Everyman had many friends,
and the Sheilas loved his looks.
He spent his days at football,
with not much time for books.

Everyman in the prime of life
was a wonder to behold.
Was any man more full of life?
Could any be so bold?

Everyman came to the day
where he lost a step in speed.
His mates had settled, mostly down,
or sold their souls to greed.

The game moved on to younger lads,
left everyman behind
He, of course, remained a fan
consigned to the sideline.

Everyman began to fail,
old concussions took their toll.
He'd enter a room full of friends
and couldn't name a soul

Everyman, now in a "home",
awaits his morning tea.
Sometimes a stranger visits-
a member of his family.

Everyman sits in shadows now.
The world goes on without.
His strength and wits deserted him
and he never was devout.

Everyman begins to die
with a murmur, not a shout
Nurse Deeds stays to hold his hand
till the light of life goes out.

Whose women these are I think I know.
His housefly’s dead on the vignette though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his women pick snowdrops.

My little hornpipe is quite queer
He stops without a farce or sneer
Between the women with their frozen ‘la’s
The commonest everyman of the yawl.

He gives his harlot beldams his shaft
To assure they are his mistresses.
The only other soundtrack's the sweat
Of easy win from downing flagons.

The women are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promenades to keep,
And migraines to go before I sleep,
And migraines to go before I sleep.

She sent it to me as a text message, that is an image of a quote in situ, a piece of interpretation in a gallery. Saturday morning and I was driving home from a week in a remote cottage on a mountain. I had stopped to take one last look at the sea, where I usually take one last look, and the phone bleeped. A text message, but no text.  Just a photo of some words. It made me smile, the impossibility of it. Epic poems and tapestry weaving. Of course there are connections, in that for centuries the epic subject has so often been the stuff of the tapestry weaver’s art. I say this glibly, but cannot name a particular tapestry where this might be so. Those vast Arthurian pieces by William Morris to pictures by Burne-Jones have an epic quality both in scale and in subject, but, to my shame, I can’t put a name to one.

These days the tapestry can be epic once more - in size and intention - thanks to the successful, moneyed contemporary artist and those communities of weavers at West Dean and at Edinburgh’s Dovecot. Think of Grayson Perry’s The Walthamstowe Tapestry, a vast 3 x 15 metres executed by Ghentian weavers, a veritable apocalyptic vision where ‘Everyman, spat out at birth in a pool of blood, is doomed and predestined to spend his life navigating a chaotic yet banal landscape of brands and consumerism’.  Gosh! Doesn’t that sound epic!

I was at the Dovecot a little while ago, but the public gallery was closed. The weavers were too busy finishing Victoria Crowe’s Large Tree Group to cope with visitors. You see, I do know a little about this world even though my tapestry weaving is the sum total of three weekends tuition, even though I have a very large loom once owned by Marta Rogoyska. It languishes next door in the room that was going to be where I was to weave, where I was going to become someone other than I am. This is what I feel - just sometimes - when I’m at my floor loom, if only for those brief spells when life languishes sufficiently for me be slow and calm enough to pick up the shuttles and find the right coloured yarns. But I digress. In fact putting together tapestry and epic poetry is a digression from the intention of the quote on the image from that text - (it was from a letter to Janey written in Iceland). Her husband, William Morris, reckoned one could (indeed should) be able to compose an epic poem and weave a tapestry.  

This notion, this idea that such a thing as being actively poetic and throwing a pick or two should go hand in hand, and, in Morris’ words, be a required skill (or ‘he’d better shut up’), seemed (and still does a day later) an absurdity. Would such a man (must be a man I suppose) ‘never do any good at all’ because he can’t weave and compose epic poetry simultaneously?  Clearly so.  But then Morris wove his tapestries very early in the morning - often on a loom in his bedroom. Janey, I imagine, as with ladies of her day - she wasn’t one, being a stableman’s daughter, but she became one reading fluently in French and Italian and playing Beethoven on the piano- she had her own bedroom.

Do you know there are nights when I wish for my own room, even when sleeping with the one I love, as so often I wake in the night, and I lie there afraid (because I love her dearly and care for her precious rest) to disturb her sleep with reading or making notes, both of which I do when I’m alone.
Yet how very seductive is the idea of joining my loved one in her own space, amongst her fallen clothes, her books and treasures, her archives and precious things, those many letters folded into her bedside bookcase, and the little black books full of tender poems and attempts at sketches her admirer has bequeathed her when distant and apart. Equally seductive is the possibility of the knock on the bedroom / workroom door, and there she’ll be there like the woman in Michael Donaghy’s poem, a poem I find every time I search for it in his Collected Works one of the most arousing and ravishing pieces of verse I know: it makes me smile and imagine.  . .  Her personal vanishing point, she said, came when she leant against his study door all warm and wet and whispered 'Paolo’. Only she’ll say something in a barely audible voice like ‘Can I disturb you?’ and with her sparkling smile come in, and bring with her two cats and the hint of a naked breast nestling in the gap of the fold of her yellow Chinese gown she holds close to herself - so when she kneels on my single bed this gown opens and her beauty falls before her, and I am wholly, utterly lost that such loveliness is and can be so . . .

When I see a beautiful house, as I did last Thursday, far in the distance by an estuary-side, sheltering beneath wooded hills, and moor and rock-coloured mountains, with its long veranda, painted white, I imagine. I imagine our imaginary home where, when our many children are not staying in the summer months and work is impossible, we will live our ‘together yet apart’ lives. And there will be the joy of work. I will be like Ben Nicholson in that Italian villa his father-in-law bought, and have my workroom / bedroom facing a stark hillside with nothing but a carpenter’s table to lay out my scores. Whilst she, like Winifred, will work at a tidy table in her bedroom, a vase of spring flowers against the window with the estuary and the mountains beyond. Yes, her bedroom, not his, though their bed, their wonderful wooden 19C Swiss bed of oak, occupies this room and yes, in his room there is just a single affair, but robust, that he would sleep on when lunch had been late and friends had called, or they had been out calling and he wanted to give her the premise of having to go back to work – to be alone - when in fact he was going to sleep and dream, but she? She would work into the warm afternoons with the barest breeze tickling her bare feet, her body moving with the remembrance of his caresses as she woke him that morning from his deep, dark slumber. ‘Your brown eyes’, he would whisper, ‘your dear brown eyes the colour of an autumn leaf damp with dew’. And she would surround him with kisses and touch of her firm, long body and (before she cut her plaits) let her course long hair flow back and forward across his chest. And she did this because she knew he would later need the loneliness of his own space, need to put her aside, whereas she loved the scent of him in the room in which she worked, with his discarded clothes, the neck-tie on the door hanger he only reluctantly wore.

Back to epic poetry and its possibility. Even on its own, as a single, focused activity it seems to me, unadventurous poet that I am, an impossibility. But then, had I lived in the 1860s, it would probably not have seemed so difficult. There was no Radio 4 blathering on, no bleeb of arriving texts on the mobile. There were servants to see to supper, a nanny to keep the children at bay. At Kelmscott there was glorious Gloucestershire silence - only the roll and squeak of the wagon in the road and the rooks roosting. So, in the early mornings Morris could kneel at his vertical loom and, with a Burne-Jones cartoon to follow set behind the warp. With his yarns ready to hand, it would be like a modern child’s painting by numbers, his mind would be free to explore the fairy domain, the Icelandic sagas, the Welsh Mabinogion, the Kalevara from Finland, and write (in his head) an epic poem. These were often elaborations and retellings in his epic verse style of Norse and Icelandic sagas with titles like Sigurd the Volsung. Paul Thompson once said of Morris  ‘his method was to think out a poem in his head while he was busy at some other work.  He would sit at an easel, charcoal or brush in hand, working away at a design while he muttered to himself, 'bumble-beeing' as his family called it; then, when he thought he had got the lines, he would get up from the easel, prowl round the room still muttering, returning occasionally to add a touch to the design; then suddenly he would dash to the table and write out twenty or so lines.  As his pen slowed down, he would be looking around, and in a moment would be at work on another design.  Later, Morris would look at what he had written, and if he did not like it he would put it aside and try again.  But this way of working meant that he never submitted a draft to the painful evaluation which poetry requires’.

Let’s try a little of Sigurd

There was a dwelling of Kings ere the world was waxen old;
Dukes were the door-wards there, and the roofs were thatched with gold;
Earls were the wrights that wrought it, and silver nailed its doors;
Earls' wives were the weaving-women, queens' daughters strewed its floors,

And the masters of its song-craft were the mightiest men that cast
The sails of the storm of battle down the bickering blast.
There dwelt men merry-hearted, and in hope exceeding great
Met the good days and the evil as they went the way of fate:
There the Gods were unforgotten, yea whiles they walked with men,

Though e'en in that world's beginning rose a murmur now and again
Of the midward time and the fading and the last of the latter days,
And the entering in of the terror, and the death of the People's Praise.

Oh dear. And to think he sustained such poetry for another 340 lines, and that’s just book 1 of 4. So what dear reader, dear sender of that text image encouraging me to weave and write, just what would epic poetry be now? Where must one go for inspiration? Somewhere in the realms of sci-fi, something after Star-Wars or Ninja Warriors. It could be post-apocalyptic, a tale of mutants and a world damaged by chemicals or economic melt-down. Maybe a rich adventure of travel on a distant planet (with Sigourney Weaver of course), featuring brave deeds and the selfless heroism of saving companions from deadly encounters with amazing animals, monsters even. Or is ‘epic’ something else, something altogether beyond the Pixar Studios or James Cameron’s imagination? Is the  ‘epic’ now the province of AI boldly generating the computer game in 4D?  

And the epic poem? People once bought and read such published romances as they now buy and engage with on-line games. This is where the epic now belongs. On the tablet, PlayStation3, the X-Box. But, but . . . Poetry is so alive and well as a performance phenomenon, and with that oh so vigorous and relentless beat. Hell, look who won the T.S.Eliot prize this year! Story-telling lives and there are tales to be told, even if they are set in housing estates and not the ice caves of the frozen planet Golp. Just think of children’s literature, so rich and often so wild. This is word invention that revisits unashamedly those myths and sagas Morris loved, but in a different guise, with different names, in worlds that still bring together the incredible geographies of mountains and deserts and wilderness places, with fortresses and walled cities, and the startling, still unknown, yet to be discovered ocean depths.

                                    And so let my tale begin . . . My epic poem.

                                                 THE SEAGASP OF ENNLI.
       A TALE IN VERSE OF EARTHQUAKE, ISLAND FASTNESS, MALEVOLENT SPIRITS,
                                                AND REDEMPTIVE LOVE.

My attire, flyer than a kite
Bellowing higher
Floating, but ******
Sober, I'm told
The only state I'm in
Ain't about sin
Just a means to avoid
a loose mind
Of a multiple kind
Where happy and mad coincide
Follow me through the workings,

Go inside.

Where the mood pendulates
side to side
With reckless abandon.

Manifest in a man
To have childish tantrums
Self righteous in  his self deprecating anthems
To spring one's phantoms alive.

This, I strive to evade
I hide, but to save
No one else, but me.

Everyman for himself!

The mantra (sadly) of anyone seeking to be Free!

Why Has Everyman Turned To Beards?

It’s weird,
This shift to beard controlled appearance.
A trend it seems, not only spreading,
But which has no end.
Scratching when it kisses,
Missing out on blisses, I assure you.
Shaping face, I must admit,
(but not to everyman’s face-benefit).

If truth be told,
It must be hell to keep a chin/cheek fold all squeaky smooth.
But who in heavens want to hold, take hold
                                                           of bristles,
Or see badly shaped and prickly thistles?
Men have aped since lunar’s start.
Everyone knows that!
Fashion is contagious as the rabies from a bat.

Long, short, food-y flecked, unchecked,
Yet there is self-absorption’s admiration.
Let us hope the puppy generation
Growing up will razor up,
Shave every self-helped hair
Formed there (or anywhere.)
It grows unlimitedly wild.

Undefiled, I plead,
Wield the blade
And beauteously shear with care.
Brave new men, you are not cavemen!
Shave men!
One more time and once again -
Just shave!

Why Has Everyman Turned To Beards? 3.27.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Everybody fighting this war
no you cannot win
fighting for these things
everything you've been feeling
fighting for these things
everything you've been learning
everyman is at fight with a war
no you cannot win
a war with yourself
man its a war left within
everyman fighting this war
you know you cannot win
a war with yourself
man its a war left within

Everyman fighting this war
a war with yourself
man its a war left within
trapped with nowhere to hide
you gotta see through blue eagles eyes
soaring high through the trees
yes soaring out, out into thee
now everyman can't you see
the answer my friends always born free
it could be the time and the space
this wonder that you seek

I've given poetry readings where less than a handful of people were present. It's a humbling experience. It’s also a deeply familiar experience.

"Poetry is useless," poet Geoffrey ****** said in a 2013 interview, "but it is useless the way the soul is useless—it is unnecessary, but we would not be what we are without it."

I was raised a Roman Catholic, and though I don’t go to Mass regularly anymore, I still remember early mornings during Advent when I went to liturgies at my parochial school. It was part of my offering—the sacrifice I made to honor the impending birth of the Savior—along with giving up candy at Lent. So few people attended at that hour that the priest turned on only a few lights near the altar. Approaching the front of the church, my plastic book bag rustling against my winter coat, I felt as if I were nearing the seashore at sunrise: the silhouettes of old widows on their kneelers at low tide, waiting for the priest to come in, starting the ritual in plain, unsung vernacular. No organist to blast us into reverence. No procession.

Every day, all over the world, these sparsely attended ceremonies still happen. Masses are said. Poetry is read. Poems are written on screens and scraps of paper. When I retire for the day, I move into a meditative, solitary, poetic space. These are the central filaments burning through my life, and the longer I live, the more they seem to be fused together.

Poetry is marginal, thankless, untethered from fame and fortune; it's also gut level, urgent, private yet yearning for connection. In all these ways, it's like prayer for me. I’m a not-quite-lapsed Catholic with Zen leanings, but I’ll always pray—and I’ll always write poems. Writing hasn’t brought me the Poetry Jackpot I once pursued, but it draws on the same inner wiring that flickers when I pray.        

• • •

In the 2012 collection A God in the House: Poets Talk About Faith, nineteen contemporary American poets, from Buddhist to Wiccan to Christian, discuss how their artistic and spiritual lives inform one another. Kazim Ali, who was raised a Shia Muslim, observes in his essay “Doubt and Seeking”:

[Prayer is] speaking to someone you know is not going to be able to speak back, so you're allowed to be the most honest that you can be. In prayer you're allowed to be as purely selfish as you like. You can ask for something completely irrational. I have written that prayer is a form of panic, because in prayer you don't really think you're going to be answered. You'll either get what you want or you won't.

You could replace the word "prayer" with "poetry" with little or no loss of meaning. I'd even go so far as to say that submitting my work to a journal often feels like this, too. Sometimes, when I get an answer in the form of an acceptance, I'm stunned.

"I never think of a possible God reading my poems, although the gods used to love the arts,” writes ***** Howe in her essay "Footsteps over Ground." She adds:

Poetry could be spoken into a well, of course, and drop like a penny into the black water. Sometimes I think that there is a heaven for poems and novels and music and dance and paintings, but they might only be hard-worked sparks off a great mill, which may add up to a whole-cloth in the infinite.

And here, you could easily replace the word "poetry" with "prayer." The penny falling to the bottom of a well is more often what we experience. But both poetry and prayer are things humans have learned to do in order to go on. Doubt is a given, but we do get to choose what it is we doubt.

A God in the House Book Cover
Quite a few authors in A God in the House (Howe, Gerald Stern, Jane Hirschfield, Christian Wiman) invoke the spiritual writing of Simone Weil, including her assertion that "absolutely unmixed attention is prayer." This sounds like the Zen concept of mindfulness. And it broadens the possibility for poetry as prayer, regardless of content, since writing poetry is an act of acute mindfulness. We mostly use words in the practical world to persuade or communicate, but prayers in various religious traditions can be lamentations of great sorrow. Help me, save me, take this pain away—I am in agony. In a church or a temple or a mosque, such prayerful lamentation is viewed as a form of expression for its own good, even when it doesn't lead immediately to a change of emotional state.

Perhaps the unmixed attention Weil wrote of is a unity of intention and utterance that’s far too rare in our own lives. We seldom match what we think or feel with what we actually say. When it happens spontaneously in poetry or prayer—Allen Ginsberg's "First thought, best thought" ideal —it feels like a miracle, as do all the moments when I manage to get out of my own way as a poet.

Many people who pray don’t envision a clear image of whom or what they’re praying to. But poets often have some sense of their potential readers. There are authorities whose approval I've tried to win or simply people I've tried to please: teachers, fellow writers, editors, contest judges—even my uncle, who actually reads my poems when they appear in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he used to work.

And yet, my most immersed writing is not done with those real faces in mind. I write to the same general entity to which I pray. It's as if the dome of my skull extends to the ceiling of the room I'm in, then to the dome of the sky and outward. It’s like the musings I had as a child lying awake at night, when my imagination took me to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. But then I emerge from this wide-open state and begin thinking about possible readers—and the faces appear.

This might also be where the magic ends.

• • •

I write poetry because it’s what I do, just as frogs croak and mathematicians ponder numbers. Poetry draws on something in me that has persisted over time, even as I’ve distracted myself with other goals, demands, and purposes; even as I’ve been forced by circumstance to strip writing poetry of certain expectations.

"Life on a Lily Pad" © Michelle Tribe
"Life on a Lily Pad"
© Michelle Tribe
At 21, I was sure I’d publish my first book before I was 25. I’m past my forties now and have yet to find a publisher for a book-length collection, though I've published more than a hundred individual poems and two chapbooks. So, if a “real” book is the equivalent of receiving indisputable evidence that your prayers are being answered, I’m still waiting.

It hasn’t been easy to shed the bitter urgency I’ve felt on learning that one of my manuscripts was a finalist in this or that contest, but was not the winner. Writing in order to attain external success can be as tainted and brittle as saying a prayer that, in truth, is more like a command: (Please), God, let me get through this difficulty (or else)—

Or else what? It’s a false threat, if there’s little else left to do but pray. When my partner is in the ICU, his lungs full of fluid backed up from a defective aortic valve; when my nephew is deployed to Afghanistan; when an ex is drowning in his addiction; when I hit a dead end in my job and don’t think I can do it one more day—every effort to imagine that these things might be gotten through is a kind of prayer that helps me weather a life over which I have little control.

Repeated disappointment in my quest to hit the Poetry Jackpot has taught me to recast the jackpot in the lowercase—locating it not in the outcome but in the act of writing itself, sorting out the healthy from the unhealthy intentions for doing it. Of course, this shift in perspective was not as neat as the preceding sentence makes it seem. There were years of thrashing about, of turning over stones and even throwing them, then moments of exhaustion when I just barely heard the message from within:

This is too fragile and fraught to be something that guides your whole life.

I didn't hear those words, exactly—and this is important. For decades, I’ve made my living as a writer. But I can't manipulate or edit total gut realizations. I can throw words at them, but it would be like shaking a water bottle at a forest fire; at best, I can chase the feeling with metaphors: It's like this—no, like this—or like this.

So, odd as this sounds for a poet, I now seek wordlessness. When I meditate, I intercept hundreds of times the impulse to shape a perception into words. Reduced to basics, the challenge facing any writer is knowing what to say—and what not to.

• • •

To read or listen to poetry requires unmixed attention just as writing it does. And when a poem is read aloud, there's a communal, at times ritualistic, element that can make a reading feel like collective prayer, even if there are only a few listeners in the audience or I’m listening by myself.

"Allen Ginsberg" © MDCArchives
Allen Ginsberg
© MDCArchives
When I want to feel moved and enlarged, all I have to do is play Patti Smith's rendition of Ginsberg's "Footnote to Howl." His long list poem from 1955 gathers people, places, objects, and abstractions onto a single exuberant altar. It’s certainly a prayer, one that opens this way:

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!

The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and **** and hand and ******* holy!

Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel!

Some parts of Ginsberg's list ("forgiveness! charity! faith! bodies! suffering! magnanimity!") belong in any conventional catalogue of what a prayer celebrates as sacred. Other profane elements ("the ***** of the grandfathers of Kansas!") gain admission because they are swept up into his ritualistic roll call.

I can easily parody Ginsberg's litany: Holy the Dairy Queen, holy the barns of the Amish where cheese is releasing its ambitious stench, holy the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Internet. But reading the poem aloud feels to me the way putting on ritual garments must to a shaman or rabbi or priest. Watching Patti Smith perform the poem (various versions are available on YouTube), I get shivers seeing how it transforms her, and it's clear why she titled her treatment of the poem "Spell."

A parody can't do that. It can't manifest as the palpable unity of intention and utterance. It can't do what Emily Dickinson famously said that poetry did to her:

If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only [ways] I know it. Is there any other way.

Like the process of prayer—to God, to a better and bigger self, to the atmosphere—writing can be a step toward unifying heart, mind, body, universe. Ginsberg's frenzied catalogue ends on "brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul"; Eliot's The Waste Land on "shantih," or "the peace that surpasseth understanding." Neither bang nor whimper, endings like these are at once humble and tenacious. They say "Amen" and step aside so that a greater wordlessness can work its magic.

I was a lost soul
In this world so cold
Where everyone knows the mind becomes corrupted
Because everything in life is about money cars
and that ****** seduction

Just becareful bcus if u get ****** in
Ull cnfuse love with lust
Money for power  
In it's self a contradiction
But still has Everyman wishing
For the life of a superstar when really it's the little ones that make galaxies

but see we are confused by our own infatuations nd a touch of insanity
So here I am trying to figure out my souls anatomy

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
     Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!
     The nose is holy! The tongue and **** and hand
     and ******* holy!
Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is
     holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an
     angel!
The ***'s as holy as the seraphim! the madman is
     holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is
     holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy
     Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cas-
     sady holy the unknown buggered and suffering
     beggars holy the hideous human angels!
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the *****
     of the grandfathers of Kansas!
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop
     apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana
     hipsters peace & junk & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy
     the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the
     mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the
     middle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebell-
     ion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria &
     Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow
     Holy Istanbul!
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the
     clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy
     the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the
     locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucina-
     tions holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the
     abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!
     bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent
     kindness of the soul!

                                   Berkeley 1955

Every man
I have ever
Loved
Admired
Or even
Respected
Has in some way degraded me
Unforgivably.
This is why I prefer to meet them in passing,
As shadows with hard fingers and
Leers
Or as ghosts with an extra tip
For the pretty waitress.
I cannot love
Admire
Or even
Respect them
If I really see their faces.
So I don't
Look.

What was it like
To be who I was
Before I became
Who I am now?
You want to know
The old, old story
All about the tale
Of when and how?

You know I was not
A member of nobility.
That is not a part
Of my ignoble history.
You know I was not rich
Because I have no gold.
So, what was I after all
In my days of old?

As I was no hero
Heralded in legend songs.
I was but a normal person.
Any praise would be wrong.
There are no carvings,
Friezes on marble walls.
No horde of loyal soldiers
Rally at my urgent call.

But I can leave life
Proud to say what is true.
I died without a penny
To any other person due.
I achieved most of my dreams.
I will say that with my last breath
Between my humble life
And my inglorious death.

Look, I just want to move you.
Woo you.
Shake you loose but never lose you.
I want to
Savor the glazed reverent silence
Of your gasping, ungrasped breath.
Sip it down till there's nothing left
Yet still explain all the rest.
See, it's time I unearth some gold.
Nothing here sold.
Just given freely to slurp up,
served up cold.
But I dare not go it alone.
Not when there's so many heplping hands
Beyond my own.
So I first court Eloquence.
She's an easy mark to find,
volubly masticating volumes
while leisurely lathering her tanned,
Leather skin.
Dolloping her monocle-bodied features
In librarian sin.
She says...
"My dear boy.
Berate them NOT
with your false start,
lethargic oddities.
Your penchant,
Melancholic falsities.
You must but grunt through the trudgery
Of your muddy misgivings,
And birth only accessible
Pertinent notions.
Neither precarious nor
Incongruous to the truth!
Robby.
You must simply relinquish your
Intrepid, frenzied paucities!
So I dismiss the diss.
Since
her big scary words are kinda lost to me.
Evidently, though,
I must need a Joe Blow.
An Everyman.
A Streetcorner Clairvoyant.
I turn to
(drum roll)
Raunchiness.
His beer belly **** and **** jokes
And dollar store aftershave suggest
A pleasing 'pull-my-finger' charm
that just might turn the trick.
He licks his lips,
And chides through a buck-tooth,
Spit shine smile.
Sheeeooot, boy,
That there one's easy.
All you gotsta do is
Go down deep
And speak from your gut.
Tell em how you feel..
How you REALLY feel.
Tell em..
shoot, tell em they rub you just right,
You might well feel as ***** as
Your gas gauge after a good pump.
As ***** as a McD's wrapper
Corner-pinch-discarded like
A used diaper hammock.
Yeah! You tell em your as ******
As a receptacle
For used diaper hammocks!
Hells yeah.
Girls will eat that **** up!
And say you're as gay as rainbow gold
As straight as an arrow-head.
As misled as finding your folks are still *** fiends
or as contradictory as ***** like me!
Boy, you are as con-fused as the
Lumpy, stumpy, pimply dimpled teen who finds out
Santa Claus IS real!
And he's hanging out loose
In every single Hustler Magazine!
Now hear me boy.
If they still don't care,
Or they see that you're scared,
Just say you feel as guilty as midnight dials
From parents of Girls-Gone-Wild,
sneering,
"Well shoot, sugar plum.
You sure ain't been feeling
Real secure in awhile."
And as he loosely labels me
As awkward as **** thermometers,
As misunderstood as **** plugs,
I give Raunchiness a dismissive shrug,
And return to the mystery
Of what I've missed from me,
Whatever still may be
My own poetic style.

Someone please tell me,  that

..The true Art of Love  is more
than the self-centered,  'incestuous'
  form of  love,  shown
within what the Modern world
refers to as "Romantic love"..
aw ****.. please tell me it is more

    Romantic love says this--
"You are 'of value' to me because I love you"
"You are 'of value' to me because you are in my life"
"You are 'of value' to me because you are  mine"

And after the 'bliss-filled'  romantic love
     ***** the bed..
the only value that remains is through the residual,
soon to be diluted and washed out by displacement--

..Either that of a new self-centered based  'filling'
or that of the re-placement of "value-image"  
with that, brought about through the all-too-ready
  and internally-available Gaslighting process

So please, please explain it to me just how  wonderfully
"romantic' love can truly ever aid in the healing process..
     someone.. please.


     .      .      .      .      .      .      .    

Alone  she sits in her room,  waiting.
The atoms  of the air,  
carry  both sides  of the story--

  The coldness  and the warmth
  the closeness, and the distance

  ..the empty-black
  followed by the Sky-filled Blue

  Someone please tell me,  just who
  helped this little-one  to see
     that the way  out..
     is the way,  through?

Protected to the point  of nearly dying
    Insulation is isolation to the bone
     (she is crying, crying,  crying)

On a Prayer mat,  facing East;
a grounded soul  is flying

    (but flying  so very all alone)

There is a Chaste,  and a Purity
  Borne separated
from the Un-doings  of man..
    Void of all walls,  
   there is a susceptibility

Yet also  a wide-Opening
    to the pressings  of the Ache

There has been a waiting
to the point of near Death
A look in Patient eyes
    (One that separates me  
       from my breath)

Not all are so protected
from the Fallen  love of man
..Not all  have almost died
so all alone  in their room; 

  protected

From that empty kind  of love
leading to an empty, empty  Death

greece, even, in the nostalgia decades sometimes wore american clothes
but she spoke no english, was starkly unilingual
save for the french "sillage". she was the reason they teach you safe ***
and abstinence: the reason they couldn't trust you
she dressed more american than everybody else; she was a beautiful cockeyed anachronism

your jimmy stewart baby blues on her, brandy-sanctioned
better than the everyman. and a hallucination of your stand-in therapist
asking you "why should there be guilt if there is pleasure?"
and you replying horselike/illogical "it is the unconscious fantasy that i can be torn apart"

So I see that you're a
Functioning alcoholic
Don't forget the bin

My biggest fear has nothing to do
     with monsters, the dark, death,
     or any of those usual frights.
No, my most intense scare comes
     from the anticipation that one day
     you may see me the same way
     I see myself.
For you see I'm not the girl that guys
     conjure up in their daydreams.
I could never hope to pass as one
     of those flitty girly-girls who know
     of quizzical things such as
               make-up
               cute hairstyles
               or fashion.
My blemishes show, and honestly
     I haven't a clue how to hide them
     anyway.
I look at braided hair, beachy waves,
     and effortless updos with envy
     My hair has two styles: up or down.
I've never in my life looked casually cute,
     and am obviously uncomfortable
     in a dress.  Please just pass me
     my jeans and t-shirt back,
     I'm much more myself in them.
     How does one even walk in heels?
I'd like to think I'm one of those
     "cool" girls that guys claim
     they love, the low-maintenance
     type chick, but I don't think
     I'm "cool" at all, really.
When guys describe those chicks,
     they do things like
               play video games
               quote Star Wars
               read comic books
     like some ideal gorgeous geek.
Well that's **** sure not me either.
     I **** at video games,
     love Star Wars, but
     I'm terrible with movie references,
     and have never read comics.
     Does manga count?
     I'm kind of starting to get into that...
I'm not the nerd's epitome of perfection
     either, the everyman's ideal.
So what am I? I'm just boring,
     little ole me.
I love to read, and would rather
     spend the night reading
     or watching something than go out.
I'm shy and self-conscious to a fault,
     so don't try bringing me around
     friends, I'll just bring you down.
Honestly, I'm basically a child. I love
               Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
               Gargoyles
               Tom & Jerry
               Animaniacs
     and cartoons in general.
I'm quiet and contemplative, often caught
     writing in my notebook,
     detailing my observations
     about the world around me.
I have a ***** mind and a messed-up
     sense of humor, giggling
     of the worst times occasionally.
But all in all, I think of myself
     as pretty boring.  Laidback,
     but with the most capricious of moods.
     I'm both low and high maintenance.
I don't know why you think positively
     of me, but I anticipate the day
     you realize I'm really nothing
     special at all.
The day you discover the truth
     I already know all too well.

Every want of ours is a need,
an everyman's need is unnecessary,
it is already fulfilled with a snap.
slip, slap, snap, just easy like that.

You are the funniest person I know. I am too.
We are the weirdest creatures,
so when we do normal things with normal people,
why, it's hilarious.
An ironic mockery of the everyman everyday.

Instead of being angry or rising against the system,
we play it like a fiddle,
and laugh at everyone and thing while we sit
smoking fat cigars and counting our money
before we dump it into our art and clothes
or set it on fire.

It's just so funny,
because we aren't like that
and we know it.
The world is our plaything and we just
laugh and
laugh and
laugh and laugh.
everything is just so manicially funny...

"The power of freedom to overcome tyrants and terrorists"
Moral clarity accoding {cording} Natan Sharansky,
he mustabin seeking seeing through a moral window
besmerched wi'traditions
radiating

A Russian-reared Jew's perspective from Israel
In the 1990's
No integration without representation

--- wait, let the reader recall the goal - yet set not -
right, roll on
{where is this going, David Goodman Chronicles 2020}

The book of life, your role,
{when you find your name, you know}
expand into
A party for the moment, our parts played,

well, let's try {hence, a title}

----govern yer own damself

A gain, a tryal, a paying, a tension, contention,
single source contention,
pride's the culpa writ. Right.

{when you walk into a banquet, be polite,
meaning act as though you are where you know
you are welcome, ask if the empty seat is taken,
if not, you will know you are welcome,
neighbor. This is the same old way, in the future.}

Hubris gotcha down- be humble, win a crown

Shall we win freedom for those locked in fear?
A fine challenge, don't you think?
Read.
Sakarov was Sharansky's teacher, his Plato,
upon whose shoulders, strangely strong faith
finds footing,
fulcrum,
you get the ideas you claim to own, not
the ideas you thought taught
true to all who consume the canon.
Leverage.
A library gives a mind leverage,
we have AI, no lie.

An idea, an id-entity, speaking spirit
Weyekin, englished to we ye kin,
angels, beings guiding ones
who know.

Not every evil is nullified.
Be a ware, the e keeps you from being
a war, knowing your own self as warrior.
Peace makers do not keep the peace,
peace makers let it settle to stillness
waiting behind any obstacle,
waiting is suffering this to be so now, because
nothing in the energy compelling me is breaking
through
but to you, see, dear reader It may be
only I who thinks we are, you could be imaginary.

Actually.
Many useless
morals of stories remain as aphorisms
and adages and proverbial warnings to provoke.
Nietzsche numbered his, to give account
for every idle word,
links
perhaps…
Speak up, lie not against the truth, saying I know,
I know
-boundaries, of course
Freedom must be
defined.
Who knows? Tell me, oft-op apt ove'yer'head!
Y'know? Y,
Everyman does what is right in it's own eyes.
Maybe,
define everyman.
{und ganz Übermenchen}
All of us. Everyman sind all of us, in well ordered
reality,
such as our readers of reality-
between-
lines-never-drawn
in
sand. {flaunting the peace of the sabbath,
which did allow stoning, as you may recall.}

You see, we are in the same story.
There is no authority, save you pay,
free willingly, attention to tensions
seeming
to signal something
mechanical,
click,
ping, a single ATP dis compossesses.
-composed
Ride that photon.
Here we are again, speed of thought.
Think so? Real is an assumption, not an imagination.

I heard this guy say he was a son of God. Big G.
'Said he was aman with anorm al 'erose journey,
when 'tall wentahell.
Then, he believes he was reborn,
somewhat more than a mere mortal.
He claimed his forever
began when he stood up
to the knowing of good and evil, personally.
Intimately.
That seems good. Freedom is from some thing,
stricitive, right. Free from what?
Fear?
fear is one thing,
but fear has preservation purpose so,
we must be specific in which fears we bind to the NULL set.

WE are judging angels. Dare think.
You judged your own collection of inspirations,
did you not?
I prayed God, YHWH, actually, would show me
all the lies I believed,
about him and anything else. Amen, I did.
We'll make this plain, if this is your first signpost of note.

Ideas of freedom formed in the minds of slaves,
meet ideas of freedom formed in the minds of felons,
greet ideas of freedom formed in the minds of children in the desert,
bher with ideas formed in vacation bible school at hippie cults.
Suffer ideas formed in academies of technical guessing, f
er cryin' out loud.
Ideas of freedom?
Little children, keep yourselves from vain imaginations.

Freedom that cannot name Jesus YHWH is not the proof.
Truth is the proof. Truth makes free, he who seeks it,
which is not to say
he who has apprehended
the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
No, whoso ever seeks,
finds more abundance
of that which he has.
He who has nothing, finds nothing.

All candidates claiming direct linage to truth:
define freedom and be judged.

That's not fair.
Accuse, excuse us, life's not fair,

Judge yourself. "Make yer dam' bed!"
{presuming you woke t'd'yoke}
leave us form a
party to puff
up moral clarity like
leaven, till three more measures of
dust rise on the gasses we naturally

cannot see. In corpo ratus.
CLEAR!
Scientology? Coincidence, if 'tis.
Ol' magi-tech, what so
ever we agree. Same trick.
Sacro-sanctity
freedom from fear. Agree? No? Why not?

Fear of YHWH is the beginning of Wisdom.
True, but thought wrong.
Genitive fear, God's fear, is the beginning
of Wisdom, she was with him ere the
highest part of the dust of the world took form.
Fear of falling, is good -- no, it is a mistaken signal,
an imbalance, eh?
The speed of thought correction is faster than the eye
can see and warning is thought, of an unknown harm,
mistook.

Fear of believing lies, is needed, I thought, but, no,
There's no fear of believing lies,
truth be told.
"Cannot the tongue taste its words?"
"Is there any taste in the white of an egg?"
"Do you know the sweet influence of Pleiades?"

The bubble of all you know is an egg. Kinda.

-----

Self-govern, together live, birds of a feather flock together,
that idea. No slaves.

Fear society or free society, self, thyself, govern true.

That's right. "To thine own self, be true"
"believe no lie, tell no lie"
"Know thyself"
"Know thy shadow"

Today is 11-11-2021 the time here is 9:11 ante meridian,
You, as imagined, by me, alone,
are you, alone, reading, to yourself words
made from thoughts I am thinking at this pace.
Prepositioned, in your pastence.
Phrase, word, phrases, line
lines alone

lines in pairs
certain points genitivious, engender differing means
to obviously triplication of some certainties, certain
ties to old lines unraveled from a net knotted
in Ur.

We be ye kin, ken ye grock rocks rollin' on
down a course?
Of course you can, of course, the only common
course, this course of human events, common
sensed as time and space overlapping stuff.

Mater, mater, may I imagine being born, eh
oh, yes, -- movie memory -- see
right through the visible man,
a boy toy, picked by luck or the answer
to a prayer,
but I did ask for the best gift, hoping
it was money, because I was told Solomon,
was the wisest of mortals in ever, so
I was told he said, Money answereth all things.

Yeah, right. You already know, that seems so
wrong, wrong to the point, the root
of evil, barbed tail,
horns of dilemma, ah, what's a mind like mine to do?
Semantics, its all
se man tics, terms of worth, pro
forward onward efforting verbs, action words
The Infallible Book declares, Money answereth all things.

A single grain contains the whole, or some say so,
I imagine reality less restrictive in common sense
utility
use of knowns passed on as memes with reasons,
we sit to
gather memory, tell story, think song sung, sing
that song
a gain, we make the peace past understanding,
past when we were one, and we stood up
right
and ran away
remember, the heart of every story boy meets girl.

Well, this is different, scientifical. Fantastic, sure,
stable as the grammar in DNA.

Steady as the procession of the stars seen from
certain times and places, and passed through time
to any who wish to know
all the truth once held in forms told around fires
to comfort a child with a common cold,
aches and sniffles, full tummy,
milk and honey heated by stones, dropped
into a turtle shell mug my grandma gave to me

drifting into to tal, mor tal is man mortalisman more
more
more, wait. Wait.

We breathe. We listen. This is the book of life, live.

My task is breathing inlets along coastlines, where
waves of overlapping, pearling shallows round
stones as witness, stones crying out
living water has shaped me, see,

is this beauty for giving or selling. I wish I knew,
instantly,
this bit has been freely given, for the use
been made,
the formation, the inspiring aspiration to make

make up
a mind to find the answer, and find
it does appear
line upon line,
beyond the library Daniel witnessed sealed.

Money made this possible, this magic pen,
for all intents and purposes, this tech is magic.

Have you witnessed 3-D printing circa 1985?
Mac SE was cutting edge, and owning one
was status, using one was a good gig,
for an old counter of picas and points, once
the laser writer met vector formed fonts
calculated, computed with most accurate maths,
tangents and cosins and such,

the power of the press, in the hands of a pauper,
hmm, time and chance, let me warn you, this is
the untangling of the famed tangled web we weave
when first we receive the call to listen to the truth
you hear in written words arranged in patterns
adapted to the available, usable, medium.

Draw your self watching the horses painted
as the song of us is sung, a domus, we domus, us

singing together we form
awe
awfullest noise you can imagine in a secret place.

Welcome to the cavern of forgotten good ideas
and idle words mistaken as misdefined, this is that.
              
-restart
from certain places where uses are determined
by any means, good
[ye-es, the idea at the center}
pre-positioned, made fit for a king or a priest
or any humbler soul in a state of grace, id
est, best state, favored, by no power id-entity in me
conceived, but by the word of GOD, who is
good
all the time, any hungry child knows, how a child
weighs the worth of such an idea, plucked
from thin air…

Here, we be, wir sind, si, we know, go Ko!
golf-commentator whisper voice

did you come to find my voice, listen
learning is the first act that never ends,

the next word is the next thing, eventually,
events being
things, in their own right state, useful, or not.

Tantrums serve to prove the uselessness of tantrums.
Grandfather level wisdom fits moral to mean to end,
end all conjecture,
cease casting all cares to the common winds of time,
and space and sea and sky, everywhere idiocy abides
provoking one
an other, ricochet-re-re-re act re
sponse, jump, start

run, upright, spring thinking what
if
I say this is the goal, get to the bottom, fundus
professionally guided by I mind I myself, made up
mind
including you, the acting dear reader.
Saving myself for a publisher, copy right ritual
of code devisors, to increase interest,
gouge-deeper gullies to wash away desires
inspired by alluring vertisements intended
to loosen your grip
on sati. Satisfy my yearning soul-blues, bha-bha
boom
woncha sing witme seem what we seem to be
haps in a time per haps
may happen at will in a mind on a binge to end
all binges, writing like a joy-daemon viral
ex-plainer, needling *****, look

this way, see

ear? Practice makes perfect opportunity next

use of truth to tell a lie from a joke, perhaps
that is the trick,
who told the tale before you heard it was your
intellectual heritage,

your link to who and what you are, through song
and saga and right stepped beeing dancing thisaway
thataway sing asongofus a we a we a we away

what were we thinking, then
Lion King reminds us, being or not, what do we got
to do to attain

Acunamatattal rattle shake shake shake
shake your spoils from the war,
were you unaware, shaking ***** measures worth?

Stealing attention from the stars, eh,
lying demon, here, here be heretic tic, instant
hell
a poppin all around, as we recall some mirror neurons
to signal gut response
text wise
is this happening? Did the dam break, or the branch

is this a bough breaking affirmation broken from
the tree of life entangling the tree of knowing increase
vow to know
more, was the chant for warned be, war chants and we
chants are mortally indiscernible but

we die to learn the difference, you must be born again,
I can not call that a lie. Nor can you and prove me wrong.

Was that a the reason for war all along, selected
bits of the last old wives tales, the barren ones,

old wives, who watched no child, ever form, from
one generation, after another, to no eggs
ever forming vessels for the spirit of life knowing knowing
things, we agree on
things, we agree on things we make up and lie to others

to scare them, put fear in their hearts, fear of death,
real, on the edge, fear, we make up,
we pretend, we play, who am I to be, when I grow up?
- practice perfect sati, old wives say we agree, go.
polisemy spawn bloom Thuc's lic be witcha

If it was a common question, why was it no answer
is readily available…

avail, second instance, in this stream, how extra
ordinareally organzed are these eddies in the depths,
silken threads, silver in golden needles, apples
of gold, in pitchers of silver, still life, made
in vocative voice we sought, peace
in a picture
formed from words drawn in letting symbols setting
free
chthonic thoughts some time now,
where we go or how is immaterial now, here
is where all the power to be us - is, right now.

I'm loving the concept, except one knows,
one knows not,

could be a numbered aphorism in thoth lost long ago.

Freedom from pain? When? When the pain ends.

I have watched Thuc burn, many flashes
as to why
so, I surmise, no promise I am right then, but now
I am right, as a twist top.

As in,
do it right or break the true purpose of rightness,
lefty loosy, listen
righty tighty, mechanical children know that by five.

So in saying we ***** with minds we mean we re
thread the spiral needed to hold order to the curve
we use to move from mind to mind
by simple subtility common to reading minds, let
loose from codes of obscurity and silence,

priesthood of the programmers, defiled
by HyperCard…

hit it, 1985, we role the hero in the tail, the new man
stranger in his own home town, trope, f'shore

distant Homer's combed the beaches, sifting shipwrecks

finding, from time to time, these jars of old stories
written in magical ways, saying unspeakable things.

A dawning in the mind of all the kin, weyekin, listen
we say say the story so
somebody
listens, thinks, listens thinks, I thought that,
and laughs,

that feels good, silent smile, quiet grin, nobody sees,
but me, we ai n't e-whistlin', Dixie,

did the singer make a we of us, or did you watch
the TV show,
so you know? Did we meet and leave impressions,
or did you think I reminded you of a character
Bill Murray could play well?

What the hell? Imagine that, being another body,
after being this, be gone.
Sa sa sati. Is fine, as an idea, an id-entity in common state
free satisfaction for any dis-
satisfied mind, but
be aware, breathing is involved, for a lifetime, of days
and seasons, one after the other, constantly
feeling the draw
of empty from full, as we all sang, let the healing waters
flow,
and the joys, celestial
glow… go go go make up a Mormon link and think we

lied about many things, we need not lie about knowing.

Now, no lie lives in sacred temples misappropriated
by a tyranny over the mind of man,
to which we Jeffs and Jinn agree, an end is deservant

of your attention to the actual forces involved in details,
such as you reading this line after all the lines you read
before
now… when your clock is pacing, time's worth one way
or wait,
a guide, some intuitive icon may make sense suddenly
256 shades of grey, undefiled by the muse that planted
the shame associated with putting on that mind,
being in the head of a dramatic iteration of broken

sense of being holy, historical fashion statements
straight from full victorian victim global angst,

interesting times, said the chinaman to the BIC guy,

click, British East India, and the ***** war and
the tea cartel.

Grey Pompon, cheer rah rah rich man, now I can
eat your mustard,
rawly.

Euphony, is good euglobonics, euro-trash
white and all its malonat- ive {melatonin-iment}
serrendipt natural to the medium
hyper-text in metaspace, true to the thought
at
the bottom, pro fundus
ment-al-ity ifs
itself
into this actual state, where
when I write you read, and
this is connected to a very complex
tangled web of reasonings for acting
as if we know
this is that right thing you do, we do think
the thoughts in words we let mean true
things, in bundles.

Sub routines, we may choose
to understand, reasons for simple when
sublime takes a life time.

Faster fasting, we did, my we did speed,
even if it was only a game,
we generated the oomph that once made
war
bore boys and girls who saw the science
consciously, thinking
I was made for this, this time, these rules,
this tech
this magic, this history, this lexicon

this underneathness, chthonic thought
Lex Fridman, coincidental influencer
Joe Rogan happened,
to survive, or
did he, is he really Joe Rogan, on Spotify
or did he leave his sould self on YouTube
bait,
come pay me attention I may sell and
make you laugh and feel good
doing it, laughing
inside.

I just recall this guy I know, who has
grown anonymously old, mellowed
with char and aged to perfection
on the adapted tongue,
it is a cultural test, can you swallow
the real
hard stuff boy?

You want a taste of your own medicine,
- twined voices old and gravelly craw
- high and whiny boy

The story takes a turn, same script,
life is poetic, or is that the other way round,

who cares

Malonate
The malonate or propanedioate ion is CH₂2−.
Malonate compounds include salts and esters
of malonic acid,
such as diethyl malonate,₂,
dimethyl malonate,₂,
disodium malonate,
Na₂.
Malonate is a competitive inhibitor
of the enzyme succinate dehydrogenase:
malonate binds
to the active site
of the enzyme
without reacting, and so competes
with succinate,
the usual substrate
of the enzyme.
The observation that malonate is
a competitive inhibitor
of succinate dehydrogenase was used
to deduce the structure
of the active site
in that enzyme.

From <https://uci.officeapps.live.com/OfficeInsights/web/views/insights.immersive.html>

MMM, I get by…

There is a passion that rends the skies
dark of pain, to thunder forth
in this suffering world;

Grace that rains and brings forth
an oasis of refuge in this
world weak of flesh;

The spirit rises weighed on the cross
by the suffering inflicted in place
of Barabbases, thousands.

In the dunes of the desert, a call echoes:
husbandsman, tinkerman, everyman,

Never mind the pharisees;
The spirit to the letter is moon
to the mirage.

Weighed down by the burden of life,
you who have been told you deserve
nothing more than the dirt of the earth
you sinner, you sufferer,

A passion calls forth to you. So difficult
indeed is to see the father, aye,
lawmongers, enough for us to see
this humble son of a carpenter here;

O you crushed
under the wagon wheels of time
taste that love by which you are
before Abraham was.
Come, be pillars
in the mansion of your father;

Tiller toiling away in the sweat of life,
you on whose shoulders walk
the sweet-talking liars
who yet enthroned say
you are worth
only more taxation,

You can part waters. You are a miracle.
You drive away ghosts. You can
call the dead to life. Yet you are
love and see no difference
in Mary from Mary,

a secret ocean at the shore of an oasis
to drink of, until we are here
as He is in heaven.

Heaven for us to see and live here
not some unknowable hereafter.

He is everywhere at once, yet a total mystery
He get's through any lock, yet never has a key
No matter where you go, there is nowhere to hide
He'll be there in the snow, he'll search far and wide

He's the shoulder for your tears
He's the blanket for your fears
He's the voice that no one hears
Yet always there all these years

He is sensitive and caters to all your needs
Where the others fail, he always succeeds
Your every hungry urge now finally feeds
He is the tourniquet for thy heart that bleeds

He is always there for you
In each and every single way
Until you find someone new
And you call him Mr. Yesterday

And now you know who this is truly about
But you may not yet know his very name
Yet you've met him without a single doubt
Because in this game we are all the same

So please, without any further delay
It is and always will be to my dismay

Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Everyman
If a girl is in need, he will be there...if he can

I celebrate this journey in the desert -
I am but a traveler in my time:
in this pasture of my fathers, land,
where stands this miracle of glass
now calling manna down
from the high home of eagles:
I am but a helpless everyman, lost
in the desert, on a journey out
from the clutches of misery, and pain;
The world is making progress.
As I see the oases running farther
away from my sights: on
elevators to the skies, numbers
of the young call on benefactors
across the seas, for a ropeway
across the quagmires: a home, a car
and the family life; saving for a
better day, in the future, while
my home went from mudbrick
to thatched grass, then out on streets
by the gutter with the dogs;
I am a cleaner, cobbler, janitor
in the land where I was the tiller.
Wiping the sweat on my brows
as I loaf on the lawns, awaiting
labour days hyphenated by mealtimes,
there is no witch-doctor now, and
no money to pay up at the hospitals
that the wealthy from afar line up to,
but to die helpless a wretched death,
I celebrate my helplessness!

If you want flowery poetry
Hit pause, backspace delete.
I write on a lot of subjects;
Only a few could be called sweet.
I’m not into swirling windstorms
Or describing billowy clouds.
Not into extolling autumn leaves
Or conifers standing proud.

I try to select the human things
Whether good or even bad.
Sometimes I wrestle with
Life twists that make us sad.
I try to speak for everyman
And that includes the women.
I try to reflect life circumstances
And the results the travel with them.

So, crooning polysyllabically
Is seldom my favorite tune,
Nor is waxing limerickally
About June, and spoon and moon.
Instead I’ll probably take to task
Those who live in sappy hope
A prince shows up in their life
A proper romantic dope.

I write the rhymes about crooks
That steal from your children
And the supposed leaders
That ****** and abuse women.
I write about parents who
Ignore what their children need
And instead find their joy
On selfishness and greed.

After so many millennia
We really need to stop
Waiting for someone else to come
And be the moral traffic cop.
It is us who need to change
And teach our children accordingly
Because the way we are fixing things
Humanity is progressing dismally.

So keep your butterfly couplets
And views of rain on hedges.
We are falling apart as humans
And it’s visible on the edges.
It will only take a few crazies
With power enough to wield
And this planet, and us of course,
Will no longer have a shield.

the grovelling pig...
and the snivelling dog...

the snorkelig tabloid &
taboo of...
anything beside
the born blue: whale...

an arsenal of ****-joy words...
a much bigger
"assumption" of...
raj-stan spices...
to compete with
the 20th century arsenal
of the manhattan
project of h'america...

     and whatever the soviet
sly of empire-building
came to pass: and pass it did...

no one is celebrating...
how... pacified...
the disintegration of the soviet
"empire" took a postcard
turn in the events of history...

when the roman empire
disintegrated...
             no one is going
to go forward and bless:
how the russians played poker:
and... folded?

              to leverage in the oligarchs...
the... eternal flames of parody blues...
of avarice and that story of
yachts: tripping on...

greed is beside the l.c.d. "tripping"
chess pieces avarice...
the "insomnia" tactics of:
happy boys... shooting rich-boy
bullets at... all the more happy:
rich boy targets...

a french riviera target nuance: dulce...
deux...
       excesses of letters...
comes the grafitti with a tow
of toe-tied batman:
only val kilmer will do...

       yes... i grew up on "serious"
cinema... "serious":
i.e. "curious"... i.e. bored...
existential feats of bergman?
the magician?

    a film that would never allow
me a want to subscribe to...
reading into...
what's beside... pop culture propaganda...
not under the umbrella of the soviets...
or the historical nazis:
or...

          this time compass of:
a withstanding inconvenience of
hiatus... and hubris...
        scandinavian origins story...
                
      the red sq.... promenade... delight...
in... to fashion a hugo: who boss:
boss of who? via: hugo's who's hugo: who?
this advent of claiming...
riddles from the 20th century...
all clear: calibre...

   prior to 1945... exciting years...
and of that...
as if... waking up... from a family affair...
king edward VII:
       Bertie 12/20
                             give 'im a "sigh"
of relief... let's make that... a reasoned
fraction...
              mr. cig ar ah-rette'tsar...
                 herr 12/24...
                              herr halbzeit...
                world war I borrows...
19th century and... the insightful delight...
of the ruling elite and "******" affairs...
after 1945...

  so many years... of having to...
have... one's humor... dislodged from...
a coronation:
the republicans...
contra: the libertarians...
blah blah...

               because...
by no means... the russians were...
ploy:
Bertie the... and Tsar Nicholas...
didn't resemble clones...
               herr halbzeit... who the **** was he?
it's not so much a conspiracy theory...
it's... everyman's fiction...

  who's going to bother time well
spent: in the advent of requiring said
events to have happened...

             ****** was an ugly surname...
and how he... confiscated...
how he... rode to events like a Khan...
and usurped... nay!
hijacked! the aritocratic houses!
and they... fell... head: oh look!
no heels!
                   look!

   kopf-uber-ferse!

they're english! the fwench wish
they weren't cousins...
but the house of ßaß!
it was all a family affair!
                
                       the affair was so minded:
that poor h'america was involved...
and... how... the freed people from
the trigonometry of tyranny under
king george III... escaped...
then had to... choke cousins...
and fake cousins...
and bride themselves to...
the fire-bombing of Drezden...
etc.                         and more...              etc.

people with tattoos...
yes... those who don't mind history...
history and their amnesia project...
i have... skin clean from...
auschwitz imposed...
or that glorified ink-itch of modern times...
i have history:
my mind is tattooed...
loser loser: and a winner of what?
a tax on a car?
a road tax? a car i also own an
m.o.t.
                  i've learned to ride horses!
give me a horse!
**** your traffic car sterility:
i'm in love with the double-decker bus!
from london through to honk-*******-kong!

the 20th century can't just
become some... amnesia deposit...
history is a fake: i was supposedly...
only... "dreaming"...
          through to the Weimar Republic...
but i'm not invested in...
culminations...
in... old scores and schools of thinking:
taxing the dead... etc.

                i drink when i truly enjoy writing...
and... imagine... that i do:
imagine writing for a newspaper...
writing as a chore...
that has to be necessarily...
an artifact of sobriety and...
journalistic integrity... mmmpphhhghh...
sorry...
   journalistic integrity?
apart from a war or... ***** dealings
when all the culprits have had
their feet washed by a:
jesus christ look-alike...
    a... idi amin... retired in saudi arabia?

one could say... since i was born
at the end of "it": that i was... have been...
hijacked by the 20th century...
to write... a parody... epitaph...
someone has exacted me...
to write... an exit... wording...

perhaps because... there's still that
20th century immediacy...
all the other centuries... could...
not celebrate...
they could march on... into...
a dream-esque satirical state of progress...
perhaps they did dream...
while we're struck by the insomnia
invented by the 20th century...
well... the 19th...

when Prometheus...
            Frankenstein: fire! bad! ugh!
when Prometheus...
               when Promotheus...
St. Peter would love to entertain
the thriced acknowledged...
thus: no denial...
      Michael Faraday...
   or that lightbulb men-struosity...
     Edison...

   to clone a sheep...
        the perfected beijing-valkyrie
of the genetically perfect:
zero acne... blah blah...
               but a clone: clone?
   trouble that...
if not soul: then autonomy...
clone to pet?
ah... clone to pet... ah... ha ha! ah ha ha!
a clone to pet!
answers: the clone's self-determining
autonomy: alias: S.D.A.
        eh... it's missing a letter...
let's just keep it as "soul" for the minors...

ah ha ha: giggles oh my! the furore from
pandemonium!
the idea so lodged in the inferno...
the last time anyone heard just
laughter... was when...
****** was first... "investigated"...
in-ves-ti-ga-ted... gay-ted...
see: missing letters... somewhat...

and yes... there is... the closest approximate
of... flying lizards...
of... turtles out-living...
   beside what could be...
contrived... exoskeleton mush of muscles
and brains...
magpies...
of all the birds... magpies...
the closest akin... lizard folk...
to descend from "angels"...

   magpies are like... the cinema
depicted... velociraptors...
   magpies are the modern velociraptors...
the crows can croak their odin *******
off all they want...
the woodland pigeons do their...
whatever striptease echo coo... coo...

magpies... for me... magpies are...
the heirs of the velociraptor...
proof?! ah ha ha! proof?!
what proof is there that...
an asteroid... hit the earth...
and wiped out the dinosaurs?!
i haven't seen any "proof"...
  i've just heard... an undeniable fiction....
supported by science...
so here's mine!
the magpie descended from the velociraptor!
have you even... heard the magpie...
the variation of its communications
vocab?
it's prehistoric! compared to other birds!
even in the words of humans:
they are... conflated with:
gypsy-mythology:
that they... seek silver...
anything shiny...

           intelligence is a curse...
what proof is there that a meteor wiped
out the dinosaurs?!
what's history like in the hands
of man...
with active negation:
i.e. "the holocaust didn't happen"...
let's write our own:
play dough history...

the magpie is a direct descendent of
the velociraptor...
somehow the d.n.a. survived the meteor crash...
the turtle is still here...
the birds: still are...
the jelly-brain pickle of the great t-rex:
the serpent is still wriggling away...
but i ask: what proof:
what greast... undiscovered crater?!
the Mariana trench?
there's? big squid **** and all range
of car-boot sale *******?!
there?

                 a statue of shiva too:
snorkeling... to boot?!
    i've been alone and "lonely" enough...
of all the common birds...
the magpies... the magpies...
the "teutons" of the skies...
the velociraptors...
                  you've heard the seagulls...
you've heard the crows...
you've entertained the sparrows...
the woodland pigeons...
the robins remained mute...
the kestrels remained mute...
the magpies were the most vocal...
and when vocal... at most: in variation...

velociraptors...

yes... this is "history"... it's "history"...
with journalism and... "journalism"....
              last time i heard...
a louis XIV made it into the t.v. with...
a sidekick show of Versailles...
eh... Phillip II Augustus...
    "perhaps"... just "perhaps"...
           the lion in winter... who the ****
ever happens to remember a historical
excavation fetish from 1968?!
it was only a ******* cameo!

not for the actor... the capetian!

The Great Falls,
was a massive
clone of ice;
yet still
her waters
poured forth
in roaring waves
over the ebb
of the river.

Sliding into
a frozen crevasse,
down an icy bar,
I land wet,
chilled and numb
from the duration
of the decent
and the soul
piercing cold.

On the landing,
the carcasses
of industrial waste
were encased
in a frozen loam.

The giant
mill wheel
locked in place,
entombed
in a glacier
of ice.

It made
good sense
to found
this city
on an
industrious
bluff.

The Great Falls
spun the wheels
that powered
vast manufactures.

Shoots
and trams
shot flumes
of water
down
every
street.

Everyman
was a master
of his
cottage industry,
forging bullets
constructing
locomotives,
spinning
the finest silk
from the
most exotic
foreign worms.

But the machines
shut down.

The handiwork
of learned men,
entrepreneurs,
urban planners,
engineers
and artisans
now encased
in frozen rust.

Barely a tool
could be used
to produce
a product
or plumb
a line.

A simple
hand tool
could not
be lifted
without
betraying
its purpose.

A society
of useful
manufactures
frozen shut;
dissolving
into bankrupt
liquidation;
so I left
my home
on Chianci Street
and caught the first
Paterson Plank coach
to the Hoboken Ferry.

I would be in
Manhattoes
by nightfall.

The morning travels
consumed thoughts
of future prospects.

The
silk mill
forever
closed.

The industry
of my home
city,
dead.

This weaver
of fine silk
had lost
his loom.

For William Carlos Williams
From: Vesuvia, 1997

Music Selection:
Yo-Yo Ma & Silk Road Ensemble,
Arabian Waltz

What is your story? What say you, curtsy, wile and whisper -
You, the everyman, blank face in the crowd;
You, the stranger on the streets, decked out and dapper;
nay We, who exist in the life of the life gone, forgotten, that Time enshroud?

What pictures do your eyes behold in visions past and present-
drawn to memory in intangible ink yet indelibly lustre?
From whence the dreams do you evoke in daytime quiescence
or cascading phantasms painted on pitch-black canvasses unfurled in slumber?

What paths have you taken, to gloom or glory
and upon which pedestals have you stood in crowning echelon -
when once upon a mountain peak, above clouds, you stood proudly -
or taking solace in sidewalk shelters with no home to go to thereupon.

What words should escape your lips in all manner of dictum
or wisdom and deceit for all intents and folly?
Words in coalescence like beads on strings, the essence of rhythm
threaded by tongues in guile and unwitting poetry:

What say you, as but a flower linger and wither
in the winds of Time; a mere flicker in the lives of stars?
What prose should speak your story, hither or dither
in unwitting poetry - nay Unpoetry! - as the Everyman exemplars?

Alas Unpoetic, the story of us all in bloom
told in unwitting poetry and archetypal analogue.
Alas so unique the lives we lead from conception in the womb
should by perchance end with a humble epilogue.

You could say he hates her,

From the way she talks to him, how every rose is ****** at him thorns first - millions of little slashes - battle wounds of the everyman adding up day to day week to week year to year the river of blood leaks to the ocean big enough to drown them both.

He fires back though, and across the battlements of the dinner table sits the enemy shaking a half empty bottle of depression pills, basing how much happiness was left for the month off of the rattling of white capsules against the orange bottle.. She, how could she have ever given birth to him? Some might argue that was all she ever did for him, too preoccupied with her reflection to see the mirror image her son had become with his suken eyes, a rotton apple, a cyanide cynic at the ripe fresh age of fifteen.

So six months later when they both led the cavalry in charge for the umpteenth time throwing dagger words laced with poison aimed high at heads ducked below cover to a safe place (but of course there is no safe place),

Who would've thought when he told her to start taking her pills she'd take them all. Tip top of the bottle bottoms up for the bottle plain white capsules and blood red wine because when she goes out  she goes out like a lady.

Its a sad sight seeing all her family weep at her grave, cry true tears clear and pure. All her family but one, her beloved boy. How dry face and stone visage were oh so heart wrenching.

But perhaps worst of all, is that you could say he hates her even now

Pro-

Photo-frame on the wall,
beautifully adorned.
Empty.

Snap your hero in.

-logue

Never mind their foibles;
Every fault is just a small weakness
when found in the otherwise great.

Dying to deify,
we are itching to sanctify;

Castigation unabashed,
but, for the struggling everyman.

What if we will never find
another son of a carpenter
who will die preaching love?

Epi-*

In a world starved of messiahs
ready always to worship ever
but be, never,

iconoclasts are icons;

Sentimental impossibilities
in the language of hope
aye, fete-worthy acceptables.

what is my pain
to another’s love
not that it was meant for me
but i like to peer upon it
from outside
why does their love
amplify the hurt
why do i envy
their comfort