I

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
  For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
  When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
  And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
  In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
  And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
  So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
  With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
  Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
  With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,
  Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
  A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
  “That fellows got to swing.”

Dear Christ! the very prison walls
  Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
  Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
  My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what hunted thought
  Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
  With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
  And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
  By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
  Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
  The brave man with a sword!

Some **** their love when they are young,
  And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
  Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
  The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
  Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
  And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
  Yet each man does not die.

He does not die a death of shame
  On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
  Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
  Into an empty place

He does not sit with silent men
  Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
  And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
  The prison of its prey.

He does not wake at dawn to see
  Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
  The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
  With the yellow face of Doom.

He does not rise in piteous haste
  To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes
  Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
******* a watch whose little ticks
  Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not know that sickening thirst
  That sands one’s throat, before
The hangman with his gardener’s gloves
  Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
  That the throat may thirst no more.

He does not bend his head to hear
  The Burial Office read,
Nor, while the terror of his soul
  Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own coffin, as he moves
  Into the hideous shed.

He does not stare upon the air
  Through a little roof of glass;
He does not pray with lips of clay
  For his agony to pass;
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
  The kiss of Caiaphas.


II

Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,
  In a suit of shabby grey:
His cricket cap was on his head,
  And his step seemed light and gay,
But I never saw a man who looked
  So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
  With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
  Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every wandering cloud that trailed
  Its raveled fleeces by.

He did not wring his hands, as do
  Those witless men who dare
To try to rear the changeling Hope
  In the cave of black Despair:
He only looked upon the sun,
  And drank the morning air.

He did not wring his hands nor weep,
  Nor did he peek or pine,
But he drank the air as though it held
  Some healthful anodyne;
With open mouth he drank the sun
  As though it had been wine!

And I and all the souls in pain,
  Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot if we ourselves had done
  A great or little thing,
And watched with gaze of dull amaze
  The man who had to swing.

And strange it was to see him pass
  With a step so light and gay,
And strange it was to see him look
  So wistfully at the day,
And strange it was to think that he
  Had such a debt to pay.

For oak and elm have pleasant leaves
  That in the spring-time shoot:
But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
  With its adder-bitten root,
And, green or dry, a man must die
  Before it bears its fruit!

The loftiest place is that seat of grace
  For which all worldlings try:
But who would stand in hempen band
  Upon a scaffold high,
And through a murderer’s collar take
  His last look at the sky?

It is sweet to dance to violins
  When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
  Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
  To dance upon the air!

So with curious eyes and sick surmise
  We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
  Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
  His sightless soul may stray.

At last the dead man walked no more
  Amongst the Trial Men,
And I knew that he was standing up
  In the black dock’s dreadful pen,
And that never would I see his face
  In God’s sweet world again.

Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
  We had crossed each other’s way:
But we made no sign, we said no word,
  We had no word to say;
For we did not meet in the holy night,
  But in the shameful day.

A prison wall was round us both,
  Two outcast men were we:
The world had ****** us from its heart,
  And God from out His care:
And the iron gin that waits for Sin
  Had caught us in its snare.


III

In Debtors’ Yard the stones are hard,
  And the dripping wall is high,
So it was there he took the air
  Beneath the leaden sky,
And by each side a Warder walked,
  For fear the man might die.

Or else he sat with those who watched
  His anguish night and day;
Who watched him when he rose to weep,
  And when he crouched to pray;
Who watched him lest himself should rob
  Their scaffold of its prey.

The Governor was strong upon
  The Regulations Act:
The Doctor said that Death was but
  A scientific fact:
And twice a day the Chaplain called
  And left a little tract.

And twice a day he smoked his pipe,
  And drank his quart of beer:
His soul was resolute, and held
  No hiding-place for fear;
He often said that he was glad
  The hangman’s hands were near.

But why he said so strange a thing
  No Warder dared to ask:
For he to whom a watcher’s doom
  Is given as his task,
Must set a lock upon his lips,
  And make his face a mask.

Or else he might be moved, and try
  To comfort or console:
And what should Human Pity do
  Pent up in Murderers’ Hole?
What word of grace in such a place
  Could help a brother’s soul?

With slouch and swing around the ring
  We trod the Fool’s Parade!
We did not care: we knew we were
  The Devil’s Own Brigade:
And shaven head and feet of lead
  Make a merry masquerade.

We tore the tarry rope to shreds
  With blunt and bleeding nails;
We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
  And cleaned the shining rails:
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
  And clattered with the pails.

We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
  We turned the dusty drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
  And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
  Terror was lying still.

So still it lay that every day
  Crawled like a ****-clogged wave:
And we forgot the bitter lot
  That waits for fool and knave,
Till once, as we tramped in from work,
  We passed an open grave.

With yawning mouth the yellow hole
  Gaped for a living thing;
The very mud cried out for blood
  To the thirsty asphalte ring:
And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair
  Some prisoner had to swing.

Right in we went, with soul intent
  On Death and Dread and Doom:
The hangman, with his little bag,
  Went shuffling through the gloom
And each man trembled as he crept
  Into his numbered tomb.

That night the empty corridors
  Were full of forms of Fear,
And up and down the iron town
  Stole feet we could not hear,
And through the bars that hide the stars
  White faces seemed to peer.

He lay as one who lies and dreams
  In a pleasant meadow-land,
The watcher watched him as he slept,
  And could not understand
How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
  With a hangman close at hand?

But there is no sleep when men must weep
  Who never yet have wept:
So we—the fool, the fraud, the knave—
  That endless vigil kept,
And through each brain on hands of pain
  Another’s terror crept.

Alas! it is a fearful thing
  To feel another’s guilt!
For, right within, the sword of Sin
  Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
And as molten lead were the tears we shed
  For the blood we had not spilt.

The Warders with their shoes of felt
  Crept by each padlocked door,
And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
  Grey figures on the floor,
And wondered why men knelt to pray
  Who never prayed before.

All through the night we knelt and prayed,
  Mad mourners of a corpse!
The troubled plumes of midnight were
  The plumes upon a hearse:
And bitter wine upon a sponge
  Was the savior of Remorse.

The **** crew, the red **** crew,
  But never came the day:
And crooked shape of Terror crouched,
  In the corners where we lay:
And each evil sprite that walks by night
  Before us seemed to play.

They glided past, they glided fast,
  Like travelers through a mist:
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
  Of delicate turn and twist,
And with formal pace and loathsome grace
  The phantoms kept their tryst.

With mop and mow, we saw them go,
  Slim shadows hand in hand:
About, about, in ghostly rout
  They trod a saraband:
And the ****** grotesques made arabesques,
  Like the wind upon the sand!

With the pirouettes of marionettes,
  They tripped on pointed tread:
But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
  As their grisly masque they led,
And loud they sang, and long they sang,
  For they sang to wake the dead.

“Oho!” they cried, “The world is wide,
  But fettered limbs go lame!
And once, or twice, to throw the dice
  Is a gentlemanly game,
But he does not win who plays with Sin
  In the secret House of Shame.”

No things of air these antics were
  That frolicked with such glee:
To men whose lives were held in gyves,
  And whose feet might not go free,
Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
  Most terrible to see.

Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
  Some wheeled in smirking pairs:
With the mincing step of demirep
  Some sidled up the stairs:
And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
  Each helped us at our prayers.

The morning wind began to moan,
  But still the night went on:
Through its giant loom the web of gloom
  Crept till each thread was spun:
And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
  Of the Justice of the Sun.

The moaning wind went wandering round
  The weeping prison-wall:
Till like a wheel of turning-steel
  We felt the minutes crawl:
O moaning wind! what had we done
  To have such a seneschal?

At last I saw the shadowed bars
  Like a lattice wrought in lead,
Move right across the whitewashed wall
  That faced my three-plank bed,
And I knew that somewhere in the world
  God’s dreadful dawn was red.

At six o’clock we cleaned our cells,
  At seven all was still,
But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
  The prison seemed to fill,
For the Lord of Death with icy breath
  Had entered in to ****.

He did not pass in purple pomp,
  Nor ride a moon-white steed.
Three yards of cord and a sliding board
  Are all the gallows’ need:
So with rope of shame the Herald came
  To do the secret deed.

We were as men who through a fen
  Of filthy darkness *****:
We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
  Or give our anguish scope:
Something was dead in each of us,
  And what was dead was Hope.

For Man’s grim Justice goes its way,
  And will not swerve aside:
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
  It has a deadly stride:
With iron heel it slays the strong,
  The monstrous parricide!

We waited for the stroke of eight:
  Each tongue was thick with thirst:
For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
  That makes a man accursed,
And Fate will use a running noose
  For the best man and the worst.

We had no other thing to do,
  Save to wait for the sign to come:
So, like things of stone in a valley lone,
  Quiet we sat and dumb:
But each man’s heart beat thick and quick
  Like a madman on a drum!

With sudden shock the prison-clock
  Smote on the shivering air,
And from all the gaol rose up a wail
  Of impotent despair,
Like the sound that frightened marshes hear
  From a ***** in his lair.

And as one sees most fearful things
  In the crystal of a dream,
We saw the greasy hempen rope
  Hooked to the blackened beam,
And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare
  Strangled into a scream.

And all the woe that moved him so
  That he gave that bitter cry,
And the wild regrets, and the ****** sweats,
  None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
  More deaths than one must die.


IV

There is no chapel on the day
  On which they hang a man:
The Chaplain’s heart is far too sick,
  Or his face is far too wan,
Or there is that written in his eyes
  Which none should look upon.

So they kept us close till nigh on noon,
  And then they rang the bell,
And the Warders with their jingling keys
  Opened each listening cell,
And down the iron stair we tramped,
  Each from his separate Hell.

Out into God’s sweet air we went,
  But not in wonted way,
For this man’s face was white with fear,
  And that man’s face was grey,
And I never saw sad men who looked
  So wistfully at the day.

I never saw sad men who looked
  With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
  We prisoners called the sky,
And at every careless cloud that passed
  In happy freedom by.

But there were those amongst us all
  Who walked with downcast head,
And knew that, had each got his due,
  They should have died instead:
He had but killed a thing that lived
  Whilst they had killed the dead.

For he who sins a second time
  Wakes a dead soul to pain,
And draws it from its spotted shroud,
  And makes it bleed again,
And makes it bleed great gouts of blood
  And makes it bleed in vain!

Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb
  With crooked arrows starred,
Silently we went round and round
  The slippery asphalte yard;
Silently we went round and round,
  And no man spoke a word.

Silently we went round and round,
  And through each hollow mind
The memory of dreadful things
  Rushed like a dreadful wind,
And Horror stalked before each man,
  And terror crept behind.

The Warders strutted up and down,
  And kept their herd of brutes,
Their uniforms were ***** and span,
  And they wore their Sunday suits,
But we knew the work they had been at
  By the quicklime on their boots.

For where a grave had opened wide,
  There was no grave at all:
Only a stretch of mud and sand
  By the hideous prison-wall,
And a little heap of burning lime,
  That the man should have his pall.

For he has a pall, this wretched man,
  Such as few men can claim:
Deep down below a prison-yard,
  Naked for greater shame,
He lies, with fetters on each foot,
  Wrapt in a sheet of flame!

And all the while the burning lime
  Eats flesh and bone away,
It eats the brittle bone by night,
  And the soft flesh by the day,
It eats the flesh and bones by turns,
  But it eats the heart alway.

For three long years they will not sow
  Or root or seedling there:
For three long years the unblessed spot
  Will sterile be and bare,
And look upon the wondering sky
  With unreproachful stare.

They think a murderer’s heart would taint
  Each simple seed they sow.
It is not true! God’s kindly earth
  Is kindlier than men know,
And the red rose would but blow more red,
  The white rose whiter blow.

Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
  Out of his heart a white!
For who can say by what strange way,
  Christ brings his will to light,
Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
  Bloomed in the great Pope’s sight?

But neither milk-white rose nor red
  May bloom in prison air;
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
  Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
  A common man’s despair.

So never will wine-red rose or white,
  Petal by petal, fall
On that stretch of mud and sand that lies
  By the hideous prison-wall,
To tell the men who ***** the yard
  That God’s Son died for all.

Yet though the hideous prison-wall
  Still hems him round and round,
And a spirit man not walk by night
  That is with fetters bound,
And a spirit may not weep that lies
  In such unholy ground,

He is at peace—this wretched man—
  At peace, or will be soon:
There is no thing to make him mad,
  Nor does Terror walk at noon,
For the lampless Earth in which he lies
  Has neither Sun nor Moon.

They hanged him as a beast is hanged:
  They did not even toll
A reguiem that might have brought
  Rest to his startled soul,
But hurriedly they took him out,
  And hid him in a hole.

They stripped him of his canvas clothes,
  And gave him to the flies;
They mocked the swollen purple throat
  And the stark and staring eyes:
And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud
  In which their convict lies.

The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
  By his dishonored grave:
Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
  That Christ for sinners gave,
Because the man was one of those
  Whom Christ came down to save.

Yet all is well; he has but passed
  To Life’s appointed bourne:
And alien tears will fill for him
  Pity’s long-broken urn,
For his mourner will be outcast men,
  And outcasts always mourn.


V

I know not whether Laws be right,
  Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
  Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
  A year whose days are long.

But this I know, that every Law
  That men have made for Man,
Since first Man took his brother’s life,
  And the sad world began,
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
  With a most evil fan.

This too I know—and wise it were
  If each could know the same—
That every prison that men build
  Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
  How men their brothers maim.

With bars they blur the gracious moon,
  And blind the goodly sun:
And they do well to hide their Hell,
  For in it things are done
That Son of God nor son of Man
  Ever should look upon!

The vilest deeds like poison weeds
  Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
  That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
  And the Warder is Despair

For they starve the little frightened child
  Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
  And gibe the old and grey,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And none a word may say.

Each narrow cell in which we dwell
  Is foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
  Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
  In Humanity’s machine.

The brackish water that we drink
  Creeps with a loathsome slime,
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
  Is full of chalk and lime,
And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
  Wild-eyed and cries to Time.

But though lean Hunger and green Thirst
  Like asp with adder fight,
We have little care of prison fare,
  For what chills and kills outright
Is that every stone one lifts by day
  Becomes one’s heart by night.

With midnight always in one’s heart,
  And twilight in one’s cell,
We turn the crank, or tear the rope,
  Each in his separate Hell,
And the silence is more awful far
  Than the sound of a brazen bell.

And never a human voice comes near
  To speak a gentle word:
And the eye that watches through the door
  Is pitiless and hard:
And by all forgot, we rot and rot,
  With soul and body marred.

And thus we rust Life’s iron chain
  Degraded and alone:
And some men curse, and some men weep,
  And some men make no moan:
But God’s eternal Laws are kind
  And break the heart of stone.

And every human heart that breaks,
  In prison-cell or yard,
Is as that broken box that gave
  Its treasure to the Lord,
And filled the unclean *****’s house
  With the scent of costliest nard.

Ah! happy day they whose hearts can break
  And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
  And cleanse his soul from Sin?
How else but through a broken heart
  May Lord Christ enter in?

And he of the swollen purple throat.
  And the stark and staring eyes,
Waits for the holy hands that took
  The Thief to Paradise;
And a broken and a contrite heart
  The Lord will not despise.

The man in red who reads the Law
  Gave him three weeks of life,
Three little weeks in which to heal
  His soul of his soul’s strife,
And cleanse from every blot of blood
  The hand that held the knife.

And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
  The hand that held the steel:
For only blood can wipe out blood,
  And only tears can heal:
And the crimson stain that was of Cain
  Became Christ’s snow-white seal.


VI

In Reading gaol by Reading town
  There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
  Eaten by teeth of flame,
In burning winding-sheet he lies,
  And his grave has got no name.

And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
  In silence let him lie:
No need to waste the foolish tear,
  Or heave the windy sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved,
  And so he had to die.

And all men **** the thing they love,
  By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
  Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
  The brave man with a sword!

The rain-Gods should
Give this greenhorn a reason
To why pain could
Appear this green-corn season,

Which baboon will make a sound
If the rich moon cannot be found?
Sometimes we play all day
Making sure that the clay
Does not decay,

But now our rock had bend
And who will lock and mend,
Ah, send the Gods a plea,
And it will end the cods a sea,

For the fear of might is oppression
Whiles the tear of night of derision
But nothing inside will look so strong
If something outside looks so wrong

Is this ice of life so conscious?
Maybe the price of life is so precious,
Men of Kush!
Have a pen for push

And never harm the Gods arm,
For their charm grows your farm,
The debtors have broken the palm-vine
Causing the ancestors to drink the palmwine
Indeed, what life sees as pain,
Must be given to death to explain.


© PRINCE NANA ANIN-AGYEI
Email: nanaspeaks@gmail.com

xspacexpotatox 1h
Racism is a lie, your people hate us naturally lol just look at the way you’re responding................ and us “black people” are supposed to be the ignorant ones.... whew
xspacexpotatox  1h
Look at the affliction and persecution. There’s a reason why your ancestors put chains around our necks. It’s because the Bible said it would happen ****
xspacexpotatox  1h
So do me a favor, go learn a bit more. I’m not even gonna laugh at your ignorance, I’ll pray for you. Have a nice one.
Torin Galleshaw  1h
oh so your jewish friend is the authority on this? what does he know about zionism? seems you got your mind made up man. good for you
xspacexpotatox  1h
I want to know why you feel so threatened lol
xspacexpotatox  1h
I won’t let the hate reach me man
Torin Galleshaw  1h
wow, racism is a lie then u stereotype all white people IMMEDIATELY after you say that. ignent? i really wanted to give you a chance bro. but you have been very abrasive this whole time, immature and incredibly offensive. i dont know where in the bible it says that. or, if as i remember when i went to ce williams middle school as a young kid in a poor part of charleston south carolina where i also learned a test can be racist because the only person that did well on it was me, the white kid. ive felt black racism towards me all my life. do you know the history of the celtic people. yeah, slaves were given food to eat, my people died in gutters in the cold because of no mc hiring practices. ever heard of britain, do you know who irelands neighbor is. have you heard of the potato famine, do you know why it happened? william wallace?
systematic opression for over 800 years.

most important part and key difference between us, besides the fact thta your better than me because you are black, but. you claim im so ignorant im not worth your time, essentially. i think your so misguided i would love to show you the actual way to god and heaven. brother, you need it.
xspacexpotatox  1h
Bro you lose don’t message me anymore
Torin Galleshaw  1h
and dont claim im acting like im threatened, first thing, you dont know me. youre acting nearly militaristic on this ****. young malcom X wanna be. im cool tho, you robably never knew someone as chill as me.
maybe we could talk without resorting to personal attacks tho. thats a good sign you are losing an argument.
xspacexpotatox  1h
What’s your point? Mines is simple. I get what I learned from college text books and the Bible, the knowledge coincides and that indicates who my people are.
Torin Galleshaw  1h
do you know of the talmud?
do you know what it is?
do you realize that it contains the only visual description for jesus?
do me a favor, before you try to come at me with some more weak **** why dont you go and see what the talmud has to say about it
thank you brother
xspacexpotatox  1h
Was the visual description a white man? If so I’m not interested
xspacexpotatox  1h
I’m a young black man that’s been taught all his life, all I know is truth.
xspacexpotatox  1h
I’m not that arrogant, I offered you edification and once I edified you rejected. lol I’m not supposed to be nice and open to you.... I know who my oppressors are.
xspacexpotatox  1h
“GOD” said “and I know the blasphemies of those that say they are Jews and are not” you’re disrespecting my ancestors
Torin Galleshaw  1h
thats the thing only a truly awoken spiritual person will ever recognize. in a past life you were a tiny asian woman bro, you were a fat white guy, you were a cat fucj it. so rn your black. soul dont got color. recognize bro. i dont wanna big boy you on this, but i can. and i will if i have to. or maybe you would either A. apologize for your offensive and rude behavior, or B. and my preferred choice we could ACTUALLY converse. you say you got proof, cite it priest boy
xspacexpotatox  1h
Bro, my ancestors were beaten, *****, hung, fed to alligators, shot in the streets, literally broken. Imagine having your family heritage stripped from you, your language and books taken from you.. You’re not hearing me out, you’re trying to prove yourself to be what I am and I can’t let you think that’s okay. I’m OG. I teach people. So far I’ve learned nothing from this conversation. I’m proud of the beatings my people took to get here, and I definitely don’t agree with the whole “you were a white or Asian person in the past life” because that makes no sense. My family is “BLACK”, besides that my moms great grandmother was mixed, and were STILL predominantly “BLACK”. I come from “BLACK” people, therefore I am a HEBREW ISRAELITE, and I know this for a FACT!
Torin Galleshaw  49m
Bro, my ancestors were beaten, *****, hung, starved for hundreds of years, shot in the streets, forced to fight in the civil war after arriving here form ireland starving, (one of the most effective brigades, you see many of the soldiers had to fight in wars against the british already)literally broken. Imagine having your family heritage stripped from you, my last name is not the last name my great great great granparents had. it was too ethnic, it was changed, your language and books taken from you. do they speak celtic in ireland?.. You’re not hearing ME out, you’re trying to prove yourself to be what I am and I can’t let you think that’s okay
xspacexpotatox  42m
Oh you guys are actually mention in the battles you fought?! **** there’s no documentation of anything “African Americans” did in the wars we helped win! Atleast you guys got decent credit
Torin Galleshaw  37m
bible told me you just have to accept his love, jesus's love, but even buddahs love, and john the baptists love, and all of gods great prophets. bible taught me that without their love i can never really love any one.
xspacexpotatox  35m
If you believe in the most high, fine with me. That’s all I have to say.
Torin Galleshaw
Torin Galleshaw  33m
yes, there is documentation of both slaves ad freed black men fighting on both sides actually, believe it or not
Torin Galleshaw  32m
https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war

"Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship."

Frederick Douglass

xspacexpotatox  28m
I never once believed the history teachers in school, I always challenged them because I know that American History is *******. Just like whatever filth you’re trying to show me will only bore me like the teachers bored me in school. I served in the US Army. I did my time for white america and I refuse to go back lol

he blocked me not long after that, final thoughts

Matthew 6:10-14 thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors,And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

don't get me wrong, i believe in competition,
but the neymar conundrum is
slightly bugging me...
    where does actual competition occur,
and where does general inequality begin?
   if you told me that the lie of being
educated was true: i'd laugh it off...
    after all, preceding generations always
valued education as a force for good -
a transition into adept modes of behaviour...
socialism was born from a rift from
the under-appreciation of the so-called
"virtue" of becoming educated...
           evidently only "idiots" gained
the higher economic ground for expressing
the ultimate freedom of "expression"...
   but paying someone one-hundred-and-ninety
pounds, for someone who can kick
a ball is the zenith of western "values"?
  what sort of "competitive" game is being
played out?
a bit like ensuring that mike tyson spars
with a one-handed boxer...
         oh sure... **** me! that's competition!
when will this "idea" of competition spiral
out of control and begin to look ridiculous?
it's, probably, about now...
            footballers' logic would state it
in the most obvious dynamic possible...
                   the individual is worth precisely
what is expected of him:
   the luck of a poker hand... luck!
        in the infinitely random pursuit of
the "individual",
                  there is always the notion of a
shared effort...
             to me, individualism is a fake
construct...
               ask the chinese about an individual...
oh yeah... there was one, a long time ago,
some guy named confucius...
    but these days he's in a sea of a billion
examples...
                i do believe in individualism,
but not when it's over-arching,
spanning 1 - 3 generations,
         it takes centuries, it takes 3+
generations, as it might take to establish
centuries and call them: the victornian era...
but so many "individuals" in a single moment,
where there is no death-debacle, a death-membrane
exclusion parameter? you *******
kidding me?
                 how will people not react to
this injustice of the "competitive" principle?
      so this ****** gets to kick a ball
and gets so much because so many eyes are
peering at him...
   if this isn't post-capitalism, i don't know what it:
capitalism has conquered socialism,
fair enough...
       but it has also showed us a heresy
inherent in itself: within the principle of
competition (which i agree with, given the spartan
dynamic): it has a handicapped person
competing with an ably bodied person -
  the idea of competition has become unfair...
no, not it terms of physical ability,
but in terms of reward!
                      you can't just do
          a humpty-dumpty um? moment...
so why bother schooling kids in the subject
matters of chemistry, history or english,
if some have the ontologia innatus
   (innate nature of being)
   that supports them in excelling in a particular
area of "interest"...
    you know what's actually socialistic
in a capitalistic system? the education system...
education is actually socialistic in capitalism:
it's oppresive!   it doesn't forge
people of skill... it only forges people
   who's sole "skill"? is to pay off debt!
   you're not creating professionals!
                                you're creating debtors!
so why bother:
1. erroding people's memory &
2. + 3. not teaching them a professional
    mechanism, due to bombarding them with
useless theory: airy-fairy *******
  while
        living the lie of reaching 100 mortal
years, and not... not once! not once!
encouraging the stability of future generations
filling those about to retire
                  spots of competence?!
no... this is not capitalism...
          this is capitliasm eating itself...
capitalism was always going to cannibalise itself
given the disappearing outside "threat"
competition...
   it was always going to implode...
                                  it's ouroboros capitalism...
because as of the 1990s... its only competition
is itself...
                      any footballer will tell you:
the neymar conundrum?
    oh, it's there...
                              he's an "individual"
within an advert...
   within a brand?
                but in a football team?
                              he's still only a striker!
i have to say... first the western powers blame
"collectivism", because it's too large to handle...
and then they cherish the idea of
"teams"... team sports, working together...
   at least socialism is a dualism...
   capitalism? nothing but a false serving
dichotomy...
            so this socialistic "grey area"?
                         isn't it bound to capitalism
also? whereby the so-called "individual"
over-shadows the group effort?
                    on the hard-on fans could name
me a few manchester united defenders from 1994 - 1998...
garry pallister? denis irvine?
              such a ****** sort of "individualism"...
who the **** actually came up with the paradox
of shoving individualism up everyone's ***-crack,
while at the same time preaching
                              the "team effort" mantra?

i've started to absolutely loath these shifts at Oxford...
for one: compared we're talking about a league one side...
the ****** stadium is one thing
but... just the drive there: and back...
out of the house from 1pm until 12:30am...
and for what? there's that coughing up for fuel
which has increased from £10 to £15... hell: my pay
hasn't risen...
   on topic: i was talking with my father about this...
inflation... the prices of commodities increases,
but the wages do not...
    fair enough: i might seem gullible at times...
given my grandfather was a member of the communist
party... but then communism in Poland
(a satellite state) wasn't the same as it was
in the actual Soviet Union... i'm no romantic of communism...
but surely if there's a concept of inflation:
there ought to be a logic around a concept of deflation...
but there isn't one in economics,
i.e. when wages go up: but the price of commodities
stays the same...
yet... the work of dairy farmers is the same: quality
and quantity-wise... economics it not my strong point...
i'm just thinking out-loud...
and i like thinking-dumb...
              my recent fascination comes in the form
of Confucius < Mozi < Mencius < Zhuangzi | Huizi
i.e. Kong Qui < Mo Di < Meng Ke < Zhu7ang Zhou |Hui ****...

i leave the house for roughly 10 hours and bring
back about £35... sure... it's the easiest shift on my list...
i get paid £35 to watch a football match...
but? today... the sky above Oxford looked more
entertaining than the football match... so? for the majority
of the time while the sun was still clinging
to reign over the sky: i was just looking at very pretty
clouds in the distance... i sometimes can't stomach
these base human foundations for society:
entertainment... i'd rather drink a bottle of wine
and just watch clouds behave like sloths...
or... perhaps not sloths... more like when a jellyfish
****** a cauliflower....

at least there was banter with my "manager"
en route toward Oxford... i ate a McDonald's in the alley
while waiting for him to pick me up...
banter... oh right: code words...
we call them the PLATOON... there's about 40 or so
"banana boat" folk... Daniel is the guy who conjured
up the expression: black don't crack...
what does that mean? you can't tell a black person's
real age... since you can be looking at a black
person who's 50... and you'd guess their age
to be 30... black don't crack...
i really think cosmetic industries should look into
the genome of both black people and people
with downs syndrome: those ******* hardly age...
you can't tell if there's a wrinkle on them...
seriously!
                  white boy humour... white boy
British humour... i'm writing this in complete earnest...
it's not even a joke: well... it's funny in a conversation
when you can crack jokes without a CCTV crow
on your shoulder...
so we cracked jokes about the PLATOON...

Daniel played that famous video of the ventriloquist
with that Ahmed the dead suicide bomber
puppet: I **** YOU...
i laughed on the verge of tears...
it's almost like that Dave Chapel sketch about
uniforms: a woman all tarts and no choux pastry
stuff... and Dave's like: pretending to be a police officer:
excuse me, ma'am... i may be dressed as a police officer!
but it doesn't mean that i am, a police officer!
or Team American's Durka Durka: Muhammad Jihad...
i just said to Daniel: are any of these ***** from
Rotherham? where? oh you know...
that Rotherham grooming gang scandal...
i'd love to get my hands on one of those *****...

a former prisoner officer talking to a former
chemistry student... seriously... those organic chemistry
schematics of electron migration were a bit pointless:
until i realised: they showed me loopholes in
the language... call it the rearrangement of vowels
and consonants... absolutely ridiculous:
since all theory and very little practice...

oh sure... the PLATOON was there...
i started it calling it SLOW-IQ from cousin-*******...
which is true... you have to start calling out
taboos at some point...
i mean: these guys were slow...
Ha-HMED! hark the H... draw a longer breath
and forget that the R was ever associated with a trill
of a rattlesnake...
oh sure... we get sold that puny story-detail
of low testosterone levels in European men....
these days? i was signing them in...
i had to ask 2 or 3 times for them to repeat their names:
they spoke their names so delicately
i couldn't understand them...
and i'm the one who picks up sounds...
my auditory hallucinations sometimes speak louder
than these people, "these people"...

i checked up on some theory...
the length ratio of the index finger to the ring finger...
i look at my left hand... then at my right hand...
oh **** me... no wonder...
i'm a *******... a promiscuous *******...
my ring finger is much longer than my index finger:
much longer on my left hand than my right hand...
ergo? a shorter index finger implies higher levels
of testosterone...
   am i to be, now, what? self-congratulatory...
no... it's intrinsic ontology: i can't help what i am...
just like i can't help with being a raw-red Caucasian
in mentality that's deviant from the British-compact
model...

i cleaned the house in the morning really focusing
on repeating the song My Friends by
the Red Hot Chilli Peppers...
hey... listen... if these ******* have the audacity to
march in with their mosques... blow themselves up for
no grand attaching reason to further each and every one
of our plights: again... life isn't that terrible...
reality isn't unshakeable: unmoveable...
only people unto people make this life difficult:
usually out of complacency... laziness...
a solipsism that doesn't begin to factor in a fact
that solipsism could be a theory: a testing ground
of understanding autism...

but i abhor these Oxford shifts...
i leave them spent... the egress is magic though...
i'm more time-wasting than time-investing...
i still don't understand how inflation works
and i still don't understand why deflation doesn't exist...
the worth of goods increases:
but the method of producing these goods stays
the same... i have to admit...
i'm thinking about going out of my comfort zone...
looking into the thinking of economists
and not philosophers...
after all, my name was once allocated
to one famous tax-collector...
                     mind you: i like thinking about money...
not that i have a stash of it...
just enough to enjoy thinking about it...
i like thinking about money because i don't think
about spending it like most people do:
like most people who spend it frivolously and therefore
don't have enough of it and therefore
are in debt: these people are in debt because
they spend money on credit...
i have money, because i spend money on debit...

i couldn't never allow myself to accept a credit based
system of expenditures...
it made no sense to me: sure, you have more protection
using a credit card than a debit card...
after all the current system focuses more on creditors
than it does on debtors... then again: like for like...
you need less creditors than debtors:
you actually require more people in debt than
those willing to provide credit...
but then there are people like me who hyper-focus
on an earning-spending dynamic who
avoid building up too much credit:
by not building too much credit...
you can't exactly build up your... "debit score rating":
there's no "debit score" rating...
money turns into water...
you behave like your wallet if a dam...
that's a "metaphor" for savings and expenditure...

it's impossible for me to spend on credit...
why? i can't earn on credit:
well... i can earn on credit of my performance:
but that's a different sort of credit:
it's a credit i earn... rather than spend...
but i spend exclusively on debit...
on the basis of a debt i'm owned for my work...
i like money...
in philosophy there's that scared word: THING...
and NOTHING...
in economics there's that word too: MONEY...
and NO-MONEY...
oddly enough nothing is a categorised as a pronoun
while thing is categorised as a noun...
ergo? money is a noun and no-money
is a pronoun...

                    it's not even about being poor...
broke-***... it's about having enough money to do...
whatever the hell you want...
without a co-dependant... no woman: no children...
i can ******* from a shift... ask to be dropped
off at a petrol station... rather than the usual pick-up
spot... buy a £3 platter of sushi...
three ciders... a 10 packet of cigarettes...
eat... smoke a cigarette... then take at least two
bottles of cider dancing into the night...
i used to love swimming... now? if it's not cycling
it's walking... esp. come the night...

there's nothing quiet like it...
i hate these Oxford shifts... if it wasn't for the humour
i don't think i would have ever bothered...
focus on perception...
it's all about the TILT of the EARTH...
from the winter months and the summer months...
i was admiring the night thinking about
just that... this one... constellation...
in the summer months she's up-close...
you can see her enlarged (yeah?
things in English are generally asexual...
but you can ascribe *** to them...
like in most sensible tongues of the European
continent, there can be a sense of
the masculine and the feminine in nouns...
there's no need for gender-neutral pronouns...
there can exist gender-provocative nouns...
constellations are feminine)

   right... so there's this one jaw-dropper
of a constellation...
it's massive in the summer-time...
can't miss it... what the naked eye can't miss:
the mind ought to write about...

you know the constellation i'm talking about:
during the summer months it's enlarged...
but during the winter months it's squeezed into
its compact representation:
it's the same ******* constellation...
but since the earth is tilted on its axis...
that tilt generates a "disparity" of vision...
it's microscopically viewed in the summer months
and macroscopically viewed in the winter
months... when you sometimes walk the night
streets... tilt your head left to right...
and watch a bonanza of frost settling on the pavement
like it might be the glitter of paparazzi's cameras
eventing a strobe light effect of frost
glitter paving your honoured walk back
to a cold bed where only you or perhaps a cat might
be sleeping in...

no... it's not the constellation of cancer:
it's the constellation of scorpio:

                    •
                •
            •

­                   •
                      •
                          .
           ­                                  •

    •

that's most definitely a scorpion...
the tail... the torso... and the two pincers
extending...
but i'm not referring to the constellation
of scorpio... i'm refferering
to...the trapezium with a tail...

the big and little wheelbarrow constellation are
one and the same...

•
                        •


                                                                ­            •
                                            •


                                                 •                  •


it just depends on how the earth tilts...
call it her the little and big wheelbarrow...
microscopic in the realm of summer:
macroscopic in the realm of winter...
not a rhombus with a tail?
and what about the constellation of
scorpio...

three days by: Jane's Addiction...
always with the bass guitar that gets me...
now admire the tilt of the earth as this one constellation
all the same moves in and out to to an even greater
focus... "flat earth" expert as myself
ought to know... knowing one's own geometrics of
not having the luxury of parodying
movements that
demand the rigours of traffic...
such is a man's luxury of trailing behind night...
trailing behind dreams:
behind dreaming...
such is this world: that affords me so much
luxury... so little mediocracy...
            
tonight i brought back an acorn...
no... i wish i brought back an albino mulberry...
then again: i wish i brought back an oak conker...
but i prefer acorns more...
those hatted pebbles... oak? chestnut...
a corn that's not corns... that's acorn?
conker then... no? a nut with thoughts of
pirate X-marks-the-spot-chests?!
etymological tested grounds of frequented nouns...
hammer... table... mosquito...
            sun and moon...
                        sun as a he and moon:
although however stressed asexually: will be a she
in Ing-Leash.

The city is shut, sparing its prey until tomorrow. Night rules, dreams creep down the street, eyes dead
Her poised being is the center of universe, that girl
She is loath to beg yet for the twenty fourth time of the night she sings out, God?
It’s two in the morning and they are sitting at the balcony, God and her, both holding a cigarette
Mother and father are in screaming colors but she is, only, the darkest blue
Two of them are contradiction, a vexing rendezvous but they yearn for each other so once in a while they talk

People talk
A boy across the house is found dead
Parents roaring, raging, crashing the ground, he’s wearing a pair of new basketball shoes. Blue.
He is one of million, a delicate kind, very comely, a subtle presence. Neighbors murmur maybe God
fell in love, maybe God enraptured by the boy. But God is peeking behind the closed door with the girl
Between their fingers still a burning cigarette

Maybe it’s the taste of Marlboro Red, the girl
wishing an epiphany, a revelation, for its been too long, the girl and God
writing each other’s eulogy. The girl has been dead for God and God has been dead
for the girl, ruptured for a very long time, there’s no way back. No long talk
can fix the burn of cigarette,
the eternal crippling affliction taped up in every cavity inside the holy temple of their body

A lady in the house with doors and windows painted blue
is murdered. She was having a dalliance and neighbors talk
behind their open bible. God cringes, God recoils, her god is a beige-tied, cigarette
scented with hair slicked back. She was in his thrall, calls her name in a mesmerizingly fetching way making her girl
again, an ingénue with a pair of chatoyant eyes. Bodies clashing, her muse, they fuse, he choose to ruse, dead,
God is amused, time is lapsed, but perhaps she was not divine. A lady in someone’s car trunk, murdered, dear God!

Inhaling. Conflating. Cigarette
smoke all over the veins. A bright blue
car parked across the street. A week since the boy died. A week since the lady went missing. People talk
about somewhere this week another dead
body is going to be found. Maybe in the park under the slide or on a high school bleacher, like the girl found God
under her bed. The first encounter of God and the girl.

God
and the girl run out of cigarette
counting the days God and the girl
Next time won’t be cigarette and balcony. God and the girl next time at a bar with blue
sign where sinners and saints sipping absinthe because God won’t talk
to anyone but the girl. God and the girl sipping absinthe because the city is shut. Eyes dead.

my life was like a rope walk
a thin rope of sanity I walked on
and below was a thousand feet Valley of depression,
you miss a step ,you never come back.
struggling to balance myself ,
and then I met you .
the saviour ,
like the albatross
who came to save the ancient mariner.
you came into my life and with you came hope.
the rope beneath my feet widened ,
widened to become a plank.
and as you grew closer,
the plank became solid ground.
the valley started to disappear
and the fear melted down.
now I could risk missing steps,
enjoying the grass and the tiny falls.
it felt like never before ,
and there was no turning back.
but I realised, on the ground I wasn't alone .
not just mine,
but you had saved a zillion lives .
but that didn't matter now .
they all loved you and so did I .
so we all pledged :
to help you, to love you forever
and that anything that gets to you
have to first get through us .
we all are debtors of your love
and we will pay back by standing by you .
you are the nation of our happiness
and we are your A.R.M.Y.















saranghae BTS

In memoriam
C. T. W.
Sometime trooper of the Royal Horse Guards
obiit H.M. prison, Reading, Berkshire
July 7, 1896

I

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
‘That fellow’s got to swing.’

Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some **** their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty space.

He does not sit with silent men
Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
The prison of its prey.

He does not wake at dawn to see
Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
With the yellow face of Doom.

He does not rise in piteous haste
To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats,
and notes
Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
******* a watch whose little ticks
Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one’s throat, before
The hangman with his gardener’s gloves
Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may thirst no more.

He does not bend his head to hear
The Burial Office read,
Nor, while the terror of his soul
Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own coffin, as he moves
Into the hideous shed.

He does not stare upon the air
Through a little roof of glass:
He does not pray with lips of clay
For his agony to pass;
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
The kiss of Caiaphas.

II

Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,
In the suit of shabby grey:
His cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay,
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every wandering cloud that trailed
Its ravelled fleeces by.

He did not wring his hands, as do
Those witless men who dare
To try to rear the changeling Hope
In the cave of black Despair:
He only looked upon the sun,
And drank the morning air.

He did not wring his hands nor weep,
Nor did he peek or pine,
But he drank the air as though it held
Some healthful anodyne;
With open mouth he drank the sun
As though it had been wine!

And I and all the souls in pain,
Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot if we ourselves had done
A great or little thing,
And watched with gaze of dull amaze
The man who had to swing.

And strange it was to see him pass
With a step so light and gay,
And strange it was to see him look
So wistfully at the day,
And strange it was to think that he
Had such a debt to pay.

For oak and elm have pleasant leaves
That in the springtime shoot:
But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
With its adder-bitten root,
And, green or dry, a man must die
Before it bears its fruit!

The loftiest place is that seat of grace
For which all worldlings try:
But who would stand in hempen band
Upon a scaffold high,
And through a murderer’s collar take
His last look at the sky?

It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!

So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.

At last the dead man walked no more
Amongst the Trial Men,
And I knew that he was standing up
In the black dock’s dreadful pen,
And that never would I see his face
In God’s sweet world again.

Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
We had crossed each other’s way:
But we made no sign, we said no word,
We had no word to say;
For we did not meet in the holy night,
But in the shameful day.

A prison wall was round us both,
Two outcast men we were:
The world had ****** us from its heart,
And God from out His care:
And the iron gin that waits for Sin
Had caught us in its snare.

III

In Debtors’ Yard the stones are hard,
And the dripping wall is high,
So it was there he took the air
Beneath the leaden sky,
And by each side a Warder walked,
For fear the man might die.

Or else he sat with those who watched
His anguish night and day;
Who watched him when he rose to weep,
And when he crouched to pray;
Who watched him lest himself should rob
Their scaffold of its prey.

The Governor was strong upon
The Regulations Act:
The Doctor said that Death was but
A scientific fact:
And twice a day the Chaplain called,
And left a little tract.

And twice a day he smoked his pipe,
And drank his quart of beer:
His soul was resolute, and held
No hiding-place for fear;
He often said that he was glad
The hangman’s hands were near.

But why he said so strange a thing
No Warder dared to ask:
For he to whom a watcher’s doom
Is given as his task,
Must set a lock upon his lips,
And make his face a mask.

Or else he might be moved, and try
To comfort or console:
And what should Human Pity do
Pent up in Murderers’ Hole?
What word of grace in such a place
Could help a brother’s soul?

With slouch and swing around the ring
We trod the Fools’ Parade!
We did not care:  we knew we were
The Devil’s Own Brigade:
And shaven head and feet of lead
Make a merry masquerade.

We tore the tarry rope to shreds
With blunt and bleeding nails;
We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
And cleaned the shining rails:
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
And clattered with the pails.

We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still.

So still it lay that every day
Crawled like a ****-clogged wave:
And we forgot the bitter lot
That waits for fool and knave,
Till once, as we tramped in from work,
We passed an open grave.

With yawning mouth the yellow hole
Gaped for a living thing;
The very mud cried out for blood
To the thirsty asphalte ring:
And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair
Some prisoner had to swing.

Right in we went, with soul intent
On Death and Dread and Doom:
The hangman, with his little bag,
Went shuffling through the gloom:
And each man trembled as he crept
Into his numbered tomb.

That night the empty corridors
Were full of forms of Fear,
And up and down the iron town
Stole feet we could not hear,
And through the bars that hide the stars
White faces seemed to peer.

He lay as one who lies and dreams
In a pleasant meadow-land,
The watchers watched him as he slept,
And could not understand
How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
With a hangman close at hand.

But there is no sleep when men must weep
Who never yet have wept:
So we—the fool, the fraud, the knave—
That endless vigil kept,
And through each brain on hands of pain
Another’s terror crept.

Alas! it is a fearful thing
To feel another’s guilt!
For, right within, the sword of Sin
Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
And as molten lead were the tears we shed
For the blood we had not spilt.

The Warders with their shoes of felt
Crept by each padlocked door,
And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
Grey figures on the floor,
And wondered why men knelt to pray
Who never prayed before.

All through the night we knelt and prayed,
Mad mourners of a corse!
The troubled plumes of midnight were
The plumes upon a hearse:
And bitter wine upon a sponge
Was the savour of Remorse.

The grey **** crew, the red **** crew,
But never came the day:
And crooked shapes of Terror crouched,
In the corners where we lay:
And each evil sprite that walks by night
Before us seemed to play.

They glided past, they glided fast,
Like travellers through a mist:
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
Of delicate turn and twist,
And with formal pace and loathsome grace
The phantoms kept their tryst.

With mop and mow, we saw them go,
Slim shadows hand in hand:
About, about, in ghostly rout
They trod a saraband:
And the ****** grotesques made arabesques,
Like the wind upon the sand!

With the pirouettes of marionettes,
They tripped on pointed tread:
But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
As their grisly masque they led,
And loud they sang, and long they sang,
For they sang to wake the dead.

‘Oho!’ they cried, ‘The world is wide,
But fettered limbs go lame!
And once, or twice, to throw the dice
Is a gentlemanly game,
But he does not win who plays with Sin
In the secret House of Shame.’

No things of air these antics were,
That frolicked with such glee:
To men whose lives were held in gyves,
And whose feet might not go free,
Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
Most terrible to see.

Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
Some wheeled in smirking pairs;
With the mincing step of a demirep
Some sidled up the stairs:
And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
Each helped us at our prayers.

The morning wind began to moan,
But still the night went on:
Through its giant loom the web of gloom
Crept till each thread was spun:
And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
Of the Justice of the Sun.

The moaning wind went wandering round
The weeping prison-wall:
Till like a wheel of turning steel
We felt the minutes crawl:
O moaning wind! what had we done
To have such a seneschal?

At last I saw the shadowed bars,
Like a lattice wrought in lead,
Move right across the whitewashed wall
That faced my three-plank bed,
And I knew that somewhere in the world
God’s dreadful dawn was red.

At six o’clock we cleaned our cells,
At seven all was still,
But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
The prison seemed to fill,
For the Lord of Death with icy breath
Had entered in to ****.

He did not pass in purple pomp,
Nor ride a moon-white steed.
Three yards of cord and a sliding board
Are all the gallows’ need:
So with rope of shame the Herald came
To do the secret deed.

We were as men who through a fen
Of filthy darkness *****:
We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
Or to give our anguish scope:
Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.

For Man’s grim Justice goes its way,
And will not swerve aside:
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
It has a deadly stride:
With iron heel it slays the strong,
The monstrous parricide!

We waited for the stroke of eight:
Each tongue was thick with thirst:
For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
That makes a man accursed,
And Fate will use a running noose
For the best man and the worst.

We had no other thing to do,
Save to wait for the sign to come:
So, like things of stone in a valley lone,
Quiet we sat and dumb:
But each man’s heart beat thick and quick,
Like a madman on a drum!

With sudden shock the prison-clock
Smote on the shivering air,
And from all the gaol rose up a wail
Of impotent despair,
Like the sound that frightened marshes hear
From some ***** in his lair.

And as one sees most fearful things
In the crystal of a dream,
We saw the greasy hempen rope
Hooked to the blackened beam,
And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare
Strangled into a scream.

And all the woe that moved him so
That he gave that bitter cry,
And the wild regrets, and the ****** sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.

IV

There is no chapel on the day
On which they hang a man:
The Chaplain’s heart is far too sick,
Or his face is far too wan,
Or there is that written in his eyes
Which none should look upon.

So they kept us close till nigh on noon,
And then they rang the bell,
And the Warders with their jingling keys
Opened each listening cell,
And down the iron stair we tramped,
Each from his separate Hell.

Out into God’s sweet air we went,
But not in wonted way,
For this man’s face was white with fear,
And that man’s face was grey,
And I never saw sad men who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw sad men who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
We prisoners called the sky,
And at every careless cloud that passed
In happy freedom by.

But there were those amongst us all
Who walked with downcast head,
And knew that, had each got his due,
They should have died instead:
He had but killed a thing that lived,
Whilst they had killed the dead.

For he who sins a second time
Wakes a dead soul to pain,
And draws it from its spotted shroud,
And makes it bleed again,
And makes it bleed great gouts of blood,
And makes it bleed in vain!

Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb
With crooked arrows starred,
Silently we went round and round
The slippery asphalte yard;
Silently we went round and round,
And no man spoke a word.

Silently we went round and round,
And through each hollow mind
The Memory of dreadful things
Rushed like a dreadful wind,
And Horror stalked before each man,
And Terror crept behind.

The Warders strutted up and down,
And kept their herd of brutes,
Their uniforms were ***** and span,
And they wore their Sunday suits,
But we knew the work they had been at,
By the quicklime on their boots.

For where a grave had opened wide,
There was no grave at all:
Only a stretch of mud and sand
By the hideous prison-wall,
And a little heap of burning lime,
That the man should have his pall.

For he has a pall, this wretched man,
Such as few men can claim:
Deep down below a prison-yard,
Naked for greater shame,
He lies, with fetters on each foot,
Wrapt in a sheet of flame!

And all the while the burning lime
Eats flesh and bone away,
It eats the brittle bone by night,
And the soft flesh by day,
It eats the flesh and bone by turns,
But it eats the heart alway.

For three long years they will not sow
Or root or seedling there:
For three long years the unblessed spot
Will sterile be and bare,
And look upon the wondering sky
With unreproachful stare.

They think a murderer’s heart would taint
Each simple seed they sow.
It is not true!  God’s kindly earth
Is kindlier than men know,
And the red rose would but blow more red,
The white rose whiter blow.

Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
Out of his heart a white!
For who can say by what strange way,
Christ brings His will to light,
Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
Bloomed in the great Pope’s sight?

But neither milk-white rose nor red
May bloom in prison-air;
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
A common man’s despair.

So never will wine-red rose or white,
Petal by petal, fall
On that stretch of mud and sand that lies
By the hideous prison-wall,
To tell the men who ***** the yard
That God’s Son died for all.

Yet though the hideous prison-wall
Still hems him round and round,
And a spirit may not walk by night
That is with fetters bound,
And a spirit may but weep that lies
In such unholy ground,

He is at peace—this wretched man—
At peace, or will be soon:
There is no thing to m

The growing day has
Handed over the doyen
To the dawning evening,
Yes, it is the
Responsibility of the
Father to make the
Sacrifices for the son,

Ask the son to wake up
Early on his soul day,
In preparation for the ceremony,
For Ntikuma has exposed
Kwaku Ananse once again,
Perhaps, it was our fault,
For Boakye Danquah has
Gone to the village without a cause,

Now, sprinkle the divine water
From the calabash,
Three times on him,
Oh yes, on the son,
And ask for the Gods blessings
Right after the libation,

Indeed, anyone who does
Not know the drums or horn
Message of his chief,
Gets lost in any dispersion,
Joseph Boakye Danquah,
The true father of Ghana,
We are debtors to your soul.

            II
Who is this father?
Ask him to use the three
Fingers between his thumb
And the smallest finger
To smear the mixture of white clay
On his forehead, chick and wrist bone,
For Boakye Danquah has
Gone to village without a cause,

Ah, Boakye was born
In the period where
The stormy rainfall causes
Small ***** to abound,
Hmm, the nations have drunk
The water of affliction
And have eaten the
Strange bread of adversity,

Was anyone there,
To quench his throat?
Was anyone there?
To drink his blood and sweat?
Was anyone there?
To witness this transfiguration?

Indeed, the horns cannot be
Too heavy for the head of the cow that
Must bear them,
Joseph Boakye Danquah,
The true father of Ghana,
We are debtors to your soul.


© PRINCE NANA ANIN-AGYEI
Email: nanaspeaks@gmail.com

Don't worry it's not what you think
Another tale of woe
Of Tiny Tim and all the rest
And the ending we all know
Scrooge and ghosts and la de da
They do it in one night
But, that was Charles Dickens way
It's time we got it right
Nobody works the way they did
The poorhouses done and dusted
If Scrooge was here and lived today
You know he would be busted

So, I'll bring you up to date on this
And Scrooge can come on too
It's been a couple hundred years
Let's make this carol new

Scrooge had let Bob Cratchit go
Due to labour laws and stuff
He didn't have a union
But old Scrooge had heard enough
Every year the same old thing
And every year he cries
It's only for one day each year
At least till his kid dies
So, Scrooge was sitting home alone
Checking files on his screen
Debtors owing money and
Re runs of Mister Bean
Scrooge kept his accounts on line
So he could work on them at home
He got more done here anyway
He felt more comfortable  alone
While surfing through his evict notes
A pop up screen appeared
It said "I am The Marley Virus"
And Sir Scooge, I should be feared
Scrooge cursed the interruption
He thought the virus was a joke
But, when he tried to clear the screen
A face appeared and spoke
Right there before his rheumy eyes
His partner showed his face
Ebeneezer hit delete
But Marley held his place
I'm not a ghost like olden days
I'm a virus now you see
I've moved into the future
And Scrooge you must hear me
You will not get a visit
From three ghost like stories old
We've gone hi tech, it's apps you'll get
And your story will be told
Three icons will be on your screen
Once I have told my tale
You'll click on each of them in turn
And you'll ignore all your mail
Each application will come forth
And will take you back in time
Remember Scrooge, the end result
Could be the same as mine
But, Jacob, I'll delete them
I'll run a scan and then reboot
The reason for your being here
Will then be surely moot
Marley let a piercing howl
And he left Scrooge with his screen
The were just three icons there
Where his desktop once had been
Scrooge clicked one, it opened up
It was Christmas past for sure
A video of Scrooges life
Was playing now, and more
The background everchanging
Showing Scrooge in younger days
When greed and avarice were not
The ruler of his ways
Remember now, we're modernized
No ghosts, so all went well
Scrooge remembered all the good times
As far as I can tell
The video ran on and on
It showed Scooge when he was nice
He thought you know when all is done
I might just watch this twice
The screen went black, the music stopped
And two icons took their place
He clicked on icon number two
And he opened up it's case
Donation links appeared at first
To charities galore
But Scrooge just passed on over them
In fact he showed them to the door
He saw the files of eviction notes
And of receivables and charts
He knew that he would lose one day
And the next, would need to start
To work on all this quickly
Year end would be here soon
He'd evict all of the deadbeats
And then they'd sing a different tune
He saw pictures of Bob Cratchit
Of his family and his brood
Of their meager Christmas Dinner
And the apparent lack of food
He saw how they were happy
How just together meant so much
And beside their electric fire
He saw a tiny crutch
He watched the clip and saw the pics
And in the end it warmed his heart
But there was still another icon
And this app must play it's part
You know where this is going
So, I would drag out the tale
But, in the end all his possessions
Went on line for a huge sale
He clicked upon the icon
And all his files reappeared
And then ...right before him
Each account slowly disappeared
Written off, deleted gone
No money did they owe
The ledger had been vanquished
No balance did it show
This took almost two hours
Each entry in the wind
All accounts forgotten
All eviction notes were binned
Scrooge, we know was changed then
We heard he was a better man
But, in truth he only changed one thing
A new virus protection plan
Remember, it's the future
And corporate greed is still around
And no accounts will be forgotten
Till Scrooge is six feet in the ground
I know you know the story
You want him nicer in the end
But, if that's the way you want it
Go watch the movie once again!!!

The rainy season is at
The door once again,
And loneliness has
Brought me a new pillow,
But who is to defend
My repugnant soul?
Can it be the Gods?

Hear this! The rain has
Began knocking at my
Slammer door gradually,
Oh no, it is knocking
And wailing so heavily,
With his icy voice
Of storm and cold
Arresting my hearty dreams,
But I will retch at his smell
And hurry for my handkerchief,

Where is my lantern?
May be, the native doctor
Has the answer to the
Cylindrical jar containing
Her eternal juniper organs,
Indeed, it is my misfortune
To go about with the priest,
For even the child of
The priest even dies at noon,

Ah, I thought she was
Vigilant and ever-ready
To make the debtors
Chew the palm kernels,
But she became the
Portion of the exterior of
The *** that skin can cover,

I have lost my heaven,
Oh no, I have lost the
One whose neck is like a
Bunch of small-fingered plantain,
I have lost the whetstone
On which I sharpen
My thirsty sword to
Perform deeds of valour,

Let the Gods weep!
Let the ancestors wail!
Let the people of Africa,
Give me condolence of
The talking drums,
For their child is gone,
The wise woman who cut
Her thumb in order to get
A wise husband is dead,

Mother, the Okro full of
Seeds of children and literature,
Efua Sutherland, the queen,
The toad likes water, but not
When the water is boiling,
Send me something
When someone is coming,
Efua Sutherland, the queen,
You and I exchange gift.


© PRINCE NANA ANIN-AGYEI
Email: nanaspeaks@gmail.com

why are people, so surprised about the converts?! i'm past the "surprise", there's nothing surprising, akin to ezra pound being "mad" about fascism... mind you, it the italian version of what became germany had not socialism invoked, esp. national... but can't people see the slavery of usury? doubled up by banks being bailed? in economic terms, i feel myself encrusted islam... why? because this so-called judeo-cheristian ethical model, is hardly a compensation to the islamic economic model, that object to the use of usury... why are people bewildered by their own converting to islam, if it's all about a coin-flip's worth of demanding answers? akin to simony, the ******* child of usury... i too once thought that islam was pure barbarism, but when i found out that islam didn't like the idea of usury... is it so hard to conceive why people convert? i don't, and never will... seems a sensible option given usury... so much for glorifying "ethics", hitting as many likes for gays, when all it does it provide the basis for the modern translation of slavery... namely slaves have become debtors... sure, the bible is horrible about gays... given the times, you think people strived to establish a perfection of the hippocratic god, in those days? why is it so hard to believe in a god, the impetus? back then, gays would be hindering the continuum... don't you think? i know, the believers cite the text like it was worth the same now, as it isn't, right now... but making a cheap joke about the text now, with the now-content of life... surely there's a context disparity... homosexuals weren't allowed back then, given that the hippocratic impetus didn't exist in those times... is, that, so, ******* hard to understand?!*

you like slaves? i like slaves; i really love slaves, i like the idea of slaves, but given it's the 21st century, we best tone it down... how? how about using ultimatum-usury, calling slaves debtors? i like that, i like that very much, we can have slaves, and call them the nicer term of debtors... that's nice. of course it's nice, it's what the slaves deserves... we'll be milking the manual labour in building the pyramids, way past the holocaust... i like the idea of usury... debtors always sounds nicer than slaves, we can at least trust the pontius pilate tactic of washing our hand clean from the affairs, rather than be the martyrs on the "altar" of the crucifix.

who wouldn't be "infertile"
with so many
               laws in place?
beginning with *usury...
last time i heard,
the islamic world had no belief
in allowing the practice of
usury...
               i can see the tickling
basis for conversion,
no woner some people convert,
given that the concept
of usury is such an alien concept
to the islamic world...
that's probably the sole
reason people convert to islam,
it's the ideology of economic fairness...
there is no room for
usury in islam...
      the debt ratio in islam is
1 to 1, it's not ever, or will be
a "ratio" of
  1 to 1 marginal increment of %,
by my standard of interpretation:
that's advocating slavery...
who gives a **** about
slavery in the 3rd world countries,
when slavery exists
in 1st world countries?
i can see the "exotica" of converting
to islam,
  is pretty simple...
   it just takes the judeo-christian
validation for pursuing
usury, while the islamic world
says: you borrowed 10 tea-cups from,
i expect 10 tea-cups back...
why is everyone in the western world
so "bewildered" about western
converts?
         i wouldn't be...
   it makes perfect sense...
   no man wishes to be a slave
of another man,
     better be a slave to an "imaginary"
being... that face the submission toward
a system that acts like a dozen leeches...
why are people so ******
surprised?!
            i guess the only surprise
comes with the realisation that:
some people like being slaves;
my student loan?
  **** no, i'm not paying it back,
i already have legal authority,
i am not earning enough to pay it back
in the agreement, i'm 10+K under-par
in paying it back...
               i have a chemistry degree,
you give me a job in chemistry,
   there is no point in me working
in a supermarket, on a 0 hour contract,
i wouldn't have decided to be more
schooled...
      next thing you know,
like some english men,
  i become bound to the opposing
horde, the islamic anti-usura mind-set...
n'aah... jut kidding,
    i like being a slav, among slaves;
but i still don't know why there's
even a shock-value involved in
converts to islam,
     usury is nothing new,
   but it's certainly something that
attracts concverts to islam,
         where usury is so alien,
and frowned upon.

First Living Organism

Anyway, there is love and death and governance. With the birth of my sons, love was fulfilled. There is no romance left in love for me, women are another form of men. Perhaps their toes are painted rather than blood-encrusted, but blood runs from their bones, their eyes are friendly as camera lenses, muscles hungry. Death continues to be my every third thought, fittingly. Occasionally I feel strong, but when I don’t it’s death waiting. I think I know it’s a waste of time to imagine being dead, as if being dead were a form of living. It’s not, but last night I was reading about the efforts of astrobiologists to identify LUCA meaning Last Universal Common Ancestor and FLO, first living organism, and that gave me a calmer feeling. Bringing me to governance, how we manage together between birth and death. What can I say that hasn’t already been said by Aristotle and Plato, the Republicans and Democrats, Hamilton and Jefferson. To start, your daily discipline is a personal governance. There are many ways to know a person: by their god, by their fears and appetites, by how they spend their money or organize their time. Who is in authority, who is in command here? The one in authority is not necessarily our leader.


Patience

I live in a mountainous community about 140,000 strong. My irascible, aggressive temperament toward my fellow citizens has exiled or sidelined me to a peripheral almost insignificant role although when I arrived I was considered a problem solver, even a savior of the poor and the wealthy classes who feared for the future. Why mention this. He who knows patience knows peace. I have surely lost face often in my life. As a kid, lost most fights, as a man, chosen last to lead the squad or platoon. Only when every known leader had died did those in authority decide to use me. Someone must begin to write the federalist papers for the world. And, of course, it’s being done and heard. Books in print, blogs, debates. My vision is a world where you can fly from Madagascar to Mississippi and be greeted by a sign that says Welcome to our land. Go about your business, setting off no bombs, and fly home. Perhaps take a lover for one afternoon.


The Machine and the Season

The machine and the season are so far incompatible. The machine claims electrical problem. The house leaks from rain. The men who left the machine have started their own business. A new endeavor by which they will keep warm and purposeful. The junior partner, heavier, says the Grand Canyon’s not so grand. Jaded individual or one to set himself against the depths, abyss? Man’s systems. Man made the machine (and the town) from rocks mined next door. Some few men understand these invisible electrons moving the machine to perform. I still cannot imagine, i.e. my mind cannot move fast enough to know how so many particles can be sorted and split so quick to make words on a screen. My simplicity is terminal.


Saving Grace

Today it is fall, first day for long-sleeved shirts. The boys at school. I admonish Zach not to whine and complain about the work. Lately reading or practicing piano, prone to fits of frustration. To the point of claiming belly pain. Last night I dreamed I had pushed him to suicide. It is so important for a man to do no harm. This is what makes us crazy against Wolfowitz, willingness to **** to do good. Someone very sure of himself and shining, much wiser and more compassionate than me, has calculated for the world that more lives now for fewer later shall be sacrificed. The people he serves are cantankerous, disorderly, selfish and complaining. The same diverse, spoiled, unpatriotic revolutionaries as at the nation’s beginning. Their refusal to be more than the sum of themselves is their saving grace.


Politics

Politics can be an escape from the personal, the debates are of little interest to a man in hospice. Will the machines do their work? How will we make decisions together? Roger Johnson’s gravel pit must be killing his neighbors with the noise of boulders being pulverized to rock but Roger is certain his business is necessary for the public good. He knows he has a right to use his property as he sees fit. There is a noise ordinance, a state employee will travel out to measure the decibel level in your front yard as compared to the ambient noise level. There is a measurable amplitude beyond which the legislature has determined no citizen may be exposed or corporation go. It can be measured.


Measure for Measure

Measure for measure, all’s well that ends well during a midsummer night’s dream for the merry wives of Windsor. A million or more poets but only one Top Bard. How did he know so much about kings and fools and murderers? An Elizabethan and no Freedom of Information Act. Today it is fall. The legislature and president are at work and so are our machines. One by one and then in armies the leaves come down. It is not that someone must decide, we must decide how we will make decisions and where authority resides. What am I learning, sitting, watching the season turning? Content this morning to admire my sons’ photos, reread my own poems searching for the prize answer, and answer the phone. I seem to be alienating potential business partners with a take it or leave it comme-ci comme-ca attitude. All you can do, the best that can be done is to go to your daily discipline. Driving home or waking up at night I think I’m dying. Do the much-admired writers of our time die more content than that?


War All the Time

War all the time. I’ve been fond of saying what distinguishes America is its daily low intensity warfare. Endless but not fatal conflict. Chambers of commerce, municipal government, big corporations wrestle nearly naked and will lie as needed for what? I tire like an 80 year old man of the storm and worry. I remember my early years when I had no known skill to offer and elections occurred without my vote being solicited. I noticed no harm or good I did was noticed. Autumn was all mine, mine alone, I was alone in the world with autumn. My mind could not stand it. I cried out for comfort, someone to obey. I needed to grow up and know money.


The History That Surrounds Us

I’m not going anywhere, I chose to stay and hold my clod of soil in the landscape of community oh blah dah. I want like Shakespeare and other writers to discern the motivations of women, men, see through their lies to a humorous truth careless about success and able to explain why what happens today or on September 11th obtains. I was impressed by the critic who found that Shakespeare in Hamlet had tried to write about the thoughts of a man suspended between having decided to act and the act itself. Why bother he soliloquated why commit or submit to the great moment when mere men of bones and dust, disgusted with themselves and others are the actors of the moment, beheaders, rhymers, debtors. And, of course, the answer comes to one in the night like Chuang-tzu, or Lao, why not? The great moment is no greater than the small and the small no smaller than the great. You perform the history that surrounds you and go to your daily practice.


A Systems Guy

I’m something of a systems guy. I want the truth and death and worth to be independent of individual motives, paranoias, prejudice, peccadilloes, virginities, crucifixes, paradoxes, protons, protozoa or curses. I want pure human machinery, stainless steel, clear thinking, even handed, not a doubt that every doubt is wanted, needed, good to the last drop toward the ultimate ignition into outer space, colonization of diverse planets and immortality of the genome. Here’s what’s odd. While enduring ever more frequent panic attacks (and nudging toward survival and self-sufficiency my offspring) pounding and pinching my skin to stay sensate, maintain consciousness, I parabolate (always orbiting myself, eye on the tip of my *****) to another extreme, i.e. my belief mankind can escape the earth unlike Hamlet’s dad’s ghost. A system is a set of inputs–values, policies, objectives, procedures, data–organized and repeated to generate significant quantities of desired outcomes without redesigning the system for each individual outcome. I told John Russell from Amnesty International at Jack Shwartz’s daughter’s coming of age party about my plan to reorganize the U.N. so only the democracies can vote and no nation has a veto. He said the world’s not ready, with absolute certainty, knowledge and authority. I looked out the hotel window, this was shortly after 9/11, at dozens of American flags and a lone security guard. I’m always right I said to myself.

We the citizens, who live as refugees,
We keep earning & see if our life is turning,
To the price rise, we lose savings,
Still we remain rock-bottom in standard of living.

We belong to the middle class,
Whose life always a breakable thin glass.
Our life remains completely unsettle,
Every second, life tests our mettle.

Life chases us with pressure, failure and useless lecture,
We are nurtured with a fear of future,
Happiness remains just a leisure,
Live with the unsecure & unsure present for a secure future.

We keep us busy and function,
We fear, when there arrives a function,
Towards happiness, we run as a pilgrim,
For the corporates, we become a mere victim.

We run like an athlete for salary, food and target,
For this globalized world, we are just a market,
Like hungry dogs, we wait for increments,
We keep running with bitter disappointments.

We live in own house, only in our dreams,
Our hearts cry with hopeless screams,
Failures remain our tutors,
Inability has turned us the irrecoverable debtors.

Our appearance has a rich look,
We have untold hidden burdens,
That keep us shook,
Keeps us forbidden and fear-ridden.


Low class think us rich,
High class always want us to be their *****,
Politically neglected by the rulers,
Economically exploited by the rich powers.

We exhaust ourself for subsistence,
We remain victorious and satisfied only in our existence,
We lose our life to sustain in competence,
We run our life with a mere persistence.

More than the high class and low class, we suffer,
Our lives never progressed as governments differ,
All see low class with empathy and sympathy,
To our difficulties, we are looked with apathy.

On rich, we are not jealous,
Towards our aim, we are zealous.
Never think we are nothing,
We truly have nothing to lose.

We take risks to make history,
Our path is nothing less than a mystery,
You never allow us to come up,
But we are not going to give up.

Hello High class,
Never pretend to live like us, to exploit us,
Gone are the days, we remained fools,
You will stand a day as the super intelligent fools.

Before, we are hungry for food,
Now, we are hungry to rule,
Before, we feared to live,
Now, we are ready to win the world.

We are nothing! We are nothing
We have nothing to lose!
We won’t stop until having nothing could do nothing to us.

Tear down the clouds, kindle the summer sun
Let the bright, flooding clarity come
Displace the darkened world’s gloom
Let all the liars speak too soon

Make the wise men start to shave
Give voice to bodies in mass graves
Shatter insecurity, staring from its mirror
Pack away the things we most fear

Spark bonfires in every child’s heart
Teach them love, the most delicate art
Show all the CEOs what emotions are
Build great ladders to hug the stars

Put bows round each headstone
Free the debtors, forget their loans
Free every convict of insignificant crime
Fill the public fountains with a hundred thousand dimes

Make all the mourners dress in white lace
Let the summer sun shine from every face
Remove the cobwebs from the sad boys’ rooms
Steal the black thread from the weavers’ looms

Watch all nightfall melt away
Into a celestial menagerie
Stark prison of the heart
Let beauty’s peaceful riot start

Marigolds in bright oranges and reds;
The dead lay below soft flower beds.
What will happen if I reach too far,
Knowing I can't keep those who have crossed the bar?
The days seem vague and bleak,
Will my sins persuade and leave me meek?

What will happen if I cross the ocean,
And not care about the ripples set in motion?
Will my loved ones soon depart,
Only those younger to inherent their art?
My prayers are motionless and repetitive.
My plead is to my Pilot to keep me in the narrative.

For oft when I lie in bed,
The Negative and Dreadful fill my head.
"Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors,"
Is all my prayers are; it is the setter.
Lead me through temptation and give me a honey tongue,
To give it my all for the distance run.

Knowing that the Daffodils prance,
Throwing their heads in sprightly and cheerful dance,
Be still, sad heart! And cease your grieving!
For all through one's life loved ones must do the leaving.
For two roads diverge in a yellow wood,
And a good idea is to keep attached what is under your hood.

I don't know where, if it will end.
Refuse to voice or recommend.
To treat what ails us is pretend.
Slips through fingers apprehend.

To help more than to hurt,
reflexive sunny disposition
which can cradle sallow sleeping stoic pride.
Distinguishing the dirt,
collective run beside conviction;
acting ladle heavy, heaping, terrified.
 
Leave things better than you found them
Received our debtors stand; surround them.

I wonder if to soothe what ail,
under apprehension prevail.
Therein lies each us, our grail -
our demons sinking in each nail.

Debtors and creditors
Declining stock
High sales
heartless flock

Profit is aim
Impractical gain
Weather is good
Never cared to enjoy the rain

Captured soul
Under the debris of files
Running one after the other
Honesty dying in front of lie

Stylishly tucked in suits
And heart tailor made of wood
As only then will justiy
What we did and what we should

Hitting hard with financial indicators
Stock in hand or sundry creditors
Breathe out this craziness
Seek pleasure in the little things
And make life a lot better


Manisha

Hex Birthright in Hellenika

The Celestial Spirit of Vernarth began to walk through the Castellum del Horcodising, after the parapsychological regression in the conclusive auction and purge of him. He was looming at the Horcondising Keep; here all toilet modules, food, and medicines were well equipped, except for the inks and writing papers that were totally exhausted. Here you can see his mother Luccica, who was in a position to scribble and write on an upstairs deck, and in the other hand, she had a rosary of liberation, which anonymously appears before her purging in the presence of the protervative spellings that still wander through the cells and bedrooms of the Castellum del Horcondising. Her mother is seen twisted over the voices that polished the eight moons that she had designed for her son Vernarth from the very machicolations of the Castellum, but now with a rosary of liberation. It was clearly seen in the leaves written by her, which said that “My son abandoned his weapons, now in fluids of holy water, symbolizing real chimeras by the projections, to those who read his life verses in our Castellum, in Gaugamela and Patmos ”. Vernarth, mostly Hellenic, awaits to manifest healings for all creation, dumping water from moon storms on Rhodes, and lighting Matacan wall light at the door of the Messiah stand.

Vernart says: “my adolescent look, she has to be reborn with that of my father Bernardolipo; a whole Chamberlain, making himself free and a supporter of the baronies that were part of the servants of my servants…! Although now to climb his cabinet I have to raise my knees higher before his amplified step, calling us all and trying to be closer to a new bell to call us to dinner, as an entity of pride of architecture defined by his pen, ink, and white sheet that I mention. The mother I have to mention; My mother Luccica, rests not condemned or corrupted before her flesh, rather perfectly united to her spirit that envelops her free of sin, so that her company would be of complete solitude in our Castellum, we will continue to be in conformity with the spirit because our mansion is a beautiful spirit of vicissitudes, life, and peace, that our esplanade holds hunger and coldly indifferent to loneliness, cooling and pleasing the company of its own cold, rising from the first rays of the day, as well as rising from the first pinches of graduated ink, agreeing in the corrals where my father already lived according to his life among debtors, mortifying what he has not been able to mount on his steeds that inhabit his senses, leaving not so far to greet them in the mornings free of errors of not greeting, even When the minimum space is left to think of him as a joint-heir. Because the laments sob and others are born in the virginity of the light of the world with other lines Luccica can scarcely write, writing her co-age spirit, manifesting itself foolishly in suffering perfection; manifesting itself as everyone's delight, although ringing with anger at not freeing itself from glorious freedom. Not all sing to the tune of the disability of putting the strength of the grapheme of posterity, rather we blind ourselves by putting hope, but of patience that we arm ourselves by losing our courage to have it. Our will is of the magnitude of saints when doubt and fear entertain us, according to all the things and purposes that irreversibly will surprise us. I do not know where I have to walk here in this tower ?, because I know that myths of the unknown will fall according to the fact that I am his son, being the first-born of all men in the world, speaking of who among many intercede before tribulation or anguish, that strips me of all spirit still asking for it and justifying that I keep talking about them, but that I have been gone for a long time. For this reason, venerated mother, wake up from this frozen cell of the courtesy tower, because I am jealous and I believe that neither death nor life will fill the dead suspended in your room, which support more lives with their angels adorning their bindings and paragraphs, with principalities that are increasingly so distant more than imminent to come to please you. When your name is tried in real vices to increase, they are being stripped of the sons of the principality in which they shine from afar, but with our feet dancing on despotic brilliance, and not of the hollow that still does not fill my heart for you”

Emerging from the last lights of the Castellum del Horcondising, Vernarth bids farewell to his reign, leaving his mother Luccica in the company of three Angels who mined him with the amber mistletoe, of sallow light. However, she will remain frosted on her desk with ink at night and by day, so that when the day ceases, she will draw ink from the darkest night to continue writing that she can already be without Him! Near the Halleniká Necropolis in Rhodes, a statue of Peltasts stood, shielding the site where the “Vas Auric” Auric Medallion would sporadically rest, which came between the bilges, now inside the Eurydice. It came predestined with sacred amber garments alloyed, to make up for the between Peltast mediators who guarded them, to deliver it to its Commander Vernarth.

The Apostle Saint John says: “The Sephardim like us in exile did not see reasons restored in our union and tradition, we resembled a diaspora that did not derive voluntarily, according to events that occurred in my case in Judah at the hands of the Romans. The Alexandrian Jews form on my part certain Israelites dispersed in my prayers, leaving us where the radiance of our faith makes sense and dispensed power to us. My economy is to create the furniture that will inhabit laborious houses in the Staurós histos, even among those Jews and mercenary soldiers, freeing themselves from prejudices and clothing that represented them alone and fragile, being sensible by the diaspora. The world separates itself from the matter cell, clinging to the consciousness of the unity of dispersed Mosaicism as a sacrificial cult, to cater to those who write history more distant than a synagogue without a Rabbi. When bad winds blew there, they often made the situation worse for those scattered in a foreign land. At the end of the Hellenistic era, we had Jews in Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Phenicia, Pontus, north of the Black Sea, Cappadocia, the rest of Asia Minor, Egypt, and Cyrenaica, Carthage, Greece, Macedonia, and Italy. Now I in Rhodes with the Vas Auric, to trace the true effigy of Judas Thaddeus, my co-religious in pursuit of an intellectual and theological religious activity of edifying centers of prayer and universal unification, here in the Necropolis of Hallenikka, where some Davidian Psalm will be in more regions of here documented in precession, and as a reciprocal religion to Hellenic situationism. Its religiosity is felt, it even remains open in proselytism that causes the indefiniteness of the half-convert and that implies a risk for the identity of the Jewish religion as the support of a people with not a little original conscience "

He sings The Delphic Sibyl: “He bears the crown of thorns of the Coronation of Jesus, which also happened in the Praetorium, and as in previous cases to the scene represented in the corresponding neutral. In Eritrea Stauros, rather Herophile, if chaste and Delphic clairvoyant and apologetic, her vernacular artery made her a native of Marpeso, Troyana-Troade. As in fantasies of being the daughter of a Nymph and a Shepherd. Her elegy was escorting her to the Duodecim Evangelii, from Samos she is docking towards Patmos at the foundations of the Megaron. With the same polygon of the Sistine Chapel, in the quattrocento, where Vernarth had assistance in the parapsychological Regression of the Quattrocento Duodecim Evangelii, announcing that Vernolatry would be part of his Apologetic life, inspiring prophecies with the Iaspis Parables, commending scholarship after the grave that He was in the forest of Apollo Smintheus, returning to his origins in a sinkhole in Mount Coric. The idiomatic cross was its interlaced fractal, with threads and kashmar pole, surrounding the crossed palisades with linen threads, and Koiné to display the cross in the hestion or towards the Staurós or cross, in the capital event of the material instrument of execution for the man who falls into no man's land "

In shadows cast by burdens' weight,
I wander through a bleak estate,
Where debts entwine like chains of fate,
And dreams of love lie desolate.

Oh, wretched soul, trapped in this snare,
My heart, once hopeful, now stripped bare,
For love's embrace seems all but fair,
As debts devour the joys we share.

The golden band that graced my hand,
A symbol of a promised land,
Now tarnished by the debtors' brand,
A bitter curse I can't withstand.

With each passing day, a mounting toll,
A debtors' song, an endless role,
No solace found in midnight's shoal,
As dreams of wedded bliss take a toll.

I yearn to hold my lover near,
To banish all the doubts and fear,
But in this realm of debts austere,
Our love's sweet whispers disappear.

The wedding bells, a distant chime,
Lost amidst this pitiless rhyme,
As debts entangle, stall, and bind,
Our future fades, a shattered mime.

No fairytale ending shall we find,
For love's foundation, undermined,
By creditors' greed, so unkind,
Our plans to wed, forever confined.

Oh, cruel fate, with callous glee,
You douse our hopes, relentlessly,
In this abyss, we'll cease to be,
A tragic tale of debt's decree.

So let my tears flow like a river,
For shattered dreams and love's endeavor,
As debts consume, and hearts deliver,
A woeful dirge, a love that withers.

In the depths of debt's relentless snare,
A lover's union, left threadbare,
A somber tale of love's despair,
Bound in the debt's suffocating lair.

Shall I march into the sea tonight?
The lighthouse-keeper asks.
The light is lit; the wind is wound;
I have no other tasks.
The rains have cycled fifty times
Since they last turned on me;
Shall I bar the windows shut tonight,
or march into the sea?

Who will find me lost at sea tonight?
The lighthouse-keeper thinks,
When shepherds turn their flock indoors,
And the barkeep turns to drink.
I am the lighthouse-keeper, but
I do not have to be;
They'll find another keeper when
They find me lost at sea.

And if the sea won't take me, love,
The lighthouse-keeper sighs,
No candle on my windowsill
Is watched by no-one's eyes —
No shadow's crossed my threshold's bounds
Since I was thirty-three —
With stones inside my pockets
Let me march into the sea.

Give me no pauper's funeral,
The lighthouse-keeper sings,
Though scant be the inheritance
You'll cobble from my things.
If my debtors come a-calling,
Tell them, forfeit every fee —
Or, if they are truly greedy,
Let them find me lost at sea.

Today I realized the world has gone mad,
Still lending bills to penniless debtors,
But now sending in knights with armor clad
So no one messes with debt collectors.
This is it—my Sunday epiphany,
That somehow could rattle my state of mind.
Yet looking back, it’s not very holy.
I’m starting my day, and no longer blind.
Even their stuff sneaks over the border.
Look, toothpaste! Made down south in Mexico!
They laugh at the sign “Welcome to Mordor,”
And they **** the man asking “Friend or foe?”
  Dear Congressman, answer me this, big guy.
  I’m confused – where does our allegiance lie?

  Is our friendship with China just a fling?
  I thought we trusted them with everything!

  “You can make our computers, shirts, and toys.
  Oh, our toothpaste? We hired that country’s boys.”
Now there’s a just reason to start a war.
Some racist fear of lead-infested paste,
No care for the kids sweating on the floor,
More worried that our nation’d come to waste.
Ignorance is bliss; knowledge is power.  
A slavery that no one speaks about
Will never reach its final hour
unless I stand on a street corner, shout,
and wave around my poorly crafted sign.
Commercials are about money, and lots of it,
Not kids working in a factory line.
A modest proposal: destroy all profit!
  
  We should either be poor or go down fighting,
  At least we’ll have honor while we’re dying.

Bankrupt of his majesty
the would-be, could-be king
falls into a paunchy old age
Quite literally

He was young once
the would-be, could-be mogul
fell into addiction, hard times
Quite typically

Now hobbling into oblivion
the would-have-been, could-have-been
falls for a younger princess in her thirties
Quite predictably

Standing taller
his would-have, should-have, could-have
falls away in the reverie of romance
Quite nicely for a time

Until his old habits hurt her
his should-be-s apply to her
falling in love hurts them both
Quite a bit

She was young once too
a would-be, still could-be
falling into the trap of thinking time is scarce
Quite often

She's teetering on oblivion
the would-have, could-have, should-have
falling for the allure of what-is-not
Quite hard

A patch of gray hairs dust her widow's peak
would-have, should-have covered them
falling in line with what's expected
Quite easily

Bankrupt of her majesty
the would-be, still could-be queen
rises into a vulnerable middle age
Quite determinedly

Discover what the mind has given you,
Realize what is within the soul!
Strengthen your heart, guided by the unknown.
Discover a world from within,
Illuminate the souls of others,
Free the minds of the debtors,
For they are the same as you.

Discover what was there from the start,
For the earth is massive, therefore is the heart.
Forgive yourself of the harm you have caused,
Love instead. Forever love.
All, and always.

Hold fast to that which is good-
sheets in clenched fists
bodies churning fast then-
minds blank as emergency room flatlines.

Render to no one, evil for evil-
spread out wide, butter on bread,
before you like a deer in headlights
humming in shared solitude.

And deliver us from debts- as we-
forgive our debtors.
Each wall collapsing as we tumble down-
down, down- a cushioned fall.

And lead us not into temptation
a jolt of the lungs- intake of air
sweet like sugar on the tip of my tongue.
Motions liquid, silky.

But deliver us from evil.
Oh God! Please save me- as hearts
pound to bones- playing nerves as harp strings.
Oh God! please save me. Save me.

When did we become so disconnected?
Was it when we became so connected?
To every screen in sight
To every pixel in the night

When did we stop talking?
Was it when we stopped walking?  
Side by side
Across the countryside

When did we stop writing letters?
Was it when we engaged our debtors?
For everything we need to own
For every in App purchase in the game zone

When did we stop being selfless?
Was it when we became a menace?
To every man and women we see
We take what we want then flee

Dear corrupt country
Giant of all African countries
International debtors
Global investors
The nation I love so dear

The kid on street you allowed suffer
Hereby presents you a hate offer
Spire Biafra o! You zoo
Britain et tu
That should encourage freedom

The undiscovered Poet you wants dead
For trying restoring a freedom dead
Lives till now and also healthy
Though he is not a bite wealthy
His life he loves so dear

The stone you cared not for
Others seek for
That little boy you rejected
You he have ultimatly rejected
For of no good are you to him

Shame is mine being your child
I quite being your ward
If I am
And I shout it loud as an alarm
To the human right restrictioner

Stop my breath if you can
For history I know can
Never dream of forgetting me
Nor poems written by me
For one or two must stand

Dear corrupt country
I quite being your ward
If I am.

NEW DAY

Beautiful sunrise,it's a new day
I am blessed again to be alive
It's yet another chance for more opportunities
Struggle once more to overcome the challenges
It's a new day,some did not make it to this day
Who am I not to be grateful?!
To the Lord Almighty, I am thankful
Another chance to be surrounded by those that I love
It's yet another chance to extend love to those that need it the most
Among all His people,of course I am not the best
But he has seen it right to make me see a new day
Many that I once knew are no more
They went away and we are never to see each other here
Another chance to make more friends and enjoy life
Another chance to travel to new places and appreciate nature
It's a new day,I can smile and laugh once more

Beautiful sunrise it's a new day
The birds are singing as if to praise His name
The rivers are flowing like they can never stop
It's a new day,hills and mountains are still standing tall
It's a new day,the wicked will fall
It's a new day,my debtors will pay
While His name I can still glorify,
The temptations of the devil I'll defy
It's a new day,I can breathe in and out
It's a new day,my worries shall pass.

30/11/2019.
©Emanzi Ian.

The boy was happy,

His every whim fulfilled,

But the fun left debts to repay.

His bank account always refilled,

By the man who gave him life.

The debtors kept him leashed,

To this expensive way of life.

His idea of friends tested,

As they cause nothing but strife.

He pays and pays, to get his fix,

They make and make, as he tries to change.

He pays and pays, his money nixed,

The “friends” of the boy, begin to unhinge,

The life of their toy, to start by beating,

They move on to a picture, so incriminating.

This boy now sees his life, how he was cheating,

A quick fix for the stress, non-discriminating.

The time of his life was slowly ending.

If that image got out, he would lose his lifeline,

His only chance to pay for the thing,

The thing that he did not need, but craved.

The men kept him trapped,

With a childhood picture, something depraved,

Left this young boy trapped, in a life he no longer craved.

The house had an evil aspect as
It hung out over the street,
Casting a permanent shadow there
Where the market stalls would meet,
The first floor was half-timbered, with
The ground floor made of stone,
The windows were made of pebble glass
And the window frames of bone.

No one had lived in the house for years
Til the Robinson’s moved in,
A couple, straight from the wedding church
Where they’d cleansed themselves from sin,
They’d listened to all of the rumours that
The house had its share of ghosts,
But the cheapness of the peppercorn rent
Had influenced them most.

The house was built where a charnel house
Had stood in the days of plague,
Where later a debtors’ prison stood
Though its history was vague,
They said there had been a gallows there
With a trapdoor through the floor,
And the arm of the ancient gallows now
Was the lintel of a door.

But the Robinson’s had sailed right in
With a mop and a whisking broom,
‘In no time, it’ll be **** and span,’
Said Sally, within the gloom,
While Brad had opened the shutters then
To let all the light stream in,
‘We’ll flush the ghosts from their waiting posts
With a broom and a pound of Vim!’

They dusted down the old furniture
Left sitting since George the Fourth,
And turned the old oak table round
So the end was facing north,
‘But still there’s a dampness in the air,
And a tension that feels grim,’
Sally said, as they lay in bed,
And she clung, so close to him.

‘Are you sure that they can’t get in,’ she said
‘Now we’ve flushed them out in the street?’
But Brad was trying to understand
Why the bed was cold at his feet.
‘Why are the sheets so damp,’ he said,
‘And they’re cold, as cold as sin,’
Sally was shivering, fit to burst
Though the sun came streaming in.

They sat at the old oak table with
Their bowls of soup, home-made,
And Sally reached out to hold his hand
But he started back, dismayed,
The soup was thick in the serving bowl
It was still three-quarters full,
When a swirl in the murky liquid then
Revealed a grinning skull.

Sally shrieked, but she couldn’t speak
And Brad had held his breath,
‘We’ve got to get out of this house today,
We’re surrounded here by death.’
The shutters slammed on the windows and
The doors flew shut on their own,
And barring the pebble windows were
The frames that were made of bone.

The people out in the market heard
The screams at an early hour,
Looked knowingly at each other, said,
‘They have them in their power!’
And Brad was hung from the lintel when
They finally broke inside,
While Sally was dead by a grinning skull
In the dress of a new-wed bride.

David Lewis Paget

there are pieces of me hidden in the walls that you will never forget
but that's not your occupation now
chasing down younger stars by the seas
if you were a good host you would've at least made toast
but you never did find the right combination of pills and tries to be perfect
so we all go hungry

rust-red shoulders, shark-flesh skin
in debtors prison before the week begins
you've been dying since the day divorce first came around
hollowed out syncopated, broken and unborn
I'm radioactive and I'm in love
I'm ready to go but we can't go slow

has anybody seen the gasman goin' round?
this is the day and the glory
fuel set to fire
fractals in the walls all going down
the spaces that we share were my all-time favorite hiding places
but you knew them all too well
now we're planetary alignments on rusty shocks
but you're pluto a voyager away

gold-veined limbs smashing clocks into scattered ticking parts
priceless gems from eras never passed
it's the strangest medicine we've tasted
the only one we need
is this fantasy
I learned nothing about dying this year in science
stranger medicine I haven't learned to make

Why not dig faster
As if you hadn't time
The water may be rising
But why not sit and rhyme

Sometimes echoes
And smiles abound
Forgetting yourself
Isn't worth
what was found

A bird to rise
And bags beneath
And strain to beg for
Just release

Wheat and hazel
May make thee
An orchard merry
Or feet to flee

Somber silence
One prays for
Shallow living
To pay the store

I am living
Inside out
Humble endings
For the rout

Shaking tremblings
lovely shapes
Air connecting
What to sate

Ponder meanings
In moss and stone
As debtors mingle
At your home

Where did we go wrong
I sometimes ask the Sun
But answers are long given
And hardly won

The evening star soon falters,
Night flowers lay in wait,
Trust not the depth of dark waters,
Invaders nature will eradicate,

The living end still comes,
Echos heard within the pristine wall,
A grave pact was made within the slums,
In one night all shall fall,
Not a few,
Not some,
Or many,
But a few,
Some,
Many and all,

The plague rats gather,
At night nothing is safe to say,
The marrow gnawers may rather,
But the swarmyard is the only way,

The coffers are full,
Death's storehouse is now empty,
But don't be a fool,

The assassin lay ready,
The crypts are no longer Hallowed,
Keep yourself steady,
You do not want to get swallowed,

If you make it out alive,
The debtors' knell you will pay,
Without them you would not survive,
Don't forget thank the spirit for another day

Our Father, who art in heaven
How long have you been asleep?
Did the angels message you about the word on the street?

Were you busy rubbing your eyes during the Holocaust?
Took a quick leak during slavery?
Blink after the project in Manhattan?
Go on break while the Native Americans were slaughtered by people
who in your name
pulled out guns at men, women and children?
Turned to check on an angel babe
during the Civil Rights movement?
Was it really your will that was done?\

Forgive me for my judgment
I am very aware that others judge me
including yourself
but also forgive me for questioning
because you seem to have given unclear instructions
according to the humans that lost the real message in translation

Lead me to love
and deliver me from hate
because it is so hard to give
without expecting anything in return
The kingdoms is yours
this planet is yours
and my body is mine
But I understand that our temples could be desecrated
disrespected
our reputations tarnished
and our beliefs and truth questioned
I know you are powerful
but can we see eye to eye?
can we
So at least I know the fight that seems to be forever and ever
is actually worth?

A woman not amen
wants to see your blueprints
and wants to know
if you still have faith
in a bunch of trespassers and debtors