Epicentre of destruction, now Nepal
Chosen by destiny, very brutally
Terrains blew, and maps deformed
Lives lost, people slayed by almighty Lord

Not one, two, or three, plenty of them
Shot one after another, from below
Shaking and trembling, structures fall
Amassed devastation, no one can stop

In a time of need like this, for humanity
To help and console, Nepal community
Every soul prays for them
May all those are lost, rest in peace, Amen


|AB|

The courtesan and poet Zuo Fen had two cats Xe Ming and Xi Ming. Living in her distant court with only her maid Hu Yin, her cats were often her closest companions and, like herself, of a crepuscular nature.
      It was the very depths of winter and the first moon of the Solstice had risen. The old year had nearly passed.
      The day itself was almost over. Most of the inner courts retired before the new day began (at about 11.0pm), but not Zuo Fen. She summoned her maid to dress her in her winter furs, gathered her cats on a long chain leash, and walked out into the Haulin Gardens.
      These large and semi-wild gardens were adjacent to the walls of her personal court. The father of the present Emperor had created there a forest once stocked with game, a lake to the brim with carp and rich in waterfowl, and a series of tall structures surrounded by a moat from which astronomers were able to observe the firmament.
      Emperor Wu liked to think of Zuo Fen walking at night in his father’s park, though he rarely saw her there. He knew that she valued that time alone to prepare herself for his visits, visits that rarely occurred until the Tiger hours between 3.0am and 6.0am when his goat-drawn carriage would find its way to her court unbidden. She herself would welcome him with steaming chai and sometimes a new rhapsody. They would recline on her bed and discuss the content and significance of certain writings they knew and loved. Discussion sometimes became an elaborate game when a favoured Classical text would be taken as the starting point for an exchange of quotation. Gradually quotation would be displaced by subtle invention and Zuo Fen would find the Emperor manoeuvring her into making declarations of a passionate or ****** nature.
       It seemed her very voice captivated him and despite herself and her inclinations they would join as lovers with an intensity of purpose, a great tenderness, and deep joy. He would rest his head inside her cloak and allow her lips to caress his ears with tales of river and mountain, descriptions of the flights of birds and the opening of flowers. He spoke to her ******* of the rising moon, its myriad reflections on the waters of Ling Lake, and of its trees whose winter branches caressed the cold surface.

Whilst Zuo Fen walked in the midnight park with her cats she reflected on an afternoon of frustration. She had attempted to assemble a new poem for her Lord.  Despite being himself an accomplished poet and having an extraordinary memory for Classical verse, the Emperor retained a penchant for stories about Mei-Lim, a young Suchan girl dragged from her family to serve as a courtesan at his court.
      Zuo Fen had invented this girl to articulate some of her own expressions of homesickness, despair, periods of constant tearfulness, and abject loneliness. Such things seemed to touch something in the Emperor. It was as though he enjoyed wallowing in these descriptions and his favourite A Rhapsody on Being far from Home he loved to hear from the poet’s own lips, again and again. Zuo Fen felt she was tempting providence not to compose something new, before being ordered to do so.
      As she struggled through the afternoon to inject some fresh and meaningful content into a story already milked dry Zuo Fen became aware of her cats. Xi Ming lay languorously across her folded feet. Xe Ming perched like an immutable porcelain figure on a stool beside her low writing table.
Zuo Fen often consulted her cats. ‘Xi Ming, will my Lord like this stanza?’

“The stones that ring out from your pony’s hooves
announce your path through the cloud forest”

She would always wait patiently for Xi Ming’s reply, playing a game with her imagination to extract an answer from the cinnamon scented air of her winter chamber.
      ‘He will think his pony’s hooves will flash with sparks kindling the fire of his passion as he prepares to meet his beloved’.
      ‘Oh such a wise cat, Xi Ming’, and she would press his warm body further into her lap. But today, as she imagined this dialogue, a second voice appeared in her thoughts.
      ‘Gracious Lady, your Xe Ming knows his under-standing is poor, his education weak, but surely this image, taken as it is from the poet Lu Ji, suggests how unlikely it would be for the spark of love and passion to take hold without nurture and care, impossible on a hard journey’.
       This was unprecedented. What had brought such a response from her imagination? And before she could elicit an answer it was as though Xe Ming spoke with these words of Confucius.

“Do not be concerned about others not appreciating you, be concerned about you not appreciating others”

Being the very sensible woman she was, Zuo Fen dismissed such admonition (from a cat) and called for tea.

Later as she walked her beauties by the frozen lake, the golden carp nosing around just beneath the ice, she recalled the moment and wondered. A thought came to her  . . .
       She would petition Xe Ming’s help to write a new rhapsody, perhaps titled Rhapsody on the Thought of Separation.

Both Zuo Fen’s cats came from her parental home in Lingzhi. They were large, big-***** mountain cats; strong animals with bear-like paws, short whiskered and big eared. Their coats were a glassy grey, the hairs tipped with a sprinkling of white giving the fur an impression of being wet with dew or caught by a brief shower.
       When she thought of her esteemed father, the Imperial Archivist, there was always a cat somewhere; in his study at home, in the official archives where he worked. There was always a cat close at hand, listening?
       What texts did her father know by heart that she did not know? What about the Lu Yu – the Confucian text book of advice and etiquette for court officials. She had never bothered to learn it, even read it seemed unnecessary, but through her brother Zuo Si she knew something of its contents and purpose.

Confucius was once asked what were the qualifications of public office. ‘Revere the five forms of goodness and abandon the four vices and you can qualify for public office’.
       For the life of her Zuo Fen could not remember these five forms of goodness (although she could make a stab at guessing them). As for those vices? No, she was without an idea. If she had ever known, their detail had totally passed from her memory.
       Settled once again in her chamber she called Hu Yin and asked her to remove Xi Ming for the night. She had three hours or so before the Emperor might appear. There was time.
        Xe Ming was by nature a distant cat, aloof, never seeking affection. He would look the other way if regarded, pace to the corner of a room if spoken to. In summer he would hide himself in the deep undergrowth of Zuo Fen’s garden.
       Tonight Zuo Fen picked him up and placed him on her left shoulder. She walked around her room stroking him gently with her small strong fingers, so different from the manicured talons of her colleagues in the Purple Palace. Embroidery, of which she was an accomplished exponent, was impossible with long nails.
       From her scroll cupboard she selected her brother’s annotated copy of the Lun Yu, placing it unrolled on her desk. It would be those questions from the disciple Tzu Chang, she thought, so the final chapters perhaps. She sat down carefully on the thick fleece and Mongolian rug in front of her desk letting Xe Ming spill over her arms into a space beside her.
       This was strange indeed. As she sat beside Xe Ming in the light of the butter lamps holding his flickering gaze it was as though a veil began to lift between them.
       ‘At last you understand’, a voice appeared to whisper,’ after all this time you have realised . . .’
      Zuo Fen lost track of time. The cat was completely motionless. She could hear Hu Yin snoring lightly next door, no doubt glad to have Xi Ming beside her on her mat.
      ‘Xe Ming’, she said softly, ‘today I heard you quote from Confucius’.
      The cat remained inscrutable, completely still.
      ‘I think you may be able to help me write a new poem for my Lord. Heaven knows I need something or he will tire of me and this court will cease to enjoy his favour’.
      ‘Xe Ming, I have to test you. I think you can ‘speak’ to me, but I need to learn to talk to you’.
      ‘Tzu Chang once asked Confucius what were the qualifications needed for public office? Confucius said, I believe, that there were five forms of goodness to revere, and four vices to abandon’.
       ‘Can you tell me what they are?’
      Xe Ming turned his back on Zuo Fen and stepped gently away from the table and into a dark and distant corner of the chamber.
      ‘The gentle man is generous but not extravagant, works without complaint, has desires without being greedy, is at peace, but not arrogant, and commands respect but not fear’.
      Zuo Fen felt her breathing come short and fast. This voice inside her; richly-texture, male, so close it could be from a lover at the epicentre of a passionate entanglement; it caressed her.
      She heard herself say aloud, ‘and the four vices’.
      ‘To cause a death or imprisonment without teaching can be called cruelty; to judge results without prerequisites can be called tyranny; to impose deadlines on improper orders can be thievery; and when giving in the procedure of receipt and disbursement, to stint can be called officious’.
       Xe Ming then appeared out of the darkness and came and sat in the folds of her night cloak, between her legs. She stroked his glistening fur.
       Zuo Fen didn’t need to consult the Lu Yu on her desk. She knew this was unnecessary. She got to her feet and stepped through the curtains into an antechamber to relieve herself.
       When she returned Xe Ming had assumed his porcelain figure pose. So she gathered a fresh scroll, her writing brushes, her inks, her wax stamps, and wrote:

‘I was born in a humble, isolated, thatched house,
and was never well versed in writing.
I never saw the marvellous pictures of books,
nor had I heard of the classics of earlier sages.
I am dimwitted, humble and ignorant . . ‘

As she stopped to consider the next chain of characters she saw in her mind’s eye the Purple Palace, the palace of the concubines of the Emperor. Sitting next to the Purple Chamber there was a large grey cat, its fur sprinkled with tiny flecks of white looking as though the animal had been caught in a shower of rain.
       Zuo Fen turned from her script to see where Xe Ming had got to, but he had gone. She knew however that he would always be there. Wherever her imagination took her, she could seek out this cat and the words would flow.

Before returning to her new text Zuo Fen thought she might remind herself of Liu Xie’s words on the form of the Rhapsody. If Emperor Wu appeared later she would quote it (to his astonishment) from The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons.

*The rhapsody derives from poetry,
A fork in the road, a different line of development;
It describes objects, pictures and their appearance,
With a brilliance akin to sculpture and painting.
What is clogged and confined it invariably opens up;
It depicts the commonplace with unbounded charm;
But the goal of the form is of beauty well ordered,
Words retained for their loveliness when weeds have been cut away.

Is your life an epicentre for death when two of your best friends, mother and brother, are dead before you can grow a beard.
What if you add the mothers of two more best friends, followed by your own grandmother?

It's the thoughts like these that lead to the bottle or the nearest crutch.
What if the crutch you seek was the cause of half those tragedies?
Should you look elsewhere even if it holds you up?

You were always happier than me, but maybe you had help.
Maybe this help numbed instead of soothed.
And maybe I shouldn't have been sleeping when you needed to talk.
But maybe now the crutch that let you fall is the only thing helping me walk.

She opened the door of the gallery and there it was, there it lay, before her, nearly perfect: her exhibition. The opening was an hour or so away and there were, naturally, a few adjustments to make, but in essence it was right, and as she walked to the middle of the rectangular space (to survey the full effect ) she felt held by the quiet wonder of it all; that she had made all this and with ‘the quality control of nature’s accidents’. He’d written those words some years previous when a solo show was but a dream she would enter between sleep and wakefulness, when she would think of the west coast of Scotland and the poetry of its seashore, the infinite variety in the seashore strand between sand and sea. It was such natural accidents of form and transformation by nature’s hand that had guided her imagination into rightness and towards this exhibition.

At breakfast that morning she had come to the table dressed to greet her audience, and for the first time as a featured artist in a festival of some repute. She had felt the quiet joy of choosing the right combination of clothes to be the public person she had now become. He had loved the new dress she had bought to clothe her gallery persona. She had been conscious of his eyes following the lines this frock so generously drew around her body’s shape and form, the way the material fell across her *******, lay smoothly on her thighs.  It was a very grownup frock and with the jacket and scarf made her look purposeful, confident. His looking made such confidence possible, his admiration and what she could tell was that coming together of love and passion that, her being dressed in this formal way, so often evoked.

In the gallery she had worried over the lighting, climbed up the metal ladder with the fluffy green glove thoughtfully provided to enable those small adjustments of direction to be made on a hot spotlight. There were four large pieces flanking a corner that had embossed lines running across their surfaces, lines that needed oblique light to reveal the shadowing of this effect of swirls and marks of a retreating tide on sand.  Two smaller pieces needed rearranging; she’d placed them, late the evening before, in the wrong sequence. Poster boards were to be filled with her poster and put outside on the pavement by the gallery entrance. She opened the main door, a very green door with its top and bottom bolts and black-painted handle ring. The street outside was a welcoming mix of 18th and 19th C buildings, hardly one the same, the sort of three storey buildings that had simple plaques prominently placed into the brickwork from a distant past when proud builders would describe a structure’s use or ownership with a title and date. By ten o'clock this one-way street was lined with parked cars, but now there was little traffic. It was a quiet sunny morning in a market town.

‘Don’t mind the dog, ‘ he said. ‘He’s used to coming in here.’ It was a long-haired verging on the side of scruffy sort of dog, used to keeping its own counsel, probably used to being taken to exhibitions. ‘Just popping in,’ he said, this man who, and she couldn’t help noticing this, seemed to hold much in common with his dog; the long, but retreating on the forehead, hair, slightly scruffy from the want of a comb or a good brush (like his dog), he had dressed without much thought (because who dressed thoughtfully to walk a dog?), and that’s what he was doing, walking the dog and, seeing the Gallery open, thought he ought to look in.

Giving him her brightest smile, she embarked on performing the artist’s music of conversation, that score holding gentle melodies and welcoming harmonies. Although she had become quite practised in talking to her audience there was always the challenging inquiry that would catch her off guard.

‘Well, are you finished with the seashore now?’ said the man with the look-alike dog. For a moment a half dozen possible answers seemed possible. ‘Could one ever finish with something so extraordinary and various as that hinterland between land and sea?’ No, that was seemed a mite critical and clever. ‘Oh, I’ve hardly started’ was tempting, but rather smug and too confident by half. ‘I just love the seaside’ would probably do, as no one else was listening. ‘Merleau-Ponty says the complexity of the seashore is a metaphor in the search for self-identity’. She did wonder what he’d make of that, but finally decided on ‘It’s such a rich source of ideas and images I’m sure there’s a lot more I want to do with the subject.’

”It’s all the same colour”. She’d had that one a few times. ‘When I’m on the beach I’m fascinated as much by the texture and shape of what I see  and feel than the colour. I like the subtlety of the colours in the sand. I think my pieces – and she waved her hand towards what she had titled her Sand Marks pieces – show so many of the different shades of colours you find on the seashore.’

Those Sand Marks, a collection of variously dyed and marked two metre plus linen-lengths, dominated one wall of the gallery. They floated a few centimetres from the white wall, and when people moved past them the slight shadows cast by the linen lengths seemed to ripple in the human-made breeze. She could never look at them without thinking how their very accidental making – binding a linen cloth with inner placed objects and using the natural dye of tea – could create such absorbing results. She would follow with her gaze one of the linen-lengths from bottom to top (or top to bottom) and find herself walking on the wet sand of a Scottish beach, overwhelmed by the clear light and space with only the sea sound surrounding. He would tell her, had told her often, how moved, how affected he had been when he first saw them hung. To him, these ‘marks’ carried an essence of this aesthetic she now owned and for which had become recognised.

Even on this, her first day, she had been visited by a small number of admirers and supporters, some travelling distances to see her work with the aura of the original, a truer view than that possible on the back-lit screen of their computer monitors. Ladies who loved textiles, the containment and privacy to sew and stitch secured in their busy lives. These friendly and smiley women (the comfortable side of sixty) understood something of what she was doing here, and perhaps imagined themselves as thirty-somethings walking Scottish beaches free from children and the relentless list-making of house and home and occupation, able to create imaginary worlds of marks and folds, pleats and textures. Full of enthusiasm for the medium, what they perhaps didn’t have was the skill of seeing, a skill she had grown up with, had always owned to some degree: found, fostered, honed, developed into a second-nature activity of always looking.

There would be the occasional brief lull when the gallery was empty or close to empty, as though needing the space to come up for breath after being occupied by people and their movement. She would then walk slowly around the long well-lit room viewing her pieces and her arrangements of pieces from different angles. She would look at his poems placed antiphonally between her work, commissioned for her catalogue, her book of images of the sea shore paired with, incorporating even, her made pieces. She’d chosen a favoured few she’d felt caught the essence of being in the sea’s company, in the sand and shore’s domain. Like everything he did it had been undertaken with the utmost intensity of purpose. She saw him now in her mind’s eye with his notebook sitting against rocks, paddling in the great shallow pools, walking head down along the tide line, those bright days on a Scottish island and before, before on that ellipse of beach by the fishing station.

He would tease out an idea formed from a little motif of words, perhaps like the very music that was his private territory: here, alone, apart we are marked by the tide’s turn. Yes, we are marked by being solitary in such unconfining space, the marks at our feet become the lines, the mounts, the fingers, those interruptions, breaks and blockages found in the tridents, chains and crosses of the art of palmistry. We read the seashore as a psychic oracle reads the hand, hoping, as Kathleen Jamie so rightly says, for the marvellous. And marvellous it so often is.

Standing in this gallery was like being gathered about by the seashore. It was a short jump in the imagination’s miracle to hear the soft breathing of the sea, the wind caressing the face, the warmth of the afternoon sun on the freckled cheek.

See how those we love are transformed
when the sea is their only boundary

a figure stands before a sand bar
in a crescent of water left by the tide
an affecting geometry of solitude
. . .

These words had always stopped her in her perambulating tracks. She thought of her son, far distant on the beach, at rest for once, still, motionless within the confluence of the elements of the beach, at the epicentre of her gaze, all things flowing to and from his tiny, far-away figure.

This day needs tomorrow
As much as
Tomorrow needs today.
Throw a stone,
Watch ripples lick the shore,
Then turn around
And ripple more;
Like magician's rings,
Smoke rings,
Wedding rings,
Entangling,
Enriching,
Intertwining,
Becoming Olympian.
At the epicentre
It's calm.

Mountains moved with thoughts
We stood still as the land shook
Handshakes won't break our cause
I see through those crimson gloves,
That velvet touch won't fool us all.

We move in crevasses,
We'll never fit into those confined environments
End it all, end it all before the earth rips us apart,
Craters remain where we once stood fingertips glanced, fleeting moments,
Give me one last chance.

We told them we were protected,
Projected on to those fallen walls,
Broken bricks and misplaced concrete tricks,
We're stronger than them all,

We told them we won't fall,
As we looked to the stars,
It was only then we realised our backs were perpendicular to the floor,
Alas, I couldn't wait there anymore - but for you I'd spent eternity beneath those dark clouds amongst strangers and go to war.

Again.

As a maddened beast it charges
Emanating with expanse
Brute techtonic plate reaction
From the epicentre’s stance.
Huge concentric rings diverge
Expanding at horrific rate
Black, titanic, towering waters
Ploughing to a deadly fate.

Kneeling in her bed of roses
Pollinating bees abound,
Morning sunbeams kiss her shoulders
Peaceful garden bliss surrounds.

Surging to the coastal shelf
The black gigantis rears on high
Claws toward the placid beach
Seabirds scatter to the sky.
Tide receds to bare the reef
Stranded mackerel whitely leap,
Enormously the massive wave
Attacks the land and they who sleep.

Death comes fast to they who loiter
Violence in the tangled purge,
Massive pressures, crushing debris
Broken buildings in the surge.
Ships and cars are tossed asunder
Inexorably it slams
Far inland to slay those fleeing
Locked in highway traffic jams.

Strange roar at the garden wall
Terrified, she finds her feet,
Roses, bees, sweet girl engulfed
As black entombedment swamps the street.

Far inland the chaos flows
Wreaking death's destructive bands,
Halted now by highland hills
Where souls in horror, wring their hands.
Slow retraction leaving ruin
Desolation far and wide,
The smell of new death in the air,
Heartbreak in the countryside.


Marshalg
For Nippon
18 March 2011

I travelled straight west
to the epicentre of the southern wastelands
and 'twas with mind-numbing disbelief that
I found an Oak table propped upon the sands

and it was not alone either
for three beings sat it, seemingly nonplussed -
one was a skinny old man
wearing a linen suit faded and powdered with dust

his collar frayed around the edges
a moth-eaten hat sat upon his head,
he had a daisy poking from his breast pocket
so very much preserved, so very much dead,

to his left sat a one-eyed Hare
the sole eye ecstatic and wiggling -
he swore and blasphemed each time the man spoke
from a mouth toothless and dribbling,

sat to the right of the man
was absolutely (absolutely!) nothing,
however I observed with mild humour
that both man and Hare were convinced it must be something

for the man was profusely adamant
scorning the Something for dissing the Hare's hair,
although the Hare was too busy rolling around its one eye
to even notice the man, or simply give a fu- care

"Hey hey talk to I! Hath thou seen my missing eye?!"
Hare asked from a voice shrieky and shattered
saliva running in rivets
upon the table it slopped and slavered -

then suddenly the man started singing encore
his voice cringe-worthy, out of tune,
sounding like a cat back-broke and on steroids
rocking and waving like a spastic-loon;

"If Father Time has no end,
does he even have a beginning -
oh, if there's pain is there gain,
which one of us is it that's winning?"

alas, that's when my attention was brought to the mounds
of surgical needles cluttered on the ground,
feeling sickly aura lick the back of my throat
I started backing away without a sound

["Hey hey talk to I -"]

["If there's pain is there gain -"]

["Hath thou seen my missing Missing MISSING EYE?!!"]

#FLASH!#

the dystopian landscape around me melted
into a field of bloated poppies -

serene, scarlet and blinding 'neath the sun,
feasting upon our charred bodies.

AJ

I suddenly don't know who my friends are anymore
But I know who has never been,isn't and never will
You're not my friend if you think our whimpers propaganda
You're not my friend if you're not in support of a proper Uganda
You're not my friend if you opposed our
struggle till its seemingly dead end
You're not my friend if you think we shouldn't grieve
You're not my friend if in yellow rule you still believe
you're not my friend if you're still blinded
even after so many are hurt and lives ended
you're not my friend if you sung a song in praise
of he who won't our teacher's salary raise
you're not my friend if I reminded you of the Hospital
and you said them sick suffer for the love of free things with no remorse at all
you're not my friend if you've stuck to his support
simply because he fills your wallet while the rest are emptied,
you're not my friend if in this sad time you feel relief
you're not my friend if you forgot about the *** holes
the uncertainty that characterises the air all over the country,
you're not my friend if in your heart melancholy isn't,the despair
you're not my friend if you don't mind the pauper on the street
the emptiness of our capital competing with that in our hearts
you're not my friend if you don't think it badly hurts
you're not my friend if as long as your Porsche you drive
you don't mind about the state of a country
whether your neighbour's child is dead or alive
you're are not my friend if everything you wish for you have
and you don't give a **** if others starve
you're not my friend if you're contented with the shaky epicentre
forgetting that when the centre is shaky things fall apart
you're not my friend even if the politics ended
for my friend you weren't right from the start
you're not my friend if you've played part in steering us to a wrong course
against the pleas and cries of the despairing concourse
you're not my friend if you're the reason country man lies in a casket
in exchange for a piece of the national cake in your basket
you're not my friend if you believe in steady progress
even if you're my brother,whilst rest of the country lies in regrets
you're not my friend if you are against the people's choice
for the people's choice is the people's voice
You're not my friend if your government military deploys
dubbing the shout of our plight unnecessary noise
You're not my friend if you're smiling while we cry
in darkness as sunshine lights your home for you own our sky
you're not my friend if you forgot about those studying under a tree
you're not my friend if you still think we're free
You're my enemy if you're an enemy to my friend
You've wounded this nation by standing by the olden trend
you're an enemy to the state and so you're my enemy
you're not my friend, for God and my country
you're not my friend and that I will never forget traitor
no,I will remember through every January to December
I will remember even after you forget,centuries later

One white page.
One black dot.
One white page
with one black dot.
That is all.
You see it.
Good.
Now wiggle that dot.
Just a tad.
Watch it shake.
A single vibrating cell.
A fly in the wind.
Trembling up. And down.
And down and up and right and left.
It's a ***** smudge
ruining your clean page.
So rub it out .
With your pencil thin rubber.
But it dodges like a boxer's head.
A darting fish.
You want to get rid of it.
You want a clean white page.
Plant your rubber down.
A dramatic staff in the ground
cracks the white soil.
But it circles you.
That fly, that fish,
that blurred boxer.
That singular cell.
It circles your staff.
Your statement.
Magnetically.
A metal ball.
Orbiting your invisible eraser.
To erase the invisible dot.
But it is there.
Circling faster.
Wider.
Angrier.
Leaving a trail behind.
Too fast for the eye.
The sultry smoke of speed.
The slipstream of a cannonball.
The page is warped.
Earthquake epicentre on the A4.
Shook by the fault lines.
Jutting canyons drop down.
Ledges crumble and crash.
Sugared pie crust
hit with a hammer.
Everything collapses.
Invisible things are also under
the spell spell of gravity.
Hit on the head by invisible apples.
But it's not invisible.
It's not a cell.
A fly or smudge.
An agile boxing fish head.
A cannonballing canyon pie.
It's not even a white page.
Nevermind the black dot.
It's nothing.
Not a thing.
Not invisible,
but  the kind of nothing
that can't be seen.
Yet there it is.

Its Louder in the centre,
Enter my nucleus centre,
Blood soak soul with graffiti on its wall,
A wall of sound,
A beat so neat with some emptiness that quakers a note hard to speak.
Whether loud or clear it sometimes shows its neatness, its politeness silences its weakness like war is about to begin.

But louder in the centre come closer, Sense its bullet proof soul listening out for a linking which way road out where.
How dare these intrepid molecules of sound bite words blood flow soak and leak my outer shield,
If all things hidden surely they won't get far but mainly quietly written with out a doubt coming louder from the centre.

Oh but when's this circus to commence?
This circle of life drowned from each day without a change,
No need to sit and crumble no calls for sin.
But louder from the centre you will hear the echo's of its sitting begin.
Not leaving yet no faith from a patriot
A divided wall of large and small, good versus evil with some sort of escape from it all.

Louder from the centre words fog form from a vice versa,
Forming this epicentre a true understanding copied from whatever is on the agenda.
Small leaf's clover covers it all gathering its mud blood dust from this voluminous mess,
Louder in the centre.

Sweet eyes ride upon these lines,
Providing its goodness re energised its epicentre which comes from within to be
Louder in the centre.

O'Reily@22082014

Give me a smile, that I may build on your assurance,
Kiss me, that I may have to thy kind heart entrance,
Love me less, and see how tumultuous life could be,
Give thy command, and see my loyalty to thee.

In thine absence, mine heart cannot from thee depart;
A moment's departure would rend my world apart.
I recall that very day I beheld thy face;
A lasting memory I will forever retrace.
That Sunday when thine eyes did my emotions disarm;
The day mine heart responded to thy Love's alarm,
The day you sat upon mine heart's epicentre,
To govern my feelings from their very centre.
Josephine my love, I bequeath my self-will to thee,
Let me thy world share, and make thine own tumults mine,
And come in to my own world, for all I have is thine.

Have you ever tided upon tsunamis?
Indeed, these giant brooms clean everything in its wake.
This is the only time you are glad to have resisted
transforming someone into poetry,
as the waves sweep ink and paper off your desk.
They kissed the shores too passionately this time around.

Have you ever fuelled a fire in the woods?
Eyes burning brighter than old flames.
Exchanging breaths of smoke and dust,
and feeding what has already been strangled dry
To red and orange and blue tongues.

Have you ever triggered an avalanche?
It's a ride that gets faster and faster and faster.
The world spins around you,
And you still hear your echoes
Albeit in the end,
it still is all white and
nothing else.

Have you ever clapped alongside thunderstorms?
Fight poison with poison, they say.
So I shouted your name,
and the storms are singing along.
Up till now,
I still wonder if you could build homes
out of ruins.

Have you ever stood in the eye of the hurricane?
There's a weird kind of serenity in that.
As though you could halt the whirlwind and the cold and its monstrous roar in their tracks
With your bare hands,
and place them where they ought to be.

Have you ever buried yourself in the epicentre of earthquakes?
The earth spins on its axis;
your consciousness hinges on your emotions.
Hold on to the loose gravel around you-
it's the closest you can get to
the warmth of someone safe.
The debris destroys both you and the haven.

Have you ever counted flames, cinders and lava that leaves a crater?
An eruption of falling stars;
home is where they return.
There is always a takeaway
from tragedy it seems.

Your body is wild magic.
You harden under my hand.
I am a sorceress
commanding forces
that untether oceans -
unleashing the tsunami
that will change the shape of things
                                                  forever.

Every time I feel myself falling, I try to grab onto you.
Slipping my arm through yours, hand locking around your waist.
Broadcasting your warmth from every pore - I relent, knots unwinding
for that second before you steel up tall, lock your chin, and frown.
Then you shake me loose. I can see on your face that you don’t want to push me away
Which is why you’re not. You’re shaking me over the centre of the earth
But it is my gravity that will claw me down and **** me.

This is your epicentre. The point where all your earthquakes start:
You did not push me down the hole. You merely shook me loose over it. Differentiation.

you are made up of everyone you've loved
they live inside your capillaries
ride your blood river
in tiny canoes
made up of wood
and memories

you notice them sometimes
the canoe attempts the impossible
and traverses through the aorta
that epicentre
of blood and feeling

it rides rough rapids
of turmoil
and regret
sometimes, longing
that terrible longing
the most wretched rapid of all

when your skin itches
that is them expanding
and contracting
touching your epidermis
to remind you they’re alive
and still a part of you

we are made up of everyone
everyone we've ever loved

Softly child softly
Skitter through the fields to the ruined city
Stand on the outskirts and wonder
Who could have destroyed this?
Wonder
Who could have torn down these arches?
On tiny feet approach
Tread softly child, softly

Over the red dust
Across the desolate plains
Toward the hint of the fallen city.
Foot falls like gentle rain
Wonder mixing with innocence and love
Softly, child

Skip around the rim
Dance with the choice of stepping where none have
On bold feet; Be courageous..
But curiously, child. Softly

Step inside the bounds
Find its dark destroyed corners, and
marvel at the wear of time
Wonder, child

In the epicentre
From which the salt earth extends
A small circle of pearls
Plant a seed
child, thoughtfully

Water it with your tears
Shelter with body and belief
And watch as this seed take
Tend the vines, then
Cultivate the ground with your love
Softly, child

Now sit..
Sit, child
And weep.
Not in shame
Nor sorrow, despair or anguish at loss
Let the marvel of your hands very creation
Fuel your tears
Weep for the subtle nature
Weep for the one who came before
My beautiful child

Now smile
As eyes slowly cloud
As memory finally becomes sight
And lungs now strive for air
Let go
And be at rest, finally as all things
Sleep child.
Peace.

To what shall I liken thee?
An angel in realms above,
a mermaid in Oceans beneath,
a costly stone in the fiercest
contention sought for,
or even a costly diamond in the
earth's elusive epicentre buried?
Your beauty is a turning point
reference in your amazing book
of chronicles.

Napoleon Bonaparte

a trail of
kisses starting
north on
your eyelids
down your
sullen face

with empty
breaths that
trace my
collarbones
you beg me
to travel
south with
rushed hands
and quick lips

yet i don't
want to rush,
my love

let me
trace my
hands down
the source
of your quivers

let me ****
in the warm
chopped air
you release

allow me
every pleasure
to cherish
the sweetness
of your
pink lips

unleash your
asteroid words
your infinite
galaxies of
nail scratches

in this moment
let me feel
the planets
within you
implode

let me be
the reason,
the epicentre of
your uncontrollable
tremors

release your
stars on me

make a
constellation
in your mind
of the times
i shook
your universe

and tell me
how it feels like
returning to the suburbia
walking past couples
eating chilly popsicles
from each others’ hands
while kids fall on the pavements
not a worry, not a melee
as the first full moon
overlooking us
beyond the double pulses
built at the epicentre
witnessing all of the
wild, harsh river flows
that taught us life
I am not the melodramatic aristocrat
you are the forgetful, envious plutocrat
will you make it through January
when I still linger with December?

you would know that only answer.

She's a newspaper.
There's her headline bold and brash;
But read the small print and she becomes a 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.
The words are memories which moulded her, the pictures are dreams, aspirations and fears.
Her paper pages may be thin but each is woven with lines of strength.
Her heart lies at the epicentre of the fold in the pages and it's the most wonderful thing.

Rose,
The morn is bright
and fair,
and so art thou.
Good Lord! when
shall my envy
cease, for he that loveth thee?
My convincing love words
will never be exhausted
until your highly sought
after hand in marriage I have won.
Contenders from the east, west,
north and south of France
line up by day just for your
consent to seek.
But just as dauntless, relentless
and resilient in battle I have been,
so will I be in my struggle
with these contenders
for your heart's epicentre.

In 2006 I ventured into an old abandoned libary, being an urban explorer I wanted to see first hand the haunting tales of what occured inside one's of occultism, satanic rituals and the paranormal.

I don't remember much of the trip but I can recall I heard a scream that sounded very familiar.

The year is 2016 and I have decided to return. This place so beautiful on my first visit now appears like the tales I was told those years ago. I open the main door now screeching due to the rust that covered the metal.

I make my way through a darkened hall, dimmly lit bulbs blinking providing the limited light. Bleak and the sudden pungent smell of decay, the brick walls once filled with warmth are now wet and cold.

Something is here.

The overbearing smell of rot and death lingers in the already thin air. Gulping....I stop....then proceed forwards. I feel the warmth of a stagnant breath on my back and turn a quick 90 degrees.

Nothing

Turning back to the direction I was originally heading, goosebumps adorn my being. Shaking and saying to myself. GET THE **** OUT GET THE **** OUT GET. THE. ****. OUT... I ignore my better judgement, I'm here to stay.

So I press on determined. I hear the buzzing of flies and I know I'm at the epicentre of the stench.

Bookshelves thrown askew, pentagrams and other ****** graffiti adorn the walls. I look around the room and then I see it...

A foot, I glide over to the foot and proceed from the blooded body stabbed in several places multiple times from the torso all the way to the face.

I stop...frozen in shock

I gasp...

It's not just any face

**It is mine.

The cracking of your bones,
sounds you hear when you crouch.
Trying to protect yourself from whom?
Your spine can bend
and extend
no further, protruding out
ready to snap, you twist and you moan and you groan
when will this stop?


You feel as frail as a bird
One that has fallen after its very first flight


The cracks are what you hear
when hope is lost.
You feel like your weakening will
can weaken
no further.


stop
just stop.


Listen here
Don’t listen to yourself breaking
Don’t slip through these cracks
Standing up is now your cause
Hope is not lost
So sit up and straighten your back


The more you crouch, the more it hurts
That corner you’re attached to is not your solace
or quiet place
you crouch there, only in the cold embrace
of your crumpled shirt


Corners don’t shelter you from your fears;
they cage you in with them.
They widen and stretch the cracks on your skin
Allowing pain and judgement to seep in
Cracks are gateways letting the water in…
Water that dampens your flame, your fire
and Hope
a precious thing


You’re hidden yet left wide open
Stuck in purgatory
This liminal hell
You hear the tolling of your own death knell


Are these cracks the
pain before your rebirth
the shedding and flaking
of your skin
which will leave you behind, a rejuvenated being?


You decide if these cracks will only exist
as a reminiscence of the passing pains
or will your thoughts dictate
that these cracks originate
from the epicentre of who you are?


Will you let this cancer-like spreading of the cracks continue?
Or will you stand up and straighten your back
To close up the cracks
and save you from You

When the bomb dropped
I was at the epicentre
With my back turned
I didn't see it coming.

When the sky fell
I turned inside out
And became the earth
My heart bled everywhere.

But over the hill came an army
Carrying no weapons
Their palpable strength like a mirage
Their love blinding like laser beams.

They formed a force field
Lifted me up
Filled in the cracks
And carried me.

Indestructible strength
Unequivocal faith
Infinite power
My army of love.

Sharpen the knife by whetstone,
walk to the shore, hold the blade
perpendicular to the fat belly
blanketed with tiny mirrors glinting
sun into your eyes

    Find the bridge decorated in promise locks
    cast a net,
    prime your tongue
    squeeze air from your lungs into
    gurgling words decorating her ears,
    be impossible
    be the everything
    lock yourself inside as a habit
    as the indispensable limb

Scrape scales with the cutting edge,
send them flying in the air
landing like lily-pads
breaking the surface of salt-water

    Touch your roughest hand to the softest
    palette of the face with knuckles
    first tenderly like a mother
    and then violate in flight,
    land harshly
    crush the rosy palette into a
    cacophony of betrayal on the
    cheek, corrupt the soft curve of the lip
    decorate the chest in crimson,
    cut out trust from deep inside her
    womb  

Bathe the memory in a white tub
kissed by carmine, let it flow down the
hypnotizing hurricane drain
through hair-matted pipes.
His after-shave knuckle tenderness
will perfume the steam,
permeate your memories
make home deep inside capillaries

Wash the fish in the Atlantic – let it
kiss its forehead, puncture the gut
with the ****** end, pull back,
let crimson blood and iron
perfume spill in globules onto emptying
tides washing out to sea

Dawn crab will come to the shallows,
eat the scraps with their pincers.
In the morning gulls recognize backs
hunched over by the water, swoop down

Pull out the curved hook from your cheek
dragging you in matrimony
drop the shredded robe of sinew and worth,
leave the tatters on the bathroom floor

    Go to her in the evening
    sew the pretty back together into a quilt,
    stain it with ****** knuckles and
    kiss her goodnight into resentment

Others will come into your life,
one will recognize the perpetual
circling in the epicentre,
swing prayers into your centrifuge of
consequence and
pull out the spears from
your chest, mend broken hopes
straighten the shattered
bones into a home indispensable to him
and show you simply, Love

My Horrible Habit

My horrible habit of laziness
Chains me to the ground
In the epicentre
Of the circumference
Of my life

I do what I like to do
And nothing else
Expending all my energy
On myself

My inconsideration for others
For all my mothers
Is utterly unacceptable

I must tie my mind
To the stake
And burn my self away

Sean Hunt  
Windermere April 2015

I left my midnight shifts
and stepped into their spaceship.
The grass was thrown into purple light,
a royal carpet between my toes and
all with no scorch marks left behind.
I had wanted something
flesh-and-blood to believe in.
They would stroke my back
until I fell asleep, purring rolls of sound
through vibrations in my spine,
into the epicentre of The Electron
and its throbbing, binaural flute.
I left the planet on a whim
with common strangers
who understood the distance of stars,
but more importantly:
how to get there.

Your worn our mask it slips,
Your tired our act it shows,
Faltering occasionally,
To reveal a you which nobody knows.

When I say nobody,
I truly mean that,
You’re not even aware,
You ever learned to act.

The mask you wear,
Is part of your face,
You change it all the time,
you have masks for every day.

Its not your fault,
It’s a blameless act infact.
Which is a shock you,
For theres always be those you’ve had ,

In your search light,
The epicentre of your passion,
For being made to feel,
Your happiness is a wartime ration.

So to spread it out you change,
For each of your companions,
Don a different face,
And become that someone’s champion.

You be what you think they want
While all the while you’re not

Your selfish inability
To open your eyes, to truly see,

That all people want from you
Is for you to be true.
To scrap the masks, quit the act,
It’s hard as hell, that’s a fact,

You’ve worn so many that,
You have forgotten what.
The real you Is
And is not.

But that’s ok, just make another face,
But if you do,
Can you keep up the pace?

It’s easier to make,
Than just to be,
Which in my eyes shows,
for all we have, few of us are free.

We are put on a stage
But given no lines,
And god forbid
We say something, honest in our eyes.
So keep acting, I won’t tell you stop,
The saddest thing is,
I don’t know if I wrote this or not.

Check.

Relief.

Check.

Relief.

Check.

Relief.

Pause.

Don’t check.

Un-pause.

Sudden and devastating irony that one’s skin can crawl, yet none of their limbs work.

The only animated parts being my heart as it hammers against the rigid, perspiring cage that it so desperately tries to keep alive.

And my lungs, as they desperately gulp for air like they may never taste it again.

For who knows if oxygen exists in the darkness that lurks at the epicentre of the collision between fact and fiction.


Check.

Check again.