Mula sa higanteng alpombrang balot
Bumuhos ang walong henerasyon halos
Ng karit, palay, tagtuyot, unos
Martilyo, pako, pagpapakaputa sa utos!
Aba, hindi pangako ng sistema ang presensya ni Hesus!

Sa madilim na purgatoryo ng impiyerno at kalangitan,
Sa mahiwagang pagitan ng lunsuran at lansangan
Nagka-prusisyon ang dibinong Toledong bayan
‘Pagkat naipasalangit na
Ang Multo/Kapre/Bal-bal/Berberoka/
Aswang/Mangkukulam/Agta/Santelmo/
Batibat/Berbalang/Bungisngis/Diwata
Na sumiil sa banal na pook ng Toledo.

Pitu-pituhan ang naging palitan
Sa pagbuhat sa bangkay ni Rodiano Abduhan.
“Dito ako sa ulo.” “Pasmado ka ba? Larga na!”
Padulas-dulas ang kapit, sumisilip na ang paa
At sa bawat yapak, bumuhos ang patak
Ng dugong pesante sa sagradong Toledong lupa.

Rodiano Abduhan, mas kilala bilang Tatay Godong
Manggagamot, tagalunas ng salot, kampon ng Diyos,
Ika ng iilang nagpatingin sa mahiwagang tatang,
Pero manyak, magnanakaw, aswang, mangkukulam
Kamo ng nagmula sa abang Toledong bayan.
‘Pagkat ang pugad niya’y sa kanayunan, sa kalaliman, sa kaibuturan,
Ng mailap na lansangang ng Diyos tinalikuran.

Kaya nang ang taumbaya’y nakabatid
Na lumubha ang sakit ng pamangking si Adring,
At na natagpuang bukbukin ang bangkay ni Celine,
Kaniya-kaniyang satsat, sitsit, at hirit
Ang kumapal sa amihan ng Toledong hangin.

“Mangkukulam! Heto yung bumati sa Adring kong pamangkin!”
Kaya ng taumbaya’y binatikos at siniraan sa lihim
Sa walwal o gimik, pagkalaklak ng gin.

“Berbalang! ‘Di ka umawat hanggang naubos ang dugo!”
Kaya’t nang-imprinta ang madla ng mga galos abot sa buto
Tatak Cebu! Tatak lungsod ng Toledo!

“Aswang! Luwal ng putang nakunan!”
Kung kaya’t naisama rin ang anak ni Abduhan
Sa kawawang listahan ng mapapaslang.

Biro mo! Ang manggagawa ng himala
Natamaan ng sumbi ng masaklap na realidad!
Ay, hindi makaliligtas ang dukha
Sa kamandag ng pader ng matayog na siyudad!

Pero nang maabot ang mapanglaw na kremahan,
Ang mailap na lubid ng buhay at kamatayan
Ni Rodiano Abduhan, aswang at mangkukulam,
Ng dugong maliliwat ay tuluyan siyang naubusan.
Maputla niyang balat, sa abong langit ay umagpang.
Inaakit ng lagay na hamak na sa wakas ay tumahan.
Pero nang maunawaan niya na sa kaniyang kamatayan
Mapupuksa ang kasarinlan at kalayaan,
‘Pagkat siya ang sisidlan ng dugong maglilinang,
Kampeon ng kanayunan, hari ng himagsikan,

Nasapian ni Lazaro.
Nabuhay.
Natauhan.

Magsasaka, mangingisda, labandera, gerilya.
Artista, mayora, tindera, tsismosa.
Karpintero, ****, kutsero, kaminero.
Abugado, inhinyero, piloto, maestro.
Ninais ng lungsod ang pagsapit ng mundo
Sa mahinhing mundo ng mga diwata’t engkanto.
Oo lang nang oo, bawal mangontrabida,
Kaya kung gusto nila ng Multo/Kapre/Bal-bal/Berberoka
Ano pang magagawa kundi patabain ang mataba?

So natunaw ang pintura
Ng nagbabalat na ngang dingding
Nabawian ng Sol at Luna
Ang kalangitang sadya nang makulimlim
Ang basang semento ay nauhaw
At naging nagbabantang lamig.

Mula sa naagnas na kabaong sa hukay lumaya
Ang mga magsasaka, mangingisda, labandera, gerilya
Ang mga Batibat/Berbalang/Bungisngis/Diwata.
Mula sa abo sa loob ng saro nagka-anyo
Ang mga karpintero, ****, kutsero, kaminero
Ang mga Aswang/Mangkukulam/Agta/Santelmo.

Tsaka humayo’t bumulong kay Abduhan
Nang siya’y mailatag sa loob ng makinarya.
Tsaka niya nagunita ang anak at asawa
Nombrado na atang manananggal at tiyanak.
At ang bawat katiting na patak ng dugo
Na hinayaan niyang umagos, bumuhos, tumulo
Sa lupang Toledo, lupa ng berdugo’t demonyo.
Doon niya nabatid kung saan totoong nagmula
Ang mga Multo/Kapre/Bal-bal/Berberoka,
Aswang/Mangkukulam/Agta/Santelmo,
Batibat/Berbalang/Bungisngis/Diwata.

At doon nabuhay ang Santelmo ng Toledo;
Nang umalpas mula sa crematorium si Rodiano Abduhan,
‘Di na mas hahaba ang buhok, at nakatatak ang pangalan
Sa kaniyang mga galos at sugat, habang
Noo’y banig ang balot, ngayo’y apoy na bagong silang.
At nang nadaanan niya ang mga balintataw
Ng mayayamang poong siya mismo ang nakapukaw,
Nabatid niya kung bakit kailangan ng Toledo ng isang halimaw.

At the Crematorium
white smoke curls
and coils
and drifts
- a wisp
of your hair.

Blood-red rich roses
thrive in bone rich soil
velvety smooth
and secret-scented
- the inside skin
of your wrists.


          
© M.L.Emmett

If you want to do something for me,
Throw me like a flower in the crematorium,
i you can...
Build a palace for me in the crematorium,
because;
I was died while living,
Your words have broken my heart like a dagger,
I want to die.
There is no love now;
In that crematorium at least i want to live the next life,
Like a queen.....!!

He was the child with the magnifying glass that lingered
in the exhalation of the heavens. Always holding it on
those of weaker statue than himself. Insects were his
starting point, as they were barbecued under the influence
of what was focused between light and glass and what
lived became inanimate just a blackened smear that he
smothered words into the dirt
        
                           I'LL BURN THE WORLD,

His parents saw this and in jest laughed it off as the
Immaturity of a child's frustration. That all was but a
a boy finding his place within the many echoes of manhood.
A child was maturing, and they assumed that he was not
ready for the collision of what was in-between the moments
of childhood and adulthood.

One cold and sodden night where the only things that were dry.
Were submerged in the cover of roofs and foliage.
But even the penetrating raindrops gathered in haste to soak
the earth beneath the leaves protection. All drowned within
nights flourish of immersed air. Where it felt that breath was only
in-between the flurry of h20's deluge.

Within the house, within the rooms crept a silence.
            It wasn't alone, for it wept unseen streams between the  
crisp white borderlines,  were doused in clear liquids,
Draping the curtains in non received  heavy remorse,
the only things that were burdensome were the drapes as the weight of the liquid pulled at the seams holding them aloft.

Remorse was neither felt or given. just a feeling of accomplishment.  
Felt it in the moments that succeeded between this
gathering of dead lights as a flame was lit.
But not a whisper was echoed this flame was lifeless
in the eyes of its beneficiary.
But it lept upon the walls like a ballerina, gentle,
and dancing within the confides of its given dance.

He stood in the hallway the flashback was unexpected,
but he still stood there gazing and the beauty of something
given with such frailty that a breath could extinguish
its potential. His parents had no idea, they were slumbering
within the confines of blankets that entombed the warmth.
Clasping hand even in sleep love was a subconscious yearning.
The thing with these old houses some had decretive metal over
the wind bars in beauty crafted to keep things out.


But this was his plan, what cant get in cant get out.
He'd gone in there room and stole the key.
He took a last glance, and said,
             "I Love You
,Before sealing them within. The flames were silent like
a stalker watching waiting, till the inevitable conclusion.

As things started to burn more passionately, caressing every
thing it was touching. So the smoke started to thicken like
A heavy smog it got into places the fire had not reached.
Moans could be heard, then screams at the realisation of
what was happening. He Could hear them, he could see them.
For even though a teenager he was intuitively cunning,
tinkering with everything and anything.

And small cameras were dotted around the house,
looking listening to everything that was seen and spoken.
It had come to fruition due to one such thing he had heard
being discussed by his parents.

"I saw him in the woods,

                 "Doing what darling?

"He didn't see me but the neighbours cat,
                                  "you know soot,

"What did he do, nothing bad!

                "He tied it up,
"Then threw what I thought was water on it,
                  I thought it was nasty but then!!!  

"Then what, your scaring me,

"He lit a cigarette, I didn't even know he smoked,
  "Then he discarded the match,

       "The cat, oh my god the cat,

"But he recorded its screams, he recorded it dying,

"I couldn't move I was so angry, so humiliated,
        "I wanted to throttle him there and then,

"But ill phone the police tomorrow,
                  "He's not right, who would do that,

How dare they think that I can just be fobbed off,
         discarded.

                                             I was making music,
the screams were a delicate symphony,
            acoustics that's couldn't be reproduced.
It had to be from the source.

That laid, the plans for what now enveloped that house,
recording every noise, every scream. But what he needed
was for them to burn, to release the music he needed to
hear to complete his work. And they like parents gave it
there all, he had goose bumps as he heard there terror.
his eyes welled up, not in regret but the beauty that his
parent last words were given to him, so personal was this
moment that he'd never forget it.
                                                        
                                                                ­          "Thank Mum & Dad,

After this he released a mix tape, that could be only
conceived from an artist, in the womb of excellence.
That's the reviews he had, it brought shudders to your
heart and mind. It was if your humanity was crying out to it.

As so forth and more were sewn in the adulation of his work.

Now he needed to make more music, but he needed more
screams to make his next piece two were not enough..

So he wandered the night, dressed in unclean wear
so not to be confused with who, or what he was..
He hung around the homeless parts of town,
plastic sheeting for roofs.. and combustible bedding.
It was as if he'd planned himself. but he had to be smart.
for this was if ill planned he would have a needle in his
arm within the year. But he took his time tiny cameras
recording visually and sound.

He had gathered the combustible elements needed to
make this a orchestra of his needing, not a duet like before.
He didn't down play his past offering, but this would make
an album of despair and monument to the flame.

It had been raining, but only lightly as he needed some
dampness in the air on there sheets cardboard mattresses.
So not to raise suspicion on the dampness of there homes.

As they moved away from the embers of barrel fires,
yes he'd thought about that. Not every home was a
crematorium a cardboard and plastic coffin of there
choosing. He waited clasping his hands together breathing
on them as it was cold night. He liked to watch, a voguer
of sort, but his wasn't the fantasy of death it was to hear the
music that was about to be sung with smoke filled lungs.

He'd set up a unique but rudimentary way to light the fire,
a small gas hob with liquid within. it needed to be a certain
temperature ignite, he had tried it before in a field out west.
Deserted he'd made a mock up of this humble place.
And he wasn't mistaken it was fascinating, the flame spread
like the wind enveloping everything but, it was a dull for even
though the flames wept of everything, its tears turning all to
ash..

It was silent, deafening, he cried for a while, there should never
be censorship of the flame, for what is a log fire without the cracking of its inner self being consumed. This was just smoke
and regret. But he now looked down at the camp, his watch
counting down the precious moments.
                                                             He whispered.
                                              

                                                  "Thankyou,
­
And then like a super nova the darkness was ingulfed in
the aurora of flame, gliding over the ground as if a stream
of conscious reckoning. Those near by the civilians that were
                        across the street were transfixed.
As screams embellished the flames, this was my orchestra
of light and noise. Those across the street were either screaming
or videoing the scene.
I looked at them and wondered where there humanity
had gone to, as to film this moment rather than to rush in
and save the few that they could.

I watched as the engines came, extinguishing my masterpiece
choosing the night was always preferable to the day as flames
dance better when there is less light to contaminate there beauty.

My music, I had become quite the remixer, of vocal and rhythmic
sounds.
                               Within a week I had mad nine new songs.

I named them each as deserved, making them in memory of
those who perished that dreadful night.
            It was well received, a few thought it was a haunting
melody of humanity's struggle, while a few thought it was
over ambitious, and lacked the passion of my first piece.

All together it went down well, and the adulation of the
flame was kept, to honour that which gives as much as
takes the breath of life away.
A year had past and the door rang, it was an officer.

                 "Could you come to the station please,

Had I become the victim of my own success, had someone
broke down the acoustics of my music and realised what
they were?? So many thoughts went through the calm
exterior of my persona. But inside the flame dimmed,
had I lit the last candle. I was taken in to a room,
and questioned evasive not to the point but gathering
speed to the answer, where were you on the
                                                             ­       30th April 2019.

Alabi's were a fantastic thing to plan ahead, I had laced
my date with sleeping tablets to leave her in perpetual
slumber. And got back before she awoke, we made love
we were the flame and the wick.. and our sweat was the wax dripping from our form. The next week I dumped her.

They asked if I recognised a picture, blurry and ill framed
but I could make out the figure was me. No sir I don't why.
This person of interest is wearing your jacket, your logo!
I smiled and was truthful to a degree.
                                                             Planning is everything.

I threw maybe fifty into the crowd when I did a concert
in the city, when we drove past some homeless persons.
We donated what was left to them, do you realise how
cold these streets are, who am I to steal warmth away.
I don't wear my own merchandise what do you think I
am egotistical, no I wanted to help those who I could
have been if not for my music. I lost my parents I know
what its like to be alone.

I think the show went well, as I was released before
reporters even got a sniff. But I knew that my time
was a wick trying to keep the flame lit but dying out
anyway. I had made preparations for this time.

I had brought a club only for gigs, cheesy as hell but
had that 80's disco vibe the entire floor was light up.
But I had brought  the ingredients for thermite,
amazing what you learn in school and the internet.
But I never used mine different libraries in different
cities so not raise suspicion. I  invited the music critics
and others which I had personally disproved of.
its was going to be free drinks and themed 80's night.

Who can not want free drinks, well I wasn't going to be
disappointed 90% came, how lucky the few.
Phones were confiscated, no video, but more
importantly no phone calls to the outside world.
I told them at the end of the night that I was realising
a new song, they were like vultures to flesh.
As the night progressed some wanted to leave,
but we offered them the VIP section also lit flooring.

Now was the time, I had put heating elements under the floor
to ignite the thermite. A supernova of heat even though brief
would ignite the choir of harmony needed. I asked them,
                                                           ­ "Are you ready,

And then silence, I put on my welding glasses,
                                                        ­         I wasn't stupid.
Never look into the heart of the flame unless you want
to be blinded by its beauty.
I pressed a button and it was magnificent, it was like a tide of sunlight, they tried to scramble but all exits were locked.
It was like the wizard of Oz, and the witch I'm meltinggggg..
But this wasn't a fairy tale.. The adulation I had for these
chosen few. What excitement the others had missed.

I'd made my booth flame and smoke proof, I had my own
walkway but I knew that this was the last time I could pay
homage to the flame. As the screams died down.
The wicks smouldered and the floor looked more like a battle
field of  WWII. I began I knew I didn't have a lot of time.
But this was just a single I'd already got the backing music
ready. And as I worked away, I could hear the banging on
the reinforced doors. They gave me a breather to get my
work fulfilled.

I heard the doors start to give way but no matter
I'd only needed this time to tweak the music.
Given I'd started this over an hour ago, it was good
on my part for this not to be broadcast till I saw fit.
As the police burst through, gazing at the flaming
effigies that lied before them, some threw up, gross..

While others saw me smiling I pressed the button and
my new song was word wide.. its was called the critics
tried to burn me down. The response was gratifying.
Likes reached the hundreds of thousands in mere minutes.
Well it was only three minutes twenty five seconds long.
As they shoot at the booth I wiggled my finger at them.
I do like to plan ahead but dam was that loud against the
glass. Got to be said some had wicked aim, made me flinch
a few times.

But alas all things come to an end, I uploaded my videos
of what I had done. I was proud of my contribution to
my legacy and empowering others with my music.
As I looked down at the puddle, I tap danced in it for
a moment and then lit the lighter, I looked a them
and once again waved, I was like a funeral pyre.
A crematorium of silence and then I was gone.
                                                I didn't scream,
I was in her embrace and had done her proud.

And at the crematorium.
We laid that very old body on fire woods. Put some woods on top of him. He let us lit him.
And he, with quiet crackling, burnt away.

I saw his flesh give a way through the bones.
I saw his hands burn up first then legs and then face, but feet were left out because he was tall.
So then we pushed them in the pyre.

Then we hit the burnt skull with the big bambu stick and huuuuptttttt it cracked. The pressurized brain matter, it just huuuuuptttt.
The 98 yr old brain, the 98 year old skull.
Our bodies were getting heat from his funeral pyre. A

And then burnt his pelvis and then chest.
That hip was faster than his chest, his heart.
He had 6 children, 10 grand children, 10 great grand children.

When nothing was left. The ashes from his pyre flew and settled on my head and shoulders, on all of ours heads and shoulders.

Now on the 12th day, in some ritual, priest will announce that this is the ritual which will cut the final cord with the dead person, for u all have to move on then.

Some will cry again. Some foundations will shake again. But priest will say, "All you can do is, LIVE AS HE HAD LIVED."

There were places in the above and below where souls
weren't as they were meant to be. Reverberations of what
had been but for some reason not known, they had dissipated
in to inconsistent particles. They were congregated to a
place of between the realms of passing where they were
reinstated into one. Many pieces made the collection of singular.

A rebirth of separation, that which was collected into a shell
of purest mortal coils. In moments that ebbed away on thoughts
and maturity something was noticed upon the eyes of those
classed as the shepherds, They were of flesh and bone but a
vessel of angels essence, no beat was felt but life of our own
non understanding reverberated in these vessels.

So long had these chosen gathered the pieces that were rebirthed.
a freshness not tainted by either as in the fire the dead the
soulless shards were consumed in the eternity furnaces.
Some gathered in moments, others lingered in their, as if
like ash in a breeze they were inadvertently kept asunder.

Like a leaf they eventually descended and lingered amongst
others that had scorched for longer than even those now
gravitating towards its centre of rebirthed oblivion.
They never thought for a moment that what had been a
metaphysical collection of particles was anything but echoes
of voices incoherent and desolate.

But now as what has happened only a few times in eternity
is spilling like water from a broken vessel. So many have
spoken in the dead language of even angels understandings
but the fragmenting scribbles that vacate their minds saturate
in a repeating rhythm.

"We burnt with our eyes wide open,

So many voices expelled in a pool of white, transparent
vestiges lingered beneath but no ripples were ever realized
till they had gazed beneath and where censorship was
consummated overhead so the lingering wailing below
was all consuming so much affliction was bestowed on
these now seeded souls.

They were never broken remnants of whispered echoes
but were indeed a embryo of a matching of heaven and
hell a new partnering that was misread as feathers lingering
in the winds of eternity. But where a new higher purpose
was meant to have been birthed so now do they burn not
for but a flickering moment but an inaudible amount of time.

Speech of what was singular now birthed into a perplexed
culmination of uncooperative wailing incensing each others
needing's. That was for those at least the yearning to not be
entwined in the illuminated combustion of self. But they were
imprisoned, fashioned into a vessel of multitudes not meant
to be, but only a singular existence was meant to cinder into form.

They wallowed in surreal thoughts, memories of a life that
was a broken picture frame and the faces were etched out so
not even they knew who or when they were from. but the
shepherds were there salvation or so it was thought.
They simultaneously gathered those that were swallowed
in a realm of an uneasy reality. Then they chanted, for hours
they spoke the words, Our wordings will set you singular again.

But what befell those that guided shepherds was unexpected.
They screamed in either ecstasy or writhing pain, but then as
If a curtain fell. Then all that was mortal shed into oblivions
grasp and it consumed them the shepherds were engulfed in
shards of personality till they themselves were twisted in visions.

Their eyes wept one like onyx bleeding frosted tears of all that
was pure, the other like snow but as the raven tears cut upon
there features and blood teared on the floor they grappled
with what had befallen them for these acolytes that for this
instance that joined in ceremony now had not fallen or ascended
But were the rebirth of neither but vessels of everything.

Those of fractured echoes, those entwined with the crematorium
of broken vessels now ascend and descend to the places which
greeted these seeds with such distain. After a time all went still,
silent, within each  realm and they just sat their. Each hand greeted
the flame or light and within their grasp a new spirit was born
not burnt but eased over time and like a seed they grew once more.

I walk out their back door
and onto F street.
I stand there for a second
halfway up the hill
staring at the deep reds and soft pinks of the fading sunset
and then turn and continue on my way
into the shadows of the multi story brick buildings
that form my high school
my old school.
I walk through the staff parking lot and under the library
where I spent my lunches for three of those four years
alone.
I climb the stairs and walk past the couch,
the giant cement couch that gets re-painted every night
with a message of some sort,
this time it's white with green letters welcoming the 2014 seniors.
the lights are all on and another guy walks past on the other side of the lawn
I stand there for a second and he passes me
I want to stand here forever
staring at all the buildings
staring at my life for four years,
but I continue on
past the annex, the gym, the Stuart
past the Catholic church where I took pictures in the last snowstorm
past the Mar Vista portables and the art portable
and down Blaine street
where we'd run freshman year in PE,
tapping the gate at Chetzemoka and running back.
Sophomore year I'd walk the same route
during photography and video productions, with friends.
Some days I would turn and walk down to Aldriches,
some days I would continue on
some days I would rehearse my own poetry under my breath.
Today I turn a block before Chetz and continue down the hill
past the condos and the turn off for Point Hudson
past the skate park
past Memorial Field (packed with so many memories)
past the park, the old police station,
the ice cream shop dad used to work at,
the tea shop where I've spent so many hours,
the fountain, the stairs, the writers workshop, the old underground coffeeshop,
my therapist's office, the best pizza in town,
the motel where my mom's first roommate now lives (and works),
into the port and past grandma's old workplace,
past the restaurant my grandpa used to spend hours at
and the boat he used to live on
past the port showers they used to use
and onto the trail along the beach I would walk with mom and grandma
when my now 12 year old brother was in a stroller,
past the mill, sitting at the bottom of three long winding hilly roads,
containing memories of that awful polluted stench that clings to the first third of this town
and would cling to my dad when he'd return from work,
and up the road we lived on when we first moved here.
Past the homeless trails I have scavenged for beer cans on for hours for spare change
and the apartments we used to live in,
past the flowershop where I bought the corsage
that the cheerleader I went to prom with kept getting complimented on.
Past my best friends house
and past the flooring place that we mowed the grass for last summer.
Across the roundabout that has grown into the highway
past the crematorium and waste not want not.
Past the apartments that she lives in, my name still somewhere in her heart.
Past my fathers Jeep and under the archway, covered in dead roses.
Across the mossy yard and through my front door.
I'm going to miss this town.

Buna
by Primo Levi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Mangled feet, cursed earth,
the long interminable line in the gray morning
as Buna smokes corpses through industrious chimneys...

Another gray day like every other day awaits us.

The terrible whistle shrilly announces dawn:
"Rise, wretched multitudes, with your lifeless faces,
welcome the monotonous hell of the mud...
another day’s suffering has begun!"

Weary companion, I know you well.

I see your dead eyes, my disconsolate friend.
In your breast you bear the burden of cold, deprivation, emptiness.
Life long ago broke what remained of your courage.

Colorless one, you once were a real man;
a considerable woman once accompanied you.

But now, my invisible companion, you lack even a name.
So forsaken, you are unable to weep.
So poor in spirit, you can no longer grieve.
So tired, your flesh can no longer shiver with fear...

My once-strong man, now spent,
were we to meet again
in some other world, beneath some sunnier sun,
with what unfamiliar faces would we recognize each other?

Buna was the largest Auschwitz sub-camp, with around 40, 000 foreigners “workers” who had been enslaved by the Nazis. Primo Levi called the Jews of Buna the “slaves of slaves” because the other slaves outranked them. Despite Buna’s immense size and four years of activity, according to Levi it never produced a kilo of its intended product: synthetic rubber. Levi described Buna as “desperately and essentially opaque and gray.” He said not a blade of grass grew within the compound because its soil had been impregnated with the “poisonous juices of coal and petroleum” so that nothing was alive but machines and slaves, with the former “more alive” than the latter. Levi also related hearing a Buna Kapo say that the only way Jews could leave Auschwitz was “through the Chimney” of the crematorium. It is possible that the companion being addressed in “Buna” is Primo Levi himself, recognizing what he had been reduced to. Keywords/Tags: Primo Levi, translation, Holocaust poem, Auschwitz, Buna, mud, chimney, smoke, crematorium, corpses, bodies, death, ******, starvation, gray, colorless, invisible, nameless, slave, slaves, slave labor, horror, hell

Shema (“Listen”)
by Primo Levi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You who live secure
in your comfortable homes,
who return each evening to find
warm food and a hearty welcome ...

Consider: is this a “man”
who slogs through mud,
who has never known peace,
who fights for scraps of bread,
who lives at another man's whim,
who at his "yes" or "no" lies dead.

Consider: is this a “woman”
shorn bald and bereft of a name
because she lacks the strength to remember,
her eyes as void and her womb as frigid
as a winter frog's?

Consider that such horrors have indeed been!

I commend these words to you.
Engrave them in your hearts
when you lounge in your beds
and again when you rise,
when you venture outside.

Rehearse them to your children,
or may your houses softly crumble
and disease render you equally as humble
so that even your offspring avert their eyes.

My mom forgot to tell me
that it would hurt when you set my heart on fire.
She forgot to tell me that love is just as much pain as it is fun
and that sometimes the fire doesn't go out when the other person dies,
sometimes the fire burns you alive.
You forgot to tell me that death was an option
and that sometimes destiny ******* hates you,
or maybe its me who hates Destiny
for drinking and then deciding to drive.
One thing I learned from you is that cold showers don't stop love
they just freeze the desire to live out of you.
I don't know anymore if my heart is on fire
or if I stepped into that crematorium with you
but I am alone right now
and it makes me mad.

Cloudy, 70 degrees Fahrenheit,
Outside on the beach, and inside my head,
Weather, overcast, color and temp., coordinated.

Early risen like some other Jew,
The waves say:

Hey, Hey! Yo, Yo! We're available,
Walk on us and drown your sorrows,
If they're original,  we'll Jonah-spit you back.

Most likely, common enough, and we will
Keep your body, Mr. Word Sailor,
Recompense for suffering your trite insights,
Swallowing whole, you and your appetizer poems nobody reads,
Body and soul buried side by side
In the cemetery's ocean, just one more
Dead Poet to add to the Society,
Our very own collection.

No Thanks, says my pride, still got one more left inside,
Bait taken, gotta catch and release,
Cause I'm an environmentalist,
Or, at least, a plain old mentalist,
Whose words escape his body,
Thru his eyes, ears and fingertips,
Sustainability for a few more days.

Beach walking, my eyes are not deceived,
The shells, the husks, the dead upended,
***** and mollusks have hora-circled me,
Holding hands, they too, dance and sing their
Lamentations, as if I didn't have enough of my own,
To keep myself self-employed.

Look at us, turn not, Sir, disguised by word-stubble,
Face not away from us and our exposed-now, truths.

Upon Silver Beach, we preach,
This our death spot, our crematorium,
Hunted and gull-pecked,
Our shells, teenage broken,
Holed, shucked, stepped upon,
What ignominy for proud sea creatures!
Is this the death we deserve?

Why to me whine, wail and cry,
I, nothing to your deaths, hasten,
Do, did or done,
Though I plied the waters of
Noyack and Little Peconic Bay but yesterday,
Not one of your kind did I disturb,
For your kind,  my God, consuming disallowed.

Take your sad eyed tales to the under-towing waves,
Perhaps, they will listen, for they enjoy containing
Morted objects on their invisible sands,
The waters will take you and your plaints,
Soundlessly, you will be accepted, upon their plains.

No, No!
Instructions sent and well received,
You, poet, are the one, needs notification
Our doom is your doom, symmetry to
Your gloom, for one and the same.

What meanest thou, meanest creatures,
Commonality nor companionship,
Kith nor kin are we!
Our connectivity is but
This beach we presently share!

Guiltless in life, we but survived,
Hurting no one, no thing,
Yet, here we lie, ignored, unattended,
Yet, you fail again to see our connection?
You do not recognize us?

We are the shells, the husks of you,
Your poems unread, you labors unpreserved,
All wasted, for unless they are read, they die,
As you will too.
Some fast, by water, some slower, time-eroded,
All, ended, by drowning in the Sea of Who Cares!

Shell-shellacked, be refted, be reaved,
The be-each minions have crucified my anything,
Truth, the sword for ribbon cutting ceremonies
Risen up from these waters, to cut me down,
To complete my shame, the duo,
Wind and sand combinate to sting my eyes,
But succeed not, for I weep so copiously,
Their endeavors re fused, but what's the point,
For I am a results-oriented man,
My results, naught.

I know now where to go
When the silence external is needing coordination,
UnSound symmetry, with a silenced mind.

5:52 AM
Silver Beach
June 30th, 2013

Cockroaches in striped pajamas
stained by the scent of snow-melted blood
under a compassionate moon.
No reflection to admire
other than the eyes of a thousand
miserable and sordid puppets
with shaven heads and wooden clogged shoes.

God and their souls
murdered by a vile evolution,
crucibles of Jewish remains.
Rabbis and priests,
scholars and the poor:
moving targets with stars on their sleeves.

Naked souls waited,
listening to the gods of old Germany.
“Zieh dich aus! (Take off your clothes!)”
They shouted, pushing
them further into the chamber.
The doors
closed shut behind them.
A deathly fog clouded
among them,
putting them to drown
under a thick green darkness.
Agonized voices
shredded apart
as their nails clawed
at the concrete walls.
Women and children held each other tight,
whispering Kaddish,
hoping and praying.

Twenty minutes
of shouting and stumbling,
Twenty minutes
of spluttering and gargling.
The little ones witness the eyes
of their guardians writhe and turn white,
as their bodies jolted
as their lives were stolen.

The gods finally entered
to clear the room,
to pile the dead onto the carts,
to visit the crematorium.
To finally shovel the mounds of
striped clothing,
to recycle and burn the rest.

But this end comes
as a sweet release
as their ashes
were sent through the chimneys
and into the air
to rest in their graves.

The address of that floor will be my house,
One day, I will be in search of the crematorium...
#thought #floor #crematorium

I dreamed of Yuri Gagarin straddling an atomic bomb,
I dreamed of grace and annihilation weightless and atmospheric
I dreamed of gravity as the tyranny of man

I dreamed of a view of this world from the sun, ashes in a cosmic crematorium
I dreamed of ice and fire, winter and war
I dreamed of mutually assured destruction, eyes watching the sky

I dreamed of watching from on high, all glory hallelujah and twinkling giants
I dreamed of falling back down, arms spread in unbreakable faith
I dreamed of Yuri Gagarin, alone among the stars, saint of that great abyss, smiling as he met God, and asking him in a calm and reassuring tone, where he's been all this time

i find nothing intelligent about philosophy,
if in were to prescribe a self-help book
i'd prescribe any philosophy book,
it would become mantra to: dumb-down.
fascinated as i am, dancing
pretending to drum, when there's
a sudden jolt and i sing hail! in the
vandal epice, i am fully intact as a
skeleton of an albatross - and stand in a shape
of ᛉ... zigfreid... jawolh...
    having spent 3 weeks in Poland,
in some obscure city gave me utter peace...
but hey, why not come back to England
and get a moral sun-tan of absolute
*******... why not dress up
  in post-colonial nuances, why not experience
post-colonialism?
         3 weeks without the internet
and i really, really did feel relief...
           i thought television is bad...
well, it is bad, if you have internet access...
but with the internet, comes the Belzeebub,
a swarm of words, of opinions that only lead
to a cul de sac of your own basis:
for not talking on a street corner, with a sign
dangling on your neck like a cowbell
reading: the end is near!
          i get it, it's a fetish, it's man claiming
the end will come when he'll obliterate gravity,
i''m cool with that, shindig and all the ponce
of an urban vocab...
   talk to me like a farmer though... please,
please, please do... i want to talk to a farmer...
i can't deal with this cool urban kids
and their microaggression and, whatever it is
they have stashed in their socks...
     because you really can't read a philosophy
book and care to be intelligent...
         i've read a few, and each time i return to
the most despotic creature i could ever wish
to be... the one that's perplexed that he
say something tangible, something worth
riddling... but nothing outside of
the arithmetic... of gluing i am dodo
therefore i'm extinct...
     try to imagine living in a country without
a colonial past... i can, i just did, spent
3 weeks in Poland, and after having acquired
English, like the good, assimmilated foreigner
i am: i want to unlearn it...
   i'm dying to unlearn it... i ****** wish i didn't
speak it...
              it's too global for me...
    i speak it, but i don't want to speak it,
but then i invested over 20 years of my life in speaking
it, and thinking in it...
       i'd also like to see little england,
the england with its camper vans and it's yorkshire
terrier... but i am currently holding
an anchor on the periphery of London,
and boy, the drag is something, i am actually
enjoying this paralysis...
but you can't expect to read a philosophy and
get the idea that suddenly there's a theory
of relativity sleeping within you...
    read a philosophy book, learn to become an idiot...
    intelligence can't even stomach awe...
it always has to say something witty,
be something opportune, have a dinner party...
fake it...
           the idiot just looks at the world
and says: huh? it really is a chance to play the Frankenstein
monster... so many people, and they have so
much care to trade, sell apples, argue...
so much care to attain the ****** appeal,
to trim their hair...
   so much energy to trade, sell life insurance,
to argue...
               where do they get it from, that mana?
it can really be so welcoming,
to experience life in a non-colonial society,
    to be bored, to do nothing and simply be human...
now that's a first...
              to do nothing and simply be, human...
   me thinks that animals have it easy,
i wish i could have the digestive system of a koala
bear...
                to be a creature with a mono-facet
adaptability dynamic... well, a bi-facet adaptation
scenario... me, coordinates (0, 0), the thing
i want, coordinates (1, 1)... move!
     not me, i'm human, i have to go to the *******
cinema, i have to attend a funeral,
i have to do a, b, c, and all the way down through to z...
    evolution is cruel...
               this constant physical bombardment
with sensual teasing, and then being ****** anally by
some cognitive fudge phalllus...
    it's really become obsolete to even think,
there's no: think for the pleasure of mere thought...
now i'm waiting for a shepherd to
huddle me into a crowd in need of writing a book...
i really don't know how the natives
  deal with this, but if i were to suddenly speak my
native tongue i'd be better off, english is really
being stretched, so many bad, i mean really bad
accents... they only speak the english they speak
because english is a barren wasteland without any
diacritical marks... it's covert language,
puny secretive bollocking at the start,
and nothing else at the end...
    but it really is a headache knowing english
these days... it's doing my head in...
          i speak english and i'm already imaging
myself head-banging, or knocking down
the al-buraq - if you know Polish then you'll
just say: the beetroot.
                       and whatever the media tells you,
everyone in the trenches of society
actually adores Putin...
             it could be sad, but at least it's not so
flimsy and artsy after all...
   a society with clear indication that internet
megalomania is not permitted...
                  yes, i really am writing you a postcard
with a: wish you would go there...
     even with its Christian conservatism...
      it's actually bearable...
becuase, having 3 weeks there, and as i get older
(even though i'm only 30)...
  i find England: exhausting... literally
like dragging elephant testicles wherever i walk...
it's exhausting... England is exhausting...
   talking English is exhausting...
     this beacon of hope and freedom has become
a **** nugget, set alight on a toothpick...
     i've lived in England for so many years,
and have yet to taste the local delicacy... of an English
******... while a story emerges in Rotherham
about a ******* cartel... it begins to really break
your heart... there's you, ***-starved and
having the tendency to over-exaggerate a handshake
and there's the world...
     you can't really drink enough alcohol these days
to knock yourself out...
and i've been drinking, on and on, on and on... and on...
and it never stops being so depressing!
     there, my tongue is lose... it's a streaker on a
football pitch... running wild... giving it all
for the worth of simply: frenzy...
             but there's something very ancient about this
dynamic... the fact that these are the lands
once occupied by the romans...
sure, in Poland you use the Latin alphabet, but
the spaghetti maneli crew never threw their
pizza that far up north...
                          go to any country that doesn't
boast of a Roman heritage...
that's for starters...
                         if the place boasts about being
conquered by the romans...
                  you end up watching a funeral that
just won't go away... not how the latin alphabet
was best symbiotic with numbers due to the holes
and you can't code on a computer screen
with anything, but latin... try writing an app.
using arabic or hebrew...
it truly is a language based on: matchsticks made
in heaven...
                 just the areas where the romans didn't
settle... the "uncivilised" regions...
    it's enough that the Slavs probably had the equivalent
of runes... and a polytheism of some sort...
but all i see is: perfected exploitation of the latin
alphabet, and well, might as well forget the rest.
    now that's major digression...
      it's as if i'm trying to have a conversation,
  but then the claustrophobic tendency of narration
take off and i''m thrown into a Tartar army...
       entranced into singing allah'u akbar... instead
of reciting Rumi...
                    it is what it is,
and since England is a major player in world
affairs, there's nothing little about it, even
if you live in Dover...
                 yet there is a nation-state serenity somewhere,
where everything is truly small,
  truly content with very little, where it's not
gagging to advertise itself, to sell itself...
    perhaps Auschwitz is a blessing as a "tourist"
destination after all...
           come to think of it... people will be children
around the pyramids...
they'll climb a pyramid... make funny photographs
of the pyramids what afar, as if they were holding
it... can't see any funny photographs coming
from Auschwitz... people gearing up to
smoke a shisha in a gas chamber...
                       or climbing into one of the crematorium
ovens to replicate a Tokyo hotel "room",
maybe Auschwitz is the blessed deterent of globalisation?
it's a great question...
           while the Czechs import hen and stag parties
to their capital with cheep beer...
  no one from the west seems to feel the same
drunken bliss in Krakow... what with Auschwitz
so close...
               they'd rather drink with the Russian
separatists in Kiev!
                  and indeed, what the German rage left,
i wear it like a black diamond...
              a crow's croak...
so, does that mean i have to appeal to some
imaginative conquered-party appeal?
   that i let it all happen, while i pressed the snooze
button on my clock?
     i don't know... Poland is a bit odd, and coming
from there, it almost seems that i should be writing
about Moldavia.
              and blessed are those: firmly rooted in one
place, with neither care nor obligation
   to travel far...
                          lest they bring nothing but
scurvy, in hope of bringing the beacon of civilisation
  and only that, no olympic flame: but a plague.
England is a land of displaced people,
  and can't be anything other than:
i got ants in my pants and i'm going to sing the blues!

there is no GOD, and I am his prophet.
don't shove your religion down my
throat.
there is no GOD.
to believe in GOD is wishful thinking.
i don't need a boss man
breathing down my neck,
but you must.
you better harden up.

i believe
that you shouldn't believe
in anything, and I believe you
ought to harden up.

face facts.
get real.
it's a raw, dog eat dog world out there
and it's us against them.
you have to be able to
face the cold truth of it all.
life's just what happens
between the maternity ward
and the crematorium.

hear me brother,
this is my sermon:
there is no GOD
and I am his prophet.

The elusive necessity was plaguing his waking
Thoughts so long had it been numbed beyond
Reproach but like a scratch it had haemorrhaged
In his latent thoughts and then like a dove,
Bludgeoned, choked white turned crimson.

He had made them into fractured images, abstract
Monuments to his mind diluted thoughts of beauty.
But he needed to mould form once again. Those of
No addresses were his trail and error his fingers were
A master piece of arcane excellence, creation was to bleed.

He used a diamond headed drill thinnest you can get,
With that inclination he descended in to their thoughts
Targeting the synaptic transmission centres of where
Pain metaphorically existed. Like trimming roses he did
The same with the spine, peace of mind and body as one.

His perfection of his profession  had released his ominous
Side that  was now at play the ones that tendered his first
Tries were brain dead from the trial and error of his drill.
Then their was the unfortunate vein nicked her and there,
Some bled internal while others like waterfalls it descended.

No one ever discovered his human errors, all were ash
Cinders filled his  crematorium of hellish demise. For those
Now gone no pain just silence shards of bone all that's
Left is memories in wisps of fading smoke. That was the
Past now all that exists is his first of many creations.

The insertions were made bone muscles removed slowly
Like an artist his scalpel glides effortlessly it creates his
Vision of the beauty of the desires, depictions of what
He see's within them and creates it with flesh and bone.

"You are my creations of will and my perfections of canvass,
"I name you the Cheshire breed, look upon your grandeur,

They blink saying nothing but smile from ear to ear their lips
Gorged, plump, but all that whispers on their features are
Tears rolling down on their stapled smiles. He always liked
Pairs an image reflected in both their views of his twisted
Perfection and then released them on the watching world.

He felt like Noah leading them into salvation two by two, they
Were insignificant before but now they were a tapestry of flesh
Reinvented upon imagery of their own makings. Waiting for
His beauty to be eyed by the masses. As his new edition to this
Collection was now being created in the depths of his operations,
He stroked there hair never knowing what he had done to them.

Outrage monster they called him, he was an artist of unparalleled
Sophistication, in time they would admire his work. And so he
Readied the new forms, the radius also ulna and all ossa bones
Were removed. And so was birthed the clingers, huger's of
Self loathing. Neatly knitted they adhered to their ****** silhouette.

I release you beautiful creations of my inner most yearnings.
They couldn't scream a voice box severed, only tears descended
Upon themselves. Hooded they heard only a voice, it would
Linger for what life they deemed worthy to live. Screams were
Collected upon their sights at what was observed in dismay.
He expelled joy seeing his work displayed to  the masses via TV.

"My art of the flesh is descended to those lowly souls.
"All can now envisage my creative genius unbound,

"Now the final form can take place, the puppets will fall,

He had planned this endeavour for so long, no one was any the wiser
As he had planned this over years. So many had he seeded,
Only thought of missing time that they had for unknown reasons
Past out. But that was then and this is now, each was injected
With a cylinder only millimetres across but when a frequency
Released, then they would be like puppets without strings, they fall.

He would release his puppets upon the world, he released a
Message to the media that his puppets would fall down that
They would all lie in silence.  He told them of his art forms become
Flesh and this was verification of what he claimed. weeks had
Past and no words were heard, but then a video surfaced that
Would tell of his needing to create and that they would all fall.

"News at 6 the homicidal artist, has now released this video,
"VEIWERS DECRESTION IS ADVISED,

"Hello my puppets so many have a stringed along.
"Not knowing that you were mine all this time,

"I am an artist of the flesh, I must admit a spilt much,
"But they are but ash for artwork that fails isn't worth keeping,

"But to what is important my public, my new piece of creation,
"This has been a long time in the making patience is a virtue,

"Have you ever felt an itch, that cant be reasoned with,
"That itch is me beneath your skin, that's me,

"Now for the finally, this is going to be something people,

"I now cut the strings of life, you puppets of life no longer,

EXISTS,EXISTS,EXISTS,

Then all went silent in the news room, and then where shock
Feel panic arose. He just stopped mid sentence, then news came
In that the video had a submerged signal buried within its layers.
So many fell, their strings were cut in moments. But that wasn't
The worse for months people just died they tried to delete it.
But once on the web its always their to be looked upon.

"Curiosity was a killer, I dare you to watch,

They tried in vain, but he was a shadow in a thought, an urban
Legend of reality. So many surgeons were questioned. But self
Taught was their theory, how many had he killed before perfecting
His master pieces of flesh. their were a few copy cats but his were
The real deal. Two are still alive today he didn't implant them
His creations had to live. the others deemed life unliveable, sorry.

His last words would hang around the country if not the world
For a long time to come, he has never or she has never be found.

*"We are a tapestry of creation, let life be your art. For we must
Bleed to feel alive for without doing this how do we know were
Even existing or for that matter alive,

I watched a body burn yesterday,
with eyes closed shut
and brown hair parted so perfectly
that it couldn’t possibly have been you.
But it was wearing your shoes
the faded blue Converse
that I tried to throw away when you weren’t looking.
Your mom must have salvaged them.

I’ve been looking for you
in the places I thought would remember you.
I have found
that you don’t exist anywhere:
not in the urn
resting in your mother’s living room
not in the shower
where I try to freeze the love out of me.
You have left me smoldering.

Your mom told me they burned you
with a pack of cigarettes
in your jacket pocket.
The faint smell of burning tobacco
would follow you to death.

I think I might hate you.
You told me it was your trademark
to leave people wondering
about where you were going.
I thought you were just mysterious
not intentionally cruel.
But you have left me here
left me not knowing
if my heart is on fire
or if I stepped into the crematorium with you.
I can’t breathe right now.
Completely burnt out.

The experiment is maliciously cold, dangerously cunning-
A wrong sort of rapture
An invitation made in amusement
People surround you like the frigid flames in a hyena’s eyes just before it pounces
The experiment is brutality, a completely psychological Auschwitz-
A nightmare down memory lane-
But whose memories are they?
The experiment (seems) to work by gas lighting and technology-
That’s all it needs- cigarettes and soup
But who’s at the watchtower?
I have no delusions of reprieve- despite what people tell me
They- the illusions, delusions, holograms of people reaching out in “love”
Your love is a weight, just like mine is to you
Yes, I bring sorrow to you, but out of this sorrow something was created
Something you can never know because it can’t be possessed-
Too many ideas and too much time…
Still searching for one thing- not love, but truth
Have a roast, lay it on me
Don’t hold back because you don’t want my blood on your hands
It’s already been spilled
You live with my faults and my dilemmas and my neurosis,
But I must live everyday in the body that houses these faults, dilemmas, neurosis.
Still they turn on their Piscean baths, expecting a scorpion not to drown-
A crematorium with no weapons-
Inanimate objects speak, but humans gurgle out white noise,
A poison formed first in the brain then saturated by the tongue
And all the demonic children….
I am that demonic child. I am that vat of toxic waste.
I am a liar, a sinner, a drunk, a madman, a beggar, a freak, a thief
My pain fascinates others as they tap on the fishbowl glass,
Making me shudder
Are these the people of God?
Am I a person of God?
Most likely neither
But how did it come to this?
And really, what would Jesus do?
Jesus probably wouldn’t live in America
And love isn’t enough
They crave conformity, obedience-
What a sick, twisted practice
The sacrifice of one for all
Don’t make any waves, but here’s an ocean

There once was a boy who loved fire,
He kept matches in hand and sang in choir,
The church burned days after that,
Only matches they found inside a dead rat,
The boy went missing a few days later,
But no one cared, other worries were greater,
So the boy got away with less matches in hand,
Singing dogmatic songs of a fiery land.
One day in black sun a demon will come,
He’ll save us in the blaze hoheehohum

The next town he settled in was quite small,
But it had an orphanage where he could stall,
Living as an orphan was less than fun,
He dreamed of fires, up walls they’d run,
Nuns gave him chores like scrubbing floors,
But living this life was an absolute bore,
Weeks in he again found his little box of fire,
And snuck away at night as his heart desired.
One day in black sun a demon will come,
He’ll save us in the blaze hoheehohum

He started anew in a town called Old Haven,
Teenaged he was and very well-behaven,
He worked for a grocer, handling cash,
But one day, the store’s walls turned to ash,
No one suspected the teen and his matches,
Until he disappeared in a bat of your lashes,
He continued on, without a worry for the world,
Knowing eventually in fire it’d be hurled.
One day in black sun a demon will come,
He’ll save us in the blaze hoheehohum

Eventually he settled in a place with no fire,
Except in the first job where he was no liar,
A crematorium he settled to live,
Bodies he burns, then ashes he gives,
A match started every body-fueled flame,
A box in hand singing the devil finally came.
Then, one summer, the now-man threw himself in,
Mad with laughter, hell accepted him.
One day in black sun a demon will come,
He’ll save us in the blaze hoheehohum

Reverberation hit's the auditorium
Wailing notes and key's, guitar, piano
Chord's splash sound to the crowd
Leaving traces of burnt trails
Like the neighborhood crematorium.

Girdle, gurgled amplified effect's
Some do it for the love, other's for a check,
Fifty musician's. One stage to be the attention
Microphone's and xylophone tones rock out
To jam overtaking, to rock and blues ripping.

You looked at me
As if I were a broken muse
Jagged instead of smooth
A cracked carapace
A bag no longer containing God
And in this moment of your breath
I was a face for the morgue
The crematorium,
With the sifting of ash
To be your repentance-
The discovery of the shelf of a cheekbone
To be the only thing that held
The disappointment in alignment
Up to your rueful eyes

Sometimes I write nights, in the séance of the city

to the thrum of the sidewalk, the fume of the smokestack;

I scribble the madcap of it all, I furrow my nails in vinyl and dance

            in memoriam,

            my face blackened by storms in the crematorium;

      there are those that watch the world through a window,

      and those that are watched;

and if they have no voice in their manic stumblings; and if instead they

                  mutter

to the shadows for traction, to the swirl in the gutter, the outer rim of

                  silence

they will find a friction

to descend upon cement with an electric lunacy;

      and though they will be outliers, they put out the candles

      and write nights too;

within the funneled starlight, and the wheel of the sky,

we string our bodies astral,

in procession and out, similar in divergence, until similarity diverges

      into steam and carbon

and time surges backwards to rejuvenate nights

and our visions are left clotted in their seams by

                  the dark.

a patch
of flaming red tulips
burns away winter's body
in the crematorium of spring.

That short wispy haired lady
Fighting her way against the wind
Up the London Road
Is my Mother.
Lips pursed she is returning
From the hairdressers, the post office
And has yet to pick up steak and kidney
For the pie she will make
For the boy who is coming home
For her son who will soon be there
For the man who loves the pie
For her child who loves her.
Her lips are pursed in determination
Against all the obstacles
Real and imagined that stalk her.
Lately that climb past the church
Made her puff.
Tiredness, her weakened heart
Struggling to keep up.
Perhaps the thought of another winter
Another wet and windy struggle
Up and down the village
Up and down the London Road.
Discretely her body decided
To give up.
No more struggling
No more tiredness
No more puffing and halting
For my shy timid Mother.
No more making tea
No more cleaning
No more washing
No more worrying
For my Mum.
Her three sons
Middle aged and modern
Stand miserably with their Father
Standing in suits in the municipal crematorium.
Rain and wind, my Mothers enemies
Howl and lash outside
Lost without their old victim
Inside aging relatives
Exchange scared glances
Wondering who is next.

In sleep I dream, illusions of being awake
From the first moment to the last, of their plot.
Of it being perfect to it becoming perfection;
Eden in its own serenity- chaos,
Eden in its own confusion- bliss.
Anger clouded by love,
Passion pervaded with bitterness;
The fruitfulness of creation, their desire to destroy.
Pandemonium throughout millenniums,
The reckoning of reason throughout the centuries.
Sifting through thoughts, riding the zephyr of forgotten memories.
The taste of oceanic air, induces thee
The scent of roses upon thy skin reduces me!
The autylosis of flesh in the wilderness,
An arbituar, a crematorium- my garden.
Eden all decaying; seen, smelt and felt
Yet I still recall
Remembering fields of Asphodels
And a dream of a flower that too long ago was our ancient emblem,
Somewhere inside I am touched by this flower
And my relentless dream to feel again, what was
Before the death of Heaven.
Heaven before the conflagration; Heaven before the stench,
A Heaven of basking in fields.
Yet I am null and void of what is,
Null and void of emotion and what was
As that Heaven still subsides in me.
Elysium, the beautiful abode of the after world
Elysium with fields of sepulchre,
A Heaven of sceptre carrying angels
A recollection of a deadly nightmare
A recollection of a Heaven with Asphodel's;
The Heaven that once existed
A Heaven of which I do dream;
The Heaven of which I originally inhabited,
The Elysium in which Heaven and Hell co-existed
Harmoniously.



Eleete J Muir 1998

I’d swear a monster lived in the hall
Of the house when I was young,
Just like the tiger under the bed
I could see when they were gone,
For I could hear him climbing the stair
When the house was fast asleep,
I knew he roamed around and about
When the stairs began to creak.

And then he’d enter my bedroom and
He’d re-arrange my toys,
That’s how I knew he disliked me, he
Kept all his tricks for boys.
He never bothered my sister, or
Disturbed her dolls and things,
Her bedroom was like a sanctuary
For her necklaces and rings.

He’d hide in all of the daylight hours
So he’d not be seen by them,
The others, who would make fun of me
When I warned them all again:
‘You wait, he’s going to take you out
He will catch you unawares,
You won’t be able to scream or shout
When he comes, and climbs the stairs.’

The winter months were both damp and cold
And the woodwork creaked and groaned,
It shrunk and stretched, it was getting old
And it hid the monster’s moans.
So I hid down by the bannister
And I tied a string across,
To trip him when he would climb the stairs,
I would teach the monster loss!

A storm was raging outside that night
And the wind howled through the trees,
The back door opened and flapped a lot
And let in a winter breeze,
I heard my father run down the stairs
And an awful cry and crash,
Then silence settled and fed my fears
Where the bannister was smashed.

I thought the monster was gone for good
With the service come and gone,
I thought he couldn’t survive that crash
And the crematorium,
But barely a week had passed us by
And the stairs began to creak,
So I placed a candle under the stair
And the place burned for a week.

David Lewis Paget