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I met him on the Amtrak line to Central Jersey. His name was Walker, and his surname Norris. I thought there was a certain charm to that. He was a Texas man, and he fell right into my image of what a Texas man should look like. Walker was tall, about 6’4”, with wide shoulders and blue eyes. He had semi-long hair, tied into a weak ponytail that hung down from the wide brim hat he wore on his head. As for the hat, you could tell it had seen better days, and the brim was starting to droop slightly from excessive wear. Walker had on a childish smile that he seemed to wear perpetually, as if he were entirely unmoved by the negative experiences of his own life. I have often thought back to this smile, and wondered if I would trade places with him, knowing that I could be so unaffected by my suffering. I always end up choosing despair, though, because I am a writer, and so despair to me is but a reservoir of creativity. Still, there is a certain romance to the way Walker braved the world’s slings and arrows, almost oblivious to the cruel intentions with which they were sent at him.
“I never think people are out to get me.” I remember him saying, in the thick, rich, southern drawl with which he spoke, “Some people just get confused sometimes. Ma’ momma always used to tell me, ‘There ain’t nothing wrong with trustin’ everyone, but soon as you don’t trust someone trustworthy, then you’ve got another problem on your hands.’”—He was full of little gems like that.
As it turns out, Walker had traveled all the way from his hometown in Texas, in pursuit of his runaway girlfriend, who in a fit of frenzy, had run off with his car…and his heart. The town that he lived in was a small rinky-**** miner’s village that had been abandoned for years and had recently begun to repopulate. It had no train station and no bus stop, and so when Walker’s girlfriend decided to leave with his car, he was left struggling for transportation. This did not phase Walker however, who set out to look for his runaway lover in the only place he thought she might go to—her mother’s house.
So Walker started walking, and with only a few prized possessions, he set out for the East Coast, where he knew his girlfriend’s family lived. On his back, Walker carried a canvas bag with a few clothes, some soap, water and his knife in it. In his pocket, he carried $300, or everything he had that Lisa (his girlfriend) hadn’t stolen. The first leg of Walker’s odyssey he described as “the easy part.” He set out on U.S. 87, the highway closest to his village, and started walking, looking for a ride. He walked about 40 or 50 miles south, without crossing a single car, and stopping only once to get some water. It was hot and dry, and the Texas sun beat down on Walker’s pale white skin, but he kept walking, without once complaining. After hours of trekking on U.S. 87, Walker reached the passage to Interstate 20, where he was picked up by a man in a rust-red pickup truck. The man was headed towards Dallas, and agreed o take Walker that far, an offer that Walker graciously accepted.
“We rode for **** near five and a half hours on the highway to Dallas,” Walker would later tell me. “We didn’t stop for food, or drink or nuthin’. At one point the driver had to stop for a pisscall, that is, to use the bathroom, or at least that’s why I reckon we stopped; he didn’t speak but maybe three words the whole ride. He just stopped at this roadside gas station, went in for a few minutes and then back into the car and back on the road we went again. Real funny character the driver was, big bearded fellow with a mean look on his brow, but I never would have made it to Dallas if not for him, so I guess he can’t have been all that mean, huh?”
Walker finally arrived in Dallas as the nighttime reached the peak of its darkness. The driver of the pickup truck dropped him off without a word, at a corner bus stop in the middle of the city. Walker had no place to stay, nobody to call, and worst of all, no idea where he was at all. He walked from the corner bus stop to a run-down inn on the side of the road, and got himself a room for the night for $5. The beds were hard and the sheets were *****, and the room itself had no bathroom, but it served its purpose and it kept Walker out of the streets for the night.
The next morning, Texas Walker Norris woke up to a growl. It was his stomach, and suddenly, Walker remembered that he hadn’t eaten in almost two days. He checked out of the inn he had slept in, and stepped into the streets of Dallas, wearing the same clothes as he wore the day before, and carrying the same canvas bag with the soap and the knife in it. After about an hour or so of walking around the city, Walker came up to a small ***** restaurant that served food within his price range. He ordered Chicken Fried Steak with a side of home fries, and devoured them in seconds flat. After that, Walker took a stroll around the city, so as to take in the sights before he left. Eventually, he found his way to the city bus station, where he boarded a Greyhound bus to Tallahassee. It took him 26 hours to get there, and at the end of everything he vowed to never take a bus like that again.
“See I’m from Texas, and in Texas, everything is real big and free and stuff. So I ain’t used to being cooped up in nothin’ for a stended period of time. I tell you, I came off that bus shaking, sweating, you name it. The poor woman sitting next to me thought I was gunna have a heart attack.” Walker laughed.
When Walker laughed, you understood why Texans are so proud of where they live. His was a low, rumbling bellow that built up into a thunderous, booming laugh, finally fizzling into the raspy chuckle of a man who had spent his whole life smoking, yet in perfect health. When Walker laughed, you felt something inside you shake and vibrate, both in fear and utter admiration of the giant Texan man in front of you. If men were measured by their laughs, Walker would certainly be hailed as king amongst men; but he wasn’t. No, he was just another man, a lowly man with a perpetual childish grin, despite the godliness of his bellowing laughter.
“When I finally got to Tallahassee I didn’t know what to do. I sure as hell didn’t have my wits about me, so I just stumbled all around the city like a chick without its head on. I swear, people must a thought I was a madman with the way I was walkin’, all wide-eyed and frazzled and stuff. One guy even tried to mug me, ‘till he saw I didn’t have no money on me. Well that and I got my knife out of my bag right on time.” Another laugh. “You know I knew one thing though, which was I needed to find a place to stay the night.”
So Walker found himself a little pub in Tallahassee, where he ordered one beer and a shot of tequila. To go with that, he got himself a burger, which he remembered as being one of the better burgers he’d ever had. Of course, this could have just been due to the fact that he hadn’t eaten a real meal in so long. At some point during this meal, Walker turned to the bartender, an Irish man with short red hair and muttonchops, and asked him if he knew where someone could find a place to spend the night in town.
“Well there are a few hotels in the downtown area but ah wouldn’t recommend stayin’ in them. That is unless ye got enough money to jus’ throw away like that, which ah know ye don’t because ah jus’ saw ye take yer money out to pay for the burger. That an’ the beer an’ shot. Anyway, ye could always stay in one of the cheap motels or inns in Tallahassee. That’ll only cost ye a few dollars for the night, but ye might end up with bug bites or worse. Frankly, I don’t see many an option for ye, less you wanna stay here for the night, which’ll only cost ye’, oh, about nine-dollars-whattaya-say?”
Walker was stunned by the quickness of the Irishman’s speech. He had never heard such a quick tongue in Texas, and everyone knew Texas was auction-ville. He didn’t know whether to trust the Irishman or not, but he didn’t have the energy or patience to do otherwise, and so Walker Norris paid nine dollars to spend the night in the back room of a Tallahassee pub.
As it turns out, the Irishman’s name was Jeremy O’Neill, and he had just come to America about a year and a half ago. He had left his hometown in Dublin, where he owned a bar very similar to the one he owned now, in search of a girl he had met that said she lived in Florida. As it turns out, Florida was a great deal larger than Jeremy had expected, and so he spent the better part of that first year working odd jobs and drinking his pay away. He had worked in over 25 different cities in Florida, and on well over 55 different jobs, before giving up his search and moving to Tallahassee. Jeremy wrote home to his brother, who had been manning his bar in Dublin the whole time Jeremy was away, and asked for some money to help start himself off. His brother sent him the money, and after working a while longer as a painter for a local construction company, he raised enough money to buy a small run down bar in central Tallahassee, the bar he now ran and operated. Unfortunately, the purchase had left him in terrible debt, and so Jeremy had set up a bed in the back room, where he often housed overly drunk customers for a price. This way, he could make back the money to pay for the rest of the bar.
Walker sympathized with the Irishman’s story. In Jeremy, he saw a bit of himself; the tired, broken traveler, in search of a runaway love. Jeremy’s story depressed Walker though, who was truly convinced his own would end differently. He knew, he felt, that he would find Lisa in the end.
Walker hardly slept that night, despite having paid nine dollars for a comfortable bed. Instead, he got drunk with Jeremy, as the two of them downed a bottle of whisky together, while sitting on the floor of the pub, talking. They talked about love, and life, and the existence of God. They discussed their childhoods and their respective journeys away from their homes. They laughed as they spoke of the women they loved and they cried as they listened to each other’s stories. By the time Walker had sobered up, it was already morning, and time for a brand new start. Jeremy gave Walker a free bottle of whiskey, which after serious protest, Walker put in his bag, next to his knife and the soap. In exchange, Walker tried to give Jeremy some money, but Jeremy stubbornly refused, like any Irishman would, instead telling Walker to go **** himself, and to send him a postcard when he got to New York. Walker thanked Jeremy for his hospitality, and left the bar, wishing deeply that he had slept, but not regretting a minute of the night.
Little time was spent in Tallahassee that day. As soon as Walker got out on the streets, he asked around to find out where the closest highway was. A kind old woman with a cane and bonnet told him where to go, and Walker made it out to the city limits in no time. He didn’t even stop to look around a single time.
Once at the city limits, Walker went into a small roadside gas station, where he had a microwavable burrito and a large 50-cent slushy for breakfast. He stocked up on chips and peanuts, knowing full well that this may have been his last meal that day, and set out once again, after filling up his water supply. Walker had no idea where to go from Tallahassee, but he knew that if he wanted to reach his girlfriend’s mother’s house, he had to go north. So Walker started walking north, on a road the gas station attendant called FL-61, or Thomasville Road. He walked for something like seven or eight miles, before a group of college kids driving a camper pulled up next to him. They were students at the University of Georgia and were heading back to Athens from a road trip they had taken to New Orleans. The students offered to take Walker that far, and Walker, knowing only that this took him north, agreed.
The students drove a large camper with a mini-bar built into it, which they had made themselves, and stacked with beer and water. They had been down in New Orleans for the Mardi Gras season, and were now returning, thought the party had hardly stopped for them. As they told Walker, they picked a new designated driver every day, and he was appointed the job of driving until he got bored, while all the others downed their beers in the back of the camper. Because their system relied on the driver’s patience, they had almost doubled the time they should have made on their trip, often stopping at roadside motels so that the driver could get his drink on too. These were their “pit-stops”, where they often made the decision to either eat or court some of the local girls drunkenly.
This leg of the trip Walker seemed to glaze over quickly. He didn’t talk much about the ride, the conversation, or the people, but from what I gathered, from his smile and the way his eyes wandered, I could tell it was a fun one. Basically, the college kids, of which I figure there were about five or six, got Walker drunk and drove him all the way to Athens, Georgia, where they took him to their campus and introduced him to all of their friends. The leader of the group, a tall, athletic boy with long brown hair and dimples, let him sleep in his dorm for the night, and set him up with a ride to the train station the next morning. There, Walker bought himself a ticket to Atlanta, and said his goodbyes. Apparently, the whole group of students followed him to the station, where they gave him some food and said goodbye to him. One student gave Walker his parent’s number, telling him to call them when he got to Atlanta, if he needed a place to sleep. Then, from one minute to the next, Walker was on the train and gone.
When Walker got to Atlanta, he did not call his friend’s family right away. Instead, he went to the first place he saw with food, which happened to be a small, rundown place that sold corndogs and coke for a dollar per item. Walker bought himself three corndogs and a coke, and strolled over to a nearby park, where, he sat down on a bench and ate. As Walker sat, dipping his corndogs into a paper plate covered in ketchup, an old woman took the seat directly next to him, and started writing in a paper notepad. He looked over at her, and tried to see what she was writing, but she covered up her pad and his efforts were wasted. Still, Walker kept trying, and eventually the woman got annoyed and mentioned it.
“Sir, I don’t mind if you are curious, but it is terribly, terribly rude to read over another person’s shoulder as they write.” The woman’s voice was rough and beautiful, changed by time, but bettered, like fine wine.
“I’m sorry ma’am, it’s just that I’ve been on the road for a while now, and I reckon I haven’t really read anything in, ****, probably longer than that. See I’m lookin’ to find my girlfriend up north, on account of she took my car and ran away from home and all.”
“Well that is certainly a shame, but I don’t see why that should rid you of your manners.” The woman scolded Walker.
“Yes ma’am, I’m sorry. What I meant to convey was that, I mean, I kind of just forgot I guess. I haven’t had too much time to exercise my manners and all, but I know my mother would have educated me better, so I apologize but I just wanted to read something, because I think that’s something important, you know? I’ll stop though, because I don’t want to annoy you, so sorry.”
The woman seemed amused by Walker, much as a parent finds amusement in the cuteness of another’s children. His childish, simple smile bore through her like a sword, and suddenly, her own smile softened, and she opened up to him.
“Oh, don’t be silly. All you had to do was ask, and not be so unnervingly discreet about it.” She replied, as she handed her pad over to Walker, so that he could read it. “I’m a poet, see, or rather, I like to write poetry, on my own time. It relaxes me, and makes me feel good about myself. Take a look.”
Walker took the pad from the woman’s hands. They were pale and wrinkly, but were held steady as a rock, almost as if the age displayed had not affected them at all. He opened the pad to a random page, and started reading one of the woman’s poems. I asked Walker to recite it for me, but he said he couldn’t remember it. He did, however, say that it was one of the most beautiful things he had ever read, a lyrical, flowing, ode to t
A Short Story 2008
Tabitha Sullivan Dec 2012
Camper bed

Comfy enough

Tiny for us

No good for ***

Perfect for cuddling

Curl up right in your arm

Feel you breathe in

Wait for you to breathe out

Match our inhales and exhales

Hoping to match up our hearts

Melting the two beats into one

Drifting off to sleep slowly

Blinking trying to stay awake

Smiling because you say my name

Whispering I love you’s

Closing my heavy eyes

Opening them to you

Brushing hair out of my face

Camper bed..

You are **** and love approved.
Julie Grenness Jan 2016
How to be a Happy Camper, dears,
Wake up smiling, we woke up, cheers!
Positive approach to daily life here,
Whatever happens, don't stress, dears,
Looking forward to a peaceful day,
No dumb arguments for a blessed way,
Say never mind, blip happens, dears,
Smile and walk away, no tears,
It ain't Armageddon yet, dears,
At least we woke up here,
How to be a Happy Camper, cheers!
Feedback welcome.
Keith W Fletcher Jun 2017
Wednesday morning I woke up from my first night sleeping in the camper, and  I had that  disjointed feeling that comes from unfamiliarity.  I recognized  the interior of the camper, so that was not what was  triggering that closed in feeling that enveloped me, not claustrophobic really, it was more: comforting.  It is hard to put into words that kind of feeling, but as I am supposed to be an aspiring writer ......It would seem to be my responsibility to do so,,  or at least try.
    So as I lay there cradling the warm afterglow of a satisfying night of slumber and with pleasant dreams of…I’m hungry ! I suddenly thought to myself.  No! Actually I am starving, and just one look down at Stormy , lying on the floor and staring at me and  it was more than obvious that he too was hungry..
    “Okay, boy, I know.  I hear you..”
     “All we ate last night was those Fritos wasn’t it?”Stormy just stared at me with those big brown, expectant and hungry eyes..
   “ Sorry boy !  I am new at this.”  I said as I was just  realizing that I was fully clothed, This fact reminded me that I had come into the camper cruiser nine hours earlier, intending to fix me some food, had seen the bed laid out , done while setting up camp hours earlier, so I decided to see how comfortable it could possibly be .
    I remember laying down and  saying to myself, “  this ain’t too bad.”  Looking down at Stormy -closing my eyes- and well , here I am, nine hours later,  starving and being stared at by Stormy .
    .  6:30 AM Wednesday morning- and both of us starving  .   "Man!   Talk about exhaustion.!" I said to the world at large .
    “Just hang in there for a few minutes more  and we  will both have bacon and eggs today....  Okay?”
To which stormy happily  wagged  the whole rear half  of himself in undying gratitude.
     After breakfast I had a cup of coffee in my hands, and a buzz in my head as I sat down in the lawn lounge thingy ( It had even come with the camper) and watched the other people  go about their morning..
     Was this my story--the ever evolving story  of… Come on dude!  I chastised myself,  this is not your mission, to write about camping spots,  and the ever evolving state of one parking spot that                they are occupying.   .  But as I was beginning to slowly realize  ; my story , just might be more elusive than I  had taken time to consider.
      I glanced down at storm to see if he had any insight, an opinion of some great revelation for me,  but he was in his own world; lying there beside me and watching with rapt interest the antics of a pair of foraging gray squirrels as they skipped and be bopped among the branches of a huge white oak;   wherein  Stormy, unlike myself,  saw the big picture,,  all the story he needed was playing out in the branches of that tree.  This tree was his tree ……of life..!
    “Crazy little buggers   ain’t they boy?”  I remarked to him as I rubbed his head and neck , taking away a few precious seconds of his squirrel watching while he looked around me before returning his gaze back to the  acrobatics  of the little be boppers of the tree..  I went back to watching my new neighbors,  for in a sense-that is exactly what this is . Nt much  different from  the cul-de-sac.  I grew up on. ..  With one exception-vital as it is . I mean  that I only have  the imaginary view of these people , not  the  reality  that I had with… But then, I reassess my thought,,  reorganize my pattern as I remember that morning  .
     That crazy day with all the police  and ambulances suddenly appearing in the street..  All the neighbors  having  been bunched up  in curious knots to wonder what was happening at the Angleton’s.
   Like wind swept fire  to a field of tall grass, the rumors began spreading through  the street.
   “He killed her!”  Someone remarked abstractly..
    “Who?”  They all asked in comatose reality.
    “George Angleton” they said, “he killed his wife  and then he killed himself--I think”
    “Whyyyyy?”  They   bleated .
    “Do not know-I heard they had financial problems,  maybe that was it.”  They quoted equivocally.
    “There was always something funny about them.”  The little man said   fumbling the ball
   “Who?”  They all questioned again.
    “Angleton’s…  It was strange, I wouldn’t  let my kids go up there  on Halloween.. and that time he gave all comic books!”  The little man said with an air of superiority.
   “   Why is that?”  They argued in question.
     “You asked me he was trying to lure them kids in.”  He blundered and fell
    “You are nuts!  He was a sweet old man… It had to be… financial”  they persisted..
     “Say what you want-  but I know what I know-and he was weird.”  The little man overstated.
    “You did not even live around here.  That year he gave out comic books-did you?”   Somebody pointed out aggressively.
      “Well.... no,,” the little man sputtered,, “bububut I heard about it..”   The little man  beleaguered now     “So you never even met George!”   Someone accused  ..
     “Not personally; but all  the…” The little man started.
      “Get the hell away from me little man.” the whole crowd expressed in screaming silent looks .
King Panda May 2016
rain
mud and grass
common prayer
good weather
good people
art
and umbrella bags
because who wants to
get wet?
unless it’s with you
I could
I would
jump into the lake
for that rock
sew
cleanse
initials made in sharpie
and unclamp
we run
around the park
the afternoon surrounds us
the woman in the bikini
passes
and we laugh
iced tea
decaf coffee
cake without teeth
and that airstream camper
you always wanted
I could live in your
backyard
I could live somewhere
not here
in silver
prostrated
with my back to the
moon
like dead
like a mummy
like a mirror
and life would make sense
life would be beautiful
like this run
with perfect amounts of sweat
and conversation that runs
waves in the sand
and tells the squirrels
goodnight, tractor
see you tomorrow

and the land that billows
is dug up
and chewed
like a goodnight poem
this run with you
takes rest
on my soul
and I crack my ribs
to take the spring’s
twilight
aroma
OriginalMade Nov 2016
For seven months,
My boyfriend, I, and our dog,
Could not find anywhere to call home.
We lived in a box,
One much smaller than your own,
We lived in a camper,
One that must be pulled to move along.

During our seven months,
We endured many of lives lessons.
Many showing us what a cruel world we actually live in.
My boyfriend tried everything.
He even began asking random strangers for a space in their attic.
So many people could care less for our situation.
So many people only saw us as another burden.

The things we would have done for these people.
Like clean up whatever messes they couldn't get to.
So many ways we would have expressed our gratitude.
Yet so many faces turned down a helpless few.

We experienced faces like our own.
Others just trying to make it,
Even in a blistering cold.
We did not have much money,
Nor a whole lot to offer,
But when others needed help,
We tried our best to provide it.

One man with his dog,
Was very accustomed to his life.
He had been living without,
For quite a long time.
He learned to prevail,
And learned his own ways,
By being human to all,
He is alive to this day.
This man gave us a token,
An Obsidian with Hawks Eye.
A necklace he had made,
While finding himself in time.

Though meeting so many people,
We spent quite some time alone.
Reflecting with each other,
On the world we thought we'd known.

As for our box,
A sixteen foot trap.
There had been a leak in the roof,
Since we got it seven months back.
This leaky roof had always been a problem,
That we tried to fix quite often.
But every time it was "fixed",
Sure enough,
The rain would prove us wrong.

The cold of Autumn began to spread,
Soon the cold was our biggest dread.
It seemed the only source for heat,
Was a propane tank and burner, complete.

Its funny the options given aside from death.
Either freeze now,
Or warm yourself while breathing your last breathe.

The heater was lovely,
Giving us reason to move on.
But the leaky roof would prove otherwise,
As the weather sharply turned.

We had carpet in our small abode,
Not too thick but just right.
And in two weeks,
It had rained four days straight,
Carpet soaked, Happiness to shreds.
Two weeks later, the carpet was dry,
Only for the next day to begin with rain,
To our surprise.

Another week and a half of soaked up thrill,
Till my boyfriend came up with an idea,
Trying to raise our frills.
He found some free carpet,
Cut out what he could of the old one,
And laid in some new.
How nice it felt to walk freely,
Not have to worry about wet shoes.

This sensation once again did not last,
We both became ill,
As did everyone around.
Each sickness was different,
But all soon became well.
The only problem was that I was still ill.

Then my boyfriend found a place,
A place we all could call home,
But we ended up staying in our camper,
Another two weeks, too long.

When we finally arrived,
At an actual destination of stay.
I was so overwhelmed,
Just to be somewhere I could walk,
More than four feet.

With a room to put our things,
We briskly unpacked,
The weight we'd been towing,
And at times nearly dragged.
But once the camper was empty,
We began to over scan,
The big lug we had lived in,
For seven months passed.

With one look under our bed,
I knew why I was still ill.
The ammonia from this creature,
Swept throughout with a shrill.
The fungus that grew here,
Would overwhelm the deepest of Hells.
And even after finally seeing it,
I cannot believe this is where I had dwelled.

For seven months,
We had lived there.
Called that camper home.

It's been one week since we've left there,
Still sick but finally feeling like we're Home.
thought id go out camping so i took along the my tentbut when i got  to camp all the poles were bentso i struggled on  and tied the canvas to a treethen suddenly i got stung by a passing beei jumped in to the air till all the pain had gone i got myself together then i carried onthen i lit a fire so i would get a warma message on the radio said there would be stormthen i heard the wind as wild as it could  beslowly getting stronger heading straight for meso i climbed in side and thought id better staythen came the wind and blew my tent awaynow i told myself campings not for methen i headed home the place that i should be
took a trip to millom camper trev and me
just to get a breakway by the beach and sea
for a little romance beneath the stars  above
trev and i together for some camper love

take little stroll walking hand in hand
beneath the moon above along the millom sand
with the man i love theres just him and me
in our camper van in millom by the sea
SøułSurvivør Jun 2016
I'll agree!
But I'm not camping 'neath a tree
I'm getting fit... I'm getting free
From habits that were hurting me
Now my weight loss all can see!

I'm not hiking through the woods
But i work out... it does me good!
I now cook nutritious food!
The labels are now understood!

I'm never tired. Never bored...
The future has so much in store!
I'm learning mindfulness and more
I was put here by the Lord

And now my life has been restored!


:D Catherine
It is my last week at Camp Wellness... a 9 week Fitness and Nutrition Learning Center. They have really helped me to get to know myself and some of the self-defeating habits I had gotten myself into. I have lost 10 pounds and feel wonderful!

I want to thank you all for bearing with me during this time that I haven't been able to read that much. You have been so faithful to read me and repost and comment...

I APPRECIATE YOU! ♡

Unfortunately I must go off site again now... more chores to be done... It never ends!

-
Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce:
the courtroom a cement box,
a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me
and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land
for the Jew in me,
but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us-
and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors
that makes the now separate parts useless,
even to cut each other up as we did yearly
under the crayoned-in sun.
The courtroom keeps squashing our lives as they break
into two cans ready for recycling,
flattened tin humans
and a tin law,
even for my twenty-five years of hanging on
by my teeth as I once saw at Ringling Brothers.
The gray room:
Judge, lawyer, witness
and me and invisible Skeezix,
and all the other torn
enduring the bewilderments
of their division.

Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce.
They arrive like round yellow fish,
******* with love at the coral of our love.
Yet they wait,
in their short time,
like little utero half-borns,
half killed, thin and bone soft.
They breathe the air that stands
for twenty-five illicit days,
the sun crawling inside the sheets,
the moon spinning like a tornado
in the washbowl,
and we orchestrated them both,
calling ourselves TWO CAMP DIRECTORS.
There was a song, our song on your cassette,
that played over and over
and baptised the prodigals.
It spoke the unspeakable,
as the rain will on an attic roof,
letting the animal join its soul
as we kneeled before a miracle--
forgetting its knife.

The daisies confer
in the old-married kitchen
papered with blue and green chefs
who call out pies, cookies, yummy,
at the charcoal and cigarette smoke
they wear like a yellowy salve.
The daisies absorb it all--
the twenty-five-year-old sanctioned love
(If one could call such handfuls of fists
and immobile arms that!)
and on this day my world rips itself up
while the country unfastens along
with its perjuring king and his court.
It unfastens into an abortion of belief,
as in me--
the legal rift--
as on might do with the daisies
but does not
for they stand for a love
undergoihng open heart surgery
that might take
if one prayed tough enough.
And yet I demand,
even in prayer,
that I am not a thief,
a mugger of need,
and that your heart survive
on its own,
belonging only to itself,
whole, entirely whole,
and workable
in its dark cavern under your ribs.

I pray it will know truth,
if truth catches in its cup
and yet I pray, as a child would,
that the surgery take.

I dream it is taking.
Next I dream the love is swallowing itself.
Next I dream the love is made of glass,
glass coming through the telephone
that is breaking slowly,
day by day, into my ear.
Next I dream that I put on the love
like a lifejacket and we float,
jacket and I,
we bounce on that priest-blue.
We are as light as a cat's ear
and it is safe,
safe far too long!
And I awaken quickly and go to the opposite window
and peer down at the moon in the pond
and know that beauty has walked over my head,
into this bedroom and out,
flowing out through the window screen,
dropping deep into the water
to hide.

I will observe the daisies
fade and dry up
wuntil they become flour,
snowing themselves onto the table
beside the drone of the refrigerator,
beside the radio playing Frankie
(as often as FM will allow)
snowing lightly, a tremor sinking from the ceiling--
as twenty-five years split from my side
like a growth that I sliced off like a melanoma.

It is six P.M. as I water these tiny weeds
and their little half-life,
their numbered days
that raged like a secret radio,
recalling love that I picked up innocently,
yet guiltily,
as my five-year-old daughter
picked gum off the sidewalk
and it became suddenly an elastic miracle.

For me it was love found
like a diamond
where carrots grow--
the glint of diamond on a plane wing,
meaning:  DANGER!  THICK ICE!
but the good crunch of that orange,
the diamond, the carrot,
both with four million years of resurrecting dirt,
and the love,
although Adam did not know the word,
the love of Adam
obeying his sudden gift.

You, who sought me for nine years,
in stories made up in front of your naked mirror
or walking through rooms of fog women,
you trying to forget the mother
who built guilt with the lumber of a locked door
as she sobbed her soured mild and fed you loss
through the keyhole,
you who wrote out your own birth
and built it with your own poems,
your own lumber, your own keyhole,
into the trunk and leaves of your manhood,
you, who fell into my words, years
before you fell into me (the other,
both the Camp Director and the camper),
you who baited your hook with wide-awake dreams,
and calls and letters and once a luncheon,
and twice a reading by me for you.
But I wouldn't!

Yet this year,
yanking off all past years,
I took the bait
and was pulled upward, upward,
into the sky and was held by the sun--
the quick wonder of its yellow lap--
and became a woman who learned her own shin
and dug into her soul and found it full,
and you became a man who learned his won skin
and dug into his manhood, his humanhood
and found you were as real as a baker
or a seer
and we became a home,
up into the elbows of each other's soul,
without knowing--
an invisible purchase--
that inhabits our house forever.

We were
blessed by the House-Die
by the altar of the color T.V.
and somehow managed to make a tiny marriage,
a tiny marriage
called belief,
as in the child's belief in the tooth fairy,
so close to absolute,
so daft within a year or two.
The daisies have come
for the last time.
And I who have,
each year of my life,
spoken to the tooth fairy,
believing in her,
even when I was her,
am helpless to stop your daisies from dying,
although your voice cries into the telephone:
Marry me!  Marry me!
and my voice speaks onto these keys tonight:
The love is in dark trouble!
The love is starting to die,
right now--
we are in the process of it.
The empty process of it.

I see two deaths,
and the two men plod toward the mortuary of my heart,
and though I willed one away in court today
and I whisper dreams and birthdays into the other,
they both die like waves breaking over me
and I am drowning a little,
but always swimming
among the pillows and stones of the breakwater.
And though your daisies are an unwanted death,
I wade through the smell of their cancer
and recognize the prognosis,
its cartful of loss--

I say now,
you gave what you could.
It was quite a ferris wheel to spin on!
and the dead city of my marriage
seems less important
than the fact that the daisies came weekly,
over and over,
likes kisses that can't stop themselves.

There sit two deaths on November 5th, 1973.
Let one be forgotten--
Bury it!  Wall it up!
But let me not forget the man
of my child-like flowers
though he sinks into the fog of Lake Superior,
he remains, his fingers the marvel
of fourth of July sparklers,
his furious ice cream cones of licking,
remains to cool my forehead with a washcloth
when I sweat into the bathtub of his being.

For the rest that is left:
name it gentle,
as gentle as radishes inhabiting
their short life in the earth,
name it gentle,
gentle as old friends waving so long at the window,
or in the drive,
name it gentle as maple wings singing
themselves upon the pond outside,
as sensuous as the mother-yellow in the pond,
that night that it was ours,
when our bodies floated and bumped
in moon water and the cicadas
called out like tongues.

Let such as this
be resurrected in all men
whenever they mold their days and nights
as when for twenty-five days and nights you molded mine
and planted the seed that dives into my God
and will do so forever
no matter how often I sweep the floor.
Amy Harris Jul 2013
You have no idea.
How much you mean to me.
And every word you say.
Can take my breath away.
But you don't seem to realize.
That there are tears forming in my eyes.
Because you never seem to look.
THE ALLAN FAMILY STORY




YOU SEE MY FAMILY WERE A GOOD CAMPING FAMILY

AND WE HAD THIS BIG ORANJE TENT, WHERE THE

FAMILY BROUGHT TO CAMPING GROUNDS, TO

ENJOY WEEKEND CAMPING, I REMEMBER CAMPING

EVERY WHERE AROUND NSW AND THE ACT

AND AS A WAY OF EXCAPING THE NORMAL LIVES

ME AND MY BROTHER PUT THE TENT UP IN THE BACKYARD

AND HAD OUR OWN CAMPING GROUND, AND I HAVE

SO MANY GREAT MOMENTS, LIKE NEW YEARS EVE PARTIES WITH LYLE

AND YEAH, I WAS LIKE A NORMAL TEENAGER, WITH SLEEPOVERS IN THE TENT

AND HAVING AN ESKY OF DRINK AND SAUSAGES AND OTHER THINGS LIKE

CHIPS AND I GOT SOME GREAT PHOTOS ME AND LYLE ARE HAVING A GREAT

PARTY FOR NEW YEARS EVE, WE CELEBRATED WITH POISON AND DEF LEOPARD

AND LYLE BOUGHT AIR SUPPLY, OH MY GODFATHER, I HATE THAT BAND

I REMEMBER WHEN ME AND MY BROTHER WENT IN THE TENT, WE WATCHED TV

AND WE TALKED FOR HOURS LIKE ME AND LYLE, WE HAD A HEAP OF ****** FUN

YA SEE I REMEMBER LYLE SAID HE WASN’T SCARED OF THE OLD BOOGIE WOMAN

AND I AM NOT SCARED OF THE OLD BOOGIE WOMAN EITHER

AND MY BROTHER LOVED TO JOKE AROUND WITH US

YA SEE, LYLE WAS ENJOYING PUTTING THE TENT UP

AND WE BOTH HAD OUR STEREOS, AND WE PLAYED GREAT TOP 49 HITS OF THAT ERA

YOU SEE, MY DAD WAS A GREAT CAMPER AND BUSHWALKER, AND BUDDHA’S SPIRIT

MADE ME INHERIT DAD’S ADVENTURE BLOOD, BECAUSE, OF MY LAST 2 HUMAN LIVES

BEING GREAME THORNE, AND PATRICK DUNBAR, BOTH KILLED AT 8

AND BUDDHA MADE ME AN ALLAN, TO KEEP ME SAFE

BUT I WAS A KEEN BACKYARD CAMPER, COOKING ON GAS BBQS

AND EATING CHIPS, AND HEAPS OF CHOCOLATES, AND ME AND LYLE BOTH WATCHED THE CRICKET

ON THE TELEVISION IN THE TENT AND NEW YEARS EVE, WE WATCHED THE GREAT

BICENTENNIAL NEW YEARS EVE CONCERT IN 1987, ME AND LYLE HAD FUN DOING THIS AS

WELL AS WATCH GREAT MOVIES ON THE VHS RECORDER,

BUT THAT ALL ENDED, WE RAGED A BIG PARTY IN THE TENT, WITH MUSIC AND GREAT FOOD

I CAN’T REALLY HAVE ***, I AM NOT THE *** TYPE, I TALK ABOUT ***** DONORS

BUT ONE THING I WAS GOOD AT, WAS TALKING, WITH LYLE, PATRICK MY BROTHER, SCOTT,

AND MANY MORE, AND THE BIG ORANGE TENT WAS FINALLY BOUGHT BY A FAMILY

I THOUGHT I SAW IT AT THE ABORIGINAL TENT EMBASSY, IT COULD’VE BEEN

IT LOOKED LIKE IT, AND IT’S GOOD THAT, IF IT IS, THAT POOR PEOPLE WITHOUT A HOME

ARE ENJOYING THIS TENT AS A HOME

GREAT ALLAN FAMILY CAMPING OVER
I'm a Tree Huggin', Soy Chuggin',
I won't eat no meat
I'm a vegan of convenience,
Still, there's leather on my feet
I don't believe in lots of things
I'll protest and attack
But you won't find me out in front
'Cause I'll be in the back
I give money to my causes
Save the whales, electric cars
But I'm not one to lead the fight
"Cause I don't like the scars
Bricks get thrown alot you see
And those things ****** hurt
And I'm not a happy camper
When there's blood upon my shirt
I won't eat seeds of any sort
They get stuck in my teeth
My clothes are all from LL Bean
Except what's underneath
Way back in the sixties
I lived communaly
We ate only what the earth gave up
We didn't watch tv
As years passed by, our voices died
Our causes became much rarer
We sounded more like Manilow
Than Phil Ochs or Tom Lehrer
I choose fine wine over wheatgrass juice
I like leather and wear silk
I no longer go and get the goat
So we can have fresh milk
I'm a Tree Huggin', Soy Chuggin',
I won't eat no meat
I'm a vegan of convenience,
Still, there's leather on my feet
I don't believe in lots of things
I'll protest and attack
But you won't find me out in front
'Cause I'll be in the back
I've changed lots since the sixties
I'm a capitalist blood hound
If I said I'm a true vegan
My board would see me drowned
I used to wear just cotton
Hemp and caftans  and blue jeans
Leather shoes and belts and jackets
Were just not part of my scene
My friends, well, they grew up
And others stayed in touch
The ones with money see me
The others not so much
I used to go out jogging
Through the park in puma shoes
Now I workout in a private gym
Wearing nikes and with my  crew
You see I'm still a vegan
When it suits me, don't you see
My new girlfriend likes organic
And she's only twenty three
There's forty years between us
Though I've done it all before
When my girlfriend is not with me
I am a carnivore
I support all of her causes
Though most things I don't attend
I'll be a vegan of convenience
Until our courtship ends
Who knows, what then will happen
Will I eat Tofu or some chops
I know which way I'm leaning
We'll see how that one drops
Like I said when we first started
I am a vegan, so I am
But instead of eating quinoa
I'll stick to eggs and ham.
I'm a Tree Huggin', Soy Chuggin',
I won't eat no meat
I'm a vegan of convenience,
Still, there's leather on my feet
I don't believe in lots of things
I'll protest and attack
But you won't find me out in front
'Cause I'll be in the back
RobbieG Nov 2021
Since my breakup 
I realized the importance 
of threats from debt 
wieghing down 
a relationship 
Since my breakup
I have made a promise 
to not have one 
monthly obligation
regardless the sacrifice 
Since my breakup 
I moved in with family 
in order to save money 
and paid cash for a camper 
so I could live, rent free 
Since my breakup 
I paid cash for a pickup 
that easily could last me 
the next 20 years to come, not paying one penny to interest 
Since my breakup 
I have been saving 
as much as possible 
versus financing 
MY AMERICAN DREAM 
Since my breakup 
I bought a sports car 
that was the one to have 
when I was in highschool 
another goal Im proud of 
Since my breakup 
I have divided and conquered 
all the debts and threats 
of monthly obligations 
and rearranged my desires 
Since my breakup 
I have realized what i want 
and Im proud to say 
I finally purchased 
my own piece of land 
Since my  breakup
I have discovered 
my desire to live simple 
and my next mission
is to build a home on my land 
BUY DIRT
Nigel Morgan Oct 2012
It was a summer afternoon in Wester Ross. Two moments: one near, on tide-swept sands, with glorious and gloriously blue amalgams of sky and water; the other far, on a distant shore, a vista of sweeping rain and a gang of clouds marauding the hills. Near abouts: a meeting of warm land and cool sea over a deserted beach. There were midges of course, but on that day a lithe breeze kept them at bay. As she was discovering the chaotic delights of the disused Fishing Station, I was Charles Darwin standing on a deserted shore looking across to Tierra del Fuego. Not a sign of a dwelling, a boat, or even a person on the coastal footpath. A vast panorama spread beyond the edges of my unturning vision. Out on the grey blue water, I became Captain Vancouver sailing up the Inner Channel exploring and mapping every indent, nook and cranny of the double coast. Suddenly, five indians in their log canoe appeared paddling around the point, navigating by the feel of depth and the thrum of the current inches under their bare feet and bottoms.
 
This place, the larger vicinity, the region driven through, on and onwards, into and out towards landscapes vaster than anything I’d previously known in this small island; it had already staked its claim on my consciousness. I was transfixed. On my own, decent progress during a walk was almost impossible. I would stop every few moments aware that something new and different was going on. To miss anything seemed an affront to the sublime. I would walk early in the morning whilst she lay peacefully in bed, her arms stretched out on the blue-striped cover, her hands and fingers gently curved, at rest. This morning time was alive with a colourscape of silences, different shades of low-level noise. There is no camera able to catch the play of real all-surrounding images with those extensions of fantasy the imagination blends and stirs. No microphone can be sensitive enough to the surround sound in air and landscape, the faint breath of the sea, and the incessant conversation and playback of her tender evening voice in my thoughts. Here the past was invading the present, speculating on the future, our future.
 
I ventured inside the hut at the Fishing Station. Curious to see what she was up to. She was arranging, like children do, her found objects. Along the few shelves fixed to the corrugated iron walls her quiet hands placed and replaced, shifted and turned; then, the click of the camera, again click, adjust the focus, click. Ropes lay at her feet snake-like, hemp and nylon, that urgent orange, that too smooth blue, mounds of old fishing gear mostly unidentifiable, not an idea where the floor might be found, so completely covered. If there had been a door it was no more; just a gap in the wall, seaward.
 
These objects she arranged: screws, bolts, nails, strange keys, boltless nuts and nutless bolts, small bottles, a can or two. Everything hand-size, tarnished, rusted, some oiled, stained oil-black. I felt an intruder witnessing her preparations for a secret game, a ceremony of recording and removal. A kindly ‘do not disturb’ sign hung about her face; a blankness, a dream-like visage of the initiated, as though she held some premonition of this material’s importance, a treasure found in a shack of a shed, a ‘find’ she would collectively decode. Already this visit took on the character of a preliminary investigation. She began wrapping and tying some of the more unusual items in cloth, making mummies that in a few days she would return to and unwrap to find their imprint and press marked on the cloth.
 
We lost time in this place. Only the incoming tide was a clue to how the afternoon had advanced. The beach, at whose far end the station had been built, held a gentle new moon’s curve. The water’s encroachment of the beach became mesmeric; it was difficult to leave the looking until its tide journey had been completed. But we did, and wandering through the dune meadows, between the diffident cattle, past the remote farm at the end of the track, gate after gate, then the proper road, the twice a day post box, two houses set well back from the road, a woman leading a boy on a horse, up a rise, a lay-by with a camper van, walking backwards to keep the view to the red sand beach in our sights as the afternoon light began to turn from gold into auburn, then with fingers threaded into fingers down to the wooden cottage. And there, later, after love’s welcome and its celebration, stillness.
Robin Carretti Jul 2018
The Amazing Grace
Face
Place
Glance-dance

"Her Pleasure" Eiffel Kiss France
The lost place trance-spell-
You should see the look
on your face
*        *        
It wasn't her wishful thinking
Bringing her deep love the wishing well
  fuller up guilt tells the trips
Feeling lost but it turns Global
somehow it follows rose stem rural
Hard pillow but painful
The glow her words felt like a burn
His wicked candlelight so stern
smile concert rearranged

Too many heavy metals
Iron Clad Civil war deeply hanged
Something changed all deranged

Change of weather
England his hands are happy
needing more water to sprinkle
The happiest  time in London
Pub cheerful Lad star twinkle

I saw her standing there

Her friend was reminiscing
but lost some memories
Until an image appeared of him
she found herself

Pleasurable oneself she was
Wondering feeling the thunder
now as two cockpit rambler
Being lost on the shabby
chic shelf
The Greyhound those
Siberian Huskies with her
plaid hankies

The race is on those bookies
Growing and howling I was lost in his
Skydiving but I didn't see him
going down bits and pieces
The picture shows what a blow
falling for Autumny leaves
High price got low
Lost his smile that was my pleasure
Reaching
Stretching
The praying Mantis Rosary

How do I resume soup consume
Sipping his alphabet words
Always lost it said
Innocuous
Delicious Dove flight
Details of the lover wings
then there split in two lost
Like an experiment pleasurable host
They are strangers in the night-star
Or the economy of life went too far
Like the mosaic artsy wife

Being loved its drawn to you
The intense side
Sunnyside he's up ******
The contrast comes closer
To their bodies hot
streaming intensity
Eyes lost with fragility
Lost in each other what hotties
Procreation

Lifted to the heights seduction
The lost pleasures images rounded
On the edge of
Ecstacy she is lost
but he was found
The mighty cool way of thinking in her
pleasurable fun wedges less
said without a sound
Not about apples and oranges
Sweeter and hotter but her lips got dryer
The lost painter the splash on her cheeks
Her sheer face lost inside the curtain
Her wetness arise on her lips
What high waves she had and
he the showstopper

Pleasurable but hot wilderness
her wildflower caves happy camper
So demure with an allure
The lost pleasure when you find
it the whipped cream she became the
Debutante what Suzette
Meeting her it was her pleasure
The hard teeth bite that ****** apple
crushed  it came
rolling down
the hill
She caught his jelly roll
His little bite burst her dream soul
Moving on with pain
how can we
meet our pleasure

Whats lost can be found freely
The taste is always there
The pleasure we try different
methods not always nutritious

Someone lost inside her delicious
Like the lost lobotomy

Of the Rite
This wasn't *** education of the
Deans list pleasurable digest
How it leaps up every year
Leap Year, not the frog to kiss
Finding love constitution
Follow me we are on our
next mission *
my pleasure what
are you waiting for?
Being lost in someone's love can be difficult  somehow it gets
harder to find our way every day  but the pleasure word is like a God and the pain word makes it painfully sad being lost is not something to take lightly add some fun the whip-cream and get to her pleasure of her cherries there are so many love theories
Better to be a live dog
than a dead lion.

Better to be a rollin' log
than a lumberjack cryin'.

Better to be a drunkin' fool
than a ******'s spoon.

Better to be a happy camper
than a hurtin' unit.

Better to be a fresh pamper
than full of ****.
Rebecca Rocker Jan 2017
As rain beats down on canvas,
I squeeze my face through the zip.
The clouds are swelling and angry;
The wind hits my cheeks like a whip.

I retreat to the core of my tent
And trip on the wellies inside.
Still covered in last year's mud,
These purple boots fill my mind.

I am fond of my waterproof shoes.
I ponder their rubbery struggles:
Abandoned for most of the year,
But mighty when dealing with puddles.

The water rises and enters,
It covers my groundsheet in mud,
But I've got wellington armour
To conquer the enemy flood.

I must learn to rely on my wellies,
When storm clouds rumble and growl.
I have come to a happy conclusion:
My wellies will not let me drown.

I squeeze through the zip of my tent
And plant my feet in the slime.
I am met by a brave fellow camper
Wearing wellies the colour of mine.

There are porches all over the country
With lonesome wellies inside.
If ever a storm is a-brewing,
Put them on, take it all in your stride.
Better to be a live dog
than a dead lion.

Better to be a rollin' log
than a lumberjack cryin'.

Better to be a drunken fool
than a ******'s spoon.

Better to be a happy camper
than a hurtin' unit.

Better to be a fresh pamper
than full of ****.

©2000
Will Mercier Sep 2012
***** from the bottle,
Warm.
Hot dogs from the package,
When your down and *****
The grotesque becomes magic.
Pawning a guitar for a pellet gun,
To procure breakfast.
Squirrel stew in the back of a scamper camper.
Spotlighting bullfrogs,
And mopping floors for a hot meal,
And a cold beer,
And a sympathetic ear.
Nights when the blacktop turned into void,
And the painted lines became a tightrope to nowhere.
Full circle,
Bangor to Frisco,
Any woman who was willing to sleep in the bed of a truck
Was a queen for as long as she stayed,
Always had **** concealed on me,
The copper piece of road currency,
To the gold and silver, of *** and gas.
The exchange rates would change overnight,
But syphon some gas at a truck stop
And it all will be alright.
Misspent youth, following bands
And getting lost along the way.
***** from the bottle,
And hot dogs from the package.
I haven't eaten a hotdog in years, and I don't miss those days.
Peace and love

Will
Robin Carretti Jul 2018
It's now or never what awaits
Gin is forever like her collagen of skin
the wanting how her prayers got answered
The (Him) the (I-phone) not my (Apple)
My blessings I got my miracle how fate
sipped me in with my best friend
                        (Gin)
The sip loving him  gin is her oxygen
All cravings from the countries
Native American, Latin American
Afro American, and The North American
The Hotel going to all the meetings
At the Sheraton
my lip to his sunset
Makes a world of her savings

Meets to my original
Tastebuds petals
and sprinkles like bling
Watering my rosebuds
So many brands but
Modern twist
Portugal Spanish
olives trees could sing

Cat nine lives versus her
Gin of love doves pleas

Scratch me lucky seven
But  conventional
Love-seat sectional
Him- I- Gin lets be

((Gin Rational))

Like the pixel living
more with a sweet taste
Stirring and purring Cat
I-Gin him the mighty morsel
Playing black-Jack
She had the best cards
Gin* I * pack
The game is pouring
the poker lip scouring

The origin of Dracula Bram Stoker
Her wavy hair red-hot tasseled
Like waves of (Gin) rippled
She mingled like" I- Gin"
But she was more mortal
Are we on air 2 win
The News over dripping
Hot Gin story him side-slip
National sip velvet whole lip
The warmth going down
The gin was magical potent
All exotic types she dressed
in stripes
Not the American Flag

The European sip of the Gin
Meeting her man
Weaving through the warmth
Juniper Glamped Gin camper
He's so defined in his character
Gin all him her floret trim glass

The process takes time
Gin- Boss Italian glass
Florence blown
Newfangled  or seductively
Flagged in bangled worn

Entirely subjective
The Europeans Industry
Origin of the whole dynasty
Juniper berries
Like a Junior virginity-Gin
Or him___?
Far from New York City
His flight first class (Gin)
and only him
Butterflies look divine on
her breast
Like the Gin and Science test
Her cherries in her Gin Drink
His theories in his Manly winks

The gin so medicinal
How it ward off malaria
She drinks to her delicately
tone body All God-lit
Her swiftly steps fit
Shes all heart like the ballerina
She is the Grace of the gin drink
The new look on her face
The purest wings fly the best
Our time of the Origin

Women and Men start now to begin
Dressed up new technology generation
The Gin of romance mission
The next pour dripping
intense torrential rain
For the single- set such potential
The married couple drenching
drink wet was more primal

The Gin couple was immaculate
never late
They won the bet that's
Gin-like no other fate
This is about the Origin of Gin my style and how a drink can change lives or if your single talk more and starts to mingle if your married there might very well be Gin God have a party gin fire up your hot rod
r Feb 2014
Back in my rebel days (yester)
I sported a spelunking bumper sticker
On my 1972  VW pop-up camper van
That read Free Floyd Collins
Totally apolitical well intentioned humor
Concerning one of my pasttimes that surprisingly
Never maimed or killed me
Whilst reporting for an official call for jury duty
The uptight and obviously a **** (did I just say that?)
Prosecutor enquired during jury selection
As to whether any of us prospectives
Had bumper stickers and if so
What they might say
The NRA sticker guy next to me
And the I'd Rather Be Fishin'  and NASCAR
Sticker guy next to him
Passed with smugly flying colors
(red needless to say)
While the 72 year old nun
With the Amnesty International sticker
Didn't fair so well
And was promptly burned at the stake
(I kid you)
Needless to say
The long-haired Harvard educated
Native American
With the Doctors Without Borders
And the Remember Wounded Knee
With a not so discreet AIM sticker thrown in to boot
Also got the boot
Pondering the merits of the court stenographer's
Shapely fingers while judiciously confidently awaiting my turn
It never ocurred to me that Mr. Collins might be
So wrongly accused as to have me
Rejected and summarily ejected
From jury duty
A travesty of justice
I say
If for no other reason than I was so looking forward to
Sticking it to the Man
You can imagine my surprise and disappointment
As I wandered down to the Shamrock
To catch Terry O'Leary do a slam
And raise a glass to
Bobby Sands

r~ 22Feb14
Floyd Collins: 1887-1925. Pioneering cave exploer from Kentucky. Mr. Collins died as a result of exposure and dehydration after being trapped in Mammoth Cave despite many attempted rescues. RIP, Floyd. True that my Free Floyd Collins bumper sticker resulted in my not getting selected for jury duty. I kid you not.
John F McCullagh Dec 2011
I’ll sleep within these woods tonight,
That much, at least, is plain.
I’d hiked for several hours
And not much day remained.
The shadows on the ground grow long
As it’s that time of year
when leaves on branches are few or none
and shadows sinister appear.
There is a clearing up ahead;
A friendly glow is seen
A solitary camper sits
beneath an Evergreen..
His smile is warm and friendly
He bades me to remain
with gestures warm and welcoming
Speech lyrical and strange..
I share with him a simple meal
Of pan fried fish and beer.
The meal seems like a miracle
As I know of no lake near.
Dark night has come and both are glad
To spread our bedrolls down
I sleep the night like one who’s dead.
I wake, and no one’s near.
No sign of my host or his tent
No sign that he was here.
I shake my head in wonder
And pack my roll to go.
What the Evergreen has witnessed
is not for me to know.
Consider this as my homage to Frost's " Stopping by woods on a snowy Evening" These are the Berkshires of allegory.
Matthew A Cain Jul 2017
They say we’re crazy
Chasing stupid millennial dreams
Too far fetched they seem and sometimes we agree
But secretly we hope and pray they become reality

Excuse the interruption but does this sound familiar for anybody else?

“Big house on its second mortgage, and a camper for when we feel like downsizing prison.
Cars each on a different loan, manicured lawn because we must show status in everything we own.
Monday, he cheated with the bottle and she cheated in her heart
Tuesday, sister came home late, crying her eyes out because the arms of her last lover were just like her fathers.
Wednesday was surprisingly peaceful, but unnerving, as sunny days were far and few between and I was thinking this was just the calm before the storm.
Thursday I saw father sitting on the floor his last straw a piece of paper "final notice" printed in red
Friday mother sat in the car for an extra twenty minutes starring blankly at the door contemplating her life
Saturday was fight night
Sunday we went to church and pretended it was all alright”

I’m sorry if my pursuit in life is simply this: Happiness.
If it looks like a retrofitted van and I live like a *** because I never want to fight about little green men
Or, if it was a tiny home that her and I could reasonably afford on land far away from the city lights and temptations that come at night
You could say It’s something about the fights we could hear through thick walls that drove us mad inside
And now we chase peace and calm, love and happiness, through any means
Because that’s something that cannot be bought despite our parents thoughts.
I started out with a completely different poem but somehow it morphed into this as I delved into my thoughts. The more I think about my generation and our obsession with tiny homes and little joys in life I believe this is what drives us to this way of life.
annh Apr 2022
Marge retrogrades lazily towards the hills;
Her name, printed the width of her cab-over dinette
In crinkled cobalt cursive,
Totters eccentrically as her handbrake fails.

SNAP-AP

Oblivious to errant camper vans (and centripetal forces in general),
Barney speeds maniacally along a deserted city street;
Golden coated and joyously poochie,
His tongue flabbers as fast as his bicycle courier dad can pedal.

SNAP-AP-AP

Mr Blue buys buckets at Bunnings
To match his cerulean suit and shinier-than-shiney satin shirt;
Periwinkle rhinestone shoes carry him unabashedly passed the second glances and sideways looks;
There goes the best dressed DIY-er in town…don’t ya know.

SNAP-AP-AP-AP
Oh, and that’s Antigua Street photography not Antigua street photography. :)

‘I only know how to approach a place by walking. For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heart of the known awaits just around the corner?’
- Alex Webb
In my office me and Gonzo waited speaking on deep issues
with no true meaning as usual.
*******'s heart had been broken for Drew had   left him a beaten and
love bitten  luchador slash attorney.

Senior Gonzo speaking endlessly to the hat rack had reminded me why
I never  dropped acid anymore.
Poor gonzo had just been served with divorce papers  to which
his only response was ****** amigo  i never knew i was married.


As his attorney  i belived a trip to mexico was outta the question for i had just got back do to some well a misunderstanding  its legal
jargin you  couldnt possibly understand.

His deadline was near  and without my solid advise this man wouldnt be able to pull it off  so being we had been in the bar for more than
eight hours  we decided to make a exit through the  mens room window.


Front doors are over rated.
In my legal office slash camper  hey eveyone starts somewhere
okay.
  I was reminded of my  loved hellcat Drew
she had left many items here a satanic bible  her  boil cream.
how I did mis rubbing her webbed toes.

How was i to work Gonzo was a mess hidding under the table
so the ginger bread people couldnt find him
and return him to there  bitter talentless leader
Kate Perry  i swear if you stab me one more time senior  gonzo
with that fork in my maracas im going to get medevile on your ***

Oh how i missed my tag team partner drew.
i should never have introduced her el man donkey who
resist such a uhh personallity.

But now here I  sit with a madman under my table tripping his
***** off   insisting  I contact Simon Cowell  to inform him
man ******  are so yesterday.

If only I had gotten the Lindsy Lohan case  I would finally have gotten my brake or maybe just a std.
Oh well theres always hope Mel Gibson  will need me.
The road warrior was a true classico  and he seemed so well
balanced compared to my   reallity challenged  cilent.

Remember kids if ever  you have a chance to trip with senior Gonzo
its probaly best you hide all sharp objects.
adios  *******
el ******* is always availible for quick and honest legal advise
i except all major credit cards and  will take trade as well
******* loves you all  just like  sisters  even the men to
adios
DJ Thomas Apr 2010
I did not know her then
nor do I now
but in between, I did

She swam for Barbados
fluid young islander
of affluent Germanic descent

Adrift, cultures island sought
she surfaces, bobbing
in the Red Dragon’s wake

House on the Bay,
overflowing camper van, brim
full of friends and fun

Over the Bridge
splashing loneliness, diving
into my bath and bed

Floating alone
undercurrents scratch, tides
sandy icing of memories

Locked lapping Bay days
drag
piloting others fun

sea blue horizons
debentures sold, goodbyes told
surf Ahoy

She jumps far flung
fun soaked, to sail
the Bay of Islands

.
copyright©DJThomas@inbox.com 2010

Far Flung Fun is inspired by a memory of Nadia and dragon drawn with eyes closed, capturing the musicality of her ‘splashing loneliness’ in unusual collocation and context soaked in a ‘watery’ semantic field, with enjambement diving-boards centred in three line verses, a single ‘drag’ line highlighting meaning and internal ‘sold’, ‘told’ mouthed rhythms.
dj Nov 2012
I went hunting with my dad once
Around August or September
I was younger but old enough to remember

Windhowls of the deep forests
Sounded like owls everywhere
Straying from our camper - I didn't dare

It didn't take long
   It was almost too soon
Anticlimactic & too simple to be true

Just planted ontop of the weeds
Just a few feet into the brush
Lay a pile of stuff

Disshevled and unkempt
Motionless and covered in burrs
Save for the sleight of a gust to weave thru its fur

The bones weren't white or polished
The cartoons had misled
It sat there in pieces & browning, instead

Skeletal, like random things tossed together
A velcro roadkill tumbleweed
Dried out and unable to bleed.

My dad told me it was a coyote
   I thought,
There's no way that was a coyote - a coyote?

It's just a pile of stuff
David W Clare Dec 2014
Bank,
took away my tract-home-house, got divorced from my last cheatin’ spouse

Laid-of from my company job, all I get to eat is corn-on-the-cob

Get evicted cant pay no rent
Rains too **** much to pitch me a tent

Kinfolk don’t  like the mess I’m in, so I became a bohemian . . .

Trailer Home Romeo, I’m a trailer **-home romeo

Kinfolk don’t  like the shape Im in, so I drink with trailer park beer drinkin men !

Pay Taxes that I owe?  Hell No !  I’m a bohemian on the go a trailer **-home romeo!

Bought me an old F-150 Ford, at least I ain’t got no **** landlord

I cash in cans I find on the ground, easy work get paid by the pound
Can’t buy me no tonic and Gin like the rich Good-Sam suburbians

I fix my own truck rent-a-wreck, told I don’t qualify for no welfare check
Afriad to go outside in the day for a jog, got bit last week by the neighbors dog

Can’t track me down, I’m always on the go, move down south if it starts to snow!
Move when I want don’t have to hesitate, hitch-up my truck and relocate

My left tire just fell-apart so I propped it up with a K-mart shopping cart

Got me a bottle of Jim Beam to pamper, might get drunk but I’m a happy Camper !

Kinfolk don’t  like the mess I’m in, so I became a bohemian . . .
Trailer Home Romeo, I’m a trailer **-home romeo

Kinfolk don’t  like the shape I’m in, so I drink with trailer park beer drinkin men !

Pay Taxes that I owe? 

... Hell No !  

I’m a bohemian on the go a trailer **-home romeo!


© David Wayne Clare   In Perpetuity - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Clairvoyant Music / BMI
Rockin country
Michael R Burch Oct 2020
Doggerel

The limerick is one of the most common and most popular forms of doggerel. This is one of my favorite limericks:


There was a young lady named Bright
Who traveled much faster than light.
She set out one day,
In a relative way,
And came back the previous night.
―Arthur Henry Reginald Buller


I find it interesting that one of the best revelations of the weirdness and zaniness of relativity can be found in a limerick! The limerick above inspired me to pen a rejoinder:

***-Tronomical
by Michael R. Burch

Einstein, the frizzy-haired,
proved E equals MC squared.
Thus, all mass decreases
as activity ceases?
Not my mass, my *** declared!



These are "subversive" poems of mine, pardon the pun:

Bible Libel
by Michael R. Burch

If God
is good,
half the Bible
is libel.

I came up with this epigram after reading the Bible from cover to cover at age eleven, and wondering how anyone could call the biblical God "good."



What Would Santa Claus Say
by Michael R. Burch

What would Santa Claus say,
I wonder,
about Jesus returning
to **** and Plunder?

For he’ll likely return
on Christmas Day
to blow the bad
little boys away!

When He flashes like lightning
across the skies
and many a homosexual
dies,

when the harlots and heretics
are ripped asunder,
what will the Easter Bunny think,
I wonder?



A Child’s Christmas Prayer of Despair for a Hindu Saint
by Michael R. Burch

Santa Claus, for Christmas, please,
don’t bring me toys, or games, or candy . . .
just . . . Santa, please,
I’m on my knees! . . .
please don’t let Jesus torture Gandhi!



***** Nilly
by Michael R. Burch

for the Demiurge, aka Yahweh/Jehovah

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You made the stallion,
you made the filly,
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You forced them to run
all their days uphilly.
They ran till they dropped―
life’s a pickle, dilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
They say I should worship you!
Oh, really!
They say I should pray
so you’ll not act illy.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?



Low-T Hell
by Michael R. Burch

I’m living in low-T hell ...
My get-up has gone: Oh, swell!
I need to write checks
if I want to have ***,
and my love life depends on a gel!

Originally published by Light



Door Mouse
by Michael R. Burch

I’m sure it’s not good for my heart—
the way it will jump-start
when the mouse scoots the floor
(I try to **** it with the door,
never fast enough, or
fling a haphazard shoe ...
always too slow too)
in the strangest zig-zaggedy fashion
absurdly inconvenient for mashin’,
till our hearts, each maniacally revvin’,
make us both early candidates for heaven.



The Humpback
by Michael R. Burch

The humpback is a gullet
equipped with snarky fins.
It has a winning smile:
and when it SMILES, it wins
as miles and miles of herring
excite its fearsome grins.
So beware, unwary whalers,
lest you drown, sans feet and shins!



Apologies to España
by Michael R. Burch

the reign
in Trump’s brain
falls mainly as mansplain



No Star
by Michael R. Burch

Trump, you're no "star."
Putin made you an American Czar.
Now, if we continue down this dark path you've chosen,
pretty soon we'll be wearing lederhosen.



tRUMP is the **** of many jokes.—Michael R. Burch



Golden Years?
by Michael R. Burch

I’m getting old.
My legs are cold.
My book’s unsold and my wife’s a scold.
Now the only gold’s
in my teeth.
I fold.



Less Heroic Couplets: ****** Most Fowl!
by Michael R. Burch

“****** most foul!”
cried the mouse to the owl.
“Friend, I’m no sinner;
you’re merely my dinner!”
the wise owl replied
as the tasty snack died.

Originally published by Lighten Up Online and in Potcake Chapbook #7

NOTE: In an attempt to demonstrate that not all couplets are heroic, I have created a series of poems called “Less Heroic Couplets.” I believe even poets should abide by truth-in-advertising laws! And I believe such laws should extend to Creators who claim to be loving, wise, merciful, just, etc., while forcing innocent mice to provide owls with late-night snacks. ― Michael R. Burch



Animal Limericks

Dot Spotted
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a leopardess, Dot,
who indignantly answered: "I’ll not!
The gents are impressed
with the way that I’m dressed.
I wouldn’t change even one spot."



Stage Craft-y
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a dromedary
who befriended a crafty canary.
Budgie said, "You can’t sing,
but now, here’s the thing―
just think of the tunes you can carry!"



Clyde Lied!
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a mockingbird, Clyde,
who bragged of his prowess, but lied.
To his new wife he sighed,
"When again, gentle bride?"
"Nevermore!" bright-eyed Raven replied.



The Pelican't
by Michael R. Burch

Enough with this pitiful pelican!
He’s awkward and stinks! Sense his smellican!
His beak's far too big,
so he eats like a pig,
and his breath reeks of fish, I can tellican!



Nonsense Verse about Writing Verse

The Beat Goes On (and On and On and On ...)
by Michael R. Burch

Bored stiff by his board-stiff attempts
at “meter,” I crossly concluded
I’d use each iamb
in lieu of a lamb,
bedtimes when I’m under-quaaluded.

Originally published by Grand Little Things



Other Animal Poems

Lance-Lot
by Michael R. Burch

Preposterous bird!
Inelegant! Absurd!

Until the great & mighty heron
brandishes his fearsome sword.



honeybee
by Michael R. Burch

love was a little treble thing―
prone to sing
and sometimes to sting



Kissin’ ’n’ buzzin’
by Michael R. Burch

Kissin’ ’n’ buzzin’
the bees rise
in a dizzy circle of two.
Oh, when I’m with you,
I feel like kissin’ ’n’ buzzin’ too.



Generation Gap
by Michael R. Burch

A quahog clam,
age 405,
said, “Hey, it’s great
to be alive!”

I disagreed,
not feeling nifty,
babe though I am,
just pushing fifty.

Note: A quahog clam found off the coast of Ireland is the longest-lived animal on record, at an estimated age of 405 years.



Baked Alaskan

There is a strange yokel so flirty
she makes ****** seem icons of purity.
With all her winkin’ and blinkin’
Palin seems to be "thinkin’"―
"Ah culd save th’ free world ’cause ah’m purty!"

Copyright 2012 by Michael R. Burch
from Signs of the Apocalypse
all Rights and Violent Shudderings Reserved



Going Rogue in Rouge

It'll be hard to polish that apple
enough to make her seem palatable.
Though she's sweeter than Snapple
how can my mind grapple
with stupidity so nearly infallible?

Copyright 2012 by Michael R. Burch
from Signs of the Apocalypse
all Rights and Violent Shudderings Reserved



Pls refudiate

“Refudiate” this,
miffed, misunderstood Ms!―
Shakespeare, you’re not
(more like Yoda, but hot).
Your grammar’s atrocious;
Great Poets would know this.

You lack any plan
save to flatten Iran
like some cute Mini-Me
cloned from G. W. B.

Admit it, Ms. Palin!
Stop your winkin’ and wailin’―
only “heroes” like Nero
fiddle sparks at Ground Zero.

Copyright 2012 by Michael R. Burch
from Signs of the Apocalypse
all Rights and Violent Shudderings Reserved

I wrote the last poem above after Sarah Palin compared herself to Shakespeare, who coined new words, rather than admit her mistake when she used "refudiate" in a Tweet rather than "repudiate." The copyright notices above are ironic, as the poems above were written and published before 2012.



Nonsense Verse

There was an old man from Peru
who dreamed he was eating his shoe.
He awoke in the night
with a terrible fright
to discover his dream had come true.
―Variation on a classic limerick by Michael R. Burch



There once was a mockingbird, Clyde,
who bragged of his prowess, but lied.
To his new wife he sighed,
"When again, gentle bride?"
"Nevermore!" bright-eyed Raven replied.
― Michael R. Burch



Dear Ed: I don’t understand why
you will publish this other guy―
when I’m brilliant, devoted,
one hell of a poet!
Yet you publish Anonymous. Fie!

Fie! A pox on your head if you favor
this poet who’s dubious, unsavor
y, inconsistent in texts,
no address (I checked!):
since he’s plagiarized Unknown, I’ll wager!
―"The Better Man" by Michael R. Burch



The English are very hospitable,
but tea-less, alas, they grow pitiable ...
or pitiless, rather,
and quite in a lather!
O bother, they're more than formidable.
―"Of Tetley’s and V-2's," or, "Why Not to Bomb the Brits" by Michael R. Burch



Relativity, the theorists’ creed,
says all mass increases with speed.
My *** grows when I sit it.
Albert Einstein, get with it;
equate its deflation, I plead!
― Michael R. Burch


 
Hawking, who makes my head spin,
says time may flow backward. I grin,
imagining the surprise
in my mothers’ eyes
when I head for the womb once again!
― Michael R. Burch



Hawking’s "Brief History of Time"
is such a relief! How sublime
that time, in reverse,
may un-write this verse
and un-spend my last thin dime!
― Michael R. Burch



A proper young auditor, white
as a sheet, like a ghost in the night,
saw his dreams, his career
in a "****!" disappear,
and then, strangely Enronic, his wife.
― Michael R. Burch
 


There once was a troglodyte, Mary,
whose poots were impressively airy.
To her children’s deep shame,
their foul condo became
the first cave to employ a canary.
― Michael R. Burch



There once was a Baptist named Mel
who condemned all non-Christians to hell.
When he stood before God
he felt like a clod
to discover His Love couldn’t fail!
― Michael R. Burch



The Humpback
by Michael R. Burch

The humpback is a gullet
equipped with snarky fins.
It has a winning smile:
and when it SMILES, it wins
as miles and miles of herring
excite its fearsome grins.
So beware, unwary whalers,
lest you drown, sans feet and shins!



Door Mouse
by Michael R. Burch

I’m sure it’s not good for my heart—
the way it will jump-start
when the mouse scoots the floor
(I try to **** it with the door,
never fast enough, or
fling a haphazard shoe ...
always too slow too)
in the strangest zig-zaggedy fashion
absurdly inconvenient for mashin’,
till our hearts, each maniacally revvin’,
make us both early candidates for heaven.



Ding **** ...
by Michael R. Burch

for Fliss

An impertinent bit of sunlight
defeated a goddess, NIGHT.
Hooray!, cried the clover,
Her reign is over!
But she certainly gave us a fright!



Be very careful what you pray for!
by Michael R. Burch

Now that his T’s been depleted
the Saint is upset, feeling cheated.
His once-fiery lust?
Just a chemical bust:
no “devil” cast out or defeated.



The Flu Fly Flew
by Michael R. Burch

A fly with the flu foully flew
up my nose—thought I’d die—had to sue!
Was the small villain fined?
An abrupt judge declined
my case, since I’d “failed to achoo!”



Hell-Bound Hounds
by Michael R. Burch

We have five dogs and every one’s a sinner!
I swear it’s true—they’ll steal each other’s dinner!

They’ll **** before they’re married. That’s unlawful!
They’ll even ***** in public. Eek, so awful!

And when it’s time for treats (don’t gasp!), they’ll beg!
They have no pride! They’ll even **** your leg!

Our oldest Yorkie murdered dear, sweet Olive,
our helpless hamster! None will go to college

or work to pay their room and board, or vets!
When the Devil says, “*** here!” they all yip, “Let’s!”

And yet they’re sweet and loyal, so I doubt
the Lord will dump them in hell’s dark redoubt . . .

which means there’s hope for you, perhaps for me.
But as for cats? I say, “Best wait and see.”


Menu Venue
by Michael R. Burch

At the passing of the shark
the dolphins cried Hark!;

cute cuttlefish sighed, Gee
there will be a serener sea
to its utmost periphery!;

the dogfish barked,
so joyously!;

pink porpoises piped Whee!
excitedly,
delightedly.

But ...

Will there be as much glee
when there’s no you and me?


Anti-Vegan Manifesto
by Michael R. Burch

Let us
avoid lettuce,
sincerely,
and also celery!


Rising Fall
by Michael R. Burch

after Keats

Seasons of mellow fruitfulness
collect at last into mist
some brisk wind will dismiss ...

Where, indeed, are the showers of April?
Where, indeed, the bright flowers of May?
But feel no dismay ...

It’s time to make hay!

I believe the closing line was influenced by this remark J. R. R. Tolkien made about the inspiration for his plucky hobbits: “I've always been impressed that we're here surviving because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against impossible odds: jungles, volcanoes, wild beasts ... they struggle on, almost blindly in a way.” Thus, whatever our apprehensions about the coming winter, when autumn falls and fall rises, it’s time to make hay.


How It Goes, Or Doesn’t
by Michael R. Burch

My face is getting craggier.
My pants are getting saggier.
My ear-hair’s getting shaggier.
My wife is getting naggier.
I’m getting old!

My memory’s plumb awful.
My eyesight is unlawful.
I eschew a tofu waffle.
My wife’s an Eiffel eyeful.
I’m getting old!

My temperature is colder.
My molars need more solder.
Soon I’ll need a boulder-holder.
My wife seized up. Unfold her!
I’m getting old!



A More Likely Plot for “Romeo and Juliet”
by Michael R. Burch

Wont to croon
by the light of the moon
on a rickety ladder,
mad as a hatter,
Romeo crashed to the earth in a swoon,
broke his leg,
had to beg,
repented of falling in love too soon.

A nurse, averse
to his seductive verse,
aware of his madness
and familial badness,
searched for the stiletto in her purse.

Meanwhile, Juliet
began to fret
that the roguish poet
(wouldn’t you know it?)
had pledged his “love” because of a bet!

A gang of young thugs
and loutish lugs
had their faces engraved on “wanted” mugs.
They were doomed to fail,
ended up in jail,
became young fascists and cried “Sieg Heil!”

No tickets were sold,
no tickets were bought,
because, in the end, it all came to naught.

Exeunt stage left.



Apologies to España
by Michael R. Burch

the reign
in Trump’s brain
falls mainly as mansplain



No Star
by Michael R. Burch

Trump, you're no "star."
Putin made you an American Czar.
Now, if we continue down this dark path you've chosen,
pretty soon we'll be wearing lederhosen.


tRUMP is the **** of many jokes.—Michael R. Burch



Doggerel about Doggerel

The Board
by Michael R. Burch

Accessible rhyme is never good.
The penalty is understood―
soft titters from dark board rooms where
the businessmen paste on their hair
and, Walter Mitties, woo the Muse
with reprimands of Dr. Seuss.

The best book of the age sold two,
or three, or four (but not to you),
strange copies of the ones before,
misreadings that delight the board.
They sit and clap; their revenues
fall trillions short of Mother Goose.



Longer Doggerel

When I Was Small, I Grew
by Michael R. Burch

When I was small,
God held me in thrall:
Yes, He was my All
but my spirit was crushed.

As I grew older
my passions grew bolder
even as Christ grew colder.
My distraught mother blushed:

what was I thinking,
with feral lust stinking?
If I saw a girl winking
my face, heated, flushed.

“Go see the pastor!”
Mom screamed. A disaster.
I whacked away faster,
hellbound, yet nonplused.

Whips! Chains! *******!
Sweet, sweet, my Elation!
With each new sensation,
blue blood groinward rushed.

Did God disapprove?
Was Christ not behooved?
At least I was moved
by my hellish lust.



Happily Never After
by Michael R. Burch

Happily never after, we lived unmerrily
(write it!―like disaster) in Our Kingdom by the See
as the man from Porlock’s laughter drowned out love’s threnody.

We ditched the red wheelbarrow in slovenly Tennessee
and made a picturebook of poems, a postcard for Tse-Tse,
a list of resolutions we knew we couldn’t keep,
and asylum decorations for the King in his dark sleep.

We made it new so often strange newness, wearing old,
peeled off, and something rotten gleamed yellow, not like gold:―
like carelessness, or cowardice, and redolent of ***.
We stumbled off, our awkwardness―new Keystone comedy.

Huge cloudy symbols blocked the sun; onlookers strained to see.
We said We were the only One. Our gaseous Melody
had made us Joshuas, and so―the Bible, new-rewrit,

with god removed, replaced by Show and Glyphics and Sanskrit,
seemed marvelous to Us, although King Ezra said, “It’s Sh-t.”

We spent unhappy hours in Our Kingdom of the Pea,
drunk on such Awesome Power only Emperors can See.
We were Imagists and Vorticists, Projectivists, a Dunce,
Anarchists and Antarcticists and anti-Christs, and once
We’d made the world Our oyster and stowed away the pearl
of Our too-, too-polished wisdom, unanchored of the world,
We sailed away to Lilliput, to Our Kingdom by the See
and piped the rats to join Us, to live unmerrily
hereever and hereafter, in Our Kingdom of the Pea,
in the miniature ship Disaster in a jar in Tennessee.



Doggerel about Dogs

Dog Daze
by Michael R. Burch

Sweet Oz is a soulful snuggler;
he really is one of the best.
Sometimes in bed
he snuggles my head,
though he mostly just plops on my chest.

I think Oz was made to love
from the first ray of light to the dark,
but his great love for me
is exceeded (oh gee!)
by his Truly Great Passion: to Bark.



Oz is the Boss!
by Michael R. Burch

Oz is the boss!
Because? Because ...
Because of the wonderful things he does!

He barks like a tyrant
for treats and a hydrant;
his voice far more regal
than mere greyhound or beagle;
his serfs must obey him
or his yipping will slay them!

Oz is the boss!
Because? Because ...
Because of the wonderful things he does!



Excoriation of a Treat Slave
by Michael R. Burch

I am his Highness’s dog at Kew.
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
―Alexander Pope

We practice our fierce Yapping,
for when the treat slaves come
they’ll grant Us our desire.
(They really are that dumb!)

They’ll never catch Us napping―
our Ears pricked, keen and sharp.
When they step into Our parlor,
We’ll leap awake, and Bark.

But one is rather doltish;
he doesn’t understand
the meaning of Our savage,
imperial, wild Command.

The others are quite docile
and bow to Us on cue.
We think the dull one wrote a poem
about some Dog from Kew

who never grasped Our secret,
whose mind stayed think, and dark.
It’s a question of obedience
conveyed by a Lordly Bark.

But as for playing fetch,
well, that’s another matter.
We think the dullard’s also
as mad as any hatter

and doesn’t grasp his duty
to fling Us slobbery *****
which We’d return to him, mincingly,
here in Our royal halls.



Bed Head, or, the Ballad of
Beth and her Fur Babies
by Michael R. Burch

When Beth and her babies
prepare for “good night”
sweet rituals of kisses
and cuddles commence.

First Wickett, the eldest,
whose mane has grown light
with the wisdom of age
and advanced senescence
is tucked in, “just right.”

Then Mary, the mother,
is smothered with kisses
in a way that befits
such an angelic missus.

Then Melody, lambkin,
and sweet, soulful Oz
and cute, clever Xander
all clap their clipped paws
and follow sweet Beth
to their high nightly roost
where they’ll sleep on her head
(or, perhaps, her caboose).



Updated Advice to Amorous Bachelors
by Michael R. Burch

At six-thirty,
feeling flirty,
I put on the hurdy-gurdy ...
But Ms. Purdy,
all alert-y,
kicked me where I’m sore and hurty.

The moral of my story?
To avoid a fate as gory,
flirt with gals a bit more *****-y!



On the Horns of a Dilemma (I)
by Michael R. Burch

Love has become preposterous
for the over-endowed rhinoceros:
when he meets the right miss
how the hell can he kiss
when his horn is so ***** it lofts her thus?

I need an artist or cartoonist to create an image of a male rhino lifting his prospective mate into the air during an abortive kiss. Any takers?



On the Horns of a Dilemma (II)
by Michael R. Burch

Love has become preposterous
for the over-endowed rhinoceros:
when he meets the right miss
how the hell can he kiss
when his horn deforms her esophagus?



On the Horns of a Dilemma (III)
by Michael R. Burch

A wino rhino said, “I know!
I have a horn I cannot blow!
And so,
ergo,
I’ll watch the lovely spigot flow!



The Horns of a Dilemma Solved, if not Solvent
by Michael R. Burch

A wine-addled rhino debated
the prospect of living unmated
due to the scorn
gals showed for his horn,
then lost it to poachers, sedated.



Less Heroic Couplets: Word to the Unwise
by Michael R. Burch

I wanted to be good as gold,
but being good, as I’ve been told,
requires something, discipline,
I simply have no interest in!



Villanelle of an Opportunist
by Michael R. Burch

I’m not looking for someone to save.
A gal has to do what a gal has to do:
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.

How many highways to hell must I pave
with intentions imagined, not true?
I’m not looking for someone to save.

Fools praise compassion while weaklings rave,
but a gal has to do what a gal has to do.
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.

Some praise the Lord but the Devil’s my fave
because he has led me to you!
I’m not looking for someone to save.

In the land of the free and the home of the brave,
a gal has to do what a gal has to do.
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.

Every day without meds becomes a close shave
and the razor keeps tempting me too.
I’m not looking for someone to save:
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.



Less Heroic Couplets: Shell Game
by Michael R. Burch

I saw a turtle squirtle!
Before you ask, “How fertile?”
The squirt came from its mouth.
Why do your thoughts fly south?



Helen Keller
saw more than the stellar-
visioned
and the televisioned.
—Michael R. Burch



Antsy kids of the world, unite!
You don't like facts, so fight!
Call them all “haters,”
those cool, calm debaters,
then your mommies can tuck you in tight.
—Michael R. Burch



Ireland’s Ire has Landed

The luck of the Irish has failed:
Trump’s landed and cannot be jailed!
From Killarney to Derry
the natives are very
despondent and bombs have been mailed.

Donald Trump has alarmed Country Clare:
the Irish are crying, “Beware!
He won’t pay his tax,
his manners are lax,
and what the hell’s up with his hair?”

The Donald has landed in Doonbeg
(Ireland). Why? For a noon beg:
he’s running real low
on cash, so you know
he’ll fit like a freakin’ square peg.

The luck of the Irish has faltered.
Trump’s there and he cannot be haltered.
From Killarney to Derry
the natives are very
insistent his visa be altered.



Poets laud Justice’s
high principles.
Trump just gropes
her raw genitals.
—Michael R. Burch



Zip It
by Michael R. Burch

Trump pulled a stunt,
wore his pants back-to-front,
and now he’s the **** of bald jokes:
“Is he coming, or going?”
“Eeek! His diaper is showing!”
But it’s all much ado, says Snopes.



Limerick-Ode to a Much-Eaten ***
by Michael R. Burch

There wonst wus a president, Trump,
whose greatest *** (et) wus his ****.
It was padded ’n’ shiny,
that great orange hiney,
but to drain it we’d need a sump pump!



On the Horns of a Dilemma (I)
by Michael R. Burch

Love has become preposterous
for the over-endowed rhinoceros:
when he meets the right miss
how the hell can he kiss
when his horn deforms her esophagus?

On the Horns of a Dilemma (II)
by Michael R. Burch

Love has become preposterous
for the over-endowed rhinoceros:
when he meets the right miss
how the hell can he kiss
when his horn is so ***** it lofts her thus?

On the Horns of a Dilemma (III)
by Michael R. Burch

A wino rhino said, “I know!
I have a horn I cannot blow!
And so,
ergo,
I’ll watch the lovely spigot flow!

The Horns of a Dilemma Solved, if not Solvent
by Michael R. Burch

A wine-addled rhino debated
the prospect of living unmated
due to the cruel scorn
gals showed for his horn,
but then lost it to poachers, sedated.



A Possible Explanation for the Madness of March Hares
by Michael R. Burch

March hares,
beware!
Spring’s a tease, a flirt!

This is yet another late freeze alert.
Better comfort your babies;
the weather has rabies.



Voice of (T)reason
by Michael R. Burch

Love is the highest, the greatest, the grandest!
Love has us all and our lovers in thrall!

Love, but don’t fall.

Love is the coolest, the truest, the Yule-est!
Love is sage Andrew’s Marvell-ous ball!

Love, but don’t fall.

Love is the sweetest, the deepest, the fleetest!
Yes, that’s the problem – a pall over all.

Love, but don’t fall.



Final Ballad of the Unhappy Camper
by Michael R. Burch

I’m low on ****,
lost my fizz,
out of biz.

Flabby and *****,
morose and mourny,
gals’re scorny.

Friggin’ Low T Hell!
Unable to swell!
"More sleep"? Do tell!



Less Heroic Couplets: Weird Beard
by Michael R. Burch

for and after Richard Thomas Moore

C’mon, admit—love’s truly weird:
why does a ****** need a beard?

Should making love produce foul poxes?
What can we make of such paradoxes?

And having made love, what the hell's the point
of ending up with a sore, limp joint?

Who invented love, which we all pursue
like rats in a maze after sniffing glue?



This is my randy version of a classic limerick originally published by Arthur Henry Reginald Buller in Punch on Dec. 19, 1923.

An incestuous physicist, Bright,
made love at speeds faster than light.
She had *** one day
in her relative way,
then came on the previous night!

There was a young **** star of Ghent
whose get-up just got up and went.
Too sleepy for ***,
her fans became ex-
subscribers, and no checks were sent.
—Michael R. Burch

Fair Elle was an eely lover
who squiggled beneath the covers ...
She was hard to pin down!
When I did it, she’d frown,
then wouldn’t do none of my druthers!

There once was a camel who loved to ****.
Please get your crude minds out of their slump!
He loved to give rides on his huge, lordly lump!
—Michael R. Burch

I wanted to live like a sheik, in a harem.
But I live like a monk without gals ’cause I scare ’em.
—Michael R. Burch



Mouldy Oldie, or, Septuagenarian Ode to Cheese Mould
by Michael R. Burch

I’m getting old
and battling mould —
it’s growing on my cheese!

My phone’s on hold
to report the mould —
my life is not a breeze!

I pray and pray,
"Send help my way —
good Lord, I’m on my knees!"

But truth be told,
it’s oversold —
that’s it, I’m done with cheese!



Wonderworks
by Michael R. Burch

History’s
mysteries
abound
& astound,
found
(profound)
the whole earth ’round,
even if mostly
underground.

I wrote the poem above after discovering an article about the aptly-named Wonderwerk Cave in an ancient (March 2016) falling-apart issue of Discover that I rescued from my car. The cave in question lies in South Africa’s Northern Cape province, around 300 miles southwest of the “Cradle of Civilization.” Artifacts discovered in the Wonderwerk Cave appear to be even more ancient than the Cradle’s. According to the article, “The density of stone artifacts in the region is staggering.” The use of fire may now date back as far as 1.8 million years.



The Procrastinator’s Creed
by Michael R. Burch

It’s always, “Tomorrow, I’ll do it.”
Work? I eschew it.
I never collect money I’ve loaned
and the rest of this poem’s been postponed.



WHEN MAN IS GONE
by Michael R. Burch

When man is gone
won’t the sun still rise?

Will anyone care
that he isn’t there?

Will the porpoises
lack purpose,

the marigolds
fold?

Will the doves and the deer
weep bitter tears?

Or will life continue,
glad to be off his menu?



That Mella Fella
by Michael R. Burch

for John Mella, former editor of LIGHT

There once was a fella
named Mella,
who, if you weren’t funny,
would tell ya.

But he was cool, clever, nice,
gave some splendid advice,
and if you were good,
he would sell ya.



One for the Thumb!
by Michael R. Burch

Counting rings, the counters come,
marching to the same sad drum:

“Your GOAT has two, but ours has four!”

“Our GOAT has six, and six is more!”

“One for the thumb! Our GOAT’s the best!”

But Robert Horry’s not impressed.

Jim Loscutoff is trying on
the mantle of the GOAT, anon.

Frank Ramsey laughs himself to tears:
since he won seven in just nine years.

Tom Heinsohn, K.C. Jones, Satch Sanders
and Hondo all have eight, ring ganders.

Sam Jones has rings to fill both hands
(that’s ten for all math-challenged fans),
won in twelve years, as truth demands.

Meanwhile, the only GOAT we know,
Bill Russell, has one ... for the toe!



Mating Calls, or, Purdy Please!
by Michael R. Burch

1.
Nine-thirty? Feeling flirty (and, indeed, a trifle *****),
I decided to ring prudish Eleanor Purdy ...
When I rang her to bang her,
it seems my words stang her!
She hung up the phone, so I banged off, alone.

2
Still dreaming to hold something skirty,
I once again rang our reclusive Miss Purdy.
She sounded unhappy,
called me “daffy” and “sappy,”
and that was before the gal heard me!

3.
It was early A.M., ’bout two-thirty,
when I enquired again with the regal Miss Purdy.
With a voice full of hate,
she thundered, “It’s LATE!”
Was I, perhaps, over-wordy?

4.
At 3:42, I was feeling blue,
and so I dialed up Miss You-Know-Who,
thinking to bed her
and quite possibly wed her,
but she summoned the cops; now my bail is due!

5.
It was probably close to four-thirty
the last time I called the miserly Purdy.
Although I’m her boarder,
the restraining order
freezes all assets of that virginity hoarder!

6.
It was nearly twelve-thirty
when, in need of something skirty,
I rang up (to bang up) the reclusive Miss Purty ...
She hung up the phone
so I banged off, alone.



Hot Cross Buns
by Michael R. Burch

Lexi, Lexi, Lexi,
so lovely and perplexy,
please meet me for a meal
spicy and Tex-Mexy.

Done with hot fried fritters,
bend over, show your knickers;
then, as your *** cheeks redden,
ignore the public snickers.



New Year’s Dissolution
by Michael R. Burch

The year draws to a close ...
Who knows
where the hell the time goes?

I’m up to my nose
in ill-fitting clothes!

They canceled my shows!
My corns grow in rows!

And yet I’ll survive ...
Perhaps ... I suppose ...

So let’s ring the New Year in
with tonic and gin
and greet the foolish Babe
with an even-more-foolish grin!



Her Whirlwind Life
by Michael R. Burch

for Tallulah Bankhead

“Never slow down
or someone’ll catch up.
Virgins are boring,
give me a ****.”

“Male or female,
it really don’t matter.
Life is too short
to live it in a halter.”

Keywords/Tags: doggerel, nonsense, light verse, light poetry, humor, silliness, limerick, jingle, jangle, mrbepi
The Day I Hit The Bear

The day started out like most days in the mountains. The sky was bright but not entirely sunny. It was a Friday morning at 8:37 when I pulled out of my ‘economy’ motel on the eastern outskirts of Roanoke.

I had spent the previous afternoon (Thursday) riding the Blue Ridge Parkway from the Carolina border to Roanoke. It was after 6 and the heavy tree formation along the Parkway had started to darken the road, so I decided to call it a day. Too many animals call that time of night nirvana for me to feel safe after dusk anymore.

After a quick stop at ‘Denny’s” it was off to bed in the $41.00 motel I found just off the entrance to the Parkway. I slept great, as I always do on the road and woke up at seven raring to go. After a gas-up and ‘breakfast’ at the B.P. station, I was back up the entrance ramp onto the parkway and making the left turn that would take me North all the way to Front Royal Virginia.

As I started North, I got to thinking. I was riding my beloved Venture Royale, which I had always referred to as just the ‘Venture.’ Most guys I know after establishing a love affair with their motorcycle name their bike like they do their children and dogs. I never had — it was just the Venture.

After 150,000 of the most unbelievable miles anyone could imagine, the bike still had the name it was given by its manufacturer  I had always felt guilty about that, but never seemed to be able to come up with the appropriate name.

As I left the Blue Ridge Parkway and entered Shenandoah National Park (Skyline Drive), the sky darkened and the posted speed limit dropped to 35. I’ve always wondered why the speed limit was only 35 here yet 45 on the Parkway just below. The makeup and complexion of the roads looked identical or at least so it seemed. It’s a long ride through the park to Front Royal at 35mph, and if you don’t stop you might make it in about three hours.

I was now at a consistent elevation above 3000 feet and the air and shrubbery started to feel and look like the Rocky Mountains. I stopped at a rest stop to use the facilities and drink some water and then quickly got back on the road because my goal was to make it to the Pennsylvania line before dark.

The Bike was running as well as it ever has, and after 22 years of faithful service that’s saying a lot. There are only 2 states we haven’t been to together (Mississippi and Rhode Island), and I’ve got both of them on my short list to round out the lower 48. The Venture, there I go again calling it something so bland, has also been to Alaska twice. It has made 5 cross-country trips and my favorite, a 10-day Odyssey with my son going up one side of the Rockies and down the other. The memories of our times together came flooding back as I rounded a large bend in the road to the left.

Then it happened !

Before I could react, downshift, or even pull the brake lever, it was directly in front of me. I saw it, and my life flashed in front of me at exactly the same time. It was a black bear, and it looked to be full size. Before I could even exhale it was less than a foot from the front tire of the bike.

BAMMMMM ! It hit like a sledgehammer. First it sounded like a small explosion just behind the front wheel on the left side. Then the back of the bike lifted up about two feet in the air. I had hit the bear and then run over it as it passed under the bike.

We’ve all heard stories about near death experiences that cause your life to flash in front of your eyes in that very instant. Trust me, it’s true, and here’s what flashed through mine.

Anyone who knows me, knows about my lifelong love for motorcycles and motorcycling. My first ‘car’ was a BSA Gold Star that I had in High School. My mother never knew about it because YES VIRGINIA — my Grandmother and Grandfather let me hide it in their garage.

I bought the first 750 Honda when it was introduced in 1970, rode it all through college and believe me when I say those Penn State winters were brutal. I didn’t know it was called Hypothermia, but I experienced it every week between November and March. I dated my Wife on that motorcycle and am lucky that I still have it tucked away in the back of my garage today.

Combined with my love for Motorcycles is my love of the mountains and the Rockies in particular. I have spent almost all of my vacation time during the past 30 years riding, touring, and exploring the Rocky Mountain West.

As a result of my time in the Rockies, about 25 years ago I also developed a love for bears. All bears. I love Black Bears, Grizzly Bears and Polar Bears, but if forced to choose the Grizzly would be my favorite. My 2 close encounters in Yellowstone, and my 1 in Glacier, with large Brown Bears changed my perception of life and what it means forever. I was totally at their mercy. Looking into their eyes, which the so-called experts warn you against, was a life altering experience that I’m glad to have done

Now, back to what flashed through my mind when the bear was about to make contact. It all seemed to happen in slow motion but I thought as I hit him that if this was truly the end — how lucky I was! YES LUCKY. To end my life doing the thing I loved the most, in a place (A National Park) I loved most being, and to have it ended by an animal that meant more to me than any other. It all just seemed fitting and right.

In that instant I was ready to go, and in a strange and still unexplainable way, I was almost thankful for it happening the way it did.

And then before I had even blinked my eyes, the rear of the bike was back down on the road and now sliding to the right. I counter-steered as I was taught when road racing, and after drifting across both lanes the bike ‘******’ straight up and started heading North again. Instinctively I looked in my rear view mirror and saw the bear run off into the tall grass on the side of the road and then collapse.

I went about fifty yards further up the road and stopped the bike and got off. It was damaged in the front and just slightly leaking. The radiator cowling was broken off and part of the lower fairing was gone. There was organic material all over my left tailpipe which I would later find out was brain matter from the bear. I got off the bike and walked back to where I thought the bear was laying.

He was right where I had seen him collapse and he had a huge opening in his skull where he had made contact with the bike. As terrible as this made me feel, something else made me feel even worse, --- he was still breathing.

Two hikers (a husband and wife), about my age were now walking toward the bear and had seen the whole thing happen. They were locals and worried that there may be more bears around. They both suggested that we leave the area quickly. They told me there was a rest stop two miles further up the Parkway on the left and that I would be able call a Ranger to come and assist (shoot) the bear. I thanked them as they left and watched them head down the trail directly across the road from where the bear and I now were.

I got back on the bike and hurried up to the rest stop. Just as the couple had instructed the nice woman behind the counter called the Ranger Station and they sent a USFS Officer named Gary Roth to talk to me. I pleaded with the Ranger to forget about me, (I was fine), and to please go help the bear. I was pretty sure the bear was unconscious, but even then, you can sometimes still feel pain.

That Ranger spent almost two hours with me, first checking my driver’s license and registration, insurance card, etc. I’m sure he was also doing a back round check on me when he went back to his SUV, and all the while the poor bear was lying in trauma on the side of the road.

These Park Officials claim to love their charges, the animals in the park, but today it didn’t seem that way. I would have gladly given the officer my bike keys and identification, which he could have kept while going back to help (dispatch) the bear. ‘NO’ was all he replied back when I made that suggestion.

Finally, the Ranger left after thanking me for stopping and filing the report. He told me that most people who hit bears (on average one a month) don’t even stop to report it. At this time of the year the bears are very active, as they are foraging incessantly for food, trying to gain weight before hibernation. They are more vulnerable to car and motorcycle traffic in the fall than at any other time. He also told me that I was the only one in his memory (19 years in the park), to have hit a bear on a motorcycle and to have walked (ridden) away.

As I watched him head South on Skyline Drive, I looked at the sorry state of the Venture. I felt guiltier than ever, still referring to my beloved, and now damaged bike, in such an objective way. I decided to ride back to where I had hit the bear and make sure the Ranger did what he said he would do.  By the time I traveled the two miles to where the bear had been, the ranger was gone and there was no sight of the bear. However he did it, the Ranger had removed the bear quickly and took him to wherever they take animals that have been killed on the road.

I turned the bike around and headed North again. As I passed the rest stop I looked over to see if maybe the Ranger had come back, but the parking lot was now empty except for one lone moped parked off on the grass to the right of the building. ‘Must be a camper,’ I thought to myself.

Looking straight North again in the direction of Front Royal, I noticed the ‘Venture Royale’ badge on the dashboard of the bike. An epiphany then happened that had never happened while riding before.

                                THE BEAR / THE BEAR !!!

I would never again refer to my beloved motorcycle as the Venture again. The spirit of something primordial had overcome both of us today and allowed us to survive. From this moment on, the bike will forever be known as — THE BEAR.

Roanoke Virginia
October 2012
Jeff Stier Jun 2016
Seeing the volcano from below
just another mountain
but this mountain
speaks of the earth disgorging
its molten guts
of lightning arcing
in ten zillion volt flashes
of God's terrifying grace
of geologic upheaval
that happened before anyone knew
anything about God
that happened before anyone knew anything

We were kids on a
long weekend
decrepit jeep pickup
camper shell over the bed
we stopped for an old Indian woman
and her son
hitchhiking
I remember the strange musky smell
of her
sitting by me
on the truck's bench seat
like food I'd never eaten
or a hand-me-down blanket
from the last century

We camped at Green Lake
and green it was
set out the next day
fully unprepared for our climb

But our young limbs
carried us to a precarious summit
the South Sister
nothing but sky all around
and dreams
distant peaks
the sleeping volcanoes
of the Cascade Range
stretching into the vastness
of north and south
Such peace

And here
now
I drown in
a deep web of tangled memories

Vistas I once surveyed
live and breathe in my mind
people I once knew
still whisper in my ear
though they are long dead

How do they live on?
Who tends these grass-grown graves?
Who speaks for these dead?

And where do these memories go
when we die?
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
i find nothing intelligent about philosophy,
if in were to prescribe a self-help book
i'd prescribe any philosophy book,
it would become mantra to: dumb-down.
fascinated as i am, dancing
pretending to drum, when there's
a sudden jolt and i sing hail! in the
vandal epice, i am fully intact as a
skeleton of an albatross - and stand in a shape
of ᛉ... zigfreid... jawolh...
    having spent 3 weeks in Poland,
in some obscure city gave me utter peace...
but hey, why not come back to England
and get a moral sun-tan of absolute
*******... why not dress up
  in post-colonial nuances, why not experience
post-colonialism?
         3 weeks without the internet
and i really, really did feel relief...
           i thought television is bad...
well, it is bad, if you have internet access...
but with the internet, comes the Belzeebub,
a swarm of words, of opinions that only lead
to a cul de sac of your own basis:
for not talking on a street corner, with a sign
dangling on your neck like a cowbell
reading: the end is near!
          i get it, it's a fetish, it's man claiming
the end will come when he'll obliterate gravity,
i''m cool with that, shindig and all the ponce
of an urban vocab...
   talk to me like a farmer though... please,
please, please do... i want to talk to a farmer...
i can't deal with this cool urban kids
and their microaggression and, whatever it is
they have stashed in their socks...
     because you really can't read a philosophy
book and care to be intelligent...
         i've read a few, and each time i return to
the most despotic creature i could ever wish
to be... the one that's perplexed that he
say something tangible, something worth
riddling... but nothing outside of
the arithmetic... of gluing i am dodo
therefore i'm extinct
...
     try to imagine living in a country without
a colonial past... i can, i just did, spent
3 weeks in Poland, and after having acquired
English, like the good, assimmilated foreigner
i am: i want to unlearn it...
   i'm dying to unlearn it... i ****** wish i didn't
speak it...
              it's too global for me...
    i speak it, but i don't want to speak it,
but then i invested over 20 years of my life in speaking
it, and thinking in it...
       i'd also like to see little england,
the england with its camper vans and it's yorkshire
terrier... but i am currently holding
an anchor on the periphery of London,
and boy, the drag is something, i am actually
enjoying this paralysis...
but you can't expect to read a philosophy and
get the idea that suddenly there's a theory
of relativity sleeping within you...
    read a philosophy book, learn to become an idiot...
    intelligence can't even stomach awe...
it always has to say something witty,
be something opportune, have a dinner party...
fake it...
           the idiot just looks at the world
and says: huh? it really is a chance to play the Frankenstein
monster... so many people, and they have so
much care to trade, sell apples, argue...
so much care to attain the ****** appeal,
to trim their hair...
   so much energy to trade, sell life insurance,
to argue...
               where do they get it from, that mana?
it can really be so welcoming,
to experience life in a non-colonial society,
    to be bored, to do nothing and simply be human...
now that's a first...
              to do nothing and simply be, human...
   me thinks that animals have it easy,
i wish i could have the digestive system of a koala
bear...
                to be a creature with a mono-facet
adaptability dynamic... well, a bi-facet adaptation
scenario... me, coordinates (0, 0), the thing
i want, coordinates (1, 1)... move!
     not me, i'm human, i have to go to the *******
cinema, i have to attend a funeral,
i have to do a, b, c, and all the way down through to z...
    evolution is cruel...
               this constant physical bombardment
with sensual teasing, and then being ****** anally by
some cognitive fudge phalllus...
    it's really become obsolete to even think,
there's no: think for the pleasure of mere thought...
now i'm waiting for a shepherd to
huddle me into a crowd in need of writing a book...
i really don't know how the natives
  deal with this, but if i were to suddenly speak my
native tongue i'd be better off, english is really
being stretched, so many bad, i mean really bad
accents... they only speak the english they speak
because english is a barren wasteland without any
diacritical marks... it's covert language,
puny secretive bollocking at the start,
and nothing else at the end...
    but it really is a headache knowing english
these days... it's doing my head in...
          i speak english and i'm already imaging
myself head-banging, or knocking down
the al-buraq - if you know Polish then you'll
just say: the beetroot.
                       and whatever the media tells you,
everyone in the trenches of society
actually adores Putin...
             it could be sad, but at least it's not so
flimsy and artsy after all...
   a society with clear indication that internet
megalomania is not permitted...
                  yes, i really am writing you a postcard
with a: wish you would go there...
     even with its Christian conservatism...
      it's actually bearable...
becuase, having 3 weeks there, and as i get older
(even though i'm only 30)...
  i find England: exhausting... literally
like dragging elephant testicles wherever i walk...
it's exhausting... England is exhausting...
   talking English is exhausting...
     this beacon of hope and freedom has become
a **** nugget, set alight on a toothpick...
     i've lived in England for so many years,
and have yet to taste the local delicacy... of an English
******... while a story emerges in Rotherham
about a ******* cartel... it begins to really break
your heart... there's you, ***-starved and
having the tendency to over-exaggerate a handshake
and there's the world...
     you can't really drink enough alcohol these days
to knock yourself out...
and i've been drinking, on and on, on and on... and on...
and it never stops being so depressing!
     there, my tongue is lose... it's a streaker on a
football pitch... running wild... giving it all
for the worth of simply: frenzy...
             but there's something very ancient about this
dynamic... the fact that these are the lands
once occupied by the romans...
sure, in Poland you use the Latin alphabet, but
the spaghetti maneli crew never threw their
pizza that far up north...
                          go to any country that doesn't
boast of a Roman heritage...
that's for starters...
                         if the place boasts about being
conquered by the romans...
                  you end up watching a funeral that
just won't go away... not how the latin alphabet
was best symbiotic with numbers due to the holes
and you can't code on a computer screen
with anything, but latin... try writing an app.
using arabic or hebrew...
it truly is a language based on: matchsticks made
in heaven...
                 just the areas where the romans didn't
settle... the "uncivilised" regions...
    it's enough that the Slavs probably had the equivalent
of runes... and a polytheism of some sort...
but all i see is: perfected exploitation of the latin
alphabet, and well, might as well forget the rest.
    now that's major digression...
      it's as if i'm trying to have a conversation,
  but then the claustrophobic tendency of narration
take off and i''m thrown into a Tartar army...
       entranced into singing allah'u akbar... instead
of reciting Rumi...
                    it is what it is,
and since England is a major player in world
affairs, there's nothing little about it, even
if you live in Dover...
                 yet there is a nation-state serenity somewhere,
where everything is truly small,
  truly content with very little, where it's not
gagging to advertise itself, to sell itself...
    perhaps Auschwitz is a blessing as a "tourist"
destination after all...
           come to think of it... people will be children
around the pyramids...
they'll climb a pyramid... make funny photographs
of the pyramids what afar, as if they were holding
it... can't see any funny photographs coming
from Auschwitz... people gearing up to
smoke a shisha in a gas chamber...
                       or climbing into one of the crematorium
ovens to replicate a Tokyo hotel "room",
maybe Auschwitz is the blessed deterent of globalisation?
it's a great question...
           while the Czechs import hen and stag parties
to their capital with cheep beer...
  no one from the west seems to feel the same
drunken bliss in Krakow... what with Auschwitz
so close...
               they'd rather drink with the Russian
separatists in Kiev!
                  and indeed, what the German rage left,
i wear it like a black diamond...
              a crow's croak...
so, does that mean i have to appeal to some
imaginative conquered-party appeal?
   that i let it all happen, while i pressed the snooze
button on my clock?
     i don't know... Poland is a bit odd, and coming
from there, it almost seems that i should be writing
about Moldavia.
              and blessed are those: firmly rooted in one
place, with neither care nor obligation
   to travel far...
                          lest they bring nothing but
scurvy, in hope of bringing the beacon of civilisation
  and only that, no olympic flame: but a plague.
England is a land of displaced people,
  and can't be anything other than:
i got ants in my pants and i'm going to sing the blues!
SE Reimer Jan 2016
~

gold-encrusted jewels dance
on sun-drenched ocean stacks,
his rugged rocks etched deep
by her waves from far beneath,
and Pacific’s gusty breath;
his wind-swept islets burn,
aflame in sunset's dying embers,
like a lover's siren call.
his chiseled keyholes waiting
for the ciphered piercing rays
to collide in rushing tidal spray.
unlocking sunset's golden hour...
surging forth then quickly fades,
as sunbeam fingers slowly slip,
beneath horizon's sultry lip;
dusk unfolds in magic hues,
molten rose turns scarlet blues,
night descends as one by one,
we raptured star-kissed lovers
disembark this ferris wheel;
the curtain falls again,
with sea and rocks
rehearsing lines
to play again another day.
this their theatre
of the night,
performed by two alone,
beneath the moon
and starry sky.

~

*post script.

our last time through in 2004 was a blur on our way through to San Diego, an exhilarating ride for certain, with all of its bends and curves experienced top down in a convertible, but hardly doing justice to Big Sur’s stunning scene in mere hours; we told ourselves we simply had to return.  

it took eleven years, and this time we spent a full five days and nights along Highway 1, towing a camper and slow-driving south from Monterrey all the curves to Morro Bay, exploring just about every hike and lookout in between; and in so doing, validating our return in a most satisfying way.  Big Sur is officially off our bucket list!  her sunsets were particularly rewarding, especially two... one enjoyed at sea level, from the sand and keyholes at Pfeiffer Beach day use area, the other delighted us from high above the ocean waves, seated at the picnic table of our cliff-side camp site at Kirk Creek Campground.

a most refreshing time to recuperate and recharge our spirits; five glorious days of disconnection, reconnecting to nature, each other and best of all, life at the speed of sunsets and star gazing; evenings spent round the campfire with no cell, no i-pad, no laptop, only the light of the fire, the stars and that sparkle in each other's eyes!
my profile cover collage shows from left to right- Pfeiffer Beach - "golden spray", Pfeiffer Beach - "keyhole at sunset"  Kirk Creek - "sunset from our picnic table"
Jessie Meredith Jul 2013
Who offered 6-year-old-me deals of a toothbrush or a paddle,
(I took the paddle).
Who would call to say “be there in ten,”
And rang again in forty-five.
Who told me to stop trying to sneak out
And just use the front door.

Who, on every spontaneous trip to Barcelona or Belize
would add another nameless instrument to the stage
of our living room, with nameless band mates to follow,
and would drag me from bed at 2 AM on a Monday
and hand me a guitar.

Who I learned to play guitar for, so I could send to her my
“Wish You Were Here” and she could listen from wherever
her 1970s camper and wanderlust heart had taken her.

Who gave advice of “If you’re gunna be stupid, ya gotta be tough.”

Who yelled at Ashlyn and me the first time she caught
us with a joint- “What the hell are you doing? Don’t you share?”

Who, after I invented master plans of how to get rid of
the smell of cigarette smoke and spilled beer, how to keep
Troy from sleeping in her bed and Jordan from drinking her Captain
And Jeremiah from eating all the food she left me,
always returned from her trips and knew, within minutes,
that her house had been our playground

Who would simply ask, “have fun?”

Who mistook adolescent angst and the silence of my Nirvana daze
for a resentment of struggles past, and
Who thought I felt better off without her around.

Who may have been right,
but was probably wrong.
Gonz and Roses Mar 2011
Drinking allnight  just to get right.
She claims she never but it sure dont seem tight.
Im half off the wagon but I just went for the ride
Passed out at the keyboard found out  a friend  called hello died.

Went to the funeral what did I see.
A ****** new place it did appear to me.
One for the road okay i took the case.
Hopped in the coffin.
felt like i just came back from outter space.

If your camper's rockin.
Better hope your husban dont come a knockin.
cause bulletes leave ya sore.
So just hide in the floor.
Cause if your dead it's pretty tuff to get some more.

I like beer and poetry what else did ya think i'd say.
like a kid throwin rocks at a hornet's nest
nest with danger i will always play.

Im guessing my wife must be outta school.
Honey you can ride the bus for free.
No need to blow the teacher and being he's the janitor it's not really cool.

I like beer and pushing the envelope what can i say.
just cause you like to snuggle on fishing trips
people call ya gay.

I write like a demon sometimes i even think.
When did God invent *******?
Come on lets mix a drink.

Cartoons are great ever watch fritz the cat?
got busted last week trying to spend some alone time.
guees it's not cool to ******* in a laundrymat.

Wow im so impressed okay maybe not.
Love the new site.
Wonder if the new designer  on his meds
are really doesnt care to think alot.

Wonder if my new will stay.
I love beer and poetry
What else did you ***** little  hamsters really think i'd say?
Id like to thank  to thank Jesus, My drug dealer, Betty White  for the pics,
Hamburgers  and perverts ,Clouds that dont talk back,******* shady pines mental home for the shock treatments what a buzz.

Mr pickles , Skeeter for not charging me , And my amigos for laughing even when i cant   adios

we have left the building.
Kimberly Clemens Mar 2014
Laying on my back I watch the ceiling,
the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars begin to fall one after another-
as I regard my world crumbling from the bottom up
and the sky feigns my view to take me back
to picturesque memories of childhood in the summertime.

A ball flying towards the power lines in
the action of a cul de sac neighborhood game
And countless bending limbs towards a mailbox driveway
To saftey.
The verdant grass on the ground encompasses a happy body;
A ball of innocent energy laughing in the perfection of a moment
That wasn't captured on camera.  

Road trips to New York in the camper
Playing music that I didn't know I would be holding close to my heart,
Living in time that went by much slower than it does now-
Forever joking to daddy are we there yet?
The sand dune hills never seemed so big
As they did when I built sand castles in the gritty beige of my grandma's land.
The bristling field never felt as fresh
As the first times I ran out in them,
Laughing in the perfection of another moment
That was not captured on camera.

Back home, when grandma and grandpa still lived with us,
I run around in tiny clothes in my tiny body
Planting flowers in pots with my grandma in the warm summer air
And hitching lawn mower rides as my grandpa mows the lawn.
Held in his firm arms I am laughing in the perfection of a moment
That was not captured on camera.

I can feel the golden light of happiness still inside me-
Bubbling and giggling as innocence hides somewhere inside my maturity.
I watch the ceiling above me fall back into place
Gaze at the stars flowing back into their given position
As if they'd never moved at all,
I lay here as my mind reaches back to when it wasn't hard to be infinitely happy,
To moments of innocence that bring me back
To safety
While I laugh in the imperfection of a moment
That is me now.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2023
Kaiser's hiccups
/are/
   and \were\
   legendary
and probably
  |will be|

having a little break cleaning the house, after having taken out the garbage, the dustmen always come later than the postman, around 2am, i'm guessing my street is their last point of call... which suits me just fine... the house was almost entirely cleaned, vacuumed, floors wiped with detergent... ugh... **** it... lazy fingers... i opened up my guitar case, the PIECYK (amp) is ******, i still have my first ever acoustic guitar but i'm missing three strings, my electric still has all 6 strings... i'll get some jam out... i haven't practiced in years... i figured: if i can't find a drummer... if i can't find a bass player... try the mandolin outside a girls window once, give up the dream, put a poster of a rock band on my wall... do some art when i'm completely "out of it": drunk... poetry: not a most spectacular art... well: it would be spectacular without all the ******* puritans of form, rhyme and: meter? they call it a meter but not a metre? that's a bit like telling someone you weigh... that's mass in kg multiplied by "X" is... 999.6N... ah... i know... science shoved it's pickled brain into casual talk: the distinction between weight and mass... mass came after weight... weight is still commonly expressed foundation akin to height... but it was a welcome break with my seemingly dead electric guitar... dangled a few jangles and jingles of remembering when i used to play... Silverchair's Shade, Red Hot Chilli Pepper's Under the Bridge... Eric Clapton's Layla... Link Wray's Rumble... Grieg's in the House of the Mountain King...

only today i realised that people are truly lonely...
odd... when i was in my utter depths of despair:
no one came... but who did come? me!
i picked myself up, no one was willing...
but then... coming across a descending /
an ascending choir of song in an empty church
then hearing a great wind disperse the singing:
i did have my technological asset with me...
the hallucination, the, "hallucination" was so potent
that... regardless of putting in my headphones
or not... the singing continued...
it was only when i scuttled and hid beneath
the altar and took the altar cloth off the altar
and covered myself momentarily with it
then starting running around the church like
a headless chicken... i know! i know! i know with
a BURNING I KNOW... if i uttered a word
i would hear the wrong reply!
either a god descending or a devil ascending...
after all... either side has a singing choir...

people are truly lonely...
i'm alone... loneliness is something that
attracts people to me...
i can't stomach loneliness...
for me that's like... the cul de sac of former
extroverts having an orange with no
orange juice to trickle down into a glass:
half full? regardless the optical misnomer of
calling the same glass: same... half empty...
i am more than willing to do this security
job because i get to do some decent work...
like being a chemistry teacher...
it's a great narrative canvas...
i write over what was already talked (over)...
that's how you get to paint by writing...
you're not some Tolstoy's...
no... not some Pavlov's dog trying to wet his appetite
but also sweat... via drooling saliva...
before my shift i had that random conversation
with mother...
she was watching the t.v. adaptation
of Leo Tolstoy's War & Peace and i said to her:
i don't recall having ever read Tolstoy...
he's not like Dostoyevsky, is he?

so we compared: Tolstoy is the writer
of the macro-cosmos... of events that shake nations
and the individuals: "individuals" are sort of:
chess-pieces...
it's the sort of literature of the salon...
Dostoyevsky is a psychologist...
a world war II might be taking place...
but... but... some Heinrich *******is getting dealt
a terrible hand of both luck and fortune...
like i said to my ailing mother:
she half-jokes aligned with giving birth to me
being her crucifixion...
i joke back: maybe if i wasn't born
i would have both my hinds...
i was once called a: hunchback angel by a guy
advocating the advent of the DUB-STEP musical
genre... way before DUB-STEP became bust
and only associated with SKRILLEX
"drop the button buster, beat, blah blah"...

reimagine drunk conversations in a pub...
in a PLOOB... Scouse? i don't know... maybe somehow
someday, maybe...
    ich sehen rot.. ergo: ich aufladung,
i.e. go! i.e. gehen!

people are so lonely, not having read anything of
philosophy...
if i were to learn anything from the sage-father
that my father isn't....
read philosophy when i'm old and clinging ton sanity
with a chance: oops...
*******... death end clue...
what?                        before you're dead...
please leave your nappies alongside the rest
of the remains of you...

i was having a: drinking session with
newly married couple... Irish traveller...
i downed his, my, his, my: whichever pint
long before the closing hours were done...
Frankie... Francesca...
**** me... Matthew Conrad "m.d."

it's called: tunneling!
me what?! a **** was asking me to g back
to her flat to sniff some *******...
smoke some ****....
i'd love to...
        but i need to make my mother
a coffee come 9am...

i never realised people could become so lonely
and when drinking enough become so blatantly obvious
about it...
it took me one night trip to find a fox's corpse
by the side of the street
to subsequently find a skip and some black bin bags
wrap the road-****... walk with it for almost five miles,
stopping off at the house to weigh myself
then me and the carcass...
amassed to about 7kg... a big, healthy *******
of a fox...
when i was picking him up from the pavement
at 5am a man and a woman were eying me up
like: no... not a ******... a shaman...
they should i might be pretending to chop the fox up...
i just didn't want such a beautiful creature,
beautifully dead, serene, lying on the side of the street...
the only burial i gave him was throwing him
into some thorny bushes by a stream...
another time i was playing i-see-you-but-you-don't-see-me
with another fox... sat on a curve and just eyed it...
until a woman passed the fox and me sitting across
the street drinking a beer... WE'RE MEDITATING!
did the fox flinch? nope... the woman walked about a metre
from the fox... ****** didn't flinch...
i was working up to the TOTEM...
it took one afternoon of the door being opened to
my kitchen and me cooking up two curries...
hey presto: BRODY...
that ****** came for leftovers from meals for over a month...
until, he stopped coming...
i'm guessing he was hit by a car...
but... i'm guessing my care for one fox being
somewhat properly buried and another fox coming
to inquire about: what smells so good
is the reason why i have captured such great photographs
of a fox in my garden...

- hmm... date? or after work coworker drinks?
i know that i scribbled in my little notepad
when she went on her Nth visit to the toilet...
my guess is that males have weaker bladder
of the sexes... a SPRINKLE OF SOME MARIJUANA..
i'm waiting for VOLTAGE...
i'm about to hallucinate in ink... burgundy mixing itself
with Bishop Purple...
those first 30 minutes after a sunset...
cycling down the A12 with heavy traffic... reaching the Green
Belt between Romford and Mark's Gate...
breathing through the nose...
Spring is teasing... Spring is teasing with her
oncoming stealth of scents...
the earth is yet again starting to breathe...
first comes the botanical kingdom,
soon after will come the kingdom of the insects...
wait! i have not heard of an angel or a demon
associated with botany! in charge of, say... roses...
too good of a mark for a Saint George with...
or was that St. Stephen...

write like an imitation of ice-skating...
pretend to fall... gain momentum...
think out a thinking of shadow, curb,
night and walking Ninja hey-presto! feline...
think a loudness: think the loudness...
the ***** of a 4 x 4 pedestrian cross
section of Tokyo...
leave your cycling attire on the bed, stinking of you...
watch a female cuddle and curl up to your Lycra
long-shanks for the specific reason: been cycling...
acid on a bicycle... the 1st and the only ever tRIP...

i always wanted to travel to India...
and walk back to England...
i always wanted to do that...
second: if? aha... QUESTION "question" questing onion
quest of an onion... ANSWER:
i swear, i: as it were... as it is... i: as it were:
i of i, i off i, i vs. no-i...
not i vs. not-i: schizoid broo... Brrrrr... BWOOM(B)
***** a-plenty with witches...

fly fly away my little star...
fly fly away my little st'ah... st'ah...
Stachurski! da da da... ditch Z-Detusche:
na minute, na chwile! na jedno
i drugie dingo dingo!

Lord of the Mushroom!
and mushy peas... and... dhal...
Lord... Bel
              פִּטרִיָה               (Be-EL)

i'm shocked that the gnostics didn't...
to be honest? what was missing in Hinduism?!
what was missing in Hinduism?!
AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

oh yeah... that's a Satanic laugh that is...
a laugh that makes the existence of soul viable...
it is a glowing...
when one internalizes laughter with eureka
and mixes it up with stage-fright and a "hate"
for the sound of one's voice...
but then from time to time...
one is caught singing while doing chores and finds
one's voice appealing to be given song
rather than words to speak or write...

but not even in Egyptian mythology...
it was coming! it was ******* coming home!
the botanical godhead...
in the pantheon was missing!
was missing in the pantheon!
the

פ
P / PH / F (greek sidelined, referee: TH)eta
ט
T
ר
R(esh)
י
    YOD: first son of Yiddish: YON... by a boy named
YON...                  a

      e                                               i
                            Λ
                            Y                                  (LY)HH
    
                  o                       y

ה
hello friend: vowel catcher and laughter generator ...
ה not Π... that one connecting letter: ח

hmm: older than capitalism and communism,
but to simply the problem up:
capitalism is the lion
and everything English...
capitalism is the bear
and everything Russian...
vice versa for communism...
the English bred their mythos on the superiority
of a lion and... a unicorn... more a Celtic, Scottish... thing...
the Russians on... a union with the bear...
the bear and the two headed eagle: ergo:
another unicorn...
like the Srbs... serbs... two headed eagle?
the Soviet downfall with the two-headed eagles
of Chernobyl?
       ******: moi... i seriously sometimes forget
my own ethnicity i'm so caught up in English
metropolitan... cosmopolitanism...
      the Global City-Free-States... CITIES AS STATES...
very imaginable...

not City-States... rather... on the global connectivity
project?
what Dinosaur what meteor?
what super-volcano what Yellowstone
what man?
  it's a bit like Pompeii...
give the worlds greatest party and then the volcano
explodes...
better than a meteor: a volcano killed us...
Yella Big Yella...
            the greatest, supposedly no OB-EASE:
into obese...
          ah ah... tongue out... speak! the prolonged A
of neither ah not āh...
                      -
                        2

                                      ****... that's chemistry's notations...
                     2
                  -                                 (huh?!)

the macron over the A... for AAH...
i.e. not an:                                                      ah!

                        á!
                                               A
    
                                   H                        H

           á                                   'ey?!
                                ha ha: key?    hey?!

the burial ground of...
    hmm...
               BEE-EL...
      
PHTRYH: the godhead is that of a mushroom...
people partied to the music of: infected mushroom...
a god is making himself known...
like the false god of H. P. Lovecraft
horror-imago: Nyarlathotep...

precisely! what vowels!
PH or P or F?
   two H's emerged... a good sign that it's PH
for aesthetic reasons...
scribbling this down...
i feel like i'm actually left-handed...
a diametrical opposition to the stasis-enforced
gravity of nothing falling: everything sitting...

ph(aeiou)t(aioue)r(aouei)y(aueio)h(aeiou)

if insects can be allowed the dimension of godly
creatures: thousand blessings on the head!
the lion's head the eagle...
emblem of the Volk of the Volcano:
a Mushroom-Head...
                    
toilet... ah... welcome relief... the water is running...
running...
hmm... from a top... otherwise flowing...
if...
lake: mirror imitation, Lake Narcissus and
his brother Sea Samael: Death...
     like absinthe before adding water like it
was milk...
the water is in tide: with tide: use the FORCE...
tide...
   like water found the force... the force:
with force water found gravity via tide...
earth found gravity with the quake
fire found gravity with the sparkle of the stars...
fire... charcoal peered at night at the already
lighted... as he admired the lightning with fear...
no lightning ever warmed...
comforts of a distant home... fire found gravity
envying the stars... Prometheus who?
and the brothers of Gaia?
Fero...
                fire...
                              AQ... the water brother...
ah... forgot about the younger sister:
AIA...              air...

what a weird ******* date, coworker after shift drinking...
i've never been on a date with a lesbian...
i felt... TESTED... we watched almost the entire match
Chelsea women vs. Tottenham Women Hotbras...
coming close to the end of the shift she asked
if i wanted to go drinking...
sure... why not...

            hmm... it became a date... after she bought the two
rounds i paid for on our previous encounter
when we actually went ice-skating and i became
a local internet sensation for teaching seagulls how to fly:
wearing ice-skates, frozen lake: fly fly!

so we start... the pub is getting busy...
it feels worse than a strip-club...
at least in a strip-club most people are naked
and people get to wear imaginary masks...
in a pub? **** me...
people are dressed up and are made to wear
imaginary clothing! ha ha!
masks?! what masks... a LIE is 10 masks... one lie equals
10 masks... because a lie concerning
the body of soul... is accented with more than
a physical imprint...
LIE MASK AS IF PRETEND SUPPOSE SO
AS IF AS SO CALL IT QUITS
ACTING

it felt like a date... she was getting all nervy...
going to the toilet... checking her phone all the time...
i was patient, smart girl, while i was pretending to
opt out from her OCD... check the phone...
check the fridge-freezer... check your opt out
capacity for a TV license...

how do you go out on a date with a lesbian?
neither you nor her are advocating for woke talking points...
about pronouns or... Furry? listen...
she talks to me about getting FIFA '22...
i finished gaming off at PS1 and reliving the golden days
by re-watching the walkthroughs of
MGS2 (metal gear solid 2)...

because? movies are ****...
i don't want to want these women...
i want... a ******* canoe and a ******* paddle!
and a grizzly bear cub to cuddle and a birch tree to cuddle!

MUFFA!
YEROYI... AHMADI-DEM-BASHAI
YAMSH'EH GIBYT!
VAZOL: OCH TIBI IM PEO-OM-KATA
ES O I TOBOM.

no language suddenly praise with the rigidity of
continuation...
i'll be honest... what do i need a woman for?
to get old, get a haircut... buy food...
not watch the sunrise or the sunset...
instead watch the news on t.v. watch the t.v.
not watch the aquarium?
don't own an aquarium?

own a car but don't own a bicycle?!
in London...
it was 2: so nie to know you: snooze:
represented by letter Z or 2...
if 5 is S and 6 is b...

                     the marriage of letters
to numbers... numbers? meaningless...
absolutely... meaningless...
199 KILOGRAMS
200 CENIMETRES
X contra "x"...

        dead-weight marrying
      1 + 1 + 1 = 3
when marrying
o + n + e = one...
              ah! but 3 and one are different!
former? the forever unit...
latter? the splinter, E3...
forever question...

               turn 3 into omega...
when sharpen it up for a SH... hide the H...
wake up the Z... hide the Z
emerge with a v above an
                           S

call it crown....

     - so Francesca asked me to go drinking again:
again a date doesn't feel like a date...
am i supposed to know about the plethora of female
sexuality?
         **** McDonald one day...
   straight out of Orange is the New Black the next?
just for drinks... i thought we would equal out the tab
on who paid for what previously...
went into the pub at around 20:30 came out around
00:15... we watched the females' football league...
her team, Chelsea beat Tottenham at the Leyton Orient
ground: no plague of parakeets...
honestly: hand on my heart and one on my ear
standing naked before four mirrors:
i did not hear about wild parakeets... parakeets
in general since: only since i worked the Craven Cottage
shifts... Bishop's Park was full of them!
there were no wild parakeets in Essex... not that i know of...
i once listed down all the birds
i could see from my garden...
seagulls, kestrels, two hawks battling in the air,
woodland pigeons, urban pigeons,
crows, magpies, sparrows, swallows,
robins, blackbirds, Canadian geese (migrating),
mallard ducks (also migrating), swans (migrating ditto)...
but sure as **** no parakeets!

in that session i bought only 1 round...
she was hungry so she ordered food...
three plates of food...
fried wings with two sauces...
a bowl of cheesy fries with strips of bacon
and a bowl of popcorn chicken which
i first thought was: battered and deep-friend
mozzarella nuggets...
i had three things... showing off my eating skills...
my grandparents never used to eat
the cartilage and the best meaty bits
off of the chicken legs, drumsticks or wings...
i went a step further...
a bit like eating a whole apple... including the core...
aa magic trick of eating:
you begin with holding something in your hand...
then it disappears completely...
holding an apple, whole, and eating it whole...
subsequently is a bit like playing with a top hat
imagining red eyed albino bunnies, from Albania
(albino >< Albania).. clash of borrowed letters
but two completely different meanings...

etymologically: Albania: land of the Albinos:
Albanios? more like a he, noun...
a mountain, a he...
                 a lake: he and she... neither, always:
if reading English like a native
of the tongue...
                        Albatross from Albanions...
poetry borrowed from a dictionary, rigid function:
hiding the rhyme
exposing the etymological "rhyme".
Alba-
                                      white...
a dyslexic meets a Daltonist in Dover..
the dyslexic arguments are along the lines of:
Dawid Bovie... dead... pish-poor shapes to be be
before huddling out the grave
for a Madame Tussauds pose and a quick nap
and not asking for
a Doppelganger like Sisyphus without a stone
but the equivalent worth of the stone
in pebbles...

    i would be a fair god...
if i'm willing to give birth to an angel of the Botanical realm
since there's the Lord of the Flies... Beelzebub..
and there's the Lord of the Mosquitos: Jesus "sacred heart"
reincarnated by Jungian inspection
a literal: MOTHER... ******...
Chirst...
                      it's not enough to play the pig's blanket
and pretend a crucifix is a ***** and in dire need of being
used by a ******* according
to Marquis de Sade...
Phateroyah...
                     obviously the vowels will change...
with vowels like water and consonants like earth...
punctuation is like air... punctuation and a physical
representation of writing: nothing ethereal,
nothing metaphysical... writing with expression
on our faces... writing as something less and less
a claustrophobic or its implosion: to an effect...
writing less about an extension of thinking...
in the Cartesian dynamic:
res extensa: via writing, alternatively:
if one were to be prone to smoking enough marijuana:
auditory hallucinations... writing is
by definition the same variant of the EXTENDED classification
as a schizophrenic's auditory hallucination...
the former just forces it upon others...
the latter is unwarranted access to a corrupted ego...
a hurt ego...
an ego without the capacity to imagine,
to dream, to digress...

i showed her how to eat chicken proper...
i ate three wings, two chips avoiding the bacon and cheese,
and about three popcorn nuggets...
i forgot myself: once all the cartilage on the bones
was cleaned off... i went in to bite into the bones...
the ends are sort of soft and marshmallow-almost...
not in texture... in my reimagining:

reimagining - hmm... Kant...
         remembering...
a prior... remembering...
   a posteriori: reimagining...

if a crime happens we don't have an a priori remembering
tactic... ingesting the realm of a prior
with memory... remembering...
that's what we do...
what came before 5? S? or !!!!! five exclamation marks?
or? >>>>> five more-than signs?
did 5 come before five?
did words spawn numbers
or did numbers spawn words?
clearly they're not identical...
and they operate two different realms...

we have words for numbers...
as we have numbers that are also letters...
but numbers are not words...
even 3.14159....
                   is not a word, but a letter: Pi i.e. P...
it's not a word... it's at best a letter...
i'm thinking the gods are words and the angels
are letters...
  while the anti-gods are constants
and their "angels" are numbers...

constants?
                         3.14159..... is not a constant... it's a freak of O...
a circle... and a whole mythology of the Wheel...
O... ****** VENUS...
  phallus... the egg... Oh and 0ero         Z: zed extended
via snooze: zzzzz... harps and snoring... terrible music...
constants? in numbers as if creating a word?

6.02214076 × 10²³ mol⁻¹

                     Avogardo's: the equilibrium dynamic if
i remember correctly...
today i learned about...
     Jakob Fugger... back in his day worth around
400 billions "x"... who financed the construction
of St. Peter's in Rome...
i now wish i visited Rome instead of Venice...
          i would have had more fun in Rome...
  
(algebra is the reply, letters imitating
numbers... should the inclusion of MOL be a problem)...

i bit off the chicken legs marrow...
she was in the toilet about fifty ******* times, each time,
ordering more drinks...
we came in at 20:30 and left at around 00:30
at one point she was in the toilet and
i just remembered something...
they have this "thing" in Japan... where you pay a stranger
to pretend to be your friend...
i'm not pretending... but conversation is dry...
i try to ask questions: i ask questions,
i hear replies... but i don't hear reciprocating
questions... Mr. Familiar has or had no problems?
people confide in me and yet
whenever i try to confide in them
i'm told to shut up...
oh... i get it... i do...
before i knew it i was this heaven-sent ideal...
i was the strength and they were the weakness...
i see it now more than even...
she can tell me about her abusive past...
her drunk father who kissed her mother with knuckles
instead of lips... how she's a lesbian but also
a butch ******* **** with hands almost as large as mine
and how her daughter was put into care
because "X"...
but my shizophrenia is a "schizophrenia" is...
i wasted my 20s on anti-psychotic drugs and psychiatrists
that i bundled up and threw into a hornets' nest of
******* *****, threesomes (just the one, but one is
the threshold)... prostitutes: you talk more with your
eyes and your hands and your other endings
and your nose than you care to ******* lasso a string
of coherent words together...

my problem? what problems?! exactly...
there's nothing wrong with me: i have no regrets...
i don't need to speak to someone with an endearing
sake of self definition... i can just scribble notes down
and leave them for some yet to be born
****** of petty things...
i can do just that... no wonder i can't open up...
talk about... "me"? that's still packaged goods...
i'm waiting for the morbid call of a biography
postmortem...

it's strange going on a date with a lesbian...
it's not a date it's me going for after-work drinks
with a colleague...
it's me and her eyeing up the same behind the counter:
tight ***, fake eyelashes she can pull off...
her unwashed pink-fading dyed fair:
feminist... it's me telling her a little about my past:
i had long hair before,
i couldn't pull off a Jesus...
i would only grow a beard if i cut my hair...
short...
she's still trying to find me on social media...
god: i love keeping a girl in suspense whether or not
i have any social media presence...
best try it out with a lesbian first...
we talk about dating apps:
i have a knowledge of their existence...
but hardly a knowledge that might demand
the pressures of: USAGE...

i end up drinking the night away with a revelation...
i was eyeing these two pairs of love birds for some time...

when i was at the Ol' "John's" taking
a whizz... this Greek version of Freak... o.k. o.k.,
ETHAN ROARK type... balding on the top
of the cranium, allows his hair to grow long...
didn't you know...
Garry Glitter was released... he's already
been harangued by the ******* "police"....

what like Batman did a "forever"?
          
   i get paedophiles doing a second jester runner
with meeting up with underage:
sorry... not boring enough?
it's like pretending to be a mandible,
aerobic classed agility with
a prosthetic... that's what ******* a teenage girl
might feel like:
i rather run with deer....
or charm a fox into becoming my totem...
should i be reincarnated what might i come back as?
i'm not banking: i'm saying: fuchs!
fox! LIS!
if i were to freely roam the prance-lands of Essex
as a fox... that's me, done and dusted...

but i wouldn't inhibit a man willing to repent...
after all: if no forgiveness?
the Muslims were right: no crucifixion took place...
did it?
a 78 year old can be given a heave's sake....
life's fruition and that's done...
sorry for the hurt parties... living their:
adamantly purposive lives
with the weight of: Abel not dead...
sorry... the story goes... Cain murders you....
you're still live yet:
you're supposed to be dead...

i'm only making excuses for Gary Glitter...
i wouldn't be for...
Ralph Heimans...
                                 it's music and i can't stop
listening to Rock & Roll parts I & II...

**** me: i ended up the night...
she hated ***** accents.. Liverpool-day-john-ion...
part Eirish: skirmish: scoot!
a Swabian swap... an "oops": Ludwig... or was
that Lufthansa...
this girl, a ***** bridge,,. i'd love to add hired
bride...
                  but instead?

Traveller Irish... i was talking to a bridge...
bride...
you want a drinking race?
ejecting the two pairs...
i snuggled down my pint: his pint...
in 3x glugs... i saw a phantom of an opera...
what?she told me she never used social
media before marrying?
why do i need to Afghanistan to find
datable brides? i squeak and wriggle myself
into the CAMPER VAN culture...
Irish travellers... so? i'll drink with them...
i'd drink with a repentant ******* asking:
was it anything like Nabokov prescribed?!

£30 for 3.5grams of ****...
time excavated? 30+ hours...
£120 + £10 for entry for an hour with a *******...
well... i'd love to prove my masculinity
with having a competing:
hopeless: always alive sort of battery life:
kept up: *******...
but even i think *** is primarily a dosage of
insect desires...
mammals like us sometimes
tend to play games to escape the pressures
of ***...
requested: what? getting my beard trimmed
or getting my underwear "lost" or my ******* "trimmed"?

i get it... ******* are people who are not afforded
a chance to compensate...
relieve themselves through the shared
antics of (shared) grief...
just like Jesus Christ once crucified can't be
resurrected! n'est ce pas?!
what if... the ******* can be left alone...
in his freedom and a freedom-sickly-cage...
what if?!

a bit like saying:
but i can't be anti-racist...
i can be a non-racist...
but i can't be: anti-racist...
                    there are humans either side of
the "argument"...

one mighty argument of goo after another...
inverting the whole dynamic of dates...
seen your face for over a year...
now i heard your voice: your soul...
you heard me laughter...

a naked table, a naked chair...
a dressed table, a dressed chair,
a lightbulb with a cloche...
rigid Slavic KLOSZ...
walls: brick or slab...
naked... wallpaper slapped on...

   how did that "date" end up?
i was speaking to Irish Travellers...
the ****** types... caravan dwellers...
with the girl... snogging before
ordering a pint....
how she was Lady Margaret all pristine
didn't drink or use social media
before getting married...
i was chasing pints...
race: 3x glugs down...
  i out-chased him...

the pub was closing, we wanted the people out...
strange so, talking to this Irish Traveller Lassie,
most settled people with mortgages or
council houses, flats... avoid speaking to Irish Travellers...
but the revelations she uttered...
i might as well been talking to a Muslim girl...
by her account...
she didn't start drinking before she was married...
she didn't use social media,
she said that in the travellers' community having
a social media account is a bit like *******...
hell: i think it's much worse...
fair play to the capitalistic system...
but social media is what it is...
         it has marketed our private-lives...
not written as a complaint...
                        i allowed for that to happen...
willingly...
now i can't simply walk away from the gallery...
i still don't know what to do with it
instead of making if a reference point akin to:
the red and the amber and the green
of traffic lights...
the "system" wasn't going to capitalise on the market
of my dating preferences and ****** encounters...
sure... i don't mind a public "dear diary"...
a place to store links to music videos when i forget
to add them to my browser's bookmarks:
because i've probably added the same song twice...

but Kant has been bothering me...
ever since i wrote:
a priori remembering
    and a posteriori reimagining...
why do i think that it's impossible
to a priori reimagine?
              
i need to go back to the rubric
and try to burn it into my head like the alphabet
was burned into my mind once...
one of the following four
is impossible:
    with the simplest expression for each:

(analytical) a priori                             (analytical) a posteriori
1 + 1 =2                                                   not every man is a ******
wrong!                                                   some men are
that's synthetic a priori!
+, /, £

(synthetic) a priori                               (synthetic) a posteriori
1 + 1 = 2                                                   £: money makes monkey
i synthesised these                                either that shaman
numbers...                                              mushroom on an ant's
analysed what prior?                            buttocks or:
the increasing number                          the botanical "anomaly"
the added, subtracted,                        money is: asexuality it's
multiplied,                                              what if Adam gave Eve
by god sq. rooted?!                              her first un-earned banknote...
1, 2, 3, 4...                                              spend freely! not having
                                                                earned it!
                                                               what if Eden and the apple
                                                                are wholly outdated
                                                                metaphors?

hmm...

the first £10 she got? was that money earned or money freely
given? was she handed down an allowance or
her first earnings? the trickling down idea follows suit:
if her father gave her money for free... for completing "chores"...
if he gave her an allowance: worse still...
without chores...
why wouldn't expect the sane fir passable:
future partners: daddy day-care "hoes"...
                           my daddy this, my daddy that...
HUBBY no. 2... give give...
i drink less... i smoke some marijuana
and i remember that i read some philosophy...
no new grounding since Wittgenstein
gobbled down Spinoza in a ferocious
of homosexual madness of jealousy...
misunderstood by at least 4 parties...

*** and women unplugged...
some of us boys are playing a game of Alchemy...
solid silver, liquid silver...
i guess plastics are gassy silver...
***... can i please assume there might be
two mouths breathing?

I ate your breath before you ate the apple...
i ate your breath while you gauged
my eyes and saw milk in your *******...

in the labyrinth of: i sigh...
i'm to your bidding bound, sire...
i ate your breath long before you might have ate...
that fruit of autumn, fallen, rotten...
fermenting.... this rotten fruit...
no, not plucked from three... ripe and sweet...
rather picked up attired in autumn's clothes:
auburn, over-ripe cinnaamon-brown,
orange and yellow...

you gave me a drunkard's bear or ilk!
male deer! you gave me a drunkard's apple!
i might be stumbling:
but i'm still chiming with the blues!
what Mosad Mandarin faction of
the intelligence community?

   ching-fang-*******-wall'ah-CHANG
wrote a similar (liar) armistice peace-war:
if we can't use this military equipment...
let's, make... ******* movies!
woo yee HA!

Baron astronaut, ergonomic... a house ought
to have two doors: H... a house
ought to have rooms focused upon the dynamic
of Y...
oh **** your woo! woo! glue my ***
of the Tetragrammaton:
i heard it once before:
the Arabs got their pearly and Kentucky bound
Timothy....
while the Hebrews got the paranoia...
windmills in Chelsea, London,
not Kansas... New Lit Bits of Jersey....

i was left aghast... um... i laughed...
i couldn't say the words ****... pairing it up with her voice...

well... according to sources all knowledge a piori
is ANYLYTICAL... but what was i "analysing"
when i was conjuring the letter R or the number Z?
i borrowed the circle from the sun
and the house from the cave?
i must have done so...
i probably conjured the game of rugby from
the sea's tides and yoyo from an egg of a dodo...
and the goal posts from the letter H...
ripples in the water ZigZag and M and W...
cosine as the refined W
and sine as the refined M...

   a parabola confined in a W...
D in do and devil...
God with Dog and: all?! ah!

    i'm not dumb: i just want to extract more from Kant
than people, ever had, toyed with a jihad of had the Hadiths
in a puddle of paper: equaling the refined weight:
of the organic worth of bark? timber: temples of stone
have turned the gods all cold:
about 5 kilograms for a stash of a week's worth of newspapers...

please please don't let me understand myself:
please oh please don't let me understand myself:
when i'm sober and especially when i'm slightly drink...
drunk... drunk... and smoking a bit of ****...
and...

grass is green: after having established that
not everything is grass
and not everything that's grass is green
wheat? grows like grass...
but it's not green...
and it grows taller than grass
and cows and horses don't eat it...

i could watch a thousand movie and listen to a million
songs... i could even manage to love a woman
and her tell me in the cravat adorning mammal skin
caravans... but i'd still go to bed with Kant...


   it's not that difficult but i need to ask myself to burn
this rubric into my mind...
under each the easiest expression: an abstract...
i just can't word it differently:
a priori remembering...
true...
a posteriori reimagining...
also true:
after the fact of seeing a tree...
can i see a tree prior?
ergo? i can't be capable of a priori reimagining...
first i have to see a tree...
but upon seeing the tree i can't reimagine it...
therefore i can only reimagine what comes after seeing it...
how do i practice a priori remembering?
on the most practical level...
i remember 1 + 1 = 2...
history and memory...
sure... but what of history as epistemology?
as a child i'm not really taught that 1 + 1 = 2...
knowledge and 1 + 1 = 11... not "somehow" just by
"coincidence" of the missed meaning of the cipher +,

epistemology and etymology are the only
two branches that should be given access to the study
of history...

reimagining a tree is impossible in that it's a realm
of geometric abstractions that borrow from
geometric orthodoxy and render them useful:
a tree is a home, i can, reimagine a tree...
if i reimagine myself as a bird or a monkey
perched in a tree... reimagining the roof...
via the sky... but that's hardly likely,
mountain and cave dwelling: home...
a prior reimagining is in its own right something...
but reimagining resulted in the dimension
of a posteriori...
i reimagine a tree and make it: a talking tree...
i apply pareidolia...
or like with clouds... those favourites...
why would i reimagine clouds a priori?
i can... but then that would imply reimagining
cauliflowers... or rather: clouds remind me of
cauliflowers: but that's not reimagining either
clouds or cauliflowers: it's remembering what each
looks like and why, subjectively i remember:
that i think they're alike...

hmm... proof: no pudding....
clearest blue...
          or solid green... the Jade from China...
XINY X= CH
we can apply the letter X in our tongue...
that's what marijuana morphs:
the perception of time... 10 minutes already
feel like an hour....
xolera... cholera H! hhhh...
                 xorwat - croat...
                   xemia - chemistry....
chmiel: xmiel:
                              toad breath!
the stuff i sniff up before going to bed!
you ******* DYSLEXIC...

choroba: xoroba...
sickness...

  DYSLEHIC...
                   i'm asking for upgrades...
i hope my upgrades are not too: demanding...
i'm asking... i'm asking...
i'm getting **** all...
well then... best not become a priest
and conjure up what i might need...
i may need this that and the other...
Hebrew...
i'll need the vowel hiding prerogative
to be minded... i'll need Kant..
punctuation marks and numbers....
most certainly letters...
plus akin to comma....

                                 if still alive: i'll lso require death...

chwila: xwila: a fleeting moment...
lapsed timing...
           c H-A
arecz: samo-H-ah...
                  nie na xixota.... śpiew
raptem: tak! ha! ha! aha!

daj znać gdy ty i ja,
tak nagle żyją... i nie... o tak!
i mihght have a Frenchman's heart
to want: Romance after news of
a hereafter..
the moon is blue
the sun is bronze...
the air is milky in the morning...
the water is traffic and there's no
traffic... i'd like death before the explaining mantra:
what's worth a life: squid parody on... ******* skates?!

the love of the gods is doubly insulating...
first they try to demolish you: one ******* fatal claim after another...
the they employ women... they too... *******.. fail...
what are you rounding up against, you?!
sails without winds and no boats to sail with,
the supposed... great artefacts of claiming
the winds!

i once sat alone in a park... hair growing freely....
i had no addition of a face with the addition of hair...
i had no beard, not stubble...
the wind was and my long hair was
and there was, no war, no famine...
there was only dancing and twice reading
into a Charles Dickens...

twice: a rereading a text not available
for journalistic imprints of:
that satisficed mantra of derailing:
expectations of the meddling-ground....

oh well: oh nothing...
oh riddle me some more: nothing...
life is cheap: buy it bought!
sell it sold!
       earn it not living (it); earning it!
ergo: "living"... and (existentialism)...

   a king's frown is a beggar's stomach...
money makes money:
onions grow on trees!

giving birth to the son of Mammon
was... not... hard?
seriously?!
                          thank god i'm twisted in my own
sort of superstitious way...
when there's talk of a birth of an angel...
my ****** demands become joke...
i forget something, and within the confines
of something: almost: everything...

save180:

p'oh tay t'oh
but not
toe-may-toe
that's not
t'oh may t'oh
but...
t'oh m'ah t'oh

         if only it was a p'oh t'ah toe t'oh.

— The End —