Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Cedric McClester Nov 2015
By:Cedric McClester

They smoke, they drink
And fornicate
Then claim a religion
That they must hate
While trying to form
A new caliphate
Made up of gullible people
Led by an apostate

He’s studied Qu’ran
And got a degree
But routinely misleads
Muslim wannabes
By proselytizing
He makes ‘em agree
With his twisted logic
On how things should be

At the risk of redundancy
Let me restate
What I’ve said before
He’s an apostate
With his own religion
That’s comprised of hate
And most of the uumah
Does not relate

Some call him Sheikh
Other imam
But I call him apostate
Cuz I don't give a ****
Despite all his followers
Who’ve been programmed
Into believing his dogma
See they've just been scammed







Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2015.  All rights reserved.
This poem is dedicated to the devil's helper Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi,  the wannabe calipha.
Still must I hear?—shall hoarse FITZGERALD bawl
His creaking couplets in a tavern hall,
And I not sing, lest, haply, Scotch Reviews
Should dub me scribbler, and denounce my Muse?
Prepare for rhyme—I’ll publish, right or wrong:
Fools are my theme, let Satire be my song.

  Oh! Nature’s noblest gift—my grey goose-quill!
Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will,
Torn from thy parent bird to form a pen,
That mighty instrument of little men!
The pen! foredoomed to aid the mental throes
Of brains that labour, big with Verse or Prose;
Though Nymphs forsake, and Critics may deride,
The Lover’s solace, and the Author’s pride.
What Wits! what Poets dost thou daily raise!
How frequent is thy use, how small thy praise!
Condemned at length to be forgotten quite,
With all the pages which ’twas thine to write.
But thou, at least, mine own especial pen!
Once laid aside, but now assumed again,
Our task complete, like Hamet’s shall be free;
Though spurned by others, yet beloved by me:
Then let us soar to-day; no common theme,
No Eastern vision, no distempered dream
Inspires—our path, though full of thorns, is plain;
Smooth be the verse, and easy be the strain.

  When Vice triumphant holds her sov’reign sway,
Obey’d by all who nought beside obey;
When Folly, frequent harbinger of crime,
Bedecks her cap with bells of every Clime;
When knaves and fools combined o’er all prevail,
And weigh their Justice in a Golden Scale;
E’en then the boldest start from public sneers,
Afraid of Shame, unknown to other fears,
More darkly sin, by Satire kept in awe,
And shrink from Ridicule, though not from Law.

  Such is the force of Wit! I but not belong
To me the arrows of satiric song;
The royal vices of our age demand
A keener weapon, and a mightier hand.
Still there are follies, e’en for me to chase,
And yield at least amusement in the race:
Laugh when I laugh, I seek no other fame,
The cry is up, and scribblers are my game:
Speed, Pegasus!—ye strains of great and small,
Ode! Epic! Elegy!—have at you all!
I, too, can scrawl, and once upon a time
I poured along the town a flood of rhyme,
A schoolboy freak, unworthy praise or blame;
I printed—older children do the same.
’Tis pleasant, sure, to see one’s name in print;
A Book’s a Book, altho’ there’s nothing in’t.
Not that a Title’s sounding charm can save
Or scrawl or scribbler from an equal grave:
This LAMB must own, since his patrician name
Failed to preserve the spurious Farce from shame.
No matter, GEORGE continues still to write,
Tho’ now the name is veiled from public sight.
Moved by the great example, I pursue
The self-same road, but make my own review:
Not seek great JEFFREY’S, yet like him will be
Self-constituted Judge of Poesy.

  A man must serve his time to every trade
Save Censure—Critics all are ready made.
Take hackneyed jokes from MILLER, got by rote,
With just enough of learning to misquote;
A man well skilled to find, or forge a fault;
A turn for punning—call it Attic salt;
To JEFFREY go, be silent and discreet,
His pay is just ten sterling pounds per sheet:
Fear not to lie,’twill seem a sharper hit;
Shrink not from blasphemy, ’twill pass for wit;
Care not for feeling—pass your proper jest,
And stand a Critic, hated yet caress’d.

And shall we own such judgment? no—as soon
Seek roses in December—ice in June;
Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff,
Believe a woman or an epitaph,
Or any other thing that’s false, before
You trust in Critics, who themselves are sore;
Or yield one single thought to be misled
By JEFFREY’S heart, or LAMB’S Boeotian head.
To these young tyrants, by themselves misplaced,
Combined usurpers on the Throne of Taste;
To these, when Authors bend in humble awe,
And hail their voice as Truth, their word as Law;
While these are Censors, ’twould be sin to spare;
While such are Critics, why should I forbear?
But yet, so near all modern worthies run,
’Tis doubtful whom to seek, or whom to shun;
Nor know we when to spare, or where to strike,
Our Bards and Censors are so much alike.
Then should you ask me, why I venture o’er
The path which POPE and GIFFORD trod before;
If not yet sickened, you can still proceed;
Go on; my rhyme will tell you as you read.
“But hold!” exclaims a friend,—”here’s some neglect:
This—that—and t’other line seem incorrect.”
What then? the self-same blunder Pope has got,
And careless Dryden—”Aye, but Pye has not:”—
Indeed!—’tis granted, faith!—but what care I?
Better to err with POPE, than shine with PYE.

  Time was, ere yet in these degenerate days
Ignoble themes obtained mistaken praise,
When Sense and Wit with Poesy allied,
No fabled Graces, flourished side by side,
From the same fount their inspiration drew,
And, reared by Taste, bloomed fairer as they grew.
Then, in this happy Isle, a POPE’S pure strain
Sought the rapt soul to charm, nor sought in vain;
A polished nation’s praise aspired to claim,
And raised the people’s, as the poet’s fame.
Like him great DRYDEN poured the tide of song,
In stream less smooth, indeed, yet doubly strong.
Then CONGREVE’S scenes could cheer, or OTWAY’S melt;
For Nature then an English audience felt—
But why these names, or greater still, retrace,
When all to feebler Bards resign their place?
Yet to such times our lingering looks are cast,
When taste and reason with those times are past.
Now look around, and turn each trifling page,
Survey the precious works that please the age;
This truth at least let Satire’s self allow,
No dearth of Bards can be complained of now.
The loaded Press beneath her labour groans,
And Printers’ devils shake their weary bones;
While SOUTHEY’S Epics cram the creaking shelves,
And LITTLE’S Lyrics shine in hot-pressed twelves.
Thus saith the Preacher: “Nought beneath the sun
Is new,” yet still from change to change we run.
What varied wonders tempt us as they pass!
The Cow-pox, Tractors, Galvanism, and Gas,
In turns appear, to make the ****** stare,
Till the swoln bubble bursts—and all is air!
Nor less new schools of Poetry arise,
Where dull pretenders grapple for the prize:
O’er Taste awhile these Pseudo-bards prevail;
Each country Book-club bows the knee to Baal,
And, hurling lawful Genius from the throne,
Erects a shrine and idol of its own;
Some leaden calf—but whom it matters not,
From soaring SOUTHEY, down to groveling STOTT.

  Behold! in various throngs the scribbling crew,
For notice eager, pass in long review:
Each spurs his jaded Pegasus apace,
And Rhyme and Blank maintain an equal race;
Sonnets on sonnets crowd, and ode on ode;
And Tales of Terror jostle on the road;
Immeasurable measures move along;
For simpering Folly loves a varied song,
To strange, mysterious Dulness still the friend,
Admires the strain she cannot comprehend.
Thus Lays of Minstrels—may they be the last!—
On half-strung harps whine mournful to the blast.
While mountain spirits prate to river sprites,
That dames may listen to the sound at nights;
And goblin brats, of Gilpin Horner’s brood
Decoy young Border-nobles through the wood,
And skip at every step, Lord knows how high,
And frighten foolish babes, the Lord knows why;
While high-born ladies in their magic cell,
Forbidding Knights to read who cannot spell,
Despatch a courier to a wizard’s grave,
And fight with honest men to shield a knave.

  Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan,
The golden-crested haughty Marmion,
Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight,
Not quite a Felon, yet but half a Knight.
The gibbet or the field prepared to grace;
A mighty mixture of the great and base.
And think’st thou, SCOTT! by vain conceit perchance,
On public taste to foist thy stale romance,
Though MURRAY with his MILLER may combine
To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line?
No! when the sons of song descend to trade,
Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade,
Let such forego the poet’s sacred name,
Who rack their brains for lucre, not for fame:
Still for stern Mammon may they toil in vain!
And sadly gaze on Gold they cannot gain!
Such be their meed, such still the just reward
Of prostituted Muse and hireling bard!
For this we spurn Apollo’s venal son,
And bid a long “good night to Marmion.”

  These are the themes that claim our plaudits now;
These are the Bards to whom the Muse must bow;
While MILTON, DRYDEN, POPE, alike forgot,
Resign their hallowed Bays to WALTER SCOTT.

  The time has been, when yet the Muse was young,
When HOMER swept the lyre, and MARO sung,
An Epic scarce ten centuries could claim,
While awe-struck nations hailed the magic name:
The work of each immortal Bard appears
The single wonder of a thousand years.
Empires have mouldered from the face of earth,
Tongues have expired with those who gave them birth,
Without the glory such a strain can give,
As even in ruin bids the language live.
Not so with us, though minor Bards, content,
On one great work a life of labour spent:
With eagle pinion soaring to the skies,
Behold the Ballad-monger SOUTHEY rise!
To him let CAMOËNS, MILTON, TASSO yield,
Whose annual strains, like armies, take the field.
First in the ranks see Joan of Arc advance,
The scourge of England and the boast of France!
Though burnt by wicked BEDFORD for a witch,
Behold her statue placed in Glory’s niche;
Her fetters burst, and just released from prison,
A ****** Phoenix from her ashes risen.
Next see tremendous Thalaba come on,
Arabia’s monstrous, wild, and wond’rous son;
Domdaniel’s dread destroyer, who o’erthrew
More mad magicians than the world e’er knew.
Immortal Hero! all thy foes o’ercome,
For ever reign—the rival of Tom Thumb!
Since startled Metre fled before thy face,
Well wert thou doomed the last of all thy race!
Well might triumphant Genii bear thee hence,
Illustrious conqueror of common sense!
Now, last and greatest, Madoc spreads his sails,
Cacique in Mexico, and Prince in Wales;
Tells us strange tales, as other travellers do,
More old than Mandeville’s, and not so true.
Oh, SOUTHEY! SOUTHEY! cease thy varied song!
A bard may chaunt too often and too long:
As thou art strong in verse, in mercy, spare!
A fourth, alas! were more than we could bear.
But if, in spite of all the world can say,
Thou still wilt verseward plod thy weary way;
If still in Berkeley-Ballads most uncivil,
Thou wilt devote old women to the devil,
The babe unborn thy dread intent may rue:
“God help thee,” SOUTHEY, and thy readers too.

  Next comes the dull disciple of thy school,
That mild apostate from poetic rule,
The simple WORDSWORTH, framer of a lay
As soft as evening in his favourite May,
Who warns his friend “to shake off toil and trouble,
And quit his books, for fear of growing double;”
Who, both by precept and example, shows
That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose;
Convincing all, by demonstration plain,
Poetic souls delight in prose insane;
And Christmas stories tortured into rhyme
Contain the essence of the true sublime.
Thus, when he tells the tale of Betty Foy,
The idiot mother of “an idiot Boy;”
A moon-struck, silly lad, who lost his way,
And, like his bard, confounded night with day
So close on each pathetic part he dwells,
And each adventure so sublimely tells,
That all who view the “idiot in his glory”
Conceive the Bard the hero of the story.

  Shall gentle COLERIDGE pass unnoticed here,
To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear?
Though themes of innocence amuse him best,
Yet still Obscurity’s a welcome guest.
If Inspiration should her aid refuse
To him who takes a Pixy for a muse,
Yet none in lofty numbers can surpass
The bard who soars to elegize an ***:
So well the subject suits his noble mind,
He brays, the Laureate of the long-eared kind.

Oh! wonder-working LEWIS! Monk, or Bard,
Who fain would make Parnassus a church-yard!
Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow,
Thy Muse a Sprite, Apollo’s sexton thou!
Whether on ancient tombs thou tak’st thy stand,
By gibb’ring spectres hailed, thy kindred band;
Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page,
To please the females of our modest age;
All hail, M.P.! from whose infernal brain
Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train;
At whose command “grim women” throng in crowds,
And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds,
With “small grey men,”—”wild yagers,” and what not,
To crown with honour thee and WALTER SCOTT:
Again, all hail! if tales like thine may please,
St. Luke alone can vanquish the disease:
Even Satan’s self with thee might dread to dwell,
And in thy skull discern a deeper Hell.

Who in soft guise, surrounded by a choir
Of virgins melting, not to Vesta’s fire,
With sparkling eyes, and cheek by passion flushed
Strikes his wild lyre, whilst listening dames are hushed?
’Tis LITTLE! young Catullus of his day,
As sweet, but as immoral, in his Lay!
Grieved to condemn, the Muse must still be just,
Nor spare melodious advocates of lust.
Pure is the flame which o’er her altar burns;
From grosser incense with disgust she turns
Yet kind to youth, this expiation o’er,
She bids thee “mend thy line, and sin no more.”

For thee, translator of the tinsel song,
To whom such glittering ornaments belong,
Hibernian STRANGFORD! with thine eyes of blue,
And boasted locks of red or auburn hue,
Whose plaintive strain each love-sick Miss admires,
And o’er harmonious fustian half expires,
Learn, if thou canst, to yield thine author’s sense,
Nor vend thy sonnets on a false pretence.
Think’st thou to gain thy verse a higher place,
By dressing Camoëns in a suit of lace?
Mend, STRANGFORD! mend thy morals and thy taste;
Be warm, but pure; be amorous, but be chaste:
Cease to deceive; thy pilfered harp restore,
Nor teach the Lusian Bard to copy MOORE.

Behold—Ye Tarts!—one moment spare the text!—
HAYLEY’S last work, and worst—until his next;
Whether he spin poor couplets into plays,
Or **** the dead with purgatorial praise,
His style in youth or age is still the same,
For ever feeble and for ever tame.
Triumphant first see “Temper’s Triumphs” shine!
At least I’m sure they triumphed over mine.
Of “Music’s Triumphs,” all who read may swear
That luckless Music never triumph’d there.

Moravians, rise! bestow some meet reward
On dull devotion—Lo! the Sabbath Bard,
Sepulchral GRAHAME, pours his notes sublime
In mangled prose, nor e’en aspires to rhyme;
Breaks into blank the Gospel of St. Luke,
And boldly pilfers from the Pentateuch;
And, undisturbed by conscientious qualms,
Perverts the Prophets, and purloins the Psalms.

  Hail, Sympathy! thy soft idea brings”
A thousand visions of a thousand things,
And shows, still whimpering thro’ threescore of years,
The maudlin prince of mournful sonneteers.
And art thou not their prince, harmonious Bowles!
Thou first, great oracle of tender souls?
Whether them sing’st with equal ease, and grief,
The fall of empires, or a yellow leaf;
Whether thy muse most lamentably tells
What merry sounds proceed from Oxford bells,
Or, still in bells delighting, finds a friend
In every chime that jingled from Ostend;
Ah! how much juster were thy Muse’s hap,
If to thy bells thou would’st but add a cap!
Delightful BOWLES! still blessing and still blest,
All love thy strain, but children like it best.
’Tis thine, with gentle LITTLE’S moral song,
To soothe the mania of the amorous throng!
With thee our nursery damsels shed their tears,
Ere Miss as yet completes her infant years:
But in her teens thy whining powers are vain;
She quits poor BOWLES for LITTLE’S purer strain.
Now to soft themes thou scornest to confine
The lofty numbers of a harp like thine;
“Awake a louder and a loftier strain,”
Such as none heard before, or will again!
Where all discoveries jumbled from the flood,
Since first the leaky ark reposed in mud,
By more or less, are sung in every book,
From Captain Noah down to Captain Cook.
Nor this alone—but, pausing on the road,
The Bard sighs forth a gentle episode,
And gravely tells—attend, each beauteous Miss!—
When first Madeira trembled to a kiss.
Bowles! in thy memory let this precept dwell,
Stick to thy Sonnets, Man!—at least they sell.
But if some new-born whim, or larger bribe,
Prompt thy crude brain, and claim thee for a scribe:
If ‘chance some bard, though once by dunces feared,
Now, prone in dust, can only be revered;
If Pope, whose fame and genius, from the first,
Have foiled the best of critics, needs the worst,
Do thou essay: each fault, each failing scan;
The first of poets
All night the dreadless Angel, unpursued,
Through Heaven’s wide champain held his way; till Morn,
Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand
Unbarred the gates of light.  There is a cave
Within the mount of God, fast by his throne,
Where light and darkness in perpetual round
Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through Heaven
Grateful vicissitude, like day and night;
Light issues forth, and at the other door
Obsequious darkness enters, till her hour
To veil the Heaven, though darkness there might well
Seem twilight here:  And now went forth the Morn
Such as in highest Heaven arrayed in gold
Empyreal; from before her vanished Night,
Shot through with orient beams; when all the plain
Covered with thick embattled squadrons bright,
Chariots, and flaming arms, and fiery steeds,
Reflecting blaze on blaze, first met his view:
War he perceived, war in procinct; and found
Already known what he for news had thought
To have reported:  Gladly then he mixed
Among those friendly Powers, who him received
With joy and acclamations loud, that one,
That of so many myriads fallen, yet one
Returned not lost.  On to the sacred hill
They led him high applauded, and present
Before the seat supreme; from whence a voice,
From midst a golden cloud, thus mild was heard.
Servant of God. Well done; well hast thou fought
The better fight, who single hast maintained
Against revolted multitudes the cause
Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms;
And for the testimony of truth hast borne
Universal reproach, far worse to bear
Than violence; for this was all thy care
To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds
Judged thee perverse:  The easier conquest now
Remains thee, aided by this host of friends,
Back on thy foes more glorious to return,
Than scorned thou didst depart; and to subdue
By force, who reason for their law refuse,
Right reason for their law, and for their King
Messiah, who by right of merit reigns.
Go, Michael, of celestial armies prince,
And thou, in military prowess next,
Gabriel, lead forth to battle these my sons
Invincible; lead forth my armed Saints,
By thousands and by millions, ranged for fight,
Equal in number to that Godless crew
Rebellious:  Them with fire and hostile arms
Fearless assault; and, to the brow of Heaven
Pursuing, drive them out from God and bliss,
Into their place of punishment, the gulf
Of Tartarus, which ready opens wide
His fiery Chaos to receive their fall.
So spake the Sovran Voice, and clouds began
To darken all the hill, and smoke to roll
In dusky wreaths, reluctant flames, the sign
Of wrath awaked; nor with less dread the loud
Ethereal trumpet from on high ‘gan blow:
At which command the Powers militant,
That stood for Heaven, in mighty quadrate joined
Of union irresistible, moved on
In silence their bright legions, to the sound
Of instrumental harmony, that breathed
Heroick ardour to adventurous deeds
Under their God-like leaders, in the cause
Of God and his Messiah.  On they move
Indissolubly firm; nor obvious hill,
Nor straitening vale, nor wood, nor stream, divides
Their perfect ranks; for high above the ground
Their march was, and the passive air upbore
Their nimble tread; as when the total kind
Of birds, in orderly array on wing,
Came summoned over Eden to receive
Their names of thee; so over many a tract
Of Heaven they marched, and many a province wide,
Tenfold the length of this terrene:  At last,
Far in the horizon to the north appeared
From skirt to skirt a fiery region, stretched
In battailous aspect, and nearer view
Bristled with upright beams innumerable
Of rigid spears, and helmets thronged, and shields
Various, with boastful argument portrayed,
The banded Powers of Satan hasting on
With furious expedition; for they weened
That self-same day, by fight or by surprise,
To win the mount of God, and on his throne
To set the Envier of his state, the proud
Aspirer; but their thoughts proved fond and vain
In the mid way:  Though strange to us it seemed
At first, that Angel should with Angel war,
And in fierce hosting meet, who wont to meet
So oft in festivals of joy and love
Unanimous, as sons of one great Sire,
Hymning the Eternal Father:  But the shout
Of battle now began, and rushing sound
Of onset ended soon each milder thought.
High in the midst, exalted as a God,
The Apostate in his sun-bright chariot sat,
Idol of majesty divine, enclosed
With flaming Cherubim, and golden shields;
Then lighted from his gorgeous throne, for now
“twixt host and host but narrow space was left,
A dreadful interval, and front to front
Presented stood in terrible array
Of hideous length:  Before the cloudy van,
On the rough edge of battle ere it joined,
Satan, with vast and haughty strides advanced,
Came towering, armed in adamant and gold;
Abdiel that sight endured not, where he stood
Among the mightiest, bent on highest deeds,
And thus his own undaunted heart explores.
O Heaven! that such resemblance of the Highest
Should yet remain, where faith and realty
Remain not:  Wherefore should not strength and might
There fail where virtue fails, or weakest prove
Where boldest, though to fight unconquerable?
His puissance, trusting in the Almighty’s aid,
I mean to try, whose reason I have tried
Unsound and false; nor is it aught but just,
That he, who in debate of truth hath won,
Should win in arms, in both disputes alike
Victor; though brutish that contest and foul,
When reason hath to deal with force, yet so
Most reason is that reason overcome.
So pondering, and from his armed peers
Forth stepping opposite, half-way he met
His daring foe, at this prevention more
Incensed, and thus securely him defied.
Proud, art thou met? thy hope was to have reached
The highth of thy aspiring unopposed,
The throne of God unguarded, and his side
Abandoned, at the terrour of thy power
Or potent tongue:  Fool!not to think how vain
Against the Omnipotent to rise in arms;
Who out of smallest things could, without end,
Have raised incessant armies to defeat
Thy folly; or with solitary hand
Reaching beyond all limit, at one blow,
Unaided, could have finished thee, and whelmed
Thy legions under darkness:  But thou seest
All are not of thy train; there be, who faith
Prefer, and piety to God, though then
To thee not visible, when I alone
Seemed in thy world erroneous to dissent
From all:  My sect thou seest;now learn too late
How few sometimes may know, when thousands err.
Whom the grand foe, with scornful eye askance,
Thus answered.  Ill for thee, but in wished hour
Of my revenge, first sought for, thou returnest
From flight, seditious Angel! to receive
Thy merited reward, the first assay
Of this right hand provoked, since first that tongue,
Inspired with contradiction, durst oppose
A third part of the Gods, in synod met
Their deities to assert; who, while they feel
Vigour divine within them, can allow
Omnipotence to none.  But well thou comest
Before thy fellows, ambitious to win
From me some plume, that thy success may show
Destruction to the rest:  This pause between,
(Unanswered lest thou boast) to let thee know,
At first I thought that Liberty and Heaven
To heavenly souls had been all one; but now
I see that most through sloth had rather serve,
Ministring Spirits, trained up in feast and song!
Such hast thou armed, the minstrelsy of Heaven,
Servility with freedom to contend,
As both their deeds compared this day shall prove.
To whom in brief thus Abdiel stern replied.
Apostate! still thou errest, nor end wilt find
Of erring, from the path of truth remote:
Unjustly thou depravest it with the name
Of servitude, to serve whom God ordains,
Or Nature:  God and Nature bid the same,
When he who rules is worthiest, and excels
Them whom he governs.  This is servitude,
To serve the unwise, or him who hath rebelled
Against his worthier, as thine now serve thee,
Thyself not free, but to thyself enthralled;
Yet lewdly darest our ministring upbraid.
Reign thou in Hell, thy kingdom; let me serve
In Heaven God ever blest, and his divine
Behests obey, worthiest to be obeyed;
Yet chains in Hell, not realms, expect:  Mean while
From me returned, as erst thou saidst, from flight,
This greeting on thy impious crest receive.
So saying, a noble stroke he lifted high,
Which hung not, but so swift with tempest fell
On the proud crest of Satan, that no sight,
Nor motion of swift thought, less could his shield,
Such ruin intercept:  Ten paces huge
He back recoiled; the tenth on bended knee
His massy spear upstaid; as if on earth
Winds under ground, or waters forcing way,
Sidelong had pushed a mountain from his seat,
Half sunk with all his pines.  Amazement seised
The rebel Thrones, but greater rage, to see
Thus foiled their mightiest; ours joy filled, and shout,
Presage of victory, and fierce desire
Of battle:  Whereat Michael bid sound
The Arch-Angel trumpet; through the vast of Heaven
It sounded, and the faithful armies rung
Hosanna to the Highest:  Nor stood at gaze
The adverse legions, nor less hideous joined
The horrid shock.  Now storming fury rose,
And clamour such as heard in Heaven till now
Was never; arms on armour clashing brayed
Horrible discord, and the madding wheels
Of brazen chariots raged; dire was the noise
Of conflict; over head the dismal hiss
Of fiery darts in flaming vollies flew,
And flying vaulted either host with fire.
So under fiery cope together rushed
Both battles main, with ruinous assault
And inextinguishable rage.  All Heaven
Resounded; and had Earth been then, all Earth
Had to her center shook.  What wonder? when
Millions of fierce encountering Angels fought
On either side, the least of whom could wield
These elements, and arm him with the force
Of all their regions:  How much more of power
Army against army numberless to raise
Dreadful combustion warring, and disturb,
Though not destroy, their happy native seat;
Had not the Eternal King Omnipotent,
From his strong hold of Heaven, high over-ruled
And limited their might; though numbered such
As each divided legion might have seemed
A numerous host; in strength each armed hand
A legion; led in fight, yet leader seemed
Each warriour single as in chief, expert
When to advance, or stand, or turn the sway
Of battle, open when, and when to close
The ridges of grim war:  No thought of flight,
None of retreat, no unbecoming deed
That argued fear; each on himself relied,
As only in his arm the moment lay
Of victory:  Deeds of eternal fame
Were done, but infinite; for wide was spread
That war and various; sometimes on firm ground
A standing fight, then, soaring on main wing,
Tormented all the air; all air seemed then
Conflicting fire.  Long time in even scale
The battle hung; till Satan, who that day
Prodigious power had shown, and met in arms
No equal, ranging through the dire attack
Of fighting Seraphim confused, at length
Saw where the sword of Michael smote, and felled
Squadrons at once; with huge two-handed sway
Brandished aloft, the horrid edge came down
Wide-wasting; such destruction to withstand
He hasted, and opposed the rocky orb
Of tenfold adamant, his ample shield,
A vast circumference.  At his approach
The great Arch-Angel from his warlike toil
Surceased, and glad, as hoping here to end
Intestine war in Heaven, the arch-foe subdued
Or captive dragged in chains, with hostile frown
And visage all inflamed first thus began.
Author of evil, unknown till thy revolt,
Unnamed in Heaven, now plenteous as thou seest
These acts of hateful strife, hateful to all,
Though heaviest by just measure on thyself,
And thy  adherents:  How hast thou disturbed
Heaven’s blessed peace, and into nature brought
Misery, uncreated till the crime
Of thy rebellion! how hast thou instilled
Thy malice into thousands, once upright
And faithful, now proved false!  But think not here
To trouble holy rest; Heaven casts thee out
From all her confines.  Heaven, the seat of bliss,
Brooks not the works of violence and war.
Hence then, and evil go with thee along,
Thy offspring, to the place of evil, Hell;
Thou and thy wicked crew! there mingle broils,
Ere this avenging sword begin thy doom,
Or some more sudden vengeance, winged from God,
Precipitate thee with augmented pain.
So spake the Prince of Angels; to whom thus
The Adversary.  Nor think thou with wind
Of aery threats to awe whom yet with deeds
Thou canst not.  Hast thou turned the least of these
To flight, or if to fall, but that they rise
Unvanquished, easier to transact with me
That thou shouldst hope, imperious, and with threats
To chase me hence? err not, that so shall end
The strife which thou callest evil, but we style
The strife of glory; which we mean to win,
Or turn this Heaven itself into the Hell
Thou fablest; here however to dwell free,
If not to reign:  Mean while thy utmost force,
And join him named Almighty to thy aid,
I fly not, but have sought thee far and nigh.
They ended parle, and both addressed for fight
Unspeakable; for who, though with the tongue
Of Angels, can relate, or to what things
Liken on earth conspicuous, that may lift
Human imagination to such highth
Of Godlike power? for likest Gods they seemed,
Stood they or moved, in stature, motion, arms,
Fit to decide the empire of great Heaven.
Now waved their fiery swords, and in the air
Made horrid circles; two broad suns their shields
Blazed opposite, while Expectation stood
In horrour:  From each hand with speed retired,
Where erst was thickest fight, the angelick throng,
And left large field, unsafe within the wind
Of such commotion; such as, to set forth
Great things by small, if, nature’s concord broke,
Among the constellations war were sprung,
Two planets, rushing from aspect malign
Of fiercest opposition, in mid sky
Should combat, and their jarring spheres confound.
Together both with next to almighty arm
Up-lifted imminent, one stroke they aimed
That might determine, and not need repeat,
As not of power at once; nor odds appeared
In might or swift prevention:  But the sword
Of Michael from the armoury of God
Was given him tempered so, that neither keen
Nor solid might resist that edge: it met
The sword of Satan, with steep force to smite
Descending, and in half cut sheer; nor staid,
But with swift wheel reverse, deep entering, shared
All his right side:  Then Satan first knew pain,
And writhed him to and fro convolved; so sore
The griding sword with discontinuous wound
Passed through him:  But the ethereal substance closed,
Not long divisible; and from the ****
A stream of necturous humour issuing flowed
Sanguine, such as celestial Spirits may bleed,
And all his armour stained, ere while so bright.
Forthwith on all sides to his aid was run
By Angels many and strong, who interposed
Defence, while others bore him on their shields
Back to his chariot, where it stood retired
From off the files of war:  There they him laid
Gnashing for anguish, and despite, and shame,
To find himself not matchless, and his pride
Humbled by such rebuke, so far beneath
His confidence to equal God in power.
Yet soon he healed; for Spirits that live throughout
Vital in every part, not as frail man
In entrails, heart of head, liver or reins,
Cannot but by annihilating die;
Nor in their liquid texture mortal wound
Receive, no more than can the fluid air:
All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear,
All intellect, all sense; and, as they please,
They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size
Assume, as?***** them best, condense or rare.
Mean while in other parts like deeds deserved
Memorial, where the might of Gabriel fought,
And with fierce ensigns pierced the deep array
Of Moloch, furious king; who him defied,
And at his chariot-wheels to drag him bound
Threatened, nor from the Holy One of Heaven
Refrained his tongue blasphemous; but anon
Down cloven to the waist, with shattered arms
And uncouth pain fled bellowing.  On each wing
Uriel, and Raphael, his vaunting foe,
Though huge, and in a rock of diamond armed,
Vanquished Adramelech, and Asmadai,
Two potent Thrones, that to be less than
Raj Arumugam Oct 2010

there was a comma
which was so light
it started to float;
the other down-to-earth commas
ganged up and banished
that comma that dared to cross the line
and so that deviant comma stays there in mid-air
like a feather
and you can see it if you
keep your eyes open



’ ’
and since its fall, or rise,
it’s been called the apostate -
I mean, the apostrophe
Mind you, it’s not to be taken lightly
for it can settle legal cases
as it indicates who things belong to
(like if it is John’s money
or Nicole’s )



’ ’ ’
and in matters of communication
it can abbreviate things
and make the style more conversational



’ ’ ’ ’
But I'll tell you when it’s not so happy:
if you say, for instance: “Its Monday”
or “The dog wags it’s tail” -
ah, then the apostrophe hates you
and it really wishes it could land on your head
like a bag of lead
Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first
Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast Abyss,
And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That, to the height of this great argument,
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
  Say first—for Heaven hides nothing from thy view,
Nor the deep tract of Hell—say first what cause
Moved our grand parents, in that happy state,
Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the World besides.
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
  Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was whose guile,
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equalled the Most High,
If he opposed, and with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud,
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy th’ Omnipotent to arms.
  Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew,
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded, though immortal. But his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him: round he throws his baleful eyes,
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay,
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate.
At once, as far as Angels ken, he views
The dismal situation waste and wild.
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
Such place Eternal Justice has prepared
For those rebellious; here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set,
As far removed from God and light of Heaven
As from the centre thrice to th’ utmost pole.
Oh how unlike the place from whence they fell!
There the companions of his fall, o’erwhelmed
With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns; and, weltering by his side,
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and named
Beelzebub. To whom th’ Arch-Enemy,
And thence in Heaven called Satan, with bold words
Breaking the horrid silence, thus began:—
  “If thou beest he—but O how fallen! how changed
From him who, in the happy realms of light
Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine
Myriads, though bright!—if he whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
And hazard in the glorious enterprise
Joined with me once, now misery hath joined
In equal ruin; into what pit thou seest
From what height fallen: so much the stronger proved
He with his thunder; and till then who knew
The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those,
Nor what the potent Victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent, or change,
Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed mind,
And high disdain from sense of injured merit,
That with the Mightiest raised me to contend,
And to the fierce contentions brought along
Innumerable force of Spirits armed,
That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven,
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost—the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power
Who, from the terror of this arm, so late
Doubted his empire—that were low indeed;
That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall; since, by fate, the strength of Gods,
And this empyreal sybstance, cannot fail;
Since, through experience of this great event,
In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war,
Irreconcilable to our grand Foe,
Who now triumphs, and in th’ excess of joy
Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven.”
  So spake th’ apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair;
And him thus answered soon his bold compeer:—
  “O Prince, O Chief of many throned Powers
That led th’ embattled Seraphim to war
Under thy conduct, and, in dreadful deeds
Fearless, endangered Heaven’s perpetual King,
And put to proof his high supremacy,
Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate,
Too well I see and rue the dire event
That, with sad overthrow and foul defeat,
Hath lost us Heaven, and all this mighty host
In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as Gods and heavenly Essences
Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns,
Though all our glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallowed up in endless misery.
But what if he our Conqueror (whom I now
Of force believe almighty, since no less
Than such could have o’erpowered such force as ours)
Have left us this our spirit and strength entire,
Strongly to suffer and support our pains,
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire,
Or do him mightier service as his thralls
By right of war, whate’er his business be,
Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire,
Or do his errands in the gloomy Deep?
What can it the avail though yet we feel
Strength undiminished, or eternal being
To undergo eternal punishment?”
  Whereto with speedy words th’ Arch-Fiend replied:—
“Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering: but of this be sure—
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil;
Which ofttimes may succeed so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
His inmost counsels from their destined aim.
But see! the angry Victor hath recalled
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
Back to the gates of Heaven: the sulphurous hail,
Shot after us in storm, o’erblown hath laid
The fiery surge that from the precipice
Of Heaven received us falling; and the thunder,
Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep.
Let us not slip th’ occasion, whether scorn
Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe.
Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light,
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves;
There rest, if any rest can harbour there;
And, re-assembling our afflicted powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our enemy, our own loss how repair,
How overcome this dire calamity,
What reinforcement we may gain from hope,
If not, what resolution from despair.”
  Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate,
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim th’ ocean-stream.
Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,
Deeming some island, oft, as ****** tell,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind,
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.
So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay,
Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence
Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others, and enraged might see
How all his malice served but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn
On Man by him seduced, but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured.
  Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature; on each hand the flames
Driven backward ***** their pointing spires, and,rolled
In billows, leave i’ th’ midst a horrid vale.
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,
That felt unusual weight; till on dry land
He lights—if it were land that ever burned
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire,
And such appeared in hue as when the force
Of subterranean wind transprots a hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
And leave a singed bottom all involved
With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole
Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate;
Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood
As gods, and by their own recovered strength,
Not by the sufferance of supernal Power.
  “Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,”
Said then the lost Archangel, “this the seat
That we must change for Heaven?—this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid
What shall be right: farthest from him is best
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor—one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reigh secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
Th’ associates and co-partners of our loss,
Lie thus astonished on th’ oblivious pool,
And call them not to share with us their part
In this unhappy mansion, or once more
With rallied arms to try what may be yet
Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell?”
  So Satan spake; and him Beelzebub
Thus answered:—”Leader of those armies bright
Which, but th’ Omnipotent, none could have foiled!
If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge
Of hope in fears and dangers—heard so oft
In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge
Of battle, when it raged, in all assaults
Their surest signal—they will soon resume
New courage and revive, though now they lie
Grovelling and prostrate on yon lake of fire,
As we erewhile, astounded and amazed;
No wonder, fallen such a pernicious height!”
  He scare had ceased when the superior Fiend
Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield,
Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,
Behind him cast. The broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening, from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.
His spear—to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great ammiral, were but a wand—
He walked with, to support uneasy steps
Over the burning marl, not like those steps
On Heaven’s azure; and the torrid clime
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire.
Nathless he so endured, till on the beach
Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called
His legions—Angel Forms, who lay entranced
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th’ Etrurian shades
High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed
Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o’erthrew
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcases
And broken chariot-wheels. So thick bestrown,
Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
He called so loud that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded:—”Princes, Potentates,
Warriors, the Flower of Heaven—once yours; now lost,
If such astonishment as this can seize
Eternal Spirits! Or have ye chosen this place
After the toil of battle to repose
Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find
To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the Conqueror, who now beholds
Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood
With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon
His swift pursuers from Heaven-gates discern
Th’ advantage, and, descending, tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf?
Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!”
  They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung
Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch
On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread,
Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake.
Nor did they not perceive the evil plight
In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel;
Yet to their General’s voice they soon obeyed
Innumerable. As when the potent rod
Of Amram’s son, in Egypt’s evil day,
Waved round the coast, up-called a pitchy cloud
Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
That o’er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like Night, and darkened all the land of Nile;
So numberless were those bad Angels seen
Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell,
‘Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires;
Till, as a signal given, th’ uplifted spear
Of their great Sultan waving to direct
Their course, in even balance down they light
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain:
A multitude like which the populous North
Poured never from her frozen ***** to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
Forthwith, form every squadron and each band,
The heads and leaders thither haste where stood
Their great Commander—godlike Shapes, and Forms
Excelling human; princely Dignities;
And Powers that erst in Heaven sat on thrones,
Though on their names in Heavenly records now
Be no memorial, blotted out and rased
By their rebellion from the Books of Life.
Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve
Got them new names, till, wandering o’er the earth,
Through God’s high sufferance for the trial of man,
By falsities and lies the greatest part
Of mankind they corrupted to forsake
God their Creator, and th’ invisible
Glory of him that made them to transform
Oft to the image of a brute, adorned
With gay religions full of pomp and gold,
And devils to adore for deities:
Then were they known to men by various names,
And various idols through the heathen world.
  Say, Muse, their names then known, who first, who last,
Roused fr
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2018
.i cannot do justice to Hölderlin's invocation of Hyperion, but i also have no intention to, but i'll begin with, what isn't regarded as a pristine, classical constellation:

it begins with a punt volant,
on first observation,
   ・
      which descends in brightness
         ano teleia -
romanic interruption of the added
comma beneath it,
like a tail dragging the head along...

    the constellation?

        a dismembered man,
a crooked pentagram,
and a trinity of sorts...

                              .          .        
    ­                               .    
                                           .
        .

                       .

                                       .

this, the dislodged man,
with a trinity of stars floating
outside of him...

the trinity is faint...
when you first spot the ano teleia
star with its brightness...
yet that is a mishandled
pentagram...

which brings me to the argument,
some people send their DNA
to companies that
discover their genetic makeup,
i also read a newspaper article
that stated:
why bother?
you genetic make-up
also consists of what
you gravitate to,
culturally...

    so... i'm reading an article
on Hyperion...
and then i follow several links...
all i know is that the Vikings
were the founders of
Kiev...
                
   and to get to Kiev from Norway...
you have to go past the land
i was born in...

   then working from an article
on Emperor Julian, the Apostate...
then onto an article on Mardonius...
then on the article on the Goths...

Goths?
  Swedish "vikings"...
  who had established settlements
in the region of Poland were
i was born,
by 250BC...
                  
   so... why would i cling to
Nordic folk songs,
or their revisionism,
if i... suddenly hear a song,
and react with goosebumps on
my cheeks from hearing it?

or what about the remnants
of Scythia?
           boiling in my veins?

that newspaper article was right,
i don't need to send off my DNA
sample to companies,
i can read my DNA from the culture
i'm migrating toward!

     Hyperion,
i have abandoned the Athenian gods
of Olympus,
i've looked elsewhere,
to the mountain that became
the pit of Tartarus...
look back at Uranus, and sampled
the wintry perfumes of Gaia...

          swam in the ***** of Pontus...
and i have...
seen how both the gods,
and the titans...
   are the source of etymological
classification,
unlike what the judeo-christian tranditions
teach...
Adam didn't name the birds
and the animals from an a priori
posit / advantage point
of some obscure inheritance...

        first come the grander things...
man conjures up the existence / non-existence
of either gods, or titans...
to spin the wheel and gain etymological
momentum!
            
of what became the ****** of the affair
between Helios and Gaia...
    however true...
   or untrue...
      there is still an etymological foundation
for the existence of said
names...
   the names / not beings...
that spawn more names to be attributed
to such miniscule things
as flies, centipedes and pebbles...

from the word Uranus, comes the word
Helios,

from Selene comes the word
which coincides
the words Pontus, Oceanus, Poseidon,
and subsequently the
moon's influence of the tides...
the... παλίρροιες (palirroies,
siblings of the furies, the rivers,
and all other nymphs)...

      but however ridiculous applying
these nouns is...
they are rigid evolution
of words, formerly grunted,
or expressed in a barbaric way...
these are the words first defined...

Gaia probably became perfected
when there occurred a syllable
arithmetic... well... "arithmetic" is a lose
term of addition...
    the syllable g'ah! g'ah!
combined with i'ah!
                            
stealthy *******, this Jewish god,
he knew it all along...
hide in the letters,
hide in phonetics,
hide long until...
there's a second Belshezzar moment
in history...
when he's seen a second time...

i see him!
the surd H and the laughter
instigator H of the tetragrammaton...
you sigh when you write AH...
you express a vague awed-surprise
when you write OH...
    H represents the breath...
and the soul...

i see him!
i write too much to not be able
to dis-guide you from doing likewise...
the breath enter with an AH
and an OH...
   ah as in wonder with a surprise,
oh, as in counter: so i was wrong?

ooh... like something is teasing
you...
    uh? as in an element of disgust...
but?
HA?
       the point...
the point being?
laughter...
                    how else can you
express laughter,
if not balancing on the Jewish
definite article,
i.e. HA, i.e. HA-shem (the-name?),
how?!

but the Greeks were of some use...
their names of Titans and
Greeks?
   etymological boot-camps...
what we began with,
and, ultimately,
what we return to,
not for bowing, prayer,
belief...
but?
            *momentum
...
    
we already that Zeus is actually
Thor,
   who's father, Odin,
is Uranus...
                    so, technically...
Zeus is Thor...
                     Prometheus is Loki...
etc. etc. etc.,
      point being...
these similarities, these correlations?
they're not, they're not,
plagiarisms...
                        they would be plagiarisms,
if they had similar etymological
beginnings...
they're not plagiarisms,
because even now,
not everyone on this earth is a bilingual
entity that could
support a globalist agenda!
      if bilingualism was rife,
then the liberals could have their
globalist "unity"...
              but since bilingualism is the lesser
half of the polymath...
    no...
              isolated communities
have isolated ideas...
they look as if they were plagiarisms
now... but then?
   the only globalist artifact left these days,
the Socratic argument for
universal, convergent purposes -
and particular, divergent practicalities...
these religions were not
plagiarisms...
   do you really think that
plagiarism is a pulverizing motivational
tool for the perpetuation
of a people's existence?
   i don't think so...
                      plagiarism doesn't drive
people...
it's just a strange coincidence that
there are similarities that could be conceived
as plagiarisms...
but then again...
****... me and this Mongol share
a very similar physiognomy...
  and... oh ****... we're standing up-right...
have five limbs...
   and we use fire to cook food...
yeah... the religious plagiarism issue is
really suspicious...
we weren't, ever, to make a similar conclusion...
since we all, supposedly led a mass
exodus from Africa...
     like **** we did...
     perhaps...
               but the story doesn't begin
with an origins...
   more... what happened in what
became localized eventualities of segregation...
hey... i might have, 100 year... ha ha!
yeah right... to write my own narrative...
i don't like the antithesis of
doubt: of the perfected plethora of
the antithesis of both faith & denial...
     i like my rainbow plethora of doubt
to "counter" faith & denial...
   given that i also don't like
the pseudo-schizophrenic dichotomy of
faith, contra denial.
- makes for a more exciting
content of the heart... what? doubt;
doubting Thomas
  with a heart like a sinking stone,
and fire in his eyes,
                    a, second Belshezzar.
zebra Aug 2017
a black bat
hangs upside down
digesting a fly
his face almost human
a flying Frankenstein

he excretes
puddles of guano
like miniature buttered popcorn
a dark and wavy goulash
gods gift
to beetles and worms

dizzied overheated men look on
to an uproarious variety hour
of song and a high heeled kicks
inspiring
a tempest of throbbing
whisky drenched
folded ***** and cash

trouser trout fish,    
undulant
sexed up
tape worms for love
pulse the night
egging on bunny **** pom poms
devout finger puppets of Eros
for
shimmering ****** lipstick twilled vibratos

sequined tassel spinning areolas
and lavish come **** me dance girls
bring down the house in flames
making hearts apostate
clamoring
and melt men like steaming everglades

the bat
hangs from the chandelier
licks his black lips
and looks on to panorama of hieroglyphics
hearing music
a thunderous nonsense  

witnessing visions
of
flies, tasty white winged moths
and the thrill of screams
while biting the head off of another bat
in a claret stained red velvet cabaret
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
i can be a sadomasochist with myself sometimes,
given the videos i watch on the internet -
but then i'm again bound to being perched on
a windowsill, married to a dialogue with
the moon... and to tide bound,
sometimes the graciouis words comes my way,
sometimes the ingratitude... but then clouds at night
are never so by day.... and i feel blessed...
for they contort in such a way that i see
all paths toward pandemonium
leading, how they contort without
Mickiewicz toward no hope of castles or swans
being conjured - but hollowed out eyes of death
with a jester's smile of awaiting Tripoli -
are thus bound and exhausted
in exceeding their time there...
once monotheism conquered
the gods of both norden bound
and classics... it should be faced with a new
barbarism, and bygone strides
       against the demigods...
with a demi-**** that's Muhammad
of semi-applause allowed the gratification
of being literate, but as all good myths
abide by: unable to write out
δ ι κ τ α, plus minus 1 + 1 be the = dicta...
clouds in the night...
breathing magnimonity -
         as merely: cloud in the night,
Ilsidore...
had i been given the confirmation name,
now i can think of a name, i'd would like...
izydor...
             this is this last precision of magic...
had i been confirmed by a church,
and the bishop of some obscure essex country,
only being aged 30 i'd like the name to
be Isidore...
                     a bit late, i know...
  but i am an apostate, and i want
to drink from the font of baptism...
but you give me no water for my scythed lips...
for death scythes no bones...
had my confirmation be, it would have been
Isidore... the 16 year old me would have taken
to the name Michael... give it time
and it would have matured into Isidore...
Izydor of Seville...
but i am an apostate... and i don't believe this
egypt crap of the nag hammadi library...
i can't argue with a muslim,
i am given the archeology of the library,
and given the death of the prophet Isaiah...
it's too real to have these two prophets burried...
and in script re-awoken...
           that the new testament and the koran
make no sense... archeology sort of dislodges their
heart's intent to kneel and make macabre at the mosque...
it's impossible to convert... because you just can't convert...
   Isaiah was cut in half and Jesus was crucified...
i can't believe in the son of god...
                           both were burried...
       but the catholic bureucracy remains,
and if my confirmation name goes as anything,
i would now be called Isidore...
                                and if i'm mad for doing so:
then i have prince purple as my sparring partner...
                       nag hammadi & the dead sea scrolls...
no wonder the koran is so agitated...
      it has lost its profound origin...
it has lost its profound cool because it was lost...
the current muslim affairs are due to the fact that
the nag hammadi library and the dead seal scrolls emerged...
there's no simpler explanation,
   it's hard to testify irrational emotional
                                    coagulations when something is spoken
in archeological testimony...
    thank god the new testament speaks of jo and ma
moving to egypt, where the nag hammadi library was found...
and we know the prophet isaiah was a courtesan,
which is why we find his book in israel...
but the koran brotherhood is *******...
   i think the new testament wrecked more havoc
on northern europeans than the koran ever could
on the Indonesians... to be honest.
but because the two archeological findings were found,
the koran crew is *******... they're simply saying:
we prayed five times a a day, and for what?!
you ask me, i was expecting falafel and baklava.
                i can't expect them not being angry
when the koran has been undermined...
and it has...
                       when they hid the gospel of thomas
in egypt and sold the truth: by jew for jews alone...
no one thought it would backfire...
     st. paul can sorta forget mass circumcision as benefit
with these women...
  it's a question of: you have to re-learn
the benefits, to see what you lost.
              and you have lost what you couldn't appreciate.
so in america: anti-religious circumcision,
or secular circumcision and ***** paved the way for
what we have: rather happy masturbators with foreskins
and women with circumcised male partners,
and neither masturbators nor secularists want to
start families... d'uh.
             the koran is ******* because of what emerged
in 1945 and was guarded by the logic of archeo...
                                    you can't stop
because they know they're simply wrong...
we know from those adhering to st. thomas' gospel
as promoting trans-gender bulletproofing
that poetry can only be stretched so far...
   you can't tell demons to be methapors
   and tell transgender bi-genital creatures that they're
figments of our imagination...
you tell me a demons doens't exist: i tell you a transgender
person doesn't exist... this is the glorious
anarchy of st. thomas' gospel implemented without
the authority of the church...
the mystery of lawlessness? archeology:
hide it long enough, even the koran will crumble...
and lo and behold! i'm drinking! why?
because i'm celebrating this glorious whirlwind of
insisting anarchy!
         and why do i not feel rebellious?
that might be a good question...
                 but it's not...
              i don't have a proto-koran to begin with...
i have the old and new testament,
  and the emergence of
                      a 2000 year old hidden
mingling of the two, beginning with the prophets
Jesus and Isaiah...
                               one was a Jew that lived as a courtesan
and was cut-in-half...
the other was a Jew that became militant and later
made sure that Muhammad was also a militant
prophet starting off from a non-militant position
of mere merchant... according to the historian Josephus...
the compendium of the profanity of
tetragrammaton came with the historian Josephus
at the rule of Nero... hence the quickened
book of revelation being written...
                       once "the" beast reigned...
       it's no wonder that the two books are so unknown
in christianity...
            the fact is that the simultaneousness of
the emergence of nag hammadi and the dead sea scrolls
being simultaneous meant that the two old devils
of christianity and judaism would firmly diverge,
make divorce... and make secularism married to islam's
antagonism as the last blind-man fondling the elephant...
   i can't be jew because i'm not circumcised,
but i can't be christian in my liberalism to accept
the anarachy steering away from church,
   and family... or nation and federalism...
and i know, that's obscure; i just can't see
trans-gender ******* as a priority for humanity...
i can understand wearing a mismatching pair of socks...
but genitelia? that can't be jewish...
that has to be egyptian...
that has to be egyptian in terms of undermining
a jewish psyche...
                worthy of a crucifix... meaning that jo and m
really did travel to egypt and escaped herod...
               but je suis was cought up in the egyptians
taking rule and i bet one ******* duck-quack
that je suis was robbed from being capable of
conjuring up a dream... i bet je suis
couldn't dream... all the icons point toward that
crusade analogy.
                 it's still no excuse for the koran plebs
getting so frustrated that they have no archeological
involvemnt in the matters of today,
which is why they turned to brute and bully...
because they have been excluded from the archeological
findings, they can only do the meanest thing imaginable
and stage a violent insurection into the dialogue...
but since they're not really welcome,
and because they're actually talking *******
they can only resort to terrorism...
   it's a harsh reality to be met against...
    i'm not surprised they resort to terrorism,
given that they have no archeological grounding to
introduce themselves...
               into a civilised conversation...
          i'll probably bemoan this fact for
about 10 seconds... and then laugh for the next 10 minutes.
1298

The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants—
At Evening, it is not—
At Morning, in a Truffled Hut
It stop upon a Spot

As if it tarried always
And yet its whole Career
Is shorter than a Snake’s Delay
And fleeter than a Tare—

’Tis Vegetation’s Juggler—
The Germ of Alibi—
Doth like a Bubble antedate
And like a Bubble, hie—

I feel as if the Grass was pleased
To have it intermit—
This surreptitious scion
Of Summer’s circumspect.

Had Nature any supple Face
Or could she one contemn—
Had Nature an Apostate—
That Mushroom—it is Him!
Francie Lynch Jul 2015
I believe
In the shameless love of this life;
Not in a previous or afterlife.
I don't believe
In reincarnation, transmigration
Ascension or decesnsion.
And all the sepulchres concur.

I believe in Christ,
Not Christianity or Protestantism.

I believe in Muhammad,
Not Islam
(And this list goes on).

I don't believe in banshees,
Astral projection or any OBE.
I don't believe in gnomes or trolls,
Elves, sprites and witches,
Nirvana, Valhalla, Heaven or Hell.
And I believe
I won't be disappointed.

I believe in politics,
Not politicians.

I believe in the Arts
(All of them),
And humanity,
And You,
The healers and teachers.

Oh Spirit,
Where is it?
I don't believe hovering souls
Listen to eulogies.
I don't believe in death-bed conversions
Just because...

I believe in a living consciousness,
For
I Am That I Am,
And that's what I am.

I will not go gently,
For I know,
There's nothing
To worry about.
Tip of the cap to Dylan Thomas for the line.
Xan Abyss Oct 2014
She is the Devil
Standing in the Doorway
Constantly reminding me
of the Debt I've yet to pay
She looks like Heaven
Divine and Catastrophic
Hellcat and Rogue Apostate
Tells me,
"There's Hell to Pay."

Gotta find a way
Gotta get away
I'm in deep too and there's Hell to Pay

She is Satan in a Red Dress
and Six-Inch Stilletto Heels
Crimson-Colored Lipstick
With matching Sharpened Nails
Her Clawmarks in my Skin
Remind me every day
That my soul belongs to Her,
and there's still Hell to Pay

Gotta find a way
Gotta get away
I'm in too deep and there's Hell to Pay

She is the One Unholy
She is the Queen of Time
Her Love Burns on Eternal in the Furnace
of my Mind
My Spirit is her Claim
From now until the End of Daze
Ours are the Hearts of Evil
And still there's Hell to Pay

Gotta find a way
Gotta get away
Running outta days until there's Hell to Pay

Leviathan Cross
Forever in Her Flesh
Her Eyes, Ablaze with Hellfire
Gaze into the Abyss
No Matter how Savagely
I Ravage Her and Damage Her
She always Returns
for yet another Massacre.

Gotta find a way
Gotta get away
Running outta days until there's Hell to Pay
A little Faustian lust poem while everyone's still in the October spirit.
If thine eye offends thee
pluck it out....

War offends
my eye.

All my
senses
defiled
*****
disemboweled
by the
abomination
of war.

My mind
disregards
denigrates
reneges
warps time
destroys values
alters psyches
lays waste
to my
conscience
of hope.

Mine eye offends me
the complicit witness
complacently
ambivalent
turning deaf ears
to groans
of the wounded
wails of the aggrieved
silence of the dead;
shutting doors
to sanctuaries
where refugees
seek safe houses,
locking factories
where men seek work,
level homes
where women nurture,
strafe playgrounds
where children laugh,
raise cities
where people
learn to be human,
immolate mosques
where
God's Children
cry out to the
Beneficent One.

Mine eye offends me,
my gut sickens,
to witness
the slaughter
of innocents
droning on
no angels to save
the million Issac's
savagely smashed to bits
by a Tomahawk's blow.

God's vengeance
escalates
the celestial ledgers
dripping red ink
from excessive
collateral damage,
people reduced
as objects used
to secure a loan
indeed an ARM
on a real time
American nightmare
whose reset rate
is mounting body counts
and massive budget allocations
protecting undisturbed flows
of corporate profits
valued in barrels
of imported blood.

Mine eye offends me
an innocence lost
Veritas vanquished
life is devalued
humanity debased
compassion defunct
empathy a twisted satire
an indelible weakness
incidental hostage
to the torridness
of the lurid play
of savage nations
projecting will,
a devastation
of action.

Mine eye offends me
the message of
sweet Jesus
a way of light
transformed into
biblical justification
agitprop verse
stoking blood lust zeal
for apostate infidels
sons of Abraham's
unworthy spawn,
of Hagar the *****
******* child Ishmael
turned out again
from tribal tents
of an absentee father
from an unfriendly
paternity.

This black *******
an abomination
in the sight of Allah
celebrates
a zeal to ****
unholy disciples
yearning to fill
banana crates
with body parts
draped in
drab Hijabs
decorated with
satanic verses
from a
Holy Quran
carved with
bayonets
of self righteous
Crusaders
armed with rifles
inscribed with
Gospel verses
on deadly gun
barrel stocks
to ramp the passion
of the righteous Crusade
against Godless apostates.

Mine eye offends me
as I witness
the **** of
corporate mercenaries
churning bereaved
Blackwaters
beholden only
to shareholders
gobbling spoils of war
to safely exit
to private vomitoriums
to expunge the excess
of gluttony
only to
quickly return
to engorge themselves
at the public troughs
again.

No constitutional
restraints
save the
strict guidelines
of holy
corporate governance scriptures
ruthlessly enforced with
golden carrots
of multi-million dollar
stock options
and the brutal stick
of shareholders divine right
to quarterly dividends
and above average
equity returns.

Corporate warriors
anointed by
holy oil
proffered
by capitalist shamans
and US Senators
conferring
jurisprudential deferment
on civil law
recusing them from
any behavior
to recognize the humanity
of captive insurgents.

Mine eye offends me,
as the flag
draped coffins
of returning
servicemen
and women
continue to pile
on the boiling tarmac
of Dover Air Force Base.

Tearful salutes,
folded flags
and mournful dirges
of prerecorded Taps
are small compensation for
shattered families,
and a wasted life,
unnecessarily spent,
criminally sacrificed
in a pointless conflict
in service to a lie.

Mine eye offends me
as I watch
my country's soft parade
of growing militarization
xenophobic fear
compelled patriotism
salute and goose step
to the flash of sword
and the sound of guns
and the glittering
medals of valor
adorning the chests
of a nations warriors.

How barbaric
are we?
allocating
overstuffed
apportionment
of weapons
and armories
while
people are
foreclosed
forcing armies
of unemployed
Joads
to ride
en masse on
an Acela Express
to a crowded
poor house
a listless journey
on pock marked
highways
arriving at
dreaded
destinations
to defunct
townships
offering
empty factories
and closed schools.

Screaming in silence
I scratch at my eyes
with numbed fingers.

Matthew 18:9

Music Selection:
The Doors, The Soft Parade

Oakland
3/17/10
jbm
When I was spongy
soft and daisy yellow, my father poured
forth with piety his cleansing love
for god and country, and he poured
it into poor little porous me.

It was a sop I tried to hold
but just as gold wings go
and clay feet come,
so my faith in blindness was replaced
by a bookish seeking.

The small wrings and smaller
squeezes of his uneven hands
told me god wasn’t 'man enough,
and any bounded place was too cramped
a space for my odd inklings.

Then I found this upon the further
side of knowing: Nature lives and dies not
in our world alone,
but there’s a universe to breed
and spoil with my loving’s expansion.

It’s always cycling...
cycling before me...
cycling through me...
cycling past me...
cycling in spite of me.

Ever never blinks
and no quill’s ink tallies
those woes and wants
played out on the twinkling
stage of our weakling moments.

Outside the familiar
rhythms of my childish loves,
I’m left
pledging to do no heavenly harm
as I spread wide these arms
so inadequate for embracing the vast
elliptical clouds of intermingling
light and dust,
and in flying I’ll fall toward
but not reach
the core of my sunny belief.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Formless, hidden flagrance
Bastardizations
Subconscious invasions
Derealization

Murderous mindless mental gobbledygook
Aloof, to bide inside and take a look
Spurious flourish in acrid abhorrence

Tis the demon
Which lies within
That tells me lies
And promotes sin

Trials of toilsome interims
Stagnate and rot, in mine, chagrin

Ineffectual ****** aggravations
Sordid, torrid want, ablation
Putrescence of evanescence

Sorrowful warbles in gargling marbles
Choking on hope,
extinguishing flames of my name and making

Prodding the prongs of the timeless song
Rending and rendering nought to which I belong

Seeing sights, in blindness bind,
simulations of kindness, in emptiest minds

I've seen it screaming, deadened in the dark
It doth implore me, say'n only "Hark!"

Tell me truly, what unruly things of which you speak
Portent futures ever looming, bleak
Unspeakable things

I cannot be
I will not be but me
I am not apostate
To lunacy
Frank Russell Feb 2014
Just like I told you:
It was not Jesus the Jewish reformer,
the philanthropic teacher,
That caused my grief
-  I had admiration for him.

My revolt was caused by
The Christian Jesus, you see?
The arrogant only begotten,
The "You must accept Me as Savior,"
The Jesus of Paul and the Evangelists,
The Jesus of the various councils,
the many churches,
denominations, creeds  -
The Jesus that they created...

While crucifying His doctrine.

- fr
This was my life's work.
It's all I had going for me.
A head in a hand basket and a knuckle-rust sandwich for dinner.
Stored neatly in a corner
Reserved for mice and maggots
Wrapped in used aluminum foil
It's just as I left it
That cold and only day
Far away from grey skies and blue turtle tails.
I could barely concentrate on it most days.
Too much pressure.
Too many distractions and though I realized this was to be
My memories last stand
I couldn't help but feel as if more than time
Was being wasted.

All I could do was apologize.
It's the way my brain works.
Nothing gets done.
I fall in love with the thought of impermanence
Until the cold realization that it's my own illusion  
Whispering away on the wind and no one else's.
So
I fail again.
This beginning is near the end and it's no indication
Of what I'm capable of.
It's an anti-****** of sorts.
If there's a God in heaven,
If I haven't wasted all this life struggling against the weight of damnation in vain
I'll be redeemed in it's eccentricity
For eccentricity is all I've experienced.

Let me say that again.
I've courted eccentricity like a blind lover
Too eager for the afterglow.
The expectations I've hoarded are staggering
They make me an eager handyman of souls.
This eccentric nature I've absorbed
And yet it is loathsome to me.
I crave acceptance but ****** be the man who can figure me out.
It hurts so much to know I've missed you.
The signal resignation that I've been forced to grant normalcy.
Without sense or sensibility.

Should I speak in the third person?
Would you think I was trying to hide behind a character the thoughts and plans and deeds I might not care for your knowing?
Is that something I might do?
Those thoughts.
Those deeds.
Those plans.
They exist be they the property of
I
ME
MINE
or of Jerry the poultry dealer.
The only difference is that Jerry the poultry dealer is a fairly affable fellow.
I'm a *******.
Maybe 20 years
if I'm lucky
I'll waste every one
I know I will

Vultures winging lazy, hungry circles
majestic carrion
thinking of dogs
too lazy to chase them way

Maybe it's the poet
on the feeding trend
lifeless, soulless
his broken heart to mend

Apostate
the poet cannot be trusted
he has dealt with lies and half-truths
almost his entire life

He thinks he knows who his friends are
but he doesn't recognize the sound of their laughter
when he's turned away
guffaws, giggles, hateful, evil snark

But he deserves it
madman desire it
your useless, poet,
when your words have no use for you
Pearson Bolt Jan 2016
hand-me-down lessons lifted
from leather-bound tomes
in iterations of half-hearted exultation
but i found definition in negation

i am the antichrist

for false hope mingles with
crippling self-doubt and
cerebral self-mutilation leads
inexorably to intellectual suicide

i won't follow the death drive

rejecting fantasies of faith
in order to
overcome the world
my struggle is undertaken

alone

i will not sacrifice
reason science art philosophy
for a paternal phantasmagoria
or pastoral paradise

black sheep weren't born to follow
Jesse R Anderson Apr 2014
Oh, Father, where’s the Messenger?
I can endure not one day more.
They promised me the Messenger
Was knocking at the door.

His gentle words transfixed me,
And bore up the hearts of men.
He said I only need believe,
To be guiltless once again.

His empathy beguiled my soul.
My faith he did endow.
He swore that he’d return someday.
Oh, how I need him now.

Oh, Father, where’s the Messenger
I’ve pinned my hopes upon?
“He’s come and gone!” My Father laughed.
“He’s, long since, come and gone!”
Yes, it's cynical. but it's an apostate's prayer, after all.
love's apostate
a former demise
I bloom a fervid admiration
a hatred never heard
commensurable to my own
a soul never alone
...or is it too late?
Who set you on this path to hell?
The same ones telling you "turn around"
Weren't they saying there's no turning back?
They'd have you believe it's much easier
Getting used to the idea of being ******
But you've seen the world from a different point of view
The truth is a misunderstood paradox
Being as far from the Eternal as you can possibly be
You swing the spiral to become closer than you ever were
Where the reality of I
Is neither blessed nor condemned
Caught in the short circuit
Where acceptance and rejection
Elicit the same response
Joy and sorrow
Indistinguishable
Caroline Shank Dec 2021
I Found God

I found God in a Baptist Church
in Milwaukee.
Faith,  small hands and
scratched bibles.

Warm cookies.

The delicate and the children.
Their names in coded
words on the skin under

my arms. .

Dedicate: the
day to the great E. Perience.

There is a new Age
coming.

I smoke a cigarette.

God arrived in fancy clothes.

Women dressed, frown.
Still voices in the

Wilderness

Witness the Beloved
baptism of perfumed
sinners

I smoked for them all.
My fee for being previously

Apostate.


Caroline Shank
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2020
keep me in this prison: to recount the spinning
labyrinth of thought before falling
to sleep only 14 hours ago...
                      and having done so:
dreaming up the most uncomfortably real dreams -
not that detailing them would be worth
anything...

   begging myself: remember the words
prior to sleep: write them down: you fool!
the "other" man is speaking - rising from the depths:
the child "abadoned": to curate this tongue
has risen from the depths by chance
of you favouring to enter them in turn...

a protest concerning kenneth rexroth:
but sir... what's there to boast about?
    aren't you reading Proust as a translation?

keep me in this prison... as of today...
a few chapters from the pickwick papers:
yes... i do kind Dickens much easier on the eye:
and most certainly much more peacock-strutting
than Shakespeare...
            perhaps with the exception of Macbeth:
as ever... exceptions can and sometimes
must be made...
                      however: minor...

and in between chapters... well...
                         a swedish ***** and some tonic
and lime...
            and then the windowsill...
perched on a folded leg...
       smoking a cigarette... continuing
to sip the thrill zapping... crisp and cutting...
      warm snow...
                       and the song...
             qui nous demaine:

                  trois fleurs d’amour i trouvai
                  en la bonne estraine
                  voici le mai, le joli mois de mai
                  qui nous demaine...

in the rendition of corvus corax...

yet another moon-less night...
         such nights: where it almost feeds to be inclined
to conjure up some nearby nomad with
a robe attired with stars...
         a silver globus of glistening
romance and death...

                  such nights when the moon
doesn't appear...
            and frankly... the clouds have settled
for keeping the man in the ***** of earth:
never to aspire toward galileo and copernicus ltd.
in protest! for astronomy!

yes... between reading the pickwick papers...
and listening to some music:
never the two at the same time...
a parting of the seas...
the art of reading: in the sea of silence...
where you can fiddle with...
    a whisper from the buzzing aeon bound
to minutes: the sound of an electric demon
in a lightbulb...

and of course beyond this sea of silence:
a sea of sighs and yawns...
a flipping of a page: like a crease in time -
or a passing whale-shaped-tsunami
of sound...          to then the music...

as death would have it: beside the music...
perhaps once upon a time...
but i do not believe it:
a pen on paper - a hunched crow left scratching
with its claws...
while a fire **** between such
imaginary creatures took place in a candleflame...
but no music...
perhaps in the 20th century:
the radio... and the type-writer: machine-gun...
the radio static would have aided
the mechanisation of the type-type-typo!
scratch-rip! again!

21st century antics?
   pristine quality, earphones...
all the better to not hear the clicking sound
of a lineage of ten little hammers on a keyboard...
perhaps plucking oysters from the depths...
or for that matter pearls...
or perhaps searching for delicate mushrooms
and pulling them by the stump...
still the umbrella royalty still: that sucker's bribe
of pride...

of note: the old tongue wanted an audience...
concerning? drinking... and other... habits...
*****: most certainly... with the lime and tonic...
in "rationed" doses... and a good sleeping
hygiene... i must call it a sleeping hygiene...
at most 12am to bed... and at least 8am the rise...
the drinking:
one day upon a sleeping lake...
another day upon a raving lunatic of a sea!
a time for drinking: a time for thrist...
a time for living and a time for dying...

i tried to imagine myself in one of those a.a.
meetings... self-lacerating myself:
in that secular ugliness: without a monk's tunic
or: tools for: penitence...
after ten weeks or so: clap clap all round applause!
i bet...
       the dry stretch: applause applause:
lady gaga go-go! to live for applause...
b'ah! to ******* with that sort of attitude...
and this is where the old tongue spoke(:)

o piciu?! wersja: jak, pić?!
chcem tego psa na smyczy niż tą smycz: samą!
bez tego psa! ten "niby"
wzamian z tym marno-nerwowym
   człowiekiem! tą śpiącą pijawką!
suma sumarum?
   wole tego psa na smyczy - niż tą smycz
bez psa!
lepiej ja z tym psem na smyczy:
   niz ten czlowiek ze swą śpiącą pijawką!


tr.
     on drinking?! version: how to, drink?!
i want this dog on a leash than this leash:
on its own! without this dog!
                  that "so-called" alternative
with this feebly-nervous human!
                                    that sleeping leech!
<>
i rather this dog on a leash - than this
leash without a dog!
better i with this dog on a leash:
than this human with his sleeping leech!

it's not some eternal wisdom...
but...                                 it's a good enough start...
and yes... please... this prison...
every... single... day, and, night....
forever...
i can become the observant spy mushroom:
the hitchhiker in 1960s psychadelia
mingling with darwinism...
the mushroom that hijacked the ape...
etc.

                  it's a pretty simple list...
a dickens... a ***** and tonic and lime...
a windowsill... a cigarette...
   some... folkish song... i'd much prefer
the lyrics to the sung in anything but english...
french, latin... german... norwegian...
but please... not italian... i'll settle for greek...

if asked: why didn't you marry...
good question...
                why didn't i marry?
                        perhaps this... or perhaps...
i much prefered the 1 hour periods
of entertaining the company of prostitutes
in a brothel?
               honest transactions: stealing kisses...
the mainstream already laid the generic
framework: jack the ripper sort...

                      well: from judas to jesus
to me to the... "lowest denominator"...
                                            or so "they" say...
since if there was anything to be celebrated
at easter... outside of a homogenous catholic
nationhood... in england...
the lair of the huguenots...
         well... i teased reading kabbalah...
i teased reading the gnostic texts and i really did go
mad about the nag hammadi library...
after a while though:
can i change the direction of the Vistula
by putting a stick in the middle of it?
i certainly: ha ha! river... not the sea:
what can you do? turn the time and the flow?

anyway... catholicism...
                the usual suspect rubric check-list...
baptised? had i any say in it?
first communion? did i have any say in it
or would you rather ask whether
i lied when taking my first confession?
a first confession is a precursor to a first communion...
or... i don't remember...
i played the xylophone at the st. augustine's
primary school nativity play:
yeah... and drinking under-age...
crux of the matter: if we're all about peacocking
and comparing all the little richards
via the 3rd's **** or whatever...
confirmation?                      yeah...
          ­           so much for a church wedding...

all that... and i have to come back...
sensibly... catholic intellectualism or sorts...
bribe me and i might take it seriously...
love me and i might even throw in some fiasco
of apologetics... but then i'd be like
a monkey at a sushi bar: eat it? fling it?!
the only sensible consolidation of
a celebration of easter...

    the winter has been crucified...
                 and today was the first day i could
pick up a scent of spring...
in the rain... it trickled with...
earth... from far away... dry sand... mingling
with the water... the wind must have
picked up the sand from sahara and a dollop
of the evaporating mediterranean...
flung it to these isles...

                       yes: origins in catholicism...
which always more fun to break away from...
"apostate": notably watching apostate intellectual
jews and their spezial brand of atheism...
since: i mean... trust a catholic convert to
judaism? trust a *** reading into gnosticism?
or trust a muslim at all?
                         basic questions of: a priest,
a rabbi...                        a druid walk into a bar...
sort of jokes...
           there a litany of them...
a whole 'ymn book o' 'em!
                       sam's the weller! see the son?
moi noi'ver!

         but back and forth back and forth
within and without catholicism...
                                it's not as fun... black-clad
sober, serious, surplus of secularism...
                         all that: agitation from... what the persians
rebelled against... when finally the islamic
schism came so early...
and the ****'ites and... the persians like
the good choir boys of catholicism...
     one eye is said to be reserved for reading...
one eye is said to be reserved for admiring...
           it's hard to admire a text...
                          when it's even harder to read
into a sculpture!

oh yes... i like this prison... very much...
                                             where, is, my, mind?!
Aditya Roy Oct 2018
Me shelter
My veil
These are things
put together well
Me shelves
Keeps the kettle called black
Coal fueling it's function
Apostate that I am
Robert Zanfad Apr 2010
i've come here to commit the quivering weak,
feeding scurrying beasts more reeking fodder
sentimental flesh no match for their razor sharp teeth
banging *** lids, stomping feet
hoping that rats near, feasting
on scraps and detritus will scatter amid bluster
before eyes dare to open - perhaps catch sight of things
that might scare us
our cans, never closed -
left always ajar, an offering of communion
lest they grow too hungry
gnaw through walls and come inside,
share foie gras with guests I'd hoped to impress
now seated and dining behind;
disgust them in sights of sins best hidden out back in the darkness
and leave fine linens soiled with meals yet digested

his body's been disposed before,
innocent specter resurrected by morning to fog up the mirror
reciting novenas as beads of his rosary roll in counts down its surface
never suspecting fate that awaits as night falls once more
daytime is easier, drowning sound
from his voice in symphonies of piano and strings
Mozart's or Mahler's  -
other things of distraction...
that aren't there to hide in when
sun fades and sleep, again, tries to invade
his figure repudiated, extracted
from a psyche dissected years ago, like a tumor threatening to grow
swallow the Now from which time's made.
in pretense of conversion for the moment,  i take his hand and lead him -
more fresh meat for the rodents
(even saints sometimes lie when they don't like the answers - they atone deception later)
he still cries when I leave him alone at the altar

once
a shaman shaking dried heads tied to a stick with palm leaves
promised mysterious potions that would strengthen the weak
reciting magical incantations expected to exorcise spirits within
for all those who believed
practicing his science of faith or faith in his science
for clients lined up at the door,
seeking doses of hope that he sold them -  returning each week for some more
but for those apostate, left to stare in the glare of florescent
humors never found balance in bloodletting
lancet nor leaches
the weakness of faithless was in never tasting the cure
or trusting tears could ever be wiped away by ice picks
he ****** deep in eye sockets, the sweet lies he told us
holes left in the soul could never filled by blue pills -
they couldn't reach there

missionaries positioned their ways
through that breach,
preaching a new theology requiring surrender
of my reliquary of cherished memories
as precondition for salvation,
discarding polished bones i'd kissed and prayed over:

Her precious pink t-shirt, coil of hair still stuck there,
though having no root it could never be proved
from whom it was groomed,
it was article of faith - who could dare question it;

the used ticket stub with date imprinted
indicating temporal evidence that
once something true existed
that i, too, felt part of;

words bound in a covenant sent by saints
in small pieces of lavender-scented mail
though having waited so long
faith in The Coming had wasted
and perfume, long ago, faded to imagination

and so, a soul abandoned all hope of redemption

a red rose rendered in oils
expressing devotion for eternity lost meaning
when it withered
watered by hope, as it was and forgotten;
our castle built on clouds came tumbling to the ground
when we looked up, stared at the sky;
the permanent brilliance of diamonds become mere stones in the garden
when sown from a window on high -
wealth for worms to covet and fight over,
though the fool still knelt to sift soil through his fingers
in search of lost sacrament
finally planting his hope
in the many graves that he'd made
otherwise, for forsaken,
faith is just hope not yet ready to die

then, there's the weak one i'll face in the morning,
likely still worshiping old bones and reciting from memory his ancient liturgy
when i let it, a cacophony of questions
can echo about paths never taken, and why some vows, not others;
and i wonder if there's a heaven for heathens when clocks cease their ticking
off nows that i try to live in
For the stout of heart who have made it to this end, wondering why they've wasted their time with obscurity and lunatic rant,  my apologies... the outburst felt good in its writing.
Àŧùl Feb 2019
You can experience it
Coming from most of
The writers around the
Block of Writers Block
Only to be saved by the
Bunch of Writers from
The Writers' Block.

They can call you names,
Ranging from A ******
To A Grammar ****.
But don't be put off,
Don't be put out,
Just hold on.
Hold your ground.

You might have OCD,
The Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,
Don't worry - just channel it well.
Channel it well and play your tunes,
Don't worry about the runes,
They will be all covered with ink.
Yes, the electronic ink.

For all eternity, they say,
You can never achieve perfection,
And it should not concern you.
Just remember your wordlust,
Coin new and better words,
Just play your sweet lute.
Yes, you are so cute.

"What's so cataclysmic about the apostrophe?"
You asked me,
And legitimately so.
It's the difference 'tween us,
Perfection and poets,
Godliness and humaneness.
Divinity and profanity.

"Yes, perfection is sacrilege,"
I say, "Perfection is an ambition,"
"Of humanity and nature."
I take a deep breath before saying,
"In the knowledge available,"
"It's just a figment."
You ask me, "Where is it located?"

I say:
Find it 'fore some letters,
You can find it afta' some letters,
Lockin'n'poppin words together,
The apostrophe is so savoury & flexible
I just hope that I never become,
A Grammar Apostate -
I'll rather be ill instead.
My HP Poem #1732
©Atul Kaushal
JDG Dec 2015
You say you love Christ
you look the part
but if I were Him babe
I'd rather fill the grave
than your heart
An older one, redone.
Hie did/do cha did cap cha a clue
you want me....... yes sigh dew
and will hew
a path in tandem with the help of uncle loo
on guard on mind our peas and queue
in an effort to earn my stripes for u
and even join tribe of village people per view
wing a Flintstone lifestyle where…whew
mebbe, many a close call chased by a giant beast,
   and saved
   by the released arrow whack,
   sans bulls eye thwack (no lion) respite of a Zulu.

---------- while ----------

Awaiting my modified sentence  -
A fictional injustice landing me in the slammer for fone he ears - with no penitence.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
No way to dodge fiat decreeing death sentence twill span
the rest o' me life, cuz such incarceration haint part o ma plan
for this abetting dodging, hedging rambling man
voicing objection - that thee trump petting don iz no fan
of mine, and who felt unready to kick the can
on account of violating what...freedom of speech ban
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Against abominable illegal mandate
with no way to commute death sentence this late
for simple act of voicing opinion against
   existence of heavenly gate
nor hellish underworld despite religious ******
decreeing penance as one articulate prelate
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Spurious pedagogical poetic rant,
ache kin to melting wax growing a candlewick
not the ravings of some half mad lunatic who doth tick
tock carefully plotting recitation that springs quick
from combined teachings of kant did *****
the mind of this jolly old Saint Nick
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Charges ******* up per this average don
purportedly blaspheming judeo-christian paradigm
as an atheist many beliefs outdated and fore gone
upending blind faith equated with hill of beans upon
which dogma erected epitomized by
complex edifices via grime
+ ****** tears and trifle pay for toiling for a bombastic scion
sweat shed by Polish slave labor
usurpation of freedom stripped analogous
to yearning Palestine yearning their own Zion
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Until outspoken persons risked life and limb
to invalidate existence of supreme deity
many still accredit with creating life proper and prim
whether for extra credit or perhaps on a whim
Adam from whose rib cage without anesthesia
but razor sharp knife sprung Eve
with a physique quite pleasing and trim
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
But rather than get lost in the Garden of Eden myth
final seconds countdown of existence tick away
while this keying nonchalant hammering word smith
doth not capitulate, aye deem heart of religion flimsy as pith
without intent to recant statements
   solely acceptable to b’ni brith
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Prompting last words of mine as oye vay
thing in the wind or house of cards vulnerable to blow away!
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
free from the irishman's arbeit macht frei on the building site:
****** worked the tools for a few years, got promoted and started
to kiss pig snouts - thinks he's the god Merovingian,
people hallucinate a potato where
his head ought to be and laugh -
well, how the most of society is sheltered
from the construction site in the west:
foreigners out! willkommen... now you
get you spoofs to do the hardened labours -
see how they fair, poncy fairies couldn't
even lift a shitload of bricks: but there they
go into the temple of hamster wheels
and brass muscles and kissing bicep meat-heads...
they could be utilised to generate enough
power to provide energy for a corner shops -
so yeah, the Romanians were on holiday,
it took them 5 days to reach their village
flying from London to Bucharest -
the cultural improvement of the Kazakh nation
was filmed there, after 5 weeks free from
the shackles of the irishman's version of
Auschwitz: a regular staple around here,
i get the smuggled cigarettes -
but after smoking tobacco smuggled from
god knows where, these Benson & Hedges
feel like torpedoes between the index and middle...
odd what 3 packets of 50g tobacco does to
perception, for a while i was smoking chop-sticks,
next thing i'm smoking torpedoes thick bulging
sticks - the smoke v. drink dynamic changes...
is Mary Poppins about to teach me a lesson
in how the HM & Revenue is sacred?
i hated that nanny when she said: to preserve
the health of the public, and to invoke a need
for proper taxation... well... **** that...
ever smoke Беломорканал сигареты?
       (belomorkanal sigarety)?
i thought you haven't, i have, i wouldn't even know
where to begin if i had to lie and tell you
i visited the Lenin mausoleum -
Беломорканал сигареты though? see the neo-Greek
in Cyrillic, or as? talk about evolution, i'd talk
more about more recent events in linguistic,
how Greek evolved in Cyrillic and Latin into added
diacritical markings: English held onto puritan Latin
impression way too long, instead of diacritical markings
we have U.S.A. accents, Scottish Irish and Welsh accents,
regional accents in England, Australian and South African...
it's like this inverse sense of insomnia:
    the sun never, ever, ******* sets on English,
steroids and amphetamines, continually news -
must be hard to keep up, to keep the local reference
in a world adequately suited for the day-to-day
marching orders - but yeah, smoked those cigarettes -
they don't have filters, well, cardboard "filters" -
you squeezed the ends and smoked the workman's
tobacco - while you were digging that god awful trench:
the white sea-baltic canal - and she was the lovely
middle-class lady who introduced me into smoking
them, after she realised she had the poker hand -
it always happens when the middle-classes meddle
with someone originating in the working class
who wants to become a chemist... they say: work!
whip for a tongue... i swear you need shampoos and toothpaste...
oh right, i'm from the land of brick and mortar?
well, if you're going to maim me, damage me,
obviously i'll stage a rebellion utilising poetry...
should have left me after infringing the damage on me,
should have left me to do the work...
but no... she calls me up and exposes me to
a schizophrenic virus: i.e. the atypical symptom -
and i'm like: huh? voices? what are voices?
what do you meaning you're hearing voices?
i guess the conscience kicked in -
                         oh how angelic everyone thinks they are...
    i call these symptoms: a rotten conscience,
  the fact that anyone would appreciate having one
is already a miracle... but seeing it rotting
    is a bit like a Dorian Gray revelation -
shock! awe! but the picture is there!
                                               funny how people who
plan a baby sometimes never score,
              and funnier still how some people invoke
   getting impregnated without the state's laws
of matrimony to blackmail a man into matrimonial
laws, use the meanest, bleakest, bile-fuelled mechanism
to erase the person from all the pages of life,
   then spectacularly fail: a bit like Jesus on the third day,
and the person in question blahs his way into
   something resembling life -  the typical
Hollywood plot: they killed him, but he got away...
        now i'm just waiting for a Mr. Chapman to finish
the job properly - because he might say:
                                his talent started waning...
    oh sure... i'd love to reach threescore & ten -
  and wait for the gimmick post-: every year after that
   is god's blessing... can i speak to the god in Sudan?
   can i get an audience? no? ah ****.
better start planning early mortality plans
while others are thinking of retirement.
                **** me! i used to be so into life that i'd
probably have written a poem a month apart -
    and now i'm left with a ****** biography that
could be encompassed in a year...
   i'm not even obsessing about it, it's just an elephant
in a box room that started snorting ******* and
playing jazz real good -
                                 then they blamed me on marijuana,
   i'd be the laziest person alive if i overdid that drug...
and however much i tried to become a Catholic
apostate, not getting confirmed and what:
   i was forced into Christian lessons of forgiveness,
only because i didn't have enough money to
pursue an argument in court... grand... just pitch-***
perfect -              mind you, they are really ****** lessons,
    i wouldn't go banging them to anyone
  who hasn't experienced injustice in this world:
gravity is probably the only law we can all experience
with true justice... as you can see, gravity wasn't
man-made... so good luck arguing your cases
     with murderers not being punished
  thieves not having their hands cut off for stealing jewels...
   if anyone was god at the birth of Christianity,
it was only Pontius Pilate - he washed his hands clean
from the matter... to me that's who god was in that
story... i'm washing my hands of anything that
might come from this.
Parent of golden dreams, Romance!
  Auspicious Queen of childish joys,
Who lead’st along, in airy dance,
  Thy votive train of girls and boys;
At length, in spells no longer bound,
  I break the fetters of my youth;
No more I tread thy mystic round,
  But leave thy realms for those of Truth.

And yet ’tis hard to quit the dreams
  Which haunt the unsuspicious soul,
Where every nymph a goddess seems,
  Whose eyes through rays immortal roll;
While Fancy holds her boundless reign,
  And all assume a varied hue;
When Virgins seem no longer vain,
  And even Woman’s smiles are true.

And must we own thee, but a name,
  And from thy hall of clouds descend?
Nor find a Sylph in every dame,
  A Pylades in every friend?
But leave, at once, thy realms of air
  To mingling bands of fairy elves;
Confess that woman’s false as fair,
  And friends have feeling for—themselves?

With shame, I own, I’ve felt thy sway;
  Repentant, now thy reign is o’er;
No more thy precepts I obey,
  No more on fancied pinions soar;
Fond fool! to love a sparkling eye,
  And think that eye to truth was dear;
To trust a passing wanton’s sigh,
And melt beneath a wanton’s tear!

Romance! disgusted with deceit,
  Far from thy motley court I fly,
Where Affectation holds her seat,
  And sickly Sensibility;
Whose silly tears can never flow
  For any pangs excepting thine;
Who turns aside from real woe,
  To steep in dew thy gaudy shrine.

Now join with sable Sympathy,
  With cypress crown’d, array’d in weeds,
Who heaves with thee her simple sigh,
  Whose breast for every ***** bleeds;
And call thy sylvan female choir,
  To mourn a Swain for ever gone,
Who once could glow with equal fire,
  But bends not now before thy throne.

Ye genial Nymphs, whose ready tears
  On all occasions swiftly flow;
Whose bosoms heave with fancied fears,
  With fancied flames and phrenzy glow
Say, will you mourn my absent name,
  Apostate from your gentle train?
An infant Bard, at least, may claim
  From you a sympathetic strain.

Adieu, fond race! a long adieu!
  The hour of fate is hovering nigh;
E’en now the gulf appears in view,
  Where unlamented you must lie:
Oblivion’s blackening lake is seen,
  Convuls’d by gales you cannot weather,
Where you, and eke your gentle queen,
  Alas! must perish altogether.
ConnectHook Apr 2018
Qui Transtulit Sustinet

There sat CONNECTICUT, a twit
blue nanny-state, and doomed to sit
on welfare-warrens of the ******
her social service on demand.
She withers on NEW ENGLAND‘s vine
a bygone has-been, and a sign
of democratic overkill
where her once-dear and verdant rill
now stagnant flows: polluted stream
a moribund New England dream.
The richest state with poorest heart:
the Northeast’s saddest story. Part
of history’s renowned revival,
now irrelevant. Survival
chains her children in dependence
keeping back the state’s ascendance.
Apostate Puritan, grown old—
for LIBERTY, no longer bold;
a slave to Man, where once God’s WORD
awakened greatness. Souls were stirred
in ENFIELD (of all strange places),
Christ beheld in radiant faces . . .
Edwards held their spellbound souls
like spiders over flaming coals,
in gratitude for Gospel grace
renewing thus both town and race.
But I digress. Connecticut
is what I came to speak about:
forgotten dull colonial matron
yoked in failure, plebe as patron
nostalgic for her Charter Oak
whose deadwood limbs went up in smoke
along with dark tobacco wrap
while the plantation took a nap.
Her social programs overgrowth
pose forest fire-risk. Under oath
her public servants signal virtue;
sign which really should alert you
to the democrat-machine’s
impending failure (ways and means).
Nutmeg-addled Tax-and-spenders,
dollar drunks on welfare benders
widen economic rifts;
force single moms toward double shifts
while Latin Kings hold court in prison
waiting out their royal season:
fiscally unsustainable—
yet totally explainable
(nutmeg is a drug for witches
spendthrift warlocks, bankrupt *******).
Oh HARTFORD, city of the dead
which dies at five, then home to bed,
insurance once assured your rise;
but now your ghosts haunt sadder skies.
Your life displaced, outsourced, out-dated;
so, it seems, your fall was fated.
Meanwhile, close to New York City,
fairer fields are growing pretty
long on corporate commutes.
Data-driven growth computes
as data-drivers flood the roads
and enter by Manhattan-loads
from golden coasts’ Atlantic shores
and posh patrician golden doors
to bite the apple of our time:
a number-cruncher built on crime.
New England’s puritannic granny
(data-driven tyrant ******)
seeks to harbor tropic isles
with blandly bureaucratic smiles.
Your poor dear heart cannot afford
to welcome every island lord
who looks to better his estate
and so decides to emigrate.
Displaced Jamaicans outta yard
compel the soft verse to get hard.
Boricua separatists, dispersed
show nationalities reversed
and dwell between two foreign lands
in Spanglish no one understands.
Such nutmeg gets the covens high
to soar the stormy Liberal sky.
It’s Yankee hubris: condescension
taxing plebes for such dissension.
Though you connect, there I would cut,
excising from New England’s gut
metastasizing social tumors:
clueless and obese consumers,
teenage moms, pajama-clad
whose nenes wait in vain for dad.
QUI TRANSTULIT SUSTINET—truth . . .
but that was was in our nation’s youth.
She’s gotten worse with passing years
confirming citizens’ worst fears;
showing her colors every vote
her monotone, a droning note
on which the blue-bloods hang their hue
when hope and change are overdue.
Her atheist zeal meets Yankee pride:
a most progressive broomstick ride;
oblivious to her Christian past,
an enemy of God at last.
Senryu and Haikai:
Basho-san, can you get me
another beer, please?
Norbert Tasev Jan 2021
If the Sun calms down today, perhaps I can objectively state the fears of my dreaded fears, not in vain and maybe I will not be alone forever! It became a negative of many memories in my brain! A cherishing move takes hold of me, and it would be good not to let it go with the Goodness of an unconditional donor! In my room at night, the only contiguous falling reassurance — with every palm in turn, can only hesitate any human Promise — is the moment that can be evoked with a single act, when we gave estimated hands unconditionally to the other and he was so relaxed as to betray his word!
 
This is how a given, trusting word can only become a nodding, apostate Shadow! On my face, tattered, tired tears, like bouncing glass *****, trickle at a slow pace, Greek! I would love to throw out all the ingrained nonsense out of my brain! Immortal Dear unfolding, flawless figure as if he no longer promises me his redeeming unearthly charms! I still keep my restlessness to myself like the scream of an orphaned child!
 
Waiting for a new reverence for selfishness, I take part in disguised annihilation as I stifle my will to act every day, my heart attack tempers! I am a child even after all these years, and the fragments of the curved mirrors of my face are constantly wounding the Past with their testimony! - Can the lace bushes in love with my words burn someone with a warm glow ?! "I am pondering the depths of my expelled defensiveness, I think: what did I have to ruin so far?!
 
If the Sun calms down today, perhaps I can objectively state the fears of my dreaded fears, not in vain and maybe I will not be alone forever! It became a negative of many memories in my brain! A cherishing move takes hold of me, and it would be good not to let it go with the Goodness of an unconditional donor! In my room at night, the only contiguous falling reassurance — with every palm in turn, can only hesitate any human Promise — is the moment that can be evoked with a single act, when we gave estimated hands unconditionally to the other and he was so relaxed as to betray his word!
 
This is how a given, trusting word can only become a nodding, apostate Shadow! On my face, tattered, tired tears, like bouncing glass *****, trickle at a slow pace, Greek! I would love to throw out all the ingrained nonsense out of my brain! Immortal Dear unfolding, flawless figure as if he no longer promises me his redeeming unearthly charms! I still keep my restlessness to myself like the scream of an orphaned child!
 
Waiting for a new reverence for selfishness, I take part in disguised annihilation as I stifle my will to act every day, my heart attack tempers! I am a child even after all these years, and the fragments of the curved mirrors of my face are constantly wounding the Past with their testimony! - Can the lace bushes in love with my words burn someone with a warm glow ?! "I'm pondering the depths of my expelled defensiveness, I'm thinking: what did I have to ruin so far ?!"
Michael Kusi Mar 2018
Message said, I ask leave to make a speakage to the Federation troops.
The Covenantal Project nodded and replied, Your Helmetchief, who holds the Dahomeyian Rulership, may address this group.
Message stood on top of the mount and entered into a Battlefare Stance.
The Winged Fire-Lance and the Celestial Blade Saber were in both her outstretched hands.
Message screamed with zealous fervor, Soldiers, Shark-Devil has transgressed the Federation’s Charter and must suffer as an apostate.
This Battlefare struggle will make all you brave troops who were trapped in the land of the unknown great.
Victory is now because death is choked in the air sweetened with the taste of sure progress.
I Message, will lead you forward, into the sunlit uphills with Shark-Devil heart torn out of his breast!
But I thought Shark-Devil was my battle to win and fight
Dragon-Man whispered with concern to the nearby Lady of the Night.
Lady of the Night scolded, Hush Message is the Helmetchief, she can have any enemy prize that she wants.
Message then lifted the Winged Fire-Lance and the Celestial Blade Saber and shouted, ADVANCE!

Dragon-Man urged, You heard our Helmet-chief, Now is the time get into the fight that must be won with bled.
Shark-Devil told Officer Thon, I will make you the Designated Casualty to go out and **** Message dead
The plain was a whirlwind of activity, with The Federation and Shark-Devil at a standstill.
Officer Thon then saw Message and thought, Now is my time to go out for the ****.
Because Message had rushed out too far forward on her Centaur-Raptor, she was helmed in far.
Officer Thon told his soldiers by mind-speak, Keep her cornered until I can come to finish her.
Message used both hands to deadly effect, the body count became mere body calculation.
Because Message was ready to die as Helmetchief for the sake of the Federation.
Officer Thon stuck a Scythe Dagger to Message’s Centaur-Raptor, it fell down with her on.
Message got up bruised and got ready to battle to the death with Officer Thon.

Dragon-Man was searching for Shark-Devil, the one who had destroyed his family tree
Shark-Devil was in the rear protected, directing the Battlefare operations by telepathy.
Dragon-Man suddenly arrived in Shark-Devil’s presence, and Shark-Devil taunted, this is the last face you will see you fool.
Dragon-Man kneeled down and said, No, Shark-Devil, The Great Beyond is where you will go back to rule.
Lady of the Night jumped off of Dragon-Man’s back to leap high, she truly soared in the air.
But by the time she brought her weapon down where Shark-Devil was, he was not there.
Shark-Devil had gone to Officer Thon’s assistance, and taunted Message, my killing offer still stands.
Message retracted the Winged Fire-Lance and Celestial Blade Saber into her watch, and called on the Death-Hands.
Dragon-Man and Lady of the Night were rushing to help Message in her fight, but the odds were against them coming in time.
Suddenly Breastplate-Bearer pulled up in a Paroah Chariot, and cried out, Follow me on this, because I leave no man behind.
Shark-Devil and Officer Thon were closing in, and Message prepared herself to take lives of two.
When Dragon-Man and Lady of the Night showed up behind Message, and Lady of the Night said, We outnumber you.
Then they started to fight, and soon all of them were bloodied, bruised, and battered.
They struggled as if no war before existed, and no war after mattered.
Dragon-Man suddenly readied himself to strike Shark-Devil, he prepared the Abyss Sword for a mighty blow for Shark-Devil’s death.
OWW, MY ARM, cried out Message, and Dragon-Man saw to his horror his Abyss-Sword had pierced Message’s left biceps
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2017
i may be a catholic apostate who did not
take too lightly in being confirmed,
and even though i studied chemistry to a degree
level, i find a welcome break,
an armchair metaphor in studying
esoteric materials, because they simply bring
that kind of comfort, and a complete
lack of rigour that allows so much to shine
through...

like my discovery of the sign of the cross
in the Sefirot...
        again, i have to stress that i have
a fetish for the Deutschezunge and Hebrew
in theology, for i could never fall to my knees
before the one most despised by the Jews,
how could i?
          i required Hebrew literature,
and may i add: the study of kabbalah has
proven to be, after all the trials,
a very scientific endeavour into
the mechanisation of language...
        trans-linguistic is would appear...
i simply can't return to the mundane world
of either prayer or mantra...
     that's below me, plus it erodes the memory,
with its rubrics of said words
unnecessarily recited...
  forgive me, but it's one thing to
remember the necessary words
only when something is conjured and appears,
and another to conjure nothing
more than a missing poetic cannibalism...
which christianity invokes:
poetic cannibalism...
             sorry, no, the bread is stale and
the wine has been watered down,
you drink my blut -
              fermentation of rye and barley
and wheat... have a sucker pouch for
a glass of whiskey...
                  bread?
      swallow some lead pebbles...
                       i can't deal with this *******
lightly, i tread along this route with shackles
clinging, swaying, breaking silence upon
silence within silence that's an enigma...
              
but i found something of interest,
  the sign of the cross in the supposed
"tree of death"...
                  for i have nothing left in me
than the admiration of a Hebrew...
       or as i like to call them: the Hebraï...
      i.e. not the indian raj,
          but the mingling of ray with ri-fe,
    the former bit of the puzzle...
             i wish i could return, sometimes,
but most of the time i'm unabashed
in not fathoming if not merely forming an
apology...
  there truly are greater reasons beyond
the catholic church's ******* priest...
           just today three pubescent girls walked
up to me in the deathly hollow of
the night and asked for direction...
  just doll like features, barely 13...
          porcelain in moonlight from the fat
on their cheeks glistening and bouncing off them...
i merely replied: for the love of god
i do not know the street you're trying
to find... Waverley Avenue?!
   i know of Waverley St., but it's up in
Edinburgh! with that touristy greeting
of a scot in proper attire playing the bags!
anyway... back to the "primitive"
concerns...

              | in the name |
                         keter
                  ehyeh asher ehyeh

    | of the son |
               tiferet
           beauty, YHWH,

       because wasn't it beautiful?
look how much beauty arose from
the crucifixion, am i not right?
  the son is always depicted as beautiful,
esp. under the powers of
      torturous event, esp. then...

  | and the father |

binah, gevurah, hod vs.
       chokhmah, chesed, netzach...

   oh, wait... ****!
it would appear that i'm the sort of person
unashamed of showing mistakes,
or to put it "mildly": glorifying them in being
included,
   for the only end-product is one filled
with imperfections...
         after all, the prime philosophical
narrative drive is: inconsistency,
albeit inconsistency visible,
not the end-product, polished version...
i simply remembered a wrong
version of the trinitarian formula...

once again, maestro, hit me!

and it will spread to the north
                             first,
then to the west,
then to the east,
and last: unto the south bound
      (the geography of the trinitarian
formula).

being an apostate at least i got
the beginning correct:

              | in the name |
                         keter
                  ehyeh asher ehyeh

  | of the father |
     there ought to be a dispute
given the crown of myrrh...
   irony serves god best,
namely? what king serve a kingdom
sanely with such an object,
what is a crucifix compared to a throne?
hence?
      the father is the foundation
      (yesod)
  rather than the kingship (malkhut) -
that's one for riddling the zealots
and teaching liberalism...
         the heart of the father teaches
a foundation,
since, as the common saying goes:
the woman wears the trousers.

  | and of the son |
this is where it becomes complicated...
was it really the son's
final statement to express love (chesed)?
what sort of person admires a self-imposed
masochism?
               there are two rubrics at work
here...
  binah                            chokhmah
   (understanding)           (wisdom)
gevurah                    &       chesed
(strength)                               (love)
hod                                     netzach
(splendour)                          (victory)

| and the holy spirit |
   what is singular in transmission,
and what allows a collectivism of
these six traits?
        not understand,
       not splendour, not love, not wisdom,
perhaps strength,
  but surely a vision of victory...

| in the name of the son |
who is the son, when characterised the most
with said attributes?

tiferet (beauty) abides by the world,
and is, the world.

           | amen |
            malkhut,
               kingship!
finally! the relation of the crown
to the kingship via but a single word.

| and of the son |
or perhaps it is that citation upon
the cross: my father's house will be a house
of prayer: that self-assurance of victory
(netzach)... which could only revel in

   | and of the holy ghost |
   as being both gevurah & hod
(strength & splendour) respectivelym
what with the strength of an enduring religion,
and the opulence of the churches
bleeding ornament gold...
marble... silver...
  
yet the reason why the son clashes with
the holy ghost is because:
the father is unrelated in the concept
of a trinity, for so much of him belong
to the Jew, and not the slandered Gentile,
as the Gentile was slandered by the mouth
of the son...
                  
      at least the "father" is clearly related
to the following Sefirot dynamic:

     keter (crown) = malkhut (kingship) /
yesod (foundation) = tiferet (beauty)

the "son" is paralysed from this dynamic,
there's not beauty in a crucifix,
even if gilded in gold...
                    or managed by marble sculpture
macabre of the penitent madonna..
          
already the crown, the crown of myrrh
is a bad joke, the throne a hanging instrument
a torture another, bad joke,
     there is no foundation in that image,
the foundation is more scientific,
  a droplet of saliva on some glucose,
for example...
    and the beauty?
              how about exchanging two gorgeous
torture symbols to cowbell dangle
iron maidens?!

  i have the luxury of studying religious texts,
since i paid my allegiance to studying
science to the age of 21...
       i have this luxury,
              i did the science,
but now i have to attempt the ultimate
humanism: a study of religion...
but given the times:
                it's hardly nonsensical
to attempt such a feat.
Kainat Azhar Feb 2016
Breathless,
I ran into the valley
of serenity…

A valley where birds were extinct,
a valley where time had no wings,
a valley where words no longer exist,
a valley where perfection was built…

Perfection
that was carved
out of the finest, sparkling stars
chosen by gods
of every religion.

Perfection
that the gods agreed
to place into the eyes
of an apostate
I just met.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
i wouldn't be looking for a grain of sand
(biology and physics involved in
the extreme of timescales as necessities
of prescriptive ontology akin to paracetamol),
to pass the time looking at paint dry
or the kleptomaniac amphetamine ******
trying to allocate time a spacing: clepsydra -
i'd be looking for a Napoleonic mountain -
something grand, something audacious -
something crowd pleasing; i'd be looking
for a mountain rather than a grain of sand,
a Mohammed's brow of pleased foresight
forged by pleasing excitement: when
-ed got in the way of -ing upon revision -
the necessity of the verb: (to) please.

and of him they said three things:
1. the death of death
2. the man who turned himself into a tree
3. of the men that will instil fear
    into the children of others
4. did you know that there was a child
    born without a brain in Poland?
    yep! no brain, he could talk and walk
    but he didn't have a brain... no, not that he
    was a hillbilly intellectually... he literally had no brain...
    just a woodpecker in the cranium of war-drums bellowing
    out a familiar tune of geese strapped to a
   methodology of synchronisation...
(5. rightfully alcoholic and apostate catholic,
      know any better sedative?
     Priest Rydzyk: radio Maria:
     hoi hoi huj! as if the Vatican isn't the
     oldest name for Mafia -
     usurper of education in orthography,
     a question of aesthetic and lessened
     rigour is relevant: as is the prevalent
     notion of *chomąto
- or the missing tail
     on the a, as in o & n:  the ą stress was always
     nasal, so, chomonto - unless we encourage
     the English to use diacritic marks,
     we'll have to unravel what makes a couplet
     of diacritical vowel and consonants -
                                  and not cheap -
      but hope -                   c's apparently
      optional, or, would you believe,
      a monopoly... d'uh, what else?
      the more i hear of Poland
      these days the more i make assurance
      to not speak anything but English...
      chomąto, i.e. noble herb? no!
                               horse collar - to oar the fields
for french fries - just like the modern children
who say milk comes from a supermarket
and not a cow... the Bermuda ****** tweak
of revisionists' scandal: to improve humanity.
altogether another way to say
                     behind this man there was no woman
for you to imitate writing and outright
subordination -
                              shady creatures, women,
long lost artefacts of womanhood:
the Graeae sisters and Medusa - ******* saints
in the feminist dogma -
                                       soon to be released:
feminism and Plato, feminism and Nietzsche,
feminism and ******, feminism and Leibniz,
feminism and Einstein, feminism and Putin,
feminism... **** me! the long lost theory
of everything! we've found it! stop digging!
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
it pains me to say: and it just so happens that the culprit in question was a Muslim... oh hell, i could have all the Malcolm X positivism concerning Islam about how it's the grand ethnic plateau... it pains me to write a near cliche of current affairs... i was open minded enough to emerge from Catholic bureaucracy without being confirmed... apostate that i am... i was open minded and trying to short-circuit the microchip implant of god in my mind... i was ready to do all those things and immerse myself in free secular love society... but after a certain incident at the stated location (https://goo.gl/MKNAWZ) i wasn't given much choice... my heart hardened and i became prone to zeal of throwing **** around - a Zealot without a definite grounding - i wish i could undo everything, but at the suggested U.R.L. is where it all began / after the incident i didn't start a cult, i phoned my ex-girlfriend begging her to come and meet me with bread and water... that's what defying the munchies does to the mind after the terrible has already happened, that damnable coercion of the politics of experience... you see me running around the amazon rain-forest with a bunch of zombies citing fragments of the bible and waiting for their salvation in a suicide pact? you can't be frank these days! you trying to keep calm and continue? what do you think i'm trying to do? fiery-tongued stink up a pulpit?!*

i don't know if i write good, i mean,
i enjoy what i write sometimes -
so i guess it must be bearable rather than good -
along the path i spotted philosophy
books that use really airy words and nothing
concrete in terms of grammatical
classification to shorten argument (but i do
like spaghetti waffling to be honest,
unlearned to read a novel with many characters,
instead learned to adore how philosopher
change between pronouns and not a single
character pops up, true to narration, and
not a single act of distancing and claims of
persona) - i can do with philosophers despising
poets (primarily for not reading their works)
but it has come upon us that poets hate
poets... but you know what? i'd give up
whatever natural ability i have for this form any day,
just so i could get a natural night's sleep,
and go back to manual labour and all my prior
physical strengths like riding a bike -
i'd return to where my soul was - that long
forgotten ease of thought that never cared to
be materialised into a poem - i'd give up every
single poem that i wrote, do a Anna Kavan
treatment to it, burn all the manuscripts,
promise to Franz Kafka that his books build burn...
or like Jack Spicer and Lorca... here's me and Kafka...
Franz?! are you sure? you want me to throw your
outpourings into the flames? you joking or
being half serious? you know, after your kinsmen
left Europe and the Muslims were invited
we've been arguing with tailors and not really
producing anything artistic... it's Sahara at the moment...
rap and viking metal... now the Europeans are
waking up and thinking: maybe the Jews really knew...
you see a face you trust a face - the English
called it Satan's postbox - free-stamps to boot...
seriously Franz? you being serious about your
work or aiming for a prophetic cameo at the
Opernplatz of 1933? on a personal note though:
if i could go back to the time when my brain
was not like an intro of a Marvel comic movies sequence
where evolved dna meshed with existing dna
(in my case blood forming Lichtenberg figures
in my brain, exciting grey matter and the "delusion"
of the grey citizen) i would - i wouldn't drink
to maximise the usefulness of sleeping pills,
i'd fall asleep naturally - i'd be breathing the fresh air
of the rooftops of London, and with good connections
might have ended up as a surveyor on construction
sites, given a degree in Chemistry -
whisk me away from my stupid heart, where i trusted
someone i can't be blamed for, where in a matter
of seconds i came to carry a tattoo of a crucifix -
and then, suddenly, my language exfoliated to
what it is now - i write like i don't care to speak for
such affections - i'm not saving anyone, i'm keeping
myself afloat - the once famous substance of ease
that allowed me to be thoughtless while high on marijuana
is completely in ruins - i can't rebuild the soul -
hence me, a body, and the mechanisation of the soul
that has for me become an entire world -
as some believe in a personal god with their soul intact -
i believe in an impersonal soul with god proven
in some kind of marriage of night and day and dislodged
moving stars - what remains personal is this writing,
and the mortality of my body, never to arise again -
for how can you caress a thought once more rekindled,
if the person who hurt you you played happy birthday
for on a guitar? i'd rather get gas chambered by a ******* ****;
cos if it ain't outright ****** it's physically modifying
to a disable former essentials - not quiet a burden
for the family... but the source of all ******* ridicules that
you almost see punch after punch and the zombie-gangrene
core of western hip-hip-hooray at a cricket match
with diluted Pimm's at 7 quid a glass!
This was my life's work.
It's all I had going for me.
A head in a hand basket.
A knuckle-rust sandwich.
Stored neatly in a corner
Reserved for mice and maggots
Wrapped in used aluminum foil
Just as I left it
on that cold and only day
Far away from grey skies and blue turtle tails.
Most days I could barely concentrate.
Too much pressure.
Too many distractions
...and though I realized this was to be
The last stand of my memorys
I couldn't help but feel as if more than time was being wasted.



Apologize.
It's the way my brain works.
Nothing gets done.
I fall in love
with the thought of impermanence
until the cold realization
it's my own illusion
whispering away on the wind
no one else's...
...so I fail again.

This beginning leans
towards the end
No indication
an anti-****** of sorts
and if there's a God in heaven,
if I haven't wasted all this life struggling against the weight of damnation in vain...
I will be redeemed in it's eccentricity


I've courted eccentricity
a blind lover
eager for the afterglow.
Expectations I've hoarded are staggering
They turn me into an eager handyman of souls.
An eccentric nature I've absorbed
Yet loathsome to me.  
Craving acceptance
but ****** the man who can figure me out.
It hurts so much to know I've missed you.
The signal resignation
I've been forced to grant normalcy.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2019
it would seem,
   a maine **** cat, male, is best appeased
by a shoelace...
     hardly a comparison
aligned to the master mikhail bulgakov...
this cat doesn't drink *****,
or play chess...
nor does it drink wine...
      it prefers sushi shrimps and
       sushi trout eyes...
and... shoelaces... for a game...
as i too might, imagining being infested
by a tapeworm...
shoelaces: but no shoes
   do women really keep cats for
replacement company therapy sessions?
i just keep cats as the last
resort format of a curiosity
learning curvature... they're just weird,
or rather, of all the petted animal,
so subtly idiosyncratic...
  i have too many nicknames for them...
the male? quarus? osama bind laden:
the terrorist... the aria king...
   bodzio when he's wanting
to cling to head-butting you as a greeting...
   pavarotti...
          he meows to the point of howling
come 4am...
   the female? veroniya?
       ss-obersturmbannführer,
witch,
            tyson fury when she's trying
to hide her "oopsie" of a ****'s worth...
jaws... since her tail is always upright...
like a shark's fin when she's strutting...
oh but animals have their character...
   less visible in dogs...
    give it enough time:
you're bound to spot it among / in cats...
even a cow was a character dynamic
proding suss... however subtle...
most people don't encompass a capacity
to encompass this sort of
                    gift.  

.and some would claim that there exists, a contradictory-"******" related to the psyche of suicides... it would appear the mere thought of suicide is a "disgruntled" variation of arousal, nay, the mere thought is more potent than a ****** arousal... it's less the ultimate taboo, but the ultimate fetish... why blame those, who have managed to satisfy this urge? my father never complained about suicides, he had a story, where his friend committed suicide, becausde his father was ******* his girlfriend, and he, simply, reached the threshold of what was acceptable, for his psyche to manifest a will inclined to entertain life, rather than that omniscient lover, death... i've come to realise that death, is... as ****** as whatever harlequin / de sade ******* allows, nay, more... how mere thinking can create an arousal, of goosebump testicles, imitating a ***** dynamic, without really achieving a hard-on, rather, a protruding tongue, silenced, which gives the hands momentum, to doodle, something, akin to this; suicide is forever going to be, the exacted limit of passing a free will judgement, however wrong... if the argument goes: humans are without free will, a suicide will always provide the antithesis; i've had a fwend (" ") once, who wanted to shame michael hutchence for his suicide... one brave ******* in all honesty... to experience that sort of a metaphysical ******, well... don't know what it would feel like... any science is contrary to the details, given that... all your "proof" is ascribed to the dead... but at least a philosophical mind-set provides, some groundwork, for imagining a counter-argument, and... the justification for the most "abhorrent" expression of free will... it feels good, to be left without the shackles of the free will argument, that excludes the act of suicide; that's the 1st step: if someone can't commit themselves to suicide, then... man has no free will... there's nothing quiet like engaging with a conscious choice, freed from conscience, whatever post mortem arguments come after, don't even matter... flimsy ******* sparrows, scheming and fluttering of wings! fly! fly! be free! be free!

                           tim pool:
being gay is not a choice,
being religious is,

except the whole
bureucratic fiasco
of the catholic church

the whole pro-life
and pro-baptism...

   i made it blatantly clear
that i didn't want
to be baptißed,
when i dissented from
having to be
confirmed...

mind you:
one great aspect of a catholic
school?
   uniforms...

yeah... i guess you don't
get to create a group
dynamic borrowed
from clothing,
there's no high-school "culture"
that later translates itself
into a resentment culture
that lends the high-school
years as blueprint,
for "extracurricular" activities
of: the motivational life
(aspect)...

i can't remember being
asked whether
i wanted to be baptißed
or not...
i do remember being
asked to be confirmed...
i declined...

so... i am an apostate,
but for that to have any
clingy-meaning,
you'd need catholic
bureucracy to imply
"something"...
nothing protestant:
*****-nilly on the side...

   an uncircumcised man
succumbs to the allure
of hebrew mysticism
and (g)nosticism...
   namely the qabbalah...

oh sure, sure,
i was going to side with
the younger devil
(islam) on matters
of my, "christianity"...
i was going straight
to the jews to find
reasonable answers...

      oh ****...
    i should have done that
protestant "thing"
of borrowing from
either buddhist or hindu...
****...
must have slipped my
'ed.

i still don't understand how h'american
adult life translates itself from
a resentment of the h'american high-school,
if it does not lend itself to
the critique associated with faith schools,
and uniforms...
                 at least in english,
catholic high-schools...
everyone was made uniform,
akin to joining the army...
an army of jesuits...
         h'american public schools,
and their non-uniform policies...
bad idea...
       we had about 3 non-uniform days
in school, we were allowed to not wear uniforms,
as long as we gave money to a charity cause...

i hate the notion of the genesis
of culture, being excavated from h'american
public schools, where uniforms were deemed:
non-complicit...

i liked the uniform,
it's the closest i ever came to my father's
stint in the ****** army...
           being the most handsome,
recruited for the "royal guard" equivalent...
i.e. the republican guard...
pretending soldier status...
shooting blanks, at state funerals in
a "bargain" of the salvo...

thank god i never attended a public
school, i liked my catholic school uniform...
i never dressed to impress...
i never made a cultural backdrop out
of it... there was never a piggy-bank's
worth of a twilight saga to bank on...
     thank god not all of h'america
left the shores of america...
  thank god some of it: stayed in its place;

what?!
  
      i live in england...
  why wouldn't i whistle the le marseillaise
alongside the british grenadiers' fife and drum,
rather than... oh god... god save the queen / king?
the most ****** national anthem in
world history...

  sorry, i can't...
                it's a ****** anthem...
              at least the russians and the scots have
the grounds for an anthem covered...
****... beside vaughan williams...
    elgar?! that's it?! no wonder.
Mateuš Conrad May 2016
listen, i did my christianity bit,
i went to a catholic school,
that's about it, i'm not going to be paying
any more dues, and yes it is scary leaving
the theological ***** where you're expected
to **** yourself should something awful were to happen,
my Cartesian model is a bit different though,
instead of cogito ergo sum (ego inclusive),
it's a- deus ergo ego cogito...
i don't know where to put the affix hyphen to balance
the equation, whether -ego or -cogito to create
the + of ergo, the 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9
sequencing as the offshoot of thinking and being,
which, however, is not as easily represented
by mathematics - cogito ergo sum
is not a straight forward + + +, it's the tetrasignum
of +, -, x and ÷, the interaction between thinking
and being is no straightforward sequence of events,
not a simple adding up... it varies, the four variables
have to coexist in the ergo that bridges thinking
and being... i mean one event in your life can
either add to the experience, subtract, multiply
or divide you an your thinking in terms of how
you'll later be... imagine a burglary,
indeed the tetrasignum is at work (basic! basic!
forget the anti-matter and subatomic particulars
that mathematics possesses with its logic,
e.g. √ and other meddles, basic is +, -, x and ÷
like a, b, c, the other mathematical functions
are like adding diacritical marks to letters,
so in algebra an x squared is like the e in olé!)
it will divide you, subtract from you, add up naiveness,
and you'll perceive the multiplicity of other people
also having experienced the distress. i could
complicate the explanation further, but i'll just
abandon the whole thing, because i have this
on my mind:

you write about religious matters you end up
desecrating things, religion and that damnable
materialistic symbolism, how those people
cling to crosses so much that they tattoo the symbols
into their skin - such mental straitjacket imprints -
there is a different version of Milton's paradise lost
(i don't like Blake because he attacked from
Milton and Newton) -
it's called *yesterday, today and for ever
,
and was written by edward henry bickersteth, d.d.
(late bishop of Exeter), published
by Longmans, Green & Co. 39 Paternoster Row,
London (also fourth avenue & 30th street new york
& Bombay, Calcutta & Madras) 1915 (height of
British imperialism before the ski-***** descent),
in twelve books, preface dating september 1866
(so i'm guessing the bishop was dead by 1915),
contents of the twelve books:
i. the seer's death, and descent to hades
ii. the paradise of the blessed dead
iii. the prison of the lost
iv. the creation of angels and men
v. the fall of angels and men
vi. the empire of darkness
vii. redemption
viii. the church militant
ix. the bridal of the lamb
x. the millennial sabbath (shābat)
xi. the last judgement
xii. the many mansions
                                                    (i know, i know, the
twelve disciples what not);
citation chapter ix page 247
   disguise was not: the dust instead of water drank in blood;
and fiery persecution in all lands
          lit up the lurid flames of hell.
  the whole creation in birth-pangs travail'd and groan'd;
while Satan inly tortured, with a fiend's dark
jealousy contemplating the power of Baalim
and envious Ashtaroth, though himself advanced,
as yet sub-served their banded *******.
Antichrist, as hollow subterfuges cast aside,
usurp'd the throne of Christ.


so that's an extract, but an e.g. of the notes of the
explanatory index:

st. paul's adoption of the word prophet to describe
the Cretan bard Epimenides (Titus i. xii)
appears to justify the use of seer in an equivalent sense;
compare i samuel. ix. ix.

line 78 "its true gauge"
'the measure by which we shall be measured, is the
faculty of love in the soul.'     Tauler, born 1290 a.d.

so there you have a sample of the lesser known Paradise
Lost... you probably won't find it in any shops,
it's a dated book, hard-cover... if you want it
i could send it to you, but you'd have to pay for
the postage duties.
ah crap, but that's not the point,
you've heard of the unholy trinity, well in it there's
this missing plurality, christian revisionists
(notably Slavoj Žižek) claim that the holy ghost
is not an individual but a community, a herd
(after all, it was a white dove descending at his
baptism, can't tell doves apart, so great, a community),
but working from there you have to accept
the other, counter: the false prophet of the opposite
hierarchy... it has to be plural... i.e. false prophets;
now i betcha ten quid that you wouldn't learn that
at sunday school.
title wise? i might change it...
                            i hate writing about religious things
because: a. it upsets people
                b. i don't like people getting upset
                c. some things just have to be said
                d. **** it, people are as adamant about
                     mobile phones as they are about
                     crucifix necklaces
                 e. i was schooled in catholicism although
                     not confirmed
                 f. i live in a protestant country, so, technically
                 g. i have to rebel and become an apostate,
                     meaning
                 h. the twelve apostates rather than the other 12.
It feels as if I'm sinking
into the deep end again,
Mulling over the particulars
of nothing, I find myself
longing; wanting, things.
I stare out my window,
Curled up on its ledge
like a feline, discerning
the character of lamplight
and the quality of shadows
cast on a row of houses and
the sidewalk. I am this lost broadcast
of resounding consciousness,

I am a lonesome psychonaut,
and it's possible I'm an apostate
because I do not use drugs much
anymore. I love the dark, the rain

and the tranquility found in a storm.
I am a human with a quiet addiction.

I am a silent fiend.
I am too old to care
and too young to die.
Deryck Jul 2010
With wings removed he falls through midnight’s sky
Tumbling toward a dying earth

Screams of anguish lost within winds tongue
His fall is observed by none but I

A layer within the cloak of the night I watch
A sheet within the blanket of darkness I listen

The fallen's hate washes over me as he passes by
Coating me in emotions of lightlessness

Removed from Shallows above
Leaving a streak of darkness in nights sky

As he reaches earth below
A cry is raised above nights wind

I look above to an eclipse of lightlessness
A myriad of wingless tumble through the sky

The apostate seraphs to join their master below
An endless cry of agony tears through my ears

As one they reach the dying earth below
Their fall shatters the planet to pieces

Its heart is broken
Its blood soaks the fallen

— The End —