Hip Service
By Julian Malek

The zeal of cobblestone tolerance arrayed in fashionable hues masquerading as crimson secrecy, elevates the tide of man but some boats leak in their foundations. Therefore a cork to every exuberance and a triumphant torch for every sorrow lives onward in collective time. Larks that abound because prescience and PUGET sound, that brown has become the new orange which in turn prowls as a concealed swarthy black. To antagonize the willful and frenetic pace, a prodrome of lasting but memorialized disgrace. Should I move to a state by first or last name, or is the final appellation worthy of much more lasting fame. I scurry down the aisles, bemused by shimmering tiles and the beguiled audiences who see much in my limitation but doubt little about my debited elation. Ringmaster Barnum, how much horticulture is needed for assured superstardom, how many cloisters must we evacuate from the incendiary plumes of a metaphorical Harlem..  But know that no virtual reality can supplant the reality that does truly exist, or at least our time is too infernal and purblind to resist. Carrey the tops of mountains in the humor of wellsprings and fountains, we engage a menagerie of egos lilting of an etiolated pragmatic concern. Evicted from paradise, littered with say-cheese demise ensnaring three blind mice eaten alive by snake-eyed vice. To feel good without incorporated tyranny, we must see blue and red as alternatives to the same destiny. A world that reckons with the futilitarianism of pacified malcontent and astroturf monikers that lead the impressionable into a slaughter shed. Established or not, any enchantment under the sea must include fishes once a pastiche of me, but to them I avoid their courtesy flush and never even faintly blush as my egalitarian statements are lavish thrush.

Five TO Won baby one in 99, everyone here aboard the titanic stays alive, you got your boat baby and I got mine, gonna make it with babies numbered in surreal primes. Halt the slots game the nines, a stitch in time is going to turn out to be Mine. Flanger goals, girded piles, liminal like an aborted Harry Styles, we climb mountains we issue tithes, and the turmoil is etched into 45-notched bludgeons and two-tucked knives. Excuse you, where have you been all day, have you been sauntering in a gentle rain or a genteel pain, have you wallowed beyond the mires of doubt and ranked above David Blaine. I hope you tell me of your magic tricks, rather than your other flicks endeared I stand to fight an ineradicable itch. But if not, you placid pond dented by so many rocks and so many ripples give your heart over to me, before I clinch the special Olympics *******, we ran, we span the homespun garments of your left and right hand, but death is a specter that ghoulishly carouses along the carousel terminal disease we call life. I beseech your deepest affection and want to console you for your deepest struggle, to be there every time wed with time rather than a throttled scuttle. Moons make you guarded but maroons leave me desiccated, don’t ever let that wilted flower die, always water it with a rich but gentle ties and widened deck for all to at once marvel and pry.  Monsters of Mars Attacks once flanked my bed, as though the **** brain scared every gooseflesh and restrained every frisson of mystery. I lampoon myself for those cold Dark Knights and the protection ended by the plight of the poor mattering nothing to the deliberately internecine rich. I struck gold in a valley somewhere, an oxymoron of paradox that now you have the privilege to dock, to stay aboard to be a vessel of peace less widely deplored. Even if we don’t sprout wings, we garner the exactitude of measured things and our glass elevator though easily shattered by the glower of enslavement is actually our vista to heaven or listening to brethren tingles for rich mans trinkets and other things. For humanity deserves a legend and a princess, a regimented desuetude and a flanged lust but in our mistakes wildly flouted in momentary moments we become purified by the temptations of an alabaster palace.

***** the left-field wisdom of a pragmatic paragon ellipsis in prison, slip between the cracks and let my suburban muse become your urban ruse. To enchant a caged world beyond a reality delicately and deliberately unfurled. Squirming toads on highways enchanted but dead, are graves for the blue becoming purple in every dignified red. Gainsay assaults me with platitude, a repeated hitter quit on the first bunted ball into foul-line territory. Those gripes are swiped right in all circumstance no matter the plight. The pronged hearing of a trident sensitive to ambient collection, and suddenly we are all in the mad house even though the house of profaned pain is much worse. Glimpses of gambits that gambol for nickels in transit as occult grenades and known dice waddle through without artifice or device, and the laughter and slaughter that trains collegiate minds, differs no more than the tropes of a glamorous violence articled in sordid rhymes. This surfing movie means so much more than Surf Wax America pristine in limited but sacrilege nirvana. Teen spirits smell muskier than 90s pop dreams, the grasp and grunge of gouged eyes becomes a mummified staid, a scarecrow to those who disobey. Childhood flashes with blinding light, and new sight illuminates darkening blight, A blight eradicated only by two magazines and including one that houses the bullets that ***** themselves between death and comatose dreams both within astral sight. Littoral harbor on a seaside town, a shanty with a brackish gown that glides the gourmand to the cosmopolitan eatery on the outskirts of lost & found. But forever lost in embonpoint and forever gained in chavish that exonerates the gaunt, the etiolated prince in heart becomes irrefutable marrow in minded souls.

If I am a spy you are an ESPY, and if I cry than you are a baby,but since neither are the case my wiseacres will cultivate lava lamp dreams for a new generation and suddenly Boston bets on Harvard, but who knows of this piped blather squirming for relevance rather than voguish but temporary chatter. My regatta knows how to swim, my life now knows how to cringe and yet still win and in stilted plays of bungled sincerity the God of peace reminds us of our transcendent personalities. That we in sincerity top the barnacles of invention a novelty but a rarity. But the guillotine quill of emboldened unscripted parvenus ruthless in their eager dues, outdate and outlive the sued swayed blues that indemnify Clinton and make the atomic dog an amazing Winston hill a church often in sheltered disuse. Imps and urchins sting the sentiment, cloy the alimony of repentant betterment, but neither touches the gilded skies of pleonasm striving for raspy disguise as to dissuade further diatribe investigation. Lurking in those scared days of youth, the gore of unalloyed horror scourged me with a limp, that compassion itself could ever become a gimp. Now years later athletics better and scoring goals making the mildew sweat and the years wetter, not a global warming that can be alarmed by global mourning. Take peace at heart if distanced spears of separation make Idiocracy as a pastiche look exceedingly smart. And spar only with the true antagonists bridging malevolence with expedience. Killjoys sure, will joy even more sure, but still boys fluttered heart stopping dead at a stop-watched alarm the worst tragedy of our sordid sort. Give an African Child a real home rather than a spatial roam, a palatial desiccation of momentary Jonas Brothers snapping back at captives with sexualized foam.

Narrative blinds shuttered in an Island among mountains hardly ever wiser to sanitize the sanitarium among the wasps of stung power. Police crumple their uniforms as they prowl down the avenues, looking for misfits and widened platitudes. Somehow that the vigilance of those corrupted by their very career choice, look even worse when megalomania of private is the limelight of public, to their defense few turrets I can muster but castles in the sky will be the apartheid judge. Those that cling to virtue to eradicate Porsche-driven faked or real deaths at the most breakneck speed, that Fast & Furious operation if disclosed completely would turn the Shire of the ring into the hatred curtailed by a song in Sing-Sing. Immunity must not Yoda implore, that livery Liverpool marooned on islands can also to deplore the R.E.D. and still whet the sharpened stead and the fly-by-night Manchester United alights like militant peer pressure for wranglers in tights. But beating the Beatles at a game of Walruses and egg-shelled eyeful towers likely impedes rinkside hockey from anything over bellicose ballyhoo…it exists as a transient fixated glower. But who knows about soccer speculation when love is the transcendent temptation, when nest-egg hens rather than neglecting rig Bens of clockwork and clocked words designed arise better for their token ken. Do I must repeat the subtext of submarines, yellowed as though ugly unused as though unseen, as though the quixotic earthquakes of tintinnabulations Avatar dreams. Wafted souls console the disheartened thoughts of a dashed dream that Berlin hates more than a Furor’s unbridled and useless scream.
Demotic clips slinging from the bedridden silence of a token moon and its token friends, swimming in a shore of ambiguity whether history mellows or whether its furor melts away momentary doubts. I want to avoid the sting rays exorcised by due providence and become the amalgamated talents gentry and of course the upstart swagger of Jack Dawson. But with the psy-op going on, the people manipulated on all sides of a gray picket fence will the relationship bloom without muttered dissent or pretended smiles. Will we take upon the shuffled shuttle and dig with shovels deep-rooted Christmas trees and toast our lives to Dos Equis. We may never go out of style, but the treacle of illuminated imagery when divorced from sentiment bristle shows a swagger that prioritizes rather than amalgamates all love. I love being brash and brazen and honest because when she finally ditches the grandstand of delayed frenemies fandoms of other tinsel decorations without any substance beyond meretricious thrill. You want a roller coaster on some days, but most often you want the nutcracker to elope to secret hiding places. Swim with adventure not just in love, not just in affection with the starlight now matter how luminous, sixpence all the richer is no centuries any poorer and we could be that gilded couple of star and screen and if we ever have to scream, let our screams unite us in passion, rather than a milquetoast deference to pedestaled beauty. but of course the end times don’t laugh at your crumpled wizened relapse. Not out of convenience wed by a discriminating genetic harvest moon but a deeper engagement that flatters when stylish and bristles when romantic but never defiled, never riled of specious pretense. Promise me that you will always remember me in my flaws and my faults, in my scause factory destructions and the penults of PEN-ULTIMATE wisdom that comes before the grace of God in the annihilation of passion for eroded omission. If your goal is to be remembered, check that out…but the most admirable goal is as the propinquities of souls dusted in the wind returning to a spring equinox of passion and if you find in yourselves reservations do not depart from sacred land, and never jilt me because of a boisterous and menacing friend. You are everything to me right now, and I Hope this persists despite the vicissitudes of star-favored afflictions mixed with utter benediction without the pontification of stilted Benedictines  or rather the hyped ludic effrontery of termagants being made of younger and younger women. Leave it at this ,32 leaves the royal secret in royal hands and the Knights Templar and us we altogether hold hands, if only a prelude for a masquerade ball. But the stilted embarrassment of crestfallen time, let that be relegated and emphatically lets embrace what is like to not ever need a real white horse to get back into your favor, because we never go out of style we can brandish the best elements and reject the sentiments of the too newfangled and the too stodgy. We in our crenellated pleonasm can eager ride the lightning to another tomorrow and another yesterday and if even not that, we virtually make an indelible impression of embroidered love not too distant in ivory towers and not to vulgary( catering to popular sentiments) to become a trash glam movement. We soar, others deplore but let their purblind doubts render them blind to our burgeoning love.

Forget the brisk trees dangled in the wind on winding paths through haunted forest or remember them because of ghoulish fortress but with our apotropaic lamp we can avert most evil and call the rest fun and gains and shun but fames never profaned, never inalterable a destiny to magical to be some whimpered catcall. Or we could linger beneath lambent street lights disguised as though wilted garb, attrition of circumstance waiting patiently for the matinee and the vintner to escort us beyond the garb of pretense in a city so abundant with it that it deserves castigation. But I digress, a beachside cliff overlooking tepid waters tumultuous in their power but august in their noises, the cadence of love will sing a half-moon bay on full-moon nights and we will frisk each other like grasping at straws of permanent tracks trammeled of the elite and a sidetracked basque bet. Trim those antlers and instead grow metaphorical wings, to us we all sing but few can match your elegance and everyone would be crazy not to see your ennobled age and together thrilling songs to emulate thriller in sales we will collaboratively sing.
Haughty sneers from lifeless lycanthropy straggling furtively along the pastiched sidewalks of grime, livid because they can’t share the lingering limelight, with as many guarded perks of privacy clambering like a hive of snarky sharks. Lets ditch the big town dreams in terms of posh and stature if only for a caressed moment beneath the unadulterated stars and if you find spars **** to the extent they are amiable than I say guess what my name is Lars! Or wait a second, paused in the big city spotlight our stenciled hearts will guide whatever progeny is yours or mine or ours together we will sing the most comforting lullaby, and caves no longer must we abide. Yearn and earn every inch, as I gripe with my delicate saddened pinch but I think the innuendo speaks . Ripen with our trips to Napa, long afternoon sunsets swim in our hearts as we taste the vanguard’s toast on elegant wine.I console with entreaty to disavow the omen of that San Franciscan church October 2008, the doom implied by Einstein, the raillery of a world grinding down the endless decadence of a railed future inalterable in destiny or partialy amenable to widespread coquetry.

Forget those rumbles in your past that made you feel partial to insecurity and learning the ropes you transcended all and live in all eternity. Thimble and brook, tolerant of all those tokes I took your rebellious side flattens the yeast of Exodus raspy in its begrudged clapping. But the Pharaoh of the modern world sheltered me under his prickly thorns, shielded me from the sickly things that life adorns. We have the numbers on our side, the weight of destiny on our shoulders, dedicate yourself to yourself and I will preen the most vibrant wisdom and love will leap like Apollo across all borders not for camel-****** hoarders. We are culminated destiny in the wings of the best daydream

what forests are those we pass,
blazing along the railway tracks,
a tree bloom of still cranes,
stream black of ******* bane,

stench of dead city rubble,
factories of rusted cast metal,
distant cotton twilight skies,
sun slide across a bunch of wires,    

passing tunnels echo
lonely platforms, frantic gecko,
looming hillside,
crackle dry wood fire,

a god barred in lock&key, 
blink glimpse of the sea 
one rush of vision,
pebble fling at frisson,

metal-crunch rhythm,
grind music sublime,
spark, grunt, grate,
we arrive, we dissipate...

for Sally, Bex and Tonya, Denel and my beloved

<>

gods do not seek forgiveness,
or comprehension,
desertion, desecration, ascension
or condemning condescension

but how how they crave
just a good conversation,
to get a word in edgewise,
a nice chat,
entrée à, la tête-à-tête,
entre deux, deluxe-amis

a casually talking,
absent of
words of need and beseech,
reason and causality,
and no I or We pronouns,
sans enunciations and annunciations,
false hopes for incarnations, incantations,
set asides for life's grievous aches
all human requests, and some of God's commandments
for now, set aside,
annulled

just a talk,
some repartee,
but mostly an open ear lent,
an early morn quiet listen
over tea (he/she) and coffee (me),
paying attention to
both sides of an interactive story

as recompense for my willingness to be,
his engaged counter party,
my mourning gloomier cloudiness,
quick exchanged for instant,
rising sunshine warming glorious

my vista
of a bay dancing
to Tchaikovsky Swan Lake ballet music,
deftly inserted between
an Agnus Dei and an Ave Maria

mood music he said,
and we chuckled,
he/she was god and orchestrated
my tastes,
Adele et Dudamel,
comprehending my undesirable apprehension,
by granting my needy wish for
poetic inspirational composition contentment

all exchanged,
for just a good listen,
no judgements, in either direction

I am the god of love,
the one who makes you weep,
when you study your beloved's rising chest,
each uplifted breast heaving,
a confirmation blessing,
that her life is present
for at least the next second,
ready for your magi adoration

be not fearful,
this day we talk only,
as I pass by,
I have no business to conduct,
on your island of sheltering redoubt,
but to engage and unburden
for even gods
are required to confess,
and aging godheads do adore
a human shoulder
upon to rest,
a great invention,
(If I may say so myself)
and to whom better to address
than my only love poetry
poète personnelle

here he off-guards me
with a favorite injection,
Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings,
music so sweet that it never fails
to weaken my knees,
sweeping my eyes unto weeping
priming me with this first coat of
sounds so elementary soothing

he half-bows before me and says,

forgive me human, for I have sinned

in Dallas and Nice,
just this past week,
with forays here and there,
doing god's work

read your bitterness and struggle,
anger and forgiveness all in one crust,
furious curses and wails so plaintive,
my heavenly musicians weep from jealousy,
at the cries emanating from the fired fury song
of human hearts torn and love plundered

I am the god of love

and

the god of pain and all that is the

anti-love

(and to make me better understand,  
Schindler's List score, so sweetly,
he plays for me,
to clarify the atmosphere,
that death and love -
and the courage of understanding,
so oft go hand in hand)

write me a love poem for me,
no hymn or sonnet do I require,
for love is essence of forgive,
there is no perfect union,
that cannot stand,
with out this emotion of
conciliatory intermediation

tell me you understand
that the scales
of bereft befallen,
disparate chance interrupting randomized,
must periodic perforce
sometimes weigh more,
than the good of simple

balance tip that creative god spark within,
of which you write,
away from my bloodied, unsightly hand

write me one more love poem
a frisson semi-sweet and cleanly neat,
of good things sad,
but worthy of remembrance

you are not the first for this bequest to receive,
other poet's before and after,
will Jacob-wrestle with my angels,
battling to find the...

no matter

"my love to thee is sound sans crack or flaw"^

let your love poem
to me
be of whole healing,
for these disarrayed feelings
cannot forever persist,
the perfect balance you desire
is not on your Earth existent,
unobtainable

these cracks and flaws must and will come


and yet

love poems
will be our common language

and then he/she left,
leaving this poem behind,
born from my mind, yet,
carved on my skin,
written with the nib of my rib,
sealed and signed,
future undefined,
but dated upon my
cleansed hand's lifeline,
hand held outstretched
as if to say

“and yet"

I woke up to a beautiful summer morning. The sun was shining and the rainclouds were far away. I decided I would spend the day on the beach. I always enjoy visiting the beach as it gives me an opportunity to laugh at people's hideous bodies. But where? And then, suddenly, a wonderful idea came to me: why not go to a nudist beach as they always attract the ugliest people with the worst bodies imaginable. And you get to see their naughty bits too, for added humour.

So I rushed to my computer to check the Internet for possibilities and, to my utter amazement, I discovered there was a naturist beach only fifty miles from my beautiful home. As I read the details of the beach and the directions, I had a sense of déja vu; I realised with a frisson of ****** anticipation that it was the very same beach described by Victor the ****** in his wonderful story "Confessions of a ******" which held pride of place on my toilet reading shelf.

I was at the wheel of my incredibly expensive and luxurious car just as soon as my servants had packed my essential requirements: icebox with chilled vintage champagne, lightweight folding gold-plated sun-lounger, vicuna picnic rug and of course my lunch hamper. My chef had rapidly prepared a delicious impromptu luncheon of smoked salmon, steak tartare and a selection of other goodies. I decided to dispense with the services of my chauffeur in the interests of preserving the confidentiality of my destination.

In less than an hour and a half I was there; and the place was exactly as Victor had described it in his immortal novella: a long stretch of mixed sand and pebbles, backed by dunes planted with wild grass, waving romantically in the sea breeze. Idyllic, and crawling with naked perverts as a bonus. I parked my car and transported my equipment to the dunes. I regretted not having brought one of the servants as the hamper and icebox were quite cumbersome and heavy. I was perspiring gently by the time I had unloaded everything and set it all up to my satisfaction.

I took some care in selecting what I felt was the optimum location as I needed to combine the potentially conflicting benefits of wanting to see as many naked people as possible (hopefully including some *** action) with the need for privacy. After all I am famous. I finally chose a spot where there were several ghastly specimens on view for a few laughs and where I could also see a potentially interesting couple who might be exhibitionistic perverts. The man was about 45, shaven-headed, skinny and prematurely wrinkled all over by the sun (yes, I do mean all over) and he had an interesting tattoo on his back: "I love hot ***** ***", which I saw as promising. The woman was plump with pendulous ******* and very prominent buttocks; additionally - how can I put this delicately? - her **** was totally bereft of hair.

Before settling down to my lunch, I felt a little perambulation would not come amiss. So, as bold as brass, off I went for a little **** stroll through the dunes. I will not describe in full detail the visual horrors I encountered: hirsute old men playing aimlessly with wizened, shrunken todgers the size of a thimble; obese old biddies, their rolls of sun-tanned lard hanging round them like rows of bloated udders on a pregnant sow; tattooed bald queens, muscles bulging under lashings of sun-oil, their pierced genitals glinting wickedly in the sunshine; the list was endless. How could such grotesques revel in revealing their corporeal repulsion to the eager world?

And then I saw him! It had to be him! In a dip in the sand dunes lay a middle-aged, paunchy little man, intently watching a couple of old ******* groping each other incompetently. It could only be Victor the One-Legged ******! After all, just how many unipod Peeping Toms are there?

I strolled over to him, coughing discreetly so as to give him a chance to stop his furtive *******. 'Do excuse me for disturbing you,' I said, 'but are you by any chance Victor the famous ****** whose confession I read only last week?'

'Why yes,' he admitted, 'but how on earth did you recognise me?'

I smiled and pointed to the cast-off artificial leg lying next to his beach towel (which, incidentally, was emblazoned by a giant "V", a bit of an identity hint, I felt). He patted his stump ruefully and laughed uproariously so that his average-sized ***** flapped like a pennant in a Force Eight gale. 'I forgot,' he bellowed deliriously.

'I'm just about to have a spot of lunch,' I said. 'My personal Michelin-starred chef, Jean-Claude Anusse, always over-caters ridiculously as he knows I often pick up people on my excursions, so there'll be more than enough. I'm afraid it's nothing special: some smoked salmon and some assorted cold meats, possibly a spot of pâté de foie gras, if I know Jean-Claude. And, naturally, enough champagne to drown a hippo in. Please do say yes, as I have so many questions to ask you about your hobby.'

'That's very kind of you.' mumbled the astonished Peeping Tom, 'I should be very happy to accept your generous offer. Incidentally, to whom have I the honour of speaking?'

I was, frankly, shocked when I realised Victor had not recognised me, and then I remembered I was naked. That explained it. 'Why, I am none other than Edna Sweetlove, poetess to the stars, creator of the Barry Hodges "Memories" poems and biographer to the intrepid and incredible superhero SNOGGO,' I murmured sotto voce, not wishing to be mobbed for my autograph.

'Edna Sweetlove!' he exclaimed, 'you mean THE Edna Sweetlove?' And so saying he glanced down to my genital zone in order to answer the question which so many of my fans have asked over the years. He grinned as he saw the solution to the great mystery.

Victor quickly strapped on his prosthesis and accompanied me (slightly lopsidedly) to my little luncheon site. He helped me unpack our repast and then made himself as comfortable as a naked one legged ****** could reasonably expect to be without a chair.

I must say Chef and his team had excelled himself in the thirty minutes I had given them: smoked salmon roulades, a magnifique plateau de fruits de mer including a three-pound giant lobster, steak tartare, a whole cold pintarde à l'ail, a few dozen sushi rolls, a monster summer pudding, and naturally a Jeraboam of Krug '92. No wonder the hamper had been so ******* heavy. I could see Victor was impressed as I offered him a chilled flute of the most expensive champagne he had ever tasted. 'Better than the pathetic, poverty-stricken muck you were going to gobble, I expect,' I commented in a friendly way.

'Mmmmmmmmm! Absolutely delicious, Edna. I was certainly not expecting this! exclaimed the grateful freak. But before we start on what looks like a truly exquisite nosh-up, I must give you a word of warning.'

'A word of warning? What about, Victor dear?'

'Well, you see, there's no, um....er,' he blushed charmingly.

'No what, Victor? Don't be embarrassed, sweetie. This is Edna you're talking to. Spit it out, baby.'

'Well, um, there's no ******* on the beach, Edna,' explained Victor uncomfortably. 'So, if you need to pump ship, you have to do it native-style "au naturel" in the dunes over there, which can be a bit messy what with all the filth lying about the place in that area, not to mention the lavvo-voyeurs hanging round. Or else you need to swim out a bit and unload into the sea. Judging by what's on offer at your stylish picnic, we'll both be bursting for a good old **** and crap afterwards.'

I shrieked with laughter and explained there was nothing I liked better than a widdle en plein air or a double act dans l'eau. We then tucked into lunch with a vengeance. It was ******* delicious, even though I say so myself. After about fifteen minutes' happy munching, interspersed with witty small talk, Victor suddenly went rigid. 'Look over there!' he hissed and indicated the middle-aged couple by the windbreak.

I looked and I was surprised. The plump woman with the big *** was on her knees in front of her partner, giving him a vigorous *******, and he was lolling back in ecstasy, a broad smile on his face. He seemed to be looking straight at us, almost visibly willing us to watch. He winked repeatedly in a conspiratorial fashion; maybe he had St Vitus’ Dance. Or even worse, he wanted me to get stuck into the action with them.

'They're regulars here, they normally put on quite a good show,' explained Victor excitedly, his hand reaching down automatically to his rapidly stiffening ****.

'Victor!' I admonished him, 'I would prefer it if you didn't **** yourself off during lunch. How about another oyster, you silly old ****?'

'Sorry, Edna, I forgot,' he replied shamefacedly. 'No more oysters thank you; they only make me more randy than I already am. But I'll have another lobster claw if I may. My compliments to your chef.'

So we sipped our champagne and enjoyed our luncheon as we watched the couple give us their little exhibition. After a few minutes *******, the fat lady turned around and leaned forward on her hands and knees and her gnarled bald hubby ******* her doggy fashion from behind with some gusto; this made her beefy buns bounce about like two ferrets fighting in a sack.

I glanced around us and realised that, totally unbeknown to me, the little spectacle had attracted quite an audience. Nine men, young and old, short and tall, fat and skinny, stood staring transfixed by the petite scène erotique before us, all ******* wildly. 'Oi!' I called out. 'Can't you see we're eating?' I admonished them, but to no ******* avail whatsoever.

Victor was visibly torn between his innate desire to watch the copulators and masturbators and with his understandable wish not to offend his lunch companion by manhandling himself unrestrainedly. But, thank God, his natural good manners prevailed and we continued to converse and enjoy our meal in the midst of this Bacchanalian scene of depravity.

I watched dispassionately as the couple came to what sounded like a very satisfactory mutual ******, accompanied by the observers' seminal tributes to their performance. I naturally had filmed the entire scene secretly on my state-of-the-art mobile.

'If you give me your email address, Victor my love, I'll send you a copy of that little show,' I promised. He nodded in gratitude. 'Victor  the ****** at yahoo dot co dot uk,' he mumbled rapidly, 'no dots, Victorthevoyeur is all one word.'

Once we had polished off lunch, I told Victor I would like to interview him with a view to writing a short story about his life's work. He was touchingly flattered and, with a little judicious prompting and probing, told me his saga, which I recorded on my Edna-phone. I naturally don't want to pre-empt my forthcoming mini-biography of Victor, but suffice it to say that Victor told me how and why he became a ******, he regaled me with some of the staggering things he had seen, he gave me a list of some really ace ******* locations, he shared all his best peeping places with me, he gave me the ultimate lowdown on the world of Britain's most celebrated *** snooper and I was touched by his burning honesty. I felt a tear ***** my eye at this tragic tale.

All too soon it was time for us to part. After thanking me profusely and making me promise I would visit him one day so he could repay my generosity, he re-attached his metal leg and limped away towards his beach towel. I knew he was raring to go as the best of the action normally took place in the early evening.

'Farewell, dearest Victor,' I called out as he tripped clumsily over a fellow pervert who had been eavesdropping near us.

“He doesn’t even care to keep the knowledge of her possessions a secret, not the least worried about it being stolen”
“What’s worse, is that everyone knows his treasure exists. It’s common knowledge in town”
“How long will it take to get stolen?”
“It’s a matter of days, if you ask me.

He was, however, smiling in the corner. He coerced the enemy into being his friend.  This is why he doesn’t actually disclose himself to anyone, because she might be misunderstood, like what was unravelling right before his eyes. This time however, the misunderstanding just helped him protect his real treasure, something he thought no one could possess because……………

What if you need to think a certain way to know something; and you can’t think that way without feeling or experiencing something else. If that’s true, so much of this world remains hidden in sight, and we don’t even know its hidden.

You can, to an extent, disguise what arises from material belongings immaterially. That’s what makes the key to your locked doors. The keys to your secrets and trust. Our experiences may dictate the way we feel. Look closer however, and there will always be these cracks on the edges of interpretation, these nuances in feelings, small differences that stem out into larger and larger branches until you have at your disposal- uniqueness.

So, here is a complex network of questions and possible answers deconstructed to portray different perspectives of personality, trust and secrets.

Let’s start with trust. It should ideally start with mutual respect and admiration.   Most things fade away, so in reality you are not trusting the other person, you trust yourself to be hopeful enough to believe trust will not wither through time, which is why it may seem like it’s your fault or centered towards you when you are betrayed of trust.

Even the reasons for choosing why we trust others is vastly different for each person. It goes to show how ephemeral our mind is at the microscopic level., almost like no one can truly know us. The reaction of others and their understanding of you may be an external input. But after that the interpretation is yours. And interpretation is slowly built over cycles of overlapping feelings and subtle thoughts.
Can we use this as a “key” to explore parts of ourselves whilst keeping them invisible to others? Can we recover old feelings or find out what means a lot to us, but we remain ignorant to?

Many things that matter deep inside, tend to have a personal lock, like an unspoken connection, or a bittersweet memory we like to visit. The most interesting part about these is that the key for some of these is unpredictable! Any future incident could somehow serve as an access to it, which is what makes personal locks so magical. No one can possess it because of no one, sometimes not even yourself, knows it's meaning to you. Such a key is truly unique, two people may go through the same thing, but for one person alone, that experience could serve as a key.  Here, an experience from the outside world can awaken memories, thoughts that we inadvertently treasured. It can, in a sense, almost transport us to a different timeline.

The phenomenon of getting goosebumps from listening to a piece of music (called frisson), and experiencing a surge of sensory feeling could be a doorway to some great things and could be a sign of higher levels of creativity. When you re-listen to a song you hadn’t listened to in many years, you can relive the time you originally heard it to startling detail. You may notice newer things about memories, be aware of nuanced feelings. Essentially, it becomes something that’s only yours, because you can’t predict how you yourself will be. The only key for such a secret is a unique reaction to an external input.

When you listen to this song, even ambiguously (not attaching it to any particular person or experience), even then when you later hear it, it will be infused with meaning. Why? Because the environment around you at that time possessed some emotional meaning, even if you didn’t know it. It became like recovering a part of you. Like recovering your own perspective on what’s in front of everybody.

Suppose instead of attaching significance, you simply create scenarios in your mind. You just imagine instances and do this repeatedly. Over time, the song’s original meaning will tarnish away. Such imagination gives temporary satisfaction, and even though one can imagine a variety of different scenes and emotions; imagination itself, feels the same. It does not carry any value by itself. It would seem that listening to a song a couple of times and then years later seems to be the world’s best time machine, but when we overplay it, and tamper it using imagination, neural networks get diluted and may not be serve as a very effective train of reminiscence anymore. *^


Mulling things over in our mind in loops can change almost everything about it- it may change a happy sentence into a sad one, a normal experience into a special one, and now these emotions that have been created by you, are like small filters that complicate further experiences.
Consider that two people go through the same experiences from birth. They may not feel each experience to the same degree. The second point is that subtler feelings are experienced by each of them. One may react more heavily, and the other may have auxiliary feeling in more magnitude than the other. Though these differences may be minimal at the start, these subtle thoughts become triggers, just like the initial experience.
Look at what’s happened. Now the seed of subsequent thoughts and emotion is no longer EXTERNAL. Its internalized. As they grow, though material interactions give rise to initial waves of thoughts, our lives are culminated by infinite intertwined feelings and emotions- so for each material interaction, a hundred immaterial ones are processed subconsciously. A symphony can’t be broken down to violins, piano, and drums separately. The feeling that arises when they are played in unison is simply “different” though its just a conglomeration of its parts. This is similar to our mind, and the concept of “The whole is greater than its parts”. What’s more is that the thoughts occurs in different order, and a different order creates a different story.
The concept of “personality” is viewed as abstract sometimes”.  Like character is something that describes the mind, rather than the experience. But this is contradictory, as “Personality” is immaterial, while the experience, the derivative, is material. So, there is a possibility that during this invisible conversion process, our internal reactions and what we make of things in our mind may gradually shape our personality more than the experience itself.


In a strange way, that makes us original. Perhaps not completely original, but it’s possible that no two people are the same, even if they have gone through the same things.
But since the development of originality is subconscious, let us look at conscious examples to put it into application:

Often, there is a part of a song that appeals to us, a favorite part.  When we ask ourselves why that particular melody appeals to us, it may be hard to pinpoint the source of what produced your liking in that part.  Sure, it may mean something like “freedom” or “joy” of remind you of a memory. But why does it mean a specific emotion to you? This is an example of how something that has no direct connection with a memory could possibly trigger a feeling. This is a magical occurrence. It’s extraordinary that a melody can awaken in you a unique emotion, that others may not react to in the same way. It goes to portray how subtly different our minds are. Furthermore, when we create things out of that feeling we derive from the music- make a story based on the feeling, write a new song, or even play it on an instrument- now you have made something that is unique from the depths of your mind. Your own subconscious interpretation.  
Frequency of frisson was positively correlated with overall Openness to Experience, as well as five of its six sub facets: Fantasy, Aesthetics, Feelings, Ideas, and Values. *This may also mean that extensive feeling, or sensing is related to creativity.

Sensory influx, the visual imagery, nostalgia, all point towards creativity, and many renown creative geniuses draw on their sensitivity to fuel creative processes.

Highly sensitive people tend to be more creative, as the depth of feeling offers scope for exploration. The interpretation and emotion felt greatly corresponds to the creation of ideas, and is similar to how interpretation even creates association between senses, or synesthesia.
Infact, drawing on nostalgia can increase imaginative processes

You might have heard of the term “synesthesia”, where sensory experiences get interconnected. A person with grapheme synesthesia, for example, associates letters and numbers with colors. A person with musical synesthesia sees colors effuse out of musical notes. Some synesthetes taste words, smell numbers, etc. It is also a fact* that Synesthetes don’t necessarily share the same sensory experience-though there are commonalities ( ex: most synesthetes associate either black or white with zero), the difference in perception is linked to the environment of growth, childhood*, and if its occurrence is natural, then synesthesia is developed in childhood or at birth.

A Symptom of synesthesia is also reading sentences that seem personified, as though a stranger with different personalities are narrating them. It is interesting to relate this to how there might be different personas in our own head, and sometimes constantly make commentary on our life! It’s like seeing yourself through different perspectives, except these perspectives have defined forms, which makes it easier to assign little quirks to them. If this helps us sense and perceive the world better, and makes us see through multi-colored glasses, it can be very creatively satisfying to have internal conversations, in a positive and uplifting way. We can be a stranger to our own experience, and wouldn’t a change of view be enlightening?

Synesthesia also, may be linked to creativity and metaphors, * and is in a way a example of consciously coming up with original sensory interconnections, a creative process that becomes part of character.  It's connecting something unrelated and different, and an original combination of connection.

So the rearrangement of feelings, and extent to which people sense and feel can contribute to original creations. It is no surprise that many artists and musicians have synesthesia.

Such experiences, with music, nostalgia and conditions like synesthesia are examples of a how we interpret and sense can consciously contribute to originality.


The bottom line is that synesthesia obtains its roots from childhood, but morphs into something complex enough to blur lines of emotion. The proportion of how things are mixed is unique. That proportion is the starting line for all character, and the proportion can be random and unique.
Thoughts feel so diverse and interwoven, that experiencing different facets of it itself can seem synesthetic. Seeing a neon sky, for instance, may not just bring happiness or excitement, but very specific sentience, and a connection to memory, even if it has never been a part of your life at any point of time. The neon sky could mean regret and eccentricity, and flashes of senses may correspond to it. You may feel the aesthetic of a place to strange degrees, and sometimes a simple scenery can seem “wrong” or “sinister”.


  “Why does the neon sky seem eccentric?” “why are roses connected to a past memory that had nothing to do with roses?”

These questions have some intangible meaning behind them. So, it’s not just that people perceive things differently, it’s that their reality itself, a culmination of perceptions is unique, and so are thoughts. And don’t thoughts and ideals shape character in some way? Don't these interpretations become a part of you? A filter for how you perceive the world?


Some song forms a golden thread link with some intense feeling which is connected to a memory you never knew you possessed (this memory may be fictional even) which is linked to a whole little city in your world.  Everything means differently. And as we think and think, these meanings become fine-tuned, and create emotions, thoughts and perspectives that shape our individuality. The essence is that your character may have obtained its roots from the world, but your proceedings, both on the inside and outside, are truly yours. And gradually, proceedings reflect character. More than the roots. It’s a many layered mind that could seem impossible to strip down.

Memories can be similar, but the sequence of memories and thoughts, will likely not be the same.


Here we gently skim the daunting surface of the philosophical idea of “Fictional realism”. A main idea here is to try and question what the definition of something has to be to be considered real. We say “It was a dream, not reality” But did it not feel real? When we read a book, or a movie, and voraciously delve into fictional landscapes, does it not truly feel like we are integrated into it, or rather, it is integrated into us? In that case, since we are real and it is now a part of us, can it be real too? Or can it be real, simply because it exists in our minds? Love and loathing also exist in our minds, but we regard them as a real thing, pulsating with its repercussions. Do we regard something as real only if it has a scope for action? Or if it’s something we can touch or see? In that case, the world will be limited, and there would be a loss of explanation for what gives rise to those actions. It would be like saying “imagination seeds reality”.

Memories and thoughts can be similar, but the sequences of them, even if  slightly  different can grow to be hugely dissimilar. If we can consciously create things when exposed to sensory information, why can't we consider the possibility of subconscious creation of individual character?

My orbs sought yours
Amidst the same old crowd
Waiting to connect
To create a sound so loud
An instant glee
This soul thirsts for
Just one look at me
I won't need more.

​
we always connected
we felt it right away
how our spirits smiled
when we first met that day

i know you well now
when all is said and done
i even know how your toes
point down when you come

now we are good friends
which is how it should be
keeping our distance but
there's ever possibility

when you come close now
a mission i am on
to touch, to taste and join you
in genital frisson

Sonnet.

Que j'aime le premier frisson d'hiver ! le chaume,
Sous le pied du chasseur, refusant de ployer !
Quand vient la pie aux champs que le foin vert embaume,
Au fond du vieux château s'éveille le foyer ;

C'est le temps de la ville. - Oh ! lorsque l'an dernier,
J'y revins, que je vis ce bon Louvre et son dôme,
Paris et sa fumée, et tout ce beau royaume
(J'entends encore au vent les postillons crier),

Que j'aimais ce temps gris, ces passants, et la Seine
Sous ses mille falots assise en souveraine !
J'allais revoir l'hiver. - Et toi, ma vie, et toi !

Oh ! dans tes longs regards j'allais tremper mon âme
Je saluais tes murs. - Car, qui m'eût dit, madame,
Que votre coeur sitôt avait changé pour moi ?

You comfort me, my cover my blanket
Shocking how our electric bodies met
Interesting how I took you travelling
Overwhelming how you became a sheath of warmth
an epitome of hope

It is a mystery how people combine
Whether it is a case of conflicting individuals
Or the mere phenomenon of how souls pair
I need you before I meet you
I miss you and yet I forget you
Once with you I know I have what I've been looking for

My portal to higher worlds
My partner in creating new energies
It is in making love with me
How the physical eyes close and the ethereal open
Your etheric body glistening as mine charges yours
Joining the divine in creation, where those watching - entertained -
whisper words of motivation
In this centered point of fusion, lust is an illusion
Our vibration high and muse sinking as voice does sigh
Some advanced life-forms jealous and aroused
attempting to possess your body to have a piece of me
The low beings trying to possess me to evil bring

Drenched in sweat but not too wet you bring me closer our bodies frisson set
We dive into wormholes and white holes
The doors of the universe if not windows
Playing hide and seek, hearing vortex points beep
We make fire and plasma lights up
The liquids surrender to heat and speed
a connective energy created
and ******* juices exerted

This would be the end but the physical must be converted
We take a breath and sparks fly passing through the foggy smoke in the air
love is in the air and our chakras dance to rhythm adore
trust then flows and insecurity -jealous- abhors

We then talk about the nothings to avoid this wonderful something
Learning about each other we do not wish to lose one another
The Venusian Tesla would be proud of how we've done electricity justice
This science, this drug, this philosophy, this state
Time has nothing on us we cannot be late
In our future we were dreaming of our past to remember the present
so to figure out how time went

These tongues and curls I speak have me bent
Admiring the cosmic accents
Acknowleding the galactic language
Now I know what the words, "I Love You" mean
for it isn't only a noun or common thing
But a lifestyle in astral streams
A pronoun when brought to the matter world
A verb lived like a movie
A story I will never forget.

Seagull on rotting planks, bouy bells ding to fog and driftwood.
A culling fire exploits the docking shire.
Filled with chlorine shards, legs caught in the clap-traps.
Friar palms glisten,
Rage responds with frisson.
Clear view over water.
Feel your arms relax and slip onto your back while the culling fire attacks.
Bulbous deadening brain chimes
As the eyes slide down to your omission crimes.
Leave me alone in my despondent company.
Don't push the matter further let communication fail to nurture.
A warm breeze carries me
like a floating portrait towards unreal scented meats.
I'm here now, alone in the corner,
The greatest intimacy with the static patterns on the carpeted flooring. The king of this corner is the odor of plank seating and flowery detergent in this lonely corridor fluorescent light-bulb poles and old grain floorboards.
Now the returning shards of panic to uncelibate strangers drive me up, far, deep in my own ribcage to something wholly non-organic.
Time to clock-in, time to check out.

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

Her syllogisms repose trust in her adept beleaguering of unworthy opponents.
Constantly in a state of lassitude for this desultory, inure world of the insouciant youth which dwells upon it's cathartic terrain, she engages not in lachrymose nor is she crestfallen for the hope of romance and it's everlasting ineffability.
She is a fugacious moment of frisson embodied in a human form; a juxtaposition of the serendipitous moments that ever constantly come one after the other in a fickle wheel of steep highs and deep lows. All her life, this girl will lilt through the crossroads of her obstacles and show the world the efflorescence of her beauty. Hush don't speak lest you miss hearing the mellifluous music of her voice of fail to hear the lagniappe that is her name.
She is the cynosure of human attention, the goddess and we are but her humble servants. She is innocence most rare, love most coveted. She is infinite. She is peace.

Turning table of bare skin and plaster
Sitting model of perfections mastered
Brushing every layer on blank sheets
Watering eyes for moisture in basking heat

Now cry those pictures prettier than me
Wash away what flaws replay then flee
Creating beauty; an authentic frisson
Until the truth is unmasked to glisten

Strokes of warmth into lustrous mellow
Let me shine then fade a sweeter yellow
Add finishing touches on the drying husk
Then marvel at the paint of dawn to dusk.

Le poète

Le mal dont j'ai souffert s'est enfui comme un rêve.
Je n'en puis comparer le lointain souvenir
Qu'à ces brouillards légers que l'aurore soulève,
Et qu'avec la rosée on voit s'évanouir.

La muse

Qu'aviez-vous donc, ô mon poète !
Et quelle est la peine secrète
Qui de moi vous a séparé ?
Hélas ! je m'en ressens encore.
Quel est donc ce mal que j'ignore
Et dont j'ai si longtemps pleuré ?

Le poète

C'était un mal vulgaire et bien connu des hommes ;
Mais, lorsque nous avons quelque ennui dans le coeur,
Nous nous imaginons, pauvres fous que nous sommes,
Que personne avant nous n'a senti la douleur.

La muse

Il n'est de vulgaire chagrin
Que celui d'une âme vulgaire.
Ami, que ce triste mystère
S'échappe aujourd'hui de ton sein.
Crois-moi, parle avec confiance ;
Le sévère dieu du silence
Est un des frères de la Mort ;
En se plaignant on se console,
Et quelquefois une parole
Nous a délivrés d'un remord.

Le poète

S'il fallait maintenant parler de ma souffrance,
Je ne sais trop quel nom elle devrait porter,
Si c'est amour, folie, orgueil, expérience,
Ni si personne au monde en pourrait profiter.
Je veux bien toutefois t'en raconter l'histoire,
Puisque nous voilà seuls, assis près du foyer.
Prends cette lyre, approche, et laisse ma mémoire
Au son de tes accords doucement s'éveiller.

La muse

Avant de me dire ta peine,
Ô poète ! en es-tu guéri ?
Songe qu'il t'en faut aujourd'hui
Parler sans amour et sans haine.
S'il te souvient que j'ai reçu
Le doux nom de consolatrice,
Ne fais pas de moi la complice
Des passions qui t'ont perdu,

Le poète

Je suis si bien guéri de cette maladie,
Que j'en doute parfois lorsque j'y veux songer ;
Et quand je pense aux lieux où j'ai risqué ma vie,
J'y crois voir à ma place un visage étranger.
Muse, sois donc sans crainte ; au souffle qui t'inspire
Nous pouvons sans péril tous deux nous confier.
Il est doux de pleurer, il est doux de sourire
Au souvenir des maux qu'on pourrait oublier.

La muse

Comme une mère vigilante
Au berceau d'un fils bien-aimé,
Ainsi je me penche tremblante
Sur ce coeur qui m'était fermé.
Parle, ami, - ma lyre attentive
D'une note faible et plaintive
Suit déjà l'accent de ta voix,
Et dans un rayon de lumière,
Comme une vision légère,
Passent les ombres d'autrefois.

Le poète

Jours de travail ! seuls jours où j'ai vécu !
Ô trois fois chère solitude !
Dieu soit loué, j'y suis donc revenu,
À ce vieux cabinet d'étude !
Pauvre réduit, murs tant de fois déserts,
Fauteuils poudreux, lampe fidèle,
Ô mon palais, mon petit univers,
Et toi, Muse, ô jeune immortelle,
Dieu soit loué, nous allons donc chanter !
Oui, je veux vous ouvrir mon âme,
Vous saurez tout, et je vais vous conter
Le mal que peut faire une femme ;
Car c'en est une, ô mes pauvres amis
(Hélas ! vous le saviez peut-être),
C'est une femme à qui je fus soumis,
Comme le serf l'est à son maître.
Joug détesté ! c'est par là que mon coeur
Perdit sa force et sa jeunesse ;
Et cependant, auprès de ma maîtresse,
J'avais entrevu le bonheur.
Près du ruisseau, quand nous marchions ensemble,
Le soir, sur le sable argentin,
Quand devant nous le blanc spectre du tremble
De **** nous montrait le chemin ;
Je vois encore, aux rayons de la lune,
Ce beau corps plier dans mes bras...
N'en parlons plus... - je ne prévoyais pas
Où me conduirait la Fortune.
Sans doute alors la colère des dieux
Avait besoin d'une victime ;
Car elle m'a puni comme d'un crime
D'avoir essayé d'être heureux.

La muse

L'image d'un doux souvenir
Vient de s'offrir à ta pensée.
Sur la trace qu'il a laissée
Pourquoi crains-tu de revenir ?
Est-ce faire un récit fidèle
Que de renier ses beaux jours ?
Si ta fortune fut cruelle,
Jeune homme, fais du moins comme elle,
Souris à tes premiers amours.

Le poète

Non, - c'est à mes malheurs que je prétends sourire.  
Muse, je te l'ai dit : je veux, sans passion,
Te conter mes ennuis, mes rêves, mon délire,
Et t'en dire le temps, l'heure et l'occasion.
C'était, il m'en souvient, par une nuit d'automne,
Triste et froide, à peu près semblable à celle-ci ;
Le murmure du vent, de son bruit monotone,
Dans mon cerveau lassé berçait mon noir souci.
J'étais à la fenêtre, attendant ma maîtresse ;
Et, tout en écoutant dans cette obscurité,
Je me sentais dans l'âme une telle détresse
Qu'il me vint le soupçon d'une infidélité.
La rue où je logeais était sombre et déserte ;
Quelques ombres passaient, un falot à la main ;
Quand la bise sifflait dans la porte entr'ouverte,
On entendait de **** comme un soupir humain.
Je ne sais, à vrai dire, à quel fâcheux présage
Mon esprit inquiet alors s'abandonna.
Je rappelais en vain un reste de courage,
Et me sentis frémir lorsque l'heure sonna.
Elle ne venait pas. Seul, la tête baissée,
Je regardai longtemps les murs et le chemin,
Et je ne t'ai pas dit quelle ardeur insensée
Cette inconstante femme allumait en mon sein ;
Je n'aimais qu'elle au monde, et vivre un jour sans elle
Me semblait un destin plus affreux que la mort.
Je me souviens pourtant qu'en cette nuit cruelle
Pour briser mon lien je fis un long effort.
Je la nommai cent fois perfide et déloyale,
Je comptai tous les maux qu'elle m'avait causés.
Hélas ! au souvenir de sa beauté fatale,
Quels maux et quels chagrins n'étaient pas apaisés !
Le jour parut enfin. - Las d'une vaine attente,
Sur le bord du balcon je m'étais assoupi ;
Je rouvris la paupière à l'aurore naissante,
Et je laissai flotter mon regard ébloui.
Tout à coup, au détour de l'étroite ruelle,
J'entends sur le gravier marcher à petit bruit...
Grand Dieu ! préservez-moi ! je l'aperçois, c'est elle ;
Elle entre. - D'où viens-tu ? Qu'as-tu fait cette nuit ?
Réponds, que me veux-tu ? qui t'amène à cette heure ?
Ce beau corps, jusqu'au jour, où s'est-il étendu ?
Tandis qu'à ce balcon, seul, je veille et je pleure,
En quel lieu, dans quel lit, à qui souriais-tu ?
Perfide ! audacieuse ! est-il encor possible
Que tu viennes offrir ta bouche à mes baisers ?
Que demandes-tu donc ? par quelle soif horrible
Oses-tu m'attirer dans tes bras épuisés ?
Va-t'en, retire-toi, spectre de ma maîtresse !
Rentre dans ton tombeau, si tu t'en es levé ;
Laisse-moi pour toujours oublier ma jeunesse,
Et, quand je pense à toi, croire que j'ai rêvé !

La muse

Apaise-toi, je t'en conjure ;
Tes paroles m'ont fait frémir.
Ô mon bien-aimé ! ta blessure
Est encor prête à se rouvrir.
Hélas ! elle est donc bien profonde ?
Et les misères de ce monde
Sont si lentes à s'effacer !
Oublie, enfant, et de ton âme
Chasse le nom de cette femme,
Que je ne veux pas prononcer.

Le poète

Honte à toi qui la première
M'as appris la trahison,
Et d'horreur et de colère
M'as fait perdre la raison !
Honte à toi, femme à l'oeil sombre,
Dont les funestes amours
Ont enseveli dans l'ombre
Mon printemps et mes beaux jours !
C'est ta voix, c'est ton sourire,
C'est ton regard corrupteur,
Qui m'ont appris à maudire
Jusqu'au semblant du bonheur ;
C'est ta jeunesse et tes charmes
Qui m'ont fait désespérer,
Et si je doute des larmes,
C'est que je t'ai vu pleurer.
Honte à toi, j'étais encore
Aussi simple qu'un enfant ;
Comme une fleur à l'aurore,
Mon coeur s'ouvrait en t'aimant.
Certes, ce coeur sans défense
Put sans peine être abusé ;
Mais lui laisser l'innocence
Était encor plus aisé.
Honte à toi ! tu fus la mère
De mes premières douleurs,
Et tu fis de ma paupière
Jaillir la source des pleurs !
Elle coule, sois-en sûre,
Et rien ne la tarira ;
Elle sort d'une blessure
Qui jamais ne guérira ;
Mais dans cette source amère
Du moins je me laverai,
Et j'y laisserai, j'espère,
Ton souvenir abhorré !

La muse

Poète, c'est assez. Auprès d'une infidèle,
Quand ton illusion n'aurait duré qu'un jour,
N'outrage pas ce jour lorsque tu parles d'elle ;
Si tu veux être aimé, respecte ton amour.
Si l'effort est trop grand pour la faiblesse humaine
De pardonner les maux qui nous viennent d'autrui,
Épargne-toi du moins le tourment de la haine ;
À défaut du pardon, laisse venir l'oubli.
Les morts dorment en paix dans le sein de la terre :
Ainsi doivent dormir nos sentiments éteints.
Ces reliques du coeur ont aussi leur poussière ;
Sur leurs restes sacrés ne portons pas les mains.
Pourquoi, dans ce récit d'une vive souffrance,
Ne veux-tu voir qu'un rêve et qu'un amour trompé ?
Est-ce donc sans motif qu'agit la Providence
Et crois-tu donc distrait le Dieu qui t'a frappé ?
Le coup dont tu te plains t'a préservé peut-être,
Enfant ; car c'est par là que ton coeur s'est ouvert.
L'homme est un apprenti, la douleur est son maître,
Et nul ne se connaît tant qu'il n'a pas souffert.
C'est une dure loi, mais une loi suprême,
Vieille comme le monde et la fatalité,
Qu'il nous faut du malheur recevoir le baptême,
Et qu'à ce triste prix tout doit être acheté.
Les moissons pour mûrir ont besoin de rosée ;
Pour vivre et pour sentir l'homme a besoin des pleurs ;
La joie a pour symbole une plante brisée,
Humide encor de pluie et couverte de fleurs.
Ne te disais-tu pas guéri de ta folie ?
N'es-tu pas jeune, heureux, partout le bienvenu ?
Et ces plaisirs légers qui font aimer la vie,
Si tu n'avais pleuré, quel cas en ferais-tu ?
Lorsqu'au déclin du jour, assis sur la bruyère,
Avec un vieil ami tu bois en liberté,
Dis-moi, d'aussi bon coeur lèverais-tu ton verre,
Si tu n'avais senti le prix de la gaîté ?
Aimerais-tu les fleurs, les prés et la verdure,
Les sonnets de Pétrarque et le chant des oiseaux,
Michel-Ange et les arts, Shakspeare et la nature,
Si tu n'y retrouvais quelques anciens sanglots ?
Comprendrais-tu des cieux l'ineffable harmonie,
Le silence des nuits, le murmure des flots,
Si quelque part là-bas la fièvre et l'insomnie
Ne t'avaient fait songer à l'éternel repos ?
N'as-tu pas maintenant une belle maîtresse ?
Et, lorsqu'en t'endormant tu lui serres la main,
Le lointain souvenir des maux de ta jeunesse
Ne rend-il pas plus doux son sourire divin ?
N'allez-vous pas aussi vous promener ensemble
Au fond des bois fleuris, sur le sable argentin ?
Et, dans ce vert palais, le blanc spectre du tremble
Ne sait-il plus, le soir, vous montrer le chemin ?
Ne vois-tu pas alors, aux rayons de la lune,
Plier comme autrefois un beau corps dans tes bras,
Et si dans le sentier tu trouvais la Fortune,
Derrière elle, en chantant, ne marcherais-tu pas ?
De quoi te plains-tu donc ? L'immortelle espérance
S'est retrempée en toi sous la main du malheur.
Pourquoi veux-tu haïr ta jeune expérience,
Et détester un mal qui t'a rendu meilleur ?
Ô mon enfant ! plains-la, cette belle infidèle,
Qui fit couler jadis les larmes de tes yeux ;
Plains-la ! c'est une femme, et Dieu t'a fait, près d'elle,
Deviner, en souffrant, le secret des heureux.
Sa tâche fut pénible ; elle t'aimait peut-être ;
Mais le destin voulait qu'elle brisât ton coeur.
Elle savait la vie, et te l'a fait connaître ;
Une autre a recueilli le fruit de ta douleur.
Plains-la ! son triste amour a passé comme un songe ;
Elle a vu ta blessure et n'a pu la fermer.
Dans ses larmes, crois-moi, tout n'était pas mensonge.
Quand tout l'aurait été, plains-la ! tu sais aimer.

Le poète

Tu dis vrai : la haine est impie,
Et c'est un frisson plein d'horreur
Quand cette vipère assoupie
Se déroule dans notre coeur.
Écoute-moi donc, ô déesse !
Et sois témoin de mon serment :
Par les yeux bleus de ma maîtresse,
Et par l'azur du firmament ;
Par cette étincelle brillante
Qui de Vénus porte le nom,
Et, comme une perle tremblante,
Scintille au **** sur l'horizon ;
Par la grandeur de la nature,
Par la bonté du Créateur,
Par la clarté tranquille et pure
De l'astre cher au voyageur.
Par les herbes de la prairie,
Par les forêts, par les prés verts,
Par la puissance de la vie,
Par la sève de l'univers,
Je te bannis de ma mémoire,
Reste d'un amour insensé,
Mystérieuse et sombre histoire
Qui dormiras dans le passé !
Et toi qui, jadis, d'une amie
Portas la forme et le doux nom,
L'instant suprême où je t'oublie
Doit être celui du pardon.
Pardonnons-nous ; - je romps le charme
Qui nous unissait devant Dieu.
Avec une dernière larme
Reçois un éternel adieu.
- Et maintenant, blonde rêveuse,
Maintenant, Muse, à nos amours !
Dis-moi quelque chanson joyeuse,
Comme au premier temps des beaux jours.
Déjà la pelouse embaumée
Sent les approches du matin ;
Viens éveiller ma bien-aimée,
Et cueillir les fleurs du jardin.
Viens voir la nature immortelle
Sortir des voiles du sommeil ;
Nous allons renaître avec elle
Au premier rayon du soleil !

Acquiesce here my love
Ameliorate my heart
The assemblage of circumstance provides dulcet ebullience
An efflorescent dalliance conflated into cathartic becoming
My bucolic bungalow made upon your callipygous
A young Life’s denouement
Your evocative elixir fetching
An erstwhile emollient embrocation
Your eloquent fingers find their way to frisson
My felicitous chatoyant gambols in glamor like a halcyon incipient made ineffable by the look of the ingénue
The labyrinthine inglenook lagoon leisurely lithe
The murmurous daffodils wink at the insouciance of your beauty
A panoply panacea, the half shadow complete as an epiphany
Quintessential to feminine riparian resplendence
Your mellifluous voice, an opulent offing, the sumptuous summery soliloquy of an angel
Cools my soul like the smell of earth after rain
Your propinquity ripples the scintilla of my spirit
Your surreptitious smile like a zephyr quietly whispers
Its redolent seraglio sempiternal in my thoughts
As skyward gazes like saccharine gossamer lilt with the knowledge of our raveling juxtaposition
a masterful pastiche, the cynosure of divine revelation

That brief but memorable moment that gives you the tingling chills. A biological response to a pleasure-inducing sound or vision.
My frisson today hit me out of the blue. Electrically charged, flying, seeing all the hidden hues, amazed at what I normally miss.

DNA at its finest, but why? To what end does it promote our species to experience such a rare moment of incomparable pleasure?
For those seconds, nothing was more important than the richness of life. I exist for these unpredictable moments of ecstasy.

                                                I am alive.

Contended by mine eye and ear
I wouldst be joined by this kiss
in the promise made Dwynwen
whilst captured by thine poetry
a beauty lost in past empyrean age
as is this disciple here and now
in a sirens call of dark promise
lips offering a frisson of delight
thence romances pulsing core

Let this vow and plea be honoured
each 'Dydd Santes Dwynwen'

David x

A scintillating ocean.
Refracting light across the spectrum,
colours beyond white, black, and red;
Mirror to the universal spirits.

Crystalline forms growing
like families of fungi across the horizon.
A mycological configuration
of salts and waveform reflectors.

A frisson of diamonds.
Seizures of globular light, elliptical rainbows.
Twice-reflected hollow moonbeams.
Creating.

Cubes in the molecular structure,
Silent carbon and quartz,
as from some distant caverns
unseen by any eye.

I've read that people re-write their memory repeatedly,
until we've floated down so far from the moment
we can only think of our pruning hands.
Tiny hills of flesh soaked through from a river of touching
and going.
I am still here.
I kept you whole by building theme parks over
bad decisions.
A carousel of nights where we'd slip away
to try each other on.
Some sudden frisson
roller coaster rolling me closer to
knuckled blood, white bone, holding your hand
during the free fall we were too embarrassed to be afraid of,
but rode it three times just to be sure we had a grip.
I cannot hold it all so I thought to carry just the goodness.
Me a hungry thief with my arms full in an orchard of peaches,
that you gave
like someone who had never been kissed.
Your eyes were so bright and new I swear sailors must have seen you coming
over the horizon at dawn on the last day at sea.
Their skin wet with the voyage as they slide down
to find earth underfoot and look back over an ocean
only to whisper under a hushed northwesterly,
"Finally."

each note is a touch
that vibrates the mind
strands of hair stands
a whisper to both ears
amidst the silence.

It’s work, this wailing,
a daily occupation.
Alongside the light-rail
A ghost bike, a placard,
a quickening in the blood.

Murmur, breathe myself to sleep,
fleece this feeling,
Blue skies somewhere
and yeah, life goes on.

I struggle to wake,
my sharpest knife
slides along this peach’s stone,
scoop this flesh, devour.

Crepuscular light,
Fecundity of life,
Lacerate this daytime
cut through with dim.

Celerity of dusk,
and with it this gloaming,
My quidnunc neighbor
seals ear to wall to trace
my hitching breaths from air.

But it’s tomorrow now
and it is warm in Paranoia Park.
This violinist, though hardly Paganini,
embroiders sound onto sound.

His bow draws a frisson
along my spine, my nerves
His strings, vibration,
shimmering, a shock, a flush.

This moment: a reprieve,
my coffee break from grief.
All the trees are turning orange.
The days all turn to sleep.

just sitting when you happen
to glance at me and my heart
stops because you
don't understand what you mean

I

Vraiment, c'est bête, ces églises des villages
Où quinze laids marmots encrassant les piliers
Écoutent, grasseyant les divins babillages,
Un noir grotesque dont fermentent les souliers :
Mais le soleil éveille, à travers des feuillages,
Les vieilles couleurs des vitraux irréguliers.

La pierre sent toujours la terre maternelle.
Vous verrez des monceaux de ces cailloux terreux
Dans la campagne en rut qui frémit solennelle
Portant près des blés lourds, dans les sentiers ocreux,
Ces arbrisseaux brûlés où bleuit la prunelle,
Des noeuds de mûriers noirs et de rosiers fuireux.

Tous les cent ans on rend ces granges respectables
Par un badigeon d'eau bleue et de lait caillé :
Si des mysticités grotesques sont notables
Près de la Notre-Dame ou du Saint empaillé,
Des mouches sentant bon l'auberge et les étables
Se gorgent de cire au plancher ensoleillé.

L'enfant se doit surtout à la maison, famille
Des soins naïfs, des bons travaux abrutissants ;
Ils sortent, oubliant que la peau leur fourmille
Où le Prêtre du Christ plaqua ses doigts puissants.
On paie au Prêtre un toit ombré d'une charmille
Pour qu'il laisse au soleil tous ces fronts brunissants.

Le premier habit noir, le plus beau jour de tartes,
Sous le Napoléon ou le Petit Tambour
Quelque enluminure où les Josephs et les Marthes
Tirent la langue avec un excessif amour
Et que joindront, au jour de science, deux cartes,
Ces seuls doux souvenirs lui restent du grand Jour.
Les filles vont toujours à l'église, contentes
De s'entendre appeler garces par les garçons
Qui font du genre après messe ou vêpres chantantes.
Eux qui sont destinés au chic des garnisons
Ils narguent au café les maisons importantes,
Blousés neuf, et gueulant d'effroyables chansons.

Cependant le Curé choisit pour les enfances
Des dessins ; dans son clos, les vêpres dites, quand
L'air s'emplit du lointain nasillement des danses,
Il se sent, en dépit des célestes défenses,
Les doigts de pied ravis et le mollet marquant ;
- La Nuit vient, noir pirate aux cieux d'or débarquant.

II

Le Prêtre a distingué parmi les catéchistes,
Congrégés des Faubourgs ou des Riches Quartiers,
Cette petite fille inconnue, aux yeux tristes,
Front jaune. Les parents semblent de doux portiers.
" Au grand Jour le marquant parmi les Catéchistes,
Dieu fera sur ce front neiger ses bénitiers. "

III

La veille du grand Jour l'enfant se fait malade.
Mieux qu'à l'Église haute aux funèbres rumeurs,
D'abord le frisson vient, - le lit n'étant pas fade -
Un frisson surhumain qui retourne : " Je meurs... "

Et, comme un vol d'amour fait à ses soeurs stupides,
Elle compte, abattue et les mains sur son coeur
Les Anges, les Jésus et ses Vierges nitides
Et, calmement, son âme a bu tout son vainqueur.

Adonaï !... - Dans les terminaisons latines,
Des cieux moirés de vert baignent les Fronts vermeils
Et tachés du sang pur des célestes poitrines,
De grands linges neigeux tombent sur les soleils !

- Pour ses virginités présentes et futures
Elle mord aux fraîcheurs de ta Rémission,
Mais plus que les lys d'eau, plus que les confitures,
Tes pardons sont glacés, à Reine de Sion !
IV

Puis la Vierge n'est plus que la vierge du livre.
Les mystiques élans se cassent quelquefois...
Et vient la pauvreté des images, que cuivre
L'ennui, l'enluminure atroce et les vieux bois ;

Des curiosités vaguement impudiques
Épouvantent le rêve aux chastes bleuités
Qui s'est surpris autour des célestes tuniques,
Du linge dont Jésus voile ses nudités.

Elle veut, elle veut, pourtant, l'âme en détresse,
Le front dans l'oreiller creusé par les cris sourds,
Prolonger les éclairs suprêmes de tendresse,
Et bave... - L'ombre emplit les maisons et les cours.

Et l'enfant ne peut plus. Elle s'agite, cambre
Les reins et d'une main ouvre le rideau bleu
Pour amener un peu la fraîcheur de la chambre
Sous le drap, vers son ventre et sa poitrine en feu...

V

À son réveil, - minuit, - la fenêtre était blanche.
Devant le sommeil bleu des rideaux illunés,
La vision la prit des candeurs du dimanche ;
Elle avait rêvé rouge. Elle saigna du nez,

Et se sentant bien chaste et pleine de faiblesse
Pour savourer en Dieu son amour revenant,
Elle eut soif de la nuit où s'exalte et s'abaisse
Le coeur, sous l'oeil des cieux doux, en les devinant ;

De la nuit, Vierge-Mère impalpable, qui baigne
Tous les jeunes émois de ses silences gris ;
EIIe eut soif de la nuit forte où le coeur qui saigne
Ecoule sans témoin sa révolte sans cris.

Et faisant la victime et la petite épouse,
Son étoile la vit, une chandelle aux doigts,
Descendre dans la cour où séchait une blouse,
Spectre blanc, et lever les spectres noirs des toits.

VI

Elle passa sa nuit sainte dans les latrines.
Vers la chandelle, aux trous du toit coulait l'air blanc,
Et quelque vigne folle aux noirceurs purpurines,
En deçà d'une cour voisine s'écroulant.

La lucarne faisait un coeur de lueur vive
Dans la cour où les cieux bas plaquaient d'ors vermeils
Les vitres ; les pavés puant l'eau de lessive
Soufraient l'ombre des murs bondés de noirs sommeils.

VII

Qui dira ces langueurs et ces pitiés immondes,
Et ce qu'il lui viendra de haine, à sales fous
Dont le travail divin déforme encor les mondes,
Quand la lèpre à la fin mangera ce corps doux ?

VIII

Et quand, ayant rentré tous ses noeuds d'hystéries,
Elle verra, sous les tristesses du bonheur,
L'amant rêver au blanc million des Maries,
Au matin de la nuit d'amour avec douleur :

" Sais-tu que je t'ai fait mourir ? J'ai pris ta bouche,
Ton coeur, tout ce qu'on a, tout ce que vous avez ;
Et moi, je suis malade : Oh ! je veux qu'on me couche
Parmi les Morts des eaux nocturnes abreuvés !

" J'étais bien jeune, et Christ a souillé mes haleines.
Il me bonda jusqu'à la gorge de dégoûts !
Tu baisais mes cheveux profonds comme les laines
Et je me laissais faire... ah ! va, c'est bon pour vous,

" Hommes ! qui songez peu que la plus amoureuse
Est, sous sa conscience aux ignobles terreurs,
La plus prostituée et la plus douloureuse,
Et que tous nos élans vers vous sont des erreurs !

" Car ma Communion première est bien passée.
Tes baisers, je ne puis jamais les avoir sus :
Et mon coeur et ma chair par ta chair embrassée
Fourmillent du baiser putride de Jésus ! "

IX

Alors l'âme pourrie et l'âme désolée
Sentiront ruisseler tes malédictions.
- Ils auront couché sur ta Haine inviolée,
Échappés, pour la mort, des justes passions.

Christ ! ô Christ, éternel voleur des énergies,
Dieu qui pour deux mille ans vouas à ta pâleur
Cloués au sol, de honte et de céphalalgies,
Ou renversés, les fronts des femmes de douleur.

Rien n'est jamais acquis à l'homme Ni sa force
Ni sa faiblesse ni son coeur Et quand il croit
Ouvrir ses bras son ombre est celle d'une croix
Et quand il croit serrer son bonheur il le broie
Sa vie est un étrange et douloureux divorce
Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux

Sa vie Elle ressemble à ces soldats sans armes
Qu'on avait habillés pour un autre destin
À quoi peut leur servir de se lever matin
Eux qu'on retrouve au soir désoeuvrés incertains
Dites ces mots Ma vie Et retenez vos larmes
Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux

Mon bel amour mon cher amour ma déchirure
Je te porte dans moi comme un oiseau blessé
Et ceux-là sans savoir nous regardent passer
Répétant après moi les mots que j'ai tressés
Et qui pour tes grands yeux tout aussitôt moururent
Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux

Le temps d'apprendre à vivre il est déjà trop ****
Que pleurent dans la nuit nos coeurs à l'unisson
Ce qu'il faut de malheur pour la moindre chanson
Ce qu'il faut de regrets pour payer un frisson
Ce qu'il faut de sanglots pour un air de guitare
Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux.

Telephone wires are tangled in the trees tonight
and the stars are copper colour,
as if scattered from a fountain
and Romeo is calling from beneath the balcony
of the Capulet family in Verona,
trying to get reception-

but the receiver is busy
moving on, and growing up-

Juliet, the girl he is calling, has a new phone
that she doesn't trust with unfamiliar numbers,
and his is listed 'unknown'

Unsent messages: "goodnight
"goodnight- parting is such sweet sorrow,
that I shall say good night till it be morrow."

The story of the star-cross'd lovers was no tragedy at is end.
Nobody died, nobody had to pretend
to die. They rarely think of one another now,
only from time to time do they wonder 'what if'
or regret the absence of a real goodbye.

Romeo never got the chance to defy the stars
Juliet never got the chance to contemplate him cut out in them
and neither of them got the chance to commit,
and neither of them took a chance with suicide.

Telephone wires in trees, copper stars-
-ghosts, wished on, shooting, burning far, far away-

Unspoken words: "some consequence
yet hanging in the stars,
auspicious stars"

(the fairest of them, he'd once found in her eyes)-
no reception, nothing received.
In this love story, nobody dies.

It is remembered as any other night before.
It was not long until where Romeo had come and gone
he'd left behind just a flicker of a frisson
in memory, growing distant,
gradual decay, and then
he was nothing more than threads to weave
the patchwork of a dream,-
hard to recall, a close call,
a near miss, a could-have been-
but it was harder, with time, to believe it was ever
the real love she yet knew nothing of
at the keen age of only thirteen.

It was Paris she fell for. The two were to marry
and for her bouquet that day, the flower she chose
to carry- for their romance and sweetness-
was the rose, and in her vows, she spoke of her love
being boundless and deep as the sea,
and infinite. All the wishes he'd made on stars
and coins in fountains had come to be.

Spoken words: "Have I thought long to see this morning's face..."

So many saved lives and one love lost and
a glooming sort of peace settled over
the star-cross'd streets of Verona.

Prayer is a thought,
                a frisson,
                 a song,
                 a sob.

Prayer can be all that one is,
All that one aspires to be,
It can be all that one has lost,
The last thing that one has to give.

True prayer is internal,
Prayer is like a snowflake,
Prayer is not printed
Words on a page.

Prayer is not always cathartic.
Prayer is angry. Prayer is hopelessness.
Prayer is more often than not
A last resort born of desperation.

Prayer uttered daily, commanded by a man,
Is prayer stripped of meaning, desecrated,
A holy word on a holy plane
Made mundane.

Drastic measures must be taken to overcome the afternoon lull.
Seventeen obscure hardbound essays to consume, spines flaking
and half-eaten by dustmites. Their goodies
can only be extracted by torture, but my instruments are dulled
by shriekless hours and the fuddy-duddies
beside me, who god help me I’ll never become,
though I’m already bearded, and have started showing some dome.

Time, I think, to give something back:
a single bogie on a lone mission
to retake Stevens’  Noble Rider and the Sound of Words.
A big ask, I reckon, but this mischievous frisson
is deepness: It’ll probably be half, or at least a third
of my life before anyone finds my sleeper, my double agent
Amongst horses shedding their coats for the summer.
I smile at no one in particular, and return to my stack.
Keyboards clatter like rain, drowning out what little glamour
remains of the microfiche, leaping silent
over centuries in a smallish room in the corner.

Her present universe reflects an insurmountable challenge.
See how she struggles, climbing then sliding back on her alpine *****.
Climbing then sliding,
climbing, sliding.
How relentless her microscopic brain.
How miraculous such a diminutive creature evokes our human emotions.
Poor hopeless thing. She is the center of my attention.
She can count on all eight of her fuzzy legs that a sherpa rescue is at hand.

I toss in a towel.

Aware of oppressor, not saviour, she contorts her body,
covers her eyes with her legs. Screws herself into a dried raisin.
A class act if ever I saw one!

When the sound of thunder ceases to rattle the bath
she cautiously unfurls, stretches her joints,
then scurries over the snowy fibres.

Only then does a frisson of fear creep across my flesh.






copyright © Caroline Grace 2011