Bouazizi’s heavy eyelids parted as the Muezzin recited the final call for the first Adhan of the day.

“As-salatu Khayrun Minan-nawm”
Prayer is better than sleep

Rising from the torment of another restless night, Bouazizi wiped the sleep from his droopy eyes as his feet touched the cold stone floor.

Throughout the frigid night, the devilish jinn did their work, eagerly jabbing away at Bouazizi with pointed sticks, tormenting his troubled conscience with the worry of his nagging indebtedness. All night the face of the man Bouazizi owed money to haunted him. Bouazizi could see the man’s greasy lips and brown teeth jawing away, inches from his face. He imagined chubby caffeine stained fingers reaching toward him to grab some dinars from Bouazizi’s money box.

Bouazizi turned all night like he was sleeping on a board of spikes. His prayers for a restful night again went unanswered. The pall of a blue fatigue would shadow Bouazizi for most of the day.

Bouazizi’s weariness was compounded by a gnawing hunger. By force of habit, he grudgingly opened the food cupboard with the foreknowledge that it was almost bare. Bouazizi’s premonition proved correct as he surveyed a meager handful of chickpeas, some eggs and a few sparse loaves. It was just enough to feed his dependant family; younger brothers and sisters, cousins and a terminally disabled uncle. That left nothing for Bouazizi but a quick jab to his empty gut. He would start this day without breakfast.

Bouazizi made a living as a street vendor. He hustles to survive. Bouazizi’s father died in a construction accident in Libya when he was three. Since the age of 10, Bouazizi had pushed a cart through the streets of Sidi Bouzid; selling fruit at the public market just a few blocks from the home that he has lived in for almost his entire life.

At 27 years of age, Bouazizi has wrestled the beast of deprivation since his birth. To date, he has bravely fought it to a standstill; but day after day the multi-headed hydra of life has snapped at him. He has squarely met the eyes of the beast with fortitude and resolve; but the sharp fangs of a hardscrabble life has sunken deep into Bouazizi’s spleen. The unjust rules of society are powerful claws that slash away at his flesh, bleeding him dry: while the spiked tendrils of poverty wrap Bouazizi’s neck, seeking to strangle him.

Bouazizi is a workingman hero; a skilled warrior in the fight for daily bread. He is accustomed to living a life of scarcity. His daily deliverance is the grace of another day of labor and the blessed wages of subsistence.

Though Allah has blessed this man with fortitude the acuteness of terminal want and the constant struggle to survive has its limits for any man; even for strong champions like Bouazizi.

This morning as Bouazizi washed he peered into a mirror, closely examining new wrinkles on his stubble strewn face. He fingered his deep black curls dashed with growing streaks of gray. He studied them through the gaze of heavy bloodshot eyes. He looked upward as if to implore Allah to salve the bruises of daily life.

Bouazizi braced himself with the splash of a cold water slap to his face. He wiped his cheeks clean with the tail of his shirt. He dipped his toothbrush into a box of baking powder and scoured an aching back molar in need of a root canal. Bouazizi should see a dentist but it is a luxury he cannot afford so he packed an aspirin on top of the infected tooth. The dissolving aspirin invaded his mouth coating his tongue with a bitter effervescence.

Bouazizi liked the taste and was grateful for the expectation of a dulled pain. He smiled into the mirror to check his chipped front tooth while pinching a cigarette **** from an ashtray. The roach had one hit left in it. He lit it with a long hard drag that consumed a good part of the filter. Bouazizi’s first smoke of the day was more filter then tobacco but it shocked his lungs into the coughing flow of another day.

Bouazizi put on his jacket, slipped into his knockoff NB sneakers and reached for a green apple on a nearby table. He took a big bite and began to chew away the pain of his toothache.

Bouazizi stepped into the street to catch the sun rising over the rooftops. He believed that seeing the sunrise was a good omen that augured well for that day’s business. A sunbeam braking over a far distant wall bathed Bouazizi in a golden light and illumined the alley where he parked his cart holding his remaining stock of week old apples. He lifted the handles and backed his cart out into the street being extra mindful of the cracks in the cobblestone road. Bouazizi sprained his ankle a week ago and it was still tender. Bouazizi had to be careful not to aggravate it with a careless step. Having successfully navigated his cart into the road, Bouazizi made a skillful U Turn and headed up the street limping toward the market.

A winter chill gripped Bouazizi prompting him to zip his jacket up to his neck. The zipper pinched his Adam’s Apple and a few droplets of blood stained his green corduroy jacket. Though it was cold, Bouazizi sensed that spring would arrive early this year triggering a replay of a recurring daydream. Bouazizi imagined himself behind the wheel of a new van on his way to the market. Fresh air and sunshine pouring through the open windows with the cargo space overflowing with fresh vegetables and fruits.

It was a lifelong ambition of Bouazizi to own a van. He dreamed of buying a six cylinder Dodge Caravan. It would be painted red and he would call it The Red Flame. The Red Flame would be fast and powerful and sport chrome spinners. The Red Flame would be filled with music from a Blaupunkt sound system with kick *** speakers. Power windows, air conditioning, leather seats, a moonroof and plenty of space in the back for his produce would complete Bouazizi’s ride.

The Red Flame would be the vehicle Bouazizi required to expand his business beyond the market square. Bouazizi would sell his produce out of the back of the van, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood. No longer would he have to wait for customers to come to his stand in the market. Bouazizi would go to his customers. Bouazizi and the Red Flame would be known in all the neighborhoods throughout the district. Bouazizi shook his head and smiled thinking about all the girls who would like to take rides in the Red Flame. Bouazizi and his Red Flame would be a sight to be noticed and a force to be reckoned with.

“EEEEEYOWWW” a Mercedes horn angrily honked; jarring Bouazizi from the reverie of his daydream. A guy whipping around the corner like a silver streak stuck his head out the window blasting with music yelling, “Hey Mnayek, watch where you push that *******.”

The music faded as the Mercedes roared away. “Barra nikk okhtek” Bouazizi yelled, raising his ******* in the direction of the vanished car. “The big guys in the fancy cars think the road belongs to them”, Bouazizi mumbled to himself.

The insult ****** Bouazizi off, but he was accustomed to them and as he limped along pushing his cart he distracted himself with the amusement of the ascending sun chasing the fleeting shadows of the night, sending them scurrying down narrow alleyways.

Bouazizi imaged himself a character from his favorite movie. He was a giant Transformer, chasing the black shadows of evil away from the city into the desert. After battling evil and conquering the bad guys, he would transform himself back into the regular Bouazizi; selling his produce to the people as he patrolled the highways of Tunisia in the Red Flame, the music blasting out the windows, the chrome spinners flashing in the sunlight. Bouazizi would remain vigilant, always ready to transform the Red Flame to fight the evil doers.

The bumps and potholes in the road jostled Bouazizi’s load of apples. A few fell out of the wooden baskets and were rolling around in the open spaces of the cart. Bouazizi didn’t want to risk bruising them. Damaged merchandise can’t be sold so he was careful to secure his goods and arrange his cart to appeal to women customers. He made sure to display his prized electronic scale in the corner of the cart for all to see.

Bouazizi had a reputation as a fair and generous dealer who always gave good value to his customers. Bouazizi was also known for his kindness. He would give apples to hungry children and families who could not pay. Bouazizi knew the pain of hunger and it brought him great satisfaction to be able to alleviate it in others.

As a man who valued fairness, Bouazizi was particularly proud of his electronic scale. Bouazizi was certain the new measuring device assured all customers that Bouazizi sold just and correct portions. The electronic scale was Bouazizi’s shining lamp. He trusted it. He hung it from the corner post of his cart like it was the beacon of a lighthouse guiding shoppers through the treachery of an unscrupulous market. It would attract all customers who valued fairness to the safe harbor of Bouazizi’s cart.

The electronic scale is Bouazizi’s assurance to his customers that the weights and measures of electronic calculation layed beyond any cloud of doubt. It is a fair, impartial and objective arbiter for any dispute.

Bouazizi believed that the fairness of his scale would distinguish his stand from other produce vendors. Though its purchase put Bouazizi into deep debt, the scale was a source of pride for Bouazizi who believed that it would help his profits to increase and help him to achieve his goal of buying the Red Flame.

As Bouazizi pushed his cart toward the market, he mulled his plan over in his mind for the millionth time. He wasn't great in math but he was able to calculate his financial situation with a degree of precision. His estimations triggered worries that his growing debt to money lenders may be difficult to payoff.

Indebtedness pressed down on Bouazizi’s chest like a mounting pile of stones. It was the source of an ever present fear coercing Bouazizi to live in a constant state of anxiety. His business needed to grow for Bouazizi to get a measure of relief and ultimately prosper from all his hard work. Bouazizi was driven by urgency.

The morning roil of the street was coming alive. Bouazizi quickened his step to secure a good location for his cart at the market. Car horns, the spewing diesel from clunking trucks, the flatulent roar of accelerating buses mixed with the laughs and shrieks of children heading to school composed the rising crescendo of the city square.

As he pushed through the market, Bouazizi inhaled the aromatic eddies of roasting coffee floating on the air. It was a pleasantry Bouazizi looked forward to each morning. The delicious wafts of coffee mingling with the crisp aroma of baking bread instigated a growl from Bouazizi’s empty stomach. He needed to get something to eat. After he got money from his first sale he would by a coffee and some fried dough.

Activity in the market was vigorous, punctuated by the usual arguments of petty territorial disputes between vendors. The disagreements were always amicably resolved, burned away in rising billows of roasting meats and vegetables, the exchange of cigarettes and the plumes of tobacco smoke rising as emanations of peace.

Bouazizi skillfully maneuvered his cart through the market commotion. He slid into his usual space between Aaban and Aameen. His good friend Aaban sold candles, incense, oils and sometimes his wife would make cakes to sell. Aameen was the markets most notorious jokester. He sold hardware and just about anything else he could get his hands on.

Aaban was already burning a few sticks of jasmine incense. It helped to attract customers. The aroma defined the immediate space with the pleasant bouquet of a spring garden. Bouazizi liked the smell and appreciated the increased traffic it brought to his apple cart.

“Hey Basboosa#, do you have any cigarettes?“, Aameen asked as he pulled out a lighter. Bouazizi shook the tip of a Kent from an almost empty pack. Aameen grabbed the cigarette with his lips.

“That's three cartons of Kents you owe me, you cheap *******.” Bouazizi answered half jokingly. Aameen mumbled a laugh through a grin tightly gripping the **** as he exhaled smoke from his nose like a fire breathing dragon. Bouazizi also took out a cigarette for himself.

“Aameem, give me a light”, Bouazizi asked.

Aameen tossed him the lighter.

“Keep it Basboosa. I got others.” Aameen smiled as he showed off a newly opened box of disposable lighters to sell on his stand.

“Made in China, Basboosa. They make everything cheap and colorful. I can make some money with these.”

Bouazizi lit his next to last cigarette. He inhaled deeply. The smoke chased away the cool air in Bouazizi’s lungs with a shot of a hot nicotine rush.

“Merci Aameen” Bouazizi answered. He put the lighter into the almost empty cigarette pack and put it into his hip pocket. The lighter would protect his last cigarette from being crushed.

The laughter and shouts of the bazaar, the harangue of radio voices shouting anxious verses of Imam’s exhorting the masses to submit and the piecing ramble of nondescript AM music flinging piercing unintelligible static surrounded Bouazizi and his cart as he waited for his first customers of the day.

Bouazizi sensed a nervous commotion rise along the line of vendors. A crowd of tourists and locals milling about parted as if to avoid a slithering asp making its way through their midst. The hoots of vendors and the cackle of the crowd made its way to Bouazizi’s knowing ear. He knew what was coming. It was nothing more then another shakedown by city officials acting as bagmen for petty municipal bureaucrats. They claim to be checking vendor licences but they’re just making the rounds collecting protection money from the vendors. Pocketing bribes and payoffs is the municipal authorities idea of good government. They are skilled at using the power of their office to extort tribute from the working poor.

Bouazizi made the mistake of making eye contact with Madame Hamdi. As the municipal authority in charge of vendors and taxis Madame Hamdi held sway over the lives of the street vendors. She relished the power she had over the men who make a meager living selling goods in the square; and this morning she was moving through the market like a bloodhound hot on the trail of an escaped convict. Two burly henchmen lead the way before her. Bouazizi knew Madame Hamdi’s hounds were coming for him.

Bouazizi knew he was ******. Having just made a payment to his money lender, Bouazizi had no extra dinars to grease the palm of Madame Hamdi. He grabbed the handle bars of his cart to make an escape; but Madame Hamdi cut him off and got right into into Bouazizi’s face.

“Ah little Basboosa where are you going? she asked with the tone of playful contempt.

“I suppose you still have no license to sell, ah Basboosa?” Madame Hamdi questioned with the air of a soulless inquisitor.

“You know Madame Hamdi, cart vendors do not need a license.” Bouazizi feebly protested, not daring to look into her eyes.

“Basboosa, you know we can overlook your violations with a small fine for your laxity” a dismissive Madame Hamdi offered.

Bouazizi’s sense of guilt would not permit him to lift his eyes. His head remained bowed. Bouazizi stood convicted of being one of the impoverished.

“I have no spare dinars to offer Madame Hamdi, My pockets are empty, full of holes. My money falls into everyone’s palm but my own. I’m sorry Madame Hamdi. I’ll take my cart home”. He lifted the handlebars in an attempt to escape. One of Madame Hamdi’s henchmen stepped in front of his cart while the other pushed Bouazizi away from it.

“Either you pay me a vendor tax for a license or I will confiscate your goods Basboosa”, Madame Hamdi warned as she lifted Bouazizi’s scale off its hook.

“This will be the first to go”, she said grinning as she examined the scale. “We’ll just keep this.”
Like a mother lion protecting a defenseless cub from the snapping jaws of a pack of ravenous hyenas, Bouazizi lunged to retrieve his prized scale from the clutches of Madame Hamdi. Reaching for it, he touched the scale with his fingertips just as Madame Hamdi delivered a vicious slap to Bouazizi’s cheek. It halted him like a thunderbolt from Zeus.

A henchman overturned Bouazizi’s cart, scatter

Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven firstborn,
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam
May I express thee unblam’d?  since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.
Or hear”st thou rather pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell?  before the sun,
Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.
Thee I re-visit now with bolder wing,
Escap’d the Stygian pool, though long detain’d
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Through utter and through middle darkness borne,
With other notes than to the Orphean lyre
I sung of Chaos and eternal Night;
Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to re-ascend,
Though hard and rare:  Thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou
Revisit’st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So  thick a drop serene hath quench’d their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veil’d.  Yet not the more
Cease I to wander, where the Muses haunt,
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallow’d feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit:  nor sometimes forget
So were I equall’d with them in renown,
Thy sovran command, that Man should find grace;
Blind Thamyris, and blind Maeonides,
And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old:
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note.  Thus with the year
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of nature’s works to me expung’d and ras’d,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou, celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.
Now had the Almighty Father from above,
From the pure empyrean where he sits
High thron’d above all highth, bent down his eye
His own works and their works at once to view:
About him all the Sanctities of Heaven
Stood thick as stars, and from his sight receiv’d
Beatitude past utterance; on his right
The radiant image of his glory sat,
His only son; on earth he first beheld
Our two first parents, yet the only two
Of mankind in the happy garden plac’d
Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love,
Uninterrupted joy, unrivall’d love,
In blissful solitude; he then survey’d
Hell and the gulf between, and Satan there
Coasting the wall of Heaven on this side Night
In the dun air sublime, and ready now
To stoop with wearied wings, and willing feet,
On the bare outside of this world, that seem’d
Firm land imbosom’d, without firmament,
Uncertain which, in ocean or in air.
Him God beholding from his prospect high,
Wherein past, present, future, he beholds,
Thus to his only Son foreseeing spake.
Only begotten Son, seest thou what rage
Transports our Adversary?  whom no bounds
Prescrib’d no bars of Hell, nor all the chains
Heap’d on him there, nor yet the main abyss
Wide interrupt, can hold; so bent he seems
On desperate revenge, that shall redound
Upon his own rebellious head.  And now,
Through all restraint broke loose, he wings his way
Not far off Heaven, in the precincts of light,
Directly towards the new created world,
And man there plac’d, with purpose to assay
If him by force he can destroy, or, worse,
By some false guile pervert; and shall pervert;
For man will hearken to his glozing lies,
And easily transgress the sole command,
Sole pledge of his obedience:  So will fall
He and his faithless progeny:  Whose fault?
Whose but his own?  ingrate, he had of me
All he could have; I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
Such I created all the ethereal Powers
And Spirits, both them who stood, and them who fail’d;
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
Not free, what proof could they have given sincere
Of true allegiance, constant faith or love,
Where only what they needs must do appear’d,
Not what they would?  what praise could they receive?
What pleasure I from such obedience paid,
When will and reason (reason also is choice)
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil’d,
Made passive both, had serv’d necessity,
Not me?  they therefore, as to right belong$ ‘d,
So were created, nor can justly accuse
Their Maker, or their making, or their fate,
As if predestination over-rul’d
Their will dispos’d by absolute decree
Or high foreknowledge they themselves decreed
Their own revolt, not I; if I foreknew,
Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault,
Which had no less proved certain unforeknown.
So without least impulse or shadow of fate,
Or aught by me immutably foreseen,
They trespass, authors to themselves in all
Both what they judge, and what they choose; for so
I form’d them free: and free they must remain,
Till they enthrall themselves; I else must change
Their nature, and revoke the high decree
Unchangeable, eternal, which ordain’d
$THeir freedom: they themselves ordain’d their fall.
The first sort by their own suggestion fell,
Self-tempted, self-deprav’d:  Man falls, deceiv’d
By the other first:  Man therefore shall find grace,
The other none:  In mercy and justice both,
Through Heaven and Earth, so shall my glory excel;
But Mercy, first and last, shall brightest shine.
Thus while God spake, ambrosial fragrance fill’d
All Heaven, and in the blessed Spirits elect
Sense of new joy ineffable diffus’d.
Beyond compare the Son of God was seen
Most glorious; in him all his Father shone
Substantially express’d; and in his face
Divine compassion visibly appear’d,
Love without end, and without measure grace,
Which uttering, thus he to his Father spake.
O Father, gracious was that word which clos’d
Thy sovran command, that Man should find grace;
, that Man should find grace;
For which both Heaven and earth shall high extol
Thy praises, with the innumerable sound
Of hymns and sacred songs, wherewith thy throne
Encompass’d shall resound thee ever blest.
For should Man finally be lost, should Man,
Thy creature late so lov’d, thy youngest son,
Fall circumvented thus by fraud, though join’d
With his own folly?  that be from thee far,
That far be from thee, Father, who art judge
Of all things made, and judgest only right.
Or shall the Adversary thus obtain
His end, and frustrate thine?  shall he fulfill
His malice, and thy goodness bring to nought,
Or proud return, though to his heavier doom,
Yet with revenge accomplish’d, and to Hell
Draw after him the whole race of mankind,
By him corrupted?  or wilt thou thyself
Abolish thy creation, and unmake
For him, what for thy glory thou hast made?
So should thy goodness and thy greatness both
Be question’d and blasphem’d without defence.
To whom the great Creator thus replied.
O son, in whom my soul hath chief delight,
Son of my *****, Son who art alone.
My word, my wisdom, and effectual might,
All hast thou spoken as my thoughts are, all
As my eternal purpose hath decreed;
Man shall not quite be lost, but sav’d who will;
Yet not of will in him, but grace in me
Freely vouchsaf’d; once more I will renew
His lapsed powers, though forfeit; and enthrall’d
By sin to foul exorbitant desires;
Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand
On even ground against his mortal foe;
By me upheld, that he may know how frail
His fallen condition is, and to me owe
All his deliverance, and to none but me.
Some I have chosen of peculiar grace,
Elect above the rest; so is my will:
The rest shall hear me call, and oft be warn’d
Their sinful state, and to appease betimes
The incensed Deity, while offer’d grace
Invites; for I will clear their senses dark,
What may suffice, and soften stony hearts
To pray, repent, and bring obedience due.
To prayer, repentance, and obedience due,
Though but endeavour’d with sincere intent,
Mine ear shall not be slow, mine eye not shut.
And I will place within them as a guide,
My umpire Conscience; whom if they will hear,
Light after light, well us’d, they shall attain,
And to the end, persisting, safe arrive.
This my long sufferance, and my day of grace,
They who neglect and scorn, shall never taste;
But hard be harden’d, blind be blinded more,
That they may stumble on, and deeper fall;
And none but such from mercy I exclude.
But yet all is not done; Man disobeying,
Disloyal, breaks his fealty, and sins
Against the high supremacy of Heaven,
Affecting God-head, and, so losing all,
To expiate his treason hath nought left,
But to destruction sacred and devote,
He, with his whole posterity, must die,
Die he or justice must; unless for him
Some other able, and as willing, pay
The rigid satisfaction, death for death.
Say, heavenly Powers, where shall we find such love?
Which of you will be mortal, to redeem
Man’s mortal crime, and just the unjust to save?
Dwells in all Heaven charity so dear?
And silence was in Heaven: $ on Man’s behalf
He ask’d, but all the heavenly quire stood mute,
Patron or intercessour none appear’d,
Much less that durst upon his own head draw
The deadly forfeiture, and ransom set.
And now without redemption all mankind
Must have been lost, adjudg’d to Death and Hell
By doom severe, had not the Son of God,
In whom the fulness dwells of love divine,
His dearest mediation thus renew’d.
Father, thy word is past, Man shall find grace;
And shall grace not find means, that finds her way,
The speediest of thy winged messengers,
To visit all thy creatures, and to all
Comes unprevented, unimplor’d, unsought?
Happy for Man, so coming; he her aid
Can never seek, once dead in sins, and lost;
Atonement for himself, or offering meet,
Indebted and undone, hath none to bring;
Behold me then:  me for him, life for life
I offer: on me let thine anger fall;
Account me Man; I for his sake will leave
Thy *****, and this glory next to thee
Freely put off, and for him lastly die
Well pleased; on me let Death wreak all his rage.
Under his gloomy power I shall not long
Lie vanquished. Thou hast given me to possess
Life in myself for ever; by thee I live;
Though now to Death I yield, and am his due,
All that of me can die, yet, that debt paid,
$ thou wilt not leave me in the loathsome grave
His prey, nor suffer my unspotted soul
For ever with corruption there to dwell;
But I shall rise victorious, and subdue
My vanquisher, spoiled of his vaunted spoil.
Death his death’s wound shall then receive, and stoop
Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarmed;
I through the ample air in triumph high
Shall lead Hell captive maugre Hell, and show
The powers of darkness bound. Thou, at the sight
Pleased, out of Heaven shalt look down and smile,
While, by thee raised, I ruin all my foes;
Death last, and with his carcase glut the grave;
Then, with the multitude of my redeemed,
Shall enter Heaven, long absent, and return,
Father, to see thy face, wherein no cloud
Of anger shall remain, but peace assured
And reconcilement: wrath shall be no more
Thenceforth, but in thy presence joy entire.
His words here ended; but his meek aspect
Silent yet spake, and breathed immortal love
To mortal men, above which only shone
Filial obedience: as a sacrifice
Glad to be offered, he attends the will
Of his great Father. Admiration seized
All Heaven, what this might mean, and whither tend,
Wondering; but soon th’ Almighty thus replied.
O thou in Heaven and Earth the only peace
Found out for mankind under wrath, O thou
My sole complacence! Well thou know’st how dear
To me are all my works; nor Man the least,
Though last created, that for him I spare
Thee from my ***** and right hand, to save,
By losing thee a while, the whole race lost.

Thou, therefore, whom thou only canst redeem,
Their nature also to thy nature join;
And be thyself Man among men on Earth,
Made flesh, when time shall be, of ****** seed,
By wondrous birth; be thou in Adam’s room
The head of all mankind, though Adam’s son.
As in him perish all men, so in thee,
As from a second root, shall be restored
As many as are restored, without thee none.
His crime makes guilty all his sons; thy merit,
Imputed, shall absolve them who renounce
Their own both righteous and unrighteous deeds,
And live in thee transplanted, and from thee
Receive new life.  So Man, as is most just,
Shall satisfy for Man, be judged and die,
And dying rise, and rising with him raise
His brethren, ransomed with his own dear life.
So heavenly love shall outdo hellish hate,
Giving to death, and dying to redeem,
So dearly to redeem what hellish hate
So easily destroyed, and still destroys
In those who, when they may, accept not grace.
Nor shalt thou, by descending to assume
Man’s nature, lessen or degrade thine own.
Because thou hast, though throned in highest bliss
Equal to God, and equally enjoying
God-like fruition, quitted all, to save
A world from utter loss, and hast been found
By merit more than birthright Son of God,
Found worthiest to be so by being good,
Far more than great or high; because in thee
Love hath abounded more than glory abounds;
Therefore thy humiliation shall exalt
With thee thy manhood also to this throne:
Here shalt thou sit incarnate, here shalt reign
Both God and Man, Son both of God and Man,
Anointed universal King; all power
I give thee; reign for ever, and assume
Thy merits; under thee, as head supreme,
Thrones, Princedoms, Powers, Dominions, I reduce:
All knees to thee shall bow, of them that bide
In Heaven, or Earth, or under Earth in Hell.
When thou, attended gloriously from Heaven,
Shalt in the sky appear, and from thee send
The summoning Arch-Angels to proclaim
Thy dread tribunal; forthwith from all winds,
The living, and forthwith the cited dead
Of all past ages, to the general doom
Shall hasten; such a peal shall rouse their sleep.
Then, all thy saints assembled, thou shalt judge
Bad Men and Angels; they, arraigned, shall sink
Beneath thy sentence; Hell, her numbers full,
Thenceforth shall be for ever shut.  Mean while
The world shall burn, and from her ashes spring
New Heaven and Earth, wherein the just shall dwell,
And, after all their tribulations long,
See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds,
With joy and peace triumphing, and fair truth.
Then thou thy regal scepter shalt lay by,
For regal scepter then no more shall need,
God shall be all in all.  But, all ye Gods,
Adore him, who to compass all this dies;
Adore the Son, and honour him as me.
No sooner had the Almighty ceased, but all
The multitude of Angels, with a shout
Loud as from numbers without number, sweet
As from blest voices, uttering joy, Heaven rung
With jubilee, and loud Hosannas filled
The eternal regions:  Lowly reverent
Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground
With solemn adoration down they cast
Their crowns inwove with amarant and gold;
Immortal amarant, a flower which once
In Paradise, fast by the tree of life,
Began to bloom; but soon for man’s offence
To Heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows,
And flowers aloft shading the fount of life,
And where the river of bliss through midst of Heaven
Rolls o’er Elysian flowers her amber stream;
With these that never fade the Spirits elect
Bind their resplendent locks inwreathed with beams;
Now in loose garlands thick thrown off, the bright
Pavement, that like a sea of jasper shone,
Impurpled with celestial roses smiled.
Then, crowned again, their golden harps they took,
Harps ever tuned, that glittering by their side
Like quivers hung, and with preamble sweet
Of charming symphony they introduce
Their sacred song, and waken raptures high;
No voice exempt, no voice but well could join
Melodious part, such concord is in Heaven.
Thee, Father, first they sung

Philosophy 6/13/2020: A New Model of Time (The Original Document Was Expurgated Because it was Too Genius so I am trying to reinvent the argument) EXPECT FUTURE EDITS WHEN I AM NOT INEBRIATED
A key feature of invigoration is the enterprise of mapping the entire syntax of all relevant human language as measured by the gamut of applesauce that doesn’t sour and an in depth analysis of creative fiction and poetry for common cadence features in the linguistic enterprise of mapping the subroutines of complex articulation as etched by the fabric of genius intellects intertwined in a gamble with wits to try and create coded missives that entangle hypertrophy and enlarge the gamut of decryption in the universal rudiments of alchemy based on depreciative and appreciative aspects of apperception that depend on visual cues and funding from a collaborative venture of universities to challenge people to zero-sum games or net positive games where teams collaborate to usher unconventional unchartered territory of classification beyond normal proclivities based on the lineaments of idiosyncrasy to pinpoint the provenance of ideation itself and unveil the mind at a bargain pittance for the eventual headway this could pave for the Department of Education to revert from froward to forward in their recalcitrance and insouciance with the current linguistic modalities of outstretched engraven hortoriginality trailblazing new modular seismotic waves and hotbeds for firebrands to debate and scholars to joust with in the jest of the cineaste metaphor and the rubricated rundles of rectiserial innovations in the taxonomy of devolved meaning relying on an inventive enterprise to galvanize a new jargon into prominence based primarily on guarded secrets of the trade that might unlock the primordial soup of verbal creativity while also probing detective apperception for a wide-ranging panoply of digested movies and beyond that a farsighted incumbent inclination to probe the calibration of numerical happenstance in estimate and in long-term theorization of taxed realty in the estate of guarded tegular relationships among the woven fabric of conceptual latticeworks pioneering in scope and analyzed rigorously in reward of discretion and furtive cryptology to untether the world from the pioneering basis of sloganeered piggybacks that swivel in sockets but enforce a reductive paradigm of obganiation of core themes reiterated hypnotically to traindeque entire generations into piebald thinking that overlooks the panorama for incident and incident for categorical generality when no such axiom can be the logical predicate of its antecedent conditions that spurn the traditional rote moot wernaggles of futility and inseminate crafty legerdemain of writhing contortion altering the specificity of revalorized meaning in the novel context that consequence is always the consequence not only of its predicate but its successor by the very modalities of proven reversals and enantiodromias of sorts that revert in a reverse progression spatiotemporally to exact incident as antecedent of its own existence by the very fact of iteration and this map of the recursive cycles of consequences elapsed only because of their insertion in a predevoted matrix is the gnomic apothegm of a new frontier of advanced logic that assumes the impossible is only improbable if the possible can be proven impossible by reductive inversion of core precepts in the rigmarole of design that states for every orchestra of butterflies that echo is actually the incident of refraction that contaminated the first polyacoustic trace of amplified sources in space time to revert into primordial form but the reversion is only incurred upon the fixture of origination and beyond that point remains inscrutable because foreknowledge necessarily prevents accuracy in determining the spectrum of the cacophony or rhapsody of the echo dependent on the observer’s perspective: which is only fungible to the extent that the subliminal remains guarded by the protectors of the clepsammia and the recensed polarization of time. This transcendence of time transfixed on orbital gravitas and centripetal ****** initiates a promulgation of the swallock of a remanded entropy that works in swiveled contraposition to the dynamic flux of the internment of balkanized forces of demassification dampening the efficacy of the central butterfly actor to expand the ampitheater of its own audience to the extent that every cultural artifact can be mapped to the geotaxis of its conceptual orbit. Thereby we can prove that pivots of the obvious focal point peak in resurgence upon the heyday of retrieval but dampen into a logarithmic regression of decreasing amplitude fluctuating around the aleatory probability of insemination through the percolation of the widespread narrowed to a fulcrum that balances the orbit of the stellified narrative of ingemination that some artifacts like Stayin’ Alive achieve maximum geotaxis because of their centrality in the taxidermies of revived memory recapitulated by both virtuosity and valor and posing as consequences of future foresight clouded by preventive measures that one quaky spasm in alarm could paralyze the precedent to the incidence of the afflatus that galvanized the heyday of remonstrance so that we can affix a modular angular gravity to events as well as referents to those events in a spatiotemporal mapping of consequence reverted upon itself because of necessity that binds the taxemes of the subliminal in the architecture of a curvature of geotaxis that is centrobaric not necessarily to the contingencies that magnify the germane propositions that affix modern eyes but rather the overall stifling modularity of temporal sequence redoubled by manufacture and manufacture alone predevotes antecedents that trace to a pivot in space time curved without prescience beyond measure but precision enough to approximate the summation of collective cultural shifts away from the estrangement of diversion from itself as a balkanizing force into a collectivized unity that orbits eccentrically by the very nature of the parallax between gravitational pull and the dynamics of time itself centripetal but centrifugal simultaneously and both conditions must be met so the converse of meaning becomes the recapitulation of remontant blessings rather than pruned dry garbologies relevant only to margins of subculture minimized in heyday and scope but pinpointed with exact precision the dynamos that inhabit the sphere of the populated future defenestrated from the magnetism of the past by very definition. Thereby, we arrive at Back to the Future because the paradox of recensed calibration suggests the free fluctuation of time between the eccentricity of magnified lens distorted by the entropy of calculus to become the integral summation of the sinuous vacuum of a trigonometric balance that barks with amplification of synergistic elements of strings and quantum flux to emigrate from an origination to the mapping of the eventuality. This precisely explains the scene in Back to the Future with the amplifiers turned all the way up because by exaggerating the simplicity of the declassified it expedited cinema to its eventual intermediary conclusions heralded by that one event of transfixed mystery that binds spacetime into a coherent bidirection of multidimensional philosophy of the enantiodromias of sorts of the parallax among constellated events. Mapping the impact of funneled cartels that hegemonize regions of the geopolitical sphere explains the amplivagant effects of the refracturism of swallock and thereby seminal ideations can be traced to provenance of cowardice cloaked in excuse but incisive in the skullduggery of the mechanical reinvention of excuse and pretext as a cloak for more furtive workings of the intelligentsia to engineer time by deriving the precise tangential multidimensional syntax of the calculus of proliferation reviewed from a consequent perspective of a future unknowable gravitas fluctuating between states of annihilation and existence in the acatelpsy of design so that specters actually enforce more change than events and prospects magnify positive dimensional thrusts that galvanize prospectus emigrating from either distant knowns or parallel realities that converge on the optimum of either the hapless or calculated design of a synergistic development of social engineering so precisely mapped that it identifies trajectories of improbable events with increasing specificity at the alarm of the spectral realm promulgating wealth to the foreseeable compunction of science to revert to probable pivots of consensus manufactured by think tanks that outfox the syntalities that defy the system or piggyback on their very causes to empirically carve the spectrum of future possibility becoming entelechy desired or feared but always predestined or flanged into distortions of reification that are transformative of precision in design without exactitude in the terminus of the centrobaric chambers of all meaning. Thus the algorithm outsmarts itself until only the machination to dehumanize for prediction occurs at a pessimum of morality or an explosion of a proliferative new venture in unchartered territory conquers the novantique of novelty. The ampitheater of its own audience is the traction of embedded subculture in subroutine becoming a compound atocia that sterilizes opponent possibility and probabilizes the occurrence of endomorphs that resemble effigies of constellation primed to swivel in retrospection as a recurrent lapse of amplification upon the culmination of predestined time points or junctures specified within the realm of the matrix of possibilities to outstretch the realm into a dampened exponential explosion of self-reference becoming embedded consequence by conditioning and by anticipatory psychology working in preconcert to evoke the determinative impetus of momentum that magnifies the speed of acceleration in technology that depends on the propriety of reification itself that swarms us with evocative tempests that barnstorm in reiteration to recapitulate by design to engrave themselves on the collective psyches of the hortoriginality of many minds intrepid before me that transfigured reality in this precise contortion of terminology with variegations in the specificity of context and articulation of the clavigerous entropy of swallock and how the outfoxed design becomes that cage of destiny that is a baritone complexion of vibrant hues exploding into the trammeled paths that have elapsed before me by the first movers advantage of theoretical physics but nonetheless independently verified by dovetailed emergence of that centralized balance between design and destiny that is precedent to the antecedent of the consequence of the precedent’s consequence on the direct antecedent inflexion point upon which the provenance of momentum drifted into cultural psyche and enlarged the gamut of myth in the raillery of subaudition. Essentially Time only exists to those without the simultagnosia to appease a mirror parallax of universes upcoming and universes forestalled but pivot with omphalism on the gravitas of Einsteinian calculus that theorizes that the acatelpsy of enumerated prediction is a lapsed regress the pinpoints with the harpricks of specialization the regal momentum of time to its own behest to propagate the elucidated certainty of its own traversal to the expedited enumeration of the future which populates the past because the curvature of time is an entantiodromia of reflexive itinerant vagrancies that cement the authorship of events to warble through the tilted hypertrophy of design itself to maximize the freebooter avarice of those people that rely on the luxuriance of trespass to magnify the modular gravity of culture to forswink its compunction and regale its own recursive logic. Essentially Time is a mapped ampitheater that depends on an audience of sentience to enlarge its own gamut and because it is riddled with obscurantism of believable recursion it magnifies its own entropy in reversal to orchestrate events in a rectiserial convolution of the whipsaw between the expected and the foreknowledge of the knowing class because when shaky vacillatory politics prevail the behest of time looses its capitalization of the amplivagant affects of the marginalia that is wed to the devolved rudimentary rigmarole of proliferation scaffolds destiny in alternative configurations to fulminate with explosive progeny that latitude incumbent to those without perspicuous clarity to fathom the acatalepsy of the unfurled universe magnetized by the seminal tremendum of the moments memorialized by memory that provide the traction of time to supersede its own acceleration by the writ of the beneficence of the eccentric orbit of the brittle axioms of design to recense and revalorize the wilted transponders that refer to specific events where the space-time continuum was cleaved in divisive anticipation to balkanize the resistence to the fringe clavigerous amplification of the resonance of etiolation that marginalizes the dearth and amplifies the prospectus to make time supersolid beyond all reckoning to cement its captaincy as the algorithm of rhythmic gravitas orbiting the moribund fragmentary flictions of regimented truth to be at war with its own foresight because foresight is a compulsion of time to recapitulate the foreknown deeds of the future to the regenerative hypothesis that hypostatizes that the transcendence of time is mirrored illusion because the future populates a region of space-time that is not forlorn but magnified in scope to reverse the trends of abomination and cast the aspersions of grandeur into eccentric orbit that by geotaxis foments the revolutionary impetus not of cancellation or nullification of the bereaved past but a culmination of deeds known only to the future that galvanize the very fruition of the dependent expectancy to become antecedent to the consequent by a warped form of recensed logic because the orbital sphere of considerations is tangential to the evocative memory of the memorialized statutes that prize their own entelechy above their divergence from design in such a peculiar way that obscurantism of the leaders of the world is manned by an alien presence to mendlatch the locked keys of a virtuouso future compounded in interest and destined for unfurled clarification. Time is an ironic boyg and quandary because for time to give birth to its own recapitulation it must be stammered with seismotic statutes that rip through the fabricated rudiments of predestination to enthrall the apostasy of the knowing from leverage over a future they vaguely see but provides largesse to the regimentation of design to rickety consternation that prediction is evocative of expectancy less than expectancy is its own geotaxis around the gamut of foreseen affairs that must be iterated rather than violated in order to maintain the mainlined integrity of the brittle fungible force of quantum dynamics to bypass the rigmarole of etched design to be evocative of a reverse transpondency that reconfigures the past into perfectible strings of amplification to anoint time its own behest at the formidable specters of its own violation by those who seek trepass but are predevoted out of ephorized control by the vicissitudes of the gamble and the frapplank of the known destiny catalyzing the unknown progeny that by very definition could not be obrogated in tenure or tutelage over the past because the elapsed gravitas of the known past depends on the pivot of the ampitheater of the future to ambitious reckoning that provides absolution to its forlorn vestiges to cement the centrifugal impetus of many from exact foreknowledge.  Many pioneers have probably theorized similar hypostasized concepts but the fact that even without a degree in physics I understand these arcane precepts yet tested by the rigmarole of comprehensive known experiment is a testament to the power of hortoriginality to pave the trailblazer focus on the rivets of a rickety secrecy designated by definiens of abstruse taxemes of yet defined meaning. The primary quandary is the isolated pretext of predevoted sequencing that abandons me (and this is central to my theory) from the weather of meaningful social encounter in order to hone in with precision on the empirical enterprise of seminal regress cemented as ceremonial progress and only by vaulting above this cage of finicky predestination can entelechy that desires rapprochement can be achieved because eventually the relevance of my ideas can be shelved and the peremptory obligation of intervention must be deployed to salvage my parable into completion. The itch for the government to anticipate the universe’s localized traction delimits the sphere of social indoctrination to a reality amenable not to the coercion of precise anticipation but the gamble on vagary to produce more seminal events that compound the amplivagant effects of ecumenical exhaustive troponders to the extent they flourish beyond the bounds of completion and into optimal conditions that is whipsawed by the demands of the rigmarole of precise definition of all trajectories conclave in their logarithmic design  anticipated by designation but not predevoted into futility because that capstone would reduce the proliferative affect of space time to carve a more extravagant reality that tests limits beyond frontiers of expectancy. The brain is highly malleable and entity theorists are moribund in their defenses of trite hackneyed racial arguments about intellect. The mythos preserves that radical ethos that prediction of my insights supersedes the importance of my rapprochement which will amplify the effects of the spatiotemporal mapping in a much more profound way with specialized focus. Thereby when we conceive of time we must specialize in inhabiting the sphere of acatalepsy of flanged prediction preventing the abortion of the future based on the vagrancies of the gyrovagues and bibliopolists seeking to demolish the fruition of the ribald coarse albatrosses of the future to diminutive leverage rather than amplifying the stringed syndication of knowledge to eccentrically stellify the unknown regions of the populated presence contingent on the populated future which ensures the eternal life of all by some formant boundaries of the universe because what is recapitulated in the lapse of certainty known by the anticipatory vagary of a riddled rigmarole of complex dynamism this thermodynamically reversible into the reversal of entropy because the organization of the past hinges upon the reconfiguration of the future and thereby we swivel endlessly with recursive iterations of evanescence that spoon-feed the generations among us to truckle beneath the cartels that array spatiotemporal mappings into their personal optimum to catapult the granular edification of all deeds beyond their forsifamiliation from their provenance gamboling with the distant frescade of a known destiny cavorting with the meddlesome reconnaissance of all that is observed and the tribunes magnify this effect by centralizing the bronteums of fulgurant strikes to be localized to a centralized pivot of universal acclaim that provides felicity for the ecumenical endeavor (I will edit this philosophy at an opportune time but the basic ingredients are provided)

The oceans’ froth betrothed to lunatic scoff
The sublunary elegance of a subdued earthen cough
Infectious pulchritude conjures snow-globe turpitude
Defiant humility professes to know the rudeness of the crude
Distilled casually in a leery trance
Terpsichorean choreography of a hallowed prance
Callow scowls affix the hebetude of anger to the sauciness of banter
Gallant cavalries court the cult of she and enamor and enchant her
Foretold calamities proceed like clockwork from God’s destructive jaundice
Death deployed as a sententious homily of wraiths that taunt us
At every turn fatidic inspirations work to cement a known outcome
Averted gaze away from rampant gays and fire-and-brimstone bunkum
We cherish a world where the stodgy and outmoded monopolize choice considerations
Where hedonism abreast of asceticism are internecine intimidations
Suffer like Christ and buffer like tenacious poverty sustained by rice
Dare to glower with menacing insistence at the known outcome of errant dice
Soothsayers soothe prayers but cataclysm still dares
To pulverize innocent insouciance and become the cynosure of trepidation and stares
Heaven blares a deafening “obey” while hell stays silent to lure the prey
Hobnob with hobgoblins and expect opprobrium to park and stay
Gentility and class-divisions orchestrate a frozen system of tenacious prisons
Stalking the lifeblood of mainlined ecstasies and surgical incisions
Minority Report within the grasp of the majority uproar
Dalliance with a self-fulfilling time means there will always be a bout between Bush and Gore
Lecherous eyes prize a hedged bush and irascible lies seek copious gore
But because the bush ensconces the ****** in bed with China the twin towers imploded for common core
Mondegreens serenade a mistaken flirtation with a time traversed and mastered
Swelling tides hearken the moon to make a hypothetical bonanza out of disaster
Enumerated infinity within esoteric grasp and pandered sequester
Bedazzled of foreknowledge  it charters the uncharted exploitation faster and faster
Burgeoning funds entertain a mind cloistered by infamy and oppressed by indecency
Burbling puns ecstatic about the perpetuity of guns hector the province of a token leniency
Squander the day and indulge the night by knowing exactly the demise of every shooting star
Knowing the origin and legacy of every single scar
Knowing the path creates the path known
Every single stock you know you should with alacrity own
Prosperous kinship and insubordinate brinksmanship win the prejudiced award
Fencing with lethal intent the specter of death devolves into irenic accord
Envy the impregnable corporate machine and its unassailable pipe dream
Hunt the Wolfs of Wall Street until panic evolves into cacophony of screams
Democratization of prophecy will cue the most titanic robbery
Shills looking for upstart thrills will pretend an unwarranted snobbery
Paradox is impossible because every moment elapsed is indelible and irrevocable
Every frisson of love is fertile and impregnable
So rejoice that the masters of the clock invest in select stocks
And hope that parcels of secrecy tumble from the 1919 White Sox
Emerald Street knows When the Music ‘s Over
Brandished crumbs adorned with sportive panache clothed in a lucky clover
Deprived of snide tithes and the confessions of millions protest a catholic cabal of universalism draped in quaint overalls
Mock the hegemony of the sailing class and their brisk and copious squalls
Opulent scions vouch for the failsafe prerogatives of Zion
Sleeping awake we indulge the oneiromancies of Orion
Cinematic wonders regale glorified eavesdropped blunders
Until the secrecy of the machine is so conspicuously in sight it tears the elected pantheon asunder
A master race of an intelligent nepotism in denial of its own disgrace
Exploits the argosy of secrets of the flying-disked race
But one day a challenger like a rooster will orient the demotic vogue towards the treasure trove
And pirates will prosper in burgeoning droves
Myths foisted will debunk themselves as eternity preens its chosen wealth
Even the most furtive endeavors will have to equip even more stealth
That day will prompt an arms race and a worms race
To burrow beneath the chasms of malcontent and adopt and insular embrace
They billow now with toxicity and malignancy
Even death will have alternative contingencies
The resplendent future will capture the common heart
For the accumulated wisdom of words will make us infinitely more smart

An old man cocked his car upon a bridge;
He and his friend, their faces to the South,
Had trod the uneven road.  Their hoots were soiled,
Their Connemara cloth worn out of shape;
They had kept a steady pace as though their beds,
Despite a dwindling and late-risen moon,
Were distant still.  An old man cocked his ear.
Aherne. What made that Sound?
Robartes. A rat or water-hen
Splashed, or an otter slid into the stream.
We are on the bridge; that shadow is the tower,
And the light proves that he is reading still.
He has found, after the manner of his kind,
Mere images; chosen this place to live in
Because, it may be, of the candle-light
From the far tower where Milton's Platonist
Sat late, or Shelley's visionary prince:
The lonely light that Samuel Palmer engraved,
An image of mysterious wisdom won by toil;
And now he seeks in book or manuscript
What he shall never find.
Ahernc. Why should not you
Who know it all ring at his door, and speak
Just truth enough to show that his whole life
Will scarcely find for him a broken crust
Of all those truths that are your daily bread;
And when you have spoken take the roads again?
Robartes. He wrote of me in that extravagant style
He had learnt from pater, and to round his tale
Said I was dead; and dead I choose to be.
Aherne. Sing me the changes of the moon once more;
True song, though speech:  "mine author sung it me.'
Robartes. Twenty-and-eight the phases of the moon,
The full and the moon's dark and all the crescents,
Twenty-and-eight, and yet but six-and-twenty
The cradles that a man must needs be rocked in:
For there's no human life at the full or the dark.
From the first crescent to the half, the dream
But summons to adventure and the man
Is always happy like a bird or a beast;
But while the moon is rounding towards the full
He follows whatever whim's most difficult
Among whims not impossible, and though scarred.
As with the cat-o'-nine-tails of the mind,
His body moulded from within his body
Grows comelier.  Eleven pass, and then
Athene takes Achilles by the hair,
Hector is in the dust, Nietzsche is born,
Because the hero's crescent is the twelfth.
And yet, twice born, twice buried, grow he must,
Before the full moon, helpless as a worm.
The thirteenth moon but sets the soul at war
In its own being, and when that war's begun
There is no muscle in the arm; and after,
Under the frenzy of the fourteenth moon,
The soul begins to tremble into stillness,
To die into the labyrinth of itself!
Aherne. Sing out the song; sing to the end, and sing
The strange reward of all that discipline.
Robartes. All thought becomes an image and the soul
Becomes a body:  that body and that soul
Too perfect at the full to lie in a cradle,
Too lonely for the traffic of the world:
Body and soul cast out and cast away
Beyond the visible world.
Aherne. All dreams of the soul
End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.
Robartes, Have you not always known it?
Aherne. The song will have it
That those that we have loved got their long fingers
From death, and wounds, or on Sinai's top,
Or from some ****** whip in their own hands.
They ran from cradle to cradle till at last
Their beauty dropped out of the loneliness
Of body and soul.
Robartes. The lover's heart knows that.
Aherne. It must be that the terror in their eyes
Is memory or foreknowledge of the hour
When all is fed with light and heaven is bare.
Robartes. When the moon's full those creatures of the
full
Are met on the waste hills by countrymen
Who shudder and hurry by:  body and soul
Estranged amid the strangeness of themselves,
Caught up in contemplation, the mind's eye
Fixed upon images that once were thought;
For separate, perfect, and immovable
Images can break the solitude
Of lovely, satisfied, indifferent eyes.
And thereupon with aged, high-pitched voice
Aherne laughed, thinking of the man within,
His sleepless candle and lahorious pen.
Robartes. And after that the crumbling of the moon.
The soul remembering its loneliness
Shudders in many cradles; all is changed,
It would be the world's servant, and as it serves,
Choosing whatever task's most difficult
Among tasks not impossible, it takes
Upon the body and upon the soul
The coarseness of the drudge.
Aherne. Before the full
It sought itself and afterwards the world.
Robartes. Because you are forgotten, half out of life,
And never wrote a book, your thought is clear.
Reformer, merchant, statesman, learned man,
Dutiful husband, honest wife by turn,
Cradle upon cradle, and all in flight and all
Deformed because there is no deformity
But saves us from a dream.
Aherne. And what of those
That the last servile crescent has set free?
Robartes. Because all dark, like those that are all light,
They are cast beyond the verge, and in a cloud,
Crying to one another like the bats;
And having no desire they cannot tell
What's good or bad, or what it is to triumph
At the perfection of one's own obedience;
And yet they speak what's blown into the mind;
Deformed beyond deformity, unformed,
Insipid as the dough before it is baked,
They change their bodies at a word.
Aherne. And then?
Rohartes. When all the dough has been so kneaded up
That it can take what form cook Nature fancies,
The first thin crescent is wheeled round once more.
Aherne. But the escape; the song's not finished yet.
Robartes. Hunchback and Saint and Fool are the last
crescents.
The burning bow that once could shoot an arrow
Out of the up and down, the wagon-wheel
Of beauty's cruelty and wisdom's chatter --
Out of that raving tide -- is drawn betwixt
Deformity of body and of mind.
Aherne. Were not our beds far off I'd ring the bell,
Stand under the rough roof-timbers of the hall
Beside the castle door, where all is stark
Austerity, a place set out for wisdom
That he will never find; I'd play a part;
He would never know me after all these years
But take me for some drunken countryman:
I'd stand and mutter there until he caught
"Hunchback and Sant and Fool,' and that they came
Under the three last crescents of the moon.
And then I'd stagger out.  He'd crack his wits
Day after day, yet never find the meaning.
And then he laughed to think that what seemed hard
Should be so simple -- a bat rose from the hazels
And circled round him with its squeaky cry,
The light in the tower window was put out.

I am Janus, born and lived of two faces.
One, a tragic Hero; who loved  for all and forsook fame for honor.
A paragon whose powers and skills remained dormant, forgotten.
Created from a darkness so black that light could only ever be the way forward.
He, so loving the world and resigned to protect; would fall at the strength of his own sword to keep the Villain at bay.
His other face, the frightening Villain; he thirsts for the unparalleled fear in the eyes of the unprepared masses,  who wide awaken their darkest fear before their very eyes, at his presence.
Forged from the evil of a holy goodness ripped too sweetly from his purpose, and with much foreknowledge of the searing light;
He merely wishes to satiate his amusement, by enslaving the Hero to defend against his endless onslaught.
I am Janus, cloven in two;
Heart and Soul, Mind and Body.

I know that I will at times struggle for words…or even use too many to say too little.  Expect this. It is part of me. I will try to connect myself to the world, to circumstance, to people, with words. I attempt to stitch my fingertips to what I touch, see, and feel, with what I say. I attack with words. I defend with words. I seek, run, build and dismantle with words. There is sometimes in me a necessity for silence. But it does not come often enough. Why? It is because I fear it. I fear what silence means, because words are tangible, hey can be defined, put in boxes, made to be straight or curved, applied in context, and analyzed even for meaning separate of context. But silence? Silence can mean so many things.  There are clues with softer edges that require much more foreknowledge to obtain. Silence can be shaped by emotion into something in the mind of the beholder that it is not to the one who sits quiet. Words too can be misconceived, but with words, things are definable and misconception is almost always evident to one or the other. With silence, misconception is often left in ignorance. Both the silent and the listener are unaware of the other’s thoughts and intentions with silence. Silence is at least as powerful a tool as words.  They may both change the courses of lives. There is a time for silence and for speaking. But it is my mind which fails to know when silence is more necessary, because my mind almost by nature uses words to explain or ascribe meaning to almost everything and anything I experience.  See how long this single entry is? To explain words and their role and importance to me I am using words, because in my emotions, words are bridges, and silences are those bridges burning.  I am using words, but I will learn to use silence.

It’s a simple, mundane day, yet busy with an absolute slew of schoolwork
I take up a table in the library, high up on the 4th floor, overlooking
The shapes below with different work in the same time and place
There’s a large model airplane, an early model,
Suspended by cables that attach themselves to the far walls,
Yielding the illusion of mid-flight

It appears I wasn’t the only one with the idea to seclude myself this high;
Around me are the detached murmurs of still more students, bent
On the conclusion of their labors, some more eager than I, some less so
And closer to me, on a juxtaposed table, is another student, about my age
Shuffling through what looks like math
But I don’t pride myself much on intrusion, so I let him be

For hours we all toiled, us in the 4th floor and us down below
The music of light concentration, fluttering pages, a utensil,
Swathing through those immobile wings and dwindling on the propeller
The time is rapidly becoming the enemy in all our bingo books
And of the books stacked in the cluster of cases, some of which will no doubt remind one
Of the timeless saying that ‘time waits for no one’

The student of the table next to me is still at work, and I’m still at work
And people file in and out of the door which leads downstairs,
Faces going in with indignance and a foreknowledge of what they’re to do
Faces leaving triumphant, secured in another day’s duty crossed off
I steal a look at the student close to me
I see him pass a tired hand over his eyes
(I agree with his plight)

By now we’ve been swarmed with a million like us
Jumping from table to table to seat to seat, in groups or in respectable solitude
A veritable mosaic of people, a timelapse in ironic real-time, elapsed second onto second
The darkness crowds the unlucky surfaces of the windows, tries to push in
And like lichen stuck to sea rocks amid a terrible tidal storm we remain
Jaded and mentally broken down, but finally we see each other

He looks at me dully, I return it with a shrug and the slightest smirk
And I think we both understand it
Though no words needed to pass through the air, nor signals of the eyebrows,
The hand, the heavy persistent  sigh
We’ve seen the lapse, just us and the jetstream of the world unending
And he looks away, and I look away at the suspended plane, still as it ever was

There are some days
When one fatal heart-wrenching
Rejection can cascade into a torrent
Of gut-punching, sick-inducing barrages of failure.
One rejection after another for one long week
Of un...something misery.

The first, well, I saw it coming.
There was a heavy inevitability about it in the air
Like the thick sweat before a summer storm.
Yet, despite this, almost foreknowledge,
My heart still lies in shattered pieces,
My head awash with regret, self-loathing,
And a deep inexplicable sadness.
Swiss chocolate - she was meaningless,
Surely soon forgettable,
But in that moment ever so sweet...
And the sight of her would brighten up my day.

The second was a reminder of my "situation" -
That constant battle between our demons and our angels,
The latter of whom have mostly hung themselves by this stage,
Or drowned themselves in vats of ciders,
Awaiting judgement or an epiphany.
Maybe they were waiting for a train,
And the demons simply gave a firm push,
Or whispered sweet infinities into your ears
As they bristled against the breeze atop a tall building.

The third was another, somewhat self-inflicted, destruction.
Less a rejection, and more an ultimatum:
"Sort your ******* life out Thomas
Because you're ruining hers tall, dark, and handsomely."
- That's not what she said, but it stung,
More or less, with the same venom,
Whilst maintaining that same tinge of flirtatious tone.
Somehow I stumbled into this mess without malicious intent -
Just a stupid little boy with a box of matches,
And a canister of petrol, and a blissful unawareness
Of the inevitable inferno.
Undoubtedly, the demons are laughing
At all the tears that will surely come.

The fourth was particularly unfortunate.
In classic "Thomas" style my first thoughts were to hit restart.
I wonder if all Thomas' are arseholes?
I mean obviously Edison was, and no doubt
There was malice behind Thomas the Tank Engine's smug grin,
But I wonder if it is a scientific certainty, or just dumb luck?
Needless to say I packed my bags in my head
And applied for the trabajo.
New start. New beginning. Old cliché.
And inevitable rejection -
One I didn't see due to my
Rebounded energy to avoid failure.
The repetitive nature of life's cycle is somewhat nauseating.
What kind of sadist designed this ride?
I wonder if his name was Thomas too?
Ah well, I've nothing better to do. "Another go, please."

Do it!
Don't ******* ***** to me about doing it.
Just ******* do it!
Regret comes later.
We'll have time to deal with that when you're bleeding out because her boyfriend didn't appreciate the sentiment in you pleasing pretty girls with full foreknowledge and a divine purpose.

She hurt you?!
Well lets ruin that ******* life.
Where does she live?
I can take us there right now.
Now don't ******* tweet without dropping a name, just go light her ******* lawn and we'll laugh while we ***** up blood from that disgusting ******* ***.

I'm so alone.
Man *******!
You had three girlfriends by the time you were sixteen
I had you.
So when I slept early it's because I was busy crying because the other kids got ahead of me and I had to replace handjobs with poetry a fact I fail to regret to this day.

They rock!
Imagine how cool a stage dive would be.
Get up here.
I'll fall first and you just follow me.
Metalhead ******* cheering for me when I can't even distinguish the words that are written to make me feel angry, someone ******* drop me just so I can hit somebody.

**** the system.
Or just don't be a ******* tool.
You're all generic as ****
Why argue the fact?
There are so many reasons to own a ******* pocket watch and because society wears one on it's fat, ******* wrist isn't one I'll accept as perfectly valid.

Life's hard.
You don't want to do it any more?
You've been telling me for weeks
But that's what knives were made for.
You have to puncture just a little hole and get a feel for life dripping away and then we move to the big leagues of ****** and suicide and feel entirely free of your immense emotional torture.

But who cares?
The future will still be there.
Just you won't be.
Nobody'll give a ****.
I can twist your thoughts and let you see that you'll live on in the grass that grows from that hole we dug for you not that long ago, but just **** that.
You're ******* dead.
Deal with it.

Our routine entwines filaments of comfort
Finely woven between gaps of unoccupied time
My hands wrinkle with the loss of my
youth
Cracks and flakes of dryness and Future
I am only 23, but my soul says otherwise

My fingernails grow like tree branches
I cut them down and use them as swords
Battling imaginary creatures who stalk my shadow
Each victory harms my ego
Each trophy an intangible farce

Foreknowledge and foresight allowed me to
forego certain forgotten ceremonies;
I encounter them on the road to Manhood
Avoiding each by traveling the dark impasse
I cloak my yearning in a wool coat and a bright red scarf

Bound by absurdity,
I become the High Priest of Ritual
Anointed with the experience of Curiosity’s fluid influence
I wade in the shallow waters to catch my breath
I see you walking on the pier,
Pensive and lonely

**I am too late.

one.
we traced outlines of our frames
in chalk on sidewalks

two.
You asked me if I would marry you under the oak tree
in your backyard with fireflies as our
witnesses  
I said, I do

three.
We started kindergarten
today and I asked you to
build our future house out of legos
you looked at me like I had three heads and
pushed me down.
They said, Boys will be boys
you said the same thing on my porch that
afternoon but you gave me a flower you picked
from your mother’s garden and said you wouldn’t do it again.

four.
You stopped coming over to catch fireflies
and hold my hand.
My mom said that we grew apart
but I told her that we had promised to get married
in spring in your parents yard under the tree we climbed
that year when I fell and broke my arm.
She told me I fell in love like a child
but
how could i fall in love any other way?

five.
So isn’t it fitting that I fell in love with a Boy
afraid of heights?
Who never even had foreknowledge of what it felt like to fall.

The pain is unrelenting,
and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come-
not in a day,
an hour,
a month,
or a minute.
If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary;
more pain will follow.
It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.
So the decision-making of daily life involves not, as in normal affairs,
shifting from one annoying situation to another less annoying-
or from discomfort to relative comfort, or from boredom to activity-
but moving from pain to pain.
One does not abandon, even briefly, one’s bed of nails,
but is attached to it wherever one goes.

In Ulzana's Raid,
the Native- and European-American concepts of property
      ownership and rights
are incompatible and irresolvable. McIntosh
had no illusions about that. He said hating Apaches for killing
      whites
is like hating the desert for having no water.
I suspect the movie's not a good source of anthropological
      data
and overlooks the commonalities among human communities
to focus on just a few bold characters
as all art must.

I consider McIntosh fortunate
to have died commensurate with the way he lived his life,
rolling a final cigarette, nothing between him and the desert,
and no gravediggers waiting, jesting, defecating. Also,
he is lucky to have had one last, dispassionate friend
to whom there is nothing left to say, the Chiracahua tracher
Kah-ti-nay.

Last night's performance of Beauty and the Beast
may have been the most victorious, ecstatic, cohesive
moment in our little school's history. Emily was Beauty, a
      filament of energy
who doesn't like to be touched and has been known to punch
boys hard. She had memorized her lines until she was hardly
Emily but only Beauty in a blue dress unselfconsciously
hiking up her tights between the Beast's advances.
Is this done in every American town and the world
over so there's no need to feel lost or lonely
ever?

There is no context for a man
outside the platoon or raiding party, home or shop.
When violence comes to the neighborhood,
the hierarchy of communicants will hold or fold
it is then the peace work proves relevant. I noticed McIntosh,
grizzled as he was, accepted the given hierarchy, a raw
      lieutenant's orders,
as he did the desert and Apaches, with a shrug and
      foreknowledge
of the outcome. If there's anywhere with no Emily or Beauty
we should bring them such blessings at the point of a
gun. But there is no place without Emily, not
the least-known prison in deepest space as long
as we do not hate or hurt or shun
the Beast.

It’s easy to discern the who what where and when
Compared to the divination of why.
Why are we here?  Why are we alone?
Why are we tortured with foreknowledge of death?

Stop.

That’s the most important why, perhaps.
For it plucked us from the trees
And set us on course
To make some sense of our shortage of days,
To ****** the brass ring of eternity
If only in the collective memory.

(Let us here pause
And give a moment’s thought
To the countless anonymous
Who sacrificed all their
Fleet-footed hours
And all human joy
For attainment of eternity
In the memory collective
Only to have been
Promptly forgotten
In the first moment of
Posthumous silence.)

But this quest is amoral,
It does not specify
Whether fame or notoriety’s the prize.

This is the apple of Eden
The tree of knowledge.
It is the crux of sentience

(Poor sentience,
robbed by redefinition
of all salience and pride,
Left lying shop-worn and ill-used.)

It’s the fear of time, the root of crime
And our demand for assistance devine.
Are our whole lives a scream of protest
Against the known inevitable?
Can inevitability even be known
Without the benefit of hind legs?

(Why the quadruped bias?
(and what does this have to do with inevitability?)
Any more than four legs would render
‘Hindmost’ as opposed to ‘hind.’
Let us be specific,
Whether or not it’s
Neither here nor there.)

Why can’t we make peace with our fate,
And accede to the eventual silencing of that
Hated, feared, beloved voice within?
What does nothing feel like?
What does nothing sound like?
Who would be there to tell?

Imagine our lives
If foreknowledge of death,
Did not exist.
What would be sustained?
What would be lost?
What would have never become?
(I know that my ask is unreasonable at best,
The bell has already been rung.
But this is my poem and I’ll ask what I will.)
Could you live in such a state
Of innocence edenic?
Of course not; not as you are.
But then, who, what would you need to be?
If innocence were refundable,
What would that voice,
That lives in a certain place
Between your ears

(Would that voice still
be hated, feared, beloved
under the prospective circumstances,
or would it be otherwise?)

Have to say

(Does a voice ‘say,’
Or does it speak
For it’s master?)

When in quietest solitude?

Are you uncomfortable?
Will you turn the page?
Would you prefer to debate
Than to imagine?
Do we know which way the wind blows?
Are there any more weathermen?
Or are we all meteorologists?
Does it matter?
Did it ever?


For those who remain,
Let me welcome you
To the Realm of Poets and Madmen.
A distinction without a difference.

I fell in love with you
similarly to how people fall in love
with Winter.
With foreknowledge that they will eventually
tire of the cold.

Don't know how to tell you this, but somehow it must be
that someone tells us something and I guess today that's me.

I've thought up lots of somethings and of all the thoughts I've got
the ones I could be sharing are the one's I'd rather not.

See I've made a lot of choices from the dull part of my brain
most without foreknowledge, and of course some caused me pain.

So I go about my business since I'm hired, this is true
when assigned you'd best be following the leader, and I do.

But when I'm free to think alone, I look out on the fields
and contemplate my choices now and how the future yields.

There are things you plan ahead in life and trust, though God is good,
that other folks will treat you well around the neighborhood.

Things we count on, days and nights, the seasons and the years
but words are gold, be bold and God will surely quell your fears.

The best book I am reading, besides the Bible's Truth
the story of George Washington, our founder, from his youth.

Considering the past is wise and don't repeat mistakes
do your best to state your quest, and stay away from flakes.

Give when you are able, do the right thing as it's said
a good man can't be faulted though he's human, heaven led.

Use your gifts, 'a future and a hope' He's promised man
Be wise, get wisdom, realize your time is in His Hand.

Frankenstein's monster will carve the flesh away from crooked and cracked spine.

He will lay it before him, dine on my corrupt core and chew it and taste it
to his liking.

He will lay it before him until I am ground down like cow in malevolent misery mouth.

I will caress the monster's earlobe like a lover loves to touch tentatively.

I will whisper winsome my gratitude in to his deepening, voracious appetite.

Appetite.

I am appealing; I appeal sometimes.

Monsters don't stop.

He is kind, waving his flag of caustic cautionary tails and tales.

He will enable me still I will violate his violently vile mouth.

I will scream skunk scented bile into his diseased eyes.

I will despise his acid belly.

He will laugh.

He will caterwaul, he will sing his celebrity over my aching guts
that are splayed so ******, flinching and twitching for his feast.

In the least, I will show a tired effort of the finished, final scream.

Kindred severance washed down with the finest of red wine
built over breaking bridges that collapse under this foreknowledge;
the monster mocks and flocks like a fleet of wild birds, inside the
married meat of my stride away.

I won't laugh.
I won't smile.
I won't remember.
I won't want.

I will sail like a baby girl delivered into the peaceable tastes of a beginning innocence.

I won't want to remember.

I will want to view an eye that can't see me.
I will want to smell a mouth that hates me.
I will want to taste a hand that closes angrily around my throat.

I will want to hear.
I will want to hear.

I will want to hear you tell me you love me.
I will want hear inside an ear that listens to me.

I will want to devour a bit of interrogating mayhem before it devours me.

I will survive the monster's prowling, hmph...in his putrid spruce pants
he wears to capsize my tries.

Picasso pictures busy themselves around my waist like your arms wind
up love around that girl's.

Shh.

I will hush my turbulent sorrow.
I will hush my endearing memories of the tingling hands
that stand high above my last love.

Reason's charity could've fought my battle but the monster proved
his dedicated engagement
his engaging affliction; he proved his pressuring ability.

I'd like to dance endlessly.
I'd like to movie inside your misery and dissolve, destroy!

Your disastrous danger.

I need a melody survivable, tender through trials of truth.

I knew there would be new.

I've not ever been seclusive, exclusive to you.
I am intrusively presumptuous.

Accept my apologies, I repeat and I repeat, accept my apologies as I've accepted
anxieties

I never expected an embrace.

I don't expect an embrace.

Like that majestic man sips singular sanctuary of that
fantastic, general, genial girl I gulp blue bottles of sky.

I would prefer you drink of me.

Battered, I believe you but choose
you choose
but you choose
the bruise.

There may never be any new for me of you.
There may only ever be you.

Sip me, as I am your Kiss Elixir, feathering against your sable brushes
seeping today, tomorrow and yesteryear.

The tip of my pink tongue tastes your timid tenderness
and your dreaming and driving distinctions quenches
my desires of today, tomorrow and yesteryear.

I am your Kiss Elixir.

Arctic anger wraps inside simple solitude though I've not tasted our separation.

I've sung through every scathing scream you've ever bellowed.

Won't you have me instead?

I am ended.

The monster's claim is one more; another disparate love.

The acquisition of a son
With an adequate corporeality, albeit with certain caveats,
Certain limitations in terms of progeny and posterity,
Had awaken something in the old man,
Certain forces leading him to the altar
And, subsequently, to the nursery once more
(A second son, brought to bear in the established manner.
With a minimum of drama and fanfare.)
The child was loved, in a rudimentary fashion;
While his flesh-and-blood bona fides were beyond question,
He was a consumer, a thing of constant need
More akin to a hardship than his celebrated half-sibling,
Whose command of the spotlight
Served as a gravitational pull for parental affections.

The old man passed on after a spell,
Hanging on long enough for his second son
To stumble onto the precipice of adulthood
(His mother had hot-footed it out
Almost immediately after the burial,
Choosing to stage-mother her feted stepchild)
Though his fatherly wisdom
Was limited to matters of his craft, his business,
Which was left to the young man, though grudgingly at that,
As a sop, a means of getting shet of two unwanted encumbrances.
He’d proved to have much of the old man’s gift,
Whittling and carving puppets and toys and dolls
(Though with a certain grim fury making it evident to all
That the work was not a labor of love)
Rarely stopping to speak to or even acknowledge his clientele,
Except if one of them happened to repeat the time-worn chestnut
That the toy chooses the child, in which case he laughed harshly,
All but barking It’s the purse that closes the deal, not the ****,
And then he would return to carving some doll or marionette,
Which would always seem to have a certain wan look
Around the corners of the eyes, the edge of the lips,
The look of a child’s toy equipped with the foreknowledge
That it was destined for the back of some closet shelf,
The bottom of some attic-bound chest.

i may be an optimist,
but the truth never escapes me
the soldiers in my chest have long
abandoned their posts
with the foreknowledge that
some wars
will never be won

Laughter

They were young at the stage when old people
But not your granny look funny, those young faces looking
Or perhaps not into the future without any trepidation
I enjoyed their laughter even if it was directed at me with
Hair was sticking out of my baseball cap; they looked edible.
I knew with resigned sadness when they came to age I would
Be no more and they would stop laughing and face
A future of devastation, need and hunger and many of them
Perhaps most die of wars no of their making but of what
Political leaders decide today
Despite this foreknowledge, I would like to be there
And laugh with the survivors.

There’s a seat at the table if you’re so inclined.
Bitter herbs and fish are offered, served with bread and wine.
It’s an intimate Seder gathering, just twelve of his close friends.
He calls them Disciples. You know what this night portends.

There’s a seat at the table, for one man’s left early.
Judas seemed racked with guilt, by turns worried and surly.
Did our Host have foreknowledge, or did he merely suspect,
when he pointed out that traitor when they both dipped their bread?

Our Host is reflective; there is much on his mind
As he offers us bread and he blesses the wine.
This week has been a whirlwind of Halcyon days.
He entered by the Eastern gate to much acclaim and praise.

There was that trouble at the temple where the money changers lurk.
You never saw the Lord so angry when about his Father’s work.
Now our Seder is concluding and it has been a long day,
Will you join us at Gethsemane where the master’s gone to pray?

“The creation of man whom God in his foreknowledge knew doomed to sin was the awful index of God's omnipotence. For it would have been a thing of trifling and contemptible ease for Perfection to create mere perfection. To do so would, to speak truth, be not creation but extension. Separateness is identity and the only way for God to create, truly create, man was to make him separate from God Himself, and to be separate from God is to be sinful. The creation of evil is therefore the index of God's glory and His power. That had to be so that the creation of good might be the index of man's glory and power. But by God's help. By His help and in His wisdom.”
― Robert Penn Warren

The Ancient Mariner slaughtered
this ungainly bird around my neck
like a bridle it directs my days
like a talisman it breeds only doom
the poet acts the marksman
his words aim at the all-seeing eye
to blind it of foreknowledge
to skew its vision toward the western sky

Only the bird hears my words
recited like a child's rhyme
only its wings mute my voice
flapping recklessly on deck
the music of my verse turns to spleen
for the ****** masses who assault me
the albatross a mere distraction
an impotent symbol useless and puerile

The bird's plaintive cry resounds
as the measure of all poetic voices
why speak when you can fly
why land when the weight of the world
propels you forward atop faded alexandrines
you can goose-step from height to height
or slosh through the gutter swishing music
into broken light spying feathers at your feet
biting the bullet of your humiliation
plotting the evil in all things