******, ****, Gay
these words cut through queer youth
like their razors through their wrists
words that cause the list of queer youth committing suicide seem like a revolving door
queer youth of color forced into a two doored slaughter house
The army or the pen
Queer youth of color being harassed, beaten, and killed
While gay marriage is the sign of equal rights for gays
I CALL *******!
There is no equal rights for gays when gay people are given the “privilege” to enter the heteronormative social constructions of the American Dream, to believe in the American Way
There is no equal rights when the blood of gay youth floods America’s streets!

Hic. On the grey sand beside the shallow stream
Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still
A lamp burns on beside the open book
That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon,
And, though you have passed the best of life, still trace,
Enthralled by the unconquerable delusion,
Magical shapes.
Ille. By the help of an image
I call to my own opposite, summon all
That I have handled least, least looked upon.
Hic. And I would find myself and not an image.
Ille. That is our modern hope, and by its light
We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind
And lost the old nonchalance of the hand;
Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush,
We are but critics, or but half create,
Timid, entangled, empty and abashed,
Lacking the countenance of our friends.
Hic. And yet
The chief imagination of Christendom,
Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself
That he has made that hollow face of his
More plain to the mind's eye than any face
But that of Christ.
Ille. And did he find himself
Or was the hunger that had made it hollow
A hunger for the apple on the bough
Most out of reach? and is that spectral image
The man that Lapo and that ***** knew?
I think he fashioned from his opposite
An image that might have been a stony face
Staring upon a Bedouin's horse-hair roof
From doored and windowed cliff, or half upturned
Among the coarse grass and the camel-dung.
He set his chisel to the hardest stone.
Being mocked by ***** for his lecherous life,
Derided and deriding, driven out
To climb that stair and eat that bitter bread,
He found the unpersuadable justice, he found
The most exalted lady loved by a man.
Hic. Yet surely there are men who have made their art
Out of no tragic war, lovers of life,
Impulsive men that look for happiness
And sing when t"hey have found it.
Ille. No, not sing,
For those that love the world serve it in action,
Grow rich, popular and full of influence,
And should they paint or write, still it is action:
The struggle of the fly in marmalade.
The rhetorician would deceive his neighbours,
The sentimentalist himself; while art
Is but a vision of reality.
What portion in the world can the artist have
Who has awakened from the common dream
But dissipation and despair?
Hic. And yet
No one denies to Keats love of the world;
Remember his deliberate happiness.
Ille. His art is happy, but who knows his mind?
I see a schoolboy when I think of him,
With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window,
For certainly he sank into his grave
His senses and his heart unsatisfied,
And made -- being poor, ailing and ignorant,
Shut out from all the luxury of the world,
The coarse-bred son of a livery-stable keeper --
Luxuriant song.
Hic. Why should you leave the lamp
Burning alone beside an open book,
And trace these characters upon the sands?
A style is found by sedentary toil
And by the imitation of great masters.
Zlle. Because I seek an image, n-ot a book.
Those men that in their writings are most wise,
Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.
I call to the mysterious one who yet
Shall walk the wet sands by the edge of the stream
And look most like me, being indeed my double,
And prove of all imaginable things
The most unlike, being my anti-self,
And, standing by these characters, disclose
All that I seek; and whisper it as though
He were afraid the birds, who cry aloud
Their momentary cries before it is dawn,
Would carry it away to blasphemous men.

She was as crazy as a Norse horse
with a wild bleached mane and madeyes,
always willin to do anythin for ya
with a ''come on then''
her moods would drive you insane,
wrenching compassion and anger from your heart in equal parts,
spewing venom when talking of her ma,
it would hurt to listen,  yet it was easy to see this sulphuric froth
as just rage being rage.
In her kitchen she concocted over spilling potions
banana and coconut breads, her time was your time,
her table always spread, with baskets and jars,
Valerian by the bottle she sculled to help sleep,
baskets with moss and golf *****, Scottish tat in a heap
and beliefs, worn and threadbare like the carpets
in her tiny,  orange doored flat
with a gerbil called ***** and a hamster called pat,
and dear wee Jamie who spouted that Halloween mantra ''crap bat''
we filled and hung balloons with sweets and let the kids skewer
the hell out of them, it rained chocolate in the corridor for weeks,
and that is what I loved about her madness,
is that it dived and it did, and it speaked

The weekend revellers
hand over a half-hour of toil,
of eros, of prayers in cash,
of dizzy heights, life lived
and to be lived again
as I hand over their bottled beer,
their ice and *****,
their poster boy of good times
and the erasure of all day
spent watching the wheels.
Spent watching the clock
wind its endless route
to freedom.

Legs cramp,
eyes blur to focus,
and cash moves dirtied hands,
one to the other, to the other
and back again.
Back again to the dancefloor,
to the gape of sweaty arms
flailing in catharsis,
in sweet memories
of playground kisses and
lunchtime riots.
We play sweet imitation
of black-man-blues
and toast the new day
as it comes 'round the corner,
steamrollers through
into Sundays spent
with cigarette ends and
heads in buckets.

This, my origin of misery,
their open-doored appearance
to substantial existence,
to footprints of two-time
than carbon.
To commutes of whiskey sour
and wine dry,
car left in park at home,
whilst the taxis
pick up the slack.

Poisoned in the promise
of forever-youth,
the cougars cover
the same old ground,
the same old ground
every week.
I spot them in the corners,
by the doors,
in the cloakroom
and in the fire of backway passages;
the closest hope to
human touch
they'd ever dare to dream.

And the shot girls.
The shot girls kick water
in a sea of salted men,
football hooligan,
semi-political lyncher
and the neck-tattooed reality hero
who crawled in from
some bar or other,
to condemn losses with shouts
of *****, of *****, of please.
“Please, just once,
afford me a want in life”,
comes the mating call
of lads and businessmen alike,
as young female flesh passes by
their lives,
like some unfulfilled match,
kicking up sparks
but refusing to flame.

Each day I wonder
why dread exists. Why I
cling to the bedsheets,
why stories are poured
and glasses written,
why I settle for anti-living
and artificial light,
why woman is singular
and drinks are solo;
whilst all life passes by
in the excruciating hours
spent stood behind
the beer taps,
behind the barrier
that separates me
from them.

playing the ***** at a puppet cocktail party
couldn’t be an easier audience
but my check is still in the mail

saving a skinny woman with chest compressions
single-handedly so-to-speak
i wasn’t alone but i’ll take the credit
the others were weak, i was going heavy
and that’s when she came back

resurrecting my villain for the TV series Heroineburgh
an afternoon shoot with 3 young ladies in tight spandex
acting!

saving another woman with team compressions
went on for 60 minutes before her heart reignited
a christmas miracle
though i unplugged her 2 days later
continuous seizures

getting 3 of my 4 bands on one compilation
that and a quarter would give me a quarter

falling off my bike twice in 5 minutes
car ran a red light, then got doored in the bike lane
today was the first day my sprained wrist allowed pushups
(helps with those chest compressions)

making a money hat for the video i’m shooting for the Dumplings
they’re the Rolling Stones of my favorite bar

went to a hypnotist at the Fringe Fest
failing to get hyponotized
"you were obviously resisting," said my wife
i don’t know
i think i’m just obviously me

playing my ***** on a movie stage
for 8 second segments with the movie
don’t ask
we made $96 and bought tacos for $95

now i’m listening to my swinging new louis prima album
reflecting on this groovy month of spring

How can it be that life should be so sweet
What could I've done to earn this greatest gift
That I should have this rarest chance to meet
A soul so kind, who opens up her heart.
Their arms forever opened to embrace
Their words forever ready to uplift
Even her home, that sanctuaried place
Left open-doored to friends who go adrift.
Their voice they raise to advocate for change
To validate, they spread not hate, but love
She lives her life without a trace of shame
She must have been a gift sent from above.
No words I speak nor write could manifest
A friend like her; she really is the best.

My father had a propensity for a peculiar type of sparseness.
Enhanced with items of furniture collected from many sources.
Not a mean man but coming from a very poor family off Labrook Grove in London his few possessions were meaningful.

In the 1970s my parents moved to Totland to take up residence in a new bungalow on The Isle Of Wight, situated overlooking rambling countryside and narrow, windy lanes.
There was a wide but shortish back garden needing to be established. The front garden a sloped bank to meet the pavement.
Mother brought with her, from Streatham her London home, favourite hardy shrubs easily transplanted.

My father retired early finding the strain of being a hospital administrator at St Georges Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, too taxing.
Recruitment was problematic and mainly filled with applicants from overseas.(Not much has changed in fifty years.)My mother wanted to spend time with Frank, her father, sharing his latter years at Totland where he and his wife, Gwen, lived overlooking the Solent on a considerable plot of land.
This included the new bungalow built about 1952-4 and designed by John Westbrook, Frank's son, and acres of beautifully planned flower gardens, a vegetable patch and large wooded area where the trees held tiny toys, to the magic of Tolkein. As children this place was as close as one could get to paradise.

Usually we entered by the back lane entrance rather than from The Alum Bay Road. The plot stretching between the two.
The rows of backgarden fences looked much the same
Crumbling and split wooden planks, large tree roots
Dividing up the length and making mysterious openings
Where rather dilapidated gates, latched firmly
So animals could not stray,
Allowed for the start of magic.
Out of all these fences one belonged to my grandparents and
Through which our travels to Narnia began.

So twenty, mainly, glorious years on The Island, enjoying its many beautiful walks, the beaches and a few precious friends and neighbours. It had been my mother's dream to inherit her father's bungalow and spend her final years watching the boats float on the Solent and breathe sea air sitting on a swinging seat surrounded by primroses. Unfortunately this dream did not materialise due to my mother's poor health. But she was grateful for the years Bill and herself  had together on that green and pleasant land.

My maternal grandparents were, quietly distinguished, letter writers
Who embroidered their days with poetic licence. They had few visitors, apart from the local vicar, the vet and gardener. Gwen being a rather possessive and eccentric lady and having no children of her own, treated the dog as one would a child and life centred around dog walks, feeding and playtime. Frank was also frail and being older than Gwen needed much care and attention.They both liked to read and write letters which they did after lunch with an added snooze. Every day flowed with regularity and neat routines interspersed with many hours tending the garden, picking raspberries from heavily laden canes and gathering long, plump runner beans.
Throughout the Summer months high tea was set in the garden on a rickety table, and consisting of thick slices of current bread coated in salt free butter, a variety of homemade cakes, sandwiches, and ice cream and jelly with a *** of tea or lemonade.
I am reminded of 'The Bloomsbury Set' and Vita Sackville -West, a tranquil but harassed life with too much need for perfection.


Geographically some distance from our London home visits, both ways, were infrequent and by the time I was about nine Frank was too old to travel to Streatham. However their presence formed a significant part of our lives and is still with me today.
Unfortunately letter writing was for my brother and I a chore not undertaken with glee,
Especially as the gift was often a box of embroidered hankies sat in someone's drawer for an age.

The family structure, having married in their fifties, consisted of Frank and Gwen, Mother and always a wire haired terrier, often renewed as age took this species young. Mother was in her nineties and having brought up Gwen and Kath singularly now lived with her daughter in the bungalow at Totland on the Alum Bay Road.

Frank had been part of the Boy's Brigade movement from his teens, taking his love of camping into his marriage to Alexandra Emily Giles, the mother of his two daughters, Grace Emily and Betty Rose. His wife sadly died in childboth leaving the girls orphaned at five and seven.
Frank then moved from Reading to Tooting in south London and married Vera, a girl of twenty one, to whom he had a son, John.
Vera was flirtatious with the boys in the brigade and left Frank and her son, John, at the age of nine, to the care and protection of my mother Grace who was then eighteen. Grace loved them both but it restricted her life and she feared she would never marry. However she found my father, a wonderfully loving and wholesome person who made her very happy in most ways.

Throughout my mother's and John's childhood time was spent camping on the Isle of Wight and so strong associations were made with Totland where the brigade camped in a field in Court Road.

The two bungalows were approximately two to three miles apart.
My mother visited Gwen and her father twice a week spending
A couple of hours sitting in the open planned hallway, glass doored, which faced onto the Alam Bay Road. If warm it would be brunch in the garden at the back. These visits were my mother's anchorage with her life as she missed me very much and her grandchildren in Watford.

Innisfail (meaning- The Ireland of Belonging) was the name of my grandparents' bungalow. ( please see below for more lengthy meaning and interpretation, kindly, written  by John Garbutt).

My parents' bungalow was named  'Crowhurst'  and carved on a wooden plaque as a present by John Garbutt my auntie Betty's partner. The origin of the name came from a retreat that my father, Bill, attended and connected to a church in Streatham where I lived as a child.

Almost all my childhood annual holidays were taken on the Island so we could visit our grandparents and my mother spend time with her father. After my parents moved and I married and had children the pattern was repeated. And till this day it is a favourite with all my children and grandchildren. A special place fixed in time and beauty.

The bungalows are both sold now as their residents have all died.
Clearing out the garage of my parents' bungalow my brother found many of my father's precious possessions although the house was quite sparse still having the wooden floorboards laid when first built twenty years before.

May they all rest in peace .Love Mary ***

My Family and our long and happy connections with The Isle Of Wight. By Mary Kearns April 2018.
John Garbutt wrote the following piece on the meaning of the name 'Innisfail'.

My belief that the place-name came from Scotland was abandoned
on finding the gaelic origins of the name.
‘Inis’ or ‘Innis' mean ‘island’, while ‘fail’ is the word for
Ireland itself. ‘Innisfail’ means Ireland. But not just
geographically: the Ireland of tradition, customs, legends
and folk music, the Ireland of belonging.
So the explanation why the Irish ‘Innisfail’ was adopted as the name
of a town in Alberta, Canada, and a town in Australia,
can only be that migrants took the name, well  over a century ago
to their new homelands, though present-day Canadians
and Australians won’t have that same feeling about it.

------------------------------------------------------------­---------
The bungalow was designed by John Westbrook, who was an architect, as a wedding present for his father and Gwen Westbrook.
I do believe he also designed the very large and beautiful gardens.
I no longer know whether the bungalow is still standing or what it may be called .Mary xxxx

Next then now, then next
no line, no dot, nothing now

time passes, came to pass,
as a near answer, a near new
point from which to view now.

…
In my case, my time as part,
smallest difference made,

the air you breathe, once,
I breathed into, and once,

I made you think yourself,
become a being I am not, but

then,
time,
and chance, all things working,
being, by gone, on gone working
to gather the momentum to make
time stretch into another whole mo-
ment, monumental pillar of earth salt.

At this point, next seems inevitable.
So we wait.
Thinking a next like this next one,
has never had a state of being common.

What - all ifery asks, if, imagined, seen, see

we agree and proceed to see, so time's
essence is momentarily mental, we think,
therefore we do many mental moments, we
think we would, or could or should be ready
for ever to cease forming myself, from myself,

slowing time, to myself, for myself, taking mine
and forming some for you to use, to take a second

order of packeted eventuality, side-tracked,
to let the important news of many deaths elsewhere,
make us agree to become so much better informed,

buy the best life has on offer, ready,
read the instructions.
{ lifetime acheivement, never reached}
Chiefest among missers of the mark.

Of course, in the course of human events,
from the playing fields of Eton, to the battlefields
of Afghanistan, what power reigns supreme?
- The Lion came, and brought the Tiger,
- the Bear came, and left, and then the Rat,
- or the Weasle, we can even see a Squirrel
- in the role of first worst case scenario on offer.
VOG - quiet on set, quiet back stage,
mind reengage tongue, taste the fertile reality, who
and what we are, enjoyment, actually, being, mere joy,
ahoy, adrift in all our otherwords, set idle by our tech-logic
- What fear rules the man who has learned his role?
Broken leg, reversed cursing, blessing God, just in case.

-- A day, Ivan Denisovich, Zeks, yes,
man's inhumanity to man, and best layed plans

plotted course of concentration, minds meld, given
incentive to spill over the banks of the feeder canals,

as the hermit's cistern in the Lagunas, topped it's edge,
and he sighs, thinking, so it is, you got a cistern,
I gotta cistern, if yours were to overflow,
it is your fault, or your glory for the joy, in the streets
in the summer,
in the city, back o' yo' neck red and sweaty, you dig,
you become worthy of the daily bread we are given
for righteous duty done, did I do, or did you, did we

sing along with the bouncing ball, did we all?

Thinking, all we do is wait,
becoming old, we wait to finish thinking,
thinking old, old, olden days, before letters,
before
knowing, being nothing, becoming this, these
lines of lettering linking noises used among us
to carry thought from me, myself and I, to you,

the one other at the moment, in the state,
what if, what if, what if nothing makes more
difference than you, one of us, one in our once

in an unbroken history of science and philosophy,
our hours of confluency, our instants in shared
learning, minutes of life's use, as used to make us
up from nothing… to think about a series of every

expansion to our sense of connectedness, seeing
we lieve being true, first proof the priests do lie,

first proof the chaos is not evil, but essential
patient zero, paradigm,
"logical or conceptual structure
serving as a form of thought
within a given area
of experience," Kuhn, perhaps, aligned

any worth, any value, any cost or price,
eventually, any time is too short.
Any vessle filled with experiential wonders
projected on reflective walls, six ways walled.
windowed and doored.

In parts, in passing, taking offerings
left in pasts for hungry spirits, urging

answer seeking, seeming endless, whying,
ifing, framing forms for fitting twos to ones,

as when we agree, we form a two headed
thing, with we agreeing meatily to work
as carnal minds do, given set and setting,

inform a vessle for holding self evidence.

Governing systems, blindman crosswalks,
mandated, ai, remote eye aware, are we,
seeing from television, new form, digitized
bit maps of surprising resolution, if one re-
members learning lessons of scale, how tall,
how small, the ratio, this pattern of whorls,

and that, fingerprint from some once in ever,
there, we all see it, so huge we lack the frame
of referrence, we cannot bear the weight of knowing

we are the tipped point on our wave's recourse
around the laws serving stanchion roles in god's houses.

Pillars formed from promises, to those who find the time,
now, in a given day,
plain old everyday summertime, growing time, passing
as quaint, handcrafted meditation stations, desert fathers,

have we any wool, yessir, yessir, three bags full,
master, dame, and some poor spinner
who lives down the lane… earning daily bread,
as penance for being born in sin, losing all the good God
had planned, I' know a guy,
he can tell this story,
as a called and reconnected son, of God.

And the likelihood, actuarially, as tithes passed,
interesting, heft, umph, to the indulgent users, knowing
good and evil, evil is lazy money, doing no man any good.

Knowing how to grow more money, Midas, reminds,
as do many voices from the tombs, liars prosperity changes

legends, shapes myths, fixes history just so, at the instant,
we knew, we all knew, at once, everything,
is after ever before,
and we have stores of knowns, unbeknownst,
arranged in time and alpha beth order, for habitual
referrence, you know, we all know religions are powers
wielded by Ideal candidates, chosen children, and broken
old ladies,
what mystery is more mysterious than they,
the power they rewield as time stamps, proof, there

that guy was a witness, and he was not there,
on the stair, I
sat, imagining I remembered that, and found it odd.

I have been lied to, and I have lied, to you, I do,
naturally, I am of that class of sapient things, I can
lie, if lying leads the mark into the mark-et try and do,

do, indeed, Yoda, wink. Done, and beheld, now, that
is time well spent.

AND there's more…

Meta Kuhnian Crisis Paradigm.

Four nickles, two dimes, time was,
two novels, or four one reel peep shows,
-SECOND COMING TYPE- ten 2 cent papers
WAR CALLS
PEACE-
times means for holding a cultural bubble,
intact, sticky in fact, tacky to the touch,

RSO and blue stripes… settled hermit state,
from a granite lip of a feng shui breeze,
AI, what do I know - in summary,
a procession
Summarizer
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a book written by philosopher Thomas S. Kuhn in 1962.12 Kuhn argued that scientific advancement is not linear, but rather a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions, where one conceptual world view is replaced by another.3 The book offers a general pattern of scientific change, where inquiries in a given field start with a clash of different perspectives.1 Eventually, one approach manages to resolve some concrete issue, and investigators concur in pursuing it—they follow the "paradigm." Kuhn challenged long-standing linear notions of scientific progress, arguing that transformative ideas don't arise from the day-to-day, gradual process of experimentation and data accumulation, but that the revolutions in science, those breakthrough moments that disrupt accepted thinking and offer unanticipated ideas, occur outside of "normal science." The historical process of science is divided into three stages: a "normal" stage, followed by "crisis" and then "revolutionary" stages.0

Of my own volition, if one were to assume
one of my stations in life could possibly know my own will,
revolunteered to lead a raid behind the lines,
out of loyalty to a bucket list
perfect cow dismemberment, check,
tear a sacred cow to shreds and leave it to be ciphered out,
by farmers living high on the Teapot Dome affair,
and its coincidence to great social reformation,
- steam roll, electric mind of Tesla
- and all the unsung genius under Edison, into one,
- as the online entity with roots back to BBS and
- dial tone tricks of a switch…
yes, the burden of the rich, as we saw the similarities,
become the unresolved problem,
- mission drift, art intuited cognosis
have you never read where it is written that we,
we who read
being the only letting being
to let it be known, that we are to judge angels,
- where does this go?
as best messaging noncorporeal beings, wielding spirit in truth,
not some clown troupe trope miss
representing feeble minds reattempting trials,

Not Clarence, or Caspar, or the couple in the Thin Man,
nor Harvey, the Pooka manifested as human in a rabbit hat.

In profile he became the ******* Logo, same rabbit head guy.
Bunny lore, wrapped in chinchilla, soft as kitten fur,

who would ever tell?

--- Business, summer makes me think of winter sales.

No curious use of curio arts, ancient
beta better possible ways, from when we knew nada
at all, zip, zilch, no se, no way, we were babes,

and if we are raised, we become like animals, we sweat.
But, if we are reared, we become as men, we perspire.

As sentient beings who read as readily as we write,
we accept the role of reader as ours by right, or rote
ritual quotidian duty, each day, we plan to finish re-en
lightening the mob, the masses, eight billion of us now,

as we approach the peak, powers of ten, times six,
why six,
cubes stack nice… least heat, cool
enough to seal a preset get,
go, be gone to elicit light,
research into mind mold.

My father had a propensity for a peculiar type of sparseness.
Enhanced with items of furniture collected from many sources.
Not a mean man but coming from a very poor family off Labrook Grove in London his few possessions were meaningful.

In the 1970s my parents moved to Totland to take up residence in a new bungalow on The Isle Of Wight, situated overlooking rambling countryside and narrow, windy lanes.
There was a wide but shortish back garden needing to be established. The front garden a sloped bank to meet the pavement.
Mother brought with her, from Streatham her London home, favourite hardy shrubs easily transplanted.

My father retired early finding the strain of being a hospital administrator at St Georges Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, too taxing.
Recruitment was problematic and mainly filled with applicants from overseas.(Not much has changed in fifty years.)My mother wanted to spend time with Frank, her father, sharing his latter years at Totland where he and his wife, Gwen, lived overlooking the Solent on a considerable plot of land.
This included the new bungalow built about 1952-3 and designed by John Westbrook, Frank's son, and acres of beautifully planned flower gardens, a vegetable patch and large wooded area where the trees held tiny toys, to the magic of Tolkein. As children this place was as close as one could get to paradise.

Usually we entered by the back lane entrance rather than from The Alum Bay Road. The plot stretching between the two.
The rows of backgarden fences looked much the same
Crumbling and split wooden planks, large tree roots
Dividing up the length and making mysterious openings
Where rather dilapidated gates, latched firmly
So animals could not stray,
Allowed for the start of magic.
Out of all these fences one belonged to my grandparents and
Through which our travels to Narnia began.

So over twenty, mainly, glorious years on The Island, enjoying its many beautiful walks, the beaches and a few precious friends and neighbours. It had been my mother's dream to inherit her father's bungalow and spend her final years watching the boats float on the Solent and breathe sea air sitting on a swinging seat surrounded by primroses. Unfortunately this dream did not materialise due to my mother's poor health. But she was grateful for the years Bill and herself  had together on that green and pleasant land.

My maternal grandparents were, quietly distinguished, letter writers
Who embroidered their days with poetic licence. They had few visitors, apart from the local vicar, the vet and gardener. Gwen being a rather possessive and eccentric lady and having no children of her own, treated the dog as one would a child and life centred around dog walks, feeding and playtime. Frank was also frail and being older than Gwen needed much care and attention.They both liked to read and write letters which they did after lunch with an added snooze. Every day flowed with regularity and neat routines interspersed with many hours tending the garden, picking raspberries from heavily laden canes and gathering long, plump runner beans.
Throughout the Summer months high tea was set in the garden on a rickety table, and consisting of thick slices of current bread coated in salt free butter, a variety of homemade cakes, sandwiches, and ice cream and jelly with a *** of tea or lemonade.
I am reminded of 'The Bloomsbury Set' and Vita Sackville -West, a tranquil but harassed life with too much need for perfection.


Geographically some distance from our London home visits, both ways, were infrequent and by the time I was about nine Frank was too old to travel to Streatham. However their presence formed a significant part of our lives and is still with me today.
Unfortunately letter writing was for my brother and I a chore not undertaken with glee,
Especially as the gift was often a box of embroidered hankies sat in someone's drawer for an age.

The family structure, having married in their fifties, consisted of Frank and Gwen, Mother and always a wire haired terrier, often renewed as age took this species young. Mother was in her nineties and having brought up Gwen and Kath singularly now lived with her daughter in the bungalow at Totland on the Alum Bay Road.

Frank had been part of the Boy's Brigade movement from his teens, taking his love of camping into his marriage to Alexandra Emily Giles, the mother of his two daughters, Grace Emily and Betty Rose. His wife sadly died in childboth leaving the girls orphaned at five and seven.
Frank then moved from Reading to Tooting in south London and married Vera, a girl of twenty one, to whom he had a son, John.
Vera was flirtatious with the boys in the brigade and left Frank and her son, John, at the age of nine, to the care and protection of my mother Grace who was then eighteen. Grace loved them both but it restricted her life and she feared she would never marry. However she found my father, a wonderfully loving and wholesome person who made her very happy in most ways.

Throughout my mother's and John's childhood time was spent camping on the Isle of Wight and so strong associations were made with Totland where the brigade camped in a field in Court Road.

The two bungalows were approximately two to three miles apart.
My mother visited Gwen and her father twice a week spending
A couple of hours sitting in the open planned hallway, glass doored, which faced onto the Alan Bay Road. If warm it would be brunch in the garden at the back. These visits were my mother's anchorage with her life as she missed me very much and her grandchildren in Watford.

Innisfail (meaning- The Ireland of Belonging) was the name of my grandparents' bungalow. ( please see below for more lengthy meaning and interpretation, kindly, written  by John Garbutt).

My parents' bungalow was named  'Crowhurst'  and carved on a wooden plaque as a present by John Garbutt my auntie Betty's partner. The origin of the name came from a retreat that my father, Bill, attended and connected to a church in Streatham where I lived as a child.

Almost all my childhood annual holidays were taken on the Island so we could visit our grandparents and my mother spend time with her father. After my parents moved and I married and had children the pattern was repeated. And till this day it is a favourite with all my children and grandchildren. A special place fixed in time and beauty.

The bungalows are both sold now as their residents have all died.
Clearing out the garage of my parents' bungalow my brother found many of my father's precious possessions although the house was quite sparse still having the wooden floorboards laid when first built twenty years before.

May they all rest in peace .Love Mary ***

My Family and our long and happy connections with The Isle Of Wight. By Mary Kearns April 2018.

The shadows are a
Newfound emptiness.
Winter collapses on my
Blooming form;
The aching is like a
Rose in a withering bind.

Show winter goodbye
Without a velvet kiss,
Your lips intricate like
Candlelight flooding darkness.

The whispers are a
Newfound romance;
A deep melody
Burning a quiet
Softness into me.

Show softness a warm
Welcome, with wide, open
Doored arms.
Your delicate fingers like
Raindrops to seed.

I want to leave you on a better note, every day away from this is like a broken toe, I lose balance when time passes by words I haven't wrote, I run afoul of vowels in slim corridors across the labyrinthian mind, A Major rings in sonata, tenor to soprano tremors, bells of horrors, tight and highly-pitched the orchestrated punishment of tinnitus, this is my mind's bliss, a warning issued at the fourth corner, warm up before you run there won't be any disbelief, no slab for the coroner, cold beef, a ghost you won't meet, like a sheet on a stretcher, the home stretch is the long run, bask in the villainy, I hound myself to waking nightmares like these verbal vibes that flow freely on tap for saps from the vines in my brains that pump through my veins creating this vitriolic viscosity, giving the impression I'm of equal likelihood to ascend to higher planes of peace in touch with divinity as I am to engage a killing spree with explosive, violent velocity, verbose verses versus society, I eat my own rage and bomb it back onto a page, ***** that into pieces, let my spirit leave and levitate over self-loathing so I can see myself clearly, before I am set to go off on any and every figure, past, future and present of authority, fictional or based in this unfortunate reality, I am the risen-to privileged proponent for anarchy, vicarious nature my pair of sights survey from the perspective of the hungry what possessions are beset in my vicinity, and they used to call our democracy one of two parties, that just kills me

I want to be known in my own time for what I'm going to write, not to live a life of luxury, not to be followed and affirmed by every other popular consensus crowd member who follows me, the opinions that are loudest and heard most often are deafening and ones on which we can mostly, almost, partially, chaotically rampage over those who disagree, so I'd rather never put my face on the back of a book and have to give you my biography, in my ambition, those who like it, look for it and when they see my pen name they know it's me, it'll be spoiled by the date I see that come to fruition, I am no role-model, and all the fish will wash up dead and frozen from a boiling sea before I'm a teacher, I'm no hero, I'm just a writer and barely a human one at times, for I may rarely if ever raise a fist and if I hold you in consolidation I may also commit the violation of holding your neck in a twist, I am no model citizen or proper young man I am the spirit of a writer holding this flesh vessel captive, a demonic denizen, while life leaves and all his passions incarcerate and hold judgement over him, driving natural desires away from the light and shadows further in, I see events unfold before me so many steps prior I arrive a kilometer before catastrophe strikes again, my mule trods beneath me, the oni jockey who races his disgraces and chases last places leaving all the trademark traces that makes us traitorous ingrates laughing in saintly, gracious faces with frothing venomous spit at the lips we split to inspire the higher seated those we all admire, the rich and smooth-feeted to hang themselves from their ivory-gold-laden towers by their silk shoe laces, that their laurels awaken to see the golden geese lives taken and then I'll beat my dead horse, and spur it on to trample the begotten generation of idols whose idle idiocy breeds complacency, degeneracy and self-generates the disillusion of individuality in unison of voices all voting in unity for their unique indecency, the power of the cult of personality, until I finally wither to finely ground dust before the over-trusting, ever-loving, new brand of nuke via the actuality behind the pop of the culture of popularity  

It's easy to be a devil's advocate, a spokesperson and a woke-person, while the world worsens and the arsenal of subjugation deepens, your subconscious doesn't register the seeds of indifference and supremacy, poison comes cerebrally, live across all the media, one lone voice starts to look like a medium for insanity or immediacy, impossibility and ludicrousy, intelligence comes into question and they ask why listen when you could stay sitting, divisive mathematics are the key, they keep everyone against each other, the art of snakes in the grass who agitate the viper pit they slither right in it and then shatter like a dagger made of glass, stuck deep so the powdered remnants remain, and no matter how much of their influence is removed there will always be pain, take it back to the top, the labyrinthian mind, that means it's easy to get lost in your thoughts, I don't feel overwhelmed by myself, sometimes I just get lost in my brain and I know I'm not one of a kind, no matter how proud I might get over some clever turn of phrase, you can't twist my arm to give myself a pat on the back, I'd rather be writing anyways, there's no shame in any artist's history that gets them through the days, concepts realized and learning about real misconceptions can give you the chance to wake from a daze, to find time when you've been drifting in a trance through a haze, the mesmerized eyes glazed that just need to get back in touch with one spark to reignite their craze, and hypnotists know this, creativity will never die as long as the game to weaponize control lives on, everybody plays, originality somehow suffers the Mandela Effect, an infrastructure of greed stays, to see the same rehashed creations with promised innovations, everybody pays



For rest, forests exemplify the upmost standard I would live and die by, my mind's eye wanders over the death of all things hungry for exfiltration from this fraught and weary tortoise back world as an expectant fly might beat its wings one last time before the dinner table, its hat hung on the rack, fourth quarter about to begin after it rubs its hands together in prayer and with silverware ready lets out a sigh, and now allow the sun to rise to the sky and all things to know the light of the moon and stars as this at last we rectify; forests fraught with fires raising forth four hundred more foretold score years forlorn of yore, shorn of shores for lore of fifteen forty, Jesus of Lübeck sailed with slaves, Christians filled hundreds of graves in the Red Summer, on domestic soil Jesus saves the foreign force you're in store for, dreamed of exoticism and allure, sure, maybe a cure to the core for the massacres that occurred, the gore and the horrors that four million klansman can commit door to door, they don't teach about the nationwide headcount in nineteen fifteen to nineteen forty four in school, or what happened on July first, second and third in nineteen seventeen before the US joined the first world war, talk about who the murderers were, ****** and morons moreover in their bedsheets, Georgian confederates opened the door for the second iteration of the **** which declined because they enlisted to hand Nazis defeat, the irony is sweet, the third iteration three to eight thousand members off hand, declared terrorists, one hundred thirty chapters of a book that activists and active listeners, anyone with a few braincells on hand just wants to end, their hatred ******, a tour of who's been shot by the luck of the draw, calling out to the white and poor, insecure, unintelligent bores, Biden their time for a public outburst, there was a poll in the land, not an invasion of Poland, I wouldn't even vote, these brats are the worst, so sore from their storied ancestral homes to the inhalants and never having the right bills on the trailer floor, flustered and face-flushed at the lack of sinister will of fellow whites, forgetting choice amendments when they recite them they might as well rewrite a document and call it the Bill of Whites, so hard-working, so hard-headed, outraged at welfare, well it's fair, when it comes out of taxes they can't even afford, if they hate everyone so much, just leave, homes on four wheels that are one doored, the only freedoms they actually use they manage to borderline abuse and then cite their weakness (constitution) of their own accord, truly subversive, you make your own race ashamed to be the same species, if nothing else the fully indoctrinated are to their own pinnacle as a jackboot scraping of feces, cannibals to zombies, crackers to crumbs, when Armageddon comes, assemble Four Horsemen, take back the fourth day of Genesis and the warmth of the sun, even if there is an ever after and Kingdom Come, there are some so dumb all their own, they'd rather be separated from, into a little cosmic barrel to form the fourth iteration, in the infernal eternal segregation of the pitiful, infinitely small-minded, multiplying in their mindset, forever trapped and cyclically blinded, bound to hate and be numb.

Once, upon,
a crime,
unconscionable,
grime,
started to,
eat away,
at me;
mouldy.
But, I said,
"I am fine. At least none of the time."
as, the snows,
set, in gray,
mixed, with,
green,
coldly.

Twice, upon, a shrine, I battled, a couple,
of, faces,
seperated,
by, a, single, line.
They, went, by, the name, of, Janus.
Cries, and, prattles,
of, zodiac signs,
and, serrated intent,
cut, through,
lives, of, nine,
and, cats, had,
twelve kittens,
in, their places.

Thrice, upon,
a shine,
a magic number,
frequented,
and, a trio, of, doored futures, occurred.
There, was, one,
boring, benign,
and, one,
unrelented,
and, a final one,
so, silly,
that, it, was,
absurd.
I, asked for,
none of them,
instead, for, the windows, above, them.
So, I, cleaned,
polished, and,
brushed, them.
Then, as, I,
declined,
the Moon,
presented,
a fourth option,
deferred.
It, was, a future,
of, mine,
as, free, and,
uncemented,
as, the, upward, cascading, ghost, of, a bird.

And, finally,
hencefourth, upon, that, which, is, divine,
I, now, fly,
over, and,
across, universal divides, filled, with, sky,
knowing,
that, in,
every,
teardrop,
that,
I cry,
lives, great, galaxies, of, wondrous, light,
and, that,
my sadness, creates, the forces, of, life.

© poormansdreams