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Like a psychotic docent in the wilderness,
I will not speak in perfect Ciceronian cadences.
I draw my voice from a much deeper cistern,
Preferring the jittery synaptic archive,
So sublimely unfiltered, random and profane.
And though I am sequestered now,
Confined within the walls of a gated, golf-coursed,
Over-55 lunatic asylum (for Active Seniors I am told),
I remain oddly puerile,
Remarkably refreshed and unfettered.  
My institutionalization self-imposed,
Purposed for my own serenity, and also the safety of others.
Yet I abide, surprisingly emancipated and frisky.
I may not have found the peace I seek,
But the quiet has mercifully come at last.

The nexus of inner and outer space is context for my story.
I was born either in Brooklyn, New York or Shungopavi, Arizona,
More of intervention divine than census data.
Shungopavi: a designated place for tribal statistical purposes.
Shungopavi: an ovine abbatoir and shaman’s cloister.
The Hopi: my mother’s people, a state of mind and grace,
Deftly landlocked, so cunningly circumscribed,
By both interior and outer Navajo boundaries.
The Navajo: a coyote trickster people; a nation of sheep thieves,
Hornswoggled and landlocked themselves,
Subsumed within three of the so-called Four Corners:
A 3/4ths compromise and covenant,
Pickled in firewater, swaddled in fine print,
A veritable swindle concocted back when the USA
Had Manifest Destiny & mayhem on its mind.

The United States: once a pubescent synthesis of blood and thunder,
A bold caboodle of trooper spit and polish, unwashed brawlers, Scouts and      
Pathfinders, mountain men, numb-nut ne'er-do-wells,
Buffalo Bills & big-balled individualists, infected, insane with greed.
According to the Gospel of His Holiness Saint Zinn,
A People’s’ History of the United States: essentially state-sponsored terrorism,
A LAND RUSH grabocracy, orchestrated, blessed and anointed,
By a succession of Potomac sharks, Great White Fascist Fathers,
Far-Away-on-the Bay, the Bay we call The Chesapeake.
All demented national patriarchs craving lebensraum for God and country.
The USA: a 50-state Leviathan today, a nation jury-rigged,
Out of railroad ties, steel rails and baling wire,
Forged by a litany of lies, rapaciousness and ******,
And jaw-torn chunks of terra firma,
Bites both large and small out of our well-****** Native American ***.

Or culo, as in va’a fare in culo (literally "go do it in the ***")
Which Italian Americans pronounce as fongool.
The language center of my brain,
My sub-cortical Broca’s region,
So fraught with such semantic misfires,
And autonomic linguistic seizures,
Compel acknowledgement of a father’s contribution,
To both the gene pool and the genocide.
Columbus Day:  a conspicuously absent holiday out here in Indian Country.
No festivals or Fifth Avenue parades.
No excuse for ethnic hoopla. No guinea feast. No cannoli. No tarantella.
No excuse to not get drunk and not **** your sister-in-law.
Emphatically a day for prayer and contemplation,
A day of infamy like Pearl Harbor and 9/11,
October 12, 1492: not a discovery; an invasion.

Growing up in Brooklyn, things were always different for me,
Different in some sort of redskin/****/****--
Choose Your Favorite Ethnic Slur-sort of way.
The American Way: dehumanization for fun and profit.
Melting *** anonymity and denial of complicity with evil.
But this is no time to bring up America’s sordid past,
Or, a personal pet peeve: Indian Sovereignty.
For Uncle Sam and his minions, an ever-widening, conveniently flexible concept,
Not a commandment or law,
Not really a treaty or a compact,
Or even a business deal.  Let’s get real:
It was not even much in the way of a guideline.
Just some kind of an advisory, a bulletin or newsletter,
Could it merely have been a free-floating suggestion?
Yes, that’s it exactly: a suggestion.

Over and under halcyon American skies,
Over and around those majestic purple mountain peaks,
Those trapped in poetic amber waves of wheat and oats,
Corn and barley, wheat shredded and puffed,
Corn flaked and milled, Wheat Chex and Wheaties, oats that are little Os;
Kix and Trix, Fiber One, and Kashi-Go-Lean, Lucky Charms and matso *****,
Kreplach and kishka,
Polenta and risotto.
Our cantaloupe and squash patch,
Our fruited prairie plain, our delicate ecological Eden,
In balance and harmony with nature, as Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce instructs:
“These white devils are not going to,
Stop ****** and killing, cheating and eating us,
Until they have the whole ******* enchilada.
I’m talking about ‘from sea to shining sea.’”

“I fight no more forever,” Babaloo.
So I must steer this clunky keelboat of discovery,
Back to the main channel of my sad and starry demented river.
My warpath is personal but not historical.
It is my brain’s own convoluted cognitive process I cannot saavy.
Whatever biochemical or—as I suspect more each day—
Whatever bio-mechanical protocols govern my identity,
My weltanschauung: my world-view, as sprechen by proto-Nazis;
Putz philosophers of the 17th, 18th & 19th century.
The German intelligentsia: what a cavalcade of maniacal *******!
Why is this Jew unsurprised these Zarathustra-fueled Übermenschen . . .
Be it the Kaiser--Caesar in Deutsch--Bismarck, ******, or,
Even that Euro-*****,  Angela Merkel . . . Why am I not surprised these Huns,
Get global grab-*** on the sauerbraten cabeza every few generations?
To be, or not to be the ***** bullgoose loony: GOTT.

Biomechanical protocols govern my identity and are implanted while I sleep.
My brain--my weak and weary CPU--is replenished, my discs defragmented.
A suite of magnetic and optical white rooms, cleansed free of contaminants,
Gun mounts & lifeboat stations manned and ready,
Standing at attention and saluting British snap-style,
Snap-to and heel click, ramrod straight and cheerful: “Ready for duty, Sir.”
My mind is ravenous, lusting for something, anything to process.
Any memory or image, lyric or construct,
Be they short-term dailies or deeply imprinted.
Fixations archived one and all in deep storage time and space.
Memories, some subconscious, most vaporous;
Others--the scary ones—eidetic: frighteningly detailed and extraordinarily vivid.
Precise cognitive transcripts; recollected so richly rife and fresh.
Visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory reloads:
Queued up and increasingly re-experienced.

The bio-data of six decades: it’s all there.
People, countless, places and things cataloged.
Every event, joy and trauma enveloped from within or,
Accessed externally from biomechanical storage devices.
The random access memory of a lifetime,
Read and recollected from cerebral repositories and vaults,
All the while the entire greedy process overseen,
Over-driven by that all-subservient British bat-man,
Rummaging through the data in batches small and large,
Internal and external drives working in seamless syncopation,
Self-referential, at times paradoxical or infinitely looped.
“Cogito ergo sum."
Descartes stripped it down to the basics but there’s more to the story:
Thinking about thinking.
A curse and minefield for the cerebral:  metacognition.

No, it is not the fact that thought exists,
Or even the thoughts themselves.
But the information technology of thought that baffles me,
As adaptive and profound as any evolution posited by Darwin,
Beyond the wetware in my skull, an entirely new operating system.
My mental and cultural landscape are becoming one.
Machines are connecting the two.
It’s what I am and what I am becoming.
Once more for emphasis:
It is the information technology of who I am.
It is the operating system of my mental and cultural landscape.
It is the machinery connecting the two.
This is the central point of this narrative:
Metacognition--your superego’s yenta Cassandra,
Screaming, screaming in your psychic ear, your good ear:

“LISTEN:  The machines are taking over, taking you over.
Your identity and train of thought are repeatedly hijacked,
Switched off the main line onto spurs and tangents,
Only marginally connected or not at all.
(Incoming TEXT from my editor: “Lighten Up, Giuseppi!”)
Reminding me again that most in my audience,
Rarely get past the comic page. All righty then: think Calvin & Hobbes.
John Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year old boy,
Subject to flights of 16th Century French theological fancy.
Thomas Hobbes, a sardonic anthropomorphic tiger from 17th Century England,
Mumbling about life being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
Taken together--their antics and shenanigans--their relationship to each other,
Remind us of our dual nature; explore for us broad issues like public education;
The economy, environmentalism & the Global ****** Thermometer;
Not to mention the numerous flaws of opinion polls.



And again my editor TEXTS me, reminds me again: “LIGHTEN UP!”
Consoling me:  “Even Shakespeare had to play to the groundlings.”
The groundlings, AKA: The Rabble.
Yes. Even the ******* Bard, even Willie the Shake,
Had to contend with a decidedly lowbrow copse of carrion.
Oh yes, the groundlings, a carrion herd, a flying flock of carrion seagulls,
Carrion crow, carrion-feeders one and all,
And let’s throw Sheryl Crow into the mix while we’re at it:
“Hit it! This ain't no disco. And it ain't no country club either, this is L.A.”  

                  Send "All I Wanna Do" Ringtone to your Cell              

Once more, I digress.
The Rabble:  an amorphous, gelatinous Jabba the Hutt of commonality.
The Rabble: drunk, debauched & lawless.
Too *****-delicious to stop Bill & Hilary from thinking about tomorrow;
Too Paul McCartney My Love Does it Good to think twice.

The Roman Saturnalia: a weeklong **** fest.
The Saturnalia: originally a pagan kink-fest in honor of the deity Saturn.
Dovetailing nicely with the advent of the Christian era,
With a project started by Il Capo di Tutti Capi,
One of the early popes, co-opting the Roman calendar between 17 and 25 December,
Putting the finishing touches on the Jesus myth.
For Brooklyn Hopi-***-Jew baby boomers like me,
Saturnalia manifested itself as Disco Fever,
Unpleasant years of electrolysis, scrunched ***** in tight polyester
For Roman plebeians, for the great unwashed citizenry of Rome,
Saturnalia was just a great big Italian wedding:
A true family blowout and once-in-a-lifetime ego-trip for Dad,
The father of the bride, Vito Corleone, Don for A Day:
“Some think the world is made for fun and frolic,
And so do I! Funicula, Funiculi!”

America: love it or leave it; my country right or wrong.
Sure, we were citizens of Rome,
But any Joe Josephus spending the night under a Tiber bridge,
Or sleeping off a three day drunk some afternoon,
Up in the Coliseum bleachers, the cheap seats, out beyond the monuments,
The original three monuments in the old stadium,
Standing out in fair territory out in center field,
Those three stone slabs honoring Gehrig, Huggins, and Babe.
Yes, in the house that Ruth built--Home of the Bronx Bombers--***?
Any Joe Josephus knows:  Roman citizenship doesn’t do too much for you,
Except get you paxed, taxed & drafted into the Legion.
For us the Roman lifestyle was HIND-*** humble.
We plebeians drew our grandeur by association with Empire.
Very few Romans and certainly only those of the patrician class lived high,
High on the hog, enjoying a worldly extravaganza, like—whom do we both know?

Okay, let’s say Laurence Olivier as Crassus in Spartacus.
Come on, you saw Spartacus fifteen ******* times.
Remember Crassus?
Crassus: that ***** twisted **** trying to get his freak on with,
Tony Curtis in a sunken marble tub?
We plebes led lives of quiet *****-scratching desperation,
A bunch of would-be legionnaires, diseased half the time,
Paid in salt tablets or baccala, salted codfish soaked yellow in olive oil.
Stiffs we used to call them on New Year’s Eve in Brooklyn.
Let’s face it: we were hyenas eating someone else’s ****,
Stage-door jackals, Juvenal-come-late-lies, a mob of moronic mook boneheads
Bought off with bread & circuses and Reality TV.
Each night, dished up a wide variety of lowbrow Elizabethan-era entertainments.  
We contemplate an evening on the town, downtown—
(cue Petula Clark/Send "Downtown" Ringtone to your Cell)

On any given London night, to wit:  mummers, jugglers, bear & bull baiters.
How about dog & **** fighters, quoits & skittles, alehouses & brothels?
In short, somewhere, anywhere else,
Anywhere other than down along the Thames,
At Bankside in Southwark, down in the Globe Theater mosh pit,
Slugging it out with the groundlings whose only interest,
In the performance is the choreography of swordplay and stale ****** puns.
Meanwhile, Hugh Fennyman--probably a fellow Jew,
An English Renaissance Bugsy Siegel or Mickey Cohen—
Meanwhile Fennyman, the local mob boss is getting his ya-yas,
Roasting the feet of my text-messaging editor, Philip Henslowe.
Poor and pathetic Henslowe, works on commission, always scrounging,
But a true patron of my craft, a gentleman of infinite jest and patience,
Spiritual subsistence, and every now and then a good meal at some,
Sawdust joint with oyster shells, and a Prufrockian silk purse of T.S. Eliot gold.

Poor, pathetic Henslowe, trussed up by Fennyman,
His editorial feet in what looks like a Japanese hibachi.
Henslowe’s feet to the fire--feet to the fire—get it?
A catchy phrase whose derivation conjures up,
A grotesque yet vivid image of torture,
An exquisite insight into how such phrases ingress the idiom,
Not to mention a scene once witnessed at a secret Romanian CIA prison,
I’d been ordered to Bucharest not long after 9/11,
Handling the rendition and torture of Habib Ghazzawy,

An entirely innocent falafel maker from Steinway Street, Astoria, Queens.
Shock the Monkey: it’s what we do. GOTO:
Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey/
(HQ music video) - YouTube//
www.youtube.com/
Poor, pathetic, ******-on Henslowe.


Fennyman :  (his avarice is whet by something Philly screams out about a new script)  "A play takes time. Find actors; Rehearsals. Let's say open in three weeks. That's--what--five hundred groundlings at tuppence each, in addition four hundred groundlings tuppence each, in addition four hundred backsides at three pence--a penny extra for a cushion, call it two hundred cushions, say two performances for safety how much is that Mr. Frees?"
Jacobean Tweet, John (1580-1684) Webster:  “I saw him kissing her bubbies.”

It’s Geoffrey Rush, channeling Henslowe again,
My editor, a singed smoking madman now,
Feet in an ice bucket, instructing me once more:
“Lighten things up, you know . . .
Comedy, love and a bit with a dog.”
I digress again and return to Hopi Land, back to my shaman-monastic abattoir,
That Zen Center in downtown Shungopavi.
At the Tribal Enrolment Office I make my case for a Certificate of Indian Blood,
Called a CIB by the Natives and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The BIA:  representing gold & uranium miners, cattle and sheep ranchers,
Sodbusters & homesteaders; railroaders and dam builders since 1824.
Just in time for Andrew Jackson, another false friend of Native America,
Just before Old Hickory, one of many Democratic Party hypocrites and scoundrels,
Gives the FONGOOL, up the CULO go ahead.
Hey Andy, I’ve got your Jacksonian democracy: Hanging!
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) mission is to:   "… enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. What’s that in the fine print?  Uncle Sammy holds “the trust assets of American Indians.”

Here’s a ******* tip, Geronimo: if he trusted you,
It would ALL belong to you.
To you and The People.
But it’s all fork-tongued white *******.
If true, Indian sovereignty would cease to be a sick one-liner,
Cease to be a blunt force punch line, more of,
King Leopold’s 19th Century stand-up comedy schtick,
Leo Presents: The **** of the Congo.
La Belgique mission civilisatrice—
That’s what French speakers called Uncle Leo’s imperial public policy,
Bringing the gift of civilization to central Africa.
Like Manifest Destiny in America, it had a nice colonial ring to it.
“Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent,
Allotted by Providence for the free development,
Of our yearly multiplying millions.”  John L. O'Sullivan, 1845

Our civilizing mission or manifest destiny:
Either/or, a catchy turn of phrase;
Not unlike another ironic euphemism and semantic subterfuge:
The Pacification of the West; Pacification?
Hardly: decidedly not too peaceful for Cochise & Tonto.
Meanwhile, Madonna is cash rich but disrespected Evita poor,
To wit: A ****** on the Rocks (throwing in a byte or 2 of Da Vinci Code).
Meanwhile, Miss Ciccone denied her golden totem *****.
They snubbed that little guinea ****, didn’t they?
Snubbed her, robbed her rotten.
Evita, her magnum opus, right up there with . . .
Her SNL Wayne’s World skit:
“Get a load of the unit on that guy.”
Or, that infamous MTV Music Video Awards stunt,
That classic ***** Lip-Lock with Britney Spears.

How could I not see that Oscar snubola as prime evidence?
It was just another stunning case of American anti-Italian racial animus.
Anyone familiar with Noam Chomsky would see it,
Must view it in the same context as the Sacco & Vanzetti case,
Or, that arbitrary lynching of 9 Italian-Americans in New Orleans in 1891,
To cite just two instances of anti-Italian judicial reach & mob violence,
Much like what happened to my cousin Dominic,
Gang-***** by the Harlem Globetrotters, in their locker room during halftime,
While he working for Abe Saperstein back in 1952.
Dom was doing advance for Abe, supporting creation of The Washington Generals:
A permanent stable of hoop dream patsies and foils,
Named for the ever freewheeling, glad-handing, backslapping,
Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force (SCAEF), himself,
Namely General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man they liked,
And called IKE: quite possibly a crypto Jew from Abilene.

Of course, Harry Truman was my first Great White Fascist Father,
Back in 1946, when I first opened my eyes, hung up there,
High above, looking down from the adobe wall.
Surveying the entire circular kiva,
I had the best seat in the house.
Don’t let it be said my Spider Grandmother or Hopi Corn Mother,
Did not want me looking around at things,
Discovering what made me special.
Didn’t divine intervention play a significant part of my creation?
Knowing Mamma Mia and Nonna were Deities,
Gave me an edge later on the streets of Brooklyn.
The Cradleboard: was there ever a more divinely inspired gift to human curiosity? The Cradleboard: a perfect vantage point, an infant’s early grasp,
Of life harmonious, suspended between Mother Earth and Father Sky.
Simply put: the Hopi should be running our ******* public schools.

But it was IKE with whom I first associated,
Associated with the concept 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I liked IKE. Who didn’t?
What was not to like?
He won the ******* war, didn’t he?
And he wasn’t one of those crazy **** John Birchers,
Way out there, on the far right lunatic Republican fringe,
Was he? (It seems odd and nearly impossible to believe in 2013,
That there was once a time in our Boomer lives,
When the extreme right wing of the Republican Party
Was viewed by the FBI as an actual threat to American democracy.)
Understand: it was at a time when The FBI,
Had little ideological baggage,
But a great appetite for secrets,
The insuppressible Jay Edgar doing his thang.

IKE: of whom we grew so, oh-so Fifties fond.
Good old reliable, Nathan Shaking IKE:
He’d been fixed, hadn’t he? Had had the psychic snip.
Snipped as a West Point cadet & parade ground martinet.
Which made IKE a good man to have in a pinch,
Especially when crucial policy direction was way above his pay grade.
Cousin Dom was Saperstein’s bagman, bribing out the opposition,
Which came mainly from religious and patriotic organizations,
Viewing the bogus white sports franchise as obscene.
The Washington Generals, Saperstein’s new team would have but one opponent,
And one sole mission: to serve as the **** of endless jokes and sight gags for—
Negroes.  To play the chronic fools of--
Negroes.  To be chronically humiliated and insulted by—
Negroes.  To run up and down the boards all night, being outran by—
Negroes.  Not to mention having to wear baggy silk shorts.



Meadowlark Lemon:  “Yeah, Charlie, we ***** that grease-ball Dominic; we shagged his guinea mouth and culo rotten.”  

(interviewed in his Scottsdale, AZ winter residence in 2003 by former ESPN commentator Charlie Steiner, Malverne High School, Class of ’67.)
                                                        
  ­                                                                 ­                 
IKE, briefed on the issue by higher-ups, quickly got behind the idea.
The Harlem Globetrotters were to exist, and continue to exist,
Are sustained financially by Illuminati sponsors,
For one reason and one reason only:
To serve elite interests that the ***** be kept down and subservient,
That the minstrel show be perpetuated,
A policy surviving the elaborate window dressing of the civil rights movement, Affirmative action, and our first Uncle Tom president.
Case in point:  Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman & Metta World Peace Artest.
Cha-cha-cha changing again:  I am Robert Allen Zimmermann,
A whiny, skinny Jew, ****** and rolling in from Minnesota,
Arrested, obviously a vagrant, caught strolling around his tony Jersey enclave,
Having moved on up the list, the A-list, a special invitation-only,
Yom Kippur Passover Seder:  Next Year in Jerusalem, Babaloo!

I take ownership of all my autonomic and conditioned reflexes;
Each personal neural arc and pathway,
All shenanigans & shellackings,
Or blunt force cognitive traumas.
It’s all percolating nicely now, thank you,
In kitchen counter earthen crockery:
Random access memory: a slow-cook crockpot,
Bubbling through my psychic sieve.
My memories seem only remotely familiar,
Distant and vague, at times unreal:
An alien hybrid databank accessed accidently on purpose;
Flaky science sustains and monitors my nervous system.
And leads us to an overwhelming question:
Is it true that John Dillinger’s ******* is in the Smithsonian Museum?
Enquiring minds want to know, Kemosabe!

“Any last words, *******?” TWEETS Adam Smith.
Postmortem cyber-graffiti, an epitaph carved in space;
Last words, so singular and simple,
Across the universal great divide,
Frisbee-d, like a Pleistocene Kubrick bone,
Tossed randomly into space,
Morphing into a gyroscopic space station.
Mr. Smith, a calypso capitalist, and me,
Me, the Poet Laureate of the United States and Adam;
Who, I didn’t know from Adam.
But we tripped the light fantastic,
We boogied the Protestant Work Ethic,
To the tune of that old Scotch-Presbyterian favorite,
Variations of a 5-point Calvinist theme: Total Depravity; Election; Particular Redemption; Irresistible Grace; & Perseverance of the Saints.

Mr. Smith, the author of An Inquiry into the Nature
& Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776),
One of the best-known, intellectual rationales for:
Free trade, capitalism, and libertarianism,
The latter term a euphemism for Social Darwinism.
Prior to 1764, Calvinists in France were called Huguenots,
A persecuted religious majority . . . is that possible?
A persecuted majority of Edict of Nantes repute.
Adam Smith, likely of French Huguenot Jewish ancestry himself,
Reminds me that it is my principal plus interest giving me my daily gluten.
And don’t think the irony escapes me now,
A realization that it has taken me nearly all my life to see again,
What I once saw so vividly as a child, way back when.
Before I put away childish things, including the following sentiment:
“All I need is the air that I breathe.”

  Send "The Air That I Breathe" Ringtone to your Cell  

The Hippies were right, of course.
The Hollies had it all figured out.
With the answer, as usual, right there in the lyrics.
But you were lucky if you were listening.
There was a time before I embraced,
The other “legendary” economists:
The inexorable Marx,
The savage society of Veblen,
The heresies we know so well of Keynes.
I was a child.
And when I was a child, I spake as a child—
Grazie mille, King James—
I understood as a child; I thought as a child.
But when I became a man I jumped on the bus with the band,
Hopped on the irresistible bandwagon of Adam Smith.

Smith:  “Any last words, *******?”
Okay, you were right: man is rationally self-interested.
Grazie tanto, Scotch Enlightenment,
An intellectual movement driven by,
An alliance of Calvinists and Illuminati,
Freemasons and Johnny Walker Black.
Talk about an irresistible bandwagon:
Smith, the gloomy Malthus, and David Ricardo,
Another Jew boy born in London, England,
Third of 17 children of a Sephardic family of Portuguese origin,
Who had recently relocated from the Dutch Republic.
******* Jews!
Like everything shrewd, sane and practical in this world,
WE also invented the concept:  FOLLOW THE MONEY.

The lyrics: if you were really listening, you’d get it:
Respiration keeps one sufficiently busy,
Just breathing free can be a full-time job,
Especially when--borrowing a phrase from British cricketers—,
One contemplates the sorry state of the wicket.
Now that I am gainfully superannuated,
Pensioned off the employment radar screen.
Oft I go there into the wild ebon yonder,
Wandering the brain cloud at will.
My journey indulges curiosity, creativity and deceit.
I free range the sticky wicket,
I have no particular place to go.
Snagging some random fact or factoid,
A stop & go rural postal route,
Jumping on and off the brain cloud.

Just sampling really,
But every now and then, gorging myself,
At some information super smorgasbord,
At a Good Samaritan Rest Stop,
I ponder my own frazzled neurology,
When I was a child—
Before I learned the grim economic facts of life and Judaism,
Before I learned Hebrew,
Before my laissez-faire Bar Mitzvah lessons,
Under the rabbinical tutelage of Rebbe Kahane--
I knew what every clever child knows about life:
The surfing itself is the destination.
Accessing RAM--random access memory—
On a strictly need to know basis.
RAM:  a pretty good name for consciousness these days.

If I were an Asimov or Sir Arthur (Sri Lankabhimanya) Clarke,
I’d get freaky now, riffing on Terminators, Time Travel and Cyborgs.
But this is truth not science fiction.
Nevertheless, someone had better,
Come up with another name for cyborg.
Some other name for a critter,
Composed of both biological and artificial parts?
Parts-is-parts--be they electronic, mechanical or robotic.
But after a lifetime of science fiction media,
After a steady media diet, rife with dystopian technology nightmares,
Is anyone likely to admit to being a cyborg?
Since I always give credit where credit is due,
I acknowledge that cyborg was a term coined in 1960,
By Manfred Clynes & Nathan S. Kline and,
Used to identify a self-regulating human-machine system in outer space.

Five years later D. S. Halacy's: Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman,
Featured an introduction, which spoke of:  “… a new frontier, that was not,
Merely space, but more profoundly, the relationship between inner space,
And outer space; a bridge, i.e., between mind and matter.”
So, by definition, a cyborg defined is an organism with,
Technology-enhanced abilities: an antenna array,
Replacing what was once sentient and human.
My glands, once in control of metabolism and emotions,
Have been replaced by several servomechanisms.
I am biomechanical and gluttonous.
Soaking up and breathing out the atmosphere,
My Baby Boom experience of six decades,
Homogenized and homespun, feedback looped,
Endlessly networked through predigested mass media,
Culture as demographically targeted content.

This must have something to do with my own metamorphosis.
I think of Gregor Samsa, a Kafkaesque character if there ever was one.
And though we share common traits,
My evolutionary progress surpasses and transcends his.
Samsa--Phylum and Class--was, after all, an insect.
Nonetheless, I remain a changeling.
Have I not seen many stages of growth?
Each a painful metamorphic cycle,
From exquisite first egg,
Through caterpillar’s appetite & squirm.
To phlegmatic bliss and pupa quietude,
I unfold my wings in a rush of Van Gogh palette,
Color, texture, movement and grace, lift off, flapping in flight.
My eyes have witnessed wondrous transformations,
My experience, nouveau riche and distinctly self-referential;
For the most part unspecific & longitudinally pedestrian.

Yes, something has happened to me along the way.
I am no longer certain of my identity as a human being.
Time and technology has altered my basic wiring diagram.
I suspect the sophisticated gadgets and tools,
I’ve been using to shape & make sense of my environment,
Have reared up and turned around on me.
My tools have reshaped my brain & central nervous system.
Remaking me as something simultaneously more and less human.
The electronic toys and tools I once so lovingly embraced,
Have turned unpredictable and rabid,
Their bite penetrating my skin and septic now, a cluster of implanted sensors,
Content: currency made increasingly more valuable as time passes,
Served up by and serving the interests of a pervasively predatory 1%.
And the rest of us: the so-called 99%?
No longer human; simply put by both Howards--Beale & Zinn--

Humanoid.
Shofi Ahmed Jul 2018
On the edge, the living earth
dared to mimic Queen Fathima's worth,
The Queen of Heaven's grace and poise,
Her footsteps, a blessed path of choice.
This way bedewed with divine light,
A numinous destination of sight,
Graced by thousands of prophets of God,
the hallowed, mirror-polished sod -
The ultimate path that all should tread,
Closing endless pi's transcended thread,
Leading to perfection's true embrace,
The loving cosmos' eternal glue, circling grace.

In the name of Allah the Most Gracious,
the Most High, the One and only One, she descended,
On the Night of Ascension, her path transcended.
From the Night of Measures, she came,
Her frame, heaven's dark matter, a mystery untamed.
A divine dot in terra incognita,
A fondly-folded bud where time doth bloom.
If one can see up to where it rose,
Paradise sways towards this uncharted way
The only guide, oft is a glimpse of Queen Fathima's eye!

The only asymmetrical golden ratio,
Steps forth amidst the symmetrical prophet flock.
The earth makes way for her in awe,
In sequence she moves with the golden lock.
Cloaked in mystery, she reveals
Her unique, divine relation to the divine.
Makes measured moves at the forefront,
Shining the light ever drawing closure to God.

She is so pretty and classy, the paragon of art,
The sunrise amidst the eternal night.
Her beauty is a burning fire in her shadow,
She is 'Zahra,' pure light, a luminary dynamo.
The only woman in heaven and earth with no shadow!

The great flock of women mirrors the earth,
Following each atom on that angled girth,
Aligned perfectly under the waxing full moon's worth.
Lo, they approach the behemoth's might,
Atoms beneath their skin explode in their finest sway,
And beneath Fathima's feet, vibrations take flight.

'Nature' is a feminine she—a gradual revelation indeed,
of the ultimate paragon—Paradise, never to cease.
Here’n hereafter, eyes on the masterstroke:
Queen Fathima at the peak!

The ocean billows up, floating with the clouds,
like choreographed dewdrops, low on the rose—
ready to shower that blessed spot with honey-drops.

Even the Moon on the horizon follows suit—
ah, the lunar punter rows, sipping the dew like fruit.
Sleeping beauty awakes in the moonlit night,
silver dancing in her eyes, stars burning bright.

The Moon sails down from its celestial height;
The seven seas hum in the cosmos' dark,
Exuberant fireflies pulsing with a starlit spark—
An ultimate sublunary craft,
Gently steering on heaven's path.
Tiny tricksters rock the moonlit boat,
Swaying soft toward that sweet drop afloat.

Poetry in motion, the sea on the ground—
beauty reflected in the Moon’s soft crown.
Storylines leap and dance all around,
painting the winds in colours unbound.
Over the grove, the rhythm rolls on,
raining from heaven on that sweet spot—
singing the sweetest of all title songs.

Never was there a woman—a prophet of God—
but for the primitive woman, the leading lady,
the sharpest cut, above the rest—
she leads the pack, outshines the test.
Sayeedatun Nessa, Queen Fathima.
No secrets Heaven holds—only an open mirror.

The secret is: Fathima touched the bottom of the Earth first,
raising the foundation—building man’s first house to last.
In her elements—pure, motherly, universal,
and uniquely one—lived an otherworldly love.
Womankind scores that only by entering paradise.

“There is no night, only déjà vu moonlight.
The pious homemakers, these veiled tuberoses,
were hidden gems to the sublunary fireflies—
soon to become open moons in heaven’s secret skies.”

The Huris—seventy or more in a mesmerizing array—
draped in splendor, formed of light, timeless in display.
But still, their gaze is drawn in awe, not envy or ploy,
to the one real McCoy:
the small Earth’s women in paradise.

The universe debuts a primitive water dew.
Fathima drops in it her duo of hairs—
lovingly raises a tearful Earth into her velvet lock—
the perfect circle, at the ever-evolving Earth's core,
the only otherworldly matter, there's no more!

All things that ever float on the ocean of creation vanish soon,
but this Earth—the cosmos’ deep mind—is still a bloomer,
lodged on a tangent of the Queen’s otherworldly lock.
It’s her perfectly knotted perfect circle—its science.
She moved the needle at the beauty spot—
enduring art in its subtlest form.

Fathima keeps nature in the loop—
a stroke of Allah SWT’s divine AI,
its neurons in deep learning, pre-designed with sacred data,
outpouring through the Output Layer: predictions, futures—
each returning to the past,
to a moment before moments,
when there was only one:
a purposeful, intelligent design.

Boom! Absolutely pure—the Big Bang follows.

Lo! The elementary, pristine water interacts
with Fathima's otherworldly deep black lock.
Now, innate dark energy ignites the bud in bloom.
Nature cracks the first light—grabs the paintbrush.

The rose smiles on Earth, the sun on sky—
building ever more,
treasuring the lucky lock in Earth’s core.

Chorus of the First Dawn
(sung by the nightingales and birds of the first universe)

Before time ticked, before stars sang—
there was water, still and unseen.
Not chaos, but calm. Not void, but waiting.
The origin was not random.
It was her.

Fathima—Allah SWT’s masterstroke,
the paragon form of nature itself.
She did not follow creation.
She caused it.

With a drop of her otherworldly chiaroscuro,
dark energy stirred,
and the universe—
burst into being.

The Queen’s first impression hooks on—
the motionless Earth, in dew, makes the first move.
A polished golden spiral blooms, expanding ever more.
The last thing the sun can’t do: look away.
After the Big Bang—big fireworks—still: Ratqan, a black mole,
thicker than the black moon, gravitates the cosmos!

Walking in the dark ahead of the sun and moonlight,
one step up that shadowed path the Queen cemented on,
perfectly—circle pi-locks—the Earth takes a Ma pause.
Until, God willing, Fathima’s locks finally bottom in,
the long haul of time squeezing out paradise upside—for good.
The heavenly Queen shines the light at the secret end of God.

The planetary ebb and flow move toward heaven—
planet Earth, the only steppingstone.
No matter how many times they try,
there will always be an unturned stone—
until the one, the original woman,
Queen Fathima, steps on.

Dots connect in her presence.
The nadir and the zenith perfectly intersect—
once and for all, mingling in her perfect circle,
without a single gap in the whole.
A pure Scientia scenario:
As above, so below.

Where the Queen stands,
heaven will open its grand door.
No more reverse engineering the original—
God willing, Fathima will step
on the last turned stone.

From the one, the greatest woman,
paradise begins—
from beneath the mother’s foot.
by
Alexander K Opicho

(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)

When I grow up I will seek permission
From my parents, my mother before my father
To travel to Russia the European land of dystopia
that has never known democracy in any tincture
I will beckon the tsar of Russia to open for me
Their classical cipher that Bogy visoky tsa dalyko
I will ask the daughters of Russia to oblivionize my dark skin
***** skin and make love to me the real pre-democratic love
Love that calls for ambers that will claw the fire of revolution,
I will ask my love from the land of Siberia to show me cradle of Rand
The European manger on which Ayn Rand was born during the Leninist census
I will exhume her umbilical cord plus the placenta to link me up
To her dystopian mind that germinated the vice
For shrugging the atlas for we the living ones,
In a full dint of my ***** libido I will ask her
With my African temerarious manner I will bother her
To show me the bronze statues of Alexander Pushkin
I hear it is at ******* of the city of Moscow; Petersburg
I will talk to my brother Pushkin, my fellow African born in Ethiopia
In the family of Godunov only taken to Europe in a slave raid
Ask the Frenchman Henri Troyat who stood with his ***** erected
As he watched an Ethiopian father fertilizing an Ethiopian mother
And child who was born was Dystopian Alexander Pushkin,
I will carry his remains; the bones, the skull and the skeleton in oily
Sisal threads made bag on my broad African shoulders back to Africa
I will re-bury him in the city of Omurate in southern Ethiopia at the buttocks
Of the fish venting beautiful summer waters of Lake Turkana,
I will ask Alexander Pushkin when in a sag on my back to sing for me
His famous poems in praise of thighs of women;

(I loved you: and, it may be, from my soul
The former love has never gone away,
But let it not recall to you my dole;
I wish not sadden you in any way.

I loved you silently, without hope, fully,
In diffidence, in jealousy, in pain;
I loved you so tenderly and truly,
As let you else be loved by any man.
I loved you because of your smooth thighs
They put my heart on fire like amber in gasoline)

I will leave the bronze statue of Alexander Pushkin in Moscow
For Lenin to look at, he will assign Mayakovski to guard it
Day and night as he sings for it the cacotopian
Poems of a slap in the face of public taste;

(I know the power of words, I know words' tocsin.
They're not the kind applauded by the boxes.
From words like these coffins burst from the earth
and on their own four oaken legs stride forth.
It happens they reject you, unpublished, unprinted.
But saddle-girths tightening words gallop ahead.
See how the centuries ring and trains crawl
to lick poetry's calloused hands.
I know the power of words. Seeming trifles that fall
like petals beneath the heel-taps of dance.
But man with his soul, his lips, his bones.)

I will come along to African city of Omurate
With the pedagogue of the thespic poet
The teacher of the poets, the teacher who taught
Alexander Sergeyvich Pushkin; I know his name
The name is Nikolai Vasileyvitch Gogol
I will caution him to carry only two books
From which he will teach the re-Africanized Pushkin
The first book is the Cloak and second book will be
The voluminous dead souls that have two sharp children of Russian dystopia;
The cactopia of Nosdrezv in his sadistic cult of betrayal
And utopia of Chichikov in his paranoid ownership of dead souls
Of the Russian peasants, muzhiks and serfs,
I will caution him not to carry the government inspector incognito
We don’t want the inspector general in the African city of Omurate
He will leave it behind for Lenin to read because he needs to know
What is to be done.
I don’t like the extreme badness of owning the dead souls
Let me run away to the city of Paris, where romance and poetry
Are utopian commanders of the dystopian orchestra
In which Victor Marie Hugo is haunted by
The ghost of Jean Val Jean; Le Miserable,
I will implore Hugo to take me to the Corsican Island
And chant for me one **** song of the French revolution;


       (  take heed of this small child of earth;
He is great; he hath in him God most high.
Children before their fleshly birth
Are lights alive in the blue sky.
  
In our light bitter world of wrong
They come; God gives us them awhile.
His speech is in their stammering tongue,
And his forgiveness in their smile.
  
Their sweet light rests upon our eyes.
Alas! their right to joy is plain.
If they are hungry Paradise
Weeps, and, if cold, Heaven thrills with pain.
  
The want that saps their sinless flower
Speaks judgment on sin's ministers.
Man holds an angel in his power.
Ah! deep in Heaven what thunder stirs,
  
When God seeks out these tender things
Whom in the shadow where we sleep
He sends us clothed about with wings,
And finds them ragged babes that we)

 From the Corsican I won’t go back to Paris
Because Napoleon Bonaparte and the proletariat
Has already taken over the municipal of Paris
I will dodge this city and maneuver my ways
Through Alsace and Lorraine
The Miginko islands of Europe
And cross the boundaries in to bundeslander
Into Germany, I will go to Berlin and beg the Gestapo
The State police not to shoot me as I climb the Berlin wall
I will balance dramatically on the top of Berlin wall
Like Eshu the Nigerian god of fate
With East Germany on my right; Die ossie
And West Germany on my left; Die wessie
Then like Jesus balancing and walking
On the waters of Lake Galilee
I will balance on Berlin wall
And call one of my faithful followers from Germany
The strong hearted Friedrich von Schiller
To climb the Berlin wall with me
So that we can sing his dystopic Cassandra as a duet
We shall sing and balance on the wall of Berlin
Schiller’s beauteous song of Cassandra;

(Mirth the halls of Troy was filling,
Ere its lofty ramparts fell;
From the golden lute so thrilling
Hymns of joy were heard to swell.
From the sad and tearful slaughter
All had laid their arms aside,
For Pelides Priam's daughter
Claimed then as his own fair bride.

Laurel branches with them bearing,
Troop on troop in bright array
To the temples were repairing,
Owning Thymbrius' sovereign sway.
Through the streets, with frantic measure,
Danced the bacchanal mad round,
And, amid the radiant pleasure,
Only one sad breast was found.

Joyless in the midst of gladness,
None to heed her, none to love,
Roamed Cassandra, plunged in sadness,
To Apollo's laurel grove.
To its dark and deep recesses
Swift the sorrowing priestess hied,
And from off her flowing tresses
Tore the sacred band, and cried:

"All around with joy is beaming,
Ev'ry heart is happy now,
And my sire is fondly dreaming,
Wreathed with flowers my sister's brow
I alone am doomed to wailing,
That sweet vision flies from me;
In my mind, these walls assailing,
Fierce destruction I can see."

"Though a torch I see all-glowing,
Yet 'tis not in *****'s hand;
Smoke across the skies is blowing,
Yet 'tis from no votive brand.
Yonder see I feasts entrancing,
But in my prophetic soul,
Hear I now the God advancing,
Who will steep in tears the bowl!"

"And they blame my lamentation,
And they laugh my grief to scorn;
To the haunts of desolation
I must bear my woes forlorn.
All who happy are, now shun me,
And my tears with laughter see;
Heavy lies thy hand upon me,
Cruel Pythian deity!"

"Thy divine decrees foretelling,
Wherefore hast thou thrown me here,
Where the ever-blind are dwelling,
With a mind, alas, too clear?
Wherefore hast thou power thus given,
What must needs occur to know?
Wrought must be the will of Heaven--
Onward come the hour of woe!"

"When impending fate strikes terror,
Why remove the covering?
Life we have alone in error,
Knowledge with it death must bring.
Take away this prescience tearful,
Take this sight of woe from me;
Of thy truths, alas! how fearful
'Tis the mouthpiece frail to be!"

"Veil my mind once more in slumbers
Let me heedlessly rejoice;
Never have I sung glad numbers
Since I've been thy chosen voice.
Knowledge of the future giving,
Thou hast stolen the present day,
Stolen the moment's joyous living,--
Take thy false gift, then, away!"

"Ne'er with bridal train around me,
Have I wreathed my radiant brow,
Since to serve thy fane I bound me--
Bound me with a solemn vow.
Evermore in grief I languish--
All my youth in tears was spent;
And with thoughts of bitter anguish
My too-feeling heart is rent."

"Joyously my friends are playing,
All around are blest and glad,
In the paths of pleasure straying,--
My poor heart alone is sad.
Spring in vain unfolds each treasure,
Filling all the earth with bliss;
Who in life can e'er take pleasure,
When is seen its dark abyss?"

"With her heart in vision burning,
Truly blest is Polyxene,
As a bride to clasp him yearning.
Him, the noblest, best Hellene!
And her breast with rapture swelling,
All its bliss can scarcely know;
E'en the Gods in heavenly dwelling
Envying not, when dreaming so."

"He to whom my heart is plighted
Stood before my ravished eye,
And his look, by passion lighted,
Toward me turned imploringly.
With the loved one, oh, how gladly
Homeward would I take my flight
But a Stygian shadow sadly
Steps between us every night."

"Cruel Proserpine is sending
All her spectres pale to me;
Ever on my steps attending
Those dread shadowy forms I see.
Though I seek, in mirth and laughter
Refuge from that ghastly train,
Still I see them hastening after,--
Ne'er shall I know joy again."

"And I see the death-steel glancing,
And the eye of ****** glare;
On, with hasty strides advancing,
Terror haunts me everywhere.
Vain I seek alleviation;--
Knowing, seeing, suffering all,
I must wait the consummation,
In a foreign land must fall."

While her solemn words are ringing,
Hark! a dull and wailing tone
From the temple's gate upspringing,--
Dead lies Thetis' mighty son!
Eris shakes her snake-locks hated,
Swiftly flies each deity,
And o'er Ilion's walls ill-fated
Thunder-clouds loom heavily!)

When the Gestapoes get impatient
We shall not climb down to walk on earth
Because by this time  of utopia
Thespis and Muse the gods of poetry
Would have given us the wings to fly
To fly high over England, I and schiller
We shall not land any where in London
Nor perch to any of the English tree
Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Thales
We shall not land there in these lands
The waters of river Thames we shall not drink
We shall fly higher over England
The queen of England we shall not commune
For she is my lender; has lend me the language
English language in which I am chanting
My dystopic songs, poor me! What a cacotopia!
If she takes her language away from
I will remain poetically dead
In the Universe of art and culture
I will form a huge palimpsest of African poetry
Friedrich son of schiller please understand me
Let us not land in England lest I loose
My borrowed tools of worker back to the owner,
But instead let us fly higher in to the azure
The zenith of the sky where the eagles never dare
And call the English bard
through  our high shrilled eagle’s contralto
William Shakespeare to come up
In the English sky; to our treat of poetic blitzkrieg
Please dear schiller we shall tell the bard of London
To come up with his three Luftwaffe
These will be; the deer he stole from the rich farmer
Once when he was a lad in the rural house of john the father,
Second in order is the Hamlet the price of Denmark
Thirdly is  his beautiful song of the **** of lucrece,
We shall ask the bard to return back the deer to the owner
Three of ourselves shall enjoy together dystopia in Hamlet
And ask Shakespeare to sing for us his song
In which he saw a man **** Lucrece; the **** of Lucrece;

( From the besieged Ardea all in post,
Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,
Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host,
And to Collatium bears the lightless fire
Which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire
  And girdle with embracing flames the waist
  Of Collatine's fair love, Lucrece the chaste.

Haply that name of chaste unhapp'ly set
This bateless edge on his keen appetite;
When Collatine unwisely did not let
To praise the clear unmatched red and white
Which triumph'd in that sky of his delight,
  Where mortal stars, as bright as heaven's beauties,
  With pure aspects did him peculiar duties.

For he the night before, in Tarquin's tent,
Unlock'd the treasure of his happy state;
What priceless wealth the heavens had him lent
In the possession of his beauteous mate;
Reckoning his fortune at such high-proud rate,
  That kings might be espoused to more fame,
  But king nor peer to such a peerless dame.

O happiness enjoy'd but of a few!
And, if possess'd, as soon decay'd and done
As is the morning's silver-melting dew
Against the golden splendour of the sun!
An expir'd date, cancell'd ere well begun:
  Honour and beauty, in the owner's arms,
  Are weakly fortress'd from a world of harms.

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator;
What needeth then apologies be made,
To set forth that which is so singular?
Or why is Collatine the publisher
  Of that rich jewel he should keep unknown
  From thievish ears, because it is his own?

Perchance his boast of Lucrece' sovereignty
Suggested this proud issue of a king;
For by our ears our hearts oft tainted be:
Perchance that envy of so rich a thing,
Braving compare, disdainfully did sting
  His high-pitch'd thoughts, that meaner men should vaunt
  That golden hap which their superiors want)

  
I and Schiller we shall be the audience
When Shakespeare will echo
The enemies of beauty as
It is weakly protected in the arms of Othello.

I and Schiller we don’t know places in Greece
But Shakespeare’s mother comes from Greece
And Shakespeare’s wife comes from Athens
Shakespeare thus knows Greece like Pericles,
We shall not land anywhere on the way
But straight we shall be let
By Shakespeare to Greece
Into the inner chamber of calypso
Lest the Cyclopes eat us whole meal
We want to redeem Homer from the
Love detention camp of calypso
Where he has dallied nine years in the wilderness
Wilderness of love without reaching home
I will ask Homer to introduce me
To Muse, Clio and Thespis
The three spiritualities of poetry
That gave Homer powers to graft the epics
Of Iliad and Odyssey centerpieces of Greece dystopia
I will ask Homer to chant and sing for us the epical
Songs of love, Grecian cradle of utopia
Where Cyclopes thrive on heavyweight cacotopia
Please dear Homer kindly sing for us;
(Thus through the livelong day to the going down of the sun we
feasted our fill on meat and drink, but when the sun went down and
it came on dark, we camped upon the beach. When the child of
morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, I bade my men on board and
loose the hawsers. Then they took their places and smote the grey
sea with their oars; so we sailed on with sorrow in our hearts, but
glad to have escaped death though we had lost our comrades)
                                  
From Greece to Africa the short route  is via India
The sub continent of India where humanity
Flocks like the oceans of women and men
The land in which Romesh Tulsi
Grafted Ramayana and Mahabharata
The handbook of slavery and caste prejudice
The land in which Gujarat Indian tongue
In the cheeks of Rabidranathe Tagore
Was awarded a Poetical honour
By Alfred Nobel minus any Nemesis
From the land of Scandinavia,
I will implore Tagore to sing for me
The poem which made Nobel to give him a prize
I will ask Tagore to sing in English
The cacotopia and utopia that made India
An oversized dystopia that man has ever seen,
Tagore sing please Tagore sing for me your beggarly heat;

(When the heart is hard and parched up,
come upon me with a shower of mercy.

When grace is lost from life,
come with a burst of song.

When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from
beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest.

When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner,
break open the door, my king, and come with the ceremony of a king.

When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O thou holy one,
thou wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder)



The heart of beggar must be
A hard heart for it to glorify in the art of begging,

I don’t like begging
This is knot my heart suffered
From my childhood experience
I saw my mother
Julian Mar 2019
Tantalized by the fractious limerence of a vestigial habiliment of the old order, we conclude that hypertrophy leads to a limbo where random permutations alloyed by the rickety limits of concatenation subsume concepts that are equivocal but populate the imaginations of newfangled art forms that jostle the midwives of rumination to lead to unique pastures that are intuitively calibrated to correspond to definitive unitary events in conceptual space that sprawl unexpectedly towards the desultory but determinative conclusion of a meandering ludic sphere of rambunctious sentiments cobbled together to either rivet the captive audience or annoy the peevish criticaster when they dare to inseminate the canvassed and corrugated tract of intellectual territory created ad hoc to swelter the imagination with audacious ingenuity that is an inevitable byproduct of lexical hypertrophy. In this séance with the immaterial realm of concept rather than the predictable clockwork reductivism of a perceptual welter that is limited by the concretism circumscribed by spatiotemporal stricture we find that an extravagant twinge of even the smallest tocsin in the interstitial carousel of conscientious subroutines compounding recursively to pinprick the cossetted smolder of potentiality rather than extravagate into the vacancy of untenanted nullibiety can spawn a progeny of utilities and vehicles for dexterous abstraction that poach the exotic concepts we fathom by degrees of sapience malingering in lifeless bricolages of erratic abstraction in manners useful to transcend the repose of abeyance and heave awakening into the slumberous caverns of still-life to make them dynamically animated to capture ephemeral events that defy the demarcations of wistful indelicacy of the encumbered bulk of insufficient precision.

Today we embark on a quest to defile the anoegenetic recapitulation of canon that litters the dilapidated avenues of miserly contemplation that has a histeriological certainty and feeds the engines that enable novelty but ultimately remain rancid with the stench of the idiosyncratic shibboleths of synoptic alloyed impoverishment that leads to the vast wasteland of cremated entropy that is a stained foible of misappropriated context interpolated usefully as botched triage for daunting problems that require a nimble legerdemain of facile versatility that we easily adduce to conquer the present with the botched memorial of a defunct salience. Despite the travail of scholars to retreat from the frontier into the hypostatized hegemony of recycled credentialed information, we often are ensnared by the solemn attrition of decay as we traverse the conceptual underpinnings of all bedrock thought only to dangle precariously near the void of lapsed sentience because of transitory incontinence that is contiguous to the doldrums of crudity but nevertheless with mustered mettle we purport that the very self-serious awakening to our hobbling limitations is akin to a prosthetic enhancement of ratiocination capable of feats that stagger beneath the lowest level of subtext to elevate the highest superordinate categorization into heightened scrutiny that burgeons metacognitive limber. Marooned in the equipoise of specifiable enlightenment countermanded by the strictures of working memory we can orchestrate transverse pathways between the elemental quiddity of impetuous meaning and the dignified tropes of transitivity that bequeaths entire universes with feral progeny that modulate their ecosystems with both a taste of approximated symmetry and a cohesive enterprise for productivity that rests on the granular concordance of the highest plane to the indivisible parcels of atomic meaning that solder together to exist as intelligible if strained by the primordial frictions guaranteed by the brunt of motion incipient because of the metaphorical inertia created within insular universes to inform sprawling conurbations of mobilized thoughts designed to reckon with the breakneck pace of the corresponding reality to which they explicitly and precisely refer to.

We must singe surgically the filigrees that amount to the perceptible realities that transmute temperaments into the liturgy of routine conflated with the rigmarole of neural dragnets of reiterative quips in an elegant game of raillery with our supernal contumacy against the rigid authority of aleatory vagaries mandated by a dually arbitrary universe in a probabilistic terpsichorean dance with the depth of our dredge for subliminal acuity or the shallow bellicosity of common modes of glib contemplation characteristic of the basic nobility of improvisation. This basic interface with the world can either be mercurial or tranquil based on the interactionism of the enfeebled trudge of surface senses or blunt intuitions and the smoldering impact of the vestigial cloaks that deal gingerly with the poignant subtext evoked in the cauldron of immediacy rather than pondered with the portentous weight of imperative singularities of uniqueness derived from the plunge into the arcane citadel of microscopic introspection so refined that the ineffable drives we seek to fathom become amenable to the traipse of transcendental time that rarefies itself by defying the brunt of compartmentalized bureaucracies administered by the fulcrum of stereotypical notions of acquired gravitas imputed to mundane pedestrian quidnunc concerns that defile humanity rather than embolden the subaudition of gritty punctilios that show the supernal powers of the axiomatic divinity of sharpened sentience to reign with supremacy over the baser ignoble components of bletcherous nescience that leads to knee-**** platitudes that provoke folksy peevish divisions. We should rather orchestrate our activity by heeding the admonishment about the primogeniture of poignant sabotage buffered by the remonstration of innate tranquility and finding a whipsawed compromise of rationalization with true visceral encounters with the fulgurant quips of brisk emotions that grind industriously into amorphous retinues of the trenchant human imagination to either equip or hobble the leapfrogged interrogation of veracity and more consequently our notions of truth and fact.

When we see the hackneyed results of default ecological dynamics, we find ourselves aloof from purported transcendence because the whimpered bleats and cavils of the importunate masses result in a deafening din of cacophony because we strive throbbing with sprightliness towards the galloped chase of tantalization without the luxury of a terminus for satiation. Obviously a growth mindset is the galvanic ****** that spawns the imaginative swank of the pliable modulations of our perceived reality that, when protean, showcase the limitless verve of our primordial cacoethes for epigenetic evolution rather than the stolid and staid foreclosure of impervious sloth that memorializes the gluttony of speculation about fixed entities rather than imperative jostling urbanity that dignifies the brackish dance with dearth and the exuberant savory taste of momentary excess because it engages the animated pursuit of limerence rather than the exhumed corpse of wistful regret. Nature is a cyclical clockwork system of predatory instinct met with the clemency of the prosperous providence enacted by the travailing ingenuity of successive cumulative generativities that compounded unevenly and unpredictably to predicate a fundamental zeitgeist calculated to engorge the fattened resources of the resourceful and temper the etiolated dreams of the fringed acquiescence of a hulking prejudiced population of dutiful servants that balk at the diminutive prospects of a lopsided distribution of talent and means but slumber in irenic resolve created by the merciful hands of defensive designs that configure consciousness to relish comparative touchstones rather than absolute outcomes that straggle beyond a point of enviable reference to shield the world of the barbarism of botched laments clamoring for an uncertain grave from the gravity of the orbiting satellites of apportioned wealth both sunblind and boorish but simultaneously inextricable from the acclimated fortune of heaped nepotism and herculean opportunism. The intransigence of the weighted destiny of inequity is a squalid enterprise of primeval abrasive and combative tendencies within the bailiwick of the indignant compass inherent to the system that fathoms its deficiencies with crabwise and gingerly pause but airs a sheepish grievance like a bleat of self-exculpation but simultaneously an arraignment of fundamental attribution erroneously indicted without the selfsame reflexiveness characteristic of a transcendent being with other recourses to clamber an avenue to Broadway without malingering in the slums of opprobrious ineffectual remonstration against the arrangement of a blinkered metropolis of uneven gentrification.

We flicker sometimes between the strategic drivel of appeasement and the candor of audacious imprecation of the culprits of indignity or considerate nutritive encomium of the beacons of ameliorated enlightenment because we often masquerade a half-witted glib consciousness lazily sketched by the welters of verve alloyed with the rancid distaste of squalor and slumber on the faculty of conscientious swivels of prudential expeditions with an avarice for bountiful considered thought and wily contortions of demeanor that issue the affirmative traction of adaptive endeavor to cheat a warped system for a reconciled peace and a refined self-mastery. We need to traduce the urchins that sting the system with pangs of opprobrious ballyhoo and the effluvia of foofaraw that contaminate with pettifoggery and small-minded blather the arenas better suited for the gladiatorial combat of cockalorums tinged with a dose of intellectual effrontery beyond the span of dogmatism rather than the hackneyed platitudes that infest the news cycle with folksy backwardation catered to the fascism of a checkered established press that urges insurrection while tranquilizing dissent against the furtive actions of consequence hidden behind the draped verdure of pretense whose byproduct is only a self-referential sophistry that swarms like an intractable itch to devolve the spectator into a pasquinaded spectacle of profound human obtuseness that pervades malignantly the system of debate until the reductionists outwit themselves with the empty prevarication of circular logic that deliberately misfires to miss the target of true importance because of the pandered black hole easily evaded by creatures of high sentience but inevitably ensnaring the special kind of dupe into a cycle of bellicose ferocity of internecine balkanization. The vainglory of the omphalos of entertainment is also another reckoning because it festers a cultural mythos of glorified crapulence parading a philandered promiscuity with half-baked antics that gravitate attention and the lecheries of gaudy tenses of recycled tinsel alloyed by debased aberrations of seedy grapholagnia that magnetize as they percolate because of the insidious catchphrases embedded in pedestrian syncopation that ignite retention and acclimate to mediocrity the sounds of generations discolored by faint pasty rainbows rather than ennobled by majestic landscapes of ignipotent mellifluous sound that stands a supernal amusement still for the resourceful trainspotter.

Despite the contumely aimed in the direction of contrarians for deviating from the lockstep clockwork hustle of stooped pandered manipulation that peddles the wares of an entirely counterfeit reality, I stand obstinately against the melliferous stupefaction of entire genres of myth and subcultures huddled around the sentimental tug of factitious sophistries regaled by thick amorphous apostates that cherish the vacuous sidetracked spotlight with fervor rather than pausing on the enigmatic querulous inquisition about the penumbras that lurk with strained effort beneath or above the categorical nescience of the shadowy unknown that often coruscates with elegance even in obscurity. I fight with labored words to spawn a psychological discipline that invokes the incisive subaudition of the pluckily pricked exorcism of true insight from the husk of buzzwords that constellate auxiliary tangential distractions from the art form of psychological discernment that predicates itself on the concept that the rarefaction of rumination by degrees of microscopic precision enables the introspective hindsight of conscious events that can be parsed without the acrimony of cluttered conflations of the granular prowess of triumphant ratiocination that earns a panoramic perch with the added luxury of perspicacious insight into the atomic structure of the rudiments of our phenomenological field and the abstractions that linger beyond perceptual categorization. When we analyze the gradients of anger, for example, we can either be ****** into a brooded twinge of wistful resentment or we can decipher that through heuristics designed to cloister the provenance of subconscious repose with ignorance there exists a regimented array of tangential accessories embedded deep within the cavernous repository of memory that designates a cumulative trace of compounded symmetries of concordant experience immediately perceptible because of the tangible provocateur of our gripes and the largely subliminal tusk that protrudes because of primal instinct that squirms with peevishness because of the momentary context preceded by the desultory churn of smoldering associations swimming with either complete intangible sputtered mobility through the tract of subconscious hyperspace or rigidly fixated by an arraignment of circumstances with propinquity to the deep unfathomed flicker of bygones receding or protruding because of the warped and largely unpredictable rigmarole of constellated spreading activation.  
When we examine the largesse of the swift recourse of convenience we forget by degrees the travail that once bridged the span of experience from patient abeyance in provident pursuit to now the importunate glare of inflated expectations for immediacy that stings the whole enterprise of societal dynamics because it vitiates us with a complacency for the filigrees of momentary tinsel of a virtualized reality divorced from the concretism that used to undergird interaction and now stands outmoded as a wisp beyond outstretched hands straggling beyond the black mirror of a newfangled narcissistic clannishness that shepherds the ostentation of conceit to a predominant position that swaddles us with fretful diversion that operates on a warped logic of lurid squalor and pasty trends becoming the mainstays of a hypercritical linguistic system of entrapment based on the apostasy of candor for the propitiation of fringed aberration because of the majoritarian uproar about touchy butthurt pedantic criticasters with a penchant for persnickety structuralism. With the infestation of entertainment with the ubiquitous political cavils engineered by the ruling class to have a common arena of waggish irreverence we forget that sometimes the impetuous ****** of propaganda is cloaked by the fashionable implements of a rootless time writhing in a purported identity crisis only to gawk at the ungainly reflection of modernity in the mirror and remain blissfully unaware about the transmogrified cultural psyche that feeds the lunacy of endless spectacle based on the premise that one singular whipping post can unite an entire generation of miscegenated misfits looking for commonality to team up against the aging generations that cling to the sanctity of cherished jingoism against the intentionality of a revamped system that malingers with empty promises using exigency and legerdemain to obscure the mooncalves among their ranks that march on with quixotic dreams that tolerate only the idea of absolute tolerance and moderate only when feasibly permitted by the anchored negotiation of the fulcrum of totemic governmental responsibility between factions that wage volleys of invective at each other to promote a binary choice of vitiated compromises of mendaciloquence that ultimately endanger the republic with either the perils of hidebound conventionalism and nativist fervor or the boondoggles of fiscally irresponsible insanity cloaked with rainbows and participation trophies. Reproach can be distributed to both sides of the aisle because ironically in a world where gender is non-binary the most important reproductive ***** in the free world is a binary-by-default despotism that polarizes extremely ludic fantasies on the left met with the acrimony of the traditionalisms on the right that staunchly resist the fatuous confusions of delegated order only to the sharp rebuke of the revamped political vogue that owes its sustenance to a manufactured diplomacy of saccharine lies and ubiquitous lampoons that are lopsided in the direction of a globalist neoliberal bricolage of moderately popular buzzwords and the trojan horse of insubordinate flippant feminism that seeks to subvert through backhanded manipulation the patriarchy so many resent using lowbrow tactics and poignant case studies rather than legislating the egalitarian system into law using the proper channels. I myself am a political independent who sides with fiscal conservatism but libertarianism in most other affairs because the pettifoggery of law-and-order politics is a diatribe overused by sheltered suburbanites and red meat is often just as fatuous as blue tinsel and sadly in a majoritarian society the ushers of conformity demand corporate divestiture in favor of an ecological system of predictability rather than an opinionated welter of legitimate challenges to a broken system of backwards partisanship and wangled consent. Ultimately, I remain mostly apolitical, but I am a fervent champion of the mobilization of education to a statelier standard that demands rigor and responsibility rather than the chafe of rigmarole that understates the common objectives of humanity and rewards conventional thinking and nominal participation to earn credentialed pedigree when the bulk of talent resides elsewhere.
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
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Mitchell Sep 2013
We met on the stairs
Of a 15th century cathedral in Rome.
I was wearing my
Light gray suit that she later told me reminded
Her of the color of fresh volcano ash.

She - cut in half by the moonlight -
Wore red flats,
A ******* linen dress that
Effortlessly pronounced her *******,
While her oaken red and auburn hair
Lunged down both of her shoulders like
A waterfall or an avalanche,
Just touching the top of her belly button.

I, looking up toward the marble spires
Spinning into the scattered stillness of the nights
Opaque and cream colored stars,
Did not know she was hovering behind me watching me,
Until she had decided to speak;

If I had known, I would have ran inside.

"The cathedral is very nice, isn't it?"
I heard her ask to my back.
At the sound of her voice, I was not
Filled with that melodramatic cliché dripping
With soap opera fused emotions.

No, I
Was dipped into a large cauldron of ice-water.

There was a tremor
Somewhere
Inside of me and a heat
Ricocheting in her.

"Yes," I replied,"It is
Very nice and very old and I wonder why it is still here."

I did not know what I meant, but
From the pause and inhalation I heard immediately after, I
Believed she must have thought what was said profound.
Was I profound? Why would she believe that if it was only from
The spontaneous question that held no real physical weight? Or
From me jumping so quickly into this little

Game,

No question's asked?

"These buildings still stand because they
Are a physical memory of what we have achieved
And what we must continue to achieve
In the future
." She had come up beside me now.
Vanilla lavender lotion and mint
Toothpaste were the first smells that came to mind.  

"The future..."I said, trailing off, "The future."

"Yes, the future is very important."

"It is all we have."

"Well, all we truly have is the present, don't you agree?" I asked,
Slightly turning my head to look at her.

She was still looking up at the cathedral. She was focused on the large church bell
That hung there like the moon in the night sky. I continued
To stare at her, my question hovering vulnerable in
The air as a butterfly with its wings damaged would. Then, a
Couple passed by us in a hurry. Their hands were clasped tightly together, the man
In front and the woman looking to be dragged by him. I saw
Neither of their faces, but I imagined them both to be calm and red.

"They look to be in a hurry," she said, "Where do
You think they're going?
"

"Somewhere very important I'd imagine."

"And where is very important for you, sir?"

She turned
To meet
My gaze a

As if challenging it.

Her lips were full and painted with red lipstick. Where I thought her eyes would prove to be light colored or forest green, they were actually colorless and black. I inhaled at the sight of her, then immediately blushed. Again, our questions back and forth to each other were more of an interrogation of one's hearts and minds than flirtation. As she stared at me, I sensed that we had met before. There was something in her face that brought the feeling of an old friend or an acquaintance, like the feeling one gets when they see a past school teacher or love interest back in grade school. There was a warmth and giddy tension between us that made me feel eight years old again. I had felt so old recently. There was a sudden wink in her eyes and I then remembered the question I had asked her before.

"You haven't answered my first question," I stated seriously.

"I agree," she answered quickly, "The present is the only thing we have truly and
Do not have, all at the same time."

"What do you mean?"

"Being present 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is a very exhausting,
Trying thing,
Isn't it?

"Yes, I would agree with that."

"And being present for whatever reason, be it socially, romantically,
Professionally, etc., is really all for the future. One's own's private future goals.
Something one desires in the moment and wishes to have for oneself in the future. Our
Motivations are our desires. Our wishes. The lives we wish to own in the future."

"At times, yes, I do believe
One is present for those reasons, but
Sometimes, and I speak for myself,
I wish to lay back and let the sun burn my skin and
The clouds to blanket me, chilling me, so to remind myself
Of my placement on this planet and the miniscule and
Tremendous affect I have on my surroundings. For example...
"

"You are very talkative," she said cutting me off, "I could
Tell from the way you looked up at this cathedral all by yourself,
Lost in thought or lack thereof, that you were a talker."

She smiled and I forced a tight-lipped smirk.

"Well, I am
So talkative because you have made
Me so.
"

"So be it."

"It is so."

"Are you mad? she asked.

"Not the least bit," I returned, unsure whether I was lying to
Her because I didn't want to offend her and scare her off or because
She was so extremely beautiful.

"Well, I am glad that I can do that to you." She looked back
Up at the church bell, trying to hide her satisfied smirk.

"I have said too much. Let us both watch
The cathedral stand on her own for a bit in silence, ok?"

"That sounds good."

She took a step down from the step she had been on with me. Two steps.
There she let her head and hair fall back, taking everything in she possibly could.
I needed a drink and she needed the sky, the cathedral, the city, but I
Could only give her my company, unsure whether she truly needed it or not.
I shifted my glance from the bell tower to what was behind me. There, I saw
A wooden trolley up against the far wall near a trickling fountain
With puppets hanging from their thin clear strings. The light from the oiled lamp posts
Was a dark orange and cast an array of ****** shadows along the walls that
Encircled the square which me and the woman and many others were standing around. Night
Had set on the square, but no one had decided to go anywhere.
The square was perfect for them; anywhere else would have seemed uncomfortable.

She looked at me from two steps back and asked,
"We are being present for a better future, yes?"

"What we hope will be a better future," I said, turning
My head away from the bottom of the square back to the
Cathedral. I emphasized the word hope.

"Yes, men and women must have
Hope for something better."

"Life does not guarantee anything, does it?"

"No, I guess it doesn't. It gives you chance and we give
One another choice."

"Or," I hesitated to say what I wanted to say, "Or God does."

"God," she laughed, "What's He got to do with anything?"

"Everything and nothing, I hear."

"Don't be so vague," she grinned, turning her body completely around to me
So I could see her full figure. Her dress outlined a woman's body,
But I knew, inside, there was so much more precious things then flesh. "Hear
From who and where?"

"You choose what you wish to believe
And no one can tell you otherwise. What
You need and
What others may need can be different and should be.
This does not mean that we cannot get along.

Is there a way to be wrong in what one believes in?
She looked to want an honest answer, so I gave her one.

"Yes."

"That's it?" she asked, wanting more.

"That can't be it?"

"Yes is a decent enough answer,
But because you looked to be so talkative before,
I assumed you would have more to say on the matter."

"Assuming something
Is a very dangerous, childish thing.

"Yes," she agreed, "It is."

"If one believes in something and tries to share
Those beliefs in an unaggressive, listen-if-you-will,
Dangerously friendly, perhaps even musical way, then
The listener has their choice in the matter. They can

Walk away

No questions asked or feelings hurt.

"That," she said, "Sounds good for the listener,
But perhaps not so great for the speaker.

"
Why?"* I asked, surprised.

"Because then the speaker may turn into something
They originally did not want to be. A prophet or voice for something
They may honestly have no interest or passion for.

"I see."

"
But, please, go on."

"
On the other side, someone may believe in something fully, to their bitter core, but there needs to be a validation from another to prove their conviction. This is a weakness in their faith. They secretly doubt themselves and are trying to prove, by the obedience and following of others, that
Their belief, system, God, what have you, is a truth, a fact like the sky is blue or that fishes swim in the sea. These people with their thoughts and beliefs are the one's that are wrong. The one's that push their way onto other's without any room for being challenged or accused of falsity."

"
There are some that do not want follower's, but as soon
As they turn around, there they are.

"Yes," I nodded, "I can think of a few thinker's
That I've read or heard of that happening."

"
God, though," she laughed again lightly, "It
Is
Funny that you bring Him up."

I didn't have anything to say, so I said nothing.

"
Are you a religious man...?" she asked.

"
My name is Robert Commento and no, I am not religious man."

I gave
Her my name
Out of my uncomfortable stance on religion and
To change the subject to less formal and conversational matters.

She put out her hand and I slipped my palm under hers. I was
Never taught to shake a woman's hand - for it is too delicate -
but to let their hand rest atop mine.

I bowed and gently kissed her hand.
Her skin smelled of fresh milk and uncut grass and
What morning dew feels like across raw fingertips.
I tried to force myself not to trip too quickly into love,
But there are some things
Men are absolutely unable to do.

"
Luria Rose," she said, bowing her head, "Very ncie to meet you
Robert Commento."

"
And very nice to meet you."

"
You are from here?" she asked.

"
Yes,"* I said, "Well, not exactly."
"From a city over where the tail of the river ends."

"I know this place, but I cannot recall the name." I could see
She was embarrassed by not knowing the location, telling me she
Was obviously from Rome and proud of it.

"Cuore Tagliente," I told her with zest,"That is where
I am from and where I was raised. My family still lives there to

Manage their small farm of olive trees.

"Do they make very much money?" At this question, I turned
On my heel and stared at her. By her look, she seemed to be
Unsure whether I meant this in seriousness or in jest. So not to scare her
Off again I forced a smiled, left my eyes upon her as if viewing a painting or a statue, and
Answered as truthfully as I could without insulting the name of my family
In truth, I lied a little.

"They were very
Well off when they bought the
Olive farm and they are still very well off
Due to savings and the like, but, because of the business they sold
And the expenses of starting from scratch in the scorching fields of where olives are grown,
They took quite a beating financially. We are quite fine now, very, very fine now,
But not as fine as if we had stayed with the old company. In a way, we were
Asked very professionally and cordially to step down. Of course, my mother, bless
Her body and soul, was very destroyed by this matter and that is why I find it hard to continue.

Luria, staring at me blankly, but with a slight hint of fascination,
Walked up the two steps she had just stepped down and
Two more past where she had been beside me.
She swiveled around on her flats and faced me. Her
Eyes were now impossible to see in the night, though I knew she was
Looking directly at me. Curious why she decided to say nothing in return
To my story, I said something in her place.

"I say so much about myself...well, then, what about you?"

Instantly, she pounced on the question,
"I am
An orphan of Roma
And grew up on the streets stealing and
Running amok quite happily, though
Sometimes I regret what I stole. Every single one was a

Necessary action."

This took me back, for she looked tanned, healthy, and
Well fed, instantly making me think she must be a very skilled
Thief. Eyeing her up and down, I wondered if this was why
She was even talking to me presently. I checked my wallet. It was there,
Though this fact made me feel only slightly better. I watched her
Blow a thick, crescent moon shaped strand of dark brown hair from her eye,
Seeing if the story had settled. Was she lying? Was she telling me the truth?

Why would she tell me anything at all?

"Let us get dinner someplace," I offered, "You can
Take me to your favorite, local restaurant in the city and I
Will pay. No favors thought to receive or anything. All I'd like
Is to have a conversation through the night with whom I have in front of me."

She nodded, said nothing with a smile, and stood still.

"You must lead the way for
I have no idea where you would like to take me. I, of
Course can take you to any of the many restaurants
I know of in my Rome, but I want to go to the one the thieves knows of.

Suddenly, her face contorted into a shape like
A razor had been dragged down the length of her face.

She shouted,"Do not call me a thief, Robert!
Your a poor son of olive farmer's! What do you know about
Anything of the street? So much so that you can ridicule and
Mock whoever's from it? You know nothing!

I immediately tried to tell her I was teasing, but she ran past me, down the stairs, and across the square. I stood stunned, embarrassed to see if anyone had noticed this outburst. No one
Had. Groups of people were still sitting around the fountain, throwing
Coin into the water as some children played and dipped their toes into the
Clear, tranquil water. The puppets waved back and forth in a light, chilled wind,
And the lamp posts still burned casting a curing light over the square. There,
I saw Luria cast in the dark orange light for just a moment. She turned around to look at
Me in the light and there, I saw her eyes were not black, but sky blue, like
The fresh melted ice I had once seen on my travels to Antarctica. Then she was gone.

Pausing, letting myself be hugged by the cathedral behind me,
Half of me wanting to stay in her embrace and the other wanting me to be in hers.
I could not hug stone forever," I told myself, "Man needs to hug a woman
Into eternity, not the church. Maybe later in life, but now, man needs the physical,
Not the metaphysical. There, I see her as she goes through the alley behind the fountain on the
Path toward my favorite bakery, Grano Gorato. I will follow her and find her.

I ran down the stairs carefully for they had become wet and slick from the light
Fog that sometimes rolls into Rome when it is night. There, I moved through the crowd
Which looked to have double in size with people. Where had they all come from?
The alleys, no doubt. They all felt the warmth and comfort of this secret square with Her
Majesty looking down on them from above, the church bell and moon like two great eyes,
The tinted cathedral windows depicting ancient actions Her heart, and the hard square
Slabs of concrete and smoothed stone Her skin. But, Luria did not care for such comforts, She
Believed in no comforts other then the one's another could give. Did she want that from me?

Once through the alley and passing Grano Gorato, I swiveled my head three-hundred-and
Sixty degrees hoping to spot the white dress with the long brown hair. There were many
Women about, but none that were Luria. I sat on the edge of another fountain in a smaller
Square which I had found myself in. Inside the café in front of me, I observed an old man order
A glass of red wine and a mini-short bread crust filled with cream with bright, light green
Kiwi on top. It is was brightly lit inside and everyone was smiling, even the servers. Looking up
At the sign for the restaurant, I saw its name was Mondi. I made a note to go there with
Luria when I found her.

"Luria! I shouted. The name echoed about the numerous walls that
Surrounded me. A few tourists dressed in sandals with socks and cameras
Wrapped around their shoulders and "*****-packs" around their waists

(Terrible Things)

Gave me a concerned glance, but I continued to
Shout, "Luria!

"Yes, Robert?" I heard Lu
martin Jun 2014
In the cold grey light of the sixth of June, in the year of forty-four,
The Empire Larch sailed out from Poole to join with thousands more.
The largest fleet the world had seen, we sailed in close array,
And we set our course for Normandy at the dawning of the day.

There was not one man in all our crew but knew what lay in store,
For we had waited for that day through five long years of war.
We knew that many would not return, yet all our hearts were true,
For we were bound for Normandy, where we had a job to do.

Now the Empire Larch was a deep-sea tug with a crew of thirty-three,
And I was just the galley-boy on my first trip to sea.
I little thought when I left home of the dreadful sights I'd see,
But I came to manhood on the day that I first saw Normandy.

At the Beach of Gold off Arromanches, 'neath the rockets' deadly glare,
We towed our blockships into place and we built a harbour there.
'Mid shot and shell we built it well, as history does agree,
While brave men died in the swirling tide on the shores of Normandy.

Like the Rodney and the Nelson, there were ships of great renown,
But rescue tugs all did their share as many a ship went down.
We ran our pontoons to the shore within the Mulberry's lee,
And we made safe berth for the tanks and guns that would set all Europe free.

For every hero's name that's known, a thousand died as well.
On stakes and wire their bodies hung, rocked in the ocean swell;
And many a mother wept that day for the sons they loved so well,
Men who cracked a joke and cadged a smoke as they stormed the gates of hell.

As the years pass by, I can still recall the men I saw that day
Who died upon that blood-soaked sand where now sweet children play;
And those of you who were unborn, who've lived in liberty,
Remember those who made it so on the shores of Normandy.
____________
Jim is a D-day veteran and folk singer who wrote this song. I just watched him perform it on tv at a banquet to commemorate the 70th anniversary.
Read and don't be ashamed to shed a tear for the thousands of young lives lost on that day.
VENUS62 Jul 2014
Swaymvar- Wedding! With Translation in English

Kavi, tha khayalon me khoya
Dard-e -dil soch ke roya

Tab Apsara sundarsi hui prakat
Ahista se gayee Kavi ke nikat

Likhte kyun ** kavita hamesha udaas
Racho koi rachna jisme ** harsh-o- ulhas

Ghatne wali hai ghatna avismarniya
Reh jayega baki sub kuch asmarniya

Aney wali hai baraat aaj raat
Yahi kuch gyarah- barah baje ke baad

Chaand ke saath hogi chandni
Sitare layenge jhilmil roshni

Indra layenge varsha ko saath
Varun ayenge thamey badalon ka haath

Suraj layenge bas kiran ek
Teeno mil sajayenge indradhanush anek


Draupadi ke saath honge punch pandav
Shiv bhi karenge nritya tandav

Agni khud karenge havan
Halka sa jhonka denge Pavan

Patton se banegi chudiyan hari
Maang mein mitti hogi lal sindoori

Aasman mein cha jayega kala-neela sa rang
Krishna jab nachenge radha ke sang

Rachegi khoob ras leela wahan
Dekha na hoga kabhi ye jahan

Pakwan har ek hoga anvesh
Bhojan hoga bahut hi vishesh

Srishti banegi ati ati -sundar
Rachegi jab
Ambar aur dharti ka swayamvar!



Translation The Wedding!
The poet was lost in thought
Heartbroken and distraught

When appeared an Apsara ethereal
She touched his shoulder lightly

Why do you write poems full of sorrow
Do write some poems replete with joy

About to happen is an event memorable
Everything else will be forgettable

The bridegroom will ride on a chariot light
Around eleven-twelve tonight

The moon will swing in with his moonlight
The stars will twinkle on their own shining bright

Indra will bring along the rains
Varun will hold the clouds in rein

The sun will be present as a single ray
The trio will create a rainbow array

Draupadi will come with five pandav
Shiv will swirl to his Dance Tandav

Agni himself will do the Havan
Gentle breeze will be supplied by Pavan

The bangles will be made from leaves green
The color of the earth will be vermilon red

The sky will be decked in black and blue
When Krishna will dance with Radha his beloved true

There will be celebrations lavish
Mortals will be left in disbelief

The food will indeed be delectable
Each dish will be a creative spectacle!

Creation will be at her very best
When the earth and sky
will be in their union blessed.
WHEN that Aprilis, with his showers swoot,                       *sweet
The drought of March hath pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such licour,
Of which virtue engender'd is the flower;
When Zephyrus eke with his swoote breath
Inspired hath in every holt
and heath                    grove, forest
The tender croppes
and the younge sun                    twigs, boughs
Hath in the Ram  his halfe course y-run,
And smalle fowles make melody,
That sleepen all the night with open eye,
(So pricketh them nature in their corages
);       hearts, inclinations
Then longe folk to go on pilgrimages,
And palmers  for to seeke strange strands,
To *ferne hallows couth
  in sundry lands;     distant saints known
And specially, from every shire's end
Of Engleland, to Canterbury they wend,
The holy blissful Martyr for to seek,
That them hath holpen, when that they were sick.                helped

Befell that, in that season on a day,
In Southwark at the Tabard  as I lay,
Ready to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Canterbury with devout corage,
At night was come into that hostelry
Well nine and twenty in a company
Of sundry folk, by aventure y-fall            who had by chance fallen
In fellowship, and pilgrims were they all,           into company.
That toward Canterbury woulde ride.
The chamber, and the stables were wide,
And well we weren eased at the best.            we were well provided
And shortly, when the sunne was to rest,                  with the best

So had I spoken with them every one,
That I was of their fellowship anon,
And made forword* early for to rise,                            promise
To take our way there as I you devise
.                describe, relate

But natheless, while I have time and space,
Ere that I farther in this tale pace,
Me thinketh it accordant to reason,
To tell you alle the condition
Of each of them, so as it seemed me,
And which they weren, and of what degree;
And eke in what array that they were in:
And at a Knight then will I first begin.

A KNIGHT there was, and that a worthy man,
That from the time that he first began
To riden out, he loved chivalry,
Truth and honour, freedom and courtesy.
Full worthy was he in his Lorde's war,
And thereto had he ridden, no man farre
,                       farther
As well in Christendom as in Heatheness,
And ever honour'd for his worthiness
At Alisandre  he was when it was won.
Full often time he had the board begun
Above alle nations in Prusse.
In Lettowe had he reysed,
and in Russe,                      journeyed
No Christian man so oft of his degree.
In Grenade at the siege eke had he be
Of Algesir, and ridden in Belmarie.
At Leyes was he, and at Satalie,
When they were won; and in the Greate Sea
At many a noble army had he be.
At mortal battles had he been fifteen,
And foughten for our faith at Tramissene.
In listes thries, and aye slain his foe.
This ilke
worthy knight had been also                         same
Some time with the lord of Palatie,
Against another heathen in Turkie:
And evermore *he had a sovereign price
.            He was held in very
And though that he was worthy he was wise,                 high esteem.

And of his port as meek as is a maid.
He never yet no villainy ne said
In all his life, unto no manner wight.
He was a very perfect gentle knight.
But for to telle you of his array,
His horse was good, but yet he was not gay.
Of fustian he weared a gipon,                            short doublet
Alle besmotter'd with his habergeon,     soiled by his coat of mail.
For he was late y-come from his voyage,
And wente for to do his pilgrimage.

With him there was his son, a younge SQUIRE,
A lover, and a ***** bacheler,
With lockes crulle* as they were laid in press.                  curled
Of twenty year of age he was I guess.
Of his stature he was of even length,
And *wonderly deliver
, and great of strength.      wonderfully nimble
And he had been some time in chevachie,                  cavalry raids
In Flanders, in Artois, and Picardie,
And borne him well, as of so little space,      in such a short time
In hope to standen in his lady's grace.
Embroider'd was he, as it were a mead
All full of freshe flowers, white and red.
Singing he was, or fluting all the day;
He was as fresh as is the month of May.
Short was his gown, with sleeves long and wide.
Well could he sit on horse, and faire ride.
He coulde songes make, and well indite,
Joust, and eke dance, and well pourtray and write.
So hot he loved, that by nightertale                        night-time
He slept no more than doth the nightingale.
Courteous he was, lowly, and serviceable,
And carv'd before his father at the table.

A YEOMAN had he, and servants no mo'
At that time, for him list ride so         it pleased him so to ride
And he was clad in coat and hood of green.
A sheaf of peacock arrows bright and keen
Under his belt he bare full thriftily.
Well could he dress his tackle yeomanly:
His arrows drooped not with feathers low;
And in his hand he bare a mighty bow.
A nut-head  had he, with a brown visiage:
Of wood-craft coud* he well all the usage:                         knew
Upon his arm he bare a gay bracer
,                        small shield
And by his side a sword and a buckler,
And on that other side a gay daggere,
Harnessed well, and sharp as point of spear:
A Christopher on his breast of silver sheen.
An horn he bare, the baldric was of green:
A forester was he soothly
as I guess.                        certainly

There was also a Nun, a PRIORESS,
That of her smiling was full simple and coy;
Her greatest oathe was but by Saint Loy;
And she was cleped
  Madame Eglentine.                           called
Full well she sang the service divine,
Entuned in her nose full seemly;
And French she spake full fair and fetisly
                    properly
After the school of Stratford atte Bow,
For French of Paris was to her unknow.
At meate was she well y-taught withal;
She let no morsel from her lippes fall,
Nor wet her fingers in her sauce deep.
Well could she carry a morsel, and well keep,
That no droppe ne fell upon her breast.
In courtesy was set full much her lest
.                       pleasure
Her over-lippe wiped she so clean,
That in her cup there was no farthing
seen                       speck
Of grease, when she drunken had her draught;
Full seemely after her meat she raught
:           reached out her hand
And *sickerly she was of great disport
,     surely she was of a lively
And full pleasant, and amiable of port,                     disposition

And pained her to counterfeite cheer              took pains to assume
Of court,* and be estately of mannere,            a courtly disposition
And to be holden digne
of reverence.                            worthy
But for to speaken of her conscience,
She was so charitable and so pitous,
                      full of pity
She woulde weep if that she saw a mouse
Caught in a trap, if it were dead or bled.
Of smalle houndes had she, that she fed
With roasted flesh, and milk, and *wastel bread.
   finest white bread
But sore she wept if one of them were dead,
Or if men smote it with a yarde* smart:                           staff
And all was conscience and tender heart.
Full seemly her wimple y-pinched was;
Her nose tretis;
her eyen gray as glass;               well-formed
Her mouth full small, and thereto soft and red;
But sickerly she had a fair forehead.
It was almost a spanne broad I trow;
For *hardily she was not undergrow
.       certainly she was not small
Full fetis* was her cloak, as I was ware.                          neat
Of small coral about her arm she bare
A pair of beades, gauded all with green;
And thereon hung a brooch of gold full sheen,
On which was first y-written a crown'd A,
And after, *Amor vincit omnia.
                      love conquers all
Another Nun also with her had she,
[That was her chapelleine, and PRIESTES three.]

A MONK there was, a fair for the mast'ry,       above all others
An out-rider, that loved venery;                               *hunting
A manly man, to be an abbot able.
Full many a dainty horse had he in stable:
And when he rode, men might his bridle hear
Jingeling  in a whistling wind as clear,
And eke as loud, as doth the chapel bell,
There as this lord was keeper of the cell.
The rule of Saint Maur and of Saint Benet,
Because that it was old and somedeal strait
This ilke
monk let olde thinges pace,                             same
And held after the newe world the trace.
He *gave not of the text a pulled hen,
                he cared nothing
That saith, that hunters be not holy men:                  for the text

Ne that a monk, when he is cloisterless;
Is like to a fish that is waterless;
This is to say, a monk out of his cloister.
This ilke text held he not worth an oyster;
And I say his opinion was good.
Why should he study, and make himselfe wood                   *mad
Upon a book in cloister always pore,
Or swinken
with his handes, and labour,                           toil
As Austin bid? how shall the world be served?
Let Austin have his swink to him reserved.
Therefore he was a prickasour
aright:                       hard rider
Greyhounds he had as swift as fowl of flight;
Of pricking
and of hunting for the hare                         riding
Was all his lust,
for no cost would he spare.                 pleasure
I saw his sleeves *purfil'd at the hand       *worked at the end with a
With gris,
and that the finest of the land.          fur called "gris"
And for to fasten his hood under his chin,
He had of gold y-wrought a curious pin;
A love-knot in the greater end there was.
His head was bald, and shone as any glass,
And eke his face, as it had been anoint;
He was a lord full fat and in good point;
His eyen steep,
and rolling in his head,                      deep-set
That steamed as a furnace of a lead.
His bootes supple, his horse in great estate,
Now certainly he was a fair prelate;
He was not pale as a forpined
ghost;                            wasted
A fat swan lov'd he best of any roast.
His palfrey was as brown as is a berry.

A FRIAR there was, a wanton and a merry,
A limitour , a full solemne man.
In all the orders four is none that can
                          knows
So much of dalliance and fair language.
He had y-made full many a marriage
Of younge women, at his owen cost.
Unto his order he was a noble post;
Full well belov'd, and familiar was he
With franklins *over all
in his country,                   everywhere
And eke with worthy women of the town:
For he had power of confession,
As said himselfe, more than a curate,
For of his order he was licentiate.
Full sweetely heard he confession,
And pleasant was his absolution.
He was an easy man to give penance,
There as he wist to have a good pittance:      *where he know
Yenson Oct 2018
Criminal Gang Stalking

Definition:

The crimes committed through gang stalking an individual are covertly done, hence little in evidence is left behind of the crime, and the target is left with little in the way of resources to defend him or herself.

Isolation, through disrupting socio-familial ties in an intense slander campaign, is usually achieved once the actual stalking begins.

A pervasive slandering campaign takes place, projecting the target as an unstable individual, child molester, a person with hidden dark secrets, or a person prone to psychopathic behavior.

The criminals planning a gang stalking endeavor study the target long before the stalking begins. Psychological profiling is done, and this is to assist in the overall campaign that includes intense psychological harassments and demoralizations. Tactics used go well beyond fear, demoralization and psychological harassment.

The tactics used have been the protocol in campaigns against common people implemented by the KGB in Soviet Russia, Nazis of **** Germany, and the KKK in the early to middle of last century in America.

The accumulation of all the tactics and events in this dangerously hurtful organized crime against an innocent human being can led to trauma and will emotionally bankrupt the targeted individual, and may lead to death, as suicide is often induced through the assaults. The perpetrators of gang stalking are serious criminals who do great damage, and the acts done are very serious crimes by any measure.

Gang Stalking is a highly criminal campaign, one directed at a target individual, and one that aims to destroy an innocent person’s life through covert harassments, malicious slander and carefully crafted and executed psychological assaults.

Gang Stalking deprives the targeted individual of their basic constitutional rights and destroys their freedom, setting a stage for the destruction of a person, socially, mental and physical, through a ceaseless assault that pervades all areas of a person’s life.

What drives such campaigns may be revenge for whistle blowing, or for highly critical individuals, as outspoken people have become targets. Other reasons why a person may become a target individual for stalking: ex-spouse revenge, criminal hate campaigns, politics, and racism.

Gang Stalking may be part of a larger phenomena that may have loose threads that extent into a number of differing entities, such as government, military, and large corporations, though it is certain that organized crime is one of gang’s stalking primary sources, or origins.

The goals of Gang Stalking are many. To cause the target to appear unstable mentally is one, and this is achieved through a carefully detailed assault using advanced psychological harassment techniques, and a variety of other tactics that are the usual protocol for gang stalking, such as street theater, mobbing, pervasive petty disrespecting.

Targets experience the following :

A total invasion of privacy
Pervasive and horrific slander
Isolation through alienation that is caused by the slander. 4.Destruction of, or alienation from all things that the target holds dear.
Ground Work: A discrediting campaign is initiated long before the target is actually stalked. They, the criminal perpetrators, twist and fabricate reality through such a campaign, displaying lies that paint the target as a child molester, a person with hidden dark secrets, an highly unstable individual who may be a threat to society, a *******, or a longtime drug user, etc.

The slandering or discrediting campaign sets the stage for the target to become alienated in just about every social-familial- work environment, once the actual stalking begins. This slandering campaign is instrumental in eliminating all resource and avenue of defense for the target, before the actual stalking begins.

This stage is one that sees people close to the target, family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers recruited by the perpetrator criminals, who will pose as law enforcement officials, private investigators, or a groups of concerned citizens.

The Gang Stalking is aimed at achieving one or all of the follow:

induced suicide
financial devastation
homelessness
institutionalization in psyche wards
Once actual Stalking begins: The target will endure a vast array of tactics: gas lighting, street theater, drugging, gassings, scent harassment, mobbing, subtle but frequent destruction of property, killing of pets

Psychological profiling will be done so as to initiate an intense psychological harassment assault. Staged happenings and planned or directed conversations will take place around the target in public or places of work, and serves not only to undermine the targets psychology, but also may be used to cause the target to thinking that he or she is under investigation for horrific crimes.

Stalkers will have studied the target to such a level that they know and can predict the person’s behavior. Again, often the target will think that they are being investigated for crimes that would be absurd for the target to have actually committed. Not knowing what actually is happening, the target is isolated and lives through a never ending living nightmare.

Once the target finds out that they are a target individual for gang stalking, or multi stalking, they may have some relief, but from what I have read, the stalking simply changes dimensions a bit, and continues.

Identifying the exact people who initiated gang stalking campaigns is difficult, or near impossible, and this makes it very difficult for people researching this phenomena to discover, in certainty, the roots and genealogy of the crime. Investigation of a “Gang Stalking” crime would require a great deal of resources, and intensity similar to ****** investigations.
WHAT THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW....THIS IS THE TRUTH.

Background information, please read 'Where Is Justice' by same author on this site.
This horrendous situation is happening in our Great civilised Nation,
xei Oct 2014
He stood fifty times his height,
his palms pressed against the glass
separating him from the road in their glamour;
blurred images of car in their splendor –
and there isn’t the
familiar scent of coffee –
I call this pandemonium.

Nothing beats a day in a café
redolent of the finest Arabica,
he’d inhale deeply and recall :
unroasted gives the sweetest scents
of blueberries –
roasted’s entirely different:
fruit, sugar, perfume –
They call this addiction.

Mnemonic – a wind chime
lost in the array of winds.
“You used to be my cup of tea –
I drink coffee now.”
These words slip out of his dry lips,
and a lone tear trickles down a milky cheek;

They all say if they’ve got love,
they don’t need money –

And he’d say if he’s got coffee,
he doesn’t need love –
He calls this heaven.
Karijinbba Jul 2018
My twin flame here I am
Do with me as you please
I surrender to you
Other women complain asking
you why do you love me more then them and you replied...
"why do I not love any of you like I love her?"
"If a blind woman and one who sees are together in darkness, they are the same.
Light comes, the one who sees will see light. The blind one
stays in darkness."
I am yours beloved I see your light my teacher my guru Sage twin flame my everything!
Caress me dance me oh sing me
Lay with me among the wild
flowered fields and bunny meadow prairy land
Spread you my wings I am
in full array near our nudist hill
My Adam your Eve
Or skip this previews
just take me now
Touch me taste me
Climbing becoming one we do our Macchu-picchu mountain each time we touch
many a mountain we shall climb
I won't ever let you down
Reciprocate my lover
I am your true love
I've been waiting for your scripted promises of old for decades to manifest.
Help me bridge this old gap bridge the chasm with
a leap of faith
Help me come out of this world of unreality our old prenuptial script lets jump into life
Let me spill my heart to you
Spill yours and play some nice music no more sad songs
Its sunny and beautiful outside
What a wonderful world
Loving the outdoors
Loving you loving me
Lay me down under the sunny
blue sky by day, let the pine tree aromas after the heavy rains to heighten and sharpen our senses
the evenings long.
Let's lay us both down
under the pomegranate trees examining their sensual hanging fruits that get us so high
Feed me your ripe fruits
I so hunger for you love.
Embrace me gently or grab me
download yourself into my hybrid vessel your inter galactic antivirus, lets wait untill dark falls for the stars to blanket us all night long I am your star seed
ENTER ME the evenings mornings long.
You raise me up like mercury on a thermometer pumping me
Earthquaking me
Fireworks crackling us
Volcanic booms exploding
with each pump fly me higher and higher raise me up, and up
You are the perfect lover
Protective husband amazing father
To this truth I surrender to you
Mate with me jump into Karijinis's hole fly us a honeymoon trip to Australia.
Protect me from the wild beast there here guide me make me into your own image God of love heart of gold like me!
King of hearts
here I am your Queen bee 2
glued together baby two
plus eight more!
There isn't a tree a rose a
Hilton hotel a Travelodge
A Laundry's restaurant
a garden a mountain
Paris Egypt Australia Africas starry sky
Not any place on Earth
Where I can't find you
You are omnipresent in my world even crossroads and street lights define you
You love like I do your eye moves are my own!
your smile is my own!
There isn't a Space Center rocket
Not any Star System
That won't remind me of you:
looking at me, waiting
Longing praying
for me to understand you.
You were the only one who
truly loved me just for me!
Everywhere I look I see you
I died amnesic in Greece and Veracruz there I wished I was never born
we all have our ways
of jumping off cliffs.
I fell into the abyss and I died again when Nasus answered phone in our home in Kemah
saying you two had a son!
I believed her lie
Lover of  life!
Giver of life
Love of my life
Lord G* heaven i missed you all my life
I sing and dance for you
Lord son of G
omnipresent
miss you my E.T divine
I surender to you
do with me
as you please.
rdd/pjc I'm bba/asg
remember me as
something very
dear and precious
you promed me
my true love
I love you adore you forever yours in
mind heart body spirit soul.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By: Karijinbba
All rights reserved:
excerpts from my first memoir
Aplicable {1974 through 1995-
up to 2006) sorry we didn't change the world where rich
marry poor
and women not men rule
no more wars
no more wars!
It was golden and splendid,                                                      
That City of light;                                                            
A vision suspended                                                              
In deeps of the night;                                                        
A region of wonder and glory, whose temples were marble and white.              
                                                                              
I remember the season                                                            
It dawn'd on my gaze;                                                          
The mad time of unreason,                                                        
The brain-numbing days                                                        
When Winter, white-sheeted and ghastly, stalks onward to torture and craze.      
                                                                              
More lovely than Zion                                                            
It shone in the sky                                                            
When the beams of Orion                                                          
Beclouded my eye,                                                              
Bringing sleep that was filled with dim mem'ries of moments obscure and gone by.
                                                                              
Its mansions were stately,                                                      
With carvings made fair,                                                      
Each rising sedately                                                            
On terraces rare,                                                              
And the gardens were fragrant and bright with strange miracles blossoming there.
                                                                              
The avenues lur'd me                                                            
With vistas sublime;                                                          
Tall arches assur'd me                                                          
That once on a time                                                            
I had wander'd in rapture beneath them, and bask'd in the Halcyon clime.        
                                                                              
On the plazas were standing                                                      
A sculptur'd array;                                                            
Long bearded, commanding,                                                        
rave men in their day—                                                        
But one stood dismantled and broken, its bearded face battered away.            
                                                                              
In that city effulgent                                                          
No mortal I saw,                                                              
But my fancy, indulgent                                                          
To memory's law,                                                              
Linger'd long on the forms in the plazas, and eyed their stone features with    
awe.                                                                            
                                                                              
I fann'd the faint ember                                                        
That glow'd in my mind,                                                        
And strove to remember                                                          
The aeons behind;                                                 &
Stephen E Yocum Aug 2013
Went to the County Fair today,
I have always liked to go,
So many animals,
and things to see,
It's truly quite a show.

The Carnival Games are fun,
But certainly never free,
Most are surely rigged,
You hardly ever succeed.

There are Side Shows galore,
Some bring, right out in the open
******* clad young women for
perusal, to tease men into arousal.
But you need to pay to go inside,
To get a better peek.

Best of all though, for me,
Is the vast array of Junk Food,
Right there on display,
for everyone to see.
Forbidden none healthy stuff,
that the rest of the year,
I never get to eat.

While walking around,
The sights and the sounds,
of these many prohibited treats,
Their enticing smells do so delight,
That my stomach begins to growl.

It does not help, that huge colorfull,
signs, on each food stalls does adorn,
Advertising it's tantalizing offerings,
making them all the harder to ignore.

The combination of these deeds,
of visual, and nose sensory sensations,
Can doubtless render this person,
incredibly weak in the knees.

Next up jumps a big dilemma,
Which one thing should it be?
Pop Corn, with lots of salt and  butter,
Better yet, that fresh corn on the cobb
I see.

Look over there, Oh MY!
It's fried dough Elephant Ears, I spy,
Sprinkled with honey and cinnamon,
I seldom, almost never pass them by.

Oh YES, Bright Red Candy Apples!
A boyhood favorite of mine,
and a sure win.
An apple a day, they say,
Keeps the Doctor away,
The candy is just there for a grin.

Fried Chirreo's and Corn Dogs on a stick,
Both I could do, making that combination,
a bona fide Hat Trick.

Nachos dripping with melted cheese,
Oh sure, that's bound to please.

Pulled Pork on a bun would be kind of fun,
But the Barbeque Sauce gives me gas.

One that I'd almost forgotten,
How 'bout Candy Cotton?
A marvelous Incantation,
Sugar dropped into a machine's
whirring vat, spun like magic,  
Puff, just like that.
No slight of hand required.
Really quite a sweet sensation.

I've spent now over an hour,
Just wandering all around,
Looking at the stalls and signs.
And yet,
Still can't make up my mind.

Racked with indecision,
This perplexing dilemma,
Rests with no other person,
This one is all about me.
Yet another half hour,
from the clock has expired,
and still no decision is rendered.

The day is ending,
it's nearly Six,
Not long 'till Supper Time.
Before I left home,
My wife did inform,
"It's *** Roast tonight,
your favorite,
Make sure you're here by seven!"

With a certain hesitation,
And twinge of remorse,
Disappointment etched on my face,
I turn listlessly towards my car,
With slow pace resignation,
Still pondering all those treats,
I might have had,
If it weren't for my procrastination.

Decision making,
I've been slow to admit,
Has never been my forte.

Well perhaps, No for sure.
Maybe, I'll probably come back.
Tomorrow, or even the next day.
It could, or might possibly be,
That by then, I will have thought,
this all through,
And come to some decision.
And we know he won't, poor guy,
his sort never can.
Which of the treats would you have
picked? Bet you can make up your mind.
That's an easy bet. Writers make instant
decisions all the time.
Stephan Sep 2016
.

Of broken branch and multi-colored stone façade
the pathway steals my outward glance
Winding through the cottage hills
like kite string freed by a strong wind, it spills
Patterns shadow in abstract array
through barbed wire and solid steel
barricades, creating menacing shapes,
criss-crossing narrow wheel ruts of long ago

Obstacles, of stead and stood,
branded in a wilting wood
directions carved to empty me of all I know as good


Within my chest sits a living compass,
beating my quest in a never ending melody,
sweet as caramel cream pie and pointing
towards the sun, which sits before me
two hills above the horizon on this new day
Temptation beckons over my right shoulder,
whistling in the breeze of delicious
offerings, and I do hunger

Take your glow of nectarines
cool refreshing summer streams
for I shan’t waver, not an inch, her love calls in my dreams


Midday, as the solar glow finds my shoulders red
and sweat clings like life in dampened conclusions,
blisters form bringing the pain of decisions made before
and I would have it no other way, for this I deserve
Mountains faced of fractured stone break my crawl,
rubble sweeps my feet, as my knees bleed,
thirst speaks in the language of a long feared enemy,
yet I do not listen…

State your case in hammered stone
tear my skin of broken bone
no tethered vines of loneliness shall sway me from my home


My shadow now waits before me, long and slender,
molded by dried weathered foot prints, my foot prints,
once heading a direction opposite my heart
Many years old yet still their outline remains as a warning,
When I see it, the lilac arbor, scented in old desires and
new in life, encasing a glow, melodies of gold finch song
as my eyes find your smile, an extended hand, a soft touch
I have found my way home, to you

*Decisions made along the way
mistaken steps of lost array
when found my every dream it longs within your arms to stay
627

The Tint I cannot take—is best—
The Color too remote
That I could show it in Bazaar—
A Guinea at a sight—

The fine—impalpable Array—
That swaggers on the eye
Like Cleopatra’s Company—
Repeated—in the sky—

The Moments of Dominion
That happen on the Soul
And leave it with a Discontent
Too exquisite—to tell—

The eager look—on Landscapes—
As if they just repressed
Some Secret—that was pushing
Like Chariots—in the Vest—

The Pleading of the Summer—
That other Prank—of Snow—
That Cushions Mystery with Tulle,
For fear the Squirrels—know.

Their Graspless manners—mock us—
Until the Cheated Eye
Shuts arrogantly—in the Grave—
Another way—to see—
too much interference
has been extensively run
by those who hold
the kingmaker's gun

as a consequence
of this kind of thing
the democratic process
is under a clouded ring

the flow of votes
which were meant
for the out in front candidate
got subverted somewhere
in the ballot box's victory pate

foreign countries meddling
with other country's domestic autonomy
so the results of elections
will satisfy their sovereignty

transgressors are employing
their technics from nations far away
to determine who'll wear
a crowning array
and here we'll have a magnificent view
off a moon in fullest array
in the vastness of the open skies
its luminous silver face
shall stream with torrential beams
throughout the night
it will sail over the black sea sky
on a voyage
of majesty
such a grand display
this lunar show
astounding the eyes
with its mystical glow
the stars shall dance
dance all night
in accord with the brimming
moonlight
wonder
shall dwell in the celestial plains
as the moon
on this night
shall regally rein
Ferns Jul 2018
The pile of books
The array of papers
They long-await
that ink will pour
on their vacuous
void of emptiness
For the deadline
draws near
Yet I'm still here
Sitting on my windowsill
Lackadaisically waiting
Certainly expecting
For water to descend
From the firmament
surrounded by dullness
where a mass of clouds
are there to be seen
judy smith May 2016
For the fifth year in a row, Kering and Parsons School of Fashion rolled out the ‘Empowering Imagination’ design initiative. The competition engaged twelve 2016 graduates of the Parsons BFA Fashion Design program, who "were selected for their excellence in vision, acute awareness in design identity, and mastery of technical competencies." The winners, Ya Jun Lin and Tiffany Huang, will be awarded a 2-week trip to Kering facilities in Italy in June 2016 and will have their thesis collections featured in Saks Fifth Avenue New York’s windows.

The Kering and Parsons competition, which is currently in its fifth year, is one of a growing number of design competitions, including but not limited to the LVMH Prize, the ANDAM Awards, the Council of Fashion Designers of America/Vogue Fashion Fund, and its British counterpart, the Woolmark Prize, the Ecco Domani fashion award, and the Hyères Festival. among others.

In the generations prior, designers were certainly nominated for awards, but it seems that there was not nearly as intense of a focus on design competitions as a means for designers to get their footing, for design houses to scout talent, or for these competitions to select the best of the best in a especially large pool of young talent. Fern Mallis, the former executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America and an industry consultant, told the New York Times: “Take the Calvin [Kleins] and the Donna [Karans] and the Ralph [Laurens] of the world. Some of these people had money from a friend or a partner who worked with them, but they weren’t out spending their time doing competitions and winning awards to get their business going.” She sheds light on an essential element: The relatively drastic difference between the state of fashion then and fashion now. Fashion then was slower, less global, and (a lot) less dominated by the internet, and so, it made for quite different circumstances for the building of a fashion brand.

Nowadays, young designers are more or less going full speed ahead right off the bat. They show comprehensive collections, many of which consist of garments and an array of accessories. They are expected to be active on social media. They are expected to establish a strong industry presence (think: Go to events and parties). They are expected to cope with the fashion business that has become large-scale and international. They are expected to collaborate to expand their reach, and while it does, at times, feel excessive, this is the reality because the industry is moving at such a quick pace, one that some argue is unsustainably rapid. The result is designers and design houses consistently building their brands and very rarely starting small. Case in point: Young brands showing pre-collections within a few years of setting up shop (for a total of four collections per year, not counting any collaboration or capsule collections), and established brands showing roughly four womenswear collections, four menswear collections, two couture collections, and quite often, a few diffusion collections each year.

The current climate of 'more is more' (more collections, more collaborations, more social media, more international know-how, etc.) in fashion is what sets currently emerging brands apart from older brands, many of which started small. This reality also sheds light on the increasing frequency with which designers rely on competitions as a means of gaining funds, as well as a means of establishing their names and not uncommonly, gaining outside funding.

The Ralphs, Tommys, Calvins and Perrys started off a bit differently. Ralph Lauren, for instance, started a niche business. The empire builder, now 74, got his start working at a department store then worked for a private label tie manufacturer (which made ties for Brooks Brothers and Paul Stuart). He eventually convinced them to let him make ties under the Polo label and work out of a drawer in their showroom. After gaining credibility thanks to the impeccable quality of his ties, he expanded into other things. Tommy Hilfiger similarly started with one key garment: Jeans. After making a name for himself by buying jeans, altering them into bellbottoms and reselling them at Brown’s in Manhattan, he opened a store catering to those that wanted a “rock star” aesthetic when he was 18-years old with $150. While the store went bankrupt by the time he was 25, it allowed him to get his foot in the door. He was offered design positions at Calvin Klein (who also got his start by focusing on a single garment: Coats. With $2,000 of his own money and $10,000 lent to him by a friend, he set up shop; in 1973, he got his big break when a major department store buyer accidentally walked into his showroom and placed an order for $50,000). Hilfiger was also offered a design position with Perry Ellis but turned them down to start his eponymous with help from the Murjani Group. Speaking of Perry Ellis, the NYU grad went to work at an upscale retail store in Virginia, where he was promoted to a buying/merchandising position in NYC, where he was eventually offered a chance to start his own label, a small operation. After several years of success, he spun it off as its own entity. Marc Jacobs, who falls into a bit of a younger generation, started out focusing on sweaters.

These few individuals, some of the biggest names in American fashion, obviously share a common technique. They intentionally started very small. They built slowly from there, and they had the luxury of being able to do so. Others, such as Hubert de Givenchy, Alexander McQueen and his successor Sarah Burton, Nicolas Ghesquière, Julien Macdonald, John Galliano and his successor Bill Gaytten, and others, spent time as apprentices, working up to design directors or creative directors, and maybe maintaining a small eponymous label on the side. As I mentioned, attempting to compare these great brand builders or notable creative directors to the young designers of today is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, as the nature of the market now is vastly different from what it looked like 20 years ago, let alone 30 or 40 years ago.

With this in mind, fashion competitions have begun to play an important role in helping designers to cope with the increasing need to establish a brand early on. It seems to me that winning (or nearly winning) a prestigious fashion competition results in several key rewards.

Primarily, it puts a designer's name and brand on the map. This is likely the least noteworthy of the rewards, as chances are, if you are selected to participate in a design competition, your name and brand are already out there to some extent as one of the most promising young designers of the moment.

Second are the actual prizes, which commonly include mentoring from industry insiders and monetary grants. We know that participation in competitions, such as the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, the Woolmark Prize, the Swarovski, Ecco Domani, the LVMH Prize, etc., gives emerging designers face time with and mentoring from some of the most successful names in the industry. Chris Peters, half of the label Creatures of the Wind (pictured above), whose brand has been nominated for half of the aforementioned awards says of such participation: “It feels like we’ve talked to possibly everyone in fashion that we can possibly talk to." The grants, which range anywhere from $25,o00 to $400,000 and beyond, are obviously important, as many emerging designers take this money and stage a runway show or launch pre-collections, which often affect the business' bottom line in a major and positive way.

The third benefit is, in my opinion, the most significant. It seems that competitions also provide brands with some reputability in terms of finding funding. At the moment, the sea of young brands which is terribly vast. Like law school graduates, there are a lot of design school graduates. With this in mind, these competitions are, for the most part, serving as a selection mechanism. Sure, the inevitable industry politics and alternate agendas exist (without which the finalists lists may look a bit different), but great talent is being scouted, nonetheless. Not only is it important to showcase the most promising young talent and provide them with mentoring and grant money, as a way of maintaining an industry, but these competitions also do a monumental service to young brands in terms of securing additional funding. One of the most challenging aspects of the business for young/emerging brands is producing and growing absent outside investors' funds, and often, the only way for brands' to have access to such funds is by showing a proven sales track record, something that is difficult to establish when you've already put all of your money into your business and it is just not enough. This is a frustrating cycle for young designers.

However, this is where design competitions are a saving grace. If we look to recent Council of Fashion Designers of America/Vogue Fashion Fund winners and runners-up, for instance, it is not uncommon to see funding (distinct from the grants associated with winning) come on the heels of successful participation. Chrome Hearts, the cult L.A.-based accessories label, acquired a minority stake in The Elder Statesman, the brand established by Greg Chait, the 2012 winner, this past March. A minority stake in 2011 winner Joseph Altuzarra's eponymous label was purchased by luxury conglomerate Kering in September 2013. Creatures of the Wind, the NYC-based brand founded by Shane Gabier and Chris Peters, which took home a runner-up prize in the 2011 competition, welcomed an investment from The Dock Group, a Los Angeles-based fashion investment firm, last year, as well.

Across the pond, the British Fashion Council/Vogue Fashion Fund has awarded prizes to a handful of designers who have gone on to land noteworthy investments. In January 2013, Christopher Kane (pictured below), the 2011 winner, sold a majority stake in his brand to Kering. Footwear designer Nicholas Kirkwood was named the winner 2013 in May and by September, a majority stake in his company had been acquired by LVMH.

Thus, while the exposure that fashion design competition participants gain, and the mentoring and monetary grants that the winners enjoy, are certainly not to be discounted, the takeaway is much larger than that. These competitions are becoming the new way for investors and luxury conglomerates to source new talent, and for young brands to land the outside investments that they so desperately need to produce their collections, expand their studio space, build upon their existing collections, and even open brick and mortar stores.

While no one has scooped up inaugural LVMH winner Thomas Tait’s brand yet or fellow winner, Marques'Almeida, it is likely just be a matter of time.Read more at:www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses | http://www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-sydney
Ye learnèd sisters, which have oftentimes
Beene to me ayding, others to adorne,
Whom ye thought worthy of your gracefull rymes,
That even the greatest did not greatly scorne
To heare theyr names sung in your simple layes,
But joyèd in theyr praise;
And when ye list your owne mishaps to mourne,
Which death, or love, or fortunes wreck did rayse,
Your string could soone to sadder tenor turne,
And teach the woods and waters to lament
Your dolefull dreriment:
Now lay those sorrowfull complaints aside;
And, having all your heads with girlands crownd,
Helpe me mine owne loves prayses to resound;
Ne let the same of any be envide:
So Orpheus did for his owne bride!
So I unto my selfe alone will sing;
The woods shall to me answer, and my Eccho ring.

Early, before the worlds light-giving lampe
His golden beame upon the hils doth spred,
Having disperst the nights unchearefull dampe,
Doe ye awake; and, with fresh *****-hed,
Go to the bowre of my belovèd love,
My truest turtle dove;
Bid her awake; for ***** is awake,
And long since ready forth his maske to move,
With his bright Tead that flames with many a flake,
And many a bachelor to waite on him,
In theyr fresh garments trim.
Bid her awake therefore, and soone her dight,
For lo! the wishèd day is come at last,
That shall, for all the paynes and sorrowes past,
Pay to her usury of long delight:
And, whylest she doth her dight,
Doe ye to her of joy and solace sing,
That all the woods may answer, and your eccho ring.

Bring with you all the Nymphes that you can heare
Both of the rivers and the forrests greene,
And of the sea that neighbours to her neare:
Al with gay girlands goodly wel beseene.
And let them also with them bring in hand
Another gay girland
For my fayre love, of lillyes and of roses,
Bound truelove wize, with a blew silke riband.
And let them make great store of bridale poses,
And let them eeke bring store of other flowers,
To deck the bridale bowers.
And let the ground whereas her foot shall tread,
For feare the stones her tender foot should wrong,
Be strewed with fragrant flowers all along,
And diapred lyke the discolored mead.
Which done, doe at her chamber dore awayt,
For she will waken strayt;
The whiles doe ye this song unto her sing,
The woods shall to you answer, and your Eccho ring.

Ye Nymphes of Mulla, which with carefull heed
The silver scaly trouts doe tend full well,
And greedy pikes which use therein to feed;
(Those trouts and pikes all others doo excell;)
And ye likewise, which keepe the rushy lake,
Where none doo fishes take;
Bynd up the locks the which hang scatterd light,
And in his waters, which your mirror make,
Behold your faces as the christall bright,
That when you come whereas my love doth lie,
No blemish she may spie.
And eke, ye lightfoot mayds, which keepe the deere,
That on the hoary mountayne used to towre;
And the wylde wolves, which seeke them to devoure,
With your steele darts doo chace from comming neer;
Be also present heere,
To helpe to decke her, and to help to sing,
That all the woods may answer, and your eccho ring.

Wake now, my love, awake! for it is time;
The Rosy Morne long since left Tithones bed,
All ready to her silver coche to clyme;
And Phoebus gins to shew his glorious hed.
Hark! how the cheerefull birds do chaunt theyr laies
And carroll of Loves praise.
The merry Larke hir mattins sings aloft;
The Thrush replyes; the Mavis descant playes;
The Ouzell shrills; the Ruddock warbles soft;
So goodly all agree, with sweet consent,
To this dayes merriment.
Ah! my deere love, why doe ye sleepe thus long?
When meeter were that ye should now awake,
T’ awayt the comming of your joyous make,
And hearken to the birds love-learnèd song,
The deawy leaves among!
Nor they of joy and pleasance to you sing,
That all the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring.

My love is now awake out of her dreames,
And her fayre eyes, like stars that dimmèd were
With darksome cloud, now shew theyr goodly beams
More bright then Hesperus his head doth rere.
Come now, ye damzels, daughters of delight,
Helpe quickly her to dight:
But first come ye fayre houres, which were begot
In Joves sweet paradice of Day and Night;
Which doe the seasons of the yeare allot,
And al, that ever in this world is fayre,
Doe make and still repayre:
And ye three handmayds of the Cyprian Queene,
The which doe still adorne her beauties pride,
Helpe to addorne my beautifullest bride:
And, as ye her array, still throw betweene
Some graces to be seene;
And, as ye use to Venus, to her sing,
The whiles the woods shal answer, and your eccho ring.

Now is my love all ready forth to come:
Let all the virgins therefore well awayt:
And ye fresh boyes, that tend upon her groome,
Prepare your selves; for he is comming strayt.
Set all your things in seemely good aray,
Fit for so joyfull day:
The joyfulst day that ever sunne did see.
Faire Sun! shew forth thy favourable ray,
And let thy lifull heat not fervent be,
For feare of burning her sunshyny face,
Her beauty to disgrace.
O fayrest Phoebus! father of the Muse!
If ever I did honour thee aright,
Or sing the thing that mote thy mind delight,
Doe not thy servants simple boone refuse;
But let this day, let this one day, be myne;
Let all the rest be thine.
Then I thy soverayne prayses loud wil sing,
That all the woods shal answer, and theyr eccho ring.

Harke! how the Minstrils gin to shrill aloud
Their merry Musick that resounds from far,
The pipe, the tabor, and the trembling Croud,
That well agree withouten breach or jar.
But, most of all, the Damzels doe delite
When they their tymbrels smyte,
And thereunto doe daunce and carrol sweet,
That all the sences they doe ravish quite;
The whyles the boyes run up and downe the street,
Crying aloud with strong confusèd noyce,
As if it were one voyce,
*****, iö *****, *****, they do shout;
That even to the heavens theyr shouting shrill
Doth reach, and all the firmament doth fill;
To which the people standing all about,
As in approvance, doe thereto applaud,
And loud advaunce her laud;
And evermore they *****, ***** sing,
That al the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring.

Loe! where she comes along with portly pace,
Lyke Phoebe, from her chamber of the East,
Arysing forth to run her mighty race,
Clad all in white, that seemes a ****** best.
So well it her beseemes, that ye would weene
Some angell she had beene.
Her long loose yellow locks lyke golden wyre,
Sprinckled with perle, and perling flowres atweene,
Doe lyke a golden mantle her attyre;
And, being crownèd with a girland greene,
Seeme lyke some mayden Queene.
Her modest eyes, abashèd to behold
So many gazers as on her do stare,
Upon the lowly ground affixèd are;
Ne dare lift up her countenance too bold,
But blush to heare her prayses sung so loud,
So farre from being proud.
Nathlesse doe ye still loud her prayses sing,
That all the woods may answer, and your eccho ring.

Tell me, ye merchants daughters, did ye see
So fayre a creature in your towne before;
So sweet, so lovely, and so mild as she,
Adornd with beautyes grace and vertues store?
Her goodly eyes lyke Saphyres shining bright,
Her forehead yvory white,
Her cheekes lyke apples which the sun hath rudded,
Her lips lyke cherryes charming men to byte,
Her brest like to a bowle of creame uncrudded,
Her paps lyke lyllies budded,
Her snowie necke lyke to a marble towre;
And all her body like a pallace fayre,
Ascending up, with many a stately stayre,
To honors seat and chastities sweet bowre.
Why stand ye still ye virgins in amaze,
Upon her so to gaze,
Whiles ye forget your former lay to sing,
To which the woods did answer, and your eccho ring?

But if ye saw that which no eyes can see,
The inward beauty of her lively spright,
Garnisht with heavenly guifts of high degree,
Much more then would ye wonder at that sight,
And stand astonisht lyke to those which red
Medusaes mazeful hed.
There dwels sweet love, and constant chastity,
Unspotted fayth, and comely womanhood,
Regard of honour, and mild modesty;
There vertue raynes as Queene in royal throne,
And giveth lawes alone,
The which the base affections doe obay,
And yeeld theyr services unto her will;
Ne thought of thing uncomely ever may
Thereto approch to tempt her mind to ill.
Had ye once seene these her celestial threasures,
And unrevealèd pleasures,
Then would ye wonder, and her prayses sing,
That al the woods should answer, and your echo ring.

Open the temple gates unto my love,
Open them wide that she may enter in,
And all the postes adorne as doth behove,
And all the pillours deck with girlands trim,
For to receyve this Saynt with honour dew,
That commeth in to you.
With trembling steps, and humble reverence,
She commeth in, before th’ Almighties view;
Of her ye virgins learne obedience,
When so ye come into those holy places,
To humble your proud faces:
Bring her up to th’ high altar, that she may
The sacred ceremonies there partake,
The which do endlesse matrimony make;
And let the roring Organs loudly play
The praises of the Lord in lively notes;
The whiles, with hollow throates,
The Choristers the joyous Antheme sing,
That al the woods may answere, and their eccho ring.

Behold, whiles she before the altar stands,
Hearing the holy priest that to her speakes,
And blesseth her with his two happy hands,
How the red roses flush up in her cheekes,
And the pure snow, with goodly vermill stayne
Like crimsin dyde in grayne:
That even th’ Angels, which continually
About the sacred Altare doe remaine,
Forget their service and about her fly,
Ofte peeping in her face, that seems more fayre,
The more they on it stare.
But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground,
Are governèd with goodly modesty,
That suffers not one looke to glaunce awry,
Which may let in a little thought unsownd.
Why blush ye, love, to give to me your hand,
The pledge of all our band!
Sing, ye sweet Angels, Alleluya sing,
That all the woods may answere, and your eccho ring.

Now al is done: bring home the bride againe;
Bring home the triumph of our victory:
Bring home with you the glory of her gaine;
With joyance bring her and with jollity.
Never had man more joyfull day then this,
Whom heaven would heape with blis,
Make feast therefore now all this live-long day;
This day for ever to me holy is.
Poure out the wine without restraint or stay,
Poure not by cups, but by the belly full,
Poure out to all that wull,
And sprinkle all the postes and wals with wine,
That they may sweat, and drunken be withall.
Crowne ye God Bacchus with a coronall,
And ***** also crowne with wreathes of vine;
And let the Graces daunce unto the rest,
For they can doo it best:
The whiles the maydens doe theyr carroll sing,
To which the woods shall answer, and theyr eccho ring.

Ring ye the bels, ye yong men of the towne,
And leave your wonted labors for this day:
This day is holy; doe ye write it downe,
That ye for ever it remember may.
This day the sunne is in his chiefest hight,
With Barnaby the bright,
From whence declining daily by degrees,
He somewhat loseth of his heat and light,
When once the Crab behind his back he sees.
But for this time it ill ordainèd was,
To chose the longest day in all the yeare,
And shortest night, when longest fitter weare:
Yet never day so long, but late would passe.
Ring ye the bels, to make it weare away,
And bonefiers make all day;
And daunce about them, and about them sing,
That all the woods may answer, and your eccho ring.

Ah! when will this long weary day have end,
And lende me leave to come unto my love?
How slowly do the houres theyr numbers spend?
How slowly does sad Time his feathers move?
Hast thee, O fayrest Planet, to thy home,
Within the Westerne fome:
Thy tyrèd steedes long since have need of rest.
Long though it be, at last I see it gloome,
And the bright evening-star with golden creast
Appeare out of the East.
Fayre childe of beauty! glorious lampe of love!
That all the host of heaven in rankes doost lead,
And guydest lovers through the nights sad dread,
How chearefully thou lookest from above,
And seemst to laugh atweene thy twinkling light,
As joying in the sight
Of these glad many, which for joy doe sing,
That all the woods them answer, and their echo ring!

Now ceasse, ye damsels, your delights fore-past;
Enough it is that all the day was youres:
Now day is doen, and night is nighing fast,
Now bring the Bryde into the brydall boures.
The night is come, now soon her disaray,
And in her bed her lay;
Lay her in lillies and in violets,
And silken courteins over her display,
And odourd sheetes, and Arras coverlets.
Behold how goodly my faire love does ly,
In proud humility!
Like unto Maia, when as Jove her took
In Tempe, lying on the flowry gras,
Twixt sleepe and wake, after she weary was,
With bathing in the Acidalian brooke.
Now it is night, ye damsels may be gon,
And leave my love alone,
And leave likewise your former lay to sing:
The woods no more shall answere, nor your echo ring.

Now welcome, night! thou night so long expected,
That long daies labour doest at last defray,
And all my cares, which cruell Love collected,
Hast sumd in one, and cancellèd for aye:
Spread thy broad wing over my love and me,
That no man may us see;
And in thy sable mantle us enwrap,
From feare of perrill and foule horror free.
Let no false treason seeke us to entrap,
Nor any dread disquiet once annoy
The safety of our joy;
But let the night be calme, and quietsome,
Without tempestuous storms or sad afray:
Lyke as when Jove with fayre Alcmena lay,
When he begot the great Tirynthian groome:
Or lyke as when he with thy selfe did lie
And begot Majesty.
And let the mayds and yong men cease to sing;
Ne let the woods them answer nor theyr eccho ring.

Let no lamenting cryes, nor dolefull teares,
Be heard all night within, nor yet without:
Ne let false whispers, breeding hidden feares,
Breake gentle sleepe with misconceivèd dout.
Let no deluding dreames, nor dreadfull sights,
Make sudden sad affrights;
Ne let house-fyres, nor lightnings helpelesse harmes,
Ne let the Pouke, nor other evill sprights,
Ne let mischivous witches with theyr charmes,
Ne let hob Goblins, names whose sence we see not,
Fray us with things that be not:
Let not the shriech Oule nor the Storke be heard,
Nor the night Raven, that still deadly yels;
Nor damnèd ghosts, cald up with mighty spels,
Nor griesly vultures, make us once affeard:
Ne let th’ unpleasant Quyre of Frogs still croking
Make us to wish theyr choking.
Let none of these theyr drery accents sing;
Ne let the woods them answer, nor theyr eccho ring.

But let stil Silence trew night-watches keepe,
That sacred Peace may in assurance rayne,
And tymely Sleep, when it is tyme to sleepe,
May poure his limbs forth on your pleasant playne;
The whiles an hundred little wingèd loves,
Like divers-fethered doves,
Shall fly and flutter round about your bed,
And in the secret darke, that none reproves,
Their prety stealthes shal worke, and snares shal spread
To filch away sweet snatches of delight,
Conceald through covert night.
Ye sonnes of Venus, play your sports at will!
For greedy pleasure, carelesse of your toyes,
Thinks more upon her paradise of joyes,
Then what ye do, albe it good or ill.
All night therefore attend your merry play,
For it will soone be day:
Now none doth hinder you, that say or sing;
Ne will the woods now answer, nor your Eccho ring.

Who is the same, which at my window peepes?
Or whose is that faire face that shines so bright?
Is it not Cinthia, she that never sleepes,
But walkes about high heaven al the night?
O! fayrest goddesse, do thou not envy
My love with me to spy:
For thou likewise didst love, though now unthought,
And for a fleece of wooll, which privily
The Latmian shepherd once unto thee brought,
His pleasures with thee wrought.
Therefore to us be favorable now;
And sith of wemens labours thou hast charge,
And generation goodly dost enlarge,
Encline thy will t’effect our wishfull vow,
And the chast wombe informe with timely seed
That may our comfort breed:
Till which we cease our hopefull hap to sing;
Ne let the woods us answere, nor our Eccho ring.

And thou, great Juno! which with awful might
The lawes of wedlock still dost patronize;
And the religion of the faith first plight
With sacred rites hast taught to solemnize;
And eeke for comfort often callèd art
Of women in their smart;
Eternally bind thou this lovely band,
And all thy blessings unto us impart.
And thou, glad
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2015
poet, or philosopher, it doesn't really matter which is which, or whether the two are indistinguishable, notable in the former scenario, when someone has an eclectic bounty of interest is simply not love-scorned or love-nostalgic, love-idealistic, does it really matter? i was once called a philosopher: a teenage girl said in third person (as if she was a puppet and some-thing was moving her tongue): 'talk to this philosopher'... not in that sarcastic way that philosopher is an misnomer or an abused term of: self-gratifying grandeour, it was quiet genuine, but: imagine my shock... i had an ambition in life, it was to perform a service to thinking: without doing as much as hammering a nail into a plank of wood, that's the ambition of any thinking man: to borderline on telekinesis or telepathy... that was Hegel's modus operandi, his categorical imperative... after all: ego is a metaphysical tool, while thought is its metaphysical canvas... the mere suggestion that a copernican inversion can happen in physics "contra" metaphysics... it's already apparent, any word can behave like a hand touching the sacred object / subject of transfiguration and become something else, even a misnomer can find itself given solace to the user... for now i've forged a belief in the ultimate: away from the absolute in relation to omni in unum - one first has to learn to think, before having to learn to feel... mind you, i don't like the current nietzschean inversion of the cartesian equation: (ego) sum ergo (ego) cogito... esp. among the youtube political commentators, too many examples to give: i'm a classical liberal, i'm a progressive, i'm a liberterian... i don't really like seeing: i am, precede i think... i don't even like the origin-argument of this inversion: i exist for the sole purpose of thinking... after all: i think prior to being, since i can also daydream and not be what my thinking suspects as a possible truth-outcome... that's the nature of the freedom of thought: i don't have to be what i think, i can find thinking to be a pleasure, when the senses do not offer me any pleasure derivative, e.g. eating can sometimes be boring, chewing, chewing, *******... i eat because i need to live: i don't live to eat... i really have under-appreciated Hegel, i should really visit my grandparents for two months and read the phenomenology of the spirit: i'm trying to replicate the saying attributed to him (verbatim), but i doubt that i will, i don't have the patience to sift through all the quotes, but it goes along the lines of: beware oh wordly man, to not be a pawn in a thinking man's game... hence my suggestion of philosophy entering into the realms of telekinesis and telepathy: you get to see things play out and people express the origin story, of your own memetic generation of the original idea... how are poets finally alligned to philosophers? good thing that i studied chemistry at edinburgh university: we return to atoms, words are no longer enough, sure, they are, contrary to the statement...  (why did i under-appreciate Hegel? ah... had my head stuck up heidegger's and kant's *****...

  integration? great!
but i'll meet you halfway...
    i'll eat your fish & chips,
your englush breakfast,
  i won't sing your anthem: god save the queen,
****** anthem, too short,
but i will whistle through:
the british grenadiers' fife & drum...
like i might through la marseillaise...
i'll meet you halfway...
i'm not a former colony member,
commonwealth,
   i'm not some ****- paying bribes
to the british powers
to join in on a world cup of cricket...
this is what happens when immigration
turns sour...
they either lesrn the host tongue,
or they don't learn it...
or they can't distinguish the two:
speak polonaise at home,
speak the hosts' sprechen outside of it...

   if the ******* aren't suspect:
by not being bilingual...
the arab beatles... jihadi john...
          ringo star h'ahmed...
  george ali...
                paul mecca rashid...
oh i'll settle for integration...
but don't you ******* think i'll give
up my mother tongue
for "c.c.t.v." close-ups back home,
home being my private lodge...
like ******* will...
  i'll speak your tongue in public...
but i'm not ******* former commonwealth
****- riddled with a need to play
cricket, "forget" my tongue in order
to compensate for olives
              and sun-burnt bananas!

a former colony ****-**** is about
to dictate the rules for fellow
europeans, on the tram-ride from
Birmingham to Nottingham?
seriously?
        but of course the englishman
will favor the former colony pet bush-monkey
from sri lanka...
since the brit can't really dictate
to a fellow european his superiority
complex... which he can...
with a petted copper skinned
toy-ting...
who brought 'im a korma curry!
nice one, ol' laddy...
        right on the plonker...
                 i'm not finished!
                        i'm just getting started!

gehirnablassen:

perfectly respected immigration,
given that so many english girls just love
the attention their **** minders,
sexually abused,
not really making it as nurses
or... ahem... karaoke superstars
worth the while of britain's got talent
or voice of britain,
or...whatever the ****** show was
that gave birth to one direction...

so a.... brain-drain? good immigration?
the best!

i can sit awhile by myself and count...
1. the sparrows,
2. the swallow,
3. the starlings,
   4. the crows,
5. the magpies,
6. the pigeons,
7. the woodland pigeons
(fatter, with dog collars),
8. kestrels
  (one is enough to begin
the count)...
9. the blackbirds....
10. seagulls... seagulls?! 25 miles from
romford to southend! seagulls?!
this far in-land?! fair enough...
11. a robin...
                   12. goldfinch...
i just sit and watch these birds
in my garden, i sometimes spot
a darting frog in the garden,
i'm more english than the english...
i actually enjoy owning a garden...
the "english" surrounding me
exemplify a bbq. as a luxury parade...
what's so luxury about marinating
some meat, and then grilling it?!
please! enlightend me!

    gehirnablassen...
                   brain-drain immigration,
the type asiatic tiger-mums brag about
at child olympics...
   for the required rubric stature...
******* mothers, basically...

1. χaron χaos - cha-cha-cha       khaos
2. theaetetus - so / ma   letters / syllables:
     graphemes: sz phi theta
      compound syllables (caron s) - Na (sodium)
3. music choice...
       brain damage perturbator ft. noir deco
    virga iesse floruit, gradual of eleanor of
britanny...
4. pride / stubborness (not equal to) honour,
tolerating islam is not the same
as respceting islam...
   german 19th century fascination
with islam...
     θought and φilosophy...
   greek in warsaw, giving him directions,
talks: sounds so much like spanish...
5. england a nation of singletons,
idiosyncracy... social pressures in poland
and even in h'america missing in england
to marry...

1.

chamaleon tongue,                    shape shifter,
bez akcentu w piśmie - więciej akcentu poza pismem
(trainspotting scottish), welsh, cockney,
east london altogether, pakistani english, etc.
e.g. rather, or raver, i.e. not rayver
(someone who parties at night on ecstasy pill)
but ra'ver, like verging on a new discovery,
it's not even the = ~v but is actually v...
english is a chamaleon tongue, you say 'nostic
when you write gnostic, i say diagnostic,
therefore say gnostic, you say 'nome, i say gnome,
as cf. with diagnostic;
then there's the case of the per se:
you say chamaleon - no kappa there apperent, eh?
but there's chappie, chap, chuckles,
no kappa in a millionth chance
to also say nough'ledge for knowledge,
a bit like that gnome of yours...
as i said before: a language without
a written insertion of stressors / distinctions
will produce a massive array of diacritical
stressors / distinctions outside the written format,
but it will also become as complex as to
allow adults with learning difficulties e.g. dyslexia,
and that horrid internet slang of shortcuts:
i ate my 8 when i was late for my disco date
with the cha cha cha melon.

p.s. if there's a hay patch at the beginning, the nasal flute
will ask larry 'the lynx' saxophone to hark it out with rasp
gritting of phlegm... but if it's somewhere else down
the piccadilly line... it will act like a nudist spy and resonate
less than expected; probably mingling with f, i think.
ConnectHook Sep 2015
ϖ↑∅⊕↓☺↨☼♀


The dawn is nigh at hand. The clouds
begin to lift above the grange.
Arise, O Phoebus, bless the crowds—
let poultry roam the range.

I’ll bind a broom of gathered hay
to sweep the hen-house free of hate.
Let roosters hail the crack of day
and chicks with ***** tempt fate.

A fractured self and a challenge hurled:
they left the shell, but found it rough
because our bigoted barnyard world
cannot get queer enough fast enough.

They flutter through the *******’s farm
subverting gender’s useless role.
We feel their pain, and mean no harm—
yet question this progressive goal.

They cluck a brand-new barnyard song:
Gender Identity Obsolete!
(As long as they claim God hatched them wrong,
biology signals their defeat.)

While poultry scratches rhymes for “hen”
and chicks are combing crests for *****
let’s ring the dinner bell and then
we’ll synchronize the global clocks.

Let Mankind’s unmanned race delight
at Jesus’ gender-free return.
Soon Africa shall see the light
and Araby’s sun more brightly burn.

Then dawn shall break o’er Russian plains
to liberate the Tartar races;
loose their limbs from Gender’s chains
to stride with polymorphous paces.

China too, and Southeast Asia
swift shall follow in their train
celebrating ***-aphasia
joining in the West’s refrain.

Hindu multitudes will rise
to vanquish gender, caste aside
and shake the slumber from their eyes
with metro-ambisexual pride.

Carib isles, with Latin kingdoms
From the tropics to the mountains
Shall announce they too are Wisdom’s,
drinking from de-gendered fountains.

Juveniles, raised to simply be
shall pioneer new modes of life;
explore horizons happily
set free from biologic strife.

Then shall our earth, in glad array
***** dirt upon Tradition’s tomb;
unshackled from that dark dismay
to grieve—but nevermore exhume.

Alas, the global dreams descend.
We’re back in the barnyard, gender-queer…
where hens have ***** and eggshells bend
transcending Nature’s reign of fear.

The henhouse still votes hetero;
their eggless chickens cluck for rights
biologists, ex utero
are born to further futile flights.

(Because I was almost one of them
I’ve earned the right to make fun of them.
Time alone will tell if the trend
remains coherent to the end.
)
Edward Coles Jul 2014
“You know the worst thing I ever saw?” He asked.

I sighed to myself, took another gulp of beer and fixed him with a look of half-interest. He was drunk. A complete ****-up and a bore when he's drunk. I don't know why I drink with him. That said, he probably thinks the same.

“What's that?”
“Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard.”
“Ye-what?”
“Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“The homeless. Right.”
“I'll get us another drink.” he says, “then I'll start where I left off.”
“Oh, good.”

He comes back with two bottles. We drink and we start talking about football. We're just about getting by before he raises his palm to his face.
“Aw, ****. I forgot, yeah. The worst thing I ever saw. I never told you.”
“You did. Bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“Yeah yeah, but that doesn't really say much, does it? You're probably wondering to yourself why that would **** me off so much?”

Not really. He's the type of no-action, all-caring, bleeding heart that sits on his fattening **** every day, 'liking' rhetorical captions over pictures, and signing petitions to axe some ***** politician or other.
“I guess. Shoot.”

He shoots.
“I wanna burn down the churches. Seriously. Stupid ******* religious folk. I bet they go home and post pictures up of themselves, all busy in the soup kitchen, ladling minestrone into some poor *******'s styrofoam bowl.
“They'll never touch them. Always at arm's length. You don't wanna breathe in the pathogens of the anti-people...”
He slurred a little, went to carry on, but took another gulp of beer instead.
“What does that have to do with bedsheets over the benches in the church yard?” I took a gulp myself, this time watching him with a little more interest. Probably just because he looks like he could spew at any moment.
“You're not letting me finish...”
He finishes his beer, gets up, almost bumping into his piano-***-keyboard. He's off to the fridge again. I have a look around while he's out of the room. I can hear him ******* in the kitchen sink.

I've seen the place a million times before but it always has a whole bunch of new **** tacked up on the wall or else bundled in the corner. He's no hoarder, just gets bored and throws out all the stuff he bought the year before.
There's a framed picture of himself on the wall, cradling his Fender as if he's a master of the arts. It's signed, too.
I've seen him play. Probably will tonight. Wouldn't be surprised if he's written a protest song called: bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. The old **** can't even hit an F major with regularity.
He'd decided to put up his vinyl sleeves on the wall like a 17 year old would with an array of **** pop-punk band posters.
Blink and you might think he's the new John Peel or Phil Spector. Stare, and you'll realise he's twice as crazy, yet half as talented and half as interesting to listen to.
His room is like a CV to show to interesting, young indie women. Shame he's hitting forty now,and hasn't been to a club in about 3 months.
Last time we went he just sulked in the corner and got too drunk. He cried in the smoking area about his job before going round and asking attractive girls whether they think he's too old to be out. Most didn't even bother to give an answer. Probably best.

He comes back in with more beer.
“A-anyway...” He says, groaning a little like an old man as he settles back into the chair. “As I was saying...” he sloshes beer on the carpet, rubs it in with the heel of his shoe. He spits on the mark and then rubs again.
“What I was saying was that the church would be a whole lot more useful to the homeless if it was burned down. A condemned building is a whole lot more useful than being looked down on by holier-than-thou, middle-class, white Christians.
“They go home after an hour, bolt the church doors, and then watch TV in their brand new conservatories that they spend several thousands on. Just give the losers a place to shoot up and sleep in safety. That makes sense, right?”
“I guess so.”
I couldn't think of a change of conversation. So I just drank some more and pulled out a cigarette. It's nice to smoke inside for a change.

“It's a ****** ******* awful thing. If people were actually religious, they'd throw open their ******* doors for everyone. It's what Jesus would do, right?”
“Right.”
“He'd have all the **** in his bedsit, piled in like sardines, spreading TB like wildfire.”
“And that's a good thing?”
“Well, it can't be any worse, right? Sleep's important. I learned that the hard way.”

He didn't learn it the hard way. Not really. He's a self-motivated, self-harming insomniac. He spent his teenage years listening to bad music and staying up too late ******* over his French teacher. I should know, I mostly did the same.
He hit the **** pretty hard during college. Never really looked back until recently. ****** him up worse than you'd reckon. He couldn't sleep without the stuff. Man, if you'd have seen the poor guy whenever he couldn't get hold of some for the night. Eesh.

“...you know what I mean though? I'm sick of charity. Those fun-runs you get. A load of women in pink pretending that they care about breast cancer, before posting a million and one pictures up of them in ankle warmers and a kooky hat...”
“**** of the Earth.”
“Yup. Right up there with the women who have 'mummy' as their middle name on Facebook.”
“Yeah.”
“Honestly though, it's the laziest form of charity. Throwing a couple old, mouldy bedsheets out on some bird-**** bench made of wood and ancient farts...”
“It is pretty lazy.” I drank some more.

It was getting late. We swallowed three temazepams each, moved onto the cheap shiraz once we ran out of beer. We leant back in our chairs, barely talking and letting Tame Impala supply the conversation for us.

“You know what?” I ask, pretty much out of nowhere. His eyes have narrowed. He's not sleepy, just ****** on ***** and tranquillizers. He takes a moment.
“Huh?”
“From what you were saying earlier... you know, about the bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, why don't you?”
“Why don't I what?”
“Burn it down.”
“The church?”
“Well, you go on about being lazy and ****. Here's your chance. Help the homeless. Break the locks, pour the petrol, take out a few bottles of wine if you find any...”
“Now?”
“I guess so. Homeless folk are dying of pneumonia out there. Not a second can be wasted.”
“I dunno. I didn't mean I had to do it. I was just saying...”
“I guess they were just saying too.” I felt like I was being a ****, so I changed the subject to women I haven't laid.

I stumbled home leaning on my bicycle all the way. Daylight was just about visible off in the distance. I passed two homeless guys on the way back, gave one of them a fiver, the other one my big mac and the last of my cigarettes (well, leaving a couple for myself).
They said thanks, god bless you, etc, etc. I carried on walking.

I woke up the next afternoon with a mouthful of sand and in desperate need of a hangover ****. I hadn't shaved in about two weeks and there were dark circles under my eyes. I thought about going out to the diner for a full breakfast, but strange people were beyond me.
I ordered a pizza full of meat and grease and garlic sauce instead. I text him to see if he wanted to come over and nurse the hangover with a little ****. Watch a film. Get drunk again. He still smokes it on special occasions, and this ******* of a hangover was pretty **** special.
No reply, and I end up rolling up a joint for myself, smoking it by the window and watching the magpies peck around the grass. It's nice out.

The pizza guy comes. He's holding the pizza up like a map, calls out in a bored sort of voice: “Hello sir. I've got a large Palermo Pizza here, with a side of chicken strips and a can of Dandelion and Burdock?”
I say yes and he hands it over.

I tip him with the coins still left in my wallet from the night before, and he sheepishly says he picked up my post for me as well.
I look down at the pizza I'm holding, and there's a few envelopes that look suspiciously like bills, rival takeaway leaflets, and the local paper. I say thanks, give him the best sort of smile I could, and then close the door.
I turn on the TV. I forgot the England match was on. I turn over to something more interesting. There's nothing, so I switch back over. Before I open up the pizza, I take the paper. A small-town existence, nothing ever happens, but I could do with a new job.

The front page is on fire. A church has been burned down in the early morning. A forty-something man has been arrested and then taken to hospital for severe burns to the face. A load of children's art has been lost, along with countless Bibles, prayer cushions, and vaults of cash.
“****.”
I read through the article. The whole place was gutted. Nothing could be salvaged. Nothing could be redeemed. In the corner of the picture, through the red, green, and blue dots, I could just make out some bedsheets over the benches in the church yard. For the homeless.
I apologise profusely for posting up a short story instead of a poem. I wrote this in one go tonight and haven't proofread it. I had no plan, I just wrote until there was -something- there. I just wanted to try something different.

C
It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that it ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming through a crack in the wall,
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming from the sorrow on the street
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal *******'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of G-d in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
o mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
past the Reefs of Greed
through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on
It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
that the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming to the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
o mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
past the Reefs of Greed
through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on
I'm sentimental if you know what I mean:
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Karijinbba Apr 2020
Not a poem,;

A Repost:
Stay healthy beloved readers. I send you all my healing love:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Use apple cider vinegar or any vinagar asap even if you feel no tickle add sea salt gargle gargle gargle every hour if possible before and after eating! Or blend garlic and add vinagar gargle it!
men please do it! Go bathroom kitchen sink and look up at the ceilling open mouth wide gargle deep it shall burn a bit spit it out  do it sgain many times until it hurts no more.
Acid gets virus hiding in throat to come out and avoid getting the bicho nano bug into your lungs!?

A healthy immune system begins in the gut with a healthy balance of beneficial bacteria.

For far too many Americans, Candida overgrowth compromises the immune system, as it is constantly fighting the battle to keep Candida in control
If you do become ill, DO NOT feed the virus or the Candida with sugar. Yes, you need to drink a lot of fluids, but don’t drink sodas and sugary juices at this time. Cranberry unsweetened read lable cocktail has sugar get unsweetened one or grandberries fresh into blender or lemonade with stevia is a good choice. Try it warm or cold.

Gargle. Gargle. Gargle. Gargling lowers the viral load, leaving your throat body with fewer invaders to replicate.

So sip on this Mother Earth Organic Root Cider warm. Cold’s and flu often start in the throat or the nasal cavities.
At the first sign of a sore throat or sinus infection, sip on the root cider! If you don’t have it, use apple cider vinegar
Also flush your nose deep each side lean over sink to right and left sides flush nose for God's sakes alternate sea salt baking soda or use vinagar to nose too!? Rubb garlic on your nails eye bows.

Also, remember that a fever is one of nature’s means to fight infection.
Of course, you don’t want it to get too high (higher than 102) and drink plenty of fluids to prevent dehydration.
Filtered apple juice has boron brings down fever fast 4 to 6 onz every hour or if too sweet delute it half water half juice!
Vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, and vitamin C are all vital nutrients for the immune system.
If you have any lip mouth sores you need to ballance minerals too much vitamin requires minerals fulvic humic

If you take high doses of vitamin C to fight a virus, remember that you should not abruptly stop taking vitamin C.
You should titrate down.
Vitamin C is needed by the immune system to make interferon, which the immune system produces to protect healthy cells from viral invasion.!!!

Zinc has been proven to be effective against the common cold and to be effective as a topical treatment for ****** sores.
ZINC It is believed to be effective due to preventing replication of the virus.
The immune system needs selenium to work properly and to build up the white blood cell count.
Berberine is an alkaloid compound found in several different plants, including European barberry, goldenseal, goldthread, Oregon grape, Phellodendron, and Coptis chinensis.

It has antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, anti-parasitic, and immune-enhancing properties.
It’s been proven effective against a vast array of bacteria, protozoa, and fungi.
It can be used topically on cuts and other wounds, and it’s perhaps most commonly used to treat gastrointestinal issues.
Probiotics are always helpful in maintaining gut health, especially when the body is under a viral attack that involves the digestive system.
Probiotic foods and drinks without added sugar can help maintain a healthy balance of bacteria.

Garlic is anti-viral, anti-fungal, and antibacterial.
You can take garlic in a tonic or if you can handle it, chew raw garlic.
It not only will help fight the virus, it will help **** any secondary infections trying to take root.

Echinacea not only supports the immune system, it also has been proven to reduce the severity and duration of viral infections.

Colloidal silver is believed to interfere with the enzymes that allow viruses (bacteria and fungi as well) to utilize oxygen
A double-blind trail showed elderberry extract’s ability to reduce symptoms of influenza and speed recovery.

It also showed elderberry’s ability to enhance immune response with higher levels of antibodies in the blood.
It is believed to inhibit a virus’s ability to penetrate healthy cells and protect cells with powerful antioxidant S. Elderberry has also been shown to inhibit replication in four strains of ****** viruses and reduce infectivity of *** strains.

The flavonoids in green tea are believed to fight viral infections by preventing the virus from entering host cells and by inhibiting replication.

Though double-blind clinical trials are needed, olive leaf extract has been shown to inhibit replication of viruses. In one study, 115 of 119 patients had a full and rapid recovery from respiratory tract infections while 120 of 172 had a full and rapid recovery from viral skin infections such as ******.

Pau d’arco has been used in indigenous medicine for generations. One of its compounds, lapachol, has proven effective against various viruses, including influenza, ****** simplex types I and II and poliovirus. It is believed to inhibit replication.

Studies have shown that glycyrrhizin, a compound found in licorice root was more effective in fighting samples of coronavirus from SARS patients than four antiviral drugs. It reduces viral replication, cell absorption, and the virus’s ability to penetrate cells. It is also being used to treat ***.

St. John’s Wort has been proven effective against influenza, ****** simplex, and ***.

If you’re prone to viral infections or are dealing with a chronic infection like ***, as mentioned above, the first step is to get your gut in shape. This is absolutely imperative. The best article to do that with is Best Supplements To **** Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections & Gut Health. Everyone who is chronically ill has an abundance of Candida. Yes, everyone.

Provided your gut is healthy, or if you just feel the need to skip that part, here are the supplements to take in order to make sure your immune system is able to fight off viruses:

While there are most supplements listed above, the combination of these listed here is more than enough to balance out the body and ward off viral infection.
~~~~~~~
A Repost By Karijinbba.
love kindnes helping one another
call neighbors help or ask for help...ask.
Tammy M Darby Jul 2013
On the molded plastic black keys
Tip- tap tipping away  
Smiling wickedly
With self-satisfaction
Words deliberately in a sociopathic array

Crazed Eyes agleam
Thoughts rambling across the planets
In and out of reality
Both far and away

Each letter vibrates with its own life
The deranged wordsmith's release
So the clicking and typing
Systemic vacant sounds
Never seem to cease

To the mad poet
The combinations of descriptive words
Overpowering
Promotes the disease
Hypnotizing
Beguiling
Calling in a sweet voice
To the mad poet
In letters A to Z


This poem is copyrighted and stored in author base. All material subject to Copyright Infringement laws
Section 512(c)(3) of the U.S. Copyright
Act, 17 U.S.C. S512(c)(3),

Tammy M Darby
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2016
.before i come to the food topics, here's a pet peeve... language... how the pakistanis might / might not be offended by the laziness of the english, shortening their denotation to a prefix: ****-... and i'm like... is that really offensive? with the -stani suffix missing? o.k. o.k., iraq: iraqi... iran: iranian... pakistani: ****- / pakistani... so what about afghanistan? afghan, or afghanistani?! i'm pretty sure it's afghan... a person is afghani and not afghanistani... so what's wrong with ****-? it must be an english-****'stani thing from the 1960s or something... ******* as sensitive as french footballers... this has to be hard-pressed... this instance... because i hardly think it's a racial slur to stick to the prefix and not include the suffix, given the example from afghanistan - just like the "problem" of calling a jew a ***-, borrowed prefix from... yiddish! now for the food:

a. would you trust a skinny chef? i know i wouldn't trust a chef who's also a healthy-eating gym bro maniac, i bet he would never cook with lard or pork trimmings, with that calorie calculator lodged up his head that represents an ******* is not much to go with when taste is prime... 6ft1 253.5pounds, that's where i stand... i would never trust a health-freak to cook for me, let alone all the proofs rattling anorexic examples...

    b. "***** take your shoes off and get into the kitchen!" what a ****** joke, chauvanism rampant... mind you... who the hell said that women belong in the kitchen? they don't... i don't want a woman in the kitchen... i've had two dinners cooked by my fwends' mothers when still in my early teens... 1. over-cooked pasta... my fwends father would pretend to eat the dinner, before driving me home while stopping off at a sikh diner and took to the take-away (cooked by men), another example beside the over-cooked pasta? under-cooked spring potatoes - after all... the men on ships and submarines that kept the other men firing did all the cooking... men can cook... or at least: that's the least they should do... think: organic chemistry experiments...

eating a raw herring
in piquant mayonnaise
of reminiscence of a
granny-smith and pickled
cucumber tickle...
slurping it up into
a workout of the oesophagus
might remind many
of oral ***: but after all...
it's only a raw herring being eaten.

p.s. well perhaps gulping down
a raw oyster does feel familiar
to performing oral *** on a woman...
but since you're not really
chewing the oyster,
or licking it... but gulping it whole...
i can only compared performing
oral *** on a ***** to
                eating a raw herring.

            and why all of this talk of food?
well... what's on the menu for tomorrow?
a bangers & mash stew,
    old recipe from the days of the british
empire... mind you: why did they
call sausages bangers back then?
well, during the war, they put a lot of
water into the sausages...
and when water mixes with warm oil?
bang! bang!

                 'i was five and he was six,
   we rode on horses made of sticks,
he wore black and i wore white,
   he would always win the fight...
   bang! bang!
  he shot me down!
  bang! bang!
                 i hit the ground...
bang! bang!
   that awful sound...
bang! bang!
   my baby... shot me down!'
              (audio bullys ft. nancy s.) -

so obviously i had to take a walk
and buy the key ingredient...
   i.p.a.:
        and when they were stationed
in the raj, and the troops were receiving
provisions...
  the standard beer wouldn't last the trip,
going off...
     and dark port was too sweet...
so indian pale ale was invented:
   more potent alcohol content and brewed
based more on hops than barley or wheat...
bitter: but my god, what a strand of beer,
like your typical irish stout...
   which is why i never figured out
  the bud to be the king of beers...
   fermentation of rice? sure... it's crisp...
but also the sort of toddler **** you'd expect
from rice fermentation:
no body, no *****, no blood,
no palette...
      easy stew:
   sausages,
      onions, garlic, celery, carrots,
                  leeks...
     a bottle of i.p.a.,
   some to degrease the pan the sausages
and veg were fried on, the rest for the jacuzzi...
some water, bay leaf, salt to taste,
   tomato purée and 2tbsp
  of muscovado sugar to bite through
   the extra hops... mash on the side...
                  and an array of veg on the side too...

i still don't know where the idea
that women belong in the kitchen came from:
perhaps when the men were coal-miners,
and when the kitchen wasn't filled
with all the current day appliances
of convenience...
   when women worked as hard in the kitchen
as the men who worked in the coal-mine...
perhaps then, in the early part of the 20th
century... when spaghetti dough was hand-made
at home...
then a woman could take pride in her
house-keeping...
   now? now i guess: the same sort of melancholic
voice bound to nancy sinatra singing...
because once upon a time it was hard
work, running the house...
                       and then "suddenly"
everything became simple...
a man could walk into a coal-mine,
come back home and...
              make himself a decent meal...
  looking at what the english woman buy
in the supermarket?
      couch potato maidens...
       ready meal after yet another ready meal...
things have become so easy
that easy isn't enough...

      let me tell you a culinary ***** of a story...
the scurge of making homemade
ravioli! believe me... once a year is enough...
sure, it tastes great...
                  but once a year is enough.
Ann Marcaida Jan 2013
I. Neptune’s Theater


A rock spins through the universal tumbler

and its warm blue pools calcify

as turquoise Neptune in his cloudy blue bath bath

builds a lace castle with his fingertips


Sculpts a submerged eden of crimson and emerald

where painted parrots chat up cardinals

butterfly and angel fry sway with wave pulse

and foliated coral fingers beckon from arched windows.


Neptune’s children are flat and bright, spined and notched

free yet entangled in lace mesh ecosystem

beneath an array of bioluminescent stars

as a gangly pretender watches and blows bubbles.




II. Sapien Siege


The hot acidic hand of death grasps

the mesh rends and tangles

the ecosystem shattered

reef’s loosed children scream beneath planet’s stars.


Butterflies impaled

cyanide-swooning damsels

mesh-tangled angels hauled heavenward

coral to potash, corpses to coal.


The pretender to the throne blinks

rubs blurry lenses,

kicks plastic fins

and moves on to the next show


Unseeing and unaware

of the luminous filament in his wake.

Self-appointed divinity,

deus ex machina.

*****************­************

Ann says: All of the animal and human characters in this poem (except Neptune and The Pretender) are named after coral reef fish. Coral reefs, one of the most diverse ecosystems, are expected to be largely extinct within one human generation. Deus ex machina is Latin for “God from the machine.”

Copyright 2013 by Ann Marcaida.
Copyright 2013 by Ann Marcaida.

All of the animal and human characters in this poem (excepting Neptune and the quadruped) are named after coral reef fish. Coral reefs, one of the most diverse ecosystems, are expected to be largely extinct within one human generation.

Special thanks to my poetry coach, without whom I never would have gotten this poem to publication quality.  Also to anonymous reviewer G.W. who helped to steer me in the right direction.
Mariam Paracha Oct 2012
The warmth of the sun settles, hugging the lake.
The dragonfly flies low, hovering above the tranquil water
the light seeping through the paper thin skin,
it hums across the lake, refracting light off its wings,
An array of colors make patterns on the wings,
wearing it like a cloak, a rainbow embedded within.
The colors tilt and shift as the dragonfly gracefully cruises through life,
laying close to the water but letting the air propel it forward,
floating between two different worlds,
it is like a dream where our thoughts are separated from reality,
and are scattered like refracted light for us to assemble.  

Through a screen of our dreams, a world can be seen.
A world of hopes and desires that is dormant within
The light of life just soaks us bare,
our skin turns frail,
under the scorching glare,
the glare of eyes that want you to be,
someone that is accepted by society.


the dragonfly bathes itself in the sun,
the iridescent colors shine on its skin,
flying and floating, he’s determined to win
a predator, determined to get what it wants
nothing blocking its way or paving its path
making the most out of life and never holding back

spread your wings like the dragonfly
that hums its way through life,
dipping its wings in the sun to shine,
breaking free a life of colors,
that we leave locked and forgotten,
behind a reality made of black and white,
the black ink seeping through our minds,
injecting us with ideas of the 'ideal life'
where money and fortune, and status define.
Bathe your mind in the wonders of the world,
soak your heart in life's warmth and glow,
and pave your own path,
with the dreams you sow.
Life
Jeanne Fiedler Jul 2013
As I walk along the sea of life
I pass the soft blue water
against the pale blue sky
I think of the sea creatures,
the ducks, the seagulls,
the seahorses and starfish
the myriad array of shells and stones
bringing me gems of wisdom...
The carefree breeze as the
water splashes on the shore
relaxing and renewing me...
I meditate on the serene tides
bringing me calm and focus

The sea is intense but still
as it enters my inner
and outer worlds,
but even though there
is an end somewhere -
it seems like an eternity...
Jenny Mar 2018
love
its a beautiful thing really,
its brutal, its strong
it so deep, and so heartwarming,
and at the same time,
it makes me want to cry, scream
pound my bed,
punch the white cement wall until my knuckles are ******, raw
and the wall has a display of reds.
it makes me want to break an elegant expensive vase, and crush it in my hand.
its destructive, desired, dangerous,
and yet
i want to laugh
i want to sing
and dance!
dance to oh what a night
dance with my yellow watercolored pillow case, with my favorite pillow stuffed inside
oh, love is so peculiar isn’t it?
its spectacular,
and its like standing in the middle of a ballroom
where dresses and suit ties of different hues reflect the chandelier light hanging from the ceiling,
an array of rainbows cast on the walls.
and yet, theres an emptiness…
one I’m afraid i cannot fill, and rely on you to.
its like standing in an ocean of chaos, of excitement and watching it from afar at the same time.
i can see myself swimming with the sharks, yet i am a bystander
as the thread of my life is strung tautly,
i watch myself bleed, gruesomely torn to pieces
i watch as the water darkens from spilt wine,
the wine that was once salty becomes sickly sweet around me
but i continue watching myself become bones stuck in their teeth.
its like being in an aquarium, encased in water,
and yet, still not a part of it, a distance, yet, a proximity
i watch myself drown through the looking glass, unable to help.
the sign says don’t tap the glass, but i pound and pound.
I am the only one watching myself slowly slow, and slowly stop.
stop breathing, stop fighting.
love is holding your breath, being cautious, yet careless.
Its diving recklessly, unsure whether to be sober, or drunk,
and being both.
its like seeing myself on a high diving board, the water beneath is so deep,
it seems to never start, and never end at the same time.
I can see myself, on the edge peering over,
scared to take a leap of faith,
yet relived i can still feel the sharp breaths,
nervous stomach,
because it means i can still feel, i am still capable of human emotions
i thought had left me long ago, before you.
Baby Don't Hurt Me
preservationman Oct 2015
The pavement having a merchandise name
Merchandising sales being the aim
Markdowns throughout any retail store
The array of assortments a consumer just can’t ignore
Yet watch how the consumer spends their money
The consumer will be broke, but certainly not the only
Plastic credit cards that could get you into trouble
This could cause your interest rates to double
But I one should only buy what they actually need
However unnecessary things with no need to proceed
Retail prices coming from a Buyer’s advice
Watch the price and shopping being wise
Fashion designers with a eye for your appeal and style
All through the theory the consumer is thinking during while
Well retail stores have much they want the consumer to explore
But with prices slashed here and over there, the consumer becomes not being sure
Perhaps having will power is something no one should ignore
Money saved with nothing being spent
No question needing to be asked as to where your money went.
Leal Knowone Mar 2019
Meeting the foul faced fiend & foe we call death.
Lurking about looking for souls, a collector in the truest sense.
Mortals can be persistent,pondering away subsistence.
From death breaths life, a rotting coexistence.

There is nothing but bones left
A gorgeous array of decay
The splendor of existence lost
The amusement of resistance

Gandering at the reaper we can  see life, and reflect
We may see many worlds, life in the blink of an eye, right before our death.

Try not to inject your morals for the minds you infect.
Is there ever really a time when there's absolutely nothing left?
In the world of your mind you must be the architect.
the worlds crumbling down. Your mind is yours to *****

There is nothing but bones left
A gorgeous array of decay
The splendor of existence lost
The amusement of resistance


The dead flower has more power than your wilted soul.
My knife has more life to watch death grow.
That broken glass a stones throw. You are Building up a rebels soul.

There is nothing but bones left
A gorgeous array of decay
The splendor of existence lost
The amusement of resistance

Nothing but bones. Such a gorgeous array. The splendor of existence.The amusement of resistance, and the foul faced fiend we call death.
Looking for souls. Morality they say.....
Mortals can be persistent.
pondering away subsistence.

Gandering at death we see life and reflect
Try not to inject your morals, minds you infect.
Is there ever a time when there's nothing left?
In the world of your mind, be the architect.

The dead flower has more power than your wilted soul.
My knife has more life to watch death grow.
That broken glass, stones throw. Building up a rebels soul.
Now when Jove had thus brought Hector and the Trojans to the
ships, he left them to their never-ending toil, and turned his keen
eyes away, looking elsewhither towards the horse-breeders of Thrace,
the Mysians, fighters at close quarters, the noble Hippemolgi, who
live on milk, and the Abians, justest of mankind. He no longer
turned so much as a glance towards Troy, for he did not think that any
of the immortals would go and help either Trojans or Danaans.
  But King Neptune had kept no blind look-out; he had been looking
admiringly on the battle from his seat on the topmost crests of wooded
Samothrace, whence he could see all Ida, with the city of Priam and
the ships of the Achaeans. He had come from under the sea and taken
his place here, for he pitied the Achaeans who were being overcome
by the Trojans; and he was furiously angry with Jove.
  Presently he came down from his post on the mountain top, and as
he strode swiftly onwards the high hills and the forest quaked beneath
the tread of his immortal feet. Three strides he took, and with the
fourth he reached his goal—Aegae, where is his glittering golden
palace, imperishable, in the depths of the sea. When he got there,
he yoked his fleet brazen-footed steeds with their manes of gold all
flying in the wind; he clothed himself in raiment of gold, grasped his
gold whip, and took his stand upon his chariot. As he went his way
over the waves the sea-monsters left their lairs, for they knew
their lord, and came gambolling round him from every quarter of the
deep, while the sea in her gladness opened a path before his
chariot. So lightly did the horses fly that the bronze axle of the car
was not even wet beneath it; and thus his bounding steeds took him
to the ships of the Achaeans.
  Now there is a certain huge cavern in the depths of the sea midway
between Tenedos and rocky Imbrus; here Neptune lord of the
earthquake stayed his horses, unyoked them, and set before them
their ambrosial forage. He hobbled their feet with hobbles of gold
which none could either unloose or break, so that they might stay
there in that place until their lord should return. This done he
went his way to the host of the Achaeans.
  Now the Trojans followed Hector son of Priam in close array like a
storm-cloud or flame of fire, fighting with might and main and raising
the cry battle; for they deemed that they should take the ships of the
Achaeans and **** all their chiefest heroes then and there.
Meanwhile earth-encircling Neptune lord of the earthquake cheered on
the Argives, for he had come up out of the sea and had assumed the
form and voice of Calchas.
  First he spoke to the two Ajaxes, who were doing their best already,
and said, “Ajaxes, you two can be the saving of the Achaeans if you
will put out all your strength and not let yourselves be daunted. I am
not afraid that the Trojans, who have got over the wall in force, will
be victorious in any other part, for the Achaeans can hold all of them
in check, but I much fear that some evil will befall us here where
furious Hector, who boasts himself the son of great Jove himself, is
leading them on like a pillar of flame. May some god, then, put it
into your hearts to make a firm stand here, and to incite others to do
the like. In this case you will drive him from the ships even though
he be inspired by Jove himself.”
  As he spoke the earth-encircling lord of the earthquake struck
both of them with his sceptre and filled their hearts with daring.
He made their legs light and active, as also their hands and their
feet. Then, as the soaring falcon poises on the wing high above some
sheer rock, and presently swoops down to chase some bird over the
plain, even so did Neptune lord of the earthquake wing his flight into
the air and leave them. Of the two, swift Ajax son of Oileus was the
first to know who it was that had been speaking with them, and said to
Ajax son of Telamon, “Ajax, this is one of the gods that dwell on
Olympus, who in the likeness of the prophet is bidding us fight hard
by our ships. It was not Calchas the seer and diviner of omens; I knew
him at once by his feet and knees as he turned away, for the gods
are soon recognised. Moreover I feel the lust of battle burn more
fiercely within me, while my hands and my feet under me are more eager
for the fray.”
  And Ajax son of Telamon answered, “I too feel my hands grasp my
spear more firmly; my strength is greater, and my feet more nimble;
I long, moreover, to meet furious Hector son of Priam, even in
single combat.”
  Thus did they converse, exulting in the hunger after battle with
which the god had filled them. Meanwhile the earth-encircler roused
the Achaeans, who were resting in the rear by the ships overcome at
once by hard fighting and by grief at seeing that the Trojans had
got over the wall in force. Tears began falling from their eyes as
they beheld them, for they made sure that they should not escape
destruction; but the lord of the earthquake passed lightly about among
them and urged their battalions to the front.
  First he went up to Teucer and Leitus, the hero Peneleos, and
Thoas and Deipyrus; Meriones also and Antilochus, valiant warriors;
all did he exhort. “Shame on you young Argives,” he cried, “it was
on your prowess I relied for the saving of our ships; if you fight not
with might and main, this very day will see us overcome by the
Trojans. Of a truth my eyes behold a great and terrible portent
which I had never thought to see—the Trojans at our ships—they,
who were heretofore like panic-stricken hinds, the prey of jackals and
wolves in a forest, with no strength but in flight for they cannot
defend themselves. Hitherto the Trojans dared not for one moment
face the attack of the Achaeans, but now they have sallied far from
their city and are fighting at our very ships through the cowardice of
our leader and the disaffection of the people themselves, who in their
discontent care not to fight in defence of the ships but are being
slaughtered near them. True, King Agamemnon son of Atreus is the cause
of our disaster by having insulted the son of Peleus, still this is no
reason why we should leave off fighting. Let us be quick to heal,
for the hearts of the brave heal quickly. You do ill to be thus
remiss, you, who are the finest soldiers in our whole army. I blame no
man for keeping out of battle if he is a weakling, but I am
indignant with such men as you are. My good friends, matters will soon
become even worse through this slackness; think, each one of you, of
his own honour and credit, for the hazard of the fight is extreme.
Great Hector is now fighting at our ships; he has broken through the
gates and the strong bolt that held them.”
  Thus did the earth-encircler address the Achaeans and urge them
on. Thereon round the two Ajaxes there gathered strong bands of men,
of whom not even Mars nor Minerva, marshaller of hosts could make
light if they went among them, for they were the picked men of all
those who were now awaiting the onset of Hector and the Trojans.
They made a living fence, spear to spear, shield to shield, buckler to
buckler, helmet to helmet, and man to man. The horse-hair crests on
their gleaming helmets touched one another as they nodded forward,
so closely seffied were they; the spears they brandished in their
strong hands were interlaced, and their hearts were set on battle.
  The Trojans advanced in a dense body, with Hector at their head
pressing right on as a rock that comes thundering down the side of
some mountain from whose brow the winter torrents have torn it; the
foundations of the dull thing have been loosened by floods of rain,
and as it bounds headlong on its way it sets the whole forest in an
uproar; it swerves neither to right nor left till it reaches level
ground, but then for all its fury it can go no further—even so easily
did Hector for a while seem as though he would career through the
tents and ships of the Achaeans till he had reached the sea in his
murderous course; but the closely serried battalions stayed him when
he reached them, for the sons of the Achaeans ****** at him with
swords and spears pointed at both ends, and drove him from them so
that he staggered and gave ground; thereon he shouted to the
Trojans, “Trojans, Lycians, and Dardanians, fighters in close
combat, stand firm: the Achaeans have set themselves as a wall against
me, but they will not check me for long; they will give ground
before me if the mightiest of the gods, the thundering spouse of Juno,
has indeed inspired my onset.”
  With these words he put heart and soul into them all. Deiphobus
son of Priam went about among them intent on deeds of daring with
his round shield before him, under cover of which he strode quickly
forward. Meriones took aim at him with a spear, nor did he fail to hit
the broad orb of ox-hide; but he was far from piercing it for the
spear broke in two pieces long ere he could do so; moreover
Deiphobus had seen it coming and had held his shield well away from
him. Meriones drew back under cover of his comrades, angry alike at
having failed to vanquish Deiphobus, and having broken his spear. He
turned therefore towards the ships and tents to fetch a spear which he
had left behind in his tent.
  The others continued fighting, and the cry of battle rose up into
the heavens. Teucer son of Telamon was the first to **** his man, to
wit, the warrior Imbrius son of Mentor rich in horses. Until the
Achaeans came he had lived in Pedaeum, and had married Medesicaste a
******* daughter of Priam; but on the arrival of the Danaan fleet he
had gone back to Ilius, and was a great man among the Trojans,
dwelling near Priam himself, who gave him like honour with his own
sons. The son of Telamon now struck him under the ear with a spear
which he then drew back again, and Imbrius fell headlong as an
ash-tree when it is felled on the crest of some high mountain
beacon, and its delicate green foliage comes toppling down to the
ground. Thus did he fall with his bronze-dight armour ringing
harshly round him, and Teucer sprang forward with intent to strip
him of his armour; but as he was doing so, Hector took aim at him with
a spear. Teucer saw the spear coming and swerved aside, whereon it hit
Amphimachus, son of Cteatus son of Actor, in the chest as he was
coming into battle, and his armour rang rattling round him as he
fell heavily to the ground. Hector sprang forward to take
Amphimachus’s helmet from off his temples, and in a moment Ajax
threw a spear at him, but did not wound him, for he was encased all
over in his terrible armour; nevertheless the spear struck the boss of
his shield with such force as to drive him back from the two
corpses, which the Achaeans then drew off. Stichius and Menestheus,
captains of the Athenians, bore away Amphimachus to the host of the
Achaeans, while the two brave and impetuous Ajaxes did the like by
Imbrius. As two lions ****** a goat from the hounds that have it in
their fangs, and bear it through thick brushwood high above the ground
in their jaws, thus did the Ajaxes bear aloft the body of Imbrius, and
strip it of its armour. Then the son of Oileus severed the head from
the neck in revenge for the death of Amphimachus, and sent it whirling
over the crowd as though it had been a ball, till fell in the dust
at Hector’s feet.
  Neptune was exceedingly angry that his grandson Amphimachus should
have fallen; he therefore went to the tents and ships of the
Achaeans to urge the Danaans still further, and to devise evil for the
Trojans. Idomeneus met him, as he was taking leave of a comrade, who
had just come to him from the fight, wounded in the knee. His
fellow-soldiers bore him off the field, and Idomeneus having given
orders to the physicians went on to his tent, for he was still
thirsting for battle. Neptune spoke in the likeness and with the voice
of Thoas son of Andraemon who ruled the Aetolians of all Pleuron and
high Calydon, and was honoured among his people as though he were a
god. “Idomeneus,” said he, “lawgiver to the Cretans, what has now
become of the threats with which the sons of the Achaeans used to
threaten the Trojans?”
  And Idomeneus chief among the Cretans answered, “Thoas, no one, so
far as I know, is in fault, for we can all fight. None are held back
neither by fear nor slackness, but it seems to be the of almighty Jove
that the Achaeans should perish ingloriously here far from Argos: you,
Thoas, have been always staunch, and you keep others in heart if you
see any fail in duty; be not then remiss now, but exhort all to do
their utmost.”
  To this Neptune lord of the earthquake made answer, “Idomeneus,
may he never return from Troy, but remain here for dogs to batten
upon, who is this day wilfully slack in fighting. Get your armour
and go, we must make all haste together if we may be of any use,
though we are only two. Even cowards gain courage from
companionship, and we two can hold our own with the bravest.”
  Therewith the god went back into the thick of the fight, and
Idomeneus when he had reached his tent donned his armour, grasped
his two spears, and sallied forth. As the lightning which the son of
Saturn brandishes from bright Olympus when he would show a sign to
mortals, and its gleam flashes far and wide—even so did his armour
gleam about him as he ran. Meriones his sturdy squire met him while he
was still near his tent (for he was going to fetch his spear) and
Idomeneus said
  “Meriones, fleet son of Molus, best of comrades, why have you left
the field? Are you wounded, and is the point of the weapon hurting
you? or have you been sent to fetch me? I want no fetching; I had
far rather fight than stay in my tent.”
  “Idomeneus,” answered Meriones, “I come for a spear, if I can find
one in my tent; I have broken the one I had, in throwing it at the
shield of Deiphobus.”
  And Idomeneus captain of the Cretans answered, “You will find one
spear, or twenty if you so please, standing up against the end wall of
my tent. I have taken them from Trojans whom I have killed, for I am
not one to keep my enemy at arm’s length; therefore I have spears,
bossed shields, helmets, and burnished corslets.”
  Then Meriones said, “I too in my tent and at my ship have spoils
taken from the Trojans, but they are not at hand. I have been at all
times valorous, and wherever there has been hard fighting have held my
own among the foremost. There may be those among the Achaeans who do
not know how I fight, but you know it well enough yourself.”
  Idomeneus answered, “I know you for a brave man: you need not tell
me. If the best men at the ships were being chosen to go on an ambush-
and there is nothing like this for showing what a man is made of; it
comes out then who is cowardly and who brave; the coward will change
colour at every touch and turn; he is full of fears, and keeps
shifting his weight first on one knee and then on the other; his heart
beats fast as he thinks of death, and one can hear the chattering of
his teeth; whereas the brave man will not change colour nor be on
finding himself in ambush, but is all the time longing to go into
action—if the best men were being chosen for such a service, no one
could make light of your courage nor feats of arms. If you were struck
by a dart or smitten in close combat, it would not be from behind,
in your neck nor back, but the weapon would hit you in the chest or
belly as you were pressing forward to a place in the front ranks.
But let us no longer stay here talking like children, lest we be ill
spoken of; go, fetch your spear from the tent at once.”
  On this Meriones, peer of Mars, went to the tent and got himself a
spear of bronze. He then followed after Idomeneus, big with great
deeds of valour. As when baneful Mars sallies forth to battle, and his
son Panic so strong and dauntless goes with him, to strike terror even
into the heart of a hero—the pair have gone from Thrace to arm
themselves among the Ephyri or the brave Phlegyans, but they will
not listen to both the contending hosts, and will give victory to
one side or to the other—even so did Meriones and Idomeneus, captains
of m
Just Me Dec 2014
The snow glimmers like diamonds, each falling flake sparkling in its own array of prismatic colors. The sky, clear and blue, is sprinkled with these small gems.
breathe in.
      The air is cool and crisp, stinging her nose on every intake, but filling her lungs with clean fresh air.
breathe out.
      Little puffs of steam flow from her mouth and into the world, each little droplet tumbling over another as they scramble to explore this new universe, until they vanish completely from sight.
breathe in.
      The soft breeze drifts carelessly over the snow, leaving an icy touch in its wake.
breathe out.
      The thumps of her heart increase and fill her ears as she approaches the gate.
breathe in.
      The thumps become steady, a rhythmic beat to keep the time.
breathe out.
      Three. The hand goes up.
breathe in.
      Two.
silence.
      One. It drops.
breathe out
      She is gone.
Something I wrote for a college app that I really liked and decided to post it here. The prompt was get us hooked in 150 words. Hope you all like it :D I don't know what to call it either. Any suggestions?? Comment below :D
Ovi-Odiete Jul 2016
Waves of Ephemeral heights
       Lay in Ethereal mights
Floating
       And
    Clothing
The depths of the Night

Waves of hope and bliss
        Through the Moon's eyes
Array
         The fearful Night
In a glorious box
             Encased in Glory

Ovi Odiete©
The Moonshine down and watch us sleep
    It brings forth bliss
Bliss
   Comes down and gives us calm

Ovi Odiete©
JWolfeB Jul 2014
Eye
It's as if a storm blew in, torrential rains, metal bending winds and standing in the eye was you.
Waves crashing. People locked up for days, hours, as time danced around -- the clocked stopped ticking.
A foolish venture to see the cause of such array. To see. To touch. To feel. Your sight penetrating through the clouds, ripping apart my seams. You watch as I came undone; undone by the velvet in your eyes, the bend in your smile. I twirl as I am stripped clean in your eyes. You see every scrape, scar, bruise and every moment I have tried to sew back together. Your touch burns my flesh. Sear into me a moment I cannot forget, a moment I grasp for in the darkness when I am all alone.
It's as if I can feel your fingerprint on my heart with every beat. As I stumble towards you, exposed and raw --- you absorb me. Absorb my pain, struggles, my darkness. You hold me so tightly it's as if when you breathe, I breathe the same breath.
Your embrace calms the storm. Calms the rush of thoughts, fears, worries and emotions. As I look up into your eyes, you see my future. My happiness. My vision of happily ever after -- holding hands in the sunset, in the rain, in the snow. As the winds die down, as the rain lets up, as the oceans settle -- I see you clearly. I feel your heartbeat. I know I am right where I should be. The eye of you.

— The End —

 
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