We had a very happy conversation about family matters.

Mom, Dad. I’m OK.
They’ve been really honest with me
but they’re perfectly willing to die for what they’re doing.
And I want to get out of here
but the only way I’m going to
is if we do it their way.
And I just hope that you’ll do what they say
Dad
and just do it quickly.
I really am alright.
I just hope I can get back to everybody really soon.

My little girl.

Catherine and Randy gave impeccable dinner parties.

I am an Establishment person.

I am being held as a Prisoner of War
and not as anything else.
I mean I am being treated
in accordance with
international codes of war.
I’m not left alone, and I’m not just shoved off somewhere.
I mean, I am fine.

Also, since I am an example
and it’s really important
that everybody understand that
you know,
I am an example and a warning.

And so people should stop acting like I’m dead.

Mom should get out of her black dress,
that doesn’t help at all.
and just hurry.
Bye.

Patty honey I want you to know
that your father is doing everything in his power.
Millions of people all over the world are praying for you
I know it’s been a long time sweetheart
but keep up your courage
and you keep praying
pretty soon god will touch their hearts
and they’ll send you home.

Mom, Dad.
I've been hearing reports about the food program.
So far it sounds like you and your advisors
have managed to turn it into a real disaster.
Anyway, it certainly didn't sound like the kind of food
our family is used to eating.

I called him a couple of weeks ago and said,
Hey, Randy, let's play tennis.
We haven't played tennis in months
and he said
Gosh. I just can't. I'm busy.
I know he's got a lot on his mind,
But, I think he's pretty obsessed with this.

Mom, Dad.
Tell the poor and oppressed people of this nation
what the corporate state is about to do.
Warn Black and poor people
that they are about to be murdered
down to the last man, woman and child.
Tell the people,
Dad
that the removal of expendable excess,
the removal of unneeded people
has already started.

I have chosen to stay and fight.
I have been given the name Tania
after a comrade who fought alongside Che in Bolivia.
It is in the spirit of Tania that I say,
'Patria o Muerte, Venceremos.'

She was one of the prettiest young women south of the Mason‐Dixon line.

Q. Okay. As a matter of fact, when you got to 1827 Golden Gate, or this apartment on
Golden Gate, you were not being held in that closet all the time, were you?
A. Yes, I was.
Q. You were?
A. Yes.
Q. Was there a previous closet in which you were held?
A. Yes.

DEATH TO THE FASCIST INSECT THAT PREYS UPON THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE

She is a winsome beauty and her sweetness of manner has endeared her to all who know her

Whatever happened to the real men in this world? Men like Clark Gable? No one would have carried off my daughter if there had been a real man there.

She was somewhat of a revolutionary savant.
We kidnapped a freak.
I think that she was spectacular.
At that point, it was against her will to go home.

Q. And you moved in a car, I take it?
A. Yes.
Q. Were you blindfolded?
A. Yes.
Q. And whose car was it, do you know?
A. I don’t know. I was put into a garbage can that was ******* and put in the trunk of the car.
Q. And then, was the garbage can taken into the apartment on Golden Gate when you arrived?
A. Yes.
Q. Were you in it?
A. Yes.
Q. And you were placed in a closet immediately, is that correct?
A. Yes.

I. She’s an amoral person
thought that the rules did not apply to her.
She lied to nuns at school
about her mother having cancer
in order to get out of an exam
engaged in ****** activity
at an early age
and experimented with drugs
such as LSD.

II. Velcro Theory defined the aimless, lost souls
such persons, he said, who float around
in an empty moral space
and then find stuck to them
the first random ideology they bump into.

III. She is a celebrity prisoner of war
but the other thing
is that listening to her voice
is kind of hypnotizing
and not at all unpleasant
she speaks in this whisper
the well-enunciated voice
that someone called
the rich girl’s voice
The eerie voice of an heiress
and it's hard not to admire her composure
considering the ordeal she just went through.

We didn't know whether we were looking at a live girl or a robot.

Greetings to the people.
This is Tania.
Gabi crouched low with her *** to the ground.
Perfect love and perfect hate reflected in stone cold eyes.
To shoot first and make sure the pig is dead before splitting.
I died in that fire on 54th Street,
but out of the ashes I was reborn.
I know what I have to do.

Catherine was mentally and physically exhausted after the kidnapping. No wonder she developed a drinking problem.

Q. Okay. And is it true, Miss Hearst,
that you in the presence of Thomas Mathews ejected a live round from the M-I
that you had near you
and inserted that in the clip,
and put the clip back in the weapon?
A. I don't recall, it is possible.
Q. It is possible you may have.
And did you, in fact, also at that time
load a couple of live rounds
into the chamber of a revolver, a pistol?
A. I don't recall.
Q. Did you give Bill Harris a pistol
in the presence a Tomas Mathews?
A. I don't recall.
Q. You don't recall?
A. No.

I’ll think of it all tomorrow—I can stand it then.

I think this has been extremely ******* her
She's what the kids call ‘spaced out.’
Her religion holds her together.
And when you talk to her,
you see reality escapes her.
All she can say is that people are
‘persecuting’ Patty.
That's the word she uses,
‘persecution.’
We all love Patty,
and God knows she's had a terrible time,
but the whole complexity of the situation
seems to escape Catherine.

You're being told this
so you'll understand why I was kidnapped.
The S.L.A. has declared
war against the Government
I'm telling you now why this happened
so that you'll know
so that you'll have
something to use,
the knowledge
to try to get me out of here.
Bye.

I’m the happiest mother in the whole world.

I hope that you'll make sure that they don't do anything else like that Oakland business.

Q. Do you recall you spoke those words, Miss Hearst?
A. Can I see the transcript?

I don't believe Patty's legal problems are that serious. After all, she's primarily a kidnap victim. She never went off and did anything of her own free will.

From the moment I was kidnapped,
they consistently attempted to
discredit the revolutionaries.
After the first communique was received,
the pigs reacted by hauling out the stress machines.
The machines indicated I was being tortured
and kept awake 24 hours a day.
I guess that all the pigs expected me
to keep my mouth shut,
but I was furious.
They put away their trickology for a while.
If you believe the media,
you'd think I was totally weird.
According to them, I never mean anything.

Catherine, while still blond and attractive, has aged around the corners of the eyes.

Greetings to the people,
this is Tania.
Our actions of April 15
forced the Corporate State
to help finance the revolution.
As for being brainwashed,
the idea is ridiculous beyond belief.
I am a soldier in the People's Army.

I am Tania and We are not fooling around.

What could have been a tremendous instrument for change—Patty's kidnapping—has failed, and their old attitudes toward life—I guess it's called ‘conservatism’—are back

The kids who went to public schools
were not the kind of people
we should have close associations with.
As a result, I spent twelve years
almost totally surrounded by young people
who were busily developing
ruling class aspirations.

She has nowhere to go,
as resulted in only a change of captors.
But at least now,
as long as society is her
captor,
she does not have to worry about being killed.
Freedom may be a more awesome
alternative
-- you are not here to decide that.
We have a framework,
the SLA predicted this trial.
If we can't break the chain
at some point in their predictions,
there are going to be other Patricia Hearsts,
the blueprint is plain,
it works

A year and a half after her kidnapping,
she's in the safe arms of the law.
So, what does she do?
Patty gives the revolutionary salute,
even when she's in handcuffs.
And when she's booked,
she's asked her occupation
and what does she say?
Urban guerilla.

Bailey, I just –
I don't know him,
you know,
like he just kind of drifts in
and you know,
says blah, blah, blah
and I just go,
oh,
okay.

It was never true that our objective was to reconvert her.

You can almost see how Patty couldn’t relate to her—you know, trying to be so self-righteous and so upright.

Well, I always knew
that the Lord was in my life,
kind of on my shoulder.
I started to stray off
I always knew His hand
was there to bring me back.
I got to the house,
put my bags down in the entry,
went right to the kitchen
and the first thought on my heart was
I need to hear Jesus.
I picked up that Bible
and started in Matthew 1:1.
For that whole five days
I read and cried
and read and cried.

In short order, she returned to being the Patty Hearst of Hillsborough, California, the heiress herself.

It's kind of fun because back then,
there's nothing else to do but paint your nails.
It's really exciting.
I have been crocheting now.
At least, my mother came in and she asked –
she had asked me,
about my hair,
you know,
like
can I change it back?
She asked if there was a beauty parlor.

Her eyes are,
for the most part,
downcast,
as if she were sharing a secret with
herself.

She’s such a devoted, old-fashioned Southern lady, that we just died watching her facade break. That hysteria wasn’t just grief that Patty was gone—it was guilt, you know, ‘What have I done wrong?’

I'm being treated in accordance
with the Geneva Convention
and one of the conditions being
that I am not being tried
for crimes which I'm not responsible for.
I'm here because
I'm a member of a ruling class family,
and I think you can begin to see the analogy.

She writes these dramatic
love letters to her boyfriend saying,
"I want to keep up the fight for the revolution."
And she wants to overthrow the government in America,
which she spells A-M-E-R-I-K-K-K-A.

Q. And you were reading a paper, were you not, when they were in the store?
A. Yes.
Q. And you looked up from that paper, did you not, and you saw that William Harris was being held on the ground by someone and being detained, isn’t that true?
A. Yes.
Q. And you picked up an automatic weapon and shot in the direction of Mel’s Sporting Goods Store?

OBJECTION

I have a really nice brown pantsuit.
Al got it.
He has really good taste.

Trish Tobin
is telling her
that she is about to head off to Switzerland
to go skiing for three weeks.
I mean,
so what you have
in this compressed circumstance
is the old life skiing in Switzerland
for three weeks,
and Patty is saying,
I've got a life now.
I've got a new life.

The Hearsts are really ramping up for this one.
He is a bright guy,
but in terms of just his manner and his dress,
you couldn't help but be struck by
how square he was.

Q: I've become conscious and can never go back to the life we had before." Do you recall saying those words?
A: I don’t recall seeing a transcript of that tape.

I have chosen to stay and fight.

She is still an uncommonly handsome woman, prettier in fact than any of her daughters.

It’s a miracle she survived at all.
The ordeal nearly killed me,
Mrs. Hearst once admitted and,
asked what sustained her,
she answers instantly: My religion.
Yet her victory over despair
sometimes seems more apparent than real.
After her divorce, she moved to Beverly Hills,
where she supported Catholic causes
and joined the Beverly Hills Garden Club.

I just want to tell you like, my politics are real different from way back when.
Obviously, right.

Q. Is it not true that you ejected
from your automatic weapon
a live round and placed into it
an additional clip?
A. I did not have an automatic weapon.
Q. You did not?
A. No.
Q. What type of weapon did you have?
A. It was an M-I carbine.

She’s a victim of thought control by terrorists. And all I can do is hope and pray that God will bring her home again.

She was de-programmed and de-radicalized,
returned to the persona
more similar to what she was
She was essentially brainwashed
by her side team and her lawyers.
By the time she walked into the courtroom,
nail polish,
nice pair of shoes,
very well dressed,
it was impressive.

I'm terribly happy. More happy than predacious.
Do you have any notion what you'll say to her when you see her?
I'll tell her I love her.
Are there questions that you want to ask her?
No questions in my mind.


I want to see my parents, and my sisters... I'm really happy to be going home.

This was a twisted night,
I looked naughty at her sight,
He brought me a **** scrumptious babydoll,
Where I took her fully on demand,
Commanded us to kiss,
I felt her lips speak on mines wanting me to make her mine,
He watched us unravel into one of his prolonged fantasies,
In my mind I felt amoral,
But every part of me love the entertainment of pleasure we had,
The night aroma smelled like grapefruit,
And she tasted like a sugar cane,
Such a bittersweet moment,
Move baby move,
Slow baby slow,
She did by my every word,
I had to much control on her,
Like she was my little voluptuous puppet,
That night it should've last longer,
Her curvy body so addictive to hold,
Her heartbeat so quietly beating to match mine,
The way she looked at me as if I brought her back to life of happiness,
I noticed how she fell for me more than I care for her,
But I noticed how I fell for him more,
We made it clear how we felt that night,
He made it clear how he liked it,
Will I ever be the
same without her,
Or is it the two that finally makes me complete.

Romantic arson,
a thousand lovers burning
to the blooming flowers
of my accelerant:
amoral, senseless rage.

Because I do not
or will not consider
another vice
for your confessional.

Come shed indifference.
Thumb the holy water font.
Theorize inconclusive evidence
of life apart from love.

Crawl into
the vacant church
which is my heart.
Idolize Me.

There was a dream here. It passed over in the night; a blur that burnt a fever into the earth. It died in the gap between. Fingers unlaced. Hand to the side. The sun runs soft tendrils through thick curtains. Or something like that.

Have you seen the new Star Wars movie? No. You’d like it. It’s the same thing all over again, but with a black guy and a chick as the main characters instead. I guess that’s what you call progress.

There was a dream here. A thick, unfurling mass of potentialities. Sartre once wrote existence precedes essence. Schopenhauer believed the essence of a chair was as much willed into being as the essence of a man. There was choice once, but it died when we chose. The breath you took before your last smoke. The air is stirred by a passing train. A woman steps off a bridge, into the mourning blue of an autumn lake. There is an empty car on fire. There is a man inside. His brother sleeps through his exam, doped up on too much codeine. There is the stench of lack. There is death passing a mirror, seeing herself in haste, but too rushed to make sense of it.

He runs fingers down the scars of her arm. A trickling, stream awakening from a long winter thaw. Vessels blue. Oceans of laughter tucked deep in the folds of her skin, so faint you can barely see them any more.

The sheets are black. The city folds itself. The sky collapses into the gutter; Jupiter bleeds into the apartment block on east side. A man leaves his home, but never reaches his destination.  There is a movie Face Off, where the identity of Nicholas Cage is challenged through the transplantation of his face. If reincarnation were possible, would we even be capable of recognising our reincarnated selves, stumbling through the visage of a billion other, unknown vessels? The skip collectors come at 4am. Metal grinds against metal until all that is left is dust.

Hands shaking a pit of coal. Shake shake. Shake shake. Your mother is dead. Shake shake. Shake shake. Jesus working at a shoe store. Shake shake. Shake shake. An atheist. Hah hah, hah.

The channels fill. Ink drops on water. Fireworks blackening the contours. There is a sun in Peru. Waste water pumps through the vessels of the city. The mayor drinks punch. The catacombs crumble like desert bones. The roads split above. Traffic stalls. Shadows stretch. Meet at the centre. A core. Slender fingers. The infinite. A hollowed heart. A heritage.

Drink your punch, says the mayor, try the grape and cheese.

There is a comic. Five or six woodland friends play grab the tail. After one round, they look over to find friend raccoon sleeping. They laugh and shout next round. Friend scorpion looks at his tail with tears in his eyes. It is funny, because death is boundless, amoral, and imminent.

A group at a party. Someone brings up the right-wing branch of their government. Everyone begins laughing, red in the face, spit flying from their mouths, arms noodling into the sky. Yeah, yeah. Hella. It is an imitation game. A laugh track on repeat. Maybe someone scratched it on purpose, or the sound guy fell asleep on the button. Now everyone is stuck, laughing. They begin to doubt themselves, but look up, reassured by the glowing sign above their heads that displays the text laughter, in bold black Helvetica. The sign is faded from heavy use, a sickly cream that looked bad before it left the factory. They were made in batches of a thousand and shipped across the country. One begins to choke, spilling her drink, bunching the cloth on the table beside her. They keep laughing. She is purple now. Another group spots them and joins in. The party next door. The whole neighbourhood. It is broadcast across the city. A wave of hysteria sweeps the nation. An online celebrity creates mugs. A famous rapper uploads himself eating pancakes. The sound guy wakes up and turns off the display, but everyone keeps laughing.

God died today. Crumpled jacket at the foot of an apartment block. Creased ticket. Crooked can rolling down suburbia. American dream wakes up. Finds herself an amnesiac in a foreign land. Catches bus downtown. Wanders vacant sun. Blood trickles from wrinkles. So many now. Creased, crumpled, crooked. Drinks from gutter. Chokes. Stumbles into abandoned church. Blood dries into grotesque mask. Hard to feel through it. Like second skin. Tired. Rests head against wall. Waits for pulse. Finds nothing.

A joke to break the gloom. Two crows are perched opposite one another, partitioned by a one-way mirror. Both break into laughter.

No, wait. Maybe tears.

Between
Black and White
Right and Wrong
War and Peace
lies the
Gray zone the
Blurred line
Middle ground
Limbo

No boundaries between
Good and Evil
Moral and Amoral
Thin ice and
Solid ground

No safety net to prevent slipping into extremes
No caution signs or flashing lights to guide our steps

We live and die in a
Fairy tale with alternate endings penned by
Politicians
Media moguls and
Religious fanatics who
Convince us to
Choose from a stacked deck to
Win a fixed game
Compliment us on our finery
tho we are threadbare or naked

We live in the land of the free where the
Rule of law applies only to commoners
Opportunity comes with a price few can afford  and
Everyone has the
Right to work and the
Right to be exploited

You might be dwelling in the kingdom of surreality if….

Conflicting images are presented as harmonious
Opposites are blended to form bland
Ugliness is sugar-coated and swallowed whole
Love and passion interfere with success.

It's over now, It's so hard  to think of You,
Must be good for you cuz now you're able to do what ever you want, be with them other women.

I'd stab you if I'd never get caught, Like how I caught you. I'd run a sworded tip right through your lying self,

Poke you right where ya heart should be but I doubt it you have one, I think you have psychopathic behavior and if you don't understand let me clarify it NOW;
"
A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse."

That's what you didn't have for me-  remorse or  empathy, you must have some kind of personality disorder to treat me so negatively, I'd get over it easily if  it was so simple,

Knowing that soon I'll breed your children makes me even more mad, makes me afraid to be with out you even knowing what I already do.

But I gotta shake you off,
get you outta  my head,my house & bed,
See you know your a good lover
but it's just not enough
and if it was just your ***

well I can get that from the next,
Like you said can't no one do me like you,
And your right
I don't think anyone else can
lie & mistreat me or ever cheat on me  

Hell naw not like you did,
Right under my radar,
You where so slick with your deception's,

So cool while be confronted
and held your ground until you
heard she too was carry your child.
haa haa haa Your gonna Pay Now!
one way or another

You'll pay and I ain't got to do a **** thang!
well I do have to finally find the courage to
Leave Yo *** !
Always Me Ayeshah

[Ready?]
Yes but I really don’t approve of your obvious use of anabolic steroids. It’s an amoral and cowardly shortcut. And don’t even get me started on the innumerable adverse effects. Don’t even get me started.
[Can you keep up ?]
Of course but can we talk? Can we talk? The size and shape of your head is comical who do you think you’re kidding? You have, by far, the roundest head I’ve ever seen. I can’t help but imagine you as an obtuse High School English professor who doesn’t understand the source of his students’ laughter but really, it’s because you gave me a C on an essay because you say I had a “circular” argument. Or as an equally clueless physics professor generating chuckles left and right in response to your lecture on “spherical” whatsits in a vacuum.
[Are you tired?]
No, we’re not done yet—Am I right? Am I right? Look at you. If God ever were to create guns or pumps or pecs of that size, it would only be by way of some syntax error.
[How about now?]
No, let me finish—Who are you trying to impress? Masculinity most certainly isn’t the word to use. I’d say monstrosity. Who do you think is or would be attracted to a walking, talking industrial sized freezer. If a woman needs protection, she’ll find a guard dog of necessary ferocity. Or maybe, she’ll cultivate some kind of relationship with you and find comfort in the fact that if she ever upsets you, you could break the ***** in half without the slightest hitch.
[……]
I don’t even want to know the state of the pinpricks you at one point called your testicles
[……]
I wouldn’t even say it’s proper to call you “Mr. Universe”. You’re big, but you’re not that big. I’m more inclined to call you “Mr. Pampered and Pumped up New England”. I cannot comfortably call you Mr. Universe because I’m not comfortable having you represent my universe. The “Mr.” signals the “Master”. That’s just appalling. And what is with the spray tan? What is the true pasty picture of Mr. Universe throughout the winter months?  If someone ever has a question for the Master of the universe, I’ll be sure to tell them to direct their questions to the beefed up and bloated tangerine to my left.
[……]
……
[……]
Are we done?
[No]
How far have we gone?
[Nowhere]
What?
[You have gone too far, but we haven’t even walked out the door. Once you’re finished running your mouth, we can work on getting your fat, saggy *** into shape.]

We triumph for those who have known us in glory
And in utter ruin remember the story
Acknowledge our valor, our power to keep
Braving all odds unheeded, march into the deep
Preserving a legacy not quite our own
Be of foes we have bested to reclaim the throne
Or of people we’ve wrested from brinks of despair
Abject in their poverty, dreamless nightmare
As we serve higher causes of righteous assurance
Our quest ever dauntless against the abhorrence
An amoral mass of the impure intent
In our ascent raise them from endless lament
To depart from a world to for years we have been
But as shadows to those of us living in sin
For it is but of ours time itself meets its fate
And begins to devour us all in its gape

This is a man,
without change.
This is a man,
alone.
No convictions
to sour his soul.

This is a man,
who sees the tide.
This is a man,
Who is outlaw, brigand
and savior.

He walks a path,
no dusty trail.
He makes a call,
just to gamble.

This is a man,
with no hope
This is a man,
amoral.
No God, No Glory,
just alone.

The world was born of steely gray
An utter blending of the shades
Of miserable black and righteous white
Indicating wrong and right.

Or is it white whose hue condemns
And black from which the conscience stems?

Never matter, our impartial domain
Favors neither of its veins
Confounding at its very core
The moral and amoral score.

Imagining yourself a one true love,
know
these are lunatic lies
arranged in the sky to wile away
the monumental guilt that tessellates stony relationships

You're a young man
starting out- there's
heroism on minor scale
a dreamy-eyed smouldering
some sense of discrete self-evaluation
a modesty of taste

I am some madder
version of who nobody should be
amoral, unkind, with nothing to redeem me
save the love of ragged street-dogs, and the owning of books.

Why fall into togetherness,
as if it were an easy game, to arrange in terms
of size, splendor, jollity, dice?

And that done, why pretend nobody loses?
At least admit to feeling lost.

You're
memory
of a silhouette walking
to me
you're as real as this poem is.

Amoral critic's slander me,
None extricate anaology,
Remonstration I do not forwait!!!
                                                         Respite me revered ******,
                                                         Maudlin Utopian,
                                                        ­ Solely narcotic!!!!
I shake just to feel thine presence!!!!

Snug house,
Picket white fence,

With willow to sway the gale!!!!!

A pint of ale,
Of ourn holy concoction,
Space and time conjunction!!!

Paddling with ourn adulation,
Pure infatuation,
                              Weaved in by auspicious voliton!!!

TREPIDATION!!!!!!

Speeds up this schoolboy gusto,
For mine needing's and wanting's groan,

                        For the satin laced imaginative figure!!!

Time doesn't exist
but for mankind's presence
it's amoral, heartless and nonchalant
though it doesn't utter a single sentence.

Wielding a whip over everyone's head
like a cattle-drover
none would it leave alone
it's a bully and a dictator.

The day is bleeding
men and women are in frenzy
work must be done--deals must go through-
everyone needs the money

too eager to push a competitor down
it's survival of the fittest
it's a jungle out there
pity the weakest.

Many would be the day's losers
hopes will be dashed,  tears will flow
hearts will be broken,  promises unfulfilled
that's the way the world does go.

This is the bleeding of day
and a heavy toll it has taken on so many
the evening and night offer little rest or comfort
while time is watching without the slightest sympathy.

Fellow Americans
     Won't is not can't
           We can end this tirade
                This ignorant rant
           Neo-**** crusade
      This fearmongering
Xenophobic campaign
      This point your fat finger
           Take none of the blame
                 This **** flinging ape
            This bombastic baboon
       Rotting all of our brains
Like a ****** cartoon
       This email distraction
            For no course of action
                 Except the word "jobs"
            And a Twitter war faction
        This sick, twisted joke
This comedy act
         Dropping the curtain
             On matters of fact
                 This tax-dodging fraud
             Has stolen from you
         So what makes you think
You're a part of his coup  
         This billion-airhead
             Makes no cents at all
                  He speaks his small mind
             Behind a big wall
        This nuclear bomb
  To diplomacy's voice
        Aborting the right
             To democracy's choice
                  This false god complex
              Disguises his devil
         Deceptions to drag us
Back down to his level
         This Molotov cocktail
              In Putin's back pocket
                  His greedy heart froze
              In a cold-plated locket
          This coal-blackened soul
Toxic demagogue
         Keeps poisoning us
              By spewing speech-smog  
                   This climate change hoax
              Outweighs all the lies
         Deny this one truth
  And everyone dies
         This you're fired show
              Outsources our trust
                   To Chinese steel towers
              Of slave-labor rust
        This loaded handgun
To sanity's head
        Depravity bullets
              Promoting bloodshed
                   This locker room talk
              This all Muslim ban
        This election is rigged
This ******* madman
        This antithesis
              Of all we stand for
                   Great from our first steps
              Onto Liberty's shore
        So I beg of you now
Vote him off of the stage
        This dog's had his day
              Put him back in his cage
                   This nation was founded
              By working together
        And those who attempt
To divide us shall never
        Condemn our ideals
             To an amoral fate
                    Lest we forget
                         That love always trumps hate

Born Clarendon Square, 1875

11th year, father and hero dies

Mother's moniker, The Great Beast

Carries proud 'til rest in peace



Scripture's words so clearly lies

One off the wrist and women's thighs

Such morals never suit The Beast

On original sin, so does he feast



Red light women, gonorrhoea

Inhale and hold, but have no fear

Bow to none beneath the sky

Affliction, addiction, getting high



Poetry, prose, philosophy, chess

Science, literature, quite the quest

Majestic Monch without a guide

Dispel the darkness deep inside?



A new Sunrise, The Golden Dawn

To most, The Beast is but a thorn

From all the hate, he does defend

"I shall endure until to the end"



A crashing bore, The Golden Dawn

Such petty games, reject them all

Traverse the world and left in awe

In India, sombre spirits soar



The Savage Mountain scrapes the sky

Never scaled yet still must try

Brash bravery, they do not lack

No savage spoils, men beaten back



Convenience ties Beast and Rose

Affection hankers hard to show

Rosa Mundi and Love Songs

One lake of molten joy, one pond



In Egypt, Prince invokes the Gods

Great Horus comes, the Equinox

Aiwass speaks, so Beast does score

A new Aeon, Book Of The Law



On Nepal's peak, his peers they die

Attempt descent beneath dark skies

For such a loss bears all the blame

To climbing clique, ne'er the same



With Godhead now is unionised

As hashish opens the Third Eye

Meagre means and thus provides

Tankerville's peace is bonafide



A∴ A∴ heart, see how it glows

Tree Of Life they seek to grow

A flower's bloom begins to fade

Whilst sadly withers in the shade



The Beast now pens The Book Of Lies

His Scarlet Woman within resides

And for *** Magic does devise

"Contra Naturam", come inside



World War One, it rakes the Earth

While Wilhelm is as Jesus birth

Did The Beast truly betray

A country that had held his sway?



Thelema Abbey, hear its call

Lewd libertine within these walls

Loveday discovers only death

Benito brings its final breath



To man, a prophet is declared

Thelema's message, for to spread

Magnum opus, now complete

Of France, fair punishment is mete?



High on Hell's Mouth, his heart it breaks

But both black ink and leap are fake

War once again now rakes the Earth

Will Blackshirts bond Thelema's church?



War service scorned by N.I.D.

The face behind the Victory V?

Olla: Sixty Years of Song

A final book, the last swan song



Hasting's last battle is now lost

The Great Beast feels the final frost

"A Black Mass", many tabloids cry

Cold ashes now in Hampton lie



Amoral man, your heart did sing

Black ballads of the blackest dreams

Listen and there's still the screams

Of Thelema's ghosts, it seems





Copyright © Craig Detheridge.

2015 - 2017.

I am a refugee from the City upon a Hill.

My homeland once a resounding light to the nations; has become a convulsing black hole, threatening to devour any semblance of civility.

My City, once a radiant promontory of enlightenment, its illumination of liberty’s searing torch revered, it’s practical striving for democratic wisdom shaping the long arc of the moral universe emulated by people of good will across the globe; now lies in state as a mordant corpse, serenaded by a funereal chorus of laughing griffins, a dead patriarch surrounded by the ruins of a once opulent now sacked city, a bygone home to the scattered disassemblage of a once noble people.

I recoil from the rancor of extreme partisanship, the gerrymandered apportionment of citizenship rights, the buoyant vindictiveness celebrated by small minded ignorance.

The blind allegiance to jingoistic nationalism, the adulation of Blueline authoritarianism, the fealty to imperial militarism and the dangerous trajectory of it’s awful consequence yet to come, enthralls me with dread.

Compelled patriotism enforced by threats of faux patriots, amoral ammosexuals, their small hands stroking quick triggers of long guns, genuflecting in mastabutory glee to the preeminence of 2nd Amendment atrocities, angling crosshairs of resentments to firmly fix a promise of ghoulish body counts, a rationalized apocalypse a captive people must suffer to underwrite profiteering gunrunners who blindly defile the constitutional tenets of life, liberty and happiness, the blood splattered keystones of our true exceptionalism.

Xenophobia and racialism, are stoked and celebrated by the City’s chief executive, his impish smile mouths Blood and Soil sloganeering, he solemnly salutes the Confederate flag while cheering torchlight processions of enraged White Nationalists marching to the drum of the Grand Republic’s midnight dirge along the once hallowed trail of Jeffersonian Democracy and a sacred place of secular enlightenment and higher learning. His gleeful decrees tweet the destruction of families and his police agents mouth holy scriptures to justify the imprisonment of children.  These vandals rhapsodically paint images of phantasmagoric nightmares trampling and mocking democratic ideals, resurrecting long settled conflicts, terrible tests a once great City rose to extinguish, now swelling numbers of craven citizens ardently embrace Klansmen, insurrectionists and ****’s as righteous brethren.

The madness of chauvinism and racial supremacy has fully metastasized within the body politic, polluting the mind, infecting the bloodline with a virulent strain of a white blood cell disease coursing through the veins of republican citizenship.

A City stolen from the Native inhabitants, ethnically cleansed and its former inhabitants remanded to the prisons of reservations, a City constructed on the backs of chattel slaves, erected on the graves of exploited wage laborers, provisioned by the ruthless denigration of the earth’s bounty, law and order mandated by criminalizing the marginalized, repressing the civil liberties of outliers and subjecting women to a perpetual status as the second *** underclass; has failed to repent and steadfastly refuses to make reparations for its sinful past has made the City uninhabitable.

The embrace of tolerance and diversity is the balm, the curate that can salve the oozing sores crippling the City. Nativist prejudice is a long protracted path that City citizen’s find impossible to exit. The malevolence that consumes the mind and moves the soul of a desperately spiteful people, who take delight and find it necessary to dehumanize and imprison alien races and creeds to maintain vapid notions of superiority, profane the ideals of a republican calling. They ruefully ignore the beacon of light warning of the dangerous shoals that lay ahead. The ideals of the great democratic experiment on course to be dashed on the jagged rocks of ignorance, fear, and anger. The doomed City has set a course that endangers its embargoed citizens. Travelling in steerage, a captive body, believing they are on a course for the rebirth of the City’s greatness are emboldened and chained by the delusions of their self destructive steadfast resentments.

My home City has become unknown to me.  I have become a stranger in this strange land. What was once beloved has become insufferable. What was once treasured has become burdensome. The familiar has become fully alien. A terrible avenging apparition haunts and mocks people of good will. My heart is disheveled. My spirit bruised. My body literally aches from the wounds exacted from the deconstruction of my beloved metropolis.

I stand stranded at the border of incivility. Bewildered I peer through a protective wall of concertina wire, eyeing the imprisoned haughty souls of fully enfranchised citizens, bellowing self righteous psalms, singing interminable lamentations of terminal ignorance.

Condemned by their belief in the salvation of violence and recrimination, secure in their faith that their moat of self righteousness shelters them from the gulags of perdition they eagerly proclaim for others, feeling recused from the bane of sinfulness by meager tithes, tumidity and scriptural specificity and the sweet delusional conviction they are the chosen tribe of God’s favor; their aspirations viscerally dashed in blizzards of metaphysical illusion strewn like meaningless confetti onto a passing parade of barbarians who have taken the City as its grandest prize.

Sadly I must withdraw from my beloved City. I retreat to a refuge where the barbarians dare not enter. Their ignorance and stasis weds them to a place far from my sanctuary of choice. May my sanctuary restoreth my soul!

I find refuge in the temples of jazz. I sing arias of lucent improvisation. The freedom of unbridled expression reinvigorates the mind, alighting the emanation of our better angels. The music calibrates my soul with the syncopated beat of an irrepressible life force, the humanity of my welling heart swells on the sonorous oxygen of a lyrical free spirit.

I take refuge in our vanishing mountain wilderness. The natural world offers a solace of solitude, a unrequited impression of scale and a transcendent communion immune from the trampling cacophony of gleeful vandals running rampant through the streets of the City. In winter the summits are capped in crowns of viginal snow, spring awakens a dormant flora, autumn leaves shout the chorus of a seasons glory and summer flowers bloom in multitudes of brilliant colors marking a startling contrast to the fifty shades of gray tattooed onto the City’s restive souls by the purveyors of power.

I find respite on the friendly banks of rivers and breeze swept ocean shores. The perfume wafting along a rivers streaming eddies or a briney snort gulped from the foam of a cresting wave invigorates the lungs, strengthens the heart and clears the mind. The flow of living water heals lifes wounded spirit. It quenches a thirst for justice and nourishes the hope of freedom for all incarcerated souls. The ceaseless roll of the ocean waves prove the enduring power and inevitability of liberty.

I find a good refuge in books. Here I discover a fleeting glimpse of our forgotten love of knowledge and pursuit of truth and rational thought. Enlightenment is the plot of every storyline.

I take refuge in art. I escape into the multiple dimensions of aesthetic beauty trouncing the twittering banality of fad, pornographic affectations and consumer fethishism. Glimpsing beauty while beauty is there to behold and the diligent practice of its creation is an answer to a higher calling.

I take refuge in my dog. Unconditional love and trusted friendship are values at peril in a transactional world; virtues nobily demonstrated and freely given by our canine and feline friends.

I take refuge in late night comedy. Working the midnight shift, whistling past the graveyard with a hearty laugh helps to while away the desperate hours. The rancid fruits of our labor leave a bitter taste in our mouths, humor is the bread of life that clears the palate and makes the terrible sufferable.

My lasting sanctuary is the stronghold of faith, forbearance and tolerance. I trust the long arc of justice will bend toward the righteous and offer a pathway of redemption for all desecrated souls.

I take refuge in the Blues. Let my lamentations turn to songs of joy and deliverance.

I take refuge in prayer. May my places of exile restore and heal my denigration. May God deliver us to a good destination. May our generational wanderings in the desert of desolation end in the discovery of a good place of habitation.

In the solitude of prayer may I experience catharsis, may my petitions find an open ear, may I achieve clarification, may my pious supplication be genuine , my conviction firm, a direction found, a decision made, a call to action clear.  May I become a healer of the breach.

May Your grace be sufficient for me.

I declare my exile over. I will return to my City. I will attempt to rekindle the extinguished flame of liberty to dispel the darkness enveloping my City.

Selah.

Mark Almond: The City

Puyallup
6/30/18
jbm

I wanted to undress you

I wanted you to crawl like a tigress
I wanted you to show me the danger

I wanted to *******
I wanted to see you dance in strawberry orchard

I wanted to here you moan
I wanted to see a red strawberry griped to your lips

I wanted to exchange vow of silence
I wanted to see you become buoyant

I wanted you to say '**** me more'
I wanted you to fill what words can not fill

I wanted to you be amoral over the codes
I wanted you to flourish like a red poppy

I wanted you to walk with me side by side
I wanted to teach you green, red and blue, black and white

I wanted the strawberry to remark our day
I wanted to see your smile and **** walk

I wanted you to be me
I wanted you to have big eyes

I wanted you
I wanted the whole you

© shanikayrs

We strolled through converging pathways spilling with synchronized chaos, finding our own space amidst the rumpus of the crowds on a small hill overlooking an endearing muddle of humanity. The grass was wet with evening dew and we were colored with the aureate light of dusk, watching everything swim by with novel delight. The city erupted before us, vibrant, apathetic, and amoral and we swelled with its magnitude. Round and enchanted, we rolled down the hill and fell into the peculiar happenings encapsulated in the windows.
We stood before a man with no eyes and worms coming out of his fingertips in a room with no floor. He smiled at us, carious teeth bending into slight parabolas under the pressure of its sweetness. We excused ourselves quickly, escaping into a opaline kaleidoscope that had opened up before us. I could taste all the lives we tumbled past as a mix of bitter almonds and grapefruit with the occasional shock of decomposing fish heads.
We squeezed our bodies into the melody of a madrigal sung by a girl with four heads and sonorous hands to find ourselves in the rafters of an old cathedral. Below us contorted souls filed into wooden confessionals screaming sins of their fathers into the ear of a deaf priest who gave copacetic blessings in the form of an orange pill bottle. Distended and bruised, we fell from the ceiling into the baptismal font. Bioluminescent algal blooms effloresce above our heads and resplendent stingrays whisked by, casting soft, amorphous shadows across our cheeks. Lulled by the etherial tenderness of the liminal world, we fell asleep with your hand on my neck and my fingers tangled in your seaweed hair.
We awoke to the sound of falling peaches and splitting skin. I pulled a small fish out from behind your ear and inhaled the brine of your tongue before stepping into the open window beneath your pinkie finger. A man in a suit who was really a box jellyfish greeted me in the center of a opulent office building that had no purpose. I politely declined to shake his hand and instead lost myself in the map of the city unfurled beneath the wall of glass in front of me. I pulled a small seashell out of my pocket and threw it. Everything shattered.
I felt you next to me, falling through space and low-lying clouds to find ourselves in the present.
We are saturated colors of mustard, earthen green, and midnight blue sprawled on sloping grass without hesitation. Buoyant and expectant, we meander through song and chatter to find ourselves bright and shining on a warm green bench talking in improvised harmony. Our skin is a new composition of window light, yellow and breathing. A synthesis of memories pool and flush our cheeks with affection and we inhale the world. Flags pirouette and fall, a refracted constellation glimmers on glass, and you taste like honey and rich smoke. The moon is ebullient, so full and round that in a gasp I pluck it from the sky and place it in your shirt pocket. We’re effervescent, with giggling fingertips on a euphoric investigation into novelty of human sensation. Somnolent and gentle, we fall asleep with the memory of our water soaked bodies burgeoning under softened hands.

Lord wind helped the butterfly,
Dazed, enroute, protected under th' sky.
Ancient sun entangled in coloring,
On the yellow and white of its wing.


Gentle nature helped it over the hill,
Now it sat beside the queen on her sill,
The symbol of future on it stirred,
Fortune for the queen it brought; lingered.


Only for the appropriate eye to read,
Of coming days swathed in wicked greed,
For only the goddess, queen of light,
Such was the symbol on the butterfly.


She opened her eyes, glowing;
Butterfly held in her eyes, flowing;
She read the symbol with rabid calm
Hurriedly rose on her arm.


She deciphered no meaning useless,
Calculated the measure of the mess,
Anger bellowing under her breath,
But she only whispered at length.


"Come now black flags, riding;
Come on the cold wicked wind, hiding;
But cross not this land today
Greedy amoral as you stray.


You bringer of miseries
Crowding faceless thieves
I alone will shake your glory
Translate it into a forgotten story".


Thus putting her promise in her heart
She lands her feet, to start
This day; mother earth puts across a smile
She feels the feet for a little while.


Something is spoken between,
No words can define what they mean,
The glorious queen has understood
What mother earth said to her foot.


Thus began the ancient war,
This morning as the forests roared,
The queen gallant, picked her staff,
And called the angels at day's half.


Soft swollen lips, whispered;
The names of the angels, spurred
With the wind, the message flew,
To all the horizons it blew.


Mother earth saw all this power,
From her eyes drew gentle shower,
She alone could foretell,
The future of gods as well.


She alone understood,
How these winged words stood,
The fortune they would bring,
All black flags, soon be crumbling.


The queen of light, Aphrodite;
Gazed around outside;
From her lovely drapes today,
No black flags yet sway.


The chariots of the illuminant sun,
Swift across the horizon,
Rode to match and scale the hour,
Scaled along time's tower.


Labored to take time away,
Memories mounting as they sway,
The present being churned;
Past; all churned glories earned.


Gentle queen, wore white crystal dress,
Magnificently flowing, touched the floor,
Calm and serene, her face bore no stress,
As messenger wind opened her door.


"My lady! I arrive this hour,
I swept aloud, all, too far,
I summoned all to this place,
All shall arrive in much haste.


Angels wowed through all the spheres,
All made allegiance, and so their heirs;
Even now their horses trod this way,
They shall arrive at the half of day".


Soft pink lids dropped over her eyes,
She pictured her words in sublime skies,
Resounding and echoing, away and afar,
Its meaning trailing; a shooting star.


Followed secretly the silence of wait,
The coming of the seven angelic troops,
Sun’s chariot trod at stupendous gait,
Lord Wind and Queen await the sound of hoofs.

Everything was as it
        always was, nothing had changed –

youth sleuthing through
        the heightened wet,
        light gracing stonetop,
                  and a pillowed streak   
                                      on western sky –

and as before,
        sun corrals light –

        amoral, though not abnormal
                        but for
                        its leaning
                                on my weathered
                                        heart

Unfoldings
by Michael R. Burch

for Vicki

Time unfolds ...
Your lips were roses.
... petals open, shyly clustering ...
I had dreams
of other seasons.
... ten thousand colors quiver, blossoming.

Night and day ...
Dreams burned within me.
... flowers part themselves, and then they close ...
You were lovely;
I was lonely.
... a ****** yields herself, but no one knows.

Now time goes on ...
I have not seen you.
... within ringed whorls, secrets are exchanged ...
A fire rages;
no one sees it.
... a blossom spreads its flutes to catch the rain.

Seasons flow ...
A dream is dying.
... within parched clusters, life is taking form ...
You were honest;
I was angry.
... petals fling themselves before the storm.

Time is slowing ...
I am older.
... blossoms wither, closing one last time ...
I'd love to see you
and to touch you.
... a flower crumbles, crinkling, worn and dry.

Time contracts ...
I cannot touch you.
... a solitary flower cries for warmth ...
Life goes on as
dreams lose meaning.
... the seeds are scattered, lost within a storm.

Keywords/Tagss: love, roses, petals, unfolding, lips, spring, ******, dreams, time, seasons, storms, summer, drought



More or Less
by Michael R. Burch

for Richard Moore

Less is more —
in a dress, I suppose,
and in intimate clothes
like crotchless hose.

But now Moore is less
due to death’s subtraction
and I must confess:
I hate such redaction!



Anna Akhmatova was a great Russian poet, and a personal favorite of mine...

The evening light is broad and yellow
by Anna Akhmatova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The evening light is broad and yellow;
it glides in on an April rain.
You arrived years late,
yet I’m glad you came.

Please sit down here, beside me,
receive me with welcoming eyes.
Here is my blue notebook
with my childhood poems inside.

Forgive me if I lived in sorrow,
spent too little time rejoicing in the sun.
Forgive, forgive, me, if I mistook
others for you, when you were the One.



Our Sweet Ecologist
by Michael R. Burch

Our sweet ecologist —
what will she do with the ants
and the cockroaches, bedbugs and lice
when they want to live in her pants?



bachelorhoodwinked
by michael r. burch

u
are
charming
& disarming,
but mostly alarming
since all my resolve
dissolved!

u
are
chic
as a sheikh’s
harem girl in the sheets
but my castle’s no longer my own
and my kingdom’s been overthrown!



The Bachelor Spectacular
by Michael R. Burch

One heart? Tossed aside.
The other? A bride’s.
In all his great wisdom, the bachelor decides.

Eeenie, mean-ie, mine-y, mo’,
one gal must stay and one must go.
If she hollers? That’s the show!

No heart can handle such despair!
But hearts get broken, hearts repair.
Next season? The treasoned will rule the air.

Originally published by Light



The Unspectacular Bachelor
by Michael R. Burch

The bachelor is back, he’s black,
and some fair-skinned gals sure want him in the sack!
And, yes, he’s a whole lot smarter
than the previous knights of that peculiar garter.

We can hear the white supremacists stewing:
What the hell are the screenwriters doing?
They know love requires a nice white spark,
and this apprentice is far too dark!



Updated Advice to Amorous Bachelors
by Michael R. Burch

At six-thirty,
feeling flirty,
I put on the hurdy-gurdy ...

But Ms. Purdy,
all alert-y,
kicked me where I’m sore and hurty.

The moral of my story?
To avoid a fate as gory,
flirt with gals a bit more *****-y!



Cut Out the Bachelor Nonsense!
There's a bun in auntie's oven;
now soon you'll have a cousin!
―Michael R. Burch



Time Out
by Michael R. Burch

Time is running out,
no doubt.
Time is running out.

I don’t know what the LORD’s about,
since Time is running out, the Lout!,
and leaving me with gas and gout.

I don’t know what the LORD’s about;
still, it does no good to grouse or pout,
since Time is merely running out,
like quail before a native scout.

’Twill do no good to shout or flout:
Time’s running out,
I have no doubt,
though who knows what the LORD’s about?

No need for faith or even doubt,
since Time is merely running out,
like water from a rusty spout
or mucous from a leaky snout.

Yes, Time is merely running out,
and yet I feel inclined to pout
and truth be told, sometimes to doubt
just what the hell the LORD’s about.



Tr(end)y
by Michael R. Burch

Ain’t it funny how trendy
becomes so dead-endy?
Lava lamps and bell bottoms
soon became “never bought ‘ems.”
While that teenage tattoo
soon’ll have wrinkles too.



This was my first-ever dabble dactyl, my variation of the double dactyl.

Donald Dabble Dactyl #1
by Michael R. Burch

Piggledy-Wiggledy
Ronald McDonald
cursed Donald Trump,
his least favorite clown:

"Why should I try to be
funny as Donald? He
gets all the laughs
claiming upside is down!"

Donald Dabble Dactyls must begin with "Piggledy-Wiggledy" in homage to The Donald's oinkerishness and his 'do. References to clowns, gold-plated toilets and/or diapers are a plus but not required.

Donald Dabble Dactyl #2
by Michael R. Burch

Wond’ringly, blund’ringly
Ronald McDonald
asked, “Who the hell
is this strange orange clown?”

“Why should I try to be
funny as Donnie? He
gets all the laughs
from marks who should frown!”

I see that I violated my prime directive, so "never mind."

Donald Dabble Dactyl #3
by Michael R. Burch

Piggledy-Wiggledy
45th president,
or erstwhile manse resident,
perched on a throne

of gold-plated porcelain
matching his orange “tan,”
bombing Iran
from his twittery phone?



Cowpoke
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

Sleep, old man ...
your day has long since passed.
The endless plains,
cool midnight rains
and changeless ragged cows
alone remain
of what once was.

You cannot know
just how the Change
will **** the windswept plains
that you so loved ...
and so sleep now,
O yes, sleep now ...
before you see just how
the Change will come.

Sleep, old man ...
your dreams are not our dreams.
The Rio Grande,
stark silver sand
and every obscure brand
of steed and cow
are sure to pass away
as you do now.

I believe this poem was written around the same time as “Blue Cowboy,” perhaps on the same day. That was probably sometime around 1974, at age 16 or thereabouts.



Blue Cowboy
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

He slumps against the pommel,
a lonely, heartsick boy—
his horse his sole companion,
his gun his only toy
—and bitterly regretting
he ever came so far,
forsaking all home's comforts
to sleep beneath the stars,
he sighs.

He thinks about the lover
who awaits his kiss no more
till a tear anoints his lashes,
lit by uncaring stars.
He reaches to his aching breast,
withdraws a golden lock,
and kisses it in silence
as empty as his thoughts
while the wind sighs.

Blue cowboy, ride that lonesome ridge
between the earth and distant stars.
Do not fall; the fiends of hell
would leap to feast upon your heart.

Blue cowboy, sift the burnt-out sand
for a drop of water warm and brown.
Dream of streams like silver seams
even as you gulp it down.

Blue cowboy, sing defiant songs
to hide the weakness in your soul.
Blue cowboy, ride that lonesome ridge
and wish that you were going home
as the stars sigh.



Chixiao (“The Owl”)
by Duke Zhou
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Owl!
You've stolen my offspring,
Don't shatter my nest!
When with labors of love
I nurtured my fledglings.

Before the skies darkened
And the dark rains fell,
I gathered mulberry twigs
To thatch my nest,
Yet scoundrels now dare
Impugn my enterprise.

With fingers chafed rough
By the reeds I plucked
And the straw I threshed,
I now write these words,
Too hoarse to speak:
I am homeless!

My wings are withered,
My tail torn away,
My home toppled
And tossed into the rain,
My cry a distressed peep.



The Song of Roland
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

"for spring in retreat"

Rain down,
strange murmurous water...
no, summer is not yet nigh.

Cease your complaining,
for May is,
calling December a lie,
still rocking the high white sky.

Sleep now,
summer hours...
too soon your time shall come.

Softly straining,
the raining
spring begs, "Let me run
one more hour beneath the sun,
for soon I shall be gone."

Lie down,
weary Roland,
for summer is not yet nigh.

Remember a pyre
of stars blazing higher
upon night’s immense dark sky
unsettling as her eyes,
twinkling, even as you died...

Lie down,
weary Roland,
for summer is not yet nigh.

I believe I wrote “The Song of Roland” around age 16.



That Not-So-Mellow Fellow, Othello
by Michael R. Burch

Not sure ’bout that fellow, Othello,
was he a “hero” or merely **** yellow?
He killed his poor wife
over a handkerchief!
Thus Iago proved his heart Jello.



Time Out!
by Michael R. Burch

Time is at war with my body!
am i Time’s most diligent hobby?
for there’s never Time out
from my low-t and gout
and my once-brilliant mind has grown stodgy!



Waiting Game
by Michael R. Burch

Nothing much to live for,
yet no good reason to die:
life became
a waiting game...
Rain from a clear blue sky.



*******' Ripples
by Michael R. Burch

Men are scared of *******:
that’s why they can’t be seen.
For if they were,
we’d go to war
as in the days of Troy, I ween.



Untitled Epigrams

Teach me to love:
to fly beyond sterile Mars
to percolating Venus.
—Michael R. Burch

The LIV is LIVid:
livid with blood,
and full of egos larger
than continents.
—Michael R. Burch

Evil is as evil does.
Evil never needs a cause.
Evil loves amoral “laws,”
laughs and licks its blood-red claws
while kids are patched together with gauze.
— Michael R. Burch

Poets laud Justice’s
high principles.
Trump just gropes
her raw genitals.
—Michael R. Burch



That Mella Fella
by Michael R. Burch

John Mella was the longtime editor of Light Quarterly.

There once was a fella
named Mella,
who, if you weren’t funny,
would tell ya.
But he was cool, clever, nice,
gave some splendid advice,
and if you did well,
he would sell ya.

Shakespeare had his patrons and publishers; John Mella was one of my favorites in the early going, along with Jean Mellichamp Milliken of The Lyric.



Chip Off the Block
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

In the fusion of poetry and drama,
Shakespeare rules! Jeremy’s a ham: a
chip off the block, like his father and mother.
Part poet? Part ham? Better run for cover!
Now he’s Benedick — most comical of lovers!

NOTE: Jeremy’s father is a poet and his mother is an actress; hence the fusion, or confusion, as the case may be.

Keywords/Tags: Shakespeare, poetry, drama, poet, light verse, humor, life, death, love, Mars, Venus, Othello, Iago, Duke Zhou, Owl, homeless, cowboy, bachelor, Richard Moore, Anna Akhmatova

whether a critic or whether a writer, the most popular genre in modern times in the west is either autobiographical, or disguised biographical... i call it ******* literature of the worst kind... some call mere thinking intellectual *******, those ingrained in the thinking that education per se is just that, and expressing it on paper is just that, what a horrid bunch of people, worse of than the religious types, who at least cling to something, the last rite of man worshipping man involved man having to pray to a man suffering on the ultimate geometry that's the cross, so instead of taking the man down from the cross, they did the opposite: 'hang on! hang on just a little bit longer! we'll just add to judas' profit! hang on old chap! we're coming to get you and take you off the cross! we'll just investigate the chance of making profit, creating a pyramidal ecclasiastical order and you'll be off the perfect geometry of intersection in no time!' ****** sadists... where were we? ah yes... autobiographies... the critics and writers summon the words, like: 'i am quite prepared to be searingly, plum honest waiting for the limo under the eye for the insomniac marks of swollen eye about my life...' i'm sure you are, considering the fact you already lived it, and are now about to revise it; it's like watching a bunch of dead people having another stab at life... they lived it, now they're going to write about it, hardly a reason to summon ghost writers, i'm sure, but that's not really automation; memory if a fickle faculty, disrupted by the educational system feeding you useless pythagorean theorems,  memory is subtle, fragile like a snowflake, once it happens, once the imprint is made, it vanishes, and becomes deistorted from the objective reality, which turns the event, any event, into a falsification process, a subjective reality, we cling to pleasant memories because of the pain ahead, and we do something that nature does with its natural selection: selective memorisation. a true autobiography is therefore something that's written without memory, life as it happens, the opposite of painting with its still life tactic... life as it happens... otherwise we're talking literature's post mortem ex vivi / -o (about the hyphen attached to a letter in a moment)... it was simply those two hands of shade with hammer and chisel grinding little trenches of lettering into the gravestone... goth macabra... a dead man writing his own epitaph... so far went his self-knowledge that it became apparent that no one really knew him. hence? the best autobiographies are those with the mundaneity of life's purposes, written as life happens, deviating from what life could be, truly immersed in life as life in deviation from what can be associated with life's purposes requesting other people's involvement; or least that's the sort of autobiography i'd like to read, less lying involved to a peerage of an admirable social status, and more 'in the moment' moments to consider, quiet frankly no ******* of 'gone with the wind,' hence my other joke, less subtle: a book rather than a door - knock knock (actual knocking on compressed wood that's paper) - who's there? - a reader - answer: flick flick flick and no skimmed reading, please!

two concepts i rather avoid,
so i did, i made (i) a priori
into a- priori
and (ii) a posteriori
into a- posteriori,
standard literal dictionary definition
without elaboration places
(i) as: from the one before -
thus the hyphenated activity replaces
literal meaning as:
without the one before -
in the current situation, and with
the current population currency
at above 6 billion - it means
without hercules, adam, abraham,
moses, jesus, etc.
the same goes for a- posteriori,
i.e. without the one after...
and if i'm not being pedantic enough
the distinction between *a and a-
is that the meaning of the unit in
italics means from, while adding
the hyphen as a preposition to
circumstance it as a prefix changes the
meaning to without-,
given that the priori & posteriori
abide by the sixth definition of the unit
discussed, i.e. before a consonant, p is a consonant,
as much as the word amoral defines proper
a- usage and understanding;
however, the point is not about this,
rather tha activity of what happens when
the dynamic changes, by replacing a / a-
with re- / res.
the resulsts are staggering:

(i)
re- priori                    v.              res priori
again the one                             indivisible thing(s)
before                                         before

(ii)
re- posteriori              v.             res posteriori
again the one                             indivisible thing(s)
after                                            after.

for each there's an example, there's a parallelism
in the res examples, e.g. the sun, the moon, the earth,
mountains can crumble, trees can be cut down
to toothpicks...

the re- examples have a certain ambiguity to them,
give the possibility of a dodo / white rhino extinction,
these example are ordained by an ambiguity
naturally, depending on which factor is stressed more,
whether that be man in a japanese symbiosis
with nature, or whether that be man in a european
symbiosis with nature...
given that the former includes man in nature
and allows a neighbouring,
or with the later, which excludes man from nature
and allows man's egoism to come
crashing down not being able to tame a tsunami.