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RAJ NANDY Sep 2018
Dear Poet Friends, Torin Galleshaw from Charlotte NC, a Member of this Site, had requested me to compose about the Rise of Third *****. Therefore, I have commenced with the causes for its Rise in my Part One posted below. Planning to compose Part Two with ******’s Blitzkrieg campaign of Poland later. It is unfortunate that I am unable to post related Maps & Photos for better appreciation of my Readers! Such options are not available for us here! However, I have managed to post a copy with maps & photos in the E-mail ID of my friend Torin!  Kindly give comments only after reading this researched work of mine, during your spare time.  Thanking you, - Raj, New Delhi.

            STORY OF SECOND WORLD WAR – PART ONE
                            RISE OF THE THIRD *****
                                       By Raj Nandy

                                  INTRODUCTION
In this part I shall mainly deal with the causes leading to the Second World War,
Which had also created favourable conditions for the rise of Third ***** under ******.
The word ‘*****’ derives from old German word ‘rihhi’ meaning ‘realm’;  
But is also used to designate a kingdom or an empire in a broader sense.
Historically, the First ***** was the Medieval Holy Roman Empire which lasted till the end of the 19th Century.
While the Second ***** was the First German Empire from 1871 to 1918, when dynamic Otto Von Bismark had united all of Germany,
Which ended with its defeat in World War One and birth of the Weimar Republic.
The Third ***** refers to the **** German Empire under ******, Which lasted from 1933 till 1945, for twelve traumatic eventful years!
Historians opine that the ending of a war is equally important as
its beginning;
Since the causes for the start of a war is often to be found embedded in its ending!
The First World War came to an end on 28th of June 1919 as we all know.
With the signing of the Treaty at Versailles by the German Foreign Minister Hermann Muller and the ‘Big Four’.  (Britain, France, America, & Italy)
Yet it is rather ironical, that this Peace Treaty of Versailles, considered as President Woodrow Wilson’s ‘brain child’,
Had sowed the seeds of discontent resulting in the outbreak of the Second World War, and Adolf ******’s dramatic rise!

Though several causes are attributed for the outbreak of the Second World War by our Military Historians.
Let me try to summarise those causes which are considered to be more relevant.
Commencing with the harsh Treaty of Versailles, the British and French Policy of Appeasement, followed by Hyperinflation and the Great Depression of 1929, and failure of The League of Nations to maintain peace;  
Are relevant factors which collectively combined resulting in the outbreak of the devastating Second World War, scarring human memories for all time!
But not forgetting ******’s forceful and persuasive eloquence which mesmerised the Germans to rise up as a powerful Nation once again.
Since ****** promised to avenge the humiliation faced by Germany following the Treaty of Versailles,
Which was drawn up with vengeance, and dictated by the victorious Allies!

THE  ARMISTICE  AND TREATY OF VERSAILLES:    
Armistice means a truce for cessation of hostilities, which provides a breathing space for negotiating a lasting peace.
Now the Armistice ceasing the First World War was signed inside the railway carriage of the Allied Supreme Commander Marshal Foch, in the Forest of Compiegne,
On the 11th of November 1919, sixty km north of Paris, between the victorious Allies and vanquished Germany.
But in the meantime naval blockade of Germany had continued, and the German Rhineland was evacuated and partly occupied by the combined Allied troops!
Release of Allied POWs interned civilians followed subsequently; And the Reparations Clause of monetary compensation was strictly imposed on Germany!
Now, following a wide spread German Sailor’s Revolt towards the end of October 1918, Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm-II had abdicated;
And on the 9th of November Friedrich Ebert, as the new Social Democrat President of Germany, authorised his representative to sign the Compiegne Armistice.
We should remember here that this Armistice seeking cessation of hostilities did not stipulate any unconditional surrender;
And the signing of the Armistice by the German Social Democrats, was considered as ‘a stab in the back of the German army’ by majority of the Germans!
These issues get repeatedly mentioned by Adolf ****** in his eloquent speeches subsequently,
To arouse the spirit of German Nationalism, and resurgence of the ‘Master Aryan Race’ of the Germans, - in Germany!

The Versailles Treaty was signed on 28th of June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand which had sparked World War One.
Let me mention few aspects of this Treaty which was detested by the Germans!
Germany lost 13% of its land, 12% of its people, 48% of its iron resources, 15% of its agricultural production, and 10% of its coal, following its implementation!
German army was reduced to 100,000 men, its Navy reduced to 36 ships with no submarines, its Air Force banned, and its union with Austria forbidden.
Now to use a Shakespearean phrase the ‘unkindest cut of all’ came in the shape of Article 231,  the ‘War Guilt Clause’ of the Versailles Treaty,
Which provided the legal basis for the payment of war reparations by Germany.
The reparation amount of 132 billion gold marks (US $33 billion) to cover the civilian damage caused during the war, now had to be paid by Germany!
Thus the humiliation, resentment, and the virtual economic strangulation following the Versailles Treaty,
Was exploited by extremist groups such as ******’s **** Party.
And in the decades to follow, ******’s Nazis would take full control of Germany!

NOTES: Following Versailles Treaty, Alsace-Lorraine captured by Germany in 1870 was returned to France. The SAAR German coalfield region was give to France for 15 yrs. Poland became independent with a corridor to the sea dividing Germany into two. Danzing, a major port in East Prussia, became a free city under the League of Nation. Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, & Czechoslovakia became independent. Industrial area of German Rhineland, forming a buffer zone between Belgium &France,was
demilitarised.

WOODROW WILSON’S  14 - POINT PEACE INITIATIVE  & THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS:
American President Wilson was an idealist and a visionary, who in a speech to the US Congress on 8th Jan 1918,
Introduced a 14 Point Charter as a platform for building global peace, based on the principles of transparency, self-determination, and Democracy.
But for the first time in US history, the Republican-led US Senate rejected this Peace Treaty, and prevented America from joining the newly created League!
The US Senate wanted to retain its sovereignty without external entanglements;
Free from the League of Nation’s political dictates in its foreign commitments!
The Irish immigrants refused to support Wilson's Fourteen Points because Wilson was concerned about stopping WWI, rather than forcing the British to set Ireland free.
Many Jews also refused to back Wilson, since he was paying too much attention to the War, and not enough to the Balfour Declaration of 02 Nov 1917, -
Which promised an Independent Jewish State with a distinct Jewish identity.

The League of Nations had emerged from Wilson’s 14 Points on the 10th Jan 1920, with its HQs at Geneva, Switzerland, but it had no peacekeeping forces those days!
The League had failed to prevent invasion of Chinese Manchuria in 1932 by Japan;
Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935; annexation of Sudetenland and Austria by Germany!
The Axis countries Germany, Italy, and Japan, withdrew from the League subsequently.
Thus the League of Nations was disbanded in 1946 officially!
But President Wilson’s ceaseless efforts for global peace did not go unrecognised,
Since on the 10th of December 1920, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize!
While his disbanded League of Nations, as the first global humanitarian organisation,
Continued to survive in spirit with the establishment of United Nations Organisation on the 24th October, 1945.

ECONOMIC CAUSES - FOLLOWED BY THE GREAT DEPRESSION OF 1929 :
Germany emerged from the First World War with loss of 25,000 square miles of territory;
Loss of seven million inhabitants, and a staggering debt imposed by the Versailles Treaty!
The Wiemar Republic, after abdication of Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm-II  to Holland,
For the first time in German history, established a Democratic Constitution with Friedrich Ebert as its first President.
But The Republic first had to consolidate itself by squashing the Spartacist Revolt of January 1919 led by the extreme Leftists, and inspired by the Russian Bolshevik Communists!
The Freikorps, in March 1920, an Ex-Soldiers Rightist Group, tried to overthrow the Wiemar Republic with support of their Rightist allies and their own veteran troops!
This was soon followed by a Communist attempt to takeover of the Industrial Rhur;
But fortunately, all these uprisings against the Republic were effectively subdued!
But the 33 Billion Dollars of Reparations hung over the Wiemar Republic like the legendary ‘Sword of Damocles’, followed by the Great Depression of 1929;
Coupled with the ‘Policy of Appeasement’ practised by the British and the French;
Became the most important causes for ******’s expansionist ambition and his short- lived meteoric rise to fame!

GERMAN PAPER CURRENCY & HYPERINFLATION:
Gold Mark was the currency used by the German Empire from 1873 to 1914 only.
But to pay for the costs of the ongoing First World War, Germany suspended the gold standard, and decided to fund the war by Borrowings entirely,
Hoping to pay back the loans after Germany achieves Victory.
But having lost the war, and faced with a massive debt imposed by the Allies,
Exchange rate of the Mark against the US Dollar steadily devalued and declined!
Papiermark became the German currency from 04th August 1914 onward, when link between the Mark and gold reserve was abandoned,
In order to pay for the ongoing expenses of the First World War with paper marks, which was constantly being printed!
But later after the war, when the London Ultimatum of May 1921 demanded payment of war reparations in gold or in foreign currency only,
Even more paper marks got printed by the Republic to buy those foreign currency !
By December 1922 hyper-inflationary trends emerged, when the US Dollar became equivalent to 7,400 German Marks, with a 15-fold increase in the cost of living !
By the fall of 1922 when it became impossible for Germany to make further payments,
The French and Belgium armies occupied Germany’s Ruhr Valley area, its prime industrial region!
French and the Belgians hoped to extract payment in kind, but a strike by the workers of the Ruhr area their hopes belied!
The Wiemar Republic printed more paper notes to pay and support the workers of the Ruhr area,
When hyperinflation had peaked at 4,210,500,000,000 German Marks, to a US Dollar!
Paper currency having become worthless, some form of ancient barter system began to be used instead!

STABILISATION OF GERMAN ECONOMY WITH ONSET OF  THE GREAT DEPRESSION:
Following the hyperinflation Chancellor Josef Cuno’s cabinet resigned in August 1923,
When Gustav Stresemann became the new Chancellor of Germany.
Stresemann’s Government had introduced the Rentenmark as a new stable currency,
To end the hyperinflation which had plagued Wiemar Germany.  
Rentenmark was backed by real goods, agricultural land and business,
Since gold was not available in a beleaguered German economy those days!
When One Rentenmark was equivalent to One million, million, old German Mark;
While One US Dollar was equivalent to only 4.2 Rentenmarks.
Though Stresemann’s Government lasted for 100 days only, Stresemann continued to serve as the Foreign Minister in successive Coalition Governments of the Republic,
Till his death in the month of October 1929, but working for the betterment of Germany all the while!
His ‘Policy of Fulfilment’ stabilised German economy with a 200 Million Dollars loan from America under the Dawes Plan in 1924,
Which had also ensured the evacuation of France from the occupied Ruhr area, with their future reparations payments ensured.
Stresemann’s signing of the Locarno Pact in London on 1st Dec 1925 with France, Belgium, Great Britain, and Italy, was considered as his achievement and a feat!
Since it made Germany to enter the League of Nations ensuring stability and peace;
While the Noble Peace Prize was awarded to Stresemann for his efforts in 1926!
Later, the Young Plan of 1929 further reduced German reparations payment by 20%, while extending the time frame for the payments to 59 years!
But following a sudden Wall Street Stock Market Crash in late October of 1929,
The American Banks were forced to recall money from Europe and the Young Plan;.
Which created acute financial distress when unemployment soared to 33.7%  in Germany in 1931, and quickly rose to 40% during the following year!
Lausanne Conference was held in Switzerland in 1932 by Great Britain, Germany, and France, to further reduce the War Debts imposed by the Versailles Treaty.
But in Dec 1932, the US Congress had rejected this Allied War Debt Reduction Plan completely.
However, no further payments were made by Germany due to the Great Depression;
And by 1932, Germany had paid only 1/8 of the total sum required to be paid as per their pending wartime reparations!

NOTES: Rentenmark was issued on 15 October 1923 to stop the hyperinflation in Wiemeer Germany. Reichmark was the currency in Germany from 1924 to 20 June 1948 in West Germany , when it was replaced by the Deutsche Mark; but had continued in East Germany until 23 June when it was replaced by East German Mark.
During the Stresemann Years of Stability from 1924 to 1929, (prior to the onset of the Great Depression), with help of American financial aid, created more housing & production in Germany. Dada & Expressionist Art forms flourished, followed by modern architecture; also the Philosophy of Existentialism of Thomas Mann – influenced the Western culture. Paul Whiteman's Band for the first time brought in American Jazz to Germany, and Jazz signified the liberation of German youth and women folks of the younger generation generally. But the US Stock Market Crash had unfortunately ended this short lived euphoria, and as it soon became a global phenomena!                                


FAILURE OF THE WIEMAR REPUBLIC & THE GREAT DEPRESSION WHICH BENEFITED THE NAZIS:
Last Days of Wiemar Republic:
Ever since Otto Von Bismarck that ‘Man of iron and steel’, united Germany into a single Empire in the year Eighteen Hundred & Seventy One,
For the first time a Constitution for a Parliamentary Democracy was drawn up in August 1919, in the eastern German city of Wiemar.
Wiemar was the intellectual centre of Germany associated with musicians like Franz List, and writers like Goethe and Schiller.
The Wiemar Republic of Germany which had lasted from 1919 till 1933 had seen,
20 different Coalition Governments, with frequent elections and changing loyalties!
Due to a system of proportional representations, and the presence of very many political parties those days,  
No single party could obtain absolute sole majority in the Reichstag Parliament!
The longest Coalition Govt. was under Chancellor Bruning, which had lasted for only 2 years and 61 days!     (From 30 March 1930 to 30 May 1932)
Now, to understand the reasons for the failure to maintain a Democratic form of Government by the Wiemar Republic,
It becomes necessary to monitor its ‘dying gasps’ during its closing years so to speak!
Since faced with the economic depression Chancellor Bruning had worsened the unemployment situation by adopting stringent and unpopular measures!
Thereby having lost popular political support, Bruning with the approval of President Hindenburg, invoked emergency powers under Article 48, to survive his last few months and years!
During the years 1931 and 1932  it is seen, Bruning had used this Emergency Clause 44 and 66 times respectively!
Thus his so-called ‘Presidential form of Govt.’ had undermined Wiemar Democracy!
If Burning was the ‘Republic’s Undertaker’, now remains a debatable issue of History!
But Burning’s vigorous campaign made Hindenburg to get re-elected as the President;
Thereby he had removed the defeated Adolf ****** out of the Presidential race!
Therefore, later when ****** became the Chancellor on 30 Jan 1933, Bruning had very wisely fled from Germany!

Following Bruning’s resignation in May 1932 came Chancellor Papen’s ‘Cabinet of Barons’ consisting of individuals who were not members of the German Reichstag!
While in the election of July 1932 ******’s **** Party won 230 seats, making it the largest party in the Reichstag.
But ****** refused to form a coalition with Papen, because he wanted to become the Chancellor himself !
Now General von Schleicher advised President Hindenburg that the German Army,
Would not accept Papen’s use of Article 48 to remain as the Chancellor of Germany!
Therefore following Papen’s resignation, Schleicher took over on the 04th of December 1932 as the new German Chancellor.
Schleicher tried to restore a democratic form of government to get the Wiemar Republic back on its feet.
But in the ensuing political power struggle Papen wanted to take revenge on Schleicher for his removal from power and defeat.
So Papen persuaded Adolf ****** to become the Chancellor, and retain for himself the post of Vice-Chancellor.
In doing so, Papen mistakenly thought that he would be able to reign in the self-assertive Adolf ******!
Papen finally made President Hindenburg agree to his proposal, and on 30th of Jan 1933,
****** became the New Chancellor, with approval of the President!
A month later a sudden fire in the Reichstag made ****** invoke Article 48, in order to squash the suspected Left Wing Communists;
But while doing so, the Press was muzzled, and many Civil Rights of the German people were abolished, inclusive of their right of assembly and free speech!
****** acted swiftly, and by passing the Enabling Act on 23 March, 1933, armed himself  with dictatorial powers for enacting laws without the approval of the Reichstag whenever necessary!
Thereby ****** threw Democracy to History’s wasteland most unfortunately!
Following the death of Hindenburg on 29 June 1934, ****** combined the powers of the President and the Chancellor, and became known as the FUHRER!
Historians generally agree the Enabling Act of 1933, as the date for establishment of The German Third *****.

THE POLICY OF APPEASEMENT AND GERMAN AGGRESSION:
The horrors of trench warfare with the rattling of machine guns and bursting of poisonous nerve gas shells,
Even after 20 years remained fresh, in the minds of all World War One participants!
Therefore, it was natural for British and French Prime Ministers Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier initially,
To grant political and material concessions to an aggressive Germany, for the sake of peace and stability.
Thus the diplomatic stance of Appeasement between 1935 and 1939 followed by the French and the British, was mainly to avoid another dangerous armed conflict!
But the trusting Mr. Chamberlain had underestimated ******, who had served in the German Army as a Corporal, winning the Iron Cross during the last Great War!
****** was not afraid of war, but wanted to avenge the Treaty of Versailles and its punitive dictated peace;
And also establish for the superior German Aryan race a lasting Third *****!
Therefore, having consolidated his power as the Fuhrer along with his trusted **** Party cronies, he withdrew from the League of Nations in October 1933.
Introduced conscription in March 1935 in Germany, and embarked on a mission to rebuild a new modernised German Army for combat on land, air, and sea!
In March 1936, in another open violation of the Versailles Treaty, ****** re-occupied the demilitarised Rhineland, followed by a Treaty of Alliance with Japan and Italy.
The much desired Anschluss (or merger) with Austria, the country of birth of ******,
Saw the German Army in March 1938, triumphantly and peacefully marching into Vienna!
Now with the Munich Conference of 19 September 1938, this Policy of Appeasement is said to have reached its climatic peak!
The Sudetenland area, consisted of 3 million Germans were made
to join Czechoslovakia when the frontiers were drawn in 1918-19,
Much against the wishes of the Germans!
When ****** wanted to annex this Sudetenland area, Britain, France, Germany and Italy, met at Munich to diffuse an explosive situation peacefully.
It was agreed at Munich that once Sudetenland joins Germany, ****** will not invade Czechoslovakia and honour the terms of peace.
But on 15th March 1939, in violation of the Munich Agreement, ******’s army invade and occupied Czechoslovakia, thereby openly flouting the Policy of Appeasement!

NOTES: ******’s desire for ‘LEBENSRAUM’ or ‘increase of living space’ for the Germans, commenced with his ‘Border Wars’, which soon turned into a Global War because of the ‘appeasement policy’ of the Allies. ****** had secured his Eastern Front with a treaty with the Stalin, since fighting on two fronts would have been very difficult for the Germans.

Now when ******’s army invaded Poland on 1st of September 1939, it became ‘the last straw on the camel’s back’ for the Western Allies!
Committed to the Anglo-Polish Defence Pact of 25 August, 1939, both Britain and France declared war on Germany,
Which I propose to narrate in Part Two of my Second World War Story.  
The Policy of Appeasement no doubt gave some time for Britain, to regain its depleted military strength,  but Adolf ****** had viewed it as a sign of weakness!
With Russia and America initially as non-participants, ****** became more confident and arrogant!
Thereby turning his border wars into a global conflagration lasting six long years.
When the use of advanced technology, resulted in greater loss and casualties;  
Which was followed by the holocaust and unprecedented human suffering!
I would like to conclude my present narration with a poem by English soldier-poet Seigfried Sassoon, who participated in the First World War on the Western Front.

DREAMERS  -  by Siegfried Sassoon
Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal ****** with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with ***** and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.
…………………………………………………………………………
Thanks for reading patiently, from Raj Nandy of New Delhi.
  *ALL COPYRIGHTS ARE WITH THE AUTHOR ONLY
Akemi Apr 2017
Awhile ago, I had been at a party. I’d listened to someone talk about Kate Moss for ten minutes straight. I left the room, found my flatmate and asked why anyone was interested in anything at all. We’d come up with no answers.

All this started a month ago, and all that started long before. I will not bore you with trite aphorisms about how I survived, or how wondrous life has become since. At some point my mind broke. This is a collection of memories about my attempted suicide and the absurdity of the entire experience.

Wednesday, 26th of April, 2017, midnight.

Couldn’t sleep. Surfed the internet. Fell into ASMR sub-culture.[1] Meta-satire, transitioning to post-irony, before pseudo-spiritual out-of-body transcendence. I thought, *this is the most ****** experience I’ve had in half a decade
, while a woman spun spheres of blobby jelly around my head and whispered elephant mourning rituals into my ears.

Tuesday, 27th of April, 2017, afternoon.

Woke up mid-day. Looked at all the objects in my room, unable to understand why any of them mattered. Milled around the flat. Went online to order helium so I could make an exit bag.[2] Cheapest source was The Warehouse, though the helium came with thirty bright multi-coloured party balloons. I kept imagining one of my flatmates walking in later that day, seeing my crumpled body surrounded by these floppy bits of rubber and a note saying this life is absurd and I want out of it. There was no online purchasing option, however, and I couldn’t be bothered walking into town. I began reading suicide notes. One was from a kid who’d slowly taken pills as he watched TV, culminating in a coma. That sounds pleasant, I thought, whilst at the same time knowing that it takes up to three days to die from painkillers and that the process is anything but painless or final. I opened my drawer, found a bunch of paracetamol and began washing them down with water, whilst listening to the soundtrack of End of Evangelion.[3]

I’m not sure why, but I began crying violently. I knew I’d have to leave the flat before my flatmates came home. I hastily scrawled a note that said, donate my body, give my money to senpai, give my possessions to someone I don’t know, it smells like burning, it was good knowing you all, before walking out the door with Komm Süsser Tod playing in the background.[4, 5] I’d already written my personal and political reasons for suicide in the pieces méconnaissance[6] and **** Yourself,[7] so felt there was no reason for anything more substantial.

I wandered the back roads of my neighbourhood. My body shook. I felt somnolent, half-dazed. I wanted a quiet place to sit, sleep and writhe in agony while my organs slowly failed. My legs kept stumbling, however, and my head was beginning to feel funny. I found a dead-end street and sat on one of those artificially maintained rectangles of grass. There was a black cat lying in the middle of the road, just bobbing its head at me. I zoned out for a bit and when I came to a giant orange cat was to my left, gazing intently into my teary face. I tried to refocus on my crotch. I couldn’t help but notice a white cat across the road, pretending not to be seen. It had a dubious look on its face, a countenance of guilt. What the hell was going on? A delivery person looped round the street. People returned home from work. Garage doors opened, cars drove down driveways. Here I was, slowly dying, surrounded by spooky ******* cats and the bustle of ordinary existence.

“Uh, hey. You look, uh, like something isn’t . . . do you need, uh, help?” a woman asked, crossing the street with a pram to reach me. I groaned.

“It’s just that, you know, ordinarily, um, I mean normally, people don’t sit on the sidewalk,” she continued, glancing down with the half-confused look of a concerned citizen who is trying to enter a situation outside of their usual experience. I mumbled something indistinct and went back to staring at my crotch.

“You know, I can, er . . . I can . . . I can’t really help,” she ended, awkwardly. “I have a daughter to look after, but . . . if you’re still here when she’s asleep . . . I’m the red fence.” She darted off without another word.

Had she wanted me off the sidewalk because it was abnormal to sit there, or had she seen the abnormality as a sign of something deeper? Either way, she’d used abnormality as a signifier of negative change. Deviancy as something to be corrected, realigned with some norm that co-exists with happiness and citizenship. I was being a bad citizen.

I thought, I miss those cats. At least they had judged me in silence. Wait, what the hell am I thinking? This is clearly a case of deviancy associated with negative feelings. Well, negative feelings, but not necessarily negative change. Suicide is only negative if one views life as intrinsically worthwhile

I could hear pram lady in the distance. She was talking to someone who’d just come back from work. They thanked pram lady and began moving towards me. Arghggh, just let me die, I thought.

She introduced herself as a nurse. From her tone and approach, it was clear she’d handled many cases like me. I’ve never hated counselling techniques. They seemed to at least trouble neoliberal rhetoric. There is little mention of overcoming, or striving, or perfecting oneself into a being of pure success. Rather, counselling seemed to be about listening and piercing together the other’s perspective. Counsellors tended not to interject words of comfort. They’d tell you mental illness was lifelong and couldn’t be fixed. They’re the closest society has to positive pessimists. Of course, they’d still want you to get better. Better, as in, not attempting suicide.

I talked with nurse lady for an hour about how life is simply passing. Passing through oneself, passing through others, passing through spaces, thoughts and emotions. About how the majority of life seems to be lived in a beyond we’ll never reach. Potential futures, moments of relief, phantasies we create to escape the dull present. About how I’d been finding my media and politics degree really rewarding, but some part of my head broke and I lost all ability to focus and care. About how the more I learnt about the world, the less capable I felt of changing it, and that change was a narcissistic day dream, anyway.

She replied “We’re all cogs. But what’s wrong with being a cog? Even a cog can make changes,” and I thought, but never one’s own.

She gave me a ride to the emergency clinic because I was too apathetic and guilt-ridden to decline. Why are people so nice over things that don’t matter? Chicks are ground into chicken nuggets alive.[8] The meat-industry produces 50% of the world’s carbon emissions.[9] But someone sits on the side of the road in a bourgeois neighbourhood and suddenly you have cats and nurses worried sick over your ****** up head. I should have worn a hobo coat and sat in town.

Tuesday, 27th of April, 2017, evening.

I had forgotten how painful waiting rooms were. It was stupidly ironic. I’d entered this apathetic suicidal stupor because I’d wanted to escape the monotony of existence, yet here I was, sitting in a waiting room, counting the stains on the ceiling, while the reception TV streamed a hospital drama.

“Get his *** in there!”

“Time is the real killer.”

“It wasn’t the cancer that was terminal, it was you.”

Zoom in on doctor face man.

Everybody hugging.

Emergency waiting rooms are a lot like life. You don’t choose to be there. An accident simply occurs and then you’re stuck, watching a show about *** cancer and family bonding. Sometimes someone coughs and you become aware of your own body again. You remember that you exist outside of media, waiting in this sterile space on a painfully too small plastic chair. You deliberately avoid the glances of everyone else in the room because you don’t want to reduce their existence to an injury, a pulsing wound, a lack, nor let them reduce you the same. The accident that got you here left you with a blank spot in your head, but the nurses reassure you that you’ll be up soon, to whatever it is you’re here for. And so, with nothing else to do, you turn back to the TV and forget you exist.

I thought, I should have taken more pills and gone into the woods.

The ER was a Kafkaeque realm of piercing lights, sleepy interns and too narrow privacy curtains.[10] Every time a nurse would try to close one, they’d pull it too far to one side, opening the other side up. Like the self, no bed was fully enclosed. There were always gaps, spaces of viewing, windows into trauma, and like the objet petit a, there was always the potential of meeting another’s gaze, one just like yours, only, out of your control.

I lay amidst a drone of machinery, footsteps and chatter. I stared at ceiling stains. Every hour or so a different nurse would approach me, repeat the same ten questions as the one before, then end commenting awkwardly on my tattoos. I kept thinking, what is going on? Have I finally died and become integrated into some eternally recurring limbo hell where, in a state of complete apathy and deterioration, some devil approaches me every hour to ask, why did you take those pills?

Do I have to repeat my answer for the rest of my life?

I gazed at the stain to my right. That was back in ‘92 when the piping above burst on a particularly wintry day. I shifted my gaze. And that happened in ‘99 when an intern tripped holding a giant cup of coffee. Afterwards, everyone began calling her Trippy. She eventually became a surgeon and had four adorable bourgeois kids. Tippy Tip Tap Toop.

The nurses began covering my body with little pieces of paper and plastic, to which only one third were connected to an ECG monitor.[11] Every ten minutes or so the monitor would begin honking violently, to which (initially) no one would respond to. After an hour or so a nurse wandered over with a worried expression, poked the machine a little, then asked if I was experiencing any chest pains. Before I could answer, he was intercepted by another nurse and told not to worry. His expression never cleared up, but he went back to staring blankly into a computer terminal on the other end of the room.

There were two security guards awkwardly trying not to meet anyone’s gazes. They were out of place and they knew it. No matter what space they occupied, a nurse would have to move past them to reach some medical doodle or document. One nurse jokingly said, “It’s ER. If you’re not moving you’re in the way,” to which the guards chortled, shuffled a metre or so sideways, before returning to standing still.

I checked my phone.

“Got veges.”

“If you successfully **** yourself, you’ll officially be the biggest right-wing neoliberal piece of ****.”[12]

“Your Text Unlimited Combo renewed on 28 Apr at 10:41. Nice!”

I went back to staring at the ceiling.

Six hours later, one of the nurses came over and said “Huh, turns out there’s nothing in your blood. Nothing . . . at all.” Another pulled out my drip and disconnected me from the ECG monitor. “Well, you’re free to leave.”

Tuesday, 27th of April, 2017, midnight.

I wandered over to the Emergency Psychiatric Services. The doctor there was interested in setting up future supports for my ****** up mind. He mentioned anti-depressants and I told him that in the past they hadn’t really worked, that it seemed more related to my general political outlook, that this purposeless restlessness has been with me most of my life, and that no drug or counselling could cure the lack innate to existence which is exacerbated by our current political and cultural institutions.

He replied “Are you one of those anti-druggers? You know there’s been a lot of backlash against psychiatry, it’s really the cultural Zeitgeist of our times, but it’s all led by misinformation, scaremongering.”

I hesitated, before replying “I’m not anti-drugs, I just don’t think you can change my general hatred of existence.”

“Okay, okay, I’m not trying to argue with your outlook, but you’re simply stuck in this doom and gloom phase—”

Whoa, wait a ******* minute. You’re not trying to argue with my outlook, while completely discounting my outlook as simply a passing emotional state? This guy is a ******* *******, I thought, ragging on about anti-druggers while pretending not to undermine a political and social position I’d spent years researching and building up. I stopped paying attention to him. Yes, a lot of my problems are internal, but I’m more than a disembodied brain, biologically computing chemical data.

At the end of his rant, he said something like “You’re a good kid,” and I thought, ******* too.

Friday, 28th of April, 2017, morning.

The next day I met a different doctor. I gave him a brief summary of my privileged life culminating in a ****** metaphor about three metaphysical pillars which lift me into the tempestuous winds of existential dread and nihilistic apathy. One, my social anxiety. Two, my absurd existence. Three, my political outlook. One, anxiety: I cannot relate to small talk. The gaze of the other is a gaze of expectations. Because I cannot know these expectations, I will never live up to them. Communication is by nature, lacking. Two, absurdity: Existence is a meaningless repetition of arbitrary structures we ourselves construct, then forget. Reflexivity is about uncovering this so that we may escape structures we do not like. We inevitably fall into new structures, prejudices and artifices. Nothing is authentic, nothing is innocent and nothing is your self. Three, politics: I am trapped in a neoliberal capitalist monstrosity that creates enough produce to feed the entire world, but does not do so due to the market’s instrumental need for profit. The system, in other words, rewards capitalists who are ruthless. Any capitalist trying to bring about change, will necessarily have to become ruthless to reach a position of power, and therefore will fail to bring about change.

The doctor nodded. He thought deeply, tried to piece it all together, then finally said “Yes, society is quite terrifying. This is something we cannot control. There are things out there that will harm you and the political situation of our time is troubling.”

I was astounded. This was one of the first doctors who’d actually taken what I’d said and given it consideration. Sure we hadn’t gotten into a length discussion of socialism, feminism or veganism, but they also hadn’t simply collapsed my political thoughts into my depressive state.

“But you know, there are still niches of meaning in this world. Though the greater structures are overbearing, people can still find purpose enacting smaller changes, connecting in ephemeral ways.”

What was I hearing? Was this a postmodern doctor?[13] Was science reconnecting with the humanities?

“We may even connect your third pillar, that of the political, with your second pillar and see that the political situation of our time is absurd. This is unfortunate, but as for your first pillar, this is definitely something we can help you with. In fact, it’s quite a simple process, helping one deal with social anxiety, and to me, it sounds like this anxiety has greatly affected your life for the past few years.”

The doctor then asked for my gender and sexuality, to which after I hesitated a little, he said, it didn’t really matter seeing as it was all constructed, anyway. For being unable to feel much at all, I was ecstatic. I thought, how could this doctor be working in the same building as the previous one I’d met? We went into anti-depressant plans. He told me that their effects were unpredictable. They may lift my mood, they may do nothing at all, they may even make me feel worse. Nobody really knew what molecular pathways serotonin activated, but it sometimes pulled people out of circular ways of thinking. And dopamine, well, taken in too high a dose, could make you psychotic.

Sign me the **** up, I thought, gazing at my new medical hero. These are the kinds of non-assurances that match my experience of life. Trust and expectations lead only to disappointment. Give me pure insurmountable doubt.

Friday, 28th of April, 2017, afternoon.

“The drugs won’t be too long,” the pharmacist said before disappearing into the back room. I milled around th
1. Autonomous sensory meridian response is a tingling sensation triggered by auditory cues, such as whispering, rustling, tapping, or crunching.
2. An exit bag is a DIY apparatus used to asphyxiate oneself with an inert gas. This circumvents the feeling of suffocation one experiences through hanging or drowning.
3. Neon Genesis Evangelion is a psychoanalytic deconstruction of the mecha genre, that ends with the entire human race undergoing ego death and returning to the womb.
4. Komm Süsser Tod is an (in)famous song from End of Evangelion that plays after the main character, who has become God, decides that the only way to end all the loneliness and suffering in the world is for everyone to die.
5. Senpai is a Japanese term for someone senior to you, whom you respect. It is also an anime trope.
6. https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1936097/meconnaissance/
7. https://thesleepofreason.com/2017/04/04/****-yourself/
8. See Earthlings.
9. See Cowspiracy.
10. Franz Kafka was an existentialist writer from the 20th century who wrote about alienation, anxiety and absurdity.
11. Electrocardiography monitors measure one’s heart rate through electrodes attached to the skin.
12. Neoliberalism is both an economic and cultural regime. Economically, it is about deregulating markets so that government services can be privatised, placed into the hands of transnational corporations, who, because of their global positioning, can more easily circumvent nation-state policies, and thereby place pressure on states that require their services through the threat of departure. Culturally, it is about reframing social issues into individual issues, so that individuals are held responsible for their failures, rather than the social circumstances surrounding them. As a victim-blaming discourse, it depicts all people equal and equally capable, regardless of socio-economic status. All responsibility lies on the individual, rather than the state, society or culture that cultivated their subjectivity.
13. Postmodernism is a movement that critiques modernism’s epistemological totalitarianism, colonial humanism and utopian visions of progress. It emphasises instead the fragmented, ephemeral and embodied human experience, incapable of capture in monolithic discourses that treat all humans as equal and capable of abstract authenticity. Because all objective knowledge is constructed out of subjective experience, the subject can never be effaced. Instead knowledge and power must be investigated as always coming from somewhere, someone and sometime.
Harsh Mar 2013
I'm craving a man-hug tonight,
initiated by strong arms picking up my under weight body
letting me believe I'm re-enacting the lift from ***** dancing.
And as those arms hold me close
I would bury my face in his neck
where after shave meets his soft pulse and the warmth of my breath.
This hug would be so tight,
tight enough to squeeze the pain out of my soul
and be incredibly protective at the same time
beating away the nightmares of reality late at night.
A hug that draws out all the tears that should have been cried
until my eyes run dry
and start shedding all the rejection accumulated throughout this plight.
An unconditional man-hug with its ends free,
one not subjected to a **** in my mouth
a cigarette
*****
a cigarette
couple of poems
insomnia
and a cold bed.
I crave for a man-hug that will liberate me
from the pathetic standards I've set for myself,
of how I should be treated before handing a piece of me in exchange.
One that would numb the little voice in my head
which goes on and on
about self-deprecating *******
bundling together all the mistakes made over the years
and spanking my self-confidence
until it dresses up in a short skirt and high heels
and runs into the arms of a narcissist *****.
A man-hug to step in and save the day
when loneliness breaks in,
and murders empowerment, independence and positivity in their sleep,
then opens the door to insecurity and fear,
who robs all hope,
leaving behind intolerable darkness.
I crave for a man-hug that follows through to the end
with stability and consistency,
like mom's cooking or my best friend,
or daddy's instant reaction to defend.
One that's tangible and attainable
without twirling my fingers around forgotten jewellery,
phone messages
or a drunk memory
just to remind myself what it felt like,
but only to be reminded that it can never be felt again.
Though I'm craving a man-hug tonight
I will have no luck.
Because anything with "man" in front of it,
will always just be a ****.
This poem is the sole property of me and cannot be copied or used without permission. [Copyright G.H. Rodrigo 04/03/2013]
we live in times when words have lost their meaning
they only serve to fill some soundbite gaps between
faces of popstars, politicians, presidential candidates,
maybe some refugees, victims of crimes and natural catastrophes

and more sensational media creations flooding our lives
with unrelenting hype unless you push the button
that brings quiet to your life   and you find time to reconsider
what it might be  exactly you desire to achieve

in the short time we are allotted in this world
you will discover it is not the senseless media blather
but some coherent thoughts turned into words becoming deeds
enacting change leading to bold decisions

think for yourself and don’t let others think for you
then speak your thoughts in words like others cannot do
Big Virge Nov 2014
Ya know .....

This Violence thing ....    
just isn't in me ... !!!  
I'm just wondering when ...    
you masses will see ,,, ?  
    
That wars are like ****** ....  
"Without" ... A ***** ... !!!!!!  
    
See ... it really is ... "Futile"  
to be messin' with me ...  
    
I've got logic like Spock  
and ... Big Ears ...  
Don't you see ... !?!  
    
Yes ...    
The name is ... " Big V "  
and this style I believe ... ?  
is called ... "Slam poetry !?!"  
and I hear that ... to win ...  
it helps if ... you're ...    
    
........... FUNNY ........ !!!!!  
    
Well .....  
I hate to ... Disappoint ...  
    
But ...    
That's just ... missing ... the point !  
    
I try to write things  
that are built to ... " Anoint " ...  
An ... "Elixir of Pictures"  
in terms of ... My ... Scripture ...  
    
That Affect ... your mind ...  
Like ... Smoking ... "A Joint" ... !!!!!  
    
See ...    
One day it was Yoda ...  
who said to me ....  
    
'Virgil my son  
this poetry thing  
is your DESTINY !!!"  
    
Like Luke I said ....  
    
"Maaaannnn,    
that just isn't me  
performing this thing  
they call, Slam Poetry !?!"  
    
So ......  
Now that this veil ...  
is .... Covering me ...  
    
I feel like Darth Vader ...  
with forces ... So DARK ... !!!!!  
    
I keep checkin' my head ...  
for that ... 666 ... Mark ... !!!!!!!  
    
But .......    
God's force ... I ... " Believe " ...    
just keeps ... "Loving Me" ...  
So ... "My Soul" ... like my mind  
will always be .... " FREE " ....  
    
"Violence" ... surrounds me ...  
yet ... "Angels in my Heart" ...  
but it's ...... "Lucipher" ........  
Don't you .... see .... !?!?!?!  
    
who sits back with a ... "***" ...  
looking on .... " Patiently " ....  
Awaiting .... Those .... "Fools"  
    
.............. Wanting ................  
    
"Destruction' ...... of ...... " WE " .....  
    
"We" .... as in .... " PEOPLE "    
    
So .... What's Your ... " Destiny ? "    
    
It's ... "Lost Souls" ...  
who'll be ... ****** ...  
for ....... ETERNITY ........................  
    
So .......  
What DO they ... Achieve ... !???!  
    
See ......  
I've found ... NO Relief ...  
and now ... "TRULY" ... Believe ...  
A ... "Great Many" ... in this world  
just keep being ....  " Deceived " ....  
by ... BULL** ... and ... Lies  
that the ..... Media ..... "FEEDS"    
    
While these ... "Draculas" ... " **** ! "  
It's my heart that just .... "BLEEDS"    
    
Thus My Words ...    
search for ... "TRUTH"  
with .... " INTENSITY " .... !!!!!  
    
while Violence ... now ... " Reigns "  
in each ... " Big City " ... !!!!!  
    
EVEN ........  
Young Girls will ... "****" ... !!?!!  
Stab a gay ... in his chest ...    
or .... could it be .... This .... ???  
    
Is she just ... "Re-enacting" ...  
what she saw in ... **** Bill ... !???!  
    
"We told you before,  
Quentin's films are TOO VIOLENT !!!!!"  
    
The censors ... Complain ...  
but ... who is the ... Tyrant ... ?!?  
    
A man using film ... to ...  
"Reflect" ... our ... Environment  
    
Or .... "Overpaid MP's" ....  
who NEED ... Early Retirement !!!!!  
    
So ... Who do you ... TRUST ... !?!  
    
"Ashes to Ashes"    
    
........ or .........  
    
"Dust to Dust"  
    
An Icepick ... in your chest ... !!!  
in a ... FIT ... of ... " LUST " ... !?!  
    
Well .......  
It's my ... Basic Instinct ...  
That allows me to ... "Drink" ...  
    
I've got ... "A Shield of Steel" ...  
But ... My name ain't ... "BATFINK" ... !!!!!!  
    
See ...    
In these few words ...  
"My Truth" ... is ...  
    
.... REVEALED .... !!!!!  
    
and like ... Bruce ...  
I survive .....  
    
On my ... "Boy Scout" ... Appeal ... !!!  
but now it seems ..........  
Like Lambs ........  
    
You're all ... "quiet and silent" ...  
as I draw .... analogies ....  
from movies ... with ... VIOLENCE ...  
    
So ... when this .... Inscription ....  
is ... "FINALLY" ... "DONE" ...  
    
Will I be ... " The ONE " ... ?  
who's ... INJECTED ... your mind  
with thoughts of ... " Freedom " ... ?!?  
    
Well .....  
Be careful what you wish for ... !!!  
cos' i'm the ... "Wishmasters' Son" ... !!!    
and will take your ... Last Breath ...  
if you wish to ... Retain ...  
Your ... " Youthful Reflection " ...  
    
So .....  
What ... Reflects ... WHAT ... !?!?!?  
    
Is it ... Life ... "Within Movies" ... ?  
    
................. or ....................... ?????  
    
Movies that .... " Reflect " ....  
what goes on in ... OUR LIVES ... ?    
    
I'm not Arnie .... !!!  
BELIEVE ME ......... !!!!!!!!  
What's TRUE ... in a ... LIE ... ?!?  
    
I'm a ... "Lyrical" ... Prince ...  
but ... My Doves ... "DO NOT CRY" ... !!!!!!  
    
It's ... " PEACE " ... That I LIVE FOR ... !!!  
    
So this VIOLENCE ...    
    
........ “ MUST DIE ” ....... !!!!!!!
I'm pretty much, Anti ... Poetry slams, having done a few back when I wrote this, but, have to at least be thankful, for these words they inspired ! How many movies and shows do you know that I have mentioned ... ???
Z May 2014
The parasympathetic nervous system
is responsible for regulations
unconsciously transpiring
within the organs and
the glands of
the body.
Such as:
urination, salivation, digestion, defecation, and
lacrimation
(noun. ‘the flow of tears’. Latin.
from lacrimare (‘weep’) and lacrima (‘tear’).
It’s why I cry
even when I don’t want to.
You are the parasympathetic nervous system.

The (ortho-)sympathetic nervous system
is responsible for the mobilization
of the fight-or-flight response
and constantly maintaining
homeostasis within
the body.
It acts
rapidly, enacting an attempt at stability and
the necessary and critical ability
to suddenly escape
on pulsing legs or
cling to survival through
brandishing adrenaline-doused knuckles
and dilated pupils.
It’s why you live
even when you don’t want to.
I am the sympathetic nervous system.

The parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems
are two of three essential nervous systems which
compose the autonomic nervous system
(a part of the peripheral
nervous system)
that manages
involuntary
functions of the body. Such as:
swallowing, perspiration, arousal, breathing, and
heart rate
(noun. ‘the speed of the heartbeat’.
usually expressed in beats per minute. mine speeds up when I see you).
Individually these two systems oppose
but compliment
each other like our hands do—
pressed together and omitting equal force;
veins meeting
at the fingertips and throbbing at the wrists
but running amuck on our respective digits otherwise.
You are the invariable and unspoken reminder to
breath,
love,
sweat,
and live.
I am the sudden snap of reality always aiming to save you
but grudgingly willing to fight you and
ready
to
leave.

From the deepest lower half of my brainstem
and from every nerve
in my cycling body,
I’m sorry.
From all of my chromaffin cells
and from the truest parts of submandibular ganglian,

I am sorry.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
one - i don't understand why saying "it's the 21st century" is somehow seen as a compensation for 20 centuries of our inhumanity, or a case of: only improvements reside in us - seems just as false to say - men can overcome angels, as stated by the first Christians... yeah, we can do miracles with technology and ultra-secular communication dynamics - discarding the existence of such beings resulted in hen parties with plastic wings and halos... what a great method to discard such being, and subsequently appropriate their features, if ever needed, but altogether unnecessary... two - that disrespecting heterosexuality aligned with the power of science has made it altogether a pointless endeavour in re-enacting the monogamous nature of swans: if we can breed the many perversions, ahem, deviations, we surely require en equal share of respect, before science undermines any deviations into an economic format of breeding pure heterosexual contingencies... three: who the hell said i was throwing anyone off a roof? i was just curious about the slack pressurising the alias big brother / grey matter dictator into teaching us language, then to later make us into a Koranic cyclops or having to sway one side, but not the other, teaching us vocabulary in school, but robbing us of a fluidity of language beyond school, in society... any rational man would say: just teach me the knuckle, the stone and the stick to express my manners... because, to be frank, i'm not into faking being civilised, just teach me to be a barbarian from the start, don't dangle the magic carrot in front of my eyes when it's a fake... teach me the barbarism you want to suppress later on in life: i'm not into being Dolly 2.3419, and an attache to a sheepdog for herding purposes to take it up the **** and shut up: because a member of Parliament did it to me aged 14; for example.

subjectivity is doubled attacked, it's not the merely rationalist
approach of an objective side of things,
i could understand tiresome efforts
Chinese politics while walking
the tourist plot on the great wall -
in a society that's seismically acknowledging
social or whatever coherence,
i find it a bit of limbo of paraphrasing
trans - or trans-physics, or the active
way to usurp metaphysics, by deviating
from thought as an activity, and more
how words are sense datum co-ordinates
that are like dictators: because it just, feels,
funny, and, offensive. ***** vocabulary,
that's what i call it... after a while you concentrate
on what ****** you off, first the educational
autocracy teaches you a vocabulary,
then come the St. Thomas' terrorists with:
you need to revise your vocabulary...
like **** that'll happen, you don't own
language, i don't own language, you're
little fascist agenda to censor such awoke
the boy that was supposed to wake Barbarossa
from his slumber with the cry: crows! crows!
a cloud of crows! funny how the eagle is a
failed emblem for empires, and the crow isn't...
mind you, the English succeeded with
an empire half-and-half: a lion and a unicorn...
i'd guess as much with a monkey and
a centaur, or at least a Cerberus - something
mythical - well, sure, the Poles are attacked
in Britain... but ever hear about the Scot
being attacked in an English village?
a Scot was attacked just the other day,
because kilts were deemed offensive...
so trans-gender is good, meta-gender is:
had a wee t'ink 'bout it...
   robots start with the pronoun use: one...
royalty start with the pronoun use: we...
                 and in between we have paranoid
they and we... and insecure you and i -
or as e. e. cummings would have it:
    *i say no world
                 can hold a you
   shall see the not
             because
  and why but
                          (who
        -
true, but as much of not is entanglement
              with knots - or ought to tries -
  to not or to knot and be -
                              Shakespeare also said:
  funny how i was born neo-liberal,
millennial tattooed - and fake-left...
   i hear the right is a tsunami of focus these days,
all the generation Z are buying into
obstructing gay-marriage, and are adamant
   on not abusing pronouns - hence the current
revival in grammar school education in England -
they don't drink, i.e.: taking psychopathic gambles,
they're prone to social-media overdoses
rather than succumbing to excess ecstasy and palpitation:
i had 190 "friends"... let's just call them vantage points...
   sheered that social media sheep: only 13 left...
but at least objectivity outright says:
       subjectivity is subhuman, science taught us
that subjectivity is the fire between two flint stones,
all in all necessary - but objectivity said:
             two flints! two flints! no fire!
what attacks subjectivity is not objectivity,
it's satire... to humanise everything: good or bad,
with a standard of humour... well... telling a sad
joke to later tell the same sad joke by satirising it...
punch in a face; because there are only so number of
things that are funny in life... the English language
doesn't seem to understand that even the odd chance
of black humour, will not lift the spirits of those,
who, quiet frankly, don't want to be humoured...
the only humour left is not to provision the public
with barbaric satire, sometimes empathy will do,
because it's emphatic humour,
   it's Godot's roundabout humour: the shared experience.
laughing for the sake of laughing is
             a cry from apathy's lost interest in
being pardonably dasein - laughing at all the truthful
autobiographic desecrate is apathy's last
chance to impress: but how foul it all sounds by then...
   the western version of buddhism suddenly feels like
  a taste of pears in november: not sour, not bitter...
just maggoty foul - yucky goo
                  of a plum-shaded rouse of the skin
tinged hue after contact with knuckle and knee.
  but they attacked a ******* Scot in an English village,
because of a kilt...
                                   he knows the strand of ganging up
in hyena numbers and then the celebratory drink
of compensating conscience - they'll sooner accept
     a trans-gender dunno'h than a hot-blooded
heap of tartan - ever ask the homosexuals what
they think of St. Thomas' gospel?
              i think: too much, too early, too innocently.
and if they tell you: speak differently!
they will, i'm ****** sure they will want to
control your grammar without any specialisation -
you'll wonder: summer in Syria?
                     because as racism goes,
they attack the difference, and the difference is only
skin deep, like they did with the Afros of Kentucky,
the Kentucky Afros will spring right back,
    because the abuse was only skin deep,
therefore their soul was enlarged, and they'll
play the blues, and the jazz, and rap, and break-dance...
but if the abuse goes to the depth of soul...
in that it's soul-deep...
                                and because it's white v. white...
it will ferment, and nothing positive will come from it...
no jazz, no blues... nothing of cultural importance...
   it will be haggled in the political market
to the point where both sides will find it utterly
unbearable: and then start to sheer their skins...
        you won't get anything from this soul-deep
attack... if the holocaust is what it felt like,
            then this is a minor post-holocaust episode,
a reminder...
                          and by god, i thank god
for the fact that the Picts are involved -
                                                            whe­re to now?
O Imperium Gladstone paraphrase?
                            it will be hard to beat the unicorn -
all empires donning the eagle duly fail -
centaur and a frog? maybe next time.
MV Blake Mar 2015
You sit gathered in

Robes wielding knives

From your sleeves;

How determined are you?

Did you agree this death

Behind closed doors?

Assassins in closets,

Knives in their craws,

A ****** of crows pecking

A dying wolf's paws.

How calm you lie

While you hide the knife

You used to slay me;

How calm and sure.

Did you hesitate

To put me in the ground?

Was it hard to push it in

Without a sound?
Reece Jul 2013
Smoke stacks, shadows cast
Looking back, into the past
Industrial town, all around
Look at me, I wear a frown
Pretty girls, in wedding gowns
and here we are, falling down
For all around this ***** town
Is a crumbling council
and shops run-down
Golden brown, sweet ****** sound
The summer sings, sun shines down
But the government continues
To let us drown
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2018
<•>
4/10/18 10:55pm ~ 4/22/18 2:02 am

Introduction

a simpler than plain fact,  
deserving reflection beyond the obvious,
containing obverse emotional mine field sonar arrays
floating on an ocean unhidden,
listening for the ocean's bleeping hid-dens,
before surrendering to its ****-sinking power of time/gravity
the better life elsewhere is always someone’s misery


<•>
confetti is just tomorrow’s garbage

someone stood on lower Broadway at 5am
watching the sanitation men sweeping up the aftermath of a super bowl  victor’s celebration, with broom heads borrowed from giants’ moustaches

passage of a single thought,
that the victorious celebrated on the parade should
a posteriori be required to participate
in this flip-side experience as
‘active cleaner uppers,’
re-enacting the famous Persian Sufi adage,

“this is too shall pass”

someone whispers we have blessed lives,
rich in the experiential, free of the dragging boredom
of the daily draining of making it, head well above of the
humanizing periodic regularizing water dunkin’ reminder
of just
or

“we too shall pass”

so even the confetti honorees must have too someone whose
life to aspire, the top of the heap, in chained food chain world

assaying perfection and the luck thereof,
picture perfect lives cannot withstand tsunamis of
waves eroding their shapes, wearing boundaries down,
do not forget the invisible invitation from the riptide
just beneath the calm surgical surficial surfacing disguises

if you face my book, will find in a later chapter prior
the fine sorry lines, the pierced titanium bulletproof vest,
the divorces of mistakes remade, the haunted envisioning,
the obligatory items that keep you awake, those awesome
responsibilities that take many small bites of a soul’s coverlet
that cannot be removed isolated jailed or desperate destroyed

confetti rained interspersed with droplets of sand grains,
this man of constant tomorrows, hopeful Mondays, bad Fridays,
is a man of constant sorrows,
pictures and poems life celebrating a never allowed to forget
lucky runs out like the string from packages saved
when no more packages arrive

when the packages no longer get delivered
oh that started years ago, when came the bile instead
of the blood’s replacement clotting factors

passing is a sometime thing
sometime is a most imprecisely defined terminus
sometime means that today’s confetti is a day away
as resurrected garbage
but nonetheless,
you are forever responsible for the cleanup


a picture worth a thousand words
but in me lives
tens of ten thousands words,
including

“this is too shall pass”

<•>
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2467058/writers-block-kick-the-editor-out-of-the-room/
finally finished fin
Harper Oct 2012
Sleeping someone somewhere
Dreams of drinking daises
Laying lucid loving lavender
Adapting admiration of the ages
Koala kites, kaleidoscope cries
Bubbles blowing bare beauty
Riding radiance rapidly realizing
Forsaken focus freeing form
Soaring sensation seeps synchronicity
Dripping differences deranged
Rearranged ripples randomly react
Enacting endorphins equally engaging
Induced ignition infinitely intact
Pulsating precision purpose full pact
Toothache Mar 2019
Please come and find me.
Playful whispers in the dark.
Who am I calling?
I suppose...
My baby,
Can I call you baby?


O sweet lullabyes in the night,
Hold me in mild constriction.
Squeeze a little bit tighter, love.
I don't know how much time I have left.
Delusional!
Alone on the vacuum.
Scratching at air for any oxygen my depraved lungs can find,
Suffocating on your love,
Choking on your divinity.

Oh darling,
My sweet crimson lover
Dancing on the bridge of death at the break of dawn,
You swing me in your arms,
Tight tongue behind your violent grin,
Your hair grows stars, and your arms bend time,
my fatal partner in a tango to the edge of the earth.

Heartless as you torture me,
Wrench my soul playfully,
Foolishly and ignorantly,
Pulling my strings.
Enacting
autopilot daydreams
Painting mindless patterns
On an inky black sky,

Orange slices on existential beach
Sparkling warm coast,
The cosmos like a bright sunny day above.
Bitter ashes mix and churn with the sand,
I'm sinking,
Quickly,
Help me!
But you just watch.
And I sink until I hit the bottom
And there I lie,
Falling asleep to as my grief fills the ocean.


The zodiac locked fate,
Fish and Virgins! Fish and Virgins!
Poets and failures,
Academics and frauds,
Spring and summer to autumn and madness,
My eternal indigo diary,
My blueberry lipstick,
My lavender kiss.
Leaving light stains on my love-lorn letters,
Mailed to you on Sunday,
Delivered along the Milky Way.

Waiting emptily,
In an empty white asylum,
With an empty mind,
Waiting for you,
My answer,
My meaning,
My red and blue jumper.
Not standing up to stretch,
But sitting still,
Letting my bones grow stiff,
To creak under my weight,
Like an old back porch,
Made for a pair of old lovers,
Desolate,
Withered by neglect,
Empty.

A pointless pray for solace,
In hope you will come,
My prince of waves,
My fifth science,
My escape from this never ending sporadic spiral down into the murky, dusty, purple fog of asinine and inane.
My peace of mind.
My baby.
Can I call you baby?
How can I die in peace when we all die alone.
Haydn Swan Dec 2014
If only you knew the damage caused
a few small words said and forgotten
days and hours of painful analysing
awake late at night, cold sweat haze
reliving, re-enacting, in my mind
caught in a time trap, held on repeat
left on my own, locked in this hurt
I hear my voice repeat as I cry
eternally asking the question, why?
.
Michael W Noland Aug 2012
a beast
bitterly binding
the broken books
of the benevolence
that be-seats
the thrones of thieves
a binary botulism baby
survived by
the lowest common denominator
lord of may be
the calamity shaker
shaking limbs from trees
he made me
who am i
to be enshrined by
the designs in which
he heaves the storms away
leaves the drones in decay
as of yesterday
in an electrical parfait
of symbiotic energy
******* tempting me
in its tether
as embryonic entities
shutter the flow
to the effects
that no one knows
of the development and growth
of self
and the foes he oppose
as was imposed upon
by force of will
exposed and deloused
of the shrill
cockiness instilled
in his build
aroused
in the post stillness
of his kills
he is i
and i am thrilled
to lower the shields
leveling out the playing field
and yielding
to the technical terminology
of my basic demonologies
of my ****** up philosophies
cloning the technologies
you infuse into the spirituality
of your broken dichotomy
just let me know
how that goes
as corrosive winds blow
through the boroughs
of your haunts
i can almost feel
the taunts
as i hear the boots clomp
turn to stomping through the door
enacting your unholy chores
in that which bares no reward
the price is blood
the cost is love
in which i cannot afford
unfurled upon the hoard
in torn intellect
abhorred in the twirls
of a de-cored vortex
inter-sexed
and robbed of originality
in the result of cultural finality
empty
in a sea of dreams
our heads blown apart
is only the start
as it seems
ill be whispering
from afar
by dark
yet to embark
from under the rage of my darkening heart
but if i hiss cyphers into your charts
ill become safer than the cause
as i shall get the sympathy
of the claws
across my character
in the jaws of the barrier
to non existence
its even scarier
than the persistence
of ignorant citizens
with hard-ons
and night vision
down-loadable intuition
with the precision of the averages
unlocked savages
in the ravages
of synthetic bliss
1.1 happiness
projected in eyelids
emptiness
defectors of the world
gotta free them
beat them
if you have to
defeat them in the bathroom with a knife
rip their chips of deceit
show them life
clip their legs in retreat
until they secrete
the evil from their throats
binary bohemia
pooling into a despondent
pool of blasphemy
drained happily
from the heads of greed
only when willing
to commit to killing
can we fix the dream
and control the lean
of modernized thinking
chromatically depleting
as our chromosomes are shrinking
not one inkling
nor notion
of the ocean sinking
before the rise
and in all that you bitterly despise
forgotten
as the world is washed
before your eyes
yet to realize
the compliance of failed tries
a crashed system of self told lies
yet ...
i still spy the better days
i can smell them in range
estranged
surprised
i muffle the cries
of demise
in reprise
of a new name
a fresh start
summarized
in the surmise
of restraint
the faint
whisper
delivering from here
the elixir of life's experiences
cryptically laid upon the sentences
of my ethereal commencements
the beautiful lessons
entrenched in the blemishes
the scars of the heart
impart
on you
the virtues
of the tried and true
blood sweat and tears
in the blurbs
of yesteryear
obtuse
it be my will
to instill
in you
the
jaded
truth
love yourself
and i shall
love you
too
Simon Oct 2019
A fulcrum to a virus, is stabilizing the charge of negativity in the bodies natural system. The heart feels it’s blood rippling with contractions. Main internal organs feeling the depth at which disturbance is relative to the norm. The norm being (activity) in the face of hustling environmental situations. Outside your system, or inside isn’t contrary by any means. It’s the same as if it were simple inputs reacting in a form able to move on its own accord. Syncing with the outputting world. Activity starting to measure itself for the greater good. A judgment calls in the face of closing a deal. The deal is finally running into something meant for challenges to address the norm from growing stale too early to experiment. Experiments meant to mold something that’s already in preparation. Waiting for the call to the fulcrum making ends meet with the negativity taking effect. Stronger as the virus who is used to surroundings of this caliber. An arsenal made to manufacturer imprints onto your biological code of conduct. Operating a system’s (will) against its own preparations. A set up of different fulcrums into the breath of negativities process. A virus! Virus includes its force of adjustment in the form of flaying innocent diagrams. Innocent diagrams pinpointing the exact locations which the virus could have a better hold of a body’s systems to executing its process of negativity. Spreading this unusual influence will boost the construct’s own fulcrum. So now it’s virus’s fulcrum versus body’s fulcrum? Can’t predict what hasn’t started processing the experiment. Knowing that much, will scare your interpretations from ever taking true shape. Never appreciating another awareness again. Only as long as it’s needed to accomplish it’s objective. Virus or systems encased in a body formation. There more alike then you think. Giving credit away from what is truly obvious. Virus…bad. No virus…good. The virus might as well shove its fulcrum right down your throat! Forcing you to understand just how premature you sound. Experiments issued by the systems controls, enacting a system wide preparation. Conceding balance controls. Its preparations already tested itself enough in its own environment. Its own tools and mechanisms ready for performance. Components never shy away from a challenge. Unless you’re a conscious base simplifier? Wanting nothing more then to not issue such orders. Getting in the way for a conscious system never understanding its own velocities bouncing one second to the next. It’s sometimes a burden in the light. Focusing on too much, is sometimes a headache waiting to run you dry! Virus prompting the systems desire to accept its fulcrums challenge. Respecting the process of negativity to run it’s course. Tempting the virus to not drown its components too easily. Virus tempted to act. Systems body waiting for virus to take the obvious bait. Which is too good to be true? If only the rules of different fulcrums were to make a biological check under the hood. Everything wouldn’t be so confusing, repetitive, or complicated. The list doesn’t go on and on. It lapses with the same circulation of promises to act on certain flaws that are made out to be one-sided believe and claim. When it’s actually the one-sided always tipping the scale in the end. Concluding the advantages of two opposites never winning the same side as itself. One-sided meant for only one giant slice of balance can be met. Never completely diminishing the result thorough to its points of interest. Interest is already exasperating its body language! Process of negativity is openly resonating from deep inside. Cells becoming soggy. Filled with disbelieve in itself. Trying to interlock messages out toward other neighbouring cells of similar placements. A cell being no more different then someone’s own home. Space reacting to your design. You’re believe system. Instincts holding sturdy promises to the experiment. Which meets every expectation available? A heated discussion between the spaces of cells. Something is radiating those spaces between ties uncut by regular motives. Fulcrums don’t imagine well. It’s a circumstance of visuals, and feeling. Nothing more to hold your own full of reflective potential in remaining stable between your relations. Don’t let yourself become uncomposed in the face of negativities actions. The virus is cunning. Yet ill tempered. Never hesitating to take the whole neighbouring block out with itself. Annihilating itself over the control of its fulcrums (want’s and needs). Diverse a charge to big for complications to arise out from the self replication that is voting the fulcrums negativity to higher platforms. Frequencies ricocheting back and force. Like kids bouncing from phase to phase, in order to find themselves. A dust settled in wrong claims of itself. The experiment was a sham. Virus has been tricked! Tricked by its own flawless nature. The system rejoices the claim of servitude. You were never really supposed to willingly action our will to newer adaptions. It’s tolerable to think two sides of the same coin, could ever amount peace. A peaceful remedy too powerful for the likes of a mere prisoner. The virus gasps in suppression. Never dislocating influence back into the stream of fulcrums not yet devised to join it’s cause. A cause made up. No servitude. Except for one ego rising better than the other. Becoming its own worse enemy. A self reflecting charge full of gimmicks too in denial and childish to RIP succession apart! The virus speaks one last time. I-I…thought we had a deal?! Now how does a deal go unaddressed, when we didn’t notify each other of such claims? The prisoner is escaping! Hold it for ransom?! The fulcrum of systems body, sinisterly grins delight. Let’s test the strength of similar brethren. In the attempt to draw more to our immaculate system of faithful desires!
A deceiver in the light, thinking it’s the deceiver in the dark. Mixed communications through tightened visuals of appealing the issue. Judges something not what it seems to be at first.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
only a scouse inhabitant could have pointed it out (merseyside english / liverpool) to no better comparison.

i'd love to have the salt & pepper dilemma
between low alcohol sessions and
high ******* session, just did the low
alcohol sessions and laughed, after having
become equipped with marijuana "abuse"
starving / fasting, never gearing for chips
and munchies...
the streets of london look a lot different
walking about high & hungry
rather than jokey and as a jockey of an
imaginary horse...
god made sanity and soberness an ivory tower
that was not worth defending
unless for manual tasks... all other tasks
were never ready for the multipliers of human presence,
not all of us would hammer a nail
for all the scratches of a vinyl disk if all were able.
indeed the scouse lad knew it,
languages that clung to latin were left historically
naked, without diacritical marks,
instead they delved deep as to upkeep the latin
they forced the closure of grammar schools
along with coal mines...
and what they earned was not a sense of categorisation,
english slosh tongue said the 18th century
happened akin to the abhorrence of moral relativism
by socrates to make stab in the eye a ******,
to thus say bronze age was but a hundred years...
keeping latin naked as it was by the abhorred
conquered land of the romans due to its bad weather
may have made a milton or a shakespeare arable...
but because of a certain type of censoring not ever used,
what became beautiful in other european tongues
became the ugly spelling of the english tongue,
what became stress marks of "accent" for the french,
and german, romanian and polish,
there was none of that in english, instead
we became accustomed to aesthetic "marks", that
were "marks" because there were no actual examples
for a clear rubric... instead we received too many examples,
the particulars of why we wrote the and said a sharpened v
in written form v'eh off veer...
there are no unitary aesthetics marks other that words
themselves... rather than what we have in terms
of unitary diacritical marks of akin umlaut...
there's no where else to go... the Minotaur has caught
up with us and our shadow! there's no labyrinth to further
our heaving lung to cheat both silence and breath! there's isn't!
it's the end... not using diacritical marks on units
only creates aesthetics of multiplying units
where they are multiplied: riddle... mirror...
                 keep, kettle, leer, pass, throttle, amiss.

(the syllables are not perfectly connected,
therefore much of "coining the phrase"
with prefixes anti- con- un- sub-
being endeared into your vocabulary,
then again clearly, accenting and aesthetics
compare to reach a parallel,
never leave it naked i say, never leave it naked,
for fear of reprisal of that which ought
be buried still alive, and with clear
acuteness for certain letters appropriating
there is no originality in the british tongue
for origins of the a - z under virgil
who originated the letters to the plagiarism
of grecian theology with the trojans
moving from turkey to italy -
therefore you become akin to other european
nations enacting a parasitic semblance
for the simple reason of ease coupled
with the many "loop holes" of the tongue,
or you reach absolution with the missing diacritic
as reasons for the modern acronyms: l8r, o.m.g.,
b.a.e., i.r.l.... all of this crap is a byproduct.)

but to say latin is dead, you must recreate the latin
alphabet with an ethnic particularity of a modulation
that might be compared to the migration of goths /
huns / vandals... to say 'latin is dead' and keep the
latin a without a modulation to craft an ą,
is a darwinian heresy that demands counter-evolution;
there's hardly one coliseum in london, although
i admit plenty of football stadiums;
still the evolutionary need is still necessary
and consistent, because it's not the case of the three
wise monkeys seeing, hearing saying no evil...
if this phonetic geometric is to survive and the crucifix
not be a vanity shield of artists due to the wrathful lamb,
it will need to specify whether it's gaelic english,
welsh, australian, london based, come home county based,
arizona or texas draw.
Danny Wolf Jun 2018
The Hanbleceya.
The cry for a vision.
The Vision Quest.
The space between worlds.
In the presence of the Great Mystery.
I went down to the fire,
and she, the self I aim to be,
was not there.
I became her.
And maybe just for that moment on my blanket because I needed to be her.
She is on the eternal quest.
Forever in search,
forever seeking.
That magic I was hoping for did not emerge in the way I believed it would...
I let instead the Earth, and only her,
hear my screams.
Hear some deep agony within me,
maybe not even completely of my own.
Maybe the ancestral pains of the women who carried lives before me.
Red is the road to my heart,
is the color that bled out of me on the way up.
Dripping prayers down my legs,
each step became even more sacred.
Together, we sang our warrior song.
They are my amor, my comfort, my shelter, my warmth.
But on your blanket in your circle of prayers,
there is only you and the Creator.
You and the Great Mystery.
You and your fears, your pains, your demons.
You and your truths, your reasons, your prayers.
It is your choice whether to feed to thirst and hunger in your head,
or the hunger in your soul.
There is no greater pain than a soul not enacting its purpose,
its duty, its agreement with the Divine.
No greater pain.
And those screams that emerged from me,
from depths vast and deep,
was everything I ever let block me.
When we are broken open,
when we cry that deep soul cry,
we are breaking to let love and truth in,
we are watering our gardens.
So what magic am I believing was not present?
A vision may have not been shown to me,
but the courage of a single moment was.
To decide to not shut my eyes,
but to pray.
To offer compassions back to the Earth and take less for myself.
To not **** a single mosquito,
but rather walk off that blanket four days later marked with their persistence.
I watched their points enter my flesh
and saw their bodies fill with my blood.
Maybe they were extracting from me all that I no longer need.
And what itch is worse?
That of a red bump,
or that of the soul's need to incessantly scratch through its flesh suit to get to the core of its truth?
There were hours upon hours I let myself fall silent.
Listened to the sound of the woodpecker,
watched the spider crawl,
saw the turkey run.
They know how to be at home here.
And it is nothing grand that they do,
but they understand their purpose and place and they do not strive to feed and ego.
They do not "Ease God Out."
They are of God,
they are a God of their own.
So how do I remove myself from all the ******* of this world
if I do not place my being into the womb of Creation and sit?
The layers strip down,
the sun rises and sets and does so again.
I began to know before the sky would lighten that the morning was coming soon just by the sounds of the forrest.
The great trees barely swayed and the Earth was uprooting.
What am I doing here?
The days were long and hard and filled with a frustrating buzzing in my ears.
Buzzing like all the nonsensical thoughts we have on a daily basis.
If only our ears would buzz and ring every time we had a thought that backtracked us from our truths
and the inherent love that is within our beings.
If only we had the persistence of the mosquito that does not,
will not stop until it is filled with the one nectar it was meant to live on.
There were moments of bliss and moments I felt anxiety bubble up within.
Such a rare form of myself,
a piece of me I do not know too well.
I wanted to crawl out of my skin and be gone.
Be wind, be ether, be smoke.
Be gone.
And then they came,
bearing compassion.
Just a single sip of water.
Just a little.
They handed me that cup and I just cried.
Cried from the depths of my being.
"Do I even deserve this?"
And I let some moments pass,
held that cup in my hands and prayed in the form of tears.
That water,
that precious gift bearing life,
it touched my lips and made its way into my being.
And all become calm.
I am here for a purpose,
on this blanket, I mean.
I am here and meant to be no where but here.
And gently they spoke of the 6 pointed white star flowers surrounding me.
Not to me,
but a message for me.
A reminder of the beauty all around,
if I would only just look.
There I was,
sitting upon the hands of Creation.
If I had just stopped to listen,
stopped to breathe,
maybe I would have understood that on my own.
But that is why we tie that red prayer hung to our Ancestors.
He said,
"that prayer is your reminder to come back."
So for the next 360 days until I sit upon my blanket again,
the only prayer is to remember what I learned on that Mountain.
To remember what a blessing it is to drink a sip of water,
to be alone,
to look not into the eyes of another,
but only see the beauty of Creation.
I went out there wanting to be silent.
To just listen to what the world had to speak to me,
to shut out the voice in my head,
but there were moments that I could not hold back the words and prayers from my throat,
moments I needed to send my voice up or else I swore I would get up off that blanket and just walk away.
Moments I swore I would have filled the Earth with my screams again.
And when I spoke,
it was with such softness.
Maybe to not disrupt the frequency that Mountain has known long before Creator ever chose that spot for me to pray.
Maybe because when I spoke I barely recognized my own voice.
Because when you speak to Creation,
it is the truest version of yourself whose voice rises up from the very depths of your soul.
This is the voice that Creator knows.
And I just need to say I'm sorry that if for any moment I used my voice not pray
or to talk myself back into my heart and out of my head.
I'm sorry if I wasted a single moment on that Mountain.
The minutes seem so long when you're out there,
but now as I'm back home,
I'm wishing I could have just a few moments back on my blanket.
That I could have just one more opportunity to pray.
I would say to the Creator my name,
I would say please help me because I am struggling.
Please help me because  just want to make the best out of my life.
Please help me because I want to make sure I am on the right path to my purpose.
Please help me because I never want to know a life without you,
without prayer, without this Red Road.
Just one more time I want to speak those truths and let my tears become offerings of myself to the Earth.
But that is why we tie that prayer in Red.
Because I can go back.
I will go back and again be given the holy space to send my voice up and pray,
to cry,
to fall into silence,
to watch the sun set and rise again.
And I can stop now and breath.
I can stop and close my eyes and be on my blanket.
I can smell the freshness of Earth and the copal cloud of smoke.
I can pray and cry with myself on that blanket,
because there is a piece of me that will always be there.
Joseph Childress Apr 2014
Preparations
For Love and Destruction
Volatile environments
Whose inhabitants
Distract inhibitions
By enacting emotional exhibitions
Fueled by liquid fire
.Injection.
Fluid spirits
Energize the soul
Chemically reacting to stress
Freeing the hostages
Housed inside the hostile hospice
Of hearts
.Ejection.
Nature’s neutrality
Doesn’t do much
For this current
Wave
Of Lust and Frustration
So,
Lo and Behold
The solo soul below
Who bellows
In the belly of beasts
Like growls
That grows into speech
As I transform from
Animal to Anomaly
Asking for the one thing
That will keep me
From the answer
.Rejection.
a maki Feb 2012
eating up the buildings,
crawling up the corners
to cover the signs of the city.
enacting their revenge
on the cement coating their soil.

If Heaven is a theater:
Men and women are
“Characters” enacting as
Holy angels
And pure virgins
once again just  to demand
each other for freedom and  power:
They have decorated
it’s doors and windows  
with flowers and olive leaves
   to commit their sacred sins;
They have their own
rules; regulations
Later they become
God’s and goddesses.
and one God from among
  plays a dual role.

If Hell is a theater,  
Men and women are
“Characters” enacting as
Good devils
And bad ******
once again just  to command
each other for freedom and power:
The have ruined
It’s walls and roof’s;
With   blood and raw meat;
To quench their thirst, hunger;
They have their own
Dirt, Debris
Later they become
Devils and witches
And one devil from among
Plays a dual role
*
By
Williamsji Maveli

Email:
williamjsji@yahoo.com
1698

’Tis easier to pity those when dead
That which pity previous
Would have saved—
A Tragedy enacted
Secures Applause
That Tragedy enacting
Too seldom does.
A T Bockholdt Dec 2017
Jorge

still in the night he
does not remember why
—sounds of her sighs

her small ears
pressing into the tight
space of the day

or the tenderness between
him and her
held in the air

the repeated denial
of the time set chained  
to hold their plans

were revolting against
trysts
spent in another’s gaze

2. Sebastian

the tenacious sense in
arrangement
lets slip imitation

how I could possess
your breath
and bear it

delicately freeing
my stances
I strained

in celebration
at the sanctification
that you’d
granted to Saint Sebastian
in Irene’s
blessing

will healing hands make
poetry
or trap the shaking  

of my languid silver pens  
taut but not
ready

3. Carlos

the sweet words
brought
for the lovers

that beats hard
each
hesitance

leaps
without fear
regarding

that
their time is
now here

the shape that
your
sighs take

suggesting
as if
limits don’t exist
This is part of collection for a senior portfolio project at CU Denver
Project is intended to represent the stylistic distinctions of great American poets through the imitation of their poetics and/or their subject matter

In this three section poem, "Enacting Imitation," I work to closely mirror William Carlos Williams poem "3 Stances." Williams uses enjambment to subtly infuse multiple meanings into his sparse lines. Williams poetry also enacts a metaphysical level that allows the reader to see the poet's space of thinking and anxieties in writing which we see in "Danse Russe," wherein Williams finds freedom in writing for himself. I also use his ideas of the variable foot to employ certain rhythmic tones and speeds into this imitation.
Carl D'Souza Feb 2021
I feel
so many feelings
all the time.

I am
a feeling being.

I need
to feel
to understand
the meaning of my experiences
in comparison to my needs and aspirations.

But
my feelings
happen intuitively
and prior to careful evidence-based reasoning
and so my feelings are not philosophically reasonable
and so my feelings are dangerous
if I use my feelings to define what reality is.

I protect myself
from unphilosophical unreasonable feelings
by never enacting my feelings,
by never reacting motivated by feelings;
rather I use my feelings
only as information
that I am having feelings
and so my needs and aspirations
may be affected in some way
by my experiences
which led to my feelings;
then I reflect
on my experiences
to philosophically reasonably discover
how it is most useful for me to feel
to achieve my optimal joy an happiness.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
Charlie and D sitting in a tree, Henry VIII comes along, chops down the tree.*

part of me constantly and perversely anticipates
what Islam holds dear, the cult of the moon
rather than the sun - sleeping nudges of inquiry
and reminiscence of Freud rather than this constant
pulverisation of scientific safety-nets -
the sun and the scam of diet - Narcissus myth
all too apparent, too self-conscious to feed
the beauty, laboratory type beauty,
statistician's paradise - sun and skin cancer collective,
i'm not an Arab, and i never will be,
but this sort of weather and jet-stream excess isn't
exactly helping either - Einstein might have
saved you from exacting the thought process
(never experiment with it, never)
behind Newtonian cause & effect, but this ****
isn't going away, and you won't be exactly barnacle
jumping mad with Jack & Jill if you voice your
concerns; for all that urbanity the village life
is having a comeback - hello brick, hello tree,
hello tomorrow: the day of never-be -
the Spaniards had a second try at an inquisition
via Gibraltar - the Scots sailed to Brussels -
the village life is having a comeback -
the Americans are hoarding guns prior to enacting
scenes from Bastille Sq. with the guillotine -
they don't know it yet, but they're hoarding guns
to topple the government over - elsewhere
a bunch of Palestinians were throwing stones
at bullseyes for a fluffy toy in a theme park.
I wish you were a pleasant wren,
  And I your small accepted mate;
How we'd look down on toilsome men!
  We'd rise and go to bed at eight
  Or it may be not quite so late.

Then you should see the nest I'd build,
  The wondrous nest for you and me;
The outside rough, perhaps, but filled
  With wool and down: ah, you should see
  The cosey nest that it would be.

We'd have our change of hope and fear,
  Small quarrels, reconcilements sweet:
I'd perch by you to chirp and cheer,
  Or hop about on active feet
  And fetch you dainty bits to eat.

We'd be so happy by the day,
  So safe and happy through the night,
We both should feel, and I should say,
  It's all one season of delight,
And we'll make merry whilst we may.

Perhaps some day there'd be an egg
  When spring had blossomed from the snow:
I'd stand triumphant on one leg;
  Like chanticleer I'd almost crow
  To let our little neighbors know.

Next you should sit and I would sing
Through lengthening days of sunny spring:
  Till, if you wearied of the task,
I'd sit; and you should spread your wing
  From bough to bough; I'd sit and bask.

Fancy the breaking of the shell,
  The chirp, the chickens wet and bare,
The untried proud paternal swell;
  And you with housewife-matron air
  Enacting choicer bills of fare.

Fancy the embryo coats of down,
  The gradual feathers soft and sleek;
Till clothed and strong from tail to crown,
  With ****** warblings in their beak,
  They too go forth to soar and seek.

So would it last an April through
And early summer fresh with dew:
  Then should we part and live as twain,
Love-time would bring me back to you
  And build our happy nest again.
Amitav Radiance May 2015
Masks unmask the real identity
Enacting many roles as actors
Behind a different face and avatar
Under the cloak of anonymity
Many truths comes under spotlight
Masks give the actors, the freedom
kenye Sep 2013
Be my constant
like Desmond
and the Island

When you and me
met between nosebleeds
and seizures of consciousness

We looked to the sky
and watched
electromagnetic
explosions

That held our hearts
pumping out supernovas
In their hands
we were Gods
respectively
blowing
Buddha minds
out of proportion
re-enacting
some center stage production
of how we shift our own reality

Subtly
unspoken
devoid of emotions
lost like a lighter
in a smoke circle

Offsetting
the light and darkness

But You were always my constant
again and again
in
flash-backs
flash-forwards
flash-sideways
*We could never escape the timeline
I've been watching Lost on Netflix...
Minor Key

I

Let me enjoy the earth no less
Because the all-enacting Might
That fashioned forth its loveliness
Had other aims than my delight.

II

About my path there flits a Fair,
Who throws me not a word or sign;
I’ll charm me with her ignoring air,
And laud the lips not meant for mine.

III

From manuscripts of moving song
Inspired by scenes and dreams unknown
I’ll pour out raptures that belong
To others, as they were my own.

IV

And some day hence, towards Paradise
And all its blest—if such should be—
I will lift glad, afar-off eyes
Though it contain no place for me.
Indigo Morrison May 2014
They fear for their children,
Their things when our black men come near.
But do they forget that it was the pale faces who were the cruel ones?
They shipped and trapped our brown for sugar, molasses...
For things.
They inspected
Destructed
Degraded
Detained
Stripped naked our black men for money.
They stole much more than our black men today.
Beat, broke, and chained our black men
Only to incriminate the black body
Only to create fear of skin that has been kissed by something not man made.
So forgive me if I say "*******" to the police in their attempts at racial profiling rationalizations.
Have you no education?
Have you no intellect?
Have you forgotten OUR history?
You cannot cancel violence by enacting violence.
You cannot stop a cycle that you have began if you cannot even look at yourself .
LOOK AT YOURSELF.
It must be hard being so **** stupid.
Being so detached
And having the good graces to ignore and not to teach OUR history.
The black body isn't what you should lock your doors from at night.
Are you scared you wont be able to see it?
Are you?
It is the ignorance of our society of the simple fact
That what starts here
Ends here.
And we are doomed to continue
This cycle of shedding the blood of each other
If you refuse to educate on where the violence
                                                        ­the cruelty
                                                        t­he ownership
                                                       ­ the belittling
                                                        of the human body began.
Colin E Havard Mar 2014
Will I walk,
Will I talk -
Will I open up,
Or will I baulk?
---------
Moved by time, unremitting;
Approaching disintegration - universal dispersal.
Emotional denial, fearing the inevitable.
Procuring the future by biological means;
Neglecting angst instilled in collected dreams;
Ever hopeful for intervention - role reversal.
----------
Dancing betwixt light beams
Floating on echoed screams
Unsure what reality means;
Confronted by attitudes obscene
Lost amid chaotic scenes
Is anything what it seems?
---------
Hello - How are you?
Hello - Can I help you?
Hello - Did you hear me?
Hello - Who are you?
Hello - Do I understand you right?
Hello - What'd you say?
Hello - Are you with me?
Hello - Did you see that?
Hello - Are you sure?
Hello - What's this?
Hello - I'm trying to communicate!
Hello - Welcome.
Hello - Come in.
Hello - I am...Friendly (and Curious)...
---------
Too much angst
Too many sorrows
Too much fear
Too few tomorrows.

Too little, too late;
Too bad, too sad.

Too much waste
Too much greed
Too much gain
Too much need.

Too distracting
Too frivolous
Too complex
Too preposterous.

Too many scandals
Too many re-acting
Too muck shock
Too few enacting.

Too much terror
Too much blood
Too many agendas
Too much cud.

Too much goodwill
Too little done
Too...
...You...
You're 2 kind.
Thanks, mate.
---------
Rhetoric or ridiculous?
Rude or risqué?
Right or righteous?
Ruling or ruining?
Revolving or resolved?
Revolting or revolutionary?
Repeating or reposing?
Revealed or reviled?
Rambling or raving?
Rising or risen?
Robust or round?
Rigorous or regressive?
---------
Aggressive
Repressive
Depressive
Regressive­.
Impressive
Oppressive
Expressive
Obsessive.
2/8/2002
Mardi Grass-E-**** - Hola!, Earlwood
Sampson Feb 2014
Master of puppets cease the chatter and ruckus find what life's sum is 
Climb to the summet notice the smell will be pungent 
I can see his sights clear I hold no fear you froze in the middle like headlights on a deer causing the cataclysmic fate into which you peer 
I'll try not to get too wordy, to many word patterns while I chop this rhyme up in fury tell me what might the cure be ?
Lines lay down like corpses in a morgue dissecting you into a gord you life hangs by a thread or cord 
Empathy is something I can't afford 
Bitterness hate enacting my raging states leave you stiff In a lake 
Your body's bloated like yeast in a cake you existing was a mistake 
Your a ****** and who's body was turned stagnant your mind devoid of thought life in fragments rigamortis leaves you muscles tight together like magnets 
**** it , the bay harbor butcher with looks like Ashton Kutcher leave you with cuts you can't sutcher
Put ya in a state of endless suffering no pain subsiding or breaks ,there will be no buffering 
Let it end ,feel the life you want go and the agony tear your mind apart slow, you have nothing left to learn that I don't know I will forever domineer your soul
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2017
the universality of relativity has already
already occurred, far beyond the scope
of the physically simplified
  time = space via the epsilon =
             μ and "kappa" squared...
what's the equation with "kappa"
                                  cubed?
but it's beyond speaking relative
language,
            when the study of time,
i.e. history, is only left with an absolutist
"morality"...
                     the grand theory of
relativity killed off all considerations
of a moral relativism...
                         and what's hard to grasp
is not the theory of relativity,
but the enacting of moral absolutism...
   at this point relative languge
is otherwise the focus on nuance...
what is required is absolute language:
there's only one book worth burning,
and it's the thesaurus...
              red is relative to crimson,
blue is relative to azure...
      the otherwise reprimands of shades...
red = crimson = red, at the end of it...
         but how can we live
in a time or space where time = space
without having a historical
stalemate, a status quo, a congestion?
the only answer comes with how
space is effected,
  this current isolationism...
this quasi solipsism...
                    at the precise point
were time & space coincide comes
the time of the great unravelling...
           time becomes a constipation,
while space becomes a claustrophobia...
  no more history is written with
authenticity in mind, merely a parody of
a repeated narrative...
space? space become a single man,
occupying a ******* universe!
              even the god Atlas fell
to his knees trying to balance act
a supra-geometrical "shape"...
      the convergence of space and time
surmounts any deliberation of the "ultimate"
evil...
the evil is inconsequential when
the apparent good serves an ultimatum...
you either obey my laws,
or shut up, completely!
         the re-convergence of time from
space, a divorce, a disparity can only
be achieved when the speed of light
is conceptualised as cubic, stationary...
           via the notion of anti-matter
i.e. anti-mass...
       E is reserved as the equilibrium mediator,
a buffer zone... the pH 7...
what concerns equals (=)...
            but when time and space
collided there were too many
sycophants that didn't understand the science!
for god's sake you've create a vacuous medium
whereby history is a congestion,
and space a zoological realm of study
beginning with chimps and ending
with man!
               the reason why most people
perceive history as not actually
occurring,
        is that Einstein reversed the
Copernican discovery...
   the earth has once more,
began tp stand still..
                                  24h news reels
have ensured that the earth is
standing still, i am aware of the facts,
but perceptively it's not actually moving...
it's waiting for a dawn, akin
to the burning down of the library of
Alexandria...
                        however i put it already,
time is congesting,
      space is isolating...
                         upon a convergence,
there comes a divergence...
  what we're experiencing is the divergence
of what came to be a space-time
convergence...
    it will take more than a few decades
to unravel the pivot...
    that balanced time with equal
satiety of space...
             at this point we're heavily
inclined to fathom space,
science fiction, space travel -
if not fathom, then become satiated by it
being explored, hence our historical neurosis
and ease at having un-lived past experiences...
our historical: kindergarten "reminiscence"
or therefore: lack of respect / seriousness...
to match but one requisite of a respect
for time, there must come a death of being
fascinated by the fiction surrounding space...
and come the reality of:
the non-fiction encompassed by time;
for time is but a contracting force,
given the mortal frame,
with space expanding, time contracts.
and the skies with sudden encore come
filled with words not worked
orchastrating a full complement
of treacherous ambition
and will an exploration
of competeing claim of unsundry wills
and such as is gives men a will to transform themselves
to give a cause to anciet or recent voice
a permissible presentation of possibilities
in battle and brawl with a blunt rhetorical and physical disorder
which does emphasize such dramas
with stark, violent and repressive potential
all tantilized with the prospect of wealth in the ground
make a contention with vicious energies
of hate and ambition that propels
an intence and exhausting experience
upon a once civil-world to spiral
vertiginously toward an ancient choas
enacting old stories with the oppresiveweight of the past
now monstrous individualism
whose hideously fragile bonds to peace
no longer exeert their hold
and thus divorse themselves
with an individual rapaciousness
annihilating lives with a curiousley
derivative quality for a store of gas and oil
and disinherite themselves from moral constriant
evoking the soliloquy of historical hypocrisy
with a mutilation of truth
in a tragedy of lament for all human kind
then sudden uncalled for encore fills the skies
Toys are scattered about the floor.
Robots and Dinosaurs attack plastic soldiers.
The Grandsons are enacting a ****** battle.
No one is safe! Not even Grandpa!
     I've been killed, apparently,
     by a flying super-robot that
          knows no mercy!

I worry I won't be
playing with them next year.

Darkness all around the world.
Darkness all inside of me.
Whispers behind my back,
murmurs of pity, I think.

I still have much I can offer
        to these boys.
        Or so I'd like to believe.

I'm not ready to stop hugging them.
Telling them, again and again,
how important they are to me.

Little boys live in a special world.
A place of mud and sticks,
        bugs and stones.
        Imagination the
        only rule they follow.

***** hands and faces,
       bodies screaming
          for a bath.

I understand this world.
It used to be the same one
         I lived in before.

Ah dear Grandsons.
        Will you miss me?
Will you think of me
      in the middle of your
            playing?

Will you feel me?

Grandfather lips
        mouthing
           "I love you."

Your hearts so innocent.
Lives so uncomplicated.

Neither of you understands
          the concept of dying.

As it should be.

Stay this way as
long as you are able to.

The real world is a cold place.
A mixture of grieving and denial.
A faithless emptiness that
        consumes the desire
            to achieve.

Toys are scattered about the floor.
Robots and Dinosaurs attack plastic soldiers.

Dear God, how I wish this was
        the only battle I was fighting.
He doesn’t deserve your kisses

Not like I did</p>

<p>He doesn’t deserve your love & affection

Not like I do</p>

<p>Just look around you quickly

There are signs to see

Why aren’t you coming up to me? </p>

<p>He doesn’t love you like I do </p>

<p>He doesn’t deserve to be in your dream

You should be talking to me everyday </p>

<p>He doesn’t deserve to be in your thoughts  

I should be your knight

Lwt me step into the spotlight with you baby</p>

<p>He doesn’t deserve your enacting

He doesn’t deserve your pictures

And doesn’t deserve your blessings </p>

<p>Listen!!!</p>

<p>Just look around you quickly

There are signs to see

Why aren’t you coming up to me?</p>

<p>He doesn’t write you poetry

He doesn’t write you love songs

He doesn’t treasure your heart

He doesn’t have faith in you

His mind is out of romance

The guy you chosen is a mistake </p>

<p>Baby!!!</p>

<p>He doesn’t deserve you</p>

<p>He doesn’t love you like I do</p>

<p>Listen</p>

<p>He doesn’t deserve your smiles

And he doesn’t deserve your laughs

He doesn’t deserve to wake up beside you when the sun rises</p>

<p>Baby!!! </p>

<p>I have a billion words of describing you</p>

<p>Just don’t understand how much I care about you</p>

<p>I would die for your love cause

I’m the one that deserves to be with you until the end</p>

<p>My dear   </p>

<p>He doesn’t love you like I do

He doesn’t deserve you</p>

<p>Just look around you quickly

There are signs to see

Why aren’t you coming up to me?*</p>
Butch Decatoria Nov 2016
If freedom means
To not need
To ask for permission

Why does it cost
So much
And many a pretty penny

Life like re-enacting
Civil wars and holocausts
Conditioned for submission

The battles with ourselves
Already lost
All ready at a loss

So many without
Such pretty pennies
To show for

Only the cross,
Only the burdens
And the shameful guilt

Unworthy and unfit
Already at a loss
Born to silt and subdegation

I try to avoid confrontation
Nothing said in conversations
When all we do is cuss...

And still we are proud
To have the freedom of speak and say
How the prey will pray

(For you)

These times we consume
In a spherical cage
Of our own doom...
Lauren C Sep 2012
What is the substratum of each day
but mere

filler,
the in-between?

The contours roughly
pencilled in, we simply

flesh them out,
gamely connect-the-dots,

paint by numbers.
This, that we wake to

each day, that we reconstruct,
dumbly enacting

each scene, each encounter,
actors

simply wanting
to please, to cover the cost

of each curtain, the ushers
to soundlessly herd you out.

Every last one of us
apprentices, frenzied

cattle -
the grand performance,

back by popular demand!
Fodder for our

flighty
attention

        spans, meagre

senses of self.

Nextstoppleaseholdhow
areyouicanhelpyouhere
ithinkineedfin­deverything
youneededtodaygoodthanks

pillowed against the brute
fear

of boredom,
of silence.
Ashwin Kumar Aug 2022
It's been a long, long time
Since I went to school
Therefore, my memory of those days
Is hazier than a cloud of fog
However, whatever I do remember
I remember vividly, as though it were only yesterday

Such as, committing the biggest faux pas of my school years
When I was in the fourth standard
By wearing a t-shirt and jeans one fine day
While everyone else was dressed in uniform

Disturbing the whole class by talking about cricket
And thus getting a nice scolding from the principal
When I was in the fifth standard
Crying in front of the whole class
Later during the same year
Exam tension getting the better of me

Enacting the role of a princess in a cartoon show
While on the way home
During the seventh standard

Failing in quite a few subjects
At the beginning of the eighth standard
After switching from CBSE to ICSE
Being forced into a trekking adventure
Thanks to the annual cross-country races

Scoring an own goal as a goalkeeper
During the ninth standard
Failing in a record number of subjects
During the same year
Thanks to my obsession with cricket

And last but not the least
Making amends for my past failures
By clearing the tenth boards with flying colours

I can go on and on
But I think that's quite enough for today
Self-explanatory!!
Ashwin Kumar Jul 2023
There are times
When I wish I could be a child again
Because, as far as adulthood is concerned
There is a lot of pressure and expectations
And many complications as well
Work, relationships, time, money, health
The list is endless
Also, let us not forget
That I am a divorcee
And yearning for a second marriage
Or at least, some kind of romantic relationship
And at the same time
I have to deal with work as well
Anyway, I wish I could be a child again
Because my childhood was awesome
Lots of love
From my family, cousins and relatives
Playing cricket with one of my close cousins
Going on train trips with family
Having fun with schoolmates
Including enacting the part of a Japanese anime princess!!
Playing chess with my maternal grandfather
Watching the golden era of Sachin Tendulkar
Listening to AR Rahman classics
Watching the best movies of Superstar Rajinikanth
Playing tennis with my father
During my second visit to Mumbai
And best of all
Having a life free of tension and worries
Except of course, as far as studies were concerned!!
Well, there were bad times too
For instance, the bullying I faced
Which forced me to leave a renown school
In the span of just one week!!
Nevertheless, on the whole
My childhood is something to be cherished forever
And reflecting back on it as an adult
I am filled with a sense of nostalgia
Being a Potterhead, I wish I could use a Time Turner
And go back in time
In order to revisit all those fond memories in person
Yes, I am not ashamed to say
That I wish I could be a child again
Self-explanatory!!
Amitav Radiance Apr 2015
When some memories
Tug at your heart strings
Older tunes do play
Yesteryear lyrics on the lips
Hum away with nonchalance
Surrounded by nostalgia
Inadvertently enacting the past
Some memories do not fade
Remains etched forever
Deepest corners of life
Hide them away from present
Now and then they do come out
Taking over the present

— The End —