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Ayad Gharbawi Jan 2010
PASSION PLAY

Ayad Gharbawi




Location: Desert Shore, Bitterly Cold Night, next to strong waves from the ocean.
Characters: Man ((M) and his Lover, a Woman (W).

----------------------------------------


W: “Search as I forever do, in manifold ways unknown, I seek but to love thee, and the meagre goodness from Life, with steely ardour - my armour faithful.”
M: “Alone I may be, and still, yes I love thee; these days heavy are and beset I am by burdensome trivialities, but I remain trusting, though my corner so narrow remain.”
W: “My Love! Your speech I hear aloud and thine lips I live within and yet, my Love, all Solitude I am. Man! I am unaided! In this journey of sinful thorns, my love, in this unforgiving journey, this blurred odyssey, I stand alone”.
M: “This trial you speak of, but I do know of it well; so, listen then: within the strength of trusted togetherness we can plough on, though everlasting harm shall do its spiteful tricks, warm to our united truth shall we remain.”
W: (Surprised) “O! My love! This thought I cannot hear! My life, my destiny, is but mine. And all have their own solitary roads of jagged rocks to embrace, like it we or not. We heartbreaking earthly sad beasts, either fiercely clutch at integrity, or we do let it go to perish away.”
M: (Confused) “My Love! I do hear, I do hear. But when Times decide on burdening us, what then can we achieve? To face Reality within the frail arms of solitude is to ignore, to refuse the severe threats of repulsive grins.”
(Silence)
M: (Passionately) “O! My sweet! Only in us, can we envelope, through joined, clasped warmth can we be as one united! The screams that so truly are meant to slice us off, only we, our Unity, can destroy. For mine eyes can only find sleep in your ears, and it is so - for otherwise nothing and no one can be.”
W: (Angry) “My Passion too is bubbling for thine bewildered ears. Am I not your soul? Do we not suffer as one? Do we not reflect as one? Am I not your lover true? Is not our warmth not weighty to our fickle bones?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “But, Lover, this much ought I to formally declare unto thee: For our eyes, and all eyes, envision unequally at one another. Till eternity, in its casual, indifferent flicker, snatches at us all wretched mortals, the gazes from lords to paupers remain veritably mismatched. O my passion! My woeful heart! These words I thunder forth defines love unfeigned, and what mine eyes do pour out unto thine ears is authenticity true.
(Silence)
W: (Passionately) “What joined mem’ries you choose to caress may possess thee, but your exactness for what love is to you, doth not dwell in mine mind. What tears, what weepings you do, fall stormily upon thine own soul’s wildernesses. You choose to be chained by changing visions and indefinite sentiments of light weight – though so poignant at the moment they veritably are?”
M: (Inquiring) “My love! I cherish thee; where hast thou been in thine mind, for now ye talk of that truth you relate to in your heart. Your pronouncements, what depths I do feel! Can it perchance be that my passion has strayed our winds far from me?”
W: “No, my love! Why is anger, I feel, lush on thine tongue?”
M: (Surprised and Frightened) “Anger! I am too distant from that affliction! But yes, I feel my words make only for unstable murmurs in my breath.”
W: (Quietly) “Then, do tell me, lover, who do your murmurs betray - myself or yourself then?”
M: (Quietly) “Perhaps so, perhaps so. But my anxiety wilfully demands of me to eradicate your vision.”
W: (Firmly) “You answer naught from my undemanding question. Or, are mine meanings too violent for you? What aches thee?”
M: (Passionately) “My sweet! In so many moments, I created mysterious planets for thee! Bizarre worlds of contrasts and opposites and musical words of antiquity and sensual ravines. My love! I, my soul, my life, my inner deepest breath, tempted as I am by Fates’ inscrutable cruelties to ashamedly yield, I have yet always expressed to mine eyes’ heart, though they be in bleak darkness, to faithfully fight without pause all shades of vice and still yet - with loving integrity; I have stood with arms of righteousness and love for thee up and never down! Yes, sincere good and venal ill remain joined in life for all to feel, but you knew it was not for me to disentangle them. And so, I pronounce unto thee, still, and yet ever and ever more, my love for thee, though still beholding a thousand mountains before me, I remain sturdy for thee; I remain undisturbed by burly laws, and by exotic dictums, I stand fierce and unhurt, save in your absence.”
W: (With Sadness) “My beloved, your vivid voice stabs the falsehoods for thee, and I say unto thee, unto thee your excessive and unreasonable chains, and for myself my unreasonable and extreme chains remain.”
M: (Shocked) “But I burden thee with no steely chains, nor verbal fetters! For naught I produce for thee save grace, passion and freedom to love for us both to be in Unity Sacred! Dost thou embrace my visions as ‘shackles’, then ‘tis better we agree to class that which we are as but madness! Hear me, for my tears now must truly change their colours!”
W: (Determined) “Your feverish hands clutch only upon mine erratic wings!”
M: (Anger) “Never! Never! For I clutch only to destroy all malevolence; as for thee, Lady of the purest, untouched, guarded, secluded Ponds, I seek to unshackle for you the scattered, scared shadows that yearn for thine sovereignty. And what is this ‘sovereignty’ but our Sacred Union? What curse deemest you I impose? Do you equal my purest passions with atrocities? Murmur unto mine ears, your clearest love for me.”
W: “Ah! You enquire of me my ‘sincerity’ for thee? What demands!”
(Silence)
M: “I see naught but heaving forests of love betwixt us, and yet, you discover my words being ‘demanding’?”
W: (Drily) “Perchance, your visions are indistinct and ever more blurred, through these years cannot be ignored.”
M: (Begging) “My love! All mine life, though it be lengthy, I fought most venal tyranny, and for this moment, you question my righteousness?”
W: (Indignantly) “I have been plunged into seas hostile and I have plunged in a thousand miles of inert minds troubled beyond conceivable comprehension and I have yet to have my Right for my own greedy, ravenous flesh to be vigorously and forcefully embraced by sensuality and serenity. Yes, I do love thee, and yet in our union, as in all unions, I have been adorned with naught, save snickering, gossiping scenes of festive *****, games, chatter and farewells, themselves festooned within silly and sincerely stupid smiles and frowns, and shallow tears and never ending ludicrous chatter unworthy of monkeys conversing. I have met programmed rows of pats, respect and all other so-called decent intents and gestures, but, where, lover that you are of mine, where does my personal heart, throb and manically vibrate, save in your heavenly imaginations?”
(Silence)
W: (Quietly but Determinedly) “My love! I truly thee love and with passions, I tell you, of proportions of precise exactitudes; in your eyes I have witnessed symphonies of exquisiteness; and, I of thee ask: where dwelleth your own love for myself in thine body?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “Do you recognise the changing structures that form this, that I name ‘My Love’? In my solitude eternal, I do evermore and always do pause, and be pensive, and be thinking of questions, such as ‘where’, ‘why’, ‘when’ ‘how’, and ‘which’ should be my path; I am forever and ever more searching, seeking the heavens of every corner, and the irritable tempests, within my changing self as they themselves do try to seek me, and we forever, through inconceivable murkiness, do try to assemble the everlasting entirety of these disorganized puzzles into some measure of comprehensible cohesion that ‘I’ am. That is how the ‘I’ you love is forever changing and thereby formulating itself, and within all these meandering passions, and endless errors, where am I to feel thee? Where? And where do you seek me? In which land? In which forest? You trivialise my beingness as you focus upon my lands as being that which so effortless to find, and yet, you are much too distant from an understanding of my conflicting, emerging civilisations.”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) If the utterance ‘Never’ is pathetic for thee, then allow me to introduce you to my latest heart: for it screams out that single, protracted utterance! Never! My love, these winds of raging wraths, both within and outside by flesh, must and can only be annihilated by mine own sincerities – were I not to play against my own self. My uncontrolled desires and, yes, thirsty manic passions can only be tempered and thoroughly satiated to the utter brim, by mine own loving, sources of pleasure, my own uncontrollable ecstasies. As for the rest of ****** pleasures, my own erroneous words, speeches and utterances can only be severed and sliced by my tranquillity.”
M: (Resigned) “I hear thine words. Do not abandon me. Do not destroy our civilisation of justice.”
W: “What we share, the bonds, are enjoyment. Listen though to mine lips: enjoyment is what - when it is to be compared with convulsive ecstatic quivers of satisfaction?”
M: (Puzzled) “And what of all our journeys to attain that unity? For all that, is it to be of mere insignificance? And if that be your truth, for what then did we toil and labour for unity of minds and bodies?”
W: (Laughing) “Did you understand from Life itself, that here it was, grandly to proclaim its furtive faces unto thine own awaiting face?! “
M: (Baffled) “It was so far too plain and vastly clear unto me these sceneries we faced before our loving bodies.”
W: “Yes, and I too, did see them with thee. Our four eyes, did see unity for that flicker of time. How true you speak! But, time clocked on, I saw you as you stood there, moving nowhere, unawares that it was your duty to squash onwards whatever vile breaths faced us.”
M: (Desperate) “And did I not? Did I abandon thee in these crushing paths?”
W: (Accusing) “No, you did not. Never, once did you abandon me. I ask of thee; for what sense do we feel a need for a continuation of these gruelling marches? For unity? For love? Or, is love unity? Was that and is this our reason for us to carry on with these shackles?”
M: “For assuredly, yes, and more yes, I tell thee! Toil and gruelling dawns, and unbearable evenings and the whitest of nights are all for the sacred attainment of that heavenly summit of joy I name as blessed ‘Love’.”
W: (Assured) “And, Sire, what if my nerves, blood and ****** hunger tell thee in truth that we, all of us, need no longer, and need never in truth, to undertake these paths, for we find naught that nourishes us at the blessed summit of your definition of what ‘Love’ is?”
M: (Confused & Sad) “So, I falter here and now upon understanding your speech; do I reason from thee that our loving days in unity are frivolously bygone now?”
W: (Calmly & Gracefully) “Do the wandering birds, and do the blind bats, and do the reckless storms, and do the blindly, raging waves and do the supremely arrogant oceans eternally march on in but one direction only with the savage passage of time within their particular lives? You did pronounce that you built planets for our unity; well then, did you not view how planets endlessly revolve along the same path?”
(Pause)
W: (Calmly & with Dignity) “For, Sire, I am not as a Planet - could you not feel that throughout our journeys? You endlessly query and question ‘who’ it is that ‘I’ am? Well, I speak this much on myself; I am as the birds, and the bats, and the storms and the waves and the oceans.”  
M: (Angry) “Woman! I can only then tell of thee that you are naught but feuding clutter and violent disarray!”
W: (Unconcerned) “Those are your words. Not mine. Speak for what you wish, Sire.”
M: (Angry) “And I stand here, before thee, in anger – nay, more, more! In fury!”
W: (Laughing) “For what? For the deeds that created but sticky, and grimy grains of sand for the undoubted pleasure our eyes?”
M: “And so you label our truths, our love so much! Fair indeed, you speak, Woman of Justice.”
W: (Arrogantly) “Man! Express your delights for your own delights. And, alas, there the circle and reality ends – and it ends only for you. That is one morsel of truth for you to ponder. What we ‘created’ and what we ‘loved’ was never and never, ever be the same for you as it is for me. Are you a sincere believer that your personal vision is the same sight all other seeing creatures envision?”
M: (Angry) “Woman, you enrage me! Your arrogance is drenching thine rags.”
W: (Sarcastic) “Tis the Man with no reason who allows his breath and words to be a veritable cesspool of fuming stenches!”
M: “But I, that I am, no longer can define your contours?”
W: (Pointedly) “Precisely, Man, precisely. Perhaps, now you have come closer to the vulnerable shores of reality!”
M: (Confused) “Do you express that you are ever varying and so for that reason there is not a one unified you?”
W: (Calmly) “For we are all ‘varying’, to borrow your word – if you do so allow me, Sire. There was never ‘unity’ of soul, nor mind, nor self, nor of any one personality. This, I desire, that you may understand.”
M: (Aghast) “Then if that be your truth and then, are we naught but multitudes of ever changing confusions, Lady of the Desert?”
W: (Calmly) “Yes and no! For those who are muscular and full of fertile vigour in their flesh, and in their intellects, and those that are severely and strictly scholastic, then they do need and they can succeed in time, in their never ending struggle to bring together the mutually antagonistic factions of that which constitutes our beingness. And, as for the dense brained soulless beings, then, it is equally veritably true that, a descent into madness can be rapidly produced, since from their erratic constituents, they cannot attract together these antagonistic and mutually-hating emotions in some vision of cohesion, and thus mayhem can be fashioned.”
(Silence)
M: (Calmly) “So, pray do tell me, where does Love and Justice and Truth and Morality stand in your universe?”
W: (Serenely) “That has been mine desire to hear the words being produced from your lips, Man!”
(Pause)
W: “So, now perhaps, your sight may be getting clearer, for your question is certainly apt. Foremost, we pathetic mortals, we the be are forever slimy specks of sand that  crumbles, must necessarily seek to survive and flourish within whatever forest, desert, meadow we find ourselves cast upon.”
M: (Startled) “At what cost, Woman? At the expense of Morality?”
W: (Rapidly) “Yes and no.”
M: (Shocked) “Horrendous! How can you spout out such filth?”
W: (Quietly) “Restrain your stupidities, and give more room to your intelligence, Sire.”
(Silence)
W: (Gracefully) “In times of trouble, what can Man do when he be forced to embrace evil, even though he finds the act of the embrace loathsome, but he does what he does for the truth of his vital existence to continue. Only when he need never embrace vile, and then allows himself to commit the act, then he is for certainty to incur the everlasting wrath of God. Evil is thus never one truth to be utterly rejected, perchance you may now see. ”
M: (Calm but Tired) “I follow your words and their ideas therein.”
W: (Gracefully) “When you talk to me on Man and everlasting, conflicting changes within that self-same creature, I tell you with all the earnestness that I possess, of what God has scattered and endowed upon me; for this beast, we all call in unity Man, this creature has far too many a numberless number of mutually self-contradicting, distrusting, loving, hating, inspiring and a never ending number of feelings and emotions that are in constant flow and change – as in any rapid river descending unto its eventual destination, which in its case, is the sea, while in our case, it is Death itself for sure.”
M: (Despair) “And how can this beast ‘love’ anyone within this welter of confusion?”
W: (Rapidly) “He cannot!”
M: (Rapidly, Begging) “But Man and Woman do love with bristling passions! Do you deny that, Woman?!”
W: (Calmly, eyes downwards looking) “Yes, and no. Since the beast has needs, based on his vastly intricate constituents, to ‘love’ his fellow beast, he imagines and believes
Ayad Gharbawi Jan 2010
PASSION PLAY

Ayad Gharbawi




Location: Desert Shore, Bitterly Cold Night, next to strong waves from the ocean.
Characters: Man ((M) and his Lover, a Woman (W).

----------------------------------------



W: “Search as I forever do, in manifold ways unknown, I seek but to love thee, and the meagre goodness from Life, with steely ardour - my armour faithful.”
M: “Alone I may be, and still, yes I love thee; these days heavy are and beset I am by burdensome trivialities, but I remain trusting, though my corner so narrow remain.”
W: “My Love! Your speech I hear aloud and thine lips I live within and yet, my Love, all Solitude I am. Man! I am unaided! In this journey of sinful thorns, my love, in this unforgiving journey, this blurred odyssey, I stand alone”.
M: “This trial you speak of, but I do know of it well; so, listen then: within the strength of trusted togetherness we can plough on, though everlasting harm shall do its spiteful tricks, warm to our united truth shall we remain.”
W: (Surprised) “O! My love! This thought I cannot hear! My life, my destiny, is but mine. And all have their own solitary roads of jagged rocks to embrace, like it we or not. We heartbreaking earthly sad beasts, either fiercely clutch at integrity, or we do let it go to perish away.”
M: (Confused) “My Love! I do hear, I do hear. But when Times decide on burdening us, what then can we achieve? To face Reality within the frail arms of solitude is to ignore, to refuse the severe threats of repulsive grins.”
(Silence)
M: (Passionately) “O! My sweet! Only in us, can we envelope, through joined, clasped warmth can we be as one united! The screams that so truly are meant to slice us off, only we, our Unity, can destroy. For mine eyes can only find sleep in your ears, and it is so - for otherwise nothing and no one can be.”
W: (Angry) “My Passion too is bubbling for thine bewildered ears. Am I not your soul? Do we not suffer as one? Do we not reflect as one? Am I not your lover true? Is not our warmth not weighty to our fickle bones?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “But, Lover, this much ought I to formally declare unto thee: For our eyes, and all eyes, envision unequally at one another. Till eternity, in its casual, indifferent flicker, snatches at us all wretched mortals, the gazes from lords to paupers remain veritably mismatched. O my passion! My woeful heart! These words I thunder forth defines love unfeigned, and what mine eyes do pour out unto thine ears is authenticity true.
(Silence)
W: (Passionately) “What joined mem’ries you choose to caress may possess thee, but your exactness for what love is to you, doth not dwell in mine mind. What tears, what weepings you do, fall stormily upon thine own soul’s wildernesses. You choose to be chained by changing visions and indefinite sentiments of light weight – though so poignant at the moment they veritably are?”
M: (Inquiring) “My love! I cherish thee; where hast thou been in thine mind, for now ye talk of that truth you relate to in your heart. Your pronouncements, what depths I do feel! Can it perchance be that my passion has strayed our winds far from me?”
W: “No, my love! Why is anger, I feel, lush on thine tongue?”
M: (Surprised and Frightened) “Anger! I am too distant from that affliction! But yes, I feel my words make only for unstable murmurs in my breath.”
W: (Quietly) “Then, do tell me, lover, who do your murmurs betray - myself or yourself then?”
M: (Quietly) “Perhaps so, perhaps so. But my anxiety wilfully demands of me to eradicate your vision.”
W: (Firmly) “You answer naught from my undemanding question. Or, are mine meanings too violent for you? What aches thee?”
M: (Passionately) “My sweet! In so many moments, I created mysterious planets for thee! Bizarre worlds of contrasts and opposites and musical words of antiquity and sensual ravines. My love! I, my soul, my life, my inner deepest breath, tempted as I am by Fates’ inscrutable cruelties to ashamedly yield, I have yet always expressed to mine eyes’ heart, though they be in bleak darkness, to faithfully fight without pause all shades of vice and still yet - with loving integrity; I have stood with arms of righteousness and love for thee up and never down! Yes, sincere good and venal ill remain joined in life for all to feel, but you knew it was not for me to disentangle them. And so, I pronounce unto thee, still, and yet ever and ever more, my love for thee, though still beholding a thousand mountains before me, I remain sturdy for thee; I remain undisturbed by burly laws, and by exotic dictums, I stand fierce and unhurt, save in your absence.”
W: (With Sadness) “My beloved, your vivid voice stabs the falsehoods for thee, and I say unto thee, unto thee your excessive and unreasonable chains, and for myself my unreasonable and extreme chains remain.”
M: (Shocked) “But I burden thee with no steely chains, nor verbal fetters! For naught I produce for thee save grace, passion and freedom to love for us both to be in Unity Sacred! Dost thou embrace my visions as ‘shackles’, then ‘tis better we agree to class that which we are as but madness! Hear me, for my tears now must truly change their colours!”
W: (Determined) “Your feverish hands clutch only upon mine erratic wings!”
M: (Anger) “Never! Never! For I clutch only to destroy all malevolence; as for thee, Lady of the purest, untouched, guarded, secluded Ponds, I seek to unshackle for you the scattered, scared shadows that yearn for thine sovereignty. And what is this ‘sovereignty’ but our Sacred Union? What curse deemest you I impose? Do you equal my purest passions with atrocities? Murmur unto mine ears, your clearest love for me.”
W: “Ah! You enquire of me my ‘sincerity’ for thee? What demands!”
(Silence)
M: “I see naught but heaving forests of love betwixt us, and yet, you discover my words being ‘demanding’?”
W: (Drily) “Perchance, your visions are indistinct and ever more blurred, through these years cannot be ignored.”
M: (Begging) “My love! All mine life, though it be lengthy, I fought most venal tyranny, and for this moment, you question my righteousness?”
W: (Indignantly) “I have been plunged into seas hostile and I have plunged in a thousand miles of inert minds troubled beyond conceivable comprehension and I have yet to have my Right for my own greedy, ravenous flesh to be vigorously and forcefully embraced by sensuality and serenity. Yes, I do love thee, and yet in our union, as in all unions, I have been adorned with naught, save snickering, gossiping scenes of festive *****, games, chatter and farewells, themselves festooned within silly and sincerely stupid smiles and frowns, and shallow tears and never ending ludicrous chatter unworthy of monkeys conversing. I have met programmed rows of pats, respect and all other so-called decent intents and gestures, but, where, lover that you are of mine, where does my personal heart, throb and manically vibrate, save in your heavenly imaginations?”
(Silence)
W: (Quietly but Determinedly) “My love! I truly thee love and with passions, I tell you, of proportions of precise exactitudes; in your eyes I have witnessed symphonies of exquisiteness; and, I of thee ask: where dwelleth your own love for myself in thine body?”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) “Do you recognise the changing structures that form this, that I name ‘My Love’? In my solitude eternal, I do evermore and always do pause, and be pensive, and be thinking of questions, such as ‘where’, ‘why’, ‘when’ ‘how’, and ‘which’ should be my path; I am forever and ever more searching, seeking the heavens of every corner, and the irritable tempests, within my changing self as they themselves do try to seek me, and we forever, through inconceivable murkiness, do try to assemble the everlasting entirety of these disorganized puzzles into some measure of comprehensible cohesion that ‘I’ am. That is how the ‘I’ you love is forever changing and thereby formulating itself, and within all these meandering passions, and endless errors, where am I to feel thee? Where? And where do you seek me? In which land? In which forest? You trivialise my beingness as you focus upon my lands as being that which so effortless to find, and yet, you are much too distant from an understanding of my conflicting, emerging civilisations.”
(Silence)
W: (Passionate) If the utterance ‘Never’ is pathetic for thee, then allow me to introduce you to my latest heart: for it screams out that single, protracted utterance! Never! My love, these winds of raging wraths, both within and outside by flesh, must and can only be annihilated by mine own sincerities – were I not to play against my own self. My uncontrolled desires and, yes, thirsty manic passions can only be tempered and thoroughly satiated to the utter brim, by mine own loving, sources of pleasure, my own uncontrollable ecstasies. As for the rest of ****** pleasures, my own erroneous words, speeches and utterances can only be severed and sliced by my tranquillity.”
M: (Resigned) “I hear thine words. Do not abandon me. Do not destroy our civilisation of justice.”
W: “What we share, the bonds, are enjoyment. Listen though to mine lips: enjoyment is what - when it is to be compared with convulsive ecstatic quivers of satisfaction?”
M: (Puzzled) “And what of all our journeys to attain that unity? For all that, is it to be of mere insignificance? And if that be your truth, for what then did we toil and labour for unity of minds and bodies?”
W: (Laughing) “Did you understand from Life itself, that here it was, grandly to proclaim its furtive faces unto thine own awaiting face?! “
M: (Baffled) “It was so far too plain and vastly clear unto me these sceneries we faced before our loving bodies.”
W: “Yes, and I too, did see them with thee. Our four eyes, did see unity for that flicker of time. How true you speak! But, time clocked on, I saw you as you stood there, moving nowhere, unawares that it was your duty to squash onwards whatever vile breaths faced us.”
M: (Desperate) “And did I not? Did I abandon thee in these crushing paths?”
W: (Accusing) “No, you did not. Never, once did you abandon me. I ask of thee; for what sense do we feel a need for a continuation of these gruelling marches? For unity? For love? Or, is love unity? Was that and is this our reason for us to carry on with these shackles?”
M: “For assuredly, yes, and more yes, I tell thee! Toil and gruelling dawns, and unbearable evenings and the whitest of nights are all for the sacred attainment of that heavenly summit of joy I name as blessed ‘Love’.”
W: (Assured) “And, Sire, what if my nerves, blood and ****** hunger tell thee in truth that we, all of us, need no longer, and need never in truth, to undertake these paths, for we find naught that nourishes us at the blessed summit of your definition of what ‘Love’ is?”
M: (Confused & Sad) “So, I falter here and now upon understanding your speech; do I reason from thee that our loving days in unity are frivolously bygone now?”
W: (Calmly & Gracefully) “Do the wandering birds, and do the blind bats, and do the reckless storms, and do the blindly, raging waves and do the supremely arrogant oceans eternally march on in but one direction only with the savage passage of time within their particular lives? You did pronounce that you built planets for our unity; well then, did you not view how planets endlessly revolve along the same path?”
(Pause)
W: (Calmly & with Dignity) “For, Sire, I am not as a Planet - could you not feel that throughout our journeys? You endlessly query and question ‘who’ it is that ‘I’ am? Well, I speak this much on myself; I am as the birds, and the bats, and the storms and the waves and the oceans.”  
M: (Angry) “Woman! I can only then tell of thee that you are naught but feuding clutter and violent disarray!”
W: (Unconcerned) “Those are your words. Not mine. Speak for what you wish, Sire.”
M: (Angry) “And I stand here, before thee, in anger – nay, more, more! In fury!”
W: (Laughing) “For what? For the deeds that created but sticky, and grimy grains of sand for the undoubted pleasure our eyes?”
M: “And so you label our truths, our love so much! Fair indeed, you speak, Woman of Justice.”
W: (Arrogantly) “Man! Express your delights for your own delights. And, alas, there the circle and reality ends – and it ends only for you. That is one morsel of truth for you to ponder. What we ‘created’ and what we ‘loved’ was never and never, ever be the same for you as it is for me. Are you a sincere believer that your personal vision is the same sight all other seeing creatures envision?”
M: (Angry) “Woman, you enrage me! Your arrogance is drenching thine rags.”
W: (Sarcastic) “Tis the Man with no reason who allows his breath and words to be a veritable cesspool of fuming stenches!”
M: “But I, that I am, no longer can define your contours?”
W: (Pointedly) “Precisely, Man, precisely. Perhaps, now you have come closer to the vulnerable shores of reality!”
M: (Confused) “Do you express that you are ever varying and so for that reason there is not a one unified you?”
W: (Calmly) “For we are all ‘varying’, to borrow your word – if you do so allow me, Sire. There was never ‘unity’ of soul, nor mind, nor self, nor of any one personality. This, I desire, that you may understand.”
M: (Aghast) “Then if that be your truth and then, are we naught but multitudes of ever changing confusions, Lady of the Desert?”
W: (Calmly) “Yes and no! For those who are muscular and full of fertile vigour in their flesh, and in their intellects, and those that are severely and strictly scholastic, then they do need and they can succeed in time, in their never ending struggle to bring together the mutually antagonistic factions of that which constitutes our beingness. And, as for the dense brained soulless beings, then, it is equally veritably true that, a descent into madness can be rapidly produced, since from their erratic constituents, they cannot attract together these antagonistic and mutually-hating emotions in some vision of cohesion, and thus mayhem can be fashioned.”
(Silence)
M: (Calmly) “So, pray do tell me, where does Love and Justice and Truth and Morality stand in your universe?”
W: (Serenely) “That has been mine desire to hear the words being produced from your lips, Man!”
(Pause)
W: “So, now perhaps, your sight may be getting clearer, for your question is certainly apt. Foremost, we pathetic mortals, we the be are forever slimy specks of sand that  crumbles, must necessarily seek to survive and flourish within whatever forest, desert, meadow we find ourselves cast upon.”
M: (Startled) “At what cost, Woman? At the expense of Morality?”
W: (Rapidly) “Yes and no.”
M: (Shocked) “Horrendous! How can you spout out such filth?”
W: (Quietly) “Restrain your stupidities, and give more room to your intelligence, Sire.”
(Silence)
W: (Gracefully) “In times of trouble, what can Man do when he be forced to embrace evil, even though he finds the act of the embrace loathsome, but he does what he does for the truth of his vital existence to continue. Only when he need never embrace vile, and then allows himself to commit the act, then he is for certainty to incur the everlasting wrath of God. Evil is thus never one truth to be utterly rejected, perchance you may now see. ”
M: (Calm but Tired) “I follow your words and their ideas therein.”
W: (Gracefully) “When you talk to me on Man and everlasting, conflicting changes within that self-same creature, I tell you with all the earnestness that I possess, of what God has scattered and endowed upon me; for this beast, we all call in unity Man, this creature has far too many a numberless number of mutually self-contradicting, distrusting, loving, hating, inspiring and a never ending number of feelings and emotions that are in constant flow and change – as in any rapid river descending unto its eventual destination, which in its case, is the sea, while in our case, it is Death itself for sure.”
M: (Despair) “And how can this beast ‘love’ anyone within this welter of confusion?”
W: (Rapidly) “He cannot!”
M: (Rapidly, Begging) “But Man and Woman do love with bristling passions! Do you deny that, Woman?!”
W: (Calmly, eyes downwards looking) “Yes, and no. Since the beast has needs, based on his vastly intricate constituents, to ‘love’ his fellow beast, he imagines and believes
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2017
all I've learned from love


<•>

for the fedora man, 10/29/17 10:34am

<•>

another song done me wrong on a Sunday morn,
so much due to do, a list not for compilation/publication,
including poems promised and weighty deadlines overdue,
for its tedium would still be lbs. heavy in weightless space

instead a lyric plucks my attention, of course beeping,
insistent chirping a chorus of, write me right now,
immédiatement dans son français de Montréal,
this is the item that needs to be list topping,
now whispering a messenger-angel name dropping
a request formal from the fedora man dressed in black

all I've learned from love,  
a listing doomed to comprehensible incompletion,
a listing to the right as new reasons in-come
constantly from the left, each heart beat a
remarkable reminder that the list grows longer

every day, the repeating seasons, proffer suggestions,
disguised as a newly revised ten commandments,
obedience to which is a wish list for
attaining grace

all I've learned from love is its duality, essential quality,
a human single cannot attain the commingling required
for the visioning a peak season of life colorful,
its sad corollary, leaves falling exposing the body bare-****** of the soul linear alone

all I've learned from love is its shining skin is an agreed upon
indefinable nature, other than we all recognize how our
definition personal exists in that Ven diagrams space where
our circles intersect, when A breaks the skin of B, creating
{A,B}

all I've learned from love is without it no matter what
somewhere inside is a desperation pocket that is
an inquisitive irritant, a brain burr, a pea under the mattress,
a high and mighty 1% of disarmament incompetence that rules the imbalanced balance of my bottom line on the top of my head

all I've learned from love that it appears on its own timetable,
in surprising trains and planes and baseball games, sitting
alone in a theater or in front of a Rubens, on crazy disastrous
first dates in foreign countries at cafes or non gender
specific bathrooms amidst alternating currents of
this is crazy and this is infinite and ever so sobering
wondrous possible


all I've learned from love is it never shoots straight,
but will always end in a holy bullseye


*Tout ce que j'ai appris de l'amour, c'est qu'elle ne tire jamais directement,
mais se terminera toujours dans une sainte bullseye
Jake Espinoza Sep 2012
Write something about nothing, call it poetry.
Quiet jet-engine speed turmoil indecision on the topic.
Silent bodies, screaming minds, communication desired and avoided
Chance glances, glimpses. Hoofing it.
Write poetry about nothing, call it something, but only in whispers to yourself, pretend to hope to be heard, have interest feigned or genuine directed your way.
        Confusion. Mingled strings of internal conversation.
        Misdirected. I can’t think crooked, focalisation se présente sideways. Self-expression in non-poetic terms seems likely. Saw girls, one on Detroit street, summer clothes and quiet face, scampered inside from the yard littered. Saw her again in the street next to a minor catastrophe, passed her by and looked.
        Let’s take a second to breathe, introduce a silence to the mind so that everything that comes can be better heard. So much background noise, minor thoughts mingle into static, almost impossible to interpret the bemused psychobabble. Empty it out, slow down, relax, and maybe you’ll begin to recognize coherent thoughts; organize the jumble of words fighting to be understood all out of order and as yet meaningless. Thoughts keep revolving, recycling; the girl, she reminded you of Melissa. Same style, a girl whose mood is always a grateful summer to your wintry perspective. Refreshing reminder, easy on the eyes. This girl’s likeness and your friend the poet, separated; his utensils. The paintbrushes he flourished about to create were not wooden and sable but liquid and smoke. That small ******* secret voice suggesting unwholesome things, acts unbefitting of brotherly conduct. He is my true brother, my family; an extension of my own soul. I went to treatment, they broke me down, whittled away at my rough hewn surface to make sculpture, a replica of others, manufactured to meet requirements and specifications deemed necessary for target successes. This talk of will, sacrificing my own, force-fed trust and mantras begetting themselves in circular fashion, turning in sync with the earth’s rotation upon its axis in its course of necessary revolution.
        Expended effort and time saved or served, goals impossible until forgotten, let go empty space ellipsis let god. Self-supplanted in unpredictable incomprehensible present, trying to avoid thoughts of crumpled papers in paper bags serving as receptacles for things undesired or abandoned or too truthful, I’m forgetting what it is to hide from myself which makes it possible to disappear. Tune in to the present, your train of thought – a queue – crowding, crowds rushed and frantic me first says everyone impatiently awaiting their turn for attention. Starved but forgotten proper nutrition. Self-criticism equating to self-analysis – spontaneity – uncontrollable, unforeseeable in the present aromatic mixture of mason jars swarmed with colored lights beautiful dim in darkness in which beer was swilled, time spent in unkempt kitchens nervous, standing walking evading settlement peace or rest, this is excitable discomfort, anything to slow down or feel a surrogate thereof. Forgotten words remembered, past rooms beautiful dim in darkness, proper illumination – see everything just right, not too brightly though not too dark. Living in this room for now, seeing as though immersed, submerged in memory of smiling faces easy laughter, cold-eyes Vera and well-at-ease. There is a wealth of self-acceptance. These people, their faces shine contentment, comfort, and mine is manufactured. I’ve become a factory where everything is sought after and nothing is attained because my goals are intangible, comprehensible but beyond aid, sorry, it’s just the way you are, maybe you’ll know one day, but we can’t help. We don’t waste our time with questions of absurdity, we live in this present moment, and that’s how we do it – no plans until plans come. No thoughts until thoughts come. Easy transitions in conversations, we don’t think of how to be ourselves, we just do it because we slow down, we know we are breathing, and it is not in our nature to forget it. It is not in our nature to live in our heads, to flail in a swell of questions less dense than water, we attend. We simply are.
        This is contentment. This is their seamless skin where mine corresponds to scars and rabid suspicious scratches dug deep. They were content with their surfaces; I was convinced of malice subcutaneous hence the scars and blood breathing open air. It is this suspicion that draws a line, places me on one side, them on another; it is this curiosity intrinsic and ironically unquestioned that digs the trenches in shape of graves. This fatal imaginary need for understanding where there is nothing to be understood. Questions are my poison, self-manufacturing, self-sufficient destruction, coming hot off the assembly line in my skull. Questions incubating further questions error: implement infinite loop, killall. Find the bug, recompile, run. Sit still, learn from the wind and atmosphere you’ve learned to sense which makes you an outsider only because you wanted this somehow. Uncertainty, confused reflection, arbitrary comments; coincidences, conspiracy, breakpoint. Programs running in smooth operation.
        Radiohead blaring, self-conscious self-care, these people enjoy themselves with unconscious grace, they let themselves be and immediately I tear my mind in two to understand what they understand without understanding. It is the nature of love and music that displays the closest correlation. These people are my idealized notion of grace, rendered more so by speed of processing, depth of analysis so that they appear not only graceful creatures, but with grace amplified as if observing them in slow-motion. So much contingent on understanding, contingency notwithstanding if I was comfortable with ignorance, if questions did not occur. These people are appropriate; balanced, no need for brutal introspection, no need to stir up sand composing the sea bed. These people, they understand certain things I cannot as of yet. They understand, they know without knowing that things are the way they are because things are the way they are and that’s ok, we’re ok, and everything is and will always be ok as long as we know well enough to leave well enough alone. We are each other, serving compliments to sainthood.
        ...let go, and be one with us, for love is in our hearts.
It took a few lines to get into it. Also, this is meant to be read aloud, somewhat intensely.
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Prose is unpretentious, that's its attraction. Avoids bombast of line breaks but forgoes -- what -- perfect rest. Anyway today, a November day in February, no chance getting rest with the poor clay I'm made from.

With my mother this weekend, her dementia proceeding according to what plan. Saturday the kind of day I never have. Actually read three stories by Updike. One extraordinary -- Tomorrow and Tomorrow and So Forth -- which I chose from his Complete through 1975 for the reference to Macbeth and in it he so humanely, sympathetically explains through the high school English teacher's thoughts Shakespeare's mid-life bitterness or disappointment realizing few men achieve their potential in the face of history, society and their personal flaws. Making for tragedy. Hard to be humorous about that although Updike finds in Shakespeare's late plays, especially The Tempest, a resolution amounting to wisdom that there can be contentment with imperfection and partial achievement. Updike took some of the starch out of my contention that all Shakespeare's plays are comedies, impossible to take Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth and Othello seriously. Certainly not Romeo and Juliet. It is a consolation that Updike's and even Shakespeare's achievements are imperfect although it would be wringing blood from a rock for me to achieve as much. The other two stories by Updike assured me that prose story-telling is as hit or miss as poetry. Bulgarian Poetess and How to Love America and Leave It At the Same Time made me think how fortunate I had been to find Tomorrow on the first try.

Not so much luck. I was attracted like a bee to a blossom to Shakespeare's lines in my personal anthology. No anthology and the poetry dependency it has created and I might have passed over the story. But now there is this conversation between me and all other writers. The anthology helps me know what I like but now I am tempted to try to articulate why I like what I like. Like the calendar, time and all else man lays his mind to it is a matter of bringing order from chaos by naming things according to our observations.

First, I like to understand what's going on in the poem. Not paraphrase it but describe the action. In Yeats' Lapis Lazuli, in the first paragraph, strophe or stanza, he talks about a community, a city or country, in which people, the women especially, high-toned maybe?, are upset about a political or wartime situation and are too hysterical for art or grace. Then he talks about actors playing Hamlet and Lear holding it together even though their characters die at the end of the play. No shouting, no crying. Then a paragraph or stanza about how whole civilizations are transitory too. Finally, in a reference to one of our oldest civilizations, two old Chinamen and their retainer are in the mountains. From their perspective, calm acceptance and longevity, perhaps some sadness, they look on all of history and non-history with something like gladness.

From there we can appreciate the artistry -- in Yeats' case the interesting rhymes and variable line lengths -- recognizing, however, that the artistry is not so much a demonstration of skill or a performance as the particular vehicle or discipline by which this artist discovered the content of his mind. It little matters whether verse is free, rhymed, blank, or formed as long as it is understandable and meaningful. Understandable to anyone, meaningful to someone.

The oldest formulation I have is Pound's -- the great themes of literature can be written on the back of a postage stamp. Until recently, I thought you could do it but you'd have to write very small. Now I know you can do it in your normal handwriting. I think they are Love (how we come into the world), Death (how we leave the world) and Governance (how we live in the world together). It may be possible to group Love and Death together, coming into and going out of life being similarly unknowable mysteries. The ways of talking about this one same mystery are apparently endless and endlessly fascinating. We cannot leave it alone. Almost all the greatest poems are about this mystery. Life is but a dream.

Then there is Governance -- how we live in the world together -- about which there are far fewer great poems. And usually they are about how our failure to live together leads back into the unknowable mystery through premature and sometimes mass death. Siamanto's The Dance comes to mind. I think the best poems of this type are written by so-called oppressed people.

Many poems treat both themes. But on the question of content, Pound is where I begin. My anthology -- Whole Wide World -- has a section which I'll call Double & Triple Features: Poems to Read Together, which pairs and groups poems according to my feeling that they share something -- theme, voice, structure -- in common. Subject matter is, I think, the commonest sharing. If I tried to name each pairing or grouping I might then have a hundred or more themes. Naming them adequately would be difficult to impossible. But why? And why not try? It would be a necessary start to talking about the poems: I read these poems together because....

Prose doesn't have to be beautiful, sometimes it's best when it's flat as Hemingway conclusively proved and one of its attractions is you can run on and on as long as the mind goes on following a thought without a stop sign for a whole page of books like Proust or Faulkner or Joyce.

Auden's is the second useful formulation that comes to mind (besides his chummy reverence for Shakespeare in naming him Top Bard). He classifies poems five ways:

            1. A good poem that's meaningful to him;
            2. A good poem that's not meaningful to him;
            3. A good poem that may someday become meaningful to him;
            4. A bad poem that's meaningful to him;
            5. A bad poem that's not meaningful to him.

I find I do about the same. But I discard all poems, good and bad, that are not meaningful to me. I have little taste for artistry for art's sake. The poem must speak to me or awaken me. Dickinson's formulation -- takes the top of your head off -- is the same as We can't define ******* but we know it when we see it.

A short aside: it feels inappropriate to answer the question What do you do? by saying I'm a poet. It would be like saying I'm a leader or I'm a prophet. You cannot anoint yourself a poet, a leader or a prophet -- others must do it for you. I wonder if I would be more comfortable if I had a larger audience (following) like Billy Collins for example. I think not. It would be like being a rock star, not a composer.

It's much more acceptable to say I'm a writer. Then when you answer the question Oh, what do you write? with Poetry, you are not self-aggrandizing, merely irrelevant, effete. Being a poet is viewed as being a flasher or nudist, exposing parts of yourself others would rather not see, at least not up close and personal, providing more information than others need or want to have. Maybe that's a good definition of a bad poet. Self-revelation dressed in verbal prowess is acceptable but naked, abject confession is unpardonable, tedious.

Although content is requisite for a poem to be meaningful, a poem is not really a communication like fiction or essay. It is more like an object, like a painting or sculpture, and perhaps like a musical score, sheet music. Yet I would still instruct students of poetry to first read each poem by the sentence, not the line, to derive its meaning, understand its argument, visualize its action. Then one might ask how and why is it sculpted, structured, with line breaks and strophes. Ultimately, the form of the poem is nothing more or less than the method by which the poet discovered his meaning. Although it is arbitrary -- it could have been said another way -- it is the only way it could be said by this person in this time and place. I have always liked the idea of a sculptor carving away stone or wood to reveal the form inside the block.

The poem lives on as an object, recognized by many or few or none. Like art or furniture, most are briefly useful then are moved to the attic or shed where they gather dust and mouse turds then break, dry and decay and find their way to the dump, the dust heap of history, only not even human history, just your personal history.

The anthology has made me an antiquarian -- one who cares as much for objects made by others as if I had made them myself.

So how can one talk about poems? The argument that any attempt to discuss or describe a poem is better served by simply reading the poem, perhaps memorizing it, has merit. Except in one respect -- the process can take you to undiscovered and half-discovered country within yourself. Always, first, you must understand the action otherwise we are just re-reading ourselves in our own tried and untrue ways. We must not mistake an old dog dying for a puppy being born. Misunderstanding the words is like constructing a science experiment with a flawed methodology and then using the results to shape or live in the world. It can be dangerous. Therefore reading poetry is a mental discipline worthy as the scientific method itself. It takes you out of yourself.

The fun of criticism comes in examining why and how the poem made you feel or think as you did. You can read closely for the chosen words, rhythms, lines and stanzas. You may admire the skill or wit of the poet. And you can refer to your own experience to understand your reaction. You can even disagree with the poet's thought or perception, or reject the sentiment. You can say that's him, not me.

Then there are Bloom's formulations of which I am wary, he being a critic not a poet. Yet here they are. Three sources of healthy complexity or difficulty in poems: 1) Sustained allusiveness -- cultural references that require the reader to be educated beyond the poem's content, for which he cites Milton as an example and could have Dante; 2) Cognitive originality -- leaps of perception and depths of understanding that startle, enlighten and take off the top of your head, for which he cites Shakespeare and Dickinson as examples and to which I would add much of what is memorable in modern poetry; and 3) Personal mythmaking -- whereby the poet constructs over time a system of images and personal (more than cultural) references that with familiarity become understandable and meaningful, citing Yeats and Blake as examples. How to make this formulation useful.

A second formulation by Bloom discusses poetic figures or the indirect means by which poetry uncovers truth, dancing with and romancing language rather than wrestling and pinning it down like philosophy tries. There are four: 1) Irony or saying one thing and meaning another, usually the opposite; 2) Symbol (synecdoche) or making one thing stand for another; 3) Contiguity (metonymy) or using an aspect or quality of something to represent the whole; and 4) Metaphor or transferring the qualities or associations of one thing to another.

Meanwhile, here's my **** poetica:

1) Poetry is an acquired taste, like golf or wine, with no obligation to appreciate it.

2) Poetry is divination; prose explains what we think we know but poetry discovers what we didn't know we thought.

3) Poetry is one of many man-made systems, like baseball or the scientific method, for producing knowledge, meaning and pleasure. Or are they all natural as ***?

4) Of all the other arts, poetry is most like sculpture; the word "poem" comes from the Indo- European root meaning "to make, to build."

5) It is impossible to write exactly what you mean or be accurately understood; poetry uses this to its advantage.

6) Line length -- enjambment -- is the single most important feature of poetry.

7) Poems are made from ideas; poetry is philosophy but where philosophy wrestles language down, poetry romances language.

8) Meaning is the most important product of poetry but it's completely personal; poems almost always say one thing and mean another but the poet often doesn't know what he meant.

9) It is almost impossible not to rhyme or write rhythmically in English or any other language.

10) The forms poets use are how the poet gets to his truth and are basically arbitrary choices.

11) Poems may be difficult and complex and irrational but they must be comprehensible.

12) Just describing the action of the poem will take you where you need to go.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Sam Hawkins May 2013
Buildings for the most part are boxes square.
But Pentecost circles and spirals,
they turn and burn wild.

Of those who would tame
and make comprehensible any fire--
apt tongues have gone titch titch
and beautiful catch 'til words and music
and parlor diplomacies fortify
much which is untrue.

Fear has no finish, even in our dying.
The path is a cliff edge.

Let us turn, un-adult-like, and strip ourselves  
of civilized persuasions. Usher
Earth's children into primordial worlds.

Water shall love and receive us, as it always has.
The naked ground will speak up,
into our touching feet.

Listen to the tongues of the wind.
Unhinge the body, which is you.

Let all creation fly.
Breethyr Nov 2020
When i tell people about how i saw beyond reason, they tell me i'm not making any sense. Ironically, that's exactly the point. Something beyond reason can't make sense, logically, but it doesn't mean there isn't anything beyond logic.
We as people often act defying logic, although, arguably, the logic we live by is relative, and that leads to certain logical conclusions. What i am more interested in is, if all the relative points of logic can be seen as parts of objective, or even universal logic, then can i map it's boundaries? The answer is no. For the reason that if you can't see beyond a certain point you can't tell what's behind it. Say i stumble upon the logical end of my thought - it seemingly ends at a certain point, but what is beyond - i cannot know, that's why i can not tell if it's the logical end of it is relative to me or objective. But that is a logical mistake on my part. It's the relatively logical way to think, but objectively it's doomed for failure. For the same reason why we can't find the edge of our universe - not just because we don't see beyond the visible space region, but because it is impossible to reach such an edge in three dimensional space.
Allow me to logically explain why, on example of a two-dimensional space. Imagine yourself in a jar with water, you are swimming on the surface. The boundaries of the jar is your observable, or for better word - reachable universe. But the jar is not the entire universe, beyond the jar there is enormous amount of water. Whether it exists on a three-dimensional sphere or simply goes forever is irrelevant - you will never swim to the edge regardless. But if you were to be able to jump up from the surface of water then you would have understood that the true edge of this universe was actually vertical and you've just escaped through it into a new 3-dimensional one that is an extension of the two-dimensional one you previously were floating in. Now how do you then escape this 3-dimensional one you found yourself in? You know the answer, you jump into the 4th dimension - the logically only true edge of it.
Whether you can do it or not is irrelevant, what matters is what it tells us about logic - the exactly same thing - you can't reach the end of logic by simply looking around for it's borders, you have to fundamentally defy logic and go beyond it from the start.
Before we attempt that i have to lay down some things i kept secret from you until now. Why do i even chase the logical end? The answer is - i don't, i chase the fundamental understanding of the universe. "Whoah - hold up there" you might say, "what a perverse charlatan you are with your irrational methods, leave the universe to scientists!" And i will tell you - you are completely right. I don't understand anything a physicist or astronomer does when they examine what they can about the universe, but i believe, even though objectivity is not a matter of belief, to have a full understanding one can't study things from one aspect. Logic is the counterpart to fact, it is due to logic that facts exist the way they do, and it is due to facts available to us that we have the relative understanding of logic that we have today. Logic is the interpretation of the universe. And to reach a logical limit, in a sense, would be similar to reaching the limit of the universe. I can't jump into the fourth dimension of space, but i still i want to gain the fundamental understanding. I am desperate. That's why i will not stop until i have found it.
I have to derail from logic, and to do so i first need to deconstruct it. Construct is the foundation logic. By tying things into constructs, logic allows for interpretation of facts. Take for example the three dimensional space. It's construct is simple - it is existing in a three-axis fashion. There is left-right, forward-backward, up-down. Very simple, yet if need be it allows for great complexity, which can always be traced down to it's construct - three axis. To go beyond logic's very basic construct would be reaching my goal, but it is too early for that, as i can't yet pin-point what that is; i can do it for the relative space that i operate in, since with logic i interpret it, but to break down the very thing i interpret the world with is a completely different task.
Let's return to constructs. As i have realized, they are the foundation of logic. But further than that, they allow for existence of concepts. Now, beyond being a pretty word, a concept is something that we can logically interpret - understand, deconstruct or construct. Now not to play this game of terms any further, for the sake of logical simplicity i have decided that there are two types of concepts (and nothing further) - relative and objective. Relative concepts are understood in connection to other ones, while objective ones don't need the presence of others to still be ready for interpretation. The truth is, no one operates in objective constructs, because for that you would have to be outside of logic and universe, know it completely and wholly, only then would you truly be able to tell what constructs are objective. Even though relative to us, some concepts seem objective, for example - evolution, we describe it as the process of continuous adaptation. Seems very objective, right? But to proclaim such a thing is a fallacy - as even though it may be connected to our entire relative field of logic, we cannot tell whether is a fundamental property of all layers of the universe beyond our own. Another example - the concept of process. Well, time flows and with it something changes. Very objective. But time is relative to our perception of reality, there may not even be "time" at all and all there is is the way we experience the universe. What if we experienced time backwards? What if we experienced all time available to us at once? What if we did not experience time at all and stayed in a single "time-frame"? Is the concept of process still valid then? As such, all concepts available to us lie in the relative region of logic, and as far as we can understand, they don't stretch beyond it at least objectively.
Now that i have decided upon the features of logic, i need to derail. I don't know where to start so i will attempt to deconstruct a concept, and hopefully i will reach a logical failure - that will indicate to me that i have reached the limit to which i can deconstruct the concept, unless of course i have failed to stay true to logic, which seems contradictory, but really it isn't, as duality is the nature of the universe - even in logic.
If i have to "derail" then i will go with the concept of "a train". The one that travels on rails. What is a train? Is it a machine powered by fuel that goes on rails to transport someone or something, and usually consists of many connected wagons? Yes, but a lot of that is formalities, as how exactly a train works isn't a fundamental part of it's concept. The human idea of train can easily be seen in how we use the word alternatively - "train of thought". Fundamentally, it's something that travels to (hopefully)_a destination (but this train is doomed to fail). As such, i have discovered that "train" is only one of the faces for the fundamental concept of "transportation". Transportation is so fundamental to not just our existence but all life on Earth; because of this the invention of train by humankind was inevitable.
Let us transport somewhere. Conceptually, transportation means continuous movement of object by another. I want to go from point A to point B and i transport myself: i put myself in a cart and the cart takes me there. I want to transport a can of soda from the store to my fridge: i transport it there by carrying it in my hand.
I have realized that transport is a bad word for all of this, since it is not yet the most fundamental concept. What an oversight by me! Let's quickly fix this by proclaiming that more fundamental than transportation is movement. That truly is a great concept, as it is very fundamental, so please replace the word "transportation" for the word "movement" in the previous examples i'd described.
Movement is the primordial concept. I have arrived to such conclusion by thinking for an entire minute. If the construct of our perceivable reality is the three-axis, then by adding the concept of time and cause-effect into the mix, movement inevitably appears. Actually i have messed up with the terminology, so i will clean up the mess: construct of perceivable space is three-axis, but the fundamental construct of our relative reality also consists of time and cause-effect. In such a formation, movement is the primordial construct of this relative reality, as it is the most fundamental act. If you didn't know, non-movement is impossible in our reality due to the principle of relativity: even if you stay in place - from many perspectives you are in fact moving.
How does movement occur?.. What does it describe?.. A process of me moving from one point to another in a certain period of time? But what if it can also be reversed and describe me as moving in time in a certain length of space? Yes, it should, absolutely. Because from a detached perspective, it's the same thing. For me to move a certain distance, a certain amount of time has to pass; when a certain amount of time passes, i inevitably move a certain distance. I can't move to a certain distance without passing through a certain amount of time. I can't pass through a certain amount of time without moving some distance. In fact, i have an idea, i will move through time just because i decided to, and for that to happen i only need to go over a certain distance, or i may not even need to go, as i move through space all the time anyway. I still can only experience the time in one direction which is dictated by the cause-effect first being cause then effect in my relative perception of reality, but all it takes for me to go backwards is to turn around the cause-effect axis the same way i would turn around in the spacial three-dimensional axis'es. Everything would be exactly the same, just going backwards, and would make perfect sense once you apply a different logical interpretation strategy (with the effect being prior to cause).
Now i turn on the cause-effect axis in such a way that to my right is the cause and to my left is the effect. Time is at a standstill. I can't tell for sure but either i experience just one time-frame or all of them at once, but time no longer plays a part in my perception of reality, in fact now i see that to my right is the past and to my left is the future - it's frames like the one in which i currently am but slightly alternated, only if connected in a sequence they combine into time, but standalone they are like three-dimensional pictures.
I have experienced the world in a way i never had yet, but it still makes complete sense. I need to start removing parts of the logical construct. As i still witness past to the right and future to the left i decide that i can also see the alternative pasts and futures - all of those that intersect the one frame i currently inhabit. Why did i even decide i can do that? Because quantum mechanics told me i can, since according to their principles, universe is both deterministic and random - all effects occur from all possible causes and thus form infinite amount of timeline forks - all of which happen but a single observer feels like he only experiences one.
So i am an observer who turned perpendicularly around the cause-effect axis and decided that he can see what other observers he interconnected with experienced and will experience - them being technically other versions of me that cross paths in this frame. Now, when i say i've decided, you must understand, that even though factually none of this is possible, logically it is, just as much as you don't need to actually perform an action to sort of experience it - when you play a video-game or imagine things. Now, back to my experience of this ultra-reality, it is not very comprehensible, as it is similar to having not just one vision but 3 powered by infinity. I can't take it all in, but all my counterpart versions did come to this time-frame too, after-all. Which means that right here and now there's infinite amount of me, and all-together we can comprehend this mess of infinite pictures, one by one. This is definitely some sort of super-consciousness, made possible by all of us observers realizing that we interconnected from divergent paths in this one frame, which in turn was made possible from us rotating on the cause-effect axis. This is as close as it comes for me experiencing something truly divine. Not factually possible, yet logically experienceable.
Now i have seen it all - the entirety of my personal observable universe - or to be more factually correct - the entirety of my relatively available logic. Being only one of those infinite converging observers, i can't really tell you exactly what it consists of, but if you follow me in my previous steps you will understand it without me having to explain it.
Now only just one thing remains to finally derail - as i see everywhere i could ever see, and still wish to see what i could never see. Just like from that two-dimensional water i jumped into the three-dimensional air above it, i have to jump from whatever this thing i currently am experiencing to somewhere beyond it.
And i actually do so. In a way. I can't see **** here. Or at least, i can't figure out what i see, it makes no sense, it is beyond logic, beyond comprehension. Not even the infinite amount of my brethren can figure it out, it is on a completely different plane of existence, or maybe it even is unexistance, i can't know. It's completely quiet, even though maybe it is actually loud, just that the sound doesn't make any sense to me, so it's the same as if i don't hear anything. I just stare into it which is both nothing and so much everything to me that i almost drown in it. It pretty much ***** my thoughtful entirety into it much like a black-hole, it can't really do it but all my thoughts are attracted to it. It is to me like a great void that probably has lots of stuff inside but i can't possibly ever reach it, so to me it's a void. A void beyond logic, the delirious nonsense itself. I cannot reach it.
I get back from it to my plane of existence and turn around into the normal position on cause-effect axis of my relative reality. I really did it, i found that edge, that border. It's such a strange insight unlike anything else i have ever experienced in my head. I both know and don't know so much more about the universe - i experienced that black hole in my head, the end of the line for the train of logic, that drowns out into the vast void of complete irrationality relative to me. Now i know where and how to find it, and while it's not of any use to me, it brings me both despair and solace.
And did You find your end of the line?
Not a poem but a small personal philosophical absurd "treatise".
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2013
After reading about some tribal warfare in a far away land, I wrote this true story down. Now re-published every year on this day. Seems more appropriate than ever

one July 4th,
many years ago
walking the streets,
of the city of Nice,
situe on the Cote D'azur of France,
on the Mediterranean Sea,
where ships of navies
may safely park their sailors,
sending them ashore for R&R,^
they, leavened to disembark^^

how I came to be there is a
poem for another time

walking the streets,
palm tree resort,
along La Promenade Des Anglais,
coming at me,
Three Sailors,
unmistakably
American

one white,
one black,
one brown from California,
which I believe,
is still part of the USA

how we fell upon each other
in warm embrace,
smiling, bestowing
blessings of grace
not as strangers,
but as fellow signatories
on the Declaration of Independence

brothers,
long lost, reunited,
as if it had been many years,
since we last had our arms entwined,
one family from one far away united place

dialectical differences ignored,
even the wide-eyed 'Bama boy,
totally comprehensible, for on that say,
we spoke a language that
encompassed a single brotherhood,
a common histoire,
all on that
holy day

no tribes in America, no colors,
no religions,
only sisters and brothers-in-arms

I need not choose to believe,
for it is certainty guaranteed,
that should it happen again
twenty years hence,
perhaps with their great grandsons,
my embrace will,
exactly the same be,
for I know it true,
there are
no tribes
in an

American heart
^ Rest and recreation
^^disembarked to be leavened....either ok

written in 2013, but true story that occurred many years prior
how timely for this day and time
Tracy Malloy Nov 2010
It occurs to me,
finally,
that I loved
you
because your loneliness
dark and foetid
is a perfect match
for mine

How busy we make our lives
So full and practical
but we stood
two children
on the edge of a swamp
warm and slimy
reeking of decay
and held
each other's
hand for a moment.
11-16-2010
The Motherland May 2014
I feel her there sometimes
Sometimes silent, sometimes not

When she is silent the emptiness is
Oppressive
And makes my skull feel heavy and weak
And my thoughts clouded with
The groping fingers of all that ask,
"Are you okay?"

When she screams, I am filled
To the brim with panic and chaos
That spews from her maw in
Tangled, writhing masses

The sound is almost angelic.
Is she heavenly?

I have never seen her but I know what she looks like.
It is a knowing feeling, or an overexcited imagination?
Long, tangled black hair,
Something is caught in the snarls and curls.
A pale face whiter than bone,
Thin and fragile like china.

Hands clawed and twisted,
Feet swollen and scarred.
A white dress long in tatters slipping off the bony shoulder

please take me back,
take me home

I plead but there are no words
Comprehensible to my human
(However extraordinarily mutated)
Brain
That leave her cracked lips.
Nat Lipstadt May 2019
~for better days for the poet betterdays~

mournful tunes play silently, but still too often,
eyes wet but in corners kept, recurring then the
memories, keepsakes, letters, books, small trinkets,
not dusty, but dusky, resting on in-between ledge of a
mountain-sized twilight of well lit shadowy haziness,
edgy dark brilliance, a comprehensible contrast non-comprehendible

tunes that bless with equal measures of grief,
comforting, by memorable card flashes of good relief,
a dividing line, hazy and frequented crossed, a sort of path,
with no destination signaled, as if the path itself was an end,
to a meaning, a solution, with no clarity divined, a division
of sight and insight, providing an ill fitting reconciliation

mourning is electric, morning is electric,
letters, words bottled up in evaporating perfume bottles,
seeking the comfort of dissipation unto a larger atmosphere,
the scent in everything tangible, stronger still yet, in intangibles
that can erode but never ever fail to return instantly when voked,
by vision, odor, a particular child’s smile, line in a poem volunteered

recovered, uncovered, a post first writ to be written, discovered,
when time and place coincidentally breathe together, at last,
beckoning you to places where memory serves only as a pleasuring,
upright mind marker, decorated in chains perpetual reforging,
absent pain, gleaming dreamings full-replacing longings for pasts,
new verses composed, passing, a grand addition to a child’s legacy
loss can only be tempered, reforged, and ultimately used for our  own betterment when the heart commands, now write!
Dark Delusion May 2017
Sitting in the room,
Just staring at the clock.
Waiting for the time to end,
My desire to be free.

Observing creatures called humans,
Doubting their version of  reality.
Nothing makes sense,
No meanings.

Life isn’t beautiful,
It’s all in your mind.
Nothing can make me understand the nature of humans.
All those emotions, I can’t control them all.

I’ve befriended a fallen angel.
An outcast just like me.
We got this life,
and landed in hell.

We made a deal with the devil.
We traded our sanity for a comprehensible mind.
The greatest memory or the saddest experience?
Or maybe the stupidest decision?

It’s too late now.
The canvas I painted my life on
Became blank.
My tears washed the colour away,
And the emptiness ruined the art.

At least I got to see the darkest lie
my delusion had to offer.
My aesthetic soul,
And my insane delusions.

*All in one and shall be the end of me.
insanity death angel darkness hell world reality lies delusion time
Keely Anne Dec 2012
what i said:
"you sound rough this morning."


what i meant:
"your voice is lavender and honey and tea time and supernovas colliding with gentle breezes and if i could wake up to it, just once, cocooned in a tangle of your arms and couch cushions and that blanket you keep in the back of your car, i swear by the stars in my eyes no one on this godforsaken planet would be out of earshot of my singing

i hope that tonight when i dream of you--it is no longer a matter of uncertainty, but anticipation--you speak like you've just overslept your alarm and frantically motored yourself to where i am, like is the case today.

i wish you had chosen me but if i could only listen to you speak to me, about anything--rivers or math homework or football or belonging or music or even your girlfriend--i promise i would listen with the beating urgency of a swimmer in a frozen stream, i would savor each word from your lips, like they were the spring and i was the underground daisy waiting for your kiss.

and in precisely three days i will have an essay to compose about a beautiful topic that would consume me thoroughly were it not for the memory of your groggy morning voice, so full of raspy complacency i can't breathe but instead of fulfilling my obligations i will be hashing out halfway comprehensible poetry about you and crying about how i cannot recreate the sound of your voice with any combination of hollowly clicking keys.

you are so beautiful that i could spend the remainder of my life with a five-subject notebook, scrawling 'your eyes. your smile. your hands. your voice' over and over endlessly and die feeling as though i had lived a thousand years of quiet adventure.

you are so much and too much for me and i have no idea why you see as much in me as you do but i will not question it, for fear that if i were to come too close to you, to run my fingers along the marvel of your face you would shrivel and unfurl into nonexistence, like the leaf in the fire."


and also:
"why can't your voice always sound like this?"

and finally:
"******* you're attractive"
12/11/12
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2015
the reason behind some of my poetry: i do appreciate the fact that some of them are sloppy, and aim at crafting an expansion of the vocabulary i already have, but as i drink i relax it happens automatically, but i know i can return to the sober reality of increased volume - all i know is that when i do this unwinding into what i can only call abstraction, it's because i'm entering the joycean domain of finnegans wake, which isn't exactly brothers grimm or disney territory, given that the book is dedicated to his struggle with his daughter's diagnosis of schizophrenia. one example comes with words like the prefix nou(n)- and the suffix -verb, which i borrowed from the kantian transformation of the word phenomenon (that which can be clearly understood due to the no. of similar analogues, and their seemingly constant re-, i.e. repetition, recurrence, re-emergence), hence the meaning i derived from the new word is: the activity behind a noun, e.g.: wheel... wheels rotate on a flat surface, and due to gravity roll down hills; another e.g.? bird - birds sing in varying degrees of diversity and they fly, and share a common origin with reptiles, since they hatch from eggs. i think that's enough examples behind the meaning nouverb... perhaps i might change it to nouneverb, because if translated into french, the french might make connotations with noué vogue, and i don't want this word to mean simply new verb, but the activity behind the noun.*

poets are known to use technical terms of poetry,
to invoke a knowledge of the topic,
perhaps even to condense matter, nonetheless
they use technical terms for balance, and orientation
in what they're saying, the key indicators as it were;
but i find it strange that in every philosophy
book i read, there are no prime technical terms:
of course you will find logic compounds,
like phenomenology, ontology, metaphysics,
but you find that such balancing acts require
a constant reminder of these words, and when
inserted into very long expression, there is no
prime balance with the words that i have not seen
expressed in any philosophy book i read,
whether it be heidegger, kant, kierkegaard,
sartre, nietzsche, tatarkiewicz, whoever -
none of them use grammatical words, nor have
produced an account of the dynamic when
deviating from standard lessons in grammar
which can be longwinded - and an absolute
dross; my english teacher didn't like to teach it,
in my two years under him we have less
than a dozen lessons, most concerned with
writing formal letters, and whether to end
the letter signing under either yours sincerely
or yours faithfully... the expectation was to
speak it fluently and mould the written language
from that - if it's comprehensible with the tongue,
it will be comprehensible with the quill.
but enough of that, i'm still adamant to stress
my censorship of dreaming, perhaps because
i just loathe freud and find jung quirky enough
with his religiosity and that book of his
about hallucinations and telekinesis like in that
film interstellar where the books fall from the shelf,
but it's primarily because there is a more important
subplot: today i woke up and remembered something
from 20 years ago, primary school, year 5 (aged 9),
our teacher called in sick and we were left to our
own devices, we were assigned the task of doing
long-division mathematics, and long-multiplication,
the whole class was in furore, but i just did the
****** task (fresh off the boat, you know, vito corleone
ambition and what not) - teacher's name ms. mcguire -
the teacher came back, scolded the whole class
excluding me - then she gave instructions to do the
assignment i did the previous day, and she told me
i could do whatever i wanted... just like the whole
class the previous day... so i read a book.
oh hell, if we're going that far back... pst... a secret,
on the gants hill roundabout there used to stand
a magnolia coloured cinema, the odeon...
i remember seeing armageddon there even though
a few hours prior i fell into a pseudo-epileptic fit
(a weird sensation in the head, crawling into the jaws,
i clenched my jaws, and then a spasm that travelled
into my stomach and started the convulsions and
the pain increased... i've had about three of these
in my life... for days on end after the last one,
i kept falling to sleep in fear... a fear of clenching my
teeth) - oh and the mummy, the little princess
(even though i bought a ticket for jumanji),
gladiator, lord of the rings fellowship of the ring
(about 3 times if not more), mission impossible,
the three kings when i broke one of the seats and
fell on my ***... but back then cinema tickets were
bearably affordable... not anymore... and it took
ages for the film to be available on vhs (when
blockbuster was still around - actually, there is one
left near the loughton central line station - a bit
back to the future for me; yeah, and valentines park
nearby where you could play 18 hole short-distance
golf, but that's also gone - now all you have is a block
of flats... just a massive vitro phallus.
vircapio gale Feb 2013
i hope, i try to hope
--to believe--
believe me, i try
to trust in trust i think i feel, or think or know
there isn't any code that satisfies
though maybe there's an uber-uber-ultra-meta code beyond what even codes can mean?
meh.
i enjoy the hypothetical,
Paris in a bottle, fairness for all sentient beings, faith in nothing comprehensible,
an English teapot circles Jove from afar
or all that's uncontrollable, for some all-purpose good to decorate the brackish, ocean truth.
and uncertain science is another case,
mistrusting all, testing daring thoughts with razor sight,
to sharpen speech and challenge all
to flex the truth into a fitness ground on which to stand, objective stern
and method doubt to peer and scan the detail bare, denude minutiae
into ever smaller parts, expanse of raw and empty space attuned,
to vibrant nothingness rebound
muons, gluons, tauons, quarks and bosons --Higgs the boon for popular appeal,
to bridge or monumentalize the science-mystic gap
appall the ghosts that Galileo keeps for company
i enjoy the fantasy,
dragons in a flask, perfect love for all, dancing in the dark in joy regardless of the shutter thicken dust
Michael R Burch Apr 2021
ALBERT EINSTEIN POEMS

These are "poems" I created from Albert Einstein quotes, changing a word here and there for the sake of meter and rhyme...



A question that sometimes drives me hazy:
am I or are the others crazy?
—Albert Einstein, interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Relativity and the 'Physics' of Love
by Albert Einstein, interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sit next to a pretty girl for an hour,
it seems like a minute.
Sit on a red-hot stove for a minute,
it seems like an hour.
That's relativity!

Oh, it should be possible
to explain the laws of physics
to a barmaid! ...
but how could she ever,
in a million years,
explain love to an Einstein?

All these primary impulses,
not easily described in words,
are the springboards
of man's actions—because
any man who can drive safely
while kissing a pretty girl
is simply not giving the kiss
the attention it deserves!



Solitude
by Albert Einstein, interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Solitude is painful
when one is young,
but delightful
when one is more mature.

I live in that solitude
which was painful in my youth,
but seems delicious now,
in the years of my maturity.

Now it gives me great pleasure, indeed,
to see the stubbornness
of an incorrigible nonconformist
so warmly acclaimed...
and yet it seems vastly strange
to be known so universally
and yet be so lonely.



Morality
by Albert Einstein, interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Still, as far as I'm concerned,
I prefer silent vice
to ostentatious virtue:
I don't know,
I don't care,
and it doesn't make any difference!



Against Hubris
by Albert Einstein, interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Science without religion is lame,
religion without science is blind,
and whoever undertakes to establish himself
as the judge of Truth and Knowledge
is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.



War and Peace
by Albert Einstein, interpretation by Michael R. Burch

But heroism on command,
senseless violence,
and all the loathsome nonsense
that goes by the name of patriotism:
how passionately I hate them!

Perfection of means
and confusion of ends
seem to characterize our age
and it has become appallingly obvious
that our technology
has exceeded our humanity,
that technological progress
is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal,
and that the attempt to combine wisdom and power
has only rarely been successful
and then only for a short while.

It is my conviction
that killing under the cloak of war
is nothing but an act of ******.
(I do not know what weapons
World War III will be fought with,
but World War IV will be fought
with sticks and stones.)

Oh, how I wish that somewhere
there existed an island
for those who are wise
and of goodwill! ...

In such a place even I
would be an ardent patriot,
for I am not only a pacifist,
but a militant pacifist.
I am willing to fight for peace,
for nothing will end war
unless the people themselves
refuse to go to war.

Our task must be to free ourselves
by widening our circle of compassion
to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature and its beauty.
And peace cannot be kept by force;
it can only be achieved by understanding.



Mystery
by Albert Einstein, interpretation by Michael R. Burch

There are two ways to live your life:
one is as though nothing is a miracle,
the other is as though everything is a miracle.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious:
it is the source of all true art and all science.
He to whom this emotion is a stranger,
who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.



Curiosity
by Albert Einstein, interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The important thing is not to stop questioning.

Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates
the mysteries of eternity,
of life,
of the marvelous structure of reality.

It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.

Never lose a holy curiosity.

People do not grow old no matter how long we live.
We never cease to stand like curious children
before the great Mystery into which we were born.



Character
by Albert Einstein, interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds
because anger dwells only in the ***** of fools
and weakness of attitude soon becomes weakness of character.

Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity (and I'm not sure about the former) ;
furthermore, we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

The world is a dangerous place: not just because of the people who are evil,
but also because of the good people who don't do anything about it.

He who joyfully marches to music rank and file has already earned my contempt:
he has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.



These are poem about Albert Einstein or in which I mention him ...



Excerpts from “Travels with Einstein”
by Michael R. Burch

I went to Berlin to learn wisdom
from Adolph. The wild spittle flew
as he screamed at me, with great conviction:
“Please despise me! I look like a Jew!”

So I flew off to ’Nam to learn wisdom
from tall Yankees who cursed “yellow” foes.
“If we lose this small square,” they informed me,
earth’s nations will fall, dominoes!”

I then sat at Christ’s feet to learn wisdom,
but his Book, from its genesis to close,
said: “Men can enslave their own brothers!”
(I soon noticed he lacked any clothes.)

So I traveled to bright Tel Aviv
where great scholars with lofty IQs
informed me that (since I’m an Arab)
I’m unfit to lick dirt from their shoes.  

At last, done with learning, I stumbled
to a well where the waters seemed sweet:
the mirage of American “justice.”
There I wept a real sea, in defeat.

Originally published by Café Dissensus



The Cosmological Constant
by Michael R. Burch

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



ASStronomical
by Michael R. Burch

Relativity, the theorists’ creed,
claims mass increases with speed.
My (m)*** grows when I sit it.
Mr. Einstein, get with it;
equate its deflation, I plead!



Relative to Whom?
by Michael R. Burch

Einstein’s theory, incredibly silly,
says a relative grows *****-nilly
at speeds close to light.
Well, his relatives might,
but mine grow their m(*****) more stilly!



Relative Theory I
by Michael R. Burch

Einstein’s "relative" theory
says masses increase, all too clearly,
at speeds close to light.
Well, his relatives’ might,
but mine grow their m(*****) more stilly!



Relative Theory II
by Michael R. Burch

Einstein’s peculiar theory
excludes all my relatives, clearly,
since my relatives’ *****
increase their prone masses
while approaching light speed—not nearly!



Relative Theory III
by Michael R. Burch

Relativity, we’re led to believe,
proves masses increase with great speed.
But it seems my huge family
must be an anomaly;
since their (m)***** increase, gone to seed!



A Child’s Christmas Prayer of Despair for a Hindu Saint

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

Will Jesus Christ cause or allow Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi to be tortured in an "eternal hell" for guessing wrong about which earthly religion to believe? What about Jesus's parable of the Good Samaritan, who put aside religious differences to practice compassion? Did Jesus, who saved all his sternest criticism for hypocrites, talk the talk but fail to walk the walk himself? Or did Christian theologians get something very, very wrong? And what would Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny say about such intolerance and infinite cruelty?  




The Top Ten Einstein Quotations: The Wit and Wisdom of Albert Einstein

You never truly understand something until you can explain it to your grandmother.

We all know that light travels faster than sound. That's why certain people appear bright until we hear them speak.

Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity (and I'm not sure about the former) .

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

An intellectual solves a problem. A genius avoids it.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love!

Keywords/Tags: Albert Einstein, poet, poems, poetry, relativity, physics, love, time, genius, stupidity, universe, light
we worried for Your s.a.n.i.t.y.
when Michael Bublé and Metallica
wore matching sailor suits. we warned You.
failed interventions toed the line
between crafted clichés and comprehensible,
misguided attempts to paste bits and pieces
of the Pyramids back together.
You know they were stolen, right?
the pharaohs were ****** — drunk on
the melodies of doorbells and
bits and pieces of clichés crafted at a Metallica concert.
brave the mosh pit.
You may catch a glimpse of
sarcophagi gleaming in torchlight.
don't lift the lid, for the love of
g.o.d.!
those sailor suits have been preserved for centuries.
"Do Not Disturb."
the doorbell
won't work now,
not now that Michael Bublé's bubble burst.
can You blame us for screaming into
microphones? maybe the bits and pieces of clichés You swept
into neat little piles after footfalls die down
torch-lit corridors will
shake the Pyramids.
at the very least, ring a doorbell.

"d.o. n.o.t. d.i.s.t.u.r.b."
Hana Gabrielle May 2013
contracting breaths
between the sentences
of those faceless giants
that surround me
without a comprehensible sound
lost
and not quite yet
found
you'll come around,
but only once I've given in
sin, skin, and cigarettes
fleeting hope
and looming regrets
in overcast limbo

fool me once
shame for life
you said you'd never hurt me
but the pain came twice

tell her that she's alone
that she deserved it
she's on her own
well I won't let you take
her voice away
she likes to ****
but you like to pray
kiss and makeup
because there is plenty else to hate
and your ignorance is out of date

your loneliness is just a phase
but hakuna matata is just a phrase
and happily ever after
is just a ghost in the wall
high, tripping, and falling
into ink
into dreams
into distant ****** up haze
of your forgiveness
which I am expected to accept
even when you took away
until there was nothing I had left
an intolerable possibility
that I should be so willing to receive
your gold paved poor intentions

pour them
into my poor eroded throat
just to be evoked
from a bottomless pit
where my insides should be

no clear beginning or end
to myself, or identity
like a blurry negative
or a softly fallen tree
keep the change
the empty promises
the debt and the punishment

but I'm breaking the mirror
and not the habits I loathe
dissociation
a celebration and emancipation
from the tunnels of my mind
winding and finding
yourself
so undone

this is a war that can't be won
without losing
SG Holter Feb 2015
Poetry written on cave walls
Of distant planets in other galaxies
Is still comprehensible to human
Hearts.

The stars look the same
From there.

They say the American flag planted
In moon dust is nothing but a
Sun bleached white piece of cloth
By now.

All things, it seems, given enough
Time and exposure

Become requests for
Peace
In the
End.
Jessica Wong Oct 2012
Black, reflecting my negative emotions
And yet, also reflecting soft dappling light -
White light, reflecting my optimism for happiness.
Clicking cameras' clinging onto frozen moments.
Curved lenses
Capturing, condensing,
concentrating, and compacting.

A vaguely comprehensible collection
of inconsequence.
While I do enjoy writing poetry, I also like photography and other forms of expressing myself through artistic/creative ways (photography, writing, drawing/painting, music).
I feel like you're slipping through my open fingers, our relationship falling like a handful of sand and no matter how fast or hard I clench my fist you find the little cracks to fall through

They say that when kids reach late teens, they fight, and grow distant, they grow to resent their parents and relationships fail, but I feel like I'm something new, our relationship isn't disappearing, you aren't fading into the distance, instead you are transforming into something new and I'm no longer your little girl.

Early today we went to the mall, and as we sat and ate lunch you said the strangest thing. You started talking about your job and about your feelings, treating me like an adult at last. The way I had always wanted you to talk to me my whole life. Like I was a friend and you could confide in me, because I still can't talk to you about the devastation I've encountered, but you finally understand that though I am still small my eyes hold wisdom and the gibberish you think I hear, comes like a melody in comprehensible packages. The codes you have come untangled to my ears, because I too have experienced your codes.

As a little girl I waited begging into my pillow that you would treat me this way, that you would talk to me like a friend. But the other day you did, and something was missing. I missed the way that you used to talk to me with your eyes shining carefully watching your words. The way that you would censer your topics as if I didn't understand the truth.

And now that you do this, that you talk to me like a new found friend you met at work, I miss being your little girl. I see the shinning eyes as your talk to my younger brother, and I miss the days you looked at me with that little kid look. Because now you see me with eyes of an equal, because I'm not your little girl anymore, because our mother daughter relationship has slipped through my fingers and the love you showed like chocolate kissing placed on the pillow of your every action, have been given to another and now my mother is slipping away.
Anna Jan 2014
A love, faintly remembered, is rekindled below my weary spirit. Your acute absence has made this cliché stronger. My forbidding heart warms in the moment I smell the flame. I lose all restraint against your mysterious effect as passion overrides my shivering fear. I pull you to me desperately with a newfound innocence. I open myself over the flame with a surety never before known. You kneel intimately at my feet, removing the last of me with such a patient gentleness. My heart truly breaks at the sight of your exposed vulnerability. You light up my fair skin with your poetic hands. Tenderness, how I had forgotten your true beauty. Breathing my name into my naked shoulder, you make love to me. In response, I raise my ready body to meet yours, realizing I am lost. I cling to you, shaking, as our passion consumes all that is comprehensible. In the fading darkness, tears spill from my eyes as you stroke my neck into a false affection. I ache to have you as my own, lying with no other. The desire dies in my heaving chest as I escape this beauty once more.
Mooseman55 Nov 2014
The mischief minds of men,
Haunted by their thoughts and ideas;
stuck in their ambitions,
And the search for perfection.

This utopia they seek,
Is nothing more than a shadow;
Comprehensible by the eye,
But unreachable for the soul.

Nevertheless the mind pushes on,
The trail getting ever so long;
It is here we are lost,
It is here we will die.
Jayne Blackman Jun 2015
Boyfriend number 1
Moody, tall & grumpy
Heard he's got 8 kids
****** glad he dumped me.
Boyfriend 2 & 3
Interchangeable, doing battle
Fighting for my affections
****** tittle tattle.
Boyfriend 4 heartbreaker
Mastering his art
Olympic flirt, lothario
2 timing man ****, ****.
Boyfriend 5 flash Harry
A ladies man, so he reckoned
Metallic Ford Capri
He was gone in 60 seconds.
Boyfriend 6 & 7, Hammer Horror
How the **** did these begin
Beer goggles and cocktails
UGH! Just let me catch me skin.
Boyfriend 8 from Down Under
Bit angry, bit thick
James dean Lookey likey
Married him too quick.
Boyfriend 9, pious
Quiet nature boy
Once married grumpy ****
Terminated contract, lack of joy.
Boyfriend 10 professional
Public Sector, comprehensible
Politically correct lifestyle
He thought I wasn't sensible.
Boyfriend 11 is The Man
Mild mannered rampant ram
Sizzling hot attraction
He accepts me as I am.
Now the chase is over
Got him, Bingo, I've won
Hellfire he's got 5 kids
******* glad I've been done.
softcomponent Nov 2013
the left side of every entrance tells me
a singer-songwrite about the fashion
in which you once entered a room..
glassing around your iris in false
-search for something to pretend
you are not paying attention to
me as much as you are to what
is in front of you because you care
so much.. beyond a comprehensible
dust-jacket mind-map lick-my-toes
and prove your

LOVE..

I kid, I kid, you love me, you
needn't prosthetic yourself into
a dark misogyny over there.
it's always strange to consider
how strangled you become in
flashy jackets bought forever
at a thrift-shop cash-register
and oh good ******* the
employee is no employee he's
a volunteer and he's been here
forever sweet mr. christie (avoiding
the obvious reference because Judaeo
-Christianity does not make

                          Good

           Cookies)

processing your purchase--
perhaps soon it'll be dollars
to counter. dollars have found
her--

**awake
at my wake
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2014
There are no tribes in America

after reading about some tribal warfare in a far away land,
I wrote this true story down....
~~~~~~~~~
one July 4th,
many years ago
walking the streets,
of the city of Nice, situe
on the Cote D'azur of France,
on the Mediterranean Sea,
where ships of navies
may safely park,
sailors ashore
leavened to
disembark^

how I came to be there is a
poem for another time

walking the streets,
of the palm tree resort
along Le Promenade Des Anglais,
coming at me,
Three Sailors,
unmistakably
American

One white,
One black,
One from California,
which I believe,
is still part of the USA

how we fell upon each other
in warm embrace,
smiling, bestowing
blessings of grace
not as strangers,
but as fellow signatories
on the Declaration of Independence

brothers,
long lost, reunited
as if it had been many years,
since we had our arms entwined,
one family from one far away united place

dialectical differences ignored,
even the wide-eyed 'Bama boy,
totally comprehensible,
for on that say,
we spoke a language that
encompassed a single brotherhood,
a common history,
all on that
holy day

no tribes in America, no colors,
no religions,
only brothers-in-arms

I need not choose to believe
that should it happen again
ten years hence,
perhaps with their grandsons,
my embrace will exactly
the same be,
for I know it true,
for there are
no tribes
in an
American heart.



^disembarked to be leavened....either works
Originally posted Dec 28th,
Reposting for the 4th with a few minor edits
You might have seen them through the window,
a little girl pouting on the stool and her mother
behind her, deft fingers weaving the strands
together, chocolate hair in french braids and the
wrinkles in her blue gingham dress.

There is a beginning to everything.

Golden-hair boy, caramel colors glinting in the sun,
pieces that flopped over his eyes and plastered
themselves over his forehead when the wind blew
erratic. He wears t-shirts streaked with dirt and high-
water jeans half-rolled, half-bunched up to his knees.

She thought, I could love this boy.

They're in the field again, ankles itching under her
frilly socks and ants crawling over her shoes. He lets
one amble around on his finger while she studies him.
Holding it up to the light, all serious and squinting,
He whispers, "They are so small."

She remembers this field for a long time.

She points to his heart. This is where I live. He looks
at her skeptically, raises an eyebrow."Is it awfully
uncomfortable there?" She lets the silence grow while
the birds make conversation and smiles to herself when
she sees him listening too.

Sometimes it is cold, but then you remember me.

There are pieces of love scattered around this world.
I have been trying to find them, trying to arrange them
into a comprehensible hope. There's the field. There's the
beach. There's the little stream that carries us where we
need to go. There's you, in that one summer.

It's been so long, but I remember. I remember it perfectly.

She's making a daisy chain while he looks out over the
lake. Climb the tree for me. I want to see how high you
can go.
Nearly breaking the branches with his weight, he
calls out, in the purest joy you've ever heard to this day.
"You should see this view!"

*I do.
My heart feels sort of beaten up now that I've written this.
Poetoftheway Sep 2017
the simplicity of grandeur (what I want of you)*

every conversation, must have a name,
a blessing and a bane,
every poem, twice as much,
twice the same, a division fine
tween the holy and the mundane

an end, a start and
a finishing line,
untitled, it is without grandeur,
difficult to understand,
every grande boulevard, every country road must be either ,
either be an Avenue des Champs-Élysées, ou Route Napoléon,
each with a unique simplicity, et histoire individuelle,
like the persons who traverse it with eyes thirsty to learn
all about those who preceded their voyage

want nothing but seek everything:

the comprehension and the mystery of the next verse,
where the potion of poetic notion came from,
beg that any scratching is genteel, distingué, sans sang,
how you you breathe and see the smell of wet cobblestones,
how you hear them talking and what tales they hint of,
but never reveal the ending-prematurely?

what I want is what you want.

self portraits realized, that each a particle of the mystery,
self portraits that ask, and answer, but forever insufficient,

what is the idea of you?

Quelle est l'idée de toi?

what is naturel, what is imaginary,
to be a visitor in your museum,
your ******, a voice that listens to the answers,
a mail recipient to  what ever you wish to enclose,
in the poems that make perfect
no sense, that are yet, fully comprehensible,
grand, in their simplicity*

<•>
6:21pm
m. naturel
Daniel Gambill Sep 2015
The broken wings of angels,
They are so hard to see,
Especially when those angels are not seen by you or me.
From heaven they have fallen,
A blessing from above.
While giving up their home
God chose them out of love.
Their tongues silent in battle,
Quiet wars waged within.
Seeking out the lost and weary
To right their way again.
These angels never seeking
To be fixed to fly away.
Content to care for others,
On this earth they choose to stay.
But if their final breath be taken
When their time has come,
No mistake can be made;
On earth God’s work was done.
These broken winged angels take flight for one last time,
From the grave into heaven, where heaven’s bells will chime.
Although not comprehensible,
It is easy to see,
That God broke those angels’ wings
Just for you and me.
SG Holter Dec 2014
To awake rested, yawn and
get up on the
completely right side
of the bed.

a full, healthy breakfast,
quality coffee.
good news headlining
the paper.

the smell of a bathroom after
a woman has spent time
getting ready for a
night out.

words of kindness from a friend.
such things I adore.
...but I love
poetry more.

a fully comprehensible manual.
a love letter post-it note,
or a book on something
hysterically interesting,

like psychology or history.
music of the kind that you welcome
sticking to your mind for a
whole day.

these things make my day for sure.
...but I love
poetry more.

her hands on me, warm with
sleep as she reaches over and
sighs between dreams.
yes. he's still here...

waking up with her hair in
my face, falling asleep on the
sofa with my head on her legs
the way a dog warms its owner's

feet with itself while resting.
not feeling like myself when
she's further away than the
next room.

hard to not shake
when she cries.
impossible not to laugh when
she laughs,

and to not want her
when she
wants me
to.

****. it's plain to see.
...I love her
more than poetry...
manicsurvival Aug 2013
The breeze isn't cool
The breeze is now cutting
It stings like a bee
It slices like a knife

This love isn't pure anymore
It's uncracked eggshells
Oysters that never opened
Expired dairy products

The air isn't filling anymore
There's no clarity
Just beautiful sunsets because of carbon emissions
And oceans full of waste

Friendship isn't real anymore
There's Facebook and Twitter and Instagram
I may have over 1,000 friends
I may have less than 5

Nothing is comprehensible anymore
There's only confusion and anguish
Scribbled notes and blurry polaroids
It's hopeless
Lori Armstrong
August 1998


Standing tall and silent, like the Sentinel guards of the Forest,
They appear to be listening to Words of Wisdom from an
Unseen, wise, and wonderful Mentor.

They respond in a shy, childlike, gleeful laughter,
Which is Felt, more than heard, by the passerby.
Happy with the whispered answer,
They slowly start to move in a Graceful rhythm,
A sweet and enchanting Dance.

Their outstretched arms surround each other,
Presenting the massive creation of a joy-filled group hug,
A bond of Camaraderie is their own as they sway back and forth in Unison.

Like children playing the game, “I’ve got a secret”,
They seem to simultaneously hide the Mysteries throughout history,
Yet, unwittingly revealing every Moment in Time
They have ever witnessed just by their Presence.

If they could speak, what would they Speak of?
Would we Understand?
Would we Listen?

If they could cry, how deep would their Tears flow?
Do they cry and we are just not ready to Hear?
Would we wipe their tears? … Or cry with them?
Could we truly feel their Sadness? …Their joy?

Could we share in their Trials and their Triumphs?
Do we dare try, for could we endure what they have Endured?

Would we sing along to their Songs of Yore?
Would we understand the Passion in their Words?
Could we carry the Harmony, …
Feeling the Peaks and Valleys of the expressions in their Music?

Their wisdom in age is Unfathomable.

Their vulnerability to man is Reprehensible.
Yet, unfortunately, Comprehensible.

Their story is one of Peace, Love, War, and Chaos, …

But still so Silent to so many.

Their grandeur is taken for Granted, …
And yes, even Exploited.

Their majestic silence is Comforting, appreciated Individually for their gift,
Solitary in the meaning to the receiver.

Breathtaking is their Beauty.

Admirable is their Resiliency.

Gloriously enthralling is their History.

The Creator’s History.

The History of a Gift.
The Noose Dec 2013
I haven't really laughed since 2009
He said,
He then divulged his struggles
As I did mine
We spoke of the mutual regret about not keeping in touch
But with conflicting schedules, relocations and studies
It is comprehensible we veered in opposite directions and lost contact

My estranged bestfriend

We reminiscenced about the time when we were school kids
In stiff shirts, massive floppy hats
And giant blazers we practically drowned in
How eager we were to go home
When the siren went off at 3:05pm
The shanenigans at the pavilion
In sixth form
When we were the lords of the academy

A strong grip on my giant mug as if it were the holy grail
Stirring my something that ends with cinno
Huddled in the corner of a cozy eatery

In his company once again
it felt as though I had arrived home where fire burns incessantly in the fire place
On a winter's night
With a soft blanket over my shoulders

We laughed about my truancy
And how he got kicked out of the ruby team on account of his rather lanky physique
He imitated our biology teacher and tears flowed down my cheeks
That kind of laughter
You feel in your core
And your whole body shakes

So captivated by the various discussions
We both forgot to sip on our steaming beverages

He narrated a few short stories about the events
that have taken place since we last conversed
I in turn narrated mine or lack thereof
He emphatically tilted his head to the side
God, I had missed those gestures of his
It all came flooding back
His mannerisms
The way he moves his hands when he speaks  as if he is trying to literally hold the conversation

For what seemed like a lifetime Before saying goodbye
Dead-eyed
We stared into each other's eyes
Almost as if to telepathically say
Do you remember the time
When we were so alive.
This is rather tedious, pardon me.
Laurie Fisher May 2012
Idealism is comical
But hardly comprehensible
You want to resist
With much persistence
Who you really are
Inside you not a super hero
One that can fix all
You trick your mind
Believing that you can make a difference
That in this life
Others are more important
But one mistake you have made
When times are dark
All that ******* will fade
Selfish creatures we are
Stuck in a state of deep desires
You’re a puppet chosen to play the role
And you can gladly pretend
And stand high on your stead
Pretending your above the laws of nature
But you’re a peasant
Nothing major
Chris Weir May 2010
I scrub down the entrails
cast now in wire
forcing fast horsehair to form
audible friction,
with wood, metal, keratin, and navel craft
comprehensible tension;
and I study such tension to
form a portfolio of frequencies
from which to draw
and cause
emotion on cue:
to tease my tactile habits
is to hone my habitual expression (they say);
I ask the doctor and take this aural tool
--a theory of not colors but a fifth wheel--
as directed,
and use it to forge links between acoustic flailings
to turn feelings into gears that line up
just as the label instructs.

And so I train my instincts to match the mold taught in
this cramped and unfamiliar womb;
and I teach my hand to tremble uniformly.
Josh Koepp Jan 2013
I exist behind my words
I swear I'm trying but the light burns the eyes
Of every coherent thought I devise
So they cower behind my molars
Little men with puffed up shoulders
Shaking from fear, I know its absurd
But bear with me, its rediculous
But hear me out
I swear they're little soldiers
of intelligence but cowardice
Who know not of their own prowess
who only know of tooth brushes
Yes I brush my teeth to rid myself of the shaking
The quaking of stupid little intellectuals
Begging to be let out,
Imagining hypothetical situations of triumph
Only in reality met with silence
Because the unintelligible break the dental barrier
Much more often than comprehensible
Logical witty and thoughtful even attempt tooth warfare
And all that happens is a stutter
Because my little intellectual insurrectionists
Cowering from the light
cannot see the others flying in the air
Not lying in wait
I hope one day I can say something wrong enough to scare them out.

— The End —