When Zuo Fen woke day was well advanced into the Horse hour. In her darkened room a frame of the brightest light pulsed around the shuttered window. A breeze of scents from her herb garden brought sage, motherwort and lovage to cleanse the confined air, what remained of his visit, those rare aromatic oils from a body freed from its robes. Turning her head into the pillow that odour of him embraced her once more as in the deepest and most prolonged kiss , when with no space to breathe passion displaces reason in the mind.
 
The goat cart had brought him silently to her court in the Tiger hour, as was his custom in these summer days when, tired of his women’s attention, he seeks her company. In the vestibule her maid leaves a bowl of fresh water scented with lemon juice, a towel, her late uncle’s comb, a salve for his hands. Without removing his shoes, an Emperor’s privilege, he enters her study pausing momentarily while Xi-Lu removes himself from the exalted presence, his long tail *****, his walk provocative, dismissive. Zuo Fen is at her desk, brush in hand she finishes a copy of  ‘A Rhapsody for my Lord’. She has submitted herself to enter yet again that persona of the young concubine taken from her family to serve that community from which there seems no escape.
 
I was born in a humble, isolated, thatched house,
And was never well-versed in writing.
I never saw the marvellous pictures of books,
Nor had I heard of the classics of ancient sages.
I am dim-witted, humble and ignorant,
But was mistakenly placed in the Purple Palace . . .
 
He loves to hear her read such words, to imagine this fragile girl, and see her life at court described in the poet’s elegant characters. Zuo Fen’s scrolls lie on his second desk. Touching them, as he does frequently, is to touch her, is to feel mystery of her long body with its disregard of the courtly customs of his many, many women; the soft hair on her legs, the deep forest guarding her hidden ***, her peasant feet, her long fingers with their scent of ink and herbs.
 
He kneels beside her, gradually opening his ringed hand wide on her gowned thigh, then closing, then opening. A habit: an affectation. His head is bent in an obeisance he has no need to make, only, as he desires her he does this, so she knows this is so. She is prepared, as always, to act the part, or be this self she has opened to him, in all innocence at first, then in quiet delight that this is so and no more.
 
‘A rhapsody for me perhaps?’
‘What does Liu Xie say? The rhapsody is a fork in the road . . .
‘ . . . a different line’, he interrupts and quotes,’ it describes people and objects. It pictures appearance with a brilliance akin to sculpture or painting.’
‘What is clogged and confined it invariably opens. It depicts the commonplace with unbounded charm.’
‘But the goal of the form is beauty well-ordered . . . . as you are, dearest poet.’
‘You spoilt the richness of Lui Xie’s ending . . .’
‘I would rather speak of your beauty than Xie’s talk of gardening.’
‘Weeding is not gardening my Lord.’
 
And with that he summons her to read her rhapsody whilst his hands part her gown . . .
 
Over the years since he took her maidenhead, brusquely, with the impatience of his station, and she, on their second encounter deflowered him in turn with her poem about the pleasure due to woman, they had become as one branch on the same tree. She sought to be, and was, his equal in the prowess of scholastic memory. She had honed such facility with the word: years of training from her father in the palace archives and later in the mind games invented by and played with her brother. Then, as she entered womanhood and feared oblivion in an arranged marriage, she invented the persona of the pale girl, a fiction, who, with great gentleness and poetry, guided the male reader into the secrets of a woman’s ****** pleasure and fulfilment. In disguise, and with her brother’s help, she had sought those outside concubinage - for whom the congress of the male and female is rarely negotiable. She listened and transcribed, then gradually drew the Emperor into a web of new experience to which he readily succumbed, and the like of which he could have hardly imagined. He wished to promote her to the first lady of his Purple Chamber. She declined, insisting he provide her with a court distant from his palace rooms, yet close to the Zu-lin gardens, a place of quiet, meditation and the study of astronomy.
 
But today, this hot summer’s day, she had reckoned to be her birthday. She expected due recognition for one whose days moved closer to that age when a birthday is traditionally and lavishly celebrated. Her maid Mei-Lim would have already prepared the egg dishes associated with this special day. Her brother Zuo-Si may have penned a celebratory ode, and later would visit her with his lute to caress his subtle words of invention.
 
Your green eyes reflect a world apart
Where into silence words are formed dew-like,
Glistening as the sun rises on this precious day.
As a stony spring washes over precious jade,
delicate fishes swim in its depths
dancing to your reflection on the cool surface.
No need of strings, or bamboo instruments
When mountains and waters give forth their pure notes . . .
 
Her lord had left on her desk his own Confucian-led offering, in brushstrokes of his time-stretched hand, but his own hand nevertheless, and then in salutation the flower-like character leh (joy)
 
‘Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart’.
 
Meanwhile Xi-Lu stirred on the coverlet reminding Zuo Fen that the day was advancing and he had received no attention or conversation. It was whispered abroad that this lady spoke with her cat whom each afternoon would accompany his mistress on a walk through the adjacent gardens. It was true, Zuo Fen had taught Xi-Lu to converse in the dialect of her late mother’s province, but that is another story.
 
Lying on her back, eyes firmly shut, Zuo Fen surveyed the past year, a year of her brother’s pilgrimage to the Tai Mountains, his subsequent disappearance at the onset of winter, her Lord’s anger then indulgence as he allowed her to seek Zuo Si’s whereabouts. She thought of her sojourn in Ryzoki, the village of stone, where she discovered the blind servant girl who had revealed not only her brother’s whereabouts but her undying love for this strange, ungainly, uncomfortably ugly man who, with the experience gained from his sister’s persistent research had finally learned to love and be loved in equal measure for his gentle and tender actions. And together, their triumph: in ‘summoning the recluse’, and not one alone but a community of five living harmoniously in caves of the limestone heights. Now returned they had worked in ever secret ways to serve their Emperor in his conflict against the war-lord Tang.
 
She now resolved to take a brief holiday from this espionage, her stroking of the Emperor’s mind and body, and those caring sisterly duties she so readily performed. She would remove herself and her maid to a forest cabin: to lie in the dry mottled grass of summer and listen to the rustle of leaves, the chatter of birds, the sounds of insects and the creak-crack of the forest in the summer heat. She would plan a new chapter in her work as a poet and writer: she would be the pale girl no longer but a woman of strength and confidence made beautiful by good fortune, wise management and a generosity of spirit. She needed to prepare herself for her Lord’s demise, when their joyful hours living the lives of Prince and Lady of Xiang, he with his stallion gathering galingales, she with her dreams of an underwater house, would no longer be. She would study the ways of the old. She would seek to learn how peace and serenity might overcome those afflictions of age and circumstance, and when it is said that love’s chemistry distils pure joy through the intense refinement of memory.

I am lovely, O mortals! Like a dream carved in stone,
And my breast where poets are bruised to the bone
Formed to inspire each in their quintessence
A love as eternal and silent as essence.

I unite Ledaean pallor with a frozen heart,
I scorn movement for it displaces my art,
A riddling sphinx, on a throne in the sky;
Never do I laugh and never do I cry.

Poets, at the feet of my imperial pose,
Which I seem to adopt from statues grandiose,
Will consume their lives in studious indulgence;

For I have, to enthrall those docile paramours
Pure mirrors to enhance all beauties evermore:
My eyes, my large, wide eyes of eternal effulgence!

I was six when I first saw kittens drown.
Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the scraggy wee *****',
Into a bucket; a frail metal sound,

Soft paws scraping like mad. But their tiny din
Was soon ******. They were slung on the snout
Of the pump and the water pumped in.

'Sure, isn't it better for them now?' Dan said.
Like wet gloves they bobbed and shone till he sluiced
Them out on the dunghill, glossy and dead.

Suddenly frightened, for days I sadly hung
Round the yard, watching the three sogged remains
Turn mealy and crisp as old summer dung

Until I forgot them. But the fear came back
When Dan trapped big rats, snared rabbits, shot crows
Or, with a sickening tug, pulled old hens' necks.

Still, living displaces false sentiments
And now, when shrill pups are prodded to drown
I just shrug, '****** pups'. It makes sense:

'Prevention of cruelty' talk cuts ice in town
Where they consider death unnatural
But on well-run farms pests have to be kept down.

Dear Poet Friends, I hope you like this slice of Early History presented
below in simple verse. Please do read the short notes at the end, before giving your comments.  Thanks, - Raj

ARCHIMEDES : THE PIONEERING
       STREAKER OF HISTORY!

There lived in the Third Century BC, in the Sicilian
town of Syracuse, then a Greek colony,
A Greek mathematician named Archimedes.
He was tasked by King Hiero of his town,
To find the purity of gold in his crown;
Suspicious of the goldsmith having mixed
some material of inferior kind,
Which the King wanted Archimedes to find!

So, Archimedes lost in thought one day,
Entered the public bath on his way!
And as his body began to get submerged,
He happened to notice perchance,
Water spilling over from the tub!
The answer suddenly flashed across his
mind,
And he jumped up leaving everything
behind,
Wearing only his birthday suit,
Running through the street of Syracuse,
Exclaiming -  “Eureka! Eureka!”
(I have found it! I have found it!)
Perhaps to become the first known streaker  
of History!
While establishing the Principles of Buoyancy!
@ (see notes)

Archimedes, son of the astronomer Pheidias,
studied at the great Alexandrian city,
Remembered even to this day for his many
pioneering works, -
In Hydrostatics, Mechanics, and Geometry.
With his ingenious mechanical discoveries,
He held the great Roman galleys of Marcellus
at bay,
For more than three years, as Plutarch the
Roman Historian says!    + (see notes)
Later one day, while lost in deep thought,
When some intricate problem of geometry
he was trying to resolve,
Refused to hear Marcellus' bidding,
To be slain by the Roman soldiers who had
come to fetch him!
O those Romans, with lesser brains and more
brawn!

And some hundred and thirty years after
his death in 75 BC,
Cicero, then the Roman Governor of Sicily,
Found the tomb of great Archimedes, near the
Agrigentine Gate, over grown with bushes and
thorns;
Where he lay buried in the scented dust of History!
                                                   - Raj Nandy, New Delhi.

NOTES:
@ Principle of Buoyancy = any floating object displaces its own
weight of fluid. So weight displaced by a crown of pure gold and
the one already made could be compared to find the truth!
+ Archimedes designed large stone throwers, & crossbows, and
also grappling hooks using large cranes to grab Roman ships and
capsize them!

Whoe’er she be,
That not impossible she
That shall command my heart and me;

Where’er she lie,
Locked up from mortal eye
In shady leaves of destiny:

Till that ripe birth
Of studied fate stand forth,
And teach her fair steps to our earth;

Till that divine
Idea take a shrine
Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:

Meet you her, my wishes,
Bespeak her to my blisses,
And be ye called my absent kisses.

I wish her beauty,
That owes not all its duty
To gaudy tire, or glist’ring shoe-tie;

Something more than
Taffata or tissue can,
Or rampant feather, or rich fan;

More than the spoil
Of shop, or silkworm’s toil,
Or a bought blush, or a set smile.

A face that’s best
By its own beauty drest,
And can alone commend the rest:

A face made up
Out of no other shop
Than what nature’s white hand sets ope.

A cheek where youth
And blood with pen of truth
Write what the reader sweetly ru’th.

A cheek where grows
More than a morning rose,
Which to no box his being owes.

Lips, where all day
A lovers kiss may play,
Yet carry nothing thence away.

Looks that oppress
Their richest tires, but dress
And clothe their simplest nakedness.

Eyes, that displaces
The neighbour diamond, and outfaces
That sunshine by their own sweet graces.

Tresses, that wear
Jewels, but to declare
How much themselves more precious are;

Whose native ray
Can tame the wanton day
Of gems that in their bright shades play.

Each ruby there,
Or pearl that dare appear,
Be its own blush, be its own tear.

A well-tamed heart,
For whose more noble smart
Love may be long choosing a dart.

Eyes, that bestow
Full quivers on Love’s bow,
Yet pay less arrows than they owe.

Smiles, that can warm
The blood, yet teach a charm,
That chastity shall take no harm.

Blushes, that bin
The burnish of no sin,
Nor flames of aught too hot within.

Joyes, that confess
Virtue their mistress,
And have no other head to dress.

Fears, fond and flight
As the coy bride’s when night
First does the longing lover right.

Tears, quickly fled
And vain as those are shed
For a dying maidenhead.

Days, that need borrow
No part of their good morrow
From a forspent night of sorrow.

Days, that, in spite
Of darkness, by the light
Of a clear mind are day all night.

Nights, sweet as they,
Made short by lovers’ play,
Yet long by th’ absence of the day.

Life, that dares send
A challenge to its end,
And when it comes say Welcome Friend.

Sydneian showers
Of sweet discourse, whose powers
Can crown old winter’s head with flowers.

Soft silken hours,
Open suns, shady bowers
‘Bove all; nothing within that lours.

Whate’er delight
Can make day’s forehead bright,
Or give down to the wings of night.

In her whole frame
Have nature all the name,
Art and ornament the shame.

Her flattery
Picture and poesy,
Her counsel her own virtue be.

I wish her store
Of worth may leave her poor
Of wishes; and I wish—no more.

Now, if Time knows
That Her, whose radiant brows
Weave them a garland of my vows;

Her, whose just bays
My future hopes can raise,
A trophy to her present praise;

Her, that dares be
What these lines wish to see:
I seek no further, it is she.

’Tis she, and here
Lo! I unclothe and clear
My wishes’ cloudy character.

May she enjoy it,
Whose merit dare apply it,
But modesty dares still deny it!

Such worth as this is
Shall fix my flying wishes,
And determine them to kisses.

Let her full glory,
My fancies, fly before ye;
Be ye my fictions, but her story.

First, you choke on an easy mouthful of air, gasping in over and over but feeling more light-headed all the while
Second, you close your eyes, taste the terror rising up the back of your throat and blocking the air from going down
Third, you shatter, feel your body falling apart and realize with a vengeance how delicate your life is
Fourth, the panic starts. you shake, scream, sob, curl up or lash out while it grabs hold of your nerves and bends your body to it's will
Fifth, you find some breath. maybe someone is helping you. maybe you're helping yourself. a wave of calm displaces every other feeling.
Sixth, you lose your body. your mind floats in a pool of nothingness while your body runs out of primitive instinct. your calm turns to numb.
Seventh, you blink. you breathe. you remember what it feels like to be in control of your body again. you drink some water, or sleep, or both. your head hurts. your mind drifts between your body and the ether. you wipe your face and try to remember what it's like to not be having an attack.
Eighth, you can't remember, because it never seems to end. you accept it. you refuse it. you hate it. you cry. your chest gets tight.

His motion dark. It’s sickening
how fields are barren from the salt.
The years they come to ****** away my mind.
The brewing hate is welcoming
So raise your finger to them all
and fall back into comatose this last time.

If there’s a need, I’ll gravitate
into the gaps of history
and break the burden of this yoke for you.
With tainted cups we celebrate
the sowing of a fractured seed.
Its funeral for everyone we knew.

The morsels fall from trickled thoughts
they taste like you when you were mine
our effervescent youth now lay in ruins.
The share of us displaces taunts
my serendipity has died
you’re all that’s left…you’re all that’s left…and you’re always all that’s right.

The Struggle of the
American
It's Heaven”
Mr. Buetti,
“Or this is Hell”     
Who is 51 and lives

“It's a  choose your own adventure”
Standardized,
Mass Produced, Vessels.
Missing some deeper substance

Southern farmers, Harlem stoop sitters,
Musicians, builders, athletes,
Liberians, and sailors

A
Dormant
Theater Set
Waiting
For Actors' or super models'
To bring it back to life
Wealth displaces grief.

From Here
I Saw
What Happened and Cried.
Just another day in the life of
Secret Americana.

Fall displaces our sun
Hidden behind a sterile vale
I wait in ignorance

Wolves chase me
Tear me through the open
Long drawn out dashes of red
Streaks on the cheeks of the river
She soaks in the end of a prayer
A dried ball of cotton dyed into other
Ways of being        And matter

The stone Buddha smiles
Red ink in my palms with thanks
An offering made in prostate
    pose like the subject to the question
Answered with distilled teeth
Unclentched the tongue soft
Under the lips of a kiss in the winter's day

To be given        Not had
This thanks of dubious nature

Red tape outlines the past

Red like the ink in your pleading hands

Red like the cotton in your mouth

Red like the beginning of your life

It comes swiftly into her eyes
Against the blue and green
    of our days in thought

The candle wax
    red too
Holds the negative space
Between the pages

A promise written to home

"My child is born today"

Mouse-perspective; touristy
neck cranked to measure
immensity before me.

So I went higher, to cloudy hills
and gaudy views, where I knew
a great border Above.

Between the clouds I beheld
the enormity of structure, staring
into my eyes? An iris!

Tapestries. Shadow and relief
realized in stone. Baffled
before the incontrovertible

evidence of a benevolent
face? Rushing terrain brings
nostrils, now lips.

Orbiting in the stillness,
stories laid bare as skin
lesions glow.

The cost of working gears
displaces and appears red
as recent scars

where now sprawling sameness
mask the bruises, smooth
as plastic.

My city a single dot
for hands of a blind God
to glide over.

Love’s call love’s aweThis child this woman this Queen
To speak of her you must go to the inner depths of the soul this hallowed sacred place all is ablaze with
The unalterable knowledge that things here have no secrets or malice it is a fortification and out shines
The days of royal courts and knight hood where else can or should you take a life and turn it to all sides
To reveal its riches its extraordinary complexity the divine verve laid on top of human energy that is a
Golden gate that turns on hinges that sing and the song tells all about her nature the mist on a rustic
Country path she soothes with a smoothness like the cooing of a dove it displaces everything and then
You hear it alone in the silence this modulation this wonder is speaking from human lips it slips on to the
Air and begins streaming into your ears your heart your soul it divides into tiny spellbinding wisps like
the Breeze in the orient mysterious telling a freshness it holds court you are its willing subject you never
tire Your heart only desires more is there any who can or would deny loveliness it is lilt in magic add
with the Eyes that play and show thoughts being developed there is no armor than can defeat the
softest power Over flowing you it gains strength as your wanes inward crashing outwardly it not heard
but the treble Can be observed love has reached a fever pitch it swells are descending how can this be
coming from One who is so still the liquid volute with this signet her nature begins to pour forth the
appeal of silence Gentle richness starts to effect you senses is free moving thoughts that disarm your
Own concerns you’re swept into a dream like state of mind it pushes at the far edges caries away
Misbegotten debris and Returns with a flow of bliss dark substantive a holding power locks you into her
Concisenesses what a place you find yourself in you quickly conclude you have no desire to be anywhere else
In shadow and light you drift without destinations this is the thrill ride she gives when she really gets
Started and begins to ramp It up playful delightful magical no pretense why would she ever go there I
Could write so much more but just imagine you met an angel and of all things she took interest in you
And she started to give herself to you how do you imagine you would feel well that’s how I felt these
Words were written as her Husband Tom told them to me I hope you get the meaning and truth a
treasure lives and breathes What a blessing to know her so I send these pure thoughts to her

There is a mist that settles
close to the earth
It has no hope of surviving the sun
Whose warmth and glow
Displaces its watery blanket
Freeing the short grass
and hidden flowers
To strain with the breeze
Two feet venture across the moors
Heavily booted
Over non-matching socks
There is silence to be gained
on the plains
Suppressing the tarred brickwork
Of houses nestled together
Homes to hop-filled words
Pointing fingers
Contorted faces
Harsh ugly spewing outbursts
Love was for outsiders
And loneliness a gift within
The sky seems so close to the tips
Of your raised fingers
A gesture - a reach
For places you will leave behind

i.
the rain falls down
in sheets now, blocking my view
as i stand here on the corner
waiting for you
i wish i was young again
i wish i was warmer

ii.
counting backwards
settles my mind
like a surgery patient
waiting for the blade
(although you never use
anesthesia)

iii.
the cab pulls
to my corner
you open the door
i take in your aura
a pulsing
which displaces
the air in the cab
so this is what
heartbreak is for

Reading a friend's poetry
and learning about myself--
learning new articulations.
Switching to menthols
for as long as this cold lasts.
Realizing my body wants nicotine
but my mouth wants smoke,
that very often one, not the other,
will be satisfied--that is what's in conflict.

I am trying to be a child,
and I could go philosophically about that
or regressively--
Sort of, it is not the bottle itself I sip
which makes me the rosy ribald randy carouser
but what I put back into the bottle then the trashbin
which displaces the liquid up to my lips.

But regardless of my intents and drinking habits,
I'll still be splashing in the water,
running along the edge of the pool
building a current, a whirlpool
compelling my friends into water,
tackling and dunking and pull them underneath,
and gasping together for breath,
swept along and swelling
hoping to summon a Maelstrom
to engulf me and all.

You are like the sea,
Truth be told there is no other way to put it.
The sound of silence covered in repeated sigh.
A total embodiment of things placed of collective wonderment.
What shall triumph the noise of wave overlapping wave.
Of all things calm you spread your presence,
Drowning in the bliss of serenity.
You and only you could create the quiet hush dreams are made of.
Although
Some tides are bigger than most, 
Of all times, not all are escapable.
Splashing against the shore in a bipolar like disorder.
Crushing everything it touches, selfish in nature.
For every action there is a natural reaction that displaces the initial action.
A need for finding peace in the eye of discord.
This is where your heart becomes a walking representation of the sea itself.
And I the jagged coast, cleansed of any disbelief that things won't get any better outside of the moment.
Pieces of myself lost in you. A constant movement no longer stagnant in thought. 
This is where I consider you the sea, the depth of your eyes covering everything it touches.
And I the boat lost in mid drift, without a care in the world.
A means of transportation exploring a depth of things I never knew to exist.
The things you keep hidden.
Far from the hindsight of eyes, your habits, things you reveal to be true given enough time.
The constant change that happens every moment of every minute.
Still it doesn't take away from it's beauty, the things kept hidden.
You are like the sea, 
A profound way of expression.
And I, the sailor. 
Watching the truth reveal, bit by bit.

At midnight, the microwave reads "00:01"
And the sound it emits displaces roaches in the cupboards.
The sound of a distant freeway, running with traffic,
Like the blood which flows through my veins, constant.

Neon lights buzz in the background,
And a moth floats, attracted to the light,
Which flutters until it dies, and its final resting place is the window sill,
Near a dying tomato plant whose soil is littered with ashes,
From late night smoking sessions as I stare at the street below.

Pedestrians are silhouettes stalking the streets at night.
And when they pass under a light, you're surprised to see:
The student, the migrant worker, and the mother of four,
disengaging from the hourly buses which run at this hour.  

The microwave reads "00:00," and its beep alerts of the meal,
Mostly frozen peas and potatoes, but the meat is warm,
And the plastic film poked with holes slowly fills the apartment,
With some sign of life and comfort.

Where are the lines when the time has aligned?
And is there a way to accountably die?
I seek but a grave for this body to lie
Yet cannot submit to the ground, it is dry

A desert of trouble is all I can find
Desperate, I wander and tangle the vines
Here in the moment our steps are entwined
But who was the first to arrive, you or I?

Take up your pen and the hand that you hide
Use all the ink that is harbored inside
Bleed like a wound, it will keep you alive
Why do you fear what you simply deny?

Bury the questions, one sand at a time
Under the doubt that displaces your mind
Come be unraveled, prepared and refined
Then help me uncover meridian *lines

Life is passing, and so am I. Cars pass through the night, the quiet slush of tyres on wet asphalt. The air stirs softly through my open window. I’ve been passing all day, through empty straits and the static of a dying storm. Earlier in the year a flash flood came and burst through the walls of half the buildings in town. Nothing changed. The store on the corner that sells teen clothing threw out their wares, cleaned up the place best they could, and reopened a week later. The flood was on everybody’s mind for a few days. As weeks passed, it began to dissipate, like steam rising from hot tar, or puddles in wake. Today everything was as it always was. People gathered at crossings, walked within the white lines of their existence, and stopped when the lights turned red. Cars moved automatic. Blue, white, black geometries, smelling of earth and blood and rot. People shuffled past one another. They moved in circles, repeated phantom gestures of older times. The present reorganised from the past.

I sat in the shopping mall and watched people rising from escalators. Those without friends stood motionless, like mannequins. They barely breathed, fixed their eyes on the nothingness of automatic existence. The mall is a place of noise, whiteness and stench. A pale layer coats everything. The thin sound of radio intermixes with the chatter of nearly cafe-goers, the heavy slam of a cash register cuts through the harsh hum of kinetic machinery, steps without the need to step. Everyone is passing, but going nowhere. Commodities line the windows. Electronics, homeware, food items, travel plans—experience packaged into desirable aesthetic arrangements, to be consumed and forgotten. Western empires of capital exploiting the human need to feel something during their short existence. I was here—walking the same stretch of space a thousand others have walked.

I pass in repetition. I wake, shower, eat, study, binge, sleep, fall into existential despair and contemplate jumping off a cliff, but there are no close cliffs around, so I fall back into rhythm. Wake, shower, eat, study, binge, sleep, wander the commercial district wondering why anyone moves at all, how anyone can stand these mundane repetitions, the same social greetings, unfulfilling meals, temporary binges that leave you empty of your self. I thought knowledge filled, but it empties out. It displaces—it fragments you into tiny pieces, until you find there is nothing left to grasp—intentionality turns outwards, but it’s already too late—you find you can no longer connect with anyone, or anything—they try to converse but all you can hear is their stupid voice filled with phantom lines cobbled from movies, games, sports, family events, supermarket visits, patriarchal bonding discourses, the wet tongue of capital individualism, or perhaps teeth, biting into consciousness—so you turn away, or stay silent, too afraid to confront them of their non-existence, of their worthless chatter, of their niceties, because in the end all they want is to connect, but all you hear are circuits of repetition and capital, and you wonder how they can live this way, and you can’t.

Time passes. I stumble back towards university. I jack my headphones in and pass into the nothingness of another’s consciousness. I displace myself on purpose, because I’m sick and tired of what’s left. The man at the art store tells me I get a discount for being a student. I steal a pencil. I pass through the cold air of fall. I pass an endless strip of vacant motels. I pass into my room, try to read, drink a bottle of alcohol and pass out.

Inspiration is born in:

Dark places
Lost cases
Consumed chases
Forgotten races
Empty spaces
Mind mazes
Someone else's suitcases
What life Erases
Displaces
Absent Embraces
Bad places
Sad places
Disappearing faces

So go.
Find your aces.

A CORPORAL'S DEFINITION OF POETRY

The perfect summer's day.
The sky a postcard blue.

Hate distorted voices...faces
chanting: "STICK IT IN HIS GUTS!"

A lark ascending
throws itself against the vault of Heaven.

Only to be
rejected.

"...MAKE IT HURT...TWIST IT ABOUT
**** THE *****ING *******!"

God has a sick sense
of humour to have

bayonet practice
on such a perfect day.

The world whirlpools
down the plug hole

of Corporal 'Orrible's
almighty mouth.

He hates me because I
(Pt. Dempsey D. No. 835572)

am not showing enough
hate to **** a sandbag.

Sweat trickles down my spine
vertebra by vertebra.

The sandbag ***** the blade in
and won't give it back again.

I pull it out and fall
upon my derrière.

The sandbag bleeds sand.
Mocks my efforts

which displaces the book
I have about my person.

"What's this...what's this!"
Corporal 'Orrible hisses.

"A book, Corporal!"
"I can ****** well see it's a book!"

"A poetry book, Corporal!
IN PARENTHESIS by David Jones."

"In...in...wotsis do you think I'm
thick or wot!"

"Wot, Corporal?"
"Don't you wot me sunny Jim!"

His spit
peppers my face.

"There isn't enough white space
around the words for it to be a poem!"

"That's not an accurate definition
of a poem, Corporal!"

He froths at the mouth
tears it in half...throws it over his shoulder.

"Why you impudent little pup!
*** that rifle up...up....up!"

He runs me around the training ground
three times and then three times.

Later I go back and find
only half of it.

The half I have already read.
A sheep is nibbling it.

But like the Corporal it isn't
to his taste.

Over 40 years go by and
here I am an ex-army man.

Finishing the second half of
Jones' IN PARENTHESIS.

Remembering all too well the hell of
running 'round the training ground

three times and then three times
with my rifle up above my head.

Oh the agony of bearing arms.
Remembering too never to argue

with a corporal's definition of
poetry during bayonet practice.

It is quiet and secretive, not telling out its message from the first, but from later on, later in the day. The afternoon was where it usually began, the morningtime being far too bright, except on an autumn day of mist and mellow fruitfulness. Keats knew it, looked out of windows for it, wrote letters full of it for the girl he loved, who was, quite naturally, quite taken by it. Has it to be it? Are we afraid to say this word too regularly in case its quality dilutes?

If one is of a sensitive disposition it can be so easily achieved, this state of grace. He would say it was watching her cross that sun-filled room, early autumn sunlight filtered through damson leaves bathed her quiet figure with shadows falling across a full grey skirt with its deep pockets and camphored hem. She held a bowl of figs in both hands, to place on the blue tablecloth. Better not go there he thought, the touch of fig on the lips, then its open fruit beset with seed. The rest is beyond and far away.

Is there such a music? A composer I know who believes so, and says for him composition consists of the enchantment of the audience through sound. There’s a little song I wrote when hardly out of my teens that conjures up this very state. Carousel it’s called and carousel it does.

A green table,
on it a fan.
Black plays white,
big versus little.
Each with green
gripped by delicate fingers.
Laughing both
the little one wins.
J’ai une maladie.
Yes –the world is for little people.
For children it opens its petals,
for the old they crumple.

Oh yes, for children the world opens its petals. My daughters being cats hiding in boxes, my son his eyes full of stars on a Welsh mountain under a winter’s sky – the memory so quickly fills with the enchantments of children.

And for lovers this word displaces the ordinary and surfaces with the barely credible. Not the first kiss, but on the thousandth brush of lips so light their bodies shuddered, their breath quickened, and there in that moment the perfume of passion enveloped them. In the silent bedroom they emptied themselves into love’s soft shadows and could hardly open their eyes to make sure they were really there and not elsewhere: they had walked from the slow curve of the sheltering beach to the flower-filled pasture, past indifferent cattle and through a tenderness of kissing gates where every embrace of lips gathered momentum towards, finally, that deepest kiss of all; enchantment, more than any loving, wholly and unforgettable.

Deep in the folds
My vulnerable places
Like a draft displaces
Turbid Stagnance
Firey sun illuminates
The dewey fertile soil
Infiltrating unturned
Spongy depths
Stimulates the follicles
Teases tenacious life
Into frothing vigorous
Surging prominence
Hungry searching tongues
Tasting the flushed flesh
So forceful and so hot
in open air
Primitively freely
illuminate
My hunger
Devour me
Like a flame
Consuming
My pride and shame
To surrender
Is to love you
And the falling
Hurts the best

Winter has no cold lie the brief terror of life that seems endless the terror strikes from streets
And paths once walked in joy now each house every board each window every angle states
What was and never will be again nature will not allow a vacuum but lost- loved ones are the
Holes and vacuum that honeycomb the human heart these are the shadows that the brightest
Sun cannot abolish they visit in long walks or can come from the briefest encounter their
Unprecedented power is evidenced in silence of chiseled granite over windswept hills and
Fields nothing effect these monuments but the human heart alone through love can enwrap
The Coldest stone making it melt by love’s glowing power the stone shimmers momentarily and
Then is replaced by living memory that the coldest beast of all which is time has relentlessly
Pursued until has drawn a high flame of youthful vigor down till it is but a feeble flame that the
Smallest breeze extinguishes all leave a lasting mark and each in their own special way give
Enduring power that goes a long way in the healing process God their most prominent
Characteristics to veil the suffering one until the walk can be made alone for some it is the
Power of their personality others their gentle sweet nature can even hold deaths pall at bay
And still others the wonder they spin in common ordinary days come rushing in as swirling
Waters that raise the soul and carry it to higher climes shadows call us to refection our loved
Ones stand ever present to diffuse the harsh glaring light we hear their whispering voices they
Are timeless reminders of life’s greatest good we gather these mortal treasures they continue
To be our closest advisers and closest friends although they have ventured to the farthest
Boundaries of our understanding our hearts will always be knit together by love the greatest
Power known to mankind that is our unbreakable cord that binds us together yesterday today
And for all the tomorrows O stillness that can hold heaviest burdens it displaces the most
Contrary circumstances let us view our tomorrow the silence our escape walk the solitary
Landscape tin the emptiest places you will find the rare that stands out in exquisite detail we
Have shared the wonder of souls that have been strategically placed in our lives so that we
Could reach our destiny and fulfillment go forth bravely and share the gifts they bestowed in
Your life

There is a wind

a wind that displaces me

from the limitations  of the present

it locates me in a century

i shall never live to see

a coloured wind

that overtakes me

lifts me out of this present

transports me into

the fragments of a fiction

it is a wind with violet eyes

it disperses me

into celebrated elements

a wind that cradles me

listens to me

a wind that stops me

in mid-sentence

makes me fumble

over the cohesion of my words

it is a wind that

drapes the mirrors

causes voluminous

approbation of thought

across purple, blue and red lit canals

a wind that is

the potency of a swallowed aphrodisiac

blowing through my veins

a wind of implacable silence

that causes me to hear

the tireless serration of

my mind expiring

on the last moonlit beach

Ear worms during zen prove that left to nothing, popular culture will take my attention.
So let them create their music: an evil in the Hadiths of Islam, and a degradation in the Pali Canon.
Music's flames burn away the veins and stupify the mind.
The heart is replaced with straw and the liver is poisoned.

Baha'u'llah said music is lawful as long as it uplifts the spirit.
But I say:
It eats the organs, toxifies the blood.
It makes me forgetful of liberation.
Its words are idols against the Path.
It masks the senses.
It trivializes reason.
It points the disposition into darkness upon darkness.
It deafens the ears.

It lightens the body.
It stammers the sense of smell.
It invades attention and enslaves the mind.
It dries the throat.
It displaces the sense of location.

Don't you hate it when your train of thought is moving consistently and then something derails it?
Another idea or just a random thought pops into your head and displaces
Your concentration, this happens all too often now
With technology improving attention span goes down

and the more it goes down
the less kids play outside
and the less homework gets done

So as the sun sets all I can say is
Distractions are constant but attention you can afford to pay

you just gotta learn what you're paying to
and if the cause is really worth it because
the time you got on this here planet
is all you've got

motes of snow float listlessly by the window
rising and falling with meandering currents of air
sunlight, filtered pale through grey cloud
another moment passing
a dull refrain...
the chill clawing at walls and doors
incessantly as incomprehensible being      
...
another long grey day,
arctic wind,
bodies bundled,
and the mind seeking the warmth of certainty...
not found today
...
today, I wish I was a Marxist with something worldly to believe in
something that gives utter meaning
something that displaces, with in me, the grey despair, the icy thoughts of winter
not some frigid airy faith
but the lodged certainty of mind, man, and history...

but those statues are long gone
those poets of the proletariat have been
single mindedly disgraced
the windows of future hope have been iced over
and our little fire burns the furniture of our lives
like Zhivago's

and the mice are watching us from the cupboards
and the rats fall between the walls scratching at lathe and plaster
and in the night
they scare us scuttling over our sleeping bodies

they’re everywhere
like spies saying nothing
watching, waiting for the cold to take us
unfeeling, frozen on the recliner covered
with a feeble quilt
they’ll dance then before our milky white eyes
open, staring out past the frosty sill
And the ice glaze over the pane
…
when spring comes I will cry with the ice...
melting down the window
when worldly ideology fails
I will read banned books on the soul
spin in the slushy square a sloppy dance
of liberty

when spring comes I will sing
with the crows over dead ideology
that couldn’t save a soul
but could hope to
like all the others  

when spring comes
I will look no further than
naked trees promising bud

...
December 3rd 2014

The foggy mirror
Displaces your image
Back to you
Distorted and the right on the left
Left on the right

You rub your hand against the glass
Use the sleeve of your shirt to pierce the fog
Though it does not disappear

It’s permanently there, you decide
Along with the black mold that lingers at the corners
And at the sides

You look further into it
Just a piece of reflecting glass
Or that’s what it seems to be

You look directly into the middle
Not at your eyes but at the material of the glass
There is a small speck with no fog.

You start again to run you sleeve across
But starting at the speck,
The fog slowly circulates around the mirror
Like it is holding a pool of fog

You push the fog so it overlaps
And the edges are a deeper gray
A clear spot emerges in the center

You put your finger right in the middle of the spot
It’s not painful
But it’s not comfortable
There is pressure on your finger

A vibrating sensation
An other worldly pull
You are completely mystified
By the images that swirl through the fog

Though not of another world,
They are of yours,
They are what you may be able to hold in your hands one day
The others what happens with nothing in your hands.