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The screaming
children of Gaza
torment the sleep
of a troubled world,
and remain a real-time
unending nightmare;
anointing The Levant’s
fevered brow
with a diadem of
incessant grief.

Gaza is a burning
ankh that sears the
madness of sorrow
upon Egypt’s skull.

Gaza,
an unblinking
third eye
of shame,
peers into
Lower Egypt’s
closed window
ever reproaching
it’s turbulent
conscience;
chiding fellow
Muslims with
the ugly memory
of abject affliction,
the endless images
of a living Guernica
suspended in the hell
of indefinite imprisonment
all Palestinians are forced
to suffer.

As Zionists ***** the
steep walls of Apartheid to
extend its occupation
of Palestine, it
condemns the youth
of Gaza to a life of
incarceration with no
possibility of parole;
hardening the hearts
and steeling the resolve
of a new generation of
militants to demolish the
walls and the wardens
that imprison them.

The Zionist jailers
bestow upon
Ishmael’s Children
phylacteries of shame,
wearing the rolled
prayers of wailing pain
scribed with bits of
dust from the
the broken walls of
demolished buildings
and desolate homes
beyond habitation,
now housing grief
of trampled souls,
forcing recitations
of deliverance
to Allah while
davening an
incessant drone
of anguish at
the Wailing Wall
of Resentment;
decrying the
blood lust of
undying acrimony,
victimization and
the slaughter of
innocents, carried on
with the imperial license
of state sanctioned impunity.


Father Ibrahim's
feuding children may
share a sacred paternity
but remain the
divided brothers
of different mothers;
stoking a sibling rivalry
more bitter then
Cain and Abel.

Our anguish
never dissipates,
the gnawing
impulse of empathy
to assist the distressed
of Gaza is dashed
by omnipotent
powers recusing
the ability to act.

Sympathy is
embargoed
in the black
obfuscation
of religious
partisanship
while timely
assistance
to aid the
distressed
lie netted in
blockades of
realpolitik
affinities.

Gaza, where
Hashim is granted
his eternal rest,
restlessly inhabits
his unknown grave
from the destitution of
his profaned homeland.

Ghazzat,  “the stronghold”
countlessly conquered,
falling to Roman Emperors,
Lionhearted Crusaders
Ottoman Caliphates,
and British Mandates;
slipping from Egypt’s
geopolitical grasp as
as a casualty of
The Six Day War.

Gaza is now a stronghold of
resent and desperation for a
desperate conquered people.

Ghazzat, the prized city of
the western Mediterranean,
a four star Phoenician port of
caravansaries now unable
to trade with any partners
due to ungodly blockades.

Gaza, has grown wholly
dependent on the largess
of UN aid and meager
subsistence portions
doled out by well
meaning NGO’s.

Gaza, the foot stool of
the Levant and surely
the pathway Father
Ibrahim, Jacob,
Joseph and Jeremiah
traveled to escape
Canaan's famine;
finding at the close
of their sojourn
a table set with the
plenteous bounty
the Blue Nile
unconditionally offered;
the veritable feast
of abundance,
the generous yields
of the blessed delta
that sustained the
Prophets of Judah
and a thousand
generations of the
Nile’s Children.

Gaza, the Achilles
heal of Middle East
peace, land of the
Canaanites, Philistines
and Old Testament
heroes.

Gaza, a fortress for
Philistines who
imprisoned the storied
Sampson, revered for
breaking the chains of
imprisonment and righteously
destroying a pagan temple
in a suicidal act of heroism.

Gaza, where the myths and
legends of rapacious
holy crusaders captured
the western imagination
with the chivalrous gallantry
of religious warfare and
valiant last stands of
Templar Knights employing
the tactical imperatives
of terrorism in service to their
higher God.

Gaza, an oasis
by the sea now
lies dry and brittle
as the precious Hebron
waters of Wadi Ghazza
are diverted to serve
the agriculture of
Judah; condemning
a dehydrated Gaza
panting of thirst
to an imposed drought
and a war of
self preservation
to remove
the dammed rivers
of justice controlled
by intractable powers
laying upstream beyond
Gaza’s mean borders.

The Qassams
lunched by Hamas
are desperate
expressions of
exasperated people,
eager to call
world attention
to the growing
insufferable plight
of a people living
in a perpetual
state of siege.

Its a modern day
David slinging rocks
against an armor
clad Goliath.

Each Katusha
serves as
a justification
for Zionist
intransigence
and condemns
any possibility
for peaceful
coexistence
of a Two State
Solution.

The pointless attacks
invite massive
disproportionate
retaliation and succeed
in prolonging and
increasing the
measure of Gaza’s
agony.

The mystic grace,
the divine power
of satyagraha
-a non-violent
response to the
cruel enforcement of
Apartheid- is Allah’s
way to secure the
moral high-ground
and the surest way
for Palestinians to
expose it’s unholy
adversaries innate
contempt for civil rights
and a refusal to
recognized the
shared humanity of
all of Father Ibrahim’s
wayward progeny and
recalcitrant prodigal sons.

Mubarak’s fall
has allowed the
Rafah Gate
to swing open again.

The concertina
wire that separates
Gaza and Egypt
has been removed.

The prisoners
of Gaza have
an open portal
of freedom.

It is a Day of
Jubilee, a day
of pardon for
for the inmates
of prisons built
for victims.  

It is a day of
possibility for peace.  

It is a day to declare an
Exodus from the land
of bitterness.

Humanity is
offered the hope
of escape from
the prisons of
acrimony, to
freely move across
the staid borders
of intractability
and exclusion.

The hearts and
minds of Palestinians
and Egyptians
are free to connect
and unite once again.

Liberation is
possible only
when we uphold
and honor the
affirmation
of all humanity.

Music Video:

Silk Road
We Will Not Go Down

Oakland
2/9/12
jbm
a poem from the epilogue section of Tahrir Square Voices
What's wrong with you, with us,
what's happening to us?
Ah our love is a harsh cord
that binds us wounding us
and if we want
to leave our wound,
to separate,
it makes a new knot for us and condemns us
to drain our blood and burn together.

What's wrong with you? I look at you
and I find nothing in you but two eyes
like all eyes, a mouth
lost among a thousand mouths that I have kissed, more beautiful,
a body just like those that have slipped
beneath my body without leaving any memory.

And how empty you went through the world
like a wheat-colored jar
without air, without sound, without substance!
I vainly sought in you
depth for my arms
that dig, without cease, beneath the earth:
beneath your skin, beneath your eyes,
nothing,
beneath your double breast scarcely
raised
a current of crystalline order
that does not know why it flows singing.
Why, why, why,
my love, why?
Homunculus Mar 2016
Enamored of the possible, and racing,
  Through a winding maze of endless choices,  
  Daunted by the obstacles we're facing, and 
  Dizzied by the clamor's many voices,

Shackled by a heavy chain of causes,
  Binding us to all we've ever known,
  The many paths before us give us pause, as
  We struggle to define which are our own,

Within a world that's not of our own making
    We anxiously await the day we'll find,
    A journey worthy of our undertaking, so
    That purpose in our lives may be defined, but
    
Perhaps our fate condemns us all to wander, and
       Our lives are merely mysteries to ponder
I think this is the first of a series of 5 Shakespearean sonnets based on Aristotle's rhetorical foundations. Telos means an "ultimate object or aim." This particular iteration also owes its driving force to Heidegger's notion of "thrownness" or the idea that we all inherit a ready made world from the history of our predecessors, and struggle against the way the facts which constitute that world condition what is possible for us to achieve within it. The other 4 will be Kairos, Logos, Ethos, and Pathos; and I will be working on and publishing them as they come to me. - Your Humble Servant
High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth or Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised
To that bad eminence; and, from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue
Vain war with Heaven; and, by success untaught,
His proud imaginations thus displayed:—
  “Powers and Dominions, Deities of Heaven!—
For, since no deep within her gulf can hold
Immortal vigour, though oppressed and fallen,
I give not Heaven for lost: from this descent
Celestial Virtues rising will appear
More glorious and more dread than from no fall,
And trust themselves to fear no second fate!—
Me though just right, and the fixed laws of Heaven,
Did first create your leader—next, free choice
With what besides in council or in fight
Hath been achieved of merit—yet this loss,
Thus far at least recovered, hath much more
Established in a safe, unenvied throne,
Yielded with full consent. The happier state
In Heaven, which follows dignity, might draw
Envy from each inferior; but who here
Will envy whom the highest place exposes
Foremost to stand against the Thunderer’s aim
Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share
Of endless pain? Where there is, then, no good
For which to strive, no strife can grow up there
From faction: for none sure will claim in Hell
Precedence; none whose portion is so small
Of present pain that with ambitious mind
Will covet more! With this advantage, then,
To union, and firm faith, and firm accord,
More than can be in Heaven, we now return
To claim our just inheritance of old,
Surer to prosper than prosperity
Could have assured us; and by what best way,
Whether of open war or covert guile,
We now debate. Who can advise may speak.”
  He ceased; and next him Moloch, sceptred king,
Stood up—the strongest and the fiercest Spirit
That fought in Heaven, now fiercer by despair.
His trust was with th’ Eternal to be deemed
Equal in strength, and rather than be less
Cared not to be at all; with that care lost
Went all his fear: of God, or Hell, or worse,
He recked not, and these words thereafter spake:—
  “My sentence is for open war. Of wiles,
More unexpert, I boast not: them let those
Contrive who need, or when they need; not now.
For, while they sit contriving, shall the rest—
Millions that stand in arms, and longing wait
The signal to ascend—sit lingering here,
Heaven’s fugitives, and for their dwelling-place
Accept this dark opprobrious den of shame,
The prison of his ryranny who reigns
By our delay? No! let us rather choose,
Armed with Hell-flames and fury, all at once
O’er Heaven’s high towers to force resistless way,
Turning our tortures into horrid arms
Against the Torturer; when, to meet the noise
Of his almighty engine, he shall hear
Infernal thunder, and, for lightning, see
Black fire and horror shot with equal rage
Among his Angels, and his throne itself
Mixed with Tartarean sulphur and strange fire,
His own invented torments. But perhaps
The way seems difficult, and steep to scale
With upright wing against a higher foe!
Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench
Of that forgetful lake benumb not still,
That in our porper motion we ascend
Up to our native seat; descent and fall
To us is adverse. Who but felt of late,
When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear
Insulting, and pursued us through the Deep,
With what compulsion and laborious flight
We sunk thus low? Th’ ascent is easy, then;
Th’ event is feared! Should we again provoke
Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find
To our destruction, if there be in Hell
Fear to be worse destroyed! What can be worse
Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemned
In this abhorred deep to utter woe!
Where pain of unextinguishable fire
Must exercise us without hope of end
The vassals of his anger, when the scourge
Inexorably, and the torturing hour,
Calls us to penance? More destroyed than thus,
We should be quite abolished, and expire.
What fear we then? what doubt we to incense
His utmost ire? which, to the height enraged,
Will either quite consume us, and reduce
To nothing this essential—happier far
Than miserable to have eternal being!—
Or, if our substance be indeed divine,
And cannot cease to be, we are at worst
On this side nothing; and by proof we feel
Our power sufficient to disturb his Heaven,
And with perpetual inroads to alarm,
Though inaccessible, his fatal throne:
Which, if not victory, is yet revenge.”
  He ended frowning, and his look denounced
Desperate revenge, and battle dangerous
To less than gods. On th’ other side up rose
Belial, in act more graceful and humane.
A fairer person lost not Heaven; he seemed
For dignity composed, and high exploit.
But all was false and hollow; though his tongue
Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were low—
To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds
Timorous and slothful. Yet he pleased the ear,
And with persuasive accent thus began:—
  “I should be much for open war, O Peers,
As not behind in hate, if what was urged
Main reason to persuade immediate war
Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast
Ominous conjecture on the whole success;
When he who most excels in fact of arms,
In what he counsels and in what excels
Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair
And utter dissolution, as the scope
Of all his aim, after some dire revenge.
First, what revenge? The towers of Heaven are filled
With armed watch, that render all access
Impregnable: oft on the bodering Deep
Encamp their legions, or with obscure wing
Scout far and wide into the realm of Night,
Scorning surprise. Or, could we break our way
By force, and at our heels all Hell should rise
With blackest insurrection to confound
Heaven’s purest light, yet our great Enemy,
All incorruptible, would on his throne
Sit unpolluted, and th’ ethereal mould,
Incapable of stain, would soon expel
Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire,
Victorious. Thus repulsed, our final hope
Is flat despair: we must exasperate
Th’ Almighty Victor to spend all his rage;
And that must end us; that must be our cure—
To be no more. Sad cure! for who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallowed up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated Night,
Devoid of sense and motion? And who knows,
Let this be good, whether our angry Foe
Can give it, or will ever? How he can
Is doubtful; that he never will is sure.
Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire,
Belike through impotence or unaware,
To give his enemies their wish, and end
Them in his anger whom his anger saves
To punish endless? ‘Wherefore cease we, then?’
Say they who counsel war; ‘we are decreed,
Reserved, and destined to eternal woe;
Whatever doing, what can we suffer more,
What can we suffer worse?’ Is this, then, worst—
Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms?
What when we fled amain, pursued and struck
With Heaven’s afflicting thunder, and besought
The Deep to shelter us? This Hell then seemed
A refuge from those wounds. Or when we lay
Chained on the burning lake? That sure was worse.
What if the breath that kindled those grim fires,
Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage,
And plunge us in the flames; or from above
Should intermitted vengeance arm again
His red right hand to plague us? What if all
Her stores were opened, and this firmament
Of Hell should spout her cataracts of fire,
Impendent horrors, threatening hideous fall
One day upon our heads; while we perhaps,
Designing or exhorting glorious war,
Caught in a fiery tempest, shall be hurled,
Each on his rock transfixed, the sport and prey
Or racking whirlwinds, or for ever sunk
Under yon boiling ocean, wrapt in chains,
There to converse with everlasting groans,
Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved,
Ages of hopeless end? This would be worse.
War, therefore, open or concealed, alike
My voice dissuades; for what can force or guile
With him, or who deceive his mind, whose eye
Views all things at one view? He from Heaven’s height
All these our motions vain sees and derides,
Not more almighty to resist our might
Than wise to frustrate all our plots and wiles.
Shall we, then, live thus vile—the race of Heaven
Thus trampled, thus expelled, to suffer here
Chains and these torments? Better these than worse,
By my advice; since fate inevitable
Subdues us, and omnipotent decree,
The Victor’s will. To suffer, as to do,
Our strength is equal; nor the law unjust
That so ordains. This was at first resolved,
If we were wise, against so great a foe
Contending, and so doubtful what might fall.
I laugh when those who at the spear are bold
And venturous, if that fail them, shrink, and fear
What yet they know must follow—to endure
Exile, or igominy, or bonds, or pain,
The sentence of their Conqueror. This is now
Our doom; which if we can sustain and bear,
Our Supreme Foe in time may much remit
His anger, and perhaps, thus far removed,
Not mind us not offending, satisfied
With what is punished; whence these raging fires
Will slacken, if his breath stir not their flames.
Our purer essence then will overcome
Their noxious vapour; or, inured, not feel;
Or, changed at length, and to the place conformed
In temper and in nature, will receive
Familiar the fierce heat; and, void of pain,
This horror will grow mild, this darkness light;
Besides what hope the never-ending flight
Of future days may bring, what chance, what change
Worth waiting—since our present lot appears
For happy though but ill, for ill not worst,
If we procure not to ourselves more woe.”
  Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason’s garb,
Counselled ignoble ease and peaceful sloth,
Not peace; and after him thus Mammon spake:—
  “Either to disenthrone the King of Heaven
We war, if war be best, or to regain
Our own right lost. Him to unthrone we then
May hope, when everlasting Fate shall yield
To fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife.
The former, vain to hope, argues as vain
The latter; for what place can be for us
Within Heaven’s bound, unless Heaven’s Lord supreme
We overpower? Suppose he should relent
And publish grace to all, on promise made
Of new subjection; with what eyes could we
Stand in his presence humble, and receive
Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne
With warbled hyms, and to his Godhead sing
Forced hallelujahs, while he lordly sits
Our envied sovereign, and his altar breathes
Ambrosial odours and ambrosial flowers,
Our servile offerings? This must be our task
In Heaven, this our delight. How wearisome
Eternity so spent in worship paid
To whom we hate! Let us not then pursue,
By force impossible, by leave obtained
Unacceptable, though in Heaven, our state
Of splendid vassalage; but rather seek
Our own good from ourselves, and from our own
Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess,
Free and to none accountable, preferring
Hard liberty before the easy yoke
Of servile pomp. Our greatness will appear
Then most conspicuous when great things of small,
Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse,
We can create, and in what place soe’er
Thrive under evil, and work ease out of pain
Through labour and endurance. This deep world
Of darkness do we dread? How oft amidst
Thick clouds and dark doth Heaven’s all-ruling Sire
Choose to reside, his glory unobscured,
And with the majesty of darkness round
Covers his throne, from whence deep thunders roar.
Mustering their rage, and Heaven resembles Hell!
As he our darkness, cannot we his light
Imitate when we please? This desert soil
Wants not her hidden lustre, gems and gold;
Nor want we skill or art from whence to raise
Magnificence; and what can Heaven show more?
Our torments also may, in length of time,
Become our elements, these piercing fires
As soft as now severe, our temper changed
Into their temper; which must needs remove
The sensible of pain. All things invite
To peaceful counsels, and the settled state
Of order, how in safety best we may
Compose our present evils, with regard
Of what we are and where, dismissing quite
All thoughts of war. Ye have what I advise.”
  He scarce had finished, when such murmur filled
Th’ assembly as when hollow rocks retain
The sound of blustering winds, which all night long
Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull
Seafaring men o’erwatched, whose bark by chance
Or pinnace, anchors in a craggy bay
After the tempest. Such applause was heard
As Mammon ended, and his sentence pleased,
Advising peace: for such another field
They dreaded worse than Hell; so much the fear
Of thunder and the sword of Michael
Wrought still within them; and no less desire
To found this nether empire, which might rise,
By policy and long process of time,
In emulation opposite to Heaven.
Which when Beelzebub perceived—than whom,
Satan except, none higher sat—with grave
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed
A pillar of state. Deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat, and public care;
And princely counsel in his face yet shone,
Majestic, though in ruin. Sage he stood
With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look
Drew audience and attention still as night
Or summer’s noontide air, while thus he spake:—
  “Thrones and Imperial Powers, Offspring of Heaven,
Ethereal Virtues! or these titles now
Must we renounce, and, changing style, be called
Princes of Hell? for so the popular vote
Inclines—here to continue, and build up here
A growing empire; doubtless! while we dream,
And know not that the King of Heaven hath doomed
This place our dungeon, not our safe retreat
Beyond his potent arm, to live exempt
From Heaven’s high jurisdiction, in new league
Banded against his throne, but to remain
In strictest *******, though thus far removed,
Under th’ inevitable curb, reserved
His captive multitude. For he, to be sure,
In height or depth, still first and last will reign
Sole king, and of his kingdom lose no part
By our revolt, but over Hell extend
His empire, and with iron sceptre rule
Us here, as with his golden those in Heaven.
What sit we then projecting peace and war?
War hath determined us and foiled with loss
Irreparable; terms of peace yet none
Vouchsafed or sought; for what peace will be given
To us enslaved, but custody severe,
And stripes and arbitrary punishment
Inflicted? and what peace can we return,
But, to our power, hostility and hate,
Untamed reluctance, and revenge, though slow,
Yet ever plotting how the Conqueror least
May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice
In doing what we most in suffering feel?
Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need
With dangerous expedition to invade
Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault or siege,
Or ambush from the Deep. What if we find
Some easier enterprise? There is a place
(If ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven
Err not)—another World, the happy seat
Of some new race, called Man, about this time
To be created like to us, though less
In power and excellence, but favoured more
Of him who rules above; so was his will
Pronounced among the Gods, and by an oath
That shook Heaven’s whole circumference confirmed.
Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to learn
What creatures there inhabit, of what mould
Or substance, how endued, and what their power
And where their weakness: how attempted best,
By force of subtlety. Though Heaven be shut,
And Heaven’s high Arbitrator sit secure
In his own strength, this place may lie exposed,
The utmost border of his kingdom, left
To their defence who hold it: here, perhaps,
Some advantageous act may be achieved
By sudden onset—either with Hell-fire
To waste his whole creation, or possess
All as our own, and drive, as we were driven,
The puny habitants; or, if not drive,
****** them to our party, that their God
May prove their foe, and with repenting hand
Abolish his own works. This would surpass
Common revenge, and interrupt his joy
In our confusion, and our joy upraise
In his disturbance; when his darling sons,
Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall curse
Their frail original, and faded bliss—
Faded so soon! Advise if this be worth
Attempting, or to sit in darkness here
Hatching vain empires.” Thus beelzebub
Pleaded his devilish counsel—first devised
By Satan, and in part proposed: for whence,
But
Audrey Aug 2014
I am Christian. I believe in the
Trinity of the Holy God, The Son, and The Spirit,
I believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of mankind
I own more than three Bibles
I teach Sunday School every week and
I pray every night.
I am Christian,
And as such I
Hate queer....

Phobia. I can not stand intolerance
And I cry at hatred,
Blood running in the streets,
Fear running in veins,
Running away from the truth.
I am Christian, yet
There are bloodstains in my Bible
And the prayers on my lips
Are for forgiveness for who I am.
The entire story of ***** is
Crossed out, blacked out angrily
In the dead of night
In all 4 versions,
Leviticus is blurred,
Wrinkled with my tears,
Soaked with my pain.
I am Christian
And I am not homophobic.
I know my church won't recognize
Non cis-het marriages,
Leaving entire worlds of rainbows in the dark
The higher-ups insist
Weddings are white, shiny, husband-and-wife, happily-ever-after affairs
That shove me and my friends, my  family, my lovers,
Into closets of heavenly wrath and
Fire and brimstone sermons,
Locked into personal hells of shame
And confusion.
I am Christian
And I am not straight.
My God doesn't hate me for who I love,
He loves me because I try not to hate.
So to the homophobic Christians, I ask:
Who is your God?
Who is your God that supposedly condemns people He has created in his own image?
Your rainbow picket signs are nothing but a cruel mockery of a covenant
Not truly shared by you.
Your tongues are no better than the viper's who called Adam and Eve to sin,
You are the vipers of my world.
Do you think you avoid judgement
When trans teens are killed
By the bullets you spit with your words?
Who is your God,
That tells you to picket the funerals
Of those you hate?
Who is your God,
That refuses to let you open your heart to differentness?
I am Christian,
And I don't need your permission to
Love my God.
Take my scars and tear-stained Bibles,
Listen to my fervent prayers,
Watch my lips tremble when
I listen to my pastor.
I don't need your permission
To love who I want,
In fact I don't want it.
Take my midnight screaming and fear of coming out,
Listen to my frantic pleading for a hand to hold,
Watch my eyes linger on her chest.
I am Christian.
My God doesn't hate me for who I love,
He hates you who refuse to love
While you carry His name, if
Not his blessing.
So I ask again
Who is your God?
Because mine loves all of me,
All 5'6" of queer pride.
Who is your God?
How dull the wretch, whose philosophic mind
Disdains the pleasures of fantastic kind;
Whose prosy thoughts the joys of life exclude,
And wreck the solace of the poet's mood!
Young Zeno, practis'd in the Stoic's art,
Rejects the language of the glowing heart;
Dissolves sweet Nature to a mess of laws;
Condemns th' effect whilst looking for the cause;
Freezes poor Ovid in an iced review,
And sneers because his fables are untrue!
In search of hope the hopeful zealot goes,
But all the sadder tums, the more he knows!
Stay! Vandal sophist, whose deep lore would blast
The grateful legends of the storied past;
Whose tongue in censure flays th' embellish'd page,
And scorns the comforts of a dreary age:
Wouldst strip the foliage from the vital bough
Till all men grow as wisely dull as thou?
Happy the man whose fresh, untainted eye
Discerns a Pantheon in the spangled sky;
Finds sylphs and dryads in the waving trees,
And spies soft Notus in the southern breeze
For whom the stream a cheering carol sings,
While reedy music by the fountain rings;
To whom the waves a Nereid tale confide
Till friendly presence fills the rising tide.
Happy is he, who void of learning's woes,
Th' ethereal life of bodied Nature knows;
I scorn the sage that tells me it but seems,
And flout his gravity in sunlight dreams!
Mother fish sees her eggs devoured
by alligator that gulps everything on the sand
save her own eggs and children.

Mother fish cries her eyes out
and seems not to be heard
neither by the heaven,
nor by the sea (their common abode),
that bore them, and now assists to her boredom
indifferently and silently,

which silence she condemns and curses.
She goes to the beach; she weeps
and seeks revenge in vain.
Now she sees a python that creeps
from the bush around the beach.

The creature she has never seen before,
as immense as the world,
eyes first the alligator
whose blood becomes as cold
as the ice under the sea.

They stare at each other
like someone intruder,
at a home where he is not wished as guest,
who faces the anger
of the owner who would not him host
but from there him usher out.

They look at each other
with sulks on their ugly faces
and fear as each one faces
this kind one for the first time.
However intimidations from each party
can’t touch the other party.

The cold war ends and becomes hot:
The Python and the alligator
get ready to come at each other
like warriors of different kings
ready to defend their kingdoms’ colors,
ready to defend the pride of their lords,
and ready to die for their honour
though they’d prefer to live
unnoticed and live longer.

Furious, the python throws her head up,
her dart flies like flash out and in
between the jaws of horrible sight,
and the beast tests she’s still unrivaled in
cruelty. She gets ready to attack.
As for the alligator, all her muscles she does check,
her arms dig into the sand,
And she flies to crunch the enemy.

She bites hard the neck of the python,
yet her teeth can’t tear the strong scales
of the mammoth reptile.
The python pretends to be provoked;
She wildly crawls and coils around the alligator
and holds tight her body from the tail to the head.
And alligator’s jaws, strong to weaker preys,
become useless.

Her mouth opens wide and starts to swallow the alligator
as the latter did when she chewed the eggs and children of the fish.
From distance the fish watches, admires
and enjoys the scene as the python
seems to be her avenger.

In the end the whole body of the fallen fighter
disappears into the trunk of the strange predator.
Then the fish wonders, “Am I avenged
or this strange creature merely needed food
as did the poor alligator
when she thought to rule over
our lives and made my children her food,
causing my eyes to shed floods of tears,
that she did not notice ‘cause mixed
with the waters?
And she ignored the mightier one existed.”

In conclusion the fish realizes
were herself or her children the first seen by the python,
they would face the same fate as the alligator she cursed
and that alligator’s killer may not be by the Maker blessed.
The most powerful predator
cannot be of the fauna liberator.

The greatest warriors
fight to shed the blood of their victims.
Only their aim they follow,
and they turn deaf their ears to the tears
of any fellow.
And as the fish thinks of this predator,
no ****** war winner will rule better
than a beaten dictator.
Poem for reflection
Terry O'Leary Feb 2014
NOW

Well, GI Jack is welcome back, he left his legs in 'Nam.
He wakes at night in sweat and fright, then drinks another dram.
He doesn't know quite where to go, so seeks his uncle, Sam.


                           BEFORE

One can't ignore - his ma was poor, and seasons sometimes cruel,
yet Jack was brave and well behaved and surely no one's fool
so joined the ranks that man the tanks, as soon as he left school

He learned to **** our foes at will (ordained a sacred rite)
then packed his bag, unfurled his flag, when sent away to fight.
And yes, the tide was on our side (for, clearly, might makes right)

Through tangled days in jungles' maze, he sought the enemy
behind the trees where, ill at ease, he fought the Yellow sea -
upon the waves of gravelled graves he sailed a killing spree

The ****** dropped and cooked the crops, charred huts along the way
and tanks, with zest, erased the rest, their villages of clay.
(Yes, turret guns are loads of fun with roaring roundelay.)

While on the hunt with other grunts, he burned some babes alive
and wondered why frail things must die, while evil's phantoms thrive -
<When folly ends, he'll make amends if only he'll survive>

With ***** traps (sticks smeared with crap), yes, Charlie fought unfair.
He hid in holes with snakes and voles and snuck up everywhere
and like a mite within the night, caught Jackie unaware

At battle's end, Jack sought his friends - their souls were washed away
and only he and destiny were left in disarray -
with bed and pan, just half a man, the man of yesterday

When Jack awoke beyond the smoke, his frame no longer whole,
he found instead some suture thread neath wraps to hide the hole,
and realized a further prize: a chair on wheels to roll

His head felt light, as well it might, at Victory Day Parade
(across his chest, you've surely guessed, his medals shone, arrayed)
for when he rolled, while others strolled, his boots no longer weighed


                           AFTER

Well, Jack stayed home (no roads to Rome) to start his life anew
receiving dole which took its toll as largess went askew
for sure enough, when times got tough, his uncle, Sam, withdrew

To walk the streets with fine elites (or else some *** who begs)
or find a job (or even rob) requires both your legs.
And those who can't, are viewed askant like those we call the dregs.

For getting by he tried to ply and mine his medals' worth -
a wooden cup, a mangy pup, a smirk when miming mirth,
and best of all, at midnight’s call, beneath a bridge, a ‘berth’

He clutched a sign 'A dime to dine?', if anybody cared,
but soon he found, as time unwound, that victors seldom shared.
And Jackie's pride was slowly fried by vacant eyes that stared


                           ENLIGHTENMENT

He took to drink to break the link with thoughts of what he'd done
and threads of doubt began to flout the yarns Big Brother spun
of freedom's ring and other things, like what it was we'd won

His vague unease arrayed a breeze with words that chilled the air
and like the fogs above the bogs, they floated through the square
where people sat at tea to chat, and shrieked 'How could he dare?'

Yes, freedom's price is never nice: like storms before the flood
the Daily Rag was on a jag, was looking out for blood,
deemed Jackie's thoughts untamed and fraught, then dragged him through the mud

By hacking clues, they plucked his views like grapes upon the vine.
Big Brother came, blamed Jackie's name for thinking out of line,
shut Jack away from light of day, eclipsing freedom’s shine

The Junto Brass, with eyes of glass, were robed in fine array
to hear the words (though slightly slurred) the witness gasped to say,
while Justice snored (the waterboard awash with Perrier)

Well, Jack was charged with laws enlarged in secret dossiers
within the guise of spreading lies and leading thoughts astray -
The Jury's out... the rabble shout “well someone's gotta pay”

The Judge (who fears the mind’s frontiers) inclined his head to yawn
while making haste through courtroom waste, though slightly pale and wan.
(A voodoo Loon withdraws as soon as Night condemns the Dawn.)


                           ETERNITY

While in his cell, the verdict fell - the sighs of Silence, rife
While in his cell, the verdict fell - the Reaper played a fife
While in his cell, the verdict fell - the price was Jackie's life


                           EPILOGUE

Well Jackie's ghost, unlike the most, still mused upon the praise
for misdeeds done in victories won when cruising in a craze,
and once again upon the sin of thinking, nowadays
where, cunningly, humanity’s served lies, and trust betrays.
Then, reconciled, it simply smiled at fortune's wanton ways.


                           EPITAPH

A mind was caught while thinking thoughts neath Sammy’s prying gaze
and forced to stop by concept cops, else join the castaways.
For now it's law to hold in awe the brave new world's malaise
and cerebrate with programmed pate, adorned with thorned bouquets,
then mimic mimes in troubled times - and no one disobeys.
With freedom’s death, truth holds its breath awaiting better days.
while humanity lay sleeping
a subtle sound came creeping
a tiny muffled murmur
of the drums  

it crept into our valley
a quiet distant sally
the reverberating tapping
of the drums

oh the drums drums drums
foretell the things to come
the tapping beat calls
hearts and minds to stir

awakened from dear sleep
we discern the growing creep
the mounting host of warriors
tramping on
      
the fifers next came peeling
the swooning mass was kneeling
the flash of brass and horns
enthralled us all

the salute of rifles thundered
leaving all of us to wonder
what this show of force
would mean for you and me

oh the drums drums drums
the flash and crack of guns
the might and mien of country
on display

yes we howl a raucous cheer
as we shout we raise a beer
the march of shock and awe
is on its way

the thundering timpani                                  
soul of a nation's symphony
united in common purpose
all in step

pressing on to foreign fields
with armies, tanks and shields
we offer sons and daughters
to the lords of war

sleek missiles flew and flashed
buildings crumble and crash
the righteous right of the stronger
proved again

but blood will wash the ground
wails of mourning will sound
dead soldiers and civilians
on all sides

percussive cannon blasts
bursts eardrums kills you fast
the awful smashing and the
bashing of the bombs

the popping flap of flags
assure a profiteers swag
much riches to be made
through the spoils of war

filthy lucre that is earned
the value of life is spurned
hoards of begotten treasure
condemns its lord

so spend it if you must
for your gold will turn to rust
and dust to dust your
soul shall return

oh the drums drums drums
calls our sisters and our sons
to step and march along
a deathly roll

constant war begets a madness
unhealed wounds endless sadness
friends and lovers sadly perish
families destroyed

oh the drums drums drums
once so stirring like a sun
the rattling snare of drumsticks
a hissing asp

oh the drums drums drums
we whistle through our gums
past the midnight graveyards
hallowed for our youth

so listen for the drums
the droning of the guns
stand firm for peace
and walk its blessed way

or you can yell yell yell
marching onward straight to hell
where death will greet you
with the devils kiss

he’ll sing you bitter taps
the music that entraps
and commends the young
to the wretched earth

or play Djembe for peace
witness all conflict cease
bongo bops for peace
may it always increase

yes the drums drums drums
the resounding joyful strums
a mirthful dance of peace
may it always increase

so play Djembe for peace
our song will never cease
our dance will be
a whirling prayer of grace

Music Selection:
Fela Kuti & Afrika 70, Zombie

jbm
3/9/12
Oakland
Jane EB Smith Apr 2013
Here’s what a divorce does:

Divorce
Takes a remnant of a family from the house they moved into 10 years before
when their family numbered 6
then added a 7th

Divorce
Takes them from the house where a new daughter came home
a new Marine came home
the first daughter-in-law came home
the first grandchild came home
the newest daughter to be came home
where we battled illness and survived
where we laughed till we cried.

Divorce
Takes them from the house where friends have gathered to celebrate
birthdays
bonfires
a prom
a dinner dance
a wedding.
Divorce
takes one away
puts two in limbo
makes three leave
four-legged family members
who can’t live
where they are going.

Divorce
shatters family
abandons dreams
mutilates memories
condemns the future.

Divorce
only helps the one who wanted it.

4/13/2012
Here hails a huge, long and dragonish snake,
With myriads of dangerous heads on its thorax,
Roaming up and down in a nefarious duty
All over the African streets and hamlets,
Villages and terrains, the abodes of poor folks,
Swallowing daughters and sons of this land,
Swallowing a handful of them on each bite,
They are in a forlorn despair like never before,
Defenselessly succumbing to the dragon once in the grip,
Young and old, prebubescent and all others are cancers’ fodder,
Africa is truly diminishing to the abysmal jaws of cancer,
Forget of initial vices of ***, Ebola and leprosy,
Forget of the contemporary terrorism and ethnic warlordism,
Cancer is ruthlessly swallowing poor folks of Africa
Into its inferno of early deaths, rendering many parentless,
A knot for the living to put aside pride and seek genuine help,
For the myriad heads of dragonish cancer violently **** the prey,
I have seen sons and daughters of poor Africa in cancerous agony,
Often with a blocked food pipe when in the grip of throat cancer,
Non-stop vaginal bleeding at mercilessness of cervical cancer,
In the torture of brute pulling weight in grip of scrotal cancer,
On the top of maximum pain in the grip of breast cancer
Humorously desperate before menacing eyes of death,
When misfortunately in the grip of heart cancer,
Deathly starvation condemns many poor folks to grave,
Always when in the unlucky tentacle of intestinal cancer,
In this desperate land of Africa where basic hospital
Stands a luxury, affordable by the rich in the political class,
As the poor without choice die and die and die,
O who will take me out of Africa, this nonchalant Africa?
Before the dragon of cancer condemns me down to its
Inferno of pains and miserably violent death!
I fear death due to punctured lungs without solace,
I fear death due to stunted blood cells without succor
I fear death due to poisoned blood without palliative
When the cancerous heads of ; lung cancer, blood cancer,
And Liver cancer will besiege this land of Africa to hold me a captive.
Dr Zik May 2015
The rolling stone always remains disturb
And does not maintain his status
__
By leaving selfishness one can emit light as human do
The martyr observed the cruelty of the unwanted persons
_
And condemns their supremacy
A martyr shows a distinctive confidence
Which is matchless
__
A time is coming when you will find a deserted way and nothing else
But you’ll be alone without me.
A translation of my own poem written in Urdu language. The name of book is "RAH TAKTI AANKH (راہ تکتی آنکھ)"
Ken Pepiton Oct 2018
Thursday, October 25, 2018
1:33 PM History records my state of mind:

Pure thought projects zoom in and out of focus,
Political integrity, personal honesty, good medicine, bad medicine

Whose hell imagined itself transfigured int-energ-
emagically into
the set of NULL?

Mine.
Imagine that. Pure thought experiment, unjudgeable, fret not.

Puritans lack the pineal insight to see the light in the forest.
Horus eye in the middle of the brain?
I just saw that, too. Pineal reality.

The light in the forest?

The man in black lingered there, according Hawthorne,

or did old Nate mock the man in black and laugh at the idea of

good medicine, bad medicine, goody two-shoes
holds it in her holy socks. She's a witch.
stupid.

That was a McLuhanwaderyadoin joke. You don't have to laugh.
We no longer know of his work.
Have to is a stupid saying.
say waht it means, spellt out have, et to.
I have
breath,
blood, spit, eyes, ears et cetera

but to, have to, what? can to having have meaning with no do:
to what end have I any thingable thought to what?
Stupid language, nothing is ever clear.

Ought we explore our relationship, you and me, I mean,
when I say we. We are intimate, dear reader.
As close as two minds may be, with permission, assumed.
My insane, in your brain, is not my insane in mine.
A little like leaven, if you ever bake.

No con querity con cerns us here, we filtered those before.
CERN's discerning of the matter making
thing, bosonic tonic device,
that led us to line our tinfoil hat with lead,
just in case Higgs ups happen and stutters start.

Hold your breath. We both have one to hold, but not for long.
And so it goes, I do enjoy a vintage Vonnegut thought
floating by on a breeze.

Imagine me a Virginia Wolfe trust fund child gone wild,
un gentled, sent down t' Tobbacca Road
in a hot rod Lincoln,
t' find a bride.

Some said something in the water, flouride, petrafied
pineal glands and blinded a generation,
to the sins of their father's
legions of liars,

hired to progressively teach us to work in factories
which vanished
right before

the beans vanished from our ears and we heard the rush
of the rolling tide lifting boats big and small.

Remember being accused, in your mind, of only wanting to be on the side that's winning?

That hot rod Lincoln, Thunderword road, remember the environ?
Pure
Moonshine, melts that petrafied flouride away,

a whole generation o' peasants
turned on.
Holler Hi dee **, burns the tummy, doncha know but

epigenetic application of pure moonshine in the ac-company-ment,
companion, accuse amigo,
same bread, same leaven,
com panion we be
joined.

Jesuits, that was the idea,
formed in Xavier's fever wracked brain
as his medievally medicated flesh fought for every
breath.
Heroic. Hagiographic. Stale, smoke filled acacia incense maybe

We have gone to havings
whence such bread is said to become the an-ointed, magi know, knew, expected, fore told for if ever forever begins,
as far as mortal peasants may be concerned with such high mindedness.

The leader is a liar and the people feel free to follow him.
When the twisted rule the ruled twist, too.

Solomonic wisdom, that is. Oil on the water. Pass the torch.

This was 2018, Donald Trump was President.
how come this to be
to have to be
held.
Who still,
can imagine war?
None.

No reflection,
lack of humility,
proud noble rare-ified re-ified de-ified

Charming fellow, though, can't you admit
his charm is a luring, tempting thing, temporary testing,
is he
an enemy,
donchaluvem? Life is the test. It is that simple. Right, Mr. Perot?

No distraction action condemns a man here, we have none.
Condemnation, none of that here. My reality, you know.

Tempests in teapots, fersher. Command zed, eh.
Fold it up, put it away. New idea. New everything.

People and political servants. No more leaders, no more war.
imagine that.
People and servants serving to govern the emerging
situations
as time rolls out the barrel with the single rotten apple,

and we, the people, feed that rotten apple to the pigs,

who were addicted to pearls,
during the confusion
as mankind lost its mind

we never doubted the need for men to be born.
again, we knew not what we believed born again may be.

Taste, good medicine is bitter more oft than not,

Sugar blues on a global level, those never justify the cost,
of making the medicine go down.

Sweet desire deprived, that is poison.
Dainty appetizers, served in the rich man circus,
stolen by servants racked with guilt,

shame and blame arise,

emergency action, a reason, why are those dainty meats so alluring,


ask the fisherman. Watch for his hook.
Someday, I don't want anyone to gues where I stood concerning Donald, I never met the man and never liked the mask.
Alexander Foe Nov 2018
Sometimes I trust my instinct,
but it tells me to do things in ways
that no one dares
It can implore me there,
to take paths no one walks

I fear the fresh footsteps I make
on the new brick road
I'm a social animal, a human;
doing what others do seems the right
thing to do

Once you're a bit different, society condemns
They raise an eyebrow, they don't give
their consent;
But I've seen great people do great things
Because they had faith in their instincts.

They have the drive to keep going,
To try and even fail.
I'd very much like to do the same,
At least I have real
control over my own doings.

If I succeed, I have only my instincts to celebrate.
If I fail, I have only my flaws to blame.
Everything under my possession,
Ne te quaesiveris extra, as they say
It's your life to do, your life to bear.
today, bob delahunty, was asked along to that HDU, to try and here the stories

of these many people who have been arguing about who is god, you see, there

is always, debates on who is more powerful that jesus, and who is jesus, and

when bob arrived, all the HDU, are arguing religious topics at each other till

their ears bleed, and bob didn’t know which way to turn, so, what bob did

is take them aside, first was ben teckerdid, who says his god, and bob said what makes

you god, buddy, ben said, well, i help people after i get drunk with them, my gift of the mandrunk

is to overdo helping people, and i end up here all the time, to reform everyone here, to

get this fucken place, closed down, then bob said, why that does make you GOD, ben

no, your just a crazy person, who likes to help, but you are not medicated right, in doing your deeds,

well, it passes the god test, but ben you are not the almighty one, and ben told bob to SHUT UP, singing

i know god is the devil, but the devil is bob

god is the devil and the devil is bob

god is the devil and the devil is bob

ben the devil and bobby poo

bob told ben to sit down and brought richard smith in, who believes he is the real jesus, and bob

was intrigued, why are you the real jesus, and richard said, because i can feel everyones pain

if you hit anyone, i feel it, and if i worked in a homeless shelter, i will get everyone inspired

cause, i am the real jesus, bob sat there laughing hitting himself with a rubber band, and richard

said, it doesn’t work like that, you see bob, i turned water into wine, i told moses to walk on water

i enjoy drinking wine, but i am a filthy little ****, i am jesus, cause, on inspection days in my flat

i can clean all day, to past the test, ooooh, i must be jesus, and bob said, ok, you have my vote

and richard said no bob, i am jesus christ, and not just to get out of here, either, I AM JESUS

and richard left saying, did you understand, as he left singing

god is the devil, and the devil is bob

god is the devil and the devil is bob

god is the devil and the devil is bob

GOD, THE DEVIL, AND ****** BOB

the next patient also thought he was jesus, he was also the devil and god, because to him

he was religion, he lived for 323 years, and all his stories were written in his tent, but bob

thought straight away, WHAT A NUTJOB, he isn’t religion, he’s a clot, and his name was barney

and he lived near fred, and a woman named betty as his wife, and they worked on a dinosaur

and bob said, this guy has flipped his ****** marbles, that was a television show in thew 1970s

and barney said in his defense, no, it actually was the truth, barney helped fred, i helped fred

i am barney, and bob said, you are a shitzophrenic patient in the HDU, i don’t want to upset you

but the flintstones, never was real, in the way you explained it, ben and richard had better views

that you, buddy, and barney told bob to *******, and went away singing

god is the devil and the devil is bob, and barney is religion

god is the devil and the devil is bob and barney is religion

god is the devil and the devil is bob and barney, oh barney oh barney is religion

flintstones existed bobby delahunty

bob saw his last patient who said he was jesus christ and the devil, he saves people

but he also condemns people, ya know, puts people right all the time, bob thought

i don’t mess with you, mr, and he said he was jack flynn, i am 23, and i live and work

in a ****** neighbourhood, i never get any help from doctors and psych crews

and my only solace are my beliefs and writing them down on my computer

and i can save a lot of people, with the stories i wrote, buddy, ya know

bob asked, i understand that, but both jesus and the devil, and jack said

ummmmm, i am jesus, and there is no devil, good things happen bad things happen

the devil doesn’t control, and yeah, I, JESUS, MUST FORFILL MY DUTY TO PROTECT THE WORLD FROM VIOLENCE

IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM, bob said, interesting, ok, and bob went away making sure

that each of these dellusionists take their medications cause even if they are, their crimes were wrong, ok

but, remember, they have a right to their beliefs, and bob went away singing

god is the devil, and the devil is bob

god is the devil and the devil is bob

god is the devil and the devil is bob

GOD THE DEVIL AND BOB

bob went off thinking

god is the devil and the devil is bob

god is the devil and the devil is bob

god is the devil and the devil is bob

GOD THE DEVIL AND BOB
I would like to think that by the age of 6, i would have turned deaf, from the hands being placed on my ears to escape bullets of words. Shattering around me, i wished to grow up. By the age of 8, i knew my place and, my place knew me. I lived in a minefield, during a war i had not realised was going on. I had unbroken bones which bled from the inside, my mind was torn in to a million pieces and at 10, i didn't know what childhood was, and wished i was alone.

By 16, I fell into a man, a man who's hand it took 2 years to gain from his mother, as she sat there smoking and drinking hot water with lemon to be diet thin. Trimmed the fat a bit when we both left the country, and he got a girl pregnant in India, with twins, which she later aborted; I was in Canada, and 18 when i wished i was blind.

I followed through, travelled the world, til i was 21, became a university student, a best friend, a lesbian, and went to a foreign country were you are forced to use your goodness to be a force of good, which no-one sees as good, but as a hand out, and i lost good friends and saw bad men lose theirs, at 21, I saw the world and i was i was emotionally devoid in a climate of acclaimed peace.

By 26 i was a mother, uncontrollable love and grief flowed through me, like rain is dissolved by the streams in the hills. I picked up my smiling, beautiful child, which had became my night, noon, morning and day, and i wished i could repair the tear within my soul, to encompass all the love i had for my son; and the tear remained patched up with sellotape; I wished I had been a better child.

I lost all consciousness from 27 til 28, love turned to hate, i lost my love, and picked up a young one, if only she was to physically show me what my ex had not been telling me all along; what my ex boyfriends mother made me feel for 2 years, and the way my father left, whilst my mother was pulling me up the stairs, by my hair. At 28 I realised i had made the wrong decision.

From 28, here on out the wind blew, and it blew down to the valleys, and there i found the love of my life. We found and created an indestructible friendship and love, the first only and ever to support me and our goals, she helped me stand up to my father; who then ended our own father/daughter relationship. And not 3 months shy later, when myself and my son mouthed our love and said goodbye. We returned to an empty house. I sacrificed my grief for a small boy who cried for a non-existent person. At 29 my heart was destroyed in a slow burning bonfire.

I replaced the love with the lost, and gladly filled up my tank with lost souls of lost girls, who had lost their souls from some other lost soul, and so the cycle becomes fully reborn. I became someone i knew not of. I had a best friend, who i solely loved because she was the vat of hope i desperately needed in the darkest hour, my biggest cheerleader and my ***** compadre. I remember at 29 celebrating a birthday with 2 friends, and looking at the stars and thinking, is this the meaning of my existence? I remember feeling like the winds were about to change.

30. I had moved house, abandoned my son and old life, for a new job, for new money. I sunk like the titanic who did not see the epic gigantic proportion of iceberg that was about hit the ******* fan. I lost the best friend. Slowly through another relationship did i gleam a sensation of love. It was love, but it was demanding and childish, and i pushed her away before she even asked me to be hers;  in i might add one of the most romantic pursuits ever. She became my sons best friend, my dancing partner, she loved me so very very much, and i hated her for it, i hated her so much for loving me, because i was rightly wrong and she was wrongly right. I just turned 31, and she walked out over an argument over bike helmet. I realised, i was a product of my over endless pursuit of love perfect.

At 32, i am single, broke my back at work, i was then dismissed by that work, moved house, began recovery, had a car accident and here i am beginning again. Yet i am in love now with a man, something i have struggled with for a year, i am at my most humble, deep, profound, sense of being in love, without reciprocation than i have even been, and why........?

Well....

When i was 16 i wanted to be 30, i wanted my life to be over. I wanted the dead years to pass. I wanted the hard work to be gone and done. Not because i didn't want to live, but because i had lived so hard before i was 16, that anything else seemed to exhausting for words to even begin to create.

Except i lived it.
I learnt that love is not words, love is words.
Love is the words of your favourite song, emblazoned on a 8ft wall, that you come home to, and see as a surprise.
Love is someone letting you read your book.
Love is not the voice, the meaning, the tone, the perception or allegorical meaning.
Love is not the abuse, the abuser, their demons, their guilt or their silence.
Love is the unspoken word, the deep stare, the knowing glance, a tender reassurance, that this is ok.
Love is your hand holding mine. N.B Handholding is underrated.
Love is not possession, greed, want or desire. They are not yours, you are not theirs.
Love is invisible, yes it is, red balloons don't mean **** on one day a year.
Love is not perfect, but imperfect.
Love is ruthless, and cut-throat.
Love will burn you to the very last core of your being because you cannot contain its power.
Love is not lies, deceit, untruths, stories told to the naieve because you cannot be a lover and have to be a storyteller.
Love is truth, truth that so bitterly hurts, that you want to be porcelain and break into a million pieces, from the chest .
Love is walking, talking, and laughing, always laughing; love is a smile on a face.
Love is hard, and intolerable, it is passionate, and persistent and it is consistent. It does not break, it is not flimsly like a kite in a storm.
Love does not take offence to personal battles and rebukes of deadly warfare.
Love does not change its mind, be unsure, lack responsbility, or drinks you dry, til you are dried out and up.
Love is not ***, love is not lust, lust is not 'go on, you know you want to', love is not sorry in the morning.
Love is not the ***** all night *** sessions that keep the neighbours awake, but it is in the glory of two bodies where love can be found.
Love condemns. Love is a silent recommendation from Disney, Cathy and Heathcliffe, and Ring of BrightWater.
Love is a minefield and a forbidden playground; it is a secret garden and a theme park.
Love is not alone, and it is not together; it is not your children, or your childrens, children; It is within them and without them.
Love is not to be found on the praying may, in the clouds, in a the pew, or in the incense.
Love cries, love wails, love beats at your very chest, love is in death, love is in the birth.
Love.
Love.
Aaah, hmmm, Love, is an indeterminable force, by which, because of its very nature, no-one can define by logic, except that they will, because, what they cannot understand, they use perception of their blinded sight, deaf ears, and lost senses to put into words, something their heart cannot.
You have everything and you have no-one.
You have reason and you have none to be afraid of.
You are your past, and unfortunately, you are not.
You are your damage, your hurt and your pain, and hardest, your own responsibility.
You are worthy, and you are worthless, you have been shamed and you have been glorified.
You are your own future, your own today, and the yesterday.
And despite all the crap ******* memes,
Love is you, and you are love.

By 32, i had learnt to love myself. Inbetween the grieving, there is a silent knowledge, that by 32 i am in love, with myself.

*I wrote this as a very open outpouring of grief i am currently going through, and also an open realisation of the love within and for myself. It is one of my most open and explicit short stories of my life, and even within that there is lots that has not been recognised, because it has been shortened and reconsidered somewhere else. Thank you
Vetelo Ngila May 2013
WHISTLING AND SNIFFING SIMULTANEOUSLY

Whistling and sniffing at the same time
Can’t hold hands or rather get married
United and collaborative in any case
This duo may perhaps land into the life of some person
The kind of man whose who acts,
Performs duties of the shepherd on the flock.
Like his initial master,
He condemns wickedness,
Goes against what is religiously evil,
And exults the righteous.
But he soon he craves for another pair of his robe
For he does accumulate an avalanche of resources,
His eyes are soon blinded.
Would his robe evade being soiled?

Co-operative sniffing and whistling,
Can hatch into temptations to anybody,
Even the half-human, half God
Did he not get tested in the wilderness?
Our big man opens his eyes one day,
Finds himself campaigning and competing for,
Trying to woo for citizens’ keys,
Essentials for serving the people in a wider circle.
Perhaps his whistling guides his path.
Brings him in the companionship of
Other servants of the people.
Any devoted service present in that house really?

Brotherly whistling and sniffing,
May make one’s conscience slither backwards,
Two or more steps into mud.
He is now influential,
A famous societal figure.
His fat salary seconded with some allowances.
Or even thirded with public developmental resources,
Guarantees him total luxury.
Is this not an opportunistic opportunist?

Our Sniffer and whistler is contended,
Complacent with his success.
Jubilant with him servant is his ‘first Master ’
For keeping to the ‘sacred’ scriptures.
The vehicle which carried him straight,
One way to heaven gets crippled,
It can’t manage to hit the road
Like its American, British and Chinese counterparts,
His sincere promise goes unfulfilled
Unmet due to his pretentious pretence.
His ‘second’ Master gets extremely mad.
For loyalty and faithfulness denied.
And furiously plucks him from glory.

Simultaneous whistling and sniffing,
The ‘initial’ heaven can’t simply put up with them.
A wise servant of the masses
A true leader should only whistle at a time,
Sniff at a time.
But not sniffing and whistling simultaneously.
he weaves home buzzed on bicycle falls asleep telephone rings 3 AM waking him suspects it is Reiko does not pick up receiver momentary pause rings again 5 times does not pick it up truth is he is still weak for her unable to fall back to sleep gets up makes tea ignores steaming cup decides instead on glass of wine watch telephone does not ring again he sips smokes cigarette march winds rattle window stares out at darkness

following week Cal insists they go to tittie bar Odysseus agrees they order 2 for 1 beers steak and lobster 12 dollar special watch vast assortment of ******* clad bare breasted women Cal comments makes me forget about the hell my life is Odysseus acknowledges i hear you their attendance becomes weekly ritual bartenders bouncers dancers managers know them by name Odysseus smiles flirts with familiar athletic flat-chested brunette believes dancers grasp powers wiles of female mystique that current feminist movement condemns Cal warns dancers are all phony all they want is money Odysseus glances away from blonde female gyrating against pole on stage you’re right Cal why am i such a sucker for a pretty girl? creases brow ponders besides everyone’s thoughts and feelings we are our bodies variations of nature unequal characteristics beauty casts unjust hierarchy of privileges what you might refuse a 1000 you will permit with 1 suitably possessing beauty’s fascination beauty corrupts renders us slaves it’s sick like rilke wrote each single angel is terrible think about it Cal doesn’t beauty tend to take advantage and in doing so does all beauty hide some selfish truth? In that self-interest comes loneliness why am i attracted to that selfishness? isolation? Cal looks points replies chill Odys check out puffy ******* at bar

later Odysseus comments i want to write a book about process of growing questioning choosing love over hate aging death Cal remarks me too Odys if you finally write yours swear to me you won’t dress it up with chase scenes murders surprise twist ending just tell the truth about what happens to a person as they go through life keep it real keep it uncompromised
Andrew T Hannah Jul 2013
You crucified me, with your fanatical insanity,
Using religion as an excuse to persecute cruelly.
Words can cut deep, like knives flaying skin…
Now it is your turn to suffer, so we shall begin!

You anger me, evil human so filled with hate,
Believing yourself so entitled to judge my kind!
Saying I am going to hell because I love deep,
One who shares my gender as well as my heart!
For you, evil human, it is already far too late…
Your soul is forfeit, your spirit I shall now bind.
With darkest sorcery, devils your soul shall keep!
By the power unseen, you will be broken apart.
How dare you mock me, and so provoke wrath,
Until I long to see your head mounted on a pike…
Whilst wolves nibble at your entrails in red bath!
It is not I you need fear, nor I who shall strike.

Demons will haunt your sleep, of your making.
Torments, shall punish you, leaving you mad…
Until: your flayed limbs lie trembling and quaking,
For you have angered me, angered me so bad!
You say I am going to Hell? I am Hell incarnate.
Behold your vile death knell! Let is swell, fiend,
For though I be a devil in your eyes, my true fate,
Is a brighter thing, than any you could ever glean!

You tie yourself with your own veins torn free…
Thinking yourself better than my generation was.
We did not start world wars that killed innocents,
My only sin was that I said the words ‘blessed be’.
Yet you despise all I am, without thought’s pause,
But it is you, who shall sing the bitterest laments…
Evil human, evil bigot, evil mortal whom I despise!
I am your better; I am superior beyond your hope.
You are beneath my contempt; I am the Queen…
And such sweet suffering Hell shall for you devise!
Whilst around your neck is tied the mighty rope…
You will be lowered into darkness, to so scream.

In the end, you will bow to me in heated chains…
Until your shrieks rise like music, to amuse gods.
Whilst I sit in judgment over your countless pains,
As your inner demons poke you with hot prods….
In the tender places, so that you know my agony,
The hell that comes from being treated much less:
Less than human, though I am more can’t you see!
Your demons will drink your blood in gory mess.

Upon a cross, shaped like an X, you will suffer…
No sleep will be permitted you, no sweet dreams.
You will be broken as you broke me, foul thing…
And no reprieve is mine to, your vileness, so offer.
I am the Queen; you will know the truth of Her…
Your every fear will flow from you in vast streams,
And for every time I cried, you will feel that sting,
Your weeping will so harden into a jeweled coffer.
Nothing of you will be left intact, no sanity whole,
And in Hell there is no death, only eternal horror!
Your torture was never my wish, never my goal…
But you wanted this, and so let demons so confer,

The totality of your misery back unto you: creature.
Your evil makes you reek, and it makes me sick!
I am your better, for I am not childish but mature,
Never stooping as low as you, to ignite the wick…
The flame of war to provoke, as you dared wake!
You woke the Dragon, and now you must so pay.
I will lay not a finger upon you; the evils you make,
You will know in Hell, for you must die, one day.

And thence: be bound eternally by your inner ills!
You judged me, hated me, abused me, and spat.
But one day you will kneel before my dark throne,
Fettered by the weight of your unrepentant evils:
And behold my true face, where your fears sat…
Whilst your fears flay you: to your weakest bone.
You saw me as less than human, you sick beast!
Mocked me, for being bisexual and transgender.
You called yourself, a believer in a loving God?
But I am your better; on you, crows shall feast…
Whilst my love, and I, shall always be together!
Keep hating me: keep calling me freakishly odd.

You mock the Queen of Hell, the bright Angel…
But, I was a child, when you first hurt my spirit!
What gave you the right to tell me I was wicked?
You never had the power to judge me so harsh.
But all things change, things ebb and then swell,
Like a primordial ocean, and how you will fear it!
It is not I who condemns you; you made this bed.

You crucified me, with your fanatical insanity,
Using religion as an excuse to persecute cruelly.
Words can cut deep, like knives flaying skin…
Now it is your turn to suffer, so we shall begin!
karen dannette Feb 2013
My pain is like a dripping faucet
abused and mistreated
My overall condition, worsening drip by drip by drip.
Filling up the sink of life and drowning slowly,
agonizingly.

Choices made with haste and without true understanding of the possible result of the bitterness and pain I was causing.
The loss of the only child you carried in your womb, protected and loved by you, tenderly and with intent.
Mistakes so numerous, an exact moment of loss not known.
Immature woman given young child to raise in this world
of temptation, sin and emotional turbulence.......

-SIN OF THE FLESH CHOSEN OVER A GODLY LIFE-

My beautiful boy with a heart full of hope and abundance
damaged with a change of plans in my travels, unfairly and unjust.
Causing his vehicle to careen down an empty highway of bitterness and isolation.
Fortifying walls around his heart full of abundance of trust and love
Now cold and distant from the mother that shielded him from pain with strain and exertion.

My voice beckons him from across the canyon
To PLEASE allow me to make things ok again between us.
But, alas, only the echo of my own voice is rocketing in the distance
Emptiness and hopelessness, I strain to hear anything at all, no emotion allowed to return to me.  Not even an angry voice.
Beating myself with a metal chain, ****** and in complete desperation, standing on piercing nails with ripped off limbs.....

-OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER-  
FOR EVER??  
NO MORE CHANCES.  
FORGOTTEN, WATCHING IN DESPAIR AS HIS LIFE GOES ON WITHOUT ME
SO EASILY, HE MAKES IT APPEAR.

Regret is like an ancient building ruining the value of its neighbors
decrepit and broken down,
Depraved, isolated and abandoned with recklessness.
So ugly on the outside, no one dares try to re-enter the condemnation of the door.
No one believes it can ever be restored to its original beauty and inspiration.

Hopeful and optimistic for a reunion of remembrance and forgiveness.
Determined with purpose, willing to risk looking shamed and unlovable.
No more self-respect because of hasty, decisions and instant gratification.
Still holding my breath.  Could this be the time I call and he finally comes around?
Grasping to clutch, once again, the blessed unconditional love and trust of my only son.

Negligent and selfish, unintentional life choices of a mother
Difficult to completely accept responsibility for injuries sustained by my misjudgment.
Finally, after years of scripture and study,
Understanding the agony and misery
God must have felt to watch Jesus' beaten and prodded,

GOD SACRIFICED HIS ONLY SON
............THE ONLY WAY TO SHIELD US FROM THE UNIMAGINABLE PAIN AND MISERY
OF AN  ETERNITY  IN HELL ALONE AND UNWANTED
FINALLY RENEWED WITH FORGIVENESS!!!
AFTER WE HAD SINNED AGAINST HIM SINCE THE GARDEN OF EDEN FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS.

Almost insane from the self-inflicted abuse,
Survival instincts start to make me want to give up and continue my bad choices to numb the memory of him.
Yet, still begging to have him love me again, even if it was for a single minute.
Dreaming of a loving hug from son to mother in earnest and heartfelt.  Willing to settle ANY emotion at all reciprocated.
Hoping he never makes a mistake that causes such irreparable intensity, empty and unwanted.

After 12 years of comforting and soothing and protection,
Everything lost, no more memory at all of mother needed...
No thought of how important he made me feel at one time.
Only father standing proud in picture next to child
                Lovingly smiling at him with adoration.

He respects him and loves him as much as he condemns and disregards me.
               He only speaks or thinks of me with disdain and total detachment
And.. Only when absolutely unavoidable and by force, it appears.
What kind of hell on earth is this?  
           My own tears drown my hope and regret now defines me with each effort of possible reconciliation that is tossed away like an unwanted thing.  

Drip, drip, drip.
My heart is ripped into a million pieces, by my own hand.  
Never to be needed again
If forgiveness will never be possible, tell me now.
                 Please have mercy, while I grieve the loss of my only son.  Yet he lives.
addiction  ad·dic·tion (ə-dĭk'shən)
n.
Habitual psychological and physiological dependence on a substance or practice beyond one's voluntary control causing regret and devastation to loved ones..
sometimes, irreparable.
Arlene Corwin Jun 2020
She Let A Moth Drown In the Lake

She let a moth drown in the lake,
Waves taking stackars* little thing
Further than her oar could reach.
Standing on beach, cupped eye,
Squinting, trying…
Moth was gone.
Death had won.

Just so you know I do no lie,
That ‘she’ was I.
I am the wimp who hesitated.
Fear of depth, of cold, of wet.
Excuses inexcusable.

Death of moth, still flapping moth
Is just as undeserving as our own demise.
Pedestrian, prosaic, commonplace,
Disgusting,
Yet compulsively discussable.

All living things delight in life-ness.
While they move and throb the slightest,
They delight.
Who takes a life by standing by
Will also die.
It is essential, is it not, to cry,
Identify with kin?
Kin hereby meaning ‘life within’.

Left with remorse and shame
She self-condemns,
She takes the blame.
She hopes some force
That knows the individuality of moth
Shows sympathy in rebirth
In some future form that has a breath.

So be it, Om, Amen to Earth!

She Let A Moth Drown In the Lake 6.14.2020 Birth,Death & In Between II;Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Nature II;Pure Nakedness;Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover, Corwin

*stackars; Swedish; ‘poor thing’
Simon Clark Aug 2012
Owl Of Night

Hoot cracks the night air,
Rustling rodents stands frozen,
Shock, swoop, attack prey.

2. Bat Of Night

Clear sight of blindness,
Sonar sounds rebound; its wings
cut fog; vampire.

3. To The Eagle

Giant golden flight,
Endless grace and smoothly glides,
Strong; its nation falls.

4. To The Graceful Swan

Elegant swimmer,
Pure white like virginal snow,
Paired to bitter end.

5. The Butterfly

Multicoloured gift,
Taken by the gusts to blend
like petal to plant.

6. The Butterfly Effect

Toxic explosion,
Hong Kong is destroyed; travels,
Condemns London air.

7. King Of The Jungle

Magnificent beast,
Ruler of his skilful pride,
Stalks African plains.

8. Roar Of A Tiger

Powerful calling,
Echoes ‘cross the heated land,
Mighty animal.

9. A Proud Cat

Sits in the garden,
Ears pricked, curled tail, statuesque,
Pride clear in her purr.

10. A Dog

…is a mans best friend,
…brightens the darkest of days,
…guarantees friendship.

11. The Wolf

A midnight howler,
Ghostly happenings occur,
Silhouetted; still.

12. The Polar Bear

Camouflaged in white,
Against the snow he hides out,
Tough, sturdy and pure.

13. God and the Devil

One high in the clouds,
Symbol of goodness; he’s blessed,
One below the ground.

14. To The Heavens

Are you really there?
Floating land of peaceful rest,
Will I be let in?

15. To Hell

Overwhelming flames,
Dead with red burns, smoke filled lungs,
Worse than hell on Earth.

16. To Mother

You granted me life,
Cared, and still do, for my health,
Made happiness real.

17. To Father

Encouraged and led,
Guided me with your being,
Created this man.

18. To My Siblings

Sister and brother,
On my shoulder no my back,
Love, care, lend and steer.

19. To A Child

Tiny newborn boy,
Asleep in his mothers arms,
The storks’ joyful gift.

20. To A Friend

A supporting hand,
To turn to, cry with and trust,
To laugh with and love.
written in 2010
Nathan Hicks Mar 2014
In our world we do not love freely,
Yet are so quick to hate.
We make haste to judge what we do not understand,
Fearing it like it will determine our fate,
Our lives...
And it will, but only in the way that hate begets hate,
And that is what they will sow,
This fear that they cultivate,
But why?
Love is so pure and easy to give,
Yet we reserve it,
We hold it back.
Our society condemns love,
Condemns peace,
We support war,
Support hate,
Support greed,
But why?
Why can two people who love each other not marry?
Because they are the same ***?
Who gave you that burden to carry?
To decide,
Love is not something that you hide away,
Don't act like this affects you.
Preach love,
We all share this earth as one nation,
Put aside our differences,
Better yet embrace them,
For they are the things that make us who we are,
The things that make us great,
We all have similar problems,
You'd be surprised who can relate.
Be positive change.
Sa Sa Ra Jun 2012
Before what thief you judge I be
Dare I share what apparent I see
A lie is but a lie is but a lie
Yet out of Garden, Heart and Mind
Four truths of lies be
One condemns the innocent
While another keeps guilt hidden
Which gives birth to swords…
That protect the innocent
And condemn the guilty
That’s what war is good for
To destroy denial
And ultimate deception
‘To do what has never been done’
And ‘Win what has never been won’
That the deserving have
What they have already won
Mr Darwin, please explain

Reading TS Eliot is to be drawn into timeless space where images of past and future combine in a continuous stream of thinking …. perhaps the immortality of ideas. The genetic material of life, DNA, is immortal, an unbroken thread linking life’s origins 4 billion years ago to the present ….. and future.

Sequence upon sequence of symbolic letters encoding countless forms of bodies, built to the same principles inherent in the genetic code, yet morphing in endless variety according to the tenets of natural selection ….. Darwin’s idea that transformed our thinking from a moment of purposeful creation to how life changes through time.

Cosmologists suggest we live in one of many possible universes perhaps in parallel time allowing parallel lives, one not knowing of the other’s existence because of the limitations of our three dimensional view of the world and its existence in the cosmos. We see in three dimensions and no more, but we are aware of more because mathematics tells us so.

Mr Darwin, please explain explores the seamless continuity of Darwinian thinking with the timelessness of Eliot’s poetry…..

I In my beginning is my end …. V In my end is my beginning.
(East Coker, Four Quartets, TS Eliot)


Mr Darwin, please explain

I

What is this selection of love so natural
To drive men insane and women to purgatory
Can Mr Darwin explain?
Some ask the question
But I doubt not, that his meaning is clear
Why love one to one remains so dear,
Though Karl denied it, Lenin too
And Uncle Joe dismissed it
As a plot to subvert what was good for the proletariat.
But in that recent time when ******’s darkness shadowed The Earth
Love glowed in the gloom of the despair of nations’ Terezíns
Which to-day helps to repair our broken dreams
Of why we love one to one.

Keats loved one ***** Brawne
And Coleridge his Asra
But what is ecstasy’s advantage?
When comes the pain of separation
Mr Darwin, please explain.
Is it lust, is it reproduction?
But then when love is thwarted
We cannot function,
Where is the advantage
Mr D --- what is the aim, can you explain?
How the coiled spiral passing from time to time
Its immortal message which condemns each generation
To the pain of separation
When the reaper calls, or the rival sunders
The coils of love’s message we’ve inherited
Since the beginning of time
Why? What is the advantage?
Mr D, please tell me your answer.

The whales they sing one to one
Like Eliot’s mermaids singing
Not to Prufrock but perhaps to you and me
The message of communication.
Is this love as one to one
Each supports another wounded
By the enormity of the harpoon?
The dictator’s message in another form
Devoid of love, sundered, never whole
Coming from that Terezín we never solve.
Dysfunctional Mr D, where’s the advantage
For such conflicting feelings to evolve?

David Applin
March 2012

II

Genes are the immortal ones
The links between past and future
But ever present
Unintentionally directing the future and fate of humankind.

Silent, unobserved yet Gods of their domain
Which is us and life past and future
Coiled threads of eternity that determine our happenings
Including our loving one to one.

Yet ….

In their entirety and interaction
Do they, in their interaction
Determine our loving one to one?
The bond that binds each to each
Perpetual celebration.

Or ….

Is their selfish blindness which some accord to be
Inconsequential
Like boats tossed helplessly on storm driven seas
Subject to the whims of wind and rain
No more than replicators housed in vehicles
Subject only to the chances of a changing world.


III

Bodies are vehicles, genes the replicators
Bodies and genes indivisible
At least in the present
But separated as bodies die after
Genes have passed to their immortal future.
Perhaps this is what is meant when they say
That the gene is selfish.

Accommodated in the selfless body at a particular time
But then discarded as genes pass its immortality
From past to future
Changes slow, quick depending on stasis or acceleration
According to Darwinian tenets that enfold the changes
In genes and therefore bodies
Through all time.


IV

Cycle upon cycle of genes and bodies
One perpetual, the other discarded each generation
By the unseen hand of an uncaring Nature.

Our nature, all nature, the beauty of sunsets
Driven by the mechanical clocks of cosmic cycles.

Yet Relative to other Dimensions where
What we see, we do not see
Because of the profound limitations
Of three dimensions.
We see only dimly what might be past
And what could be future
As we struggle in the presence of tautological explanation.

Body and gene, gene and body the temporary and perpetual
Bound in the dance of a living presence
The one ensuring the other’s future
For all time.
Circle upon circle, tautological argument
Explaining everything and nothing but all powerful
In its reductionism of humankind
And life kind as whales support the one
Wounded by the enormity of the harpoon
Loosed by the bodies of genes
Storm tossed and directionless
When thinking that others’ bodies
Can be discarded without thought or thinking
Perpetual damnation.

Tautomeric interaction.
We say the same thing in different ways,
Recycled ideas that parody the twenty different plots of novels
That return to the same point,
Come back to the common question

Why do we love one to one?

People ask…. ‘Can Mr Darwin explain?’

Perhaps not through bodies and genes
But instead, understanding the epistasis of genes and where we live.
We live in this world because of our past
As genes dance to the chance of environmental shifts
The whims of wind and rain, sea and wave
That blow and toss the genes
In their bodies, in random patterns,
Some sinking, others floating
Not always by chance
But because they float and fight
Yielding to the pressures of an uncaring nature.
Like soft down yielding to the thud of falling bodies
Softening their impact.

So to yield as well as fight
Is part of the selection of one by another
In the perpetual
Celebration of loving one to one.

We yield to the blandishments of the soft embrace
We fight to attain it

And once attained, what we do is all we do
To keep a hold on what we love
Only to lose it to the grim reaper of all our dreams
In this present world,
But to regain it in worlds to come
The link between past and future
For immortal genes
Of transitory bodies which is how
We think and see our presence
In time without end.



V

General relativity and quantum mechanics
The combination of infinity and the very small
Do not replace the Newtonian meaning of the day to day.
Just, that Newton is displaced to another time and place
Where description is precise but with uncertainty according to
Heisenberg.

To be certain is to fix ideas in time
Like natural selection in the Darwinian mind
To be propitiated without exception, else suffer extinction of self
And of all that matters to self and others
Sacrificed on the alter to propitiate the Gods of our certainty.

That is not to say that an idea cannot be fixed in time
That its central tenet is not true for eternity.
But truth is relative and uncertain
To be strengthened or cast aside
By better truths or developments of the same.

Our understanding expands with time
But often returns to something that was said before
And said again as if it were newly minted
In the mind of its creator
To become dogma
And as all dogmas
The truth unchanged in people’s minds.
Yet the central tenet survives, as survival is the result of natural selection
But with added components as
Understanding expands as to what is meant by surviving and survival.
To inherit the coils of love’s message is to survive.


VI

Can Mr Darwin explain?
Perhaps is not a whole question
In the same sense that answers depend on
The question asked and who is asking.

The truths that questions seek to answer
The truths of love, beauty and heating systems
Arise from answers to questions in different languages,
And languages translate imperfectly from one to one
As genes imperfectly translate proteins and therefore love in the
Darwinian world of our dreams.

Truth comes in different forms
And Darwinian truth is true to the questions it addresses.
But these are not the only questions of why we are,
Who we are, what we are
Who, what, why are we?

Questions past and future asked in the present
For all eternity.


Christmas (25th-28th) 2012
David Applin

Copyright David Applin 2015
......the rest of the poem as promised when the first part was posted May 2015. Another poem from the collection 'Letters to Anotherself'
They were hot on the trail
of the Parisian terrorists
who killed 127 people

When the gendarme came for her
they asked… “where's your boyfriend?”

she answered “he’s not my boyfriend”
she pushed a button and blew herself up

painting the inside of her modest flat
with a single coat of macabre rouge

an unsympathetic Tweet reported
that her head flew out the window
coming to rest on the cobblestone street
in front of the neighborhood bakery
her nostrils drawing a final breath filled
with the aroma of freshly baked croissants

perhaps her dimming retina reflected  
the flickering laser strobe scanning
the Parisian skyline from atop
the Eiffel Tower

maybe it was for the best
that she's been released
from her earthly travails

gotta be a major downer
being a card carrying Jihadi
living  life, parsing locations
to find the best sites to
****** innocent people

living life inside the prison
of a black burka, is
living inside the dogma
of religious delusion
gotta be a living hell
living large in a
Dante’s Inferno
doin hard time in
solitary confinement
of an addled mind
chained to a
wretched heart
looking at life
through tiny slit
like horse blinders
designed to encumber
the distraction of any
peripheral perspective

in summer the dark fabric
traps heat inside the raiment
bringing simmering resentment
to a raging boil

railing against bourgeois decadence
stewing over the whoredom of halter tops,
mini skirts and teeny weeny bikinis

a coal fired pressure cooker
stoked with repressed libidinal energy
loathing the sin of intimacy
recoiling from any intimate touch
the simmering resent
unable to find release
slowly builds until it blows

pure torture for a young woman
how can you not fall in love in Paris?
groove to jazz, lounge an afternoon away
sipping coffee at a sidewalk bistro
French kiss a lover
on a Rive Gauche bench

In The City of Light
how can you prefer body counts
to loving embraces?

the construction of a suicide vest
to epiphanies concealed in
affable Impressionists brushstrokes
or the revelations of Cezanne's dancers


to never roll the warm blush
from a fine Bordeaux
in the cradle of your tongue
or the sophisticated pose
of a first cigarette

to be immersed
in the City of Lights
while shunning
its illumination
by hiding under
a black burka
is absurd

why does this form of Islam require
these sacrifices from the fairer ***?
why does their understanding
of faith forbid body contact
yet demands a righteous body count?
what type of religion sanctifies this?

where an unknowable Allah
promises a paradisaical afterlife
only through the condemnation
of a pedestrian Joie de Vivre

Sharia liberates the soul
with divine chains of submission
and stokes an abhorrence to
secular democracy that condemns
the spirit to the anarchy of choices

is it no surprise she pulled the trigger?
to bad the Quran consumed all her reading time
had she only lifted a slim volume of Camus
she may have read The Myth of Sisyphus
"suicide springs from a feeling of absurdity"
Allah condemned her to a dark subservience
whose only goal was a nihilist martyrdom of
mass ****** and self annihilation  

Said Camus

“those who lack courage will
always find a philosophy to justify it”

and finally she may have understood

Camus's posit of the most important question….…...

“should I **** myself or have a cup of coffee?

she should have had a cup of coffee….

Erik Satie - Trois Gymnopédies

jbm
Oakland
020316
This poem is a companion piece to Righteous Ruminations ....
It is not my intention to denigrate Islam or Muslim women of the veil...
tolerance for religion is the path to peace...
yet the tension between the secular west and Sharia practices remain at odds and nurture extremism on both sides
Saul Makabim Nov 2014
Silenced
by a two-tongued tyrant
Who condemns with one flick
and licks the hand of hate
with the other
I shall never love
or find sister or brother
in the valley of silk scarves
wrapped around the root of creation
Deliver us Shiva
from the servants of dread Kali
Who don the mantle of civilization
but **** the faithful in the shadows
Oh foul deity of negativity
just once
please
show us who you are
Because your mask of kindness is broken
and the anger of your spirit
seeps out like a stealthy virus
Not bold and righteous
like the noble villain
But with a sheeps skin draped
over his foul devouring maw
If evil lurks and strikes
in the guise of the holy
Then you are greater than evil
A horror beyond the bounds
of acceptable wickedness.
Low...in the dead of night a savior appeared...he held the bread of vitality in one hand...and behind his back he concealed tyranny...
Marshal Gebbie Dec 2010
For my mate Ernest W who cared....

Invisible in silky strands, a gossamer of lethal thought,
Drifting through the nether regions, touching on my mind.
Complication’s vagaries encroaching on the circumspect
Magnifying well beyond solutions I can find.

Nervous in the groundswell now, I feel it all inflating,
Inflating to a curtaining beyond my self control,
Waves of peristalsis in a shrill persistant keening,
Locking out the sanity in holding logic’s goal.

Waves of peristalsis in a bath of perspiration
Panic in a rupture at the coccyx of my spine,
Ravenously eating at the fabric of all reason
Ravenously gnawing at this rationale of mine.

***** in a puddle on the floor beside my footwear
Cloying is the stench of the ***** in my drawers,
Lost are the vestiges of any thought of decency
Gone is the differentiation in my flaws.

Clenching of hands in a bind of blue confusion
Catatonic slowness in arresting the decline,
Vaccilating eyeballs are rolling for the camera
And utter desolation is a flavour on my mind.

Why be concerned with the shaming of tomorrow?
Why come to terms with the maunderings of late?
Why face the music of the mirth and derision
When there’s a more practical direction to take?

Glide to the realm of the smooth overflowing
Slide in the slipstream oblivion makes,
Slip the bonds of your sad  mortal tenure’s
Awful array of destructive mistakes.

Glide to the realm of serene independence
Glide far away from the troubled and hard,
Gone to the gossamer web of the ether
Gone to the nether world’s silky facade.

...........: But what's the guts Courageous,
You happy with your deed?
Are your friends all overjoyed
To see your suicide succeed?
Is your family unaffected
By the loss and guilt remorse,
Your sudden grand departure
leaving kids without recourse?

Did you think about the aftermath?
The chaos and the pain
And the long term implications
Of your shattered families' shame?
The guilt within your partners heart,
The kids who are confused
And the ****** dissapointment
Of your mates.. who feel abused?

The mess you left behind you
And the tangled web you wove
And the bruising of good memories
For which, you once,...had strove.
Your painless, quick demise, you thought,
Released you from all this.....
But the sadness in the silent eyes
Condemns you as remiss.



Marshalg  
In an effort to understand why?
....And explain why not !
9 December 2010



Read more: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/suicide-12/#ixzz17kzvfsTk
Tryst May 2014
To strive to know the heart of one so pure,
To contemplate the fate of one so young;
With heavy hearts, uncertain and unsure,
We honor thee and praise thee with our song;
To stand alone, amongst the enemy,
To take a stand, and stare them in the face;
With courage in your heart, to let them see
That you alone can walk within God's grace;
To burn and burn and thrice to burn again,
To turn the skin, and flesh, and bone to ash;
Discarding all remains unto the Seine,
The stains upon their souls will never wash;
        Old men of cloth, long deaf to voices sainted;
        Her name condemns your black-hearts ever tainted.
In memory of Joan of Arc, murdered 30th May 1431.
Lily Sep 2012
She strives for the picture in her mind
of that inimitable girl she can't define.
She runs through life trying to stay on track
guarded, but craving a pat on the back.
She dreams out how she wants scenarios to go
and is fine ending up watching a different show.
She clings to the people she holds most dear
even the ones that are not so near.
She condemns herself when mistakes abound
instead of just saying, "it's too late now"...
If the White-Washed Tomb our Saviour condemns
Would soil my Beatitudes for your Pleasure
A True Friend I'd Fail. Though your Sense indemns,
Spread by some Hippies who plead my Censure
Fine. Be it so for the Loony I am
Though to Toxic Increments you may succumb
Which, praying deeply, prevent this love enhance
Then flow to where your Best Graces become
There are Fishes, after all, for you to feast
Since your Face hooked as Bait will consider
Which an Episode be careless at least
And leave your Bones nipping one another.
Honestly so, these Words I do evade
Which porns my Intent; And brands me a *****.
#tomdaleytv #tomdaley1994
Jack Trainer Oct 2014
In the morning, I gather my thoughts of yesterday
Like the foraging chipmunk, collecting acorns
And stuffing them miserly in my jowls
The past is sustenance for a somnolent soul

As age condemns my faculties
I pull, from my once copious jowl
A jewel of sorts
A garnet set in fool’s gold

My memory is manufactured
Assembled and disassembled
No longer what was or is or will be
But was and is and never has been

I confine my thoughts to winter
Where barren fields and sterile trees
Offer less to recollect
And empty my jaws of these useless reminiscences
Imagining what it must be to have this dreadful disease.
I've been afraid
Not of the truth
But of what it would do to you
I've wanted to slough the burden
Of which it weighs me down
Words have not been given
Me
That would shine a brighter light
Sufficient to reveal and yet
Dim enough so as not to blind
For it is not to you that I would send them
Neither do I expect you to listen to them
I would rather you didn't
But what comes around goes around
And I have lived vicariously through
You
For many, many years
Surely the truth will find it's way
It's own special way
I should embrace it, let it set me free
But I fear it
I fear death, too

There is something pushing against my back
Something heavy and forceful
The momentum of it's ******
Finds a center in my chest
Where I can only imagine a heart rests
My secret room, my prayer closet
Storehouse for everything I've ever known
Wasteland of every forgotten thought and memory
Embryo of my spirit
Womb of my soul
The weight of all that follows me
Threatens to raze it all
All I ever was, pushed into nothing
I feel it strong, it doesn't stop

A vacant numbness envelopes my mind
Some kind of mental Novocaine
I see the beauty of the world
I hear the music of your voice
They crawl into open holes
And pass straight through, down the spiral
Until the spiral implodes
In upon itself
Disappearing, vanishing, out of this world
Unregistered by the attention span of a zombie
Still, there are moments of cognizance
That I would cherish fondly
If only memory would cooperate

I do not want to die
I want to disappear
I want to close my eyes and never have to open them again
I want to dissolve into nothing
I want to ride that spiral myself and find out
To where the visions travel
I want to float in an ocean of light
Millions of miles from land in any direction
I want to be able to give up everything
That makes me want to stay here
A list, by the way, which gets shorter by the year
I want to walk into the light
That condemns me on this side

I would give up heaven
To go back to the womb
To call this life a draw
Before I could get the chance to ruin so many lives
Then slice open that womb
And let the placenta drenched shell drop into a bucket
You'll never see me
The scalpel will never press cool surgical steel
Against anything I could be, would be
Into anything I am
And let my mother shed no tears
And grieve me not
I am where I always hoped to be
I am where I am

The light shows this heart of mine
That's where I want to be, too
And this may sound like something
But it's not
I will hold on to hope
Even as it dies to an ember
Invisible to the naked eye
I am a strong man
My soul has been beaten down
Many times
But I always pick it back up
Stuff it back in
Move on
Move on
Move on

And I know what love is
I just can't feel it
Which doesn't make it any less love
But it lives in a hollow place
Where it stings like a hornet
When touched
Like the poison of a catfish gill
That once slipped into the skin
Makes you never want to go fishing again
Love that can't be felt, is it worth living for?
Precious Lord, is it worth dying for?

These pills won't cure you
Hopefully they will keep the illness at bay
Bravo, pharmaceutical science
’Twas now the noon of night, and all was still,
Except a hapless Rhymer and his quill.
In vain he calls each Muse in order down,
Like other females, these will sometimes frown;
He frets, be fumes, and ceasing to invoke
The Nine, in anguish’d accents thus he spoke:
Ah what avails it thus to waste my time,
To roll in Epic, or to rave in Rhyme?
What worth is some few partial readers’ praise.
If ancient Virgins croaking ‘censures’ raise?
Where few attend, ’tis useless to indite;
Where few can read, ’tis folly sure to write;
Where none but girls and striplings dare admire,
And Critics rise in every country Squire—
But yet this last my candid Muse admits,
When Peers are Poets, Squires may well be Wits;
When schoolboys vent their amorous flames in verse,
Matrons may sure their characters asperse;
And if a little parson joins the train,
And echos back his Patron’s voice again—
Though not delighted, yet I must forgive,
Parsons as well as other folks must live:—
From rage he rails not, rather say from dread,
He does not speak for Virtue, but for bread;
And this we know is in his Patron’s giving,
For Parsons cannot eat without a ‘Living’.
The Matron knows I love the *** too well,
Even unprovoked aggression to repel.
What though from private pique her anger grew,
And bade her blast a heart she never knew?
What though, she said, for one light heedless line,
That Wilmot’s verse was far more pure than mine!
In wars like these, I neither fight nor fly,
When ‘dames’ accuse ’tis bootless to deny;
Her’s be the harvest of the martial field,
I can’t attack, where Beauty forms the shield.
But when a pert Physician loudly cries,
Who hunts for scandal, and who lives by lies,
A walking register of daily news,
Train’d to invent, and skilful to abuse—
For arts like these at bounteous tables fed,
When S——condemns a book he never read.
Declaring with a coxcomb’s native air,
The ‘moral’s’ shocking, though the ‘rhymes’ are fair.
Ah! must he rise unpunish’d from the feast,
Nor lash’d by vengeance into truth at least?
Such lenity were more than Man’s indeed!
Those who condemn, should surely deign to read.
Yet must I spare—nor thus my pen degrade,
I quite forgot that scandal was his trade.
For food and raiment thus the coxcomb rails,
For those who fear his physic, like his tales.
Why should his harmless censure seem offence?
Still let him eat, although at my expense,
And join the herd to Sense and Truth unknown,
Who dare not call their very thoughts their own,
And share with these applause, a godlike bribe,
In short, do anything, except prescribe:—
For though in garb of Galen he appears,
His practice is not equal to his years.
Without improvement since he first began,
A young Physician, though an ancient Man—
Now let me cease—Physician, Parson, Dame,
Still urge your task, and if you can, defame.
The humble offerings of my Muse destroy,
And crush, oh! noble conquest! crush a Boy.
What though some silly girls have lov’d the strain,
And kindly bade me tune my Lyre again;
What though some feeling, or some partial few,
Nay, Men of Taste and Reputation too,
Have deign’d to praise the firstlings of my Muse—
If you your sanction to the theme refuse,
If you your great protection still withdraw,
Whose Praise is Glory, and whose Voice is law!
Soon must I fall an unresisting foe,
A hapless victim yielding to the blow.—
Thus Pope by Curl and Dennis was destroyed,
Thus Gray and Mason yield to furious Lloyd;
From Dryden, Milbourne tears the palm away,
And thus I fall, though meaner far than they.
As in the field of combat, side by side,
A Fabius and some noble Roman died.
A slight quiver from the bow in your back
I come on strong like a fatal attack
Hunting you down
A hushed whimper in your throat condemns
The subtle undertones of shameful whims
Cutting you down

A silent breakdown in the guise of guilt
Laying waste to a temple built
Crumbling down
A lucid dream where you all four come
Expecting nothing, but for me to run
Gunning you down

So, it has come down to this
Sinking further between your lips
Holding your hips I aim to fix
This memory with another hit

Self-soothe with a fading bruise
All there is left of you
Leaving you down
Tip off the cops in this ****** plot
Left unpursued with a final thought
Burning you down

So, it has come down to this
Sinking further between your lips
Holding your hips I aim to fix
This memory with another hit
Erase her graceful face
Erase her staying taste
Erase her hopeful trace
Erase her
Erase her

(Ich möchte sehen, dass Sie sich für Ihre Unwissenheit brennen. Ich will sehen Sie spucken Blut, du verdammte Hure. Es gibt nichts, ich will in meinem Leben, außer dich leiden sehen aus erster Hand. Ich könnte glücklich sterben wissen Sie nahm das eigene Leben, also, wenn Sie wirklich wollen, mich glücklich zu machen, dann gehen ******* do it. Ich werde weinen gottverdammten Tränen der Freude, wenn du weg bist, dass eine Garantie ist. Gehen Sie weiter und hassen mich, weil ich krankhaft bin, aber dieses realisieren: Sie wissen nicht, Scheiße, und du wirst nie, du Fotze stur. Ich werde dich in der Hölle zu sehen.)
"Abscission of Eschewal”

If I am still, I can hear the voices.

Chimes of advices, softly spoken, coronate in neon in my peripherals. Messages, abscissas from the x-axis of words and sounds, just parallel, float their fog of transmission to me.

“Touch that wall,” a voice’s suggestion nudges as I crookedly gain my balance by clutching the flat surface of this white wall, one fourth of the surfaces confining the contents of a tight enclosure. Just under the ventilation shaft, the wall is vibrating. The voices are louder near vibrations.

The enclosure, with every surface bleach white, is a bathroom, a corner taken at the edge of the convenience store off the four lane highway by the high school.

Its sink compacts spotless metal into its design, and the crafting lines visibly run parallel upon in its surface, reflecting generously to the bags under my eyes. The soap dispenser’s cubic structure cut into a visitor's vision like the blade of a pencil sharpener, showing every pixel and every angle of my face inside it.

Feint grooves dig into the wall in the shape of a triangle and a pair of scissors. Opposite that wall, a door with no handle stands; in the place of the handle rests only a circular lock. Behind the door, I hear a sigh, a winded slurp, the kind joggers give after high speed exertion on a morning run.

I hear the air rush, hitting the nostrils.

I hear a whimper.

I push the door open, slowly, and the hinge pops in intervals as it wedges open.

In front of me, a stool sets with a touch screen phone running on top of it, and a limp woman curls in a ball upon the floor, facing the bathroom. Her eyelids are missing.

A video plays of her on the touch screen phone on the stool. In a Skype window, she, a brunette girl with duct tape wrapped around her mouth, flickers in the thick black mire of what appeared to be another lavatory with a single fluorescent light with faulty wiring blinking a white glow upon her matted, unwashed hair. A black frame and darkness outlines her figure, filling the rest of the room. Her eyelids are missing in the video, just as her eyelids are missing in person, but she grasps to consciousness in the video, and she turns her eyes frequently with nervous twitches, wheezing and whimpering in the Skype window on the phone.

“Incoming call, 785-135-1581,” a white screen with green buttons interrupts.

I touch “Accept” and pick up the phone.

When my ear touches to the phone, I hear heavy breathing.

“No breeding, Jonas.” a male voice whispers.

“How do you know me?” I ask.

“Mating. They want to keep you from it,” the man continues.

“I won’t let that happen,” I assert.

“This was in protest, the first. Eyes open, so they can see,” the man says on the phone.

The male voice I heard on the phone, The Heavy Breather, inhales and exhales.

“Are there anymore?” I ask.

“I didn’t need anymore. Find out about her. See for yourself.”

I check her wallet.

I see credit cards, visas, and a 5x7 with her standing behind a podium in a lodge in a small town with a banner behind it, and a picture of a man racing on foot, crossing a finishing line with an arm outstretched in front of another racer to prevent him from finishing.
On the banner, a slogan reads, “Keep unborn and unflowered: cleanse the youth.”
Seated before her in the lodge are several lawyers, doctors, and town leaders conversing, smiling, and greeting.

“Look what they’ve done, colluding together, excluding us.  Leaving us alone. Partying while we suffer. Those in The Colluded of the Equinox kiss their wives and girlfriends and children in public they hoard and tell it all to us, flaunting their miscreant deeds. They hide in shadows and do every wrong thing, but they only rarely do wrong in public, and they are never together at the same time. They keep hidden company. They rejoice in their evils, oppression. We live not more than a few miles from them, wherever we live at anytime. We live with them. One sin from an unlucky man is worse than a thousand sins from a lucky man. Is that it? Is an unlucky Christian worse than a lucky atheist? They spew their mantra: 'It’s so much worse than you think.' They tell you you’re not what you think, that everything you know is wrong. 'Submit,' they say. You know what I did? I did what I wanted. This woman on the ground before you is what I wanted.”

“All this to stop from reproduction? This society…” I ask.

“I hate it, also. Be it willing or unwilling conspiracy, it is still conspiracy, high crimes, ” The Heavy Breather responds.

“Crimes before whom?” I question.

“I don’t know,” The Heavy Breather admits.

“I know some. First, they stare. Peeping in your windows, following. Then, records, whole security camera videos, receipts in stores, gone…written in ink that disappears. Records of existence...gone.Wherever you were, you were never there. That’s what they want for you, to delete every backed up conversation, memory, and recollection, so they can instill new things. I shopped in stores, and the devices were amnesiacs,” he recounts.

The woman on the floor moans and stirs, but she settles again feebly.

"They can't get rid of all that at once," I interject.

“No, but they keep scraping the little details of life away, proof of life, covering them up. They have cleaners, cleaning up our little spills of progress and success. Witnesses, like the devices they own, are amnesiacs." The Heavy Breather asserts.

"Even if the electronics are wiped clean, they must have seen us at stores or parking lots, somewhere. They can think for themselves and put it together, right?" I ask.

“Those that remember us have no incentive to continue those memories. The Colluded of the Equinox brainwash. Married people are telling the ***** not to get married. They force celibate priests, figures in white hoods.
The Colluded of the Equinox force people like quivering lures, closing doors until the only ones left are of seclusion and chastity. They are in all religions, hierarchies, in every ruling body, replacing reproduction with work, with ‘purpose,’“ he continues.

The body on the floor twitches as I hear the Heavy Breather grunt on the phone.

“These are their protocols. These are the Colluded’s motives. The Colluded condemns displays of affection, physical acts of love, reproduction. The Colluded controls the population. The Colluded tells the women to focus on each other and obey advertisements’ models of how they should behave and look…conformed and emotionless. The Colluded are survivalists, locking the reproductive organs of selected citizens to save money and keep control. The Colluded use the magnetism of credit cards to lock your urethra…the tingle you feel when you sit down on your credit cards in your wallet…it lowers your ***** count,” he growls.

“The answer came to me. 'Write your message on her insides,' said the sentence that was scrawled within my closed eyes in neon. It should read: ‘She threw us a stone instead of bread, the way corrupt people do.' You can go, now. I have work to do,” he suggests.

I heard a motor crank on the phone.

“Should I expect the authorities here?” he asks as the sound rumbles in the background.

“Carry on. I didn’t see anything,” I reply.

I grab the cell phone from the stool, press the 'End' button, put it in my pocket, and walk out of the bathroom, pushing the woman on the floor with my foot on my way out far enough from the door to close and seal it in front of her, nodding to the convenience store clerk as I push the glass door open and walk out into the street, cranking up my car and leaving to the open road.
this age of existence strikes
an honesty that prevails
it disappoints the generations
perhaps this age has failed

liberal humanism condemns
America's noble stance
a selfish congregation builds
a mosque on hallowed land

for we elected those
who dug us in a hole
in debt, our freedom spent
and now this wretched toll

it's about sensitivity,
we need a peace of mind-
change, our leader must make,
but he's on vacation all the time
© Christopher Rossi, 2010
Makana Queja Sep 2012
The Land of the Free…

Is it? Isn’t it? I thought so.

America is everyone’s land.

Or so that’s what they claim.

It became a land filled with

Lies and deception.

They lied within their lies,

It might as well be Inception.

“Be who you want to be,

As long as it is who we want.”

That’s what the Motto should be.

But this is America. MY AMERICA.

I would die for the Stars and Stripes.

Because I was told that I was entitled

That my ancestors bleed for this land,

And that this land is worth dying for.

A place where you can be who you want to be,

No matter of race, ****** orientation, or religion.

That’s the land that I’m willing to die for.

A place where every man is entitled to their opinion,

Without discrimination. Where no man condemns.

I fight for freedom. Not for myself, I know that I’m free.

I fight for freedom. For my fellow man,

Because I know they deserve it,

Just as much as I do.

Just as much as anyone does.

I fight for freedom,

What do you fight for?
Sag Aug 2014
They say everyone has a chance
for eternal life if they accept Him.
They say "the blood of Christ will
make hearts white and cleanse them."
What about the girl whose heart beats
for another girl under her sheets?
Or the boy who was born in sin
lusting over and loving men?
Who makes those sinners well?
If love condemns me to Hell
then I want no part in this holy land
because I only feel heaven when I'm holding her hand.
And if that's wrong
then I don't want to be right
because her blood will cleanse me
and make my heart light.
So call me Judas Iscariot
or nail me to a cross
But love is a battle I've fought and fought
And I won't take this loss.
Jon Sawyer Mar 2014
A lazy slave takes advantage of their master.

A lazy master condemns themself.
Max Jones Feb 2013
hey, god,
can you explain this artificial, chemically grown form of love?
if  this love thing's so wonderful,
why is it assigned like some ******* chore?
some combination of cells grosses from your genitalia
and now you have some new tax deductions and soccer games to see.

is love an emotion?
you endure it and feel it like it's turned your bones into wind chimes?
is love an adjective?
does that soup taste of love? does her hair reek of love?
is love a noun?
can you hold it and touch it? can you sew it to your t-shirt?

is love made in a factory?
a touch of obligation, a handful of selflessness?
is love a seed that's planted?
does it break through the earth and climb towards the sun?
is love a song you write?
do a few measly chords grow into music after time spent strumming your heart strings?

the earth is coated in conditions,
so how does this conditionless concept thrive
in an atmosphere that condemns it?

and why, god, why,
do i appear to be the only one who questions it?
why can't i feel it, understand it, grasp it,
when the rest of the world breathes it like oxygen?

the faithless can mold it,
the faithful live for it.
so what catastrophic flaw is lodged into my brain that disables me to feel it?
to comprehend it?
to accept it?

how can it exist in so many dimensions?
is it like the flu, do you catch it?
is like a piece of art, do you create it?
is it like your mother's crooked nose, do you inherit it?

and how
can a mother look at  her newborn
not knowing its intentions, its personality, its thoughts
and feel sunshine that
is rooted in the bottom of
her soul?

— The End —