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“Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.”
                                                    ­ George Orwell, 1984* (published in 1949)

Which brings us, of course, to the subject of torture since 1949.
Come with me to the Casbah, Babaloo.
We begin in the 1950s with the French in North Africa,
****** baguettes in Algeria,
Couilles frits, anyone?
Electrodes wired to Mustapha’s *****.
And "Bigeard's Shrimps,” as the bodies were called,
Dumped over the Mediterranean from aircraft,
All things considered a je ne sais quoi,
Though Camus and Sartre gave it a whack.

Then the 1960s: the CIA dabbling in mind-control and LSD.
Later, a Phoenix Program,
Very secretive, sympathies with the Cong required,
Various elders selected,
The village disinfected,
**, **, ** and a bowl of Pho.

Apartheid anyone?
Thirty years of South African terror & torture.
Torment in the townships,
Shaka Zulu gold and diamonds,
De Beers in Swaziland swing.

1971: riots at Attica,
Prisoners abused and tortured,
Rockefeller’s overcrowded slammer,
An upstate New York katzenjammer,
Nelson’s finger on the trigger,
39 dead and counting,
But who’s counting?

The CIA, back in the news in 1973,
Torture chambers under Chilean soccer stadiums,
And the Khmer Rouge:
Those Wacky Cambodians with skull racks.  
And let us not forget the British,
With centuries of colonial experience behind them,
Occupy six counties in Northern Ireland.
Finally codify the imperial process,
The Five Techniques:
Sounds like a Motown group,
Satin smooth colored boys,
But more method than music:
(1) Wall-standing,
(2) Hooding,
(3) Subjection to noise,
(4) Sleep deprivation,
(5) No food and drink.

And there’s a bunch of horrible ****,
We still don’t know about the Argentine ***** War,
And other Mai Lai-like,
****-fest massacres in Vietnam.

How about torture since 1984?
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo,
Come quickly,
(www.prematureejaculatorsanonymous.com)
To mind,
As do US-sponsored rendition facilities,
Spread throughout the NATO alliance.
And closer to home, it’s never a dull moment in the 5 Boroughs:
Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, The Bronx and Manhattan.
Take your pick from Giuliani’s Greatest Hits,
Rudy Kazootie’s campaign of law and order,
Not necessarily in that order.
More awful than lawful,
A bathroom plunger rammed up,
The Haitian voodoo ****** of Abner Louima,
While he be handcuffed at a Brooklyn station house.
Or, the NYPD partying like it was 1999.
When in fact, it was1999,
And a curious death it was for Amadou Diallo,
Would-be American citizen from The Republic of Guinea,
(No connection to Italy or Italians),
Abner & Amadou: a pair of cautionary tales,
Either/or reflecting standard procedure for the Po-Po,
Time and time again from coast to coast.
Either/or: poor Abner, no Haitian Papa Doc.
Poor Amadou, on his way home from night school,
When police squeeze off 41 rounds,
Most of them in his direction,
Hitting him 19 times.
Just the facts, ma’am:
Diallo had reached into his jacket.
A trigger-happy police officer yells “Gun.”
A jungle warfare quartet springs into action:
Shenzi, Banzai, Ed & Zazu,
Four equally trigger-happy colleagues,
Empty their weapons.
No gun was found on Diallo,
Only the wallet he tried to pull out,
Containing his Green Card,
4 U.S. dollar bills;
And a laminated,
Credit card-sized copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
(I just didn’t know when to quit, did I?
The wallet was there with Green Card and the bucks,
But I made up the part about the Bill of Rights,
Trying to add poetry to tragedy, as usual.)

I don’t have to say much about Rodney King (RIP).
You watched it on TV a hundred times,
And a picture’s worth a thousand words.
Or ten thousand or a million, I suppose.
“Can’t we all just get along?” asked Rodney Glen King.

Last but not least there’s Kelly Thomas (RIP),
Another incidence of police insanity,
It was July of 2011 in Fullerton, California.
Thomas, a 37-year-old homeless man,
Schizophrenic, but unarmed,
Beaten to death at a bus depot,
During an altercation with six Fullerton police officers.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2019225/Kelly-Thomas-Poli­­ce-beat-taser-gentle-mentally-ill-homeless-man­-death.html#ixzz1e­3­4QnHtr

Mervyn Lazarus | Attorney | (www.mervlazarus.com) Police Brutality, Excessive Force and Jail Injury cases | California . . . Albuquerque

Jackie Chiles perfect attorney -YouTube, (www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpcEietIoxk) Nov 17, 2010 - 13 min - Uploaded by Kroeger22 All the scenes with Jackie Chiles from Seinfeld."Chiles is a parody of famed attorney Johnnie Cochran; both ... www.seinfeld.com

Perhaps the greatest torture of all,
Is that which artists subject us to.
Let us examine the case of Roberto Bolaño:
Roberto Bolaño, the great Chilean writer,
Tells a fabulous World War II story,
About a Spaniard--an Andalusian--
Fighting for the Germans against the Russians.
Captured by the Russians,
He is tortured for information.
The Spaniard speaks no Russian,
He knows only four words of German.
The Russian interrogators strap him into a chair,
Attach electrodes to his *****,
Attach pincers to his tongue.
The pain makes his eyes water.
He said--or rather shouts--the word coño.
It is Spanish for ****.
The pincers in his mouth,
Distort the expletive,
Which in his howling voice comes out as KUNST.
The Russian who knows German looks at him in puzzlement.
The Andalusian was yelling KUNST,
Yelling KUNST and crying in pain.
KUNST in German means art,
And that was what the bilingual Russian heard, KUNST.
“This ******* must be an artist or something.”
The torturers remove the pincers,
Along with a little piece of tongue,
And wait, momentarily hypnotized by the revelation:
The word ART had soothed the savage beasts.
So soothed, the savage beasts take a breather,
Waiting for some kind of signal.
Meanwhile, the Andalusian bleeds from the mouth,
Swallows his blood liberally mixed with saliva, and chokes.
The word coño,
Transformed into the word *KUNST,

Had saved his life.
It was dusk when he came out of the building.
Light stabbed at his eyes like midday sun.

So, it’s a fact that I love,
Truly love the simple blunt Anglo-Saxon expletive ****,
****: I pray that while I am being tortured some day,
I have the dignity to scream the word out loud.
And if I am screaming **** at the very end,
When my nervous system finally fails,
When I **** my pants,
When my pulmonic heart and lungs collapse,
Is that so bad?
Is that so wrong?

Do you realize that 1984 came--
Came and went, without any significant cultural hoopla?
The networks ignored it.
As did the cable pundits.
No significant comparative analysis between,
Orwell’s book 1984 and the year 1984,
Was broadcast electronically or publicized in print.
Steve Jobs got it, but as usual no one else did.
Mr. Jobs (RIP) did his best,
To mainstream its profound cultural relevance,
But ultimately failed,
Despite the $1.5 million he paid one of the networks,
To air a one minute nation-wide commercial,
During the 3rd Quarter,
Of Super Bowl XVIII,
January 22, 1984.
Despite Ridley Scott’s astonishing spell-binder,
His 60-second spot for The Macintosh 128K--
Still considered a watershed event,
And an advertising industry masterpiece,
…YouTube it and watch it.  (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ji0B98IMo).
See the hammer throwing athlete chick,
See her fling the sledge,
That huge sledgehammer,
Smash into Big Brother’s flat screen face.
Despite Jobs’ global presence,
Despite Steverino’s unfettered microphone access,
Whenever he felt an oraculation coming on,
Despite everything,
He was unable to move the powers that be,
To either hype the book or the prophecy come true.

So, what’s my point? I have two.
First, in April 1984 the estate of George Orwell,
And the television rights holder to the novel 1984,
Considered the edgy Jobs/Scott commercial to be,
A flagrant copyright infringement,
Sending a cease-and-desist letter to Apple Inc.
And the advertising agency that produced the spot: Chiat/Day Inc.
The commercial was never televised as a commercial after that.  
Score: Lawyers 1, Artists 0.

My second point is that in November 2011,
The U.S. government argued before the U. S. Supreme Court,
That it wants to continue utilizing GPS tracking of individuals,
Without first seeking a warrant.
In response, Justice Stephen Breyer (one of the sane ones),
Questioned what this means for a democratic society.
Referencing Nineteen Eighty-Four, Justice Breyer asked:
"If you win this case, then there is nothing,
To prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24/7,
The public movement of every citizen of the United States.
So if you win, you suddenly produce what sounds like 1984 . . .”*

My third point,
(Yeah, I know I said two, but *******.)
My third point is that I’m just so ******* angry,
All the time, late and soon like Wordsworth,
(Was anyone more aptly named?)
I am angry about so many different things,
And every day that goes by I relate more and more,
To the thousands of Americans that occupied,
Zuccotti Park and Oakland,
And countless other venues,
Out into the streets.
Across the country.
Around the world.  
I am humbled by their courage and perseverance.
Yet, I am afraid for them.
I am made paranoid by the scope and power,
Of the government,
Of the ruling class that controls it,
And the technology they allow us to embrace,
Technology’s sinister potential,
Now that more and more knowledge and information,
Has been digitized,
Existing only in cyberspace.                                                      ­                                                 
What frightens most is the realization,
That anyone with a word processor,
And access to the database could rewrite,
Any historical or legal document,
To fit the needs of a current agenda.
The scary part is—
Repeating myself for emphasis—
That anyone with a word processor
And access to the database could rewrite,
Any historical or legal document,
To fit the needs of a current agenda.

Does anyone out there give a ****?
Does anyone out there share my nightmare?
Do it to Julia.
Do it to Julia.
Shuffled deck; fetch me three of Seventy-Eight cards.
First:

Queen of Swords
"This fine Sword of honest metal
is a more true an Ally
than many of Flesh indeed prove to be."

Much like Athena,
The Queen of Swords
is symbolic of progress;
always keen on new ideas;
though she is not One to leave herself defenseless,
her faithful Sword stands
always by her side.


Second of the three,
of the still Seventy-Seven:

Two of Swords
"Distracted by conflict
'twixt Heart and Mind,
I hold two Swords and bide my Time."

Two of Swords
stands between Moon and Water;
the Shadow and the Subconscious
the darkness and the unknown.

The Two of Swords
is blindfolded
and in her blissful ignorance
maintains her precarious balance,
for now.


The third of three random cards;
leaving Seventy-Five unturned:

Knight of Swords
"Feast your eyes upon this, my plan;
I wager thou hath, in all thy wretched days,
ne'er so beauteous a thing beheld!"

The Knight of Swords
is a keen poet and a fine musician;
though perhaps not romantically.

She dabbles for the sake of the intellect,
and seeks that those things be playthings thereof.
She is symbolic of progress through new ideas
and of the eloquence of a well-laid plan.

Being of the House of Swords,
she revels in the stimulation of intellect
and the effective use of wisdom.
She usually yields only to herself
and marches to the beat of her own convictions,
all the while
keeping her eyes
on the prize.

-
All of these Cards
are of the House of Swords.
There's about a 1 in 166 chance
of getting 3 of the 14 Swords
out of a random deck of 78 cards.

I got the Queen of Swords as my third card last time
and the first card this time;
There's 1 in approximately 676 chance
of getting the same card
in two consecutive sets of three cards
from a random 78 card deck.

(im)Probabilities aside:

The Suit of Swords is generally associated with:
one's ways of thinking, systems, ideas, and communication.

It has much to do with
what we chose to do with our Minds
and it also is symbolic of the power of
the stories we tell ourselves and each other.

The Swords are indeed double-edged in Tarot.

It has to do with the power of information
and with that comes delusion,
and, inexorably,
paradox.

Patterns do exist, however.
Upon these patterns
foundations may be built,
the same is true within myself;
I can choose to use all these Swords
to cut through this cage of Shadow
and set free the Light once more
rather than allowing myself
to myself fall victim to the Swords
through inaction or misuse
though only if I tread lightly
and thoughtfully
and proceed with tact;
that much is clear.

Sword is the sign of Air;
perhaps the message here is simply
"Remember to breathe."
Second reading I've bothered to share and explicate on.

First is found here: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/dabbling-in-divination-tarot/

All three cards were of the house of Swords, which is sort of an omen of intellectual conflict within one's self. It can also be indicative of an imminent change that may take a minute to get one's head around. Whatever the case, it has been insightful for me, and I hope it has been at least interesting to you, as a reader!

PS:
Yes, I used my calculator to get those stats.
Basic probability and graphing calculators are wonderful things!

78 cards:
21 major
56 minor
in 4 suits
with 14 each,
drawing 3 cards
1 at a time;
interesting numbers arise.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2019
.how did the political "debate" ever become surmount to include musicians? from what i've seen? of the KEXP radio session...  Ashish Vyas had the most fun from the session... i always admired the bass players more than those ****-offs running out of rhythm guitar sessions... bass, a tier above the drums... masturbator-grand-master-soloist... i guess this is one of those nights where i drink more than i write... elephant's ******* choking me to come... oh well... not even a Decalogue will save me... the political art is no art to begin with, curtains... all i'm seeing if curtains... and households filled with retired personel... and curtains... curtains but not blinds... it's abhorrent to have to listen to music with hushed bass guitar... notably metallica... apart from devil's dance and... where's the bass guitar? the rhythm guitar section overpowers the music... fine fine, have your solo *******, but don't silence the bass guitar with the rhythm guitar, i need to hear the drums translated via the bass guitar into the rhythm guitar... solo guitar and vocals all you want... it's like... the lessons to be learned from jazz, when all the fire prime instruments are allowed to solo... went, "missing"... i need the bass, man... frantic bass & drum genre type of music will not do lollipops for me... what was the alternative? dub-step? well... vex'd & distance... burial... who were the others? i don't remember... don't make me cite skrillex: white privelege man! yeah... at least with rabbit teeth missing, doing that well known party trick! i don't like bands that have a knack at an over-emphasis of the rhythm guitar, who neglect the bass guitar... it's so counter the jazz-inheritance... tool: grand bass, red hot chilli peppers, silverchair... i need that smoothing out layer of sound that manifests itself in a bass... a layer of sound just below the rhythm guitar and a tier above the base (not bass) of the african drum borrow... bāß... base (not bass)... yes, it's not supposed to look pretty: a phonetic antithesis... as most "things" in english...

             mind you... did i mention how heidegger
has a foot in the door?
       oh... i didn't? did i?
     the reflexive and the reflective quadratic...
the reflex of conscience "vs."
the reflectiveness of consciousness...
       heidegger:
                  language - only if speech has acquired
the highest univocity of the word does it become
strong for the hidden play of its essential
   multivocity (as withdrawn from all "logic"),
of which poets and thinkers alone are capable,
in their own respective modes and their own
directions of sovereignty.

  of the few lyrics i've entertained these passing
"days"?
             the black keys: lonely boy -
              i got a love that keeps me waiting...
borrowing from Kafka i guess:
      in that case, i’ll miss the thing by waiting for it.
   no?
   guess there's no "oops" where these words
come from...
              
    with the "passive" circumstance of the faculty
of memory...
                two tiers of memory:
the reflexive memory type,
the scholastic rubric type...
  1 x 4 = 4, a + b + a +c + u + s = instrument =
counting... etc.,
            that's the reflexive memory type...
a scholastic rubric...
      dyktando...
but memory also occupies
the reflective parameters...
          which involve personality...
a sort of memory dissociated from schooling,
and more, associated with:
disinhibiting any chances of succumbing
to dementia's grinding machine
of the mortal circus...

  the reflexive memory storage bank is
the buffer...
the "placebo": nay... the safety mechanism...
but... too much education,
too much pointless education,
and the erosion of the reflective memory
storage bank: this is not a buffer,
this is not a something equipped with
a "safety mechanism"...
        given that a self is perpetuated
within the confines of
a constant conflict with the "self"...
   a and italics / the and "ambiguity commas"...

well, there's always a place to start...
i find of like philosophy as being
a rigour associated with a satisfactory
form of vocab.,
       namely?
i can use the associated words bound
to a sentence with confidance...
unlike a ****** fiction writer,
sometimes dabbling into loan words
from a thesaurus, to, invoke:
an intelligence superiority...
  don't worry...
  when people lend themselves
to use a thesaurus, having exhausted
their adjective knowledge... it shows...

come on... a background in chemistry nouns?
3,5-methylhexane... you think?
that's the remains of a saxon past in english...
in chemistry...
germans spell like dr. faustus to begin with,
they, compound...
        the remains of a germanic past in
the current state of english shrapnel still
lives... in chemistry...
        hydrocarbons...
                  usually met with a hypen:
hydro-carbons...
       siebentausendzweihundertvierundfünfzig
(7,254)...
well, very german: what a waste of not employing
punctuation marks (', -) when it came
to the caterpillar 189, 819:
methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl...isoleucine,

Me­thionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylleucy­lphenylalanylalanylglutaminylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylgluta­mylglycylalanylphenylalanylvalylprolylphenylalanylvalylthreonylle­ucylglycylaspartylprolylglycylisoleucylglutamylglutaminylserylleu­cyllysylisoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucylglutamylalanylgly­cylalanylaspartylalanylleucylglutamylleucylglycylisoleucylprolylp­henylalanylserylaspartylprolylleucylalanylaspartylglycylprolylthr­eonylisoleucylglutaminylasparaginylalanylthreonylleucyl arginylalanylphenylalanylalanylalanylglycylvalylthreonylprolylala­nylglutaminylcysteinylphenylalanylglutamylmethionylleucylalanylle­ucylisoleucylarginylglutaminyllysylhistidylprolylthreonylisoleucy­lprolylisoleucylglycylleucylleucylmethionyltyrosylalanylasparagin­ylleucylvalylphenylalanylasparaginyllysylglycylisoleucylaspartylg­lutamylphenylalanyltyrosylalanylglutaminylcysteinylglutamyllysylv­alylglycylvalylaspartylserylvalylleucylvalylalanylaspartylvalylpr­olylvalylglutaminylglutamylserylalanylprolylphenylalanylarg inylglutaminylalanylalanylleucylarginylhistidylasparaginylvalylal­anylprolylisoleucylphenylalanylisoleuc…

or just read the end of james joyce's ulysses
or jean-paul sarte's iron in the soul...
you do have to insert shrapenl punctuation
into this word...

but these are the last remains of the english language
being associated with a germanic origin:
compounding words...
             esp. in chemistry...
                

as any drunk would state,
to suffice...

    what was it that the luftwaffe
prescribed for the night raids
on London?

   and what did isis fighters
be prescribed?

    amphetamines?
n'oh!
   (minus the extended omega:
oooooo enough time
for a katy perry song,
an afternoon shower,
a slap in the face,
and then a few punches,
hey, jerking off became
boring)...

   so the british,
and a few polacks doing their
r.a.f. bit beat the germans
because?
   oh... **** no...
they were ingesting
an impediment factor,
durg, ****,
drunk, numb-skulled...

    we're talking counter
measure to the "enchanced"
mensch...
    high on amphetamines...
insomniac, but still going...
i guess the loci of
the amphetamine adventure
had to relocate to the anti-ego
focus of the phallus
in the variation of viagara...

****...
i care more for my giggles
and a friar tuck physiognomy...
seriously...
   it's more important than mere
gymnastics of
a freudian "metaphor"...
  ha ha...
   i guess conversation is
also allowed...
   try keeping that up...
given that most men are
******* into a solipsism...

     date nights... m'ah ah ha ha ha...
i figured that i don't
need french intellectuals to
redefine absurdity,
or german philosophers
to "redefine" existentialism,
i just needed to leech
off an nativistic english
"public"...

                      what the ruling
class spews:
   i reinterpret...
                  simple, 1 + 1 = 2...
crux, numbers,
   bounce back...
echo...
     compliment to the language...
as i stood in the shower thinking...
well isn't modern gaming
slightly "ingenious"...
money piggy...

or... reversed...
    provided the unlimited time
of experience...
no constraints,
just a game within a game,
like sims 3: making a sim
play a video game...
wormhole paradox
      and a brain shattering moment,
a jolt,

         these modern "free" games?
well... at least if you
do not invest in them,
are... games mostly associated with
time...
time is the game...

   whoever gets ****** into
the money laundering schemes
of these games,
forgot to read the cheat walkthroughs
akin to final fantasy VII,
because of homework,
and... Saturday mornings.

   **** air guitar:
here's to air drumming to posit
a point...

          the allies drunk their pint
of whiskey, slightly debilitated,
without the circumstance of feeding
a feeling of superiority,
the germans over-inflated
their superiority complex with
amphetamines...

         ergo?
    i'm either proper drunk, or just plain dumb,
or... it's related to listen, repeat,
listen, repeat: katy perry
  (sucker for POP!)....

      never mind...

games used to be fun,
games used to lead to a completion,
tenchu, that was fun,
final fantasy VII...
but this current,
money-sucker of an experience?
well... sure...
now games have reached
an anti checkmate conundrum
which it is...
because, the games are "free"...

           apparently time,
is perceived as a non-commodity...
tell that to someone stuck
in traffic...
      time: the "elder" flimsy
              construct of relativism...

try not giggling
while exchanging whislting to
either the british grenadier march song,
and the french la marseillaise...

   it's like eating pork liver with onions
fry funny...
    or at least a stew of chicken
hearts... tight tender little *******...

but modern gaming is just that...
ingenious counter measure
to the old school variation
of gaming,
    games... without fiction,
games, without script...
    continued perpetuation
of engagement "syndrome"...

     thank god,
i'm pretty sure that if i went beyond
owning a PS1,
i wouldn't have spotted this,
and have a narrative subsequently,
for the worth any sort
of compromise...

ergo? i drink...
   eh... i need to dumb down...
it wouldn't be fair otherwise...
it's not so easy,
to acquire a culture,
a psychology,
a mentality,
   and then...
     to ****... (grimmace, burp,
         snigger) it all away...

**** me, the flute always
gets me...
          i mean...
every time i hear that flute...
my feet at rambling,
itching to tap along...

   well of course it wasn't
the ******* jazzy clarinet,
was it?!
  tell that to the broad
who perfect a *******...
see if she comes back
as smart,
as smart to comply with
the intricacies
of playing, the ******* clarinet.

p.s.
aud lang syne: the only song,
of all time...
shakespeare seems
pale by comparison,
"side-note"...

          broad vs. brode,
******* giggles in the afternoon.
Verdae Geissler Jun 2013
I met a girl when she picked me up while  I was hitch hiking back from the health food store.

Her name is, well, I’ll call her “Mirror”. She was seventeen, with three different colors in her hair,and she was driving this great big mafioso looking thing down an old country road.

AND she picked me, a hitch hiker, up. like it was it was no big thing to her.

My first response after the normal howdy do’s, was;” Okay, first off, we are on this desolate back road, in the middle of BFE ,and corn fields forever. How do you know that I am not going to pull out a gun or a knife and slit your throat, or blow you away for your ride, or WORSE?”

She snickered and said,”Cause’ I can tell .”You aren’t that kind of person!”

My responsewas ,”How can you even  pretend to know THAT?”

She comes back with; “I can just tell”!

“Anyway, aren’t you glad I picked you up?’

“Of course!” I said, “but you need to be more careful!”

She dropped me at my house, and that was that.

I was left with hoards of memories sweeping my mind. Memories of myself at her age, along with her responses to my concern, and her total disposition, I knew I was staring into a mirror of my past!

I would, for sure, be seeing her again!

It was approx. two weeks later that I saw her, in a little mustang, as I was walking my dog on that same old road.

She pulled of as she turned the stereo down, I think it was blasting some new girl band, “Hey girlfriend” she says with this sweet little sideways glance, as if she’d known me for a lifetime, “whatcha up to?”

Having done the small talk thing, we decided ot hang out.
So she came over to the house, we talked.
As I got to know her situation a bit better, I knew.
... I was looking into the mirror of my past once more.
I had been placed into her life for a very special mission.

I also knew in my heart that, according to what she was telling me, she was headed for the same path of disaster and destruction, I had, not so long ago, put my own self  through.
It had all started at her exact age. but I did not, at this point know what to do about helping her.
...But it would come! ...yes, it would!

I found out, a little more than a year later, i could not have done anything to stop it from happening, when I met her. ...In her beginning...
It was during the “aftermath” or the “beginning of the end”, where I would be called back into her life to “play my part” so to speak.
So...
It was about a month ago, I just happened to be browsing through a thrift store, in Spruce Pine, with my neighbor. As I stood there, looking at an old quilt I wanted, but could not afford, I heard that  soft, sweet, little voice call me by my name.

”Romy?’ “Is that yooouuuu?!”
“*** I can’t believe it!”,
.....and so on and so forth.

My sweet friend from the road by my house, was there, was handing out Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

Mind you, I knew what this meant...
...She’d gotten herself into some kind of trouble.
And now, she was doing community service for it.

Sure enough she had.

I gave her my  telephone number, and that was that.

It was about three days ago when I got a phone call.
It was her.
She asked if she could come by to see me that afternoon, after school.
She needed to talk.
She actually did come on by.

Here we are some years later. I am scared.
Not for myself , physically, but something told me my time was up.
The gig was up.
The angels had finally found a way.
For me.
For her.

Now.
I need to back up to two years ago, so that you can get a real sense
of what is really going on here…..

After our first meeting, after she came back by my trailer,  in the cow pasture, the first time,
She hung with me the whole summer, and then into fall.
I got to know her parents very well.
I n their eyes I'd become a big sister/baby sitter for her.
She thought of it as just hanging out.
...a place away from her Dad, but close to her home.
She had never been with a boy, she explained,
but she'd made an attempt at a relationship with a girl at school, which turned out disastrous.
It even landed here in trouble at school, with the cops, and with the DSS, here in Yancey County.
(a place no one would ever want to land!)

Her mom was going through chemo and radiation, and so was I.
I was uncanny.
I had at least SOMETZHING, one thing, in common with almost every member of her family.
I became part of her family!

I knew from my own life and my experiences,  
she was dabbling in some kind of drug activity.
I just did not know what at first.

Made myself a promise.
I would find out what was really going on with t his girl.

Once I got her to open up to me.
I discovered she was stealing her dad’s 40mg Oxycontin and his 1mg klonapin out of his locked box.
This only AFTER he'd been giving them to her when she turned fourteen.
She was not only snorting them, but she was selling them as well!

I also did some digging, and found, she was getting in with some pretty savory characters.
Of course it wan't long, before she met this guy...
He was handsome, manipulative, and cunning.
But most of all, he had a raging monkey, the size of Detroit, on his back!

Only I could see him for the ****** ******* he really was.
I tried many tricks to expose him.
Her partents were blinded by his enamering.
His story was easy:
..he had been in the military, only to come home to a trailer trash wife, on drugs, of course, who had neglected their four year old child.
He'd come home just in time to play the knight in all his armour....!
I KNEW better!

But when I tried to warn her parents
they would hear nothing of it!
They refused to see in him
the evil that i could....

So when she started seeing him, I went to her parents with my premonitions.
They told me I was over  reacting.
And that i had become attached to their daughter, that I should just stay away for a while.
Her mom’s exact words were:
”I mean really, Romy...
" He is a MARINE for goodness sakes... !"
"... and the only reason he is home right now, is to save that yungin' from his drug addicted mother!”

UGHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I had to let go....

Only years later, it would come out,
To her parents and everyone.
...He was a **** and dilaudid ******.
His mother was one, as well.
They used the little boy for food and money,
as well as their own selfish adgenda of feeding
that monkey from Detroit,
and the disease he brought with him.
They conned everyone from welfare, to  churches, to the department of Social Services.

I remember a conversation a had with her mom, while trying to get her to realize what he really was.
It went like this:
mom: “How could you even say such things about him!”
I never said another word.
Only
In my mind I was screaming;
"Because I know this *******!
He is addicted to drugs!  
He told me so, in the beginning!
He bragged to me about how he’d been doing dilaudid with his MOTHER for years.
And, all  of us junkies know, the only way to do dilaudid, is to shoot it up in your veins!

"*******!”"
I said to myself.

"PLUS, I even know his  other name."
"THE NAME is Daniel!"

"I know him well!"
"I ruined most of my young life trying to win his love."
"Only I did not know then what  I was up against...."
"This addiction was more powerful than another woman, or anything else, for that matter!"

"There IS no match
  for it!"

...I was screaming this all to myself.
...I knew then.
I was talking about my own life experience.
The years I spen, hurting myself, all the while attempting to impress my first, and truest love of my entire life.
He almost proved to be the ruin of me!
...The man on whom I waisted more than half of my life!
He, who became the beginning of my end!
He was the beginning of a lifetime of  ****** addiction, tears, disappointments, lies, and horror!

As I saw it, he and this ******* were one in the same.

More importantly, I also knew, in my heart of hearts, he would be the beginning of  HER end.
He would prove to be the beginning of her  horror.
I also knew, if she were to end up staying with this nobody *******, for any length of time, she would, inevitebly begin sticking needles in her arms.
My bet would be she'd start within one year.

Sadly,  I was correct.
she was,
and had been,
sticking needles in her arm.

The way I found out went down like this:
(and thus my reason for writing this)

She phoned me, upset, and crying.
Don't ask me how, but I knew she was dope sick.
...Perhaps it was the quiver in her voice.
The desperation.
A feeling I knew all too well.

I told her to come over.
She did.
I'll never forget.
She was working at Mc Donald's, to pay her way through cosmetolegy school.
So she still had that Mc Donald's uniform on. (The one, I knew, she loathed with every part of her being!)
And bless her heart...
...She brought me a pie.

I told her she looked like ****.
Then I asked her to explain why she'd gone so long without having any contact with me.
(although I knew the answers to each of my questions, I asked them anyway.)

I gave her motherly/sisterly hugs, while attemting to make her feel loved.
(something she had not experienced often, at least, not without a price!)

I needed her to know, that no matter what she had to offer , for the time I hadn't heard from her, I would love her, and I would help her, and I would hold her, until she needed me to let go.

So.
It was after hugs, love, some understanding eye contact, I made the promise of understanding. She had to know, that  no matter what she might reveal, I would ALWAYS be in her corner. I would always be hers. I would be whatever she needed me to be.
..As long as I was helping her towards her self understanding,  towards love, and  towards happiness.

It was a few seconds after our long embrace and our moment of connection and understanding, when she took me into the bathroom.
She uttered these words, nervously, and with shame;
”Romy, Do you really want to know how bad I've gotten, how far I have now fallen?”
...Or perhaps her words were, in actuallity, more like "Romy, look at how bad this has gotten."
I am not sure which of the two is more correct, but I got the message loud and clear, and my heart broke.
Litererally, it broke into a million pieces.
My heart broke for her, but it also broke for the girl I once was, before my own demons came to visit.

I knew then, from the depths of my being,
how the scene would play out...
I knew the ending,
before it ever began.

In a moment I will share with you, the dialog that went on between us on that cold, cloudy, winter afternoon in Nowheresville, NC.
This is one conversation I shall, forever, remember until I take my final breath.
It will remain with me through lifetimes to come.
...It has become a part of me.

ME: ”So. have you learned how to do yourself?”
“Or is that why you are here?”
"If it  is the later, you've come to the wrong place."

She started to cry.

"I know how to hit myslef", she said.
H uge tears runnig down her face.
"You warned me, Romy." "And I didn't listen."
"How DID you know, anyway?"

I could not hold back the tears.  
They poured straight from the depths of my being.
Again, he I stood, once again, in front this georgous girl, who was destroying herself!
Again, all I could see was myself in the mirror!

I have yet to felt such a sadness within me, as the one I felt at that moment.

As she rolled up her sleeve, there it was...
a site too familiar..
Uncanny, it was.
How could this girl be the SAME?
Seriously!
...The same arm.
...The same hole.
...The same sore.
...The same color.
..The same sad and bewidered expresion.
It said. No, it screamed;
"Help me please! I'm so ******* gone!"
"Help me please!"
" You're all I've got!"

I wanted to turn and run a fast and far as I could get.
Heer she stood in front of me
Here she stood.
The exact ******* same as me.
I couldn't move.
I couldn't think.
I wanted to puke.
She
was
MEEEE!

The silence was broken by her voice, and by her expression.
She obviously saw my transition from a strong woman who cared so much,
into a womean who had turned white as a ghost.
Then she asked;
” How did you know, Romy?”
“How ever COULD you have known?”

I did not.
I could not.
Begin to answer her then.

But I thought to myself;
"How could I not?"

I left that tiny bathroom not knowing WHAT to do, or what to say.
I, for once,was at a loss.
For the first time in my life,
the words  would just not come!

I couldn't speak my usual words of incourgment.

Until she came to me, and gave me a hug.

...she has just left my house.
My heart is heavy.
She'd  come to me today, for reasons,
she herself,
could never have understood.

I went into my bedroom, whee she sat.
I asked her what she'd been up to that made her decide to call me.
She said she did not know.
She'd been out driving after work,
and so she'd just ended up calling.
Now she was at my place.

I shared with her the importance of truthfulness.
With oneself even more than with others.

Then I shared with her my story, and my reasons for caring so very much for  her well being.

I told her about the mirror I saw between us from the beginning.
..of my battle with herion addiction.
But I told her  also of the stubborn dream I'd carried with me for eighteen years because of a guy, just like hers.
I answered all of her questions.
I completed her sentences.
She completed some of mine.
I felt her heart breaking.
And I helped her to let go.

She was so shocked at what I shared with her, about myself,
and about my own life,
that it  literally brought her back to her self. I had somehow, reached her inner being.
She was able to return to her own reality, away from the deceit.
And away from the web of lies which had been woven around her.

I feel good!
I feel like she will be alright.

May hope is, through me, she was able to see how easily we can fall into someone else's need and addiction. How we make it our own by allowing someone elses demons drag us down, down into oblivion, and how their misery can, so easily, consume us. Then take over our very life!
IF we let it!

....I held her for a long time.
We cried together.
I cried for her.

I also cried for me.

I cried for the girl that I once was.

...Before Daniel.
                              ...Before Manhattan.
                                                      ­                                                
                                                                ­       ...Before the misery.

She cried her own tears for herself,
her kind heart,
and for what would never be.
She cried, grateful tears, knowing now she will no tso easily loss her way,
she knows the angels now. She can feel them guide her every day.
She is not alone.

I will forever be there for her.
wherever she may be.
...we are connected now.
...Little Miss Kim and me!

Her spirit is strong.
She will succeed.
She recieved what she needed most.
... A friend
... A kindred spirit.
...and  a bit of wisdom from little old
me.
Oh, and now I know why my Blackie walked me down the old country road.....
My sister, Kimberly, needed me!
Shuffled Deck; the first Card:

XVI: The Tower
"Now, that's foreboding."

Destruction of a thing familiar,
a thing tactfully constructed
a thing that's held dear;
Oh dear.


The second card:

Page of Pentacles
"Time for something new."

Enthusiastic exploration;
skillful, practical, and imaginative
a new approach to things;
beginning anew.


The third card:

Queen of Swords
"Don't mind the Sword."

*Nurturing of new ideas;
honest, beautiful, intelligent and true
she always carries her sword,
that she may smite Betrayal.
First reading I've done with my new Steampunk Tarot deck.
So far so.. mythic?
The lost days of my life until to-day,
What were they, could I see them on the street
Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?
Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
The throats of men in Hell, who thirst alway?

I do not see them here; but after death
God knows I know the faces I shall see,
Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
‘I am thyself, — what hast thou done to me?’
‘And I—and I—thyself,’ (lo! each one saith,)
‘And thou thyself to all eternity!’
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
islam is really buying into an ideological
warfare
       of creating a historiogical narrative
for former crusader nations...
           the history? it's way gone, past,
in the dust... but islam is probing
        this need to settle old qualms in a modern
narrative...
    i can't actually add to a history
           these days, but i can take up a banner
of historiology, or so i am told...
   and yes, certain words aren't exactly
the standard bearers of who easily you can
rap them...
            you really need to pause and catch
the nuance... or the naiveness in which they're use...
   when i use the word historiological
i think of the past as having necessarily happened,
and in need to happen again, on the basis
of someone else telling me: you have to
inherit this.
            it's no wonder that islam attacks former
crusader nations... france esp.,
          what with adhemar, bishop of le puy,
urban ii grand speech lauching the ***** into
a tight spot... tancred de hauteville...
                 bohemond...
        radulph of caen merely annotated the deeds done
and the words said...
      robert, duke of normandy, and his daughter
adela, quick to **** at Urban's tongue... the truth...
   Islam is really reassigning us with
a historiology, not a history we might be prone
to forget, or be ashamed by...
   it's not doing what the word histiorology is defined by,
not this unearthing of graves, and their deseceration...
you really want to wake up the Nazgûl?!
seriously?
   sure, i can be your necromancer... we can have
total obliteration... just speak enough ****** constriction
to germans, and then point them at the target,
and you'll get a crossbow shock of the event...
     Islam really is warming us up for something,
they're nibbling at us, they're trying to
  really give us the "spark", it's not a case whether i'm
correct in thinking this... it's only that i feel it...
i can taste it... i can stomach it...
     such lovely names, those old crusaders...
Tancred...
                     mind you: peter the hermit's child
crusade...
                       if they came from north of Persia
they'd be drafted as Mameluks...
       le throng! if only there were always
the french incission to state that...
   le throng! you just can't leave youth culture
settle into the urban environment,
you really seem to want that... get pockets
of culture coming from the youth...
     it can't ever be grime from east or south london...
    me? i'm trapped in a library, i actually
built of myself... apparent;y 1 in 10 people don't
own a single book in england...
         the brothers Godfrey, Eustace & Baldwin...
   oh lookie lookie... you're tickling the beast
so just, any minute now and it will awake once more...
    and be cited as having said:
   walking up to me knee in blood and
slaughtered corpse... Harod looks pale the minute
past...
               Tancred... dubbed te Panzer sulphur snout...
are there more gentlemen of my stature on
their way?
        that's me: don't know who's the possessor
of a ***** and who of a juiced up ****...
   but i can bet the niqab does wonders...
   so much anonymity, you don't even need
  internet pseudonym names, no jackx666
or rogerxtra... you just don the ninja and, ooh!
ooh! everything's so flimsy! so airy! flutters
of a butterfly!
               that ***** king in the kingdom of heaven
movie did have a name: baldwin iv...
   and he was a *****...
         you'd accidently sneeze into his face
and his nose would fall off...
   true story, or i'm drunk...
           but my: this wine i made, this homemade
wine? it does the trick!
                 baldwin iv died aged twenty four...
lucky sod, kurt cobain of the medieval ages...
    oi oi... wait wait... ZENGI!
  zengi the heavy drinker! buddy!
fully name? imad ed-din zengi. ah, zengi zengi,
zengi... what tales i have for you...
      i'd tell them, and you'd turn out to be in full
disclosure trying to fake sober...
                        ibn al-athir also wrote something,
does it deserve more a toast or mere chronicler?
the latter will know.
fatimids and sunni caliphs...
              Balak, the dream-inspiration for
Fulcher of Chartres...
Antioch, Tyre, Edessa...
  and that old feverish fox known as the lesser
Barbarossa: Reynald de Châtillon...
         don't know...
   as an ethnic bias, i am of the people that remained
bound to a home near the Baltic sea...
  we also fought crusaders...
the knights templar, die ritter von deutsche haus
beispiel sankte mariam in yerusalem...
       which makes my history a bit different
to the current history...
i have other myths... with
Jagiello... and grand-komtur Brzęczyszczykiewicz...
but you know... hmm... let's go crazy
and pop a pill or two... blues for the upper
and reds for the downer...
what a unique occasion! are you sure
we're not sailing on a gondola in the water-alleys
of Venice singing some obscure folk-song, hmm?!
by now i look like the stańczyk (grand court
jester) in one of jan matejko's paintings,
laughing my *** off as to denote: that i am,
quiet righly: the most amused. ha ha.
Sioux! sioux! pruss! pruss!
     and the crucifix really is a profanity of
the tetragrammaton, that came back,
morphed, as if touching a philosophers stone,
and turned out to be an acronym n.e.w.s.:
north, east, west... south...
   the minute the tetragrammaton touched
the ✝ it came back as n.e.w.s.
      and that really is the most dignifying
Balaam equal compliment i can give...
      but you know, just seeing how Islam is really
inviting former crusader nations to have a fight...
   and i'm spotting this, coming from a region
that also had crusades riddle it...
    but it's true... the crusades around the Baltic coast
never get any coverage these days...
  i guess you can't really make momentum
from a reigion where it's natural resource hidden
in the ground is salt... rather than oil...
    then again, lying about,
reading the book crusades by terry jones
& alan ereira... didn't really make me think much...
   when it comes to the two splinters off
res in: res cogitans,
  i can only think of re-       i.e. reflex
   and re-    i.e. reflection...
     and the tongue these days is so ******* saggy....
i'd take more pleasure eating a bagpipe of haggis
than listen to current rhetoric...
    it's a sickness though, this demand Islam
is making, that once Israel has been established
we forget our cosmopolitan cocktails and engage in
a holy war...
                  but it is the narrative, we're almost expected
to feed into a crusader culture...
      but once again, i'm using a tongue that once
did wield crusading pomp, and i have an
underlining perspective of being on the receiving end
of crusades of the baltic states...
     i really should be jumping for joy right now...
   but given the schooling system in england,
or i suppose the whole of western europe,
i'm part of the schattenvolk...
                how the Lithuanians were so and so...
how the Poles were so and so...
    how i could almost try to seek out the same
linguistic pride of modern Silesians in ancient yore
of Pruß, but come against nothing but the Kashubian
denote...
**** me! so it really was worthwhile keeping
my native tongue, and exploring my ethnicity
and history like a ****-pants 16 year old girl
on a trip in the guise of tourism?!
  oh applause! this is better than milking old ladies
like Liberache might for a fur coat
or a gold-plated toilet!
     ooh... you rascal you...
                 can i please not sound gay now?
i hate how the concept of personnae can creep into
your psyche and give you, the most obliterating
narrative techniques imaginable...
                        but if you ask me...
Islam will not wage war against nationas that did not
succumb to the rhetoric of pope Urban Deux...
        i mean... can you really imagine a terrorist
attack in Poland?
             given that Poland experienced it's own taste
of crusades?
                 well... if it does happen... that really will
wake up something... it certainly won't be multiculturalism....
perhaps this really is merely a **** into the wind...
         my, all this can come out sleep-walking by
simply lying in bed and reading a history book?
             it's a good thing i assimilated on the basis
of merely using the tongue, rather than tapping into
past history of the people, past grievances, past prides,
past symbolism... i just use the language...
    i don't expect to really revolve around being an
adamant west ham supporter...
i just know that i'm Polish in the english language...
   and Islam doesn't really attack
      those who've have the better share of grievances...
whether in the 20th century context,
of going way back, when Israel was about...
             and reading a history book...
   wriggling toward a status of fame is absurd...
     i like the idea of: gently passing by like foam on
top of a cup of cappuccino...
                      someone said froth:
i'm exfoliating with this that and the other guess work
of vocab...
               well... that's that...
        worth noting the many more easily impressionable
young men out there...
                that would rather chop a head
of a person of their assimilated culture, and subsequently
not retain their native tongue,
   and then not play: smack the ******!
    layering over what their ethnicity clearly speaks,
although with a borrowed tongue...
       which is why a slang variation of language
has to emerge...
                it's not a case of slang representing
prior footing, and current footing, but cleansing
prior footing, as current footing, with only
a melting *** to be sure of...
         on the objective basis that's the right thing
to do... you really want to eat a good curry
at the end of the day...
  but sometimes you need someone to say:
me a shallot prior a carrot in that melting *** of spice...
        the feeling is not mutual...
    would i ever eat sand to sharpen my teeth
for a cannibalistic grin?
                         i'm quiet content with merely
dabbling in poached lamb... but if another mein teil
scenario arises... it'll probably come west of the Odra
river.
aerial ladder truck, amok, amuck, awestruck, bad luck, black buck, black duck, bruck, buc, buck, by luck, canuck, chuck, cluck, cold duck, collet chuck, cruck, dabbling duck, delivery truck, diving duck, donald duck, druck, duc, duck, duk, dumbstruck, dump truck, dumptruck, fire truck, fish duck, fishbach, fluck, fslic, garbage truck, garden truck, get stuck, give ****, gluck, good luck, grucche, guck, hand truck, hockey puck, huck, hucke, icing the puck, ill luck, kachuck, kluck, kruck, kruk, kuc, kuck, kuk, ladder truck, lake duck, lame duck, laundry truck, luck, lucke, luk, mandarin duck, megabuck, moonstruck, mruk, muck, musk duck, naugatuck, nuque, panel truck, pickup truck, pluck, potluck, puck, queer duck, raybuck, roebuck, ruck, ruddy duck, schmuck, schtik, schuch, schuck, sculk, sea duck, shmuck, shuck, sitting duck, smuck, snuck, sound truck, starbuck, starstruck, struck, stuck, stucke, suc, ****, suk, summer duck, thunderstruck, trailer truck, truck, tuck, tuque, unstuck, vhsic, wild duck, wnuk, wood duck, woodchuck, wruck, young buck,chuck-a-luck, yuck, yuk, zuck, zuk
Joey Zimmerman Dec 2010
Although I’m on hydro’s
Its not enough to pick me up and
Lay me on the pavement like
Your warm arms used to

After all I’ve drivin’ miles upon miles
Halfway with my eyes closed because I dream
Of that exact moment most often

I run a marathon like that finish line
Is laying on a bed with you
Please, return the favor
By waiting

Giving prayer a purpose
I believe that God has the power
To make your arms surround me again

I want the road to twist
And even with a seat belt
Break right through the glass
Breathing is a wreck
For this brief moment suspended
In the air; due to how fast I was traveling and gravity
This feels like flying
It scares me that I could beat my wings
Although it’s already too late
You’ve taken what’s left of the hydro’s
Alyssa Oct 2013
there was a time when i thought that maybe i could start to be alive. i stayed away from drugs and alcohol and i trained for hours every day and learned what not to eat and practiced a religion i had no idea about. but i felt something was missing and i had no idea why i felt so empty. i saw the people i love start to turn sad and gray and most days they couldn't lift their head out of bed. i soon began to realize that i had stolen all of their happiness, all of their hope and all of their motivation to live. it was like once i started to feel happy i drained all others of theirs. of course the only moral thing to do was to give back their happiness but i did not want to.

i am selfish and i am selfless and i am without self.

i felt it was mine, not theirs. i worked so hard to be happy for the first time in my life. i was independent, i was hopeful and positive, i was everything i had wished i could be. but i understood that this happiness was not mine and so i drained myself with cigarettes and bottles on top of bottles of old liquor and a different drug every day. i began to dream feverishly of fresh grass and old tasting food and sickness. i began to dream of my death. death was an old friend and he did not mind reuniting. i had dabbled with death for a long time, always testing him and some times begging him to take me with him when he left. he always knew the right times to kiss me but he never followed through.

death talked a lot of **** for a guy who didn't know how to take a hint.

i prayed to a god who didn't listen to me. i constantly got into fist fights with a god who forgot about me
i cannot tell if i am going crazy or if maybe i just need some sleep (i haven't slept in 3 days)
Leone Lamp May 2021
I had my happy coloured marbles,
All in a drawstring bag
I even had my wits about me
When they all said I was mad

I've since lost my marbles,
My wit's been licked it seems
I'm still searching for them
While you analyze my dreams

Now they call me mellow yellow
Since that slick spark has dimmed
No longer a manic madman
Calmed by my tonic and gin

Why does there always seem to be
An exchange, creativity for conformity
A need for insanity to be confined to brevity
And quickly quelled by righteous authority?
Just another lost psychonaut reminiscing about brief departures into madness...

`~05/10/2021
Shadow of the past,
echo of the future;
dedicated Musician,
a Phonomancer;
and inspired Philosopher,
a Philosomancer.

A Mystic and a Metalhead,
a lifetime Scholar and a self-Teacher;
a determined and self-guided mythic Artist,
a psychologist and an Observer;
I am a Lover, a Father, and a Son,
a homeowner and a Dishwasher,
a Friend and a bit of a stoner,
a social drinker and a fan of quality Spirits;
I am a self-contained Universe
contained within another Universe;
so fractal-esque.

There is much to this being I call "me"
and so little of it is visible
from the surface of my awareness;
so much of it falls within-
within the limitless void;
to be revealed only in Time,
and, to be unraveled by Time.

Discerning, yet reckless,
a wise man and a fool;
I find myself within,
and within myself,
a beautifully chaotic dance
of chaotically diverse energies.

Within:
the Spirit of a Renaissance Man;
Music, Geometry, Cosmology,
Mathematics, Statistics, Physics,
Mythology, Musicology, Psychology,
Masculine, Feminine, Canine, Feline,
Light, Dark, Day, Night, Sun, Moon,
Anthropology, Cooking, Dreams,
***, Love, Lust, and Suffering,
Spirituality, Science, Language,
Contrast, Respect, Individualist,
Intuition, Feeling, Understanding,
Action, Non-Action, Elation,
a bit of a Goth and a Hippie,
a Rocker and a Composer,
Haphazard Attention to Detail,
Conscious, Shadow, Subconscious,
Id, Ego, Super-Ego,
Animal, Human Being.
Alive.
Mortal.
Mortal,
and grateful for it.

An aspiring,
amateur Shaman
who "shows promise";
dabbling in Feng Shui,
the Occult,
T'ai Chi,
the Tao, Zen,
Music,
Art,
and Life;
a dilettante Poet;
I am an ephemeral expression,
a temporary microcosm,
of both the Human Spirit
and the very Universe
in which we occur,
if for but a brief,
beautiful,
fleeting,
moment.
Thanks to all of you who have, or will, accept my challenge:
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/a-challenge-ye-friendly-fellows/
It has been an honor and a privilege to see the replies.
Here are some submissions I received:

The Noose:
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/riot-grrrl/

Kelly Rose:
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/portrait-of-self/

Tdudleyesquire:
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/the-chameleon-4/
I beseech of thee, deck of Seventy-Eight,
perhaps some insight, or at least a "Gee ****!"
First of three:
Five of Pentacles

Secondly:
Page of Wands

And, to conclude:
The Fool

My gut feeling:
**** yeah.
~~
I shall explicate later;
at present, I must prepare for a gig in Folsom. :D
Now long and long from wintry Strymon blew
The weary, hungry, anchor-straining blasts,
The winds that wandering ****** dearly rue,
Nor spared the cables worn and groaning masts;
And, lingering on, in indolent delay,
Slow wasted all the strength of Greece away.
But when the shrill-voiced prophet 'gan proclaim
That remedy more dismal and more dread
Than the drear weather blackening overhead,
And spoke in Artemis' most awful name,
The sons of Atreus, 'mid their armed peers,
Their sceptres dashed to earth, and each broke out in tears,
And thus the elder king began to say:
"Dire doom! to disobey the gods' commands!
More dire, my child, mine house's pride, to slay,
Dabbling in ****** blood a father's hands.
Alas! alas! which way to fly?
As base deserter quit the host,
The pride and strength of our great league all lost?
Should I the storm-appeasing rite deny,
Will not their wrathfullest wrath rage up and swell?
Exact the ******'s blood?--oh, would 't were o'er and well!"

So, 'neath Necessity's stern yoke he passed,
And his lost soul, with impious impulse veering,
Surrendered to the accursed unholy blast,
Warped to the dire extreme of human daring.
The frenzy of affliction still
Maddens, dire counselor, man's soul to ill.

So he endured to be the priest
In that child-slaughtering rite unblest,
The first full offering of that host
In fatal war for a bad woman lost.

The prayers, the mute appeal to her hard sire,
Her youth, her ****** beauty,
Naught heeded they, the chiefs for war on fire.
So to the ministers of that dire duty
(First having prayed) the father gave the sign,
Like some soft kid, to lift her to the shrine.

There lay she prone,
Her graceful garments round her thrown;
But first her beauteous mouth around
Their violent bonds they wound,
With their rude inarticulate might,
Lest her dread curse the fatal house should smite.
But she her saffron robe to earth let fall:
The shaft of pity from her eye
Transpierced that awful priesthood--one and all.
Lovely as in a picture stood she by
As she would speak. Thus at her father's feasts
The ******, 'mid the reveling guests,
Was wont with her chaste voice to supplicate
For her dear father an auspicious fate.

I saw no more! to speak more is not mine;
Not unfulfilled was Calchas' lore divine.
Eternal justice still will bring
Wisdom out of suffering.
So to the fond desire farewell,
The inevitable future to foretell;
'Tis but our woe to antedate;
Joint knit with joint, expands the full-formed fate.
Yet at the end of these dark days
May prospering weal return at length;
Thus in his spirit prays
He of the Apian land the sole remaining strength.
Betty Bleen Nov 2011
Perhaps this is the way Picasso got started,
as a baby sitting in a high chair, dumping the
dish and the cup, the fork or spoon to the floor,
delighting in how the green of the pea met
with the yellow gravy, how the mashed
potatoes looked set against the wood plank
of the kitchen floor.  Did he laugh with glee
to see the orange yolk of the egg swirled in
the white of the milk, how the red Jell-O
looked floating in the yellowed chicken soup?
Later, when painting became more than
a figment in his mind’s eye, did he recall this
early experimentation, this playing with food?
I prefer to think of you in this way daughter,
dabbling in colors like a young Picasso, your
only tools the fingers in your food.  It is much
easier on my psyche to channel happy
thoughts your way, preferable to my getting
upset, aggravated every time you dump your
food, my blood pressure rising to the roof.
At every meal you fend off any attempts to
feed you, preferring to lift your own fork or
spoon then send them sailing, as if to say,
I will be in charge of my world.  I will
command what is at hand.  As my mind
wanders, I begin dabbling in daydreams,
futuristic thoughts… I am beaming with
pride… you are being called a genius as you
are applauded for your latest masterpiece…
but swiftly I am brought back to reality, as
just as quickly you hurl from your high chair
this meal’s rendition, today’s most recent
work of art.
Cné Feb 2018
As rainbows emanate
within my soul,
watercoloring
all my emotions.
Painting stories
on my inner scroll,
as rainbows emanate
within my soul.
Dabbling colors
on the canvas whole,
waves of hues
swirling within my ocean.
As rainbows emanate
within my soul,
watercoloring
all my emotions.

When colors
combine and intertwine,
within the palette
of my heart.
Makes me feel fine
with a happy shine,
when colors
combine and intertwine.
Paintbrush emotions
tickle my spine,
my happiness
is a work of art.
When colors
combine and intertwine,
within the palette
of my heart.

As it paints laughter
upon my face,
each stroke
becomes a smile.
All the colors and hues
I embrace,
as it paints laughter
upon my face.
Pigments of love,
and faith, and grace,
are the colors
of my style.
As it paints laughter
upon my face,
each stroke
becomes a smile.
Getting lost in paint
always makes me happy!
aniket nikhade Nov 2015
For a moment in time everything seems to be possible
Later on, something else seems to be possible
Still later, still something else gets sighted that seems to be possible.

It’s the mind that travels to far off places covering a large distance
The mind works constantly,
from the present to future,
from the future to present.
Still it’s always better to live with the present moment of time.

The desire to get something more, than all that you have leads to the process of ascertaining the future.
The lure for a better future spoils the present.
Still the process of ascertaining the future does not stop here.

Other way round,

Possibly something better seems to be possible in the future
Most probably there seems a better opportunity in the future
The worry about better future ceases to die down.
It neither settles on it’s own nor does it die down.

The mind continues to worry in a hope that a day will come when something better will happen and the future will be secured.

All this volatile nature of the thought process seems to be for a moment of time, otherwise after a moment or so, everything returns back to normal.

Satisfaction and fulfillment seem to be there only for a moment in time.
Then thereafter, the restlessness of mind starts again
What now?
What next?
What else?
What if something like this does not happen?
Questions and more questions are raised as the restless still remains.

Better to have something definite in mind, something of own, something certain.
Better to work with a positive mind set.

Definitely a day will come when something better will happen, something of which you had never even thought of.

Never wait for something like this to happen
Always make a way of your own, follow the same
Definitely a day will come when you will be confident as to how to reach to your destination.

Till then, it’s work that counts and matters.
It’s the input that you give in your work that counts
It’s the thought process that gets activated and worked up that counts
So keep going, till that point in time, until you reach to your destination.
Nat Lipstadt May 2013
As long as there are teenagers extant,
Anomie and alienation of
an unripened generation
Shall spill upon this site in cliched cries,
Dabbling with threats of pills and lies,
The endless pain felt gives one fright.
To this old soul who wonders silently,
Will these thousands of pained children
Make it through to their next incarnation

So much angst, so much anger,
I wonder if God created poetry
To salve their wounds

Their unknown futures loom,
But all I read is  hurt and doom.
You shall survive, children.
Awful poetry, some good,
you will write.
But write and write
till your heart be calmed

For even ancient kings felt the anguish  of the soul,
And we profit even today by King David's psalms.

This wizened fool has his hands full,
Mouths to feed, bread to earn and bake,
As midnight is almost nigh,
He rests prone and adds a verse to this old poem
He long ago scribbled down, grimace-smiles now,
Realizing there is little difference tween him and the
Sad Eyed Teenagers of the Lowland.

For poetry salves his wounds still, even now,
Unashamedly, he thinks, quiet like, praying,
Hallelujah, spoken in the original,
The tongue of his ancestors
May 2013
Bob Sterry Jul 2014
Pinot this and pinot that
This young Grenache is a trifle flat
Better to try and get along
With a slightly older Sauvignon

I sometimes get a trifle low
When dabbling in a cheap Merlot
And so to scare the blues away
Will sip a spendy Chardonnay

But to avoid real ennui
Drink super Oregon Pinot Gris
And let’s be quite awfully frank
That’s much better than Chenin Blanc

But while you sort out your Pinot
Give a break to Grignolino
It’s good, but not the same as
A bold and cheeky Oz Shiraz

And if you want to go very far
Don’t ignore local Pinot Noir
It always sells well on the block
And I wonder who likes Marechal Foch

As I was supping a cute Barbera
At a certain State affaira
Things got quickly very highbrow
When someone mentioned Muller Thurgau

It is no lack of vinous respect
That makes us scorn the best Malbec
And can you find me a single fan
Of that very odd vine, Carignan?

If one must go to a grapey hell
There’s good company in Zinfandel
But if we really must go
Could we have some Nebbiolo?

In the end we all agree
Any wine is better free
But if not free we’ll surely call
Any wine beats none at all!
There are hundreds of grape varieties. Some make good wine, some do not. A poem including all of them would be too long. This one takes care of the obvious contenders.
Thomas Bodoh Nov 2018
Just another broken heart
flattened into words again,
Smearing across the pasty page
like black or blue-blotched blood again;
Just a touch of token art
with which to whip the world again;
Fearing a cross too crass to carry,
They faerie-framed their thoughts again:

Take time, took time, take time this time
To clash colors, a mix of chromas, aromas:
Molten gold, glinting, told tales this time
Of sins staining souls, a soma, a coma;
Forge phrases, four ages of metals to melt
Syllables, words, still able swords, vaunt,
Down and up high the hammer to **** her
Or him for whatever however we want

Looking for troth or truth, that thing;
Maybe by binding books we can find it.
It should never make sense, confusion is
Beauty apparently; form or frame has aged
Too sage, or something, just a splash of
Words on a page, repeat, repeat
Sounds lovely, drip, drop, break, love, hurt,
He said, she said, forever and for ever, then
Stop

Something simple, sight or sound,
Take a second, and rely
On real eyes
To realize
The real lies
We're all just
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2016
i used to be, what you might call husband material, and i stress that i used to be; i can count the number of girlfriends i had with one hand, no relationship lasting long enough to celebrate anniversaries.

i moved up in life, i'm still drinking
a £10.80 bottle of scot club whiskey,
but the mixer has been upgraded from
a £0.17 bottle of coca cola to a £0.55
bottle... and noticeable differences,
waking up with a hangover i used to
drink up the leftover mixer in the afternoon
(obviously the mix to get rid of insomnia
is really effective - naproxen is a more
effective version of paracetamol;
and in relation to the poem
*rock bottom england
, everyone's
abusing antibiotics these days,
people are making viruses cleverer,
all this darwinism against theology
has made us teach darwinism to viruses,
one cough, one sneeze and you're dead),
so yeah, conjunction usage like a comedian
on a stage, you never know what you're
going to say next, a bit like an r.e.m.
gimmick salute to nirvana, about
how many times you can say yeah in a song
(man on the moon, smells like teen spirit,
indeed i'm in that age bracket if you're asking,
i know more about steve tyler than swift tailor),
anyway... what was i saying?
oh yeah, the £0.17 bottle of coca cola is
over-fizzy, they jazzed things up with excess gas,
too much carbon dioxide,
it's too acidic,
i know because yesterday i bought
a bottle of pepsi, drank it today
and i didn't get heartburn... well, serves you
right for buying the cheap **** i thought,
so i upgraded to the £0.55 bottle
and guess what... no excess fizz!
but that's how it goes, the best albums
to listen to when walking in english suburbia
are burial's untrue album,
very experimental dub-step that's not really
about dabbling in a pigeon or chicken strut,
i.e. no "drop" that's a signature of drum & bass...
and susumu yokota's grinning cat,
both albums work perfectly with the illumination
on suburban streets of essex
(oh look, urbanity - consciousness -
suburbia - subconsciousness -
the countryside - the unconscious);
so the talk in the supermarket was
a guy stacking freezer products damning it
all with, quote: 'money is the vilest of evils
of this world',
true that i said out-loud walking back to
the automated cashiers with another £1.50
bottle of amstel beer...
england was playing the Netherlands
and was winning one nil,
a bad joke about the flatlands
and how the dutch were good when
johan cruyff played, getting to the final
in 1974 losing to west germany,
and how the germans cheated playing
in unplayable circumstances with poland
in a bog rather than a pitch, the rain man,
the swift polish players were no match
on a dry pitch, with the german heavy cavalry;
so then on the walk i peer into this one house,
a massive blue aquarium in it,
Poseidon's wallet... and i thought...
was i rich enough to own a house,
or if i were to be like a moralising Confucius,
teacher of humanity, i'd replace all
modern fireplaces that televisions are,
and install aquariums in every household.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2020
.and very much so:
the royal albert hall... is not where you'd go
to watch ballet...
      unless you were going to watch...
an enlarged centipede pretend to stampede
on a treadmill...


high-brow my ***...
         because iron maiden's phantom
of the opera... did... does... predate...
andrew webber's stab...
                 hard rock 'ammer...
       as in... a paul di'anno bitchboy
                 scant-gimpwhore fan... etc.
the castrato operatics... later...
n'ah...               but that's oh so much
an origins story...
                    and hardly the evolution...

- that the phantom of the opera stands on
a skeleton of three songs...
revised...                morphing...

perhaps not, not that they are songs...
i'd have to sharpen my scalpel for
attempting the smithy deeds on words...

a skeleton of three themes...
       thus noted:

               "angel of music"
            "phantom of the opera"
    and... last but not least:
                     "masquerade"...

what a day... or what wasn't expected...
no one ever told me that:
a musical per se... differs so much from
a musical: for the stage...

by musical...
                 i'd be shaking to conjure up...
the screen musicals of a west side story...
etc. -

            and one can easily so tire of
this trap...

  and what of the internal jokes?
jokes at the expense of the opera...
              - poor fool, he makes me laugh
       - hannibal...
quite the jokes...
   having to draw the blood from
the mundane talk elevated to an operatic
context of song...

that a musical is... somehow...
when opera can be reduced to talk...
and can be thus reduced to:
the joker in a hand of poker...
   a whimsical little card...

the 25th anniversery of the phantom
at the royal opera house...
one can somehow forgive the electronic
attaches of the overture...
whether the electric guitar of the drum
machine...

   like one can forgive:
                 nirvana's unplugged...
at the end though...
   even andrew webber looks perplexed /
nervous... how did we get away with this?
i don't know:
the only style of genre that...
actually requires a stage and props...
and ample volume of space!
a theatre: since otherwise...
opera: pure technique...
                and prop minimalism...

and...

because can a musical: not require a stage?
does it indeed feed too many images
that need to be attired with quacks...
with feathers... with leather boots and chandeliers?!

now i'll toast! i'll toast to a new reason
to go down the alleys of ah bit tipsy:
itsy bitsy sniffing a bottle neck...
bloated from a champagne cork pop!

truly... if only the stage...
   that allowance to perform a performance
a need to perfect: always never:
the editor in charge...
   all those out-takes left to what life is
left behind the curtain...

     the musical of the movies of h'america...
whatever they might be...
to name but a few would be best...
           and if i didn't first see the phatom
on a television screen...
but in its natural environment:
with the volume of required air...
     i wouldn't have been able to choke
my tears...

and i have seen the theatre
and i have seen the opera
and the ballet...
                            i sometimes...
"sometimes": wearisome...
try to forget the maggot pit of phelgm,
sweat and ***** of a rock concert...
        of all the mediums...
         this jumbled up swedish table platter...
what a cocktail of a rollercoaster!

i could forever take off my garments
of jealousy: of which there's that pitiable
affair of a beard-envy...
                well...
                           well well...

how pristine: they even had a music-box!
in that crude relief of finding
"revisions" and alt. interpretations
of... perhaps it's only a matter of
two themes and that overture?

             and if it's song and dance...
       it's not a candy-smiles and tap-dancing buffet...
it's opera and ballet...
because... it's opera:
                 ha! empty these cupboards!
no one needs to attend an opera
like a foreign language movie:
with subtitles running on a FTSE100
reel above the stage...

                      the musical: is the reinvention
of the opera... a musical is an opera...
with mild added animation of theatre...
and there's a pinch of ballet!

          this will most certainly not translate
into me liking cats... or les misérables...
       this will do...
                   sing-along / sing-through?
and everyone is, suddenly... equipped with
a deciphering ear to translate the over-infuated
vowels of an operatic breath?!

- and very much so:
the royal albert hall... is not where you'd go
to watch ballet...
      unless you were going to watch...
an enlarged centipede pretend to stampede
on a treadmill...

- but if someone would tell you...
a musical... west side story? yes?
     i'm pretty sure it would be all about:
singin' in the rain... fair enough...
             but all for that popcorn entertainment...
and the tap-dancing...
and chewing-gum advert smiles...
and all that technicolour dabbling...
and all those heavily bothersome editing
processes... like... the plumbers
most associated with veins and arteries?
sorry: the romanians are picking the fruit
and veg for the next: x-factor star...
the next youtube vlogger breakthrough chart
topper...

blunt and ******* obvious...
      and how has english changed since Dickens?
i made a note of...
because i will not make notes
of what's already passed...
a direct etymological association with a loan,
word...
  not from dutch, german or french...

       SA-LU-BRI-OUS
            (healthy...)

                   PER-EM-PTO-RILY...
         (not being permitted a denial)

that 19th century victorian english that...
just had to loan words directly from
latin... this much of reading Dickens remains
in me... after having just experienced
a blitzkrieg of a musical: proper...

there are still the same old nooks 'n' crannies
for me to find shadows and moths
in...

    because: i am most certainly the one
about to cite: they took away my circuses!
and m'ah bread!
there's no football! well... no football?
goodness me! what are, what are...
the alternatives?!

         opera you can... disregard...
theatre if... movies are your...
ahem... sartre's curiosity with the keyhole...
voyeurism: to exist is to be seen...
but only through a keyhole...
                     which movies aren't, of course!
the editor comes in...
even in the golden age of cinema...
the panoramic view... resembled a stage...
and in the old movies you could
time... the editor taking charge...
and how long it would take for
the actors to forget their lines...

            not that that matters... given...
there's no stage... but the red carpet
of postures and toothpaste adverts...
and paparazzi *** epilepsy from the strobe
glitter ball of the leeches congregating!
not even vultures make such a spectacle!
i saw the same...
then the concrete was layered with enough
frost at night...
the crevices would become impregnated
with diamonds of ice...
every twist of the head would
agitate these sparkles toward imitation
of a flash!

there's a "musical": in the advent of the h'american
sense... and there's: a musical...

- and if you happen to hear a subtle joke
by evelyn waugh in the meantime:
at the better for you...
              what is an encyclopedic "ogling"
within the confines of scrutiny:
that man may forever be attired...
and the genitals just dangling like
champagne flutes without any,
any sort of, scrutiny of...
not having to play the Oedipus!

               here's a fork... here's a donkey...
here's a spoon... here's the Schleswig-Holstein
and its siege of Westerplatte!
here!
   the Schleswig-Holstein tenor of
                           the opera: Westerplatte...
oh joy: a "my" in a "history"...
and none of it an affair that might...
disturb the peaceful lives
of those lived: under the splendour
of a charles II and a handel firework's music
to have to somehow: "put out"!

clearly: i'll be dying from the ******
of all the collective forces of the universe
and gambling and... oopsies...
i am here... and it's not that sort of grey...
pistons assured!
- had i the face of beauty...
beside starring as a tadpole of potential...
a voice with a stage to make outlet with...

- what could ever become of this...
jigsaw puzzling overdue do...
                         the narrative in the classical sense:
hardly what, and what not:
this vector and the in-between
from some mythical (a) toward a journalism,
and weekend opinion pieces...
and all that insomnia riddled "journalism"
of the current year of crux denoted with
a (b)...

               all true: from darwin and the "big bang"...
and of course... time shrinking...
in between... beside carbon dating...
and let us not hear of things speak
for themselves: but ourselves!
untrue! hercules!
untrue! prometheus!
untrue untrue untrue!
but darwin and the ape: nod! gentlemen!
we have proof!
myth or no myth: but a journalistic integrity!
that's enough proof! for today and tomorrow!
and... what's not the fiction that's already
memory?

and what is... this imagination that's...
not a single street witnessed of Paris
in the circa of the year that was... 2004...
or 2006 or 2007...
                      
for the art... and this detail of science that
once upon a time shocked...
now... only comes... burdensome...
a ballet on ice... a shaking of hands with
a shadow... something beside this:
base revision of culture and civilization:
this bogus lopsided quest for:
re-inventing... nothing more... than a zoo!

so little must have happened in the case
of english history...
this hannibal and the mountains...
but what curtain: the great wall of china:
built among the mountains...
ingenious: doubling-up?
  xerxes whipping the waves of the aegean...
the great wall of *****-chewing-wall'ah...
i dare become the new albino...
i dare... and i the next japanese porcelain
frailty...
               many thanks: for the <caugh caugh>...
hooray!

              oh my mother:
the cindarella of nations of europe...
         i seriously can't do much worse than
that cocktail and carboot sale of tchaikovsky's
1812 overture...
   it's an overture!
              
really? the phantom of the opera is because...
of the overture?
last time i heard... prokofiev's lieutenant kijé
(kij - stick... kije... sticks)...
romance... was all a rave! "rave"...
              a nibbling at a crescendo...
    but hardly: then again: a nomad chorus...
a reminiscence... a memory lost: yet foretold...

and if... the anonymous provider...
of the full extent of the carmina burana...
      what if?
        i play... this cliche... this... my most
democratic oath: for the bettering of the voice
that could allow the congregation of
the many! my democratic oath: my quasi:
civic duty... me joining the club of the most
sober bottom's-up! pick'ld-week!

                 such are the affairs... hardly a worthiness
of a frenchman of pander...
or of being so blessed by an island...
when being neighbour of europe...
and easily bound to be found because:
france never too interest in the robot antics
of the scandinavians or what
was ever to be assured by iceland!

thus came the crude: skeleton waiting
to be refined... a peter schteele interlude of:
fancying a giant to a tumble...
i will not satisfy myself with a biography
outside of the realm of immediacy...
how do people write a biography without
the peacock of whim and of what's readily
available? a biography with a past...
automated: futurism... n'est ce pas?

         - i escape for the transcendental relief in
beauty... my own lack...
therefore better neglected: rather than denied...
it's my own that Belzeebub should
****** with maggots and acne synonyms onto
my face...

          i escape for beauty... not... sorry...
pardon my fwench: a ******* conversation
of the paupering sociopathic sort of
a job trotter sordid kin'!
                  if only crocodiles could cry...
they'd be warm-blooded...
and i would be year after year
an oscar nominee for a toast
of best actor at the oscars!

          pity... pity and the subsequent
dumbdrum!
                no! i do not want to guillotine this
affair with the autobiographic as long
as i am drinking and not any champagne
in sight... or... schnapps...
              
i best be off... this is enough frivolity
of the heart for a day's worth!
Michael W Noland Jul 2012
He was a heavenly hellion

acting the fool again

filled of dreams and adrenaline

hes mumbling with the manikins

and mocking the shenanigans

of morbid ministers dabbling with their daggers again

a hooligan

with a silencer ******* in

the machiavellian

looming beneath the luminescence of the crescent moon again
Aurora Feb 2020
R.J Calzonetti


Screaming cross the skyscraper’s windbreaker tapering

Aether vapour- trailblazing ****-sapien wafers

Of machinations psychotropic doppelgängers

Aristotle throttling menagerie’s philosophically hypnotic obelisks

Mind-boggling astronomical chronological esophagus

Antioxidants phosphorus catastrophic mitochondria

Beyond anaconda onomatopoeia

Of hallucinogenic Armageddon biblical umbilical cords

Swarming northern lights of aurora borealis

The chalice a battleground of Evangelion belladonna

Metalica candelabra swallowing the monochrome Hanukkah

Of a cold winter’s eldritch disintegration photosynthesis

Of innocent infinity stretching wretched beckoning requiem

The words that fall upon my page, are really just a shallow grave

Of the dawn of nighttime in my eyes, calm upon the twilight sun

Wrong is done draped on the blood moon wraiths

Skyscraped fields dusk a hollow thud below the dunes

That thumps the consumption of our fate, fumes to glow in darkness loom

Left blind in light of day you cannot see, the little pieces silver sheen

For blinding light may fade to grey, and I will never have my way

Nightfalls on another daybreak, dawning darkness, sundown on another day

Twilight plays with sparkling haze, the sky a wildfire made ablaze in patchwork scarecrows

Who etch rainbows black as a heart of coal, sold flatlining railroads

Gold wraithlike halos of stained-glass cathedrals unreal in the fever-dream of human beings

Bleeding Elysium from the seabed of dead worlds, gourds of incorporeal cornucopias

Born orchestra morsels of sorrowful oracles predicting crucifixion of ellipsis’ antithesis


(MC) Aurora


Absonant  as my pen writes the twilight, the red swallowed on horizon and bright

As through a sea of blood under my feet and shrinking mast of my mighty ship

A shadow I make on that red snow and peep into my heart’s hollow

It’s deep as much as my pen spake of grief.

I blinded in that last light and hurled like a beast dreading the songs of holy lies

That have just pained in bright and made me grieve.

They dragged me on my wings and deplumate  me as so fallen humans

They wrenched my limbs and rive my heart out and flinger me in air and I laid forever

On the stones that dank my blood.

I wait for the troth  of  demise but betrayed as it didn’t come to detract,

I laid when the horizon grinned red on my face and poured the last ale

And brutally drank the last sip of me.



R.J Calzonetti


People are sleeping under the blankets of a tranquil streetlamp

A sunflower in the damp bed of concrete

Soon they’ll be pushing up daisies

Underneath the foundation of what I stand for

Nip the bud of the flower pedalling the root of all evil like fallen leaves

Breeding paraplegic freedom from the pollen melancholic

Anarchistic polycrystalline shapeshifters drifting vilified

Buried alive like asphalt constellations crowning metallic gallows alcoholic in my solitude

See the clouds bury the ground in half a heaven’s heartbeat

Limbo’s limitless abyss the photosynthesis of the sepulchral diablo

Revenants of redemption dancing with death

Evanescent in its bioluminescent crescent moon spooning illuminated illustrations

Of Himalayan mayhem cremated avarice of ethereal onomatopoeia unravelling catacombs in God’s palindromes

Homeopathic saplings decapitated in the dismembered September wastelands defibrillator

Invigorating the nightshade white wraiths plane-walkers of Apocrypha documenting entropy

Pent up sentience avenging the endless demigods of discombobulated proclamations nocturne graceless, octaves eldritch, evangelic

Elegant elevators to flights of staircases where the air is fragrant with the fragments of stagnant stained glass asterisks

Written gospels to masquerade hostage to the faith the man misplaced the sacred hate, the passageways of apathy apostrophe

Apartheid of serpentine survivors carving smiles on the sidewalks

Farming diamonds and their detox

Arming giants like a phoenix

Carnal nihilists with their secrets

Stardust quiet as the bleachers

Start defiant still a reject

Art discipled to our freedom

Shattered hearts pick up the pieces

Jigsaw puzzles, smothered treasons

Sow the seeds and **** the reaper

Even legions rhyme and reason

Tattered flags without a penance

Good men do not go to heaven

Buy your burden at 7-11

Your exit is the only the next entrance

Resurrection prepubescent

Asymmetric biomechanics

Anguish to be reprimanded

Megalomaniac in our sabbath

Living life is just a sentence

Psalms of seance death’s senescence

Baptize vengeance lest it ventures into heaven

Ventriloquist omniscience of rhythmic equilibrium

Earthly hurricanes reemerging insurgent as the sugarcane purgatory

Primordials metamorphosis contorting rigour Mortis oracles horoscope cloaked in cloaca hallucinations

Induced irradiated amalgamated retaliatory incorporeal chlorophyll

Born from the sorcerers' spell, the cathedral of doubt

The only darkness is within oneself, light shed within a holy shell

Isolation is a lonely hell, scythes of moonlight blight of bells

Nightingales fail to halo word of mouth

Enveloped in the clouds cast shadows hex

But resurrection cannot hide from the eyes of death

Fresh as babies breath

Rank as the body festers effigies

Bless the Nephilim the questions beck

And call for some god to collect the rest

Is there any answer?

Even growth can be a cancer

Lifeless corpses once were dancers

Devils waltz on top of canopies

Heaven’s hands have touched serenity

****** brands that crushed His enemies

Stained glass sanguine dismantled entropy

Calamity ran dry insanity dabbling in humanity

Unravelling the candy wrapper saplings of happiness

Pitch black irradiant dull edges sharpening archangels, darkness reincarnating

Blinding bioluminescent glistening abyssal rakshasa sarcophagus parting monarchies

Metamorphosis coruscating fornication immortalization Tartarean

Reverberating ****-sapien scintillating hurricanes palpitation circulating ricocheting oblivion

Shining crepuscular homunculus dully illustrious

Sunless avatars, mannequins of Abaddon stygian as fallen leaves on the breeze of Avalon Evangelion

Incarceration breeding Elysium’s jailors in the cathedral of double helixes

Bethlehem's’ new genesis of Lucifer’s crucifixion

Brighter than a fallen star

Mourning in the dark

Doppelganger apostles night stalkers of phosphorous

Pockmarked arcanum bloodstained in gravestone Salem

Where the braves’ halos dined on maelstroms alone

Heirs succeeding failures of the empty throne

Filled with nothings’ own

Brimming bound by Babylonian poems

Deus ex Machina's apocalypse coughing prophets of Samsara blossoming diabolic

Life is but a Holocaust

Death the moment God forgot

Breath the only psalm we sought

Kept within a hollow box

Shedding devils, angelic, lost

Finding metamorphosis


(MC) Aurora


A world often synonymous with beauty on the horizon,

Meet my eyes you mourned demon load the strength on thee.

Crestfallen light on your wrist burns down your girth

And you can plead, just plead your twilight sun.

Watch the dead sea swallow you in the salts of agony

And drown in the anguish, hundreds of angelic bloodsheds,

Press hold of the thumbprints on your throat, you can't roar.

Sore lugubrious melancholy aired atmosphere,

And downhearted souls dispirited dragons dragged along.

The sob grim hiding in a blue funk rusty smog choking wind,

The nyctophilliac animals howl long the cold-blooded love song

In your lungs and burn.

It's the twilight sun,

Just that twilight sun.
By Aurora & R.J.Calzonetti
Poet took a grandiose leap of faith,
   amid a big swig of moonbeams
   dabbling toes beyond starry galaxies
Milky Way spun in translations
    Pluto still looked perplexed,
Big Dipper gave a smart **** grimace
    wondering what the hell was
   going on 'neath the stratosphere
   when human beings can't keep
       their heads above ambiguous clouds
            feet  firmly planted on ground,
delving lofty heaven's bliss
     escaping the wrath of hell's fire,
  aggrandizing endless poesy that
absorbs sparks of a universal desire
        never phasing sun's obstinance,
   but, if you believe in poetry
      there's no telling where
        boundless skies will surrender**

...and the man in the moon tilted on his axis in a
    backward's spiral and unabashedly winked
Ken Pepiton Aug 2022
The work words have to do, I do as well
leaving being as having been begun
ghabh-
also *ghebh-, Proto-Indo-European root meaning
"to give or receive."
The basic sense of the root probably is "to hold,"

Able comes from this, thus
ability  

8 billions, say
- the ob-servant says,
half are breathing in, as half
were breathing out,

certainly a few were out of sync,
so some of us sneezed, one would think
to effect the fectuality, unawares,

stutter steps, bridge march, aware
smell the honey suckle smell, no,
discern a subtle dif-fer tle,lit-tle
bit
literal not sames, similar sense, smell
seeming
how more aware have we all become,
we who lost taste and smell, while
experiencing a pandemic in our time.
Eventually endemic.
How rare are we in history? First wave.
Mindful, some how, now
my taste and smell
systems are back,
on.

Off, again, try to remember the smell,
of linden trees in Helena,
and wonder, set a mind on wish to know
will wonder, the worth of which we know

but fail to consider until… un til, tilling soil,
un
I think, et I'm y conjoined, to reconsider you.

At my bitterest root,
my jealousy and rage,
- alleluia, you know the drill
my will to act like some ancient god.
Cursing all I ever was.
-disconfabulating my own legend… uses
time, in points made.

May I guess we know each word,
writ and read, in this medium sprouted from
science with held from those
limited access faith confirmations, holy secret
ways out of paying for all the idle words,
never taken for the sense intended,
foremost
sense
posited, as a point in time,
we agree, I can, we did

--plea, please explain, make it seem
as real as any dream, we can't handle the truth.
-pointless-
- why carry the weight of knowing
think of nothing
in a word,
yet
not in time/
-- a spirit from the mortals fearing death
lives in this lie, cultural *******, fear of measure,
spit an image, imagine a nation, from dragon's teeth
spat, shat, splat, all the same, fat rain sound.
-- crack of the gavel, give us rapt attention---
order, order in the court, when, in fact,
judgement begins where Jesus says God is,
in his forever state, in me, of we, who
took him at his word, be true, live.
the way
courtesy commands, as judgment begins
in the spirit
of the man,

The right hand ignores the left hand clapping
-present the feeble fable

Discord sown among brothers-
hate the owning fact of life, only one breath,

- listen to the retold old word tale
- endemic demes enforced knowledge
- from **** to last told tale… we are this
- this is epic in each occurrence… we realize
smoked ribbon winds around in
form,
the long winter mind, all hearing ears, feel
from our gut, we obey. We join image-e- nations.

We dare ante-cipitate the motion in the dance.
All public opinion re
arrives at one point. We have no reasons for war,
we are not the users of others, we give, and
have been given unto, in some inexplicable way,

peace in time to rest in it, dabbling in old lies, left
binding cultural ties, as all reason for stiffness wilts

We listen to the Wendigo,
who wound the ******* greedy winding wake,
when the forest was aflame, and the wind had no cloud
that did not poison rain.
- meandering progress, not steam ship progress
sense posed reason aitia, to the t/
spirit and image in the idiom/
sublime

Now, the teller, looks to me, reminds me
of light perceived as punctual, flashing,
aha, waves in passing
understood.
Effectually.
- we stand as one.
- In the ready written mind.

All but he who takes a knee, ala George Washington,
under the leafless tree, in the olden vale.

The point of any thing, is made for, f-word for or fore
before, forsaking, one must make for some sake,
no relationship to four, for some reason, get
as a service, do what you do. Right.
Why would one enabled to do good,
do otherwise?

Ignor the answers you ask for.
Pretend poetry never makes
sense in terms of poetic good, exhaled, relieved,

passing coolness in the air.
- as gentle spirits some say do
Orderly arrangement, left mind, right or most versatile hand,
point at any thing,
bend that finger,
as on a trigger,
we can, we
know not how, we know, we have, we hold certain
positioning words as one mind may, I know,

I just got my smell back.
Like that, but after using your James Webb visualizing augments.
The wheel galaxy, just as imagined… we see

In effect, this is science, this is history,
this is art and language, holding sway,
we all know earth produces on a cycle, right,
greed breeds and brings forth famine,
famine finds us eating our corporations…
Jubilee, reset
-ship, shape, worth-shape, sense make,
peace where war was, one point
at a time.

Hold that thought, this is intended for

an audience, as the Terminal List,
was made to entertain military minds,
mental peace enforcer traits, keepers
of the secret, duty to the concept,..
live free, or die- for no reason,
save the Platonic essential lie.

Peacemakers were not intended,
we want valient warriors, at the core,
not the passive resistors increasing
capacity
to have the whole world sneeze.
And blink,
To sell words redeemed, mercurial recovery,

as from first people stories, branching away,

chaparral, between the salty sea,
and high reaching pine

fishing in a sea of social forgotten schemes/

Self govern, but in these days, not the future,
self govern now, participate in the present,

NPC over sight, non intervention-invention,
installed when you agreed, you watch,
do not rewrite the ending/

So, story being told.
Story being made up to conserve,

serve a certain truth we know, winter comes
some times for too long,

so we consider the ant, and remember Wendigo.

greedy gut, cheater, long time ago, we know,
we all can be the hungered beast.

Wait, and see, some day, we see the peace pass
for understanding, and we wonder into a we,
state of awe, as a we aware, we think

whole worlds and only words, at once.
Making peace from confused principle things.

We can, others have, agree; we are the best/

--------
Welfare, fare thee well, we said

we are as rich as ever was,
but we live a quiet life.

Pressure from some outside source,
begins be gins beginning to squeeze,

and pull and stretch, who needs the show
shown every where,
there, those other people, who own
no means to make a living form we are
reality personality types, all observants
become familiar with,
predicting winners, if it happens

I coulda been a contender, the audience
always know,
just how it feels, to be on your own,
a compleated unknown enfolding old Dylan licks,

Wendigo, there he go,
lickin' his chops, BG words are all I have
to take his breath away,

soft, and gentle/ sub-tility, wait, as sufficient

seed becomes something, never just a seed again,
and then just a seed a million times, in the wind.

-------------
3:55
I've driven myself to reflection
point,
observation con services ob
scene, objects mis directed, rect-
ify, io I mean, finger mover, on demander
I, free, willing, hunting wendigo from fantacy
conforming to hate manifested, abhor evil,
-never rests, never
rest in stranger's peace of mind,
find plain old apples in the tree, free, no fines,
no charge, non sense, an-tic

click onoma-tope -- under all of history, we know,

scribes, alone, found time to write, after reasoning
in the agora all day… ancient minds, WWSD?

--- listen, I am ashamed to beg, so, what does
your tab say, listen, I'm thinking

that's too much, here, take your ledger, wipe the debt.

Clean, no remnant from which revenant wrongs make claim,

first story told was told as lies, intended to deceive.

Knowledge is truth's gift, we live and learn
and pass it on. One point, inevitably crossing now.
And leaving a ripple, no marks

Yet, behind all that, this peace in mind, as a state, mindstate
timespace space time

taken, for granted bequilement does not disconnect,
knowing from known, and proof from pudding,
true rest,
reason for peace taken, in knowing, some body
had to believe, if it feels good, suddenly,
you know, every thing we eat
turns to ****, unless we learn…

that is good. Deal with it.
Homework, listen again to Braiding Sweetgrass.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2016
the feminine powerlessness of art, and the then again strict rubric of Darwinism's dictatorial regime to talk cool - sieg heil throughout, as a running honk! honk! (joke) on the sly.*

a testimony to high school:
don't ever listen to The Smiths
or The Cure, or Depeche Mode....
or any of my uncle's **** list...
the point being,
you can swagger among
Eucalyptus trees and feed the frenzy
like any Ibiza patron might;
cos' there's a koala rummaging
your drawers so to speak:
due to an episode of king's testicles
in the attic - hey presto!
a grand piano! hey presto! coronation's
fireproof underwear!
lovey dubby dub dub, and a coercive
test for nibbling on a Maltese ginger...
dabbling the fearsome offence...
the only school Morrissey attended was nostalgia.
Brian Pickering Mar 2017
The plumber came to call or The self-draining P’trap

To all the plumbers I have met, and yes I've met a few,
Domestic pipes, commercial pipes and civil pipe-work too,
Blow torch and solder, flux and joints,
Tricky bends and straight bits, in perfect counterpoint.

Then of course the big stuff, pipes bigger than your shoulders,
Not supplied by DIY, only bought from stockholders,
No solder for this job, a welding torch’s the thing,
Careful tack, align no crack, weld a perfect ring.

All the pipes are connected, whether large or domestic small,
Fill with water and pressurize, hoorah, no leak at all,
Flush the pipes, flow is fine, a job with a happy ending,
Pack the tools grab the kit, thank god I’ve finished bending.

The domestic user is dabbling, with a little pipe-work flair,
Can’t be that difficult, just one joint here, or the odd joint there,
All seems fine, fresh water in, waste water out,
I’m not going to spend money, on a plumber’s callout,
The waste seems not to drain well, gracious, how can that be,
I connected what I thought was right, no it can’t be me

It appears the waste pipe is blocked, gone are the comforting swirls,
This must be where the gooey stuff goes, and all those hairy curls,
I can clear the blockage, how difficult can it be,
Now, the water goes down the plug hole, around a wiggly bit, I see,
I think they call that a P-Trap, that’s all technical news to me
An old wire hanger, with force of water, will definitely do the trick
Plunge hanger down the hole, wiggle it round a bit, give it a flick,
The water hasn’t moved an inch, and the wire is firmly stuck,
Time to remove the P-trap, and deal with the unpleasant muck,
How difficult can this be, what could possibly go wrong,
Get the tools, lay on my back, this shouldn’t take too long,
Gripping trap tightly, with little effort it should unscrew,
Nothing moves, try again, it’s ****** tight, I think the thread’s askew,
A tap with my hammer, will loosen this stubborn joint,
No movement is detected, both sides are still conjoint,  
A mighty whack should do the trick, just to make my point,

A thin stream of water, is dribbling down my arm,
Success, I grab the trap, twist like merry hell, and to my alarm,
The stored bath water gushes out, the mood is far from calm.

Pushing the trap together again, trying to stem the flow,
A loud voice calls, from the dining room below,
What the hell are you doing, water’s all over my Chapeau.

Sorry my love, move your hat, it’ll be fixed in a trice,
Me thinks, If I don’t fix this very soon, I’ll need a flotation device,
Just a five minute job, am I kidding myself, my mouth is all agape,
I hunt around with my free hand, and grab the gaffer tape.

I unwind the life saver, and wrap it around the leak,
Let’s consider the situation, to avoid my wife’s serious fit of pique,  
Keep my mind focused, what could possibly go wrong,
A solution is required this very minute, that won’t take overlong.

I’ll wedge my hammer, beneath the troublesome trap,
This will give extra support, whilst my plan, I have time to map,
As I swung the hammer into place, there came a mighty crack,
A hole appeared in the bath end, I suffered a symbolic heart attack.

Time to call the plumber, and hang my head in shame,
My wife’s assessment of DIY, will never be the same,
Emergency call out was swift, a smiling youth at my door,
Lead me to the problem site, and I will probe and explore.

An estimate was made, whilst ******* air through his teeth,
What Pratt, he said, has been working on the trap beneath,
Is it bad, my wife has strength of a gorilla, it’s beyond belief,
I’m afraid it’s a bath, a trap and associated pipe work, good grief.

It’s going to be expensive, there’s the bath and tiling too,
I can’t do it straight away, but I’ll put you in the queue,
Said he was interested in the engineering feat,
Designing a self draining P-trap, was a little hard to beat.


A temporary repair was fashioned, with fiberglass and tape,
I cleared the mess around me, and quickly made an escape,
It was some days later, I thought I’d clear the gutters,
I could tell the family were not keen, by their groans and their mutters,
Not to be diverted, I disregarded all their ridicules,
I told the wife I’d start right now, but she’d locked away my tools.
Here, from the king's mountain view;
here, from the wild dream come true;
feast like a Sultan, I do,
on treasures and Flesh, never few;
but I,
I would
wish it
all away
if I
thought I'd
loose you
just one day.

The Devil and his had me down,
in love with dark side I'd found.
Dabbling all the way down,
up to my neck, soon to drown;
but you changed that all for me,
lifted me up, turned me 'round.
So I; I; I; I;
I would,
I would,
I would,
wish
this
all
a-
way.

Prayed like a martyr dusk 'til dawn.
Begged like a ****** all night long.
Tempted the Devil with my song,
and got what I wanted all along;
but I,
and I would,
if I could,
then I would
wish it away,
wish it away,
wish it all away;
wanna wish it all away,
no cross that could hold, sway,
or justify kneeling away my Center,
so if I could I would wish it all away
if I thought Tomorrow
would take you away:
you're my peace of Mind,
my Home, my Center;
I'm just tryin' to hold on
one more day.

Dim my eyes;
dim my eyes.
Dim my eyes,
if they should compromise
our fulcrum
if wants and need divide me
then I might as well be
gone-

[Most epic instrumental section in 6 ever]

Shine on forever,
shine on, benevolent Sun.
Shine down upon the broken;
shine until the Two become One.

Shine on forever,
shine on, benevolent Sun.
Shine upon the severed,
shine until the Two become One.

Divided, I'm withering away.
Divided, I'm withering away.
Shine down upon the Many, light our way,
benevolent Sun.

Breathe in union.
Breathe in union.
Breathe in union.
Breathe in union.
Breathe in union.
So,
as one,
survive
another day
in season.
Silence, legion,
save your poison!
Silence, legion,
stay out of my way!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE8aP6jALyo

Great song by a stellar band.
Death-throws Mar 2015
I was never a good boy  , dabbling in the wrong side of the right life,  i stole coins like candy from my grandmothers cookie jar.  Of coarse i was wrong, but i allays...
I always thought i was right , because my world had so little light  i didn't know...
I didn't know what was right, what was i to feel? how i was i to fight?,
i wasn't..
depression is like having a red dot on your forehead and you cant tell if that's from the divines gifting you inspiration to speak or the ****** down the road firing words sharp enough to slit wrists through the ballistic scope of the internet. and how dare you say..
"get over it"
how dare you say"be happy",
because depression is like a black hole
that not even light can escape and where all stuck at the bottom..
only the lucky few get to sit at the top with smiles and wave without being ****** in. throwing in careless well wishes like the coin you stole into a well...wishing that coin would grow and swell and unfurl into the note  of green you think you need.
stop counting your own blessing and count mine,  because down here at the bottom  its to dark to see the notes of happy things you write, and still you throw more and ask for them back but why is it always about you?  why cant i get a helping hand without seeing the back of it against my cheek, because we only get help when its returned..and we can only beat depression when we earn it.  and the only way to earn it is to run faster then light because that's where the answer is...
happiness
and im not talking about the kind of happyness that drips from the slit neck of a broken bottle, im not talking about  the kind that seaps from my lungs in the clouds i blow, im talking about that someone ..
the girl with cute socks all fluffy and pink,  the doctor who series box set and waaayyy to many treats..
im talking about  the people who even when my skin is made out of stone see the marshmallow of my heart, even when my worlds falls apart, and the fragments of my reality splinter into stepping stones across a  raging river...
they make the steps not so far apart...
  while upstream my family and my friends rush construction on the dam that will slow the flow enough to cross..
THERE THE ONES WHO CARE  !'
the ones who grab that happiness that outruns my own black hole and dive head first into it m force feeding me spoonfuls of sugar and courage and smiles because  they never saw the swirls of darkness around me they only saw emptiness


And one after another those broken hearted lovers those screaming from slit rists or happyness in there raught minds strip there beds and make a rope from the sheets  and tossed it from the tallest window of the fortress of life and  as soon as it touched the ground..they scream. they scream like animals climb.. climb dam you climb!!! climb like gravities blowing you a wet kiss and  the worlds tied wings to your back CLIMB! and those eat the bottom of the rope .. they  chant your bane  to keep you going...keep moving they say.. and those on the other side who can see the sun rissing and see it getting better they scream hurry! because my lifes passing me by and only they can see it...

and i can say because of them...the friends that care the one who suffer i climb...Ii still do... I haven't stopped and im STILL not at the top but im still going...
and its hard...
and my hands bleed from the effort and the slits on my wrists beg to burst again but i cant...
I  cant **** the rope that love built with my own blood and slip back down
I  must keep going...
thanks to the selflessness of those around me i know that bed sheets aren't for nooses...
there for ropes..
because dreams aren't  knifes there an escape from climbing...
the soft pillow i rest my head on doesn't feel like rocks any more..
because i couldn't dream before and now its all i do,   i  scream it DREAM!  i yell from one ear to the next look at me! smiling with  broken teeth look-at me! my scars aren't scars because I've shaped them into badges of pride because im climbing...
and as long as i climb ill never have to touch the ground...
  as long as i catch the rope when i slip those who love me will cheer me on, iscream it... look at me, not even a black hole could catch me now

*L.G
a quick spoken word speach
GailForceWinds Jan 2015
Suzanne was an only child, adopted at only a few weeks old. This was no secret, she always knew from the time she was a small child. Her mom would tell her beautiful stories, while she sat in her bed, of how she and daddy waited so long to get her, and how special she was.
She used to feel special, but that was a long time ago. Things were simpler back then, when she was four or five. Mom and Dad seemed happy, and Suzanne did not feel any different being adopted. She was the one kid in the small neighborhood that was an only child. Every other house had five, six, seven kids. Suzanne never knew what it was like to live in a house with other siblings. She was happy with the way things were.

Then the storms in the house began. By the age of five things started falling apart at home. Dad was always sick it seemed. Mom was always upset, crying or yelling or both. It seemed to always be toward Dad, a quiet man. He never fought back, he just sat and took it. She was never be sure what came first, her dad’s sickness or her mother’s madness. She just knew things were not right.

Her mother’s anger and frustration caused her to lash out at out at Suzanne as well. She was filled with fear and embarrassment at a young age. Her relationship with her mom was strained to say the least. From being “special” she suddenly could do nothing right, always being compared to a cousin or the neighbors’ kids.

Now 10 years old she hid in her room a lot, it seemed safer there. But she could not stop the sounds from downstairs. Her mother’s voice booming throughout the neighborhood. How embarrassing! She has to face her friends, doesn’t her mother realize everyone can hear her?
Her father became very ill. He was drinking a lot, falling down and passing out, sometimes on the front lawn. Embarrassment was something Suzanne was becoming very familiar with. He was a gentle man, there was no fear of abuse. But her mother’s emotional abuse was far worse. She was always screaming and crying. There were the nights he didn’t come home for hours, and Suzanne and her mother would wait, hoping he would be coming home, alive.
At 12 years old, her father went away to a hospital, a mental ward of some kind. Shock treatments, pills and therapy. He was always making leather belts while he was there, and that continued long after he got home.

Her father was gone for months. Suzanne stayed with her Grandmother very often. She was an old Italian woman who spoke broken English and always had a tale of woe. Her mother would come get her after a visit to the “hospital”. There wasn’t much time for Suzanne then, the focus was on her father. She drifted through the Catholic school system easily. She was a bright girl, but had to grow up fast, too fast.

What does she tell her friends? Mom said don’t tell anyone anything, ever. No personal information! That’s when she learned how to lie. Over the years she became very very good at it. Hiding things and lying, that’s what you were supposed to do, right?
Her father finally came home, a new man. He had stopped drinking and seemed stronger than ever. Her mother’s ranting and raving did not seem to bother him a bit. He just shrugged it off and went on with what he was doing. But Suzanne could not shrug it off, it killed her spirit a little more every day.

Suzanne was no beauty growing up. She was the ugly duckling among the swans. And she was very aware of it. "Pleasing plump" her mom would say, as she made the big, heavy, fat laden dinners every night. Donuts and crumb cake were breakfast. Always on one diet or another, but nothing worked. Food was an escape for her, and all too available.

She was the fat girl, crazy hair that her mother cut, glasses, buck teeth, which eventually turned her mouth into a sore, metal mess, and of course the Catholic uniform she wore day after day. The other girls her age were all thin and pretty pre-teens. Suzanne was none of that. She went through childhood embarrassed over her family and her looks. Friends were few for her back then. It wouldn't be until much later, when the braces came off, the contacts went in, and the weight became somewhat normal, that her beauty started to shine through. But that didn't matter in Suzanne's mind, she was still the fat ugly kid inside. She would carry that with her for years.
The time for graduation from Catholic School finally came. Instead of joy, all she could feel was fear - fear of embarrassment. Would her father show up drunk? God only knew what would happen. But the night came and went. Dad was on his best behavior, mom was quiet for a change. No carrying on tonight, no-no, she had to put an act on for everyone. No one could ever know how dysfunctional our family was. So the show went on, the good Catholic family, happily ever after. Suzanne was just glad to get out of there without a scene. But now what?
The thought of High School was as scary to Suzanne as a trip to Mars! She was sheltered in Catholic School for eight years, uniforms and nuns, no dating, smoking or drugs. Was she in for a surprise! It started the summer before High School, when she met some kids that went to a “real” middle school. They were no stranger to smoking, boys or drugs. They seemed so grown up, and they went out with boys! Suzanne was going to be just like them.

The first day waiting at the school bus, Suzanne was more nervous than she had ever been in her life. She felt awkward; the clothes her mother picked out were just horrible. After years of uniforms, she had no sense of style, and her mother bought clothes that looked like they came from a thrift shop. It was too late to do anything about it, the bus was coming and she had to get on.

She didn't know that first step on the bus would change her forever. The next four years would steal her innocence, opening up a different world which years later would only be a blur.
She floated through the first year only slightly touched by the devil. Cigarettes were her only vice. Not yet an addiction, just a way to fit in. Her art of lying served her well. She was good at hiding things from her parents. They were too wrapped up in their own misery to notice her. She escaped in her room and dreamed. Her dreams were of being part of them, the cool kids. Whatever it took, she would do. And so it began....
Four years flew by, much of it a blur for Suzanne. By sophomore year she was becoming a pro. A pro at being “cool”, smoking joints, drinking a keg in the woods with the older kids, dabbling with a pill here and there. The few times she threw up in a shoebox in her room didn’t stop her, but makes her cringe now. Her parents never caught on. Even the days she came home tripping on acid. Were they that stupid or that uninterested in her life? It didn’t matter, she lied good and did what she wanted. Including boys.

She met him at 16, he was a bit older, had his own house and grew his own ****. Doesn’t get cooler than that! And ***** galore. Of course there was ***, but that wasn’t the relationship, the party was. Always looking for the next party, the next drink, the next joint, the next line of coke. So of course they got married! She had to get out of her parent’s house, what better way? Say “I do” just to get away, and the party could really take off. And it did, for years….
Suzanne couldn’t take the coke anymore, or the ***, or the drugs. It was too much for her, so she gave it up, one by one. But not the alcohol. That was her thing, and she wasn’t gonna stop, not for a few more years. So she drank and drank every night. Maintaining a job but hating her life. She realized at 25 that her husband was her best friend, party buddy, but not a lover. The thought of divorce was too scary. Nobody got divorced, right?

So at 25 she quit drinking, only to become obsessed with running and working out. That was the new addiction. She became distant from her husband even more. She worked out and he partied it up. She couldn’t be around it, or him. She just didn’t love him that way…. Hell, she didn’t even know what real love was. Would she every find out? She was determined to try. On to the divorce…

It was pretty painless, once her husband got over the realization that it was going to happen. They parted friends. He fell in love right away, and married again within a couple years. Suzanne wanted to have some fun, not ready to settle down. She never had the experience of dating before, or being wanted by different men. If there was any flirting during her marriage, she couldn’t act on it. So act on it she did! What a wild ride, three years and countless guys later, she started to play with the wine again…

It started slow, a glass here and there, months would go by without. Drinking wasn’t a problem, right? Oh how wrong she was. She’ll eventually find out later on, after much pain, self-hate and heartache. For now, it was easy to pretend everything was just great. Life was great, although lonely. She was worried about finding a man now. She was 30 for God sake, she should be married again. Well, be careful what you wish for! At 31 she met her next ex-husband.
It was a whirlwind romance, took off fast and ran fast. He drank, so she drank more. Still, not a problem. Everybody blacks out, right? He didn’t mind, he was just as bad at that time. Together they could not be stopped. They were the “good looking” couple, the entertainers, the hosts of every party and holiday. And Suzanne continued to drink, more and more. Always looking for the next party.

She worked hard, moved up in her career and did very well for herself, despite the drinking every night. She was young enough to handle it, but that would all change. She had a son, and didn’t drink while pregnant, a glass of wine here and there, nothing crazy. But the flood gates opened again after the baby was born. No sooner was she back from the hospital than the wine cork popped.

The next several years would be somewhat of a blur. The drinking was still manageable for a while, but soon the chaos would begin. Divorce, DUI’s, blackouts, bad men, drugs… Life was definitely unmanageable now. Things were out of control. The drinking became an everyday thing now, weekends were non-existent, only a drunken blur. Something had to be done, before she killed herself. She didn’t want to die, at least she thought not.
Time had somehow stopped one day. There was no day or night, just one long drunk, in and out of consciousness. Her son was older now, the men were gone, she was heartbroken, her only love was the bottles of wine she drank day after day. Without a license, for 10 years, it was easy to isolate. And isolate she did. Suzanne had a driver, who everyday knew to pull into the D&D; liquor store on the way home from work. She would call him on weekends, anytime of day, early morning, afternoon or night, whenever her wine was finished and the liquor store was open. She could never seem to buy enough.

She stated to sink into the dark hole. Was she losing her mind? She didn’t know what day it was or time it was, was it morning or night? Did it matter? As long as the bottle was not empty, it would be ok. But the pills for anxiety weren’t working anymore, she had to take more and more, and still the shaking would not stop. There was not enough ***** or pills for Suzanne to calm her nerves when she wasn’t passed out. She didn’t sleep anymore, it was just a blackout state, over and over again.

One day Suzanne woke up in the emergency room, again, not the first time. She didn’t know what happened, but she knew she had to do something. Her hair was filled with dried blood. How’d she get there? Who called for help? How was she going to go to work? Her mind wandered as she lie there, now awake, wanting to get out!!! They finally released her, 18 stitches in her head, with no coat, no shoes, it was mid-January in Jersey. She got her driver to get her home, with the one stop on the way of course, D&D.; "Really," she thought. "Am I serious???" But Suzanne was very serious. She went back to her tower, her bedroom of isolation. How could she explain this? She couldn’t.

That’s when she picked up the phone, glass of wine in her hand, and made the call. This is where her next journey began….
This is a first attempt at a short story.  If anyone has time to read, I'd appreciate feedback.  Thank you!
Richard Riddle Jan 2015
You made a personal decision to leave HP, based on dissatisfaction with the abundance of certain language issues that have, in my opinion, saturated the site. I couldn't agree more with what you say, but is it enough to leave a site that has provided the majority with many enjoyable works.
I don't know just how old "The 'Ole Storyteller" is, it makes no difference. An enjoyable read is always an enjoyable read, and one that  is read multiple times. Writers like yourself are important to the site. They are the ones we respect, look up to, learn from. Your writes serve as an inspiration, not just to the newcomers trying to find their way, looking to create their own style, dabbling with many, but for all of us that want to do better, better than the last one, and the one before it, and so on.
Your writes, teach. What more can you ask. Yes, there will always be those that want to waller in misery, wanting everyone else to swim with them in their muck. Some feel it necessary to throw in a few four-letter words which add nothing, but succeed in ruining what could have been a very good write.
Come back "Ole Storyteller"! Show those that cause your discontent that you are above what seems to becoming the norm.
copyright: richard riddle January 14, 2015
John B Jul 2014
Dabbling in daunting errant

Walks the line of sane and saint

Map's of mice and men immortal

"turmoils end or endless toil?"

Journey's end or genocide.....
"More meat for the grinder!"

a description for one of my retro alts figured id post it...
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2016
and with the high street long gone, they keep nagging that
only lunatics use the internet,
me? i treat the internet as a serious medium,
it's almost despotic to treat it otherwise,
after all... internet banking, amazon,
why should Beelzebub's pixel vision
in that new medium be lesser?
it isn't, here's the big ******* F
                                                                U
to the establishment - and i too thought
that the mystery if lawlessness
                  was with Philippe Petit -
you got to admit, that's more spectacular
than that thing at Golgotha...
you even have an accent of stigmata riddling
the mystery - oh sure, i'm into esoteric
*******, because i'm about to become
a shopper -
                        people don't seem to go
into merchandise streets to buy things,
all it is is: clothes, shoes and mobile phone
outlets -
                     anyway, they walk the promenades
to be seen...
                            not to necessarily buy
and keep the economy well oiled...
            they go and do the catwalk pretence...
so that's me: a Heidegger book worth £30...
mad, ain't it? spending £30 on a book...
                  and an album by cage the elephant,
i should really buy another copy of
tool's aenima or steve wynn's album with
cindy it was always you -
                                      maybe a pair of socks
to match...                  next thing you know
they'll call it shamanism - well, any literature
coming from Eastern Europe can almost be
deemed as such...
                               and the next best thing
to fame is enforced anonymity -
                                        because fame just
= interviews.... and mostly moths / journalists.
                     nagging aunties and uncles
of the scene.
                                   oh sure, take all you can,
i don't mind... if it gives you rubies and
diamonds i don't mind... a conker
signature of mahogany print is worth more
than a table to sit about with your
******* / orthodox disciples -
                fame?          i've seen what it does...
i rather have the chance to do small talk
at the supermarket and say: well, yeah,
i write poetry, no biggie,
                                           does it rhyme?
does it have to / would it help?
                             i left Cheltenham earlier
than planned because of my left hand -
that's the deal with the industrialisation of
writing, with that quill you get to be one-sided,
i know for a fact that my hand can grip
the quill better, i left the festival early because
i felt sick with my left hand not being
encouraged, lame, not using the keyboard -
i hate leaving body parts about the place
not being used,
                            and, obviously,
when someone starts reading philosophy and
utilises the medium of poetry: he's not one
to entertain...
                           at least i learnt a valuable lesson
after seeing spoken word event -
              i couldn't entertain -
my life might be ****-up, but it's not ****-up enough
to vocalise it with some sort of
                                redemptive analogue -
i couldn't entertain people even if i wanted to:
i read philosophy, without tutoring by established
lecturers -              it's enough i studied chemistry
and thought that dabbling in philosophy would
make me seem more "human": that famous
abhorrence of scientific studies and what humanities
shun in terms of adequate perspective -
               i simply cannot entertain -
                                     maybe because i'm
entertaining myself more,
                               the shadow and glad to be one...
but they keep nagging internet opinions...
     narratives...
                          yes, i'm gullible enough to believe
all of them...
                         if the internet managed to desecrate
the high street shopping experience, and people
bank using the internet...
                         i believe every word...
      lies have short legs anyway,
        and assuredly a Samson moment comes
somewhere on the timeline with the blind hulk
pulling the temple down...
                       i just never used the internet to
use comment forums...
                                 my experience of trolls is minimal...
                  the terrible has already happened,
   i just filter any agony and transform
certain one-liners into an antibiotic:
       your writing is ****!
i.e.      pronoun noun verb noun
                                              problem solved -
and too many young people took their own lives
because no one taught them to use this barrier,
these white cliffs of Dover, this natural barricade
and the ultimate defence -
                              put the hate into a grammar
filter - apply the anaesthetic - desensitise -
                                             that's practically what
your subconscious does anyway,
                               some part of you if wholly grammatical,
meaning that you're understood,
                                 point being:
journalists have become annoying -
                         the printed press is a bit scared,
          primarily because they're offended by
our expression of democracy, they think that whatever
is written on the internet is bogus...
                      so i guess internet shopping is bogus
as if internet banking... bogus too...
                        if the internet wasn't all-encompassing
i'd agree...
                                but as usual, people have to
******* something silly rather than make love to it...
sure, i have my wild opinions,
                                       but i have them because
they are actually dialectical cul de sacs -
                                     yep, dialectical dead-ends -
           i write them but do not actually adhere to
them -
                                pretty much conversation
killers -
                          post-Nietzsche? more than
killing god... we killed dialectics -
                                     since Socrates we've been
putting god and dialectics back into the box
to prescribe civilisation innovations of how to
construct "polite" societies -
                                              the sort of "politeness"
that masquerades and is the dung-heap
                    where mushrooms like Isis sprouts from.
but sure enough: read philosophy
                              and stop pretending to be
an entertainer -
                                 i couldn't entertain people
for the love of anything worth mentioning -
                     entertaining would mean disrupting
the continuum -
                                  the very accurate biographic
sketches -
                                  well... what would you expect,
we're living in a parallel society,
                                a society where a gardener on
television becomes a chat-show host
                                  and gets a publishing deal...
               we're bypassing that...
                                            if we're living in a democracy
we're living in a badly represented formatting of the idea...
              and that great ponce of the idea of books:
more than bricks...
             i open a book, enter it, and i'm already
walking into a building of some sort...
                     few books i enter are actually left
undisturbed - i make my own feng shui alterations -
            but i wonder:
                   is eternity the place where you actually
live inside your own head?
                              &nbsp
GailForceWinds Jan 2016
Suzanne was an only child, adopted at only a few weeks old. This was no secret, she always knew from the time she was a small child. Her mom would tell her beautiful stories, while she sat in her bed, of how she and daddy waited so long to get her, and how special she was.
She used to feel special, but that was a long time ago. Things were simpler back then, when she was four or five. Mom and Dad seemed happy, and Suzanne did not feel any different being adopted. She was the one kid in the small neighborhood that was an only child. Every other house had five, six, seven kids. Suzanne never knew what it was like to live in a house with other siblings. She was happy with the way things were.

Then the storms in the house began. By the age of five things started falling apart at home. Dad was always sick it seemed. Mom was always upset, crying or yelling or both. It seemed to always be toward Dad, a quiet man. He never fought back, he just sat and took it. She was never be sure what came first, her dad’s sickness or her mother’s madness. She just knew things were not right.

Her mother’s anger and frustration caused her to lash out at out at Suzanne as well. She was filled with fear and embarrassment at a young age. Her relationship with her mom was strained to say the least. From being “special” she suddenly could do nothing right, always being compared to a cousin or the neighbors’ kids.

Now 10 years old she hid in her room a lot, it seemed safer there. But she could not stop the sounds from downstairs. Her mother’s voice booming throughout the neighborhood. How embarrassing! She has to face her friends, doesn’t her mother realize everyone can hear her?
Her father became very ill. He was drinking a lot, falling down and passing out, sometimes on the front lawn. Embarrassment was something Suzanne was becoming very familiar with. He was a gentle man, there was no fear of abuse. But her mother’s emotional abuse was far worse. She was always screaming and crying. There were the nights he didn’t come home for hours, and Suzanne and her mother would wait, hoping he would be coming home, alive.
At 12 years old, her father went away to a hospital, a mental ward of some kind. Shock treatments, pills and therapy. He was always making leather belts while he was there, and that continued long after he got home.

Her father was gone for months. Suzanne stayed with her Grandmother very often. She was an old Italian woman who spoke broken English and always had a tale of woe. Her mother would come get her after a visit to the “hospital”. There wasn’t much time for Suzanne then, the focus was on her father. She drifted through the Catholic school system easily. She was a bright girl, but had to grow up fast, too fast.

What does she tell her friends? Mom said don’t tell anyone anything, ever. No personal information! That’s when she learned how to lie. Over the years she became very very good at it. Hiding things and lying, that’s what you were supposed to do, right?
Her father finally came home, a new man. He had stopped drinking and seemed stronger than ever. Her mother’s ranting and raving did not seem to bother him a bit. He just shrugged it off and went on with what he was doing. But Suzanne could not shrug it off, it killed her spirit a little more every day.

Suzanne was no beauty growing up. She was the ugly duckling among the swans. And she was very aware of it. "Pleasing plump" her mom would say, as she made the big, heavy, fat laden dinners every night. Donuts and crumb cake were breakfast. Always on one diet or another, but nothing worked. Food was an escape for her, and all too available.

She was the fat girl, crazy hair that her mother cut, glasses, buck teeth, which eventually turned her mouth into a sore, metal mess, and of course the Catholic uniform she wore day after day. The other girls her age were all thin and pretty pre-teens. Suzanne was none of that. She went through childhood embarrassed over her family and her looks. Friends were few for her back then. It wouldn't be until much later, when the braces came off, the contacts went in, and the weight became somewhat normal, that her beauty started to shine through. But that didn't matter in Suzanne's mind, she was still the fat ugly kid inside. She would carry that with her for years.
The time for graduation from Catholic School finally came. Instead of joy, all she could feel was fear - fear of embarrassment. Would her father show up drunk? God only knew what would happen. But the night came and went. Dad was on his best behavior, mom was quiet for a change. No carrying on tonight, no-no, she had to put an act on for everyone. No one could ever know how dysfunctional our family was. So the show went on, the good Catholic family, happily ever after. Suzanne was just glad to get out of there without a scene. But now what?
The thought of High School was as scary to Suzanne as a trip to Mars! She was sheltered in Catholic School for eight years, uniforms and nuns, no dating, smoking or drugs. Was she in for a surprise! It started the summer before High School, when she met some kids that went to a “real” middle school. They were no stranger to smoking, boys or drugs. They seemed so grown up, and they went out with boys! Suzanne was going to be just like them.

The first day waiting at the school bus, Suzanne was more nervous than she had ever been in her life. She felt awkward; the clothes her mother picked out were just horrible. After years of uniforms, she had no sense of style, and her mother bought clothes that looked like they came from a thrift shop. It was too late to do anything about it, the bus was coming and she had to get on.

She didn't know that first step on the bus would change her forever. The next four years would steal her innocence, opening up a different world which years later would only be a blur.
She floated through the first year only slightly touched by the devil. Cigarettes were her only vice. Not yet an addiction, just a way to fit in. Her art of lying served her well. She was good at hiding things from her parents. They were too wrapped up in their own misery to notice her. She escaped in her room and dreamed. Her dreams were of being part of them, the cool kids. Whatever it took, she would do. And so it began....
Four years flew by, much of it a blur for Suzanne. By sophomore year she was becoming a pro. A pro at being “cool”, smoking joints, drinking a keg in the woods with the older kids, dabbling with a pill here and there. The few times she threw up in a shoebox in her room didn’t stop her, but makes her cringe now. Her parents never caught on. Even the days she came home tripping on acid. Were they that stupid or that uninterested in her life? It didn’t matter, she lied good and did what she wanted. Including boys.

She met him at 16, he was a bit older, had his own house and grew his own ****. Doesn’t get cooler than that! And ***** galore. Of course there was ***, but that wasn’t the relationship, the party was. Always looking for the next party, the next drink, the next joint, the next line of coke. So of course they got married! She had to get out of her parent’s house, what better way? Say “I do” just to get away, and the party could really take off. And it did, for years….
Suzanne couldn’t take the coke anymore, or the ***, or the drugs. It was too much for her, so she gave it up, one by one. But not the alcohol. That was her thing, and she wasn’t gonna stop, not for a few more years. So she drank and drank every night. Maintaining a job but hating her life. She realized at 25 that her husband was her best friend, party buddy, but not a lover. The thought of divorce was too scary. Nobody got divorced, right?

So at 25 she quit drinking, only to become obsessed with running and working out. That was the new addiction. She became distant from her husband even more. She worked out and he partied it up. She couldn’t be around it, or him. She just didn’t love him that way…. Hell, she didn’t even know what real love was. Would she every find out? She was determined to try. On to the divorce…

It was pretty painless, once her husband got over the realization that it was going to happen. They parted friends. He fell in love right away, and married again within a couple years. Suzanne wanted to have some fun, not ready to settle down. She never had the experience of dating before, or being wanted by different men. If there was any flirting during her marriage, she couldn’t act on it. So act on it she did! What a wild ride, three years and countless guys later, she started to play with the wine again…

It started slow, a glass here and there, months would go by without. Drinking wasn’t a problem, right? Oh how wrong she was. She’ll eventually find out later on, after much pain, self-hate and heartache. For now, it was easy to pretend everything was just great. Life was great, although lonely. She was worried about finding a man now. She was 30 for God sake, she should be married again. Well, be careful what you wish for! At 31 she met her next ex-husband.
It was a whirlwind romance, took off fast and ran fast. He drank, so she drank more. Still, not a problem. Everybody blacks out, right? He didn’t mind, he was just as bad at that time. Together they could not be stopped. They were the “good looking” couple, the entertainers, the hosts of every party and holiday. And Suzanne continued to drink, more and more. Always looking for the next party.

She worked hard, moved up in her career and did very well for herself, despite the drinking every night. She was young enough to handle it, but that would all change. She had a son, and didn’t drink while pregnant, a glass of wine here and there, nothing crazy. But the flood gates opened again after the baby was born. No sooner was she back from the hospital than the wine cork popped.

The next several years would be somewhat of a blur. The drinking was still manageable for a while, but soon the chaos would begin. Divorce, DUI’s, blackouts, bad men, drugs… Life was definitely unmanageable now. Things were out of control. The drinking became an everyday thing now, weekends were non-existent, only a drunken blur. Something had to be done, before she killed herself. She didn’t want to die, at least she thought not.
Time had somehow stopped one day. There was no day or night, just one long drunk, in and out of consciousness. Her son was older now, the men were gone, she was heartbroken, her only love was the bottles of wine she drank day after day. Without a license, for 10 years, it was easy to isolate. And isolate she did. Suzanne had a driver, who everyday knew to pull into the D&D; liquor store on the way home from work. She would call him on weekends, anytime of day, early morning, afternoon or night, whenever her wine was finished and the liquor store was open. She could never seem to buy enough.

She stated to sink into the dark hole. Was she losing her mind? She didn’t know what day it was or time it was, was it morning or night? Did it matter? As long as the bottle was not empty, it would be ok. But the pills for anxiety weren’t working anymore, she had to take more and more, and still the shaking would not stop. There was not enough ***** or pills for Suzanne to calm her nerves when she wasn’t passed out. She didn’t sleep anymore, it was just a blackout state, over and over again.

One day Suzanne woke up in the emergency room, again, not the first time. She didn’t know what happened, but she knew she had to do something. Her hair was filled with dried blood. How’d she get there? Who called for help? How was she going to go to work? Her mind wandered as she lie there, now awake, wanting to get out!!! They finally released her, 18 stitches in her head, with no coat, no shoes, it was mid-January in Jersey. She got her driver to get her home, with the one stop on the way of course, D&D.; "Really," she thought. "Am I serious???" But Suzanne was very serious. She went back to her tower, her bedroom of isolation. How could she explain this? She couldn’t.

That’s when she picked up the phone, glass of wine in her hand, and made the call. This is where her next journey began….
Short Story
A two two tier system of health is established
now you are asked private or NHS.
This could determine who lives or dies
relying on those with funds.
The quality of treatment depends on paying
if none your only hope is praying!

NHS patients it's a lucky dip for treatment
private no expense spared.
No matter how dedicated the doctors maybe
money is the pass code.
Pay avoid the endless hours on a waiting trolley
instant service if flash the lolly!

No more the fare care for all who enter within
moral has long been exhausted.
By the excessive dabbling of many governments
where no parliamentarian is poor.
And had no knowledge of the staffs dedication
now wanting their eradication!

With an amazing crew who were not listened to
or giving them back up or respect!
The health service now in the United kingdom
is doomed to be for the rich!
The rest of us will wait forever for care
that no longer can be there!

Once the worlds flagship for health care
now the example to be aware!

The Foureyed Poet.
The National Health Service used to be a great place for treatment and a good employer. But No More! The Foureyed Poet.
You’re an arsonist, baby.
You’re an arsonist, dabbling
in the arts of fire.
And love is your fuel.
My heart was inflamed.
You left me to smolder
But I stoke those flames
because I’m a pyromaniac.

Your flames licked at my flesh.
And I kinda liked it.
The heat, the burning,
I thrive off of it.
You’re an arsonist, baby,
and that’s okay.
Because I like the fire.
You lit me up, ignited
my thirst, my hunger,
my passion

I inhale your smoke.
Taking you in.
The smoke left me in a haze.
My vision, my thoughts,
all left unclear.
Your fire left nothing untouched.

You scorched my heart.
Consumed me. Refined me.
You sought to finish me off,
burning for you from within.

I tried to hide behind others.
Beneath their skin.
Not even grafts can hide
the damage done.
You left behind your mark,
on me.
Branded me with your ashes still visible.
Dose me in your precious love.
Open the flame. Light me
Up. I’m a dancing tongue of fire of your creation.
Watch me burn for you.
Watch me perish because of you.
Watch me love you with
Everything I am.

You’re an arsonist, baby.
And I’m a pyromaniac.
What’s the number for 911?
I need a firefighter.

— The End —