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

So silent I when Love was by
He yawned, and turned away;
But Sorrow clings to my apron-strings,
I have so much to say.

You lift the blinds
blinking
A message in a bottle
in the ocean between our homes
But you are a jellyfish

(When I was a child
you laid there
tender without oxygen
you blue little jellyfish
in innocence i tried to save you)

But you are a jellyfish
And I am a lighthouse
I can't save you
Only (mis)guide you

Every time the bucks went clattering
Over Oklahoma
A firecat bristled in the way.

Wherever they went,
They went clattering,
Until they swerved
In a swift, circular line
To the right,
Because of the firecat.

Or until they swerved
In a swift, circular line
To the left,
Because of the firecat.

The bucks clattered.
The firecat went leaping,
To the right, to the left,
And
Bristled in the way.

Later, the firecat closed his bright eyes
And slept.

I recently got fired from a job. I was working at a summer camp with the 8 year old's. And one day one of Satan's soul ******* descendent's got on my nerves so I snapped. I said "Ok. You need to stop right now you little walking abortion". You would be mad too if he kept hitting you with his crutches.

The best THING
That ever happened to me was
When I was a college freshman.                              
It happened in mid-February of 2009.
Valentine's Day.
A day of celebrating a couple's
Relationship with each other,
A day of romance & companionship,
And a day to say "I love you"
to your significant other.....
While getting SMACKED
In the FACE
By a PILLOW!

I was in San Francisco
at the time.
The City by the Bay.
It was three weeks
before Valentine's Day.
Throughout the entire
San Francisco State Campus,
Hundreds of fliers
Were spread throughout
The college
Describing the big event;
That it's going to be HUGE,
That it's going to be EPIC,
And that it's going to be.....
SUPER, DUPER, FUN!!!!!

I was walking to class
The other day when
I stumbled upon
one of the fliers.
After I read the flier,
I realized that
Since I don't have a
Boyfriend to hang out
With me on that day,
And that my friends
Are too busy
Hanging out with their
Significant others
And that they don't
Have the time to
Hang out with me
On that day,
So I figured
That I MIGHT as well
Go to the event
Just to see what is like
And to pass the time
on the official day of love.

A few weeks have gone by,
I was busy counting down
The days until the big event
While going through
My daily business
as a busy college student.

FINALLY
The day of the big event
Has ARRIVED!
I WAS BEYOND EXCITED!
I CANNOT contain myself.
Instead of studying for my classes,
I did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
during the day.

Just a couple of hours before
The start of the big event,
I GRABBED my pillow,
DASHED out of the dorms,
RAN through the college campus,
And got on the MUNI Light Rail
That will take me to the location
of the big event.
Was I alone?
Nope.

A bunch of other exciting college students
From the same college
With their own pillows
were going to the big event as well.
Along the way, more and more
Exciting people carrying their
Own pillows came on board the
MUNI Light Rail en route to the
location of the big event.

When we arrived at the location
Of the big event,
The Port of San Francisco
On the Embarcadero,
It.....was.....MADNESS!
There were tons of people
With their own pillows
Crowding the streets
And the piers
Along the Embarcadero;
They were all looking
At the Port of San Francisco
Building's clock;
Patiently waiting for the big event
to actually begin.
The anticipation was filling the air.

Then, the clock rang
Signaling for ten minutes
until the start of the event.
People everywhere were
Waving their pillows
FRANTICALLY in the air;
They were Cheering, hollering, hooting,
Howling, screaming loudly;
Making ALL kinds of sounds
to pass the time.
The clock rang once again
Signaling for five minutes
until the start of the event.
More cheering, hollering, hooting,
Howling and screaming coming
From the vastly large crowd
As well as more frantically-waving
pillows.

Finally
The moment had arrived.
DING. DING. DING.
DING. DING. DING.
The clock slowly rang six times
Signaling for the start of the six o'clock
hour.
And at the same time,
Hundreds upon hundreds
Of pillows were SMACKED
Against each other
And the feathers were
flying all over the place.
THE GREAT SAN FRANCISCO
VALENTINE'S DAY PILLOW
FIGHT HAS OFFICIALLY BEGUN!!!!!

Not only was I participating in the big event,
I was too busy snapping pictures of the big
event with my cell phone.
I've captured some of the most
Memorable moments
From different angles
And from different parts
Of the Embarcadero
of the big citywide pillow fight.
All of the pictures that I've taken
During the event
Were stored into my cell phone
So that I will cherish them
And remember/reminisce them
until the end of my cell phone contract.

Then
I decided that
I should get in on the fun.
So I went down to the main scene
Of the big pillow fight,
And started looking for a group of people
To have a nice, friendly game
of pillow fighting.
Luckily, I stumbled across
A small family;
A father and his two children,
And then.....it was love at first SMACK!
We automatically started to hit each other
with our pillows.
It lasted for a good five minutes.
We are having the time of our lives!
I was having so much fun with the family.

Well,
All good things
must come to an end.
I have a great time,
I wish I could stay for a
Little bit longer, but
I need to go back to the dorms.

Overall, I would rate this event
A 10/10,
Or better yet,
A 100/100.
BEST
VALENTINE'S DAY
EVER.
I need to do this event
EVERY
SINGLE
YEAR.

Whether I'm a single lady
Or in a relationship with a boyfriend
Or just hanging out with my friends,
I will go to this event every year
And I will definitely bring my boyfriend
and my friends with me to this event.
IT DOESN'T GET MUCH BETTER THAN
THIS!

In my opinion,
Saying "I love you"
With a box of chocolates,
With flowers,
With a nice dinner and a show or movie,
Or spending quality time doing it in the
bedroom.....
is ordinary.
Saying "I love you"
While getting hit in the face by a pillow
participating in an EPIC citywide pillow
fight.....

Now THAT'S extraordinary!

Nothing
And I mean NOTHING
Says "Happy Valentine's Day"
Than a good old-fashioned
Pillow fight!

I think it’s important to make peace with your long line of perpetually confused and self-indulgent ancestry once grasping at and fumbling through a life at which they, preceding you, assumed they occupied the centre of and sought to prove this to mostly anyone, with rapacious might and puerile visions of their own success story, which no matter how successful would always only occupy the dark corners of their blood-successors’ historical records of themselves, which is to say you, adding them up with other people who were once important to them and stuffing them into some numerical equation on which they occupy the left, and you the right side of the equal-sign, but all of which exists in the vast and endless vicissitude of spinning void, of which you both (and us all) occupy some cosmic equivalence (and importance) of the universes stray skin-cell, somewhere on the foot perhaps, unconsidered and left alone until we all disappear into the casket of an unrecorded history.

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around; no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing. else in Tennessee.

Huge are the canna in the dreams of
X, the mighty thought, the mighty man.
They fill the terrace of his capitol.

His thought sleeps not. Yet thought that wakes
In sleep may never meet another thought
Or thing... Now day-break comes...

X promenades the dewy stones,
Observes the canna with a clinging eye,
Observes and then continues to observe.

His Funeral was today.  Well, his wake rather.  It was in his old colonial home on Elm Street, a bought of irony that Paolo would never get.  Anyway, it was an odd set up at his house. Family and friends downstairs in the living room, acquaintances and honorable mentions meandering through the hallways clearly more interested in the intricate little floral patterns that adorned the wallpaper than how his family was holding up.  The company of the house was split, everyone either legitimately full of sorrow, or completely full of ****.  In everyone’s grasp either handkerchiefs or hand grenades it was as if the invitation read “Come see it to believe it!” In the study across the hall a small memorial was set up.  Big cards, tons of photos, some flowers, anyone who actually cared stayed there and stared at his once happy face, who knew what it looks like now.  
He had died of some sort of overdose, one that destroyed his heart, so he would have looked fine in an open casket.  The doctors say it was *******.  I don’t believe them.  Paolo had his fun in college, ***, *****, sure, but coke?  There’s no way.    The services weren’t to take place for another two hours, so his family rolled him onto the second floor balcony.  It was actually his dad’s decision, something about a “disgrace” and not wanting to look at his face.
Apparently his mom had felt bad letting her dead son chill on the porch for a few hours, so she rolled him across the hallway to his own room him and kind of laid him out on the bed, as if letting her baby boy take his eternal sleep where he’d have had most of his shorter ones.  
Picturing him lying up there was the first negative connotation I ever had with the image of him on that bed.  He had that kind of headboard that when we started getting at it the bed would hit the wall with each rhythmic movement.  Steady and almost tribal as our bodies danced to the ever increasing beat of a talking drum.  Our clothes off and our skin glazed with sweat it was like my own personal method for getting high. Now don’t get the impression that our relationship was based purely on a physical connection, we’d been dating for three and a half years, the love was there all right.  
We had met in the strangest of ways, through a mutual friend that I was kind of, almost, sort of, but not really having a “thing” with, you know?  Cisco was his name.  So we were together one day and he, being the adorable spaz that he was, had forgotten that his own birthday party was that same night.  He asked if I didn’t mind tagging along, it was a celebration for him and two friends whose birthdays followed his in sequence.  
This had been going on for several weeks, and I know we weren’t dating but I still had a feigning interest in the guy.  So we arrive to this girl, Cristina’s, house and I noticed this other boy almost immediately.  In a backwards cap and pair of boot cut jeans he was jumping around, tossing his arms, right in the middle of reciting some hilarious anecdote to any of his friends who hadn’t heard it yet; even those who had seemed riveted.  He was so full of charisma and with such assurance.  Besides that he was kind of cute so, though pathetically, I tried flirting with him for the rest of the night; he didn’t really catch on.  We left that night without having exchanged more than ten words between each other, I thought I’d never see him again, turns out I was wrong.  
“Broadway CAREols.  Show others that you care by enjoying a night of with your favorite blend of Christmas ditties and Broadway biddies” And before you ask, Yes, I did come up with that title, I think it was great and it was at the top of each flyer in big red and green letters and if you asked me “If you could do it again…” I would do it the same each and every time don’t judge me.
It was a show I had to direct for a community service project and of all people he played the piano for my show.  Only me and several other girls made up the cast, and I knew how easy it was to mistake a positive attitude for flirtation when it comes from a handsome young man.  He ran the music over three or four times individually with each cast member before the night of the show, but when Paolo and I worked that night he stopped me and just sang. For me.  
Each night after rehearsal I had to give him a ride home, I was a year older and thus had my license a year sooner.  I’d never mind allowing myself more time to bask in the glow of his perfectly understated confidence, so I was happy to oblige.  Technically Connecticut state imposed a law forbidding new drivers under the age of 18 to be on the roads past 11 at night.  My mom, being a government employee, really stressed this one.  His house was a solid ten minutes drive from our rehearsal spot, and my mom often warned me to allow myself enough time to get back home before 11.  What started as me beginning to drive faster and faster during the trip home ended as a routine each night, where I would finally allow him to step out of my car just as the clock read 11:00 PM.  
Our first kiss was in that car, my first uncontrollable breakdown was in the car, hell the first time he told me he loved me was in that car…right at the lip of the driveway.  I learned to ride my brakes perfectly to the point where I could park just beyond the edge of the sidewalk yet just before the point where the porch light would flash on, reminding his mother that his son is out past ten on a school night.  It was so warm.  I’ll never forget the cadence of his laughter as it trailed off, seamlessly merging with that next statement “Anna, I love you”.  I could have sworn the porch light went on.  

Now I know it may seem like I don’t care for his being dead right now, but the thing is, I did something.  I did something really bad.

You see, I had mentioned that he was up in his room, right?  Still, stiff, simply waiting to be brought down in a few hours as the catalyst to another round of tears.  Now don’t get me wrong, I did my share of crying the night before.  He’d been in the hospital for only a few days and when they told us he was dead…God, he was just so young, two years into college, the friend you have who was chasing his dreams down with a brand new pair of sneakers.  That kid the whole town knew because of the multitude of silly town functions he attended.  He would always insist.  Every other weekend was one silly thing or another “Oh you’re gonna love this.  Two words – ‘Poetry showdown’.  If you can’t take the heat, don’t stay in the kitchen”
The day of the funeral I just had to see him.  I snuck up the two floors to his room on the third floor.  As I neared his door at the top of that final flight of stairs each creak of the floorboard seemed to resonate through the house, followed by the hollow silence of my stillness.  I paused with each step as if stepping in larger spans of time would make what I was doing seem less suspicious, should someone hear me.  Upon touching his doorknob I felt an immediate chill. I couldn’t tell whether it was some ghostly feeling of being in the presence of a dead person, or the fact that the thermostat had been turned down to keep his body prime for viewing.
I held my breath as I opened the door, and blinked a couple times when I saw him.  He was wearing what everyone else was in downstairs, black tuxedo and a dark tie.  I know he would have scowled had he known he was going to be buried in a constricting penguin suit.  We had a conversation about it, you know?  Out on Academy Hill, right in the middle of a picnic. We were in enough shade that his transition lenses were only half tinted, and when he sat up, it was abruptly.  Pushing my head off his chest he kind of leaned in to the cemetery in the distance and pointed out how sad it is that no one really ever gets the chance to choose how they want to spend the rest of eternity dressed in.  He would have preferred his puma sneakers, still white after seven months, his striped green and blue socks, his only pair of ripped designer jeans and that express shirt he loved so much because it showed off his natural physique.  
I moved closer, inching toward him at first, then quicker as I broke through a place where I just relaxed, and for a moment he wasn’t dead.  For a moment he was just sleeping, all ready in his fancy get up simply waiting for me to wake him up.  I found myself sitting next to him, my eyes cast downward, half expecting his gaze to meet mine, and while stroking his hair I got an idea.  It happened quickly, and I kind of have a problem with acting upon my impulses, it’s something he used to criticize me on that and I never really improved.  Without thinking I threw open his drawer and pulled out what I knew he’d have wanted to be dressed in, should he have gotten the chance to create a will concerning his death-wear.  As I pulled of his starchy shirt my hand brushed against his chest, chilled as the room was, eerie as nothing else.  I finally got him down past his pants and saw, of all abominations, that he was outfitted in a fresh pair of tighty whities.  God, it’s as if the funeral home was asking to be haunted by his tormented soul.  I found his single pair of silk boxers and reassembled him in the way I knew he’d have wanted to be.
So great, now everyone will think I’m a loon for having desecrated his body.  Well what do they know; I’m the only one who ever really knew him! But how the hell would I explain it to his parents when the pallbearers march in and there he is, laying face up in his street clothes?  
This wasn’t right.  He didn’t belong here, he needed to be somewhere comfortable, someplace he enjoyed, not sitting upstairs in a suit with the lights off and the air blasting.  He hated the cold!  Certainly he would have hated a hundred people staring at his dead and lifeless shell, and he would, without a doubt, hate being six feet under, pushing daises at the Nichols Road cemetery.
I wrapped my arms around him, and as the building adrenaline made my breaths deepen I inhaled several moments of ecstasy off his clothes that still clung to his musty scent.  I lowered him gently to the floor and took care as I dragged him across the carpet to his door.  After fumbling, for what felt like several minutes, on his door handle I got him onto the awning introducing the stairs.  I even made it down the first flight of stairs without freezing up at the tiniest creak when I heard someone coming my way.  ******, they must need to use the bathroom, why couldn’t they just use the one downstairs like any normal person?  Without hesitation I throw open up the window near bottom of the stairs, heaving myself and him, sending us tumbling onto the garage roof.  Ignoring my probable bruises I spring up and slam the window behind me while taking special care to hide us both as far away from the bathroom window as possible.
Sitting up there, my heart racing, I felt his hand in mine and it was probably because my palms had gone clammy but I swear for a span of time he was alive again.  I closed my eyes and felt the breeze in my hair and was transported to a place where I spent a single moment in each day we ever shared.  Each beach side sandcastle, each afternoon spent cloud gazing, those same afternoons turning into evenings of star gazing, each and every night spent utterly and irrevocably lost with this silly boy that chose to love me.  
I was torn from my oasis as I heard the bathroom’s occupant exit and continue downstairs.   Knowing that my van was parked on the other side of the street I pushed his body as close to the edge of the roof as I could without his falling off and let him be. I hopped back inside and ran downstairs, but not before flying through the doors of the memorial and interrupting his mothers eulogy.  In an act of sheer brilliance I mustered a few tears and tore out the back door.  Everyone figured I was just so taken away by his death that I couldn’t stand to be there anymore.  Who knew anxiety could be mistook for remorse so easily?
I ran down the driveway, losing the grace I had composed in my dress in high heels the moment I slammed that door.  I jumped into Emmet, my van, because only crazy people drive around in un-named vehicles.  
I pulled out of my spot, nearly ruining the paint job on both my and his Uncle Ed’s car.  I flew my trunk door open and set the third row down, the general idea being his landing securely in my back seat.  I reversed up the driveway with the precision of a surgeon and the speed of a leopard right back to the edge of the garage where I had tossed his body.  I jumped out of my car nearly forgetting to put it into park before I shut off the engine.  I barely got halfway around my car before becoming transfixed on his hand, hanging off the gutter as if reaching for mine to grab hold and pull him to sweet salvation.  I jumped up a few times, unsuccessfully before I took off my shoes and got a good running start.  I flew up, grabbed his arm and ****** towards the car in a sideways downward motion.  He nearly cracked his head on the pavement coming down, he would have too if it wasn’t for my body breaking his fall.  I got up, too distracted by the sheer volume of my own heart to realize the pain I felt.  I shoved him into my back seat, slammed the trunk, stumbled into the car, stuck it in reverse and stepped on gas without even putting my shoes back on.

I told you I had done something bad.

driven by the medium of exchange.
dare remember from where it is you came.
dance in the smoke that once brought moths to flame.
incandescent, and full of shame.
buried in books to keep you insane.
hoping happy people do the same.
must you keep her emotions tame
wrong way in a one way lane.

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

The dream I dreamed tonight
Was me with a cabin light
A cliff by the seaside,
I watched the falling stars
The sky turned purple
and I heard the singing grass
You flew to my side
and together we laughed
on how silly is the night owl,
to be drinking tea at night
I had a pet white tiger
and a carriage made of clouds
And a set of picnic materials,
I had you by myside
Was it a paradise?

The joy I felt was everlasting,
I did not wish to say goodbye
We listened to invented melodies
and slept to  mythical charms
of how happiness will  always stay,  
how undefeated we will be
I heard you plead,  "Don't leave me",  
I responded with a smile
There, I promised to fight,
for you I will thrive
I am brave in a dream,
I am strong in a dream
Was it paradise?

I dreamed a dream tonight
And never will I wake up
I dreamed of you tonight
I missed your little laughs

Goodbye to you my love.

Why?
It's a painful memory that appears to be settling in for life rather than preparing to leave,
It's been heard by countless millions, and none of them can understand how it sounds to me,
I haven’t been as happy since hearing it as I was when I heard it,
It's symbolic of the most significant turning point in my life to date,
The lyrics are so perfectly foreshadowing of a problem that I couldn't fathom that I’d have,
It has a stronger connection to memory than any other song,
It represents the perpetual unhappiness that I refuse to believe controls me.
I'm unhappy.

Where?
A car that I haven’t seen in years,
On a street I barely saw enough of,
In a town I wish I could visit again.
A happier place that I can see but can never return to,
Personified by a face that's disappeared from here.
Somewhere I miss, yet somewhere I hate;
Somewhere that needed the version of me that died in that very place;
A cemetery.

When?
Happier times;
A collection of moments which are infinite from within,
Yet minute from without.
A time when I could define myself,
Through the vice of another person;
Albeit vicariously, it was the last time
I was able to define myself.
I was everything; I was the world.
And then the world ended.
Happier times that I can't and won't return to.

What?
A song;
A memory;
A beautiful beat,
In a story that nobody's telling.
A soundtrack to a movie nobody wants to see,
A composition that will fall on deaf ears;
Yet still be heard by the world at large, call it irony.
Something nobody can take away from me;
Despite how tenaciously I've tried to get rid of it.
A succession of noises that would be meaningless to me,
Were it not for the memory.
The memory.

Who?
She, I, and the drivers of some road in Georgia;
Drivers that didn't notice then and don't notice now.
She, driving, demonstrating, performing;
Has driven on, failing to notice.
Me, her, and the songwriter, I suppose;
Me, a person I don't know,
Replaced by a person I can't.
The songwriter, collecting her checks and trophies,
Probably not a **** to give about the troubles
Of some ******* who heard her song.
Us, a concept foreign to me;
Unbeknownst then, well studied now;
Still as foreign as that state,
That city,
That road,
That car,
That place that I can revisit,
But never go back;
Her.

The Song?
Because I'm unhappy;
In a cemetery,
During happier times that I can't and won't return to;
A memory
With her.
I need more words.

Words
Nevermind, I'll find someone like you.
I wish nothing but the best for you.
Don't forget me, I beg.
I remember you said:
Sometimes it lasts in love,
But sometimes it hurts instead.

But that's not right.
I won't find someone like you;
There was no you.
I wish anything but the best for you;
You selfish child.
Please forget me;
I'm nothing worth remembering.
I've forgotten everything you said.
It rarely, if ever, lasts in love.
It always hurts.
Laughable,
The things I tell myself to bandage
A wound that doesn't appear.
The clichés I give meaning to are

******* pitiful.
Just about two years and counting.
Two psychiatrists,
Two half-assed ******* suicide attempts,
Dozens of classes,
Legions of friends,
A handful of people so much like you that they'd failed to notice there is no you,
And you're still talking about this
Pile of ****.
Who's talking about it?
Me? You?
Nobody.
It's white noise;
Habituation at play.
A memory not worth remembering.
Three years of piano lessons,
The lines of my scripts,
The best films throughout history,
Even the Eagles game from last week is

Worth remembering
This,
This moment in time occupied by just another pop song,
Time spent with a person no longer there,
Family member after family member, anecdote after anecdote,
Things not to say or do in front of her hulking ******* of a brother,
Approval of people I wound up discarding.
What now?

I need more words.

Where were we?
Fresh year, fresh start, and the Eagles were still a winning team○;
A dorm, a drunken haze, a bed, a city unparalleled;
Untested grounds for a young idiot
Like me. She certainly did
And wasn't afraid to show it.
Independence, experience, maturity,
And a stunning mutual lack thereof.
Problems, buried like the worst ******* time capsule ever.
Happiness (unsustainable)
Love (attachment)
Future ()
A candle burning down to its last wax can’t relight,
And a pile of wax won't help me see in the dark.

But who needs candles anyway?
I'm better off without candles,
Playing with fire can get me burnt.
And besides, lightbulbs are brighter and more efficient.
I’ll install lightbulbs all over the apartment,
Once I can figure out how to turn the power back on.
Oh, there aren't power lines running to this apartment.
(sure wish I had a candle right about now)
Maybe the light from this cigarette will help.
And I could sure use a cigarette right now
Because they’re playing that song again.
Surely I can find some better music than this.
This station seems nice, let's see what she can offer.
They're playing that song again.
Over and over again.
Is it just me, or are they always playing that song?
It's always that song, no matter what.
It's all I ever hear.
Pop radio sure is terrible these days, right?
Sure is.
Can't walk down the street to class without hearing

That ******* ******* song.*

(
Nobody else is hearing it.
I'm the one singing it.
My life's a ******* joke, isn't it?
)

○The Philadelphia Eagles were 10-6 in 2010, 8-8 in 2011, and 4-12 last year. And during the ‘still friends’ period, we watched the division rival Giants win the Super Bowl together. I ******* hated it.

A nervous shiver rippled briefly across his shoulders as Dunstan peered over the balcony, it was a long way down from his penthouse suite he guessed, shrinking back from the handrail... at a rough guess somewhere between the upper observation deck, Eiffel-Tower, Paris, France and lower basement mezzanine at Miss Selfridge, London, England... and Dunstan was terrified if heights.
  
     It scarcely seemed anytime at all really since he'd relocated to his new and upwardly situated des-res, yet for all that he could hardly recall living anywhere else, once you'd seen one, well... you got the idea,  after a while they all looked pretty much the same, you just had to be able to haggle, but for now at least he was obviously safe enough where he was, sunning himself on the balcony watching the world go by as he scribbled down a shopping list... but lunchtime was almost upon him and then all hell was sure to break loose.

     Having finally determined to put down roots and raise children of her own, his mother Elvera, finding herself in the family-way had wasted no time at all in tearing several well thumbed pages out of her mother's book, then taken both Dunstan's father and his gene-pool straight to the cleaners, just to keep them, so page three informed her firmly in the family... so Dunstan grew up knowing a great deal about laundry and dry-cleaning, but very little about his father, just the occasional anecdote cast to the wind like so much bird seed, about their early courting days and how they'd both wanted him to grow into a strong, healthy lad and do well at school, climbing the corporate ladder, so-to-speak and go to Boy-Scouts every Tuesday evening just like his father had done before him... and learn all about knots, but Dunstan had vertigo and couldn't tie knots for toffee.
                                    
     All hell was certainly dead set on breaking loose that lunchtime, or rather Houdini were they to continue and remain on first name terms... and there was nothing Dunstan loved more than a captive audience.   Reflecting deeply and never wanting a repeat of the previous week he studied the hastily bound swaddling, perhaps the odd tweak here and there just to be on the safe side should ensure the safety of his dinner guest for the remainder of the afternoon.   As Dunstan snipped the final thread he considered that simply nothing was too much trouble where todays 'entree was concerned, he now sat before Houdini smacking his lips in anticipation, quivering in the front parlour waiting for the dinner gong to sound, the Sunday lunch however, now in a mounting state of frenzied agitation continued bouncing around on the embroidered tablespread.  

     Dunstan could never understand what the fuss was all about... I mean, it wasn't as though his dinner guest hadn't been invited, he argued and that for the umpteenth time, as he reached for the carving knife and steel, he simply wasn't going to take no for an answer, leaving his dinner guest still bouncing about, insisting that he'd merely dropped in for directions... and that he, The Great Houdini, currently billed at The London Hippodrome for the remainder of the season had a far more pressing dinner engagement elsewhere, with a diary for the foreseeable future distinctly at odds with those of his host... leaving Dunstan so he hoped, far behind and in no uncertain doubt that not only had he been left hanging in stickier corners than this one, but had every intention of extracting himself from being principal dish of the day before third curtain call... and having done so, wish Dunstan a very good day and remit his professional fee by return of post.

    Meanwhile, insisting that his guest needn't feel obliged to dine elsewhere when they could both enjoy a really splendid one right here, chewing over happier times together, although should Houdini wish, then Dunstan felt confident that his dinner guest was more than capable of punching his way out of as many wet paper bags as he liked... and just what were the Marquis of Queensberry Rules anyway... so encouraged, Dunstan continued sharpening the knife. 

     "Well really", thought Dunstan... 'and without so much as a by-your-leave' carefully examining the damage to his new lace tablecloth, torn in Houdini's haste to depart, he really must be careful as he rummaged for his darning needle, not to fall through.  It had been the shortest dinner party in living memory, Dunstan sighed, it simply would not do, what would all his neighbour's think, he'd never hear the last of it, his reputation they would whisper, well... it would all end in ruins, mark their words it would.  Dunstan's tummy rumbled, he'd been filled with nothing but anticipation that day and very little else, but other than a torn tablecloth and superfluous items of Houdini, shrugged of in his bid for freedom, no one would be any the wiser... having said that, Dunstan would have to make do with a cold repast for luncheon instead, hanging quite still in the larder.

                                                        ­     ­ ...    ...   ...**

A work in progress.                                                        ­                                                               831

should she have
thrown her wish at the stars
or down a well?

her hair in cigar smoke ringlets
her eyes were the guinness
the journey, her passion
the boy, her poison
the liffey winked with antidotes

black glass with white lights
why do rivers mock the sky?

her hair in her vision
her voice in a bird cage
a swan on a sailboat
not a soul on the ferry

on another coast
amid the day before
and the one that followed
seafoam clashed with clouds
came full circle
as her favorite dead end

she raised
then rolled
her eyes

blue waves with gray wisps
why do skies mock the river?

she didn't go over
nor to the end
she just went against the grain
of the rainbow
only she could spot

and then
she stuffed her hands into her pockets
and
she threw her wish
away

From the ripple in a glass of water
to the sonic boom of this internal
Pompeii, the erosion
of her etymology is the only
sense of movement in her
dilated, cave-pupil eyes, those
two ghost towns spanning
and encircling all the way back,
stretched like an elastic blindfold
past the moment the first brick was laid,
perhaps her first vivid memory,
or anecdote, or first word uttered
in a Cuban slum.

There are mountains of tumbleweed
over the once thriving metropolis
that expanded towards America;
who threw herself into
the architecture of seven pillars,
borne from her land and
minerals. Gone are the
huts that housed her
knowledge of basic motor skills.

The women who once imagined
Mami and Mima as her birth
name now scrub off
the graffiti of her excrement;
they saw a swarm of pink moons
the day she told the same story
to every visitor that came
their way, each day then becoming
a missing surveillance tape, a sinkhole
dismantling the awareness
in her bones and stubborn will,
until she became
these dust-engulfed plains with
a daughter and granddaughter
archeological in their efforts
to chase down the remains
of a girl still breathing in
those eyes from time to time.

Every other ten-millionth blink of
the eye rides the silhouette of a post-infant girl
on the high tides of her quick visit,
looking in horror
as the nation of her life's nightmares,
heartaches, broken promises, romances,
spiritual breakthroughs, life-changing seconds
drowns with morbid unity en cien fuegos,
desperately attempting to assemble
the remnants of her psyche
past her cognitive bloodclots
with the awareness of one
who speaks no languages.

Gone is the moment
she first learned
to feed her several children
before the slip of sunset.

One of seven pillars remain intact,
the others long dismantled of their
stick and straw infrastructures.

One pillar remained,
housed her own colony
for nine months,
and now both descendants
travel the mind of their
greatest influence
with perplexed dedication,
caustic humor the decoy
for swarms of exhaustion
and asphyxiation
from the truthful atmosphere,
reveling in the seconds
of humanity lurking
in an abandoned etymology.

Portentous enunciation, syllable
To blessed syllable affined, and sound
Bubbling felicity in cantilene,
Prolific and tormenting tenderness
Of music, as it comes to unison,
Forgather and bell boldly Crispin's last
Deduction. Thrum, with a proud douceur
His grand pronunciamento and devise.

The chits came for his jigging, bluet-eyed,
Hands without touch yet touching poignantly,
Leaving no room upon his cloudy knee,
Prophetic joint, for its diviner young.
The return to social nature, once begun,
Anabasis or slump, ascent or chute,
Involved him in midwifery so dense
His cabin counted as phylactery,
Then place of vexing palankeens, then haunt
Of children nibbling at the sugared void,
Infants yet eminently old, then dome
And halidom for the unbraided femes,
Green crammers of the green fruits of the world,
Bidders and biders for its ecstasies,
True daughters both of Crispin and his clay.
All this with many mulctings of the man,
Effective colonizer sharply stopped
In the door-yard by his own capacious bloom.
But that this bloom grown riper, showing nibs
Of its eventual roundness, puerile tints
Of spiced and weathery rouges, should complex
The stopper to indulgent fatalist
Was unforeseen. First Crispin smiled upon
His goldenest demoiselle, inhabitant,
She seemed, of a country of the capuchins,
So delicately blushed, so humbly eyed,
Attentive to a coronal of things
Secret and singular. Second, upon
A second similar counterpart, a maid
Most sisterly to the first, not yet awake
Excepting to the motherly footstep, but
Marvelling sometimes at the shaken sleep.
Then third, a thing still flaxen in the light,
A creeper under jaunty leaves. And fourth,
Mere blusteriness that gewgaws jollified,
All din and gobble, blasphemously pink.
A few years more and the vermeil capuchin
Gave to the cabin, lordlier than it was,
The dulcet omen fit for such a house.
The second sister dallying was shy
To fetch the one full-pinioned one himself
Out of her botches, hot embosomer.
The third one gaping at the orioles
Lettered herself demurely as became
A pearly poetess, peaked for rhapsody.
The fourth, pent now, a digit curious.
Four daughters in a world too intricate
In the beginning, four blithe instruments
Of differing struts, four voices several
In couch, four more personae, intimate
As buffo, yet divers, four mirrors blue
That should be silver, four accustomed seeds
Hinting incredible hues, four self-same lights
That spread chromatics in hilarious dark,
Four questioners and four sure answerers.

Crispin concocted doctrine from the rout.
The world, a turnip once so readily plucked,
Sacked up and carried overseas, daubed out
Of its ancient purple, pruned to the fertile main,
And sown again by the stiffest realist,
Came reproduced in purple, family font,
The same insoluble lump. The fatalist
Stepped in and dropped the chuckling down his craw,
Without grace or grumble. Score this anecdote
Invented for its pith, not doctrinal
In form though in design, as Crispin willed,
Disguised pronunciamento, summary,
Autumn's compendium, strident in itself
But muted, mused, and perfectly revolved
In those portentous accents, syllables,
And sounds of music coming to accord
Upon his law, like their inherent sphere,
Seraphic proclamations of the pure
Delivered with a deluging onwardness.
Or if the music sticks, if the anecdote
Is false, if Crispin is a profitless
Philosopher, beginning with green brag,
Concluding fadedly, if as a man
Prone to distemper he abates in taste,
Fickle and fumbling, variable, obscure,
Glozing his life with after-shining flicks,
Illuminating, from a fancy gorged
By apparition, plain and common things,
Sequestering the fluster from the year,
Making gulped potions from obstreperous drops,
And so distorting, proving what he proves
Is nothing, what can all this matter since
The relation comes, benignly, to its end?

So may the relation of each man be clipped.

Johnny had a golden head
  Like a golden mop in blow,
Right and left his curls would spread
  In a glory and a glow,
And they framed his honest face
Like stray sunbeams out of place.

Long and thick, they half could hide
  How threadbare his patched jacket hung;
They used to be his Mother's pride;
  She praised them with a tender tongue,
And stroked them with a loving finger
That smoothed and stroked and loved to linger.

On a doorstep Johnny sat,
  Up and down the street looked he;
Johnny did not own a hat,
  Hot or cold tho' days might be;
Johnny did not own a boot
To cover up his muddy foot.

Johnny's face was pale and thin,
  Pale with hunger and with crying;
For his Mother lay within,
  Talked and tossed and seemed a-dying,
While Johnny racked his brains to think
How to get her help and drink,

Get her physic, get her tea,
  Get her bread and something nice;
Not a penny piece had he,
  And scarce a shilling might suffice;
No wonder that his soul was sad,
When not one penny piece he had.

As he sat there thinking, moping,
  Because his Mother's wants were many,
Wishing much but scarcely hoping
  To earn a shilling or a penny,
A friendly neighbor passed him by
And questioned him: Why did he cry?

Alas! his trouble soon was told:
  He did not cry for cold or hunger,
Though he was hungry both and cold;
  He only felt more weak and younger,
Because he wished so to be old
And apt at earning pence or gold.

Kindly that neighbor was, but poor,
  Scant coin had he to give or lend;
And well he guessed there needed more
  Than pence or shillings to befriend
The helpless woman in her strait,
So much loved, yet so desolate.

One way he saw, and only one:
  He would--he could not--give the advice,
And yet he must: the widow's son
  Had curls of gold would fetch their price;
Long curls which might be clipped, and sold
For silver, or perhaps for gold.

Our Johnny, when he understood
  Which shop it was that purchased hair,
Ran off as briskly as he could,
  And in a trice stood cropped and bare,
Too short of hair to fill a locket,
But jingling money in his pocket.

Precious money--tea and bread,
  Physic, ease, for Mother dear,
Better than a golden head:
  Yet our hero dropped one tear
When he spied himself close shorn,
Barer much than lamb new born.

His Mother throve upon the money,
  Ate and revived and kissed her son:
But oh! when she perceived her Johnny,
  And understood what he had done
All and only for her sake,
She sobbed as if her heart must break.

In childhood, your father’s name is DAD
Now grown, maybe with children of your own
But his name is still DAD
DAD, the teacher, the consoler, the advisor
Admonishes: “Drive safe” and “Save your Money”

Today he’s the bard
“This is like prison,” DAD laments while rolling his eyes
Tubes like thin plastic chains tether his deflated body
to blinking panels; paintings (factory printed ones)
pretend the hospital room is more than just a sterile space

Today, DAD’s eyes cast a faraway gaze, projecting
And I see the characters in his story
I see the 10 year old boy he describes, who snuck to stash a set
Of English Composition Texts in the boy’s bathroom
To escape Mrs. McElroy’s Fourth Grade course in Morose Poetry

I see the thin, sandy blond, 6 foot 2 high school rabblerouser
Who broke into the Vice Principal’s old Fiat
And buried Stilton cheese in the dashboard
All done on a sweltering May school day
The anecdote is punctuated with a smirk and a: “Who would do a thing like that?”

Stories of when he spotted a shy brunette at the dance and knew
Knew he was to marry her;
Stories of when his own DAD grasped his infant grandson’s dimpled hand
Before giving in to complications of a heart attack
The bard stops and exhales a sigh

He cringes in his crinkled skin
Sunken eyes squeeze close “I’m sorry”
the nausea interrupts his tale “These drugs are…”

“It’s okay. Take your time” I console, trying to comfort the pain in the room
Now I’m the consoler, taking on the job to ameliorate
Now this man, vulnerable in his suffering, is no longer DAD
Now mortal, a child, a brother, a lover, a patient
A man chained by the body’s sickness

He is distilled by chemo
reduced to a soul, who, through affliction,
Forgets
As his children remember
He is as helpless in this life as we are.

I am a poet.
I am an artist.
A lover of words, a shaper of thoughts, a master of feelings;
A player of emotions, a speaker of charms, a thinker of minds.
A giver of taste-and at times, a succulent creator of madness.
Madness outside such lines of timid regularity;
The rules of the common, and the inane believers of sanity.
For to me, sanity is as easy as insanity itself-
On which my life feedeth, and boldly moveth on;
And without insanity, t'ere shan't be either joy-or ecstasy;
As how ecstasy itself, in my mind, is defined by averted uneasiness,
And t'at easiness, reader, is not by any means part of;
And forever detached from, the haunting deities of contemporaneity.
Thus easily, artistry consumeth and spilleth my blood-and my whole entity;
Words floweth in my lungs, mastereth my mind, shapeth my own breath.
And sometimes, I breathest within those words themselves;
And declareth my purity within which, feeleth rejection at whose loss;
Like a princess storming about hysterically at the failure of her roses.
Ah! Poetry! The second lover of my life; the delicacy of my veins.
And I loveth, I doth love-sacredly, intensely, and expressively, all of which;
I loveth poetry as I desire my own breath, and how I loveth the muchness of my fellow nature;
Whose crazes sometimes surroundeth us like our dear lake nearby;
With its souls roaming about with water, t'at chokes and gurgles-
As stray winds collapseth around and strikest a war with which.
And most of the year-I am a star, to my own skies;
But by whose side a moon, to my rainless nights;
On the whole, I am an umbrella to my soul;
So t'at it groweth bitter not, even when t'ere is no imminent rain;
And be its savior, when all is unsaved, and everything else writhest in pain.

Thus I loveth poetry as well as I loveth my dreams;
I am a painter of such scenic phrases, whose miracles bloometh
Next to thunderstorms, and yon subsequent spirited moonbeam.
And t'eir fate is awesome and elegant within my hands;
They oft' sleep placidly against my thumbs;
Asking me, with soft-and decorous breath;
To be stroked by my enigmatic fingers;
And to calm t'eir underestimated literariness, by such ungodly beings, out t'ere.
Ah, poor-poor creatures-what a fiend wouldst but do t'is to aggravate 'em!
As above all, I feeleth but extremely eager about miracles themselves;
and duly witness, my reader-t'at t'is very eagerness shall never be corrupted;
Just as how I am a pure enthusiast of love;
And in my enthusiasm, I shareth love of both men and nature;
And dark sorrows and tears t'at oft' shadowest t'eir decent composures.
When I thirstest for touches, I simply writest 'em down;
When I am hungry for caresses, I tendeth to think them out;
I detailest everything auspiciously, until my surprised conscience cannot help but feeling tired;
But still, the love of thee, poetry, shall outwit me, and despise me deeply-
Should I find not the root, within myself, to challenge and accomplish it, accordingly.
I shall be my own jealousy, and my own failure;
Who to whose private breath feeleth even unsure.
I shall feel scarce, and altogether empty;
I shall have no more essence to be admired;
For everything shall wither within me, and leave me to no energy;
And with my conscience betrayed, I shall face my demise with a heart so despaired.
Ah, my poetry is but my everything!
'Tis my undying wave; and the casual, though perhaps unnatural;
the brother of my own soul, on whose shoulders I placeth my longings;
And on whose mouths I lieth my long-lost kisses!
Ah, how I loveth poetry hideously, but awesomely, thereof!
I loveth poetry greatly-within and outside of my own roof;
And I carest not for others' mock idyll, and adamant reproof;
For I loveth poetry as how as I respectest, and idoliseth love itself;
And when I idoliseth affection, perhaps I shall grow, briefly, into a normal human being-
A real, real human being with curdling weights of unpoetic feelings;
I shall whisper into my ears every intractable falsehood, but the customary normalcy-of creation;
And brash, brash emptiness whom my creative brains canst no longer bear!
Ah, dearest, loveliest poetry, but shall I love him?
Ah-the one whose sighs and shortcomings oft' startlest my dreams;
The one whom I oft' pictureth, and craftest like an insolent statue-
Within my morning colours, and about my petulant midnight hue?
Or, poetry, and tellest me, tellest me-whether needst I to love him more-
The one whose vice was my past-but now wishes to be my virtue,
And t'is time an amiably sober virtue-with eyes so blue and sparkling smiles so true?
Ah, poetry, tellest me, tellest me here-without delay!
In my oneness, thou shalt be my triumph, and everlasting astonishment;
Worthy of my praise and established tightness of endorsement;
But in any doubleness of my life-thou shalt be my saviour, and prompt avidity-
When all but strugglest against their trances, or even falleth silent.
Ah, poetry, thou art the symbol of my virtue thyself;
And thy little soul is my tongue;
A midnight read I hath been composing dearly all along;
My morn play, anecdote, and yet my most captivating song.

I thirstest for thee regularly, and longeth for thee every single day;
I am dead when I hath not words, nor any glittering odes in my mouth to say.
Thou art my immensity, in which everything is gullible, but truth;
And all remarks are bright-though with multiple souls, and roots;
Ah, poetry, in every summer, thou art the adored timeless foliage;
With humorous beauty, and a most intensive sacrifice no other trees canst take!
O poetry, and thy absence-I shall be dead like those others;
I shall be robbed, I shall be like a walking ghost;
I hath no more cores, nor cheers-within me, and shall wander about aimlessly, and feel lost;
Everything shall be blackened, and seen with malicious degrees of absurdity;
I shall be like those who, as days pass, bloometh with no advanced profusion,
And entertaineth their sad souls with no abundant intention!
How precarious, and notorious-shall I look, indeed!
For I shall hath no gravity-nor any sense of, or taste-for glory;
My mind shall be its own corpse, and look but grey;
Grey as if paled seriously by the passage of time;
Grey as if turned mercilessly so-by nothing sublime;
Ah, but in truth-grey over its stolen life, over its stolen breath!
I shall become such greyness, o poetry, over the loss of thee;
And treadeth around like them, whose minds are blocked-by monetary thickness;
A desire for meaningless muchness, and pretentious satire exchanged '**** 'emselves;
I shall be like 'em-who are blind to even t'eir own brutal longings!
Ah, t'ose, whose paths are threatened by avid seriousness;
And adverse tides of ambition, and incomprehensible austerity;
Ah, for to me glory is not eternal, glory is not superb;
For eternity is what matterest most, and t'at relieth not within any absence of serenity.
Ah, but sadly they realiseth, realiseth it not!
For they are never alive themselves, nor prone-to any living realisation;
And termed only by the solemnity of desire, wealthiness, and hovering accusations;
For they breathe within their private-ye' voluptuous, malice, and unabashed prejudice,
For they hath no comprehension; as they hath not even the most barren bliss!
And I wantest not to be any of them, for being such is entirely gruesome;
And I shall die of loneliness, I shall die of feasting on no mindly outcome;
For nothing more shall be fragrant within my torpid soul;
And hath courage not shall I, to fight against any fishy and foul.
My fate is tranquil, and 'tis, indeed-to be a poet;
A poet whenst society is mute, I shall speak out loud;
And whenst humanity is asleep, I wake 't with my shouts;
Ah, poetry! Thy ****** little soul is but everything to me;
And even in my future wifery, I shall still care for, and recur to thee;
And I shall devote myself to thee, and cherish thee more;
Thou hath captured me with love; and such a love is, indeed, like never before.

But too I loveth him still, as every day rises-
When the sun reappeareth, and hazy clouds are again woken so they canst praise the skies.
I loveth him, as sunrays alight our country suburbs;
With a love so wondrous; a love but at times-too ardent and superb.
Ah, and thus tellest me-tellest me once more!
To whose heart shall I benignly succumb, and trust my maidenhood?
To whose soul shall I courteously bow, and be tied-at th' end of my womanhood?
Ah, poetry, I am but now clueless, and thoroughly speechless-about my own love!
Ah, dearest-t'is time but be friendly to me, and award to me a clue!
Lendeth to me thy very genial comprehension, and merit;
Openeth my heart with thy grace, and unmistakable wit!
Drowneth me once more into thy reveries of dreams;
And finally, just finally-burstest my eyes now open, maketh me with clarity see him!

Ah, poetry, t'ose rainbows of thine-are definitely too remarkable;
As how t'ose red lips of thine adore me, and termeth me kindly, as reliable;
And thus I shall rely all my reality on thy very shoulder;
Bless me with the holiness confidentiality, and untamed ****** intelligence;
Maketh me enliven my words with love, and the healthiest, and loveliest, of allegiance.
Bless me with the flavoured showers of thy heart;
So everything foreign canst but be comely-and familiar;
And from whose verdure, and growth-I shall ne'er be apart!
And as t'is happens, holdest my hand tightly-and clutchest at my heart dearly;
Keepest me but safe here, and reachest my breath, securely!
Ah, poetry-be with me, be with me always!
Maketh me even lovelier, and loyal-to my religion;
In my daily taste-and hastes, and all these supreme oddities and evenness of life;
Maketh me but thoughtful, cheerful, and naive;
And in silence maketh me stay civil-but for my years to come;
and similarly helpeth my devotion, taste, and creativity, remain alive.

Ah, poetry, thus I shall be awake in both thy daylight, and slumbers;
And as thou shineth, I knoweth that my dreams shall never fade away;
Once more, I might have gone mad, but still-all the way better;
And whenst I am once more conscious; thou shalt be my darling;
who firmly and genuinely beggeth me t' keep writing, and in the end, beggeth me t' stay.
Leave me not, even whenst days grew dark-and lighted were only my abyss;
Invite my joy, and devour every bit of it-as one thou should neither ignore, or miss.

Wisest of the wise always quote
Poison for the poison is anecdote
Hatred and contempt is to float
From one boat to another boat
At times a mote takes us- remote
This is how humans promote

Vices on the chest of motherland
Vicious circle acts like a band
Land remains no more a land
Only righteous can take a stand
Castles which are built on sand
May have had their own brand

Love remains its own reward
Even if it is earned too hard
It is but a virtue of the Lord
Which always is ready to guard
Humans from their ugly card
Love is evergreen never time barred

Col Muhammad Khalid Khan
Copyright 2016 Golden Glow

I thought I was the story of your life.
Turns out,
I am only the anecdote in your life.

i think, you should stop going to italy, for one, oh **** me, keep going on hedonist ****-**** fests to places like mallorca, but stop going to italy, you're making my stomach ache from laughter, with what you come back with, the so-called "innovations"; somehow i'd just poach my cauliflower, and drizzle it with fried breadcrumbs, and serve it as a side-dish to fried eggs (2), and some tatties; for goodness sake, even cauliflower cream soup makes more sense, garnished with some fried chorizo!

first it was avocado on toast...
          who the **** puts avocado on bread?
i can imagine putting it in pasta...
but on bread?
                hey, what the **** does
the acronym f.a.d. mean?
             i don't know, and i won't google it...
o.k. avocado on toast...
              nothing near guacamole,
  but fair enough...
           but what i discovered... pushes
the button where i turn into a fox laughter
(fuchslachen) -
           i couldn't stop...
                      you can find it in the *weekend
section of the saturday times newspaper...
written by nicola m.
          cauliflower and mozzarella pizza...
you have to be ******* me...
                cauliflower? on pizza?
one of my housemates at university told
me an anecdote:
    i was in a restaurant once,
          and asked for a pizza with no cheese...
he continued:
      and then the head chef came out and
asked me... are you, insane?!
       a bit like: bread...    but no butter?
and i thought i was insane eating a watermelon
today, whole,
the red pulp, and the outer layers including
the skin included, allowing myself
a gorilla imitation cameo gimmick...
      but i thought i was mad...
but there's avocado on toast...
   and now... cauliflower on pizza...
                              it's a ******* side-dish!
wait, don't tell me... you're going to put
some potatoes onto the pizza the next frizz
comes along... right?
                      how about beetroot?
                         thankfully, if i have some
wacky ideas in terms of culinary escapades,
they happen, drunk, after 12a.m.,
and i'm the scientist, and the experimental rabbit
2-in-1...
                     a newspaper column?
apparently, you get one, putting avocado
on toast...
                 or cauliflower on a pi-zzzzz-ah...
to be honest, even though i haven't tried it,
grilled aubergines on a pizza could work...
   the toast?               marmite and cheddar...
english people should stop glorifying holidays
in italy... they're ****** cooks...
                   an italian would just look at
a pizza with cauliflower and say:          cosa?
i'd suggest heading to scotland first,
and picking up the vibes from some haggis.
**** me...
   avocado on toast...
                caulifower on a pizza?!
                           now i can die happy, 'appy,
clapping: encore!

when you start talking... you rarely unravel the brain's conspiracy for secrecy, you never want brain = heart automation with solid theories that are rarely given an individual bias to be based on... a bit like those pencil-pushers working in offices for MI5 or MI6 who thought spying was all in fiction, but rarely confirmed the fact: in the c.v. it was stated: show your intelligence to prove the vulnerability of others easily persuaded... that's called providing intelligence... and those adverts for london hipsters on brick lane and hackney pavements just blew my cover... because no one really knows if one will doppelgänger the plot... with the body alcoholic and the shadow intelligent, or vice versa... the oddity... please call david bowie.*

in the freudian sense we get an origin of understanding
with a little boy, who's about to become oedipus,
we have diagnostics from a complex, the oedipus complex,
but with jung the childhood origin of diagnosis is
missing, childhood isn't the source of the problem,
after all we are born with a weak bladder and weak
**** muscles, hence the diaper, hence the elevation
of the problem into the realm of a collective unconscious,
i.e. the plumber doesn't know what the electrician does,
the electrician doesn't know what the artist does,
or how he does it, it's not that we're all unconscious
unable to craft any collective or individual meaning,
but i can recognise a freudian sympathy in 21st century
practice of psychiatry from a jungian one...
the freudian simply assumes your childhood was a nightmare,
that you were abused... but to a jungian - with the
offshoot of the testimony of laing's anti-psychiatry
never mind szasz... you say you go drinking at night
into the woods alone... they sense a fear in themselves
and simply un-diagnose you; which i managed to do...
i can count about 10 psychiatrists who diagnosed me
this that and the other... but they never asked me about
the problems in my mature being, they were looking for a
hurt child, sure i grew up in an environment without
a father between the ages 4 & 8... my father was just
a voice on the telephone and the first nintendo,
a gameboy... but i was surrounded by older people,
my great-grandmother read me a picture bible
and taught me to tie my shoelaces like i'd tie a ribbon
of a present, my grandfather took me for walks with
the two dogs i owned: axel a dobberman and bella
the alsatian, me piercing one of his bicycle tires to get
him off work at the steel factory for a day...
the steel factory closed, went bankrupt, or simply sold-out
to foreign spanish investors, many people left the city
of my origin... never mind...
children are not compulsive liars... but those who
emerge from childhood become compulsive liars...
children are selective liars... once the cookie jar is
opened... once the dog ate the homework...
they can't even combine lying with imagination,
after childhood you can't even do that, you can't
even combine lying with imagination -
there are no images involved, only words, black holes,
symbolism... all you get from an expected combination
of lying and imagination is that imagination
becomes ****** expressions, bordering on apathetic
****** expressions.
but guess what, above all what i said...
i was diagnosed as mad... but i never set foot in an
asylum, a knothouse (knot, yes, madmen are
like knots, jumbled up, the linear pattern of vitality
suddenly becomes a knotted sphere with only cats
able to unwind it - set loose the cats into the madhouses
of the world!) which can only mean ONE thing...
if i was diagnosed mad, but never entered a madhouse...
i'm assured by the laws of deduction, that, i, am,
in, fact, in a society that's a madhouse...
no wonder people can't appreciate the beauty of
the world, they took theology to the parasites
and explained things that way,
plus they advertised, started traffic signalling...
now days people simply pass trees and mountains
nonchalantly... they're more interest in what's organising them,
once words were kept in books... those great bricks,
but since people managed to make everyone literate,
the words broke out from the alcatraz of their
enticement and ventured out, like robots trapped,
and became adverts coca cola and warnings 50mph...
then the beauty of the word disappeared, because everything
in diamond contortion odd simply became dull,
dull because life became faster... and there was
no way of allowing reflection on unmovable things
to contain any speed - otherwise become a dog,
hold something resembling a branch in your mouth,
bite down, keep it in your mouth long enough
while you carry down the stairs a copy of witkiewicz's poems
and your tongue will become alive and numb
with poison... it will become a poison arrow...
and now that arrow is aimed at your heart.

. only last night i decided to put out a cigarette stump on my left hand's right knuckle...  squeamish? i didn't exactly hear a protest, invoking a gasp, of imploding pain.

                                           so...
  when was the last time,
you, actually tell your
neighbor to...
  *******...
   trembling with anger
as if waiting to have a fist-fight
over the most minor triviality?
i've heard him speak
foul words before his
supposed bride...
  and before the ******* kid...
i hate bullies...
  back in school i remember
being a bully for a split second...
i stephen kennedy...
   i heard an anecdote
   about a girl forcing him
to eat **** from the pavement...
so i jagged him up
with a fist to the kidneys...
    but then i took care of
         martin elliker -
the crooked toothed hunchback
during chemistry classes...
helped him out from time to time...
didn't mind the bad breath...
     we talked about playing
final fantasy VII...
   in this catholic school -
even the so called bullies protected
the genuine victims,
   from whimps, cry-babies,
you name them...
    and we shared a, as i mentioned
before, a pax non bellum...
we corporated in our approach
for the general morale of the peers...
in the 6 or so years at the school?
one suicide, a girl...
   just one...
              not bad...
       i met this girl at a romford
bus-stop once... told me her father
walked from Ethiopia to England...
        so we took the bus,
to Goodmayes...
    i, trying to be polite...
said i was going to visit a friend
to smoke some marijuana...
   she bought the story...
but then... i had to tell her the truth...
she already shielded my supposed,
slumber approaches with the line:
i have a boyfriend...
   so i told her...
    i'm actually going to the brothel
for an hour's worth of a, "girlfriend"...
all of a sudden, "richard" pops out
out of nowhere...
   "richard" was a proper bully before
moving from high school
to a six former status...
    on the sly:
    on a school trip to Glasbury-on-Wye,
for kayaking, caving, horse-riding,
      just after the mad-cow epidemic
cooled downed...
    each morning...
      me... at the breakfast table...
with about nine afro-saxons...
   not even making jokes
about phallus sizes...
                so this, "richard" remembered me,
asked me if i remembered his name...
which i did, several days later...
OH ****! DANIEL!
           would have been *******
easier if it was Fola Malomo...
a nigerian kid from primary school...
      point being...
  all this "real" life and the internet
imprint, internet banking
and internet shopping - also not being real,
apparently...
      well... internet trolling -
first i'm all for internet transparency,
second of all, some sort of cordiality
ethos -
                 ****-posting is not my thing...
neither is trolling...
   when you have a real problem
with a neighbor, over whether he tells
you that you should inform him
when you're cooking up a barbeque
and he has clothes on the washing line...
and you start trembling,
internalizing berserk anger in a
metaphysical ******...
                 and all you have in your head
is the color red, and plum...
    and a smashed in gorilla cartilage
of what was once a human nose?
    - and you have to use
verbal restraints, akin to: *******...
   what's with all these internet, "problems"?
it's not even worth the tunnel vision
analogy of a horse donning pomp
shutters...
     by then i turn off... become black-eyed,
losing a reference to an iris...
    i become a honing device...
between my tongue and my fist...
   is the matchstick's worth of width
of keeping up the least, or last
         artifact of civilized cordiality;
here?
   but an outlet - a refrigerator...
   some men would probably
      prefer to cool down aiming at
a punching bag...
                i can't do that...
       i have to be more subtle...
   and employ words as the worth
of punches... and a blank canvas as
the punching bag.

.h'america.... the last theological playground of... whatever the mind left behind in the decrepit bulwark that's europe... oh... and those mid-western died-hard hitchcock platinum-blondes in a-waiting... my typo pristine dutch-girls-go-to-church mantra... otherwise? no b'ooh'y'ah! chugger-chugger-chugger-chuck-cherry-choppy-chops-you-*******-cuc­­k-chuckie! quasi-whitman wannabe... billy was a butcher... a thematic long lost gun... billy was a butcher... and all the ripe choppers of pork... gave us a belief in snow; and what some heaved with a falling-of-a-star of dis-.belief: i too was bound to glorification of: what was expected to be known! and the subsequent: wow! i have met only the most limited of men... i have therefore met all men... the "all" men of this rubric of a year, a decade... all that's bygone of a yawn; swear it sn't so! a so! that's not be be sown! i am here too: upon the whim of expectation... merely... waiting... a man comes to be born come his 30s... his 40s? his nostalgia "moment"... former known name of: Jack Lil Lick 'Em Boots... and the crescendo of pauper's black lining of the Wall St. "better oiled"... scalp the ******! and send him unto the rabbi's true blessing... in the cusp of the scalp of the kippah!  and now... you take... your anglo-spreschen-tangle... into the salt-wounds of your h'america! first born: young... i don't like your revision... looking toward Europe with a hope for a sensibility... this pseudo deutsche: pseudo dutch, anglo-; this is no loss of the French or the Slav! this is our celebration! does one have an irish phrasing in uns to be at in it or one? beyond this grip boyo bound glue? this clerical spare of the otherwise leftover skivvy? we have made barons of these minutes.... as if we were to be kings of the coming years... and how we didn't become gods of the atoms... and the men of the suns and planets... that is our... most worthwhile conundrum in a da pacem domine bound; you're going to Beirut on me... or something?!

in my haitus away from this canvas:
naive me thought: perhaps a surge...
again proven wrong -
albeit not disappointed -
so i had to look elsewhere -

i had to look for a clarity of diction...
i had to move away from
the western lands and their:
death of god and their death by metaphysics...

even in this barren english...
i could not figure out:
why are these people,
apologetics from the central leftists...
these liberals...
ditto: i will butcher this name...
i will butcher the pronunciation
of this word...

if there are "questions" regarding
what's being phonetically encoded...
so much for me "learning to code"...
i too once wrote a html encoding...
with all the < and < and > toys...
spacing... {[( gradations... etc.,

i had to look east, after a while writing
schlechtdeutschegrammatik...
bad german grammar...
again: it's posthumous "Latin"...
it might be...
bad grammar german...
or german bad grammar...
deutscheschlechtgrammatik...

spelling is the mathematical equivalent
of... arithmetic...
but grammar? you need a ping-pong
table...
you need something cymru-esque...
a scandinavian-esque bilingual cushioning...

english alone will not solve the matter...
it's not french, it's not german,
it's certainly not spanish...
spanish and how post-colonialism was
settled with a post-racial attitudes of
Brazil...
england has taken too much time
looking up and out of the h'american
*******...
no grand satan 'ere...
no silk road bazar of fruits exotica from...
Teheran...
something more... subtle...

i had to go back to the "tsar"...
and the цэркйэв: 'cerkiew'...
and there i was amused how...
well apparently...
there are a lot of words
that do use the sz'cz...
enough... to deviate from
the Latin bollocking represented via
шч = щ....

that's perfectly logical...
i'm done with "perfectly logical"
if it exists outside of the realm of
orthography...

szczypta soli - pinch of salt...
in russian...
щ... that's a bit of a "question"...
yes, yes it is complicated...

szczery / szczera (he's honest /
she's honest)...
szczerość (honesty)...

no it's not... you german fickle-wit!
you forget the ы!

ah! well then... щыптa....
**** me... disorientating...
they could do all that with greek and glagolitic...
but they still had to keep...
latin: roman: holy roman empire: GERMAN...
lowercase lettering...
akin to a... e... c doesn't count...
since that's a greek cedilla "missing"...
ç... or... sigma... ς -
otherwise known in english as that S
after the apostrophe...
when something is called being:
the possessive article...
a (indefinite) the (definite) - some -ism to mind?!
no... but 's is... a bit like the SS...
in greek...
all in lower case: stephen's and...
στεφηνς...
σtephenς: that very much desired: ha!
ridiculous gag... the "much desired"
alternative to an apostrophe S ('s)...

it's Stephen's! it's Stephen's!
it's Sylvester's!
three articles in english:
the indefinite article (a)...
the definite article (the)...
and the possessive article ('s) - apostrophe S...
eS eS!

russian accents...
ъ, ы, ь...

but i only know of one "hard sign" example...
and that disqualifies the J ever needing a lower-case
"dot"... ȷ... namely... зъ: ż... alternatively
also: rz... and ж...
żuk! beetle! somehow the caron makes it...

szczyt! zenith!
щыт!

- and since i'm no longer writing:
i'd be writing if i were monolingual...
or... if i was animated by
the sort of Knausgardian bilingualism
of chop of swede: marker norgie...
but... i'm painting...

i forgot how to write when i could
see "synonyms" of sounds...
entombed in two different phonetic
encodings, namely elevated latin
and "pan-greek": cyrillic...

the variations between:

й and ы...
i.e. via е - "ye"
ё - "yo" (there's an umlaut in russian?!)
"у" - yew and you...
the gamma subscript...
ю - "yu"...
and... я - "ya"...

with regards to this rubric...
i am in the middle...
i can see a distinction between
a "y" (whine why and no I)...
hardly a jotted anecdote...
and yes... the closest the russians
ever come to Cracow is with ы
to a western slavic y...
ask me: toй - ask me: toȷ...
who needs a dot above the J
in the lower-case... if...
if... there's no absolute need for it to
be there: unlike some greenwich mean time
focus?
it ȷust so happens that...
the better clasp of the equator is
married to Greenwich: London...

dr. who time lords:
bellybuttons of the world: the english are...
again: i have to remind myself...
ı am not wrıtıng... ı am... paıntıng...

1(one), l(el)... I and ı(ıota)...
i guess an apostrophe would suffice...
ıf it's not an "ı"...
ı'ota... ı: oath...
sure as fıgurative "****" it's not...

ı must wrıte some more examples
in russıan...
to get me off me mark into
some "wax lyrıcal"...
ıslander mentalıty of the hen'glısch...

see how "the dot" can appear...
and disappear, as one see fıt?
and ıt makes: no little bıt of...
"dıfference"?!

i need to sleep on thıs "exercise"...
dot-pop-up...
dot-fold
dot-pop-up...
dot-fold...

w­­ıll eyes gets it?
hardly...

the rest of these cosmopolitan *******
focused on gwaffiti awt...
which is welsh for: GRA GRA...
when was the last time you heard
an englishman trill an R?
ı can't remember...
give me a night to soak up the pickling
juıces... i can't remember the last time
i heard an homest trIll eıther!
pauper me...

it's probably because of the welsh:
GWA GWA! gwadleıth cowonew...
or coroner row row row a rombat into a rue:
or a woo...
rhyme: contorts...
shapes and disappearing: oopses...
a whole multıtude of 'em...
come like the tıde...
leave... lıke a tilde... quası N:
it's a... H is a zeus...
and J is a Ha Ha Ha wrap-up rap of
laughter: in spanısh: of course...

i don't wrıte... ı paint...

impromptu interludes, quickened:
i'm a marriage of two continents...
and one island...
east of moscow...
asia... west of warsaw and...
these gloomy island pits of
idiosyncracy... never quiet the icelandic
answer to norway...
or greenland's answer to denmark...
but an island... nonetheless...

- to hell witth cascading linear cascades
of narrative: i'm blind to the optics
of "the narrative" in the paragraph
format...

i will look back east...
i will look at the russian script...
i will look at it as a time in ******
history equivalent to:
why didn't you just think of it as Greek?
but "my people" didn't...
and i'm not exactly a "why / didn't"...
i'm part of the excavation machinery...
i come with what was served...
i will leave without
leverage...

and here is the russian icon translated
from the Babel...
the following are orthodox letters
shared by one and all
to the western lands...

а б в г д e з и й
к л м н o п р c т
у ф

a b v g d e z i j
k l m n o p r s t u
f

now we leave: łen łill that be?
we should all somehow know...
to łork out a When a Where
(notably with the "h" being but a surd)...

mother how should i further this?
herbata
hasło (ha-s-woe)
hołd (**-**-w'd)

to no other: otherwise only in scotland:
the loch of tipsy work...
albeit: orthographic distinction...
хęć - a whim a desire...
a loch is no: cheat of a lake...
latching onto the otherwise boredom caron
exposed...

дух (ghost) with a душa (soul)...

else there's c dissociated from the s...
and more so with a kappa kaput...
the drumstick slick on a wet snare of: tss...
ц - almost...
then morphing into a ць -
yet in my version: no so silent...
ćma: moth...
цmokaць / cmokać: to click with the tongue...
to kiss smackingly -
to ingest food via a smoczek...
a smoчek - a smoček... the baby soother...

this is my third day having to return to
this canvas...

first thing's first:
palatization (palatißation)
is not... a name of german crusader song:
palästinalied...

this is one of the main reasons why
i can't imagine myself as being able:
to write a novel -
i can't bear this birth of words into
this pseudo-Kandinsky -
it would be much easier with painting
something for a year -
than writing for a year -
the same thing, over and over again...

if i write a "poem" or, rather, a poo'em...
i expect the concept of
ensō: a circle has to be drawn with
a single uninhibited stroke...
when the body is set free and the body
merely complies...

comparison... if one were to draw
a most pristine ensō...
one would never achieve an ouroboros
depiction... it's quiet impossible
to use one volume of ink
attached to a stroke to complete
a circle... let alone a depiction
of an ouroboros...
what starts off as concrete soon...
fades away... thins out...
until there is so little ink left
on the brush that individual hairs
of the brush start appearing...

a pristine depiction of life...
but never the hardline ouroboros
depiction: this cerberus of reincarnation:
i never would have believed in it -
given that: there would have to be
a limited number of souls...
the thought that i might be introspective
enough as to be one of these: "elites"...
and the rest... were "n.p.c." drones...
zombie-esque drifters...
that had no psychological infrastructure
to have memory and rubric of learning
bound to them to be: invested in?

i am still going to write this Kandinsky...
one way or another...
but i can say only that:
i can imagine myself returning
to a painting - and painting it for a year...
but a book?
if a poem can't be written in one sitting...
it's not a poem...
this is not a poem: this is a novel
equivalent...
the best to my ability: which is none...

all i will ever manage with this
is a pedantic scrutiny of russian orthography,
how i don't follow metaphysical arguments
of the germans, the english or the french,
because i don't dream that often,
and when i do dream?
i dream up nonsense...
last time i dreamed that a hiena was
biting at my arm like a corn-cob...
but it wasn't biting to draw blood...
it was biting and cackling in order
to tattoo me... it bit into my arm and detailed
indentations akin to braille...
a pianola roll...

and that's the only details of the dream
i can remember...
perhaps i strained memory...
perhaps people who dream...
are fond of forgetting...
perhaps i don't dream because i can
remember being 4...
a shadow (my maternal great-grandfather)...
a large piano, a small piano...
he worked a retirement as a security guard
in a kindergarten...
i once spent an afternoon with him...
i have seen pictures of him...
but i don't remember the face in the photographs...
he sat me before a bonsai piano
while he sat at the large piano...
and i guess: we were going to be the new
Chopins or something...
he's still a shadow... a grey form...
perhaps a extract of memory that reaches
back 29 years is the reason why i don't
dream... then again...

what if i were to have recurrent dreams?
i've heard people have recurrent dreams...
i just have details of dreams...
i'm not complaining but...
it has become exhausting to simply sleep sometimes...
to replay that lullaby of the void...
yes: yes... i will return to russian orthography:
give me a moment!

well, on my "haitus" i had to look beyond
"conventionality"...
there was a period where i found
the glagolitic script - i said to myself:
there must be an equivalent alphabet to match
the runes...

there must have been a way to encode
without the romans and greeks...
after all... there is the St. Cyrill alphabet
and that of Methodus...
how many ethnic groups are there
on this old, yawning continent -
minor point: old age is not plagued by
yawning - only youth yawns...
old age is cured of yawning -
hanging over them the yawning death...
when father - when father - will this old
ponce come into my *****?

glagolitic and cyrillic?
well Ⰱ Б...
Ⱂ and P... which is not exactly lent-greek...
i guess it's only "wise"
to go back into the modern scribbles...

there are so many branches
to be plucked off a pine
to reserve yourself with ending up
to owning a pike...
so what would it help me:
if i had to reverse and ezra pound
my way forward...
bubble bulging roma notations?
i see: when that chisel in marble
V is not supposed to be a U...

EVROPA... etc.

i need to bring to the fore my own
distinctions...
spread: universally within the confines
of the people that speak it:
i even had to made balkan additions...
like the caron S and caron C...
to hide the english gimmick
of SHarp and CHeat...
evidently we use the Z to replace
the H when stressing our "demands"...
Šarp and Čeat...

so back into russian?
i almost forgot that i said...
their orthography is not worth the dog's
bollocking of a lick...

i was wrong, obviously...
but even the russians are supposed
to be allowed their idiosyncracy -
their orthographic pedantry...
russian orthographic pedantry?
ah...

when е met э...
was also the time when э didn't meet з...
this is pedantic...
another russian pedantic "detail"...
how many Y's or J's do you need...
to detail: the elongated-iota?
before... "****" becomes confusing...
within the confines of gamma...

i'm pretty sure the russians have
fixated their attention on the Y/J "debate"
working from their central premise of
the english AYE... I... the pronoun bunker...
der deutsche affirmative: ja!
yah in the hebrew respective for: wisdom...

let's see... i'm pretty sure the russians
have all the vowels bow to this mecca
of Moscow, cite me: and please reiterate...
that i use J and Y interchangeably...
i don't imply: to jot - to "dz"ot...
or Joseph in Ypres...

otherwise: a yeti climbing a yew shouting: yes!
it's not exactly jargon -
but... a prefix y- in english...
is not a suffix -y in english...
which just... "out of the blue"...
demands to be associated with the iota
of: ply... and yet: it's no i.e. e'et...
it's neither ate or the fwench and (et)...
it's a yeti... but not a jetty!

never mind... back into the fussy russian...
i'm pretty sure you will find all
of the pentagram (vowels) bowing before
the altar of pseudo-gamma:

                                     ю (yu)
                                    /
(details in) й ------ я (ya) -- ы (oh look, solo!)
   the above"rant")  |
                                  у (which is a u)
                                /   \
                     e (ye)       ё (yo)

almost... but i'm far from learning russian...
i find these orthographic details...
coexisting...

зъ = ж = ż = rz = ř / ž...

eastern, mother slavic...
beginning with a western slavic translation
"innovation"...
central / western slavic...
balkan slavic...
oh we are such famous clarinet players!
because what happens
when the caron is sliced into two...
and an acute ****** pops out?!

hence the зъ beginning...
yes... it's not "silent"... it's simply not
palatalißed... the tongue doesn't tip-off
the palette... the sound escapes via
the gritting of teeth...
with it: the tongue can rattle and a trill
R is heard...

зъ (ż) contra зь (ź) -
życzenia - well wishes| źródło - source...
now to only write these words
in russia - without knowing the russian
noun-denotations...
for orthographic purposes...

жыченя... or is it... жычениa?
зьруд... problem... can't find the english
W in russian... or the ****** Ł...
there's the english V... the ****** W...
but russian doesn't translate (Вв)
so vell into wery: not so weary but
nonetheless very not so, so...

my problem is not about that though...
this poem this poo'em this:
a pigeon drops a zeppelin-****
on your top-hat implies good luck...
no 13's or black cats crossing your path either...
i could most honestly spend
100 years of each of the 100 individuals
bound to the salt mines in the vicinity
of Beijing... and i would still find myself...
without tears...
because this is the most inexhaustible
crux: it's really bugging me foundation stone...

i won't even mind the modern greeks
at this point... they do use diacritical markers
too... but over-do it... as if compensating
or trying to compete on level par
with their metaphysical dittos...

чaхa: czacha... almost slang term for:
czaszka... чaкшa...
and this is by no means "smart"...
i can't solve crosswords puzzles...
well i can: but i need to find myself
in the company of my grandmother...
in the morning...
i would have had to drooled over some novel
from 7am until she gets out of bed
come 9am... we'd drink coffee and i'd
smoke cigarettes...
and it would be a month prior to christmas
or easter, or the interlude...
and... i'd be freed from writing or
reading anything in english...
either me looking at diacritical distinctions
in the realm of orthography between:
russian, ******, balkan...
or... me never learning french,
or attempting to: ever, again!

******* suffix-eaters...
dyslexics in reverse...
say one thing: write another thing...
this is probably born from my frustration
at being unable to learn french...
perhaps after having acquired english
i was given german to learn...
but no... first hurdle... french...
flop!
now it's a diet of no crosswords...
some sudoku from time to time...
and my new hobby after having found
"too many" googlewhacks...

so there's nothing smart about this:
this is in no way useful to anyone -
being the sort of person
to "mind" whenever one's being asked
to spell their surname...
it's hardly that difficult but...

would i go for the echo sierra charlie
hotel lima echo romeo tango...
or go out full greek with it?
perhaps the greek...
since that would solve the problem
i've had for a while,
concerning the eta / epsilon "debate"...

how does a greek laugh -
what is the crux letter via which
a greek laughs?
you see a H shape on the horizon...
but you... hear the noun: eta...
you later see the name eta...
but that's eta: without an apostrophe...
the apostrophe 'eta being the "surd" H...

in greek then...
epsilon sigma... **** it... there's no "sch"
of a german worth in greek...
let's cut it out:
epsilon lambda epsilon rho tau...

otherwise in russian...
once more:

ś(lub) - wedding - сь(люб)
"soft" sign - ' - apostrophe -
or ACUTE elsewhere...
why not сьлуб?
i don't know... it's not like сь is even
minded in russian...

ah! my favorite!
goń! gonitwa: a race -
the verb impetus: race! chase after!
гoнь!

since ы is the "odd" one out between
the application of "ь" and
and "ъ"...
come to think of it...
ы gave birth to: ю (yu), я (ya),
у (u), й ("y"), и ("e")...
i... i.e. and... in ******...
akin to those languages that use e...
to also imply and...
ё (yo)... how did i miss the umlaut
infiltrating the russian 'bet...
i blame catherine the great!
and... е (ye)...
is that the pentragram?
u, a, e, i, o... yes! we have it!

i truly had better days when sudoku was
the better puzzle to fill a day with...
not this... from glagolitic, to greek,
to roman, to post-roman to russian
and back into...

if we are all "supposedly" literate...
begs the question why: why oh why the emoji...
the *******-wanking hieroglyphics...
the :) and what not...
i guess to better escape this sort of
headaches... minor chances of everyone
becoming a bilingual:
but what's there to brag about
being bilingual!
i guess the polyglots do not have such
headaches of detail...
they just... bypass these rules and regulations...

to better guide me:
if i managed to sift through james joyce's
finnegans wake... and didn't find any
diacritical markers in it?
can't i compensate?
i'm compensating right now!
if the 2010s as a decade was a decade
filled with... sisyphus titans akin
to kant, hiedegger, kierkegaard,
knausga(a)rd, joyce...
beckett - yes...
again that hollowed "y" distinction!
it's not a sisi: yes yes problem...
hardly me being ***** either...
e'ver... i'ver...
ain't that a *****...

clarity of diction... the best motto there is...
crab-bucket-intellectualism:
alternatively the focus away from
any ontological stressors of "example" -
ontological and its variant of
a priori:
perhaps, given that the ontological
is an a priori argument...
here's my crossword puzzle -
ref. thesaurus rex...

and by no means... at all...
etymology is the better variant of any known
history...
when this bundle of words:
that an ontological dialectic can be achieved:
that ontology can be given within
as much as an a priori: bigot! focus...
with as much as an a posteriori:
wizened unicorn quid pro quo tanz!

hamsterwheel loopholes or:
crab-bucket intellectualism...

now: i really could have put these words
to better use... to make them linear...
less cryptic... but how can i?
i'm solving a crossword puzzle in reverse!
i don't expect the easily scared moths
to entertain this fire...

i expect midgets to be dancing...
before my eyes...
whenever i listen to
faun's tanz mit mir
or in extremo's rotes haar...
when the bagpipes and the flutes
kick in...

- since if i were to write a coherent sentence:
succumb to a linear narrative...
i'd people reading this to be also found:
easily talking about it...
perhaps i don't enjoy freedom of speech
as much as i enjoy the freedom to think...
perhaps i haven't written anything
worth speaking about, regurgitating,
making vogue, working for some intellectual
period-piece of "vogue"...
perhaps this is a shared problem,
hidden in a cipher...
of: how i can't heave this tool...
this tapeworm of existence,
this medium of god...
to later trash it, to have nothing better
to do with it other than play-games...
worded games... crossword puzzles...
perhaps i need a crossword puzzle to imply:
neighbour's share some words...
together... but then write them differently...
perhaps i require a crossword puzzle...
to read into some russian...
on the praxis base of english...
flying past Warsaw toward the itch
of the edge of Asia...
breathe the air - the heart of the continent...

perhaps i would have never managed
to escape this world if i ingested
mind-benders of the h'american 1960s
revolutionary schematics of the:
new-humanists... crash course in literature:
only one magic mushroom trip away!

фoрк ин дэ рoaд (fork in the road)

ИN...

some shared words, of etymological
curiosity...

(fork) вилка - wilka -
polish? wilka? that which belongs to
a wolf... widelec...
видэлэц...

(knife) нож - nóż -
well... orthography comes into play...
while people can have their...
ahem... in-the-meantime metaphysical
playground...
the ground, the word,
the geology is already here...
written alternatively?
нузъ...

i take a different stance to the common day
****** back east...
when russia starts slagging you off...
you put on a Boris Yeltsin mask on
and dance the drunk panda dance...

(spoon) ложка - łyżka -
in polish? ah those russians... ло ло...
лож: lorz...
lo lo and behold the translated
quasi-russian into the borders of europe...
ł.w.(ызъка)...

black and white (черный и белый):

czarny i biały: rho-si-ye!
char-nee-ye! bel'ye)...

perhaps the timing is a bit off:
the proper wording would be:

czarno na białym -
not: in black and white...
чaрнo на биa-wh-ым...

knocked-out to be honest...
the russians use ый like that?
YJ? oh right! i use it too!
in the prompt:

tyj! tyj ty grubasie!
hmm... -asie...
it would do me a lot of good...
if that iota didn't have a decapitated
head of a halo hovering above it...
why? so i could introduce the acute
slant over the S and surd it...
i.e. -aśιe...

тый! ты груб... exactly...
grub-               -aсьие
тый! ты грубaсьие!
to grow fat: тый!
              "problem": -aśιe vs. -aсьие...
well... it's there: сь...
but it also isn't there: и...

but it isn't: but it also isn't...
i just managed to find out that...
in warsaw (if i lived in warsaw)...
we have that conjunction: -ый-
however rare it is: it is there...

any more delegations from Moscow?
tyj! tyj ty grubasie!  
and i will write these last few words
and know why i don't really feel like
solving crosswords puzzles...
or doing those i.q. schematic tests...

**** it... the welsh should know and help me
out... concerning?
how it's YN and not IN...
how it's Y and not I when referring to THE gwyll:
dusk...
y gwyll o hywels: the dusk of powells...
only the welsh would know my "pain"...
yn y gwyll o y hywels:
in the dusk of the powells...

taking a step back - a step back...
yes yes, apologies... if my punctuation...
is too much of a ******* arithmetic!
too bad!

p.s. and yes... don't leave anything lying
around in the drafts or as private...
chances are... with a 2 day delay...
this will never be fed into the LATEST feed.

Everything's a ******* square.
My journal.
The rich kid crackers.
My pillows, safe as they are.
Some are seam-stretched,
manipulated by a team of God and tired hands
a more desirable something,
thrown away just the same.
My parents.
My head.
The entire visionary sidewalk-gray sky,
as down is up for most, my neck associated with.
It wraps itself a ballooned cube, square faces
to be pinned over themselves by shapely oceans and unwitting gulls.
******* annoying gulls.
I fed one a firework once
the kind you throw at your sister and it pops on her
and she cries, illogical from her eye sockets in
steeped in the terror of the 9/11 on her swimsuit.
Snatched, exploded
Feathery tears rained,
a little less illogical.
I'm vegetarian now.
No relation.

I have fallen into the snare of love; whether or not I wish it, I must love; and strugglingly, whether or not my heart desires to taste it, I have to go through it. I have tried, certainly, with beads of weird sweat, to crawl along its muddy channel; a muddy channel adorned only with tears and grievousness, but still I have failed to pass it. I have failed to pass my heart onto it, my poor little heart; and relieve it with comfort love might just ever have.

How I once desired to call thee, hath now ceremoniously gone; my stomach flips and churns itself like a whirling streak of poor butter being invaded by endless chains of ***** charms. My heart is plain, bleak, and can only whisper to me the pain it feels; my heart has beats still, but neither air nor breath. Its air has been radiantly tossed away; and superseded by a chance of madness it had always averted--at least before the very incident took place. It is now, thus, pale and has no shimmer nor glitter on its surface; its tale is as bare as a thin wintry raspberry branch might be. Ah, Immortal, my Friday morning; my Saturday evening; my Sunday afternoon. Immortal; with his faded grey hat strolling comfortably alongside a smiling me; our love was growing mutually on a warm Saturday morning. I told thereof, some minuscule bits of anecdote-like poetry; and his laugh afterwards warmed up all the butterflies that had hitherto laid down lazily around the grounds on their coloured stomachs. Immortal with his arduous bag hoisted onto his sturdy shoulders; and greeted me softly, with a rough morning voice; as he padded down the stairs--smelling like honey and trees and a flying bumblebee. Immortal with his love settling onto his voice; his shaky lips as he uttered a verse he remembered from a novel he had (unsuccessfully) tried to read. Immortal with his reddish lips, and innocent brownish glances--as he walked down the stairs. Immortal with my love encircling every swing of his steps; Immortal with my little heart within him. Immortal my dearest darling; his treasures were always brown--at least twice a week, and the smell of his perfumed blossom-like shampoo clinging all too gently onto the way down his white neck, and waist.

Immortal in his black garments in last year's cold weather; and with a witty smile so meaningful that he was once like a candle to my darkened heart. Immortal and his bored face that always entertained my heart; and his anxiety about immaculate workloads that made everything but funnier than they already were. Ah, Immortal, Immortal, Immortal; my very own Immortal. Though thou might be Immortal no more, in thy mind; thou really art still my Immortal in every sense; and I can still but feel thy presence even from a very far distance. Immortal, thou art my blood; my jugular veins, and the definition of my very heartbeat! Immortal, how I am a fool to have confessed this; thou might remember me no more; but for thou knoweth--thou art my prince still, of whom I feel the humblest streak of pride; and for whom I shall still wipe my showering tears. Ah, Immortal! One day I had just emerged from my room with a jug of warm water, and a flavour of strange poetry in my literary mind; and my Immortal greeted me with a stamp of melancholy smile as he always does when he retreats from work. He looked tired but not submissive; he had a rain of spirit still--for the remaining ingress and egress of the raucous Monday evening. I was, indeed, explosively exhausted from my head all the way to my feet--and a lurid chat with him slowly melted my stern visage and restored its gleams. Ah, Immortal; my lover, my shiny petal; the missing wing of my eastern soul; my European moon. He is from Sofia; as how its chaotic--yet elaborative auras always danced around his face. The charms of Sofia were even better scented in his breath; he was always prophetic about the skies and the red-skinned suns of the summer. He thoughtfully suggested that I write of 'em; he breathed his relief and exhaustion only into my hands, how he trusted me and depended himself on me like a selfish little lad! On other occasions laughed with a pair of red cheeks--is aromatic and handsome my lover, indeed he is! My poor, poor lover; for the world hath now defined its triumph over him; and thus its terrifically evil proses his very regions. Ah, my darling, if only still-I could save, save, and save thee! Ah, 'em--doth thou, by any chance, hold any remembrance of 'em still? Our blessed, blessed offspring--and they but shall be nurtured and overjoyed and delightfully pampered, as the very special fruits of our love. The love that both of our souls enjoy; the love that our sides agree on. Your fatherliness is in our son; and just as how I am, our daughter shall enlighten our home with her poems; ah, dear, dear little giggles t'at would be ours, and verily ours only! Ah, Immortal, if only thou but knew--how panoramic my wifely love would be!

Immortal, my darling; my purplish sun; my picturesque sky; my starlet dream. Even the oceans across our splendid earth are not vacant, and innocent, as thy eyes; thy words are like a calming river whose odour once shrieked gently onto my ears. Every breath thou maketh is my poem; and thus in every single poem, or verse I write--there dwells a vast bulk of thy charms. Thou art alive still--in my lungs; in my humorous soul; thou art the eve to my nights; the leaf to my mornings. Even the only leaf that shall stay firm when autumn finally arrives. But unfortunately shall it arrives with dire terms; for shall it have revenge--due to its savagely desperate needs for reclaiming its once lost freedom. Ah, its freedom, that was consumed away by the compounded fires of the summer. Then, still there shall be no-one to replace thee, even about the adequate hills and valleys outside; I could find thee not this jubilant afternoon. Oh, how unceremonious! And how malicious my love is, for thee! And our song is, for thou knoweth, resembles the one echoing in yon marvelous Raphaelite painting; my hair sings of your love; just as my poetry speaks of thy bounteousness. Thou art not Him; but still--thou art more bountiful to my heart, than to all our frail counterparts may seem!

And by this I am still your little girl; I shall play with my bike and congratulate thee on crafting off the last bits of my poetry. Like in a nursery once, though I doth remember it thoroughly not; I played with my dolls and later created a bride and groom out of them; I shall perhaps play with them again and make the remembrance of our now astray marriage, this time, their illusionary sanctuary. Ah, Immortal, this love might be virtual--and thus not by any chance effectual; but do remember, in thy severed heart, that it was once real; and that it was, long ago, deeply heartfelt and actual. Immortal, the king of my moon; the very last spark of my charms, I hope thou wilt know one day--how I selflessly loved--and love thee still, purely and artistically, just as how I loveth His other creations and my beautiful poetry; and that I shall still supplicate that you be the first, and last mate in my arms-- for my love is sacred, humid, and eternal; and I want thee thus, to be my only immortal.

I love thee; and thee only, querida. Obicham te, obicham te, obicham te.

Friend Rockstar,
            Listen, yield to a robust think-tank,
            earlobes skidding against wheat and grain.
Terrible story, yes, what happened to that little girl.
Sterile teddy nightgowns weeping in the squad car windows.
Teacher – Teacher, do you harken my yodels for grace?
            I’ve never been maternal.
            Put the game on. Abortion.
            That’s what I’m about.
            Grab a bra. Sling some weight.
            That’s what I’m about.
Some housefly wings on a weathered corn cob.
Some downhome, homegrown twang for those fancy, fussy britches.
            Muddy workboots. Sweat-soaked collars.
            That’s what I’m about.
Him done made me read, sir.
What sacraments did we write today?
            I can still remember my first broken bone.
            I can still remember my first broken *****.
                        That could be what this is all about.
Mary, Mary, you can be contrite,
            so knife – so critter – so laze – so stalked.
    Who fertilized your seeds? Who reared your sprouts?
            Cockle shells and silver bells, honey,
            can’t grow up
            to be pretty little maids all in a row.
Sterile teddy nightgowns – green bells in gaseous gardens.
Friend Rockstar, you may have to sleep.
This restless harbor is a shivering anecdote spilled from a belly,
            a vast, deep cavern with love notes written in milk.
Your fried, stern smile was a flaking fingernail adjacent to the crack in the flowerpot.
Some garden, I say.

given the study of benzene, you get the inner electron dynamic, which later expanded into a non-conformity with electron orbits of atoms, benzene gave us the clue as to how electrons behaved, nothing on the atomic scale would ever be given planetary scales of orbiting a nucleus, benzene encapsulating a ring of electrons, gave way to an atomic cloud of electrons, meaning that beside the Higg's Boson, what's more important is not finding the mass-universal, but gravity on an atomic scale, not the sort of Newtonian gravity of Voltaire's anecdote-metaphor... unlike philosophers who with a framework of methodology use a constricted vocabulary, i'm bashing a single word... metaphor... which evolved into benzene, and subsequently into benzene attachments, in the respective ortho- para- and meta- positioning... hence metaphor revised with unfashionable variations of orthophor and paraphor... i don't have the time and space (patience) to invent meanings for these yet-to-exist words, but they're there... i want to understand gravity on an atomic scale, another form of gravity must exist here, not the gravity of apples, trees and autumn harvests for cider... i mean quantum gravity, it must... and this wouldn't be a universal gravity as that of apples falling from trees at g = 9.80665 m/s2, i'm guessing it would have to be cubic, i.e. metres per cubic second... also known as an existential stasis - on the atomic level, where the eyes are futile another form of gravity has to exist, a lot of will have to do with the relativity dip / parabola where time and space create space-time - but as the study of benzene showed in comparison with the atom: electrons do not have orbits, they're like clouds of people and morality, the most famous trick of them all: now you see me... now you don't... the study of benzene taught us that electrons behave in a cloudy formation and not in a Simpsons' logo of a nuclear factory... if i had the money and the equipment i'd be looking for atomic gravity / glue, given the already stated gravity of bigger things... fair enough to Higgs for proposing a constant of mass universal in all things... i want to differentiate the gravity of large things from the gravity of small things... given the proton + essence and the electron - essence, there's still the neutron ÷: the dividing / non-differential equator of debate, where both sparring partners of those favouring + and those favouring - are given dot-revisions as starting platforms, because, after all, magnets do not exist on an atomic scale, and saying that protons are north and electrons are south will not explain very much... in neutral territory we will debate the point of the second form of gravity, without the idea of magnets and the over-simplification of plus and minus on the atomic scale behaving like due opposites; another explanation of gravity must exist on the atomic level, given the ridiculous notion of Copernican north and Copernican south or east or west, i.e. on the atomic scale we're talking spiders in a spider-web and flies caught in it; the notion of Copernican north is funny given the preservation of nautical language.*

for every rational secular noun,
there's an irrational religious metaphor:
a compound noun-verb sort of speak,
a noun that does irrational things
with our minds when the tongue is applied,
(metaphors are complex grammatical
vectors, nouns are simple grammatical
vectors, so to avoid confusion):
for every rational secular noun,
there's an irrational religious metaphor.

Endlessly getting better seems a bit too tiring sometimes.
You can only look at the world through blurry eyes for so long,
until you start to believe in the blurred carcass of the familiar.
It resembles the thoughts pooling out from the shattered glass,
floating up from behind my eyes
and flows through the room from a dark hole, yet to be explored.
Into the cavern, into the waves.
Into the seams, pulled far by a stretched mind and starry skies.
Pulled wide when we broke up last night.
This morning was strange.
I found hospitality in The Upsides, ironic comfort in the past before the past.
You could never understand, and maybe it was better that way.
But I ******* felt you inside me.
No more, active heart between my bones.
Be calm. Be aware.
Still here, and forever observing the real.

Lovely thoughts are shackles.
They invoke what even the microscope
omits from the commentary
Well-prepared cups of tea on Sunday afternoons
The dragging of fountain pens retracing ornate loops.

Each a relief from the threat of whatever crisis interred
by the quiet of a room
The practical, the indulgent, without progression.

The contemporary pastoral
is to be found
Amongst old boxes
of  boy's adventure paperbacks
and girl's glitterworn and broken hairbrushes
Shooting the mind off to tragedies
whirring still away at even further distances.

Memories, like sentiments
when copacetic
Provoking always the invasive link
the dependent, the pathetic.

A picture of a doomed ship in storm
Hung on the red carpeted wall of a restaurant

A jar of olives
left untouched
for decorative purposes
in the old grain store
which now serves unfiltered coffee
and plays loud but pleasing music
'til 6 p.m.

What I have spoken of are McGuffins.
The mind distracts.
Yes, the mind encounters,
we discover, we make lists.
But if you can remember
minutiae, try then to remember
History is the repetition of revelations.
The reel does not cut off.

In short,
don't congratulate
Yourself about life
until you've at least seen the nursing home.

It was just like Christmas,
A sunny star - far in the corner of the sky
Hiding as a small child, curled in a ball all tucked up and warm.
The hills were decorated with evergreen eyelashes
and the pounding red screen of eyelids.

It was just like a schoolgirl's daydream
to fling open the car door and grasp your sunny face like the jaws of life,
- you know I'd been growing out my nails ? -  
to feel your porcelain skin beating - to rub the delicate china scenes
under my fingertips, and feel the silk robes of time gone by.
Some things are breakable.
I didn't know you were one.

I was young when I conjured you up,
when I mixed equal parts bone-running shivers,
and raised eyebrows.
I shimmied across my living room
and out of my nightgown,
like flipping a switch, I lit up your eyes.
You got me lipstick for Christmas that year.
I wrapped up tired metaphors, and said - I wish I could stay.
Sometimes I lie.

We started out as a quiet superstition, but I forgot to water our roots.
I wanted to give you goosebumps, but I forgot they leave scars,
and tiny webs married to my villainous fingertips.  
You were angry - red like your tie
And I hid as a small child growing younger through the years:
The curious case of an anemic soul hiding in the curios cabinet -
you'll have seen it in theaters.
Too bad we weren't a cactus.

there are too many tricks I know.
I didn't realize the voice in my head could talk back.
Like I said,
I was young.

Give me leave to lay my brow, ever burdened with strain and stress,
Upon your pale, pinkish breast.
You, tenderly streaked with wisps of scarlet nimbus,
Are to my heart as a blank page is to my mind; a quiet refuge, never thinking to rebuke,
To whom I do release the torment of my falsely pained soul.
Your gentle features tempt my wandering eye,
Straightening the drifting passage of my heavy feet.
As an itinerant with sudden purpose, my steps become lighter; I urge on my weary limbs.
With such alacrity I pursue your heavenly beauty: eternally sought, for it is eternally distant.
Cut off in my ethereal chase by the limiting margent of a spiteful pond,
I espy that which you, enticing, have kindly led me to.
A pale, lovely form, alone in the company of Nature’s subjects,
With whom I believe I shall spend the final hours of the expiring day,
Noticing my gaze, stands to greet me as you withdraw under night’s comforting sheet.

it's scary what people want to hear,
i feel, nothing at all, to be honest,
whenever i think of fame
i feel all famous people speaking the words:
don't become even by our standards moderates...
szlafrok: bathrobe -
              szuja: lizard-like-homeless person -
then again chattering ratty too -
does that mean: if i write i'll
get a penny for a structure where a brick is
worth just as much to the letter, the word
           or the line or the paragraph?
                  cukier: sugar...
   for every brick i'll get a penny's worth?
      writing discourages you from dreaming...
only the most adapted
                   who get encouraged by
   advertisement and who fake writing will ever get
the technicolour coat of Joseph...
         writing erodes your perspective of dreams,
it actually censors your ability to do so...
    i hear them, make novels from their body-language...
        and get an itch... nothing finicky... just
barring without baritone...
      poet's alphabet st. - barring without baritone...
antinomy of anecdote... false impression memorisation,
nothing rubric bound nothing alphabetical,
         nothing Pythagorean...
      antinomy... and there was me thinking of
antimony...                  there's no cascade of the sound
encoding of b or of a...
    there's the alphabet... and then there's
the dictionary... na na mmm, ma ma nun..
                    so cool with it, fit-bit....
      or should i claim you a toyo-bot?
           a ******* Hamleys' jack-in-the-box
     chuckles?
            either way... it's all a strategic **** -
or a macaque - or mà-cá-qé!
         herald the surgeon!
             grave a in the first syllable?
a delay... let's term yhwh as surd invocations -
           mà! (and yes, exclamation marks
are part of the necessary progress -
   unless you'd prefer anti-German anti-compound
allocation of a word to be turned into syllable mince...)
         mà! alternatively that's non-ambiguous -
what's ambiguous is the second syllable...
   mà!... cà!     màcà!        it's almost like holding-off
*******...          màcà!
      and then there's the qé!        or for optical reasons
as well as for reasons for the priestly monopoly
written as macaque - my-khaki-haka...
  (haka is a dance in rugby by the new zealanders,
   and khaki is diarrhea brown, diluted brown) -
   it's almost Spanish in a sense, huh?!
   well, because it's not exactly queue -
  or: que(h)? i.e. qweh?
well yes, it's a monkey, a tiny little bonsai
of a gorilla... cute... funny... loves tea-bags
and sugar... great company on a hot Kenyan night,
gets pestered with slingshots by the courtesan
   "bodyguards" of a tourist hanky-panky free whiskey...
  the time those kenyan entertainer girls
came up to me i sorta wished to play the
white-guy-****-history-joke...
stood my ground, went to sleep on one of the lounge
chairs one night... could have been stolen by pirates...
and i kinda wished it, but it didn't happen...
   still, the application of diacritical marks to
define syllables... the grave mark above vowels is
a bit like "holding back"...
         for some reason i first wrote mà-cá-qé...
but i realised... the avalanche only comes with
the acute marking above eh!....
        grave markings means restriction, a holding back...
and by this i mean that when the acute stress is
added, no number of optically adequate spellings
can erase it...
     in this case qé for what's encoded as -que -
   and still the four surds appear whether invited or
uninvited - softened laugh, eh? as in the asphyxiating
form of breathing, and then relaxed: ha ha ha ha!
       then again, i'm wrong,
they call them macaque: ma-ca-qac....
         so as a good revisionist does:
                grave and acute without a macron:
      má-cà-qàc - ma-cac-cac - not ma... ca-que!
   macaque!          Fawlty Towers and Mánuèl...
i know... nothing - hairspray romance,
and a horse called dragonfly...
   macaqué! olé!              
                          mácáquè -
    for the love of u - or parabola...
                 truth be told? i'll never know!
why? because no one taught us the rules of how
or when to apply such demands!
   let alone semicolons or commas...
                   macaque - barbarism sentenced to:
ma       ca              qak
                or simply my kayak...
**** me... it's still a monkey whether you like it or
not taking a **** and calling that chocy part of
its inverted intestines' toad-stool.
  let's just call it a mácàq monkey... because
the -ue suffix is just getting unbearable, like
an umbrella unfolded in one's **** -
   and applying diacritics to a suffix of pure-vowels
is beyond missing an ******, and making
rationale (the part where you miss stating an olé -
the part where rational is elongated into rationál
or the non-diacritical addition of -e)....
and then they worried why people never punctuated
correctly... maybe because people never applied
diacritical marks that they went beyond,
and didn't punctuate correctly?
                       humpty-dumpty hmm hmm:
                   eggs St. Benedict's, and a falafel Sunday!
me? trying to invoke a vocab that transcends
the ******* cool, however condescending i can be,
without trying or eating rye bread to boot,
    and then wear a balaclava calling it a Gucci neckwear,
drinking rather than throwing Molotovs.

Shove it in the box
So I can catch a glimpse
Of the soldiers walking home
Going single file
All the way home

Scribble it out
It’s not good enough yet
Hold tight

From the earth and the sea
Pour it on me
So versatile
Your smile

The smallest shell
The toughest to crack
It draws near
The last one born
Coming home
Coming home
What a good story, now close the lid