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Jermon Jun 2018
Our Maths Sir erases the blackboard
But leaves a part unwiped
He takes a pen off the hooked cord
And now begins to write

Our Maths Sir erases the blackboard
And keeps a bit not right
We look at it with our necks bent
But it just doesn’t seem alright

Writing on the now whiteboard
He flashes a cunning smile
And tells us not to hoard
What puzzled our minds awhile

While erasing the frustrating blackboard
He repeated himself again
“Keep the good things on board
And throw the rest away”

And that’s the golden life’s taste
And all because no waste- no haste
03.11.2017
Our maths sir always erases part of the board and keeps the rest of it because he doesn’t want to write it all over again for the next similar format question. Funnily, he made this into a life lesson for us... Teachers.
*rolls eyes
Tori May 2013
Watching him write on the blackboard
More green than black
I was struck by the deep blue of his shirt
And how crisp the lines were
Folded and ironed
More effort than I care to put into a shirt

And even though I was shivering
In the dark, hopeless blue of
My bulky winter jacket
Sitting in that empty chair
I slid out of the room in my mind
Recalling summer

The windows, now with canvas
Blinds half lowered
Would, instead of frost and condensation
Allow thick, all-encompassing heat
To slither into the room
Our shirts sticking to us

Sweat stains would mark up our
Clothes, like chalk on the blackboard
And our legs would
Stick to our plastic chairs as we
Stood at the end of class, reinvigorated
Voices raised in shared triumph of the overcome

Backpacks would be thrown over our
Shoulders wet and tan and flush with
Heat of the summer season, synonymous with
Hope. Our shorts and bright shirts made the
Room a deafening testament to our
Readiness

For the day.
first step

when he looks at a woman he searches for qualities that attract him because he wants to desire her yet this tendency creates an imbalance or disadvantage he is rendered weak to a woman’s beauty or whatever traits he idealizes self-realizing this propensity he looks away from women years of disappointment neglect change him he becomes afraid of women gynophobic

2

when she looks at a man she searches for qualities she is critical of because she wants to be impervious to his power she is suspicious of all men their upper body strength penchant to be in control misperception of women as property misogyny emotional immaturity neediness to be mommyed selfishness insensitivity or over-sensitivity depending she wants to be treated with equal respect a loving nurturing relationship she is suspicious of all people their alternate realities passive aggressive behavior co-dependence craziness

3

he sees her then looks away she suspiciously notices nothing happens they go back to their separate homes alone always home alone grown calm in resignation yet disbelieving of this destiny saddened by this fate both worry about future she looks at her face naked body in mirror her stomach churns feels sad sickening remembers time when she was more carefree he puts one foot in front of other then walks tries to remember who taught him to walk how many times did he fall who taught him to laugh where did his sense of humor go

4

he sees her thinks she is lovely resists the urge to turn away he smiles says hello she notices nervously smiles her shaky voice articulates louder than a whisper hi

Tucson 2-step

they are standing in line at a café on 4th avenue he is directly behind her she is lanky wearing white background faded colors patterned summer dress thin straps over bare shoulders long brown hair few gray strands small unfinished tattoo on left calf leather slip-ons 1 inch heals he is at a complete loss for words thinks to make remark about the weather decides not to overhead fan stirs hot humid July air barista girl asks what she would like her eyes scan blackboard menu behind counter she hesitates remarks help him i need an extra moment to decide he steps up to counter money in hand orders small to go Arnold Palmer half black current lays $3 on counter mentions change goes in tip jar thank you barista girl moves fast he lifts cup from counter glances at woman still deciding then at barista girl says have a wonderful day turns walks out door dawns on him woman grows hair under her arms his 2nd most compelling female physique adornment fetish oh god he thinks to himself should i wait for her to make up her mind then approach try to craft conversation at least find out her name no i’m too weak in this moment she is so lovely let her go

2

she orders double Americana in small cup to go room for soy milk thinks to herself he did greet her perhaps their paths will cross on street why did he run off so fast she glances toward front of café notices window seat changes her mind instructs barista ******* 2nd thought make it for here digs through purse realizes she left wallet in truck explains to barista girl she needs to run out to her vehicle to retrieve wallet forgotten under front seat the air on the street is heavy dense she smells her own perspiration looks north then south does not see him walks to truck feels exhausted appetiteless almost nauseous wishes she did not order a drink thinks to get behind wheel drive home go to sleep

Tucson 3-step tango

she feels disappointment by her recent writings as if she is reaching a more sophisticated audience and setting a higher standard for her work yet she is not living up to her ambitions her recent writings smell of her past writings too emotional the damaged woman wounded child she wants to write more introspectively with detached humor that only comes from keener intelligence she slams her laptop shut decides to go to Club Congress for a ****** mary or margarita but Club Congress is haunted with small town cretins losers wannabes she considers Maynard’s decides Maynard’s is too safe suburban yuppyish finally gives in to thought of glass of pinot noir at Plush next comes what to wear jeans in mid-July desert heat is unacceptable perhaps loose fitting thin cotton white summer dress thin leather belt ankle high indian moccasins hair in ponytail no pigtail braids no ponytail no makeup maybe little ylang ylang oil no she thinks about her recent writings

2

i am one breath away from crying in every moment one breath away from flying m.i.a. in every moment one breath away from destroying everything there is beauty in ugliness beauty in decrepitude disease beauty in harm hurt suffering beauty in greed injustice betrayal beauty in corruption contamination pollution beauty in hate cruelty ignorance beauty in death we spend our whole lives searching for a good death we spend our whole lives searching for eternal love this modern world is too much for me over my head the horrors of this place are beyond words unspeakable voice inside maybe mom yells quit your whining or dad hollers stop complaining i am trying to smile through tears one breath away from giving in one breath away from becoming stranger to myself winter spring winter spring there is beauty in nothingness we spend our whole lives searching for ourselves learning who we are not finding grasping secrets from dark paths light trails winter spring winter spring i am one breath away

3

she sits alone at bar at Plush glass of pinot noir glass of ice water in front of her 2 bearded older men eye her from other end of bar she ignores them glances at her wristwatch tries to look like she is waiting for someone music from speakers antiquated rock standard it is early friday hours from dusk moderate middle aged crowd mingle wait for local jazz trio to begin she thinks about her recent writings wonders is it too late for love considers lesbian affair from 5 different perspectives 5 woman’s voices each describing same lesbian affair in 5 opposing accounts hmmm she sips dark red wine from glass chases it with ice water she considers a story about a gang of female bikers who ride south to Mexico

4

the Americans came through here last night crossing border illegally climbing over our fences digging tunnels beneath our barrier walls littering along their trail they travel in packs of every skin color carry guns knives explosives wear leather boots some are shirtless tattoos dyed hair mischievously smiling conceitedly stealing when in question murdering they rob our homes slaughter our chickens ransack gardens loot our harvest you can still smell the stink of their fast food breaths

5

she swallows the last dark red wine from glass chases it with ice water local jazz trio begins to play as bar fills with more people she decides to walk home one foot in front of other wonders who taught her how to walk how many times did she fall she laughs to herself

Tucson square dance

TPD 10-18 unconfirmed data report

7 post-University of Arizona female graduates go to Cactus Moon for several drinks and dancing then drive to Bashful Bandit for more drinks and dancing 2 women get into scuffle victim Brittany Garner female 23 years of age race #5 (Native American, Eskimo, Middle -Eastern, Other) 5’ 2” long black hair cut-off blue jean shorts clingy light blue top falls hits head on side of bar dies of fatal blow to skull forensics report crushed occipital lobe assailant Stacy Won female 31 years of age race #4 (Asian) 5’6” black jeans black leather jacket red helmet Honda motorcycle still at large

witness accounts

Jess Delaney female 33 years of age race #2 (White) 6’ tight black pencil skirt white sleeveless undershirt no bra 3” heels blond ponytail “that squirting little **** deserves everything she got she lied told Stacy i’m a ***** i never cheated on Brittany i don’t understand we were all having a good time getting buzzed and dancing we should never have left Cactus Moon **** Kerrie thought some biker dude might be hanging around the Bandit hell maybe the Bandit was a biker bar once but now it’s just a college sink hole full of drunken frat boys when Monique flashed a little *** they went crazy cheering and buying us shots it just got out of hand never should have happened the way it happened Stacy didn’t mean to **** Brittany it’s ****** up i want to go home please let me go home”

Sabrina Starn female 29 years of age race #2 (White) 5’8” trendy corporate gray suit black pumps red shoulder length hair “i have to be at work at 8 AM Stacy was drunk out of control she gets crazy when she drinks Brittany was trash talking pushing all Stacy’s buttons then Stacy accused Brittany of sleeping with Monique and all hell broke loose i didn’t see what happened i was in the powder room it’s a terrible tragedy unfortunate accident can i please be released i need to sleep this is madness”

Kerrie Angeles female 27 years of age race #1 (Hispanic) 5’ 6” black pants white shirt black hair cut stylishly short silver crucifix around neck red fingernails “when we got to the Bashful Bandit i was ***** soaking between my legs thinking about a cowgirl at Cactus Moon ready to **** anyone i saw fantasized pulling a train with those frat boys Monique had been kind of quiet at Cactus Moon but when we got to the Bashful Bandit she lit up dancing wild unbuttoning her top jacket Sabrina went to the ladies room to snort coke with biker dude Kerrie wanted but he wasn’t into her then Brittany started saying crazy stuff accusing Stacy of stealing Monique from Jess Jessie goes through women heartlessly she doesn’t give a **** about Monique Jessie knows if she wants Monique back she can simply fiddle a finger my guess is Stacy is half way to Argentina she never meant to **** Brittany i’m going to miss her real bad she was a good kid”

Ann Skyler female 28 years of age race  #2 (White) 4’ 11’’ green white red Mexican peasant skirt black t-shirt black high-tops hair in messy bun “i’m confused i saw them dancing laughing grinding up against each other Rage Against the Machine came on then Nine Inch Nails the room felt quaking dizzy claustrophobic then they were pushing each other shoving yelling frat boys cheering the next thing i knew Brittany was supine on the floor blood pouring out maybe she just slipped hit her head i don’t know what to think i feel real sad confused sick to my stomach scared”

Monique Smithson female 24 years of age race # 3 (Black) 5’ 9” blue jeans jean jacket cowboy boots nose ring braided pigtails “Stacy had it in for Brittany from the start i saw it in her eyes at Cactus Moon she made several clever toxic remarks they snapped at each other i never thought it would escalate to ****** poor sweet Brittany was always so susceptible i was looking down adjusting my jeans over my boots when it happened i heard felt a big thump glanced up Brittany was lying there lifeless blood spilling everywhere Stacy ran out fast i heard her bike engine take off in a hurry”

Rodeo Drive Tucson

matt’s hats tom’s tools & tobacco lou’s liquors fred’s beds frank’s planks bill’s drills jane’s drains & panes chuck’s check cashing cheryl’s barrels hank’s tanks tina’s trucks & tractors walt’s asphalt sean’s pawn rick’s rifles mom’s guns terry’s tires charlie’s harleys rhonda’s hondas jim’s rims art’s parts gus’s gasoline mike’s bikes frank’s feed gwen’s pens ann’s cans nancy’s nursery joes‘s clothes jess’s dresses bert’s skirts steve’s sleeves paul’s shawls michelle’s shells & bells al’s pails & snails sam’s hams & jams patty’s pancakes phil’s chili don’s donuts betty’s spaghetti bob’s burgers alycia’s quiches jean’s beans jerry’s berries anna’s bananas andy’s candies cathy’s taffies tony’s ponies roy’s toys kim’s whims marty’s parties jill’s pills rick’s tricks alice’s palace debbie’s disposal dave’s graves

Quinta Waltz de Tucson

she is definitely displeased profoundly disappointed in her latest literary efforts she dreams aches to create deeper discourse higher insight more thoughtful philosophical inquiries about life’s challenges beauty a better world overpowering love inspiration instead she writes paperback television trash stupid inadequate answers to solemn questions she wonders if she is too scratched dented to find love her ******* are definitely changing she is deeply disturbed not ready for menopause too young for menopause she wants to remain a fertile woman with smooth skin wet ******

2

her neighbor Leslie awoke to horrible morning Leslie’s 6 chickens were assaulted overnight precious Mabel dragged off feathers everywhere trail down the street other hens cowering slumped together with wilted necks 3 of them with puncture wounds Leslie carried them one by one inside washed their wounds hugged them cried who did this terrible act a neglected abusive neighborhood cat or some desert predator why didn’t Leslie wake to sounds of savage marauding now this creature knows hen’s whereabouts when will it return for more massacre what modifications need to be enforced to ensure their coup before nightfall

3

she wants to remain a hen keep producing eggs does not want is not ready to enter the next **** stage of this **** existence it was fun being pretty for men inspiring them to say do whacky things she wants to remain a hen she is definitely displeased profoundly disappointed in her latest literary attempts “Tucson square dance” (self-referential) ****** bit about Americans came through here last night in “Tucson 3-step” ****** "Rodeo Drive" tepid perhaps the pinot noir lowered her standards everything is becoming nothing she cannot sleep tosses turns thrashes sheets in humid heat of her lonesome bed is she is too scratched dented to find love she worries for Leslie

4

tomorrow is another day they say the rain will come last year’s monsoon never came the baking sun smothered her garden died one by one sleepless she will miss tomorrow’s pilates class the infrequent delightful chatty breakfast afterwards she dreams aches of deeper discourse higher insight with detached humor that only comes from keener intelligence more thoughtful philosophical inquiries about life’s challenges beauty a better world overpowering love inspiration she crossed the line tonight her ******* are definitely changing

Tucson 666

he decides to shave eighth to quarter inch length salt and pepper beard a.k.a. unshaven look he has worn for years and grow full mustache the whiskers on his upper lip are darker with sparse gray at first no one notices after weeks the mustache gradually fills evoking many contrasting remarks several women loath it several men admire it girl at grocery store suggests he grow Fu Manchu so she can tug on it shopgirl says he looks like Charlie Chaplin downstairs neighbor from Turkey explains most Turkish men traditionally wear mustaches he read mustaches masculinize and empower men especially men in authoritative positions he thinks back to the 1960’s when many hippie males grew mustaches then in the 70’s gay men fashioned mustaches then in the 80’s cops adopted mustaches he wonders why a swatch of hair beneath nose is so provoking examines his visage in mirror discerns the mustache confers a Pepé le Pew quality or European accent to his appearance he remembers when he was young hippie with many amorous episodes how his mustache preserved the scent of a woman but there are no women in his life for many years do post-menopausal women possess scent? he feels indecisive whether to retain it or be rid of it

2

she observes her figure in mirror thinks to herself maybe her ******* are not changing perhaps it’s all in her head she inspects the little lines forming near her eyelids studies her features for signs of aging hardly any silver strands in long brown hair she examines neck ******* arms elbows fingers tummy hips pelvic region thighs knees shins calves ankles feet detects subtle changes thinks to herself my ******* are possibly slightly changing turned 40 in March married briefly in late teens no children a 15 year old dog beginning to suffer veterinarian promises to warn her when the time comes she wonders why it is so difficult finding fitting mate men sleep with her several times then move on maybe she is not such a great lover perhaps she would be better if one of them stuck around perhaps she is a lesbian the whole ide
Terry Collett Apr 2015
All through double science Sheila thought about the boy shed seen go by that mid-morning break not that hed looked at her too much or responded to her shy smile but she thought of him even to the degree of inking in his name on her small palm John scribbled there in black smudgy ink and she thought he had looked at her he seemed to look at her the way he had turned his head indicated to her at that time that he had and the science teacher talked of something to do with gases and she copied what he had written on the board into her exercise book in her minute scribble with her head to one side has she did while writing her arm at an angle her small hand gripping the pen in an odd fashion he had smiled yes she was sure John had smiled as she had smiled she sighed softly her eyes lifted to the blackboard to take note of what was written her hands scribbled her mind wanted to think of the boy with the quiff of hair the smile yes yes he had smiled and she wanted to stand up and say HE SMILED AT ME as loudly as she could but she never would she was not that type of girl a elbow nudged her the girl next to her nudged her and nodded towards the blackboard the teacher was pointing out something and asked her a question and Sheila had not heard him ask her the teacher was staring towards her expectantly she blushed sorry Sir didnt hear the question she muttered looking at the board and then at the teacher who seemed put out then listen girl listen he said then pointing to another to answer the question he repeated and Sheila still blushing looked at the girl next door and shrugged her thin shoulders the girl looked at her blankly and looked away she looked ta the blackboard and read it through slowly as she could taking note what had been written about gases and she stifled a yawn and looked back at the exercise book and what she had written in her scribbled handwriting she looked at the inner page where she had scribble John and drew a heart-shape with an arrow through it she held the page open just enough for her to see it then opened the book to wait for further instruction regarding gases the teacher walked along in front of the class pointing to the blackboard and indicating a diagram he had drawn Sheila wondered if the boy allow her to hang around with him after all she had seen other girls walk round with the boys either in groups or singly why couldnt she? she asked herself sitting up and staring out of the windows at the grass and the blue of sky over the way and what if he said yes how would she feel then would she walk with him or would she feel too shy to  and then all of a sudden she panicked what if he wanted to kiss her as shed other boys do with girls actually kiss on the lips sort of thing and shed never ever kissed a boy before not even her brother Bert a panicky feeling crept into her stomach what then? what if he wanted to kiss her a piece of chalk pinged onto the desk in front of her and the girl next to her elbowed her again SHEILA are you with us today? the teacher asked bellowing her name out of frustration she nodded and blushed again have you been listening? he asked yes Sir she said what did I ask? he said she stared at him blood pumped through body as if she was on fire and she shrugged as words wouldnt come see me after class he said and walked along the front of the class and asked another a boy with his hand raised she watched the teacher and listened to what he was saying about gases and types of gases and the affects and effects and so on and she felt the need to yawn but put her hand over her mouth and let it out secretly as softly as she could she smelt her palm then gazed at the word John scribbled there and with her lips kissed the inked name as if it was he she kissed her lips on his and she felt spittle on her palm and wanted to leave it there so she could pretend it was his spittle and not hers she looked up at the teacher and tried to give the impression of paying attention to his every word the boy had his hand up again as a question was asked and the teacher nodded and smiled then just as she prepared herself for any potential question that may come her way-God forbid- a bell rang for the end of the lesson and a sense of release flowed through her despite having to have stay and see the teacher afterwards there was a movement of books being put into bags and chairs being moved and voices and talking and the slow moving of bodies towards the door but the teacher was eyeing her as she moved towards him her book tucked away in her bag her palm clenched into a loose fist to hide the scribbled John in her palm she stood before the teachers desk and he stared at her sternly Sheila have you something on your mind? she shook her head feeling the need at that moment almost suddenly to urinate well you certainly were not paying attention to the lesson were you? he asked something worrying you? he asked she was going to say something but she didnt know what to say she couldnt say she was thinking of a boy and about if or not he was going to want to kiss her so she said nothing just shrugged her thin shoulders and gave a vacant expression-an expression her mother said indicated a near death experience-you must pay attention the teacher said I am paid to teach you as well as the others the sciences and I feel it is my duty to do my best to do that do you understand? she nodded taking note of the leather patches on the elbows of his jacket brown and sewn on maybe she thought by his wife or mother now please listen Sheila or youll get behind with the lessons Ok? she nodded and he dismissed her and she walked towards the door wondering if the boy would be on the playing field during lunch recess and if she had the nerve to ask him if she could hang around with him and if he would want to kiss her and o my God she thought panicking what if he did and she blushed at the thought and moved along the corridor amongst moving throng of other kids on their way to lunch or home and a bite to eat and she stood thinking of the boy gazing at her black shoed feet.
A GIRL AT SCHOOL WHO CANNOT GET THE THOUGHT OF A BOY OUT OF HER MIND DURING LESSON
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to **** you.
You died before I had time ----
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My ****** friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You ----

Not God but a *******
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the *****.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two ----
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagersnever liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you *******, I'm through.
NaKina Talbert Jul 2013
I want to draw a picture on life's blackboard.
I want the colors to be brilliant, and vibrant, and full of love!

But as I pick up the chalk to draw...
it squeaks...
so loud...

it scares me.
Sharina Saad Jun 2013
Heard a beeping sound
Followed by A very old Frank Sinatra’s song
My classmates’ heads turned
Who’s phone? who’s phone?
Less chaotic when the teacher glared
Everybody put their heads down
And checked their sophisticated mobile phones
Once again...
When the teacher wasn’t looking..
Mobile phones roamed in a dull classroom
Updating facebook status,
Uploading candid photos of a snoring friend
Copy pasting assignment
Text messaging and gossiping about their stern looking teacher
In the name of advanced technology
Mobile smartphones create the impossibles...
Beyond the blackboard and the four walls of the classroom
O o Frank Sinatra’s song again...
And everybody started looking...
The teacher grabbed her mobile phone
Tried to switch it off....
When students could own smartphones..
Who needs NOKIA from the old time zone....?

~ Sharina~
should have thrown my cellphone into the deep sea...
i forgot how to write
but there's revelry in spite of me
sounds and words inside of me
semantics trapping happily
sentiments tapping rapidly
on the inside of my skull

slowly i am lulled
inevitably pulled
suffocated slow
by lies as cold as snow
piled up in banks
as high as memories
of sour smokes
and trusted snakes
of shattered hopes
and forlorn aches
wounds i forced forgotten for ages
creaking out of their cast iron cages
locked no more, instead released
from tired hopes for truth
and worn out wakes for peace

over the candles,
across the white cloth'd table
I sip coffee as i stare them in the face
with a soft glance,
i slip into a subtle trance-
empty space on which to paint
the blackboard of my brain.

And there
maybe chalk will wash away in rain.
I was in a headspace where i had not written much or well for quite a while.  Standing in the shower, i thought "i forgot how to write". To follow came  the second line. then, formulating the meaning of such, it lead me along the idea that writing is incessant in my head and becomes a blur that needs to be let out. Its not that it isnt there - it always is. Rather, it is discerning the words from the amorphous mass that is the challenge for me as a writer. All the words and thoughts and emotions i possess boil under the surface in my brain. I often glance down from  above, and see nothing but a smoothe surface, ignoring the creatures there in the deep.

This time, i think the happening that lead to my not writing is in y havign been unable or un-ready to face wounds present in myself, fromt hings ive done, lies ive been told or told, of people i thought honest and true to me turning out to be frauds and transients and leaving my life.  The idea of sipping coffee with your hurts always comes back to me in times where depression is strong - thanks to a friend of mine who said to me something along the lines of "sometimes we dont need to solve our problems, sometimes we just need to sit and have a cup of coffee with them".

The blackboard brain bit is the way that i think in images and connected concepts- the same way i imagine a chalboard would be useful in illustrating- and a place to illustrate the details of each wound as i give them the attention they deserve. The trance that comes with trauma. The way it can empty all else from the mind and become the sole focus. And finally, the way that, hopefully, facing, illustrating, and looking intently at each, will assuage the damages.
preservationman Jun 2020
The agenda in what crime might take place
It sounds more like substance taking up space
The chalk on the blackboard written with the plan
It’s just a matter of time
This is no time to be kind
Calculations with defined precision
The motto is the key in decision
The crime trail wrote out in black and white
The chalking tail of a safe and a bank being for the taking right
The mystery behind why the crime is being committed
The Villain’s names are being omitted
No need to tell
It’s all in a matter of time when the stroke of midnight strikes with the ringing of the bell
A crime that was supposed to start, but never did complete
Behind is all was no courage, but plenty of deceit
The crime that came with defeat
The Villains were caught before the crime was even done
Too bad all crimes don’t end like this being the headline of “Hit into Miss”
The Blackboard turning crime into a twist
Hank Van Well Jr Oct 2014
The blackboard

I often ask myself when
When it was that it started to end
My greatest fear realized
Clouded judgement
Forgiveness , loyalty ,
Love
Like a wand made out of porcelain
Chalk
Filling the blackboard with memories
Moments , blocks , and bricks
That formed the horizon that was
"Us "
For everything my love , is , was
You
But slowly ,
The wings of chaos makes its presence
Unveiling what lay beneath my love stuck conscious ...
Maybe it was the time you lied to me for the very first time ?
Maybe it was when you were unfaithful ?
The only loyalty you showed was for your own self preservation
Instance by Instance ,
The pieces of the picture nullified,
Erased .
All the un answered odes
Empty calls
Under appreciation ,, met with a pre occupied heart
Or a wintry response
Slowly the slate surface of the blackboard pushes through the cloudy remnants if the "rubbed out"moments we had
Forgiveness , met with a cold heart
And a pile  empty sorry's
For her heart, has become as hard, and cool as the blackboard itself
And now it is an ashen pile of clouds
A remnant trail from the eraser
As " we"
Slowly faded away .......
Shofi Ahmed Mar 2017
I wanted to sneak into
a space down the star
I couldn’t sleep in a night
Huh I was yet to get an
answer to a quiz why!

Though I showed a mirror
The moon floats in the night
gently, the dark could
mingles into the light.
But one couldn’t relay
My sweetie toyed it away!

As if no matter what if one
wishes so is free to sway.
Huh my sweetie toyed it away!

Did the Moon score
tapping in on the starry
night’s blackboard,
how many *****?
Who can tell, who can tell?
Though a cheering sun rises
In the end by the rose.
Myriads stars meltdown
in a stunner’s teardrop.
That stirs coming so close.
Yet is a dwarf over the ocean!

Touches the moon not
one that pulls the most.
The sea lives by the small earth
There is no law in love
My sweetie toyed it away!
jane taylor May 2016
and there i am in the midst of it all, conscious of what appears to be existent, yet knowing it is illusory.  and if time is occurring synchronously then how can i look back with contrition?  for if i have the capacity to move backwards and forwards in quantum leaps, i can erase the past like pastel chalk on an antique blackboard, then start anew.  is not the sky my canvas and the arc of the rainbow my palette?  and the stars in lustrous luminosity light my way so that ev’n at dusk I can paint.  yet pain ne’er ceases to hollow me out.  then through a barren vessel i catch more rain, and pour it out upon the parched terrain.  just when i thought enlightenment was nigh, a sharp edge is discovered.  must it necessitate additional sandpapering from the wind?  when will the gemstone sparkle without further pressure?  does it lie in its power to simply shimmer sans duress?  perhaps it was dazzling at its inception, relinquishing its luster upon domestication.  with this proviso, as it nears twilight i shall tarry and blend with the night.  i’ll dance with a moonbeam knowing the jewel will glisten afresh upon the rise of the golden sun.

@2016janetaylor
She fabricates variance in the same picturesque sky
Mauling two birds with one stone-cold, self-sustaining lie

If happiness blots itself upon perspective,
then I was merely one musing of a momentarily hung canvas
dangling dull under the noose of your
cautiously composed independence

            -

"Independence"
                   she doth protest

While in dependence,
                   she doth ingest

She flees towards East evermore, infatuated under the intoxication of dissimilar skies, ceasing to remember that all worlds eventually become spherical.

We, abreast, left the nest;
I, digress, detest the West.
Until my hands ring dry the tattered cloth of indifference.
Maria Rose May 2012
Perseverance on my tongue,
a silken thought in silver ink
I scrawl strange patterns on the sun
and watch for daybreak to dismiss
the blackboard starlight drips and runs.

Now listless with my aching legs
I’m counting candles, chasing smoke
that filters yellow, drains the dregs
of coffee, cold and drowned of hope.

By tingling error I swallow words,
boredom pervades the bitter night
with a whistle, tuneless, that seems absurd
I empty out my troubled mind
to exhale sadness; curled, entwined -
quite futile, like staring when blind.
old
J Arturo Dec 2017
A little bird tried to fly through the screen door and I thought, 'if only there were more air up here'.

The view from the second story deck encompassed miles of low scrub hills, piñon, and was daily growing less hazy as the fires subsided. The little bird was dead. Was not even twitching or rolling or whatever idiot birds do to fight or hold onto life. Or maybe it was unconscious. If it was a head impact, it could just be out cold. I could take it in for a bit, see if it revives. But the brains of birds are very small... maybe not large enough to switch out of consciousness without damaging the whole system. It could wake up brain damaged: amnesic, whistling gibberish, unable to collaborate or co-worm-locate or sit on eggs or whatever other higher functions birds perform. Angry, all the time. Likely a burden and a danger to the community. Condemned to either death or a life of lonely suffering. I'd rather not be culpable for that.

Prospective buyers are arriving at four, the realtor as well, for a tour, so I grabbed a broom and swept the quiet body into the shaggy juniper that surrounded the house. Swept up with maple leaves that had settled on the porch since this time yesterday, together a mass of decomposing matter, under the railing and into the dark.

I'd spent a lot of time alone in the house on Grand. Watched nature slowly creep through the iron fence and into the faux-pond, up under the patio bricks, purple flowered and needley plants growing taller and more hostile daily. Increasing numbers of little brown birds mistaking the reflected sunset in the plate glass doors for real sky.

"If only there were more air up here." A little joke I repeat out loud while sweeping broken bodies into shrubs. The thickest places, where they wouldn’t be seen when (if) someone ever dropped by to view the house.


I don't live here, the house is soon to be foreclosed. But a friend of mine knew I needed a place to stay and offered this, his third home, empty of everything except a coffee maker, some landscaping tools, a few boxes that had yet to be moved. I have a twin sized mattress in what must have been a child's room: a strip of Denver Broncos wallpaper runs the circumference, every other surface painted complimentary blue.


The couple arrived at five. She wears a salmon coloured shawl over a white blouse. They’re performing the theatric act of young couples in love (with the idea of a larger house): she ecstatic over the seven jets in the master Jacuzzi tub, he hesitant about the people-paths in the wall-to-wall-carpet, the everpresent pastels we know were once in vogue but will take weeks and at least two layers of base to fully eradicate. It’s the realtor’s job to showcase the place but I often stand outside the plate glass windows of the living room, keeping an eye. Playing the role of groundskeeper because hitchhiker is so much less glorious.

So far it’s been the same. Always she with a genuine smile that will be gone forty minutes after she’s left the driveway. He, always in t-shirt and “trying to be casual” jacket calculating the square footage of each room, the viability of the fireplace. Opening cabinets, but not concerned with storage space. He wants to see if the brass hinges really have brass pins. Is it wood, linoleum? Look closely at his eyes and watch them dance across a virtual blackboard, adding up the gallons of primer and paint needed to cover up the colour mistakes of a before-his-decade.

  2

You can almost watch his eyes dart across the blackboard. A house is a house but the home must be shredded, burned, before making it yours.


But they all do this. A dozen or so now, this summer. And I spend a lot of time alone. Injecting my thoughts into people who think they know what they need next, before getting in a small car and checking out a properly closer to town. Making little jokes to myself as I sweep the porch. The isolation even maybe altering small parts of my self. The social parts, perhaps. I feel good, most days, but find myself repeating the same phrases: “****. Shower. Shave”, “If only there were more air up here.”, “I could learn to love a leopard”, even recently a little Old Testament, which like a ******* I’ve been taking to bed with increasing frequency and a growing selfish guilt, repeating,

“As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him.”


They won’t be back, but for the first time now there’s a deer in the yard. Meaning there must be a hole in the fence. A doe, and fawn too, and I can sit and stare with my broom in hand because my job is to sweep the deck. Dead birds and maybe rats, leaves of course, but with all the water the bank is wasting on this waste of a lawn, come deer: come all ye deer, come and eat. Maybe you will even eat the frighteningly thistly things. Regardless, in exchange for this room I was given a broom and deer are far too large to sweep.



When my student visa expired in Canada I left the country with no identification, five Canadian dollars, a five litre backpack mostly occupied by a camera, and in my mind some distillation of the romanticism from On The Road that I’d managed to power-read in a Heathrow bookstore four years before (lacking the pounds to actually purchase the book). I crossed the border via ferry, and entered the country without identification. I thought this was impossible but it turns out that when you have no time but your whole future ahead of you, and nowhere to get to anyway, insisting “I am a U.S. citizen and you need to let me into this country” does in fact work, if you repeat it enough, and are willing to wait. In my case border patrol even gave me a twenty note and a pat on the back before sending me on my way.


How I ended up sitting on the floor watching birds die, backlit by a desert sunset, in the mountains of New Mexico, is a long story, and to be honest the details have largely escaped me. I do remember I was reading Hemingway. “The Innocents Abroad”, and trying to find myself in any character I could lay my hand on. The word “Innocent” in the title, I suppose, far moreso any actual character, struck the most.


It’s the middle of The Great Recession. Or The Great Depression. The Great Compression. I can’t remember any longer which economic period this particular episode occupied (why can’t they name them more sensibly, like hurricanes?) Call it, then, The Great Introspection, as I narrated myself through the dozen rooms of a million-dollar house: the material self still alive and thriving inside in a self-congratulatory spiral over the personal ROI that left Canada on five dollars and put me, rent free, in a home worth that multiplied 200,000 times. The home where I first had my own key. The home where I learned to drink a glass of water before my morning coffee.

(Five years and $98,000 in college expenses later that was, easily, the best advice I’ve ever received.)


Eventually the phone was disconnected, the water, the power. The jacuzzi, though dry, was still a good place to lie and read. And the piñon and snakes, cacti and juniper, then inklings of pine trees came in steadily. When you would look at them they would freeze. But every morning something new was growing, some new pink flower popped up promisingly to crack the mortar in front of the door. Sweetly at first, then growing thorns, and I walking the perimeters saying “if only there were more air out here”, saying, “can not feel her anymore”, as if the decadent madness of the lawn could be silenced by speaking out loud. Trying to walk the edge of the fence, increasingly losing it in the encroaching bush, then resigning myself to the living room, the **** carpet flattening into a forest path while I impressed miles into that offensive floor.



words. seeds. thistles. marvin morales.


Sleeping on that filthy mattress, the Denver Broncos looking down, still optimistic about their upcoming trophy, or cup. Whatever it was that a bunch of cartoon horses could win. But the sweeping gave me solace, even though the growing thistles made the bricks uneven and caught in the bristles of the broom, leaving little shards of transplanted pink flowers emedded in the yellow polyethylene. I loathed them, but looking back I can see I played straight into their plan. Transplanting little seeds to new weak places in the cement, where they could grow tall again and **** up what little good was left of the land. Bring deer to eat them. Bring little idiot birds to pick the seeds out of the faeces, recycling with pure intent, and flying off into the bright light of sunset. Then crashing broken to the floor.

And like the lawn, like the porch, like what happens when you read Twain, something in me changed. “If only there were more air”, yes, but there is never enough air. Piling up among the deer, among the doe, among my now all-consuming pacing and talking to ghosts who don’t live here anymore, among the many birds who ate their worms and went on to hatch a dozen more, flew into a plate glass sunset, and were ignored.
9/22/2014
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
from the simple email, to now a pitch-perfect complication
of the internet - no performance poetry found here -
performance meaning singing, meaning cascade of rhymes
to help you memorise sentences and shake your hands
about - ekphrasis (εκφρασις) - performance stand-up
but not stand-out - i'm not complaining, i'm just feeling
the fear and loathing too - or according to M. Schmidt (
no, not Martin Schmitt, the ski-jumper, but then again
the two seem almost indistinguishable when said -
counter e.g. gnome - 'nome and schmi'dt'dt'dt'tt stutter
at the end of words rather than at the beginning before
the dam gates open for the word to flow out from).
besides the point, can you imagine Kant using the phrase
a fortiori in his work that uses only a priori and
a posteriori? i only came across it today - but given
the big *** systematic approaches, you'd find it hard
to squeeze in a fortiori into the complex narrative -
an entire blackboard of mathematical proof concerning
disallowing the end product to be ∞: in philosophy that means
explaining something on a universal basis, the entire human
concern for things said, things done, things owned -
inserting the term a fortiori where once came a priori
would be a disaster for the Kantian narrative, he'd
have to write another critique all on its own to insert that phrase
among a complete systematisation of that phrase -
well the funny thing is, this expression goes in line with that
i observed about left and right, hands eyes whatever -
indefinite a- and the definite -the articles and then an ism -
i sometimes feel funny or at least embarrassed that i keep
repeating this notice from time to time -
but you would expect me to include gravity too,
or how i used to be a flower thief in spring bordering
on winter, plucking the eager flowers in the frost around
the countryside - well, i revived that practice today,
plucked two stalks of lavender (they were pinching my
nose when i walked past with a beer) and something
resembling lavender... google-moment... if only they
created apps that could tell you what flower it is you're
trying to identify, search engine impromptu -
well... it's either a coin-toss between
summersweet (clethra alnifolia) or butterfly bush
(buddleia davidii) - but it could be something else -
cigarette, beer and sniffing lavender, just my kind of night -
i swear to god i once drank a lavender-flavoured beer,
or cider... i can't remember -
but by definition, when i look at philosophy books i feel
they're much too bound to something said earlier
and followed by something to support it -
or in the case of a fortiori the expanded-upon basics,
i.e.: from a / the stronger (thing) - which means
it's a dual-carriage way of saying what you want to say:
from a stronger thing - from the stronger thing -
in real life that's like: what we get from a telescope,
or? what we get from a microscope -
stars aplenty - G-Rex 5571 in the Zodiac constellation,
U80802Z from the constellation of Poseidon -
i mean, flimsy answers - sky's the limit - then
the azure cage hovers over us during the day and
we turn to daydreams packing apples into crates -
telescope: oh airy-fairy, somewhere far far away -
microscope: got that needle and thread with you?
well, whatever we have, we know that our minds are
not build for the omni- affix when affixed to anything,
esp. god. Jews never bothered with it - there are just
as many necessary limitations of a deity as there are
as many unnecessary limitations of our freedoms -
that's how you move away from big ideas and narratives
of a Kant, with his chequers of analytic / synthetic
a priori / a posteriori and concern yourself with
knives (indefinite) and scissors (definite) articulation of
language - hell, we can go down the road much further
and say something about indirect and direct articles -
pronouns are the prime subscribers -
you wouldn't talk to a Jihadi directly as you'd talk about
him indirectly - i shared that curiosity with a local
stranger-mate in a park once walking his dog,
an ex-banker - those boom-bomb boys are being prescribed
the same thing that the Lufftwaffe pilots were prescribed
(pervitin) - but i doubt they got their hands on the pure
medical stuff, they're probably on amphetamines...
oh the R.A.F.? yeah, drunk like skunks.
but just imagine rewriting the Critique with a fortiori
and a infirmiori - disobeying "correct" definition,
as already mentioned the pronouns composed from
articles, as in condensed to indistinguishable parameters -
a fortiori - from something stronger            -
             a infirmiori - from something weaker -
(as already stated, the original definition of
  a fortiori was - from a / the stronger [thing]) -
so the articles disappear and couple themselves to the word
thing (word meaning, no grammatical classification is
really necessary, because if grammatically classified it would
be too obstructive) - but because of this lack of
grammatical classification of the word thing,
we are already associating the definitions via only the
indefinite pronoun - rather than a definite pronoun (i.e. nothing),
it would be pointless to write definitions using a definite
pronoun - well, up to a point, i suppose that
suggesting both a fortiori and a infirmiori to be defined
as: from nothing stronger and / or weaker we can create
a self-mechanistic-propeller, a way of self-overcoming that
in the end arrives as self-knowledge, obviously the
ultimate purpose - and this goes against all solipsistic despair,
as it also goes against making too many comparisons
with others, some who are weaker than us, and some who
are stronger than us - for the stronger will make light
of one set of propositions as the weaker will make light
of another set of propositions to suit their demands -
this can only be seen in light of Kantian-Darwinism,
survival of the fittest and what not -
Kant had in mind something simply said historically in
a condensed sphere of reality, Darwinism kinda did away
with historical realism, soon after the English Renaissance
after the second world war, Darwinism picked up again,
as a way to shut off the murk of the Holocaust -
Elvis did his bit, the Beatles too, but once the imagination
dried up, people decided they wanted to travel back
in time to 10,000 B.C. - and you think artistic expression
will end up a concept prog rock album, or a cute 3 minute
synthesizer song while M.T.V. turns into a 16 year old's
******* of a baby? i'm going keep the acronym, and instead
call it MORAL TELEVISION, or? how to buy a ******
or pull out early - but obviously i'd get a wisecrack comeback
from Juno - see a preacher man anywhere around here?
Kantian algebraic (big words, small people, Belgian waffles
too):                                                    ­              a. / s. after
                                           (event) x.
a. / s. prior
                                     what qualifies?
                                    - historical hindsight -
                                    - the current historical catalyst(s),
        THE BIG BANG... or as i like to call our current history,
an interchange on the words: BIG BANG BLACK HOLE...
BANG A ******* HOLE... get a BIG CLOCK...
******* HOLE... which is what it looks like at night...
two catalysts overall - and boy we're speeding
to Groundhog day - the biggest changes in history were
some celebrity's haircut - that's relative to
what happened when the Treaty of Versailles was signed;
BIG HOLE BLACK BANG (and that's thanks to dark matter) -
but to be honest, if i'm given only these two historical
vectors to work with... i'm not surprised so many
Islamic youths are disfranchised, choosing a third,
Jannah - it seems like a natural thinking process that
will never make it into popular media -
just thinking about it probably warms the heart,
obviously to an extremely violent end -
but this is gone way beyond the heliocentric and
geocentric arguments - because up there, where you
can see the earth where the hell is Copernican East
or Copernican West? it's nice to know that the earth
isn't flat... but that won't help you reaching the Panama
Canal from Portugal... will it?!
J McDevitt Jun 2013
With miles to go before I sleep
and sounds around risen from the deep;
If I heard them, should I keep
the memories from haunting?

And as the grey rolls into black,
can you see the white hiding in the back?
The foundation that let’s us hold fast
and gives the hope to make it last.  

I see faces in the pages
jumbled between line spaces.
Hallucinations become engrained in
my vision while I listen

to the clack of chalk
scribbled
spat from fingers
and thoughts
dribbled.
Charlie Feb 2015
Given
That
You're
Living,
Why
Not
Make
It
Count?

'Cause
Once
You're
Gone,
You're
All
Out.
Abigail Madsen Apr 2013
my intelligence is not defined by a number, nor a letter.
nor should I be graded on a curve
by people
who don’t know me.
What does knowing the pythagorean theorem
have to do with me being a good person?
what will memorizing words on a page
help me with my rage
raging about how education has become
this conveyor belt
chewing up and spitting out
society’s warped up idea
of intelligence.
Throw me in a classroom with twenty-something students
just to tell me I’m better than him
but not as smart as her
teachers saturating our brains
with force fed textbook equations
telling us this is what we have to know to make it
“make it on time”, they say
“Passing it in late is not okay”
but when I am eventually thrown out
of this conveyor belt of education
the realization will be that life does not have
a set schedule.
my life will not change on time, as you ask
I cannot cram my creativity onto a five-paragraph
piece of paper.
I cannot crunch my knowledge
down onto six pages
about who I am
Don’t give me guidelines
my future does not have guidelines
you think you’re teaching us information
but in reality, you’re teaching us around the system
of how to get a passing grade
but not the exceeding knowledge
knowledge about what?
Our history?
what about our future?
We can’t learn about our future by staring at a blackboard
in a dim-lit room
with twenty-something other people
wondering what the hell we’re doing here
but being too scared to stand up
and ask.
A collaboration between my friend and I, this is what we came out with
Terry Collett Jan 2014
Alice sits
in the room
with blackboard

and easel
and small desk
and small chair

with Nanny
stern and strict
pointing at

the blackboard
with her stick
teaching her

her letters
the grammar
paragraphs

sentences
by long rote
and command

and Alice
knows now that
any cause

of Nanny's
discontent
will bring her

punishment
her father's
hard hand smacks

whack and whack
she sits still
taking note

but bored she
stares out high
windows at

tall tree tops
and blue skies
thinking of

her mother
locked away
(ill in her

head Nanny
coldly said)
then she thinks

of her new
adoptive
mother who

works below
stairs(low stairs
her father

often says)
the one with
the red raw

fingers thin
and young who
secretly

said she would
be her new
adopted

mother but
to strive to
learn to do

her best and
so she does
but thinks of

the time when
lessons are
over she

can sneak down
below stairs
and along

passageways
to where her
adoptive new

mother works
and feel her
embrace her

earthy smell
her soft cheek
against that

rough cloth of
apron the
red fingers

caressing  
her long hair
whispering

words but still
the nanny
drones on the

lesson now
taking its
toll boredom

sinking in
wishing her
adoptive

mother would
come and take
her away

for a walk
to the horse
stables or

into town
holding her
hand the red

hand holding
her pink one
or dreams of

snuggling
up to her
in her bed

feeling her
motherly
tender warmth

but Nanny
still drones on
the long lesson

word on word
keeping her
from the arms

and caress
and earthy
smell of cloth

of her new
adoptive
young mother

below stairs
Alice yawns
secretly

her small hand
over mouth
knowing this

blowing soft
from her palm
to her young

adoptive
mother a
secret kiss.
A YOUNG GIRL IN 1890 AND HER NEWLY ADOPTIVE MOTHER BELOW STAIRS.
Stephan Aug 2016
.

Raising his hand
moving from the desk
as spitballs fly
and notes are passed

Chasing his tale
in make believe endings
with a princess in pink
draped on his arm


snickers and snorts bellow
his train of thought
traveling off track temporarily,
temporarily  

Dancing at midnight
drifting the seasons
on a feather boa mattress
pearlescent skin and fingers


silence gathers around
heavy breaths float
eyes squint, trying to focus
not his, theirs

Drawbridge openings explored
present tense heartbeats
sundown desires drip
saturating the scabbard


Homework is sidelined
jealous boys, intrigued girls
as curiosity peaks and biology
is not just a subject anymore

at the front of the classroom
writing in black chalk
so the rest of the class
cannot see


but he can

*oh he can
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2017
there's ethical idealism:
where ethics is discussed...
there's ethical relativism:
where ethics is practised...
there's ethical realism...
where ethics is quantified
as an improbability;
and then there's ethical
absolutism,
where we supposedly
"progress" -
in this scenario are
the laws of physics actually
suspended:
whereby oculus qua oculus
is replaced -
a loss of an eye is "relative"
to 10 years in a cage...
really?!
           ethics is
ideal, realistic, absolute or relative...
we're encouraged to live
in "realistic relativism"...
      never in an absolute realism,
since realistic relativism
only compares itself
  to ideal absolutism...
and nothing more...
          ever watched that film
secrets in their eyes?
you ever wonder what
ethical idealism is to the ethnical
consequence that can absorb
a realistic libra?
    i can only believe in
ethical absolutism,
  ethical relativism is horrid to me...
relativism adorns idealism,
absolutism adorns realism...
          a life sentence is worse than
a death sentence,
whether justified or not,
prison is sadism,
but at least ****** is simply ******...
a space-time intact,
           a ****** penalty is not
inhumane, nor a ouija board...
      it's time for time,
space for space,
  the actual punishment comes
with the missing adrenaline rush
of the unexpected reception of the wielded
weapon...
          either send these jealous plonkers to
siberia, or sentence them to death,
for you are no more than they are,
nay, you are more...
  you're akin to cats toying,
playing a sadistic games with half-mutilated
mice...
             this is why i abhor
ethical relativism of the crucifix...
           hence my belief in ethical
absolutism in the paragraph of realism,
  which is perfected, by
being exacted, and never, ever,
being leisurely discussed,
  on a farcical palette with a grimace
to boot: ******* a lemon;
compensating the horrors within
minutes, is never compensated
  with ordeals that last years...
which is why i find the death penalty
an act of authentic humanity,
and not this quasi-humanitarian
act of pardon, ******* hypocrites -
       i abhor the caged rat
more than the rat gladly nibbling
on a dead corpse...
        at least there was passion
in the ******...
waiting for death penalty is like killing
a vermin with poison,
disposing them with nonchalantly...
the wise maxim states:
  ledo ferrum sicut id est calidi -
strike the iron while it's hot...
       death is the dawn-broker -
a new tomorrow promise -
              left intact, the fermenting process
of ethical dynamism takes over...
      then again,
the supposedly "evolved"
preferred moral relativism to moral
absolutism,
          because there was no
moral realism to speak of,
                       since morality could only
be talked about in ideal terms of
the supposedly so, supposedly
fashioned via: it ought to never happen to
me...
and then it might, and then:
oops... argument sinks like a wet fatty ****
into shambles of keeping up with
the presupposed pillar of argument
being "impenetrable";
hey, genius, back to the blackboard!
Idiot Aug 2017
Blackboard, broken pieces of the Pierian Mountains
They give mathematicians creativity and muse.
Beautiful pieces of math are given birth,
just as Venus from the ocean.
#Mousai were given birth in the Pierian Mountains.
#Blackboards are really necessary for mathematicians.
Mike Hauser Sep 2013
She's written my name in chalk

On the blackboard of her heart

Without a second thought

She could easily brush me off

With eraser in her hand

She's always making other plans

Always with some other man

Whose name is also written in chalk

On the blackboard of her heart
You bring me good news from the clinic,
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the *******
Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.
When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist
Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask.  The nauseous vault
Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.
Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.
O I was sick.

They've changed all that.  Traveling
**** as Cleopatra in my well-boiled hospital shift,
Fizzy with sedatives and unusually humorous,
I roll to an anteroom where a kind man
Fists my fingers for me.  He makes me feel something precious
Is leaking from the finger-vents.  At the count of two,
Darkness wipes me out like chalk on a blackboard. . .
I don't know a thing.

For five days I lie in secret,
Tapped like a cask, the years draining into my pillow.
Even my best friend thinks I'm in the country.
Skin doesn't have roots, it peels away easy as paper.
When I grin, the stitches tauten.  I grow backward.  I'm twenty,
Broody and in long skirts on my first husband's sofa, my fingers
Buried in the lambswool of the dead poodle;
I hadn't a cat yet.

Now she's done for, the dewlapped lady
I watched settle, line by line, in my mirror—
Old sock-face, sagged on a darning egg.
They've trapped her in some laboratory jar.
Let her die there, or wither incessantly for the next fifty years,
Nodding and rocking and ******* her thin hair.
Mother to myself, I wake swaddled in gauze,
Pink and smooth as a baby.
Songs abound in Time as running due paid
We of Merry Emotion dance a Jig
And see you Happy toss-coins on the Said,
Mark farthings for pounds won on Cocktail's Lip
And whilst we Celebrate, what is that Chest,
Eating Sweets beneath the Lottery's Lot?
That's a nice hobby; Dried lollie's possessed
And Playful Numbers tucked beneath forgot
Taking Remembrance when he was Alive
With Chances simply Fun and Truly told
That the Greatest Theme; Not for Profit's Bide
But Storied Values hungry tongues retold.
What such Lesson this, a Blackboard can learn
Gems studded aside; That same Chest you earn.
#tomdaleytv #tomdaley1994
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2022
precursor - title correlation
body -

mind of:

C                oh

    oh                      Ri

n'ah.   (half an hour fiddling with a 502 bad
gateway; traffic these days! jeez!)

I.

it don't know what's more frustrating for the reasons that it's so good... i can't choose... it's a close call... either listening to Red Hot Chilli Peppers' B-sides from By The Way... ugh! why didn't they release that as a double album! Stadium Arcadium was not that good as a double-album... all the prior albums are MAGIC... literally... for ****'s sake: GOLDMINE is literally just that... there's that... i can't concentrate on making my own translation of Ovid... i'm yet to scribble down the translation i have... i can't even drink my whiskey properly... the other frustrating focus? watching Armand Duplantis break his own world record of 6.21metres... the ****** has still at least 10cm in him! a record that will have to stand-still for the next 20+ years... i'll be dead before this record is broken... Сергій Бубка best be sleeping... i'm listening to the music, reliving the end of the World Athletics and trying to heel-myself-in-the-buttocks: better get a move on boy... hmm! "trying"... i'm actually heeling myself in the buttocks: no time to wait... one can wait for a bus... one cannot for one's own incentive... ol' Lizzy is coming up the mountain... she's coming with the proper closure of the 20th century... however many popes she outlived... however many prime ministers and american presidents... come on Lizzie... just one more year... i'm actually dying to spend money with whittle Charlie printed on the notes... my fingers are itching... but **** me... music so good By The Way should have been a double-album... no! Stadium Arcadium was not the salvagable double-album worth session... i'm getting "schizophrenic" vibes... i know that poetry is not an entertaining medium: it's a complacent self-congratulatory, thereupeutic load of *******... it's obnixious when staged: the exasperated art of speaking with speed... today i realised that i much prefer drinking to having ***... i like the preservation of my brain with a hard-on of itchy fingers than any actual ******* hard-ons... the knife opening oysters or plucking out the eyes of deer... best the eyes be gauged out... than having deer stare into car lights... hybrid confusions of static, motivated to move... frozen in a make-shift imitation of root and clay and copper: bam! one more statue down...

II.

it's no wonder why i'm not looking for a girlfriend, it's no longer bewildering why i'm not looking for a wife, at best i'm looking out for that ancient custom of Roman emperors: to become a foster father, a surrogate - i'm yet to find a match-up... i almost did, but she undermined my chances by undermining her own seriousness in such affairs... but clarity does come... as much as i might be a surrogate father to her son or daughter: i wouldn't be faithful to her... i would steal the night and run away into a brothel... but there's something else... the whole dynamic of publishing has changed... the whole idea of a library has also changed... i own more valuable books in my private collection than the public library of Romford... which is me peering at the dire straits of what the public is fed... i know why i don't aspire for pair-bonding... perhaps man so levelled aspired toward the imitation of birds a long time ago... perhaps swans are truly noble creatures: for one hears of widow and widower swans... perhaps parrots: born from those monstrous beasts that were the dinosaurs can imitate our talk... all that's this reality within the confines of "perhaps": nonetheless, it's all true... but perhaps being the mammal that i am... i moved from a community of chimpanzees into a solo-ride of imitation-bear... perhaps i only entertain the opposite *** on the encounter of ***... i couldn't land a conversation with a woman outside the constrictive-framework of work, so much so: i would abhor the mindset of men that go on dates with women: buy them food and then EXPECT... i leave that ******* out in my interactions... pay-up-front for what you're about to receive otherwise don't play cat while the woman plays mouse... or rather... a rat in cat's clothing: the woman therefore becoming a rat-trap... mind you: i can't think of a more terrible idea than the modern version of: eat first, **** later... at the old ****** proverb states: a hungry ****** is angry... a filled ****** is lazy... god forbid i ever become tempted by those dating sites... i'm currently looking for the original Latin text of Ovid's the Amores book 2 poem 6... why? what i have in my hand... and what i'm finding... it's like what Robert Pinsky remarked about once: TRANSLATIONS differ so much from one translator to another...

they have done it... UEFA are mad... just to get my
accreditation for the women's Euros final
at Wembley they're asking me to bring my passport
with me... so is Wembley the JFK of Florida
          space-shuttle launch? Houston? am i leaving
the country?
                but the girls have done it...
funny: some other people are still complaining:
IT'S TOO WHITE!
   there's not enough diversity in the team...
          that's me also planning to go and live
in Kenya and become a model for toilet paper...
i'm sure i could replace that known Koala bear /
golden retriever or perhaps i could go there
and model for soap adverts...
it just so happened that racial tensions (only football
could create them) rose up for a little:
just one night the day England lost to Italy
on penalty shootouts... because... 3 black guys
were playing a rigged roulette...
            then again? me? and the African heat?
fat chance...

find me the original Elegy VI: the death of Corinna's
pet parrot...
oh man... and her name was Polly...
i sat up late last night trying to find something
interest on the television...
bam! thank you ma'am...
                       kurt cobain: montage of heck...
sort of reminded me of...
                           a SCANNER DARKLY...
                           mind you: i sometimes do enjoy
a one-man show... or at least two...
there was this brilliant show in the West End...
Stones in his Pockets...
       two actors... sharing the roles of...
                  about 15 people each...
but it was back in circa 2001...
so... maybe it was Louis Dempsey
                                                        & Sean Sloan...
mind you... i'd still love to see Samuel Beckett's
             NOT I...

Jack Trades says: i'm about to a heap
of hay of hate...
                                i'm everywhere sometimes...
if it's not music, then its visual arts,
then it's philosophy, then fine literature...
then something "oriental" in thinking...
then its coupling my fetish for Deutsche as:
father to the English zunge...
then it's back east to rummage in some Katakana...

i know why i'm single, Roger Moore remained
a bachelor until his death...
  courteous: as ever as forever always...
i'd be a terrible match-up... i've given pair-bonding
a chance: i can't bemoan why X is not Y...
the sort of men that pair-bond are claustrophilic...
they love the company of a mate...
each time i was ever in a "relationship" i already
had one foot dangling: tapping an imaginary
drum set...
recently i discovered the B-side of the Red Hot Chilli
Peppers... so for me it's a version
of keeping the 20th century alive with
the "dichotomy" of the Rolling Stones vs.
the Beatles... i'm more... R.H.C.P.'s A-sides
of R.H.C.P.'s B-sides?
                                        i'm busy...
                i'm always busy... i don't want to relax...
i want a Turkish barber to suggest that
i need  hot-towel and an arm massage after
my beard is trimmed and... i'm still going to state:
getting a Turk to trim my beard is a close
contender to oral *** from a Turkish *******...

but try finding me that original Latin of Ovid's...
ah! found it! let's see if i can compete with
my own translation... the one i originally read
and the one i found finding the original Latin
were so disparaging...

**** yes! well... there was Ted Hughes writing
about the Crow... poor ******...
should have killed himself: might have competed
with his terribly-wonderful wife of a poet...
i give her that: what noose?
best head in an oven...
and you want a shovel with that?
but this is Ovid... "complaining" about
the death of his lover's parrot...
immediately i jumped to conclusions:
not enough crackers...

(A) the Original:

Psittacus, Eois imitatrix ales ab Indis,
    occidit—exequias ite frequenter, aves!
ite, piae volucres, et plangite pectora pinnis
    et rigido teneras ungue notate genas;
horrida pro maestis lanietur pluma capillis,
    pro longa resonent carmina vestra tuba!
quod scelus Ismarii quereris, Philomela, tyranni,
    expleta est annis ista querela suis;
alitis in rarae miserum devertere funus—
    magna, sed antiqua est causa doloris Itys.
Omnes, quae liquido libratis in aere cursus,
    tu tamen ante alios, turtur amice, dole!
plena fuit vobis omni concordia vita,
    et stetit ad finem longa tenaxque fides.
quod fuit Argolico iuvenis Phoceus Orestae,
    hoc tibi, dum licuit, psittace, turtur erat.
Quid tamen ista fides, quid rari forma coloris,
    quid vox mutandis ingeniosa sonis,
quid iuvat, ut datus es, nostrae placuisse puellae?—
    infelix, avium gloria, nempe iaces!
tu poteras fragiles pinnis hebetare zmaragdos
    tincta gerens rubro Punica rostra croco.
non fuit in terris vocum simulantior ales—
    reddebas blaeso tam bene verba sono!
Raptus es invidia—non tu fera bella movebas;
    garrulus et placidae pacis amator eras.
ecce, coturnices inter sua proelia vivunt;
    forsitan et fiunt inde frequenter ****.
plenus eras minimo, nec prae sermonis amore
    in multos poteras ora vacare cibos.
nux erat esca tibi, causaeque papavera somni,
    pellebatque sitim simplicis umor aquae.
vivit edax vultur ducensque per aera gyros
    miluus et pluviae graculus auctor aquae;
vivit et armiferae cornix invisa Minervae—
    illa quidem saeclis vix moritura novem;
occidit illa loquax humanae vocis imago,
    psittacus, extremo munus ab orbe datum!
optima prima fere manibus rapiuntur avaris;
    inplentur numeris deteriora suis.
tristia Phylacidae Thersites funera vidit,
    iamque cinis vivis fratribus Hector erat.
Quid referam timidae pro te pia vota puellae—
    vota procelloso per mare rapta Noto?
septima lux venit non exhibitura sequentem,
    et stabat vacuo iam tibi Parca colo.
nec tamen ignavo stupuerunt verba palato;
    clamavit moriens lingua: 'Corinna, vale!'
Colle sub Elysio nigra nemus ilice frondet,
    udaque perpetuo gramine terra viret.
siqua fides dubiis, volucrum locus ille piarum
    dicitur, obscenae quo prohibentur aves.
illic innocui late pascuntur olores
    et vivax phoenix, unica semper avis;
explicat ipsa suas ales Iunonia pinnas,
    oscula dat cupido blanda columba mari.
psittacus has inter nemorali sede receptus
    convertit volucres in sua verba pias.
Ossa tegit tumulus—tumulus pro corpore magnus—
    quo lapis exiguus par sibi carmen habet:
"colligor ex ipso dominae placuisse sepulcro;
    ora fuere mihi plus ave docta loqui".

mein gott... in English it reads so smoothly reading
it while listening to Red Hot Chilli Peppers'
B-sides... quixoticelixer...
teatra jam (short)... and then thinking about it...
through to and through Going Li coupled
with trouble in the pub (instrumental version)...

i will never own a car...
              mind you: i already secretely own a house...
if i keep appeasing my mother and my father:
when reality kicks in and they're dead and i'm
project solo... it's not like i'm waiting for the day...
they are hoarders of shoes and screws...
literally... no metaphor...
  on my own: i will have to recycle so much ****
before i will put the house on the market...
and? i never pledged any allegiance to Essex...
England... i have: pledged an allegiance
to the English tongue...
                 but if not the Shetland Islands...
north... "god" send me north! even as far as
Greenland!
                i'm not willing to die in a place where
villages are flaring up in a July heat...

i can't bemoan what i honestly couldn't keep...
i sometimes get mad at my father for being
so submissive to my mother...
i sometimes get so mad at my mother for only
being able to talk about her chronic pains:
i'm alligned with my grandmother
who once said: she's just like your paternal
great-grandmother... every itch and scratch...
it's like writing with chalk on a blackboard...
hey presto! ruptures of the Grand Canyon...
that ******* bollocking of: ooh! ah!
           me? i don't understand people with tattoos...
me? i collect scars...
these two fading ones on my face are a disappointment...
i thought something more pronounced
could be kept from that bicycle-crach Francis Bacon
esque imitation of painting:
   the sort of painting where you can still revel
in brush-strokes being visible...
   because it's not rigid: Renaissance form painting...

now: i can sort of imagine what men couple up...
those who fear being alone...
those not interested in art...
those mostly interested in sport... but not all sport...
just some sports...
sports that they support "passing their lineage"
with according to the cult of football teams...
not all-sports... i.e. not an interest in fencing...
swimming... certainly guys who thought:
wow! tennis is great to watch!
   but squash is so much more fun to play!
cycling... well... if you love cycling per se:
watching other people cycle is a bit: BOO-RING...
what sort of other men get married?
probably those not interested in risque ***
with prostitutes...
ones interested in making money for a woman
to spend...
me? i'm not interested in money...
                       in terms of money:
i'm more likely to spend £30 on a book than
think about a dinner date...
                      
is that...   ??? i'm not even going to ask myself
that question that begins with a buzz-word
and the letters Mmmm... miso...
                             well... what is a boy to do...
figure out what to do with his spare time...
               i don't mind cleaning the house:
who ever said that it's the duty of a woman to keep
the house clean? i like living in a household in order...
i love cooking: it's like chemistry 2.0...
                      give me a bag of Indian spices and i'll
cook up a perfect storm of a curry...
but then again: i'm not work-shy when it comes
to using heavy-duty tools akin to the KANGO...
which... i later found out was a Japanese word for
Chinese in general... or the other way round...
i'd hate to be one of those Phil Collins types of
forgetting how many hands i have
by changing gloves like i might be an octopus...

and when it comes to children?
eh... it's enough for a boy in a buggy in a supermarket
pointing his finger at me as i walk past
making that chimpanzee face of OOH at me...
or a fist-bump with some teenagers at the London
Stadium... that's enough... i'm happy to play
the "secret uncle" role...
while women remain women: as fickle as the wind...
i've learned to live with that reality...
i scratch my beard and pretend that i'm playing
a violin...

plus, i'm a terrible drinker... i'm a loving-drunk...
i'm drunk right now...
if a litre of whiskey per night satisfies
my libido shortages i'm happy:
it implies i can write... i stop drinking and start
*******: alles goot...
                           today i was visited by a wasp...
i was visited by a bee before...
oh man... it was heart-breaking...
he was dying... i had to help him...
   i poured some honey onto the pave-,
and moved him towards the puddle...
he stuck his mighty Gene Simmons sucker out
and started to perform an OD on sugar...
i was glad... watching him die from a sugar-overdose...
it was: rather pleasant to watch...

TERROR! mix JAINISM with TAOISM
and fuse that in an European mind...
               but i'll still eat meat...
                        it's a parody of what's to be expected:
i prefer life with the possibilities of change...
with... curiosities of: extensive ulterior
possibilities that run counter to estblished norms
of expectations of a RIGID MIND...
i water: i flow...
      i fire: i dance...
i air: i whirl...
i earth: i rumble...
i lightning: i blink...
hey presto! the five elements!

in another language close to my heart:
since i was born with it...
the pronoun disappears:
ja woda: płyne
ja ogien: tańcze...
   ja powietrze: kręce się (odd)
ja ziemia: trzęse się (also "odd")
ja grzmot: mrygam

there are languages in existence where pronouns
hide... to be honest...
in ******? the pronouns are rarely used...
oh mein gott... when they're used in a sentence:
esp. the I... it's like... wow! i just found
a "nugget of gold"!
seriously... that how my mother-tongue
is structured: on English is the current
prounoun-circus available to watch...
i'm siding with the Somali pirates having
a giggle... playing blackjack with either Greeks
or some other Africans...

there are languages in English that cannot: will not,
succumb to the current Marxist onslight
happening in this tongue...
not because these languages will not:
they CANNOT...
mind you... it's such an intellectual low-bar
of achievement... but since it's piggy-pop...
it must be slaughtered on an individual level
before this DISEASE is allowed to spread...
thank heavens that English is only my second
language... how that allows me to bypass
buying into any sort of propaganda...
   my lingua Ingelese... my tongue for spreading
ideas...
    oh: and thank **** i' expressing in a medium
desecrated by the same people pushing these
sordid ideas... post-humous fame! 'ere i come!
obviously! who's in it for the "real" and immediate
if one isn't... fabricating a pickling of a shark
in plastic.... who? who?! woof!
   a-woooooo"

            my heart has shrunk and hardened to
the size and hardness of a pebble...
    i wish i could entertain cosy nights with a woman
watching some pointless movie about
the stereotypes of love... then again: no...
i'd rather not...
drinking alone: who the hell said i was alone?
i sometimes "hallucinate" someone crying:
of late... i'm like: this isn't Aud Lang Syne...
this isn't Shakespear...
then again i love the idea that my true readers
are yet to be born...
i'm happy, happy-bear-alone...
                       a Maine **** is sleeping in my
bed... i'll join him come the right hour...
but he's not looking at me... he's looking above me...
only yesterday i started to paparazzi
a wasp that flew into my bedroom...
          what the **** do i have above me?
please say letters... i will not do alright with a halo...
i'm not going to join that
archangel one minute... saint the next...
clip my ******* wings for a get-through-easy
card: no!
          
it became finalized today... i'm literally tired
of ***... i'm tired of *** when it's equivalent to not...
being tired of eating food... drinking water...
it's unnecessarily-necessary... *** as golf...
per say...
                2 months of delay in payment...
i'm thinking about rekindling my affair with that mountain
bike... i have to forget the streets...
i need the woods again... but for that i need new tires...
oh... hell... i no longer have anything
to prove in the brothel... blah blah whatever...
threesomes look great: LOOk...
like a block of cheddar looks great...
when shredded...
and then melting...
perhaps in pornographic flicks...
but in reality? the changing of condoms
from one mouth to another...
from one ****** to another...
                          
what?! peiple are having unprotected ***?
vermin ****?!
   **** me... well... at least i'm obnoxiously savvy
in that regard...
no no... it's too disappointing...
you have to split your attention up...
there's nothing good about a *******...
why? because, usually... of the two girls...
there's one you really want to be a screwdriver to...
while the other is just being a, *******...
a ******* bandwagon... leftovers...
a pair of **** you get to imitate ****** with...
it's a bit like:
coupling an elephant with a giraffe...
but i want to ride the elephant!
but i want to stroke the giraffe's neck!
but  i want to pretend the elephants's tusk...
no! not tusk! TRUNK....
that rectangular bit of ******* you shovel
your clothes in when travelling...
TRUNK... or a TRAMPOLINE!
no... not the bouncy layer...
TRUNK... sneeze! trambone! jazz! ******* Miles Daisies!
Davis!  trumpet *******!
no... don't get me started on the sax...

then again: i want a rhino's horn! ram-jam...
Black Betty Bam B'eh Lam!

- oh no... i moved along... R.H.C.P.'s: thanks for the t-shirt...
Big Bukowski style:
i hate the eagles... run through the jungle...
run Forrest! whun!
WHUN!
  and that's me... hardly a LAMNTIA of the Beatniks
tripping... me? enough whiskey
and the right song... and i'm grooving beside
an imaginary drum-kit...
in that: once upon a time...
when men grew their hair long...
they were the barbarians knocking
on the gates of Rome... rather than being
the implosion of Rome within with
all of Rome's degeneracy of transgender gimmicks...

mind you: i've given it some thought...
i broke it down toward the following schematic:

anonymous audience, commenting,
video making blah blah...
****** "schematic": if you can call it that...
mind you: the VAR in WIETNAM
had the best soundtrack...
just saying: hey! her?! hey! don't shoot
the messanger!
i'd rather work the Fulham opening night
with the new stand: Thames-side being opened
than attend Wembley for a Westwood...
Westworld... Westlife concert,
i'm all up for handling those Scousers:
northern monkeys?
southern fairies...
let's just call them for what they are...
northern TOURISTS...

but the dynamic of publishing has changed:
i already know the criterium first...
women and children first...
THIRST beccause water matters...
i'm thirsty too... one litre of whiskey and
i'm still typing like a machine...
i'll box my liver and kidneys
as long as i keep my brain and eyes happy...

but it's just a different dynamic...
the internet experience...
i know a lot of people miss it...
i can't force people to read my bollocking-riddles...
ergo? i don't stagnate into celebrating it
or therefore advertising it...
i'm either read or i'm STAUB...
   dust...
                
i can't! i'm only making something available...
i can't force people out of their democratic "wedlock"...
you like it? great! you don't? great!
but the psychology of those video creators that
mind how many views they receive and
how many comments they: likewise receive...
"false hits" with the number of hits of viewership?

me? i'm not bothered... i've been watching
the female Euro finals...
i was almost scared... what if the female England team
don't make it to the finals?!
me? i'm gearing up...
any rowdy hooligans up to speed?!
as much as i hate women not trying toi compete
in sports that are sexually-exclusive...
there's this... THIS... i watch the games because
the Colleseum is burning...
i'm only watching the fire...
    and i'm watching the women i'd love to ****...
this never would have happened if watching
tennis...

    the crisp biting attache of a sharpshooter
WONG sort of mixer-mix-up with a whiskey
and a pepssi...
me... reaching for a second glass
with one already filled like: *******... RAINMAN...

keep your horses!
i'm gearing up to a translation!
wait, the, ****, up! keep it cool in Doob-Lyn!
oh no... you don't get to tell me
i use too many vowels without me showing
you... you mishandled the vowel-to-consonant
dynamic... Doob-Lyn is Dublin: tow me...
no: not to me? tow me... now you're dragging me
along the snail-trail...

the disparaging translations:

(B) the A. S. Kline translation

Parrot, the mimic, the winged one from India’s Orient,
is dead – Go, birds, in a flock and follow him to the grave!
Go, pious feathered ones, beat your ******* with your wings
and mark your delicate cheeks with hard talons:
tear out your shaggy plumage, instead of hair, n mourning:
sound out your songs with long piping!
Philomela , mourning the crime of the Thracian tyrant,
the years of your mourning are complete:
divert your lament to the death of a rare bird –
Itys is a great but ancient reason for grief.
All who balance in flight in the flowing air,
and you, above others, his friend the turtle-dove, grieve!
All your lives you were in perfect concord,
and held firm in your faithfulness to the end.
What the youth from Phocis was to Orestes of Argos,
while she could be, Parrot, turtle-dove was to you.
What worth now your loyalty, your rare form and colour,
the clever way you altered the sound of your voice,
what joy in the pleasure given you by our mistress? –
Unhappy one, glory of birds, you’re certainly dead!
You could dim emeralds matched to your fragile feathers,
wearing a beak dyed scarlet spotted with saffron.
No bird on earth could better copy a voice –
or reply so well with words in a lisping tone!
You were snatched by Envy – you who never made war:
you were garrulous and a lover of gentle peace.
Behold, quails live fighting amongst themselves:
perhaps that’s why they frequently reach old age.
Your food was little, compared with your love of talking
you could never free your beak much for eating.
Nuts were his diet, and poppy-seed made him sleep,
and he drove away thirst with simple draughts of water.
Gluttonous vultures may live and kites, tracing spirals
in air, and jackdaws, informants of rain to come:
and the raven detested by armed Minerva lives too –
he whose strength can last out nine generations:
but that loquacious mimic of the human voice,
Parrot, the gift from the end of the earth, is dead
The best are always taken first by greedy hands:
the worse make up a full span of years.
Thersites saw Protesilaus’s sad funeral,
and Hector was ashes while his brothers lived.
Why recall the pious prayers of my frightened girl for you –
prayers that a stormy south wind blew out to sea?
The seventh dawn came with nothing there beyond,
and Fate held an empty spool of thread for you.
Yet still the words from his listless beak astonished:
dying his tongue cried: ‘Corinna, farewell!’
A grove of dark holm oaks leafs beneath an Elysian *****,
the damp earth green with everlasting grass.
If you can believe it, they say there’s a place there
for pious birds, from which ominous ones are barred.
There innocuous swans browse far and wide
and the phoenix lives there, unique immortal bird:
There Juno’s peacock displays his tail-feathers,
and the dove lovingly bills and coos.
Parrot gaining a place among those trees
translates the pious birds in his own words.
A tumulus holds his bones – a tumulus fitting his size –
whose little stone carries lines appropriate for him:
‘His grave holds one who pleased his mistress:
his speech to me was cleverer than other birds’.

(C) the  P. Green translation

parrot, that feathered mimic from India's dawlands,
is dead. come flocking, birds, to his funeral:
come, all you godfearing airborne creatures,
beat ******* with wings,
   mourn, claw your polls, tear out soft feathers
(your hair), and pipe high your sad lament.
Philomela, nightingale, the ancient crimes of Tereus
which you lament is long past -
    divert your grief to the obsequies of a rare and modern
bird: poor Itylus' case was tragic, but antique.
all wind-borne voyagers through the clear empyrean
lament now, and above all his friend the turtle-dove
they lived in complete agreement,
    their bond of faith held firm to the end.
what Pylades was to Orestes or Argos, that Parrot,
turtle-dove was to you - while fate allowed.
yet of no avail your devotion, your rare and beautiful
plumage,
your adaptable mimic's voice;
    not even the care that my darling lavished on you -
poor Polly, paragon of birdhood, is dead.
so gree his feathers, they dimmed the cut emerald;
scarlet his beak, with saffron spots.
no bird on earth could copy a voice more closely
or sound so articulate.
fate, jealous, removed him - that unaggressive creature,
that talktative devotee of peace,
with his tiny appetite , whose love of conversation
left him little leisure for food,
who lived on a diet of nuts, used poppy-seed to encourage
sound sleep: kept his thirst at bay with nothing but water.
quails spend their whole life fighting -
maybe that's how they reach a ripe old age.
carnivorous vultures, kites gyring high in the heavens,
weather-wise jackdaws, prophets of rain to come,
are all long-lived - while Minerva's bête noire, the raven,
can outlast nine generations. yet Parrot is dead,
that loquacious parody of human utterance,, that bonanza
from the eastern edge of the world,
greedy death almost always pickss off the best ones early -
it's the third-raters who reach a ripe old age.
Thersites attended the funeral of Protesilaus;
Hector was ashes while his brothers still lived.
what point is recalling the desperate prayers my sweetheart
uttered?
some stormy sirocco blew them out to sea.
six days he survived, and then, at dawn on the seventh,
his thread of destiny ran out.
yet somehow, though dying, he could still find utterance,
and the last words he ever spoke were: 'Corinna, farewell!'
beneath a hill in Elyium, where dark ilex clussters
and the moist earth is for ever green,
there exists - or so i have heard - the pious fowls' heaven
(all ill-omened predators barred).
harmless swaans roam after foot there, there dwells
the phoenix, that long-lived, ever-solitary bird;
there Juno's peacock spreads out his splendid fantail
amid the billing and cooing of amorous doves;
and there, in this woodland haven, the feathered faithful
welcome Parrot, flock round to hear him talk.
his bones lie buried under a parrot-sized tumulus
with a tiny headstone bearing these words:
r.i.p. Polly: this tribute from his loving mistress:
articulate beyond a common bird

the thought of LEMONS or perhaps
the IDEA of lemon...
then again: i can't refrain from
ORANGES and LIMES...
and the shy-sunlight of autumn
and the blooming of apples...
and operas...
             "someone"...
                              what pretty pies of
unfuckable wonders await...

divert your grief to the obsequeies of a rare and modern
bird: poor Itylus' case was tragic, but antique
(antiquated?).
all wind-borne voyagers through tge clear empyrean
lament nowm abd above all
his friend the turtle-dove, they lived in complete
agreement
   their bond of faith held firm to the end.
what Pylades was to Orestes of Argos, that, Parrot,
turtle-dove was to you - while Fate allowed,

i'm not even going to bother with a "bananna C"...
i woke up wild-awake with ideas...
brimming with Tao...
"non-doing" id est: point PROVEN
or rather point SERVED?!

Russia and China are clashing...
or rather sparring...
they're having their civilization-state
agenda being put in place...
while there's a "culture-war" in the "west"...
right... James Bond...
so we're refrrering to nation-stattes
as post-nationhood...
  "states"...
                    precursors to the globalist agenda
of fake space exploration via the ******* telescope...
if Russia and China are civivilasation-states...
then... whatever culture "war" is investing in:
or rather: digressing into... impliies
the FSA (federal states of america)
             is a culture-state...
                                                ­                 no?

personally? i don't like the current h'American culture...
it's absolute *******...
no! i'm not going to translate any more of Ovid...
i already read the better translation...
i found out only two minites ago that
i prefer drinking to having ***...
and keeping an eye on cats is just as rewarding
as rearing children: if you allow yourself
to give them a personality...

           so Russia is a civilisation-state...
while America is a culture-state...
                    well... no wonder...
                                            America is the zenith
that could be: but doesn't have to be
preserved...
the culture-state-of-the-sand-*******...
i wish: the Arabs clocked in lucky...
sitting on so much raw ill of oil...
bounce bounce libido bounce bounce...

hmm... "inner monologue"... i had that "thing"
once... i kost it... turning psychotic...
then again: within the confines of having
an internal monologue? i was passive...
       i was a passive agent...
                         upon losing it: having my soul
evaporate: becoming an "N.P.C."...
i became an active agent...
i opened my eyes a second time...

           i think my inner monolpogue became blocked
by:
został wyciszony... bo zaczoł być cykliczny,
tzn. nie po prostej:
       wymarł według koncepcji
sprawiedliwości...

even i know: the gods uttered the words:
shut the **** up! we know you're right!
but we're playing roulette!
shut the ******! we're playing cards!
shut up!
wait! wait your turn!
**** me, given the prowess at attaing
a concept of the differential of space comparing
time... i.e. speed... i'll be karma-happy
once i die...

i'm not translating the rest of that Ovid...
a girl's parraot died... great!
now i'm thinking about:
a bicyckle is a terrible idea... to ride...
on the roads towards St. Paul's... i think i might
require a horse!
i need a horse! bring me a hood, a hoof,
an apple and a toothbrush!
the last place i'm thinking about moving
to is California...
   and thank no god for that...
just the people who already live there.

III.

i sooner discovered the rare B-sides of Red Hot Chilli
Peppers than having realised... oh right...
they release two albums after By the Way...
i completely forgot about those two...
               guess i'm not as big a fan as i thought i was...
Go Robot... it's not oh so wo terrible now, or anymore...
oh woah woe... what a whale to ride into the night...

sometimes it just happens, a sort of blend of an Ezrra Pound
and a Charles Olson moment, poem, moment-poem...
it stretches for three days and you just don't want
to finish it... you kept repeating yourself writing seemingly
aimlessly with no focus...
at this point writing becomes theraputic...
by the simple act of writing: not theraputic regarding
what you're writing about: memories of frustration and
complications having finished Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus...
unlike those joyous frustrations with Samuel Beckett's
Watt...
                  and on the third day "he" finished painting
four metal chairs a new colour of copperhead...
a copperneck painting chairs copperhead...
to me the colour of copper is more appealing than
that of gold...

if i still had that inner-monologue people speak of
i wouldn't be writing this,
that inner-monologue fantasy i once was a proud owner
of: i.e. the closest "thing" to the idea of soul
was also filled with so many doubts...
i simply don't care what the supposed benefits
of it were... that whole no-inner-monologue ergo
one's an NPC (non-playable character)...
    i remember that that when my first psychotic episode
slammed me on a rampage i started to see DIFFERENTLY...
it was as if a veil was lifted from my eyes...
if i didn't write terrible poetry back then...
i most certainly wrote very little...
             the inner-monologue doubts... a plethora of them...
no? psychosis = the osmosis of soul...
   the body has remained... the devils said:
but these idle hands and this idle intellect have to stay...
we'll pass on the message with your soul
as it leaves your body...
call it whatever you want:
   res vanus or the silence of the "mind"...
that's how you become more of an active agent...
it might be called writing but i call it digging...
a tunnel toward some variaton of: marrying Hades
with Tartarus...
                after all... Venus is the daughter of titans...
and she's the only Titan among the Olympian gods:
such is her perfection... almost on par with
   the patron of philosophers that's Sacred Sophia:
who entertains the foolishness of elder men
without being able to tell them apart from boys...

IV. if i were to translate Amores II. XI

would i be willing to add a D in the translation sequence?
i don't think so
there's no need... i like comparing the two i already
made available...
i just wanted to stress how unbelievable Latin is...
compared to the modern tongue, for example English...
how compact it is!
- and course, i prefer the second translation...
     it... exfoliates!
                     this is the point for me where i truly appreciate
Ovid to be on par with Horace...

side by side walking through the zenith-nadir of
man...

   i'm finally come across a sequence of events that
make me unwilling to stop typing: perhaps if i get
drunk enough and stumble on my first typo
perhaps a series of typos would end my ambition...

do i think men in the west are living
in a land of libido-insomnia? i think they are...
whoever said that watching one type of pornogrphy
soon spirals out of control and men start
scouting for more extreme *******:
hello outlier A! hello outlier B!
where's outlier C? oh... he's coming...
at a time when women are supposed to be these
sexually liberated creatures while men
are either STAGS with harems or limp biscuit *****...
thank god i managed to catch the train
of having the ***** of walking into a newsagent
and buying a pornographic magazine to ******* to...
stashed about six in a folder behind
the radiator in the bathroom at 21B Beehive Lane,
Gants Hill...
                         mind you: i started prematurely...
8?
     i switch off with western ****** antics:
people are either having too much ***: ergo the kinks
or not enough of it...
outlier in the middle: when it's too hot
i leave the insects to do their lineage pride...
cooler temperatures: *** like rubbing sand-paper
on a ****** paint-job...

                         makeshift boney **** of the hand...
well: at least ******* makes me more interested in
the **** than **** ***...
but i did the opposite... i need to keep a sack-of-sanity
atop my head...
beside adoring the Katakana...
i very much adore Japanese tamed sexuality...
     グラビア アイドル (gurabia aidoru)...
back in the day when the English tabloid newspaper
the Sun had a page 3 girl...
back to basics... a show of *******...
    a show of cleavage... perhaps even the breast
like the eye... the sclera of the rounded breast...
the darkened skin at the iris and then the pupil
as the ******...
  floral patterns of the *******...
                  back to basics...
                           a photograph of a naked woman
and all the imagination at work: what wouldn't
i want to do with her?

well... if you begin pleasing yourself while concentrating
on the kiss between Venus and Cupid
in one of Bronzino's beauties of paint-strokes...
you're hardly going to go down a rabbit-hole
of "hide and hide": wihtout seeking it out...
people and thier kinks...
while a minority: dodo-project sexuality of
homosexuality is celebrated: garnerded unto the guise
of "pride": i can't stomach shame...
but hey: look at me! i'm about to parade my sexuality
like and ******* latex-clad gimp readied
for being given ***-favour-orders...

outlandish! god-forgiving god-fearing...
  hardly every god-loving...
           a settling in of a blue that's not the sky
but a melancholy... i'm finally willing to end this
"diatribe"... to start afresh... again and again...
like mixing: Dreams of a Samurai with
Hans Zimmer's spectres in the fog...

                      my ***: going back to figuring out
the premature adventures into ***...
one boy passing on the secrets of *******
to another while sharing a bath:
the cruel curiosity of the circumcision:
in a secular environment: without the kippah
or the niqab: the submission of the women...
i will not give up the "sheath" to my "sword"...
i will keep my teeth with my twirling tongue...
if ever an improvement on the aesthetics?
clipping the ears of Dobberman dogs...
banning clipping the clipping of their tails...
but still: the preserved atrocity of male circumcision...
i could agree...
once a woman is devoted to her man...
a circumcision like putting on a wedding ring...
noble swans... oh noble swans...

a melancholy that's sort of azure...
amass enough water and you will see blue...
amass "too little": freeze it...
a paleness somewhat grey...
but then the icebergs roaming that are
the Cistercians...
            all i need right now is for some lonely
dog to start barking into the night...
or the cackling "laughter" of a fox...
    
    but all those sexless lives...
            "lucky" me for taming my consumption down...
where would i be without it?
i didn't ask for a *******...
i wa offered it... i will never forget how she clamoured
for the opportunity...
she couldn't stomach being rejected twice...
she just had to clamour like a crab in a crab bucket...
even if she thought she thought she succeeded:
she was the spare wheel...
what i've learned... i prefer one-on-one interactions...
but i gave in...
   it would have never worked out:
not like it "works out" in pornographic flicks...
the sharing of saliva and other juices...
we're responsible adults...
unlike in the pornographic flicks...
          two women: one man...
the changing of condoms...
                           i had to think quick:
there's only one way i will not be undermined...
snuggling up to the one i really wanted
to spend an hour with...
                       kissing neck and cheek...
while she did a hand-job...
   the other just sat there sort of idle...
                          until i figured out... those *******
could be of some use...

- i couldn't pull off a Jesus look...
long hair and a beard is not my "thing"...
even with a sly undercut...
i chose the better option.... short hair, a beard, yes,
but a "fu manchu": an elongated love-spot...
competing with the length of the beard...
i really "don't understand" why i have no memory
of my chin and neck...
it's like there was never the idea of using
water as a mirror... perhaps poor Xerxes lashed
at the Aegean for hiding his reflection
when he had one of those Narcisstic moments
of anguish: he forgot how he looked like...
but then the sides of the moustasche also drooping:
elongated... that work much better than
a beard and long hair...
it's so unfashionable these days...
i don't get why men think beards and long hair
"work"....

then again i never figured out why Khadira
wanted to have unprotected ***...
  how she insisted that it was just plain o.k.
for me to ******* into her...
how i snapped and dived in into her pandamonium
of multiples springs of irritated ****...
all slobbering with oyster-tongue
and knose...
                               all that informed me...

companionship? what a rare commodity...
it's enough to have a mother to know
how a woman's company can quickly sour
the already sweet grapes...
one word: tell a man he's LAZY...
while he's just tired of being pushed and shoved...
if a mother can do that to a son?
what could a wife do?
                          and i'm come across curiosities of
men who waged wars with their mothers...
at the Tyson Fury boxing match...
i was trying to calm the **** down a guy
who was having a panic attack after being
"abandoned" by his mother...
who bought the tickets... and drinks...
i squeezed him hard... told him: but i'm here for free!
nay! i'm here and getting paid for it!
blah blah...
               i hate seeing panic attacks in men...
it makes me either feel like
more than a man or less of a man...
it makes me think of the men prior
with shell-shocks... or women exploiting
the challenges of p.t.s.d.

                                    i've seen so many people fake
a mental illness... i've spoken at length
to them... how easily open up to their own struggles...
while i'm left alone with whatever ones
i have...
                   maybe because my "mental health issues"
have morphed into philosophical caviats
implies that i'm immune to outright sharing
the details... and boring people to death...
so i listen...
        i listen...
                            in one ear out the other...

i remember days in high school when we would love
to change the subject, create a game:
SLAP-BALL... imitation of Tsar Peter III prior
to tennis... an imitation court... with a fence between us...
or just playing BLACKJACK...
cards... that was big... we understood that ignoring
women was best done with / by playing cards...
at one point: i remember it to this day...
Samuel Richards grabbed Ian Goodman's neck
and pinned him to the floor...
we tried to intervene...
i don't know whether it was about the actual
game of cards or whether it was about
Sam bailing out... he was about to move to France...
and ****** off from pur in-group...
started playing basketball with the black-boys...
forgot he was supposedly the "PUNK" in the school...
i remember skateboarding with him...
he actually stole his mother's credit card and bought
a skateboard for me...
but his ******* MOHICAN was ****...
it didn't entertain the entire length of his skull
meeting his spine...
but we did walk back from Romford
toward Ilford this one night...
underage drinking... singing Backstreet Boys songs...

ha ha...
         time is a museum of melancholy...
while space is a museum of furthering whatever is left
of leftover potential...

i'm so despondent about this life having to end...
today i cycled up to the traffic lights
on my ******... ******?! £125 viking road bike... say the word
****** one more time... what was i facing?
a solitary man in an Aston Martin...
behind him? some solitary guy in a Porsche...
right... "alphas"...
i'm on my bicycle... but these two guys
in those choicest of motor-examples?
that's the thing with "competing" in life rather than
sport...
     i like my bicycle... i love my bicycle...
i am yet to wash away the blood from my head
from the crash...
i don't have a broken leg: i just have an outgrowth of bone
on my shin where my bone should have cracked:
i love milk...

competing with these men... **** me...
i was thinking about the Porsche guy...
nice game... but it's not playing cards...
i taart myself up: compete...
what do i get? i get a Porsche...
     but then ahead of me there's this guy
in an Aston Martin: mate! i'm ******!
oh blue blue Hue... the Aston Martin looked like
the bomb that is already was...
the Porsche? the Porsche looked like
a ******* Ford Mondeo by comparison...
Civic Extra... if that's even a car...
i was sort of happy to by cycling...
i figured... well: i'm not using my legs...
to walk... i'm peddling...

ever heard the expression "push-bike"?
i heard that only recently... what a werid coupling
of words... a motorcycle is distinguished from
a a bicycle by the term: "push-bike"
this half-brain-dead coworker...
what the **** am i pushing?!
it's just as weird as calling it a peddling-bicycle, no?
eh?
but what am i pushing? a bicycle is a bicycle
a turtle is a turtle... i still have to figure out
what's being pushed...
what comes first? the donkey, the carrot, or the stick?!

mawn the lawn: sieve the sand...
mawn the lawn: sieve the sand...
keep nurturing the spacing between numbers
but also keep lost track of the alphebticaal
queue...
never the type to rehash a refurbishment
of SPAWN...

           i simply don't want this day-dream to end...
around me people cowering into sleep...
i'm left in limbo...
            between consetllations and the scythe
of the moon... dearest: moooooon...
i'm itching to break the silence with a howl...
but first: the thirst of a dog barking...
i hear a dog barking i'll start to howl!

aren't we simply becoming the same
tired people of old?
              more impetus...
more gravity! more fire! more tides!
more the quaking of the earth!
more whirlwinds! more! more!
one Pompeii is not enough!

                       almost one litre of whiskey
into the session and i'm sober-tense...
i'm starting to think that entertaining
hell is not a bad "gimmick"...
                  there's the imaginary hell-crowd
and there' some also doubly-imaginary
crowd of people that yet to be bound to imitation-migration
focus...
           next time you ask me:
i'd rather be eating ice: crunching on
ice than drinking water...
i want to burn my tongue...
licking ice...l i want to burn my tongue
licking ice: but first i want to be dipping
it in coridnader-cumin-chilli-turmeric mix-up
of spiders...

i want to first bruise my knees before
i lick them clean...
i want the strict juices of: not tomatoes?
red is red: ergo blood is blood...
vulture ****...
there's an open window:
there's an evaporating night too...

best refrain: 6 by 6s refrain on 9s...
since? there's plenty of 0s / oopses...
by this "flesh and blood"...
i heave this sand and timer
like: i was sadly woken up with
an inheritance of salt...
boiling blue bloods and boiling gravy...
a smile that reads: clenched teeth...
a smile so awkward that
it make^ a parrot think twice about
imitating human speech.

^a notable typo, i think i might require an editor
(insert a snigger); two alternatives:
1. it might make a parrot think twice,
2. a smile so awkward that it makes a parrot think twince...
all depending on the tense.
Literatim Dec 2016
Blackness is green in a setting of grey and the surface as chalky and white as snow.
Sharp edges are rounded, wood is metallic, black is green and green is white.
White is being wiped, green emerges and black is as absent as green in winter.
The powdery substance of snow is mimiced by lines of white traversing black
which is not black but green.
Blackness is green.
A tribute to Gertrude Stein, inspired by her work "Tender Buttons" (1914).
Donall Dempsey Sep 2018
DRIVING A FERRARI INTO THE FUTURE

the house floated out of the darkness
as if it had been flying about in the fog
before perching on the mountain's side

the house was embarrassed
to be seen
in its ruin

this was the somewhere
she had come from
it now no longer existed

she felt that she too
no longer existed
an equation erased on a blackboard

she became naked
wearing only the lake
and moonlight

water flowed over her
like a silken garment
she the empress of this nowhere


only when she stood dripping
on the edge of this nothingness
did she feel the cold and shiver

the stars were like an atlas
of themselves...the Milky Way
reaching over a hedge...lapping the lake

time fell all about her
like a sudden rain
the seen and un-seen together

she drove her Ferrari into the future
leaving behind forever
the girl she once had been
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2013
the state or quality of being elastic.
flexibility; resilience; adaptability: a statement with a great elasticity of meaning.
buoyancy; ability to resist or overcome depression.
Physics. the property of a substance that enables it to change its length, volume, or shape in direct response to a force effecting such a change and to recover its original form upon the removal of the force.

are you ready?
here it comes!

Slap!

having slapped you
with, to kind attention,
you may now recover
your original form,
when there was
no grief, no distress,
the great clarity
of eying the day's birth,
sweetly and innocently.

once again, you are
buoyant,
molecules of polluted memories,
erased.
wind scattered, gone,
blackboard erased,
whiteboard replaced.

you have been reminded,
even reprimanded,
for forgetting your
elasticity.

life, what ever that be,
is constant motion,
a reshaping of the heart,
for the heart has
no unique shape.
it's adaptation,
it's elasticity,
it's genetic forgive and forget ability,
is legend, is you,

you are legend,

You are elastic.

the human hallmark impressed
in the palms of your hands,
that cannot be erased
by time, fatigue, failure, or anger,
the hands that mold,
re-form for every need,
for every handhold,
for different are:

The hands that open closed fists
The hands that wave hi
The hands that are first to touch
and the last to leave,
waving goodbye,
elastic - tender when tender needed,
strong when strength essences.

so be elastic,
remember to be
ecstatic
remember
when you do,
you need show proofs.

Prove it to me.
Prove it to yourself.

shake, kiss, dare hug,
the one who needs reminding
that life is elastic,
*even more than you.
5:08 am
Dec. 26th, 2013

corny...but...
marisa Oct 2014
When you’ve asked yourself, “what the hell am I doing with my life?”
Five times before you’ve even had your morning coffee
Which isn’t enough, so you grab a second coffee
Because you stayed up until sunrise writing a lab report on the psychological effects of coffee
They call that an education.

When you stare at screens and sheets of paper
Until Shakespeare’s sonnets and Sir John A. Macdonald
Are scratched into the blackboard on the inside of your brain
Only to have the slate wiped clean
The second your Scantron card spells “success” in Braille,
They call that an education.

When you’re swimming in, shall we call it, the Academian Sea
And tentacles reach out and start to pull you under one by one
And the lifeguards on the shore simply tell you to swim harder,
They call that an education.

I remember walking onto campus feeling so inspired
Ready to be re-wired
Until they said my arts degree would never get me hired
Now the time keeps passing by and I always feel so tired
And for what reason?
I’ve read countless books on history and Hamlet and how to speak Italian yet it seems as though the most I’ve learned is all the different ways I can doubt myself
I am creative, I am well-read, I am kind, I am caring, but I am a history major
And in a place where 3.0s and 4.0s and future capital value is practically etched into our skin for the world to read like a bad tattoo
Apparently that means I’m not going anywhere.
There are so many days when I want my tattoo removed
So people will stop staring at the decimal points and prerequisites that distract from the rest of me and look me in the eyes for a change and see in my smile that this is who I really am

But instead I’ll probably stay up late again
Learn names and dates again
Forget them after the test again

Because when you stare at that sheet of paper if you’re dedicated (or crazy) enough to make it that far
And you cover up your tattoo with your graduation gown only for them to draw your degree wherever enough skin shows to prove to the world that they’ve churned out another one
They call that an education.
i love learning, but i have a bone to pick with the education system.
CharlesC May 2013
The time honored
brainstorming
collective planning
a filling blackboard
is now denounced..
storming is thought
thought on thought
wrinkle on wrinkle..
what goes begging
is quantum's leap
a leap waiting
for solitude and
an empty slate...
Aaron LaLux Jun 2018
When words are not enough,
and the world won’t get off her back,
she dances the Devils way,
She’s a princess,
wait she’s a queen,
wait she’s an angel,
wait she’s everything,
a Goddess,
the hottest performing artist I’ve ever seen,

and she’s dancing,
dancing is her therapy,

I mean,
I’m not James Brown,
but it’s a man’s world,
even if Rihanna runs this town,

See,
she’s been suppressed all her life,
and I’m not just talking about Rihanna,
I’m talking about every girl that was ever forced to be a wife,
just to survive in this life,

she was touched by her father,
or brother or cousin,
when she was just a little girl,
I know we all wish it wasn’t,
but it is true,
so what’s a girl to do,
when she’s a clean 13 messing with The ***** Dozen,

this isn’t battle of the sexes,
this is war of the worlds,
wants to be a woman but she’s just a girl,
no No Doubt just burnt out nerves taken turns,

she never asked to be born,
with the burden of being beautiful,
but she refuses to conform,
she is attractable irrational and radical,
so when it’s all too much,
the stares and the catcalls,
the aggressive forceful touch,
the nails across her back like a blackboard,
and the moans become just white noise,
she takes it all in,
she forgives the man because he’s just a boy,
he is an angel even if he has fallen,
she takes it all in,
and she uses all of those abuses,
as the fuel with the tools which induces,
an allusive state of truth which,
allows her to move with intuitive smoothness,
and lose herself in the music morphing into what a centrifuge is,
separating fluids transforming what was otherwise useless abuses,
into a truth that cruises and confuses the stupid stooges,

she dances,
in a statement of glorious refusal to submit to their ideals,
she is more than a princess queen angel goddess,
she is fire burning up all preconceived notions of *** appeal,
the real deal,
dancing sweating cleansing her soul and her pores,
moving faster in progression refuting repression,
overcoming an obsession of oppression and knocking down all doors,
she is not a possession,
though she is possessed when,
she’s a dancing expression of how we all feel and more,

no words are enough,
she shows what we all feel,
she reveals what,
was before thinly concealed,

she is the perfect expression,
of imperfect circumstances,
she is poetic stanzas,
she is the paint on the canvas,
there is no question that she is the answer,
and all of this is made clear when she takes it all in,
let’s go of everything and dances…

∆aron L∆ Lux ∆

#strength #metoo #dancer #ballet #blackswan
Micah Alex May 2014
Do you hear those screams, piercing the night? It’s a little annoying sometimes, just when I’m trying to sleep, a shriek tears that delicate fabric of silence, and jolts me awake, once again. I’m not scared of those screams, but there’s something familiar about them, something, about that voice, that dread that cripples my heart-That voice. It belongs to me.                        Sweat rolls down my tiny face, like on a warm summer night, except now every part of me shivers from the cold, on the inside and the outside.

And slowly I start to remember why; why I scream.

The reminder, the memory- It comes. Silently, like a thief tiptoeing into my room. I bear witness unable to move, Still as a rock, I’m smothered by the weight of it, unable to breathe.“Go away”, I try to scream under the weight of a disobedient voice. But it’s no use, the naustalgia is unstoppable.           The coming nightmare whispers silently into my terrified ears, “Shush, enjoy that pain, they say everyone likes it.”And it comes, the pain so painful that death is sweeter. I can’t embrace it, I never will.

 And I’m taken to the past. To the day it all went downhill.

“So many colours!”, I said, as I gaped at the garishly painted wall that I tried to grasp with my gnarly little digits. I was never bored here at the kindergarten, unlike some other muskrats who only bestowed their presence to show off their capabilities to produce saltwater from their eyes and dolphin mating calls from their blackhole-like mouths. Some talent.

It was a sunny summer day and the only thing I didn’t like about it was that every adult complained about the heat -all the time- my mum, my dad and my teachers, everyone. I remember thinking that all these grown-ups were absurd. Sure it was a little hot, but winter was always coming, so it was only fair. Change was constant, but it was such a bright day, why complain at all? I felt exceptionally happy, the whole day was a treat to my imagination laden senses.

Pity, it was such a good day to eat chocolates too.

Another thing I remember about that day was that pesky little boy, who didn't strike me as obnoxious back then, but now I’m retrospect he was really quite a block in the chimney stack. He’d entered class yesterday with the Doraemon pencil that recited generic phrases from the popular kids show, stuffed proudly in his chest pocket. And as he walked to his seat, the sound of his footsteps were punctuated by tiny “oooh’s” and “aaah’s”, as adoring little preschoolers watched the invaluable speaking object reverently. Unable to deal with the sudden adoration prudently, he got ahead of himself as his world fed that ancient balloon- The male ego. He started teaching "art" forms such as scribbling and scratching. And because I was the one sitting next to him, he felt the need to bestow upon me his vast knowledge of the subject. I didn’t really mind this condescension only because the implement he used to teach me was so exquisite. I sat there listening to him till I got bored of him talking about his Daddy and his money.

Then that little bird had started to sing so beautifully, humming at the trees as it sat on our windowsill. Every shrill note out of its little beak sent the "historic" words of that boy deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of my tiny mind. The effect of that simple melody was immediate. I stood up and started to sway slowly to the windowsill. (Even though the things I remember about this make no sense to me now, they are quite an accurate representation of my state of mind at that point.) I loved the little sound that the little birdie made, the memory of it still makes me want to jump and dance. I cooed back to her, “Coo coo(I’m happy too I tried to chirp to her)”. She looked at me quite a while, cocked her head a little to the side and cooed once more before flying off.

She replied!

She understood what I told her and she replied in kind. My wonder making mind went into a mad frenzy. So all the cartoons were true, you could really speak to animals. How I wished, I had a poké-ball! I marched to the teacher in small short joyous steps as she wrote on blackboard and clutched on to the end of her Churidar because my little hands could only go so far.          “Teacher, Teacher”, I squealed in ecstasy, “That birdie spoke to me”          “I’m sure she did, sweetie, now go back to your seat.”, she replied.

Deflated but happy nonetheless, I skipped back to my chair merrily, thinking of little birdies and a magical Pokémon. I remember, I loved how that know-it-all pencilbigmouth kept asking me to tell him what the birdie told me. Even if I hadn’t loved to see him beg,(which I did) it was my little secret, how could I tell him? How would he even start to understand? (Yeah I was being quite the drama queen in my head back then, blame the TV.)

 

 

Here I break apart from my rapture into the past and find that in my subconscious, the memory gets blurry somehow, like the radio running between stations on daddy’s phone, I get snippets of thoughts and feelings as the memory fractures into a thousand pieces.

“Mumma must understand what the birdie said.”
"Pokémon exist."
“Oh! Chocolates! Yay.”
“There’s more, if you want some.”, a gruff voice resounds in my heart.
"More yay."
“Why is he removing his clothes?”
Then suddenly,  I remember the pain- searing hot and burning through me-as clearly as sunlight through trees. Crying and screaming, I tried to escape, but to no avail. There was a big man in front of me now. His lust-crazy eyes, ******* out every piece of my existence. Somehow he was inside me and it hurt, it hurt.

How was he inside me?

Why did it pain so much?

Didn’t he hear my cry?

Stop it.

I couldn’t move, I could do nothing but scream.                                                  He touched me in my softest parts, painfully, pinching me and tearing my skin apart. It was a sea of agony and I was drowning. As I struggled to breathe, the blackness finally took me under. That unconsciousness had saved me and cradled me, lulling me to sleep in its darkness.

It felt like death but crueler, because it let me live.

Looking back I realize, the sun wasn’t bright because it was happy, it was warning me. The day wasn’t bright, it was becoming hotter in foreboding. The bird didn’t tell me it was happy, it told me to fly away, far away.

 

Why are you still making me cry? After all these years, even when you’re asleep behind iron bars. Why are you still here, holding me down in your death clasp.?

Stop it. It hurts.                                                           ­                                                 It hurts.                                                           ­                                                                 ­  I can’t breathe, I’m choking,                                                         ­                          I’m dying.

I’m dyi…..

 

Calm down, I yell at my panicked heart. Slowly inhaling and exhaling, trying to fall back into my dysfunctional sleep, I lay back into my sweat soaked bed and close my eyes. And as the blackness of sleep slowly washes me down under its waves once again, I hear it again, somewhere over the dark horizon.

Stop it! I like this darkness, stop screaming. I sit up once again. I tell myself I’m not afraid of these screams anymore. I ignore the shrieks and the unease growing in me and close my eyes once more. Then I realize that the cries of terror that resound in my ears like a half-forgotten memory, they belong to me.

And once again I start to remember why, why I scream,

And once again the memory comes.
This is based on a recent **** that shocked India as a nation.
Marissa Christie May 2013
i want to treat your heart like a blackboard
and write my name in white chalk
across the middle in big letters
i tried so hard to keep you around
but the problem with chalk on a blackboard is that
it can be erased and replaced so easily
Ken Pepiton Jun 2019
If the writer is not the reader and the reader is not entered
(entertain-ed?) by the trial or trier
here in our phor of oroboronic

wheel spinning, our world of
entertaiment
contained,
be
coming to meet, um,
-phatics of sorts unheard,
ignored,
or unshown, un-

init-
iated unit-
ary, you,

become the
eleventh hour ***, none hired.
Apo

Unem, come work my field, *** my hard rows
no early helpers
weeded

Attention glitch... some signal intra fearal

No worry,
-- fear of god beginning wisdom boot code;

that connection
has been loose so long, missignaling
special and free,

a special sort of
crudescence has scabbed the short.
It's a brain fix.
You get a feel for it, the augments help,
Om as the
Axionic go, is tuned to absurdity. Listen.

Hear me, dragon-lizard-brain. We are a team. The team.
All the story stories tell of you and me. We unite.
We get our act together, and we
go mad, in the sight of all earthlings augmented to see
Youtube.

By my ab-surd-ifity, all our stories change. An unmatched wave.

-- forgive the footnote, but don't lie about what we both know is true:

absurd (adj.)"plainly illogical," 1550s,
from Middle French absurde (16c.),
from Latin absurdus "out of tune, discordant;"
figuratively "incongruous, foolish, silly, senseless,"
from ab- "off, away from,"
here perhaps an intensive prefix,
+ surdus "dull, deaf, mute," which is possibly
from an imitative PIE root meaning "to buzz, whisper"
(see susurration).
Thus the basic sense is perhaps "out of tune,"
but de Vaan writes,
"Since 'deaf' often has two semantic sides,
viz. 'who cannot hear' and 'who is not heard,' ab-surdus can be explained as 'which is unheard of' ..." The modern English
sense is the Latin figurative one,
perhaps "out of harmony with reason or propriety." Related: Absurdly; absurdness.
--
Screech, boomers know, finger nails on the chalkboard, the blackboard
jungle screech,
when teacher is takin' a smoke. Absurdity is entertainment.

It can make you think in whole new ways.
Or stop your believing of a lie

for long enough to see
a hope, no lie, a hope of something human
**** sapien sapiens augmental,
upright under Good and Evil,
sheltered from the storm.

A class, a level, a common value beyond Belief and Dignity and

dexterous sinister plots of points where clues were pinned,
yet you
overlooked the message, daze-led by the angels dancing.

Thales fell into this hole. He survived. It all ties in

The new -phatic word that started this stream ends it,
with our common
scream for meaning fullness apo-

apo-phatic mystery of sympathy,
bha, bha --

Paradox ortho
pedic augmentations, koan to mantra,
meditation on the word of words,
step to step to step logical
logos-centric reason, logo-istical rite to
evince a visible faith,
a virtue signal,
a mark, between the eyes,
an aim,
a point to spring a story from
upon an unsuspecting child averse to boos.

Trauma at a bubble pop. When all we know, dear
reader, is lost, and our bubble's edge sur
past our horizons,
we are mine-yoot, mispent attentions being

recycled, for goodness sake. Old lies twisting
into first fruits of the know
ing tree, ideas mani-fest
ing
ting, ding

Aha, my bubble of thought ala
funny papers in the old days where we met and laughed
together
in America, before we knew
earth from this distance
fifty years ago.

Wishbooks were real,
Whole Earth Catalog suppliers
sold me my nets, my hooks, and lines,

I learned the ways men have caught fish.
Wishing all the while for a way to live as earthlings live.
Guided by witty inventions, messengers
from the gods, eh.

Easter eggs, tucked away in retro games surfacing on Wall Street.

Who manages the messages released when the
first trump sounded?

That was me, as real, Asreal Kanbe, a walkon role.

I saw a third,
at least, of all the fish in the sea die,
in the duration of a single
short-span standard life. All seven trumps did sound, though,

they may be like lizards, we don't hear them well.

These seventy years of captivity
in the tales of my culture, my people and the ways they live in peace,

in the ways they resist war, sistere in peace with faith, the idea, the deed,

faith works in acting. True. Eh. Faith without action is dead.

Incandescentis onburnedupus, ****, dark. Switch on switch off
nada
dark dark faith sees nothing, ah so what, we muddle in puddles

and fail to portage for fear of surface I can't sticking to our
iron shod feet,
miry clay, heavy steps ******* the good news socks off
our beautiful feet,

see hear focus id - i dent ify the why, find the how-

thought change changes thinker, not thought.

Which of you can make one wire plus or minus by taking thought?
Taking anxious thought? Eh?
Fret not. Ohmmmmmmmm

my god, why the threats? Why must I fret for never making sense?

Dee ahna knowledge chan zen

consider the opposite, the shadow of turning, not doubt

preserve light and darkness little man
preserve sun and moon and stars

lose your wish to catch the Magic Fish.

But that is my wish, my wish for one more wish,
I wished to catch the fish

which taught the lessen to the fishher whose wife
could not be satisfied.

I wished for a source of all the answers ever found,

Ah. and I got this global brain that remembers ever,
though we know only now.
Never before,
has this been past that which men hoped for,
unseen.
Faith for the world to become as it now is,
is finished.
What a man sees, why does he hope for?

It worked. Self-evident, right. Same class as life and liberty.

Chickeneggical,
**** or ovoidal elliptical slices of life, those arrive for our

per-use-al, right or wrong. Like a Fabrege' egg:
You break it, you bought it. Life ain't fair. But it works.
Pick up the pieces.
They all still fit. None are missing. Some are broke,
but a soft touch can fix em.

You were always Humpty-Dumpty. This had to happen once.

Good side always shines, when
the rub has been dealt a shine-on signal for ever sake,
no reason,

just cause. A man can, even mad, be as happy
as he can imagine being,
at the time, all things considered, augmentasciously.

This was my oldest memory today, the future
shall come, and whatever
shall be, shall be, que sera sera.

How are you bored? This is earth. Even if you wish otherwise.

There are new things we may learn if we choose.

--apophatic (adj.)
"involving a mention of something one feigns to deny;
involving knowledge obtained by negation," 1850,
from Latinized form of Greek apophatikos,
from apophasis "denial, negation,"
from apophanai "to speak off,"
from apo "off, away from" (see apo-) + phanai "to speak,"
related to pheme "voice," from PIE root *bha- (2) "to speak, tell, say."

I would not call this meditation, sitting in the back garden.
Maybe I would call it eating light.
Mystical traditions recognize two kinds of practice:
apophatic mysticism, which is the dark surrender of Zen, the Via Negativa of John of the Cross, and
kataphatic mysticism, less well defined:
an openhearted surrender to the beauty of creation.

Maybe Francis of Assissi was, on the whole,
a kataphatic mystic,
as was Thérèse of Lisieux in her exuberant momemnts:
but the fact is, kataphatic mysticism has low status in religious circles.

Francis and Thérèse were made, really made,
any mother superior will let you know,
in the dark nights of their lives:
no more of this throwing off your clothes and singing songs and babbling about the shelter of God's arms

When I was twelve and had my first menstrual period,
my grandmother took me aside and said,
'Now your childhood is over.
You will never really be happy again.'
That is pretty much how some spiritual directors treat the transition from kataphatic to apophatic mysticism.

But, I'm sorry, I'm going to sit here every day the sun shines and eat this light. Hung in the bell of desire.” 
― Mary Rose O'Reilley, The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd
Daring to let art be fun and philosophy be phuny, I laugh and romp in the remains of fallen walls between any curious mind and all the knowledge in the world, accessible as long as we both shall live.

— The End —