on moonstone slab Manmata flames again
from out of ashes rises, gloating unfinality of Shiva's dance
reincarnate offering of endless Self
in Lakshmi's avatar
a fateful prince's heart to lance

and lanced his heart her visage did,
                                                     though with vaster pinions fully pierced was she, in depths
                                                          ­                                                                 ­                 without rivalry~

his lust was sharp to invite solitude,
but easy to conceal,
he imagined cupping her against him,
scoured memory of upward glimpse,
inch  by  inch
with added imagery, invention moulding her
beneath his grasp
from forehead curls along
glowing skin and eyes
to curving, palatially appareled ******* . . .
her open lips . . .  her hips
--but after, merely to dismiss
and even sleep a bit
and quip inside at irony
to be at mercy
of a girl in flowers
when he with arrows demons lay to rest
(though she would, within the selfsame hours lose her wits ;)

in cityscape descried the triad:
gold dome gifts for sky
in shining generosity
Mithila's people overflow with joy
exuding free abundance carelessly--
jewelry loosed on playful street
from overkeen embrace, is left to lie;
loss in ever-present wealth nigh obsolete

musth of elephant, froth of steed,
floral garlands tangle, line and mix
for clouds of honey-bees to lick their feast.
a bustling of virile acrobatic populace--
symphonic mux of chaos tressed,
metropolis of idylls coalesced;
drums, races, grinning faces flinging courtship,
smirking merchants under wigs
bathers splash exotic fish to flit and weave
while ballads sift for higher pitch of love

from elevated terrace ladies prance
and watching from an inner spire
the princess spies her prince--
emerald shoulders, lotus-petal eyes
Vaikunta hidden from their mortal sight
but straining recognition there,
a union ageless as the stars
inspired suddenly another first:
Rama's transfixed stare she feels and meets,
strangers locked entwining glances
--fated simultaneous-- electric heat   like
from a planet sparking for the taste of outer space --
the lightning burns its mark ensouled
in blooms beyond her ripe, anthophilous form,
verdant visions planted in the rays of light
between two instant loves
to slip inside the eyelid entrance
and evermore impregnate with a glory ill,
as separation wills,
to colonize throughout with other Being there
phantasmal yearnings of entrancing elegance
--from dawn of time instilled, akashic script
of binding hurt with joy in love's embrace
condemn desire to a writhing term
when not imbibing such togetherness
a worldless crypt preferred

and so as swift as gymnast flip to fall
the heart is gushing toxic lack,
epic ventricles the viscose tug
in fluid inspiration wrote of Sita's
sudden addict gnashing inner plight
while slips the sight interred within the crowd,
as if a sorcerer the cosmic sea to play her destiny:
the waves inside enraged to overwhelm
the sudden coral crust beneath the swell
an unmarked seaside's lavish drown unto the land
and reeling send this fragile ******
into wilting, her floral haze to drooping fell...
        in revelatory crash of passion's oceanic weight...
attendants pamper uselessly
--from swoon to mood irate
to wait until the next appearance of her mortal god
the only one to sate the shameless need
entwining up within a clenching wrack of milky fits
from bed to sweaty bed they take the burning maiden~
the outer sea inflow in calming dusk meant nothing to the agony of new romance
                       sequestered in hymenic fire, dawning brilliant
                                                       ­                                omni chakral pierce in rays,
                                                                ­                                                              tot­ality relentlessness
and therein descry a wholeness
  yet unregained
a hopeless birdsong careless as the wind
in caring strokes of pollen redolence
for forest ears an endless vibrate mate
of elemental ease the simmer float
upon the dukkha broil paths embroidery of karmic
cookery the godly recipe invoked,
gibed her without cease,
****** flare eternal guna coals to stoke
and spite her with their peace,
for her attainment only next to he
the moon communes the message blinding clear
amid the ghee her girls would light in care
to soften her despair -- but only aggravate her state --
and so by dim refracted moondrops set,
in only gemlight, Sita basks in pain
her gaze entrained by night obsessively
while overhead the crescent hook beams
freely in to fertilize her all-too-chastely girdle there,
petals wilting under body pressed to slab of stone
as mounting groan on groan intones her writhing questioning
of whomever he could be to cast her moaning so
a deity in maidenhead unwitting of such otherlife
left by endless, anthrocosmos' whim to ache, and alone
in wonder scream abandonment from aether poise
confusion reigning noisome nescient choice


















.

'Tell me I'm not in a dream. Or one of my trances.' She uttered the two sentences between gasps and seem-to-be quickening pulses. In midair, the tension between them kept growing intensely, trying desperately to meet its peak every second, before finally disappearing into the sightless distance above it. 'You're not,' the man said, his voice distant even when his face was only a few inches from hers, and cupped his free hands around her chin to calm her pale face. Her cheeks were warm in his palms, as if being burnt by hundreds of heaps of dying, yet ravenous flames. She closed her eyes, recording the touch of his perfect skin that seemed able to charm her endlessly since the first time she had fixed her gaze on his shimmering features. The angelic voice which accompanied it woke her a few seconds later. 'And even if you are,' he traced his soothing fingers along the reddening skin of her cheeks, 'I'll bring you back to life. Which is here.' He emphasised the last two words with a smile, a heartbreaking, infuriating smile - because of its astounding beauty, before tenderly touching his cherrylike lips to hers, making her start to tremble uncontrollably in deep confusion. She was, again, in the middle of these steep rocks without any aid to support her unstable weight, meanwhile the air over their heads began to twirl in circles, the weather around them getting pink and turning red in five seconds' time. She was lost. In someone else's magical world, with a rendition of one of The Beatles' hit singles from the 1900s or 1950s - she could not exactly recall which period of years it came from - playing smoothly in the CD player in the languid atmosphere of the living room behind them.
After a moment of enjoyment the kiss brought them he pulled back, before slamming his left hand into the tiny depth of his shirt pocket and taking a silver locket out of it. He threw a confident smile at her, and in one blink of his eye, the room fell dark. Petrified yet washed out by the sudden darkness among them, the girl let out a heart-rending shriek, which was followed by her heaving her body onto him, making his head hit the floorboards and the long necklace break in half. In seconds, blood-red light began to shuffle out of the center of the torn necklace, mingling with the air outside its shell and sending the woman into gradually-coming unconsciousness. She could now only see shadows, muttering and brimming all over the weather around her, and had not the strength to stand up apart from lying helplessly on the feathered carpet beneath. Before her, she saw how he started to rise and reveal his claws, and fangs, and bright red eyes above her. He laughed mercilessly. Instantly, she covered her sweating face with her hands - which now felt too shaky and she hated it, she loathed it very much - and brought out a despondent, lamented sound of cry. Her evil lover, at the same time, continued to soak up as much energy as possible from the change of circumstance.
'Again, I successfully, harmlessly tricked you,' he whispered this to her right ear. Around them, the horrendous wind potter faster and faster meanwhile their invincibly powered circles got bigger. 'You should thank me for that.'
'Th... Thank you for what?' She abruptly gathered her courage to confront him. If this meant that the end of my life was approaching, I would be ready, she thought silently.
'For letting me bound my ways into your life again, Em,' his angelic voice replied, and before she realised what was coming next, she wailed with all of her might when she laid her eyes on his real monstrous, vampiric face before her.
'I am indeed sorry to say that you - a clever and sanguine girl like you - was granted the chance to relish your life only momentarily,' he cleared his throat. 'You have always known that you could not outrun us at the end..., and so have your family.'
'No,' she mumbled, and drifted her gaze to his face - his now burning face. 'NO!'
'No,' he mockingly repeated her words, 'or YES, my dear?'
'Don't call me using that 'D' word, beast,' she put her best effort to yell at the top of her lungs, ''cos I am not your dear, and prefer death to becoming one of you!'
With those last few words, she scrambled to her feet, and stood up in just two swift movements. In her both hands, which he did not know were protected by the two stashes of garlic and one wooden cross in her dress pockets, were two shiny swords with special blades carved onto their two edges which were designated to **** vampires. Get rid of them. And their malicious world of beasts.
She stepped forward, and new powers began to regenerate inside her - despite the cries she felt start to roll into her heart, upon knowing that her beloved Joe had died. Joe had been deceased now. He was lifeless, and no longer able to help her here. She should never have ditched him. It dawned on her now, when everything was already too late to fix up. But she knew that she should never give up. Javier and his vampire family might have tasted every single drop of her other family members - and the rest of Ludirus town's residents - including her Joe, before she idiotically kicked him out for this pathetic, heartless beast who wore a disguise to displace him. She stretch the first sword - the one in her right hand - out to him. He took a step back, his eyes remained focused on her.
'You won't hurt me,' he pretended to be in pain, and in one and a half seconds, he transformed into the figure of the innocuous, blue-eyed prince once more.
'I won't be deceived by your looks, pig,' spat her, meanwhile her brain rummaged through a thousand ways to stick the two swords into his chest. That was, in fact, the only way to **** him. To drain his evil life out of him.
'You were, once,' he laughed, the sound of his devious laughter echoed in the very room, and later left it in such dread and wariness.
'Not anymore,' she bravely took a step forward and, without any further doubt, without caring about her being imprisoned for the rest of her life before getting her blood dried by the fangs of Javier's two older brothers, she stabbed the swords into his chest with all the energy she had left. And the effects sprayed out by the action were beyond any of her expectations. Thousands of blood droplets poured out of his body and onto the floor beneath her, flooding the entire living room and finally the streets outside the building until no litter, little scraps of food, and wheels of vehicles were seen anywhere in sight. Surprisingly, these endless streams of blood did not cause any floods, and rapidly soaked through every single layer of soil the earth had on its surface. The blood that had been consumed out of the poor people of Ludirus, the rural village in South Ireland, famous for its cruel killing rampage for several thousand years, where a group of aristocratic vampire ruled the lives of humans and their own species. But now, there would be no more of them. No more of their horrible treatments. No more of their sneaking-up-on-humans tricks they secretly did at night - to savour human blood, which was lawfully removed from the protecting-human law renewed every year. It was all a lie. Yeah, a lie. A lie that allowed Javier's family to approach Lucinda's family members to be victims in their lifelong killing spree. But now, there would be no more vampires, thought Lucinda as she kissed her holy cross and sets of garlic affectionately. There would be no more blood sacrificed to fend for those beasts' hunger, even though it meant for her to live alone. Live on her own, as she no longer had anyone around her to turn to. To soak up her tears when she was scared away by the bunch of vampire kids on the way home from school. To calm her with her melodious chords at the piano. Mother. To serve her the best spaghetti in the world as a reward for her outstanding grades at school. Sister Sheila. To rub her back and put her to bed at night - at the age of sixteen! Father. Luce's tears just would not stop while she kept counting her memories, as every single shadows of her deceased beloved came back to her. And finally, the sight of her Joe lying his tired head on her lap, and reading out loud to her his newest poem he composed at the office for her. All were gone. Dissolved into the ravenous sea of blood in the guts of those psychotic, simpering, abusive monsters.
But she was satisfied. She felt, somehow, proud of her heroic, or at least, brave actions. She had taken control of her fear, and that was one of the most important characteristics a woman should have to succeed in this cruel world, her father had once said. Now she could prove to them all that she was a newly reborn person, and was no longer the old Lucinda. Lucinda Hale who had always been the 'tail' of her sister while they were six and four, and the little, spoilt daughter of Jim and Aileen Hale who could not hold a plate properly in every banquet their family was invited to. Luce knew that she was now completely a stranger to her family. She squinted her eyes shut, trying to imagine how nice it would be to show off her new self to her late family if only they were all alive with healthy pink cheeks now. In her own peace and this momentary solitude, she found herself sinking onto the floating warmth of blood, but strangely, she did not fall. She did not plunge into the limitless red colour underneath, and remained flowing above it while her tears started to crawl out of her eyes. She did not know, and did not want to know how long this remained until she eventually felt the rough surface of the bearskin carpet again. She woke up with a dizzy head and quickly threw a hasty look around her living room. The prince, beastly Javier had vanished. Oh, there are his remnants, she thought and unconsciously, chuckled quietly to herself when she came to take hold of several white, lifeless bones laid in front of her. Then suddenly she understood what had just happened. The legend in that book she had borrowed from the library transported the knowledge back into her mind. All the members of Javier's family had been crushed now. They were dead. Her sacred tears, which came to mix with the blood flood, became the cure for all the people who had been ****** by the vicious vampires in town. They were now freed, and reawarded, although still mortal, but yet a very rare, elusive, privileged chance to be alive once again and start their lives all over again. They must not be far from her now, thought her. Without any further wait, she raced out of the room, and wormed her way onto the street.
And here they were. The streets of Ludirus were no longer deserted. Traditional markets with a thousand-metre long series of antiques roamed them, occupying every single tiny space provided to place racks containing jewels, valuables, and gold pots. There were also shelves of books about cookery, traditional healing potions, sports, literature, and anything else someone ever wanted to buy. And then she spotted a book with a bright yellow cover, entitled 'Love Poems: From 1900 to the Present, by Joe Grogan.' Her breath seemed to stop at that time and suddenly, before she even got the opportunity to touch the cover of the copy in front of her, two warm arms wrapped her waists and turned her body around to face the owner. Once again, she was at a terrible loss for words. 'Joe,' she mumbled.
'I am,' the writer nodded solemnly. And just like the evil Prince Javier had done before, he pulled out a beautiful silver box and opened it. Inside, two rings shined beautifully before their eyes, radiating a smile as bright as the one seen on others' faces among them. A smile that celebrated the comeback of their long-lost independence. Before she knew it, Joe knelt before her, and presented the ring upwards onto her.
'What would you like to do first, Madam? Marry me, or buy my book?' He grinned and held both her hands. Before she could answer him, he inserted her left ring finger into the perfectly made ring, and helped her right hand fasten his own ring onto his finger. She lifted him up and wrapped her hands around his neck.
'Do you have time for both, Sir?' She rubbed his smooth cheeks and kiss them before looking deeply into his hazel eyes.
'Absolutely,' he answered firmly, and scooped her whole weight into his arms and spinned her around. Luce could no longer say anything when a sudden wave of happiness washed all over her, and became even at a more unfathomable loss of words when she caught the sight of her beloved father, mother, and her sister, all alive, start approaching to deliver their congratulations. Here we are, she thought with a satisfied feeling. We were, are, and will always be meant to be together.

THE PROLOGUE.

THE Cook of London, while the Reeve thus spake,
For joy he laugh'd and clapp'd him on the back:
"Aha!" quoth he, "for Christes passion,
This Miller had a sharp conclusion,
Upon this argument of herbergage.                              lodging
Well saide Solomon in his language,
Bring thou not every man into thine house,
For harbouring by night is perilous.
Well ought a man avised for to be        a man should take good heed
Whom that he brought into his privity.
I pray to God to give me sorrow and care
If ever, since I highte* Hodge of Ware,                      was called
Heard I a miller better *set a-work;                           handled
He had a jape of malice in the derk.                             trick
But God forbid that we should stinte here,                        stop
And therefore if ye will vouchsafe to hear
A tale of me, that am a poore man,
I will you tell as well as e'er I can
A little jape that fell in our city."

Our Host answer'd and said; "I grant it thee.
Roger, tell on; and look that it be good,
For many a pasty hast thou letten blood,
And many a Jack of Dover hast thou sold,
That had been twice hot and twice cold.
Of many a pilgrim hast thou Christe's curse,
For of thy parsley yet fare they the worse.
That they have eaten in thy stubble goose:
For in thy shop doth many a fly go loose.
Now tell on, gentle Roger, by thy name,
But yet I pray thee be not *wroth for game;     angry with my jesting
A man may say full sooth in game and play."
"Thou sayst full sooth," quoth Roger, "by my fay;
But sooth play quad play, as the Fleming saith,
And therefore, Harry Bailly, by thy faith,
Be thou not wroth, else we departe* here,                  part company
Though that my tale be of an hostelere.                      innkeeper
But natheless, I will not tell it yet,
But ere we part, y-wis thou shalt be quit."               assuredly
And therewithal he laugh'd and made cheer,
And told his tale, as ye shall after hear.

Notes to the Prologue to the Cook's Tale

1. Jack of Dover:  an article of cookery. (Transcriber's note:
suggested by some commentators to be a kind of pie, and by
others to be a fish)

2. Sooth play quad play: true jest is no jest.

3. It may be remembered that each pilgrim was bound to tell
two stories; one on the way to Canterbury, the other returning.

4. Made cheer: French, "fit bonne mine;" put on a pleasant
countenance.


THE TALE.

A prentice whilom dwelt in our city,
And of a craft of victuallers was he:
Galliard he was, as goldfinch in the shaw*,            lively *grove
Brown as a berry, a proper short fellaw:
With lockes black, combed full fetisly.                       daintily
And dance he could so well and jollily,
That he was called Perkin Revellour.
He was as full of love and paramour,
As is the honeycomb of honey sweet;
Well was the wenche that with him might meet.
At every bridal would he sing and hop;
He better lov'd the tavern than the shop.
For when there any riding was in Cheap,
Out of the shoppe thither would he leap,
And, till that he had all the sight y-seen,
And danced well, he would not come again;
And gather'd him a meinie of his sort,              company of fellows
To hop and sing, and make such disport:
And there they *sette steven for to meet             made appointment
To playen at the dice in such a street.
For in the towne was there no prentice
That fairer coulde cast a pair of dice
Than Perkin could; and thereto he was free    he spent money liberally
Of his dispence, in place of privity.       where he would not be seen
That found his master well in his chaffare,                merchandise
For oftentime he found his box full bare.
For, soothely, a prentice revellour,
That haunteth dice, riot, and paramour,
His master shall it in his shop abie,                       *suffer for
All have he no part of the minstrelsy.                        although
For theft and riot they be convertible,
All can they play on *gitern or ribible.             guitar or rebeck
Revel and truth, as in a low degree,
They be full wroth* all day, as men may see.                at variance

This jolly prentice with his master bode,
Till he was nigh out of his prenticehood,
All were he snubbed both early and late,                       rebuked
And sometimes led with revel to Newgate.
But at the last his master him bethought,
Upon a day when he his paper sought,
Of a proverb, that saith this same word;
Better is rotten apple out of hoard,
Than that it should rot all the remenant:
So fares it by a riotous servant;
It is well lesse harm to let him pace,                        pass, go
Than he shend all the servants in the place.                   corrupt
Therefore his master gave him a quittance,
And bade him go, with sorrow and mischance.
And thus this jolly prentice had his leve:                      desire
Now let him riot all the night, or leave.                      refrain
And, for there is no thief without a louke,
That helpeth him to wasten and to souk                           spend
Of that he bribe can, or borrow may,                             steal
Anon he sent his bed and his array
Unto a compere of his owen sort,                               comrade
That loved dice, and riot, and disport;
And had a wife, that held *for countenance            for appearances
A shop, and swived* for her sustenance.             *prostituted herself
       .       .       .       .       .       .       .

Notes to the Cook's Tale

1. Cheapside, where jousts were sometimes held, and which
was the great scene of city revels and processions.

2. His paper: his certificate of completion of his apprenticeship.

3. Louke:  The precise meaning of the word is unknown, but it
is doubtless included in the cant term "pal".

4. The Cook's Tale is unfinished in all the manuscripts; but in
some, of minor authority, the Cook is made to break off his
tale, because "it is so foul," and to tell the story of Gamelyn, on
which Shakespeare's "As You Like It" is founded. The story is
not Chaucer's, and is different in metre, and inferior in
composition to the Tales. It is supposed that Chaucer expunged
the Cook's Tale for the same reason that made him on his death-
bed lament that he had written so much "ribaldry."

She lay awake in her tiny bed
And she waited for the dawn,
For then she’d be turning five, they said,
The day that she was born,
She hid her head right under the sheet
And she giggled, now and then,
Thinking about the presents like
They’d given once, to Ben.

For Ben was her older brother and
He’d recently been eight,
Was given a bike, though second-hand,
And Ben had thought it great,
He’d fallen off it a dozen times
And she saw he’d skinned his knees,
But how she would love a bike like his,
She lay and she whispered, ‘Please!’

He’d also got lots of lollipops
And he wouldn’t even share,
The one that she stole got sticky, and
Got tangled up in her hair,
But best of all was the parcel that
Unwrapped, was a railway train,
It puffed real steam and its livery gleamed
Til he left it out in the rain.

The sun peeped over the window-sill
And she thought she’d take a look,
For lying there on her counterpane
Was a well-thumbed Cookery Book,
And dimly, stood in the corner of
Her sparsely furnished room,
Was a brush and pan and a black lead can
And a new, short-handled broom.

‘You’re old enough for the chores,’ she heard
As her mother watched her sob,
‘You can start by filling the kettle,
Then you can place it on the hob,
You’ll use the pan for the ashes that
You’ll be scraping from the grate,
Then spread them out by the roses, on
The ones by the garden gate.’

‘You’ll sweep the floors in the morning with
That nice new broom you got,
Attend to all of the blacking when
The oven’s not so hot,
And then you’ll help with the cooking, so
You’ll come home straight from school,
Your Da’ has need of his supper, so
You’ll work, not play the fool.’

The broom had come from a gypsy van
That was camped out on the green,
Was shaped and whittled by gypsy men
To whisk the meadow clean,
It carried with it a gypsy spell
That was woven in a hearse,
To whisk it well, or a taste of hell,
Along with a gypsy curse.

When Martha picked up the broom she felt
The power spread in her hands,
She whisked away to a gypsy tune
She’d heard from the caravans,
She whisked the ashes over the floor,
Put blacking over her nose,
Spilled the kettle over the hob
And ruined her father’s clothes.

Her mother started to beat the girl
But the broom then beat her back,
Whisking her out through the open door
And putting her under attack,
It swept the porch right into a heap
It piled the boards of the floor,
Tearing them up from the joists, and then
Sweeping them out the door.

It whisked the lid off the blacking can
And spread black over the walls,
Til Martha’s mother ran down the street
To the sound of squeals and squalls,
So Martha’s father bought her a doll
That could do all kinds of tricks,
While Martha waved the broom at her Ma,
‘Just wait til I am six!’

David Lewis Paget

First poem of the Day: Yes Ma'am!

The discussion that follows is pertinent,
If you are over a certain age limit,
Whereby, having survived, you are entitled
To certain discounts that shall remain nameless

(Still reading? cool)

Having recently entered said stratosphere,
I became painfully aware,
There is no precision tool created that
A man can call his woman in public
Without setting off fiery eyebrow raising
  
Let's state the facts:
She gorgeous, she's hot,
She goes tango dancing after 10 PM
With bad boys from Argentina and the Ukraine

But that is not the problem, for she loves
Her poet's nookery, like he adores her cookery

No, my issue is more conventional,
Indeed, not boundary breaking sensational,
It is ticklishly delicious,
I don't know how to introduce her in public,
Or in a quaint phrase, in polite company

She has rejected
Lover
GF
Mi amore
Woman,
Companion

Hardly indiscreet and something the world has quite accepted,
Tho she dances nightly, on this particular dilemma,
She provides no guidance, dancing here too,
All around the problem

One day she intro'd me as her fav poet,
To which I acknowledged by addressing her as
My number one fan,
Which seems to have stuck,
so I acknowledge her as such,
And always add a polite, respectful, winking,
Yes ma'am!

Today cops had to break up a riot in the cookery aisle.

Two-dollar waffle makers.

Father Why’s Glob

              And whan he rood, men myghte his brydel here
                    Gynglen in a whistlynge wynd als cleere
                    And eek as loude as dooth the chapel belle

                                                        -­Chaucer

A famous priest takes pictures of his meals
Writes detailed notes on how they were prepared
As he airplanes around the world attending meetings
To talk about people he doesn’t like

A famous priest takes pictures of more meals
Almost cellular closeups of bits of meat
While he is flying holy in first class
And praising his cabernet sauvignon

A famous priest promises prayers (and cookery tips)
If you will send him money for his many trips

Her  red dress and  curls
are currently bespoke  in her  mind.
Walking  home, past the overgrown duck pond,
towards  honeysuckle lane
she  nonchalantly recalls
her  cookery classes
where see dreamed of preparing
welcome  meals for  a chosen one.
But  of  late, her mercurialness
navigates notional dreams
solitary by turn,
and  then  she  cut her  curls
to renounce  her prior gains.

no! seriously! how many ******* times will we have to go over this format of reciting biblical compliments to each other, chapter 1 verse 1 through to 3 like it's worth 30,000 word essays on hermeneutics... if any rational man could see that somehow 3 words = 30 thousand words... he'd have written a dictionary in 10 languages, and thesauruses combining 3 of them for aesthetic purposes of non-tutored rhetoric: the talk that made drinking a pint less about st. st. st. stuttering, and more about: rub-dub-rub-dub... why in seashell the sea and in cave the echo? psst... don't wake them... the English rationalists will have a monkey scout on the trails of such loose language insensibility... they'll keep the power of the un-tripped domino with Shakespeare... the only country in the world where a dictator exists... and no one wants to own up to the identity of who he is.*

for all its worth, history is like science, quiet frankly history is
a science of humanism, so many facts in science, as there
are dates in history -
we educate people for the hamster catch -
drill them Pythagoras to reach a blind spot,
likewise quantum twins:
here too, there too,
Xerxes mad lashing at the sea for disobeying,
some Emperor of Japan not lashing at the sea
and allowing a samurai smooth tsunami stroke
against the neck wipe a million shaven heads
and a beard from the cares of
the few entombed in modern pyramids: harems.
if only Xerxes were transported to Japan
and began lashing against the sea for disobeying,
sent a few army bombers to disperse the wave,
maybe then we'd know why he failed
in his conquest of Greece...
apathy is the worst kind of madness,
it breeds no King Lear... it breeds no fear,
no theatrical splendour...
it just showcases the homeless man
at Covent Garden with the sign: please help...
walking past in fake diamond but nonetheless
esteemed ownership for status...
i'd run naked past... but to prove what?
that brother C.C. owns a t.v.?
prove what, and to whom? the grey mass
that entombs a life we once had
but are left to this perpetual-awe riddle
of up-kept science and ridicule of awe from
the beginning? up-keeping awe in science goes so
far, as Cancer Man said: the minute
they reject my book, i turn into the subverting
agent of their success... they don't
publish my book i un-publish their so called-truth
books, which become nothing more than
cookery books... the people of Siberia
are stern enough to survive without some
mush from upper-east side, some
London elitist with a flavour for Dubai...
to attain the uttermost objectivity of man's concern
is to devolve his highly evolved protection
of the subjectivity of the state, or patriotism,
of the Hegelian protective ownership of goods,
of the Marxian communal dis-ownership of such escapades:
to give birth to a God of jealous inquisitions,
one must give birth to a God of jealous intentions,
as of any time as the one time in mythology,
no greater time would be assured in being equal,
to his being... oh i favour the Cancer Man...
the object remains intact, censored subjectivity has already
been in place with the enforcement of
keeping Shakespeare saintly, erasing all existing memory
of, i admit, unnecessary bureaucracy to merely
draw a halo over a frying-pan of scrambled eggs...
it doesn't matter how right or wrong i am...
people have been given an almost eternal history,
so that they don't believe in an eternity...
but whereas a wolf once attacked a flock of sheep
and could be easily distinguished by adaptability,
the wolf within the sheep, as with the sheep within
a metaphysical suggestion (abstract) is no longer
distinguishable... we evolved to cannibalise each other...
whether intentionally in isolated cases, or poetically
with unintended cases of isolation...
we gave birth to a greater death than that of god...
we gave birth to the death of poetry, by precursor
to a death i mean the birth of the mediocre.
all the avenues are exhausted... all that fanciful
cocktail of clown and mime and acrobat are done...
we turned to comparative existentialism, as we always
did, we always wanted to protect the lamb from the wolf,
the fly from the spider... but when we were given the
bigger picture, the pyramid, the schematic, we became
so scared of our natural power that we created an overwhelming
seemingly over-worldly power of the atom...
we pitied the lamb lost among a pack of hungry wolves...
but then we gave sway to the industrial slaughter of cows
for mere food fights in schooling institutes that cared
more for imagining ourselves without body rather than
without god... god is dead... enter the dietitian.
as one swine plucked the heat from another swine's comfort,
another anorexic prickled her skin against another's
for the other's to only feel nerve and bone than anything
mammalian... we, the lizard people of the severed cranium,
who, through our concreteness to fact:
as in science as one fact changed, so history without mythology
no fact remains with the mythology of hindsight, the what if...
who cares if it happened, why are you trapped in the mythology
of what if? we are truly lizards... to the core that we imagine
the canvas of our fancies (muscles, fat, fibres) so gluttonous
with ****, while leaving cold skeletal phonetics dyslexic,
broken... why then so many people dare to read?
want to? want to escape the horrid comforts of the papier mâché?
fibula... but is that φι- or θι-? you don't know,
before you could teach the coherence of the movement of such
bones, you enveloped them in moulds of images,
which you later called sacred, and knelt before them,
in the worship of former stone engravings, which you engraved
on canvas depicting learned folk who were bitterly ignorant...
then you desecrated graves... giving fake skeletons
property over pointless words, words that could never stretch
to the sentence of: i love you... you left them,
in slogan canned, until started asking: where are the dentists!
where are the dentists! we need dentists!
you we simply slurring a stupid karaoke into a microphone
while your grandmothers ****** your very lives day by day;
but hey! ooh those steroid biceps that would
end up giving you a heart-attack when running
against true athletes of 200 metres at 20 metres dead;
oh believe me... those tourist trips to Auschwitz?
they're fakes... you don't have to go on a tourist trip to
Auschwitz to start realising you're living in hell...
those trips are only real for people who've been there
for real... even those Israeli schoolchildren have no place
there... it's a place designated for Nazis and Poles
who identified themselves as Jews first...
mind if we import the Sphinx to Trafalgar Sq. for
kicks the tourists might admire in between breaks of
watching Netflix?

Cities are *****, grimy places
Full of people with interesting faces.

There's dark hair, blonde hair, red hair, white hair and grey ;  imagine all the colours of a rainbow and then add a few.

There's fair skin, dark skin, olive skin and mellow tones too.

There's small eyes, wide eyes, blue eyes, green eyes, grey eyes and brown; some have 20:20 vision, some hide behind glasses, some wear contact lenses to enhance their sight, some have a world of darkness behind their eyes.

There's large noses, small noses, wide noses, button noses, some hold glasses upon their face, some are cumbersome, some full of grace.

There's clear skin, wrinkled skin, acne skin, damaged skin, translucent skin, soft skin, dry skin, sunkissed skin, sunburnt skin.

There's big ears, small ears, pierced ears, cauliflower ears, ears with rings in to make them wide; some people wear hearing aids to enhance what they hear, some live in total silence.

Some people are tall, some are short, some are able to walk, some need assistance every day to be able to walk even a small way.

There are cyclists and runners on every street, roller skaters, walkers your most likely to meet; add in football, cricket and rugby players too, basketball, rounders, netball, tennis and golf, squash, badminton, swimming and diving, there's such diversity in all that we do.

Libraries and Museums open their doors, sshh be quiet, though it's free to explore.

Shops, coffee shops, hairdressers a plenty, though some of the bigger spaces remain empty; cost of rent is exceedingly high and don't even think about the option to buy.

There's leisure parks to walk and have fun with your dogs, parks with swings and roundabouts for your children who are  young.

Some Cities have rivers, some have canals built to let barges through.

Some Cities have harbours, marinas too, look over the Ocean at a sea that's blue.

All Cities have Universities to provide education to those from home or from far and wide.

Spoilt for choice of courses to attend there's professions of course, doctors, dentists, lawyers and nurses, accountants and vets. There's media, dance, English language and literature, geography, history and maths. There's IT, cookery and drama and how to handle a camera. There's business and entertainment, wedding planning and Latin. Any subject of your choice can be found somewhere around.

You can find comedy clubs, poetry readings, chess clubs, scout clubs, lego groups, cookery classes, sewing classes, reading groups, right outside your door, if you took the chance to look around your neighbourhood and the  time to explore.

Don't write off the City though it may look ***** and grimy in places, it is as you can see, full of interesting people and places.

A text for five voices.

Note on text: For formatting reasons, this should be read on a full screen, or in landscape mode on a mobile.

i. Blank copy

I look out of the window at
the houses as they pass and they
don’t so much slide past
                                    or glide past
                                                the motion isn’t smooth.
They sort of click past.
They tick past, dit-dit-dit:
House after house after house after house
                                                dit-dit-dit­-dit-dit
My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough
to keep up with all the houses
                                  as they pass.
It’s 10 o’clock when I arrive at my office
and no-one is there yet
and I turn on my computer.
I sort of just
                sit there
                for quite a long time. Then
at 10.37 I print a document I’ve been working on
and I pick up my mug and I go to the kitchen where the printer is
and I put the kettle on.
I log on to the printer but instead of pressing
                                                Print
  ­                                              I press
                                                        Cop­y
                                                        instead­.
The machine whirs
The light goes
                        across
And out comes this copy this
        Copy of
                nothing.
I pick it up from the cradle.
It’s warm.
And I hold it and I look at it and I think:
                                                This is a copy
                                                                ­of nothing.
And since it is no longer an empty piece of paper but now
                                                             ­   something more
                                                            ­    something
                                                   ­                                imbued
I don’t put it back in the paper tray
and I don’t put it in the bin.
I carry it carefully with my tea back
to my office and put it
                                Carefully
                    ­                            on my desk.
I close the door.
Usually when I arrive and no-one is there I keep the door open for a bit.
It’s my way of letting people know I’m here.
It also helps me get a sense of what’s going on in the building
which students are there and what they’re doing
and once I’ve got a decent enough idea
or if there’s someone around I don’t really feel like helping
                                                         ­                           I close the door.
Today it is quiet.
It is a Friday.
                     Fridays are quiet.
It is the seventh of March.
It is 2014.
              I’m looking out of the window as I recall
              without much interest
              that yesterday was my father’s sixty-first birthday.
The buses tick past the window.
Without really thinking I
roll down the blind
                            Until the window is as blank as my copy of
                                                              ­                                           nothing.
I look at it but I
don’t
              sit
                     down
                                   yet.
My computer makes a noise and a purple box
tells me I have a meeting in thirty minutes.
                                                        ­Oh shut up I tell it
                                                        out loud.
Now I realise that I never did print my document
so I go back to the printer and the file is still there waiting for me
and I press Print All
                     and out it comes
and the piece of paper looks
Obnoxious
                     scrawled over in heavy black print
                     and ****** coloured columns
                                                                ­      and smelling
                                                        ­              Smelling of toner.
For someone who claims to be conscious of the environment I
print excessively. But only at work.
It’s the combination of it being free
                                          (or at least, no cost to me)
and that feeling you get when you
swipe
your access card to log in to the printer
and tap the screen dit-dit-dit to choose this or that.
It feels
       to me
              like being a grown-up.
It’s intoxicating.
I don’t want to go to the meeting
and I’m suddenly annoyed by this ***** piece of paper
which
       I ***** up
                     and throw in the bin.
**** it.
Not even in the recycling.
**** it.
Who cares.
              What difference could it possibly make
              whether I throw this piece of paper
                                                 which I will now have to print again
              in the black part of the bin for waste
              or the green part of the bin for recycling.
I go back to my computer and press Print but
this time
I keep clicking my mouse
                                   ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
                         ­          Yeah.
                                   ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
                         ­          ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
And I go back to the printer and the name of the document comes up on the built-in screen
dozens and dozens of times
the same name of the same document
and I tap
              Print All.
And as the machine spits out clone after clone I
mutter under my breath:
                                   **** it.
                                   Yeah.
Then out loud:
                                   **** it.
                                   Yeah.
And as I throw them in the bin and go back for more I think
I’m going to buy a car. Yeah.
And I’m going to drive my car to work and
when I finish work I’m going to drive it
to a big supermarket
                            a hypermarket
                            a super hyper mega market
where I will buy and buy and buy,
and on my way home I will buy petrol to put in my car
       And I will go on holiday
       I will book all those last minute deals on the internet
       And go to Turkey or Lanzarote or Corfu for a hundred
                                                         ­      or a couple of hundred
                                                         ­      pounds, every month maybe
And I’ll fly there on a big plane.
I’ll soar over the ocean on a big plane.
And when I come back
I’ll soar over all those people outside Stansted Airport
All those
people
With banners
Moaning and complaining and protesting
Banners saying things like
                                   I don’t know
                                                 “Down with planes”
And as the flight attendant smiles goodbye I’ll think
yeah.
       Down with planes.
                                   And I’ll drive my car home and I will
                                   stop
                                   worrying
                                   about
                                   everything.
I go back to my office.
I retrieve one copy of my document from the bin and I
put it on top of my copy of nothing.
Whereas before the document offended me
                            now I have difficulty
                            telling the difference between the two.
My colleague arrives and she tells me about the motorway.
She’s always telling me about the motorway.
I think about my car I’m going to buy and I
think about being on the motorway.
I think about being on that part of the M25
where the planes are so low you duck as they thunder over you
and they come
                     in rapid succession
                                          dit dit dit
                                                        rapid­ eye movement
                                                        ­radar.
I think about being stuck in traffic there and the air
thick with exhaust fumes
mixing with the air around Heathrow
and all those tons of jet fuel from the planes zooming over
Blink and you miss them
                                   but always another follows.
I go to my meeting.
I realise that I have picked up my blank copy
along with the document I printed for the meeting.
Someone says they wish I’d printed more than one copy
as it turns out it would be useful for everyone to have one
and I laugh in their face without explaining myself.
                                                         ­             I make notes on it.
                                                             ­         My copy of nothing.
                                                        ­              Without really realising
                                                       ­               I’ve scribbled notes on it
but as I look at my spidery black biro handwriting
and think with some real despair about how I have mindlessly
destroyed
something pure
the notes
              disappear
                                int­o the paper
and it is clean again.



ii. Ringing sea

My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough.
What I’m looking at
my rational brain tells me
is a video of two people having ***.
I have seen that before.
But what I’m actually watching is a video of
my husband
                     having ***
                                          with another woman.
And my eyes don’t refresh the image fast enough
So I keep seeing his face.
The whole picture melts away and
I just see his face
                     Which belongs to me.
                                          It’s my face. I – own it.
                                                        It’s my- my- my-
                                                        And it freezes there
just his face is all I can see then the video continues for a
split second then freezes again
                                   His face
                                   His face
                                   His face       It’s him
                                                        It’s him
                                                        It’s him.
I stop the video and I put the phone down on the table
and I breathe very deeply and
every time I blink, between every saccade
there is his face
                            a face I know intimately
                                                      ­         and it’s looking away from me.
I turn on the television. It is Saturday.
He is flying back from Asia on Tuesday. I have until then to
                                                              ­        what?
The sound and light from the television
flicker over me
And I sort of just empty,
Quietly, like a balloon disappearing into the sky.
I don’t know what I’m going to do but
for now that’s
fine.
The brown armchair swallows me up
and I cry for two hours without really noticing.
The cookery programme I’m not watching finishes and I think
the news is about to come on so I turn off the TV
and I put on my shoes
and I go down the stairs and out of the house
and I get in my car.
It’s raining and I just sit there.
Without starting the engine I flick on the windscreen wipers:
                                                         ­      Dit / dit.
                                                            ­   Dit \ dit.
                                                            ­   Dit / dit.
It takes less than three seconds for them to pass
from one side of the windscreen to the other.
And I get this feeling this
unexplainable feeling
that I want to crawl inside that moment
when the wipers are moving from one side of the screen
                                                          ­                   to the other.
I flip down the sun shield and look at myself in the mirror.
There are two lipsticks in the glove compartment.
I pick the darker one
                            and apply it
                                                 carefully
                                                       ­          sensually.
I start the car.
West London ebbs away to the motorway
My car is silver and in the rain it feels invisible
I don’t know where I’m going
                                I follow words on signposts I recognise the shape of
                                without really reading them
and I keep driving
I let my eyes come away from the road and
watch the fields and trees tick past like cells of film
and I look at the cars on the other carriageway
and I notice they’re all silver like mine
                                                        (onl­y mine is invisible)
and I duck as a Boeing 777 soars over near the M4 interchange
and let myself scream soundlessly under the roar of its engines.
I wonder where it came from.
                                          I think about the people on board.
I think about their mobile phones and
all the ******* there must be on them
and I realise
how many videos there must be in the world
of people having ***.
I take the M23 past Gatwick Airport
                                          the motorway ends but I keep driving
until finally I come to the sea.
No-one is here because it’s March and it’s raining.
I have always loved the sea.
Not sailing or swimming or surfing
Just being near it, for me it’s
                                   a spiritual experience.
I’ll lie on the stones and gaze at the sky for hours
but not today.
                     There are some flowers tied to a railing
                     somebody has drowned.
Presumably they never found a body to bury.
The awfulness of that strikes me like a stone.
                                                        It­’s the not knowing.
                                                        ­The lack of 100% concrete total proof.
I take my phone out of my handbag.
                                                        ­But I know now.
The shingle crunches underneath my flat shoes.
                                                        No­w I know.
The cold burns my ears and the wind picks up as I get closer to the water
the tide slips serpentine up the stones
white-edged
                     beckoning me.
Without realising I’ve slipped
                                                 out of
                                                            my­ shoes
but the stones do not hurt my coarse feet
and the wind
                     howling now
                                          catches me behind my knees
quickening my stride.
The spit curls around my toes.
And then I catch myself wondering
                                          whether my husband will call me or
                                          text me when he lands
and I hurl
       my phone
              into the sea.
On the drive home I listen to the radio.
The news is dominated by the Crimean conflict
and the referendum that’s coming up there.
Florence Nightingale
                            is all I can think about when they talk about Crimea.
Until recently I never even knew where it was.
At school you only learn about Florence Nightingale
                                   not the geography
                                          not the conflicts
                                                 not Ukraine’s edges so charred by
                                                               invasion and,
                                                                ­             subsequently,
                                                                ­                                  explosion.
                    ­               We live in so many war zones.
and I’m wondering what else I never learned about when
the story changes and now they are talking about a plane.
A plane is missing
                                   between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing
                                          and the blood drains out of me.
It isn’t like floating away like a balloon this time
it’s like plunging off a cliff.
And at once I see
                            with brilliant, burning clarity
                                                        m­y phone, ringing, on the sea bed
The light from the screen illuminates the stormy water but
I can’t see the name:
                                   I can’t see who’s calling.
I need to know.
I need to know it’s him.
       I drive back at twice the speed limit.
In the dark the flowers look menacing and half-dead; my
shoes fall off in the same place
But the tide is in so the whole beach looks different.
I’m up to my waist but my
top half
       is as wet
              as my bottom half
                            because the rain
                                          is torrential
                                                      ­  and I can still hear the phone ringing
                                                        b­ut I can’t see the light in the sea.
and I howl
       his name
but the wind carries it away soundlessly
       and I can’t tell if I’m
              further out
              or if the tide’s further in
                            and the ringing grows louder
                            as the current takes me powerfully by the waist and
                                                             ­         the stars rush by overhead.



iii. Acid rain

Every time I blink, between every saccade I see
a brilliant but infinitesimally brief flash of colour.
       Purple
       or green
       I think.
                     One on top of the other.
It’s hard to tell for sure because they’re so brief.
It’s like when you look at a light bulb for too long
                                                            ­   or stare directly at the sun.
I see it sometimes when I’m on my bike
or on a really big rollercoaster
                                   going downhill at 100 miles an hour
                                   the wind blasting through me
                                   the screams whirling through the air.
But I’m not on a rollercoaster, I’m sat very still
it’s Monday afternoon and I’m at school.
I haven’t said a single word to a single person today.
I didn’t even answer my name in the register.
I feel a bit dizzy like
                                   everything is turning together
                                   but I’m on a different
                                                       ­                 axis?
I think the bell goes, I’m
not a hundred percent sure,
but I leave anyway and no-one stops me.
       Outside in the sunshine the flashes of colour are
       several thousand times brighter.
In the next lesson I slip in my earbuds and
it looks like the teacher is singing the words.
                                                 I put on the most obscene song I can find.
I must have it on too loud
because eventually she notices and
she forces me to give her the headphones. This is the first time
someone has spoken to me today
                                          it feels a bit surreal
                                                         ­      but the world stops spinning
                                                        ­       a bit.
After school I go into the supermarket on Wigmore Lane
the enormous white of it is tinged in green and purple
and all I want is to buy a drink
                            I have a feeling of exactly the kind of drink I want
                            but I can’t find the right one
                            even though the fridge must be longer than
                            the driveway of my house.
Racks of newspapers and magazines clamour for my attention
       the only real colour in this great white warehouse of a store
       red tops and blue spreads
       and green and purple and green and purple
              and green and purple…
They’re talking about that missing plane in the news
and they keep using the same phrase.
They’re talking about the people on board the missing plane
and they keep saying
                            Missing
                      ­      presumed dead.
Not dead dead. Presumed dead.
I start wondering what it’s like to be both dead and alive at the same time,
as if all the people on board that plane are like Schrödinger’s cat
              (cats)
and we won’t know whether they’re dead or alive until we find the plane
and pull it out of the sea
and look inside
                     so
                         until then
                     they’re both.
Out in the car park I count the planes as they descend onto
the runway less than a mile away.
       One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
       I figure about a hundred and eighty a plane maybe,
       which means fifteen hundred people just arrived in Luton.
Nobody comes to Luton for the scenery.
Soon they’ll be gone,
A town haunted by a ghost population of thousands an hour.
                                                 filtered onto the trains and buses
                                                 and out from the sprawling car parks
                                                 to the motorway, and
                                                 onto connecting flights back into Europe
              but none of them will stay in Luton
                                                           ­                  Missing
                                                         ­                    presumed dead.
As I bike through Luton I think it might not be so strange to be dead and alive at the same time.
I’ve lived here my whole life and the whole place
                                                           ­                         which is a *******
                                                 moves with the mundanity of machinery
                                                 like the big car factories by the airport
                                                 the lights on, the production lines rolling
                                                 but all a bit automatic and lifeless.
But in the airport, it’s different.
The air, with its artificial chill, hangs with a faint shimmer
and the people here move purposefully, and with charge
                                                          ­     excitedly
                                                       ­                      or dejectedly
                                                      ­         but not neutrally
heading for the gates where they are sealed two hundred a time into airtight tubes
like Schrödinger’s cat:
                            dead and alive in the air;
                            one or the other on the ground.
                                                         ­      My teachers say I have an
                                                              ­ “odd way of looking at things”.
I leave my bike outside without chaining it up and go into the terminal.
In a café in the check-in hall I find exactly the drink I want
and I pay £2.75 for it.
                            I look at the departure boards.
                            Edinburgh. Bonn. Marseilles.
                            A green light flashes next to each gate as it opens
                                                           ­                  green and purple
                                                          ­                   green and purple
                                                          ­                                 Missing
                                                         ­                                  presumed dead
The flashes of colour are growing brighter
every time I move my eyes a green and purple streak follows behind like a jet stream
but the bustle and activity of the airport is so much that I can’t keep my eyes still
       so they keep darting
                            this way and that
                                                 until my vision is painted over
                                                            ­                 green and purple.
The streaks roll over each other like clouds of acid rain.
       This is the final call for flight 370 to–
My bike is gone when I go back outside
The front of the terminal is a plateau of thousands upon thousands of cars
and it’s probably in one of them
                                          but I’ll never know which.
The car parks reach all the way back to the runway.
Green and purple acid rain from all the jet fuel mixed with the air
melts a hole in the fence and I slip through
moving purposefully
                            with charge
                                          across the green and purple grass
                                          scorched by a hundred thousand landings
                                          a hundred thousand people arriving in Luton
And there on the tarmac
                     glinting in the rain
                     surrounded by blinking amber
       there is my bike
       its black handlebars spread like the wings of a jet plane.
I duck as an Airbus screams in just a few feet over my head
the rush from the engine lifting the soles of my feet from the ground.
I pick up the bike and start pedalling
                                                 pedalling down the runway
                                                 pedalling towards the blinking amber.
It feels light, nimble, fast
the tyres take the asphalt with ease.
And the faster I go the lighter I feel
       the acid rain eats away at my clothes
       and they melt off my body and pool on the runway below,
                     Lighter
                            and lighter until…
                                                 The wheels lift away from the ground
                                                          ­     and in the air I am dead and alive
                                                 and maybe nobody will
                                                                ­                           ever
                                                            ­                               see me
                                                                ­                           again.



iv. Burning sky

The faster I go, the lighter I feel.
I’ve taken the night watch and the yacht
is cruising across the Indian Ocean
penetrating the black abyss like a white bullet
and the lights in the portholes send shimmering white bullet shapes
for miles across the endless ink.
                                                            ­                 What?
                     We’re not going very fast at all
                     But it feels like any minute
                                                 we might drop off the edge of the world.
I hope we do.
I feel light and dizzy and irrational
                                          and I feel aware of being
                                          light and dizzy and irrational
and I wonder if this is what going mad feels like.
Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life?
I
       feel like that a lot lately.
Marc is sleeping.
We didn’t speak much today.
I can’t really remember how long it’s been
       since we left Victoria but the fight
       we had there
                            in a bistro by the port we
       said things we
       said things that
                            we can’t take back.
The Seychelles were stifling.
The heat was stifling.
He was stifling.
And the people were stifling
                                   the people kept talking about pirates.
                                   They kept warning us about pirates.
                                   You’re sailing where
                                                        the­y say
                                   You must be careful
                                                        t­hey say
                                   It’s notorious
                                                       ­ they say
I have fantasies about being kidnapped by pirates.
Not stupid Johnny Depp pirates with *** and parrots, no
       Real pirates.
                     Nasty pirates.
                     With dark snarls and AK-47s.
When we were at sea off the Horn I’d see things on the horizon
Dots or lights I couldn’t make out
And I’d imagine the rifle against my neck
Their hot breath
Chains and ransoms.
                          I’d wonder how much we’d be worth.
                          If we’d make national news.
                          Would it be David Cameron to announce,
                                                       ­        regrettably,
                                                    ­           we don’t negotiate with pirates,
                          or would it be someone less important?
                          Maybe just the foreign secretary.
                          What is the worth of my life at the end of a steel barrel?
But it would only be a buoy, or a plane on the horizon,
and I would get into bed with Marc
       disappearing under the covers like a different kind of hostage.
I
              oh
                                   I
                                                 Sorry
I’m crying.
                     I don’t know when I started crying.
The thing is I don’t know if it’s me breaking the marriage
or the marriage breaking me.
I’m watching everything literally fall to pieces and for all I know
it’s me with the detonator.
And then
              everything
literally falls to pieces
                            My mug of coffee falls from my hand
                            shatters on the deck
                                                            ­and the sea rears up nightmarishly.
Above me
a long orange **** of flame
is burned into the sky.
                            No, really.
                            That’s not a metaphor.
                                                       ­        There is fire in the sky.
It’s about a mile up and a mile away.
Look.
       There.
              ****.
                            **** **** ****.
What is that?
                                   Marc!
I call for Marc.
                                   Marc!
       There is fire in the sky.

–              Katherine.

       Fire in the sky.
       Fire in the
       Fire in

–              Katherine.

       Fire

–              Katherine.

       What
              Marc, what?

–              Are you awake?

       I think so.

–              You were calling out again.

       Calling

–              Calling out. You were shouting.

       What
       where
       What time is it?
                                   Where

–              Dubai. We’re in Dubai. It’s 7.
                They delayed again while you were sleeping.

       Dubai?

–              Katy I really think you should see a doctor.

       Don’t call me that.

–              Pardon?

       Katy.
       Don’t call me that.
                                          Like

–          ­                                       Like what?

       Everything’s okay.

–

       Everything’s not okay.

–               There’s
                 doctors. You’re not well. You’ve been confused since,
                 well actually since before it even happened.

       You think I’ve been confused.

–              Not right.
                Not you.

       You’re **** right.

–              Forget it.

       Thank you.

–              Go back to sleep. ****.



–              Are you still seeing it?
                The plane? On fire.
                                   You’re dreaming about it, aren’t you?

       Yes.

–              It’s affecting you?

       I’m
              just
                     unhappy,
       Marc.

–              That’s not just it though is it?

       What’s that supposed to mean?

–              Something about seeing that
                                                           ­   plane has scared you.

       We don’t know it was the plane.
       The one that –

–                            No. But, right place, right time.
              They said

       Maybe.

–              It’s still a coincidence.
                It’s not

                                   What

–                                   A sign.
                                     From god.
                                     Or
                                          whatever.

     ­                                     Whatever you think it means.



                            Katherine.

       The thing I don’t know, Marc
       is if I’m more scared that it was the plane
       or that it wasn’t.

–

       Imagine.
       Vanishing.
       Into thin air.

–              I know.

                            No, you don’t.
       Disappearing
                            into thin air
       Or falling
                            out of it.

–              Falling.

       You can’t imagine that.

–              I can.



–              I can, Katy.
                I ******* can
                                          Imagine.
       ­         Falling.
                Disappearing.
             ­   Into thin air.

                *******
                            i­nvisible.

                 I am
                           right
                          ­          ******* here,
                                                        K­atherine.

       I see you.
       I see you Marc.
       But you’re not
                            solid.

       I’m not
                            solid.
                          ­                              See?

                           ­                             It passes
                                                          ­     right through.

       Now you see me.
                                   Now yo–



v. 2015

Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life?
The hotel room here in Singapore is almost identical
to the room I had in Mexico City.
The heat feels the same and it’s the same
nondescript decoration
which doesn’t really belong to any time or culture.
It gives me a headache. The neutrality of it.
As I check my messages I remember
                                                        ­       I’m not in Singapore.
I’m in Kuala Lumpur.
I haven’t been home for nearly three weeks now.
It’s ridiculously late
The IOC conference is at six thirty
              and I’ve been asleep all day.
                                   I get dressed and grab my camera
                                   and leave the hotel with a large, black coffee.
At the press call I see a man from Reuters I recognise.
       The coffee here is terrible.
I talk to him about his family
              his daughter is four now
              he’s shaved off his beard since I last saw him
              and he’s moving, he says,
                                                 near me apparently
                                                 to Southend.
                                                       ­               “London Southend” he jokes
                                                                ­      with a roll of his eye
                                                             ­         and inverted commas.
I say yeah that’s quite near me then move away to take a phone call.
Inside the press conference there are ten people at the table
       the women are all wearing identical powder blue suits which
       strikes me as idiosyncratically Asian for no good reason.
The men all wear simultaneous translation headphones
                                                      ­                but the women don’t.
I wonder if this is because they speak better English than the men
or if it just isn’t considered necessary to translate for them.
       They have given the Winter Olympics to Beijing.
              I wonder what is lost between the
              Mandarin spoken by the mayor of Beijing
              and the English spoken by the translator.
                                                     ­          The space between words.
                                                          ­     The space between looking left
                                                            ­                               and looking right.
It’s a nice atmosphere in the cool air-conditioned room.
I’m struck by how nice everyone is
       except for the British delegates
       including the man from Reuters who speculates
       that the voting was rigged.
A while later someone else calls it a “farce”.
              I get a photograph of the IOC President’s face
                                                            ­          as it falls
              and email it to my office from my seat.
Outside, the Petronas towers rise above the conference centre like
enormous empty silos.
This is my first time in Kuala Lumpur
                                          the last city I have to visit before I go home.
I get in a taxi and say the name of my hotel
                                          and the city flashes by.
I look out of the window at
the buildings as they pass and they
don’t so much slide past
                                   or glide past
                                                        the motion isn’t smooth.
They sort of click past.
They tick past, dit-dit-dit:
Building after building
                            dit-dit-dit-dit-dit
My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough
to keep up with all the buildings
                            as they pass.
The taxi stops and I pay seventeen ringgit and get out:
it has gone by the time I realise this is not my hotel.
I don’t know where I am but I was in the taxi long enough to know that I
am some distance
                            from the centre of the city.
I look up at the name of the hotel the driver has taken me to
and the English transliteration is very similar to the name of the hotel I am staying in.
       I go inside.
There’s a nightclub in the hotel
I order Glenfiddich
                            double,
                 ­           cut with water.
              not because I like it but
              because there’s something about scotch that feels
                                                           ­                         moneyed
              heavy amber liquid in heavy-bottomed glasses
              it helps me buy into this idea of the travelling businessman
              even though that’s a lie.
                                                        I’m just a man who takes pictures.
                                                       ­ And I want to go home.
I sit at the bar which is as long as my driveway.
I swirl my glass and watch the amber legs trickle down the sides.
A moving light above it hits the gloss black surface
with an open white like the early morning sun on my gravel
                                                          ­                   as I get into my car.
A girl from here, young enough to be my daughter, is talking to me.
She points out her friends and I half-wave, uneasily
and she asks what I’m drinking.
                                          A news alert on my phone says a piece of
                                          plane wreckage
                                          washed up
                                                        on Réunion
                                                        i­n the Indian Ocean,
                                   east of Madagascar and south of the Seychelles.
The girl seems nice. She says her name is Dhia
                                                            ­                 it means “glowing”.
She doesn’t seem to want anything,
certainly not ***;
her friends have disappeared so
                                          I dance with her.
As we dance I see something in her eyes that is at once
both young and
                     endlessly wise.
She has deep brown eyes exactly the colour of earth
and a small mouth which smiles brilliantly.
In the half-light they open up to me like pools
                                                 and I imagine
                                                         ­             swimming
                                           ­      in them.
Even though she’s only nineteen, twenty-one at most,
there is something about her that’s
                                          maternal
       ­                                   spiritual
                    ­                      nourishing.
She asks me what I’m doing in Kuala Lumpur and I tell her
I don’t know.
She asks me what I did today and I tell her I
                                                               ­              slept
                                                           ­           then took some photographs.
You’re a photographer, she says, and I shrug
then she leans into my ear and says
                                                        don’­t tell anyone.
What
       I say
and she says
              I’m a princess.
And I look into her eyes and she isn’t lying.
She says no-one is going to recognise her
but
       just in case
                            she isn’t supposed to be seen drinking.
Who would I tell
I say to her.
She grins and finishes her beer and it’s true
                                   no-one is looking at her
                                   but she’s the most magnetic person in the room.
In the taxi I say the name of my hotel extremely slowly
and the driver replies in perfect English
                                                         ­      yes sir, I know where you mean.
Kuala Lumpur ticks by in electric darkness.
I flick through the news as we drive
                                                 I see the photo I took this evening about
                                                 a dozen times
                                                 or more.
There is something bitter about the tone in all the British press when they talk about the Olympics
as if:
Beijing get to do it twice?
                                   What about us?
I think about a country with a quarter of the world’s population
and I think about the tiny little island I’ve come from
                                                        and I feel smaller than I’ve ever felt.
The aircraft wing that washed up in Réunion is from a Boeing 777,
they say.
The same type of aircraft as the one that went down last year.
The one they never found.
                            It was going from here to Beijing.
                            Last communication at 1.19am.
And it’s at
                     that
                     time
                     precisely
                                   my phone rings.
It’s my boss in London
she says the Chinese Olympic Committee
are scheduling press conferences.
                                                    ­    It looks like I’m going to Beijing.

I was late for school but it was cool, my chauffeur took the wrap
I even blamed the butler for the absence of my cap
My cravat was always crease-less and my slacks were really snappy
My shoes were always shiny, which made my pappy happy

Lesson one was cookery, but not for me today
So I sent our chef, an hour ahead, to make a nice soufflé
He usually does a marvelous job or when his mood permits
For Daddy signed him on a whim, after dining at the Ritz

Lesson two was Polo or Gymkhana if you must
So I chose fresh clothes and donned my hose as Polo’s upper crust
Oh I wish I’d brought my pony for the school ones just won’t do
They are barely fit for peasants, they are barely fit for glue

Morning break was late to take and the Polo match was drawn
But if you pleased, they’d bring cream teas to be taken on the lawn
I really didn't fancy Maths, so I stayed and sipped my char
For who could bear, and hour with Blair and his dreadful algebra

Lesson four was falconry with Mr Preston Love
His birds were plump but deadly and so quick off the glove
I loved to watch them soar and dive, a spiffing show for all
Reminds me of my gap year, hunting foxes in Nepal  

Lesson five was cancelled as Mummsy wrote a letter
She felt that English won’t suffice and elocution’s better
So Wilson rolled up in the Rolls and whisked me off to class
I hope tomorrow’s much improved, for today was oh so crass

A line cook at Denny’s (must have own pans)
Is an artist, accomplished in assemblage
Compositions of eggs (rather like Cezanne’s)
Toast, bacon, waffles for his decoupage

His gesso is the window layered in steam
Built of reflections and condensation
Hinting at the flowing Interstate stream
Beyond the No Smoking pumping station

The line cook has indeed his pans and plans -
Art, as the muse of cookery commands

My sad mentality
Destroys my reality
Annihilates my honesty
All I have got is privacy
Not a shed of sociality
My life's complexity
Against myself a conspiracy
Emphasizes my stupidity
Locks up my humanity
Self pity is my speciality
It seems a necessity
Which confuses my phsychology
And Leaves nothing I wanna be


My life's history
I have waited patiently
To write in my corrupting diary
For I am no deity
If there was something godly
I'd have been killed furiously
That conclusion comes logically
Though simultaneously
I have lived happily
My neurology
I have kept in secrecy
Cause with my souls delivery
To the devils cookery
They feasted immediately
On my souls purity
My life's mystery
Won't be uncovered easily
For I life silently
In my ****** up fantasy
Which left nothing I wanna be

I have waited impatiently
For others to grow up with me
For without being remotely angelically
I have behaved, we'll almost elderly
Or I have tried to behave intelligently
Never drunkingly
And quite rarely
Entirely freely
On this I look quite positively
For it has allowed me
To stand against the waves unwaveringly
Looking upon life much more detailedly
Seeing more nuanced on life's complexity
And for the ability to do this comfortably
I must thank my family
While I can say all the above truthfully
There is plenty to say negatively
For standing against the norm unrockingly
Can at the best of times be quite lonely
And most the time I looked desperately
After those who floated by me oh so freely
While looking so unfathomably
Completely, worryingly, unanimously happily
At a world driven by the greedy,
Disgustingly, horrifying monsters of humanity
This have tortured me existentially
At times I have felt ****** up mentally
But as time passed slowly
Step by step I realized surprisingly
That it has left me allmost exactly like I allways wanted to be.

A cookery show with noshes and gnaws -
People giving a ‘burger rounds of applause

Here's an ode to make us laugh,
Boomers resilient to the last,
Survived high school in  the sixties,
Where we learnt cookery,
Girls did not have *****,
Couldn't do woodwork, over it!
Instead, made a pudding of suet,
Fat, fat, fat, eating to rue it!

I find her countenance visible in the
trees
Autumn gratuities of windswept -
beautiful leaves
Simple southern cuisine by the
maplewood hearth
Forever inquisitive if we had enough
Quietly singing hymns , perfecting her cookery
in a simple country kitchen well into dark* ....

i don't write, i don't write rhyme, i am a lumberjack with words, and for those reasons: i have imbued some masculine dignity into the art form: i don't do well-wishes, hopes, utopian forms of the sudden burst of emotion; every time i'm trolled i turn into an orc, ravenous with an adrenaline thrill: and pristine english sarcasm comes to the fore: i first nibble on the genitals, the ego hardly mentioned, i mean, who does attack a person's taste in music with such adamant enforcement... but? what pissess me off the most? how puny the argument matter is: freedom of speech should, never, ever! bypass the rule of at least a few dialectical exchanges... blah blah all you want: but what's the point of a freedom, if there is no guiding "aesthetic" surrounding it? ******* caviar on toast, just as absurd as an avocado on toast: point for point: a load of *******.

it always makes sense to listen
       to some scandinavian
music, with interludes of rain,
in the night, after a few ***** sharpshooters -
peaches & cream moment...
can't argue with it -
esp. if it's *corvus corax's song
                 a i mbealtaine, **** just sticks to
the wall, and in every appropriate way:
feels a tune of the heart -
i once had a dialectical mini with a biology
teacher of mine:
i said that lyrics mattered, and that you
needed to understand them -
she said: only the melody matters -
in cooking that's comparable to the presentation
versus the flavour -
     i'm sure she had the hots for me,
a few days passed, and she put on a hijab...
god, but raven dark folds of her pakistani hair
really could be compared to the thickness
of custard...
   shame she put on a hijab soon after -
i didn't even mind her post-acne peppered
face: i thought it gave her character -
and those **** chubby cheeks just fused
perfectly with the thickness of her hair...
hair... every woman's plot of jealousy begins
with another woman's hair...
     at least men are compensated with
a beard... me?
      ugh... too much: on my chest, on my stomach,
on my head: i have to wet it to keep it
from turning into a rampant amazon in
post-apocalyptic new york...
       and yes, i do like the ***** on my face -
i became bored with shaving,
            plus i look more monarchical -
regent - loser regent - nonetheless regent:
donning a beard is exhuming some minor
authority - long hair? you get two food-stamps
ye ******* 'ippy! say hello to the cockney
meister schtick: herr H.
  oh no, not ******, i'm bored of citing that:
if they only let him into the arts academy
and allowed him to paint his mediocre
paintings -
        he wouldn't be that much different
from picasso...
    sure **** he became an "artist" -
       only an "artist" could have conjured
auschwitz; gentlemen! applause for the vienna
school of art!
it was always about not writing cute,
not writing ******* overladen with rigid
technique, most terrible: avoid rhyme:
at all, and i mean all costs;
     leave that for the nursery brigadiers
of bombing blank pages with word bombs...
i can't stomach this notion of "cute" -
   this pedantic pseudo-haikus in women's
poetry: by comparison,
      sylvia plath produces a raw steak
tartar - you know, originating from the people
that made the steak from horse-meat,
and downed a litre of horse-blood,
once upon a time in the days of the golden horde;
sylvia just rhymes unintentionally -
   she tickles rhyme, but as soon as she
has a couplet, she hides it,
  this game of hide & seek &
                  seek rhyme & hide rhyme,
is, in all honestly? genius!
     i find that sometimes just one couplet
work to perfection like glue...
tell you what - i'll let you in on a little secret,
you want to write poetry?
  start by watching australia's masterchef -
i know, weird - it dawned on me that it's worthwhile
watching cooking shows...
  given (a) you just entered a post-pavlov experiment,
and (b) they talk about food these days
are works of art...
         guess what, every time i watched
obelix eat his way through one of the herculean
tasks of asterix in the 12 (1976 a.d.)
   i always felt obliged to eat something...
if i were you, i'd start watching some cookery
shows: after all... the eyes eat prior to
the mouth... you'll find that much of writing is
culinary;
      the "placebo" pointers are already in place:
people have arrived at the multifacet meaning
of binging.
    
and yes, when i said that modern day talk,
even the puny internet "not-real-life"
   (funny how most of us shop and bank online,
not real what?) types of conversation -
really?
           beside the point -
   it's not rude to engage in dialectics
(as nietzsche infamously noted) -
            i don't understand staging two opposite
arguments and expect civility to ensue -
ars dialectica est quaestio ad infininitum,
   "post scriptum" ad nauseam -
to simply have rigid, aphoristic opinions,
without having them question,
well... that's the downfall of appreciating
nietzsche by the modern crowd...
         what we're talking is "safe spaces" -
nietzsche, of all people: instigated this notion!
imagine the paradox;
dialectics instigate rude societies?
      no! dialectics instigate eternal societies!

i sometimes consider sudoku puzzles optical
illusions,
     there's sometimes absolutely no "logic"
involved - well, there is: a tree line a tongue
of a serpent, Y - oh you know -
that invisible γΥy in the sky...
   but once you start solving each puzzle
you realise: ****, there's a blindspot in these?!
and it always feels like there is,
given the matrix to the power of O (revolvi)

( s / se   | e |  | n | n / nw
  s / sw  |w | | s  | n / ne     )º
                  
a tongue that turns into an eclair.

conclusively?
oh, just something minor, a minor detail -
if you ever chance to step on the continent of europe,
do you know how much darwinism you'll hear?
NONE!
       europeans have become bored of this very
english genesis of affairs...
       yes, bored is the appropriate word -
it can be years on the continent where darwinism
is cited, or the fetish over david attenborough
exemplified...
          to most continental europeans the natural
world is nothing more than a blip -
ask the krupp von essen family: steel! steel! steel!
darwinism is only a respected choice
of argumentative positioning in the anglosphere,
outside of it? a tumbleweed;
and i'm of the continental inclination -
   i source my history not in a platonism -
which darwinism is: **** similis - as man be
clearly identifiable as an evolved ape -
i place my history in something much more
compatible within the framework of today -
monkeys used sticks & stones,
man? man uses letters & numbers...
      i see my place in history from a purely
etymological perspective -
  pre-etymology is just boring as it is,
i.e. how the romans plagiarised some of the greek
phonetic encoding -
    then again: it's a mystery how of all
ancient texts - the greeks invented the omicron...
oh, sorry, the wheel...
   sanskrit? any wheels there? arabic, any wheels
there? noope.
  so i wonder as i give my summa summarum...
oh yeah: roman is the masculine (w)
and greek is the feminine (ω) -

which would be easier to solve

(a) 0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0
      0  8  0  6  0  5  0  7  0
      9­  3  0  2  0  7  0  5  8
      0  5  9  0  0  0  6  3  0
      7 ­ 0  0  9  0  3  0  0  1
      0  0  8  0  0  0  5  0  0
      0  ­9  0  3  0  4  0  8  0
      8  1  0  0  0  0  0  9  4
      0  7­  5  0  0  0  3  6  0

or

(b) χ  χ  χ  χ  χ  χ  χ  χ  χ
      χ  θ  χ  ζ  χ  ε  χ  η  χ
      ι  γ  χ  β  χ  η  χ  ε­  θ
      χ  ε  ι  χ  χ  χ  ζ  γ  χ
      η  χ  χ  ι  χ  γ  χ  χ ­ α
      χ  χ  θ  χ  χ  χ  ε  χ  χ
      χ  ι  χ  γ  χ  δ  χ  θ  ­χ
      θ  α  χ  χ  χ  χ  χ  ι  δ
      χ  η  ε  χ  χ  χ  γ  ζ  χ­

                       ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?

i suggest you try this, before learning oriental
languages -
it's all cross-eyed spaghetti monsters
from here on in.

A cookery class
The smashing of a glass
The dress that was too pretty
A tape from a friend
Looking at a man
It really was so petty

You were strong, this spurred him on
Made it justified, to him.
We watched it happen
The punches, the slapping.
Wanting to stop him but really how could we?

Just children, afraid of how this could end.
We plotted and planned
Use pots? Use Pans?
We could no longer take it.
Feeling so helpless, lost and bereft.
Watching our mother be beaten.

It eventually ended.
She healed and mended
Got stronger and never looked back.
As for us, we're grown and gone
But you cant always forgive and forget.

Hannah is a medical student with a serious addiction to video games
~ A Biography ~
Hannah Lauren Donaldson is a 22-year-old medical student who enjoys adult colouring books, cookery and spreading fake news on Facebook. She is gentle and generous, but can also be very sad and a bit depressed.

She is addicted to video games, something which her friend Oscar Dustin Hammond pointed out when she was 18. The problem intensified in 2019.

She is English who defines herself as straight. She is currently at college. studying medicine. She is obsessed with selfies.

Physically, Hannah is in good shape. She is average-height with bronze skin, grey hair and brown eyes. She has sticking-out-ears.

She grew up in a middle class neighbourhood. Her father left when she was young, leaving her with her mother, who was an addict.

She is currently in a relationship with Horace Keith Cummings. Horace is 18 years older than her and works as a builder.

Hannah's best friend is a medical student called Oscar Hammond. They get on well most of the time. She also hangs around with Brandon Reynolds and Carmen Watts. They enjoy playing video games together.

A cookery class
The smashing of a glass
The dress that was too pretty
A tape from a friend
Looking at a man
It really was so petty

You were strong, this spurred him on
Made it justified, to him.
We watched it happen
The punches, the slapping.
Wanting to stop him but really how could we?

Just children, afraid of how this could end.
We plotted and planned
Use pots? Use Pans?
We could no longer take it.
Feeling so helpless, lost and bereft.
Watching our mother be beaten.

It eventually ended.
She healed and mended
Got stronger and never looked back.
As for us, we're grown and gone
But you cant always forgive and forget.

my eyes are two ponds in each a Fernald's iris floats
...
that night in each picture taken the light, shining off the optic nerve, moved from left to right like two dancing irises reacting to the ripples of my tiny apartment life full of books, domestic cookery, Bluetooth Son Jarocho canciones, and the bright reminder in your eyes that closed of laughter because I passed you the fork instead of opening the refrigerator door. Your lashes looked like the sun's rays your joy traveling to me at their speed before we locked eyes you stood still and gazed at me as I were you and you were me. One cannot laugh at such moments, the profound inclination to smile when one sees the beauty of a sunset over Dockweiler beach or the inevitable beauty of wild northern California flowers swaying in the wind disarms you of all, all mixing spoons and guitar music went. my ponds  silent witnesses  to the bright promise in your eyes,   I thought we were so close to the lips of world peace
...
what is your wish he asked me "I wish we could see ourselves as each other" he laughed "If we could do that, there would be no need to be here. There would be peace on earth "