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I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
the lady has me temporarily off the bottle
and now the pecker stands up
better.
however, things change overnight--
instead of listening to Shostakovich and
Mozart through a smeared haze of smoke
the nights change, new
complexities:
we drive to Baskin-Robbins,
31 flavors:
Rocky Road, Bubble Gum, Apricot Ice, Strawberry
Cheesecake, Chocolate Mint...

we park outside and look at icecream
people
a very healthy and satisfied people,
nary a potential suicide in sight
(they probably even vote)
and I tell her
"what if the boys saw me go in there? suppose they
find out I'm going in for a walnut peach sundae?"
"come on, chicken," she laughs and we go in
and stand with the icecream people.
none of them are cursing or threatening
the clerks.
there seem to be no hangovers or
grievances.
I am alarmed at the placid and calm wave
that flows about. I feel like a ***** in a
beauty contest. we finally get our sundaes and
sit in the car and eat them.

I must admit they are quite good. a curious new
world. (all my friends tell me I am looking
better. "you're looking good, man, we thought you
were going to die there for a while...")
--those 4,500 dark nights, the jails, the
hospitals...

and later that night
there is use for the pecker, use for
love, and it is glorious,
long and true,
and afterwards we speak of easy things;
our heads by the open window with the moonlight
looking through, we sleep in each other's
arms.

the icecream people make me feel good,
inside and out.
Abigail Marie Apr 2014
You cause
a break inside my organs
Pointing out my flaws
our differences.
You are at peace.
I sit jittering, worrying
what everyone will think
of when I didn’t care
you made me laugh at
everything
Changes.  You’re not right for me
Nor I for you, but I can’t help
Thinking
What if?  Then I remember
you’re not what nor
Everything I want.

You are an intellectual snob you
have a depth about you
I would love to delve in,
a psychological study
that even the best critics would praise,
but I don’t want anyone else to have been there
or ever go there.
I cannot hold on to you
tear me away while
You’re haphazardly gluing us together
We’re a kindergarten art project
messy, trying to see
Beauty within the confusion,
unfinished    

You asked me
Where am I most at peace
4 years old.      
I could be anything
No fears
I hadn’t been ripped apart.
I was the girl that said everything,
until I felt the need to screen my thoughts,
like the filter you use to make your coffee
each morning.  I wish that’s where I was,
having you tell me
that you like your women like your coffee
Dark and bitter.

I can look past your chauvinistic ways,
not giving a **** about anyone.
You’re not really closed minded
You just act like it,
which annoys the hell out of me
Sometimes.  I wish life was simple.    
But then
I would never know your complexities nor
Feel the things you help me feel,
like hate for train whistles
or the burn of gin hitting my throat.
Music      
you introduce me to
offstage trumpets, bad movies.  Your politics,
your brown eyes      
and how you can hear frequencies
that most everyone else can’t.  I worry
that you hear
the fear in my voice and heartbreak
With every word I speak.

When were you going to tell me?
Or was that your plan all along?
To throw me out
like yesterday’s coffee grounds
or cut up scraps
Used and unwanted.
I wish I could tell you
to tell her you don’t want her
but me instead,
you don’t, I don’t want you to.
I want holding hands, laughter
comfort, personality, humor, intellect.
You want that plus things
I can’t give
But you always take.

You are your coffee
disgusting, caffeinated,
addicting
the only patch that helps is
comforting words you never spoke.
We had many conversations
of your desires, lusts, mistakes,
but I was burned,
by lies, distrust.
You left, like always,
a harsh, acidic aftertaste
on my tongue.
Linguistic Play Aug 2013
Oh, but please spare my head of necessities
of the complexities
that are but trivial and non-existential
to the pursuit of living and thriving,
not in a pool of segregating ridden paper,
but in a bath of mentation and minds wide open.

And please bite your tongue,
when the lick of a serpent dances across your taste buds,
when you wish to deprive me that of a young mind
and youthful stride.

I do not wish to be at one with your negativity,
I wish to flee and sprint from your gloomy, pessimistic stint.
Rather, I invite you to join me in the pursuit of creativity,
to strive to leave your imprint,
of sheer, requited positivity.

But if you will,
without a plee,
I wish to help you swing with me
on practiced words and the fleet from stability,
I wish to take you on a stroll,
through and into the soul,
of nothing less than a dreamer,
of a hoper,
of someone so desperately fleeing
from the necessities of the complexities.
Skip Ramsey Nov 2014
Inseparably attached,
Hopelessly apart,
An ocean away,
But we carry one heart.

The emotions I feel,
As I think of you,
A smile and a tear,
I wonder which is true?

I've never touched your hand,
Or said your name aloud,
Yet for not a second doubt,
That I'd find you in  a crowd.

The words of love you give,
And bits of truth you share,
Are the only things that help,
The distance for me to bear.

I try to be so strong,
But I am brought to my knees,
By the miles that separate us,
To create our love's complexities.
Love over any distance, fires such strong emotions.
Larry Potter Jul 2013
I was hungry enough to eat the **** end of a skunk.  I felt like gobbling the whole mound of concrete that is half an hour closer from becoming a part of my room.  Make that a quarter. I guess my tummy has had enough grumbling, like a seething network of volcanoes ready to devour Hawaii.  I am sure as exhausted as a zombie after a “battle of life and death” handling a plethora of carpentry tools which I have managed to rummage from our dismal basement.  I’m quite serious with the phrase “battle of life and death”.  I get to have this Obsessive Compulsive Syndrome which gulps a huge amount of my rhythm compelling me to put things in place especially in my chamber.  At times, a weltered pen could instigate an emotional havoc.  Or perhaps an inappropriate collaboration of curtain hues and mattresses would be ample to spin the color wheel concept out of my brain.  But now, my walls have done it.  Well, it was just a microscopic sight of a divine crevice, but how in the world could that escape my eyes?  Without a second thought, I approved an avid proposal from my subconscious – a full concrete room renovation.  And that’s how it brings me here, smothering the last square inch of the genius blueprint with this porridge of lime and clay, the hell with chemistry!  I have found out that my room has achieved the piquancy of a sizzling summer noon, thanks to the mist of dust and the precipitating drops of sweat that come tingling down my overheating body.  Ah! At least my system tells me that I’m not a promising patient of ****** dysfunction.  When the last patch has been perfectly planed in place, I drew my last ounce of pure strength and plunged into my most formidable bed, congratulating myself for a job well done. Alas! A thirty-minute nap and I’m ready for a superb coffee and doughnut delight.

I woke up from a cat’s screech. I peeped through the window. The nap breaker was a Cheshire, one with a dimmer fur, the stripes of gray suppressing the darker color.  Its tail enjoyed dancing around its rear, connoting either fear or excitement. It sure has a distinctive mischievous grin.  The feline was on the verge of climbing up the roof by jumping from a gutter about five feet away.  It seemed to have slipped but has managed to bring its **** next to the roof tiles. It stared at me with intent, giving me the macabre look from its glaring eyes.  It’s as if I’m being watched, stalked and examined in a way I couldn’t see, bringing me that feeling of guilt, of remorse.  Urgh! That’s why I hate cats.  Though I’m planning to keep one, I’ll reconsider it.  But what pains me more is to discover that my alarm was not able to do the job and so I slept three hours more than planned.  I looked down and saw the city lights flashing one by one, the beams glowing like a barrier of radiance diffusing into the gloom of the night. I guess this was the price I have to pay. I traded my snack with a peaceful hibernation, turning the coffee into a glass of iced tea and the doughnut into a great dinner with me, myself and I.

I have learned to cook since I was ten.  My mother believed that culinary prowess could be inherited from generation to generation.  And so, she put her trust on me and I haven’t failed her ever since.  This gourmet brilliance proves to be very useful at times of solitude when you got bored of ordering other’s recipes and decided to make your own buffet.  I remembered her telling me that all food would taste good if there is the chef’s heart flavored in it.  Cooking is an art, combining the loops and the whoops of seasonings and spices to the medley of meat and herbs.  Tonight, I decided that my dinner would equal breakfast, satisfying the grudge that I got from skipping my  diabetic snack attack.  A beef stew and a side of paella made my stomach die in joy, appeased at last that my gears are energized for my routinely nocturnal bookworming activity.

I normally hide under my sheets at nine but tonight, I shall break the rules. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll fix the rules next time. Just this time to spare for I have gained interest on this book entitled “100 Years of Solitude”, talking about how one could live happily even alone, just by creating the world you have ever dreamed of. Gabriel García Márquez is dumping the “no man is an island” concept which anyway sounds inspiring to me.  Finally, I jumped into bed thanking Him for letting me outrun another day living alone in a comfortable apartment, free from all sorts of vexation.  I wished for a better life at school, which gives me an imagery of dull monochromatic memories.  I am not that famous but I can be someday.

A heavy beam of sunlight pierced through my window, refracting on the ***** white floor and creeping up to the mahogany table just right at the corner.  It intercepted with the glass pyramid and created a beautiful prism that glittered all around my room.  It was a really majestic scenery, one that I luckily happen to see every morning, a good optic background, I guess. Two hours before class time – that’s where my pattern starts.  Take a bath, eat, brush teeth, groom, check the doors and power, then I’m off to go. Everybody follows a certain kind of pattern, that’s for sure. Whether you wear different types of clothes everyday or use competing brands of toothpaste, clothes are clothes and toothpastes are toothpastes.  As humanity finds more and more complexities in life, they become wired to doing the things and involving the events which they think would give happiness to them and simplify their equation of life.

As a proof, there’s Mrs. Lanny Honeycut from the house next door. She usually sprinkles her daisies every ten in the morning, wearing that friendly neighborhood smile. On their patio, you could never miss a day seeing her husband, Mr. Blake Honeycut reading the daily papers with a round of tea, jam and bread spread on his table.  On the busy intersection stands traffic enforcer, Red Mayer, waving his arms to and fro while wearing that aura of valor, never seem to get tired of doing the same thing over and over again. Thousands go out for work and go back to sleep everyday and that's the status quo we're talking about. Even inside the academic arena, you can still hold on to that thought; I mean the size of the population doing the same pattern at the same time – my schoolmates, enemies and… friends? Well, I’m not quite sure with the last one, but it’s this: they all make a fun of me.  They say I’m a dork, a nerd, a geek, a freak, and etc.  I wonder if they mean everything that they say or say everything that they mean.  Either way you put it, I’m not buying it. I am not what they say I am.  I just like being alone and that’s where I do best.

And as always, the school is crowded with busy people rushing through the corridors. Others are beating the deadlines while some are happy they could breathe for another break. But no matter how busy everybody could be, there is always a time spent for “information dissemination” or chitchats. But only this time, the topic discussed is the same.  I could hear it on the entire campus, everywhere in the perimeter. Another student in the university is missing leaving no trace of existence.  It’s been going on like this for over two months now and the university council has taken their best courses of action to unknot this mystery while campaigns have been running on TV’s and vigils were spent. Not that I don’t care but it seems that this is also happening to other places, I mean, this is not the only school where maniacs could exist and become professional serial rapists in the making. By the way, this is already the 12th case on the record. Weren’t people overreacting to the issue? Isn’t the case overrated? Did they reject the possibility that these people ran away because they got pregnant, messed up or something like that? Soon, the university area was covered with security troops roaming around like a swarm of bees, buzzing and sometimes boozing all the time.

I guess that’s what happens when you hang out too much with friends who are just jesters plotting your own jeopardy. I don’t think it would be good at all to be bothered with things like that because sometimes, it’s also useful not to have any use at all.  Like the king being admired by his kingdom amidst his sloth and compromises.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not friendly anymore. Actually, if it happens that I got company, I would magnanimously offer a treat at my place.  But the thing is, who would likely do that? I’d cross my fingers on it.

Wishes do come true even for a loner like me.  I think I have a fan. No, that would be too sublime. She’s hot and she’s hotter when you’ll know she’s so cool. Quite a paradox, but that’s just reality.  We came to know each other on our lab class. Her name’s Athena, fitting for her twisted logic and good humor. It makes me burn a lot of calories when I talk to her more than a 5-mile marathon could squirt. We were lab partners and we get along well. I just couldn’t figure out where she got the courage to befriend me. I do regard myself as unwelcoming species, but I might work on it when someone tries to knock the door. We juxtapose ideas. Yes, that’s what makes our conversations spin like a merry-go-round. But we enjoy it nevertheless, evident by the crescent smile we both generate out of the craziest topics in store. Once, she interrogated my way of settling wars with enemies. Well, I told her it was my habit of treating them to my house and giving them souvenirs to show how sorry I could be. She snickered and her eyes glowed like the Andromeda and her face shun the whole universe. Oh, I can do this all day long, if only I got hold of time and space.

Today, she asked me if it would be okay if she’ll stay at my place till nine when her dad could be home and she would be able to call her and ask to pick her up. She reasoned out that otherwise, the night would be scary because she’ll be alone in their house, no company, no security. I was puzzled how the thought of being alone could scare her. It is like freedom from any constraints, no ties, and no limits. But I couldn’t blame her. She’s too fragile, too vulnerable to handle it with herself.  With the speed of the light, I accepted the favor.  Well, that goes even without saying.

It was past six thirty when we arrived at my immaculate apartment. It’s great to be an“ OC” sometimes, I said to myself.  I thought of a winner dinner, one that would make her visit worth reminiscing. I preferred Italian.  I cooked her lasagna and drenched the dinner with sherry. We talked a lot until we run out of resorts. I guess she planned it, or I planned it, synergy perhaps.

The clock ticked nine and there’s no sight of her father’s getaway car. But there’s no sign of worry in her countenance either. I surmise it didn’t reach her inkling yet to phone her dad.  She was busy dissecting my kitchen and living room with her very playful eyes. That doesn’t trouble me though. That’s just as instinctive as any other first time guest could get. She grappled her attention on my antique collection of prehistoric movies, like the Scarlet Letter, The count of Monte Cristo and the likes. She happened to love them too. Well, that makes her more beautiful to me, other than the satin white dress she wears. Suddenly, she got the impulse of going to my room. She said there’s nothing more exciting to see than a gentleman’s bedroom. I startled from the request, but before I could say anything, she leaped straight to my chamber with the gestures of an imp. It’s weird to be in this kind of circumstance because I don’t often invite a lot of visitants to my room. I ain’t no hotel crew, bowing down and waving his hand to the chamber’s destination and leading the VIPs to their cabins. Yet this time, it’s the other way around: it’s my cabin.

But now it’s too late to stop her. She molested the **** and I giggled for some reason. Finally, the door opened a crack and a bend of light escaped from inside. She stepped in, and I followed. She was filled with awe not because my room is all made of gold nor did it resemble a royalty’s den. It was the exaggerated neatness and order that greeted her. In some unknown vortex of my deepest imagining, it made me feel like I’ve been through this instance before. The flashback is not so vivid as it appears, but something tells me this isn’t the first time. Deja vu could be working on it, I infer,although I don’t really believe in those forms of conceptualizations. Perhaps it’s the sherry’s spell infiltrating my mental prognosis. But something, I guess, isn’t really right.

I caught her opening a red box that was hidden behind my cabinet. I tried to steal it away from her but she fought back and it came tossing down the floor. Numerous items spilled from the case. A purple head band with the glittering initials ANNE, a ruby embedded bracelet, and a Nokia handy phone exposed the secrecy. This isn’t going to go along well and fine, I guess. A strong surge of desire came from my core. It tried to envelop my entirety and control me like a lifeless puppet. I felt the tip of the pyramid glass in my hand and I succumbed to lose my consciousness.

Morning came and it felt better than ever. It was a ***** Saturday. There she lies beautifully on the deck, like an immortal bud of red rose trapped in golden amber. The cellophane fits her well, and there’s no doubt she’ll be complaining anymore. I already prepared a cozy place for her deep sleep: A 5x2 feet wall engravement which I was busy molding last night. It wasn’t easy making her go to bed but still it ended up smooth and sound. I helped her get up and fitted her in place.I turned on the radio as I reached for my dear carpentry tools. The news was still nailed on it. But this time, the missing case struck for the 13th turn. Ahh, the hell with society! They never really get a way to deal with it.

I was busy patching the last mound of concrete that is half an hour closer from becoming a part of my room. Make that a quarter. I guess there’s no end to this divine crevice issue. It must be following a pattern too. But I can handle it, thanks to this vicarious personality. I wonder if I could get the chance to invite another visitor in my place. But if I do, I would certainly offer the best treatment they could ever have.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
this will make sense in the end, or at least along the way... a modern version of the Ruben's judgement of Paris, although if you watch the debate, the mediator already insinuates the "confusion": to my left or to my right, ha ha, left to right, right to left, 1st 3rd 2nd... that's putting it mildly, if i were Paris i'd have given the apple of knowing to Hera, queen of the goddesses... naomi wolf... beauty is in the eye of the beholder... and your phallus in the hand of... mhmm... softer than the flesh of an oyster at the end of the day... they did say once in times just after Pericles: make my inner as beautiful as my outer, and my outer as beautiful as my inner... then take art as not representing images: or the "shallow" arguments... any man would have given the apple to the intellectual Aphrodite (karen straughan)... we all know that antigone darling is Athena: who speaks so little you start to equate wisdom to be a distant synonym of needing courage to engage with a plebiscite crowd... oh don't give that prize to her: she'll probably tongue-tie herself and will never be able to speak into a microphone, the intellectual Aphrodite knows all too well the conundrum... it's the cougar attired in crimson that fuels the whole debate... she doesn't need to have inner beauty, you phallus is already shouting 'sir! yes sir!' at the drill sergeant anyways... you take Aphrodite as a paradoxical beauty, namely that of long conversations and not long interludes of ******* and baking cookies... you'll leave Aphrodite confused... i once heard an English motto: don't take for a wife a woman that's too attractive... that wasn't intended to be within the bias of intellect, i mean a beautiful woman within the bias of being able to manage a harem of 72 male virgins... well **** yeah, artists leave clues, whether knowing or unknowing... they're working from triangles, poets end up writing from Δ, they obscure textures and antonyms of what appears to be monochromatic, we say: red, crimson, burgundy in x-ray confines... the point being: there's no intellectual debate to be had with someone representative metaphorically or not of Hera... you can't have a Parisian fashion week catwalk where you find dehydrated beauty on the outside and an anorexic ego on the inside... what you find in Hera is a volume (voluptuousness) on the inside, within which there's a leech libido that transgresses all demands for intellect... unless it's pistons-well-oiled orientated... please, read some Marquis... if you get an ******* having read a few of his works: you're qualified - or as i like to call it: neo-classical *******... ever masturbated over Bronzino's Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time? well, if you haven't i guess **** ******* and gang-banging is your outlet: mine are pictures of Aria Giovanni and Chloe Vevraire (googlewhack no. 3!): Chloe Vevrier... but if you're never done the Odysseus pokes fun at Polyphemus... yep: the ghost hand: nobody!


you know, you can cram a lot into a 30 hour "day",
which results in the complete erosion
for the capacity to dream afterwards,
to actually work from the unconscious and create
a subconscious medium vector that connects
to points of consciousness: 30+ hours awake,
however many hours asleep, and then awake again
for another 30+ "day" to digest...
the classical definition of the subconscious, in theory,
is that you get plenty of sleep,
and it's a bit like that schematic A x B (algebraic)
A knows x     and B knows x...
   something mutual acknowledgment
via the same schematic but
A knows x, B knows x,
A knows that B knows x,
A knows that B knows that A knows x,
   which is all very Aristotelian to be frank,
it's this hyperlogic of having to acquire
great technological feats and reduce such
complexities to cat-videos on the internet as
the Egyptian partake in the genius that actually
made it possible... the slogan goes
Moses, you fool! said Nefertiti...
    so B knows x and knows that A knows x
and knows that A knows that B knows x
and B knows it's not necessarily anywhere
alphabetically less, even though the French said
a, b, c... which was very imperial of them,
that's the imperial version of what the mathematical
imperialism proved with the English inches, miles
and furlongs... but in this French case of imperialism
it wasn't a e i o u, b c d f g h j...
            that's what 30 hours awake does to you,
you wouldn't think of alcohol as a party drink,
a social barrier deconstruct... after 30 hours
you're hoping to meet Vladimir Klitschko on your
way to bed... aye pleasing Cossack, give us a
smacker goodnight... one glove it filled with
whiskey, the other with naproxen and amitriptyline...
boom! k.o. snooze, baby:
you gotta love buddhist honesty...
at least you get to see the bright side of life...
  and if people start thinking that Kant was the harbinger
of ill fate... you obviously haven't met a necromancer...
it was only von Kleist for ****'s sake!
       and he had the American option of a suicide
pact with a terminally ill woman and a bullet from
a pistol in a ditch... you can't get more romantic than that...
and there i was, mid-afternoon, having done a few of
the household chores: the washing, the ironing and
cooking a two-course meal while my mother did
the taxes (seems only mothers understand their sons
these days... women my age?
   ever see David Attenborough describe Emperor
penguins? money was invented for women,
because it brokered the end of the brotherhood of man,
we became famished by feminine needs
and have reduced inherent sports in us (hunting)
to sledgehammer bashing entertainment...
i'm the "drunk" that would rather watch ten hours
worth of ping-pong that tennis...
    i don't know why they resurrect the Olympics
every four years, have a **** coverage of it anyway
and then go back to that Glaswegian diet
of deep-fried pizza and haggis... and i hope to never know,
maybe Sepp Blatter knows...
but that's 30 hours of being awake, and only not
able to relax, by writing...
                 you wouldn't see this sort of "abuse" of
alcohol anywhere in the world...
the Soviet sleep experiment is actually not that silly...
too much sleep can also make you feel the minutes
upon your wake as if you've been stung by a bee...
three of my all time favourite songs?
the stone roses'* i wanna be adored,
    chromatics' cherry,
and finally: i can be forgiven for having missed this,
i got into them seriously with the album aufheben
and didn't really move anywhere else,
the dandy warhol effect got me...
but this song out of obscurity, 20th century technology
translated into mp3 and then onto c.d. and then
back into mp3... a song from an album that doesn't
even appear on their discography...
the brian jonestown massacre's pol ***'s pleasure penthouse,
the song in question? fingertips.
so there's that three...
      but **** on me, i half expected android (2015)
to be like ex_machina (whatever year that was)...
same topic... what the difference between android
cyborg and robot?
                                  aren't robots the proper a.i.?
as in: in production, the thing that's not hand-crafted
is artificially crafted, because it is crafted to a large yield
of a product? isn't that so? i can't distinguish (as of yet)
the difference between android and cyborg, i guess
as a Latin man (a - z user) i have to condescend the Grecian
pompousness of demeaning Hebrews (original anti-semitism
originated in Greece, not Rome, the Romans gave
the Jews not elaborate architectural schemes to abide by
in honour of Octavian, but the supposed pride in Greek
thought, undermined what later science would provide
a Latin man with, given the translation of יחֵוָחֵ,
indeed variables... i once wrote a piece about
the two Adams... namely how אָ (alef)
and עַ (ayin) are prominent letters among consonants,
but no vowel kindred of Eve is equal...
or how Eve is covered in both mainstream Islam
and orthodox Judaism... and Christianity is
a Rastafarian dream for more jerky reggae reggae...
they never sing down with Rome, judgement upon
Rome... they always sing about Babylon...
well, polytheistic or poly-schismatic,
it's all Hindu from hereon in - apart from that
here's a very tiny heresy... is that yod he vav he
or is it yod he vav het?
         there is a difference, afterall:
he (ה)        and het (חֵ) obviously differ... oh!
xet!                   god this garden is a mess,
               i guess the fruit of knowing good from evil
was intended to say: till the land, deforest,
learn agriculture... that's good, the **** you do to each
other... well: that's hardly a tonne of grain...
but they so alike though, even when you apply a noun
to these two symbols!
  could have said he xet but instead it's known as he het:
no wonder the Hittites came along for a curious look...
mind you, had not a prominent Roman, a centurion,
asked for help... we'd be prudish in runic from the northern
invaders... so thankfully no one within the Roman confines
of encoding sounds didn't have the bright spark idea
of looking at the very tiny little island of Israel and that
four lettered word and how it became known
to say o = omicron, ε = epsilon and γ = gamma,
   and cutting those things apart leaving only letter
having done plastic surgery on the noun that denotes the
letter that's denoted by the symbol, rearranged it
and got the idea of εγo: ****** marvellous!
- this is not brian pallenberg's story about the pleasure
penthouse album...
but you know what really got me in those 30 hours:
day, night, day, night: a NHLF debate between
naomi wolf, karen straughan & antigone darling,
the part where karen makes the point that
once upon a time men who beat their wives
in Scotland were publicly whipped (dhaal,
straugan), and if they were beaten-up instead by
their wives, a plebiscite of good-wishers would turn up
at the house and apply the Freudian theory of
a castration to the man, bang pots and pans,
and then in public display him having to ride on a
donkey backwards, having to hold the donkey's tail
for stability...
     see that woman in red in that debate? a true political
man-eating beast of ***** readied in atom bomb
explosions... the one next to her isn't wearing any tights...
unconsciously you're thinking: i like her french freestyle
of not having shaved her legs... the smart one is wearing
jeans and she looks oh so desperate to get out...
    the discussion doesn't even enter the realm of ideas...
hen-picking is discussed... all poetry ascribed to language
is gone... is it politically correct to ascribe the sexuality
of female chickens with the word hen to women?
behind me in Blackpool stag-dos (dos? no does...
there isn't even a ******* spelling for that phrase...
hen-nights and the inflatable Juan)...
well obviously your mind is working out why you'd
**** the middle 'un right away... she doesn't say divorcee
which is so "unsexy" but say she's a mum twice,
a mum, a single mum... polly wants a *******...
her address is new york city? ******! i'm heading there,
right now! can a white guy use urban colloquial
in the suburbs on a piece of pixel paper, which he claims
is mere the cartesian extension of his thought
and disinterest in rhetorical skills? i hope so...
it's not like herr adolf wrote a disclaimer saying:
read this or a thousand volts up your ****!
that really was a constipated debate, plus the red was all
provocateur and peppered with "you know",
   and "i know absolutely nothing": there were no ideas
in the debate! whenever there was a chance to debate
ideas, the debate turned into a debated about words,
and what words to use: to simply brush aside any clinching
to a idea-debate... perhaps because feminism is
an ideology without any coherency of ideas, as stated
from the debate: a coherency of wording: and that better
be hen = an asexual chicken, rooster = an asexual chicken...
it's still a chicken kiev at the end of the day.
now? i might squeeze in another poem...
     but it would still be great to get any kind of analysis
comparing the movie android and ex_machina...
the only problem would be: both creators are men...
so that's gender-stereotyping already...
but hell! she gets to build a buggie that she directs with
a laser pen... so that's nice...
but i'd love a discussion on these two films,
given that the music in both films is very oomph!
thriller genre always had better music than horror...
horror music is too romantic... thriller music?
***** back-stabbing you whenever you think you're
going to get a comfortable 10 minute slot...
but it's there... aside from both robotic creators being male...
woman: ex_machina - out of the machinery of man
          ergo? deus, or woman as...
i actually have a problem with the word android...
the woman is a factor of playing the two men against
each other... the android actually find a mechanical
part of himself in the way the "human" talks to the woman,
while the "android" is prejudiced against the rigidity
of his ****** movement: unlike the "human" having
an intellectual rigidity... the woman plays the two against
each other... well, 30 hours no sleep...
  i'm doing the helter-skelter trying to throw ideas
by way of remembering the actual plot of the film...
this obviously adds nothing to the discussion:
meaning i probably gave away a "spoiler" -
but more the point, i need a refill and some fresh air
to breath, having farted into a leather chair for the past
hour.
The concept of a whole person is an enigma that evolves within a culture . Often it is not a transitive concept and can only be conjuncted within it's social setting . In fact the realities of social fragmentation make most all concepts of a whole person universally inapplicable .

Literature is often a good tool for developing an understanding of a culture and it's inclinations . In a cultures folk tales , plays , and fictions you find authors making a deliberate attempt to portray the basic dramas of their society .

Greek myths are a vivid example of this ; they are literally frought with characterizations . In their development these multitudes of characters weave into an elaborate tapestry that depicts the developing Greek moral ethic . The intricasies of the analogous content are brought across in a multitude of forms . Names were very important and a major force in clarifying the concepts being presented . The multitudes of characters portray a multifaceted understanding of the human psyche . The chauvinistic banality of their culture and it's gods is graphically depicted against the backdrop of their developing ethics .

It is difficult for a modern man to construct a vision of a whole person from a strictly ancient Greek point of view . The obvious anachronisms envolved make such an attempt partially ludicrous . Contrarily the bulk of their characterization paints a vivid picture of their primative social state .

Of course while the Greeks were muddling through the multicolored quagmire of human frailty many societies where learning to master the powers they had developed through centuries of strict adherence to religious and social mores . The development of their socially biased realities make many Greek nuances seem decadent anachronism . Rather than deitizing their baser natures as the Greeks had thay had learned to master them and turned to new paths to clarity . Spiritual pragmatism and lack of comunication nullified the social attributes of many of these extrapolations on positive orientation .

Jung preaches that man has an innate need to assimilate all external sensory perceptions . I find this untrue . In fact I find it self abortive . Human beings have a complexity factor that is individual and must be protected from overload ; man's moral ethic is a tender and deludable feeling directed by empathy . In the hectic world of modern mass media this tender individuality can become dwarfed by the percieved need to obtain social acceptance . Whole civilizations have become deluded by the flow of their complexities into an outright denial of their moral ethics .

I find this partially estranged condition prominent throughout social history . Children are brought up to respond to a vast realm of presupposed social ideologies and are not allowed to venerate themselves until much of their conscious matrix has been established . This of course makes self evasion an easily attainable goal . Sometimes politically speaking the actual goal . The mind satiated by it's social framwork is the ideal tool for a socialistic or tyrannical government .

To me the value of social history lies not in it's application as much as it's illumination . All the fragmented pockets of human coalescence should instill an understanding of man's posibility factors . Man's inability to supersede his developing anachronism may well be the cause of his annihilation .

Modern man has learned how to use tact in instilling the acceptable social mores . Solviet psychiatrists have spent years on perfecting these social sublimations ; children learn how to make their personalities conform to the accepted mean . I think that the true nature of a well rounded being lies in an ability to reject the fragmental nature of these instilled mores and develop a more universally acceptable social orientation . Does the son of a ku klux **** member have to hate blacks ? The obvious answer is no ; contrarily socially acceptable orientation is a product of environment . This is the pitfall of man's evolution as a race ; his inability to rise above the quandary of his immediate surroundings with all of their overwhelming complexities and demands to become a cognizant and empathetic being . There in lie the keys to his future .

This does not necessarily define the well rounded person . A well rounded person must be able to cope with his immediate surroundings withoutan abject denial of his empathetic being .

I believe well roundedness lies in thoughtful orientation and a well centered understanding of self . One need not be socially active as long as they are thoughtfully cognizant . Obey the golden rule ; you can not allow your objective orientation to supersede your subjective empathy . You can't allow yourself to be thwarted or overcome by your peers into being something they might want to make you because temptation may overwhelm them and you will become a transient tool in their succession .
I appreciate simplicity.
The mediocrity
Of being absorbed in my thoughts.
The life of a solivagant.
It's who I am.
It's all I know.
Do not deem me ill because
You have never sat down and
Explored the dynamics and complexities
Of your being because we are clearly not On the same mental or spiritual calibre.
RAJ NANDY Jul 2016
Dear Poet Friends, our World today & especially Europe is threatened with terrorism from the religious fundamentalist groups like the ‘IS’ ! History teaches us that during the Middle Ages the Holy Crusades were launched with the combined forces of Christendom. May be History is repeating itself once again within a span of thousand years! Do kindly read with patience this True Story of the Holy Crusades in Verse, to see events in its proper historical perspective. Concluding portion as Part Two has also been posted here. You will find the portion on ''Motivation & The Medieval Mind'' to be interesting! Kindly take your time to read at leisure. No need to comment in a hurry please! Thanks, - Raj

               STORY OF THE HOLY CRUSADE: (1096-1099)
                                           PART ONE

                                       INTRODUCTION
For thousands of years the Holy Lands of Palestine on the eastern coast
of the Mediterranean Sea had witnessed,
Ferocious battles fought between the Christians, Jews, and the Muslims,
with much bloodshed;
For a strip of land few hundred miles in length and varying between some hundred miles in breadth,
Which they all righteously defended!
There the Ancient City of Jerusalem now stands as a World Heritage Site,
Sacred to the three of World’s oldest Religions and as their pride!
Jerusalem today is a symbol of unity amidst its religious diversity;
For on its Dome of the Rock, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Synagogues, are etched thousand years of Ancient History.
In 1096, Pope Urban the Second, motivated Christendom and launched the First Holy Crusade,
To liberate Jerusalem from 461 Years of MUSLIM dominance!
Some Historians have listed a total of Nine Crusades in all,
And I commence with the FIRST, being the most important of all;
For it recaptured Jerusalem from the Seljuk Turks making it fall. (in 1099AD)
While subsequent Crusades did not make any appreciable dent at all!
Not forgetting the THIRD, led by King Richard ‘The Lion Heart’, -
Who made the Turk leader Saladin to agree,
For Christian pilgrims to visit the Holy shrines in Jerusalem and the Hills of Calvary.
The Crusades began towards the end of the 11th Century lasting for almost Two hundred years;
Had later turned into a tale of sorrow and tears!
Now to understand the Crusades in its proper perspective let us see,
The brief historical background of Europe during the early parts of
Second Millennium AD.

                         A BRIEF HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The Normans:
During the first century of the Second Millennium, Europe was in a formative stage,     (11th Century AD)
It had began to emerge from its long period of hibernation called the ‘Dark Age’!
The Viking raids from those northern Norsemen had ceased subsequently,
As they became Christian converts settling in Northern France in the Duchy of Normandy.
In 1035 when Robert the Devil, 5th Duke of Normandy died on his way
to Jerusalem during a Holy Pilgrimage;
His only son William, who was illegitimate, was only seven years of age.
By 1063 AD these Norman settlers had intermingled and expanded their lands considerably,
By conquering Southern Italy and driving the Muslims from the Island of Sicily.
And in 1066 Robert’s son William shaped future events, -
By defeating King Harold at Hastings and by uniting England.
Now William the Conqueror’s eldest son Robert the Duke of Normandy,
Participated in the First Holy Crusade, which has become both Legend
and a part of History!
These Normans though pious, were also valiant fighters,
And became the driving force behind the Crusades from 11th Century
onward !

                     MUSLIM CONQUEST AND EXPANSION
After the death of Prophet Mohammad during 7th Century AD,
Muslim cavalry burst forth from Arabia in a conquering spree!
They soon conquered the Middle East, Persia, and the Byzantine
Empire;
And in 638 AD they occupied the Holy city of Jerusalem and
Palestine entire!
Beginning of the 8th Century saw them crossing the Gibraltar Strait,
To occupy the Iberian Peninsula by sealing ruling Visigoth’s fate!
Crossing Spain soon they knocked on the gates of Southern France,
When Charles Martel in the crucial Battle of Tours halted their rapid
advance!  (Oct 732 AD)
By defeating the Moors, Martel confined them to Southern Spain,
And thereby SAVED Western Europe from Muslim dominance!
Charles Martel was also the grandfather of the Emperor Charlemagne.
The Sunni–Shiite split over the true successor of Prophet Muhammad,
and other doctrinal differences of Faith,
Had weakened the Muslim Empire till the Mongols sealed their fate!

                         THE SELJUK TURKS
Meanwhile around Mid-eleventh Century from the steppes of Central Asia,
Came a nomadic tribe of Seljuk Turks and occupied Persia!
In 1055 they captured Baghdad and took the Abbasid Caliph under their Protectorate.
The Persian poet Omar Khayyam, and the great Rumi the mystic sage,
Had also flourished during this Seljuk Age!
In 1071 at the Battle of Manzikirt the Seljuks defeated the Byzantines
and occupied entire Anatolia,     (now Turkey)
And set up their Capital there by occupying Nicaea!
Deprived of their Anatolian ‘bread basket’ the Byzantine Emperor
Alexius Comnenus the First,
Appealed to Pope Urban II to save him from the scourge of those
Seljuk Turks!
The Seljuk Turks had also occupied Jerusalem and entire Palestine,
And prevented the Christian pilgrims from visiting its Holy Shrines!
The Seljuk, who converted to Islam, became staunch defenders of the
Muslim faith,
And played an historic role during the First Two Holy Crusades!

THE CHURCH AND THE SECULAR STATE (11th Century) :
The ecclesiastic differences and theological disputes between Western (Latin) and Eastern(Greek Orthodox) Church,
And the authority over the Norman Church at Sicily;
Resulted in the Roman and Constantinople Churches
ex-communicating each other in 1054 AD!
This East-West Schism was soon followed by the ‘Investiture Controversy’,
Over the right to appoint Bishops and many other doctrinal complexities;
Between Pope Gregory VII and the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV  
of Germany.
Here I have cut short many details to spare you some agony!
Pope Gregory was succeeded by Pope Urban the Second,
Who was a shrewd diplomat and a great orator as Rome’s Papal Head.
Pope Urban seized this opportunity and responded to the Byzantine
Emperor’s desperate call,
Hoping to add lands to his Papal Estate after the Seljuk Turks fall!
Also to reign in those errant knights and warlords, -
Who plundered for greed and as mercenaries fought!
And finally, by liberating Jerusalem as Christendom’s Religious Superior,
Pope Urban hoped to assert his authority over the Holy Roman Emperor!
It is therefore an unfortunate fact of History, that the news of re-conquest of Jerusalem failed to reach Italy;
Even though Pope Urban died fourteen days later,
on the 29th of July, in 1099 AD!

                 MOTIVATION AND THE MEDIEVAL MIND
The Medieval Age was the Age of Faith, which preceded the Age of Reason;
A God-centred world where to think otherwise smacked of treason!
It is rather difficult for us in our Modern times,
To fully comprehend the Early Medieval mind!
The Church was the very framework of the Medieval Society itself,
With their Monasteries and Abbeys as front-line of defence
against Evil;
While combating the deceptions and temptations of the Devil!
It was a mysterious and enchanted Medieval World where superstition
and ignorance was rife;
Where with blurred boundaries both the natural and the supernatural
existed side by side !
When education was confined to the Clergy and the Upper Class of
the Society exclusively;
In such a world the human mind was preoccupied with thoughts
of Salvation and piety;
And in an afterlife hoping to escape the pains of Purgatory!
So in Nov 1095 at the Council of Clermont in France,
When Pope Urban II made his clarion call to liberate the
Holy Lands from the infidels,
The massive congregation responded by shouting, “God Wills It”,
‘’God Wills It’’,  - which echoed beyond France!
The Crusade offered an opportunity to absolve oneself of sins,
And to even die a martyrs death for a Holy cause, which motivated
them from within!
Now for actual action kindly read the Concluding portion,
I tried to make it short and crisp!


    STORY OF THE HOLY CRUSADE : CONCLUSION
                                 PART TWO

THE  PEASANT’S CRUSADE (April-Oct 1096) :
Even before the First Crusade could get officially organized,
A Peasant’s Crusade of around forty thousand took-off,
taking Pope Urban by surprise!
When these untrained motley body of men led by the French
Lord Walter Sans Avoir, and Peter Hermit reached Constantinople;
They disappointed Emperor Alexius, who for seasoned Norman
Knights had bargained.
So Alexius ferried them to Anatolia across the Bosporus Strait,
Only to be massacred there by the hardy Seljuk Turks who sealed
their fate!
Thus ended the Peasant’s Crusade, also known as “The People’s
Crusade’’.
But Peter the Hermit survived as he had returned to Constantinople
for help,
And participated with the main Crusade, motivating them till the
very end,
With his sermons and prayers till their objectives were attained!

THE CRUSADE LEADERS AND THEIR ROUTES:
Now let me tell you about those Crusade Leaders and their routes,
For this true story to be better understood.
In the Summer of 1096 French nobles and seasoned knights,
along with Bishop Adhemar the Papal Legate,
Set out in large contingents by land and sea routes, forming the
Christian Brigade!
Their rendezvous point being Constantinople, capital of the
Byzantine Empire,
And from there across the Bosporus to enter Turkey then known
as Anatolia;
To finally take on the Seljuk Turks, in response to the request  
made by Emperor Alexius.
Raymond the IV of Toulouse, the senior-most and richest of
the Crusaders,
Was an old veteran who had fought the Moors in Spain was one of
the Crusade leaders.
He brought the largest army and was accompanied by the Papal Legate, and his wife Elvira,
And later played a major role in the siege of Antioch, and Nicea.
Raymond along with the veteran and pious bachelor knight
Godfrey of Bouillon, who became the First Ruler of Jerusalem
after its capture and fall;
Was accompanied by Godfrey’s ambitious brother Baldwin and
a large contingent, -
They followed the land route to Constantinople.
The fierce Norman knight Bohemond of Taranto, along with
Robert II Duke of Flanders, and the Norman knights from
Southern Italy,
Followed the sea route to Byzantium from the Italian port of Bari.
I have mentioned here only a few, to cut short my story!
At Constantinople Emperor Alexius, administered a Holy Oath of
allegiance to the Crusade Leaders;
Hoping to win back his captured lands after the defeat of the
Seljuk Turks.

THE SIEGE OF NICEA (14th May – 19th Jun 1097) :
This captured Byzantine City was then the Seljuk Capital;
With 200 towers its mighty walls was a formidable defence!
Emperor Alexius sent his army to help the Crusaders in the siege,
And by blockading the food supply lines the city was besieged;
In the absence of the City’s ruler who had gone on a campaign
to the East, -
Alexius’ Generals secretly worked out a negotiation of surrender
and peace!
The Crusaders were angry and felt they were being cheated,
But Alexius gave them money, horses, and gifts to get them
compensated!
On the 26th of June the Crusader army was split into two contingents,
And the Turks ambushed and surrounded the vanguard led by Bohemund the Valiant.
Turk cavalry shooting arrows mauled part of the vanguard,
When the rearguard of Godfrey, and Baldwin charged in
and rescued them from the Turks!
Historians call this the Battle of Dorylaeum;  (1st Jul 1097)  
It was the first major battle  which provided a taste of
things to come!

SIEGE OF EDESSA:
Next a three month’s long and arduous march followed
under the sweltering Summer’s heat,
When five hundred lost their lives due to sheer fatigue!
Baldwin lost his wife God Hilda, a rich heiress;
Now with all her wealth going back to her blood line
as per tradition of those days,
Placed ambitious Baldwin under great mental and financial
distress!
So Baldwin with a few hundred knights headed East for the
rich Christian city of Edessa,
With intentions of claiming it as his own after the loss of his
wife Hilda!
The citizens there backed Baldwin and gave him an Armenian
Christian lady to be his wife,
And against their old childless Ruler Thoros, they plotted to
take his life!
It was not a great start for the idealism of the Crusade,
Since motivated by greed Baldwin had carved out his own
State;
While Edessa also became the First State to be established
by the Holy Crusade!

THE SIEGE OF ANTIOCH  (21 Oct 1097- 02 Jun 1098) :
Antioch was an old Roman city built around 300 BC,
Its six gates and towers fortified the city.
Its formidable walls were built by the Byzantine Emperor
Justinian the First,
And twelve years prior to the arrival of the Crusaders,
Antioch had got occupied by the Turks!
In the absence of a Centralised Command, the Crusade leaders
frequently argued and quarrelled;
Since the majority preferred a siege, so Antioch got finally
surrounded.
When food supply ran short during the winter, both
starvation and desertion plagued the Crusaders;
While Antioch’s Governor Yagi-Siyan appealed for
assistance from his distant brothers the Turks.
He tied messages on legs of trained homing pigeon,
A unique postal service of those early days!
End May 1098 brought news of a large Muslim army
commanded by Emir Kerbogha,
Had set course from Mosul to liberate Antioch from
the Crusaders!
The Crusaders now had to break in fast into Antioch,
or face those 75,000 strong Turkish force!
The Twin Towers on the southern side was manned by
an Armenian Christian Muslim convert named Firuz,
Who was bribed by Bohemund to betray Antioch!
Firuz let down rope ladders for the Crusaders to climb
inside,
And a massacre followed late into the ****** night!
Next day Emir Kerbogha’s troops arrived and the
situation got reversed,
The attackers now lay besieged by those Seljuk Turks!
After fifty-two days of trying siege food supply ran out,
Morale of the Crusaders were rather low, and some even
feared a route!
Now buried in the Church of St. Peter, Peter Bartholomew
the French priest found the ‘Holy Lance’,
About which he had a vision in advance!
This find raised the morale of the Crusaders, and some
even went into a spiritual trance!
For Peter claimed this ‘Holy Relic’ had pierced Christ’s body
after his Crucifixion;
And the Crusading army now moved out of the city in full
battle formation!
Soon after the Turkish army of Kerbogha retreated fearing
devastation!
This victory has been attributed to God and His miraculous
intervention!

                     LIBERATION OF JERUSALEM
After the conquest of Antioch in June 1098, the Crusaders
stayed on till the year got completed.
Though the death of the Papal Legate in August got them
rather depressed;
While Bohemund of Taranto took over Antioch, which now
became the Second Crusader State;
And Raymond of Toulouse became the undisputed Leader
of The Crusade!
Next travelling through Tripoli, Beirut, Tire and Lebanon;
To liberate Bethlehem they sent off Tancred, and Baldwin
of Le Bourg.
On the 5th of June they liberated Bethlehem, and on the
Seventh of June they reached the gates of Jerusalem!
Facing acute shortage of food and water their initial attack
failed to materialise,
When priest Peter Desiderius’ vision of the deceased Papal
Legate came as a pleasant surprise!
This vision commanded them to fast, atone for their sins and
make amends,
By walking barefoot in prayer around the Holy City of Jerusalem!
After a final assault on the 15th of July 1099, they broke into
the City,
Killing all Muslims and Jews with impunity!
Pious Godfrey of Bouillon refusing to wear the crown, became
the First Ruler of this Third Crusader State;
And objectives of the Crusaders were finally attained!
With the formation of warrior monks of ‘Hospitallers’ and
‘Knight Templers’, wearing White and Red Crosses respectivel
RELEVANT LESSONS CAN BE DRAWN FROM PAST HISTORY!
The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
Can like the ***** of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no ****** feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood.
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
Anderson M Oct 2013
A river flowing against its course
As if to floss
Its rare peculiar uncanny ingenuity
A notable case study of ambiguity.

An estranged lover unceremoniously
Literally butchering his offspring mercilessly
In cold blood
For having been dragged through the mud.

The undercurrents of change overriding
Entrenched seemingly myopic tendencies which aren’t binding
Causing irrevocably reversible state of affairs
Care not to be caught in the crosshairs.

A hopelessly optimistic romantic
Head over heel in love with the mystique
Aura of eccentricity effortlessly effused by
Her, she indeed worth a try.

Myriad circumstantial conundrums
That is cause of the inevitable humdrum
So characteristic of life
Answers a trifle few and the lackluster enthusiasm rife.
Frantically chasing the wind
hoping against hope to catch it some day
will that day ever come
so that my chase is ended
and peace finally finds eternal abode in my heart.
Adelina Marie Sep 2014
i'm beginning to develop a
schoolgirl crush on you, my dear,
for you make me giggle as if i were
five years old again.
what i feel for you is
a dumbed down version of
a complex mixture of
like,
love,
lust,
and puppy-love infatuation.
i simply do not know what
has gotten into me but
i do know that i'd
love to feel your lips on my own.
i would be delighted to delve deep
into your embrace and
give names to the galaxies that have called
the depths of your eyes
home.
i haven't known you very long and
i have had not the pleasure of feeling
you in person but the pleasure of
hearing your voice pronounce
my name.
just to see you standing in
front of me once
would perhaps give me
some insight as to
how i feel in
regards to you.
or maybe i'll be more
puzzled than I am
as of now.
The lady has me temporarily off the bottle
and now the pecker stands up
better.
however, things change overnight--
instead of listening to Shostakovich and
Mozart through a smeared haze of smoke
the nights change, new
complexities:
we drive to Baskin-Robbins,
31 flavors:
Rocky Road, Bubble Gum, Apricot Ice, Strawberry
Cheesecake, Chocolate Mint...

we park outside and look at icecream
people
a very healthy and satisfied people,
nary a potential suicide in sight
(they probably even vote)
and I tell her
"what if the boys saw me go in there? suppose they
find out I'm going in for a walnut peach sundae?"
"come on, chicken," she laughs and we go in
and stand with the icecream people.
none of them are cursing or threatening
the clerks.
there seem to be no hangovers or
grievances.
I am alarmed at the placid and calm wave
that flows about. I feel like a ***** in a
beauty contest. we finally get our sundaes and
sit in the car and eat them.

I must admit they are quite good. a curious new
world. (all my friends tell me I am looking
better. "you're looking good, man, we thought you
were going to die there for a while...")
--those 4,500 dark nights, the jails, the
hospitals...

and later that night
there is use for the pecker, use for
love, and it is glorious,
long and true,
and afterwards we speak of easy things;
our heads by the open window with the moonlight
looking through, we sleep in each other's
arms.

the icecream people make me feel good,
inside and out.
Frieda P Jan 2014
Lanced hearts with sharpen'd derisive swords
praise in quest of soul with fortress'd intensity
humanity's depths of breaths & declination
flippant whirl around fury's surge
dance'd with indignity around posies
knelt before the gods in reverence
vivacious adoration of nature's beauty
languid solemnness dip'd in gravitas
bruised butterfly wings, birthing conception
satiated desires within abstract'd notions
language combined within torrents of gusto
floating on gale winds and simplex'd zephyrs
artful appreciation prais'd in kind
communion encompassing a state of being,
complexities of a poet's psyche*

~Amen
JWolfeB Nov 2014
I have been waiting
for her to pick me off the shelf

To remember me as fondly
as I dream of her nightly

Wanting nothing more than to be
used like her favorite toy

The one she played with as a child
when holding each other came simple

For her to lay me next to her heart
during the dim nights under gods shadow

Giving up on the complexities
of the never ending day before us

While engulfing each other in stories
of an emotion we remembered as love
False Poets Feb 2018
complexity bias

how you love to criticize my poems
as too long and overly complex

poor me, I’m no genius, don’t prosper by exploiting
unrecognized simplicities, rather deconstruct the
intricate complexities that I flatter myself are the me-sinews

Writing is a **** temptation -
we focus on the 10% that is complex and ignore the easy 90%

perhaps this once I will surrender my bare bones
put aside the rich, satisfying of cave diving, urban spelunking
word caressing tongue verbiage rich tapestry exploring -

give you the plane of plain where nestles my destiny: nesting near motionless where the couch is my kingdom and cold cereal is
easily digested and there are no consequences

I am a member of a discriminated-against minority
we have no charismatic leader, no marchers anywhere, and government programs say
hey you’re free white and twenty one plus, get the crap out of
our faces,  you useless piece of rhymes with **** and includes dirt, though I shower twice a day to keep myself occupied

25 years old, a high school dropout, of course I’m white,
my occupation is playing video games and making sure
my supply of opioids is adequate in these great United States
where I was born

there are fewer jobs than none that my application survives
a first glance discardation, and now my disability preempts
any demand to pretend there is gainful employment in store in
my future

this reductio ad absurdum is a technique to expose the fallacy,
ah what’s that you say no interest in hanging about,
on your way out, of course, of course,
we are the wrong flavor of downtrodden

my life is simple - simplistic in its a chaotic entropic way,
order slowly declines into disorder

my rituals are a fight against slip sliding down, falling off the
the Herzog continuums
and the poems are desperate hand holds to prevent my
going, gone under

so forgive me if I tax you without possessing not the
requisite taxing authority

you hone in on the obvious disparities and my contradictions

resenting my sending you this bill of extravagant length

compose with me and a mean will be located and to sleep I go,
perhaps to undress my dreams and explicate the wealthy multiples of complexity in the simplicity of a junkies life
Styles Jul 2019
Your taste;
   flavor laced.
   with complexities,
   that are addicting to me.
   tastebuds consistently feening for,
   the texture of your consistency.
Madison Dec 2013
I can never simply scratch the surface
and let things be;
I need to tear open the wound
and dive deep into the veins
To discover why the blood flows
so quickly.
I over analyze
the simplest complexities.
The Wicca Man Jul 2013
I could answer your questions with a simple, off-the-cuff explanation but have ended up writing this essay: the more I thought about what you’d asked, the more the I felt it warranted a fuller explanation so I will try to explain why I call myself a Wiccan and how I come to be following the Wicca Path. And apologies in advance for the length of this!

As well as my love of Literature, I love History with a similar passion. My degree was in English and History and although I specialised in Shakespearian and post-Shakespearian literature and Modern History, I have a long held fascination with Celtic and pre-Celtic history, beliefs and spirituality. It is the mysticism of the Old Religion that seemed to attract me most and I found myself drawn particularly to the Celtic and Welsh mythology and have read extensively about it: Cornwall and Wales (mid Wales in particular) are my two favourite places in the world. I have read a lot about Celtic and pre-Celtic history, beliefs and religion over the years, both fiction and non-fiction.

Although Jewish by birth, I was brought up by my father who was a confirmed atheist so I lost out on any formal religious influence as I was growing up. Perhaps because of his views, I developed a distrust of formal, mainstream religion. That’s not to say I felt I had no spiritual beliefs at all, it’s just they were untapped and unidentified; I felt I was reaching out for something but it never took on any tangible form, rather like in a dream when you cannot see clearly the faces or forms of the inhabitants of your dreams.

By the time I got into my forties, I realised there was something seriously lacking in the spiritual side of my life. These beliefs were compounded by three events:

    * reading James Lovelock's Gaia theory [which inspired me to write one of my favourite stories, Gaia's Last, published here];
    * my discovery of Jean Auel's Earth's Children series of books , Clan of the Cave Bear, etc. which go into extraordinary detail of Cro-Magnon peoples' belief in nature spirits, worship of The Mother and Shamanism;
    * a sudden change in my circumstances that forced me to re-evaluate every aspect of my life and my existence.

It was at this time I began to research the Old Religion: paganism, nature-worship, whatever you want to call it, and this led me to discover Wicca.

The more I read about it, the more I realised it fitted in with my current state of mind and outlook on life. Maybe there is a sense of escapism inasmuch as the roots of Wicca look backward to a simpler time and as I was having difficulty coping with the complexities of the changed circumstances in my life at the time. Wicca seemed to offer exactly the spiritual needs I was lacking.

That is not to say that Wicca is old-fashioned and out of date. Rather the contrary in fact. Whilst its roots acknowledge the Old Religion, Wicca is relatively modern having been developed by a guy called Gerald Gardner who published a book called Witchcraft Today in the 1940s I believe which re-established in the public eye the old pagan beliefs that have been around since the dawn of man. These beliefs never really disappeared even through the worst of the atrocities perpetrated against followers of the Old Religion [The Burning Times ]. (And just to make an important point about the title of the book and Wicca in general, Witchcraft in the pagan and Wicca context is NOT Black Magic or Satanism as the tabloid press or mainstream religion would have you believe; it could not be further from them. It is simply an acknowledgement of the existence of natural forces that can be used or channelled by those who choose to learn these ancient skills).

I have seen Wicca [and other forms of Paganism] referred to as Green Magic and that seems the perfect definition; it is immensely comforting to work so closely with the natural world and to feel such a part of it.

So for me, Wicca is an ideal spiritual antidote for the impossibly fast-paced, self-serving lifestyles we all seem to be caught up in these days, often through no choice of our own. It is as valid a belief system as any other practised throughout the world and is nothing like the forms of Wicca popularised in the media with TV shows like Charmed and its ilk!

Wicca is it is not something to be taken on lightly - Wicca practices should be treated with the same reverence as those in any other belief system. It requires study, practice and dedication.’

I have to confess to have been lacking in all three since I originally wrote this so have vowed to myself to rectify these shortcomings. I feel excited about my rekindled sense of spirituality and more at peace with myself for making this decision.

Go in Love & Light!
I hope people don't object to my posting this; I am a passionate believer in freedom of speech and of expression. I hope people here are open to these views, which are mine and in no way do I want to foist my views on anyone or indeed, cause offence.
whispers flowing gently
  'tween the softness of fallen rain
celebrating each bittersweet moment,
breathing in the exhales of fiery fate
mulling over a cuppa fresh brewed coffee
         in spaces of last night's frenzy,
a dreamt recollection of poetry &
   appreciation of a brand new dawning
sense of anticipation in realizations'
  mysteries of experience are sublimely reverent,
   as the knowledge that pauses serves a purpose
      in the seemingly simple complexities
           of honoring loving indulgences
Sylvia Nguyen Aug 2014
Senseless beauty,

Indulge every chance you get.
In that galactic heart of yours,
Where stars are dense as wild flowers
Covering the dark ranges of space.
Where the greatest lessons are distilled
In your subtle flavours and delicate
complexities of your new sensorium.
Eat your guilt, and do not look at your tortured mate.

*The lesson is pleasure not pride.
heather mckenzie Sep 2018
i don’t think I found myself in the poetry, i think i am finding myself in your arms
under the gentle pressure of your fingertips and the velvet embrace of your words.
they think I found myself in the halls of the airport that it walked alone
but
i think i am finding myself in the kitchen of your flat, waiting for the kettle to come to a boil; in cups of tea nursed at the table and I hope that’s okay.
i sip in the same tentative manner that i reach for your hand in the dark; you may have the effervescent beauty of a tree in the autumn but right now i would like to lace my fingers with yours and be human together. i hope that’s okay.
you are like literature and myth; a deep and sprawling spectrum of contradictions and complexities. i feel like teiresias; blind and trapped within my own self-made cocoon of spiralling thoughts.
eyes closed i reach for your hand.
i almost miss my stop on the last train home spilling out sweet words about your everything.
her hair straight out of bed with soft eyes and parted lips, sculpted by aphrodite; carved from the finest marble i want her to pin me down,
to the bed, to reality-
her lips, to guide me
from her waist and back
to sanity. early in the morning
when she wakes up tangled in sheets
with her eyes peeking up over her phone,
soft smile on her lips.
the world stands still in the soft glow of flickering street lights like visible heartbeats, glowing and not glowing in tandem, and the windows are frosted along the edges; worrying a cracked lip between my front teeth i realise this may be the most I have ever thought about tea.
our fingers
tangle, grasp sheets or cheeks rosy
with first-kiss smiles. eyelids
crinkle.
you are butterflies in my stomach, fear and exhilaration, honesty and hope
you are
listening to the same song on repeat; your laugh is the song stuck in my head, every song i’ve ever loved,
the only song i want to listen to.
Amitav Radiance Jul 2014
The fundamentals of simplicity is not fathomed
Entangled in the barbed wires of complexities
Simple words sing no more to the yearning ears
Heavy laden words and tedious conversations
Gnawing away at the precious moments of life
Disparity is making the divide in humanity
Thoughts no more in one’s control, all indoctrinated
Confusion and rage seems to be the new found ‘normal’
Wonder why simplicity is consigned to such a fate
Let there be a new dawn of realization, to simply live
Breathe in the fresh era of clarity, with no malice
Simplicity, I pray to thee, turn your gaze towards humanity
Amitav Radiance Dec 2014
How easy it is to complicate situations
And how hard it is to simplify
Amidst the complexities
We lose the plot, easily
Challenges were never easy

A new poetry posting site from God's own country, Kerala in India

Poetry dates all the way back to the beginnings of Humanity. People have always been questioning nature, and the day-to-day existence of themselves and other humans love, death, survival, war, injustice, and the universe are all examples of things that have been questioned by men and woman since the roots of human existence. Whether in nursery rhyme, ballad, jingle, rhyme, anthem, or music, people have found poetry to be an outlet for expressing these questions, sensations, and experiences

People often associate it with strict rhyming patterns, complicated vocabulary, hidden iconic meanings, and difficult rhythmical conventions. Poetry is even taught in school to be an intricate, complicated, inexplicable puzzle. True, poetry is difficult. Sure, it can be harder to understand than prose. However, that is only because sometimes it is involved with your inescapable complexities
and uncertainties of your existence.

In this era when the soul wants to go on a spree, imagination and creativity are all merged to serve and let you fulfill your wish to express. The pen, mightier than the sword, is free and can conquer hearts all over the world. So here is a site which allows unity in diversity and considers not cultural and racial barriers. It welcomes professionals and amateurs equally as poetry believe not in prejudice. Human beings are free to write their feelings and emotions. We therefore invite here people from all over the world to celebrate under the ipoetree. Feel at home here under the shade of this tree which
pines to have as fruits your poems.

Williamsji Maveli (Williams George Maveli) is an enthusiastic and solid writer. He is a sincere, resourceful and diligent in his poetic work. He is very well connected and networked within the literary community and is willing to take up projects even in his tight schedules. His writings reflect the amount of research on the current events that has gone into it along with his knowledge and expertise in the field. However, Williamsji’s many poems are simple to read, interpret, and understand. His latest book, titled “ARAMVIRALTHUMBATHU…” (On the tip of the sixth finger), is now published and released by H & C Books,Trichur, Kerala in India, which is a collection of lyrics.

If anyone is interested, please email to williamsji@yahoo.com or write to

WILLIAMSJI MAVELI
PO BOX 3
ANGAMALY
ERNAKULAM DISTRICT,
KERALA - INDIA

www.ipoetree.in
Where Poets grow and glow !
If anyone is interest in the above poetry site, Please write to williamsji@yahoo.com
SassyJ Feb 2016
Crossroads (Spoken Word- Freestyle-Dramatics)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
== Crossroads ==
by
SassyJ
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Complexities we create

(Copy the link below to your browser)
Follow the link at:
https://soundcloud.com/user-367453778/crossroads-sassy-j
Insatiable was the menu we served exclusively
The culinary gourmet, marked in Michelin stars
The 5 course preparation of paradise on a dish
The interval of forks, spoons, knives and platters
For I drool it all, still you can’t see the stained print
I reverse the stilled portrait and you stare amused
Tainted as the stringed moonlight crawled unearthed

Take this bulb, for I have smashed it see this bruise
The blooded finger prints, the imprint of fine justice
I breath the freshness of the mist but it evaporates
My mind cascading  to the pitted grounded roots
The sun rays blows to blind, its my lidded perspective
The unparalleled horizon casting on glittered aisle
Send them all home, the show is paused,cancelled

Reality is the diverse of confusing notions and illusions
A multiplication of complexities that we have created
The absolute happiness remains a psychological concept
The happen stance of nature entwined with freedom
To exist yet persist and bloom like a yeasted dough
Encircling reputations, reflections to heavy to bury
I come back home to announce a new found hope
K Balachandran Nov 2011
The setting sun profusely
showering  golden yellow
over scattered Mughal ruins,
dragged history of dead centuries
in to their conversations.

In Delhi
history rocks one back and fourth
as if  in a swing, when one sees
own predicaments from different angles,
realize, the role of a rolling stone
in the incessant flow of time.

In India past centuries, co-exist
forming  a deep water pool,
on the banks of which,
the cities are made.
this  pool makes its presence felt
amazingly in contemporary life,
you can see your face,
and life itself reflected on its waters,
--as if  walking on the shore of distant times;
an exhilarating feeling, eerie too at times.

History was a live  presence,
all along with them, future loomed
with  grievous air of uncertainty
he and she, two lines drawn parallel
(not by them but others, who know better!)
over the busy today of Delhi
gloriously old, yet decidedly new
and an uncertainty vastly between.

one easily gets lost in the labyrinths
unless fully  imbued all this contradictory complexities.

she said, in dreams she was a princess
who fell in love with a poet penniless
but sung his songs only to her heart,
she never did want anything else
she was blissfully unaware of the
complexities of labyrinths,

the king got furious, she said
like some  parents of present times
who don't hesitate a bit, to **** in cold blood
their children who cross the lines
killings in the  name of honor is on the increase
every day you are informed.

in the story of her nightmares
it all ended in tragedy:
the king without mercy hung
the lovers, who preferred death
than getting separated

He walked back alone,
making way through
the ruins of past strewn
with an agitating heart,
here, the time is a still pool
that refuses to flow,
he thought

between the sunset of past glory
and an uncertain dawn
he and she stand separated
by a dark frightening night.
Eve Aug 2016
Inseparably attached
Hopelessly apart
Many oceans away
But we carried one heart

The emotions I feel
As I think of you
A smile or a tear
I wonder which is true.

I never touched your hand
Or called your name aloud
Yet I have no doubt
About finding you in a crowd

The words of love you give
And bits of truth you share
Are the only things that help
This distance life's given me to bear

I try to be so strong
But I am brought to my knees
By the miles that separate us
To create our love's complexities

-fir.m
A.A
2012/02/28 - 2014/06/16
Long distance relationships are hard, It's been so long since we've shared certain emotions with each other. I don't know if he was real to me but i was real to him and as the years goes by it hurts less and looks more beautiful. As i am introduced to newer people, newer ideas and newer methods of love none can quite compare to the love we shared. We still talk and i still get this tingly feeling in my chest or stomach or wherever it is whenever i know it's him. I do hope i find someone i can love more than this.
Descovia Nov 2023
These words that have pull and plunge your being into an intense trip. Watch the words, fly off the page and take you through time faster than any Uber or Lyft.
For this neat little trick, we employ the words that grip.
The ones that squeeze and then some that suddenly hold until the reader drips. Fill their bottle with a cuffing concoction, with every verse, they'll take a sip!
Descovia joined forces with Alma/Rota to deliver a compelling masterpiece for genius minds!
Christian Ek Nov 2014
Some might say I'm too passionate and that I only speak the language of poetry.
There is a spirit animal who appears to me and the primordial instincts it values turns on inside of  me.
They ask me why I close my eyes when the music begins to play but they don't understand how I completely dive myself into the music.
I fall in love with the simplicity life has to offer and with the complexities I can't explain.
Am I a victim ? because I want more than the normal or am I the one who is still waiting for those animalistic passions to pierce through to my soul.
- C.Ek
Clare Wright Mar 2010
I see Dockers watering pansies with dainty watering cans,
I see transvestites doing DIY,
I see women building bodies,
I see men cook and fry,
And don’t grown men cry?

Gender complexities, ****** complexities,
Why the split when things don’t fit?
Women doing house removals whilst men sit and sew,
So what?
Humanities, biologies, personalities,
Are we not more the same than different?
The World is crazy for categories,
But we do not fit inside.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2015
i thought two things prior, prior walking out
ensuring a tree branch could support
a heinekken bottle on a branch...
well it was as clear as day: thinking proves we have a soul,
the existence of thought proves soul and nina simone...
it would be depressing otherwise, the highest understament
of creation being a dog’s bark and *******...
but there’s something bothersome about monotheism
and the ritual rites of burrial that makes it less sophisticated
than polytheism, such as the pagan greeks knew
and the hindus continue to approve...
see it as: why would man engage with the paradox
of coming from dust, and returning to the element of earth...
it’s missing something... ah yes... intelligence...
the pagans were unified in the burning bush...
the plague that unified the world... the 9th plague
in canada: huh?! w.t.f.?! the 9th plague in japan: huh?! w.t.f.?
the 9th plague is the origin of aztec pyramids...
you’ve been warned.
you see, i see the monotheistic coupling of the corpse
with the earth, coffin and favourite track and ceremony
really groutesque...
i like the hindus and pagans coupling man’s body with fire...
this monotheistic coupling with the element of earth
is too morbid for me... i prefer the bit they put two choins
on the sockets for charon... and burn you,
so the metaphor lives: we had fire in us, even though
we were primarily composed of water... we had fire in us nonetheless!
all this gothic coffin bits: the epitaph post-mortem rather than
vivus maxim... all that tending to the grave like it’s a garden...
no wonder voltaire rebelled with candide...
it be natural that a bush on fire be guidance of man’s true origin
and ontology... that it was fire that spoke... rather than earth;
and yet we give ourselves to the false elemental coercion...
it’s not earth that spawned us, earth was but a canvas...
it was fire that spawned us... with each splinter of the spark
of the brush stroke.
or i could tell you about the many times i spent in the brothel
in goodmayes...
the time i gave one ******* an ****** and she said that it hurt
when she composed herself to put her clothes back on,
the time i cried with one,
the time one almost nibbled my ******* off with a death-stare,
the time one stole my debit card and had me go back
and see the stash load of other cards exhibited by the ****,
the time i thought they were romanian girls but
were in fact bulgarian girls...
the time i ****** a ***** off and was asked: do you want to use it
and thus replied no...
the time i was asked if i wanted a ******* and
took the orthodox route and had the same woman for two hours...
and this concern, the freudian madonna-***** complex,
a fine divide... i can go limp **** with girls outside the profession...
why? because i haven’t objectified them,
in the case where they objectified themselves it’s no problem...
but outside the industrial profession of getting turned on
synthetically using cream it’s more difficult...
i need to know the person, i can’t objectify her in the way
she can already objectify herself...
i can be limp **** with a girl who’s a cashier in a supermarket,
but i can never be limp **** with a girl from a brothel...
it’s not that odd... it’s the explanation of freud,
as all theories, there’s a hyphen inserted to compound
and in a grammatical sense it’s the reverse of mathematics,
in grammar the hyphen is like = when two things are added,
subtracted, multiplied or divided...
time-space is usually a narrative of some sort that’s the adequate
answer...
madonna-***** complex also has a narrative, like this one,
i’m not ashamed of a quasi-impotence...
i just **** professionals drunk, i need the calories...
i’ve had *** with prostitutes and was aroused immediately...
a bit like acknowledging: in a dentist’s chair,
i’m about to get my rotten teeth pulled, rather than get a botox insertion
or a heart transplant.
as simple as that.
(the one that stole my saracens' beanie i will never forget,
i got it buying two saracens' supporters
a pint of beer each at a pub in liverpool st.
by faking delusion associating them with
the actual saracens rugby team...
i really want that saracens beanie back!)
well, we'd get nowhere with space~time or madonna~*****,
only because our linear foundations would
fluctuate in the realm of trigonometry:
they break your heart... you break their mind;
forget direct relation, endear indirect relation
where the former is time-space and the latter is time~space.
Nigel Morgan Feb 2013
Prince Niou had removed himself from Kaoru’s company and the warmth of the wood-burning stove. Under the shelter of the steep karawa eaves he stood to watch the snow, to watch it fall, fall relentlessly, relentlessly. But for the biting cold he might have been watching the blossoms fall and scatter, those intricate, delicate flowers that, as you looked up at them in the trees, were in tessellation with the sky. It was Kisaragi (late February) when winter shows little sign that spring might appear. So now the time of deep snows in the mountain fastness where Kaoru’s family estates straddled part of the necessary journey from Edo to Kyoto.
 
The snowfall mesmerized Niou. It held such a purity of disordered motion, He stretched out his arm to feel the soft touch of the flakes on his embroidered sleeve. He imagined Ukifune’s touch would be like that of this falling snow, a pattering of fingers, a sweep of her long, long hair. She, Kaoru’s mistress, had left earlier in the afternoon to journey safely across the mountain passes to her lakeside home before the heavy snow fall set in. He had been close witness to Kaoru’s passion for this delicate flower picked from across the mountains to grace his country house his wife would never visit in winter. And now Prince Niou had, in just two days of polite proximity, lost his heart and all reason to this girl-woman, this woman-girl. She seemed beyond conventional description such was her beauty and her graceful manner. When her eyes rose to his he lost the composure he knew his station demanded. But Kaoru in his own infatuation and glowing with the pleasuring he and Ukifune enjoyed seemed oblivious to the Prince’s covert gaze.
 
This evening Kaoru had already drunk more than was sensible. But darkness was drawing in, and the duties, what little he allowed himself, were over for the day, except to entertain his eminent friend. He had allowed himself to be carefully boastful of Ukifune’s charms and beauty. His words made frequent veiled suggestions of their moments of pleasure together in this winter world of silence where lovers would part the screens and stand folded in each other’s arms to witness the white world of snowfall decorate the mountain landscape.
 
Prince Niou had already decided that as his friend fell into stupor then sleep, and that would be soon, he would set out across the snows to seek Ukifune’s path, to capture her for himself, to declare his love and passion. As she left he had passed a note to her maid telling her not to be surprised by a night-time visitation. He knew that a journey in falling snow would take many hours and it would probably be dawn before he could approach her mountain retreat, a small house by a lake. There, it seemed, she withdrew from the complexities of court life to find the peace and balance necessary to sustain her beauty. She had described the joy of witnessing the intricate twilights and blood red dawns of winter, of watching the birds rise from and return to the oft-frozen lake. She and her maid would drift idly in her boat watching the black, dense water lap too and fro, until the cold required a return to warmth and comfort.
 
It was to be a hard journey. Niou, though prepared with stout boots, an extra cloak and shawl, knew he would flounder into drifts along way. Only his long staff would save him from ignominy. His saw his path blessed by the light of a half moon and together with a myriad of stars arching across the heavens, he would triumph. He had borrowed items of Kaoru’s clothing, his hat and staff, his bag and winter cloak. To all intents and purposes as he approached Ukifune’s home he would appear as his soon to be cuckolded friend. His thoughts remained fixed on  Ukifune. He longed for the moment when she would raise her eyes to him from her pillow, in surprise, in wonder he hoped. He considered how his cold body would join with her warm body in the infinite caress of love’s first passionate meeting. He would then carry her wrapped in her bed coverings to her boat and, having secured her comfort, pole out into the lake and there join with her as the moon looked down from the dawn sky.
 
Later they would exchange poems:
 
Niou
​Snow upon hill, ice along frozen rivers:
​​There for you I trod, yet for all that never lost
​​The way to be lost in you.

 
Ukifune​
*Quicker than the snow, swirling down at last
​​To lie by a frozen lake, I think I shall
​​Melt away while aloft yet in mid sky.
Fought
One, Twenty-two skidoo.
Cantankerous mad filamous

She,
That of her,
Me.

Piñata, stretched balloon
Over my big fleshy
******.

Tea and cakes,
Painted my nails
Painted my lips
Like candy.

Gold trinkets,
Pour like mercury out of my ear.

Ouch! I cried
My feet in hot sandy
Dreams.

Flying peacocks tickle
My *****.

Oranges roll on chalk board tables
Over stale rye bread.

***** dribbles out like mucus
And a runny nose.

Toilet paper and rusty water.
******* on you.

Stocking lover.

Fetish cover.

Woman pusher.

Mellifluous ****.

Look at my skin.
Pink, beige, peach, red
Porous, greasy, bacteria ridden hide.

**** me like seppuku,
Smother, suffocate me with
Red jelly jam.

Lubricate your finger with black
Cancerous ash.

Stick it in my naval,
Unravel my umbilical cord
Like so many filaments of my heart.

Tear your flesh
You auto *******.
Rip your liver

And force feed it
Corn and maize
Hay and grass

Emory my nails against
Red barn walls
Until bare skin fundamentals

Kisses with salty lips
Inflame my ravishing
Pig stomach.

Kick my shin you
Everything,

Wake up you stupid
*****.

Void can be blue skies,
Oceans call for suicide.

Kiss me with delight,
Raspberries tattooed
In my *****.

Strawberry cream
Vanilla, milk,
Ponderous infinity,

Cotton, dough
Honey and sage.

Caustic gastric
You and not me.

Feel my legs,
Touch my thighs,
Lick my lips,
Give me anything
Not direct.

Tie me up in complexities.
**** my head up.
Put me in a dream,
Make me happy.

Blair Butterfield 2004
Andrew Rueter May 2017
I see the rabbits feeding on the grass
My heart is filled with joy
Their life is precious
I see the vultures feeding on the rabbits
My heart is filled with joy
Their life is precious

That's what I never understood about coffins
Life is about expanding your prison cell as much as you can
There's no requirement to be contained once it's over
Our nutriance to the Earth
Is our nutrients into Earth
All creatures that die on this planet
Become a part of it
The Debt they paid to the future
The Debt that is always collected on
We travel nonchalantly on their corpses
Wishing they could appreciate
That each and every one of them
Was one step closer to sentience
This planet's passion project

Could the first single-celled organism
Comprehend my humiliation?
When the first creature walked on land
Was it anticipating my shame?
Did it sprout wings
To give me nightmares of dying in an airplane?
Did ancient Neanderthals dance around a fire
To reenact my adolescence?
Could mystic voodoo shaman
Cure my lack of agency?
Or did lost American tribesmen
Prophesize the complexities of my love?
I can feel all these ******* looking up at me from the ground
And it's just me
As I accidentally burn my notebook with a cigarette
Can be found in my self published poetry book “Icy”.
https://www.amazon.com/Icy-Andrew-Rueter-ebook/dp/B07VDLZT9Y/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Icy+Andrew+Rueter&qid=1572980151&sr=8-1
Duncan Brown Sep 2018
Not long after the beginning, and a bit before the end, the Almighty said to Noah: “Is that your real name?” “Yeah”, said Noah: “you gave it to me, your ever generousness. I was hoping for something a bit more romantic, maybe even an extra syllable or two, or become all psychedelic and have a hyphen and a double barrel, but Noah is functional. I’m not complaining, a lot. After all what’s in a name? Wouldn’t a cactus be just as uninteresting if it was called something else? Why am I and my not very exciting name so humbly in your almighty and quite tedious presence?” asked Noah. “I’ve had a great idea”, said God: “and I want you with the very boring name to be the first to hear it.” “Can’t wait to hear it your Denseness, even if it is only half as brilliant as the square wheeled chariot and deep-fried ice cube you nearly invented for us last week; and as for the three-armed jacket, well what can I say? Jacob wears his every day and I won’t tell you what he does with it at night, as it involves folk music. And didn’t the Paisley patterned boulder illuminate the landscape?” said Noah “Oh good”, said God: “I do so enjoy it when the minions are attentive to my every word and trembling syllable, What’s the point of being an Almighty if you can’t Almighty it over the lower orders from time to time?” “I couldn’t agree more, your Bampotness. Even if you do appear to be a few slices short of a full loaf on occasions. So, what’s this big idea you’ve had?” said Noah. “I want you to build a boat, the biggest and bestest boat there’s ever been” said God. “Why”, said Noah, “we live in a desert, we don’t do boats; never have done, don’t get a lot of call for them in these parts, your Obliqueness. Ordinarily you’re every utterance is a symphony of sound and beauty to the sticky out bits on the abstract countenance you have so generously created for me, O Guano features. Couldn’t you do another plague of frogs and locusts? We loved those. Your subjects haven’t eaten so well since. Very tasty they were indeed, and so much more nourishing than the daily fare of cactus bark and centipede you dish up to us as we go about our increasingly diminishing mortal trespass. I hope you weren’t baffled by the paradoxical construction of that sentence. One Almighty’s punishment is another lowly minion’s business opportunity. I was running a fast food joint while it lasted. Made a change from the normal feast, where you have to catch your dinner before it catches you. Eat before your eaten that’s the Law ‘round here. It makes you feel more like a recipe than a person on occasions, your Compostness.” “Be that as it may, said God: “I’ve got some drawings which Eve helped me to make” “Eve?”  said Noah: “did you say Eve?” “Yes” said God: “Eve”, that’s what I said, she likes me more than all the rest of you put together and that’s why she’s my favourite” “This will be good” said Noah: “let’s be having it. Let’s see the cosmic blueprint of a less than useless boat that Eve devised” “I helped to devise it as well”, said God: “In fact I done all the pencil sharpening, and here it is.” Noah sniggered and said: “That’s not a boat it’s a camel!” “Brilliant, isn’t it?”, said God: “you’ve got to hand it to Eve; she’s a genius at this kind of stuff, and she says it will make me look jolly clever as well. And that will stop all you ungrateful and wretched minions from smirking and sniggering every time I have a wonderful idea.” “This is even better than the ten commandments, three dos six don’ts and a maybe” said Noah. “My Ten commandments were wonderful” said God: “even Moses said so.” “The only reason you have ten commandments”, said Noah: “is because you have ten fingers. If you had seventeen fingers we would have seventeen commandments; one for each digit. People who use their toes to count their fingers should avoid life’s mathematical complexities. And as for Moses ‘The Born Leader’ he’s a party hack. He’ll agree with anything you say as long as he gets his name on the tablet. He’s publicity mad. When he grows up he wants to chisel the definitive text on cactus attraction, for the benefit of future desert wanderers. Eve says he a bit of a Freudian fruitcake on the quiet, whatever that is. She also says, his mother told him he was adopted, and he’s never quite got over it.” “Why would Moses want to get over a cactus, seems jolly silly to me” said God: “He’s a complete basket case, according to the local grapevine. Never mind all that, let’s see the blueprint.” said Noah: “A wooden camel, only a cosmic idiot could imagine it. If it was a wooden horse it could have been sold to the Trojans, or a wooden cat to the Pharoahs, and I’m told the antipodeans go a bundle on timber budgies, but camels; nobody wants one, not even other camels. How did someone as colossally dense and as infinitely thick as your self acquire the surreallness of thought to imagine it in the first place?” said Noah. “You’re a bright little chappie for a minion”, said God: “Eve told me about the Greeks and their wooden gee-gee and I suggested a boat, then Eve pointed out that this was a desert, and consequently we need a desert boat. ‘One that floats on sand’, I said. ‘Not quite El Plonkero’ she said. Then Eve said we have to adopt and then apply some lateral thinking to the problem. She pointed out that we live in a desert and that we need a boat that sails in the desert. And then I had the mostest cleverest thought I’ve had in ages. We need a ‘desert boat’ I exclaimed. And Eve said I was a true plankton eater. She says the nicest things to me. A ‘ship of the desert,’ she says, ‘and what’s a ship of the desert?’  Quick as a flasher in the rush hour, I said ‘a camel’, and Eve replied that I was quite bright for a log, and that camel plus ship equalled wooden camel to sail away from here to some other paradise she called Hollywood, ‘Land of heavenly bodies and the drop dead gorgeous Brad Pitt.’” “And you believed her?” said Noah. “Of course I believed her”, said God: “she’s Eve and if you can’t believe in Eve what else is there to believe in?” “There’s an answer to that”, said Noah: “but you’d toast me like a heretic on the happy juice if I repeated it, your Doorknobness.”
Cheyenne Mar 2015
Here in the masquerade,
plastic faces on parade.
Truth refracted by our lies.
Masks revealing what we hide.

Beneath the mask, a painted face--
there is no truth that's not erased.
We are what we pretend to be--
flaunting our complexities.

We cannot undo the mess we're in;
Our costumes now our second skin.
We choose carefully our facades;
We pay the price to act like Gods.
I feel the humid emotion in our room

This room where feelings are felt and magic happens between you and I

You, sitting on the edge of our bed..motionless as the air itself..

Your pale colored eyes looking hungrily all over me..craving desire..

I know you want me..

Your layered jet black hair falling over your face in a roughed up lust..

I , sitting across from you on the ground

These old cherry glazed wooden floors that are so familiar to us

Sitting half undressed,  motionless

My hair in a mess, like one of those models posing in a vogue magazine

Desperately waiting for something to spark between this still nature

My eyes

looking you up..

and down …

I want you…

I crave your touch

That euphoric rush you give me when your skin meets mine..

I want to feel your warmth up against my body

A feeling I longed to feel for so long

Sometimes I wondered if love really exists?

Sitting alone, envisioning, and always thinking of you

Is love just a movie?

It starts, and sadly ends

When I see you here in front of me, I deeply reflect.

I think no, never.

You are the definition of love

You are my beautiful distraction

The way your eyes lock on mine, they paralyze me, our gaze is cemented

I wonder if you feel the same about me

The emotions rush through my body as I passionately look at your perfection

I the butterfly, and you the lion, such strong complexities to obtain.

I leisurely rise and walk towards you following your desirable gaze

I get close to your body and touch your gentle face, you let me get into your lap.

You make me fear, you

I touch you to reassure this is real

The love I have wanted for so long.

I kiss your soft skin, and bite your lips gently.

Your warm body up against mine makes me melt in your arms.

We share deep and passionate kisses that I wish would last forever.

But forever is too long and I would be a corpse decaying in your arms.

This memory will always linger
I only want more from you.

Take me somewhere we both know we want to go

I whisper words into your ear softly

Words that haven’t been spoken as long as I could remember.

I shudder with life every time your touch embraces my soft skin.

I close my eyes and the world spins into a maelstrom of pure bliss

a beautiful desire.

— The End —