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Now when Jove had thus brought Hector and the Trojans to the
ships, he left them to their never-ending toil, and turned his keen
eyes away, looking elsewhither towards the horse-breeders of Thrace,
the Mysians, fighters at close quarters, the noble Hippemolgi, who
live on milk, and the Abians, justest of mankind. He no longer
turned so much as a glance towards Troy, for he did not think that any
of the immortals would go and help either Trojans or Danaans.
  But King Neptune had kept no blind look-out; he had been looking
admiringly on the battle from his seat on the topmost crests of wooded
Samothrace, whence he could see all Ida, with the city of Priam and
the ships of the Achaeans. He had come from under the sea and taken
his place here, for he pitied the Achaeans who were being overcome
by the Trojans; and he was furiously angry with Jove.
  Presently he came down from his post on the mountain top, and as
he strode swiftly onwards the high hills and the forest quaked beneath
the tread of his immortal feet. Three strides he took, and with the
fourth he reached his goal—Aegae, where is his glittering golden
palace, imperishable, in the depths of the sea. When he got there,
he yoked his fleet brazen-footed steeds with their manes of gold all
flying in the wind; he clothed himself in raiment of gold, grasped his
gold whip, and took his stand upon his chariot. As he went his way
over the waves the sea-monsters left their lairs, for they knew
their lord, and came gambolling round him from every quarter of the
deep, while the sea in her gladness opened a path before his
chariot. So lightly did the horses fly that the bronze axle of the car
was not even wet beneath it; and thus his bounding steeds took him
to the ships of the Achaeans.
  Now there is a certain huge cavern in the depths of the sea midway
between Tenedos and rocky Imbrus; here Neptune lord of the
earthquake stayed his horses, unyoked them, and set before them
their ambrosial forage. He hobbled their feet with hobbles of gold
which none could either unloose or break, so that they might stay
there in that place until their lord should return. This done he
went his way to the host of the Achaeans.
  Now the Trojans followed Hector son of Priam in close array like a
storm-cloud or flame of fire, fighting with might and main and raising
the cry battle; for they deemed that they should take the ships of the
Achaeans and **** all their chiefest heroes then and there.
Meanwhile earth-encircling Neptune lord of the earthquake cheered on
the Argives, for he had come up out of the sea and had assumed the
form and voice of Calchas.
  First he spoke to the two Ajaxes, who were doing their best already,
and said, “Ajaxes, you two can be the saving of the Achaeans if you
will put out all your strength and not let yourselves be daunted. I am
not afraid that the Trojans, who have got over the wall in force, will
be victorious in any other part, for the Achaeans can hold all of them
in check, but I much fear that some evil will befall us here where
furious Hector, who boasts himself the son of great Jove himself, is
leading them on like a pillar of flame. May some god, then, put it
into your hearts to make a firm stand here, and to incite others to do
the like. In this case you will drive him from the ships even though
he be inspired by Jove himself.”
  As he spoke the earth-encircling lord of the earthquake struck
both of them with his sceptre and filled their hearts with daring.
He made their legs light and active, as also their hands and their
feet. Then, as the soaring falcon poises on the wing high above some
sheer rock, and presently swoops down to chase some bird over the
plain, even so did Neptune lord of the earthquake wing his flight into
the air and leave them. Of the two, swift Ajax son of Oileus was the
first to know who it was that had been speaking with them, and said to
Ajax son of Telamon, “Ajax, this is one of the gods that dwell on
Olympus, who in the likeness of the prophet is bidding us fight hard
by our ships. It was not Calchas the seer and diviner of omens; I knew
him at once by his feet and knees as he turned away, for the gods
are soon recognised. Moreover I feel the lust of battle burn more
fiercely within me, while my hands and my feet under me are more eager
for the fray.”
  And Ajax son of Telamon answered, “I too feel my hands grasp my
spear more firmly; my strength is greater, and my feet more nimble;
I long, moreover, to meet furious Hector son of Priam, even in
single combat.”
  Thus did they converse, exulting in the hunger after battle with
which the god had filled them. Meanwhile the earth-encircler roused
the Achaeans, who were resting in the rear by the ships overcome at
once by hard fighting and by grief at seeing that the Trojans had
got over the wall in force. Tears began falling from their eyes as
they beheld them, for they made sure that they should not escape
destruction; but the lord of the earthquake passed lightly about among
them and urged their battalions to the front.
  First he went up to Teucer and Leitus, the hero Peneleos, and
Thoas and Deipyrus; Meriones also and Antilochus, valiant warriors;
all did he exhort. “Shame on you young Argives,” he cried, “it was
on your prowess I relied for the saving of our ships; if you fight not
with might and main, this very day will see us overcome by the
Trojans. Of a truth my eyes behold a great and terrible portent
which I had never thought to see—the Trojans at our ships—they,
who were heretofore like panic-stricken hinds, the prey of jackals and
wolves in a forest, with no strength but in flight for they cannot
defend themselves. Hitherto the Trojans dared not for one moment
face the attack of the Achaeans, but now they have sallied far from
their city and are fighting at our very ships through the cowardice of
our leader and the disaffection of the people themselves, who in their
discontent care not to fight in defence of the ships but are being
slaughtered near them. True, King Agamemnon son of Atreus is the cause
of our disaster by having insulted the son of Peleus, still this is no
reason why we should leave off fighting. Let us be quick to heal,
for the hearts of the brave heal quickly. You do ill to be thus
remiss, you, who are the finest soldiers in our whole army. I blame no
man for keeping out of battle if he is a weakling, but I am
indignant with such men as you are. My good friends, matters will soon
become even worse through this slackness; think, each one of you, of
his own honour and credit, for the hazard of the fight is extreme.
Great Hector is now fighting at our ships; he has broken through the
gates and the strong bolt that held them.”
  Thus did the earth-encircler address the Achaeans and urge them
on. Thereon round the two Ajaxes there gathered strong bands of men,
of whom not even Mars nor Minerva, marshaller of hosts could make
light if they went among them, for they were the picked men of all
those who were now awaiting the onset of Hector and the Trojans.
They made a living fence, spear to spear, shield to shield, buckler to
buckler, helmet to helmet, and man to man. The horse-hair crests on
their gleaming helmets touched one another as they nodded forward,
so closely seffied were they; the spears they brandished in their
strong hands were interlaced, and their hearts were set on battle.
  The Trojans advanced in a dense body, with Hector at their head
pressing right on as a rock that comes thundering down the side of
some mountain from whose brow the winter torrents have torn it; the
foundations of the dull thing have been loosened by floods of rain,
and as it bounds headlong on its way it sets the whole forest in an
uproar; it swerves neither to right nor left till it reaches level
ground, but then for all its fury it can go no further—even so easily
did Hector for a while seem as though he would career through the
tents and ships of the Achaeans till he had reached the sea in his
murderous course; but the closely serried battalions stayed him when
he reached them, for the sons of the Achaeans ****** at him with
swords and spears pointed at both ends, and drove him from them so
that he staggered and gave ground; thereon he shouted to the
Trojans, “Trojans, Lycians, and Dardanians, fighters in close
combat, stand firm: the Achaeans have set themselves as a wall against
me, but they will not check me for long; they will give ground
before me if the mightiest of the gods, the thundering spouse of Juno,
has indeed inspired my onset.”
  With these words he put heart and soul into them all. Deiphobus
son of Priam went about among them intent on deeds of daring with
his round shield before him, under cover of which he strode quickly
forward. Meriones took aim at him with a spear, nor did he fail to hit
the broad orb of ox-hide; but he was far from piercing it for the
spear broke in two pieces long ere he could do so; moreover
Deiphobus had seen it coming and had held his shield well away from
him. Meriones drew back under cover of his comrades, angry alike at
having failed to vanquish Deiphobus, and having broken his spear. He
turned therefore towards the ships and tents to fetch a spear which he
had left behind in his tent.
  The others continued fighting, and the cry of battle rose up into
the heavens. Teucer son of Telamon was the first to **** his man, to
wit, the warrior Imbrius son of Mentor rich in horses. Until the
Achaeans came he had lived in Pedaeum, and had married Medesicaste a
******* daughter of Priam; but on the arrival of the Danaan fleet he
had gone back to Ilius, and was a great man among the Trojans,
dwelling near Priam himself, who gave him like honour with his own
sons. The son of Telamon now struck him under the ear with a spear
which he then drew back again, and Imbrius fell headlong as an
ash-tree when it is felled on the crest of some high mountain
beacon, and its delicate green foliage comes toppling down to the
ground. Thus did he fall with his bronze-dight armour ringing
harshly round him, and Teucer sprang forward with intent to strip
him of his armour; but as he was doing so, Hector took aim at him with
a spear. Teucer saw the spear coming and swerved aside, whereon it hit
Amphimachus, son of Cteatus son of Actor, in the chest as he was
coming into battle, and his armour rang rattling round him as he
fell heavily to the ground. Hector sprang forward to take
Amphimachus’s helmet from off his temples, and in a moment Ajax
threw a spear at him, but did not wound him, for he was encased all
over in his terrible armour; nevertheless the spear struck the boss of
his shield with such force as to drive him back from the two
corpses, which the Achaeans then drew off. Stichius and Menestheus,
captains of the Athenians, bore away Amphimachus to the host of the
Achaeans, while the two brave and impetuous Ajaxes did the like by
Imbrius. As two lions ****** a goat from the hounds that have it in
their fangs, and bear it through thick brushwood high above the ground
in their jaws, thus did the Ajaxes bear aloft the body of Imbrius, and
strip it of its armour. Then the son of Oileus severed the head from
the neck in revenge for the death of Amphimachus, and sent it whirling
over the crowd as though it had been a ball, till fell in the dust
at Hector’s feet.
  Neptune was exceedingly angry that his grandson Amphimachus should
have fallen; he therefore went to the tents and ships of the
Achaeans to urge the Danaans still further, and to devise evil for the
Trojans. Idomeneus met him, as he was taking leave of a comrade, who
had just come to him from the fight, wounded in the knee. His
fellow-soldiers bore him off the field, and Idomeneus having given
orders to the physicians went on to his tent, for he was still
thirsting for battle. Neptune spoke in the likeness and with the voice
of Thoas son of Andraemon who ruled the Aetolians of all Pleuron and
high Calydon, and was honoured among his people as though he were a
god. “Idomeneus,” said he, “lawgiver to the Cretans, what has now
become of the threats with which the sons of the Achaeans used to
threaten the Trojans?”
  And Idomeneus chief among the Cretans answered, “Thoas, no one, so
far as I know, is in fault, for we can all fight. None are held back
neither by fear nor slackness, but it seems to be the of almighty Jove
that the Achaeans should perish ingloriously here far from Argos: you,
Thoas, have been always staunch, and you keep others in heart if you
see any fail in duty; be not then remiss now, but exhort all to do
their utmost.”
  To this Neptune lord of the earthquake made answer, “Idomeneus,
may he never return from Troy, but remain here for dogs to batten
upon, who is this day wilfully slack in fighting. Get your armour
and go, we must make all haste together if we may be of any use,
though we are only two. Even cowards gain courage from
companionship, and we two can hold our own with the bravest.”
  Therewith the god went back into the thick of the fight, and
Idomeneus when he had reached his tent donned his armour, grasped
his two spears, and sallied forth. As the lightning which the son of
Saturn brandishes from bright Olympus when he would show a sign to
mortals, and its gleam flashes far and wide—even so did his armour
gleam about him as he ran. Meriones his sturdy squire met him while he
was still near his tent (for he was going to fetch his spear) and
Idomeneus said
  “Meriones, fleet son of Molus, best of comrades, why have you left
the field? Are you wounded, and is the point of the weapon hurting
you? or have you been sent to fetch me? I want no fetching; I had
far rather fight than stay in my tent.”
  “Idomeneus,” answered Meriones, “I come for a spear, if I can find
one in my tent; I have broken the one I had, in throwing it at the
shield of Deiphobus.”
  And Idomeneus captain of the Cretans answered, “You will find one
spear, or twenty if you so please, standing up against the end wall of
my tent. I have taken them from Trojans whom I have killed, for I am
not one to keep my enemy at arm’s length; therefore I have spears,
bossed shields, helmets, and burnished corslets.”
  Then Meriones said, “I too in my tent and at my ship have spoils
taken from the Trojans, but they are not at hand. I have been at all
times valorous, and wherever there has been hard fighting have held my
own among the foremost. There may be those among the Achaeans who do
not know how I fight, but you know it well enough yourself.”
  Idomeneus answered, “I know you for a brave man: you need not tell
me. If the best men at the ships were being chosen to go on an ambush-
and there is nothing like this for showing what a man is made of; it
comes out then who is cowardly and who brave; the coward will change
colour at every touch and turn; he is full of fears, and keeps
shifting his weight first on one knee and then on the other; his heart
beats fast as he thinks of death, and one can hear the chattering of
his teeth; whereas the brave man will not change colour nor be on
finding himself in ambush, but is all the time longing to go into
action—if the best men were being chosen for such a service, no one
could make light of your courage nor feats of arms. If you were struck
by a dart or smitten in close combat, it would not be from behind,
in your neck nor back, but the weapon would hit you in the chest or
belly as you were pressing forward to a place in the front ranks.
But let us no longer stay here talking like children, lest we be ill
spoken of; go, fetch your spear from the tent at once.”
  On this Meriones, peer of Mars, went to the tent and got himself a
spear of bronze. He then followed after Idomeneus, big with great
deeds of valour. As when baneful Mars sallies forth to battle, and his
son Panic so strong and dauntless goes with him, to strike terror even
into the heart of a hero—the pair have gone from Thrace to arm
themselves among the Ephyri or the brave Phlegyans, but they will
not listen to both the contending hosts, and will give victory to
one side or to the other—even so did Meriones and Idomeneus, captains
of m
RCraig David Apr 2013
From my "Bestifreadaloud" series about a girl that got away that Spring because I waited too long.

Part 1 The Past
A case made now faded of a simple place, a time, a space,
a perfect moment let pass in haste.
Clasped in clashes,
brash in passion,
rose from ashes,
desire fires every second's essence as it passes,
a ton amasses.
Fast bloom,
Blast!! Boom!!
The past relapses.
Notably lesser song notes float hopeful, emotional ends and remember whens.
Sent us spinning, then spin adrift again.
Sprung in spring, we fell,
Some are reasons to recall.
Summer's season breaks, we fall.
Flocks fly down and fallen callings fade to Winter's south.
How fate related still debated.
Re-Sprung the next Spring' rise, chance misses fate this date.
I weighed and debated and waited too late

PART 2
Still all these years alone, the "one", the "purpose" unsought.
Capturing thoughts,
The ones I caught and tossed,
Things I was taught and lost.
Proof framed and embossed for a cost.
Coping through the unabashed hopes to one day cash in on all this stashed trash I clash with.
"Smash it?" ...the thought crossed.  

Unimpressed by my evidence of self-less requests,
pursuit of self-evident truth proves a most ruthless abuse.
Even less are my skewed protests for “selfish quests" at the behest of the very strangers I sought to impress.
I digress.

The years compound, bossed around, kicked down but soundly employed,
I turn cold, blaming Freud for defining my non-violent, intolerance threshold on page 23 of some textbook I should have resold.
I go silent. Grow old.
"While your whining and shunning your shinning,
They're sinning and winning." Bad timing.

Girls come, go and follow this shallow, hollow fellow on the run.
While preyed upon...I paid a ton. I play.
The sum never more than the cost of rented fun.
Without insight but consent forthright,
my 30 years of intent were spent in a fortnight.
Still bent on shedding every pound of one first-moment's ton I lost not won.
Can't buy happy for less than the cost of your one-ness.
While prayed upon...paid a Son, they say.

part 3

Ohh the wait....
Ohh the weight...
My set-adrift-soul's mending depends solely on tossing
lost cause cost-spending into thrift.
Well it's a beginning.
All the amassed notes, quotes, boat-floaters,
and sailboat hopes spun in one 1-ton loss moment sprung that one Spring.

Now and again, it creeps in,
like slowly growing stinging nettles around a squelched,
once steaming scorched dream kettle.
Still stays packed away in my heart's darkest parts.
Blurred by time and place,
this burning, misplaced furnace space lays in wait.

Such compiled cold-case denial files from other life trials, lay piled in haste on my proverbial, "less pressing" messy desk of "not ready to face."
Too scared or daring to date, try to relate or contemplate
how to best equate this great weight.
Wait?... Wait.
Elation brewing from pursuing future fruition or ensuing
pure ruin gates these fates from moving, year-to-date.
For the sake of trying or dying forsaken,
another day awake is another day gained or taken.

I found her again,
the town's she's in
but she is taken and then
She learns of my wait, it's weight, my fate, she's shaken,
another ton amasses again. I pretend.
Lay down.
Drown the score of sounds surrounding.
Furthermore, slow the pulse-pounding abounding your core.
Fill your breath.
What is less is gone, tomorrow more.  

by R. Craig David-Copyright 2012
Thus did they fight about the ship of Protesilaus. Then Patroclus
drew near to Achilles with tears welling from his eyes, as from some
spring whose crystal stream falls over the ledges of a high precipice.
When Achilles saw him thus weeping he was sorry for him and said,
“Why, Patroclus, do you stand there weeping like some silly child that
comes running to her mother, and begs to be taken up and carried-
she catches hold of her mother’s dress to stay her though she is in
a hurry, and looks tearfully up until her mother carries her—even
such tears, Patroclus, are you now shedding. Have you anything to
say to the Myrmidons or to myself? or have you had news from Phthia
which you alone know? They tell me Menoetius son of Actor is still
alive, as also Peleus son of Aeacus, among the Myrmidons—men whose
loss we two should bitterly deplore; or are you grieving about the
Argives and the way in which they are being killed at the ships, throu
their own high-handed doings? Do not hide anything from me but tell me
that both of us may know about it.”
  Then, O knight Patroclus, with a deep sigh you answered,
“Achilles, son of Peleus, foremost champion of the Achaeans, do not be
angry, but I weep for the disaster that has now befallen the
Argives. All those who have been their champions so far are lying at
the ships, wounded by sword or spear. Brave Diomed son of Tydeus has
been hit with a spear, while famed Ulysses and Agamemnon have received
sword-wounds; Eurypylus again has been struck with an arrow in the
thigh; skilled apothecaries are attending to these heroes, and healing
them of their wounds; are you still, O Achilles, so inexorable? May it
never be my lot to nurse such a passion as you have done, to the
baning of your own good name. Who in future story will speak well of
you unless you now save the Argives from ruin? You know no pity;
knight Peleus was not your father nor Thetis your mother, but the grey
sea bore you and the sheer cliffs begot you, so cruel and
remorseless are you. If however you are kept back through knowledge of
some oracle, or if your mother Thetis has told you something from
the mouth of Jove, at least send me and the Myrmidons with me, if I
may bring deliverance to the Danaans. Let me moreover wear your
armour; the Trojans may thus mistake me for you and quit the field, so
that the hard-pressed sons of the Achaeans may have breathing time-
which while they are fighting may hardly be. We who are fresh might
soon drive tired men back from our ships and tents to their own city.”
  He knew not what he was asking, nor that he was suing for his own
destruction. Achilles was deeply moved and answered, “What, noble
Patroclus, are you saying? I know no prophesyings which I am
heeding, nor has my mother told me anything from the mouth of Jove,
but I am cut to the very heart that one of my own rank should dare
to rob me because he is more powerful than I am. This, after all
that I have gone through, is more than I can endure. The girl whom the
sons of the Achaeans chose for me, whom I won as the fruit of my spear
on having sacked a city—her has King Agamemnon taken from me as
though I were some common vagrant. Still, let bygones be bygones: no
man may keep his anger for ever; I said I would not relent till battle
and the cry of war had reached my own ships; nevertheless, now gird my
armour about your shoulders, and lead the Myrmidons to battle, for the
dark cloud of Trojans has burst furiously over our fleet; the
Argives are driven back on to the beach, cooped within a narrow space,
and the whole people of Troy has taken heart to sally out against
them, because they see not the visor of my helmet gleaming near
them. Had they seen this, there would not have been a creek nor grip
that had not been filled with their dead as they fled back again.
And so it would have been, if only King Agamemnon had dealt fairly
by me. As it is the Trojans have beset our host. Diomed son of
Tydeus no longer wields his spear to defend the Danaans, neither
have I heard the voice of the son of Atreus coming from his hated
head, whereas that of murderous Hector rings in my cars as he gives
orders to the Trojans, who triumph over the Achaeans and fill the
whole plain with their cry of battle. But even so, Patroclus, fall
upon them and save the fleet, lest the Trojans fire it and prevent
us from being able to return. Do, however, as I now bid you, that
you may win me great honour from all the Danaans, and that they may
restore the girl to me again and give me rich gifts into the
bargain. When you have driven the Trojans from the ships, come back
again. Though Juno’s thundering husband should put triumph within your
reach, do not fight the Trojans further in my absence, or you will rob
me of glory that should be mine. And do not for lust of battle go on
killing the Trojans nor lead the Achaeans on to Ilius, lest one of the
ever-living gods from Olympus attack you—for Phoebus Apollo loves
them well: return when you have freed the ships from peril, and let
others wage war upon the plain. Would, by father Jove, Minerva, and
Apollo, that not a single man of all the Trojans might be left
alive, nor yet of the Argives, but that we two might be alone left
to tear aside the mantle that veils the brow of Troy.”
  Thus did they converse. But Ajax could no longer hold his ground for
the shower of darts that rained upon him; the will of Jove and the
javelins of the Trojans were too much for him; the helmet that gleamed
about his temples rang with the continuous clatter of the missiles
that kept pouring on to it and on to the cheek-pieces that protected
his face. Moreover his left shoulder was tired with having held his
shield so long, yet for all this, let fly at him as they would, they
could not make him give ground. He could hardly draw his breath, the
sweat rained from every pore of his body, he had not a moment’s
respite, and on all sides he was beset by danger upon danger.
  And now, tell me, O Muses that hold your mansions on Olympus, how
fire was thrown upon the ships of the Achaeans. Hector came close up
and let drive with his great sword at the ashen spear of Ajax. He
cut it clean in two just behind where the point was fastened on to the
shaft of the spear. Ajax, therefore, had now nothing but a headless
spear, while the bronze point flew some way off and came ringing
down on to the ground. Ajax knew the hand of heaven in this, and was
dismayed at seeing that Jove had now left him utterly defenceless
and was willing victory for the Trojans. Therefore he drew back, and
the Trojans flung fire upon the ship which was at once wrapped in
flame.
  The fire was now flaring about the ship’s stern, whereon Achilles
smote his two thighs and said to Patroclus, “Up, noble knight, for I
see the glare of hostile fire at our fleet; up, lest they destroy
our ships, and there be no way by which we may retreat. Gird on your
armour at once while I call our people together.”
  As he spoke Patroclus put on his armour. First he greaved his legs
with greaves of good make, and fitted with ancle-clasps of silver;
after this he donned the cuirass of the son of Aeacus, richly inlaid
and studded. He hung his silver-studded sword of bronze about his
shoulders, and then his mighty shield. On his comely head he set his
helmet, well wrought, with a crest of horse-hair that nodded
menacingly above it. He grasped two redoubtable spears that suited his
hands, but he did not take the spear of noble Achilles, so stout and
strong, for none other of the Achaeans could wield it, though Achilles
could do so easily. This was the ashen spear from Mount Pelion,
which Chiron had cut upon a mountain top and had given to Peleus,
wherewith to deal out death among heroes. He bade Automedon yoke his
horses with all speed, for he was the man whom he held in honour
next after Achilles, and on whose support in battle he could rely most
firmly. Automedon therefore yoked the fleet horses Xanthus and Balius,
steeds that could fly like the wind: these were they whom the harpy
Podarge bore to the west wind, as she was grazing in a meadow by the
waters of the river Oceanus. In the side traces he set the noble horse
Pedasus, whom Achilles had brought away with him when he sacked the
city of Eetion, and who, mortal steed though he was, could take his
place along with those that were immortal.
  Meanwhile Achilles went about everywhere among the tents, and bade
his Myrmidons put on their armour. Even as fierce ravening wolves that
are feasting upon a homed stag which they have killed upon the
mountains, and their jaws are red with blood—they go in a pack to lap
water from the clear spring with their long thin tongues; and they
reek of blood and slaughter; they know not what fear is, for it is
hunger drives them—even so did the leaders and counsellors of the
Myrmidons gather round the good squire of the fleet descendant of
Aeacus, and among them stood Achilles himself cheering on both men and
horses.
  Fifty ships had noble Achilles brought to Troy, and in each there
was a crew of fifty oarsmen. Over these he set five captains whom he
could trust, while he was himself commander over them all.
Menesthius of the gleaming corslet, son to the river Spercheius that
streams from heaven, was captain of the first company. Fair Polydora
daughter of Peleus bore him to ever-flowing Spercheius—a woman
mated with a god—but he was called son of Borus son of Perieres, with
whom his mother was living as his wedded wife, and who gave great
wealth to gain her. The second company was led by noble Eudorus, son
to an unwedded woman. Polymele, daughter of Phylas the graceful
dancer, bore him; the mighty slayer of Argos was enamoured of her as
he saw her among the singing women at a dance held in honour of
Diana the rushing huntress of the golden arrows; he therefore-
Mercury, giver of all good—went with her into an upper chamber, and
lay with her in secret, whereon she bore him a noble son Eudorus,
singularly fleet of foot and in fight valiant. When Ilithuia goddess
of the pains of child-birth brought him to the light of day, and he
saw the face of the sun, mighty Echecles son of Actor took the
mother to wife, and gave great wealth to gain her, but her father
Phylas brought the child up, and took care of him, doting as fondly
upon him as though he were his own son. The third company was led by
Pisander son of Maemalus, the finest spearman among all the
Myrmidons next to Achilles’ own comrade Patroclus. The old knight
Phoenix was captain of the fourth company, and Alcimedon, noble son of
Laerceus of the fifth.
  When Achilles had chosen his men and had stationed them all with
their captains, he charged them straitly saying, “Myrmidons,
remember your threats against the Trojans while you were at the
ships in the time of my anger, and you were all complaining of me.
‘Cruel son of Peleus,’ you would say, ‘your mother must have suckled
you on gall, so ruthless are you. You keep us here at the ships
against our will; if you are so relentless it were better we went home
over the sea.’ Often have you gathered and thus chided with me. The
hour is now come for those high feats of arms that you have so long
been pining for, therefore keep high hearts each one of you to do
battle with the Trojans.”
  With these words he put heart and soul into them all, and they
serried their companies yet more closely when they heard the of
their king. As the stones which a builder sets in the wall of some
high house which is to give shelter from the winds—even so closely
were the helmets and bossed shields set against one another. Shield
pressed on shield, helm on helm, and man on man; so close were they
that the horse-hair plumes on the gleaming ridges of their helmets
touched each other as they bent their heads.
  In front of them all two men put on their armour—Patroclus and
Automedon—two men, with but one mind to lead the Myrmidons. Then
Achilles went inside his tent and opened the lid of the strong chest
which silver-footed Thetis had given him to take on board ship, and
which she had filled with shirts, cloaks to keep out the cold, and
good thick rugs. In this chest he had a cup of rare workmanship,
from which no man but himself might drink, nor would he make
offering from it to any other god save only to father Jove. He took
the cup from the chest and cleansed it with sulphur; this done he
rinsed it clean water, and after he had washed his hands he drew wine.
Then he stood in the middle of the court and prayed, looking towards
heaven, and making his drink-offering of wine; nor was he unseen of
Jove whose joy is in thunder. “King Jove,” he cried, “lord of
Dodona, god of the Pelasgi, who dwellest afar, you who hold wintry
Dodona in your sway, where your prophets the Selli dwell around you
with their feet unwashed and their couches made upon the ground—if
you heard me when I prayed to you aforetime, and did me honour while
you sent disaster on the Achaeans, vouchsafe me now the fulfilment
of yet this further prayer. I shall stay here where my ships are
lying, but I shall send my comrade into battle at the head of many
Myrmidons. Grant, O all-seeing Jove, that victory may go with him; put
your courage into his heart that Hector may learn whether my squire is
man enough to fight alone, or whether his might is only then so
indomitable when I myself enter the turmoil of war. Afterwards when he
has chased the fight and the cry of battle from the ships, grant
that he may return unharmed, with his armour and his comrades,
fighters in close combat.”
  Thus did he pray, and all-counselling Jove heard his prayer. Part of
it he did indeed vouchsafe him—but not the whole. He granted that
Patroclus should ****** back war and battle from the ships, but
refused to let him come safely out of the fight.
  When he had made his drink-offering and had thus prayed, Achilles
went inside his tent and put back the cup into his chest.
  Then he again came out, for he still loved to look upon the fierce
fight that raged between the Trojans and Achaeans.
  Meanwhile the armed band that was about Patroclus marched on till
they sprang high in hope upon the Trojans. They came swarming out like
wasps whose nests are by the roadside, and whom silly children love to
tease, whereon any one who happens to be passing may get stung—or
again, if a wayfarer going along the road vexes them by accident,
every wasp will come flying out in a fury to defend his little ones-
even with such rage and courage did the Myrmidons swarm from their
ships, and their cry of battle rose heavenwards. Patroclus called
out to his men at the top of his voice, “Myrmidons, followers of
Achilles son of Peleus, be men my friends, fight with might and with
main, that we may win glory for the son of Peleus, who is far the
foremost man at the ships of the Argives—he, and his close fighting
followers. The son of Atreus King Agamemnon will thus learn his
folly in showing no respect to the bravest of the Achaeans.”
  With these words he put heart and soul into them all, and they
fell in a body upon the Trojans. The ships rang again with the cry
which the Achaeans raised, and when the Trojans saw the brave son of
Menoetius and his squire all gleaming in their armour, they were
daunted and their battalions were thrown into confusion, for they
thought the fleet son of Peleus must now have put aside his anger, and
have been reconciled to Agamemnon; every one, therefore, looked
round about to see whither he might fly for safety.
  Patroclus first aimed a spear into the middle of the press where men
were packed most closely, by the stern of the ship of Protesilaus.
He hit Pyraechmes who had led his Paeonian horsemen from the Amydon
and the broad waters of the river Axius; the spear struck him on the
right shoulder, and with a groan he fell backwards in the dust; on
this his men were thrown into confusion, for by killing their
leader, who was the finest soldier among them, Patroclus struck
panic into them all. He thus drove them from the ship and quenched the
fire that was then blazing—leaving the half-burnt ship to lie where
it was. The Trojans were now driven back with a shout that rent the
skies, while
What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it *******, has it edges?

I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking

'Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one, the one with black eye-pits and a scar?

Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,
Adhering to rules, to rules, to rules.

Is this the one for the annunciation?
My god, what a laugh!'

But it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me.
I would not mind if it were bones, or a pearl button.

I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year.
After all I am alive only by accident.

I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way.
Now there are these veils, shimmering like curtains,

The diaphanous satins of a January window
White as babies' bedding and glittering with dead breath. O ivory!

It must be a tusk there, a ghost column.
Can you not see I do not mind what it is.

Can you not give it to me?
Do not be ashamed--I do not mind if it is small.

Do not be mean, I am ready for enormity.
Let us sit down to it, one on either side, admiring the gleam,

The glaze, the mirrory variety of it.
Let us eat our last supper at it, like a hospital plate.

I know why you will not give it to me,
You are terrified

The world will go up in a shriek, and your head with it,
Bossed, brazen, an antique shield,

A marvel to your great-grandchildren.
Do not be afraid, it is not so.

I will only take it and go aside quietly.
You will not even hear me opening it, no paper crackle,

No falling ribbons, no scream at the end.
I do not think you credit me with this discretion.

If you only knew how the veils were killing my days.
To you they are only transparencies, clear air.

But my god, the clouds are like cotton.
Armies of them. They are carbon monoxide.

Sweetly, sweetly I breathe in,
Filling my veins with invisibles, with the million

Probable motes that tick the years off my life.
You are silver-suited for the occasion. O adding machine-----

Is it impossible for you to let something go and have it go whole?
Must you stamp each piece purple,

Must you **** what you can?
There is one thing I want today, and only you can give it to me.

It stands at my window, big as the sky.
It breathes from my sheets, the cold dead center

Where split lives congeal and stiffen to history.
Let it not come by the mail, finger by finger.

Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty
By the time the whole of it was delivered, and to numb to use it.

Only let down the veil, the veil, the veil.
If it were death

I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes.
I would know you were serious.

There would be a nobility then, there would be a birthday.
And the knife not carve, but enter

Pure and clean as the cry of a baby,
And the universe slide from my side.
Impulzez Nov 2013
It was just a Kiss
It was a fellas hangout
Why I refused? Still don't know
We were all there, ballers and players
Ian was always there, behind
Never fails to appear a Lover
Tonight she is a drunkard
No hold backs; No barrier
"How long Adelaide, how long?"
You can't kiss me in public
I am not your side-chick
No more , No more, NO!
I've done it all, everything
Come dear can we go home
We can talk about this at ....
******* Adelaide! Sit down
These are your friends, aren't they?
Tell them who i am to you NOW!
She's now the Boss, I get Bossed
For your information, giggles!
I'm pregnant and I'm not terminating
Oh! Baby... Don't baby me...
Gabby should have kept quiet
'Hm-mm Sorry can i excused?"
Shut the **** up Gabriel!
Are you saying you aint in this?
Giggles! NG Gabby has a child ...
"What! SLAP! Jeez! ***!
Its enough Ian! SLAP! Silence
Long silence.....
Tears, agony, wailing, pleadings
Guess its more than just a kiss
It always is Stupid...
Ian and Adelaide got married 6 months after.... Please don't try this unknowingly, it doesn't always work...
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2013
Wrote this eons ago, tonight, once more,
spend some human capital, editing...
Something to think about
as we tuck ourselves in.

the young'uns keep on asking me for tips,
secrets, to this art, magical poetry gig,
as if I had any left unrevealed.  

recalled this old'n,
from a vintage poetry year,
as a suggestion,
a stating-starting place,
for young poets:

do not self-chain,
let the words take you where
they lead, write them up
for the rhyme is waiting,
in the heart chest deep down,
not on the screen.

I read you Goodnight Moon,
Falling asleep beside you.


<•>

People stop rhyming...

When first you overcome your fears,
And dare to put on paper your tears,
Give it up, set yourself free from the shackles,
Of thinking a rhyme is a necessity for a
Rooting tooting writing of a
**** good poem

If you feel lost,
Want to share the cost,
Feel not bossed,
By a newbie's need
to believe that if it rhymes
Everyone will like your poem
Just fine

And if you get past this stage,
And advance to the next page,
Do not think that writing down a sentence of
Your mind's first up, innermost thoughts,
Is something that will make you
Less lost, heralded, worthy of a parade,
And be blessed with an A  
In your Teacher's pet grade book

My heart broke.
I feel bad.
I feel sad
Cause my man/woman left me
And I hope
Someone kicks his or her ***

That Ain't No Poem Neither...

And if you can't help but complain repeatedly
How life ***** and you're feeling blue
extremely indiscreetly,
Don't make me try on your scribblings
intimately indiscriminately,
Read a million, even wrote a few myself

You think you can write?

Then employ a word outside your comfort zone,
Go it alone,
Write just four sentences that will make
The hopeful reader stand up and you,
Twice as much, and shout

Hallelujah *******.

Work. Poetry is work. Hard work.
Don't fret. But, think on it.
Let it come easy, then let it rest,.
Then spend days editing every comma,
And when you love it so much,
You are chest busting bursting,
Why have you not pressed Send already?

Have the sweetest dreams.
In the morning, when you but awake,
A poem will be aborning in thy mind,
And dare I say it, you will find a new freedom
In free verse.
(I know you will slip in a rhyme or two,
I can't help but do it too)

G' nite!
Why is that parents plant ideas in your brain as you're falling aslee..............

Just a suggestion....what do I know,
Alone within my emotional wilderness

A reverie along memory lane when, this lviii sea sunned
row man (stills paddles in oarlocks and serenely quizzically,
lackadaisically, and harmoniously drifts) along the slip
stream of time. Awash on his figurative manual navigated
opportunistic prideful quintessential schooner reflects,
regales, and revisits ebbing lapsed instances (fast receding
into the past time, when psychological instability grounded
fragile my self esteem (generated venting, steaming, and
piping hot brickbats). As a newly minted harrumphing,
grubbing, and floundering dada enmeshment (analogous
to a fish caught in a net, hence quickly ricocheting, rabidly
splashing, and sloppily thrashing) predicated my foray
into das fatherhood. Aye experienced nearest approximation
Bing battered, rammed, and torpedoed from glomming
(par for the course riot ting heaps) necessarily imposed
adult responsibility. Such metaphorical motoring across
avast Battle Creek with no landfall in sight, this then nada
so Grand Turk (key in the straw) Otto man continually
snapped, cracked and popped. This human ping-pong
fitbit part player papa felt akin to subjection re: thralldom).
At this juncture in me cross currents of existence I can
harken back to those most exhausting, fatiguing, and
grueling endeavors. Hindsight offers this aging baby
boomer the luxury to cast astern. Retrospective leisurely
trawls along the shoals throes of fatherhood allow,
enable and provide and opportunity to scrutinize per
chance, where arises this on account of the empty nest
syndrome. Ordinarily the wife (i.e. missus to appear
more formal), would caw out my name nonstop….
”Matt”…”Matt”…”Matt”…, but she opted to organize
the cluster of assorted household items at the apart
ment (located in Crum Lynne – Ridley Township),
we hope to move within a fortnight. Thy spouse
volunteered her own mini reprieve by setting order
to the miscellaneous fixings gradually amassed,
appropriated, and gifted thru out the twenty plus
years of marriage, which hodgepodge of personal
possessions downsized whence circumstance dictates
evaluating goods having keepsake meaning versus
anomaly of belongings to be unloaded, repurposed
for someone else, or ordained as unworthy to schlep.
Alone asper like a very brief sabbatical from marriage
finds stillness amidst the white noise of the whirring
fan. Thus, I sit here ruminating how to dredge up
some idea for a poem,  (non) fiction or essay. This
husband became acclimated, conditioned, and em
bossed with a mate a tete for two plus decades,
whereby both thee dos delightful daughters on
Track 742 heading west. Honest to dog, I miss
the role of fatherhood when either off spring
(with an age difference of approximately twenty
five plus months) romped, scampered, and trotted
as toddlers, and upon childhood, thy little girls
found exultant excitement dashing higgledy-
piggledy, hither and yon, to and fro across the
playground as most glorious human indulgence.
Despite the plaintive wail vis a vis Juliet saying
goodnight to Romeo (…parting is such sweet
sorrow) haint pleasurable atoll. Hitherto un
known that during the most vexing, trying,
and quaking bouts when both kin of thy ****
fought like angry cats would there transpire
the occasion of sincere tearfulness ululating
vain warbling. Now a pang of nostalgia arises
when I drive past their happy go lucky stomp
ping turf, or reflect on answering the trumpet
call to chauffer one or thee other to amusement
park, play date, mall, favorite toy store such as
Fivebelow, birthday party, et cetera. Even
certain tunes recalled to mind and/or heard
being broadcast across the audio logical spec
trum a cause for moistened tear ducts. Wince
with sadness also mixed with sigh lent bundled
expostulations of joy. Both progeny metamorphosed
into able bodied, minded and spirited lasses,
whose attainment far exceeded any projections
internally forecast. Initial onset of parent role
found me all thumbs. Prior to begetting two
darling dames, this chap spent disproportionate
number of hours sequestered within some hide
away, which frequently happened to be the
designated bedroom at 324 Level Road, College
Ville, Pennsylvania, 19010. Never did thee major
rit tee days of mine life point to babysitting or
working with that chronological demographics
comprising the adoring blessed innocence,
murmuring newborn obliviousness, that bespoke
penultimate unsullied, utmost virtue necessitating
interaction with tender infants beckoning being
cradled, endearingly fondled, demonstrably easing
fondness gripping heartstrings issue jetblue kinks.
Aye felt pitched headlong into this foreign territory,
and initially experienced utmost awkwardness when
attending, pampering and pulling (albeit gently)
upsy daisy, the nascent hint of autonomy. Remembrance
and recollection of élan, joie de vivire, and yea those
ear splitting threshold of pain screaming tantrums
all boxed into tidy wholesome Zen announcing
nuggets of greater meaningfulness and absolute
value. The above long winded reverie intended and
meant tubby a semi biography, but leave hit up to
his hie n hiss, he went way overboard, and will give
a one line summarization to describe his i.e. yours truly
life sentence fate decreed. He (this Anglophile chipper
chap lived under duress of extreme anxiety, obsessive/
compulsive behavior, panic attacks and essentially
schizoid personality disorder for the greater part
of his life and hard times, which raw bits would
warrant fleshing out to extrapolate how these psychic
pitfalls represented critical factors at various and
sundry turning points in his life.
Benedict Menda May 2014
when the sun shines,my mind finds, inspiration as I look upon a nation with untapped potential and a need for influential ****** such as myself.
I do not brag or boast, I am just a sand peckle laying in the coast, but I refuse to be tossed and bossed around by the waves of social expectations and wicked ways of a nation just so one day I can hope to be found.
the tongue is powerful so I watch what I say, I believe in self motivation just incase friends slowly start pushing away, I believe in being morally upright and refusing discrimination upon Gods creations, communications without conflicts having good public relations.
I would not go so far as to call myself a king for motivation,
I would only say that I am a man that brings comfortation,
don't cling to observations,
just sing and make proclamations,
that people aren't actually free. I mean they are but don't act like it, matter of fact they don't like it when you tell them they are stuck to routines.
people are so busy trying to make a living but forget to make a life for themselves.
my mind is an attic, filled with the old and the New coz it's dynamic, I am also an addict, to a tragic free life.
so when you say life's a ***** just know your the snitch that let life dig a ditch and placed you in it, now stop for a minute and think about it and try admit it, most of us don't get in it, we were just born in it. we woke up to walls around us, limitations.life is for the living, get out there and breathe in the fresh air, believe in something but beware, have good desires, coz if not you end up in the ditch this time burning with fire.
He may be twisted but deep inside,
I believe lies a man full of pure love and affection.
Grounded, surrounded, bossed around,
But sets me free into his safe arms.
As if fear drags us apart.

I was so blind, but now I see.

Now he's gone, but within I stay,
Regrets after regrets,
Are drowning me.
...
I remember the smiles he caused to be,
All the happiness flying through the soul inside of me.

But now you'll see it's not only me.

I'm glad to have seen, before letting go.
Regrets after regrets,
Cause' its crystal clear.
...
Saving what I have,turns out not fear.
I say thank you because it's all your fault.

Don't let what's bad blind your eyes,
It'll take your love , without your feel.

By: Zoulaikha
Now when Morning, clad in her robe of saffron, had begun to suffuse
light over the earth, Jove called the gods in council on the topmost
crest of serrated Olympus. Then he spoke and all the other gods gave
ear. “Hear me,” said he, “gods and goddesses, that I may speak even as
I am minded. Let none of you neither goddess nor god try to cross
me, but obey me every one of you that I may bring this matter to an
end. If I see anyone acting apart and helping either Trojans or
Danaans, he shall be beaten inordinately ere he come back again to
Olympus; or I will hurl him down into dark Tartarus far into the
deepest pit under the earth, where the gates are iron and the floor
bronze, as far beneath Hades as heaven is high above the earth, that
you may learn how much the mightiest I am among you. Try me and find
out for yourselves. Hangs me a golden chain from heaven, and lay
hold of it all of you, gods and goddesses together—tug as you will,
you will not drag Jove the supreme counsellor from heaven to earth;
but were I to pull at it myself I should draw you up with earth and
sea into the bargain, then would I bind the chain about some
pinnacle of Olympus and leave you all dangling in the mid firmament.
So far am I above all others either of gods or men.”
  They were frightened and all of them of held their peace, for he had
spoken masterfully; but at last Minerva answered, “Father, son of
Saturn, king of kings, we all know that your might is not to be
gainsaid, but we are also sorry for the Danaan warriors, who are
perishing and coming to a bad end. We will, however, since you so
bid us, refrain from actual fighting, but we will make serviceable
suggestions to the Argives that they may not all of them perish in
your displeasure.”
  Jove smiled at her and answered, “Take heart, my child,
Trito-born; I am not really in earnest, and I wish to be kind to you.”
  With this he yoked his fleet horses, with hoofs of bronze and
manes of glittering gold. He girded himself also with gold about the
body, seized his gold whip and took his seat in his chariot. Thereon
he lashed his horses and they flew forward nothing loth midway twixt
earth and starry heaven. After a while he reached many-fountained Ida,
mother of wild beasts, and Gargarus, where are his grove and
fragrant altar. There the father of gods and men stayed his horses,
took them from the chariot, and hid them in a thick cloud; then he
took his seat all glorious upon the topmost crests, looking down
upon the city of Troy and the ships of the Achaeans.
  The Achaeans took their morning meal hastily at the ships, and
afterwards put on their armour. The Trojans on the other hand likewise
armed themselves throughout the city, fewer in numbers but
nevertheless eager perforce to do battle for their wives and children.
All the gates were flung wide open, and horse and foot sallied forth
with the ***** as of a great multitude.
  When they were got together in one place, shield clashed with
shield, and spear with spear, in the conflict of mail-clad men. Mighty
was the din as the bossed shields pressed ******* one another-
death—cry and shout of triumph of slain and slayers, and the earth
ran red with blood.
  Now so long as the day waxed and it was still morning their
weapons beat against one another, and the people fell, but when the
sun had reached mid-heaven, the sire of all balanced his golden
scales, and put two fates of death within them, one for the Trojans
and the other for the Achaeans. He took the balance by the middle, and
when he lifted it up the day of the Achaeans sank; the death-fraught
scale of the Achaeans settled down upon the ground, while that of
the Trojans rose heavenwards. Then he thundered aloud from Ida, and
sent the glare of his lightning upon the Achaeans; when they saw this,
pale fear fell upon them and they were sore afraid.
  Idomeneus dared not stay nor yet Agamemnon, nor did the two
Ajaxes, servants of Mars, hold their ground. Nestor knight of Gerene
alone stood firm, bulwark of the Achaeans, not of his own will, but
one of his horses was disabled. Alexandrus husband of lovely Helen had
hit it with an arrow just on the top of its head where the mane begins
to grow away from the skull, a very deadly place. The horse bounded in
his anguish as the arrow pierced his brain, and his struggles threw
others into confusion. The old man instantly began cutting the
traces with his sword, but Hector’s fleet horses bore down upon him
through the rout with their bold charioteer, even Hector himself,
and the old man would have perished there and then had not Diomed been
quick to mark, and with a loud cry called Ulysses to help him.
  “Ulysses,” he cried, “noble son of Laertes where are you flying
to, with your back turned like a coward? See that you are not struck
with a spear between the shoulders. Stay here and help me to defend
Nestor from this man’s furious onset.”
  Ulysses would not give ear, but sped onward to the ships of the
Achaeans, and the son of Tydeus flinging himself alone into the
thick of the fight took his stand before the horses of the son of
Neleus. “Sir,” said he, “these young warriors are pressing you hard,
your force is spent, and age is heavy upon you, your squire is naught,
and your horses are slow to move. Mount my chariot and see what the
horses of Tros can do—how cleverly they can scud hither and thither
over the plain either in flight or in pursuit. I took them from the
hero Aeneas. Let our squires attend to your own steeds, but let us
drive mine straight at the Trojans, that Hector may learn how
furiously I too can wield my spear.”
  Nestor knight of Gerene hearkened to his words. Thereon the
doughty squires, Sthenelus and kind-hearted Eurymedon, saw to Nestor’s
horses, while the two both mounted Diomed’s chariot. Nestor took the
reins in his hands and lashed the horses on; they were soon close up
with Hector, and the son of Tydeus aimed a spear at him as he was
charging full speed towards them. He missed him, but struck his
charioteer and squire Eniopeus son of noble Thebaeus in the breast
by the ****** while the reins were in his hands, so that he died there
and then, and the horses swerved as he fell headlong from the chariot.
Hector was greatly grieved at the loss of his charioteer, but let
him lie for all his sorrow, while he went in quest of another
driver; nor did his steeds have to go long without one, for he
presently found brave Archeptolemus the son of Iphitus, and made him
get up behind the horses, giving the reins into his hand.
  All had then been lost and no help for it, for they would have
been penned up in Ilius like sheep, had not the sire of gods and men
been quick to mark, and hurled a fiery flaming thunderbolt which
fell just in front of Diomed’s horses with a flare of burning
brimstone. The horses were frightened and tried to back beneath the
car, while the reins dropped from Nestor’s hands. Then he was afraid
and said to Diomed, “Son of Tydeus, turn your horses in flight; see
you not that the hand of Jove is against you? To-day he vouchsafes
victory to Hector; to-morrow, if it so please him, he will again grant
it to ourselves; no man, however brave, may thwart the purpose of
Jove, for he is far stronger than any.”
  Diomed answered, “All that you have said is true; there is a grief
however which pierces me to the very heart, for Hector will talk among
the Trojans and say, ‘The son of Tydeus fled before me to the
ships.’ This is the vaunt he will make, and may earth then swallow
me.”
  “Son of Tydeus,” replied Nestor, “what mean you? Though Hector say
that you are a coward the Trojans and Dardanians will not believe him,
nor yet the wives of the mighty warriors whom you have laid low.”
  So saying he turned the horses back through the thick of the battle,
and with a cry that rent the air the Trojans and Hector rained their
darts after them. Hector shouted to him and said, “Son of Tydeus,
the Danaans have done you honour hitherto as regards your place at
table, the meals they give you, and the filling of your cup with wine.
Henceforth they will despise you, for you are become no better than
a woman. Be off, girl and coward that you are, you shall not scale our
walls through any Hinching upon my part; neither shall you carry off
our wives in your ships, for I shall **** you with my own hand.”
  The son of Tydeus was in two minds whether or no to turn his
horses round again and fight him. Thrice did he doubt, and thrice
did Jove thunder from the heights of. Ida in token to the Trojans that
he would turn the battle in their favour. Hector then shouted to
them and said, “Trojans, Lycians, and Dardanians, lovers of close
fighting, be men, my friends, and fight with might and with main; I
see that Jove is minded to vouchsafe victory and great glory to
myself, while he will deal destruction upon the Danaans. Fools, for
having thought of building this weak and worthless wall. It shall
not stay my fury; my horses will spring lightly over their trench, and
when I am BOOK at their ships forget not to bring me fire that I may
burn them, while I slaughter the Argives who will be all dazed and
bewildered by the smoke.”
  Then he cried to his horses, “Xanthus and Podargus, and you Aethon
and goodly Lampus, pay me for your keep now and for all the
honey-sweet corn with which Andromache daughter of great Eetion has
fed you, and for she has mixed wine and water for you to drink
whenever you would, before doing so even for me who am her own
husband. Haste in pursuit, that we may take the shield of Nestor,
the fame of which ascends to heaven, for it is of solid gold, arm-rods
and all, and that we may strip from the shoulders of Diomed. the
cuirass which Vulcan made him. Could we take these two things, the
Achaeans would set sail in their ships this self-same night.”
  Thus did he vaunt, but Queen Juno made high Olympus quake as she
shook with rage upon her throne. Then said she to the mighty god of
Neptune, “What now, wide ruling lord of the earthquake? Can you find
no compassion in your heart for the dying Danaans, who bring you
many a welcome offering to Helice and to Aegae? Wish them well then.
If all of us who are with the Danaans were to drive the Trojans back
and keep Jove from helping them, he would have to sit there sulking
alone on Ida.”
  King Neptune was greatly troubled and answered, “Juno, rash of
tongue, what are you talking about? We other gods must not set
ourselves against Jove, for he is far stronger than we are.”
  Thus did they converse; but the whole space enclosed by the ditch,
from the ships even to the wall, was filled with horses and
warriors, who were pent up there by Hector son of Priam, now that
the hand of Jove was with him. He would even have set fire to the
ships and burned them, had not Queen Juno put it into the mind of
Agamemnon, to bestir himself and to encourage the Achaeans. To this
end he went round the ships and tents carrying a great purple cloak,
and took his stand by the huge black hull of Ulysses’ ship, which
was middlemost of all; it was from this place that his voice would
carry farthest, on the one hand towards the tents of Ajax son of
Telamon, and on the other towards those of Achilles—for these two
heroes, well assured of their own strength, had valorously drawn up
their ships at the two ends of the line. From this spot then, with a
voice that could be heard afar, he shouted to the Danaans, saying,
“Argives, shame on you cowardly creatures, brave in semblance only;
where are now our vaunts that we should prove victorious—the vaunts
we made so vaingloriously in Lemnos, when we ate the flesh of horned
cattle and filled our mixing-bowls to the brim? You vowed that you
would each of you stand against a hundred or two hundred men, and
now you prove no match even for one—for Hector, who will be ere
long setting our ships in a blaze. Father Jove, did you ever so ruin a
great king and rob him so utterly of his greatness? yet, when to my
sorrow I was coming hither, I never let my ship pass your altars
without offering the fat and thigh-bones of heifers upon every one
of them, so eager was I to sack the city of Troy. Vouchsafe me then
this prayer—suffer us to escape at any rate with our lives, and let
not the Achaeans be so utterly vanquished by the Trojans.”
  Thus did he pray, and father Jove pitying his tears vouchsafed him
that his people should live, not die; forthwith he sent them an eagle,
most unfailingly portentous of all birds, with a young fawn in its
talons; the eagle dropped the fawn by the altar on which the
Achaeans sacrificed to Jove the lord of omens; When, therefore, the
people saw that the bird had come from Jove, they sprang more fiercely
upon the Trojans and fought more boldly.
  There was no man of all the many Danaans who could then boast that
he had driven his horses over the trench and gone forth to fight
sooner than the son of Tydeus; long before any one else could do so he
slew an armed warrior of the Trojans, Agelaus the son of Phradmon.
He had turned his horses in flight, but the spear struck him in the
back midway between his shoulders and went right through his chest,
and his armour rang rattling round him as he fell forward from his
chariot.
  After him came Agamemnon and Menelaus, sons of Atreus, the two
Ajaxes clothed in valour as with a garment, Idomeneus and his
companion in arms Meriones, peer of murderous Mars, and Eurypylus
the brave son of Euaemon. Ninth came Teucer with his bow, and took his
place under cover of the shield of Ajax son of Telamon. When Ajax
lifted his shield Teucer would peer round, and when he had hit any one
in the throng, the man would fall dead; then Teucer would hie back
to Ajax as a child to its mother, and again duck down under his
shield.
  Which of the Trojans did brave Teucer first ****? Orsilochus, and
then Ormenus and Ophelestes, Daetor, Chromius, and godlike
Lycophontes, Amopaon son of Polyaemon, and Melanippus. these in turn
did he lay low upon the earth, and King Agamemnon was glad when he saw
him making havoc of the Trojans with his mighty bow. He went up to him
and said, “Teucer, man after my own heart, son of Telamon, captain
among the host, shoot on, and be at once the saving of the Danaans and
the glory of your father Telamon, who brought you up and took care
of you in his own house when you were a child, ******* though you
were. Cover him with glory though he is far off; I will promise and
I will assuredly perform; if aegis-bearing Jove and Minerva grant me
to sack the city of Ilius, you shall have the next best meed of honour
after my own—a tripod, or two horses with their chariot, or a woman
who shall go up into your bed.”
  And Teucer answered, “Most noble son of Atreus, you need not urge
me; from the moment we began to drive them back to Ilius, I have never
ceased so far as in me lies to look out for men whom I can shoot and
****; I have shot eight barbed shafts, and all of them have been
buried in the flesh of warlike youths, but this mad dog I cannot hit.”
  As he spoke he aimed another arrow straight at Hector, for he was
bent on hitting him; nevertheless he missed him, and the arrow hit
Priam’s brave son Gorgythion in the breast. His mother, fair
Castianeira, lovely as a goddess, had been married from Aesyme, and
now he bowed his head as a garden poppy in full bloom when it is
weighed down by showers in spring—even thus heavy bowed his head
beneath the weight of his helmet.
  Again he aimed at Hector, for he was longing to hit him, and again
his arrow missed, for Apollo turned it aside; but he hit Hector’s
brave charioteer Archeptolemus in the breast, by the ******, as he was
driving furiously into the fight. The horses swerved aside as he
fell headlong from the chariot, and there was no life left in him.
Hector was greatly grieved at the loss of his charioteer, but for
all his sorrow he let him lie where he fell, and bade his brother
Cebriones, who was hard by, take the reins. Cebriones did as he had
said. Hector thereon with a loud cry sprang from his chariot to the
ground, and seizing a great stone made straigh
Jo Baldwin Oct 2015
In a station in the city a British soldier stood
Talking to the people there if the people would
Some just stared in hatred, and others turned in pain
And the lonely British soldier wished he was back home again

Come join the British Army! Said the posters in his town
See the world and have your fun come serve before the Crown
The jobs were hard to come by and he could not face the dole
So he took his country's shilling and enlisted on the roll

For there was no fear of fighting, the Empire long was lost
Just ten years in the army getting paid for being bossed
Then leave a man experienced a man who's made the grade
A medal and a pension some mem'ries and a trade

Then came the call to Ireland as the call had come before
Another ****** chapter in an endless civil war
The priests they stood on both sides the priests they stood behind
Another fight in Jesus name the blind against the blind

The soldier stood between them between the whistling stones
And then the broken bottles that led to broken bones
The petrol bombs that burnt his hands the nails that pierced his skin
And wished that he had stayed at home surrounded by his kin

The station filled with people the soldier soon was bored
But better in the station than where the people warred
The room filled up with mothers with daughters and with sons
Who stared with itchy fingers at the soldier and his gun

A yell of fear a screech of brakes the shattering of glass
The window of the station broke to let the package pass
A scream came from the mothers as they ran towards the door
Dragging children crying from the bomb upon the floor

The soldier stood and could not move his gun he could not use
He knew the bomb had seconds and not minutes on the fuse
He could not run to pick it up and throw it in the street
There were far too many people there too many running feet

Take cover! Yelled the soldier, Take cover for your lives
And the Irishmen threw down their young and stood before their wives
They turned towards the soldier their eyes alive with fear
For God's sake save our children or they'll end their short lives here

The soldier moved towards the bomb his stomach like a stone
Why was this his battle God why was he alone
He lay down on the package and he murmured one farewell
To those at home in England to those he loved so well

He saw the sights of summer felt the wind upon his brow
The young girls in the city parks how precious were they now
The soaring of the swallow the beauty of the swan
The music of the turning world so soon would it be gone

A muffled soft explosion and the room began to quake
The soldier blown across the floor his blood a crimson lake
They never heard him cry or shout they never heard him moan
And they turned their children's faces from the blood and from the bones

The crowd outside soon gathered and the ambulances came
To carry off the body of a pawn lost in the game
And the crowd they clapped and cheered and they sang their rebel songs
One soldier less to interfere where he did not belong

But will the children growing up learn at their mothers' knees
The story of the soldier who bought their liberty
Who used his youthful body as a means towards an end
Who gave his life to those who called him murderer not friend

By Harvey Andrews 1972
A true story. Posted in remembrance
Keith J Collard Aug 2012
A blue jay with crested plume,
and fierce face,
batters a beetle off the mighty Ash.
Trees of sword and spear contrast,
balanced ****** against maple ax.
Odysseus bravery, and Achilles' hate,
depicted on Ash's underside lanceolate.
even when oak leans in for slash,
with jagged sword serrate,
****** through heart and out the back.
But another tree does wear greaves,
with top heavy slash of bronze cordate,
poplar with xiphos of patina leaves.
speared through brain and cheek plate.
and red bud vaunting behind bossed sheild,
throw of spear,
much red blood on dust congealed.
" Run cowards, back to the forest of fairy's,"
" you are the son's of rock moss,
whereas I am the son of Aries."
But then the Sumac, took from it's quiver,
it's poison tipped arrow and shot thither,
" Trojan, promise my body burial honours,"
but they cut him up, and stripped his armour,
but when Achilles finds out, he will avenge..........{keeeeeith, dinner time}

Sounds and sights, as I watched this bird,
clashing armour, war cries heard.

(this poem is about a boy imagining the Trojan war after reading the Illiad, and learning that the greeks made there spears out of the Ash Tree.  He sees all the leaf shapes of the trees as weopons, which actually were the models for the greek sword and spear.also arrow.)
****, I forgot that Aries supported the Trojans, and Patroclus(achilles main man) died from apollo...maybe " Apollo slapped me on the back, but my father is stacked" might suffice.things that make u go hmmmm.
I am quiet. I am shy. But don’t you dare think for a minute that that means I have no voice. I am short, and I don’t speak unless called on, but don’t you dare think that that means that I am any less of a person. I have a voice, and I will be heard. I was forgotten on the bus because I was too quiet, too small, too shy. I am afraid to look people in the eye, to walk past a male without feeling in danger. I have been shoved, pushed, squished, and squashed! So I am fed up, and trust me, you don’t want to make me mad.

I am 14, I am a female, and I have a voice! I have opinions, and you **** well better listen! I will have opinions about my life, and I will have a say in the matter. You can try to put me down, but I’m already short! You wanna know why us short people have such fiery tempers? It’s because we are closer to hell. And we will give it to you too.

Don’t you dare tell me that I can’t. I can do anything, and I will do it better than you ever could. I was captain of my baseball team for 5 years. Yes, that’s right boys, I, the quiet, nerdy, small girl bossed your ***** around on the field.

My step-father insists I have no voice. Now, as I’ve said before, you know I do. My step-father insists that I am too young, my step-father insists, that I, know nothing. I want to yell, I want to scream out: “YES I DO!” But my mother insists I stay quiet. My mother insists that I should submit to his whims, my mother insists that I must behave for him, to not anger him, DO NOT ANGER THE BEAST! This is what I am taught every day!

Don’t you dare make him mad, don’t you dare have opinions, don’t you dare have a say. Because you are a 5’4, 14 year old female, raised by a single mother and a ***** donor. Because you come from the bottom of the heap, so why should you? Because you are bullied, because you are quiet, shy, short, nerdy, and you want to have a voice.
I have no idea what people will think, but oh well...
Having arrived at Patmos, on the southeastern ***** of Skalá, Wonthelimar observed that the Seleucid ships were there. Already knowing of the myth of Seleucus and of his Divinity, since her mother Laodice, according to Vernarth's parapsychology parallel account, and aligned with Wonthelimar, that she had presumed that her son Seleucus had been conceived by carnal union with Apollo. These oracular dreams separated them from Vernarth, for a certain Antigone of the imperial Seleucid with the anchor of the ring that Apollo had captivated from the gematological extract, now wading in the quantum of Chauvet, which had been identified from Gaul.

Wonthelimar says: “from such a thigh such as a Vas Auric you will be anchored at your anchor, in a proud fallacy if you have been engendered by Apollo if it is that your mother temporizes in a hallway idyll or Antigone, and not of someone wearing a ring that smells like broken neo-Hellenic dreams in one that anyone believed, born of one being or another like me from a mythological Iberian, but being carried from a very young age on the haunches of a Bucephalus. Here I believe where Laodice would be or would be caught by knowing that creatures like me, spawned in the darkness of a cave, should wear that ring, but in the seventh ring of the horns of my paternal Ibez with its antlers constantly growing, and in my forehead having one of them in the antlers of the female that fed me in the reign of darkness and in the heights of the mountains. Upon leaving Chauvet I embraced her suspended antlers, and when I separated from the sixth ring, my female nurse with her pale neck offered me the seventh so that I would do it with brown illusions to be like her in the maternal ***** of the Rhone that in altitudes Thousands leveled out over seven hundred meters, with each ring being the power of a reign of darkness filled with light and undeserved talent. In the autumn, my female mother would get involved when I timidly approached from my cavern full of aldehyde, eliminating it through my mouth and eyes, creating from them the brave fear of misunderstood symbols..., if you saw it, your Seleucus...? You would abandon your divinity with a single breeze of the elements when you would recover your anchor rings on the roads. On the other hand, I wake up in his ring because of the meager light that intimidates the converted mountain beings, who interpose me in their combats, if an antler was or is torn from one of my attempts of frustration, after not seeing what it is not noticed even in thousands of distant blushes, and not even in the emission of the eyes of a hypothetical Apollo "

Behind the philastic zoomorphic of the exalting from Seleuco's mouth, the bilocated Epidaurus on Patmos was lowered by the steps of an amphitheater, bossed around in the conclusive closing of his story behind bars or horns that splintered his revoked mention of aspiring to a ring, which is not and will be nothing more than a synonym of despair, more than an immortal that is now abbreviated from the stigma of co-founding itself in meaning as a temporary truth of Hellenism, deducing to qualify its origin as a plus part and ascendant servant, but not descendant in shirts that have to transvestite him on the Epidaurus proscenium. Seleucus began to doubt his converted eagerness to lash out the mythological divine lineage for a sanction, in which the lightning bolts of the stunning sky themselves demystified their annoying gales of submission, by dynasties of the proverbial Kleos for the purposes of fame, and politics that open the loaded winds with cots of gold to marry with diligent nebulosity in transliterated and linked tripods in cumulus universes, where the first two abuse the fulcrum of the obverse that falls by gravity on no man's land..., here is the myth of anchoring and not of to aspire to a ring or earring that will drag us to heights where the icy cold wind crowns you on legs of bronze and not of gold "

These coins were carefully observed by those who observed them from a gorge, capturing the humility and infallibility of a being that came from the entrails of Chauvet, interpreting courses that awaited Seleucus. The appendages were detached from the koilones and tiers that jumped over it, to press and narrow the diazomas or corridors that were already deployed like a laser in the cubations of the consciousness of Megarón and the Vas Auric of the Hexagonal Primogeniture, which already was made ubiquitous. It was released from an Alexandrian Greek fire on the jaws of the hecatomb of the ex-generals of Alexander the Great. Here in funeral periphrasis, few prostitutes rusted behind his inheritance, each with their bronze panoplies and banners in favor of Leonatus in the hands of the Satrap Antigonus, Ptolemy, and the most outstanding applicant of his divine inheritance, Seleucus. They all meet outside the Eurydice ship in Skalá to settle decisions and franchises of ancestry, for the purpose of divinizing the destinies of their tasks and interests, to sink them into the first stone under a base of faith, and of those who will come from the return of the Anastásis like Greek resurrection of bread and wine, Psomí kai krasí…; "The Mashiach for being of whoever and whatever"

Seleuco says: "Psomí kai krasí, Bread and Wine for all." We have revived our leader, who in good time should resurrect us all for his mentions of the new future of fallen leaders and heroes. We are not oblivious to your expiration and perhaps your negligence in Babylon, but the steps of a king require other Seleucid measures and their oriental legitimating, being oligarchies that should morally do what is known. Antigonus, Ptolemy, and I appear here with me, preserving periods that leave us of mediumistic notions of the grim, who does not allow us to close our eyes. We confer the denounced ambiguity of previous riches that do not fit in any silo that can contain it, nor what happens to the secondary after diving early in the morning mounted on your Bucephalus, full of its manes swollen with the posterity of a Roman emperor besieging it, without advancing by requirements or where he rides now in steel wastelands, and not through upholstered steppes of the cautious ensign on your guard and in the solemn light of life that the **** leaves behind in your symbolic sarcophagus! We want you to join us, and to be able to banish our distinctions from where Apollo has given his eternal sleeper in the sense of an ephemeral truth, which makes light of flesh colors in the fiery figure of your coat of arms.
We have stolen the traced areas of Judea and from there Maccabees have donated us inscriptions back to my threat to you and Antigonus,... to my enemy debtor, but even so, I come to repair unevenness and want to repair idylls more remote from the Euphrates to settle in the ranks of Ptolemy. We have all sinned to look for you in our slogans, gaining fleeting territory, but we have lost your lux, already well said in my sanctuary in Didyma, but in seconds that continue from the first, already raising flags and heralds that increase your vox, more than a David that defeats a colossus; that from his own death resurrects...! "

All perceptibly dismayed looked at Alexander the Great who was behind a canopy listening to everything with his ear attached to the canvas that separates him from a presumed truth. He draws the curtain and pounces before everyone with stealth and courtesy, incontinenti he speaks to them after inhuman efforts to move away from the stagnant sub-understanding of his former commander.

Alexander the Great says: “The aureoles of sanctity have dislocated my Beelzebub, and the brambles brush against the Scabious flowers like widows that sing in the cenotic lines of my hands from a purgative cathartic in its graceful subfamily that makes my eyes heterochromatic de facto, between the thistles that are spiced between the aromatherapy of the Scabiosa cretica. In their oblong shape with pincushion flowers, they make the basting their nailed pins waiting to be used so that my desolations are not lost even after being just reborn. After the annual Attic calendar in Elaphebolion where they walked on me to resist the deer of Artemis, in attempts to get up and ***** me in the sessile voices of Scabiosa dispelled by Vernarth that have raised me in the involved species, like a chalice of unstitched shreds in seven holes, leaning back to the Aquenio in his fruit tree that is stained with lavender-blue, and the Lepidoptera bringing Vernarth from Gethsemane and the anti-Sarnic clothing that makes him exalted. Now from here, I harangue you, like immaterial troops that do not move their courage, with enemies that are left open to the fear of my walk on them, on rams of the imminent danger of warbling victory with steely Falangists. What a nationalist Faskéloma attribute as obscene fuss and Pashkien that reorders the armies that invade its headless stadiums, in raised nightingales that chirped the sadness of seeing myself fallen on the nose of the common soldiers and full of scabies in Arbela. I have to fly with you my lost flocks ready of Apollo surrendering twilight fire, and of moon-sun between the legs of a colossus forged by greater fires, speaking to me of Macedonian triumph, under the yoke of the crackle of a people that lies taciturn with the satraps in Hercules's cunning conquering in the cheers only after three laps they made debits from my left, while I saw the light of Uriel coming towards me in the Lepidoptera with his sheathing, and entirely of a horse placed Beelzebub, to transmigrate him with me from Cinnabar chains and honor what serves the world also that dies with me in Thrace or Alexandria Bucephalus, after the south of Corinth, regardless of me, who already sensed that he was anti-diadoco..., being at that time a leader of the Sacred League of Delphic Amphibian, after feeling so much pain immediately from dying..., I still had life left in the Scabiosa flask and in bronze vessels that I removed from the swirling wind of the s Thermopylae, leaving me stranded with nothing but chimeras of winning the world, but losing a Life that had just begun "

Meanwhile, at the dawn of Vas Auric was projected at relative height, Syrmus's light and resounding fall were shown when he attacked the back of Macedonia -... here Alexander makes a gesture of modest resilient power... -, after he glimpsed to Saint John the Apostle how he moved with his staff the tricolor clouds transmitted by the troops of the Tribalios and that was crushed by the carnal battery of Macedonian cavalry that immolated them before their knowledge, and then after their three thousand victims..., which according to some outstanding Hypaspists also rushed them far beyond the Danube where they were engulfed in the confinement of the Getas in thousands, and in greater proportion but with leather rafts, the Hellenic troops crossed this same river and with a few thousand they conquered them filling their saddlebags..., not gold... !, but brandy that burned all the pastures where no Bucephalus crossed by fire.
Wonthelimar Dismissed Diadocos
Julian Aug 2020
Septuagint prince scribing on scrivello detail
Emerges from the frogmarch grave of revenants sheepish about ghoulish masquerade
The tribes whittle puckered shibboleths and charismatic vengeance evades
The henpeck of roosters harmonizing sand into grassy knolls of carapace cathedral light
Walks beyond the whimsical despair the conniving conservatories of manufactured fright
Spurned by smokestack confusion above a plastered reconnaissance of abundant life flocking between small awakenings curtailed by fulgurant swelters of blistering white
The spectral dance assumes primordial shades to dampen the windowed elegance of betrayal complicit in the haze
Mojo’s rise and fall with moonshot decades flashing intimacy lived twice barking like a squelched gyrovague relishing the kantikoys of burlesque night
And yet among the bemused stars unbuttoned by the prolixity of the Russia ruse the smear indelible flaunts with decadence in the pleonasm of sluggish articles of flight
How long must the messianic age shelter the nebbich halls of crambazzled piety in science to an upbringing of oligochrome
How many dastardly wernaggles of the rusticated elitism flomp with desultory banquets reminiscent of boiling Rome
Incinerated in an ageless day revived only after a historic lapse of barbarity in the ferule exacted such immeasurable despair
That the prejudice of pride is forever shelved as redundant because the filigrees of geometry only permit curvature in flatness
Convex movements captured in still-framed pillories refract nothing but Blazing Saddles of a caricature full-bloom sun
Yet we marvel at storybook ghosts and the isangelous carapace of marauding instincts forever brave and encaged
Erratic by delivery but sciamachy knows no identifiable age
Scrawny fossarians dig entrenched charnels voraginous with skeletons of brackish regelation enthused by immemorial decay
Must we abridge a hearty ocean in a month’s sublime regaled design of trespasses of unsung heyday spaying its weakest defrocked knight
Armed to the Teeth we seek the terminus of apocalyptic capsules destined for gluttons braving annihilation in the vacuum of orbital planes plain only to the ken of the keenest sight
No we make no petitions in prayer for this Soft Parade of vigor verging on flair
We ransack littoral virtues in nexility bronzed with Stayin’ Alive shoes in remission of staircase blight
Beamish in beatitudes of milquetoast pregnancies of salted Matzah brimming in the yeasts of cesspool emergent from scarecrow metaphors flagrant hauteur gliding on air
Witness the spearhead of revolution in the metagnomy of oracular aubades to future brimstone caverns
Lurking like counterstrokes in revision blackguarded by the feisty prowl of outpaced labtebricole whipsaws of timber readied into foisted brown-brick comestion of elegant emerald errors
Dancing with galactic improvidence concealed by the rigor of lurched liars enthroned with prerogatives of stain-glass adumbration
We parcel up parsecs because clairvoyance among titans is a swank in need of 20/08 visions spectral in the clouds of all prominent registries of memory
Lost to faint delicacies of swift serpents outlasting gnats in the tabernacles of ribald ecbolic promontories on the verge of futile tomorrow pastimes spinsters flummox with slimmerback rigmarole flanged by whinks and escorted by the maskirovka of positive bears in absolute value alone
Yet Enola Gay found its destruction profitable to hominist lore enough to attenuate its evaporation of suffrage in the glint of pervasive remedies to stranded gore
Embanked on the sidelines of conquistador flaunts that a Titanic missive of classy regard found the damsel at the steerage slipping on zalkengur irony the anticlimax of lore
Traipsing fellowship of many a ring is a phony artifice for an ostentation that bellows so loudly when isolated perjury must not whimper but sing
The loudest plaudits afforded to a parallax incumbent white horse in the shadow of Dark Horse occultism a barbed flying wing of the West becoming the king of behest
Scurrilous are many jeers because their similes are baseline just as much as the storged conglomerate behind ensnared rapture looming with less ecstasy and blunt fear remains the kilmarge of simple foresight wrinkled behind the sum of many tears
We await our Creator’s Throne insuperable even with the blandishment of piecemeal craters that are superlative bolides of the weirdest attenuated into the spectrum of eldritch weird
Yet the riches of hobohemia found in “invisible lockets” worn by the travesty of jerseys measuring up to Roadhouse beer
The cartels of citadel cascades built on mountebank fortunes reaped from venal psephology collectively embody the unconscious gamut of javelin cloaks of sardonic sneer
Threnodies written long ago in the Hidden Tracks of sophistry welcome the intermissions of antiquity abridging the donnybrooks of charlatans bossed around by facetious gibes of manicured belletrist humid enough that evaporation itself of rarefied tabacosis has few if any peers
Yet the peerless sketch thrombosis in the oxygeusia of deceptive schadenfreude only to topple jengadangles that glabrous gravity muscles to barely if it all steer
In a vacant reality eager for surrealist bounty the sidereal question of moribund placards supplanted by vibrant living semaphores fixates upon figments of acatalepsy rather than ruddy enumerations of partition despite beloved chalky rudiments filibustering with courtesy rather than jeer
Amicable are ravenous betrayals for chieftains cloffined by warm sapwood integral to equated tantamount mountains festooning firmaments in quaffed delights rigid and keen
The most welcomed blasphemy fragrant with jejune originality celluloid enamors splenetic with sprees of perishable profanity lurking ever more obscene
Regaled in the modest jostle is the forsifamiliation of heterodyne dins of honest applause from the blackguarded periphery among which there are no visible beacons no visible stars
Scarred by diacope enumerated in prescient revelry the trollops of tune and attunement magnetize a riveting weld of seamless geometry that is permeable to ineffable lychgates both porous with prowess and ajar against a golfer’s remediable par
Wizened ghosts flirt with tucked bushes in the forlorn deserts jolted by oasis and flagrant with confection torn asunder by wide-eyed gallantry skipping stones on ataraxia from a distraught afar
That lake of goldmines is scattershot with limey limelight squandered on profligate wrikponds of propinquity but not prolixity in scores and bounties of exoticism in glaikery’s fugitive charm
In proximity there is usucaption but the usufruct of sustainable obelisks to liberty must have the forbearance to bear many witnessed eyes to the Right to Bear Arms
Skirmishes of benighted fracking obsolescence ragged with vitriol and poison-ivy nostalgia flaunt the bromides of algedonic flash over consequences that many disregard
Spiraling with vertiginous pain the scowl of obligation is both seamstress of emblazoned effronteries and the proper reflection of seasoned but not seasonable garb
This barbed quandary riddled with rapacious tendency mixed with myopic bonhomie devours a rickety cacophony of diminutive scopes of ******’s glare to prove each atomic indivisible atrocity a carbonated fulmination heavily barbed
This is all why the killjoys monopolize their gangster vices behind tinted windows and chockablock morality are uxorious bridewells for the bridgewater of garbology sketched by vanity in the outrecuidance of gallionic chasms of an absolute value of firebrand regard
No difference does it make if the recoil is whimpered by hordes of sheep in pretenses of authenticity or whether decapitated delopes emerge from visagist dacoitage snuffed like flavors orbiting self-injury by clockwork towers apace to outlast tertiary bribes for secondary bards
The atocia of freckles in recognition of frail pinnacles summited by daily alpine dilettantist dualisms of polarity are a gullywasher to cleanse and launder indelible regrets carved by aboriginal pottery to memorialize primordial penury
As the slick oleaginous tilts of wicked smart Northeasters swarm the hindsight of Southern Weather afflicted by tempests beleaguered first on recapitulations of Calvary and then deposited evidence upon bourgeoisie
Fumes of the modest flambeaus torching sunken apostasies of hungry spasms of the wind meeting the brusque celerity of the ribald waves rarely etch sublime hint in etch-a-sketch lapses of untimely mobility
Instead that perspicacity of conservatory silence bludgeons Lisbon in the fright before the fall of so many a Phoenix in a foreign land can bear the assaults of the heaved seas
Lambent upon a craggy regularity extinguished by sentinels of the tattered womb for a grimace of prestige by primipara seduction we find no justice of known and knowable terminal disease
Figurative in spoken wisps that predate evaporated concepts of precipitous time the triumph of exalted adoration belongs to hubris but vacant of the prideful decline of crime
To each outspoken verve witnessed on sublunary turf the absolution is nearer to fertility than the craggy soil is to dirt as blemished prowess is a furlough to the sensitive pink tucked manifold beneath each authentic skirt
Liberated by ophelimity but flexed by vicarious pomp in serenade only of hauteur for the hottest we slice and dice a cavern of temptations regardless of enumerated patterns of clearly lopsided dice
We think we live and die but You Only Live Twice in ******* to the oriental bolides of meteoric meteorology preeminent in governing plantations of rice
In jubilant proclamation, I graft from venereal skin a renewed girth of purpose that all enchanted fantasia is a birthright of pleasure more than a vapid drawl of purpose
Glitter bores the scintillation of a denuded naked glory of gore because intimacy is antecedent and consequent to immovable revolutionary procreation of service
To conclude this homily the apothecary in persiflage renounces the role of kilns in both poverty and pottery because his shaken dreams are yelps of a disgusted ornery camaraderie
Listless by oracular dreams of titanic parvenus immune to the sway of tentative croons of Suburban Muse because the grisly subversion of vetust honor that honors not verdict but version of ghastly spools of flimsy epitaphs and not the paragon surgeon is the downfall of a diatribe of petty men
Littering their taradiddles on owleries in overclocked jaundice drowning for purpose among hatcheries of the privvy roosters that own the consequence of audacious pens
Dodgy in interrogation, flummoxed with deracination, isolated by time for time’s recapitulation of surrender in katzenjammer vibes it is time for gossamer servant surfers to borrow nine and hang ten
But the noose of the wednongue nun specializes in puritanical Model Ts for DeLoreans trendsetting years ago because listless lethargy benights the glory that cineastes already won
Teeming on the brink of tomorrow is the progeny of hopeless yesteryear engraved on the iconoclasm of the weak after the next debacle because the Earth after Christ has already borne a Ton
Liturgies revised to reflect corsair trigonometry aimed forever at zephyrs of plight bathe in July 3rd infamy doctored by Generators and Generations before and beyond Walter White menacing the saber with imperious might
Flowered in the nuisance of death is the womb of the arena participant to infinite relapses of contention gladiatorial only when the shunamitism of shanachies sheds serpentine grit for the blench of ligonies of redoubled sight
Towering from the knave inferno of a tramontane elusive cordial imitation of captive citizens of attentive sites the illusion is the vanguard of centuries guarded gingerly by Canada Dry sprites
Rollicking in vehement magpiety attuned to machismo if marginally the sultry philander of naked ruse medicates the charmed Apache Indian on his brief encounters with limousine cruise
Stark in sunken destination glimpsing coal-fire recursive ironies the cloned subversion is a golden calf so effete because it never moos about instinctual muse relegated by twin terrors riddled with sparkplug truce
Limited by scopes enlarged by scales mired in funereal pyres to rigmarole sensationalism worthy of nativist coercion and pivoted lyres the riddle of terminus remains an acquiescent scoff, cough and quaff that never expires
It reaches planetary dread of vast distances regaled against gambits of the spread so the richest sourdough appeases the riper vipers of the nested bed
Recalcitrant with frugal uxorious creed the leader of esquivalience is the headless horseman of innumerable tractions but no mouth to feed
He digests the gallop of the gallant interregnum specious in caitiff ploys and the recessive allele of commiserations against the piety of apolaustic joy because rambunctious speed always attracts a resignation professed from the tailspin of a crass voyage of ludic greed
Tricksters boast of passionate lubrications of finessed bread recocted from useless toasts glowering with insipid pallor as heat and humidity reckon billows of hype congregated more in cisterns of apostasy for remark than a marksman headshot of a Head Hunter wed tightly to a pregnable visions of proactive Ghost
Recidivism and time have a vendetta against verdant drolleries coated by waxen plenilune accordions rampant with polyacoustic rhymes
The tridents of mercurial weather bent on the ineffable vacillations of whether are the brazen opponent of Sterling fatherhood of life’s only father the clockwork animation of a living patronage of eternal existence cobbled from immutable time
To the glory of the Father the sun shades its whimpers and the moon alights as the frontispiece of nocturnal revisions to the New York Times but the hues of rocketed ingenuity coax the ingratiated few to the laureates of genius reckoned with both designation and superlative artifacts of pristine design
Haunted by Green-Light Politics for Greener-Eyed Ladies masquerading in star-crossed tomes of existential dread of lollygagged playful mischief tucked in the coach as he leads his team with sophrosyne feel-good invictive treacle we witness the fumiducts of fortune blitzing Hail Mary contrition with earnest specialty in defense of offensive precision
Games won by the squirrel are outnumbered by the stars in the heavens flagrantly devoid of specialized electricity enough to encapsulate the ommateum of collectivized insights found only in the most evolved sequence of cell division
Incarcerated by the scrappy schlep of bad beats and bronzed chariots roiled by the momentum of angular spears we seek oracular transcendence that cements decades into the span of days that portend the deliverance of future years from past and present fears
Presiding as proctor in the redacted exoneration of crash-course pilots glowering with the effluvium of recensed perdition the heyday of one becomes the mayday of anarchy tested only by the alacrity of the summation of its beloved yet maligned cheers
Against a prosperity hard-won by earnest husbandry commandeered by gammerstang notoriety spawning the recrimination of star power into centupled peers negligent of zero-sum opinionation wagered by Country Club fraternities embedded in the taxonomy of wilted hackumber for hegiras minimized by outcry but cemented by Dear Johns’ twinged with sultry pleonexia in taxed tears
So with the whipsaw of the individual between the collective funnel and the idiosyncratic insubordination that amplifies outcry galvanized throes of insemination built on cross-pollination is melliferous to a pretense of alchemy outstretched to sidereal wonder
Hardest to guess is intimacy clothed in Platonic virtues crumbling because puritanical pilgrimage is appraised as a joyous thunder for a abnegation from all potential blunders
To wager such a life is a depredation of the abundance that John breathes as a ceremonial birthright cast aside by latent regrets stampeding the realm of nosocomial reflections of the pallor of a lurid squander
So we are left to bemuse the decrepit bodewash of realism taken to such a virulent extreme it leaves few artifacts of nostalgia to croon about and ponder and fewer abstractions to yield to manicures of elegant troponder
Diminutive sinews in the intertesselations of heft profess a fidelity of notoriety carving life before and after death
Unsung by the beadledom of the usucaption of exotic tailored musician brutes upon my landlocked assault of chryselephantine usufruct I lampoon nescience as it lurks in murky graveyards of anoegenetic zombies covered in thick pigments of piggish soot
Yet this fuliginous bronteum of warped clarity transfixed by the ulterior wednongues of atrocious spans of provenance jilting providence makes betting interests of rivalry outcomes harder to win earnest roots
The trees of the gamboled skittish resignation of checkered blinks obscuring the curtailed discernment of bedizened slogans of future campaigns yet distasteful in ornery churning the bootstrapped tie their tethered laces to their acquired boots
Barnstorming through afflicted spandrels of abeyance shepherded by notions of public dereliction by imperium of centrobaric centripetal philters of concubine rhymes I surge beneath cordial flonky redhibition because of redshorts in estimable traction cemented by supernal design
Weak in luster my potent pollination for synergistic aplomb evades the fringe of corrugated affections mounted upon quixotic escapades of jockeyed statistics flourishing by reticence rather than frazzling the prolix emulation filibustering the mundane ignorance but garnering the harvest of the plevisable sequence from prime to prime indivisible by liberty alone or complicit with cadence sublime
Finishing the sermons of modern apostasy to a gallant cause my laments outnumber the muzzles belonging to the quorum of begrudged applause in the rawest spectacle of unheralded genius clawing insistently at the heart of electric gravity
The nuances of plausible nuisance bicker in emerald harlots of the tantamount nature of derelict frikmag to calculated prosodemic solidarity around insanity because the vein of the golden ore should see ivoride as nullification and inanity
We all stoop on counterfeit stencils of pretense hearkening a clairvoyant sun to droop for closer inspection but detective remonstrance is outmoded by dreary witless defections
Thus the drawl scrawled by the genius flonky in gadzookerie but gilded in rhapsodies of ineffable cadence fighting orthodoxy to a relegated draw sketches the outline of the special talents of lying claws
Because stipulated in the vast oversight that predicates reprisals of retches glazing in obtuse effronteries with eccedentesiast odontoloxia we witness the corrosion of race and gender into pontificating audits of nomadic treason in a fortress militarized by niche applause
Trickling from repcrevel faucets implicit degradation is a casual casualty of an abbreviated motive gestured in ponderous stupidity to distract abiding legislation into the giggled gaggle of tinsellated glitter
Fatuous by vacuums of gaudy prizes worthy only of token motions rather than locomotive strains of virulent and compassionate respect lapsed on vigors of vehement regret is a sing-song ridicule of a still-framed pillory erected as the obstacle that gouges the riddles of impediment and deprives the luxury of preferential emolument siphoned off to lurid jeers of mockery propaganda sizzling in the cauldrons of tilted marginalization
So we witness the faded declension of the hubris of fair-weather camaraderie as a flux dispersal of invidious buoyant bloviated streaks of temporal grit into inverted revelry never shared by the proper ubiquity of streams of personal recompense for plodding fragments of invasion
If I veer away from bickering cackles of denounced preeminence swiveled to face the shadows upon the great cavern of insuperable bounds of fickle human ignorance I deplore the vaunted toadies that shrink my shadow and diminish my viable conceptual and vibrant footprints
Few extinct creatures know the annihilation of petty fame quaffed on Whiskey Bars I never met because the insipid banal pleonasms of restructured irony grimace at my complexion as the scent of the game alerts the foibles of a champion begotten once before as a shark-tank prince
Livid is my grief in the aborning moral quandary of sunken priority overlapping with piebald skeumorphs of retches of blinkered allegiance faltering prior to the primary day of my true awakening because the completion of nesiote subterfuge  rusts on creaky hinges of noncommittal regressions of pointed but pointless deluge
I spar with the augury of irrelevance with a five-pointed star bequeathing rigid but plentiful provision to assist with more than a petty dime of tithe to a 20/20 flash of perfect prescience and hallowed vision
The eve of all destruction is the lollygag of subordinate squawks redacting convenient priorities on the slowpoke walks through teenage immaturity found in the infamous “talk” that the world is governed by evasion in supremacy rather than by the bywords of the perennial stocks in sublime stalks
This nation perishes with my visionary clarity because the bifocal constraints of delimited defenestration remands my custody beneath ****** upheaval documented by useless historians of deliberation in gaffe and ammunition for agitprop flickering away the aubades of praise for the stilted pretense of sclerotic values inflexible to authorship thus scuttled by crowdsourced dictatorship
How sad a spate that the welters of sciamachy hide behind the glaring shadow of immeasurable genius for an unwarranted earwig to steal the echoes of my thunder and poison the servitude of the minions to companionship to highlight aggrieved infamy over walloping feats of refrain found in an isolated rather than protracted celebrity
The guilt of the reproachable beams through the frikmag of tyrannical bouts of circular wernaggle as I carve spherical reckoning that outstretches in all viable directions so that “The Mailman” and the Male Man both succeed in historic insurrection
Flashy benumbed brutish ferules of ferocious dainty dances with an arbitrary cage highlighted among a voiceless heyday for an auditorium which perceives insanity more dangerous than inanity is a profane stipulation by wrinkled mediagenic hubris which scours planetary limitations for excuse to recourse and recourse to excuse
We find marvels in subtlety finicky on the apothegms of heterochrony divergent even further from syndication as the regimented nuances of abuse become plucky daredevils that cozen robust vital sapwood from anglers seizing by seizure the roundabout logic of the innumerable minority characterized forever obtuse
I writhe in delicate contortions of flexed directional bypass surmounting orthodromic velocities capering with the anenometers that spar against spangled enthusiasm only to become an anointed slave of the flagging moral resolve fulminating a huffed crusade with silentiums of false asylum for true achievement brusque against any resourceful tempest scurrying the hidebound illusion of pandemonium for scrappy shenanigans of vergers and emptied pews griping with the dearth of the day-to-day despite the known tomorrow
We cannot affix primary focus upon constellated wasms of puckered abstention borrowed from a maskirovka of secret hedonism wed to many vices among wives but deprived of sacrosanct remuneration for abiding expenses yet an atoll upon a continent decisive in its aborning revolution
Ribald wiseacres of a jovial dismay flanged on rectiserial exaggerations of sebastomania is a stranded frigate of a fugitive escapism wandering with nomadic insistence against cosseted blackguard of assertion without plenipotentiary verdicts against the suborned crater of overstated flimsy truculence in sardonic dissolution
In trespass of a reservation of recoiled tender of tutelage proctoring unseemly haggardly refuse to creak into noisome and noisy cacophony armed by centurions of merciless scorn that lackadaisical winter belies the meteoric riches of autumn mainour fungible with the retches of remorseful decay dangling retreat above entreaty for exasperated wednongues lacking curiosity or the backbite of counterfeit engastrimyths seeding an unknowing complicity to fallacy forked over by chiefs and chefs to an amounted dubiety reserves the armaments of glib sedition for inopportune blacklists by a whitewashed Listerine amenable to launder travestime into oversight rather than belabor banal graft upon the agelasts of a toilsome operose labor to trivialize Herculean monuments to creativity as backwater residence of restive plucky percurrent revivals of infamy as a primary thorn rather than a secondary abreaction
Sentinels swift to the expedited squalor intrepid in sclerotic simpers of renowned defalcation bludgeoned by the tridents of harmonized trauma healing the brayed complaint while regaining the quixotic statute of plevisable mobility belongs to the froward counterpunch to the flippant underminnow of savagery yet among noble personage a blip on furloughs rather than a singed diacope perishing in Wasting Light for denuded darkness to supplant the vacated stage of ironic upbringing bartered from a treasury of obsolete wasms of trivial shadows in the amounted lineage of time.
Elected by the purblind fudged cadge of intransigent solidarity behind unhinged proclamations of lewd lunacy the reset of wibble-wabble and conflagrations of trenchant visibility will cloud the cloudiest tempest with hurricane-force devastation by the healing stripes of the piebald idiosyncrasy of gerrymandered defamation failing where insular regeneration outlasts hamartia and blinkered foibles of girouettism to pillory the excess but not transmogrify the whittled progress of seminal generativity unbounded by harped lyres of discord for secret concords of select femicide
With outstretched hands I point to the tapestry of the Heavens as eternal folksy witness that to endear the temperance of time bullishly roaring on the laureates of prolific servitude to the malleable substance of capered argument the enigmatic punctuation outweighs the baragnosis of miscreant opportune glares at personal prospect for aggrieved sockdolagers of redstrall over the filigrees of innate geometry to cackle above the shouted gnash and the dissoluble squirms of blackened cremation of living memories into insipid fracking of sapwood caitiffs flowing on the motion of discredit rather than honor in valuable endeavor for future genuflection
Totems value me as much as they stalk grazed hinderbaggle of cosmetic devolution of ragged popcorn theatrics in the desuetude of normative ethics beneath the carcass of rotten dastardly cowardice brandishing an ulterior discretion beneath the level of the lowest stoop of any breed founded on loyalty verging into flagrant snipers of integrity for the integral unshakable paragon of broad illumination the guidepost for many spectral truths overshadowed by one miserly fool flummoxing with albatross without the overhang  of pluvious integrity shepherding his hauteur in zig-zagged wallops rather than buoyant serenades
Thus entrenched in juicy poignant barricades against virulent spawn of the katzenjammers of squawking femicide I spout the blossom, bequeath the gift, renounce the delusion and form a formidable bastion against depredated valleys blemished from sight by intolerable patches of darkened verdure hiding from commonwealth perception the pearl of ecumenical salvation swimming in the naked tongues of honest profession dancing with conventional demarcated demerits of Rimbaud ramshackle deracination as a humdrum belittled squander of a prop of craven filibuster rather than beavers outsmarting the delignated destruction of habitat because of outright distaste for plucky individuation above the squalor of relativism in minor octaves of gnashed betrayal rigged by hamsters rather than owned by the men trigger-happy with rat race motivation only to the servitude of degrees rather than plausible recovery embedded into the fabric of fickle society
Hidebound tomes fishing for destruction but grappling with the enormity of the plagued pitfall of ceramic skirmish with brittle conscience emerge with epincion rather than sulk in brooded hyperbole of convenient drapes of flocks postulating irrelevance clearly in the light of the truest day frolicking with gigantic swaddles of curated support etching masterpieces of traipse into the frescades of future calenture beyond the petty misestimation of hemitery politics
Thus the weapon serves two masters of row rather than regatta and the besieged rankles the testy predicament to a teased poetry riveted by years of rhapsody rather than moments of tomfoolery emergent victorious rather than dilapidated by what-could-have-been chary brinkmanship on the precipice of modern sacrilege
To instruct the herds of men to hoard and the wisdom of the wise to circulate that apothegm of reclamation owns superlative traction fundamental to whimsical festivity even forsaken on a churlish masquerade outmantled by frenetic activity famigerated by the true Richter Scale of public fanfaronade because justice is truth and only in germane truth beyond germ scares will decrepit scarecrows demolish their Fear Factor even when the gullible squirm for nexility on bounded continents rather than novantique frontiers
Conscription demarches for assembly beyond relegation and celebrity above frays of discordant rumination feasting advenient rather than cherishing internal and integral the virtuoso wrabble of residue generations churning wheels of acceleration rather than quibbling extinguished vitality as principal complaint exercised in negligent abodes of facetious barnacles to outlandish freckles in the majestic pulchritude of a Titanic salvation beyond and considering the curglaff of sunken resources pitted to my registry by slot-machine audiences incognizant of brittle whittled henpecks of adoring truth and perdurable verve
We sink and die by destructive tongues but abide and live by righteous exemplary prowess capable of scraping the towering canvass of the firmament and the retches of the deepest sea inhabited by any curiosity worthy of emolument
So in token liturgy I decry sidelong cursory squandered affronts that drive the Jehus madcap with fractious celerities of formal destitution rampant on flonky menace rather than modern hypertrophy
In The End, we see triumph in every nuance and bristling concord with every perspiration of ennobled effort truckling into serrated selachostomous and fractious bromides of wrecking-ball fashionistas fumigating cultural pederasty with subtle bailiwick but ragged travesties of taxidermy celluloid
Marvel in-between the serenade and grandstand and cull the turnverein of triumph from banished evasive rundles of the outlasted calculus to neuter the estranged and to estrange the atocia of vibrant surreal vibes no stranger to an alien hand in a desolate world.
Mary-Eliz Apr 2017
Opal
her name was
Opal
she should have been
Aunt
Opal
but she was
just
Opal

she was bossed around
and tossed around
by our Aunt Marie

we were afraid of her
Opal, that is

though Marie was no
sweet cup of tea

afraid just because she
looked different

though later
long after she’d gone
remembering her smiling round face
and thin slanted eyes
I guess we realized

but back then, we were kids
we didn’t understand
we didn’t see her much

and they didn’t tell us a thing

not who she was
not why she was there
not even that she was kin to our dad
a sister, in fact

she didn’t seem really loved
didn’t seem cared for that much
yet she was so quiet
and
calm

I’d love to go back
I’d love the chance
to smile and look up to her eyes
then
I’d take her hand
lead her gently around
and
call her my sweet
Aunt Opal!
True.
Ever think you know know what you want?
Then the next day you are startled to find yourself lost.
Are the majority of us walking around confused?
Lost in a moment only to find the moment's passed.

Certainty must be written in the smallest font.
We live in search of satisfaction, but at what cost?
Striving to be pleased with the small stuff, yet confused.
Living in glass boxes hoping the last stone to cast.

Who will set me free from these thoughts that haunt?
Strange as independent I am that I long to be bossed.
Wanting someone to shake me and break me from being confused.
Hurry come claim me and please make it fast.

April 6, 2012
Max Neumann Nov 2019
dear idol i
want to be like you

dear idol i
want to be you

scratched your name into my arm
your face is my tattoo
your tattoo is my face

been listening a decade
to your lyrics i'm all

'bout it
wit it

re-in up
bossed up
fetish for dough

baby i be yours
take me as a gift

my game tizzop
Today is a good day.
Terry Collett Mar 2013
Miss Schinzer do not undress
they said but she did and so
they locked her in the side
room alone and she heard the

key turn in the lock and that
was that she heard them walk
away along the passage heard
the footsteps getting soft and

softer then silence the silence
of that abbey she went to some
years back as a child and the nun
with her beady eyes said here

one must absorb the silence here
silence is our food and drink and
she remembered the way the nun
empathised the word silence

the way her lips moulded the word
as if it were brand new and not to
be damaged or spoilt but that was
then as a child before the voices

began before the orders were laid
out for her to obey do not undress
Miss Schinzer they had said but her
voices inside said undress take off

garment by garment and as you do
so think of Christ and how he was
disrobed and hammered to the wood
and she did hearing as she undressed

the hammer on nails the jacket and
then the blouse and then the brassiere
and she felt the chill about her *******
how they stiffened she thought waiting

to remove more cloth waiting for the
voice to say undress more of the clothes
and she recalled how Mr Dimpledone had
said the same thing but she was a child

then a girl in the choir but she didn’t ask
why she just undressed and he just stared
at her and said what are you doing child?
but you said so she said no no he said gruffly

be silent unless you want to leave the choir
but she didn’t remember him saying that not
then but couldn’t be sure and the voices said
take off the lower garments and so she removed

her skirt the black one the one that made her
look like a nun she took it off and then removed
her slip and underwear and sat on the floor quite
bare remembering the hanging Christ the hands

curled like ***** nailed to the cross beam his
naked flesh the wounds the blood and she lay
down flat and put out her arms forming a cross
and her legs tight together one foot touching

the other and over in the corner knitting and
humming some Schubert her bossed eyed mother.
bells are ringing
hear the sound
i'm listening
six feet under ground
i've got a problem
so i've found
no one quite wants me around

i'm a challenge
i've sold my soul
but, i'm still waiting
in this hole
i hear the ringing
i'm set to go
but, i'm still waiting
in this hole

heaven don't want me
and hell ain't ready
not quite yet
hell ain't ready
sitting waiting
i'm ready teddy
heaven don't want me
and hell ain't ready

shot a man
because he crossed me
beat another
cause he bossed me
had a wife
but, now she's lost me
i'm stuck waiting in this hole

fought a war
that had no winner
i'm not a saing
i'm just a sinner
i choked to death
while eating dinner
i'm down here waiting
getting thinner
i'm stuck here in this hole


heaven don't want me
and hell ain't ready
not quite yet
hell ain't ready
sitting waiting
i'm ready teddy
heaven don't want me
and hell ain't ready

hell ain't ready
for me to go there
hell ain't ready
for what i'll do there
hell ain't ready
i think it ain't fair
i'm waiting in this hole
i'm ready, set to go
just waiting in this hole
but,,,hell ain't ready


heaven don't want me
and hell ain't ready
not quite yet
hell ain't ready
sitting waiting
i'm ready teddy
heaven don't want me
and hell ain't ready
Kara MacLean Nov 2010
A mirror is a perception
A trick of the mind
Try looking in a mirror and saying "I'm ugly"
And surely enough that is what you will see
Tainted looks and lost expression
My nose is too big
I have imperfections, including each and every freckle
I am bossed around by worldly views
Through the eyes of fashion magazines and top model
My thoughts pulse and with each pulse my list of imperfections lengthens
I've gained too much weight
I didn't need that sandwich
I need a hair cut
And a possible nose job
I turn away from the mirror
I look at my hands
I feel my waist
I feel skinny
I feel beautiful
So what is with these false perceptions?
These standards of beauty, only meant for a super human
**** the standards
**** the fliers, the model pictures
**** societies standards of me
Because I don't need them.
I've got mine.
By: Kara MacLean
Max Neumann Mar 2020
in a void of air and space
music floats and keeps us safe
you need to listen

fo real and fo shizzle: listen
it's 3:45 everybody bossed up
dough fetish fantasies

the suzuki in a jakuzzi
keeps my mind busy
(keeps my mind busy)

how can you enter the next stage?
it's fo real like tizzops cage
the barrel of a golden gauge

look into my face: a rat race
never ending being fast paced
today is my last day but i will

remain
Today is a good day.
mk Jun 2015
you always spoke of a brighter future
were you referring to the 9 to 5 jobs?
to the apple pie life
or the romance lacking relationship with your wife?
did you mean the mortgages,
the taxes, or the men with grey hair in grey suits?
the jobs you do just for the money
or the people who speak too much, but are still mute?
did you mean the polluted skies or the cursing taxi drivers?
did you mean the way when she touches you, you feel no fire?
how nothing makes you feel alive
but you’re still not really dead?
how nothing is wrong
but you’re itching to put a bullet through your head?
when you said you were working towards a better future
did you mean a life of monotony, dullness and boredom?
what happened to your love of adventure, of mystery,
to your dreams of martyrdom?

looking back now,
would you take it all back?
would you change the way you did things
fill in the gaps?
or would you continue to oblige to the rules and regulations
would you still mindlessly follow the system?
would you carry on doing what they tell you?
those who bossed you around, would you still be with them?
or would you soar and fly
ask questions, ask why?
would you run in the jungles
and climb the highest mountains
would you swim in the seas
and tell your beloveds that you love them?

we only have one life
and we’re always waiting for it to change
we’re working towards a future
to which we have no claim
live, live, I beg you to live
make mistakes and fall
then get back on your feet
don’t hesitate, take it all
for the future is not ours
and the past is too late
but we have the present
don’t let it go to waste
// carpe diem till the very end //
Luna Casablanca Aug 2016
Where are you to hold me when I need you to?
Where are the understanding thoughts others have of my imperfections when I can't help myself either?
Why do the horrid memories replay in my hippocampus when I thought I already turned them off?
Where is my mania to squash my depression half?
Why do I seem helpless and wait forever to succeed in the adult world?
Why do I get so intensely excited then become an antagonistic monster?
Why did I not know then what I know now?
Becoming a victim completely unaware.
Proved wrong and I strip to be the bad one
so everyone shuts up.
Humiliated and hurt and everyone looks out for me.
Naive behavior and hunger too strong I steal from others.
Tears swelling in front of small children.
A girl who wanted nothing but for me to suffer.
A boy who wanted nothing but my genitals.
A troubled woman who wanted nothing but my time.
A guy who wanted nothing but for me to be his *****.
A guy who possessed me,
Though everyone at some point
Did.
I've been owned, abused, humiliated, hurt, assaulted, victimized, bullied, made fun of, attempted to **** myself, blown off, screamed at, fought with, admonished, antagonized, used, looked down on, bossed around, yelled at, pushed, shoved, thrown away.
Today,
I have love that is a beautiful miracle and proof I will be loved without being pushed into what's only for him.
I have a few good friends who care and don't grab my hand.
I occasionally hate who I'm becoming when the anger within is the kraken in my body swerves herself around me inside slowly and aggressively.
Only way she comes out is through profane vulgarity in my words and through my lips.
They're gone,
They're not mine,
They're hurtful,
But remember they're only for a moment.
I'll be done with the anger one day someday,
and the kraken is just a myth.
Though my traumatic stories may seem like a myth too,
be grateful I'm still here and
smiling.:)
Donal Blanchard May 2012
I used to have a voice of my own
It used to sing often, but song was not its only channel
It laughed, cried, urged, cajoled, conversed, loved, cared, preached, bossed, and obeyed.

But my voice got lost in the shadows of my keep
I don't know how, but I think I know why

I could tell I was losing my voice,
could feel it bleed away
No longer acting with edge, it first became dull
then quieter, then simply gone

Along the way, I would ask to talk just to keep my voice alive
I would beg to listen, just so my voice could find a partner to stay with
I got no voice in return, so soon mine stopped trying too

As it got quieter, I would sit in my car and scream at the steering wheel.
Surely, the steering wheel had to listen.  Alas not.
But it didn't matter, because the sound of my own scream proved to me
that my voice was not gone yet, still alive inside of me
Just the act of screaming was a release for my voice
Each day, my voice got ever quieter
One day I screamed in the car, and I heard nothing.  Gone.  

After all these years, my voice came back at me.
Not from my mouth, an echo from another.
Across a chasm I can not reach nor see.
Still I hear a voice.  Not my voice.  But my voice.
I hear my voice.

It started not as a whisper, but a scream.
My voice was screaming at me.
I could not hear what it said, but I know it was my voice
I still hear it, but it still can't tell me what I need to know

So much unsure, uncertain.
Will my voice stay with me this time?
Will the echos grow closer, and will I cross that chasm?

I do not scream in my car now, because I don't need that to proved to me
that my voice is not gone yet, still alive inside of me
I have other ways now.  Healthier ways.  Richer ways

My voice is coming back.  The echos are still here too.
I need all of it, and it needs me

Again I have a voice of my own, and I have my echo to thank.
Someday, there will be no chasm, and the echo will know too.
nick armbrister Aug 2023
What Fun!
I worked in a small call centre once
The boss was fed up of being bossed about
So left his job and set up his own call centre
He became his own boss and my boss
Gave me a job dialling varied accounts
In the US UK and Australia

Including tech support surveys sales
Plus education and B2B accounts
I learnt so much in my year with him
It was different and challenging

Each day was different even fun
I was gal agents cry I saw guys battle
We work drank sang ate danced  
In my first year of BPO work
I’d do it all again oh what fun!
HE ALLAN FAMILY STORY = BRIAN IS GETTING TEASED




YA SEE BRIAN USED TO STARE LIKE, PEOPLE STEALING HIS LUNCH

AND STICKING DRAWING PINS UP HIS ***, AND BEING YELLED AT

BY ****** PEOPLE AND BRIAN CAN’T STAND IT, IT’S ALRIGHT WHILE

BRIAN WAS STILL IN SCHOOL, BECAUSE KIDS TEASE, BUT IT WAS

WHEN HE STARTED WORK AT THE CANBERRA REX HOTEL, BRIAN

BOSSED PEOPLE AROUND, L;IKE HE WAS KING ****, OR SOMETHING

AND TWO FILOPINOS TEASED BRIAN, BY THROWING HIS BIKE IN THE
LINEN TROLLEYBAD, AND THEN, SOME OTHER ****

YELLED AT HIM, BRIAN WAS SCARED, AND THEN STEVE YELLED AT HIM

BECAUSE BRIAN TEASED HIM, AFTER BRIAN WAS STRUGGLING WITH

THE HORRIBLE TEASING AT THE LETS COURSE, BECAUSE BRIAN PREFERRED

TO WATCH TV RATHER THAN DO WOOD WORK AND ALSO REFUSED TO PLAY VOLLEYBALL

ONE REASON IS, THAT LET’S COURSE REALLY ******, AND BRIAN HATES

WHEN EVERYONE RAN INTO HIM, BECAUSE, HE WAS SCARED OF THESE TEASERS,

IT’S NATURAL TO BE SCARED OF TEASERS, LIKE THAT, BRIAN SAID, I PREFER

TO BE IN MY OWN OWN WORLD RATHER THAN BE WITH YOU, AND AT THE

CAR DETAILING COURSE, THIS MAN CLINTON, FOLDED HIS ARMS, YA SEE

HE WAS A MECHAINC, AND THESE TWO YOUNGER ONES WERE SAYING

TO ME WOOSEY WOOSEY WOOSEY WOOSEY, POOFTER POOFTER

AND CLINTON GOT IN THE ACT TO, AS I WAS CLEANING THE CAR

CLINTON SLAMMED THE DOOR, ON ME, PERSONALLY, I FELT VERY WEIRD

FROM THAT SORT OF TEASING, BUT I AM READY FOR TEASING IF I BECOME

FAMOUS ON STAGE, YOU SEE PEOPLE ARE TEASING ME ON THE COMPUTER

AND IN REAL LIFE, I AM A FAMILY PERSON, PART OF THE ALLAN CLAN

YOU SEE, THIS TEASING WAS HORRIBLE, AND IT WAS BECAUSE BRIAN WAS STUPID

AT THE MOMENT, BRIAN LIKES DOING THINGS, IN A CREATIVE WAY

JOINING FACE BOOK, YOUTUBE AND MANY MORE INTERNET SITES

BUT THIS TEASING IS COMING THROUGH THE COSMOS BY HIS GOOD MATE PAT

I
in the beginning we counted no cost
but went rejoicing into the warm rain
so now more grimly we face what we've lost

so many choices into the mix tossed
almost at random it all seemed so plain
in the beginning we counted no cost

as being worth waiting no text was glossed
for hidden messages all was just gain
so now more grimly we face what we've lost

a world more troubled a future star-crossed
no brilliant thoughts emerging from each brain
in the beginning we counted no cost

instead we are the ones who now are bossed
ordered about and marked with a sad stain
so now more grimly we face what we've lost

knowing that morning will see the first frost
that signals a new winter with its pain
in the beginning we counted no cost
so now more grimly we face what we've lost
Ingenue Jun 2014
~When I was 4
my parents left me in a car
in an unfamiliar neighborhood
while they attended a party
because I had fallen asleep
When I awoke
I cried
and went to a strangers house
asking for my mom
they called the cops
it was my fault.
~When I was 7
I got home after school
nobody was home
I waited a little bit
then called my friend's mom
scared, and had them pick me up
When my parents got home
a little bit later
they had been shopping
everything was fine
it was my fault.
~When I was 9
I began to have night terrors
I couldn't sleep
I cried and cried
my dad tried to understand
but there was only so much he could take
he made me sleep alone
upstairs
but I didn't sleep
I was afraid
and it was my fault.
~When I was 11
I found some friends
they were really cool
and I wasn't cool enough for them
they bossed me around
and I bought them ice cream
When my best friend
told me that Janelle was her best friend
not me
I cried, I didn't understand
and it was my fault.
~When I was thirteen
I thought I was in love
though I didn't know loves meaning
I was fooled and tricked
led on and hurt
I was pathetic
and it was my fault.
~When I was 15
I got over my first love
found a boy that was very cute
he said he loved me
and we made love
my first time
and many more followed
but it was all a lie
and mind games began
I believed him
it was my fault.
~When I was 17
I met a boy
whose heart was a diamond
who touched every person he met
he was loved by all
a caring, understanding, trustworthy person
something I had never come across
I took that amazing beautiful thing
the one person that told me
it's not your fault
and ruined it for myself
and it was my fault.
lotti123 Aug 2015
Why do I stop writing when I know I'm going mantally insane
Not saying what I want to say
Dealing with life everyday
If you haven't figure it out now
I'm venting my feelings
In the only way I know how
My poetry is my therapist
And my words and thoughts are
The things that calm me down
Because I'm bossed around on the daily
And expected to do the unexpected
Feeling so stretched thin
Can almost scream
because the stress it brings
Zulu Samperfas Nov 2012
"I'll probably be in the bathroom before it, throwing up," says my Union representation
I'm in her office, seeking her advice
And she knows exactly what I'm going through
Except for her it was because of another him, not you
And now it's you.  Now it's both of our plight.

You sent me to her because you're "concerned"
If I don't play my cards right, from you I'll be burned
"If he doesn't know what to do,
if he feels cornered he'll get abusive and attack."
Says another ally who has my back

My union rep feels my pain
Why are we on this sick train?
Bossed by people with no people skills
Do they think they don't need to deal with human beings?

Lies about me, you think are truths.
Can I shake loose?  
Or is this just going to turn ugly

Take the higher ground, she says
Document everything says the other
One way or another
I feel the crowd closing in
Targeted, cases made against me about how I don't fit in
Willfully ignore the rules

To think I once thought we'd be friends
Well, that is at an end.
I don't know if I'll survive
Now I can barely look at you, barely say "hi"

Always at the end,
I gather around women
we help each other
we must defend
against the gathering male onslaught
people who attack without thought
Never a man in sight
The knight is a myth, it's right
The knight is the one with the weapon
And we women must gather together for protection
Livingdeadgirl Mar 2015
what can i feel
but the beating of my own heart
the acheing of my own flesh
the damnation of my own soul and mind
that i go through this pain
this torture
and i can only call it this
life
the memories and tortures i share
the moment i bleed
for the blood drains away
through the deep wounds
the ones i have
my heart is heavy
there's a hand there
squeezing harder and harder
i feel it but am powerless to stop it
tighter, tighter
but the beat doesn't slow
it's torture
agony
the pain i face
i need to lash out
need to cry
want to feel safe
but nowhere is safe
not anymore
i need to run
i can't stay
i don't want to
but i'm forced to
i have to
have to stay in this place
where i'm ******
where i'm condemned
why can't i die
as i write i see this
i'm shaking now
not afraid
but *******
i am helpless
i keep losing the battle
i have two wars
one outside
and one inside
both tearing me apart
limb by limb
part by part
piece by piece
'tll there's nothing left
i feel sick
lost
i contemplate my demise
would anyone miss me
i don't know
maybe
those who don't fully know mw
just one thing stoping me
i hate pain
if only i could ask someone
to come **** me quickly
if they'd do it
i'd be ok
knowing
i didn't wouldn't
deal with this
****** up
world anymore
please!!!
anyone???
i'm begging anyone too
to please help
and put me out of my misery
i want out...
no, wait... not want...
no...NEED out...
i'm so cold
i'm alone
completely
utterly
alone...
and i don't know what to do
i want/need to cry,
to let the pain out,
but they won't come
i need to scream
but i can't
i'm not allowed to
i'm just supposed to listen
to be the perfect little slave
to be bossed about
and to do everything perfectly
i'm tired now
hopefully i can fall asleep
and never wake up
so i say good bye
and maybe we'll meet again
someday
Tom Cooney Jan 2016
I want to Hunt.
I want to find Prey, and take from it, the way Predators have done since time immemorial.
Beasts like me are meant to Hunt, not sit around and play pretend that we're Prey, or are just there to be guard dogs for them against, "bad people".
I don't want to be subjugated by Prey animals because of their opinions on how a Beast should act when I am perfectly capable of breaking every bone in the hand they're using to stick their finger in my face.
I tire of being bossed about by Prey and by Weak Beasts. I tire of being limited based on fantastical versions of reality in which there are no Predators. What angers me most is that there's enough Weaklings that are willing to defend the Prey that I can't have at any of them without being locked in a cage or killed. By my OWN KIND.
Someday soon, when the laws of Men fail, and We the People are forced to fend for themselves...they will remember that the Predators are still there.
When the laws of Nature that Prey thought they could hide from come, yet again, into effect- they will remember.
And they will wish that they had hidden more carefully.
The Fire Burns Sep 2016
Now gather around and listen to this
This is something that you don’t want to miss
A song about, fishing, shooting and hunting deer
I imagine we will mention some beer

Might even talk about whiskey and coke
Forty creek and Seven and maybe a smoke
Might quote the Doors, and even The Who
Ask, WWJD, What would Jed do

Well since you ask its time to cast
A top water out and work it back fast
Zara ***** on an ABU 5500C3
St. Croix rod as good as it can be

Fishing some pads on the south side of Fork
Waiting to set the hook, and reel with some torque
10 pound bass, explodes on my lure
Up from the depths, an attack that’s pure

Count to 3 set the hook in her lip
She comes up, tail walks and backflips
Pulls lots of drag, it’s a hell of a fight
But I’m gonna win, try as she might

Tournament lift into the floor of the boat
Make my buddy take my picture, while I gloat
Post it to Facebook, not telling how many likes
Its chorus time now, gonna sing in the mic

My buddies and me, man we love the outdoors
Say let’s go and listen for the slamming doors
Gear being loaded and Pickup trucks crank
Gravel flies down the drive, hear it click and clank
Off the fenders and bumper we’re on the way
Boys with toys headed out to play

This time though were at the caliche pit
Shooting pistols and talking ****
Brought every gun in the arsenal to shoot
12 gauge muzzle on the toe of my boot

Hollering pull, let the clays fly
From over my head they whizz by
Draw a bead and slap the trigger
Next guy in line is really eager

Clay turns to dust, he is out of luck
It’s still my turn, so he’s stuck
I finally miss and its on to the next
Pull out the .50 muscles flexed

Way down range bucketful of water explodes
Underneath it the grass and dirt erodes
One shot one **** those rounds cost
Out come the AR’s, everyone’s bossed

Shoot a few more rounds, its getting dark
Loaded it all back up in the truck that’s parked
Get it all on home, its dinner time
Give my wife a kiss, man is she fine
White tail stew and some home fries
Had a good time hanging out with the guys

My buddies and me, man we love the outdoors
Say let’s go and listen for the slamming doors
Gear being loaded and Pickup trucks crank
Gravel flies down the drive, hear it click and clank
Off the fenders and bumper we’re on the way
Boys with toys headed out to play

Its November, and you know what that means
Headed to the lease in my camo jeans
Up in the morning, out to the stand
13 inches wide is what the state demands

Binos around my neck, 270 leaned
In the corner of my stand, hear the corn fling
Feeder went off like mornings alarm
Grab the rifle throw it up on my arm

Muzzle out the window, not long to wait
9 point buck and his cute little date
My freezer is empty, time to refill
They finally line up and stand still

One shot two kills, both through and through
My buddy call, asks, hey was that you
I tell him yes, and we have work to do

Rack was so big, didn’t need a ruler
Deer all quartered, cleaned and in the cooler
Time for a cigar, and some Whiskey and coke
Sit around and celebrate enjoy the smoke

Steak on the grill, fire burning in the pit
Buddy says this is the life isn’t it
I just nod and take another sip
He nods back sticks in a dip

Morning comes pack it up and go
Back to the house where the love flows
For the wife and kids and the **** dog
Its where I am the boss hog
Make time for your family and friends
You just never know when it will end

My buddies and me, man we love the outdoors
Say let’s go and listen for the slamming doors
Gear being loaded and Pickup trucks crank
Gravel flies down the drive, hear it click and clank
Off the fenders and bumper we’re on the way
Boys with toys headed out to play
overladen snow covered crackle and crunch
though, this skeptic owned a doubtful hunch
that such 24/7 round the clock whether coverage
     would make laughingstock of forecasting
     how Jack Frost feigned being out to lunch

and merely his
     (or maybe he hiz a her saving
     best surprise for last, thus Jackie Frost,
     cuz women feel snubbed, shortchanged,
     excluded, and being bossed
around feeling pinched at emotional,

     physical, and spiritual cost
with million plus women marches
     that did exhaust
yet, brought more equitable treatment,
     and now risk being lost
in space at the outer limits
     of the twilight zone or tossed
     into the maws of Earth vis a vis

donning miner for a heart of gold,
where a frayed life line offers tenuous hold
nonetheless, despite risks to life and/or limb
     females can experience em bold
dinned journeying
     exposing them to in extremis cold
and worthy bets
     at gambling halls upon casino bluffing,

     thence, slapping (with poker face)
     upon table a winning hand
     abruptly forcing game to fold
grinning ear to ear while she scoops up gold

repudiating ugly rumors stereotyping women,
     within which many other arenas
     the devastatingly constricting mold
now upon many another proving grounds

     non verbally, smugly,
     and proudly assert" i told
     you so" garnering, inviting, and
     kickstarting kudos where,
     their overdue praiseworthy virtues extolled
which hard fight now pits

     more gals to enter the scrum
letting actions speak louder than words
as bragging rights allow them to keep mum
though insinuating

     rightful opportunity to whisk plum
ming access, where once (and still
     to a lesser degree)
     men didst unfairly prune
     and hurl cruel names like hey "****

     bag", and/or other unflattering brickbats
     versus increasing plaudits showered from
on high spelling vic tory
     toward equality effacing glum
scowl into smile breaking out
     finding more men grudgingly
     bestowing deserved accolades
     re-evaluating degrading

     the fairer *** with dumb
asinine barbs, now underscoring
     befriending opposite gender
     making ladies in waiting
     tubby a worthy chum

now, this ***
seeks Alma Mater dames
     and graduates of
     Hard Knocks School Alum.
The date of the celebration
(the second day of February) coincides
with medieval feast of Candlemas,
and its pre-Christian predecessor,
Imbolc, a day also rich in folklore.

An old Scottish prophecy foretells
sunny weather on Candlemas
means a long winter.

The tradition is recounted in this poem:
As the light grows longer
The cold grows stronger
If Candlemas be fair and bright
Winter will have another flight
If Candlemas be cloud and snow
Winter will be gone and not come again
A farmer should on Candlemas day
Have half his corn and half his hay
On Candlemas day if thorns hang a drop
You can be sure of a good pea crop.

Punxsutawney Phil is the focal point
of oldest and largest annual
Groundhog Day celebration,
held in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania,
every year since 1886.

Members of Phil’s “Inner Circle”
claim he is now 137 years old,
(rumor circulates this one groundhog lived
to make weather prognostications
since 1886, sustained by drinks
of "groundhog punch"
or "elixir of life" administered
at annual Groundhog
Picnic in the fall),
hence thanks to said magical
life-extending serum
they feed him each year—
and his predictions
one hundred percent accurate.

Coincides with astronomy's
first cross-quarter day,
marking the midpoint between
winter solstice and
spring (vernal) equinox,
which will occur at 5:24 PM on
in Northern Hemisphere
Eastern Standard Time
Monday, March 20, 2023

Small consolation old man winter
spans fewest days
of all four seasons,
especially when

A powerful nor'easter
will develop in western Atlantic
beginning late Friday,
(February third two thousand
and twenty three)
bringing heavy snow,
strong winds and
coastal flooding to parts
of the East Coast,
but there remains
a larger than usual amount
of uncertainty in forecast
for this storm.

Yours truly remembers
when spry Jack (****) Frost
(just yea high -
both arms stretched to sky)
came early, left late and bossed
zealous vernal equinox
rattling barenaked lady branches
obviously inapropos
to budding friendship.

Now (courtesy global warming/ climate change)
mother nature experiences feeling strange
within valleys and atop many mountain range,
wherein goods traded away on stock exchange.

Fortunate concerning yours truly
versus daring to brave
inclement treacherous weather
getting stranded in the process
(possibly becoming gratefully dead)
risking life and limb venturing forth

amidst near whiteout conditions
creating debacle perilous and grave
shoveling snow lest he get buried
he can remain holed up
(in tandem with the missus)
snug as a bug in his mancave.

While nestled inside warm abode for awhile
(at least until temperature upwards doth dial
safely ensconced against elements (of style),
I stopped at metaphoric woods edge
trekking until... for no rhyme nor reason
the poetic metered equivalent,
viz another mile
then stopped for coffee break

burst of energy gave me cause to smile
fording imponderable stream of consciousness
impossible (airy) mission to dodge regarding
aforesaid daunting task to craft worthwhile
poetic endeavor to entertain anonymous readers
gleaning how one bard (with his shaky spear)
evokes fiction being snowbound
as if cast adrift within Siberian exile.

Straightaway I continue writing askew
aware how literary trademark modality
characteristic of one hapless wordsmith
unwittingly indelibly embedded
analous to mine Caucasian
versus swarthy melanin hue

man automatically confers eligibility granting
innumerable known mighty opportunities
(privileged skin color - how unfair)
bigoted prejudices shade those
either hashtagged as black,
naturally copper toned gentile and/or Jew.
Rhoda Jun 2019
Am I just a toy?
To be used when your feelings are young and indefinite which u claim them not to
Am I just a toy?
To be tossed and thrown and bossed around all day
Am I just a toy?

— The End —