I famigerate without taciturn timidity the straits of a straightened jury-rig of nesiote narrowbacks harping the accordion zest and zeal of the plenilune consuetude of a scrivello infamy sprung into the rows of rip-tide acclaim hamstrung by the decline in fastidious upkeep of the timberlask vesicles that avoid the phenakism of prismatic reformation fundamental to transmogrified simpers of dismal saturnine darkness encroaching on the parallax of realms within the dominion of the Almighty for the omniety of the usucaption of the fruitful prune in the priggish afterglow of a noontide eclipse bereaved of whispering retreat in the hallowed wasms of stiltanimity becoming an entreaty to ecumenical barbs of propriety selected without intimacy to folksy bibliopolists but rugged in sterling tribute to the true vine of the appointed ways of sacerdotal triage among a roughshod vanity of a derelict world marveling at otiose rejoinder rather than true spasms of tragedy flickering in the recessive alleles of a careworn culture. The travesty of Beirut is the bromide of current leapfrogs of sentinel lust and malapert destruction forming an ironclad camaraderie with chocolate-box langlauf disasters wed uxoriously to the penury of the brackish version of the catadromous bailiwick of despotic nescience pregnant with sophrosyne redemption at the cusp of a plaid perfunctory quip of quisling intimations of the sketchy provenance of humdingers of comestion lurking in the plodding prowl of a ribald wiseacre of a beckoned billow of trinkochre welded into a conscientious blarney that awaits the popinjays that sculpt brittle redshort fictions into awakened carapaces of a limacine reduction of impoverished fulmination into the neatly sworn footprints of a geotaxis shuddering with magnetism only in spectacle without the overhailing zeal of vintners who specialize in curtailed wine drawn from Caiaphas and soaked with the muddy turgid Siloam as avenues toward the repentance of asunder becoming marginalized as a whimper of taciturn choleric war receding not even into an audible delope as the masterful chryselephantine assault of cryptic auditions in the theater of effete refuge sink into the pelagic oblivion of a remarkable blister festering into inconsequence as the rebarbative emoluments to tattered travesty hearken a battle-cry yet emanated in the reprehensible bulwark of the gerendum of a poised plastered humility aggrieved with such friction turgid on rollicking magpiety that even the larceny of brutish renegades of triumph sink beneath the brevity of accident rather than the fortitude of globalized turpitude weakened by the improper demarche of fuliginous homeless depredation of innocent bystanders flocking to the harvest of war found in insight rather than the perfunctory bromidrosis of the macroscian enmity of hidden maleficence spawning a credenda that is spayed on arrival in the faineant zoolatry of a spelunkers’ madcap dash to flex the filigrees of turmoil in resentment of the amicable truces of a God who never tempts and a lurking lie that never itches for trigger-happy hapless rebukes because the skittish skirmish of futilitarian repose is a scoundrel of the profligacy of errant weakness blinkered by the humdrum din of deafening semaphores of provocative thornbush on the threshing floor of cowardly imposture president of all affairs of spirit and all renegades of caitiff megalography of forgotten oblivion despite the curglaff of vindictive and never vindicated assaults on the integrity of the birthright of Lebanon to wager a presumptive gamble of trifling retribution for the alacrity of suspicions eloping with forbidden mistresses in the humdingers of flackey rather than the troudasque harbinger of a lunacy impugned by a restive triumphant fallow time seasonable for a litany of pretenses demassified for a liturgy of seances with eldritch commiseration in the saw-toothed serration of selachostomous bravado wielded by likely or unlikely culprits of ravenous ruin shepherded by the guilty cardinal sins of the complicity of explosive vanity marauding on the ruins of a fortress debased by pettifoggery of internal excuse rather than the wrath of provocative ire in the irksome cauterized wounds of the inured to deliver spectacular reticence despite such grievous diacope. Evil gilderoys of maleficence carve the sapwood of the periphery to aimless subversions miscarried by the modern atrocity of glamour memorialized as a sound-byte underminnow of a roaring rhombos rip tide as stocks wavy at the curvature of edgy demarche despoil the denuded wasteland of cultural despondency a wagtail to the impudence of famigerated affronts that deserve a sterling recompense wielded by the onerous and operose burdens of a prone decubitus of aboriginal bread seeded from Heavenly realms dissipating into the roars of blinded conflagration too meek to even exist on the ramshackle hillside of a barnstorm of aggression powerless to encapsulate the nexility of unspoken allegiance to destruction rather than the halidom of consecrated marriages balking at the caulked provisions of a slugabed monolith of craven capers on the recesses of abeyance in the interregnum of a time where famous people communicate with me. How can such a charismatic bravado of lurking presidency stoop to the denizens of usufruct in licentious latitudes on the outskirts of consideration even pretend anymore that the vacuum of effluvium (Gal 6:7) can be mocked and milked into the row of centuries blistering through the calenture of apprisal and heaved awakening as the zephyrs of the Occident meet temporal juncture with the coenesthesia of a hibernating trumpery formed by the turnverein of listless lethargy billowing through fumiducts of siphoned lavaderos of hypogeiody that the underground spasms of cacophony could marvel at the historic emergence of a magnate with the most powerful magnetism of God shepherding the true flock John 10:27 because he is willing to be the good shepherd and potentially die for his sheep John 10:11. Remember, whenever you hear a Queer Studies Radical Feminist bloviate on emasculated sardanapalian posture John 8:44 and even though personified as a masculine titan of bulwarks of immense otiose wilted inkburch shielding the world from true meaning, the maskirovka of the Devil is present in the dark trespasses of personal abandon among the wilderness of many marsupial jackals of martles wagtails to an invictive proclamation of invulnerable sappy sopanaceous filibusters against hefty sinew forged the bony fragments of the charnels lost to brief epitaphs never mourned in threnodies worthy of remembrance that the departed died with us and live again through us whether in Heaven as participant or on Earth as an acting battalion of the skullduggery of the mystique of shimmers of God acting on Man’s behalf 1 Col 1:15-16. That the firstborn of all creation obtains supremacy through the finalisms that I seek as the captain of trailblazing untrammeled roads we are reminded of the narrow and wide gates expanded by the explosion of thought that trespasses into the hidebound ratchet of a reasonable bleat becoming a harsh outcry of justice for Lebanon that they feel so powerless in implosion what could aggrieve potentate civilizations to the precipice of global maleficence in destruction. Swarming for alveolate hominid hominism as an outgrowth of alienation by design polarized spectral dangles at jaundice flamestun by the ordeal of oppositive barnacles to the chryselephantine habituation of a masked menace of Procrustean authority to muzzle the free license of armamentariums of a latent man keen to the kenspeckel visibilia that we might have punctuation in the poised primiparas of a hearkened unprecedented in modern history that the traipse of lapse is no longer the tenure of mindless calculation of authoritarian gabble sentries of a mobilized fleet of embodied human ignorance but a foisted sprite of whangams of apothegm that deserve in their gnomic respite from the phenakisms of a philogeant kumbaya assertive in its treony of radical compassion for those who dwell in tentpoles of revelry bound not to the covenant that sent us into light and sparkling in hidden obsolescence that the fulgurant words of Mount Horeb (Sinai) are both immaculate and without trace of sin because Acts 17:30 declares a powerful truth lost to the twinges of time that issued peremptory governance of my theology but through remission I admit the grievances of septiferous blockades of ponderous plodding nescience haunting the spectral aubades of paeans to a high-flown sun darting through galactic space apace of the velivolant sails of divine wind that come in the spree of recompense authored by the vines to which all roots belong rhizogenic and immutable because the demarches of time forget the marches against the cauterized grime of new-world suspicions of aleatory fickle gubernatorial proclamations that issue reverb more than sprinkle flanged atrocity in the sight of the holy ramparts of an active double-edged God who reminds us of our many witnesses but provides not a single latchkey of escapism resident to many hapless homes of the drunken sing-song rhapsody nullifying the psychotaxis of the motatory miserly Draconian charades of Leviathan grasping the tridents of warp-speed revisionism in a benighted world overrun by mandarist fictions that fumigate a pasteurized control of cultural malcontent in situations of dearth infested by the concentration camps of China that remain unheralded in brumal and brutish indoctrination spared from worldwide outrage by the tribunes that are complicit more in malfeasance than they are celebrated for the herald of heinous bletcherous crimes of abecedarian abligurition anointed in waste rather than refined like unquenched slakes of eternal water so that no man can thirst hungry for the daily bread without returning to the providence of God awakened. Recalcitrant by the impudent quislings of repugnasket flarmeys of advenient flummoxed besieged clairvoyance I bask and beaze on the light that never fades because of the brackish whisk of a barnstorm of allegiance that is contumely to a bromide society listless in inferiority of intellect to my former streaks beyond jejune reiteration of the Jehu mentality against the canine fate of Jezebel and her faltered ministry of ewnastique waged as battalion gore of a trifling musket of an aboriginal swim through the oceanic gaze of peerless eternity squirming because of flagging resolution among the spandrels of incommunicable largesse lolloped extravagantly not just for the spoils of hyped pedigree but also a chamade to Heaven to enlist the purblind vestiges of a crambazzled Earth rejuvenated in adolescent esprit rather than callow eclat against the outrecuidance of whimpered miserly conscientiousness that exists in a shorter frame of reference than the provident dashes through a furlough of time and ancestry to cobble together a lapidary bristling excoriation of the tumescent squabbles of mystique brave enough to rarefy the humid pasteurization of a mannequin kenspeckel still-frame jilt of jostled infamy brusque in its curt envies borne of still-born promenades of a whasper between the youthful ligony and the intrepid soul of a collective warrior debased by the adscititious participant to elegant effronteries of the newfangled intellectual vogue that is the grombang of the tralleyripped hamshackle of ostentation meeting mirrored paralysis in sheepish ewnastique creations meddlesome in their ironic frizz of recursion as I lounge on the habits of creation by intelligent lurches of design that appointed the demarcations of all creatures and the mysterious bridge between the missing links that remain elusive to the flombricks of the misery of epigenetic rhizogenic imparlance of desuetude cringing at foresight littered with the disaster of ravished hindsight blushing at the limpid degeneration of the vapid varnish of benighted ligony rather than heroic strides of stoic-epicurean compromise in the apolaustic pursuit of the one eternal God present in rebellion but never the temptress of mendacity and mendaciloquence because the tug I have on speed is ratifying a cauterized casualty in the spumid betrothed wicked snuffs of extinguished furor for a time beyond barnstormed racloir rugged origination and faulty phenogenesis that escorts mythos into actionable litanies of the awakened breed scoffing at the inkburch of “Electrolytes”-wernaggle that besets the queer fascinations of a warped generation. The pytherian swank of artrench embodied in the recocted rendevation of hypetrophy in hubris swaddled by the reductive dranger polluting the realm of compliant complicant complaints of the ashowel of albatross astroud in the hibernaculum of langlauf rather than the ultramontane fiduciary tether to the estrockentch rather than the laureates of plevisable courage found in truest shades of vinsky not the subhastation of a gaslighted galvanization of purebred classy swivels of opportunism nor the ravenous incubus appetite for usufruct in subversion belongs to the behest of an insular nesiote flexing the flux of subversion as the candid posies of saccharine immodesty become relegated figments of the everlasting age of promised propriety rather than rigid stultimathy of hackencrude virtues of virtuosos that marvel at troudasque wonders occluded by the girlcott of Team Biden and his militarized soldiers of desiccation of trumpery and the faucets unbounded by swanky concealed epithets of regaled rentgourge by a hapless objection of the runic destruction of apothecary leniency becoming of the betokened emblazonry of scrimshank in every perfuncturation but embodiment of character shouldered by every chasm of power erected in demolition of the warped egintoch radicalism of the submerged wernaggles of the hopeless minority swimming with autodimplage few have to bear but the truest flock of God heeds my voice and has the sapience to spare themselves of contumely and invective to hearsay of invictive triumph beyond radioglare swirk to renege the musical providence of the chamades to the asterongue I often take for granted by immunifacient degrees of the foretold encroaching upon the crux of a pivotal and pivoted destiny not distant from cordial providence. The sweedle of epigones for the risctender of obligation to subvert the coryphaeus with the rigmarole of gentincture borrowed from the Gates’ formulaic effleck of perverse warbles of collectivized contrition for abetted cultural pederasty limpid in its achieved objective of the crudenzy borrowed from a lacking impediment to arentrum belonging to the knowledgeable happenstance of the glorified dengonin is a denostram that forestalls the agelasts behind porsters of culture rather than legitimate mainlined contamination of wellsprings of fliction of paranoiac enthusiasm might swim in kinkativy blinkered blind piebald girouettism but never dauntless in sematic entrenchment of robust dilettantism as the swaddled corrugation of time into centripetal ****** against centrifugal modernism that alienates propriety while estranging by vacuous vacuums the outspoken progeny of the surviving age beyond the Jay and Silent Bob travesty that manifests as a glower of menacing Bushian invention to tarnish with ****** mythos the drapes of a defenestrated realism of the flinkers of sheepish indignation against many drakstings of intonorous sclerotic mandibles of crackjaw chockablock annihilation of core precepts and institutions indelible from the face of a quixotic entreaty of a ragged intrusion of ageotropic monoideism above the secular-clerical fidelity of honest witness borne of triumph and tribulation festooning the nativist hyperbole into a useless effigy of mountebank imposture silly in precision and purblind to gallantry. Yet I must kisswonk rather than truckle under such ponderous pretense because of a sertivine certainty in the thickets of prudence rather than the tomfoolery of humgruffin impudence scaffolds me to a post-modern ****** that shanks through prisons of guilt and burrows an interrogation of reality supreme over all complaint that the virtuosity of the Gifted (the elect flock that comprehends my volcanic diatribes against mandarism and stomachs them without sardonic pastorauling insults of passerby vicissitude) will spare many nations of awakened perjury against human instinct in the fitness of nations to denigrate the populist squalor of lurid and livid ewnastique wernaggles of the listless buttress against my formal modesty encouraged in all affairs even in aggrieved humility belonging to intimidation rather than spawned jostles through the rumpus of shunamitism that might rankle a later age.  Yentrified morality is a personal flapdoon against the promiscuous pederasty of freewheeling ophelimity and the lurking narquiddity of the traindeque of donnist hedonism to hijack my psychedelic tolerance into an unwarranted and inadvisable sanction into the netherworld of the frinterans of cultural modality that curdact religion into a cosmetic cosmogony rather than a soldiered infamy becoming a beacon on a towering hill growing in solidarity with the pleonasm of existence itself which surpasses crude formulas that already abide by the riches of decorum too much to be admired as trigger-happy fools run the asylum of domesticated irony and the librettos to downfall rather than the wassails of “The Man” becoming more masculine in featured charisma rather than defiled against Leviticus among others who preach belonging to nuclear creed without fission but for true rapprochement to the fusion of the treony with legitimate gripes of unsung complaint among the masculine minority. The traindeque of a baseline complaint aggrieved by the kilmarge carapace of stiltanimity for the hackencrude resentment of the inkburch of illiteracy is a profligate degeneracy lurid in hyped enmity that the envied entreaty becomes the despotic shadow masquerading in shadows blossoming into the full wisdom of the mature sophrosyne heart eager to pour out blessings upon a conservation of recycled epitaphs becoming hearsay in a rebarbative convolution of redacted rigmarole incendiary to whittled henpecks of political engineering but never vapid in their flagging insistence upon an ecumenical toleration of the brooks of modernity and compromise upon which much felicity is aggrandized and permuted against the spoilsport frinterans who encage a dodgy moralism in wilted etiolated jaunty pedigree that espouses the maudlin grievous and ghastly ghouls and sprites that haunt the fictional hobgoblins of the Potemkin Village that finds usury convenient and perjury even more facile for the glib facetious engineers of modalities of hatred unsung by the ribald witwanton “I got a Solution...You’re a ****…South Carolina What’s Up” crowd that never marvels at ingenuity or rarely attempts it in the summit of the climacteric jaundice of hidebound whemmles of ridicule sparring against spartan flagitious wiseacres of genocide of ideation for the revelry of armed missives denatured by raw promotion of the questionable ethics of a flavork of needed slakes of unquenchable desire swarming us with daily temptresses not of wayward women but the disarmed pretense of a lapidary rejoinder to a long expatiation or harangue against hackencrude curdles of rowboat injustice masquerading as sentinel savory destruction of the towering edifice of proclamation. There is great menace in the casuistry of sophist philogeant philocubists dicey with destiny for mincemeat puppetry against sciamachy for the gallionic rise of gammadions in the craven lore of baseline pasquinade rallied to the insuperable causes of tribal shibboleth anointed by secular totemisms of fracture and fricative hisses of lineage that amount to pleonasms of brassage rather than mystagogical mystique of the prestige of human fraternity that shatters paradigms of creed and invites an honest vestige of Noble Savages to roam the Earth yet again unencumbered by lugubrious welters of misnomer and malapropism wagered by artifices of guileless supremacy that is cursory prima facie neglect of even the sororal duties not of sophomoric glib facetious cowardice of backbited backlash of venom militarized for the desuetude of entertained visagists sculpting *****-nilly their version or verdict of decisive apartheid when we should all rally behind the united frontier of the chosen flock in the chosen generation to truckle beneath the pews not of ignorance aggravated by the polluted kilmarge egintoch puritan barbs against publicity choices I now regret (as an emolument to an incredibly euphoric track with a poor miserly message to the enchanted flock inoculated from such diversions) because alighted upon the quenched thirst of salvation I will be judged more harshly as a teacher James 3:1 than the rest of my flock but gifted with the gratuitous salvation carved from the chiselers of ribald infamy capering around with dacoitage and ladronism of the bomans of unsuspecting quixotic caprice I must reckon with the burden of ghoulish shadows on the spectral imprint of my eternal soul relishing in vicarious splendor yet bereaved of quintessential love 1 Cor 13:4 that is necessary for the nuclear conclamation of vibrant hues of resplendent and refulgent providence necessary not from a dynastic perspective but from an aimed providence that alerts dynamism rather than chides with mimes of useless schadenfreude carved from the prestidigitation of the wicked condemned in Galatians 6:7 for the mockers of sanctanimity accorded upon me as gratuity that no man can boast my elite ears and my astute wonderworks of imagination qualified me for prophecy and among the most mesmerizing prophecies registered to fulfillment that the world has ever yet witnessed because the watershed isn’t a bridgewater for the chavish of ignoramus hatred congealed into thrombosis but the narrowed gate enlarges to encompass the swath of man amenable to the flocks that escort me into permanence rather than regale the tridents of a hedonism that elected me clairvoyant at a cost of immaculate splendor registered to the holy clergy of the Sacred Catholic Church and the broader Ecumenical Endeavor that tries to be a seamstress and bridge elemental divides inherent to divided approaches to liturgy which flex their strengths in times of robust fortitude rather than become a subhastation to the vestiges of the pilgrimage to false tabernacles erected by people cozened into charlatan endeavors by the pernicious and persnickety whiplash of Least Common Denominator subversion of widely heralded sentience and sapience enriching the lot of human ambition rather than stoking useless conflagrations of refracturism accorded to the swallock of primposition of the hackneyed hackencrude that swivels with the odious ornery pretense of overtures not to apertures and lychgates of the true abiding Heaven felt on Earth by many Christians whether in sobriety or not without the evil maleficence of a misguided donnism of narquiddity for the grambazzles of aged recklessness aborning on vacant responsibility that is rickety in its magnanimity of absolution because of the ulterior chase for bottom-line top-dollar oligochrome foisted by the cartels that blind true spiritual insight from ever reaching the magnitude of ambition required to shape mountains of revolution among the tertiary squabbles of a conversant Earth open to the troudasque gallop into yield and cloveryield for repcrevel reforms the paludism of the swamp remains skittish about conforming to because objectivism is a renegade of perspicuous light blinkering in hubris and gourmandizing the hinderbaggle of cosmetic pollutions aggravated by the plevisable articles of envy and TLDR politics to “Electrolyte” logic that is a sad recursive wernaggle of the useless buffoonery of humgruffins of tatterdemalion spate rollicking in the magpiety of a timid consentient faltering myth of unanimity among the beleaguered rainbows of many lugubrious tears showering bickering blasphemy upon the mockery of God for the pleasantry of self-aware sheepish resignation that professes only that any form of meritocracy is existentially unfounded only because the beehive elected its progeny the scepter of the ironclad kingdom that wages war against idolatry and serenades heaven with luxury simultaneously. We are all shepherds of providence and there is power enough in collective prayer that we don’t fiddle around with bodewash in mistaken identity but riddle the persnickety blemish of the fastidious critiques of biting sarcasm as a tantamount blasphemy and a criminal repartee of sardonic cloys of inanity foisted above truth. The peevish breedbates who scour my evidentiary pillar of chiseled vertebrae of unbroken bones of solidarity with oikonisus will be sorely disappointed in their truthful audits of my true perception because in every single case it exonerates me from the pulpit of menacing idiots who scrawl random gabble in attempts to sound smart while reeking of iniquity wrought by the gavels of predevoted inferiority of complexion and attitude that gravitates them to an insensate benumbed transmogrified bailiwick of an appalling atrocity of mythomaniacal myths spurned by consensus among those who prize my grandeur above the superstitions of the illiteracy of the rancid rankle of otiose stupidity writhing its own sheepish envy of arbitrary dislike motivated by feminist aggressors waging warfare on turf I already conquered by swaying the intelligentsia to beckon my cause rather than pillory me on a false scaffold of frinteran abuses of the nyejays of bernacle that junediggle in the taradiddle of the nanciful excoriation of my leaden corpse weighed down by the witchcraft of connivance trayning its own delicate myths while avoiding scrutiny for appalling contumely that deserves an audience more suited for fracklings of treony belonging to the trinkochre of the rising alienation and suicides among perverted gay indoctrination that is a scourge on the planet because it willfully denies with its portentous hibbles the regaled wisdom of the culminated age against renegades of apostasy and for the behemoths of true monumental change that sizzles in savory circles among the vanguard only to alarm the Status Quo hijack of my entire endeavors as a covert crusade to use wrecking-ball fashion tactics to cosmetically incisively and insidiously perform a harprick of surgery upon a blameless countenance only for being a thorn to wragatek wragapole slavery which wages war against universal salvation because it gripes with inkburch and circular pleonasms about the most obvious glaring lies and feasts upon the serrated edge of the capers of hatred that frolic in meadows too skittish to enter the barbarian fortress of my forested residence robust in fortitude and glowering with a menacing contempt for runaround psychobabble that obganiates the obelisk of the moribund crusade to make normative ethics effeminate and to enthrone inviolable women’s speech as supreme to any male objections like the Cristiano Ronaldo accuser that came forth 8 months after #MeToo one of the most dishonest campaigns in modern history enthroned by Hollywood elites in gammerstang insurrection against pay-gap ethics done manipulatively with the sapwood of mendaciloquence like Blasey Ford whose physiognomy reeked of maudlin pretense that was so ornery in how obvious of a maleficence the intrepid Abortion Agenda has over the minds of selfish women who prefer ecbolic second-term abortions to the servile gripes of primiparas building new life rather than tearing down the scaffolds of new generations. Hominism deserves its rise because-in increasing numbers-men are derelicted by society and coerced into vapid tallespin enslavement that ridicules itself with the perjury of soul to the soulless vanity of recursive cycles of benumbed narquiddity found in “****** Hero” among other atrocities littering the human fascination with the hinderbaggle of our polluted age verging on totemic blistering hegemony of a few rotten apples corrupting the vagrant ingenuity of the forgotten champion who ushered in a new era of candor in the attempted interregnum of the United States government because I Am Hollywood got the name correct considering how many memorials there are to me in the movie industry. The junediggles of sc-ha-den-freud-e which is as deliberate of a German pun as JUDEn JuDEN which shows the German language is as farsighted as you can get and why many of my neologisms have a German tinge to them. German is an elegant language with botched syntax but a peerless repertoire of vocabulary and even though I love French, the Germans are smart because their language is smart not just because of petty arguments of pedigree which are specious at best. Being dontolesque with  the zenkidu of rengall nauclatic mythos is an artful degree which accords nominal prestige to licentiates while excorifying the obvious metaphors of sunblind logic that scours the scorched Earth of internet diatribes of sophistry and dethrones the Marcie Biancos of the world “Heterosexuality is officially OVER...K Bye” with her 145 IQ and a Stanford Degree in Queer Studies (A professed atheist by her own Twitter admission) with the warped logic to equate a heterosexual relationship for a woman as ******* to patriarchy. For someone that well-studied in literature she sure is a dumb-*** and I will demolish the syntagma of those that root against me for Status Quo preservation in the official interregnum of Saturdays during the Trump Presidency. We need an official referendum on the ideas of termagant illogical anti-egalitarian poison that derives from a deracinated worldview that doesn’t contextualize how powerful language is at shaping thought because if the entire world were Anglophonic every single country on Earth virtually would see immediate dividends in terms of intellectual creativity and limber with concepts and percepts because it is no accident the most successful empire in History the United Kingdom, was favored because of its shibboleths of Shakespearean creativity draped with flairs of the irreverent while gilded by God to be a majestic commonwealth. England and France monopolized a huge majority of history by no accident because although English might be a slightly keener language the French culture of salons of freewheeling intellectual enlightenment gilded the 17th and 18th centuries into absolution despite the Panglossian epithets of Voltaire who was ironically dissuaded from religion because of the All Saints Day 1755 Lisbon Earthquake and Tsunami. We need to be vigilant against encroachments of perceived shibboleths and more keen on an affirmative meritocracy that favors the poor and blesses the meek in their poverty and inspire ambition among them to join the coteries of refinement in thought sometimes harder to achieve with crackjaw lollops in pleonasmic languages that fail to articulate with nexility or forceful wit the true abstractions that govern the pataphysics of the unknown. Language is so decisive over human thought that it is incumbent upon every language to refine its vocabulary to trayne compendious verbiage and trim the hedges of global reform to invite the curiosity of the age to favor all creeds and languages of Abraham and the diverse progeny of a variegated panoply of majestic feats common to all parlance and capacity beyond just the Anglophonic snare because the world needs not a chicanery of blustering churlish buffoonery but an Almighty respect for the consanguinity of all to God’s blessed creation that he inseminated by his deliberate hands to enrich the world with diversity rather than cleave the world with piecemeal skeumorphs of radical propaganda that opposes the modern and post-modern egalitarian streak. One wrong must be corrected, however, the underrepresentation of Hispanics in the media and in film because this grave error is much more pervasive than the ******* LGBT inclusion narrative because these days the lollygags of fashionista odalisques with Obelisks to Baal get more say over the common decorum than the marginalized bronteum of the  rich and vibrant Latino culture which is squelched by the poverty of media and Hollywood representation. Synectics showcases how a henpecked aim at the synaesthesis of culture congregated around our Almighty Father blessed among the nations who adhere to the progeny of Abraham can be more blessed when working together rather than tribal with nepotism and aristocratic in sustained affronts to the elevation of affirmative meritocracy to the forefront of discussion rather than the froward backlash of benumbed narquiddity because the synallagamatic nature of complexity needs to be devolved with industrious ambition to all cultures and the savory flair of the vogue needs not merely a wednongue fascination with an eventual terminus of crudenzy but a sustained intellectual reformation on all fronts to standardize the English language through Hollywood and the Music Industry so that the dragnets of appeal etch a permanent trace into the engraved souls of the true flock John 10:27 are consecrated in divine purpose to reverse the Babylonian Diaspora of confused and conflated purpose that stunts the raltention of humane course and the proper pataphysical syncrisis of an evolved mundane temperament that transcends the circular traps of circumlocution common to the milquetoast industrial titans who winsomely charm with toady gestures the elitism of a moribund philosophy of intellectual thought delegation to elevate the common rhetoric to reach new pinnacles in both tribune and political gamesmanship because higher standards are required even when they surpass some common understanding so that every ambition becomes a conclave for the goal of human unity solidified by the truth of the kerygma and proclaimed to all creation as the culminated synclastic reformation of the idea of indulgence and the propriety of regaled moderation that appeases the common decorum with a shared vested interest in Latin America especially which is besieged by the cultural tenets of obrogated specialization and denigrated by the common myths of warped phenogenesis which should be debunked as a wasm of hypocrisy limited because its callous tentacles lack the charismatic fulgurant equipment of future generations to bear the operose burdens of a quintessential time of harmony united by the hymns for God by God to appease the sentries in Heaven and the celestial realms that exist for our merriment more than our detriment. The sprauncy have the  frikmag to recognize the spuria of apocryphal heresies that encourage kinship above matriotism and shared fortitude for intellectual valor rather than “*** talk TLDR” hashtags abounding on the turf of the insensate wernaggle of clueless charlatans wiggling through life not because they were borne into slavery but because they choose to be Helicopter Parents of “Baby Shark” rather than token mantelpieces of enlivened culture shimmering with radiation of Gods glory as cemented in Colossians 1:15-16 because the firstborn of all creation lives in some form in the ligature of Christ 1 Cor 12:12 because there are so many talents that exist in our variegated world that the mastery of expertise in dominions of conversant fluency will abet the variegated crops of a draped humanity corrugated on its own ironies for the delicate sizzle of beatific felicity multiplying itself in centupled design over centuries to overcome hinderbaggle while realizing the fictions of some drawflark. The strigine world concedes to this upstart rooster maybe considered a parvenu of dearth but luxuriant in riches boundless to all that draw near to the kerygma of Christ and feast on his daily bread found throughout liturgy because we should listen to people like Cardinal Timothy Dolan who is exceptionally astute (perhaps an understatement) to guide us on a regenerative rather than degenerative pathway towards universal attempts at salvation that broach a new decorum bridged by aliens to select chosen emissaries to bridle the fissions of repartee reserved for the forlorn that balk at ambition rather than relish a new era of seditious determination against the determinist fallacy and for the mental health of those coping with autodimplage and sheepish regrets and persnickety articles of remorse because all the world deserves our consolation and desperate attention rather than the trumpery of the circus masquerade of marauding agitprop which congeals into thrombosis of toxicity as the vast majority of Democrats refuse to even hear Trump speak when he is discussing discursive solutions to enigmatic quagmires,for, if more people listened to Trump they would be disabused by the specious claims of his misogyny and white allegiances because his candor is brilliant and despite the prominent advocacy of Biden who has considerable prestige in my memory, we deserve a bipartisan syncretism that unites the world and unifies the country away from the swerve of salacious mythos and towards a rambunctious magpiety of solidarity against the secular humanism of a defunct piety to Marxist feminism which is a crudenzy among the awakened men around the world increasingly alienated by the hackencrude of wednongue illiteracy even trumpeted by the vanguard as panacea when it is a comestible form of poison. We need visionary unity where there was once toxic divisive balkanization of exclaves of limited foresight clashing with new wave awakening to the persecution of illumination itself for not a rigid hierarchy but a flexible structure of inclusion that adjusts to cultural expectancy and modifies the traindeque that strands many in institutionalized poverty especially in Latin America and India and obviously Africa too. The stegophilists of language should herald the aubade of the chavish of redintegration over the squawk of din of squabbles of internecine redacted revisionism beleaguering our lyceums with toxic agitprop even at the highest institutions of learning who balk often at the recycled auditorium of useful thought because their venal tilt is complicit in squelching freedom of thought and our schools should open early so that zig-zag-zoom politics around feldtrounds who are eagerly outnumbered by the patrons who police thought become agentic not with outspoken treacheries but inseminations of intimation to hint at the spectral mystagogical reality we are all members of despite hurdles that beset the hemiteries of odalisques who seek inertia rather than mobilization. The ribald underminnow of transparency is a carcinogen of the rampant siege of Status Quo coarse hypocrisy for tentative flings with cadged cloyed saturnine professions of the landmines of atrocious miscarriage as I soldier on in the causes of the poor and the forlorn to become enriched by the glory that God delivers with munificence so that all might be enriched by the emanations of the true vine and in distaste of error I rebuke the armada of belittled armamentariums of the cantonment of deep-state breedbates boiling over potboiler frikmag that exists as a transcendent obscurantism flowering in decisive times to warp the contextual footprint of a life served in the service of all the oppressed people as a kind of Moses figure raised by the elite and fighting for the criminally oppressed and the ****** of mediagenic hyperbole is dissatisfied by my glowering spectacles because they dismount from the equipoise of the righteous gallop towards ecumenical solidarity at untimely punctuations of juncture superseding the flictions of frikmag dethroning my righteous valor and provident sanctanimity to prowl like predatory wolves the fathers of the casuistry of mendaciloquence to accentuate the stridor of inopportune squalor of the selachostomous regimes of teetotaler totalitarian freebooters who prevent bootstraps from manufacture as they gradgrind the world into ergonomic insufficiency while I provide a Kamacho-like galvanization to the broader world that favors the consanguinity of all animate sentience to the aboriginal vine of the universe that plays with the toyed cadge of oppositive support but lends credence to a more evolved view than the crudity of encapsulated travesties inserted with jaundice against the lyceum of freedom of thought and the celerity of headless horseman galloping in partial interregnum to crown the strobic stridor of the stiver of the steven of contarianism engineered for walloped ringleaders of the renegades of heresiarch sedition in their odalisque oaths to Pagan dieties carved from the sapwood of gullible Illuminati naivety that professes allegiance to the worst whangam ever invented Baphomet and his faked cronies of ewnastique free-for-all diminutive crags in the renown of dawning light becoming cagey struthious structuralism embedded in sclerotic wasms of the wanhope of a nullified message becoming a sacred creed to the attentive while the lilt of the otiose drawl in serpentine convolution a ribald pleonasm of circular circumlocution that provides locomotive linearity rather than leapfrogged slogmarches into the province of the territorial alignment of kinship against the partisan hollertrap and the stigmatophilia of obsessive persnickety popinjay beadledom the last stronghold of the rickety resistence to this Saturday interregnum which presides over the better part of the intelligentsia if not the common pedestrian parlance because hortatory weights cannot be described in any other way than metagnostic flickers of Yellow Submarine vandalism of a pristine living animation of the humane spirit that prizes the plight of the poor and the blarney and blench of unjust opprobrium faced by the institutionalized bailiwick of flictions of gammadion gallionic posture when in fact they register as seismic entities engraved upon my Christian conscience that strictly welcomes the emigrants to truth from whatever consecrated virtue they originate from because all are capable of the same light and the same compassion of a beatified humanity rather than the relish of deep-state castophrenia which belies its own ribald gay mockery on live TV as not a single twinge of ****** attraction overtakes me in matriotic sardanapalian effrontery of a hollow but sadly hallowed vainglory of the hierodules that bury the coffers of patriotism in a sad LGBTQ graveyard of landmines that demonstrate a complete disregard of the nuclear family and should be decried as an outcry against redefined Christianity bolted to unshakable irrefragable beliefs in the constitution of man and women wed together in one monogamous flesh with the occasional cuddle of close tithes to the ******* of friendship as the slavery of sin in Leviticus 20:13 falls to the wayside because this patriotic lewdness is a vapid fatuous derangement that is a new low for the United States attempt to inoculate China from religious accord with the broader world and should be seen as a Chinese maskirovka worthy of the heaviest disdain and I will disavow America if it continues to bandy the tripwires of Chinese boondoggles under the American banner and pretend its pretense isn’t lagging under its own bletcherous abecedarian elementary fallacy of psychobabble oblivion of dark saturnine brusque termagants of tatterdemalion cloaks of the selfsame illusion of a desperation of China to wreck the United States economy and inseminate Florida, Arizona and Texas especially with the Coronavirus to swing the election in Biden’s favor with or without US Complicity to expedite the course of a virus which sees no resurgence in any other civilized country in the world while the heroic Russians, Germans, Israelis, French, British and true American Christians banish the barristers of bad taste as an acerbic poison on the wellsprings of a flagitious flag I would kneel for in the knells of disgrace if the pompous and completely inoculated missives of Buttigieg ******* continue to roam shepherded by deep state elitism to wreck the opportune moment of religious revival for petty reasons of chryselephantine gambit and gimcrack for institutionalized poverty which my ambition is to heal completely by sacerdotal deeds and consecrated prayers in the Lord whose peace surpasses the temporal despair of senectitude and comforts the grievances of the aggrieved because Galatians 6:7 is no more true than the fatuous display of muscular idiots waving American flags for turpitude rather than flogging very perverse Gay men in the streets which might be a more fitting outcome even though I must remove the plank in my own eyes first to see the irony of the detested. The doytin is no longer misguided by the nanciful derision of the vociferous clangor of the venal Gates mafia militia wrecking ball vaccination Bezos crew in Medina which is a mettle I can’t match when you own every citizen in the world in a few square miles of nesiote territory the denizens of conquest besieging religious sanctity with profane outbursts of corruptible linchpins on the public lynch of the strepsis of periblebsis that vitiates commonwealths of supreme sputtering regimented clairvoyant superlative alabaster wealth of the isangelous protectorate of the supreme God that supervises his careworn flock into the storge against the scourge of prosodemic stigma stained in bleeding heart liberal bathed tears of pseudoautochiria of Jim Morrison glaring in the face of the triads that Killed Him in the French Connection ******* of 71’ that outnumbered his hobohemia of loyal jewish bohemians livid in the rhapsody of nurture rather than enfeebled by the unfurled destiny of the Soul Kitchen he foresaw to his own pitiable demise at probably the hands of strangulation because no autopsy was performed. Although repetitive Transparent is a real anthem for oracular mystagogical transcendence a mandatory hymn for the ryseolagnus of the poetic verve of a new wave swooning the cordial progressive of atmospheric oneness with the primordial vine and the vintners that congregate on populated soil to feed a desolate destitution of synoecy or synaesthesis in the syncretic rhapsody of the subfocal ageotropic plenilune yet saturnine lugubrious toil of those that shovel through the albatross of ewnastique recapitulation to the same tired “Its got what plants crave, it’s got electrolytes” wernaggle of the hopelessly dismal inkburch of illiteracy crawling like a Hyacinth House on a vacant graveyard turf guarding the legionaires of rapid-fire zig-zags through a serpentine curvature of the ligaments of fabricated space warped through prismatic lenses of aperspectival time aspiring for ventriloquial enamored rapture upon Earthly parallax with tapestries of refulgent cascading wandering wonder that meditates its own lucubration with careworn tutelage against the wasms of dying oleaginous swelters of redshort opportunistic vultures swooping with Raven’s claws against the odometer of viewership surpassing records in unspeakable wisdom that crowds out the crambazzle toonardical wreffelaxity of the tiresome nuisance of ornery brawn muscled into a formidable triage in vengeance for Jim Morrison’s scripted eviction from Earth either by poisoned ****** or by  Asphyxiation by the French Connection avenging RFK and the cultural revolutions of 67’ in Haight Ashbury and the widespread percolation of treacheries fathomed to the most obvious degree in showmanship that it bristled as an affront so severe that even the patronage of Paris wasn’t immune to infiltration. His threnodies will always be sung with Triumph that the hallowed day of a monumental soul eluding the darkness of purgatory into the welcoming aborning light of the noontide progeny of eternal ataraxia awaited him in the stagecraft tub of blasphemy bellowing ratcheted warnings that not even the palatine grasp of a potentially divine being was inoculated from the deep dark chasm of nefarious skullduggery for boasting so widely and openly of his professed foresight to glamorous to be hidden as the beacon of virtuosity that galvanized a generation to flout the  futtocks of a keelhauled vision of sanitized purblind mortality that the fear of death rarely crossed the mind of the greatest fearless poet of an entire epoch that we may pray that Jim Morrison feasts in Heaven atoned for his sins and is at peace with God now. The substratose congeniality of marginalia on the outskirts of pederasty in cultural miscarriage owned by hierodules boundless in their lurid debaucheries that they might be remanded for being custodians of hostage to a prolific nescience  reaffirming their dying posture in the extinction of sardanapalian coverthrow of repcrevel camorras of ladronism and dacoitage always cauponate in imbibed throes of lewd AstroTurf outrecuidance glowering at sanctity with a bereaved psychobabble divorced from the purebred empiricism of true giants of industry that are almost insuperable in their extortion that their darkness in deeds of Kobe Bryants assassination do not go unpunished at least in Los Angeles. His untimely death as with many others registered on the Richter Scale because Come Clean perverts from Kansas City wanted San Francisco to win to clean the mops of janitorial revenge of the subturbary rickety foundations of a flailing moral compass so wicked in arbitrage that no subreption undetected would flourish among capernoited vigilantes of poached titanism and illuminism scarring the vestiges of enigmatic encroachment upon untouchables daring the frights of the Living Daylights of scurrilous rebukes so scathing in their menacing depiction of negligent bromides of token sacrilege and scarred sacrifice of a scarecrow example of how the prosodemic scourge of befuddled turgid pristine transmogrified heralds scampered away with pseudoautochiria that afflicted Jimi Hendrix suspiciously as well. My support is behind the justice warriors aggrieved by the Beirut explosion because they deserve a vindictive outcome that quells the quislings of atrocity of the popinjay beadledom of the unspeakable tremors of seismotic popples of unrest warranted in Lebanon the homeland of Keanu Reeves a saint among men for his peerless grace and agraceries of the smog of myth evanescence becoming perdurable swings of the humdingers of berated jaundice becoming the prerogative of the revenge of a city leveled to the ground by suspicious skullduggery and I am surprised they lay dormant for this long in their protracted grievance over the ghoulish frights of one of the most unheralded major events in recent memory. We need to highlight the plight of Lebanon so that world leaders are frightened even of intimidated people tranquilized by terror rather than enlivened by the propriety of redacted rejoinders that serve the ulterior mission of a Titanic bravery that never sinks beneath the sumptuary treacle of grombang grambazzle and supercherie of the supercalendar of poignant repined repose derailing an emolument to ecumenical solidarity. Lets highlight Lebanon as an inexcusable trespass worthy of some mighty reckoning if not a riveted war but at the very least a devastated twinge of outrage.

On Hellespont, guilty of true love’s blood,
In view and opposite two cities stood,
Sea-borderers, disjoin’d by Neptune’s might;
The one Abydos, the other Sestos hight.
At Sestos Hero dwelt; Hero the fair,
Whom young Apollo courted for her hair,
And offer’d as a dower his burning throne,
Where she could sit for men to gaze upon.
The outside of her garments were of lawn,
The lining purple silk, with gilt stars drawn;
Her wide sleeves green, and border’d with a grove,
Where Venus in her naked glory strove
To please the careless and disdainful eyes
Of proud Adonis, that before her lies;
Her kirtle blue, whereon was many a stain,
Made with the blood of wretched lovers slain.
Upon her head she ware a myrtle wreath,
From whence her veil reach’d to the ground beneath;
Her veil was artificial flowers and leaves,
Whose workmanship both man and beast deceives;
Many would praise the sweet smell as she past,
When ’twas the odour which her breath forth cast;
And there for honey bees have sought in vain,
And beat from thence, have lighted there again.
About her neck hung chains of pebble-stone,
Which lighten’d by her neck, like diamonds shone.
She ware no gloves; for neither sun nor wind
Would burn or parch her hands, but, to her mind,
Or warm or cool them, for they took delight
To play upon those hands, they were so white.
Buskins of shells, all silver’d, used she,
And branch’d with blushing coral to the knee;
Where sparrows perch’d, of hollow pearl and gold,
Such as the world would wonder to behold:
Those with sweet water oft her handmaid fills,
Which as she went, would chirrup through the bills.
Some say, for her the fairest Cupid pin’d,
And looking in her face, was strooken blind.
But this is true; so like was one the other,
As he imagin’d Hero was his mother;
And oftentimes into her ***** flew,
About her naked neck his bare arms threw,
And laid his childish head upon her breast,
And with still panting rock’d there took his rest.
So lovely-fair was Hero, Venus’ nun,
As Nature wept, thinking she was undone,
Because she took more from her than she left,
And of such wondrous beauty her bereft:
Therefore, in sign her treasure suffer’d wrack,
Since Hero’s time hath half the world been black.

Amorous Leander, beautiful and young
(Whose tragedy divine MusÆus sung),
Dwelt at Abydos; since him dwelt there none
For whom succeeding times make greater moan.
His dangling tresses, that were never shorn,
Had they been cut, and unto Colchos borne,
Would have allur’d the vent’rous youth of Greece
To hazard more than for the golden fleece.
Fair Cynthia wish’d his arms might be her sphere;
Grief makes her pale, because she moves not there.
His body was as straight as Circe’s wand;
Jove might have sipt out nectar from his hand.
Even as delicious meat is to the taste,
So was his neck in touching, and surpast
The white of Pelops’ shoulder: I could tell ye,
How smooth his breast was, and how white his belly;
And whose immortal fingers did imprint
That heavenly path with many a curious dint
That runs along his back; but my rude pen
Can hardly blazon forth the loves of men,
Much less of powerful gods: let it suffice
That my slack Muse sings of Leander’s eyes;
Those orient cheeks and lips, exceeding his
That leapt into the water for a kiss
Of his own shadow, and, despising many,
Died ere he could enjoy the love of any.
Had wild Hippolytus Leander seen,
Enamour’d of his beauty had he been.
His presence made the rudest peasant melt,
That in the vast uplandish country dwelt;
The barbarous Thracian soldier, mov’d with nought,
Was mov’d with him, and for his favour sought.
Some swore he was a maid in man’s attire,
For in his looks were all that men desire,—
A pleasant smiling cheek, a speaking eye,
A brow for love to banquet royally;
And such as knew he was a man, would say,
“Leander, thou art made for amorous play;
Why art thou not in love, and lov’d of all?
Though thou be fair, yet be not thine own thrall.”

The men of wealthy Sestos every year,
For his sake whom their goddess held so dear,
Rose-cheek’d Adonis, kept a solemn feast.
Thither resorted many a wandering guest
To meet their loves; such as had none at all
Came lovers home from this great festival;
For every street, like to a firmament,
Glister’d with breathing stars, who, where they went,
Frighted the melancholy earth, which deem’d
Eternal heaven to burn, for so it seem’d
As if another Pha{”e}ton had got
The guidance of the sun’s rich chariot.
But far above the loveliest, Hero shin’d,
And stole away th’ enchanted gazer’s mind;
For like sea-nymphs’ inveigling harmony,
So was her beauty to the standers-by;
Nor that night-wandering, pale, and watery star
(When yawning dragons draw her thirling car
From Latmus’ mount up to the gloomy sky,
Where, crown’d with blazing light and majesty,
She proudly sits) more over-rules the flood
Than she the hearts of those that near her stood.
Even as when gaudy nymphs pursue the chase,
Wretched Ixion’s shaggy-footed race,
Incens’d with savage heat, gallop amain
From steep pine-bearing mountains to the plain,
So ran the people forth to gaze upon her,
And all that view’d her were enamour’d on her.
And as in fury of a dreadful fight,
Their fellows being slain or put to flight,
Poor soldiers stand with fear of death dead-strooken,
So at her presence all surpris’d and tooken,
Await the sentence of her scornful eyes;
He whom she favours lives; the other dies.
There might you see one sigh, another rage,
And some, their violent passions to assuage,
Compile sharp satires; but, alas, too late,
For faithful love will never turn to hate.
And many, seeing great princes were denied,
Pin’d as they went, and thinking on her, died.
On this feast-day—O cursed day and hour!—
Went Hero thorough Sestos, from her tower
To Venus’ temple, where unhappily,
As after chanc’d, they did each other spy.

So fair a church as this had Venus none:
The walls were of discolour’d jasper-stone,
Wherein was Proteus carved; and over-head
A lively vine of green sea-agate spread,
Where by one hand light-headed Bacchus hung,
And with the other wine from grapes out-wrung.
Of crystal shining fair the pavement was;
The town of Sestos call’d it Venus’ glass:
There might you see the gods in sundry shapes,
Committing heady riots, ******, rapes:
For know, that underneath this radiant flower
Was Danae’s statue in a brazen tower,
Jove slyly stealing from his sister’s bed,
To dally with Idalian Ganimed,
And for his love Europa bellowing loud,
And tumbling with the rainbow in a cloud;
Blood-quaffing Mars heaving the iron net,
Which limping Vulcan and his Cyclops set;
Love kindling fire, to burn such towns as Troy,
Sylvanus weeping for the lovely boy
That now is turn’d into a cypress tree,
Under whose shade the wood-gods love to be.
And in the midst a silver altar stood:
There Hero, sacrificing turtles’ blood,
Vail’d to the ground, veiling her eyelids close;
And modestly they opened as she rose.
Thence flew Love’s arrow with the golden head;
And thus Leander was enamoured.
Stone-still he stood, and evermore he gazed,
Till with the fire that from his count’nance blazed
Relenting Hero’s gentle heart was strook:
Such force and virtue hath an amorous look.

It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is over-rul’d by fate.
When two are stript, long ere the course begin,
We wish that one should lose, the other win;
And one especially do we affect
Of two gold ingots, like in each respect:
The reason no man knows, let it suffice,
What we behold is censur’d by our eyes.
Where both deliberate, the love is slight:
Who ever lov’d, that lov’d not at first sight?

He kneeled, but unto her devoutly prayed.
Chaste Hero to herself thus softly said,
“Were I the saint he worships, I would hear him;”
And, as she spake those words, came somewhat near him.
He started up, she blushed as one ashamed,
Wherewith Leander much more was inflamed.
He touched her hand; in touching it she trembled.
Love deeply grounded, hardly is dissembled.
These lovers parleyed by the touch of hands;
True love is mute, and oft amazed stands.
Thus while dumb signs their yielding hearts entangled,
The air with sparks of living fire was spangled,
And night, deep drenched in misty Acheron,
Heaved up her head, and half the world upon
Breathed darkness forth (dark night is Cupid’s day).
And now begins Leander to display
Love’s holy fire, with words, with sighs, and tears,
Which like sweet music entered Hero’s ears,
And yet at every word she turned aside,
And always cut him off as he replied.
At last, like to a bold sharp sophister,
With cheerful hope thus he accosted her.

“Fair creature, let me speak without offence.
I would my rude words had the influence
To lead thy thoughts as thy fair looks do mine,
Then shouldst thou be his prisoner, who is thine.
Be not unkind and fair; misshapen stuff
Are of behaviour boisterous and rough.
O shun me not, but hear me ere you go.
God knows I cannot force love as you do.
My words shall be as spotless as my youth,
Full of simplicity and naked truth.
This sacrifice, (whose sweet perfume descending
From Venus’ altar, to your footsteps bending)
Doth testify that you exceed her far,
To whom you offer, and whose nun you are.
Why should you worship her? Her you surpass
As much as sparkling diamonds flaring glass.
A diamond set in lead his worth retains;
A heavenly nymph, beloved of human swains,
Receives no blemish, but ofttimes more grace;
Which makes me hope, although I am but base:
Base in respect of thee, divine and pure,
Dutiful service may thy love procure.
And I in duty will excel all other,
As thou in beauty dost exceed Love’s mother.
Nor heaven, nor thou, were made to gaze upon,
As heaven preserves all things, so save thou one.
A stately builded ship, well rigged and tall,
The ocean maketh more majestical.
Why vowest thou then to live in Sestos here
Who on Love’s seas more glorious wouldst appear?
Like untuned golden strings all women are,
Which long time lie untouched, will harshly jar.
Vessels of brass, oft handled, brightly shine.
What difference betwixt the richest mine
And basest mould, but use? For both, not used,
Are of like worth. Then treasure is abused
When misers keep it; being put to loan,
In time it will return us two for one.
Rich robes themselves and others do adorn;
Neither themselves nor others, if not worn.
Who builds a palace and rams up the gate
Shall see it ruinous and desolate.
Ah, simple Hero, learn thyself to cherish.
Lone women like to empty houses perish.
Less sins the poor rich man that starves himself
In heaping up a mass of drossy pelf,
Than such as you. His golden earth remains
Which, after his decease, some other gains.
But this fair gem, sweet in the loss alone,
When you fleet hence, can be bequeathed to none.
Or, if it could, down from th’enameled sky
All heaven would come to claim this legacy,
And with intestine broils the world destroy,
And quite confound nature’s sweet harmony.
Well therefore by the gods decreed it is
We human creatures should enjoy that bliss.
One is no number; maids are nothing then
Without the sweet society of men.
Wilt thou live single still? One shalt thou be,
Though never singling ***** couple thee.
Wild savages, that drink of running springs,
Think water far excels all earthly things,
But they that daily taste neat wine despise it.
Virginity, albeit some highly prize it,
Compared with marriage, had you tried them both,
Differs as much as wine and water doth.
Base bullion for the stamp’s sake we allow;
Even so for men’s impression do we you,
By which alone, our reverend fathers say,
Women receive perfection every way.
This idol which you term virginity
Is neither essence subject to the eye
No, nor to any one exterior sense,
Nor hath it any place of residence,
Nor is’t of earth or mould celestial,
Or capable of any form at all.
Of that which hath no being do not boast;
Things that are not at all are never lost.
Men foolishly do call it virtuous;
What virtue is it that is born with us?
Much less can honour be ascribed thereto;
Honour is purchased by the deeds we do.
Believe me, Hero, honour is not won
Until some honourable deed be done.
Seek you for chastity, immortal fame,
And know that some have wronged Diana’s name?
Whose name is it, if she be false or not
So she be fair, but some vile tongues will blot?
But you are fair, (ay me) so wondrous fair,
So young, so gentle, and so debonair,
As Greece will think if thus you live alone
Some one or other keeps you as his own.
Then, Hero, hate me not nor from me fly
To follow swiftly blasting infamy.
Perhaps thy sacred priesthood makes thee loath.
Tell me, to whom mad’st thou that heedless oath?”

“To Venus,” answered she and, as she spake,
Forth from those two tralucent cisterns brake
A stream of liquid pearl, which down her face
Made milk-white paths, whereon the gods might trace
To Jove’s high court.
He thus replied: “The rites
In which love’s beauteous empress most delights
Are banquets, Doric music, midnight revel,
Plays, masks, and all that stern age counteth evil.
Thee as a holy idiot doth she scorn
For thou in vowing chastity hast sworn
To rob her name and honour, and thereby
Committ’st a sin far worse than perjury,
Even sacrilege against her deity,
Through regular and formal purity.
To expiate which sin, kiss and shake hands.
Such sacrifice as this Venus demands.”

Thereat she smiled and did deny him so,
As put thereby, yet might he hope for moe.
Which makes him quickly re-enforce his speech,
And her in humble manner thus beseech.
“Though neither gods nor men may thee deserve,
Yet for her sake, whom you have vowed to serve,
Abandon fruitless cold virginity,
The gentle queen of love’s sole enemy.
Then shall you most resemble Venus’ nun,
When Venus’ sweet rites are performed and done.
Flint-breasted Pallas joys in single life,
But Pallas and your mistress are at strife.
Love, Hero, then, and be not tyrannous,
But heal the heart that thou hast wounded thus,
Nor stain thy youthful years with avarice.
Fair fools delight to be accounted nice.
The richest corn dies, if it be not reaped;
Beauty alone is lost, too warily kept.”

These arguments he used, and many more,
Wherewith she yielded, that was won before.
Hero’s looks yielded but her words made war.
Women are won when they begin to jar.
Thus, having swallowed Cupid’s golden hook,
The more she strived, the deeper was she strook.
Yet, evilly feigning anger, strove she still
And would be thought to grant against her will.
So having paused a while at last she said,
“Who taught thee rhetoric to deceive a maid?
Ay me, such words as these should I abhor
And yet I like them for the orator.”

With that Leander stooped to have embraced her
But from his spreading arms away she cast her,
And thus bespake him: “Gentle youth, forbear
To touch the sacred garments which I wear.
Upon a rock and underneath a hill
Far from the town (where all is whist and still,
Save that the sea, playing on yellow sand,
Sends forth a rattling murmur to the land,
Whose sound allures the golden Morpheus
In silence of the night to visit us)
My turret stands and there, God knows, I play.
With Venus’ swans and sparrows all the day.
A dwarfish beldam bears me company,
That hops about the chamber where I lie,
And spends the night (that might be better spent)
In vain discourse and apish merriment.
Come thither.” As she spake this, her tongue tripped,
For unawares “come thither” from her slipped.
And suddenly her former colour changed,
And here and there her eyes through anger ranged.
And like a planet, moving several ways,
At one self instant she, poor soul, assays,
Loving, not to love at all, and every part
Strove to resist the motions of her heart.
And hands so pure, so innocent, nay, such
As might have made heaven stoop to have a touch,
Did she uphold to Venus, and again
Vowed spotless chastity, but all in vain.
Cupid beats down her prayers with his wings,
Her vows above the empty air he flings,
All deep enraged, his sinewy bow he bent,
And shot a shaft that burning from him went,
Wherewith she strooken, looked so dolefully,
As made love sigh to see his tyranny.
And as she wept her tears to pearl he turned,
And wound them on his arm and for her mourned.
Then towards the palace of the destinies
Laden with languishment and grief he flies,
And to those stern nymphs humbly made request
Both might enjoy each other, and be blest.
But with a ghastly dreadful

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

The sweetest of words escape your lips and leave me breathless.
Butterflies flutter inside,
fill day dreams with your static covered voice,
So smooth and masculine.

Never have I been so drawn to the corners of another's mind,
wanting to fill myself into the creaks of your heartache.
I could heal you....
shower you in affection and adoration.

Your brilliance captivates me,
leaving me wanting more.
I'm to caught up in what ifs...
What lingers between that I can't confess,
is that I'm afraid,
I could get completely lost in you.

you* *should sleep.

i can't. are you   tired?

no, i wanna talk to you.

sunlight streaming through windows,
       soft skin,
             a dream with warm brown eyes,
a sleepy snowfall of kisses and snowflakes stuck to eyelashes,
   honey spilling over the floor,
              love spilling through lips,
sleep stuck under fingernails and pulling mouths into long drawn out yawns,
              the night leaving its soft bruises under eyes,
hearts beating slow as the sun creeps its way up through the sky,
              time dripping like molasses

goodnight

goodnight

i love you

*i  love you too

Road Trip: Thinking it's about time (find yourself within II)

This particular poem was born as a one line response to a message.  But in many other forms, half written, it exists still, un, unfinished, waiting for the next burst energy, the next holiday time, to reach a new finish line.

This is a different but similar to a poem posted on June 2nd, "Poetry Round (find your self within)"

Any error of omission is unintentional, but know that this took many hours, until fatigue won. If you never told or revealed to me your location, know that you will be called out, to and unto me, in another poem, called "your banner is my flag."

Fact about me:  You design me.
-------------------------------------------------------

th­inking it's about time for a road trip.

create an excuse
(reasons, I got a plenty)
to stop by,
to show you another side of me,
for a drink, a meal,
and some kind
of exchange, of
form and fluids,
manner to be determined.

to come to Minneapolis,
watch you create a heated sensuality,
verbally, from melted snowdrifts,
a hot time to be had
by all the poets
of the mini-apple,
I want to meet
and celebrate ann victory.

travel to Thiruvananthapuram,
tour the treasures
of gold and diamonds,
from whence come
the bejeweled poems,
that have earned visits from
thousands upon thousands,
pilgrims, devotees, followers,
to partake at that, his,
special temple.

Gomer, Gomer,  & MJJ,
I am in your Florida,
no, sorry, not in Ocala,
near to your homer,
and I feel you springer
ten times in the
November sun rays,
that have me locked
in a full Nelson,
your productivity,
endless,
a sea of orange sunburnt words,

Tennessee,
The Carolinas,
Georgia,
The South,
I rise with it,
now, again,
that I will need a slow
sunny all lazy summer long to
learn y'alls ways,
see the wolves,
in your forests,
helm the riverboats,
navigate the quaint tides
of Charleston,
the special places
where they heal, le ville,
where the ashes of
burnt children,
retuned to be whole.

learn y'alls ways,
walk in your boots,
of seeing poems
using your special
southern saber words.

missed the original
Thrilla-in-Manila,
but rest easy, assured,
that hotbed of creativity,
where I check the
PH of the mc waters
to comprehend its
wisdom and now, it's sadness,
will be an illustrious destination
on my itinerant itinerary,
stopping by Makati City,
after all,
it is writ in the good book,
this island,
the PhilippineS,
is the birthplace
of the letter S,
Samples: samson, sally,
and So many others?

in Nevada City,
which is of course in
krazy California,
wager philosophy, romance,
be available for
succinctly seeing
works in progress,
from which I
will imbibe,
so **** deeply,
may have to
stay awhile for...

while I am there,
will need to do
a search and
Hug Mission,
to find a special man,
his unkempt prose,
his mortal rhymes
disguise not his holy worth,
even to the grassy
cal-stratosphere,
to the mesosphere,
will I high fly,
to find his sweetest spot,
then and thereafter
going looking
further on to
Humboldt County.

in Leeds, in West Yorkshire,
(Hamphshirians, Northamptontonians,
patience please)
built foundries and factories
over the magical forest of Loidis,
near to the river Aire,
yet still hides a
magical sorceress of words,
casting spells over
men and beast.
no one has seen full
her half-turned away face,
but when she summons,
do I have a choix
other than obey?
even if I get lost,
my sorceress,
you know,
I am on way too.

to get there,
will fly I must,
to Heathrow hell,
will do it,
just for you,
faithful friend,
a man da gotta do, what
a man gotta do...for you,
but first a stop off at the
London School of Economics,
Hampstead as well,
for a tutorial about sonnets,
or sams in wells,
even if I come
in my bare feet.

even in New York Upstate,
a man da gotta do,
what he mulls over in his heart,
be not surprised at a knock upon
your door, to make comparative notes,
about each other's tattoos.

in the South African veld,
hid in the highland grasses,
crouches the poetesses and tigresses,
waiting to ambush you
with words that must be seen
to be heard, to be well understood.
perhaps I'll come at ester time,
under blue indigo skies over,
a golden landscape,
seizing all the gems
that can be seen
only at 3:00am

leeward,
north to Canada,
must I, transgress,
country of my momma's birth,
fly from Montreal to Toronto, Calgary
then over to Vancouver.
Canada,
a dangerous place for me,
cause there are beautiful
souls up there,
and maybe even a
warrant to
repossess mine,
they want their
poets back.

double down by ferry,
me to Seattle,
to see a man about river,
in the Pacific Northwest,
where I have happily
drowned so many times,
that The Lord is complaining,
am hogging all the baptismal waters,
but when reminded that
nothing lasts forever,
here tomorrow,
gone today, walk on,
I add my tears
to that river,
before hitting the road.

on that river,
gonna drive me a kayak,
down Daytonway,
on the Yamill River,
see a gyreene marine,
watching me do a beach landing,
in Willamette Wine Park.
he will teach me to salute,
I will teach him how to
shake hands,
and learn from him,
it's ok,
to stand down.

man o' man
there are a lots of poets,
in these here parts,
this grand
Pacific North West,
looking for one in particular,
who will be quite easy to spot,
as he is my very own
soul brother.

will be easy to find,
though we have never met,
he will be on his kayak,
I on mine,
tho when he paddles,
somehow he manages
to hold
never letting go
of, his lovely bride,
his best half's hands.

this will a problem,
for I must teach him how to
shake two handed souls,
while hugging and paddling,
even bailing,
with an old dented pail
simultaneous.
but you can teach old dogs
new tricks, even the ones,
that can't spell
rhymers.

have mercie on me Ohio,
like a mother has to her daughter,
done a three year sentence in Cleveland,
but no jail can hold an NYC boy,
but if requested, yes I will return
to set fire to the *Cuyahoga,
again! he he he...
but do not s mock me!
(now you know why the FBI loves
my poetry, my biggest institutional fan).

souls in torment,
where you be,
where you hide,
matters not where
you physical reside,
for we have found
each other
in each other words.

You, who live in
your very own
personal hell,
I think we met there,
because
yours was
mine too,
tho not found
on any map.

maybe I will meet the
Empress Josephine Maria,
rowing on the canals of
the Netherlands,
no longer will she be
alone.

but then again, some
very special things,
like
the purest of love
are on no map,
they are everywhere.

while in India,
will seek the many musings of many lips
of aged rhyme men
and complicated charmers
so I may kiss them
with spiced humors
to pour and pour,
more and more,
upon this western soul,
mysteries of the east,
to Kashmir, Bangalore,
wherever I must,
even take a praDip in the Ganges,
I will go, find you,
un-hide you,
among the
teeming millions,
millions of
jokes and rhymes,
that make the
world spin brighter.

in Germany,
all the university students
speak English,
in Wiesbaden, they know
poetic beauty is not in the format,
some in Bamberg,
with a peculiar
Missouri accent,
which is nicht gut Englisch,
so study hard the real way,
speak the language
the new yorka way,
which will require
study abroad,
which is quite funny,
now that I think about it.

but in Mo.,
the native drums roll,
long and slow,
making words
I know
better, different,
in a way never saw before,
leaves me asking for,
mo', mo', please?

to get there, to Allemagne,
land of my forefathers,
a ship I will take,
from Southampton
across the Kiel Canal,
before I depart,
will have my hair cut,
my words reworked,
by her Ladyship,
whose keen eyes and
maternal instincts,
see the joy of life in every
Livvi little thing.

Watt am I going to do if
I need to find a Tecumseh,
taker of my naked poems,
and enlarger of them,
so truth by her,
all revealed,
we are all naked
at least,
twice a day?

In Nepal I will purr at the words
gleaned from the markets and
train stations where
voyages from Lalitpur to Katmandu,
start and end,
where there is a miracle almost
sixteen years young,
where they call their schools
future stars and little angels,
so why should poetic miracles not be
as common as its subtropical clime?

though I despise the
Dallas Cowboys,
not my  America's team,
nonetheless there is a young woman,
a true rose of Texas,
who waits and writes
so lovingly of her airman,
in Afghanistan, I have placed
their names first,
in my nighttime prayers,
hoping to be there,
schedule my visit,
to witness his safe return
and their
joyous reunification.

there are no Mayans in Maine,
but poets of similar name,
kould be, mae be,
Julia's in Jersey, new,
in Auckland,
there are poets
who don't know it,
and Down Under, too,
where getting high is easy,
getting high at
and on words
well marshaled ,
but **** sure I will be
peering and prring,
all the way.

Oregon,
don't be gone,
those wide eyes shut,
when I come by,
who knows when I
will pass this way again...
on my way to Phoenix,
where sunrayes bend to the
desires of dessert breezes.

Kentucky to Korea,
one long road to travel,
but middle son,
if you can do it,
so can I, and,
I will follow.

in a beautiful city,
unsurprisingly called
Belleville,
the leader of the band,
still leads us in belle 'noise'
and when he finishes
fall leafing us in song, he still,
rises up in the mid of dark,
prayerful haikus to write.

off to Rogers, Arkansas
to meet an Italian from Mexico
who specializes in skinny poems,
something one day I will be too.

maybe I will go to
places it snows,
there are so many,
but your photo,
and tattoo trail,
clues, will follow,
no matter how hard
you make it a mystery.

you, who live in just
the world,
don't even think,
that crazy dotted lines,
unstraight,
or huge plains,
are sufficient,
to hide your
moody dust trail
from me!

somewhere in the USA,
roses grow in ground
that needs the
watering of tears,
though this place
is hard to find,
ha, turn around,
that is me,
tapping you,
on the shoulder!

will find you,
as I am searching for
a lovely pair
of stockinged ankles,
each with a heart tattoo,
but I sure could use
a clue,
before this hobbit searches
all the shire,
derby hatted,
to find your
heart real, and the real you...

my mode of time travel?
why I am just
a dude on a rocket ship.

Wisconsin,
look for my ruby message
in the snow,
in the dust,
in the sand, the skies, the sea,
but will you answer me?

Pittsburgh,
patient, you've been,
you thought I forgot
all about you,
chimera  at the intersection
of three rivers,
all you need wonder,
upon which one
will my ship arrive
and why you still disbelieve
you are not a poetess!

ME oh my,
you too, a hidey hole got,
but, we are strange, we humans,
we would gladly bleed to please,
If we could but find
a combination of
new words that
would your heart gladden,
your eyes tear,
your lips wear,
a smile of pleasure
at our offerings poetic!
but still I know not,
the where!

Lagos,
where
I shall climb the tallest skyscraper,
calling out in Yoruba,
where is my Temitope?
where is mine,
worthy of thanksgiving
so I may carry my Popoola,
my pole of her of
written wealth?

Mombasa, Singapore,
Maryland, Rhode Island, Kentucky,
Huddersfield, Connecticut Joe, Ireland,
South Dakota,
where the merry elders
well ken somethings
about a moon and tattered clouds,
something about children and dogs,
and something about letting
tomorrow's wait.

Milwaukee, Atlanta,
chuck, in *PA., friend to all,
to all those scattered across these
United States of America.

can we dare not mention
"The Shaq" of Malaysia,
South Sudan, Pakistan,
of course not!

Suburbia,
beautiful, black San Diego, Detroit;

The BBB's -

British Columbia, Brazil, Breendonk, and
B'kara!
the goodness of *Boston,
flipping out in Flipadelphia,

did you think I would forget ya?

those of you hiding among 64 stars,
the groves of L.A',
on the lanes,
the special land of I-sia-Bella,
fellow citizens of Neverland,
those of you 'at home,'
in the land of nightmares,
concrete boxes,
those who post without a doubt,
and in the box,
this who think your birth year
is an identifying mark, not,
you never fooled me,
will visit each and everyone.

even and especially,
the grays of crosstown
NYC,
the red writers of my hood,
the tylers too.

I am exhausted,
forgive me well,
if thy locale,
I did not explicate,
for the hour is very late.

yet thru subtle fissures
in the clouds,
look for a tired old man
on the wings of a
chariot drawn by angels,
bringing you a dictionary
full of new words,
a present for you,
but truly,
a present to himself
for from it,
your future poems
will come.

*but the sun has come up,
so now I sleep.

a princess sits in her royal lounge
troubled at mind, restless of heart
trembling limbs and parched tongue
the rivers in her eyes betray
the sorrow that drowns her soul
with shaking fingers she struggles
for a firm grip on her quill
her heart pours out in fluid words
to express a love nursed for years

“My Lord, from childhood I have heard
of your courageous acts and kind character
of your handsomeness and perfectness
and I am unable to draw my mind away
from thoughts of you and yours
I am shamelessly besotted by you
Like a sunflower that is drawn to the sun
I am drawn to you
It is against the common notion
for a woman to ask a man
to take her hand in marriage
I break every tradition,
but Mukunda, answer my question-
which woman, high-born
and well-versed in all the arts,
will not wish to be your consort-
and besides I have already considered myself
wedded to you, in thought and spirit
is it not immoral then
when I consider myself a married woman
and when I am already yours
body, mind and soul,
to allow me another marriage?
My brother Rukmi has arranged
a marriage for me, and it is in the morrow
my heart sinks in sorrow
you are my saviour-
it behooves you to come
and claim what is yours
and how to accomplish it without needless bloodshed
need not cause you worry, for I have a plan
tomorrow morning I shall go for my pre-nuptial prayer
at the temple in the outskirts
away from curious eyes
and it is from there
that you can take me
please do come Krishna and save me
from this mockery of a marriage
I have already said that I am yours
and if you do not come, I shall
with no second thought ensure
that I am no longer alive
to be the object of another man’s desire
and if not in this birth, we shall
in another birth be man and wife”

she seals the letter with  burning tears
and entrusts in a priest’s willing hands to deliver
this receptacle of her hopes and fears
a sliver of hope begins to glimmer
as exhaustion finally takes over
and sleep beckons with gentle hands
to distant happier lands

In the morning she awakes
mind no more clouded or deluded
a faith unshaken that strengthens
as her messenger arrives
bearing happy news
her heart gladdens

Krishna will come – of that she is sure
a love denied will now be hers
the blush of excitement gives way
to shyness - kept so far at bay
the letter was written boldly enough
but now her maiden coyness asserts its sway
with eager pulsing heart she awaits
the moment of freedom and fastening
with her love – it seems too long a day!

In her best finery she is bedecked
a bride blossoming like a flower
eyes shining like diamonds
in their excitement
nocturnal hair that falls to her waist
in a tidy plait
lips tinged with a secret smile
an accompaniment to her glowing face
her blush spreads
like a rose amongst jasmines

with slow sure steps
and comely gait
eyes glistening with hope
and conviction strengthened with faith
she proceeds towards the temple
with sincere emotion she prays

“Devi Parvati, with your motherly grace
look upon me with your kind gaze
as once through penance you gained
your true love as a husband
I too embark today
on a quest to find my way
to him who is my very soul- I pray
let Krishna me my husband”

As every minute passes hope grows
and then she hears his majestic roar
like  a dark thunder-cloud he appears
his turmeric vestment blowing in the wind
and like lighting in the night sky
suddenly and nimbly he hoists her
onto his chariot and they are away

and then the powerful anticipation of this moment gave way
to its pure enjoyment, the company of the loved one

and thus it was that the unflinching Rukmini
wedded Krishna one day.

- Vijayalakshmi Harish
        10.9.2012

Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish

1.
I am drawn to you
stealing glances across rooms
Pray you notice me

2.
I’m drawn into you
You are staining me like ink
The stars brought us here

3.
I am drawn to you
like a curtain, blank-faced stares
all we’re sharing now

you caused this fire
with a dimpled smile and a plane ticket
can’t suffocate a blaze with a match
petrol running down my legs
wanna watch me burn at the stake?
7,000 miles of wildfires called me by your name

like a moth drawn to a flame
we kissed on the light up floor
your fingers inside of me, it was divine to me
surrendering my soul to my god
left my lipstick scars all over you

i ate the apple from the softness of your hand
our garden of eden was no holy land
i let you knock at the door of my spine
no malice in my voice, come inside
but baby, you weren’t expecting
me to multiply

like a moth drawn to a flame
i bit your tongue in the break of day
wanted to taste your blood for a change
nothing like a little emotional
devastation to get me through it

yell it más, señor
til your vocal cords are ******
oath taken in sacred silence
tragedy and insanity and is
it all a game to you?
because you hid while i sought
yell it más, señor
yell it más

and when i told you of the flower blossoming within
you cried like a boy for his mother
you see, there’s no way we can keep it
not for your career

and the next day on the 405
my soul wrung empty inside
suffocating loneliness, all-consuming
75mph, nearly opened my door
told my therapist i wanted the asphalt to eat me alive

they took me to the madhouse
while you had a pint and a laugh miles from my hospital bed
they said
“she wants to end her life with a baby inside, oh, what a terrible state she’s in”

the doctor watched me as i cried
with cigarette breath and roaming hands
forced the wand inside of me
at the same time i jumped over the ledge
and did you know i laid in silence
while he whispered in my ear

“good girl, it’s a girl”, you see, oh?
can’t you feel the joy?
of creating something like God herself?
like vines sprouting from the soil?
but Oceania, so much panic, yeah
too far, didn’t wanna come near
my ash-strewn wreckage

like a moth drawn to a flame
blazing light, burned just right
i wanted you to suffocate my pain
pretended it didn’t exist for our

transpacific love games
i’ll be Marilyn and you be Errol
the actor who can’t survive any longer
and the one who devoured a woman whole

yell it más, señor
oh god i’m bleeding on the bathroom floor
so much sacrifice for paradise
but isn’t this what it’s for?
tragedy and insanity and
oh no, it’s all a game, i see
yell it más, señor
yell it más

aliel
enaj

THE HOUSE OF DUST
A Symphony

BY
CONRAD AIKEN

To Jessie

NOTE

. . . Parts of this poem have been printed in "The North American
Review, Others, Poetry, Youth, Coterie, The Yale Review". . . . I am
indebted to Lafcadio Hearn for the episode called "The Screen Maiden"
in Part II.


     This text comes from the source available at
     Project Gutenberg, originally prepared by Judy Boss
     of Omaha, NE.
    
THE HOUSE OF DUST


PART I.


I.

The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.

And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,
The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street,
And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.
The purple lights leap down the hill before him.
The gorgeous night has begun again.

'I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams,
I will hold my light above them and seek their faces.
I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins . . .'
The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness,
Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest,
Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains.

We hear him and take him among us, like a wind of music,
Like the ghost of a music we have somewhere heard;
We crowd through the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamplight,
We pour in a sinister wave, ascend a stair,
With laughter and cry, and word upon murmured word;
We flow, we descend, we turn . . . and the eternal dreamer
Moves among us like light, like evening air . . .

Good-night!  Good-night!  Good-night!  We go our ways,
The rain runs over the pavement before our feet,
The cold rain falls, the rain sings.
We walk, we run, we ride.  We turn our faces
To what the eternal evening brings.

Our hands are hot and raw with the stones we have laid,
We have built a tower of stone high into the sky,
We have built a city of towers.

Our hands are light, they are singing with emptiness.
Our souls are light; they have shaken a burden of hours . . .
What did we build it for?  Was it all a dream? . . .
Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam . . .
And after a while they will fall to dust and rain;
Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands;
And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.


II.

One, from his high bright window in a tower,
Leans out, as evening falls,
And sees the advancing curtain of the shower
Splashing its silver on roofs and walls:
Sees how, swift as a shadow, it crosses the city,
And murmurs beyond far walls to the sea,
Leaving a glimmer of water in the dark canyons,
And silver falling from eave and tree.

One, from his high bright window, looking down,
Peers like a dreamer over the rain-bright town,
And thinks its towers are like a dream.
The western windows flame in the sun's last flare,
Pale roofs begin to gleam.

Looking down from a window high in a wall
He sees us all;
Lifting our pallid faces towards the rain,
Searching the sky, and going our ways again,
Standing in doorways, waiting under the trees . . .
There, in the high bright window he dreams, and sees
What we are blind to,-we who mass and crowd
From wall to wall in the darkening of a cloud.

The gulls drift slowly above the city of towers,
Over the roofs to the darkening sea they fly;
Night falls swiftly on an evening of rain.
The yellow lamps wink one by one again.
The towers reach higher and blacker against the sky.


III.

One, where the pale sea foamed at the yellow sand,
With wave upon slowly shattering wave,
Turned to the city of towers as evening fell;
And slowly walked by the darkening road toward it;
And saw how the towers darkened against the sky;
And across the distance heard the toll of a bell.

Along the darkening road he hurried alone,
With his eyes cast down,
And thought how the streets were hoarse with a tide of people,
With clamor of voices, and numberless faces . . .
And it seemed to him, of a sudden, that he would drown
Here in the quiet of evening air,
These empty and voiceless places . . .
And he hurried towards the city, to enter there.

Along the darkening road, between tall trees
That made a sinister whisper, loudly he walked.
Behind him, sea-gulls dipped over long grey seas.
Before him, numberless lovers smiled and talked.
And death was observed with sudden cries,
And birth with laughter and pain.
And the trees grew taller and blacker against the skies
And night came down again.


IV.

Up high black walls, up sombre terraces,
Clinging like luminous birds to the sides of cliffs,
The yellow lights went climbing towards the sky.
From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain,
Each yellow light looked down like a golden eye.

They trembled from coign to coign, and tower to tower,
Along high terraces quicker than dream they flew.
And some of them steadily glowed, and some soon vanished,
And some strange shadows threw.

And behind them all the ghosts of thoughts went moving,
Restlessly moving in each lamplit room,
From chair to mirror, from mirror to fire;
From some, the light was scarcely more than a gloom:
From some, a dazzling desire.

And there was one, beneath black eaves, who thought,
Combing with lifted arms her golden hair,
Of the lover who hurried towards her through the night;
And there was one who dreamed of a sudden death
As she blew out her light.

And there was one who turned from clamoring streets,
And walked in lamplit gardens among black trees,
And looked at the windy sky,
And thought with terror how stones and roots would freeze
And birds in the dead boughs cry . . .

And she hurried back, as snow fell, mixed with rain,
To mingle among the crowds again,
To jostle beneath blue lamps along the street;
And lost herself in the warm bright coiling dream,
With a sound of murmuring voices and shuffling feet.

And one, from his high bright window looking down
On luminous chasms that cleft the basalt town,
Hearing a sea-like murmur rise,
Desired to leave his dream, descend from the tower,
And drown in waves of shouts and laughter and cries.


V.

The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain . . .
It eddies around pale lilac lamps, and falls
Down golden-windowed walls.
We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain,
We do not remember the red roots whence we rose,
But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while
We shall lie down again.

The snow floats down upon us, we turn, we turn,
Through gorges filled with light we sound and flow . . .
One is struck down and hurt, we crowd about him,
We bear him away, gaze after his listless body;
But whether he lives or dies we do not know.

One of us sings in the street, and we listen to him;
The words ring over us like vague bells of sorrow.
He sings of a house he lived in long ago.
It is strange; this house of dust was the house I lived in;
The house you lived in, the house that all of us know.
And coiling slowly about him, and laughing at him,
And throwing him pennies, we bear away
A mournful echo of other times and places,
And follow a dream . . . a dream that will not stay.

Down long broad flights of lamplit stairs we flow;
Noisy, in scattered waves, crowding and shouting;
In broken slow cascades.
The gardens extend before us . . .  We spread out swiftly;
Trees are above us, and darkness.  The canyon fades . . .

And we recall, with a gleaming stab of sadness,
Vaguely and incoherently, some dream
Of a world we came from, a world of sun-blue hills . . .
A black wood whispers around us, green eyes gleam;
Someone cries in the forest, and someone kills.

We flow to the east, to the white-lined shivering sea;
We reach to the west, where the whirling sun went down;
We close our eyes to music in bright cafees.
We diverge from clamorous streets to streets that are silent.
We loaf where the wind-spilled fountain plays.

And, growing tired, we turn aside at last,
Remember our secret selves, seek out our towers,
Lay weary hands on the banisters, and climb;
Climbing, each, to his little four-square dream
Of love or lust or beauty or death or crime.


VI.

Over the darkened city, the city of towers,
The city of a thousand gates,
Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers,
Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates,
The slow wind flows, drearily streams and falls,
With a mournful sound down rain-dark walls.
On one side purples the lustrous dusk of the sea,
And dreams in white at the city's feet;
On one side sleep the plains, with heaped-up hills.
Oaks and beeches whisper in rings about it.
Above the trees are towers where dread bells beat.

The fisherman draws his streaming net from the sea
And sails toward the far-off city, that seems
Like one vague tower.
The dark bow plunges to foam on blue-black waves,
And shrill rain seethes like a ghostly music about him
In a quiet shower.

Rain with a shrill sings on the lapsing waves;
Rain thrills over the roofs again;
Like a shadow of shifting silver it crosses the city;
The lamps in the streets are streamed with rain;
And sparrows complain beneath deep eaves,
And among whirled leaves
The sea-gulls, blowing from tower to lower tower,
From wall to remoter wall,
Skim with the driven rain to the rising sea-sound
And close grey wings and fall . . .

. . . Hearing great rain above me, I now remember
A girl who stood by the door and shut her eyes:
Her pale cheeks glistened with rain, she stood and shivered.
Into a forest of silver she vanished slowly . . .
Voices about me rise . . .

Voices clear and silvery, voices of raindrops,-
'We struck with silver claws, we struck her down.
We are the ghosts of the singing furies . . . '
A chorus of elfin voices blowing about me
Weaves to a babel of sound.  Each cries a secret.
I run among them, reach out vain hands, and drown.

'I am the one who stood beside you and smiled,
Thinking your face so strangely young . . . '
'I am the one who loved you but did not dare.'
'I am the one you followed through crowded streets,
The one who escaped you, the one with red-gleamed hair.'

'I am the one you saw to-day, who fell
Senseless before you, hearing a certain bell:
A bell that broke great memories in my brain.'
'I am the one who passed unnoticed before you,
Invisible, in a cloud of secret pain.'

'I am the one who suddenly cried, beholding
The face of a certain man on the dazzling screen.
They wrote me that he was dead.  It was long ago.
I walked in the streets for a long while, hearing nothing,
And returned to see it again.  And it was so.'


Weave, weave, weave, you streaks of rain!
I am dissolved and woven again . . .
Thousands of faces rise and vanish before me.
Thousands of voices weave in the rain.

'I am the one who rode beside you, blinking
At a dazzle of golden lights.
Tempests of music swept me: I was thinking
Of the gorgeous promise of certain nights:
Of the woman who suddenly smiled at me this day,
Smiled in a certain delicious sidelong way,
And turned, as she reached the door,
To smile once more . . .
Her hands are whiter than snow on midnight water.
Her throat is golden and full of golden laughter,
Her eyes are strange as the stealth of the moon
On a night in June . . .
She runs among whistling leaves; I hurry after;
She dances in dreams over white-waved water;
Her body is white and fragrant and cool,
Magnolia petals that float on a white-starred pool . . .
I have dreamed of her, dreaming for many nights
Of a broken music and golden lights,
Of broken webs of silver, heavily falling
Between my hands and their white desire:
And dark-leaved boughs, edged with a golden radiance,
Dipping to screen a fire . . .
I dream that I walk with her beneath high trees,
But as I lean to kiss her face,
She is blown aloft on wind, I catch at leaves,
And run in a moonless place;
And I hear a crashing of terrible rocks flung down,
And shattering trees and cracking walls,
And a net of intense white flame roars over the town,
And someone cries; and darkness falls . . .
But now she has leaned and smiled at me,
My veins are afire with music,
Her eyes have kissed me, my body is turned to light;
I shall dream to her secret heart tonight . . . '

He rises and moves away, he says no word,
He folds his evening paper and turns away;
I rush through the dark with rows of lamplit faces;
Fire bells peal, and some of us turn to listen,
And some sit motionless in their accustomed places.

Cold rain lashes the car-roof, scurries in gusts,
Streams down the windows in waves and ripples of lustre;
The lamps in the streets are distorted and strange.
Someone takes his watch from his pocket and yawns.
One peers out in the night for the place to change.

Rain . . . rain . . . rain . . . we are buried in rain,
It will rain forever, the swift wheels hiss through water,
Pale sheets of water gleam in the windy street.
The pealing of bells is lost in a drive of rain-drops.
Remote and hurried the great bells beat.

'I am the one whom life so shrewdly betrayed,
Misfortune dogs me, it always hunted me down.
And to-day the woman I love lies dead.
I gave her roses, a ring with opals;
These hands have touched her head.

'I bound her to me in all soft ways,
I bound her to me in a net of days,
Yet now she has gone in silence and said no word.
How can we face these dazzling things, I ask you?
There is no use: we cry: and are not heard.

'They cover a body with roses . . . I shall not see it . . .
Must one return to the lifeless walls of a city
Whose soul is charred by fire? . . . '
His eyes are closed, his lips press tightly together.
Wheels hiss beneath us.  He yields us our desire.

'No, do not stare so-he is weak with grief,
He cannot face you, he turns his eyes aside;
He is confused with pain.
I suffered this.  I know.  It was long ago . . .
He closes his eyes and drowns in death again.'

The wind hurls blows at the rain-starred glistening windows,
The wind shrills down from the half-seen walls.
We flow on the mournful wind in a dream of dying;
And at last a silence falls.


VII.

Midnight; bells toll, and along the cloud-high towers
The golden lights go out . . .
The yellow windows darken, the shades are drawn,
In thousands of rooms we sleep, we await the dawn,
We lie face down, we dream,
We cry aloud with terror, half rise, or seem
To stare at the ceiling or walls . . .
Midnight . . . the last of shattering bell-notes falls.
A rush of silence whirls over the cloud-high towers,
A vortex of soundless hours.

'The bells have just struck twelve: I should be sleeping.
But I cannot delay any longer to write and tell you.
The woman is dead.
She died-you know the way.  Just as we planned.
Smiling, with open sunlit eyes.
Smiling upon the outstretched fatal hand . . .'

He folds his letter, steps softly down the stairs.
The doors are closed and silent.  A gas-jet flares.
His shadow disturbs a shadow of balustrades.
The door swings shut behind.  Night roars above him.
Into the night he fades.

Wind; wind; wind; carving the walls;
Blowing the water that gleams in the street;
Blowing the rain, the sleet.
In the dark alley, an old tree cracks and falls,
Oak-boughs moan in the haunted air;
Lamps blow down with a crash and ****** of glass . . .
Darkness whistles . . . Wild hours pass . . .

And those whom sleep eludes lie wide-eyed, hearing
Above their heads a goblin night go by;
Children are waked, and cry,
The young girl hears the roar in her sleep, and dreams
That her lover is caught in a burning tower,
She clutches the pillow, she gasps for breath, she screams . . .
And then by degrees her breath grows quiet and slow,
She dreams of an evening, long ago:
Of colored lanterns balancing under trees,
Some of them softly catching afire;
And beneath the lanterns a motionless face she sees,
Golden with lamplight, smiling, serene . . .
The leaves are a pale and glittering green,
The sound of horns blows over the trampled grass,
Shadows of dancers pass . . .
The face smiles closer to hers, she tries to lean
Backward, away, the eyes burn close and strange,
The face is beginning to change,-
It is her lover, she no longer desires to resist,
She is held and kissed.
She closes her eyes, and melts in a seethe of

The moon is full tonight.
I can feel it's pull.

The cat stares at me.
Her eyes seem to suggest she knows what is on my mind.

As I gaze up into the mysterious sky,
The familiar taste of salt trickles into the corners of my lips.

I can feel a tug of my emotions,
Like the moon somehow has a role in the pull of my interstitial fluid.

It is basically sea water,
Right?

The black cat loiters a certain superstition within.
Fear becomes instilled as she stares into my soul with her all knowing glare.

"Blame it on the moon, blame it on the moon.
Tides come and go, so this shall too"

I strive to find the comfort this world has to offer me
Some say it comes from within, this I am not sure of.

The thoughts linger. The cat knows, I know she knows.
What does she make of me in this incapacitated state?

I taste the salt. It is drawn out by the moon.
That is what I tell myself.

Deep down I know the salt is due to the overwhelming grief I try to deny.

And the cat is merely the internalized self stigma eating away at my self esteem and efficacy.

CHAPTER ONE

My geographic movements during the past year could be called “A Tale of Two Couches.” So as June draws to a close, I assume the position here again on Couch California. I am back in Hemet, the place the smug among us call Hemetucky--as if there was nothing a couple of Mint Juleps and a **** of Blue Grass wouldn’t cure. It is the year of our Lord, 2014: so far an interesting year for women. There was a woman who wore socks to bed. There was always my long-time, here today-gone tomorrow, long time companion, currently teaching somewhere remote on the Big Rez, a southwestern Navajo concentration camp near the 4 Corners.  Next, there’s my current object of affection, that fine and frisky lady from The Bronx by way of Bernalillo--currently at home in Laguna Beach, Orange County. Trixie: my main squeeze at the moment.

And now, completely out of the ******* blue this afternoon, my cell phone rings and it’s ******* Juanita--my all-time favorite woman, Juanita Mi Favorita de La Quinta--a Coachella Valley town and desert wadi, extending its lucrative winter tourist season to become a significant, year-round retirement venue and a robust service economy feeding off it.  Juanita arrived there in the late 80s, in middle of her early forties.  She was unemployed, homeless, just a suitcase to her name and a two-year old toddler in tow. Her parents were there, as was her Aunt Peggy.  Juanita was always Peggy’s favorite niece, her favorite child, actually, Peggy herself being childless, never married.  Aunt Peggy put her maternal instincts to work on Juanita Rodriguez, her Sister Rosalia’s second favorite twin daughter.

Maria, Rosalia’s first favorite daughter, Juanita’s twin sister—MARIA: lives in Newport Beach and acts as an extra in many commercial ads shot in southern California and elsewhere, an irony never without sting for Juanita. “Que lastima!” Poor Juanita: as her would-be Hollywood Movie star aspirations disintegrated over the years, along with her unrealized lower expectations to be TV star, and even those semi-glamorous modeling gigs at trade shows and fairs—the elephant’s graveyard of the acting profession—failed to materialize, and now her celebrity habitat shrunken even further, to that sporadic but consistent mockery of stardom, I refer to any would-be thespian’s ignominious one-celled visual protozoan: The Extra Call List.  And—*******-- what happens next? Juanita’s sister Maria starts getting these parts, starts getting hired by filling out a ******* postcard, starts getting paid to look good in the background. *******: no professional education or instruction, no agent, and no need to **** off both the producer, the producer’s cousin Morey, the director and the director’s wife’s huge Golden retriever, Genghis--actually a mighty handsome animal--or needing to spill $4K on that Derma-brasion, Juanita inflicted on herself last year.

Juanita, as you already know, was the second favorite daughter and the second favorite twin of the family. She became the third favorite child in her three-child family upon the arrival of her slick baby brother Nico-- the Golden Child, who grew up to be a glib Merrill-Lynch stockbroker, office and residence, Beverly Hills 90112.  (Enter forcefully into the narrative, His Nibs himself, Sir Nicodemus of Hollywood, Juanita and Maria’s baby brother Nico. He speaks: “Excuse me, stockbroker my ***, as it says in a 11 point Rockwell Boldfont, right here on my gold-leaf embossed business card: Senior Large Capital Investment Counselor.”)

No, Juanita had a hard time just treading water in that Cleveland shark tank. And though she lacked nothing in the cuteness department, she had this one fatal flaw, namely, the gift of ***** and sass and a reflex to speak truth to power. Juanita: rejected by Rosalia as a threat to her hegemony as Boss of the Girl’s Club, was cast adrift on a tempestuous childhood cruel Montserrat sea, out there on the briny deep . . .  
                

                                      



High Seas: where many a tuna has a Sorry Charlie moment: “Star-Kist don’t want no tuna with good taste; Star-Kist wants a tuna that tastes good.”

Finally, Juanita is rescued, taken aboard the Good/Soul Aunt Peggy—that wayward bark Elisabeta Rodriguez, home-ported in Southside, Chicago, Illinois—the rescue at sea performed in classy, rather low-key manner; no Andrea Doria drama, but understated:

{Camera One, Helicopter above, zooms over turbulent ocean surface. Peggy, an oasis of calm, aboard the raft Kon Tiki with Thor Heyerdahl and his crew, floats by, whispering, “Going my way, Honey? Climb aboard. Have a homemade oatmeal cookie and a small glass tumbler of Jack Daniels.” Okay, no, that’s not fair. Sure Aunt Peggy drank, but never got round to offering you a drink until you were well into your 30s. Let’s just say she offered you a warm glass of milk, the mother’s milk deprived you by your mother, her sister Rosalia. Dear Aunt Peggy: a seasoned survivor herself, flawed by early childhood deafness and grotesque speech.  Yet, she had refused to settle for life in an asylum. She made a go at life.  She learned; she prospered; she flourished. And when the time came, she was there for you in the Coachella Desert, there for her feisty niece Juanita Ann.  Aunt Peggy: a loving spirit personified, became Juanita’s special confidant and counselor, her personal cheer squad of one. Juanita, of course, a former cheerleader herself--an early hint of greatness to be sure, a highlight, perhaps the highlight of her life, shown off every Halloween, still celebrated at American high schools each Fall. She is the Principal’s secretary at a huge suburban high school in Indio. Each Halloween, if the date falls on a school day, Juanita arrives for work wearing that scrupulously preserved, vintage 1966 cheerleader uniform, looking real foxy still, snug now in all the right places. Eternal Truth: Juanita has always and will always be good looking. Life with Juanita is perpetual “ooh la-la.”

So, I am on the couch that afternoon, reading more of Gramsci’s prison notebooks, specifically the philosophy he calls “Praxis.”  Completely out of the ******* blue, Juanita calls me on a RESTRICTED phone, as I said, Juanita, a torch I’ve kept burning for years, flaring up like a refinery flame--oil still very much in the present energy mix--hope springing eternal as they say, and instantly my mission in life is rekindling our lost love. Juanita’s conceived her mission prior to her phone call:  using me to keep her son from being whacked by the local Eme--the Mexican Mafia—that ethnic-pride social club that the RICO-squad-- using family tree socio-grams and other expensively-printed graphics, the one RICO keeps trying to convince us is some sort of organized crime conspiracy. The Mexican Mafia: like everything else practical and utilitarian in this world: THAT’S ITALIAN! And, if you are starting to sense a bit of ethnic chauvinism on, between & below the lines, you are barking up the right tree.
                                                           ­     
      
                                                            
(AUTHOR’S POST-SCRIPT EDIT: And, an ad for dog food right here? Not the best choice of sponsors, perhaps, at the moment. Juanita was far off from the ****** ***** that start looking not half-bad at 2:30 in the glazy morning, not anywhere near those beasts you find lingering in the airport bars you usually frequent near closing time on Saturday nights. No, I remind you that Juanita was all “ooh la-la.” In my next printing—and my Lord, there have been so many, haven’t there, Paulie “Eat-a-Bag-of-****” Muldoon? I will change out the Alpo ad, plugging in a spot for Aunt Jemima pancake syrup or Betty Crocker whipped cream, you know, something more apropos.)

Juanita, I really must hand it to you. You showed the greatest staying power, year after year as I moved further and further away from La Quinta, California. Juanita: you embraced what was good in me, ignored my flaws and strengthened me with your love for so many years. As far as you and Peggy, I guess it was a case of the “apple not falling far from the tree” one of many endearing Midwestern metaphors you taught me.  Peggy taught you, taught you to be kind and then you taught me. No matter what bizarre venue I pulled out of my ***, you showed above-average staying power, continued to visit me wherever I went, Casa Grande & Buckeye, Arizona, Appalachia, West Virginia, and even Italy, when I thought I’d try Europe again after so many years.  With each move, each time, Juanita renewed her commitment to the relationship. Meanwhile, I continued to test her, quantifying her dedication, undermining her sense of mission to disprove my worldview on the expendability of women. Surely, you know that one: the unreliability of women, women who disappear without saying goodbye. That old deeply etched conviction to never get attached to a woman, any woman, based on the empirical fact that women have been known to suddenly die, a fact seared into my still tender metal by the surprise death of my mother on 11 January 1962.

1962. It was already an insecure world, to wit:  The Cuban Missile Crisis. Nikita Khrushchev, in his time both Dr. No and Dr. Evil, namely the Premier whom we Baby Boomers saw as Boogey Man of All Time (Although Putin is showing potential, lately)—the Kennedy ****** (what else could you call it?). All these events scary, whether or not I got the chronology right . . . I remained on high alert for any threat to my delicate adolescent psyche.  My mother-Rosa Teresa Sekaquaptewa-died at 2 o’clock in the morning, screaming in agony while apologizing to my father for not having his dinner on the table when he walked in from work that prior afternoon. She’d already been in bed since noon, attended by two of my aunts--both my father’s sisters--who loved their Hopi sister-in-law, Rosa.  Also present was Lafcadio Smirnoff, M.D.--last of the house call medicine men--a dapper, mustachioed, swarthy gentleman, misdiagnosing her abdominal pain as a 24-hour virus, while she bled out internally for at least eight more hours, her whimpers alternated with screams, well into the wee hours of the morning.

I was upstairs in that dormer bedroom listening to her die. An hour later, Father Numb-nuts of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish teleported in, beaming directly into my bedroom from the parish rectory.  Father Seamus Numb-nuts, an illuminated Burning Bush . . . not quite the bush I ‘d conjured at other times, so many times alone with Gwen Wong, ******* Playmate of the Year, 1961, one of Hefner’s hot centerfolds. No, give me a ******* break, you momo! Whacking off is the last thing on a libidinous, adolescent guinea’s brain when his mama is being tortured and killed by God. Even Alexander Portnoy, Philip Roth’s early avatar would have drawn the wanking line at that unforgettable moment.

No, perhaps what I’d had in mind was The Burning Bush Golf Course where so much of Fletcher Kneble’s political mischief and government shenanigans got cooked up. You remember his books, some of the Cold War’s finest: Seven Days in May, Vanished, etc.

Or better yet, perhaps the greatest political slogan of the 20th century: “STAY OUT THE BUSHES!” Thank you, Jesse. “Thank you, Reverend Jackson,” I slip into my Excellence in Broadcasting mode, my very own private Limbaugh. Announcing my on- air arrival is El Rushbo’s unmistakable, totally recognizable bass line bumper, courtesy of Chrissie Hynde’s Pretenders band mate, guitarist Tony Butler: Dum, dum, dum-dum, Da-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum-da-dum-dum. Single, “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders
Rush Limbaugh Song– YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=SScW9r0y3c4

I become Reverend Jackson. I emerge from the vapors, an obscure abyss of deep family pangs and disappointments, ever-diminishing public relevance and fade to black (no pun intended) and media oblivion. The only thing left is that line:  “STAY OUT THE BUSHES!” You will always own that line, Jesse--true political genius (to wit: Rainbow Coalition) Jackson that you are, despite El Rush-Bo’s virulent anti-Black animus, his predilection to mock you, Al Sharpton, Corey Booker, Barack “Hussein” Obama, and any other professional ***** in America. Isn’t it time someone came right out and tagged Mr. Limbaugh as the Father Coughlin of our time.

Meanwhile back in The Bronx, enter another man of the cloth:  It’s Seamus Numb-nuts, making one of his many well-documented spectral visitations, his splendiferous miracles and wonders. How much longer will the Vatican ignore this humble Bronx priest, this epitome of Sainthood; this reverent man, lacking only the stigmata for a unanimous consent vote? Quote the Numb-nuts: “God Works in Mysterious Ways.” An old standard to be sure, but a lovely, all-purpose bromide for explaining why evil exists in our world. Needless to say, I was underwhelmed; I lost God at that moment, consequently shooting myself in the foot--metaphorically-speaking-condemning myself to an unshielded life, life OUT THE BUSHES!  I went forth into the world without God, without that handy divine crutch, that Andy Devine metaphor for when one’s legs grow weary: a puff of smoke, a reverb twang and a nasty frog croaking “Hi-ya, Kids. Hi-ya, Hi-ya. Hi-ya.”

   Andy's Gang - Pasta Fazooli vs. Froggy the Gremlin - YouTube
► 3:55► 3:55
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H35odPm7b3w Aug 8, 2012 - Uploaded by jmgilsinger
Froggy the Gremlin -Tuba ... Andy Devine (Aug 24, 1952)

Life for me became lonely and purposeless. And probably explains my susceptibility to military discipline and a subsequent career in clandestine government service. In 1968--the very day I turned nineteen, September 25th of that year—that fateful day when I should have shot myself in the foot—literally not metaphorically--earning that coveted 4-F physical rejection, a draft deferment to be desired, that 4-F classification of unfitness for duty, a necessary loophole in U.S. conscript service law.  The Draft: last used during that great commonwealth Cold War purge, that culling out of the unwashed, uneducated children of immigrants, that cut-rate, discount, lower socio-economic ***** bank—the only bank where after you make a deposit, you lose interest, to wit: most Black, Hispanic and Poor White Trash parents.  We were cannon fodder, many of us got to be planted at Arlington and other holy American shrines, still wrapped in black or olive drab leak-proof body bags, doing our generational bit to strengthen the gene pool left behind. A debt, some would say, we owed the country and, given the sorry state of the global wicket, increasingly an obligation to the species. And if I had to predict an outcome, Fascism in America will arrive riding the white horse of the environmental, anti-nuclear Bolsheviks. One could argue that Communism has moved so far left on the political spectrum that it’s now the far right.  Concoct a legislative policy goal, accomplish it legally as the bill becomes Law, signed by the President, endorsed and blessed by The U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court in the land.

To wit: “Three generations of imbeciles is enough?” declared Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., an Associate Supreme Court Justice at the time, buttressing a majority argument harnessing the power of U.S. law as a legal means of purifying the race.  When euthanasia failed to win over American hearts and mind, the Federal Government played the war card again and again. Vietnam: undeclared and therefore unconstitutional--except for that Gulf of Tonkin ******* resolution. Vietnam: a cost-plus eugenics project, if ever there was one, although responsive, of course, to the needs of the Military-Industrial Complex.  ******* Ike: he warned us against Fascism in America. As usual, we ignored the man in charge.

Eugenics? Why didn’t the government just put all the retards on the stand, as John Frankenheimer did in Judgment at Nuremberg, a crafty Maximilian Schell humiliating a feeble-minded Montgomery Clift?  Why not, make everyone face a public tribunal, forcing all of us to testify in court, exposing our many substandard and borderline substandard cerebral deficits?  Why not force everyone to demonstrate just how ******* dumb we are, using some clever intelligence test, something l

O, for that warning voice, which he, who saw
The Apocalypse, heard cry in Heaven aloud,
Then when the Dragon, put to second rout,
Came furious down to be revenged on men,
Woe to the inhabitants on earth! that now,
While time was, our first parents had been warned
The coming of their secret foe, and ’scaped,
Haply so ’scaped his mortal snare:  For now
Satan, now first inflamed with rage, came down,
The tempter ere the accuser of mankind,
To wreak on innocent frail Man his loss
Of that first battle, and his flight to Hell:
Yet, not rejoicing in his speed, though bold
Far off and fearless, nor with cause to boast,
Begins his dire attempt; which nigh the birth
Now rolling boils in his tumultuous breast,
And like a devilish engine back recoils
Upon himself; horrour and doubt distract
His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
The Hell within him; for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
By change of place:  Now conscience wakes despair,
That slumbered; wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be
Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue.
Sometimes towards Eden, which now in his view
Lay pleasant, his grieved look he fixes sad;
Sometimes towards Heaven, and the full-blazing sun,
Which now sat high in his meridian tower:
Then, much revolving, thus in sighs began.
O thou, that, with surpassing glory crowned,
Lookest from thy sole dominion like the God
Of this new world; at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
Of Sun! to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere;
Till pride and worse ambition threw me down
Warring in Heaven against Heaven’s matchless King:
Ah, wherefore! he deserved no such return
From me, whom he created what I was
In that bright eminence, and with his good
Upbraided none; nor was his service hard.
What could be less than to afford him praise,
The easiest recompence, and pay him thanks,
How due! yet all his good proved ill in me,
And wrought but malice; lifted up so high
I sdeined subjection, and thought one step higher
Would set me highest, and in a moment quit
The debt immense of endless gratitude,
So burdensome still paying, still to owe,
Forgetful what from him I still received,
And understood not that a grateful mind
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and discharged; what burden then
O, had his powerful destiny ordained
Me some inferiour Angel, I had stood
Then happy; no unbounded hope had raised
Ambition!  Yet why not some other Power
As great might have aspired, and me, though mean,
Drawn to his part; but other Powers as great
Fell not, but stand unshaken, from within
Or from without, to all temptations armed.
Hadst thou the same free will and power to stand?
Thou hadst: whom hast thou then or what to accuse,
But Heaven’s free love dealt equally to all?
Be then his love accursed, since love or hate,
To me alike, it deals eternal woe.
Nay, cursed be thou; since against his thy will
Chose freely what it now so justly rues.
Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.
O, then, at last relent:  Is there no place
Left for repentance, none for pardon left?
None left but by submission; and that word
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
Among the Spirits beneath, whom I seduced
With other promises and other vaunts
Than to submit, boasting I could subdue
The Omnipotent.  Ay me! they little know
How dearly I abide that boast so vain,
Under what torments inwardly I groan,
While they adore me on the throne of Hell.
With diadem and scepter high advanced,
The lower still I fall, only supreme
In misery:  Such joy ambition finds.
But say I could repent, and could obtain,
By act of grace, my former state; how soon
Would highth recall high thoughts, how soon unsay
What feigned submission swore?  Ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void.
For never can true reconcilement grow,
Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep:
Which would but lead me to a worse relapse
And heavier fall:  so should I purchase dear
Short intermission bought with double smart.
This knows my Punisher; therefore as far
From granting he, as I from begging, peace;
All hope excluded thus, behold, in stead
Mankind created, and for him this world.
So farewell, hope; and with hope farewell, fear;
Farewell, remorse! all good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my good; by thee at least
Divided empire with Heaven’s King I hold,
By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign;
As Man ere long, and this new world, shall know.
Thus while he spake, each passion dimmed his face
Thrice changed with pale, ire, envy, and despair;
Which marred his borrowed visage, and betrayed
Him counterfeit, if any eye beheld.
For heavenly minds from such distempers foul
Are ever clear.  Whereof he soon aware,
Each perturbation smoothed with outward calm,
Artificer of fraud; and was the first
That practised falsehood under saintly show,
Deep malice to conceal, couched with revenge:
Yet not enough had practised to deceive
Uriel once warned; whose eye pursued him down
The way he went, and on the Assyrian mount
Saw him disfigured, more than could befall
Spirit of happy sort; his gestures fierce
He marked and mad demeanour, then alone,
As he supposed, all unobserved, unseen.
So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champaign head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
Access denied; and overhead upgrew
Insuperable height of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene, and, as the ranks ascend,
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops
The verdurous wall of Paradise upsprung;                        

Which to our general sire gave prospect large
Into his nether empire neighbouring round.
And higher than that wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit,
Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue,
Appeared, with gay enamelled colours mixed:
On which the sun more glad impressed his beams
Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow,
When God hath showered the earth; so lovely seemed
That landskip:  And of pure now purer air
Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires
Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair:  Now gentle gales,
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils.  As when to them who fail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambick, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabean odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the blest; with such delay
Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles:
So entertained those odorous sweets the Fiend,
Who came their bane; though with them better pleased
Than Asmodeus with the fishy fume
That drove him, though enamoured, from the spouse
Of Tobit’s son, and with a vengeance sent
From Media post to Egypt, there fast bound.
Now to the ascent of that steep savage hill
Satan had journeyed on, pensive and slow;
But further way found none, so thick entwined,
As one continued brake, the undergrowth
Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplexed
All path of man or beast that passed that way.
One gate there only was, and that looked east
On the other side: which when the arch-felon saw,
Due entrance he disdained; and, in contempt,
At one flight bound high over-leaped all bound
Of hill or highest wall, and sheer within
Lights on his feet.  As when a prowling wolf,
Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey,
Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve
In hurdled cotes amid the field secure,
Leaps o’er the fence with ease into the fold:
Or as a thief, bent to unhoard the cash
Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors,
Cross-barred and bolted fast, fear no assault,
In at the window climbs, or o’er the tiles:
So clomb this first grand thief into God’s fold;
So since into his church lewd hirelings climb.
Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life,
The middle tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a cormorant; yet not true life
Thereby regained, but sat devising death
To them who lived; nor on the virtue thought
Of that life-giving plant, but only used
For prospect, what well used had been the pledge
Of immortality.  So little knows
Any, but God alone, to value right
The good before him, but perverts best things
To worst abuse, or to their meanest use.
Beneath him with new wonder now he views,
To all delight of human sense exposed,
In narrow room, Nature’s whole wealth, yea more,
A Heaven on Earth:  For blissful Paradise
Of God the garden was, by him in the east
Of Eden planted; Eden stretched her line
From Auran eastward to the royal towers
Of great Seleucia, built by Grecian kings,
Of where the sons of Eden long before
Dwelt in Telassar:  In this pleasant soil
His far more pleasant garden God ordained;
Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow
All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste;
And all amid them stood the tree of life,
High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold; and next to life,
Our death, the tree of knowledge, grew fast by,
Knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill.
Southward through Eden went a river large,
Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill
Passed underneath ingulfed; for God had thrown
That mountain as his garden-mould high raised
Upon the rapid current, which, through veins
Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn,
Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill
Watered the garden; thence united fell
Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood,
Which from his darksome passage now appears,
And now, divided into four main streams,
Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm
And country, whereof here needs no account;
But rather to tell how, if Art could tell,
How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,
With mazy errour under pendant shades
Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice Art
In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon
Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain,
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierced shade
Imbrowned the noontide bowers:  Thus was this place
A happy rural seat of various view;
Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm,
Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind,
Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true,
If true, here only, and of delicious taste:
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed,
Or palmy hillock; or the flowery lap
Of some irriguous valley spread her store,
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose:
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves
Of cool recess, o’er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant; mean while murmuring waters fall
Down the ***** hills, dispersed, or in a lake,
That to the fringed bank with myrtle crowned
Her crystal mirrour holds, unite their streams.
The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal Spring.  Not that fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower by gloomy Dis
Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world; nor that sweet grove
Of Daphne by Orontes, and the inspired
Castalian spring, might with this Paradise
Of Eden strive; nor that Nyseian isle
Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham,
Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan Jove,
Hid Amalthea, and her florid son
Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea’s eye;
Nor where Abassin kings their issue guard,
Mount Amara, though this by some supposed
True Paradise under the Ethiop line
By Nilus’ head, enclosed with shining rock,
A whole day’s journey high, but wide remote
From this Assyrian garden, where the Fiend
Saw, undelighted, all delight, all kind
Of living creatures, new to sight, and strange
Two of far nobler shape, ***** and tall,
Godlike *****, with native honour clad
In naked majesty seemed lords of all:
And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine
The image of their glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure,
(Severe, but in true filial freedom placed,)
Whence true authority in men; though both
Not equal, as their *** not equal seemed;
For contemplation he and valour formed;
For softness she and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him:
His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad:
She, as a veil, down to the slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
Nor those mysterious parts were then concealed;
Then was not guilty shame, dishonest shame
Of nature’s works, honour dishonourable,
Sin-bred, how have ye troubled all mankind
With shows instead, mere shows of seeming pure,
And banished from man’s life his happiest life,
Simplicity and spotless innocence!
So passed they naked on, nor shunned the sight
Of God or Angel; for they thought no ill:
So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair,
That ever since in love’s embraces met;
Adam the goodliest man of men since born
His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.
Under a tuft of shade that on a green
Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain side
They sat them down; and, after no more toil
Of their sweet gardening labour than sufficed
To recommend cool Zephyr, and made ease
More easy, wholesome thirst and appetite
More grateful, to their supper-fruits they fell,
Nectarine fruits which the compliant boughs
Yielded them, side-long as they sat recline
On the soft downy bank damasked with flowers:
The savoury pulp they chew, and in the rind,
Still as they thirsted, scoop the brimming stream;
Nor gentle purpose, nor endearing smiles
Wanted, nor youthful dalliance, as beseems
Fair couple, linked in happy nuptial league,
Alone as they.  About them frisking played
All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase
In wood or wilderness, forest or den;
Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw
Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards,
Gambolled before them; the unwieldy elephant,
To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed
His?kithetmroboscis; close the serpent sly,
Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine
His braided train, and of his fatal guile
Gave proof unheeded; others on the grass
Couched, and now filled with pasture gazing sat,
Or bedward ruminating; for the sun,
Declined, was hasting now with prone career
To the ocean isles, and in the ascending scale
Of Heaven the stars that usher evening rose:
When Satan still in gaze, as first he stood,
Scarce thus at length failed speech recovered sad.
O Hell! what do mine eyes with grief behold!
Into our room of bliss thus high advanced
Creatures of other mould, earth-born perhaps,
Not Spirits, yet to heavenly Spirits bright
Little inferiour; whom my thoughts pursue

In a playful vision sent
Your ****** homologue
Of amber shins and pale phalanges
Weaves four-leaved clovers.

In response,
***** spurs
And protean winged descent
To float into your kaleidoscopic star:
Gliding,
Freely falling,
To rest in lace extremities.

There in our bed of sensual feet,
Sunflowers breath,
Whose burnished rotating petals
Gather me in wisps,
Each spiral frond,
Gyring
Before death's voids
Is drawn in purls.

And in pleasures held,
Cossetted in latticed limbs,
A ***** lustrous rich embrace;
Denuded and alive!
And with abandon kissed:

    Bony toes
    Tendons
    Deep arches
    Shins
    Ankles,
    Sweetmeats,
    Light and delicate.

As here between pretty shins
And fleshy silken feet
Our ascent begins
Rising,
From low regions,
To scale new night,
And crown our heights.

This lovers' leap into prismatic
reproduction
In the empty Cosmic wastes
     In a web is caught!
Where feet and toes inspire
Continuity for pointed stars.

As material possibilities collide
The lust for life
Is born in non-existence:
So in our nest of feet,
Mating in the game
With heads thrown back,
Of lust drink deeply we.

NOTE TO THE READER – Once Apun a Time

This yarn is a flossy fabric woven of several earlier warped works, lightly laced together, adorned with fur-ther braided tails of human frailty. The looms were loosed, purling frantically this febrile fable...

Some pearls may be found wanting – unwanted or unwonted – piled or hanging loose, dangling free within a fuzzy flight of fancy...

The threads of this untethered tissue may be fastened, or be forgotten, or else be stranded by the readers and left unravelling in the knotted corners of their minds...

'twill be perchance that some may  laugh or loll in loopy stitches, else be torn or ripped apart, while others might just simply say “ ’tis made of hole cloth”, “sew what” or “cant seam to get the needle point”...,

yes, a proper disentanglement may take you for a spin on twisted twines of any strings you feel might need attaching or detaching…

picking knits, some may think that
       such strange things ‘have Never happened in our Land’,
       such quaint things ‘could Never happen in our Land’’,
       such murky things ‘will Never happen in our Land’’…

and this may all be true, if credence be dis-carded…

such is that gooey gossamer which vails the human mind...

and thus was born the teasing title of this fabricated Fantasy...

                                NEVER LAND

An ancient man named Peter Pan, disguised but from the past,
with feathered cap and tunic wrap and sabre’s sailed his last.
Though fully grown, on dust he’s flown and perched upon a mast
atop the Walls around the sprawls, unvisited and vast -
and all the while with bitter smile he’s watching us aghast.

As day begins, a spindle spins, it weaves a wanton web;
like puckered prunes, like midday moons, like yesterday’s celebs,
we scrape and *****, we seldom hope - he watches while we ebb:

The ***** grinder preaches fine on Sunday afternoons -
he quotes from books but overlooks the Secrets Carved in Runes:
“You’ve tried and toyed, but can’t avoid or shun the pale monsoons,
it’s sink or swim as echoed dim in swinging door saloons”.
The laughingstocks are flinging rocks at ball-and-chained baboons.

While ghetto boys are looting toys preparing for their doom
and Mademoiselles are weaving shells on tapestries with looms,
Cathedral cats and rafter rats are peering in the room,
where ragged strangers stoop for change, for coppers in the gloom,
whose thoughts are more upon the doors of crypts in Christmas bloom,
and gold doubloons and silver spoons that tempt beyond the tomb.

Mid *** shots from vacant lots, that strike and ricochet
a painted girl with flaxen curl (named Wendy)’s on her way
to tantalise with half-clad thighs, to trick again today;
and indiscreet upon the street she gives her pride away
to any guy who’s passing by with time and cash to pay.
(In concert halls beyond the Walls, unjaded girls ballet,
with flowered thoughts of Camelot and dreams of cabarets.)

Though rip-off shops and crooked cops are paid not once but thrice,
the painted girl with flaxen curl is paring down her price
and loosely tempts cold hands unkempt to touch the merchandise.
A crazy guy cries “where am I”, a ****** titters twice,
and double quick a lunatic affects a fight with lice.

The alleyways within the maze are paved with rats and mice.
Evangelists with moneyed fists collect the sacrifice
from losers scorned and rubes reborn, and promise paradise,
while in the back they cook some crack, inhale, and roll the dice.

A *** called Boe has stubbed his toe, he’s stumbled in the gutter;
with broken neck, he looks a wreck, the sparrows all aflutter,
the passers-by, they close an eye, and turn their heads and mutter:
“Let’s pray for rains to wash the lanes, to clear away the clutter.”
A river slows neath mountain snows, and leaves begin to shudder.

The jungle teems, a siren screams, the air is filled with ****.
The Reverent Priest and nuns unleash the Holy Shibboleth.
And Righteous Jane who is insane, as well as Sister Beth,
while telling tales to no avail of everlasting death,
at least imbrue Hagg Avenue with whisky on their breath.

The Reverent Priest combats the Beast, they’re kneeling down to prey,
to fight the truth with fang and tooth, to toil for yesterday,
to etch their mark within the dark, to paint their résumé
on shrouds and sheets which then completes the devil’s dossier.

Old Dan, he’s drunk and in a funk, all mired in the mud.
A Monk begins to wash Dan’s sins, and asks “How are you, Bud?”
“I’m feeling pain and crying rain and flailing in the flood
and no god’s there inclined to care I’m always coughing blood.”
The Monk, he turns, Dan’s words he spurns and lets the bible thud.

Well, Banjo Boy, he will annoy with jangled rhymes that fray:
“The clanging bells of carousels lead blind men’s minds astray
to rings of gold they’ll never hold in fingers made of clay.
But crest and crown will crumble down, when withered roots decay.”

A pregnant lass with eyes of glass has never learned to cope.
Once set adrift her fall was swift, she slid a slipp’ry ***** -
she casts the Curse, the Holy Verse, and shoots a shot of dope,
then stalks discreet Asylum Street her daily horoscope -
the stray was struck by random truck which was her only hope.

So Banjo Boy, with little joy, he strums her life entire:
“The wayward waif was never safe; her stars were dark and dire.
Born midst the rues and avenues where lack and want aspire
where no one heeds the childish needs that little ones require;
where faith survives in tempest lives, a swirl within the briar,
Infinity grinds as time unwinds, until the winds expire.
Her last caprice? The final peace that no one could deny her -
whipped by the flood, stray beads of blood cling, splattered on the spire;
though beads of sweat are cool and wet, cold clotted blood is dryer.”

Though broken there, she’s fled the snare with dying thoughts serene.
And now she’s dead, the rumours spread: her age? a sweet 16,
with child, *****, her soul dyed red, her body so unclean.
A place is sought where she can rot, avoiding churchyard scenes,
in limey pits, as well befits, behind forbidding screens;
and all the while a dirge is styled on tattered tambourines
which echo through the human zoo in valleys of the Queens.

Without rejoice, in hissing voice, near soil that’s seldom trod
“In pious role, God bless my soul”, was mouthed with mitred nod,
neath scarlet trim with black, and grim, behind a robed facade -
“She’ll burn in hell and sulphur smell”, spat Priest and man of god.

Well, angels sweet with cloven feet, they sing in girl’s attire,
but Banjo Boy, he’s playing coy while chanting in the choir:
“The clueless search within the church to find what they desire,
but near the nave or gravelled grave, there is no Rectifier.”
And when he’s through, without ado, he stacks some stones nearby her.

The eyes behind the head inclined reflect a universe
of shanty towns and kings in crowns and parties in a hearse,
of heaping mounds of coffee grounds and pennies in a purse,
of heart attacks in shoddy shacks, of motion in reverse,
of reasons why pale kids must die, quite trite and curtly terse,
of puppet people at the steeple, kneeling down averse,
of ****** tones and megaphones with empty words and worse,
of life’s begin’ in utter sin and other things perverse,
of lewd taboos and residues contained within the Curse,
while poets blind, in gallows’ rind, carve epitaphs in verse.

A sodden dreg with wooden leg is dancing for a dime
to sacred psalms and other balms, all ticking with the time.
He’s 22, he’s almost through, he’s melted in his prime,
his bane is firm, the canker worm dissolves his brain to slime.
With slanted scales and twisted jails, his life’s his only crime.

A beggar clump beside a dump has pencil box in hand.
With sightless eyes upon the skies he’s lying there unmanned,
with no relief and bitter grief too dark to understand.
The backyard blight is hid from sight, it’s covered up and bland,
and Robin Hood and Brother Hood lie buried in the sand.

While all night queens carve figurines in gelatine and jade,
behind a door and on the floor a deal is finally made;
the painted girl with flaxen curl has plied again her trade
and now the care within her stare has turned a darker shade.
Her lack of guile and parting smile are cutting like a blade.

Some boys with cheek play hide and seek within a house condemned,
their faces gaunt reflecting want that’s hard to comprehend.
With no excuse an old recluse is waiting to descend.
His eyes despair behind the stare, he’s never had a friend
to talk about his hidden doubt of how the world will end -
to die alone on empty throne and other Fates impend.

And soon the boys chase phantom joys and, presto when they’re gone,
the old recluse, with nimble noose and ****** features drawn,
no longer waits upon the Fates but yawns his final yawn
- like Tinker Bell, he spins a spell, in fairy dust chiffon -
with twisted brow, he’s tranquil now, he’s floating like a swan
and as he fades from life’s charades, the night awaits the dawn.

A boomerang with ebon fang is soaring through the air
to pierce and breach the heart of each and then is called despair.
And as it grows it will oppose and fester everywhere.
And yet the crop that’s at the top will still be unaware.

A lad is stopped by roving cops, who shoot in disregard.
His face is black, he’s on his back, a breeze is breathing hard,
he bleeds and dies, his mama cries, the screaming sky is scarred,
the sheriff and his squad at hand are laughing in the yard.

Now Railroad Bob’s done lost his job, he’s got no place for working,
His wife, she cries with desperate eyes, their baby’s head’s a’ jerking.
The union man don’t give a ****, Big Brother lies a’ lurking,
the boss’ in cabs are picking scabs, they count their money, smirking.

Bob walks the streets and begs for eats or little jobs for trying
“the answer’s no, you ought to know, no use for you applying,
and don’t be sad, it aint that bad, it’s soon your time for dying.”
The air is thick, his baby’s sick, the cries are multiplying.

Bob’s wife’s in town, she’s broken down, she’s ranting with a fury,
their baby coughs, the doctor scoffs, the snow flies all a’ flurry.
Hard work’s the sin that’s done them in, they skirmish, scrimp and scurry,
and midnight dreams abound with screams. Bob knows he needs to hurry.
It’s getting late, Bob’s tempting fate, his choices cruel and blurry;
he chooses gas, they breathe their last, there’s no more cause to worry.

Per protocols near ivied walls arrayed in sage festoons,
the Countess quips, while giving tips, to crimson caped buffoons:
“To rise from mass to upper class, like twirly bird tycoons,
you stretch the treat you always eat, with tiny tablespoons”

A learned leach begins to teach (with songs upon a liar):
“Within the thrall of Satan’s call to yield to dim desire
lie wicked lies that tantalize the flesh and blood Vampire;
abiding souls with self-control in everyday Hellfire
will rest assured, when once interred, in afterlife’s Empire”.
These words reweave the make believe, while slugs in salt expire,
baptised in tears and rampant fears, all mirrored in the mire.

It’s getting hot on private yachts, though far from desert plains -
“Well, come to think, we’ll have a drink”, Sir Captain Hook ordains.
Beyond the blame and pit of shame, outside the Walled domains,
they pet their pups and raise their cups, take sips of pale champagnes
to touch the tips of languid lips with pearls of purple rains.

Well, Gypsy Guy would rather die than hunker down in chains,
be ridden south with bit in mouth, or heed the hold of reins.
The ruling lot are in a spot, the boss man he complains:
“The gypsies’ soul, I can’t control, my patience wears and wanes;
they will not cede to common greed, which conquers far domains
and furtive spies and news that lies have barely baked their brains.
But in the court of last resort the final fix remains:
in boxcar bins with violins we’ll freight them out in trains
and in the bogs, they’ll die like dogs, and everybody gains
(should one ask why, a quick reply: ‘It’s that which God ordains!’)”

Arrayed in shawls with crystal *****, and gazing at the moons,
wiled women tease with melodies and spooky loony tunes
while making toasts to holey ghosts on rainy day lagoons:
“Well, here’s to you and others too, embedded in the dunes,
avoid the stares, avoid the snares, avoid the veiled typhoons
and fend your way as every day, ’gainst heavy heeled dragoons.”

The birds of pray are on their way, in every beak the Word
(of ptomaine tomes by gnarly gnomes) whose meaning is obscured;
they roost aloof on every roof, obscene but always herd,
to tell the tale of Jonah’s whale and other rhymes absurd
with shifty eyes, they’re giving whys for living life deferred.

While jackals lean, hyenas mean, and hungry crocodiles
feast in the lounge and never scrounge, lambs languish in the aisle.
The naive dare to say “Unfair, let’s try to reconcile.
We’ll all relax and weigh the facts, let justice spin the dial.”

With jaundiced monks and minds pre-shrunk, the jury is compiled.
The Rulers meet, First Ladies greet, the Kings appear in style.
Before the Court, their sins are short, they’re swept into a pile;
with diatribes and petty bribes, the jurors are beguiled.

The Herd entreats, the Shepherd bleats the verdict of the trial:
“You have no face. Stay in your place, stay in the Rank and File.
And wait instead, for when you’re dead, for riches after while”;
Aristocrats add caveats while sailing down the Nile:
“If Minds are mugged or simply drugged with philtres in a vial,
then few indeed will fail to feed the Pharaoh’s Crocodile.”
The wordsmiths spin, the bankers grin and politicians smile,
the riff and raff, they never laugh, they mark a martyred mile.

The rituals are finished, all, here comes the Reverent Priest.
He leads the crowds beneath the clouds, and there the flock is fleeced
(“the last are first, the rich are cursed” - the leached remain the least)
with crossing signs and ****** wines and consecrated yeast.
His step is gay without dismay before his evening feast;
he thanks the Lord for room and, bored, he nods to Eden East
but doesn’t sigh or wonder why the sins have not decreased.

The sinking sun’s at last undone, the sky glows faintly red.
A spider black hides in a crack and spins a silken thread
and babes will soon collapse and swoon, on curbs they call a bed;
with vacant eyes they'll fantasize and dream of gingerbread,
and so be freed, though still in need, from anguish of the dead.

Fat midnight bats feast, gnawing gnats, and flit away serene
while on the trails in distant dales the lonesome wolverine
sate appetites on foggy nights and days like crystalline.
A migrant feeds on gnats and weeds with fingers far from clean
and thereby’s blessed with barren breast (the easier to wean) -
her baby ***** an arid flux and fades away unseen.

The circus gongs excite the throngs in nighttime Never Land –
they swarm to see the destiny of Freaks at their command,
while Acrobats step pitapat across the shifting sands
and Lady Fat adores her cat and oozes charm unplanned.
The Dwarfs in suits, so small and cute when marching with the band,
ask crimson Clowns with painted frowns, to lend a mutant hand,
while Tamers’ whips with withered tips, throughout the winter land,
lure minds entranced through hoops enhanced with flames of fires fanned.
White Elephants in big-top tents sell black tusk contraband
to Sycophants in regiments who overflow the stands,
but No One sees anomalies, and No One understands.
At night’s demise, the dither dies, the lonely Crowd disbands,
down dead-end streets the Horde retreats, their threadbare rags in strands,
and Janes and Joes reweave their woes, for thoughts of change are banned.

The Monk of Mock has fled the flock caught knocking up a tween.
(She brought to light the special rite he sought to leave unseen.)
With profaned eyes they agonise, their souls no more serene
and at the shrine the flutes of wine are filled with kerosene
by men unkempt who once had dreamt but now can dream no more
except when bellowed bellies belch an ever growing roar,
which churns the seas and whips a breeze that mercy can’t ignore,
and in the night, though filled with fright, they try to end the War.

The slow and quick are hurling bricks and fight with clubs of rage
to break the chains and cleanse the stains of life within a cage,
but yield to stings of armoured things that crush in every age.

At crack of dawn, a broken pawn, in pools of blood and fire,
attends the wounds, in blood festooned (the waves flow nigh and nigher),
while ghetto towns are burning down (the flames grow high and higher);
and in their wake, a golden snake is rising from the pyre.
Her knees are bare, consumed in prayer, applauded by the Friar,
and soon it’s clear the end is near - while magpie birds conspire,
the lowly worm is made to squirm while dangling from a wire.

The line was crossed, the battle lost, the losers can’t deny,
the residues are far and few, though smoke pervades the sky.
The cool wind’s cruel, a cutting tool, the vanquished ask it “Why?”,
and bittersweet, from  Easy Street, the Pashas’ puffed reply:
“The rules are set, so don’t forget, the rabble will comply;
the grapes of wrath may make you laugh, the day you are to die.”

The down and out, they knock about beneath the barren skies
where homeward bound, without a sound, a ravaged raven flies.
Beyond the Walls, the morning calls the newborn sun to rise,
and Peter Pan, a broken man, inclines his head and cries...

The world is conceited, that's easy to see.
People as a whole living egotistically.
We live in an era of self-image, self-lust.
We create a fabric of our lives that's just not us.
We show ourselves as beautiful and hide from the flaws.
When the flaws are what make us, no matter how small.
So stop living behind a vanity screen and face the world without fear.
Someone will find you beautiful, the love of your life, drawn near.
To the flaws and imperfections they can't see behind a screen.
Taking selfies isn't helping.
You're somebody's dream.

The hallowed turf is a six-seasonal
always one step ahead on Earth.
So exceptional a land is out of the box
acutely drawn down the Moon
and sublimely unique is written in stone!

A patch of land every star loves to touch
so much so the Mintaka know they can mirror
the pyramid on the surface of the earth
but not the tucked away zenana here
the planetary gem, the earth's gold dust:
Matches the lead Prophet's birthplace!

Open and globular star clusters
up above the mundane Himalayas peak look
diagonally into Sylhet down the Meghalaya stardust
eying on for a shortcut to Earth's gold dust
that only gushes out elixirs Abe Hayat.

Lovely sought after by the water nymphs
that won't tarry scurrying to the waterfront of paradise
in Ma, the space between, while the waxing moon
takes a waning pause only to roll down and croon
in deep tranquil, thaws the midnight moonlit blue pond
amidst silhouetted bamboos, the sun after a night pause,
there it blooms new again bathing in the morn!

Boarding in such a serendipitous moment, they dream,
carried out just these hidden elixirs in their pitchers
before Queen Fathima The Queen of Heaven.
Perfectly spherical she zeroes in the cosmic loop
and spills in the open sea one more colourless scoop
without a pinch of salt there the sunrise and set troupe
pause and lay in once again the most colourful swoop.

Up above heaven's Saal Saabila River
on the empyrean Moon, she hops on one foot
and down the evergreen Earth's spring dips a toe
without a shadow without a footprint, tone on tone
ties both worlds forever in bloom!

Blow the wrap off, score a preserved geometry
somewhere in Sylhet, even the Hebrew King David here
would offer his thousand and one melodic symposium
and King Solomon princely his whole affluent shebang.
'Cause the prevailing sun from heaven this time
could roll down on a palm simply like a handful of earth!

Oh, what will it land in Sylhet, the pearl of the earthy depth?
Art in light, the spark from the Earth's foundation stone?
Eyes gaze on so firm like the solid sky yet surge like kite
in the air looking here over a truly pristine drop of water
with the ocean is inside until it shows up down the blue sky
though rainbows oft pop out tantalising every looking eye!

The fairy that ascends then is a stealer no hand can touch
seven colours shine on a patch of blue unspoiled untouched
took on a meaning for Sylhet in a handful of earth
matching the soil of Makkah the centre of the Earth
the birthplace of the lead prophet Muhammad (PBUH)!
One who is in the know hops on the foundation stone
and rose to heaven in the Night of Ascension.

How a regular soil mirrors the very pivotal one?
The labyrinth is out of this world, relates to Queen Maab
let alone a native maestro that no genie can describe!
Every atom loves to discover the meaning of that
it knows the constant vibrations of the never-ending dance
keeping it on its toe the choreography comes from outside.
The feet are most polished and motions are butterfly dance,
still the canvas is blank, light one more candlelight!

Light a candle in Sylhet I wonder here the moonlight
spills through even into an atom's black canvas and the sun
lovely drops down on a handful of earth on the flipside!
Meet here the open future shows up at the Earth's hub
the moon's anew rallying to the untouching-sea
the Indian subcontinent's corner to the ancient wind!

Go with the southern breeze on play with the sun
here it colours the wind, gives it its Midas touch
and strikes a deal to part a silhouetted cloud.  
That a beauty spot raises the eyebrows of the day on a high,
on the shining face of the golden Bangla in broad daylight!

Hark the morning birds, follow singing deep in the midst
mellifluous-shrills fill the air unveiling the dream scenes!
Ah, the deep footed earth how mystique,
every morning the sun off the heaven's hill
lays in a new diaphanous gold-light-rug beneath it,
only to loose its colours in a colourless magic
let alone painting its footprint!

Every time is new numerates the bounties of our land
craving to sip in a dew-potion on our blossoming rose
cirrus clouds dancing over the seas here they drop
banish the midday blues singing the deep sea's song!

Nestled amidst the Rivers Surma, Kushiara and Monu
perched on the shades of the trees, each one is a canvas.
Returning melodic birds crescendo by the downstream  
hail from the autumnal breeze on the upstream.
Six seasons rebound alike leap and swing on the trees
unpacking their intricate and mesmeric fluid designs
often make a meal of the obvious and work of art alike!

Stunned angels on their way heaven taking one more sunset
potted in the starry bowl look back here at the wee hours.
They can hear pianissimo on this preserved perennial land
it never falls asleep is awake with a perfectly round
360-degree circle of spiritually impowered dynamos
dead but live on a different level Dervishes
keeping an ear on the hallowed Sylhet's ground.    
A deep-seated truth, rock-solid Shilahatta in Sanskrit
clothed in an enduring vesture minted Sylhet loops in
with the Hebrew Bible's Shalet, a ruler, a shield!  

A little drop makes the mighty ocean
likewise with one single word on the lips,
the maestros' great epics begin to be told.
Just with a mundane handful of earth
pristine Sylhet's masterpiece begins to unfold.

With the whole ball of wax keeping us onboard
lo, before the face of the Earth, it unveils the mirror!
With the whole nine yards on her least hold
believe it or not, Sylhet is cherry-picked chosen by God!

3:15am

<•>

unlike a first kiss, a first love,
the premiere awkward first coupling,
which when one recalls it
appears with ever increasing fuzziness (intentionally?)
or not at all, so much so that making it up based on
fleeting hazed glimpses of unmemorized dreams
just to have an “official entry in the cloudy memory,”
is a semi-necessity for regaling...nobody

but you never forget your virginal
projectile vomiting

there is even an emoji for it,
a hurling curling celebration

like a computer reset,
a confessional admission
that includes your own original
original sin,
a purging so complete,
it is a rebirthing of sorts,
a human do over

(c’mon c’mon get on with this, this
no kiss, a most undeserving bizzaring poem title choice)

each and every time I draw forth
the words on the in sides of me
they are ejected with force comparable,
my body rejecting l'étranger,
who’s now escaping

no first kiss, miss, no laughing at one’s first tumbling fumbling,
there is no smiling recollections sweet,
a cover up for your exciting intimation initiations faint revisions

but your first writing!

given up and out in a ejection burst,
a needle in the arm, gunshot
fluids *******, spit out,
without malice aforethought,
and this your last writing

this one, yes, this one.
comes quick, rough and inelegant,
expulsion combustion leaving you
panting on the cold floor you emptied
but
sorta of whole, a clean sheet, so to speak,
swearing you’ll never do this again,
must be an easier way,
to just slow secrete it holy,
or give up the drug of writing
raven forevermore nevermore

nope-u-dope

the vision of a long ago rabbi,
being burned to death slowly
by the Romans, wrapped in
dampened torah scripture scrolls
to lengthen the burnished burning,
a vision burned into a
very youthful boy’s consciousness,
the holy black ink hand drawn letters flowing
from martyr’s mouth, flying heavenward
this fresh within,
a childhood image primal mind,
is ways present
as each letter typed, formulating mathematically,
based on an artificial intelligence theorem,
that updates itself with every missive,
until the new poem is
projectile released in
a single ***** bursting,
purging of the urging

and guess what,

it just happened again

4/27/18

~for Sky, whose poems endearing found me, in her brazen ways,
which is what poets do~
https://hellopoetry.com/sheepskyny/

You cant save my life
I am drawn
drawn in my own pain

You cant make me happy
I am covered
Covered with my own grief

You cant read me
I am written in the paper
damped by my own tears

Silicate, emotionless sedimentary,
Darling, it is cold, doesn't care wheter it breaks or if it is swept away in a stream, cut into small pieces by the sharp rush of flowing water,
While it may hold no emotions, it can be the bringer of hope, bliss, happiness, sadness but also spite and envy, or a simple fulfilment,
Look at the wedding-rings, their stones on top to embellish beauty such as the insurance to be with the other through thick and thin,
Some diamonds are rough, but they are stronger than stones, if that is enough, harder and almost unbreakable, sorted in line moliculary,
When the kiss of death puts us to rest, a tombstone is the sad, cruel remembrence of a former life, sprouting blossoming and blooming, before returning to the soil it once had found its origin, its beginning,
I will try to be your wishing one, your shooting star, racing through the glory of the starlit nightsky to catch a moment of your passion,
Burning up within the atmosphere of your warm embrace, dearest.
Drawn by your gravitational impact on me, I will be your comet, returning to you each day without burning away as rapid as a meteor.
Darling, alike a blazing Sun you make me melt.

~ Umi

I was born a sickly, screeching baby, two months earlier than expected. The doctor and midwife did everything they could to keep my little limbs moving and to keep my tiny heart beating, fluttering like the wings of butterfly.
“Is it a boy?” my mother whispered through her pale lips, as they bathed my naked body in hot water.
“No, ma’am, it’s a girl” The midwife struggled to add on something that would make the wailing creature seem more desirable. “With exquisitely shaped feet, so perfectly miniature”
She let out a croak of conflicting emotions: the joy and pride of a newly-founded motherly love, the fear of presenting a girl as a first-born, the relief that the hours of agony in childbirth were over and the dread of facing her husband once he found out about me.

My mother was not healthy after my birth for a long time; and when I was only one and two months old she fell dangerously ill, and the house whispered footsteps running to her room late at night and muffled voices of different doctors. Mercifully, she survived but was left barren and forever unfertile.
I can not imagine my father’s fury. He believed in having sons to carry on his old last name of thirty-one generations; it was his religion and had I been a son, I would have been worshipped as a god. I can imagine how my mother prayed and thanked her ancestors that her dowry was of a large one.

He could barely tolerate being in the same room as me during my toddler years. Every time he entered a room I was playing in, nurse would sweep me to our garden out side; answering to my startled queries, “Be an obedient daughter, don’t bother your father and don’t ask questions”
My body had been born frail, but my natural spirit was as healthy as could be, full of inquiries, wonders of the world around me and everyday I would learn something new just wandering around the neighborhood observing things, with my nurse trailing with a worried eye behind me muttering, “Girls are not supposed to be exposed to this” she spoke the words as if they were sour, “you should be sitting at home and accompanying your mother.”

Every day at dinner, the two females of the house, me and my mother, were silent while my father ranted on and on. My appetite being very delicate, I often just sat there as still as I possibly could and listened to my father talking about politics, jobs, money. Things he called ‘men business’. I longed to ask questions about these ‘men business’, especially ‘university’ for I had an inquisitive sort-of nature but was refrained with a sharp, piercing look from my mother every time I opened my mouth and sometimes, she pinched me under the table leaving purple splotches which flashed, “Don’t question your father”
Sometimes, he would talk about the future he had decided for me, “You will marry off, sixteen at the latest, to some one rich and beneficial to our family. You will do as I say till I marry you off, and then you will do as your husband tells you.”
“Yes father, for I should repay everything you have done for me” I replied as sweetly as I could.
“Yes, you’re a good daughter. Bear lots of sons for him and your house will be one of happiness.”
I was proud that he had given me a compliment. “Yes father, for it will make you joyful as I always wish to make you so”
My childish heart did not understand why my mother turned her head down while her left eyebrow twitched, and why that night, as she tucked me into bed, I thought I saw a tear roll down her cheek and why as she kissed me that night she whispered, “Do not love me so; love your father. The men in your life are your gods.”

My physical health would constantly limit the desires of my free spirit. I could not to do what others who were as free of spirit as I was could do, and couldn’t socialize with them and the rest of the children in my neighborhood had their siblings to mingle with, causing me to become the pitiful outcast.
I saw children around my age, around seven or eight, climbing trees and wanted to do so as well, but my white feet did not have grip enough to grasp onto the fat branches.
Father caught me once trying to propel myself up a tree and his expression was both of a resigned anger and sadness before he turned him and his face away and back into the house without a word.
That night, mother told me not to climb trees ever again. I noticed a faint bruise on her cheek bone that had been covered with white powder.

When I was eleven or twelve, and was allowed to wander further out into the neighborhood with my nurse I saw the boys fishing in the nearby pond and wanted to do so as well. Starting that day, every week I pocketed the three coins mother gave me until I could buy the best fishing rod in the little store and ran as fast as my skinny, weak legs could carry me to the pond. I mimicked the way the boys flung the fishing rod out over the water but the metal pole was too heavy for my pale, shaking arms. I tried over and over again as my nurse watched, biting her lip in anxiety. I held the fishing rod with trembling sore arms till  I felt a bite; I pumped my small arms to reel it in, but they were so tired and I was far too slow, losing the fish I had spent half the day trying to catch. “Ah, just bad luck, don’t worry! It was a smart fish, I tell you!” nurse exclaimed, though her eyes flashed a look of pity and I knew she knew it wasn’t just bad luck or a smart fish.
In anger, I sold the fishing rod to one of the boys for two-thirds of the price I had bought it for. He was delighted with the bargain and I watched with a lump in my throat as he caught three fish with the tug of his healthy, muscular arm within fifteen minutes. “This is a beautiful rod, and the pond is just filled with fish today, Little Sister!”
Wanting to spend the money jingling inside my pocket, money that to me was just a reminder of a painful memory, I headed off to the collection of little shops close to my house where I was guaranteed distraction. Nurse, sweating and complaining of the heat, followed me.
An ageing man with a bunch of filthy hair working away on a piece of thick, rough paper with wondrous colors inside a shop caught my eye as I peered inside the window. He turned the picture upside down and continued blending in the dark colors of the shape to create a shadow along the curve of it. I entered the shop. “What is that?” I asked of him.
“A face” he replied back absentmindedly.
“Doesn’t look like one to me” I confessed with my honesty.
He looked up at me, “No, it does not to you, and maybe, neither will it at the end. To me, it looks like an angle of a faded face. But slowly, with time, it will become clearer and clearer, yet only to me, and as it does, I will be able to choose more colors to make it yet more beautiful. The outcome of this painting is entirely up to me.”
I felt my challenging self rising up. “But what if you imagined a certain color in your head but couldn’t find it or be able to mix it to your mind’s perfection?”
“Then I would create my own paint color.”
“You know how?”
“No, but if I could not find the paint color already made I would make it myself, and no matter what, would learn how to. So far I have always been able to compromise and mix different colors to please me.”
“You do an awful lot of shadowing light colors with dark colors”
“Why do you think I do so?” he questioned me this time, with bright eyes.
I pondered for a moment to give as good an answer as he had given me and then told him my answer.
He nodded with impress, “Yes, yes, absolutely right. I never thought I’d hear that from a child” and looked at me with his head cocked in curiosity.
“What would you like to buy from here, Little Sister?”
Still deeply interested in our conversation I pulled out the coins I had in my pocket. “How much stuff can I buy with all this money? I’d like those crayons, I’ve tried them once before and they are so creamy and smooth.”
“Oil pastels?” he asked, a little confusedly.
Feeling ashamed of my ignorance, I nodded. The tutor father hired evidently bent to father’s strict rules of what should be taught and what would not be taught. Father disapproved of women painting, and would’ve dismissed nurse had he known that instead of taking me out for a little walk to smell the blooming daffodils, she in fact let me explore the environment around me to the best of my ability even in disgruntle.
The man gave my red-patched cheeks and undeveloped translucent frame a sympathetic look and when he spoke, his voice was gentle. “Little Sister, I’ve a whole basket of oil paints that I’ve used but rarely and so are still in perfect condition. Would you like to carry the whole basket home for all the money you have in your pockets?”
I handed him all my golden coins, “But first I must see if I like it.”
“You won’t be disappointed” he chuckled and walked with an imbalanced limp to the back of the store. I noticed a wooden stump protruding from the bottom of his long, black pants. My heart throbbed achingly; he was ****** limited too. I turned to his painting and smiled from deep inside, a smile I rarely wore.
He came back tugging a huge brown basket filled to the brim with sticks of oil pastels, some longer or thicker than others. He lifted an orange one up and showed the tip of it to me, which was stained with a black mark. “Sometimes when you blend colors this will happen, but it’s easy to rid off. Just softly, and patiently rub it off on a cloth until it disappears.” He demonstrated upon his black pants.
“Thank you. It’s kind of you. But...I can’t carry this home myself. It’s heavy.”
I turned to nurse and smiled my best pleading smile.

The basket was toiled up as nurse undressed me from my shower and father and mother were otherwise occupied. That night, with my precious basket safely under my bed, I cleaned all the multi-colored oil pastels on an old shirt, and as soon as the house was ringing with silence, I locked my door and flicked on the lamp light, and started pressing the smooth colors into the paper to blend and make a picture of kissing colors on a relatively large piece of white paper. A thrill ran from my finger tips and along my arm, and made my palms tingle as I held the colorful sticks in my hand to the paper. I hid it underneath my bed just as a rosy sun was rising.
*
I was sixteen, and I was thought beautiful: for now, at this age, it was considered beautiful to be so pale of skin, so small of feet and hands, graceful to have tiny limbs and charming to have little strength for it was now considered ‘feminine’.
It was three weeks after I had turned sixteen and for dinner, father had brought over an ugly man with a bulging waist and shiny bald head who continually made ****** jokes at the dinner table while he believed I did not understand them. He was infamous for the two wives he had had (before they died from sickness), and how he not only hit them but kept other lovers too. Yet he was desirable for his vast richness. He leered at me obnoxiously, in an attempt to smile.
Father caught him looking at me, “She’s incredibly silent, never says a word of defiance and will be a most dutiful wife.”
“Yes, she is beautiful”
My heart froze and my brain was stimulated to work twice as fast. Him?! Him?! The man who’s wives were killed through an illness called ‘abuse, neglect and disloyalty?!’
I cast my eyelashes down in order to appear a calm, modest young lady while my heart hammered in fury, disgust and a rising hysterical panic. I shot a look at my mother whose left eyebrow was twitching as she stared down at her dinner plate, and I knew she was having the same thoughts as I.
“I would be glad to have you as my son-in-law. You would have no trouble with her, and would be embraced with open arms into our family.”
They continued this path of talk through dinner while he eyeballed me in a way that made me cringe. I felt his foot nudge mine under the table and in haste tucked it under the chair with a little gasp. His eyes glittered at my gasp and I was furious with myself for letting him feel a rotten triumph. Though I had always felt an extremely strong dislike towards him from what I knew of him and sometimes saw of him with an immoral lady, something pushed in the pit of my tummy, and I knew it was pure hatred.
When mother tucked me in she was being strange. On closing my door she whispered, “I love you… so I wish you to know… don’t ever contradict men”

As I was secretly drawing a picture as I did every night till dawn, I heard my father’s voice roar in the dead of the night. In a sudden, I shoved my portrait under the bed and threw all my oil pastels into the basket, hid it, and switched the light off. I heard his voice roar again, accompanied by a thud. I was wild with fear as I crept to my door and pressed my ear against it, barely even shocked at my own daringness as my instinct, love, took over- my instinct of must knowing what was happening to my mother.
“How dare you say I’m wrong!?” there was another thud, and this time I heard a soft whimper. “She is worthless to me, not a son. And I will marry her off to a rich man who can actually benefit this family.” He roared.
There was a whisper which I strained to hear, “He will **** her”
“From the moment she was born she wasn’t made to live!” he yelled.
A hiss escaped my tongue and I coiled like a serpent, flinching as a thud was heard yet again and an immediate cry of pain escaped from both my lips and my mothers’.
A fire awoke inside me, burning my temples and my whole body and my eyes stung with hot tears; tears that burned my face as they splashed down. My whole body was shaking and my tightly squeezed eyes were going through spasms. I was no longer wild with fear, but with anger.
I turned my light back on and tugged my basket of oil pastels out. I yanked my portrait off from a thick of pile of different pictures I had drawn.
My breath was coming in quick short breaths as I finished my portrait to the utmost perfection, using every oil pastel in the basket. Every time I heard a thud, I colored with more fiery… shadowing my jaw line with the fat black oil pastel, in the crook of my ear, the corner of my mouth… where the light shone upon my fore head, how it reflected in the color of my eye and glowed on my cheeks.
When I was finished, the house was deadly quiet again and dawn was breaking. I looked down upon it and realized something that changed my life.
In frenzy I swatted out all the things I had ever drawn and stared at them in an awakening.
The colors on them were the events of my life, the things that characterized it, the decisions. They were beautiful for they had been chosen and controlled by me … I had chosen the colors I wanted and thought best for my pictures; and spent thought over how to blend different colors to the color I wanted.
And everyday, as I worked into the drawings with time, they became clearer and clearer on what was the right thing to do, and how it should possibly look like in the next stage.
I leaned over and kissed the thin lips of my portrait that didn’t look exactly like me for not even the most skilled artists have complete control over what they draw.

Then I remembered what I had told the one-legged man in the shop a few years go:
“Lights not only illuminate, they also cast shadows. The contrast makes you able to appreciate the power of both.”
Now it was time to truly let the light illuminate my life, and let the shadows let me appreciate the light that shines upon me; I color my own life, and choose my own colors.

To pull out the colors underneath the darkness of my bed…
And spill it to the world outside.

The distant hollow of the high mountain pass
swallows the setting sun as it steals away southbound
behind the coastal mountain's tangerine sunset hued silhouettes
Mulberry plashed shadows pointing northward
across the evergreens outstretched dimming,
beneath the waning fade of each fleeting eventide

Sundown ebbing asunder the wafting daylight,
each gloaming of the day, helplessly a moment sooner past,
transfixed further south beyond yesterday's passing azure
The lazy days of summer escape unbounded,
nomadic as the sea I've seen sail away before;
evanescent as the beauty of the bloom summer days beheld
and the memory of the fragrance they exhale

The nebulous weight of the gravity is consciously denied
by the truths a human heart beholds
A moment’s epiphany afflicts like a rogue wave in a calm sea;
the only thing my heart ever wanted remains out of reach

Everything my heart needs consciously surrendering
to the poignant passing moment's beauty,
the falling sun at distance sets more suddenly now
Lost in the undeniable certainty
life's imminent season's change

Eyes drawn stubbornly from presence to a sky so far away,
knowing there'll be no restitution for the welling sense of loss...
A bitter sweet song mummers in the silence of the absorbing spell,
summer's sun stained pages of watermarked soul scribbles,
time tattooed reparation for the indelible ache
of a harsh grey winter loneliness

Perhaps too familiar, this whelming Déjà vu
that tears my soul;     that tugs at these roots
but cannot sever their sacred grasp
But for now, eyes fixed to the sun's
inevitable tightening tether hence —
to wear weary each fraying thread's  impending break

Each sunset leans a deeper angle southward
as it slips down through the firwood shadows;
illuminating other faraway latitudes
far beyond the distant horizon skies

The preordained continuum unfolding what will be ...


someone you used to know ... September 11, 2017 ... 7:30 PM

(Yes, better than Harry Potter, get your pitchforks ready)

My first encounter with THG was approximately four years ago, when I had barely turned fourteen, did not consider myself bilingual and was romantically frustrated. Naturally, I made several mistakes at the time. First off, I read the series in translation, since I'm not a native English speaker, and missed out a huge chunk of the significance of the story. Then, as I said, I was romantically frustrated and thus paid such a monstrous amount of attention to the romance aspect of the story that I want to bitchslap myself. Finally, at fourteen, I was still ignorant and uneducated about so many things that I read the series, got hyped for perhaps six months or so, then forgot all about it, save for the occasional rewatch of the movies. In retrospect, this is probably one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made. Now, at the ripe old age of eighteen, a significantly better-read person, waaay more woke, as well as socially aware, I decided to finally read the series in the original and am finally able to put my thoughts together in a coherent, educated review of the series.

The Hunger Games has continuously been compared to a number of other books and series, occasionally put down as inferior and forgettable. In those past few years I managed to read a great part of the newly established young adult dystopian genre and am able to argue that A. The Hunger Games is undoubtedly universal and unrestricted to young adult audiences and that B. it is, without the slightest shade of uncertainty, the best series written in our generation.

While many people draw parallels between The Hunger Games and, say, Battle Royale, the similarities end with the first book, which, while spectacular in execution, seems unoriginal in its very idea. As the series unrolls, however, it is hardly possible to compare it to anything, save for, perhaps, Orwell's 1984. The social depiction and the severe criticism laid down in the very basis of the story are so brutally honest that it fails my understanding how the series was ever allowed to become this popular. What starts out as a story about a nightmarish post-Apocalyptic world works up to be revealed as a cleverly veiled portrayal of our own morally degraded and dilapidated society (if you're looking for proof, seek no further: as the series was turned into several blockbuster movies, public interest was primarily concerned with the supposed love triangle rather than the bitter truths concealed in the narrative). Class segregation, media manipulation, dysfunctional governments are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the realities that The Hunger Games so adroitly mimics. If I were to dissect, chapter by chapter, all three books, I'd probably find myself stiff with terror at the accuracy of the societal portrait drawn by Collins. I strongly advise those of you who haven't read the series between the lines to immediately do so because no matter how many attempts I make to point it out to you, you simply have to read the series with an alert sense of social justice to realize that it doesn't simply ring true, it shakes the ground with rock concert amplifiers true.

Other than the plot that unfolds into a civil war by the third book (the series deals so amazingly with trauma survival and with depicting the atrocities of war that I am still haunted by certain images), the characters of the story are what makes it all the more realistic. Though Hollywood has done a stunningly good job in masking the shocking reality of the fact that these are children - aged twelve through eighteen, innocent casualties paying for the adults' mistakes; children forced into prostitution, fake relationships, children forced into maneuvering through a world of corruption, media brain-washing and propaganda.

Consider Katniss. She is a person of color (olive-skinned, black-haired, gray -eyed, fight me if you will but she is not a white person), disabled (partially deaf, PTSD-sufferer, malnourished), falling somewhere in the gray spectrum both sexually and romantically. As far as representation goes, Katniss is one of the most diverse characters in literature, period. Consider Peeta, his prosthetic leg (which, together with Katniss's deafness, has been conveniently left out of the movies) and his mental trauma in the third book. Consider Annie's mental disability. Consider Beetie in his wheelchair. Consider all the people of color, as well as the fact that people in the Capitol seem to have neglected all sorts of gender stereotypes (e.g. all the men are wearing makeup). There is absolutely no doubt that the series is the most diverse piece of literature out there. Consider this: the typical roles are reversed and Peeta is the damsel in distress whereas Katniss does all the saving.

Furthermore, the alarming lack of religion (in a brutal society reliant on the slaughter of children God serves no purpose), as well as several other factors, such as the undisputed position of authority of President Snow, is suspiciously reminiscent of the already familiar model of a totalitarian society.

The Hunger Games, in other words, is revolutionary in its message, in its diversity, in the execution of its idea, in its universality. I mentioned Harry Potter in the subtitle. While this other series has played a vital role in the shaping of my character, it has gradually receded to the back line for several reasons, one of which is how problematic it actually is. This, though, is a problem for another day. (The Hunger Games is virtually unproblematic and while it may be argued that the LGBTQ society is underrepresented, a momentary counterargument is that *** has a role too insignificant in the general picture of the story to be necessary to be delved into this supposed problem). Where I was going with this is that, at the end of the day, Harry Potter, while largely enjoyed by adults and children alike, is a children's book and contains a moral code for children, it was devised to serve as a moral compass for the generation it was to bring up. The Hunger Games, on the other hand, requires you to already have a moral compass installed in order to understand its message. It is, as I already said, a straightforward critique of a dysfunctional society, aimed at those aware and intelligent enough to pick on it.

As for its aesthetic qualities, the series is written, ominously, in the present tense, tersely and concisely, yet at the same time in a particularly detailed and eloquent manner. It lacks the pretentious prose to which I am usually drawn, yet captivates precisely with the simplicity of its wording, which I believe is a deliberate choice, made so as to anchor the story to the mundane reality of the actual world that surrounds us.

That being said, I would like to sum up that The Hunger Games is, to my mind, perhaps the most successful portrayal of the world nowadays, a book series that should be read with an open mind and a keen sense of social awareness.

As the Night is drawn,
In the spectacles of my mind.
I stand alone,
In the shadows of light.

My eyes turn to the moon,
Whose gaze is pallid and ghastly.
Now they shift,
Becoming Scarlet irsises.

I am a beast of the night,
The nocturnal moon is my call.
To summon from sleep,
And all.

Nocturnal forever.
A girl of the night.
I am the one in the shadows.
I fight for that right.

i just remembered when it all began to fall apart i was in mid-thirties weary of taking advantage of women i wanted to change grow become better person more compassionate find loving respectful relationship maybe marriage i knew i needed to step away stop

chicago 1985 Odysseus is a stranger to himself living someone else’s life does he really want what Mom Dad Chris want? is he lying to everyone else or himself? he snorts another line of ******* moves on to next girl in dizzy way he is having time of his life so much occasion to waste doors to open slam rooms to pass through “In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions” thank you t.s. elliott his ****** liaisons carry on from several weeks to several months begin with him adoring some girl or she adoring him little fires that burn themselves out for his part infidelity is rarely in question instead typically he or she feels let down by some personal response or character trait and simply stops calling in actuality no girl ever bothers to stick around they follow his lead and evaporate his mind draws a blank he wonders what do girls want? Deep inside he knows nothing in life is greater than the love of a woman he would have liked all those girls to be just one girl but she is missing where is she? occasionally he will run into one of his ex-lovers on street she wears an expression that hints why didn’t you phone me back? why did you stop calling? he suspects she is playing victim in self-satisfying charade in fact Odysseus crosses into new territory it is difficult to go back he hones his edge no longer is he wonder-stuck child possessed by curiosity for girls he requires **** and kink longer buildups then urgent bursts of effort drawn out climaxes nameless girl wearing tight jeans cowboy boots braids whom he meets in drake hotel elevator pushes stop button she ***** him off he has **** *** with tan-skinned french-canadian female tourist in telephone booth on north avenue gorgeous longhaired creole girl from new orleans ***** him on fire escape stairs **** *** with skinny punk girl in dark alley dutch foreign exchange student gives him ******* between parked cars on clark street weird awkward *** with goth girl in graveyard ****** by older blond woman who positioning herself underneath table in ritzy restaurant he has *** with chatty college sorority girl in jet lavatory he goes down on nerd girl wearing thick glasses in criticism section of depaul’s library he gets ****** ****** by perfect stranger in lake michigan each evening before he goes out prowling he looks in mirror wonders what strange female he will have *** with tonight it always surprises him what a person might not admit to or accept but allow or give in to if the right moment or if the right person is there not that he is particularly the right person rather he stumbles onto an astonishing streak there is the paris/milantokyo fashion model with stylish french haircut who possesses astonishing beauty perfect ***** and haughty temper after night of too many ***** martinis and ******* she announces “you and your friends are going nowhere  you’re all second-rate artist losers! and your cousin and his group are obnoxious *******” she flips him the finger then shoves him he shoves back resulting in dual arrests and domestic violence charges there is the tall blond stripper who totally fulfills his ****** desires once she lets him insert garden hose up her **** laughs uproariously as stream of water shoots out on another occasion she requests he *** in her *** he begins to believe he will marry her she insists she is too low class for his family one night she drunkenly hurls champagne bottle gives him black eye drives away crashes her car there is blue-eyed sweetheart with divine ****** loving touch who after months of sleeping with Odysseus confesses she is ******* some other guy and swears she will be faithful in the future she begs for his forgiveness as he loses it pushes her out door throwing her clothes after her one girl lights candles gives him full body massage ******* another girl holds him tight cries pushes him away one girl writes confessions with permanent markers on walls of closet another girl slaps him yells why? why why why! one girl runs to toilet pukes passes out on floor another girl sits up all night talking teasing never relieving him another girl falls asleep snores while he is in conversation one girl makes fun of small left ******* later gossips to her girlfriends he meets girl who will do anything except allow him to enter her ****** he meets girl who is professional escort she offers to do him for free she has lots of toys videos he declines they mess around she gets him off with ******* he meets girl whose ***** hair grows to mid-thigh she incessantly calls for her dog Bertram! he meets girl who shivers moans furiously cries laughs when he climaxes he meets girl with self-inflicted scars on arms legs who only wants it up her **** he meets girl who likes gagging deep-******* him to skull-**** her harder the better he meets girl whose ******* are so fierce she loses complete control drenching him sheets with her fluids excrement he meets girl who wants ******* squeezed so tightly he fears he will draw blood he meets girl who likes to talk ***** slaps his face as he is reaching ****** he meets girl with gargantuan ***** ******* as large as thumb she gurgles hot breaths later tries to steal string of beads he meets girl who enjoys lactating on his thighs while she gives him head he meets girl who knows how to contract vaginal muscles so tightly all he does is sustain ******* inside her in order to reach ****** he meets girl who pees tiny squirts while he penetrates her **** she laughs wildly he meets girl with furry mound who requests he **** on her as she masturbates he declines she reproaches him accusing you’re not nearly as freethinking as you pretend to be in fact you’re full of ****! he meets girl who wants him to act out **** they struggle he meets girl who desires to be ******* whipped he is not into inflicting pain he meets large strong girl who forces him he never tells anyone about incident he becomes mindful many females are more depraved than him women remain puzzle to Odysseus he is repeatedly astounded shocked can never predict about girl what her ******* ****** will look like whether she has eager *** or what are her secret desires he is explorer women are vast mystery he wonders are females as sexually driven as males? are they as vulnerable? is their **** like tiny *****? he speculates if completely unknown attractive woman walks up to any average man grabs his crotch many possibly most men will willingly allow it are women that weak? more than anything what most excites Odysseus is female lust handjobs are test of adequacy distinguishing character having masturbated thousands of times he thrills in having girl do it he delights in watching her arousal just staring at his ******* is captivated by method of her fingers hands revitalized by degree of her determination throughout he needs to ****** her ******* ****** *** titillated as she licks lips after swallowing ***** he realizes if he were female he would be total nymphomaniac yet he finds it difficult to imagine desiring men are all so like him women are so strange fascinatingly different he craves their otherness Odysseus loves women more than they love themselves smell sight of them sends him into frenzy problem is he fears their power over him

it’s been 25 years since those days i live alone for many years in tucson arizona have not been with a woman for long long time last relationship 2001 with crack ***** i hang my head cry wish for love wonder do i deserve to be loved pray to be forgiven

ever since i was young,
my gaze was drawn skyward.
i could tell you the story of orion,
and how to brush bernice's hair,
before i could tell you that two plus two equals four.
i know more about our vast universe,
than i know about many of my friends.

if you are not well acquainted with a pisces,
let me give you a bit of an introduction:
we are compassionate, imaginative,
we adapt to whatever is thrown at us,
and my personal favourite,
we are unfalteringly loyal.

however...
we are full of self-hate,
prone to laziness,
we are escapists
and horrendously easy to manipulate.

i believe my horoscope today is complete *******.
i do not feel utterly lovely,
i know i will not score a date
because no one feels for me romantically.
i've nothing to flaunt.
the horoscopes are saccharine lies,
but, those traits? those are me.

my soul is ancient,
i feel the pain of struggles i have not faced,
or rather, have not YET faced;
i will split my soul in two
i will break my bones
i will give every drop of my blood
i will breathe my last breath
for those that i love.

i spent two years of my life giving my heart and soul to a sagittarius.
philosophical, adventurous.
i admired him so.
but his negatives--
inconsistent. overconfident.
careless.
he was a burning house.

my mother, also a pisces, when all was said and done,
told me to stay away from those sagittarius boys.
they're dangerous for wary, fretful fish like us,
who ask 'from what bridge?' when we are told to jump.

All armies are the same
Publicity is fame
Artillery makes the same old noise
Valor is an attribute of boys
Old soldiers all have tired eyes
All soldiers hear the same old lies
Dead bodies always have drawn flies

the Eyes are the window to the Soul
really?
a tinted window, perhaps
or one with the shutters Tightly drawn
a shattered window
a window into an Empty room
or one so cluttered there is no where to Begin

maybe the window tells us more than what is Inside

she was leaving
and got the gumption
to see me before she did
so we went to dinner
she sat, crumpled
at the edge of the booth
playing with her silverware
hands sweating
our knees barely touching
underneath the table
they shook like the day we met
they shook like floodgates
when the clouds get upset
her hair was drawn back
into an apology
and she didn't answer
when the waiter asked for drinks
she pans, tilts
looking for the restroom
but doesn't get up
covers her mouth
to hide her furled chin
i cut her a piece of bread
not sparingly
i didn't want to ruin the symbolism
of cutting a gangrenous thing
from ones self
she half wept out "tell me a joke"
i thought to say "look at us."
that's it. that's the joke.
the premise & the punch line
sharing some silence
here in this ominous moment
so thick with goodbye
you could touch it
i said "when they asked what the name was for the wait, i should've said "awkward, party of 2"
but that's not the joke
"knock knock"
she whispered "who's there?"
i sat for a moment and said
"so we've come full circle.. we're even in the same seats, from all those months ago"
her lips quivered
and she hid her mouth
"i just wanted to hear a joke"
she said
i came back with
*"if i fell for you in a quiet restaurant & no one was around to hear it, does the laughter of children i drempt we'd have make a sound?"

What is our life? The play of passion.
Our mirth? The music of division:
Our mothers’ wombs the tiring-houses be,
Where we are dressed for life’s short comedy.
The earth the stage; Heaven the spectator is,
Who sits and views whosoe’er doth act amiss.
The graves which hide us from the scorching sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus playing post we to our latest rest,
And then we die in earnest, not in jest.

She is drawn to SATAN like an addict to ******
She burns her fingertips, edging them into candle wax, mourning in the absence of Lucifer
“Dear valentine “she cries in the stark midnight, she won’t give in this time
She licks her raven shot gun, lining all the bullets in the form of pentagram
All she can hear is ringing in her head, he has made her weak,
Dangly calves, wrists scarred, teeth marks on her neck & heart scattered-
Like the ashes of his past lover’s
Traits of an incubus, seducing naïve women
Toying with their hearts, Masking his destructive tendencies, like a Russian politician
Eyes all pleasant lies, lips uttering praises for the rival’s spoken lines

Rough *** wont her mind, her heart wont subdue to his crimes
She is a fighter, he is a sinner
Smoke edged fingertips, lips turning into a wicked glee, bow down to the madhouse queen
Insanity is a welcomed relief, freedom from his infidelity
Pressing on the lever, pointed directly at his cerebrum
“Venomous mind, you should’ve have never thrown your heart in confines, you would have been alive”
CRACK! Led by a passage of dead silence, later morphed into scavengers screeching and agile flapping of inky wings.

Like the tide,
you, will, rise and fall, impossible to hold on to.
Just as a pattern emerges
your personality synchronises with the British weather.
Like a long summer evening in Shanghai you are warm and bright,
carefree as an afternoon breeze.
Making me smile, laugh, blush
such a tease.
Car rides into the sunset with
the windows down and the music up
sharing cigarettes.
But as you pull those dark shades over your eyes and soul
the rain begins to pour
the intimacy washes away
trust astray
several steps apart
from the inch we grew closer yesterday.
Laid back, insecure, self-centred, unreliable,
unstable, restless and emotinally unavailable
yet somehow charmingly mystic
surprisingly dashing
talented and well bred
unattainably captivating
naively helpless
shy
thus I cannot pin point why
I am drawn.
I regret not kissing you
and know I would still have
if I did...

The Slate is Drawn Clean

The slate is drawn clean but fear grips the land.
From whence came this man,
and what guides his hand?
How did we get here, we wonder aloud.
And what will he write and store in the cloud?
With words he assailed us; could we not hear?
Logic has failed us. There's nothing to cheer.
The slate is drawn clean, this harsh Genie out.
He rages his rants and prances about.
The twit now becomes "The Twitter in Chief"
His words bring us heartburn
With no quick relief!
Oh, how I long for that wonderful day
When a proper president comes our way.

(C) K. L. Hicks, 2017