1969 Hartford art school is magnet for exceedingly intelligent over-sensitive under-achievers alluring freaks congenital creeps and anyone who cannot cut it in straight world it is about loners dreamers stoners clowns cliques of posers competing to dress draw act most outrageous weird wonderful classrooms clash in diversity of needs some students get it right off while others require so much individual attention one girl constantly raises her hand calls for everything to be repeated explained creativity is treated as trouble and compliance to instruction rewarded most of faculty are of opinion kids are not capable of making original artwork teachers discourage students from dream of becoming well-known until they are older more experienced only practiced skilled artists are competent to create ‘real art’ defined by how much struggle or multiple meanings weave through the work Odysseus wants to make magic boxes without knowing or being informed of Joseph Cornell one teacher tells him you think you’re going to invent some new color the world has never seen? you’re just some rowdy brat from the midwest with a lot of crazy ideas and no evidence of authenticity another teacher warns you’re nothing more than a bricoleur! Odysseus questions what’s a bricoleur teacher informs a rogue handyman who haphazardly constructs from whatever is immediately available Odysseus questions what’s wrong with that? teacher answers it’s low-class folk junk  possessing no real intellectual value independently he reads Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium Is The Message” and “The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci” he memorizes introductory remark of Leonardo’s “i must do like one who comes last to the fair and can find no other way of providing for himself than by taking all the things already seen by others and not taken by reason of their lesser value” Odysseus dreams of becoming accomplished important artist like Robert Rauschenberg Jasper Johns Andy Warhol he dreams of being in eye of hurricane New York art scene he works for university newspaper and is nicknamed crashkiss the newspaper editor is leader in student movement and folk singer who croons “45 caliber man, you’re so much more than our 22, but there’s so many more of us than you” Odysseus grows mustache wears flower printed pants vintage 1940’s leather jacket g.i. surplus clothes he makes many friends his gift for hooking up with girls is uncanny he is long haired drug-crazed hippie enjoying popularity previously unknown to him rock bands play at art openings everyone flirts dances gets ****** lots of activism on campus New York Times dubs university of Hartford “Berkeley of the east coast” holding up ******* in peace sign is subversive in 1969 symbol of rebellion youth solidarity gesture against war hawks rednecks corporate America acknowledgment of potential beyond materialistic self-righteous values of status quo sign of what could be in universe filled with incredible possibilities he moves in with  painting student one year advanced named Todd Whitman Todd has curly blond hair sturdy build wire rimmed glasses impish smile gemini superb draftsman amazing artist Todd emulates Francisco de Goya and Albrecht Durer Todd’s talent overshadows Odysseus’s Todd’s dad is accomplished professor at distinguished college in Massachusetts to celebrate Odysseus’s arrival Todd cooks all day preparing spaghetti dinner when Odysseus arrives home tripping on acid without appetite Todd is disappointed Odysseus runs down to corner store buys large bottle of wine returns to house Todd is eating spaghetti alone they get drunk together then pierce each other’s ears with needles ice wine cork pierced ears are outlaw style of bad *** bikers like Hell’s Angels Todd says you are a real original Odys and funny too Odysseus asks funny, how? Todd answers you are one crazy ******* drop acid whenever you want smoke **** then go to class this is fun tonight Odys getting drunk and piercing our ears Odysseus says yup i’m having a good time too Todd and Odysseus become best friends Odysseus turns Todd on to Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” and “Ariel” then they both read Ted Hughes “Crow” illustrated with Leonard Baskin prints Todd turns Odysseus on to German Expressionist painting art movement of garish colors emotionally violent imagery from 1905-1925 later infuriating Third ***** who deemed the work “degenerate” Odysseus dives into works of Max Beckmann Otto Dix Conrad Felixmulller Barthel Gilles George Grosz Erich Heckel Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Felix Nussbaum Karl *******Rottluff Carl Hofer August Macke Max Peckstein Elfriede Lohse-Wachtler Egon Shiele list goes on in 1969 most parents don’t have money to buy their children cars most kids living off campus either ride bikes or hitchhike to school then back home on weekends often without a penny in their pockets Odysseus and Todd randomly select a highway and hitch rides to Putney Vermont Brattleboro Boston Cape Cod New York City or D.C. in search of adventure there is always trouble to be found curious girls to assist in Georgetown Odysseus sleeps with skinny girl with webbed toes who believes he is Jesus he tries to dissuade her but she is convinced

Toby Mantis is visiting New York City artist at Hartford art school he looks like huskier handsomer version of Ringo Starr and women dig him he builds stretchers and stretches canvases for Warhol lives in huge loft in Soho on Broadway and Bleeker invites Odysseus to come down on weekends hang out Toby takes him to Max’s Kansas City Warhol’s Electric Circus they wander all night into morning there are printing companies longshoremen gays in Chelsea Italians in West Village hippies playing guitars protesting the war in Washington Square all kinds of hollering crazies passing out fliers pins in Union Square Toby is hard drinker Odysseus has trouble keeping up  he pukes his guts out number of times Odysseus is *** head not drinker he explores 42nd Street stumbles across strange exotic place named Peep Show World upstairs is large with many **** cubicles creepy dudes hanging around downstairs is astonishing there are many clusters of booths with live **** girls inside girls shout out hey boys come on now pick me come on boys there are hundreds of girls from all over the world in every conceivable size shape race he enters dark stall  puts fifty cents in coin box window screen lifts inside each cluster are 6 to 10 girls either parading or glued to a window for $1 he is allowed to caress kiss their ******* for $2 he is permitted to probe their ****** or *** for $10 girl reaches hand into darkened stall jerks him off tall slender British girl thrills him the most she says let me have another go at your dickey Odysseus spends all his money ******* 5 times departing he notices men from every walk of life passing through wall street stockbrokers executives rednecks mobsters frat boys tourists fat old bald guys smoking thick smelly cigars Toby Mantis has good-looking girlfriend named Lorraine with long brown hair Toby Lorraine and Odysseus sit around kitchen table Odysseus doodles with pencil on paper Toby spreads open Lorraine’s thighs exposing her ****** to Odysseus Lorraine blushes yet permits Toby to finger her Odysseus thinks she has the most beautiful ****** he has ever seen bulging pelvic bone brown distinctive bush symmetric lips Toby and Lorraine watch in amusement as Odysseus gazes intently Tony mischievously remarks you like looking at that ***** don’t you? Odysseus stares silently begins pencil drawing Lorraine’s ****** his eyes darting back and forth following day Lorraine seduces Odysseus while Toby is away walks out **** from shower she is few years older her body lean with high ******* she directs his hands mouth while she talks with someone on telephone it is strange yet quite exciting Odysseus is in awe of New York City every culture in the world intermingling democracy functioning in an uncontrollable managed breath millions of people in motion stories unraveling on every street 24 hour spectacle with no limits every conceivable variety of humanity ******* in same air Odysseus is bedazzled yet intimidated

Odysseus spends summer of 1970 at art colony in Cummington Massachusetts it is magical time extraordinary place many talented eccentric characters all kinds of happenings stage plays poetry readings community meals volleyball after dinner volleyball games are hilarious fun he lives alone in isolated studio amidst wild raspberries in woods shares toilet with field mouse no shower he reads Jerzy Kosinski’s “Painted Bird” then “Being There” then “Steps” attractive long haired girl named Pam visits community for weekend meets Odysseus they talk realize they were in first grade together at Harper amazing coincidence automatic ground for “we need to have *** because neither of us has seen each other since first grade” she inquires where do you sleep? Todd hitches up from Hartford to satisfy curiosity everyone sleeps around good-looking blue-eyed poet named Shannon Banks from South Boston tells Odysseus his ******* is not big enough for kind of ******* she wants but she will **** him off that’s fine with him 32 year old poet named Ellen Morrissey from Massachusetts reassures him ******* is fine Ellen is beginning to find her way out from suffocating marriage she has little daughter named Nina Ellen admires Odysseus’s free spirit sees both his possibilities and naïveté she realizes he has crippling family baggage he has no idea he is carrying thing about trauma is as it is occurring victim shrugs laughs to repel shock yet years later pain horror sink in turned-on with new ideas he returns to Hartford art school classes are fun yet confusing he strives to be best drawer most innovative competition sidetracks him Odysseus uses power drill to carve pumpkin on Halloween teachers warn him to stick to fundamentals too much creativity is suspect Todd and he are invited to holiday party Odysseus shows up with Ellen Morrissey driving in her father’s station wagon 2 exceptionally pretty girls flirt with him he is live wire they sneak upstairs he fingers both at same time while they laugh to each other one of the girls Laura invites him outside to do more he follows they walk through falling snow until they find hidden area near some trees Laura lies down lifts her skirt she spreads her legs dense ***** mound he is about to explore her there when Laura looks up sees figure with flashlight following their tracks in snow she warns it’s Bill my husband run for your life! Odysseus runs around long way back inside party grabs a beer pretending he has been there next to Ellen all night few minutes later he sees Laura and Bill return through front door Bill has dark mustache angry eyes Odysseus tells Ellen it is late maybe they should leave soon suddenly Bill walks up to him with beer in hand cracks bottle over his head glass and beer splatter Odysseus jumps up runs out to station wagon Ellen hurriedly follows snow coming down hard car is wedged among many guest vehicles he starts engine locks doors maneuvers vehicle back and forth trying to inch way out of spot Bill appears from party walks to his van disappears from out of darkness swirling snow Bill comes at them wielding large crowbar smashes car’s headlights taillights side mirrors windshield covered in broken glass Ellen ducks on floor beneath glove compartment sobs cries he’s going to **** us! we’re going to die! Odysseus steers station wagon free floors gas pedal drives on back country roads through furious snowstorm in dark of night no lights Odysseus contorts crouches forward in order to see through hole in shattered windshield Ellen sees headlights behind them coming up fast it is Bill in van Bill banging their bumper follows them all the way back to Hartford to Odysseus’s place they run inside call police Bill sits parked van outside across street as police arrive half hour later Bill pulls away next day Odysseus and Ellen drive to Boston to explain to Ellen’s dad what has happened to his station wagon Odysseus stays with Ellen in Brookline for several nights another holiday party she wants to take him along to meet her friends her social circles are older he thinks to challenge their values be outrageous paints face Ellen is horrified cries you can’t possibly do this to me these are my close friends what will they think? he defiantly answers my face is a mask who cares what i look like? man woman creature what does it matter? if your friends really want to know me they’ll need to look beyond the make-up tonight i am your sluttish girlfriend! sometimes Odysseus can be a thoughtless fool

Laura Rousseau Shane files for divorce from Bill she is exceptionally lovely models at art school she is of French descent her figure possessing exotic traits she stands like ballerina with thick pointed ******* copious ***** hair Odysseus is infatuated she frequently dances pursues him Laura says i had the opportunity to meet Bob Dylan once amazed Odysseus questions what did you do? she replies what could i possibly have in common with Bob Dylan? Laura teases Odysseus about being a preppy then lustfully gropes him grabs holds his ***** they devote many hours to ****** intimacy during ******* she routinely reaches her hand from under her buns grasps his testicles squeezing as he pumps he likes that Laura is quite eccentric fetishes over Odysseus she even thrills to pick zits on his back he is not sure if it is truly a desire of hers proof of earthiness or simply expression of mothering Laura has two daughters by Bill Odysseus is in over his head Laura tells Odysseus myth of Medea smitten with love for Jason Jason needs Medea’s help to find Golden Fleece Medea agrees with promise of marriage murders her brother arranges ****** of king who has deprived Jason his inheritance couple is forced into exile Medea bears Jason 2 sons then Jason falls in love with King Creon’s daughter deserts Medea is furious she makes shawl for King Creon’s daughter to wear at her wedding to Jason  shawl turns to flames killing bride Medea murders her own sons by Jason Odysseus goes along with story for a while but Laura wants husband Odysseus is merely scruffy boy with roving eyes Laura becomes galled by Odysseus leaves him for one of his roommates whom she marries then several years later divorces there is scene when Laura tells Odysseus she is dropping him for his roommate he is standing in living room of her house space is painted deep renaissance burgundy there are framed photographs on walls in one photo he is hugging Laura and her daughters under big oak tree in room Laura’s friend Bettina other girl he fingered first night he met Laura at party is watching with arms crossed he drops to floor curls body sobs i miss you so much Laura turns to Bettina remarks look at him men are such big babies he’s pitiful Bettina nods

following summer he works installing displays at G. Fox Department Store besides one woman gay men staff display department for as long as he can remember homosexuals have always been attracted to him this misconception is probably how he got job his tenor voice suggesting not entirely mature man instead more like tentative young boy this ambiguous manifestation sometimes also evidences gestures thoroughly misleading after sidestepping several ****** advances one of his co-workers bewilderingly remarks you really are straight manager staff are fussy chirpy catty group consequently certain he is not gay they discriminate against him stick him with break down clean up slop jobs at outdoor weekend rock concert in Constitution Plaza he meets 2 younger blond girls who consent to go back to his place mess around both girls are quite dazzling yet one is somewhat physically undeveloped they undress and model for Odysseus radio plays Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song” both girls move to rhythm sing along he thinks to orchestrate direct decides instead to let them lead lies on bed while curvaceous girl rides his ******* slender girl sits on his face they switch all 3 alternate giggle laughter each girl reaches ****** on his stiffness later both assist with hands mouths his ****** is so intense it leaves him paralyzed for a moment

in fall he is cast as Claudius in production of Hamlet Odysseus rehearses diligently on nights o

Forty Days

A Season of Grief, a Season of Rejoicing

November 9-December 20, 2014

For Barbara Beach Alter 
It is Christmas morning in Saco, Maine, where today Bett, Aaron, Emily, Thomasin and our beloved cousin Marie find ourselves gathered to celebrate our first Christmas without dadima (our name for Barbara Beach Alter).  Brother Tom writes that already in India he and Carol with Jamie, Meha and Cayden (the only of her seven greatgrandchildren Barry never held) have celebrated.  Today Marty and Lincoln join us in Maine.

This gathering of documents—notes, drafts of memorial services, poems, homilies—is my christmas present to each of you.  It is a record, certainly subjective, of grief and rejoicing.

John Copley Alter
1:14 a.m.
Saco, Maine 
November 9

Loved ones,
Barbara Beach Alter died peacefully at 2:55 Sunday morning (today).  Bett and I had the good fortune to be there for the final beating of her good strong heart.  She murmured charcoal.  The nurse who was bathing her afterwards noted how few wrinkles there were, and it is true.
For those of you nearby you may if you want visit Mom in her room at hospice this morning (until noon).  Visit? Darshan? Paying respects?
Bett and I plan to be there around 11:00.
Much love to all. A blessed occasion.
John

 
November 10

Matthew 5:13-19
Jesus said, "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
"You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

yesterday in the early hours my mother died her saltiness
restored all that had through the months of her old
age and convalescence obscured the lens of her life cleaned
away so that for us now more and more clearly
as we hear about her through the memory and love
of so many people her good works shine forth in
their glory but it is to the days of her
convalescence the days of her dementia I would turn our
minds those of us who spent time with her at
Wingate long-term care facility remember that Barbara Beach Alter became
at times fierce in her commanding us that ‘not one
letter, not one stroke of a letter’ of the commandments
should be altered do you remember that those of you
and us who were given the work and gift of
spending time with Barry in those days in that condition

remember for instance how fussy she became about the sequence
of food on her tray how impatient with us for
our trespasses and violations how adamant that we look forward
for instance and not back at her how she would
say stop holding my hand and saying you love me
you have work to do o she was almost impossible
and certainly incoherent and demented in her obsession with law
and procedure fussy impatient imperious I do not forget being
scolded reamed out put in my place for having somehow
failed to do what the ‘law and the prophets’ demand

Barbara beach alter in the days before hospice in the
nursing home and hospital and even if we are honest
in the final years of her life found herself caught
up in the rigidity of her anxious desire to be
faithful to the laws and commandments of her life and
that made her at times extremely demanding to be with

amen and the epistemological confusion of course the clash between
her reality and ours it was all an ordeal for
her and for those of us who kept her company

and yet and yet through it all and now as
that ordeal for her is no longer paramount as she
dances in heaven all the wrinkles and discomfort of her
life removed and forgiven Barbara Beach Alter kept the faith
living in the midst such that those who cared for
her most intimately the strangers all professed your mother blessed
us


Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.



So, brother and sister, here are my thoughts about the memorial service(s).
Let’s find a time when we three can be present; that’s the most important thing.  My life is currently the least constrained by agenda and schedule.  And then the grandchildren, recognizing that Jamie may not be able to come.  So, our work is to find our when our kids are able to come. Bett and I are exploring that with our three, each of whom has some constraint: Emily, the cost; Thomasin, the piebaking demands, Aaron school.  But we are flexible.

Much love.

John



Walking in my mother’s wake today some trees
a gentle breeze some dogs a little boy
the neighborhood and I took joy from interaction

we are at best a fraction in love’s
calculation after all heaven I realize is not
above or below cannot be taught comes naturally

as death does walking in my mother’s wake
I found new allies learned yet again not
to take myself too seriously to be caught

off guard as a matter of principle and
not to insist that I understand but live
in the midst of forgiveness


in my mother’s wake I am reading these books for
some way to continue to knock on her door Wendell
Berry he can tell me some things and William Blake
he can take me closer and I remember she described
me once as an unused Jewish liberal so I am
reading about protestant liberalism but ham that I am also
reading Carl Hiassen’s Bad Monkey and Quo Vadimus that my
daughter left behind and mythologically Reflections from yale divinity school
no fooling Denise Levertov David Sobel Galway Kinnell’s translation of
Rilke some wake
 
November 11

Matthew 25:1-13
Jesus said, "Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, 'Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.' Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' But the wise replied, 'No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.' And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, 'Lord, lord, open to us.' But he replied, 'Truly I tell you, I do not know you.' Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour."

this morning in the wee hours my mother died one
of the wise bridesmaids whose lamp to the end was
full she carried always the flask of oil that is
joy that is the love of the kingdom of heaven
and of the bridegroom a flask always replenished by prayer
by devotion by a humble courageous living in the midst

she expected every day the bridegroom to come in other
words and she was also one who would never refuse
to share even the last drop with somebody in need

and at the end it is so clear the door
into the banquet hall was not closed to her as
it is not closed to any one of us foolishness
is to believe otherwise to believe that the bridegroom will
not come today in the early morning in the wee
hours that is when he comes in the midst of
other plans is when he comes even when we are
doing what we assume to be good work when we
are doing what gives us pleasure our duty joy comes
then unsummoned unpredictable random even according to all our best
laid plans my mother loved so many things her pleasure
included dancing late in her life terminally unsteady she invented
what we loved to urge her to do namely the
sitting jig and we grew up with images of her
Isadora Duncan dancing with white scarves in an enchanted forest

Barbara Beach Alter aka Barry aka dadima bari nani aunt
and daughter wife missionary is now I know dancing a
rollicking boisterous jig on the shores of a lake that
is as her grandson once confided to her god in
liquid form spilly Beach of course also dyslexic executive function
compromised she was but one who loved to be always
in the midst surrounded by loved ones some of them
absolute strangers she shared her oil because for her it
came welling up from an inexhaustible source a deep eternal
well of such illumination and laughter such giddy divine chuckles

for her there was to be no exclusion she would
not find the awful idea of being one of the
foolish applicable to anybody but happily she welcomed into her
midst so many it is hard to imagine how many

so there she is now a bridesmaid dancing for joy
in such elegant clothing with such perpetual brightness

amen hallelujah rejoice


sometimes I think she pulled us all out of the
magic hat sometimes I think she knit us all into
one of her theologically impossible sweaters and then with a
wink she passes through the eye of the needle and
is gone and we are left to play in her
honor endless hands of solitaire sometimes I think we are
no more than the hermeneutics of her life the epistemology
artless she was not her heart like one of those
magical meals for her then a doxology praise then praise
she knows salvation

what is a life’s work it is like a landscape
dotted with oases and gardens for the thirsty and the
lost it is like scraping through dry barren ground and
finding there suddenly not only the theology of paradise but
such seeds your hands ache to begin the planting what
is a life’s work what has been shut for too
long opens what has been shut for too long opens

a life’s work renews itself then with death the kernel
of hope that dies in springtime sprouting is what a
life’s work becomes
 
November 12

John 21:15-17
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs." A second time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Tend my sheep." He said to him the third time, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep.

I know my mother very much enjoyed having breakfast with
god and that the meals of her nursing home drove
her nearly crazy and that when at last she found
hospice o she again could imagine the feast of heaven
at which Jesus breaks bread with us and speaks with
such clarity do you love me more than these I
know it was questions as simple and overwhelming as this
that dominated her final days do you love me love
being  one of the last five words she attempted to
speak do you love me she wrestled in her last
months with epistemology and psychology and theology and all had
to do with whether she could answer unequivocally you know
that I love you and that she could say of
her life that she had broken bread with god we
all remember in her life those moments when there was
a great gladness an innocent acceptance of what lay immediately
in her presence now those months in the nursing home
tormented her in precisely this fashion that it was hard
to accept to be in the midst of such mediocrity
and woe to be innocent and accepting but now praise
god there she is a happy guest at the great
feast and we left behind bereft can acknowledge that she
loved god in her own fashion as best she possibly
could and do you remember being with her there in
hospital or nursing home and she commanding us to move
beyond holding her hand and saying we loved her and
to feed the sheep to do that work which will
make of this earth this here and now an outstation
of heaven Barbara Beach Alter loved god in her own
fashion as best she possibly could we remember that and
that memory is today like a great network a web
of love and inspiration o we would gladly one more
time hold her hand and say I love you but
we know also clearly I think today what the work
is to love our neighbor as ourselves to work for
peace and justice I think of my sister with her
colleagues in WEIGO and how her sisters have understood her
grief  let us break our fast together then glad for
the worldwide web that in these days is reading the
gospel of the life of Barbara Beach Alter praise god


feed
tend
feed
in exchange for his three denials Peter is given three imperative verbs
feed
tend
feed
this is the commission Jesus after breakfast on the shore of the sea of Galilee gives to Peter
twice he says feed
in the commonwealth of Massachusetts 700,000 people are hungry
1 in 6 americans are hungry
living in uncertainty about their daily bread
more than 18,000,000 in Africa
842,000,000 around the world go to bed hungry


Marty and Tom
The thinking about the memorial service is taking this slow and cautious turn, namely that we have three services (at least), one in Sudbury, one in New Haven (allowing Stan and Chuck and others to come) at First Presbyterian (with Blair Moffett we hope), and of course one in India.
The date frame appears to be somewhere between December 17 and 20, unless you have other thoughts.
The actual cremation happens tomorrow.  Lincoln, Bett, Alexis and I will attend, and then of course there is In the Midst on Friday.
Love you more than tongue can tell.
John


the thing with a life well lived is that many
people have partaken the way let’s say a river moves
down through any number of different lives all the time
sedulously seeking the shortest path to the sea to steal
a line from somebody or other meandering a watershed within
which so many of us find a way to live
our own lives nourished and for each of us the
river distinct and different white water the slow fertile meander
the delta and we say to each other this is
the composite river


sometimes I feel like a sleepwalker trying to run a
marathon sometimes I feel like a speedbump in a blizzard

an arrow in a wind tunnel sometimes I feel like

a hazard sign in an old age home sometimes I
feel like a tyrannosaurus rex trying to ride a tricycle

and sometimes those are the good days when identity is
strong like an icicle in a heat wave is strong

I try to read wisdom literature at happy hour scotch
and Solomon can’t go wrong I think and sometimes I

feel like crying
 
November 13

four days ago we were left alone there with your
body after your breathing ceased and the proud stubborn beating
of your heart and in those four days beloved mother
so much I would love to say to you and
share the antics of the squirrel late leaves on the
neighborhood trees music Orion the network the atlas of love
your life has left behind and all the words we
are the gospel of today and I would sit with
you there then in silence as I sit now four
days later vigilant insomniac aware that the kingdom of heaven
is not more complicated than singing than love than dancing

we are all dancing the dance lord siva teaches and
the s

We spread all over the continent
Your underwater girl event
So many times we
spoke curled up in
each other
I heard your getting
married to my
friend's brother huh?

Best friends acting silly
Girly- Goose rhymes
Girls with special
privileges

Like the magical tales
All the males get
better wages
And we are stuck
The unfurl girl
On fuel she got
The longer life eyelashes

The Gossamer
Pink Owl it's her
The Consumer Male
Play Bill

The pink lady fussy-Playgirl hat
The dreamer what's new Pussycat
Her body lined all sheer inside
the curtain's play pretend
he calls every time
Her pink slippers are on

Mystical time of men
Lucky Red dragons
* She Opens up pink for him
She's around all He's
Kitchen pink polka dots
In her Galley pink apron
He's in Las Vegas winning
the slots
Pink Mustang Sally
The dark magenta
Pink sugar pop
Mary Kay
Faraway Fay Dunaway
Powder Puff Maina Delray
Jekyll and Hyde
I'm certain I see him, Sir
She's in the Girl furled State

"It's a girl thing always
showing up late"

Girly whirly Artsy celebrate
Like a party pink
Gatsby
Impromptu
Pink pillow talk naps
Spinning bottle
Oh! her brassiere
Ginger
snaps
Girl gone Genie
in her tutu
The Girly gathering
Coffee and brunch Kong Fu

Whats up with her menu
Eye opener Pirates Carribean
Had her Jungle Jane meal
Those feminine smiles
*** appeal
A million stars of
masculinity the rough shave
Pretty in pink ladies
never behave

Girl's of pink pearls of
Mercedes
Let's bury the hatchet

Unfurl Girl Girl

Her Pink/Gold locket shines
Boys and Girls rocket
Spa creamy
The religiously told prophet
Easter Bunny Jack Rabbit
The habitats of the fervor my
Godly savor
The girl goes overboard
Femininity ****** creatures
not Saints we cannot be
what we ain't
      Gods
We got the girly features

Many people despise the rose crush
We are a naturally sweet  whole bunch

The pink feminine gift
Be careful in your
girly ways look to your left
Let us change our evil days
Unfurl Girl Girl her path to the right
Prayers become artificial
Materialistic Girl talk should be realistic

Animalistic our instinct ******
The girly specimen up to date
The sweet and so modest
She's the divine
A kiss on the hand
Confidential
Smelling all sweet

Elizabeth violet blue voice
She symbolizes
Grace so sweet the papers
For a real divorce
Wild untamed unfurled
All softly curled and loved
He looks at her the way
she looks now
But here to Eternity, she looks
amazingly well
Shes the girl-girl unfurl
He's handsomely tall she
is the Princess dressed frilly
Pink champagne ball
Their girly wishing well
who wants to tell?

.i left an excess of a B somewhere in here... within the confines of a word giblet... i probably thought: bigger... bouncier... gibblet looked better... and so very far removed from goblet... i'm not going to look for it.

i haven't done much today -
and i don't suppose i will finish this day of
with some grand poo'em...
but one can almost be proud
to have perfected a chicken breast roulade...
the rest of the chicken missing
the butterfly? well... bound to a very
decent soup... clear and not atypical
western cream-soup...
but the roulade! the roulade!
no... you don't beat the butterfly *******
like you might turn to: "sadistically"
for a schnitzel...
you do beat the meat,
but you more or less... press down the mallet
onto the meat, until you reach
the right equilibrium of pressure and
there's that squish-sound / feel of the *******
expanding...

if it was a whole roast chicken:
of course i'd stuff the space between
the skin and the ******* with some thyme
infused butter... to capture the richness...
but this is a roulade...
the stuffing? goats cheese... toasted almonds...
fesh dates... thyme...
i might have just over-balanced
the equation with the dates...
but as i explained to the fussy-eater:
what are you implying that we do not
serve poultry with a sweet attache?
cranberry sauce and turkey?
and as i've learned...

it's best buying potatoes from a turkish
outlet by the 25kg bulk...
from a warehouse where the buyers
walk with bundles of money and do not
use debit card "finger" prints...
the free passing of money is still retained
in some tiers of society...
but the idea, regarding the potatoes is
to poach them from a bath of cold water...
once they start boiling leave them for
five minutes, then turn the heat off
and wait for the bubbling water to stop...
drain them... then leave them on
the already turned-off stove to get rid
of any excess water...
drizzle some chilly infused olive oil
onto the baking tray, place each potato individually...
then drizzle some olive oil onto them...
shove them in the oven when the roulade
is finished...
my first most pristine roulade...
of course you have to pan-fry it to get some
colour... the filling is kept intact given that:
goats' cheese is no mozarella...

it doesn't melt and subsequently ooze out...
and the whole lot should be be done within
the hour... the roulade can be pressured
to go for 25 minutes...
depending on the colour of the tatties...
i still had to take it out and "glitter" it with
a 1:1 ratio of honey and lemon juice...
the remains of this juice i designated on al dente
cooked greens... there was no need
for a dressing...
left-over red cabbage coleslaw...
that helps... sweet chilli sauce with some mayo
and crem fraiche...
it even looks the prettier picture:
leftover but it still works...
***** of a ******* butterfly *******!
of course it was going to spit oil back at me,
i was frying the skin... the fat from the skin
was melting the skin was getting crisp
and mingling with the olive oil fat...
also... it's a myth that the temp. should
read: 165°F... that's really just a circa...
mine read 156°F... and given the time i let
it rest...

oh right... this is not a food blog...
perhaps the moon is just too beautiful tonight
to have to attach words to it?
perhaps my love is better left alone and unused
and it doesn't demand sleeper idealism
for it to be celebrated?
it's cooking food... it's not a hip-replacement
surgery...
when cooking was married to chemistry:
i sometimes miss the laboratory
and the cooking up of esters...
my new found calling is in cooking...
and something i... wouldn't exactly want to earn
money for...

and what is surgery if not elevated butcher's ******>antics? oh no, it's needed...
but the meat is supposed to be raw
from beginning to end...
and if i was only given the chance to recycle
a recipe for a stake tartar...
or sushi... well... it wouldn't be much...
esp. when i come into my own
and cook an indian **** of spices...
but then again... the indians butcher their meat
in their curries...
i've come to some serious realisation...
the indians butcher the meat with their curry sauce...
it comes down to baking the meat...
in order for the meat to still retain its
original juices...
i quiet enjoy that little detail of cook...
in that: i don't remember the last time i was
in a restaurant...

i can't imagine eating while having to talk...
conversation over food is no better
than sitting in field of grazing cows
and their leech clouds of flies all bothersome...
with regards to the quality of the meat....
there is always some excess of meat from
the butterfly ******* before you start moulding
them into a shape that will satisfy it being
rolled...
it's a supreme joy working with a whole
chicken... i sometimes wish i was also the man
who could see the whole procedure of:
and be involved in the slaughterhouse...

oh god... the brute village beheading is
rather uncompromising... one chicken is caught
and beheaded on a stump of wood...
the head still moves with its last remaining
short-circuit tongue extending out of the beak
and the eyes roll... and then all the other chickens
congregate and perform a Kuru ritual of pecking
the blood... sipping it...
that's how killing a chicken in a village
looks like... i can't imagine an industrial scale
precision... but i would't mind...

every time i hear of veganism: the ethical argument
i start conjuring up an antithesis of
cannibalism... which is not exactly edgy given
my catholic background (i haven't been
confirmed, personal choice):
this is my body, this is my blood...
i hear a vegan talk i make a fetish of
imagining cannibalism...
believe me... these limbs look akward...
to begin with... where can you find a *******
drumstick of poultry on it?!
nowhere!

only a few days shy off today i made a most
delightful broth of chicken hearts...
i can't explain how the sight of washing...
oh... around 30 pultry hearts feels like...
given that they're hearts and not the entire chicken...
but as ever... the internal organs are a delight...
pork or poultry liver...
poultry hearts...
poultry stomachs...
cow intestines...

come to think of it... you never really cook meat...
you... curate it... it become a fine art specialist...
for those who turn to veganism or the vegetarian
"alternative": perhaps they never curated meat,
perhaps they simply butchered it?
the chicken roulade of butterfly poultry *******
always came out dry-*****?

after all, wasn't ol' Adoolph the one to say:
'hello mr. carrot, hellooo jew no. 1269230 of
auschwitz'... that's the puberty of my distrust
for vegans... they were never able to
cook meat properly... they probably ate
a decent piece of it served in a restaurant...
but when it came to cooking it themselves...
they would have probably butchered
a pasta and never reached the quality: al dente...
either...
and i'm worried that they can't cook
vegetables al dente either...
so it's back to the gulag of roots overcooked
and turned into mush...

oh i believe that meat is butchered...
but it's from the actual butchery...
it's from a lack of respect in how it's finally
"cooked"... well... curated...
are vegans the sort of people that never
ate a stake tartar... or found the most
arisotractic flavours in the giblet?
oh my god... if you can eat a drumstick
of chicken clean to the bone...
and, like me... sometimes bite off
the budding pulp of the bone for the marrow
gnash?
perhaps that's why i own cats...
delicate courtesans of the table...
a dog would go hungry at this table...
sharpnel of bones and some lurking marrow
in the "shins"... and that's about it...

you can never truly be a vegan...
not unless you repudiate the fact you've only
tasted muscle tissue...
what about the giblets and the cartilege?

every time i would perform oral ***
on a woman i could only conjure up one distate...
this is not a steak done rare...
this is not an oyster...
this is not a steak tartar...
there are "things" pulverising this meat...
there's an unexpected pocket of heat
in this... "thing"...
this is a sensation that lends itself
to the pastry section of my diet...
a warm apple pie... a custard drizzle
over some chocolate sponge...
oh qui qui... the marvels of a bilingual mouth...

if the meat is of good quality....
as the chicken roulade i made today...
and there were leftover snippets...
which i fed to the cats...
and the meat was eaten... in totality...
i was eating good chicken...
cats regarding meat are like...
those ancient jobs equivalent to...
Halotus...
god! give me a chance to own a cat!
i'll name him: Halotus!
he'll be my meat taster...
he'll tell me if i'm eating bad meat...
i'm not a Claudius but...
this cat could very well be the next Halotus!
dogs eat leftovers...

beside this one instance of catching
a female mosquito by the leg
and feeding it to a cat...
the most pleasure i ever received was
when i was preparing a rainbow trout
for grilling...
the head couldn't be used since:
i wasn't planning to cook a base fish stock...
so i plucked those pearly eyes from the head...
and my... what a delight they were...
not me... the cat...
i'm guessing that's the equivalent
of me gulping down an oyster...

female maine **** fascination with dairy
products...
any cream will do... even cheap-oh cheese...
dairylee spreadable...
but all manner of cream whipped...
i've heard of cats being fond of red wine...
i once owned one that was fond
of... olive brine...

again: what's with this need for people to cook
your food? what sort of decency of conversation
can one have when presented with food?
i don't like restaurants simply because:
well i can't exactly cook roadkill...
and shooting at birds is not my kind of thing...
so if i can't catch it and **** it...
i can at least: cook it...
i distrust what i eat that i haven't prepared
myself... notably the hygiene dilemma...

it really is on my head whether i'll catch
salmonella when i sometimes drink a coffee
with a guilty pleasure of mine:
whisked egg-yoke and sugar... on top of the coffee...
that's my problem...
but eating is never a synonym with conversation...
and it's never necessary to loiter and wait
for someone to shove pretenses above
the food in the first instance of: the waiting staff...

i blame the rise in veganism surrounding
the people who never allowed themselves to appreciate
the animal: in total...
there's no fun just sticking to ingesting muscle
protein... first you have to cook it properly...
this chicken roulade didn't have to reach
the internal temp. of 165°F - that's a circa proposition...
at 156°F and allowed to rest is just as good...
because it's an art-form to cook meat...
then again: what's cooking and what's about
to be curated?

the people who turn to veganism are also the people
who never bothered with gibblets...
the liver, the heart, the stomach,
in some cases the intestines...
hence my critique of Islams critique of ol' porky Bella...
this most unique animal...
which you can eat in total...
tenga deep fried pigs ears...
again: the cartilege...
ethics my *** if all you know about a pig is a bore
chop or a **** or... you never get into
the knitty-gritty details of the interior of
an animal... lamb is a stinking meat...
it's hell-rot when the male is slaughtered...

oh right! right! how could i forget the star
pinnacle... poached giblet supreme...
the neck... if you know how to eat a drumstick
down to the bone...
poached poultry neck...
the teeth and tongue wandering around
the crevices of this elongated spine...
i can imagine monkey's extended coccyx
tastes as tender... but only among
the macaques...
otherwise: when what's about to be eaten...
can be elevated to a status of ****** fetishes...
gimps in leather...
when rummaging among so many
boyscouts & aenemic vegans...

i'm yet to taste this, one specific, delicacy...
flaki (flački) is not new to me...
i need to marry a girl from ******* Masovia...
somewhere in the vicinity of Płock...
for i can eat some černina...
duck blood and clear broth soup...
as long as most of the animal is used...
the dogs can have the rest
and so can the vegan ethics society...

but of course this is no an anathema...
or some curated vendetta...
all the roots in the vicinity...
even the fungus... can vegans eat fungus?
are you sure?
what about those "thinking" magic mushrooms
that... if you looked into 1960s:
quick-n-easy philosophy courses...
the fungus is the botanical hitchhiker
that strapped itself to the humanoid brain
and... broadened our horizons and what not...
can you eat the godhead 'shroom?
it might just very well be...
that i'm picking a half-brain half-mushroom
entity in some alcohol to allow myself
to ease a tongue out from
its standard formality of the mollusk...
and waggle waggle waggle brute...

but yes... one is most certainly butchering
a piece of meat when one cooks
a broth... or a curry... unless its a gibblet
of sorts...
to "curate" muscular meat in a broth of a curry...
poaching it to death and worse than death:
dry...
it's about allowing the meat to retain its
natural juices...
how else to enjoy a poultry butterfly breast
roulade - with the natural juices still intact?

- i stopped paying attention to these *******
moralists...
if you have ever figured your way around
cutting off the butterfly of ******* for a roulade...
and you know what it feels like
when you stuff the space between
the meat and the skin of them
with some butter and fresh thyme...
and you're still not circumcised...
well... that's what skin feels like...

how else to reiterate? Ava Lauren is probably
the best example of a brothel beauty...
mandible beauty... something that contorts
and appeals to a perspective of cubism...
wretched beauty of the squashed square
into a pseudo-rhombus contort...
at least doing it from time to time leaves me
without a single buoyancy of thought regarding:
am i having enough, am i not having enough:
and if i'm not having enough -
what are the chances of me contracting some
s.t.d.?

bad beef...
again... juxtaposing a reiteration...
there's something worse than visit a brothel...
there's the... visiting a resturant..
i can't stop thinking about alien,
unwashed hands, preparing my food...
it's already one kick-in-the-***** not having
hunted the food... but to be left ******-over
twice by not having cooked it?!

at least if you know what flesh feels like
between the two crucibles of
death's kiss and man's tongue tease...
you will know when...
you will at least know when...
death comes with its kiss...
and its breath... the meat will turn all
yucky... as if a mollusk decided to prance
upon it in an imitation zigzag...

hence? i have no respect for islam because
islam has no respect for Miss Porky Bella!
seeing how most of the lamb -
except for the kidney in a steak pie
is not wasted...
the pig could feed two african villages...
if done properly...
while a lamb would only serve a pittance
for a poor man of yemen harem...

again: the pig is the enemy...
while not making crab meat a haram is not?
vulture meat... scavenger meat...
that's a: o.k. but the sophisticated nature
of the pig: sophisticated in that:
almost all of it can be eaten...
that so much of it can be you would probably
burp out an oink...
done properly...
the giblets in tow...
pity that such a desert god would never
appreciate the pig becoming a dog on
its truffle hog days...

beside all the arguments...
imagine how the "one true god" goes down
on a platter of those ignorant Beijing folk...
Warsaw testing! Warsaw testing!

pristine my *** when all they ever do
is eat the muscles and never appreciate the detials...
no wonder they become aenemic vegans!
at least butchering a vegetable is less of a concern...
you can almost get away with butchering a root...
it is... oh most certainly it is a shame...
when you can't cook meat properly...

but at least i never feel ever as bad going to a brothel
seeing the sort of people who venture into
restaurants...
i don't like being cooked for, i don't like being
"waited" for...
i don't like this modern orthodoxy affair
of a restaurant... i wish these people
learned something about how meat is: never cooked...
and how... it's always most certainly most necessarily:
curated...

pedantic? perhaps... you should have seen
me in that athenian strip-club with two-clingy *******
either side of me... starwberries in their *****
and we are all fine and giggling...
stealing kisses from prostitutes is: truffle hog
"learning" parabolla...

a date and a "promise" of *** is always
a limp **** affair...
i always want to know whether what i'll be eating
still entertain the existence of salt...
or whether i'll have to find alternatives
of: extracting the juices and finding the right
bites...
because love is long over-due and i'm not going
to butcher it further with whimsical hopes...
my love is a dead love is no ideal...
my love is donning a ball and chain of memory:
i have left the better parts of myself
in the wrong sort of people...
they're hardly coming back...
the people or the pieces of me...

but at least i can attest that:
oral *** and the cool crisp gulp of an oyster
passing the Charon of my tongue...
oysters are only fascinating to eat...
because you always want to concentrate
on the fact that: you're eating something that's still
alive... not even a steak tartar or a sushi slice
gives you that hope and thrill...
unless... you're hoping for some tapeworm
embryo being lodged in the flesh...
which how man can almost arrive
at the conception of foetus and womanhood...
i can't be impregnated: exclusively...
i can't be... pregnant: exclusively...
but i can allow a parasitical tapeworm
to become my new-born-*******-out-abortion...

inclusively... how else?!
i'm also tired of being left immoral by the act
of *******...
not unless you know what not being circumcised
feels like... and what chicken skin feels like...
the people at the restaurants...
a palette disgruntled by minor changes of heat...
and... there's always a very precise detail
when it comes to the temp. of a piece of meat
being cooked... and when it's allowed to epilogue
when resting to ****** with all its juices
left intact...

over-sexed society, are we?
at least doing the one-eyed-bandit's favor
doesn't allow me to ferment...
to pickle such repressive thinking...
itself pitched against: in itself...
and these this Radeztsky March forward...
over-sexed also can imply:
not exactly culinarily-savvy...
these are always twins walking side by side...
and they are always siamese problems...
over-sexed implies...
not cuninarily-savvy...
the better part of this critique is already wide open...
why all these cooking channels,
all these cooking programs?
and all this ****?

can't **** can't cook? broomstick! and to sabbath
with you!
i can't no better comparison...
over-sexed and also: terrible at *******...
******* is terrible to begin with...
you can't exactly quip yourself with
having done some lessons in tango or salsa...
the chances are that the *** turns out to
be a laughable take on tango and
you're going to step on a day-dreaming
dancing partner...
it's exactly what's it's supposed to be:
a gamble at best...
but when you throw in bad cooking?
recipe for disaster... bad dates that begin
in a restaurant and arrive at a black-out
bedroom with cockoon *** under
the bedsheets with you gasping for air!

'god let me out! let me out!'

A story in three movements after the painting by Mary Elwell*
 
 I

She’s out. Changed her frock, left me a list and her letters on the hall table. I heard the door bang. She was in a hurry. Wednesday afternoon she’s often in a hurry. I don’t know where she goes, but she’s usually back about 9.0, and Mr Fred has his tea by himself. I come in here when she’s out and I’ve done the necessary. It’s a big house and apart from Janet and Elsie in the mornings I look after the place, and her when necessary. She’ll call me into her bedroom to tell me what she wants done with her laundry. She’s fussy, but she can afford to be. She has two wardrobes, what I call her Mrs Fred clothes and her ‘Mrs Knight’ clothes. They’re quite different; like she’s two different people. When she paints she’s someone I don’t know at all – she looks like a *****. She doesn’t belong in this room anyway when she paints. She has her studio in the attic and doesn’t even let Mr Fred in there. I don’t go in there. I’ve never got further than the door. She doesn’t want anyone to see what goes on in there. Oh, I see the pictures when they’re finished. She places them on Mr Fred’s easel in the drawing room and spends hours pacing up and down looking at them. She pulls up a chair and sits there. She doesn’t like being interrupted when she’s doing that. I like to come in here when she’s out. It’s a lady’s bedroom. I don’t think Mr Fred comes in here very often. She likes to go to him when she does, which isn’t often. When I first came here they were always in each other’s bedrooms, but she keeps herself to herself now except when Mrs Knight comes.
 
II
 
 When I was a young man I often used to look up from Walkergate at the windows of this room. You can’t miss them really as you walk towards the Bar. I coveted this house you know. Marrying Mary suddenly made that a possibility. When Holmes died and left her his fortune it came on the market and I said lightly one afternoon – she was in my studio in London – I see Bar House is up for sale. Yes, she said, we could buy it. I think she knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere in London, and she wanted to go back to Yorkshire.  She was from the first going to be her own person having been Holmes’ for ten years – an older man, dull and old. She felt by marrying me, an artist, her desire to be solitary, self-absorbed, would be understood. I don’t often come in here. She comes to me, usually to talk at the end of the day. She doesn’t sleep well, never has. We don’t, well you know, it was all about friendship, companion-ship I suppose, and money. She had it. I didn’t. You know the light in this room is so wonderful in the afternoon – like honey. I like to sit on her bed and think of the days when I would wake in this room. There were two beds here then. She’d be sitting at her writing table in her blue gown. She liked to get up with the dawn and write long letters to her friends, mainly Laura of course. After that first sitting she began writing to me, all about her love of painting and how Alfred had never encouraged her, and would I help her, advise her? She wanted to go to Paris and be in some Impressionist’s atelier. I soon realised in Paris I was never going to be a great artist or a modern painter. There’s one picture from that time . . . only one; that girl from the theatre, Amelie. I’d seen Degas and thought . . . no matter, I could never match her letters. I was always a disappointment. I still am. I would sit down at my desk with one of her letters  - she wrote to me almost every day - and think ‘I’ll just deal with that enquiry from Alsop’s’, and then I’d find another pressing letter, or I’ll look at my accounts, and all my good intentions would be as nothing. If I’d really loved her I would have written I’m sure. It takes time to write, to think what to say. It’s time I always felt I couldn’t allow myself. Painting was more than enough, and more important than letters to Mary. She wanted to talk to me, and wanted me to talk back. So she talks to Laura now, who returns her ‘talk’ with equally long letters – with sketches and caricatures of people she’s met or ‘observed’. Occasionally, I catch sight of one of these illustrated letters on the sitting room sofa, placed inside a book she is reading. I have a box of Mary’s letters, and when she’s away I look at them and read her quiet words – what she’s seen, what she’s read, what she hoped  we might become.
 
 III

I often stand at the door, even today when I’m in a rush, to gaze at my room before going out and leaving it to itself. I love it so in the afternoons when the sun takes hold of it, illuminates it. You know each item of furniture has its own story; my mother’s quilt on my bed, the long mirror from Alfred’s house; my writing box given to me by my Godmother on my 21st; the little blue vase by my wash stand – that back street shop in Venice, my first visit. I stand at the door and think, well, just what do I think? Perhaps I just rest for a moment at the sight of myself reflected in these ‘things’, my possessions, my chosen decoration, the colours and tones and shapes and positions of objects that surround my daily life. My precious pictures; some important gifts, others all about remembrance, a few from my childhood, my first marriage – Alfred was very generous. The silver vase on my writing table glows with delphiniums from the garden – and a single rose from Laura. And today we will meet, as we do on alternate Wednesdays, to drink tea in the Station Hotel, arriving on our different trains from our different lives. This friendship sustains me, and more than she will ever know. She is so resolute, so gifted as an artist. She is a painter. She has imagination, whereas as I just see and record. She puts images together that carry stories. That RA **** – that’s Laura you know – and the painter is me – and wearing a hat for goodness sake! Me paint in a hat! I remember her going through my wardrobe to dress me for that picture. Why the hat? I kept asking. But she made me look as I’ve always wanted to look in a picture – as though I was a real artist and not a wealthy woman who ‘plays’ at painting. Fred’s portraits say nothing to me, whereas Laura’s make me feel weak inside. I remember her trying out that pose in front of my long mirror. ‘Will this do?, she would say, ‘Or this? All I could look at were her long, long fingers, imagining her touch on my arm when she kissed me goodbye.

It’s something that try we should
To provide the parrot its basic food
Apple minus seeds mango banana
Grape orange guava papaya
As for vegetables cooked dried bean
With beet broccoli its heart you can win
Cucumber carrot and cauliflower
They surely love like they love a shower
Corn on the cob is fun for parrot
They aren’t fussy as them you thought
Hot peppers peapod lettuce
For them delicacies you can choose
Sweet and baked potato well cooked yam
They devour in delight add to their glam
Parrots are cute friendly and nice
Give them oatmeal millet brown rice
They’re not greedy from you they won’t beg
Though these birds love scrambled boiled egg
The parrot is innocent gorgeous and sweet
Can’t call them carnivore yes they like meat
Must talk to them and not keep your mouth shut
Your loving pet the parrot loves occasional nut.

Now words of caution what don’t do them good
Candy and chocolate and all junk food
I know you are smart and not at all mean
To offer this wonder bird mushrooms caffeine
Believe my words they aren’t my opinion
Use them in your food don’t give them onion
Dairy products for them are a big ‘no’ ‘no’
You surely want them to healthily glow
Give the parrot shower keep its cage clean
Give them just fresh foods no sugar no caffeine
Say ‘no’ to pesticides choose only organic
See in their bowel nothing goes toxic
Follow what I’ve said the task is not hard
Spend your time well with this beautiful bird.

In June this year, designer Masaba Gupta and film producer Madhu Mantena had the quietest of civil ceremonies. It was only when she took to Twitter the next day to talk about the court registry that most people heard of it. It was a move most unorthodox, for a leading fashion designer, especially one who counts several Bollywood actors among her close friends.

At the time, she also announced “a Caribbean wedding in November”.

The destination wedding isn’t happening. But that’s not to deprive us of a grand, four-day affair, the sort that has the most coveted guest list, and is followed with the keenest interest. It will start on November 19, with the bridal showers, will continue with the mehendi on November 20, the sangeet on November 21 and a gala reception on Sunday, (November 22). Expect the works, and guest lists that boast of Bollywood A-listers (Shahid and Mira Kapoor, and Sonam Kapoor are close friends, just so you know).

In short, it sounds like any other grand Indian celebrity wedding. Except, this is Masaba Gupta we’re talking about. As we catch up with her, we get the sense that she’s approached the whole thing with the same minimalism and quirkiness with which she approaches fashion. “A lot of people are invited,” she tells us, “But I’m not going around and talking about my wedding designer or my lipstick, so on and so forth.”

Unlike most Indian brides, she’s not even fretting over the big day, or days, as it were. “When I was growing up, I always saw brides around me under tremendous stress. The pressure to dress a certain way, wear a certain amount of jewellery and make-up... I saw how uncomfortable it was. So I decided that, if I do get married, I’ll be someone who puts comfort first, and then looks at her options for cut, colour, embroidery or jewellery,” says Gupta.

So, in case you do find yourself invited (otherwise, there’s always Instagram), don’t be surprised to see the most relaxed bride, dressed so comfortably that she’d be the envy of any married Indian woman. The idea, she says, is that a bride should “dress in a way that she can interact with people and have a good time herself.”

She’s also taken charge of the whole thing, and planned a non-fussy, non-extravagant celebration. “For me, three vacations is more value-for-money than a mandap with diamonds on it.”

True to her word, for her sangeet and reception, Gupta is ditching the norm of heavily designed lehengas and saris. “I didn’t go into that heavy, couture, bridal space. And I’m the kind of designer who wears works of other designers,” she says. So, her trousseau will have outfits by several other leading designers. “There are a few people who are great at doing certain things. Anamika [Khanna] is great at reception outfits. I can do a cool, quirky mehendi outfit. For a sangeet, somebody more in the Manish Arora or Shivan and Narresh kind of space,” she says.

The designer who’s always stood apart also seems keen to set an example. By not conforming to rules, Gupta wants to make a point. “I do want it to be about comfort, but I also want to change things up a bit. I want to set an example and say that you don’t need to wear a certain colour, a certain type of maang tika; your hair doesn’t have to look a particular way,” says the young designer.

Ask her if this is the (unconventional) dream wedding come true, and she laughs. “I never had a dream wedding. I’ve never visualised anything except clothes. Certainly not an elaborate wedding setup. See, I just don’t want to starve at my wedding. So, my dream wedding is one where I get to eat a meal while everyone else enjoys themselves as well.”

Masaba’s five-point guide to a chilled-out wedding

1) Get people to help out. If you try and look at every detail, you’re going to have a hard time. You may have a great input, but get people to do it for you.

2)People think you should shop for jewellery and clothes much in advance, but I think it should be done as close to the wedding as possible. You’ll have the latest stuff, and your taste might change over time. It’s best done around the wedding, so you don’t regret what you’ve bought.

3) Shoes are important. Make sure you’re in comfortable heels or flats, so you can survive the night.

4) Always test the make-up artist. Don’t just do a demo and leave it; test it through the day. See how the make-up behaves over a few hours, then you’ll know what it will actually be like, because it takes a couple of hours for make-up to set.

5) Receptions should start becoming more informal. You shouldn’t have to have the couple on stage smiling through the evening. I’ve heard of brides getting locked jaws. It’s absolute torture.

How to be the unconventional groom

• Fusion looks work well. If you’re wearing a Jodhpuri or a bandhgala, team it up with Jodhpuri pants. For men who are slimmer, suits do wonders.

• If you wish to be quirky and know you can carry it off, team dhoti pants and a shirt with a really formal blazer and a brooch.


• I love the cropped, ankle-length formal pants men are wearing now. It’s great for a reception.

• You don’t need to wear laced up shoes. Wear a nice slip-on in patent leather or a printed pair of shoes that stand out. So, you can make the whole look black and white, and have a nice pop shoe and make that the focus.

• Don’t be afraid of colours at your wedding. Get over navy blue, black or maroon. On a darker man, a haldi yellow kurta will look fantastic when teamed with an off-white or cream churidar. Even a soft pink in raw silk — it has a silver-pink shine — looks lovely.

How to be the ‘in vogue’ bride

• We’re seeing a lot of shapewear backs. Instead of the flared lehenga, women are opting for the fishtail cuts. Girls are also wearing shararas with big flares that almost look like a lehenga.

• Brides are going minimal. Go for less embellishment, and lighter lehengas.

• The dupatta is being ditched. Either that, or it’s attached. Much easier to handle.

• The choli is becoming more modest. People are wearing longer lengths, which are more fitted; the ‘60s style kurtas with shararas are also in. There’s more focus on the body and shape.

• I’m hoping the anarkali has died. It’s the worst of the lot. And it’s not very flattering. If you’re very skinny and tall, it works for you. If you’re short, you look like you’re lost in your outfit.

• Ditch the trail. At the end of the night, it’s a rag. It’s been stepped on and is *****.

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/mermaid-trumpet-formal-dresses

www.marieaustralia.com/cheap-formal-dresses

She called through
the cloth of the tent
are you in there?
no

you replied
I'm not
and she laughed
and said

thought we were going
down to the beach?
thought you wanted
to see the sunset?

sure I do
you said
just getting dressed
dressed?

she said
you are naked?
not now
but I was

a few moments ago
****
she said
should have just

unzipped your tent
and poke my head in
too late now Mamie
you said

and you unzipped the tent
and climbed out
and stared around
the camp base

at the bar
and other tents
and the odd
palm tree here and there

thought you were going
to come over to my tent
this afternoon?
she said

didn't know if Fussy Annie
was still there
you said
didn't want to crowd

you both out
she laughed
she's off someplace
looking at mosques

o
you said
wish I'd known
I could have come over

and we could have done
some exploring
of our own
yes

she said
but there you go
that's life
opportunities

come and go
if you miss out
you miss out
anyway let's go

down to the beach
and see this sunset
and so you followed her
down to the beach

her hand holding yours
her fingers gripping
you tightly in case
you ran off

what's she like
Fussy Annie?
you asked
fussy

Mamie said
all the time
she's on about
something or other

not being right
or someone having
did such and such
and o God

the toilets
you should have heard her
ranting about
the two bricks

you have to stand on
to do your business
yes comes as a bit
of a shock to see

those two **** bricks
you said
the beach was reached
the horizon

was like a world
on fire
she kept close
to you

her hip
touching yours
full of unexplored
desire.

Deep within an enchanted forest out pass a gypsy town, many strange beings are known to dwell beyond our sight and sound. Upon their horizon it’s as if time stands still; still time bends to no one’s will. Here sweet dreams spring forth from magical mushrooms and enchanted daffodils.

She was a pretty little fairy with beautiful large exaggerated eyes of blue, transparent wings and sparkles trailed behind her as she flew. She was but one of the many brilliant lights that roamed the hillsides late at night, yet merely a fussy glow in our human sight. Her name was Lilly: she was curious, witty and very much in her fairy prime; I apologize for speaking in riddles and rhymes but only the young at heart can see her and her kind.

Although this is a story about a fairy, technically it breaks the fairytale rules because unfortunately this story is true …

Lilly possessed a restless soul; she was tightly wound and always ready to go. Patience was her heart’s greatest foe. She loved to surf the summer breeze like a robin soaring free, past the hills and beyond the swamps filled with reeds just to see what she might see.

One day she flew a bit too far and as she would often do, she began to dilly-dally; little did she know she wandered smack-dab into Witches Valley. She didn’t notice anything out of the norm as the sun ducked behind the Silver-Lined Clouds of Truth; but for those who reside in this region such was the ritualistic passage of the end of youth.

Suddenly the shadow began to whisper and the wind began to blow; the weeping willows danced about and out of the shadows came forth two eyes aglow. To flight her spirit beckoned her yet her curiosity took its toll; something reached out and touched her with an embrace that quenched her restless soul. Waves of pleasure through her body flowed; she had never felt so alive or so comfortable in her own skin: with rosy cheeks and glassy eyes she bid the shadow “please touch me again.” That day she lost her way, trapped in this overwhelming perpetual thrill; far beyond the measure of magical mushrooms and enchanted daffodils. Things were set in motion and Lilly would never again be the same; time sped up on her horizon and here her destiny changed. When she flew sparkles no longer followed in her trail, and her very own people began to refer to her as the Nightingale.

At first it seemed Lilly had been awakened into a constant dream but then she began to miss her home, the majestic hills of gold and green. She longed for the sparkles that would trail behind her flight and her people who were now but fussy glowing lights.

Perhaps Lilly was bewitched by the shadow and his overwhelming touch, yet inadvertently time catches us in it’s clutch. Lilly slowly lost the magic of her youth and my eyes no longer glow. As for Lilly and I, she left me for a Leprechaun many years ago …

.h'america.... the last theological playground of... whatever the mind left behind in the decrepit bulwark that's europe... oh... and those mid-western died-hard hitchcock platinum-blondes in a-waiting... my typo pristine dutch-girls-go-to-church mantra... otherwise? no b'ooh'y'ah! chugger-chugger-chugger-chuck-cherry-choppy-chops-you-*******-cuc­­k-chuckie! quasi-whitman wannabe... billy was a butcher... a thematic long lost gun... billy was a butcher... and all the ripe choppers of pork... gave us a belief in snow; and what some heaved with a falling-of-a-star of dis-.belief: i too was bound to glorification of: what was expected to be known! and the subsequent: wow! i have met only the most limited of men... i have therefore met all men... the "all" men of this rubric of a year, a decade... all that's bygone of a yawn; swear it sn't so! a so! that's not be be sown! i am here too: upon the whim of expectation... merely... waiting... a man comes to be born come his 30s... his 40s? his nostalgia "moment"... former known name of: Jack Lil Lick 'Em Boots... and the crescendo of pauper's black lining of the Wall St. "better oiled"... scalp the ******! and send him unto the rabbi's true blessing... in the cusp of the scalp of the kippah!  and now... you take... your anglo-spreschen-tangle... into the salt-wounds of your h'america! first born: young... i don't like your revision... looking toward Europe with a hope for a sensibility... this pseudo deutsche: pseudo dutch, anglo-; this is no loss of the French or the Slav! this is our celebration! does one have an irish phrasing in uns to be at in it or one? beyond this grip boyo bound glue? this clerical spare of the otherwise leftover skivvy? we have made barons of these minutes.... as if we were to be kings of the coming years... and how we didn't become gods of the atoms... and the men of the suns and planets... that is our... most worthwhile conundrum in a da pacem domine bound; you're going to Beirut on me... or something?!

in my haitus away from this canvas:
naive me thought: perhaps a surge...
again proven wrong -
albeit not disappointed -
so i had to look elsewhere -

i had to look for a clarity of diction...
i had to move away from
the western lands and their:
death of god and their death by metaphysics...

even in this barren english...
i could not figure out:
why are these people,
apologetics from the central leftists...
these liberals...
ditto: i will butcher this name...
i will butcher the pronunciation
of this word...

if there are "questions" regarding
what's being phonetically encoded...
so much for me "learning to code"...
i too once wrote a html encoding...
with all the < and < and > toys...
spacing... {[( gradations... etc.,

i had to look east, after a while writing
schlechtdeutschegrammatik...
bad german grammar...
again: it's posthumous "Latin"...
it might be...
bad grammar german...
or german bad grammar...
deutscheschlechtgrammatik...

spelling is the mathematical equivalent
of... arithmetic...
but grammar? you need a ping-pong
table...
you need something cymru-esque...
a scandinavian-esque bilingual cushioning...

english alone will not solve the matter...
it's not french, it's not german,
it's certainly not spanish...
spanish and how post-colonialism was
settled with a post-racial attitudes of
Brazil...
england has taken too much time
looking up and out of the h'american
*******...
no grand satan 'ere...
no silk road bazar of fruits exotica from...
Teheran...
something more... subtle...

i had to go back to the "tsar"...
and the цэркйэв: 'cerkiew'...
and there i was amused how...
well apparently...
there are a lot of words
that do use the sz'cz...
enough... to deviate from
the Latin bollocking represented via
шч = щ....

that's perfectly logical...
i'm done with "perfectly logical"
if it exists outside of the realm of
orthography...

szczypta soli - pinch of salt...
in russian...
щ... that's a bit of a "question"...
yes, yes it is complicated...

szczery / szczera (he's honest /
she's honest)...
szczerość (honesty)...

no it's not... you german fickle-wit!
you forget the ы!

ah! well then... щыптa....
**** me... disorientating...
they could do all that with greek and glagolitic...
but they still had to keep...
latin: roman: holy roman empire: GERMAN...
lowercase lettering...
akin to a... e... c doesn't count...
since that's a greek cedilla "missing"...
ç... or... sigma... ς -
otherwise known in english as that S
after the apostrophe...
when something is called being:
the possessive article...
a (indefinite) the (definite) - some -ism to mind?!
no... but 's is... a bit like the SS...
in greek...
all in lower case: stephen's and...
στεφηνς...
σtephenς: that very much desired: ha!
ridiculous gag... the "much desired"
alternative to an apostrophe S ('s)...

it's Stephen's! it's Stephen's!
it's Sylvester's!
three articles in english:
the indefinite article (a)...
the definite article (the)...
and the possessive article ('s) - apostrophe S...
eS eS!

russian accents...
ъ, ы, ь...

but i only know of one "hard sign" example...
and that disqualifies the J ever needing a lower-case
"dot"... ȷ... namely... зъ: ż... alternatively
also: rz... and ж...
żuk! beetle! somehow the caron makes it...

szczyt! zenith!
щыт!

- and since i'm no longer writing:
i'd be writing if i were monolingual...
or... if i was animated by
the sort of Knausgardian bilingualism
of chop of swede: marker norgie...
but... i'm painting...

i forgot how to write when i could
see "synonyms" of sounds...
entombed in two different phonetic
encodings, namely elevated latin
and "pan-greek": cyrillic...

the variations between:

й and ы...
i.e. via е - "ye"
ё - "yo" (there's an umlaut in russian?!)
"у" - yew and you...
the gamma subscript...
ю - "yu"...
and... я - "ya"...

with regards to this rubric...
i am in the middle...
i can see a distinction between
a "y" (whine why and no I)...
hardly a jotted anecdote...
and yes... the closest the russians
ever come to Cracow is with ы
to a western slavic y...
ask me: toй - ask me: toȷ...
who needs a dot above the J
in the lower-case... if...
if... there's no absolute need for it to
be there: unlike some greenwich mean time
focus?
it ȷust so happens that...
the better clasp of the equator is
married to Greenwich: London...

dr. who time lords:
bellybuttons of the world: the english are...
again: i have to remind myself...
ı am not wrıtıng... ı am... paıntıng...

1(one), l(el)... I and ı(ıota)...
i guess an apostrophe would suffice...
ıf it's not an "ı"...
ı'ota... ı: oath...
sure as fıgurative "****" it's not...

ı must wrıte some more examples
in russıan...
to get me off me mark into
some "wax lyrıcal"...
ıslander mentalıty of the hen'glısch...

see how "the dot" can appear...
and disappear, as one see fıt?
and ıt makes: no little bıt of...
"dıfference"?!

i need to sleep on thıs "exercise"...
dot-pop-up...
dot-fold
dot-pop-up...
dot-fold...

w­­ıll eyes gets it?
hardly...

the rest of these cosmopolitan *******
focused on gwaffiti awt...
which is welsh for: GRA GRA...
when was the last time you heard
an englishman trill an R?
ı can't remember...
give me a night to soak up the pickling
juıces... i can't remember the last time
i heard an homest trIll eıther!
pauper me...

it's probably because of the welsh:
GWA GWA! gwadleıth cowonew...
or coroner row row row a rombat into a rue:
or a woo...
rhyme: contorts...
shapes and disappearing: oopses...
a whole multıtude of 'em...
come like the tıde...
leave... lıke a tilde... quası N:
it's a... H is a zeus...
and J is a Ha Ha Ha wrap-up rap of
laughter: in spanısh: of course...

i don't wrıte... ı paint...

impromptu interludes, quickened:
i'm a marriage of two continents...
and one island...
east of moscow...
asia... west of warsaw and...
these gloomy island pits of
idiosyncracy... never quiet the icelandic
answer to norway...
or greenland's answer to denmark...
but an island... nonetheless...

- to hell witth cascading linear cascades
of narrative: i'm blind to the optics
of "the narrative" in the paragraph
format...

i will look back east...
i will look at the russian script...
i will look at it as a time in ******
history equivalent to:
why didn't you just think of it as Greek?
but "my people" didn't...
and i'm not exactly a "why / didn't"...
i'm part of the excavation machinery...
i come with what was served...
i will leave without
leverage...

and here is the russian icon translated
from the Babel...
the following are orthodox letters
shared by one and all
to the western lands...

а б в г д e з и й
к л м н o п р c т
у ф

a b v g d e z i j
k l m n o p r s t u
f

now we leave: łen łill that be?
we should all somehow know...
to łork out a When a Where
(notably with the "h" being but a surd)...

mother how should i further this?
herbata
hasło (ha-s-woe)
hołd (**-**-w'd)

to no other: otherwise only in scotland:
the loch of tipsy work...
albeit: orthographic distinction...
хęć - a whim a desire...
a loch is no: cheat of a lake...
latching onto the otherwise boredom caron
exposed...

дух (ghost) with a душa (soul)...

else there's c dissociated from the s...
and more so with a kappa kaput...
the drumstick slick on a wet snare of: tss...
ц - almost...
then morphing into a ць -
yet in my version: no so silent...
ćma: moth...
цmokaць / cmokać: to click with the tongue...
to kiss smackingly -
to ingest food via a smoczek...
a smoчek - a smoček... the baby soother...

this is my third day having to return to
this canvas...

first thing's first:
palatization (palatißation)
is not... a name of german crusader song:
palästinalied...

this is one of the main reasons why
i can't imagine myself as being able:
to write a novel -
i can't bear this birth of words into
this pseudo-Kandinsky -
it would be much easier with painting
something for a year -
than writing for a year -
the same thing, over and over again...

if i write a "poem" or, rather, a poo'em...
i expect the concept of
ensō: a circle has to be drawn with
a single uninhibited stroke...
when the body is set free and the body
merely complies...

comparison... if one were to draw
a most pristine ensō...
one would never achieve an ouroboros
depiction... it's quiet impossible
to use one volume of ink
attached to a stroke to complete
a circle... let alone a depiction
of an ouroboros...
what starts off as concrete soon...
fades away... thins out...
until there is so little ink left
on the brush that individual hairs
of the brush start appearing...

a pristine depiction of life...
but never the hardline ouroboros
depiction: this cerberus of reincarnation:
i never would have believed in it -
given that: there would have to be
a limited number of souls...
the thought that i might be introspective
enough as to be one of these: "elites"...
and the rest... were "n.p.c." drones...
zombie-esque drifters...
that had no psychological infrastructure
to have memory and rubric of learning
bound to them to be: invested in?

i am still going to write this Kandinsky...
one way or another...
but i can say only that:
i can imagine myself returning
to a painting - and painting it for a year...
but a book?
if a poem can't be written in one sitting...
it's not a poem...
this is not a poem: this is a novel
equivalent...
the best to my ability: which is none...

all i will ever manage with this
is a pedantic scrutiny of russian orthography,
how i don't follow metaphysical arguments
of the germans, the english or the french,
because i don't dream that often,
and when i do dream?
i dream up nonsense...
last time i dreamed that a hiena was
biting at my arm like a corn-cob...
but it wasn't biting to draw blood...
it was biting and cackling in order
to tattoo me... it bit into my arm and detailed
indentations akin to braille...
a pianola roll...

and that's the only details of the dream
i can remember...
perhaps i strained memory...
perhaps people who dream...
are fond of forgetting...
perhaps i don't dream because i can
remember being 4...
a shadow (my maternal great-grandfather)...
a large piano, a small piano...
he worked a retirement as a security guard
in a kindergarten...
i once spent an afternoon with him...
i have seen pictures of him...
but i don't remember the face in the photographs...
he sat me before a bonsai piano
while he sat at the large piano...
and i guess: we were going to be the new
Chopins or something...
he's still a shadow... a grey form...
perhaps a extract of memory that reaches
back 29 years is the reason why i don't
dream... then again...

what if i were to have recurrent dreams?
i've heard people have recurrent dreams...
i just have details of dreams...
i'm not complaining but...
it has become exhausting to simply sleep sometimes...
to replay that lullaby of the void...
yes: yes... i will return to russian orthography:
give me a moment!

well, on my "haitus" i had to look beyond
"conventionality"...
there was a period where i found
the glagolitic script - i said to myself:
there must be an equivalent alphabet to match
the runes...

there must have been a way to encode
without the romans and greeks...
after all... there is the St. Cyrill alphabet
and that of Methodus...
how many ethnic groups are there
on this old, yawning continent -
minor point: old age is not plagued by
yawning - only youth yawns...
old age is cured of yawning -
hanging over them the yawning death...
when father - when father - will this old
ponce come into my *****?

glagolitic and cyrillic?
well Ⰱ Б...
Ⱂ and P... which is not exactly lent-greek...
i guess it's only "wise"
to go back into the modern scribbles...

there are so many branches
to be plucked off a pine
to reserve yourself with ending up
to owning a pike...
so what would it help me:
if i had to reverse and ezra pound
my way forward...
bubble bulging roma notations?
i see: when that chisel in marble
V is not supposed to be a U...

EVROPA... etc.

i need to bring to the fore my own
distinctions...
spread: universally within the confines
of the people that speak it:
i even had to made balkan additions...
like the caron S and caron C...
to hide the english gimmick
of SHarp and CHeat...
evidently we use the Z to replace
the H when stressing our "demands"...
Šarp and Čeat...

so back into russian?
i almost forgot that i said...
their orthography is not worth the dog's
bollocking of a lick...

i was wrong, obviously...
but even the russians are supposed
to be allowed their idiosyncracy -
their orthographic pedantry...
russian orthographic pedantry?
ah...

when е met э...
was also the time when э didn't meet з...
this is pedantic...
another russian pedantic "detail"...
how many Y's or J's do you need...
to detail: the elongated-iota?
before... "****" becomes confusing...
within the confines of gamma...

i'm pretty sure the russians have
fixated their attention on the Y/J "debate"
working from their central premise of
the english AYE... I... the pronoun bunker...
der deutsche affirmative: ja!
yah in the hebrew respective for: wisdom...

let's see... i'm pretty sure the russians
have all the vowels bow to this mecca
of Moscow, cite me: and please reiterate...
that i use J and Y interchangeably...
i don't imply: to jot - to "dz"ot...
or Joseph in Ypres...

otherwise: a yeti climbing a yew shouting: yes!
it's not exactly jargon -
but... a prefix y- in english...
is not a suffix -y in english...
which just... "out of the blue"...
demands to be associated with the iota
of: ply... and yet: it's no i.e. e'et...
it's neither ate or the fwench and (et)...
it's a yeti... but not a jetty!

never mind... back into the fussy russian...
i'm pretty sure you will find all
of the pentagram (vowels) bowing before
the altar of pseudo-gamma:

                                     ю (yu)
                                    /
(details in) й ------ я (ya) -- ы (oh look, solo!)
   the above"rant")  |
                                  у (which is a u)
                                /   \
                     e (ye)       ё (yo)

almost... but i'm far from learning russian...
i find these orthographic details...
coexisting...

зъ = ж = ż = rz = ř / ž...

eastern, mother slavic...
beginning with a western slavic translation
"innovation"...
central / western slavic...
balkan slavic...
oh we are such famous clarinet players!
because what happens
when the caron is sliced into two...
and an acute ****** pops out?!

hence the зъ beginning...
yes... it's not "silent"... it's simply not
palatalißed... the tongue doesn't tip-off
the palette... the sound escapes via
the gritting of teeth...
with it: the tongue can rattle and a trill
R is heard...

зъ (ż) contra зь (ź) -
życzenia - well wishes| źródło - source...
now to only write these words
in russia - without knowing the russian
noun-denotations...
for orthographic purposes...

жыченя... or is it... жычениa?
зьруд... problem... can't find the english
W in russian... or the ****** Ł...
there's the english V... the ****** W...
but russian doesn't translate (Вв)
so vell into wery: not so weary but
nonetheless very not so, so...

my problem is not about that though...
this poem this poo'em this:
a pigeon drops a zeppelin-****
on your top-hat implies good luck...
no 13's or black cats crossing your path either...
i could most honestly spend
100 years of each of the 100 individuals
bound to the salt mines in the vicinity
of Beijing... and i would still find myself...
without tears...
because this is the most inexhaustible
crux: it's really bugging me foundation stone...

i won't even mind the modern greeks
at this point... they do use diacritical markers
too... but over-do it... as if compensating
or trying to compete on level par
with their metaphysical dittos...

чaхa: czacha... almost slang term for:
czaszka... чaкшa...
and this is by no means "smart"...
i can't solve crosswords puzzles...
well i can: but i need to find myself
in the company of my grandmother...
in the morning...
i would have had to drooled over some novel
from 7am until she gets out of bed
come 9am... we'd drink coffee and i'd
smoke cigarettes...
and it would be a month prior to christmas
or easter, or the interlude...
and... i'd be freed from writing or
reading anything in english...
either me looking at diacritical distinctions
in the realm of orthography between:
russian, ******, balkan...
or... me never learning french,
or attempting to: ever, again!

******* suffix-eaters...
dyslexics in reverse...
say one thing: write another thing...
this is probably born from my frustration
at being unable to learn french...
perhaps after having acquired english
i was given german to learn...
but no... first hurdle... french...
flop!
now it's a diet of no crosswords...
some sudoku from time to time...
and my new hobby after having found
"too many" googlewhacks...

so there's nothing smart about this:
this is in no way useful to anyone -
being the sort of person
to "mind" whenever one's being asked
to spell their surname...
it's hardly that difficult but...

would i go for the echo sierra charlie
hotel lima echo romeo tango...
or go out full greek with it?
perhaps the greek...
since that would solve the problem
i've had for a while,
concerning the eta / epsilon "debate"...

how does a greek laugh -
what is the crux letter via which
a greek laughs?
you see a H shape on the horizon...
but you... hear the noun: eta...
you later see the name eta...
but that's eta: without an apostrophe...
the apostrophe 'eta being the "surd" H...

in greek then...
epsilon sigma... **** it... there's no "sch"
of a german worth in greek...
let's cut it out:
epsilon lambda epsilon rho tau...

otherwise in russian...
once more:

ś(lub) - wedding - сь(люб)
"soft" sign - ' - apostrophe -
or ACUTE elsewhere...
why not сьлуб?
i don't know... it's not like сь is even
minded in russian...

ah! my favorite!
goń! gonitwa: a race -
the verb impetus: race! chase after!
гoнь!

since ы is the "odd" one out between
the application of "ь" and
and "ъ"...
come to think of it...
ы gave birth to: ю (yu), я (ya),
у (u), й ("y"), и ("e")...
i... i.e. and... in ******...
akin to those languages that use e...
to also imply and...
ё (yo)... how did i miss the umlaut
infiltrating the russian 'bet...
i blame catherine the great!
and... е (ye)...
is that the pentragram?
u, a, e, i, o... yes! we have it!

i truly had better days when sudoku was
the better puzzle to fill a day with...
not this... from glagolitic, to greek,
to roman, to post-roman to russian
and back into...

if we are all "supposedly" literate...
begs the question why: why oh why the emoji...
the *******-wanking hieroglyphics...
the :) and what not...
i guess to better escape this sort of
headaches... minor chances of everyone
becoming a bilingual:
but what's there to brag about
being bilingual!
i guess the polyglots do not have such
headaches of detail...
they just... bypass these rules and regulations...

to better guide me:
if i managed to sift through james joyce's
finnegans wake... and didn't find any
diacritical markers in it?
can't i compensate?
i'm compensating right now!
if the 2010s as a decade was a decade
filled with... sisyphus titans akin
to kant, hiedegger, kierkegaard,
knausga(a)rd, joyce...
beckett - yes...
again that hollowed "y" distinction!
it's not a sisi: yes yes problem...
hardly me being ***** either...
e'ver... i'ver...
ain't that a *****...

clarity of diction... the best motto there is...
crab-bucket-intellectualism:
alternatively the focus away from
any ontological stressors of "example" -
ontological and its variant of
a priori:
perhaps, given that the ontological
is an a priori argument...
here's my crossword puzzle -
ref. thesaurus rex...

and by no means... at all...
etymology is the better variant of any known
history...
when this bundle of words:
that an ontological dialectic can be achieved:
that ontology can be given within
as much as an a priori: bigot! focus...
with as much as an a posteriori:
wizened unicorn quid pro quo tanz!

hamsterwheel loopholes or:
crab-bucket intellectualism...

now: i really could have put these words
to better use... to make them linear...
less cryptic... but how can i?
i'm solving a crossword puzzle in reverse!
i don't expect the easily scared moths
to entertain this fire...

i expect midgets to be dancing...
before my eyes...
whenever i listen to
faun's tanz mit mir
or in extremo's rotes haar...
when the bagpipes and the flutes
kick in...

- since if i were to write a coherent sentence:
succumb to a linear narrative...
i'd people reading this to be also found:
easily talking about it...
perhaps i don't enjoy freedom of speech
as much as i enjoy the freedom to think...
perhaps i haven't written anything
worth speaking about, regurgitating,
making vogue, working for some intellectual
period-piece of "vogue"...
perhaps this is a shared problem,
hidden in a cipher...
of: how i can't heave this tool...
this tapeworm of existence,
this medium of god...
to later trash it, to have nothing better
to do with it other than play-games...
worded games... crossword puzzles...
perhaps i need a crossword puzzle to imply:
neighbour's share some words...
together... but then write them differently...
perhaps i require a crossword puzzle...
to read into some russian...
on the praxis base of english...
flying past Warsaw toward the itch
of the edge of Asia...
breathe the air - the heart of the continent...

perhaps i would have never managed
to escape this world if i ingested
mind-benders of the h'american 1960s
revolutionary schematics of the:
new-humanists... crash course in literature:
only one magic mushroom trip away!

фoрк ин дэ рoaд (fork in the road)

ИN...

some shared words, of etymological
curiosity...

(fork) вилка - wilka -
polish? wilka? that which belongs to
a wolf... widelec...
видэлэц...

(knife) нож - nóż -
well... orthography comes into play...
while people can have their...
ahem... in-the-meantime metaphysical
playground...
the ground, the word,
the geology is already here...
written alternatively?
нузъ...

i take a different stance to the common day
****** back east...
when russia starts slagging you off...
you put on a Boris Yeltsin mask on
and dance the drunk panda dance...

(spoon) ложка - łyżka -
in polish? ah those russians... ло ло...
лож: lorz...
lo lo and behold the translated
quasi-russian into the borders of europe...
ł.w.(ызъка)...

black and white (черный и белый):

czarny i biały: rho-si-ye!
char-nee-ye! bel'ye)...

perhaps the timing is a bit off:
the proper wording would be:

czarno na białym -
not: in black and white...
чaрнo на биa-wh-ым...

knocked-out to be honest...
the russians use ый like that?
YJ? oh right! i use it too!
in the prompt:

tyj! tyj ty grubasie!
hmm... -asie...
it would do me a lot of good...
if that iota didn't have a decapitated
head of a halo hovering above it...
why? so i could introduce the acute
slant over the S and surd it...
i.e. -aśιe...

тый! ты груб... exactly...
grub-               -aсьие
тый! ты грубaсьие!
to grow fat: тый!
              "problem": -aśιe vs. -aсьие...
well... it's there: сь...
but it also isn't there: и...

but it isn't: but it also isn't...
i just managed to find out that...
in warsaw (if i lived in warsaw)...
we have that conjunction: -ый-
however rare it is: it is there...

any more delegations from Moscow?
tyj! tyj ty grubasie!  
and i will write these last few words
and know why i don't really feel like
solving crosswords puzzles...
or doing those i.q. schematic tests...

**** it... the welsh should know and help me
out... concerning?
how it's YN and not IN...
how it's Y and not I when referring to THE gwyll:
dusk...
y gwyll o hywels: the dusk of powells...
only the welsh would know my "pain"...
yn y gwyll o y hywels:
in the dusk of the powells...

taking a step back - a step back...
yes yes, apologies... if my punctuation...
is too much of a ******* arithmetic!
too bad!

p.s. and yes... don't leave anything lying
around in the drafts or as private...
chances are... with a 2 day delay...
this will never be fed into the LATEST feed.

Friend Rockstar,
            Listen, yield to a robust think-tank,
            earlobes skidding against wheat and grain.
Terrible story, yes, what happened to that little girl.
Sterile teddy nightgowns weeping in the squad car windows.
Teacher – Teacher, do you harken my yodels for grace?
            I’ve never been maternal.
            Put the game on. Abortion.
            That’s what I’m about.
            Grab a bra. Sling some weight.
            That’s what I’m about.
Some housefly wings on a weathered corn cob.
Some downhome, homegrown twang for those fancy, fussy britches.
            Muddy workboots. Sweat-soaked collars.
            That’s what I’m about.
Him done made me read, sir.
What sacraments did we write today?
            I can still remember my first broken bone.
            I can still remember my first broken *****.
                        That could be what this is all about.
Mary, Mary, you can be contrite,
            so knife – so critter – so laze – so stalked.
    Who fertilized your seeds? Who reared your sprouts?
            Cockle shells and silver bells, honey,
            can’t grow up
            to be pretty little maids all in a row.
Sterile teddy nightgowns – green bells in gaseous gardens.
Friend Rockstar, you may have to sleep.
This restless harbor is a shivering anecdote spilled from a belly,
            a vast, deep cavern with love notes written in milk.
Your fried, stern smile was a flaking fingernail adjacent to the crack in the flowerpot.
Some garden, I say.

the 3 mental health conditions i have



depression, when i lose my jobs, and  when i lose my way in life, i go into a deep depression

or it could be anxiety, like like i go out, but when people treat me like one of their mob, i go into

a shell, saying, i am not a hooligan, i am a family person, and i would winge about this for days

i was thinking that other people, were trying to fight me because i am trying to be a street person

and the voice was saying you and your brother ain’t like us, you see, i always have been teased

by other poor people, because i am poor too, and i remember in the bar, i wanted to go to the bar

to have a beer, and these men wanted me to play with them, i was too young to understand, that they

were just using me, and i felt i was getting hassled, day in and day out, by the working class, it doesn’t stop

me from helping them, but i prefer to help the homeless, or disadvantaged at common ground, and

i look at common ground plans, and it could be how i visioned, when people yell at me, i go, leave me

alone, mate, i am a family person, i felt people were taking my job away from me, every day, i know now

that they weren’t, but i felt people were saying, i am sorry, your not cut out for helping us, today

i was really crazy, i implied to this man, who was doing the washing up, that i wanted to do this

he was upset, maybe, it is not depression, it’s me being anxious to help people, with my past, voices

saying don’t muck with brian, saying he is still a shy person, and despite all the good things i did

i left them, but the reason why i did, because, i was paranoid, that, i was being put in a little situation

by the people at the rainbow, like me being *******, in the craft room, i remember that note very well, i was

very uneducated about this, and i was trying to make it up to my mum after yelling at her and dad when i was young

and when i was drunk, and i wanted to be nice to everyone, but my kindness could have killed me, like i was

arguing with everyone, getting defensive so to speak, and i ate a lot of food and nearly died of obesity. well

i could say, i did die, of obesity, i am getting voices, every time i say i want to **** me when i was young, when i mean

the evil streak in me, the voice says, don’t, i liked that little guy, and he really did like that little guy, it could have

been created from the simpsons, there was a problem when i was working at the rainbow, i gave into temptation, where

i mucked with people who mucked around, but i still did my cooking and creative writing, and now, i have so many stories

to share with my youtube generation, but i was making mum and dad relax around me, and that is all i care about, and

then the crazy delusions i was getting when i killed my loving family cat, delusions were coming into my head, at first

i thought it was cool, i was hearing old mates and all my family, all gathering and the voices were great, and i tried every time

my parents got cranky, i tried to calm down, you see my parents would cry over spilt milk, literally, and then wondered why i

got cranky with them, i made a joke saying dad, don’t cry over spilt milk, dad got cranky and said, implying he was a clean person

and we should feel guilty about dropping anything on the floor, i said to dad, accidents to accure, and dad said, yeah but you need

to be more careful, and i wanted to escape my parents, because they were such projectionists in everything they did, and i found

out that leaving my house in a mess, was my way of playing cool for them, maybe in 2004, they were cleaning my house for me

before i went to hospital, but, i found mum and dad, as i said, real perfectionists, everything had to be perfect, i found it hard to

understand that my house if messy could spell eviction, but i was living in the backyard, yeah, mum and dad help, but i find a little

too much, i was doing fine when i moved in my new flat in hawker, i cleaned it every day, until i went into hospital, but dad

still wanted to be a dad, and i wanted him to be a friend, because, him and mums way wasn’t helping me, i understand where

it should help me, but it flaming didn’t, ya see i hated that little situation, where dad and mum were treating me like a 4 year old boy

so i brought back the memories for dad, saying why don’t you smoke again dad, saying, you seemed happier when you smoked

because, dad said, don’t argue with me be a BUDDHIST, i am a buddhist, but unlike christians, buddha allows a bit of teasing as

long as it is done in a peaceful, dad is dead, and now dad is betty campbell, but i want mum to one day understand this, because

i feel she is dwelling in all this, and she is worrying about me, but, i prefer the life of enjoyment, and i like community spirit

you see i liked and still like how men used to say i am doing a wonderful job, i was visioning dad turning off me, like he was

dwelling in the past, i told dad that his father is macauley culkin, but he actually is ryan clark, and mums dad is macauley culkin

i know this cause i am cronus, i liked when men said to me, keeping busy, mate, keeping out of trouble, mate

because i liked helping in the community, but mum and dad, i feel, were treating me like an old fogie, when they were complaining

about me doing volunteer work, i liked volunteering, every job was fun, mum and dad just worried about me, but in hindsight

i didn’t want them to worry, ok i never liked all that being my mums son, nor i hated being a little kid, i sit there and let us big adults

muck around, i liked how i was feeling down in the dumps, and i rang up dad and mum and we’ll doing the same thing

then i heard dad say, i am not mucking around in cool kid groups with brian, like a real **** would say, you see i was being an adult

i hated how dad tried to be like the in crowd, there is nothing wrong with that, but he looked like he was worried, i felt like saying

STOP WORRYING ABOUT YOUR SON BRIAN, AND RELAX, i tried to get him to relax by asking him to watch the cricket

and other shows, he refused, and now dad is dead, he is betty campbell now, but dad obsessed with doing everything perfect

if ya wanna copy dad, fine, but, i want to have better people around me, ok, to have PARTIES, dudes

rather than just doing it with mum, i am saving for adelaide on nye and the carols in the domain as well in sydney

PLEASE BUDDHA, BRING DAD CLOSER TO ME, ON TV, i miss him

Says I to my Missis: "Ba goom, lass! you've something I see, on your mind."
Says she: "You are right, Sam, I've something. It 'appens it's on me be'ind.
A Boil as 'ud make Job jealous. It 'urts me no end when I sit."
Says I: "Go to 'ospittel, Missis. They might 'ave to coot it a bit."
Says she: "I just 'ate to be showin' the part of me person it's at."
Says I: "Don't be fussy; them doctors see sights more 'orrid than that."

So Misses goes off togged up tasty, and there at the 'ospittel door
They tells 'er to see the 'ouse Doctor, 'oose office is Room Thirty-four.
So she 'unts up and down till she finds it, and knocks and a voice says: "Come in,"
And there is a 'andsome young feller, in white from 'is 'eels to 'is chin.
"I've got a big boil," says my Missis. "It 'urts me for fair when I sit,
And Sam (that's me 'usband) 'as asked me to ask you to coot it a bit."
Then blushin' she plucks up her courage, and bravely she shows 'im the place,
And 'e gives it a proper inspection, wi' a 'eap o' surprise on 'is face.
Then 'e says wi' an accent o' Scotland: "Whit ye hae is a bile, Ah can feel,
But ye'd better consult the heid Dockter; they caw him Professor O'Niel.
He's special for biles and carbuncles. Ye'll find him in Room Sixty-three.
No charge, Ma'am. It's been a rare pleasure. Jist tell him ye're comin' from me."

So Misses she thanks 'im politely, and 'unts up and down as before,
Till she comes to a big 'andsome room with "Professor O'Neil" on the door.
Then once more she plucks up her courage, and knocks, and a voice says: "All right."
So she enters, and sees a fat feller wi' whiskers, all togged up in white.
"I've got a big boil," says my Missis, "and if ye will kindly permit,
I'd like for to 'ave you inspect it; it 'urts me like all when I sit."
So blushin' as red as a beet-root she 'astens to show 'im the spot,
And 'e says wi' a look o' amazement: "Sure, Ma'am, it must hurt ye a lot."
Then 'e puts on 'is specs to regard it, and finally says wi' a frown:
"I'll bet it's as sore as the divvle, especially whin ye sit down.
I think it's a case for the Surgeon; ye'd better consult Doctor Hoyle.
I've no hisitation in sayin' yer boil is a hill of a boil."

So Misses she thanks 'im for sayin' her boil is a hill of a boil,
And 'unts all around till she comes on a door that is marked: "Doctor Hoyle."
But by now she 'as fair got the wind up, and trembles in every limb;
But she thinks: "After all, 'e's a Doctor. Ah moosn't be bashful wi' 'im."
She's made o' good stuff is the Missis, so she knocks and a voice says: "Oos there?"
"It's me," says ma Bessie, an' enters a room which is spacious and bare.
And a wise-lookin' old feller greets 'er, and 'e too is togged up in white.
"It's the room where they coot ye," thinks Bessie; and shakes like a jelly wi' fright.
"Ah got a big boil," begins Missis, "and if ye are sure you don't mind,
I'd like ye to see it a moment. It 'urts me, because it's be'ind."
So thinkin' she'd best get it over, she 'astens to show 'im the place,
And 'e stares at 'er kindo surprised like, an' gets very red in the face.
But 'e looks at it most conscientious, from every angle of view,
Then 'e says wi' a shrug o' 'is shoulders: "Pore Lydy, I'm sorry for you.
It wants to be cut, but you should 'ave a medical bloke to do that.
Sye, why don't yer go to the 'orsespittel, where all the Doctors is at?
Ye see, Ma'am, this part o' the buildin' is closed on account o' repairs;
Us fellers is only the pynters, a-pyntin' the 'alls and the stairs."

Look upon all my beauty
I'm a traditional rhyme
Written so elegantly
Perfect in every line!

No, look at my free verse style!
I'm not prissy or fussy
I'm free as a bird with a free spirit
That flies within the realm
Of so many possibilities and directions!
Much less inhibited than you!

Nonsense! The camera flashes!
They are taking pictures of me!
Lovely, poetic form of old
Style, as pure as can be!

You're out of your mind!
You traditional snob!
All the oohs and aahs
Are really all for my poetic genius!
Move aside!

And so they soon got into a tussle, words flying everywhere....that is according to Free Verse

Traditional Rhyme felt so robbed
Free Verse, you trouble maker!
You may be the rage of the day!
But to me you are a faker!

Free Verse had such a harsh choke hold
On the throat of Traditional Rhyme
I can rhyme too... but not like you!
Perfectly? No! Not all of the time!

Traditional Rhyme called a truce
Finally accepting both ways
Sure, she had grace and she had style
But Free Verse would not go away

This is a beautiful "Barry Hodges" poem.*

Ah, sweet memories of that night in Blarney
In the stout-soaked suburbs of ould Cork City.
How clearly through the mist of alcoholic memory
I recall how we all piled out of Johnny's bar at closing time
****** as a load of proverbial ******* newts;
'Where to now me boys, which bar's still open?'
Shrieked spiflicated Sean O'Shannon
(that's notorious sixteen pints an hour Sean,
the man who won Strictly Come Boozing twice)
As he tottered over to his Pa's new BMW convertible,
Lucky ****** that he is to be son to a Fianna Fáil MEP,
And one not adverse to trousering a Euro or two.

'Sean, me oul' potato, de ye think ye should be driving
With that record-breakin' skinful o' stout
I just seen you put away down your greasy gullet,
Not to mention the quadruple whiskey chaser?'
Enquired loopy Liam O'Lephrechaun as he leaned over
And puked up another gallon of warmish Guinness
Over yours truly as I rolled helplessly in the Ballygrohan road
To the amusement of the gawping bystanders,
Bearing in mind there were a good dozen gobbets
Of half-digested pork scratchings in the froth
Which was causing havoc with my apparel.

So without another feckin' word being spoken
My dear drinking companions and ***** buddies
Left me prostrate and clambered gaily into the waiting car
And roared off into the enchanted Gaelic night;
Singing and smoking themselves silly simultaneously,
So full of the joys of life and the blessed bottle.
And then some ****** stupid American tourist
(doubtless dressed in hideous checked golfing trousers
with a backwards-facing baseball cap on his ugly head,
not to forget his overweight wifey crammed into the front seat
just like a huge white bloated fat-faced hippo),
Came round the next corner in a clapped out rental car
And the two of them got sent to Kingdom-sodding-Come
With a terrible metallic crash which destroyed them completely.

'Oh begorrah and *******, would ye just look at the mess
The feckin eejit's made of me Daddy's Beemer,
And it's his pride and joy so it is to be sure!'
Cried Sean O'Shannon in an alcoholic rage,
As he contemplated the largest insurance claim
In the County Cork for the past six decades,
(at least the largest legitimate one anyway).
Whilst I was trying to get my hipster pants down
To avoid filling them up with beery diarrhoea
Brought on by my involuntary bursts of joyous mirth,
(bejasus, 'twas the second time in the space of a single week
and my new girlfriend was getting a bit fussy about hygiene
bearing in mind she was thinking of taking the veil).

How fortunate old Father Tucker and Garda Sergeant O'Toole
Could both (when they'd sobered up sufficiently)
Testify later from their secure vantage point
In the rear compartment of a nearby parked hearse,
(where they were having a ******* with Deidre,
the filthiest wee **** in the whole South-Western counties)
That the accident was not dear Sean's fault at all, to be sure,
As the other stupid sober yankee ****** was driving at 75
On the wrong friggin' side of the ******' street
Or probably in the middle, come to think of it.
'Sure but Sean's the best driver this side of the Blarney Stone,
And there's no way himself would ever drive under the influence'*
They agreed sagely before going off for another jar or two
And maybe a double knee-trembler with Deidre's fat sister,
One up each of her gaping hair-rimmed orifices.

Before I take one last bow
Plunge it hard deep it go
I beg

*When history writes its page
Mark me not a savage
But one who loved his girl well
Till to the trap he fell
Of being too fussy
In love’s jealousy
A trait that breed
Possessive greed
Pay reasons no heed
In love blind and mean
Doubt the ******
And end up
Spilling misery’s cup
Cursing fate
Realizing too late
An act badly done
Killing the beloved one
Losing patience
To see her innocence
And then beg
The history’s page

Not to mark him a savage

tootsie pops, pop rocks, rock candy
sweet tarts, smelly farts, war-heads, sour patch kids
reeses pieces, reeses stix, snickers lickers
fudge pile, chocolate smile, peanut butter bile, sugary style
baby ruths, almond joys, soy bean sauce, creamy steam
ill give u a payday, mayday, hay tastes good with parfai
milkyways stay gay to play games with sunrays
icing splicing with knife dicing
makes cakes, cook steaks, rumcakes
****** sprinkles, rip van winkle, diddily dinkle
gummy worms, germs impregnate firm, permed urns
angel food, carrots, pineapple upsideways
fruits, *****, parachutes, scooters, jello shooters
goobers, corn on the cobbers,
veggie wedgies, pepper leppers, squash boxes,
fry foxes, fleet rocks', carrot tops',
dishes of fishes,
witches brew platypus and fat kush
pushy slushies riding skateboards on gary busy
fussy hussies getting blushy about cussies
cereal made of creoles, bread straight from dreads,
rice is nice with spice, yeast is beast,
last but not least, wheat is a treat,
kiwis, shmiwis, dodos on go phones, starfruits,
bartlejuice, grape drank, sushi stinks.
ill eat anything.

however i choose
to abuse these loose reigns
to gain whatever gallops may overtake
to overrun the rampant jade
in summer's plum, my teeth in no shade
but the plump flesh
of a ****** day; brightly at heel
of my toes, bejeweled
in ocean spray
fresh cut lawns with diamond dew, disarranged
sprinkler cast before midday
to cheat the sun,  a sip or two -
and slake the thirst
of emeralds
i would soon delight
to cantor through.
to roam
with eyes too wide
to choose
a culdesac ... to dread-
or view. Perhaps
a glance at crates
and crude cadavers of a life
removed -
from every thing i worship twice !
while prancing, ever-prancing -
through
the manicure
that has ' no cure '
for Nature's way
of tending too the over-groped
and fussy plucked,
some Charter barks
you have to do; What Art dispels
what man has framed ?
what power drapes
the Land more true ? A dozen Elves ?
Prayer in school ?
what genius
never fails to ask -
the question that reveals the fruit ?
or listens .... to the loamy grass ?

a very
few, if any who -
would
do
the same; the
mortgage and a
landscape, paid;
' in-full.'  [ The first ]

with love, the glade ?

The Earth
is all i know,
would do
for nothing,
all...  Spite all -
we do.
however we blockade
or stake
the acreage
we have papers prove-
belong to every
dispossessed
with keys to doors
that lead to
rooms -
that seldom have the sun
inside the red Redwood
the old thing died
too raise your roof
under god's blue
sky.

To shelter
men from other
men,
who covet what
you keep in
them.

a 1000 yrs of Life, undone  
to build our vapid
ornaments.
a forgery
of hearths; and hardly worth
the vasty parlors
lost.

we parcel, carve
and auction
off
our petty Lots of
*******...

the empty ones we polish
while our homeless
remain home-
less

the echoes of a simpler time
too weak to even haunt them.

our shame intact, we slash
and burn, for coffers have
no conscience.

our charity is scarcely more than earplugs
for a blindness; a band-aid for an Apathy
a thimble and
a wine list
etched inside the hollow
just below the milk of kindness
that soured
in a palsy hand
that brought a drop
and spilled it.


However
I have chosen more
than fiberglass and
fountains
my habit is to wander off
the beaten path
to mountains.
To slopes
of avid avalanche
and quiet shouts
of Silence -
that echo and return
as if to soothe
my withers'
finally...

an
ache
to meadowlark and leap
for leagues without a harness
without
a gate to keep
the lush pavilions
at a distance

nothing
to contain
the gift
and no one
there to
name
it.

nothing but the wind to kiss
and no books to
explain
it.

id est contra sic (502 bad gateway bypass)

dare to write something
beautiful only once...
the rest of the time you can
spend it (i.e. time)
finding the world rather
ugly...

            (caught you mother-******!,
no i can publish my original intent!)

i sit on the windowsill come the night and look out
at the clouds and the moon and everything else
the night might allow me to see,
but at the same time i'm tricking my cat into
"thinking" that i'm sitting on a windowsill drinking
and looking at "something"
for him to subsequently imitate me when
i'm not on the windowsill to do the same...
he decided it was worthwhile to imitate me...
sometimes he sits on my usual spot
(although not perched like a crow,
sitting on a folded leg, crunching the bones
where my leg ends and my foot begins)
or he sits parallel to me on the windowsill
in the bathroom...
i look out, he looks out...
what he doesn't know is that when i'm looking
at the horizon and the moon and trying
to conjure faces from the clouds i'm actually looking
in... these external objects just aid me in introspection,
i have this cauldron of memories stashed in me
that i bring to the fore in a labyrinth of
thought...
it helps to elevate and bring together
a mixture of thought-memory... i can't escape thinking
without memory: it has been drilled into me from
an early age, mind you: everyone has been drilled
this complex: thought-memory within the confines
of pedagogy... very quickly we are told that
thought-memory is prime while thought-imagination
ought to be extinguished...
i.e. you should really imagine a circle if you've already
seen a circle, but you should remember
that... A = πr²...
                                no? within the confines of modern
pedagogy we are absolved of any imagination:
we apparently have none, no imagination to put up
with a mundane job by imagination little critters of
escapism on our own behalf within ourselves...
and memory? well... personal memories can sort
of "**** themselves" when it comes to memorising
rubrics of arithmetic and spelling...
or the ingestion of historical facts that: when coupled
with the ongoing onslaught of journalistic overload
mean very little... in a time of libido and historical
insomnias...
well i do know how to escape from something
mundane presented before me...
i remember better times,
memory is a fickle creature: it takes time to control
it in order to select the most pleasurable memories:
and even then, it doesn't ****** work:
pedagogy did that: we had to remember things we
would rather wish to forget because they have
to relevance in our life, or how we apply our skills
or non-skills... but of the personal memories we
gather: they are automatically filtered by memory-itself,
a "cognitive selection" takes places:
who says it's either natural or unnatural,
is must be both... then again: you can't remember everything,
but i prefer the cinema of memory mingling
with thought (or its narrative aspect absent
of the ******) than if i were lost in imago-cogito...
the imagining-thinking...
my cat "thinks" i'm looking at something interesting...
i'm not... then again i am: i'm looking backwards:
i'm reflection on, for example, today...
Poet of the Coliseum... supervising blah blah...
what crept up today was what has crept up
at the London Stadium for the past several shifts...
the Jeffrey Dahmer (ugh... a surd of H)
show... i swear to god i'm sensing that i'm giving off
vibes of a serial killer to certain people...
in the work environment people try to cue
some personality, some personal references to fellow
coworkers... me? i'm trying to push back with as much
ahem... "professionalism" as possible...
i'm here, i work, i'm done, i'm out...
i drink alone, i don't drink to talk i drink to write...
but over several shifts this topic was raised and i'm like...
can't we talk about Ed Gein?
he was a much bigger cultural influence on America than
the whole lot of them put together...
all the serial killers were white... huh?!
what about that black guy... why isn't Samuel Little
famous, based on the body count?
we talked about America... racism blah blah... south...
i said i didn't have a thirst for seeing America...
Kamchatka, the peninsula? oh yeah... America?
no really... it's a land of the celebration of Cain...
clearly... elsewhere serial killers would be taken into
a prison cell and get shot in the back of the head
and as the urban myth goes... they wouldn't die
immediately... sure... the brain would be ******...
but the heart would still be ticking tick-tock...
a bullet in the head is not some magical immediacy of death...
ask Christine Chubbuck... she was on life support
machines in limbo because she only not only
missed her brain but merely damaged it...
like that urban myth aligned to:
a cockroach loses its head... what does the cockroach
die of? starvation...
Franz Kafka was right (stab the heart)
Kurt Cobain was wrong (shotgun to the head)...
am i seriously giving off vibes of a serial killer or something?!
well... finally! i found one Subway outlet that
accepted discount vouchers...
ate nothing beside a slice of pizza i made the day earlier
when i woke up... i was getting dizzy from low sugar...
i ordered a foot-long chicken something or other...
and a drink... £5.50... decent...
i love Subway... why? the bread is prepped,
the meat... then you get to the salad section and the girl
asks you... what would you like, onions? sweetcorn,
salad, black olives... etc.
     it gets them all the time when you reply: all of it...
i ******* hate fussy eaters... if there's one "class" of
people i hate more than vegans it's: fussy eaters...
i hate fussy eaters...
i'll eat dried fish and drink beer with Russians talking
about fussy eaters and how: no...
peanuts are not the perfect compliment to beer...
Russians gulp down dried fish while drinking beer
like the Thai add dried shrimps to their curry sauces...
idle me... i do believe animals have souls...
i just don't think they think...
how can a dog think when all he can is utter
a bark or a cat think if he can only utter a meow?
what "thinking" is there bound to man's
"deciphering" of the sound the cat utters
with the letters M-E-O-W... blind men see more
with their agility to think than cat's with their
utterance of a meow...
i know: an onomatopoeia...
                              but i guess that also conjures
up a correspondence to character...
petted animals build a character off of the person
petting them... herded animal, farmed animals
are different: if there's a "problem" of numbers
then i assure myself: cows have no personality,
they're no petted beasts... ergo?
they return to the godhead of cows...
and i close the lid and never ask Pandora for her
knitting skills... to unravel my closed box
per se explanation... as happened with Beelzebub
and Hey-Zeus of Golgotha becoming the
Lord of Mosquitos... everything ******* vampire-esque
stems from that "metaphor" of this wine is
blood and this water is also wine...
i do know how he managed to get those people
drunk on water...
he wasn't alone in the desert for those 40 days and
40 nights...
nope... if he managed to get people "drunk" on water...
he must have taken them into the desert with him...
imagine not drinking water or eating for a month...
what would happen after those 40 days and nights?
you'd drink a glass of water
and become revived: "resurrected"!
you'd be glad and happy and seemingly drunk...
why? you haven't been drinking water for 40 days!
the moment you drank a little you'd be *******
seemingly drunk! it's the ascetic veil!
everyone should know what it is!

look at me... talking curtains and veils and mirrors...
but it is what it is!
i would be drunk from drinking water
after spending 40 days in the desert without a drip drip
droplet's worth of ease...
******* "mysteries" my ***... i must have been there...
in my sleep... so much so that now that i have a body
and a capacity to dream: i don't dream...
i must have seen what truly happened:
i bypassed the Byzantine grandeur of the choir singing
and said: when a Byzantine forgets that he
was a Greek primo, is the day that...
well... it's a day like any other...

i really don't know what "they" are trying...
even with all their ******* wigs i will not find black
women attractive... all the white girls can have
all the black boys: i too find something attractive about them,
but i can't compensate with the reverse...
i'll settle for... Gypsy... Romanian... Indian...
the odd black girl might spice my thinking up
once in a while... but that's like finding an emerald
in a heap of sand...

hmm! ha ha! me living in Africa... i was actually
thinking about ******* off to Kenya to try
and become a model for an advert... advertising soap...
or custard... since Western Europe is collapsing
like a gecko pretending to me a sloth...
but fair enough, circa London: the whole world is here...
as long as i can keep the mystique of people
thinking i'm this evil person, i'm all for it...
i like the idea of being thought as evil:
thinking you're evil: when you're not...
makes life so much more easier...
you don't have to worry about moral grand-standing!
you have no superiority "complex" over anyone...
you just "nod"... yes, yes yes...
i'm evil... well... better a presupposition of evil
(however much deluded)
than a supposition of good (however much well-intended)...

but in the workplace, mein gott... these horror stories...
these women...
i don't know how they managed it...
she makes her 3rd mistake with this guy:
who doesn't pay her child support...
3 kids, works 6 days a week as a nurse in
a hospital... blah blah...
how many mistakes do you have to make
before you start learning?
Pontius Pilate made it spot on:
a sport of washing your hands clean from:
no... not from being responsible for the self...
rather: meditating on not being responsible for others...
for others' mistakes you would otherwise
not make: i can understand being responsible
being responsible for others who would otherwise
make you responsible...
but not... not when the responsibility is aligned
to: people owning up to their mistakes
you would otherwise could not have made...

Christianity: the bogus focus on attempts of
ownership... own up?! no, oh no no...
so don't own up?! oh no, no no...
what then?!

              Christianity is rife in Africa...
well... a slave religion is befitting to supposed former
slaves... i need to elevate myself beyond this grip
of the emblem of suffering in the form of the crucifix...
let Hebrew be Hebrew and continually overstate
his conundrum with divine intervention
via: it wasn't enough! you didn't give us superpowers!

well... we do have c.c.t.v. in place, not enough?!
**** it... if that's not enough...
no wonder the mass sacrifice...
the breathing of ash into the air...
how much of a divine involvement do you actually
require before you decide to take life
into your own hands?!
how many hands do you have, before you realise
it requires at most, two?!

of course i'm *******!
i'm giggly-*******!
i see specimens weaker than me and i tend to them...
and they like me for that...
a ******* starts snuggling up to me
giving me a hand-job before i realise she was
a shallow **** and i can't get a plum "tattoo" on my pelvic
region from ******* her
and her face contorts in a semi-expression of pain....

but these women with obligations:
i was telling my fellow-co-workers,
before feminism... as my grandfather used to say:
there was something known as
the "bachelors' tax"... they were absolutely
dumb-founded... culturally-appropriate that,
*******...
yeah, single men had to pay extra taxes for
being single!

now?
i have as much "Darwinism" up my *** as i have
in my gob and as much as is allowed in head...
which is as much as my quasi-homosexuality
is ever to be nails harassed with acrylics...

perhaps women outperform the men in...
a load of bolloks...
but at the same time...
sparrow... sparrow: the call for freedom....
i am freed from the expected sanitising obligations
orientating men....

to be men...
                thank you, i most grand thank you...
thank you, thank you, thank you!
you don't even fathom how long
i've been waiting for an age of "irresponsibility"!
thank you!

i listen to these women,
i listen good, and proper...
if i were to pass on this agony...
i'd ask for the girl i was with
to be an iron maiden instrument of torture
before she could attain her status-hood
of being some... ******-Jezebel
of however capsized:
this ship is not going to sink!

                           and all the luck bound
to a barrel that's not floating on the whims
of the sea!

I will wait for you
on a crowded street

I will wait for you
on the busiest bridge

I will wait for you
on a fussy platform

I will wait  for you
near the rushed office gate

I will wait  for you
near a temple

I will wait for you
near your house entrance

I will wait for you
wherever you assure to come

i have a little budgie and i call him tweet
he his very tidy and keeps cage so neat
he his very fussy  and dosent like a mess
anything he spills puts him in distress
he his always busy. cleaning when he can
it his fun to watch this house proud little man
he polishes his mirror till it gets a sheen
a house proud little budgie i have never seen

.
In matters of ‘***’
why is it that some
think knickers are best
when  carefully pressed.

Just leave them crinkly;
or to put it quite simply:
in places not sunny
the  *** is not fussy.

I have access to a million getaways
But I want to go to none of them today
What's the point of money
When you can't even be happy

I've heard a thousand songs
But none of them could write out what my heart longed
What's the point of these sounds
When you can't even hear your heart pound

I have a hundred followers on Twitter
But none of them know me any better
What's the point of the many stars above
When they can't even light up your path on earth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…Aunties that put all this to shame.

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

Lighten her load if you can.

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

I Think I'd Make A Good Principal is just one of the stories within these pages, but you'll also find a recess superhero, some suggestions on where to time travel, a tiny guy that can't sleep, a fussy grandpa that lives upstairs, a zombie mouse, and several other funny and imaginative poems sure to delight both kids and adults. (Complete with wonderful illustrations by artist David Lee)

It's something that wouldn't be typical,
But I think I'd make a good principal.
The first thing I'd cut would be funding for math,
Maybe not fully, but at least in half.
Next on the list would be killing off science
Proudly shaking my fist in defiance.
Social studies is sure to get axed,
And geography class prob'ly won't

It all began as an observation,
a mere innocent study,
to watch people in cars,
from cars.

First, the tired workers,
who glared and stared in the road in front,
who slumped in their seats,
who held the steering wheels in a glum manner,
who had dark circles under their eyes,
who had cans of beers at the back seat,
tired, weary, drained, exhausted,spent.

The cheeky children,
who yelled at their siblings,
who wrestled with siblings,
who sat listening to lectures,
who texted with their phones,
who went tippy tappy with their laptops,
who ignored the world; reading,
innocent, busy adolescents.

Of course, there are mothers,
who glance at their sleepy children every few minutes,
who smile at their babies dotingly,
who gave loud lectures to kids,
who smoked cigars,
who was on the phone,or was just driving ahead,
loving, fussy, unleisured.

There were the out-going,
who head-banged furiously to booming music,
who sang aloud to radio,
who chatted enthusiasticly with passengers,
who smiled the whole way through the journey,
who stuck their hands out to feel the wind,
who had nothing to worry about,
free, wonderful, liberated, loose.

Also, some were fretful,
who needed to visit hospitals,
who had their heart broken,
who got rejected at interviews,
who lost someone,
who is obviously in anxiety, who were simply drunk,
worrysome, tired, sad.

And then there's me,
who had nothing better to do,
than to watch and observe,
and felt many things should be changed,
eccentric, weird.

What's a guy to do, when he encounters you?,
It's not even your looks, your nose is like a hook,
And inner beauty is void, you leave me so annoyed.

You prey on young men, luring them to your den,
Then you **** their funds dry, and will bid them goodbye,
You just toss them aside, god woman where's your pride?,

I can see what you're doing, it's not me you're fooling,
My man's not for the taking, you make no mistaking,
He sees what you're like, he calls you the town bike.

So move along *****, my love's really fussy,
He likes girls with class, not some cheap ******,
Avert your eyes elsewhere, look, there's a teen, over there....



(c) eileen mcgreevy 2009

At the back of the cupboard
I skulk
You don't need me any more
So I sulk
Discarded and alone
Getting dusty
Hardly used any more
Smelling musty

There was a time long ago
When you loved me
You showed me off
When you made your friend's tea
You used to wash me and dry me
Make me feel smug
Now you've replaced me
With a tea bag in a mug

But today might be
My lucky day
I hear your Mother's
On her way
I know how fussy she can be
I know she'll insist
On a proper *** of tea
She'll turn up her nose
At your common mug
She'll want a nice tea ***
And a china cup
With some milk
From a proper milk jug

Nicki Tilston

At eighteen I'm the scent of second-day hair with perfume in it
It smells like your bed, and my sweat, and your exhales, and my Juicy Couture Viva la Juicy . How middle school of me.  
I'm the cool touch of unwashed sheets on bare skin because the thermostat is fussy and I like sleeping naked
Just me, you, and this body that I don't like so much right now, but I'm eighteen, and I'm working on that.
I'm leggings while they still pass for pants, and the chewed up ends of pens in twenty different colors
Chinese homework has really turned me into such a biter, and I claim to love all those darling pens equally, but I show my blue pens the most love
I've teethed them half to death
I'm not even close to halfway to death assuming things go well for me. Oh, please let things go well for me.

At eighteen I'm the taste of chai and menthol because that's what's **** these days
I'm all about what's **** these days. Apathy, really bad electronic music, bare midriffs.
Funny since at eighteen I don't want anyone to touch me
This body is my project, please don’t even look at me like this, all insecure and exposed. Please just let me curl up, and please let me be by myself.
I wish my mother were here to bring me a popsicle. My throat hurts from all the screaming I do these days.

At eighteen I guess I'm still a little angsty, but I just want you to love me
God, do I want you to love me.
I want you to patronize me with the warmth of your arms and undress me with strong, resolved hands
Don't touch me, just look at me and tell me that I'm perfect and naive because at eighteen I'm still milky white, soft, and broken
I'm a sight for sore eyes, a new sight, your sight
For god's sake
Just love me.

Normal and I dated for a while,
Normal was a little high-maintenance,
Normal asks you not to laugh too loud, that's not very lady-like you know,
Normal tells you to always wear lipstick when you go out,
Normal demanded perfection.
Normal doesn't like it when your hair is messy or your nails aren't done,
Normal gets fussy when there are creases on your shirt,
Normal says, straighten that wrinkle, scrub that spot and align your smile,
Normal means business, there's no time to be sad,
Normal won't let you show your weaknesses, you must be perfect,
Perfect posture, perfect smile, oh! and don't forget that lipstick.
Normal unfortunately, wasn't for me.
So, we called it quits a while ago.
Last I heard, normal was seen trying to adjust the smile of his current love,
As for me, I fell in love with wanderlust and he's been good to me so far.

A star has stowed away
In a part of my heart
The sky being this large, blunt chart
With the bright backbone: a strip of powder cloud
And the fussy dust beneath our boots
The chaparral under foot
Blooming purple, dry, splitting the cough drop earth
Red rock by rock
Our talking warms me
The taste of mint julep and tea
We, sweet past times: all they matter
Had a nail between us to hammer faster
There could have been curtains in our home
Were we grown;
Cantaloupe soaking in the sink
To string up at the brink
Think of how dry it got
The plants in their ***
Unwatered, untouched
Living as such--
Meanwhile, the clock combusted
Pounded out notes upon every hour
Its golden limb swinging up, lilting, wilting in its tower
Life deployed beyond this, grazing every flower
Their implicit movement stalls;
My nights wrapped in my shawls
Dark timber bark laments
In the fire so well spent
Rocking, I have remained here;
From the farthest port
You came with teeth and things
That fringe
Deliberate and outward bending, which scorches
Retires on porch swings
Shares time, stolen from what silent world may be out there
Bundled, told: "Handle with care."
But I do not care to pick at straws, or to stare
Between your eyes,
The lines beneath them
The calligraphic flourish
Touring deep, steeply descending
The tiled smile, pretending
Creaking, scarcely there and perishing;
I have not uttered your name
In the dark of this home
I have printed it, though, on occasion
In the pictures I hang
On the walls of this tomb
Painted path, fire we fashion
All the bits of compassion lodged like salt in my bones
Only thinking of your thoughts
Sipping slowly from your cup
Shuffling to the border in the corner of the world
Where the blooming sky is hastened
In its spatial recreations
That has fallen falls again,
Calling back, fiercely contend
Dynamics of a spark
A black hole tears itself apart
The where we are, the where we start;
Oh, Come the Day we might
Give less regard to light
Were I to move to where you are
Across the room, one room too far
It seems to me that I, in staying
Have distended what was fraying
Yet I stay- at least today
And may tomorrow bring the rolling, cetacean clouds back into orbit
May the sun fall with the rain
May my love call back again;
Once more, I think,
Once more.

The old man sits on the park bench.
He feeds the birds.
He plays chess with an old Navy Buddy...

Memories shared with tenderness to valor
of the yester year that become fussy and *****,muddy.

Flashbacks to the battles fought.
Families built on foundations of their own family names.
Defining the future of the grandchildren and children.

Humor adds to clear the pain of a lost yesterday.
As the elder whipes a misquito flying from near his ear.

Stories in the fashion of "Forrest Gump." brings color
as crowds listen in the park.

To listen to the wisdom of those who helped shape their "today"
Intrigued by their topics, they fail to leave, they pull up a chair and stay.

The two chess playing elders sharing whimiscal tales of old...
Scrolls of the writings of confus of fortunes fortold come to light
as people become warm through listening to great memories
and avoiding the void of connection which was the cold.

♀  ♀  ♀

Hey you! In the ******-hat,
frumpy feminist dressed in pink;
we men (what do you make of that)
would love to know just what you think.

We've heard of "***-hats", anyway.
But we can see the other side:
it's orificial bombs away
as bridegrooms now behold the bride.

Gynecology on parade:
how weird. You think it makes your point?
It's more a vaginal charade,
and promises to disappoint.

You say your cap evokes your *****;
feline foolishness, I say.
It's cat in bag when fems get fussy
showing patriarchs the way.

Show us yours and we'll show our own.
Well actually, it's kind of cold
to whip it out right here downtown...
We'll grant you this: you chicks are bold.

Your choice-aborted progeny,
disposed of in the clinic's trash,
might blame you for misogyny—
though spared the curse of diaper rash.

We'll keep abreast of all you do,
chanting, marching, fists in air...
yet still, you seem a silly crew
aflush with zeal (and ***** hair).

But must it always come to this:
biology devoid of God ?
Exteriorizing, hit and miss,
the secrets of your aging ***...