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Nigel Morgan Nov 2012
As a woman, and in the service of my Lord the Emperor Wu, my life is governed by his command. At twenty I was summoned to this life at court and have made of it what I can, within the limitations of the courtesan I am supposed to be, and the poet I have now become. Unlike my male counterparts, some of whom have lately found seclusion in the wilderness of rivers and mountains, I have only my personal court of three rooms and its tiny garden and ornamental pond. But I live close to the surrounding walls of the Zu-lin Gardens with its astronomical observatories and bold attempts at recreating illusions of celebrated locations in the Tai mountains. There, walking with my cat Xi-Lu in the afternoons, I imagine a solitary life, a life suffused with the emptiness I crave.
 
In the hot, dry summer days my maid Mei-Lim and I have sought a temporary retreat in the pine forests above Lingzhi. Carried in a litter up the mountain paths we are left in a commodious hut, its open walls making those simple pleasures of drinking, eating and sleeping more acute, intense. For a few precious days I rest and meditate, breathe the mountain air and the resinous scents of the trees. I escape the daily commerce of the court and belong to a world that for the rest of the year I have to imagine, the world of the recluse. To gain the status of the recluse, open to my male counterparts, is forbidden to women of the court. I am woman first, a poet and calligrapher second. My brother, should he so wish, could present a petition to revoke his position as a man of letters, an official commentator on the affairs of state. But he is not so inclined. He has already achieved notoriety and influence through his writing on the social conditions of town and city. He revels in a world of chatter, gossip and intrigue; he appears to fear the wilderness life.  
 
I must be thankful that my own life is maintained on the periphery. I am physically distant from the hub of daily ceremonial. I only participate at my Lord’s express command. I regularly feign illness and fatigue to avoid petty conflict and difficulty. Yet I receive commissions I cannot waver: to honour a departed official; to celebrate a son’s birth to the Second Wife; to fulfil in verse my Lord’s curious need to know about the intimate sorrows of his young concubines, their loneliness and heartache.
 
Occasionally a Rhapsody is requested for an important visitor. The Emperor Wu is proud to present as welcome gifts such poetic creations executed in fine calligraphy, and from a woman of his court. Surely a sign of enlightment and progress he boasts! Yet in these creations my observations are parochial: early morning frost on the cabbage leaves in my garden; the sound of geese on their late afternoon flight to Star Lake; the disposition of the heavens on an Autumn night. I live by the Tao of Lao-Tzu, perceiving the whole world from my doorstep.
 
But I long for the reclusive life, to leave this court for my family’s estate in the valley my peasant mother lived as a child. At fourteen she was chosen to sustain the Emperor’s annual wish for young girls to be groomed for concubinage. Like her daughter she is tall, though not as plain as I; she put her past behind her and conceded her adolescence to the training required by the court. At twenty she was recommended to my father, the court archivist, as second wife. When she first met this quiet, dedicated man on the day before her marriage she closed her eyes in blessing. My father taught her the arts of the library and schooled her well. From her I have received keen eyes of jade green and a prestigious memory, a memory developed she said from my father’s joy of reading to her in their private hours, and before she could read herself. Each morning he would examine her to discover what she had remembered of the text read the night before. When I was a little child she would quote to me the Confucian texts on which she had been ****** schooled, and she then would tell me of her childhood home. She primed my imagination and my poetic world with descriptions of a domestic rural life.
 
Sometimes in the arms of my Lord I have freely rhapsodized in chusi metre these delicate word paintings of my mother’s home. She would say ‘We will walk now to the ruined tower beside the lake. Listen to the carolling birds. As the sparse clouds move across the sky the warm sun strokes the winter grass. Across the deep lake the forests are empty. Now we are climbing the narrow steps to the platform from which you and I will look towards the sun setting in the west. See the shadows are lengthening and the air becomes colder. The blackbird’s solitary song heralds the evening.  Look, an owl glides silently beneath us.’
 
My Lord will then quote from Hsieh Ling-yun,.
 
‘I meet sky, unable to soar among clouds,
face a lake, call those depths beyond me.’
 
And I will match this quotation, as he will expect.
 
‘Too simple-minded to perfect Integrity,
and too feeble to plough fields in seclusion.’
 
He will then gaze into my eyes in wonder that this obscure poem rests in my memory and that I will decode the minimal grammar of these early characters with such poetry. His characters: Sky – Bird – Cloud – Lake – Depth. My characters: Fool – Truth – Child – Winter field – Isolation.
 
Our combined invention seems to take him out of his Emperor-self. He is for a while the poet-scholar-sage he imagines he would like to be, and I his foot-sore companion following his wilderness journey. And then we turn our attention to our bodies, and I surprise him with my admonitions to gentleness, to patience, to arousing my pleasure. After such poetry he is all pleasure, sensitive to the slightest touch, and I have my pleasure in knowing I can control this powerful man with words and the stroke of my fingertips rather than by delicate youthful beauty or the guile and perverse ingenuity of an ****** act. He is still learning to recognise the nature and particularness of my desires. I am not as his other women: who confuse pleasure with pain.
 
Thoughts of my mother. Without my dear father, dead ten years, she is a boat without a rudder sailing on a distant lake. She greets each day as a gift she must honour with good humour despite the pain of her limbs, the difficulty of walking, of sitting, of eating, even talking. Such is the hurt that governs her ageing. She has always understood that my position has forbidden marriage and children, though the latter might be a possibility I have not wished it and made it known to my Lord that it must not be. My mother remains in limbo, neither son or daughter seeking to further her lineage, she has returned to her sister’s home in the distant village of her birth, a thatched house of twenty rooms,
 
‘Elms and willows shading the eaves at the back,
and, in front,  peach and plum spread wide.
 
Villages lost across mist-haze distances,
Kitchen smoke drifting wide-open country,
 
Dogs bark deep among the back roads out here
And cockerels crow from mulberry treetops.
 
My esteemed colleague T’ao Ch’ien made this poetry. After a distinguished career in government service he returned to the life of a recluse-farmer on his family farm. Living alone in a three-roomed hut he lives out his life as a recluse and has endured considerable poverty. One poem I know tells of him begging for food. His world is fields-and-gardens in contrast to Hsieh Ling-yin who is rivers-and-mountains. Ch’ien’s commitment to the recluse life has brought forth words that confront death and the reality of human experience without delusion.
 
‘At home here in what lasts, I wait out life.’
 
Thus my mother waits out her life, frail, crumbling more with each turning year.
 
To live beyond the need to organise daily commitments due to others, to step out into my garden and only consider the dew glistening on the loropetalum. My mind is forever full of what is to be done, what must be completed, what has to be said to this visitor who will today come to my court at the Wu hour. Only at my desk does this incessant chattering in the mind cease, as I move my brush to shape a character, or as the needle enters the cloth, all is stilled, the world retreats; there is the inner silence I crave.
 
I long to see with my own eyes those scenes my mother painted for me with her words. I only know them in my mind’s eye having travelled so little these past fifteen years. I look out from this still dark room onto my small garden to see the morning gathering its light above the rooftops. My camellia bush is in flower though a thin frost covers the garden stones.
 
And so I must imagine how it might be, how I might live the recluse life. How much can I jettison? These fine clothes, this silken nightgown beneath the furs I wrap myself in against the early morning air. My maid is sleeping. Who will make my tea? Minister to me when I take to my bed? What would become of my cat, my books, the choice-haired brushes? Like T’ao Ch’ien could I leave the court wearing a single robe and with one bag over my shoulders? Could I walk for ten days into the mountains? I would disguise myself as a man perhaps. I am tall for a woman, and though my body flows in broad curves there are ways this might be assuaged, enough perhaps to survive unmolested on the road.
 
Such dreams! My Lord would see me returned within hours and send a servant to remain at my gate thereafter. I will compose a rhapsody about a concubine of standing, who has even occupied the purple chamber, but now seeks to relinquish her privileged life, who coverts the uncertainty of nature, who would endure pain and privation in a hut on some distant mountain, who will sleep on a mat on its earth floor. Perhaps this will excite my Lord, light a fire in his imagination. As though in preparation for this task I remove my furs, I loose the knot of my silk gown. Naked, I reach for an old under shift letting it fall around my still-slender body and imagine myself tying the lacings myself in the open air, imagine making my toilet alone as the sun appears from behind a distant mountain on a new day. My mind occupies itself with the tiny detail of living thus: bare feet on cold earth, a walk to nearby stream, the gathering of berries and mountain herbs, the making of fire, the washing of my few clothes, imagining. Imagining. To live alone will see every moment filled with the tasks of keeping alive. I will become in tune with my surroundings. I will take only what I need and rely on no one. Dreaming will end and reality will be the slug on my mat, the bone-chilling incessant mists of winter, the thorn in the foot, the wild winds of autumn. My hands will become stained and rough, my long limbs tanned and scratched, my delicate complexion freckled and wind-pocked, my hair tied roughly back. I will become an animal foraging on a dank hillside. Such thoughts fill me with deep longing and a ****** desire to be tzu-jan  - with what surrounds me, ablaze with ****** self.
 
It is not thought the custom of a woman to hold such desires. We are creatures of order and comfort. We do not live on the edge of things, but crave security and well-being. We learn to endure the privations of being at the behest of others. Husbands, children, lovers, our relatives take our bodies to them as places of comfort, rest and desire. We work at maintaining an ordered flow of existence. Whatever our station, mistress or servant we compliment, we keep things in order, whether that is the common hearth or the accounts of our husband’s court. Now my rhapsody begins:
 
A Rhapsody on a woman wishing to live as a recluse
 
As a lady of my Emperor’s court I am bound in service.
My court is not my own, I have the barest of means.
My rooms are full of gifts I am forced barter for bread.
Though the artefacts of my hands and mind
Are valued and widely renown,
Their commissioning is an expectation of my station,
With no direct reward attached.
To dress appropriately for my Lord’s convocations and assemblies
I am forced to negotiate with chamberlains and treasurers.
A bolt of silk, gold thread, the services of a needlewoman
Require formal entreaties and may lie dormant for weeks
Before acknowledgement and release.
 
I was chosen for my literary skills, my prestigious memory,
Not for my ****** beauty, though I have been called
‘Lady of the most gracious movement’ and
My speaking voice has clarity and is capable of many colours.
I sing, but plainly and without passion
Lest I interfere with the truth of music’s message.
 
Since I was a child in my father’s library
I have sought out the works of those whose words
Paint visions of a world that as a woman
I may never see, the world of the wilderness,
Of rivers and mountains,
Of fields and gardens.
Yet I am denied by my *** and my station
To experience passing amongst these wonders
Except as contrived imitations in the palace gardens.
 
Each day I struggle to tease from the small corner
Of my enclosed eye-space some enrichment
Some elemental thing to colour meaning:
To extend the bounds of my home
Across the walls of this palace
Into the world beyond.
 
I have let it be known that I welcome interviews
With officials from distant courts to hear of their journeying,
To gather word images if only at second-hand.
Only yesterday an emissary recounted
His travels to Stone Lake in the far South-West,
Beyond the gorges of the Yang-tze.
With his eyes I have seen the mountains of Suchan:
With his ears I have heard the oars crackling
Like shattering jade in the freezing water.
Images and sounds from a thousand miles
Of travel are extract from this man’s memory.
 
Such a sharing of experience leaves me
Excited but dismayed: that I shall never
Visit this vast expanse of water and hear
Its wild cranes sing from their floating nests
In the summer moonlight.
 
I seek to disappear into a distant landscape
Where the self and its constructions of the world may
Dissolve away until nothing remains but the no-mind.
My thoughts are full of the practicalities of journeying
Of an imagined location, that lonely place
Where I may be at one with myself.
Where I may delight in the everyday Way,
Myself among mist and vine, rock and cave.
Not this lady of many parts and purposes whose poems must
Speak of lives, sorrow and joy, pleasure and pain
Set amongst personal conflict and intrigue
That in containing these things, bring order to disorder;
Salve the conscience, bathe hurt, soothe sleight.
judy smith Apr 2015
The Pakistan Fashion Design Council in collaboration with Sunsilk presented the fourth and final day of the eighth PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week. Indeed the 8th PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week marked the twelfth fashion week platform initiated by the Pakistan Fashion Design Council [with eight weeks of prêt-à-porter and four of bridal fashion] and was a direct manifestation of the Council’s commitment to sustainability and discipline within the business of fashion and the facilitation of Pakistan’s retail industry. Indeed #PSFW15 endeavoured to define and present trends for 2015, focusing specifically on fashion for the regions’ long hot summer months. Day-4 featured High-Street Fashion shows by the House of Arsalan Iqbal, Erum Khan, Chinyere and Hassan Riaz and designer prêt-à-porter shows by Sana Safinaz, Republic by Omar Farooq, Syeda Amera, Huma & Amir Adnan, Sania Maskatiya and HSY.

Speaking about the PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week platform, Chairperson of the PFDC, Sehyr Saigol said: “With the 12th iteration of our critically acclaimed fashion weeks, the PFDC is always working to streamline our prêt-à-porter platform to make the PSFW experience more beneficial for all stakeholders in terms of show experience, exposure and ultimately, retail value. To that end, each year we look inward to find the best possible formats and categories to benefit the very trade and business of fashion. In this vein, we introduced 3 separate categories for Luxury/Prêt, High Street and Textile at PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week, giving each entirely separate show space, times, audience exposure and viewing power. Our High Street fashion brands had been given a standalone show time on two separate days as early evening shows and Textile brands a separate dedicated day for Voile shows on Day 3 of PSFW 2015, a measured step to further highlight Pakistan’s textile prowess and high street fashion strength which are of significant importance to national and international fashion markets. As per past tradition, we continue to work closely with all our emerging designers and mainstream brands to help hone their collections for the runway through mentorship by senior PFDC Council members and with retail support through the PFDC’s own stores and network. We are grateful for the committed support of our sponsors and partners which provides us the stimulus to further enhance our fashion week platforms and put forth the best face of Pakistani fashion on a consistent basis.”

“The Sunsilk girl is an achiever, with an air of enthusiasm and positivity. Great hair can give her the extra dose of confidence so with Sunsilk by her side, she is empowered to take on life. Fashion is very close to this aspirational Pakistani girl making the PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week a highly valued platform for us. We recognize PFDC’s efforts to promote the fashion industry and experienced and upcoming talent alike. Sunsilk has been a part of this fantastic journey for 6 consecutive years and continues to shape aspirations, taking contemporary fashion directly to the homes of consumers and encouraging them to script their own stories of success” said Asanga Ranasinghe, VP Home and Personal Care for Unilever Pakistan.

On the concluding day of #PSFW15, the Chairperson of the PFDC Mrs. Sehyr Saigol also made a special announcement on behalf of the Council and its Board Members, where she shared the Council’s plans to establish Pakistan’s first ever craft based Design District, a multi-purpose specialized facility that would assist in developing and enhancing the arts and crafts industries, which are an integral part of Pakistan’s rich cultural legacy. In addition to being a centre for skill improvement and capacity building, the Design District would also house a first of its kind Textile Museum.

The official spokesperson of the PFDC, Sara Shahid of Sublime by Sara also announced the official dates for the Council’s next fashion week, PFDC L’Oréal Paris Bridal Week 2015 which is scheduled to be held from 15th September to 17th September 2015.

Indeed the success of PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week continued to prompt private sector associates to grow in their engagement of the platform to launch new marketing campaigns and promotional activities. To this end, the PFDC’s evolving partnership with Sunsilk grew exponentially this year whereby in addition to their title patronage; Sunsilk also took over the coveted PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week red carpet and the Green Room/Backstage, as sponsors. This extension of their support is indeed a manifestation of the brand’s belief in and commitment to the platform. Also in continuation of their support for the platform, Fed Ex – GSP Pakistan Gerry’s International returned to PSFW as the official logistics partner, offering the PFDC a special arrangement for international designer consignments.

PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week 2015 was styled by the creative teams at Nabila’s and NGENTS. Light design, set design, sound engineering, video packaging, choreography and show production from concept to construction was by HSY Events, front stage management by Maheen Kardar Ali, backstage management by Product 021, Sara Shahid of Sublime by Sara as the official spokesperson for the PFDC, logistics and operations by Eleventh Experience and photography by Faisal Farooqui and the team at Dragonfly, Hum TV/Hum Sitaray as the Official Media Partners, CityFM89 as the Official Radio Partners with all media management by Lotus Client Management & Public Relations.

High-Street Fashion Shows

The House of Arsalan Iqbal

The afternoon High-Street Fashion Shows on the final day of PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week 2015 were opened by leading fashion brand The House of Arsalan Iqbal, who showcased a collection titled ‘Devolution Chic’. Inspired by street art across the world by various artists, European high-street trends and technique of quilting, Arsalan Iqbal garnered personal portfolios of graffitists from myriad urban cityscapes such as London, New York, Tokyo, Barcelona and Cape Town, juxtaposed with some unique in-house created patterns including those of Pac-man, calligraphic flourishes and aqua and tangerine bands and circlets. Based in chiffon, the ensembles were molded into voluminous structured silhouettes including draped tunics, edgy jumpsuits and wide palazzos dovetailed with off-white and ecru charmeuse silk jackets created with a revolutionary quilting process. Along with menswear pieces, the collection also included in-house footwear and jewellery made in collaboration with pioneering Karachi-based street artist SANKI.

Erum Khan

Designer Erum Khan followed next and made her PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week debut with ‘The Untainted Shine’. The collection took its inspiration from the sparkle of twinkling stars, a walk on pearl dew in the morning and the enchanted glow which is produced when “a magic wand” is waved around the body, making it glow in a pearlescent white and exhibiting a jewel themed lustre on the body. With neat and straight structured cuts, Erum had used fabrics such as organza combined with silk, 3D flowers, patch work and antique katdanna in a collection which was based in a white colour palette. Trends highlighted in the collection were high waist skirts to button up pants and sheer long dresses. Acclaimed Pakistani musician Goher Mumtaz and his wife Anam Ahmed walked the ramp as the designer’s celebrity showstoppers.

Chinyere

Following Erum Khan, fashion brand Chinyere showcased its Spring/Summer 2015 High-Street collection ‘Mizaj-e-Shahana’ at PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week 2015. An ode to the era of the Mughal royalty and their imperial aesthetic, the collection comprised of modern silhouettes and traditional embellishments with organza skirts paired with cropped tops, angarkha-peplum tops with embellished cigarette pants, sheer knee-length jackets paired with structured digital printed bustier-jumpsuits, diaphanous wrap-around boot-cuts and embellished boxy sleeves with soft A-line silhouettes. Chinyere also showcased ten menswear pieces comprising of waistcoats, jodhpurs, knee-length sherwanis paired with gossamer sheer kurtas. The colours used had been divided into a collection of distinctive Mughalesque pastels and jewel tones. The pastels included the classic marble ivory-on-ivory, the bold black, saffron, gold and ivory. The colour segments also included metallic gold and grey sections, with accents of bronze and black. The jewel tones included jade, emerald, ruby and sapphire.

Hassan Riaz

The concluding High-Street fashion show of PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week 2015 was presented by Hassan Riaz who showcased his ‘Contained Shadows’ collection. Inspired by the diverse facets of the human soul that explore both the dark and light sides of human nature, taking into account yearnings, desires, and anxieties that make us distinctly human, Hassan had based the collection in summer twill, organza and summer denim in shades of blue and white with a gold accent to reflect upon his inspirations. ‘Contained Shadows’ made use of structured and drifting silhouettes, cage crinolines with corsets and bustiers with distinct trends featuring cropped tops, nautical accents, experiments with transparency and patchworks of metal mixed & matched with flowers.

Designer Showcases

Sana Safinaz

PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week 2015’s evening [rêt shows on the fourth and final day was opened by premier designer label Sana Safinaz. Sana Safinaz’s PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week collection was inspired by monochromatic structured looks with pops of color. The collection was based in luxe fabrics such as kattan, silks, fine silk organza and dutches satin in a colour palette majorly based in black and white with strong vibrant pop infusions.
Key trends being highlighted were the oversized T, constructions-clean lines, simplicity of cuts and effective embellishments.

Republic by Omar Farooq

Following Sana Safinaz, acclaimed menswear brand Republic By Omar Farooqshowcased a collection titled ‘Que Sera, Sera!’ (whatever will be, will be!). Omar Farooq had used a variety of luxe fabrics such as suede, linen, chiffon, cotton, cotton silk and wool silk. A collection for all seasons, the ensembles built upon the label’s signature aesthetics while providing a new take on contemporary menswear. Acclaimed media personality Fawad Khan walked the ramp as the brand’s celebrity showstopper.

Syeda Amera

The third Prêt show of the final day of PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week 2015 was presented by designer Syeda Amera who made her ramp debut with ‘The World of Sea’. Inspired by love for the enchanting underwater, the collection was based in premium quality organza, jersey, nets and silks with delicate cuts and embellishments consisting of beads, sequins and feathers to reflect the collection’s aquatic theme. ‘The World of Sea’ featured a palette of aqua marine, scupa blue, powder pink, grey blue, tequila sunrise yellow, orange and lagoon green with trends that employed skirt layering, frills and ruffles and flared pants.

Huma & Amir Adnan

Following Syeda Amera, Huma & Amir Adnan showcased a joint collection for the first time at a fashion exhibition. Both Huma and Amir feel that as a couple they share their lives and draw synergies and their collection ‘Symphony’ was an epitome of how two people can revolve around the same concept in harmony, while maintaining their individual distinction. Showcasing both menswear and women’s wear at PSFW 2015, Huma and Amir had used a mix of fabrics, textures and embellishments with a complex collection of weaves, prints and embroideries in silk, linen, cotton and microfiber. The color palette included midnight blue, emerald green, wet earth, aubergine, ivory, old paper, turmeric, leaf and magenta. Key trends highlighted in the collection were long shirts, double layered shirts, printed vests and jackets, textured pants, colored shoes for men and layers of multi-textured fabrics, tighter silhouette, vests and jackets for women.

Sania Maskatiya

Designer Sania Maskatiya showcased the penultimate Luxury/Prêt collection of the evening at PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week 2015. This S/S ’15, Sania Maskatiya took audiences on a fashion journey to ‘Paristan’ – a place of fairytale whimsy at PFDC Sunsilk Fashion Week. With a colour palette ranging from the softest shades of daybreak to the deepest hues of nightfall, ‘Paristan’ was a collection of playful, dreamlike prêt ensembles. Featuring luxury fabrics like silk, organza, charmeuse and crepe, the pieces followed the brand’s signature silhouettes, both structured and fluid. Beads and sequins embellished varied hemlines and multiple layering, all set against captivating scenes of mirth and magic. Motifs ranged from the sublime to nonsensical; friendly mice and naughty elves, clocks and teapots, flowering fields and star-filled skies, princesses and ponies.

HSY

Day-4’s finale was presented by acclaimed couturier HSY who showcased a collection titled ‘INK’; a collection inspired by Asia and specifically HSY’s journeys to The Land of the Rising Sun. INK represented the essence of Langkawi, Indonesia, Nagasaki, and Yunnan with natural and indigenous yarns, hand-woven to perfection. The collection featured the traditional dyeing techniques of Shibori from Nagasaki, Batik from Indonesia, and Gara from Sierra Leone infused with mackintosh, saffron, aubergine, eggshell, rosette, indigo and ochre. Created with the scorching sub continental summer in mind, INK channelled versatile hemlines to suit a diversity of younger, older, working men, women and homemakers alike.Read more here:www.marieaustralia.com/long-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-brisbane
Nigel Morgan May 2015
In a distant land, far beyond the time we know now, there lived an ancient people who knew in their bones of a past outside memory. Things happened over and over; as day became night night became day, spring followed winter, summer followed spring, autumn followed summer and then, and then as autumn came, at least the well-known ordered days passed full of preparation for the transhumance, that great movement of flocks and herds from the summer mountains to the winter pastures. But in the great oak woods of this region the leaves seemed reluctant to fall. Even after the first frosts when the trees glimmered with rime as the sun rose. Even when winter’s cousin, the great wind from the west, ravaged the conical roofs of the shepherds’ huts. The leaves did not fall.

For Lucila, searching for leaves as she climbed each day higher and higher through the parched undergrowth under the most ancient oaks, there were only acorns, slews of acorns at her feet. There were no leaves, or rather no leaves that might be gathered as newly fallen. Only the faint husks of leaves of the previous autumn, leaves of provenance already gathered before she left the mountains last year for the winter plains, leaves she had placed into her deep sleeves, into her voluminous apron, into the large pockets of her vlaterz, the ornate felt jacket of the married woman.

Since her childhood she had picked and pocketed these oaken leaves, felt their thin, veined, patterned forms, felt, followed, caressed them between her finger tips. It was as though her pockets were full of the hands of children, seven-fingered hands, stroking her fingers with their pointed tips when her fingers were pocketed.

She would find private places to lay out her gathered leaves. She wanted none to know or touch or speak of these her children of the oak forest. She had waited all summer, as she had done since a child, watching them bud and grow on the branch, and then, with the frosts and winds of autumn, fall, fall, fall to the ground, but best of all fall into her small hands, every leaf there to be caught, fallen into the bowl of her cupped hands. And for every leaf caught, a wish.

Her autumn days became full of wishes. She would lie awake on her straw mattress after Mikas had risen for the night milking, that time when the rustling bells of the goats had no accompaniment from the birds. She would assemble her lists of wishes, wishes ready for leaves not yet fallen into the bowl of her cupped hands. May the toes of my baby be perfectly formed? May his hair fall straight without a single curl? May I know only the pain I can bear when he comes? May the mother of Mikas love this child?

As the fine autumn days moved towards the feast day of St Anolysius, the traditional day of departure of the winter transhumance, there was, this season, an unspoken tension present in the still, dry air. Already preparations were being made for the long journey to the winter plains. There was soon to be a wedding now three days away, of the Phatos boy to the Tamosel girl. The boy was from an adjoining summer pasture and had travelled during the summer months with an itinerant uncle, a pedlar of sorts and beggar of repute. So he had seen something of the world beyond those of the herds and flocks can expect to see. He was rightly-made and fit to marry, although, of course, the girl was to be well-kept secret until the day itself.

Lucila remembered those wedding days, her wedding days, those anxious days of waiting when encased in her finery, in her seemingly impenetrable and voluminous wedding clothes she had remained all but hidden from view. While around her the revelling came and went, the drunkenness, the feasting, the riotous eruptions of noise and movement, the sudden visitations of relatives she did not know, the fierce instructions of women who spoke to her now as a woman no longer a young girl or a dear child, women she knew as silent, shy and respectful who were now loud and lewd, who told her things she could hardly believe, what a man might do, what a man might be, what a woman had to suffer - all these things happening at the same time. And then her soon-to-be husband’s drunk-beyond-reason friends had carried off the basket with her trousseau and dressed themselves riotously in her finest embroidered blouses, her intricate layered skirts, her petticoats, even the nightdress deemed the one to be worn when eventually, after three days revelry, she would be visited by a man, now more goat than man, sodden with drink, insensible to what little she understood as human passion beyond the coupling of goats. Of course Semisar had prepared the bright blood for the bridesbed sheet, the necessary evidence, and as Mikas lay sprawled unconscious at the foot of the marriage bed she had allowed herself to be dishevelled, to feign the aftermath of the act he was supposed to have committed upon her. That would, she knew, come later . . .

It was then, in those terrible days and after, she took comfort from her silent, private stitching into leaves, the darning of acorns, the spinning of skeins of goats’ wool she would walnut-dye and weave around stones and pieces of glass. She would bring together leaves bound into tiny books, volumes containing for her a language of leaves, the signs and symbols of nature she had named, that only she knew. She could not read the words of the priest’s book but was fluent in the script of veins and ribs and patterning that every leaf owned. When autumn came she could hardly move a step for picking up a fallen leaf, reading its story, learning of its history. But this autumn now, at the time of leaf fall, the fall of the leaf did not happen and those leaves of last year at her feet were ready to disintegrate at her touch. She was filled with dread. She knew she could not leave the mountains without a collection of leaves to stitch and weave through the shorter days and long, long winter nights. She had imagined sharing with her infant child this language she had learnt, had stitched into her daily life.

It was Semisar of course, who voiced it first. Semisar, the self-appointed weather ears and horizon eyes of the community, who followed her into the woods, who had forced Lucila against a tree holding one broad arm and her body’s weight like a bar from which Lucila could not escape, and with the other arm and hand rifled the broad pockets of Lucila’s apron. Semisar tossed the delicate chicken bone needles to the ground, unravelled the bobbins of walnut-stained yarn, crumpled the delicately folded and stitched, but yet to be finished, constructions of leaves . . . And spewed forth a torrent of terrible words. Already the men knew that the lack of leaf fall was peculiar only to the woods above and around their village. Over the other side of the mountain Telgatho had said this was not so. Was Lucila a Magnelz? Perhaps a Cutvlael? This baby she carried, a girl of course, was already making evil. Semisar placed her hand over and around the ripe hard form of the unborn child, feeling for its shape, its elbows and knees, the spine. And from there, with a vicelike grip on the wrist, Semisar dragged Lucila up and far into the woods to where the mountain with its caves and rocks touched the last trees, and from there to the cave where she seemed to know Lucila’s treasures lay, her treasures from childhood. Semisar would destroy everything, then the leaves would surely fall.

When Lucila did not return to prepare the evening meal Mikas was to learn all. Should he leave her be? He had been told women had these times of strange behaviour before childbirth. The wedding of the Phatos boy was almost upon them and the young men were already behaving like goats before the rut. The festive candles and tinselled wedding crowns had been fetched from the nearest town two days ride distant, the decoration of the tiny mountain basilica and the accommodation for the priest was in hand. The women were busy with the making of sweets and treats to be thrown at the wedding pair by guests and well-wishers. Later, the same women would prepare the dough for the millstones of bread that would be baked in the stone ovens. The men had already chosen the finest lambs to spit-roast for the feast.

She will return, Semisar had said after waiting by the fold where Mikas flocks, now gathered from the heights, awaited their journey south. All will be well, Mikas, never fear. The infant, a girl, may not last its birth, Semisar warned, but seeing the shocked face of Mikas, explained a still-birth might be providential for all. Know this time will pass, she said, and you can still be blessed with many sons. We are forever in the hands of the spirit, she said, leaving without the customary salutation of farewell.
                                               
However different the lives of man and woman may by tradition and circumstance become, those who share the ways and rites of marriage are inextricably linked by fate’s own hand and purpose. Mikas has come to know his once-bride, the child become woman in his clumsy embrace, the girl of perhaps fifteen summers fulfilling now his mother’s previous role, who speaks little but watches and listens, is unfailingly attentive to his needs and demands, and who now carries his child ( it can only be a boy), carries this boy high in her womb and with a confidence his family has already remarked upon.

After their wedding he had often returned home to Lucila at the time of the sun’s zenith when it is customary for the village women to seek the shade of their huts and sleep. It was an unwritten rite due to a newly-wed husband to feign the sudden need for a forgotten tool or seek to examine a sick animal in the home fold. After several fruitless visits when he found their hut empty he timed his visit earlier to see her black-scarfed figure disappear into the oak woods.  He followed her secretively, and had observed her seated beneath an ancient warrior of a tree, had watched over her intricate making. Furthermore and later he came to know where she hid the results of this often fevered stitching of things from nature’s store and stash, though an supernatural fear forbade him to enter the cleft between rocks into which she would disappear. He began to know how times and turns of the days affected her actions, but had left her be. She would usually return bright-eyed and with a quiet wonder, of what he did not know, but she carried something back within her that gave her a peculiar peace and beauty. It seemed akin to the well-being Mikas knew from handling a fine ewe from his flock . . .

And she would sometimes allow herself to be handled thus. She let him place his hands over her in that joyful ownership and command of a man whose life is wholly bound up with flocks and herds and the well-being of the female species. He would come from the evening watch with the ever-constant count of his flock still on his lips, and by a mixture of accident and stealth touch her wholly-clothed body, sometimes needing his fingers into the thick wool of her stockings, stroking the chestnut silken hairs that he found above her bare wrists, marvelling at her small hands with their perfect nails. He knew from the ribaldry of men that women were trained from childhood to display to men as little as possible of their intimate selves. But alone and apart all day on a remote hillside, alone save for several hundred sheep, brought to Mikas in his solitary state wild and conjured thoughts of feminine spirits, unencumbered by clothes, brighter and more various than any night-time dream. And he had succumbed to the pleasure of such thoughts times beyond reason, finding himself imagining Lucila as he knew she was unlikely ever to allow herself to be. But even in the single winter and summer of their life together there had been moments of surprise and revelation, and accompanied by these precious thoughts he went in search of her in the darkness of a three-quarter moon, into the stillness of the night-time wood.

Ah Lucilla. We might think that after the scourge of Semisar, the physical outrage of her baby’s forced examination, and finally the destruction of her treasures, this child-wife herself with child would be desolate with grief at what had come about. She had not been forced to follow Semisar into the small cave where wrapped in woven blankets her treasures lay between the thinnest sheets of impure and rejected parchment gleaned surreptitiously after shearing, but holding each and every treasure distinct and detached. There was enough light for Semisar to pause in wonder at the intricate constructions, bright with the aura of extreme fragility owned by many of the smaller makings. And not just the leaves of the oak were here, but of the mastic, the walnut, the flaky-barked strawberry and its smoothed barked cousin. There were leaves and sheaves of bark from lowland trees of the winter sojourn, there were dried fruits mysteriously arranged, constructions of acorns threaded with the dark madder-red yarn, even acorns cracked and damaged from their tree fall had been ‘mended’ with thread.

Semisar was to open some of the tiny books of leaved pages where she witnessed a form of writing she did not recognise (she could not read but had seen the priest’s writing and the print of the holy books). This she wondered at, as surely Lucila had only the education of the home? Such symbols must belong to the spirit world. Another sign that Lucila had infringed order and disturbed custom. It would take but a matter of minutes to turn such makings into little more than a layer of dust on the floor.

With her bare hands Semisar ground together these elaborate confections, these lovingly-made conjunctions of needle’s art with nature’s purpose and accidental beauty. She ground them together until they were dust.

When Semisar returned into the pale afternoon light it seemed Lucila had remained as she had been left: motionless, and without expression. If Semisar had known the phenomenon of shock, Lucila was in that condition. But, in the manner of a woman preparing to grieve for the dead she had removed her black scarf and unwound the long dark chestnut plaits that flowed down her back. But there were no tears. only a dumb silence but for the heavy exhalation of breath. It seemed that she looked beyond Semisar into the world of spirits invoking perhaps their aid, their comfort.

What happened had neither invoked sadness nor grief. It was as if it had been ordained in the elusive pattern of things. It felt like the clearing of the summer hut before the final departure for the long journey to the winter world. The hut, Lucila had been taught, was to be left spotless, every item put in its rightful place ready to be taken up again on the return to the summer life, exactly as if it had been undisturbed by absence . Not a crumb would remain before the rugs and coverings were rolled and removed, summer clothes hard washed and tightly mended, to be folded then wrapped between sprigs of aromatic herbs.

Lucila would go now and collect her precious but scattered needles from beneath the ancient oak. She would begin again - only to make and embroider garments for her daughter. It was as though, despite this ‘loss’, she had retained within her physical self the memory of every stitch driven into nature’s fabric.

Suddenly Lucila remembered that saints’ day which had sanctioned a winter’s walk with her mother, a day when her eyes had been drawn to a world of patterns and objects at her feet: the damaged acorn, the fractured leaf, the broken berried branch, the wisp of wool left impaled upon a stub of thorns. She had been five, maybe six summers old. She had already known the comforting action of the needle’s press again the felted cloth, but then, as if impelled by some force quite outside herself, had ‘borrowed’ one of her mother’s needles and begun her odyssey of darning, mending, stitching, enduring her mother’s censure - a waste of good thread, little one - until her skill became obvious and one of delight, but a private delight her mother hid from all and sundry, and then pressed upon her ‘proper’ work with needle and thread. But the damage had been done, the dye cast. She became nature’s needle slave and quartered those personal but often invisible
Ugo Apr 2012
Dedicated to stillborn fetuses, 99 cent Malt Liquor and Existentialism
1.
Nymphomaniac tree huggers
And overweight bisexual vegetarians
Swallowing phentermine poison to stay fit.

2.
Funky fresh *******  
throwing pigs at St. Augustine’s pear tree
and frolicking abortions over Moloch’s philoprogenitiveness,

3.
While sipping barbecue sauce dipped in Lipton tea,
dancing around adhesive bonfires
reciting memories of holocaust, the Kristallnacht nights
and beautiful words suffered by ancestors lost.

4.
Inhale chicken noodle soup, with a side of Lithium,
And prance to Literacy class to combat envisionment
With free association conceptual constructions,

5.
Computerized like Prometheus’ fire burning through SmartBoards
In classrooms where the poison of heterosexual history
Is fed to boys in skirts cursed by Adam’s apple,

6.
Baptized by social norms and locked away in hopeless closets
According to the Tautology of Leviticus…
until they cut their breath by the vein of soteriology;

7.
Misunderstanding of God’s words
Covets the innocent to early graves
In biblical paratactic irony…like God betting Satan for a Job.

8.
Rub fried chicken oil on Bartholomaeus Anglicus’ skin
and soil his white pride with ***** flavor,
for revenge  On the Properties of Things

9.
and howl out in glory of victory
over totes of  lickerish piper methysticum blunts
that beg the conundrum,
'What is the origin of this world?'
'Ether,' he replied.
But it is not ether!
Nor Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
It is Dada. Dada. Dada!
  10.
For this is a record of the life stories of the greatest minds and geniuses of your generation,
written in boys and girls
who mimicked Basquiat’s genius and tagged bathroom walls with abstract philosophies like “Love is a prime number” and “ the weight of Duncan McDougall’s soul can only be found on the 15th of October”
who drank vampirish gulps of Vicodin while consoling themselves with aphorisms such as: “don’t rue the misses, you don’t need a Mrs. when you’re elevated by chemical kisses”
11.
Who stood naked in mirrors, weeping, for they were a mystery to themselves, but a great talent and soon to be legend to some.
Who lit cannabis in loneliness and waltzed naked with their ghosts, fantasizing about ****** tomatoes and Corpus Christi Mexican Jazz.
Who composed psychedelic anthems from dreams that were lost in ghettoes where virginities were lost for loaves of bread, for the hunger of bread.
12.
Who wrote suicide notes on a toilet seat, contemplating the texture of Marshall Mathers’ favorite underwear and whether the color green was an invention of **** Germany.
Who used to love their lovers in darkness and colored the streets of Manhattan with rainbows on June 24, 2011 to mark the date lady liberty finally bought a new pair of glasses.
13.
Who lost musical talents to a Wine-house and ended up in a whine-house where lobotomy was subsequently prescribed by the milligram.
Who indulged in pharmaceutical vices and when asked why replied simply, every recursively enumerable set is Diophantine.
Who diagnosed themselves with “start ****-itis” and self medicated by eating Fifinellas at the stroke of each midnight.
Who rubbed paraprosdokians on their skin and occupied Wall Street in search of a new euphemism for being American.
Who poured Alkalizer on a dead moose and kicked it while feasting on the divine question, “why does Rice play Texas?”
14.
who got bored with conventional relationships and bought the Origin of the World on street corners from vixens nicknamed “Jezebel” and climaxed atop of them screaming  “I’m in Babylon, the great Mother of ******!”
Who attempted suicides upon suicides upon suicides, in Oakland, until they were shipped away to private catholic universities in Rhode Island, where the history of Colossus was being taught.
15.
who serenaded love interests with four letter curse words at open bars where Kubla Khan was read and Tartars kings were licked all over like holy communion *****.
Who drove home with the spirits of wine and crashed on telephone poles where their obituaries were written in their prime, leaving their mothers weeping and calling congress to reconsider Prohibition.
16.
Who mixed Redbull with Propofol and drank the juxtaposition galore only to be woken up the next morning dead in their sleep.
Who tattooed rat poison packages with goodwill messages such as “****** divided by Water =6th day of creation” or “Seroquel + Brett Favre = St. Patrick”,
who went speedballing with Basquiat during autoscopy and woke up wondering the cost of Nautilus in Albuquerque.
17.
who took 33 hallelujah 1800 tequila jello shots and daydreamed about laying on Mithras’ grave, yelling, beetlejuice, beetlejuice…beetlejuice.
who found the truths of the Bible invalid by the miscalculation of Pi in 1 Kings 7, verse 3, and mailed death on anthrax letters to Reagan in protest.
18.
who sat empty bellied at breakfast tables wondering the temperature of satellites at Lagrangian points,  only to soon catch fire in their tongues and speak Labyrinth soliloquies that ended in
19.
Zion,
Where Google knows every answer.
In Zion
Where the youth, tomorrow’s future, quote a ***** named Hova better than they can quote Jehovah.
In Zion
Where *******’s art was used as weapon during the Cold war.
20.
In Zion
Where sartorial geniuses where no pants,
In Zion
Where David Kato Kisule is the secret hero of these words, for he was taken at a time
In Zion
Where we were supposed to be our ancestor’s sci-fi.

21.
In Zion,
Where the youth bear the scarlet letter X for they are a problem to tradition and hold no definition for the future, for they have discovered
In Zion
That the origin of this world is in their living eyes, and not in the dictionary of their ancestors who lived
In Zion
when the epitome of the literature of life ended in Revelation of Amen and Shantih shantih shantih;
this is a record of the greatest minds and geniuses there ever was, written
in Zion
where the meaninglessness and nothingness of Dada reigns, and the trinity of life now lives in the Subject, subjective and subjectivity.
http://www.amazon.com/OLAF-Nothing-Above-Fiction-ebook/dp/B009XZ9OVY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid;=1353822133&sr;=8-1&keywords;=olaf+last+king+of+nothing
"Stoner's Poem"

I see your snapstories,
I see your ask profile.
I see how you comment and reply and flaunt your English skills.
Trust me, I love your rebuttals,
More than Biryani and the Lebanese pornstar.
I see your Facebook posts,
I see your WordPress,
And I see, how you craft your poems flamboyantly,
And then, and then,
Pilfer my breath,
And rob my me.
Sometimes, just sometimes,
Your deportment bewilders me,
More than Lowry-Bronsted's theory.
I see how you dance in the rain,
Like "All, sin, tan, cos", do in my brain.
I see how you frequent every segment of my cardiac muscle,
And then desert it, like it's one of the many dilapidated constructions.
My reminiscences about your thingness,
Escalate me to a higher spiritual level,
More than **** does.
Oh, that smile,
Oh, that look,
Oh, the mystique in you.
And again, I am writing of Love.
And the pen doesn't seem to stop soon,
For I have taken a greater risk,
Than asking my friend about cathodes and anodes and electrolysis, while I took my last chemistry exam,
When the invigilator was around.
Ugo Feb 2012
1.
Nymphomaniac-addicts,
Overweight bisexual vegetarians
Climbing trees to stay fit
and eating 80’s fried chicken *******

2.
just imagine
Aquarians full of class valedictorians
Swimming on display for graduation ceremony…
reverse-symbolism of how Moolch drowned His *****

3.
Better yet, just imagine
Holy wars,
Beautiful words written to describe the burning pains
Of holocaust...the Kristallnacht nights
Under the mistletoe,
Watching Hall of fame ball hawks on pivot toes
Driving through hoes
After the whistle blows

4
College Literacy classes teaching basic:
Ideas that good questions leads to good answers,
Reading reminders
Free association conceptual constructions

5.
But *******’ professor:
free association **** shticks
misfires, false alarms
are all art, too,
Like sticking a dagger into an apple,
Not the edible, but the technology.

6.
Go head, deconstruct the philosophy
Of oral cute-tification,
according to the Tautology of Leviticus,
With the same three half truths, pogroms
against biological deviant... FLAGS!

7.
Cryptic gospels of a *******
Where three F.F.F’s
Stands for six six six
Like how 1mg of juxtaposition
And a dose of metamorphosis
is the repertoire of a king of curmudgeon
‘cause even the Holy Ghost
drinks from the cup of Christ’s blood.

8.
Reading,
Self-flagellation gospel-manual of Pope John Paul II,
At shrink sessions under the daze of heron Piper methysticum blunts
With sweet phat butts like lit lickerish that droop eyes
Like the psalm of Valeriana officinalis root extract.
Big Virge Sep 2020
Now Construction Is A Word...
When Applied To... " Verse "...
That NEEDS PROPULSION...
For Your Words To Be Heard... !!!
  
To Construct Or... BUILD...
... DEMANDS REAL SKILL... !!!
  
If You're Trying To... ENLIGHT...
Through The Words You Write...
  
Which Is Why Hip Hops'...  
Standards Have... dropped... !!!
  
Cos' It's Now Gone... " POP "...
When It Used To ROCK Spots... !!!
  
... ROCK Foundations...
Constructed By Stations...
  
Whose Radio Shows REFUSED To Go... !!!
To Playlists Built With HIP HOP Flows...  
  
Well It Seems OTHER Scenes...
... STILL REFUSE To SEE... ?!?
  
That When Built WELL...
... Hip Hop Can SELL... !!!!
  
CLEVER Word Constructions...
Feeding... NUMBERS... !!!
CLEARLY Now EXCEEDING Hundreds... !!!
  
MILLIONS Now Across The Globe...
CONSTRUCT SLICK Flows...
To EARN Them DOUGH... !!!!!
  
But As I Said.....
Some Heads Constructions Are WORTHLESS... !!!
And Send CONVULSIONS Through Poems...
That Make NO SENSE Or INSIGHT VIOLENCE... !?!
  
WHY Construct Things That Lead To DEATH... ?!?
This CONTRADICTS CONSTRUCTIVE Trends... !?!
  
Construction IS The SAME AS CREATION...
So WHY Enlist What FEEDS DESECRATION... !?!?!
  
Construction Through The Words We Use...
Can HELP YOU FUEL What's GOOD In You... !!!
  
DON'T Get Me Wrong Sometimes SAD Songs...
Can HELP Someone Learn To... Move ON...
  
But MURDEROUS Words Can Motivate Herds...
To Try To HURT Or Do... MUCH WORSE... !!!
  
If You Just Create...
To Make Some CHANGE... $$$$...
  
Through ANY OLD Phrase Or VIOLENT CLAIM...
What You CONSTRUCT May SEAL Your Fate... !?!?!
  
And May Result In FUELLING... HATE... !!!
  
That's Why I Choose CONSTRUCTIVE Tools...
To HELP REDUCE My... ANGRY MOODS... !!!
  
Of COURSE I've Written ANGRY WORDS... !!!!!
  
But What You QUOTE...
And Choose To PROMOTE...
May One Day... BURN...
And Leave You CURSED... !!?!!
  
I'd RATHER SEE... POSITIVITY...
In Poetry That Comes From ME... !!!
EVEN WHEN... I Face PROBLEMS... !!!
  
CONSTRUCTION Lends Itself To BLENDS...
That CREATE MORE And DESTROY LESS... !!!!!
  
Which I Am FOR And NOT Against... !!!!!!!!!!!!
  
SO MANY SELECT DESTRUCTIVE Styles...
To Get A CHEQUE FAKE Hugs And SMILES...
  
That POSITIVE Rhymes Are Now RESIGNED...
To Being KEPT............. From Minds...
ESPECIALLY When The TRUTH's Outlined... ?!?
  
I Guess That's WHY We Now... " Accept "...
CONSTRUCTED LIES From Governments...
And................................ ........ OSTRACIZE.....
  
Those Who EXPRESS...
Their Arguments Through Common Sense... !!!
  
My Intellect YES... IS Down With Them... !!!
So Construct Words In Their DEFENCE...
  
While Most PREFER To FOLLOW The Herds...
of Writers Whose Constructions... PROVE...
That What They Do AIN'T Good For You... !!!
  
Each To Their OWN Of Course OF COURSE... !!!
But Watch Them CLOSE And DON'T Get CAUGHT... !!!
  
In Zones Where Souls Are Sold Then BOUGHT... !!!
  
Constructions Built Should HOLD The Fort...
NOT WILT Like Stilts On BURNING Floors... !!!!!
  
WEAK Constructions WILL MALFUNCTION... !!!
Like Those With Men WIELDING TRUNCHEONS... !!!!
  
I Like Things BUILT And Constructed WELL...
Like Women With... Bodies That SELL... !!!!!
  
And A MIND With Which We Could ENRICH...
Our Lives With LOVE We Could CONSTRUCT... !!!!!
  
A CONSTRUCTION Like THAT Would Be SO NICE...
I'd Be Her Man For The Rest of Our Lives... !!!!!!
  
MAYBE Construct A... " Family "... ???
  
"Hold on there V, You're in a dream !
You know that's not reality, and probably, is unlikely !"
  
What I Construct May One Day See...
A Woman Who LOVES My Poetry...
Become THE ONE Who FILLS My Dreams... !!!!!
  
UNTIL That Time I'll Write My Rhymes...
Because This IS My... COMPULSION...
To Touch EVERYONE Who READS My Stuff...
  
Through Simple Use of...
  
... " CONSTRUCTION "...
Just a lil' poetic construction.....
Wen Ao Long Nov 2014
Hello snorer, I hope you didn't sleep any poorer
when I stayed up all night typing this not-poem
I meant you no harm, but I had to stay up
Because I couldn't make music out of your obnoxiously loud cacophony of windpipe crap, er "music".  Time to not-pretend to absolutely hate your snoring under the guise of being perfectly okay with it for the sake of setting the tone a bit nicer to all who must hear it, so they can BEAR to, for otherwise it would be absurd.  Not as absurd as anyone hating to have aural drills applied to all their chakras all night, but still absurd enough to get a chuckle out of me (I hope it didn't wake your fine specimen here). It was never my intent, though it was always my ethical concern (if only everyone could be as reciprocal as you and I).   Oh, my not-pretend hatred is very thinly veiled.  I wasn't totally defeated by your snore-sound armies so that I couldn't type words, but I may have lost some of my desired effect due to the sometimes wincing distraction they caused to my piece of mind at this or that time when I needed it the most (even though I was awake, which is no crime if snoring at night and keeping me that way isn't).

Well, I did ask you if you'd mind if I typed,
I did tell you that you could tell me if its quiet purr of clicks would bother your precious sleep
But I never felt a need to be concerned, because whenever I
was typing, I heard you snore, and whenever I was in the heights of
some new discovery or epiphany, your sharp sudden thunderstroke of near death
corrugated metal vibrating in the torrent of some sudden gale force gust of wind.

These were signs to me of your restful sleep.  So I simply didn't worry about your sleep.  I was certain that my electronic beeps were every now and then music to your ears, just as they were to mine.  This is because in the midst of these I heard you snore, and when you snored, I took you to be asleep.

Ah but then again, then again, these are fanciful constructions which simply say that what is wonderful for me should be just fine and dandy with you, at a bare minimum, and on those grounds of very unsymmetrical attitude about right and wrong I would have to begin my music tirade of words as well.  But I don't view justice and propriety along such selfish lines as these.

What I see is that duplicity is your thesis.  I have anecdotal accounts which are marvelous to behold first hand, but the details of the absurdities cannot be done justice in the language of men, for the intensity of such insanity can only be borne lightly by the frailest frayed ends of my sanity for having lived through your acoustically maddening inanity.

You didn't ever admit to me that my noises were not music to YOUR ears.  Indeed  you claimed never to be bothered by them because you never voiced up against them.  I suppose you might as well voice up against them in the street as well if it turns out not all of you snorers-go-a-viking types like to hear my mouse clicking away like a tapping noises on a metal plate in your skull.  Sorry if it is another non-snorer-who-must-stay-up-late-and-so-be-occupied person whose nocturnal joys were misinterpreted as direct assaults on the dignity, spirit, or just basic mental viability of your wounded snoremonster troop of anti-late-stayer-uppers, because in fact, we used to be sleep-at-night-entities like you, but that was before you showed up, thoracic marching band in tow.  Marching bands are musical also, to some people.  And for some all hours of the night are perfect for a marching band.  Who am I to tell them otherwise.  

Well let me know the next time a marching band is given special permit to come through your neighborhood at night, and I'll be glad to point out to you the first Snorer'sville, because only they should be expected, in all justice to live with the macroscopic manifestation of their personal narcissistic paradises.

Let you all go to your own place and form your own nation, and see if you can consistently demand everyone else find music in your ****** and accursed racket!  But until then I expect some of you will have to take the damage returned by the growing number of people who are very much tired of living under the horrors of your infliction upon us, your demonic and evil tyranny of mind-crushing hate that is your ****** noise.  We will do yoga and breathe, and stretch, and some light calesthenics to relax and seek some focus and composure, whenever our spirits require, and this will be unchallenged by you so long as you are asleep, and it will be unchallenged by you so long as you are awake too.  For in the latter case you are already awake (and so still are we, usually) while in the former case it is far quieter than your snoring, both in its valleys and peaks.  And moreover it has not kept you up, but in fact I have noted that you wake yourself up with your own music when it reaches a certain crescendo.  

Unless you want to say that those crescendos are some sort of involuntary complaint about MY crescendos of spirit, when I start typing about 20% faster than normal, with perfect focus and accuracy while reaching an aesthetic pleasure approaching ****** as I realize that it is almost unerringly in the midst of such an experience that I hear your crescendo resound. And since it was no more intended to be a distraction for me, then surely my music must have also gone undetected by your ears, as well as your spirit. Or is it fairer to say it was the very cause of your crescendo, or at least its inspiration?

Therefore I needn't worry that it is I that is keeping you up, even if for only brief stints at a time, especially by comparison to my all-night vigils.  Not so, but it is you who are so enraptured by my occasional laughs or giggles as I edify my weary, sleep-deprived mind on some bit of morale boosting entertainment.  With headphones on of course.  It's also courteously plugged into the computer to prevent my favorite bit of Judas Priest from hurting your ear drums, or else overstimulating your music appreciation centers, which are verily attached to your ear-drums by a nerve bundle (and what nerve you all have there).  This means I've spared you too much distraction from any already-abundant music of the spheres effect you may be savoring which might have emanated from my bumbling around in the dark (to keep the lights out of course, after all people are sleeping).

Yes but that is a minority of you perhaps, who would lie about that and in fact who ought to say that our nocturnal emissions are not what you'd call restfully mind-relaxing crickets in the dead of night with an occasional hoot in the distance...  But they are a minority, the rest of you are so definitely in good faith.

But then why do I always run into those of your tribe who have strange and unethical habits, such as destroying others' lives by ruining their one perhaps most preciously personal and inalienable need second only to air and water, and that is sleep.  It is, in terms of acute necessity, in many ways more needed than food, though in the long term food catches up.  But food catches up only because not eating food is a  lot like not getting sleep, but just a lot more intense on the body when it drops to some critical point because we know from experience it is on raw nerves that we can go for a while in search of food, but if the food can't be found (perhaps because of our lack of sleep ruining our cognition in some way), then we will not eat, nor sleep, because we'll be dead.  

But either way, we'll be dead, for lack of sleep kills, both directly and indirectly, if suffered over a short time and/or in a diluted form over a long time.  That would be poetically commensurate to the sadistic similitude of the types of snoring sounds with the types of ways to die from being deprived of sleep according to two modes (acute and chronic), over many keys of incident, accident, lost opportunity and ill-stared fate, all of which can be mapped in some way back to that auditory persecution of our very souls of which your kind are in some swelling numbers quite proud.  Just think of all the car accidents, work accidents, altercations, fits of rage, inability to concentrate well or sometimes at all, and other life-damaging conditions of the mind, and also of the body, which accrue from lack of proper and healthy sleep at night!

Good thing for most of you though, right?  Because surely our music is also sweet, and I really hope I've inspired many to face this need for equality, and be on their guard against any unjust whining or groaning from those who seem in point of fact to value their sleep just a good deal more than they value anyone else's.  Not only because they really really love to get those zzz's but because they think that in the natural order of things, before people suddenly went mad and evil, people went to bed and slept well even partly BECAUSE of this brachio-esophageal orchestral lullaby.

But we'll be on our guard against those complaints, because we know you have plotted to take to the streets against us to defend your noisiness-all-night-every-night rights.  So we'll be on guard to defend ours, TO THE LAST FIBER OF OUR BEING.

Because you insufferable ******* are cruel, and cruelty no one should abide.  No one in my world, in my society of people, will be allowed to inflict cruelty on another person, nor be callously prejudicial in their own favor when injuries do occur because of their actions merely on the grounds that the damage it causes coincides with the fulfillment of a need on their own part, even while that fulfillment is of a need which is obstructed from satisfaction in the other part, and by THAT VERY SAME REASON, so that your sleep depends on keeping others awake.  UNLESS you can somehow con or coerce them into developing some form of Stockholm Syndrome and confuse the torment you inflict upon them with a sign of your love and wonderfulness to be around.

Yes, I know you hear me typing now, through your well-behaved proxy.  I feel it. If not he per se, then in a parallel universe not too far off, there's a version of him who does.  Perhaps not the one I know now, on day one of having moved into this room, but perhaps one represented in this universe by someone who has found himself in some sort of circumstances found later on during his stay, this mixed with the fact that familiarity breeds contempt... He'll start making some righteous demands of some kind, and I might not be in a such a good mood about that due to lack of proper sleep, and this will coincide with said contumacy against my own rights (such as to breathe, type, surf the net, or do other nocturnal things other than snoring which might keep others up).

As to that last point in parentheses, snoring is an activity which you perform in conjunction with your getting sleep, and it therefore means not well for your notion of fairness to say things as they are, and simply say the truth, which is that your getting sleep deprives others of theirs, but it can be logically deduced.

It can also be logically deduced that the don't give flying **** if you don't like the fact that we don't like your ear-**** night after night, which is a good name as any, but should perhaps at times be amended to body-demolishing soul-****** of a mortally sinful nature, and with an ethical incongruity to good character of a person to maintain it, all the more to sings its praises to us and call it "good poetry".
My tirade is intended to be expressive of a sincerely felt Truth, manifested in this which is only one of many forms, where things are never neutral, but divided neatly and perfectly into either Good or evil, so that no thought, word, or deed can be trivialized as mundane, neither in its innate import nor in its exported impact for others.  This is of the essence of ethics and has many metaphysical groundings which can be rationally demonstrated, but only to rational people.
Nat Lipstadt Jan 2014
Dreams of a Child
Created: Jan 23, 2011 5:44 AM
Finished: Jan 30, 2011 4:23 AM
Posted here  Jan 2014
Warning:
a very, very long poem, but within , I promise,
there is a precise stanza about, for you.  
Take it as my gift.
Let me know which you took home to play.

~~~~~~~


Some poets care not
for the
discipline of rules,
laws of punctuation.

Why bother brother,
with putting poems
in antiquated jailhouses,
prisons of vertical bars,
or afford the reader,
the courtesy of horizontal lines?

Question and quotations marks
these day refuted,
as a Catcher In The Rye
conspiracy symbology of big lies,,
political interventionism,
to the creative, most natural
right to be crude.  

Inconvenient impositions,
symbolic flailings, of an
over regulated civilization
in the throes of declination

Punkuation is but a
societal annoyance to
today's creative geniuses,
periods, commas,
nothing more than
a pause to think -
who needs 'em?
when we want to stink
up the atmosphere with vitriols
of half truths and inhuman
but oh so gleeful,
concentrated disparagement
of any person worthy of
nationwide late night mocking merriment.

Such free spirits, vivid animations,
within me do not reign,
though upon occasion,
boy got permission slips  
for breaking bad by invention
of an occasional new word.

New words, white truffles
vocabulic incantations,
my own cupcake creations,
meant to burr, or purr,
their tasty meanings, always,
were readily apparent.

Sometimes we rhyme,
sometimes  we can't;
doth not a reading of a
poetic periodic table
of rants, chants
love poems, and paeans
to a shhhh! pretend,
overarching, poesy ego
require some minimalist format?

How I envy you,
kind observer,
possessor of literary powers
untoward and untold,
delicate touches of a fingertip
rule and rue
poetic invention.

You can zoom away or in
for a closer examination
of unscripted revelations,
incinerate them like an
yesterday's newspaper,
thus demonstrate contempt for
less-than-historic ruminations,
as time has done before.

Witness the crumbled ruins of Ozymandias,
king of kings,
and how the critic's machinations
with a dash of tabasco time,
his works, now museum pieces,
in the Tate Modern's room of
Laughable Human Aspirations.

Don't panic, sigh or groan,
kind observer,
infection inflictions,
content of discontentment,  
ancient whinings that the publisher
long ago listed as discontinued,
will not herein unfold.

What has all these mumbled asides
to do with the Dreams of a Child?

Apologies prolific I distribute
for this long winded profligate prologue;
and even for prior invasions
of your contemplative fantasias,
but my intention certain:
**** out the weak chaff eaters,
feigners of faux interest,
who stanzas ago deserted us,
this confessional lore.

These prior lines conceived
to mislead and deceive,
to refer and deter
send away, the hangers-on
who litter our lives,
with whimpered falsehoods.


So, we begin anew:

Today's lecture entitled
Dreams of a Child
were formatted on a silver disc;
this communication's originations,
seedlings of block
roman black letters
on background of cleansing white,
re things that jar me in the night.

Easy slights that waken
from a fitful, pitted rest,
mental paintings
natured in gem colors,
tourmaline auras,
and vibratto hues
of blue zircons.  .  

I have never lain upon the couch,
in the inner holy of holies,
where one whispers
to the Father Confessor
an original composition,
subject, title and inspiration
of said unique origination,
decidedly of one's own choosing,
roots of the essay's telling,
harvested in the root garden
of one's dreams,
where grow herbs,
spicy ones,
flavors of childhood.

The lush and wooded smells
of a forest of childhood scars,
and it's concomitant
putrefying, fruited rot,
awoke and brokered
a stilted, tremulous sleep.

Went to bed a a man
of modest success,
of modest scenes,
a bond trader, who trades
exactly that:
his word, his bond,
his blessing to his
deal constructions,
all of which, ended with an
irrevocable cri of "Done!"

Yet like you,
I am oft undone.

Dreams.

In truth, not dreams, but
spectral moments of
our lives relived,
a melange of ancient lyrics,
taunts of childhood abusers and
peer humilators
who could
teach the CIA
torture techniques
of WORD boarding, par excellent.

Angelic faces of human ****
that birthed in me a holy duality,
anger and a,
love of words,
my vaccination serum.

Granted a love of
human kindness
from teachers who cherished their
high and mighty tight
to publicly humiliate,
knowing full well
that human laws could not
attempt to have them
justly incarcerated.

Where, where were
the supervisors
who let me be spit upon
in the back seat of a
Fifty's station wagon,
by the brothers of
a sainted dead shepherd?

I am still eight,
sitting on a stoop in the
modest side of town,
towel in hand, so handy,
to wipe the tears shed
for cause,
for the car-pool of suburban boys
who "forgot" to pick me up for
Sunday swim night.  

In high school,
in the back row,
I silently ******
the juice of a Sarte lemon and
essayed a term paper,
upon multiple mirrored
reflections of a man
called Camus.

As another self styled, only living
teenage expert
on "alien nations"
received with pride and trepidation,
a sentence of Ninety Eight,
on my term paper,
but the pedantic predators
deemed it an accident
for I, was  inscribed in their
Upper East Side
Coda of Prejudice,
as merely,
"just" a
man of USDA,
B grade quality intellect.  

Hand me downs
I did not get
as I was the
younger, sole brother,
but worn lint lines
of humiliation
when and where my pants
were "let down"
to accommodate growth spurts
were my growing marks of Cain.

Those growth lines
were economic reality signs,
and were rich fodder for
childhood monsters,
Scions of Income Superiority
who lived in ranch homes in
two car, color tv garage slums,
wearing band new Levis.

In the Sixties,
time of my unsilent spring
wore a cross of
teenage hood,
my hair,
worn long,
Jesus style

Worn with labor pride,
for it was
Made in the USA,
I was a most conventional
revolutionary.

In the parochial jail
of educated guesses,
where society's lesson plans
of all that was bad
were O so well taught,
I was apart, ahead,
of Our Crowd,
but not too, radically.  

But a spiteful
Principal of No Principle,
deemed my locks a
disruptive influence,
so to exorcise my rebel streak,
so to crucify his "Jesus Freak,"
so to exercise his diminutive spirit
a pompous uber man,
he had me shorn
like a sheep,
thrice
in just one day,

He loved his full employment
of his pharoic entitlement,
The Educator's Power of Abuse,

I was so denuded
of human strength,
the Italian barbers of the
East 86th Street subway station,
wept for me,
their cri du coeur,
Angels in Heaven did hear
and from God
did dare demand
an explanation!

He roared in manner celestial,
"Is he not my child too,
and if he be treated
in style *******,
it is purposed and willful."

Pornographic compilations of
slaps across a child's face,
I've got plenty
of and in My Space,
should you care to
add your own,
down under,
got plenty of room
for all comers    

In a Facebook world,
I pride, not pretend,
that having fewer "friends"  
is my honest and true
reflection of who I am, and,
life lessons learned -
quality, not quantity.  

Victims of discrimination
can be most discriminating
in matters of
human games, associations.  
****** or word,
lack of taking care
is not heart healthy.

Tried to forgive
the despotic progenitors,
of some of that which
is good within me
that, irony of ironies,
they can claim the title,
creator;

Tried to give them
what I had gotten -
from the happy malcontented  
evil spreaders,

That grace, grace is
the only methodology,
an inestimable but
valuable lost leader,
the only way
to survive on
this planet of
hardtack and
caste striation.  

Though still quick to anger
at the cutters and denigrators
I am quick still to
confess my own failings, and forgive those
of plain and honest folk.

Unfortunately, kind observer,
you had to share my brunt,
syllabic Iwo Jima battles
of a decaying verbal moonscape
to reach the denouement,
for now we have,
mostly arrived

Most likely you too
have long ago
deserted me like
so many others,
no matter,
this modulated breath
was born and released
from my heaving chest and
as I knew it,
know this:

My Absaloms
where ever you be,
presumably and hopefully in hell,
I give you thanks
and a mini bar drink
of absolution.
a tin medal of appreciation,
for the
Marked Improvement
you inadvertently nurtured
in this restless,
voyagered soul.

My ancient enemies
till now, be advised,
forgive and forget
was and has not  
fully formed
in my penitential template,

Unlike your natural capacity
for cruelty and mean
birthed unto you
in your third rate
genetic melange,
forgiveness is taught
in a Master Class
at a famous school of Ethical Drama,
that I did not attend

Though resident in
a better place,
my root garden,
the bitter herbs you planted
still grow but,
are welcome in sweet brotherhood,
until the selah days
of just one flavor.

Though the universe's expansion
is of a pace such that
time and space definitions
will stretch and warp
and need be
refined, replaced,
the governing principle here.
need not be rephrased.  

For goodness
from evil
doth come
and should your
evil spectres
once more try
for resurrection
in my benighted
dream world.
you will find the doors
locked and barred,
upon them a sign
not verbose,

**Done.
Whew.
Christian Ek May 2015
Hell no, you don't want to be compared to one of those models idolized in magazines.
True beauty lies outside the fashion industry’s visual constructions.
Fall in love with what you never expected to love, imperfection.
Brand-less self expression.
There are no cameras or flashing lights there
or visual effects.
We come in different range of sizes.
Shame on shallow marketing.
A pretty face can have nasty vices.
Hearts of Gold, now those aren't sold.
- C.Ek
RAJ NANDY Jun 2017
Dear Poet Friends, the Sphinx remains shrouded in myth, legend, and History. Modern research by archaeologists and Egyptologists have revealed some of its hidden mysteries. My research has resulted in providing you with a short & a balanced view about the Sphinx, keeping in mind the short attention span of my readers. Unfortunately, I am not able to post the Illustrative photographs here which accompanies my Sphinx story. Hope you like this story, thanks, - Raj Nandy, New Delhi.
            
         THE MYSTERY OF THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX

INTRODUCTION
Towering over the Giza plateau facing the rising sun over the
River Nile,
The Sphinx stands defiant for over four millennia, braving the
vagaries of weather and marauding time!
With a lion’s body and a human head the Sphinx remains
shrouded in part myth, part legend, and ancient History.
While the date of its construction, and identity of its face
have intrigued scholars for many centuries.
Today I shall tell you about this monumental and magnificent
structure,
Which stands as an iconic symbol of Egyptian architecture!
Man fears Time since he forever remains as it’s bonded
prisoner in captivity.
However, only few hours of freedom are granted to him during
his earthly sojourn, to live and love life with impunity!
But Time fears the Pyramid and the Sphinx, as they stand
defiant with their raised head;
As miniature symbols of eternity which even Time dreads!

MYTHS AND LEGEND ABOUT THE SPHINX
Many controversies and theories abound as to the identity
of its builders during ancient times.
Some say it was built by the people who came from Plato’s
lost ‘Continent of Atlantis’, prior to the Egyptians, way back
in time!
Others say it was the ancient Zulus who had inhabited the
wet and rainy Giza region with its great lake.
Around 8000 BC, during the close of the Great Ice Age!
But with changing weather pattern the Giza region later became
a desolate and a deserted area.
Yet no records or hieroglyphs survive, to make things clear.
The name ‘Sphinx’ is said to have been given 2000 years later  
by the enterprising Greeks.
Since in Greek Mythology there is a Sphinx, but with a woman’s
face, a lion’s body and with eagle’s wings;
Which guarded the entrance to the ancient Greek City of Thebes.
To the Greeks we owe the ‘Riddle of the Sphinx’ which asked all
passing travelers the following question:
“What is it that has one voice, and walks with four legs in the
morning, with two during the day, and with three in the evening
time?”  - about which those travelers had no notion!
The Sphinx devoured all those who had failed to answer, till the
Greek Oedipus confronted the Sphinx and replied,
That the riddle had described the three stages of a Man’s life.  
Since he crawled on all four as a child, grew up to walk on two
legs.
But during old age used a stick which became his third leg.
Hearing the correct answer the Sphinx is said to have jumped
into an abyss killing itself!

THE  SPHINX PROPER  
Modern Egyptologists generally agree, that the Sphinx had been
carved out from a single mass of limestone mound, -
Which dominated the Giza plateau before 2540 BC.
Built by Pharaoh Kufu’s son Khafre of the Fourth Dynasty.
Khafre was the builder of the second largest pyramid standing
next to his father’s Great Pyramid of Giza.  
While the Sphinx stands on the eastern most boundary of the
Desert Sahara;
Six miles west of Cairo, on the edge of Giza plateau.
It is 240 feet in length and almost 70 feet in height, aligned to
the Pyramid of Khafre behind.
The Sphinx lies on its hunches guarding the vast ‘City of the Dead’.
Where pharaohs mummified bodies lie deep within the pyramids;
To facilitate journey of their soul to gain eternal life and be
resurrected,
To join the Happy Fields of Osiris the Egyptian God of after-life
and death.

Great conquerors like Alexander and Napoleon had stood
dwarfed before the mighty Sphinx.
But to Napoleon we remain grateful for our knowledge of
Egyptian civilisation among other things.
For it was his soldiers who had discovered the Rosetta Stone
in Egypt in 1799, with its  bilingual inscription.
Written in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Coptic Greek, resulting in
the decipherment of the Ancient Egyptian pictorial inscriptions!

EXCAVATIONS AND RESEARCH WORK
The Sphinx had been buried by the shifting sands of the desert
many a time during past centuries.
While periodic restoration work continues to preserve it for
posterity.
American archeologist Mark Lehner and his team during the 1970s,
had analysed the bedrock under the mighty Sphinx.
They found natural cracks and fissures, and also narrow passage
ways dug by early treasure seekers!
His team climbed all over the Sphinx like Lilliputians over Gulliver, -  while mapping its structure entire.
It was found the Sphinx had been subjected to five major restoration efforts since 1400 BC .
While Mark’s dedicated efforts earned him a Doctorate in Egyptology at the Yale University.

Mark’s research also concluded that the visage of the Sphinx was
once painted in red.
While traces of blue and golden yellow decorated the ‘nemes’, the
Pharaoh’s brightly stripped head dress.
Controversies rage even to this date, as to whose features the
Sphinx’s Negroid face did actually represent.
While the disfigured nose of the Sphinx has given rise to many
speculations.
Was it the Muslim Arab conquerors, or a fanatical Sufi Turk who had tried to destroyed it as a pagan symbol!
Today I recall that the mighty 1700 years’ old statue of the Bamiyan
Buddha in Central Afghanistan.
Which was destroyed during March 2001 as a pagan statue by the
fanatical Taliban!
  
Mark feels that in all likelihood the Sphinx’s face was that of Khafre, with whose pyramid the Sphinx stands aligned.
While those ancient architects had arranged the location of the three pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx in conformity with solar events, - while choosing their construction site.
A settlement bigger than 10 football fields at this site was excavated,
Where the Sphinx formed an integral part of Pharaoh Khafre’s building complex!
This ‘Lost City’ of Mark Lehner had barracks, workmen’s quarters and kitchenette.
While remnants of diets found suggested workers were perhaps
rendering national service, and were not slaves.
No iron or bronze tools were found, only crude stone hammers and
copper chisels lay buried beneath the ground.
These copper chisels had to be sharpened at the charcoal furnace
frequently, for executing chiseling  work with artistry.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GIZA COMPLEX AREA
Mark Lehner and other Egyptologists felt that the pyramids, Sphinx, and the Temples Complex of Khafre was thoughtfully arranged,
For linking solar events and harnessing the power of the Sun God  
to resurrect the soul of the Pharaohs after their death!
This transformation not only guaranteed eternal life for their dead king,
But also sustained the universal national order, passing of seasons, the annual flooding of the Nile, and their people’s well being.
During sunset at March or September equinoxes when the sun appears to sink into the shoulder of the Sphinx, -
“At the very same moment the shadows of the Sphinx and the pyramids
both symbol of the king becomes merged silhouettes.
Sphinx representing Khafre as Horus the revered falcon god, offers with
his two paws to his father Khufu incarnated as Ra the sun god, who rises
and sets in that temple,” – as the ancient Egyptian’s thought.
Unfortunately  Kafre’s dream was not realised, since the Sphinx Temple remained unfinished as now we get to see,
As the Old Kingdom of Egypt finally broke apart around 2130 BC.
The desert sand began to gradually swallow up the Sphinx, till almost a thousand years later,
Thutmosis IV cleared the area, and introduced cult of Sphinx worship during the New Kingdom Era!
Rest is history, which has been already covered by me.

     CONCLUDING THE SPHINX STORY
The ancient Sphinx as Egypt’s iconic art,
Has captured the onlookers mind and heart.
Buried deep within its shifting sand,
Lies many a secret still unknown to man!
The Sphinx still beckons out to me,
Perhaps one day I shall get to see.
Today the Sphinx stares out at a fast food restaurant.
As it now faces a full frontal urban assault!
The rising water level of the Nile, tourism, traffic, and
air pollution, along with many urban constructions;
Make the authorities to worry about its preservation!
The Sphinx beckons out to man from eons past,
What is that secret it wants to share with us?
Perhaps it is about Environmental Degradation;
And the urgent need for Global Preservation!
                                                   ­        -Raj Nandy
ALL COPYRIGHTS WITH THE AUTHOR ONLY
M Mar 2014
So, what's the deal with ******?
Why is it that there's this whole weird thing
associated with being unclothed,
as if we don't wake up and each of us
strip down for a completely naked shower,
and under our clothes, we're completely naked.
Why is it we spend so much time pretending our bodies don't exist
and fragilely hiding behind these pointless social
constructions about what and whom you should and shouldn't be,
why do we lie about who we are and cover it up
because it's not safe for children?
CHILDREN ARE THE SAME SPECIES AS US.
THEY ARE THE SAME SHAPE.
They get naked too.
and if they're not quite the same shape yet, why do we hide what they're going to become?
It's completely pointless to build walls and act as if they were set there by someone other than ourselves, we've given each other amnesia, it's always 'they', it's always 'society', that did it.
Why do we create all these rules and desperately
struggle to follow them as if we weren't the ones
who wrote the rule book and we aren't the ones
who can erase it?
Why does he cover his emotions because he's scared to be called gay or too feminine?
Why does she wear long sleeves or look down when you talk to her?
It's not because of some conniving voice in all of our heads,
an imaginary force,
It's every time you made a sarcastic joke about people who defied the norm
and every time you yourself were afraid to break it,
you built the walls and now you're suffocating within them.
I see you, there, hiding, just like me, and it's painful to repress it, isn't it? It hurts because there's something more we're longing to do, somewhere else we're longing to be.
What is it that is so broken within ourselves that
we can't be raw and we can't be free and we can't kiss random strangers when we want to?
****** isn't dangerous if you don't hurt
and you don't make someone else feel vulnerable
or like they're trash for displaying
the image of God.
Why are we hiding the image of God?
Why do we cover our hearts like they're shameful to show?
We are born into this world naked and our parents
try to instill this ridiculous idea in our heads
that we can't share our innermost thoughts, we mustn't display,
"society won't like that"
YOU. ARE. SOCIETY.
I am a member of this universe, just like you,
and I was born naked and I take showers naked
and when we get up on stage, we're naked
and late at night, we're naked,
and when we cry, we're naked.
WHY ARE THERE ANY SECRETS LEFT WHEN WE ARE ALL HUMAN?
I have pain and joy, just like you, so show me.
My goal is to unclothe the knights in shining armor
because I don't care about the armor, I care
about his heart.
I will strip down these walls dividing you and me,
because I want to know everything about all people.
I want to unravel the secrets deep within God's mind.
I want to open the doors that are locked,
and I want to see you naked.
Allen Page Feb 2015
Derk! The Harold angels sing.
The muffin is my savior. Jesus lies.
Pacific Islands.  The screaming of fires.
Rulers.  Words.  Meters.  Feet.
The magnetic field is the only field.

If I could trust baseball, I would.
But cereals, Vonnegut, lies.
-ectomy. The ubiquitous suffix.
Suffixes make the world hell.
-ism, -itis, -like, -tude, cease
your
silly
constructions!

Constructions
are
power

I will smash

bye bye now
Michael Patrick May 2013
These golden sunglasses
Appeared on my doorstep
The last day of
The spring semester,
Sitting in a plastic pumpkin.

They weren’t mine
But when they break
I get them fixed
And when they don’t sit straight
I keep them
Because they remind me
Of how finals were over
And I slept through so many goodbyes.

The night before
We lay in your room
Sounds flowing through us like
Waves in the ocean,
Then moved to the grass outside
Watching more shooting stars than I could count.
The wood by the dorms was dark
And we ventured in in fits and starts,
The shadows of authority figures
Dancing around us.
The gazebo was silent.
And we journeyed across campus,
A pilgrimage through abandoned constructions
To see the church alight in the dark,
But the power was out and it was nothing.

I woke up in the afternoon
And knew that spring wouldn’t be back
For us.

The sunglasses weren’t mine
But someone left them at my door
And I keep them.
Matt Mar 2015
Philosophically, Camus is known for his conception of the absurd. Perhaps we should clarify from the very beginning what the absurd is not. The absurd is not nihilism. For Camus the acceptance of the absurd does not lead to nihilism (according to Nietzsche nihilism denotes the state in which the highest values devalue themselves) or to inertia, but rather to their opposite: to action and participation. The notion of the absurd signifies the space which opens up between, on the one hand, man’s need for intelligibility and, on the other hand, 'the unreasonable silence of the world' as he beautifully puts it. In a world devoid of God, eternal truths or any other guiding principle, how could man bear the responsibility of a meaning-giving activity? The absurd man, like an astronaut looking at the earth from above, wonders whether a philosophical system, a religion or a political ideology is able to make the world respond to the questioning of man, or rather whether all human constructions are nothing but the excessive face-paint of a clown which is there to cover his sadness. This terrible suspicion haunts the absurd man. In one of the most memorable openings of a non-fictional book he states: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer” (Camus 2000:11). The problem of suicide (a deeply personal problem) manifests the exigency of a meaning-giving response. Indeed for Camus a suicidal response to the problem of meaning would be the confirmation that the absurd has taken over man’s inner life. It would mean that man is not any more an animal going after answers, in accordance with some inner drive that leads him to act in order to endow the world with meaning. The suicide has become but a passive recipient of the muteness of the world. “...The absurd ... is simultaneously awareness and rejection of death” (Camus 2000:54). One has to be aware of death – because it is precisely the realization of man’s mortality that pushes someone to strive for answers – and one has ultimately to reject death – that is, reject suicide as well as the living death of inertia and inaction. At the end one has to keep the absurd alive, as Camus says. But what does it that mean?

In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus tells the story of the mythical Sisyphus who was condemned by the Gods to ceaselessly roll a rock to the top of a mountain and then have to let it fall back again of its own weight. “Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn” (Camus 2000:109). One must imagine then Sisyphus victorious: fate and absurdity have been overcome by a joyful contempt. Scorn is the appropriate response in the face of the absurd; another name for this 'scorn' though would be artistic creation. When Camus says: “One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness” (Camus 2000:110) he writes about a moment of exhilarated madness, which is the moment of the genesis of the artistic work. Madness, but nevertheless profound – think of the function of the Fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear as the one who reveals to the king the most profound truths through play, mimicry and songs. Such madness can overcome the absurd without cancelling it altogether.
www.iep.utm.edu/existent/#SH2c
Sirenes Dec 2016
If there's been a lifetime
Where I've had to fight
For my God given right to be sane,
Then this must be it.
It's a lifetime that contains within it
A constant silver lining.

It's not because I've suffered
That that should hinder me.
The clean-up just takes more time.
More persistence and faith
To wash the dirt off my worn hands.

And as I gaze out of the window
Of the large office building
Which somehow stumbled
On to my winding path,
I see cranes and constructions.
Humanity's lego blocks,
Reflections of our deepest selves.

I smile and come to realise
Somehow, this view
Looks much like myself...
Always building, never giving up
Always on the look out
For better solutions and structures.
It must have been
Humanities gift to me...

The orange winter sun
Caresses this view
And with it
It caresses my broken hands.
From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
     please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
     please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
     please come flying.

Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing.  The ships
are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags
rising and falling like birds all over the harbor.
Enter: two rivers, gracefully bearing
countless little pellucid jellies
in cut-glass epergnes dragging with silver chains.
The flight is safe; the weather is all arranged.
The waves are running in verses this fine morning.
     Please come flying.

Come with the pointed toe of each black shoe
trailing a sapphire highlight,
with a black capeful of butterfly wings and bon-mots,
with heaven knows how many angels all riding
on the broad black brim of your hat,
     please come flying.

Bearing a musical inaudible abacus,
a slight censorious frown, and blue ribbons,
     please come flying.
Facts and skyscrapers glint in the tide; Manhattan
is all awash with morals this fine morning,
     so please come flying.

Mounting the sky with natural heroism,
above the accidents, above the malignant movies,
the taxicabs and injustices at large,
while horns are resounding in your beautiful ears
that simultaneously listen to
a soft uninvented music, fit for the musk deer,
     please come flying.

For whom the grim museums will behave
like courteous male bower-birds,
for whom the agreeable lions lie in wait
on the steps of the Public Library,
eager to rise and follow through the doors
up into the reading rooms,
     please come flying.
We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping,
or play at a game of constantly being wrong
with a priceless set of vocabularies,
or we can bravely deplore, but please
     please come flying.

With dynasties of negative constructions
darkening and dying around you,
with grammar that suddenly turns and shines
like flocks of sandpipers flying,
     please come flying.

Come like a light in the white mackerel sky,
come like a daytime comet
with a long unnebulous train of words,
from Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
     please come flying.
Yenson Dec 2018
The Rent-a-Mob loonies, the gangsters and the Racists
damaged scums of society and contemporary politics
Ignorant arrogant sociopaths who want it all for nothing
Indulgent wasters in nation awashed with opportunities
In idle union they scream, feed us poor and **** the Rich

Strangers come Poland, Bulgaria, India and all over
to work in farms, hospitals, hotels and Constructions
Building futures and faring in endeavours with sweat
Crimson gangs and Renta Mobs states we serve nobody
**** the wealth makers, **** the parasites and let's drink

Our shyster gangs of Revo-comrades and malcontents
See killing fields, whereas strangers toil and find rich pickings
Our Revos Distract, confuse, sow seeds of dissent, make strife
Blame all others, lie and decieve, fling indulgent political turds
Rent brainwashed Mobs,into ***** bridgard to do their ***** work

We all know life is unfair and even roses have imperfections
Some are born to riches in spades and some born to beggars in dusts
Those with time, sit and ask God why, just a fact of life to accept
But from dust has risen billionaires, whilst riches have made duds
Insane Crimson sits in spurious guise and odious fallacy playing God

Yeh, **** the Rich and feed the poor, why hide and use Rent a mob
Why not air your case in broad daylight and stand your conviction
The coward you are knows it hold no sanity for those with sense
Except for thieves, the workshy and wasters who cheat to survive
In your city of merits aplenty, Revo-crimson is beneath contempt
Rahim Sterling - Nothing annoys the Racists more than a successful Blackman or a black male with potential. The sick of the Society will all rise up in arms to Destroy them. They can only abide the subjugated and oppressed black male, the ones they can use in Rent-a-Mob...
Hersch Rothmel Apr 2012
******, ****, Gay
these words cut through queer youth
like their razors through their wrists
words that cause the list of queer youth committing suicide seem like a revolving door
queer youth of color forced into a two doored slaughter house
The army or the pen
Queer youth of color being harassed, beaten, and killed
While gay marriage is the sign of equal rights for gays
I CALL *******!
There is no equal rights for gays when gay people are given the “privilege” to enter the heteronormative social constructions of the American Dream, to believe in the American Way
There is no equal rights when the blood of gay youth floods America’s streets!
Christine Ueri Feb 2015
A pair of crows streaks the skyline. I watch their graceful flight above bare treetops, concrete, and steel constructions, on a backdrop of exhaust fumes.

One crow alights after the other; their claws grip the bars of the signal tower a few feet away from where I wait for the next bus home. I wonder if they built their nest on that giant, manmade constellation of angles . . . From there they would have an exceptional view of the surrounding area, and few predators would dare to go up there.

"I found a dead crow, tangled in a wrought iron gate, once." His voice taps inside the nerve hollows of my mind, and I am unsure if the loud, clicking noises coming from the crows, and the perfectly synchronised squeaking of the bus' brakes, amplify or dampen his tone.

The bus driver greets with his usual, "Hello, Sweetie." I want him to be the bus driver, instead. He would never be late, he said. He wouldn't make me wait for what sometimes seems like an eternity. I mumble an almost-civil reply, biting back tears as I stumble forward against the pull of the engine to flop down on the nearest seat. I avoid eye contact with the other commuters; my gaze fixed to their reflections on the windowpane -- doppelgängers obscuring my vision -- a zeitgeist of movements . . . "Don't look at the window, look through it, silly . . . and don't miss me, I am just far away . . ." I always miss him more when he says that.

The coral trees are in full bloom, adding robust warmth to the faint copper glow of the winter sunset. Are their flowers the same vermilion colour as the 'fire tree' in his garden? Above the coral trees, I spot a pair of magnificent wings: a sacred ibis . . .

Fly south with me, Sacred Ibis. You are a goddess. White wings, neatly trimmed with a pearly black hem . . . when will you come down again, so I can show him what Isis really looks like? I won't be able to capture your image in flight, although he would love to see you like this -- spread-eagle . . .

The Ibis remains within view until we reach the nature reserve at the foot of the mountain. Here, the road forks into choices; I have but one -- keep left. The driver has a heavy foot and the next stop is mine. I get up from my seat and stumble down the narrow aisle towards the nearest exit, my hand tightening around a canary-yellow handlebar as I brace myself for the ****.

The hydraulic hiss of the opened doors spit at my heels. I leap from the bus, onto the pavement; my feet meet the concrete -- a long, silver-grey slab, slapped onto dry, red clay -- with a thud, dust settles on my coat in a whirlwind of the bus' departure.

Pigeons. Too many to count. They line the flat roofs of smog-stained, one- and two-storey buildings. Could they be soldiers? "No, my Love. Doves and pigeons are peacekeepers . . . and there is war in the Gaza Strip . . ." Yes, but what about the buildings? I walk on, thinking about the mourning dove he nursed; the one that followed his smoke rings . . .

We found an abandoned laughing dove squab last summer -- he, or she, made it. Sam was hand-reared, survived, and flew away on one of those bright summer's afternoons . . .

At the corner, I wait for the dust to settle further and the traffic light to turn green -- there are always those who don't need saving.

Turn right.

The Chinese maples are bare. Their deep-red autumn leaves have returned to the earth for redemption.

An Egyptian goose honks, calling his mate from the top of the church tower on the other side of the road. Perhaps, after so many chance encounters, he recognises me while he spreads his wings, flapping them slowly, without rising from his position, in what I imagine is a display of empathy.

I notice that I'm standing on the same patch of lawn where I found the barn owl's feather, months ago. Owl feathers ought to be kept in the dark, away from the day birds'. . . In the distance; I see the grove of pagoda trees that lead the way home -- beacons, providers and protectors. I follow. 

An assortment of feathers, haphazardly stuck into the wooden frame of the French doors, welcomes us home; fragments of unlocking and entering are placed on the dining table where we do everything.

Textbooks, dictionaries, software manuals, bird guides, the salt- and peppershakers -- guano has lost its value; it's all pink, organic Himalayan crystal salt, now. My children's empty cereal bowls were left on the table in the morning rush; they remind me of the years we have to catch up to -- I dissolve gunpowder pillulets under my tongue: Homeopathic medicine for this virus.

Balance -- like the flamingo, or the blue crane in the bird-guide-photos. On one leg, I reach for the light switch . . .

He glows in the weak ambiance -- electric bulbs cast a sepia vignette that invokes the scent of burning rose petals -- something akin to the gestalt of Rama, or a Buddha in blue . . .

Supper is a bland affair; I think of the Krishna temple I haven't visited in over a decade. How do they do it? Serve such exquisite meals on donations (feed the masses and the masses will feed you) . . .

Dishwater drips from my hands and runs down the inside of my arms as I absent-mindedly reach for the crow's feather, hidden in between the wrought iron candleholders on top of the grocery cupboard -- a gift or a donation?
 
I have donated my life to causes and movements, as a bird gifts its feathers to the earth, and to feather collectors, but will it be enough to sustain our future?

 

Aug/Sept 2014
Aug/Sept 2014
Patrick Kennon Oct 2010
Scribbles on a yellow notepad, this ink won't last
Letting sweat dry from a long walk, half way there
I didn't notice it on my first passing, or my second
Third time is the charm they say, don't they?
Now I sit in this scummy drainage ditch, writing
A tree, growing from a pile of waste concrete
Dumped carelessly by rough, tired, hands
Green leaves adorn it, this oddity, only a sapling
Like a flower on the peak of Mount Everest
Or an ice cube in the middle of the Gobi
This is not so grand, this urban contradiction
Some day it will be as tall as me, maybe taller
Stretching its limbs, eroding its base
Praising sun rays through photosynthesis
Pushing down roots through man made constructions
Reclaiming the soil from which all life springs & returns
Marti Oct 2013
Free fall sensation in the dark
invited dizzy dreams
spark singed skin

the last time I felt like I do when you touch me
I had stuck a necklace in an electrical socket
to try and figure out how the lights work
I thought I could take the energy
I thought by touching it I could understand

Except for that hurt, and you are the opposite of hurt on the same intensity
just with fingertips
except for I understand alternating current now but not this

You make me want to make sculptures
and bad jokes
you make me write but the words come out like dogs off the leash in the park

Next to you is the place where I fell asleep at the beach
and woke up warm and sun-washed
where my body felt like it belonged to me
and the waves had washed away the smell of wet cities and
old growth trees

Next to you is banana pancakes with strawberries
and silence is a round comfortable thing
like hobbit feet
like blanket forts
safe and temporary constructions
inventive nomadic shelters
lovely places to spend rainy days

You are like aloe-vera gel
and I've been forgetful and spent to much time in the sun
trying to breath in life but got hurt
but it doesn't feel raw when you slide over my skin
instead its tingly bits of mint and blue
like gypsy wind chimes and spicy food
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2016
it could be said that the constructs of grammar are a akin to
the constructions of the unconscious with sleep the dam,
   and the trickling of both the waking
hours and the concerns for dreams -
i'd say: it's not exactly the interpretation
of dreams, but a concern for them:
last night i was exposed to the most
fascinating comic, if i wrote about it
in the morning i'd reveal all of it -
but i do remember in a subplot
a Beretta and fiddling with a bullet...
dreams? unwanted distractions...
            they only possess depth's worth of
analysis for entombed people -
      for whom life has no meaning
they have to seek alternatives: i.e.,
in dreams...
                         because their lives are
so uninhibited they seek monastic
meanings, they are on a knife's edge
of slicing through cryptography -
                        they want to seek deeper meaning,
rich or poor, if life isn't a centimetre's
worth of depth of drowning, your escapism
is bound to dreams...
                             which is a secondary
excuse concerning apathy
  and the shaking homeless man...
               i'm asking for a mass exodus
of the homeless from urban areas...
                       only a fool would sit in an
urban environment these days...
               those glum godforsaken looks of
seemingly ****** superiority...
   meritocracy hides a variation of ******
it doesn't seem to recognise -
          it's a gigantic mushroom fog-cloud
and bypassing talk of the guillotine chop
to mind the Antoinette cakes for fear of
reprisals...
                        thinking never equates
to being conscious...
                                       i don't know how
this happens...
                              the divergent parallelism
states that
                   we shouldn't base our
censoring on obstructing nouns,
but the majority of politics bullies this
categorisation of words with the most
sensed purpose of it being necessary...
nouns don't do jack **** in ontological
parameters, but verbs do...
                  trying to change human
behaviour by stretching it back far enough
for cavemen to appear,
      or censoring the use of nouns
does not affect our actions -
                                     it simply doesn't...
censoring our use of words
         means we cognitively stutter... to
appease misguided pieces of information
lodged within each word...
                       we are deliberately
not engaging in the full vocabulary grasp
of things...
                          on a humanistic level
the involuntary desire
                                  to write a book rather than
learn to make toothpaste...
   outside of theorems in rubrics of
repetition:
                   what is the active ingredient
in being conscious?
                  thought or the senses?
   for me thought is the active ingredient
   and the senses are a passive ingredient.
               on the ready...
but how to make the world make sense?
  well, given the five already not making
sense, thought alone suggests a counter
question: how does the world make sense?
    i understand that these words
belong in the torture chambers of libraries...
people prefer practical problems
sourced by practical questions,
rather than preferring no problems
  sourced by impractical questions...
did i mention taxation? no.
         did i mention immigration? no.
hence i've asked impractical questions
         because i don't want people to
experience them as practical concerns
when they do not invoke practicality:
precisely because they invoke an impracticality
i'm asking them...
                              because they do
not interfere with what's impractical in life:
other people's sedimentation
into power... my questions interfere with what's
practical in life: not getting in other people's
daily affairs...
                         the more the question
is impractical, the more practical life becomes...
and then life encounters what others deem
to be the practical question, which makes
life all the more impractical...
       time orientated: on the altar of television
where everyone has enough time to
zombie-it-further.
                               with thought the
active ingredient of being conscious (double
value, two functions, one open, the other closed)
                the inactive ingredient of being conscious
is ego (hence the many theories and sub-divisions
of possessing such a thing) -
                     that doesn't necessarily translate
into                               the origin of things...
                 i'd state that grammar is
in equal measure a conscious quantity (vocabulary),
as a subconscious medium  and an unconscious
            suggestion...
                          grammar speaks of the universal man,
we speak alone or among ourselves as
men: particular...
                                      to me grammar is a medium
akin to the psychological three tier cake...
                              it's a fourth dilemma...
                 if thought is the active ingredient
of consciousness,
                                it's no wonder
   the constant sought-after identification procedures
with passports, national insurance numbers,
                   reincarnation...
    THE WEST KNOWS NO MYSTICISM...
        a common mantra...
   THE WEST IS IN A STATE OF A CRISIS
IN THAT IT HAS EXHAUSTED ALL
                           SOURCES OF PLAGIARISM...
          IT IS IN A STATE OF BABYLONIAN
  PLAGIARISM: A PERSISTENT SELF-RENOVATION
            BY PLAGIARISING ITSELF
DUE TO THE FACT THAT IT HAS EXHAUSTED
      PLAGIARISING NICHE ENVIRONMENTS...
              the white man knows no mysticism...
whatever comes from his mouth is wobble-blah...
               still even fewer made that statement
than venture into the Masai territories in Kenya
to hear a mystical burp...
                       yes... so many provocative sentences...
psychology expands into what will always be
airy-fairy Mary Poppins to me...
                        i can write about it,
but the rubric of fixating on words
                                 that are stimulants more than
additives in terms of cohesive argumentation
will always remain a mile away from my
serious interests in prolonging an argument
  for establishing a theory into it being schooled...
that'll never happen with me...
                        when i write about psychology
i am foremost to remind myself:
     you just inhaled a balloon filled with helium...
   oh god, the relief of not making more from this...
                  me, never the dodgy soul-salesman
of the naive few...
                             a penny is worth a pebble...
but is a page from Tolstoy worth a £5, a £10,
a £20 or a £50 banknote?
                                             i really wanted to
expand on the verbiage... but even i encounter
moments of true spaghetti demanding me to end
the supposed: on to it...
                                        to me psychology is
verbiage... in the back of my mind i'm looking
at grammar as a punching-bag...
                 upper-hook -logy
                        lower-hook -graphy -
          or pristine physics and chemistry...
      as one granny said: some kind of -logy
   or: a term deemed appropriate to denote
    a vocabulary fixation of some sort.
                      because that's what's called the attache...
fixated vocabulary -
                        i'd really love to expand
on this... but i don't see the point...
                 the original idea fizzled out
after i heard enough entertainment tongues
blah through a bubbling bottle of champagne
into Lake ****-on-the-Geneva-Convention flat...
                   as i am adamant on
creating Narcissus looking into the sea...
                           but that's the beauty of
poetry, it's not bound by paragraphs...
           it's open, like the ******* of literature
that it is...
                                 your payment?
just your attention...
                                           hence no paragraphs...
                your payment?
   just your attention...
                               because if they didn't cough
up for the skeleton... i'm not
           giving them my strained larynx...
                         sometimes...
   it's best to leave
                                something unfinished:
there's no melancholy surrounding
     a perfected and complete construction...
                     
Nagual Jan 2019
I favour the deep, impenetrable truth of the jungle
Over the smooth ride over sleek black rubber;
The *****, disturbing, demented disorder;
The distortions of the lights we bathe on,
Over outward alignments and the staleness of systems.

I favour the cheap, rugged, bittersweet taste
Of a late night's substandard drink,
In the midst of true lights and shadows
And the uncertainty they cast upon us,
Over the orderly and satisfactory--
The dead pleasures and securities that
Exist nowhere but in feeble projections.

I favour the basic, primeval, animal grunt--
The dirt, the dizziness of true treading
Across the muddy shallows--,
Over the clattering of an overflowed,
Certain mind.

I favour doubt, earnest doubt,
Unpalatable doubt, inescapable doubt--
A smile in a pitch-black room,
A journey on a lukewarm air balloon,
A half-finished sentence in a half-serious gloom--,
Over hasty conclusions and tainted allusions.

I favour the endearing messiness of reality;
The chaos of light and dreams;
The mystery, so out of reach,
Of you and me and the space in-between;
The stained, torn, shattered, burnt,
Twisted texture we find ourselves upon,
Over the smooth, marble-white,
Sterile surface where false certainties
Slide, grinning, before they find themselves
On an impending collision with the infectious hesitation of the ground.

I favour the acknowledging look
Straight into the eye;
A ladder with one step;
A race with no competitors;
A contentment without resentment;
A bread on your table that's good enough,
That doesn't tease you and promise you more,
And more,
And more,
So that you forget what you should really care for,
What lies deep under your skin,
What stirs up the dormant contents of your guts--
You climb to the hilltop
Which finally allows you to have
A peek at the next one.

I favour uncertainty and risk,
And walking too close to the edge;
I favour barely enough,
And cutting it too close;
I favour throwing all excess over the board,
And lowering standards;
I favour the taste of imminent failure
And the adrenaline of a heart-wakening sprint;
I favour meagre means
And big dreams, free of currencies;
For they all remind me what the world
Really looks like,
Who I really am,
And what the winter-night winds
Really feel like.

I favour the ways of nature, often erratic,
*****, ugly and convoluted,
Often dumbfounding,
Unintentionally intelligent and mysterious,
Over the ways of fear-ridden constructions,
For there is no such thing
As a straight line.
Christine Ueri Jul 2015
Japanese temple trees no longer line the way home.
I left them behind.
But my mind still strolls that avenue,
and I still see
the light catching on the bare branches
and the sparse leaves of Autumn in The Grove.

The Woodhoopoes are still nesting
in the temple trees next to the gate
I don't enter anymore.
Their iridescent plumes
still shimmer green and blue
as their vermilion scimitar bills chatter
in the to-and-fro, to-and-fro
sway of their familial ritual.
What cacophony when one has won
itself a fat gecko—the chicks won't go hungry.

I left the haphazardly arranged feathers
in the wooden frame of the French doors
I no longer unlock and enter.

The two cereal bowls
left on the table
where we did everything
have been reduced
to one.
And the table simply is.  

Now I work among veteran soldiers—
Old Pigeons with crooked feet
caused by all the lines
they've crossed, all the twines
they've tangled with, but Pigeons,
they survive without their feet.

And instead of temple trees,
buildings line the way home—
concrete and steel constructions
among long ribbons of asphalt and . . .

From a distance,
up on the third storey,
it looks like a jungle out there,
but no, on the ground,
up close, it is just human.

I still keep the Owl's feather away from the day-birds',
but I no longer collect more feathers.

No, instead, I tuck symbolic quills behind my ear.

Sagittarius serpentarius

The image of the Secretarybird towers
over the rest of the symbols
on the Official Documents I peruse.
Contracts.
I walk away, tucking the quill.

In the land of the blind, there is a one-eyed rule:
close the other eye.  

I feel the rhythm of keys beneath icy fingers,
eyes tearing from the glare of the monitor,
retracted quills rising—  
unseen antennae erected on the back of my neck—
a human lie detector.

Type, type, type:
repudiation,
subrogation,
violation . . .

Hit the letters with the power of the word.

Noisy little twitter-bird to my left,
on top of her office chair,
she’s raucous like a hysterical Mynah:

"****-****-****-****...**** everything!!!"

Absconding the scene,
I stamp, stamp, stamp
AR numbers, CAS numbers, verified.

The African masks behind my workstation:
ugly metaphors for who I really am.

Sagittarius serpentarius

A Marching Eagle,
the Devil's Horse,
the Secretarybird;
sitting in a concrete cage,
my youngest would've died of starvation,
so I let her fly a long way from home,
but nonetheless home
with her Lily-Pad-Walker father.

Jesus-bird,

With legs like a crane but scalier,
a Marching Eagle doesn't walk on water.
It stands close to the grassland fire,
waiting for its prey.
Then stomping.
Then crushing bones.
Then swallowing whole.

Balance is unnecessary.
Just bend and kick,

backwards.

Saqr-et-tair: hawk-bird, hunter-bird.

He said his heart was a dreaming Red Hawk
whose eyes he wouldn't let me see,
and Bukowski's heart was a Blue Bird of pain.
I said I didn't know
what sort of bird lived in mine,
but it dreamt the same dream:
giant wings
breaking out of its ribbed cage . . .
long runway . . .
long runway. . .
then slow, deep *****
of----------of-----------of------------of----------------of
bad weather and . . .

I fear the day it tires of dreaming.

Offices. Soldiers. Pigeons.

I slip gunpowder pillulets under my tongue:
Homeopathic medicine for this virus.

There is a Barn Owl in my mirror,
steamed up. I dream
a ****** of Crows
alights on my brow,
but I am too feverish to catch them.
Too weak.
I dream a ****** of Crows
rising from the loquat tree
where my eldest was born,

across the road . . .

I watch them
from the third storey of a collection of cages,
and I know
this building
is a cold-hearted-thirty-three-eyed-soldier
with a dog tag for a tongue,
and a contract
bound to the crooked feet of the Pigeons I didn't feed.
25/07/2015
linda barrett Dec 2013
A SESTINA FOR BRIAN

How being born on Christmas Day can make
some people think that you have this passion
for being so compassionate and construct
all sorts of things like Christ the Great Carpenter
did for living spaces of all levels
of human dwelling. You have always had to create
things for dwelling spaces and you always change
It’s like you have been going in your innate passion
since you were a baby. I saw you in winter, to make
a snow igloo. You had everything planned and constructed
this igloo right by the side of the house. It had this level
of true sophistication for a boy of your age. You could create
wonderful things: towers and tree forts and then change
to art work to decorate our house.
Brian, I’ve known you to go out of your way to make
breakfast for us. I remember the strange passion
you had and made us peanut butter and banana constructions
of pancakes. You did all sorts of culinary things on the level
of perfection to even make the best chefs just create
something to quench their envy of you. You never change
Now, when you got older, you still possessed this desire to make
you went through Penn State Ogontz and kept up this passion
to create other things and learn enough to construct
buildings but you needed the education to earn a living to create
things with your hard-earned degree and actually change
and re-arrange houses or interior of places on a different level
Why your inner mental and emotional makeup came out in such passion
that all who came into contact with you when you failed to construct
a certain project to your own perfectionistic liking and it made
you very angry and you used such profanity and it just changed
you from this compassionate and soft hearted soul into creating a raving demon out of you.
The way that you used to go out of your way and created
A wonderful family unit from a wife to a pair of children made
you bring out another facet of your personality: the father level
The two children came out of that union as some construct

from your desire to keep on creating through this passion
to keep up on revising and re-building so that you always change

@2006 Linda Barrett
Dolly Partings Dec 2013
I could drown myself in cups of coffee, in nicotine, old books, and whiskey.
But that won't make me crave you any less.
I could immerse myself in the deepest of enthralling literature, poems, a sea of colloquy,
Waves, strangling the current of my mind.
But you'd still be the resonant word.
I could listen to the sweetest of voices on repeat, golden like honey, sticky,
But my ears would only ever truly answer to yours.
Serpents tend to bite their own tails, a mythological and alchemic symbol of the cyclic nature of the universe: creation out of destruction.
But I'm not breaking my heart, loving you.
Swollen, yearning, daydreamed astray, gathered fast by night.
Curiosity deniable no more, innocence lost, hands wandered exploratory below.
Clambering desperate over themselves, those hands fell over folds of warmed flesh, over forgotten nooks and unfound crevasses, over trembling thighs and aching calves.
Astounded by the vast array of fresh delicacies, of unencountered sensations and deepest pleasures, she stood by loyal as those hands swiftly accustomed themselves to pursuing true ecstasy.
What divine rapture. What soaring heights of pleasure to ascend to. And what a delicious revelation to encounter such unimaginable ecstasy.
That twelfth year become a fourteenth, a fifteenth, a sixteenth.
And with the passing of each came a series of ever more adventurous trysts, the sorts of which Cousteau, Armstrong, and even Columbus could all be truly proud of.
Depths sounded, crevasses plundered, self’s nectars tasted and devoured, the pleasures of the flesh went unearthed.
Elaborate constructions lovingly shaped, waxed and honed, years of heady experimentation, trial and errors, fantasy and dreaming, all in the pursuit of even harder, better, faster, stronger *******. Perhaps it was that, or was it more a case of welcomed companionship? Ambidextrous frustration? A carnal appetite, most terrifying in its magnitude?

Isn’t it time then, you tried a little tenderness?
Be good to you.
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2014
throughout the day,
most oft at night,
start to say,
stop short,
painful for crying out loud thoughts,
shoutouts to any passing god

things that need to the air
be exposed,
but not to ears that
well, what could they say...

so stutter-stop
the bottling inside,
periodic fizz escaping,
and even poetry
cannot help
for it does over and over again,
end up as crumpled papers,
litter of the head,
halves, this's and that's,
even this one dies here and now*

~~~~~~~

irony delicious,
that litter sounds so literary,
so added débris,
lest my mangy constructions
manage to confuse you

the litter in question,
is your host's hors d'oeuvre
nibbles of works,
half-started, half-finished,
like rooms to let,
that come only half-furnished,
not a single morsel worthy
serving up,
all half-satisfactory

poems, of course...

the wrong write ***** clogged,
resting in peace,
Works In Progress (WIP)
unlike the poet,
who's just plain whipped

un-crumpled awaiting
an episodic finale,
if ever they should be televised,
they are needy for cumberbitches,

a birth or death certificate
sore lacking

pick up put down
new titles pop,
essays in need of love,
naught fruited, dead pits,
hanging on the tree till
gravity takes them prisoner

on and on for weeks
the side stitch does not
disappear, but does grow
aching familiar

perhaps the topic offends
you the most,
cloying, suffocating
self-pity
of your own hands
around your neck wrapped...
Him Oct 2021
The home you miss, is my burden; the longing of distance and miles is not there.

Concealed within living bone and spiral, no conquered land can I long winter, and longer yet retain.

Would you miss it - if it were always near? Those crude constructions composed of flora's corpses and Oran's nails; compose another, and... Still ye dismay:

"The house is similar, but the home is not the same."

A home requires a heart, but man has long since lost theirs; so crawling, I wonder:

"What difference is there?"
This piece presents a monologue, of a snail innately unable to appreciate Man's concept of "Home". The Snail professes an element of Man lost, a home's cause, thus no difference is to be had.
Bob Sterry Jul 2014
He was equipped with a fine vocabulary
Far in excess of his intellectual needs
An entertaining fool
Stocked with dictionaries
Obscure constructions
Medieval verbs
Circumlocutory, verbose
Impenetrable
A simple mind hid amongst
A confusion of entangled phrases
As if using a foreign language
Assembling hopefully meaningful phrases
Where a listener may find coherence
A simple message

Every request
Every Statement
Observation
From his mouth, no matter how mundane
Appeared decorated
Embellished, almost..
Baroque

In this wordy fog
It was hard to know
Hard to find
Traces of a real person
A tangible, relatable identity
Something predictable.
In the swirling wind of
Constantly shifting
Complex expressions
Seeming riddles.

He was a prisoner
A lifer
Doomed to remain
Incarcerated in his usage
Dense, cloying, exaggerated, unyielding
Usage
He could not avoid
Unconscious, reflexive, merciless
He did not struggle,
That ended long ago.
A simple phrase came to me on a bike ride, the first two lines of this poem. It became a short prose piece for my blog. Now it is also a poem.
Katherine Paist Nov 2012
I long for what I’ve never known: a word
that captures the foreign feels of speech surging
from my throat, the ways they shake and crack with
fury and failure as I break away
from the safety of silence, in jagged
and fragmented sentences–I’m desperate
to seize meaning, trying words like puzzle
pieces, I’ll force them to fit together
to form the spaces of pieces missing.
My greatest fear is to be incomplete.

And I’m constantly reminded of this
over coffee-talk and shared politics
as I recoil shyly in forced defense
of each vowel, and every consonant
and the myriad of their constructions:
they are stuck behind my eyes. I am left
apologizing for my vagueness and
for the grey shades of embarrassment and
finite language–when a dictionary
is never a long enough read for the
lone, longer walk around the circumference
of my head–or any red eye flight I have
ever caught that takes me from thought to thought:

the moving belts of baggage claim don’t
have to tell me of the luggage I lost.
As possessions were plucked from circuitry
I clung to the emptiness as if it
was mine and took it home as leverage.
I write in circles ’til I’m motion sick.
I write myself into thought-asylums
where silence is another language:
a slow germination of roots lacing
down the bell-curve of my spine.
A foreign tongue, An othered alphabet.
Time is an illusion
of the motion
of objects in space,
and the past
is a record
of the motion
of objects in space,
so the present moment
is not a moment,
it is eternity,
therefore time does not exist,
and growth
is a function
of the motion
of objects in space,
and these objects
are mass
which is none other
than energy,
and no energy
can leave space,
and death is only
transformation of energy,
and all mass/energy
is life,
and all mass/energy
is neither natural
nor artificial,
as these are only
thought constructions,
so everything is alive,
therefore,
welcome to eternal life.
Big Virge Feb 2016
Ya know .....

I'm down with … Problem Solvers … !!!
Not those … who use … Revolvers … !!!!!

By this I mean …. " Evolvers " … !!!!!

"Logical" … Thinkers … !!!
who … Don't Wear … BLINKERS … !!!

"Evolved" … like … " Incas " … !!!  
who … "Peruse" … The View …
"From" …. "Machupicchu" … hues …
to blues now seen ….
in …. " New Age " …. crews …. !!!!!

NOT SO … Evolved … !!!!!

NOPE …. would seem …. NOT …. !!!!!!!

"Problems" …. up top ….
"Evolution" …. dropped ….
for …. " Dropping Bombs " ….  !!!

"Inhumane" …. wrongs ….
as wrongs ……. move on …….
and become … " More Strong " … !!!!!

I Evolve … to belong …
where wrongs … " ABSCOND " … !!!!!
because what …. " Evolves " ….
are thoughts that … " Revolve " …
On ….. " Cerebral Planes " ….

Do you get what i'm … saying … ?!?

Higher levels of … " Being "
where there is … " No Ceiling "

A place where … " Believing "
that ….. " HIGHER ACHIEVING "
is something …. " ALL PEOPLE "
are seeing ….. Each Evening ….. !!!!!

and … Each Day … " Receiving "
"Within" … " ALL THEIR " … Teachings … !!!!!

"Darwinism" ….. Removed ….. !!!
and ….. " Eugenics " ….. Too ….. !!!!!

Instead …. STRONGER Movements …. !!!!!
are things I be …. " Choosing " ….
to be a ….. " Good Student " …..  !!!
who … " Evolves " …
with … MORE … " Prudence "
than … " Ignorant " … Tutors … !!!!!!

See … Evolution of … " words "
I put into …… " VERSE "
"Evolve' … where things … " Work "
Even if … they may … " HURT " … !!!!!

because of their … " Clarity "
Revolving round … " REALITY "

Reality …… where …… " VANITY "
Denies … so many ….. " CHARITY "

The type … where people
.…… RISE ABOVE …….  
These acts of … "Evil" …
and show …. " LOVE " …. !!!!!

Instead of …. All This ….

" Self-absorbed " …. stuff …. !!!

It's clear some have … " evolved "
just far … enough …
for them to …. " Absolve "
their acts of …. " LUST " …. !!!!!

LUST … for … Each Other …
ahead of their … Mothers … !!?!!

LUST … for … " Destruction " … !!!!!
of our …. Fellow Brothers ….
when we … NEED … " Constructions "
that … BUILD …and DON"T … "smother"

A way to …. " AGREE " ….
and … EVOLVE to be …

……. " FREE " ……. !!!!!

and find ……. " UNITY "
that bypasses … hatred …
in … Vapid Type Racists … !!!
with … " **** Type Beliefs " … !!!!

They NOW … have … " Evolved "
"Beyond" … their … White Sheets

It seems that …. Their Offspring
Now … " RUN " … companies … ?!?

where  colours are … " Mixed "
"Dissolving" … to … "FIT" …
in with …. " These Racists " …. !!!!!

NO ….
"Evolving" …. THERE …. !!!

because most … are … " Scared " … !!!!!
to evolve …. to that …. place ….
where they're … NOT AFRAID … !!!!!

to fear …. " Retributions "
for YES …. " Contributing "
to such …. " Revolutions "
that are …. " Evolutions "
to finding …. " SOLUTIONS "
that … INSPIRE … " Movements "

for …. " EQUALITY CALLS "
that … Benefit …… ALL …… !!!!!!

The Rich … and … The Poor
cos' … that gap … FOR SURE …

" Evolves " … to … Ensure …  
That …. We Can't …. " IGNORE "
These things ….. " ANYMORE " ….. !!!!!!

"Dissolving" …. The Void ….
where we have … " Unemployed "
Might Help … some … " Evolve "
from …. trying to …. " ROB " …. !!!

But that …. " Evolution " ….
is … Needed … " In Boardrooms "  

Don't get it … " Confused " … ???
to …. " EVOLVE " ….

THEY NEED …. TOO …. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Greed Driven" …. Villains …. !!!!!
who clearly … Aren't … " Pilgrims "
who live by a …. " Faith " ….
that … FEEDS … " Empty Plates "

They'd say that … "They Do !"
but … is that … " The Truth "

I don't have an answer ….  ?!?
That Question's … for … YOU … !?!

Those now …. " EVOLVED "
to think past … "Themselves"

who … do not … INVOLVE … !!!
"Pursuit" … of … Mass Wealth …
as part of the …. " Well " ….
…….. where their ………  
" BETTERMENT "  … Dwells … !!!!!

Knowledge of …. " Self "
that … " Uplifts " … The Mental

A form of …. " Self Help "
that … TRULY … is … CENTRAL
to …. " Human Infusion " ….
of what should be … loosened … !!!

Our hold of …. " Confusion "
that leads to …. " Contusions "
Persecutions …. " Exclusions "
and movements so … " GRUESOME "
that they seem …. " INHUMAN " …. !!!!!!!

The words i'm … NOW … Choosing
DO NOT FEED …. illusions …. !!! ….

" Upliftments' "…. BRUISING …. !!!
has left … MANY … Losing …

A hope for …. " Inclusion "
and some …. " Distribution "
of more than … Sweet Talk ...
from tongues shaped like … FORKS … !!!!!
that … KEEP … Fuelling Wars … !!!!!!

So ….
Here's My …. " Conclusion "

It's time for … " SOLUTIONS "
that … STOP … " Destitution "
and REMOVE … what's polluting …
Humanities' …. movements ….
towards some …. " Improvements "

where LESS … are … "colluding"
to seeing … MORE SHOOTINGS … ?!?!?

INSTEAD ….. " Resolutions "
that … Provide … " Solutions "
that … REJECT … Revolvers …
…… " Suicide Bombers " …… !!!!!!!!

and … Moods that are … " Sombre "

May see … " Problem Solvers "

be the ones who we choose …..

to … INSPIRE …

….. " Evolvers " …..
The poem says it all .....
Preech Mar 2013
Mos Def addict practicing my mathematics
multiplying gross deaths stacking high in my attic
banishing, your batting eyelashes in my hatchet
brandishing a reflection of death nothing can match it,
a packet of matches, three cans of gas am I mad *****?
I’m a man mastering cracks of dark arts from a sad witch,
tears of evil, blasting apart marked hearts, sew they can’t stitch,
so I can cross your eyes and harvest every last inch
of your body I’ve got hauled high with my crass winch.
Dangling like abattoirs meat hanging upside down by your feet,
never is the time that I will retreat,
secreting discreetly in your petite physique,
desecrated secretly I never cease with the heat.
I’m a clever beast with the sweet smile of a pre-school teacher
I’m a leach, I’m an evil preacher,
I’m worse than a priest with someone not quite senior in reach.
I beseech you to keep my smile in mind when I breach
the regular limits of sin, an when the victim begins
spinning within the rhythm of my limb precision
positions a physician would think weren't natural
constructions. Causing concussions with my bone crack percussion
discussing the disgusting repercussions of being obstructive
with a kind as destructive as mine its reductive to imply
that I’m stuck with a mind superior to thine, let the subtleties shine,
you’re an inferior design, obsolete, so the premise is supremacist
there’s no preventing this, the evidence is left in every crevice of the premises.
Rob Mar 2013
Metaphors like similes
Alluring alliteration
Onomatopoeic sounds
Swish swash through its creation
Full of figurative constructions
To skyscrapers of the soul
That rise to a crescendo
Then with bathos quickly fall
So what is it I have written?
Just a stream of consciousness?

For if I claim a classic poem
Then you’d be right to take the …. :)
Just a bit of fun !!
RD ©2013
DM Pierce Dec 2012
Drifters, sick with Now,
Swell and crowd the Elm Streets.
We, the self-anointed secretaries of culture war,
Parallel-parked car poets trapped in suburbia,
We claw our generation forward.

We seep from shifting city to evergreen forest, to
Seek answers from the grave-stone gods before us,
Learn of what they knew of man--
His vacuous constructions and his ash fortunes,
How to be martyrs and what makes us worth it.
Riq Schwartz Sep 2013
Call me stricken
by her
          my favorite color.

I want to fill my ears with static
to give my thoughts some room to move
and my eyes monochromatic
with an artistic side to prove


She writes
like shes giving
Noah Webster a *******,
her labyrinthine constructions
of consonants and vowels,
leading in circles
obliterating disbelief,
and I
          AM

the words.


She tastes like ***
and nostalgia
nauseating my pages,
wearing thin over keystrokes,
repetition,
               the mother of decrepitude
so my muse
               decimates my thoughts
          one in ten
     one in ten
one in ten
*CRACK
Blue Flask Apr 2015
Climbing those hills, those leviathan heroes from before our generations ancestors ancestors, great trodden clumps of clay and rock seemingly left their by a being greater than himself. Tell me, was it a purposeful throwing? Or was it a careless happenstance that those colossal titans were laid forever into the earth? Did those beings dream? Did they want to become those rolling hills? Were they held back by their own constructions? Were those ageless clusters of earth held back by the thin veils of confidence that plague us today? Are the trapped, as they are? Dreaming in that peaceful slumber right beneath our feet. Are their dreams imprisoned like ours? Do they illustrate the desire of their dreams on the paper thin walls they built? Do they scrawl I love you over and over just to see that someone could? Do those immortal pebbles wish to be human? Those leviathan heroes of old, dead and long forgotten, leaving behind the carcass of wonder and the sense of living through adventure.
Sometimes, to scream seems like the only hope i have for eternal life; to scream and have the vibrations reverberate throughout the universe until it vanishes. How terrible it is that this hope is so callously dashed in the next sentence. How terrible that the universe will end. Will humans be there in the end? I suppose not. It seem we’re not very likely to make it past another generation or so. Oh well-- it wouldn’t really matter, then, if my scream did reverberate forever and the universe never ended; there wouldn’t be any humans to recognize it, analyze it and understand what it is that I was saying. To be honest, I wouldn’t even be able to explain if someone were to hear me the second I was screaming-- they probably would’t ask me either. I’ve only screamed a few times in my life. The ones i can remember were late at night on the side of desolate roads where i wouldn’t be asked to give an explanation; which was haunting. I almost wished the moon would pivot in space, reveal a mouth, two eyes and ears then ask me “now what’s all this about?” In either instance, my answer would have been alternating uncertainty about my future and loneliness. I might have even expressed discontent in my life condition. The moon might have responded “you control your own conditions,” but that’s only becase the moon represents society and the generalized other. I’m glad the moon just stayed the moon; a lifeless, crater-riddled celestial body incapable of empathy. I was jealous of it.
But here i sit now, tense and distraught. I’m not taking initiative in my life; what makes this worse is that if i were to set any goals for myself they would be social constructions of what other people value. My entire being is dependent on these others and what I think they want from me; without them, I couldn’t conceptualize myself. But, as it is, I see myself as a lonely, scared, miserable wretch. This is because I am not living up to their expectations-- or at least I assume not. My father tells me that all he expects from me is to “be happy” and “be the best you can at whatever you are,” whatever that means. I think I’d rather be expected to become a convicted felon than a “happy” person; at least felony is a definable and achievable condition. The only word more vague and meaningless than “happiness” is “love”.
So, I’m not happy-- I’m roughly the opposite, although that is a contradiction of terms. I don’t try to be happy, because I know it’s impossible. The people looking for happiness have just transposed the term onto the concept of God and made a religion of hedonism. They give offerings to their God in the form of unrealized self-disdain and misunderstood feelings of guilt, and most of them lack so much in introspection that they still attribute this to original sin, i.e. being human. They don’t even feel foolish when they worship the old gods. They don’t realize that human existence is that of God-in-Becoming; even though they relate to themselves as such.
It is this becoming God that troubles me and makes me want to scream. It is the desire to Be and to Know. Because we are conscious we cannot escape it, but we are liable to hide ourselves from this truth. Our individual-self (the Ego) only insofar as it is experienced by others. It is their reaction to this experience which enables us to make hypotheses as to our actual existence, and our behavior is the way we test these hypotheses. We are desperate to understand how others experience us because it is the closest we can come to experiencing ourselves. The only way, however, to run a successful psychological experiment is to maintain a control group, and in our private experiment, the Other (society) is seen, contrary to nature, as such. We treat it as a static monolith from which we read our name and Being. It tells us what we are and can become, but we look to individuals in our life to refute what the Other is telling us about ourselves. This is our second misstep in our search for the the true Self (Being), because we alter the random sample, deliberately or otherwise, to demonstrate not the truth, instead merely the opposite of what the Other has said. We do this out of necessity, in order to create meaning for ourselves and the only way to create meaning is by transcending the contingencies of Being and Consciousness. We use our consciousness of the Other to create our own Being and since this Self is unconscious and mute, we ask individual others to view it. Our Being thus becomes a shrine to the Becoming-God our Consciousness wants but can never realize. It is an empty shrine, where we wander until we forget the Being’s relation to the Self.
In essence, I am at the shrine of my Becoming-God tonight. And instead of lighting candles or screaming, I am wondering why I have come because I fail to recognize my Self at its alter to destroyed contingency. In the past I’ve laid down decisions I have made, actions I have taken, as so many animal sacrifices and lit them on fire. I’ve consulted my Being as to what to do and what to think about my life. Tonight I am unconcerned with this. My notion is to burn down the temple; vanquish my Being through overwhelming Consciousness. I want to deny my Self and its inevitable destruction in an unfeeling universe by destroying it through contemplation. Why should I slowly creep toward death, when it seems the only moment in life which is coherent and understandable? Why extend life? What is worth experiencing? What drives me on? The answer, again, is the illusion that I will once and for all deduce the Self from my interactions with others and recognize in it a transcendence of Being and Consciousness. I want to profess my Godhood, and in so doing enable myself to postpone death, until the final end of the Universe. I see my death as oneness and God, the gentle ebbing of all energy in the Universe into nothing, which is the ultimate meaning of life. All meaning is destroyed in the burning out of the Universe, and in my becoming-God I witness the destruction of all meaning, the only true meaning. Until that moment, the end of my human life is simply the snuffing out of a candle, or Consciousness. Forever after, my body is a waiting room to annihilation.
To destroy the shrine is to delineate nature and its synthesis with the human mind. This is not a cognitive parlor trick, but an active acknowledgment of reality using the body. I stand beside the charred ruins of what I built in my mind and am unaware of this fact as it simultaneously ceases to exist. This forgetting is impossible in death, because death is without Consciousness and there is no sense of loss. Therefore, I can only appreciate the fact that I have destroyed my Self in becoming something new while I live; a different, untested Self. I have thus oscillated to the opposite of Consciousness and become Being. I can no longer view myself and depend on others reactions to establish my new Ego. At the same time, my Consciousness is outside my Being, gathering stones for a new temple. My Being will take on the sheath of Consciousness at the entrance and commune once more in the act of becoming-God.
MMXI
*This is a journal entry
Charlotte Hill Aug 2014
I build sandcastles in my mind.
I've done it since a child.
As the dark thoughts they do run wild.

In my mind I build.
An architect I am for it makes me feel fulfilled.

These constructions I create.
In a world filled with hate.

They distract me from the norm.
And help me through life's storm.

In the dentists chair I lie.
Building in my minds eye.

For the bus I sit and wait.
To build I do not hesitate.

I go to a place where nobody knows.
On a sunny beach the warm wind blows.

Ruffles my hair, takes away my despair.

I hear gulls call as I construct these walls.
The tide never changes, hence they never fall.

Made of sand they are, and they're in my mind so far.

Fortresses with moats, where I can float a tiny boat.
All my worries fade away as I shape my hope.

Any tricky situation or when I lose my motivation.
I'm back beside the sound once more, of the crashing ocean.
Franswa Hackett Jul 2010
I reject pride, for I favor disruption
I have become one with momentary obstructions,
Those that dissolve all our mental constructions
For the righteous most often fall prey to corruption.

A flame dies faster when it burns most bright,
Preconceived honor is the ugliest vice,
Empires fall, no matter the height
I saw disciples of Jesus rip the heart out of Christ.

I have not found knowledge in my excavations,
A ******* of ethics has given rise to mutations
If only we could perform the art of levitation,
Darkness might not reach us from the earth's vibrations.

Judge how you will, I seek no exemptions
I have travelled too far from the hands of redemption
Those that reach out, and offer ascension
I prefer to savor my eternal damnation.

Truth is just a simple matter of persuasion
Beliefs stay valid through clever evasions
We cannot endure Godless deprivation
Though the mind of God is a mere quantum equation

— The End —