I can imagine her in Aarhus Kunstmuseum coming across this painting, adjusting her glasses, pursing her lips then breaking out into a big smile. The gallery is almost empty. It is early in the day for visitors, but she is a tourist so allowances are made. Her partner meanwhile is in the Sankt Markus Kirke playing the *****, a 3 manual tracker-action gem built in 1967 by Poul Gerhard Anderson. Sweelink then Bach (the trio sonatas written for his son Johann Christian) are on the menu this morning. In the afternoon she will take herself off to one of the sandy beaches a bus ride away and work on a poem or two. He has arranged to play the grand 83-voice Frobinus ***** in the Cathedral. And so, with a few variations, some illustrious fugues and medley of fine meals in interesting restaurants, their stay in Denmark’s second city will be predictably delightful.
       She is a poet ‘(and a philosopher’, she would say with a grin), a gardener, (old roses and a Jarman-blue shed), a musician, (a recorder player and singer), a mother (four girls and a holy example), but her forte is research. A topic will appear and relentlessly she’d pursue it through visits to favourite libraries in Cambridge and London. In this relentless pursuit she would invariably uncover a web of other topics. These would fill her ‘temporary’ bookcase, her notebooks and her conversation. Then, sometimes, a poem would appear, or not.
          The postcard from Aarhus Kunstmuseum had sat on her table for some weeks until one quiet morning she decided she must ‘research’ this Sosphus Claussen and his colleagues. The poem ‘Imperia’ intrigued her. She knew very little Danish literature. Who did for goodness sake! Hans Christian Anderson she dismissed, but Søren Kierkegaard she had read a little. When a student, her tutor had talked about this author’s use of the pseudonym, a very Socratic device, and one she too had played with as a poet. Claussen’s name was absent from any online lists (Were there really on 60 poets in Danish literature?). Roge appeared, and the painter Willumsen had a whole museum dedicated to his work; this went beyond his El Greco-like canvases into sculpture, graphics, architecture and photography. He looked an interesting character she thought as she browsed his archive. The one thing these three gentlemen held in common was an adherence to the symbolist aesthetic. They were symbolists.
         For her the symbolists were writers, playwrights, artists and composers who in the later years of the 19C wanted to capture absolute truth through indirect methods. They created work in a highly metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. Her studies in philosophy had brought her to Schopenhauer who considered Art to be ‘a contemplative refuge from the world of strife’. Wasn’t this what the symbolists were all about?
         Her former husband had introduced her to the world of Maurice Maeterlinck through Debussy’s Pelleas and those spare, intense, claustrophobic dramas like Le Malheure Passe. It was interesting how the discovery of the verse of the ancient Chinese had appeared at the time of the symbolist project, and so influenced it. Collections like The Jade Flute that, in speaking of the everyday and the natural world, held with such simplicity rich symbolic messages. Anyway, she didn’t do feelings in her poetry.
           When she phoned the composer who had fathered three of her children he said to her surprise ‘Delius’. He explained: C.F. Keary was the librettist for the two operas Delius composed. Keary wrote a novel called The Journalist (1898) based on Sosphus, a writer who wrote plays ‘heavily laced with symbolism’ and who had also studied art and painted in Paris. Keary knew Claussen, who he described as a poet, novelist, playwright, painter, journalist and eventually a newspaper owner. Claussen was a close friend of Verlaine and very much part of the Bohemian circle in Paris. Claussen and Delius’ circle intersected in the person of Herman Bang, a theatre director who produced Claussen’s Arbedjersken (The Factory Girl). Clauseen wrote an important poem on Bang’s demise, which Delius set to music.
          She was impressed. ‘How is it that you know so much about Delius?’, she asked. He was a modernist, on the experimental edge of contemporary music. ‘Ah’, he replied, ‘I once researched the background to Delius’ Requiem. I read the composer’s Collected Letters (he was a very serious letter writer – sometimes 10 a day), and got stuck into the letters of his Paris years when so many of his friends were Scandinavian émigrés. You once sent me a postcard of a painting by Wilhumsen. It was of Clauseen reading to two of his ‘symbolist’ colleagues. I think you’d picked it up in Denmark. You said, if I recall, that you’d found it ‘irresistible’’.
          And so it was, this painting. Irresistible. She decided that its irresistibility lay in the way the artist had caught the head and body positions of reader and listeners. The arrangement of legs, she thought, says so much about a man. Her husband had always sat with the care embedded in his training as a musician at an instrument. He could slouch like the rest of us, she thought, but when he sat properly, attentive to her words, or listening to their sweet children, he was beautiful. She still loved him, and remembered the many poems she had composed for him, poems he had never seen (she had instructed a daughter to ‘collect’ them for him on her passing). Now, it was he who wrote poetry, for another, for a significant other he had said was his Muse, his soul’s delight, his dearly beloved.
          The wicker chair Sophos Claussen is sitting in, she decided, she would like in her sitting room. It looked the perfect chair for giving a reading. She imagined reading one of her poems from such a chair . . .
 
If daydreams are wrecks of something divine
I’m amazed by the tediousness of mine.
I’m always the power behind throne.
I rescue princes to make my own.
 
‘And so it goes’, she thought, quoting that American author she could never remember. So it goes, this strange life, where it seems possible for the mind to enter an apartment in 19C København and call up the smell of brilliantined hair, cigar tobacco, and the samovar in the kitchen. This poem Imperia I shall probably never read, she thought, though there is some American poet on a Fulbright intent on translating Claussen’s work into English. In a flash of the mind’s miracle she travels to his tiny office in his Mid-West university, surrounded by the detritus of student tutorials. In blue jeans and cowboys boots Devon Whittall gazes out of his third storey window at the falling snow.
 
There is nothing in the world as quiet as snow,
when it gently descends through the air,
muffles your steps
hushes, gently hushes
the voices that speak too loud.
 
There is nothing in the world of a purity like snow's,
swan's down from the white wings of Heaven,
On your hand a flake
is like dew of tears,
White thoughts quietly tread in dance.
 
There is nothing in the world that can gentle like snow,
quietly you listen to the silent ringing.
Oh, so fine a sound,
peals of silver bells,
rings within your innermost heart.
 
And she imagines Helge Rode (his left arm still on his right shoulder) reading his poem Snow in the quiet of the winter afternoon at Ellehammersvej 20 Kastrup Copenhagen. ‘And so it goes,’ she thought, ‘this imagination, flowing on and on. When I am really old like my Grandmother (discharging herself from hospital at 103 because the food was so appalling) will my imagination continue to be as rich and capable as it is today?’
          Closing her notebook and shutting down her laptop, she removed her cat from its cushion on the table, and walked out into her garden, leaving three Danish Symbolists to their readings and deliberations.

I cant find my self resepect...Cuz I fail my little brother...In his aspect... at 13 he sees me like a father...But I dont' wanna be bothered...No hes not my concern...he dont need to be fathered...look at me I had to learn...
But i can't find my self respect...Cuz i fail my mother....In her aspect...she sees me like my father...Cuz i dont want to be bothered....How she gets on my nerves...Like I need to be fathered...Like she even had hers...
But I cant find my self respect...Cuz i fail my first lover...In her aspect...She sees me like her father...But I dont want to be bothered...Im just in it for the verbs...Like I remind her of a father...When I treat he like a girl....
But wheres my self respect...I cant find my aspect..For I never knew the correct way to view...these situations...******* up my relations...
With no self respect..I fail my self...In my aspect...I had no mans help...And I dont wanna be bothered...Inside im so bitter...but I just want to be fathered..
and I found my respect droughted and withered....

THE TRUE STORY OF JERUSALEM IN VERSE :
  FOLLOWING DONALD TRUMP'S RECOGNITION
Dear Readers, to usher in the spirit of Christmas, I wish to
share with you the true Story of Jerusalem in Verse. Based on
Biblical chronology, and several articles about its Early History.
Though the three of our World’s greatest religions have a common
lineage, yet religious bickering and hatred continues to exist in
our present age! Let this Season of Christmas bring peace with
goodwill and love. Let us all pray together for a peaceful World!
If you like this true story, kindly recommend it to all your poet
friends to read this slice of History. Thanks, from Raj Nandy.

   STORY OF JERUSALEM - GOD'S “PROMISED LAND”
                         IN VERSE: By Raj Nandy
                  
                       INTRODUCTION
After reading my ‘Arab Contribution to Science’ and the
downfall of Islam’s Golden Age,
A friend had requested me to write about The Crusades.
Now the Mongol contribution was far greater towards
Islamic Empire’s downfall,
For though the First Crusade besieged the Holy City of
Jerusalem making it fall,
The subsequent Crusades to the Seljuk Turks lost all!
But before writing about the Nine Crusades proper,
To acquaint my readers with the historic city of
Jerusalem becomes my present endeavor.
For Jerusalem is sacred to the Jews, Christian, and the
Muslims alike,
As their holy relics and shrines are housed in that Old
City’s revered sites!
But prior to narrating the story of Old Jerusalem City,
Let me tell you briefly about its early history.
About the patriarch Abraham, whom God led to this
‘Promised Land’.
From where this true story of Jerusalem really began.

                 HISTORICAL  BACKGROUND
The city of Jerusalem was twice razed to the ground.
Besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, captured and
recaptured 44 times, surprising as it all may sound!
In an era of idolatry and multiple gods, Abraham born*
in the ancient City of Ur,# believed in a single God!
(1800 BC)
So God was pleased and in a covenant with Patriarch
Abraham,
Blessed him to become the ‘Father of Many Nations’
in a distant ‘Promised Land’!
Thus Abraham with his wife Sarah and nephew Lot,
Entered the Land of Canaan as promised by God.
But when a famine ravaged the Land of Canaan,
Abraham had moved onto Egypt on his own!
Having suffered there for some ungodly acts, his
return to the Land of Canaan remains a historical fact.
Through Abraham and Sarah’s Egyptian maid Hagar, -
his son Ishmael was born.
From Ishmael descended the ‘Ishmaelites’, to
become the Twelve Arab Tribes later on!
Next, with the blessings of the Lord, to Abraham
and Sarah son Isaac was born.
Isaac’s son Jacob fathered the Twelve Jewish Tribes,
Who became collectively known as the ‘Israelites’.
From the ‘Tribe of Benjamin’ came King Saul, the
first King of united Israel rising tall.
From the ‘Tribe of Judah’ King David, Solomon, and
several Kings of Judah did rise;
As proud forefathers of the Messiah Jesus Christ!
Thus in Judaism both the Arabs and the Christians
find a common lineage;
Yet unfortunately bitter differences continue to
exist even in our present age!
NOTES: Canaan was the ancient name of a large & prosperous
country (at times independent, at others a territory to Egypt),
which roughly corresponds to present day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel. Canaan
was also known as ‘Phoenicia’ between 3200 BC & 539 BC. # Ur = an important
Sumerian city-state in ancient Mesopotamia.


           ORIGINS OF JERUSALEM
Jerusalem has been hailed by many names,
Gets mentioned as ‘Rushalium’ in an ancient
Egyptian text!  (2000 BC)
Also as Salem, Moriah, Jebus and Zion, this capital city
of the Israelites had been known.
Jerusalem as the remnant town of Salem, is also
mentioned in the ‘Book of Joshua’ Chapter Ten.
It was earlier a Jebusite City, which was conquered by  
King David around 1003 BC;
When David shifted his capital to Jerusalem from Hebron.
In Jerusalem he kept the Holy Ark in a sacred Tabernacle,
For which his son King Solomon had built the First Great
Temple.
This Sacred Ark contained the ‘Ten Commandments’,
Which accompanied the Israelites during their 40 years
of desert wandering with Moses, as their guidance!
But since majority of the tribes were hesitant to fight the
Canaanites for their ‘Promised Land’,
God blessed Joshua, the successor of Moses, to lead the
Tribes to their ‘Promised Land’.
NOTE: Jebusite was one of the ancient Canaanite tribes, conquered by
King David.

        TURBULENT HISTORY OF JERUSALEM
Now cutting across several centuries of its dynamic
history, let me continue with Jerusalem’s Story.
The death of King Solomon (931 BC) ended Israel’s
‘Golden Age’,
And this united Kingdom of Israel was split into
Northern and Southern states.
Ten Tribes formed the Northern Kingdom of Israel
with its capital at Samaria;
While Jerusalem became the capital of the Southern
half called Judea.
In unity lies strength, and in division further dissention;
This kingdom of King David and Solomon now becomes
prey to several foreign invasions!
Jerusalem gets attacked by the Egyptians, Assyrians,
Babylonians, Persians, and those imperial Romans, who
had initially built but later destroyed the Second
Jewish Temple!
The cruel King Herod, Judea’s Roman Protector,
Though of unstable mind, was a great builder!
‘The Wailing Wall’ and most of the ruins visible today,
Were built by the despot Herod as Archeologists say!
King Herod enlarged the Temple Mount with a massive
retaining wall around it.
Renovated the Second Temple which finally acquired  
his name!
But in 70 AD the Roman Emperor Titus, razed this
Second Temple to the ground, as Historians inform us!
Jerusalem had some peace under the Christian Byzantine
Emperor Constantine,
Who upheld Christianity, and his mother Helena inspired
the building of many hallowed shrines;
Only to be occupied by the Seljuk Turks later, who
desecrated those shrines!
Till the First Crusade in 1099 captured Jerusalem, to
provide eighty eight years of respite.
Next in 1187 the Seljuk Turk Saladin conquered Jerusalem;
When a peace treaty with Richard ‘The Lion Heart’ allowed
the visit of its ‘Holy Shrines’ by the Christians.
The British captured Jerusalem from the Ottoman Turks
in Nineteen hundred and seventeen;
And in 1948 the State of Israel was born, realizing
Abraham’s dream!
But surrounded by hostile enemies on all sides, Israel
had to fight continuously for its survival as a Nation;
And now I pause to pay my humble tribute to those
valiant Israelites with salutation!

           THE OLD CITY OF JERUSALEM
Nestled on the hollow of the hills of Judea this city
spreads out on a plateau 800 meters above the sea.
With its Dome shining in the sun, dominating  some five
thousand years of history!
The City stretches 0.9 square kilometers surrounded by
retaining walls between 16 to 46 feet in height.
Which includes more than 200 monuments and sacred
sites!
Until the 1860s the Old City had represented entire
Jerusalem collectively.
But later under the initiative of the British, settlements
outside its wall began confidently.
During 1946 when Israel declared its Independence,
The ‘old city’ remained under the control of the Jordanians;
Only to be liberated during the Six Day’s War in 1967!

           OLD CITY GATES AND QUARTERS
The walls around the Old City stretch for 4.5 kilometers,
With its height varying between five to sixteen meters.
It has 43 surveillance towers and eleven gates.
However, only seven gates remain open as on date.
The current wall was built in 1538 by Sultan Suleiman
the Magnificent.
On the southern side of this wall is the Zion Gate, leading
to the Armenian Quarters overlooking Mount Zion outside;
Where lies King David’s tomb, a Holy Site.
The Dung Gate leads to the Jewish Quarters from the south;
And the way to Al-Aksa Mosque inside the Temple Mount.
The Jaffa or the Main Gate is on the west, with its famous
Citadel and the ‘Tower of David’ built by King Herod.
This gate leads to the Christian Quarters inside, while the
road goes to the port of Jaffa outside.
A New Gate was also built further up on the north-western
side,    (in1898)
For entry of the German Emperor William the Second,
through the Christian side!
The Damascus Gate in the middle of the Northern Wall
was the largest and the most heavily defended Gate.
Where excavations have revealed an old ‘Roman Gate’
beneath it.
Through this Gate had entered the Holy Crusade!
Further east on the northern wall is the ‘Herod’s Gate’,
Leading to the Muslim Quarters and the ‘Souk’, – the
Arab markets.
On the East is the Lions Gate, with carved figure of
lions on the gate’s crest;
Both for the Christian and the Jews this gate has a
special significance!
For this gate marks the walk ‘Via Dolorosa’, the path
taken by Jesus from the Garden of Gethsemane to
his Crucifixion Site,
Where stands the Church of Holy Sepulcher built by
the Emperor Constantine.
In 1967 the Israeli 55th Para Brigade entered through this
‘Lions Gate’, after a hand-to-hand fight with the Jordanians.
When they hoisted the Star of David on the Temple Mount  
to reclaim Jerusalem!
Jerusalem was declared as their Capital City,
Concluding a chapter of its turbulent History!

Since the time of the Crusades Jerusalem has remained
traditionally divided into Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and
Armenian sections;
Each with its sacred Synagogues, Churches, and Mosques,
defying the City’s unification!
Yet amidst the gong of church bells, the call of Muezzin,
and recitation of the Torah,
Old Jerusalem reverberates with a unique religious
euphoria!

           SACRED MONUMENTS AND SITES
‘The Wailing Wall’ is the more popular name for that part
of Western Wall built by King Herod during 19 BC,
Around the Second Jewish Temple which he renovated,
for the world to see!
Today only 167 feet of this exposed ‘Wall’ remains,
which is 62 feet high.
As a solitary witness to that once glorious past, which
evokes a deep sighs!
It is the holiest of Jewish shrines today where they
congregate.
To pray in front of this Sacred Wall and to loudly lament,
The loss of their Great Temple which was once made!
Inside the cracks in the wall many folded papers can be
seen;
Coating their petitions to God with prayers from within!

The Temple Mount is perhaps the oldest of all shrines.
Sacred to both the Christians and the Muslims alike!
For here on a rock alter Abraham had bound his son
Isaac,
Ready to sacrifice him when the Lord put him to a test!
Here King Solomon had built the First Jewish Temple;
Which during 587 BC, was destroyed by the King of
Babylon!
The King also took the Jews into captivity lasting nearly
seventy long years;
And Psalm 137 tells us how the Jews remembering Zion
on the banks of River of Babylon, - shed their tears!
That old song by ‘Bonny M’, now rings in my ears!
This was also the site of the Second Temple destroyed
by the Romans.
Who renamed Jerusalem as ‘Aelia Capitolina’, making
the City pagan!
Al-Aqsa Mosque or ‘The Farthest Mosque’, located on the
Mount, was completed around 705 AD they say.
Has been claimed by the Muslims as the site where their
Prophet traveled ‘during the night’ from Mecca to pray;
And from where angle Gabriel accompanied him to
Heaven or ‘Jannat,’ - all the way!
So they constructed the ‘Dome of The Rock’ to mark
this ascension;
Which around 691 AD saw its completion.
The Golden Gate on the east leading to the Temple Mount,
Was sealed by the Muslims during Sixth Century following
their fears and doubts.
For the Jew’s claim their Messiah will enter through this
Golden Gate one day.
Which unnerved the Muslims whatever one may say.
So outside this sealed gate they also built a cemetery;
Let future events gradually unfold in Jerusalem’s Story!

                       CONCLUSION
Now dear readers I conclude this narration, with some
food for thought and contemplation.
‘Jerusalem’ is mentioned in the Jewish Bible 669 times,
and 154 times as ‘Zion’. (‘Land of Israel’)
In the Christian Bible it is mentioned 161 times; but not
once in the Hindu ‘Gita’, the Buddhist Scriptures, or in
the Muslim Koran;
Not forgetting the fact that God is Supreme and One!
The Koran speaks only of “The Furthest Mosque” where  
the Prophet went to pray,
From Mecca we know Holy Medina comes on the way.*
(please see notes below)
The Holy Bible is also a record of Early Civilizations ,
Supported by Archaeological finds, carbon dating, and
countless excavations.
The Jewish claim to the ‘Land of Canaan’ is more than
3000 years old;
And Israel today occupies 75% of that historic piece of
land we know and have been told!
The Old City in 1981 has been declared as UNESCO’s
Heritage Site.
Let the ‘Spirit of Humanity’ overtake all religious divide!
It is true that History has evolved from the Myths and
Legends of the past.
But it is for us to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I have done adequate research of this Ancient History.
Now I leave it to You my Readers for drawing your own conclusions after reading this true Story!
Thank you readers for reading patiently,
From Raj Nandy of New Delhi .
ALL COPY RIGHTS ARE WITH THE AUTHOR ONLY

Dear Readers, to usher in the spirit of Christmas, I wish to
share with you the true Story of Jerusalem in Verse. Based on
Biblical chronology, and several articles about its Early History.
Though the three of our World’s greatest religions have a common
lineage, yet religious bickering and hatred continues to exist
in our present age! Let this Season of Christmas bring peace with
goodwill and love. Let us all pray together for a peaceful World!
If you like this true story, kindly recommend it to all your poet
friends to read this slice of History. Thanks, from Raj Nandy.


   STORY OF JERUSALEM - “THE PROMISED LAND”
                IN VERSE: By Raj Nandy
                  
                       INTRODUCTION
After reading my ‘Arab Contribution to Science’ and the
downfall of Islam’s Golden Age,
A friend had requested me to write about The Crusades.
Now the Mongol contribution was far greater towards
Islamic Empire’s downfall,
For though the First Crusade besieged the Holy City of
Jerusalem making it fall,
The subsequent Crusades to the Seljuk Turks lost all!
But before writing about the Nine Crusades proper,
To acquaint my readers with the historic city of
Jerusalem becomes my present endeavor.
For Jerusalem is sacred to the Jews, Christian, and the
Muslims alike,
As their holy relics and shrines are housed in that Old
City’s revered sites!
But prior to narrating the story of Old Jerusalem City,
Let me tell you briefly about its early history.
About the patriarch Abraham, whom God led to this
‘Promised Land’.
From where this true story of Jerusalem really began.

                 HISTORICAL  BACKGROUND
The city of Jerusalem was twice razed to the ground.
Besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, captured and
recaptured 44 times, surprising as it all may sound!
In an era of idolatry and multiple gods, Abraham born*
in the ancient City of Ur,# believed in a single God!
(1800 BC)
So God was pleased and in a covenant with Patriarch
Abraham,
Blessed him to become the ‘Father of Many Nations’
in a distant ‘Promised Land’!
Thus Abraham with his wife Sarah and nephew Lot,
Entered the Land of Canaan as promised by God.
But when a famine ravaged the Land of Canaan,
Abraham had moved onto Egypt on his own!
Having suffered there for some ungodly acts, his
return to the Land of Canaan remains a historical fact.
Through Abraham and Sarah’s Egyptian maid Hagar, -
his son Ishmael was born.
From Ishmael descended the ‘Ishmaelites’, to
become the Twelve Arab Tribes later on!
Next, with the blessings of the Lord, to Abraham
and Sarah son Isaac was born.
Isaac’s son Jacob fathered the Twelve Jewish Tribes,
Who became collectively known as the ‘Israelites’.
From the ‘Tribe of Benjamin’ came King Saul, the
first King of united Israel rising tall.
From the ‘Tribe of Judah’ King David, Solomon, and
several Kings of Judah did rise;
As proud forefathers of the Messiah Jesus Christ!
Thus in Judaism both the Arabs and the Christians
find a common lineage;
Yet unfortunately bitter differences continue to
exist even in our present age!
NOTES: Canaan was the ancient name of a large & prosperous
country (at times independent, at others a territory to Egypt),
which roughly corresponds to present day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel. Canaan was also known as ‘Phoenicia’ between 3200 BC & 539 BC. # Ur = an important Sumerian city-state in ancient Mesopotamia.


               ORIGINS OF JERUSALEM
Jerusalem has been hailed by many names,
Gets mentioned as ‘Rushalium’ in an ancient
Egyptian text!  (2000 BC)
Also as Salem, Moriah, Jebus and Zion, this capital city
of the Israelites had been known.
Jerusalem as the remnant town of Salem, is also
mentioned in the ‘Book of Joshua’ Chapter Ten.
It was earlier a Jebusite City, which was conquered by  
King David around 1003 BC;
When David shifted his capital to Jerusalem from Hebron.
In Jerusalem he kept the Holy Ark in a sacred Tabernacle,
For which his son King Solomon had built the First Great
Temple.
This Sacred Ark contained the ‘Ten Commandments’,
Which accompanied the Israelites during their 40 years
of desert wandering with Moses, as their guidance!
But since majority of the tribes were hesitant to fight the
Canaanites for their ‘Promised Land’,
God blessed Joshua, the successor of Moses, to lead the
Tribes to their ‘Promised Land’.
NOTE: Jebusite was one of the ancient Canaanite tribes, conquered by
King David.

            TURBULENT HISTORY OF JERUSALEM
Now cutting across several centuries of its dynamic
history, let me continue with Jerusalem’s Story.
The death of King Solomon (931 BC) ended Israel’s
‘Golden Age’,
And this united Kingdom of Israel was split into
Northern and Southern states.
Ten Tribes formed the Northern Kingdom of Israel
with its capital at Samaria;
While Jerusalem became the capital of the Southern
half called Judea.
In unity lies strength, and in division further dissention;
This kingdom of King David and Solomon now becomes
prey to several foreign invasions!
Jerusalem gets attacked by the Egyptians, Assyrians,
Babylonians, Persians, and those imperial Romans, who
had initially built but later destroyed the Second
Jewish Temple!
The cruel King Herod, Judea’s Roman Protector,
Though of unstable mind, was a great builder!
‘The Wailing Wall’ and most of the ruins visible today,
Were built by the despot Herod as Archeologists say!
King Herod enlarged the Temple Mount with a massive
retaining wall around it.
Renovated the Second Temple which finally acquired  
his name!
But in 70 AD the Roman Emperor Titus, razed this
Second Temple to the ground, as Historians inform us!
Jerusalem had some peace under the Christian Byzantine
Emperor Constantine,
Who upheld Christianity, and his mother Helena inspired
the building of many hallowed shrines;
Only to be occupied by the Seljuk Turks later, who
desecrated those shrines!
Till the First Crusade in 1099 captured Jerusalem, to
provide eighty eight years of respite.
Next in 1187 the Seljuk Turk Saladin conquered Jerusalem;
When a peace treaty with Richard ‘The Lion Heart’ allowed
the visit of its ‘Holy Shrines’ by the Christians.
The British captured Jerusalem from the Ottoman Turks
in Nineteen hundred and seventeen;
And in 1948 the State of Israel was born, realizing
Abraham’s dream!
But surrounded by hostile enemies on all sides, Israel
had to fight continuously for its survival as a Nation;
And now I pause to pay my humble tribute to those
valiant Israelites with salutation!

                              THE OLD CITY
Nestled on the hollow of the hills of Judea this city
spreads out on a plateau 800 meters above the sea.
With its Dome shining in the sun, dominating  some five
thousand years of history!
The City stretches 0.9 square kilometers surrounded by
retaining walls between 16 to 46 feet in height.
Which includes more than 200 monuments and sacred
sites!
Until the 1860s the Old City had represented entire
Jerusalem collectively.
But later under the initiative of the British, settlements
outside its wall began confidently.
During 1946 when Israel declared its Independence,
The ‘old city’ remained under the control of the Jordanians;
Only to be liberated during the Six Day’s War in 1967!

                OLD CITY GATES AND QUARTERS
The walls around the Old City stretch for 4.5 kilometers,
With its height varying between five to sixteen meters.
It has 43 surveillance towers and eleven gates.
However, only seven gates remain open as on date.
The current wall was built in 1538 by Sultan Suleiman
the Magnificent.
On the southern side of this wall is the Zion Gate, leading
to the Armenian Quarters overlooking Mount Zion outside;
Where lies King David’s tomb, a Holy Site.
The Dung Gate leads to the Jewish Quarters from the south;
And the way to Al-Aksa Mosque inside the Temple Mount.
The Jaffa or the Main Gate is on the west, with its famous
Citadel and the ‘Tower of David’ built by King Herod.
This gate leads to the Christian Quarters inside, while the
road goes to the port of Jaffa outside.
A New Gate was also built further up on the north-western
side,    (in1898)
For entry of the German Emperor William the Second,
through the Christian side!
The Damascus Gate in the middle of the Northern Wall
was the largest and the most heavily defended Gate.
Where excavations have revealed an old ‘Roman Gate’
beneath it.
Through this Gate had entered the Holy Crusade!
Further east on the northern wall is the ‘Herod’s Gate’,
Leading to the Muslim Quarters and the ‘Souk’, – the
Arab markets.
On the East is the Lions Gate, with carved figure of
lions on the gate’s crest;
Both for the Christian and the Jews this gate has a
special significance!
For this gate marks the walk ‘Via Dolorosa’, the path
taken by Jesus from the Garden of Gethsemane to
his Crucifixion Site,
Where stands the Church of Holy Sepulcher built by
the Emperor Constantine.
In 1967 the Israeli 55th Para Brigade entered through this
‘Lions Gate’, after a hand-to-hand fight with the Jordanians.
When they hoisted the Star of David on the Temple Mount  
to reclaim Jerusalem!
Jerusalem was declared as their Capital City,
Concluding a chapter of its turbulent History!

Since the time of the Crusades Jerusalem has remained
traditionally divided into Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and
Armenian sections;
Each with its sacred Synagogues, Churches, and Mosques,
defying the City’s unification!
Yet amidst the gong of church bells, the call of Muezzin,
and recitation of the Torah,
Old Jerusalem reverberates with a unique religious
euphoria!

               SACRED MONUMENTS AND SITES
‘The Wailing Wall’ is the more popular name for that part
of Western Wall built by King Herod during 19 BC,
Around the Second Jewish Temple which he renovated,
for the world to see!
Today only 167 feet of this exposed ‘Wall’ remains,
which is 62 feet high.
As a solitary witness to that once glorious past, which
evokes a deep sighs!
It is the holiest of Jewish shrines today where they
congregate.
To pray in front of this Sacred Wall and to loudly lament,
The loss of their Great Temple which was once made!
Inside the cracks in the wall many folded papers can be
seen;
Coating their petitions to God with prayers from within!

The Temple Mount is perhaps the oldest of all shrines.
Sacred to both the Christians and the Muslims alike!
For here on a rock alter Abraham had bound his son
Isaac,
Ready to sacrifice him when the Lord put him to a test!
Here King Solomon had built the First Jewish Temple;
Which during 587 BC, was destroyed by the King of
Babylon!
The King also took the Jews into captivity lasting nearly
seventy long years;
And Psalm 137 tells us how the Jews remembering Zion
on the banks of River of Babylon, - shed their tears!
That old song by ‘Bonny M’, now rings in my ears!
This was also the site of the Second Temple destroyed
by the Romans.
Who renamed Jerusalem as ‘Aelia Capitolina’, making
the City pagan!
Al-Aqsa Mosque or ‘The Farthest Mosque’, located on the
Mount, was completed around 705 AD they say.
Has been claimed by the Muslims as the site where their
Prophet traveled ‘during the night’ from Mecca to pray;
And from where angle Gabriel accompanied him to
Heaven or ‘Jannat,’ - all the way!
So they constructed the ‘Dome of The Rock’ to mark
this ascension;
Which around 691 AD saw its completion.
The Golden Gate on the east leading to the Temple Mount,
Was sealed by the Muslims during Sixth Century following
their fears and doubts.
For the Jew’s claim their Messiah will enter through this
Golden Gate one day.
Which unnerved the Muslims whatever one may say.
So outside this sealed gate they also built a cemetery;
Let future events gradually unfold in Jerusalem’s Story!

                            CONCLUSION
Now dear readers I conclude this narration, with some
food for thought and contemplation.
‘Jerusalem’ is mentioned in the Jewish Bible 669 times,
and 154 times as ‘Zion’. (‘Land of Israel’)
In the Christian Bible it is mentioned 161 times; but not
once in the Hindu ‘Gita’, the Buddhist Scriptures, or in
the Koran;
Not forgetting the fact that God is Supreme and One!
The Koran speaks only of “The Furthest Mosque” where  
the Prophet went to pray,
From Mecca we know Holy Medina comes on the way.
The Holy Bible is also a record of Early Civilizations ,
Supported by Archaeological finds, carbon dating, and
countless excavations.
The Jewish claim to the ‘Land of Canaan’ is more than
3000 years old;
And Israel today occupies 75% of that historic piece of
land we know and have been told!
The Old City in 1981 has been declared as UNESCO’s
Heritage Site.
Let the ‘Spirit of Humanity’ overtake all religious divide!
It is true that History has evolved from the Myths and
Legends of the past.
But it is for us to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I have done adequate research of this Ancient History.
Now I leave it to you for drawing your own conclusions
after reading this true Story!
Thank you readers for reading patiently,
From Raj Nandy of New Delhi .
ALL COPY RIGHTS  ARE WITH THE AUTHOR ONLY

perchance an epic was necessary, to consolidate the scattered thinking, and indeed, once a certain life, and was lived with a cherishing heart, the heart broke, and life turned from adventures to a more studious approach, and in here, a comfort was found, never before imagined explorations - of course sometime a tourist in the arts does come, but such tourists quickly fade, and the pursuit becomes more enshrined - to levitated towards epics is perhaps the sole reason for the cherished memory of some - and how quickly all can revolve around a searched for theme, after many incorporations were minded - as one to have travelled the Mediterranean, another to have been eaten by the great mandarin silkworm of the library of Kangxi - heading along the silk route with spices - indeed the great mandarin silkworm of the library of emperor Kangxi; as i too needed a bearing - to inspect the trickster of lore and the godly blacksmith of the north.

by instruction - an accumulation of the the zephyrs
into a vector, headed north,
toward the gluttonous murk of ice, jesting
with aches to the bulging and mesmerised crescendo
of adrift stars captured in the tilting away -
to think of an epic, to keep out-of-time of
spontaneity and thistle like swiftness in the last
days of summer, that Mercury brings the new
tides of the tetravivaldis -
   brought by the λoγος of a γoλας -
for reasons that satisfy the suntan copper of
the ***** - the λoγος of a γoλας - yet not toward
Monte Carlo or any hideout of money well invested
and greedily spent for a charm -
no, north bids me welcome from afar -
this norðri fløkja, this    ᚾᛟᚱᛞᚱᛁ       ᚠᛚᚢᚲᛃᚨ -
by my estimate, i could not take the nonsense
of numerology of a certain specialisation,
i took what was necessary, i pillaged the temple
of Solomon, perhaps that the dome of the rock
might stand - with its glistening dome and
its sapphire mosaics - i don't belong among
palm trees and date trees - hence i turned to
deciphering and subsequently encrypting -
as i have already with *ᚱᚨᛒᛖ:
the journey of an Æsir through a birch forest
on a horse.
                    with this method in mind:
(a) ᚾᛟᚱᛞᚱᛁ       (b) ᚠᛚᚢᚲᛃᚨ:

(a)
the need to acquire possessions accumulating
into an estate, is a journey encountered
day by day, although a journey on ice

(b)
cattle only thrive near water,
auruchs did not, and hence illuminated
their way to extinction,
         by way of the Æsirs' harvest
(to eat up diversity of life, and create
a godless world of man).

my escape route came from ᚠ - mirroring שִׂ
although the former standing, the latter sitting
down, although the former fathomable
to my pleasure, the latter unfathomable
to ascribe numbers to letters for patterns -
i seek no patterns, hence my sight turned to
the northern sights, and meanings amplified.
                
the greeks were intended to explore abstracts,
having stated a triangle
they invented the ² symbol and what not,
it was because
they didn't bother extracting a phonetic unit
from something definite,
they classified such endeavours barbarian,
what reasonable greek of 13% reason and
87% reality would extract alpha from
the sound you made when
saying ansur (ᚨᚾᛋᚢᚱ) - i.e. attention -
i.e. deriving a definite sound differentiation
for alphabetical rubrics from a definite thing
(in whatever classification that might be)?
the greeks used the alphabetical rubric of
crafting a definite sound from an indefinite thing,
so they said: acronym, aardvark, assumption,
                       α                 α      α     α,
then they said α² - there are no antonyms -
but indeed there were, hence the Trojan nation
settling in the boot, that's Italy,
the Romans escalated the greek theory
beyond taking out a definite sound distinguished
from other distinguishable sounds,
abstracting what the alphabetic sound assured
a list under alpha: assumption, advantage,
acorn, etc. -
the latins were the first atomist after the greeks,
the greeks believed in atoms, but had no
microscopes to prove atoms existed,
such scientific faith found no parallel;
the latins ensured this was true,
ending with castrato sing-along -
the latins furthered abstracting sounds from
definite orientation which the greeks did
working from ice into iota,
the latins just sang i, i, i -
of course chiral behaviourism of such dissection
emerged - hatch a plan, plan a chisel -
it's very piquant i mind to let you know -
the greeks abstracted nouns in order to create
the alphabet, the barbarians still used
proper nouns to speak proper, the greeks
thus created synonyms and antonyms to add
to the spice of life - after all,
not deriving definite alphas from
cursors that acknowledged points of origins
created diacritical stressing like comma and
semis of colon and macron, not deriving them
from definite things, shunning a helpful
vocabulary bank to an unhelpful vocabulary
banked: synonyms and antonyms the Gemini's
birth of rhetoric;
but the latins were rejected with their atomic theory
of pronunciation, since they became laden
with diacritics - punctuation marks of a different sort,
you can measure a man sprint one hundred metres,
but is that also measuring a man to say
mān or män or mán? i know that the slavic ó = u
given the scalpel opening the ensō to craft a parabola -
but it's not necessarily an accent debate
but a punctuation debate... the emergence of
the diacritic symbols above the letters is due
partly to their joy of the popes listening to
castrato operas and the fact that the romans
went too far... hence the chiral nature of certain
symbols when dittoing - the barbarians used
definite things to assert definite sounds -
the greeks used indefinite things to assert definite
sounds - mind you, if the romans became too
abstract with their little units that became engraved
with punctual accenting, then the greek letters
became laden with scientific constants as necessarily
fathered, unchanging in the pursuit of Heraclitus' flux -
for example... Pythagoras and the hypotenuse:
                            σ / κ² = α² + β² -
           or?
                             c² (ć) = a² (ą) + b² / š (bubble beep
                                                           bop barman backup hop
                                                           of shackled kakah
                                                           or systematic oscillation
                                                           for bzz via burp);
πρ² is still more stable
                                 than what the latin alphabet allows -
hence why greek phonetic encoding was used in
science, and latin phonetic encoding was used in music,
can't be one or the other - added to the fact that
latin encoding had too many spare holes with
the evolution of numbers, and greek didn't have them,
hence β-reduction in lambda calculus and F-dur and A#

the one variant of the grapheme (æ) they didn't include
among expressions: graphite and grapheme
was the variant - gravitating to an entombing
of the excess aesthetic - geresh stress -
somehow the twins match-up to a single womb:
àé vs. áè: V vs. Λ - Copernicus wrote over all
of this with the flat earth uselessness
in terms of navigation - flat earth is useless...
huh? flat earth is the only system that gave
Columbus the chance to explore the new world -
no flat earth no Columbus -
that satellite named Luna was no tool
in navigating across the Atlantic - believe me
i'm sure -
                  or that grapheme (æ) varied like statistics
or like the characters in the book of genesis
that famous adam und eve (kim and kanye):
chances came, chances went:
it was still a draw on the tongue tied decipher:
àè and áé proved another notation for plurality
was necessary, not at the beginning of the word,
but after, hence the possessive article 's,
we could have parallelism, there was a crux,
how once the chiselling of letters came about,
more economic to chisel in a V than a U,
both the same, much easier though...
almost barbaric i might say...
sigma (Σ) enigma rune e (ᛖ) - this compass
is a ******* berserker, god knows if it's
mount Everest or the Bermuda Δ

but one thing is for certain, never you mind how
a language is taught unless you mind it,
not that conversational athenian is really what
i'm aiming at - but a lesson is a lesson nonetheless,
out of interest something new,
richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi,
and what preceded him, namely pan-slavism,
just when the polish-lithuanian commonwealth
did a little Judaic trick of its own,
although snorkelling in the waters of not writing
history for less a time than israel -
you can't beat ~2000 under water - although
you could if your little tribe had an einstein
among them, or proust or spinoza, then
you could effectively become a whale, popping
an individual out from the rubble to say a polite
'hello' and 'when will the dessert be served?'
but indeed, learning a language on your own,
how to learn from scratch, the greek orthography,
and why omicron and not omega,
the give-away? sigma - purely aesthetic reason,
                             νoμισματων

                             nomismaton

omicron                                                 omega

                 you write omicron at the front
                 and omega at the back
                 pivot letter? two: σ     μ &
                 νoμι-                                -ατων
                      ­                     |
                 anything here  
                 will use o            and anything
                                              here uses ω

alike to sigma:
                          χωρας (choras, i.e. country)

sigma (ς) not sigma (σ), i.e. digitalising languages
without a clear connectivity of letters,
block-a-brick-block-a-brick-digit-digit-digit
you learn that handwriting is gone,
two options, your own aesthetic reasons now,
remember, some paired for the ease of handwritten
flow - digitalised language changes the aesthetics,
you make your own rules (considering exceptions
of oh mega mega, ergo revision -

                                       χoρας,

but still the sigma rule, others esp. o mega
you stamp on them like βλαττια, i.e. cockroaches -
κατσαρίδα                 not         κατςαρίδα

all perfectly clear when you explore plato's
dialogue from the book Θηαετητυς (as you might
have noticed, the epsilon-eta project is still
in the storage room of my imagination) -
but indeed in the dialogue, between socrates
and the "hero" of the book theaetetus -
a sample, without an essay on the theory
of knowledge -
socrates: ...'tell me theaetesus, what is Σ O?'
theaetetus: yes, my reply would be that it is
                    Σ and O.
socrates: so there's your account of the syllable,
                isn't it?
theaetetus: yes.
socrates: all right, then: tell me also what your
                  account of Σ is.
                                                             ­   (etc.
or as some might say, a shrug of the shoulders,
a hmmpf huff puff of hot air, impractical interests
and concerns - well, better the impractical
problems than practical problems, less feet
shuffling and nail-biting moments with your
tail between your legs and an army of
intellectuals working out what went wrong
and how history will solve everything by
the practical problems repeating themselves) -
you know that inane reaction - others would just say
Humphrey Bogart and nonetheless get on with it.

some would claim i was begot a second time,
not in the sixth month period of the aqua-flesh,
how did i actually related to the life aquatic,
for nine months i was taught to hold my breath,
however did this happen?
a miracle of birth? ah indeed the miracle of
a crutch for a woman - spinal deformities -
9 months, sort to speak, in water or some other
fluid - merman - a beastly innovation -
next you'll be telling me beyond this life
we turn into centaurs, given the Koran's promise -
you'd need the appetite of a breeding horse
to satiate the 72 - or thereabouts - martyr or
no martyr - 72? that's pushing it -
or as they say among children - a chance playground
without swings or sandpits, but very careless
gravitational pulling toward a certain direction;
nonetheless, they might have that i did indeed
settle of a sáttmáli                  ᛋᚨᛏᛏᛗᚨᛚᛁ
                  við         ­                  Vᛁᛞ
                  tann                         ᛏᚨᚾᚾ
                  djevul                      ᛞᛃᛖVᚢᛚ -
the hands you see, fidgety -
     hond handa grammur burtur    úr   steðgur
     ᚻᛟᚾᛞ  ᚻᚨᚾᛞᚨ  ᚷᚱᚨᛗᛗᚢᚱ   ᛒᚢᚱᛏᚢᚱ  ᚢᚱ   ᛋᛏᛖᛞᚷᚢᚱ
         the hands give an ardent pursuit
                                                 away from rest -
well not that my poems will ever reach
the islands in question - and indeed an
uneducated guess propels me - what does it matter,
λαλος babbler meant anything, indeed λαλος,
language as my own, is a language that i can
understand - and should anyone omit
disparities - a welcome revision would never tease
nor burn my eyes - but the phonetic omission
peeved me off: woad in water, ventricles in a
variety of entanglements - it's just not there -
and indeed, orthographically, if there are no more
optometric involvements of omicron's twin -
then the stance is with you to use whichever pleases,
i can't tell the difference, unless i was a pedantic
student, aged 70, with a granddaughter i wanted
to be wed teasing a millimetre's worth of
phonetic differentiation between the two -
POTATO PA'H'TAYTOE TOMATO TA'H'MAYTOE -
linguistically one's american and the other
is british, which looks like greek and latin
upside-down and in a mirror: pəˈteɪtəʊ, təˈmɑːtəʊ;
or as the spaghetti gobblers would put it:
the tetragrammaton is working on their
texan drawl (dwah! ripples in china) -
or the high-society new england ******* *******
coo with a cuckoo's load of clocks -
before being sent off to england for a respectable
education, something en route Sylvia Plath -
but not to ol' wee scoot land - ah nay - well
perhaps for a year and then talk of north european
barbarism of a deep friend pizza and mars bar.

and when descartes finished with christina
queen of sweden, she became an animate portrait
of feminine attempts at philosophising,
she was basically ostracised from society,
well, not society per se, she didn't become a stray
dog, but she forgot certain functions of
the upper tier - lazily modern man decides
to hide phenomena from understanding
individual instances, with the kantian guise
of a noumenon, hence cutting his efforts short -
indeed queen christina of sweden was ostracised
by society - only after descartes finished educating her;
and indeed to most people a little bit of sloth
equates to an amputation of some sort -
yet only with the x-files' season 2 episode 2
i've learned of the effects of prolonged alcohol
"misuse", that little boxing match in my liver?
it's not a pain as such, it's actually a hardening
of soft tissue - with prolonged alcohol exposure
soft tissue organs harden, notably the liver -
and it's not a pain, it's a hardening.
but indeed queen christina of sweden was ostracised
by her tier of socialites - i'm glad diogenes
didn't get to her, but then again a bit of cloth
goes a long way this far north -
yet unlike the encounter with napoleon by hegel
diogenes' encounter with alexander lasted longer -
which tells you the old method does no service
to a little bit of material accumulation -
but perhaps the acumen was briefer when you were
ably living in a barrel - and to think, as only
that being the sole expression, not so much
a body without organs as stated in the thesis
of anti-oedipus by deleuze and guattari -
a consideration for a body without limbs - prior
to a footprint an imprint on the mind -
carelessly now, a diarrhoea of narration -
how rare to find it - perhaps this idea of epic
poetry is a default of writing per se -
with this my whatever numbered entry i seize
to find escape in it - a lack of ambition -
a loss of spontaneity that's a demanded mechanisation -
by volume, by inaneness - to reach a single
technique accumulative zenith, and then back
into the ploughing, rustic scenery and the
never-bored animals - i rather forget such escapades -
and there i was dreaming of a grand
runic exploration - some imitable game -
some scenic routes - yet again -

Fros-ty the Snowman
had a twin brother named Lou
He got hit by a truck,
and we said "What the ****?",
and "You should totally sue!"

Before-he could call a lawyer
along came a snow plow
it mixed him up,
with yellow snowman guts
and he got snowman AIDS and gout

The ne-xt day, Lou died
but he left an inheritance check
Frosty sued the man,
and took all he had,
then he cashed in both of the checks

Fros-ty moved up north
Alaska is where he's livin'
where he got buck wild,
and had a child,
that he fathered with Sarah Palin

Fros-ty the Snowman
had a twin brother named Lou
who brought about fame
to the family name
in Time and US Weekly too!!!

The day you died I went into the dirt,
Into the lightless hibernaculum
Where bees, striped black and gold, sleep out the blizzard
Like hieratic stones, and the ground is hard.
It was good for twenty years, that wintering --
As if you never existed, as if I came
God-fathered into the world from my mother's belly:
Her wide bed wore the stain of divinity.
I had nothing to do with guilt or anything
When I wormed back under my mother's heart.

Small as a doll in my dress of innocence
I lay dreaming your epic, image by image.
Nobody died or withered on that stage.
Everything took place in a durable whiteness.
The day I woke, I woke on Churchyard Hill.
I found your name, I found your bones and all
Enlisted in a cramped necropolis
your speckled stone skewed by an iron fence.

In this charity ward, this poorhouse, where the dead
Crowd foot to foot, head to head, no flower
Breaks the soil. This is Azalea path.
A field of burdock opens to the south.
Six feet of yellow gravel cover you.
The artificial red sage does not stir
In the basket of plastic evergreens they put
At the headstone next to yours, nor does it rot,
Although the rains dissolve a ****** dye:
The ersatz petals drip, and they drip red.

Another kind of redness bothers me:
The day your slack sail drank my sister's breath
The flat sea purpled like that evil cloth
My mother unrolled at your last homecoming.
I borrow the silts of an old tragedy.
The truth is, one late October, at my birth-cry
A scorpion stung its head, an ill-starred thing;
My mother dreamed you face down in the sea.

The stony actors poise and pause for breath.
I brought my love to bear, and then you died.
It was the gangrene ate you to the bone
My mother said: you died like any man.
How shall I age into that state of mind?
I am the ghost of an infamous suicide,
My own blue razor rusting at my throat.
O pardon the one who knocks for pardon at
Your gate, father -- your hound-*****, daughter, friend.
It was my love that did us both to death.

You were Blue-eyed,
wild
A fierce and cautious beauty.
gentle spirit

Did you know how I loved you,
And how, while the rest of the world mourned for Paris,
I cried the saltiest tears
For you
that rainy fall night
when I heard you  
Didn't come home,
One of your pups at your side.

You were not mine
But you haunt me
The same

Were you protecting your pup from
The cougar's watchful prey?
Was it your fate to be struck twice
By the feared and sleek predator

You survived the first time
and made the  news ..
Your owner saving you
With all his heart.

Your wide eyed glance
CapturEd my heart
Like a love laced arrow
The first time we saw each other

I will not lose sight of you yet,
Nor give up hope  
that You will return to your home,
to your pups.
and to the big, gallant
Baretoes
Who fathered them..

I pray for that news,
Bella the beautiful husky.
I will not forget you.
Your blue eyes will mesmerize me
in dreams
till we meet again

Safe from stormy icy cold
from stars sheltered too below
a wish I am
to my captive be
all this thou provideth me

The ice breaker tows us in
sweet lies lavished
beneath our skin
mothered
fathered
dear!!!

Dear ravaged
bitter sweet
lovingly deceived
tucked into sheets
from teddy bear
to milky squeezed
thigh soothing
the life that's oozing

**** a doodle
screeching out in fright
of little egg
earnest yearning
heeding calling
of thee other will
spontaneity
river spawning

No time for times sake

Not a one
would be
mistaken

Only the shrunken
fear forsaking

Run hare run
way out
out
beyond sight
of the knowing
knowing though
scent lingers
in the nose
of the tortoise
and tortoises
whom are stalking

Run run
has gotten far
hid from heaven
spinning faulty
stars heathen
tales of yore
which simply
just keep moving

But delight
is
a wedding cake
in a heart
you can see
taste
taste the spin
of spinning me

Dance too
to the rhythms
and beatings
of sticks
****** quick
to the depths
of your last breath
of the last breathing

Our hearts
the rhythm

Ones soul

The beating
of skin

On our drums

Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride

On that darkest day.  Oh, forever may
He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed
Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow

Young among the long flocks, and never lie lost
Or still all the numberless days of his death, though
Above all he longed for his mother's breast

Which was rest and dust, and in the kind ground
The darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed.
Let him find no rest but be fathered and found,

I prayed in the crouching room, by his blind bed,
In the muted house, one minute before
Noon, and night, and light.  The rivers of the dead

Veined his poor hand I held, and I saw
Through his unseeing eyes to the roots of the sea.
(An old tormented man three-quarters blind,

I am not too proud to cry that He and he
Will never never go out of my mind.
All his bones crying, and poor in all but pain,

Being innocent, he dreaded that he died
Hating his God, but what he was was plain:
An old kind man brave in his burning pride.

The sticks of the house were his; his books he owned.
Even as a baby he had never cried;
Nor did he now, save to his secret wound.

Out of his eyes I saw the last light glide.
Here among the light of the lording sky
An old blind man is with me where I go

Walking in the meadows of his son's eye
On whom a world of ills came down like snow.
He cried as he died, fearing at last the spheres'

Last sound, the world going out without a breath:
Too proud to cry, too frail to check the tears,
And caught between two nights, blindness and death.

O deepest wound of all that he should die
On that darkest day.  Oh, he could hide
The tears out of his eyes, too proud to cry.

Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride

On that darkest day.  Oh, forever may
He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed
Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow

Young among the long flocks, and never lie lost
Or still all the numberless days of his death, though
Above all he longed for his mother's breast

Which was rest and dust, and in the kind ground
The darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed.
Let him find no rest but be fathered and found,

I prayed in the crouching room, by his blind bed,
In the muted house, one minute before
Noon, and night, and light.  The rivers of the dead

Veined his poor hand I held, and I saw
Through his unseeing eyes to the roots of the sea.
(An old tormented man three-quarters blind,

I am not too proud to cry that He and he
Will never never go out of my mind.
All his bones crying, and poor in all but pain,

Being innocent, he dreaded that he died
Hating his God, but what he was was plain:
An old kind man brave in his burning pride.

The sticks of the house were his; his books he owned.
Even as a baby he had never cried;
Nor did he now, save to his secret wound.

Out of his eyes I saw the last light glide.
Here among the light of the lording sky
An old blind man is with me where I go

Walking in the meadows of his son's eye
On whom a world of ills came down like snow.
He cried as he died, fearing at last the spheres'

Last sound, the world going out without a breath:
Too proud to cry, too frail to check the tears,
And caught between two nights, blindness and death.

O deepest wound of all that he should die
On that darkest day.  Oh, he could hide
The tears out of his eyes, too proud to cry.

I was driving
And thinking
(Dangerous, I know)
Thinking, hard, fast,
And even, slow;
(Did I slow down)
That is a question
Best answered for
Another poem.
(My driving?
My thinking?)

You distracted me.
I wish you would
Please
Stop doing that.
Sheesh.

I was thinking about
Robbery.
Of the armed persuasion.
Why 'armed' robbery?
Weaponized sounds better.
More exotic.
Forearmed?
Elbowed?
Wrong limb classification.
Handed robbery, unless
Prosthetics are involved.
Hooked robbery?

Unarmed robbery-
(Unhanded? UnHAND, me,
Sir!)
Is that just simple
Theft?
And is a simple
Theft ever really
Simple?
Ah, the philosophy of theft.
I think I want that,
Therefore, I exist,
Because want cannot
Exist on its own.
(Or, maybe: Want
Has pre-existence;
It is VIRTUAL
Minus the virtue-part
Until it becomes…
ACTUAL)

I’ve stolen over
My years.
I’ve taken things
That pretended to belong
To someone else.
They belonged to me
Even less.
Ad Victorum Spoilas
(To the victor, goes the spoils)
Spoiled is right.
I still feel
Residual guilt over
These crimes.
I’ve never witnessed
A violent crime.
Never been in the holdup
Of a middle.
Never seen a man
Wearing a ski mask
Running perpendicularly.
(Why are women never
Mentioned running?
Away from the scenes
Of robbery?)
Heels.
(Men are, I mean)

Stanley Kubrick Scenes
Of Robbery:
The Shining: Uncut
Take 146:
“This time, Jack,
Pretend you're a ballerina
Holding up a
Leotard store.”

I cannot wrap my
Mind around the thought
Fathered by the impulse
Grandfathered by the
Desperation of needing
Wanting
Something so badly you’d
Wager your ability
To wander, to mosey on
Along the boulevard, up
The hill, past the
Graveyard that you only
Remember was the dead
Sleeping a mile past it
In the car with which you
Are legally able to operate.

Hey! I think I’ll grab
This gun, and put bullets
In chambers, and possibly
Hide my face behind
A silly mask, and then,
Possibly, point it at
Bank Tellers?
Pregnant Ladies.
Clowns.
Mimes.
OK, I can see threatening
Mimes.

Besides appearing to
Be the most harmless of
Professionals,
They get paid peanuts.
And they get guns
Stuck in their faces
All the time.
So step 1 goes with
Hitches, glitches galore.
Video surveillance.
Dye-marked money bags.
Security guards lurking.
Dudes with cameras.

So you’ve stolen
The public’s money.
You’re in the getaway
Car, ineptly named,
Because whatever the
Percentage
Of bank robbers who
Free, clear, and cleanly
Get away has to be
Impossibly low.
What do you have, now,
Now that you have
What you risked sharing
A cell with Bubba
To steal?

Sadness. Grief. Guilt.
Stained hands.
Equally stained heart.
(And oh yeah, lots
Of marked/unmarked
Bills)
Do you feel anything
Anything at all?
Having your fun
Stuffing bills into the
Garters and ******* of
Bored strippers?
Buying expensive alcohol
And, later, waking up having
Vomited and voided yourself
In the back of a limo
That has, on top of it,
A giant chicken?

None of us,
Not ONE of us,
Knows the time of
Our demise.
We will be gone
One moment,
And Here before Jesus
The next.
At the Foot of the
Judgment Seat of Christ
Himself. Almighty God.
Quaking, trembling,
Feeling the truest form of
Respectful fear,
Fearful respect.
Shed of our human skin
Our spirits filled with the
Substance from the choices
We omitted and committed.

I know Jesus Christ
As and Is My Savior.
The god of money
(Mammon)
Will not be there
To Judge me.
God has ears, eyes.
He sees, hears.
Every thing.
ALL THINGS.
Little gods are both
Blind and deaf
(If the blind and
Deaf can be said
To exist for non-
Existent things).

Jesus will recognize me
As one of his own.
Satan might be skulking
Around, looking for
Those who chose anyone
Else but Christ as
Savior.
(Like the green cottony
Stuff that many think causes
The world to rotate)

The sweetest words I’ve
Ever dreamt of hearing
I will hear from the
Mouth of the Man who
Created everything
By speaking it aloud.
The ore in the ground
That eventually went into
The gun that I never pointed
At someone else
While taking things
That didn’t belong to me.
The trees that yielded
Some of the paper
(Most of it’s linen)
That was the money
In someone else’s
Account
From the bank I never
Robbed because I was
Too afraid of the
Consequences
Of
Theft.

why do people act the way they do
honestly i can't understand it
but then again i don't even know why i do the things i do
i think i'm thoughtful when i'm alone with pen and paper
and i think i'm artistic when i put paint on a canvas
spending all of my time and money into trying to become myself
when i thought i already was

why does she get angry at me
i don't get it, what have i done wrong
probably a lot of things
i did tell her i hate her when i was twelve,
even though i wrote her a letter and drew her a picture
and apologized every day for the rest of my life
i guess i'll never know why she yells at me

and why does he not like me
i thought he was supposed to since he fathered me
but i guess if one isn't around enough
a bond is never created
maybe that's why i wasn't worth anything,
and he didn't mind pushing me out of the house to make room
for the new woman in his life
i suppose i'll always come last on his list of priorities but i don't mind
but i do wish i had a father

and why weren't he and i born closer
instead of being five years apart
maybe we would have been best friends and
helped each other with homework and relationship problems
i could have seen the warning signs
and he could have seen the ones for me, and maybe
then our hearts wouldn't have so much wear - and - tear

I called to give you a rearrangement of irony and a bucket full of Jews, I tailor made a rebreather because the past connections were used . Indeed, just like a crossview that encouraged stars to collapse, then did a fix up for the X's and O's so every oxymoron followed with a laugh. A pail of shrubs, an ounce of yore, yesterday you were following your very own bated breath. Up until you challenged yourself to a duel, you didn't look so bad for a disastrous mess. Harms' Way could be the place in town where odds go to get even, or it could be the street where Blow-Pops aren't just made, but also handed out to toothless citizens. We the captured, please and thank you, sir and mam until our captors go, like if you imagine  The Godfather in The Graduate, describing how the Komodo dragon roasts. We haven't made it thru a single day since they've come in packs of seven, but today we'll have the chance to share some face time with the hours that we are being given.

Misty-eyed, mournful, and very sorry walked in separately from the yard. They drank cold-filtered PBR and joked about all the kids they may have fathered. Has it been four weeks or just four days, since the Ferguson, Missouri Captain resigned his post? I was always taught that for a captain to go out, he or she must go down with their boat.

In time where boredom lays around with dynamite by the loads, tomorrow remind me of the basorexia I've had since we met not long ago.

Thou hast nor youth nor age
      But as it were an after dinner sleep
      Dreaming of both.


Here I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
I was neither at the hot gates
Nor fought in the warm rain
Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,
Bitten by flies, fought.
My house is a decayed house,
And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner,
Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,
Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London.
The goat coughs at night in the field overhead;
Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.
The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea,
Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter.
                                        I an old man,
A dull head among windy spaces.

Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign!”
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger

In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering judas,
To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk
Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero
With caressing hands, at Limoges
Who walked all night in the next room;

By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians;
By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room
Shifting the candles; Fräulein von Kulp
Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door.
    Vacant shuttles
Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,
An old man in a draughty house
Under a windy ****.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last
We have not reached conclusion, when I
Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last
I have not made this show purposelessly
And it is not by any concitation
Of the backward devils
I would meet you upon this honestly.
I that was near your heart was removed therefrom
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
How should I use them for your closer contact?
These with a thousand small deliberations
Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,
Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled,
With pungent sauces, multiply variety
In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do,
Suspend its operations, will the weevil
Delay? De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled
Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear
In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy straits
Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn,
White feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims,
And an old man driven by the Trades
To a sleepy corner.

                    Tenants of the house,
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.

My mother raised me under the belief that monotony was a worse state than death and she lived her life accordingly. She taught me to do the same. About five years ago, my mother died. Her death steered my course from any sort of seated, settled life and into a spiral of new experiences.
For months after she left, I skulked about each day feeling slumped and cynical and finding everything and everyone coated in the sickly metallic taste of loss. I noticed that without her I had allowed myself to settle into a routine of mourning. I pitied myself, knowing what she would have thought.  Life was already so different without her there and I couldn’t continue with life as if nothing had happened, so I jumped from my stagnancy in attempts to forget my mother’s name and to destroy the mundane just like she had taught me to. I had to learn how to live again, and I wanted to find something that would always be there if she wouldn’t. I had a purpose. I tried to start anew and drown myself in change by throwing all that I knew to the wind and leaving my life behind.

I was running away from the fact that she had died for a long time. When I first picked up and left, I befriended the ocean and for many months I soaked my sorrows in salt water and *****, hoping to forget. I repressed my thoughts. Mom’s Gone would paint the inside of my mind and I would cover it up with parties and Polynesian women.
I was the sand on the shores of Tahiti, living on the waves of my own freedom. A freedom I had borrowed from nature. A gift that had been given to me by my birth, by my mother. I tried to lose myself in those waves and they treated me with limited respect. More often than not, they kicked me up against their black walls of water. They were made of such immense freedom that many times made me scream and **** my pants in fear, but they shoved loads that fear into my arms and forced me to eventually overcome the burden.
As time slipped by unnoticed, I created routine around the unpredictability of the tides and the cycle of developing alcoholism. One night after a full day of making love to the Tahitian waters, my buddies and I celebrated the big waves by filling our aching bodies with a good bit of Bourbon. By morning time, a good bit of Bourbon had become a fog of drink after drink of not-so-good *****? Gin maybe? I awoke to the sight of the godly sunrise glinting off of the wet beach around me, pitying my trouser-less hungover self. With sand in every orifice, I took a swim to wash me of the night before. I floated on my back in silence while the birds taunted me. I felt the ocean fill every nook and cranny of my body, each pulse of my heartbeat sending ripples through it. My heart was the moon that pressed the waves of my freedom onward and it was sore for different waters. The ache for elsewhere was coming back, and the hole she left in my gut that was once filled with Tahiti was now almost gaping. It had been a beautiful ride in Tahiti but I had not found solace, only distraction. The currents were shifting towards something new.
She had always said that the mountains brought her a solace that she never felt in church. They were her place to pray and they were the gods that fulfilled her. She told me this under the sheets at bedtime as if it were her biggest secret. I had delusional hope that she might be somewhere, she might not be gone. I thought if I would find her anywhere it would be there, up in the clouds on the highest peaks.
The next day, I was on the plane back to the States where I would gather gear. The mountains had called and left a needy voicemail, so I told them I was on my way.

In Bozeman, the home I had run from when I left, every street and friend was a reminder of my childhood and of her. I was only there to trade out my dive mask for my goggles. I had sold most of my stuff and had no house, apartment, or any place of residence to return to except for a small public storage unit where I’d stashed the rest of my goods. Almost everything I owned was kept in a roomy 25 square foot space, the rest was in my duffel. I’d left my pick-up in the hands of my good man, Max, and he returned her to me *****, gleaming, and with the tank full. I took her down to the storage yard and opened my unit to see that everything remained untouched. Beautifully, gracefully, precariously piled just as it was when I left. I transitioned what I carried in my duffel from surf to snow. I made my trades: flip flops for boots, bare chest for base layers, board shorts for snow pants, and of course, board for skis. Ah, my skis… sweet and tender pieces of soulful engineering, how I missed them. They still suffered core-shots and scratches from last season. I embraced them like the old friends they were.
I loaded up the pick-up with all the necessities and hit the road before anyone could give me condolences for a loss I didn’t want to believe. I could not stray from my path to forget her or find her or figure out how to live again. I did not know exactly what I wanted but I could not let myself hear my mother’s name. She was not a constant; that was now true.  

My truck made it half way there and across the Canadian border before I had to set her free. She had been my stallion for some time, but her miles got the best of her. It was only another loss, another betrayal of constancy. I walked with everything on my back until I eventually thumbed my way to the edge of the wild forest beneath the mountains that I had dreamt of. They were looming ahead but I swore I caught a whiff of hope in their cool breeze.
With skis and skins strapped to my feet, I took off into the wilderness. My eyes were peeled looking for something more than myself, and I found some things. There were icy streams and a few fattened birds and hidden rocks and tracks from wolves and barks of their pups off in the distance. But what I found within all of these things was just the constant reminder of my own loneliness.
I spent the days pushing on towards some unknown relief from the pain. On good days there fresh snow to carry me and on most days storms came and pounded me further into my seclusion. The trees bowed heavy to me as I inched forward on my skis, my only loyal companions; I only hoped they would not betray me on this journey. I could not afford to lose any more, I was alone enough. My mother was no where to be found. The snow seemed to miss her too and sometimes I think it sympathized with me.
I spent the nights warmed with a whimpy fire lying on my back in wait hoping that from out of the darkness she would speak to me, give me some guidance or explanation on how I could live happily and wildly without her. Where was this solace she had spoken of? Where was she? She was not with me, yet everything told me about her. The sun sparkled with her laughter, the air was as crisp as her wit, the cold carried her scent. I could feel her embrace around me in her hand-me-downs that I wore. They were family heirlooms that had been passed to her through generations, and then to me. The lives that had been lived in these jackets and sweaters were lived on through me. Though the stories hidden in the seams of these Greats had long been forgotten, died off with their original masters, I could feel the warmth of their memories cradle me whenever I wore them. I cringed to think about what was lost from their lives that did not live on. I was the only one left of my family to tell the world of the things they had done. I was all that was left of my mother. She had left her mark on the world, that was clear. It was a mark that stained my existence.
These forested mountain hills held a tragic beauty that I wish I could have appreciated more, but I felt heavy with heartache. Nature was not always sweet to me. For days storms surged without end and I coughed up crystals, feeling the snowflake’s dendrites tickle at my throat. I had gotten a cold. Snot oozed from my nostrils, my eyes itched, my schnoz glowed pink, my voice was hoarse, and I wanted nothing but to go home to a home that no longer existed. But I chose to go it alone on this quest and I knew the dangers in the freedom of going solo. The winds were strong and the snow was sharp. New ice glazed once powdery fields and the storms of yesterday came again and there was nothing I could do except cower at the magnificence of Nature’s sword: a thing so grand and powerful that it has slayed armies of men with merely a windy slash. I was nature’s *****. I felt no promise in pressing on, but I did so only to keep the snow from burying me alive in my tent.
And I am so glad that I did, because when the great storm finally passed I looked up to see the sky so hopeful and blue bordering the mountains I knew to be the ones I was searching for. I recognized them from the bedtime stories. She had said that when she saw them for the first time that she felt a sudden understanding that all the many hundred miles she’d ever walked were supposed to take her here. She said that the mere sight of them gave her purpose. These were those mountains. I knew because the purpose I had lost sight of came bubbling back out of my aching heart, just as it had for her.

These peaks as barren as plucked pelicans and peacocks, but as beautiful as the feathers taken from them, were beacons in the night for those in search of a world of dreams in which to create a new reality. From them I heard laughter jiggle and echo, hefty and deep in the stomachs of the only people truly living it seemed. When I was scouring the vastness of this wilderness for a sign or a purpose, I followed the scent of their delicious living and I guess my nose led me well.
A glide and a hop further on my skis, there the trees parted and powder deepened and sun shone just a bit brighter. Behind the blinding glare of the snow, faces gleamed from tents and huts and igloos and hammocks. Shrieks of children swinging from branches tickled my ears, which had grown accustomed to the silence of winter. As I approached this camp, I saw they were not kids but grown men and women. It seemed I had stumbled down a rabbit hole while following the tracks of a white jackalope. I had found my world of dreams. I had found them. I had found a home.
I was escaping my lonely, wintery existence into a shared haven perfectly placed beneath the peaks that had plagued my dreams. A place where the only directions that existed were up and down the slopes and forwards to the future. Never Eat Soggy Waffles did not matter anymore. By the end of my time there, I had even forgotten my lefts and rights. The camp had been assembled with the leftovers of the modern world and looked like a puzzle with mismatched pieces from fifty different pictures. At first glance, it could have been a snow covered trash heap, but there was a sentimental glow on each broken appliance that told me otherwise. Everything had a use, though it was not usually what was intended. The homes of these families and friends were made of tarp or blankets or animal hides and had smelly socks or utensils or boots or bones hanging from their openings. There were homemade hot springs made of bathtubs placed above fires with water bubbling. Unplugged ovens buried in snow and ice kept the beer cooled. Trees doubled as diving boards for jumping into the deep pits of powder around them. The masterminds behind this camp were geniuses of invention and creation. Their most impressive creation was their lifestyle; it was one that had been deemed impossible by society. This place promised the solace I had been searching for.
A hefty mass of man and dogs galumphed its way through the snow. Rosy cheeks and big hands came to greet me. This was Angus. His face grew a beard that scratched the skies; it was a doppelganger to the mossy branches above us. But his smile shone through the hairs like the moon. There are people in this world whose presence alone is magic, an anomaly among existence. Angus was one of them. Not an ounce of his being made sense. The gut that hung from his broad-shouldered bodice was its own entity and it swung with rhythms unknown to any man; it was known only to the laughter that shook it. Gently perched atop this, was his shaggy white head that flew backwards and into the clouds each time he laughed, which was often. Angus fathered and fed the folks who’d found their way to this wintery oasis, none of which were of the ordinary. There was a lady with snakes tattooed to her temples, parents who’d birthed their babies here beneath the full moon, couples who went bankrupt and eloped to Canada, men and women who felt the itch just as me and my mother had. The itch for something beyond the mundane that left us unsatisfied with life out in the real world. All of them came out of their lives’ hardships with hilarious belligerence and wit, each with their own story to tell. The common thread sewn between all these dangerous minds was an undeniable lust for life.
The man who represented this lust more than any other was Wiley and wily he was. He’d seen near-death countless times and every time he saw the light at the end of the tunnel, he would run like a fool in the other direction. He lived on borrowed time. You could see that restlessness driving him in each step he took. Each step was a leap from the edges of what you thought possible. Wiley was a man of serious grit, skill, and intelligence and never did he let his mortality shake him from living like the animal he was. He’d surely forgotten where and whence he came from and, until finding his way here, had made homes out of any place that offered him beer and some good eatin’. Within moments of shaking hands, he and I created instant brotherhood.
The next few days turned into months and I eventually lost track of time all together. I could have stayed there forever and no day would have been the same. I played with these people in the mountains and pretended it was childhood again. We lived with the wind and the wildness the way my mother had once shown me how to live. I had forgotten how to live this way without her and I was learning it all over again. We awoke when we pleased and trekked about when weather permitted, and sometimes when it didn’t. Each day the sun rose ripe with opportunities for new lines to ski and new peaks to explore. The backcountry was ours and only ours to explore. We were its residents just like the moose and the wolves. My body grew stinky and hairy with joy and pushed limits. Hair that stank of musk and days of labor was washed only with painful whitewashes courtesy of Wiley. Generally after a nice run, we’d exchange them, shoving each other’s faces deep into the icy layers of snow, which would be followed with some hardy wrestling. By the end of each day, if we didn’t have blood coming out of at least two holes in our faces then it wasn’t a good day.
I never could wait to get my life’s adventures in and here I was having them, recalling the unsatisfied ache I had before I left. Life was lost to me before. I had forgotten how to live it after she had died. Modern monotony had taken control until my life became starved of genuine purity and all that was left then was mimicry. But the hair grown long on these men and smiles grown large on these woman showed no remembrance of such an earth I had come from. They had long ago cast themselves away from such a society to relish in all they knew to be right, all their guts told them to pursue: the truth that nature supplies. Still I worried I would not remember these people and these moments, knowing how they would be ****** into the abyss of loss and time like all the others. But we lived too loud and the sounds of my worries were often drowned in fun.
     We spent the nights beside the fire and listened to Wiley softly plucking strings, that was when I always liked to look at Yona. Her curls endlessly waterfalled down her chest and the fire made her hair shimmer gold in its glow. She was the spark among us, and if we weren’t careful she could light up the whole forest.  She was a drum, beating fast and strong. Never did she lose track of herself in the clashing rhythms of the world. She had ripped herself from the hands of the education system at a young age and had learned from the ways of the changing seasons f

I fellowed sleep who kissed me in the brain,
Let fall the tear of time; the sleeper's eye,
Shifting to light, turned on me like a moon.
So, planning-heeled, I flew along my man
And dropped on dreaming and the upward sky.

I fled the earth and, naked, climbed the weather,
Reaching a second ground far from the stars;
And there we wept I and a ghostly other,
My mothers-eyed, upon the tops of trees;
I fled that ground as lightly as a feather.

'My fathers' globe knocks on its nave and sings.'
'This that we tread was, too, your father's land.'
'But this we tread bears the angelic gangs
Sweet are their fathered faces in their wings.'
'These are but dreaming men. Breathe, and they fade.'

Faded my elbow ghost, the mothers-eyed,
As, blowing on the angels, I was lost
On that cloud coast to each grave-grabbing shade;
I blew the dreaming fellows to their bed
Where still they sleep unknowing of their ghost.

Then all the matter of the living air
Raised up a voice, and, climbing on the words,
I spelt my vision with a hand and hair,
How light the sleeping on this soily star,
How deep the waking in the worlded clouds.

There grows the hours' ladder to the sun,
Each rung a love or losing to the last,
The inches monkeyed by the blood of man.
And old, mad man still climbing in his ghost,
My fathers' ghost is climbing in the rain.

Life of a drop of rain

Fathered by clouds,
and pampered by winds,
I'm a drop of rain, ready to face all that comes in,
I'll travel the highs to meet the ocean abound.
Next year we will meet again ,when the monsoon is here;
I'll fall on your face with a tip tap dance,
and start the circle of life again.

David flew into my bedroom
light blue eyes flashing excitement

"Sonya ki," he gushed

"We are now the proud parents
of a newborn baby pineapple!"

For two years David fathered
and diligently nurtured the
pineapple cutting from
the Yoga ashram

Cooing, lullabying,
coaxing, fertilizing

I threw on my sandals
and dashed into the
bucolic nursery

There peeking up at us
it's amber pink body
swaddled in spiky
leaves
was our own little
darling pineapple

as the coffee cup is rinsed,
the filthy little ******* lands
on the counter to my right.

immediately,
seeking a bludgeon,
his demise is envisioned.

however,
this housefly stays in
my periphery
for just a moment
longer

and

I cannot help but notice
his tiny little mitts, working
and fretting.

imagining the tiniest string
of rosary beads wrapped
around his housefly fists,
it occurs to me that he
might be making his peace
with God.

offering up his little housefly
benedictions, contritions;
apologies for all the sugar bowls,
he’s puked in during his
miniscule little life,

all the little maggots that
he might have fathered
and subsequently abandoned.

I think, without thinking really,
to chide my little countertop
cohort, saying:

“Ah, give it up little one, He isn’t there, He never was,
and if He is, He doesn’t give a second’s thought to the
likes of us.”

the housefly looks at me;
still furiously working his
unseen beads.

“You fool.” he says.

“God has obviously heard my contrition, my apologies,
and has granted me a reprieve, however brief.”

interrupting his novenas,
the housefly continues:

“You, my friend, are so great,
and I am so small,
yet you’ve heard my voice,
seen my beads,
given me reprieve, however brief.

I had asked God to give to you,
just one golden moment of
true, honest belief.

And, so He has, and now
you understand that
the prayers of a housefly
have stayed your hand.

So, it doesn’t matter how
great or how small,
God listens to each of us,
one and all.”  

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications; 2016

letter addressed
to the girl
too rush hour
to take the scenic route

dear fast line,
i know you didn't
choose this.
i know how hypnotizing
those yellow lines
can be but
if you keep
chasing that pavement
you'll run out of fuel
and i can't promise
your parents will
find someone like you
again.

and they'll wonder
what set your eyes
on the highway
when you come
from such a
michigan avenue father
and middle lane mother.
may i ask you
how your gps
forgot your home address?

i guess it happened
with time.
one less trip turned
to two a year.
your mothers tears
turned to sighs.

she kissed me twice
for you.
one for your forehead
another for you Ford.
may it keep you
when you go
where her God can't.

since her knees
are too soft for kneeling
she nodded toward the ceiling.
flashing God
her grin lines and gray hairs
like see, i bare stripes
just like your son.
yes i sin and i saint
but this ain't about me.
i need you to keep
my daughters.

too many fathered
ain't got fathers.
too many men
haven't figured out
the price of absence
is far more than
a gallon of gas
a six pack of beer
and a bachelor pad.

too many children
grew up with the half
the guidance.
only knowing
to trust Magellan
and Garmin
with a backseat God
who only gets to drive
when the light ain't green.

there are too many women
caught between
crash driven children
and the cross walk.

to the girl
who hasn't flashed
her break lights for miles

choose your exit wisely.

don't wait
til the last second
to switch lanes.
the end game
is much closer
than it appears
in your side mirrors.

By: Cedric McClester

When it comes to six-month-old baby Jim
Yo’ *** is clearly out on a limb
You are the one who fathered him
So you better be runnin to an ATM
What the hell did you expect
Having unprotected ***
It’s unjustified under any pretexts
But ******* are not intellects
Your DNA tells the tale
The moment that you slip or fail
To pay support you’ll go to jail
And you cannot afford the bail
So I’d pay up if I were you
The things you said were not true
If she’s a ** then what are you
Cos you went ******* riding too

Where does he find ‘em (I don’t know)
The guests seen on the Maury Show
When it comes to ... (oh **** here we go)
You are the father (***** don’t you know?)

The girl comes on and says she’s sure
But he calls her a **** and *****
Because they did it on the floor
And she has slept with countless more
Then she says Maury look at that baby
There’s no ifs, ands, buts or maybes
That’s his child (the one he gave me)
I can’t believe he’s gone and played me
Suspense is building on the set
The test results aren’t in yet
But he’s prepared to make a bet
And obviously she’s upset
Once the answer has been found
They both start jumpin up and down
Then she don’t wanna stick around
Her reputation’s in the ground

Where does he find ‘em (I don’t know)
The guests seen on the Maury Show
When it comes to ... (oh **** here we go)
You are the father (***** don’t you know?)

You’d think she’d be embarrassed, yo
But she’ll be back show after show
Claiming she just wants to know
Who’s her baby’s daddy – Oh!

Changing partner like a necklace
How can people be that reckless
She’s so gangsta she reflects this
I’ll be ****** (she’s got a checklist)
Scratchin off names (one by one)
She’s on page two and still not done
Guess you could say she’s had her fun
But she wasn’t the only one
Given all the STDs
That are out there (if you please)
They should be hogtied and seized
Or forced to bow down on their knees
I bet straight *** was not enough
They’ve probably done some other stuff
See tongue disease can be real rough

Where does he find ‘em (I don’t know)
The guests seen on the Maury Show
When it comes to ... (oh **** here we go)
You are the father (***** don’t you know?)

Look at those who’ve come and went
Though that wasn’t their intent
Most of ‘em can’t catch a hint
See they’re beyond embarrassment
All because they shook their fatties
At all of those potential daddies
None of whom wore Jimmy hatties
Now those mommas goin batty
Watch and pray that it’s not you
None of ‘em have a clue
Wouldn’t you have thought they knew
Who they’re giving their stuff to
But that would be too **** easy
Look at ‘em they sure look greasy
Some of ‘em are down right ******
And none of ‘em are built to please see

You’d think she’d be embarrassed, yo
But she’ll be back show after show
Claiming she just wants to know
Who’s her baby’s daddy – Oh!

Where does he find ‘em (I don’t know)
The guests seen on the Maury Show
When it comes to ... (oh **** here we go)
You are the father (***** don’t you know?)

When it comes to six-month-old baby Jim
Yo’ *** is clearly out on a limb
You are the one who fathered him
So you better be runnin to an ATM
What the hell did you expect
Having unprotected ***
It’s unjustified under any pretexts
But ******* are not intellects
Your DNA tells the tale
The moment that you slip or fail
To pay support you’ll go to jail
And you cannot afford the bail
So I’d pay up if I were you
The things you said were not true
If she’s a ** then what are you
Cos you went ******* riding too


(c) Copyright 2015, Cedric McClester.   All rights reserved.

well, it would really become a problem...
if i were still jerking off and had a girlfriend / wife...
the ladies are looking for ultra-violent ****,
it's just a tease off ***** -
there's choking there's *******:
oddly enough... no yo-yo of Watergate?
me... i'm not willing to be shamed...
i still have my ******* -
she can have her webcam e-thot or whatever
the hell the internet **** is: memes my ***...
once upon a time it was merely called graffiti...
i don't see how darwinism can make
a 2nd coming resurgence in the 21st century...
fine... when it first came out at the end
of the 19th century: and opened the floodgates
for the 20th... and thanks to the physicists...
lasso! rein 'em in! rein 'em in:
for the fireplace and the ******* kumbaya...
the girls are looking and having finally decided
on an spanish omelette: but not a french ****
quiche... eggs and more eggs...
while i'm strapped to ******* one genocide
after another into the tissue and
flushing it down as: meat for the crocodiles
and tapeworms pretending they know how
play the parasite attaching themselves
to a white all white: white even if you're copper
skinned, cinnamon, hot choc or...
it's still a white tadpole racer...
i usually get off on looking at some xenia wood
cleavage...
it helps to tell apart the *** cleavage and
the breast cleavage...
i moved from: ******* snaps and started peering
at: when a woman pretends to perform
the lotus on a man's face...
and there's like... a floral pattern involved
with gulping oysters...
have i ever licked an ***-hole?
oh my... have i...
**** - *** 1-on-1... doom... 1st person shooters...
never the 3rd person ghost moving
the body...
am i missing something? the girls are
looking for extreme ***... i'm looking for
cleavage and teddy bears -
and the borderline before the whole body
exfoliates and what not...
as marquis de sade said: it's hardly something
i can control when i have a hard-on
almost 4 times during the day...
if i had a girlfriend... if would be crass to:
sly one in...
but... *******... no woman no cry...
it would be truly sad if i was in a relationship
and still up to the shambles of: not up to any
or the odd sort of good -
there's always this shared approach -
the wants and willingness needs to by made
synch. - they need to be a woman and a man:
polyphony - orchestra!
why write about ***? oh hell...
watch me write anything else -
my linguistic infatuations - *** and all manner
or picked ******* sells -
or... at a catholic school they would still teach
you about the perils of sniffing glue -
apparently the 1960s never happened -
no l.s.d. was ever dropped -
the pints of guinness were drank -
the cement was poured as the muscle to
the iron rod skeletons...

and when i finally achieved a beard worthy
of a post-25 year old - when the full
bush sr. happens - i forgot to curate
a body for: the objective safety of being watched...
or how the hell you word:
prior to the beard i focused on the face
and later the body...
and long hair...
once the beard arrived...
**** it... let's take to donning the Elijah
look... the beard comes way way ahead
of the nose - and now i'm still looking
for my neck -

it's *** it's only spectacular about once...
i've had that once spectacular -
i even got a tattoo -
oh... not me... i'm the dragon alien curl...
where my scar is...
on her right shoulder-blade...
and that's not even as if i branded her
myself...
she was going to fit me out with
dreadlocks and a tattoo of her totem at
the time - a scorpion -
thankfully i read about all this crap
in high school...
nick hornby's high fidelity -

it's still a very musical affair...
i remember what love at first sight looks
like to a fresh 17 year old
novosibirsk girl... siberian girl...
all the way west in edinburgh...
she gobbled the iPod and the playlist...
a near complete oeuvre of iron maiden...
and the odd songs...
while i was correcting two girls attempting
to make pancakes...
girls! you need to put some oil into the dough...
this is dough you'd make a sponge cake with...
so the story goes...

but *** was only spectacular once...
the rest of the time i think i was minding an itch...
even these days...
among... aha! that nag hammadi word:
in the Barbelo - the brothel -
no: i will not study the etymology -
in the brothel nothing spectacular ever happens -
you chance upon a ***** -
you're asked whether you want to use it -
you decline -
to play judas with the lips -
you pay an extra ten quid for you-feeding-the-oyster
suckling and all other leech comparison of oral...
ventures...
it's done - the mirrors are witnesses...
the lights are dimmed - two beached whales
on the shore of a bed of crisp linen -
and no one-night-stand
cocoon *** *******!
how do people stand these cocoon ***:
under the bed-sheets moments?!

because it would be really harsh to have a girlfriend...
and still have to *******...
at least without a girlfriend i can solve
the mystery of the throne of thrones -
no. 1 no. 2 and no. 3 -
then a quick baptism in the shower -
i sometimes found that doing the no. 3
helps with a constipation
of a no. 2 on: the throne of thrones...

- and as someone who discovered *******
before he could produce ***** -
well - the ******* is a "side project" -

because this world already needs no more
puritanical quips -
all this ******* stigmata looms over
the circumcised men -
but of course it would - why wouldn't it?
can you scratch your nose
if you cut-off the "un-necessary" rubicon /
cartilege?

would a balding scalp Adam ever scratch his
head - quiver - i thought that only stubble
and hair prompted one to scratch one's skin?
if i see a bald man scratching his head:
i'll let you know!

the plague of circumcised men's stigmata -
and if i had a girlfriend and she wasn't
"up to speed" like me: quasi marquis de sade
"might expect"...
**** me... even Chikatilo "fathered" children...
so much for "excuses": 2 to be exact!
nominee for bachelor of the year...
205th year (circa) coming:
Kant - the prussian watchmaker in
a coming of: calculating the promenade of
excuses - no famously i didn't / wouldn't
marry -

if you asked what i used to do
on those warm spring nights...
back in ol' satellite of the former u.s.s.r. -
and that... we entertained ourselves...
catching cockchafer beetle and catching girls
and tugging at their t-shirts and throwing
them in...
we: used to that sort of thing...
what better reason to drink seeing
the youth of today:
as a seemingly old dounding man:
well... in your 30s you sort of hit that zenith
of mortality's vitality on offer -
as much as technology is celebrated -
its change - it's impetus -

what's that... quote?
when an unstoppable force (technology) meets
an immovable object (ontology) -
or at least: i find man's ontology
to be forever played and plagued
by a priori "prepositions": genes -
and technolgoy is forever the a posteriori
counter-fact: of what much later...
much much later... in limbo land of history
becomes an: artifact escaping archeology...
now are we all not wishing
for some variation of closure?

memes: represented as genes?
really? i see them nothing but a cheap south-paw
jab's worth of the otherwise obvious:
graffiti (representation)...

girls are really searching for violent *** -
having **** fantasies?
my my - and here i was looking
for a xenia wood cleavage and some Bronzino:
you never have curbed your pornographic
enthuasiasm: if you never ******
off at...
mein gott! it's a meme!
1st comes god's index finger touching
adam's index finger in:
michelangelo's fresco of the creation of adam...
but the higher 2nd?
venus' tongue teasing the tongue
of cupid in Bronzino's cupid, folly and time...

i ****** off to that painting -
it's hard to stop a boy who knew how to:
prior to the kippah-guilt tripping:
no minus the ******* into early teenagehood...
i don't think i have yet to have dumped
the proper load on this: exercise - just yet...

oh the shame:
thankfuly this is england and no h'america -
and jesus is not the queen or king -
ol' lizzie is still playing poker and...
the constitution is and what i will not become
is this "vox populis" of a people
disaffected as to why the tax goes into the
pomp & circumstance and none of it:
thank god! ever goes into sense & sensibility
akin to the consort Middleton family;
that's highly replica prone...
blue-bloods... love them or hate them...
at least you can sight them as
almost unchanging -
sphynx head while the body changes
from male to female - but the sphynx is still there...

of an erectile-dysfunction: i would most certainly
hear if i had a girlfriend...
as it happened - the "free women"
always gave me a limp...
in the brothel i was there and she was there -
and i was she and she was i
and we weren't bothered about
counting two transgender sheep
of the nag hammadi library -

even on those one-night stands:
erectile-dysfunction - dim lights two beached
whales on the bedsheets i could stomach...
in a brothel...
but then she took me home
like some morrissey wallow and...
it was all about cocoon ***...
i've heard that temperature changes
the *** of frogs upon insemination...
cocoon *** under the bedsheets...
i stopped going out...

it's might almost sound like boasting:
believe me... it's disgruntled sarcastic... the overtone
to these words...
even i tried teasing a fetish with
latex lucy - but... then i thought about...
if you start wearing the same clotches
for god knows how long -
like an imitation of dog's hair...
you'd wish to squish into something
less pardonable / expected like a full gimp
imitation of lizard latex...
but violence an ****?

maybe that's why i started to tease
1970s italian classics...
dubbing from belgium and amsterdam
and all that...
but always after the torso cleavage -
always after the Om-onomatopeia look of
absent eyes and boiling tongues in a gurgle...
the contorted final stages of the face
before the lesser death as:
faking birth in ****** -
or what the hell you call: scavenger of:
never the lost details...
and if i had 7 children in the bag i would be
a fraud... and if i had a girlfriend
i would be a fraud and hopefuly ashamed...

came the white flag... came the rainbow flag...
came the ******* flag...
came the image: how would you ever find
yourself in a desire to blink: to peacock flutter...
without a pair of eye-lids?
hmm...
all those ******* freed arguments...
not coming from the "progressive school"
of islam -
or the hasidic jewry where:
a woman is to made to make concessions?
otherwise: waiting for that
golden moral maxim Confuscian wifey?

that a deity should...
somehow give moral laws...
i thought that man was the moral lawgiver?
if god were to become the moral
law advocate...
man should most certainly become
the physical law-giver - or at least:
to best serve my attention -
attempt fictional escapes via superhero
infantilism...

again: historiological infantilism -
the only serious history we are supposed to know
comes from h'america...
the civil rights movement -
that's serious history!
everything else is infantile historicism -
interchange of historicism and historiology -
yes - heidegger's leftovers...
but what is serious history?
and what is infantile history?
oh i'm pretty sure much of history kept in
agitated dust is: cowboys vs. indians
roleplaying... games...

cite anything serious of the past...
if there's no stampede toward some platonic exit...
then serious history happens with
the h'american civil rights movement...
after that we only have journalism
and bad idea dear diary entries...
of the next to come: ***** teenager
plague by acne and the many more oopses to come...

- and with the world saturated by:
an **** of forms - wielding their interwine and
maggot pit of "metaphors" -
better i write this than speaking during *** -
what could possibly saturate the "land"
that's already a swamp -

somehow i'm not edging toward a moral
superiority - the day i discovered
that god was both the god of writing
physical: and moral laws...
i was assured by the chinese that:
all kosher and all halal would pass
the test of the: 3 peepsqueaks...
no? do not eat a pig: do not eat a mandarin!
god only knows what the pig ate...
god forbid you ever knew the full
menu of Beijing!

pigs are the: das schlechteste!
das äußersteschlechteste!
pigs, mandarins, bats...
the bubonic plague, rats,
"supposing that africans would ever ****
monkeys"...
why would africans ever
**** monkeys...
i'm supposed to be ashamed of
having a hard-on...
while the white girls rummage
the carousel!

i could suppose the chinese already
ate the supposed ****-buddy to begin with...
it's no more funny when the "thing"
spreads like a mongolian shy-auxilliary
brigade of: voyeurs of:
the only evolution we are to be concerned
with, is to be better associated
with viruses, parasites and lice...

and if i were to live a sheltered western
liberal elite life... "elite":
the bigger the mouth the bigger the... whatever...
no complaint from the arabs
itching over well curated pork...
they'll allow the mandarin diet! no problem!

it's no problem...
pigs are the "problem"... when a god devolved
to invoke moral laws: his most high!
and it was "somehow" not man...
how can god, a monotheistic god...
give both physical laws and moral laws?
to me that's near impossible!
ah... unless this god is given
the "plotheistic" splinter of being
a theistic god and not a deistic god...
a theistic god gives both physical
and moral laws... a deistic god gives:
no moral laws: he was expecting
we could do so!

i can't believe in a god that plagiarises
man's activity -
man can't change the laws surrounding gravity...
yet to be known whether light
is somehow subjected to gravity...
but a god does not intervene by giving
moral laws...
having already established physical laws...
entertaining himself in the playground
of metaphysics...
only a prince... the devil -
would ever... intervene as god to give...
higher authority: a plagiarism of
man-made laws...
and call them: with deity origins...
why would a "god" meddle in:
you will not steal, you will not ****...
when...
god has set up a recycling centre?!

god is no judge, prosecutor, lawyer,
defendent, the accussed,
the jury over moral laws...
he is the epitome of physical laws:
the unchanging...
to have confused divine intervention
with a god bowing -
before and succumbing to...
man's ordiance... a moral law...
god does not allow himself moral qualities...
and god would not discriminate
against a pig: saying:
but the pig is the most economic piece -
had not man found the boar and
domesticated it?
the boar became the pig domesticated!
and the pig can be eaten...
from snout to tail and with only
the oink missing!

for a god to be so degraded as
the arbiter of physical laws -
to be ***** into giving moral laws...
only a devil would...
only a devil would...
only a devil would play with man's moral
laws... and attempt to supress
the already constaining impossible
with his cameo in egypt -
that machiavelli of sorts...

if the quran attempts to question
the cleanliness of pigs:
and god made the pig...
or rather made the man and the boar
and allowed man to domesticate the boar...
sick... ugly... but...
kept the mandarin: pristine!
save the pig... eat a mandarin!
if you dare...

how much do i abhor these infernal riddles:
how much i abhor scolding the bacon:
is also as much as:
you deserve the beijing sneeze!
you should let it palm tree vacate
and spread in the united arab emirates!
oh.. go on go on go on!
who's not looking?!

i only have old teutonic anthems to listen
to... because...
i like the way german sounds,
how german sounded...
how german will sound...
because at least german is not english...
and that's almost asking for a plum
tattoo of hue under the teasing
socket and the cheekbone: when in england...

no zeppelin echo you hear?
encore! again! again!
it's not o.k. to eat a pig according
to the hebrews of the muslims...
the mandarins will act worse than pigs
that the classical monotheists speak of...
a cat could catch a mouse...
but a cat could not be served a mouse
on a platter... what's that dish called?
the 3 peepsqueaks?
and pork is bad?
pork is just the tip of the iceberg
concerning these omnivores...
at this point... perhaps cannibalism?

islam go back home: check if there are
any mandarins living among you...
pork is bad... pork is bad!
this is not being paranoid this is me being funny!
pork is bad and your pseudo-god
of man-made moral plagiarisms!
*******: snippet the ******* but sure you
hell and bring me the niqab!
no *******? no niqab...

why are you looking at me?
i'm a tired old european...
why should i know what floats the boat
over in h'america?!

this "god" and the "intervention"...
oh i'm pretty sure we made our moral laws...
they weren't exactly to translate as a morality =
claustrophobia...
"god"...
               a belief that the same god
created the physical laws / barriers...
and somehow... decided to... plagiarise, human,
moral laws...
how this "god" decided to become
architect of physical laws...
and the interpolator of morals?
really?

a god that's critical of pork per se:
******* sheep ******* the semites...
but not critical of the mandarin diet?
that's no god; "at least not to me"...
the god that made gravity critical
as immoveable...
but a secondary god that...
was ignorant... of the fact that...
humans already punished stealing
and ******?!
why require a doubled emphasis?!

it's as if "god" made an entrance -
when no pyramids were to be built...
it's not: oh no...
we were never given any a priori parameters!
we were always supposed to sink into:
the thinking of being free...
let's face it...
at best: bad operatics of
madame butterfly at best:
only a soap opera.

I’ve never fathered children
To say or call my own
Though
Do Have many offspring
Of things
I’ve seen, then sown

I’ve fathered many words
Which fathered many more
Some grew into poems
Though none
We’re named…
"Lenore"

I developed many photos
Tweaking
Here and there
They may live on forever
I’ll leave them in your care

I’ve conjured many dishes
Some
I’ve written down
Other's
Will expire
They’ll go
When I am gone

I’ve never fathered children
Though
Leave this legacy
I know
It’s not the same
But…
Keeps good company

By: Bill MacEachern
October 13, 2022

~ the director

one woman in particular became trapped in a man’s body and he married her.  a child they tried not to have soon arrived and brought with it a list of demands from the others.

his peers double crossed each other in small houses.  he himself was able to get away with punching a young girl for the right to drag a sled.  his child began to accept talking toys in exchange for keeping quiet.  

he was in love with his sister, always had been.  after she was mauled by the dogs meant for his father, he made walking his home until it called itself a hotel

of running.  last year, he caught a movie one had made of his life and though he missed the dedication

he did not miss
the death row scene, the saw his brother took from the cake, the plain basket
as it moved
with his mother

from bike
to bike…  

~ transmissible

the stomach remains dumb

the way she finds this out on a school bus

the way her mother
after losing
a child  

~ ephemeron

cornfield visionaries, they sat around the ball as if it were fire.  I myself was tired of magic

so we played four short and the ball was a fact.  a hard period planted in mud

or a long quote
buzzing the ears
together.  

~ alleviant

of all places a park bench will do for the man not yet reading but planning to the children’s book with its cover of mother and child and kitchen and some kind of batter on the child’s face.  presently the man is alone much as his mother is alone in one of his fingers.  two men nearby are drinking from a water fountain and in turn are each palming the low **** for the other.  they are friends but only by length of service and the man can tell one is aggressive and the other allows it.  the book itself is disappointing.  the child is just ***** and the mother is just angry and they learn only to be themselves.  the men at the fountain become two men on a bench and the reader scoots over to hear about the voice of god as ****** children take the park.

~ amends

your house in foreclosure and you leave it and you are holding two bags of cat food.
  
sometimes a tricycle is a particular tricycle
trying to clear
with its back wheel
the low cinema
of your bare
foot.  

I am mugged in your dream and mugged in mine and mugged by a woman in both.

I hope we can meet without talking money.  this story my mother gave me
about the world’s first invisible man
is a keeper.  he was born

that way.

your mother I saw her setting the patio table for two and I looked away but could hear
no one
beating her.

we can talk about your cat.    

~ homology

the empty raccoons by their emptiness have kept the priest awake.  the church dumpsters wheel themselves into the world and he watches.  he tells his mother it is the silence of god.  she shrinks from him more and more and eventually fits through a door he cannot see.  his house fills with garbage and he becomes convinced he is wearing gloves.  we do not argue.  he raises them with his hands to take them off with his teeth.      

~ fiction

my age, father paints an abstract jesus.  mother has the kitchen to herself and sits.  mother watches my brother lift a chair and leave.  my sister lets a train pass and bites at the shoulder strap of her bra.  not my age, I draw a violinist.  draw a dog at the neck of its owner.  at my age of apple and rope, I prefer god’s early work.

~ monodist

online, I pretended to be writing a very long obituary.  in house, I dreamt not of my wife but of a grape being rolled by a palm gently toward a grape the dream could not see.  as it is in heaven, I was not all there.

~ signage

I was limping the edge of the pond so as to confirm in the world my clearance given to me as before by frogs.  my punched nose was warm and my grief melted from it and I cupped my hands together for the blood and what mixed with it and when the cup was full I halved it and my already thick shoelaces thickened.  soon into this drama one frog jumped from the pond and I startled that indeed it was no frog but a toad or some form of toad.  I followed it woozily from my father’s land onto the land of the man who’d fathered the boy whose fist had found so recently fistfight heaven.  the toad was dull save for its hop from water and save for its courage and save for a sickly orange spot on its back that was a star when the toad paused and a mangled star otherwise.  everything had been planned and my body wanted to be generous to the toad and it was hard not to run or use my hands or ruin this paradise that I knew then as vengeance but now see as existential plagiarism which is nonetheless vengeance.  I told myself I would not rub the toad over me and I had to convince myself repeatedly.  the boy was no doubt inside the house as his dog was not to be seen but his sister was sprawled on two towels as she was very tall and her sunglasses were cocked enough so that her right eye could see mine.  the toad was in her mouth immediately and then her throat bulged but went quickly back to its original.  I lost the toad forever then but its orange star surfaced on the right and then the left of her belly button.  I told her I would see her at school and I would but this was the last time I would see her in anything but an overcoat and that boy would try and come close but never again pin me down.      

~ discipline

somehow sweet in his want of no trouble, the unwashed man goes hand in hand with your father to the backyard where they wrestle as if hurt were people keeping them apart.  your father’s jaw comes loose, the man’s ear seems held by too small a magnet.  at window you a sickly child with overbite and a scarecrow’s pipe stroke the puppet-corn hair of a sister’s doll and walk it cloud to defrosted cloud.  amidst this bartering of vanished weight your mother is being made to balance on her bare stomach a glass of lemonade.  in three days the man will come back, your father a bit healed, your mother less angry about straws.

~ the rabbits

the head of a shovel enters the earth of this southern field.  there is no more give here than in the northern.  the burying boy has been long facing the wind and will be longer.  in walking toward the boy, the old man’s knees have locked.  the old man is seen by the boy and the old man waves upright in the wind’s gnaw.  the tops of the boy’s legs reach his stomach.  

~ archaism

a man carrying his dog stops to kneel.  for my distance from him, I am disallowed any inquiry that would flower.  he sets the black dog in front of him in the manner I have imagined god at the simple chore of placing those first shadows.  I am holding my son nostalgically, almost forgetting how my tooth would ache and his tooth would ache and both would be things I knew and he didn’t.

~ sincerely

the males had in them a sloth and a jolly fog of sportsmanship

and in the females a mistake was made.

against frogs, and against the dim leaping
of frogsong

I had this friend

broke his arm
while *******  
at the wheel.  

I put my arm in the grief of my arm.

Born in blue ,died in white.
From far off seas she cried.
Fathered by winds from tropical hills.
Mothered by artic tide.

So off she set ,sisters in tow.
They dance, they chase ,they play.
Fishermen fear their shouts and their cheers.
Their boats they shake and sway.

And as i float not far from shore.
My paddle close to hand.
With one last breath.
I hear her voice.
As she sings to bag-n-bun sand..

I tell you all
I lost my soul one morning in October
still i can feel it trembling
with the mucous in my throat
the liquor coating of an empty stomach
denying re-entry
an expatriate exiled to the outer realms
the cells spoke to me in my elusive haze

what atrocities you brought with you the night before
volatile liquids
and billows of chyme decaying smoke
it was you who erased that patch of flesh from your cheek
the sidewalk merely a catalyst
a surrogate mother to your infantile stupidity
fathered by a not so impotent bicycle
what became was a dance with gravity
and you tried to take the lead
but that possessive ***** refused to give it up
and in a drunken stupor
thrashed you about
leaving you to the jagged teeth of concrete
costing you some epidermal friends
those whose sole duty it is to protect us
and your foolishness allowed their dismantling
so now we allow yours

so they did
with one swoop of my head
my body purged my soul into the poisonous sunlight
my brain a series of bombastic drum solos
i died there in my bed
soulless and aching
a drink in my hand....

A basketball playing professor of law
Took advantage of an opportunity he saw
He ran as a Hyde Park resident
And became our celebrated president.

Hyde Park the home of Argonne lab and the U of C
Fathered many Nobel Prize winners and nominees to be
More than Harvard, they cared not it would seem
They claimed to have a better football team.  

I'll have to renew my loaner card
Obama placed his library in our backyard
His presidential record there for all to see
What a waste, says Donald Trump
He doesn't mention me.

I got sober over a year ago.
What god blessed me with is morals, honesty and a conscious.
When I was out, I hurt people and I enjoyed it.
It was something, I just had to do so you knew how big my rep was.
I was a caged animal and I wasn't even in cell anymore in my head at least.
Any challenge I met with violence.
I prayed most nights not to wake up.
I happened to have  a reminder this evening.
Tonight I picked up some food and sat at the bar.
Instead of salivating over sharp knives, semi automatics, a broken thumb and what I would do to certain fox news anchors.

First, I saw my old friend jack.
Before we reminisced I told him that, I'm allowed back in my mothers house.
And am home for the holidays especially thanksgiving.
I can hold a job instead of amassing monstrous amounts of credit card debt and fraudulent charges.
And my family tells me they love me.
Well he told me remember the good times, like trying to get hook up with someones girlfriend at a party.
while he was passed out.
 Saying anything that was needed to close the deal.
It just happened that night.
I was bamboozled
Also  I had the privilege of running into some *****-***** who had the gull to tell me.
You have the haircut of a ****.
Her words exactly.
So instead of keying some kind four letter feminine word into her car.
I fell down into the street divider and wouldn't get up till some acquaintances went out there and asked me if  I was alright.
"That of course, was all I most likely needed growing up" said so many counselors who loved to point out the fact that, well Michael you grew up in a broken home with a father who took his life right around the corner from you when you were just ten years old. The prime growing years of any young lad.

Then I spoke to an old college friend after that a noble of sorts C. Royal.
We spoke of past-times of unprotected *** with a so called girlfriends.
All of these women of course who I had cheated on and possibly fathered many children.
Now sober I'm following leads to see if they exist and planning to set up college funds.
If the maternal parent doesn't want me int there life.
Then later in life being the genius that I was cashing in so may bonds to celebrate my future sober life I began spending over 1500 at the tables.
OF course when I was banded from narcotics and ****** at the hotel room.
Whats the point of saving over 1200 in winnings.
Like any good addict I let it ride on black.

I just kept on running into old friends.
It was a hell of a night.
I then saw a french man of sorts and spoke to him last Mr. Marnier.
I told him for now at least  I don't regurgitate Thanksgiving dinners in front of friends families.
And my friends speak to me now.
After that I picked up the food and said goodbye.

here's a barter to the gardener who made Eve then marred her
who fathered the carpenter then martyred man's armour
I spit at the sky but He spits back harder
one roar and a flash and i'm a blurred charred marker
and while I know I'm a carper to start a rant over rain,
I'm cold and I'm tired and a little bit vain

so to the almighty all awful
why when you reign does it pour?
naught but rain until dawn
is this the law of the poor and lore for those born with a luckier draw?
I cry to the alpha to compromise his plan
and just for tomorrow, clear the skies for Sam