MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY: A Dreadful Tale about a Dead Anglo Mother, A Dreadful, Avenging Syrian Aunt, A Stolen Baby Sister, and a Hateful, Unfaithful, Defaulting Father.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
With people, people who hardly know
Your vices, your intrigue, your lies, and so,
You’ve ruined lives, and now I will show

How demonizing you are, with just your thinking
About your “slemly” self,  just linking [Nice in Arabic]
That self to your own, and not us--no one else
You belong in no company, your old-time thinking.
Adopting my sister, without any inkling
Of what it takes to challenge the motherless
And seeing we ended up, also, being fatherless.

Travesties galore made this woman happy
You won hearts, but you seemed quite daffy.      
Childhood, telling us we’d never be as good
As your Syrian daughters - such a strange brood!
This kind of “teaching” by a Syrian mom was kinda lewd.

She verily and surely became our ISIS
She thought who could ever, ever be like us
She raved for hours so very against us
To that red-headed family so she could easily best us!
Humiliating us at every stop
We really, really got a lot
From her, the decadent Queen of ISIS
No, she’d never, ever be like us!

Twenty years to a guileless young person
Is a forever herstory an eternity…
A lesson, an identity…
Carried on secretly, destroying our Syrian identity.
She stole that connection, filling it with confusion
She with cruel humor would **** our loving illusion
Stopped it in its growth,
Forever unseating that family oath.
To care - without any rejection.
It was She that was The Great Defection.

Mary, Mary how does your hatred grow
Picked on those who had no Syrian power
But you didn’t see yourself becoming lower
To the ends of the earth, heartless black flower.

In her mind she’d be our Mother
But as this poet, I did not know it
Things would be better if we like sheep
Worshipped Mary, into the deep
Quite similar to the rest of her Keep
Then mayhap we’d enjoy their fully undeserved sleep.

Taught my dear baby sister like her to hate
Would I had the power to shut up her pate
Her mouth was evil to the core
I never, never could stand more.
Her hatred entered me, made me sore.

Screaming at us to keep us out
Stupid Daddy joined her in this falling out
She, successful -as any lout.
By God I thot I must be evil
Their strange behavior was not legal.
Would that she’d accept me, that dangerous eagle.
I lost my sense of self and ‘came very sad
Would that I could be like she so glad.
‘Tis fifty years now, and I can’t stop crying.
No one ever heard this “mother” sighing.

Hell, Mary, full of Face
Recognizing only your Syrian race
Did anyone else matter? Just your primitive face?
Everyone one was hurt, except you and your nace
There’ll be no one, ever, that could take your place.
Laughing to destroy our wanted Arab destiny
Which you did, and did, successfully, with your fantasy.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
Like plants, you lined us up all in a row
One good, two bad - you did the choosing
And what did you leave?
Only us, who did the losing.
You didn’t water those two plants.
Treated us two as if we were ants.
Watered sissa so she would grow
Your dreaded deeds no one would know
Judgement is left only to God.
But you and Dad should’ve returned to your sod.
Your behavior to the motherless seems very odd.
My sister and I two tossed peas in a pod.

Deserting us suddenly knowing only this hateful group
There’s nothing to which she wouldn’t stoop
Her sick obsession to hurt the powerless
Speaks of a very worst yes, cruel foulness.

We lived at a convent school very protected
Visiting weekends this aspiring ****,
Two sisters know she made a very strong mark
She was not our blood, we couldn’t take part
Of this constant coldness on her part.

And another Aunt with two daughters, good
They were always with us, always stood
The opposite of this wicked would-be aunt
This family, Americanized and very sane
Never did play the ancient Ottoman game
These Aunts were our world - our windowpane.

Two aunts - endowing us with a Syrian heritage,
One, the bad one, with too much leverage
The good one to teach a cheerful Syrian beverage      
With balance, love, and the length of days
Not like the other, the one who dismays.

We represented that bad woman’s target
What it came from. Could it be her precious Margaret?
No, not at all her peaceful daughter
But the other, gladly joined in on the slaughter
Making serious and even much more, fodder.

We had no tools to breach this hate
I guess that it would have to be our fate.
To live our lives just disenchanted.
Our hearts broke, as if forever lancets.
With Syrians there’d be no more dances

Taking my sweet sis turning her against us
She did truly give strong heed to finally fence us.
What ever could we find for our defenses?

Dad, real Dad, inebriated dad,
Fell in with them: became this negative father
Sought their pity--likening me as a foreign daughter
He was in love with them, weakly turning
But in turn, the two of us, spurning
Back to his Syrian fold back, not farther
Unwittingly, unrepentedly, uncaringly, joining the laughter
Discarding his American daughters to a mental slaughter.

At his picnic - family there - he called us foreigners
Foreigners we were, surely, when with them
They couldn’t ever believe in us,
Dad influenced them, peeved at us.
Made us feel like little fools.
No, we never had the tools
To fight this ignorance - Change these mules?

Punishing, punishing us as wedded women
Accused of all that they gossiped about
What did they say? And this truant dad a lout
Speaking of us in downing tones
I’d feel far better had they broken my bones.

Closing his relationships to his
Two lesser liked non-Arab sisters
Would there would be a better mister
He considered us two a mere sinful blister.

We ran away from this horrible drunk
He hated his daughters and he stunk
And then we suffered the worst of any they would dunk
Uncomfortable at their Arab-speaking home
We stopped visiting long before their moan
We were “no good”  said our Syrian family
Would that we knew that we’d be anti-Family.

They had something to hate and did they do it
We had no idea we were just a joke
Their words, their disgust, far more than a poke.
Their anti-American provincial views
Made little sense - such perverted mews
All we loved, we would really lose.
There was never any right to choose.

That Family didn’t speak, avoided us
At sissa's Syrian wedding. It was all mined
That scene returns to me all of them lined  
Winding its way into my unbidden mind,
They were so, so truly unkind
We always would be to them the “Other”
Yes, us, us, us, without a mother!

We lost three mothers, our real one gone
Also our good step-mother quickly on
Add Mary to that three, glad she is gone
Perhaps Dad guilty of the first two deaths
I shan’t continue - you’d lose your breaths.
  
But Hail that Lady, she would change our world
Sending us suddenly into a whirl.
How to change the young with screaming?
She’d not change but destroy our dreaming
Waking horribly from our Syrian dream
We just didn’t fit their shady crème de la crème.

Everyone was fooled by this greedy witch
She and her daughters I’d deem as *****
What was in them, caused their making?
Taking away, taking, taking, taking.
Good cousins now, have seen an awakening
My work of writing revealed Mary’s faking.

Hail Mary full of Face
Only using her charms to erace
The sisters she wished not to embrace
With threads of lies an unrevealing face
Syrians’ acceptance of her goldarn place  
No one ever will she replace  
In every way she used her mace
A clever poison to keep her place
Successfully, she’d snidely hid her dreams
Wearing a mask to hide her themes.

She’d always hated us through and through
We didn’t know it till she did what she’d do
Her masque did work, from dusk to dawn.
Hatred of us was what she would spawn
She would definitely **** our spirits
Would that I could reveal all her lyrics.

Our Syrian sissa’s wedding put us in place
That even there we could have little space.
No other family events could we be included.
Engagements, baptisms, we would be excluded
Their intentions now were completely nuded.   deluded!

You stole our little baby entering the world
Through our Mom’s Death
You stole my Dad’s affection
He also her straw man, worshiping Mary‘s fiction
Her stand could only be that of affliction.

Hail Mary full of Face
Face that faced nothing exçept winning the Ace
Did no one ever tell you - you were a case?
Using your screams to stuff our mind
And even more shrieking to clog our mind
No other Syrian family could be so unkind.

Always filling us with her delicious food
Only to turn against us, trussing our good mood.
I’d like to regurgitate all that poisonous food
Anything about her became totally lewd.
She bragged of her daughters - were they really that good?
When we were children, told us we’d never be like them
We never wanted to be like those hurting us.
Took our Dad’s affection, he also deserting us
We never but finally saw that they were into hurting us.

She has attacked us screaming, screaming on end
Never an explanation, never to end
She took money, stole sister too, not a lend.
With this cruel treatment, we were not able to fend.
I’ve never heard such venom in any human voice
It seared through both my ears, such an odious noise
Those first twenty years were so very splendid
But later with her actions - all was ended
With her allotted time this is how she would spend it.

Sister, affections stolen, obeying by fear
Couldn’t counter - with a mere
Stand up to this fraud of a Mother Dear.

Our baby sis had became her clay
She would remake her through many a day.
She owes us much, this lying thief
No family tree would know, not even a leaf
She stole and changed our beautiful blood
Returned nothing except a bad bad flood
Of making our names into family mud.

She then gave out inimical messages
The taunting that came from her mealy mouth
From Damascus, that lousy mouse.
Couldn’t discuss, but only scream
What ever, ever, did she mean?
This Family into which father bought.
Their apathetic “reasoning” I was never taught.

Her daughters conscripted to the Mary core
Following her words, her iron ore
Inflated us with much heavy criticism
To fill our sissa with a lack of witticism

Lying, lying she always, always hated us
For twenty years, she consistently slated us
For slaughter, just like little lambs
Motherless, she took our little lamb
She won, didn’t she, in her sham?
Mary & dad really fated us with their sick flim flam!

She’d tackle anyone, anything in her path
And she did, with her oh so dreadful wrath.
What powered this extremely devilish mind?
She had never, ever, been really kind.

Our sodden father turned to her
She was Goddess, he deemed Something
While we were nothing, nothing, NOTHING!
It didn’t happen till twenty years after
From kindliness to hypocrisy
One would not believe.
Our real selves never to retrieve.

A sweet child, sissa, full of love
Knew they were cold and she let us know
After those years, sadly though
Turned into another hateful *****
Forced to be like them, else be ditched.

Dad, dad, the precious Syrian lad
Embraced the family gatherings that they had
Youngest of the Ikmuks - he was mad
Allowed them the desecration of our pad
They could say anything--made it their fad.

He wouldn’t speak to them of their travesty
Worshipped them, and ever drastically
Wanted to be Them, lest he be
On the Outs from the Family Tree
Ousted, married out of the Tribe
Hardly now, when this happened, few are alive.
He refused to tell them we both should be here.
He would never, ever, play it fair.
“Dad, if you go, I’ll never be the same.”
He would never, never take the blame.
Of his paltry stabs at being a human
Go stuff him in a jar with more rotten cumin.

Never defended us, never, never
Always took their part like a mismatched lever.
Usually a Dad with a daughter would stay beside her
But then, he gave Mary a far wider rider.

Gatherings went on, by the family Mare.
All our lives had been spent with them before
But Iron Lady with Iron Ore
Came through later and before.
She would win, so well connected to her vile kin
Change, girl, change, you’re just an Anglo fem.
Don’t, please, don’t pay much attention to them.
Sudden hate - my thoughts now were dashed.
I changed - they took all I had and then they smashed.

They brought us into their sickly Ottoman lives
But all of them acted as if we had the hives
They, centuries‘ habit, it was the mid-1950’s why so bold?
They were too much, too much very, to behold
We were stricken, treated as in days of old
We would never be part of their unhealthy mold  [Mould?]

Regular at Church. What kind of God could she worship?
You know who should have been told? The Syrian Bishop!
The She-Devil not even relishing the Church script
Eternally, she would always, rip, rip, and then grip!
Instead looked to those after Church who would serve her!
She did just this with a total fervor.
No Communion, no worship, but her only feats
To seek and add to gossip in the streets
Afterward. When-Where everyone meets.

Se enjoyed the Devil of Power over those she knew
Verily, she should have been thrown in the loo.
Few new. Only the rejected two.

Mary, Mary full of Mace
You never did achieve much grace
Wish you could have finally
Fallen on your ignorant Face
There’s really not going to be any space
To explain your bad translation of a very good race.
The Syrian families I always know very well
Would never have made this kind of hell.

The Syrian race is good, except for this “mother”
I speak from my place as the dreaded ”Other”
You are and were a terrible, mother
You’re a crude example of this Middle Eastern  race.
Very few of them did see through your face.

In that family I barely gleaned this toxicity
But, never, ever, did I witness much felicity.
They llaughed and laughed about any Other
Played well their acts as if they cared
They knew Syrian-like we would not fare
We, Dad, all sisters three - fell for her snare.

What think you, God, of these poor children
How il-ly this Family thoroughly tilled them
Two non-Arab daughters’ given bad repute
Their shocking beliefs really made us mute
All that came from her demented mind
All that encountered Mary’s “kind”
She destroyed our conception of self
This hypocrisy would make one melt.

She infiltrated us, her daughters, and my Sissa
That we were not as good as she - but she lost her mister
Had Uncle [our blood] lived, this would never have occurred.
But Auntie [not our blood] surely had demurred.
Her hooked-nose criticizing, and simple daughters,
Psychologically--against us-- they joined in on these slaughters.
Kindness for two decades to rent, later they spent
Hell on the motherless, but hiding that intent
Taught her daughters: “Don’t be involved with them”
We really do know some of what she did, or said,
This is the kind of meal that she constantly fed
Her masque nearly hiding her evil bent.
Too bad she wasn’t forced back into her Syrian tent.

Mary, Mary quite contrary, How does your world work?
You won, you won, you ignorant, piece of work
You demanded respect from all of us, treacherous,
She got it, didn’t know it, then she brought down the two of us

Sneaky, low-life, hypocrite witch
We always thought we had a niche
But lost kids like us did never snitch
We wouldn’t, didn’t open up about that *****.

We had a twenty-year comfort zone with her
Deserted at last by her flying fur
Stolen, deserted at last by Dad--that foul mister
Stolen, deserted, lastly by our pretty baby sister.

This left us changed by this She-Devil
Would that there’d be a way to counter her evil
We couldn’t - she was always far too strong
An ISIS for us - this would last too long.

After these years, I could not grow
Was I a real woman? -  I didn’t know!
Being a mother couldn’t show
That this Family created a list of woe.

When Sissa had babies & a mom to help
We did this alone - all this we felt.
Her faulted hatred never did melt.
I didn’t know how to take a stance
Nor could I find out how to advance.
We had to oppose Aunt Mary’s dance.

That Sissa could not bo

Vernarth sequence

Prophecy I -  “Eighth month of sailing in systemic plenitude”

“Since they will not hunt us down in all our Itheoi cycles…
nor in other lapses from where the fine eye could have sewn the buttonholes of the shroud, where there will be life and if there will be a short time without life...
dragged by you for a long time where the sun is melted over the word, staying stored and locked in your pocket to collect it blushing,
tomorrow's jump without a yesterday declining..., without a tomorrow in the heat of a bonfire...
lamb in bait handled being the portal of those who have been slapped inside their cheeks… who will not shorten the cycle that transcends all the oblong sepulchral vaults or who abound in the nonsense of sanitizing nights of ***** despot life having to measure themselves in your flourishing duel by Aiónius of the cleanest dew of its solid stroke and announced delineation of the new one that has been retraced again being more than a brief syllable created again fertile, in the biosphere mouth so as not to see you omnipresent mist, meditating not having you and that dares to meditate on your future that will have to be reserved for yourself by professing it when you are cold in front of you and insinuating if in living followed by letters to be flooded pondering like a paralyzed sleeping part that wants not to be covered with feigned warmth and that does not fit in all the parts of me being who wants to be consul of some shelter with all those who sleep also half dreaming in the company of the lost afternoon that never ends serving Saint John in Katapausis here, perhaps Aiónius del Ibico 1 as a magnificent and net unit that sees the luminous truth when we all come out of a prophecy alive even if it's dark ".

"What a reckless job of losing value,
I am already in Katapausis in the eighth month...,
I entered as the light opened with my hand turned into the light...
being already a katapausis meaning in Sabbatarianism.
Quasi-unit method exhibiting cohesion to the rest motif
With levers in my hands and intra-sabbatism in his dissertation...
of an exegetical and theological nature that has transpired soft insomniac light, We are a people who do not have to fear or air to deposit for a future warehouse above the Sycamore or birds that guard all the Gold above my hands on the Sycamore…”

"Stay in my house, if I don't come back it will be yours
stay at home, it will belong to everyone even in the apocalypse...
that more reckless will be silent as a work of losing value,
Katapausis is the threshold where my life enters and leaves at once,
stay at my house, if I don't come back it will be yours...
Open windows by meekly closing them to that confronted obverse to you...

He comes from a den relativized on reliefs in weathered beads...
they will be soluble mineral beings convened moving away from the most distant and closest to the least distant…, from waters of underground siphons… there we will all be floating… like vertebrate invertebrate animals”

Vernarth, after not entering the grotto not having found Saint John, goes outside where he goes on a campaign for three months before he can be received by God's law. Here he meets with Reader and his pelican, as well as Eurydice.


Prophecy II -  “Seventh, Inter-synergy energy”

“Three months I have waited in the middle of this mountain,
symmetrically arranging the steps to be taken, not going backward
prana of life walking in oceans of life walking…
us and them… how much must separate us to reach us?
what I have not tried to separate…, what I have not been able to achieve…

I think I died early in the worlds that haven't risen yet,
I think I was reborn late among dense curves that overwhelm us with straight lines
soul, principle, matter, and material distinctive ontology
Ghost god of parallelisms beings and activities in affinity...
starvation body of low energy ceasing creatures in embryo
incessant firstborn to infuse other confining souls
trails demons slip where my ashes hands are sore
wounded doctrines to engender and doctrines to ulcerate...

As the prophecy uses the sea carrying messages resolved from shore to shore
close to a Virtual why in the twilight your Faith that must be glandular… matter of soul and body exposed to predisposing theological and chemical, in pursuit of the corruptible whole in vice versa if he does not burst with atheistic impatience.”

Eurydice takes a zither and sings tempting stormy actions to Vernarth, Raeder and Petrobus put their souls in line in the first linear principle, Together with the matter of corporeal fire proceeding to the definition where all the parts are confirmed without distinction dancing next to them creating the greatest bond of faith in body and soul, thus spending the three months in a few words of light of the sated fire.

"In the eighth-month katapausis, eight times your permanent peace must rest in
cited state; once it is translated into Sabbathisms and it will be the same state… When everyone finishes their dance in the cave and enters believing they have the courage to enter eight times in connection with rest…, plus eight times in connection without rest.
In some verses, the urgency of the entrance will be accentuated. The main issue “is that history will be repeating itself exactly where the Israelites were at Kadesh-Barnea. A related term either synonymous with Kadesh or referring to one of two sites, is Kadesh (or Qadesh) Barnea. Various etymologies for Barnea have been proposed, including 'wilderness of travel' but none have produced a broad consensus. What is the consensus? will we stop believing or lean on the shores of a preacher rain of Jehovah or lean on the shores of a preacher sinful waterfall or lean on the shores of a preacher confessing rain or lean on the shores of a preacher wet wind inquisitor...? where ever the aromas of its faithful winds served will go sacred to everything named before and many before the confessing rainy…, waterfalls in favor of the temperamental inquisitor wind”.

Astheneiais”, in Greek is and will be a weakness, in Hebrews a moral connotation and will mean not only physical weakness but a conscious weakness and trembling in temptation. Our Lord also understands us in this weakness because he was tempted in every way as we are. Since he himself was tempted he knows from experience what it means for us to be tempted. He was not tempted in all the particulars of our life, for example, He was not tempted as a husband or father, owner or employer or soldier, because he was none of these things. But he was tempted in all three areas of human susceptibility: body, soul, and spirit.

Prophecy III -  “Sixth, Resilience…”

“They were on the perimeter trying to keep me together at his command,
I go every day for its pantry, food, groceries, bookstore supplies and ink, oils, and other essences for the environment in continuous handwritten obedience, I have to leave for Skalá where some residents are waiting for me who have ordered to bring materials from Gricos and Psili Ammos to project your home,
If this has been written like this, it is because my pleasure in walking has written it, in the company of the one, he has written for the one who walks next to me the god Ibicus!

They always asked me why to mention why I have to do this for them… I will tell you that I used to serve leaders who consolidate the Hellenic geography,
without them, everything would have been invaded by unled foreign hands… in that rest, I have to attend to the verse that precedes it...
which says that we have already entered where I already intend to argue the following…

Resilience and exhortation that from the beginning I have taken since it began... now I will abide by and present your messages in a very predominant note, I was Hoplite Commander of the Falange and Hetairoi, now a Christian who does not dispute living a life of obedience to those who are not and are not without his martyrs...
like those people to whom God swore they will not enter my rest
whose amen will be preached in the passive voice verse!

Remain as the verb indicates with the real facts, the word
independent of the present, independent of who and when…
Saint Gabriel my Abrahamic angel will give me white strength and frolicking lilies like baskets of hermaphroditic lilies procreating only-begotten forests at the altar.

Stand tall over the Abrahamic fire without knuckles or shields,
rethink your beloved woman and take a sudden step to heal your wounds there is so much grass to cut and so much poetry to chew...
up the mountain towards Skalá at night after drinking wine
Epitrapezios Inos setting fire with innocuous saffron atmosphere
lips of fire and bread, for a good offensive fight.
Greek fire naphtha, cinnabar, and anthracite.

Wake up united with the deep disorder
Grant the color that deserves to have your day as a constellation
with the image that rests on your angular and calloused hands.
stopping spaces of loss more than all the centuries that waited for the minimum incense to a good warrior, sweet wine for open bleeding wound not his… the thunder that hides baptisms in all hearts empty of blood...

“While Vernarth was praying in the oracle he felt a thunderous supra sound As if the gates of hell had opened...
As if millions of seconds of angels were to be dispersed from the sky
To reduce more seconds of silence to the thinnest pleading eardrum

A few days ago I saw a ghost that was chopping wood...
I couldn't realize that he was really Him...,
I also saw him cutting thousands of volumes from a library...
Also, not realizing it, I saw several, like more than eighty manuscripts..., of breaths that still did not prosper in the hands of San Marcos...

A gigantic door slam is felt again...!
again it was the angels that came
at the wrong time in his return..., but now in his repatriation
they climbed through and into the Garden of Eden.”

Vernarth, evicted from the habit of the unknown, was apprehended by his craftsmanship of him, he was still attentive to be received by San Juan. The longer he waited to be arranged for an audience, he did not postpone what his memory pointed out to be more than an experience plotting capacities in the face of his own limitations. From that moment on, a gigantic gate slam is felt again! the angels who went back one after another with their polished golden-white cloaks relapsed..., but now making the Garden of Eden their own,... being theirs in what was theirs, that they would be in the house of a wise gardener of Eden perhaps being the same Katapausis manger at once!

Raeder says: hugging him profusely! time has to fly like little angels, having them by your side as companions of the time that is leftover on their wings, giving it all to your enjoyment of living and feeling it lost in you without finding it. ! khaire mi Vernarth!, I have some karidopitas with nuts and yogurt accompanied by baklava with nuts in delicious syrup from Kalymnos. Petrobus jumped for joy and fluttered like a hummingbird to steal a few pieces! Eurydice and Vernarth did the same. That night they told militia stories while they ate the morsels, so they fell asleep as if it had been the first time they had fought such a great menu. Euridice assists in the same with his fresh clean face, creating an atmosphere of conciliation to renew the dream of a day that will dawn close to his waking up far from the criminals. Vernarth takes the staff from him from then on and divides books and manuscripts into two portions so that he has time to take steps to really feel that he can walk close to Saint John.

Prophecy IV -  "Fifth, Nature, Manuscripts and Jophiel"

“Zeus wakes up trembling, full of headaches saturated with Herbs for headaches Jophiel speaking this time with the Kabbalistic language of the Torah...with golden commoner super zone of the Organikon Sorousliston Papadikon….age-old music that supplies Zeus with protein albumin, to make him more human…Zeus accepts Jophiel by placing his head about the house of Jophiel; a divine island to throw cards…brings the second ray to the Sahasrara at the crown of your head, pacifying love that is the suspicious and risky loser of everything risk in the head especially when a feeling is born!

Zeus turns his head and Jophiel twists it to the opposite side
about the ruined zeros that he did not count from the plasma of his dependency, Zeus feared having albumin at risk of human transmutation... happy to be able to cry he imagines slipping into the middle of a lake and he sees that he falls on Hera's poultry harming none, Zeus pours brimstone from his mouth and milks inelegant prose from the scythe…

Trina flame whose son bears glorious her bearer,
thousands of lives being clumsy for the wisest destitute
being what in the present you were more than past trine
when you harbor from Hanael's Blue Sodalite quarry
the imperfect perfects when you listen to your
body how it beats, how it breathes... you realize that it is perfect
as is Jophiel and discerns repairing the wisdom in the decisive punt
where gum rosin myrrh and multi urban frankincense go
towards the soul plane architecture of the human plane.
Hardened Zeus overflows glazed sallow emulsion of war
coagulated exhausting guarantor of everything is well,
books of the silent world of nails that do not sound sheets,
Hanael in massive books divides sounding with her iris gel-colored nails encrypted library manuscript of a thousand years, the voluptuous organism of a thousand years…
flapping unpredictable millennia and wiry hands,
colossal capstans…, annihilated with a thousand years…
a silly propeller that spins like a sickle rolling over a certain holistic tabernacle of the small portion of the next day when Zeus awoke to the diaphanous threatening light with sunless cloud waistband…
His face is seen with frowns and he looks at his face as well
without seeing folds…but in front of the Aiónius.

The geranium appears in the representation of the natural whole kicking the Sickle, much more here lost of our spiritual being
Zeus Jophiel's hardened shoulder heats up only to lean on Him...
light on his shoulders fires on both of them…
how long it takes to save us perhaps twenty times what supports us even tired and much more unwrapped than the treachery of him alone and without being followed without knowing
nothing more than a thousand-year-old shell through which he would drain…perhaps a tortoise-like millennial angel walked up to the omega! joy preparing to give you live hopeful,
that if it would be timely to give you more life...
Here is Aiónius reordering the world together with Zefian…
He shares everything eternal of all your life that floats in the sea,
miserable mix space where capo dastro separates the end
where all the wheres cannonade the hoarse fire...
cement that joins brick wall and plenary adobes
love without nature that castrates your beautiful woman
that hides her face without mascara looking for it...
let's go outside says Vernarth..., we still have a few seconds in his solvent... sensible, full, and arc well-being...
as if you were floating in the air floating more
also needed me to teach you before your limits limit you,
and make you angry from the miserable sense,... Don't listen to me anymore...!!”

Vernarth puts his first three fingers on the capo dastro roosters crow with his skin vibrating beyond the sleep of Raeder and Petrobus. Reader wakes up and says…; My Vernarth I will make fire and heat water. Petrobus runs with his wings to look for sacred wood. Eurydice comments…, I will prepare the praiseworthy sacred breakfast.

When they were preparing to do all this, Jophiel and Hanael appeared to him, joining in the breakfast that would feed all the days and millennia of the world. Unleavened fruit, honey, and milk multiply above all, satiating hunger with satiated satisfaction.

Prophecy V – Fourth, Limbus Necropolis

“From so far away…, so far away that I listen to your sacrosanct cries…!
from the Koumeterium of Messolonghi…, rocking my elbows and hurting myself
moving in rare pleasant crypt upon crypts disconsolate stones
not so far away..., keys held in the eighth cemetery...
Who is to open the heavy door now...?
I come from Messolonghi 555 km in linear figures to Patmos...,
narrowing concave… doubtful in extension, passion princess cloud
He must welcome me benevolently in the night nymph consort...
Limbus N cloud, Cloud Cemetery lofty lofty hypogeum
soul of Limbo, before seeing the nut that girds the face in the graceful Grim Reaper resurrecting restless…, sinning… grail sacrament without Being or being…?
Necropolis Cloud, expectant mortuary technology...
amaze me if there is a byte for me...
narrow conscience, unseemly to amaze me?

Here the lost mist of the Nothofagus God phoneme-photon vanishes with divine mass light to build the Áullos Kósmos. The Sacrament of Limbus will provide spaces and assemblages of meters for thousands of areas of infamous wandering the Ouranos, approaching the Áullos Kósmos to host him and rescue the children of the meter that was missing in the numeral rule of the Megaron acroteria before going up to the Necropolis Cloud. Vernarth, mere body formalizing principle...
extinct delicate evocation of the shadow of Elpenor;
Achaean warrior of Ulysses grandiloquent who even has otitis
and verse where flu spreads influenza
heartbreak from far away reverberating in the elite of lexicons…
arriving equidistant ... the last one arrives threatening with his Kantabroi staying neither divided nor captured, taking refuge in outright failure twilight of megahertz, farce propaganda surrendered fear will not fall even after …

Vernarth falls from the Koumeterium Mesolonghi in the Necropolis cloud privileging his status, he falls from this gloomy digital platform with a high alcoholic degree! from the high heaven after drinking hours he came in the carriage that was from Zilos, with the passion of heaven depriving his understanding stunned on some branches of will of Ziziphus…, stunned on branches of mercy….

Vernarth in a contrite accident with Elpenor, his psyche flies to the realm of the dead, Hades was remaining prisoner in that world taking the form of a Homeric icon or shadow. Vernarth was asleep after his binge, and Elpenor asks him if he wanted to join him with some concoctions. He was with blurred vision, a headache, and still lying down. But in the passionate horror of his drunkenness, he gets up quickly, saying to Elpenor: For me, it was one less pain to drink after having fallen from such a distance without being able to request and have had the grace of my mother's lullaby. For this reason, I hug you! They went together to the Cloud Necropolis to continue in the Limbus trying to alternate their physical body to gaseous liquid. At that moment Eurídice hits her with a piece of wood on her legs so that she wakes up from the bite of that nightmare that overwhelmed her to finally be able to wake up. Raeder had gone with Petrobus to Skalá to seek inputs of gnosis and his own inspiration for accents before the welcome in Katapausis to come in the blink of an eye of San Juan, necessary redaction for licenses and to be admitted to his library.

Prophecy VI - “Third, Rethymnon City and State”

“Vernarth heard the sound of a bouzouki, spoke of a 40-day fast that Greece celebrates before Easter, at the Rethymnon carnival they come from all over Greece to attend as a family during the week with animations, evenings and concerts, dances…theatre, floats with Venetian art in the picturesque old town and modern city, in this ancient city …

Rethymnon Political Ellipsis

“Like territorial extension, past-future organized infamous scene…Vernarth imagines being with Etréstles in immediate predictions
with years and thousands…, clan hobbies, Rethymnon manuscript…
while he thus deliberated…, thus rejoicing in the immaculate extramural grotto thus being as if it were comparable to a Neolithic village; being together lost with eagerness to appear from political power... palaces, kings, pro-organized religions..., rancorous superlative temple, priestly-eucharistic, nationalized sovereign citizen... commanding Parliament of the Hellenic politai people
the competent anti-value entity of the substratum political state…
sedentary-agricultural or nomadic-livestock culture…, vertical Hoplite culture!”

In Thessaloniki street, he would meet his brother head-on...Imagining how he would be...? Well-dressed-shiny, he would be in a passing tavern usually naming himself tradition and terms of questionable validity rather than those of a retro-linguistic family, in the remarkable urban-city dialogue called seditious inns with networks of political territorial extension, reaching the colossal size of multinational ideals of a complex stratification, social meeting place, future ministries to whom to delegate?. They would arrive at the tavern in Rethymnon in Crete, they order coffee, biscuits, and Mosaikó chocolates. In an unexpected moment, he suddenly wakes up from this deep, hallucinating, and futuristic imagination! His brother appears immediately, not in Rethymnon but in Katapausis with the goddess Lepidoptera!

End Ellipsis Rethymnon

“At the moment his imagination breaks just when they were preparing to toast… Etréstles in this same interval appear in Katapausis Reader and Petrobus coming in a singular pilgrimage from Skalá…this is how the syllabic song of the arcane ***** is heard emitting from the grotto…, yellow lights and saffron…. Saint John and the Gospel celebrating the Eucharist…Vernarth would believe for the first time that the hermit would come, but No…!
his brother was to be in the intervening yellow-white light
in front of him nothing more than Etréstles visiting him”

Likewise, they would no longer be in Rethymnon,
but the carnival would already begin in the region of Patmos...
eating delicacies, and the Sousta towards the circle of the Sun in the hands…They have been two months with the sweetened Moon and the Sun posing its mass of light in her… soft palm next to her waiting for him in the proximity of a Hebrew silence

Estretles says Khaire Vernarth! from Piacenza who did not see your joyous lux! I can see now to the sound of yourself the stoic zither...
countenance light, the orbit of your eyes, pale asthenia without photon without light, expectorant suppuration of your sacred Lynothorax, Absent in front of the long and fatal transverse lapse!
Raeder makes a speech to Zeus Photon Child Lux
Fulminant spends time where it remains greater than the minimum...
Patmos is the time of the Messiah…, retrograde years…
polis Helennic city-states.

Culture-state… state time chorus in tune
Philosophical poetic-epic Olympian Aiónius global leader
Homeric poems..., Raeder I am..., a naughty Politai...
you Vernarth are Politai Hetairoi militia
candy wasted by me Raeder… sweetened in my memory
polytheistic, cultured and declined…
theocratic referendum or democratic right,
Exciting porridge of my Kourabiedes cookies
butter, icing sugar, flour, eggs from the icy cliff
vanilla or Mastica resin, ***, Ouzo, mastica liquor…
or other alcoholic beverages…, which bubble on the underside of Aiónius soaked in my mouth with water from petal buds
coated for you with sugar on the tip of my tongue…
reflective cops in a wonderful dialogue of a tasty recipe...
It's time for everyone else to snack too!!

In that second Raerder was choking on a Kourabiede biscuit,
but there was the guardian of the Petrobus who piloted the
throwing hieratic water on the inside of his mouth,
forcing him to take heart from the buttress of his speech
shooing thick crumbs from his skinny dialogue spitted...
Gerakis, ray, tabletop oak bull, scepter for those who rule with him and not...My Zeus friend I invite you to play marbles,
I invite you to tell us that we are friends...
we're both fine… only Space-separated us…?

Raeder runs towards Zeus' thunderbolt from his right hand.
he jumps up and takes it from her, in exchange for this she gives him his marbles...The entire earth tilts over the Aegean..., the earth's axis tilts eight degrees, altering the cerebrospinal fluid of the Hellenic geopolitical conception..., with Zeus poly infarcted over descending magnitudes of inter-politics, millennia and headless governments...

“Apokalypsis lightning restarted, emerged from a New World”
Prophecy VII -. “Second, Alikanto Aion, Quantum”
"Kalymnos, golden tetra steed Alikanto was grazing under the metallic moon...
transiting its quantum physics…, golden legs…, four golden domes
the super host being in Apoika Andros next to the villagers,
commemorating troupe and advent…, Heraklion next period
celebrant anniversary, progeny bearer of Kanti Cretense,
close cycles of the sacred fire, domestic environment, and private zeal...
funerary hidden cult… streets in the hieratic family dwelling
fertile women… totalized and lustful ****…
productive longevity and harvests…, family Apoika
next successor belligerence…, funerary plexus…
culty predecessor…, treatise and imprecation of law, theme and legible religion domestic scene, family civic servant ceremony

Goddess Hestia austere, head with eight sacred candles dressed
Olympus lacking without gods…, only Goddesses embargo!
Feminine Hestia Domestic Goddess, an emanation of the female oval to ovulating…Pritaneo, the central decree of the political harvests… foreign exchange grains to be minted monetary stock exchange of Athens… Pritaneo ford on the rise, ford on increase Aion... hesitant dart swoop into eternity,
Alikanto Perpetual Aion…Speaks with both hands
synchronized and tilted tongue…
stutters and swallows, in six paranasal sinuses
saturated with fiery saliva..., and an Internal voice saying say...
what makes sense to feel and what does not turn off...
sleeping waves in the poison of love igniting
intra-Vernarth love…, billing infected holy blood
methodical coupled time…, Gaugamela the bronze extremity,
of a lost leader…, won leader!

If I had to run to rewrite retro Adhoc poems and chosen trova,
With a shy Trojan verse, I would dare today if I kissed her in front of me… she!
she would jump from the hyperesthetic-Ouranos…, inhuman to the Aion world
aurora celestina, bleeds big and defiant today in your star
In herself Ella…, pestiferous condemnation sweetness and aura between her…she just be, she herself be supported be…, Oh… Goddess Hestia on your opposite leg unbraced arm, meadow and vein braid… assaulted by lost and thirsty love written everything if she tempts…, everything wields darkly if it took you to our Olympus… at night loving you whole..., emptying everything with no inappropriate hand singing don vine fissure and intimate company, may it be exterminated... passion outside with nailed stake..., iron embedding..., nails wounding...exhausted supra lips supra yours…, mid sand writing full to her…
tip of my Xiphos… blood made written with written maiden mythology,
letter sword Spatha…, cyclamen balm made whole if I had you!

“To the loves of the world I say…, cover your ears fungus of boredom, your torn ears squander ignoring more than sordid saying...my blood kills, my blood revives! I **** my blood and I **** everyone, with your blood scattered, ***** blood scattered…!
do not leave me alone until nightfall… I only ask for holy water,
emptied from your mouth goddess Hestia who flies tons over me...
I only ask for a spatha romantic blood sharp, ******, and scattered...
to write to the love wars that I have lost...
to the wars of love that I have won, slicing the jugular of the
treacherous and wicked emperor"

“… Alikantus, he remembered the Hoplite commander in Gaugamela, he remembered when he dodged arrows with his head so that they would not hit his body or his pectoral. From such a present moment falling by surrendering to the evocation of him. He goes down to a stream and confines himself to the vanity quagmire, continues on his path reaching a suspicious lagoon, drinks sacred water, drinking again manages to perceive the effigy of Vernarth in the mirror of Aion's Hydor... calling him from Patmos! Law reminded his master how he died for everyone in the world just as the world would not let him bring more than agonizing for him because there was no more space said Aionius ... "

Alikantus then clenched his jaws too hard, falling out all his molars, he asked the Gods in front of Hestia to restore them fifteen days before arriving at the Ekadashi in Patmos where his master, thus loving all the lives of the world, as well as the hidden cries behind the Dypilons hiding the power of God… or laugh at gagged iris flashes and mummified sighs with lives that subsist!

Vernarth from Patmos called to him so that his eyes looked invigorated like the swarms of green and gray vanadium fire, of mood in the predictive table and close prediction. AlIkantus bids farewell to Kalymnos spraying sorrel and hyper-odoriferous flowers of the Apoika in Kalymnos loving from above, very close, flying, loving everything so much that he forgot to fly. He sometimes fell hard but recovered retried as a baby steed in the womb of a mother new species to be born again in Apoika!


Prophecy VIII -  "First of Aionius, "Eleusis Prophecy of Hamor"
“Aiónius received news of Hamor's prophecy; cosmic orgiastic order
tyrannical snake victim throwing herself into her abyss and purpose..., banishment as an objective void to be decreed, even so ending the world from another world,
discontinuous terse march, slurred arpeggio, speech by Aiónius
there is no world left but if extermination…, undone threshold…, provoke in delicate chaos…!

As a child, I ran to the supreme world herding lions... I called them and they ran to me..., they came alone, some didn't...! Being young, one day Aionius went to the farm and counted the lions... Some came others No... Aionius..., in such a hamorio he was locking an earring from his ears, he hung them again, which happened the next day relaxed..., he saw a maiden who laughed hypnotized…, he sighed when she turned around saying with her poor gestures… Destroy it! The afflicted turned away not knowing what was coming… destroying the desolate world vilifying silky physiognomies, chipped and dandruff face slipping from yours being captive and arid…, tempts to flow libertarian imprint in foreign praxis, origin, and end,
me from the slime being born in my eighth life in nothingness ataxia…

The beloved Victim surrounded by snakes moved the stump of her arms
eaten away by the serpent that took refuge in thorns of forged steel...
she kept walking…, Aiónius pointed at her and kissed her gestures escaping frightened towards the valley in farewells... not fitting itself in valleys that were never anything she paraded with the current of her last word, the beloved again moved her arms following her in front of her the beast was on her, Aiónius buried from fleeing and coming… with fiery phenotype, abrupt vocabulary, says: “Strapping and interludes, after beings of impiety, the world of impiety, Hamor of the first wit… towards other refuges I will depart about a Yes devouring bare ring on it…”
escape curve that cuts the pelvis of my beloved
destructive be your curved world that before had to destroy me...
ultra pre-hellenic nymph Harpé passion spread on me…
Hailed libertarian praise, aristocratic vermilion accent, minority ruling? Overwhelming rigor expended, prophetic Hamor, prophetic expansive arsenal! It must come from all the supreme worlds with strokes and silhouettes conquering...true dream, confused hypothetical oscillate sweeping imploring and contracting popular decision, management and space of my Sickle…, sometimes uncontained… worse avenues in its radius and dark mourning badly wounded shadow! The vertex that finally launches opens the dawn and his Hamada flees... Leaving with the untidy serpent, about touching and causing rangers in the stuck earth.

Demeter and Persephone; based on Eleusis in ancient Greece
mystery myth of the abduction of Persephone daughter of Demeter…
by the king of the underworld of Hades, Abrahamanica's offspring
cabal, life in the descent, the search and the ascent…
Ascent of Indra lightning Vahana and lightning from her right eye,
Persephone to the reunion with her beloved daughter ascending.

Zodiac and mysteries involved, visions and sleight of hand
that of an afterlife, rain of seven trunks, long-lived Airavata
elephant, Eleusis jump psychedelic mystery, incision, and coherent rites, ceremonies and experiences of cold winters and life on earth
plants in gestation under the gift of Elitíaen and beings that
they are about to germinate and be born, beings in a chain of genes...
vegetable running on the earth, vegetable in March in its glory
September in the jaws of the purified phrase and inaccurate acropolis I…

Sacred obscenities, deadly tributes with the death penalty...,
wandering nights without clothes with obese and badly fragrant meats point and taco dances praising the harvest in honor of a dead Thracian bull, libating priestly vessels and bullfighting heads in a deliberately defined and improper triweekly ritual, revealed in Demeter and Persephone.

Only Hamor in his venerable pyx lies locked up knowing he is unable to open inside this lustful bewitching sparkles, the mystery of emancipated disenchantment that awakens from his slow consciousness without knowing how to go on passing in the sum of all happenings of Aiónius. ”

This is how he defined himself from the syncretism of Indra and the mystery of Eleusis, from Demeter and his daughter Persephone from the vile kidnapped underworld. Of the divine Goddess Elitia and the annual records of children born within a year in the germinating seed of the mystery of love that would begin with this prophecy with the initial "H" of the underworld exclaimed Hades and Greek heritage in this event. Vernarth and his companions listened to this prophecy, almost falling asleep, it seemed to them sweet pallor-bitter, love-heartbreak in the previous day before diagnosing having a presence in the hermitage of San Juan Apóstol for the superior company of a later day that was approaching as the greatest daring of all up in the mountains while disposing of Vernarth's Apologist obverse of Aiónius's.

Epilogue Prophecies - “Eleusis, Isadora Duncan to the Parthenon”

“Vernarth and Eurydice indulged in the jargon of agitated diasporas
of inhabitants fleeing the Rite of Eleusis, crossed hands and feet
They dueled on olive trunks with Theban thunder, vague Insurrection of the ancient world, and consonants of barbarian Pleiades,
acclaiming predilection of the Eremita San Juan to appear...
in a breath of peace resurfacing... but seeing that Vernarth was accompanied of Eurydice hid in front of them leaving only her aura near from the stream of a chrysalis!
In the dizzying succession of myths, good news reaches her sacred ears, waking up her trend and her high quarterly price outside the walls... being later received in the grotto of the hermitage in growing expectation and a link of longing that weaves to remind him of being a crusade piece.

The kidnapping of his reverie feared and timid frivolous crushing blizzard, he was walking surrounded by Falangists on horseback pointing at him and threatening him, scrutinizing in the distance loneliness of his past lives,
his regressive life, concerning key to origins of his illustrative Existence, stranded at this moment..., Vernarth makes a pact with himself to detach himself..., of his spirit, detach from their lives under a hypnotic and compelling law..., like a suspended index in the Sistine Chapel, homologous ship Ave Maria Messiah!

From Eleusis Vernarth vanished in aerial horse-dreaming,
he crossed through the pavilions with himself persevering some wake
riding his Alikantus ******* and standing with him to pillage the Empyrium niche Persephone's trace of herself and her ******* ******* them...
with devoted passion, milky way, and milky syrup chin howling...
Vanishing dancer, Athenian acropolis, Dionysian sanctuary of the acropolis… Stepdaughter-patron in the dance of Zeus and Themis lopsided frame of the season's wildness of all creation and defiance of Eleusis looking for her daughter and her children, priestesses safely taking off their corset and their pictures…
raging chastity, oligo blood, Itheoi music, outraged dance complaining, Possessed expressing being seductive but also a native *******... the underworld in darkness, free daughter, and iconoclastic Greek mythologist
inconvenient Victorian mania, a courtesan from Olympus, courtesan undressed! Isadora, Demeter, and Persephone… flooded with Aphrodite foam!

She “prayed songs with plexus and feet, plotting gardens around the world… full of baseboard feet where everything created in brief Apokálypsis was dying! By desolate Parthenons dancing in Muscovite ruins, maenades sweaty enclave and also throwing back his head as if possessed by ecstasy in her Bugatti and Leonidas…, enchanted by Aiónius! intoxicated and exorbitant with beautiful rosy placebo eyes... Hair with headbands vine petioles, her Nebris tight skin was wearing... in her hand's bunches of barberries to Dionysus with torches and live snakes a chaste crook naming Thirsus; rod topped with Kashmar branches wrapped in borders, vines and ivy, allusive link…, morbid ecosystem! covering her crotch in the Temple of her Kopanos dancing from the eternal fire cremated and in a romantic dimension remembering Byron's meritorious…
Hellenic passionate, and of Hölderlin poeticizing together with Aiónius.

Rudiment wound … ruinous on value exciting in those
of the imagined and creative in her perdition, Sicalipsis e impudicias
torn fire in the Metelmi and her ***** we are twisted,
epic worthy of greek tragedy dancing like waves of fire
in the forge in terrifying death of her children Deirdre and Patrick,
submerged and injured in the Seine in Paris in 1913, falling into the
water in the car that was traveling with her wet nurse… before…!
saying goodbye to them in urgent social commitments,
I Aiónius take you to the Empyrium.

What a dire tribulation in the prevailing misfortunes by not postponing it, retain the fate of whose children is quite a story with the kidnapping of theirs and merits of fulfilling commitments committed to solicitous artists... support, crestfallen inside a dresser or Bolshoi dancing statue, dancing empty with bare feet, frigid anemone, frigid Sea…

Arriving at the dawn of her last prophecy, Isadora Duncan accompanies her in full life beyond all limiting borders with the borders of her dance, the flat field of Eleusis receives her presumptuously associating in around for the dressings...
And left-handed dalliance self-indulging…, advanced barefoot to the Parthenon…!naked towards the world and the orb dug out of her before her undressed.

Reader and Petrobus jumped on this steep stone, emulating the meteorites that shone in the sky of Patmos such a party of nocturnal lights, such emery detached from a fleeting planet in the largest Hellenic scene saying: "Well-being to the Hellenic World all calm, dance and immunity to the firmament where Isidora rests in the Kantabroi of Aionius”

Silky smiled girls
With cups tipped off of saturdays doubts
Validating infidelity for a firm grasp
Graffiti sideways winks
Your only as remarkable as your last debute
Born again to a word offering baptisms in svedka
Your vices tattood on a list of hymns
Find solice in no mans company
Bring faith on your knees to a boy who can't speak his name
Your body is a temple with access through insecurity
Bless me father it has been two drinks since my last confession
Silky smiled girls
Make no home for validation in weekend crimes

all the lapses in time
mix like melted crayons
i'm tired and wish that they could stay on
my skin, but they drip down and in
to a puddle at my feet
the moments that drip, slip away
are the ones that i wish that i could keep
but they melt, mix and make
a puddle so deep
i should step in
i'd be delighted to sink
take turns to tip back and taste each one like a drink
splash, spill each one over my skin
make each a mess for memory's sake
turn, tilt, and take time to
clothe my self in all the caressing colors
like a motley collage
of rainbows turned chameleon camouflage
i'll hide in the folds of these memoreies
for earth's forever
fly where they take me
daydreaming while waking
splash in a puddle comprised of the past
pbpbpbpbpbpbp play in a puddle of
paint like
late night
rain puddle baptisms
and fake rage spasms
and faces so cute it's hard to look at em
money could buy happiness if
someone bottled and sold the sunlight that we napped in
on the sidewalk
the opposite appearance but the same substance
as our late night...not dates...adventures...and deep talks
the early Tuesday morning
walks and discovering
our very own piece of paradise
complete with waterfall
the overall romance
like an always sheepish glance filled swing dance
the innocence...
the spontaneity and
"do-it-you-won't-i-wouldn't-even-be-mad" spring break trips
taco bell and heathens and sheathens, HELL!!! comments
fresh beginnings and new starts
curious minds and ravenous hearts
lakes that look like bits of Scotland
and arms with seals also on hearts
(ar ar ar)
memories like melted crayons in a puddle at my feet
he will take the memories that i can't shake

Long time ago, I thought about staying in
An era lost,
Dead and gone,
Despite all the saving and baptisms.

They offered me the chance to lead them, to teach them,
to… to be king.
But my place was here.
So I drank some juice,
Said some words and here I am.

Didn’t seem like it was over though.
I was hitchhiking down a long and lonesome road.
Suddenly,
The skies filled with brimstone and irony,
The ground grew silent and still,
Clocks ticking wound satirically,
The sea drained into nothingness
like some gaping mouth was drinking it,
Dead gods awoke,
and there shined a shiny demon,
In the middle of the road.

He said to me,
“Welcome Moon-and-Star,
Come to me through fire and war.
Come, Legion,
Come and look upon the heart.
Lay down your weapons
And pick up your pen,
It is not too late for my mercy.

Now write the best poem in the world,
or I'll swallow your soul...”

Well, my many faces,
We looked at each other,
And we all said,

Okay.

And we wrote the first thing that came to our heads,
Just so happened to be
The best poem in the world,
It was the best poem in the world.

It went a little like this:

In the beginning, there was one source of light.
It would die and come back every night,
As a woman showing off her thighs
Just a little bit at a time.

In the beginning,
everyone bowed their heads towards the light.
They would dance and eat their friends alive.
We were not happy then,
these were simpler times.

Now we are played,
we’re the moth we’re the flame.
We were aware of the danger,
we could not look away;
my eyes are open.

I forget though
that people are not good to each other,
One on one.
Marx be ******,
The sin is not the totality of certain systems.
Theology be ******,
The sin is not the killing of a god.
People are just not good to each other.

We are afraid
and
We think that hatred means strength.

And so what we need is less brilliance,
what we need is less instruction,
what we need are less poets,
what we need is more beer,
a typist,
more finches.

And now I’m hoping for a poem
That will come to me when I’m asleep.
Because I can’t lie
And so I can’t write.

Our eyes pierce you, demon,
And it occurred to me that we have spent
our whole life
Starting over.

Caught pining for the things that we could’ve been:
We could have been gold diggers
we could have been gunslingers
we could have been a little bigger
we could have been our own ringers
we could have been good writers
we could have been good writers
we could have been good writers

But what we are,
is the silence.
Share with me all your pain.

I won't
Share your love.
I need all your love
Or it’s all for not.

Look what I have found, look what I have found!

Look what I have found, look what I have found!
An artificial light, we come and gather around.
This is why we have lovers and why we have fighters.

This is why the arms race and particle colliders.
Mine is a humble flame, just a little white lighter
And it belongs to me.

And yet
There is a loneliness in this world so great
That you can see it in the slow movements
Of the hands of a clock.
There are people so tired,
So strafed,
So mutilated by love or
No love,
That buying a bargain can of tuna
In a supermarket
Is their greatest victory.

So save me, I can't be saved,
I won't be saved.
I'm a citizen's son,
I don't need no soul.
All the soldiers say,
"It'll be alright,
We may make it through the war
If we make it through the night."
All the people, they say,
"What a lovely day, yeah, we won the war.
May have lost a million men, but we've got a million more."
All the people, they think
That no recall or intervention can work in this place,
That There is no escape.

Look into my eyes and it's easy to see
one and one makes two, two and one makes three,
it was destiny.
Once every hundred thousand years or so
when the sun doth shine
and the moon doth glow and the grass doth grow.

We dance in the thunder
Of collapsing walls and twisting cages.
The great black bellowing,
“I'm a god.
How can you **** a god?
What a grand and intoxicating innocence.
I'm a god.
How can you **** a god?
Shame on you, sweet Legion.”

We screech into the obsidian sheets
that blanket the way-out,
“When the giants of heaven forsake the earth
I shall destroy you for all that you’re worth.
With the bolt of Zeus and our golden throats
I will destroy you and send you afloat.
Whether you pillage the earth or sea
I will destroy you this I guarantee!”

Needless to say,
The beast was stunned.
Whip-crack went his whippy tail,
And the beast was done.
He asked us,
Be you angels?
And we said nay,

We are but men,

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal voice went snicker-snack!
we left Hymn dead, and with His read-head
we went hiking on ahead.

And the peculiar thing is this, my friends:
The poem we wrote on that fateful night,
It didn't actually read anything like this poem!

And the past followed me anyway.
so sure, I could’ve stayed there,
Could’ve been king.
But in my own way,
I am king.

be honest
when did you last wash your hands
perform bacterial baptisms
to was the nicotine
from your lucky
and pomade
from your hair

and when did you last
think of me at three am
were you in bed
in the sea and the sky
and was it hot in thirty below zero

do you miss me
when youre *****
and craving naivety
and when it gets too hot under fleece pants
are your thighs sweating yet?

Riot because it's expected riot because they want to arrest you riot because you are angry and full of righteous anger riot because f* the police and f the government f the a** in the white house riot because you don't know what else to do riot because they left you no choice riot because they'll shoot you with a gun riot because you can't defend yourself right because they fear you will riot for the dead babies riot for the crying mothers riot for incarcerated dad's riot for ****** parents riot for grandparents raising babies riot for the Foster system riot for abusive families riot for church goers riot for God for the saints and martyrs riot for the devil  riot for income inequality riot for mcmansions tenement housing section 8 and for interest only predatory loans riot for Wall Street stock fuckery riot for corporate radio where you feel what they want you to feel for the tail wags the dog riot for censorship for shitz and **** and f* and ***** and art and
truth and unpopular opinion riot for truth and the lies told to hide it riot because it feels good right because it hurts riot because that's what society requires of you riot by the seat of your pants Riot because no smoking no drinking no chaining up dogs riot because dogs chain you up by their wallets riot because cancer ate your insides and religion ate your soul riot because your brain belongs to science and 38 other corporations and legal entities riot because they stole your land and burnt down your family riot because they stole your voice tainted your poems your songs and water and water down your truth riot because the carpet bombed your town city neighborhood reservation farm ranch plantation in bomb shelters riot for pacification dancing shows and discotheques riot why not? F them riot because you ain't caught anything all day except maybe ***** riot for free titjobs and overpriced b* riot for unemployment riot for well-connected fraternity brothers
and elite ******* riot for fake morality and pregnant stepdaughters riot for empty nesters and growing too old riot for peacekeeping military envoys and well-armed diplomatic missions riot for philosophical differences over which college football team wears the right color uniforms for racist mascots for trails of tears of many a harassed and violated person riot for tears and fears in general and sanity of society riot for ***** streets and clean suburbs riot for privileges you never had....

and riot for those that did riot for broken glass and free TVs because they've been held in captivity for too long riot for the oppressed under-represented the ghosts riot for the conspicuous riot for the helpless riot for The helpful riot for those without love in their life because how can you live without love? Riot for the hate and the bigots they need some love upside their heads riot for peace because the cops and soldiers and guards and troopers won't stop on your account jackboot goose-stepping to the tune of some other a* riot for children locked away in cages treated like stray dogs and not given dignity riot for SWAT raids on working people riot for students shuffle around like cards riot for slavery riot for greed riot for substandard manufacturing and quickly thrown up housing riot for Hovels and vacationing rats and financial advisers with your money riot for the last gasps of fresh air and pure clean water riot for fresh food and grease pits riot for those people stroking out with arrhythmias and cats and bypasses and dying by insurance Representatives riot for the toe tags and the death certificates riots for the school's not teaching truth riot for profiteering from necessary services riot the Dead the suicides The Killers shooters riot for Injustice for public ****** riot for probation cost and fees and the cycle of poverty...

riot for love for life for death in multiple baptisms that just don't take because it's all guilt and superstition riot for the sweat on the browse the stains on the t-shirts riot for the calluses on the hand and the holes worn into the jeans riot for the roofers in summer and the ditch-diggers and winter riot for the clergy with the best of intentions riot for judges and cops bought off by other people's money riot with a pitchfork and a torch and a cause riot with a fire in your belly and a Love in your heart riot for wars of aggression and preemption and murdering children with bombs we manufactured and we sold and profited from and took that blood money and put up walls between us and those in society different from us because we bought into the fear strategies riot for fear riot for the ashes and the pine boxes and the crocodile tears and the false sentiments the thoughts and prayers riot for Dharma and karma and car alarms and superficial meanderings and musings riot for Riot's sake riot for dead babies riot because we all did it and you feel guilt right because they don't riot because of love love riot peace riot righteous riot

Just
six years old
when I found out that kids could die.
There was a family at my grandma’s church—
The only black family
in the entire congregation.
The mother
was petite, wore thick glasses, and played piano during church.
The father
was greatly obese, with thinning hair, and a permanent smile.
Their two boys
were four and twelve years old.
The night of their death
I saw them at church.
Service had just gotten out
and I was running wild with my two friends.
Both a grade higher than me.
We ran across the large stage
and jumped into the huge bathtub
they used for baptisms.
The four year old boy,
only an hour away
from Death’s grip.
He said to me with a big, genuine smile,
“Hi Daniel.”
But he was only four.
Practically a baby, I thought.
I was running with the big kids.
No time for babies.
So I turned back to running around with my friends,
ignoring his friendly greeting.
An hour later
that little boy’s dad
pulled the family Lincoln Town car over on the freeway.
Flat tire.
While the dad was walking around the back of the car,
the wife and two boys were waiting inside.
Some ******* drunk
slammed into the car.
The dad watched the car
fly forward and burst into flames.
The smiling four year old
burned to death that night.
The twelve year old
suffered severe brain damage and died two days later.
The mother’s face, chest, back, neck, arms, and hands bore
charred and bubbling skin.
The father died of a heart attack a few months later.
That piano playing lady of the Lord
buried her whole family.
A decade later,
a teenager back at my grandma’s church
for mother’s Day.
The burned
former mommy and wife
still sat and played at that piano.
For some reason
she was still working for the big guy upstairs.
I couldn’t understand it then, and I still don’t.
For not saying “Hi”
to that doomed little boy that night.
That was the first time I’d ever felt like an *******.
When I was six years old.

what terrible news, the marx in me said it true, article heading: mental health gets only 1% of council tax...£664 million a year on ****** health... £111 million on tackling obesity. here’s a simpler explanation... c.d. is part of hardware... mp3 is soft-ware... get a scratched c.d. and turn the hardware into software... then put the virus mp3 onto an iPod, which is hardware... then watch the technological virology take over... the host hardware will break, given that the parasitic software is implanted from a sick hardware it was copied from.*

i was redecorating my mother’s living room,
for a handshake and the prize:
don’t interrupt my drinking pattern, woman please!
so i found to ancient scribbles of paint,
but then hid them like a treasure chest...
i also found the vol. no. 2 of kant’s critique of pure reason
under one of the pieces of furniture...
over a year i lost it... blamed everyone i knew...
but in reality the realisation came when i rekindled
the bookmark coordinate:
it took me two conscious years to read heidegger’s opus,
consciously defined by reading poetry on the sly...
with kant i ended my reading with the introduction of hegel:
antonyms of a pure mind - the third conflict between transcendental ideas -
i got the antithesis straight away... mainly because it spoke of freedom...
while the thesis spoke of the laws of nature and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...
0 central...
it spoke of sequencing of events... it spoke of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
as paradoxical of 2, 3, 4, 5... and 3, 4, 5 and 4, 5, and 5.
i think i better translate this passage to exemplify the point...
i lost kant for over a year and the **** sizzled...
i kept heidgegger for a year and i came out wondering
why it should take someone 15 years to study aristotle by the man’s suggestion,
so i had myself the alternative:
philosophy begins with awe... well... so does tourism.
let's just say there are corridors at the junction...
we say i almost pickled a cat's paw with wet cinnamon
or ketchup to imprint a paw-print with the gaff quote:
i was here, i found the sound meow inexplicable,
incomprehensible... given the human complications,
i decided to utilise meow with randomisation away
from my superior intuition... whereby the phoneticism
of meow was less than my eyesight and hearing...
so i announced the whiskers and fur and snake-eye in mammal
with a meow... i used meow to communicate with the complex
vowel-consonant reason, but i found my intuition
in rachmaninoff's vocalise wordless song... with my ear against
the radio dreaming away... so said man un-attentive of me...
that i managed to mingle my instinct without the meow
asking for butter... and instead for the daydream...
diva lute diva tangled... diva es lute es flos...
there i was... the cat of abashed baptisms at the fountains of
the baptist with my head wetted...
careless for the dung bag walking partner, or the plaything
i was forced to take interest in... my casual...
fat for keratin, as if fat translated from man unto animal
to ask the boar for the daydream of the conveyor belt
with lost fur and gained fat...
off with my shirt i too graded the follow-up...
as a loss in the tightened woods of winter with the losing shadow
of the shadows of beckoned crowns not adorned in vogue.
but this was only 1912... five years before the revulsion...
before the revolution... five years! spent in the abode of harmonics
by the piano i tried to mistune to write a deathly haunt of presence...
operatic alphabets twisted me into recovering from
the foremost attraction of failure... the neglige of virginity lost
to the public's applause missing...
i too could have vouched a coming back: of spirals away from
the champagne starlight in bouquet crescendos,
for the simple minded aura of perfection - but i vouched
hypnosis as the adequate precursor of staging fright
as the lost composition rekindled into revisionary composition
regained - there too i found the picturesque familiarity
of unsung hilltops regaining strength in the longshanks' heels
as if by deed of achilles in strength regained...
to frighten the lowlands with that glorious fame of
being poisoned by the gratifications of excess in the untrodden path
thus trodden by ear and echo rather than foot,
into the zephyrs of the larynx-ballerinas upon mountain-tops...
thus there, among the content misanthropes -
i too searched orpheus' mirror and prometheus' stone
to be bound to an eternal moment that denied all
other eternal moments and furthered the denial
by not allowing a bullish billion of china
its existential prowess among nations so frequented
by scandinavian description.

The driver wears a clock
with a hat
and it tips in favor to the newest customers
twice a day.
It drives a bright orange cab
delivering backseat baptisms
to the patients walking across the flat-top abyss at night.

I see the cab roll up beside me
and its only one step to get in but, flights of stairs are truly there.
Judas with three hands invites me forward to sit down
but, he starts shouting in tongues and all I hear is something
about shoebox pupils.

The weather in the cab isn’t inviting,
it believes in me though
and hands me a paper bag to ***** the obnoxious ticks
away, leaving an empty stomach for fair elements.

I hear my stomach quote: “I am the egg,
a sack of an embryo
of culture and ******,
chairs open doors for me.

You are the prized treasure
of the spider’s remain bag.
Bleaching light is afraid
of you.”

The driver then says with solid breath,
“Jukebox oven needs only one more
piece of our lives.
It promises with frigid fingers and leftover voices
that swamps will always run under us.
So we do as conscience demands, we pay the fare
and believe that is fair.

The lies we tell of God
Are no baptisms in a dripping moon
No cleansing in and of sunlight
No anointing me of Earth

The lies we tell of God
A mark of mortal rage
A mourning that glows and devours
The fingerprints of our ancestors

The lies we tell of God
are the lies we tell of ourselves

Chapter IV
Gordian knot

Greek legend according to which the inhabitants of Phrygia, Anatolian region, in the current one needed to choose a king, so they consulted the oracle. The latter replied that the new sovereign would be the one who entered through the Eastern Gate, accompanied by a crow perched on his chariot. The one who fulfilled the conditions was Gordias, a farmer who had his cart and oxen for all his wealth. When he was elected monarch, he founded the city of Gordio and, in gratitude, offered the temple of Zeus his chariot, tying the spear and yoke with a knot whose ends were hidden inside, so complicated that no one could untie it. According to what was said then, whoever succeeded would conquer the East.
Alexander the Great, supported by Vernarth and a hand impregnated with globules from Eritrea, was on his way to conquer the Persian Empire, already united with both Bi steeds, Fire Hoof and Ox Head, in 333 BC. C. After crossing the Hellespont he transgressed the Sudpichi Stream like a weightless cloak of a Machi Begging to the Cosmos for Negechen for the rickety Rehue, prophesying to him on his hands dismembered of bravery, great assistance of 300 years of Nge -Nge Mapus souls in his furious nose that propelled him with anger; and which untied the Champollion knot with some sphinx uncovering Pandora's allegories from the Valleys of the Kings. Then he conquered Phrygia, where they faced the challenge of untying the diocesan knot. He solved the problem by cutting it with his sword, cutting his head between the eyes, one for each side ..., the South one was from Vernarth with his beautiful eyes saying "I always see light when I wake up and dawn at night to rub the back of my Alikanto always riding with Him in Lid Universal Patriotics”.  According to Curcio Rufo's narration:   "It is the same to cut it as to untie it." That night there was a storm of unburied lightning that symbolized, according to Alejandro, that Zeus and Joshua´s stone were with him Espanta cuculí, genuflecting his knee towards such a Period in his analogy, that he would go through the shadowy time zone of Time and his eroded geo intelligence Both exhorting the oracles appeared before the stormy voices saying: "We agree on the agreements with the solution and its knot avoiding more knots by the hands of empires without a solution."

It alludes to this knot, made of mane's manes killed in battle and sleeping maiden's hair for the hope of widowhood beyond Eden: "both meditates cutting and loosing." That is, it does not matter how it is done, the important thing is that it is achieved. Millions of arrows actually fall from their badly vibrated bows, before this motto that appeared on the arrows, with a single rope cut around it.

Currently the expression Gordian knot refers to a difficulty that cannot be solved, an obstacle that is difficult to overcome or a difficult solution or outcome, especially when this situation only supports creative or own solutions of lateral thinking. "To cut the Gordian knot" means to solve a problem sharply and unceremoniously; that is to say, that discovering the essence of the problem, we will be able to reveal all its implications.

Top Ten Oases:
Just half a day after arriving in Gaugamela, Etrestles from Kalavrita, who came from Messolonghi, joined them; He came with his Kanti Black Steed "Rain of Perennial Fog". They came from Crete where the ultra cosmic powers were transmuted through their noses. That is why Kanti, as he approached the pair Vernarth and Alexander the Great flew leaping and shooting blue fire down his foamy muzzle. His ears sparkled like a Laziko dance of the Mediterranean Dodecanese of the proto Sirtakis of the north wing of whispered compasses. Holy kisses and hugs are halted and uttered, and the Macedonian Saints bowed to Lord Etretles.

Etrestles says:
I come from Messolonghi; of the eighth cemetery and of the eighth day. I get stuck the Dionysian aroma of his intentions when untying the Gordian knot. I was welcomed by the Charioteer in his armored car, after sleeping a thousand years I was reborn next to my face of the current of the greater solar star. The search for that shouting made me celebrate the search for that shouting of you. The similiar hairy body that fell contracted on my wonderful fingers, delighting my humble tributes to the beetles that accompanied me to direct my sight to the sepulchral vaults near their bodie Incorrupt.
Which of all the columns erected is capable of opening all the columns built in the pavilion of these moles without shapes or caves of colors ..., only the vitalizing Aeolian pulmonary diaphragm of my reverie, is who I think would ... To all of us who are trapped in holy Hellenic soils, I bring you good news: Auriga supports me with her Blacksmiths from the twelve rivers of the Dodecanese, to loosen the barriers of You, Beloved Brother Vernarth, and of you, my Lord Alexander the Great. .  Our father Staktos and our mother Vitabión that her lineage and beautiful face have not been corrupted in a thousand years.   Since our ninth baptism in Ayia Lavra, where she saw me be buried for the ninth time. Whose archpriest with his holy oils made him slide down our partition, pretending to be a dance of blessed water for this task in Gaugamela. To all of you. Blood of my blood, I feel your sacred vertebral need speak from within!

Auriga says: Orion's *****; everlasting fuel, will give strength to their steeds, to rise above the great contest, to brandish my undulating Xiph swords, to unsolder the bars of their oppressed souls before spilling the blessed blood of a Hellenic Soldier as sweet syrup for the dying delirium of those who will see the boom of the fireflies decay, baptisms about past lives, deaths about future lives.

Etrestles says: My ****** Vernarth, by the underground caste conglomerate you will wake up! To you. Like me, one day I lay as I was to my crude death in my last life at the hands of a Spartan Soldier. You blood of my blood released my bars to determine my Hellenic situation!

As this happened, I put in an odalisque and blew a similiar flow of ***** into my ear from the numb Vernarth. The waves and waves of paradise caused amazement at the coming duel. Before the enemy more than 250 thousand infantry and cavalry, faked tanks, archers, Greek hoplites, Peltasts, elephants and sophisticated weapons of war. Beyond mercenaries of death sowing the last words of ardor in their hands of faith of triumph, before the Macedonian militants too inferior  to the hordes of Darius in account only of 47 thousand militiamen of Alexander the Great.

under edition, to be continued

Safe Harbor
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin N. Roberts

The sea at night seems
an alembic of dreams—
the moans of the gulls,
the foghorns’ bawlings.

A century late
to be melancholy,
I watch the last shrimp boat as it steams
to safe harbor again.

In the twilight she gleams
with a festive light,
done with her trawlings,
ready to sleep . . .

Deep, deep, in delight
glide the creatures of night,
elusive and bright
as the poet’s dreams.

Published by The Lyric, Romantics Quarterly, Angle, Poetry Porch and Poetry Life & Times. Keywords/Tags: Kevin Roberts, Kevin N. Roberts, Kevin Nicholas Roberts, Romantic, Poet, Romanticism, safe, harbor, night, dreams, imagination



These are poems I wrote for my friend Kevin Nicholas Roberts, who in addition to being a talented Romantic poet, was the founder and first editor of Romantics Quarterly.



Ophelia
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin N. Roberts

Ophelia, madness suits you well,
as the ocean sounds in an empty shell,
as the moon shines brightest in a starless sky,
as suns supernova before they die ...

My "Ophelia" was inspired by Kevin's "Ophelia" and, of course, by Shakespeare's Ophelia in "Hamlet."



Goddess
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin N. Roberts

“What will you conceive in me?”—
I asked her. But she
only smiled.

“Naked, I bore your child
when the wolf wind howled,
when the cold moon scowled . . .
naked, and gladly.”

“What will become of me?”—
I asked her, as she
absently stroked my hand.

Centuries later, I understand:
she whispered—“I Am.”

Published by Romantics Quarterly (the first poem in the first issue), Penny Dreadful, Unlikely Stories, Underground Poets, Poetically Speaking, Poetry Life & Times and Little Brown Poetry. Keywords: Muse, Goddess, Erato, Beloved, poetic, inspiration, lyric, poetry, divinity, Orpheus, Sappho



Talent
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

I liked the first passage
of her poem—where it led
(though not nearly enough
to retract what I said.)
Now the book propped up here
flutters, scarcely half read.
    It will keep.
    Before sleep,
let me read yours instead.

There's something of love
in the rhythms of night
—in the throb of streets
where the late workers drone,
in the sounds that attend
each day’s sad, squalid end—
that reminds us: till death
we are never alone.

So we write from the hearts
that will fail us anon,
    words in red
    truly bled
though they cannot reveal
    whence they came,
    who they're for.
And the tap at the door
goes unanswered. We write,
for there is nothing more
    than a verse,
    than a song,
than this chant of the blessed:
    If these words
    be my sins,
let me die unconfessed!
Unconfessed, unrepentant;
I rescind all my vows!
    Write till sleep:
    it’s the leap
only Talent allows.

"Talent" was a poem Kevin liked and requested more than once.



Too Gentle, Angelic
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

Too gentle, angelic for Nature, child,
too pure of heart for Religion’s vice . . .
Oh, charm us again, let us be beguiled!
With your passionate warmth melt men’s hearts of ice.

"Too Gentle, Angelic" was written shortly after Kevin's death. He died on December 10, 2008 and the poem was written on December 23, 2008, just before Christmas. 



Beloved
by Michael R. Burch

a prayer-poem for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

O, let me be the Beloved
and let the Longing be Yours;
but if You should “love” without Force,
how then shall I love—stone, unmoved?
But let me be the Beloved,
and let the Longing be Yours.

And as for the Saint, my dear friend,
tonight let his suffering end!,
and let him be your Beloved . . .
no longer be stone: Love unmoved!
But light on him now—Love, descend!
Tonight, let his suffering end.

For how can true Love be unmoved?
If he suffers for love, Love reproved,
I will never be your Beloved,
so love him instead, so behooved!
Yes, let him be your Beloved,
or let You be nothing, so proved.

Must this be our one and sole pact—
keep you ***** forever intact?

I wrote "Beloved" a few months before Kevin’s death.



Nightfall
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

Only the long dolor of dusk delights me now,
     as I await death.
The rain has ruined the unborn corn,
         and the wasting breath
of autumn has cruelly, savagely shorn
               each ear of its radiant health.
As the golden sun dims, so the dying land seems to relinquish its vanishing wealth.

Only a few erratic, trembling stalks still continue to stand,
     half upright,
and even these the winds have continually robbed of their once-plentiful,
          golden birthright.
I think of you and I sigh, forlorn, on edge
               with the rapidly encroaching night.
Ten thousand stillborn lilies lie limp, mixed with roses, unable to ignite.

Whatever became of the magical kernel, golden within
     at the winter solstice?
What of its promised kingdom, Amen!, meant to rise again
          from this balmless poultice,
this strange bottomland where one Scarecrow commands
               dark legions of ravens and mice?
And what of the Giant whose bellows demand our negligible lives, his black vice?

I find one bright grain here aglitter with rain, full of promise and purpose
     and drive.
Through lightning and hail and nightfalls and pale, cold sunless moons
         it will strive
to rise up from its “place” on a network of lace, to the glory
             of being alive.
Why does it bother, I wonder, my brother? O, am I unwise to believe?
                                    But Jack had his beanstalk
                              and you had your poems
                         and the sun seems intent to ascend
               and so I also must climb
          to the end of my time,
     however the story
may unwind
and
end.

I wrote "Nightfall" around a month after Kevin’s death.



Storied Lovers
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin and Janice Roberts

In your quest for the Beloved,
my brother, did you make
a near-fatal mistake?



Did you trust in the Enchantress,
La Belle Dame, as they say,
Sans Merci? Shall I pray
more kindly hands to gather you
to warmer *******, and hold
your Spirit there, enfold
your heart in love’s sweet blessedness?



No need! One Angel’s fond caress
was your sweet haven here.
None ever held more dear,
you harbored with your Anchoress
whenever storms drew near.



Whatever storms drew near,
however great the Flood,
she held you, kind and good,
no imperious savage Empress,
but as earthly Angels should.



In your quest for the Beloved
did the road take some strange fork
where ecstatic feys cavort
that led you to her hermitage
and her hearth, safe from that wood.
(Did La Belle Dame’s dark eyes hood?)



I am thankful for the marriage
two tender spirits shared.
When the raging waters glared
and the deadly bugles blared
like cruel Trumps of Doom, below
how strong death’s undertow!



But true spirits never sink.
Though he swam through hell’s fell stink
and a sea of putrid harms,
he swam back to your arms!

*

Life lived upon the brink
of death, man’s human fate,
can yet such Love create
that the hosts above, spellbound,
fall silent. So confound
the heavens with your Love
and fly, O tender Dove!,
to wherever hearts may rest
once having sweetly blessed
a heart like my dear brother’s
and be both storied lovers.

Amen

I wrote "Storied Lovers" on New Year’s Day, January 1, 2009.



You Were the One Who Talked to Angels
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

You were the one who talked to Angels
while I was the one who berated God,
calling him Tyrant, Infidel, Fool,
Killer, Clown, Brute, Sod, Despot, Clod.

But you were the one who talked to Angels—
who, bathed in celestial light,
stood unarmed, except for your pen
and your journal, ecstatic, to write.

How kind their baptisms, how gentle their voices!
Considering their nature the world rejoices,
and you were their gentle, their chosen one . . .
you, my kind friend, now unkindly gone.

But you were the one who talked to Angels,
in empathy, being their kind,
a child of compassion whose tender heart
burst beneath skin’s ruptured rind.

You sought the Beloved with a questing Heart;
once found, the heav’n-quickened Spirit must fly!
You mastered Man’s strange, fatalistic Art—
to live, to love, to laugh, then die.

But living here, Angel, you found the arms
of a human Angel and, living, you knew
the glories of temporal, mortal love
where one and one eclipses two.

And now she mourns you, as we all do.

But you were the one who talked to Angels,
as William Blake did, in his day,
and, childlike, felt their eclectic grace—
sweet warmth, illuminating clay.

Two kinds of Warmth—a Wife’s, and Theirs.
Two kinds of Love—Human, Divine.
Two kinds of Grace—the Angels’, Hers.
Two Planes within one Heart combine.

And so you brought far heaven near,
and so you elevated earth
and Human Love, to where the Cloud
of Witnesses might see man’s worth.

*

My Christlike brother, who talked to Angels,
where do you soar today, I wonder?
Do you fly on white percussive wings,
far, far beyond earth’s abyssal thunder,
and looking back, regard the earth
and its lightnings and their bellowed hymns
as the sparks and groans of a temporal Forge,
as merely momentary things?

There, looking up, do you see the Host
of those who ascended, of those who see
all things more clearly, having slipped
thin veils of flesh, for Eternity?

And will you, in your Joy, forget
the sufferings of mere serfs below,
or will you remember, cry “Relent!”
to those with the power to bestow
the gifts of spirit upon the many
rather than just the Chosen Few,
who sell bottled grace for a pretty penny
and break the hearts of doves like you?

Or will you be the Advocate
of those who live—the ***; the *****;
the homeless man; the indigent;
the waif who begs at the kirk’s barred door
and dares not enter, for her “sins”
which the rich-robed mannequins deplore
as they circle her and mind the store?

Will mercy, pity, peace conspire
to hold you in their gravity
so that, still Human, you aspire
to change earth’s dark trajectory?

I wrote this poem the day after Kevin died.

Keywords/Tags: poetry, poems, poet, Kevin Roberts, Kevin N. Roberts, Kevin Nicholas Roberts, romantic, Romantics Quarterly

There is no knife that can cut as deep as you.
Baptisms save no one...reassurance of mind is nice though.
My mind and my room, filling us inside and out.
All of the little things I barely use.
The same things, done and done.
Words become repetition just as the Earth and Motion.
And what of the countless people who take their dreams and write them on paper
as they take their lives, and write them on paper?

let me take you to church on friday nights after gin and whiskey

roar ‘oh my god’ so she knows you like it
take communion when my thighs greet your face
- - - - taste thy gifts, which we are about to receive
knees rap the hardwood floor, make you beg for mercy
whisper sins in my ears, teeth bashed pillows no longer muffle
crying out your confessions, repent
- - - - keep it pseudo with a blindfold
dip deep, deliver baptisms when i get you wet
- - - - god is a woman in this bed, no more ****** mary’s
metamorphose **** into holy water
vocalize moans to the harmony of the gospel
precise fingers conduct the choir
- - - - adagio, andante, allegro - you designate
reach salvation when you ******
- - - - arch your back, thy will be (un)done

Spinal column
a stairwell of books,
rungs of untouched vertebrae
avoided by the bibliophile herself

[myself].

Brain is wired differently
than the rest of them.

At first,
I thought it was a matter of being
****-retentive.
A veteran perfectionist
who strives to imagine every detail
as intricately and accurately
as the author must have intended.

Character's faces morph into
sloppy, patchwork collages,
features copied and pasted from
beautiful strangers and
celebrities who played
in the movie adaptations.

Their appearances are both
cliche
and
incomprehensible.

I am told a character is pale,
but can only manage to visualize a complexion
the colour of notebook paper,
penetrating blue eyes mere apparitions
against a wintry terrain--
her ears
nose
lips
misplaced beneath the tundra.

I lay the book atop my collarbone,
its cover pitched into a make-shift tent.

(Cautiously).

Almost as if I am
afraid to disturb
the seriffed constellations
that flicker above my heart.

I stare up at the ceiling
(vacant, as am I),
my eyebrows scrunched
into nooses of concentration,
several minutes passing before
her cheeks gradually begin to thaw,
warming over in an ombre
of pinks and olives.

And I rejoice!

Strike down the tent,
pupils hungry for prose.

But there is always
another character.

In Valley of the Dolls,
a handsome man,
whose hairline I cannot
properly envision

(this makes him less handsome).

This time,
when I lay my book down,
I do not proceed with caution,
the corners of its pages
dog-earing against my body.

Google:

men's hairstyles, 1940's

(I need to commit to memory
three different styles
so the three different males
I am working with
are not trite clones of each other).

I can only manage three pages
at a time
before having to take a break.

Three pages for me
is strenuous,
as I pause to formulate
images befitting Jaqueline Susanne's
creative vision;
as I look up every word
I don't know the meaning of
in the dictionary;
as I repeatedly deliberate
the same passage
because of my incapability
to thoroughly process the text

Three pages for me
is strenuous,
as I pause to formulate
images befitting Jaqueline Susanne's
creative vision;
as I look up every word
I don't know the meaning of
in the dictionary;
as I repeatedly deliberate
the same passage
because of my incapability
to thoroughly process the text

Three pages for me
is strenuous,
as I pause to formulate
images befitting Jaqueline Susanne's
creative vision;
as I look up every word
I don't know the meaning of
in the dictionary;
as I repeatedly deliberate
the same passage
because of my incapability
to thoroughly process the text

Three pages for me
is strenuous,
as I pause to formulate
images befitting Jaqueline Susanne's
creative vision;
as I look up every word
I don't know the meaning of
in the dictionary;
as I repeatedly deliberate
the same passage
because of my incapability
to thoroughly process the text

Three pages for me
is strenuous,
as I pause to formulate
images befitting Jaqueline Susanne's
creative vision;
as I look up every word
I don't know the meaning of
in the dictionary;
as I repeatedly deliberate
the same passage
because of my incapability
to thoroughly process the text

Three pages for me
is an exponential task,
as I pause to formulate
images befitting
Jaqueline Susanne's vision;
as I look up every word
I don't know the meaning of
in the dictionary;
as I repeatedly deliberate
the same passage
because of my incapability
to thoroughly process the text

Three pages for me
is strenuous,
as I pause to formulate
images befitting Jaqueline Susanne's
creative vision;
as I look up every word
I don't know the meaning of
in the dictionary;
as I repeatedly deliberate
the same passage
because of my incapability
to thoroughly process the text

Three pages for me
is strenuous,
as I pause to formulate
images befitting Jaqueline Susanne's
creative vision;
as I look up every word
I don't know the meaning of
in the dictionary;
as I repeatedly deliberate
the same passage
because of my incapability
to thoroughly process the text

Three pages for me
is strenuous,
as I pause to formulate
images befitting Jaqueline Susanne's
creative vision;
as I look up every word
I don't know the meaning of
in the dictionary;
as I repeatedly deliberate
the same passage
because of my incapability
to thoroughly process the text

on the first
(second...
third...
I don't know...)

try.

Turns out
this is more than just
being ****-retentive.

This is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

I yearn for times of old
junior high
when I could finish a novel
in a day--
ramona and beezus
butterfly lion
the silver donkey.

But even then,
the obsessions were there,
one substituted for another:

the ceaseless gushing
of the soap pump
and dizzying rotation
of the faucet taps.

Could barely hold literature
between my palms
without aggravating
the rosettes of eczema
that had sprout
along my hands,
scoured clean and raw.

Eventually,
I outgrew these harrowing baptisms.

Am still waiting to outgrow
the laborious nature of my readings.

My only antidote poetry,
for it heals me in
every way
fiction could not
[cannot].

The poems do not trouble me,
do not burden me
with overwhelming arrangements
of ink and letters.

Instead,
I confront the English language
line by line,
sedated by the simple
fragmentation
of each stanza.

Because even when fragmented,
these stanzas offer up to me
the written word
like it is ambrosia
when I am starving
for intellect
but cannot feast.

I am spoon-fed words
until I am full--
am reminded that
I am not the stupid girl
I believe I am,
courtesy of my
obsessive, compulsive short circuits.

I do not relate to the cohesion of prose,
cannot deny the brilliant likeness
that exists between the reader
and her enjambment--
both fractured mosaics of metaphor.

I am
as broken
as these verses.

But

it is only as
I shatter
that I am freed.

Now I will take ya'll further back in my time
The time when I realized angels were taking care of me
They were always mine
My Daddy was quite different when he came home from Vietnam
My Mother became secondary
His mission in life was to show others God is number one
Don't misunderstand me, I know this is true
Yet I saw it my in mothers eyes at times this made her blue
Daddy stayed in the army but we also opened our home
It became a place of residence for the unwanted
We called it "The Manor"
A place to find Christ and no longer rome
During this time I was a very young child
In my eyes this enviroment felt a bit wild
Everyone rejoicing, singing hymns
Then out of the blue great vibrance would come
Someone would burst out speaking in tongues
Oh, so very much going on
My sister was upstairs jammin to psychedelic rock
Hangin with the hippies who were supposed to be
downstairs at church or the rehab class
Yet they had wandered away
To the psychedelic world that led them astray
I remember once seeing one of the alcoholic homeless men
Sneakin into my Daddy's bathroom
Drinking his aftershave
To satisfy his alcohol crave
Ah, the good Ole' daze
After sometime we moved "The Manor"
To the country, in the sunshine
A place we called "The Farm"
A big ole Victorian home, the stairs to the attic were gone
The stories were that the house was haunted
The scary tales my sisters told me yet still
I never felt any harm
The Cape Fear River flowed thru nearby
I watched the Baptisms as I played on the side
Spiritualism in my heart so very true
It buried deep inside me as I grew
I decided not to let it escape
For in my heart I knew the true cost it intakes
Even then I longed for a simple life
Trouble free, I dreamt, at no price
I sure did get happy when I would see
Grandma and Papa pull up
It meant we were heading to the beach
In Papa's SUV
That is always when true PEACE would arrive
Inside of me

I feel as if I'm corrupting you
You exhale as you have me pushed against your bed
I think of unholy baptisms and ****** awakenings
I just want your body
You slur insistently
But I also want your hair. And your lips. And your eyes.
You add importantly
Using your fingertips gently for emphasis
Now I don't know whether to go or stay

Every year visits to grandparents occur,
And the grandkids have “grown so much,”
And they need to “put bricks on their heads”.
Every year the family is updated about
The sports and the activities,
The good dates and the not-so-good dates
Of the previous year,
The births and baptisms,
The deaths and funerals.
Every year we endure the
Sometimes awkward, always long conversations
With the friends we see just once a year,
Maybe less, and every year we seem
To get further and further apart,
And the conversations are shorter,
Maybe even just a “Hey”, and you
Wonder why we can’t talk to these people anymore.
Why do people so close to us in heart become
So much more hard to communicate with in person?
Is it technology, fooling us into thinking
That we are connected to each other, when really
We don’t know each other at all?
Is it time, slowly eroding our years of
Memories and similarities, leaving us
Longing for the “good old days” instead
Of embracing the new ones?
Is the problem simply us;
Are we not willing to create new memories,
Go through the stresses of trying to forge
A new relationship when distance
Becomes an issue?
Maybe that is the problem.
Yet no one is willing to fix it,
So every year is the same.
I’ll probably be writing a poem about this
Next year.

We’d made things once, things of substance:
Copiers, straight-sixes for Chevelles, Novas, Impalas,
And tons of film, of course, loaded into tiny Instamatics
Which accompanied us to everywhere and everything
(Unless they mystifyingly scampered away from pocket or purse,
In which case we drove, cursing and volleying blame to and fro,
Fifteen, twenty, maybe more miles to retrieve them
From the kitchen table or back of the toilet)
To document births and baptisms and weddings,
The in-betweens and hereafters,
(Renderings of children and dogs
Sitting under trees with blossoms of pink and red
The blooms implausibly bright, child and beast stolid yet smiling,
Or tableaus of tux-clad cousins and brothers,
Squinting blankly in the aftermath of a visual right-cross
Courtesy of the supernova-esque emanation
From the blue cube perched on the camera’s top)
So they would not be victims of the vagaries of memory.

All of that is gone--no, taken--from us now,
The means of production having embarked for Memphis or Mumbai,
Those things which sustained us now simply vestigial curiosities,
Like hand-cranked presses or ancient milking machines
We’d tittered at on long-ago school field trips.
The march of time and technology, to be fair,
But it has left us obsolescent as well,
Stranding us without context or clarity,
With access to neither advance or retreat
(The old photographs simply mock us now,
The red-eyed images fading to the soft tones
Of a rose at the end of its summer,
The name of the third man on the left,
Who’d worked on the line with us nearly three full decades,
Refusing to be conjured out of the thin air)
Leaving us diffuse and unordered
As the old and cracked negatives
Stuffed higgledy-piggledy between old snapshots
In an enveloped at the back of an old file drawer.

we circled each other like strange, timid animals of prey
you’d never seen me crazy
but you’d never given me a reason to try
so discarded you mark me
shelf me as that little girl who’ll never understand



now here we are parked in your car
the orchard is quiet tonight
echoing the silence we are disrupting
before you can take my hand and preach your lies
I pop the door and take off

you sigh believing me to still be a child
until you get out to fetch me
and in the dark you see my top before you
do you question what’s underneath me
like you do what’s under the rest of my clothes

no where in sight is the little girl you once knew
intuitively you head toward the pond
contemplating new baptisms
or finally cleaning off layered dust to find reality
wondering what tragedies I’ll bring you this time

do I still make you feel like a young boy as I jump
in the water covered by mere splashes and starlight
are you surprised by the me I am here
that the me you barely knew was fraud
or rather only a mask as painted as your own

until I watched her at low-tide, I never
believed
she could pull water from the rocks

until I walked to the shore at dawn, and
found her moon-lonely, floating
above the empty remnants of a river once home
to a town-full of
baptisms,

until erosion turned her cheeks to
aqueducts, pouring herself back into
holy

until she looked at me and asked
if I thought they would notice that
from now on the Mississippi would be salt water,

until I looked into her eyes, hollowed and
cored and caved, and
all of the things I had drowned or orbited
in her over the years was looking back
at me

I didn’t know that running
just leads
to caught

Koumeterium  Messolonghi  - CHAPTER I

After sleeping for a thousand years the current of the major solar star fell on my face. I slept, not smiling at the crowds that buried me smearing my only bones. The search for that shouting made me celebrate the porous and fuzzy bodies that fell on my scratchy fingers, delighting my humble tributes to the beetles that accompanied me to direct my gaze to the sepulchral vaults near me. Some were filled with an augural awakening semblance; like the one that begins today, with the ominous words that moved from today, to the beat of my gaunt jaws. Among tombstones of dinosaur floral emeralds, in an autumn blue glade, birds were rubbing themselves on the edges of the sculpted stones. Meanwhile, I felt the mustard leaves riding on the dried carnation leaves. She looked at them dressed in white, even the slab of Drestnia, which closed her senses, remained behind bars with her hands crossed, as if evolving with her body to attend a new Era of geography and different technology. In her chest the living vertiginous wind would run, until the corporeal appearance in the light of the Koumeterium of Mesolongui; that hosted more than a thousand years ago, Etrestles de Kalavrita.

This immense palace and flat place, is nothing more than an asylum, where the worst plague originated that began the death of Lucifer's sentinels, which he dropped on this place with their beautiful golden cloaks; whose satagenesis the burning ground would rise to the ten fossilized cemeteries, under that of Mesolongui. I walked slowly with my old body dragging me, by the tenth floor, and that the adolescent pointed stones would break my nails; as if they were claws of a mammal trapped by the lava of a volcano. In each advance, the armor of my last patriotic fight would awaken in me, and that of its moving to observe how the parents worked through the conglomerate of castes, fighting in subterranean inclemencies.

Tease them when they wake up...:

Etrestles ...: "Which of all the columns erected is capable of opening all the columns built in the pavilion of these masses without shapes or colors ..., only the diaphragm of the vitalizing Aeolian lung of my reverie, is who I think I would...? To all those who are on the run and trapped under the soil of Mesolongui, I bring you good news ... not in a thousand years has her beautiful body been damaged. Since my birth in Ayia Lavra, he saw me being buried for the ninth time, in the fossilized Ninth Cemetery. Who’s Archpriest with his holy oils slipped across my partition, pretending to be a water dance engendered at the bottom of the Ionic. Between the arcades of the temple my mother Vitabion ran through the columns; to the outside to bathe in the sacra-vertebral water of my baptisms past. They were my past lives providing with the Auriga their entrusted previous lives. And you Mother ..., one day you tested the weight of my recycling ...?! There you, comrades of wars, of sacrosanct pilgrimages, of the enormous steamy baths of civilization in the Olympic and Equestrian fields. To you, who live here, just like my death in my last life at the hands of a Spartan soldier? You, blood of my blood, I feel your need speak within me...? And in the last Drestnia, which for its sixth uprising from here from Mesolonghi, between bars sealed your tomb to indeterminate the Hellenic situation. I have had to drink from the thorn resin, to speak to you from here, with my bony hands to touch the others just as yours are...Drestnia, from my still preserved rib, I will be reborn by appeasing the domain of collective thought and Willful, preventing your freedom. From my rib you will return to your present life, from whose cold, the flower seeds skeletonized the perimeter of your life ..., Etrestles went with all of them towards the interior of the Koumeterium of Mesolongui, towards about eighteen hundred meters in a zenith direction”

They went to constitute the Council of the Necro-Messolonghi, to define the minutes. --- While the music with its winds adorned the arrival ---. Just at the moment, the Auriga arrived with his blacksmiths; they came to free Drestnia, with his multconsciousness. What happiness for Etrestles, he ran through the underground pavilions, until the oldest Koumeterium, the first fossilized. Where thousands of Years, with numerous species now extinct, Etréstles came to give them the good news loudly!  Meanwhile, the Council attacked the promulgation of sprinkling the divine vine of the Dodecanese fields, in the seedling of Markos Botsaris.

Judge ...: With my limp, I have to advocate the reintegration of the outstanding Markos Botsaris, who once freed us from the Turkish occupation!

Ashurbanipal ...: My Syrian reign, full of dynamism, will place on its jambs the powerful image of the South-West Wind, in honor of its victorious exit in Kalidona.

Etrestles was just walking Drestnia to the Council, and thousands of harmoniums undermined doubts of the lordship that invoked the hero. Everyone stands up, the Council at their octagonal table, with their assistants, leaving the vine glasses empty to welcome the last surviving female of the first Koumeterium of Mesolongui.

The harmoniums, like Apollonian rubies, enlarged the dimensions of the cave vaults. --- They sit down and the music ends ---. Drestnia with some leaves on her shoulders adorned the new stage, where she would go to sit for the new becoming.

Asurbanipal ...: To you Oh gifts, of the Universe, you are well received at this Council, where one day they brought me to praise my contributions from the entrance of Humanity! But the topic for today will be awaiting the arrival of Markos Botsaris , just like you who have reached this end, thanks to the generous Auriga.

Auriga ...: The ***** of the wax of Orion; Eternal fuel, gave strength to my peers steeds, to rise above distant lands, to arrive with my Blacksmiths to unsolder the bars of Drestnia.

Blacksmith...: Our eyes were closed every hundred kilometers, but Eurydice with her calendar, made the aphelion bring us closer to this feat.

Echoes ...: Dust ..., Myth ..., Dream ..., Illusion ..., they have swirled the gallop of millennia, dressing the Squall in gray...! What dark words illuminate the hopes, only down here, well known is that there is much to do, since there is more activity than on the surface...!

Judge ...: Etrestles, Drestnia ..., past, present, or future will speak of you. You Drestnia ...!, What a long dream ..., you challenged your gothic vision, so as not to move your neck towards your neighbors , beings embedded in the first fossilized Koumeterium.

Vitabión ...: Mesolongui honors all the cemeteries in the world, where their loved ones go to see them. But they do not know that there is more dynamic life here than in their own world.

Menopausal Woman ...: My husband cries on my slab, because his infidelity caused a venereal disease in me, which today has eliminated me from his life. He cries and cries for my ****** descent, everything for being with another woman condemned me.

A curtain rises and Funebrio comes out; priest who concelebrates all recent deaths...

Funebrio ...: Woman when you cry my black clothes, black tears cry...! Your husband remains static, without movement, despite so many kilometers of his free will. Out of habit, the forbidden, the tempting is done. But the rebellious Mother Nature pours out her punishments on us.

Staktos ...: Friends who kiss each other, where have you deposited the ideations...? Or do you give to scatter everywhere the osculation that satisfies other mouths.

Etrestles ...: I ask you all to prepare yourself to do your job well. So too, with your prayers, I wish you to hold my mischievous heart at this hour, for the arrival of Drestnia.
The Judge asked to adjourn the meeting, so that the recess could later discuss the strategies for future deaths.

Gravedigger ...: Mr. Judge in the step of the eastern sector, they have buried an architect. We could ask for your cooperation, for the Botsaris monument.

Judge ...: All in good time. Way to go, does anyone want something to narrow down...? --- Drestnia raised her hand and asked...:

Drestnia ...: With Etrestles in the last minutes of our lives, who will pass away once said monument is finished, where will our souls who here in Mesolongui remain temporarily ...?

Judge ...: The insane generals of wars will lead to
Etrestles to the field of Lepanto, because there are stubborn souls that defy the defeated souls ..., and as for you, the benevolent Auriga will take your soul of colors of the sunset, to divide the megatons of the Romantics, who together with Ghiberti, on some trunks of beautiful minerals, they will anchor their best verses and hyperesthetic longings to overshadow their collective suicides.

At the end of the session, the attendees leave, and Drestnia and Etrestles go to the dock of the celestial napa that with its golden shine awaited them, to set sail for Tangier and Morocco. In his ships were the concurrent, Etrestles led his ribs wife towards a navigation that guided the sound of the oars that were the femurs of a Diplodocus.

Drestnia ...: When I am next to the liquid lake lord, I see the need for me to grieve ..., I have a sorrow that I want to be part of you.

Etrestles ...: In Kalavrita, when I was an infant for the fifth time, my father would read me tender stories, and I would ask him if they were from a famous writer, to which he replied that they were from an ordinary man.
The stories were about some spells about pain, one very mundane connected with something transcendent. An example is the Toothache Spell ...: “It dates back a thousand years to. c., the Assyrians attributed toothache to beginning in the Universe and ending with a toothache...:

After Anu had created the sky,
and that heaven had created earth,
and that the earth had created the rivers,
and that the rivers had created the canals,
and that the canals had created the quagmire,
and that the quagmire had created the worm,
the Worm came crying to Shamash,
shedding his tears before Ea ...:
"What are you going to give me so I can drink?
"I'll give you a dried fig and an apricot"
“What good will a dried fig and an apricot do me?
Lift me up, and between my teeth and gums allow me to reside ...”

For having said this, Oh Worm, may Ea punish you with the power of his hand!

Treatment ...: You have to mix second grade beer ..., and oil; you have to recite the spell on the medicine three times and then apply it to the tooth.

You see my Drestnia, you will see that it is possible that I have a spell just like my father gave me, and I can heal you of that pain. For you, that day will come when we will part, and the spell will be to bear the pain that will be beneficial for both of us. My rib is my sorrow, hence my last hope with smelly acid gases, I erased the invitality of you behind the bars.

“Love isn’t always magic,
sometimes it’s just
melting.
Or it’s black and blue
where it hurts
the most.”

– Andrea Gibson

Love isn’t easy,
but it is familiar.
It is memory.
It is rehearsal, target practice,
skipping stones.
It is knowing you cannot hide
in anonymity when love always
reveals.

I.

You can wear no veil,
no shroud, no cloak that will
fool me.
I will know you by your gait,
by the silence of songbirds
that have come to expect your nightingale melody,
by the parting of the sea
as you rise from its depths.

II.

You cannot even hide
behind clouds.
I will know you
when lightning strikes too close
to home. I will know you
when the sun comes scorching,
leaving angry marks of Cain on my sin.
I will know you when the sun
doesn’t come at all.
There is no heavenly body that can keep you from me.

III.

You are known
to me even when I do not face you.
I will know you at the playground
when you don’t know how
to tell me you like me
without pulling on my pigtails.
I will know you on your rooftop
when our triangular wishes
are carried off by blinking airplanes.
You are known to me
even when you cannot face
the pain you’ve left me with.

IV.

I speak in your voice
before I even realize the words are yours.
Forgive me, again and again,
for singing in a language
you and I torched
after its creation.
I know you because no one else
dares speak to me in tongues.
No one else prophesies salvation
in a thousand speeches
before the tower comes crumbling down.
I will know you when you are silent.
I will know you when you are crashing thunder.
I will know you when you are civilization falling.

V.

Love isn’t easy,
no, but it is you.
Love is knowing.
It is unraveling, undoing.
Mapping out your dreams
and learning rescue remedy.
Love is you even when I least understand.
It is holding funerals for who you were,
baptisms for who you can be.
Love is ceremony.
It is breaking bread, saying grace.
“The one verse you can trust.”
Swallowing covenant.


//A.Z.//
07-17-20
2:17 AM

We can thrive as a planet
or die as a species
and our egos may argue otherwise
but it will go extinct and wither
quicker than our bones will dry
and all the false currency
we gave our time to
will crumble in its uselessness
as life will go on without it

and those who thought themselves
immortal under the grace of god
who thought their sins against life
forgiven by the repetition
of hollow words
while burning down
the home around him
will drown in the waters
of their meaningless baptisms
and life will go on without us
as it had before
and as it will long after
any memory of our existence
has any light or thought

and yet today we still breath
today there is still hope
still a chance
to thrive as a planet
to survive as a species
to stand against
the ego of our minds
and follow the wisdom
of our hearts

my most recent self published Lulu book, [MOON tattoo], was reviewed by Krystal Sierra, and part of what she says is here:

Because of the relationship between the line and white space, the reader turns back to the poem again and again, a practice that speaks to religious tradition, incantation byway of word and image, how the poem itself becomes the way God, or Spirit, communicates with us via channels we understand, the interplay between the word and white space much like what we know and do not know about the nature of the divine. – Krystal Sierra

~

some poems, from [MOON tattoo]:

[level]

brother is digging barehanded in the backyard a hole for what he hopes is the alien of god’s choice. as for existence, my mother’s is low on mine. my father is keeping out of the same sentence any mention of ****** and totem pole. no one including you cares for my sister’s worry that this no this is the bottom of a rock. if asked, I will say I was visiting with my arms the museum of rowboats during the regional spike in baptisms we as a family failed to interrupt.

~

[meditation]

summer was for sexting and for watering the scarecrow’s spine. say it with me this was not that summer. as a ghost might surprise the mother and go to salt, a doll might remember its teeth.