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Once, and but once found in thy company,
All thy supposed escapes are laid on me;
And as a thief at bar is questioned there
By all the men that have been robed that year,
So am I (by this traiterous means surprized)
By thy hydroptic father catechized.
Though he had wont to search with glazed eyes,
As though he came to **** a cockatrice,
Though he hath oft sworn that he would remove
Thy beauty’s beauty, and food of our love,
Hope of his goods, if I with thee were seen,
Yet close and secret, as our souls, we’ve been.
Though thy immortal mother, which doth lie
Still-buried in her bed, yet wiil not die,
Takes this advantage to sleep out daylight,
And watch thy entries and returns all night,
And, when she takes thy hand, and would seem kind,
Doth search what rings and armlets she can find,
And kissing, notes the colour of thy face,
And fearing lest thou’rt swol’n, doth thee embrace;
To try if thou long, doth name strange meats,
And notes thy paleness, blushing, sighs, and sweats;
And politicly will to thee confess
The sins of her own youth’s rank lustiness;
Yet love these sorceries did remove, and move
Thee to gull thine own mother for my love.
Thy little brethren, which like faery sprites
Oft skipped into our chamber, those sweet nights,
And kissed, and ingled on thy father’s knee,
Were bribed next day to tell what they did see:
The grim eight-foot-high iron-bound servingman,
That oft names God in oaths, and only then,
He that to bar the first gate doth as wide
As the great Rhodian Colossus stride,
Which, if in hell no other pains there were,
Makes me fear hell, because he must be there:
Though by thy father he were hired to this,
Could never witness any touch or kiss.
But Oh, too common ill, I brought with me
That which betrayed me to my enemy:
A loud perfume, which at my entrance cried
Even at thy father’s nose, so were we spied;
When, like a tyran King, that in his bed
Smelt gunpowder, the pale wretch shivered.
Had it been some bad smell he would have thought
That his own feet, or breath, that smell had wrought.
But as we in our isle imprisoned,
Where cattle only, and diverse dogs are bred,
The precious Unicorns strange monsters call,
So thought he good, strange, that had none at all.
I taught my silks their whistling to forbear,
Even my oppressed shoes dumb and speechless were,
Only, thou bitter sweet, whom I had laid
Next me, me traiterously hast betrayed,
And unsuspected hast invisibly
At once fled unto him, and stayed with me.
Base excrement of earth, which dost confound
Sense from distinguishing the sick from sound;
By thee the seely amorous ***** his death
By drawing in a leprous harlot’s breath;
By thee the greatest stain to man’s estate
Falls on us, to be called effeminate;
Though you be much loved in the Prince’s hall,
There, things that seem, exceed substantial.
Gods, when ye fumed on altars, were pleased well,
Because you were burnt, not that they liked your smell;
You’re loathsome all, being taken simply alone,
Shall we love ill things joined, and hate each one?
If you were good, your good doth soon decay;
And you are rare, that takes the good away.
All my perfumes I give most willingly
T’ embalm thy father’s corse; What? will he die?
To-night I tread the unsubstantial way
That looms before me, as the thundering night
Falls on the ocean: I must stop, and pray
One little prayer, and then - what bitter fight
Flames at the end beyond the darkling goal?
These are my passions that my feet must read;
This is my sword, the fervour of my soul;
This is my Will, the crown upon my head.
For see! the darkness beckons: I have gone,
Before this terrible hour, towards the gloom,
Braved the wild dragon, called the tiger on
With whirling cries of pride, sought out the tomb
Where lurking vampires battened, and my steel
Has wrought its splendour through the gates of death
My courage did not falter: now I feel
My heart beat wave-wise, and my throat catch breath
As if I choked; some horror creeps between
The spirit of my will and its desire,
Some just reluctance to the Great Unseen
That coils its nameless terrors, and its dire
Fear round my heart; a devil cold as ice
Breathes somewhere, for I feel his shudder take
My veins: some deadlier asp or cockatrice
Slimes in my senses: I am half awake,
Half automatic, as I move along
Wrapped in a cloud of blackness deep as hell,
Hearing afar some half-forgotten song
As of disruption; yet strange glories dwell
Above my head, as if a sword of light,
Rayed of the very Dawn, would strike within
The limitations of this deadly night
That folds me for the sign of death and sin -
O Light! descend! My feet move vaguely on
In this amazing darkness, in the gloom
That I can touch with trembling sense. There shone
Once, in my misty memory, in the womb
Of some unformulated thought, the flame
And smoke of mighty pillars; yet my mind
Is clouded with the horror of this same
Path of the wise men: for my soul is blind
Yet: and the foemen I have never feared
I could not see (if such should cross the way),
And therefore I am strange: my soul is seared
With desolation of the blinding day
I have come out from: yes, that fearful light
Was not the Sun: my life has been the death,
This death may be the life: my spirit sight
Knows that at last, at least. My doubtful breath
Is breathing in a nobler air; I know,
I know it in my soul, despite of this,
The clinging darkness of the Long Ago,
Cruel as death, and closer than a kiss,
This horror of great darkness. I am come
Into this darkness to attain the light:
To gain my voice I make myself as dumb:
That I may see I close my outer sight:
So, I am here. My brows are bent in prayer:
I kneel already in the Gates of Dawn;
And I am come, albeit unaware,
To the deep sanctuary: my hope is drawn
From wells profounder than the very sea.
Yea, I am come, where least I guessed it so,
Into the very Presence of the Three
That Are beyond all Gods. And now I know
What spiritual Light is drawing me
Up to its stooping splendour. In my soul
I feel the Spring, the all-devouring Dawn,
Rush with my Rising. There, beyond the goal,
The Veil is rent!

Yes: let the veil be drawn.
Zenobia Dec 2015
Bailful fairness sudders one
From reality and fantacy...
Wanny visage enlighted:
By eyes of a cockatrice,
Never, to judge nor protest against.

How I have love thee?
Soon, to be forgotten by,
Leaving to be languished and,
Purged of love.
Love?
Never releases thé flying White Dove

Acts of Diana, knowingly brought me
Down like Juliet
For love is not love,
Without sacrifise?

Left, bewitched for amercing time,
Left, with the conceit of bestowing one's prescence once more.

Only,
To find the gall will,forsooth,
Gallop forth the next life...
For I have loved you always.
Ken Pepiton Apr 2020
2020 - day 103 -- a long and winding story, fun, I re read it twice.

Wednesday, April 22, 2020
8:04 AM

Pharoah-ism is a thing.

It's in a class of words holding forms for governing,
herds of humans,
who can be fit to the form, walk this way,

like an Egyptian, indebted for all your worth

Trillions and trillions, soon enough,
the ghost of Everett Dirkson laughs at
another billion attributed to Carl Sagan,
"we ain't even thinking real money any more."

To whom does the government of, for, and by the people,
owe all the nation can invent

Some day we will learn each bit of reality, but

we, as a specie, a valued mod on the base line
must access our global brain.

China -- that is -- the military mind of China,

has egged on
the military might of the USA, offering hope

for all-out war on peace, for no reason.

War has never had a reason for which any good
could come. Never.

And I will defend to the death your right to disagree,
but not your right to fight and destroy me.

If peace and war were to meet on a distant shore,
peace might move inland, but

now, we meet here on earth as mere ideas empowered
by the codemaker; peace and war

tete a tete, cabezo y cabezo I betcha, like dos cabezos

peering ahead on I -10... on the road again...

this is a changing station stage of life...

fold down time.

monster employers, users and maintainers of
common flesh and blood eyes, ears and hands,
people of the commonest class;
some times sitting in boxes,
some times standing in lines, sometimes

watching welder robots do your dad's old job.


--- capital
= money = time.

Gotta minute?
Invest it in imagining you think, as in,

think

who holds those, no, not those,

these truths, these factions of the whole
truth
faction, not fraction,

truth
and nothing but as sworn to on tv via mirror neurons
and solidi-fied, pur-chased, caught, netted,

in plebeian pledges of allegiance from first
grade, in the sorting of useful citizens,

some may serve at the highest levels, lifted via
lessons proven learned in standard tests,

-- number two pencil, fill each box, complete-ly,

so a machine can discern your answer, and punch
through the insulating paper, to signal
each bit of evidence

coming into piles of assorted usefull knacks,

mark this one. Feed him Wattie Piper, make him
think, I can
think, I can, think, think a little think...


We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of

How did Einstein think?

AI ai ai, we know. Not in words. Einstein was taught to think

in whatification. What if I

--- nail the sun to the sky and feel the earth move me at
-- twenty-five, or so
-- thousands of miles
per fifteen three hundred and sixtieths of a day
-- and a night, one whole day...

but N D Tyson taught me that trick, not Einstein...
and not all things count as worthy,
relatively, of attention paid.

The worth of a thought's open door invitation to the curiosity we
enjoy


Semantics (from Ancient Greek: σημαντικός sēmantikós,
"significant") 
is the linguistic and philosophical study of meaning 
in language,
programming languages,
formal logics,
and semiotics.
It is concerned with the relationship between signifiers
—like 
words, phrases, signs, and symbols
—and what they stand for in reality, their denotation.

On the subject of secrecy in general,

ah, no, we've no secrets, for here we have no truely
believable lies,

the truth will out, we say.
Life ain't fair, death had no hope, that's just

the way it is.
Wait and see. We had ein kleiner Gedanke, once
upon a mythical histerical time,

ah, think of any first blood in a world of secrets, such as we

formed from, even in famine, some seed was sown
each season,

some seed remained from first story peoples, preserved
in sacred places, safe,
until the dawning on you, that this is true, life always wins.

brightly lighted stage of history

no weakness... save where the blade meets the soft flesh
beneath a noble head bowing to think


fringe brushes my gnostic-itch, son of a gun,

son of a blade, edge, point

pierce the air, no pop, no apoptosist apostasy, see

we use words with no definitive meanings, right?

significance is cast aside, who cares
that's just semantics, I don' quibble bout {sign-if-i can-sense}
significance
or sign.
I wonder did we double down on a word righting there,
did we give meaning to a barely breathing

wind born lie, some interruptions signify engagement of

a clutch, a tool to grip the wild spinning trans-
*******, while

we slip into something more comfortable.
A higher, cruising 12 to 1 gear

My neighbor from two hills north, is coming to sit a while,

the guy has been called Cowboy, as a name, since all his siblings
knew him.

He is a walking archetype. And my friend. We share some burrs,
from wild meadows ridden on sole leather,

leaving a steaming auto-mobile by the side of the road,

aaah, the interruptions {more, with Oliver gone}

any line in context, is a step past last, a first of all the nexts

Nexts?
Options. Who determined this? My will being to discover this
fringe connection to the persistence on the fringe

of string theory strangling struggling

genera general, whole sorts of hu-mongolian signif-if-if ier yous.

Yous guys includes girls and nobody makes me say,

wombed AND un-wombed, man. So yous, youse, y'all you all;
you,
samesame, okeh. Plain and subliminal, wait and see. Losers win,

when they stop fighting fair.
Die and see what happens,
or imagine
you
know some body who did die and before he did he said,

Hide, and watch. AND now, you see,

caution once cast to the wind, calming all the rage required

to oppose the forces

¿? quare, sistere, wait, feel the urge to know, a click calque

see, new old idea, an old idea studied to the point of a word
formed to signify a set of things

cal-que-able, in curios kurio terms derived

from Phoencian merchants, who set up benches in all the ports.

Users of money, milkers of the exchange, worth-ship of silver,

balanced on the craftily formed me-assuring thing,

eight silver tid-bits makes one golden one, tid-bits fit

fingers, excluding thumbs, for thumbs play a role

mechanically in holding any thing, even

steady -- com-pre-hensive press press sure...

you got it, knowledge

ex-spands into wow... did it work?

Did we make a handle? Or a tool? No pressure, guess.

And Dave Goodman, rides into the west, with a QVC Lid-Lock

full of fabulous pasta cheese and celery, with peas.

A culinary experiment conducted by the grandmother
of all my grand children,

a most mazing teacher of balance's pre care-ious role

on an inclined plane sure to flatten the curve

--- are we in historical moments a generation long,
--- with second generations arrows
--- never quivered, these shafts I shot by faith at unseen things,

for which I have reasons. Were now the war,

we all agree war always cost far more than its worth in death,
robbing life from mankind,

unaware if there ever were a gospel truth. I say don't study war with carnal weapons.

Words carry us into real contextual contests for human sanity as a whole,
we can make peace,
we all can breathe easy, loose the tight jibbs {jaws}, gritted molars, loosen up...

Historically, it seems riddles became de riguer in ifity, but plainly,

only surviving stories survive.

Science knows no story which was eaten up and troubled m'bowels and made me know

boom boom boom, montezuma's revenge

in the spirit kah-blewy con ef ef ef fectual fervent

prayer/sayer saying/praying in timeless harmony

if we can agree... no good we imagine can fail,

let chirality meet diversity and error meet ciliation

conciliate celebration,

conciliate (v.)
"overcome distrust or hostility of by soothing and pacifying," 1540s, from Latin conciliatus, past participle of conciliare "to bring together, unite in feelings, make friendly," from concilium "a meeting, a gathering of people," from assimilated form of com "together, together with" (see com-) + PIE *kal-yo-, suffixed form of root *kele- (2) "to shout" (the notion is of "a calling together"). Related: Conciliated; conciliating; conciliary. The earlier verb was Middle English concile "to reconcile" (late 14c.).

take away my anti-grace, de
ify my chance appearance,

dance, mirror neuronically, sitting your chair-saddle,

y'put y'left foot in behind your right and

boom
y'hit a but, but this, but that, but some other thing,

you got only so much mortal attention,

so when one door closes, whatever you need, is not there,

here we see the old wise man who saved a city and no one knows his name,
he say, redundancy of instruction is the way of life.

fectual per effing e fect, non sensicle semantical ice, Gibsonian ice,

no sweat, we are wrapped in white linen,

we broke on through and waited for you.

Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also.

words we remember were words
meant
to stand tall understanding all things


differently, re
reading, the scene from Night Scenes in the Bible,
that
was a level of knowns
effectually un provable but by
common movie-complex unbelief release, let it be

-- lower missing efs, finding more attention {behind the scenes}

ef-fectual is conjugolly confusin my prudent nature.

or higher, north or sout, plus or minus h

who cares. We made it. This is today.

Meek inheritance day or the spirits judged by the degree day,
a holi
day
in which they trouble their own house, and recall the point that
pierced their own soul,

so to speak,

survived hating your own self for other's sakes,

sakes meaning  goodness and graciousness which

constitute the happy bits in ever,
the treasures found,

where a man's heart is,
my diamond farm is yours now,

my gift to you... only words.

I inherited the wind, my job is to finish melting the ice.

God and sinner reconciled is a song,

does that make it less true?

For us, ever began before today,

so today is that day or it is not, we wait to see

or we wait and see, seeing if

this were the day, when all things go my way,

or come my way, in the course of human events,

I may be ready if readiness is some form of kurios

assurance, blessed, said *****, in a song,

I agree, blessed assurance,
Hey-sus is mine, find his words bring comfort

2020 paradigm shift is common parlance, Cowboy uses that
and logos regularly and he is

old, by mortal standards, for an archetype he's barely ligandary
to most receptive sub caudal imps.

they can feel

him biting the bullet,
gritting his teeth on the Gerber Bowie-wannabe blued steel
blade, re-imagined in reread instead, bullets bitten can go off,

I know a kid fired a deadly-for-a-mile bullet,
with a hammer and a rock, so, knifes are dangerous, too,
so
as a mime-ical biting down, per
haps this hero-in-forming bites

a wooden drumstick, beating now with one,
biting down on the other
boom
boomto doom boom
boom
boomto doom boom... and as the beat goes on,

fringes find loose ends and latch on...

Dirac was an early Cher fan, and she was something like dys
lexical survivor of the year,
if she can, anybody can
I think I can read faster than

hmmm, slippery *****,
speaking memes as old as I remember, then

by the time I wondered if she were real or
a con structure
I lose my footing

slip on something comfortable, this promises to be

that night, in the legends, just prior to a marked, edge of night,

ever after post. Will you still love me,

tomorrow.... deeedly violins lift away any hope

of redemption, oh, ma, it was 1963, you had to have me

to sing your blessing into,
to hide your gift in me, no one must know, oh god
bless his heart...

no part of this vision is clear, nor plain, why is this my beatrice
cockatrice

Olden day, Robinson's cowboy preacher son, sowed a saying in my
core, I sup-pose, put
his phrase formed
an ever more pleasant link to Wikenberg,
on this shelf, see, we can remember the target by re

reading... remembering never drink from the Hasayampa.
and you can tell the truth
by
aquiring point on conscience. Taking thought.

Ethos keeps insisting we are in some offensive mode.
Thus the call for concentration, we are tunable now,

on some oldies but goodies websites...
Kenpepiton.com, for one.
mytechpeople.com is possibly in the archives.

Calebland.com long left to a bland b-break lacking dash,
early urls. imaginable as answers to
either wishes or prayers,

or desires... unseen, unthinkable tools to augment a

satisfied mind, completely ******, no direction home...

here, my heart, my contentment container,

at the moment, indistinguishable from any mortal concept of heaven.

Robinson's father's saying: {remembered just in time}

some times you have to stomp your own snakes.
he may have said, you gotta stohmp yerown dam'snakes,

but never would he have said: one must stomp one's own snakes.
Long -- but a fun run, kept my mind from waxing sentimental on the loss of my dog.
Erin C Ott Apr 2018
Alongside the girl who's a home where the heart is and a rooftop escapade all in one, I learned while wandering like a stray dog through a French chateau that old folktales believed salamanders were born of fire.

I’ve always felt as if fire is a cliche. It bites the hand that feeds it. Beautiful, but destroys. We’ve heard it before.

But, no one strives to be a cliche, and no one would like to be born of fire, either.

Too often, when we hack the head from the hydra of our family roots, another tragedy grows in its place. A salamander might have poison in its blood, and bloodline, ‘cause this family tree was uprooted long before I’ve ever seen it in its prime.

Sometimes, it’s hard to use the brimstone on your tongue for good when those with a right to be pessimists seem to drag you down, but think before you spit fire at the cinderblocks round your ankles, because even under a cockatrice’s gaze, they’re people too.

In those long weeks where high school looks like a desert, we somehow learn to never be more fragile than the skeletons, or the eggshells we're walking on. But I’ve since learned and swear by the fact that life and living are two very different things.

I can't make up my mind if this is all more apology or anthem, but if I can recommend one thing, it's this:

Allow the complexity of language in the simplest of words to forcibly beat your heart. You won't always hear the words you want to, the words that might keep a desert salamander alive, and that would do the same for you if there were someone there to say them. So grasp at straws. Hear poetic words now, and poetic words later, no matter how ragtag they may or may not be, intricate or beautiful, both, or neither, and everything in between and not. Plaster in the cracks of your atrophied heart from those nights where your mother slams every door and threatens to never come back, and dear god, make use of whatever words in this world there are that bring comfort through even that.

When the drudgery of life interrupts the sensation of living, presenting you with a rigged inkblot that just won't do you right, look, in the absolute worst of times, rather than up at a sky you've seen every day of your life, look down.

When the inconsistent blue that you've seen on every week of every month of every year fails you, do not search for life saving inspiration in what you've seen a thousand times. See the intricate patterns in the wood floors you walk on. I know it feels so often as if the beam from the lighthouse has already passed you by, but a crack in the pavement, a blemish, might just be the greatest joy of your day when you spot the flowers that still grow in spite of how they’ve been tread upon.

Then, scan your neutral horizon to see the little people. The unprompted kindness, the shy smiles, and the people who never quite know what to do with their hands, because I cross my heart and hope never to die young that they've felt this way too.

A person ought to mean more in life than in death, so for the love of your own self, feel, even in the darkest of power outages, for anything that's always out there.

And it’s true, autumn leaves cannot save your life in the long term, nor even will the smile of a stranger. But as long as you keep saving room for the simple joys that make your heart beat overtime, you'll have the first ounce of leverage it takes to save yourself.
This poem is dedicated to Leah, who helped me learn better than any cautionary tale that being cynical only yields about as much satisfaction as a cynic would honestly expect.

— The End —