Part One
Nascent Craving

The insular heart unsealed; pearled eyes
Breach parapets of stone— periled shield,
The sweetest ****—
A threatening wonder and irrefragable synergy,
Nervous routes of cognition  
In this nascent, amorous craving.
Locked and abased,
Dissonance lends pathos — euphoric and onerous,
Disconsolate cries curb sublimation,
The regnant bleed diffusing — fervid lust
Fondled, tactile surfaces in throbbing anticipation.

Sullen, aft a veil of laughter,
Visceral aftermath, out of
The ardent ash,
Burns a thirst;
Insuperable numbness and ache.
Efflorescent intimacy,
Table for two
Enraptured in new alliance,
Élan vital (psyche);
Urgent dialect petitions
Equivocation, jocularity blending
Provocation with indecision,
Noted lilt of descending inhibition.

Adrift, the incessant Now;
As occasion inexorably diminished;
Resonant simpatico tending,
Numinous amity;
Heard conversant, cognitive idioms—
Lassitude, time-eaten pangs of the unhinged heart,
Wounds axiomatic,
In disquieting synergy,
Nibbling, the circumference—
Misery’s permeating truth;
None immune, all trundle incongruously past,
Facing intrepid savages.

Licitly felt, reverberations of Amor
Whence the heart behaves;
Measured cadence, pulse elevating—
Treasured lover, contemplative muse;
Undulating clasp, inflated bone of absence;
Incarnation — a woman,
Beyond prosaic;
Ineffable adoration pours in certitudes of verse,
Elenita, enclothed —virtue unvarnished;
Reservoir intrinsic, poised advocate of the innocent:
The crooked lines of insolence,
Brazen culture of neglected youth.
Perceptive blue stare, sensitized tears—
Plaintively, evincing her injustice ago.

Part Two
Tendered Senses

Siren silence, eruptive blush, ampler between phrases
In dulcet tones — stirring discourse;
Foments rebellion, the strife beneath— his ****,
Out of its vast reserve,
Penetrate the narrowed ambit, vaguely announced.
Groping hands, migrating the sensual member
Stern faces grimacing— mirror in abrasion,
Under the blind surf of consent;
Burrowing ambiguity, emerging torsion,
Plunge, enlisted and content in the sea;
Subsumed in the nonverbal cue,
Persuasion’s plea,
Quelled in the post cerebral assent.

Piercing eyes parallel crystalline waters of Lake Tahoe.

An untouched portion of his awareness remains aloof,
Palpable in the subsequential quiet,
Obsequious and febrile, they sinned on sofas;
Peregrine predilections quenched and viscid—
Serenely requited, the room breathes her presence,
Limp, figures *******, mantled in adolescent torpor.

Erudition in bloom, trust undoubted,
Illuminating, satiating; tempest calm—
Under canvas
Terrain soaked and sodden,
Postliminary — rains of invalidation.
Allowance and permission
Recalibrate, salivate, shortly only—
Initiate, obliged consecration, appraising
Curvatures of the spine,
Stuns him obeisant, her femenine pulchritude,
Propinquity inciting vigor,
Emergent allure, the updriven
Tower of wood sprung from the blanket.

Suffused in ether, purring streams of remembrance
Vaginal honeyed dew, sung into
Orchids, remnants of remember;
Drenched down the cynosure of devotion;
Succulent view, diaphanous pantied bottom;
Halcyon mist, saporous wine — compliance of the will,
Freed fires wander,
Pliable rind, twin plums dripping,
Abject confession, dispatching doubt
In tendered senses,
Pivotal tree, lavender Jacaranda holds the key,
Unfurled, cindered vulnerability.

Half-denuded skin invites confessional savor
Acutely bubbled rear, fleshly furnished denim;
Sultry visit, San Ramon Valley in the fall,
Strewed limbs splendid, flowing filmy;
Imagination yields—
Bursting silk congealed
Across deft thighs, ambrosial thong draping ankles,
Grazing ascension, the curvaceous trajectory
Nose inflamed with fragrance,
Inhaling, climb of acquiescence,
The ****** weal, amid the globed fruit,
Focal intention — ploughed lance thrusting,
Absconding, the ancillary perfume of essence.

Perceiving avid validation,
Swimmingly, amid the monstrous gaze.
  
Humid skies simper dank, set swell the incense of Eros,
Surge of poetry engorged
The flame levened shaft,
Nimble ******* flounce, spill the harboring mouth;
Moist hands merging, unfettered,
Weave in supplication,
Vicinity voicing, enmeshed diversion;
Supple and spherical behind
Posterior arch, milky-skin against the lip—
Ripeness jostling their complacency;
Lapped the mooring, ridden decisively;
Recapitulating— spumed forth, bellied over hips warmth.
Abandon the dirge of self-pity
Late under ego’s trance.
  
Part Three
Present Tenses

Tempting trespass across sacred gardens,
Flowering, scandal set luminous: attachment—
Consensual, their corresponsive fear;
Protean manifestations— evocative, perpetual
Unutterable contention in a fictive resolve,
Deliberating the merits of their widely disparate tastes in coffee,
Amorously touring wine, let’s drowse through the gnarled vine.
Sundry deficiencies pale, once contrasted;
The beatific vision—
Material substance unaccompanied,
Imperceptible, tear-streamed cheeks in synch,
Ventral kiss, peak of carnal perfection,
Reminiscence— flesh violent with Love.

Fiction knew to meander the innominate rift,
A tincture of irony soften misdeeds
Immense as the sea.
Insolvent beast stippled with sapience—
Unmasked, the fabric of delusion;
Dependence smothering the disciplined heart
Resentment put up for release.

Waste of residual years
Fate’s apportion, scars bleakly observed;
Chastened by heartache, engulfing fervor
Too faint to recapture.
Vague glimpses dry—
Hypervigilant his defenses,
Veritable suspensions, embers lit linger;
Slender walls of solidity, the horizoned self,
Faith and reason in concert — stone levels of elucidation.

Fractured bones of distance, emanate a rigid salience,
Another ponderous night of absence—
Lingering, cauldron of dearth as indifference ushers,
The quotidian coil of contrition.
Tearful pallor, sequestered —ciphering time and solitude;
The unkissed mouth, his restive brow;
Suspend in the approximate span.
                      
After Lucid alliterations are spoken
Devoid of her face, his lover’s nudge—
The man nurtures his hurt.
Anxious as seldom unscarred,  
Venus’s susurrations,
In present tenses,
Kissed by her serenades of integration—
Notwithstanding metaphysic intrusion,
No chain stays unbroken,
Postponed drifts of deferment left unspoken,
Reverberations of amor.

© 2013 W. S. Warner

hand slaps shoulder knee rhythmically that’s called hamming the bone sitting on a street curb singing making up lyrics i got a transitor sister loves cossack named jake he rides Cherokee chopper all he’s ever known is hate he’s going down underground where a man can be a man wrestle alligators live off the land ebb flow i don’t know racing chasing hair-pin turning at 150 miles per hour downshift to 3rd spread the word sweet sour naked flower touching skin deep within defies all sin with a grin speed speed speed all i need i’m getting off coming on you tawny scrawny bow-legged pigeon-toed knock-kneed Don Juan Ponce de Leon Aly Khan all wrapped up into one going to have ******* good time good time tonight i feel like an orphan mom and dad seem so far away tonight i feel like an orphan you make me feel this way hand slaps shoulder knee rhythmically hand bone hand bone

Odyseuss drifts job to job construction worker office assistant waiter whatever he does not understand how road to recognition works continues showing portfolio to art dealers but they react indifferently he does not know how to attain notice in art world begins to suspect there is no god watching over souls instead he imagines infinite force juggling light darkness creation destruction love hate Mom and Dad insist he can earn respectable income if only he will learn commodity futures like cousin Chris Mom says you can work down at the exchange and paint on the side a part of Odysseus wants desperately to please his parents he considers perhaps Mom is right for the time being maybe build up nest egg it seems like sensible plan he wonders why Dad and Mom never speak about money how to save manage they treat the subject as forbidden topic Odysseus has no idea what Dad or Mom earn or investment strategies Odysseus is about to make serious mistake the decision to get job working at commodity exchange needs deeper examination why is he giving in to his parents what attracts him to commodities trading is it Chris’s achievement and the money? does Odysseus honestly see himself as a winning trader or does it simply look like big party with lots of rich men pretty young girls is that where he wants to be why is he giving up on his dream to be a great artist does it seem too impossible to reach who makes him think that? is he going to give up on his true self? he halfheartedly follows his parent’s advice begins working as runner at Chicago Mercantile Exchange several friends including Calexpress disloyalty for entering straight world commodity markets are not exactly straight in 1978 clearing firms pay adequately hours are 8 AM to 2 PM over course of next 6 months Odysseus runs orders out to various trading pits cousin Chris rarely acknowledges Odysseus maybe Chris feels need to protect his image of success perhaps in front of his business associates Chris is embarrassed by Odysseus’s menial rank and goof-off attitude maybe Chris senses what a terrible mistake Odysseus has made

Chicago suffers harsh winter in February Roman Polanski skips bail in California flees to France in April President Carter postpones production of neutron bomb which kills people with radiation leaving buildings intact in October Yankees win World Series defeating Dodgers in November Jim Jones leads mass-****** suicide killing 918 people in Jonestown Guyana in December in San Francisco Dianne Feinstein succeeds murdered Mayor George Moscone in Chicago John Wayne Gacy is arrested

darkness descends upon Odysseus his heart is not into commodity business more accurately he hates it he loathes battleship gray color of greed envy he resents prevailing overcast of misogyny he meets many pretty girls yet most of them are only interested in catching a trader it is rumored numerous high rolling traders hire young girls for sole purpose of morning ******* remainder of day girls are free to mingle run trivial errands commodity traders typically trash females it is primitive hierarchy Odysseus bounces from one clearing firm to another then moves to Chicago Options Exchange then Chicago Board of Trade on foyer wall just outside trading floor hangs bronze plaque commemorating all men who served in World War 2 Uncle Karl’s name is on that plaque Daddy Pat bought his son seat hoping to set him up after war Uncle Karl’s new wife wanted to break away from Chicago persuaded him to sell seat move to California Uncle Karl bought car wash outside Los Angeles with Daddy Pat’s support Mom and Dad encourage assure Odysseus commodities business is right choice they promise to buy him full seat on exchange if he continues to learn markets they feel certain he can be saved from his artistic notions the markets are soaring in profits cousin Chris is riding waves a number of Chris’s friends are sons of parents who belong to same clubs dine at same restaurants as Mom and Dad Odysseus is not alpha-male like Chris Odysseus is a dreamer painter poet writer explorer experimenter unlike Chris who has connections Odysseus starts out as runner then gets job holding deck for yuppie brokers in Treasury Dollar trading pit Odysseus holds buy orders between index and middle fingers sell orders in last 2 fingers arranged by time stamp price size in other hand holds nervous pencil he stands step below boss in circular pit in room size of football field full of raised pits everything is traded cattle hogs pork bellies all currencies gold numbers flash change instantaneously in columns on three high walls fourth wall is glass with seats behind for spectators thousands of people rush around delivering orders on telephones flashing hand signals shouting offers quantities every moment every day calls come in frantically from all around world space is organized chaos sometimes not so organized fortunes switch hands in nano-seconds it is global fiscal battleground rallies to up side or breaks to down side send room into hollering pushing shoving hysteria central banks financial institutions kingpin mobsters with political clout daring entrepreneurs old thieves suburban rich kids beautiful people pretty young females abound big guns **** in same air stand next to low-ranking runners everyone flirts sweats sneezes knows inside they are each expendable Odysseus is spellbound by sheer force magnitude he feels immaterial only grip is his success with girls it is not conscious talent he grins girls grin back Chris’s trader friends recognize Odysseus’s ability they push him to introduce girls to them it is way for Odysseus to level playing field he has no money or high opinion of himself he simply knows how to hook up with girls

1979 January Steelers defeat Cowboys at Super Bowl Brenda Ann Spencer kills 2 faculty wounds 8 students responds to incident “i don't like Mondays” in February Khomeini seizes power in Iran in March Voyager space-probe photographs Jupiter’s rings a nuclear power plant accident occurs at Three Mile Island Pennsylvania in May Margaret Thatcher is elected Prime Minister in England in Chicago American Airlines flight 191 crashes killing 273 people in November Iran hostage crisis begins 90 hostages 53 of whom are American in December Soviet Union invades Afghanistan 1980 in November Ronald Reagan defeats Jimmy Carter one year since Iran hostage crisis began

he meets good-looking younger girl named Monica on subway heading home from work he has seen her running orders on trading floor she is tall slender with long dark brown hair in ponytail pointed nose wide mouth innocent face she confides her estranged father is famous Chicago mobster Odysseus recognizes his name they talk about how much they dislike markets arrant disparity of wealth between traders and themselves Odysseus says i hate feeling of being so disposable worthless Monica replies yeah me too he tells her if i was a girl i’d ******* myself to several handsome generous traders Monica acknowledges that’s an interesting idea but who? how? which traders? do you know? he answers yeah i know exactly who and how Monica says if you’re serious i’m in i have a girlfriend named Larissa who might also be interested i’ll call Larissa tonight following day Monica approaches Odysseus at work agrees to meet at his place after markets close that afternoon Monica and Larissa show up eager to learn more about Odysseus’s scheme Larissa is petite built like a gymnast giggly light brown hair younger than Monica he lays it all out for them cousin Chris and his buddies the money ******* both girls are quite lovely he suggests they rehearse with him he will coach them on situations settings techniques girls consent for 4 weeks every afternoon they meet at Odysseus’s place get naked play out different scenarios he shows girls how to pose demure at first then display themselves skillfully fingers delicately pulling open ***** spreading wide apart buns working hidden muscles he directs each to take up numerous positions tasks techniques then has them switch places he teaches them timing starting slow gradually building up rhythms stirring into passionate frenzy having two mouths four hands creates novel sets of possibilities one girl attends his front while other excites his rear he positions them side-by-side so he can penetrate any of all four holes he stacks them one on top of the other many other variations after reaching ****** several times making sure to reciprocally satisfy their eager needs Odysseus dismisses girls until following day finally after month of practice Monica and Larissa feel confident proficient primed Odysseus arranges for girls to meet with 2 traders through Chris most traders have nicknames Twist who is hosting event is notoriously wild insatiable on opening night Odysseus behaves like concerned father Larissa and Monica each bring several dresses and pairs of shoes Odysseus helps them choose suggests Monica ease up on make-up he styles Larissa’s hair instructs Monica to call him when they arrive again when they leave he requests they return directly to his place Monica wears hair pulled back in French twist pearl earrings sleek little black dress black stiletto heels she stands several inches above Odysseus Larissa wears braided pigtails pink low-scooped leotard brown plaid wool kilt just above knees brown suede cowboy boots he kisses each on lips then pats their butts warns them to be careful mindful Monica winks Larissa giggles more than an hour passes as Odysseus sits wondering why he has not heard from girls suddenly reality hits he does not want to be commodities trader and certainly not a **** this is not how he wants to be known or remembered Odysseus wants to be a painter and writer Monica and Larissa are good sweet girls whom he has misguided he calls Twist’s place Twist answers Odysseus asks to speak with Monica when she comes to phone he questions are you all right Monica answers yes we’re fine we’re having a fantastic time why are you calling what’s wrong he explains you were suppose to call me when you arrived i began to worry i think maybe this whole arrangement is a bad idea i want you to call it off and come back home i don’t want either of you to become prostitutes i love you both and don’t want to be associated with dishonoring you Monica says it’s a little late to call it off but we’ll see you when we’re done kissy kiss bye Odys another hour passes then another he frets wondering what they are doing after 4 hours as he is about to call Twist’s house again doorbell rings Monica and Larissa both giggling beaming Odysseus can spot they have a coke buzz Monica announces you should be proud of us Odys we got each of them off 2 times we left them stone-numb and tapped out the girls open their purses each slaps 5 hundred dollar bills unto table Monica says this is your cut Odys we both got a thousand for ourselves he replies i can’t touch that money we need to sit down and talk Monica demands no talking Odys take off your clothes he insists i’m serious Monica i’m never going to send you out again Larissa claims there’s no turning back for me i had too much fun Monica  pleads come on Odys we’ll be good we promise now take off your clothes Twist and his buddy never attended to our needs i’m ***** as hell Larissa where’s that little bottle of dust Twisty handed you

Chicago Monday night December 8 1980 Cal and Odysseus sit at North End they're on 4th round feeling buzz the place is lively adorned with holiday decorations Cal says you’ve changed Odysseus questions what do you mean? how? Cal says the commodity markets and your cousin and his friends they’ve changed you when was the last time you painted Odys? are you dealing coke Odysseus looks Cal in the eyes answers they’re so ******* rich Cal you can’t believe it one drives a black Corvette Stingray another a ******* Delorean anything they want they buy girls cars clothes condos boats yeah i’m dealing coke to Chris’s friends it’s my only leverage remember the Columbian dude Armando we met at tittie bar? i score from him and keep it clean Chris’s buddies pay up for the quality i don’t remember my last painting maybe the black painting i never finished after breaking up with Reiko Lee a girl falls off bar stool crashing to floor at other end of bar Cal says Odys, you better play it careful you’re messing with the devil got any blow on you suddenly bar grows quiet someone turns up TV volume they watch overhead as news anchorman speaks slow solemn camera pans splattered puddle of blood pieces of broken glass on steps to Dakota Building Cal looks to Odysseus John Lennon has been murdered Cal waits for Odysseus to say something tear rolls down cheek Cal glances away stares down at floor they drink in silence

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

      A penny for the Old Guy

      I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

      II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

      III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

      IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We ***** together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

      V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Poem 3
How to raise kids

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

I got into to teaching to make a difference,
To add some joy to a kids existence,
I knew, so well, the hurt and pain
That kids in secondary school sustain
The tears and the fears and the dread and the...
"Ahahahaha! Look at his Nicks!! He thinks he's got Nikes but he's wearing Nicks!"
And how it switches you off and makes you not care,
Because you just don't want to go back there.
So, you wander into town to HMV
Til your parents feel let down when you only got an E
Until you failed Art and Graphics and Literacy
But at least you got an A in history...
Because academic subjects are "more important"

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

So I left 6th form and I needed change
And wanted to go to somewhere strange
(And new)
Somewhere away from all the drama
At 19 I went by myself to Ghana
"God bless our homeland Ghana
And make our nation great and strong,
Vow to defend forever
The cause of Freedom and of Right"
And I taught
Maths and English
With no books
And no training
And no observing
And I was ******* at it... Really bad
But somehow, i felt the change
Just because I cared and they cared

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

A few years later I started teachin.
GTP, hands on, straight in.
My teaching mentor was called Mr Hickey,
He smoked a pipe and drank down whiskey
(In school)
My first proper job was Bradford inner city
It was a bit rough and the buildin was ******
There we had a guy who was a lazy old ****
And he had kids tracing instead of learning Art
When I first got there I was overwrought
These weren't like the training lessons that I taught
These kids had opinions. They needed to engage...
To be taught in a way that suited kids of their age
I nearly gave up, because I felt so scared
But at the end of the day, I knew that I still cared

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

In my 3rd year I had this year 11 class
They wanted a good lesson and they wanted to pass
But they needed convincing and I nearly cried
So I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried
To listen
And react
To change
And Adapt
And those kids made me better
And for 3 years I got better
Our grades were sky high
The kids wanted to try
They wanted learn, they wanted to know "why"
But I got to the top and I needed to fly
Because I needed somewhere that I could ask the "why"

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

You have those moments sometimes in life, where you know that a decision is important, but you don't know why and you don't know which way is the right way to go with it. This was that point for me. Sat in the interview, saying I wanted to pull out but letting them convince me to stay. That was the point, I think where everything changed.

2010. New job. New government.

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

I was head of Art and I got noticed
Within a year I got promoted
Faculty leader of creative skills
This is the part where it really kills
What do you do when you just aren't wanted
When people are angry that you're there
When all of your decisions seem to be haunted
By the ghost of a culture where they just don't care
Where nastiness and gossip always bite
Resting in the coffin of a lost tradition
Kids so bored they're turning white
Beaten down to bored submission
And everyone seems to have given up the fight
But they're still convinced that their way's "right"

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

After so much pain, we were getting through it
We realised there was much more to it
No more easy working out of booklets
(The teaching equivalent of rhyming couplets)
But every time you made a shift
The goal posts seemed to start to drift
And this all caused a further rift
The final one I couldn't lift

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

Gossip and lies caused by others stress
Creates a catastrophic mess
Turns people's lives upside down
Gives off the sense that they're a clown
They're trying. They're just really down
Simply trying not to drown
Marriage ending
Friends unfriending
Children's lives are slowly bending
House and finance are up-ending
Mediation sessions need attending
Everything seems to need mending
And the pain seems to be never-ending

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

Professional life vs Personal life
Professional strife = Personal strife
Personal wife goes through professional strife
Personal strife =

"I understand what you're going through, but we need to think about the learners."

Stress in teaching is the expectation
Work life balance has no correlation
The pressures of a confused nation
Makes teachers into the poor relation

Goodbye btec, goodbye vocation
Hello Gove and his minds creation
Goodbye Gove and hello Morgan
Hiding behind a gritty slogan
Creating the pressure of pointless change
For teachers to correct and rearrange

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

But here's the thing. It's not their fault.
Sure, they've no idea MPs
They've less common sense than a piece of cheese
But all MPs really do is set
Some criteria that need to be met
A league table
Academies
Appraisal
Curriculums
It's nothing new. They've always done it
But it's given to schools to interpret
We don't lose money, we just get judged
We need conviction that can't be budged
We need to get a message out
To every parent, round about
And what this message needs to say
Is "we aren't doing extra maths today,
We're going to go outside and play
Because whatever MPs say
We'll do what's right for the kids
And here's why it's right you know
Cause we want to see your children grow
We're not just for levels, grades, progress
We're also here to relieve stress
We're also here to make your child feel
That happiness is something real
That in spite of all the crap you see
You can become head of art when you failed gcse."
Learn People skills
Determination
Creativity
Imagination
Honesty
Integrity
Sen­sitivity
And empathy
It's not an easy sell I know
You can't measure how people grow
You can't report or give a grade
But they're qualities that are heaven made
And maybe think the same for teachers
We're all very caring creatures
We care about how kids are raised
We don't need to be constantly appraised
Default 100%?!?
Like energy is heaven sent
Like when your kids are down with flu
You just man up, there's work to do
When you've got a quality person who just needs backing
Why give pressure and then threaten with sacking?

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

School - this week mark all your books
I need them up to date so I can look

Teacher - I've got to take my daughter swimming
I've got to see my son try winning

School - read through your teaching standards mate
And leave your children at the gate

End of the week the books are done
But head and deputies are overrun
"We'll have to put these books aside
To push our children down the slide"

And good for them. They work really hard. It's not a job to take lightly and they deserve to be there. But they don't have the time to step back and think "big picture"

Let's flip it round and just imagine

Teacher - I'm sorry, I'm afraid I'm ill
School - you can't be ill the learners will fail
Teacher - I need some patience, I need some time
School - the kids need work which is sublime
Don't they deserve that? Don't you think?
Do you really want your learners to sink?

And there it is. The teacher guilt.
Because that's the way that we've been built
We care too much
We try too much
We give too much
We work too much
And we lose too much
We get ideas above our station
About how this job is a vocation
When we stop and look around
The evidence just can't be found
Someone tells me what to teach
Someone tells me how to teach it
Someone tells me how to plan
Someone tells me when to plan it
Someone tells me how to mark
Someone tells me when to mark it
We work to targets, get appraised
Residuals to get profiles raised
It's industry. I rest my case.

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

Or, put it another way.

I just think that teaching has lost all its common sense. And it's kindness. It behaves like an industry which is about getting results and meeting targets. There's nothing that measures people's happiness or how deeply moved or affected someone is by what they've learned. It just checks that they learned it. And we are given this guilt trip. That it's about children and that we are affecting their lives if we don't meet targets. We give up more and more because "teaching is a vocation"  "it's about kids", and yet schools use cover supervisors, cut subjects, limit choices etc to save money and get results. So the profession behaves like an industry but the teachers have to give their lives to it like its a vocation. It's not a vocation. At all. It's a job.

How can you raise kids that are in good health when you don't see the lies that you're selling to yourself?

i could tell you how certain stations on the London underground
smell, but i can't capture you this smell...
a bit like in that film Perfume: scents are lost over time,
with regards to places -
                            unlike the eternal pine forest...
or the zest of lemon...
                                         those are universal scents...
one could and humanity has: created a synthetic answer
and copied these scents... made synthetic tastes
a whole chemistry of a posteriori scents and tastes...
Kant and chemistry are a perfect combination...
given the classical schematic:

analytical                         analytical
a priori                             a posteriori
apples grow on               tomatoes:
trees and                          categorised as fruits          
carrots grow                    yet used as vegetables
in the earth                      the analysis being
since apples                     even though they grow
are a fruit                         on something: trees,
while carrots                    bushes, vines...
are a root vegetable,       analysis has found that
ergo?                                 they are better treated
all vegetables                   as vegetables rather than
grow in the earth            fruits, since one rarely cooks
while all fruits                 savoury meals with fruit
grow on trees                  yet the tomato is used
or shrubs                         plentifully in savoury cooking


synthetic                          synthetic
a priori                           a posteriori
■, ▲                                   in light of the given examples
(geometry)                        in the realm of the analytical
and the propositions       a priori: that fruits grow on
that come with                 trees or bushes
them:                                  there's the pineapple
e.g. c² = a² + b²                   anomaly:
or physics:                         pineapples grow on the ground
e = mc²                                (in the ground) like cabbage-heads
                                            grow in much the same fashion...

i always struggle with the a posteriori conceptualization...
in the original i wrote as can be seen above...
are tomatoes the byproduct of
analytical a posteriori knowledge?
i.e. they are fruits that are used as vegetables (used,
hell, even treated as such)... because you will not find
a tomato desert as such...
the classification of a tomato as a fruit:
given how it grows... would also invoke the cucumber
to be treated as a vegetable:
vegetables are not as juicy as fruits...
the flesh of the fruit is usually softer and certainly
more juicy... while the flesh of the vegetable
is more bulky and requires cooking and salt
to extract the juices oh a higher carbohydrate
concentrate of the fibrous nature...

pineapples... a fruit that grows like a vegetable
in the earth...
i like this "confusion" in my head...
i'm not going to clarify it...
            i leave this curiosity in my writing on purpose...
analytical a posteriori facts:
well... first having categorised the tomato as a fruit:
upon analysis... true: the tomato behaves like
a fruit... but upon analysis: after the fact:
it is better used as a vegetable...

         and the synthetic a posteriori truth about
the pineapple? then again: i know where i might be going wrong...
isn't synthetic a posteriori knowledge possible?
it's not as simple as the pineapple example
based on: fruits grow on trees while vegetables grow in
the earth... i can only find questions
on the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge...
ergo? of course synthetic a posteriori knowledge
is possible...
    it's ingrained in chemistry...
what does synthetic a posteriori knowledge look like?

a chemist tastes a lemon... and he tries to replicate
the taste of lemon using chemicals...
he breaks down the chemistry of the lemon...
and? with due course... replicates the taste of lemon
without actually using a lemon!
he breaks the lemon to the basic components
of citric acids and whatever else is needed to replicate
the taste of lemon and grind it into a powder:
chemistry is synthetic a posteriori knowledge...
isn't it?

the examples i cited with the pineapples:
it doesn't matter that the pineapple behaves like
a vegetable when it grows...
apart from that sick idea of a Hawaiian pizza toppings...
pineapple? ham?! you what?!
that's not synthetic a posteriori knowledge:
that's just a ******* whim of bad-taste...
there's no actual synthesis of the pineapple growing
as a vegetable and the "ingenuity" of treating
it like a bad idea for a pizza topping...
the tomato: however... is a pristine example
of analytical a posteriori knowledge:
sure... it's categorised as a vegetable...
because of the way it grows... compared to actual vegetables:
but? you wouldn't allow the tomato
to be bitten into like an apple... you wouldn't bake
a tomato cake as you might bake a banana cake...
the analysis concludes: our knowledge of fruits is this...
and we have this vegetable: the tomato
that's a fruit... but it would be better suited
in being used like a vegetable...

synthetic a posteriori does exist... it just doesn't apply
to pineapples for the simply reason that they
grow like vegetables... they're still going to be fruits...
synthetic a posteriori knowledge is chemistry...
it has to exist because a pineapple is
not a synthetic a priori "idea" of TASTE let alone
virtue or however Kant framed it...

ugh... my first day back at Craven Cottage...
little ****** steward: i hate these hierarchies...
it's a petty army of high-viz. jackets...
   i wasn't the supervisor but i had some colts under
my "supervision"... i tried to smooth things over:
i did... in the end i wanted to see Fulham play
Liverpool... i spread the word around:
this is *******... they should have put us inside
the stadium...
   but... the weather was the loveliest and the Thames
was tide-out... two seagulls arguing...
in the shade: this part of London is truly mesmerising...
i love the smell of the Thames with the tide out...
in the shade under these mammoth-esque splendours
of foliage...
hell... i even managed to spot my first KONIK
(little horse)... that's slang for... those ******* that buy
tickets at the regular price... then hang around the stadium
and try to push the tickets at a hyper-inflated price...
the ****** was selling the tickets for £250 for two!
and this was after the first half finished!
i told one of the guys with a radio:
call this in...
                          i had to repeat myself about 3 times
before the management agreed to my concern...
they sent two spare police officers to the person in question...
he almost sold those ******* tickets...
one minute i see him pretend to tie his shoelaces
(he wasn't pretending) - his black cap
disappearing under the bushes... next minute:
wh'ah where?! ****** did a runner...
so he wasn't tying his shoelaces "on a whim":
he was about to do a runner...

                  that's ******* exploitation...
that's like: stealing... capitalism at its worst...
the ingenuity of crime: oh... but it's innocent crime...
it's i buy something for £30 but...
i'll sell it for you for £250...
                             now... it's not antiques! it's not a *******
van Gogh painting that has been lying around
for quite some time... gaining a repertoire and a reputation
as something good, worthwhile:
it's a ******* football match ticket!
hyper-inflation like under the Weimar Republic...
money good as "gold": "gold" as in winter fuel,
timber the new platinum!

after all: there was no real synthetic a priori knowledge:
chemistry is hardly a question of appearance,
water is clear, but so is hydrochloric acid...
what else is clear? sodium hydroxide...
                 chemistry was born from synthetic a posteriori
knowledge...
how many chemical experiments came as a surprise
a sort of anti-Eureka of synthetic a priori knowledge?
champagne springs to mind... lysergic acid comes
to mind: no one was actually trying to find these things...
e.g. they did not come about through analytical
a posteriori knowledge: they arose from
a dimension of the synthetic a posteriori knowledge:
by chance: by accident...

sure... i might be doing a ******-low-skill job right
now: and it is... i'll admit...
it's super **** sometimes:
most of the time my coworkers are either
over-bearing ego-maniacs fixated on hierarchy,
or they're lazy Somali youths...
or just plain-sighted Nimrods...
i sometimes leave my mind to wander...
that when i get the jerks in the feet like
i'm about to fall over... like for bearskin hatted
soldiers on parade...
but i leave my mind to wander:
it's not an insult if it's true...
                  no: when i was a roofer and fiddling
with inanimate things there was more focus
on the work to be done... dealing with people
is a crass differentiation from perfecting how an inanimate
ought to behave under your hands...
to turn a roll of felt into a water-insulated roof
with a roll of fleece and enough tar...
people are different: i'm sort of studying people...
gearing myself to hover in on children in schools...

if Leibniz preferred the profession of librarian
and a private intellectual life of par excellence...
i wouldn't think twice about becoming a primary school
teacher than being a secondary school
teacher of chemistry...
**** me: if drag queen hour is about to be imported
from America: i best (better) step in...
i just imagine: well... unlike a barren woman...
who has no children...
who goes into a profession akin to primary school
teaching... but then i'd arrive...
i know the obvious stereotype to battle:
PEDOHPILE! ha ha...
           Ava Lauren: just my type... plump...
full-bodied... probably the age of my mum by now...
that's my type...
i need something rounded of:
a 5.9 = a 6... just an example...
                
             but i let my mind wander... when roofing
you couldn't leave your mind to wonder...
i could... tell you of the specific scents in certain
underground stations... Baker Street? is that the one
with the Victorian arches, a station under the bridge?
i don't remember...
Putney Bridge is a beautiful station...
but today i took the route:
Romford via train... got off at Stratford... waited for a minute
for the central line...
(i love meditating on the topic of tubes maps...
there are only two important lines
in London... why? based on how many times
they intersect... the Central Line and the Piccadilly
Line... they only intersect at Holborn)...
travelled to Holborn... not sitting...
at each carriage there are these half-seats...
you're leaning back... standing-sitting...
i felt so relaxed... i gave way to the momentum
of the tube...
i was moving backwards and forwards...
head nodding... shoulders doing the mr. plastic-fantastic...
i almost tried to remember the remaining
tension in my body... the grip i had on a bottle
of water and a packet of tortilla wraps...
the rest of me was: freed...

when it comes to scents... that's one thing:
everyone knows it's a stupid idea to change tube
lines at Bank... why? well... Bank it connected
to Monument...
it's a city within a city: a London 2.0... oh oh:
yes it ******* is... never change at Bank...
anyway... as i was relaxing having closed my eyes...
i can tell you where the best sounds of
machinery exist in London?
between Liverpool St. - Bank - and Chancery Lane...
mind you... i cycle the route from time to time...
what's above? is not, what's above...
compared to cycling... this route is like:
watching the original Dune movie...
i'm strapped to a ******* earthworm...
or: being digested by one while listening to
the clag glug and clamour iron biting iron...
i sometimes do the "twirl" of the tube above
ground... just after Aldgate...
i head towards Brick Lane... toward Liverpool St.
prior to reaching Bank St.:

all the Piccadilly Stations between Holborn and
Earl's Court have this sickly sweet stench
about them... it's sickly sweet... it's: sickly sweet...

i remember back in St. Augustine's we had one
female primary school teacher...
some ****** proverb speaks the words:
woe unto you for having to care for the children
of others...
while i'm thinking: that would be a worthwhile challenge...
i don't want any of my own:
the fear of ******* them up more than
i was ****** up wears me down...
at least with the genes of strangers
i can send in an auxiliary covert party of my psyche...
who would i send in? the usual suspects...
Kant, Heidegger, Newton, Ezra Pound...
oh... the list is pretty long...

most probably Rumi hanging around with
Zhuangzi... Ovid and Horace...
ooh... terrible idea to start drinking whiskey
after binge-eating a watermelon...
the burps i'm getting back:
******* postcards from Uan Muhuggiag (Libya)...
i'm seeing camels double the number of their humps!
not good... absolutely no good

burp... ooh... this watermelon will not go down
so good... while i worry about *******
myself come tomorrow morning...
unlike the Red Hot Chilly Peppers singing
the fames of California:
what do i have? i have the countryside of Essex
and the incursions in the concrete staccato
of London... i can mediate this...

              burp: well... at least it's whiskey mingling
with the juices of a watermelon...
i much prefer that to the half-digested acidic
meat of any sort...
                 that's healthy burping and healthy farting
for your...
hmm... investing in children... that's an idea...
i once remarked to a boy in a supermarket:
you know... how a while i thought animals
were incapable of seeing 3D objects
in a 2D canvas: i.e. why wouldn't animals
watch television with men?
today i had a "Fred" pester me for a bite
of my tortilla roll...
i would have given it to him freely:
i wasn't that hungry...
   so i asked his owner: so... what's his diet like?
oh... Fred has had pretty stomach upsets...
he spent the past three days eating mulberries
from a tree...
ooh! i love mulberries: who couldn't be more upset?
the dog or the mulberries?
ugh: these kind of people:
that have their dogs on a ******* vegan diet...
hey! Fred! bite into this tortilla wrap!
i have learned that the food man eats
if also eaten by a dog tastes better:
after it was eaten by man!

o.k., fair enough Fred... you have an owner that
deserves having you: but no children...
i'd put you in the same category as a child...
children, dogs, cats...
things that might stir in man the unusual:
certainly not Darwinistic / genetic investment
that might reduce a man's hormonal balance...
mate... you look at me that dumb-***** eyed way
one more time... let me pat you on the head
like i have... you're coming with me to the land
of eternal tortillas wrapping around chicken
and bacon: there's no "yes" as there's no "no"...

but that's London for you...
            and that's also Essex for you...
i spent an entire day in London?
where did i find those cheap-*** beauties of womanhood?
i didn't find them in London:
i had to travel back to Romford to find...
i sat down to eat a snack bucket in a chicken shop:
three spicy wings, some chips...
mayonnaise and some chilly sauce...
a 7up... £3.50... i enjoyed the meal
and thought about: nothing...
nothing is usually hard to "think" about...
you get into geometry: to prolong your time at pretending
to look "cool"... when eating alone...

i hopped on the bus... watched two hunchbacks
of an elderly couple "manage" their way own:
what cruel fate... the extension of mortality
via science... may i never see myself
that old... reduced to being the child of Atlas...
no... i don't care for the sensibility of secularism
and science...
old age transcends both of these:
it's the reality of old age...
prolonged old age is best renowned
and celebrated by lizards: turtles most in fact...
mammals look weird...
mammals look weird when their life is prolonged:
unnaturally: via the basis of science!

start giving out re-prescriptions to people
with a a faith in science but no hope in hope...
start selling them hopes of eternity...
this materialistic "eternal life": is drawing us closer
to no closure...
there comes a life: there coms a death of said life...
it's not fair to pretend that the inevitiable
is "not" going to happen: it will...
the tyranny of old age...
                  by the standards of the Benelux:
i'm more than willing to bow out...

who knows! i am not willing to simply live
for the awkward presence of strangers
on a basis of anomalies and non-intrusions
of some freaked-up formalities...
to hell with that: i have no evolutionary-existential
plight of  "conscience" that might make me suppose:
on racial grounds: that the human "effort"
will disappear: outright: completely:
sure... chances are... humanity will be governed
by more people willing to ***** cities of death via
the pyramid... people engage in the magic carpet
flights of Islam and pseudo-Islam from regions
akin to Somalia and Bangladesh:
my problem? i can't live forever! can i?

et scriptum est...
i like being toyed around as being the idiot...
it helps me grow...
and it was so written...
                ergo? ut necesse sit!
(and so it must be)
  ha ha! ah ha ha h ha ha!
vulnus ferrum:
                  sanguis respiratio
scratch of iron:
breathing blood!
            
mortuus est mori: the dead must die!
vivos debet mori /
vivos non sunt exceptio!

i work among people that make my intellect:
CLOWN!
   i entertain them... i must...
but their intellect is about as much:
grappling as... i don't know what!
i'm out of metaphors and aphorisms...

                        intelligence is discouraged when it comes
to a working environment...
           i'm like Leibniz... i'm unlike Newton...
my ambitions a "cowering" in a personal enterprise...
i like the individualism of m own enterprise:
i don't hope to solve or save the problems of
a common man... nope!
                
last time i heard? the train has arrived:
i also heard: the train is leaving...
well... i'm i geared up:
what do i care for the famines in Ethiopia?!
i don't care for claiming responsibilities for
people who don't take responsibilities for
themselves!
starve?! **** it... why not?"
oh right... one of the Somali types?!
pretend it's work by hiding behind the bushes?!
ergo? behind the bushes i pretend to shower you
with free bread and pork? don't like pork?
eat dirt instead!

i'm done: free-loaders: i'm done with them...
i'm so ******* with these Somalis that you can't even begin to comprehend!

Enheduanna, the daughter of the famous King Sargon the Great of Akkad, is the first ancient writer whose name remains known today. Her bio appears after her poems, and it is a fascinating bio...



Temple Hymn 42: an Excerpt

to the Eresh Temple of Nisaba
by Enheduanna (circa 2285-2250 BCE)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O, house of brilliant stars
bright with lapis stones,
you illuminate all lands!

...

The person who put this tablet together
is Enheduanna.
My king: something never created before,
did she not give birth to it?



Temple Hymn 15
to the Gishbanda Temple of Ningishzida
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Most ancient and terrible shrine,
set deep in the mountain,
dark like a mother's womb...

Dark shrine,
like a mother's wounded breast,
blood-red and terrifying...

Though approaching through a safe-seeming field,
our hair stands on end as we near you!

Gishbanda,
like a neck-stock,
like a fine-eyed fish net,
like a foot-shackled prisoner's manacles...
your ramparts are massive,
like a trap!

But once we’re inside,
as the sun rises,
you yield widespread abundance!

Your prince
is the pure-handed priest of Inanna, heaven's Holy One,
Lord Ningishzida!

Oh, see how his thick, lustrous hair
cascades down his back!

Oh Gishbanda,
he has built this beautiful temple to house your radiance!
He has placed his throne upon your dais!



Temple Hymn 7: an Excerpt
to the Kesh Temple of Ninhursag
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, high-situated Kesh,
form-shifting summit,
inspiring fear like a venomous viper!

O, Lady of the Mountains,
Ninhursag’s house was constructed on a terrifying site!

O, Kesh, like holy Aratta: your womb dark and deep,
your walls high-towering and imposing!

O, great lion of the wildlands stalking the high plains!...



Temple Hymn 17: an Excerpt
to the Badtibira Temple of Dumuzi
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, house of jeweled lapis illuminating the radiant bed
in the peace-inducing palace of our Lady of the Steppe!



Temple Hymn 22: an Excerpt
to the Sirara Temple of Nanshe
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, house, you wild cow!
Made to conjure signs of the Divine!
You arise, beautiful to behold,
bedecked for your Mistress!



Temple Hymn 26: an Excerpt
to the Zabalam Temple of Inanna
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O house illuminated by beams of bright light,
dressed in shimmering stone jewels,
awakening the world to awe!



Temple Hymn 42: an Excerpt
to the Eresh Temple of Nisaba
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, house of brilliant stars
bright with lapis stones,
you illuminate all lands!

...

The person who put this tablet together
is Enheduanna.
My king: something never created before,
did she not give birth to it?



Lament to the Spirit of War
by Enheduanna (circa 2285-2250 BCE)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You hack down everything you see, War God!

Rising on fearsome wings
you rush to destroy our land:
raging like thunderstorms,
howling like hurricanes,
screaming like tempests,
thundering, raging, ranting, drumming,
whiplashing whirlwinds!

Men falter at your approaching footsteps.

Tortured dirges scream on your lyre of despair.

Like a fiery Salamander you poison the land:
growling over the earth like thunder,
vegetation collapsing before you,
blood gushing down mountainsides.

Spirit of hatred, greed and vengeance!

******* of heaven and earth!

Your ferocious fire consumes our land.

Whipping your stallion
with furious commands,
you impose our fates.

You triumph over all human rites and prayers.

Who can explain your tirade,
why you carry on so?



The Exaltation of Inanna: Opening Lines and Excerpts
by Enheduanna, the daughter of Sargon I of Akkad and the high priestess of the Goddess Inanna
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lady of all divine powers!
Lady of the resplendent light!
Righteous Lady adorned in heavenly radiance!

Beloved Lady of An and Uraš!
Hierodule of An, sun-adorned and bejeweled!
Heaven’s Mistress with the holy diadem,
Who loves the beautiful headdress befitting the office of her own high priestess!

Powerful Mistress, seizer of the seven divine powers!
My Heavenly Lady, guardian of the seven divine powers!
You have seized the seven divine powers!
You hold the divine powers in your hand!
You have gathered together the seven divine powers!
You have clasped the divine powers to your breast!

You have flooded the valleys with venom, like a viper;
all vegetation vanishes when you thunder like Iškur!
You have caused the mountains to flood the valleys!
When you roar like that, nothing on earth can withstand you!

Like a flood descending on floodplains, O Powerful One, you will teach foreigners to fear Inanna!

You have given wings to the storm, O Beloved of Enlil!
The storms do your bidding, blasting the unbelievers!

Foreign cities cower at the chaos You cause!
Entire countries cower in dread of Your deadly South Wind!
Men cower before you in their anguished implications,
raising their pitiful outcries,
weeping and wailing, beseeching Your benevolence with many wild lamentations!

But in the van of battle, everything falls before You, O Mighty Queen!

My Queen,
You are all-conquering, all-devouring!
You continue Your attacks like relentless storms!
You howl louder than the howling storms!
You thunder louder than Iškur!
You moan louder than the mournful winds!
Your feet never tire from trampling Your enemies!
You produce much wailing on the lyres of lamentations!

My Queen,
all the Anunna, the mightiest Gods,
fled before Your approach like fluttering bats!
They could not stand in Your awesome Presence
nor behold Your awesome Visage!

Who can soothe Your infuriated heart?
Your baleful heart is beyond being soothed!

Uncontrollable Wild Cow, elder daughter of Sin,
O Majestic Queen, greater than An,
who has ever paid You enough homage?

O Life-Giving Goddess, possessor of all powers,
Inanna the Exalted!

Merciful, Live-Giving Mother!
Inanna, the Radiant of Heart!
I have exalted You in accordance with Your power!
I have bowed before You in my holy garb,
I the En, I Enheduanna!

Carrying my masab-basket, I once entered and uttered my joyous chants ...

But now I no longer dwell in Your sanctuary.
The sun rose and scorched me.
Night fell and the South Wind overwhelmed me.
My laughter was stilled and my honey-sweet voice grew strident.
My joy became dust.

O Sin, King of Heaven, how bitter my fate!

To An, I declared: An will deliver me!
I declared it to An: He will deliver me!

But now the kingship of heaven has been seized by Inanna,
at Whose feet the floodplains lie.

Inanna the Exalted,
who has made me tremble together with all Ur!

Stay Her anger, or let Her heart be soothed by my supplications!
I, Enheduanna will offer my supplications to Inanna,
my tears flowing like sweet intoxicants!
Yes, I will proffer my tears and my prayers to the Holy Inanna,
I will greet Her in peace ...

O My Queen, I have exalted You,
Who alone are worthy to be exalted!
O My Queen, Beloved of An,
I have laid out Your daises,
set fire to the coals,
conducted the rites,
prepared Your nuptial chamber.
Now may Your heart embrace me!

These are my innovations,
O Mighty Queen, that I made for You!
What I composed for You by the dark of night,
The cantor will chant by day.

Now Inanna’s heart has been restored,
and the day became favorable to Her.
Clothed in beauty, radiant with joy,
she carried herself like the elegant moonlight.

Now to the Noble Hierodule,
to the Wrecker of foreign lands
presented by An with the seven divine powers,
and to my Queen garbed in the radiance of heaven ...

O Inanna, praise!



Enheduanna, the daughter of the famous King Sargon the Great of Akkad, is the first ancient writer whose name remains known today. She appears to be the first named poet in human history and the first known author of prayers and hymns. Enheduanna, who lived circa 2285-2250 BCE, is also one of the first women we know by name. She was the entu (high priestess) of the goddess Inanna (Ishtar/Astarte/Aphrodite) and the moon god Nanna (Sin) in the Sumerian city-state of Ur. Enheduanna's composition Nin-me-šara ("The Exaltation of Inanna") details her expulsion from Ur, located in southern Iraq, along with her prayerful request to the goddess for reinstatement. Enheduanna also composed 42 liturgical hymns addressed to temples across Sumer and Akkad. And she was the first editor of a poetry anthology, hymnal or songbook. Now known as the Sumerian Temple Hymns, this was the first collection of its kind; indeed, Enheduanna so claimed at the end of the final hymn: "My king, something has been created that no one had created before." And poems and songs are still being assembled today via the model she established over 4,000 years ago! Enheduanna may also have been the first feminist, as she made Inanna the supreme deity. Keywords/Tags: Enheduanna, translation, Akkad, Sumer, Nanna, Inanna, Ur, Sumerian temple hymns, Gishbanda, Ningishzida



The Love Song Of Shu-Sin
(the earth's oldest love poem, Sumerian, circa 2,000 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Darling of my heart, my belovéd,
your enticements are sweet, far sweeter than honey.
Darling of my heart, my belovéd,
your enticements are sweet, far sweeter than honey.

You have captivated me; I stand trembling before you.
Darling, lead me swiftly into the bedroom!
You have captivated me; I stand trembling before you.
Darling, lead me swiftly into the bedroom!

Sweetheart, let me do the sweetest things to you!
My precocious caress is far sweeter than honey!
In the bedchamber, dripping love's honey,
let us enjoy life's sweetest thing.
Sweetheart, let me do the sweetest things to you!
My precocious caress is far sweeter than honey!

Bridegroom, you will have your pleasure with me!
Speak to my mother and she will reward you;
speak to my father and he will award you gifts.
I know how to give your body pleasure—
then sleep, my darling, till the sun rises.

To prove that you love me,
give me your caresses,
my Lord God, my guardian Angel and protector,
my Shu-Sin, who gladdens Enlil's heart,
give me your caresses!
My place like sticky honey, touch it with your hand!
Place your hand over it like a honey-*** lid!
Cup your hand over it like a honey cup!

This is a balbale-song of Inanna.

This may be earth's oldest love poem. It may have been written around 2000 BC, long before the Bible's "Song of Solomon, " which had been considered to be the oldest extant love poem by some experts. The poem was discovered when the archaeologist Austen Henry Layard began excavations at Kalhu in 1845, assisted by Hormuzd Rassam. Layard's account of the excavations, published in 1849 CE, was titled Nineveh and its Remains. Due to Nineveh's fame (from the Bible) , the book became a best seller. But it turned out that the excavated site was not Nineveh, after all, as Layard later discovered when he excavated the real Nineveh.

As a surrogate for Inanna, the bride's mother would be either Ninlil or possibly Ningal, both goddesses.

As a surrogate for Inanna, the bride's father would be either Enlil or possibly Suen, both gods.

Shu-Sin was a Mesopotamian king who ruled over the land of Sumer close to four thousand years ago. The poem seems to be part of a rite, probably performed each year, known as the "sacred marriage" or "divine marriage, " in which the king would symbolically marry the goddess Inanna, mate with her, and so ensure fertility and prosperity for the coming year. The king would accomplish this amazing feat by marrying and/or having *** with a priestess or votary of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love, fertility and war. Her Akkadian name was Istar/Ishtar, and she was also known as Astarte. Whichever her name, she was the most prominent Mesopotamian female goddess. Inanna's primary temple was the Eanna, located in Uruk. But there were many other temples dedicated to her worship. The high priestess would choose a young man who represented the shepherd Dumuzid, the consort of Inanna, in a hieros gamos or sacred marriage, celebrated during the annual Akitu (New Year)ceremony, at the spring Equinox. The name Inanna derives from the Sumerian words for "Lady of Heaven." She was associated with the lion-a symbol of power-and was frequently depicted standing on the backs of two lionesses. Her symbol was an eight-pointed star or a rosette. Like other female love and fertility goddesses, she was associated with the planet Venus. The Enlil mentioned was Inanna's father, the Sumerian storm god, who controlled the wind and rain. (According to some god/goddess genealogies, Enlil was her grandfather.)In an often-parched land, the rain god would be ultra-important, and it appears that one of the objects of the "divine marriage" was to please Enlil and encourage him to send rain rather than destructive storms! Enlil was similar to the Bible's Jehovah, in that he was the supreme deity, and sometimes sent rain and plenty, but at other times sent war and destruction. Certain passages of the Bible appear to have been "borrowed" by the ancient Hebrews from much older Sumerian texts such as the Epic of Gilgamesh. Such accounts include the creation myth, the Garden of Eden myth, and the myth of the Great Flood and a mankind-saving ark. However, the Hebrew scribes modified the accounts to suit their theology, so in the Bible there is only one "god" who controls everything, and thus behaves like an angel at times and like a demon at others. And that is understandable if one posits that one god controls the weather, since earth's weather is unpredictable and at times seems like a blessing and at other times like a curse.



Untitled Heresies: The ur Poems

& GAUD said, “Let there be LIGHT VERSE
to illuminate the ‘nature’ of my Curse!”
—michael r. burch

reverse the Curse
with LIGHT VERSE!
recant the cant
with an illuminating chant
,etc.
—michael r. burch

Can the darkness of Christianity with its “eternal hell” be repealed via humor? It’s time to recant the cant, please pardon the puns.

if ur GAUD
is good,
half the Bible
is libel.
—michael r. burch

Christianity replaces Santa Claus with Jesus, so swell,
and coal, ashes and soot with an “eternal hell.”
—Michael R. Burch



day eight of the Divine Plan
by michael r. burch

the earth’s a-stir
with a GAUDLY whirr...

the L(AWE)D’s been creatin’!

com(men)ce t’ matin’!

hatch lotsa babies
he’ll infect with rabies
then ban from college
for seekin’ knowledge
like curious eve!

dear chilluns, don’t grieve,
be(lie)ve the Deceiver!

(never ask why ur Cupid
wanted eve stupid,
animalistic, and naked.)

ah-men!

Keywords/Tags: Enheduanna, Poetess, Sumer, Sumerian, Akkad, Akkadian, Saragon, Ur, High Priestess, Hymn, Hymns, Hymnist, Psalm, Psalms, Psalmist, Prayer, Prayers, Lament, Lamentations, Goddess, Nanna, Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte, Aphrodite, Sauska, Ornament of Heaven, mrbtr, mrbtran, mrbhymn

In June this year, designer Masaba Gupta and film producer Madhu Mantena had the quietest of civil ceremonies. It was only when she took to Twitter the next day to talk about the court registry that most people heard of it. It was a move most unorthodox, for a leading fashion designer, especially one who counts several Bollywood actors among her close friends.

At the time, she also announced “a Caribbean wedding in November”.

The destination wedding isn’t happening. But that’s not to deprive us of a grand, four-day affair, the sort that has the most coveted guest list, and is followed with the keenest interest. It will start on November 19, with the bridal showers, will continue with the mehendi on November 20, the sangeet on November 21 and a gala reception on Sunday, (November 22). Expect the works, and guest lists that boast of Bollywood A-listers (Shahid and Mira Kapoor, and Sonam Kapoor are close friends, just so you know).

In short, it sounds like any other grand Indian celebrity wedding. Except, this is Masaba Gupta we’re talking about. As we catch up with her, we get the sense that she’s approached the whole thing with the same minimalism and quirkiness with which she approaches fashion. “A lot of people are invited,” she tells us, “But I’m not going around and talking about my wedding designer or my lipstick, so on and so forth.”

Unlike most Indian brides, she’s not even fretting over the big day, or days, as it were. “When I was growing up, I always saw brides around me under tremendous stress. The pressure to dress a certain way, wear a certain amount of jewellery and make-up... I saw how uncomfortable it was. So I decided that, if I do get married, I’ll be someone who puts comfort first, and then looks at her options for cut, colour, embroidery or jewellery,” says Gupta.

So, in case you do find yourself invited (otherwise, there’s always Instagram), don’t be surprised to see the most relaxed bride, dressed so comfortably that she’d be the envy of any married Indian woman. The idea, she says, is that a bride should “dress in a way that she can interact with people and have a good time herself.”

She’s also taken charge of the whole thing, and planned a non-fussy, non-extravagant celebration. “For me, three vacations is more value-for-money than a mandap with diamonds on it.”

True to her word, for her sangeet and reception, Gupta is ditching the norm of heavily designed lehengas and saris. “I didn’t go into that heavy, couture, bridal space. And I’m the kind of designer who wears works of other designers,” she says. So, her trousseau will have outfits by several other leading designers. “There are a few people who are great at doing certain things. Anamika [Khanna] is great at reception outfits. I can do a cool, quirky mehendi outfit. For a sangeet, somebody more in the Manish Arora or Shivan and Narresh kind of space,” she says.

The designer who’s always stood apart also seems keen to set an example. By not conforming to rules, Gupta wants to make a point. “I do want it to be about comfort, but I also want to change things up a bit. I want to set an example and say that you don’t need to wear a certain colour, a certain type of maang tika; your hair doesn’t have to look a particular way,” says the young designer.

Ask her if this is the (unconventional) dream wedding come true, and she laughs. “I never had a dream wedding. I’ve never visualised anything except clothes. Certainly not an elaborate wedding setup. See, I just don’t want to starve at my wedding. So, my dream wedding is one where I get to eat a meal while everyone else enjoys themselves as well.”

Masaba’s five-point guide to a chilled-out wedding

1) Get people to help out. If you try and look at every detail, you’re going to have a hard time. You may have a great input, but get people to do it for you.

2)People think you should shop for jewellery and clothes much in advance, but I think it should be done as close to the wedding as possible. You’ll have the latest stuff, and your taste might change over time. It’s best done around the wedding, so you don’t regret what you’ve bought.

3) Shoes are important. Make sure you’re in comfortable heels or flats, so you can survive the night.

4) Always test the make-up artist. Don’t just do a demo and leave it; test it through the day. See how the make-up behaves over a few hours, then you’ll know what it will actually be like, because it takes a couple of hours for make-up to set.

5) Receptions should start becoming more informal. You shouldn’t have to have the couple on stage smiling through the evening. I’ve heard of brides getting locked jaws. It’s absolute torture.

How to be the unconventional groom

• Fusion looks work well. If you’re wearing a Jodhpuri or a bandhgala, team it up with Jodhpuri pants. For men who are slimmer, suits do wonders.

• If you wish to be quirky and know you can carry it off, team dhoti pants and a shirt with a really formal blazer and a brooch.


• I love the cropped, ankle-length formal pants men are wearing now. It’s great for a reception.

• You don’t need to wear laced up shoes. Wear a nice slip-on in patent leather or a printed pair of shoes that stand out. So, you can make the whole look black and white, and have a nice pop shoe and make that the focus.

• Don’t be afraid of colours at your wedding. Get over navy blue, black or maroon. On a darker man, a haldi yellow kurta will look fantastic when teamed with an off-white or cream churidar. Even a soft pink in raw silk — it has a silver-pink shine — looks lovely.

How to be the ‘in vogue’ bride

• We’re seeing a lot of shapewear backs. Instead of the flared lehenga, women are opting for the fishtail cuts. Girls are also wearing shararas with big flares that almost look like a lehenga.

• Brides are going minimal. Go for less embellishment, and lighter lehengas.

• The dupatta is being ditched. Either that, or it’s attached. Much easier to handle.

• The choli is becoming more modest. People are wearing longer lengths, which are more fitted; the ‘60s style kurtas with shararas are also in. There’s more focus on the body and shape.

• I’m hoping the anarkali has died. It’s the worst of the lot. And it’s not very flattering. If you’re very skinny and tall, it works for you. If you’re short, you look like you’re lost in your outfit.

• Ditch the trail. At the end of the night, it’s a rag. It’s been stepped on and is *****.

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/mermaid-trumpet-formal-dresses

www.marieaustralia.com/cheap-formal-dresses

/h'americans can call it a striptease, but in amsterdam, with legal self-employed prostitutes? we call it a cocktease: because you'd really visit amsterdam for the ****, these days?

isabella: the french psychology
exchange student -
    hung up on her ex-boyfriend -
really in anime movies -
      and that american i competed
with on an edinburgh pub-crawl
for freshers -
and lost my virginity to -
  
               probably the only time
i had the ontological parameters
of your atypical man -
  "hunting", competing -
   oh so, so, enthralling....
    (spot the irony mingling with
ridicule, when people "know"
how the modern man behaves,
with his caveman predecessors:
dragging a woman
by the hair type of cartoonish
depiction) -

the other fun time i've had
encounters with h'americans
was in Soho -
two colts, texan tourists asking
for directions,
or where this or that place was...
it almost warmed my heart
hearing that twang
                       of the tongue...
perhaps someone from arizona?
that has that - "mid" western
twang of the tongue
                 added to the bite...

snub the Boston high-mind
eloquence, like:
    you really really want
               to sound european...

never mind...
   people say that water is tasteless...
hmm...
    so last night i was heating
up one arm of scissors...
                 and sniffing it...
then licked the other arm of the scissor...

what's in water again?
   minerals... a subtle presence...
magnesium, potassium, iron...
you name it...
   so yeah... water is... "tasteless"...

eisenzahn that i am.

you can undercook pork - a little bit of pink
is rather - favourable -
you can undercook beef - a little bit...
let's go full bleu: which has a name... pittsburg
blue...
but please don't slaughter the cow,
send it to the butchers for the cuts...
and then shame it by cooking it well done...
thrice the cow thus dies...
aside from... fish...
well...
i was never a fan of chicken *******...
because whenever someone cooked them:
i.e. my mother - they tended to be... dry...
chicken drum-sticks and the almost grey area
of muscle flesh close to the bone -
these days? the former schnitzel fan has
become a chicken roulade fan...
because the stress for 165°F - and 5 minutes
worth of rest... for the cooked meat...

Ciara - another daughter of U Kʼux Kaj -
she can still be felt in the early night
when walking the streets...
some storms never reach essex -
and that's probably why i decided to grow
my beard long - to feel it combed
by the wind... this elongating chin to match
the moon's scythe -

point being... cooking chicken is unlike cooking
beef or pork... because...
well beef is born from blood -
in the body of another -
the mother - the pork is born from blood -
in the body of another - the mother...
you can undercook it... most certainly:
esp. the beef...
trouble with chicken: is the trouble
with undercooking fish...

to perfect the cooking of chicken meat...
is very much like cooking the perfect
soft-boiled egg...
you want the yoke to be runny...
and the white to be a: ścięte białko...
a coagulated white...
it's quiet amazing how chicken meat
behaves like the egg - the protein
in the atom -
how you have to mind cooking chicken:
for that juicy chicken breast roulade -
in the same way as minding a soft-boiled
egg...

i've never noticed this...
apparently that's the glaring obvious...
it always was!
beef you can undercook: cook it perfectly:
overcook it...
pork you can undercook: cook it perfectly:
overcook it...
chicken? you can only cook it perfectly
or overcook it...
undercooked chicken is a bit like...
finding a raw scallop nugget kiev-esque
in your chicken -

perhaps because: we can eat a poultry abortion:
the egg -
that i forgot or never minded to think:
the meat will behave like the egg -
the protein is borderline with seafood...
after all.. the birds are fish with wings...
that we managed to domesticate
a wolf and breed it with a dingo
and give it a bark...
how did we pluck the hawk from the sky
and gave it marching orders among
the strutting gehenna-game of the wehrmacht
with the geese...

i have no "beef" with the british and their past...
how many zulus became slaves?
hot topic...
if only a people were as fortunate -
not to be landlocked -
the last known invasion dates back to
1066 - nothing is spoken about the ottoman
empire or the mongol empire at the gates...
perhaps other people too...
could have their idle -
and been left to their own devices...
their high tea and all sort of *******...
but i'll still bemoan that...
this language does not have any orthography...
but it does have: n'dubz...
and a york-shyre from peckham and the rest...

- you simply can't undercook chicken...
you can either cook it to perfection...
or overcook... anything undercook is not going
to be eaten!
an undercooked chicken breast roulade?
that's scallop nugget in a kiev-esque chicken..
but why didn't i see it sooner...
how chicken meat would behave like
the egg when it was being cooked?
after all... what becomes of the yoke
when translated into the full-grown chicken?
the internal organs? the bones?
i'm pretty sure the egg-white translates into
the skeleton...
and the bones? it's not like the egg-shell
implodes...

in my hand i hold a chicken's egg:
a poultry abortion...
in my hand, also... a babushka doll...
this: little matron... бaбушкa...
because who would have thought that...
cooking the perfect chicken roulade...
would be akin to... 15 minutes extra...
when working from a soft-boiled egg...
oven-baked of course...
prior to the skin needs to be butter-fried...
and you can't enjoy
a chicken's neck... if it's not poached...
too many bones: not enough meat...
the neck of the chicken needs to poached...

again: one feels inclined to stress the importance
of curating the meat: curing it is one "thing"...
but it's almost an art...
as long as you respect the meat...
i find that most vegeterians or vegans
become thus...
because they have not learned to respect
the meat they're about to eat...

beef you can undercook... the sooner you do so...
the less chance that you'll butcher a second time
with a well-done: eating sand...
wishing it was poppy-seeds itching at the gums
between your teeth...

to respect the meat is to also bite off the heads
of the bones... for the over-cooked marrow...
i once held 30 or so poultry hearts in a cusp of hands...
hands prior to romeo & juliet's amen and kiss...
before i imagined what 30 hearts would otherwise
look like: if i was given the remaining body parts...

or 30 poultry stomachs readied for the broth...
with groats...
i too would become a vegeterian...
if the only chicken ******* i ate in my life
were: usually over-cooked...
dry... simulating imitation cheese
and chalk... the sort of meat: overcooked...
whereby your teeth start to experience
protein glue... and it's hard to pull the jaw
from the skull apart...

i have mentioned pittsburg blue, haven't i?
you can undercook beef and pork...
but you can't undercook chicken...
now unless you want to encounter
a pocket of a raw scallop sensation...
a chicken has to be treated as well as an egg...

most of the time you need to undercook
beef and pork...
but chicken requires...
oh glory be to the poached egg on toast...
the scrambled eggs undisturbed fried on
some pork dewlap...
when you can tell the difference between
the yoke and the whites...

such a versitile creature - this domesticated
hawk... this chicken marshal...
this would be cannibal... i've seen how one
becomes butchered with an axe -
one chicken, one axe - on stump of wood...
the rolling eyes of the decapitated...
the other chickens didn't mind...
they'd run up to the altar with the running
blood of rivers making letter markings
on the woody crumble...
and drink the blood... peck at left-over
flesh from the decapitation...

"gender expressions"... and... what's that?
leftover grammar from french...
translated from inanimate objects:
as being either endowed with a phallus
or a floral pattern -
but in english almost all objects of worded
interaction are gender-neutral!

native tongue "endowement"...
słońce - sun - is feminine...
księżyc - moon - is masculine -
krzesło - chair - i'm siding with masculine...
stół - table - that's clearly "gender neutral" /
alias: hermaphrodite... alias for the *******...
son / daughter of Aphrodite...
kamień - stone - masculine...
góra - mountain - feminine...

and so the heavens opened and became:
short on breath and soul...
the groundwork of earth...
the earth itself... started to nibble
on the delicacy of feet - the wind whispered...
and the echo: and the footsteps...
and the dutch clank convened and called it:
marriage!

how grammar transcended casual english
usage... how it bypassed orthography...
how it never attained orthography...
oh yes... the russian have it...
but... who would have expected it...

n'est ce pas?

what was once the gestalt primer...
that became a rorschach test...
i say: it's either a ink-blotch of a pelvis or a moth...
but with regards to the selfie:
i always require two mirrors...
i still remember the days when someone
would take a photograph of you being:
oblivious...
as if god: the narrator...
convened and descended upon the scene
and imposed directions of keen: montage...

the basis of gender neutrality of nouns...
it can't be extended to encompass verbs...
an oak: dąb - is male...
but a pine - sosna - is female...
all fruit bearing trees are female connotations...

whatever sheryl crow's debut album was...
wasn't alanaise morissette's jagged little pill -
however the conundrum spins with no
favor for the electric currents passing via
Ariel... give me the wind god...
the daughters and barons of: the lesser involved!

because i'm a far cry the alpha...
kindred of the omega... and all that alphabet
of meaning behind letters...
"self-imposed"... less a ******* and more...
feeble guide of watching others get
pleasured by the mantis
and the black widows of tomorrow...

a cactus would grow in my palm should
i witness germany re-united:
at least that's how the proverb stood its ground...
before common or passed on "wisdom"
learned to gravitate toward...
soap bubbles pop... charcoals smoke...
ms amber becomes a river
when there was no river expected...

the tides are hardly shy: they're buying time...
this one last commodity of the rotten mind
of the gambler...
puny prophet - of fate -
alongside the weathermen of a forgotten
afternoon: come birthday prior to noon...
and the fungus umbrellas chat
among themselves in a premature autumn
cascade...

fungus or just... lungs... devoid of a body?

my god: the kids are going after the grammar
that has already absolved them...
knitting mosquitos and lambasting
gherkins' worth of would-be:
pickled cucumbers...

that herring tartar... with dill and juices...
that baltic sushi never to arrive
at the cusp of the Caspian sea...
Molotov shots;
the Russians will always bring glasses
and ***** with them...
because... they somehow can...

- and that's because...
sheryl crow's debut album wasn't
alanaise morissette's...
but never makes the cards of a...
poker-match-up to better not earn
money if all that money is a gambler's
Eden...

- there are better ways to get away with
cooking an egg...
there's this entire myth of...
no poultry sushi...
mein gott! how the meat agrees with
abortions...
you can undercook beef,
you can undercook pork...
but when there are poultry standards...
they're just as risk-aversive as when...
a soft-boiled egg is required...
same with meat...

this direct translation of the atomised meat
in an egg white...
how it needs to coagulate to pristine juice
and all that perfect *******...
and... ****** via the runny yoke...
because i believe there's a puritanical
aspect of all life in general...
when hard-ons are sold
within the quarantine confines
of a viagara episode of: ***** into a hard-on...

chuckles and whittle charlie chaser says:
no man was ever ***** into a hard-on...
no?!
when charlie met chuckles and chuckie
and charles...
it must be a russian "thing"...
they have them... and hide them better...
there's nothing to hide in english...
just bad grammar and trans-grammar....

i.e. чa-чa-чa
            believe me... they managed to fold...
hide the caron in that alice through the looking-glass
of greek mu: μ - or (h)atches open!
how about hiding...  (letovers: č              č
the caron, in russian?          č č             č č         č)
or the H and the Z in english and polish
respective - whole - attached to the S?

epsilon lying back... the toil
of Sysiphus is a bore: шit...
****... and... шarp...
and... mateuш...
    
maybe people... or so we at least,
have inkling to hope to be receptive of...

щ: twice the hiding caron...
it's not that the russians don't use diacritical
markers - they just hide them differently...
the self-exposed vowels...
last of the reminders...
because there's the carpenter's obligation
to chisel a Y into an I...
or at least a J...

to add this currency of momentum is...
to... leave without a memory spare...
whipped along the trail via
a maine ****'s finicky worship of
air that will never translate itself
as being: breathed...

and yes: i drink... i drink to relax
my lexicon from the everyday strict: rules
and obligation of formal mr and mrs
and what doesn't fit into
a metaphor tuxedo...

over-cook pasta: we'll never talk again...
over-cook beef or pork: ditto...

it's an art to treat cooking poultry meat
with a quasi seafood status of scallops...
to curate a soft-boiled egg -
not quiet the abortion portioned
within the confines of a lost shell when
thrown into the dead-bath of
a lobster's litany when the neither alive
nor dead is cooked...

some bloos is necessary when it comes
to either beef or pork...
but you can't just have undercooked
poultry...
the grounded clipped wing marshall:
the decency of cooking poultry has
to be equated with cooking
a soft-boiled egg...

otherwise the common saying:
one apple a day... keeps the doctor away...
well...
one poem a day... keeps the psychiatrist away...
no? who are the circus freaks
the pseudos and the quasis of what...
has to be compensated by mr. rather dr.
surgeons and... the better half of whatever
becomes the butchering degree:
a degree in: what's not to be eaten...
but what has to be left intact
and reused?

less the homosexual yet still la la land...
not quiet cuck...
but still... every time i visited...
and never managed to peer at
the sort of first-person doom shooter experience
that otherwise third party sources would
allow me when...
the best fallatio is done in third-person...
talk about having someone to sit
on your face like...
never the literal metaphor translation
of ****** acts...
face-grubber from alien and...
performing oral *** on a woman...
no... none of it is true!
******* and winding archaic clocks...

some would even call it electricity should
it come from a burning candle!

All your life, you've wished for wings
While I've learned the notes the ocean sings.
To stroke the sky where it hugs the shore,
To ask the waves if we've met before.
You took your first flight as I was learning to float,
You build yourself a catapult, I dug myself a moat.
Both our hearts are equally blue,
And neither one has learned to hide.
Like lovers' eyes, you're lost inside-
Intoxicating, infinite, new.
We'll gallop together on common ground,
Sea horses with eagles true love have found.
No wind nowhere, dear, ever behaves,
The sky weeps tears and the sea laughs waves.

Where sky meets sea at the end of the world,
Where they kiss and intertwine to the beat of their song,
With the sun as a lone fiery partition,
That's where we belong.

The way he behaves,

imitating me, never --


I would act like that!

Lament to the Spirit of War
by Enheduanna (circa 2285-2250 BCE)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You hack down everything you see, War God!

Rising on fearsome wings
you rush to destroy our land:
raging like thunderstorms,
howling like hurricanes,
screaming like tempests,
thundering, raging, ranting, drumming,
whiplashing whirlwinds!

Men falter at your approaching footsteps.

Tortured dirges scream on your lyre of despair.

Like a fiery Salamander you poison the land:
growling over the earth like thunder,
vegetation collapsing before you,
blood gushing down mountainsides.

Spirit of hatred, greed and vengeance!

******* of heaven and earth!

Your ferocious fire consumes our land.

Whipping your stallion
with furious commands,
you impose our fates.

You triumph over all human rites and prayers.

Who can explain your tirade,
why you carry on so?



Temple Hymn 15

to the Gishbanda Temple of Ningishzida
by Enheduanna (circa 2285-2250 BCE)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Most ancient and terrible shrine,
set deep in the mountain
like a mother's womb ...

Dark shrine,
like a mother's wounded breast,
blood-red and terrifying ...

Though approaching through a safe-seeming field,
our hair raises as we near you!

Gishbanda,
like a neck-stock,
like a fish net,
like a foot-shackled prisoner's manacles ...
your ramparts are massive,
like a trap!

But once we’re inside,
as the sun rises,
you yield widespread abundance!

Your prince
is the pure-handed priest of Inanna, heaven's holy one,
Lord Ningishzida!

Oh, see how his thick, lustrous hair
cascades down his back!

Oh Gishbanda,
he has built this beautiful temple to house your radiance!
He has placed his throne upon your dais!



Temple Hymn 7: an Excerpt
to the Kesh Temple of Ninhursag
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, high-situated Kesh,
form-shifting summit,
inspiring fear like a venomous viper!

O, Lady of the Mountains,
Ninhursag’s house was constructed on a terrifying site!

O, Kesh, like holy Aratta: your womb dark and deep,
your walls high-towering and imposing!

O, great lion of the wildlands stalking the high plains!...



Temple Hymn 17: an Excerpt
to the Badtibira Temple of Dumuzi
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, house of jeweled lapis illuminating the radiant bed
in the peace-inducing palace of our Lady of the Steppe!



Temple Hymn 22: an Excerpt
to the Sirara Temple of Nanshe
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, house, you wild cow!
Made to conjure signs of the Divine!
You arise, beautiful to behold,
bedecked for your Mistress!



Temple Hymn 26: an Excerpt
to the Zabalam Temple of Inanna
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O house illuminated by beams of bright light,
dressed in shimmering stone jewels,
awakening the world to awe!



Temple Hymn 42: an Excerpt

to the Eresh Temple of Nisaba
by Enheduanna (circa 2285-2250 BCE)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O, house of brilliant stars
bright with lapis stones,
you illuminate all lands!

...

The person who put this tablet together
is Enheduanna.
My king: something never created before,
did she not give birth to it?



The Exaltation of Inanna: Opening Lines and Excerpts
by Enheduanna, the daughter of Sargon I of Akkad and the high priestess of the Goddess Inanna
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lady of all divine powers!
Lady of the resplendent light!
Righteous Lady adorned in heavenly radiance!

Beloved Lady of An and Uraš!
Hierodule of An, sun-adorned and bejeweled!
Heaven’s Mistress with the holy diadem,
Who loves the beautiful headdress befitting the office of her own high priestess!

Powerful Mistress, seizer of the seven divine powers!
My Heavenly Lady, guardian of the seven divine powers!
You have seized the seven divine powers!
You hold the divine powers in your hand!
You have gathered together the seven divine powers!
You have clasped the divine powers to your breast!

You have flooded the valleys with venom, like a viper;
all vegetation vanishes when you thunder like Iškur!
You have caused the mountains to flood the valleys!
When you roar like that, nothing on earth can withstand you!

Like a flood descending on floodplains, O Powerful One, you will teach foreigners to fear Inanna!

You have given wings to the storm, O Beloved of Enlil!
The storms do your bidding, blasting the unbelievers!

Foreign cities cower at the chaos You cause!
Entire countries cower in dread of Your deadly South Wind!
Men cower before you in their anguished implications,
raising their pitiful outcries,
weeping and wailing, beseeching Your benevolence with many wild lamentations!

But in the van of battle, everything falls before You, O Mighty Queen!

My Queen,
You are all-conquering, all-devouring!
You continue Your attacks like relentless storms!
You howl louder than the howling storms!
You thunder louder than Iškur!
You moan louder than the mournful winds!
Your feet never tire from trampling Your enemies!
You produce much wailing on the lyres of lamentations!

My Queen,
all the Anunna, the mightiest Gods,
fled before Your approach like fluttering bats!
They could not stand in Your awesome Presence
nor behold Your awesome Visage!

Who can soothe Your infuriated heart?
Your baleful heart is beyond being soothed!

Uncontrollable Wild Cow, elder daughter of Sin,
O Majestic Queen, greater than An,
who has ever paid You enough homage?

O Life-Giving Goddess, possessor of all powers,
Inanna the Exalted!

Merciful, Live-Giving Mother!
Inanna, the Radiant of Heart!
I have exalted You in accordance with Your power!
I have bowed before You in my holy garb,
I the En, I Enheduanna!

Carrying my masab-basket, I once entered and uttered my joyous chants ...

But now I no longer dwell in Your sanctuary.
The sun rose and scorched me.
Night fell and the South Wind overwhelmed me.
My laughter was stilled and my honey-sweet voice grew strident.
My joy became dust.

O Sin, King of Heaven, how bitter my fate!

To An, I declared: An will deliver me!
I declared it to An: He will deliver me!

But now the kingship of heaven has been seized by Inanna,
at Whose feet the floodplains lie.

Inanna the Exalted,
who has made me tremble together with all Ur!

Stay Her anger, or let Her heart be soothed by my supplications!
I, Enheduanna will offer my supplications to Inanna,
my tears flowing like sweet intoxicants!
Yes, I will proffer my tears and my prayers to the Holy Inanna,
I will greet Her in peace ...

O My Queen, I have exalted You,
Who alone are worthy to be exalted!
O My Queen, Beloved of An,
I have laid out Your daises,
set fire to the coals,
conducted the rites,
prepared Your nuptial chamber.
Now may Your heart embrace me!

These are my innovations,
O Mighty Queen, that I made for You!
What I composed for You by the dark of night,
The cantor will chant by day.

Now Inanna’s heart has been restored,
and the day became favorable to Her.
Clothed in beauty, radiant with joy,
she carried herself like the elegant moonlight.

Now to the Noble Hierodule,
to the Wrecker of foreign lands
presented by An with the seven divine powers,
and to my Queen garbed in the radiance of heaven ...

O Inanna, praise!



Enheduanna, the daughter of the famous King Sargon the Great of Akkad, is the first ancient writer whose name remains known today. She appears to be the first named poet in human history and the first known author of prayers and hymns. Enheduanna, who lived circa 2285-2250 BCE, is also one of the first women we know by name. She was the entu (high priestess) of the goddess Inanna (Ishtar/Astarte/Aphrodite) and the moon god Nanna (Sin) in the Sumerian city-state of Ur. Enheduanna's composition Nin-me-šara ("The Exaltation of Inanna") details her expulsion from Ur, located in southern Iraq, along with her prayerful request to the goddess for reinstatement. Enheduanna also composed 42 liturgical hymns addressed to temples across Sumer and Akkad. And she was the first editor of a poetry anthology, hymnal or songbook. Now known as the Sumerian Temple Hymns, this was the first collection of its kind; indeed, Enheduanna so claimed at the end of the final hymn: "My king, something has been created that no one had created before." And poems and songs are still being assembled today via the model she established over 4,000 years ago! Enheduanna may also have been the first feminist, as she made Inanna the supreme deity. Keywords/Tags: Enheduanna, translation, Akkad, Sumer, Nanna, Inanna, Ur, Sumerian temple hymns



The Love Song Of Shu-Sin
(the earth's oldest love poem, Sumerian, circa 2,000 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Darling of my heart, my belovéd,
your enticements are sweet, far sweeter than honey.
Darling of my heart, my belovéd,
your enticements are sweet, far sweeter than honey.

You have captivated me; I stand trembling before you.
Darling, lead me swiftly into the bedroom!
You have captivated me; I stand trembling before you.
Darling, lead me swiftly into the bedroom!

Sweetheart, let me do the sweetest things to you!
My precocious caress is far sweeter than honey!
In the bedchamber, dripping love's honey,
let us enjoy life's sweetest thing.
Sweetheart, let me do the sweetest things to you!
My precocious caress is far sweeter than honey!

Bridegroom, you will have your pleasure with me!
Speak to my mother and she will reward you;
speak to my father and he will award you gifts.
I know how to give your body pleasure—
then sleep, my darling, till the sun rises.

To prove that you love me,
give me your caresses,
my Lord God, my guardian Angel and protector,
my Shu-Sin, who gladdens Enlil's heart,
give me your caresses!
My place like sticky honey, touch it with your hand!
Place your hand over it like a honey-*** lid!
Cup your hand over it like a honey cup!

This is a balbale-song of Inanna.

This may be earth's oldest love poem. It may have been written around 2000 BC, long before the Bible's "Song of Solomon, " which had been considered to be the oldest extant love poem by some experts. The poem was discovered when the archaeologist Austen Henry Layard began excavations at Kalhu in 1845, assisted by Hormuzd Rassam. Layard's account of the excavations, published in 1849 CE, was titled Nineveh and its Remains. Due to Nineveh's fame (from the Bible) , the book became a best seller. But it turned out that the excavated site was not Nineveh, after all, as Layard later discovered when he excavated the real Nineveh.

As a surrogate for Inanna, the bride's mother would be either Ninlil or possibly Ningal, both goddesses.

As a surrogate for Inanna, the bride's father would be either Enlil or possibly Suen, both gods.

Shu-Sin was a Mesopotamian king who ruled over the land of Sumer close to four thousand years ago. The poem seems to be part of a rite, probably performed each year, known as the "sacred marriage" or "divine marriage, " in which the king would symbolically marry the goddess Inanna, mate with her, and so ensure fertility and prosperity for the coming year. The king would accomplish this amazing feat by marrying and/or having *** with a priestess or votary of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love, fertility and war. Her Akkadian name was Istar/Ishtar, and she was also known as Astarte. Whichever her name, she was the most prominent Mesopotamian female goddess. Inanna's primary temple was the Eanna, located in Uruk. But there were many other temples dedicated to her worship. The high priestess would choose a young man who represented the shepherd Dumuzid, the consort of Inanna, in a hieros gamos or sacred marriage, celebrated during the annual Akitu (New Year)ceremony, at the spring Equinox. The name Inanna derives from the Sumerian words for "Lady of Heaven." She was associated with the lion-a symbol of power-and was frequently depicted standing on the backs of two lionesses. Her symbol was an eight-pointed star or a rosette. Like other female love and fertility goddesses, she was associated with the planet Venus. The Enlil mentioned was Inanna's father, the Sumerian storm god, who controlled the wind and rain. (According to some god/goddess genealogies, Enlil was her grandfather.)In an often-parched land, the rain god would be ultra-important, and it appears that one of the objects of the "divine marriage" was to please Enlil and encourage him to send rain rather than destructive storms! Enlil was similar to the Bible's Jehovah, in that he was the supreme deity, and sometimes sent rain and plenty, but at other times sent war and destruction. Certain passages of the Bible appear to have been "borrowed" by the ancient Hebrews from much older Sumerian texts such as the Epic of Gilgamesh. Such accounts include the creation myth, the Garden of Eden myth, and the myth of the Great Flood and a mankind-saving ark. However, the Hebrew scribes modified the accounts to suit their theology, so in the Bible there is only one "god" who controls everything, and thus behaves like an angel at times and like a demon at others. And that is understandable if one posits that one god controls the weather, since earth's weather is unpredictable and at times seems like a blessing and at other times like a curse.

Keywords/Tags: Enheduanna, Poetess, Sumer, Sumerian, Akkad, Akkadian, Saragon, Ur, High Priestess, Hymn, Hymns, Hymnist, Psalm, Psalms, Psalmist, Prayer, Prayers, Lament, Lamentations, Goddess, Nanna, Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte, Aphrodite, Sauska, Ornament of Heaven, mrbtr, mrbtran, mrbhymn

Here I am; waiting,
Waiting for an old friend
On a deserted Railway Station.
She’s late; knew she would be.
Time behaves differently in
Such public places; very differently.

I stood waiting alone,
Then a gaggle of women
Clattered up the subway.
Stilettos and thick, heeled boots,
Beating out an echoing tattoo,
On the broad, concrete steps.

Now we wait together,
Myself and a Hen Party.
Blending of emotional alloys
Fused together, forming
Excitement; then I see her
And all heads turn to look.

Amongst the flower boxes,
Silence blossoms on the
Platform as my old friend
Glides serenely into the station,
She’s late; knew she would be
Even so, she’s on time for me.

Steam unfurls around her,
Billowing majestic clouds
Crowning this, ‘Queen of
The Rails’, last seen when
I was a boy, now in manhood
Her unsung glory is truly revered.

Steel wheels clatter, a rhythmic
Tattoo, then she draws to a halt.
Old friend from a previous age
Escaping through to this century,
Thronged by beautiful women, I
Smile, and step aboard a true beauty.

©Paul M Chafer 2014

We are the genuine men
We are the fulfilled men
Standing together
Headpiece filled with ideas. Huzzah!
Our powerful voices, when
We cheer together
Are loud and meaningful
As wind in wet grass
Or dancing feet over wooden floors
In our damp attics

Shape with form, shade with colour,
Dynamic force, motion without gesture;

Those who have crossed
With indirect eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Forget  us—if at all—not as found
Peaceful souls, but only
As the genuine men
The fulfilled men.

Eyes I dare meet in nightmares
In death’s dream kingdom
These do  appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a whole column
There, is a tree standing
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More close and more bashful
Than a newly formed star.

Let me be closer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me not wear
Such obvious disguises
Silk shirt, snakeskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
Closer—

That first meeting
In the twilight kingdom

This is the living land
This is fruitful land
Here the cloudy images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a living man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a newly formed star.

It is like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking together
At the minute when we are
Shaking with excitement
Lips that would kiss
Form praise to no stone.

The eyes are here
There are eyes here
In this valley of living stars
In this flowing valley
This whole jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this first of meeting places
We ***** alone
And invite speech
Gathered on this beach of the free river

Vision, unless
The eyes disappear
As the periodic star
Monofoliate daisy
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of whole men.

Here we go round the mulberry bush
Mulberry bush mulberry bush
Here we go round the mulberry bush
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the thought
And the implementation
Between the movement
And the deed
Rises the Light
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the inception
And the construction
Between the feeling
And the reaction
Rises the Light
                                Life is very short

Between the need
And the want
Between the potential
And the substance
Between the ingredients
And the ascent
Rises the Light
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world begins
This is the way the world begins
This is the way the world begins
Not with a whimper but a bang.

I want to tell you about time, how strangely
it behaves when you haven't got much of it left:
after 60 say, or 70, when you'd think it would

find itself squeezed so hard that like melting
ice it would surely begin to shrink, each day
looking smaller and smaller - well, it's not so.

The rules change, a single hour can grow huge
and quiet, full of reflections like an old river,
its slow-turning eddies and whirls showing you

every face of your life in a fluid design -
your children for instance, how you see them
deepened and changed, not merely by age, but by

time itself, its wide and luminous eye; and you
realise at last that your every gift to them - love,
your very life, should they need it - will not

and cannot come back; it wasn't a gift at all
but a borrowing, a baton for them to pass on in
their turn. Look, there they are in this

shimmering distance, rushing through their kind
of time, moving faster than you yet not catching up.
You're alone. And slowly you begin to discern

the queer outline of what's to come: the bend in
the river beyond which, moving steadily, head up
(you hope), you will simply vanish from sight.

studying the a.i. concept of / via the internet...

i talked to siri once... she didn't reply,
instead she sent a message to all these people
that only said: slow down...
   yeah, messaged her... she wasn't the blonde
turned super-redhead i was led to imagine,
but at least she reacted in an unexpected way...

siri? oh, that microsoft a.i. project?
     i play word games, not world of warcraft...
luckily we can be said to be architect of some kind,
   or at least that's how keep a sane head when using
the internet... or simply bypassing all major
outlets that encourage certain messaging services,
like the telephone, the media... the pope...
  i'll write my little ******* verse
         for someone who doesn't implement
censors... not unless it's wattpad, that has
a genius code that doesn't allow you to ctrl + c
and then ctrl + p...
           that's probably the only good thing about
that website...
   if all website had the secret to not allowing
a ctrl + c, that would really be basis for
intellectual property, and what's otherwise the basis
for jurisprudence in the ultra-modern era...
        the fact that most websites don't use
a sentence of code that implements a ban on
ctrl + c says a lot... i mean: a grand canyon's worth
of meaning about theft and plagiarism and what not...

yeah, but you see... given the + of wattpad,
it's hard to understand why someone, a really ******
poet can complain to the authority of the website
for having a conversation with them
on the basis that you simply do the 20th century thing
of a hotmail chat room within the frame of
the acronym a.s.l. -
          but merely concentrating on the l -
so you... well, imagine where they're writing from...
i suppose there wouldn't be a problem asking
them if they have pets...

yet how this thing behaves on a musical level...
you start listening to a macbeth soundtrack,
you switch to listening to the exmachina sountrack,   <-- p.s. ref.
and you want to listen to a particular song,                      to unnecessary
in this case: #6 -                                                                       italics
    so a bit like writing a symphony and calling                    thus
it: in #A or... that's A-major, isn't it?

   and to the sound of wasps' in a flurry...

    it's about how the algorithm behaves when you
take that one song out from a link to the entire
sountrack, and what other suggestions come along,
the immediate sense of archeology of past choices /
preferences... e.g. robert plant's darkness darkness...
hedningarna's räven, ghost b.c.'s year zero...

the only thing that's artificial is the fact that someone
smart enough to code wrote the program,
           on the basis that i didn't have the capacity to write it
in order to not muse about it's behaviour...
  
i have keep making these repetitive interactions with
the internet, it's this thing completely devoid of
any sublayers this world might have -
  well... if we didn't have internet banking i'd
clearly say: life on the internet, and real life...
    there's bound to be a "    "         in that sentence,
i'm just not sure where to put it...
      i stopped believing there was a distinction,
given how huge the human population is
and the needs to travel... for what? coffee and cookies?

for those of us who still remember life in the 20th
century...
                         what was i, in 2000? 14?
   i was a kid back then, and i'm sure people much
older than me think fondly of it...
         there was so many things to touch, to feel,
to smell...
                       i don't have this classical 20th century
or beginning with nietzsche *nostalgia*
for ancient greece... my nostalgia is subtle because
it revolves around an organic structure of
my own memory, nostalgia for ancient greece
is quiet frankly, *inorganic*, that gets passed down
via philosophy books... my nostalgia is for the
end of the 20th century... not so much being a child
or anything as crass as that...
                    but that there was this fluidity in the world....
hanging out with people in car parks,
               going to the high street...
                  agoraphobia took over from that...
and that's the best thing the greeks ever gave us:
a list of phobias...
  but then why would i be right about that?
given that polite society doesn't engage with
dialectics... with **** schizoi A bashing this opinion
and **** schizoi B blasting that opinion...

recent videos i watched? a funny compilation...
     i have to admit that *sia's* early output is
staggering... she's like this matured version of
*katy b*...
                     can you imagine that some of us coming
from the 20th century had the sole ambition
to work in a music shop?
                          oh look.... that's flushed down the toilet...

god... i hate sarcasm, it's such a dry comedy,
i might as well walk into a desert and pretend i'm
a cactus.

oh right... youtube videos...
   that rare combination of
*the amazing atheist* and transgender dating and
if that's bigotry...
      i already stated the "video" i'm watching now
exmachina #6... no, nothing robotic imagining the music...
more like wasps... or termites... evidently something
sinister... but then again gradual,
nothing like an avalanche... and there is a part
of me that would like to usher in some purposive
imagery... but then i'm being fed imagery
and i'm trying to refine what it could be by that track...

oh right... and the last video...
   this is such a francis bacon moment, how he
found beauty in violence...
    me... i'm more into seeing a brotherhood of some sort,
something that can be shared, moulded,
     something elemental, and vaguely orientated
around western values of free speech...
             anything but a vague humanity,
this constant need to individualise...
     to speak about things where the only taboo left
standing is violence...
                    there are age restrictions, of course (oddly
enough, missing in galleries...
but you know: if you ever masturbated over
an Agnolo Bronzino painting... you might talk
something as refined as the link i'm about to post)...

       youtube - Russian streetfights
                                         Russians VS Muslims...

what's amazing is this sense of togetherness....
              i can't call it anything but baconesque
after watching the david jacoby adaptation of
the artist's life and work (daniel craig being the muse
and tragic suicide)... it's almost as soothing as sitting
on a beach and watching the sea...
                                       being an only child
gives me this precursor of opinion... to think of a large
family, moving synchro like a wave.....
           it is the sea, truly... it swells and absorbs
                            the earth, teasing, gently nibbling
on it...
                      well... at least that's how i use the internet;
and so much more gratifying is the case
where i make the conscious effort that
  is in equilibirum to the made effort,
                        rather than just a passive care for
number, and a video; unless of course i'm fooling myself
on that *** note...

to finally see violence as the last standing taboo
                            and all others so openly disclosed.

p.s. what's with this website's * / _   ?

So rough the goat will scratch, it cannot sleep.
So often goes the *** to the well that it breaks.
So long you heat iron, it will glow;
so heavily you hammer it, it shatters.
So good is the man as his praise;
so far he will go, and he's forgotten;
so bad he behaves, and he's despised.
So loud you cry Christmas, it comes.

So glib you talk, you end up in contradictions.
So good is your credit as the favors you got.
So much you promise that you will back out.
So doggedly you beg that your wish is granted;
so high climbs the price when you want a thing;
so much you want it that you pay the price;
so familiar it gets to you, you want it no more.
So loud you cry Christmas, it comes.

So, you love a dog.  Then feed it!
So long a song will run that people learn it.
So long you keep the fruit, it will rot.
So hot the struggle for a spot that it is won;
so cool you keep your act that your spirit freezes;
so hurriedly you act that you run into bad luck;
so tight you embrace that your catch slips away.
So loud you cry Christmas, it comes.

So you scoff and laugh, and the fun is gone.
So you crave and spend, and lose your shirt.
So candid you are, no blow can be too low.
So good as a gift should a promise be.
So, if you love God, you obey the Church.
So, when you give much, you borrow much.
So, shifting winds turn to storm.
So loud you cry Christmas, it comes.

Prince, so long as a fool persists, he grows wiser;
so, round the world he goes, but return he will,
so humbled and beaten back into servility.
So loud you cry Christmas, it is here.

i only noticed it today - from the wide opening spaces,
the scarce forests and horses grazing -
where everyone around here looks very much feral -
and even behaves feral - it's sometimes eye-opening
seeing the big city - the rat channels - the avoidance
of staring each other in the eyes -
the number of mobile phones in almost constant use -
a grant antopia that London and other cities have
become - behemoths in their own right -
but what's most eye-opening is the perfect skin
of the populace - i can almost claim a Joseph Merrick
appearance - relativity has nothing to do with it -
the 21st century and the Victorian era are completely
two different swarms of fish - Londoners' perfect skin,
with mine like fields of Ypres during world war two -
or quiet simply: mine the moon-face - littered with
tiny bullet incisions - even if i wanted, on this
basis i wouldn't land an executive job - an office job -
these people look for pampered - so docile even -
busy docile, but so docile - and once in a while you
see a glimmer of what it's all about - a public show
of affection - a couple lost in a moment between one
underground train and the next on the tube platform -
it's mesmerising seeing such moments, such is
their rarity - for you know judging by the overall
consensus - that so too is rare an old couple - as also
a family outing - the consensus speaks a different urbanity -
not such Edenic delights in the firestorm of concrete
and sweat and fast-food outlets, overpriced beer and overpriced
coffee - priced according to the postcode and the view.

but enough of that... the ballet! the first time i went
to a ballet it was to see *swan lake -
i was put off - a sour taste on my tongue, i thought
i'd give all future ballets a pass -
then Bolshoi came along out of the blue -
i had someone else's ticket, so i went for free -
i could be all hot-air ponce puffing that it's Bolshoi -
and as if by miracle... i fell in love -
the main reason? when i went to see the swan lake
it was like watching an enlarged centipede
stomping on the stage - it was staged in the Royal
Albert Hall... they also play tennis in the Royal Albert...
the ground is too hard... when the swan lake
ballerinas pranced en pointe the centipede was out...
it even managed to overpower the orchestra -
the great en pointe centipede of royal albert hall -
the difference! the difference! when ballet becomes
silent - effortless - as it was today at the royal opera
house with a softer stage - given the play, i was
expecting the ballet dancers to imitate a bull's hoof
hitting the ground before charging - that came,
since we had matadors on stage - Don Quixote was
there too (obviously), but more in a comic role
as sheer presence - if the character danced, the whole
adaptation would have been a complete failure -
ballet and romance - who would Don Quixote dance
with, a ******* windmill? he's cameo compared
to the dancers - and all the more effective, since the
opening scene is wholly dedicated to him,
when he decides to go on his quest - Sancho runs into
his house with stolen meat, three women are after him,
so Sancho decides to hide under Don Quixoté's table  
(yes, they pronounced it with an acute e, otherwise
tongue-waggling business-as-usual); but to be honest
act i through to half of act ii doesn't feel like ballet at
all - not like swan lake felt like by comparison,
there are accents of ballet - accents as in that soloists
performing with what would otherwise be a bubonic
plague of other ballerinas missing - not to mention
that some of the soloist feats are done with the legs
being kept a secret / i.e. hidden - we get flamenco
dancers, not ballerinas - i came here to see Bolshoi
flamenco? well that's the good part - then all the
Spanish allure vanishes - phoom! puff! it's gone -
Don Quixote is taken ill and collapses in a forest -
loses consciousness and wakes into a dream -
boom! 30 odd ballerinas on stage dressed in tutus
of light azure - out of nowhere in the middle of act ii
and all the way through to the end of act iii we have
pure ballet - all the techniques, from
a (pirouette) à la second - a brisé - a fouetté -
a male grand jeté - everything you can imagine basically.
thank god Don Quixote doesn't dance but is the cameo
vehicle moving things along - fighting with windmills
or dancing ballet with windmills? i'm not too sure now,
it's more fun i suppose having actually read the book -
in the ballet the windmills' debacle comes much later
than in the book - it's like this two part story -
just before Don Quixote collapses in the forest and
the ballet begins - we have three giants swirling on stage.
on a less gratifying note though - so many Russians
in the house - i guess paying to see Bolshoi in Moscow
must be expensive, cheaper to fly to London and
see it here - but then again... why am i surprised or remotely
bothered? i could have been as level headed in my
analysis as Kierkegaard at the theatre - but i can't -
the music is too intoxicating, the body language too
architecturally sound and impenetrable -
all i can say with an honest heart:
DON'T GO TO SEE BALLET AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL
(you'll be watching a centipede dance),
SEE IT AT THE ROYAL OPERA HOUSE -
can't get a better summary than that.

You forgive everyone
for not knowing,

or understanding,
or even caring,

because you know
this is the way humans are.

This is the way, at times,
even the one you should hold most dear,

the one who goes by your name
and lives in your skin, behaves.

Forget…?      Not yet.

I was a little kid one day
I knew nothing but how to play
Once we had a big house and a tree
The paradise I used to see
I was playing with other boys
Around the tree with different toys
I always had a dream in my head
To grow up, be bigger than a kid
I always had a wish
Never to know grief or anguish
Did I forget…..?
Never….not yet.

One day I had black hair
Satisfied with my parent's care
I knew nowhere but my parents' embrace
I knew that is our house and our place
I still remember my white kite
Flying over our house before my sight
Going to school with friends of my age
Once I was young … a little page
Once we had a full life of our own
Once we had our sun and moon
Did I forget…..?
Never ……not yet.


Suddenly I grew up a thousand years
With cries, grief and tears
It was the first time to hear about Zionist occupiers
Of our own life, they are defiers
Everything turned upside down one day
My black hair turned into grey
They destroyed our house and tree
Heard lots of desperate cries…Alas, it was me!
And showed up one Zionist
And said to me "Get out, terrorist"
Did I forget…….?
Never….,not yet.


My own parents, they brutally slew
Our house and tree, they fiercely up blew
I had no ability even to weep
As terror into my heart began to creep
Our own life, they have stolen
Our house and tree have fallen
Zionists shouted, "We came to take your land"
Your sky, desert and sand
They said, "Of our own land-get out
With guns' and tanks' shout
Did I forget?
Never, not yet

I began to walk away and run
Under flaming sky and weeping sun
They forced me to desert my land, what a vile!
In my own country, everlasting exile!
All houses, schools and mosques, they demolished
All our friends and relations, they perished
Under my feet I lost my way
In my country, I became astray
My parent slept in eternal peace
They took every comfort and left me no piece
Did I forget?
Never, not yet

I was looking for a place to settle
With no food and water was so little
A while passed and saw some kids like me
They ran away, they did nothing but to flee
We lived together
We were brother to brother
Recalling what happened before our eyes
And our cries reached the skies
Everyone, his story, told
With weather was so cold
Did I forget?
Never, not yet


We promised each other
To defend our country together
We would get back our land
Arm with arm and hand to hand
We are stronger with the power of faith
We have no fear to face
Together we would sweep them out
With our faith, without doubt
The day will come so soon
And get back our sun and moon
Did we forget?
Never, not yet


Pain and torture they invent
With horror and deliberate intent
Every time they **** one of ours
The more we gain powers
One day they will definitely taste the same pain
That's what we keep in heart and brain
They make our streets full of bones
We are much stronger with stones
Keep demolishing houses more and more
We have more stones and they are our weapon and cure
Did we forget?
Never, not yet


As long as there is a drop of sweat
Our country will come back to us as we expect
As long as there is a drop of blood in our vein
Our struggle would never be in vain
We will achieve our own dream
We will cross every sea and stream
To see a green branch of leaves
Only when the last Zionist leaves
Our relations whose lives they sacrifice
In a procession direct to paradise
With prophets and martyrs they live together
An eternal life that would never wither
Did we forget?
Never, not yet

The land is ours and forever will remain
Despite all people, they **** and detain
On the land where Jesus Christ once put his feet
The same land will witness their defeat
Zionists plant sorrow  and envy
God is watching and destiny
We have God's right
With which dawn overcomes long night
Did we forget?
Never, not yet


Al Aqsa weeps and calls
Its lobbies and halls
So many martyrs on its land, no matter
For the pigeon again to come and flutter
Despite all Zionists' crimes, the world turned the deaf ear
Our dream is getting closer, it is very near
For our country we come like water flow
Yearning for our clear sky and blue
We never surrender or agree
To be slaves after being free
Did we forget?
Never, not yet


Our waiting will never be so long
Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa to us they belong
We will get our right back
And put an end to the night so black
We will get our life again
And get our land every mount and plain
Al-Aqsa will open again to pray
And will never be an easy prey
Our kids will never be slaves
With freedom every new born behaves
Did we forget?
Never, never, never, not yet.

"How one behaves will determine what one behalves."

D. Clare

You have the beauty
That enflames the heart
And enchants the soul
Within, don't hide it

Society's standards
Are ridiculous
The media's portrayal
Of what beauty is biased
We spend out of our means
To wear such and such labels
Wear pounds of make-up,
Starve ourselves,
Because who we look in
The mirror is not what
We see on tv?

What is beauty?
Is it the texture of my hair?
Is it the hue of my skin?
Is it my ethnicity?
Is it my weight?
What is beauty?

Black is beautiful
White is beautiful
Hispanic is beautiful
Asian is beautiful
Bi/multi racial is beautiful
You're beautiful
We're beautiful
We don't need society's
Validation
No, we don't need to
Be deemed perfect by society
In actual fact, it's standards
Are unatainable
So why do we strive for
Something we know is
Only an illusion?

Do we realize the impact
That media has in shaping
The way the millennium
Generation
Thinks, and behaves?
We demand change,
But we're the same people
Tuning in to the same
Shows that we protest about

We've become so engulfed
In the world of entertainment
That the word has lost
Meaning itself
Heck, I'm 18
I'm guilty of this too
Entertainment is no longer
Just that- it's crotch grabbing,
Glorified drug, alcohol abuse
And yet, we wonder why
Majority of
My generation has no substance,
No depth, and no layers

We no longer aspire to be
The Obamas, the Ghandis,
The Mandelas and so on
No! That has long passed
The 'American Dream' has
Become Kim Kardashian
And Kanye West

In all honesty,
We are our surroundings
You want change?
Let's stop watching reality tv
Maybe then these networks
Will stop producing more trash
Let's instill morals
In our children
And help them discover
The fire that burns inside
Them, the beauty within

We are all apart of one system
yet there are many components to this system
innumerable actually
all following the same laws
as if contractually

bound by one set of rules
but
with infinite variation
like nations of expression separated by vibration
only contained by the systems within
that perceive and react
to the system
they sustain

one giant metaphor

a sufficient example
is the human body
a complex interaction
of
individual organisms
all communicating, interacting and participating
in sustaining the body

an organism
of organisms

Even our organs have organs,
working together to sustain
a system larger than itself

cells
communicating, producing
regulating, exchanging
are themselves composed of
organisms, performing
all these functions

we must not
forget
the system
which we sustain

the order
we provide
for the larger body and mind

together
we compose the cells of this planet
interacting and communicating
with each other and all other life
a subtle dance
that carries impressive consequences

except

the way in which we act
as organisms
is likened to cancer
in which
a once productive cell
behaves individually
not in accordance with the system it sustains
replicating uncontrollably
wasting unnecessarily
not taking the whole into consideration

although
if the planetary cancer of humanity
replicates  
itself to extinction
all will still be well
as it always has been
and
always will be
yet
the system
in which we exist
would lose
the chance to witness and experience
the transformation from cancer
to great negative immunity
through the powers
of the newly recognized
human organism

a system sustained

Enheduanna, the daughter of the famous King Sargon the Great of Akkad, is the first ancient writer whose name remains known today. Her bio appears after her poems, and it is a fascinating bio...



Temple Hymn 15

to the Gishbanda Temple of Ningishzida
by Enheduanna (circa 2285-2250 BCE)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Most ancient and terrible shrine,
set deep in the mountain
like a mother's womb ...

Dark shrine,
like a mother's wounded breast,
blood-red and terrifying ...

Though approaching through a safe-seeming field,
our hair raises as we near you!

Gishbanda,
like a neck-stock,
like a fish net,
like a foot-shackled prisoner's manacles ...
your ramparts are massive,
like a trap!

But once we’re inside,
as the sun rises,
you yield widespread abundance!

Your prince
is the pure-handed priest of Inanna, heaven's holy one,
Lord Ningishzida!

Oh, see how his thick, lustrous hair
cascades down his back!

Oh Gishbanda,
he has built this beautiful temple to house your radiance!
He has placed his throne upon your dais!



Temple Hymn 7: an Excerpt
to the Kesh Temple of Ninhursag
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, high-situated Kesh,
form-shifting summit,
inspiring fear like a venomous viper!

O, Lady of the Mountains,
Ninhursag’s house was constructed on a terrifying site!

O, Kesh, like holy Aratta: your womb dark and deep,
your walls high-towering and imposing!

O, great lion of the wildlands stalking the high plains!...



Temple Hymn 17: an Excerpt
to the Badtibira Temple of Dumuzi
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, house of jeweled lapis illuminating the radiant bed
in the peace-inducing palace of our Lady of the Steppe!



Temple Hymn 22: an Excerpt
to the Sirara Temple of Nanshe
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, house, you wild cow!
Made to conjure signs of the Divine!
You arise, beautiful to behold,
bedecked for your Mistress!



Temple Hymn 26: an Excerpt
to the Zabalam Temple of Inanna
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O house illuminated by beams of bright light,
dressed in shimmering stone jewels,
awakening the world to awe!



Temple Hymn 42: an Excerpt
to the Eresh Temple of Nisaba
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, house of brilliant stars
bright with lapis stones,
you illuminate all lands!

...

The person who put this tablet together
is Enheduanna.
My king: something never created before,
did she not give birth to it?



Lament to the Spirit of War
by Enheduanna (circa 2285-2250 BCE)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You hack down everything you see, War God!

Rising on fearsome wings
you rush to destroy our land:
raging like thunderstorms,
howling like hurricanes,
screaming like tempests,
thundering, raging, ranting, drumming,
whiplashing whirlwinds!

Men falter at your approaching footsteps.

Tortured dirges scream on your lyre of despair.

Like a fiery Salamander you poison the land:
growling over the earth like thunder,
vegetation collapsing before you,
blood gushing down mountainsides.

Spirit of hatred, greed and vengeance!

******* of heaven and earth!

Your ferocious fire consumes our land.

Whipping your stallion
with furious commands,
you impose our fates.

You triumph over all human rites and prayers.

Who can explain your tirade,
why you carry on so?



The Exaltation of Inanna: Opening Lines and Excerpts
by Enheduanna, the daughter of Sargon I of Akkad and the high priestess of the Goddess Inanna
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lady of all divine powers!
Lady of the resplendent light!
Righteous Lady adorned in heavenly radiance!

Beloved Lady of An and Uraš!
Hierodule of An, sun-adorned and bejeweled!
Heaven’s Mistress with the holy diadem,
Who loves the beautiful headdress befitting the office of her own high priestess!

Powerful Mistress, seizer of the seven divine powers!
My Heavenly Lady, guardian of the seven divine powers!
You have seized the seven divine powers!
You hold the divine powers in your hand!
You have gathered together the seven divine powers!
You have clasped the divine powers to your breast!

You have flooded the valleys with venom, like a viper;
all vegetation vanishes when you thunder like Iškur!
You have caused the mountains to flood the valleys!
When you roar like that, nothing on earth can withstand you!

Like a flood descending on floodplains, O Powerful One, you will teach foreigners to fear Inanna!

You have given wings to the storm, O Beloved of Enlil!
The storms do your bidding, blasting the unbelievers!

Foreign cities cower at the chaos You cause!
Entire countries cower in dread of Your deadly South Wind!
Men cower before you in their anguished implications,
raising their pitiful outcries,
weeping and wailing, beseeching Your benevolence with many wild lamentations!

But in the van of battle, everything falls before You, O Mighty Queen!

My Queen,
You are all-conquering, all-devouring!
You continue Your attacks like relentless storms!
You howl louder than the howling storms!
You thunder louder than Iškur!
You moan louder than the mournful winds!
Your feet never tire from trampling Your enemies!
You produce much wailing on the lyres of lamentations!

My Queen,
all the Anunna, the mightiest Gods,
fled before Your approach like fluttering bats!
They could not stand in Your awesome Presence
nor behold Your awesome Visage!

Who can soothe Your infuriated heart?
Your baleful heart is beyond being soothed!

Uncontrollable Wild Cow, elder daughter of Sin,
O Majestic Queen, greater than An,
who has ever paid You enough homage?

O Life-Giving Goddess, possessor of all powers,
Inanna the Exalted!

Merciful, Live-Giving Mother!
Inanna, the Radiant of Heart!
I have exalted You in accordance with Your power!
I have bowed before You in my holy garb,
I the En, I Enheduanna!

Carrying my masab-basket, I once entered and uttered my joyous chants ...

But now I no longer dwell in Your sanctuary.
The sun rose and scorched me.
Night fell and the South Wind overwhelmed me.
My laughter was stilled and my honey-sweet voice grew strident.
My joy became dust.

O Sin, King of Heaven, how bitter my fate!

To An, I declared: An will deliver me!
I declared it to An: He will deliver me!

But now the kingship of heaven has been seized by Inanna,
at Whose feet the floodplains lie.

Inanna the Exalted,
who has made me tremble together with all Ur!

Stay Her anger, or let Her heart be soothed by my supplications!
I, Enheduanna will offer my supplications to Inanna,
my tears flowing like sweet intoxicants!
Yes, I will proffer my tears and my prayers to the Holy Inanna,
I will greet Her in peace ...

O My Queen, I have exalted You,
Who alone are worthy to be exalted!
O My Queen, Beloved of An,
I have laid out Your daises,
set fire to the coals,
conducted the rites,
prepared Your nuptial chamber.
Now may Your heart embrace me!

These are my innovations,
O Mighty Queen, that I made for You!
What I composed for You by the dark of night,
The cantor will chant by day.

Now Inanna’s heart has been restored,
and the day became favorable to Her.
Clothed in beauty, radiant with joy,
she carried herself like the elegant moonlight.

Now to the Noble Hierodule,
to the Wrecker of foreign lands
presented by An with the seven divine powers,
and to my Queen garbed in the radiance of heaven ...

O Inanna, praise!



Enheduanna, the daughter of the famous King Sargon the Great of Akkad, is the first ancient writer whose name remains known today. She appears to be the first named poet in human history and the first known author of prayers and hymns. Enheduanna, who lived circa 2285-2250 BCE, is also one of the first women we know by name. She was the entu (high priestess) of the goddess Inanna (Ishtar/Astarte/Aphrodite) and the moon god Nanna (Sin) in the Sumerian city-state of Ur. Enheduanna's composition Nin-me-šara ("The Exaltation of Inanna") details her expulsion from Ur, located in southern Iraq, along with her prayerful request to the goddess for reinstatement. Enheduanna also composed 42 liturgical hymns addressed to temples across Sumer and Akkad. And she was the first editor of a poetry anthology, hymnal or songbook. Now known as the Sumerian Temple Hymns, this was the first collection of its kind; indeed, Enheduanna so claimed at the end of the final hymn: "My king, something has been created that no one had created before." And poems and songs are still being assembled today via the model she established over 4,000 years ago! Enheduanna may also have been the first feminist, as she made Inanna the supreme deity. Keywords/Tags: Enheduanna, translation, Akkad, Sumer, Nanna, Inanna, Ur, Sumerian temple hymns, Gishbanda, Ningishzida



The Love Song Of Shu-Sin
(the earth's oldest love poem, Sumerian, circa 2,000 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Darling of my heart, my belovéd,
your enticements are sweet, far sweeter than honey.
Darling of my heart, my belovéd,
your enticements are sweet, far sweeter than honey.

You have captivated me; I stand trembling before you.
Darling, lead me swiftly into the bedroom!
You have captivated me; I stand trembling before you.
Darling, lead me swiftly into the bedroom!

Sweetheart, let me do the sweetest things to you!
My precocious caress is far sweeter than honey!
In the bedchamber, dripping love's honey,
let us enjoy life's sweetest thing.
Sweetheart, let me do the sweetest things to you!
My precocious caress is far sweeter than honey!

Bridegroom, you will have your pleasure with me!
Speak to my mother and she will reward you;
speak to my father and he will award you gifts.
I know how to give your body pleasure—
then sleep, my darling, till the sun rises.

To prove that you love me,
give me your caresses,
my Lord God, my guardian Angel and protector,
my Shu-Sin, who gladdens Enlil's heart,
give me your caresses!
My place like sticky honey, touch it with your hand!
Place your hand over it like a honey-*** lid!
Cup your hand over it like a honey cup!

This is a balbale-song of Inanna.

This may be earth's oldest love poem. It may have been written around 2000 BC, long before the Bible's "Song of Solomon, " which had been considered to be the oldest extant love poem by some experts. The poem was discovered when the archaeologist Austen Henry Layard began excavations at Kalhu in 1845, assisted by Hormuzd Rassam. Layard's account of the excavations, published in 1849 CE, was titled Nineveh and its Remains. Due to Nineveh's fame (from the Bible) , the book became a best seller. But it turned out that the excavated site was not Nineveh, after all, as Layard later discovered when he excavated the real Nineveh.

As a surrogate for Inanna, the bride's mother would be either Ninlil or possibly Ningal, both goddesses.

As a surrogate for Inanna, the bride's father would be either Enlil or possibly Suen, both gods.

Shu-Sin was a Mesopotamian king who ruled over the land of Sumer close to four thousand years ago. The poem seems to be part of a rite, probably performed each year, known as the "sacred marriage" or "divine marriage, " in which the king would symbolically marry the goddess Inanna, mate with her, and so ensure fertility and prosperity for the coming year. The king would accomplish this amazing feat by marrying and/or having *** with a priestess or votary of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love, fertility and war. Her Akkadian name was Istar/Ishtar, and she was also known as Astarte. Whichever her name, she was the most prominent Mesopotamian female goddess. Inanna's primary temple was the Eanna, located in Uruk. But there were many other temples dedicated to her worship. The high priestess would choose a young man who represented the shepherd Dumuzid, the consort of Inanna, in a hieros gamos or sacred marriage, celebrated during the annual Akitu (New Year)ceremony, at the spring Equinox. The name Inanna derives from the Sumerian words for "Lady of Heaven." She was associated with the lion-a symbol of power-and was frequently depicted standing on the backs of two lionesses. Her symbol was an eight-pointed star or a rosette. Like other female love and fertility goddesses, she was associated with the planet Venus. The Enlil mentioned was Inanna's father, the Sumerian storm god, who controlled the wind and rain. (According to some god/goddess genealogies, Enlil was her grandfather.)In an often-parched land, the rain god would be ultra-important, and it appears that one of the objects of the "divine marriage" was to please Enlil and encourage him to send rain rather than destructive storms! Enlil was similar to the Bible's Jehovah, in that he was the supreme deity, and sometimes sent rain and plenty, but at other times sent war and destruction. Certain passages of the Bible appear to have been "borrowed" by the ancient Hebrews from much older Sumerian texts such as the Epic of Gilgamesh. Such accounts include the creation myth, the Garden of Eden myth, and the myth of the Great Flood and a mankind-saving ark. However, the Hebrew scribes modified the accounts to suit their theology, so in the Bible there is only one "god" who controls everything, and thus behaves like an angel at times and like a demon at others. And that is understandable if one posits that one god controls the weather, since earth's weather is unpredictable and at times seems like a blessing and at other times like a curse.

Keywords/Tags: Enheduanna, Poetess, Sumer, Sumerian, Akkad, Akkadian, Saragon, Ur, High Priestess, Hymn, Hymns, Hymnist, Psalm, Psalms, Psalmist, Prayer, Prayers, Lament, Lamentations, Goddess, Nanna, Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte, Aphrodite, Sauska, Ornament of Heaven, mrbtr, mrbtran, mrbhymn

We fight and we fight and we fight
For what our communal conscious believes is right
We scratch and we scratch and we scratch
At the surface of our supposed human needs
We wave and we wave and we wave
These banners that state a truthful name
How hard we work to prove that we are human
How hard we try to not to be dissproven
The grave does not care who you are
The scythe strikes fast strikes clean but strikes fair
It doth not judge for we beings think far too much
At night when the prowling pride stalks its prey
Where the stars shine heavy on the hides of the unlucky
Does the lion question whether to eat the man or the woman?
The gay or the straight?
The gimp or the man stumbling due to too many sips?
The lion only wants his meat
His catch
Much like our friend the grave
We fight and we fight and we shout and we shout
And we wave and we wave because we think that is how freedom behaves
How lost we are, we children of mother earth
How stunned we become at our own plain insignificance
That a drifting leaf in a Fall breeze has even more elegance
Twisting spitting crying masses of flesh and bone
Drones upon drones stand upon stones upon stones
An eternal cycle of nature's evolution
A plan that is known and unknown
Seen and said but not ever shared
We fight and we fight and we fight and we fight
We say the cause is the hand of an almighty God
That the cause of liberation comes from the impulse of our sanitation
The wolf howls to be free and is
But we
We human beings
We just
Fight and we fight and we fight

Sometimes you see her admiring herself
In the mirror that's hanging next to the shelf.
And when she does it, oh, how she shines!
Is that, dear cat, how you practice your lines?
She seems not to care if we pay attention,
But maybe right here I ought to make mention
That being an actress, she's disinclined
To always reveal what's going on in her mind.
And she'll never, never tell you her age--
Aphrodite, the cat of the stage.

She says, "You know…I'm not one to cuss,
But when I am hungry, I WILL make a fuss."
Yes, she can certainly put on a scene
And act as though she's an importunate queen.
She says, "My dears, if I'm weak or mild,
I'll never drive the audience wild."
That critical scene is repeated each night--
A regular tour de force all right.
Yes, it's best to try to assuage
Aphrodite, the cat of the stage.

Her eyes were surely her greatest feature;
She THUS scoured the town for a drama teacher,
"Who," she says dolefully, "told me one night he
Could make me a star. ME: Aphrodite!"
But as it turned out, ol' Mr. Mittens
Made her instead a mom of eight kittens.
"But," she says, "THAT'S between you and me.
You know how I like my privacy."
It's good to always be on the same page
With Aphrodite, the cat of the stage.

One thing you learn is for her it's the norm
To act a bit slighted when asked to perform.
She must be totally in the mood
Or else she behaves in a manner subdued.
And heaven help you if you are neglectful
Of if her audience is disrespectful.
She'll exit the room like a "cat" out of hell,
And you may not see her for quite a long spell.
You never want to see her rage--
Aphrodite, the cat of the stage.

She sighs and says, "It's such a shame that
Few playwrights write good roles for a cat.
My friends say--when they see me upset--
'Commercials might be a better bet.'
My talents, however, as you might have guessed,
Best fit the stage. But now I must rest."
With that she lifted her nose in the air
And strutted out of the room with great flair.
It's always nice: advice from a sage
Like Aphrodite, the cat of the stage.

-by Bob B (1-24-20)

All conflicts are resolved via coercion, implied or applied,
of the dominant party over the denied (Niebuhr).
Not news at the 2nd St. jail. But the Constitution
provides for moderation, persuasion and elections
as way stations, stopgaps, safe havens before the decision's taken
to go to war. Civil war, daily low intensity warfare is unavoidable
      when
chambers of commerce and large corporations wrestle naked
and who are the 1% controlling 25% of the wealth, name names,
hold a french revolution over it. This space I write from's
safe, comfortable but what about a Taco Bell cashier with 4 kids x 3
      men
who came and went when they found how human her bleeding and
      complaining was, how voluble, not faked.

This obtains when you consider Niebuhr: "That the limitations of the human imagination, the easy subservience of reason to prejudice and passion, and the consequent persistence of irrational egoism, particularly in group behavior, make social conflict an inevitability in human history, probably to its very end." (emphasis mine)

                         respiratory tract infection, hunger pains

Popper drops by: "Their story that democracy is not to last forever is as true, and as little to the point, as the assertion that human reason is not to last forever, since only democracy provides an institutional framework that permits reform without violence, and so the use of reason in political matters. It is clear that this attitude must lead to a rejection of the applicability of science or of reason to the problems of social life - and ultimately to a doctrine of power, of ******* and submission."

                                           split lip, fever blister

Cynical nihilist Niebuhr: "Educators who emphasize the pliability of human nature, social and psychological scientists who dream of 'socializing' man and religious idealists who strive to increase the sense of moral responsibility, can serve a very useful function in society in humanizing individuals within an established social system and in purging the relations of individuals of as much egoism as possible. In dealing with the problems and necessities of radical social change they are almost invariably confusing in their counsels because they are not conscious of the limitations in human nature which finally frustrate their efforts. So persistent are the moralistic illusions about politics in the middle-class world, that any emphasis upon the second point will probably impress the average reader as unduly cynical. In America our contemporary culture is still pretty firmly enmeshed in the illusions and sentimentalities of the Age of Reason."

                                            terror, runny nose

An apoplectic Popper: "And being a typical historicist, he accepts the judgment of history as a moral one; for [Heraclitus] holds that the outcome of war is always just: 'War is the father and king of all things. It proves some to be gods and others to be mere men, turning these into slaves and the former into masters . . . One must know that war is universal, and that justice -- the lawsuit -- is strife, and that all things develop through strife and by necessity.'"

                                 lonely physics, national purpose

Poppa Popper proceeds: "Sweeping historical prophecies are entirely beyond the scope of scientific method. The future depends on ourselves, and we do not depend on any historical necessity. This prophetic wisdom is harmful, the metaphysics of history impede the application of the piecemeal methods of science to the problems of social reform. We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets."

                                    fatal heart attack, fatty acids

Reinhold, while drinking orange juice: "Conflict is inevitable, and in this conflict power must be challenged by power. Since political conflict, at least in times when controversies have not reached the point of crisis, is carried on by the threat, rather than the actual use, of force, it is always easy for the casual or superficial observer to overestimate the moral and rational factors, and to remain oblivious to the covert types of coercion and force which are used in the conflict."

                                          alphabugs, antibiotics

Doc Wheeler runs the 2nd St. jail keeping the High School Dropout
      Prevention Program
breathing. The Sheriff's Dept. provides guards, a metal detector, one
      man with a gun (encased),
door buzzer (in out), sign in sheet, breakfast and lunch. None too
      clean, not too tidy.

Niebuhr goes nuts: "All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion. While no state can maintain its unity purely by coercion neither can it preserve itself without coercion. The inability of human beings to transcend their own interests sufficiently to envisage the interests of their fellow men as clearly as they do their own makes force an inevitable part of the process of social cohesion."

                                 3 hots and a cot, circle with a dot

Popper replies: "Instead of aiming and finding what a thing 'really' is, and defining its 'true nature,' science aims at describing how a thing behaves in various circumstances and especially whether there are any regularities in its behavior. It sees in our language, and especially in those of its rules which distinguish properly constructed sentences and inferences from a mere heap of words, the great instrument of scientific description, not as names of essences. To those philosophers who tell him that before having answered the 'what is' question he cannot hope to give an exact answer to any of the 'how' questions, the scientist will reply, if at all, by pointing out that he prefers that modest degree of exactness which he can achieve by his methods to the pretentious muddle which they have achieved by theirs."

            "when making an axe handle, the pattern is not far off"

Niebuhr nods: "The problem which society faces is clearly one of reducing force by increasing the factors which make for a moral and rational adjustment of life to life; of bringing such force as is still necessary under responsibility of the whole of society; of destroying the kind of power which cannot be made socially responsible; and of bringing forces of moral self-restraint to bear upon types of power which can never be brought completely under social control."

       Popper and Niebuhr were married yesterday at the 2nd St. jail
                      under the federal Freedom of Marriage Act

i still feel that people are under-engrossed
in the simple statement they took to mean
rubric, and i took as me own, i.e.:
    just... because... i sorta feel like it...
          i really decided that
hollywood was a bit *******
and shallow, a bit dandy,
i mean: just a bit sad...
if you but a pistol against my
temple, i probably might feel something....
but hey! there comes a saving
repirsal...
i call them the alt-left
i.e. those who said: thanks for displacing
our great barrier reef
   bound by eastern europe....
a billion chinese....
    you chong that cha cha and later
spreak qua chi?
       i evidently didn't want to be an exile,
i didn't want to be a patron saint
of exile... rotting in england...
  that fertile ground of what's to come
in america...
   all you get is my laughter:
when homosexuality just spelled
out: a right of opinion,
when homosexual forgot being artists
and instead started to gear i.v.f. children,
when all the waste came back
without an Eddy Gein to talk
giving the leather-face abstract...
   very few of us could scale
such heights, yet the majority of us
became castrated by supposing we had to
do as the anti-analogue suggested:
oh sorry, too many words?
better me than the taxman checking
your bank-account...
how low can you go, seriously:
  the i.v.f. / test-tube argument was spawned
by children living in mono-*** households....
i'm just watching the clock when they
start to fall off into the proclamation of rights:
America is funny, and i am prone to
laugh...
      it's the argument you'll hear from
the science abuse of: those who can't reproduce,
and therefore raise no children...
not with a mannequin scientist telling
them: yes, you, can!
well, apparently they can...
      two protons make a neutron akin
to an electron dynamic...
     i can't help but see the fault with
the brain being the source of thinking...
i can't help thinking about it...
i could care to make the brain
the source of thought, and the delusions:
soul, god... had i found out that the brain
is as degenerate as a heart...
what, can you convince me with Alheimer's?
   it's really there, was it ever only there?
i find claim to find the origin of thought
as solely brain-orientated...
and there you go off with your neuroscience
*******...
          at least yoga teaches that
a person exists: meaning the whole body
is involved... not some itemisation part-counter-part...
i can't believe fat thinks,
and how the brain degenerates
by the verse of acne via protein equivalent
attacking it, when brain does what people
suggested: does the brain power,
compares the function of the brain to gym...
i.e. you can ever do
crosswords, and other "enigmas"
      and easily escape the moral question....
yes, i've been to prostitutes...
but it's what i did with them that matters,
not that you suddenly think to be superior levitating
above me having gone through
3 marriages... feel superior now?
probably not...
               i am really thinking
about piercing your gob and tugging it
into the pig-trough... so i can see you say
the words manure with oats....
        boring, as ever...
snowflakes that never reach the construct of
a snowman...
                  where the donkey, and the carrot?
it's certainly not a carrot-donkey story
where one's imaginary and the other
is motivated...
        i could have claimed homosexuals once,
even championed them...
about the same time
that art became boring, and they
   decided to do the standard heterosexual
thing of starting families...
    i got bored when one really became
the man, and the other really became a woman...
and there were kinds involved...
and there was no **** coercing the androgyny -
about the time when androgyny died...
when it became less and less confusing
and more cohort...
  that's when i did the one best thing
i could ever do with res vanus -
i turned cogito = mars...
   and yes, the concept of thought incorporated
into a deity from the ancient yore of
a polytheism emerged as: no gods really do...
because once you take to ennabling
a single god from the pantheon to thought
rather than being... you **** all the gods...
and each of the pantheon as alike in
thinking... huh?
     we introduced no more than omni-
to the gods of the greeks...
we did the averse-Prometheus...
upon stealing fire from Olympus,
we dragged thought into Olympus...
  prior to this: the concept of a thinking god
made no sense to be human...
    it's only with a thinking god
  or what's to be called, the basis of omni-
        that we became, slightly dislodged...
        a thinking god is the basis for a god
circumstanced out of the omni- prefix...
that's... that'sthe power of thought...
     thus with a god capable of thought
i can be but an empty thinkg (res vanus) -
and whathever violence comes my way...
with whatever violence i'd like to translate
as arm, stone, throw... i'll keep contained
as merely violent thought...
   nearing the telepathic adamancy...
but that means: a god... not a republic
of gods... which means a thinking god...
   which means that i can't think if
there's an omni- suggestion of being...
  meaning there's no evil genius or akin
given the cartesian res cogitans -
     and how the brain as an ***** is prone
to be degenerate akin to kidney...
    meaning that cogito ergo sum
isn't the right fact, just that res cogitans is...
i am empty, a thing of emptiness,
a res vanus, and i am impregnated by thought,
or by a pseudo-dasein... a being there:
that translates as rioting...
                     and all because
of the concept of a thinking god, and the prefix omni-.
man gave way to the prompt of
the gods not becoming non-existent,
but toward a prompt of merely thinking...
  and now man questions why he is how he is,
and why he behaves as he behaves,
and why there's even a case to question
being as an antidote to non-being, yet nonetheless
seeing the thus: of abhorred content and
a much greater take on what's to be abhorred.
    the omni- prefix concept only came
about when we decided that gods ought to think
after having acted like a pillaging Mongolian
horde akin to Zeus morphing into swans
to ******* **** a few demigods along the way...
the fact that there is a "god" with the given
omni- prefix standards...
  wait a minute... i lost the plot!
  over-stating the points included in this
statement over-and-over again won't work...
           i already said what i wanted to say...
trying to clarify the points as simply as
1 + 1 = 2 will not really help...
       i can't achieve a clarity of 1 + 1 = 2
no more than Kant could in his critique of pure reason...
it's language... you're writing a book...
   if it was staged to a mathematical simplicity
as 5 + 7 = 12... then i'd simply write the zenith
as a + p + p + l + e = apple...
hiding behind a mathematical zenith
while writing out the Hades using directly
confrontational optics to sound symbols
              rather than optics to thought symbols
will not help...
          the next tier of language is exploration
beyond 1 - 9, i.e. Δ -
       that's really the Pythagorean genesis...
they are bound to say delta...
       and beyond a - z...
   well: nothing you can exactly internalise...
fist, foot... stone... stuff of protests,
and farming a field of potatoes... donning
Lenin's goatee, while pretending to
play the violin, akin to fiddling with it
as a Rasputin might.

that light hair color
the crusade necklace
and the way he behaves like a brat
whenever I make a sad face
I like them all, all of him
especially how he cling on to me
leaning his head to mine like a cat
he got me thinking,
I might have fallen for him
I fall in love with an idiot

There's something strange going round down on the farm
With the animal noises and speeding of cars
If you listen it's a bit different, see can you hear it
But Farmer Jones doesn't see any harm

The pigs are out cleaning up after themselves
As the cows ****-a-doodle-do
The chickens aren't afraid of anything else
And the horses greet you with a how do you do moo

The string beans if you please are fit to be tied
And the potatoes no longer see eye to eye
The broccoli round here is now carrying spears
As the tomatoes run for their lives

It's Mrs. Jones that really has him worried though
She dolls up and dresses fancy at night
The way she lately behaves has this farmer quite afraid
So he stays days in the field, out of sight, out of mind

With the goats that communicate with an oink
And the sheep learning to drive the car
Yes there's something strange going round down on the farm
But Farmer Jones doesn't seem to see any harm

Energy

Energy that's something else isn't it? something so beautiful in it's natural form, as it connects  us from a smile to a simple gesture that ends up being meaningful it flows.
Energy powerful it alters a mood to the extant that it appears in the ways a certain person behaves.
We all connected thru different energy forms, Connected thru different signatures that form friendships, relationships that get fitted in different loves that we end up being on.
 As the energy flows our ways change in different times, shared in different places.
 As we channel the energy of the situation that we're in,Oooh we let that energy flow which most times its beyond our control. In most cases its chemistry if the energy is good thru the connection those electrical sparkles called vibes will show.
We are all connected thru the energy that flows energy.

Swoo

I walk my dog a lot, you see
twice a day, long walks with me
she likes her breaks to stop and ***,
on every other place that bears a mark
could be every thing in any green space,
or park, roadside grass, curb sign post;
thirty times or more a most.

But she is more special than that,
she pulls with the heart of a champion at
the leash or harness, she as one gear forward fast,
her four paws calloused, brace like a storm
is in her face, she is game like, that is the norm,
her shoulders lean in and her chest opens up
she is ten years old and behaves like a 22 pound pup,

That is my dog.
that is my girl.

Most days of the year we have no white stuff on the ground,
Truth be told rain by the bucket will be readily found,
Spring rains, lead to summer showers, autumn falls
both leaves and drops of water, winter moves and the call
is the same, what a shame more rain, with out any snow
we can't go and purchase a sled so in the end
that is, me in tow behind; this man's best friend,
my dog.

MUSH!

No one sits with him,he doesn't fit in
But we feel like we do when we make fun of him
Cause you want to belong,do you go along?
Cause his pain is the price paid for you to belong
It's not like you hate him or want him to die
But maybe he goes home and thinks suicide
Or he comes back to school with a gun at his side
And any kindness from you might have saved his life
Heroes are made when you make a choice

You could be a hero - heroes do what's right
You could be a hero - you might save a life
You could be a hero - you could join the fight
For what's right....

No one talks to her, she feels so alone
She's in too much pain to survive on her own
The hurt she can't handle overflows to a knife
She writes on her arm wants to give up her life
Each day she goes on is a day that she's brave
Fighting the lie that giving up is the way
Each moment of courage her own life she saves
When she throws the pills out a hero is made
Heroes are made when you make a choice

You could be a hero - heroes do what's right
You could be a hero - you might save a life
You could be a hero - you could join the fight
For what's right....

No one talks to him about how he lives
He thinks that the choices he makes are just his
Doesn't know he's a leader with the way he behaves
And others will follow the choices he's made
He lives on the edge, he's old enough to decide
His brother who wants to be him is just nine
He can do what he wants because it's his right
The choices he makes change a nine-year-old's life
You could be a hero - heroes do what's right
You could be a hero - you might save a life
You could be a hero - you could join the fight
For what's right...

Little mikey d was the one in class
Who every day got totally harassed
This went on for years until he decided
That ever again would he shed another tear
So he walked out the door
Grabbed a 4.4 out of his father's dresser drawer
And said I can't take life no more
And like that a life is lost
But this ain't even about that
All of us just sat back
And watched it happen
Thinking it's not my responsibility
To solve a problem that isn't about me
This is our problem
This is just one of the daily scenarios
In which we chose to cause a riot
Instead of doing the right thing
If we make a choice
Be the voice
To those who won't speak up for themselves
How many lives would be saved
Changed, rearranged
Now it's our job
To take a shot
Now don't keep walking by
Now why didn't you try
Cause you don't want to exist
And never be seen
So let's wake up
Change the world..Our time is now!!!!

You could be a hero - (our time is now) heroes do what's right
You could be a hero - (our time is now) you might save a life
You could be a hero - (our time is now) you could join the fight
For what's right, for what's right, for what's right