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J M Surgent Oct 2013
'Who will love you?

Who will fight?

Who will fall far behind?”

Simple as these three lines may be, there is a lot of truth in them, something to keep in mind as we move forward in our lives.  It’s amazing what human influence in your life can accomplish, what forward momentum it can stir. Or at least, what we perceive as forward, because sometimes momentum isn’t always positive. Many times, that momentum is just digging a hole for ourselves.

And as we grow older, and start to think about what makes sense in our lives, we come to find our ideas of happiness, of sadness and of sanity are all skewed in comparison to those around us, those we care about. And as we listen, as we follow, and as we fall behind, we begin to dig those holes deeper for ourselves.

Towards mid life, if you’ve been digging, your hole is chest deep, and you have two choices: escape or keep digging. And those in that position many times tend to keep digging, not for love’s sake, or for the sake of their future, but because digging this hole is all they’ve gotten to know. For years they’ve been digging, whether it be for money, for fame, for love, and that’s all they know. And when you only know one thing, you tend to stick with it, and your choices are slim.

By the end of your life, your skin is sagging and you’ve become tired of digging. Your heart is heavy and your hands weary as you let loose your final breaths and lay back. You’re now alone in this world, under this world, away from everyone, and it’s of your own doing. Every choice you could have mad to leave the hole floods your memory, and you’re stuck knowing, from day one, you chose this. You dug your own grave.

A few young men throw gravel on you, and a headstone is placed above. A few kind words may be scrambled in, or just two dates, birth and death, and a first and last name, if you’re lucky. And the knowing truth that you brought yourself to this point.

If you’re looking for a happy story, this is not the story for you. There are so many ways to dig your own hole in your life, and you may not even realize you’re doing it. From love, to career, to the way you treat your body, your hole is being dug. You could be wiping the dirt of your hands at night, so sure you’ve done a worthwhile thing that you’d never even expect that you've been digging your own grave, plunging yourself deeper into the dirt and farther away from the life you deserve to live.

I can only speak on a small spectrum here, as I am young, and my hole shallow still. But I can say, with confidence, to find people who will fight for you, people who will love you, and get away from digging yourself into a hole. Find people who are the helping hands to pull you out, and who you can be the helping hand back to. And once you have those hands, don’t let them go.

All I can say is, if you want to be happy, stop digging. Stay together and build a treehouse instead.
Preachy.
emmaline Aug 2013
Worthless. I am worthless.
Stuck in this hole I dug myself
I forgot which way is up
"I'm digging, I'm digging!"
It's worthless.
I am worthless.
Am I digging myself out or
Digging myself deeper?
I should give up.
I can't give up.
Fingers bleeding as I
Tightly grip the shovel
Sweat dripping down my face
"I'M DIGGING OKAY!"
Pressure closing in around me
Dirt clinging to my waist
Where your hands should be
I see your face
I was never good enough
Thats why you left
My aching bones are crumbling
"I'm... still... digging"
Maybe I should rest
I'm running out of air
Breathing is worthless
I am worthless.
Is all I see darkness or
Just absence of light?
Were you ever around?
Or just dirt under my feet,
A figment of my imagination?
What was that sound?
I put my shovel down.
It's worthless.
I look up
I see you
You were there all along
I just didn't notice
I am not worthless.
Robin Carretti Jul 2018
This is not, a time to loosen up
Or nine to five job to give up
Just saddle up the power is in you
Five ladies cafe to dine at five and
drove_* the meter is running
(The Canadian Cup) team versus the
     Taxi Cup
He swooned you in your
Five dreamy but half heart sugars
Come on Baby bloomers
Let's see some boom!!

In your hips men will be men taking
frequent flyer trips temptation 1 2345
We need fewer digs one love teo reasons
World  345  heart flags
We don't have to cross our hearts
Perhaps tattoo heart legs no more strikes
Jumping Jack flash
What a rope in this isn't the Pope

Somehow we all get broke
To court her like your the lasso
stars cosmos hearts like Lassie
Never a change of subject how it
remains in your heart how it hit hard
to react but changed to five cards
Digging too long  lucky 777 like heaven
Heart digs

1-where?
Oh! There

No, I am here
We are always  
In-between
numbers_ I only
have 5 minutes
No I phone have a heart
Oh! where is designed for me
Those five plates

Whats in between them
      *Him

We are opening Live- Five
Strong heart to give the caring
The useful heart is never so daring
My gate* Girls are nail digging
Hugging

Or losing add +

Flirty
*****
Our community
Heftier like Jupiter
Heart to build
the gravity
A big kiss hunch
of five roses

Your getting to bloom
but only have
5 extra movie parts
The front dress mermaid tail
Your heart delicate hands
opened up your emails
I think you hit the
Jackpot

Max to the million shot
No heart of gold
Only more leaders
Scrambling and digging
your fork
Mixing those egg beaters

Five men think they know
there women
like ten
commandments
Turn to five wrong
engagements
There it goes the lucky
five arguments

A plot beating
like a hot-shot
The French Baguette
Bread 9 to 5 firecracker
Five-carat baguette
wedding band in her safe
Heart digs to five hands
Heart neck guilty as a giraffe

The cafe house had only
5 cups left  they sold you out
Only Five Bed and breakfast
stayers
Do detailed with their Ladyfingers
But need more alone time
Be on time get sweet key lime
What is real-time so sublime

That rose- paper cut- origami
Sorcerer of five he was like the
cold cuts of big Sub Salami
Japanese sword samurai
What a Geronimo Oh! no
Jericho
This wasn't a hot potato

Or Gizmo No-Go
Getting a shot for Polio
The gusto songs to the heart play
Maestro the Cosmo's
The five stars to heart his
afterglow
Like a titanic ship but heroics

Five lunatics wedding horns ******
Five two timer Mario gamers
so demonic
DOMINO'S bed five students wed
We dug deeper get-up sleepy-head
Exposed cries location set
Network U- dig cups

Something lip curved
He misplaced my lips
What did he do in exchange
More stocks and hard stone rocks
Like frying pan egg
scrambled words

Crossed heart Rapper so believing
The Fox five sticking tacky glue
His CD Rose lying pants no clue
Painful pointed shoes need R&R
     Robin's *Responsibilities
       The Heart On Replay
The deeper you dig to restart

The healthy organically grown brain
Men on Pause I truly believe nature
takes its course
but another beat to go is that so?
And if so heart digs to five
Feel the good vibe in another tribe
Five times I had to wake you up
I am the love cure reminiscing

Giving me five reasons
Our beautiful change of
heart in season

Studying the fine art heart
Referencing
Never refusing thats life
five-step to strive nothing
Fancy

Robin shoutbox she getting
her point across
Either you're the worker or loner
The heart pleaser the boss
Your heart looks good
on your dress
Whether we win or deep mess
The good heart can change to
a bad start

Recharge your heart count to five
Venus- beauty moved on like a
pathologist digging over staying alive
The hearts what digs this is not the 9-5 workers we are talkers
and long settling in heart walkers come any join me we may actually be alive did I get a live one
Scott Swanger Nov 2011
digging in,
the way your teeth crawl.
and latch onto my heart
or my hipbone, when we
do our thing. digging in,
like the first shovel into
the earth when burying
someone you love. you
remember how fresh
the soil is, and you think
it's ironic and somewhat
painful. don't think.
don't think. digging in,
and you whisper in my ear
like you're telling me something
no one else knows while you're
having your way with me, or I'm
doing something to you. don't
think. don't think. forget digging,
forget the hipbone, forget all
of your common denominators.
don't think. don't think. and
you won't.
digging in.
digging into fresh soil
like there's something
worth finding.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pin rest; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the ***** sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging.  I look down

Till his straining **** among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a *****.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper.  He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf.  Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no ***** to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
Helen Mar 2014
Digging deep in my despair

Empty eyes are watching me

Rabid vultures stop to stare

I’m digging deep to flee

Digging deep toward the fire

Sinking deeper into the pit

Skin flaming with manic desire

I’m digging deeper than I admit

Digging deep into fertile soil

Fading slowly as time warps

Clarity with distortion

The perfect foil

Finally I’m in deep enough

To bury your ****** corpse
Cyril Blythe Nov 2012
Janie pushes the metal book cart back into its parking space in the Document Delivery Department of the St. Louis Public Library and hangs the last sticky note for October 30, 2012 on the wall by the head of the department’s closed door. She retightens her brown scarf under her chin, tucking the wispy hairs above her ears back into hiding. Having your hair begin to prematurely gray as a teenager has dramatic effects on a person. Her mother wore scarves around her wrists when Janie was growing up and when Janie begin to wear scarves to conceal her salt-and-pepper hair, her mother just smiled. The clock hanging on the wall above the children’s section reads 11:28pm.
Two more minutes.
She reorganized the pens and books on her desk and set the box reading NOTES onto the right corner or her desk with three blue pens and a stack of note cards. Her coworkers learned fast that Janie does not like to talk. She does not like eye contact. She loves the silence, and never ever to ask her about her hair. Her manager gave her the NOTES box after about a month of horrible miscommunication and everyday it fills with requests for books or tasks that Janie has to complete. She completes the tasks one by one, alone, in her back office in the Reference Department and hangs the completed sticky notes on the wall by her manager’s door. She works the night shift and locks the library up every night. When she’s alone she can talk out loud to herself and those are the only voices she cares to hear.
“Goodnight, books. Good night, rooms.” Janie shut the heavy wooden door to the library, placed the color-coded keys in the front right pocket of her jacket, and began her walk to the bus stop one corner away. She avoids the main road, taking her first right onto a side street that she knows would spit her out right beside the bus stop.
“Goodnight Taco Bell Sign. Goodnight Rite-Aide. Goodnight Westside Apartments. Goodnight Jack-o-Lantern smile.” She stopped in the middle of the alley and peered up at the Jack-o-Lantern grinning down at her from the third story window above. “Mother wouldn’t’ve liked your smirk, Jack. She would’ve slapped that **** right off your face.” Janie, satisfied the pumpkin was put in its rightful place, smiled as she trotted on.
“Mother carved smiles into her arms and that’s why Daddy left, it is, it is.” She kicked at a crushed Mountain Dew can as she remembered that night from years ago.

“Mommy?” Janie pushed opened the door to her mother’s bedroom and saw the moving-boxes torn open and all their contents scattered across the floor. She tiptoed through piles of scarves and silverware and corkscrews until she reached the bathroom in her mom’s room.
“Come to us like rain, oh lord, come and stay and sting a while more, oh lord…” her mother’s voice was slipping off the tiled bathroom walls. Janie pushed open the door and saw the blood for the first time pouring from her mother’s wrist. Her mother was naked and perched on the bathroom sink, singing to a red razor blade.
“Mommy?”
“GET OUT!” Her mother jumped from the counter and perched on all fours on the floor. She began to growl and speak in a voice too deep to be coming from her own throat.
“Mommy! It’s Janie!” She began to cry as her mother, still naked and bleeding, twisted and writhed onto her back and began to crawl towards the door that Janie hid behind.


“Thirty-Three percent, dear. Just a thirty-three percent chance.” She shivered trying to clear the last memory of her mother with the words that all the shrinks had echoed to her over the years. “Schizophrenia is directly related to genetics, little is known about the type of Schizophrenia mother was diagnosed with except that it is definitely passed on genetically. But, there is only a thirty-three percent chance you could have it, dear. Thirty-three percent.” The sound of the bus stop ahead reminds her it is time to be silent again.
“Disorganized Schizophrenia.” She mouthed to herself as she stepped back out onto the busy street from her alleyway. She tightened her scarf and saw the bus pull into the pickup spot. She walked forward to the bus, again immersed in her self-imposed silence.
Stepping out of the February cold, Janie removes her wool scarf as the bus doors close behind her.
“Where to baby?” The driver smiles a sticky smile. Her nametag reads, “Shannon” and has a decaying Hello-Kitty sticker in the bottom left corner.
“The Clinton Street drop.” She hands the driver her $2.50 fare and avoids the woman’s questioning eyes. The night drivers are always more talkative, curious.
“Your ticket hon.” She tears Janie a ticket stub. “Everything is pretty dead this late, I’ll have you there in ten minutes top.”
Janie begins to shuffle towards the seats, ignoring the woman.
“You mind if I crank up the music?” The bus driver asks, purple fingernails scratching in her thick blonde hair. “I need to keep my eyes open and blood flowing and music is my fire of choice you know?”
“Sure.” Janie shrugs her bag onto her shoulder and walks on before the woman can say anything else.
“Route E-2, homebound.” Shannon’s voice crackles over the loudspeaker.
She shuffles down the bus towards her usual seat; second from the back right side.  Shannon starts the bus rolling before she reaches her seat and Janie can hear her singing along to “Summertime” by Janis Joplin. The bus floor, today, is sticky because of the morning rain. Two years of riding public transportation has taught Janie that staring at the floor as she walks to her seat is better than the risk of making eye contact. The bus is usually empty this late but if there ever happens to be anyone else on, it’s better not to converse. Safer that way.
She plops into her seat filling the indention that ghosts of past passengers left. The seat is still warm and Janie squirms around until the stranger heat is forgotten. She tightens her scarf and sighs. The brown pleather seatback in front of her is peeling towards the top. Janie leans forward and idly picks at the scab-like dangles of brown as she watches the sodden city canvas roll past her out the foggy window. As she picks, the hole grows. She twists and digs her unpainted nails into the seat until her hands feel wet, warm. Looking down, they are covered in blood and mud.
“What. The. Actual. ****.” she whispers, wiping her hands on her pants leg. She cautiously picks off another piece of pleather and a trickle of deep red begins to run from the seat back, clumps of mud now falling onto her knees. A puddle of blood and mire splatter down her legs and pool around her feet as she picks at the seat. Her white tights are definitely beyond saving now, so she digs faster until her thumbnail catches on something, bends back, and cracks. She gasps and withdraws her shaking hand, watching her own blood mix with the clotting muck in the seat, half of her thumbnail completely stripped off.
Looking around, all else seems normal. The driver is now muttering along to some banter by Kanye West, completely unaware of Janie’s predicament. She closes her eyes.
This is a dream, this is a dream, wake the **** up.
She opens her eyes to see the pool of filth around her feet trickling towards the front of the bus. Panic sets in with a whisper, They’re going to think it was you, your fault, you’ll be thrown in jail.
“But I didn’t do this.” She lashes out to herself. “I didn’t hurt anyone.”
Next stop, E-2. Shannon blares on the intercom.
“It’s just a dream, get your **** together, Janie.” She laughs at herself, manic.
Prove it! Her subconscious screams.
Convinced to end this moment she has to continue; Janie plunges her hand into the pleather grave one more time. Frantic and confused she laughs as she digs, spittle of muck splashing on her bus window.
Faster, faster, faster.
Deeper, deeper, deeper.
Realer, realer, real.
Wake up, now!
Then, as the bus slows, one last chuck of mud splatters to the floor and Janie sees a pink piece of her thumbnail stabbed into the white of a bone in the bottom of the seatback pit. Her white Ked’s were becoming so red they were almost black. She pulls her knees up to her chest and begins to rock back and forth. Clenching shut her eyes she begins to hum. Janie’s sweet soprano harmonizes with the buses deep droning purr, their wet melody interweaving with the driver’s alto and Lil Wayne’s screech made her feel dizzy as the bus turned right.
She take my money when I'm in need
Yeah she's a trifling friend indeed
Oh she's a gold digger way over town
That dig's on me
The bus slows to a stop and the bass is shaking. Janie is cold. She slowly peeks out of her right eye, expecting to be instantly immersed into the same dismal scene. The seatback is whole again. Releasing her knees, her feet fall back to the floor and her shaking fingers stroke the solid pleather.

“Ma’am? We’re at the Clinton Drop.”
Janie hurriedly picks up her bag and flees down the aisle to the bus doors.
“Everything alright, dear?” The bus driver asks, smiling.
“Fine, just fine.”
“You be safe out there tonight. The night is dark and only ghouls stroll the streets this late.”  Shannon laughed as Janie’s jaw dropped. “Happy Halloween, dear. It’s midnight, today is October 31st.”
The bus doors opened and a cold wind ****** the warm bot-air surrounding Janie into the streets. She begrudgingly followed, her mind spinning as she stepped onto the pavement. The doors slammed behind her and she turned to see Shannon pull out a tube of lipstick and smear it, red, across her cracked lips. Shannon made a duck-face in the mirror and reached down to crank up the music as loud as it would go. The bus exhaled and rolled forward, leaving Janie behind as it splashed through the potholes.
She surveys the surrounding midnight gloom and the street is quiet and dark. Even the stars are hidden behind swirling clouds. She begins to hum, hands in her pocket, and shuffle towards her apartment.
“Goodnight, stars. Goodnight, street.”
As she approaches her single-bedroom apartment, digging through her coat pocket for her keys, her thumb pulsates. She grasps the keys and pulls them out as she steps up to the apartment. Sticking the cold, silver key in the lock she looks down at her thumb and in the shadows of the porch sees half of the nail completely missing. She laughs as she pushes the door open to her bare apartment, light flooding out. Without any hesitation she closes the door behind her, sheds her clothes, and slips onto the mattress in the corner of the room gripping her thumb tight. She reaches out for the glass of milk on the floor beside her bed from the morning and it’s still cold. Nursing the milk, surrounded by blankets and solitude, she reminds herself,  “Only a thirty-three percent chance. A nice, small, round number. Small.”  
She sets down the empty glass and curls into the fetal position under the heavy blankets, pointer finger tracing circles on her thumb. Only when she has heated her blanket cocoon enough to feel safe does she remove her scarf and allow her thick white hair to fall around her face.
“Goodnight, room. Goodnight, mother,”
“Ah, are you digging on my grave,
My loved one?—planting rue?”
—”No: yesterday he went to wed
One of the brightest wealth has bred.
‘It cannot hurt her now,’ he said,
‘That I should not be true.’”

“Then who is digging on my grave,
My nearest dearest kin?”
—”Ah, no: they sit and think, ‘What use!
What good will planting flowers produce?
No tendance of her mound can loose
Her spirit from Death’s gin.’”

“But someone digs upon my grave?
My enemy?—prodding sly?”
—”Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate
That shuts on all flesh soon or late,
She thought you no more worth her hate,
And cares not where you lie.

“Then, who is digging on my grave?
Say—since I have not guessed!”
—”O it is I, my mistress dear,
Your little dog , who still lives near,
And much I hope my movements here
Have not disturbed your rest?”

“Ah yes! You dig upon my grave…
Why flashed it not to me
That one true heart was left behind!
What feeling do we ever find
To equal among human kind
A dog’s fidelity!”

“Mistress, I dug upon your grave
To bury a bone, in case
I should be hungry near this spot
When passing on my daily trot.
I am sorry, but I quite forgot
It was your resting place.”
howard brace Feb 2012
Inconspicuous, his presence noted only by the obscurity and the ever growing number of spent cigarette stubs that littered the ground.  It had been a long day and the rain, relentless in its tenacity had little intention of stopping, baleful clouds still  hung heavy, dominating the lateness of the afternoon sky, a rain laden skyline broken only by smoke filled chimney pots and the tangled snarl of corroded television aerials.

     The once busy street was fast emptying now, the lure of shop windows no longer enticed the casual browser as local traders closed their premises to the oncoming night, solitary lampposts curved hazily into the distance, casting little more than insipid pools mirrored in the gutter below, only the occasional stranger scurrying home on a bleak, rain swept afternoon, the hurried slap of wet leather soles on the pavement, the sightless umbrellas, the infrequent rumble of a half filled bus, hell-bent on its way to oblivion.

     In the near distance as the working day ended, a sudden emergence of factory workers told Beamish it was 5-o'clock, most would be hurrying home to a hot meal, while others, for a quick drink perhaps before making the same old sorry excuse... for Jack, the greasy spoon would be closing about now, denying him the comfort of a badly needed cuppa' and stale cheese sandwich.  A subtle legacy of lunchtime fish and chips still lingered in the air, Jack's stomach rumbled, there was little chance of a fish supper for Beamish tonight, it protested again... louder.

     From beneath the eaves of the building opposite several pigeons broke cover, startled by the rattle as a shopkeeper struggled to close the canvas awning above his shop window.  Narrowly missing Beamish they flew anxiously over the rooftops, memories of the blitz sprang to mind as Jack stepped smartly to one side, he stamped his feet... it dashed a little of the weather from his raincoat, just as the rain dashed a little of the pigeons' anxiety from the pavement... the day couldn't get much worse if it tried.  Shielding his face, Jack struck the Ronson one more time and cupped the freshly lit cigarette between his hands, it was the only source of heat to be had that day... and still it rained.

     'By Appointment to Certain Personages...' the letter heading rang out loudly... 'Jack Beamish ~ Private Investigator...' a throat choking mouthful by any stretch of the imagination, thought Jack and shot every vestige of credulity plummeting straight through the office window and amidst a fanfare of trumpet voluntary, nominate itself for a prodigious award in the New Year Honours list.   Having formally served in a professional capacity for a well known purveyor of pickled condiments, who  incidentally, brandished the same patronage emblazoned upon their extensive range of relish as the one Jack had more recently purloined from them... a paid commission no less, which by Jack's certain understanding had made him, albeit fleeting in nature, a professional consultant of said company... and consequently, if they could flaunt the auspicious emblem, then according to Jack's infallible logic, so could Jack.  

     The recently appropriated letterhead possessed certain distinction... in much the same way, Jack reasoned, that a blank piece of paper did not... and whereas correspondence bearing the heading 'By Appointment' may not exactly strike terror into the hearts of man... unlike a really strong pickled onion, it nevertheless made people think twice before playing him for the fool, which sadly, Jack had to concede, they still invariably did... and he would often catch them wagging an accusing finger or two in his direction with such platitudes as... "watch where you put your foot", they'd whisper, "that Jack's a right Shamus...", and when you'd misplaced your footing as many times as Jack had, then he reasoned, that by default the celebrated Shamus must have landed himself in more piles of indiscretion than he would readily care to admit, but that wouldn't be quite accurate either, in Jack's line of work it was the malefactor that actually dropped him in them more often than not.

     A cold shiver suddenly ran down his spine, another quickly followed as a spurt of icy water from a broken rain spout spattered across the back of his neck, he grimaced... Jack's expression spoke volumes as he took one final pull from his half soaked cigarette and flicked it, amid an eruption of sparks against the adjacent brick wall.  Sinking further into the shadow he tipped his fedora against the oncoming rain, then, digging both hands deep within his pockets, he huddled behind the upturned collar of his gabardine... watching.

     It was times such as these when Jack's mind would slip back, in much the same way you might slip back on a discarded banana peel, when a matter of some consequence, or in particular this case the pavement, would suddenly leap up from behind and give the back of Jack's head a resoundingly good slapping and tell him to "stop loafing around in office hours... or else", then drag him, albeit kicking and screaming back into the 20th century.  This intellectual assault and battery re-focused Jack's mind wonderfully as he whiled away the long weary hours until his next cigarette; cup of tea, or the last bus home, his capacity to endure such mind boggling tedium called for nothing less than sheer ******-mindedness and very little else... Beamish had long suspected that he possessed all the necessary qualifications.  

     Jack had come a long way since the early days, it had been a long haul but he'd finally arrived there in the end... and managed to pick up quite a few ***** looks along the way.  Whilst he was with the Police Constabulary... and it was only fair to stress the word 'with', as opposed to the word 'in'... although the more Jack considered, he had been 'with' the arresting officer, held 'in' the local Bridewell... detained at Her Majesties pleasure while assisting the boys in blue with their enquiries over a minor infringement of some local by-law that currently had quite slipped his mind at that moment.  Throughout this enforced leisure period he'd managed to read the entire abridged editions of Kilroy and other expansive works of graffiti exhibited in what passed locally as the next best thing to the Tate Gallery, whereupon it hadn't taken Jack very long to realise that it was always a good place to start if you wanted free breakfast, in fact the weeks bill of fare was tastefully displayed in vivid, polychromatic colour on the wall opposite... you just had to be au-fait with braille.
                            
     No matter how industrious Beamish laboured to rake the dirt there always appeared to be a dire shortage of gullible clients for Jack to squeeze, what would roughly translate as an honest crust out of, and although his financial retainer was highly competitive he understood that potential clients found it bewildering when grappling with the unplumbed depths of his monthly expense account, which would tend to fluctuate with the same unpredictability as the British weather, the rest of Jack's agenda revolved around a little shady moonlighting... in fact he'd happily consider anything to offset the remotest possibility of financial delinquency... short of extortion... which by the strangest twist was the very word prospective clients would cry while Jack beavered around the office with dust-pan and brush sweeping any concerns they may have had frantically under the carpet regarding all culpability of his extra-curricular monthly stipend... and they should remain assured at all times... as they dug deep and fished for their cheque books, and simply look upon it as kneading dough, which eerily enough was exactly the thick wedge of buttered granary that Jack had every intention of carving.

     Were there ever the slightest possibility that a day could be so utterly wretched, then today was that day, Jack felt a certain empathy as he merged with his surroundings... at one with nature as it were.  The rain, a timpani on the metal dustbin lids, by the side of which Beamish had taken up vigil, also taking up vigil and in search of a morsel was the stray mongrel, this was the third time now that he'd returned, the same apprehensive wag, yet still the same hopeful look of expectation in his eyes, a brief but friendly companion who paid more attention to Jack's left trouser leg than anything that could be had from nosing around the dustbins that day... some days you're the dog, scowled Beamish as he shook his trouser leg... and some days the lamppost, Jack's foot swung out playfully, keeping his new friend's incontinence at a safe distance, feigning indignance  the scruffy mongrel shook himself defiantly from nose to tail, a distinct odour of wet dog filled the air as an abundance of spent rainwater flew in all directions.   Pricking one ear he looked accusingly at Jack before turning and snuffled off, his nose resolutely to the pavement and diligently, picking out the few diluted scents still remaining, the poor little stalwart renewed its search for scraps, or making his way perhaps to some dry seclusion known only to itself.
  
     Two hours later and... SPLOSH, a puddle poured itself through the front door of the nearest Public House... SPLOSH, the puddle squelched over to the payphone... SPLOSH, then, fumbling for small change dialled and pressed button 'A'..., then button 'B'... then started all over again amid a flurry of precipitation... SPLASH.  The puddle floundered to the bar and ordered itself a drink, then ebbed back to the payphone again... the local taxi company doggedly refused to answer... finally, wallowing over to the window the puddle drifted up against a warm radiator amidst a cloud of humidity and came to rest... flotsam, cast upon the shore of contentment, the puddle sighed contentedly... the Landlady watched this anomaly... suspiciously.

     The puddle's finely tuned perception soon got to grips with the unhurried banter and muffled gossip drifting along the bar, having little else to loose, other than what could still be wrung from his clothing... Beamish, working on the principle that a little eavesdropping was his stock-in-trade engaged instinct into overdrive and casually rippled in their general direction...  They were clearly regulars by the way one of them belched in a well rehearsed, taken-a-back sort of way as Jack took stock of the situation and was now at some pains to ingratiate himself into their exclusive midst and attempt several friendly, yet relevant questions pertinent to his enquiries... all of which were skillfully deflected with more than friendly, yet totally irrelevant answers pertinent to theirs'... and would Jack care for a game of dominoes', they enquired... if so, would he be good enough to pay the refundable deposit, as by common consent it just so happened to be his turn...  Jack graciously declined this generous offer, as the obliging Landlady, just as graciously, cancelled the one shilling returnable deposit from the cash register, such was the flow of light conversation that evening... they didn't call him Lucky Jack for nothing... discouraged, Beamish turned back to the bar and reached for his glass... to which one of his recent companions, and yet again just as graciously, had taken the trouble to drink for him... the Landlady gave Jack a knowing look, Beamish returned the heartfelt sentiment and ordered one more pint.

     From the licenced premises opposite, a myriad of jostling customers plied through the door, business was picking up... the sudden influx of punters rapidly persuaded Beamish to retire from the bar and find a vacant table.  Sitting, he removed several discarded crisp packets from the centre of the table only to discover a freshly vacated ashtray below... by sleight of hand Jack's Ronson appeared... as he lit the cigarette the fragile smoke curled blue as it rose... influenced by subtle caprice, it joined others and formed a horizontal curtain dividing the room, a delicate, undulating layer held between two conflicting forces.

     The possibility of a free drink soon attracted the attention of a local bar fly, who, hovering in the near vicinity promptly landed in Jack's beer, Beamish declined this generous offer as being far too nutritious and with the corner of yesterdays beer mat, flipped the offending organism from the top of his glass, carefully inspecting his drink for debris as he did so.

     A sudden draught and clip of stiletto heels as the side door opened caused Beamish to turn as a double shadow slipped discreetly into the friendly Snug... a little adulterous intimacy on an otherwise cheerless evening.  The faceless man, concealed beneath a fedora and the upturned collar of his overcoat, the surreptitious lady friend, decked out in damp cony, cheap perfume and a surfeit of bling proclaimed a not too infrequent assignation, he'd seen it all before... the over attentive manner and the band of white, Sun-starved skin recently hidden behind a now absent wedding token, ordinarily it was the sort of assignment Jack didn't much care for... the discreet tail, the candid snapshot through half drawn curtains... and the all too familiar steak tartare... for the all too familiar black eye.

     To the untrained eye, the prospect of Jack's long anticipated supper was rapidly dwindling, when it suddenly focused with renewed vigour upon the contents of a pickled egg jar he'd observed earlier that evening, lurking on the back counter, his enthusiasm swiftly diminished however as the belching customer procured the final two specimens from the jar and proceeded to demolish them.  Who, Jack reflected, after being stood out in the rain all day, had egg all over his face now... and who, he reflected deeper, still had an empty stomach.  Disillusioned, Jack tipped back his glass and considered a further sortie with the taxicab company.

     "FIVE-BOB"!!! Jack screamed... you could have shredded the air with a cheese grater... hurtling into the kerb like a fairground attraction came flying past the chequered flag at a record breaking 99 in Jack's top 100 most not wanted list of things to do that day... and that the cabby should think himself fortunate they weren't both stretched flat on a marble slab, "exploding tyres" Jack spluttered, dribbling down his chin, were enough to give anyone a coronary... further broadsides of neurotic ambiance filled the cab as the driver, miffed at the prospect of missing snooker night out with the lads, considered charging extra for the additional space Jack's profanity was taking...

     And what part of 'Drive-Carefully', fumed Beamish, did the cabby simply not understand, that pavements were there to be bypassed, 'Nay Circumvented', preferably on the left... and not veered into, wildly on the front axle... an eerie premonition of 'jemais-vu' perched and ready to strike like a disembodied Jiminy Cricket on Jack's left shoulder, looking to stick its own two-penny worth in at the 'Standing-Room-Only' arrangements in the overcrowded cab... and at what further point, Jack shrieked, eyes leaping from his head as he lurched forward, shaking his fist through the sliding glass partition, had the cabbie failed to grasp the importance of the word 'Steering-Wheel...' someone wanted horse whipping, and as far as Beamish was concerned the sole contender was the cab driver...

     In having a somewhat sedate and unruffled disposition it had fallen to Beamish... as befalls all great leaders in times of adversity, to single handedly take the bull by the horns, so to speak and at great personal cost, alert the unwary passing motorist...  Waving his arms about like a man possessed whilst performing acrobatic evolutions in the centre of the road as the cabby changed the wheel came whizzing around the corner at a back breaking 98 on Jack's ever growing list... and why, Jack puzzled, why had they all lowered their side windows and gestured back at him in semaphore..?  Rallying to its aid, Jack's head and shoulders now joined his shaking fist through the sliding glass partition and into the cabby's face, "Who" Beamish screeched with renewed vigour ,"Who Was The Man", Jack wanted to know... *"a
Joe Cottonwood Jul 2015
Four old men, digging a grave
on a hillside
one with a pick, two with shovels
all with stories
passing them around
stories, pick, shovels
taking turns
not a single earthworm in this ****** soil
plenty of rocks.

Don is the oldest, at eighty-plus
a good man with a pick
breaking, pulling clods of clay.
After thirty years in a
San Quentin prison cell,
he’s walked across the USA
three times. Big guy, gray ponytail,
not one wrinkle on that copper body,
power of a bronco
behind gentle eyes.

Terry is bald, seventy-plus,
in the Air Force he was trusted
with nuclear launch codes,
then thought better of it and hit the road,
dirt-bike racer, merry prankster,
grinning beatnik, psychedelic dancer,
always good with tools
wields a shovel like a pencil
writing the hole
as a poem.

David is almost seventy,
bearded like a prophet,
wizard of China
raised like a farm boy,
adventures in Alaska,
heroic high school English teacher,
telepathic with animals and teenagers,
can speak to horses
in haiku.

Digging is therapy.
A hard job, the work of death.
A time for muscle and sweat,
our language of grief.
We joke, I’ll dig your grave
if you’ll dig mine.

We agree, each canine
has an individual personality
but also each carries
dog spirit. As one leaves
you welcome another
different, individual
but the dog spirit renews
rejoins your life
making you whole.

On this land already
I’ve buried four dogs, two cats.
Dakota will make five,
good company.
Terry says “When Dakota arrives
in doggy heaven or wherever
dogs go, she’ll report
there are good owners here.”
A good review
on doggy Yelp:
Fear not, next puppy.

Four old men, digging a grave
on a hillside
among spirits.
Don Moseman spent 30 years mostly in a 4 by 8 cell in San Quentin Prison, now is a wildlife photographer.
Terry Adams is a poet, mechanic, and dirt bike racer.
David E. LeCount is a haiku master, a retired high school teacher.
Under my skin,
Your words are digging in.
Ripping, tearing,
Pulling my flesh away.
Peeling back the skin
And settling in.
To a host of which
They are unwelcome.

Under my skin,
Your words are digging in.
Lying, defying,
Numbing the realities.
Peeling back the skin
And settling in.
Whispering nothings to which
There are no meanings.

Under my skin,
Your words are digging in.
Confusing, undoing,
Ignoring all truths.
Peeling back the skin
And settling in.
Crafting lies which
Are filled with sin.

Under my skin,
Your words are digging in.
Mending, fixing,
Stitching the wounds.
Peeling back the skin
And settling in.
Making a home in which
They shouldn't be existing.

Under my skin,
Your words are digging in.
Peeling back the skin
And settling in.
Mike Hauser Mar 2019
Been digging this hole
For far too long
My pickaxe and shovel
I've about worn them down

Wish I could say
They've been put to good use
But when digging a hole
That's not always the truth

The pickaxe is my mouth
The shovel my mind
In the digging of deep
I've worked both overtime

The handles I break
As I can't handle it
You'd think I'd learn from mistakes
And finally, quit

But quitting's not easy
When digging a hole
And how long I'll go
Lord only knows

Cause I've been digging this hole
Longer than I care to count
My pickaxe and shovel
I've about worn them both down
howard brace Sep 2012
He'd been conceived in Flamborough, so his little sister assured him some eleven summers ago, which was a tad hard for Rocky to swallow, she was a whole eighteen months his junior and then some... and at that age, well... what did she know, she was only a kid, "on this very rock" River insisted, kicking her heels in delight, "next to this very rock pool" they were both sitting beside, "one sunny afternoon eleven years ago..." and that was how he came by the name of Rocky... she taunted as the rest of the colourful story unfolded... and that she had it all on the best possible authority... although the more she thought about it, had she meant concealed... she wasn't quite sure now, it was all so very confusing at her tender age but thought it sounded close enough not to matter too much and that she would just wait and see which way the wind blew.
        
     It was conceivably an ill wind that blew no one any good that day, especially if you were a boy and just happened to be sat by a rock pool next to your little sister...  Having just taken a well earned drink from a neighbouring rock pool, Sockeye the floppiest Springer Spaniel this side of the Pecos decided that he was going to dig a hole and that he would be digging it deep, then changed his mind mid-dig and decided to have a more down to earth back scratching wriggle instead... then promptly flopped over and slid into the hole... life was sweet.  Now covered from nose to tail with every species of deceased shore life usually found frequenting the high water mark Sockeye, in a blinding flash of canine inspiration judged it would be in everyone's best interest were he to have a really good shakedown which always appeared to go down well on these occasions... and give everyone a good peppering, just so they could see exactly what they'd been missing all their lives.  

     "A rock of all places, for goodness sakes..." and what's more, it was this rock, "Yuk..." he jumped up and wiped his palms on the back of his jeans in disgust, then onto his tee-shirt, then sat back down again and began exploring his left nostril in quiet contemplation before finally jambing his hands back into his pockets... what in Heaven's name had his parents been thinking of..? what on earth was his little sister talking about..? and more to the point, what in fact did conceived mean..?  these were the questions that were uppermost in Rocky's mind as he poked an exploratory stick into the rock pool...  a baby crab marooned by the tide scampered sideways beneath a large pebble and stuck one beady eye out at him... Rocky's sister, seemingly in a world of her own, much like the baby crab sat on the edge of the noteworthy rock kicking her heels, an innocent smile curled the corners of her mouth as she quietly hummed a little song of tuneful bliss to herself and considered what further mischief she could possibly pass her brother's way.

     Rocky tossed a piece of driftwood over his sisters shoulder at a nearby flock of seagulls, squabbling over what appeared to be a discarded bag of fish and chips... Sockeye, simply knowing that his little master wanted to play a game of fetch gambolled after the stick, his ears flying courageously in the still Summer air and burst, amid a melee of feathers into their midst, only to romp back moments later, the stick all but forgotten in the excitement but now proudly sporting the derelict bag of leftovers and the odd splash of guano, his tail lolloping magnificently from side to side... and for the moment at least, leaving the fratching seagulls wheeling noisily overhead and to go about their daily business without further interruption... as for Sockeye, it had been a no contest situation.

     After fourteen years of valiant endeavour his father... Red, so named for his vivid shock of wiry hair, was still engaged in man's eternal struggle to win his significant other half's approbation with the manful art of deck-chair assembly, beach barbeque and other significant gentlemanly pursuits, all while strutting his manly stuff, sporting top of the range beach wear in accordance with the social etiquette of the previous decade... his masculine paunch slumping gallantly atop his waistband...  

     After the same fourteen terms of domestic servitude and the same thirteen identically overlooked anniversary cards a certain someone had no intention of allowing another certain someone to forget so much as one of them... his better half, so she insisted would ride rough shod, administering her own brand of justice at every given opportunity, in much the same way you'd brandish a royal-flush on poker night... or better still, a loaded revolver... and that she personally carried the burden of every ill-fated card that Lady Luck had dealt strung about her neck like Adam's original sin on Judgement Day.  

     Red much preferred the shorter, more condensed name of Rock for his son, rather than the longer more protracted Rocky, as he struggled with the wood and canvas lounger badly trapping the mound of his thumb in the process, "Aaargh...!!!" plunging his throbbing hand deep into the cold, soothing rock-pool "aaah...!!!"   Still marooned by the tide, the baby crab stood poised and ready for action as it considered giving this latest intrusion a good offensive nip, then hang on spitefully as it gave Red the final withering once over with the same baleful eye it had successfully used earlier.

     Acknowledging her husbands misfortune with a perfunctory grunt as she rummaged in her beach-bag for the thermos, she refused to be drawn in where thumbs were concerned right now, after all with his DNA sequencing she was convinced he could probably grow a new one within the month... whilst Tina, well... she was just plain worn-out... but still rejoiced in telling anyone who cared to lend a sympathetic ear in her direction... and who in turn was more than happy to listen to the woes of others and went somewhere along the lines of... 'and had she heard any more of poor Mrs Dorey's lingering martyrdom recently..? you know, the downtrodden lady who lives in the next street but one... and how they would all miss her when she was gone... and how she couldn't wait...' and as rumour had it, neither could her husband...

      Feigning to be otherwise engaged, Tina... as her husband, now blowing frantically on his mangled thumb, stumbled backwards over the half erected lounger and with a spine jarring "Ooomph...!!!" landed squarely in Sockeye's subsiding earthworks... professed total disassociation with the entire fiasco as she plunged her nose even deeper into the overdue library book she'd purposely brought on holiday for just such an occasion, making it perfectly clear that she was a tourist and furthermore, planned to stick with the same itinerary once they returned home... and that while she was here, she did not under any circumstances wish to be disturbed, the notice was clearly displayed hanging from the door handle... but if anyone should, then whoever it was did so at their own peril... and she was keeping score... although a mangled thumb she luxuriated, with the same roguish smile curling the corners of her mouth as the one normally found playing around her daughter's... was equally as heart warming.

      All Tina wanted was one week of uninterrupted peace and quiet in Flamborough, preferably with a certain someone out from under her feet then spend what might pass for several undisturbed hours sitting quietly by the rock pool comparing notes on eye makeup and the feminine merits of pedicure with the little crab who, still marooned by the tide was now sat busily knitting four pairs of matching leg warmers in the cool, still water but that was only if that certain someone... a shrill  "AAaargh...!!!" somewhat more desperate than the first, ****** itself upon the as yet unaggressive afternoon as it gyrated across the warm Jurrasic rock and recoiled out to sea... "now where was I", twisting her book uppermost "oh yes..! someone was going to pay..." only now it was going to be sooner rather than later, but only if that certain someone didn't finish the seating arrangements before the Sun disappeared and drift into some backstreet tea-room before all the lemon cheesecake sold out, or was that she reflected, simply too much to ask.

     It was his Surname that Rock found so objectionable, or it had been right up until his little sister's enlightening disclosure, now it was both names Rocky disliked, it would have been far kinder had Rock Salmon been sandwiched between sliced bread and given to Sockeye... who's solemn duty, from the first mouthful to the very last, was to gaze up beseechingly from beneath the kitchen table  and devour anything that passed his way, even the postman had to be quick about his business or have his arm follow the mail through the letter box... then Sockeye would just smack his lips and help himself to seconds.  

     All Rocky's mum had thought about for the last fourteen years was seconds... every last solitary one of them since she'd suffered with an infection of matrimonial neurosis which had deprived her of common sense and her maiden name, from Chovey to that of Salmon and how with hindsight she should have taken an Aspirin instead, wedlock she asserted was everything the name claimed to be and was without doubt the worst move she'd ever made... and what's more was seen as a bad move in whoever's wedding album you just happened to be paying your condolences to.

     Rocky would never be so fortunate on that score, unlike his sister he was stuck with Salmon for good, his grandma-Ann by all accounts had been dead set against the union from word Go and saw his father as someone who would always be out of his depth in whatever rock pool he found himself in, swimming against the tide as it were, rather than going with the flow... and it appeared that Rocky, almost eleven years into a life sentence, was about to flounder in the same murky undertow as the rest of the Salmon family... only he couldn't swim.

     "There"! her husband exclaimed "all finished... better late than never eh', who fancies trying it"? his wife luxuriated over the words 'better late' and wondered whether her new earrings, her latest acquisition would complement formal mourning attire.  Red dusted off the palms of his hands with the certain knowledge of a job well done and cautiously took one step back, looking with justifiable pride at the outcome of his manly exertions of the last two hours, this was what holidays were all about he declared, one man pitted against insurmountable odds...  His wife meanwhile was getting to grips with more odds of her own than you could safely expect to shake a stick at... her husband being one of them.  

     Having gathered her offspring with the promise of verbal earache if they didn't... and finished packing the beach-bag, Tina finally located Sockeye peering out from the shade of an adjacent rock, wisps of feathers poked tellingly from the corners of his mouth, his tail beating mischievously on the shingle decided in one further blaze of canine brainstorming, as Tina attempted to slip his collar on that a game of tag would just about round the day off nicely... Tina then devoted the next ten minutes chasing him amid unrestrained salvo's of cheering from the rest of the family... then bid goodbye to the little crab who, still marooned by the tide waved a friendly pincer in return... and trusted that she wouldn't have too long to wait for the next rising tide back home, then she slid off the rock with a corrosive... "the deck-chair attendant would have shown you" she snapped "and don't forget the deposit when you take them back" then double checking that she landed squarely on his foot she marched past, her floral sun hat jammed resolutely on her head at what she considered a jaunty angle with her equally jaunty, angular children scrambling in hot pursuit, back in the direction of their lodgings.  

     "Woof "..? said a bewildered Sockeye, bringing everyone to an abrupt halt... and with paws the size of place-mats, he wasn't going anywhere he didn't want to... he hunkered down with a look of hurtful accusation on his face, "oh yes you are my lad"! said his mistress "I've met your sort before" and knew exactly where to place the toe of her dainty size-5 as Sockeye, digging his heals in even further created swathes of canine furrows up the beach, leaving her husband the unwitting holder and in sole possession of the overlooked guest-house keys... and somewhat resigned to clean up his own masculinity and dismantle the recently assembled, now redundant deck-chairs by himself... as for Tina, well... she'd had quite enough excitement for one day thank you very much.

     Morning register was always the worst he thought, as they trooped back along the shingle beach, Rocky making surprisingly good furrows of his own... but the rest of the class loved it and saw it as the highlight of each day... Rocky's form teacher, despite showing a brave face was always hard pressed to avoid bursting into hysterics every time she worked her way down the register to the letter 'S' and would attempt to bypass it altogether, jumping from 'R' to 'T' and just prayed that no one else had noticed, but it hadn't taken the class very long to point out her oversight and... "please Miss" they'd all chant "we haven't had Salmon all week" and while the rest of the class were having convulsive fits, Rocky would elbow the lad sat at the next desk in the ribs... and promptly get one hundred lines for his trouble... thank goodness it was school holidays.  Why couldn't they have been given respectable names like Seymour Legge, Rock wondered, who sat over by the window or perhaps the teachers pet, Anna Prentice or even, Robyn Banks at a pinch, but definitely not what they'd been given and certainly not Salmon, they were the most hilarious names he could imagine and if someone was looking down on them right now he thought... then they had a very unique sense of humour indeed and Rock said so... "why" his little sister asked sweetly, "what's wrong with River Salmon".

                                                      ­                         ...   ...   ...*

a work in progress*                                                        ­                                                              240­6
Mitchell Sep 2013
The retainer where she was put
Was made of concrete. My father told me they had
Dug the grave first, then poured the concrete in, waited for
It to dry and harden, then hammered in six
Circular spikes in the four corners, two on either side
Of the middle. They lifted the concrete cast out with a crane.
My dad was going to be charged 300 dollars a day for the rental,
But because of the circumstances, Home Depot let us have it for free.

-

Where was she?
Where had she gone?
Would I see her face again?
Would she want me to
Meet her on the other side of the river?

-

I answered my cell phone.

"Make sure to bring flower's."
She had been crying. Her voice wavered the way sun light
Does on moving water.

"Make sure to bring flowers," she repeated, "And
That you wear what your father and I bought you."

I nodded my head with the receiver pressed up against my ear.
We both let out a sigh. My mom hung up. I put my phone in my back pocket.

-

Lately, I had been seeing a shrink about repetition. He liked to use the word cycle.

"Everything is repeated," I would tell him.

"Life is a cycle," he'd disagree so to get me talking.

"Can cycles be identical?"

"Technically not. Some cycles are extremely similar, but no two cycles are
Completely the same. Are two people's lives ever exactly the same?"

"I wouldn't know. I don't know that many people. Maybe."

"You know lots of people, Camden. You have told me about many of your friends."

"Are we talking about the seasons?" I asked, changing the subject, "Like fall, winter, spring, summer? We are born, we live, we die, and we are born again?"

"That's a very natural way of looking at it."

"I know it is." I inhaled deeply, swallowing air and wondered what time it was.

"If you are so sure, why look for validation from me?" He liked this one, I could
tell. I imagined him shopping for clothes and then exploding in aisle 16 because of a sale on jeans.

"The word cycle is used by people too afraid to use the word repetition. Everything is
Repeated for the next generation, the next group, the next of the next of the next. We shift things
Around, give things to one another to shift life to make it look different, but, things remain the same. Everything contains the primal function we were all doing and living from the very beginning, only now, there is more of a separation. Music is still music, words are still words, paintings are still paintings, love is still love, death is still death, only done differently and more intensely."

"We are talking about man furthering technology because we, as people and creatures, are
Statistically more prone to flee than fight?"

"Why do you think it has caught on so quick?" I touched both
Corners of my lips with my tongue and suddenly realized I hadn't eaten breakfast.

"It is a theory," the psych nodded, "A theory with, I am sure, many
Palpable facts you could make a very nice report with to prove...something." He
Was at a lost for words and I felt guilty that my mom was paying him $75 an hour.

"We are very split. There are too many of us. Too many hands spinning the china."

"Who is we Harry?" The psych hadn't looked up from his pen and pad of paper, until now. I could
Tell he was annoyed with me either because he was making no progress or because the session
Had just begun and I was already digging into him.

"Culture. The government. You, me, my dad, my mom, the taco bell cashier, the geniuses at Apple computers, a paper weight, my dead sister. We're all apart of these shifts, all putting in a certain amount of energy and lies to keep the protection of the projection going. The question I keep asking myself is: do I want to use my strengths to be apart of this cycle or not?"

His eyes flared open for a moment like he'd swallowed a firefly, not at the question I had posed for myself, but from what I would soon see was from the mention of my sister. He had something.

"I was notified by your mother that you may not want to talk about your recently deceased sister. Is It O.K. if I ask you some questions about her?"

I was leaning forward on the couch with my hands clasped in between my legs. The psych had looked up at me now. He was sweating at the top of his thin hairline. Observing that I was staring at his building perspiration, he, trying to be nonchalant, took out a thin, white napkin from his grey shirt pocket and dabbed the top of his head. The napkin looked like cheap toilet paper. I'd have offered him some water, but I had no water to give and I didn't know where the sink and cups were to give him any. I figured he did - it was his office - so I asked him for some. He pointed me in the direction of the bathroom. I got up and found a stack of paper cups. I poured myself a cup and went back to the couch, but instead of leaning forward, I sat back, relaxed, and let the expensive leather couch take the weight I had been carrying away.

"So," the psych maintained cooly, "Would it be alright if we were able to discuss your sister?"

I lifted the paper cup over my head and the psych's eyes, after I poured the water over my hair, my face, and clothes, was a mixture of what my mom's eyes looked at the funeral, defeated, confused, and with a loss of faith and hope. My father's eyes had only held hate, anger and the need to lash out at someone, but the only someone that would have fit the bill would have been God.

"Sure," I answered, "Let's talk about my sister."

-

I finished drying myself in the car. The psych had let me keep the towel.
I leaned out the window to look at myself in the side mirror. I looked fine.
Presentable. Accountable. Like I had been through something where I had
Faced my soul. Like I had used and abused my emotions. There was comb in my glove compartment, so I took it out and rushed it through my damp hair. Slicked back. The sun
Was out, no clouds, burning up the inside of my car. That taste that comes after
Finishing something that's supposed to do you good didn't come. I was left with an unsure hand.
Putting my keys in the ignition, I turned them, and felt the engine rumble in front of my legs.
The sun sat in the sky like a lazy hand and I had nowhere else to go but home.

-

"Let's go to the river today," my dad said over coffee and two over easy eggs on top
Of burnt wheat toast. "I'll drive and you and your sister can sit in the back and sing."

I looked over at Ally. She was gazing into her fruit bowl she had prepared for
herself because dad didn't understand the concept or how to make it. The lamp light above us
reflected in the smooth apricot yogurt and the flecks of granola scattered on top
looked like beige, jagged rocks. My dad's offer hung in the air and neither
of us bit the lure. I had just woken up and was unable to speak clearly, a decent
excuse. Ally was simply choosing to ignore him.

"What you think there Ally?" I asked her. I sipped my coffee. It needed more cream. I got
U, got it and brought the carton to the table.

"We can take the truck down there and load the back with the fishing poles and tackle
And inner tubes. We haven't...done that...in a long time," he said, chewing his food as he spoke.

Ally poked her fruit bowl with her spoon, silent.

"What you think, Cam?" My dad was desperate. He knew I'd say yes.

"Sure. I've got no plans this weekend."

"No schoolwork?"

"It can wait till Sunday. Only math and some reading."

"Ally, what do you think?" my dad asked, leaning over to her. I could see he was
Trying to be as courteous and gentle with her as he knew how to. I felt bad for him.

"Sure," she muttered, "That sounds like fun." I could barely hear her, but somehow,
I could tell she sounded happy.

"Perfect," my dad smiled, "We'll pack the car up Friday,
Drive up Saturday morning early, camp one night, then get back Sunday afternoon." He
Took a long sip of his coffee and swished it around in his mouth, then dug
His fork into the dry toast and ran his small steak knife over the eggs. A silent pop came from
The egg and the light orange yolk spilled out. "Perfect," he repeated, "Just great."

Ally poked a grape from her fruit bowl and dipped it into the yogurt.
I took another sip of my coffee and looked up into the fan, spinning above us.
We were going to the river.

-

"Your sister turns five today," my mom told me, "And that means
I want you to be on your best behavior."

I nodded, unsure what the point of a birthday was. I had had one before, or at
least I thought I did, and all I remembered was that I got presents and the colorful balloons
and the cake we all ate with fire kind of floating and burning above it. Somewhere
in that moment I remember thinking that the cake was going to catch on fire, then they, everyone,
some that I knew and some people I had never seen before, yelled and shouted to
blow the fire out, so I quickly did, but not because it was for a wish, which I later found out it was supposed to be for, but because I truly thought the cake was going to catch fire and they wanted me to take care of it. At that point, I was unsure what it meant to be alive or why to celebrate it all.

"This is her day, Camden," my father told me, "So I want you to be happy for your sister."

"I am," I said. I was wearing my favorite white and blue striped t-shirt and
New shoes that my mom had bought me for the party.

"Sometimes you have to think of other people," my mother continued, "And today is one
of those days. I don't want any crying because you didn't get any presents or that none of your
friends are at the party. There are going to be a lot of Ally's friends there, but not many
of your's...do you understand?"

"Yes, Mom."

"Do you understand, Cam?" My father repeated. His skin was the color of a burnt
pancake and he smelt like stale sugar and sun tan lotion. He was in front of me and was
holding a thin magazine with a man in a boat holding up a fish on a line on the cover.  

"Yes, Dad," I said again. I was hungry. I wanted mac n' cheese, my favorite food.

I had been on the floor, laying on my stomach watching Ren and Stimpy. They were standing in front of the television and I remember trying to wish them out of the way. Behind them were two, large bay windows where three palm trees stood in a row like tropical soldiers. I could see there was no wind because the three of them stood still, as if posing for someone. Their leaves were bright green, a mixture of the neon green Jello I used to love to eat and the orange Jolly Rancher my dad would always have in a tiny tray in the middle of the dining table. My mother hated having them there because it always tempted Ally and I, but he never moved it until he moved out.

"Do you like your show?" my mom asked, turning to see what I was watching.

I nodded, absently. Ren was licking Stimpy's eye because he was complaining about having
an eyelash in there. Stimpy was completely still and smiling like he does - dumb and content.

"Interesting..." my mother trailed off. She walked to the kitchen behind the couch and
Opened up the pantry for something. "You hungry, Camden?"

"I'm starving," my dad said, "Let me go check on Ally in the bedroom. She should be up
from her nap."

I got up from my stomach and sat back on my legs, "Do we have mac n' cheese?" I asked.

"Let me check."

She reached up for the cabinet over the stove where I could never reach and
Opened it. I rose slightly up from where I was sitting to see if I could see the glorious dark blue and orange package, but wasn't able to see over couch. I hovered there, still like a humming bird.

"You're in luck," I heard her say, "We've got one box left."

"Yay!" I screamed and got up, running into the kitchen.

"But," she smiled, stopping me, "You'll have to share it with your sister."

"No! I don't want to! I always have to share."

"What did we just talk about Camden?" she said, lightly stamping her foot.

I tried to remember, but couldn't. I shrugged.

"You need to learn to share, Camden. You also need to listen better when your father and I are talking to you. You and your sister are going to know each other a very long time and I want you to learn how to share now, so you two can be happy in the future."

"The future," I asked, "What's that?"

She paused, then said, "It's a time," she paused again, "Ahead of us."

"Do we know where it is?"

"Not exactly," she sighed.

"What's it look like?"

"No one really knows. People can only imagine it."

"Is it very far away?"

She opened the top of the blue and orange mac n' cheese box and poured the dry macaroni into a large silver ***, lifted the faucet, and let it run inside for five or seven seconds. She placed the *** on an unlit burner and turned to look at me. Her eyes looked far away and right there with me.  

"Closer then you think," she said and turned the burner on.

-

I turned into the taco bell parking lot. There was something I was trying to remember that was in my trunk, but I couldn't recall the picture. A haze blew over the windshield that was a mix of heat and wind; I wished to be somewhere else, someone else, someplace else, but, there I was, sitting there underneath the sun, like everyone else. If I was able, I would have unlocked the door to my car and opened the door and walked out - but - there was something else lingering underneath my fingernails, something I couldn't name.

"Two tacos," I said into my hand, "And a water."

"Pull to the window," the voice buzzed over the muffled speaker.

"Yes," I said through my split fingers.

In front of me, over a patch of clean cut green grass and a yellow, red, and orange Taco Bell signature sign, was a fresh gas station with a willow tree *** near the front entrance. He had a sign that hung around his neck that read Juice Please - Very Thirsty. How I knew this was because I had seen it every time I had been asked to fill up my dad's car every other Sunday. I had never given the tree a dollar, yet, I felt that I owed him something. I tried to pull up to the window, but my clutch was grinding and a cloud slunk overhead. I was tired and only wanted to eat.

"That'll be a two twenty-five," the voice said through the thick, clear glass.

"Yes," I said to myself, digging into my wallet for three dollars.

I ****** the three onto the thick plastic platform. A quick sweeping plastic brush pushed the bills toward the asker, and the bills were gone. I had no food. I had nothing. My money was gone and all I had was a gurgling car in front of me and an empty front seat beside me. A pair of clouds waded by my front shield window. A shadow drew itself out in front of me like a **** model. A beep. Sudden and behind me. There was sound. I looked over my shoulder and a black  2013 Cadillac was sitting there, windshield tinted grey, the driver a shadow. I was unsure what to do...so I pulled forward six inches, hoping the offer would be enough. I wasn't in the best neighborhood.

The window to the left of me slid open. An arm erupted forward with a plastic bag,
"75 cents is your change."

The hand dropped three quarters next to the plastic bag. I grabbed the bag with the two tacos and three quarters and quickly wound up my window. The face in front of me was a dangerous blur: smiling, frowning, not caring either way what happened to me next. The hands had gobbled up the three dollars and I was happy to see it go. Who needed money? I tossed the plastic bag onto the passenger seat and sped off two blocks for my grandma's house. Salvation. The holy land. A place with free hot sauce and two dog's that were stolen without paper's. Eden.

-

"What are you learning right now?" I asked Ally.

She hesitated, then said, "Something to do with science." She paused," Lot's to do with rock's."

"Rocks?" I stammered, not remembering a time when I learned about rocks in school, "What kind of rocks?"

"I don't know," she grinned, looking up at me, "All kinds."

I laughed and kicked a stone into the river. The sun was out and reflected on the water like an unpolished diamond. We had grown up a quarter mile away, but still, it felt foreign to us.

"I like it. There's some things you could see that you would never think to read about it in books."

I had read plenty off books. Most, I took little from, but Ally, I could see, had taken plenty.

"What are you doing in school?" Ally asked me.

"What do you mean?" I
n)Ethno-spirit and Biodiversity (Diogiversity)

Given its ethnikos factor and contribution towards a common origin of multiethnic and languages, in values and traditions, its morphological factors of Verthian sub-mythology, are provided with content, features, colors, and textures of neutrality, focused on a biosphere ecosystem, where the air conditioning, flora-fauna will make Sub-mythological Biodiversity, where the beings that inhabit it and will be in the range of evolution of mythological living beings, whose diversity of genetic seizures, will adopt natural and compound patterns, but always predominant in the biological pattern and organic. Wandering the world in desert places, in alloys and classified plant compounds, emptying their species through the hollow of the atmosphere and through the green grasslands in the reviving surviving evolution of organisms and species that for the first time see each other as a biotype between rocks and plantations, reciprocally among themselves, and extemporaneously generating mythological genetics heritages. Considering millions of years in evolution with explosions of multicellular and fossilized species extinct in massive and occlusive memories. Inert matter and geological strata will make millions of years converted into microseconds in the Verthian Biodiversity of the Duoverse, in a Psychic and spiritual Universe, emerging in all macroscopic perspectives and parapsychological regressions. Impact They will cause the maturity of all the diversity of externality and sensations in new topologies of anonymous universes and species of biodiversity, under a pillar of culture based on the Sub-Mythological biosphere process, encompassing all mythological species where the hope of Life and Super life. Transforming systems of functionality under the protection of spontaneous generation and in a matter that is availably underlined in the mountainous tissues of the mechanics of the subset of the air mass, water, climatic biospheres, and biogeochemistry, that in the unreal juncture of, and inter-procedural reality of carbon, that factor the species key and specimen disclosure, in the collection and in sinks, water drains but without carbon. encompassing all mythological species where the Life expectancy and Super life unfolds.

Hyperdisis, the galaxy connected to the Duoverso, in its biotic diversity, reinsert thick clumps of Nothofagus Obliqua forests, in waste processes, to domesticate the Leiak ethno-forest species, as balance nutrients and repair the disgraceful disgrace of unnatural toxicity and fragile of the agrosystem, maturing cultures and preventive pollination in succulent transfers for purposes of food webs and the environment. Making the appearance of species more effective and perceptible, reunited in community chains of coherence, to amortize low-resource needs and distance economic-political impacts, in view of new base resources and the sustainability of balance of allopathic crops, for the good of driving the extinction of plagues or flagrant excesses not converted, Hyperdisis has a mass of inert matter that creates accesses of resilience, for salinity, rainfall, and human adaptive mythological innovation, given its versatile opening of complement and generation of substances, for the convenience of living beings and No. Having adopted in the context of mythological Galaxy, related to beings of light comparable to distant elements, by means of Psychic Trisomies and tell transportation, for energy sources and soil and water mechanics with Leiak, constituting molecules for the simplification of phenomena of exacerbation of chronic diseases and endogenous. Forests and parks of Hyperdisis in the symbiotic open air, for more airs in microbiological space, in the intimate portion from greatest to least challenge of elements exclusive of antinomies of hieratic human bio culturalization, in a showcase of communities with an interest in technologies and renewable empirical usability, each part doing its scientific role and biodiversity in the portico of its home. As a hieratic quality, presenting amendments that are glimpsed and more existing, although it passes before our eyes without a Carbon Footprint, figuring logical mathematics by sponsoring its count more than a shadowy synthetic body, anticipating super-appraisal measures, averaging them in tiny theological portions, with varied and dissimilar levels of genetic habitats and alleles or heterozygous in the taxonomic functionality of reproductive and approving biological elements. The wealth and abundance of this item are delegated to Leiak, in all the revolutionary processes of the oak forests and the high mountains,

Within the gasifications of Cinnabar, there was Carbon in its Life cycle, being Zefián; the curator of the Duoverse, destined for a lifetime, under Universal and intergalactic effects. Claiming innocent beings with greater attributes of predation survival in the ecological chain, with the mix of Tsambika and Theoskepatis, granting multidirectional dynamic residual matter for green energy emissions. Feedback quantifies offset options in carbon circulation, offsetting multipurpose CO₂ inventory. Through the darkness Zefián and Vernarth traveled in the streets of Rhodes, and in Tsambika looking for the distilled portions of the carbon and sulfur emanated by the Cinnabar. In the same way Etréstles in Theoskepatis initiating with the Archpriest by virtue of the honors and the rubies of accumulations of water mass and of sulfur and carbonated air, which hung over the low sky of Rhodes and Kimolos. They were going to the Necropolis of Hellenika, when the gnostic rampages were glimpsed in the surrounding slab, minting half of the gold bars for the great goldsmith who erects the conventionality of having the physis imperturbably established, as a matter of patriarchal character. They entered Helleniká and the souls that wandered were ringed under crescent-encrusted rings, lavishing the independence of the night in the hands of Borker, which was reflected in the capitals of a mausoleum. Borker is consistent in saying that he is free in Helleniká, In the myth of the dustbin woodworm of the frieze where Etréstles perched next to Zefián's strap, who would manipulate the gold and alabaster chain, to pull its ascetic and rubies from it, approaching a final night in the astronomical autumn, in the last parapsychological regression of the god Vertumnus, which would embody the expiration of the Helleniká friezes by Kashmar branches decayed from vegetation and the tears of the Etruscan god Vertumnus. Making the branches of the Kashmar, the epithet of heraldry in the noble metals and woods of the autumn, and the mountainous temple of the one that follows the equinox in the meridian of seven days towards the southern and northern hemisphere. in the last parapsychological regression of the god Vertumnus, which would embody the expiration of the Helleniká friezes by Kashmar branches decayed from vegetation and the tears of the Etruscan god Vertumnus. Making the branches of the Kashmar, the epithet of heraldry in the noble metals and woods of the autumn. They enter the Necropolis of Helleniká, by upper and lower trays, cordoned off by obelisks in a series of petrified labels, in the square sections of the convergent ones and the linearity of the central pyramid, where they sponsored all the sectors of the stones of the prismatic geometric body, next to some piloneos that flanked the third of those that were in the figurative memory of funerary monuments of Vernarth. In harmony with the radiosities of the Cinnabar, they purged the carbon emanations in the intra-bodies of petrified breaths, expanding in the segments of frenetic life of the behavior of the inert matter, crushed by the organic, polishing the degrading character of the excavated prayers, under a superfluous shade. It was already dawn, Etréstles and the Archpriest broke the loaves to deposit them in the bowl of the Day, stretching in the arms of heaven under the gargle of the god Vertumnus who forged from the materiality of Jupiter. Vernarth nodded his head to the movement of the winds that cut the profile of a Citarista yawning on the frieze that raises all the crowns of the princes of the living-dead, making them part of the royal occasion, preparing petty spaces and tyrannies for devouring vassals in Helleniká, from the lair of his rib one, sees Diogenes of Sinope emerge, splitting with his doctrinal staff all the Isthmian paroxysms, which declared the cell of his life as Diogiversity.

"There were murmurs of astonishment at the surprising response of the wise man because no one dared to speak like that to the king. Alexander the Great asked: "Why do they call you Diogenes, the dog?", To which Diogenes replied: "Because I praise those who give me, I bark at those who don't give me, and the bad ones I bite." Again, more murmurs, but Alejandro was not moved by those answers and said: "Ask me what you want." So Diogenes, undeterred, replied: "Get away from where you are, you cover the sun for me"..., Vernarth replied: "Look for him in the bones of those who refused to die and fear beyond expiration who rejoices in the cold of the dean ossuary seed, without heat or memory here in Corinth and its Diogiversity ".

o)Reflection space length (π)

The hemispheres were out of proportion, one another was modified in the air, leaving the horizon exorbitant and the poles out of square. Coastal the lengths of the sun around areas that some Helleniká countrymen had never put on the crowns of their consciousness. Certain pressure changes dislocated other modules in the filaments that had rudimentary inaccuracies, creating reflection space failures in the installation of the Duoverso, due to the due calculation defect. The observations of Hyperdisis, generated superpositions of the Zigzag Universe, before the crescent moon, after the full moon, again de-calculating the sphere of Hyperdisis in relation to the ecstatic length of itself in the hands of a third of a second a day, to overflow in impositions that They revealed Dekas Cove in Kimonos(π).

The value of the opinion of reflections will be the originality of breaking of statics, of the motors of the verb and the conscience of the flushed being, and of erudition of the naive contrast when decanting the perceived morality. They concur with the moral value in every sub-mythology of an ambivalent being of supernatural human co-belonging, not dependent on gnoseological reflections, rather spontaneous under the embankment of reason. The latter being absent in the shadow of its shadow, no reflection can take hold of anti-values, self-valorized in contingencies under the effects of the drug of lies or truth, in a difficult equation to refer to in gnosis treatises, declaring the absence of consciousness to species without reflection or length of their molecular evolution, in evidence of mythological humans. The triangle Patmos, Rhodes, and Kímolos, make up a Venusian adonis, of stimuli in the nostrils of Aion, which sneezed on the integrity of the reflex arc at high speed superseded in the tremors of Athens until Hyperdisis, flashing anatomical and pejorative on the optic nerve of the Colossus Rodino, and the twisting of the multi-personal muscles..., but already depersonalized..., with little telluric reaction in the core of the symmetry of his legs, dodging as he thrashed on his frowned arms, behind the legs of the lycaons..., digging his jaws in reflex arches, for ages that only an immemorial one would enchant him, and be it the throbbing of the earth in the crust and seams of the calcined Colossus. Existing like this their reflection of attenuated light, they shook through the sea full of sinewy pieces of precise length. Frequently in the hydronium cations, undermining the temporality of Tsambika in random stones in the humid, and dark narrowness of the anthropic reflection, having lived in the heavenly paradise that formed them by the volcanic tube and its syngenetic, by the erosion of the subsoil of Rhodes. In Helleniká, everything that is expected, flows with the Meltemi tubularly, so that they are polyps of fluctuating desolation or placed above all zephyr or anti-wind, in ammonoids or ammonites; reviving from the seas it flows with the Meltemi tubularly, so that they are polyps of fluctuating desolation or placed above all zephyr or anti-wind, in ammonoids or ammonites; reviving from the seas from Devonian to Cretaceous, escaping from the ferocities of the Etesios and these same escaping from the roars of Vernarth.

p) One-Dimensional Beams II

When their ears fell in love with the Orthoptera or Grylloideas before Joshua, the night became restless, abandoning them from their shelters, they brushed the seeds of the thistle that trembled with the new millennium of the Duoverse. Levitating their ailerons in the tenors of their birth and dilettante sounds, before an ovipositing candor of the remains of the abdomen that remained in their jaws, always being from one of the Beams, for the largest Enciphers that hung from their antennas in search of Joshua's telepathic messages in the manger. Sappho of Mytilene, also known as Sappho of ****** or simply Sappho, pretended to be a marigold proliferating in the twenty corridors of the Greek poet, and also as the tenth poet in the other ten that was reflected with transparent wings of the dew that stuck, phenomenal of physique -Saphonic and in the recent rain of wind and condensed air, in the form of drops due to the sudden decrease in temperature in contact with cold surfaces. Sappho's dew was talked about in Kafersesuh, usually when it comes to condensation on a Poetic Grylloidae surface, naturally on the ground cover or artificially in a dull cloudy crystalline, in the amount of supernatural tradition, heroes, superheroes, and anti-heroes conspiring with the territorialities of hexagonality.

The Aramaic message comes forward with vigor from the orthopterans and birds that piled up on the journey, going back and forth. The Beams shone from the celestial kingdom holding on to the Cherubim and the Archangels, through the paths of conversion and the support of the bizarre Christian time, in implacable hegemony for the propaedeutic of phylogeny, but more than perfumers chemistry and the same creation. carrying Lepidoptera winged tetra and Sand Crickets, on the interlocking and obfuscated pheromones from a nascent-elemental child, in his own evangelical philosophy, from a winged dimensionality and in the gloom of Manger shouted and aligned, before the compendiums of double pyramidal landmarks and of inflection, of his word in the Grylloids and panaceas created in the affinities of the world and Animalia, stylizing muleteers carriers, phrasing acronyms and parabolizing the polygonic nomenclature of the child made a territorial man on the wings of a Cricket, already being it !, but representing himself as a lifeless man in the entirety of an advantageous canon child, from a sudden bi-dimensionality of Grylloideos. A great Zohar light gathered all towards a whole in those vantage points of terrestrial columns and orthopterans that Joshua felt in advance in his resined ears, like irreversible entropy giving back his wise existence to prepare them for the day of his holocaust. Pre Existing in catharsis and busilis substance of divinity connected with the Grylloid phylogenetic species, classifying until the Aramaic crackle, pontifying pheromones settled in the lithosphere site of Gethsemane, coincidence in the wading of a Libraco period, or in the phenomenological simultaneity of Eukaryota and Glaucophyta until late Animalia, giving relation parental in the characters of the vibrational timbre of the Beams and the atavistic pedestal, readapting in the evolutionary ellipticals of tetra-winged species, allowing to change the ancestral linguistic accouterments in processes of redesigning the genetic historical tree..., divine and increasing.

Inter-Duoverse, in space demography, has been frequented since today in a nuptiality between the Sun and Earth, wrapping the inter-generational homes that have prostrated themselves to the One-dimensional Beams, evolving millions of years between links of angels from the north and the south., for each year between half years and decades that the ancestors are passionate about, unleashing in what they aged in their youthful lives and eternal ideals, as an atom not guaranteed in families that did not get to know their Duoverse. When they walk through the urbanized farm of their parents they go in their shoes and in the paternal and inter-parental sun barefoot, the children travel far from the monographic patriarchy, declaring themselves between psychic families and unstable plots of core conformity and procreation.

The line of supra healthy cerebral is born from the Beams of deforested family trees and treasured in the Trunk of the seventh ascending generation, towards a nefarious tribal of industrious and vegetating regressive parapsychology, bringing zombie societies, to great lethargy that disorganizes the parallel emotion of the Being descended from a Messiah, with the prophetic organization. There in the Koumeterium of Messolonghi, in past generations, the "IO" was omitted to limit them from the spellings like Ghost Cemetery lost in other lost sacramental ancestors. The inappropriate location of our ancestral duties has guided us in the axis of the pabulum, before the second coming of Messiah Parousia, to continue the re-sprouting foliage of the Universal theological tree. The children of the seven intergeneration generations, will be from the endearing of a patriarchal family, and those of Exo family lineage will be from outside the non-generational family, where everything flourishes according to the requiems of ******-domestic economies, and in the new chimera from new shocks and reprimands, already being spouses the Sun and the Earth after being divorced from a deluge of immolations and inter-millennia and rotations, further than those of any prophet wandering without advancing or rotating, enlisting and expiring in succumbed and pre-historicized generations of other prehistoric ones. Pre and post Flood; not presenting itself as the object of linking a thousand decades where not even a holy chirp from the Thrush, praises on the windows of the world bringing us babies that are born without past or future quantum generations. Ready to the hint of Duality and its nuptiality with the Sun and the Earth, They will make us magical creditors of the increase in demography and of unions that will marry in inter generations, not seeing passions in exhaustion, under the grass of the allegory of defeated love. Giving ourselves conjugal virtuosity, but of immanent dogma for the purposes of multi-figurative coexistence, under the Yoke of an individualized Faith, in the passing of millennia, we continue to crawl on the floor of the nebulae, and we do not rise to establish ourselves as masters of ecstasy, and the pendulum of the stars, creating us more in the orthogonal egalitarian of the cosmos and its Vernarthian architecture, of poly productivity, of Sun-Earth and its post-genetics, of high-grade clay, expanding with halberds on the self-insolated Suns, and highly calorific inherited towards a rupture of Solar freedom leaving us in the horizontal, not having ascendants of sin enriching their illicit chromosome. Made a beast, from the inertia of a paradise full of hidden public and private exchanges, but not secular, for those who pay tributes of ecstasy in a reborn and weakened state. This is how Diogiversality is verticalized (Diogenes's anthological action), concluding the variants that weaken the nexus of the denatured society of its atavistic social nuclear concomitant, extending eco-life gaps, but eco-unstructured and crucial inter-generational nature, being of arbitrary passion and of seismological doctrines, of haughty morality and of sociology fabrics without body or motor, with frail of castes and generations evolved age in a retrograde and elemental psychic sense, but biologically and reversibly to their boomerang lineage.

q)Amphibology Cosmogonic, Sub-Mythological root

The threshold, as a minimum rubric, must be in force from the Constellation of Orion, with barely a hundred millionths under the same eye of Orion and his psychophysical space, sensitive to the falcado charioteers and the water vessels on the backs of the probable Barnard Loop., and its nebula presence. The icy impulsiveness brought her under her right shoulder and the lean hollow under her arm unraveling from a staircase, at the entrance point of Betelgeuse coming from the cosmogony of Eridanus and in tune with Ptolemaic astrology. In the Sibyl and with a hint of a metric brilliant mass triplet, Betelgeuse Orionis, is the scale of the Aulos and piccolos expelling hydrogen as an Ace in 240 scales of harmonies and in sounds of light, for cycles and years of Light. The binary of Orion, is pre-born of the sub-mythological root, with binaries of Poetic Parapsychology, or Para-poetical; which is the trapezoid and the kinetics of the hunter Orion arrowing the Pleiades and its nebulous plains, with diametrical diarthrosis in his synovial joints, with the third militarizing joints already formed by the hyaline cartilage, which joins the two bones with the synovial fluid, before reaching the deltoid of Hunter Aurion, to awaken the Asleep world.

Vernarth in one of his adventures in Pella, scapula with his arms the force of the friction discs of the Olympics and corrected his hands and shoulders, for this purpose of Aurion and his dilettante Astro Betelgeuse, with giant arrows against matters towards the sky of its Constellation, embedded in beaten Odyssey and turpentine in the sullen Hellenistic, being for May its amber trapeze of trunk and arm, in each hand a Xifos and Dorus, always in right-handed hemispheric pathologies of their shrewd hands in Kopis swords, and in the memories of the wind that throws pain to the whistle of the combatant, when the meteorites decay in the Tyrrhenian Sea. With his brass-bronze club and Vernarth's corrosive breath, he proceeded to file odyssey on Eos's ******* and peduncles; Goddess of the Dawn, in Dionysian beauty in bulk, Mintaka, Alnitak, Alnilam, (The Three Mariah), For the twelfth lunation of the Celestial Vault, together with Pleione, in its bolometric Oceanid matrix; against borderline stellar magnitude in the major and minor dogs, and in there a priori waves of misdeeds lending measurements in the eyes of Aurion, always henchmen on their Pleiades.

From this intricacy, Cosmo-is born the Vernarth Duoverso incited towards the Horcondising, so that it is mythical co-property at the origin of the universality of the Duoverse in the Vernarth scapulae, bleeding towards the cosmos that was born from his stellar blood, conjuring chaos and uncertainty in messenger Gonies, facilitating community life free of ethnocentric, psychic, intersubjective life, the metaphor of myth and dogmatic, by the imaginary struggle that leads its bleeding back over the Cosmos, and its demiurgic brilliance over the atmosphere of the earth like bronzes that twist in the necks of oxen, that urinate on the officers of the Barnard Loop, and its polyphonic magnetic exciter, on it the ***** of Orion falling on the poles, like flagrant Amphibology.

The Kanti Steed and the Aurion nebula, to the beat of a waltz ionize, lavish chemical ions free of electrons, on the neutral molecules of Betelgeuse, to proclaim in the nerves of the shoulders and its bronze club, as musical praxis and harmony net, giving way to the nebula and the art of the Duoverso, which shows the pristine astral days, how his alchemical arm sprouting in chemo-astralities of the pectoral, and his armpit that joined in its maximum stick, cutting down roots of Olive Bernar, behind Barnard's Loops, in the midst of runaway stars that are systematized in their ionized bleeding esplanade, such as Stellae Novae, who retrograded the astronomical ritual into cosmogony, and in her escape by going at night to sleep near her father Poseidon and Euryale, who cheered him near the grassy fields to paste explosive clay on the sheet of his drunken smiley face with Ionic wine, in advance of spreading the nascent Duoverso throughout the new world.

r) Hyperdisis

Sitting on the edge of Andromeda, in his planetary chamber Zefián; The Duoverso computer separated the parasitic inter-chamber from the Duoverso, which would be born from the Auriga, which in his buggy would unleash the senses of structures and luminosity between this colossal interplanetary chamber. Being between points that venture through the axon of time infinitesimal and longitudinally for light-years, which even so, will intervene from the Duoverse, for thermal purposes and other changes of the remnants, when especially the luminosity will speak of the destruction of the darkness inherent in the eyes of the universe, which can only stabilize areas that have not been fused in the discs of the Universe-Duoverse spatiality, long before the initial explosive between the Constellation of Orion and Andromeda. Globular clusters that will make up the perfect delay of transfusing the blood and no other, which makes the character Hyper naming and hyper-pectoral blood, which flows from this tri-astral polynomial, compromising the method of area, shape, and refinement of the sagittal profile of Hyperdisis in the Duoverse in the reversible intergalactic plane. Going from lenticular to irregular over the keystone of the trapezoid, towards the right arm of Orion, where its radius becomes hypocentral sequentially, but it takes advantage of interstellar matter, to generate its own light. Some explicit explosive arms of Andromeda were expelled from their center towards the right arm of Orion, for the purpose of implosions in the effect of the clubs or snails, as a sublime effusion on other stars, which lost essential stellar mass, to differ from one another.

Radio-Patmos, or galactic energies of Andromedian origin, would arrive as devout prayers at the border of Skalá, such astro-omegas and Invisible Universes, which inhabit the flaccidity of the Universe of Consciousness of the pole contact with the Xifos or Kopis, when Andromeda contacts the spur of the clubs or snails, inciting the capos of Astro-Omegas spaces, which would begin to take the front and front, after having been the atrium of invisible stars, only visible in the spurs of the swords, which were only moistened with the viscous blood draining from Orion, towards Hellenic lands as Omega age, for Vernarth early when he carries the keys of the Omega World, towards the shadowy proto galaxies, knowing that the Milky Way and Andromeda come so close in their stellar mass, being able to collide in a few million of light years, in advance, since the Duoverse of Hyperdisis will be formed as a Galaxy of change, to interact with each other, dismembering, but re-transforming into the new speculative nucleus of the Duoverse as a great Black Hole, embedded in the Kardiá of Patmos.

Hyperdisis, navigates from the most ancient confines, from the origin of nothingness itself on the threshold of the Universe, but now it is already converted into the Duoverse, re-implanting itself in helical polarity, and in bifurcations of luminosity, of colorful reincarnations or astral, to consent to the cessation of darkness and valuing luminance, possessing colorimetry and chromatic steps of childish tales in infant galaxies, which in all the lives of Greece and Vernarth delivered for their ancestors, articulating the iconology of Orion, in candlesticks per square meter, in vigils of:

LV is the luminance, measured in Nits or candela per square meter (cd / m²).

• F is the luminous flux, in lumens for the Andromeda triad, Milky Way e Hyperdisis in conjunction with Orion.
• dS is the surface element considered in the triad of Kímolos, Rhodes, and Patmos.
• dΩ is the solid angle element, from Vernarth Omega and the origin of the Duoverse.
• θ is the angle between the diameter of Andromeda and the Milky Way (2.5 million light-years)

The luminance can be defined from the radiometric magnitude and the radiance without more than weighting each wavelength by the sensitivity curve of the eye. Thus, if LV is the luminance, Lλ represents the spectral radiance and V (λ) symbolizes the sensitivity curve of the Vernath's eye of the Betelgeuse area below, dumping plasma and bruises on the galaxies and the Orion Eyes.

s) Zigzag Universe

The Zig Zag Universe was and will be excluded between time and space, in a world adjusted to the senses that are driven within the contextual totality, the world and the biosphere framed in the phenomena of the Zig Zag Universe, being born on a stellar night when Our life searched the earth, being able to see how cordial matters of the cosmos caressed its cosmology, making it its magistracy and descendants of the Hellenic cosmos, in constant caresses of the universe already predisposed to the Bing Bang, emerging from another type of self-observation, seeing ourselves in the face of Horcondising anti-material and Universal Biomass. We preexist under science that models the system of energy and matter in causes of ancestors, with whom their vital and ours sneakily crashed. Gravity made great paternity in the Vernarth Biomass, being in the Dodecanese, being cosmos in its arcuate curvature, which makes us screen with the moon in its romantic astrophysical swings, and with the exaggerated geometry of a zigzag. We are the versatile and multi-dynamic mass that expands simultaneously in the head that pauses in the Nothofagus Obliqua of Vernarth's Horcondising and also time2-space2, which has not been troubled by the origin or abscess of the stars that move irregularly in zigzag, for the fractality of its component, which is clearly Aramaic blue light, in circuits of clusters and movements brushing the air, attracting the attention of the entire order of the hypnotized universe and making the duplication of the universe itself appear before them; in Duoverso that is the Universe shaken and young of its gratitude's ".The distribution of nearby galaxies are keys to the paleo universe already arranged in macro waves, which are percentages of spaces in the Trisolate energy fields, which interact with the Mashiach of Gethsemane phylogeny, now tending to a stagnant decomposed future, towards a specific frozen present. Its final station is to bet the Zig Zag Universe on the re-expanding temporal Medieval chrestomathy, in gregarious qualities of Sub-mythology, already conformed here in Archangelos. The implosion of gravity has created worlds of visibility in great astronomical yearnings, in some fractions of time zigzagged by millions of fractured light-years, as an irregularity that resembles the measurements of everything quantifiable, being omniscience or not, acquiring the hexagonality of the birthright in the passage, Here the Mashiach emerged and died in its abstraction in the One-dimensional Beams and in the foreign eyes, eroding those who are mortal and do not see with divine eyes in the self-resemblance, of our hypochondria and of the failed plan to amplify the size of the unknown analytic, of this new dimension in the implosive movement of the Verthian Duoverse. The nature of the snowflakes in Bethlehem are natural fractals, detailed in their nature and in the natural infinity, here the privileged new world was envisioned, for self-similarity in the speculative and cosmogonic functions of Vertnarth, at intervals in each space of the shadowy walls, bringing accelerated courier bombs from Gethsemane among mutated olive trees to other humans. "Its correlation is an infinite fractal with reversible observable time.

Finite is the curvature, between the time that walks between the grove of the Duo-Universe as an alternative of energy Zig Zag and Duoverso, which triggers our subconscious observable world, which is a great reflecting lantern eye, which ignores and prescribes extreme distant and focal parts of the One-dimensional Beams of Kafersuseh in Ein Karem, since the Duoverse is the trial Universe that the Mashiach had, before coming to the Holy Land, provided by his form of Hyperdisis escorting him from Betelgeuse and in Orion. Change from arduous colors to the gradient in Avant-Garde, for the confines of perspectives and verbality, in amendments of physical fields, interwoven by an external gravitational means. The macro waves, are exposed matter not contained in the abrupt changes of the optical selection of the Mashiach with the One-dimensional Beams, attracting selection crystals to atomize them, in reaction disturbances and recreation of multiform plasma saviors of Christian cosmic. The double expression of macro waves and the equation of them over the axial of the universe turned into the universe Duoverse, in millions of light-years will continue in the Duoverse, for ectoplasmic reconversion energy with great margins of assertiveness. The cartography in hyper diction will correct errors of the current universe, losing itself in the second thousandths of figures that separate us from the Universe, but all being more than time... !, remaining at the expense of the wick of all electro-matter " The double examination of the macro waves and the equation of them on the axial of the universe turned into Duoverse, in millions of light-years will continue in the Duoverse, for ectoplasmic reconversion with great margins of assertiveness. The cartography in hyper diction will correct errors of the current universe, losing itself in the second thousandths of figures that separate us from the Universe, but all of them being more than time... !, remaining at the expense of the wick of all electro-matter. The sub-mythology having already been constituted, Hestia appears, having slept a great slumber. When he appeared before Vernarth in Tsambika, he was seen changing in size, when he was six meters away he looked dwarf and when he was already two meters from him he looked monumentally huge, but in a versatile physiognomy, therefore he was already appreciated in his last steps, with her domestic Goddess figure that emanated light-years from the chimneys of the habitable galaxies. The critical immanence will happen, pre-existing of the perfectible plan for the Universe Zig Zag and Hyperdisis, as Hyper-Hestia, bringing torn words for those who were approaching the main altar of Vas Auric, which was in the great ratio of the proscenium in the vicinity of Tsambika, between Mind / Meditation for constant mechanisms of Wisdom / Meditate, according to the cosmological constant, taking them perhaps to the beginning of a decade and the third universe called Traverse. The oscillations of all these fantasies, Vernarth observed, but he knew that he would have to collide with these worlds finally already precipitated, and of temperature that acted on the average of the normal range, therefore it was imminent to mutate it to the provisional Christian Duoverse, which moves backward. among the dizzying lights of creation. Immediately afterward, the Universe has torn apart and lost among those around it, establishing itself in units of millions of years of light compressed in the piccolo Aulos, which Hestia carried in one of its golden hands, from the prytaneion, igniting with the flames of the Kardiá on fire and the passion of consanguineous love, "Prytaneum", the omphalos stone, marking the navel of the world with the boast of wandering towards the island of Delos, in the daily warmth of a spring afternoon in Rhodes. She is a woman with veils on her face, always walking to and from her virginal abode, in the house of foolish or vestal virgins, there is no Hestia, only maybe there are some similar ones staying in the cold fire of her menopause, losing fertility afterward. that his father swallowed it, and then it was expelled from himself, regurgitated in flames of love candles in a blessed house and full of immunity, giving the Duoverse another geometric category with never contained angles, sliding vibratory between the distances that discount minutes of the Hestian space, for such a corollary by approaching its finitude, and inaugurating the sub-finite, that it will never be the source of the end of a disconcerting end of time, neither equationally consummated nor physical. "This consolidates the Duoverse into Duo-Universe, expressed in figures that moderate the length of a physical state before it is finished and restarted in a process that does not end (sub-infinity)

t) Vernarth Omega (Ω) - Preface

before facing the Achaemenides. Being Omega and Micron in the warlike primer of their cause, within the prophetic in all necropolises of tiny omega (ω), towards an Omega that reaffirmed the good hand in Saint John the Apostle by rewriting the Apocalypse twice, coexisting the same but with the voice of Vernarth commanding the ten thousand Falangists, who made up inter-generational gaps, of camouflaged alien ancestors. For this purpose, he opened the windows with their pillars sheathed with tetrachloride of chlorine, at solid angles of Ω, in what was Virgo institutionum / Aurion-entity that interfered by projections and leaks, which converged on the strut of the omphalos of his heavenly father dealing frequently and bled his immortality, constituting from a helper being to the planes of subconscious reprogramming and perspective. With his arms raised, in each hand a raised sword to pierce the vanishing point, between the spaces that were ascribed, under the solid projection, from an observer that inhibits ad limits the biomass in all the masses of aqueous filter and lumen flow, towards the throne of the angelic guardian of Avant-guard by the stereotype and sclerosis of Zeus in his dissociated physicality, even though he is an amorphous entity with pulverized magnitudes, between Pi and Golden numbers, fading away without area or volume. Vernarth in the humanoid apocalypse was transfigured from a solid point in Hyperdisis, as a direct escape settlement to Aurion, towards a surface of conical vestige in three-dimensionality towards Andromeda, the Milky Way, and the shoulder of Betelgeuse,

Vernarth distracted the emeritus stars in the corner of his room and in the convex the points of his celestial patriarchs in the conical spheres of perenniality, leaving only solid angles in each of the two parts of space-delimited by two semi-planes that start from their common edge, under the ideal geometric concept and that it is only possible to partially represent it as duplication in parallelograms with a common side, symbolizing two half-planes, making from all distances seclusion of visions in the culmination of imagination and apparent angles, seen from any point of the Celestial Vault in invisible counterpoint.

The decalcified cells of Vernarth solfying together with Sophocles in orpheons after the victory of Salamis. Already being a tragedy in the next act of the prologue and their friendship bordering on his tragedy, he continues to exist in energetic arms to write, and Vernarth to dispute the characters from a regular prologue writing with his own blood hematology verses, which traveled meters and that they shrunk from the anti-verses scarring their declaimed intra-breath, in corals that only the wind clarifies of what precedes and happens towards the suffering, in the metrics of the Areimos chorus that were lectured anti-verses, and that they tried to ****** him from the hands to Sophocles, in immortality that refined him by abandoning him in sub-units. With masks and mythical cycles, he mixed the metaphorical facsimile of momentum and the separation of friendship with him, seeing him in an episode of his works, and instead of Vernarth's transcript sheltering him in the origins of the volatilizations of his orpheons, converted into physical waves of a dramatic-oracular order. Gods re-transformed into divination and futuristic germination, they were hidden dormant and forgotten in times of subconsciousness in the Selenite collection, felt in the Colossi signs of parliamentary, where the oracle leans on the lines of vibrational words and how they cough their " páthis "in the place where the language dissociated from the heart nucleus speaks. In misguided divination, the oracular mantic brought the cold of loneliness and the fiery heat that guesses in the laurel forests in oracular daphnomancy, Vernarth omega self-erects as a versatile column that temporalizes the threads of his organic brain, creating synaptic logos in Pashkein or the alert regret of abandoning the arm that rewrites his heroic Sophoclean and tragediographic biography, in ancients transiting in disintegrated emotionality and ****** Hellenic neurotransmission, "Two omega men or omega speedometers, carrying neurons from ankylosed and frustrated herd of pleasure, for tripartite meson form of routine grinding in Alzheimer's lost, lost in sympathetic and para-sympathetic routines, with probability of Hellenic gray matter; That is to say, of all memory that does not sin of ignorance in the ancient world, in more than nineteen hours of vehemence, the dangers will brighten when reliving nth times in the twilight of omega, Vernarth, was already narrowing on the tracontero Eurydice, to save his pains, deposed in terms that would renew anti-economies by supplying unsustainable in liquefactions and in synaptic melts, extra energetic vesicle of pure natural law of the eyebrows, of lunation that rests in the inter millennium, beating with ecstasy in the Buddhist suttas, and in the adaptation of the flesh of the hypersonic fissures of the Meltemi, and attachments that still beat over the dermis of pain. Vernarth draws his sword Xifos of phenomenal structure and he cuts on the Sutta or sermon that mimicked him at the time of the lunation, doing sabotage of redemption of the anti-verse from the court of Sophocles, as a myth-saboteur and anti-value, overvaluing the wiles of the same utilitarian tragedy, conquering in the curtain of mourning and sadness, unguarded and overcome by the stoic duel of jubilation. From here Vernarth, opens the gates of hell, eight hundred times going mad with omega value, by reiterating omeganymy, creates the numbering of the anti-verse and the suffering that does not even sleep further from the departure of a soul and a body only asleep of concave omega, overlapping in golden transfinite chests, which reorder the natural numerals with the ordinal transfinite omega, but on frictionless wheels of other omegas that break in recirculation rules on alpha, in supra omega levels such as parades, stamens, episodes, and Vernarth-omega paradigmatic exodus.

Omega I Prologue: "Once upon a time, amidst a rain of clouds full of drama, in a time that was oriented regime of the armpit of Betelgeuse and Aurion, 334 BC, it was the penultimate breeze of Tsambika, in the spiritual devotion that hovered over the unison voice in the magnanimous Zeusian chorus, as an alternate event of imprisoning past and next in an episode of the present act. The expectant was curious about the retouched makeup of the drama's superlative consonant, in a disembodied place, but with a good narrative source when it came to fruition. Here the myth is plausible, among everything mythical, more than all the super sums of expectations of the Ismo "

Parod I: "For the submissive words on the stage of the trident fire, where I have to warm my hands with ashes of eternal fire"
(Directing the scenes through the coripheum, there is the master lord who, in flames and by unequal numbers, pawned in the Aulos and piccolos, whose bare feet bordered the risk of the bellies of the Maenad damsels united in processions, between princes, powers and Dionysian dances holding on to the Pufios; in Baquian and ceremonial liturgy near Vernarth, taking a glass every seven minutes in animosity, in cages of his stuck little finger, whistling from organic pimping, next to dancers raising an arm and directing the palm towards the heaven, while the other remained down with the palm towards the earth; in this position, since he was like Vernarth buried by the tides of Patmos wandering him in times that marked the entrance from Mars to Jupiter, and from autumn to winter in fifteen times agreed with Sophocles, hanging from the penultimate to the entrance with his trembling voice desalted..., tolerating himself in his own tragedy)

This is I: "Through the right hemi-body, Vernarth intoned his laterality exposed in harsh penumbras, while Hera brandished over his existentialism clouds of oatmeal and candies in a liturgy, a homily that personified the Stasis, in the choral intermission resisting his angry hands in tragic passion and frenzy, unleashing oratory of self-blame, unraveling drama-tragic, and in each pause the emotion that was accompanied in new episodes when it was stoked "

(Vernarth says: "submitted in parts that are not its parts, my pain has blinded me, where it has embittered the conflict of ethical interest if the stars as a public cheer are anointed, sentencing the opposition of other lesser stars who cheer what that does not shine. The principle of the voice violates the normal parenthesis, which is governed by itself in the omega voice, mocking the modal in four magistrates, in martyrdoms of an ideal of the procession, each one being with his super-private toga, before me It must not be who recognizes if I will be who I am, on the seventh judgment of my surviving ethics)

Episode I: "Vernarth extrapolates the values of his judgment, which override the first, the coryphaeus directs his promenade from the countryside on his Horse Alikantus"

(Vernarth says: "I have instantiated the steps that my chestnut crossed with you in the future if I am to sing with a sorrowful voice, no choir will be able to follow me when you are gone. However, I have to define what personifies who, more than a thousand miles away, carries with him the lamp that opens the light of your roguish contemplation... "
Alikantus wailing says: "From the luster of your heartbeat, I obfuscated the jailer from your ribs, for the preference of the one who takes you even further in tempestuous pro-hedonistic prose "

Exodus I: "Sometimes the endings smell like fields of lavender, where the call of the almighty is heard, to take him over his loaded plantations, which are emerging from the dialogues in the afternoon with its twilight, as well as stanzas that smell of lavender anointing, separated in syllables and tonic that flex my charm, not to say that I was anointed with Lavender when I was prepubescent "

(In fifteen times, in syllables and rakes, the sentences of its paragraphs are sterilized, leaving the audience speechless, without a gesture or word that emanates from a sacred paradise, rather from the Stasis that never purged the omission of the syllable that is not of proscenium nor trident, but it is umlauts on Omega, between syllables of fire that burn from its proscenium)

With few and precise changes of consciousness, Vernarth approaches his Omega Point, as the end of his self is identical to his consciousness. He was leaving Tsambika and Kímolos, diligent towards Theoskepatis, warning Etréstles for defiance goods in the aftermath of the Eschaton. His spiritual cerebellum faded identically when he wandered through the distances of the entities that competed and are prominent, transforming his Hetairoi reliquary, here his tendentious impulse begins and dehumanizes him by becoming a Celestial entity, but with Noosphere endowment. The tendencies are established hyper-connected, with him Tsambika, Theoskepatis, and Patmos were triangulated for consummations and finality from the rudiment of Universal deity, reprogramming the end of restricted humanity to a mere boundary of dogmatic morality declared existential.

Within the Omega points, his unfolding acted as a disembodied statue and redemption of similarity and humanity, leading him to a self-conspiracy, by abandoning himself to his own equal, for the duration of the final sulfurous sublimation of the Cinnabar's margin of abstraction, after joining in all the quantum, physical and biological lines, making the Duoverse an inter chamber of the prior Master in a process of change, to sensitize his image of physical-chemical Man, but of God in his rigid powers. Cataloged as hommo sapiens who expresses himself in fallen beings under the arms of his sword in a limpid target, rather than in his own pointed tongue, and steely towards the point of unification in the hyper-dimensional of good achieve spatiality and volume, only contacted by his devoid of a Xifos hand. Consciousness rarely loomed in its compendium in nth bytes and data, much more than those recirculated in astrobiological quantum, creating blind exclusive and patrimonial universes, on the basis of nth bytes, which kept reorganizing itself in the personality of the unknown, fewer than four bridges of consciousness united in their own gregarious universe. The transcendence of the basic data of consciousness will lie in the Maenads, and their deliberate acre magic, extending through the limbs of the Nymphs, to re-possess it and take them to the confines of mystical paranoia, perhaps towards the embodied Vestal Virgins, purging their paths that they notice a variant of licentious departure in the stanzas when seeking final swings, which are not for the sake of shedding everything before the Universe rescinds its intellectual limitations, contracted in an orgiastic Imaginary Universe, and the precariousness of the concept transporting us to the origins of the species and its behavioral rapture of loss of sensation, and reason, for this reason, Vernarth takes them with him for his ******* and alienated perceiving of inherent reality and its opposite sunset. The ministry of the sacramental mystery is the consciousness of the Dionysian being in gestation, wanting to be the paroxysm of its equivalent, in an eternal Omega effect, for the purposes of omeganymy of conscious chaos, being the same portion of omega ad limit of its secondary reluctant personality of being, to found the hermit solitude on his revived empty ego, residing in his being by bilocating with two idiosyncrasies for a Venarthian Thiasoi, succumbing to weightlessness over all the Maenads and the intoxication of community in its opacity,

The madness was a transcript of reasons lost by the Vernarthian Omeganymy, sometimes the disproportionate of his steps by more than what should be generated was objected to in the circles of the Tsambika monastery. The unification of blood was confused by the viscous wine of the mysterious foliage of the Diospyros tree that led them through the enigmatic unaware, in primary practices that tore apart some somatized ones of the order of a third body, which still transmitted the last organic matter, refusing to spread at the omeganimic points. The consciousness of replicated beings of themselves challenged themselves towards the perfect copy of their transcendent alter ego, in an understanding of the present-future elucidating for whom or those who demystify the visions of an arbitrary creation, allied to the evolutionary myth-truth, in the face of any real and human maturity gap, the conclave of the near pious Christ, bequeathed in us and in the venerated hominization, at his sole and directional will. Now we are all in the aqueducts of Christian Science, for specimens of eternal categorization and frontally in view of a God-Mashiach, as ordinal inclusion and in greater ecumenical diversity, with variables of independence range, for staggering motor skills, retaining the attention of all the powers of the Christian world at an Omega point that seemed to be Alpha. The sense of the Duoverse in Vernarth Omega makes us rethink the central phenomenon of thought and frustrations, by the socialization of distant species from prudent dogmatic ostracism, towards refractory empathic and ultra-rational reasoning.

The supra intelligence has to become in them and those, the pre-existing point of duality, to reunify them in Patmos, as the only spirited meaning, and biomass evolving on the super-dimensioned materiality, in a greater radius where it will have to be delivered to whoever speaks with words. of living energy, and not complex towards all processes of emancipatory concord of personal authorship, on levels of relative lust in the absolution of medium integrity, and towards an elemental unitary totality of animal instinct guarded by the instinct of Being, that from its similar awakened rebirth of the sleeping mass matter, and in the animal purifying multiplicity. The man stands in his memorandum bend, like a haughty memorial, evolving in the cosmic expiration of the molecular transverse, admitting us in its vestige of complex extinction, but not in human slip, nor in acid and self-instituting scenery, on the real creation of its DNA, which reverts from the formality of helical reiterative rings, by heights of whoever oscillates in their coupled pairings, and their silent probable associations, in the nature of real origin and their structural perfection. The acceptability scenarios derive from the feasible concretion, and the approval of their tendencies and mobilizations of the structure of life, and codes greater than those that limit them to reside, to more than one body, residing from an incorporeal body, capable of its quantitative life and the extension of existence, super existing in the heights of the helical rings, which may vary more than they are, and which could be, without being seen under a scientific gaze. "Becoming a mechanics of maturation and prayer, which the energy from the material world to the spiritual, as a moving particle of inert matter in parasitized free radicals, which are re-energized by the mystery of the helical trans-threshold of the Aramaic mystery of the Olives Bern. "Vernarth disintegrates in omeganymy in laxity towards Aurion, descending pro-tenebrosity towards the profanity of Patmos, engulfed by Love in a dark summer, brushing the silos of DNA in the will of the automated world"
DUOVERSE
first step

when he looks at a woman he searches for qualities that attract him because he wants to desire her yet this tendency creates an imbalance or disadvantage he is rendered weak to a woman’s beauty or whatever traits he idealizes self-realizing this propensity he looks away from women years of disappointment neglect change him he becomes afraid of women gynophobic

2

when she looks at a man she searches for qualities she is critical of because she wants to be impervious to his power she is suspicious of all men their upper body strength penchant to be in control misperception of women as property misogyny emotional immaturity neediness to be mommyed selfishness insensitivity or over-sensitivity depending she wants to be treated with equal respect a loving nurturing relationship she is suspicious of all people their alternate realities passive aggressive behavior co-dependence craziness

3

he sees her then looks away she suspiciously notices nothing happens they go back to their separate homes alone always home alone grown calm in resignation yet disbelieving of this destiny saddened by this fate both worry about future she looks at her face naked body in mirror her stomach churns feels sad sickening remembers time when she was more carefree he puts one foot in front of other then walks tries to remember who taught him to walk how many times did he fall who taught him to laugh where did his sense of humor go

4

he sees her thinks she is lovely resists the urge to turn away he smiles says hello she notices nervously smiles her shaky voice articulates louder than a whisper hi

Tucson 2-step

they are standing in line at a café on 4th avenue he is directly behind her she is lanky wearing white background faded colors patterned summer dress thin straps over bare shoulders long brown hair few gray strands small unfinished tattoo on left calf leather slip-ons 1 inch heals he is at a complete loss for words thinks to make remark about the weather decides not to overhead fan stirs hot humid July air barista girl asks what she would like her eyes scan blackboard menu behind counter she hesitates remarks help him i need an extra moment to decide he steps up to counter money in hand orders small to go Arnold Palmer half black current lays $3 on counter mentions change goes in tip jar thank you barista girl moves fast he lifts cup from counter glances at woman still deciding then at barista girl says have a wonderful day turns walks out door dawns on him woman grows hair under her arms his 2nd most compelling female physique adornment fetish oh god he thinks to himself should i wait for her to make up her mind then approach try to craft conversation at least find out her name no i’m too weak in this moment she is so lovely let her go

2

she orders double Americana in small cup to go room for soy milk thinks to herself he did greet her perhaps their paths will cross on street why did he run off so fast she glances toward front of café notices window seat changes her mind instructs barista ******* 2nd thought make it for here digs through purse realizes she left wallet in truck explains to barista girl she needs to run out to her vehicle to retrieve wallet forgotten under front seat the air on the street is heavy dense she smells her own perspiration looks north then south does not see him walks to truck feels exhausted appetiteless almost nauseous wishes she did not order a drink thinks to get behind wheel drive home go to sleep

Tucson 3-step tango

she feels disappointment by her recent writings as if she is reaching a more sophisticated audience and setting a higher standard for her work yet she is not living up to her ambitions her recent writings smell of her past writings too emotional the damaged woman wounded child she wants to write more introspectively with detached humor that only comes from keener intelligence she slams her laptop shut decides to go to Club Congress for a ****** mary or margarita but Club Congress is haunted with small town cretins losers wannabes she considers Maynard’s decides Maynard’s is too safe suburban yuppyish finally gives in to thought of glass of pinot noir at Plush next comes what to wear jeans in mid-July desert heat is unacceptable perhaps loose fitting thin cotton white summer dress thin leather belt ankle high indian moccasins hair in ponytail no pigtail braids no ponytail no makeup maybe little ylang ylang oil no she thinks about her recent writings

2

i am one breath away from crying in every moment one breath away from flying m.i.a. in every moment one breath away from destroying everything there is beauty in ugliness beauty in decrepitude disease beauty in harm hurt suffering beauty in greed injustice betrayal beauty in corruption contamination pollution beauty in hate cruelty ignorance beauty in death we spend our whole lives searching for a good death we spend our whole lives searching for eternal love this modern world is too much for me over my head the horrors of this place are beyond words unspeakable voice inside maybe mom yells quit your whining or dad hollers stop complaining i am trying to smile through tears one breath away from giving in one breath away from becoming stranger to myself winter spring winter spring there is beauty in nothingness we spend our whole lives searching for ourselves learning who we are not finding grasping secrets from dark paths light trails winter spring winter spring i am one breath away

3

she sits alone at bar at Plush glass of pinot noir glass of ice water in front of her 2 bearded older men eye her from other end of bar she ignores them glances at her wristwatch tries to look like she is waiting for someone music from speakers antiquated rock standard it is early friday hours from dusk moderate middle aged crowd mingle wait for local jazz trio to begin she thinks about her recent writings wonders is it too late for love considers lesbian affair from 5 different perspectives 5 woman’s voices each describing same lesbian affair in 5 opposing accounts hmmm she sips dark red wine from glass chases it with ice water she considers a story about a gang of female bikers who ride south to Mexico

4

the Americans came through here last night crossing border illegally climbing over our fences digging tunnels beneath our barrier walls littering along their trail they travel in packs of every skin color carry guns knives explosives wear leather boots some are shirtless tattoos dyed hair mischievously smiling conceitedly stealing when in question murdering they rob our homes slaughter our chickens ransack gardens loot our harvest you can still smell the stink of their fast food breaths

5

she swallows the last dark red wine from glass chases it with ice water local jazz trio begins to play as bar fills with more people she decides to walk home one foot in front of other wonders who taught her how to walk how many times did she fall she laughs to herself

Tucson square dance

TPD 10-18 unconfirmed data report

7 post-University of Arizona female graduates go to Cactus Moon for several drinks and dancing then drive to Bashful Bandit for more drinks and dancing 2 women get into scuffle victim Brittany Garner female 23 years of age race #5 (Native American, Eskimo, Middle -Eastern, Other) 5’ 2” long black hair cut-off blue jean shorts clingy light blue top falls hits head on side of bar dies of fatal blow to skull forensics report crushed occipital lobe assailant Stacy Won female 31 years of age race #4 (Asian) 5’6” black jeans black leather jacket red helmet Honda motorcycle still at large

witness accounts

Jess Delaney female 33 years of age race #2 (White) 6’ tight black pencil skirt white sleeveless undershirt no bra 3” heels blond ponytail “that squirting little **** deserves everything she got she lied told Stacy i’m a ***** i never cheated on Brittany i don’t understand we were all having a good time getting buzzed and dancing we should never have left Cactus Moon **** Kerrie thought some biker dude might be hanging around the Bandit hell maybe the Bandit was a biker bar once but now it’s just a college sink hole full of drunken frat boys when Monique flashed a little *** they went crazy cheering and buying us shots it just got out of hand never should have happened the way it happened Stacy didn’t mean to **** Brittany it’s ****** up i want to go home please let me go home”

Sabrina Starn female 29 years of age race #2 (White) 5’8” trendy corporate gray suit black pumps red shoulder length hair “i have to be at work at 8 AM Stacy was drunk out of control she gets crazy when she drinks Brittany was trash talking pushing all Stacy’s buttons then Stacy accused Brittany of sleeping with Monique and all hell broke loose i didn’t see what happened i was in the powder room it’s a terrible tragedy unfortunate accident can i please be released i need to sleep this is madness”

Kerrie Angeles female 27 years of age race #1 (Hispanic) 5’ 6” black pants white shirt black hair cut stylishly short silver crucifix around neck red fingernails “when we got to the Bashful Bandit i was ***** soaking between my legs thinking about a cowgirl at Cactus Moon ready to **** anyone i saw fantasized pulling a train with those frat boys Monique had been kind of quiet at Cactus Moon but when we got to the Bashful Bandit she lit up dancing wild unbuttoning her top jacket Sabrina went to the ladies room to snort coke with biker dude Kerrie wanted but he wasn’t into her then Brittany started saying crazy stuff accusing Stacy of stealing Monique from Jess Jessie goes through women heartlessly she doesn’t give a **** about Monique Jessie knows if she wants Monique back she can simply fiddle a finger my guess is Stacy is half way to Argentina she never meant to **** Brittany i’m going to miss her real bad she was a good kid”

Ann Skyler female 28 years of age race  #2 (White) 4’ 11’’ green white red Mexican peasant skirt black t-shirt black high-tops hair in messy bun “i’m confused i saw them dancing laughing grinding up against each other Rage Against the Machine came on then Nine Inch Nails the room felt quaking dizzy claustrophobic then they were pushing each other shoving yelling frat boys cheering the next thing i knew Brittany was supine on the floor blood pouring out maybe she just slipped hit her head i don’t know what to think i feel real sad confused sick to my stomach scared”

Monique Smithson female 24 years of age race # 3 (Black) 5’ 9” blue jeans jean jacket cowboy boots nose ring braided pigtails “Stacy had it in for Brittany from the start i saw it in her eyes at Cactus Moon she made several clever toxic remarks they snapped at each other i never thought it would escalate to ****** poor sweet Brittany was always so susceptible i was looking down adjusting my jeans over my boots when it happened i heard felt a big thump glanced up Brittany was lying there lifeless blood spilling everywhere Stacy ran out fast i heard her bike engine take off in a hurry”

Rodeo Drive Tucson

matt’s hats tom’s tools & tobacco lou’s liquors fred’s beds frank’s planks bill’s drills jane’s drains & panes chuck’s check cashing cheryl’s barrels hank’s tanks tina’s trucks & tractors walt’s asphalt sean’s pawn rick’s rifles mom’s guns terry’s tires charlie’s harleys rhonda’s hondas jim’s rims art’s parts gus’s gasoline mike’s bikes frank’s feed gwen’s pens ann’s cans nancy’s nursery joes‘s clothes jess’s dresses bert’s skirts steve’s sleeves paul’s shawls michelle’s shells & bells al’s pails & snails sam’s hams & jams patty’s pancakes phil’s chili don’s donuts betty’s spaghetti bob’s burgers alycia’s quiches jean’s beans jerry’s berries anna’s bananas andy’s candies cathy’s taffies tony’s ponies roy’s toys kim’s whims marty’s parties jill’s pills rick’s tricks alice’s palace debbie’s disposal dave’s graves

Quinta Waltz de Tucson

she is definitely displeased profoundly disappointed in her latest literary efforts she dreams aches to create deeper discourse higher insight more thoughtful philosophical inquiries about life’s challenges beauty a better world overpowering love inspiration instead she writes paperback television trash stupid inadequate answers to solemn questions she wonders if she is too scratched dented to find love her ******* are definitely changing she is deeply disturbed not ready for menopause too young for menopause she wants to remain a fertile woman with smooth skin wet ******

2

her neighbor Leslie awoke to horrible morning Leslie’s 6 chickens were assaulted overnight precious Mabel dragged off feathers everywhere trail down the street other hens cowering slumped together with wilted necks 3 of them with puncture wounds Leslie carried them one by one inside washed their wounds hugged them cried who did this terrible act a neglected abusive neighborhood cat or some desert predator why didn’t Leslie wake to sounds of savage marauding now this creature knows hen’s whereabouts when will it return for more massacre what modifications need to be enforced to ensure their coup before nightfall

3

she wants to remain a hen keep producing eggs does not want is not ready to enter the next **** stage of this **** existence it was fun being pretty for men inspiring them to say do whacky things she wants to remain a hen she is definitely displeased profoundly disappointed in her latest literary attempts “Tucson square dance” (self-referential) ****** bit about Americans came through here last night in “Tucson 3-step” ****** "Rodeo Drive" tepid perhaps the pinot noir lowered her standards everything is becoming nothing she cannot sleep tosses turns thrashes sheets in humid heat of her lonesome bed is she is too scratched dented to find love she worries for Leslie

4

tomorrow is another day they say the rain will come last year’s monsoon never came the baking sun smothered her garden died one by one sleepless she will miss tomorrow’s pilates class the infrequent delightful chatty breakfast afterwards she dreams aches of deeper discourse higher insight with detached humor that only comes from keener intelligence more thoughtful philosophical inquiries about life’s challenges beauty a better world overpowering love inspiration she crossed the line tonight her ******* are definitely changing

Tucson 666

he decides to shave eighth to quarter inch length salt and pepper beard a.k.a. unshaven look he has worn for years and grow full mustache the whiskers on his upper lip are darker with sparse gray at first no one notices after weeks the mustache gradually fills evoking many contrasting remarks several women loath it several men admire it girl at grocery store suggests he grow Fu Manchu so she can tug on it shopgirl says he looks like Charlie Chaplin downstairs neighbor from Turkey explains most Turkish men traditionally wear mustaches he read mustaches masculinize and empower men especially men in authoritative positions he thinks back to the 1960’s when many hippie males grew mustaches then in the 70’s gay men fashioned mustaches then in the 80’s cops adopted mustaches he wonders why a swatch of hair beneath nose is so provoking examines his visage in mirror discerns the mustache confers a Pepé le Pew quality or European accent to his appearance he remembers when he was young hippie with many amorous episodes how his mustache preserved the scent of a woman but there are no women in his life for many years do post-menopausal women possess scent? he feels indecisive whether to retain it or be rid of it

2

she observes her figure in mirror thinks to herself maybe her ******* are not changing perhaps it’s all in her head she inspects the little lines forming near her eyelids studies her features for signs of aging hardly any silver strands in long brown hair she examines neck ******* arms elbows fingers tummy hips pelvic region thighs knees shins calves ankles feet detects subtle changes thinks to herself my ******* are possibly slightly changing turned 40 in March married briefly in late teens no children a 15 year old dog beginning to suffer veterinarian promises to warn her when the time comes she wonders why it is so difficult finding fitting mate men sleep with her several times then move on maybe she is not such a great lover perhaps she would be better if one of them stuck around perhaps she is a lesbian the whole ide
Craig Harrison Jun 2014
Wind blowing, leaves falling
In the woods I am walking
Birds chirping, squirrels digging
Not stopping my mind from wandering

Fashion walks, beach resorts
Nice weather, beautiful people
City breaks, country retreats
Exotic animals, spiders and snakes

Mona Lisa, The last supper
Beautiful art, beautiful mind
Excellent artists are hard to find

Beautiful things everywhere
open your eyes, happiness is right their
Ruby Butcher Jan 2011
It was a windy autumn day, the few leaves that there were left of the tree’s shivered halfheartedly on the lonely branches. The gray sky hung low over the garden, darkening any glimpse of life there was left behind.
I stood behind my mother; she was sat near the window in my bedroom staring out at the bleak scenery, barely moving, barely breathing. She had sat there every day since it happened. Sat there waiting. I took a deep breath, subconsciously she mimicked me; she had a tendency to do that. I always told her that it was annoying, but there was something endearing about her irritating habits that I had never noticed until now.
I stood there watching her for a while in this lonely room, the clock ticked on the wall but apart from that there was silence, the intensity was suffocating. I waited until the clock struck twelve. If it were just any normal day, she would have gone for a walk around the garden. She loved that garden. I think she went there to escape the for a while, to be alone somewhere she was happy, we shared that in common, being alone was often the best part of the day.
As I walked towards the door I pleaded silently for her to follow me, I had done so every day since the incident, but she never followed. She just sat there, with that blank expressionless face, her eyes boring into the skies. I took tiny steps, prolonging every moment she had to decide that she would follow. As I got closer to the door I questioned whether she would ever move from that seat, in my old room. But just as every sign of hope started to fade rapidly I heard a shuffle behind me. I did not look back; I just walked straight on, towards the stairs just as slowly as before. I could hear her feet hit the floor behind me treading lightly over the old noisy floorboards. We walked together through the garden towards the old oak tree near the pond, the vicious wind whipped hair into our eyes, but it was okay because i knew exactly where we were going, i could walk there with a blindfold on.  The garden had looked the same since I could remember, it was big, beautiful, full of flowers. But today it looked empty, dead. The vines on the tree that had once so softly wrapped them selves around it now seemed to strangle and **** all of the life out of it, like this very place had once done so to me.
we stopped at the old oak tree at the bottom of the garden. We stood for a while, staring the the old oak, tracing the outlines of the bark with the tips our her fingers. She followed the tree down with her eyes, just like I hoped she would, and found the dirt pile at the bottom of the tree. she did not even attempt to look for a *****, or anything that might make it easier; she just started grabbing dirt in her hands urgently dashing it aside to dive in for the next handful. I could see the dirt in her finger nails. She carried on digging and digging more and more frantically with every inch of dirt. Her clean beige trousers got ruined, but she did not seem to notice let alone mind. . Suddenly she stopped digging, she had found something, the rustling leaves came to an automatic halt, the clouds stood still, as if frozen.
She carefully dug around the object, lifting it cautiously out of the ground, as if it would explode at any sudden movement. She looked at it with a mangled expression of humor and fear for a few seconds of intensity. It was a box, to be exact it was the box she gave me on my 9th birthday. It was beautiful. It was oval shape, with exquisite details carved into the solid silver exterior. She had instructed me when she had given it to me to only keep my most precious of treasures inside, I was never too fond of jewelry so I kept one thing inside that meant to most to me. She did not open it straight away, she sat down next to the dug up earth, her back leaning against the tree and took in a deep breath. Her trembling fingers opened the box. Inside was two pieces of paper; the first a photograph, our eyes almost identical as we smile together, eternally in the best times of our lives. The second piece of paper was a letter, she lifted it out as cautiously as she had done the box and began to read it....

"I always told you I wanted to fly, all I ever wanted was to carry myself away from this place, take you with me where everything could be okay. But things are not that simple, i do not have wings, so I hope you forgive me as I depart to the place I can truly call home, and I hope you will never blame yourself, but just look forward to the day when we can spend eternity together. Where everything is okay."

She eventually looked up from the paper, her hands still trembling, tears blurred the piercing blue of her eyes. She looked directly through me, for a second i thought she could see me. With tears cascading down her cheeks she smiled, a smile I had not seen for a very long time, and with that I was granted my wings, I could finally fly.
© Ruby Butcher
Jeff Gaines Mar 2018
OK Reader, I'm going to tell you a tale … with great trepidation. You see, this tale, well, it's kind of like telling someone that you've seen a UFO. They want to believe you, but … it's never really been proven scientifically. Not to mention the fact that most folks who believe in such things are often the tin-hat wearing types, written off as … lets be nice and call them “odd”. And, of course, the more you swear to it, the crazier you appear. It's an epic tale, spanning 30 years of my crazy life.

  But, It's a story I want to tell, because it happened to me. I can barely understand it myself, let alone explain it. So … I'm just going to launch into it and you take it any way you wish.

*  *  
Where Can You Be?

Where can you be?
Where can you be, my love?
Oh, can't you see?
You're not with me!

I'll search with gazes and I'll search with cars,
I'll search the cities and I'll search the stars, well …
I'm gonna find you, oh, wherever you are,
I'm gonna find you baby …  near or far, but …

Where can you be?
Where can you be, my love?
Oh, can't you see?
You're not with me!

I thought I'd found ya, but she wasn't you,
that girl she left alone and blue, well …
I know that's something that you'd never do,
your love has always been strong and true, but …

Where can you be?
Where can you be, my love?
Oh, can't you see?
You're not with me!

If you must settle for some other man
and deviate from our immortal plan, well …
I hope you realize I will understand
and I'll try and do the best that I can, but …

Where will I be?
Where will I be, my love?
Hoping the next life sees …
our destiny!


Where can you be?
Where can you be, my love?
Oh, can't you see?
You're not with me!

~Wednesday, April 1st, 1987
10:30 P.M.



  I was singing in a band back in those days and, as it happened, this was the last song I'd ever write for it. Just after this, as it does, it all came crashing down and the band was finished. But in those last days, they pondered this song, with great puzzlement. You see, it was unlike anything I'd brought them before. It wasn't rock … It wasn't a ballad … it wasn't even structured like a “normal” 80's rock song.
  
  No bridge, no solo, no loud grinding guitars, etc. It even had bits where I hummed, yes hummed, the melody, like a lullaby. As they read the lyrics and I described how it went, they all looked at me like I had three heads and asked where this had come from. It was nothing like anything I'd written before. I could only tell them when and where I'd written it, but had no explanation of what inspired it. It had just came to me, so I wrote it down. They didn't know what to make of it, or even what to do with it.

  One of them said it sounded like a late 70's or early 80's adult contemporary song or even in the vein of The Eagles. Another asked if it was about reincarnation … And I honestly, until that moment, hadn't thought of it that way, I didn't think like that at 24 … but then, one of them said it was “Haunting” …

  “Haunting”?

  “Wow”, I thought, I'd never had anything I'd written described as that before. When I asked him what he meant by that, he told me that it was haunting to think that this poor guy is desperately seeking a girl, that may or may not even know that he exists … in a world with billions of people in it. To top that off, he fears that she may off and marry someone else if he doesn't find her in time.

  This, along with the suggestion of it being about reincarnation made me rethink and rewrite the song. Well, a few lines in the last verse and chorus anyways. It actually made the song flow better and seem more complete. In a way, it actually made the song make more sense … to me and them. Sadly, we never did anything with it. There wouldn't be time. Ha … Time … how ironic. Over 10 years later, came this …


For Someone I've Never Met

Please save a place for me,
deep inside your heart.
Always know that I think of you,
as we both practice our arts.

Our worlds are full of temptations,
so very hard to resist …
and the good Lord knows
we're both far from,
sixteen and never been kissed.

Wealthy men with jaws divine …
Temptresses with looks so fine …
Paths that lead our hearts away …
Paths that surely lead astray …

They'll lead us there every time.
They'll leave us there … so  unkind.
Our hearts must shine,
night and day.
Through any darkness … they'll light our way.

If you never touch my face …
If I never look into your eyes …
We'll always have the comfort of sharing
the same
big, blue sky.

If I never smell your hair …
If you never kiss my lips …
Always know the search for your smile
has launched a thousand ships.

So, I hope you save a place for me
in your heart so sweet and kind.
Please, save a place for me …
Heaven knows you've one in mine.

~Thursday, September 9th, 1999
9 A.M.



“For Someone I've Never Met ” poured out of me in the midst of another breakup from the second, and last, girl that I wanted to marry. That emotion, never found me again. I looked at it on my computer screen and smiled, seeing “Where Can You Be”, in my mind, on my tattered old note pad that I called my “Song Book”. The memory of me writing it while sitting in my Z-28, looking out over the Gulf of Mexico as a beautiful heat lighting storm sent bolts across the sky, came flooding back; as did the debate of reincarnation I'd had with my pals in the rehearsal room all those years before. Here I was, again, writing about “someone” that I sensed, for lack of a better term, was out there … somewhere.

  Well Reader, do you believe in reincarnation? I was never really certain, but, as you can see, I had twice written pieces to someone I wasn't completely sure existed. I had always “sensed” someone out there beginning with the period after I wrote “Where Can You Be?” and thereafter. So, there they were, each written after losing someone I was deeply in love with. Each came out of nowhere, as they usually do. By the time I was in my 40's, I began to think I was either imagining it all (a side effect of being a hopeless romantic) or that I had just somehow missed this person and our “moment”.

  And then …



Epiphany

There was a place.
There was a time …
There, I stood … still unknowing
and everything seemed fine.

But there in that place …
at that moment in time …
the moment I saw the eyes,
I'd never believed I'd find.

Well, what could I say?
What could I do?
In a world filled with billions …
and there … was a you.

I'd always known you were out there …
even written of something amiss.
I never, ever stopped looking for you …
because my heart always said you exist.

My breezy Fall became harshest Winter.
My crazy life left my health running out.
I'd resigned myself that our moment had passed …
but this moment … it removed all doubt.

Well, what could I say?
Tell me, what could I do?
There we stood, staring … alone … in a city of millions …
yes, there … there was a you.

Oh, that mistress fate, she is just so cruel.
Frustration, a curse to be mine.
   I'd searched for you my entire life …
but now … my clock … knows a limit of time.

You see, I would never venture a love with you,
while knowing I'd have to leave you … hurt and alone.
I could only admire from afar … stoic and aloof …
while turning my heart into stone.

Nothing I could ever say and nothing I could ever do …
But now, at long last … at least I finally knew.

There, you stood … green seas, gazing up … into skies of blue.
My long-awaited revelation … become sorrow-laced realization.
There really is … a you.

~August 12th, 2009
  

  Typical of my life-long Charlie Brown syndrome … After being told in 2005 that I had “the lungs of an eighty-year-old man” and that I had “Six to Ten years” to live, I made a conscious decision in that Doctor's parking lot that I could never have another girlfriend and that I must face this alone. I don't see woman as objects. They are glorious creatures that are here to be our partners and friends and to make our lives amazing. I could never, ever knowingly let a woman fall in love with me, all the while knowing I was going to die and leave her. It's not in me to do such a thing, lonely or not.

  Yes, I'm still alive, I'm stubborn like that. But, some days are better than others and my new doctors say that they don't give people “time limits” anymore … because of people like me. I can't afford the lung transplant. So, as Bono so aptly put in one of his songs: “The rich stay healthy, while the sick stay poor”. It is what it is … and like the energizer bunny, I'm still going. Good for me.

  In the moment that I met her, the morning that followed, and the amazing speed of our nexus over the next several months combined with a string of synchronicities (Coincidences? Did I mention that she too, was a poet and writer?) that not only came after I met her on the sidewalk in front of the publisher we shared, but in those pieces I had written before and in several after; I was pretty much convinced I had actually found her. I have NEVER experienced anything like this, or her, in my entire life.

  So, after all this time, here she was … and there wasn't a **** thing that I could do about it. Besides, she was much younger than I and it probably would never have worked anyways. ****, the universe is rotten sometimes, huh? Maybe, if I'm lucky, things will balance out better in the next life. I can only hope. But I'm reminded, worryingly so, of the **** The Alarm song: “Collide”:

“All of these thoughts pounding in my head …
with the words I've wrote, in the letters I've never sent.
The distance in our lives may change …
Times that you can never erase …
But will our worlds collide?
Will our worlds collide, the next time?”



  Only time will tell.



  “Colors”, and a few others, were written about/for her. But, I could never show them to her. I would never endanger my friendship with her. I just wanted to keep her in my life. That, and that alone, was the only motive I'd ever had with her. I looked forward to seeing her marry, hearing her stories of her three kid's adventures; Hubby, all greasy, working on the car in the driveway, rabbits in her garden at night, eating her precious organic veggies or even about her new curtains. Just to know that she was alive, happy and doing well. I found a solace in her voice I could never describe and I was completely content to just have her in my life and watch hers unfold. Only I could end up in this odd position.

  I feared that she might get weird-ed out because I'd never displayed any romantic inklings toward her, so, to suddenly read these might make her feel a bit, lets say: uncomfortable. Actually, I didn't write them with any romantic intentions, per se; I just did what I always do … write what comes out. Still, there's no denying that they come across romantic. Again, so, so Charlie Brown. (long sigh)
  
  It is what it is. I also have to ponder the fact that maybe all those Charlie Brown moments in my life were preparing me for this one big, painful one. That does makes sense … ******' Universe.


Colors

Well when you're Green, I'll be your Brown.
Like the earth that loves the flowers,
I'll will be your solid ground.

And I'll be your Azure, when you are Verdigris.
We'll be thee most beautiful ocean
that eyes have ever seen.

And when you're Black, I'll be your White.
Mixing all of the colors … I'll make everything alright.

Now when you're Blue, I'll be you're Red.
If something should make you wanna cry,
I will feel your pain instead.

And I'll be your Orange, whenever you are Pink.
We'll be thee most amazing sunset,
that the sky could ever ink.

And when you're Black, I'll be your White.
I'll mix all of your colors … and make everything alright.

Should you be Violet, I will be your Beige.
Like a sleepy moonlit desert,
pasteled in dunes and sage.

And when you're Grey, I will be your Rainbow.
We'll be thee most soothing rainstorm
the world has ever known.

And when you're Black, I'll be your White.
I'll mix all of your colors … yes, I'll make everything alright.

With love on my palette, painting a glorious sunrise …
I'll color all your mornings with a smile and brighten up your skies.
If you should find yourself in sorrow from someones hate or lies …
I'll take the stars down from the heavens … and paint them in your eyes.

So whenever you are Black, I will always be your White.
I'll mix all your colors with a promise … everything will be alright.

Yes, I'll mix all of your colors with a promise … Everything's gonna be alright.

~  Winter 2012



  I wrote this after she had rang me up one afternoon lamenting about her life at the moment, troubled that her latest novel hadn't done as well as she'd hoped and now she had to be waitressing to make ends meet. I tried my best to cheer her up and assured her that she was strong enough to handle anything and that she must keep chasing her dreams. I wrote it as a poem, but I can't help but notice it looks like a song, though I've never heard music for it. Those repeated verses look just like choruses to me.

  Earlier in the day, I had been looking at a booklet of paint swatches. I guess, up there on my roof looking at the Manhattan skyline, her sadness and me looking at all those colors melted together somehow and, as happens, out came this piece. Even this, became another synchronicity as she would name her next novel “Show Me All Your Colors”. I remember seeing it in the bookstore and looking straight up … shaking my head at the sky. Was this the universe telling me to show and tell her all this?

  Well, if it was, I stuck with my gut and kept it to myself. My God, if you only knew how many of these synchronicities there were between her and I. It simply boggles my mind. I wanted to call them “coincidences”, but there were just so **** many of them … Each so unique, they just couldn't be called that. I don't want to tell them all here, because like I said, the more you swear to it, the crazier you sound. And I'm sure your questioning my sanity by now, aren't you? (Smirk)


  OK, OK … this one is definitely romantic. I wrote it one night, drunk to the bejeezus. I'd done what we called “The Crosstown Crawl” with my pal Tristan and a gaggle of assorted waitresses we knew. This involved starting at Brass Monkey on the west side highway in the Gansevoort District and ending at my favorite hookah bar, Karma, on the Lower East Side … Drinking in, and often being “asked to leave” (Read: Kicked out of) every bar that took our interest as we walked (Read: staggered) west to east, staying below 14th St.

  On my way home from the city on the J train, I thought about all the phone conversations we'd had while I was on this train crossing the Williamsburg Bridge. Being drunk, I guess, I caught a bout of sadness that I'd never get to tell her any of this or even how I felt about it all. Before I hit my elevator, this piece was swimming in my head. It's about as mushy a piece as I've ever written … if not thee most! Not the norm for me, but this is, after all, a lot to keep pent up inside you. I wouldn't wish this predicament on anyone.


For My Little Red-Haired Girl …


You …

My Love.
My Queen.
This Shining Light in my eyes.

My Laughs.
My Dreams.
My Soft, Contented Sighs.

My *****.
My Lavender.
My Dew Covered Rose.

My Smile.
My Cinnamon.
The Joy in my heart … ever inspiring my prose.

My Best Friend.
My Co-Star.
My Fearless Partner in Crime.

My Breath.
My Cohort.
My Side-kick throughout time.

My Snow-capped Mountain.
The Wind caressing my face.
My Vast Green Field.

The Ivy Covered Wall
that harbors my soul … ever refusing to yield.

In a different time ...

You … would have been my Life.

You … would have been my World.

You … would have been my Everything

and I will always love you for my own special reasons.

It is just a shame … and I'm so, so sorry … that you … must never, ever know.

Maybe next time.


~Charlie Brown




   When I came-to in the morning and read what I had wrote, I had to laugh a bit. It is borderline corny, very beautiful, very telling and very sad … all at once. I shook my head, laughing and told myself :

  “*******, Sam … yer losin' it. Get your **** together, will ya?”

  I guess in my stupor, I was imagining what it would have been like to write something for her. I don't know … There it was and I was stuck with it. I almost deleted it, but, my finger wouldn't press the key. As I told you before … I'd NEVER show this to her. She'd probably never speak to me again.

   As a sadder epilogue, that eventually happened. I still don't know why, but we haven't spoken in years. Maybe she sensed this emotion in me and ran away. Or maybe, just maybe … she thought I'd pushed her away somehow … but for whatever reason, we drifted apart. I guess I'll never know.  As you can see by reading this, that was never my intention. But, like I keep reiterating … It is what it is.

  One day, I called her number to catch up and shoot the breeze. I hadn't spoken to her in a few months as she'd been busy promoting her new novel and I didn't want to pester her. But … it was disconnected … I checked my emails … nothing. I'd never been so confused, she just closed me out. I didn't want to bother her. I was sure she had her reasons and if she wanted to reach out to me again, she would. She had my email and my phone number. But, for now … she was gone … and that was that.

  So, what do you think, Reader? Do I get the Tin hat … or a Badge of courage? Am I bat-**** crazy … or just eccentric? I'll leave it up to you to decide, because as I said, this all happened to me and there isn't a thing I can do about any of it. I just had to get it off of my chest. Thanks for letting me vent.

  Wherever she is … she will always mean the world to me. I can see her green eyes if I close my mine and look for them. Sometimes, on occasion, her face haunts my sleep. Still, I like to picture her, kids playing in a sprinkler behind her, digging in her garden, wearing gloves too big for her hands and a smudge of fresh dirt on her cheek … it makes me smile.


-Sam Webster
Brooklyn, New York
2013
OK, you can stop scratching your head. I'm sorry if you feel like I tricked you or was playing a prank … That was not my intention. This piece is experimental writing, of sorts. If you are wondering, it's titled “Somewhere … Out There”. But I didn't want to put a title at the head of the page, as that might have clued you in too early.

I also confess that “Sam” the narrator is, on no uncertain terms, based loosely on myself. But hey, what better way to string you along? Besides, as Stephen King said, you “Write what you know”. As far as I 'm aware, using poetry within a short story like this, or in this manner, has never been done before. Welcome to the future!

It really belongs in my “From Thee Edge” Collection with the rest of my Twilight-Zone-esque short stories. (You can now read some of these fiction short stories here, posted in my "NoPo@HePo" posts, along with some non-fiction essays. I hope you enjoy them.) But, because I pieced together several of my poems to not only tell the story, but as a vehicle to carry it along as part of it; I wanted to put it here on Hello Poetry just to see if I could convince you long enough to get you through the story … while having you believe it was me speaking to you and that it was all very real to me. Thus, making it feel real to you as you read it.

Was I having you along right up until it was signed by someone else? Or, at least until the narrator addressed himself as “Sam”?

If so, then I accomplished my mission. I'd love to hear your comments on it. If you've been reading any of my other posts, I'm sure you've figured out that I like to run wildly outside of the box sometimes. This was just, as I said, an experiment in a different way to tell a story … fiction or otherwise. As always, I hope that I took you on a journey and, more importantly, that you enjoyed it.

~Jeff Gaines
L.A.
(Lower Alabama)
2015
there was a little mole a clever chap was he

he lived underground living wild and free

always digging holes every here and there

leaving lots of hills each and every where.



one day he was digging he heard a funny sound

it was very loud underneath the ground

mole he started digging to see where it could be

then he saw a shrew very stuck was he



the little shrew had fallen down a great big hole

now the shrew was trapped poor little soul

the shrew he started crying teardrops down his face

dont worry said the mole i will free you from this place.



mole began to a dig a tunnel underground

he dug for quite a while till way out had been found

shrew he was so happy he was free once more

he was free again just like he was before





shrew he thanked the mole and went along his way

and from great big holes shrew he stayed away

mole he carried on digging underground

still thinks about the shrew and the way out he had found
I stand on the edge of the mine,
while I wait for my potions to brine,
I mine all day long.
Maybe I’m wrong,
But there could be diamonds right there.
I mine for that blue shine in despair.
Hoping that Iĺl find it here
Trying to be a Musketeer,
I went straight down,
Im looking around,
But no diamonds!
Iĺl never see the horizon
until Iĺl find the shine
It may be the life line.
We all felt like this before. Mining for diamonds, looking for that blue rock. And finally finding them. Even for a pro, you'll always remember that first shine.
I.

One night at the Troubadour I spotted this extraordinary girl.

So I asked who she was.

‘A professional,’

That was my introduction that on a scale of one to ten

there were women who were fifteens—beautiful, bright, witty, and

oh, by the way, they worked.

Once I became aware,

I saw these women everywhere.

And I came to learn that most of them were connected to Alex



II.

She had a printer engrave a calling card

that featured a bird of paradise

borrowed from a Tiffany silver pattern

and,
under it,

Alex’s Aviary,

Beautiful and Exotic birds.



A few were women you’d see lunching at Le Dôme:

pampered arm pieces with expensive tastes

and a hint of a delicious but remote sexuality.

Many more were fresh-faced, athletic, tanned, freckled

the quintessential California girl

That you’d take for sorority queens or future BMW owners.





III.

The mechanism of Alex’s sudden notoriety is byzantine,

as these things always are.

One of her girls took up with a rotter,

the couple had a fight,

he went to the police,

the police had an undercover detective visit

(who just happened to be an attractive woman)

and ask to work for her,

she all but embraced her

—and by April of 1988 the district attorney had enough evidence

to charge her with two counts of pandering

and one of pimping.

For Alex, who is fifty-six

and has a heart condition and diabetes,

the stakes may be high.

A conviction carries the guarantee of incarceration.

For the forces of law and order,

the stakes may be higher.

Alex has let it be known that she will subpoena

every cop she’s ever met to testify at her trial.

And the revelations this might produce

—perhaps that Alex compromised policemen

by making girls available to them,

—perhaps that Alex had a deal with the police to provide information

in exchange for their blind eye to her activities

—could be hugely embarrassing to the police and the district attorney.

For Alex’s socially correct clients and friends,

for the socially correct wives of her clients and friends

and for a handful of movie and television executives

who have no idea they are dating or

married to former Alex girls,

the stakes are highest of all.



IV.

Alex’s black book is said to be a catalogue of
Le Tout Los Angeles.

In her head are the ****** secrets

of many of the city’s most important men,

to say nothing of visiting businessmen and Arab princes.

If she decides to warble,

either at her trial or in a book,

her song will shatter more than glass.





V.

A decade ago, I went to lunch at Ma Maison,

There were supposed to have been ten people there,

but only four came.

One of them was a short woman

who called me a few days later and invited me to lunch.

When I arrived, the table was set for two.

I didn’t know who Alex was or what she did,

but she knew the important facts of my situation:

I was getting divorced from a very wealthy man

and doing the legal work myself

to avail lawyers who wanted to get a big settlement for me.


Occasionally, she said, I get a call for a tall, dark-haired,

slender, flat-chested woman

—and I don’t have any.

It wouldn’t be a frequent thing.

There’d be weekends away, sometimes in Palm Springs,

sometimes in Europe.

The men will be elegant,

you’ll have your own room

—there would be no outward signs of impropriety.

And you’d get $10,000 to $20,000 for a weekend.





VI.

The tall, slender, flat-chested brunette

didn’t think it was right for her.

Alex handed her a business card

and suggested that she think about it.

To her surprise, she did

—for an entire week.

This was 1978, and $20,000 then

was like $40,000 now,

I knew it was hooking,

but Alex had never mentioned ***.



Our whole conversation seemed to be about something else.



VII.

I was born in Manila

to a Spanish-Filipina mother and German father,

and when I was twelve

a Japanese soldier came into our house

with his bayonet pointed at us,

ready to do us in.

He locked us in and set the house on fire.

I haven’t been scared by much since that.



My mother always struck me as goofy,

so I jumped on a bus and ran away,

I got off in Oakland,

saw a help-wanted sign on a parish house,

and went in.

I got $200 a month for taking care of four priests.

I spent all the money on pastries for the parish house.

But I didn’t care.

It felt safe.

And the priests sparked my interest in the domestic arts

—in linen, in crystal.



A new priest arrived.

He was unpleasant,

so on a vacation in Los Angeles I took a pedestrian job,

still a teenager,

married a scientist.

We separated eight years later,

he took our two sons to another state

threatened to keep them if I didn’t agree to a divorce.

Keep them I said and hung up.

It’s not that I don’t have a maternal instinct

—though I don’t,

I just hate to be manipulated.



My second husband,

an alcoholic,

had Frank Sinatra blue eyes, and possibly

—I never knew for sure—

had a big career in the underworld

as a contract killer.

Years before we got serious,

he was going out with a famous L.A. ******,

She and her friends were so elegant

that I started spending time with them in beauty salons.

They were so fancy,

so smart

—and they knew incredible people,

like the millionaire who sat in his suite all day

just writing $5,000 checks to girls.



VIII.

I was a florist.

We got to talking.

She was a madam from England

who wanted to sell her book and go home.

I bought it for $5,000.

My husband thought it was cute.

Now you’re getting your feet wet.

Three months later,

he died.

After eleven years of marriage,

just like that.

And of the names in the book

it turned out

that half of the men were also dead.

When I began the men were old and the women were ugly.



IX.

It was like a lunch party you or I would give,

Great food Alex had cooked herself.

Major giggles with old pals.

And then,

instead of chocolate After Eight,

she served three women After Three



This man has seen a bit of life

beyond Los Angeles,

so I asked him how Alex’s stable

compared with that of Madam Claude,

the legendary Parisian procuress.

Oh, these aren’t at all like Claude’s girls,

A Claude girl was perfectly dressed and multilingual

—you could take her to the opera

and she’d understand it.





He told me that when she was 40

she looked at herself in the mirror

and said

Disgusting.

People over 40

should not have ***.

But She Was Clear That She Never Liked It

even when she was young.

Besides, she saw all the street business

go to the tall,

beautiful girls.

She thought that she never had a chance

competing against them.

Instead,

she would take their money by managing them.





X.

Going to a ****** was not looked down upon then.

It was before the pill;

Girls weren’t giving it away.

Claude specialized in

failed models and actresses,

ones who just missed the cut.

But just because they failed

in those impossible professions

didn’t mean they weren’t beautiful,

fabulous.



Like Avis

in those days,

those girls tried harder.

Her place was off the Champs,

just above a branch of the Rothschild bank, where I had an account.

Once I met her,

I was constantly making withdrawals and heading upstairs.





XI.

We took the lift

and Claude greeted us at the door.

My impression was that of the director

of an haute couture house,

very subdued,

beige and gray, very little makeup.

She took us into a lounge and made us drinks,

Whiskey,

Cognac.

There was no maid.

We made small talk for 15 minutes.

How was the weekend?

What’s the weather like in Deauville?

Then she made the segue. ‘I understand you’d like to see some jeunes filles?’

She always used ‘jeunes filles.’

This was Claude’s polite way of saying 18 to 25.

She left and soon returned

with two very tall

jeunes filles,

One was blonde.

This is Eva from Austria.

She’s here studying painting.

And a brunette,

very different,

but also very fine.

This is Claudia from Germany.

She’s a dancer.

She took the girls back into the apartment and returned by herself.

I gave my English guest first choice.

He picked the blonde.

And wasn’t disappointed.

Each bedroom had its own bidet.

There was some nice

polite conversation, and then



It was slightly formal,

but it was high-quality.

He paid Claude

200 francs,

not to the girls

In 1965, 200 francs was about $40.

Pretty girls on Rue Saint-Denis

could be had for 40 francs

so you can see the premium.

Still, it wasn’t out of reach for mere mortals.

You didn’t have to be J. Paul Getty.





XII.

A lot of them

were models at

Christian Dior

or other couture houses.

She liked Scandinavians.

That was the look then

—cold, tall, perfect.

It was cheap for the quality.

They all used her.

The best people wanted

the best women.

Elementary supply and demand.



XIII.

She had a camp number tattooed on her wrist. I saw it.

She showed it to me and Rubi.

She was proud she had survived.

We talked about the camp for hours.

It was even more fascinating than the girls.



She was Jewish

I’m certain of that.

She was horrified at the Jewish collaborators

at the camp who herded

their fellow Jews

into the gas chambers.

That was the greatest betrayal in her life.



XIV.

She was this sad,

lonely little woman.

Later, Patrick told me who she was.

I was bowled over.

It was like meeting Al Capone.

I met two of the girls

who worked for her.

One was what you would expect

Tall

Blonde

Model.

But the other looked like a Rat

Then one night

she came out

all dressed up,

I didn’t even recognize her.

She was even better than the first girl.

Claude liked to transform women like that.

That was her art.

It was very odd,

my cousin told me.

There was not much furniture

and an awful lot of telephones.

“Allô oui,”



XV.

I had so many lunches

with Claude at Ma Maison

She was vicious.

One day,

Margaux Hemingway,

at the height of her beauty, walked by.

Une bonne

—the French for maid

was how Claude cut her dead.

She reduced

the entire world

to rich men wanting *** and

poor women wanting money.

She’d love to page through Vogue and see someone

and say,

When I met her

she was called

Marlene

and she had a hideous nose

and now she’s a princess.

Or she’d see someone and say

Let’s see if she kisses me or not.

It was like

I made her,

and I can destroy her.

She was obsessed

with “fixing” people

—with Saint Laurent clothes,

with Cartier watches,

with Winston jewels,

with Vuitton luggage,

with plastic surgeons.



XVI.

Her prison number was

888

which was good luck in China

but not in California.

‘Ocho ocho ocho,’ she liked to repeat

Even in jail, she was always working,

always recruiting stunning women.

She had a beautiful Mexican cellmate

and gave her Robert Evans’s number

as the first person she should call

when she was released.



XVII.

Never have *** on the first date.



XVIII.

There will always be prostitution,

The prostitution of misery.

And the prostitution of bourgeois luxury.

They will both go on forever.



“Allô oui,”



It was so exciting to hear a millionaire

or a head of state ask,

in a little boy’s voice,

for the one thing

that only you could provide

It's not how beautiful you are, it's how you relate

--it's mostly dialogue.



She was tiny, blond, perfectly coiffed and Chanel-clad.

The French Woman: The Arab Prince, the Japanese Diplomat, the Greek Tycoon, the C.I.A. Bureau Chief — She Possessed Them All!



XIX.

She was like a slave driver in the American South

Once she took a *******,

the makeover put the girl in debt,

because Claude paid all the bills to

Dior,

Vuitton,

to the hairdressers,

to the doctors,

and the girls had to work to pay them off.

It was ****** indentured servitude.



My Swans.



It reached the point

where if you walked into a room

in London

or Rome

as much as Paris

because the girls were transportable,

and saw a girl who was

better-dressed,

better-looking,

and more distinguished than the others

you presumed

it was a girl from Claude.

It was, without doubt,

the finest *** operation ever run in the history of mankind.



**.

The girl had to be

exactly what was needed

so I had to teach her everything she didn’t know.

I played a little the role of Pygmalion.

There were basic things that absolutely had to be done.

It consisted

at the start

of the physical aspect

“surgical intervention”

to give this way of being

that was different from other girls.

Often they had to be transformed

into dream creatures

because at the start

they were not at all



Often I had to teach them how to dress.

Often they needed help

to repair

what nature had given them

which was not so beautiful.

At first they had to be tall,

with pretty gestures,

good manners.

I had lots of noses done,

chins,

teeth,

*******.

There was a lot to do.



Eight times out of ten

I had to teach them how to behave in society.

There were official dinners, suppers, weekends,

and they needed to have conversation.

I insisted they learn to speak English,

read

certain books.

I interrogated them on what they read.

It wasn’t easy.

Each time something wasn’t working,

I was obliged to say so.



You were very demanding?

I was ferocious.



It’s difficult

to teach a girl how to walk into Maxim’s

without looking

ill at ease

when they’ve never been there,

to go into an airport,

to go to the Ritz,

or the Crillon

or the Dorchester.

To find yourself

in front of a king,

three princes,

four ministers,

and five ambassadors at an official dinner.

There were the wives of those people!

Day after day

one had to explain,

explain again,

start again.

It took about two years.

There would always be a man

who would then say of her,

‘But she’s absolutely exceptional. What is that girl doing here?’ ”





XXI.

A New York publisher who visited

the Palace Hotel

in Saint Moritz

in the early seventies told me,

I met a whole bunch of them there.

They were lovely.

The johns wanted everyone to know who they were.

I remember it being said

Giovanni’s Madame Claude girl is going to be there.

You asked them where they came from and they all said

Neuilly.

Claude liked girls from good families.

More to the point she had invented their backgrounds.



I have known,

because of what I did,

some exceptional and fascinating men.

I’ve known some exceptional women too,

but that was less interesting

because I made them myself.



Ah, this question of the handbag.

You would be amazed by how much dust accumulates.

Or how often women’s shoe heels are scuffed.





XXII.

She would examine their teeth and finally she would make them undress.



That was a difficult moment

When they arrived they were very shy,

a bit frightened.

At the beginning when I take a look,

it’s a question of seeing if the silhouette

and the gestures are pretty.

Then there was a disagreeable moment.

I said,

I’m sorry about this unpleasantness,

but I have to ask you to get undressed,

because I can’t talk about you unless I see you.

Believe me, I was embarrassed,

just as they were,

but it had to be done,

not out of voyeurism, not at all

—I don’t like les dames horizontales.



It was very funny

because there were always two reactions.

A young girl,

very sure of herself,

very beautiful,

très bien,

would say

Yes,

Get up, and get undressed.

There was nothing to hide, everything was perfect.



There were those who

would start timidly

to take off their dress

and I would say

I knew already.

The rest is not sadism, but nearly.

I knew what I was going to find.

I would say,

Maybe you should take off your bra,

and I knew it wasn’t going to be

beautiful.

Because otherwise she would have taken it off easily.

No problem.

There were damages that could be mended.

There were some ******* that could be redone,

some not

Sometimes it can be deceptive,

you know,

you see a pretty girl,

a pretty face,

all elegant and slim,

well dressed,

and when you see her naked

it is a catastrophe.



I could judge their physical qualities,

I could judge if she was pretty, intelligent, and cultivated,

but I didn’t know how she was in bed.

So I had some boys,

good friends,

who told me exactly.

I would ring them up and say,

There’s a new one.

And afterwards they’d ring back and say,

Not bad,

Could be better, or

Nulle.



Or,

on the contrary,

She’s perfect.

And I would sometimes have to tell the girls

what they didn’t know.

A pleasant assignment?

No.

They paid.



XXIII.

Often at the beginning

they had an ami de coeur

in other words,

oh,

a journalist, a photographer, a type like that,

someone in the cinema,

an actor, not very well known.

As time went by

It became difficult

because they didn’t have a lot of time for him.

The fact of physically changing,

becoming prettier,

changing mentally to live with millionaires,

produced a certain imbalance

between them

and the little boyfriend

who had not evolved

and had stayed in his milieu.

At the end of a certain time

she would say,

I’m so much better than him. Why am I with this boy?

And they would break up by themselves.



Remember,

this was instant elevation.

For most of them it was a dream existence,

provided they liked the ***,

and those that didn’t never lasted long.

A lot of the clients were young,

and didn’t treat them like tarts but like someone from their own class.

They would buy you presents,

take you on trips.



XXIV.

For me, *** was something very accessoire

I think after a certain age

there are certain spectacles one should not give to others

Now I have a penchant for solitude.

Love, it’s a complete destroyer,

It’s impossible,

a horror,

l’angoisse.

It’s the only time in my life I was jealous.

I’m not a jealous person, but I was épouvantable.

He was jealous too.

We broke plates over each other’s heads;

we became jealous about each other’s pasts.

I said one day

It’s finished.

Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and say:

Break my legs,

give me scarlet fever,

an attack of TB, but never that.

Not that.



XXV.

I called her into my office

Let us not exaggerate,

I sent her away.

She came back looking for employment,

but was fired again, this time for drugs.

She made menacing phone calls.

Then she arrived at the Rue de Boulainvilliers with a gun.

She shot three bullets

I was dressed in the fashion of Courrèges at this moment

He did very padded things.

I had a padded dress with a little jacket on top.

The bullet

—merci, Monsieur Courrèges

—stuck in the padding.

I was thrown forward onto the telephone.

I had one thought which went through my head:

I will die like Kennedy.

I turned round and put my hand up in a reflex.

The second bullet went through my hand.

I have two dead fingers.

It’s most useful for removing bottle tops.

In the corridor I was saved from the third bullet

because she was very tall

and I am quite petite, so it passed over my head.



XXVI.

There were men

who could decapitate,

****, and bomb their rivals

who would be frightened of me.

I would ask them how was the girl,

and they’d say

Not bad

and then

But I’m not complaining.

I was a little sadistic to them sometimes.

Some women have known powerful men because they’re their lover.

But I’ve known them all.

I had them all

here.



She will take many state secrets with her.



XXVI.

I don’t like ugly people

probably because when I was young

I wasn’t beautiful at all.

I was ugly and I suffered for it,

although not to the point of obsession.

Now that I’m an old woman,

I’m not so bad.

And that’s why

I’ve always been surrounded by people

Who

were

beautiful.

And the best way to have beautiful people around me

was to make them.

I made them very pretty.





XXVII.

I wouldn’t call what Alex gives you

‘advice,’

She spares you Nothing.

She makes a list of what she wants done,

and she really gets into it

I mean, she wants you to get your arms waxed.

She gives you names of people who do good facials.

She tells you what to buy at Neiman Marcus.

She’s put off by anything flashy,

and if you don’t dress conservatively, she’s got no problem telling you,

in front of an audience,

You look like a cheap *****!

I used to wear what I wanted when I went out

then change in the car into a frumpy sweater

when I went to give her the money she’d always go,

Oh, you look beautiful!



Marry your boyfriend,

It’s better than going to prison.

When you go out with her,

she’ll buy you a present; she’s incredibly generous that way.

And she’ll always tell you to save money and get out.

It’s frustrating to her when girls call at the end of the month

and say they need rent money.

She wants to see you do well.





We had a schedule, with cards that indicated a client’s name,

what he liked,

the names of the girls he’d seen,

and how long he’d been with them.

And I only hired girls who had another career

—if my clients had a choice between drop-dead-gorgeous

and beautiful-and-interesting,

they’d tend to take beautiful-and-interesting.

These men wanted to talk.

If they spent two hours with a girl,

they usually spent only five or ten minutes in bed.



I get the feeling that in Los Angeles, men are more concerned with looks.



XXVIII.

That was my big idea

Not to expand the book by aggressive marketing

but to make sure that nobody

mistook my girls for run-of-the-mill hookers.

And I kept my roster fresh.

This was not a business where you peddle your ***,

get exploited,

and then are cast off.

I screen clients. I’ve never sent girls to weirdos.

I let the men know:

no violence,

no costumes,

no fudge-packing.

And I talked to my girls. I’d tell them:

Two and a half years and you’re burned out.

Save your money.

This is like a hangar

—you come in, refuel, and take off.

It’s not a vacation, it’s not a goof.

This buys the singing lessons,

the dancing lessons,

the glossies.

This is to help you pay for what your parents couldn’t provide.

It’s an honorable way station—a lot of stars did this.



XXIX.

To say someone was a Claude girl is an honour, not a slur.



Une femme terrible.

She despised men and women alike.

Men were wallets. Women were holes.



By the 80s,

if you were a brunette,

the sky was the limit.

The Saudis

They’d call for half a dozen of Alex’s finest,

ignore them all evening while they

chatted,

ate,

and played cards,

and then, around midnight,

take the women inside for a fast few minutes of ***.



They’d order women up like pizza.



Since my second husband died,

I only met one man who was right for me,

He was a sheikh.

I visited him in Europe

twenty-eight times

in the five years I knew him

and I never slept with him.

He’d say

I think you fly all the way here just to tease me,

but he introduced me

by phone

to all his powerful friends.

When I was in Los Angeles, he called me twice a day.

That’s why I never went out

he would have been disappointed.



***.

Listen to me

This is a woman’s business.

When a woman does it, it’s fun

there’s a giggle in it

when a man’s involved,

he’s ******,

he’s a ****.

He may know how to keep girls in line,

and he may make money,

but he doesn’t know what I do.

I tell guys: You’re getting a nice girl.

She’s young,

She’s pleasant,

She can do things

she can certainly make love.

She’s not a rocket scientist, but she’s everything else.



The world’s richest and most powerful men, the announcer teased.

An income “in the millions,” said the arresting officer.

Pina Colapinto

A petite call girl,

who once slid between the sheets of royalty,

a green-eyed blonde helped the police get the indictment.

They really dolled her up

She looks great.

Never!

What I told her was: ‘Wash that ******.’





XXXI.

Madam Alex died at 7 p.m.

Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,

where she had been in intensive care after recent open heart surgery

We all held her hand when they took her off the life support

This was the passing of a legend.

Because she was the mother superior of prostitution.

She was one of the richest women on earth.

The world came to her.

She never had to leave the house.

She was like Hugh Hefner in that way.


It's like losing a friend

In all the years we played cat and mouse,

she never once tried to corrupt me.

We had a lot of fun.


To those who knew her

she was as constant

as she was colorful

always ready with a good tidbit of gossip

and a gourmet lunch for two.

She entertained, even after her conviction on pandering charges,

from the comfy depths of her blue four-poster bed at her home near Doheny Drive,

surrounded by knickknacks and meowing cats,

which she fed fresh shrimp from blue china plates.



XXXII.

She stole my business,

my books,

my girls,

my guys.

I had a good run.

My creatures.

Make Mommy happy

Oh! He is the most enchanting cat that I have ever known.



She was, how can I say it,

classy.

When she first hired me

she thought I was too young to take her case.

I was 43.

I'm going to give you some gray hairs by the time this is over.

She was right.





XXXIII.

I was fond of Heidi

But she has a streak that is so vindictive.



If there is pure evil, it is Madame Alex.





XXXIV.

I was born and raised in L.A.

My dad was a famous pediatrician.

When he died, they donated a bench to him at the Griffith Park Observatory.



I think that Heidi wanted to try her wings

pretty early,

and I think that she met some people

who sort of took all her potential

and gave it a sharp turn



She knew nothing.

She was like a little parrot who repeated what she was supposed to say.



Alex and I had a very intense relationship;

I was kind of like the daughter she loved and hated,

so she was abusive and loving at the same time.



Look, I know Madam Alex was great at what she did

but it's like this:

What took her years to build,

I built in one.

The high end is the high end,

and no one has a higher end than me.

In this business, no one steals clients.

There's just better service.



XXXV.

You were not allowed to have long hair

You were not allowed to be too pretty

You were not allowed to wear too much makeup or be too glamorous

Because someone would fall in love with you and take you away.

And then she loses the business



XXXVI.

I was pursued because

come on

in our lifetime,

we will never see another girl of my age

who lived the way I did,

who did what I did so quickly,

I made so many enemies.

Some people had been in this line of business

for their whole lives, 30 or 40 years,

and I came in and cornered the market.

Men don't like that.

Women don't like that.

No one liked it.



I had this spiritual awakening watching an Oprah Winfrey video.

I was doing this 500-hour drug class

and one day the teacher showed us this video,

called something like Make It Happen.

Usually in class I would bring a notebook

and write a letter to my brother or my journal,

but all of a sudden this grabbed my attention

and I understood everything she said.

It hit me and it changed me a lot.

It made me feel,

Accept yourself for who you are.

I saw a deeper meaning in it

but who knows, I might have just been getting my period that day!



XXXVII.

Hello, Gina!

You movie star!

Yes you are!

Gina G!

Hello my friend,

Hello my friend,

Hello my movie star,

Ruby! Ruby Boobie!

Braaawk!

Except so many women say,

Come on, Heidi

you gotta do the brothel for us; don't let us down.

It would be kind of fun opening up an exclusive resort,

and I'll make it really nice,

like the Beverly Hills Hotel

It'll feel private; you'll have your own bungalow.

The only problem out here is the climate—it's so brutal.

Charles Manson was captured a half hour from Pahrump.



I said, Joe! What are you doing?

You gotta get, like,

a garter belt and encase it in something

and write,

This belonged to Suzette Whatever,

who entertained the Flying Tigers during World War II.

Get, like, some weird tools and write,

These were the first abortion tools in the brothel,

you know what I mean?

Just make some **** up!

So I came out here to do some research

And then I realized,

What am I doing?

I'm Heidi Fleiss. I don't need anyone.

I can do this.

When I was doing my research, in three months

I saw land go from 30 thousand an acre

to 50 thousand an acre,

and then it was going for 70K!

It's urban sprawl

—we're only one hour from Las Vegas.

Out here the casinos are only going to get bigger,

prostitution is legal, it's only getting better.





XXXVIII.

The truth is

deep down inside,

I just can't do business with him

He's the type of guy who buys Cup o' Noodles soup for three cents

and makes his hookers buy it back from him for $5.

It's not my style at all.

Who wants to be 75 and facing federal charges?

It was different at my age when I

at least...come on, I lived really well.

I was 22,

25 at the time?

It was fun then, but now I wouldn't want

to deal with all that *******

—the girls and blah blah blah.

But the money was really good.



I would've told someone they were out of their ******* mind

if they'd said in five years I'd be living with all these animals like this.

It's hard-core; how I live;

It's totally a nonfunctional atmosphere for me

It's hard to get anything done because

It’s so time-consuming.

I feel like they're good luck though....

I do feel that if I ever get rid of them,

I will be jinxed and cursed the rest of my life

and nothing I do will ever work again.



Guys kind of are a hindrance to me

Certainly I have no problem getting laid or anything.

But a man is not a priority in my life.

I mean, it's crazy, but I really have fun with my parrots.



XXXIX.

I started a babysitting circle when I wasn't much older than 9

And soon all the parents in the neighborhood

wanted me to watch over their children.

Even then I had an innate business sense.

I started farming out my friends

to meet the demand.

My mother showered me with love and my father,

a pediatrician,

would ask me at the dinner table,

What did you learn today?

I ran my neighborhood.

I just pick up a hustle really easily,

I was a waitress and I met an older guy who looked like Santa Claus.



Alex was a 5' 3" bald-headed Filipina

in a transparent muu muu.

We hit it off.

I didn't know at the time that I was there to pay off the guy's gambling debt.

It's in and out,

over and out.

Do you think some big-time producer

or actor is going to go to the clubs and hustle?



Columbia Pictures executive says:

I haven’t done anything that should cause any concern.

Jeez, it's like the Nixon enemies list.

I hope I'm on it.

If I'm not, it means I must not be big enough

for people to gossip about me.



That's right ladies and gentlemen.

I am an alleged madam and that is a $25 *****!

If you live out here,

you've got to hate people.

You've got to be pretty antisocial

How you gonna come out here with only 86 people?

That's Fred.

He's digging to China.

You look good.

Yeah, you too.

It's coming along here.

Yeah, it is.

I wanted to buy that lot there, but I guess it's gone?

That's mine, man! That's all me.

Really?

I thought there was a lot between us.

No. We're neighbors.



He's a cute guy

He's entertaining.

See, I kind of did do something shady to him.

I thought my property went all the way back

and butted up against his.

But there was one lot between us right there.

He said he was buying it,

but I saw the 'For Sale' sign still up there,

So I went and called the broker and said,

I'm an all-cash buyer.

So I really bought it out from under him.

But he's got plenty of room, and I need the space for my parrots.

Pahrump will always be Pahrump, but Crystal is going to be nice

All you need are four or five fancy houses and it'll flush everyone out

and it'll be a nice area.

They're all kind of weird here, but these people will go.

Like this guy here,

someone needs to **** him.

I was just saying to my dad that these parrots are born to a really ******-up world

He goes, Heidi, no, no; the world is a beautiful garden.

It's just, people are destroying it.

I’m looking into green building options

I don't want anything polluting,

I want a huge auditorium,

but it'll be like a jungle where my birds can really fly!

Where they can really do what they're supposed to do.

There were over 300 birds in there!

That lady,

She ran the exotic-birds department for the Tropicana Hotel,

which is a huge job.

She called me once at 3:30 in the morning

Come over here and help me feed this baby!

Some baby parrot.

And I ran over there in my pajamas

—I knew there was something else wrong

and she was like

Get me my oxygen!

Get me this, get me that.

I called my dad; he was like,

I don't know, honey, you better call the paramedics.

They ended up getting a helicopter.

And they were taking her away

in the wind with her IV and blood and everything

and she goes, Heidi, you take care of my birds.

And she dies the next day.

She was just a super-duper person.



XL.

I relate to the lifestyle she had before,

Now, I'm just a citizen.

I'm clean,

I'm sober,

I'm married,

I work at Wal-Mart.

I'm proud to say I know her. I look into her eyes

and we relate.





I got out in 2000,

so I've been sending her money for seven years

She was…whatever.

Girlfriend?

Yeah, maybe.

But ***, I tried like two times,

and I'm just not gay.

She gets out in about eight or nine months

and I told her I would get her a house.

But nowhere near me.

I didn't touch her,

but I'd be, like...

a funny story:

I told her,

Don't you ever ******* think

about contacting me in the real world.

I'm not a lesbian.

Then about two years ago, I got an e-mail from her,

or she called me and said, 'Google my name.'

So I Googled her name,

and she has this huge company.

Huge!

She won, like, Woman of the Year awards.

So I called her and I go,

Not bad.

She goes, 'Well, I did all that because you called me a loser.'

I go, '****, I should've called you more names

you probably would've found the cure for cancer by now.



XLI.

No person shall be employed by the licensee

who has ever been convicted of

a felony involving moral turpitude

But I qualify,

I mean, big deal, so I'm a convicted felon.

Being in the *** industry, you can't be so squeaky-clean.

You've got to be hustling.

Nighttime is really enchanting here

It's like a whole 'nother world out here, it really is

I’m so far removed from my social life and old surroundings.

Who was it, Oscar Wilde, I think, who said

people can adjust to anything.

I was perfectly adjusted in the penitentiary,

and I was perfectly adjusted to living in a château in France.



We had done those drug addiction shows together

Dr. Drew.

Afterward we were friendly

and he'd call me every now and then.

He'd act like he had his stuff together.

But it was all a lie.

Everything is a lie.

I brought him to a Humane Society event at Paramount Studios last year.

He was just such a mess.

So out of it.

He stole money from my purse.

He's such a drug addict because he's so afraid of being fat.

He liked horse ****, though. He did like horse ****.

This one woman that would have *** with a horse on the internet,

He told me that’s his favorite actress.

Better than Meryl Streep.



XLII.

The cops could see

why these women were taking over trade.

Girls with these looks charged upwards of $500 an hour.

The Russians had undercut them with a bargain rate of $150 an hour.

One thing they are not is lazy.

In the USSR

they grew up with no religion, no morality.

Prostitution is not considered a bad thing.

In fact, it’s considered a great way to make money.

That’s why it’s exploding here.

What we saw was just a tip of the iceberg.

These girls didn’t come over here expecting to be nannies.

They knew exactly what they wanted and what they were getting into.

The madam who organized this raid

was making $4 million a year,

laundered through Russian-owned banks in New York City

These are brutal people.

They are all backstabbers.

They’re entrepreneurs.

They’re looking at $10,000 a month for turning tricks.

For them, that’s the American dream.



XLIII.

If you’re not into something,

don’t be into it

But,

if you want to take some whipped cream,

put it between your toes,

have your dog licking it up and,

at the same time,

have your girlfriend poke you in the eye,

then that’s fine.

That’s a little weird but we shouldn’t judge.



She was my best friend then

and I consider her one of my best friends now,

because when I was going through Riker’s

and everyone abandoned me,

including my boyfriend,

I was hysterical,

crying,

and she was the one that was there.

And, when somebody needed to step up to the plate,

that’s who did, and I have an immense amount of

loyalty, respect, and love for her.

And if she’s going to prison for eight years

—that’s what she’s sentenced for

—I’ll go there,

and I’ll go there every week,

for eight years.

That’s the type of person I am.
Robin Carretti Jul 2018
The sunny time's no old news
She is doing the walking in her
instant replay just pray for her
The Instant "Karma Shoes"

Any or too many Travelers' Advice
       ---    ....   _   _gone.. down
You set your own sunset like a price

A lovely lady bringing out
Her sunset went lower down her
body waves
What's inside us that craves?
It's time for you to figure out
her clues

Like he's the detective

A mind is a terrible thing to waste
Being selective pickier
The colors of the sunset change tricky
Burning heart love can be massive
What lines ahead of both of them
The crimes build like a guild

To run or to paint a lovely stay put
Eyes move the sunset
Like a crystal rock shield
Medieval love don't move
Changes the sun yellow yield
The women so beautiful
as they are to hold
  The King-set the chair or cheer
drinking
International  lip to lip he gets
The waitress jumps in an instant
Him or the hugs of bears or  beers

In her honor the Tapestry
What an artistry pink reds
burnt orange
The Venus of Dynasty

Instant Karma thinks he's
the Genious that prodigy
It will get you in your
boxers inside
Like a top student of biology
Like she's the
instant pudding smooth
To mix movie buff
The network like a NetFlix
She had another brainstorm
That's another flavor
puddling to fix
What are you waiting for?
What a gentleman opening
up her door
The Business workers, metals of hearts
Like steel robotic digging for metal heart
the undertakers tearing words apart
The true pledge leaders and
pitter scatter
heartbreakers
Was better watching the
Dog breeders your watch
Something changed at midnight
Cinderella without her clock

Who are the dreamers waiting for there love the sunset
It hot you don't get it yet? You need to cool off

The chocolate to die for the vanilla we cry for
In an instant, he opens her most dangerous door
Watch your heels clicking time bomb floor

You decide the bet never the ring box set
Lord of the rings we are never ready
at the same time near the sunset

The Dragon Lady like a picnic of flies
Vanilla sky

Dinner at eight Jean Harlow
How did she get into the picture
Don't ask why?

Just mellow transcend the prime
picture yellow
Like wings, you smile the butterfly
Your steps will get you just realize

In his Gucci shoes in the sandals
That sunflower hits her every hour
The instant smile resort
Be a sport, the sunset goes down
Can we change someone's heart
Another bone to throw dog watchers
X-Box you're moving to watch your
weight watchers
Your sunset all blood sweat and
tears beard trimming

The Dalmatian keeps taking your spots

How many times to be outfoxed
That sunset will be my last lick shot
Another heart to repair
Have dignity it's hard to work miracles
Don't fall for Autumn
when its the summertime

Her pink blush you heard it through
the grapevine wine
I heard her through the grapevine
How many times did she want him to be mine?

Sweet Caroline loves her lemonade
Flowers at her stand how lovely
Adds character like a big fun parade
They are  growing how her brain works
losing hope
The trees wake you up the color's alive

She's blooming innocent
until we meet again my sunset after 5
  The first time so instantly I saw her face
Those instant messages you need to feel
to regain consciousness your
skin of a  baby seal

She's the cloud passing her
whip cream delicious
But you have been whiplashed
Love should be clean something
cruel leads to mean

Seeing the change to have perished
The sunset disappears when my love
grows deeper it moves to vanish

But someone plays with your head
like a game *Instant Karma

No time for daydreaming
Like a bundle of cute Pomskies
Part huskies and Pomeranians
The sunset is coming
In the strangest place
You've been backhanded
the card game kingdom

Like a demonic joke
Or going broke life is a
comic book Fandom
I phone ring every day
in June

But your not ready its way too soon
Another instant Karma I Tunes
Miss Apple Jubilee so materialistic
you had me
The tapestry box
Poems of letters paradox
Who is truly the go-getter
Someone is springing like a
change of season
The four seasons love liaisons
For the right reasons
Like a new renovation
Internationally speaking
the whole entire
Sunset lips look divine waiting wet
Please don't dampen her spirit
To Remember September to relive it

The Morning glory Sapphire

Her energy got riveting so cheek razzled
Like the magician lost his love facts
Instant Zazzle Red Riding hood
Looking down going to Grandmas house
But down and out like the sunset of the Gods

How the sunset keeps coming love is more puzzling?*

This is a small figment of your imagination
A small town is divided like division
But the huge love
Came with the Divination
Ruled by the bark and paws mission
Something got caught
Bone to pick near her sunset
They left the love was too much
The camera wasn't set up

The love Men they ran with the box set
of boxers and ruff with
mans best friend their boxer bark
Their home is their bark
Instant Karma this is in our heads, not the wedding bells that are to ring  just relax I don't bite perhaps a French croissant all night something is always crispy and flaky but what about dreamy or to top things off Sunset is not set into your ******* just racing over something this not real
Cynthia Aug 2018
You dig a hole in the ground
You keep digging deep down
So the echo won’t slip
because your goal is to scream
Scream loud
to ease the pain inside
 
The dirt on your hands
is the hurt, the pain
You’ve been carrying around
Somehow you kept holding on
now freedom is what you seek

Fading memories is your dream
But what happens after you scream?

You have been carrying this weight
on your feet
feeling the heat
Blood flowing through your veins

Love turned into hate & trust into fear
So after all are you really at PEACE?

Then…
The battle with your mind begins
Because digging is no longer your escape
Your own fear has captured you in a cage
 
So you write it down on paper
Not in pencil but in pen
Because there are no mistakes
That can be erased
What’s done is done
And your shame cannot be wiped away
 
Once again you fight in the flesh
all you want is peace
And a resting place
Yet you seek no one but yourself.
Have no fear for He is with you
Seek Jesus let him be your escape
The one who fulfills that empty SPACE!
I

Winter is long in this climate
and spring—a matter of a few days
only,—a flower or two picked
from mud or from among wet leaves
or at best against treacherous
bitterness of wind, and sky shining
teasingly, then closing in black
and sudden, with fierce jaws.

     II

March,
           you reminded me of
the pyramids, our pyramids—
stript of the polished stone
that used to guard them!
                                    March,
you are like Fra Angelico
at Fiesole, painting on plaster!

March,
             you are like a band of
young poets that have not learned
the blessedness of warmth
(or have forgotten it).
At any rate—
I am moved to write poetry
for the warmth there is in it
and for the loneliness—
a poem that shall have you
    in it March.

     III

See!
         Ashur-ban-i-pal,
the archer king, on horse-back,
in blue and yellow enamel!
with drawn bow—facing lions
standing on their hind legs,
fangs bared!  his shafts
bristling in their necks!

Sacred bulls—dragons
in embossed brickwork
marching—in four tiers—
along the sacred way to
Nebuchadnezzar’s throne hall!
They shine in the sun,
they that have been marching—
marching under the dust of
ten thousand dirt years.

Now—
they are coming into bloom again!
See them!
marching still, bared by
the storms from my calender
—winds that blow back the sand!
winds that enfilade dirt!
winds that by strange craft
have whipt up a black army
that by pick and shovel
bare a procession to
                               the god, Marduk!

Natives cursing and digging
for pay unearth dragons with
upright tails and sacred bulls
alternately—
                      in four tiers—
lining the way to an old altar!
Natives digging at old walls—
digging me warmth—digging me sweet loneliness
high enamelled walls.

     IV

My second spring—
passed in a monastery
with plaster walls—in Fiesole
on the hill above ‘Florence.
My second spring—painted
a ******—in a blue aureole
sitting on a three-legged stool,
arms crossed—
she is intently serious,
                                  and still
watching an angel
with colored wings
half kneeling before her—
and smiling—the angel’s eyes
holding the eyes of Mary
as a snake’s hold a bird’s.
On the ground there are flowers,
trees are in leaf.

     V

But! now for the battle!
Now for ******—now for the real thing!
My third springtime is approaching!
Winds!
lean, serious as a ******,
seeking, seeking the flowers of March.

Seeking
flowers nowhere to be found,
they twine among the bare branches
in insatiable eagerness—
they whirl up the snow
seeking under it—
they—the winds—snakelike
roar among yellow reeds
seeking flowers—flowers.

I spring among them
seeking one flower
in which to warm myself!

I deride with all the ridicule
of misery—
my own starved misery.

Counter-cutting winds
    strike against me
refreshing their fury!

Come, good, cold fellows!
    Have we no flowers?
Defy then with even more
desperation than ever—being
    lean and frozen!

But though you are lean and frozen—
think of the blue bulls of Babylon.

Fling yourselves upon
    their empty roses—
              cut savagely!

But—
think of the painted monastery
  at Fiesole.
Tabitha Sullivan Sep 2013
I feel like a softball net

Nobody knows how my frame is supposed to go

So they build it up

Then decide it’s not right

They tear me down again

I’m a softball net held to my frame by my friends

But each friend that holds me is fragile

Like an over used rubber band

Their hooks scar me deeply

Friends come and move around

Some break and fall

A piece of me now gone from my frame

While others grow stronger

Hooks digging deeper

While I continue to fall and be refastened

Something else is thrown at me

Drama

Big, small, fast, slow, friends, home, school

They’re the softball that hit my net

Each new drama rips my net just a bit

Or knocks another piece loose

On and on the cycle goes

Frame changing

Net ripping

Hooks digging in and falling out

Rubber bands snapping
ryn Aug 2014
Tell me why it seems like the walls are closing in
Tell me why my hopes they're stretched far and thin
Tell me why my dreams still struggle in this fight
Tell me why every time I draw air but it feels so tight.

Tell me why in this turmoil my heart does wallow
Tell me why lifes' lessons by the heapfuls I choke to swallow
Tell me why I'm somewhat free but then again I am not
Tell me why I really do have but I haven't really got.

Tell me why I try to sleep many a restless night
Tell me why I am so afraid of many a fearful fright
Tell me why I still feel the way I have felt before
Tell me why I ask many questions which leaves me broken and sore.

Tell me why so much emotions run amok within me
Tell me why I look yet I do not really see
Tell me why despondence is back; it's here to haunt
Tell me why such uncertainties always beckons to taunt.

Tell me why I want more but I am quite contented
Tell me why I have to accept the path I've very much resented
Tell me why I already know but I still keep on asking
Tell me why it seems like the reasons are in every way lacking.

Tell me why I feel so happy but in fact I am so sad
Tell me why it all seems unfair but I have to be glad
Tell me why I found love in the most unfortunate circumstance
Tell me why to a mournful tune I am stuck in dance.

Tell me why my heart feels engorged but I can't release it all
Tell me why I am so scared but I would still want to fall
Tell me why I feel you close when you're farther than far
Tell me why it seems incredulous that we share the same star.

Tell me why I long to give you more when I can't this instant
Tell me why I can feel better but I seem so resistant
Tell me why sometimes I look up and curse at my luck
Tell me why I refuse to focus on courage that I really should pluck.

Tell me why I lay in bed dreaming of a place far away
Tell me why I find myself moping more and more each day
Tell me why I chose to be naive and in fate I do give trust
Tell me why time and time again it just gets ground to dust.

Tell me why I feel so beaten and weak when I should be strong
Tell me why I am so familiar in a place I don't belong
Tell me why I have to live with a mask on my face
Tell me why I feel like a marionette strung up by lace.

Tell me why I dug deep when these words make me cry
Tell me why the tears still trickle when my eyes are dry
Tell me why I share this when I know you would feel bad
Tell me why I would even spout the words that make you sad.

Tell me why these painful wounds I didn't choose to lick
Tell me why I didn't let them heal but instead I would pick
Tell me why I feel as though I am quite addicted
Tell me why it seems like I enjoy the dark I've inflicted.

Tell me why sometimes I question, the things you see in me
Tell me why you've said it many times but I don't really see
Tell me why I haven't drifted far when I should've a while ago
The reason is you; because you have chosen to love me.
Alex McQuate May 2018
Great tragedy suffered,
Impossible circumstances conquered,
The warrior walks upon the field flanked path.

The wanderer's armor tells a tale,
Battle scarred and partially rent asunder,
A face of stoicism that hides the haggardness underneath,
Peeking out beneath the mask of a hardened soldier.

The clouds clap ahead, preceded by flashes of light brightly illuminating the world,
Accompanied shortly after by the rainfall.

A trickle becomes a downpour,
The battered individual trudging along as the road becomes a bog of mud and slop,
The message firmly planted within their mind.

Coming upon the dark outline of the castle ahead the warrior picks up pace,
Reflecting upon what would happen to those that the Warrior helped.

The pace is now fueled by a different kind of urgency.

The rain is cold upon the face's of those that it falls on,
The torn edges of metal digging in at places,
Some already wounded and tender,
As the final hilltop between them is crested.

The gates are closed,
And this loyal soldier is for the moment shut out,
A fist is raised,
The declaration of allegiance given,
An angry detailing of the warriors achievements and adventures shouted,
And a challenge of one's path,
Building in anger and fury as the dam finally breaks and gushes forth,
Threatening to shatter the gate and doors to splinters and twisted metal.

A long ago promised gift to be rewarded,
For all the things endured,
Things that could be considered so cruel,
The storm picks up in force until it's akin to that of a hurricane,
As if brought forth by the warrior's grief and pain finally being released,
For the first and only time.

These things ringing out despite the storms roaring wind,
Gathering force,
Perhaps in affirmation of the warrior's words.

After a pause the gate begins to lift,
It's metal screeching,
The doors groaning as they begin to swing outward, and the battered soldier is bathed in light,
Taking the weight from the warrior's shoulders,
As the threshold is finally crossed.
Scott M Reamer Apr 2013
Man life know just set eyes way like young world soul day hunger space mouth earth thoughts ignorance blind things mind knew final moment human creation kind creatures souls high forgotten dream love spoke self existence face holy deep bound think home void say surrender ear forever called held ephemeral red state end shall heed hope edge living waking fall sea wake garden need February thought past wanderer got men page colored tepid terrible **** proudly untitled features point painted faceless box forgot render wild spring splendor  handfuls looking half brain lost torn ancestral  unseen vision inner summer honor mister owned banner save today fear groans wasn't smoke  street fable strange year contrast black years  able pain body spoken word known motion  palpitate reeling nature culture disclaimers  cancer beg attentive frames ****** base profound double remember wholly finger death token  cries continue folk oh fishing form broken true  divides spread ah twas away breathe wait warning hallowed wish closer lens turn eye live  constant current author hung theory dangle  bramble chemical new force changes adderall  anymore giving beneath possess pardon commentaries eternity internal walk reason  long change does idea glimpse consciousness  wandering simply wonder physical dreams war  sleep told rest benign prior begging truth little  2012 born tale crow bowels allegory animal rule  exasperate making horse curse hands ones read  rearrange capture doing command fail awake  aperture seedlings shift steely sir nap spead ****** demons slits clever telling loud spits la-la-di-dah killing slip game reflected nameless ask  lovers rabid bear salivate plunder shameless  famously savior mint rides menthol bully fate traded melodies play misunderstand mammals gentle witless fine utterly savage silt tongue-less  dirt dilutes pure non-sensory taste briefly ravage dismember it''ll shedding ruined curtain  knots offers plot fulfills munificent two-act  relegates boxz bug altruistic wintergreen tossing  callously guise grovels one's singers treachery ashes mid-life mutter fashion parading  ambiguity separatist liars staple steeping neath  guidelines scoffing stitch moans civil wrote  Fictitious undoing fables table effigies serve  sonnets staged remark psalm swoll praise harken  beggar verse bread lines heavily electricity detection snow sack-happy preaching credit  spotted wicked best gravity gun campaign owe  barge choir revelry celebratory satiated sinking  headline pack hound persistently propaganda  gentlemen excluding diminished ******* run idles  occupied levies wolfishly honestly misinformation cuba vehemently dumb grace spectator erasing  toned sage crowded secrets inter-connectivity  loaned prayer hymns grave mistaken magnified  vandals selective jump leak escapes says minister  buckle mass honesty shut tar children's hats  monument doping long-lived electrical ladle  exaggerated cartoons address seconds cool cradle bleak yang's mind-framed hypnotic  walker caps folly treble claim streaks mixtures  swelled interstate elapse teasing spoon mobile  succulent witchcraft borderline fatal 99 temple stacks sups plastics creeps neurotic ills tossed  meek sipping old crack interlock wax alleyway  coughing blown freak clock birthdays societies  slow flashing viscous candy argument toothless  pills cerebral rapt wall bisect lives wheezing  photo kid starter foiled pair saturated self-castrating pre-packed naked uncertainly pill  used came chaos coated reprisal fells wrack  irreverent mirth sickly disinherited proudest  collate wheeze appearance palette disharmony  discontented bastardized emotive bio inhale diction beat spoiled reclamation loudest tempo  totally disembodied matte imperfect shells flat  struck sounding imparts flak origin severance remarked bone walls snared leaflets mocking  hot scripting adjective noun agape seemingly  resistant gawk calamity passage paintings wind  trashcans signings sits cheap makers poetry persist scrap slipping individual talk wonders  leaving questions fold actor fancy parchment  fates engenders flown jaws stripped longer music  sacrifice fakers book boldly frown sigh atop patient hang trade occupation blows spectacular  whispers worthy backward waving certainty danced suppose needn't ‘drawkcab’ second-guessing  boys forget marched motto heads tightly lies two-tone earthbound harp twice turns goodnight  lying ***** internally indiscriminate nickname  drunk convictions myth steep  in-consumption  fitting artist **** universal sick expressions bad  du spell melody big siphon proud learn sprawls song spastic something temperaments utter check  fissures stomp totality blend definitely thrall sing rug voice shade pestilence ties commiserate round devil steady brains emotional certain gate  suckling gates dearth decay weight bounce pound  carrier pangs glass startle contest earthen web  tug pressed air patience flush amassed guest gone apprehension staring empathize captain believe fading in-perceivable deathbed guarder makes surrounds scatter drooling ebb blink cob tome  venom near door lair derision draws host stairs scent parts curiosities spider webbing surprise wares tips stepping ascetics starkness realize picture surroundings dictations grand pillars  deaf limited comparisons greet visual residents  personal settings dismiss alien law stability common earthly shiftless places prelude  understanding mosaic keen trifling embodiments  geared inception whisper visible jowls kiss murky  puddle rank dawn dichotomy single faithful fraying pays tailor veil climb mores pence whim  breath wellspring samara god stony pear  shadows fruiting forebodes moonlit looming  shown passed bog gold wracked faint tongues  noble preachers mirror shifting layered depth  threads jungle narcissus bemused seamstress self-worshiping architect's wore slumber anomalous  opened barren seam lip caustic scene coupled brick gardener's clenches -with forms idle breed  embodied lore starving empathy design illusion  tree coat fabricate lucid mason scatter-all  narrative seeking imbued 16th shivering chemicals 17th 15thrisk improperly dare  deliberate plan purge try brought chapter speed  aide utmost spirit leading intervention felt  recall recent advent sincerity times diary  lackluster piously lasting happy holding hear  stem tasteless whimpers wet spine monstrosity  dripping causes position quite softly claws pallet  answer digging tearing beast satiating circle breaks skips redwoods beckoning rotted hushed  gray lapsing monoliths deities creborus  imbuement hand stroll paradigm rendered chorus shy whispering forest residual tension  surrenders tolerance lull anew sentenced  bearing tide birds dirge divergent rim joined  cogs wood hesitant mist emergent towering offer  awareness confinement inverted faultier stowed  plane sanctified blanketing trusting memory fossil flash twists laden self-indulgent fleeting invitation agony grip shore impetus lingering  crows promise gift union swallowing endless floor supposed ecstasy sensory intent  psychotropic cradling placement interned  jagged connectivity exchange congenial begun  summons singular spiral assumes ambient reciprocates re-entry fruition reached aggregate lifetime limbs birthed instinct  frightening tarry proper entire light  boundaries innocence pursuit ago discover left  youth's unknowing sacred time place meager  simple fact cast ceaseless wide-eyed literal  apparent coincidence create boldness morphed  crooked kempt mere stumble buried shutter fairy  pivotal definitive months worth shear ambition sound required journeyed self-reflections title  facets vague restless intimation gut wanderer's  leap motivate path account boy soon bears faith  question tripped reasons uproot awaited confronted days step heal provocations wisps crushing transcend chronicles instance  directness raw drove occurrence objective-less  real enters slightest confident nondescript  typify  foreshortened interment paradox bitter heart  devoid jeopardy angry sensation confidential guilty arrogance mercy compliance reprieve  vincent deadening factual sign emotion awe  inhibition shackled butterflies absence actual sciences acknowledgement violent stagnant  spiritual American doors roots lack matted fore  gestures society cause streams intensity hair impossible discord lonely hearts resounding  jest  what's flavored pains closed toxic contented  happenstance scientific knowledge yeah  wizardry shaking stifled withdrawn bloom  jitter dreads settle asocial hulton make  predisposed figurative reflections demeanors  wondered affect hulton's projected sense  morning industry arrays ghosts feeling  certainly endomorphic where's partially wrath  passer mornings jovial unease advertized asking  trash onward wished tempers media mentality connect pasts sharp-toothed scramble great colours trial test salvation continually lent  degree secretly subjection social waned  disconnected colors grimly intellectual civilization cash trading baffling particular  digest myths monumental ending seasons winter  repetition introducing agent everlasting  shoulders delivered honestly-- possession funny  continence history unsightly function suffering propulsion profession divulge familiar tugs era  importance capability perpetuation spite inventory words entirety leveling fray insight  date record continues writer getting evermore fellow tongue possessions identical proof accuracy education similar sack admittance  favor unravel conveyance guilt gives beginnings  predicting audacity definition bobby heady eaters frameless learned release stone grandeur sang  speak molds sleeps split built seats people folded  sheer pour evoked playhouse liquid boring  tellers frayed stark walked reality pleas doth  preformed shows beak pride squawks opinions  greatest bold stunning sightings he'd loudly slain  sunk watch legend precipice theater deeper compound commentator civility justly silly sin  reverent seen prophetic moral confounds notion  lacking explain attempt prolific viral estrange proclivity scorn hide blur pious strung eden's  horror cut skin arch cruel twig mother vile  pass lend woods peach shrunken trail man's canopy worn 434 eat warm limb familiar father delete.

You are what your reading lady. Now would you hold this gun?
IV. TO HERMES (582 lines)

(ll. 1-29) Muse, sing of Hermes, the son of Zeus and Maia, lord
of Cyllene and Arcadia rich in flocks, the luck-bringing
messenger of the immortals whom Maia bare, the rich-tressed
nymph, when she was joined in love with Zeus, -- a shy goddess,
for she avoided the company of the blessed gods, and lived within
a deep, shady cave.  There the son of Cronos used to lie with the
rich-tressed nymph, unseen by deathless gods and mortal men, at
dead of night while sweet sleep should hold white-armed Hera
fast.  And when the purpose of great Zeus was fixed in heaven,
she was delivered and a notable thing was come to pass.  For then
she bare a son, of many shifts, blandly cunning, a robber, a
cattle driver, a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night, a thief
at the gates, one who was soon to show forth wonderful deeds
among the deathless gods.  Born with the dawning, at mid-day he
played on the lyre, and in the evening he stole the cattle of
far-shooting Apollo on the fourth day of the month; for on that
day queenly Maia bare him.  So soon as he had leaped from his
mother's heavenly womb, he lay not long waiting in his holy
cradle, but he sprang up and sought the oxen of Apollo.  But as
he stepped over the threshold of the high-roofed cave, he found a
tortoise there and gained endless delight.  For it was Hermes who
first made the tortoise a singer.  The creature fell in his way
at the courtyard gate, where it was feeding on the rich grass
before the dwelling, waddling along.  When be saw it, the luck-
bringing son of Zeus laughed and said:

(ll. 30-38) 'An omen of great luck for me so soon!  I do not
slight it.  Hail, comrade of the feast, lovely in shape, sounding
at the dance!  With joy I meet you!  Where got you that rich gaud
for covering, that spangled shell -- a tortoise living in the
mountains?  But I will take and carry you within: you shall help
me and I will do you no disgrace, though first of all you must
profit me.  It is better to be at home: harm may come out of
doors.  Living, you shall be a spell against mischievous
witchcraft (13); but if you die, then you shall make sweetest
song.

(ll. 39-61) Thus speaking, he took up the tortoise in both hands
and went back into the house carrying his charming toy.  Then he
cut off its limbs and scooped out the marrow of the mountain-
tortoise with a scoop of grey iron.  As a swift thought darts
through the heart of a man when thronging cares haunt him, or as
bright glances flash from the eye, so glorious Hermes planned
both thought and deed at once.  He cut stalks of reed to measure
and fixed them, fastening their ends across the back and through
the shell of the tortoise, and then stretched ox hide all over it
by his skill.  Also he put in the horns and fitted a cross-piece
upon the two of them, and stretched seven strings of sheep-gut.
But when he had made it he proved each string in turn with the
key, as he held the lovely thing.  At the touch of his hand it
sounded marvellously; and, as he tried it, the god sang sweet
random snatches, even as youths bandy taunts at festivals.  He
sang of Zeus the son of Cronos and neat-shod Maia, the converse
which they had before in the comradeship of love, telling all the
glorious tale of his own begetting.  He celebrated, too, the
handmaids of the nymph, and her bright home, and the tripods all
about the house, and the abundant cauldrons.

(ll. 62-67) But while he was singing of all these, his heart was
bent on other matters.  And he took the hollow lyre and laid it
in his sacred cradle, and sprang from the sweet-smelling hall to
a watch-place, pondering sheet trickery in his heart -- deeds
such as knavish folk pursue in the dark night-time; for he longed
to taste flesh.

(ll. 68-86) The Sun was going down beneath the earth towards
Ocean with his horses and chariot when Hermes came hurrying to
the shadowy mountains of Pieria, where the divine cattle of the
blessed gods had their steads and grazed the pleasant, unmown
meadows.  Of these the Son of Maia, the sharp-eyed slayer of
Argus then cut off from the herd fifty loud-lowing kine, and
drove them straggling-wise across a sandy place, turning their
hoof-prints aside.  Also, he bethought him of a crafty ruse and
reversed the marks of their hoofs, making the front behind and
the hind before, while he himself walked the other way (14).
Then he wove sandals with wicker-work by the sand of the sea,
wonderful things, unthought of, unimagined; for he mixed together
tamarisk and myrtle-twigs, fastening together an armful of their
fresh, young wood, and tied them, leaves and all securely under
his feet as light sandals.  The brushwood the glorious Slayer of
Argus plucked in Pieria as he was preparing for his journey,
making shift (15) as one making haste for a long journey.

(ll. 87-89) But an old man tilling his flowering vineyard saw him
as he was hurrying down the plain through grassy Onchestus.  So
the Son of Maia began and said to him:

(ll. 90-93) 'Old man, digging about your vines with bowed
shoulders, surely you shall have much wine when all these bear
fruit, if you obey me and strictly remember not to have seen what
you have seen, and not to have heard what you have heard, and to
keep silent when nothing of your own is harmed.'

(ll. 94-114) When he had said this much, he hurried the strong
cattle on together: through many shadowy mountains and echoing
gorges and flowery plains glorious Hermes drove them.  And now
the divine night, his dark ally, was mostly passed, and dawn that
sets folk to work was quickly coming on, while bright Selene,
daughter of the lord Pallas, Megamedes' son, had just climbed her
watch-post, when the strong Son of Zeus drove the wide-browed
cattle of Phoebus Apollo to the river Alpheus.  And they came
unwearied to the high-roofed byres and the drinking-troughs that
were before the noble meadow.  Then, after he had well-fed the
loud-bellowing cattle with fodder and driven them into the byre,
close-packed and chewing lotus and began to seek the art of fire.

He chose a stout laurel branch and trimmed it with the knife....
((LACUNA)) (16)
....held firmly in his hand: and the hot smoke rose up.  For it
was Hermes who first invented fire-sticks and fire.  Next he took
many dried sticks and piled them thick and plenty in a sunken
trench: and flame began to glow, spreading afar the blast of
fierce-burning fire.

(ll. 115-137) And while the strength of glorious Hephaestus was
beginning to kindle the fire, he dragged out two lowing, horned
cows close to the fire; for great strength was with him.  He
threw them both panting upon their backs on the ground, and
rolled them on their sides, bending their necks over (17), and
pierced their vital chord.  Then he went on from task to task:
first he cut up the rich, fatted meat, and pierced it with wooden
spits, and roasted flesh and the honourable chine and the paunch
full of dark blood all together.  He laid them there upon the
ground, and spread out the hides on a rugged rock: and so they
are still there many ages afterwards, a long, long time after all
this, and are continually (18).  Next glad-hearted Hermes dragged
the rich meats he had prepared and put them on a smooth, flat
stone, and divided them into twelve portions distributed by lot,
making each portion wholly honourable.  Then glorious Hermes
longed for the sacrificial meat, for the sweet savour wearied
him, god though he was; nevertheless his proud heart was not
prevailed upon to devour the flesh, although he greatly desired
(19).  But he put away the fat and all the flesh in the high-
roofed byre, placing them high up to be a token of his youthful
theft.  And after that he gathered dry sticks and utterly
destroyed with fire all the hoofs and all the heads.

(ll. 138-154) And when the god had duly finished all, he threw
his sandals into deep-eddying Alpheus, and quenched the embers,
covering the black ashes with sand, and so spent the night while
Selene's soft light shone down.  Then the god went straight back
again at dawn to the bright crests of Cyllene, and no one met him
on the long journey either of the blessed gods or mortal men, nor
did any dog bark.  And luck-bringing Hermes, the son of Zeus,
passed edgeways through the key-hole of the hall like the autumn
breeze, even as mist: straight through the cave he went and came
to the rich inner chamber, walking softly, and making no noise as
one might upon the floor.  Then glorious Hermes went hurriedly to
his cradle, wrapping his swaddling clothes about his shoulders as
though he were a feeble babe, and lay playing with the covering
about his knees; but at his left hand he kept close his sweet
lyre.

(ll. 155-161) But the god did not pass unseen by the goddess his
mother; but she said to him: 'How now, you rogue!  Whence come
you back so at night-time, you that wear shamelessness as a
garment?  And now I surely believe the son of Leto will soon have
you forth out of doors with unbreakable cords about your ribs, or
you will live a rogue's life in the glens robbing by whiles.  Go
to, then; your father got you to be a great worry to mortal men
and deathless gods.'

(ll. 162-181) Then Hermes answered her with crafty words:
'Mother, why do you seek to frighten me like a feeble child whose
heart knows few words of blame, a fearful babe that fears its
mother's scolding?  Nay, but I will try whatever plan is best,
and so feed myself and you continually.  We will not be content
to remain here, as you bid, alone of all the gods unfee'd with
offerings and prayers.  Better to live in fellowship with the
deathless gods continually, rich, wealthy, and enjoying stories
of grain, than to sit always in a gloomy cave: and, as regards
honour, I too will enter upon the rite that Apollo has.  If my
father will not give it to me, I will seek -- and I am able -- to
be a prince of robbers.  And if Leto's most glorious son shall
seek me out, I think another and a greater loss will befall him.
For I will go to Pytho to break into his great house, and will
plunder therefrom splendid tripods, and cauldrons, and gold, and
plenty of bright iron, and much apparel; and you shall see it if
you will.'

(ll. 182-189) With such words they spoke together, the son of
Zeus who holds the aegis, and the lady Maia.  Now Eros the early
born was rising from deep-flowing Ocean, bringing light to men,
when Apollo, as he went, came to Onchestus, the lovely grove and
sacred place of the loud-roaring Holder of the Earth.  There he
found an old man grazing his beast along the pathway from his
court-yard fence, and the all-glorious Son of Leto began and said
to him.

(ll. 190-200) 'Old man, weeder (20) of grassy Onchestus, I am
come here from Pieria seeking cattle, cows all of them, all with
curving horns, from my herd.  The black bull was grazing alone
away from the rest, but fierce-eyed hounds followed the cows,
four of them, all of one mind, like men.  These were left behind,
the dogs and the bull -- which is great marvel; but the cows
strayed out of the soft meadow, away from the pasture when the
sun was just going down.  Now tell me this, old man born long
ago: have you seen one passing along behind those cows?'

(ll. 201-211) Then the old man answered him and said: 'My son, it
is hard to tell all that one's eyes see; for many wayfarers pass
to and fro this way, some bent on much evil, and some on good: it
is difficult to know each one.  However, I was digging about my
plot of vineyard all day long until the sun went down, and I
thought, good sir, but I do not know for certain, that I marked a
child, whoever the child was, that followed long-horned cattle --
an infant who had a staff and kept walking from side to side: he
was driving them backwards way, with their heads toward him.'

(ll. 212-218) So said the old man.  And when Apollo heard this
report, he went yet more quickly on his way, and presently,
seeing a long-winged bird, he knew at once by that omen that
thief was the child of Zeus the son of Cronos.  So the lord
Apollo, son of Zeus, hurried on to goodly Pylos seeking his
shambling oxen, and he had his broad shoulders covered with a
dark cloud.  But when the Far-Shooter perceived the tracks, he
cried:

(ll. 219-226) 'Oh, oh!  Truly this is a great marvel that my eyes
behold!  These are indeed the tracks of straight-horned oxen, but
they are turned backwards towards the flowery meadow.  But these
others are not the footprints of man or woman or grey wolves or
bears or lions, nor do I think they are the tracks of a rough-
maned Centaur -- whoever it be that with swift feet makes such
monstrous footprints; wonderful are the tracks on this side of
the way, but yet more wonderfully are those on that.'

(ll. 227-234) When he had so said, the lord Apollo, the Son of
Zeus hastened on and came to the forest-clad mountain of Cyllene
and the deep-shadowed cave in the rock where the divine nymph
brought forth the child of Zeus who is the son of Cronos.  A
sweet odour spread over the lovely hill, and many thin-shanked
sheep were grazing on the grass.  Then far-shooting Apollo
himself stepped down in haste over the stone threshold into the
dusky cave.

(ll. 235-253) Now when the Son of Zeus and Maia saw Apollo in a
rage about his cattle, he snuggled down in his fragrant
swaddling-clothes; and as wood-ash covers over the deep embers of
tree-stumps, so Hermes cuddled himself up when he saw the Far-
Shooter.  He squeezed head and hands and feet together in a small
space, like a new born child seeking sweet sleep, though in truth
he was wide awake, and he kept his lyre under his armpit.  But
the Son of Leto was aware and failed not to perceive the
beautiful mountain-nymph and her dear son, albeit a little child
and swathed so craftily.  He peered in ever corner of the great
dwelling and, taking a bright key, he opened three closets full
of nectar and lovely ambrosia.  And much gold and silver was
stored in them, and many garments of the nymph, some purple and
some silvery white, such as are kept in the sacred houses of the
blessed gods.  Then, after the Son of Leto had searched out the
recesses of the great house, he spake to glorious Hermes:

(ll. 254-259) 'Child, lying in the cradle, make haste and tell me
of my cattle, or we two will soon fall out angrily.  For I will
take and cast you into dusty Tartarus and awful hopeless
darkness, and neither your mother nor your father shall free you
or bring you up again to the light, but you will wander under the
earth and be the leader amongst little folk.' (21)

(ll. 260-277) Then Hermes answered him with crafty words: 'Son of
Leto, what harsh words are these you have spoken?  And is it
cattle of the field you are come here to seek?  I have not seen
them: I have not heard of them: no one has told me of them.  I
cannot give news of them, nor win the reward for news.  Am I like
a cattle-liter, a stalwart person?  This is no task for me:
rather I care for other things: I care for sleep, and milk of my
mother's breast, and wrappings round my shoulders, and warm
baths.  Let no one hear the cause of this dispute; for this would
be a great marvel indeed among the deathless gods, that a child
newly born should pass in through the forepart of the house with
cattle of the field: herein you speak extravagantly.  I was born
yesterday, and my feet are soft and the ground beneath is rough;
nevertheless, if you will have it so, I will swear a great oath
by my father's head and vow that neither am I guilty myself,
neither have I seen any other who stole your cows -- whatever
cows may be; for I
N’díídá!
Wake up, wake up…my son.
Hogan seeing east, great sun greets.
Brave piercing cold, Brave bleeding heat.
Set rezilient mind, see battles won.
Brave flinted rocks, brave metaled beats.
See painful pasts, set your feet lil’ one.

Náás diiná
Walk forward, walk forward…lil’ man.
Look through clouds, look over mountains.
Brave the liquor, Brave the drugs.
Bend blinded minds, see lies to “amen’s”.
Brave minds blinded, brave coward tugs.
Hear the peoples past, set your legs lil’ one

Holzishdę́ díníí’
Look to pasts, look to pasts…fighter young.
Smile sacred stories, smile given songs.
Brave severed cuts, Brave suicidal triggers.
Laugh at tears run, let fierce anger rung.
Brave the useless, brave the claimers.
Sing the creation past, set your fists lil’ one.

T'áá Yedigo Yániłtxi’
Speak up, stand up…my grown spear.
Surprise the eagle, overpower the bear.
Brave the gods, Brave the fearful.
Embrace the night, prepare the gear.
Brave the genocide, Brave the brainwashed.
Break the path, keep slaying their fear.

Keep digging…keep digging pillars of braves.
“It really is,” I whispered, “It really is a beautiful world."


     “This really doesn’t feel safe,” Jamie said, her voice holding just a hint of fear. She was probably right. By anyone’s standards, this was straight up stupid, and here I had convinced her to come along with me.
     “Nah it’s totally fine. I wouldn’t do anything to put you in too much danger.” I said this without a hint of doubt in my voice, confident as usual. I had to keep the fearless and confident image or she might change her mind. I hoped the risk would be worth it in the end, but I couldn’t really be sure. How could I know unless I tried? If I didn’t try, I would just be left wondering how great it might have been.
     “We are really freaking high.” This time Jamie said it deadpan, more of an emotionless observation than anything else. Again, she was right. I looked down the long white ladder past her. It was probably 80 yards to the ground from where we were. Above us was another 20 yards of ladder, leading up to a narrow platform. We were climbing a water tower. The platform above us circled around the tower just below where it began to bulge outward into a spherical shape at the top. There was no safety cage around us, nothing to break our fall except for the climbing harnesses we wore. Each harness had two straps, each with a clip on the end. One clip would be snapped onto the first rung, then the next clip to the second, and so forth until we reached the top. It wasn’t fool proof but it was better than nothing.
     “But seriously my hands are getting tired. How much further is it?” Jamie was great, but complaining was one of her most annoying flaws. Most people wouldn’t have made it this far anyway. The fact that she had was just a testament to the athleticism and strength she had underneath all that complaining.
     “Close. Maybe fifty rungs. Hang on for another five minutes and we can sit down and rest.” Yet again she was right. My hands and forearms were burning like crazy. I had long ago learned that climbing with gloves on a slick painted surface was asking for trouble, so today we had no protection from the narrow rungs pressing into our skin.
     For the next fifty rungs, the only sound I could hear above my heavy breathing was the clink and snap as each clip was removed and replaced. It was surprisingly calm this evening, the sun not quite finished slipping below the horizon. It was late August, so the temperature was still somewhere in the 70s this time of day. The backpack on my back seemed to get heavier and heavier the higher we went. I could feel the straps digging into my shoulders and trying to tip me over backwards. This bag was far too big for what I was doing, but I needed some way to bring a sleeping bag and blanket up. Finally, my hand left the last rung and found the top of the steel platform. I unclipped from the last rung and snapped on to the hand rail that went around the outside edge before I reached down to take Jamie’s hand.
     “Thank you sir,” she said, “I see chivalry is not dead.” Her hand brushed a few loose strands of long blonde hair out of her face as she stood upright next to me, looking out over the edge.
     “Ok, you were right. This is worth it.” She said in a matter of fact tone. I laughed softly.
     “This isn’t actually what we came for,” I said with a grin, “We aren’t done climbing yet. I just didn’t think you would actually come if I told you how far we were going. But the view is really nice here.”
     “You can’t be serious. I didn’t see anything going up any further.” She sounded rather incredulous.
     “We have to follow this platform around to the other side. There is a set of stairs going up to the very top. At least it isn’t another ladder.” I tried to sound confident, like it had already been decided that we would go on, but I couldn’t stop a tiny bit of a pleading tone from leaking in. I knew there was a small chance that she would want to stop here, but I also knew that going just a bit further would be completely worth it. I had scoped this tower out from the ground several times, using my trusty binoculars that I bargained for at a neighbor’s yard sale. When I discovered the stairs going up past the platform, I used an online satellite map to take a peek at the very top of the tower. From what I had been able to tell, at the very top there was a completely level platform, twelve to fifteen feet in diameter, with a secure looking rail around it. Amazing what a person can find online.
     My hope was to spend the night on that platform, hence the sleeping bag and blanket in my massive backpack. Tonight was supposed to be the brightest and most active meteor shower of the year in North America and the weather had decided to be kind to us star gazers, leaving a clear and cloudless sky for the evening. It would be perfect. Perfect if Jamie would go along with it, that is.
     “You are the worst kind of person,” she said. She wasn’t facing me so I couldn’t really tell how she felt about it. Finally she turned around and rolled her eyes. “Ohhhkaaaay. Let’s go. We’ve already gone this far.” She was used to situations like this. I was the one who always wanted to push the limits, go a little further, risk just a bit more, and she was the one who always asked me to reconsider and then went along with it anyway. I always felt bad for a little while, but I got over it pretty quick. It’s not like she didn’t know me well.
     “You are the best kind of person,” I said with a wink and a grin, “But let’s rest for a bit. My arms are tired now.” We sat down and I took off my backpack, setting it on the platform beside me, digging through a side pocket. I pulled out two bottles of water and a box of Poptarts.
     “Poptart?” I offered, “Snack of champions. All the professional water tower climbers eat them I heard.”
     “How are you not fat,” she replied, taking a delicious cherry snack from the silver wrapper. It wasn’t a question really, it was more a running joke between her and I about how much I should actually weigh. She’d usually joke that one day all the junk I eat would hit me at once and I would wake up weighing 400 pounds. Even though she joked, she wasn’t beyond being bitter about my eating habits since she worked hard to keep a perfect physique.
     Next I pulled out two plain white pieces of paper and handed one to her. I began folding mine delicately into the perfect paper airplane, using the flat section of the water tower for some of the more delicate creases.
     “I don’t know why I hang out with you. You are literally so freaking weird. Like who the hell would bring paper up the side of a water tower just to make a paper airplane.” She laughed even as she criticized. I knew she didn’t really mind. She had on multiple occasions told me that my “quirkiness” as she put it definitely made me more interesting to be around. I guess I was a little odd, but I didn’t really think that was a bad thing. I did what I thought to be amusing or entertaining. It wasn’t my fault the rest of the world didn’t seem to feel quite the same way about life.
     “In fifty years don’t you want to be able to set your grandchild on your lap and tell them all about the time you tossed a paper airplane off the side of a water tower? Grandkids don’t want to hear boring stories. I would know. I was a grandkid once.” Jamie just shook her head with a grin and started folding her airplane. Mine was finished and ready to be launched into the great unknown.
     “This is Air Farce One to ground station Loser, requesting permission to take off.” I did my best Top Gun impression, trying to remember how cool Tom Cruise sounded when he said it.
     “This is ground station Awesome to Air Farce One. Ground station Loser could not be located but we can go ahead and give you permission to launch. Have a nice flight.” Jamie still had at least a little bit of a child left in her. I tossed my paper airplane over the side, watching it glide several hundred yards before landing in the low branches of a tree. Mission complete.
     “What perfect throwing form you have,” Jamie said sarcastically, "You were probably one of those nerds who just made paper airplanes in class all day as a kid." Ouch. Yea, that had been me. Jamie wound up and threw her airplane with all her strength. She had made more of a dart than a glider and it flew fast, eventually landing in a tree considerably further than mine had.
     “You win this round,” I said with mock disgust, only barely able to hide a smile, “Let’s keep going.” I removed my clips from the rail and began walking along the platform. The bulb at the top of the tower was much bigger than it looked from the ground. I could just imagine the thousands of gallons of water above and beside me.
     Eventually we reached the stairs. It was nice of the designers to have taken pity on the poor inspectors who had to climb this far up. A ladder going around the outside of the bulb would have been terrifying. The stairs curling around the side felt much more secure. Reaching the top, there was a narrow platform leading from the edge of the bulb where the stairs ended to the flat space in the center of the tower. There was only a handrail on the left side so Jamie and I were sure to snap our harnesses on. The sun had almost fully set by now, the last tendrils of light just enough to see by as we made our way to the center.
     “Okay this is cool. You know what we should have done? We totally should have brought an air mattress up here and slept or something,” Jamie thought aloud. “I’ll bet the stars look amazing from here. Oh and look you can already see the city lights over there!” I loved seeing her excited. She would take one hand and play with her hair while the other would point at things. It was kind of weird when I thought about it, how she always pointed at things when she was excited. But that was just Jamie being Jamie.
     “You read my mind.” I pulled the sleeping bag and blanket out of the backpack and laid them on the flat steel. I probably should have realized how cold that steel was going to be. Oh well.
     “We are so in sync right now,” Jamie laughed. “This is awesome. You were right.”
     “Wait so what did you think was in the bag?” I asked. She hadn’t mentioned it before and I never said anything about it.
     “Honestly I thought it was a parachute or some **** and you were going to try jumping off the edge,” she laughed, “I would have tried to stop you but I decided I really won’t feel guilty when you die doing something stupid.”
     “Brilliant!” I exclaimed, “I am so going to try that next time!” I wouldn’t really. I liked doing risky things, but I wasn’t suicidal. We spent the next few minutes getting the sleeping bag and blanket situated. I loved the fact that Jamie could be spontaneous sometimes and that she was totally okay with just camping out on top of a random water tower on a Wednesday night. How many people in the world would have been okay with that? I was lucky to have her as a friend.
     We had everything settled by the time darkness fell completely. The climbing harnesses had been stuffed into the backpack and the backpack had been strapped to the railing on the side of the platform. With the sleeping bag laid completely open, there was still at least five or six feet of open platform on all sides of us. It felt secure enough.
     “I also forgot to mention that tonight is a huge meteor shower.” Jamie and I were on our backs, looking up at the infinite blackness.
     “I love shooting stars.” She said softly. Her eyes were wide and I could see her making fake mustaches out of her hair. She had kicked off her shoes and socks and was wiggling her toes in the night air. There was only a sliver of moon, just bright enough that I could see the glow of it on her cheeks.
     “It makes me feel small,” Jamie whispered, “I feel like that should bother me, feeling small, but it doesn’t. It’s weird because it’s almost comforting to me. Here I am, this tiny speck of dust, floating around on a larger speck of dust in the middle of infinity.” She wasn’t usually one to enjoy philosophy, but on the rare occasions she spoke like that, her point of view and opinions usually inspired me. She had a beautiful mind. She just didn’t often care to open up and share it like this.
“It makes me feel like it can’t all be an accident. Some people say that we got here through a series of random and fortunate events, that there is no great plan or design. But I just don’t see how that can be. How can mere chance create something like this? Of all the possibilities, of the infinite infinite possibilities, I just can’t believe that people, that you and I or anyone else were put here by accident. I don’t think that life could be an accident.” She spoke softly the whole time. Her voice never raised or quickened. Words seemed to flow forth effortlessly, as if this all were prepared and practiced. She was able to speak without doubt or hesitation, with such certainty that even the greatest cynic might have stopped to listen.
     She continued on, weaving words as though spells, playing ideas as though harp strings. She talked about her life, telling me things she never had before, teaching me things even I didn’t know. Jamie didn’t seem to be Jamie for the next while. Instead, she seemed to have become a font of wisdom, ideas, and genius. At least, that is how I saw her. She was able to take a single idea, and examine it from all perspectives. It was as though she held it in her palm, slowly rotating it to peer closer. She made connections that I had never thought of, inspiring me to think even deeper, loving the moment. All the while she lay there, watching the stars, wiggling her toes, and making pretend mustaches out of that long blonde hair. Eventually, she turned silent.
     “But what if it is an accident?” I said. My voice was unusually soft. “What if it was all an accident? What if there is no plan, no fate, and no reason for anything? What if there is no beginning or end and we are just insignificant bits of space dust? The idea of it not being an accident just seems so conveniently comforting, almost too convenient.” Jamie was silent after I finished. My heart was beating fast and my mind was alive. I didn’t feel close to being tired.
     “So what if it is,” she said eventually, “What difference does it make? Even if it is all an accident. Even if there is no meaning to life at all, it seems like a beautiful accident to me. Here we are, you and I, able to share this with each other. That seems like a beautiful accident to me. Here is this great big world, all the adventure, all the excitement, and all the love that it is filled with. That seems like a beautiful accident to me. Here is this infinitely huge sky, filled with stars that are incomprehensibly far away. If this is all an accident, it is the most beautiful I can imagine.” She paused for a while longer. “I feel that whatever you believe, it doesn’t really matter. Perhaps you believe there is a supreme design and plan, or maybe you believe that life is an accident filled with chaos. It doesn’t matter. We all live in the same world. We all see the same beautiful sights, we are surrounded by it. It is only our perception of it that differs. I choose to believe that such an incredibly beautiful world cannot be an accident.”
     I was quiet for a long time. Jamie had, for all intents and purposes, rocked my world. Hers was a perspective I had never thought of before. I, who believed I had thought it through from every angle. I, who believed myself smarter than the world. I realized then, at that moment, laying on the top of a water tower in late August watching a meteor shower, that maybe I was not a genius. Maybe I did not have the world figured out like I had believed. Maybe, just maybe, I was just a cynic; a cynic blinded by the misfortunes I had seen and suffered; a cynic disappointed in a world that had not treated me well.
     Jamie took my hand in hers, interlocking her slender fingers within my larger ones. She turned her head to the side and looked at me, still sporting a fake mustache. The sliver of moon was reflected in her eyes just so that I could not really look into them. Her lips were curled into just the slightes
Does it really matter whether or not this world,
Is made from some divine blueprint?
What beauty is lost in either idea?
It doesn't matter if this is an accident.

Excerpt from my book of short stories, Fictional Truth.
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
I

These days I forgive myself everything. After all
I'm alone and unhappy so I give myself a little treat
whenever possible. On summer nights I remember
the good women who loved me but live with their husbands
      now.

This is not an easy life but I'm not afraid. Despair
leads me to talk too much about myself rather than
be transcendent. I trade push for shove with the world
and sitting above the river feel I could move the globe.

If I could stay out here on the roof all day,
get ****** and read the I Ching, write a few lines
and forget my troubles, I could be happy
today. Then I would go to work tomorrow.

But I rise at dawn and drink some orange juice.
It is good with ice. Buy a newspaper going to the train.


II

In this lousy life we work five days a week.
An Indian could gather a week's food in three days
and go swimming in the hot afternoon. The pleasure
civilization offers is a drive past fast food joints
on Merrick Avenue to a sea food restaurant in Freeport.

Almost everyone I know is dissatisfied with life
as we have been pressed into it. The system gives us
cancer and heart attacks and repressed sexuality when
I was born to be sensuous and enjoy another's body.
Instead I slug the world and the world slugs back.

I have five minutes to finish this poem. I remember
the smooth women I have known, remaining in bed
all morning. Our big ambitions are our curse.
We uphold our end of the society.


III

While it's true that I'm not happy, I'm very amused
at the craziness I have let myself in for.
Hopefully it's only one year of sleeping in my clothes
without a woman and drinking plenty of wine after work.

I listen to someone start a car downstairs, but that
is not my world, nor do I know any of these eight million
I live beside in the crotch of many waters. Above
Broadway Saturday, the geese fly south for winter.

This morning, in twenty minutes, I will go downstairs wearing
a shirt and tie and jacket and carrying a briefcase.
I will tear myself from the pleasures of tea and breakfast
to arrive at the office where each day my happiness is
      challenged.

I accepted humanity as a natural part of nature. When
I did that I had to pay the rent and get a job, too.


IV

A famous samurai crosses a plain in winter
looking for work. He comes to a farm community
but the farmers have no use for his skills. So
he removes his swordbelt and sets to work digging.

It is temporary employment while the seasons change.
The sky is gray and all of the women are occupied
warming their homes. None look up from their work
except to glance at the strong samurai digging.

Why is he digging in the frozen ground? The poet
knows little about farming and less about fighting.
He has put the samurai to work at a pointless task.
It is too early in the year to begin digging.

Nobody pities the pointless samurai or gives him food.
He ties on his sword and starts chopping wood.


V

These bird songs, this January morning, I look
for a way out of life. The Texas woman tells Marc
stories about the football players she's ******.

Although I complain like a blue jay about it, life
has accepted me. Walking uptown with Stephanie it's clear
how much the Empire State Building I've become.

Nevertheless, we make our own decisions. To fight war
or not. They are all my friends, I work for their success,
but choose my poison independently. For me, laziness
and anonymity when I could have been a star.

Newspapers indicate there is much to discuss besides myself
but the Muse seems to disagree. My few friends and the age
will look quaint as a daguerreotype in the light
of the holocaust. I kiss the girl of my dreams.


VI

Again it is almost Spring. It gives me only pain
to think back on past Springs when I seem to have been
someone else. The people who lived then live today
in the same bodies but changed in every other way.

Of course I must continue, with or without good humor.
What was amusing in my youth, that God's finger
could move me to another square, now makes me fear
old friends who are dead to me and yet still here.

The veil of life is thin if one doesn't believe in mystery.
Frequently it blows and reveals the thickening body,
alone, without a soul. One hopes for a consort who
through her own pain has become gentle and simple too.

If only I could share this life with a good wife.
But she would only be unhappy and bring me grief.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Àŧùl Aug 2013
Dig the ground,
Deeper & broader,
Large enough to accommodate,
And peacefully lay us,
The commoners to rest,
Without causing any disturbance,
To the Clout-clad looters.

Don't rest till you collapse lifelessly,
Into the mud extracted for digging,
Digging their trap deeper enough,
Deeper enough for all the clout,
'Cause you wouldn't even want,
Their zombies to be turn-out,
Escaping out stark naked,
Out in future to plight,
****** and blight,
Pester and fester
The future generation.

Oh but do we not know,
They will survive and flourish,
Indian or Russian or American or British,
The clout will always be there to ****/eat,
**** blood and eat meatballs,
Why they will survive,
And why the civilians suffer isn't riddle.
I refer to hoes as tools for digging, like the ones you might use in your gardens; the other meaning may also fit in with other combinations of similar words.

Clout-clad looters = Politicians

There's this globalization of the schemes of scams.

Hopefully, this lantern of questions will enlighten the way.

My HP Poem #401
©Atul Kaushal
Cyril Blythe Sep 2012
I followed him down the trail until we got to the mouth of the mines. The life and energy of the surrounding maples and birches seemed to come to a still and then die as we walked closer, closer. The air was cold and dark and damp and smelt of mold and moths. Delvos stepped into the darkness anyways.
“Well, girl, you coming or aren’t you?”
I could see his yellowed tobacco teeth form into a slimy smile as I stepped out of the sun. It was still inside. The canary chirped.
“This tunnel is just the mouth to over two hundred others exactly like it. Stay close. Last thing I need this month is National Geographic on my *** for losing one of their puppet girls.”
“Delvos, ****. I have two masters degrees.” He rolled his eyes.
“Spare me.” He trotted off around the corner to the left, whistling.
“I survived alone in the jungles of Bolivia alone for two months chasing an Azara’s Spinetail. I climbed the tallest mountain in Nepal shooting Satyr Tragopans along the cliff faces. In Peru I…” Suddenly I felt the weight of the darkness. In my blinding anger I lost track of his lantern. I stopped, my heartbeat picked up, and I tried to remind myself of what I did in Peru.
I followed a Diurnal Peruvian Pygmy-Owl across the gravel tops of the Andes Mountains, no light but the Southern Cross and waning moon above. I am not scared of darkness. I am not scared of darkness.
I stopped to listen. Somewhere in front of me the canary chirped.

When I first got the job in Vermont I couldn’t have been more frustrated. Mining canaries? Never had I ever ‘chased’ a more mundane bird. Nonetheless, when Jack Reynolds sends you on a shoot you don’t say no, so I packed up my camera bag and hoped on the next plane out of Washington.
“His name is John Delvos.” Jack said. He handed me the manila case envelope. “He’s lived in rural Vermont his entire life. Apparently his family bred the canaries for the miners of the Sheldon Quarry since the early twenties. When the accident happened the whole town basically shut down. There were no canaries in the mines the day the gas killed the miners. His mother died in a fire of some sort shortly after. The town blamed the Delvos family and ran them into the woods. His father built a cabin and once his father died, Delvos continued to breed the birds. He ships them to other mining towns across the country now. We want to run a piece about the inhumanity of breeding animals to die so humans won’t.” I stood in silence in front of his deep mahogany desk, suddenly aware of the lack of make-up on my face. He smiled, “You’re leaving on Tuesday.”
“Yes sir.”
“Don’t look so smug, Lila. This may not be the most exotic bird you’ve shot but the humanity of this piece has the potential to be a cover story. Get the shots, write the story.”

“Do you understand the darkness now, Ms. Rivers? Your prestigious masters degrees don’t mean **** down here.” Delvos reappeared behind the crack of his match in a side tunnel not twenty yards in front of me. He relit the oily lantern and turned his back without another word. I reluctantly followed deeper into the damp darkness.
“Why were there no canaries in the mine on, you know, that day?” The shadows of the lantern flickered against the iron canary cage chained on his hip and the yellow bird hopped inside.
“I was nine, Ms. Rivers. I didn’t understand much at the time.” We turned right into the next tunnel and our shoes crunched on jagged stones. All the stones were black.
“But surely you understand now?”
The canary chirped.

When I first got to Sheldon and began asking about the location of the Delvos’ cabin you would have thought I was asking where the first gate to hell was located. Mothers would smile and say, “Sorry, Miss, I can’t say,” and hurriedly flock their children in the opposite direction. After two hours of polite refusals I gave up. I spent the rest of the first day photographing the town square. It was quaint; old stone barbershops surrounded by oaks and black squirrels, a western themed whiskey bar, and a few greasy spoon restaurants interspersed in-between. I booked a room in the Walking Horse Motel for Wednesday night, determined to get a good nights sleep and defeat this towns fear of John Delvos tomorrow.
My room was a tiny one bed square with no TV. Surprise, surprise. At least I had my camera and computer to entertain myself. I reached into the side of my camera bag and pulled out my Turkish Golds and Macaw-beak yellow BIC. I stepped out onto the dirt in front of my door and lit up. I looked up and the stars stole all the oxygen surrounding me. They were dancing and smiling above me and I forgot Delvos, Jack, and all of Sheldon except it’s sky. Puffing away, I stepped farther and farther from my door and deeper into the darkness of night. The father into the darkness the more dizzying the stars dancing became.
“Ma’am? Everything okay?”
Startled, I dropped my cigarette on the ground and the ember fell off.
“I’m sorry, sir. I was just, um, the stars…” I snuffed out the orange glow in the dirt with my boot and extended my hand, “Lila Waters, and you are?”
“Ian Benet. I haven’t seen you around here before, Ms. Waters, are you new to town?”
“I’m here for work. I’m a bird photographer and journalist for National Geographic. I’m looking for John Delvos but I’m starting to think he’s going to be harder to track than a Magpie Robin.”
The stars tiptoed in their tiny circles above in the silence. Then, they disappeared with a spark as Ian lit up his wooden pipe. It was a light colored wood, stained with rich brown tobacco and ash. He passed me his matches, smiling.
“What do you want with that old *******? Don’t tell me National Geographic is interested in the Delvos canaries.”
I lit up another stick and took a drag. “Shocking, right?”
“Actually, it’s about time their story is told.” Benet walked to the wooden bench to our left and patted the seat beside him. I walked over. “The Delvos canaries saved hundreds of Sheldonian lives over the years. But the day a crew went into the mines without one, my father came out of the ground as cold as when we put him back into it in his coffin.”
I sat in silence, unsure what to say. “Mr. Benet, I’m so sorry…”
“Please, just Ian. My father was the last Mr. Benet.”
We sat on the wooden bench, heat leaving our bodies to warm the dead wood beneath our legs. I shivered; the stars dance suddenly colder and more violent.
“Delvos canaries are martyrs, Ms. Waters. This whole town indebted to those tiny yellow birds, but nobody cares to remember that anymore.”
“Can you tell me where I can find Mr. Delvos and his, erm, martyrs?” The ember of my second cigarette was close to my pinching fingertips.
“Follow me.” Ian stood up and walked to the edge of the woods in front of us. We crunched the cold dust beneath our feet, making me aware of how silent it was. Ian stopped at a large elm and pointed, “See that yellow notch?” Sure enough, there was a notch cut and dyed yellow at his finger’s end. “If you follow true north from this tree into the woods you’ll find this notch about every fifty yards or so. Follow the yellow and it’ll spit you out onto the Delvos property.”
“Thank you, Ian. I really can’t begin to tell you how thankful I am to find out where to find this elusive Mr. Delvos and his canaries.”
“You don’t have to,” he knocked the ash out of his pipe against the tree, “Just do those birds justice in your article. Remember, martyrs. Tell old Delvos Ian Benet sends his regards.” He turned and walked back to the motel and I stood and watched in silence. It was then I realized I hadn’t heard a single bird since I got to Sheldon. The stars dance was manic above me as I walked back to my room and shut the door.

The canary chirped and Delvos stopped.
“This is a good place to break out fast. Sit.”
I sat obediently, squirming around until the rocks formed a more comfortable nest around my bony hips. We left for the mines as the stars were fading in the vermillion Vermont sky this morning and had been walking for what seemed like an eternity. I was definitely ready to eat. He handed me a gallon Ziploc bag from his backpack filled with raisins, nuts, various dried fruits, and a stiff piece of bread. I attacked the food like a raven.
“I was the reason no canaries entered the mines that day, Ms. Waters.” Delvos broke a piece of his bread off and wrapped it around a dried piece of apricot, or maybe apple. I was suddenly aware of my every motion and swallowed, loudly. I crinkled into my Ziploc and crunched on the pecans I dug out, waiting.
“Aren’t you going to ask why?”
“I’m not a parrot, Mr. Delvos, I don’t answer expectedly on command. You’ll tell me if you want.” I hurriedly stuffed a fistful of dried pears into my mouth.
Delvos chuckled and my nerves eased, “You’ve got steel in you, Ms. Rivers, I’ll give you that much.”
I nodded and continued cramming pears in my mouth.
“I was only nine. The canaries were my pets, all of them. I hated when Dad would send them into the mines to die for men I couldn’t give two ***** about. It was my birthday and I asked for an afternoon of freedom with my pets and Dad obliged. I was in the aviary with pocketfuls of sunflower-seeds. Whenever I threw a handful into the air above me, the air came to life with flickering yellow brushes and songs of joy. It was the happiest I have ever been, wholly surrounded and protected by my friends. Around twelve thirty that afternoon the Sheriff pulled up, lights ablaze. The blue and red lights stilled my yellow sky to green again and that’s when I heard the shouting. He cuffed my Dad on the hood of the car and Mom was crying and pushing her fists into the sheriff’s chest. I didn’t understand at all. The Sheriff ended up putting Mom in the car too and they all left me in the aviary. I sat there until around four that afternoon before they sent anyone to come get me.”
Delvos took a small bite of his bread and chewed a moment. “No matter how many handfuls of seeds I threw in the air after that, the birds wouldn’t stir. They wouldn’t even sing. I think they knew what was happening.”
I was at a loss for words so of course I blurted, “I didn’t see an aviary at your house…”
Delvos laughed. “Someone burnt down the house I was raised in the next week while we were sleeping. Mom died that night. The whole dark was burning with screams and my yellow canaries were orange and hot against the black sky. That’s the only night I’ve seen black canaries and the only night I’ve heard them scream.”
I swallowed some mixed nuts and they rubbed against my dry throat.
“They never caught the person. A week later Dad took the remainder of the birds and we marched into the woods. We worked for months clearing the land and rebuilding our lives. We spent most of the time in silence, except for the canary cries. When the house was finally built and the birds little coops were as well, Dad finally talked. The only thing he could say was ‘Canaries are not the same as a Phoenix, John. Not the same at all.”
The canary chirped, still only visible by the lanterns flame. Not fully yellow, I realized, here in the mines, but not fully orange either.

When I first walked onto John Delvos’ property on Thursday morning he was scattering feed into the bird coops in the front of his cabin. Everything was made of wood and still wet with the morning’s dew.
“Mr. Delvos?” He spun around, startled, and walked up to me a little too fast.
“Why are you here? Who are you?”
“My name is Lila Waters, sir, I am a photographer and journalist for National Geographic Magazine and we are going to run an article on your canaries.”
“Not interested”
“Please, sir, can I ask you just a few quick questions as take a couple pictures of your, erm, martyrs?”
His eyes narrowed and he walked up to me, studying my face with an intense, glowering gaze. He spit a mouthful of dip onto the ground without breaking eye contact. I shifted my camera bag’s weight to the other shoulder.
“Who told you to call them that?”
“I met Ian Benet last night, he told me how important your birds are to this community, sir. He sends his regards.”
Delvos laughed and motioned for me to follow as he turned his back. “You can take pictures but I have to approve which ones you publish. That’s my rule.”
“Sir, it’s really not up to me, you see, my boss, Jack Reynolds, is one of the CEO’s for the magazine and he...”
“Those are my rules, Ms. Waters.” He turned and picked back up the bucket of seed and began to walk back to the birds. “You want to interview me then we do it in the mine. Be back here at four thirty in the morning.”
“Sir…?”
“Get some sleep, Ms. Waters. You’ll want to be rested for the mine.” He turned, walked up his wooden stairs, and closed the door to his cabin.
I was left alone in the woods and spent the next hour snapping pictures of the little, yellow canaries in their cages. I took a couple pictures of his house and the surrounding trees, packed up my camera and trekked back to my motel.

“You finished yet?” Delvos stood up and the memory of his green and brown wooded homestead fled from my memory as the mine again consumed my consciousness. Dark, quiet, and stagnant. I closed the Ziploc and stuffed the bag, mainly filled with the raisins I sifted through, into my pocket.
Delvos grunted and the canary flapped in its cage as he stood again and, swinging the lantern, rounded another corner. The path we were on began to take a noticeable ***** downward and the moisture on the walls and air multiplied.
The canary chirped.
The lantern flickered against the moist, black stones, sleek and piled in the corners we past. The path stopped ahead at a wall of solid black and brown Earth.
The canary chirped twice.
It smelt of clay and mildew and Delvos said, “Go on, touch it.”
I reached my hand out, camera uselessly hanging like a bat over my shoulder. The rock was cold and hard. It felt dead.
The Canary was flitting its wings in the cage now, chirping every few seconds.
“This is the last tunnel they were digging when the gas under our feet broke free from hell and killed those men.”
Delvos hoisted the lantern above our heads, illuminating the surrounding gloom. All was completely still and even my own vapor seemed to fall out of my mouth and simply die. The canary was dancing a frantic jig, now, similar to the mating dance of the Great Frigate Bird I shot in the Amazon jungle. As I watched the canary and listened to its small wings beat against the cold metal cage I begin to feel dizzy. The bird’s cries had transformed into a scream colder than fire and somehow more fierce.
The ability to fly is what always made me jealous of birds as a child, but as my temple throbbed and the canary danced I realized I was amiss. Screaming, yellow feathers whipped and the entire inside of the cage was instantaneously filled. It was beautiful until the very end. Dizzying, really.
Defeated, the canary sank to the floor, one beaten wing hanging out of the iron bars at a most unnatural angle. Its claws were opening and closing, grasping the tainted cave air, or, perhaps, trying to push it away. Delvos unclipped the cage and sat it on the floor in the space between us, lantern still held swaying above his head. The bird was aflame now, the silent red blood absorbing into the apologetic, yellow feathers. Orange, a living fire. I pulled out my camera as I sat on the ground beside the cage. I took a few shots, the camera’s clicks louder than the feeble chirps sounding out of the canary’s tattered, yellow beak. My head was spinning. Its coal-black eyes reflected the lantern’s flame above. I could see its tiny, red tongue in the bottom of its mouth.
Opening.
Closing.
Opening, wider, too wide, then,
Silence.


I felt dizzy. I remember feeling the darkness surround me; it felt warm.

“I vaguely remember Delvos helping me to my feet, but leaving the mine was a complete haze.” I told the panel back in D.C., “It wasn’t until we had crossed the stream on the way back to the cabin that I began to feel myself again. Even then, I felt like I was living a dream. When we got back to the cabin the sight of the lively yellow canaries in their coops made me cry. Delvos brought me a bottle of water and told me I needed to hit the trail because the sun set early in the winter, so I le
Karijinbba Jul 2018
The night under the mirror
went through a revolving door.
~~~~
Eventually I did put a face
to  your loving cues your emails
It had been so long since your destiny had asked you my King
to marry her
that hunting jealous day that began much earlier under a 1975 degree celcious and did burn us to a crisp
Nothing would have given me more assurance more pleasure  such a gracious challenge to a  mysterious
proposition to dig my heart
for the final blow
one queen for his other
prior queen bee me
Karijinbba
and a winner I would have been
all night with my King
under the mirror!
to obliterate her wedding band
from his hand
how loving of you cupid of mine
always digging at my heart
for my heart of gold
then came cause and effect of karma blowing up our plans
another King Brad appeared with roses and diamond ring
in hand he had no mask just an hidden agenda
he took my children to his Mom
to make his other queenjealous and I took the bate
for just one hour both my King and Brad
had chosen he same photo E-mailed among several
to both single men seeking bride at Kiss com.
my lovely picture was the same summer dress I wore with the king I loved
as someone something from above and beyond
mirrored the scene in my life a kind of cause and effect
it showed my
old beloved a simple approach to a woman's heart
and me that the woman he married giving her a diamond ring taking her and son to his Mom was more to make
me jealous too fight for his love
an invisible revolving door had opened up
both to win my lover back
or to lose both Knights
fate life karma G**
had bid the greatest game
of love and twin souls
remained split bleeding
both men found a way to another
woman playing their game  

I was sent to worship my Lord Jesus Christ mocking me
beware of Karma
or THINK and get rich and happy
to catch a true king FOCUS
don't take bates, don't settle for new when the heart is taken 
by a true love not followed.

My king was found by his mate
and I returned Brads diamond
lesson played leasson learned

Then came the clock ticking
tax collector King Mr Time
he took my hand
paper INK and pen
to script a new
poem
its Winter he said,
HOW DO YOU
WANT ME TO KISS YOU?
and a new revolving door
appeared here at H.P.
~~~~~~
By: Karijinbba
Copy Rights
ASG/BBA -revised 6/2020.
How do you think a and how do we feel about the one we truly love a nail can't take another out its the heart that will break and the loss is an unsurmountable abyss beware open your eyes FOCUS one single thought two hearts that beat as one cannot distract nor settle and never take a new lover if our heart loves another
Michael John Aug 2018
i

i washed up for a living,lily,
for a while there
this is something george
and i have in common..

on the whole i was treated
decently
pearl divers are a breed unto
themselves..

mine was a life of ease
over eating and boredem
it was ******* the spine
and knees..

a piece of cake compared
to digging holes
(surrounded by the boss
and his extended family..)


the pop wagon on friday
cement as a whole
the olive oil factory or
carrying bricks..

ii

the pop wagon on a friday
took only two hours
brevity
that was the answer..

the cement truck on
tuesdays
took two and half
hours..

but ended in tears..
the shift in the olive
oil factory
could last eighteen hours..

digging holes an eternity
carrying bricks up stairs
works up quite a thirst..
never mind soon be..

be in pauli´ s soup kitchen
where wine smooth and cool
as honey bees..
chicken and macaroni..!

iii

the cement was high in lime
and invariably chafed the skin
and in that hole it would set
to be picked out with olive oil

and a pin..drunk,the screaming
and carry on..
we laughed and held them down
better digging holes..!

it was so painful..!
down and out in paris and london
by gearge orwell

— The End —