“Being a farmer is like being a priest;
you take a vow of poverty
and make a pact with the Lord
that no typhoon will come
and destroy your crops.”

In the rise of sedentary human civilization,
The nation’s agriculture
Became the key expansion.

Its history dates back thousands of years,
With its development,
Has been driven and defined –
By different climates, cultures, and technologies.

The Filipino farmers:
Are they now a dying breed?

Numbers of small farms has dwindled,
With workers opting for city life.
But this trend could exacerbate food insecurity!
Yes, in an import-dependent country –
Already struggling to meet current food demand.

In the face of growing losses,
And from volatile weather,
To new-fangled farming tech,
Limited education makes them less receptive.

What took such toll on the agricultural sector?
Maybe the farmer themselves,
The investors, the buyers – maybe.
Now, it’s due to the government policies,
Our programs are good, yet so weak.
There’s excessive reliance on agricultural imports,
And corruption on the upper level.

Compounding the problem
Is a younger generation –
Largely, leaving rural areas nationwide,
And depleting the pool of potential agricultural workers.

They say it’s too late to do something;
But the mind-set of the younger generation
Still we can change
And make farming appealing once again.

(9/8/13 @xirlleelang)

1995 saw the start of Generation Z,
the ‘iKids’ with a knack for this new-fangled technology,
Millennial 2.0,
caught in the limbo of the World Wide Web development and Rose Gold iPhones.
They say we’re adaptable,
but apparently we can’t make our own decisions about anything.
They say that we don’t care about anything
except for our tiny little screens,
but they forget who put them in our hands,
and they forget who they run to for help
when they forget how to troubleshoot.
They forget what kind of technology we need to keep sustaining life in the Information Age,
Caught in a crossfire because
Yeah, we’re 90s kids—but the 90s never really actually ended until 2006,
the only difference between two decades being
how much neon versus how much chrome,
and just how expensive accidentally opening the internet app on your mom’s blackberry phone was.
We’re nostalgic for all the things we can’t quite remember,
and half these high schoolers weren’t actually born until 2000 or 2001.
Most of us aren’t old enough to even remember 9/11, nothing outside of the news clips that our teachers show us in history class every single September.
I was born in the same year as the Columbine shootings.
The United States has not been at peace for a year of my life.
We are always fighting— fighting for everything.
Human equality,
posing arguments about micro aggressions and refugees, seeing the inhumanity in the past that we’re living.

None of us are older than 21,
under such hard scrutiny while Baby Boomers Wave 2 still run our country.
We inherited the Millenial’s exhaustion,
the generation before us spending our childhood fighting for all the things that we have never really believed in.
Fairytales.

Generation Z.
The ‘iKids’ who are going to one day be making leaps and bounds with technology,
the generation to nurse this dying planet back to health,
Millennials 2.0 who know how to learn from our forerunners’ mistakes,
who know how to adapt from Sidekicks to iPhone 6S Plus in less than a decade.
We’re the kids who have realized that fun is found in safe spaces rather than invading each other’s personal spaces.

They say we’re too sensitive,
but at the same time they claim that we’re desensitized.
And I thought we were the generation that couldn't make decisions.

Ebola! Ebola! Ebola!
you are only hunting in the exhausted fields,
you predecessors have done evil marvel in this land
Africa's sons and daughter were heavily taken away
in slave raid, colonial rampage two world wars, cancer
and *** aids, Ebola you must be ashamed to come here,
are you as foolish as lioness that must follow the path
initially taken by her husband the lion?
Ebola Africa is dead tired and lain forlorn
by strange diseases not known by it
but only named in the land of their cradle
where *** was born in the Irish Laboratory
on trial and error to decimate Africa's populations
in the racially biased arsenal you have also come
you fangled teeth a bare menace to each of us
you make us bleed from out body holes,
blood oozing out like Nile water from lake Victoria
Ebola! Ebola! sympathy is not a vice, but heavenly
virtue, only protege of the Godly please be sympathetic
to Africa the orphan of the classic times with no succour
her wounds of Cancer are fresh and fresh as those obnoxites
from the nasty Aids aka ***, kindly empathize with Africa
you have eaten Mali and Nigeria after Congo Kinshasa
you are now in Kenya the neighbor of Sudan
the last born of Africa already rendered forlorn
by the AK 47 and AK 74, shot in the tribal tremors
O! Ebola Ebola! my prayer to you is as brief
as that; forgive me for my weird mourning
of my brothers and sister in death mongering
mandibles so ugly and Abysmal like
Gehenna of Jesus Christ, Amen!

A Child’s Story

Hamelin Town’s in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
But, when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.

Rats!
They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook’s own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men’s Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women’s chats,
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.

At last the people in a body
To the Town Hall came flocking:
“’Tis clear,” cried they, “our Mayor’s a noddy;
And as for our Corporation—shocking
To think we buy gowns lined with ermine
For dolts that can’t or won’t determine
What’s best to rid us of our vermin!
You hope, because you’re old and obese,
To find in the furry civic robe ease?
Rouse up, Sirs! Give your brains a racking
To find the remedy we’re lacking,
Or, sure as fate, we’ll send you packing!”
At this the Mayor and Corporation
Quaked with a mighty consternation.

An hour they sate in council,
At length the Mayor broke silence:
“For a guilder I’d my ermine gown sell;
I wish I were a mile hence!
It’s easy to bid one rack one’s brain—
I’m sure my poor head aches again
I’ve scratched it so, and all in vain.
Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!”
Just as he said this, what should hap
At the chamber door but a gentle tap?
“Bless us,” cried the Mayor, “what’s that?”
(With the Corporation as he sat,
Looking little though wondrous fat;
Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister
Than a too-long-opened oyster,
Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous
For a plate of turtle green and glutinous)
“Only a scraping of shoes on the mat?
Anything like the sound of a rat
Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!”

“Come in!”—the Mayor cried, looking bigger:
And in did come the strangest figure!
His queer long coat from heel to head
Was half of yellow and half of red;
And he himself was tall and thin,
With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin,
And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin,
No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin,
But lips where smiles went out and in—
There was no guessing his kith and kin!
And nobody could enough admire
The tall man and his quaint attire:
Quoth one: “It’s as my great-grandsire,
Starting up at the Trump of Doom’s tone,
Had walked this way from his painted tombstone!”

He advanced to the council-table:
And, “Please your honours,” said he, “I’m able,
By means of a secret charm, to draw
All creatures living beneath the sun,
That creep or swim or fly or run,
After me so as you never saw!
And I chiefly use my charm
On creatures that do people harm,
The mole and toad and newt and viper;
And people call me the Pied Piper.”
(And here they noticed round his neck
A scarf of red and yellow stripe,
To match with his coat of the selfsame cheque;
And at the scarf’s end hung a pipe;
And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying
As if impatient to be playing
Upon this pipe, as low it dangled
Over his vesture so old-fangled.)
“Yet,” said he, “poor piper as I am,
In Tartary I freed the Cham,
Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats;
I eased in Asia the Nizam
Of a monstrous brood of vampire-bats;
And, as for what your brain bewilders,
If I can rid your town of rats
Will you give me a thousand guilders?”
“One? fifty thousand!”—was the exclamation
Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation.

Into the street the Piper stepped,
Smiling first a little smile,
As if he knew what magic slept
In his quiet pipe the while;
Then, like a musical adept,
To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled,
And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled
Like a candle flame where salt is sprinkled;
And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered;
And the muttering grew to a grumbling;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats,
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,
Families by tens and dozens,
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives—
Followed the Piper for their lives.
From street to street he piped advancing,
And step for step they followed dancing,
Until they came to the river Weser,
Wherein all plunged and perished!
- Save one who, stout a Julius Caesar,
Swam across and lived to carry
(As he, the manuscript he cherished)
To Rat-land home his commentary:
Which was, “At the first shrill notes of the pipe
I heard a sound as of scraping tripe,
And putting apples, wondrous ripe,
Into a cider-press’s gripe:
And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards,
And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards,
And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks,
And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks;
And it seemed as if a voice
(Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery
Is breathed) called out ‘Oh, rats, rejoice!
The world is grown to one vast drysaltery!
So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,
Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!’
And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon,
All ready staved, like a great sun shone
Glorious scarce and inch before me,
Just as methought it said ‘Come, bore me!’
- I found the Weser rolling o’er me.”

You should have heard the Hamelin people
Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple.
“Go,” cried the Mayor, “and get long poles!
Poke out the nests and block up the holes!
Consult with carpenters and builders,
And leave in our town not even a trace
Of the rats!”—when suddenly, up the face
Of the Piper perked in the market-place,
With a, “First, if you please, my thousand guilders!”

A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue;
So did the Corporation too.
For council dinners made rare havoc
With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock;
And half the money would replenish
Their cellar’s biggest **** with Rhenish.
To pay this sum to a wandering fellow
With a gypsy coat of red and yellow!
“Beside,” quoth the Mayor with a knowing wink,
“Our business was done at the river’s brink;
We saw with our eyes the vermin sink,
And what’s dead can’t come to life, I think.
So, friend, we’re not the folks to shrink
From the duty of giving you something for drink,
And a matter of money to put in your poke;
But, as for the guilders, what we spoke
Of them, as you very well know, was in joke.
Beside, our losses have made us thrifty.
A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!”

The Piper’s face fell, and he cried
“No trifling! I can’t wait, beside!
I’ve promised to visit by dinner-time
Bagdat, and accept the prime
Of the Head Cook’s pottage, all he’s rich in,
For having left, in the Calip’s kitchen,
Of a nest of scorpions no survivor—
With him I proved no bargain-driver,
With you, don’t think I’ll bate a stiver!
And folks who put me in a passion
May find me pipe to another fashion.”

“How?” cried the Mayor, “d’ye think I’ll brook
Being worse treated than a Cook?
Insulted by a lazy ribald
With idle pipe and vesture piebald?
You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst,
Blow your pipe there till you burst!”

Once more he stepped into the street;
And to his lips again
Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane;
And ere he blew three notes (such sweet
Soft notes as yet musician’s cunning
Never gave the enraptured air)
There was a rustling, that seemed like a bustling
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling,
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering,
Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering,
And, like fowls in a farmyard when barley is scattering,
Out came the children running.
All the little boys and girls,
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.

The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood
As if they were changed into blocks of wood,
Unable to move a step, or cry
To the children merrily skipping by—
And could only follow with the eye
That joyous crowd at the Piper’s back.
But how the Mayor was on the rack,
And the wretched Council’s bosoms beat,
As the Piper turned from the High Street
To where the Weser rolled its waters
Right in the way of their sons and daughters!
However he turned from South to West,
And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed,
And after him the children pressed;
Great was the joy in every breast.
“He never can cross that mighty top!
He’s forced to let the piping drop,
And we shall see our children stop!”
When, lo, as they reached the mountain’s side,
A wondrous portal opened wide,
As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;
And the Piper advanced and the children followed,
And when all were in to the very last,
The door in the mountain-side shut fast.
Did I say, all? No! One was lame,
And could not dance the whole of the way;
And in after years, if you would blame
His sadness, he was used to say,—
“It’s dull in our town since my playmates left!
I can’t forget that I’m bereft
Of all the pleasant sights they see,
Which the Piper also promised me:
For he led us, he said, to a joyous land,
Joining the town and just at hand,
Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,
And flowers put forth a fairer hue,
And everything was strange and new;
The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,
And their dogs outran our fallow deer,
And honey-bees had lost their stings,
And horses were born with eagles’ wings:
And just as I became assured
My lame foot would be speedily cured,
The music stopped and I stood still,
And found myself outside the Hill,
Left alone against my will,
To go now limping as before,
And never hear of that country more!”

Alas, alas for Hamelin!
There came into many a burgher’s pate
A text which says, that Heaven’s Gate
Opes to the Rich at as easy rate
As the needle’s eye takes a camel in!
The Mayor sent East, West, North, and South,
To offer the Piper, by word of mouth,
Wherever it was men’s lot to find him,
Silver and gold to his heart’s content,
If he’d only return the way he went,
And bring the children behind him.
But when they saw ’twas a lost endeavour,
And Piper and dancers were gone for ever,
They made a decree that lawyers never
Should think their records dated duly
If, after the day of the month and year,
These words did not as well appear,
“And so long after what happened here
On the Twenty-second of July,
Thirteen hundred and seventy-six”:
And the better in memory to fix
The place of the children’s last retreat,
They called it, the Pied Piper’s Street—
Where any one playing on pipe or tabor
Was sure for the future to lose his labour.
Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern
To shock with mirth a street so solemn;
But opposite the place of the cavern
They wrote the story on a column,
And on the great Church-Window painted
The same, to make the world acquainted
How their children were stolen away;
And there it stands to this very day.
And I must not omit to say
That in Transylvania there’s a tribe
Of alien people that ascribe
The outlandish ways and dress
On which their neighbours lay such stress,
To their fathers and mothers having risen
Out of some subterraneous prison
Into which they were trepanned
Long time ago in a mighty band
Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land,
But how or why, they don’t understand.

So, *****, let you and me be wipers
Of scores out with all men—especially pipers:
And, whether they pipe us free, from rats or from mice,
If we’ve promised them aught, let us keep our promise.

I once scrungled a tungus, dubbed Binglo Bungus,
Whose cungles were trungly, and cuds cumpily cunk.
But his drungles did fungle, so sadly he bungled,
And without hesitation, he glunked.

Four fingles he fangled, when, biggaly bangled,
Approached not a crowd, but an army of glimps.
And they clinkled his binkle, as he chinkily changled,
But The Bungus stopped not for the bimps.

He dringled those hob-glimps! Their ****** was drompled!
Their pebuses, feeble, buckled under the frung.
And he chungled their drungles, with fury he plungled.
To this day, not a glimp stands to cung.

But his fangling, untrungled, was far from the fringus,
And he fangled on forward another five flinks.
On the fifth flink, he bebussed, as his fangle was pepis,
So he humpled the drumpling ****.

Sir Bungus fangled homeward, his blumpus was tungled.
His drungles rejonked, for the fungling was done.
They erected a frangus to plingus The Bungus,
And the drumpling **** that he'd won.

Passes not by a day, that many an e-mail
unsolicited for would not stray--
from only Christ knows where--into
my SPAM folder. Some do sail
there to have a prurient stay,
bringing along many a memento
in an argosy of raunchy piquant pictures.

Some convey commerce, insurance or banking
messages; some the cargo of relationship
carry; while another an ad of ******
bears, still another talks about dealership.

Yet stood out Twain. Two diverse
SPAM e-mails have been berthing,
with goatish gaits and sharkish smirks,
in that folder unrelenting and unswerving.

One SPAM e-mail reads: "Why wait--have
an affair with a cheating wife today."

Sweetest SPAM!

Gorging myself on this fetish
fare free of charge. Kittenish
jades, serve me thy dainties of
dalliance enough!

To rock and roll, rolling in the hay,
making merry heaves, does ever crave
this rebellious flesh--yet, this randy
SPAM e-mail's offer offsets much the mind:

"A cheating wife" desiring to find--
for reasons amourous--a dandy,
a sort of cad.

Wondering muse: "A cheating wife"?
What a magic life!

Another SPAM e-mail says its own thus: "View
my pics. Lonely married women--
view **** pics." Indeed and true,
they grip with a serious sudden
poke the soul, like pangs the heart,
those three momentous, wrecking,
wretched words: "lonely married women."

Though content spicy and Libidinous;
yet maddening.
Secret meals seemingly are delicious,
but have a fiery taste.

Where--on Earth, in Mars, or in Hell
are they? Here, in this world they dwell.

Thought marriage is a blessed haven--
a heaven of unfeigned love and lasting bliss.

How could one be married and yet
be alone in life--lonely, who has
crossed over singlehood's borders,
nor is she a widow for bereavement?

A husband did his queen abandon
for a fresh-fangled pawn,
flying away with that new
dove--frittering his fortune away,
as she chirps love in lust songs anew
into his donkey's ears; flattery
displayed, a groovy
guise--

playing ducks and drakes with his riches

until his substance ship sank, like Titanic,
colliding with an iceberg of folly
in the deep of adultery:

making a muck of his wealth.

The flirtatious dollybird no sooner
flitted, then flew abroad at last,
leaving him to drown in the murky
waters of his wreck.


Returned the prodigal man to his hearth
in a sad pickle, with one shirt, one
jean,
and a pair of snickers, to the ever
gracious ***** of his loving Missis--
like a sinner contrite to Jesus.


Whilst a sudden grass widow, his wife
did not covet the companionship,
comforts and copulation
of another flagship--

but was committed to her
vows
to that fun-tossed lugger--
despite the billowy waves,

praying he'd come to his harbour.


The women howbeit in my SPAM folder--
those "cheating wives and lonely married
women", are like Lady Portiphar
pining and yearning for Joseph.

Unread.
Unreplied.

--To Elizabeth Robins Pennell


'O mes cheres Mille et Une Nuits!'--Fantasio.

Once on a time
There was a little boy:  a master-mage
By virtue of a Book
Of magic--O, so magical it filled
His life with visionary pomps
Processional!  And Powers
Passed with him where he passed.  And Thrones
And Dominations, glaived and plumed and mailed,
Thronged in the criss-cross streets,
The palaces pell-mell with playing-fields,
Domes, cloisters, dungeons, caverns, tents, arcades,
Of the unseen, silent City, in his soul
Pavilioned jealously, and hid
As in the dusk, profound,
Green stillnesses of some enchanted mere.--

I shut mine eyes . . . And lo!
A flickering ****** of memory that floats
Upon the face of a pool of darkness five
And thirty dead years deep,
Antic in girlish broideries
And skirts and silly shoes with straps
And a broad-ribanded leghorn, he walks
Plain in the shadow of a church
(St. Michael's:  in whose brazen call
To curfew his first wails of wrath were whelmed),
Sedate for all his haste
To be at home; and, nestled in his arm,
Inciting still to quiet and solitude,
Boarded in sober drab,
With small, square, agitating cuts
Let in a-top of the double-columned, close,
Quakerlike print, a Book! . . .
What but that blessed brief
Of what is gallantest and best
In all the full-shelved Libraries of Romance?
The Book of rocs,
Sandalwood, ivory, turbans, ambergris,
Cream-tarts, and lettered apes, and calendars,
And ghouls, and genies--O, so huge
They might have overed the tall Minster Tower
Hands down, as schoolboys take a post!
In truth, the Book of Camaralzaman,
Schemselnihar and Sindbad, Scheherezade
The peerless, Bedreddin, Badroulbadour,
Cairo and Serendib and Candahar,
And Caspian, and the dim, terrific bulk--
Ice-ribbed, fiend-visited, isled in spells and storms--
Of Kaf! . . . That centre of miracles,
The sole, unparalleled Arabian Nights!

Old friends I had a-many--kindly and grim
Familiars, cronies quaint
And goblin!  Never a Wood but housed
Some morrice of dainty dapperlings.  No Brook
But had his nunnery
Of green-haired, silvry-curving sprites,
To cabin in his grots, and pace
His lilied margents.  Every lone Hillside
Might open upon Elf-Land.  Every Stalk
That curled about a Bean-stick was of the breed
Of that live ladder by whose delicate rungs
You climbed beyond the clouds, and found
The Farm-House where the Ogre, gorged
And drowsy, from his great oak chair,
Among the flitches and pewters at the fire,
Called for his Faery Harp.  And in it flew,
And, perching on the kitchen table, sang
Jocund and jubilant, with a sound
Of those gay, golden-vowered madrigals
The shy thrush at mid-May
Flutes from wet orchards flushed with the triumphing dawn;
Or blackbirds rioting as they listened still,
In old-world woodlands rapt with an old-world spring,
For Pan's own whistle, savage and rich and lewd,
And mocked him call for call!

I could not pass
The half-door where the cobbler sat in view
Nor figure me the wizen Leprechaun,
In square-cut, faded reds and buckle-shoes,
Bent at his work in the hedge-side, and know
Just how he tapped his brogue, and twitched
His wax-end this and that way, both with wrists
And elbows.  In the rich June fields,
Where the ripe clover drew the bees,
And the tall quakers trembled, and the West Wind
Lolled his half-holiday away
Beside me lolling and lounging through my own,
'Twas good to follow the Miller's Youngest Son
On his white horse along the leafy lanes;
For at his stirrup linked and ran,
Not cynical and trapesing, as he loped
From wall to wall above the espaliers,
But in the bravest tops
That market-town, a town of tops, could show:
Bold, subtle, adventurous, his tail
A banner flaunted in disdain
Of human stratagems and shifts:
King over All the Catlands, present and past
And future, that moustached
Artificer of fortunes, ****-in-Boots!
Or Bluebeard's Closet, with its plenishing
Of meat-hooks, sawdust, blood,
And wives that hung like fresh-dressed carcases--
Odd-fangled, most a butcher's, part
A faery chamber hazily seen
And hazily figured--on dark afternoons
And windy nights was visiting of the best.
Then, too, the pelt of hoofs
Out in the roaring darkness told
Of Herne the Hunter in his antlered helm
Galloping, as with despatches from the Pit,
Between his hell-born Hounds.
And Rip Van Winkle . . . often I lurked to hear,
Outside the long, low timbered, tarry wall,
The mutter and rumble of the trolling bowls
Down the lean plank, before they fluttered the pins;
For, listening, I could help him play
His wonderful game,
In those blue, booming hills, with Mariners
Refreshed from kegs not coopered in this our world.

But what were these so near,
So neighbourly fancies to the spell that brought
The run of Ali Baba's Cave
Just for the saying 'Open Sesame,'
With gold to measure, peck by peck,
In round, brown wooden stoups
You borrowed at the chandler's? . . . Or one time
Made you Aladdin's friend at school,
Free of his Garden of Jewels, Ring and Lamp
In perfect trim? . . . Or Ladies, fair
For all the embrowning scars in their white *******
Went labouring under some dread ordinance,
Which made them whip, and bitterly cry the while,
Strange Curs that cried as they,
Till there was never a Black ***** of all
Your consorting but might have gone
Spell-driven miserably for crimes
Done in the pride of womanhood and desire . . .
Or at the ghostliest altitudes of night,
While you lay wondering and acold,
Your sense was fearfully purged; and soon
Queen Labe, abominable and dear,
Rose from your side, opened the Box of Doom,
Scattered the yellow powder (which I saw
Like sulphur at the Docks in bulk),
And muttered certain words you could not hear;
And there! a living stream,
The brook you bathed in, with its weeds and flags
And cresses, glittered and sang
Out of the hearthrug over the nakedness,
Fair-scrubbed and decent, of your bedroom floor! . . .

I was--how many a time!--
That Second Calendar, Son of a King,
On whom 'twas vehemently enjoined,
Pausing at one mysterious door,
To pry no closer, but content his soul
With his kind Forty.  Yet I could not rest
For idleness and ungovernable Fate.
And the Black Horse, which fed on sesame
(That wonder-working word!),
Vouchsafed his back to me, and spread his vans,
And soaring, soaring on
From air to air, came charging to the ground
Sheer, like a lark from the midsummer clouds,
And, shaking me out of the saddle, where I sprawled
Flicked at me with his tail,
And left me blinded, miserable, distraught
(Even as I was in deed,
When doctors came, and odious things were done
On my poor tortured eyes
With lancets; or some evil acid stung
And wrung them like hot sand,
And desperately from room to room
Fumble I must my dark, disconsolate way),
To get to Bagdad how I might.  But there
I met with Merry Ladies.  O you three--
Safie, Amine, Zobeide--when my heart
Forgets you all shall be forgot!
And so we supped, we and the rest,
On wine and roasted lamb, rose-water, dates,
Almonds, pistachios, citrons.  And Haroun
Laughed out of his lordly beard
On Giaffar and Mesrour (I knew the Three
For all their Mossoul habits).  And outside
The Tigris, flowing swift
Like Severn bend for bend, twinkled and gleamed
With broken and wavering shapes of stranger stars;
The vast, blue night
Was murmurous with peris' plumes
And the leathern wings of genies; words of power
Were whispering; and old fishermen,
Casting their nets with prayer, might draw to shore
Dead loveliness:  or a prodigy in scales
Worth in the Caliph's Kitchen pieces of gold:
Or copper vessels, stopped with lead,
Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed,
In durance under potent charactry
Graven by the seal of Solomon the King . . .

Then, as the Book was glassed
In Life as in some olden mirror's quaint,
Bewildering angles, so would Life
Flash light on light back on the Book; and both
Were changed.  Once in a house decayed
From better days, harbouring an errant show
(For all its stories of dry-rot
Were filled with gruesome visitants in wax,
Inhuman, hushed, ghastly with Painted Eyes),
I wandered; and no living soul
Was nearer than the pay-box; and I stared
Upon them staring--staring.  Till at last,
Three sets of rafters from the streets,
I strayed upon a mildewed, rat-run room,
With the two Dancers, horrible and obscene,
Guarding the door:  and there, in a bedroom-set,
Behind a fence of faded crimson cords,
With an aspect of frills
And dimities and dishonoured privacy
That made you hanker and hesitate to look,
A Woman with her litter of Babes--all slain,
All in their nightgowns, all with Painted Eyes
Staring--still staring; so that I turned and ran
As for my neck, but in the street
Took breath.  The same, it seemed,
And yet not all the same, I was to find,
As I went up!  For afterwards,
Whenas I went my round alone--
All day alone--in long, stern, silent streets,
Where I might stretch my hand and take
Whatever I would:  still there were Shapes of Stone,
Motionless, lifelike, frightening--for the Wrath
Had smitten them; but they watched,
This by her melons and figs, that by his rings
And chains and watches, with the hideous gaze,
The Painted Eyes insufferable,
Now, of those grisly images; and I
Pursued my best-beloved quest,
Thrilled with a novel and delicious fear.
So the night fell--with never a lamplighter;
And through the Palace of the King
I groped among the echoes, and I felt
That they were there,
Dreadfully there, the Painted staring Eyes,
Hall after hall . . . Till lo! from far
A Voice!  And in a little while
Two tapers burning!  And the Voice,
Heard in the wondrous Word of God, was--whose?
Whose but Zobeide's,
The lady of my heart, like me
A True Believer, and like me
An outcast thousands of leagues beyond the pale! . . .

Or, sailing to the Isles
Of Khaledan, I spied one evenfall
A black blotch in the sunset; and it grew
Swiftly . . . and grew.  Tearing their beards,
The sailors wept and prayed; but the grave ship,
Deep laden with spiceries and pearls, went mad,
Wrenched the long tiller out of the steersman's hand,
And, turning broadside on,
As the most iron would, was haled and ******
Nearer, and nearer yet;
And, all awash, with horrible lurching leaps
Rushed at that Portent, casting a shadow now
That swallowed sea and sky; and then,
Anchors and nails and bolts
Flew screaming out of her, and with clang on clang,
A noise of fifty stithies, caught at the sides
Of the Magnetic Mountain; and she lay,
A broken bundle of firewood, strown piecemeal
About the waters; and her crew
Passed shrieking, one by one; and I was left
To drown.  All the long night I swam;
But in the morning, O, the smiling coast
Tufted with date-trees, meadowlike,
Skirted with shelving sands!  And a great wave
Cast me ashore; and I was saved alive.
So, giving thanks to God, I dried my clothes,
And, faring inland, in a desert place
I stumbled on an iron ring--
The fellow of fifty built into the Quays:
When, scenting a trap-door,
I dug, and dug; until my biggest blade
Stuck into wood.  And then,
The flight of smooth-hewn, easy-falling stairs,
Sunk in the naked rock!  The cool, clean vault,
So neat with niche on niche it might have been
Our beer-cellar but for the rows
Of brazen urns (like monstrous chemist's jars)
Full to the wide, squat throats
With gold-dust, but a-top
A layer of pickled-walnut-looking things
I knew for olives!  And far, O, far away,
The Princess of China languished!  Far away
Was marriage, with a Vizier and a Chief
Of Eunuchs and the privilege
Of going out at night
To play--unkenned, majestical, secure--
Where the old, brown, friendly river shaped
Like Tigris shore for shore!  Haply a Ghoul
Sat in the churchyard under a frightened moon,
A thighbone in his fist, and glared
At supper with a Lady:  she who took
Her rice with tweezers grain by grain.
Or you might stumble--there by the iron gates
Of the Pump Room--underneath the limes--
Upon Bedreddin in his shirt and drawers,
Just as the civil Genie laid him down.
Or those red-curtained panes,
Whence a tame cornet tenored it throatily
Of beer-pots and spittoons and new long pipes,
Might turn a caravansery's, wherein
You found Noureddin Ali, loftily drunk,
And that fair Persian, bathed in tears,
You'd not have given away
For all the diamonds in the Vale Perilous
You had that dark and disleaved afternoon
Escaped on a roc's claw,
Disguised like Sindbad--but in Christmas beef!
And all the blissful while
The schoolboy satchel at your hip
Was such a bulse of gems as should amaze
Grey-whiskered chapmen drawn
From over Caspian:  yea, the Chief Jewellers
Of Tartary and the bazaars,
Seething with traffic, of enormous Ind.--

Thus cried, thus called aloud, to the child heart
The magian East:  thus the child eyes
Spelled out the wizard message by the light
Of the sober, workaday hours
They saw, week in week out, pass, and still pass
In the sleepy Minster City, folded kind
In ancient Severn's arm,
Amongst her water-meadows and her docks,
Whose floating populace of ships--
Galliots and luggers, light-heeled brigantines,
Bluff barques and rake-hell fore-and-afters--brought
To her very doorsteps and geraniums
The scents of the World's End; the calls
That may not be gainsaid to rise and ride
Like fire on some high errand of the race;
The irresistible appeals
For comradeship that sound
Steadily from the irresistible sea.
Thus the East laughed and whispered, and the tale,
Telling itself anew
In terms of living, labouring life,
Took on the colours, busked it in the wear
Of life that lived and laboured; and Romance,
The Angel-Playmate, raining down
His golden influences
On all I saw, and all I dreamed and did,
Walked with me arm in arm,
Or left me, as one bediademed with straws
And bits of glass, to gladden at my heart
Who had the gift to seek and feel and find
His fiery-hearted presence everywhere.
Even so dear Hesper, bringer of all good things,
Sends the same silver dews
Of happiness down her dim, delighted skies
On some poor collier-hamlet--(mound on mound
Of sifted squalor; here a soot-throated stalk
Sullenly smoking over a row
Of flat-faced hovels; black in the gritty air
A web of rails and wheels and beams; with strings
Of hurtling, tipping trams)--
As on the amorous nightingales
And roses of Shiraz, or the walls and towers
Of Samarcand--the Ineffable--whence you espy
The splendour of Ginnistan's embattled spears,
Like listed lightnings.
Samarcand!
That name of names!  That star-vaned belvedere
Builded against the Chambers of the South!
That outpost on the Infinite!
And behold!
Questing therefrom, you knew not what wild tide
Might overtake you:  for one fringe,
One suburb, is stablished on firm earth; but one
Floats founded vague
In lubberlands delectable--isles of palm
And lotus, fortunate mains, far-shimmering seas,
The promise of wistful hills--
The shining, shifting Sovranties of Dream.

They call her Truck Stop Tessie
Out I-forty a ways.
Usually you can find her there
Most sunny days.
And even if it’s raining
I am sure if you tried
You still will find Tessie
At the café inside.

She calls herself a housewife
But that would be a lie
She doesn’t ever clean the place
She can’t cook a pie.
She only gets dressed up
To go out on the town.
She a big old mess unless
She’s messing around.

They call her Truck Stop Tessie
Out I-forty a ways.
Usually you can find her there
Most sunny days.
And even if it’s raining
I am sure if you tried
You still will find Tessie
At the café inside.

She’s an old fashioned ******
In a new-fangled dress.
She makes out she’s a lady
But she’s a bit of a mess.
She dropped out of high school
To ride in boy’s cars.
If they make a round-heel movie
She could be the big star.

They call her Truck Stop Tessie
Out I-forty a ways.
Usually you can find her there
Most sunny days.
And even if it’s raining
I am sure if you tried
You still will find Tessie
At the café inside.

She was going with another guy
When it all started out.
He wouldn’t take her dancing
So she started to pout.
Then, he slapped her face a bit,
I stepped in to defend.
I probably should slap myself
Make this nightmare end.

They call her Truck Stop Tessie
Out I-forty a ways.
Usually you can find her there
Most sunny days.
And even if it’s raining
I am sure if you tried
You still will find Tessie
At the café inside.

Waiting
will always be for me the most effective
(albeit the most frustrating)
of all the means of time travel.
You won't find me in those new fangled machines.
(You don't know when you'll end up.)
Just leave me be.
I'll wait now and see you later.

one person said: "peace is nothing but illusion
all I want is retribution"
[from "Pure Power" by Zardonic]
that's something I can identify with, which is why
I decided to write this heap of lines
————————————————————————————————
on a shooting range in a boondock la[ɛ]nd
with gloves pU̲t on; sta[ɛ]nd
in front of an autocratic ruler chained
by his hands to two moola safes'
[greed]
handles looking way
like an old-fangled car directing wheel
[steering wheel]
have this die-hard fool restrained
so that he, more or less, is still
I'm not a scho[ɑ]lar who can wave
around a degree in the medics field
but it's obvi this high-hat dO̲U̲chebag's plagued
with megalomania in a neglected condition
but there's a dreadfully effectual treatment
and he'll get it like villains
quite a gruesome fate
is looming upon this power-befuddled ****
like darkened clouds that, beyo[ɑ]nd a doubt, are soon to rain
["dark end"]
like waveriders, he's go[ʌ]nna serve
["surf"]
as a punchbag for I'm in quite a mood to raze
gonna wI̲nd up as nada short
of a ****** loon today
like Battinson, clepe me Vengeance
but I'm more something like the Zorro-looking caped
anti-autocratic vigila[ɛ]nte
from the Norsefire-ruled UK
[V from "V For Vendetta"]
meets someone whose work field's tormenting
like victimizers who pertain
to LE in one tsar-sized off-putting state
[law enforcement]
you know, the one that's go[ɑ]t a putrid trait
of always posing as a side you shouldn't blame (it's all the West!)
(now, let's go back to the foul autocrat)
like a jerky boss that you disdain
I give this no[ɑ]b a cool g'day
by douching him from a bo[ɑ]ttle full of straight-
-fro[ʌ]m-a-cooler H2O; just a fE̲w secs break
for him, & once it's U̲p, I ****** this base
being fro[ʌ]m a stE̲wpot great
with **[ɑ]t-a## noodles aimed
into this hU̲mbug's stupid face
[the "hang noodles on the ears" expression]
pepper it with some ground 7-po[ɑ]t to boost the taste
feel how I, like a husband who betrayed
his devoted, yet testy, wife, get rudely gazed
at, racked, beda[ɛ]mned (by who?)
by food-lacking men from Africla[ɛ]nd
[Africa]
ask him: "is the provided food okay?"
zero gratitU̲de displayed
all that comes from this sno[ɑ]t's bazoo's complaint
but nO̲[ɑ]t that I'm surprised
a typical pro[ɑ]sperous gobshite
the tack priorly applied
I do the same with a bucket full of maroonish paint
[autocrats have blood on their hands, hence "maroonish paint"]
like that music producer famed for dull future bass
I put on his viscous head a **** bucket
[Marshmello]
whereafter pick a wedge up & drum it
[golf wedge]
and, like a heap, I barely get started
[worn-out car]
like an unprepped passenger on an insane car ride
with no seat restraints applied
he's about to have a way hard time
I'm a cosmetic surgeon that operates part-time
fix his blamed jawline in just twain sharp swipes
with a steel bat, then yield some keen slaps
that meet his kneecaps until the knees snap
like the Baba Yaga hitman detached
from his peaceful life by someone ge[ɪ]tting him mad
[John Wick]
get his nails removed
which is pretty much the same that you do
when you repaper a room
[wall nails]
having perforated his fingertips
I ge[ɪ]t 'em plastered
a few minutes later, I rip them things
off 'kin/sim. to wax strips
he gets his phA̲[eɪ]lanxes smitten with
a freaking ratchet
[rathet wrench]
pro[ɑ]b'ly, he regrets
that his bo[ɑ]dy's still not dead
pick U̲p a pistol, set
a drum-like clip in, get
it cocked, then shoot lead around his silhouette
till the clip has zero ammunition left
seems like this once co[ɑ]cky piece of dreck
has gotten his khaki chinos wet
but if I've go[ɑ]t him in a sweat
like a summer jo[ɑ]gger being dressed
in venthole-deficient threads
for this brash dude, there's bad news
like me when I write some sick bloodshed
sadly for him, I've not finished yet (uh-uh)
like a runner that's go[ɑ]t some distance left
to complete, & it's not as dark as things can get
'cause, like the heroine o[ʌ]f M. Streep in "Death
Becomes Her" after falling fro[ʌ]m that string of steps
I've got a somewhat twisted head
[Madeline Ashton; the staircase fall scene]
so consider this as an insult-to-inju[—]ry sesh
grab a brace of scissors
for garden mainte[—]nance; Richard
Trager comes into play; begin ta
amputate his fingers; operate at leisure
disarticulate 'em I̲nto twenty eight **** pieces
cauterizing the remains with illuminated cI̲gars
fling into his piggish face some tissues
and some pain relievers
tell this nazissistic patient "hE̲A̲l up"
["****" in the sense of being "severely intolerant or dictatorial"]
let him relax for eighteen minutes
over the spa[ɛ]n of whI̲ch I put on play "La Chica
Rockabilly" & some other ro[ɑ]ckabilly
jams to make the whole vibe a mite less grisly
like an NA brown bear that is gravely injured
["mightless grizzly"; North American]
(as, in fact, this tragic-fated bleeder)
whereafter spray him with a
["wither"]
can of gas & make his dicta—
—torial a## go ablaze akin ta
a straw-fabricated figure
during gala days at the late of winter
[Maslenitsa effigy]
telling this piece of trash "in case you wI̲[ɪ]nd up
in somewhat of Hades, give a
warm shalom to the infamous ******"
consider this autocratic ****
a sugar daddy's skirt
'cause he's gotten what he was asking for
————————————————————————————————
oh, & one thing more to say: the
nullified, like ruler's presiding terms, dictator
was known among some as "toilet sprayer"
like a scuttered urinator

shapeshifter, son drunk
& changing skins.
he digs up skeletons of a spanish battalion
buried
by tigers on the garden key.

suncresent
spray of blood & oranges.
new-fangled sailors once soaked
in madness.
now just starvation.

the viking speaks:
in limericks of new world poise.
his antler woven mask,
set nicely upon the shore.

seod, turtle lord
of space & time, appears only once
every lunar eclipse. bound by treatise
to the jellyfish triumvirate.
his acolyte,
bolivar t. shagnasty,
wanders the mainland in search of water
or meat of trees.

kindness
of men turns to dust & belly worms.
forgotten, the plants mutate
into root-rich empires
of fish & figurine.
million year armistice.

dr. samuel mudd,
shackled years to tide-slab &
fort jefferson. he
purifies the island of its yellow
shivering death.
hospital key.

fastforward hundred plus years
through mudd lifeline:
battle weary sneakers,
spokes sung by strum of card, the bmx
stridden boy & his
teenage mutant ninja turtle mask.

Hail native Language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
And mad’st imperfect words with childish tripps,
Half unpronounc’t, slide through my infant-lipps,
Driving dum silence from the portal dore,
Where he had mutely sate two years before:
Here I salute thee and thy pardon ask,
That now I use thee in my latter task:
Small loss it is that thence can come unto thee,
I know my tongue but little Grace can do thee:                      
Thou needst not be ambitious to be first,
Believe me I have thither packt the worst:
And, if it happen as I did forecast,
The daintest dishes shall be serv’d up last.
I pray thee then deny me not thy aide
For this same small neglect that I have made:
But haste thee strait to do me once a Pleasure,
And from thy wardrope bring thy chiefest treasure;
Not those new fangled toys, and triming slight
Which takes our late fantasticks with delight,                      
But cull those richest Robes, and gay’st attire
Which deepest Spirits, and choicest Wits desire:
I have some naked thoughts that rove about
And loudly knock to have their passage out;
And wearie of their place do only stay
Till thou hast deck’t them in thy best aray;
That so they may without suspect or fears
Fly swiftly to this fair Assembly’s ears;
Yet I had rather if I were to chuse,
Thy service in some graver subject use,                              
Such as may make thee search thy coffers round
Before thou cloath my fancy in fit sound:
Such where the deep transported mind may scare
Above the wheeling poles, and at Heav’ns dore
Look in, and see each blissful Deitie
How he before the thunderous throne doth lie,
Listening to what unshorn Apollo sings
To th’touch of golden wires, while **** brings
Immortal Nectar to her Kingly Sire:
Then passing through the Spherse of watchful fire,                  
And mistie Regions of wide air next under,
And hills of Snow and lofts of piled Thunder,
May tell at length how green-ey’d Neptune raves,
In Heav’ns defiance mustering all his waves;
Then sing of secret things that came to pass
When Beldam Nature in her cradle was;
And last of Kings and Queens and Hero’s old,
Such as the wise Demodocus once told
In solemn Songs at King Alcinous feast,
While sad Ulisses soul and all the rest                              
Are held with his melodious harmonie
In willing chains and sweet captivitie.
But fie my wandring Muse how thou dost stray!
Expectance calls thee now another way,
Thou know’st it must he now thy only bent
To keep in compass of thy Predicament:
Then quick about thy purpos’d business come,
That to the next I may resign my Roome

Then Ens is represented as Father of the Predicaments his ten
Sons, whereof the Eldest stood for Substance with his Canons,
which Ens thus speaking, explains.

Good luck befriend thee Son; for at thy birth
The Faiery Ladies daunc’t upon the hearth;                          
Thy drowsie Nurse hath sworn she did them spie
Come tripping to the Room where thou didst lie;
And sweetly singing round about thy Bed
Strew all their blessings on thy sleeping Head.
She heard them give thee this, that thou should’st still
From eyes of mortals walk invisible,
Yet there is something that doth force my fear,
For once it was my dismal hap to hear
A Sybil old, bow-bent with crooked age,
That far events full wisely could presage,
And in Times long and dark Prospective Glass
Fore-saw what future dayes should bring to pass,
Your Son, said she, (nor can you it prevent)
Shall subject be to many an Accident.
O’re all his Brethren he shall Reign as King,
Yet every one shall make him underling,
And those that cannot live from him asunder
Ungratefully shall strive to keep him under,
In worth and excellence he shall out-go them,
Yet being above them, he shall be below them;                        
From others he shall stand in need of nothing,
Yet on his Brothers shall depend for Cloathing.
To find a Foe it shall not be his hap,
And peace shall lull him in her flowry lap;
Yet shall he live in strife, and at his dore
Devouring war shall never cease to roare;
Yea it shall be his natural property
To harbour those that are at enmity.
What power, what force, what mighty spell, if not
Your learned hands, can loose this Gordian knot?                    

The next Quantity and Quality, spake in Prose, then Relation
was call’d by his Name.

Rivers arise; whether thou be the Son,
Of utmost Tweed, or Oose, or gulphie Dun,
Or Trent, who like some earth-born Giant spreads
His thirty Armes along the indented Meads,
Or sullen Mole that runneth underneath,
Or Severn swift, guilty of Maidens death,
Or Rockie Avon, or of Sedgie Lee,
Or Coaly Tine, or antient hallowed Dee,
Or Humber loud that keeps the Scythians Name,
Or Medway smooth, or Royal Towred Thame.

I pace a space of limited freedom.
A space where, when love’s concerned,
We’re rarely in our right mind.
And times eternal lines wash out
Onto white pages in elegant contours of black -
Outlining all it is I cannot say,
Like ink on a body bathed in caramel.

Tonight the roof is open. And enigmatic
Shapes fill the void above our heads;
Incandescent shapes swirling and burning
At night before the eyes of stars,
The stern staring bright shafts of winking white,
And yellow and crystal.

Oh, Pompeian Girl – the old me was young!
Oh, reckless indecision,
Ever evading good sense,
Like shapes in the black;
Light evasive figures of light-lost spaces –
Pinning at hope in the dark.

Oh discontented winter of your youth,
You have been weighed.
You have been found wanting.
You’re going down
And I’m coming with you.

Electricity hurts,
And the Hippie-code is broken.
Placid indifference envelops my heart.
The city reeks of Urban Folk, miscalculation and conceit.

I eat my hand, fingers first,
Contemplating the Epic Cycle,
Like Plato in the shadows of the Beule Gate.
And write drivel
With the neurotic mind of a sonneteer –
Past cure am I now reason is past care.

Still no star-fangled shape of blurry
Minds eye reveals itself.
Still the work is not yet done.
Tilting for months-on-end
Upon the abyss of some nauseating
Overheated, drug-induced-calm-before-the-storm.
I lose my touch,
And touch loose ends
Of quasi-philosophical moments
Of enlightenment, or revelation,
Or some other nonsensical,
Unimportant *******,
Like the etymology of
God and good.

Good God, and giddy aunts,
And aunties that would put the sophists
And the pop world, and the upper class,
And parliamentary embarrassment, and
The football score, and grammar, and
Self-induced debt, and man-flu, and
‘off days’, and awkward dates, and
Broken phones, and insufferable library fellows, and
Hangovers, and the middle class, and first world problems,
And second world problems, and no signal,
And problems with the ex, and
The wrong coloured flowers,
And the fickle whims of fussy eaters, -
The repulsion of grown men at the sight of blood,
Or a reasonably ***** kitchen surface;
A broken string, a bad day, a long week,
A bad long week, a weekend cut short,
A short changing, the wrong sized internet-delivery,
The trivial pursuit of ancient notions of justice,
And early mornings, and morning sickness,
And the evasive nature of
Soul-mates and talent and happiness,
And ******* myxomatosis,
And dissertation proposals
And dissertations, and deadlines and pay-cheques,
And checkups;
Anything that is not fighting for your life
Or for those you love…

…Aunties that put all this to shame.

She is strong.
She eats Odysseus for breakfast,
With his affable, sneering, divine assistance.

Lighten her load if you can.

My helpless heart and I are here all week.
And my velvet tongue will inflame
And be an irritant.
My unconscious will tell me that you scoff,
Though you don’t,
I know you don’t.
Yet doubt and delusion will prevail,
And I find myself
Pacing a space of limited freedom,
Crowded by celestial forms, looming deadlines
And unfinished sentences that...

What I want
For Christmas is
Just the barest
Of necessities

All my teeth
Not just two
So when I eat
I can chew

A skip and jump
Back in my step
So each morning
I have some pep

A pair of glasses
Which self defrost
A set of keys
Which don’t get lost

All my hair
Put back in place
So I don’t have
That barren space

A pair of shoes
With self tie laces
So I don’t have to
Reach those places

A set of arteries
That don’t plug
A nice cold beer
Which I can chug

To have someone
My brain equip
With that new fangled
Memory chip

So it can tell me
My intent
When I stood up
And why I went

A bunch of prunes
Which are pre dated
To work just when
I’m constipated

A gizmo that will
So to speak
Turn off my wee wee’s
Little leak

So I don’t have
I’ll just be blunt
Those little dribbles
In the front

A cork that fits
My *** hole, please
So hemorrhoids don’t pop out
Whenever I sneeze

A longer arm
That would pass
Behind my back
To wipe my ***

On this I’ll end
My little list
I don’t want Santa
To get ******
BOEMS BY JA 103

Your generation is defined by definitions.
'This generation', this new-fangled bunch of hooligans
Cut out and put in the oven,
Lives pre-formed, based on premonitions,
Put into the system and cranked out
Made up of numbers and tests that really define who you are.
'This generation' that you have given a set of rules
A set of molds to fit into
To pour their lives out and 'better the world'
Shaped with your all-knowing tools
Scissors that cut funding to the parts that maybe,
Perhaps, might make them an individual.
Because here, no, here we don't have room for individuality
But we sure have room for this assembly
Your freedom of religion, speech, and freedom to assemble
No room for that, for fear of immorality
We don't have time for originals, we don't have time for strays
I'm sorry that you've got ideas, Generation Y
But this is the generation of time constraints.
We've got technology to innovate, an ozone to fit
Communities to build and lives put at risk
But that's not as important as what's in the now
No, not as important as these tucks and nips
We've got to put you under the needle
Even after we swore, 'first do no harm',
But this isn't going to hurt, I swear
Well, maybe not on the outside.
Look here, Y, you'd be better off compliant
To fix our computers and drive our trucks
To turn off your TVs and just trust us
To read the chapter and finish the assignment
Because to us, you all learn the same,
To us you are still just a number
Even if you think you're out when you graduate.
So what, you graduated the system,
And it's done it's work on you
Have your daddy pick the college and your mama pick the sheets
Pack your bags, you're ready for the big world
And that's exactly what we made you think.
Generation Y, you are fitting into the molds we gave you
We tried to crank you out in groups of 300
And we did
You were never allowed to be original
And you weren't.
Generation Y, this cookie-cutter, uniform
'Glued to technology', uninterested
Group of 'stupid' teenagers
You were forced to unify
And forced into corrals, thereby,
Forced into lives we've blessed you with.
I swear, by my very intelligence
That we're good by you, good by the world
In evaluating what we need
Where we need people
Hopefully creating a society less-gnarled
Generation Y, you may hate the population
But you are the population
And you are what we told you to be.
Your lives were pre-formed from day one,
So, please,
Sit down, shut up, finish your definitions,
And stop asking why.

i

In the astrology set agora
Wherein mine agra doth rest
The backwoods to her cache
Is a peaceful gentle nest.

ii

She's a cad of angelic estancia
I espy her espirit fandango
Her lace strand's floweth wildly
Fantasia of mine melody, extra terrestrial fangled.

iii

Mine Gage I handeth her, to not leaveth her side
An agala we shalt maketh romance, whilst gaiety is in her eyes
A Jardiniere to hold her tears, when Jasper's do cometh around
Jarrah to fill ourn kava diligence, diluvial amare is it's sound.

iv

No blunder head's to separate us
Just Bluebell's blush
To admire mine belle of a lamb
Her bema shalt be raised, when its me who is her man.

v

Ourn belvedere casa, ourn terrace to overlook
This is ourn story, not a tale of fools and crook's
The cover of ourn book, shalt we be entwined
Right inside the pages, of every lonesome lover's mind.


®Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poets poetry
©Elsa angelica dedication

Emergent and forming I feel a storm is imploring that soon without any warning you beg to cross a line

Every time, nothing is sacred but sacramental complacence is marked as roles of the shameless

Mean to skip a line another time? Is this too rough and obtuse for a cutie like you to boost the power line?

Number 9, completion is power and stricken chords every hour proceed to timeline devour those daily entities

I do decree that opposition to me is free and withered beatings to meetings, detours and dealings

understanding demands of variable plans is held by the hand that feeds the depleted need

I see it from every angle, the tangle, the multishifted frame though it dangles, I can't be stuck in my own head when

I see the reflections of me in the treasure it jangles, brings into focus where my head fell to float in the

moments set to wrangle, pull it in, dwell upon the good and discard where it hampers new fangled notions like

truth effusions of love and devotion are swallowed up in the daily ocean of noise traffic, the more verbose,

Graphic dispatches matches blasted disasters dashed and rash past distractions amass magic attacks balanced

Secular motion entwined with metaphysical potions, divided what is your quotient? It doesn't add up in this

moment.

Interpersonal, intergalactic, universal assertions disturbed by verbage of outrance

Message mismanaged mischief mallaeble mayhem managed maganamously mallicous mannered when I

would proclaim them. Members materialized meriting masturbatory movements and monetized

malappropriation I have no patience nor pathos for indiscriminant egos demonstrating a tangent as canon and

paralyzing progressions toward psychic visions of heaven, eyes as the cosmos, and pressures upended.

I'll cope with associations disastrous and tainted, but keep in my visage all that scratches my lenses

I know far too much to be content with the situation, but far too little to shatter falsehood's intitiation

O Hair, o Hair, wherefore art thou dear Hair?
You stuck with me since I can remember
How come you’re leaving? Why do you not care?
Why haven’t you grown since last November?

What did I do to make you love me less?
I’ve always given you the best shampoos,
Conditioners, hair cream- why are you distressed?
I wish you could talk- for I have no clue.

‘Stress’- the doctor says that you can’t bear it
It hurts you, it makes you sad, angry, weak
How I miss your happy, active spirit
You lit up my days when the world was bleak

You were obedient, made me look good
Introduced styles of your own I didn’t know
Growing fast into a shiny mane you would
Falling tantalisingly to my brow.

You used to cooperate with the stylist
So I tried new things, innovatively
Fashionable styles I never could resist
But you danced brightly, never plaintively!

Alas! I can’t possibly understand
Why you fall away to the cold hard ground
As I brush you, in the shower, strand by strand
The sight just shocks me as you make no sound.

You don’t respond to new-fangled oils
Bought online for you in desperate attempts
To make you grow again, healthy, unspoiled
But you stare up at me with harsh contempt!

Do not desert me yet, my darling friend!
I will change myself for you, make it right
Ensuring your precious life doesn’t end
I will put up a victorious, mighty fight.

I’ll meditate to reduce stress on you
I’ll stop shampoos to use homemade products
I’ll take the required medicines, oils too
Baby, for me, increase your good conduct!

I’m so sorry for all that I did wrong
All the things that then made you want to die
I’ll take care of you now, you will be strong
Work with me now, sweetheart, don’t ever cry!

Look!  The state of Israeli has taken us to dark caves,
Left us hanging between western drones
And pious chauvinism of the Islamic state,
We only harvest terrorist bombs intermittently,
As true benefactors are turfed in tight security,
Where mankind linkers an actuary determines not
Only God’s shrewd calendar has salvaged mankind
From the land based time bomb ready to trigger,
But Israeli’s avaricious eye on the lands of Palestine
Wavers not in any tincture of measure,
And western appetite for the Arabic oil wells
Has now gone fluvial spilling the moral brim,
Both have sandwiched us amid delicate edges
Tracking us down to the dangerous courtyards,
Where humanity forlornly gapes at the gathering storm,


Islamic state here comes newly fangled
Fully amoured like Arabian knights
In the dhow of Sind Bad the sailor
Sharpened to date by eastern wisdom
Where China hovers like scavengerous vulture
Waiting for sweet dish of the war plunders,
As Israel giggles at the western folly
Ever jumping into war on a simple trigger,
Evinced in the war on Iraq eked on twin towers
When the true bombers were not Arabs
But shrewd Jews who ployed and stunted
For Islamic fate on the American guillotine,

Israeli state was faked in the formation
Allowing the oil venturists to flock
Menacingly flock from America to Palestine
To usurp land that belongs to the least armed,
On whimsical claims in the  fables and rituals
Skewed to favour the tongue of Ptolemy,
Otherwise, who among us has useless history?

The state is formed by identical population,
Definitely numbered for reasons of law,
How many Israelis formed the 1948 state?
Where were the Jews coming from?
How long had they been away?
No good answer will come than drones,
It is folly to claim land you never owned
Because your foremen hailed it 14 centuries ago,
You forcefully encroach on it with force and terror
Killing and ****** the genuine land owners
Israeli!  Listen to my voice of vision;
Soon God will withdraw his favour from you
For you have ***** the weak and the poor,


Which way Africa! Which way?
Will you take to cross the battle field?
Of the possibly coming horrendous war
Between Islamic state and West backed Israeli,
Don’t go to the West in support of Israeli
For after the war Israeli will become a lion’s cub
That eats the dog foster-mother on its maturity
For a Jew prefers an Arab a thousand times,
More than he does to a black and gentile African,
Let us go east and do business with the yellowmen.

Where are those honours, IDA! once your own,
When Probus fill’d your magisterial throne?
As ancient Rome, fast falling to disgrace,
Hail’d a Barbarian in her Cæsar’s place,
So you, degenerate, share as hard a fate,
And seat Pomposus where your Probus sate.
Of narrow brain, yet of a narrower soul,
Pomposus holds you in his harsh controul;
Pomposus, by no social virtue sway’d,
With florid jargon, and with vain parade;
With noisy nonsense, and new-fangled rules,
(Such as were ne’er before enforc’d in schools.)
Mistaking pedantry for learning’s laws,
He governs, sanction’d but by self-applause;
With him the same dire fate, attending Rome,
Ill-fated Ida! soon must stamp your doom:
Like her o’erthrown, for ever lost to fame,
No trace of science left you, but the name.

So I'm drinking the red wine
I had those cut-up peaches
Soaking, fermenting in for 3 days.
A nice summer evening buzz,
Just back from my evening walk
Within the gates of my over-55
Lunatic Asylum.
On my rear porch in Hemetucky,
I chaise lounge the hours,
Listening to the mourning dove
Nesting in the bottlebrush bush.
I know she's there, having
Fired thru my duck blind,
My latest weapon of choice,
My new-fangled Flex Hose,
It expands when turned on.
Which got me thinking that the
Flex Hose inventor guy must have
Whacked off a lot as a teenager.
An Alex Portnoy protege, perhaps,
If familiar with Roth's book.
Portnoy's Complaint:
Most of us read it;
Some of us lived it.
It is pointless to speculate.
12 ft. Flexible Water Hose with
Nozzle-flxh-25 (4-00268...Home Depot
www.homedepot.com/p/12-ft-Flexible...
Hose-with.../204818892/The Home Depot
Rating: 1.8 - ‎14 reviews - ‎$19.97 - ‎In stock
"The Flexible hose automatically expands with water flow and contracts back to its original shape for storage. Lightweight and durable. The Flexible Hose will ..."
(That's right, a commercial right in the
Middle of the ******* poem.
This Poet refusing to die in the gutter,
Having finally figured out how to
MAKE POETRY PAY.)
But I digress.

Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their body’s force,
Some in their garments though new-fangled ill,
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest,
But these particulars are not my measure;
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love is better than high birth to me,
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ costs,
Of more delight than hawks and horses be;
And having thee, of all men’s pride I boast—
    Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take,
    All this away and me most wretched make.

i , yes, i , no not I but i in my life so young , have found
God. No , not God, life. No , not life, light. No , not light , darkness.
Oh, i , yes , i , oh.... i , saw , i...

through the rapidly clearing miso soup of my perspective
it is as if each whirlpool of salty broth , clears to reveal a single piece of seaweed
that splatters on the floor as i drop the bowl
oops
paradigm shift.

And just like that , the afternoon light which was just environmental delight becomes a so , essential detailed
prop to the existential conversations baseline drop

later , after i have pondered what this new fangled spyglass lends to my current present
i pick up a magazine by the name of 'Ok!' ... i read only the images and few words in english
i put it down
i have a headache.

i get up , i feel sick
i read the front 'Super Dad'
so harsh , so much pressure to fit into the narrow channeled idea
somethings got to give , this ain't living it's a waiting room for the already dead
Horoscope tells 'KNOW YOUR FUTURE NOW'

at least that's accurate...
( pun)

I've inhabited the inner industrial walls of my head
ever since I can remember.
Willing to sacrifice trivial pleasure for thought,
potential and significant conversation
was too often dismissed as lo-fi dissonant crosstalk.

There wasn't an abundance of characters
in the confines of my elitist circle,
which was essentially a nonlinear grey area
suppressed and pulled back out
from time to time for self-evaluation.

I was far too conscious of new-fangled opinions
and young judgment.
Because so little of what I did wasn't preemptive,
even the yellow and orange playground equipment
was compromised,
which was honestly never to inviting.

No matter what new trick he tried
A new deodorant or mouth freshener
Sideburns, swagger or rascally scowl
She yawned, wore her pretty little frown
And swore that he was playing the gem
When he was just another line in her poem

No matter what new-fangled idea he brought
She told him plain and square in caustic words
He wasn’t an iota of what she wanted or sought
So he went back to nights of pining and misery
And morning vigils for the postman’s delivery
Hoping to be more than just another line in her poem

Thinking and believing he could leave and learn
He went abroad to build his sunken profile
In places where none could ever him deride or stifle
Since there’s always some safety in anonymity
But when finally he landed on their shores again
He was still not more than just another line in her poem

So let's live and learn to read the writing on the wall
No matter what; and no matter how this order might be tall
For it matters not what fantasies or novelties you conjure
From what exotic lands or eccentric peoples far and wide
She remains spoken for by the high ideals of her imagination
And you forever will be just another line in her waspish poem

The check from the oil company came,
Six zeroes before the decimal.
"Some mistake," he wrote,
And sent it back.

"No mistake," the return said,
"Check is correct,
And more to come."

So what to do?
"Mother, get the kids.
We'll go to town."

Check deposited safely into savings,
The teller's awestruck service a memory,
The old truck headed to the Bean & Feed.

New rubber boots for everyone!
Lunch at McDonalds and home again,
A low-key celebration of a million dollar day.

A week or two later,
Father and son drove to a neighbor's auction
Looking for a grain drill,
Not the new-fangled air style,
But a gang of *** drills yoked together,
Heavy and cumbersome to move,
But cheap to operate...easier to fix.

When the bid hit $13,000.00,
Dad faltered...shook his head...
Let the prized drills go.

"Dad! We won't find a set that cheap!
It's not as though we can't afford it!"

"There'll be other drills!"
Was all he said.

(Can't let a little money get into your head.)

I don't know why
Counting sheep,... 1, 2, 3
That doesn't work, try the Art of Zen
I can't draw with a Pen, not sure why I thought I could be an Artist of Zen
Back to counting Sheep,... 8,9,10
That doesn't work yet again
Got myself a new fangled watch that tracks your sleep
Tells me last night I slept 8hrs, 5 light and 3 deep
Tonight I'm going to turn out my phone at half past nine, run a bath, meditate maybe even drink some wine
I'll do anything legal to catch those zzzz's
They won't beat me He! He! He!

There is a part of me that knows you'll always be my favorite song,
But there's a part of me that knows that I'll always remain a record player
While you transform and reform and expand and compress
And now you've become a ****** mp3.
While music is a universal language, our mediums have changed.
So my old fashioned needle and your new fangled  encoding do not coincide.
But you know what, you know something? That's fine.

blocked
shattered
forlorn

your voice
unable to speak
your mind
unable to breathe
your soul
unable to feel
your heart
unable to love
all because
you're exhausted

not because of anything
in particular
but the mere quiddity
of existence,
the sheer fact
that your life
is a repetitious routine

maybe there are others
that see the beauty in life
but you, worn-out and tarnished
have had enough,
with another colossal task
you're forced to do,
numerable responsibilities
that weigh you down,
broken relationships
that you cannot mend,
and new-fangled ideas
which you cannot innovate

so when is it time
to tell everyone
that you've finally had enough?
that you can't take it any longer?
that you're much too exhausted
to even care anymore?

*when it's too late?

treat it as goodbye
goodbye to silly pipe dreams
goodbye to new-fangled beginnings
goodbye to what could have been

spent all night
tinkering with it
till it ran like a kittens purr
on fresh bowl of milk

spent hours
shining and polishing
till she gleamed like a fire engin
rolled out for parade

an old mans poem
creaking and held toghter
with bits of tape and more
than a few tears

and the laughing talking wondering
crowd walks by without a word
to marvel at some young mans
novel new fangled huffing puffing
poem machine

Taker,
Take openly thou fool of non-fruited spirit!!!
Consecrator of pulse feelings,
Registrator of knighted dealings!!!!
                   Thy commitment to one means nothing,
                   Yet something means something to all who know no commandment,
Abandonment,
Surely runs across the express of adherance!!!

Longetivities lost hut is overly done,
       Nothing is won't If you lost the poker skilled bet!!!

Doeth thou as so much as care yet?

Dont throw in all thy chips,
Manipulator of long finger nailed strips!!!

      The newsboy doth not show around these ways,
No news,
               All new-fangled misgivers,
Mischief singers misdirect all pity platoons!!!

Thy twin glossed repugnance is caught quietly,
Piece by piece,
You string up the earth to the next distant crescent!!!

Proprietor,
                  What shall thou propose?

Art thou the puppet played bafoon?