Before long the summer sun will rise in London
Like the half of the Ge meets the other half.
Like a magic by the Lamp of Aladdin
The love flame hidden in the chest lights up!

Like a blooming rose in a glowing beam of light,
Like a smiling face speaks a gentle word,
Like a beautiful sunrise colour in the first light!

The summer in London will pop and sizzle
We will see a threshold in our land.
The rose for a while is tucked away
Off the winter and is given to the sun
Winter is not forever spring is on the corner
Come back in the sun with the early bird
Before Cinderella takes on the primrose path.

Keeping an eye on a thriller is in the winter’s field
Oozy ozone misty land gets a gingerly seasoning
What on earth will it strike, will it dish out?
Ah, the sun will pop out like a river breeze.

Like a southern song singing on a dream scene.
a smooth fairy dance facing the Moon
a thrill of exposing Stonehenge once and for all
a melodious raindrop in the serene pond
a butterfly dance on the rose
a turned on tall tale of the blue peacock
Like a pure belief in heaven without a pinch of salt!

by John Greenleaf Whittier  (1807 – 1892)

“As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits which be Angels of Light are augmented not only by the Divine Light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood fire: and as the celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same.”

        COR. AGRIPPA,
           Occult Philosophy, Book I. chap. v.

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow; and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”

                                       EMERSON

The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east; we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, —
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd’s-grass for the cows;
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows;
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold’s pole of birch,
The **** his crested helmet bent
And down his querulous challenge sent.

Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag, wavering to and fro,
Crossed and recrossed the wingàd snow:
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

So all night long the storm roared on:
The morning broke without a sun;
In tiny spherule traced with lines
Of Nature’s geometric signs,
And, when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below, —
A universe of sky and snow!
The old familiar sights of ours
Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,
Or garden-wall, or belt of wood;
A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,
A fenceless drift what once was road;
The bridle-post an old man sat
With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;
The well-curb had a Chinese roof;
And even the long sweep, high aloof,
In its slant spendor, seemed to tell
Of Pisa’s leaning miracle.

A prompt, decisive man, no breath
Our father wasted: “Boys, a path!”
Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy
Count such a summons less than joy?)
Our buskins on our feet we drew;
With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,
To guard our necks and ears from snow,
We cut the solid whiteness through.
And, where the drift was deepest, made
A tunnel walled and overlaid
With dazzling crystal: we had read
Of rare Aladdin’s wondrous cave,
And to our own his name we gave,
With many a wish the luck were ours
To test his lamp’s supernal powers.
We reached the barn with merry din,
And roused the prisoned brutes within.
The old horse ****** his long head out,
And grave with wonder gazed about;
The **** his ***** greeting said,
And forth his speckled harem led;
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,
And mild reproach of hunger looked;
The hornëd patriarch of the sheep,
Like Egypt’s Amun roused from sleep,
Shook his sage head with gesture mute,
And emphasized with stamp of foot.

All day the gusty north-wind bore
The loosening drift its breath before;
Low circling round its southern zone,
The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.
No church-bell lent its Christian tone
To the savage air, no social smoke
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.
A solitude made more intense
By dreary-voicëd elements,
The shrieking of the mindless wind,
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,
And on the glass the unmeaning beat
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.
Beyond the circle of our hearth
No welcome sound of toil or mirth
Unbound the spell, and testified
Of human life and thought outside.
We minded that the sharpest ear
The buried brooklet could not hear,
The music of whose liquid lip
Had been to us companionship,
And, in our lonely life, had grown
To have an almost human tone.

As night drew on, and, from the crest
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank
From sight beneath the smothering bank,
We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back, —
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art

The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;
While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.
The crane and pendent trammels showed,
The Turks’ heads on the andirons glowed;
While childish fancy, prompt to tell
The meaning of the miracle,
Whispered the old rhyme: “Under the tree,
When fire outdoors burns merrily,
There the witches are making tea.”

The moon above the eastern wood
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood
Transfigured in the silver flood,
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine
Took shadow, or the sombre green
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black
Against the whiteness at their back.
For such a world and such a night
Most fitting that unwarming light,
Which only seemed where’er it fell
To make the coldness visible.

Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed;
The house-dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat’s dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger’s seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons’ straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.

What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north-wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire’s ruddy glow.
O Time and Change! — with hair as gray
As was my sire’s that winter day,
How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to still live on!
Ah, brother! only I and thou
Are left of all that circle now, —
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone.
Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still;
Look where we may, the wide earth o’er,
Those lighted faces smile no more.

We tread the paths their feet have worn,
We sit beneath their orchard trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o’er,
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
No step is on the conscious floor!
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,
(Since He who knows our need is just,)
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own!

We sped the time with stories old,
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told,
Or stammered from our school-book lore
“The Chief of Gambia’s golden shore.”
How often since, when all the land
Was clay in Slavery’s shaping hand,
As if a far-blown trumpet stirred
Dame Mercy Warren’s rousing word:
“Does not the voice of reason cry,
Claim the first right which Nature gave,
From the red scourge of ******* to fly,
Nor deign to live a burdened slave!”
Our father rode again his ride
On Memphremagog’s wooded side;
Sat down again to moose and samp
In trapper’s hut and Indian camp;
Lived o’er the old idyllic ease
Beneath St. François’ hemlock-trees;
Again for him the moonlight shone
On Norman cap and bodiced zone;
Again he heard the violin play
Which led the village dance away.
And mingled in its merry whirl
The grandam and the laughing girl.
Or, nearer home, our steps he led
Where Salisbury’s level marshes spread
Mile-wide as flies the laden bee;
Where merry mowers, hale and strong,
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along
The low green prairies of the sea.
We shared the fishing off Boar’s Head,
And round the rocky Isles of Shoals
The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals;
The chowder on the sand-beach made,
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot,
With spoons of clam-shell from the ***.
We heard the tales of witchcraft old,
And dream and sign and marvel told
To sleepy listeners as they lay
Stretched idly on the salted hay,
Adrift along the winding shores,
When favoring breezes deigned to blow
The square sail of the gundelow
And idle lay the useless oars.

Our mother, while she turned her wheel
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,
Told how the Indian hordes came down
At midnight on Concheco town,
And how her own great-uncle bore
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.
Recalling, in her fitting phrase,
So rich and picturesque and free
(The common unrhymed poetry
Of simple life and country ways,)
The story of her early days, —
She made us welcome to her home;
Old hearths grew wide to give us room;
We stole with her a frightened look
At the gray wizard’s conjuring-book,
The fame whereof went far and wide
Through all the simple country side;
We heard the hawks at twilight play,
The boat-horn on Piscataqua,
The loon’s weird laughter far away;
We fished her little trout-brook, knew
What flowers in wood and meadow grew,
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down,
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay,
The ducks’ black squadron anchored lay,
And heard the wild-geese calling loud
Beneath the gray November cloud.
Then, haply, with a look more grave,
And soberer tone, some tale she gave
From painful Sewel’s ancient tome,
Beloved in every Quaker home,
Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom,
Or Chalkley’s Journal, old and quaint, —
Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint! —
Who, when the dreary calms prevailed,
And water-**** and bread-cask failed,
And cruel, hungry eyes pursued
His portly presence mad for food,
With dark hints muttered under breath
Of casting lots for life or death,

Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies,
To be himself the sacrifice.
Then, suddenly, as if to save
The good man from his living grave,
A ripple on the water grew,
A school of porpoise flashed in view.
“Take, eat,” he said, “and be content;
These fishes in my stead are sent
By Him who gave the tangled ram
To spare the child of Abraham.”
Our uncle, innocent of books,
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,
The ancient teachers never dumb
Of Nature’s unhoused lyceum.
In moons and tides and weather wise,
He read the clouds as prophecies,
And foul or fair could well divine,
By many an occult hint and sign,
Holding the cunning-warded keys
To all the woodcraft mysteries;
Himself to Nature’s heart so near
v That all her voices in his ear
Of beast or bird had meanings clear,
Like Apollonius of old,
Who knew the tales the sparrows told,
Or Hermes, who interpreted
What the sage cranes of Nilus said;
A simple, guileless, childlike man,
Content to live where life began;
Strong only on his native grounds,
The little world of sights and sounds
Whose girdle was the parish bounds,
Whereof his fondly partial pride
The common features magnified,
As Surrey hills to mountains grew
In White of Selborne’s loving view, —
He told how teal and loon he shot,
And how the eagle’s eggs he got,
The feats on pond and river done,
The prodigies of rod and gun;
Till, warming with the tales he told,
Forgotten was the outside cold,
The bitter wind unheeded blew,
From ripening corn the pigeons flew,
The partridge drummed i’ the wood, the mink
Went fishing down the river-brink.
In fields with bean or clover gay,
The woodchuck, like a hermit gray,
Peered from the doorway of his cell;
The muskrat plied the mason’s trade,
And tier by tier his mud-walls laid;
And from the shagbark overhead
The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell.

Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer
And voice in dreams I see and hear, —
The sweetest woman ever Fate
Perverse denied a household mate,
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less
Found peace in love’s unselfishness,
And welcome wheresoe’er she went,
A calm and gracious element,
Whose presence seemed the sweet income
And womanly atmosphere of home, —
Called up her girlhood memories,
The huskings and the apple-bees,
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails,
Weaving through all the poor details
And homespun warp of circumstance
A golden woof-thread of romance.
For well she kept her genial mood
And simple faith of maidenhood;
Before her still a cloud-land lay,
The mirage loomed across her way;
The morning dew, that dries so soon
With others, glistened at her noon;
Through years of toil and soil and care,
From glossy tress to thin gray hair,
All unprofaned she held apart
The ****** fancies of the heart.
Be shame to him of woman born
Who hath for such but thought of scorn.
There, too, our elder sister plied
Her evening task the stand beside;
A full, rich nature, free to trust,
Truthful and almost sternly just,
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
And make her generous thought a fact,
Keeping with many a light disguise
The secret of self-sacrifice.

O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best
That Heaven itself could give thee, — rest,
Rest from all bitter thoughts and things!
How many a poor one’s blessing went
With thee beneath the low green tent
Whose curtain never outward swings!

As one who held herself a part
Of all she saw, and let her heart
Against the household ***** lean,
Upon the motley-braided mat
Our youngest and our dearest sat,
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,
Now bathed in the unfading green
And holy peace of Paradise.
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill,
Or from the shade of saintly palms,
Or silver reach of river calms,
Do those large eyes behold me still?
With me one little year ago: —
The chill weight of the winter snow
For months upon her grave has lain;
And now, when summer south-winds blow
And brier and harebell bloom again,
I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
I see the violet-sprinkled sod
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak
The hillside flowers she loved to seek,
Yet following me where’er I went
With dark eyes full of love’s content.
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills
The air with sweetness; all the hills
Stretch green to June’s unclouded sky;
But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should be nigh,
A loss in all familiar things,
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.
And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I hold?
What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust with me?
And while in life’s late afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule,
The master of the district school
Held at the fire his favored place,
Its warm glow lit a laughing face
Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared
The uncertain prophecy of beard.
He teased the mitten-blinded cat,
Played cross-pins on my uncle’s hat,
Sang songs, and told us what befalls
In classic Dartmouth’s college halls.
Born the wild Northern hills among,
From whence his yeoman father wrung
By patient toil subsistence scant,
Not competence and yet not want,
He early gained the power to pay
His cheerful, self-reliant way;
Could doff at ease his scholar’s gown
To peddle wares from town to town;
Or through the long vacation’s reach
In lonely lowland districts teach,
Where all the droll experience found
At stranger hearths in boarding round,
The moonlit skater’s keen delight,
The sleigh-drive through the frosty night,
The rustic party, with its rough
Accompaniment of blind-man’s-buff,
And whirling-plate, and forfeits paid,
His winter task a pastime made.
Happy the snow-locked homes wherein
He tuned his merry violin,

Or played the athlete in the barn,
Or held the good dame’s winding-yarn,
Or mirth-provoking versions told
Of classic legends rare and old,
Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome
Had all the commonplace of home,
And little seemed at best the odds
‘Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods;
Where Pindus-born Arachthus took
The guise of any grist-mill brook,
And dread Olympus at his will
Became a huckleberry hill.

A careless boy that night he seemed;
But at his desk he had the look
And air of one who wisely schemed,
And hostage from the future took
In trainëd thought and lore of book.
Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he
Shall Freedom’s young apostles be,
Who, following in War’s ****** trail,
Shall every lingering wrong assail;
All chains from limb and spirit strike,
Uplift the black and white alike;
Scatter before their swift advance
The darkness and the ignorance,
The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth,
Which nurtured Treason’s monstrous growth,
Made ****** pastime, and the hell
Of prison-torture possible;
The cruel lie of caste refute,
Old forms remould, and substitute
For Slavery’s lash the freeman’s will,
For blind routine, wise-handed skill;
A school-house plant on every hill,
Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence
The quick wires of intelligence;
Till North and South together brought
Shall own the same electric thought,
In peace a common flag salute,
And, side by side in labor’s free
And unresentful rivalry,
Harvest the fields wherein they fought.

Another guest that winter night
Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light.
Unmarked by time, and yet not young,
The honeyed music of her tongue
And words of meekness scarcely told
A nature passionate and bold,

Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide,
Its milder features dwarfed beside
Her unbent will’s majestic pride.
She sat among us, at the best,
A not unfeared, half-welcome guest,
Rebuking with her cultured phrase
Our homeliness of words and ways.
A certain pard-like, treacherous grace
Swayed the lithe limbs and drooped the lash,
Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash;
And under low brows, black with night,
Rayed out at times a dangerous light;
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face
Presaging ill to him whom Fate
Condemned to share her love or hate.
A woman tropical, intense
In thought and act, in soul and sense,
She blended in a like degree
The ***** and the devotee,
Revealing with each freak or feint
The temper of Petruchio’s Kate,
The raptures of Siena’s saint.
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist
Had facile power to form a fist;
The warm, dark languish of her eyes
Was never safe from wrath’s surprise.
Brows saintly calm and lips devout
Knew every change of scowl and pout;
And the sweet voice had notes more high
And shrill for social battle-cry.

Since then what old cathedral town
Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown,
What convent-gate has held its lock
Against the challenge of her knock!
Through Smyrna’s plague-hushed thoroughfares,
Up sea-set Malta’s rocky stairs,
Gray olive slopes of hills that hem
Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem,
Or startling on her desert throne
The crazy Queen of Lebanon
With claims fantastic as her own,
Her tireless feet have held their way;
And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray,
She watches under Eastern skies,
With hope each day renewed and fresh,
The Lord’s quick coming in the flesh,
Whereof she dreams and prophesies!
Where’er her troubled path may be,
The Lord’s sweet pity with her go!
The outward wayward life we see,
The hidden springs we may not know.
Nor is it given us to discern
What threads the fatal sisters spun,
Through what ancestral years has run
The sorrow with the woman born,
What forged her cruel chain of moods,
What set her feet in solitudes,
And held the love within her mute,
What mingled madness in the blood,
A life-long discord and annoy,
Water of tears with oil of joy,
And hid within the folded bud
Perversities of flower and fruit.
It is not ours to separate
The tangled skein of will and fate,
To show what metes and bounds should stand
Upon the soul’s debatable land,
And between choice and Providence
Divide the circle of events;
But He who knows our frame is just,
Merciful and compassionate,
And full of sweet assurances
And hope for all the language is,
That He remembereth we are dust!

At last the great logs, crumbling low,
Sent out a dull and duller glow,
The bull’s-eye watch that hung in view,
Ticking its weary circuit through,
Pointed with mutely warning sign
Its black hand to the hour of nine.
That sign the pleasant circle broke:
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray,
And laid it tenderly away;
Then roused himself to safely cover
The dull red brands with ashes over.
And while, with care, our mother laid
The work aside, her steps she stayed
One moment, seeking to express
Her grateful sense of happiness
For food and shelter, warmth and health,
And love’s contentment more than wealth,
With simple wishes (not the weak,
Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek,
But such as warm the generous heart,
O’er-prompt to do with Heaven its part)
That none might lack, that bitter night,
For bread and clothing, warmth and light.

Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out.
Down the long hillside treading slow
We saw the half-buried oxen go,
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their straining nostrils white with frost.
Before our door the straggling train
Drew up, an added team to gain.
The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes
From lip to lip; the younger folks
Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled,
Then toiled again the cavalcade
O’er windy hill, through clogged ravine,
And woodland paths that wound between
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed.
From every barn a team afoot,
At every house a new recruit,
Where, drawn by Nature’s subtlest law,
Haply the watchful young men saw
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
And curious eyes of merry girls,
Lifting their hands in mock defence
Against the snow-ball’s compliments,
And reading in each missive tost
The charm with Eden never lost.
We heard once more the sleigh-bells’ sound;
And, following where the teamsters led,
The wise old Doctor went his round,
Just pausing at our door to say,
In the brief autocratic way
Of one who, prompt at Duty’s call,
Was free to urge her claim on all,
That some poor neighbor sick abed
At night our mother’s aid would need.
For, one in generous thought and deed,
What mattered in the sufferer’s sight
The Quaker matron’s inward light,
The Doctor’s mail of Calvin’s creed?
All hearts confess the saints elect
Who, twain in faith, in love agree,
And melt not in an acid sect
The Christian pearl of charity!

So days went on: a week had passed
Since the great world was heard from last.
The Almanac we studied o’er,
Read and reread our little store
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score;
One harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes, a book forbid,
And poetry, (or good or bad,
A single book was all we had,)
Where Ellwood’s meek, drab-skirted Muse,
A stranger to the heathen Nine,
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,
The wars of David and the Jews.
At last the floundering carrier bore
The village paper to our door.
Lo! broadening outward as we read,
To warmer zones the horizon spread
In panoramic length unrolled
We saw the marvels that it told.
Before us passed the painted Creeks,
A   nd daft McGregor on his raids
In Costa Rica’s everglades.
And up Taygetos winding slow
Rode Ypsilanti’s Mainote Greeks,
A Turk’s head at each saddle-bow!
Welcome to us its week-old news,
Its corner for the rustic Muse,
Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
Its record, mingling in a breath
The wedding bell and dirge of death:
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale,
The latest culprit sent to jail;
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
Its vendue sales and goods at cost,
And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street,
The pulse of life that round us beat;
The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow;
Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
And all the world was ours once more!

Clasp, Angel of the backword look
And folded wings of ashen gray
And voice of echoes far away,
The brazen covers of thy book;
The weird palimpsest old and vast,
Wherein thou hid’st the spectral past;
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow
The characters of joy and woe;
The monographs of outlived years,
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,
Green hills of life that ***** to death,
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees
Shade off to mournful cypresses
With the white amaranths underneath.
Even while I look, I can but heed
The restless sands’ incessant fall,
Importunate hours that hours succeed,
Each clamorous with its own sharp need,
And duty keeping pace with all.
Shut down and clasp with heavy lids;
I hear again the voice that bids
The dreamer leave his dream midway
For larger hopes and graver fears:
Life greatens in these later years,
The century’s aloe flowers to-day!

Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,
The worldling’s eyes shall gather dew,
Dreaming in throngful city ways
Of winter joys his boyhood knew;
And dear and early friends — the few
Who yet remain — shall pause to view
These Flemish pictures of old days;
Sit with me by the homestead hearth,
And stretch the hands of memory forth
To warm them at the wood-fire’s blaze!
And thanks untraced to lips unknown
Shall greet me like the odors blown
From unseen meadows newly mown,
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond;
The traveller owns the grateful sense
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare
The benediction of the air.

Written in  1865

I've been acquainted with the following
psychoactives compounds:

Depressants & Dissociatives;
Ethanol / EtOH / alcohol, drink, *****
γ-Hydroxybutyric acid / GHB / G, fantasy
β-Phenyl-γ-aminobutyric acid / PhGABA / Phenibut
Dextromethorphan / DXM / Benylin, Robitussin
Morphine / Papaver somniferum / *****
3-Methylmorphine / Codeine
Dihydrocodeine / DHC
Buprenorphine / Subutex, Suboxone
N-Allylnoroxymorphone / Naloxone / Suboxone, Narcan
Tramadol / Ultram
O-Desmethyltramadol/ O-DSMT / Omnitram
Thiopental / Sodium Pentothal
Diazepam / ******
2'-Chlorodiazepam / Ro5-3448 / Diclazepam
4'-Chlorodiazepam / Ro5-4864
Chlordiazepoxide / Librium
Gidazepam, hidazepam
Desalkylgidazepam / Bromonordiazepam
N-Desalkylfluarazepam / Norfluarazepam
Flubromazepam
Alprazolam / Xanax
Bromazolam / XLI-268
Clonazolam, Clonitrazolam / Clam
Etizolam / Etilaam, Etizest
Flualprazolam
Flubromazolam
Zopiclone / Zimovane
Pagoclone
Promethazine / Phenergan
Diphenhydramine / DPH / Benadryl, Nytol
Chlorphenamine, chlorpheniramine / CPM / Piriton
Cetirizine / Zyrtec
Amitriptyline / Elavil
Tianeptine / Coaxil, Stablon
Mirtazapine / Remeron
Quetiapine / Seroquel
Nitrous Oxide / N2O / laughing gas
Amyl Nitrite / Poppers
Ketamine [racemic] / K, Kitty
Esketamine [S-isomer] / Special K
Deschloroketamine / 2'-Oxo-PCM / DCK
N-ethyldeschloroketamine / 2'-Oxo-PCE / O-PCE / Eticyclidone
Deoxymethoxetamine / 3-Me-2′-Oxo-PCE / DMXE
Methoxetamine / 3-MeO-2'-Oxo-PCE / MXE / Mexxy
Hydroxetamine / 3-**-2'-Oxo-PCE / HXE / Hexxy
Methoxpropamine / 2-Oxo-3'-MeO-PCPr / MXPr
Methoxisopropamine / 2-Oxo-3'-MeO-PCiPr / MXiPr
3-Hydroxyphencyclidine / 3-**-***
3-Methoxyphencyclidine / 3-MeO-***
3-Methoxyeticyclidine / 3-MeO-PCE
3-Methyleticyclidine / 3-Me-PCE

Stimulants & Enhancers;
1,3,7-Trimethylxanthine / Caffeine / Coffea, Camellia sinensis / Coffee, Tea
3,7-dimethylxanthine / Theobromine / [constituent of] Chocolate
N-Ethyl-L-glutamine / L-Theanine / [constituent of] Green Tea
Nicotine / Nicotiana / Tobacco, cigarettes, smokes
Ephedrine / Ephedra
Pseudoephedrine / Ephedra, Sudafed
Adrenaline, Epinephrine
Choline bitartrate
L-alpha glycerylphosphorylcholine / Alpha-GPC, Choline alfoscerate
Cytidine 5'-diphosphocholine / CDP-choline, Citicoline
N-Acetylcysteine / NAC
2-Dimethylaminoethyl (4-chlorophenoxy)acetate / Meclofenoxate
N-Phenylacetyl-L-prolylglycine ethyl ester / Omberacetam / Noopept
Coluracetam / BCI-540
4-Phenylpiracetam
Propranolol
(±)-2-Benzhydrylsulfinyleth­anehydroxamic acid / Adrafinil
(±)-2-[(Diphenylmethyl)sulfinyl]acetamide / Modafinil
(–)-2-[(R)-(diphenylmethyl)sulfinyl]acetamide / Armodafinil
α-Methylphenethylamine / Amphetamine, αMP / Speed
N-Methylamphetamine / Methamphetamine / ****
Lisdexamfetamine / Vyvanse, Tyvense, Elvanse
2-Fluoromethamphetamine / 2-FMA
3-Fluoroamphetamine / 3-FA /  PAL-353
4-Fluoroamphetamine / 4-FA, 4-FMP /  PAL-303 / Flux
4-Methoxyamphetamine / PMA, 4-MA / Death
5-Methoxy-2-aminoindane / MEAI, 5-MeO-AI / Chaperone, Pace
Methythiolpropamine / MPA / Blow
3-Fluorophenmetrazine / 3-FPM / PAL-593
Methylphenidate / MPH / Ritalin, Concerta
4-Fluoromethylphenidate / 4F-MPH
4-Fluoroethylphenidate / 4F-EPH
3-Methylmethcathinone / 3-MMC / Metaphedrone
3-Methylethcathinone / 3-MEC
4-Methylmethcathinone / 4-MMC / Mephedrone
4-Methylethcathinone / 4-MEC
3-Chloro-N-tert-butyl-cathinone / Bupropion / Wellbutrin, Zyban
4-Chloromethcathinone / 4-CMC / Clephedrone
4-Fluoromethcathinone / 4-FMC / Flephedrone
4-Fluoro-α-methylaminovalerophenone / 4-Fluoropentedrone / 4-FPD
α-Ethylaminocaprophenone / N-Ethylhexedrone / NEH / Hexen
alpha-Pyrrolidinohexiophenone / α-PHP / PV-7
alpha-Pyrrolidinoisohexaphenone / α-PiHP, α-PHiP
3,4-Methylenedioxy-α-pyrrolidinohexiophenone / MDPHP
3,4-Methyl​enedioxy​pentedrone / βk-MBDP / Pentylone
3,4-Methylenedioxymethcathinone / βk-MDMA / MDMC / Methylone
3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine / MDMA / ecstasy
5-(2-methylaminopropyl)benzofuran / 5-MAPB
6-(2-Aminopropyl)benzofuran / 6-APB / Benzofury
6-(2-Aminopropyl)-2,3-dihydrobenzofuran / 6-APDB / 4-desoxy-MDA
Mesembrine / Sceletium tortuosum, Kanna
Harmine / Peganum harmala / Syrian Rue
3,4,8-Trimethoxyphenanthrene-2,5-diol / Dendrobium nobile
NSI-189
4-chloro-N-(2-morpholin-4-ylethyl)benzamide / Moclobemide
Escitalopram / Cipralex, Lexapro
Fluoxetine / Prozac
Sertraline / Zoloft
Venlafaxine / Effexor
5-Hydroxytryptophan / 5-HTP / Oxitryptan

Hallucinogens & Psychedelics;
Cannabidiol / CBD / Cannabis
Cannabigerol / CBG / Cannabis
Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol / THC / Cannabis, Marijuana
Hexahydrocannabinol / HHC
AM-2201 / Synth-'noids, Spice
NM-2201 / CBL-2201
5C-AB-PINICA
Salvinorin A  / Salvia Divinorum / Diviner's Sage
d-Lysergic acid amide / d-Lysergamide / LSA / Ergine
Lysergic acid diethylamide / Lysergide / LSD, LAD / Acid, Lucy
Lysergic acid 2,4-dimethylazetidide / LSZ / Diazedine, Lambda, λ
1-Acetyl-lysergic acid diethylamide / 1A-LSD / ALD-52
1-Propionyl-lysergic acid diethylamide / 1P-LSD
1-Cyclopropionyl-N-Methyl-N-isopropyllysergamide / 1cP-MiPLA
6-Allyl-6-nor-lysergic acid diethylamide / AL-LAD / Aladdin
2,5-Dimethoxy-4-methylamphetamine / DOM / Dominic
2,5-Dimethoxy-4-bromoamphetamine / DOB / Aphrodite
2,5-Dimethoxy-4-chloroamphetamine / DOC / Doctor
2,5-Dimethoxy-4-methylthioamphetamine / DOT / Aleph
2,5-Dimethoxy-4-methyl-α-ethylphenethylamine / 4C-D / Ariadne
2,5-Dimethoxy-4-methylphenethylamine / 2C-D, 2C-M / Matrix
2,5-Dimethoxy-4-ethylphenethylamine / 2C-E / Eternity
2,5-Dimethoxy-4-bromophenethylamine / 2C-B / Nexus
2,5-Dimethoxy-4-chlorophenethylamine / 2C-C / Callisto
2,5-Dimethoxy-4-iodophenethylamine / 2C-I / Infinity
2,5-Dimethoxy-4-methylthiophenethylamine / 2C-T / Tesseract
2,5-Dimethoxy-4-ethylthiophenethylamine / 2C-T-2 / Rosy
2,5-Dimethoxy-4-fluoroethylthiophenethylamine / 2C-T-21 / Aurora
2,5-Dimethoxy-4-bromo-β-keto-phenethylamine / βk-2C-B
2,5-Dimethoxy-4-bromo-β-hydroxy-phenethylamine / βOH-2C-B / BOHB
2,3,6,7-Benzo-dihydro-difuran-8-bromo-ethylamine / 2C-B-FLY
2,5-Dimethoxy-N-(2-methoxybenzyl)-4-bromophenethylamine / 25B
2,5-Dimethoxy-N-(2-methoxybenzyl)-4-chlorophenethylamine / 25C
2,5-Dimethoxy-N-(2-methoxybenzyl)-4-iodophenethylamine / 25I
2,5-Dimethoxy-N-(2-hydroxybenzyl)-4-ethylphenethylamine / 25E-NBOH
3,4-Methylenedioxyamphetamine / MDA / Sass, Sally
3,4,5-Trimethoxyphenethylamine / Mescaline / M
3,5-Dimethoxy-4-ethoxyphenethylamine / Escaline
3,5-Dimethoxy-4-methallyloxyphenethylamine / Methallylescaline / MAL
α-Methyltryptamine / αMT / Indopan
N,N-dimethyltryptamine / DMT / The Spirit
N,N-dipropyltryptamine / DPT / The Light
N,N-Diisopropyltryptamine / DiPT / The Sound
N-Methyl-N-ethyltryptamine / MET / The Colour
N-Methyl-N-propyltryptamine / MPT
N-Ethyl-N-propyltryptamine / EPT
N-Methyl-N-isopropyltryptamine / MiPT / The Touch
4-Hydroxy-dimethyltryptamine / 4-**-DMT / Psilocybe / Psilocin
4-Phosphoryloxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine / 4-PO-DMT / Psilocybin
4-Acetoxy-dimethyltryptamine / 4-AcO-DMT / Psilacetin
4-Hydroxy-N-methyl-N-ethyltryptamine / 4-**-MET / Metocin
4-Acetoxy-N-methyl-N-ethyltryptamine / 4-AcO-MET / Metacetin
4-Acetyloxy-N,N-dipropyltryptamine / 4-AcO-DPT / Pracetin
4-Acetoxy-N-methyl-N-cyclopropyltryptmine / 4-AcO-McPT
4-Acetoxy-N-methyl-N-isopropyltryptamine / 4-AcO-MiPT / Mipracetin
4-Hydroxy-N-methyl-N-isopropyltryptamine / 4-**-MiPT / Miprocin
5-Methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine / 5-MeO-DMT / The God, The Power
5-Methoxy-N-methethyltryptamine / 5-MeO-MET / The Vision
5-Methoxy-N,N-diallyltryptamine / 5-MeO-DALT / Foxtrot
5-Methoxy-N-diisopropyltryptamine / 5-MeO-DiPT / Foxy
5-Methoxy-N-methyl-N-isopropyltryptamine / 5-MeO-MiPT / Moxy

He was a man.
A thief.
It was his true nature.

He was the most beautiful
One of them all.
Had no example
To compare.

Skin and eyes
Brown and dark.
Teeth white as snow.
His scent warm and earthly.
And the feeling of his finger tips
On my skin,
Was almost intimidating.

He was a king now
And I was his queen.
We had all we ever dreamt of
But it wasn't enough
For him.

He was caged in the castle
I knew
He longed to steal
To keep moving
It was his nature.

Before long,
Aladdin was gone.
Leaving me without
A heart.

Find the lighter, use it as a lighthouse on a walk below the wall you watch along the wave-formations. Who Wants a Cold One? a Coors Light ad corrects.. When it comes to your home, the little things matter.. an insurance ad blares.. my computer is infected with 3rd party applications unremovable to my meagre tech-ability.. there is a hero as Joseph Campbell once theorized.. in myself like a sick bastardly virus waiting for moments to prove to me "I AM THE SAVIOR, I AM THE CHRIST, I AM THE WARLORD, MICE, MAN, AND VICE".. the windows of opportunity close, I am left waiting the door

& the elevator.

Thirty-thousand years ago, there was nothing but a breeze.. a viscous breeze across chill-spined pterodactyls.. warm-under-the-jungle-brush tyrannosaurus rex, and to think one day I will be just a legend in bone..
Charlotte said she thinks of death and so did Jen. They sat next to the all-you-can-eat and discussed the inevitable. I was sour and playful with no-will-to-understand, just reminding my hair of breezy summer days of 10, thinking of strangeness, of place I was in.

When it's quiet sometimes, I think of old dreams.. dreams I sunk below drown-level as a child in bed and belief. Both mommy and daddy were arguing in the kitchen, this was 7 or 8.. they argued so often one could hear mom begin to cry sometimes, and dad I could see in minds-eye with a grimace so closed and so creased he was hurt and yet honest.. I did not understand so I hid under-stood-silhouettes, oh adulthood..

once in dream I was in pulsing green graveyard like crayon realism strobe lights, tombstones all-round and faint-buzz of outside and one of those strange balded henchmen of badguy Jafar from Disney's Aladdin came peaking outta nowhere with curled eyebrow and baggy one-thousand-one Arabian nightlives parachute pants, curled toes brown-beige moccasins to.. he let out conniving 'HEUHEE!' and slapped me right-side cheek and I JOLTED up bedwise in real time to feel actual physical sting for a few lingered seconds then the sobs of poor mother outside.. I never remembered a dream so clearly again.. they all come, Pro-Found, and dizzy away after hour or two for rest of eternity or perhaps to Place I Can Visit at Death to Review Every Vision and I wonder... when your life flashes before your eyes and the light is encroaching, scenes of mother, brother, father, son, daughter, best-friend, party, break-up, heartbreak, slip-fall, first-sip, first-drag, last-leg, first-kiss, first-hit, first-game, fear, love,  HATE, wait.. do the Dreams come to? Are they all flesh-ed before your eyes as you pass into Light? Are they brought to direct remembrance as you cross the border with Passport of Gods and a Goddess (and which Picture appears on the Page)..?

I remember the old eczema taking bits of skin to carpets round-town and round-lower-mainland to disgust of friends old and new-- this was era where confidence ate itself in mirrors, the sober reality of ugly-ness chiseling away at my Goodness Attempts.. All That Pointless Pain was no Exception nor a Rule, it just **** Happens every once-and-again to the sound of life farting. I used to miss school for feet so impossible to walk on, pussing and bleeding and staining the sheets, shoe soles, carpets, and soul.. limp thru the hallways of Brooks Secondary feeling like bad flavor additive to multicultural Planet Earth-- sleeping 'til the bell rang drinking coffee singing songs I said '**** the ******* educational system and **** me I'm so flatlined..' someday I felt things would really get better and lucky young me I was right.

A half-decade later, I am 21 and hoping, floating, free in the breeze as the wings I have grown keep on wishing the subsistence down. The girl, whoever-she-might-as-well-be, sits immediately vertical chatting frantically to boy with a bit of a cowlick slouching on-up over a bundle of colored paperwork. It seems late in the season for homework, and assume they may have some affiliation with a crazy-hep computer design group in the tradition of Nouevau Silicon Valley.... I sit at my laptop, inching a word a million cubic millimeters closer to God or Divinity or Crescendo or A Bunch More ******* You'll End Up Ignoring---

It's a sunny day, the rain having slathered-off into obscurity somewhere with the Monsoons when the Sun gave the Moon a Soft Slap and the poor purity white-kid went off whimpering, bleeding nose-- I sat, the other night, playing another Grand Strategy game as Tom divided his time between a vaulted and damaged lover, his labor, and his life (friends, food, video-games, vice)... Chai, old Chai the Thai Guy mentioned past his nose in previous iterations of Depictions sat and described his pins-and-needles upset at his bosses at one his three many jobs.. desperately firing text-messages into receiving-space-panel and reflect and back unto Tom's smartphone dash asking him to order a six-pack from a local delivery service cuz his adrenal was giving him heartpain with hurt, and Tom being Busy as All-Ways Tom Is wasn't able to decipher the scramble in-time to make contact before closure of the liquor stores.. poor not-so-poor Chai at first felt castrated at realization he would miss the 11 PM dot-time, but didn't mind as he rendezvoused with Tom and I at Willows Beach where Tom reminded him of a whiskey he'd bought sitting counter-wise at his place.. we kissed a few Mary Janes rightsideup, dragging our butts in the sand to discuss what was wrong (each of us had a problem that night, save for perhaps a less-vocal Tom, I describing my annoyance that a lazy consensus had erupted in my sorry-hometown between my sorta-friends and friends-of-friends that my writing and sharing my writing was arrogant and I an arrogant *** for sharing and I just confounded that they would find my passions so trivial-- perhaps jealousy, perhaps complacency and judgement-for-lack-of-anything-better-to-do and ah **** em all if they think like that, I'll write and be the arrogant me they think I am and share 'til I'm blue in the face and dead perhaps for outspoken intellectualism in their autocratic pointless-waste worldviews.. sad that I dislike them only on the basis they disliked me first..)

I had planned to stay late and leave early-morn (5 or 6 AM) to catch a first-off morning bus back home and sleep, hoping for most part to avoid the shattered-***-mess of a home I was living in.
About 2 days ago, give or take, a water-line for the laundry machine had erupted to soak our entirely-carpeted basement suite, forcing the poor new landlord (a sweetheart of a man named Ron having just taken possession of the house from previous owner on May 1st and, it seems, left 'holding the bag' as they'd call it in day-trading-investment-lingo) to tear out the entirely-soaked carpet and replace it with sensible laminate flooring and rendering the entire suite virtually unlivable for indefinite-few-days and so for me work and friends and especially writing become a welcome reprieve to I, a first world Refu-Jeez.. us, so terribly-off I sip a latte near sunny panorama windows-so-clear-they're-not-there overlooking the crosses of Yates and Blanshard with European church of Gothic architectural style poking heedlessly into empty-open blue.. ironically and strangely there is a liquor store quite literally right next door, and's one I shop at often for its decent prices (God is Dead or Just Drinking to Cope with Sartre and Kierkegaard's Ultimate Thesis) (Kierkegaard especially '*** Kierkegaard seems a good and long friend of God the Almighty) (...I talk with such Judaeo-Christian Catholic rhetoric it never ceases to amaze myself as it bleeds to page..) (stranger thing is, tho, there is no beginning, no middle, no end.. you read or you are bored and either/or is just fine..)

There is some hypothesized crescendo-bliss Tech Singularity on the way in the try-dition of Ray Kurzweil and William Burroughs.. Oscar Wilde to.. (see The Soul of Man Under Socialism in essay-collect book De Profundis).. one day we will all be eternal happiness expressed in song and dance and LED erected-projections of Imperfect Universe (Our Imperfect Earth) with lives stuck on infinite repeat.. our idea of Paradise.. and for those with ability to remain rushed to cortisol (stress-the-best hormone) it will be Hell on Earth, so DRAB and THE SAME all the TIME and it's READ and it's WRITE and it's RIGHT.. the world runs faster with every passing day so desperate to discover the Globe is Flat so we can Hop Off the Other Side into what one might assume to be The Better Place.. elusively picking-up speed thinking 'closer now definitely closer now' unaware (or, secretly aware and unwilling to admit for what will one do when one cannot run?) they are Running in Circles Over and Over and Over and Over and Over Again... cannot take the hint in the fact the Pacific (same Pacific) has been crossed a hugeillion times, nor the same McDonald's in the Azores of Atlantic Portugal is the Same ******* McDonald's stopped-thru on the then-trillionth time last year... and all whilst the International Space Station remains muted up-above crossing 'round and 'round 'til the Jehovah'n Day of Judgement (Chris Hadfield now below with advice for how to run a little faster even blinded in one eye..) then there are the dying Prophets Predicting Industrial Collapse who preach upon the Mount of Internet Sinai Eternal and state "the world is now unsalvageable and we are all about to die.. if ever you wished to find Buddhistic Nirvanic Peace, now is the time so start meditating and imagine Death as New Life and Geopolitics as Game".. forever and ever and ever and ever.

It is only natural to find existence to be 'weird..' layered with Who's That's and giant What The ***** everywhichway you turn.. did it start in a Big Bang, will it end in a Big Crunch, Big Freeze, Big Bang.. ? all questions once ignored for certain ignorance and resurrected as questions concerning the Nature of the What The ***** (also known as 'Science').. and if it did start in a Big Bang, did I start in a Big Bang..? and if it does end in a Big Crunch, will I end in a Big Crunch..? am I a sudden flash of REAL in a Universe that isn't me..? or am I an entire Universe.. perhaps even more than that...? the questions pulse in youth like bad words or bullets. I once stayed up all-night thinking of infinity with my head soaring space-wise forever and ever and ever and I stopped in sudden panic thinking: I could lie here up all night and all day 'til the towered age of 37 (I was 14 at the time) and still be no further on the Universal Map than from thumb-tip-middle to thumb-nail so I wrapped up the attempt with a mix of fear and incredulity, went to school next-day exhausted and tried to explain it all to friends.. they got it, I suppose, but we were all 14 and played basketball instead (I imagined infinite-spinning-basketball on thumb of Michael Jordan).

It's always best describing life in form of Disembodied Poetics.. sure some Philistines won't understand '*** their minds are made of Clockwork, Digits, and Blockthought.. but the general psychic underly implied in all with human faculty will ring-a-ding-ding! and remember all such ancient thoughts and feels as forgotten as a child, locked away until the Spirit rose-up from a rosey thorn prickle to flower straight-up into a Rose! or so I hope as a one-of-many writers-- all of which will write so-as to speak on your behalf.. all floaty and marking a purpose.

The fairytale was my life.
But the story itself wasn't mine.

Placed in a town
In a time of kings and queens,
Princes and princesses,
I was a commoner.

The palace was my dream
but not for the money,
obviously for the love.

I saw him everyday,
Stealing food with his adorable monkey sidekick,
Swift and sly,
He was calm and kind.

We greeted from time to time
With the simple eye lock
And a sweet smile.
My heart danced for hours on end
Yet he'd have forgotten me by then.

It didn't matter-
He knew I existed,
That was what was most important to me.

I watched him graciously live
The scary life.
Risks of being caught
But he laughed it all off.

I begged for another word
As I followed him in my only clothes,
Stalking after him but only to get a glimpse
Of the poor prince he meant to me.

I dreamt about him every night
Even if our eyes only spoke-
Even if his eyes only said one word-
Even if that one word was
“Hello.”

But after days of analysing him,
Figuring him out through everything but words,
I was caught off guard-
Our eyes didn't catch each other anymore.

He forgot I existed.
He didn't acknowledge me.
He didn't smile at the least.

But the closer I got and I could see-
His eyes were blind.
There was someone else.

I saw him wishing for the world,
Wishing for her,
Thinking about her.
Wanting to be with her.
Needing her.

To say I was broken was an understatement.

He changed.
He followed into the palace,
He stayed there for long,
I barely saw him.

He changed from me into them.
He became a prince.
She accepted him-
It was still romantic.

He rode his flying carpet into the night
The same night I saw the stars as his eyes.
He looked at her with his heart,
The same way I hoped he looked into me.
He gave her more than the magic lamp ever could,
The same way I wished on the moon he could give me.
His love was in his heart.
My love was in my soul.

He  dressed up for rags
Getting ready to accept riches,
Wishing on a genie,
For her and her heart.
Feelings broken I realised he had fallen in love.
He was Aladdin
He was never mine.

It was clear as the sky;
I wasn't  his Jasmine.

More often than not,
I am reminded of Aladdin's struggle.

He grew up with out a life of luxury.
And then he meets Jasmine,
And he transforms himself in to something that he wasn't/isn't.
In hopes of having her falling for him.

What I think of is that he wasn't noticed at all,
Except when he stole bread or did something bad.
Until he became a "Prince".
He sings that "if only they'd look closer..."
That "there's so more to me"

There are some days where I feel like Aladdin.

Time flies like a baby fruit fly to a banana
buzzing through a brand new day through the fractal lakes
cleansing my body in peppermint amethyst vibrations
as the gyrations of the water ripple and drip down my back and waist
tickling the skin into submission--
I'm on a love mission feeling the splish-splash nefelibata mind
within my glowing gold-hazel eyes as I realize my potential.
The world isn't simply my oyster
my voice can make a difference
if I wish and believe me I've kissed Aladdin's lamp
but my mind is filled with vagary so I plant the seeds
in my magic garden and watch them grow--
burst through the ground and glowing
some like emerald embers
and others like electric chalcopyrite
as my third-eye shines and pops calico corn
crackling in the back the ideas simmer on the grill
near the chilled ZuZu Juju honeydew wine
while the electric blue hip panther cat croons
away on her guitar in ancient star languages saeng
when we were all just haranguing through the ONE-light
all bright sun's right to shine a vine of fire rays
into our future past selves
now aligned with burning designs of moons, suns and AUMS.
The animal pixie band manipulates the sounds around us--
the cicadas sing a lotus chorus while the tiger-painted rabbits rapidly
strum rainbow hieroglyphs on their magic harps
while the jazz sax racoons all dressed in jasper suede jackets
and backwards newsboy caps
play a theta vibration so meditatively
we dance in digambara dream catcher trance
of enhanced meraki enchanted atoms
and cells boiling in passionate blood.

After all the eating and dancing we play in the clay mud
recreating our animal forms and budding faces blooming
and swooning as our winged auras sling us
into the dusk sky
to sway and zoom in the rain.
later we enter Father Sky's cloud castle
for a peaceful night curled up by the azurite lightning fireplace
roasting marmalade maple marshmallows
with those rasta angel fellows token
on the diviner's sage sippin mugwort tea.
And as we third eye-gaze into and through each other
seeing our past and future time tubes
aligning into a sacred golden flower sphere,
we giggle like silly fox children
we've forgotten hours have left our pockets
cause to us it only seems like seconds have gone by...

where was i? right, anywhere but here,
listening to some medieval music,
i sometimes sit in one place,
fade, and then find myself sitting
in the same place with a question
on the tip of my tongue: where am i?!

hard not to notice:
heaven reigns supreme with
a "st." michael coming down
with the sword...
depiction, please!
where's satan?
  coming from below armed only
with a tongue...
fair fight, by anyone's standard:
i'm dripping sweat from both
ridicule and sarcasm...

st. michael comes down with a sword...
satan rises up with a flaming tongue,
does satan lick michael's sword
to draw the blood required for
running the heart factory?

               medieval people and their
"nuanced" explanation...
so many images contra words
contra literacy of the people outside
the realm of monks...

   satan rises from the depths of
     hell saying: i wish a socratic dialectic
with god...
god replies: michael i will send armed
with swords...
who ever said: the quill is mightier than
than the sword,
implied: when the tongue has
to be necessarily silenced? then!

      das schwart,
          das feder,
    das zunge...

       how many definite articles are
there in deutsche? das, der, die?
too many or too few?

         always with "st." michael armed
with a sword...
and satan... armed with only his tongue!
i guess, the tongue becomes a tank,
while the sword becomes a feather's
tickling effect...

    angehoben das teufel von der
    tiefe: und gab sie namen...

  (raised the devils from the depths:
  and gave them names)...

why is satan only armed with a flaming tongue,
while "st." michael is armed with a sword?
is god, the god-dialectic / theology
so afraid that it has to remain topped
with unchallenged imagery
                         of sword contra tongue?

ich werden anfangen:
   ich werden treffen du hälfteweg...
            im schreiben...

                  satan rose to a depiction
with "st." michael: disarmed...
  tongue in mouth: which should have been
his hand, "st." michael descended with
a sword... come to think of it,
with satan's tongue cut off...
it still spoke to "st." michael within his
hand...
  the sword overcame the medium...
and so writing was born...
once upon a time when satan's tongue
in his hand began licking the sword
of michael...
            and? if the contemporaries
should hope to know:
writing is the res extensa medium
of res cogitans:
            writing is an extension of thinking:
it's not an invitation to speak...

writing cannot be speaking,
however much commentaries you leave
behind...
writing is an extension of thinking:
it's not an invitation to speak...

it's no disguise...
    in terms of the depiction...
enough of Milton and Dante and...
satan came to the summit
  without his armour without his weapons...
the summit of the plateau...
tongue in gob and joke in cheek...
while "st." michael descended
wit a sword and a missing tongue...
it would appear that god cut out
"st." michael's tongue before his descent
while arming him with a sword to
cut the conversation even shorter
than it was supposed to be, to take place...

the aspired to monotheistic monogamy
of king Solomon,
to imitate swans...
    Muhammad's lost enterprise of
the: greatest harem the world has ever
seen... sorry... Muo-Mo-Hammie:
the macedonian alexander beat you to
the count of 365 concubines...
as did genghis khan...
           so many pakistanis with khan
as a surname...
             your failed harem ambition?
compared to the otherwise world "greats"?
with the ******* promise of 72 virgins
post-mortem? that ship is sinking in my head...
muhammad failed in the ambition
of averaging a 100+ concunbine **** fest...
so he promised 72 for those that believed in
him...
   and if he was ever competing with
king solomon? look at solomon...
         he chose monogamy in the end...
i guess it's a noble enterprise to come back
among the lizards...
to spawn from an egg: from an womb
made external by an egg in the form of a bird...
birds: half mammal half lizard...
            muhammad failed at having
an envious harem...
                which makes me a little bit envious
of him... compared to the others...
he's quiet honest...
        but if he was illiterate...
    who the **** wrote the Quran?
    what's that book, in praise of older women?
andrás vajda...
   who would have written the first
verses (if not the last) of the Quran if not
khadijah **** khuwaylid?

i'm sorry to say: the feeling of conversation
soon turns into a feeling of conversion,
me, beer in hand, park, bench,
an old pakistani walks up to me...
flips out a digital Quran,
tries to convert me...
     opens the book on surah al-baqarah...
i point at three words...
what are these, i ask?
he replies: oh... only allah knows...
really?! really?! i ask myself...

    the three words?
   alif. lam. meem.

           allah knows?!
guess i'm allah then...
given alif: أَلِف  (α, א) a-lif
                 lam: لاَم (λ, ל) l-am
   and meem: مِيم (μ, מ) m'eem...

so yeah, "god" knows...
   how was this old pakistani going to convert
me, supposing i was simply some european
"drunk" sitting on a bench, drinking beer,
assuming i was ease target for
isis propaganda?!

    "god knows"... when it comes
to old pakistanis trying to
             recruit young europeans...
god knows ****!

if this old pakistani was seeking an easy target
like some paedo, he was much mistaken,
what does a pumpernickle (has) to do with
a windmill?! zilch!
i'm not going to exactly crawl out
of my walther von der vogelweider:
        palästinalied that much easier...
i won't....
   i just think:
the yids have tight defences
against proselytes... they abhor converts...
islam, welcomes them,
at their own peril...
          and there i was thinking that
urdu was "superior" to sanskrit...
an old pakistani tells me "god knows"
in relation to alif. lam. meem.

             i guess the quran has an inbuilt
proselyte defence mechanism:
in reverse... ask a muslim what alif. lam. meem.
means... if they tell you: only god knows...
ha ha...
              hello stupid...
                            is the islamic world playing
a jewish game of gematria?
are the three letters supposed to represent
some sort of "covert" message?
A.L.M.?
        what, based on the hebrew alphabet
where "a" is not an an A but a consonant(s)
akin to ayin and aleph?!
the gay genesis?
          
                really?
                 we: the europeans were perhaps
the barbarians in the medieval years,
harrowed by the cold...
lucky us: lucky me: we did learn to read...
so ignorant of the pakis to presume
such and such...

             that we are still unable to read
and will fall for the next sort of *******...
look at us! we even began to question
christianity with the unearthing of
the nag hammadi library where
jesus played chinese whispers with
st. thomas!

   next time i'll be listening to a camel jockey
or a magic carpet ride aladdin
i'll ask them: you dehydrated, or something?!
oh forget h'america,
their evangelical ******* is worth
as much as a free microwave or a toaster...

_

hell man...
    i mean my neighbor smokes
16 8ths in a spare of the week...

wha?
    ****...
   i remember i used to smoke
an 8th over the week...

yeah... an 1/8... of an ounce...
he smokes two ounces
in a week,
  
gets the **** on discount...
but still has to cough up
over 100 quid for the stash...

but... but... these organic
cigarettes you're pushing?

ha ha... **** me... holy basil
(tulsi leaves) -
and the peppermint and green
tea leaves?
   in ******, whatever you want
to call it, rolling paper...

i've seen the inner sleeve -
big fan of hunter s. thompson,
i suspect...
   otherwise you wouldn't
have used the second, plastic
filter...
  
   tell you what... don't put
that plastic filter on every cigarette -
halve it...
     or provide two or three...
it's reusable -
        i smoked one of your
placebo marijuana joints...
  and then i'm going to smoke
a red Indian cough-up...

   ah... these blue Indians...
Vishnu centrists -
   beyond blue blooded,
more blue skinned herbalists...

dunno... the effects are subtle...
you can only tell the difference
if you actually smoke tobacco...

but sure as hot **** on a street
in Calcutta -
    it beats the Arabic portable
hookah pipe...
   i.e.?  
         vapping - or vapourißing -

i'd say less a cure for tobacco smokers,
and more a cure for
the dope-heads...
    he (my neighbor) smokes
2 ounces a week,
   and somehow manages to stay
down on a job...

    no ******* way...
    he says it helps him to sleep...
like me...
   a liter of ***** and two
paracetamols,
    or one naproxen (if i'm lucky),
or two paracetamols
  and one amitriptyline (25mg)...

sorry, what? sound of mind?
sound of mind to the point
where i'm mindful of grammar
and spelling?

            **** man...
  the content is transcendent
    of whatever the receiving end deems
it to be...

i might actually buy into
this... placebo marijuana -
given that i am a tobacco smoker...
  ha ha! holy basil:
  like Basil Fawlty...

   as you see...
there are people, and there are "people",
there are neighbors,
    and there are "neighbors",
i don't see how the natives
can dictate universal laws of
     private property ownership...
esp. over such... trivial...
meaningless...
          sitting down on a cactus
****-naked "problems"...

i hate being mean,
   i hate telling someone to *******...
i really do...
    i compromised -
i stopped smoking cigarettes
out of my window...
  but yesterday's confrontation?
over a ******* barbeque...
    oops... the compromise
has just been revoked...
  
   music blasting into my ears
through my earphones...
the next thing my cuntish neighbor
will "hear" is sign language...
  
oh yeah... that primary school
lesson:

(a) WHY     (b) DON'T  
        (c) YOU    (d) ****    (e) OFF

(a) index + middle fingers
    slapped on the left palm knuckles up

(b) index + middle fingers
    slapped on the left palm knuckles down

(c) scissor index + *******
   into the side of the left hand

(d) fist, vertical slam onto the left
  palm

(e) thumb's up moving away from
  the palm of the left hand...

because?
      i just can't be bothered trying
to reason with some people...
     they might as well be put in zoological
confinement, and put under observation...
but i'd feel sorry for the chimps
and other animals, have to share a close
proximity.

I was travelling through the country
That was once East Turkestan,
Keeping my western mouth shut in
The province, Xinjiang,
I wasn’t going to linger there,
I had planned to head due east,
And follow the Western Wall to where
They spoke my Shanghainese.

They spoke a myriad dialects
All over Xinjiang,
There must have been forty languages,
And I didn’t know but one,
I had to get by with signing ‘til
I wandered in through the trees,
Into a tiny village where
A man spoke Shanghainese.

He stood in front of a tiny shop
That was selling drink and dates,
And something evil that looked like worms
All white, and served on a plate,
He said, ‘Ni Hao’, and ushered me in
And I took what I could get,
Shut my eyes and shovelled it in,
I can taste the foul stuff yet.

But there in the back of the tiny shop
Were a host of curios,
Most of them antique statuettes
The sort that the tourists chose,
But up on a shelf, I saw a lamp
Covered in grease and dust,
I said, ‘How much do you want for it?’
‘More than your soul, I trust!’

I said, ‘It looks like Aladdin’s Lamp,
But that was the Middle East!’
He shook his head and he said to me,
‘Aladdin was Chinese!
His palace used to be over there,’
And he pointed out to a mound,
A hill of rubble and pottery shards
That covered a hectare round.

He said he’d fossicked the ancient mound
And found all sorts of things,
Cups and plates and statuettes
And even golden rings,
But the thing he found that intrigued him most
Was the finding of that lamp,
He’d dug it out of a cellar there
That was cold, and dark, and damp.

And there by the lamp was an ancient scroll
With instructions in Chinese,
‘Don’t rub the lamp for a trivial thought
For the Djinn will not be pleased,
There are seven and seventy wishes here
Then the Djinn’s released from the spell,
But if you should wish the seventy-eighth
Then you’ll find yourself in hell!’

‘So how many wishes have now been wished,’
But the old man shook his head,
‘If I knew that, would I still be here,
I would rather this, than dead.’
He said that he’d been afraid to wish
For the lamp was ancient then,
Had passed through many since it was new,
Back in Aladdin’s den.

I offered to give him a thousand yuan,
But he shook his head, and sighed,
‘I’d rather keep it a curio,
It’s just a question of pride.’
I raised my bid, ten thousand yuan
And his face broke into a smile,
‘For that I would sell my mother’s hand,
And she’s been gone for a while.’

I paid the money and took the lamp
Then wandered into the street,
Held my breath and I thought of death,
And then of my aching feet,
Shanghai was a couple of months away
If I walked as the rivers flowed,
So I rubbed the lamp and I made a wish,
Woke up on the Nanjing Road.

It only had taken a minute or so
To travel a thousand miles,
I put the lamp in my haversack
And warmed to the Shanghai smiles,
I had a meal, and rented a room
And fell in bliss on the bed,
What I could do with another wish
Was the thought that entered my head.

I’m writing this by the flickering light
Of a candle, stuck in the lamp,
All I can smell is candlewax
And the air in here is damp,
I rubbed the lamp and I made a wish
But smoke poured out of the spout,
The Djinn took off with a howl of glee,
There’s no way of getting out!

David Lewis Paget

Never before have I known
someone
who I've wanted nothing more
from
than to hold
your hand,
and lean by your
side.

.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!

Hidden at the back of my mind
an idyllic vision
taking a trip
to span all continents.
Travel to Asia's Great Wall, Europe's Eiffel Tower
Africa's Giza Pyramid, America's Statue of Liberty.
Travel by Aladdin's magic carpet
spell-bound and comfortable, yet bewitched.
Travel for too long
for an endless trip, there it is
my destination.
A final full of dreams, a final to come true
a destination that fir altogether
a destination with that jigsaw.
I cry to reach for destination
I wait for long hours, saying myself
when I reach it - that will be it
this trip is for lasting happiness. But last destination lost
it's a dram, can't believe t'was a dream
a dream which outdistances me.
Next time, I promise
not to travel with that genie's carpet again
go to walk through path untrodden
go to climb Mt. Mayon, swim more to the Pacific deep
go bare footed in the Gobi
I promise, I promise
to live more my travel
the destination, the next stop
sooner in sight
than I expect it to be.

and all i ever wanted, was to work in a music shop, to compensate my fancy moving away from Stendhal's scarlet & noir, and into the domain of Nick Hornby's high fidelity... well... that died a very Belgian death, very much akin to euthanasia.

at least i don't
bleach people to mere
pronoun usage.

and yes,
i treat the tetragrammaton
as a superlative,
esp. given
i am akin of Atilla -
and the Visigoths...
such that i am:
of the invading "horde",
because of he
the so-called culture
i see no civilisation on the horizon...
i see no Baroque...
            i hear no Bach,
and will never hear a stance
such that the music be composed...

because what is happening
in no circus of nouns...
people are being bleached,
they are being leash bound
to walk into a pet barbers to get their
hair "done"....
         i am not the one
regarding them as sole
pronoun exhibitors...
   there they are: merely pronoun bound...
and should i call them black,
or care to call them copper skinned
akin to the Indus peninsula...
                       i have forgotten
the agitating "they"...
            
i don't have a cartesian dualism
to mind...
i simply have my own dichotomy
to attend to...
   as Voltaire said: each to his own
garden; and a pair of shoes.
    
once again...
  geometry will never scope beyond the orb...
there is no geometric study to
suggest a shape for the universe...
now we know: there's no thinking
outside the box,
  even if that might ease your "claustrophobia".

  and i rather call a person by their
self-identifying characterisation
that reduce myself to a liberal
censor clot of only managing other people
in the pronoun category, auto-suggestive
of a *we vs. them...

       i don't see how that makes us
liberal, that having forsaken descriptive
approaches, we incorporated
the additive approach carte blanche
as a guide to treating everyone akin
to being dubbed albino.

   i like talking about ******* a brown-skinned
girl...
    i like talking about ******* a Thai girl...
i like putting cardamom in my curry,
or my cinnamon...
  or my everclear - heartspark dollarsign -
and thus about the time i
gave to flying the kite of full, manly,
****-refraining autonomy...
to the wind itself.

  just when we were about congested,
and lated constipated...
        i wrote this, like a clerk
might, in the bureucracy of the failing
Roman Empire, akin
to the reminiscent W. H. Auden...
      on pink'oh paper that turned boredom
into the origami of paper-aeroplanes...
  neat, folded, against the envelope
requirements... thrown right into
the lap of don quixote,
       recycled, shredded by a windmill...

as if about just apparent...
        at least this dream, this utopia
didn't originate with me...
    oh sure, i believed it...
that we could house the entire ethnically-diverse
populace under one roof...
   i believed it, the world told me to believe it...
i'd love to believe it thrice over...
   i mean, i'd love to have
    duo-ethnic children,
        who spoke four languages...
in the least three...
    but **** how that gets swept under
the rug and forgotten along
with Aladdin...
   it just gets boring, all that masochism
of being an anti-racist social warrior
but at the same time calling oneself
a white-trash stereotype transcendent.

that's me about to puke,
and write my name in diarrhea ink,
followed up by doing the same in
gonorrhea ink.

what happened at the end of the 20th century
was a very well believed
in dream, even though it was a butterfly...
and lasted no more than a few years...
it was worth it... it's when i had my childhood...
and i could have even been a roofer until now
should there be someone who said
they were overworked in a supermarket...

it was very nice for a bit,
great to believe in... how suddenly 2000 years
of history could be forgotten and
let us live in a togetherness...
    but like today, Syria and a civil war...
civil wars are unique...
  a Syrian barber tells a Syrian butcher
to *******...
     and would it be necessary for
     an English politician to get involved?

unless they're selling both
  Israeli uzis (the country where the ***
originated, yep, Israel)...
          i'm not a Syrian civilian...
so what the **** are all these tourists
talking about?! i don't care if they come
from Westminster, what are these tourists
talking about?!
                  i'd like to be a Syrian civilian
first, before i give my opinion...
        i'm not giving a single opinion
as a tourist that was ever in Syria,
or a one: waiting to visit it in the "near" future.
******* tourists...
     you have to use a blunt knife carving
this piece of history...
not point using a well sharpened knife
cutting with eloquence and absolutely
no profanity... given the excesses of ****...
   i say: oaths! oaths!

The Christmas season is upon us
With lots of things to show
NO THERE ISN'T , YES THERE IS
And the best of them's the Panto

**** Whittington and Aladdin
Are two that I've forgot
But I've heard that they're amazing
YES THEY ARE, NO THEY'RE NOT

A tradition every Christmas
The Panto finds the kid
Inside every one who witnesses
NO HE DIDN'T , YES HE DID!!

Actors dressed as women
Silly fun for all to see
NO IT ISN'T , YES IT IS
And lots of fun for me

There's nothing like a Panto
To make the people yell
NO IT DOESN'T, YES IT DOES
It's a laugh for me as well

This year I chose my Panto
I'm going to see the lot
So, I will wish you Merry Christmas
I WILL SO, YOU WILL NOT!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND ENJOY THE PANTO IN YOUR AREA.

Disney didnt lie
You just haven't found the right guy
And I don't mean that "nice guy"
You know the one
That always wants to have fun
But always expectin sumin'
And sleeping beauty lyin in bed
Rattlin her head
Like Disney said i was a princess
But I feel like a Pauper instead
Because I havent found that kiss that opens up my eyes
And all these players out here are frog just tellin lies
In disguise
But I want a prince eric that goes into the ocean
I want me Aladdin that knows how to fly
But ofcorse Disney didn't lie
And I just haven't found the right guy
3 days to find love
But that ain't enough time
And im tryin to find a healing flower
That heals my broken heart
A genie in a bottle that would set me apart
Maybe one day I will turn in to a mermaid and live a life with music and art
But thats a farce
Maybe I will end up like elsa
Queen of the singles
Not needing to mingle
With the common folk
Sometimes I feel like Disney is a ******* joke
But I keep hearing that Disney didnt lie
And I just havent found the right guy
The guy that will give me all his time
The guy that isn't in it for the money
Or the glory
Or the crown
But im looking around and all I see are these clowns
And John isnt around to save his Pocahontas
Theres a long list
Of reasons I get ******
That flynn's not out here trying to give me a kiss
And I feel like my opportunity was missed
And I'm on the ground in some mist
Waiting for the dwarves to put me in a glass casket
And i just hear the same fact
****
That Disney didn't lie
I just havent found the right guy

--To Elizabeth Robins Pennell


'O mes cheres Mille et Une Nuits!'--Fantasio.

Once on a time
There was a little boy:  a master-mage
By virtue of a Book
Of magic--O, so magical it filled
His life with visionary pomps
Processional!  And Powers
Passed with him where he passed.  And Thrones
And Dominations, glaived and plumed and mailed,
Thronged in the criss-cross streets,
The palaces pell-mell with playing-fields,
Domes, cloisters, dungeons, caverns, tents, arcades,
Of the unseen, silent City, in his soul
Pavilioned jealously, and hid
As in the dusk, profound,
Green stillnesses of some enchanted mere.--

I shut mine eyes . . . And lo!
A flickering ****** of memory that floats
Upon the face of a pool of darkness five
And thirty dead years deep,
Antic in girlish broideries
And skirts and silly shoes with straps
And a broad-ribanded leghorn, he walks
Plain in the shadow of a church
(St. Michael's:  in whose brazen call
To curfew his first wails of wrath were whelmed),
Sedate for all his haste
To be at home; and, nestled in his arm,
Inciting still to quiet and solitude,
Boarded in sober drab,
With small, square, agitating cuts
Let in a-top of the double-columned, close,
Quakerlike print, a Book! . . .
What but that blessed brief
Of what is gallantest and best
In all the full-shelved Libraries of Romance?
The Book of rocs,
Sandalwood, ivory, turbans, ambergris,
Cream-tarts, and lettered apes, and calendars,
And ghouls, and genies--O, so huge
They might have overed the tall Minster Tower
Hands down, as schoolboys take a post!
In truth, the Book of Camaralzaman,
Schemselnihar and Sindbad, Scheherezade
The peerless, Bedreddin, Badroulbadour,
Cairo and Serendib and Candahar,
And Caspian, and the dim, terrific bulk--
Ice-ribbed, fiend-visited, isled in spells and storms--
Of Kaf! . . . That centre of miracles,
The sole, unparalleled Arabian Nights!

Old friends I had a-many--kindly and grim
Familiars, cronies quaint
And goblin!  Never a Wood but housed
Some morrice of dainty dapperlings.  No Brook
But had his nunnery
Of green-haired, silvry-curving sprites,
To cabin in his grots, and pace
His lilied margents.  Every lone Hillside
Might open upon Elf-Land.  Every Stalk
That curled about a Bean-stick was of the breed
Of that live ladder by whose delicate rungs
You climbed beyond the clouds, and found
The Farm-House where the Ogre, gorged
And drowsy, from his great oak chair,
Among the flitches and pewters at the fire,
Called for his Faery Harp.  And in it flew,
And, perching on the kitchen table, sang
Jocund and jubilant, with a sound
Of those gay, golden-vowered madrigals
The shy thrush at mid-May
Flutes from wet orchards flushed with the triumphing dawn;
Or blackbirds rioting as they listened still,
In old-world woodlands rapt with an old-world spring,
For Pan's own whistle, savage and rich and lewd,
And mocked him call for call!

I could not pass
The half-door where the cobbler sat in view
Nor figure me the wizen Leprechaun,
In square-cut, faded reds and buckle-shoes,
Bent at his work in the hedge-side, and know
Just how he tapped his brogue, and twitched
His wax-end this and that way, both with wrists
And elbows.  In the rich June fields,
Where the ripe clover drew the bees,
And the tall quakers trembled, and the West Wind
Lolled his half-holiday away
Beside me lolling and lounging through my own,
'Twas good to follow the Miller's Youngest Son
On his white horse along the leafy lanes;
For at his stirrup linked and ran,
Not cynical and trapesing, as he loped
From wall to wall above the espaliers,
But in the bravest tops
That market-town, a town of tops, could show:
Bold, subtle, adventurous, his tail
A banner flaunted in disdain
Of human stratagems and shifts:
King over All the Catlands, present and past
And future, that moustached
Artificer of fortunes, ****-in-Boots!
Or Bluebeard's Closet, with its plenishing
Of meat-hooks, sawdust, blood,
And wives that hung like fresh-dressed carcases--
Odd-fangled, most a butcher's, part
A faery chamber hazily seen
And hazily figured--on dark afternoons
And windy nights was visiting of the best.
Then, too, the pelt of hoofs
Out in the roaring darkness told
Of Herne the Hunter in his antlered helm
Galloping, as with despatches from the Pit,
Between his hell-born Hounds.
And Rip Van Winkle . . . often I lurked to hear,
Outside the long, low timbered, tarry wall,
The mutter and rumble of the trolling bowls
Down the lean plank, before they fluttered the pins;
For, listening, I could help him play
His wonderful game,
In those blue, booming hills, with Mariners
Refreshed from kegs not coopered in this our world.

But what were these so near,
So neighbourly fancies to the spell that brought
The run of Ali Baba's Cave
Just for the saying 'Open Sesame,'
With gold to measure, peck by peck,
In round, brown wooden stoups
You borrowed at the chandler's? . . . Or one time
Made you Aladdin's friend at school,
Free of his Garden of Jewels, Ring and Lamp
In perfect trim? . . . Or Ladies, fair
For all the embrowning scars in their white *******
Went labouring under some dread ordinance,
Which made them whip, and bitterly cry the while,
Strange Curs that cried as they,
Till there was never a Black ***** of all
Your consorting but might have gone
Spell-driven miserably for crimes
Done in the pride of womanhood and desire . . .
Or at the ghostliest altitudes of night,
While you lay wondering and acold,
Your sense was fearfully purged; and soon
Queen Labe, abominable and dear,
Rose from your side, opened the Box of Doom,
Scattered the yellow powder (which I saw
Like sulphur at the Docks in bulk),
And muttered certain words you could not hear;
And there! a living stream,
The brook you bathed in, with its weeds and flags
And cresses, glittered and sang
Out of the hearthrug over the nakedness,
Fair-scrubbed and decent, of your bedroom floor! . . .

I was--how many a time!--
That Second Calendar, Son of a King,
On whom 'twas vehemently enjoined,
Pausing at one mysterious door,
To pry no closer, but content his soul
With his kind Forty.  Yet I could not rest
For idleness and ungovernable Fate.
And the Black Horse, which fed on sesame
(That wonder-working word!),
Vouchsafed his back to me, and spread his vans,
And soaring, soaring on
From air to air, came charging to the ground
Sheer, like a lark from the midsummer clouds,
And, shaking me out of the saddle, where I sprawled
Flicked at me with his tail,
And left me blinded, miserable, distraught
(Even as I was in deed,
When doctors came, and odious things were done
On my poor tortured eyes
With lancets; or some evil acid stung
And wrung them like hot sand,
And desperately from room to room
Fumble I must my dark, disconsolate way),
To get to Bagdad how I might.  But there
I met with Merry Ladies.  O you three--
Safie, Amine, Zobeide--when my heart
Forgets you all shall be forgot!
And so we supped, we and the rest,
On wine and roasted lamb, rose-water, dates,
Almonds, pistachios, citrons.  And Haroun
Laughed out of his lordly beard
On Giaffar and Mesrour (I knew the Three
For all their Mossoul habits).  And outside
The Tigris, flowing swift
Like Severn bend for bend, twinkled and gleamed
With broken and wavering shapes of stranger stars;
The vast, blue night
Was murmurous with peris' plumes
And the leathern wings of genies; words of power
Were whispering; and old fishermen,
Casting their nets with prayer, might draw to shore
Dead loveliness:  or a prodigy in scales
Worth in the Caliph's Kitchen pieces of gold:
Or copper vessels, stopped with lead,
Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed,
In durance under potent charactry
Graven by the seal of Solomon the King . . .

Then, as the Book was glassed
In Life as in some olden mirror's quaint,
Bewildering angles, so would Life
Flash light on light back on the Book; and both
Were changed.  Once in a house decayed
From better days, harbouring an errant show
(For all its stories of dry-rot
Were filled with gruesome visitants in wax,
Inhuman, hushed, ghastly with Painted Eyes),
I wandered; and no living soul
Was nearer than the pay-box; and I stared
Upon them staring--staring.  Till at last,
Three sets of rafters from the streets,
I strayed upon a mildewed, rat-run room,
With the two Dancers, horrible and obscene,
Guarding the door:  and there, in a bedroom-set,
Behind a fence of faded crimson cords,
With an aspect of frills
And dimities and dishonoured privacy
That made you hanker and hesitate to look,
A Woman with her litter of Babes--all slain,
All in their nightgowns, all with Painted Eyes
Staring--still staring; so that I turned and ran
As for my neck, but in the street
Took breath.  The same, it seemed,
And yet not all the same, I was to find,
As I went up!  For afterwards,
Whenas I went my round alone--
All day alone--in long, stern, silent streets,
Where I might stretch my hand and take
Whatever I would:  still there were Shapes of Stone,
Motionless, lifelike, frightening--for the Wrath
Had smitten them; but they watched,
This by her melons and figs, that by his rings
And chains and watches, with the hideous gaze,
The Painted Eyes insufferable,
Now, of those grisly images; and I
Pursued my best-beloved quest,
Thrilled with a novel and delicious fear.
So the night fell--with never a lamplighter;
And through the Palace of the King
I groped among the echoes, and I felt
That they were there,
Dreadfully there, the Painted staring Eyes,
Hall after hall . . . Till lo! from far
A Voice!  And in a little while
Two tapers burning!  And the Voice,
Heard in the wondrous Word of God, was--whose?
Whose but Zobeide's,
The lady of my heart, like me
A True Believer, and like me
An outcast thousands of leagues beyond the pale! . . .

Or, sailing to the Isles
Of Khaledan, I spied one evenfall
A black blotch in the sunset; and it grew
Swiftly . . . and grew.  Tearing their beards,
The sailors wept and prayed; but the grave ship,
Deep laden with spiceries and pearls, went mad,
Wrenched the long tiller out of the steersman's hand,
And, turning broadside on,
As the most iron would, was haled and ******
Nearer, and nearer yet;
And, all awash, with horrible lurching leaps
Rushed at that Portent, casting a shadow now
That swallowed sea and sky; and then,
Anchors and nails and bolts
Flew screaming out of her, and with clang on clang,
A noise of fifty stithies, caught at the sides
Of the Magnetic Mountain; and she lay,
A broken bundle of firewood, strown piecemeal
About the waters; and her crew
Passed shrieking, one by one; and I was left
To drown.  All the long night I swam;
But in the morning, O, the smiling coast
Tufted with date-trees, meadowlike,
Skirted with shelving sands!  And a great wave
Cast me ashore; and I was saved alive.
So, giving thanks to God, I dried my clothes,
And, faring inland, in a desert place
I stumbled on an iron ring--
The fellow of fifty built into the Quays:
When, scenting a trap-door,
I dug, and dug; until my biggest blade
Stuck into wood.  And then,
The flight of smooth-hewn, easy-falling stairs,
Sunk in the naked rock!  The cool, clean vault,
So neat with niche on niche it might have been
Our beer-cellar but for the rows
Of brazen urns (like monstrous chemist's jars)
Full to the wide, squat throats
With gold-dust, but a-top
A layer of pickled-walnut-looking things
I knew for olives!  And far, O, far away,
The Princess of China languished!  Far away
Was marriage, with a Vizier and a Chief
Of Eunuchs and the privilege
Of going out at night
To play--unkenned, majestical, secure--
Where the old, brown, friendly river shaped
Like Tigris shore for shore!  Haply a Ghoul
Sat in the churchyard under a frightened moon,
A thighbone in his fist, and glared
At supper with a Lady:  she who took
Her rice with tweezers grain by grain.
Or you might stumble--there by the iron gates
Of the Pump Room--underneath the limes--
Upon Bedreddin in his shirt and drawers,
Just as the civil Genie laid him down.
Or those red-curtained panes,
Whence a tame cornet tenored it throatily
Of beer-pots and spittoons and new long pipes,
Might turn a caravansery's, wherein
You found Noureddin Ali, loftily drunk,
And that fair Persian, bathed in tears,
You'd not have given away
For all the diamonds in the Vale Perilous
You had that dark and disleaved afternoon
Escaped on a roc's claw,
Disguised like Sindbad--but in Christmas beef!
And all the blissful while
The schoolboy satchel at your hip
Was such a bulse of gems as should amaze
Grey-whiskered chapmen drawn
From over Caspian:  yea, the Chief Jewellers
Of Tartary and the bazaars,
Seething with traffic, of enormous Ind.--

Thus cried, thus called aloud, to the child heart
The magian East:  thus the child eyes
Spelled out the wizard message by the light
Of the sober, workaday hours
They saw, week in week out, pass, and still pass
In the sleepy Minster City, folded kind
In ancient Severn's arm,
Amongst her water-meadows and her docks,
Whose floating populace of ships--
Galliots and luggers, light-heeled brigantines,
Bluff barques and rake-hell fore-and-afters--brought
To her very doorsteps and geraniums
The scents of the World's End; the calls
That may not be gainsaid to rise and ride
Like fire on some high errand of the race;
The irresistible appeals
For comradeship that sound
Steadily from the irresistible sea.
Thus the East laughed and whispered, and the tale,
Telling itself anew
In terms of living, labouring life,
Took on the colours, busked it in the wear
Of life that lived and laboured; and Romance,
The Angel-Playmate, raining down
His golden influences
On all I saw, and all I dreamed and did,
Walked with me arm in arm,
Or left me, as one bediademed with straws
And bits of glass, to gladden at my heart
Who had the gift to seek and feel and find
His fiery-hearted presence everywhere.
Even so dear Hesper, bringer of all good things,
Sends the same silver dews
Of happiness down her dim, delighted skies
On some poor collier-hamlet--(mound on mound
Of sifted squalor; here a soot-throated stalk
Sullenly smoking over a row
Of flat-faced hovels; black in the gritty air
A web of rails and wheels and beams; with strings
Of hurtling, tipping trams)--
As on the amorous nightingales
And roses of Shiraz, or the walls and towers
Of Samarcand--the Ineffable--whence you espy
The splendour of Ginnistan's embattled spears,
Like listed lightnings.
Samarcand!
That name of names!  That star-vaned belvedere
Builded against the Chambers of the South!
That outpost on the Infinite!
And behold!
Questing therefrom, you knew not what wild tide
Might overtake you:  for one fringe,
One suburb, is stablished on firm earth; but one
Floats founded vague
In lubberlands delectable--isles of palm
And lotus, fortunate mains, far-shimmering seas,
The promise of wistful hills--
The shining, shifting Sovranties of Dream.

Aladdin and Jasmine
aren't the only ones
to experience a whole new world,
I have begun.

And it's so refreshing,
this time I won't come undone
Somewhat of a blessing
and tremendous fun.

You're a breeze to the soul,
when it's had a harsh summer.
Cooling the affects of my heart's tolls,
like my favorite November.

I hope you're someone I'm glad to remember,
Regardless I'm sure you'll join the club of my heart
as an exclusive member.

When you think of love
you think of butterflies and flowers
Prince Charming and towers
happiness in abundance.
You think of kisses and hugs
Aladdin and rugs
a sort of sixth sense.

You think of daydreaming, hearts sinking
no, not sinking, skipping.
Red crayons and smiles
Long stares into each others eyes
Carnival rides
You think of it being written in the sky
and a sweet apple pie

We see it as sea side picnics
Holding hands
Watching cheesy chick flicks all night long.
Guys riding on lawn mowers
holding up a boombox, blaring phil collins.
We see walks on the beach
shoreline just reaching our feet.

When I think of love
I think of awkward moments.
I think of my father as he left my mother
See, I want someone more than just a lover.

When I think of love
I think of a stomachache
my last heartbreak
and band-aids to hide the pain.
I think of his hands in mine
our thoughts intertwined
I see the hurt in your eyes
as I told you goodbye
Our last kiss in the summer rain.

I think of love
as a societal excuse
A word said too much, too often
Just a word
Nothing more than caution.

When I think of love
I see a dog’s loyalty to his owner
and the owner showing him affection.
A sunset, a beautiful sky
The way the ocean shows its reflection

When I think of love
I think of the heart’s sight.
Love is light.
Love is Agape-
God’s grace and mercy poured on top of me
the day Jesus died on the cross.
I think of no hope lost.

When I think of love
I think of Him
I think of how.
Love is here
Love is now.

pre-scriptum:
                no polyglot would experience this sort of "paradox", it's not even a paradox of a "paradox" off a 'paradox', bilingualism has its methodology, as Kant could explain, extracting his methodology off the page into a meticulous day-to-day activity... the sage / if not the clock of Königsberg... i can imagine this obsessive-compulsive mini-rituals that would always escape the throng on a Sunday... the Sunday eucharist wasn't enough for the man, there were so many rituals to take care of, having famously not married, while Kierkegaard having: infamlusly not married... i appreciate their strategy... reading them while also reading Nietzsche, these two gentlemen, by comparison, if not in work, certainly in life gravitate above the popularity of Nietzsche... why? Nietzsche appears as an incel... fan boy, are you? *******... but you need some sort of structure if you're not going to marry... Kant found his daily routine an eternal mass... so many routine daily tasks seemingly mundane to some, can enlarge themselves to become out of proportion pillars of preserving sanity in face of standing before god and a post-life scenario... hell is not so much a place of suffering... i can tell you of the most "mild" form of suffering... an extrovert becoming drunk... constant talking, lack of purpose as in: lack of direction culminating in: lack of concentration, pandemonium is the heaven of a flickering light for a moth... again... this always bewilders me... why did Sisyphus have to drag the stone up the hill? was there some overlooking demon with a whip looking over him? couldn't he just... sit, and concentrate on the stone, create pleasure, from thinking? is that really so odd... i suppose so... given the grand h'american export of the freedom of speech... few people will find pleasure in thinking... Kierkegaard, which Nietzsche didn't read... said: why do people concern themselves with the freedom to speak, when they already possess a freedom to think? is this, me speaking, because it's the internet and it's a public space... surely i don't have an eloquent speech, i speak too quickly, i sometimes mumble, this is an extension of thinking, it's not an invitation to speak... rhetoric is an art designated for people who joked about philosophy and took sophistry seriously... i don't like Nietzsche... i still think of the man as the esteemed bachelor... apparently being freed from women allowed him to write his Critique with the sort of clarity that comes, in a cascading form, at the end, in the methodology of transcendence... which reads, like a page-turner tabloid narrative... once the formalities / difficulties are established... i'm no polyglot though, but i do succumb to some eccentricities... as any entrenched bilingual might... notably linguistics... how there are no diacritical markers in english, but there are: in other latin script based languages of continent europe... how i've never heard of dyslexia outside of the realm of spoken english... how orthography does not exist in the english language, which creates all these silly english questions of: what is reality, what is perception... with no orthography: metaphysics runs rampant... and "another" thing... i really can't read a philosophy book in english, i always have to revert back to my mother tongue, to Polish... i can't read a philosophy book in english... i looked at Plato once in english... the aesthetic is lost on me... but the Irish know of the Slavic aesthetic when it comes to dialogue, i.e.:

(a) the english standard for dialogue weaved into a narrative -
"i want this," she said,
   "as i want that," he said...
(b) the slavic standard for dialogue weaved into
a narrative...
- so?
- what?
- will we try to speak without
   the reiteration of who said what?
- we could.
- no, we should.
smoother... James Joyce noted this,
casual - no point adding descrptions of
how the puppet-master lost power
over his puppets with " " ditto markers of
dialouge of a: he, he really did say...
no, not he, the narrator...

   i simply cannot read the genre of philosophy in english, too much easy access points of pop culture with that umbrella overreach... matrix, memes, darwinism, blah blah... too much focus on images and very little focus on words, esp. etymology, that other component of history that focuses on: a universal application of words, beside status king, or status pauper... both the word bread can succumb to the king's tongue, as to the pauper's... but with an origin story? anything beside **** similis, the monkey, will do me just fine... then again... there's no one strand of monkey to begin with... a bit like looking up your own *** for too long, you decide that there's a coherent, "bigger picture" and it begins with chimp- and ends with -rilla... doesn't anyone else just tire of looking up a monkey *** to peddlestool the importance of darwinism for so long? i mean... at least chemistry is a playground among the science... there's no worry for a beginning... there's only play... no... i can't read a philosophy book in english... i have to read it in Polish... which is also a... january, february, march, april, may, june, july, august, september, october, novermber, december... you'd think i'd be able to recite you the months in my mother tongue... styczeń, luty, marzec, kwiecień, maj, czerwiec, listopad, grudzień... english alphabet? a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, m, n, l, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v... **** gets scrambled... pointless rubrics... give me the practical! - i've just picked up a copy of Plato's republic... straight away i know that i'm finding my gensus in Plato rather than Aristotle...

    och ty, pijaku z psim pyskiem,
                  a za to z sercem jelenia...

    oh you, drunkard with a dog's snout,
                           nonetheless, with a stag's heart...

again, Nietzsche: Kant is an idiot, Plato is boring...
perhaps in German, for a German,
looking for Germany while roaming parts of Italy...
well... Plato, really seems appealing in
high slavic (western), the conversations breed
a sense of clarity, about fog, about darkness,
or any akin metaphor to boot...
                           between Nietzsche's maxims,
i'll take la Rochefoucauld succinct observations
before i succumb to pop-nietzsche modern
cult meme fucklords...
                          Roger Moore... prime example
of a bachelor, Kant, the same, Kierkegaard...
as for myself? if i married?
  would i still have the same sort of access to new
music, that i currently enjoy?
   for god's sake... i have to fall asleep while
listening to music, if i spend a day without
at least 5 hours of music on the headphones
   i start to lose the plot...
              my drinking is merely a side-note...
a p.s., given that now i'm a reformed drinker?
having cut my dosage in half...
     i'm still a music *****...
   women don't like music junkies...
                   and when my ex- started reading me
a qustionnaire from a russian cosmopolitan
magazine on the train to moscow from
st. petersburg... i thought i was going to shoot
myself in the head...
             perfect girlfriend this,
perfect girlfriend that...
             bob dylan saved me...
        but not for long...
                         women aren't feline...
at least with a cat you can ignore it...
                  he's pretending to be a solipsist and
you pretend to be: caring...
                 food on the table,
a clean litter tray... besides that?
                                                 fuckoffski!
     and i write this from a perspective of endearment,
nothing beats the zenith moments in a hetrosexual
relationship... the odd date...
                 talking impromptu... making food...
***, ***... ***... *** *** ***... ***... ***...
       but the petty arguments...
   the attention to detail...
                   god... anniversaries?
  i don't even celebrate my own birthday!
i fake celebrating christian holidays...
                    today is today, tomorrow:
that's tomorrow's concern...
           o.k. england winning the cricket world cup...
but that's a celebration with a calendar!
it's not regulated by hormones and
the impossibility for nostalgia...
                 i tried the relationship,
i tried the ***...
                       i had to visit a brothel for
the anaesthetic with regards to the past...
  i needed to visit the brothel to also visit
the butchers...
                               i needed to become meat,
to **** meat... and stop concerning myself over looks:
they only brought me trouble...
like i was walking with a "telepathic"
c.c.t.v. crow on my shoulder...
                             so i put on the weight i lost...
and... at that point? it was liberating...
mind you... if you want to lose weight?
  bicycle and swimming... no gym...
fruit for your last meal during the day...
eat anything you want...
  but losing weight? and all that bulimia,
classical roman bulimia:
training the oesophagus with first *******
into the mouth... then with no fingers
down the mouth?
                beauty... is not worth the trouble
when you really tempt yourself with the expansive
temporal canvas...
21 was my peak... after that...
                     voluntary celibacy...
                   a **** here and there...
            but no... it's not for me...
                    i guess i looked up to the right sort
of men... with regards to staying a bachelor...
to be highly invested in something,
   like Kant in a transcendent methodology...
like Kierkegaard invested in the arts...
like Nietzsche invested in waiting for
the fruition of his prophesies...
                      you have to be born to want to live
the simple happy life...
                  the "expected" life...
       the whole Hiob motto of: once taken,
can be regained blah blah...
                        it needs to have trans-generational
breeding involved...
                   a list of expectations...
                social-pressures and for that matter:
intrinsic socially-cohesive-stratification...
i'm a ****** in England...
             and... that puts as much social pressure
on me as... a chihuaha barking does
to an Alsatian's yawn... that's the stereotype...
the smalls dogs bark... the big dogs bite...
                 oh sure, when i visit my grandparents
back "home"... the older generation put
the pressure questions to the test:
even women from Warsaw...
   so where's your girlfriend?
to the old folk i reply: well i can't exactly force
a woman to be with me...
to the women of Warsaw?
   i'm practially a monk...
                        why?
          you don't really want to be aged 21...
forced with a scenario of:
happily dating, presumably reciprocrating trust
with regards to contraception,
being forced to reply to the scenario:
i think i'm pregnant... my my...
   and we were only 6 months apart after
the break-up, living in two different cities...
em...
                     on a lighter note...
what's the most fun you can have in Kenya?
   sitting on the balcony, in the shade...
feeding rascal macaques anything from nuts...
to bags of sugar... you, two macaque monkeys,
one balcony... the indian ocean frothing beyond...
it doesn't require a genius to figure out
what's worth cherishing without having
to feel obliged to the whole of humanity for...
offspring - many already figured this out before me:
you learn to give birth to your self (reflective,
and yes, not yourself - the reflexive)...
   which brings death to having to stand on its head...
... isn't Sisyphus the son of Atlas?
            couldn't Sisyphus just sit beside the stone
and... well yeah: think up the philosopher?

.em... looking back at the british empire, and the loud-mouth former colonial people... by god, i've never seen such leeches, i've never seen a people, so proud of being colonialißed! what's there to be proud of?! looks like in a post-colonial world, these former colonial busy-bodies had to, had to: step up and move their markers for Aladdin being performed in the West End... *******...  never in the history of the world, were post-colonial people endowed with so much pride, the whole m'ah bwee'dish *******... to counter herr zeppelinmann with the pakistani in the p.s. framework of the british empire... rotherham... ring a pakistani blue?! have a guitar on y'ah?! see... i don't like these former colonial states, with their people migrating to england, having their overlord say it now, say it clear bollocking... i don't mind a top hat, tux donning ******* giving me directions... but when a ****- does it?! sorry... i'm so sorry... will you please excuse me?! i just don't like *******, i don't like the sort of people who celebrate being colonial subjects, esp. after the whole post-colonial celebration of "libertion"... i don't like ****** / pakis who have to find their "past" by playing the cricket ball of, "the former" colony! i hate copper skinned ******* of ****- origins! former colonial raj-vizier... how can you breed these sort of people, who find pride in being under colonial power?! the **** didn't understand freedom, only understood it when being subject to its lack?! well... so much for english women... i guess they were only going to go for pakistani grooming gangs... drowning in the ganges... i have as much of jesus christ on the cross in me, as i have plenty and enough of pontius pilate's worth of soap to mind the next few years; never in my life would i have to witness the former colonißed to bribe their way, into an acceptance "speech" methodology... the ****- to fable the englishman for his, "tea"... no conquered people, no colonißed people should ever glorify their conquerers or colonißers... i guess the british achieved a double subversion... why do the ****- (stanis) still play cricket... i don't want to know... i'm new here... but... but... when a ****- attempts to displace a european from europe? that's my breaking point... i don't like being displaced from europe... the next ****- that will? well... the obvious target, a northern english teenager girl readied for grooming. i said! next ****- that tries to displace an european from europe... well... i guess.. given the power of the current politicians... nothing! ha ha!

well, with the e.u. article x, y and z...
herr zensor just flew over
London and dropped a bomb
from his zeppelin,
             because?
         two year ago,
       a teenager, girl, aged 13,
downloaded some materials
regarding self-harm...
              now the english government
is implicating regulations,
it will regulate social media usage,
mind you: ***** 'arry was pushing
the agenda all along...
   never mind the competent users...
just tackle the problem
with the addicts...
    oh look: no ******, no alcohol...
ms. amber: i'm sorry, we've failed,
we punched "the agenda"
of a blank canvas too far,
    we're going to have to double down,
for a while, so we can just
survive and have this sort
of a punching-bag of a blank
canvas readied for us...
               so the government will come
in and regulate,
       come on, 13 years old,
but the rising queer epidemic of
premature depression in the youth?
    while the parents do not
implement internet safety
   for their children,
        no block filters...
                like blocking pornographic
sites,
      so the infiltration came
            from within the supposed
safety-net sites?
           ****... i was exposed to
rotten.com by word of mouth at
school...
                           just when the internet
launched with that whole
dial-up modem,
    chris rock in lethal weapon
moment talking about old telephones...
and people bemoaned e.u.
articles...
         there have to be consequences...
people should / companies
should be taken into account...
     what about the *******
  who sold me chemically enhanced
marijuana?
            well of course:
   better a guilty man walk free,
than an innocent man become imprisoned...
that logic is still kinda flimsy
for me...
                 i don't know why...
   but it just is...
    surely there are parental filters
for what a child can and cannot see
on the internet...
                 when i was first exposed
to horse on woman *******?
       em...
         is there anything honest to think
about, at this point?
          maybe that's why i decided
to "ghost" around 200 fwends on fb.,
i figured...
        **** this pseudo-voyeurism
of what people want me to see...
    i've invested a decent amount of years
and settled for the 13K poem / doodle count...
and some pictures...
   none of them saved on a personal
drive...
         why would i stash the content,
hide it, when i want people to peruse...
'it's always dark before the dawn',
sorry, i don't know how much
of a ****-******* optimist i have to be...
before a stoic cynicism grinds me
to a halt of:
                   "branching out"...
              i came here for the punching bag
of a blank canvas...
              i never came for the fake
sycophancy or some count of numbers...
i came here, for an outlet...
      it was either this,
                     or a punching bag...
and you almost sense that this whole
farce of "national sovereignty"
is about to be dropped into the *******
and flushed...
       because... it will all become
                             "too inconvenient"...
oh they'll stall... until the european elections
take place...
                   and there's a u.k.
                        (probably the only time
where an N does't come between
vowels)...
                they're wriggling themselves
out... public: 1 vote...
                parliament: i've lost count...
it's not even akin to rats jumping ****,
more like a maggot **** in a pit...
                        that's what a cynic is:
a realist...
                         if i'm wrong, i'm wrong...
but...
              on several occassions
i haven't been wrong...
           and you just have to watch for
that glee in the eyes of channel 4 journalist
anchors...
     i know that glee in the eyes...
it's a glee of hope...
              a sly variation of hope...
               it's also a certainty imbued
               with a certainity-expectation;
thank god i didn't use the video medium...
no passive watchers,
      at least with writing...
certain sacrifices have to be made. / / / / / / / / / /
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

a "p.s.": well of course i'm not happy
with the news coming from today,
mind you: ever spot a woodland pigeon?
god, aren't they plump?
               bloated *******,
they always seem well fed by the forest...
a pair nested in a tree in my garden,
only yesterday, i picked up two
almost translucent offspring of theirs,
thrown out of the nest,
   the bride and groom
               decided they were sick,
weak...
                  they did look weak...
     death stared back at me,
          what once was animate,
lying there, among the stones, inanimate...
what a strange sight...
            do i believe in god?
            well... tell me...
   what is the driving force that coordinates
hearbeats, the functions of the stomach,
intestines, liver, kidney and lungs?
the categorical imperative split of the brain:
thinking, memory, imagination?
the bank of pathologies?
              tell me, what is the universal
1: nth term functions of the brain / 1 (divided
by 1),
                 the heartbeat / 1,
              the liver's function(s) / 1...
              the stomach's function / 1...
the pancreatic function / 1...
           i sometimes wonder:
  i own bones only in light of the thin
skinned extentsions associated with
fingers and tooes...
   sometimes this sort of thinking helps...
to "fake ignorance",
in order to rediscover awe...
         as if a genesis story...
to be the first...
        you never actually know what you will find...
sometimes there's no point being caged
in all the advancements of knowledge,
of certainity we are presented with
on the secular altar,
            ****! i can't even begin to comprehend
how i managed to clamour out from
beneath the eisenvorhang...
    a brief interlude... and straight back under
the siliziumvorhang...
            i guess i need to sleep the better dues
to pass this day...
           it was expected though,
i was, after all... sending out an S.O.S.,
     wattpad... what is it?
              teens wet silly with poetry
associated with no messy love,
mostly girls...
              YA novelties and novellas...
side projects...
               again: vampires, warewolves,
zombies, blah blah: yawn a year later...
         teen girls: sensitive as
daffodils, but as soon as a presence
comes along: little scheming modliszkas
   (mantises) - since daddy would not
approve...
              i discovered marquis de sade
in my teens: thank **** that i did...
i wished for an exoskeleton,
i moved past it, into lizard skin,
until my skin started resembling
an oyster shell hardness...
                     you snooze, you loße...
i only saw the trilogy once,
in the waterstones of Greenwich Village
in London, when i was doing some roofing
for a housing project...
i only saw the trilogy once...
i only bought Joris-Karl Huysmans's
Là-Bas once... i should have bought
the two other books...
  since i never saw them again...
  unlucky me... having succumbed to the sterotype
of the magpie stealing silver spoons...
the cover...
   artwork by aubrey beardsley:
                        'of neophyte and how the black art
was revealed to him by the fiend Asomuel'
   (the pall mall magazine, june 1893)...
on amazon.com you either get a chance
to purchase this book, or:
Against Nature (a rabours)...
    but there's a trilogy behind Là-Bas...
zee fwench: sorry, and not sorry,
the english can be grand poets,
but when it comes to prose?
                they're not even sniffing
the toes of the french...
                what happened to woodland pigeon
coos today?  wattpad.com,
2015...             the same for me...
an outright ban... because some girl
decided to be offended by me cutting off
a conversation with her: wish her a good life...
and i really out so much effort into that page...
zip it shrimpy: cut off, little richard
on the guillotine... cut!
                well... i was clued into
the world of 'olapoesía.com,
           hallopoesia.com
                       sveikidzeja.com (lithuanian...
dzieje? happenings, events, in ******)...
          and just my luck...
      leave a harmless comment in an in-group,
in a hive?
              how the nazis were not exactly
mongols, or the first christians who
burned down the library of alexandria,
when notre dame burned...
      when the blitz of london...
and how st. paul's "miraculously" survived...
and i said: i'm pretty sure the people
in command said to the luftwaffe squadron
about to bomb london:
you drop a single bomb on st. paul's:
firing squad...
           they were nazis: but sure as ****
they weren't the people of the siberian steppe!
so hellopoetry.com,
  2019, suspension from may until december 2019...
but unlike wattpad...
  i still have my account!
   and guess who's digging trenches, right now?
poetfreak.com and minds.com are
step-overs...
why did i delete my 200+ fwends off of
facebook.com and reduced it to
3 random strangers?
          eh?
                   as much as i abhor darwinism
poking its head through to give
every single existential explanation...
i have to side with darwinism on this point:
a defensive modus operandi...
lie low...
          pretend to be dead...
                   i knew the censorship storm
was coming back in 2015...
and this current banning of woodland pigeon
coos banning?
     i'm sort of happy...
but not for the sort of reasons stemming
from the ban...
     i can finally spread the "love"!
           i finally know what it feels like,
for someone who liked my work...
         being cut off from my content...
frankly... it feels great!
                   i can finally entertain my perspective
with a pinch of empathy...
sympathy is already here:
since it happened to me back in 2015,
and in early 2019...
         now for the 3rd time lucky
on the platforms i already mentioned...
but like this hindu woman said to me...
1st time is an honest mistake,
2nd time is a lesson in learning...
3rd time? there's nothing for you to learn...
and that's of course in reverse:
of me being banned.
                         after all...
if marquis de sade is still with us?!
                 marquis de sade...
                              i knew herr zensor was
coming...           but i didn't exactly
expect to climb from under the iron curtain,
to be draped over with the silicon curtain...
and these people know they're taking away
our former playground,
our youth center,
                       well...
                           but at least i didn't make
passive content akin to a video...
         if they really want to ban me a third
time...
       i'm glad someone took the effort
to read my work...
   saves them the time ageing toward granny
age, resorting to binging on harlequin
romance novels.

p.s.

you've actually caught me in my berserker
drinking mode... i'll just spew...
and spew as i must, i never expected
the "useful idiots" to comply to what my thinking
didn't prescribe them to do...
even hegel once pointed out:
something about 3D chess,
a thinking man, with pawns of willing
actors... i never liked hegel...

                  hegel has become too much
of a crucifix, a bookmark,
of what and where, "things" went wrong...
i hate bookmarked people...
kant isn't bookmarked...
         all the slander that nietzsche offered him,
as some repetitive jargon booster,
with the sort of a bachelor lifestyle
he greatly admired: rooted in Königsberg...
****** worked like clockwork...
his predictability was the great deception...
forget shuffling ideas and whatever
like a northern semite...
weren't the vikings the semites
of the north? restless creatures,
constantly displaced? weren't they?

mind you... eh...
     you know how many necromancers
actually exist?
   you ever read a book by jean-paul sartre?
james joyce? stendhal? dumas?
sienkiewicz?
      you sure you're not
a necromancer?
                it's not an exactly
illustrious title to hold...
             when reading the books
of the departed, aren't you invoking
their living presence, into the current storm
of affairs?
  sure as **** it's not a spectacular "title"
to hold, is it?
           to think: one is more likely
to cite the dead, having "risen" from
their grave, that one is to make
   "compensations" with the living...
   when journalism ****** politics...
and the sort of admired journalism,
akin to all the president's men...
died...
                a slower death than the traversing
speed of a snail...
   like that other quote beside
hegel:         the terrible...
                   has already happened.
the holocaust, chernobyl...
   that has already happened...
               awaiting what could ever be
worse: is but akin to the sword of Democles...
it's hanging in the air,
   blood-thirty,
  like the talking heads of
the french aristocracy, once the guillotine
chop happens... gagging for "free speech"
in a basket...
what is mary antoinette just said:
let them have croissants?!
    fat fake cake binges would...
with a snap of the fingers... be over...
still... the english crumpet...
      tyson fury vs. manny pacquiao
    (the obvious choice of crumpet,
and the croissant getting battered...
akin to a french toast,
               soaked in beaten eggs)...

you read any book by a dead person,
you're a necromancer...
             i'm a necromancer...
                 you're a necromancer...
the dead arrive at your head,
have a ******* with your thinking,
then leave,
you continue,
   in your own right,
and in their right: of mutating their
original thought...
          that lost ambition of narrative,
transcending any and all
moral 'oughts...
                    try me after an hour
spent with a ******* doing nothing
but kissing her:
just, because, "on a whim",
i forgot to trim my ***** hair...
                stealing kisses from prostitutes
isn't exactly easy...
all that pretty woman dogma...
     **** above a kiss...
          well... "yeah"... in reality?
                   i'm thinking about three things
right now... growing a heard long enough
to reach my heart...
   bonsai: in both the tree botanical form
and a feline form of a shrunken tiger
akin to a maine **** cat...
   and a pagoda...
                      don't ask me why...
i'm good at su doku puzzles... mahjong...
really **** on the crossword puzzle scale...
hence? random words just enter my mind
and i need an ars poetica impromptu
to lodge them into.

p.p.s.
i already know what the inquiring man would
or could ever do with a child,
to inquire about his own development as
a child, to find the: dot dot dot the missing
answers, to see for himself as he developed
into an adult, or, worse, to project his own failings
onto the child, child genius tiger mums team
alpha-bravo... child prodigy gehennah...
it's almost a psychological fetish for some,
to bind oneself to the canvas of a child,
better off with a cat, or a dog if that's your
"thing"... at least you won't be hurting anyone...
worse still: the marquis de sade ******
scenario... i still have memories from when
i was 4 years old... Ganesha must be looking
over me: the stereotype? elephants' memory,
which is as long as its trunk...
      "conundrum": if an adult male can fathom
his child: himself at the age of 4...
if he can fathom a metaphorical foetus,
why would he have to procreate,
to produce a d.n.a. mongrel to satiate his
curiosity further?
      besides that... if society was once overtly
religious, moralistic...
today's society is overly-psychologised...
i hate psychological stereotypes,
everyone is this part-time hobby-psychologist...
             i don't exactly require a biological
part-replica of myself to preserve at least
one thought with origin and end within
the confines of my self...
       i'm not exactly prone to utter patriachal
proverbs that encompass whole ethnic groups...
maxims or categorical imperatives
cater for individuals...
                   not the masses...
i'd have to be a patriarch to utter proverbs as
a way to gather the brood of my own
sow and subsequent harvest...
to be so obscure,
    to be so... concerned with lineage...
                   you have to be born with the facets
of necessarily ensuring that future generations
are to make the same mistakes...
           that's why i would never trust western
neo-atheism... d.n.a. as the only future blah blah...
         sure... if you can lodge a thought
into d.n.a. and receive the token of finding both
self and consciousness within such claustrophic automaton confines,
"somewhere down the line"...
      much older generations would have told you...
that's in the fables, the mythos, the temporal crux
and crossroads... time doesn't give a donkey's *******
about your "rational", scientific materialism's worth
of continuum...
                         etc.

In the aftermath
Of a very hot bath
Sylvia Plath
Used to re-read
Katherine Mansfield stories
Until she felt
A little bit snory.

Whilst Ted Hughes -
After he'd imbued
The cool waters of
A shower for an hour -
Would watch Jackanory
Till he felt Hunky Dory
Then listen to Aladdin Sane
To bring him back to
The real world again.

Watch That Man!

I look in the mirror and see
not me
see
not me
I see
an artist with a frock on,
backing up a bit
I see
an artist with a smock on,
not me.

And they're talking 'bout the Shard!

if a ***** looking thing ever
looked so hard
it's the Shard.

I'm talking Annoyed and
thinking of beating up Freud
they're
thinking Schadenfreude,

that's why Lloyds
exists
for sinking wrecks and
sunken ships.

It's a hell of a mess
when you've got to confess
you've made a hell of a mess,
reflections of me in a dress,

(frocks is cool,
but they don't fool the mirror)

Cruising
pen in hand
Saddique in the driving seat
beat Boris hands down
to be the
new Mayor
in London town.

Out on the balcony and
the only thing to welcome me
is pigeon **** and
two white feathers
and the
weather's
nice.

Fifteen degrees and she's
in a bikini,
who let the genie out
of the lamp?

A classmate exclaimed
As Mrs. Ragan shoved
An Aladdin mug
In my face as I
Gained consciousness
During sixth grade
Art class

My first seizure

The depression started
Soon after

10mg of lexapro
Five thereapists
Three neurologists
Doctors ****

Middle school was
A Deep Dark
Dooming Depression
I had no friends
I hated everyone
And everything
But mostly
I hated myself

Wishing I had drowned
Or never woke up from
My first seizure

Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis,
Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.
             Ovid, Fastorum, Lib. vi.

“O Cæsar, we who are about to die
Salute you!” was the gladiators’ cry
In the arena, standing face to face
With death and with the Roman populace.

O ye familiar scenes,—ye groves of pine,
That once were mine and are no longer mine,—
Thou river, widening through the meadows green
To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen,—
Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose

Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose
And vanished,—we who are about to die,
Salute you; earth and air and sea and sky,
And the Imperial Sun that scatters down
His sovereign splendors upon grove and town.

Ye do not answer us! ye do not hear!
We are forgotten; and in your austere
And calm indifference, ye little care
Whether we come or go, or whence or where.
What passing generations fill these halls,
What passing voices echo from these walls,
Ye heed not; we are only as the blast,
A moment heard, and then forever past.

Not so the teachers who in earlier days
Led our bewildered feet through learning’s maze;
They answer us—alas! what have I said?
What greetings come there from the voiceless dead?
What salutation, welcome, or reply?
What pressure from the hands that lifeless lie?
They are no longer here; they all are gone
Into the land of shadows,—all save one.
Honor and reverence, and the good repute
That follows faithful service as its fruit,
Be unto him, whom living we salute.

The great Italian poet, when he made
His dreadful journey to the realms of shade,
Met there the old instructor of his youth,
And cried in tones of pity and of ruth:
“Oh, never from the memory of my heart

Your dear, paternal image shall depart,
Who while on earth, ere yet by death surprised,
Taught me how mortals are immortalized;
How grateful am I for that patient care
All my life long my language shall declare.”

To-day we make the poet’s words our own,
And utter them in plaintive undertone;
Nor to the living only be they said,
But to the other living called the dead,
Whose dear, paternal images appear
Not wrapped in gloom, but robed in sunshine here;
Whose simple lives, complete and without flaw,
Were part and parcel of great Nature’s law;
Who said not to their Lord, as if afraid,
“Here is thy talent in a napkin laid,”
But labored in their sphere, as men who live
In the delight that work alone can give.
Peace be to them; eternal peace and rest,
And the fulfilment of the great behest:
“Ye have been faithful over a few things,
Over ten cities shall ye reign as kings.”

And ye who fill the places we once filled,
And follow in the furrows that we tilled,
Young men, whose generous hearts are beating high,
We who are old, and are about to die,
Salute you; hail you; take your hands in ours,
And crown you with our welcome as with flowers!

How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams
With its illusions, aspirations, dreams!
Book of Beginnings, Story without End,
Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!
Aladdin’s Lamp, and Fortunatus’ Purse,
That holds the treasures of the universe!
All possibilities are in its hands,
No danger daunts it, and no foe withstands;
In its sublime audacity of faith,
“Be thou removed!” it to the mountain saith,
And with ambitious feet, secure and proud,
Ascends the ladder leaning on the cloud!

As ancient Priam at the Scæan gate
Sat on the walls of Troy in regal state
With the old men, too old and weak to fight,
Chirping like grasshoppers in their delight
To see the embattled hosts, with spear and shield,
Of Trojans and Achaians in the field;
So from the snowy summits of our years
We see you in the plain, as each appears,
And question of you; asking, “Who is he
That towers above the others? Which may be
Atreides, Menelaus, Odysseus,
Ajax the great, or bold Idomeneus?”

Let him not boast who puts his armor on
As he who puts it off, the battle done.
Study yourselves; and most of all note well
Wherein kind Nature meant you to excel.
Not every blossom ripens into fruit;
Minerva, the inventress of the flute,
Flung it aside, when she her face surveyed
Distorted in a fountain as she played;
The unlucky Marsyas found it, and his fate
Was one to make the bravest hesitate.

Write on your doors the saying wise and old,
“Be bold! be bold!” and everywhere, “Be bold;
Be not too bold!” Yet better the excess
Than the defect; better the more than less;
Better like Hector in the field to die,
Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly.

And now, my classmates; ye remaining few
That number not the half of those we knew,
Ye, against whose familiar names not yet
The fatal asterisk of death is set,
Ye I salute! The horologe of Time
Strikes the half-century with a solemn chime,
And summons us together once again,
The joy of meeting not unmixed with pain.

Where are the others? Voices from the deep
Caverns of darkness answer me: “They sleep!”
I name no names; instinctively I feel
Each at some well-remembered grave will kneel,
And from the inscription wipe the weeds and moss,
For every heart best knoweth its own loss.
I see their scattered gravestones gleaming white
Through the pale dusk of the impending night;
O’er all alike the impartial sunset throws
Its golden lilies mingled with the rose;
We give to each a tender thought, and pass
Out of the graveyards with their tangled grass,
Unto these scenes frequented by our feet
When we were young, and life was fresh and sweet.

What shall I say to you? What can I say
Better than silence is? When I survey
This throng of faces turned to meet my own,
Friendly and fair, and yet to me unknown,
Transformed the very landscape seems to be;
It is the same, yet not the same to me.
So many memories crowd upon my brain,
So many ghosts are in the wooded plain,
I fain would steal away, with noiseless tread,
As from a house where some one lieth dead.
I cannot go;—I pause;—I hesitate;
My feet reluctant linger at the gate;
As one who struggles in a troubled dream
To speak and cannot, to myself I seem.

Vanish the dream! Vanish the idle fears!
Vanish the rolling mists of fifty years!
Whatever time or space may intervene,
I will not be a stranger in this scene.
Here every doubt, all indecision, ends;
Hail, my companions, comrades, classmates, friends!

Ah me! the fifty years since last we met
Seem to me fifty folios bound and set
By Time, the great transcriber, on his shelves,
Wherein are written the histories of ourselves.
What tragedies, what comedies, are there;
What joy and grief, what rapture and despair!
What chronicles of triumph and defeat,
Of struggle, and temptation, and retreat!
What records of regrets, and doubts, and fears!
What pages blotted, blistered by our tears!
What lovely landscapes on the margin shine,
What sweet, angelic faces, what divine
And holy images of love and trust,
Undimmed by age, unsoiled by damp or dust!
Whose hand shall dare to open and explore
These volumes, closed and clasped forevermore?
Not mine. With reverential feet I pass;
I hear a voice that cries, “Alas! alas!
Whatever hath been written shall remain,
Nor be erased nor written o’er again;
The unwritten only still belongs to thee:
Take heed, and ponder well what that shall be.”

As children frightened by a thunder-cloud
Are reassured if some one reads aloud
A tale of wonder, with enchantment fraught,
Or wild adventure, that diverts their thought,
Let me endeavor with a tale to chase
The gathering shadows of the time and place,
And banish what we all too deeply feel
Wholly to say, or wholly to conceal.

In mediæval Rome, I know not where,
There stood an image with its arm in air,
And on its lifted finger, shining clear,
A golden ring with the device, “Strike here!”
Greatly the people wondered, though none guessed
The meaning that these words but half expressed,
Until a learned clerk, who at noonday
With downcast eyes was passing on his way,
Paused, and observed the spot, and marked it well,
Whereon the shadow of the finger fell;
And, coming back at midnight, delved, and found
A secret stairway leading underground.
Down this he passed into a spacious hall,
Lit by a flaming jewel on the wall;
And opposite, in threatening attitude,
With bow and shaft a brazen statue stood.
Upon its forehead, like a coronet,
Were these mysterious words of menace set:
“That which I am, I am; my fatal aim
None can escape, not even yon luminous flame!”

Midway the hall was a fair table placed,
With cloth of gold, and golden cups enchased
With rubies, and the plates and knives were gold,
And gold the bread and viands manifold.
Around it, silent, motionless, and sad,
Were seated gallant knights in armor clad,
And ladies beautiful with plume and zone,
But they were stone, their hearts within were stone;
And the vast hall was filled in every part
With silent crowds, stony in face and heart.

Long at the scene, bewildered and amazed
The trembling clerk in speechless wonder gazed;
Then from the table, by his greed made bold,
He seized a goblet and a knife of gold,
And suddenly from their seats the guests upsprang,
The vaulted ceiling with loud clamors rang,
The archer sped his arrow, at their call,
Shattering the lambent jewel on the wall,
And all was dark around and overhead;—
Stark on the floor the luckless clerk lay dead!

The writer of this legend then records
Its ghostly application in these words:
The image is the Adversary old,
Whose beckoning finger points to realms of gold;
Our lusts and passions are the downward stair
That leads the soul from a diviner air;
The archer, Death; the flaming jewel, Life;
Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife;
The knights and ladies, all whose flesh and bone
By avarice have been hardened into stone;
The clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelf
Tempts from his books and from his nobler self.

The scholar and the world! The endless strife,
The discord in the harmonies of life!
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books;
The market-place, the eager love of gain,
Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!

But why, you ask me, should this tale be told
To men grown old, or who are growing old?
It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,
When each had numbered more than fourscore years,
And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,
Had but begun his “Characters of Men.”
Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when eighty years were past.
These are indeed exceptions; but they show
How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow
Into the arctic regions of our lives,
Where little else than life itself survives.

As the barometer foretells the storm
While still the skies are clear, the weather warm
So something in us, as old age draws near,
Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere.
The nimble mercury, ere we are aware,
Descends the elastic ladder of the air;
The telltale blood in artery and vein
Sinks from its higher levels in the brain;
Whatever poet, orator, or sage
May say of it, old age is still old age.
It is the waning, not the crescent moon;
The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon;
It is not strength, but weakness; not desire,
But its surcease; not the fierce heat of fire,
The burning and consuming element,
But that of ashes and of embers spent,
In which some living sparks we still discern,
Enough to warm, but not enough to burn.

What then? Shall we sit idly down and say
The night hath come; it is no longer day?
The night hath not yet come; we are not quite
Cut off from labor by the failing light;
Something remains for us to do or dare;
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear;
Not Oedipus Coloneus, or Greek Ode,
Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode
Out of the gateway of the Tabard Inn,
But other something, would we but begin;
For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

In homage - splicer of Aladdin's reel;
a bow, beneath the centered piece so drawn
and slants alive in shade of noblest seal,
no other blushing temptress ever worn.

To hasten tryst; may taint her Jasmine gaze
as lashes flutter onto other's love
how then beguile and keep her ardent daze,
thereby no more in spite - a lonely dove?

The mystic canvas; mine - eternal beat,
and soars in winds, which sail's her gentled tones,
adrift and glides, to bloom this rose, complete
once withered long beneath the hermit stones.

If journeyed nether brittle; sways no guise
remote and marvel then - her Jasmine eyes.