My chamber teems with tensions, taut, that logic can’t withstand,
fragmenting mental masonry with memories unplanned,
as bitter tears from hazel eyes reduce the stone to sand.

Dim shadows cast by candles flit across the haunted room,
beleaguer apparitions, pale, that stalk me through the gloom,
usurping purloined purple forms forgotten ghosts assume.

The tick-tock clock of time rewinds within the mirrored hall
and pendula suspended, pause, while creatures creep and crawl
on images of effigies, through memories that maul.

The madness of the midnight mass! Perchance it interferes
with spiders spinning spiral threads which bridge the chandeliers
when weaving minds' discarded coils to silken souvenirs.

Reflections graced the vacant gaze of idols as they fled!
Their futile, feigned, far-flung farewells now hammer in my head,
marooned like frozen silhouettes in footprints of the dead.

My lovers smile through marbled masks before they turn their backs
(like furnace flames deserting ash or phantoms fleeing cracks)
with faded, painted, wrinkled faces nightmares carve in wax.

Sometimes a gust disturbs the dust and secrets reappear,
which dance in silver slippers through the dusk of yesteryear -
it's not the screams that drown my dreams, but whispers which I fear.

The hangman posts a letter home, his message indiscreet
about the vestal ****** in the café (where we meet
to savour tea and crumpets) down a one-way dead-end street.

The rapping and the tapping at my tattered, time-worn door
repeat reports of migrant myths, of tales of nevermore,
strung far across a sullen sea, most shipwrecked near the shore.

Forget-me-nots, enwrapped in rain the while a wan wind blows,
recall the faintly fickle fates this drifter undergoes –
alone, unknown with tracks interred in teardrop undertows.

My feet, no longer tied or tethered, traipse within a squall
pursuing profiles long forsaken, buried in the sprawl
of spectres spread amongst the dead, some tattooed to the wall.

At times, the belfry towers toll of anarchy and gin,
of smoke and mirrors, rolling dice and other things akin,
impaled on forks down byway roads, and things that might-have-been.

The skies outside, beyond the night with shutters shut and drawn,
begin to glow on shattered shapes escaping ’fore the dawn
as clouds undone beneath the sun release this captive pawn.

En l’an trentiesme do mon aage
    Que toutes mes hontes j’ay beues…


Pipit sate upright in her chair
     Some distance from where I was sitting;
Views of the Oxford Colleges
     Lay on the table, with the knitting.

Daguerreotypes and silhouettes,
     Her grandfather and great great aunts,
Supported on the mantelpiece
     An Invitation to the Dance.

     . . . . .

I shall not want Honour in Heaven
     For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney
And have talk with Coriolanus
     And other heroes of that kidney.

I shall not want Capital in Heaven
     For I shall meet Sir Alfred Mond.
We two shall lie together, lapt
     In a five per cent. Exchequer Bond.

I shall not want Society in Heaven,
     Lucretia Borgia shall be my Bride;
Her anecdotes will be more amusing
     Than Pipit’s experience could provide.

I shall not want Pipit in Heaven:
     Madame Blavatsky will instruct me
In the Seven Sacred Trances;
     Piccarda de Donati will conduct me.

     . . . . .

But where is the penny world I bought
     To eat with Pipit behind the screen?
The red-eyed scavengers are creeping
     From Kentish Town and Golder’s Green;

Where are the eagles and the trumpets?

     Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps.
Over buttered scones and crumpets
     Weeping, weeping multitudes
Droop in a hundred A.B.C.’s

Life belongs to Monday morning.
Still, I'm haunted by Sunday teatime.
Scones in the parlour at the back of the house.
With mamma and poppa and sweet baby Jayne.
Toasted crumpets together,and drank hot cups of tea.
The crumpets were toasted upon a huge open fire.
Jayne had been sleeping in the cot by the door.
Too young to eat crumpets and scones, she's not allowed tea.
The baby still sleeping remains in the parlour.
It's warmer in there.
And so to the drawing room with round rosewood table.
Nature of the cloth thereupon changed.
It's marked with the symbols of a, b and c.
A painted on canvass that ends with a zee.
It's crimson, edged with gold.
In the centre a YES and a NO.
Centrally placed a wine glass.
Knock knock on the door.
Now there are five.
Tonight the table may come alive.
They're hoping.
A standard lamp, rather dated stood in the corner.
Had a scarlet shade with golden tassels.
They sit round the table.
It's just what they did.
Fingers on glass.
They're calling out.
"Is anybody there?"
The room becomes chilled.
Atmosphere stifling.
Glass moves around the circle.
A...R...I....E.....L.....spellbinding.
'Twas the spirit of the dark poet,Plath.
Darkness from sorrow, no more tomorrow.
Another spirit in attendance.
Takes Sylvia by the hand.
Into the light, escorted by guide.
Goodbye sorrowed poet.
Walked into the light.
Goodnight.
Sleep tight.
(c) Livvi MMCV

some might say raw herrings
on crumpets is a bit barbaric,
but i find it the ideal meal
while feeding a cat a goodnight;
raw... rrrrrrroar flesh gives
the digestive system a one-over
twice the difficulty to feed me sleep.

Little Red Riding Hood's Last Stroll

Twas the darkest of nights in the prarie woodland
Little Red Riding Hood walked the raven strand
Her beaten path was strewn with briar and thistle band
Losing her way, she stumbled into the murky lowland
   
A steamy fog cut through the bleary bog
The rancid odor of vaporous springs did the air clog
A venomous frog full of spite sat on a jagged log
Vampire bats with their ebony capes the putrid air did flog

A Hoot owl from overhead bellowed out a dolesome refrain
Sprightly shadows followed forming a loathsome train
Every few seconds, an eery howl filled the air with a portentous strain
Creepy, crawling insects fiddled a tune of disdain

Little Red Riding Hood's heels became mired in the porous, sandy soil
Discarding her sandals, she screeched; slimy leeches clasped each, bleached sole
Thirsty, Vampire bats veered all about seeking her ****** blood to spoil
Frightened to her wits' end, she sat down on a log to weigh her dreary toll

Unbeknownst to her, the spiteful toad for a wary companion did troll
Taking aim, that malicious toad took a gleeful caper landing on her ****** mole
Discharging his vitriolic potion, Little Red Riding Hood screamed as the pain through her blanched tissue did roll
A minute later, her callous mole was transformed into a pusy, seething boil

Leaping from her bartered stool, she ran into the foreboding wood
Her homely cape snagged on an extended limb and from her fragile arm  spilt blood
The whiff of fresh, warm blood was immediately sensed by a wolf pack brood
Hearing the howling pack approaching, she froze right where she stood

Remembering Grandmother's wise advice, she climbed the nearest tree
Not realizing therein lay a poisonous snake perched so sprightly
Arriving on the scene first, the Druid lapped up the trail of blood that gushed from her wound so freely
To placate the menacing brood, she tossed down some of grandmother's crumpets briskly

A second later, the coiled up snake lunged at its helpless target with lightning speed 
Alarmed, Little Red Riding Hood whirled about wrapping around her the flailing snake like a nimble reed
Losing her balance, she fell headlong into the hungry jaws of gluttonous greed
That ravenous brood lapped up the crumpets, diced up the snake, and did the nimble limbs of Little Red Riding Hood knead

A word of caution to every rambling, ambling tite
If ever you venture into the perilous copse at night
Beware of the spiteful vermin that scour and stalk with stealthy might
And never from the beaten trail stray or malicious malcontents will your innocence spite

My Grandmother's Hands

My Grandmother's hands told many tales
Of scrubbing steps and broken nails
Hand-washing clothes in enamel sink
Red football socks turned white towels pink

When not baking cakes at the old gas stove
Rag-rugs with old scraps of material she wove
Pantry shelves filled with powdered egg
Homemade rice pudding sprinkled with nutmeg

Sea-coal burning on an open coal fire
Bread on a toasting fork burning like a pyre
Grandma plumping up pillows from beneath granda’s head
Applying ointment to sores caused by being confined to bed

Hours spent at auctions bidding with her hand
Buying an incomplete bed wasn't what she planned
Back home in time for tea, crumpets and homemade strawberry jam,
I can still recall the smell of it, bubbling in the pan

Switching tv channels with a flick of her wrist
That’s how we did it back then, when remotes did not exist
Working hard all of her life, meeting everyone's demands

Every line and wrinkle told a story
On my Grandmother's hands

foreign lands I want to roam
Where Kings and Queens sit upon their throne
And big cats prowl, and wild dogs howl
And there's every kind of fowl
Where mighty elephants trumpet
And with tea they serve crumpets
I want to see the very old creations of man
I know I'd be their biggest fan
To walk the ground that Jesus tread
And feed the masses with seven loaves of bread
I would love to see the foreign sands
To get homesick, then return again to my home land

There’s a favorite culinary dish in town;
it’s known as the synapse shish kebab.
It’s high in protein as well as fat, and it comes
with a garlic-infused broccoli rabe,
available with a choice of couscous or rice.
The palate will most likely be enticed, just like
another common John who swears to us that he
again has done absolutely nothing wrong.
It pairs nicely with an eighties chenin blanc,
gray matter that’s grilled to sheer perfection,
smoked all day, and is guaranteed satisfaction,
seemingly like an old, rambling rolling stone.
The lights are on—but nobody’s buying homes.
An opera singer that is deaf to certain tones,
this is definitely not regal crumpets and tea—
“heart-healthy nutrition,” all our medics agree.
There’s a new critically acclaimed dish around;
it’s the slow-roasted synapse shish kebab,
moderately priced, and portions are family style—
passed-down secret recipes from west of the Nile,
and also numbers that won’t make your wallet sob
like a big, bad, dark, overly loaded cloud.
Give it a try, and then shout it out loud:
synapse shish kebab!

On a fine and sunny morn
On the third or fourth of may
A boggart and a bumblebee
Went to town to play

They met up with a mugglewump
But little did he say
So the boggart and the bumblebee
Bowed and went away

They found their friends the Fuglywhits
And asked them out to tea
They bribed them with jam crumpets
But the Fuglywhits weren’t free

Much dejected did they carry on
The boggart and the bee
The fine and sunny morning
Was filled with little glee

And then the boggart came upon
A wondrous revelation
That put their moping frowns
Into quick cessation

They need no other colleagues
To have collaborations
Two could play together
In satisfied elation

And so the fine associates
Proceeded to be gay
On that fine and sunny morn
On the third or fourth of may

Of Tetley's and V-2's
(or, “Why Not to Bomb the Brits”)
by Michael R. Burch

The English are very hospitable,
but tea-less, alas, they grow pitiable ...
or pitiless, rather,
and quite in a lather!
O bother, they're more than formidable!

Keywords/Tags: limerick, light verse, nonsense verse, humor, humorous, England, English, Tetley, tea, milk, crumpets, scones, war, bomb, bombs, V-2, rocket, missile, missiles, formidable, Britain, Brits, defense, military, mrbtet, mrbtetley



This World's Joy
(anonymous Middle English lyric)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Winter awakens all my care
as leafless trees grow bare.
For now my sighs are fraught
when it enters my thought:
regarding this world's joy,
how everything comes to naught.



Elegy for a little girl, lost
by Michael R. Burch

. . . qui laetificat juventutem meam . . .
She was the joy of my youth,
and now she is gone.
. . . requiescat in pace . . .
May she rest in peace.
. . . amen . . .
Amen.

I was touched by this Latin prayer, which I discovered in a novel I read as a teenager. I later decided to incorporate it into a poem. From what I now understand, “ad deum qui laetificat juventutem meam” means “to the God who gives joy to my youth,” but I am sticking with my original interpretation: a lament for a little girl at her funeral. The phrase can be traced back to Saint Jerome's translation of Psalm 42 in the Vulgate Latin Bible (circa 385 AD).



How Long the Night
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa early 13th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song ...
but now I feel the northern wind's blast,
its severe weather strong.
Alas! Alas! This night seems so long!
And I, because of my momentous wrong
now grieve, mourn and fast.



Fowles in the Frith
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa 13th-14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The fowls in the forest,
the fishes in the flood
and I must go mad:
such sorrow I've had
for beasts of bone and blood!

Sounds like an early animal rights activist! The use of "and" is intriguing ... is the poet saying that his walks in the wood drive him mad because he is also a "beast of bone and blood," facing a similar fate?



I am of Ireland
anonymous Medieval Irish lyric, circa 13th-14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I am of Ireland,
and of the holy realm of Ireland.
Gentlefolk, I pray thee:
for the sake of saintly charity,
come dance with me
in Ireland!



Whan the turuf is thy tour
(anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
When the turf is your tower
and the pit is your bower,
your pale white skin and throat
shall be sullen worms’ to note.
What help to you, then,
was all your worldly hope?

2.
When the turf is your tower
and the grave is your bower,
your pale white throat and skin
worm-eaten from within ...
what hope of my help then?

NOTE: The second translation leans more to the "lover's complaint" and carpe diem genres, with the poet pointing out to his prospective lover that by denying him her favors she make take her virtue to the grave where worms will end her virginity in macabre fashion. This poem may be an ancient precursor of poems like Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress."



Ech day me comëth tydinges thre
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th to 14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Each day I’m plagued by three doles,
These gargantuan weights on my soul:
First, that I must somehow exit this fen.
Second, that I cannot know when.
And yet it’s the third that torments me so,
Because I don't know where the hell I will go!



Ich have y-don al myn youth
anonymous Middle English lyric, circa the 13th to 14th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I have done it all my youth:
Often, often, and often!
I have loved long and yearned zealously ...
And oh what grief it has brought me!



I Sing of a Maiden
anonymous Medieval English Lyric, circa early 15th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I sing of a maiden
That is matchless.
The King of all Kings
For her son she chose.
He came also as still
To his mother's breast
As April dew
Falling on the grass.
He came also as still
To his mother's bower
As April dew
Falling on the flower.
He came also as still
To where his mother lay
As April dew
Falling on the spray.
Mother and maiden?
Never one, but she!
Well may such a lady
God's mother be!



Enigma
by Michael R. Burch

O, terrible angel,
bright lover and avenger,
full of whimsical light
and vile anger;
wild stranger,
seeking the solace of night,
or the danger;
pale foreigner,
alien to man, or savior ...

Who are you,
seeking consolation and passion
in the same breath,
screaming for pleasure, bereft
of all articles of faith,
finding life
harsher than death?

Grieving angel,
giving more than taking,
how lucky the man
who has found in your love,
this, our reclamation;

fallen wren,
you must strive to fly
though your heart is shaken;

weary pilgrim,
you must not give up
though your feet are aching;

lonely child,
lie here still in my arms;
you must soon be waking.



Floating
by Michael R. Burch

Memories flood the sand’s unfolding scroll;
they pour in with the long, cursive tides of night.

Memories of revenant blue eyes and wild lips
moist and frantic against my own.

Memories of ghostly white limbs ...
of soft sighs
heard once again in the surf’s strangled moans.

We meet in the scarred, fissured caves of old dreams,
green waves of algae billowing about you,
becoming your hair.

Suspended there,
where pale sunset discolors the sea,
I see all that you are
and all that you have become to me.

Your love is a sea,
and I am its trawler—
harbored in dreams,
I ride out night’s storms.

Unanchored, I drift through the hours before morning,
dreaming the solace of your warm *******,
pondering your riddles, savoring the feel
of the explosions of your hot, saline breath.

And I rise sometimes
from the tropical darkness
to gaze once again out over the sea ...
You watch in the moonlight
that brushes the water;

bright waves throw back your reflection at me.

This is one of my more surreal poems, as the sea and lover become one. I believe I wrote this one at age 19. It has been published by Penny Dreadful, Romantics Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine and Poetry Life & Times. The poem may have had a different title when it was originally published, but it escapes me ... ah, yes, "Entanglements."



Shock
by Michael R. Burch

It was early in the morning of the forming of my soul,
in the dawning of desire, with passion at first bloom,
with lightning splitting heaven to thunder's blasting roll
and a sense of welling fire and, perhaps, impending doom—

that I cried out through the tumult of the raging storm on high
for shelter from the chaos of the restless, driving rain ...
and the voice I heard replying from a rift of bleeding sky
was mine, I'm sure, and, furthermore, was certainly insane.



The Sky Was Turning Blue
by Michael R. Burch

Yesterday I saw you
as the snow flurries died,
spent winds becalmed.
When I saw your solemn face
alone in the crowd,
I felt my heart, so long embalmed,
begin to beat aloud.

Was it another winter,
another day like this?
Was it so long ago?
Where you the rose-cheeked girl
who slapped my face, then stole a kiss?
Was the sky this gray with snow,
my heart so all a-whirl?

How is it in one moment
it was twenty years ago,
lost worlds remade anew?
When your eyes met mine, I knew
you felt it too, as though
we heard the robin's song
and the sky was turning blue.



The Children of Gaza

Nine of my poems have been set to music by the composer Eduard de Boer and have been performed in Europe by the Palestinian soprano Dima Bawab. My poems that became “The Children of Gaza” were written from the perspective of Palestinian children and their mothers. On this page the poems come first, followed by the song lyrics, which have been adapted in places to fit the music …



Epitaph for a Child of Gaza
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.



Frail Envelope of Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers and children of Gaza

Frail envelope of flesh,
lying cold on the surgeon’s table
with anguished eyes
like your mother’s eyes
and a heartbeat weak, unstable ...

Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this―
your tiny hand
in your mother’s hand
for a last bewildered kiss ...

Brief mayfly of a child,
to live two artless years!
Now your mother’s lips
seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears ...



For a Child of Gaza, with Butterflies
by Michael R. Burch

Where does the butterfly go
when lightning rails
when thunder howls
when hailstones scream
while winter scowls
and nights compound dark frosts with snow?

Where does the butterfly go?

Where does the rose hide its bloom
when night descends oblique and chill
beyond the capacity of moonlight to fill?
When the only relief's a banked fire's glow,
where does the butterfly go?

And where shall the spirit flee
when life is harsh, too harsh to face,
and hope is lost without a trace?
Oh, when the light of life runs low,
where does the butterfly go?



I Pray Tonight
by Michael R. Burch

for the children of Gaza and their mothers

I pray tonight
the starry Light
might
surround you.

I pray
by day
that, come what may,
no dark thing confound you.

I pray ere tomorrow
an end to your sorrow.
May angels' white chorales
sing, and astound you.



Something
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers and children of Gaza

Something inescapable is lost―
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.

Something uncapturable is gone―
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.

Something unforgettable is past―
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
and finality has swept into a corner where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.



Mother’s Smile
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza and their children

There never was a fonder smile
than mother’s smile, no softer touch
than mother’s touch. So sleep awhile
and know she loves you more than “much.”

So more than “much,” much more than “all.”
Though tender words, these do not speak
of love at all, nor how we fall
and mother’s there, nor how we reach
from nightmares in the ticking night
and she is there to hold us tight.

There never was a stronger back
than father’s back, that held our weight
and lifted us, when we were small,
and bore us till we reached the gate,

then held our hands that first bright mile
till we could run, and did, and flew.
But, oh, a mother’s tender smile
will leap and follow after you!



Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza

There was, in your touch, such tenderness―as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing
and coos to them softly, unable to sing.

What songs long forgotten occur to you now―
a babe at each breast? What terrible vow
ripped from your throat like the thunder that day
can never hold severing lightnings at bay?

Time taught you tenderness―time, oh, and love.
But love in the end is seldom enough ...
and time?―insufficient to life’s brief task.
I can only admire, unable to ask―

what is the source, whence comes the desire
of a woman to love as no God may require?



who, US?
by Michael R. Burch

jesus was born
a palestinian child
where there’s no Room
for the meek and the mild

... and in bethlehem still
to this day, lambs are born
to cries of “no Room!”
and Puritanical scorn ...

under Herod, Trump, Bibi
their fates are the same―
the slouching Beast mauls them
and WE have no shame:

“who’s to blame?”



My nightmare ...

I had a dream of Jesus!
Mama, his eyes were so kind!
But behind him I saw a billion Christians
hissing "You're nothing!," so blind.
―The Child Poets of Gaza (written by Michael R. Burch for the children of Gaza)



I, too, have a dream ...

I, too, have a dream ...
that one day Jews and Christians
will see me as I am:
a small child, lonely and afraid,
staring down the barrels of their big bazookas,
knowing I did nothing
to deserve their enmity.
―The Child Poets of Gaza (written by Michael R. Burch for the children of Gaza)



Suffer the Little Children
by Nakba

I saw the carnage . . . saw girls' dreaming heads
blown to red atoms, and their dreams with them . . .

saw babies liquefied in burning beds
as, horrified, I heard their murderers’ phlegm . . .

I saw my mother stitch my shroud’s black hem,
for in that moment I was one of them . . .

I saw our Father’s eyes grow hard and bleak
to see frail roses severed at the stem . . .

How could I fail to speak?
―Nakba is an alias of Michael R. Burch



Here We Shall Remain
by Tawfiq Zayyad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Like twenty impossibilities
in Lydda, Ramla and Galilee ...
here we shall remain.

Like brick walls braced against your chests;
lodged in your throats
like shards of glass
or prickly cactus thorns;
clouding your eyes
like sandstorms.

Here we shall remain,
like brick walls obstructing your chests,
washing dishes in your boisterous bars,
serving drinks to our overlords,
scouring your kitchens' filthy floors
in order to ****** morsels for our children
from between your poisonous fangs.

Here we shall remain,
like brick walls deflating your chests
as we face our deprivation clad in rags,
singing our defiant songs,
chanting our rebellious poems,
then swarming out into your unjust streets
to fill dungeons with our dignity.

Like twenty impossibilities
in Lydda, Ramla and Galilee,
here we shall remain,
guarding the shade of the fig and olive trees,
fermenting rebellion in our children
like yeast in dough.

Here we wring the rocks to relieve our thirst;
here we stave off starvation with dust;
but here we remain and shall not depart;
here we spill our expensive blood
and do not hoard it.

For here we have both a past and a future;
here we remain, the Unconquerable;
so strike fast, penetrate deep,
O, my roots!



Enough for Me
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Enough for me to lie in the earth,
to be buried in her,
to sink meltingly into her fecund soil, to vanish ...
only to spring forth like a flower
brightening the play of my countrymen's children.

Enough for me to remain
in my native soil's embrace,
to be as close as a handful of dirt,
a sprig of grass,
a wildflower.



Palestine
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This land gives us
all that makes life worthwhile:
April's blushing advances,
the aroma of bread warming at dawn,
a woman haranguing men,
the poetry of Aeschylus,
love's trembling beginnings,
a boulder covered with moss,
mothers who dance to the flute's sighs,
and the invaders' fear of memories.

This land gives us
all that makes life worthwhile:
September's rustling end,
a woman leaving forty behind, still full of grace, still blossoming,
an hour of sunlight in prison,
clouds taking the shapes of unusual creatures,
the people's applause for those who mock their assassins,
and the tyrant's fear of songs.

This land gives us
all that makes life worthwhile:
Lady Earth, mother of all beginnings and endings!
In the past she was called Palestine
and tomorrow she will still be called Palestine.
My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life!



Distant light
by Walid Khazindar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Bitterly cold,
winter clings to the naked trees.
If only you would free
the bright sparrows
from the tips of your fingers
and release a smile—that shy, tentative smile—
from the imprisoned anguish I see.
Sing! Can we not sing
as if we were warm, hand-in-hand,
shielded by shade from a glaring sun?
Can you not always remain this way,
stoking the fire, more beautiful than necessary, and silent?
Darkness increases; we must remain vigilant
and this distant light is our only consolation—
this imperiled flame, which from the beginning
has been flickering,
in danger of going out.
Come to me, closer and closer.
I don't want to be able to tell my hand from yours.
And let's stay awake, lest the snow smother us.

Walid Khazindar was born in 1950 in Gaza City. He is considered one of the best Palestinian poets; his poetry has been said to be "characterized by metaphoric originality and a novel thematic approach unprecedented in Arabic poetry." He was awarded the first Palestine Prize for Poetry in 1997.



Excerpt from “Speech of the Red Indian”
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Let's give the earth sufficient time to recite
the whole truth ...
The whole truth about us.
The whole truth about you.

In tombs you build
the dead lie sleeping.
Over bridges you *****
file the newly slain.

There are spirits who light up the night like fireflies.
There are spirits who come at dawn to sip tea with you,
as peaceful as the day your guns mowed them down.

O, you who are guests in our land,
please leave a few chairs empty
for your hosts to sit and ponder
the conditions for peace
in your treaty with the dead.



Existence
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In my solitary life, I was a lost question;
in the encompassing darkness,
my answer lay concealed.

You were a bright new star
revealed by fate,
radiating light from the fathomless darkness.

The other stars rotated around you
—once, twice —
until I perceived
your unique radiance.

Then the bleak blackness broke
and in the twin tremors
of our entwined hands
I had found my missing answer.

Oh you! Oh you intimate, yet distant!
Don't you remember the coalescence
Of our spirits in the flames?
Of my universe with yours?
Of the two poets?
Despite our great distance,
Existence unites us.



Nothing Remains
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tonight, we’re together,
but tomorrow you'll be hidden from me again,
thanks to life’s cruelty.

The seas will separate us ...
Oh!—Oh!—If I could only see you!
But I'll never know ...
where your steps led you,
which routes you took,
or to what unknown destinations
your feet were compelled.

You will depart and the thief of hearts,
the denier of beauty,
will rob us of all that's dear to us,
will steal our happiness,
leaving our hands empty.

Tomorrow at dawn you'll vanish like a phantom,
dissipating into a delicate mist
dissolving quickly in the summer sun.

Your scent—your scent!—contains the essence of life,
filling my heart
as the earth absorbs the lifegiving rain.

I will miss you like the fragrance of trees
when you leave tomorrow,
and nothing remains.

Just as everything beautiful and all that's dear to us
is lost—lost!—when nothing remains.



Identity Card
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Record!
I am an Arab!
And my identity card is number fifty thousand.
I have eight children;
the ninth arrives this autumn.
Will you be furious?

Record!
I am an Arab!
Employed at the quarry,
I have eight children.
I provide them with bread,
clothes and books
from the bare rocks.
I do not supplicate charity at your gates,
nor do I demean myself at your chambers' doors.
Will you be furious?

Record!
I am an Arab!
I have a name without a title.
I am patient in a country
where people are easily enraged.
My roots
were established long before the onset of time,
before the unfolding of the flora and fauna,
before the pines and the olive trees,
before the first grass grew.
My father descended from plowmen,
not from the privileged classes.
My grandfather was a lowly farmer
neither well-bred, nor well-born!
Still, they taught me the pride of the sun
before teaching me how to read;
now my house is a watchman's hut
made of branches and cane.
Are you satisfied with my status?
I have a name, but no title!

Record!
I am an Arab!
You have stolen my ancestors' orchards
and the land I cultivated
along with my children.
You left us nothing
but these bare rocks.
Now will the State claim them
as it has been declared?

Therefore!
Record on the first page:
I do not hate people
nor do I encroach,
but if I become hungry
I will feast on the usurper's flesh!
Beware!
Beware my hunger
and my anger!

NOTE: Darwish was married twice, but had no children. In the poem above, he is apparently speaking for his people, not for himself personally.



Passport
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

They left me unrecognizable in the shadows
that bled all colors from this passport.
To them, my wounds were novelties—
curious photos for tourists to collect.
They failed to recognize me. No, don't leave
the palm of my hand bereft of sun
when all the trees recognize me
and every song of the rain honors me.
Don't set a wan moon over me!

All the birds that flocked to my welcoming wave
as far as the distant airport gates,
all the wheatfields,
all the prisons,
all the albescent tombstones,
all the barbwired boundaries,
all the fluttering handkerchiefs,
all the eyes—
they all accompanied me.
But they were stricken from my passport
shredding my identity!

How was I stripped of my name and identity
on soil I tended with my own hands?
Today, Job's lamentations
re-filled the heavens:
Don't make an example of me, not again!
Prophets! Gentlemen!—
Don't require the trees to name themselves!
Don't ask the valleys who mothered them!
My forehead glistens with lancing light.
From my hand the riverwater springs.
My identity can be found in my people's hearts,
so invalidate this passport!



Autumn Conundrum
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers and children of Gaza

It's not that every leaf must finally fall,
it's just that we can never catch them all.



Piercing the Shell

for the mothers and children of Gaza

If we strip away all the accouterments of war,
perhaps we'll discover what the heart is for.



Children of Gaza Lyrics

(adapted in places to the music by Michael R. Burch and Eduard de Boer)

World premiere, April 22, 2017, in the Oosterkerk in the Dutch town of Hoorn. Dima Bawab, soprano; Eduard de Boer, piano.

I. Prologue:

Where does the Butterfly go?
I'd love to sing about things of beauty,
like a butterfly, fluttering amid flowers,
but I can't, I can't …

Where does the butterfly go
when lightning rails
when thunder howls
when hailstones scream
while winter scowls
and nights compound dark frosts with snow,
where does the butterfly go?

Where does the rose hide its bloom
when night descends oblique and chill
beyond the power of moonlight to fill?
When the only relief's a banked fire's glow,
where does the butterfly go?

Where does the butterfly go
when mothers cry
while children die
and politicians lie, politicians lie?

When the darkness of grief blots out all that we know:
when love and life are running low,
where does the butterfly go?

And how shall the spirit take wing
when life is harsh, too harsh to face,
and hope is flown without a trace?

Oh, when the light of life runs low,
where does the butterfly go,
where does the butterfly go?

II. The Raid

When the soldiers came to our house,
I was quiet, quiet as a mouse…

But when they beat down our door with a battering ram,
and I heard their machine guns go "Blam! Blam! Blam!"
I ran! I ran! I ran!

First I ran to the cupboard and crept inside;
then I fled to my bed and crawled under, to hide.

I could hear my mother shushing my sister…
How I hoped and prayed that the bullets missed her!
My sister! My sister! My sister!

Then I ran next door, to my uncle's house,
still quiet, quiet as a mouse...

Young as I am,
I did understand
that they had come to take our land!
Our land! Our land! Our land!
They've come to take our land!

They shot my father, they shot my mother,
they shot my dear sister, and my big brother!
They shot down my hopes, they shot down my dreams!
I still hear their screams! Their screams! Their screams!

Now I am here: small, and sad, and still ...
no mother, no father, no family, no will.

They took everything I ever had.
Now how can I live, with no mom and no dad?
How can I live, with no mom and no dad?
How can I live? How can I live?

III. For God’s Sake, I'm only a Child

For God’s sake, ah, for God's sake, I’m only a child―
and all you’ve allowed me to learn are these tears scalding my cheeks,
this ache in my gut at the sight of so many corpses, so much horrifying blood!

For God’s sake, I’m only a child―
you talk about your need for “security,”
but what about my right to play in streets
not piled with dead bodies still smoking with white phosphorous!

Ah, for God’s sake, I’m only a child―
for me there's no beauty in the world
and peace has become an impossible dream;
destruction is all I know because of your deceptions.

For God’s sake, I’m only a child―
fear and terror surround me stealing my breath
as I lie shaking like a windblown leaf.

For God’s sake, for God's sake, I'm only a child,
I'm only a child, I'm only a child.

IV. King of the World

If I were King of the World,
I would make every child free, for my people’s sake.
And once I had freed them, they’d all run and scream
straight to my palace, for free ice cream!
[Directly to the audience, spoken:]
Why are you laughing? Can’t a young king dream?

If I were King of the World, I would banish
hatred and war, and make mean men vanish.
Then, in their place, I’d bring in a circus
with lions and tigers (but they’d never hurt us!)

If I were King of the World, I would teach
the preachers to always do as they preach;
and so they could practice being of good cheer,
we’d have Christmas ―and sweets―each day of the year!

[Directly to the audience, spoken:]
Why are you laughing? Some dreams do appear!

If I were King of the World, I would send
my couns'lors of peace to the wide world’s end ...
[spoken:] But all this hard dreaming is making me thirsty!
I proclaim lemonade; please [spoken] bring it in a hurry!

If I were King of the World, I would fire
racists and bigots, with their message so dire.
And we wouldn’t build walls, to shut people out.
I would build amusement parks, have no doubt!

If I were King of the World, I would make
every child blessed, for my people’s sake,
and every child safe, and every child free,
and every child happy, especially me!
[Directly to the audience, spoken:]
Why are you laughing? Appoint me and see!

V. Mother’s Smile

There never was a fonder smile
than mother's smile, no softer touch
than mother's touch. So sleep awhile
and know she loves you more than "much".

So more than "much", much more than "all".
Though tender words, these do not speak
of love at all, nor how we fall
and mother's there, nor how we reach
from nightmares in the ticking night
and she is there to hold us tight.

There never was a stronger back
than father's back, that held our weight
and lifted us, when we were small,
and bore us till we reached the gate,
then held our hands that first bright mile
till we could run, and did, and flew.
But, oh, a mother's tender smile
will leap and follow after you ...

VI. In the Shelter

Mother:
Hush my darling, please don’t cry.
The bombs will stop dropping, by and by.
Hush, I'll sing you a lullaby…

Child:
Mama, I know that I’m safe in your arms.
Your sweet love protects me from all harms,
but still I fear the sirens’ alarms!

Mother:
Hush now my darling, don’t say a word.
My love will protect you, whatever you heard.
Hush now…

Child:
But what about pappa, you loved him too.

Mother: My love will protect you.
My love will protect you!

Child:
I know that you love me, but pappa is gone!

Mother:
Your pappa’s in heaven, where nothing goes wrong.
Come, rest at my breast and I’ll sing you a song.

Child:
But pappa was strong, and now he’s not here.

Mother:
He’s where he must be, and yet ever-near.
Now we both must be strong; there's nothing to fear.

Child:
The bombs are still falling! Will this night never end?

Mother:
The deep darkness hides us; the night is our friend.
Hush, I'll sing you a lullaby.

Child:
Yes, mama, I'm sure you are right.
We will be safe under cover of night.
[spoken] But what is that sound?
[screamed] Mama! I am fri(ghtened)….!

VII. Frail Envelope of Flesh

Frail envelope of flesh,
lying on the surgeon's table
with anguished eyes like your mother's eyes
and a heartbeat weak, unstable…

Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this―
your tiny hand in your mother's hand
for a last bewildered kiss…

Brief mayfly of a child,
to live five artless years…
Now your mother's lips seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears…

VIII. Among the Angels

Child:
There is peace where I am now,
I reside in a heavenly land
that rests safe in the palm
of a loving Being’s hand;
where the butterfly finds shelter
and the white dove glides to rest
in the bright and shining sands
of those shores all men call Blessed.

Mother:
My darling, how I long to touch your face,
to see your smile, to hear your laughter’s grace.
Great Allah, hear my plea.
Return my child to me.

Child:
My darling mother, here beyond the stars
where I now live,
I see and feel your tears,
but here is peace and joy, and no more pain.
Here is where I will remain.

Mother:
My darling, do not leave me here alone!
Come back to me!
Why did you turn to stone?
Great Allah, hear my plea.
Please send my child back to me...

Child:
Dear mother, to your wonderful love I bow.
But I can't return...
I am among the Angels now.
Do not worry about me.
Here is where I long to be.

Mother:
My darling, it is as if I hear your voice consoling me.
Oh, can this be your choice?
Great Allah, hear my plea.
Impart wisdom to me.

Child:
Dear mother, I was born of your great love,
a gentle spirit...
I died a slaughtered dove,
that I might bring this message from the stars:
it is time to end earth’s wars.

Remember―in both Bible and Koran
how many times each precious word is used―
“Mercy. Compassion. Justice.”
Let each man, each woman live by the Law
that rules both below and above:
reject all hate and embrace Love.

IX. Epilogue: I have a dream

I have a dream...
that one day all the world
will see me as I am:
a small child, lonely and afraid,
a small child, lonely and afraid.

Look at me... I am flesh...
I laugh, I bleed, I cry.
Look at me; I dare you
to look me in the eye
and tell me and my mother
how I deserve to die.

I only ask to live
in a world where things are fair;
I only ask for love
in a world where people share,
I only ask for love
in a world where people share.

Oh, I have a dream...
that one day all the world
will see me as I am:
a small child, lonely and afraid,
a small child, lonely and afraid.



hey pete
by Michael R. Burch

for Pete Rose

hey pete,
it's baseball season
and the sun ascends the sky,
encouraging a schoolboy's dreams
of winter whizzing by;
go out, go out and catch it,
put it in a jar,
set it on a shelf
and then you'll be a Superstar.

When I was a boy, Pete Rose was my favorite baseball player; this poem is not a slam at him, but rather an ironic jab at the term "superstar."



Reflections on the Loss of Vision
by Michael R. Burch

The sparrow that cries from the shelter of an ancient oak tree and the squirrels
that dash in delight through the treetops as the first snow glistens and swirls,
remind me so much of my childhood and how the world seemed to me then,
that it seems if I tried
and just closed my eyes,
I could once again be nine or ten.

The rabbits that hide in the bushes where the snowflakes collect as they fall,
hunch there, I know, in the flurrying snow, yet now I can't see them at all.
For time slowly weakened my vision; while the patterns seem almost as clear,
some things that I saw
when I was a boy,
are lost to me now in my advancing years.

The chipmunk who seeks out his burrow and the geese in their unseen reprieve
are there as they were, and yet they are not; and though it seems childish to grieve,
who would condemn a blind man for bemoaning the vision he lost?
Well, in a small way,
through the passage of days,
I have learned some of his loss.

As a keen-eyed young lad I endeavored to see things most adults could not―
the camouflaged nests of the hoot owls, the woodpecker’s favorite haunts.
But now I no longer can find them, nor understand how I once could,
and it seems such a waste
of those far-sighted days,
to end up near blind in this wood.



Solicitation
by Michael R. Burch

He comes to me out of the shadows, acknowledging
my presence with a tip of his hat, always the gentleman,
and his eyes are on my eyes like a snake’s on a bird’s—
quizzical, mesmerizing.

He ***** his head as though something he heard intrigues him
(although I hear nothing) and he smiles, amusing himself at my expense;
his words are full of desire and loathing, and although I hear,
he says nothing that I understand.

The moon shines—maniacal, queer—as he takes my hand and whispers
"Our time has come!" ... and so we stroll together along the docks
where the sea sends things that wriggle and crawl
scurrying under rocks and boards.

Moonlight in great floods washes his pale face as he stares unseeing
into my eyes. He sighs, and the sound crawls slithering down my spine,
and my blood seems to pause at his touch as he caresses my face.
He unfastens my dress till the white lace shows, and my neck is bared.

His teeth are long, yellow and hard. His face is bearded and haggard.
A wolf howls in the distance. There are no wolves in New York. I gasp.
My blood is a trickle his wet tongue embraces. My heart races madly.
He likes it like that.

Published by Dowton Abbey, Aesthetically Pleasing Vampires, Into the Unknown, Since Halloween is Coming, and Poetry Life & Times



Songstress
by Michael R. Burch

for Nadia Anjuman

Within its starkwhite ribcage, how the heart
must flutter wildly, O, and always sing
against the pressing darkness: all it knows
until at last it feels the numbing sting
of death. Then life's brief vision swiftly passes,
imposing night on one who clearly saw.
Death held your bright heart tightly, till its maw–
envenomed, fanged–could swallow, whole, your Awe.
And yet it was not death so much as you
who sealed your doom; you could not help but sing
and not be silenced. Here, behold your tomb's
white alabaster cage: pale, wretched thing!
But you'll not be imprisoned here, wise wren!
Your words soar free; rise, sing, fly, live again.

A poet like Nadia Anjuman can be likened to a caged bird, deprived of flight, who somehow finds it within herself to sing of love and beauty. But when the world robs her of both flight and song, what is left for her but to leave, bereaving it and us of herself and her song?



Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace,
you climb, skittish kite . . .

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast  solitariness  there,
so that all that remains is to
fall?

Only a little longer the wind invests its sighs;
you
stall,
spread-eagled, as the canvas snaps
and *****
its white rebellious wings,
and all
the houses watch with baffled eyes.

Published by Poetry Porch and The Chained Muse



To the boy Elis
by Georg Trakl
translation by Michael R. Burch

Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest,
it announces your downfall.
Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness.

Your brow sweats blood
recalling ancient myths
and dark interpretations of birds' flight.

Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls;
the ripe purple grapes hang suspended
as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness.

A thornbush crackles;
where now are your moonlike eyes?
How long, oh Elis, have you been dead?

A monk dips waxed fingers
into your body's hyacinth;
Our silence is a black abyss

from which sometimes a docile animal emerges
slowly lowering its heavy lids.
A black dew drips from your temples:

the lost gold of vanished stars.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive ****** sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing and perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem.



Published as the collection "Of Tetley's and V-2's"

why would i go to a *******,
                                             if i had the chance to go
   to a brothel?
it's a question that suggests both a barber shop
       and a ballet...
   do my hair-do on twinkle toes...
          and a cheeky pirouette donning a mullet...
                               **** the tease fetish....
  let's get into the nitty-gritty of eating your *** out.
that's probably the first and last reason i will never
set foot in america... the ****** tease of
                              what used to be brothels...
but are now ****** ballet excuses...
                             and it's like:
   oh they're not slaves, i paid them,
            they charge an extra tenner if you want
to eat their ***** out... this weird **** they do...
they cream up: and you're off! piston maniac....
                        fudge! fudge! fudge!
                                                      plop­'s a daisy!
i don't know how the brothel devolved into
a strip bar...  
                                  don't know, don't ask me,
but if they are *** slaves... then i'm a slave to my own
libido...
                          and that's way more harsh
taking to moulding those dough cheeks of a buttocks
into scones... let me tell you.
    moaning scones... groaning scones...
                   angry scones...
                                               tickled crumpets...
oh i can be a pornographer... for sure,
     there's nothing as easy as writing pornoraphy
having watched enough to the point of: boredom....
so bored, that you end up writing about it;
   a bit like the case of wearing two pairs of sunglasses...
****! my eyes are watering!
              i'm crying hot tears!
                                  either that, or i'm laughing!
what's the point of strip bars, in all honesty?
                  i'd ******* in the national gallery to some
renaissance masterpiece... or fiddle with some marble
****** sooner than... go to a place where
you're merely teased?
                          what sort of sadistic ****** would
go to such a place?
                       you want to go to a place wherer
once you *******, you jump into a bath and have
a cold shower, and she's on the bed mastrubating...
    because you're saying: honey... you're hot as ****...
and she's like: watch my hand do ping-pong
       with my ***** with you taking a cold shower
       gasping for air... to make similis... parallel
comparisons.
             i just don't know why bulgarian prostitutes
fake being romanian...
           some people do know the word: harasho /
dobrze / o.k. / and it's spelled in cyrillic as:
                    'АРАШО
                            ' = i don't actually know what letter
to utilise in engaging with the romanic equivalent
of the cyrillic                 ha ah         ha....
    it's almost as if the cyrillic patriarchs knew no
humour, or for that matter... ever laughed.
               **** are bulgar women worthy of
a harvard stipend in terms of looks and other
delicacies of their body... they just exfoliate like
                                      morning dew in april...
i just don't understand why they lie about being
romanian...                       but back to the comparison...
what's the difference between a ******* and a brothel?
the former hosts perverts...
                                   the latter hosts plumbers...
hot enough? i said are you moist enough?
                  why would you go to a place where
you watch... but can't touch?
                                or can touch... but in such a way
as to be the equivalent of stroking a dog's head?
     what's the point of teasing the man's stratrum
of "supposed" superiority?
      that throbbing hard-on... is it really going to help you?
i'd find more point in throwing coconuts:
                                aiming at a giraffe's head.

(not a poem i guess but eh)


–

Space keeps falling to the sides. I try to concentrate, - I mean, I make a token effort every now and again,- but concentration, fixation is always in terms of something external, something I'm not sure I can deal with.  I roll over and go back to sleep.

–

'Where's the flour?'
'Where you left it.'
'Which is where?'
'On the table. What you want it for anyway?'
'Which table?'
'Haha. The generic maple with the ugly-*** spandrels. What are you making?'
'You think we could afford that? Nah, it's like, faux-pine or some ****. And like muffins.'
'Oh good, there's banan's that need using up'
'No no, like, other muffins. Crumpets and such. Got any golden syrup?'
'I think there's some maple.'
'No, it's like, ply, I swear.'

–

I haven't moved in days. I need to. He'll come eventually and I don't want him to see me like this. Plus, I need to locate that smell. I can't have guests over with it here. I'm just not sure where it is though. I  feel like it's on my left arm when I’m in the middle of the room, but off to the right everywhere else. It's.. acerbic, but fermenting, like vegetables on the onset of rot but not quite there yet. Not that I know; I haven't moved in days. I don't want to smell it again. Also garlic, definitely garlic.

–

We visited the inland sea the other day. The hundred years since last time hadn't changed it one bit. The beached clay was brittle under the midday sun, and the cracking footsteps fragmented it into a hundred hexagons.
               'I hear a strain of the pathogen is airborne. It's only a matter of time now'
A group of tourists park up by the shore. A child holds out their arms and runs in small circles.

–

The corridor keeps flashing. And maybe spinning. It's hard to tell, the colour change starts at a different point each time and there's no discernible rhythm to it. You keep pacing up and down. I feel self conscious that you want to leave, but then again, you did show up unannounced. You shake the snowglobe disinterestedly. The fragments burn like molten static.
'Stop that. I feel like I’m vomiting spiders.'
'You're being dramatic.'
'None the less.'
'Don't worry; you'll get through it. The world is transitioning, and this is just motion sickness.'
'I know that, I didn't say I was worried, I said I wanted it to stop.'

'sorry'

–

We'd always go for a walk at night if we felt we needed to talk. It was an unwritten rule. The veil of amber filter let our more timid thoughts breath in the nebulous darkness. Stark daylight was always too suffocatingly real, and that was the one thing we were never allowed to be; real. You'd always talk superficially if we discussed personal matters. That day you did a one-third spin clockwise and faced my side, and talked grandeloquently, hammed up like on a stage. You gave an embarrassed smile and blew a kiss for the invisible audience. I always felt jealous of those nothings, those non-existent beings, that got to figure into your world.

–

'Christ it's warm today. I can't think.'
'so don't bother.'
I spin in the chair. Whooosh. Whooosh.

–

It's the end of a 6 hour shift. A customer, a mother in her odd thirties, was angry that a sale item was out of stock, like sale items always are: She'd only gone out of her way to shop at this store because of the advertised deal, and we had taken time out of her busy schedule under false pretence. Her child stared at the ground intensely, his eyes watering. I tried to imagine the situation through his eyes, to try and ground myself; to remain both present, but stable. She insisted on speaking to the manager. It's a relief really; He's a skeevy ****, but he at least knows when the customers are just there to start ****, and responds accordingly. He comes over, asks what the problem is. It turns out I entered the code wrong and the item was still available after all. He gets one from out the back, handles the transaction, says have a nice day and apologises for me and everything, and I just stand there blankly; I’d had the graveyard shift the night before and honestly I’m beyond feeling right now, but when she mutters 'dumb *****' as she turns away a tight feeling still twists in my gut anyway.
I come home and leave the door hanging open framed in the setting sun and just drop my bags in the hallway. You're in the kitchen, hunched over a workbench eating out of a mug.
'Whatcha having?'
'Cornflakes.'
'….Cornflakes?'
'Yep.' you pivot as I approach. 'corn..flakes.' you hold out the packet.
'coooornfllllakkkkkkkeeeessssss' I start laughing.
'coooornfllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaakes'
we chorus the term in groaning monotone, and I grab the packet out your hand and throw it down and violently stomp it into the ground with every non-energy I have left. You just laugh and egg me on, repeating 'cornflakes! Cornflakes!' in crescendo, ostinato. The satisfaction of each crunch gives me the drive to smash them further, and corn dust spills out of the pulverised cardboard and gets everywhere. In the end I’m panting, my face is a mess of tears, and I collapse over onto it and just roll, bathing in the glorious fragments of reconstituted mulch.

–

'They say another ice age is coming.'
'They also say we'll be swallowed by the sun'
'well, it's true.'
'Yeah, but which'll happen first? I need to know to dress accordingly.'
'Tunnel's up ahead'
'I know, I see it.'
I deliberately swerve to the side and speed up, changing back at the last moment.
'You know I hate it when you do that.'
'What, don't you wanna die together with me? Here and now? Immortalised, as if our existences actually meant something?'
'like Diana and the nameless chauffeur?'
'******* exactly.'
We step out onto the hill, frozen **** tufts breaking underfoot. It's cold as hell but the skies glittering. You get out the telescope you borrowed off your rich *** sister.
'I think that's Jupiter over there.'
'Pfft, Jupiter.'
'What?'
'What's the blankest space you can find?'
'Hmm.. that way?'
You point it in that direction. 'Look'
I stare into it, but it's hard to keep focus while shaking from the cold. You keep adjusting and asking ,’See anything?', eventually some hazy distortion comes into view.
'See, no matter where you look, there's always something there.' You're trying to sound eloquent. 'Even when it seems like you're drowning in nothing.'
I stand back. 'That's terrifying. I feel sick.' I try to breathe but it's shaky and shallow. I stare into the ground, but I can still feel it; the blaze of the myriad innumerable heavens burn into me. Their judging gaze pierces through me and tears me to shreds.  

–

'You know, I think I read that Spinoza thought that consciousness is manifest in the ability of finite beings to continue persisting in and of their own will over time.'
'Doesn't that make a toaster more conscious than us?'
'Yeah, you don't say.'

–

We were twelve and at the department store. It was strange. I'd never taken the bus by myself to just hang out in town before. I always feel disorientated and light-headed in crowds so it had a strangeness; waves of apprehension cushioned by the homogeneity of it. one can be truly alone in a crowd; floating in a sea of otherness, where each gaze is no longer a signification of anything, but a warm static. We were among the aisles of a department store, in the toys and tacky house ornament section. Like, the junk you buy children and grandparents for their birthday. **** that you'd only attribute to people whom have no discernible qualities of their own. We were looking at snow globes. We kept trying to shake them violently enough so that the scene framed within would become entirely lost to the fog; it always felt so disappointing when clarity returned and things re-became what they were. I remember saying, 'I wonder if it tastes like real snow', I don't remember, It was stupid, I don't know why I said it, it sounded cool in my head. But you responded, that I remember, by taking the thing and smashing it against the concrete floor, and pouring out all the fragments into our hands. We tried them together and coughed and choked in laugher. It tasted awful, entirely unsurprisingly. On a rush you stuck one in your pocket, grabbed my hand, and we promptly left the store, and my heart was palpitating, it felt like all the rules, all the natural laws that had prefigured my world were crumbling, and I was terrified, trapped in the gaze of my mothers look of disappointment when we'd be inevitably caught, somehow watching me from its potential future, and I'd no longer be allowed to visit you but it was okay because I was here with you now in this moment and we were alone in this faceless mechanical place crumbling around us, and when we left, and no sirens buzzed, I felt sick with excitement at the unbounded possibility present in everything in every second. I cringe thinking back on it, and feel ashamed at finding such meaning, feeling such unabashed wholesale virtue in indiscriminate destruction, but sometimes, sometimes I still shake that snowglobe as hard as I can, till everything determinate is lost in haze, and I still feel a wave of comfort wash over me.

–

‘We’ve been walking for ages. you know where we’re going, right?’
‘It’s just up ahead. I swear’
‘You swear?’

‘I mean, I’ve only been there once before myself.’
‘****. This way?’
‘Wait-‘
‘What?’
‘Huh. Nothing. Sorry, I thought I heard a car coming.’
…
…
‘I think that’s the ocean?’
‘But.. aren’t we heading inland?’
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah, I swear.’

–

We're in your room. Your reading on your bed and I'm in the swivelly chair by the desk, pretending to work, but really we're just chatting, talking about.. something. Whatever. It was probably stupid, laughing at our own jokes, as always, catchphrases repeated till they loose all meaning. It's been a long day and honestly we're both too tired for coherence by this point, but the lack of effort lends the air an easy comfortability. But then suddenly.. Suddenly you stare into my eyes as if you're looking at me and it's somehow different, an intense gaze that I can't escape, as if you somehow found something located there, something fixed in those abyssal pupils. The feeling is overwhelming and terrifying. I am grounded, ripped into the prison of being and frozen static like a dumb animal transfixed in headlights: I am outside myself facing in, and I’m falling away. I pull you in and kiss you to escape; now, it is your touch that is fixed, your smell, your taste, and I breath a sigh of reprieve. You hold my back as I fall into you. I lace my fingers through the buttons in your shirt and feel the faint pulse of your flickering heartbeat. At once an ever-changing epiphenomena, and a calming rhythmic certainty. I vacantly tug at the buttons and your expression changes, gone is the feeling of suffocating questioning, but one of transfixed observation. Your touch is not a reaching out into something, but a continuation of yourself; I am an instrument of your lust, an extension. Holding me in your arm, you nervously run your hand down from my nape and trace my bra from the strap over the line of my breast. The lightness of your touch is a painful tickling and I push myself into you further, my thighs wrapping around yours. Your touch shoots a burning into me, not painful, but like glowing kindling, or the warmth of a blanket; an immanence, a retreat. I let my mind go blank and we continue; you fumble with my bra as I fumble with your belt. We're both shaking but too far gone to notice, too distant to care. The dry freeze of the night air contrasts your damp heat. You clasp me as you trace your hand under my skirt and I feel your arm brush my thigh. I tremble slightly at the sharp coldness of the damp cotton coming unstuck. After a stretching moment of awkward liminality, I feel you pass into me. It's a burning smoothness, distilled liquor. The rubber is an alien feeling, and for some reason I imagine myself as a giant balloon; a malleable featureless surface, filled with emptiness. I feel myself through the threshold of your presence and I am afraid; I am a boundary which encompasses nothing, and by your passing through I fear that I will be pierced; I will burst and out will flow an obsidian wind that will wither you to nothing, but it will keep coming, an endless torrent that will subsume the world and turn everything to desert, and the only way to save you is to keep it bound up as tight as I possibly can till my heart feels like burning metal, and I feel my tears land on my hand tightly clasping your shoulder. You ask through wavering breaths if I want to stop, but I shake my head; if you left now I would be caught and torn open; no, instead I subsume your undulations into myself; till the rhythm is as oceanic noise; a surface rolling located miles above a lightless motionless centre.

–

The pale green lamplight flickers. A nausea, tepid, but understated. The sentience of moss; an almost motionless drone, but the sense of unfolding. The corridor seems larger than it once was. Blank reflections harrowing accusations, mechanically indifferent but piercing; an alarm clocks wail. I lie still, I lie still. The buzzing repeats. I lie still. I am flowing, seeping through floorboards into the pores of the earth, into colonies of worms and I am lost and free, a motion, a multiplicity, pure form without the anxious drudgery of parts; pure alimentary canal, pure Elysium absolution. The flickering quickens and gets brighter. A pulsating light, a strobe, a beat frequency wavering behind vision. The liquid earth, saturated by light, hardens and dissolves. And 'I' am lost among the ruins, a vague memory of a sentiment. A nostalgic grief, an asphyxiated longing. I reach out to you desperately in the drag of the undertow, but you are the chalk of faded bones; cast to the winds centuries prior. A thousand years pass of blanket darkness, and a unitary bell rings. The flotsam batters against the temple gates. Debris collects in cracks, and my pieces are among them. I cling to retention, and return. I am cold sweat outlining the floorboards, the feeling of clenching before vomiting, repeated endlessly.

–

A few weeks after, turning off an avenue onto the main road, I see you. You're crossing, coming this way. It was bound to happen eventually. I bite back the moisture forming in my eyes and try to remain faceless. You suddenly change your trajectory, and hit the side of a car. It honks at you and you dodge around it. I allow a bitter smile to myself; the fact I can cause you such disorientating discomfit indicates I still mean something to you. Even if it's just a discomforting anxiousness, something beyond the boundary to be avoided, I have causal powers, extension; I can see my flicker of presence in you even now, even if I cannot for the life of me find it within myself. You run around and I walk straight. It's empowering; I can remain fixed, even if the torrent of the world flows around me. At that moment, I feel the indubitable strength to persevere. I am stronger than this world; I am stronger than you. But then, just as suddenly, the feeling folds upon itself and is gone. I felt solidified, just now, by the fact that I was the one that remained in this random encounter. I won, you lost. but Won how? With the ability to pretend that I can exist alone, in a world that means nothing to me? The ability to maintain a solid spectral façade, when underneath, scratching away under the skin, I contain nothing? To continue terrifies me. Knowing that I have the strength to continue terrifies me. That last thing I ever intended was to outlive you. I feel the world drain away from me, and yet I remain, left standing, alone, in a of realm of perpetual nothing.  

–

I feel sick

a hundred years pass in the cavity of the desert. Merchants make trade off raided materials and makeshift weapons. A library is burned. A soldier, wanders freely. An insect buzzes around his face. He darts about the place in annoyance, but it remains. He can't shake it. He closes his eyes. It's still there

I feel sick

the sun burns bright arrhythmic  clicking.  A late twenties couple go clothes shopping, however the child is hungry and will have none of it. Lunch is suggested. They are jocular about the decision, but feel an uneasiness about the indulgence. The air is saturated and dries

Come join the unraveling circus
quite soon to be passing our way,
with the clowns in a clamor to twerk us -
line up as they lead us astray!

Arriving, the elephant trumpets
agendas of aberrant acts
while the donkeys drool, dunking their crumpets
and twirlers spin, twisting the facts.

The big top’s now open to breezes,
so pundits soar spreading their wings
to convince us to tread the trapezes,
for it's they who'll be pulling the strings.

The merry-go-round’s so amazing
(black horses bound, chasing the cart)
as the brass ring of change wanders wildly
till stealing straight back to the start.

The moldy old model of Ptolemy
(at the hub of this three ring domain)
mixes marvels of magic with alchemy
in the bowels of the mastodon’s brain.

Neglecting the gulls who’ll be eating
stale crumbs that have dropped from the plate,
the vain vulture of virtue’s oft tweeting  
of Circus Land once again great.

The tamer, adorned in fine trumpery
(pate garnished with fiery mane)
has endeavored to wall the ring's boundary,
keep millipede migrants in rein.

The dwarves and their antics are funny
while juggling to balance the books,
so the titans laugh, grappling the money
extracted by hook or by crooks.

The sideshows provide a composite
of fails of the frizzed billionaire,
some disclosing the bones in his closet
caught clutched in the arms of the bear.
    
From towers the trumpet is blowing
fake messages, fetid but full,
but as long as the cattle keep lowing,
he’ll hasten to serve them the bull.

The masses, persuaded to follow,
float foolishly into the fog
overwhelmed by the vapors they swallow,
choked up like the ruff-collared dog.

The snap of the whip as it whooshes
maintains the domains of the dupes
so the cats won’t escape to the bushes,
refusing to hop through the hoops.

With the promise to call out the cavalry,
the hearts of the crowds beat athrob
for in spite of their struggles and rivalry
the Don’s still controlling the mob.

Humbled Empress on *******’s hilarious,
parading her ***** and mules,
with her fabulous tales (mostly spurious)
wagging only the naive and fools.

Mounting ponies in circles, she rode 'em
through lobbies where influence crawls
with her claws clinging tight to the totem
while seals on the banks balanced *****.

Yes, the pack’s still pre-paid by the PAC men,
some wolfing their ways through the maze,
while fey fables are hawked by the packmen
who canvass our eyes with a glaze.

The pretender defender of females
is actu'ly one of the hawks;
secrets hidden in spills of her re-mails
means pillory, stuck in the stocks.

The swine in the central arenas
(immersed in the fat of the throne)
begin dancing like wee ballerinas
’fore pitching the proles a bare bone.

Jesters Cruzo and Bozo, while boozin'
(dealt cards which were ******* by the ****),
ruled “not winning the hand would be losin’
and need for an armed Minuteman.”

Well the ray gun's still loaded and toted
(the gall’ry forbidding all bans)
and the NRA gang’s become bloated
shooting **** in the face of the fans.

One day when the mad house has folded
and sawdust’s been wafted aside,
Human Race will be racing, remolded,
surmounting life’s hurdles in stride.

Clementine deleted Joel
from her mind. Joel tried to
forget her; he couldn't, so
he got rid of her too. You
try, I know, to get rid of me. I
try, you know, to pretend that
the world isn't spinning so fast
in the hope
that we will fall of its spinning-top edge
and stumble, clumsily, gracelessly, into
each other. We're spinning so fast with it-
the world- so this is unlikely, so we both
pretend that it's an accident when we fall
into each other,
again and again, as
We play spin the bottle while
The world spins instead.
Suddenly.
Now that that same world has stilled itself for
us: we don't know what to do without its
rotationary madness angling us
towards old age and crumpets (together?). That
same world has stilled itself until
tomorrow when that same world will spill
itself out from day to night to day again
as we take our respective first drafts
of our poems written about each other
and

Edit.

out that same mad spin
that made us
us
just like
Joel and Clementine forgot-
on purpose. We forget, on purpose
with purpose
but,
we'll still meet each other in Montauk where
that same world will still itself
as we wrap our fingers around each other's
fingers
in the cold
where you might finally reciprocate
my lacklustre
confessions.

You too,
right?

To foreign lands I want to roam
Where Kings and Queens sit upon their throne
And big cats prowl, and wild dogs howl
And there's every kind of fowl
Where mighty elephants trumpet
And with tea they serve crumpets
I want to see the very old creations of man
I know I'd be their biggest fan
To walk the ground that Jesus tread
And feed the masses with seven loaves of bread
I would love to see the foreign sands
To get homesick and return to my home land

winter has crept from it's cathedral with it's blue loom of white sod
against black crows and over-coats. we awaken in our separate pause
and modify our crumpets with thin icing,
drizzled over moon faced scones -
as golden as your marmoset of port wine
and wrinkled wheels of cheese...
at a moment's notice.
you float through the open window where crescendo the crisp winds and the bacon fats
rendering in the musk of firewood, oaking the nose of the decanted day
the early hearth of heaven, now powder blushed and rustle thrum
with skylarks larking in the luminous icebox
of barely sunrise.
your eyes sparkle and my antlers score the aspen bark
on a lost acre of our thickening plot.

we love a lot.

Forgive me for the ink that strains your innocent purity with words I don't even understand.

Pick up your rubber and erase my right hand with swift flick of the wrist

and a gentle caress for you cannot forgive me for what I have done,

but I can.

Stone me. Cut off my hand and stone me.

Let the blood drip like my wasted children that come and go with each

waning moon,

as the only thing that grows within me is love.

Open up the gates of hell and toss me like Mary Madeline tossed him,

and let me burn; but God, you play with fire

as I will only burn for her so nail me to the cross with my convent robe

and watch her kiss my feet and continue up to the heavens.

You can forgive me for opening my legs but you cannot nail them

shut, and you cannot cleanse my **** with salt from your narcissistic

***** that seeps between thighs in an unconsented **** of fertility.

Eve may have eaten the fruit of they womb but you cannot throw me out

the garden of Eden and you cannot tell me not to love when my heart

smells her sweet flower.

Nor can you curse our open mouths for taking a taste.

Forgive me Lord,

for I do not know what I am saying, and only say the words and I shall be

healed.


Malevolent God, this finger is for you.

But benevolent God, you gave me hands so I can make her tea

when she is dreaming,

and you gave me a heart that will not stop beating at the sight of her

sneakers on the floor.

Her eyes are like crumpets, God.

They make my mouth wet and my lips moist

and cover me in cotton blankets, just like 1993 when icicles clung to the

rooftops like I cling to her waist when she is sighing.

You made the ocean just so I can see her in a bikini.

It does't matter if she covers the curves of her thighs in shorts,

or her soft ******* in a shirt.

The point is you tried, and my God did you craft something magnificent.

Forgive me God, as I did not believe you existed till the day she said

I love you.

I smiled like second grade when I found a muffin in my lunchbox

and I ate it like my life depended on it, as if I don't have her

I fear I might explode.

But unlike 2nd grade each day I open my lunchbox and I find her

next to my sandwiches.

You made us like peanut butter and jelly.

So forgive me Lord, but I refuse to believe that you

condemn

something so perfect

as this love.

Axel, who never had a rocking horse, once rode a bright blue tricycle. He called it his ‘Athenian Rhapsody’. He loved to play the tuba in bed, and when he was feeling particularly happy, would sit on the loo in the outside shed, pants around his ankles oompa-pa’ing till the cows came home.

That was quite a while ago; the tuba and the tricycle have gone, yet he can still hear the triangle sound the bell made on his tricycle, and still remembers the scraping of the old keys on the ancient tuba.

Axel listens to old sounds very well (all the time): he loves Bach, Mendelssohn and Donovan. He loves to eat crumpets with honey and drink a large white mug of milky tea; it reminds him of summer fishing trips to Lake Eucumbine, mushrooms and gnats in the full-sun morning air, (he loves to talk fishing when he’s playing chess with Carl the orderly, often quoting from his favourite magazine, ‘Modern Fly Fishing’).

Axel was once an expert at fly fishing; tying the ‘super moonshadow’ to perfection (he named the fly after what he thought was a Donovan song, written by Cat Stevens).

When the hospital staff remember to buy him a new box, Axel loves to drink Lady Grey tea made from tea bags, he prefers tea bags, he feels that somehow they bring clearer definition to tea making.

Axel thinks a lot about definition, noting how the edges of his bed are very clearly defined by the clean-blue hospital blankets that drop suddenly to the ocean of the grey linoleum floor. He likes the smell of cleanblue, it’s somehow a new sea to sail and sometimes the feel of his favourite jumper when he was a boy: a definite edge of beginning and end. He knows that soon he’ll cross the floor-grey ocean, sailing under a white sheet. But this is not a thing Axel dwells on for very long, he prefers to think of such things as his next chess move and flirting with Miriam the night nurse.

—

Axel has just beaten Carl in a game of chess. He’s said goodnight to Miriam, a long quiet goodnight, a good long, good night. He won’t wake again, he senses this  –  and is peaceful.

When his last breath comes he hears; a faint scraping sound and a single precious note from a triangle bell on a bright blue tricycle.

They’re good sounds.

They are old sounds.

They bring him…

I walk a tight rope through life
As I seek to find my true self

But I am sure this was not the plan
As I am far to frightened to look down
Although I really need to find my feet

Insecure legs are shaking
Jelly knees are wobbling
Pterodactlys, flying reptiles
Many headed monsters
circle the sky's above
As I fight with the world's
media and societies influences

So I close my eyes
Turn TVs off and
Throw my papers away
As I seek the center of me

The outside frizzles
While my soul sizzles
With a silent voice it speaks
As the worlds forces crumble

Butter on hot crumpets
My heart starts melting
As the physical is dissolving
And I stand still just balancing
Untouched by the world
As I find a harmony
In a sweet simplicity  

As I fall within the bounds
Of a renewed innocence
I feel myself shinning
In a white heat
I find myself connecting

And on the tight rope
To true self
I see a future
Far and wide stretching
In a heart that is vibrating
In the realms of true self

his own & this world's realities are like the fuzz in the States
they're ones to escape
that's a plan of attack that's, on the lines of a wraith
switch side of Jo[ɑ]hnathan Blaze, running up on his brain
like Donald the dung piece, today
he feels bold, so maybe there'll be, like abundance of cake
["bald"]
fortune coming his way; this one's a schmuck thing to say
["fortis fortuna adiuvat"/"fortune favors the bold"]
but this club reminds of Ukraine (what?)
he, like motorized cavalcades
from the next-door empire, invades
its territory causing, like unaccommodating controversial writer, a sla[ɛ]m
[Eminem & his "Unaccommodating" song]
as he shuts the door frame; obvi, sO̲me people may
find them bars offensive, like an armed aggression
so my apologies, I'm somewhat ashamed
mainstream house stuff is on play
a thought in his skull: "this is lame"
Michael S. straight after he turned around & stumbled on blamed
Toby F.; through the crowd he cuts like a blade
[the ending of the "Frame Toby" episode cold open from "The Office" series]
having hopped U̲p on the stage
as if it were a narcotic substance you've ta'en
he, so loud as if with his cullions in grave
nU̲t-wrenching pain, bawls: "THIS ****** *****!", like a brace
of thigh highs colored with stains of blood; yanderE̲[eɪ]
["*****"; "so[ɑ]cks"]
schoolgirl; disgruntled, he makes for the f#cking DJ
delivers a verbal punch in his face by the fo[ɑ]llowing phrase:
"boy, go house-sit with your confounded
boring house sh#t, just like a housewyf"
whereafter thrusts him away
ending the uproar with "ciao, drip!"
music-wise, it's gon' go hard as nuts in this place
as if a flock of ones who're deranged
["who're" is supposed to be read/pronounced as "whoor"]
swung by a club in the wake of a ****** **[ɑ]spital break (nuts in this place)
he puts on midtempo dark cyberpunky synthwave
Gesaffelsteinish mid-paced
type of music; that's what drives his crumpet insane
speaking of crumpets, he spots a buxomish babe
while nodding his ******* nut to this cray
music, he feels like a **** being aimed
at, for she stands with her sight, like one of a gun, fixed his way
for a few secs, at each other they gaze
she's quite a fox with her vibrant locks
reminding of flame; somebody call a fire brigade
hourglass-shaped & rigged out in tight pa[ɛ]nts & a blouse
with a U̲-neck, like a fella without
*****, & leaving her waist a bit out
["******"]
on display; he makes his way to this frau
salutates her with "ciao"
she greets him with just the same, then he mouths
the following: "babe, you're way like a house
for lodging that's nowhere to be found
that is, in the deep of a labyrinth"
she's like: "what in the void's name's this about?"
he replies: "I'ma translate that one now"
"the way you look's amazing, ten out
of ten", like that "KleanColor" skin bro[ɑ]nzer
["a maze inn"; "Tan Out Of Tan"]
she makes a soft smile, then replies: "ain't you nice, pal
when you lay your thoughts out?"
"not being nice would be a crime
when you face a fine gal
like you", - he replies
"if so, rejecting the company of a guy so gracious would count"
as a crime too", - she replies
the guy asks the gI̲rl if she
fa[ɛ]ncies this sound
her reply is affirmative
she says she, mostly, faves underground
kinds of music; they vibe
to these tunes being pU̲t on, just like
that loony gobshite the whole antifa community'd like
to see end up ruined, just like
Aleppo or Mariupol; stop, I'd
like, before the main telling resumes, to rewind
a little: they vibe to these beats being put on; he finds
out, when asking her what drinkable fluid she'd like
to have, that she deems it uncool to imbibe (*****)
he replies: "to tell you the truth, so do I"
so if there's somebody to end up lit during this night
it is the moon in the sky
["some body"]
soon after having their soft drinks taken, they bounce
like the music style brought into this wO̲rld heaps
before chicks twerking
blew into the mainstream like "blaow!"
["hips"]
like a sick pervert that digs scourging
while engaged in a bout
of carnal fun, he's got a whip ordered
they wait for several mins for it
finally, the motorized conveyance comes out
like a deb girlie
[debutante]
he trails this fox like she's prey to hunt down
watching her proceed to[–]ward it
in a way like she's on a catwalk waving around
a rig splurgy
having hopped in it, to a lodging place they set out
the saucy look in her eyes
once his palm is put on her thigh
a sort of luminous sign–
–board reading: "absolutely alright
with going on a lewd spree tonight"

German rye bread & Chinese green tea
each turn of the knife
each touch of the kettle
& you send signs to the neighbors
the heavens above
a tapestry of eyes
salt water & tears
& your knees shaking
in little earthquakes
Fly the flag higher
Britishness is an art
in Earl Grey & crumpets
& mad hatter days
boasting of kisses
in mad houses
kisses you've never had
or else someone you shagged
but once
senseless & beaming
letters to Keats
& always, always
maps of the Empire
some builder nostalgic
for old might & power
& ships on the Thames
like in the old paintings.

speaking of drugs and soul mates,
somehow his dangly fingers found the inner stitches
of my pinkplated skinny jeans.
we fell into backseats and booths at bars that held
sushi and white powder lining caked sinks.
we giggled at how he said tomato, and i dissolved into
the sixth beer, the seventh, the eighth,
the lines between her lipstick.
we danced and screamed among stained floors, holding each other,
waiting until the moon lifted us.
he and i held hands as i ran between poles, pretending
i was the goddess of love, of lust, of night.
we made out and my head cracked upon glass,
his glasses slid upon pavement. he was nervous, i was laughing.
an american girl, his first time.
his fingers traced, cream upon coffee.
in the morning i found bruises upon my lips,
marks of eagerness, of mistakes.
we walked again, not hand in hand,
dreary and rainy, perfect London weather.
and i wondered if having tea
and crumpets would have
helped.

crumpets and tea,
taken with grinning powdered wigs
go scrumptiously well with a Mozart piece played in the tired drawing room;

Tchaikovsky's Fifth
would have the subject alone
in the vestibule,
ear against the ballroom double doors of ornate mahogany,
muffled and muted and just being;

Philip Glass
Is
The oppressed past lit --
A futuristic glance
over one's shoulder
Regifting an overrated present

Is there a humour therapist in the house?
Sitting here, chortling, do not grouse,
If you abuse crumpets, men,
You undermine your own best interests, do you ken?
Then you don't get crumpet, men,
Or is men a rude word,
You're reaping what you earn,
You want a cup of tea from me?
Chortle, the magic word is please!
You would not believe this ham,
Feeding the world this spam,
You want fresh vegetables?
Frozen food, not dementiable,
You can get another better than me,
So what's wrong with you, prithee?
Yes, the catering staff is on a sitdown strike,
You'd best find yourself a loving wife,
Chortle, shut up snivelling, you grouse,
Is there a humour therapist in the house?

When the day is finally done,
I jump into my bed.
I lay against my pillow
And pull the covers over head.

Soon enough I fall into
A deep unmoving sleep.
Now all I need to start to dream
Is one more giant leap.

Finally my mind decides
That it is time to wander,
Into the land where anything
Can happen over yonder.

I dream of drinking tea
And eating crumpets with the queen.
I dream of climbing up a stock
Grown from a jelly bean.

I dream of jumping right into
The board game Candyland.
I dream of eating endless sweets
While listening to a band.

I dream of riding all through space
Upon a shooting star.
I dream of sliding down a rainbow,
No need for a car.

I dream of always succeeding
In every single plan.
I dream of living every day
The very best I can.

I dream
I dream
I dream some more,
But suddenly,
A knock on my door.
It jolts me awake,
My head starts to ache,
And I realize
It was all just a dream.

As it sit, here on peninsulas
extensions into oceans,
tides that drag, pixelating
parameters opening
to peering places,

my eyes squint
at blurred horizons;
everywhere horizoning,
circumferencing me
in swirls of cataleptic cinnamon
(you know, that pop cultured
coalescence of sensation)

And while I swim
through these streams and unconscious rivers,
on peninsulas (of dust)
placidly pouring  soft summer rain
onto concrete souls like treacle on crumpets,
it occurs to me that
we are just madness becoming
into something astonishing

I got lost
For a while
I might still actually be
Lately the blues look like greens
And the greens look like blue
Though, All my dreams still contain fragmented images of you
Have I been here for days?
Or just a few grains of sand?
The flowers spoke
But I responded kindly with a strike from the sword in my hand.
How did it get there?
How did what get where?
Oh yes, the flowers, I suppose they know the Hatter and the Hare
But its not about the tea pots or crumpets
but about the four ace soldiers with trumpets
The Queen will arrive any minute
With the clubs and the spades all the same
In their white and their black suits.
I ran through the roses as fast as I could
but the raven was wearing me boots.

you had your shrove thursday! you celebrated it with frying pancakes! celebrate harvesting crops by returning to eating like wild animals... no carbohydrates on good friday! carbohydrates? complex sugars... you can ingest fructose and lactose... come on... keep up with the poetics of the religion!

well... it's easter... whatever the hell that means these days,
    in protestant lands there is more commotion around christmas
time anyway... you can literally glance over
   the concept of easter in england; i'm not sure how it
looks or feels like in either *lutheran or calvinist countries:
   germany in the former (category), switzerland in the latter...
        category...
but easter is **** hard to pick on...
                 it's supposed to be "celebrated"...
  but to be honest...                            **** all happens!
so yeah... coming from a nation that became ultra-catholic
because one of their countrymen became a pope...
     you get this fervour back there:
                           people really get to the grit of things,
and they do! i swear, they do! take it seriously -
          when you hear a bunch of poles stating their
creed: father son and the holy ghost etc.,
                         they sound like an army of satanists!
you have to hear it... it's what i call the...    murmur effect.
holy murmur... mmm and probably as much comparison
as putting your ear to a belly of a bear and listening
   in on the grumbling noises of the bear's intenstines
  doing their magic of the latter stages of digestion...
  so... coming from a culture that got duped by having
a pope's ethnicity overly-stated as: foundation! tradition!
you get an exodus of those who firmly believed that
communism was working... because they didn't get
the marshall plan hand-outs / benefits...
                         a bit like that analogy:
  give a man a fish?          or give a man a fishing-bow?
                       anyway... so you have this pope
that didn't have the human decency to become
                                                          ­            emeritus
slobbering, drooling all over the sanctity of st. peter's
humble beginnings...
                                 and you have what's called: "tradition"
of celebrating this "festival" -
                                  you don't eat meat on good friday,
also called: quasi-ramadam without any mammal proteins...
   saturday you go to the cinema...
                    sunday you go and sanctify
  eggs... that are painted, and hard boiled...
                            and you have what drunks call:
the morning after...
                                           monday? by now you're in
heaven... having risen from the dead!
                       or what's called the melancholia of winter.
but you know what really bothers me about all this?
     the holy sacraments...
                     and the ****** greek poetry that comes along
with it... and how it's misunderstood, when applicable
to the lunatic acts of "celebration"...
                                      so "fasting" is invoked by
not eating mammalian proteins... meat...
                                   meat... meat...
surely it should be about not eating bread / all forms
of carbohydrates! eh?  surely fasting would be about not
eating breads of all sorts... croissants, pancakes,
buns... crumpets... scoans...
                               after all, flesh into bread blood
into wine?
                             or bread into flesh, wine into blood?
water into wine, oysters into genitals?
                                                 lemons into oranges?
the ancient greek critique of poetry provided us
with an artefact that's probably the best joke on the planet...
thank you plato... for giving as a laughing-stock
of a political movement...
                              clearly what beats it with a club
with nails sticking out of it is:
                           a religion that's like, ultra-kumbaya -
the clerics can sing the whole shabang from
minarets - while the dutiful adherents whisper their
                                                 five-a-day, five-a-day...
that's when you get into why milton wrote what
he wrote, and then had his eyes "gauged" out -
                             nothing less than the equivalent of
the homer of the north... i.e. went blind.
                      me? i'm drinking today... whiskey was
not specified...                 now i'm going to an apache
shamanic rant and say...       whiskey! fire! fire + water!
firewater!                and just ****** greek poetry,
because you know that ancient egyptians also had
a sense for poetry, but it had to be translated into
hebrew to have potency... egyptian princes spoke
the slave tongue? it's a bit like prince charles speaking
some slavic language... say... russian....
     i'd be surprised if he could speak french, never mind
the so called "exotica".

That crude-spoken Sovereign commands a big stick,
runs the world into ruins, once our bailiwick.
Questioned why, He grins grimly, pale lips slightly pursed:
"Vindication? Straightforward: It's Me and Me First".

(To mesmerise people He’s conjured His spells
with the pride and the power that Lucifer sells –
using tricks of the trade, evil voodoos well-versed
well engendered His mojo: "It's Me and Me First").

His friends (not His foes) form the skeletal men
along trails of dead ends (for they're armed once again)
and they're counting the bones of the bodies dispersed
by His bombastic lyrics: "It's Me and Me First".

The crater walls crumble, the dust drapes and smothers,
as drummers drown screams in the dreams of the others –
while beating and throbbing, like red veins aburst,
bleating echoes redouble: "It's Me and Me First".

A warrior departed to fight for His flag
and returned as a body brought back in a bag;
alas, such are the stories of soldiers coerced
by the Devil's damnation: "It's Me and Me First".

Beneath His thick thumb, the deprived do and die,
when subjected to whims, promised pie in the sky –
yes, His heavy hand rules, and the weaklings be cursed
for accepting His sermon: "It's Me and Me First".

He's minding our business by forging fake fears
and He'll serve and protect as the bogeyman nears
by ensuring our fantasies' phantoms are nursed,
smirking: "why should you worry, It's Me and Me First".

The media moguls flash news so fantastic –
their hearsay on Honcho's forever elastic
with doctrine and hogwash and hype interspersed
'twixt the dictums of hell and of "Me and Me First".

The masses partake in His royal cavalcades
giving chase to the hearses in midnight parades
through the catacomb caves where we're falling headfirst
down the bottomless pit of "It's Me and Me First".

The children in ghettos, like slave mutineers,
vainly venture to flee before youth disappears
but their ship's on an ocean that can't be traversed
for their sails line the abyss of "Me and Me First".

While His Highness drives oxen, He's sipping champagne
thinking "each shares a trough so that none need complain",
but the water hole's drying, we're dying of thirst,
so says "sorry you guys but It's Me and Me First".

A drifter once hinted behind weary tears
"overall the world's dying or so it appears";
He replied with a flash and a sudden outburst:
"yes, but who really cares when It’s Me and Me First"?

In Great Again moments we get the DT's
from His paranoid penchants, quite like a disease,
one which spots us, then rots us, then worse comes to worst
when He utters "just Trust Me: It's Me and Me First".

When profits are plunging (approaching the pits)
He won't give up the ghost or start calling it quits,
instead purges our pockets; again reimbursed,
says (re-groping His kitty): "It's Me and Me First".

The King condescends to a sharing charade
by dispensing desserts at the penny arcade –    
yet while crawling for crumpets, the crowds are dispersed
being slogged by the slogan: "It's Me and Me First".

When faced with the facts, He's the Greatest denier
that global abuse means all life may expire –
He scoffs at the thought that it can't be reversed,
says "it's not about you, no: It's Me and Me First".

With profits performing, He smiles, misinforming  
- of weather that's warming (whilst whirlwinds twist, storming),
- of jungles conforming to nature deforming,
- of bees no more swarming, thawed glaciers transforming
bold mountains to molehills on sand bars submersed –
can the earth persevere when: "It's Me and Me First"?

                        EPILOG
If you're feeling unsettled, there's no need to fret
for it's all a delusion, and lest we forget
He repeats His old mojo (a line well-rehearsed):
"just like almighty Yahweh: It's Me and Me First".

                      EPITAPH
The remains of the deserts and wasteland lie here
where the vacuum implodes and the silence is sere
when retelling the tales of the sagas immersed
in the mythos and legends of "Me and Me First".

The stone statuettes (swapping vain epithets)
consigned rational threats (those that wisdom begets)
to their nothingness nets spread in dank oubliettes,
losing aberrant bets with no real regrets
(scorning pale silhouettes that the conscience besets).

Nonetheless, when the cosmos and chaos conversed
they but hee-hawed the hubris of "Me and Me First”.

The spooky, eerie feeling grips me,
As I watch Grandpa swinging from a tree.
His body is lifeless, limp and pale,
His hands are fragile and frail.

“Grandpa”, I shriek, “I thought you were dead,
For your funeral mass the first reading I read”.
“Shut up kid”, he says with a frown,
“Do you know how bad it is there down?”

“Down?”  I gasp,”So you made it to hell?”    
“Believe me girl heaven ain’t that swell.”
“Is it hot down there? Do you loathe the heat?”
“Down there kid, I hate the food I eat”.

“Food?”, I exclaim ,”do you still need that?”
“Of course we do you blithering brat”.
“But aren’t ghosts the gliding type all slim and light?”
“Yes kid, but we need energy to scare Earthly folks at night”.    

I gently ask, “What is it you miss most from up here?”
“Is it the TV set, liqueur bottle or fishing gear?”    
“Honestly kid, I miss the food your Grandma would make,
Those sinful crumpets and cookies she’d bake,
those meat pies and curries with assorted spices,
Oh that food would distract me for an hour and half from my Earthly vices.”

“But you never liked her cooking and always criticized this and that”.
“Yes m’dear but I’d still gulp it down and get all chubby and fat,
So pay heed young girl, don’t fuss over your looks and weight,
We men love that initially but later grow to hate,

It’s the food a woman cooks that we remember even when dead,
So ensure you keep your husband always well fed.”

it's strange to live in post-colonial societies,
northern england excluded:
aye, southern fairies and northern
monkeys! it's just strange to try
erasing the past, what's there to make up?
charisma or charcoal? never mind,
private joke... it's strange living in a
post-colonial society, the lost franchise
of wife, husband and brats falling apart,
it's so strange to live in a post-colonial society,
faking it with celebrities winning
money for charities on quiz shows televised,
the shame, it would seem as a tool
to educate others, the necessary plots
to educate people but nonetheless revise their
vocabulary to an "appropriate" use,
such method of dittoing is fine, since
you're not bothered to cite a bibliographical
reference - a someone said.
living in a post-colonial society is near-piquant
surreal... you don't know what to do...
i wish i knew... i wish it was strict and
affectionate, but sooner or later
the Zeitgeist of Darwinism will take over
and limit what's to be expressed;
why did i pick poetry as a medium of expression?
why? it's so pathetic, so ****** pathetic
that we have a poetic title of a book,
and equal plumber or electrician drudge writing
out the prose, he said, she said, whatever...
i guess people write prose like any
manual labourer does working on a construction
site, where the only Englishman is a bricklayer
or a scaffold-er, all other professions backed up
by Europe... Romanian labourers,
the graffiti in toilets... the graffiti in toilets,
once it was the Poles to blame, then
the Bulgarians and the Romanians...
strange to learn culture and contraband,
to learn it from post-colonial societies,
how they begrudge their past in order
to look pristine... oh sure they can sing...
they have the Irish jingles & jives in 'em,
but when they become conscious of it,
they want to spread it as far east as Iraq,
if they only looked in, rather than imagining
themselves as saviours... of course there are
differences, there always were,
but they haven't bothered to criticise themselves,
after such a colonial past they decided
that angels roamed the streets of London
looking for a quill... living in a post-colonial
society isn't exactly crumpets and jam...
three generations prior and you'd be singing
the national anthem with some form of
attachment - donning a top hat and a cane...
gentlemanly parading yourself on
a promenade leading up to Buckingham Palace
via St. James' Park... LOLS and high tea
at the 5 p.m. sunset worth a biscuit
dipped into Siberian tea served to pregnant
women in Siberia (i.e. with milk -
bawarka). **** on me, i never could have imagined
a former colonial nation, a former empire
to behave as it does... if i were an insider
i wouldn't have spotted the anomalies,
had i been a Jew i wouldn't either,
they still speak about us as if the Lithuanian-Crown
commonwealth never existed...
asking Palestinians are answered: give it 2000 years
of struggle to leverage authentic sympathy -
talking about humans like farmed chickens
is one way to go about it, the last resort,
but the only manageable precipitation of the world
into you, too many concerns to have,
the evidence leading up to a cocoon action,
from the earth's demanding representation of man
and worms - to dreamed up man and butterflies
that sing the Koran.