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A dancing Bear grotesque and funny
Earned for his master heaps of money,
Gruff yet good-natured, fond of honey,
And cheerful if the day was sunny.
Past hedge and ditch, past pond and wood
He tramped, and on some common stood;
There, cottage children circling gaily,
He in their midmost footed daily.
Pandean pipes and drum and muzzle
Were quite enough his brain to puzzle:
But like a philosophic bear
He let alone extraneous care
And danced contented anywhere.

Still, year on year, and wear and tear,
Age even the gruffest, bluffest bear.
A day came when he scarce could prance,
And when his master looked askance
On dancing Bear who would not dance.

To looks succeeded blows; hard blows
Battered his ears and poor old nose.
From bluff and gruff he waxed curmudgeon;
He danced indeed, but danced in dudgeon,
Capered in fury fast and faster.
Ah, could he once but hug his master
And perish in one joint disaster!
But deafness, blindness, weakness growing,
Not fury's self could keep him going.
One dark day when the snow was snowing
His cup was brimmed to overflowing:
He tottered, toppled on one side,
Growled once, and shook his head, and died.
The master kicked and struck in vain,
The weary drudge had distanced pain
And never now would wince again.
The master growled; he might have howled
Or coaxed,--that slave's last growl was growled.
So gnawed by rancor and chagrin
One thing remained: he sold the skin.

What next the man did is not worth
Your notice or my setting forth,
But hearken what befell at last.
His idle working days gone past,
And not one friend and not one penny
Stored up (if ever he had any
Friends; but his coppers had been many),
All doors stood shut against him but
The workhouse door, which cannot shut.
There he droned on,--a grim old sinner,
Toothless, and grumbling for his dinner,
Unpitied quite, uncared for much
(The rate-payers not favoring such),
Hungry and gaunt, with time to spare;
Perhaps the hungry, gaunt old Bear
Danced back, a haunting memory.
Indeed, I hope so, for you see
If once the hard old heart relented,
The hard old man may have repented.
galatea Jun 2014
Behind the house with the fragmented windows
and the corroded pipes
and the cobwebs and ages under the stairs,
she buried herself
under the earth and grime
until the roots contained her decayed soul
and encased around her brittle scarred limbs.
Until the dirt crept down her windpipes,
until her tarnished lungs were suffused
with ashes and dirt.
Until roots replaced her veins and
smothered her cracked ribcage.
Behind the house with the fragmented windows,
under the grass and gravel,
that was rougher than
her mother’s dispirited retorts,
where she once capered and skipped, and never thought
would become her grave.
By the ethereal creatures she played with
in her younger and more susceptible years.
Dig up her bones but leave her soul.
Who would ever want cruel contaminated beauty
as a periphery for such a fouled soul?
It was when she stopped falling asleep on the way home,
when her nightlight ceased to make her feel safe,
when a lover’s unlawful kisses replaced her family’s amity,
when a lover’s lethal passion parted her lethal loneliness,
when home became a person and not a place,
was when she buried herself
behind the house with the fragmented windows.
I moved out of my childhood home a few months ago. I feel as if I had buried my innocence in that house.
Valsa George Jun 2016
Here lies my dog, motionless in his kennel
unable to wag his tail as he always did.
Yesterday when I saw him, curling helpless on his mat
he still wagged his tail and from him arose
a faint tremolo of love
punctuated by gutturals of pain.
At some bleak hour of the night,
the last ember of life died down
and his supple body turned stiff and stark.

Now he lies straight and majestic in death
leaving a track record  of love
far difficult to break,
- a love no vessel can hold
or equated with what we humans feel.

Speechless as I stand, memories churn within.
He came to us - too young to be weaned,
a glossy black puppy with tawny gleaming eyes.
His short, sturdy limbs, large drooping ears,
slender waist and elongated frame
well proclaimed his pedigree aloud
So full of mischief, he capered and hopped,
like a new born calf, always up on his heels.
Sniffing with moist nose, he dug and dug
as if unearthing a treasure trove
buried deep beneath the soil.
With alert vigil, he guarded our home,
barking at strangers and driving rodents away
He expected nothing in turn but love.
His loyalty as we deem was never servile.
Never was he on chains to be hauled like cattle.
He enjoyed sauntering through the courtyard
giving company as we took our evening rounds.
He gloated rubbing his body over our knee
and sat content as our stroking fingers ran all around
Licking our feet and arms,
what he conveyed in inarticulate words
could be deciphered thus -
‘I love you, love you true’  

Like the bouncing ball, he often played with
our hearts made to bounce up in love
and our hands fold in benison
for a comrade who departs,
valiant in life and loyal to the core
hoping to meet him anon
on the far green meadows of bliss,
still wagging his tail, avowing a bond
too strong to be snapped or splintered.
it showed
an utter disdain
for the conventions
of such an event
that they would
not toe the line
like the others
they proffered
none of the standard
shoulder-dipping
sidestepped shuffles
nor the exuberant
failing of arms
that have come
to be expected
of "good" dancers
those overused staples
that accompany such
predictable song choices
outdated and enjoyed
only ironically
this dance could not
faithfully manifest
their truth

they danced
not for that unnoticed
peripheral audience
but solely
to tell a story
to one another
instead they chased
cavorted and capered
with piggybacks
and fireman's lifts
arms-spread spinning
they became fireworks
their bodies
exploding apart
pulled together
breathlessly
slipping
   and stumbling
without a care
leaping shoelessly
from place to place
from song to song
ending always
in each other's arms
The wind blew out and the sea rolled in
By the cliffs and the curving beach,
A lonely stretch, they were kith and kin
And had never heard human speech,
A cottage grew by the shore one day
There were figures of surly men,
The sea had muttered, ‘They’re in my bay,’
And the wind replied, ‘Amen!’

The men had left but the cottage stayed
Like a wound to the ocean’s pride,
It split the wind at the valley floor
As it passed there, either side,
The sea said ‘blow it away my friend,
For it grieves my heart to see,
The works of man where I lap the sand,’
And the wind said, ‘Leave it to me!’

It soughed and soared at the eventime
And it scored with sand from the beach,
It struggled to topple the chimney pots
As it surged at one and each,
It lost its puff as the sun came up
When the tide was on the ebb,
‘I couldn’t move it a jot,’ it sighed,
‘And the roof, it felt like lead.’

‘We’ll wait for the winter tides,’ my friend,
‘I’ll surge and wash it away,
I’ll undermine its foundations, then
I’ll sweep it out in the bay.’
But then a flickering candle lit
From a window, facing the shore,
‘There’s something a-move, for a shadow flit
Last night through the cottage door!’

The sea had grumbled, ‘We’ll wait and see
What lingers there in the light,’
The wind peered in at the window pane
And sighed at the wondrous sight,
‘A creature there with its golden hair
And its eyes, a deep sea blue,
That set me quivering in their stare,
So what will they do to you?’

The morning saw at the cottage door
A woman all dressed in white,
She wandered along the empty shore
And the sea had gulped, ‘You’re right!’
He lapped his waters around her feet
As she waded in for a swim,
And said to the wind, ‘She’s warm and sweet,
And it’s sad, but you can’t come in!’

Back on the beach, a gentle breeze
Had whispered the woman dry,
Then flitted, scurrying out to sea,
‘You’ve changed your tune, but why?’
‘I think we needed that cottage there,
In reflection, let it stand.’
The wind just capered along the shore
As the door of the cottage slammed.

David Lewis Paget
James Floss Aug 2018
EEEEEEK! She shrieked as
Lucky black cat spat
A mouse into the house

SKEEEEEEK! Squeaked said mouse
Paddling skedaddling hither thither
Seeking sites secure

Said mouse booked it to bedroom
Cornered itself into a corner
SQUEEEEEAKING!

Himself (and black cat) tried to help
Poking prodding mouse to come out
Critter capered up my trouser

And lept!
Disappeared!
We slept.

From boudoir to bath
I find next morning mousy
Tentatively treading toilet water

What a fright!
All night!
All his might!

Suavely saving mousey
Glad I put gloves on as its
Teeth deployed deeply

Outside with him.
Run away!
Cat’s watching.

Heart beating
Lungs working
Stay alive, little guy!

Later, Fred keeping watch
The little grey fluff is gone
I mean: really gone
Julian Aug 2020
Septuagint prince scribing on scrivello detail
Emerges from the frogmarch grave of revenants sheepish about ghoulish masquerade
The tribes whittle puckered shibboleths and charismatic vengeance evades
The henpeck of roosters harmonizing sand into grassy knolls of carapace cathedral light
Walks beyond the whimsical despair the conniving conservatories of manufactured fright
Spurned by smokestack confusion above a plastered reconnaissance of abundant life flocking between small awakenings curtailed by fulgurant swelters of blistering white
The spectral dance assumes primordial shades to dampen the windowed elegance of betrayal complicit in the haze
Mojo’s rise and fall with moonshot decades flashing intimacy lived twice barking like a squelched gyrovague relishing the kantikoys of burlesque night
And yet among the bemused stars unbuttoned by the prolixity of the Russia ruse the smear indelible flaunts with decadence in the pleonasm of sluggish articles of flight
How long must the messianic age shelter the nebbich halls of crambazzled piety in science to an upbringing of oligochrome
How many dastardly wernaggles of the rusticated elitism flomp with desultory banquets reminiscent of boiling Rome
Incinerated in an ageless day revived only after a historic lapse of barbarity in the ferule exacted such immeasurable despair
That the prejudice of pride is forever shelved as redundant because the filigrees of geometry only permit curvature in flatness
Convex movements captured in still-framed pillories refract nothing but Blazing Saddles of a caricature full-bloom sun
Yet we marvel at storybook ghosts and the isangelous carapace of marauding instincts forever brave and encaged
Erratic by delivery but sciamachy knows no identifiable age
Scrawny fossarians dig entrenched charnels voraginous with skeletons of brackish regelation enthused by immemorial decay
Must we abridge a hearty ocean in a month’s sublime regaled design of trespasses of unsung heyday spaying its weakest defrocked knight
Armed to the Teeth we seek the terminus of apocalyptic capsules destined for gluttons braving annihilation in the vacuum of orbital planes plain only to the ken of the keenest sight
No we make no petitions in prayer for this Soft Parade of vigor verging on flair
We ransack littoral virtues in nexility bronzed with Stayin’ Alive shoes in remission of staircase blight
Beamish in beatitudes of milquetoast pregnancies of salted Matzah brimming in the yeasts of cesspool emergent from scarecrow metaphors flagrant hauteur gliding on air
Witness the spearhead of revolution in the metagnomy of oracular aubades to future brimstone caverns
Lurking like counterstrokes in revision blackguarded by the feisty prowl of outpaced labtebricole whipsaws of timber readied into foisted brown-brick comestion of elegant emerald errors
Dancing with galactic improvidence concealed by the rigor of lurched liars enthroned with prerogatives of stain-glass adumbration
We parcel up parsecs because clairvoyance among titans is a swank in need of 20/08 visions spectral in the clouds of all prominent registries of memory
Lost to faint delicacies of swift serpents outlasting gnats in the tabernacles of ribald ecbolic promontories on the verge of futile tomorrow pastimes spinsters flummox with slimmerback rigmarole flanged by whinks and escorted by the maskirovka of positive bears in absolute value alone
Yet Enola Gay found its destruction profitable to hominist lore enough to attenuate its evaporation of suffrage in the glint of pervasive remedies to stranded gore
Embanked on the sidelines of conquistador flaunts that a Titanic missive of classy regard found the damsel at the steerage slipping on zalkengur irony the anticlimax of lore
Traipsing fellowship of many a ring is a phony artifice for an ostentation that bellows so loudly when isolated perjury must not whimper but sing
The loudest plaudits afforded to a parallax incumbent white horse in the shadow of Dark Horse occultism a barbed flying wing of the West becoming the king of behest
Scurrilous are many jeers because their similes are baseline just as much as the storged conglomerate behind ensnared rapture looming with less ecstasy and blunt fear remains the kilmarge of simple foresight wrinkled behind the sum of many tears
We await our Creator’s Throne insuperable even with the blandishment of piecemeal craters that are superlative bolides of the weirdest attenuated into the spectrum of eldritch weird
Yet the riches of hobohemia found in “invisible lockets” worn by the travesty of jerseys measuring up to Roadhouse beer
The cartels of citadel cascades built on mountebank fortunes reaped from venal psephology collectively embody the unconscious gamut of javelin cloaks of sardonic sneer
Threnodies written long ago in the Hidden Tracks of sophistry welcome the intermissions of antiquity abridging the donnybrooks of charlatans bossed around by facetious gibes of manicured belletrist humid enough that evaporation itself of rarefied tabacosis has few if any peers
Yet the peerless sketch thrombosis in the oxygeusia of deceptive schadenfreude only to topple jengadangles that glabrous gravity muscles to barely if it all steer
In a vacant reality eager for surrealist bounty the sidereal question of moribund placards supplanted by vibrant living semaphores fixates upon figments of acatalepsy rather than ruddy enumerations of partition despite beloved chalky rudiments filibustering with courtesy rather than jeer
Amicable are ravenous betrayals for chieftains cloffined by warm sapwood integral to equated tantamount mountains festooning firmaments in quaffed delights rigid and keen
The most welcomed blasphemy fragrant with jejune originality celluloid enamors splenetic with sprees of perishable profanity lurking ever more obscene
Regaled in the modest jostle is the forsifamiliation of heterodyne dins of honest applause from the blackguarded periphery among which there are no visible beacons no visible stars
Scarred by diacope enumerated in prescient revelry the trollops of tune and attunement magnetize a riveting weld of seamless geometry that is permeable to ineffable lychgates both porous with prowess and ajar against a golfer’s remediable par
Wizened ghosts flirt with tucked bushes in the forlorn deserts jolted by oasis and flagrant with confection torn asunder by wide-eyed gallantry skipping stones on ataraxia from a distraught afar
That lake of goldmines is scattershot with limey limelight squandered on profligate wrikponds of propinquity but not prolixity in scores and bounties of exoticism in glaikery’s fugitive charm
In proximity there is usucaption but the usufruct of sustainable obelisks to liberty must have the forbearance to bear many witnessed eyes to the Right to Bear Arms
Skirmishes of benighted fracking obsolescence ragged with vitriol and poison-ivy nostalgia flaunt the bromides of algedonic flash over consequences that many disregard
Spiraling with vertiginous pain the scowl of obligation is both seamstress of emblazoned effronteries and the proper reflection of seasoned but not seasonable garb
This barbed quandary riddled with rapacious tendency mixed with myopic bonhomie devours a rickety cacophony of diminutive scopes of ******’s glare to prove each atomic indivisible atrocity a carbonated fulmination heavily barbed
This is all why the killjoys monopolize their gangster vices behind tinted windows and chockablock morality are uxorious bridewells for the bridgewater of garbology sketched by vanity in the outrecuidance of gallionic chasms of an absolute value of firebrand regard
No difference does it make if the recoil is whimpered by hordes of sheep in pretenses of authenticity or whether decapitated delopes emerge from visagist dacoitage snuffed like flavors orbiting self-injury by clockwork towers apace to outlast tertiary bribes for secondary bards
The atocia of freckles in recognition of frail pinnacles summited by daily alpine dilettantist dualisms of polarity are a gullywasher to cleanse and launder indelible regrets carved by aboriginal pottery to memorialize primordial penury
As the slick oleaginous tilts of wicked smart Northeasters swarm the hindsight of Southern Weather afflicted by tempests beleaguered first on recapitulations of Calvary and then deposited evidence upon bourgeoisie
Fumes of the modest flambeaus torching sunken apostasies of hungry spasms of the wind meeting the brusque celerity of the ribald waves rarely etch sublime hint in etch-a-sketch lapses of untimely mobility
Instead that perspicacity of conservatory silence bludgeons Lisbon in the fright before the fall of so many a Phoenix in a foreign land can bear the assaults of the heaved seas
Lambent upon a craggy regularity extinguished by sentinels of the tattered womb for a grimace of prestige by primipara seduction we find no justice of known and knowable terminal disease
Figurative in spoken wisps that predate evaporated concepts of precipitous time the triumph of exalted adoration belongs to hubris but vacant of the prideful decline of crime
To each outspoken verve witnessed on sublunary turf the absolution is nearer to fertility than the craggy soil is to dirt as blemished prowess is a furlough to the sensitive pink tucked manifold beneath each authentic skirt
Liberated by ophelimity but flexed by vicarious pomp in serenade only of hauteur for the hottest we slice and dice a cavern of temptations regardless of enumerated patterns of clearly lopsided dice
We think we live and die but You Only Live Twice in ******* to the oriental bolides of meteoric meteorology preeminent in governing plantations of rice
In jubilant proclamation, I graft from venereal skin a renewed girth of purpose that all enchanted fantasia is a birthright of pleasure more than a vapid drawl of purpose
Glitter bores the scintillation of a denuded naked glory of gore because intimacy is antecedent and consequent to immovable revolutionary procreation of service
To conclude this homily the apothecary in persiflage renounces the role of kilns in both poverty and pottery because his shaken dreams are yelps of a disgusted ornery camaraderie
Listless by oracular dreams of titanic parvenus immune to the sway of tentative croons of Suburban Muse because the grisly subversion of vetust honor that honors not verdict but version of ghastly spools of flimsy epitaphs and not the paragon surgeon is the downfall of a diatribe of petty men
Littering their taradiddles on owleries in overclocked jaundice drowning for purpose among hatcheries of the privvy roosters that own the consequence of audacious pens
Dodgy in interrogation, flummoxed with deracination, isolated by time for time’s recapitulation of surrender in katzenjammer vibes it is time for gossamer servant surfers to borrow nine and hang ten
But the noose of the wednongue nun specializes in puritanical Model Ts for DeLoreans trendsetting years ago because listless lethargy benights the glory that cineastes already won
Teeming on the brink of tomorrow is the progeny of hopeless yesteryear engraved on the iconoclasm of the weak after the next debacle because the Earth after Christ has already borne a Ton
Liturgies revised to reflect corsair trigonometry aimed forever at zephyrs of plight bathe in July 3rd infamy doctored by Generators and Generations before and beyond Walter White menacing the saber with imperious might
Flowered in the nuisance of death is the womb of the arena participant to infinite relapses of contention gladiatorial only when the shunamitism of shanachies sheds serpentine grit for the blench of ligonies of redoubled sight
Towering from the knave inferno of a tramontane elusive cordial imitation of captive citizens of attentive sites the illusion is the vanguard of centuries guarded gingerly by Canada Dry sprites
Rollicking in vehement magpiety attuned to machismo if marginally the sultry philander of naked ruse medicates the charmed Apache Indian on his brief encounters with limousine cruise
Stark in sunken destination glimpsing coal-fire recursive ironies the cloned subversion is a golden calf so effete because it never moos about instinctual muse relegated by twin terrors riddled with sparkplug truce
Limited by scopes enlarged by scales mired in funereal pyres to rigmarole sensationalism worthy of nativist coercion and pivoted lyres the riddle of terminus remains an acquiescent scoff, cough and quaff that never expires
It reaches planetary dread of vast distances regaled against gambits of the spread so the richest sourdough appeases the riper vipers of the nested bed
Recalcitrant with frugal uxorious creed the leader of esquivalience is the headless horseman of innumerable tractions but no mouth to feed
He digests the gallop of the gallant interregnum specious in caitiff ploys and the recessive allele of commiserations against the piety of apolaustic joy because rambunctious speed always attracts a resignation professed from the tailspin of a crass voyage of ludic greed
Tricksters boast of passionate lubrications of finessed bread recocted from useless toasts glowering with insipid pallor as heat and humidity reckon billows of hype congregated more in cisterns of apostasy for remark than a marksman headshot of a Head Hunter wed tightly to a pregnable visions of proactive Ghost
Recidivism and time have a vendetta against verdant drolleries coated by waxen plenilune accordions rampant with polyacoustic rhymes
The tridents of mercurial weather bent on the ineffable vacillations of whether are the brazen opponent of Sterling fatherhood of life’s only father the clockwork animation of a living patronage of eternal existence cobbled from immutable time
To the glory of the Father the sun shades its whimpers and the moon alights as the frontispiece of nocturnal revisions to the New York Times but the hues of rocketed ingenuity coax the ingratiated few to the laureates of genius reckoned with both designation and superlative artifacts of pristine design
Haunted by Green-Light Politics for Greener-Eyed Ladies masquerading in star-crossed tomes of existential dread of lollygagged playful mischief tucked in the coach as he leads his team with sophrosyne feel-good invictive treacle we witness the fumiducts of fortune blitzing Hail Mary contrition with earnest specialty in defense of offensive precision
Games won by the squirrel are outnumbered by the stars in the heavens flagrantly devoid of specialized electricity enough to encapsulate the ommateum of collectivized insights found only in the most evolved sequence of cell division
Incarcerated by the scrappy schlep of bad beats and bronzed chariots roiled by the momentum of angular spears we seek oracular transcendence that cements decades into the span of days that portend the deliverance of future years from past and present fears
Presiding as proctor in the redacted exoneration of crash-course pilots glowering with the effluvium of recensed perdition the heyday of one becomes the mayday of anarchy tested only by the alacrity of the summation of its beloved yet maligned cheers
Against a prosperity hard-won by earnest husbandry commandeered by gammerstang notoriety spawning the recrimination of star power into centupled peers negligent of zero-sum opinionation wagered by Country Club fraternities embedded in the taxonomy of wilted hackumber for hegiras minimized by outcry but cemented by Dear Johns’ twinged with sultry pleonexia in taxed tears
So with the whipsaw of the individual between the collective funnel and the idiosyncratic insubordination that amplifies outcry galvanized throes of insemination built on cross-pollination is melliferous to a pretense of alchemy outstretched to sidereal wonder
Hardest to guess is intimacy clothed in Platonic virtues crumbling because puritanical pilgrimage is appraised as a joyous thunder for a abnegation from all potential blunders
To wager such a life is a depredation of the abundance that John breathes as a ceremonial birthright cast aside by latent regrets stampeding the realm of nosocomial reflections of the pallor of a lurid squander
So we are left to bemuse the decrepit bodewash of realism taken to such a virulent extreme it leaves few artifacts of nostalgia to croon about and ponder and fewer abstractions to yield to manicures of elegant troponder
Diminutive sinews in the intertesselations of heft profess a fidelity of notoriety carving life before and after death
Unsung by the beadledom of the usucaption of exotic tailored musician brutes upon my landlocked assault of chryselephantine usufruct I lampoon nescience as it lurks in murky graveyards of anoegenetic zombies covered in thick pigments of piggish soot
Yet this fuliginous bronteum of warped clarity transfixed by the ulterior wednongues of atrocious spans of provenance jilting providence makes betting interests of rivalry outcomes harder to win earnest roots
The trees of the gamboled skittish resignation of checkered blinks obscuring the curtailed discernment of bedizened slogans of future campaigns yet distasteful in ornery churning the bootstrapped tie their tethered laces to their acquired boots
Barnstorming through afflicted spandrels of abeyance shepherded by notions of public dereliction by imperium of centrobaric centripetal philters of concubine rhymes I surge beneath cordial flonky redhibition because of redshorts in estimable traction cemented by supernal design
Weak in luster my potent pollination for synergistic aplomb evades the fringe of corrugated affections mounted upon quixotic escapades of jockeyed statistics flourishing by reticence rather than frazzling the prolix emulation filibustering the mundane ignorance but garnering the harvest of the plevisable sequence from prime to prime indivisible by liberty alone or complicit with cadence sublime
Finishing the sermons of modern apostasy to a gallant cause my laments outnumber the muzzles belonging to the quorum of begrudged applause in the rawest spectacle of unheralded genius clawing insistently at the heart of electric gravity
The nuances of plausible nuisance bicker in emerald harlots of the tantamount nature of derelict frikmag to calculated prosodemic solidarity around insanity because the vein of the golden ore should see ivoride as nullification and inanity
We all stoop on counterfeit stencils of pretense hearkening a clairvoyant sun to droop for closer inspection but detective remonstrance is outmoded by dreary witless defections
Thus the drawl scrawled by the genius flonky in gadzookerie but gilded in rhapsodies of ineffable cadence fighting orthodoxy to a relegated draw sketches the outline of the special talents of lying claws
Because stipulated in the vast oversight that predicates reprisals of retches glazing in obtuse effronteries with eccedentesiast odontoloxia we witness the corrosion of race and gender into pontificating audits of nomadic treason in a fortress militarized by niche applause
Trickling from repcrevel faucets implicit degradation is a casual casualty of an abbreviated motive gestured in ponderous stupidity to distract abiding legislation into the giggled gaggle of tinsellated glitter
Fatuous by vacuums of gaudy prizes worthy only of token motions rather than locomotive strains of virulent and compassionate respect lapsed on vigors of vehement regret is a sing-song ridicule of a still-framed pillory erected as the obstacle that gouges the riddles of impediment and deprives the luxury of preferential emolument siphoned off to lurid jeers of mockery propaganda sizzling in the cauldrons of tilted marginalization
So we witness the faded declension of the hubris of fair-weather camaraderie as a flux dispersal of invidious buoyant bloviated streaks of temporal grit into inverted revelry never shared by the proper ubiquity of streams of personal recompense for plodding fragments of invasion
If I veer away from bickering cackles of denounced preeminence swiveled to face the shadows upon the great cavern of insuperable bounds of fickle human ignorance I deplore the vaunted toadies that shrink my shadow and diminish my viable conceptual and vibrant footprints
Few extinct creatures know the annihilation of petty fame quaffed on Whiskey Bars I never met because the insipid banal pleonasms of restructured irony grimace at my complexion as the scent of the game alerts the foibles of a champion begotten once before as a shark-tank prince
Livid is my grief in the aborning moral quandary of sunken priority overlapping with piebald skeumorphs of retches of blinkered allegiance faltering prior to the primary day of my true awakening because the completion of nesiote subterfuge  rusts on creaky hinges of noncommittal regressions of pointed but pointless deluge
I spar with the augury of irrelevance with a five-pointed star bequeathing rigid but plentiful provision to assist with more than a petty dime of tithe to a 20/20 flash of perfect prescience and hallowed vision
The eve of all destruction is the lollygag of subordinate squawks redacting convenient priorities on the slowpoke walks through teenage immaturity found in the infamous “talk” that the world is governed by evasion in supremacy rather than by the bywords of the perennial stocks in sublime stalks
This nation perishes with my visionary clarity because the bifocal constraints of delimited defenestration remands my custody beneath ****** upheaval documented by useless historians of deliberation in gaffe and ammunition for agitprop flickering away the aubades of praise for the stilted pretense of sclerotic values inflexible to authorship thus scuttled by crowdsourced dictatorship
How sad a spate that the welters of sciamachy hide behind the glaring shadow of immeasurable genius for an unwarranted earwig to steal the echoes of my thunder and poison the servitude of the minions to companionship to highlight aggrieved infamy over walloping feats of refrain found in an isolated rather than protracted celebrity
The guilt of the reproachable beams through the frikmag of tyrannical bouts of circular wernaggle as I carve spherical reckoning that outstretches in all viable directions so that “The Mailman” and the Male Man both succeed in historic insurrection
Flashy benumbed brutish ferules of ferocious dainty dances with an arbitrary cage highlighted among a voiceless heyday for an auditorium which perceives insanity more dangerous than inanity is a profane stipulation by wrinkled mediagenic hubris which scours planetary limitations for excuse to recourse and recourse to excuse
We find marvels in subtlety finicky on the apothegms of heterochrony divergent even further from syndication as the regimented nuances of abuse become plucky daredevils that cozen robust vital sapwood from anglers seizing by seizure the roundabout logic of the innumerable minority characterized forever obtuse
I writhe in delicate contortions of flexed directional bypass surmounting orthodromic velocities capering with the anenometers that spar against spangled enthusiasm only to become an anointed slave of the flagging moral resolve fulminating a huffed crusade with silentiums of false asylum for true achievement brusque against any resourceful tempest scurrying the hidebound illusion of pandemonium for scrappy shenanigans of vergers and emptied pews griping with the dearth of the day-to-day despite the known tomorrow
We cannot affix primary focus upon constellated wasms of puckered abstention borrowed from a maskirovka of secret hedonism wed to many vices among wives but deprived of sacrosanct remuneration for abiding expenses yet an atoll upon a continent decisive in its aborning revolution
Ribald wiseacres of a jovial dismay flanged on rectiserial exaggerations of sebastomania is a stranded frigate of a fugitive escapism wandering with nomadic insistence against cosseted blackguard of assertion without plenipotentiary verdicts against the suborned crater of overstated flimsy truculence in sardonic dissolution
In trespass of a reservation of recoiled tender of tutelage proctoring unseemly haggardly refuse to creak into noisome and noisy cacophony armed by centurions of merciless scorn that lackadaisical winter belies the meteoric riches of autumn mainour fungible with the retches of remorseful decay dangling retreat above entreaty for exasperated wednongues lacking curiosity or the backbite of counterfeit engastrimyths seeding an unknowing complicity to fallacy forked over by chiefs and chefs to an amounted dubiety reserves the armaments of glib sedition for inopportune blacklists by a whitewashed Listerine amenable to launder travestime into oversight rather than belabor banal graft upon the agelasts of a toilsome operose labor to trivialize Herculean monuments to creativity as backwater residence of restive plucky percurrent revivals of infamy as a primary thorn rather than a secondary abreaction
Sentinels swift to the expedited squalor intrepid in sclerotic simpers of renowned defalcation bludgeoned by the tridents of harmonized trauma healing the brayed complaint while regaining the quixotic statute of plevisable mobility belongs to the froward counterpunch to the flippant underminnow of savagery yet among noble personage a blip on furloughs rather than a singed diacope perishing in Wasting Light for denuded darkness to supplant the vacated stage of ironic upbringing bartered from a treasury of obsolete wasms of trivial shadows in the amounted lineage of time.
Elected by the purblind fudged cadge of intransigent solidarity behind unhinged proclamations of lewd lunacy the reset of wibble-wabble and conflagrations of trenchant visibility will cloud the cloudiest tempest with hurricane-force devastation by the healing stripes of the piebald idiosyncrasy of gerrymandered defamation failing where insular regeneration outlasts hamartia and blinkered foibles of girouettism to pillory the excess but not transmogrify the whittled progress of seminal generativity unbounded by harped lyres of discord for secret concords of select femicide
With outstretched hands I point to the tapestry of the Heavens as eternal folksy witness that to endear the temperance of time bullishly roaring on the laureates of prolific servitude to the malleable substance of capered argument the enigmatic punctuation outweighs the baragnosis of miscreant opportune glares at personal prospect for aggrieved sockdolagers of redstrall over the filigrees of innate geometry to cackle above the shouted gnash and the dissoluble squirms of blackened cremation of living memories into insipid fracking of sapwood caitiffs flowing on the motion of discredit rather than honor in valuable endeavor for future genuflection
Totems value me as much as they stalk grazed hinderbaggle of cosmetic devolution of ragged popcorn theatrics in the desuetude of normative ethics beneath the carcass of rotten dastardly cowardice brandishing an ulterior discretion beneath the level of the lowest stoop of any breed founded on loyalty verging into flagrant snipers of integrity for the integral unshakable paragon of broad illumination the guidepost for many spectral truths overshadowed by one miserly fool flummoxing with albatross without the overhang  of pluvious integrity shepherding his hauteur in zig-zagged wallops rather than buoyant serenades
Thus entrenched in juicy poignant barricades against virulent spawn of the katzenjammers of squawking femicide I spout the blossom, bequeath the gift, renounce the delusion and form a formidable bastion against depredated valleys blemished from sight by intolerable patches of darkened verdure hiding from commonwealth perception the pearl of ecumenical salvation swimming in the naked tongues of honest profession dancing with conventional demarcated demerits of Rimbaud ramshackle deracination as a humdrum belittled squander of a prop of craven filibuster rather than beavers outsmarting the delignated destruction of habitat because of outright distaste for plucky individuation above the squalor of relativism in minor octaves of gnashed betrayal rigged by hamsters rather than owned by the men trigger-happy with rat race motivation only to the servitude of degrees rather than plausible recovery embedded into the fabric of fickle society
Hidebound tomes fishing for destruction but grappling with the enormity of the plagued pitfall of ceramic skirmish with brittle conscience emerge with epincion rather than sulk in brooded hyperbole of convenient drapes of flocks postulating irrelevance clearly in the light of the truest day frolicking with gigantic swaddles of curated support etching masterpieces of traipse into the frescades of future calenture beyond the petty misestimation of hemitery politics
Thus the weapon serves two masters of row rather than regatta and the besieged rankles the testy predicament to a teased poetry riveted by years of rhapsody rather than moments of tomfoolery emergent victorious rather than dilapidated by what-could-have-been chary brinkmanship on the precipice of modern sacrilege
To instruct the herds of men to hoard and the wisdom of the wise to circulate that apothegm of reclamation owns superlative traction fundamental to whimsical festivity even forsaken on a churlish masquerade outmantled by frenetic activity famigerated by the true Richter Scale of public fanfaronade because justice is truth and only in germane truth beyond germ scares will decrepit scarecrows demolish their Fear Factor even when the gullible squirm for nexility on bounded continents rather than novantique frontiers
Conscription demarches for assembly beyond relegation and celebrity above frays of discordant rumination feasting advenient rather than cherishing internal and integral the virtuoso wrabble of residue generations churning wheels of acceleration rather than quibbling extinguished vitality as principal complaint exercised in negligent abodes of facetious barnacles to outlandish freckles in the majestic pulchritude of a Titanic salvation beyond and considering the curglaff of sunken resources pitted to my registry by slot-machine audiences incognizant of brittle whittled henpecks of adoring truth and perdurable verve
We sink and die by destructive tongues but abide and live by righteous exemplary prowess capable of scraping the towering canvass of the firmament and the retches of the deepest sea inhabited by any curiosity worthy of emolument
So in token liturgy I decry sidelong cursory squandered affronts that drive the Jehus madcap with fractious celerities of formal destitution rampant on flonky menace rather than modern hypertrophy
In The End, we see triumph in every nuance and bristling concord with every perspiration of ennobled effort truckling into serrated selachostomous and fractious bromides of wrecking-ball fashionistas fumigating cultural pederasty with subtle bailiwick but ragged travesties of taxidermy celluloid
Marvel in-between the serenade and grandstand and cull the turnverein of triumph from banished evasive rundles of the outlasted calculus to neuter the estranged and to estrange the atocia of vibrant surreal vibes no stranger to an alien hand in a desolate world.
336

The face I carry with me—last—
When I go out of Time—
To take my Rank—by—in the West—
That face—will just be thine—

I’ll hand it to the Angel—
That—Sir—was my Degree—
In Kingdoms—you have heard the Raised—
Refer to—possibly.

He’ll take it—scan it—step aside—
Return—with such a crown
As Gabriel—never capered at—
And beg me put it on—

And then—he’ll turn me round and round—
To an admiring sky—
As one that bore her Master’s name—
Sufficient Royalty!
Jenn Nix Nov 2014
In the faded light of the laptop screen
I let the green screen shadows lie with me.
Your phone is set to muted; messenger open to enter
But your eyes are shuttered like an empty house.

My lips you kiss once a day do not quiver anymore
Do you see?  Still as stone, cast in iron.
The fire that once raced from your fingers to my frame
Is far distant, searing trails on some other’s skin.

I, the painted fool, jestered in court
Capered for your desire and hoped
This tiny sliver of a heart left yet unbroken
Could hold you against the tides of your indifference.

I am the breath of sorrow and regret
The wineglass smashed beneath the groom’s feet.
The boundary has been demaercated
Whisper your nothings elsewhere darling, my ears are stopped with wax

like Odyseus’ sailors, who knew their will too fragile
to withstand the honeyed call to play
While the hero raged and cursed his bonds
and pined for soulless Sirens singing sweetly on a rock.
topaz oreilly Mar 2014
I cannot see her being a troubadour
there's too much work to be done,
she only hangs around the fringes
lacking  that inner feel,
once she sang the Worlds Requiem
but her interpretation lacked punch
had she the wherewithal needed?
Her jaded baggage indeterminate now
lugs her capered turn.
The old man sat on the long park bench
Where the children used to play,
He seemed to be harmless, sitting there
Though he’d be there every day.
His pockets were always full of sweets
And he’d smile a kindly smile,
But mothers would huddle nervously,
They suspected him of guile.

‘What do you think he’s up to,’ said
One mother to her friend,
‘I’ve read some terrible things about
Young children and old men.’
‘Can’t you see that he’s harmless,
He’s so old, and frail and sick,
He’s just like a kindly grandfather
Who walks with a walking stick.’

‘He shouldn’t be handing out those sweets,
We don’t know what’s inside,
What if it’s something horrible
And one of the children died?’
‘You need to become more trusting,
He’s out here in the light of day,
I hope that he didn’t hear you,
That’s a terrible thing to say!’

He smiled and nodded, and fell asleep
Sat back on the wooden seat,
His overcoat had seen better days
And so, the shoes on his feet,
He woke when the children whooped about,
Swung high on the rusty swings,
Tempted the children with his sweets
And to some, he muttered things.

‘What did the old man say to you?’
One whispered to her son,
“He asked if I wanted knowledge, if
I did, then he’d give me some.’
‘You’re not to speak to him anymore,’
The woman cried, in fear,
It isn’t right that he fills your head,
By rights, he shouldn’t be here.’

She went to sit on the wooden seat
And she grabbed him by the sleeve,
‘What do you mean by ‘knowledge’ then,
I think you ought to leave!’
‘I mean no harm, I’m a kindly man
And I love those children dear,
I’d give my all to be young again
And I feel young when they’re near.’

She nodded, said that she felt ashamed,
And patted him on the arm,
Then got up, leaving her son to play
She’d lost all sense of alarm.
The boy was tempted again by sweets
And the old man grabbed his hand,
‘Just stare right into my eyes, my boy,
I’ll take you to fairyland.’

The old man’s eyes were hypnotic when
He stared, and soon glowed red,
And then the little boy trembled as
A lifetime flowed in his head,
The old man smiled, and his hand relaxed
As the young boy turned to go,
‘At last,’ he capered, and danced about,
And the old man sank back, slow.

The mother came to collect her son,
He was nowhere on the green,
She went to the old man on the bench,
‘Where’s John? You must have seen!’
The old man struggled to sit upright
And held out a trembling hand,
‘I’ve waited ever so long for you,
But I don’t think I can stand!’

David Lewis Paget
Imelda Dickinson May 2018
Decorated dancing bear for five year olds

Staged premiere audition

One smallest ballerina features capered recognition

Excited, spirit bubbling, her Dad knows her role

Pretending to be a make-believe, golden oriole

Slim legs lace hose of tan, trimmed body feathered things

Closed curtain splits! Mom proudly sits

As her daughter’s dainty feet grown visionary wings!
Poem by Imelda Dickinson, www.imeldadickinson.com
as artists we go free,
yet included in the fee,
are coconuts and wrestling.

we travelled the path
again, he swarm followed
in revery.

the heron flew over.

while all the while we
danced and capered,
costumed and bustled,
women dressed as men,
men the women.

he held her on his knee
tenderly.

sigh on sigh,
they are in love,
them so beautiful,
down in the forest.



he held her on his knee
tenderly.

not bitten.

sbm.
Sherry Asbury Nov 2018
I woke up this morning in
an America I did not recognize
So many years of just drifting,
certain of her elasticity
her ability to shake off
the parasites and naysayers
Now I see a buffoon where
lesser buffoons have capered
Why do I imagine that under
that bleached wave, are the
numbers 666?
Wake up all you who have
slept beside me, drifting
in the false safety that is not
We must dust off our shoes
and march again, doggedly
and without reservation.
We must demand justice and change...
peacefully and forcefully.
For this nation is one person
who stands up and says - "Enough!"
My wheelchair and your legs
must gather others and refuse
to be silent - evermore.
personal rant

— The End —