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Terry O'Leary May 2013
AWAKENING

Sleep and slumber, dreams of wonder... weaving,
morning’s vacuum broke the spell
Pitted pillow, note of parting... leaving,
“from your friend, a fond farewell”
Sunrise throbbing, twilight aching... grieving,
daydreams, flashbacks, nightmares knell
Pale phantasms, visions sneaking... thieving,
plot to fill the empty shell

12 DELIRIA

1st Delirium: COLLAPSES

Fractured sky bolts, billows bursting... rumbling,
heavens tighten, turn the vise
Horsemen saddle shafts of lightning... tumbling,
jagged highways must suffice
Ruptured skyways, hailstones crackling... crumbling,
naked pearls of paradise
Toxic tongues of laughter stinging... stumbling,
ocean buckets choked with ice
Droplets drumming, thunder muzzled... mumbling,
washed out whispers pay the price
Smothered blazes, cinders smoking... humbling,
ashes shaped in sacrifice

2nd Delirium: DESCENTS

Asphalt alleys, ashen faces... frowning,
blowing bubbles, chewing gum
Drinking ale from tavern tankards... downing,
moonlit beads of painted ***
Stony stars and sea misshapen... drowning,
humble rivers’ rhythms hum
Apparitions aspirating... clowning,
diamonds dying , minstrels strum
Incandescent candles conquered... crowning,
vacant vapours, cold and numb

3rd Delirium: FATES

Tempest turmoil, tapered turrets... holding,
dungeons, dragons, chains and racks
Wheels of fortune, Tarot temptress... molding,
Hangmen, Towers, One Eyed Jacks
Sand dune castles, cryptic candles... folding,
warping walls of liquid wax
Idols colder, combed and coddled... scolding,
hide in fissures, peek through cracks

4th Delirium: LOST SOULS

Sunken cities, pilgrims peering... gawking,
squinting eyeballs, blazing sun
Janus facing, shepherds chasing... stalking,
friends embrace before they shun
Tearooms steaming, tumult teeming... talking,
lovers listen, poets pun
Broken stones unanchored, quaking... rocking,
slipping, falling, one by one
Beaten pathways, footsteps marking... mocking,
wedged in webs which spiders spun
Circus shelters, big tops tumbling... locking,
people pacing, soon they’re none
Numbered exits, zeros numbing... knocking,
midnight daylight’s days undone
Moon blood shackles, shivers shaming... shocking,
starlight striders streaking, stun
Hushed but harried hermits waiting... walking,
restless rainbows on the run
Pixies, elves, and echoes bouncing... balking,
fading fast when dawn’s begun
Bantum butterflies are flitting... flocking
sometimes conquered, overrun
Hocus pokus, seers focus... squawking,
voodoo wavered, witchcraft won

5th Delirium: INTROSPECTION

Sundown furnace, fires fading... coughing,
dusky dew drops drain the air
Empty chalice, sipped in silence... quaffing,
thirsting shadows unaware
Looking glass and lattice scorning... scoffing,
local loser gapes and stares
Faces covered, dancing naked... doffing,
peering inside, hope despairs

6th Delirium: THE VOID

Tales of taboos, mystic mythos... missing,
windows shuttered, bolted door
Kindled candles, tongues and anvils... hissing,
heavy hammers, echoes roar
Dark deceivers, raven charmers... kissing,
draging demons from the shore
Hopeless hollows filled with doubters... dissing
standing empty - nevermore

7th Delirium: SEARCHING

Martyred monks haunt runic ruins ... waiting,
banging broken bells below
Vaulted hallways, voided voices... grating,
churning Chinese chimes aglow
Granite graveyards, spectres spooking... skating,
blackened bushes, roses grow
****** dwarfs seek mutant migrants... mating,
packing parcels, ice and snow

8th Delirium: NIGHTTIME

Throbbing drumheads, fingers blazing... steaming,
coins of copper, beggars plea
Rusty residues of resin... streaming,
opal amber filigree
Orphan shades in shallow shadows... teeming,
steeping twigs in twilight tea
Cloister doorsteps, Prophets gaming... scheming,
tracing tracks of destiny
Blacksmiths blanching, horseshoes glowing... gleaming,
partially sheathed in black debris
Phantoms feigning, nightmares scathing... screaming,
dusty dreamers drifting free

9th Delerium: EMPTYNESS

Water wheels in wastelands... turning,
drowning relics in the slum
Rumpled rags of fashioned burlap... burning,
lit by bandits blind and dumb
Pastured prisons, ponies bridled ... yearning,
forest fairies under thumb
Sounds inside of cauldrons coughing... churning,
blaring bugles, tattooed drum

10th Delirium: ALIENATION

Rain unravelling, wistfully weeping... falling,
treacle trickling, fickle sky
Mushrooms sprinkled, visions sprouting... sprawling,
seagulls drowning, dolphins die
Rabble gasping, spirits broken... crawling,
lonely lonesome swallows cry
Babbling brooks and breakers ebbing... bawling
puppies paddle, puppets sigh
People passing ripple past me... calling,
rainbow colours, collars high
Chaos seething, lepers looting... stalling,
stealing stallions on the sly
Pencils pausing, scholars scrambling... scrawling,
scratching scribbles, asking why

11th Delirium: JETSAM

Silver sails sway pallid pirates... prowling,
Jolly Rogers, wind and sound
Parrots perching, tattered feathers... fouling,
tethered talons, tied and bound
Shipwrecked foghorns, trumpets stranded... howling,
spiral springs of time unwound
Magic moonlight, shimmers shaking... scowling,
burnt out matchsticks washed aground
Prairie wolfs, coyotes calling... yowling,
witching hours, midnight hounds
Tightrope walkers, grizzlies grunting... growling,
seeking islands, lost and found

12th Delirium: RELIEF

Slumber shattered, vapours captive... haunting,
chained in mirrors, breaking free
Scarlet skylines, daylight dawning... daunting,
rivers rushing to the sea
Silence softens, sandmen whisper... wanting,
piercing rafters, turning keys
Shadows shudder, notions fluster... flaunting,
moonbeam bullets meant for me
Mind in migraine, meadows trembling... taunting,
sparrows speak in harmony

REAWAKENING

Pitter patter, teardrops paling... pearling,
salting scarves in secret drawers
Mist amongst us, smoke rings rising... curling,
climbing from the ocean floors
See-saw circles, senses swerving... swirling,
swept away with silver oars
Courtyard jesters, sceptres twisting... twirling,
push the past to foreign shores
Passing pangs of passions heaving... hurling,
burning bridges, closing doors
Roses wither, icons waning... whirling,
time decays and time restores
Nigel Morgan Nov 2012
A thousand peaks: no more birds in flight.
Ten thousand paths: all trace of people gone.

In a lone boat, rain cloak and hat of reeds.
An old man’s fishing the cold river snow.

I am alone in this mountain fastness, on a steep downward path in the deepest shadow. I play with the twelve characters of Lui Tsung-yaun’s poem. How few poems tell of the desolation of winter. The coming of Spring, the passing of Autumn? Yes. But the onset of Winter? Even my sharp memory only recalls a meagre handful of poems to this season: the time of the first snows. Against all good sense I set out from Stone Village too late in the year: now I search for comforting word images to accompany me on this journey. Just below the snowline I pass through a stunted forest of ancient walnut trees almost leafless; the unrelenting wind has dispatched them crinkled brown into the valley below. I see there a winding river. I see its distant lake. I think of this poem known since my teenage years, puzzled over that one could see in one sweep of the horizon a thousand peaks. Here are that thousand and more if the ranks of limestone pillars in these mountains can be counted as peaks. I count them as peaks. And those thousand paths? At every turn there is some fresh way falling into the valley, or a faint trail rising to the heights. But this path I tread asserts itself on the traveller. Its stones are worn and the excrement of passing pack animals sticks to my boots.

Last night a cave, tonight I will reach the village of Psnumako. My former guide provided its name with a disdain he could not hide. When questioned he warned me not to enter without a stout staff against the mastiffs that guard each house, supposedly ******* during the day but apt to break their bonds at the smell of a stranger.

The steep and ever steeper descent brings pain to my knees. At this hour of the day my body would prefer to climb to the heights, but descend I must. The cold, the damp cold begins to stiffen weary limbs. I am tired from a day’s travel, tired from three hard climbs, two descents and this, my third, to complete before nightfall. I enter a narrow gorge loud with clamour of running water, cascade upon cascade flowing from the heights, falling fast to the river soon to interrupt my path. I shall have to force a crossing. What passed for a bridge were two fallen pines lashed together.  Now they lie akimbo a little distant, thrown apart like sticks by the spring flood as the deep snows melt. I must divest myself of boots and lower garments and wade across, stumbling on stones up to my waist in swift waters, terrified under the weight of my pack that I will fall and be swept under and along. To travel alone at such moments is foolhardy, but on this cold afternoon I have no choice.

I am so intent on preparing for this crossing it is only when I reach the end of the path that I notice snow is falling, its flakes sharp and white against the dark-water flow. The whirl and turn of the water mesmerises. Fatigue, fatigue embraces me, a day’s fatigue holds me fast on the river’s stony side. I close my eyes and hear the water rush and place myself into the protection of a mountain charm learnt from a passing traveller. Dwarfed by the size of his burden I see him negotiate a narrow path high above a chasm; he walked trance-like to the intoning of this charm.

It is soon done, the cold crossing, and with a lighter step I walk the remaining leagues to the lake-side and sight of the village. There are the faintest sparks of light amongst the silhouettes of houses. Animals are being brought in from the home fields against the night. A sudden shout, the barking of dogs, and now the snow falls thick and fast.

The guttural dialect here is barely discernable as speech. We are from different worlds this shepherd and I who meet at the stupa guarding the village entrance. This is not a Buddhist shrine but an acknowledgement of some mountain giant of terrifying aspect. The shepherd sees my official insignia and nods, knowing I will require shelter. He utters what may be a welcome, but could be a warning, and leads me forth. The mastiffs leap and bay as I pass between the primitive two-storey houses, animals below, humankind above. He disappears. I stop and wait. He returns with a woman who beckons me to climb the ladder to what may be her home. A widow perhaps? She is alone unless the rank darkness hides a man or child. But there is none. I hear animals move and grunt under the floor, a mat of dirt and straw. There is a sleeping loft, a cooking corner. I can see little else. But I am out of the snow, the biting wind, the cold. She pulls at my cloak, wet and caked with ice. There is a bowl placed in my hands; a rough tea. I speak a greeting, but there is no reply just a rustle of straw as she moves across the room.

The stupor of a journey’s pause is upon me. After three days on the trail to the heights I am numb with fatigue. I need food and sleep. I need rest before a final trek into the wilderness. Beyond Psnumako Lake known paths end. Except for the tracks used by shepherds to move their flocks to different seasonal pastures, there is wilderness. I hope for guidance, for the whereabouts of the sages who, in the winter months I am told, leave their reed huts on the heights for caves in the lower valleys. I shall be patient, remain here a little while. I am now immune to the discomfort and dirt of travel. That is how it is. That is how is must be. I miss only the mental absorption of writing, the caress of the brush on a scroll. In my home in Louyang I keep brush and paper close to hand; wherever I may be I can write, even in, especially in, the privy. If a line comes to me I can write it down. Here there is only the comfort of memory.

To think that in the past I wrote of this mountain wilderness out of my imagination and the descriptions of others. I once thought of these remote places as havens of spiritual liberation.

In the hills there is the sound of zither.
White clouds stay over shaded peaks,
Red flowers shine in the sunlit woods
Rocks are washed in the stream like jade;

How very different is the reality of it all; in this emerging winter world of mist, where the sun rarely visits and most living things have departed, where wind colours silence and one’s footfall becomes consolation. The sound of stone rubbing stone on the path is the eternal present. There have been days when only a distant crow moves in the landscape. Lammergeyers are known in these parts, but I have yet to see one. If there are wild beasts, they shun me.

As this bowl of tea cools in my hands but warms my frozen fingers I form pictures of the past day on its dark surface. Before dawn from the mouth of a river cave I sensed changes in the qualities of darkness that have hidden the heights above me. Then a perceptible line appeared and divided the mountain from the sky. That line became variegated; there were trees bristling on the highest rocks. It appears that at this hour the prevalent mist settles in the valleys leaving the sky clear.

The woman comes to me. She kneels to untie my boots. She looks with a curious innocence at my strangeness, the distortion of my face, the cleft palette, the deformed upper lip, the squint of my left eye. She is kindly as I give her my best smile though my face seems frozen still. There is a whisper, a prayer of welcome possibly. Then she bows her head, unravels a long scarf to reveal a mane of oiled hair, and sets about removing my boots. I see only the top of her head, a severe parting, hair held tightly in wooden combs. I close my eyes to bring to mind the image of Xaoli, so slight in comparison, her butterfly hands flittering into and around my sleeves, her seeing touch mapping out the extent of me, each piece of clothing, only later my face.

My reverie is broken by the entrance of two men. They squat behind the woman and, after taking in my ugliness and my hairpins of office, patiently wait for her to finish and retire. We stand and bow, then sit again amongst the straw.

‘Honoured Lord, I am Yun. You have travelled from Stone Village? And beyond?’

I pass him the Emperor’s seal he cannot read, but remain silent.

‘You are seeking those who live in the heights? The village only sees their servants, young boys sent for a goat or flasks of barley spirit. They bring herbs our women favour. Some have seen their huts when seeking lost animals. Now it is said they are gathered in the caves like animals waiting for the spring moon.’

‘When was the village last visited by their kind?’

‘ Hanlu, my Lord, the time of cold dew, two boys appeared with a pony. There was trading. They brought Chrysanthemum flowers and herbs for two geese and wine. They left scrolls for passage to Stone Village. Now the snows fall we may not see them until the Spring’

‘How far are your summer pastures? Have you any who would guide me there ?’

‘We do not seek these places after the first snows. The sages haunt the region beyond Chang Mountain. Before the 11th moon you might pass into the valley of Lidong where it is believed their caves lie, but to return before the Spring will not be possible.’

‘How many days there?’

‘Allow four. A difficult way, unmarked, rarely trodden, much climbing. There is one here who we could send with you – part of the way, and at a price, My Lord. Dahan travelled two seasons since as groom to a party of six with ponies, but then in late Spring.’

‘I will stay three days.’

‘Just so My Lord. Xiu Li will see to your wishes.’

And they depart, Yun’s companion has remained silent throughout, though searched my face continually. By the door he places his hand against the stout bag that carries my lute. ‘Guqin’, he says tenderly.

This instrument is my pass to the community of the reclusive. I am renown for my songs and their singing. My third-best guqin has not left its bag since Stone Village and I fear damage despite all my care on the path.

Later, as the village mastiffs gradually cease their baying as the quarter moon rises I take this instrument and place it across my lap. Its seven silk strings I wipe with a cloth and gently tune with its tasselled pegs. I then prepare myself through meditation to avoid the intrusion of distracting thoughts. With my eyes closed I allow my hands to seek out and name each part of guqin: from the Forehead of the Top Board, to the String Eyes, the Dew Collector, The Mountain, Shoulder and Phoenix Wings, past the Waist, the Hat Lines and the Dragon’s Beard, to the Dragon’s Gums and thence to the Inner Top Board. I can feel the Pillar of Heaven – the sound post – has moved a little in my recent travels. So too the Pillar of Earth – but with care I move both to their rightful positions. And so on naming the inner and outer parts of each of the two boards that make up the guqin. I begin to regulate my breathing and allow the fingers of my left hand to stroke and touch, to press and oscillate in the manner of vibrato. Zhoa Wenji describes twenty-three kinds of vibrato. I feel in turn each of the hui, the thirteen gold studs that mark the harmonic nodes and allow me to play the guqin by touch alone. In these moments of preparation I hear the words of my teacher: a good player makes sounds that are plentiful but not confused. As the moon reflecting on water, so the sounds are together but not combined. Like wind in the pines, they are combined but also spread out. Such sounds are valued for their lightness. Avoid the addition of inappropriate  "guest" sounds. This is the refined theory of the guqin. To be knowledgeable about music, one must seek this, then one can realize its beauty.

I have tuned to the Huangzhong mode. The song *Amidst Mountains Thinking of an Old Friend
I have brought to mind. I recall the words of The Slender Hermit who says of this piece that its interest lies in holding cherished thoughts, but having no way to tell these to anyone. There are emotions about the present time, longings and laments for the past, but there is no way to express any of this. And so this piece.

In this poor reed hut the room is filled with mist and haze,
how far away are the things I love;
the old plum tree seems exhausted, its flowers about to die,
the mountains are lonely and I am nostalgic for past times.
The moon shines brightly on this lovely evening,
from this distance I think of my old friend and wonder where he is.
The green of the mountains never fades,
but before I know it my hair will turn white;
the moon is waning and flowers wither,
Old friend, I dream constantly of meeting you.
How hard it is to recall the joy of our last meeting!
With the many mountain ranges,
and its hidden tigers and coiled dragons,
I am unable return to you in Chang An.
The road is distant, the tall trees make the road dark,
and the world is vast.

I mourn Aquila and Lyra
separated by the Milky Way like the cowherd and weaving girl,
on the ground we are separated by 1,000 li
in the sky we are each in a separate place,
though our passions remain strong
There has been no warm correspondence,
there is restraint to the bright harmony,
and the flowing streams are swallowed by the setting sun.


The thought of this song of mid autumn touches me before its words have issued from my lips. I play the last two lines in harmonics and sing.
Zuo Si was the brother of the courtesan and poet Zuo Fen. This short story is based on a chapter from my novel Summoning the Recluse. The opening poem appears in a translation by David Hinton from his collection Mountain Home.
Lawrence Hall May 2017
Liturgy in Time of War

I will go to the altar of God
To God who gives joy to my youth

ENTRANCE ANTIPHON

The dawn (evening) is coming, another hot, filthy, wet dawn (evening).  Let us arise, soaked in sweat, exhausted, to speak with sour, saliva-caked mouths, to meet the deaths of this day (night).

GREETING

In the name of Peace in Our Time,
For the Hearts and Minds of The People,
For the Land of the Big PX
For round eye and white (black) (brown) thigh,
I greet you, brothers.

PENITENTIAL RITE

All:

I confess to almighty God
And to you my brothers
That I have sinned through my fault
In my thoughts and in my words
In what I have done
And in what I have failed to do,
And I ask Blessed Mary…

But how can I ask Her anything now?

My brothers,
Pray for me to…

But how?
Priest: (But there is no priest)

KYRIE

Lord, have mercy
Christ, have mercy
Lord, Lord, have mercy on us now

Have mercy, Lord, on a generation
That sits smugly in college lecture halls
And protests endlessly in coffee shops
The war they hear, see, on T.V., for free
Justice and peace by the semester hour
Like, y’know, peace, love, Amerika sux
Play the guitar, ****, apply to law school

Have mercy on us
Who crouch behind sand bags
And clean our weapons
And protest nothing
And **** in the heat
And die in the hear
And throw ham and lima beans away

GLORIA

Glory to God in the highest
how many bodies yesterday?
And peace to His people on earth
Vietnamese? Or us?
Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father
ham and lima beans?
We worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory
Doc, I can’t go home to my wife with this clap
Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father
cigarette, canteen cup of instant coffee
Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world
******* magazine
Have mercy on us
relief behind the sand bags
You are seated at the right hand of the Father
i rot
Receive our prayer
i want to be clean and dry
For You alone are the Holy One
clean and dry.  just once.
You alone are the Lord
why do they chew that?
You alone are the most high
you mean the betel nut?
Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father
incoming!
Amen


PRAYER

A

Father, you make this day holy.
Let us be thankful for
The many little joys of
This day, for life, for
The chance to worship
You.  In the end, bring
Us to you, so that we
May be cleansed of mud
And sweat and filth and
Guilt, and live with you
In peace forever.

B

Father, just get me through
Another day of this mess.

LITURGY OF THE WORD –

FIRST READING

From the Intensive Care Unit, NSA DaNang

A twilight world
Of neither peace nor battle
And of both

A man world
Embracing life and the grim death
Both

Peering into infected wounds
Night building shiver
Down from the black sky flares float

Broken bodies from the war somewhere
Eyes of a shattered nineteen-year-old Marine
Staring at the door to Yokosuka

PSALM

A Song of Descents

I cast down my eyes
Into the mud
Into the blood
It seems cleaner than death and drugs and casual ***
Drink Coca-Cola

I turned my eyes away from you, O Lord
And made this
Build this
Came to this
Samantha and Darren on Bewitched

Have mercy on…but how can we ask?  How dare we ask?

SECOND READING

Old Man, Viet Nam

Old man, a dog is barking at your heels
Old man, with the tired, weathered face
Are you afraid to turn around and deal
This dog a kick, to put him in his place?

Or is it, old man, that you’re just too tired?
Just too tired to turn and show anger
Just too tired to have your temper fired
Beaten by years of contempt and danger

Where are you going, trudging so slowly?
What are you thinking, behind those tired eyes?

Probably not about ham and lima beans

GOSPEL

In the Cold White Mist

After an all-night run on the river
Our boats arrive in the village at dawn
Dawn is never cold along that rive
Along that steaming, green, hell-hot river
But the mist is cold, the grey-green dawn mist
And after the engines are cut – stillness
Foul brown water laps at the mudding bank
Sloshing softly with fertile, smelly death

In the cold white mist

The boats are secured, and watches posted
We step off the boats and onto wet land
And follow the track into the deep mist
It becomes the street of a little town
A dairy lane along which cows slopped home
And where dogs and chickens and children
      played
Bounded by carefully swept little yards
And little wooden houses with tin roofs

In the cold white mist

But some of the houses are burnt.  The smoke
Still hangs heavily in the whitening mist
The lane is littered with debris.  A lump
Resolves itself into a torn, dead child
Across a smaller lump, a smaller child
Their pup has been flung against the fence, its
Guts early morning breakfast for the morning
      flies
We smoke cigarettes against the death-smells

In the cold white mist

Beneath a farm tractor rots a dead man.
When they – they – had come at sunset
He had hidden there.  And they shot him there
A man with bare feet and work-calloused
      hands
His hair is black; his teeth need cleaning
They shot him beneath the village tractor
His blackening blood clots into the mud
And our lungs choke in the white mist of death

In the cold white mist

White mist.  The path disappears into it
Smoky skeletons of little houses
In which there will be no tea this morning
No breakfasts of hot tea and steaming rice
No old widows to smile in betel-nut
No children to mock-march alongside us
Pointing at our ******* boots, and laughing
At us, for wearing shoes in the summer

In the cold white mist

They are dead and rotting in the white mist
On the edge of the jungle on the edge
Of the world, here along the Vam Co Tay
And the people pour out of their houses
To greet us on the fine summer morning
A corpse across a doorway, another
******-doubled across a window sill
Still another strewn down the garden path

In the cold white mist

The other patrol doubles back to us
And they tell us that the Ruff-Puff outpost
Must have been overrun the night before
He had heard their radioed pleas, and had
Run the river at night to get to them
And the ARVNs had fled through the village
And the VC had stormed in behind them
And it was knife-and-gun-club night in town

In the cold white mist

A little girl is the lone survivor
She looks may six.  Cute, except for the
Bubbling, *******, bayoneted chest wound
We patch her, and tube her, and use suction
Sort of like fixing a bicycle tire
And in the wet, gasping heat take her back
With us downriver, where a charity
Hospital leaves her on the steps to die

In the cold white mist

It will be our turn again tomorrow
Not a one of us died today.  Today.
But a village is gone, burnt and rotting,
Soon to disappear into the jungle
Along the green Cambodian border
Up some obscure river.  Up there.  Somewhere.
A few hundred people.  Their ancestors’ graves
Will fade with them untended, forgotten

In the cold white mist

Radio Hanoi might blame it on us.
But maybe not.  We made our report and
Nobody really noticed; no one cared
The talk is of the VC battalion
And where it has gone, and where it might go –
Maybe into death under an air strike
“And you guys better get in some sack time,”
Says the C.O. as he turns to his maps.

In the cold white mist

HOMILY

I’m scared, and I want to go home.  I don’t care any more about justice or fighting Communism or winning the hearts and minds of the people.  I can’t think about all that right now, because I’m scared, and I want to go home.
I don’t care about truth or loyalty or bravery or honor.  If Miss March were here she wouldn’t get cold, but she sure would get sunburnt.  And in a few days her skin would start rotting.  Then nobody would want to see her in the **** anymore.  
I’m scared, and I want to go home.
Up the Vam Co Tay, everyone is scared, everyone is tired, everyone is sick, everyone could die: sailor, soldier, officer, priest, farmer, fisherman.  Everyone rots in the wet heat.  The skin bubbles and flakes and peels, and is pink again, to bubble and flake and peel again.  
I’m scared, and I want to go home.
I’m Doc.  I’m a scared, stupid kid with an aid bag and a few months’ training.  But I’m Doc.  I’ve got to fake it.  I’ve got to be cool and calm because this other kid with his guts hanging out will probably make it if I don’t ***** up and if the dust-off from Saigon can get out here now.
I have an old dog at home, and my folks write and tell me she sleeps outside my window at night, waiting for me to come home.  Someday we’re going to run and play in the woods and fields again.  She’ll bark and run wide circles, and dare me to catch her.  I will laugh under the autumn leaves.  But now my nights are glaring darkness, fits of sweat-soaked half-sleep, then sirens and falling glares and falling mortars, and then the Godawful racket of all our engines of destruction.  There isn’t any use in all this.
I’m scared, and I want to go home.

And I don’t want any ham and lima beans.

CREED

We believe in the Land of the Big PX
In presidents in suits, and generals,
In makers of economic strategies
We believe in flak jackets and .45s and peace

We believe in swing ships and dust-offs, yes
In the dark, green omnipresent Huey
Eternally begotten of technology
Blades to rotor, windscreen to machine guns
Made, not begotten, one in being with us
Through it all things are transported to us
For us men and our hunger and our hope
It comes down from the skies
By the high power of technology
It was born of the long assembly line

For whose sake are we crucified today?
Who suffers, and who dies and is baggied?
And on the third will arrive back home
To be neatly packaged in stainless steel

But not in ham and lima beans

LITURGY OF THE EUCHARIST

Preparation of the Gifts

Celebrant:

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation.
Through your goodness we have this cheap Algerian wine to offer,
Fruit of the vine and work of human hands.
It will become anaesthesia for our souls.

People:

Blessed be…we just don’t know

Celebrant:

Pray, brothers, that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father, to somebody.  Maybe.

People:

May the Lord, or the baggies, accept the sacrifice we offer with
our own burnt hands
For the praise and glory of…of what?
For our good, and the good of all His Church.

PRAYER OVER THE GITS

Little green cans, and I don’t care
Little green cans, and I don’t care
Little green cans, and I don’t care
Air cover’s gone away.

EUCHARISTIC PRAYER

Preface for the Monsoon Season:

Father, all-powerful
And ever-living God,
We do well always and everywhere
To give You thanks
Through Jesus God our Lord
Even with diarrhea
thanks
When the mail doesn’t come
thanks
When we rot
thanks
When the heat ***** at our brains
thanks
When the mud ***** at our boots
thanks
When the horror ***** at our souls
thanks
We’re alive
thanks

SANCTUS

Holy, holy, holy, Lord, God of power and might
The bunkers are full of blood and death.
Hosanna in the mud.  Blessed is he who comes with the mail.  Hosanna in the mud.

EUCHARISTIC PRAYER

The Kien Tuong Province Canon:

A sailor is silhouetted against the dawn
Along a steamy river
Mostly helmet and flak jacket
Above dark plastic gunwales

The sailor has lost his New Testament
But there’s a ******* around somewhere
Naked, willing women –
Miss March wants to be an actress

He also carries an old plastic Rosary
To touch occasionally
While whispering a hurried Hail Mary
He hopes She understands

Those who in bell-bottoms and head-bands
Fight Fascism
In Sociology 201
Will never forgive him

A sailor is silhouetted against the dawn
This day he is to be elevated
His body broken and his blood shed
For you and for all men

OUR FATHER

Our Father, who art in Heaven
this ain’t it
Hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come
this ain’t it
On earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day…
not ham and lima beans
And forgive us our trespasses
as we shoot them that trespass against us
And lead us not into ambush
But deliver us from evil

SIGN OF PEACE

Peace on you.

AGNUS DEI

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy….

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: grant us peace.

Priest:

(But there is no priest)

People:  

Lord, I am not worthy to receive you,
But only say the word and I shall be killed.

COMMUNION ANTIPHON

They ate, and were not satisfied
They killed, and were not without fear.

PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION

Lord,
If we do not get out of this
Make some sense of it to those who remain
May we go home.  Home.  Or if not,
Take us unto you, in mercy.
Home.  Where you reign, for you are Lord
Forever and ever.  Amen

BLESSING

May you walk on grass that does not explode
May you sleep without rot
Without fear
May you never see or smell ham and lima beans again.
May you live
May you play with puppies
May you find forgetfulness
May you find peace
In the Name of Him who took your death for you

DISMISSAL

This is to certify that____is Honorably Discharged from the____on theday of____.  This certificate is awarded as a testimonial of Honest and Faithful Service.

CLOSING HYMN

Old men, smoking in the sunshine
Exiled outside the doors of life
Old uniforms, old pajamas
The chrome of wheelchairs, shiny, bright

Inside, polished wooden handrails
Line the hot, polished passages
Something to cling to on the way
To the lab, to x-ray, to death

And more old men, shuffling along
In a querulous route-step march
From Normandy, from The Cho-sen,
From the Vam Co Tay, from the deserts,
Past the A.I.D.S. ward and the union signs
On waxed floors to eternity

Portions previous published:

“Closing Hymn” is from “Outpatient Surgery – Veterans’ Hospital,” Juried Award, Houston Poetry Fest 1993

“In the Cold White Mist” is a Juried Award, Houston Poetry Fest 1991

“Old Man, Viet-Nam,” was published in Pulse, Lamar University, 1982
Chuck Sep 2013
Guilty pleasure
But time I treasure
Just you and I
No kids' screaming cry
No wife to bark orders
As we seek new borders
I stroke your limbs
My ego brims
You ride me away
From stresses in my day
Your frame is so light
I ride you just right
You transport my life
In a different way than my wife
I love the both of you
To you both I'll be true
But with you I'm physical
My wife is mystical
You create such sweat
The drips make you soaking wet
As I crank you on ascents
And coast down long descents
I get light headed
Nothing you do is dreaded
You carry me away
So I just needed to say
You are my mistress, my queen
I don't want to be obscene
But if loving you is wrong
Why does my wife sometimes ride along
If you haven't guessed, and I hope you have, my mistress is my bicycle. Actually I have six of them. It's okay; they know about each other. Haha
Chuck Jan 2013
Cycling
High cadence
Low resistance
Tight corners
Horse class climbs
Mountainous descents
     Back up!
Horse class climbs?
At my current weight
More like fat *** climbs!

Cycling
No high calories
Low carbohydrates
Tight spandex
More practice climbs
Mountains want destroyed
      Go forward!
At my cycling weight
More like what climb?
This poem is inspired by Spooner but in noway a Spoonerism. It was also inspired by all the Christmas cookies. Haha
Shelly Woods Oct 2014
My scars remind me of many things…
Some I want to remember and others I want to forget.
I am pure to the truth but I swell in regret.
Shame, pain, triumph, strength… scars represent.

There are no badges to wear;
I have no pride to hide.
I am not a product of the stories;
I refuse to be a prisoner of my descents.

The past is often forgotten...
Memories distort beyond recognition.
Scars will fade, darken, stretch and shrink.
But the deep ones stay; I still can’t forget.

Emotions dissipate... or so I thought.
But now I believe they simply hide
beneath layers of damaged skin...
keeping those scars painfully alive.

It isn’t protection; it isn’t healing.
No badge I’ll wear; no pride I’ll find.
Yes, these scars are mine…
But I am not my scars! And my scars are not yours.

To some, I am marked for life;
I cannot control their stereotypes.
I **** them and their forced opinions!
They thrive on my scars; they try to create new wounds.

Sometimes, I let you see my scars… but I am far from naïve.
I know I am giving you a temptation and a tool.
Don’t try to own me… you are a fool to think you know me.
The why, when, and how is my personal mystery.

I won’t let you look beyond the fragments;
Deep below the layered scars hides my truth.
I will not allow you entry; I am still afraid.
Self-inflicted wounds are far more acceptable.

I do not wish for more scars…
to add to my repertoire.
I do not wish for more adversaries…
to shove me back into the ground.

My past is mine and mine alone; it remains a part of me.
But despite the spite I feel…  
My past is not my present; my past is not my future.
And it certainly is NOT any of your business.
addicted
turning on you
you’re more toxic
than ******
scroll fluid
in my veins
you're dangerous
a sweet poison
harmful to my health
I fill myself with you
of your essence
every fiber of me
wants to feel you
your voice
your words
your smell
your hands
your mouth
light me up
and raise me
to dizzying heights
and they throw with me
in adrenalin
descents
that leave me breathless
you’re never enough
darkness takes you away
and I’m  in withdrawal symptoms
you’re  hot oil
in my veins
burn
my nervous system
my heart
is covered with pus
a thin and  unquenchable
itchy
crawls under my skin
my brain cells
seeking frantic
satisfaction
in wrinkles of memory
dig every corner
crave a drop of you
forgotten on  the bottom
of an empty bottle
you’re toxic
abstinence
doesn’t give me  peace
I’m alienated in a whirl
of strobe lights
sweat
dehydrated
confused
find me
take me
save me
JJ Elias Jun 2014
Living is often like drowning, and sleeping like flying,
So bridges and tall buildings always tempt me.
When I talk about death I feel brave.
I've always hated how recognition can so easily turn into pride.
They say pride comes before the fall,
But I believe that various kinds of self-centeredness are the origin of all unholy descents.
I remind myself that I shouldn't take my life because I didn't give it,
And my heart continues to beat on its own.
Blood doesn't stain crimson red,
It darkens and crusts on the skin.
Everything that is dead becomes only a memory,
Then it disintegrates and washes away, eventually becoming nothing.
I can’t remember anything from before I had the ability to reason,
So when did I come alive?
I wonder if all people valued beauty,
Would there be peace?
Because I sometimes wonder whether Neil Armstrong meant to say what he did as took his first step on the moon.
I think trying is as valuable as doing,
But justification is a dangerous tool.
I am cautious of failure and success;
But count this as my eulogy
A list of things that I am going to say before my untimely death.
*I recognized the world for the canvas it was and I didn't waste my life.
My dreams were my motivation,
And they were fueled by those that underestimated me
I walked streets day and night and prayed that I would somehow run into the girl of my dreams,
and when I finally found my missing rib I looked at her like she was a piece of art that I just couldn't keep my eyes off of.
I suffered and I found its nectar bitter-sweet.
I didn't get the best of life, but then I made the best of life.
I never stopped caring,
my love for the unlovable made me daring.
I trusted too easily so I was always broken.
I always found things to love, but they never loved me,
But despite it, I still loved, hard, even though it hurt me.
I couldn't comfort because I had never been comforted.
After a lifetime of battling myself, I finally took off my crown of thorns.
I didn't let the past get the best of me,
I gave the future all of me.
I hated animosity,
War was despicable to me,
And I always preached peace.
I prayed constantly that my efforts would not be in vain.
I never actually could stop sinning,  but despite my ugly sins, I never stopped straining.
I was not perfect, but I did the best I could.
I never ceased to hear the music.
I still played, even when I felt like I was playing solo, I still played my part in this symphony of life.
My eyes were aimed at the director, and we played through the storm,
We played even when all hell was against us,
We played, and played, and played
Until eternity came through.....
Nigel Morgan Jun 2014
A suite of fourteen poems

for Alice, always

I

Cutting for Silage

Seen
on the path close to the field edge
a swathe of green grass cut,
Left
in the wake of the machine
to dry in the hopeful sun,
Rich
in a profusion of grasses,
glimmers of wind flowers,
weeds and tares.

Seen from afar
the cut fields partition this landscape
with stripped overlays
packaging the valley,
dark green rows revealing
the camber and roll of
a naked field shorn,
Dark upon light.

II

Walk to Porth Oer

Where the sand whistles
and windy enough today
for the tinnitus to set in,
we’ll walk the curve of its dry fineness
left untouched by the tide’s daily passage
up and back

before
and along cliff paths,
from the mountain
past secret coves
whose steep descents
put the brake on all
but the determined,
beside shoulders of grasses
bluebelled still in almost June
now hiding under the rising bracken
up and down

we’ll walk to a broad view
of this whispering bay
where below on the sandy shore
dots of children
tempt the slight waves.


III

Cold Mountain

Whether  a large hill
or officially a mountain
it’s cold on this higher place
wrapped in a land-mist,
the sea waiting in breathless calm
where the horizon has no line,
no edge to mark the sky.

Any warmness illusory,
in sight of sun brightening a field
far distant, but not here,
where waiting is the order of the day,
waiting for grass to shine and sparkle,
for bare feet to be comforted
by sweet airs.

Meanwhile the sheep chomp,
the lambs bleat and plead,
the choughs throaty laugh
a shrill punctation, an insistence
that all this is how it is.


IV


China in Wales

In my hermitage
on this sea-slung place,
a full-stop of an island
back-lit illuminated always,
I view the distant mountains,
a chain of three peaks
holding mist to their flanks,
guarding beyond their heights
a gate to a teaming world
I do not care to know.


V


Wales in China

O fy nuw, I thought
my valley only owned such rain,
but here it teams torrential
taking out the paths on this steep
mountain side. Mud
everywhere it shouldn’t be.
Everything I touch damp and dripping.
No promise of pandas here.
And there’s this language like the chatter of birds,
whilst mine is the harsh sibilants of sheep
on the hill, the rasp of rooks on the cliffs.


VI


Boy on the Beach

Heard before seen
the boy on the beach,
a relentless cry
of agrievement, of
being badly done to.
This boy on the beach

following his mother
at a distance
then no further.
‘I hate you, ‘ he screams,
and stops,
turning his back on the sea,
folding his arms,
miserableness unqualified,
no help or comfort
on the horizon he cannot see.
It is attrition by neglect.
He becomes silent, and called
from a distance, relents
and turns.


VII


The Poet

Austere, his mouth
moved so little when he spoke,
you felt his words
were always made in advance,
scripted first
and placed on the auto-cue.
Ask a question: and there’s a long pause

as though there lies
the possibility of multiple answers
and he’s running through the list
before he speaks, his antenna
trained on the human spirit,
full of doubt, doubting even
belief itself.


VIII


A Gathering

Thirty, maybe forty
and not in a lecture room
but a clubhouse for the sailing
look you. And we did,
out of the patio doors
to the sun-flecked sea below us,
here to honour a poet’s life and work
in this village of the parish he served
at the end of the pilgrim’s path .

Pilgrims too, of a kind, we listened  
to the authoritative words
of scholarship where ironing
the rough draft found in the bin,
explaining the portrait above the bed,
balancing the anecdotal against the interview,
reading the books he read
become the tools of understanding.

But the poems, the poems
silence us all, invading the space,
holding our breath like a fist.



IX


In the Garden

He came alone to sit in the garden
and remember the day
when, with the intimacy of his camera,
he took her, deep into himself;
her look of self-possession,
of calmness and confidence,
augmented by butterflies
motionless on the wall-flowers,
and the soft breath of the blue sea,
her soft breath, her dear face,
freckled so, his hand trembling
to hold the focus still.


X


The Couple from Coventry

Young beyond their years
and the house they had acquired
but only to visit at weekends for now,
they drove four hours to open the gate
on a different life, a second home
requiring repairs on the roof
and replastering throughout.

With their dog they were walking
the mountain paths, checking out the views,
returning to the quiet space
their bed filled in an upstairs room
echoing of birth and death:
to experiment further with loving
before the noise and distraction
of children swallowed up their lives.


XI


On Not Going to Meeting

There was an excuse:
a fifteen mile drive
and a wet morning.
He had a book, a journal
that might focus his thoughts
towards that communion of souls:
a silence the meeting of Friends
sought and sometimes gathered.

These experimental words
of a man who felt he knew
‘I had nothing outward
to help me,’ who then, oh then,
heard a voice which said,
‘There is one, even Christ Jesus,
that can speak to my condition
. . .  who has the pre-eminence,
who enlightens and gives grace
and faith and power.’


XII


New Life

From behind its mother
the calf appeared
tottering towards the gate,
but after a second thought,
deeming curiosity inappropriate,
turned back to that source
of nourishment and life.


XIII


A Walk on Treath Pellech

Good to stride out.
Good to feel unencumbered
by the unconfining space
of beach and sea, a shoreline
littered with rocks and shallow pools,
sea birds flocking at the tide’s edge.

Alone he sought her small hand
and wished her there over time and space
so to observe what lay at his feet,
that he might continue to look
into the distance with a far-flung gaze.


XIV


The Owl Box

James put it there.
One of forty
all told but
empty yet.
‘We live in hope,’
he said.

Slung from a bough,
bent and bowed,
on a wind-shaped tree,
a hawthorn blossoming still,
(inhabited by choughs a’nesting)
the box hangs waiting
for its owl, her eggs,
her fledgling young
who are not hatched together
but are staggered as though
to give the mother owl some
pause for thought.

Meanwhile the nesting choughs
tear the air with tiresome croaks,
a bit of rough these black characters,
neighbours soon to the delicate mew,
the cool, downy white of the Athene noctua.
The poet celebrated in this suite of poems is R.S.Thomas.
Francie Lynch Jun 2018
What good can come from words of mine,
In open, blank or crafted rhyme;
Could they affect a single mind,
And if so, for how long a time.

If my heartaches touched you
Because of what you read,
I know you understand
My truth needs to be said.

If what you read
Brought pallid tears
Over your quick and dead;
Or the words I chose to write my lines
Cast shadows before your blocked sunshine;
Or wrote good and bad of family and friends,
Of our descents and our ascends,
Or a general lack of recompense,
I truly make amends.
If you felt shame or remorse,
Don't rue the day you read my verse.

(You see, I concur with your every curse)

But if you winced or held a giggle,
Rolled your eyes at some recognition
Of our shared quixotic plight,
Then I'm pleased to get it right.
Logan Robertson Apr 2019
Tiger Wood's wins the Masters today
Another green jacket comes his way
Finally, his image stands large at the doorway
For it's been a knock and a hiatus of his cache
As the years after 2008 suffered from his play
No major championships one can say
Only gossip headlines, mugshots, and injuries in gray
Where once a phenom in his twenties on display
Such greatness and legend his star headway
His mid-thirties saw some of his luster fall  in dismay
With mostly self-injury to his ego in disarray
It was hard watching a once proud man's fall and decay
Especially one that held his world at bay
With his swagger, swoosh, and shine turning to clay
And like a good drama of accents and descents convey
With the wait and weight on his shoulders belay
He turned the storybook pages of dismay today
The pressure of his swing, swing, and putt on display
And how he uncorked his demons is a pure bouquet
After 43 years of his years, he took the fairway
Running, running, today after his prey
It was great seeing his game not get away

Logan Robertson

4/14/2019
Along with other patrons at a McDonald's I watched the Master's this morning. I had a Big Breakfast but was in for a bigger surprise. Coffee never tasted so good. So, too, were the tears. It is days like today that you live for, and give thanks to, namely rooting for a hero and a comeback. Thank you, Tiger. To give you a perspective of how big today was-take note that of
Wood's 80 tour wins  71 came prior to 2010. In 2016, 2017 he was out with an injury. In 2013 he did well. Yet there was so much missing from his song, one his life being together (especially his relationship problems with women and caddies), that I was happy to see him sing today.
Joy Dec 2016
barefoot on the clouds,
i chased you all the way home -
i'm crazy for you.
December, 2016
How many times can one hope to be saved,
After all the descents to the depraved?
How many times succumbed to sinful thought?
How often losing the battles he fought?

How often can he expect salvation,
When choice after choice is to damnation?
How many times can he ignore his guilt,
Atop the foundation of lies he built?

How many chances to apologize?
How much wrong can one man trivialize?
How many times can he find excuses,
For turning others to his own uses?

If he ignores needing introspection,
How can this man still expect redemption?
If one just loved him he knows that he would—
Being loved is all he needs to be good.
Instagram @insightshurt
Blogging at www.insightshurt.com
Buy “Insights Hurt: Bringing Healing Thoughts To Life” at store.bookbaby.com/book/insights-hurt
Elioinai Oct 2014
The horror,
of a tired mind,
When walls,
Once adequate in strength,
Become like paper dams,
and the dark waters,
Of my weakest moments,
come seeping through,
Poison the innocent
descents of a rainy day,
Perhaps Hezekiah,
had a mind much more tired than I.
July 12, 2014
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2017
and i'm watching this couple, this: bromance...
  and i'm wondering when the time
comes that the other tells
the former: you can't talk
physics wearing a cowboy hat,
wasn't the 20th century the time
they lost habitual need to cover their heads?
monks shaving, the kippah...
indians and the Martian act of scalping,
my donning a beard and fiddling
with it like payots / sidelocks...
can this... cowboy talk seriously to me
about what is and what isn't a stance
on pragmatism?
      let's just say, that being attired
with so many scientific facts, moon lading
and all that, i'd be most perfectly sound
in stating such facts, such attire,
without looking, rather ridiculous...
   it's nice that someone can go to the moon,
and in having this susbjecitivty enclosed in them,
and how that won't translate into something
i might share... how i will never experience
someone else's subjectivity, and how that is
the sole basis for having objective opinions...
but you have to admit that donning a cowboy
hat is more ridiculous than putting on a sock
or a shoe...
                       and then talking
looking like that genius gremlin...
    men age, they enforce being boring,
they're too nostalgic, they love to re- re-
  a care for st. pete... hey! pedro! what do women do?
they're just become weird...
   like that wasn't the case to begin with...
love is... whether expressed by a pensioner
or a teen... a bit... mmm... whatever.
          it just gives me the idea of being
a host of gnats when people have to dress themselves
with these "serious" facts... and then they later
talk donning cowboy hats and boots...
  who's the serious monkey to be given
a radio show? who the serious bobo?
          even i know, given the phonos,
that dżin is an orthographic transgression...
        dzin would suffice...
yes, you've been to the moon, that's nice...
this is where you deviate from telling other
people to keep it to themselves...
              i'd prefer to hear more about the brothers
Grimm sound asleep, than hear of american astronauts...
but yeah, thanks for the invite,
      so few people care or want to be astronauts,
the emeritus americans and the emeritus russias
ego-tripping is so, so, so so boring...
       and i'm sorta in the custard of it taking place...
ethnicity and abstract identities of succumbing to
nationhood... cut it open... dżin... it's also called
the fake graphemes of sh and sz and dz ch and cz...
those are graphemes...
            there's a reason you don't **** around
invoking too much distinction in the realm of grapheme...
they really could have just said: dzin....
or jinn... or aladin drinking gin.
    sure, they call them aesthetic bits and bobs,
when in fact they are nor aesthetic in a + way,
they're chiral, hardly natural,
gin             jinn              joke                              egg...
   gaug                                    chase,
      glee jeer... game, jam, gammon,
     jammy... gaming... the near proximity!
they're so close!
           - i sniff... (snout noises)... an existence of a graphame...
     if one was to listen to humans talking,
one could clearly see they are bound to cheat...
they have too many symbols for the sounds they make...
and for the deviations in making sounds
they ******* chiral twins of the same sound...
and then sometimes deviate from it...
ensuring that Latin graphemes, those linguistic siamese
rule the river of diacritical mark,
suffocating them, until the river becomes an
artificial lake...
            when diacritical marks was given to
the "deuteronomy", (e) missed in the original...
sometimes spelling mistakes can reveal much more
than the words themselves...
          the 2nd e... for the te-,
t-ah, tao...
                 i can feel winter ending,
i can feel the loss of limbo, fatigue,
               or what comes as spring, namely insomnia,
increased productivity,
but such that diacritical marks were the heavenly
based descents to mark distinct syllables,
  like hailed original use of pucntuation marks,
but more within every word, than among words
in sentences...
   i could just as well call for a genocide of linguists...
i just don't see why they need to
complicate the matters with some wacky
anti-copernican alphabet
akin to writing hope, (consciousness),
[hohp] (american, spaghetti, nasal
akin to echo: oompf! ergo subconscious:
insinuation, panicky, puppets and the empire),
/həʊp/ (british, origin, ergo unconscious) -
why do we need this linguistic alphabet?
you can reach a perfect argument
using the same language, with one
that has adopted the use of diacritical marks
akin to punctuation marks...
and have the only avaliable canvas that
english is... there really should be a russian
counterpart of me dealing with how the greeks
are so paranoid in over-using diacritical marks,
like me, but speaking russian and looking at greek
and nodding, insinuating the word
on a broken record: aha, aha, aha.
it would be nice to talk about people,
but then i graduated from the optometric school
of having to look at migrating electrons in
organic chemistry... i think i'm relaxed these days...
so outside the failed translation gimmick
of chemistry, mainly german, mainly
hyphen orientated CH3-CH2-OH (alcohol, numbers in
subscript) - ****... looking at that "fingerprint",
why is my vision of the world so pink?
you try to teach the anglo-saxons that they're saxons
again, and not orientated around building an empire,
imagine teaching them the proper way to be
saxon, that, some words, like german,
desire, complexpunctuationstandards.
there you go, a real life example, let's see you cut that
word open and extract a heart,
  and a lecture on having a heart,
    let's wait for Frankenstein's monster to groan
into the vacuum, and the no actual vacuum,
but merely the night.
- yes, a hyphen at a beginning of a sentence plateau
almost means a stance to take to paragraph;
even though it shouldn't exist, as a p.s.,
***** into existence by, nothing more than a bias
to endorse whims, cravats, Monet,
and tantrum fits of little girls that dreamed
of being princesses... but instead became ******;
yes, those working parts of you
                           that are quiet, edible.
to write, and see, rather than write, and hear;
that sentence will not actually require
the existential ambiguity of the zoo,
of the enclosure of "     "...
                    i look at existentialists as i might look
at zoologists... prison guards...
      pontius pilates.
TKO Sep 2016
I
look
westward.
Those meandering paths,
brittle stone atop them,
once offered me guidance.
The fresh hues of Fall have since
stolen the lingering youth of Spring.
A butterfly flits by,
acting as a muse
for my nostalgic reveries.
I lay under
a cascade of fallen leaves,
Entranced.
Their delicate descents
cradle the breeze,
no sorrow to lament
as they nourish the trees.
Don Bouchard Jul 2015
I'd suffer four long years
Before I set a letter on the page...
I'd sob a hundred times,
Waking from repeated dreams of you,
The daughter I have lost,
Running into my arms, and
Our tears mingling
Over the wasted years,
Only to realize that dreams
Are only dreams
To remind me of my longing,
Not yours.

If I were to write you a poem,
I'd tell you that sorrow cuts me still,
Even though my heart is turning stone,
That parts of me are fading out to gray...
That family isn't whole while one of us is still
Away.

If I were to write you a poem,
I'd say the old stool you loved
Stands waiting,
Your handwriting still claiming it
As yours,
Though you have left it here
These years.

But how shall I write a poem
When the leaves of spring are glittering,
And when meadowlarks are singing,
And work calls me out to take the agony away?

Perhaps in fall,
When leaves begin their grim descents,
And winds drive chilling clouds of gray,
As mournful sounds of geese in southern vees
Cast gloom upon the dwindling days,
Perhaps in fall I'll take my pen,
And try to write a poem for you
Again.
Mournful Biding
Karliah May 2018
It was deep into the heart of the earth,
Down the spiral staircase of dreams,
Far from the comfort of the suns and moons,
Men from a future long past,
Memories held through oil and gas,

Breath held as the white demons crept,
Evil and blind they never slept,
Still smell their hatred for the light,
It swept the soil and out into the endless night,
Their origins distort through the assortment of poison,
Killing their humanity it festered through centuries,

Lengthy descents down darkened and deathly hallways,
Missing and empty of those who filled the corridors with life,
The greatest disappearance not know to man,
Their history lingers in cold metal and gears,
Steam pours from their ruins like ghostly fears,

Chambers filled with knowledge beyond all who enter,
Teachings that destroy those who seek to learn,
Secrets seep from stone cut walls,
Enticing those who wish to play with death,
Driving the weak minded to wish they were,

It takes a lifetime to return to the moons,
The nightmares whisper long after,
The future lost in the past,
Finds life in legends living above,
Deep within the heart of the earth.
ohNoe Oct 2014
Adrenalin is already in play
  even beforeplay
So clip in
  (no, not *******)
grasp the bars you'll grip as you ride
  (not gasp as hard and slip & slide)
and start to pump
  slow at first
    and then faster
(okay, it's not all ******
   but it is all intimately sensual)

Welcome to Wonderful,
  the eternal quadrangle
    of physical/mental/emotional/spiritual
      (which makes love with ego's inellectual)
  where you can taste your health
    as yur in tune with yurself.
  mind drives body
    body alives mind
  it's a complete circle
    a beautiful cycle
      (a bi-cycle lol)

this movement
  this energy
it speaks to me
  both secretly and directly

Somehow effort seriously extreme
  is easier than anything should seem

Smooth & Fast like Dream Flight
  it soothes & excites!

just steady the climbs
  zoom the downs
    & pump the flats
or get stronger
  ride longer
push the legs and lungs along
  speed and speak to any ascent or descent
    until you Noe its song

This was meant to be my forte
  I was made to ride 100 miles a day!
Dude,
  distance disappears in Zen & Grace,
    it's my 2nd favorite place to have my face!

And I actually catch myself wondering what it would be like just  to keep rolling until I saw Canada and stopped to sample some salmon.....

Have you ever gazed up at your goal
  knowing it was just the first of many,
then given in to the siren call's control
  and joyed your away along the journey?

So you know teaching yourself to increase your best?
You know the ******* reaching of the crest?

Then you will Love the mint fire on your nerves
  as you *** alive cruising these curves

maybe there is no truth
  perhaps those were lies in your youth
could be there is no comfort
  mayhap all effort is merely hurt

I don't want to believe that's true
  but the only proof I have for you
is something She gave me that I Love even more than I like
  and now I Noe everything is Better on a Road Bike

the zoom, the move, the smooth
the intimacy of the power transfer
body is bike is body is bike
  check one, two, always the live mike
hills are merely miles
  and homeless heartless boy actually smiles
    (from the inside, not just the surface!!)

the only music is in my head
  are the sounds which surround me
    the hum of the tires on the asphalt
    the whoosh of the wind in my ears
      (and blowing back my hair hahaha lol)

Seriously,
  when I'm cruising my climbing
    along grades my truck hates driving
  or flying floating down descents
    as Joy earned after that ascent
  or inside my mind across miles of miles
    I ACTUALLY HAVE REAL SMILES

and as my legs link to my lungs
  muscles humm oxygen rhythm
I feel the whistle in what was once my soul
  and it feeds the underwhelming wish to be whole

at times the chills spill up & down my spine
  and I Noe there is no end of the line
just the preparation & anticipation
  for the next time.....

BOMBDIGGITY
Tilly Sep 2013
Toes                                    
         curl over                         a grassy ledge
above a raging sea            Whispers
on the wind say nothing to
save descents to me
iridescent Mar 2014
When our time comes,
float down like
autumn leaves.

Make our descents
with graceful pirouttes
guided by the soft winds;
empty branches will
leave behind reasons
for the fiery red that once laid
to be missed;
and light that seeps through
the hollow canopy shall
cleanse our fallen souls.

So when our time comes,
float down like autumn leaves.
Wear white gowns
that snowflakes weaved for us;
leave no more
footprints in the ground,
we've trampled on
their hearts enough;
bittersweet when they
think of us dancing above,
weightless and unrestrained.
Jodie-Elaine Dec 2014
Last ditch attempts and descents without grace.
Darkness was diffusing into ambers. He’d been deteriorating for a while now, slowly, abruptly, and then with the fall of the summer months completely off the other end of the scale. He’d felt it in adrenaline coursing through his veins, known it when spilled liquids seeped into carpets that weren’t his own. But this was it. He faced the final breech of his own standards, or what was left, with bare feet, exposed eyes, all the while knowing he was corrupted.
He had brought himself inches away from a descent, drawn himself through the chaos, grasped his gnarled hand around what had held him back, and pulled, pulled his own cold body from the lifeless thud on the floor, pulled himself here, and now his toes curled over the edges of what had been his life.
Gathering the last vestiges of his age and time, Bram stepped forwards into unfilled air. Foot first, the ground drawing closer; he watched the atmosphere fly past in kaleidoscope. Like all inevitabilities, the moon extinguished the sunlight, both knowing their places elsewhere.
more of a story than a poem, but ah well.
Chuck Aug 2014
I ventured on a journey all alone
Self powered also self empowered
Lonely I was but I did not bemoan
Miles washed down the drain as I showered

Met interesting folks on my bike trip
Stayed with a couple, helped me feel at home
Crashed with earthy folks, who were ultra hip
Greeted with support wherever I roamed

Climbed mountains ascending fifteen degrees
Some stretched up for miles into the blue sky
And descents that caused wobbles in my knees
As valleys and streams vanished from my eyes

Sure, I missed my wife and my kids' cute smiles
Yet, this was an adventure for legs and soul
They both grew stronger with each pedaled mile
My head was spinning as my tires rolled

Crossed my sylvan state, an empowered state
Something I just knew I wanted to do
When I made it, I had to celebrate
New Jersey was my state of soul anew
ManoelO Nov 2017
Love rises from the firey
Basement of the soul
And soars the infinite skies
Of possibilities

But this love ashes
fall from clouded
Forgiveness
And clogs the heart
Of bitter memories

The Phoneix of love
Descents
From the heavens
And plunges
Into jeopardy.
Poetic T Feb 2019
Such a strong branch holding up the
fruits of so many seasons but then one
winters wrath did the wind pick a fight.

Though it fought against the odds, it bent
within the breath of failing and yielded to
                       the chosen fate and befell its birth.


Falling silently in a wood of mute descents,
           where nothing was heard, but everything
knew that something was not as it was before.

Even thought strength held it at the yearning of all
below now it was stagnant. Then eyes pondered upon
its elegance. A fortitude of worth now meant for other means.


And though cleaved it was meant for a purpose,
             not one that it knew, now sewn on to
metallic wows. Sharp edges flowed like breath.

And so many times did it fall, not as before
                       this time it drank a different dew..
    teardrops flowed upon its eternal falling.

But it never grew weak, feeding on the nourishment
                                   of each diminishing stance.
Though it fell from the tree it still grew in depravity.



What was once a yearning life, growing further than
any other. It fell and became contaminated within
                                  earthly pleasures which it drank upon..    

A moment falls that severs ever moment before,
                     and what falls in moments after isn't
confused.  
                             It now has a purpose of the death it felt.
vhcgjhf Jul 2015
In her hair were
lilacs and lilies

how she felt, indescribable
at least as my hand imagined
an apartment held a sad fragrance
like nicotine and a cold, wet dog

Just in case
you are dense
-I don't think

I just travel, cutting off measurable descents
and action grovels and spits out piths
it dances in a grimy booth

the door was smooth and shiny
it was covered with fingerprints
from little boys in other countries

I said "ma'am, you aught to not invite
those who wish to distance everything
to pull apart each atom, leaving a space
for arson'd counties, and tarnished valleys"
beautiful vacuousness, so glazed & reflective
Feeling soft, cool breezes gliding on my skin like a graceful dance
Feeling as though I'm in a nostalgic trance
Nostalgic of once being surrounded by zephyr whispers
Familiar scents lurk within the gusts and seemingly withers

Flowing memories soon ascent;
Bringing a sense of tranquility;
Rising emotionally beyond ability
A memory having no rhyme or reason, soon descents.
Meaning: What sparked the idea of creating this was just one night just before midnight sitting on my bed. It was silent and I had my window open to let in some cool air and during all of this I started randomly thinking of sweet nostalgic early memories and at the same time sensing and feeling the soft cool breezes come out of my window and slide on my bare skin. It felt right to create this type of poem as I became obsessed with the moment.
Necropolis of Hellenika / Kímolos
Tsambika / Philo of Alexandria

They passed each other on the outskirts of Archangelos to go to Tsambika, going to the Necropolis of Helleniká where he was waiting for them more than 400 kilometers to the west of the Cyclades, precisely in Kímolos where they would do the colloquy with to do the channeling with the Necropolis. Etréstles had traveled with Kanti the steed; on his back, they saw the distance before they arrived at Mandraki in Rhodes. They all headed down the coast towards Archangelos, but Etréstles went to Helleniká, the Vas Auric was landed on Mandraki for the purposes of the Creation of Vernarth together with the Apostle Saint John. Kímolos, it is on this island that the famous beginning of the procession towards the outskirts of the cities was to deposit their sacred remains on the way to a better one, here were the martyrs who were used to Etréstles since he cohabits in delay with Drestnia for the new millennium (His female of hers) with which he resides in the Koumeterium of Messolonghi in the ninth vertical cemetery. Having a chapel and altars this place was propitious to create between Kimolos and Tsambika which was so many kilometers away, so the meeting performance between villages would be seen in its entirety to be resurrected and worshiped between the Cyclades and the Dodecanese with pious exercises between both latitudes precisely in the chapel of Theoskepasti, while in Tsambika it would be in the Panagia Tsambika monastery. Etréstles carried in both hands some matches of some population dowries with laws of affability and generations lived there without knowing each other between the two islands and tabernacles, arguing canons of burial and exhumation. In this case of performance refer to the Vas Auric of Limassol that brought the construction of a world of the right angles for the neat reconstruction of multi polygonal spectra, adopted for the first time in Kímolos to be retransferred to a logical philosophical-architectural division seeking to enclose the perfect plans where the new Christians will reside, between Rhodes and the west of Kímolos re-installing themselves among more than a third of the venerable ones who rested in Helleniká, in syncretic neatness with dissimilar populations and creeds.

Saint John the Apostle with Vertnarth, Raeder, and Petrobus plus Eurydice would bring from the rubies of Alexandria the incorporeal honor of Alexander the Great, turning both island sites into palaces of the Muses of Helleniká for the scholars who would be at the canonization of Vas Auric. Being the precursor of the chapel of the Theoskepasti, this performance of erudition will be endowed with the new status for Philo of Alexandria present here, now being a co-demiurge who will convert this necropolis city into duality with Tsambika for distinctions of the rituals and homilies, reducing the inputs basics in ceremonies. Philo of Alexandria says that only God protects the Jews, adding to what Philo wrote in La Legatio ad Gaium, the Jewish delegation had trouble meeting Caligula and when they finally met him, the emperor declared that he wanted a statue of him to be built as Jupiter in the Temple of Jerusalem, which sowed desolation among the members of the delegation. Finally, this purpose was not realized thanks to the intervention of Agrippa I and the death of Caligula, Philo attributed the happy ending of both cases to Providence. This divine letter of these translators with Saint John the Apostle and Philo of Alexandria will make this homily the spiritual custody that will be preserved in these two cities and then towards the world of Vernarth of the Duoverse, so that invisible winds blow from the chapel of Kímolos to Panagia de Tsambika, in the frameworks that feed the Hebraic and Hellenic boundary “translating Greek into Hebrew, but in two universal sites of creation in the Theoskepasti chapel and Panagia de Tsambika, about the magic of the meeting of omniscience and grace. Says Vernarth: “with the interpretation of Philo of Alexandria and his exegesis, I will rub the tract of the successions of infinity legitimately stored the creation thought of the ZigZag Universe with the Parapsychological Regressive authority now circulating in a sniffing universe with a Verthian genealogy, tempering with my Falangist disciples but being biblical when it becomes the occasional emaciated mob of a world that falls degrading with its last pieces and challenges of the world associated with an allegorical spirit, contracted to wings of ethics and doctrinal rectitude. I have two candles in each hand, similar to Etréstles in Kímolos and in Helleniká, making delights of pleasures in these ceremonies to create the world’s ignored in the office of the super compassionate language, in more than seven days that add up between the Sun and the Earth, in a sub-mythological world being ourselves our own executioner established on the ***** that falls from the match of the wick of my Lucerne in its own mood. I still have a memory of who and of each one who will always be in my prayers, reopened in a sacredness less than my own end, here I will not continue to be stored. Rather I will continue to fall, exhumed from the very storehouse and from the struggle of the thistle that falls from itself rounded up to be competent to explain himself biblically as if he had never before been read ad limit of the doctoral, and sacred in the work of Philo of Alexandria here with us leading and there in the Necropolis on another thorn; as a perpetual creeping species growing here as an unvarying summer plant in cooler climates, which would usually be prostrated on the Helleniká slab with radiating branchy stems extending the fractal distance between Kímolos and Tsambika in thistle´s ceremonies. The hirsute silts will come from the genesis of their spiritual temporal being the same wool of the whirlpool of all the weeds attached and oppressed to the lamp of the gargoyles that are tuned together with the Gulpers of Archangelos in a happy diet following patterns of even, and odd thistles spring in the Cyclades and the Dodecanese. The Parapsychological regression XIV century - Saint John the Apostle says: “from Filerimos a sidekick monk of Philo of Alexandria has come with the image of the blessed Immaculate ****** and painted by Saint Luke the Apostle. The Knights of Saint John built the Monastery of Saint John in Rhodes with this image; everything comes from there on the Miraculous Hill of Filerimos, and the temple of Athens Polias was converted into a proto-basilica with a three-bay nave dedicated to Her. The church is known since then for housing the figure of the ****** of Filerimos (Our Lady of Filerimos). In the fourteenth century under the rule of the Knights of Saint John a monastery was built here surrounded by cloisters cells and a series of chapels, that is where the figure is the miracle worker and is reverently guarded. Being a Capuchin order after the Ottomans destroyed it; it was rebuilt by the Italians. With this image we canonize the Vas Áuric in the homily prior to the spiritual link with Etréstles in Kímolos, before every morning they illuminate the sacred Earth of both latitudes in the mystical house of Saint John the Apostle with the herbalists on the wind to fight for the Somnia in Hortum et Flos Herbarium in Kímolos, Garden of Flowers and Dreams in Herbalist in Kimolos. Knowing that the Universe is approaching the Vernarthian Duoverse, Saint John the Apostle decided with the Birthright to establish a Duoversal Garden in Kímolos with the aim of laying tremendous foundations on the base of the pre-Christians and apostolic who enlisted in the Greco-Hebrew world with the addition of compression, and medicinal valences for the herbalist of Kímolos, in such a way to reissue it in the monastery of San Juan in Rhodes and the Panagia of Tsambika. Since the grains grew and germinated they became thickets of great predestined forest in Rhodes, aspiring to continue being a well-known theology in Greek also being sufficient testimonial about its Aramaic originality, being addressed to the Sanhedrin, 37-42 AD Before Caiaphas and redirecting it to his brother-in-law Theophilus of Annas. The Aramaic Apocalypse, also known as 4Q246, is in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, found at Qumran, with notable early messianic mention of the Son of God. Saint Luke says in the voice of Saint John the Apostle: “4Q246, we are children of God…, the Highest, the Messiah as a messianic voice, being able to be confused with the Beast or the Messiah but Philo of Alexandria will be there saying “I always ignored with the most blessed indifference to Satan, because therefore in this Aramaic manuscript he only has, and will reside forever and ever in his Messiah” Given this situation, the commanded expressions were those of astragals mysticism in herbalist and botany in this manuscript, since the unfortunate leftovers are the freshness and splendor of the flowers caressed by the wind that arrived at that moment; in regard to the wind of the Anemoi being eight gods that correspond to the eight cardinal points from which they came and were related to different seasons and meteorological phenomena, but he heralded the excitement of the Cyclades, like Sound of Sounds between Narcissus of Sharon and Lilies of the Valley. The audio-images were avocados forming the deep thickets that will move according to the inclinations of the planets, each time the Universe approached Greece among all the cisterns with water for the flower meadows that Vernarth in litanies was assigned to the paths that lead to the Vas Auric.

Vernarth says: “With these titles “Vas spirituale, Vas honorabile, Vas insigne devotionis, Rosa mystical, and Regina sacratissimi rosari”, I have to transform all the astragalus, and shrubs into the consorts with the presence of the jacaranda vase of living human nature in virtue of the meeting of the Universe-Duoverse, for the herbalist of Kímolos now imprisoned in the Vas Auric of Limassol. "Sweet Nectar of the dying, eager for eternal hunger and sweetness in withered flowers"
The end of Parapsychological regression XIV century
Saint John says Apostle: “Helleniká and Tsambika, will be the lily, the saffron, the rose and the violet but also new ones, like the marigold and the chamomile making of all a diadem crown to place the world of the Duoverse in all its radius, for the star that illuminates par excellence as a white planet without thorns, which is perfect among the perfect, anti herbicide of language and of incarnation as in the Empyrean the medieval sky in the highest of heavens. It is likewise in the place of the physical presence of God, where angels and souls reside in Paradise between caltrops and Rosas towards the alimentary plane of conventual voice, and tonics of the glycogenic Milky Way sipping third-grade milk to curdle in the children who have not been a Messiah yet. Paths of thorns will guide visitors to this gallery of flowers and plants through the Panagia monkish for the holy homily with the Lilies and through low valleys, where no more Lilies can escape from their chains of the Liliorum genome in the valleys of the galactogenic virtue. Like Mother Rosette and son Lirium, being the mother of everyone and of that…, there… your son, “Myself in the path of the three Mary’s”. Over there in the desolate place, a columbine carries me imprisoned on my heels as a bond of a son who makes my steps with the Columbine of my saving feet” At 320 meters of altitude Still, Life appeared concealed behind the Vas Áuric descending…, here everyone approached the auric circle of Moral that made them authors of the proximity of the Universe falling on Greece, and the Herbolaria that fell with all its reliable structure in the foliage where many more species appeared such as thilts, Laurel, Olive, Linen, Grenade in a simple and nuanced devotional with the pro status of the delegate; the same Hexagonal Primogeniture to make the cinnabar fistulas that were elemental by the different associated colors, and by Grail tutorials that looked indigo on top of some Rhododendrons. If it is eschatological, it is in the mystical nets of the Empyrean further from a form that is said to be called a form of antagonism, between Cardinals and their dead Lilies. As first among the last, the bulbous and clayey Tulip of the orbital and basilica symbology, peacemaker and philosophical Eritrean for spiritual quests that toil outpourings from the Empyrium, reaching the Messiah on his Colt on his way to Bethany. Around the Monastery, everyone could be seen as they arrived to the beat of the cymbals and aulós, among lyres that prowled tickling the inquiry to rest their fingers, or perhaps dressed by some Trojan villain augur in those of "Daedalus". Being the latter, here a tulip with flames of a true seeker trying to sacrifice subsistence daring over the risk of the resole of salvific death or perhaps dressed by some Trojan villain augur in those of "Daedalus".
Daedalus says: “After the incident with Perdix, I Daedalus was expelled from Athens. I then went to Crete, and in the kingdom of Minos I was placed in the service of the monarch. One of his tasks was the creation of Thalos, an animated bronze giant who defended the island from invasions. By order of Minos, I built the labyrinth to enclose the monster; the labyrinth was a building with countless corridors and winding streets opening into each other, which seemed to have no beginning and no end. Minos locked me up with my son Icarus, whose mother was Naucrate, a slave of Minos in the same building. The reason for the confinement was the collaboration of Daedalus in the escape of Theseus from the labyrinth, I have to lament for the ****** of Perdix, now turned into Partridge who now carries in his claws the creation of the Universe-Duoverse, turned into his own, and myself in envy neither harassing me about my endings, and neither starting nor finishing. That is why I appear here coming from Crete, to wrap myself in the garden and its mystery closing all the madrigals and hedges, like a world that has created me, in its splendor, seeing the humility fragrant with violets grafted onto lavender with my soul now, of a somewhat syncretism Hebrew-Hellenic and Mythological sub-Mythological, like a nobleman who walks free and without chains… passing through the Parthenon to put on tiaras in dresses that are adorned with Linens, but of evangelical lineage here in Kimolo.

In Kimolos; Helleniká Necropolis, Etréstles was suspended in a columbarium equivalent near the lapidem of the necropolis. There was a great amount of accumulated air enclosed in the musty cinerary walls, with the translucent specters that fluttered through other metropolises that transited inconsistently in their proto-masonry, and some resembled pink jaspers on some grooved slabs, letting pale dovecote rhizomes slip away under an oblique columbarium domain that manifested itself meagerly on an unstable podium of Folegandros. Adhering to this enormous exteriorization were Kanti, and Etréstles in their hydrothermal genesis, lying as a petra forms at a wide range of heat towards periodic effluvia of their Devonian geology, manifesting discreetly until a carbonization of sedimentary rocks attributing their curiosity when they continued to remain in areas favorable climatic conditions, simulating to be exordiums on thermal hydro sediments, leading to the carbonization of the surface of the necropolis with micas and serpentines, to cool down in the selfless natural fields that resisted the effect of the heat generated by the ZigZag Universe, etching each other on pyrites and graphite’s with the compactness that increases, and extends the widening of the mournful enclosure attentive to channeling emanations and traces, that will be the first loads of exegesis from Tsambika for prompt elucidation from Mount Hymettus in Athens, and continue to proliferate in hives of bees libating in its thickness towards the good-smelling necropolis causing its magnificent flowers and herbs to steam; so much so, that from the paved lipoids of honey astragalus and spectra will come out deposing to be toxic, yearning the strigilas or curved striaeons (reverse or straight), imitated from pagan sarcophagi.

Thousands after Thousands of Centuries after centuries, adorning themselves in the lapidem glossaries on the exterior fronts of tymbos that were embedded in the tholons, almost as in outright Constantine-Hellenic brilliance towards an unarmed cenotaph with their flat covers, pouring over them the devastated trisomy of Kaitelka, of whose diploid organism extras, aberrated by being parity triplicates of their greatest chromosomal and homologous hereditary complement. The vestiges of fossil whales here were generating disproportions of execrable variation, being destined to the patio of fall on them in three additional courtyards of marbles at the rate of inverted strata, revealing only some of their extremities appreciating them with semi-covered figures, and on reliefs filling again by genetic trisomy for gentile practices and lead them to the Christian Vas Auric. Faced with such a famous disproportion of fossil reliefs, they turn to the scourges of the Universe.

Panagia Theoskepasti Parapsychological regression Etréstles in Kímolos: The church of Theoskepasti, due to its position could be easily recognized by the invaders during their raids. However, according to a legend the church was veiled by dark clouds of mist and became invisible as soon as the assailants approached. Due to this legend the church received the name "Theoskepasti" from the Greek words "Theos" and "skepazo" meaning "God" and "watch" respectively. So, the name is 'God Veiled'. According to another tradition, when once a foreigner managed to get into the church and tried to steal the golden candle divine power cut off his hands. Also if it is watched over by God, so it is divine for the Creation that it will begin with the synchronization between both latitudes of the Cyclades and the Dodecanese. Etrestles After staying together with Kanti, they went from Theoskepasti to Hellenika, located in Dekas Bay on the west coast of Kimolos, here in the necropolis there are ruins of ancient tombs that would form part of the new humanity in the creation of the Duoverse, existing since Mycenae and the Cyclades next to the small islet of Agiоs Аndreas, also being part of the city. Many ruined tombs can be seen from the hill on the edge of Elliniká with some stones still in the sea between Kimol and Milil, in the vicinity of Psathi on this island located on the southeast coast. Kímolоs to Chοrá is 1 km away on the hill above the Psathi port from here the foreign ships trying to come to the Bay area sighted, for the advent of the Cinnabar on the scapulae that hold the Gates of the Necropolis for the effect avant-garde, and regenerator of souls that will resurface with more universal chromosome tints mutated from trisomy, more of extreme longevity. In the homily, an archpriest of the regional deanery will make a pastoral criterion for this gesture by virtue of eminence, and guide them through the orthodoxy of the chapel to the Episcopal organizational procession of the Vas Auric. It was already twilight and Etrestles was climbing onto Kanti's pony clutching the utensils of the homily, in the customary ritual before incensing and setting fire to the laurel and rosemary in the fords of Leto and Koumeterium of Messolonghi, it rotated in ellipses sprinkling crumbs of the purest loaf from Arcadia on a gray Monday with hummus to attract sour souls that they were in a catatonic state making them more esthetic or aesthesis, of reactionary rebellious natural aesthetics with nuances, then reincorporate them into the three courtyards in a magnificent concordance with Rhodes. When the Archpriest begins the talk, he derives his prayers from semi-inert materials that were made in communion with the chromosomal dyes; with the worms with absentmindedness of progenitor snakes that were grafted undulating, being in reality only worms that were amazed at the exhortation of the Archpriest in the ritual, circulating universals destined for his elegies and celebrating from an ambo or pulpit with classical Latin pronouncing the archpriest the way it died lunae, mutating it ****** to dies lunis by analogy with dies, on a dark Monday day but full of grace for the assistants doing the sermons to interpret the alabaster patios that will lead to Tsambika. The first worms were persecuted by Kanti, he believed that they were scatterings that emerged from the ground, such an earthly ecosystem was beginning to disown him due to the metamorphosis of annelids which seemed to increase their ultra-grave texture with the same remains of an irresolution without a sarcophagus, turned into sharp curves intestinal that were depressed breathing autonomously on consistent folds of the dermis of the oldest caste of the subsoil of Helleniká. Preexisting the distant origin of the Arcadias and they're dissected that silently followed the hummus and bobota, not to digest them with their suckers, but rather surround them and delegate them to explore the surroundings that would encapsulate the ground with the proximity of the transfigured universe to Vernarth's Duoverse, to phosphorus and emit the will-o'-the-wisp nitrogenous fires before the Archpriest, Etréstles and Kanti disquieting by an arcane movement. Being a full act of the herbaceous phagocytosis, they continued ascending in the curvilinear procession with their traces weaving moment without time, which was added to the sub-mythology and a finite sub-time, like unicellular procreating others that accelerated their physiognomy detached from their immateriality, towards a longer intake of the organic material on the hummus and exudation of propolis rhizomes. In this way, they resign when falling with serious cramps cleared of the digestive world, which no cell has tasted ******, but rather direct when breathing from Hellinika's lung lobes, comprised mostly by the alabaster sheepskin that was suspended to other colonies of worms that sailed to lean out towards the surface of the altar where they regenerated from the flow of the annelids. Archpriest says: “The frame of the Vas Áuric arises from the nuclei of the medallion, pending a high presence of insulation. With high mobility between the tissues and amino acids of the annelids, new basal cell functions even being visible for Etréstles and not totally for all yet. The image of the medal had a classified functionality and concrete information, but imperceptible chronological possibly being the first function of the icon in its justification with religious symbols and manifestations of the divine, and semantic still removed from a theoretical auto-iconic. When reading in Vas Auric, "What two men do not see, a man sees who does not see..., what the creeping animal sees, self-prisoner of his lack of vanity..., He will see it". Being epistemic images that provide more distant knowledge of the sub-divisible organic matter in finite mortality towards the other eternal inorganic, contributing to the super complex neuronal development, in a veiled sensation that is lost between itself and its own bodies, being able to take them with its own differentiations”

Panagia Tsambika Monastery - Channeling Cinnabar: Vernarth commanded the three architectural courtyards of Tsambika for the Cinnabar layout. They climb the steps that lead to this monastery at the top of one and to the very connection of the homily with Helleniká. In this monastery they will have to censor three courtyards, all pointing towards the west of Mandraki Bay, on some pine trees all surrounding the virtual stained glass window of the portal that joins the main avenue with the ascent of the monastery, until very close to the Virginal Marianus icon and very close to the dividing wall from where Lindos can be seen. The Tsambika Monastery is four kilometers from the city of Archangelo, the height of the monastery is leveled with pebbles on its bare floor that led everyone barefoot, towards the three nearby patios. Cinnabar as a polygonal crystal would be specially used for the perpendicular ceremony of Mercury, to sensitize the climatologically the variation that would be appreciated once it began to sponsor the bones that would spread in the extreme longevity of annelids exchanged from the moldy alabaster arcades, and carried by alluviums of crystallized mercury, granting together with the Panagia of Tsambika fertility, and parental conception for the new Universe-Duoverse of Vernarth, extending life farther than the first-born descendant's first ancestor, being the cinnabar the diversity of versed uses now been given in the upright channeling with ultra vital extensions with Helleniká. The alabaster and the three columns of these sulfated stones form compact would dare to hydrate in the silos where the windows will be poured, this is where the sub-mythological specimens detached from any temporal dimension will be used, leaving sapiens annelids free will recombining the diploid chromosomes, and profiting from molds of exact erratic aberrations to be vindicated in the dispensaries of Saint John the apostle. Thus adorning the perfumed areas intervened three cinnabar patios, for the sermon of the Vas Áuric. Thus inspiring the chair with the verses of Saint John on the immanence after the fifty days of the Messiah in epistolary verses and the evangelizations, elaborating vessels of the low rank of Faith to opt for expectations of moldings with new consciences of selenite clay, and refine them in messianic faith. Middle-range pebbles were subtracted for the interior and extramural floor of the Monastery, being rather Biblical Calcite for the Egyptian-Hellenic Alabastron psalmody praise perfume. This typology will be the quilt for the magistracy with a canopy glass exhibited near the tulip lamps, and ceiling lights of the monastery for the use of the diamantine sphere of the opaque panels that flamed from the intersection of the arachnids re sprouting from the current wind of cinnabar. Vernarth says: “Suitable for our consciences, we will open the channels in Kímolos before our subtle bodies that will make us divided just as we parabolize ourselves, before the airs of St. John the Apostle in the headdress of mediumship to reach the wavelength to Helleniká, the interactive vibrations will leave with the expression of deep reasoning after pontificating the Mandylion with the Vas Áuric, for the effect of its icon and idiomatic monologues for the edges of San Judas Tadeo and Veronica, for such a faced event in foreign forces before the Messiah, a coherent gadget will be made in the intermittence variants. The channeling to the Cyclades will go from east to west wading the Aegean and Mediterranean waters, through the channel of the Universe-Duoverse for inter consciousness between the Hexagonal Primogen in Tsambika, and the triad of Etréstles, Kanti, and the Archpriest in Helleniká, with high degrees of the light consciousness and conclaves between both synchronous homilies. With drowsiness before the Anemoi winds that will be crossing near the voyages of the Trojan chthonic ships, and before the fateful chthonic divinities for such deities in the Mediterranean substratum identifying more obviously with Anatolia which since prehistory has followed to the site of Troy, in a cheesy union plan for Agamemnon's loyalists, to defeat Hector between farms and revolutions of agriculture, and Akkadian worlds b.C., in peripheral outposts to influence the central regions of Greece and its maritime trade. Hydro-physical influences, for the cycles of the solstice and nature with life and survival after death that is at the center of concerns that are not translated. In Crete, the supposed cult of great Gods is transformed during the second millennium BC as new actors appear: various animals, plants, etc. Given the consciousness, it will be the channeled light in the three courtyards of alabaster and between the cinnabar by bending the re-fertilization of the Cyclades channels, which go from Rhodes and Kimolos, for discernment. Sometimes it is more gratifying to hear what you want to hear and not the real message, the egotistical mind that does not come from a series of daunted egos..., or signs of the technological shamanism, intervening artificial intelligence from maniacal administered consciences, being shrill for worlds of appearances and illusions. I Vernarth with our own Khaire Fíle…, in my mind I go to the vessels that sail through the landscapes of the elusive identity, trapping her in the totemic stratum, and tracking psychology, but a seer of her present ego. Today I will wear my Leonatus cap, to separate his anger from such a shadow that clouds my grief, and my own victimhood of reduced and meekness which spurns violence, blaming it on a ruthless kind of depression and excluding shame from everyone's own fear of everything. I will bandage my eyes against diseases that will heal after three days, to straighten the ecstasy that thickens towards the scaffold, staying in Golgotha with nothing, I will create the framework of cinnabar for the pain of the skull that trembles in my claws, until sleep becomes vaporous with anger and the harmless destroying itself before your egos, colorful throbbing towards your alien beings and scarified host. I will be waking up from my subtle and anthropomorphic subconscious dreams, with sentences that hurt my worst self-destructive delinquencies before the new memorial, on the veil of Theoskepasti with its science sheltering itself by giving in on the vanquished springs and inaugurating new miraculous courses where I will surrender, full of forgiveness and more distant from the veil that does not act as a viewer.

Duet time, Duet space, one with the other illusion unreal elements and epistemic images ignoring them in expeditions crackle my Duoverse, and temples of Tsambika with the decoded annelids mutating in trisomy with flat doors towards the Olives Berna. We look at what gratifies basting and plotting the positions of the stars of the universe that are attached like sheets worthy of almighty serials, and redoubled humor on the chthonic embracing tridents, before skewing Xyston as an original replica of the dream of a night in Tel Gomel. The counterweight of the message of light lagged behind the high astral like the little bear, bustards, and her angelic breath retreated in dissolution..., now if diva emotion I have my daring, and courage towards the binge of my omniscient prosopon, similar to omniscient telepathy, my soul lies and my emotion too because in this way I will treasure the value of panic by surrounding myself with the fears of resting, against the poles and sights of a peaceful energetic confrontation that will make them in Rhodes and Kimolos, channel the consumed human finitude and not eternal ad portas of his Áspis Koilé.

Unconsciously they will continue halfway with their bouquets of flowers for Valekiria, and may they never really take the time to tell her what time of eternity will make them more crowded for her, and her reliquary poem bursting into flame with its insidious outbreak and fear of telling him that if they revive they will be other Hellenic Hetairoi towards the vermilion light of the embodied sacrificed loop state as a "Being of Light". Oh ghost phenomenon that doesn't scare me... rather disappoints, clinging to the skins that die in the unexpected female muses in Gaia, with my burning and hypertensive ballast, still frequent in me... As conjecture and presence of Greek life..., having to be promoted and involved where they should be tempered to the contribution of biodiverse, and species for island life and its balance in the Aegean. The theorem will enunciate in the image of the Vas Auric as sounds of homeostasis in classrooms, properties of intervened annelids consistent, capable of maintaining them in a certain internal and stable condition, compensating for the changes of the explosion of the intervened patios, towards an environment through regulated exchange of matter and energy with the outside towards its (comparative metabolism), in the case of a form of dynamic balance with properties of Cinnabar brilliance, as a self-regulated biosphere in the conditions of the planet to make its environment (especially temperature and atmospheric chemistry) nobler with the species that make up life in the compass of two unmanned islands by beings from Gaia, rather as entropy in physical magnitude for a thermodynamic system in equilibrium, inhabited by dynamic beings that associate nobly for adaptations of worlds that are not born. It segregates them towards a departure measuring them from heightened numbers in states of zero compatible with the laws of that physics for the purposes of watchful guardians if Gaia's engine is turned on before this psychic and spiritual combustion. The laws of this system with closed circuits and brought will tend to maximize the entropy expiring inhibitory reactions for the traces of oxygen and nitrogen of the worms, making a sign of the levitated carbon dioxide to take it from Tsambika in two converged energies of Leviathan and Saint John the Apostle in moles of carbonate dioxide, battling surviving the impostor necromancers adverse to their conditions and reproduction, keeping these habitable for many who do not they enjoyed the life-death-life cycle. Greece, as it will now look regenerated and appropriate of laws and extensive fibers concerning moles of molecules said to be equal of said Vernarth hypotheses by way of sub-mythology, rather perching on the growing ivy and strangling the signs of satiety of life with properties in consonance with severities that hurt even to the sound of the rattles before the passing of the millennia! Fear, insecurity, and frustration did not fit because they will cut the Diospyros abenuz, with its stamens usually sixteen more hypogynous or inserted at the base of the corolla; as female flowers being greened or being converted into staminodes, Diospyros with generally tetra-locular ovaries or with eight locules due to false divisions, will make us channel by inseminating Itheoi demigods, under the staff of sub-mythology with Zefián, before the migrations in Helleniká begin, just as in this pact with silence and meditation and a burning flame, below the vulnerable and high insolated frequencies..., waking up in Gaia as a dozing fairy. Shamanic vested will grade synergy and simple science.
The Homily in the natural lassitude of the created, the Duoverse presented IHΣ, falling in the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet and in the duo hundred changes of physical remembrance. The PH (Hexagonal Primogeniture), is conceived in the presence of the Crismón, more Hellenic with the Vexillum banner and the Kantabroi to rescind the tired depressed zephyrs, since the quantum of memory was lost in the integrity of an earth acrophobia for the subsequent it would be air-water for this reason, preceded by the ceremonial that begins with the trimming of the abenuz Diospyros with its stamens usually sixteen plus it's hypogynous or inserted at the base of the corolla; like those of the female flowers having part of the gynoecium in the part of Tsambika, and of the androecium that will be of the Diospyros in Theoskepasti; usually tetra-ocular ovaries adapted to be inseminated for the raids of the demigods Itheoi and Duoverso, with the monogram HDD (Horcondising-Duoverso), tracing the bifurcations with Zefián; the chaos ordering up to modulated Theoskepasti. The changes have to be reborn in the stamen, being almost sterile and aborting in the chronicles of Galilee personifying the pollination benefit of the Diospyros resprouting in the same stem of the whorl even more so in each stigmatized part of Vernarth and Etréstles, carrying the IHS candles with the monogram and the Mandylion-Vas Auric, pointing to the Olives Bern. Before the seams of the carved heels and the canals of the annelids rise up through the alabaster up to the calyxes with the Chrismon hat. Filling the warehouse of Anemoi himself struggling with the roof, and forgetting his deposit of the breath on synaptic abbreviations continuing to argue with Saint John the Apostle in the network of Rhodes and Kimolos, in the bark of the sensory past and consequence of fallen gushes, and affecting being restored on the basis of oxygen-nitrogenated Nemo-genetic activation to summarize loss and gain of channeling between the Cyclades and the Dodecanese. The memories of the stuck Vernarth cerebellum will be loaded, trembling towards the marsh of the hippocampus where Zoroaster led the Magi to the end of the span and first-last border in the vicinity of Ein Karem. This evolutionary scale fluctuated in weak air masses with the increasing rise of the Meltemi over the Aegean taking them to Dekas Bay, on the knees of the colossus that cursed to avoid some delirium that could replace it's joint, remaining like this on a scale of reminiscent and unspoken emptiness..., it continues to be stated and not occupied and not, but raised towards the colossus from the ground of Vernarth which had unfolded bipartite from Rhodes to Kimolos, by way of the Verthian neuroscience whose prose emanated in the submissive glaciers of hyper-intuitive meditation (as a technique of knowledge and abstraction for functional links of improvisation, purgative discernment and yogic memory). All the nonsense is alluded to infringing the rationality of the Vas Áuric ceremonial in its phenomenology making curvilinear pauses to re-captivate phraseological, and diminished keys in the condensed equivalents to approximately ten terabytes from a homologous half surrendering almost when exhausted before both scholars, and their debts exchanged by driving..., thus recovering wave descents before reaching the bay of Dekas; Kímolos and final in the necropolis of Hellenika..., and vice versa before re-climbing in the middle of Mandraki, Archangelos and Filerimos to finish in Tsambika, Rhodes. As a parallel response to the archpriest not to alter the IHS monogram of the homily and the association in remembrance can affect the conduction of the mediate trance, almost prostrating it in the house of omission and frenzy, if it has to recover unstabilized. The sulfurous mercury component of the Cinnabar, came acidifying from the essences of the Vas Auric, already prospering in the tutelage of each auric conductor..., Archpriest and Saint John the Apostle, each one with the sulfurous of the Greek mountain and the arch of the Aegean Sea as a former karstic foundation for its diametric towards a change of reaction of chemical prisms up to the multi-angular of the topaz that Saint John the Apostle carried in his bag near the reliquary, hanging off some fringes of the Vexillum that had been placed near Vernarth. Immediately from the banks of the monastery, Raeder was walking with a lantern looking for those who might try to enter, he believed that it was his father from Kalymnos who came on another mission to be taken to the cinnabar, more on top of an encourage observing the quarters stationed in the sandbanks of Rhodes, Petrobus the pelican circling the ledges of the monastery, marking out the apparent slackness of his body and entreaties in case they ventured into Kalymnos for a good portent, in waters for tenth seeds and for all the rodines. From the cloister with one of its necessary dependencies, all were with white candles aggravated between the steps of each cell and attached friars they made an antechamber in the nave near the church on the hexagonal floor, being screened by the center of the garden where everything was dominated by the limits of the alabaster arcades, which only now pointed to the closet of the books, this time with plenty and saved voices with devotion. Chapter by chapter it was won..., for each cell, identifying each portion in identity up to the scriptorium and refectory, where this ceremony books were distributed to the infinite world of the Duoverse near the locutory to witness where Saint George and the Dragon raged, souring winepresses for the missal wine.

Sequence shot in Kimolos, Panagia Theoskepasti- Etréstles says: “according to what has to be said in this dimension, the word will be the Duoverse. Synchronically it will be aligned with the monastery in the Tsambika for the third hour after noon, reflecting on the unrevealed walls of the chapel on all the radiosities of the cinnabar, entering in electromagnetic lassitude through the trusses of the pulpit anchored in the Vox and mystical vortex, towards those who entered and left thousands of times through the counter shutters of the chapel, which collided crashing many times until by the glow of Cinnabar somewhat sulfurous, was mixed with the interlocking of some novas which also acted as a decoy for the Chrismón that Kanti carried the steed adjusted in the saddle on his back, as a mount in syntactic esotericism speaking with intangible brown colors of the Cinnabar.
Vas Auric
Zachary William Jan 2019
she walks
unbridled
through the
gardens of sunset
and plants all
turn to see just
what radiance has
come into the
garden of Eden

what Eve shall remain
as we grow old together
and our suns
begin their descents
into tomorrow?
Mark Nyangacha Jul 2022
My scars remind me of many things…😢
Some I want to remember and others I want to forget.
I am pure to the truth but I swell in regret.
Shame, pain, triumph, strength… scars represent.

There are no badges to wear;
I have no pride to hide.😢😢
I am not a product of the stories;
I refuse to be a prisoner of my descents.

The past is often forgotten...
Memories distort beyond recognition.
Scars will fade, darken, stretch and shrink.
But the deep ones stay; I still can’t forget.😢
@marknyangachapoetry
giofuellos Jul 2019
Midnight light, will you goad my eyes
   into the unbelievable sereneness of sleep,
And hush into silence the sleepless trucks
   that lines the expanding horizon;
The bicycle man rests his head on his saddle
   dreaming of bombing descents and leg stretches,
   and the hot streaming aroma of consciousness
   on gradient hilltops overlooking blazing mountains
   passing the silence of the lakes;
Carefully cruising along the highways of the mind,
   going into the light, and ecstasy, and madness;
Revolving, recurring, returning
   into deep slumber then onto the frantic going,
   along the wearisome expanse of flatland purgatories
   then onto the doorsteps of mighty heaven,
   rising up into the chill clouds of eternity and nothingness.
I am awake! and Fortuna's capricious wheel is now turning,
   now I shall rest my future-looking for my going is now
   unfolding!
Satsih Verma Jun 2019
Hitting from the
arch of eyebrows,
my pain were you.

One brief death
in illusion, settles on
all the descents.

Not taking any
road to reach the moon
on hill, when you were gone.

For all the half-
spoken words, this was
the moment of liberation.

Solemn signs without a
phrase don't turn the
key and door remains shut.

Between coming and
going, time remains still
like a frozen lake.
K May 2017
IN PRINCIPLE, all is thinkable,
From stop go; to literal mythical,

So, Move Motionless,
Close Openness,

Vainly Crowd,
Then Quietly Howl,

Enjoy Morning Twilight,
And Unlike Likes,

Take Ascending Descents,
/with Elderly Tykes,

Of Idol Realities; and Active Rest,
Make Footing Summit; and Loving Detest,

Living Lifeless, I Must Now Go,
And Search In Vain, For My Egoless Soul...

— The End —