A Poem for Three Voices

Setting:  A Maternity Ward and round about

FIRST VOICE:
I am slow as the world.  I am very patient,
Turning through my time, the suns and stars
Regarding me with attention.
The moon's concern is more personal:
She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse.
Is she sorry for what will happen?  I do not think so.
She is simply astonished at fertility.

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arranging his brown feathers.
I cannot help smiling at what it is I know.
Leaves and petals attend me.  I am ready.

SECOND VOICE:
When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it.
I watched the men walk about me in the office.  They were so flat!
There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--and the cold angels, the abstractions.
I sat at my desk in my stockings, my high heels,

And the man I work for laughed:  'Have you seen something awful?
You are so white, suddenly.'  And I said nothing.
I saw death in the bare trees, a deprivation.
I could not believe it.  Is it so difficult
For the spirit to conceive a face, a mouth?
The letters proceed from these black keys, and these black keys proceed
From my alphabetical fingers, ordering parts,

Parts, bits, cogs, the shining multiples.
I am dying as I sit.  I lose a dimension.
Trains roar in my ears, departures, departures!
The silver track of time empties into the distance,
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
These are my feet, these mechanical echoes.
Tap, tap, tap, steel pegs.  I am found wanting.

This is a disease I carry home, this is a death.
Again, this is a death.  Is it the air,
The particles of destruction I **** up?  Am I a pulse
That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?
Is this my lover then?  This death, this death?
As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name.
Is this the one sin then, this old dead love of death?

THIRD VOICE:
I remember the minute when I knew for sure.
The willows were chilling,
The face in the pool was beautiful, but not mine--
It had a consequential look, like everything else,
And all I could see was dangers:  doves and words,
Stars and showers of gold--conceptions, conceptions!
I remember a white, cold wing

And the great swan, with its terrible look,
Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river.
There is a snake in swans.
He glided by; his eye had a black meaning.
I saw the world in it--small, mean and black,
Every little word hooked to every little word, and act to act.
A hot blue day had budded into something.

I wasn't ready.  The white clouds rearing
Aside were dragging me in four directions.
I wasn't ready.
I had no reverence.
I thought I could deny the consequence--
But it was too late for that.  It was too late, and the face
Went on shaping itself with love, as if I was ready.

SECOND VOICE:
It is a world of snow now.  I am not at home.
How white these sheets are.  The faces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me:  they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life.  They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.

I have had my chances.  I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare *****,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard.  I have tried to be natural.
I have tried to be blind in love, like other women,
Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one,
Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.

I did not look.  But still the face was there,
The face of the unborn one that loved its perfections,
The face of the dead one that could only be perfect
In its easy peace, could only keep holy so.
And then there were other faces.  The faces of nations,
Governments, parliaments, societies,
The faceless faces of important men.

It is these men I mind:
They are so jealous of anything that is not flat!  They are jealous gods
That would have the whole world flat because they are.
I see the Father conversing with the Son.
Such flatness cannot but be holy.
'Let us make a heaven,' they say.
'Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.'

FIRST VOICE:
I am calm.  I am calm.  It is the calm before something awful:
The yellow minute before the wind walks, when the leaves
Turn up their hands, their pallors.  It is so quiet here.
The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks.
Voices stand back and flatten.  Their visible hieroglyphs
Flatten to parchment screens to keep the wind off.
They paint such secrets in Arabic, Chinese!

I am dumb and brown.  I am a seed about to break.
The brownness is my dead self, and it is sullen:
It does not wish to be more, or different.
Dusk hoods me in blue now, like a Mary.
O color of distance and forgetfulness!--
When will it be, the second when Time breaks
And eternity engulfs it, and I drown utterly?

I talk to myself, myself only, set apart--
Swabbed and lurid with disinfectants, sacrificial.
Waiting lies heavy on my lids.  It lies like sleep,
Like a big sea.  Far off, far off, I feel the first wave tug
Its cargo of agony toward me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.

THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness
Frightened the mind.  They smile like fools.
They are to blame for what I am, and they know it.
They hug their flatness like a kind of health.
And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?
They would go mad with it.

And what if two lives leaked between my thighs?
I have seen the white clean chamber with its instruments.
It is a place of shrieks.  It is not happy.
'This is where you will come when you are ready.'
The night lights are flat red moons.  They are dull with blood.
I am not ready for anything to happen.
I should have murdered this, that murders me.

FIRST VOICE:
There is no miracle more cruel than this.
I am dragged by the horses, the iron hooves.
I last.  I last it out.  I accomplish a work.
Dark tunnel, through which hurtle the visitations,
The visitations, the manifestations, the startled faces.
I am the center of an atrocity.
What pains, what sorrows must I be mothering?

Can such innocence **** and ****?  It milks my life.
The trees wither in the street.  The rain is corrosive.
I taste it on my tongue, and the workable horrors,
The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers
With their hearts that tick and tick, with their satchels of instruments.
I shall be a wall and a roof, protecting.
I shall be a sky and a hill of good:  O let me be!

A power is growing on me, an old tenacity.
I am breaking apart like the world.  There is this blackness,
This ram of blackness.  I fold my hands on a mountain.
The air is thick.  It is thick with this working.
I am used.  I am drummed into use.
My eyes are squeezed by this blackness.
I see nothing.

SECOND VOICE:
I am accused.  I dream of massacres.
I am a garden of black and red agonies.  I drink them,
Hating myself, hating and fearing.  And now the world conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.
It is a love of death that sickens everything.
A dead sun stains the newsprint.  It is red.
I lose life after life.  The dark earth drinks them.

She is the vampire of us all.  So she supports us,
Fattens us, is kind.  Her mouth is red.
I know her.  I know her intimately--
Old winter-face, old barren one, old time bomb.
Men have used her meanly.  She will eat them.
Eat them, eat them, eat them in the end.
The sun is down.  I die.  I make a death.

FIRST VOICE:
Who is he, this blue, furious boy,
Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?
He is looking so angrily!
He flew into the room, a shriek at his heel.
The blue color pales.  He is human after all.
A red lotus opens in its bowl of blood;
They are stitching me up with silk, as if I were a material.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him.  May he keep so.

SECOND VOICE:
There is the moon in the high window.  It is over.
How winter fills my soul!  And that chalk light
Laying its scales on the windows, the windows of empty offices,
Empty schoolrooms, empty churches.  O so much emptiness!
There is this cessation.  This terrible cessation of everything.
These bodies mounded around me now, these polar sleepers--
What blue, moony ray ices their dreams?

I feel it enter me, cold, alien, like an instrument.
And that mad, hard face at the end of it, that O-mouth
Open in its gape of perpetual grieving.
It is she that drags the blood-black sea around
Month after month, with its voices of failure.
I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string.
I am restless.  Restless and useless.  I, too, create corpses.

I shall move north.  I shall move into a long blackness.
I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman,
Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man
Blunt and flat enough to feel no lack.  I feel a lack.
I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.
I cannot contain it.  I cannot contain my life.

I shall be a heroine of the peripheral.
I shall not be accused by isolate buttons,
Holes in the heels of socks, the white mute faces
Of unanswered letters, coffined in a letter case.
I shall not be accused, I shall not be accused.
The clock shall not find me wanting, nor these stars
That rivet in place abyss after abyss.

THIRD VOICE:
I see her in my sleep, my red, terrible girl.
She is crying through the glass that separates us.
She is crying, and she is furious.
Her cries are hooks that catch and grate like cats.
It is by these hooks she climbs to my notice.
She is crying at the dark, or at the stars
That at such a distance from us shine and whirl.

I think her little head is carved in wood,
A red, hard wood, eyes shut and mouth wide open.
And from the open mouth issue sharp cries
Scratching at my sleep like arrows,
Scratching at my sleep, and entering my side.
My daughter has no teeth.  Her mouth is wide.
It utters such dark sounds it cannot be good.

FIRST VOICE:
What is it that flings these innocent souls at us?
Look, they are so exhausted, they are all flat out
In their canvas-sided cots, names tied to their wrists,
The little silver trophies they've come so far for.
There are some with thick black hair, there are some bald.
Their skin tints are pink or sallow, brown or red;
They are beginning to remember their differences.

I think they are made of water; they have no expression.
Their features are sleeping, like light on quiet water.
They are the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images.  They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched.  They are walkers of air.

Can nothingness be so prodigal?
Here is my son.
His wide eye is that general, flat blue.
He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant.
One cry.  It is the hook I hang on.
And I am a river of milk.
I am a warm hill.

SECOND VOICE:
I am not ugly.  I am even beautiful.
The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.
The nurses give back my clothes, and an identity.
It is usual, they say, for such a thing to happen.
It is usual in my life, and the lives of others.
I am one in five, something like that.  I am not hopeless.
I am beautiful as a statistic.  Here is my lipstick.

I draw on the old mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago.  It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.

And so I stand, a little sightless.  So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.
The body of a starfish can grow back its arms
And newts are prodigal in legs.  And may I be
As prodigal in what lacks me.

THIRD VOICE:
She is a small island, asleep and peaceful,
And I am a white ship hooting:  Goodbye, goodbye.
The day is blazing.  It is very mournful.
The flowers in this room are red and tropical.
They have lived behind glass all their lives, they have been cared for
        tenderly.
Now they face a winter of white sheets, white faces.
There is very little to go into my suitcase.

There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush.  There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound that they are letting go.
I leave my health behind.  I leave someone
Who would adhere to me:  I undo her fingers like bandages:  I go.

SECOND VOICE:
I am myself again.  There are no loose ends.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,
Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.
There little black twigs do not think to bud,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets me in windows--she is neat.

So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.
how shyly she superimposes her neat self
On the inferno of African oranges, the heel-hung pigs.
She is deferring to reality.
It is I.  It is I--
Tasting the bitterness between my teeth.
The incalculable malice of the everyday.

FIRST VOICE:
How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off?
How long can I be
Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand,
Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon?
The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow
Lap at my back ineluctably.
How shall it soften them, this little lullaby?

How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open:  it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

THIRD VOICE:
Today the colleges are drunk with spring.
My black gown is a little funeral:
It shows I am serious.
The books I carry wedge into my side.
I had an old wound once, but it is healing.
I had a dream of an island, red with cries.
It was a dream, and did not mean a thing.

FIRST VOICE:
Dawn flowers in the great elm outside the house.
The swifts are back.  They are shrieking like paper rockets.
I hear the sound of the hours
Widen and die in the hedgerows.  I hear the moo of cows.
The colors replenish themselves, and the wet
Thatch smokes in the sun.
The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.

I am reassured.  I am reassured.
These are the clear bright colors of the nursery,
The talking ducks, the happy lambs.
I am simple again.  I believe in miracles.
I do not believe in those terrible children
Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands.
They are not mine.  They do not belong to me.

I shall meditate upon normality.
I shall meditate upon my little son.
He does not walk. &n

The Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem

Each line consists of two half-stanzas, following the alliterative verse form of Fornyrðislag, or Old Meter.

Feoh byþ frofur fira gehwylcum;
sceal ðeah manna gehwylc miclun hyt dælan
gif he wile for drihtne domes hleotan.

Ur byþ anmod ond oferhyrned,
felafrecne deor, feohteþ mid hornum
mære morstapa; þæt is modig wuht.

Ðorn byþ ðearle scearp; ðegna gehwylcum
anfeng ys yfyl, ungemetum reþe
manna gehwelcum, ðe him mid resteð.

Os byþ ordfruma ælere spræce,
wisdomes wraþu ond witena frofur
and eorla gehwam eadnys ond tohiht.

Rad byþ on recyde rinca gehwylcum
sefte ond swiþhwæt, ðamðe sitteþ on ufan
meare mægenheardum ofer milpaþas.

Cen byþ cwicera gehwam, cuþ on fyre
blac ond beorhtlic, byrneþ oftust
ðær hi æþelingas inne restaþ.

Gyfu gumena byþ gleng and herenys,
wraþu and wyrþscype and wræcna gehwam
ar and ætwist, ðe byþ oþra leas.

Wenne bruceþ, ðe can weana lyt
sares and sorge and him sylfa hæfþ
blæd and blysse and eac byrga geniht.

Hægl byþ hwitust corna; hwyrft hit of heofones lyfte,
wealcaþ hit windes scura; weorþeþ hit to wætere syððan.

Nyd byþ nearu on breostan; weorþeþ hi þeah oft niþa bearnum
to helpe and to hæle gehwæþre, gif hi his hlystaþ æror.

Is byþ ofereald, ungemetum slidor,
glisnaþ glæshluttur gimmum gelicust,
flor forste geworuht, fæger ansyne.

Ger byÞ gumena hiht, ðonne God læteþ,
halig heofones cyning, hrusan syllan
beorhte bleda beornum ond ðearfum.

Eoh byþ utan unsmeþe treow,
heard hrusan fæst, hyrde fyres,
wyrtrumun underwreþyd, wyn on eþle.

Peorð byþ symble plega and hlehter
wlancum [on middum], ðar wigan sittaþ
on beorsele bliþe ætsomne.

Eolh-secg eard hæfþ oftust on fenne
wexeð on wature, wundaþ grimme,
blode breneð beorna gehwylcne
ðe him ænigne onfeng gedeþ.

Sigel semannum symble biþ on hihte,
ðonne hi hine feriaþ ofer fisces beþ,
oþ hi brimhengest bringeþ to lande.

Tir biþ tacna sum, healdeð trywa wel
wiþ æþelingas; a biþ on færylde
ofer nihta genipu, næfre swiceþ.

Beorc byþ bleda leas, bereþ efne swa ðeah
tanas butan tudder, biþ on telgum wlitig,
heah on helme hrysted fægere,
geloden leafum, lyfte getenge.

Eh byþ for eorlum æþelinga wyn,
hors hofum wlanc, ðær him hæleþ ymb[e]
welege on wicgum wrixlaþ spræce
and biþ unstyllum æfre frofur.

Man byþ on myrgþe his magan leof:
sceal þeah anra gehwylc oðrum swican,
forðum drihten wyle dome sine
þæt earme flæsc eorþan betæcan.

Lagu byþ leodum langsum geþuht,
gif hi sculun neþan on nacan tealtum
and hi sæyþa swyþe bregaþ
and se brimhengest bridles ne gym[eð].

Ing wæs ærest mid East-Denum
gesewen secgun, oþ he siððan est
ofer wæg gewat; wæn æfter ran;
ðus Heardingas ðone hæle nemdun.

Eþel byþ oferleof æghwylcum men,
gif he mot ðær rihtes and gerysena on
brucan on bolde bleadum oftast.

Dæg byþ drihtnes sond, deore mannum,
mære metodes leoht, myrgþ and tohiht
eadgum and earmum, eallum brice.

Ac byþ on eorþan elda bearnum
flæsces fodor, fereþ gelome
ofer ganotes bæþ; garsecg fandaþ
hwæþer ac hæbbe æþele treowe.

Æsc biþ oferheah, eldum dyre
stiþ on staþule, stede rihte hylt,
ðeah him feohtan on firas monige.

Yr byþ æþelinga and eorla gehwæs
wyn and wyrþmynd, byþ on wicge fæger,
fæstlic on færelde, fyrdgeatewa sum.

Iar byþ eafix and ðeah a bruceþ
fodres on foldan, hafaþ fægerne eard
wætre beworpen, ðær he wynnum leofaþ.

Ear byþ egle eorla gehwylcun,
ðonn[e] fæstlice flæsc onginneþ,
hraw colian, hrusan ceosan
blac to gebeddan; bleda gedreosaþ,
wynna gewitaþ, wera geswicaþ

Modern English Translation

Wealth is a comfort to all men;
yet must every man bestow it freely,
if he wish to gain honour in the sight of the Lord.

The aurochs is proud and has great horns;
it is a very savage beast and fights with its horns;
a great ranger of the moors, it is a creature of mettle.

The thorn is exceedingly sharp,
an evil thing for any knight to touch,
uncommonly severe on all who sit among them.

The mouth is the source of all language,
a pillar of wisdom and a comfort to wise men,
a blessing and a joy to every knight.

Riding seems easy to every warrior while he is indoors
and very courageous to him who traverses the high-roads
on the back of a stout horse.

The torch is known to every living man by its pale, bright flame;
it always burns where princes sit within.

Generosity brings credit and honour, which support one's dignity;
it furnishes help and subsistence
to all broken men who are devoid of aught else.

Bliss he enjoys who knows not suffering, sorrow nor anxiety,
and has prosperity and happiness and a good enough house.

Hail is the whitest of grain;
it is whirled from the vault of heaven
and is tossed about by gusts of wind
and then it melts into water.

Trouble is oppressive to the heart;
yet often it proves a source of help and salvation
to the children of men, to everyone who heeds it betimes.

Ice is very cold and immeasurably slippery;
it glistens as clear as glass and most like to gems;
it is a floor wrought by the frost, fair to look upon.

Summer is a joy to men, when God, the holy King of Heaven,
suffers the earth to bring forth shining fruits
for rich and poor alike.

The yew is a tree with rough bark,
hard and fast in the earth, supported by its roots,
a guardian of flame and a joy upon an estate.

Peorth is a source of recreation and amusement to the great,
where warriors sit blithely together in the banqueting-hall.

The Eolh-sedge is mostly to be found in a marsh;
it grows in the water and makes a ghastly wound,
covering with blood every warrior who touches it.

The sun is ever a joy in the hopes of seafarers
when they journey away over the fishes' bath,
until the courser of the deep bears them to land.

Tiw is a guiding star; well does it keep faith with princes;
it is ever on its course over the mists of night and never fails.

The poplar bears no fruit; yet without seed it brings forth suckers,
for it is generated from its leaves.
Splendid are its branches and gloriously adorned
its lofty crown which reaches to the skies.

The horse is a joy to princes in the presence of warriors.
A steed in the pride of its hoofs,
when rich men on horseback bandy words about it;
and it is ever a source of comfort to the restless.

The joyous man is dear to his kinsmen;
yet every man is doomed to fail his fellow,
since the Lord by his decree will commit the vile carrion to the earth.

The ocean seems interminable to men,
if they venture on the rolling bark
and the waves of the sea terrify them
and the courser of the deep heed not its bridle.

Ing was first seen by men among the East-Danes,
till, followed by his chariot,
he departed eastwards over the waves.
So the Heardingas named the hero.

An estate is very dear to every man,
if he can enjoy there in his house
whatever is right and proper in constant prosperity.

Day, the glorious light of the Creator, is sent by the Lord;
it is beloved of men, a source of hope and happiness to rich and poor,
and of service to all.

The oak fattens the flesh of pigs for the children of men.
Often it traverses the gannet's bath,
and the ocean proves whether the oak keeps faith
in honourable fashion.

The ash is exceedingly high and precious to men.
With its sturdy trunk it offers a stubborn resistance,
though attacked by many a man.

Yr is a source of joy and honour to every prince and knight;
it looks well on a horse and is a reliable equipment for a journey.

Iar is a river fish and yet it always feeds on land;
it has a fair abode encompassed by water, where it lives in happiness.

The grave is horrible to every knight,
when the corpse quickly begins to cool
and is laid in the ***** of the dark earth.
Prosperity declines, happiness passes away
and covenants are broken.

i swear, the biggest anti-ageist
comeback missing
from the script of we **** the old way
lies with the scriptwriter's
phobia of o.c.d.,
                 i'm guessing he experienced
it personally,
              i wish he experienced dementia
clearer of his granddad
   succumbing: o.c.d. in old age?
it's not big deal... it's no big deal...
             enough botox and soon all that glamour
and paying your respects soon fades,
fattens up and chokes on the artistic
rubric: you need rich artists to
satire rich people... stop nagging
at Katy... be, *******, thankful,
you little cat-whiskers for a ******
moustache kitty-fiddler...
           ever **** at a girl taking a selfie?
let's say it's a blank canvas, and
you're working on it...
        how can this girl can become a
crown or the abhorred fling with
missing Welsh fetishes of excess
           ****** dangle-bits?
                       i have few entry points
i like i consider...
                 before she shaves the *****,
but did you know my godmother
           is a doctor and she doesn't shave
her legs?
                     i joked at that,
i joked for the simplicity:
              why do i have to don mine
and the theory of Darwinism is never
complete? because of aesthetics,
there's a natural instinct, a natural bound
contraband that IS NEVER, EVER TINGED WITH
CHRISTIANITY... **** Radio Maria and
Priest Rydzyk too along with
                John Paul the Tarmac Kissing Saint...
popes like pop-stars: the world's a stage:
better look the prettiest...
             thank Katy... she got cool and rich
enough to covert any criticism of wealthy kids
of Las Vegas...
                          if she wasn't here i'd be dead:
i don't love her like a girl might love
the next best: never-left high school bestseller
for young girls...
                                     my black horse is
quirky and still working on working smug
rather than donning a thong at a cat-walk...
                 but my point?
the comeback the gangsters should have served up
those ****** lips?
                                rapper movie
fakes never taught you how to shoot...
                the gun goes linear: shoot, vertical...
not cool-sly horizontal...
                         you're shooting with a blind spot...
rich girls' songs for poor girls to
cat-fight over who's the better gimmick
of impersonator...
                      but the old Hackney farts still
don't have the quick-snap-comeback...
                  the colts keep referring to E2...
a postcode...
                       the old ladies should have said:
i better move there, seems like a hot-spot
for the postcode lottery!
                           the colts keep referring
to the E2 club....
                             the crew, the gang...
i'm still thinking about these pensioners
nailing them to chairs and drilling through their
bones to the marrow for the Moscow ladies
acting out the faint in the hands  
                       of chevaliers of her retirement plans...
E2? is that a postcode lottery for
                 the losers?
and the "sad" story is? in Poland we all came from
a Communist housing estate...
            only peasants in semi-detached housing...
i guess all these smart-*** young folks
are pretending to be gangsters when all they're
all aspiring to is own a pair of shoes with hay sticking
out of them: and i.t.v. come november...
               well, the casting was smart,
the accents 10 out of 10...
                   but the final point of the accents
in talk?              slow math...
                            is      E2 designated as
the case for a joke about postcode lottery?
                 one thing they're loudmouths...
another that they're also foul-mouths...
                             can't be one and the other...
                  if you're going to be a prop'ah
foul-mouth, better be a slow-mouth
               or a shush-mouth...
                                  and if you're going to
be a loud-mouth, i'd prescribe you Southampton's
away-support choir: oh when the saints...
oh when the saints come marching in...
                                no wonder gang culture
never picked up from loud-mouth birthrights of
the suggested History X...
                               borrowing from History ***:
flash news! there are more things on
my head than just hair to play toothpicks with concerning
self-doubts and the easiest solution:
            a man was crucified...
                               some say we never perfected
democracy as the civilised peoples of the world
as the Jews never perfected plebiscites as the
              "backward" peoples of the desert...
           if race coordination can't be joked about
but getting offended at:
           i'd love the Irish potato diet and the
dates served for breakfast lunch and dinner in Israel...
or in better representation?
the Pig of God... Jesus stinking like a pig
                 before the perfumes of Pilate...
skew: north-by-northwest: a good Hitch reminder:
sheep up toward Scotland...
                           but pigs that north and east...
well: pigs...
                         or how to make words
holy and meaningless when talking about the price
of butter...
                     but that's beside the case for
a quick comeback about the postcode lottery...
           or the grit of Bronson - the film,
esp. the nurse scene...
                       no spoilers... you never know when
it's happening...
                                 the greater the film,
the more monologue orientated...
                                    claustrophilic -
                                                   so you wonder
shoving that **** into the craniums of little boys:
why are they making them do it...
                        and at what point is it legal in
the social realm of guessing at all the rainbow possibilities?
   my theory? most paedophiles had failed
relationships in their teens...
                                  and they never wanted to
experience the complexities of a woman who finally
realised: ****! daddy died! i'm not a princess!
                   it's not a fear of being inadequate,
it's the fear of an inadequate woman...
                  the most adequate woman is a woman
who still resolves to the idealistic world,
rather than the realistic world -
                                   i never understood the
criminal hierarchy...
                                       in the criminal ring it would
appear no moral superiority is akin
   to bullying in school...
                                              choose the easiest
loss of moral judgement and bash it into the head...
    or what Marquis de Sade taught me...
               for most men it's the pink elephant in
the room...
                              or a light-bulb...
****** and theft is still all Robin Hood, the instilled
   heroism: moral ambiguity...
               i don't see how the other crime isn't also
an ambiguity...
                              the *** of man is already displaced
from the *** of woman...
                      why wouldn't age by that ****** ambiguity
not be squared? and doubly unfathomable?
   what made me write this?
               standing at a bus stop...
a girl coming back from school...
                                                 what?
this is a cognitive ping-pong...
                                     what?
                                                   what?!
               i'd dare David the Naturalist come out
from his comfort environment of
                 two monkeys *******, gorillas
with harems and all that easy gesture...
                   man and woman? eyes.
     all the limbs and bones captured by the eyes...
it's not that i don't spend enough time among people
to start imagining these quirks...
                 it's that i spend enough time
                 among people to not start imagining
quirks.

Moving through the night, feigning sleep,
eyes closed mind open to the possibilities
that all we thought was known, is now not true.

That we are being cared for too, instead why
is a balding wolf chewing at my pain in the neck.

The pig is a snake and has a forked tongue,
fattens you with comfort as long as you like
blood tipped sharp barbed wire, ***** coated
to guarantee you catch something, even if it is
too late, to recognize the calamity.

Don't blame the pig, "all animals are created equal
but some animals are more equal than others"

So on the morrow we may become as unglued as
what we open, hopin' for a merciful gated pasture
rather than a lamb for the slaughter as fast as
                                                 it can be manufactured.  

Oh sorry to disturb you,
I know you don't understand,
I mustn't either as then I would
not need poetry...to lie with me
and dry my tears each one wet
with fear that I torture myself,
sadly I know already that I am
right, but I am not up for
this
fight.

I will lose...no honour in this, against my beliefs,
my grief a failure will erode my will to breath,
so sorry go about your night or day, I don't
mean to disturb, let me fester, let me rot,
                you all are, all I got Hello, goodbye.

As the leaf dies
It loves the earth onto which it falls.
The executioner’s heart breaks as his vain axe falls.
Say “No” to anyone or anything
And you get a huge “No” in return.

Scream at the lover
Who has abandoned you
And the lover is still gone.
Say the parting is all the other’s fault
And you find yourself still alone.

Your sweetest love will get trampelled
Your careful plans ruined
By fires in the alleys of daily life
But there you still stand
Perplexed and searching for meaning in the chaos.

The average man’s an idiot;
His ego rages against a machine
Powered by the unconsciousness of hamburger society
He first fattens, then withers
Becomes totally blind and deaf
To the light and music of his higher self.

Don’t be in the idiot parade.
Say, “Yes” when everyone else says, “No”.
Sit and feel your gut churning
Suffer the static
As your limited mind radio
Tries to find a channel that does not exist.
Eat an unripe bitter peach.
Smile at fear.
Save your energy for the dance of individuation
On the puppet stage.

The love you want so desperately
That you believe can only come from another person
Is in you already.
Everyone seeks what you seek.
They see in your eyes
What you see in their eyes
And neither of you could see the love
If it was not there to begin with.

Look for the love behind the wall
The anthems of projected blame
The paranoid unfair burdening
Placed upon us to provide for others
What we can barely give ourselves.  

Postpone your case until Christmas recess
When the judge is tired and careless
And your radical situation may slip between the cracks
Of life’s soul-less bureaucracy.

So your birth was unavoidable;
Your death, its inevitable.
Everything in between
All your radical efforts to be happy
Get down to only one thing –
You must forgive yourself
For being addicted to being perfect
Because you aren’t.
You’re just as lonely and confused as me.

But that’s the intention in this life
To learn to see through the suffering
To have more compassion
For the frailty of yourself and others
Wouldn’t that be nice?

a wave swells, rises, peaks, and breaks
vanishing at a single tick of the longest hand
the next wave rises, and you forget that the first ever existed

a cloud forms, fattens, floats, and falls away
another cloud takes its place - the usual white, drifting mass
the moon continues to glow, unaffected

you are born, you grow, you love, and then you die
you and your wealth, your power, your reputation
when faced with eternity, you are nothing
but a wave in the ocean, a cloud in the sky

I send her roses each and every day.
     She asks for reasons, they don't satisfy.
     This heart's expression is my only way
     to answer each and every question, why?
She plants each one inside a large glass vase.
     It fattens in its bulky green-red width.
     She waters it hourly just in case
     this bulk shrivel by one rose-breadth.
In truth they have no petals and no stem,
     no color and no subtle fragrant scent.
     The vase is her awareness of them.
     They are but words of love my passions sent.
For I am but a poor and broken soul,
whose love for my dear love raises me whole.

(C)2019, Christos Rigakos

He makes the sun to rise and shine;
     His breath inspires the wind;
He fattens the fruit, ferments the wine;
     And makes the grape thin-skinned.

Because of Him, raindrops fall
     And early birds arise.
God makes the deaf to hear His call,
     And makes the foolish wise.

This part of the world,
And it's starchy ways,
Everything fattens,
Very heart unfriendly.

I can imagine myself
as a choirboy,
some feat!

Sunday does that to you,
flattens the curve for you
and fattens the calf for you
if you are a Vegetarian
you
don't get a look in.

The Vicar's sat in the clink
thinking
my God
what was I thinking,
and not for what you're thinking
he got caught drinking and driving
and is now doing a stretch in Dartmoor.

False form of Christianity:
American insanity.
Dispensing what’s unorthodox
To their low-information flocks,
Preachers rant from outer space
Extorting tithes, with glowing face.
Exhorting stubborn sheep and goats
To sow that seed in higher notes.
Media-promoted freakshow,
Beamed by satellite. Here below
We observe their bald expansions:
Buying Lear jets, yachts, new mansions . . .
Something in that Tulsa water
Fattens up these calves for slaughter
While they prattle, Okie-style,
Preaching from the Book of Vile.
Empire-building in tailored suits . . .
Its time to judge them by their fruits.

You were eating
out from our hands.
O God, we are hungry.

Sometimes I collapse
in on myself, to achieve
the quietus. Even moonlight
won't escape from me.

I collect the ashes
falling from your
golden locks. Was it the death's
pride?

The moon fattens
to receive the lost crown
of sleeping queen.

The shadow falls
at your feet. You become
taller than me.