Fragile egg-shell mind on dawn’s highway bleeding the segue between times traversed only in momentary dreams or in enduring excursions

We drag our droll and quaint 60s baggage like the luggage of a safari made of concrete girding a cavernous expanse of unheralded ground

With our ears oriented to the floor, we leap out of body never to deplore….never to ignore….never to miss the blue bus of our drafted imaginations, so carefully culled from brash elitism

I trounce the intervening time between being friendless and an ironic end, and an irenic comrade becoming the dearest amazed but always aplomb friend

We simper in our glorious traversal, and though bedraggled through an ornamented cavern we linger just long enough to be celebrated

Then a blues riff emanates from a vapid bar, and finally someone heralds my exhumed memory still rusty with the pavement of encased concrete on an empty or full tomb

So I wander in my mind to that roughshod Paris glassy tincture a romanticized gild of proper sensibility crafted in the tongues of lizards emulating the tongues of serpentine Anglicans

As the power of love transcends the love of power, both are afforded serendipitously upon the stately occasion of a fitful revolt where heads literally rolled and deaths still unfurl from the slippage of a violent malevolent eternity, crafting a new creative way to expedite the smite of preventable scourge

So, I see your picaresque side and your wide-eyed love for a listless ship anointed of a crystal blip just detectable long enough on RADAR to become the statistic to crack the slim WHIP

No wigs are needed at this formality, no figs grow from trees forty-five years buried and almost a full month unsung

Pitiable cretins of an invented insanity, they scoff at my ravenous and portentous heart for its excess and for aligning with an upstart verging on only a specious insanity

Why in all humanity could a month be mustered with every defense of history and yet for it to be so widely flouted as a risible exercise in futility

The irony that the artistic glamor of a past vogue becoming a revival that is often toked only to one song but never to the memorial of great cavernous and commodious imaginations, staggers with dismay where otherwise the mayday would be a disaster but still a great day

Then I look at a triggered-fingered omen of a death so ominous yet so brazenly confronted as the ambassadors of time provide plaudits to a fearless martyrdom

Why such a sad spate, why such a stringent but malevolent fate a malediction on a family whose crest is not crestfallen like rolling waves but ornamented with gravity impounding its own weight

A fugacious tomb, an eternal flame, a swan song announcing an independent authority on a prescient demise mashed and deprived

A single shot rippling through the broadened space between clasped eternity and a histrionic disgrace as a psychological confederate pays lip service to a reiterative applause

A cousin hardly American in a defected record of incendiary plumes of a hoarse hatred of waxen discs and flying discs alike,  climbs out of a bonfire mounted purely out of vindictive spite

Then upon a great white buffalo a wrapped package of Californian love before California ever alighted like something beyond an avaricious dove, saw a rocky park and a hearth of illuminated darkness the singular spark

Captain Morgan knows the jackknife applause of a botched deal morphing into a disbelieved spiel. A shibboleth of enormous mystical weight crashing down from an ethereal abode and heaven heavily saddened cannot hardly appeal

Then a loving spoonful of crystal blue persuasion led me to Ethel’s regimented keepsake and for once in my life nobility and I became a grateful waif. But temerity laughed, splintered spacecraft, and the wooden paws of a bearish applause led to resurgent clarity

Blinking stars shattered by knighted and raw applause punctured the liberated might of a sentient hortatory savior grasped by the internecine wrench of a waxen time

An indie track slides by unnoticed in an aleatory time, and the threadbare whine of centuries of lament becomes a dastardly barn set ablaze with the fury of ancients and the scurry of faineant patents

Perfidy slides in recess, and in gentle forbearance the winged angel lingers like a halo on conifer and spring above a remedial ring

I dial frisky celerity tingling the dangling claws of a raven’s screed and in plunder of all history’s pilfer secrets I eagerly weave a tapestry Indiana Jones himself would be proud to watch

Not the riotous ruin of a mystery tour of verdure crippled by genocide but overcome by the revived life of raised rain razing the moments of indelible pain

But the culmination of a proffered time taken at its word for its every careened bird, for its every brazen gird. The manger of proctored stars calls us home tonight and home forever. Life in quaked timorous stumbles suddenly no longer so fitfully absurd.

The quixotic plundered of pirates and emperors in direct emulation of some crooned pastiche of whittled integrity, surges above any encased blurb and any vain testament to a pyramid rigid in destiny and ragged in desultory and sturdy sincerity

Multiplying the ineffable by the division of arable divorced from edible is too creative to be eaten as pabulum when sparks curdle flickered moonlight crimson and that become golden only to the last laugh of ennobled ragamuffins

Frankly the desert of melliferous gorillas abetting the lark of a heavily vetted camarilla engaged in the sinecure of a rigged wall on a main street to block the tall from the lame bleat. Stocks grazed, costs engaged on a littoral beach at the end of a Bossy promenade

This prayer is a cutthroat collapse of a merry spare, a ribbed ****** waiting to plunge into the antithesis of female despair, but sincere in its restraint that vixens courted in love aren’t courted in litigation of a wagered dare

Ambulances chase Deloreans through the desolate moon-stricken skies of a time agape with fleets of phantasmagoria on a Cliffside too wise to ever mince words or excise cries

Skulking the red-teared caverns of entombed films and lampooned tinctures on a passion vetted only for certain and utter deracinated disguise, I wallop with winged men in a single soul Armed to the Teeth with inveterate tithes to eternal internments of poached and endangered gazettes

As growth older in wizened skin bets on epithets rather than epitaphs for rinsed peace and triumphant clefts we leap above in orbit of only the bellowing nether of blown tolls and untold souls aggregating the esoteric grasp of Alexandrian tomes

The denumeration of certainty is a carousel of wonder, a splurge of time ripped asunder with majesties of paparazzi scuttled impacts a throttled iniquity of regalia’s indicted blunder frenchified but still clean with inestimable sheens

With twenty-five dollars, a dime an assist and a nickeled reiteration of currency already so personable it is divine and sublime in crazed desist I watch the embroiled natives clash in denatured violence with the warriors of a crossed repast hearkening to an old land much of ire but too much of grandstand to ultimately last

Itching for a holy field husk of peerless ties listed as rumpus and beer, a two-packed smoked by bludgeoned blokes careless in irascible sputters of a muffled doom, a Vegan becomes the author of too many sacrosanct homilies becoming defiled witchcraft brooms dead on arrival too many lionized tombs

In plaudits and the scause of an amplified “what if?” of an olfactory nightmare of petrified fog of effluvium bogged in Wade and in heat it is always clogged, sinewy libations of toasted preemptive revenge become a powerballed hog

A castle in the sky founded on Franklin but scourged of wineskins brimming with a distilled time, a swift repartee becomes the whispered ladder of saints blather becoming not rather other than a Dan Rather spatter

A door breeched by a broached inconvenience of amphigory beyond common reach, I clamber excess and whisk the lingered love into destiny beyond any word other than a beseeched preach of nothing tired but everything inspired of noble love with abundance often to teach

Fireworks of turned tides of fallow tithes to aliens beyond any conceivable bribe the bushwhacker writhes but survives Stayin' Alive without even a hint of garbled jive a 27th floor glass elevator is quite a resplendent ride

Wellsprings knowing radical rolled tides of errant dice also themselves guilty of confessional tithes to the monolith of avarice at the nooked cranny of an evaporated time we whine as the police sting the album rained with songs too lugubrious to sing but in their elegy every lonely heart has a propinquity phone of souled resonance ring

Iterative mastery of a mathematics of love, loss decay and the dross of a dental Occidental floss, the sweep of screened queues become questions of inestimable importance to foreign dues on A Horse With No Name but so consumed with fumes

A fright occultist Thriller prowls in a waylaying daylight, masquerading an innocent confection for a rescued triage of a dawn stabbed with knives in our last dying days of trembled plight

He resurrects only the wraiths of detest, squinted at by the putrefaction of summoned cardiac arrest and littered with bullets that somehow can penetrate even impregnable bullet proof vests the wrapped carcass of the mummified husk of ready despair offers itself a ghoulish and raspy prayer

Synchronized in a low roaring swathe of rollercoasters too immersive to ride, the terpsichorean obscurantism of deliberately shattered fragments becoming blurbs dismissed with hijacked deride the carnival of a summer sun becomes the ocean of limitless love becoming endless fun

We forget the drawl of the droll old tales that haunt like specters in the closet and beneath the bedridden valetudinarian of an effrontery of shackled fright, we sprawl the innumerable caverns of prophetic insight afforded by the pantheon of history enter stage left, depart stage right

And with their insight I write and write, I grasp the tusk of democracy and wage an insurrection against the doubt of plodding limitations in otherwise immaculate sight

*** and tyrannosaurus rex, of litigable offenses leading to pardonable arrests, the gated entryway of a poetic splurge leads to the demiurge of a demotic enlightenment and suddenly the frank becomes the frazzled retirement and that haunting hounding bunny transmogrified by a shattered eye averts the car crash that careens ponderous engines out of limitless twilight blue skies.

Diamond lightning in pristine skies escorts the telegraphic totems of riddled modems from distant forbearance to nescient ultimatum and suddenly all venerable personages converge on a teeming scene of a union unified by a universal dream. To become everything and yet nothing and out of light and darkness to become a beatific beam

(poems from the Chinese translated by Arthur Waley)

Last night the clouds scattered away;
A thousand leagues, the same moonlight scene.
When dawn came, I dreamt I saw your face;
It must have been that you were thinking of me.
In my dream, I thought I held your hand
And asked you to tell me what your thoughts were.
And you said: ‘I miss you bitterly . . . “

As Helen drifted into sleep the source of that imagined voice in her last conscious moment was waking several hundred miles away. For so long now she was his first and only waking thought. He stretched his hand out to touch her side with his fingertips, not a touch more the lightest brush: he did not wish to wake her. But she was elsewhere. He was alone. His imagination had to bring her to him instead. Sometimes she was so vivid a thought, a presence more like, that he felt her body surround him, her hand stroke the back of his neck, her ******* fall and spread against his chest, her breath kiss his nose and cheek. He felt conscious he had yet to shave, conscious his rough face should not touch her delicate freckled complexion . . . but he was alone and his body ached for her.

It was always like this when they were apart, and particularly so when she was away from home and full to the brim with the variously rich activities and opportunities that made up her life. He knew she might think of him, but there was this feeling he was missing a part of her living he would never see or know. True, she would speak to him on the phone, but sadly he still longed to read her once bright descriptions that had in the past enabled him to enter her solo experiences in a way no image seemed to allow. But he had resolved to put such possible gifts to one side. So instead he would invent such descriptions himself: a good, if time-consuming compromise. He would give himself an hour at his desk; an hour, had he been with her, they might have spent in each other’s arms welcoming the day with such a love-making he could hardly bare to think about: it was always, always more wonderful than he could possibly have imagined.

He had been at a concert the previous evening. He’d taken the train to a nearby town and chosen to hear just one work in the second part. Before the interval there had been a strange confection of Bernstein, Vaughan-Williams and Saint-Saens. He had preferred to listen to *The Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. There was something a little special about attending a concert to hear a single work. You could properly prepare yourself for the experience and take away a clear memory of the music. He had read the score on the train journey, a journey across a once industrial and mining heartland that had become an abandoned wasteland: a river and canal running in tandem, a vast but empty marshalling yard, acres of water-filled gravel pits, factory and mill buildings standing empty and in decay. On this early evening of a thoroughly wet and cold June day he would lift his gaze to the window to observe this sad landscape shrouded in a grey mist tinted with mottled green.

Andrew often considered Berlioz a kind of fellow-traveller on his life’s journey of music. Berlioz too had been a guitarist in his teenage years and had been largely self-taught as a composer. He had been an innovator in his use of the orchestra and developed a body of work that closely mirrored the literature and political mores of his time.  The Symphonie Fantastique was the ultimate love letter: to the adorable Harriet Smithson, the Irish actress. Berlioz had seen her play Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (see above) and immediately imagined her as his muse and life’s partner. He wrote hundreds of letters to her before eventually meeting her to declare his love and admiration in person. A friend took her to hear the Symphonie after it had got about that this radical work was dedicated to her. She was appalled! But, when Berlioz wrote Lélio or The Return to Life, a kind of sequel to his Symphonie, she relented and agreed to meet him. They married in 1833 but parted after a tempestuous seven years. It had surprised Andrew to discover Lélio, about which, until quite recently, he had known nothing. The Berlioz scholar David Cairns had written fully and quite lovingly about the composition, but reading the synopsis in Wikipedia he began to understand it might be a trifle embarrassing to present in a concert.

The programme of Lélio describes the artist wakening from these dreams, musing on Shakespeare, his sad life, and not having a woman. He decides that if he can't put this unrequited love out of his head, he will immerse himself in music. He then leads an orchestra to a successful performance of one of his new compositions and the story ends peacefully.

Lélio consists of six musical pieces presented by an actor who stands on stage in front of a curtain concealing the orchestra. The actor's dramatic monologues explain the meaning of the music in the life of the artist. The work begins and ends with the idée fixe theme, linking Lélio to Symphonie fantastique.

Thoughts of the lovely Harriet brought him to thoughts of his own muse, far away. He had written so many letters to his muse, and now he wrote her little stories instead, often imagining moments in their still separate lives. He had written music for her and about her – a Quintet for piano and winds (after Mozart) based on a poem he’d written about a languorous summer afternoon beside a river in the Yorkshire Dales; a book of songs called Pleasing Myself (his first venture into setting his own words). Strangely enough he had read through those very songs just the other day. How they captured the onset of both his regard and his passion for her! He had written poetic words in her voice, and for her clear voice to sing:

As the light dies
I pace the field edge
to the square pond
enclosed, hedged and treed.
The water,
once revealed,
lies cold
in the still air.

At its bank,
solitary,
I let my thoughts of you
float on the surface.
And like two boats
moored abreast
at the season’s end,
our reflections merge
in one dark form.

His words he felt were true to the model of the Chinese poetry he had loved as a teenager, verse that had helped him fashion his fledgling thoughts in music.

And so it was that while she dined brightly with her team in a Devon country pub, he sat alone in a town hall in West Yorkshire listening to Berlioz’ autobiographical and unrequited work.

A young musician of extraordinary sensibility and abundant imagination, in the depths of despair because of hopeless love, has poisoned himself with *****. The drug is too feeble to **** him but plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by weird visions. His sensations, emotions, and memories, as they pass through his affected mind, are transformed into musical images and ideas. The beloved one herself becomes to him a melody, a recurrent theme [idée fixe] which haunts him continually.

Yes, he could identify with some of that. Reading Berlioz’ own programme note in the orchestral score he remembered the disabling effect of his first love, a slight girl with long hair tied with a simple white scarf. Then he thought of what he knew would be his last love, his only and forever love when he had talked to her, interrupting her concentration, in a college workshop. She had politely dealt with his innocent questions and then, looking at the clock told him she ‘had to get on’. It was only later – as he sat outside in the university gardens - that he realized the affect that brief encounter might have on him. It was as though in those brief minutes he knew nothing of her, but also everything he ever needed to know. Strange how the images of that meeting, the sound of her voice haunted him, would appear unbidden - until two months later a chance meeting in a corridor had jolted him into her presence again  . . . and for always he hoped.

After the music had finished he had remained in the auditorium as the rather slight audience took their leave. The resonance of the music seemed to be a still presence and he had there and then scanned back and forward through the music’s memory. The piece had cheered him, given him a little hope against the prevailing difficulties and problems of his own musical creativity, the long, often empty hours at his desk. He was in a quiet despair about his current work, about his current life if he was honest. He wondered at the way Berlioz’ musical material seemed of such a piece with its orchestration. The conception of the music itself was full of rough edges; it had none of that exemplary finish of a Beethoven symphony so finely chiseled to perfection.  Berlioz’ Symphonie contained inspired and trite elements side by side, bar beside bar. It missed that wholeness Beethoven achieved with his carefully honed and positioned harmonic structures, his relentless editing and rewriting. With Berlioz you reckoned he trusted himself to let what was in his imagination flow onto the page unhindered by technical issues. Andrew had experienced that occasionally, and looking at his past pieces, was often amazed that such music could be, and was, his alone.

Returning to his studio there was a brief text from his muse. He was tempted to phone her. But it was late and he thought she might already be asleep. He sat for a while and imagined her at dinner with the team, more relaxed now than previously. Tired from a long day of looking and talking and thinking and planning and imagining (herself in the near future), she had worn her almost vintage dress and the bright, bright smile with her diligent self-possessed manner. And taking it (the smile) into her hotel bedroom, closing the door on her public self, she had folded it carefully on the chair with her clothes - to be bright and bright for her colleagues at breakfast next day and beyond. She undressed and sitting on the bed in her pajamas imagined for a brief moment being folded in his arms, being gently kissed goodnight. Too tired to read, she brought herself to bed with a mental list of all the things she must and would do in the morning time and when she got home – and slept.

*They came and told me a messenger from Shang-chou
Had brought a letter, - a simple scroll from you!
Up from my pillow I suddenly sprang out of bed,
And threw on my clothes, all topsy-turvey.
I undid the knot and saw the letter within:
A single sheet with thirteen lines of writing.
At the top it told the sorrows of an exile’s heart;
At the bottom it described the pains of separation.
The sorrows and pains took up so much space
There was no room to talk about the weather!

With those acid wash jeans
With that full sleeve of twirling black ink
With the drapes of long hair
I thought that we could leave the xplosion-club
After the confection of colognes
After the South African red wine
After the pounding music all night
Something **** about
A statue that can move
It's eyes
Something **** about
A man that thinks
Openly

We took the subway back to my apartment
You picked up a pebble and tossed it
I was quieter now
Would I let him inside? I have to at this point it seems
A charming prince
is a charming prince

I open the door.
Nothing bad happens, as I expect
I am a little paranoid I don't know why
(The club flashes back)
The door closes without its usual creek,
And we're inside.
Me and the charmer; I wonder, was he once a frog?
I have a funny feeling that I think came from the wine
Am I trashed or
Does he have horns?
Slimy toadskin, red eyes, 1000 inches of claws
Suddenly
Are upon me, Oh my God!
I tell it to leave mE ALONE,
It doesn't listen to me.

Every time I try to slip out of it's grip
I slide into a claw
Gushing this stuff from the movies,
It covered the bed and then the floor,
It probably leaked out from under the apartment door.

My cellphone rings in my pants pocket
I can't reach it because by then this grendel thing had broken me
Into two legs, a torso, two arms
And a decapitated head
While it eats my right lung, my left hand tries to desperately crawl away
He pokes it with a great fork; no escaping crums
The awful amphibian finishes and leaves forever.
He's never coming back
A winner-and-loser kind of ***, I guess.

A scarlet confection
Made to tasty perfection
For your mouth’s inspection

The tip of the toppings
The vanilla flavored frosting
Is so tempting to you

The taste bud’s elation
In what you are facing
Is something like devil’s food cake

The tiled floor kitchen
In the hours bewitching
Leaves your pulse a twitching
From the caloric intake

And the hours you shorten
By licking the shortening
They are a mistake
But they are your poisonous pleasure
Made to bake and yours’ to take
It’s a sweet treat we call cake

Immaculate confection
In the market stands.
A sign touts it's perfection,
It wont melt in your hands.
A sacrament for your protection
Back by popular demand.
No less than a Chocolate Jesus
My tender little lambs.

They say marriage is all about compromise. If that's the case, newlyweds Kia Parsons and Billy Bunning are off to an excellent start.

The UK couple had different visions when it came to their wedding cake; the bride wanted an all-white tiered cake with cascading sugar flowers. The groom, on the other hand, wanted to incorporate his love of comic book superheroes into the confection. So they met somewhere in the middle:

Julia Baker of Tier by Tier cake design created the cake for the couple's August 14 wedding in Milton Keynes, England. One side is the traditional-looking cake the bride wanted. On the other side, icing curtains reveal the logos of Marvel characters Captain America, Spider-Man and Iron Man, as well as Batman from the DC Comics camp.

"I loved every minute making this cake, as I knew it would be something that people would be surprised at and appeal to all the Marvel fans!" Julia told The Huffington Post.

In all, she spent 40 hours on the cake. It took 12 hours to make the sugar flowers, and the cake-baking and building took about 28 hours.

Needless to say, Kia and Billy were thrilled with the finished product.

"Julia did such a fantastic job and we were completely overwhelmed by how brilliant it looked!" the bride told HuffPost. "From most angles of the room, the cake looked like a traditional wedding cake -- just what we had wanted. It wasn't until the cake was moved for us to cut that our guests realized there was a hidden extra. Some didn't even realize until the photos went online after the wedding!"

On Tuesday, a photo of the cake began going viral when it was shared by the Life Of Dad Facebook page.

"I was surprised at how popular it was and how quickly the pictures circulated on social media," Julia said. "I have plenty more ideas to work on and I am calling these 'double-take cakes.'"

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-perth

www.marieaustralia.com/white-formal-dresses

The recipe for chocolate dipped strawberries
fresh ripen strawberries red and plump
given by the sugar plum ferries

Belgian chocolate wrapped in a 1/2lb bag
carefully selected picked by hand
just for you was written on the little tag

Place a pan over the heat on a low setting
wash the berries but be gentle and soft
to perfection of confection you are heading

Take the chocolate pieces one at a time
place them in the pan to slowly melt
be patient everything is just fine

Stir the chocolate in a very slow pace
careful now don't let it burn
this isn't a cook off or a race

When the chocolate is melted remove from heat
next you dip the strawberries till its covered
then place your berries on cookie sheet

Place berries in a cool place so it don't melt
freeze the rest of what you didn't use
I believe a little bit of bliss you felt

When you and your man are cozy in bed
have your confection ready to be served
give one to him so you can be fed

I'm sure he will ask where did learn this
all you have to say from a recipe
then you give him a passionate kiss

I think of you, my dear, a collection of perfection.
Your extracted sweetness churned into a sugary confection.

Honey forged from honest bees is said to taste the best.
I plan to eat the nectar from your consciousness, ingest.

Purity is known as that which is undisturbed,
Non-Contaminated and original...unfiltered.

I want you to miss me so much

that when we kiss
I find our last kiss
still melting slowly
on your tongue.

The bitter yet sweet of this delicate confection,
leaves me gawking at its quite utter perfection.
One bite sends me off onto a relaxing voyage,
with soft truffle filled clouds- never a shortage.

Just stick it in
Pull it out
*******
Gag her mouth.

Bound and fist it,
Cut zip-tied wrist then,
Bathe her in warm blood bathwater.
Watch her bleed out as an oozing cow mother.

This is how we do it.
This is how we **** ****.

Boiled **** and ***** nitrates,
Bonging buttchug, grease infesting.

This is how we ****.
This our mental state.

Disgusting epoch,
The party *** phenomenon.
Drunk girls, drugged *******.
Pearl necklace confection, gourmands,
in stitches

Plagued with itches,
Stemming from ****** abuse.

This is why I ****.
This is how I crutch.

******* on the inside.
******* on the inside.
******* on the inside.

‘There’s definitely a story here’, she said that evening over the telephone. They’d been sitting in Trevelyan Square in Leeds. He’d brought a picnic lunch so they could sit in the sun. When he arrived at the station she wasn’t wearing her glasses and he thought, I only see her like this in bed or . . . and he stopped that thought immediately because she looked so very lovely and he knew he would only have a couple of hours as her companion before work and children reclaimed them both. They’d sat on a bench eating his salad confection, apricots and nectarines. They forgot about the rock buns he’d baked the night before. Just in front of them sat four hounds, four stone hounds with staring eyes and  very large paws sitting in a circle, four Talbot Hounds with water gushing from their mouths, four just larger than life-size handsome hounds commissioned by Joseph Edwards for the courtyard of his mansion at Castle Carr and, when the house was demolished in the 1940s, had disappeared. The hounds turned up in the 1970s in a stone-mason’s yard and an enterprising architect – building the Open University’s northern HQ - bought them for Trevelyan Square. As he sat there, with the water-spouting dogs, it was only her gracious, lovely self that occupied his attention. Why does she captivate me so ?, he thought. Why do I always feel with her like I did as a teenager, so unsure of myself, so overwhelmed by the female presence (he thought as he wrote this how often that word overwhelm came to mind when he wrote of her, and so checked the Thesaurus . . . hmm. Besieged, snowed-under, inundated, beleaguered, weighed down, beset? No, overwhelm was the only word he decided – she whelmed him over as a wave rises up and cresting falls and turns and rolls the swimmer beneath it.). It was, he considered, her femininity that was so particular and just embodied everything he’d ever dreamed and fantasized a woman might be, could be for him. He knew he’d thought and written of this aspect so often, and yet today, here with the sandstone dogs, there was a intensity, a vividness enlivening his senses. Without her glasses he could see the lines, indeed a shadow of fatigue, under her eyes, simply too much time with the computer perhaps. So she looked older, always wiser, and oh the joy of her freckles, the faint down on her cheek. And when, later, saying goodbye, he didn’t just kiss her gently as a good friend would do in a very public place, but brought her to him in an embrace that something outside of his usual careful manner required. He had hugged her with a passion and a joy and sadness all in one. On the train, a text, and he had suddenly to hide his tears that it could be so. He would write about those hounds . . .

A prose poem*

It’s all boarded up now, abandoned in the triangle of downtown Roy, New Mexico, but like a lost island named Capronea two-hundred forgotten years ago, I find myself back in the summer of 1977, seven-years old in the balcony of a second-run, small town movie house watching *The Land That Time Forgot in that small-town, movie-timeline kind of way: two years after everyone else. Popcorn brides, my cousins and I walked the movie processional during opening credits, almost missing the proverbial plummeting message thrown out to sea in a water cask. Candy-bored through all the world-war-submarine scenes, I perked up with innocent horror at the spreading circle of blood in the river, rifles shooting into a gaping dinosaur mouth. And the thunk of its neck hitting the deck. Years later I come back to the epic on classic TV. This time I notice the wobbly love story, German metaphysics arguing with British empiricism that lasts only one flirty scene. Now I’m shocked and a little dismayed over how little screen time the dinosaurs actually get, their three Shakespearean scenes, how I still feel all the same heartache as they enact their long and dramatic death throes. Doug McClure is alright, I guess, except that his hair is always blown out to an impossible feathered confection, just like the German Captain who keeps his hat on way past when this is necessary or useful. We laugh with ironic smugness at the stiff Jurassic puppets and the blood on rubber, the convolution of the island’s evolutionary biology. Those river amoebas are a hoot! Oh, the ironic wink that double-crosses itself in the end, an irony that is really homesickness longing for sincerity, simplicity. My husband says he prefers this movie to those Spielberg ones. I give him hell about this but later come around to see his point. Let’s take the movie’s basic premise: we are at the end of history presumably. So even if we could forget all that history, wipe the slate clean as it were, we still wouldn’t get along with our rivals. At least not enough to fashion an oil refinery from sticks and stones, pack up all that oil in barrels, and roll on outa this nightmare.

None of us will get off this island alive. At the end we’re left crossing a mountain of ice with two people whose only hope is to simplify things down to survival and ***—and *** in those impossible furs no less (in dinosaur leather maybe). We can’t help but trip over the metaphors here. They're everywhere. Only back in 1977, we believed them.

There's one way to warm hearts
On the day of an election:
Stickers with sarcastic remarks
Paired with cute confections

Um, my apologies to Lindt, dunno where that flavour originated when I first tasted it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7FeeKWVi5Q]


(sonnet #MMMMMMCCLVIII)


Lindt was the standard for good choclate, hence
Gone to the dogs as Dillon's to avail
Tastes like the thing itself, whilst in betrayl
Swiss choclatiers own powdered milk for sense?!
And our Wisconsin pride on top fr'intents--
Or what? I nibble one and t'other, frail
As private testing is, and call both pale,
Milk choclate nothing to the real stuff, whence?
Charge me with aye, a fault and swear tis poor,
I'll put on Broforce' soundtrack, thinking too--
Ha, what?!  Being "friends" is--stop there as it were.
Trust in the LORD with all thine heart--and do
Not figure.  I love Andrew.  Rain blots fer
Effect aught blue skies, and no choclate's you.

10Apr17b

A watched *** never boils
A star shoots when you least expect it
Keep stirring.
Soon, that milky, sloshy liquid
will seep in
into the thick, earthen goop
One can only hope...
And it did, this time.
those eggs
[not vegan, sorry.]
that molasses-soaked sugar
the pulverized & the beaten
all amalgamated
in a matter of minutes
and it even sopped up
the flour lining
How pleasant. No. How scrumptious.
The hardened cream, mixed
with a little bit of salt, I admit,
but you know I
was never one
to make a cake
without tears
shedding some.
But I always remember
to lick the spoon
every once in a while.

Honeysuckle running deep in nostril's recollection
Wafting nectar dripping in air, please stop
Must stay present, no time for memory swap
Sneaking in, yellowed dreams, desirous confection
O purgatory, keep me still, deviate no such inflection

Causeway flash backing egg yolk, and lemon spectrum
Road lined in runners, speckling scintillation
This loose maddening of honeysuckle titillation
Reverse your tendril's twist, quivers an ungated septum
Covers, green to yellow transitions, honeysuckle bedlam

I cannot dance down this lane for fear of you
Your ringlets curl, clasp, coil me
On such road of alluvial soil I see
How can I? Must I, escape steer of dew?
You're honeysuckle memory of all I knew

My Grandma had a purse shaped like a cobbler.
It was Blackberry and soap with a good dose of thyme.
She kept it close to her side, but behind her
so as not to impede her graceful march.
At some point the original strap had been lost
and replaced with a cherry red confection
that swirled around her arm and latched
onto the top crust that is always the most crunchy.
A few buttons were picked up along the way
and dotted the top layer like ladybugs dancing.
The zipper was never fully shut and there was often
a receipt sticking out, or perhaps her pink comb
that waggled in the air like a tongue in delight.
It wasn’t a big purse; just enough to satisfy
a healthy craving but big enough to care
were you not to see it present at dinner.

I have almost forgotten the healthy craving,
the smell of Blackberries, and why the ladybugs
should ever want to dance.

In summers past, hot and hazy,
we wandered northern shorelines,
sand whipping salt brine and
vinegar enveloped, marveling that
even the Amish possess swimwear.

I lingered at the taffy shop,
toe-raised peering through smudged
glass and candy bins, spying
both worker and robo-worker
pulling long tough ropes of
salty confection and memory.

Our time on the path is pulled taffy,
event-pummeled, tugged asunder,
reunited bittersweet.

baked boardwalk beneath feet,
cobbled personality planks
stretching taffy of time

In summers past I was there.
In summers present i am there.
In summers beyond we are back
there once again
folded and kneaded
smiling, reunited.

This is the back-end of forever,
yet do not fear;
the dying of the light
is the dawning of the dusk:
a wheel that we spin,
a point that we traverse,
a keeping of a promise,
a memory of a scent,
a vision of disorder,
and the chaos in the calm.
Cower.
Rejoice.
Repeat.
Amen.

You are
the Object of My Affection
my reason
my direction
The cause
of this infection
I can't break it down
.... in sections
Not a vote
     in an election
My sugary confection
A whirlwind
      of protection
A needle deep
       injection
I can't stand
     this harsh rejection
You are the seed
     of my reflection
We share
       the same connection
Perhaps thought
      just projection
With further
     real inspection
Was found
    in that detection
I have no need
for our perfection
I'm making
    the corrections

To be the Object of Your Affection
I hope it's not too late
that your love it still awaits
me
on the BRIGHT light of the sun.

Love you

Cherie Nolan*© 2016

In God We Trust, For He Invented Reasonable Doubt




In Courtroom of the State of New York, Part 62,
where the only decoration extant,
in gold leaf letters,
a magnificent joke,
In God We Trust.

Words so incongruous
to the real time drama,
a poorly acted Law and Order episode
of which I partake,
(as Juror No. 1,
ergo you may address me as
Mr. Jury Foreman),
they stun me into stupefaction
every time we enter and the
Bailiff pronounces with much gravitas,
"Jury Entering"

A potpourri of a dozen Manhattanites,
with wisdom acquired
by the singular virtue of
having attained the robust age of 18,  
noteworthy for being free of
criminal record,
having been nominated
to sit upon the jury that will decide
the fate of one Eric B.,
for what he may have done upon West 11th Street
one Summer night in
June Two Thousand and Eleven,

If adjudged guilty,
New York State can take,
incarcerate him for up to
15 years of his life

Predicate felon by the age of twenty seven,
Eric's resume consists of
four felonies,
two misdemeanors
a wife and two little children,
and a partridge in a pear tree.

Facts turgid and muddy,
Eric tells a story
one juror calls a confection of lies,
no one murmurs
much disagreement in the
tiny, overheated room
we have been sequestered to
replay
the 2012 version of
Twelve Angry Men.

But I am not his peer,
nor am I a seer,
common sense says
if appearances are what they seem to be,
he aided and abetted
in the forcible taking of
a nice Connecticut lady's cell phone
with his brother who just happened to be
released from prison earlier that day

A convoluted tale
ripe with inanities is told,
upshot is our defendant's tale,
his robust defense,
portrays him as the unluckiest man
in the whole world,
a good Samaritan,
{chasing after the thief,
** **, his bro}
against whom events have conspired

In Manhattan can be a harsh place,
where the natives
a tough lot,
tougher than the Indians from whom
they stole it all.

Our bridges we sell to out-of-towers,
all it takes is one to say,
what the heck,
reasonable doubt is
a ***** to overcome
so let him go


Jan, 2012

(Deborah) an old style poetic as me, thy words about empresses, kings and queens, is mine sort of style, thy writing is beautiful untamed and shalt never die in any mile. Thy writing like heaven passed down from Shakesperian words himself, true poetic!!!

( Aarvie) thou art a true of truest romantic's, as I seeith in thine pieces of heaven, its good to see other hopeless romantic's as me, I prayeth the best for thee and thy life, continue to loveth in both of thine dreams and reality, and be the king as thou art mate.

( Elsa angelica) angel to all of us, though we've not spoken in day's, just wanted to tell thee, for thee nightly I prayeth, as thou feeleth so alone, God awaits thee, for heaven's thine home, as I've said I've known thee long ago, continue to shine on, dear Angel.

( Earl Jane) dear oriental friend of mine, thy love and heart shineth above the hellish earth, thou was sent to love and forgive, and overcometh the judgement of the one's who art hurt, showeth them amour', smile and uplift as thou doth me friend.

( KetomaRose) miss, thy words lonely like me, I prayeth one day that thou findeth a king, because there's a difference between men and kings, men calleth a woman "woman", kings calleth one queen, continue to be who thou art, and one day. Get that ring!!

( Musfiq us shaleheen) dearest writing champion, thy words like butter giveth flavor to mine tongue, thy artwork's art as gods finger's stroking the sun, class thou hath, and a loving àura I canst seeith shine, like wine to mine doorstep of poetry mate.

( Anto MacRuairidh) haven't known thee to long dearest poetic, but thy word's of love rub me in a friendly alphabetic way. Continue to jot love now, tommorrow,  today, in every way continue to be the genius thou art, and remember, love is real!!!

( Katie) new to h.p, welcome mine friend, thank thee for supporting me, thy words ring across England, it rings the bell of the USA, Ireland, and the united kingdom, thou art kind, sweet, a good soul anyone wouldst want to meet. Continue thy blossoming

( Steven Langhorst) friend, always writing of thy good times and bad, the times that meant all to thee, and times thou hath hadst. Thou art a truest poetic honesty! A man of devout poetry belief, continue to love thy family, and showeth amour to all as thou art

( Victoria) another lass with class, a lady whos great, no questions to ask, thy old soul is fastened on with a pen and Papyrus to scribe thine beauties, thy artwork like movies, dancing the HP scenes, putting realness in dreams, decor thou writeth.

( Toreinss Pinwinkel III) hey good man, don't knoweth thee much, but thou art a comic, a friend of men, an honest lad, like an ex hippy gypsie, or a wonderful lad, thy words art heart forming, thy words mold into treasures that speaketh to me.

( neex) thy amare speaketh to mine soul, as everyone loveth thee, thy lingo like gold, thou showeth bright in this place of h.p . continue to loveth, forget the hatred and doeth as thou doth please, just don't forget like the rest, continue in thy love friend!

( cat Fiske) thou hath known me since the beginning friend, thou hath even made a room called" the poems Brandon writeth for us" meaning for all the girls who like mine work' lol, thank thee dear friend, keepeth thy head up, knoweth God is with thee now.

( Mina) Iranian charmstress, a best friend to me, and a world of loving ways thou art, as thou wilt meet thy king, just remember, when ourn countries and government's acteth as hating brutes, remember God is watching, and he's been there protecting to.

( Matt) this ones for thee prophetic as me, speaking of the economy's ending, friend continue just to trusteth thy God, and in love showeth Christ's love is affectionate, not deadly! Be ready for his coming dearest good friend, thou wilt find thy queen to.

( Jimmy yetts) this one for thee brother, thy word's art comical and at the same time so much truth, thou art a poet free. Not a slave, not In some noose, thine hand writeth what others need to heareth, that's a a prophetic to me, continue on friend of h.p.

( ridicule) I knoweth that's not thy real picture, yet I knoweth thou aren't fake, continue even if in secrecy to showeth thy words of beauty, and showeth thy heartbreak, as thou wilt find thy good king to, continue in love as the rest, ad thou art blessed!

(SweetPea) poetic so saccharine, I promise thee one day thy pains shalt cease, as this life hath pains and dreams, but reality for thee wilt be awoken, God wilt flyeth thee to places unspoken, aloft the clouds wherein thou shalt write. Thou art a dearest of good invite

( its gonna make sense) this ones for thee mine dearest little line writer, thy tiny confection treats art sweet to mine tongue, like pastrys filled with such goodness. Continue to search on for thy king, though only taketh him if he hath armour, a shining knight


( Frank Ruland) madman of writing, as thy jargon is enticing and I always want to take a peep, though dont knoweth thee well either, thy words like Clover's. Hard to find other words. Continue to loveth for thine queen, let words floweth like herbs.

( Nicole) a gentle soul, like a stream that surrounds the lonely banks, let thy words sink into the heart of the lonesome. Continue to shock in awe and inspiration, when thou art down cometh here to gain above. For God watches his children as many doves.

( Helena) the thief of wonder of words, don't worry thy words art heard, as I listen loud and clear. I freely feeleth thy tears cometh out in thy personal moments, like butterfly's thine writings flyeth on to the moon and back, as thou I hath as mine good friend...

She is the object of affection

No matter how wide the selection

She gets in your head like an infection

She"s sweeter than any confection

But there"s a certain section

That I"m vying for inspection

Please no rejection or defection

Let me make a correction

I just want a you collection

Pardon the change in inflection

But I can"t hide the *******

Because when I look in your eyes and direction

I see more than my reflection

It's simply...just perfection

Like sugar from a shaker, snow falls on Saul the baker
delivering steamy biscuits from the shop he calls his home
to a drafty run down mansion where the princess on her pension
can be testy with her tension, hence she's living on her own.

Today he took her order, "One fresh bagel, for a quarter
'cause I haven't seen the likes of one since I left my childhood home".
Well he'd never baked a bagel, but he's not one to finagle
and wanting just to please her, finds a recipe from Rome.

And he's thinking to himself, "I must be way out of mind~
no woman's gonna want a baker's life"
but he carries deep inside his heart, the will to be a friend
hoping someday she will come around and one day be his wife.

So to win her deep affection he packs up his best confection
takes his chances on the back roads, now iced over in the storm.
Finds her waiting in the foyer with her thrifty 5 cent lawyer
complaining 'bout the day old bread and... "this bagel isn't warm!"
So..... he heats it on the fire, 'cause her heart is his desire
but she won't accept the bagel for it's not quite the right form

And he's thinking to himself, "I must be way out of mind
no woman gonna want a baker's life"
but he carries deep inside his heart, the will to be a friend
hoping someday she will come around and one day be his wife.

So he runs back to his bagel board and pounds the dough and rolls a cord
and shapes the perfect circle to a bagel lovers dream,
He boils and then he bakes it and to her mansion then he takes it
piping hot but now she wants it with churned butter from fresh cream!

Well he's starting to get antsy but he knows the farmer, Clancy
whose butter is fresh-churned and known by counties far and wide.
He heads out to the pasture and he buys what he is after
and returns to find, 'tis so unkind, the princess, she had died.

The baker in his stricken state swallows the bagel off the plate
he calls the cops, pulls out the stops and serves the day old bread.
He gives the details more than once of how he ate the evidence
and though he thought his story bought, they arrested him instead.

"Tis a likely story", was the only thing he heard
although they'd bought his baked goods, they could not buy his word.
"The Baker is a Butcher", is what the tabloid said,
"better to take your bagel cold than take it in the head."

But all was not as it appears, she owed the butcher in arrears
and when they went to check her craw they found a hunk of mutton.
It ended all without a trial, the butcher he did reconcile
and posted "Pay the butcher now and do not to be a glutton."

And Saul was thinking to himself, " I must be way out of mind",
no woman's gonna want a baker's life",
but he carried deep inside his heart the will to be a friend
and it turned rather nicely as she willed him in the end.

This board is not on the wall. It rests on a worktable against a wall. It’s almost the length of the table, perhaps a foot short. On top of the board its wooden frame makes a shelf ideal for photographs or cards to balance precariously, photographs and cards too precious to pin. Today there are five, yes they change from day to day, and today (from left to right) there’s an original drawing in walnut ink of a winter field, a photo of two children looking from a cliff top towards a peninsula’s end, a card called Autumn Spey from a lithograph by Angie Lewin, an invitation to a gallery opening, and a What’s On brochure – from another gallery – showing some unusual tapestry.

The Notice Board is 100 x 60 cm. The wooden frame is slight, probably home-made, but well-made, with a dark brown hessian surface. Not that you can see much of the surface as it is covered with stuff: photographs, images, poems, pictures, cards, quotations, a prayer, an origami bird, a doctor’s prescription, a piece of tapestry, an invitation, an address, lists galore, a cheque or two, a diagram (of a knot), a concert program. Not everything can be seen directly as many items are shared by a single pin and hidden four, even six, notices deep. Every so often the items are unpinned and consigned to a folder and filed, and so the process of choosing and pinning starts over again. This can happen after a holiday, returning uncluttered by days walking the cliff paths with only the quiet sea to gaze at and the cottage blissfully free of things known, things owned.  So when back at the desk, in front of the notice board, it seems right to be beginning again.

Mozart’s Linz Symphony is playing quietly in the background. It’s that time of day when music is sometimes allowed to frame work at this desk and blot out the going home noise of buses in the city street moving away from the stop three floors below. Linz, the capital of Upper Austria and now a large industrial city straddling the banks of the Danube, once gave its name to Linzertorte, a cake of jam, cloves, cinnamon, and almonds, and this remarkable symphony by Mozart. The composer had only just married his Constanza and wrote to his long suffering father:

When we reached the gates of Linz . . . , we found a servant waiting there to drive us to Count Thun's, at whose house we are now staying. I really cannot tell you what kindnesses the family are showering on us. On Tuesday, November 4, I am giving a concert in the theatre here and, as I have not a single symphony with me, I am writing a new one at break-neck speed, which must be finished by that time. Well, I must close, because I really must set to work.

And set to work he did. He had just 4 days to compose, write the parts (though Constanza helped), and rehearse an orchestra. Such is life for the working composer, even today. Maybe not a summons from a beneficent Count, but a phone-call from a producer with a deadline. It is the film or TV score to be composed at break-neck speed. And it can be done, believe me. It may not be sublime as Mozart, but it gets done: there are ways and means.

But this is today’s background, and as these words are written the gracious siciliano of the Symphony No.36 plays away. Such a tender confection.

Looking up at the notice board where does one start? Each pinned piece is a divertissement, an aide memoire to times, events, places, and people. It is a mixture of the colourful, the curious, the necessary, the unusual, the nostalgic, and the personally precious. These things are the qualifications required to occupy a place on this board.

But now Haydn takes over the musical background, Symphony No.88. No descriptive name here, just his wonderful music: his first symphony to score trumpets and timpani, and with more than a touch of Turkish in the Minuetto and Finale.

So close your eyes now (let’s listen to Haydn for a while), then slowly open them and choose from the notice board what first catches your attention.

It’s a coloured sketch of flowers on an A5 sheet of cartridge paper. It is outlined delicately in pen, coloured variously with pastels, green, orange, purple, red. The vase is a glass bowl. It’s set on a window-sill and there’s the frame of a window faintly rendered. There’s no artifice in the arrangement. These are flowers from a garden, picked and now firmly ****** into the bowl. Immediately the long, quiet east-facing room comes alive to colour. It’s in shade now the sun has moved since midday when the flowers arrived after a journey of 40 miles in a hot car wrapped in moist newspaper and silver foil. It is a special gift and its beauty remains vivid for days. When visitors visited gentle comments are made on their fresh colours.

At night when the room is only lit by a standard lamp standing by a pale yellow settee the flowers sleep in the darkness, holding a vivid memory of a day of colour and light. A recording of the Schumann quartets plays passionately during the ‘close to the end of summer’ evenings. Hands are held, and between movements there is an occasional exploratory kiss. Such was their collective fear of passion overcoming other endeavours . . .

In the early morning time when she slept in the room next door oblivious to his wakefulness he would enter the long studio room with its four windows to find the first sunlight patterning the floor. The flowers were wide-awake, their perfume rich in the still morningtime. He would stand entranced to see such beauty brought from her city garden; the first of many gifts he would come to treasure. His sketch was an amateur’s, but four summers past it continued to give much joy and dear memories. It had something of the solemnity of Mozart’s siciliano, and if an image could be said to have a right tempo, it had a right tempo, a gracefulness roughly hewn perhaps, but full of grace.