventy years old, and still beyond.

A million greens, like fireworks in the night.**
I fear this sonnet never can be done.
So many colours burst upon my sight
I cannot tell the tale of every one.
But I can tell how vast excitement fills me
When all the flying sparkles fill the sky;
I want to tell the world how much it thrills me
To hold you close, reflected in your eye;
  I want to tell in all my earthly days
  And yet beyond, of what you mean to me;
  I want to say I love the myriad ways
  Of what you are and what you'll grow to be;
These counts combining made the building-blocks
When your creator took her crayon box.

Are there lawyers in heaven?
who sells fish in a Seven-Eleven?
How do you prove guilt or innocence,
with the devil conspicuous in his absence?

Are there barbers or pastors in Heaven?
Until the End-of-Days, it is unproven;
If we are to do some speculation,
Better to do more charitable donations.

But one profession, I quite understand,
whether in hell or God's Disneyland,
that will not make a good living;
that's doing double entry accounting.

So where do accountants go, you ask;
now you really need an oxygen mask;
In hell, in heaven, or anywhere you look,
there's just no place to cook the books.

Someone may now ask about exorcists,
I hate to answer, but I just can't resist;
ask your grandma or grandpa,
they are in a real big dilemma.

In heaven, no demons to trouble you,
In hell, there are more than quite a few;
In heaven, all are good, so no originality,
In hell, who works for nothing for Eternity?

.perhaps in my company we wouldn't be... opening a bottle of red wine... to let it breathe... or pouring it into a bowl to give it more air to breathe with: otherwise on life-support machine through the bottle-neck... right here, right now, we have... a glass bottle of beer (13, guinness hop lager) and 4 cans of stella artois (the wife beater's lager, so they say)... yes... beer in cans... for all intesive purposes - a good way to transport beer... in aluminium cans... but we're not bums... we don't drink beer straight from cans... we pour our beer into a tall glass and wait... so the beer can exfoliate like aladdin's jinn in the glass... away from the confines of the can... we don't drink beer from a can... we can drink it straight from a bottle... but if it comes in a can... we pour it into a tall glass... just so... so there's some head on top... we're not english in that respect either... of cutting the head (of foam) off the beer... which is probably why i always order a stout in a pub... you can't pull one without the creme de la creme on top... a head on a beer is what makes it look less like carbonated **** or concentrated lemonade... we're not bums... we drink beer from glasses... never directly from cans - the metal gets in the way... a beer like a wine needs to breathe too.

i found that there are only two types of music styles
that are suitable for drinking -
that's... drinking and not going out -
playing a cat with an imaginary fireplace...
the less imaginary fireplace being:
a stare confined to... watching a pillow...
and the general schematic of a bed...
and sitting hunched in imitation: all crow because
no crow doesn't get you far
on golgotha of daydreams: if only i...
humble servant of dusty feet - the tourist,
the pilgrim - would set off...
         on an amphetamine riddled skew into
a messiah complex adventure...

                     but not me...
                once upon a time the only music
worth drinking to was the blues...
            a long, long time ago...
                hell: once upon a time any music
would do if we all decided to go dancing...
or at least waited for the dance to come of its own
volition and not mine: i.e. the me in i would
just be dragged under the teasing waves
and slurped out to sea...

                   a thousand waves are all but the single
tongue of some swindling kraken...
drinking and random shamanic interludes in
the youth of the night-club...
when there wasn't a tally for score or...
the ones shot down by manfred...
good thing he was called manfred...
   and not some swabian helmut! oi oi!
                                             von Richthofen!
and that was when...
           until came the five beers and on
the 4th it became apparent...
                                  the red garland quintet...
soul junction...

   and it's not... a gerry mulligan's night lights...
piano sentimentality and the ode
to all things urban, cosmopolitan...
                        yes... it's not grenadine in that
sulk of yours... it's cranberry juice...
the city and... the sewers and...
                                 jazz for the urban scenes
of: anywhere but the park...
the graveyard... a choo-choo slowing into
a station... and billy joel come:
mid-life crisis and a new york state of mind...
while over 'ere we have...
     teasing the woods: where concrete ends
and mud begins... thus we can have our Adam...
and...

only today i was walking past his bride...
doing my odd citizen duty of recycling glass...
and buying the amber sedatives (carbonated)
for an evening with some cannonball adderley
or some donnie byrd... or a horace silver...
that's the beauty of jazz...
the music is all there is... the names come and go...
sonny rollins and the story behind
the bridge... and how he would pretend to
but not pretend to... retire and go off and practice
on the bridge so as to not disturb his neighbours...
all the details are there: on the vinyl sleeve
from 1963...

now that's jazz... i don't even want to mind
how pretentious this might sound...
but... it doesn't in that: jazz is jazz in that there
might come some great improv. -
after all: it's all somewhat improv. -
   but you can't really make such basic
generalißations...
        speedy-shoom-of-a-choo-choo whizzing past...
schematic!
   classical music is all a priori...
                              jazz... it's all a posteriori...
how? when people phone in between
1pm and 5pm to classic.fm and they make requests...
they sometimes ask for something specific...
but usually... they vaguely allude to... a feeling...
something "uplifting" - play something "uplifting"...
ergo... there's this... a priori "item"(?)
in the music that's... an expectation...

          i do know what jazz sounds like
a quintent: drums, bass, piano, trumpet, sax...
yes... the guitar... asking the algorithm:
a quintet is five - what is six?
        sixtet - d'uh... sextet... well that's the basic
"i know what jazz sounds like"...
but with jazz there's always this lag...
it's this lagging behind:
    i don't exactly know what i'll feel until
only after i've heard it and in the meantime too...
jazz is all a posteriori -

while classical music for me is all a priori...
given that... it's not exactly improvised:
there's the orchestra, the movie, the script...
   and it's such a music that doesn't worship
itchy fingers of improv. - the stale or rather:
the head-about-to-explode of scoring the music like
a dissected **** of beef...
the cuts for the violins the cuts for the woodwinds...
more so: the almost shy drumming...
the wet-drumming... like rain playing
rattle fingers on tin (roofs)... or what rain would
sound like... if it was made from sand...
either way... jazz is a baggage...

hardly any sort of envisioning a journey from
(a) priori through to (b) posteriori -
and at least with jazz... you never have to really
cite who's playing... in a passing gesture
for all necessary bookmark purposes
of: where i am in the library of jazz...
unlike in classical music... where...
it's either Mozart, Beethoven or then again...
some obscure composer... perhaps ola glejlo...
but it's less about the music per se:
it's about the music of THE composer...
bonus marks for keeping to a rigid diet of one
and completing the herculean task of digesting
his entire oeuvre...

-       so i was walking past the most usual scene...
a car stopped... and she got out...
she must have been no more than 16 pushing 18...
the heavy make-up hid her otherwise boyish
contorts... a short black dress...
and as she got out of the cab...
she had her high-heel shoes in her hands...
   she was walking the cement barefoot...
i peered into her eyes... the lights were out...
perhaps her soul was screaming - perhaps this was
her first disappointment - and it was only... what...
not even 10pm on a saturday night...
my nights of youthful regret usually came after 3am
having to wrestle a berserker...
or how a dog looks like when it takes
to beer with a fond heart and only three legs...
god forbid but "they" would also cut my tail off
to further throw me off balance...
the walked passed and i looked into the cab...
a very, very nervous asian was looking at me
and then her... this didn't exactly look like...
she was ***** or was fighting to escape...
           aren't those scenarios usually stage in and around
woods - without any pedestrians walking past?
call it a trainwreck a carwreck...
                      or just running mascara...
that bad, eh?
at this point... society is a cruise ship...
and i'm stuck with ottis and none of that sentimentality
of the dock: running away with a bag of
chips wrapped in newspaper away from
seagulls... who... are apparently prone
to kleptoparasitism - a real thing... i swear to god...
the animals that want to eat in the realm
of trans-species... dogs have had their
kleptoparasistism repressed: crumbs from the table...
the chicken bones with hopes for
cartilege and someone who... is bad at
cleaning the flesh off the bone: pucker up...
move aside leech... watch this slurp...
ol' hank mobley and wayne shorter...
        one cascade after another...
5th beer in and...

yeah... so that's what a carwreck looks like...
for a girl in her late teens...
the cute black dress...
   getting out of the cab holding her high heels...
walking home barefoot...
she wasn't crying just yet...
but i could see puffy tender demon baron
of the soft cheeks readying to turn into
medussa's stare-grip... but not there yet...
this must have been her first time at "life"
and the night life and saturday...
         the cab driver looked scared shitless...
as if frozen in time... about to have his photograph
taken by a more sensible shadow of his...
i did think she just escaped a bad
session of prostitution...
but not even prostitutes look so ******* gloomy
as she did...

the ******* ***** it up -
the pundit ***** it up - the show goes on...
stage or no stage... an audience or no audience...
those eyes though... not yet crying...
but they felt... like wheeping oysters nonetheless...
you know when eyes are like that...
teasing bulging out... they appear dimmed
at first... but that's a dimming before
the sparkle of tears...
it's the 29th of febuary - yes...
mr. zodiac wasn't kind to those who still believe
in the horoscope but never tried
gambling on a winning team or horse...
it's still winter and those poor feet of hers...
she must have told the cab driver to stop...
hell... half a mile before she would get home...
a 6ft2 115kg sore thumb up with a beard
up ahead: stop! let me walk past him...
that's why i gave an inquisitive stare at the cab driver...
the cab driver was looking at me...
aren't the **** victims the ones jumping
out of the cab as it speeds off or whatnot?
so this was... staged?
              i read the "situation" wrong...
well no... i didn't find a lancelot in me...
there was no door to be held open...
           not tonight...
                                           i was in a mood for
beer and jazz... and luckily for me...
marvel of all marvels...
     haig club (1627) was sold at a bargain...
                        down from 25 quid to 16 quid...
goodbye excessive drinking the cheap *****...
hello: clubman haig... is it whiskey...
is it ms. amber... or is it chanel no. 5 -
                   is it whiskey or is it a perfume?
a snapper of a dinner standing-up...
   the scent of the last bite still on my moustache
even though i had washed my teeth...
the beer bottle opened - a drizzle on the hand
and then the hand smearing the liquid all over
the stinking hairs from an unwelcome scent...
i don't mind stinking like hops...
                  but hops is better than smelly food...

- regrets? ah yes... the "what if" universe at large...
that "whaf if" this and "what if" not...
"what if" yes and... when a man takes to walk
the street at night... he's only looking for empty
streets and... the hope of not seeing his reflection:
which is never about abruptly stopping
a cab and taking your shoes off
and walking in a tight-knit black dress
having met the world and...
                     was it heartbreak or just...
disappointment that... there are no unicorns
and she isn't daddy's precious?

any of the rudy van gelder editions...
                      "what if" i had more than just these
words... a barren wasteland of a flat
with no furnishings, not a book to call it a genesis
of a private library... not a single record
to play... no bed no curtains...
and she was the: honey-catch and snare and...
what if i were still in my late teens and
didn't have these invisible tattoos of historical
dates and the tattoos that riddle bones
that are... "habits of hygiene"...
      by hygiene i imply: ontological fixtures...
immoveable objects of accumulating my mortal
years for this formal circumstance of
the worst magic trick of all...
                   transient and... packaged elsewhere...
apparently going nowhere...

if this was a truly urban scenario...
but we're talking essex...
the outskirts of greater london...
if i bothered myself tonight i might go
to a place where i'd sit on a throne of a stump
of oak and listen to owls...
spot a rabbit, spot a badger... the foxes would
come of their own accord...
and perhaps even a deer or two... or three...
there's no glit of a picaddily circus romance:
when a girl decides to get out of a cab early
and put her porcelain toes on the wintry cement...
as if: supposing she be enticing me...
as i was thinking about the scared-shitless
cab driver...        

to have once upon a time believe in love:
the sort of love you'd see in movies...
but that's of course...
before you'd get a chance to see love...
in opera...
blue pill red pill... spiderweb of fiction...
blah blah...
watch the sort of love in movies...
then go and see an opera...
most notably verdi's la traviata...
  the movies fizzle out and you don't really
need to read this to begin with...
        i was in love once...
it was a love that was in love with itself...
          a mirage a carrot on a stick...
probably something akin to this sort of impromptu...
rescuing a girl walking barefoot home...
oh sure... happens almost every other saturday...

- the beer is for these musings, for the jazz
and for... cleaning the kidneys and a work-out
for the bladder... the shot-at-a-crescendo
will come with the haig club whiskey...
is 70cl really worth 25 quid?

- there's a difference between food with a USE BY date
and food with a BEST BEFORE date...
most notably goat's cheese...
once the best before date expires...
which is way way down the line from
the use by date... the cheese starts to taste
like... ash...

i should know since i know of the alternative
to doing shots of tequilla...
the salt is replaced with licking some cigarette
ash...
the tequilla is replaced with *****...
and the slice of lemon is replaced with
black peppercorns...

so i do know what ash tastes like...
piquant tastes: this omelette of an octopus and
of tongue...

- society is a cruise ship and i'm waving it goodbye...
welcoming a sunset of a sea as calm
as a mirror... telling my feet to take root
and stand... inaccessible...
otherwise... i am barren when it comes to having
some (h. p.) lovecraftian sensibilities from
maine... aloof and anemic... anemic with bloodshot
eyes...

- of course she isn't a mystery...
the narrative would run: the little match girl...
hans... hans! hans?! hans andersen is drilling
a hole into my head about... a woman walking
home barefoot...
yes... but she is walkig home...
unlike the little match girl...
and unlike the little match girl...
this girl was carrying a pair of shoes with her...
it's not my problem whether
i'm the sore thumb that "got in the way"...
a fork in the road: like any other fork...
like any other road...

do you have to reach being 34 to see these
teenage break-ups and regrets come and bump into
you after you've done...
that most spectacular feat of towing a backpack
full of glass for recycling?
where is one to recycle bones?!

- right not all the ***** in the world is...
something of an adhesive... a hitchhiker pollen...
a hard-on of: ****** yourself for a hard-on
just because even flapping a pancake will do right now...
to ease constipation whenever necessary...

- it's a torilla... but it's wrapped like a burrito...
well... it's a torilla... kultur shock -
sarajevo - the entry level shock-awe and
blitzkrieg of drinking from the fountain
of the Haig...

- second tier... to treat pornographic movies
like... early cinema... silent...
otherwise a return to the magazine form...
and the ripe imagination readied for:
improv... or... when was the last time
my left hand didn't feel like an oyster...
and an oyster didn't feel like a leash...
and a woman's ****** stopped being
an hour worth 120 quid? -

             - third tier... the haig club whiskey
is not worth 25 quid... it's over-rated...
you're basically paying for the bottle...
i'll stick to my guns...
only the irish know how to make whiskey
on these isles... bushmills: mellow, tame...
the picts have decided to lodge
a smoking salmon into their barrels to die...
i'm supposed to have an aftertaste of vanilla...
with all that smoke... i'd be happy to taste
hungary and smoked paprika! that would
be a bonus to boot! -

- i can appreciate the picts for trying...
but let's just leave brewing whiskey to the irish...
and let's keep the english away from hops...
they'll make an undrinkable ale from it...
never the lager...

   - armed with balkan rock... standing before
the h'american monolith of tongue and culture...
or... just before what's filtered for the export...

- no... of course i don't think h'americans are dumb...
i just think there's only a naive majority...
i'm going to find the vermin and huddle among
them...

- sooner or later we'll be calling the germans
come spring... for winter provisions...
"keeshond" or: hund... i much prefer the latter...
from under the iron curtain forged from
a broken jaw when biting the curb of:
under the silicon veil... nowhere else to go...
beside Ishrael...
                        
          remains of the ottoman - which is hardly
me put into an iron maiden of akimbo...
where's the geisha and the samurai?!

- is your beard long enough?
      like mine... i tease it... catch it with braille
cardinals: the thumb the index and middle fingers...
twirl it... wait for some thread to tie it together
into a hanging ******* of a bundle...
while at the same time:
          before you... a throng of vermin...
this beard... a magic flute!
the zenith of my thinking...
and ultimately: the nadir of any narrative
that might be inclined to escape and
not become 3D...

- i listen to songs in german...
i put on airs of pride - my chin starts to contort into
the moon's scythe and sickle...
even if the night is overcast with beard,
or cloud...

- then i put on a record that's 20 years old...
deftones' white pony...
and i remember being a teen...
hungry for hormonal diet...
a diet to stop the bones from aching
as they grew extra sprouts:
adverse to the skin and photosynthesis...
bones that were expected to grow
entombed... not in flesh...

- sketches from the gasoline additive when
it comes to a beer, starter...
otherwise: elite... gonna breed on top
of the general... pucker up the tremor for a vibrato
kiss and leech her lips off...
to expose her most pristine:
todlächeln -
                           not a chelsea grin...
the joker lapse... i mean... extending the shaving
lines and just, completely, forgetting there's
any botox involved to grow a peach
from a duck of the reinvention of
the deflating balloon...

   leave no selfie without it...
                   herr grinsen: die / das / die / das...
i keep forgetting the definite plural and
the definite singular... feelz... feels...
maximum impromptu: das bösartigwimmern...
anything in german at this point...
sounds better than...
wenigbruder englisch...
                       dies, mein krawatte beste...
alle schwarz alle weiß:
      say to me... nein pinguine willkommen...

anything to keep these mosquitos these
zeppelins away... alt vater großartig Schwab
from this... herd of minor dicta
of the children of the house of ßaß...
translated nomad from the high pressure
***** basin of:
later, trajectory... later... the yawn and canyon...
and the sky above...

- beer first... whiskey after...
shrapnel... and gasoline... no car... no speeding...
fast but otherwise still walking...

            - a hurrah and the cohort of a hum...
to match the echo of the centipede...
         the silence and otherwise the simplified
complications of a conversation...
the bed torn between *** and sleep...
between saturday sunday and monday through
to friday...
   and the need to drink with someone else...
"the need"...
          
the skulls breaks at the sight of sea-riddled-and-*****
cliffs... daggers persuaded to be forever sharpened...
the fiddly parts of ***** as accountants when
it came to the pennies, copper, and granules
of sand... seized: the rivers of time...
constipated shock value elevated...
                            
                                am i to find a lover when
the orchestra tells me...
these words will never find a dear sir / madam
or circle round for a yours sincerely...
                godzilla... the theme i remember from
the days when the japanese still had control over the beast...
otherwise... an overweight t-rex with...
arm extensions... the lotus feet of the chinese...
which also includes...
the savory diet of... tendering dog meat...
i.e. beating the dog to a plum softening...
which is: then again... not curing the already dead
curated meat...
life aware needs to be involved...
brick by brick brick on brick...
the status quo: made in china...

         cheap whiskey... although in an expensive bottle...
that is the haig club whiskey...
        so much for ezra pound admiring
the ******* ideograms...
what's to admire... when...
it ends up being a crude...
current latin emoji-infiltrated grafitti
equivalent to: CUL8R...
               chow-chuckle-mein-hong-shui-chew?
all that intricacy into the ideogram...
and all that remains is...
bat soup... and an advantage at playing
poker... omnivores...
you'd think that Islam would be...
more geared to break ranks among the omnivores...
like all the fickle gods... a good joke...
they abhor / are told to herd sheep
because: what sort of pig would survive the desert
and not become crispy bacon...
camels are fine too... as are their testicles...
never mind the pork leather shoes and pork
leather belts...
but the chinese omnivores are fine by
Allah: Muhammad & Co....

                               khadijah **** khuwaylid..
wrote the first surahs of the quran...
she was the literate:
the stephen vizinczey epitome:
                          in praise of older women...
last time i heard... muhammad was illiterate...
pray! that i've exhausted sympathy on
him being an orphan...
but not a ******* oliver twist thrown into
an orphanage! b'ooh h'oo...

                     the end... the whiskey isn't going
to drink itself;
as i have exhausted the patience of my bladder...
while there's the remaining concern
for a bewildering and a simultaneously
bewildered peacock... on the hunt for coy;
which is not exactly the darwinian daydream
of the short-hand greek alphabet...
the α-β male thermodynamic...
          the Σ-Δ female harem...
salmon swimming up-stream to spawn...
                             and... Ω-man / unicorn...
                     sha! schtil!

IMMEDIATELY PLEASE REMOVE ALL OF MY INFORMATION FROM YOUR DATA BASE FORTHWITH.  ALSO,
ADVISE ANY AND ALL CONTRACTORS, SUB-CONTRACTORS, AGENTS, SUB-AGENTS, AFFILIATES, PARTNERS, COLLEAGUES, ASSOCIATES, CLIENTS, WEBMASTERS, WEB BASED LINKS, WINKS, TWINKS, COLONEL CLINCKS, BOSSES, CO-WORKERS, EMPLOYEES, VENDORS, SUPPLIERS, SALESMEN, ASCCOUNT REPS/EXCS, ACCOUNTANTS, BROKERS, CO-BROKERS, HACKERS, SLACKERS, WHACKERS, JERKS, PIMPS, HOES, HOBOS, BUMS, DERELICTS, DEGENERATES, DOPERS, DEALERS, TWEEKERS, GAMBLERS, RAMBLERS, SOLICITORS, SIDEKICKS, COHORTS, WINGMEN, WHEELMEN, LOOKOUTS, OUTLAWS, IN-LAWS, RELATIVES, FIANCES, GIRLFRIENDS, BOYFRIENDS, FAMILY, FRIENDS, ENEMIES, EVIL NEMISIS', CANVASSERS, INQUIRERS, QUEERS, QUEENS, COWBOYS, KINGS, ****, DRAGS, HAGS, HETEROS, HOMOS, TONY ROMOS, FEMALE IMPERSONATORS, (PRE OR POST) MALE IMPERSONATORS, *****, *****, VAN *****, **** VAN ****, LESBIANS, LIARS, BUYERS, CRYERS, CIGAR SMOKERS, CARPET MUNCHERS, RUG RATS, TODDLERS, TEENAGERS, YOUNGSTERS, SENIORS, SUCKERS, TRUCKERS, MOTHER shut yer mouth, LAW MAKERS, LAWYERS, ATTORNEYS, JUDGES, POLITICIANS, PECKERWOODS, LEADERS, FOLLOWERS, DISCIPLES, PROPHETS, EVANGELISTS, SAVIORS, SINNERS, SAINTS, SOOTHSAYERS, MEDICINE MEN, GYPSYS, TRAMPS, AND THIEVES, WITCHES, WARLOCKS, VAMPIRES, LYCANS, ZOMBIES, WAR MONGERS, PROTESTERS, SOLIDERS, GENERALS, GOVERNORS, PRESIDENTS, PATRIOTS, PACKERS, LIONS, BEARS, BROWNS, BLACKHAWKS, REDWINGS, RIGHT WING, LIBERALS, OR LAW BIDING CITIZENS, THEY ARE NOT TO CONTACT ME AND LOOSE MY NUMBER.
BUT IF YOU SEE MY MOM, TELL HER TO CALL ME.

............................................................­............BA-ZING..............................................­......................

No Values
just statues of accountants who could never learn to count
and mounted on the spikes,where business is displayed and laid out for the world to see in naked abject poverty
are chief executives and heads of lesser known departments who never meant to cook the books
but fell for fortune and her looks and took that chance to spread their wings
and now the wind that whistles sings
and passes through their empty eyes ,and flapping flesh drips off dry bones of arms that never meant to harm.

No charmed lives left in Holborn or in Chancery lane,where solicitors were in on the game of taking risks
and risks they took
another spike and one more hook for the fallen wig,who still seems regal but not as big as what he thought legal.

They bought but never owned the sky or stole it from the smaller fry who swam around the edges and the shadows in society
and we,
the ripped off,stripped off,sing dirges to their loss but me,I couldn't give a toss
let them burn and turn slowly on the spit
we'll roast and toast them,
let them boast then of fancy women,fancy cars and fancy meals in fancy bars.
These czars have gone the way of old
where bold men.bad men always fold in two
and the wind blew tears that fell to splash on piles of once extorted cash and though accountants cannot count
judges learn to mount the steps and put their heads in hangman's ropes and any hopes they entertain of clemency go down the drain along with
any gains they ever made.

Those who laid beside the wide boys of this world and opened eyes into another where they couldn't even bother to see just who they hurt
have lost their shirts,ripped off their backs,attacked by those that they attacked and now the axe is on the other foot where once a boot was kicked into my ****.

so good luck you *****
I hope your bodies fall to bits
and you end up burning in the pits
alongside the others that have sinned
in the end
no one wins
the voodoo dolls of life are stuck with pins
and the devil grins and hums his tune.

She spends most of her days in doldrums,
always segregated from the whole crowd.
Everyone uses her acts and games against her.

It seemed like a game and they liked it.
But now it is toture,
she is being bullied
she fears coming to school,
she fails to catch some sleep at now,
their words keep ringing in her ears at night.

Today in the morning it was her shoe lace,
after assisting them
the only thanks they give is by making her feel misrable.
Now this afternoon she is crying,
and it all seems like a joke to them.

"Nomathemba help me with Accounting !"
they call out everyday.
After her help they become ironic,
"she is a distinction student".
They make her feel belittled.

"Dont worry you will be Accountant one day...
Because Accountants are greedy too"
i am not willing to support them,
their games are surely bad.

She fails to laugh,
nor smile,
her heart filled with pain.
She is a victim of emotional abuse,
and am the only one who seems to care.
What happened to the unity amongst us?

You put me to sleep
Every night
But i write
My own history
It sounds like water
Falling from the rooftop
Through cracks in the ceiling
I drink your lightning
It pours through your toes
As I place my nose in your silence
I am absorbed in your river
Longing for your fingers
To put an end to my pain
Let's stand naked for several days
Pantomiming our stories
In the pouring rain
If you ****** my library
I’ll make love to you in a poem
You harvest all my feelings
As imprecise millionaires waver
Over your laughter
Indecisive waiters and maitre d’s
Dance upon your dinner tables
We are all crazy lovers
Hovering in the sunset
Tuning into your brilliance
We become the music of the butterflies
Merging with the sun in my insides
I rise with the moonlight
And birth a new tune every hour
For love is my shower
And it is an honor to serve her
Life is a goddess
With plumes of breath and feathers
We take her into our hearts
And leave our accounts unsettled

(In response to "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg)

I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by sanity,
seen bold new visionaries resign themselves to clinical long-haul deaths,
drug-numbed to their own suffering, and everyone else’s;
seen raving revolutionaries give up, retire to minimalist Swedish-designed armchairs,
and never move again;
seen the horizon dim and draw ever closer,
and the tenacious lunatics with the wanderlust to stray beyond
become fewer and further between.

There are uglier destructive forces than madness:
Consider cognitive rehabilitation.
Consider absolutely nothing immeasurable.
Consider utter rationality.

Ritalin, lithium, risperidone, duloxatine. [I thought I heard a man speaking in tongues,
then I realised he was simply reading out loud from a pharmaceutical directory.]
Imagine a generation of loan brokers and loss adjustors;
Hicks gone these past seventeen years and Leary still alive;
sharks floating in formaldehyde;
all true human significance lost in pretentious symbols,
and repetition
and repetition
and repetition,
and no one raging.
No one raging for real.

Where are Plato’s maniacs now?
Where are their lunatic songs?
I hear only the steady, rational tapping of the accountants’ calculators,
occasionally, some lost and lonely *** crying out for one more shot,
and the PA system calling the next patient through, the doctor will see you now,
or asking would the owner of a light blue Honda Civic please move their vehicle,
as it’s blocking in a black Lexus full of lawyers with an ambulance to chase.

Is there really nowhere between here
and the bellow and buzz, the shiver and shriek of the asylum?
Someplace between this sterile, static, silent, windowless room
and the fizzing frenzy of the electroconvulsion suite,
there must be somewhere we might have paused and breathed and set up shop,
where we could have been happy – if we’d wanted to be –
and no more or less sane than we chose.

Dr Thompson saw it coming: the dawn of this new Age of Equilibrium.
He knew that football season was over, for good this time, and made his ballistic decision
to go stalk peacocks and hound Nixon through the Kingdom Hereafter,
assuring us, ‘Relax – This won’t hurt’.
He was right.

Safe and stable and sanitized, we can no longer follow your desperate, ***** verse.
Straitjacketed by reason, we perceive our world only in terms
of quantum and co-efficiency, of the logical and logistical,
of what can be conjured in the duration of the average commercial break,
of what can be computed to at least two decimal places.

We are the chemically castrated.
We are lobotomised by mutual consent.
We are the perfect ones: regular and moderate and so healthy, so functional.
We are the white strobing smiles of the toothpaste ads,
the poster children for good mental hygiene,
the footsoldiers of no more conflict.

We have lost our skill for the alchemy
that once distilled genius from the seething crucible of lunacy.
We medicate those whose vision would otherwise put our own to shame,
leave them as myopic and blinkered as the rest of us,
the breadth and depth and distance of their sight no longer a worry to anyone.

Give us back our madmen: we need them.
Give us back our crazed anthems, our burning shrouds, our leprous one-man-bands.
Give us back the fire and the filth and the fornication that kept us howling through
those endlessly polluted nights of Windscale and Watergate, McCarthy and motorcades, Hanoi and Hiroshima.

Please.  Give us back our madmen.
I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by sanity.

I romanticize humanity until what's left isn't even human.

I cook up fallacies about legal aliens and add a dash of cumin.

Your chef tosses salads in the pasta section of the grocery store.

Devil's just as confused, with a ***** and an apology at heaven's door.


You don't know, and no one cares where eggs go when they die.

Godzilla thinks of a car full of clowns like you would a sardine pie.

What happens when an elephant gets alzheimer's and loses keys?

Does the paradox consume an entire circus of trapeze-act-fleas?


I ruin birthday cakes by blowing off the frosting instead of the flames.

How I do that? Count backwards from backwards and say my names.

Bittersweet love anthems pollute the brains of conscientious dames.

Heavy metal doesn't pollute, it pacifies rage quitting from soul-******* games.


Out of the woodwork comes a limp ***** that would work,

Long hours only to find he'd pay millions for a Miley Cyrus twerk,

Which is worth about as much as an all-female circle ****,

Unless you add strap-ons, so strap in and lap up the knee-****-smirk.


It is unwise to handle scissors when one is being cutting-edge,

Because your accountants will dangle themselves off of a three-storey ledge,

When you cut up the ledgers and make light of, that is, burn, the evidence of pledge,

To the monkeys in your think-tank mailing feces to the upstart farmer's hedge.


Now I know you're sick of rhyming and of poems and of liver culling whisky,

But I must inform you of a pirate's missing eye, I've bought sight of something risky,

I implore that when this song and dance is done, you'll assuredly miss me,

Because I've told you everything about depravity, hence forth you must kiss me.


Beacons of hope shine much like cantankerous silver in the moonlight.

If you're a werewolf that will fill you with hope and with immeasurable fright.

One day the world will admit that I'm awesome and impoverished to boot,

Because when the song and dance is done, what's left is just an ounce of loot.

Check errata, pressure chests,
minds of razors edges, vie to
stress knowledge for the win:
You second guess yourself, then.

Flip the cold and oddly coded
engine as if you're blind to it.
It's happening again, now.

Verses nurse the wounds.
Wounds nurse the verses.
Pain's slyly subjective hooks
have hooked the meat of me.

Like accountants slicing numbers,
I slice the mountains into soft shapes.
Earth and water, earthen urns, hold
Life to carry, to gift, or, to displace.

Choirs sing on high, of rightful things.
I was frightful, once. With enough
ignorant vehemence poured upon me,

poured upon me, a bath in love's less
eager refuse, has turned my dreams, too,
into excrement, excrement. Utter ****.

I was excited, once. I swear I was.
Holding out for ****** touch, left cold,
hopeless and wanting when the only
validation, validation I was taught

set my value in cash and beauty, cash
and beauty, two matters of strict
adherence to social standards, but what

if two fat, hairy legs make my tongue wet?
What if otherness keeps me lonely?
What if it keeps me lonely? Can I take
that pain, after all, into the ground of my grave?

Fame and fortune
Wall Street in wealthy being the name
Mansions, clothes and vacation hot spots
Living large and remaining at the top
Life was sweet and filled with promise
Stocks were up 100 percent
Financial Advisors keep careful analysis in where investments go
The accountants keep track of the business transactions flow
It’s where all investments went
But continuing living the life seemingly like Heaven sent
But something went terribly wrong
The Rich man’s health made a negative turn
The investments were seeing anymore earn
The Financial advisor began to steal
This thieve was for real
Suddenly stocks stumbled on down
From riches to rags heading for devastation bound
The Rich man was shocked and couldn’t make a sound
All he could was cry
He no longer wanted to continue to try
Efforts no longer existed
The Rich man was down to being a poor man
Trapped in an uncertain caravan
A Rich man being in a poor man’s sleuth
But what was the former Rich man supposed to do?
Keep living but having a purpose and a vision to pursue.

All he could see were numbers
that reached out and grabbed taxes
and takes, invoices and expenditures.
He could not see explanations of delight
that little mistake I made with fringe benefits,
those royalties that never came.
In the end his only concern was to pay the taxes
to build the roads, skyways and airports
where he would travel and stay.

I wondered how he slept at night
cocooned in numbers
just 1-9 with a hefty zero
that made the difference between rich and poor

I wondered how he could survive on numbers
no cucumbers, sunshine salads, beach beauties,
high waves of reckless living, low tides of penniless nights
and endless days of counting little many times over.

He said to me once: Save every cent,
fortify yourself against depression and
natural disasters, don't spend lavishly
there's a price to pay
cut up your credit card. Live austerely.

Oh yeah?. That same day I got an extra CC,
a nice Merc, some good looking sunglasses
(to shield my eyes from the accountants glare)
and a cruise to the Mediterranean
where the blue waters beckoned.

The accountant visited the GP
twice more than me that year.
I'm still working the fat off at the gym.
( I suspect petty poets do the same thing all the time?)
Author Notes

Anyone know this guy?

Check this Novel out!

The Chrysanthemum Trilogy: Transition
Marshall E Gass
ISBN 9781493137848

My Brothers and Sister and Me
We all share the same genes
Though some hide it better than others.
Similarities And Differences are pronounced.
The apples don’t fall far from the tree
Though a couple of them bounced.

Apples baked into pies or
Thrown to the horses
Rotten and brown and wormy and
Delicious apple cider in the Fall.
Applesauce and apple butter and Appleton, Wisconsin
Looking for a job?  Applications for them all.

Mountains, and mountains of books
Rivers, and streams of numbers
Hiking and running through canyons
Flowers and gardens and mushrooms and parks.
Shooting pheasants in the fields
Shooting stars in the dark.

Time will tell.  Time will tell
Mom’s in Heaven, Dad’s in his own Hell.
Whose footsteps will you follow?
What size boots do you own?
Who most will you resemble?
When your own kids are grown.

We are laughing.  We are laughing.
We are librarians and teachers
And accountants and staff and lumbermen always.
And still we all laugh.  
“Thought one of you’d be a preacher.”
“Good money in that.”

Each generation’s gaps grow wider
As the trees grow taller the apples fall farther
Similarities and Differences well-defined
Still laughing. Still laughing at things
New genes swimming in the family pool
Some of the cousins can sing!!
PwL March, 2015

She was old when I first knew her
To an infant, parents are timeless;
Fairy aunts are just… old.

A tiny scarecrow of a thing,
Her eyes glittered; her mouth
Never offered an ill word of anyone.

She was a good woman.  She never tired
Of talking about blind Jim – a good man –
With girlish love in her face;

One man, one love, one life
He wove wicker and filled mattresses
And listened to the wireless in the evening.

Her constant thought companion
As so many might-have-been heroes –
Gone, before I could know him.

Christmas would wend round each year,
With Meg as star guest,
Tipsy before the Queen’s Speech,

Whisky rouging her cheeks; fairy lights
Made envious by her laughter,
My mother, and hers, basking in gleelight.

I grew up there, every other Sunday,
Overlooking the Hospital and the Tay
From the safety of her living-room window,

Inventing spaceships and spies,
Dreaming of who I would be,
As my mother and Meg made small-talk.


Month by month, her daylight dimmed.
I never saw it.  She was only ever her;
Happy, constant and true.



Afterwards, I learned about the
Vying accountants and surgeons,
Postponing, year and again,

The procedure.  She told me, when finally
Her appointment was confirmed,
That when the cataracts were gone,

She was going to buy a ticket
For the number nine circular
And spend all day upstairs,

Just looking out of the window
At the city she’d lived in
For nigh-on ninety years

A week before the operation
Her home-help found her in bed, with Jim;
Smiling as they danced through the daisies.

She seemed no older when she died
Than when I first knew her.  
A good innings, they all said.

Not enough.  
If only by the length of a bus ticket –
not enough.

My dreams are compact

and filled with bored accountants waiters leaving second hand shops
in fashionable post codes,

dressed like bit part actors
carrying spare hands,
gripped at the wrist,

dangling.

Their voices are a magical shrill,
a goats bleat
a synthesizesr whoop,
mesmerizing pigeons
and paper sellers
alike.

And you know how it is,
when you find you share a name
with a famous person

you look for frames of references,
points of similarities
but you find none,

only that you share the same name.

bees can't fly
yet they still do
because they don't know
that they can't
of course this holds no relevance to me
I'm not a bee you see
i'm not saying humans can fly
i'm well aware we've tried
it just makes me wonder
about the things we never try
how the greatest musicians
turned into accountants
about what we do don't do
solely so we don't fail

if a bee were to understand
that he couldn't physically fly
he'd just buzz away
I want that

The rush is here, are you done yet?

I wish I could say I was.

So many people working so hard,

Just to pay someone else some money.

To all the accountants of the world,

It’s a day of jubilation.

But, one of sorrow for the rest.

Will they ever come out on top?

Like the days of their youth,

When they’d get their pennies back.

Tax returns bring joy and happiness,

But the filing brings tears and heartache.

perhaps we do not wish to admit,
that the majority of the words we speak,
the conversations overheard, even without intent,
leave us not awash, not suffocating, but
mesmerized in an awful way

squelching tirades of banality,
humdrum housework life's tirades of
meeting basic needs, functionaries of life,
bureaucrats of our domestic affairs,
accountants calculating marginal cures,
overridden by the occasional impulse,
which delights until it too
is humdrum-ed out of existence

a passing blazing ambulance
begs to contradict,
reminders that there are
crevasses on the city streets,
that in minuscule moments,
life becomes twisted making our lethargy,
a course 101 introduction to tragedy

but this is not the norm,
this imbalanced equation,
1X = 99 whys,

to survive,
to justify,
to mediate
between these un-counterbalanced weights,
I write poetry

I flew over to his land
With a rifle in my hand.
They told me who to shoot
I shot him, that’s the truth.
They said he threatened me
So, I responded violently
Now the foreigner I found
Is resting under the ground.

From thousands of miles away
Our leaders raised us all this way
To either invade or just pillage
Every hamlet and village
Where an enemy might hide,
To crush them with our stride.
If they had children in the street
To stomp them with our feet.

The child might carry bombs
So, ****** them with aplomb
Because anybody there I see
Might be a sneaky enemy.
That they are fighting for freedom
Fails to be seen as wisdom.
After all, we are sparkly white
And that means we are right.

Besides, the rich people at home
Especially in the Capitol Dome
Have us to understand the fact
That no matter how weak they act
They are a threat to all we own
So, we can’t just leave them alone
As we demand others do to us.
We can destroy them with no fuss.

We are the right and perfect children
Of a God that in His perfect wisdom
That sees fit to have leaders destroy
Each animal, man, woman, girl and boy.
The same as that God told King Saul
We must continue to do over all.
Even if we don’t understand the book
We worry about how it would look.

Can we, a righteous Christian land
Let things get so out of hand
That they might prosper and we fail?
No, we ****, ****** or put into jail
Anyone who does not fully agree.
Thus we can behave unilaterally
To force others to do our will
Even if it’s innocents we have to ****.

So I came here with many others
To shoot, bomb and burn out mothers
And fathers and children and crops
And decimate this country without stop.
Because we are the righteous ones
And that is why this war was begun.
Not because some leader needed war.
They told us this is not was it is for.

The accountants can show us numbers
For materiel like fuel, cars and lumber
And how the industrial industry profits
Then insist protests are to scoff at.
They insist only our leaders have the wisdom
To decide who will end up with freedom
They were the ones choose at will
Who they sent me here to ****.

The census is a gun
and every  ten years for a bit of fun
someone
pulls the trigger.

The body count gets bigger all the time because once a decade's far from fine,we all know that we want a little more
but just who is keeping tabs on us and what's the  score?

If you're more than willing to fill in and tick the boxes one by one
we'll carry on the same and be just a figure getting bigger
reviewed by counters
mounted in the book
and taken down
looked and read
underlining, numbered in red ink and thumbed,fed into ,computerised until algorithms
drip from and dot the eyes with postscripts slipped upon the page which mention dates of birth and gender
this is the age of the want to know
and we're being counted
like sheep we go through turnstiles,smiling,clicking,sickening in the need to feed the ever growing need for information,technology will be the death of me and in a census yet to come
or when my numbers up
I will be done
shot full of holes the census gun is indiscriminate but there's no fun or sense in that,they'll tamper with the workings,lay them flat and reassemble parts until we're part of some vast assembly
in a Wembley stadium,the gun's the game
we'll be numbered until the final whistle blows and someone goes to tally up the score
and in the counting they'll count more and more
as if in some final lunacy
the lunatic accountants see there's numbers coming out of their ears
and say,
'thank God it's only once every ten years'

Data will as data does and do
and who would count the countless where the few are many and any mistake means you have to start again.
Censuses
another pain and millions more
and someone will come knocking on your door to give you forms and envelopes
all hope's lost
so be counted and don't count the cost
let the ones who get paid for this
kiss their sanity
goodbye.

It wasn't until the sixth century that the Christians
decided animals weren't part of the kingdom of heaven.
Hoof, wing and paw can't put money in the collection plate.
These lunatic ****-brained fools excluded our beloved creatures.
Theologians and accountants, the same thing really,
join evangelists on television, shadowy as viruses.

We used to play Cowboys
We used to play Indians
We used to play Pirates
Sailing swift the Caribbean

Now we play worn out Doctors
Accountants counting others millions
Now we play overworked Business Men
Stuck behind cubicles locked inside buildings

We used to climb mountains
Explore backyard jungles
Always at the ready to take
The adventure set before us

Now we set the alarm
Every morning to wake us
Not ready for the adventure
Or where it will take us

We used to fly high like birds
Not knowing our limits
Along the way take what others would say
Knowing they really meant it

Now all we do is drive
Each other insane
Putting up with lie after lie
Day after day

We used to be kids
We used to have fun
Something we seem to have left behind
The day we grew up

The difference between work & play Is not that much.
It’s the difference between getting’ ***** & doin’ ***** deeds
Ramblin’ on long old roadtrips, old oaks,
And whatever happens in between
We tell odes

The difference between work & play is not that much
It’s the difference between broke bank accounts,
And boring accountants
Scrapin’ a little off the top here and there
To splash into Bitcoins
You’re still broke
But no longer boring

The difference between work and play
Lies in what makes ones days
And different amounts of up and downs
And days gone unmade,

Its not how its played
Its how one has lived

Remember you are living when you work
So  button up plaid shirt,
and go chop wood
in the dirt,

And let writing this poem go
And Let there be a sequel waiting tomorrow

heal the pain of having no money to play with in the working world
Only words.

frozen ***’s *****
their frozen assets
assimilating accountants
asphyxiated by Asperger’s
arranging orangutans
assuaging appetites
all the while
alone

Ding **** merrily oh my,
I hear the cash tills ringing
wondering what I'm going to buy
and what is Santa Bringing.
Gloooooooooooooooria
in Chelsea,
they're all singing.

Salvation army bands march past
trumpets at the ready
I was in the hostel once
the Sergeant Major fed me.
Gloooooooooooooooria
IN Chelsea,
they're all singing.

The elves are sat down in the bar
the reindeer are lunching,
accountants sat at home in fear
Christmas number crunching.
Gloooooooooooooooria
in Chelsea,
they're all singing.

The eternal trench has been dug,
Each side gazes upon a day's destruction.
A battle where neither side shrugs
A battle built upon corruption.
The fight - for North Vespucci
The land that prospers from war
Each side sets skillful schemes too cheat
And they surely settle the score.

A voice, a rifle
Like bullets - piercing a party's heart
Accountants launder loot - leaving us stifled
Like the master tactician - Commanding an army smart.
Ideas recycled;
Luring unsuspecting souls in reach
Only to promise the unobtainable
Through their leader's speech.

Cowering in fear, neutrals despised,
Don't believe the mystic mirages of which they speak
Leaving us disenfranchised,
We are who they consider "weak."
For "weak" I may be,
But disenfranchised - I will not!
With a sincere soul I speak,
We must move to stop the blood clot.

For Weak I am,
But strong I will become.
Nobody gives a ****,
But my voice will be a victorious one!

some come to serve all
the missing continents reveal their bodies
they arouse Great Spirit
like volcanoes announcing their roll call
i awake the storm of love
without my compass
i can't tell if we are off course
but who really knows anyway
if your desert walks and soul visions
are gesticulations as ubiquitous as dust
our minds and bodies align with memories
while cowards of sound  
hide themselves behind the echos
of cavernous hollows
heaven brought you to me
for beautiful kisses
so that salt and sulphur
would anchor our alchemical quicksilver
your studs and your mares
know nothing more
then to keep a few crumbs
wedged behind the cupboards
in case somebody lost themselves
along the road to the temple

accountants may tell you
that they allow the light to shine
through their tiny peepholes
yet in treacherous times
like lightning they swallow the sky whole
so your emotions can rent empty rooms
in their vacant hallways
feelings help guide you upon your journey into tomorrow
until you are able to penetrate
with bottomless compassion
and then part ways just before the hour fades
in rhythm with our future
and the Goddess (god-lioness)
says that the eye (of time) is within you

in such a short while
rebel eyes real eyes the relative lies in their relatives' eyes
like fireflies they dance upon the pavement
have you lifted the hem of your sky lately
and listened to the falling leaves
surrounding us in love

it's not like i was away from society,
sure, i crawled into my room and stockpiled on books,
the Tibetan Book of the Dead was never something
i was going to finish reading and find translatable
insights to compliment...
but there were plenty of books...
enough newspapers too... all the culture sections
written by critics: just today i was reading
up on two reviews in the culture section of
yesterday's the Sunday Times:
  poetry reviews! wow! wow! poetry is being
criticised in a mainstream media publication: still?
isn't poetry dead? last time i heard
TS Eliot killed poetry...
    well: if anything needs a killing -
i imagine trying to **** a dead person...
**** a dead person by mime?
**** a corpse by propping him in a chair...
talking to him, it, her,
pouring her, it, him a glass of whiskey...
dealing cards to them?
pretending the dead thing is somehow still
a body and all the mechanisation process of SIGMA
we dare to call soul or a seal of falling leaves or self?

horrors of the novel and all things
flashy and pop... i could if not for the autobiographical
drip drip drip...
   today i stood in the kitchen and imagined
myself: the demon cook of hell...
tomorrow i'll be making a Turkish dish
of finely cut beef... rosemary (oddly more complimentary
of beef than lamb), chillies, garlic,
sumac, pepper... cheese... white wine vinegar
to cure the meat...
                        black pepper... salt...
eaten with LAVASH...
                                          gorge of all gorges of
the thirst -
      but i will also be making two curries for the day
after tomorrow... to give myself more time for:
more time...

i went away from society: but didn't...
society tried to cement my ear into a lunatic asylum:
how i wished i made it among the madmen,
truly... how i wished i was at one point sectioned:
i tried my luck, i tried and tried but failed...
i never was... pop pill X white as nerves
and the bleaching of aluminium -
   pop pill Y... no result... the desired result...
the world span forward and still the same world
i returned to... although with quaked psyches
reaching out for hands instead of receiving
pointing fingers... exclude you: exclude i and you:
you-not-you i-not-i: or even:
i as "i" and you as "you"...
                    
in this kitchen: this, not this: any kitchen...
what was playing in the background? a spin on vampirism,
a blood-disease romance...
i thought about: if i wrote a YA novel about
vampires in the decadent period of the 1980s
with the height of the AIDS epidemic?
imagine: i "said" to myself...
    imagine vampires with AIDS... i started to imagine
vampires suffering from AIDS...
    not the sort of pristine vampires that needed
virgins or children to survive...
just a wild-thought: an unnecessary thought...
i'd be better off thinking of windmills...
    like that one coming up to Upminster from
Hornchurch...
               because this book, will never be written by
me... but a theme exists...
vampirism at the height of the AIDS pandemic...
vampires with AIDS...
             the homosexuality of vampires is yet
to be explored... seems these creatures might want
to exchange blood, spit and *****...
perhaps vampires would be immune to AIDS...
but then again: that's irrelevant since there's a cure
for ***: the virus that designated the past-"redemption"
state of AIDS...
or at least: this is what i "think" i "know":
point being - i don't care to know...
                              
the following rubric also came up...
on the topic of gravity...
swimming - ∇ (you find gravity in the top part
of your body... in the torso)...
the feet are slackers... they come in for the swim...
cycling - (again) ∇ nabla schematic...
your torso actually manages the coordination
of the body on the bicycle...
your feet do all the work... peddling...
but your upper body needs to coordinate
the centre point of gravity being: you're not falling...
you're not falling when either swimming
or cycling...
you're not falling when walking...
you're not falling when climbing, rock or tree...
∇... the legs are only there for the "ride"...

but? ice-skating... it should be the same!
it should be a ∇-schematic...
but is it?! is it?!
hardly some darkened mysterious, poetic O...
oh god... not another of those O O's...
like O is ****** or O is orbit
or O is eye or: whatever happened in Ur
and why not Oor for up-sigh-alone
   is not different to oh-mega-n: oh Meghan?
not a name in the tabloids... just
a coincidence, a little coincidence...

i can't be blamed for underachieving in the second
wave of literacy: basic example i can give:
frightoffreedom = "FRIGHTOFFREEDOM"
print(f"{frightoffreedom.lower()}")
who write so complicated but still performs
magic in 2D and can't translate 2D into 3D?
did every child start speaking said, any said
language to an unsaid capacity of a Buddha's
silence? gate-keepers some say,
a new literacy i say: i too could learn if
there was someone willing to teach...
but as the first pigs to the trough...
first learners come first and the rest "struggle"...
that's me sorting out the basics of ever used
EXCEL twice, properly...
HTML building blocks once...
sorting out my father's change of accountant:
three years prior to his retirement:
quick-books confuses everyday tax-payers
except for the intended audience of accountants...
but... how happy i was... filling out the rubrics
finding math fun without doing any math...
my new favourite expressions
are =SUM(D3:D34)
   that's for the total of money spent...
next column... =(D3*1.2)
   that's the rubric for the Netto (without VAT)
slide the mouse down from D3 through to D34...
next column the VAT (Brutto)..
    =(D3-E3)
             ergo... the VAT in cell F3... scroll down
to F34... then at F35 type in:
    =SUM(F3:24)...

                   modern poets are yet to have discovered
or used the internet or computers...
Poet-Luddite... conflated language:
i want to forget outside of the immediacy of having to
know an elephant is an elephant and
there are five blind men trying to tell apart
a chair from a table...
                 perhaps seeing each item represented
by a cubist painting would leave them
the same blind men if they were only given
a snippet of sight to tell a chair from table apart...

conkers left on windowsill and other locations
in the household allow you to spend the winter
months: freed from feeling spiders...
spiders apparently abhor the scent of oak seeds:
i've been huddling in my winter abode
freed from spider bites... in winter...
when spiders morph into mosquitos and draw
blood from mammalian flesh...

- i can't believe it though! it was so easy!
but... it had to take a lesbian to ask me out on a date!
it took me from the age of 21 through
to the age of teasing 37, done so casually...
hey: do you want to go ice-skating with me
after the shift is over? sure! why not!
today i paid for it... however many hours
i spent cycling, today i felt muscles i never thought
i had... but it took a lesbian to ask me on a date...
a coworker mingling scenario...
we worked the shift, we went ice-skating...
she filmed me trying my best not to fall over...
her laughter, or rather, her giggling reminded
me of Ilona... that masculine-feminine aura
of self-assurance...
i'm not attracted to these women:
they just seem to be attracted to me...
tattoos, piercings, bully-boy butch-Toms...
standing a proud 5ft4 eyeing up a 6ft2 example
trying to kick punch and kiss all at the same time...
well... it was so easy, so much fun...

it should follow that finding the centre of gravity
within the confines of ice skating
should be the same as that of finding the centre
of gravity while swimming or cycling...
i.e. ∇... that's the schematic...
upper-body: the torso is giving prime psychological
concerns... the legs are secondary...
but no... it's counter-intuitively: "intuitive"...
you can't exactly begin finding gravity while
either swimming or cycling by flapping your
arms about pretending to learn to fly:
but you do! you do!

            a drowning man is flapping his arms about
but his legs... his legs...
i'm starting to think i'm getting this theory all wrong...
swimming = cycling = ice skating = ∇...
i kept looking at my legs
pretending to walk while simultaneously trying to glide...

Δ schematic insinuates: don't look at your legs...
no one who walks upright looks down
asking the legs to do the walking...
one looks down to resemble a humbling
expression of grace: thank you: mechanisms of
what binds water to a tide and the mountain
to itch for rising above the setting sun...
thank you...
no one looks at one's legs insinuating:
you're not performing my unconscious demands
of moving from X to Y...
but on ice? ice skating...
it's a fake schematic... ice skating is truly like
swimming and cycling...
next time? my 3rd time on the ice? i will have to let go...
i will have to fall the nth number of times...
what's scary is generating a momentum
so easily without any obstacles of a hill
of grit of grind...
     it's a bit like: people exercising in the gym...
performance art... they can lift weights as a spectacle...
they can create a sexed-up physique, body-shape...
but throw the same people into a manual-labour
environment: with the drudgery of manual labour...
the bulkiest of them will stumble...
tell them to lift, perform "art work" on a roll of
      felt in the roofing industry...
lifting weights is an abstract compared to actual
physical labour...

still... aged 36 and the first "date": it wasn't a date...
was with a female who just so happened to be a lesbian...
what sort of heterosexual woman would go on
a date with me so simple... she asked to go ice-skating
i would have asked: want to go cycling with me?
want to go to an art gallery with me?
was there any talk about what job i have?
was there any talk about what living arrangements
i'm living "under": more like over given
the current climate of renting in London:
12 months upfront rent?!
             of course i still live with my parents...
i clean the house, i cook, i sort out my father's invoices...
i do the VAT for the accountant,
i tend to the garden...
                              i pay "rent"... well...
thankfully i didn't have hopes to get married...
so... my parents didn't have to fork out from their savings
for some grand fakery parade of ceremonial pomp
of ****** white: bride to be...
easier with the prostitutes in the brothel...
but i figured: if the the 8 year old me figured out
how to ******* before he could produce *****
he could also have an inkling into the current debacle
of men who *******: like that was ever a hindering
"problem": because women are all pristine
because they rarely talk about it:
cipher: Madame Bovary...

         two bad experiences having *** in one brothel
and i'm thinking about curing my ills seeking out
another brothel... but it's winter and my libido is
obviously not up to scratch...
so? three times daily... jerking off to the point
where i: i don't have to actually enjoy it...
no movies... just pictures... cleavage... ***...
eyes... mostly eyes...
                           bacon, butcher, bacon,
tenderising meat, curing meat with acids...
spices... herbs...
                 the more i do it the less i think of it...
worried about communal hot topics about loss
of testosterone?
                   i have hair on my chest
my stomach, my back and on my chin...
                  blah blah some parrot said...
seagulls dived in for a *******... the Kraken yawned...
Norse mythologies crept up on dying Christianity
and all was well... meadows covered by frost come
late January somewhere in the open green patches
of Edinburgh...

                - the labour and the pains of the crucified-foetus....
some say it's like waking into a world
where women perform the splinter-membrane
argument of what's living and what's not...
how ancient male mammals performed infanticide...
yet how chemistry and the abstract allowed
a new-mammalian-wave of female infanticide:
because: early birds in the dynamic of ***
made their first falls the fault in the opposite ***...
while some of us waited and waited and
by waiting became freed from ugly brides
and social expectation: Darwinism's pressures
to procreate...

i can't listen to both Darwinism and Buddhism
at the same time: i simply can't knife through
to the fork to subsequently spoon up and gulp down
this sort of duality...
like i can't stomach the dualism: if there is one
of consolidating the aesthetic with the ascetic...
i can't consolidate the AESTHETIC with the ASCETIC!
Christianity did just that! Christianity
married the AESTHETIC with the ASCETIC"

I am not a number
I am not a cypher.
I am a real live person
Not a hypothetical one.
I am part of a portion
Of the total population
Not an ignorable thing
Only fit for eliminating
If it suits a demographic,
Budgeted body politic;
Something looked upon
As something better gone.
By some venal banker,
Number crunching ******.

I matter.
Please remember I’m real
And the turning of the wheel
Might make you a rich man
But your carefully worded plan
Might crush me underneath.
Is this what you bequeath
To the society that bore you?
Is it the proper thing to do?

I am not a figure, a jot.
A squiggle on a page, not
Some negotiable loss
Decided upon by a boss
Who wants a higher bonus
Jettisoning an onus
Foisted on him by liberals.
My problems are not literal,
They are real and due
To be looked through
For a way to be humane
In matters mundane,
And not as profitable.
Don’t be despicable.

I matter.
Please remember I’m real
And the turning of the wheel
Might make you a rich man
But your carefully worded plan
Might crush me underneath.
Is this what you bequeath
To the society that bore you?
Is it the proper thing to do?

Talk to your accountants
And see what the amount is
To do things for fiscal gain
Without causing people pain.
There has to be a way
We can all have our day;
Our place in the sun
Things good for one
That are also good for all
And don’t cause a fall
In the economy and health
For those without wealth.
If the rich lose big gains
They will still eat again,
But the poor just may not
With what little they’ve got.

I matter.
Please remember I’m real
And the turning of the wheel
Might make you a rich man
But your carefully worded plan
Might crush me underneath.
Is this what you bequeath
To the society that bore you?
Is it the proper thing to do?

this was it, the sideways glace with criminal intent
tax dodger, millionaire with  make-up
slyly fleecing sheep off poor citizens backs
living within wind and rage on a mountain top retreat
glass chandeliers, wool carpets,  ivory wall hangings
smoking cubans, smirking has-beens
'who are they but grovelers in the grime
of social disgrace'. The lord.

no, i'm not i countered, shrinking in my walrus skin,
of shades of brown and chameleon
i didn't do it. I was just there buying groceries
for a weekend soup.

take him away, he is a liar, his face says so
his words are smooth as ***** glass
inserted in a conscious effort to fool us.....

five years will teach him temperance
make him see routine, file his taxes,
place him in a cell with accountants,( the cells are full of "em)
lock him up in tax forms
place him in a poverty trap
let him learn not to get rich by his wits
wits are for whites only.
skin colour is everything now. ha ha.

case closed.
throw away the key.

© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 19 days ago

- See more at: http://allpoetry.com/poem/11670069-Your-honor......-by-Marshall-Gass-noguest#sthash.TB0bh83­H.dpuf

He, growing, is nearly asleep but his psyche keeps fast to the tale
He hears:   The world at end, too many fights, ugly bites
                    They never knew or tasted peace, the blast on close
                    Rights, mere words.

He wakes, jarred by certain fear, praying the bubble at the end
Is big enough for enough
(Enough of the right people).

If the world should end this year and a select handful could make it out
Inside a scientific bubble, hidden in a volcano
(There is talk of super rich buying off tracts and strips
Away from when the crowds go mad........)
Will we need preacher or agriculturist, who will grow the crop?
Is an artist of importance or how about the taxman?
When this big, blue ball's reduced to rubble, do we need accountants?
The cave age beckons, folks and Lard knows, it seems not far off
Not the way groups take turns to hack away humanity.

Stockpile the water, canned food, save a let or two
And leave sentiment at the door, the bubble cannot hold us all
(Wait, where'd I leave my cell? Oh, there won't be electricity, no charge.)
No meat to eat, but hens to lay
Save the flint and remember: keep the secret.