I lived my half dictionary life before I could
comprehend compulsory compromises.
Collectors arise, disguises and devices beeping,
chastising my blindness.

Gather geography from Afghanistan and Myanmar
graciously growing gold gilded gift horses,
gleefully gloating about floating far away.
My hoof beats above concrete match my heart’s defeat
across borders and mountains
embroidering cardboard cut-outs
calling deserts, decorating front covers.
Exhaling handcrafted letters for my missing half,
half demanding highest caliber commanders and half commanding completion.

Jade jays joyfully lay arrays of bouquets
fragile flowers decay faraway
in jawbones and jail cells.
Begging farewells in a hotel’s lobby
began my hobby,
early morning coffee and carbon copies
concurringly cocky around his dead body.
Gang ciphers for cartels are
Christmas bells hissing at collars,
half dollars embellishing bar crawlers
godfathers hollering at car haulers.

Atrocities across cities attack,
attachable atrophies audibly ambush arthritic anthologies.
Anomalies begin apologies between apostrophes,
advancing autonomy arousing ancient animosities.
All eluding Antarctica,
giant frozen crests, multi-coloured ice
hidden in my illustrations
anxious for my distant half.

Friday cassettes and cigarettes
deliberately making bets following “M”.
Breaking bindings and finding “beta” in alphabet,
may feasibly end in debt.

I come from innocence:
shared VHS tapes,
Disney movies rewound so many times
they got jammed,
late nights spent searching for a lost Elmo doll,
orange Tic Tacs,
bedtime stories by Dr. Seuss
and later, J. R. R. Tolkien,
when Saturday mornings meant
waking up at 6 to watch cartoons,
and sleepovers involved liters of Mountain Dew
and Godfathers pizza.

I come from a magical world
where number 4 Privet Drive is my second address,
Big Brother is always watching,
and sleeping with windows open are invitations for Peter Pan.
A place where Mr. Darcy is my soul mate,
I have two dogs named Old Dan and Little Ann,
to follow a white rabbit is encouraged behavior,
and if you asked me who my hero is
I’d answer with “Sydney Carton.”

I come from opposite sides of the map:
One half includes
Springfield raised grandparents
giving me 20 first cousins,
29 second cousins,
annual family reunions at the lake,
home grown tomatoes,
and alcoholics.
The other half is four thousand miles away and includes
only two cousins,
phone calls every Sunday before two,
and phrases like “Weltrusten” and “Ik hou van jou”
that sound as English as “Good night” and “I love you.”

I come from transformation:
dance recitals where wearing lipstick and hating it
turned into High School
when we all started wearing eyeliner
because it made us look older,
summers soaked in sunlight
are now dampened with summer jobs,
monsters no longer lived under our beds
but in our heads,
clumsy first kisses went further,
romances disappeared
and were replaced with heartbreak
so agonizing
even chocolate couldn’t help,
funerals became imminent,
trophies won at basketball camp- age 7
mean nothing
when you’re told you’re not good enough- age 17.

I come from friendship:**
stupid fights for no reason
always meant brownies the next day,
five dollar Photobooth pictures at the mall,
scary movies we never finished,
sneaking out at three in the morning to swim in the neighbors pool,
and surprise birthday parties
complete with Silly String.
Learning that it’s okay
to let someone see you cry sometimes.
Dumb ideas like wagon racing,
and glow stick fights
that left welts on our arms and legs.
Lord of the Rings movie marathons,
girls night out at Buffalo Wild Wings,
riding bikes down the middle of the highway,
mix CD’s,
Red Mango runs,
words of comfort,
advice,
love,
and seeing the beauty in each other
even when we can’t see it in our self.

Kind pity chokes my spleen; brave scorn forbids
     Those tears to issue which swell my eyelids;
     I must not laugh, nor weep sins and be wise;
     Can railing, then, cure these worn maladies?
     Is not our mistress, fair Religion,
     As worthy of all our souls' devotion
     As virtue was in the first blinded age?
     Are not heaven's joys as valiant to assuage
     Lusts, as earth's honour was to them? Alas,
   As we do them in means, shall they surpass
   Us in the end? and shall thy father's spirit
   Meet blind philosophers in heaven, whose merit
   Of strict life may be imputed faith, and hear
   Thee, whom he taught so easy ways and near
   To follow, ****'d? Oh, if thou dar'st, fear this;
   This fear great courage and high valour is.
   Dar'st thou aid mutinous Dutch, and dar'st thou lay
   Thee in ships' wooden sepulchres, a prey
   To leaders' rage, to storms, to shot, to dearth?
   Dar'st thou dive seas, and dungeons of the earth?
   Hast thou courageous fire to thaw the ice
   Of frozen North discoveries? and thrice
   Colder than salamanders, like divine
   Children in th' oven, fires of Spain and the Line,
   Whose countries limbecs to our bodies be,
   Canst thou for gain bear? and must every he
   Which cries not, "Goddess," to thy mistress, draw
   Or eat thy poisonous words? Courage of straw!
   O desperate coward, wilt thou seem bold, and
   To thy foes and his, who made thee to stand
   Sentinel in his world's garrison, thus yield,
   And for forbidden wars leave th' appointed field?
   Know thy foes: the foul devil, whom thou
   Strivest to please, for hate, not love, would allow
   Thee fain his whole realm to be quit; and as
   The world's all parts wither away and pass,
   So the world's self, thy other lov'd foe, is
   In her decrepit wane, and thou loving this,
   Dost love a wither'd and worn strumpet; last,
   Flesh (itself's death) and joys which flesh can taste,
   Thou lovest, and thy fair goodly soul, which doth
   Give this flesh power to taste joy, thou dost loathe.
   Seek true religion. O where? Mirreus,
   Thinking her unhous'd here, and fled from us,
   Seeks her at Rome; there, because he doth know
   That she was there a thousand years ago,
   He loves her rags so, as we here obey
   The statecloth where the prince sate yesterday.
   Crantz to such brave loves will not be enthrall'd,
   But loves her only, who at Geneva is call'd
   Religion, plain, simple, sullen, young,
   Contemptuous, yet unhandsome; as among
   Lecherous humours, there is one that judges
   No wenches wholesome, but coarse country drudges.
   Graius stays still at home here, and because
   Some preachers, vile ambitious bawds, and laws,
   Still new like fashions, bid him think that she
   Which dwells with us is only perfect, he
   Embraceth her whom his godfathers will
     Tender to him, being tender, as wards still
   Take such wives as their guardians offer, or
   Pay values. Careless Phrygius doth abhor
   All, because all cannot be good, as one
   Knowing some women ******, dares marry none.
   Graccus loves all as one, and thinks that so
   As women do in divers countries go
   In divers habits, yet are still one kind,
   So doth, so is Religion; and this blind-
   ness too much light breeds; but unmoved, thou
   Of force must one, and forc'd, but one allow,
   And the right; ask thy father which is she,
   Let him ask his; though truth and falsehood be
   Near twins, yet truth a little elder is;
   Be busy to seek her; believe me this,
   He's not of none, nor worst, that seeks the best.
   To adore, or scorn an image, or protest,
   May all be bad; doubt wisely; in strange way
   To stand inquiring right, is not to stray;
   To sleep, or run wrong, is. On a huge hill,
   Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will
   Reach her, about must and about must go,
   And what the hill's suddenness resists, win so.
   Yet strive so that before age, death's twilight,
   Thy soul rest, for none can work in that night.
   To will implies delay, therefore now do;
   Hard deeds, the body's pains; hard knowledge too
   The mind's endeavours reach, and mysteries
   Are like the sun, dazzling, yet plain to all eyes.
   Keep the truth which thou hast found; men do not stand
   In so ill case, that God hath with his hand
   Sign'd kings' blank charters to **** whom they hate;
   Nor are they vicars, but hangmen to fate.
   Fool and wretch, wilt thou let thy soul be tied
   To man's laws, by which she shall not be tried
   At the last day? Oh, will it then boot thee
   To say a Philip, or a Gregory,
   A Harry, or a Martin, taught thee this?
   Is not this excuse for mere contraries
   Equally strong? Cannot both sides say so?
That thou mayest rightly obey power, her bounds know;
Those past, her nature and name is chang'd; to be
Then humble to her is idolatry.
As streams are, power is; those blest flowers that dwell
At the rough stream's calm head, thrive and do well,
But having left their roots, and themselves given
To the stream's tyrannous rage, alas, are driven
Through mills, and rocks, and woods, and at last, almost
Consum'd in going, in the sea are lost.
So perish souls, which more choose men's unjust
Power from God claim'd, than God himself to trust.

I have no interest in anything
insofar as a warm pitcher of spit.

there is a lineage of a plainspoken truth
that agonies itself, a slow ticking of clockwork.

all the pubs are filled with
the ugly and the beautiful.
so much the naked darlings,
so much the people writing,
and reading poems wrung dry
like unattended cornerstones.

when the flower dwindles,
the petals begin to shed.
I see people slower than drizzle,
tread the long line of existence.

as I write all words washed away by the shore,
all separated and lonely,
deeply departed as a parting hand of a wave,
all people continue their sameness.

inside me, a well-placed margin
divides flesh and bone.
overwrought the soul, untended to
like drops of water from a spigot left open.

sound of silence like the reproach of fires.
my mother loathes me for my heavy drinking.
my godfathers attenuate the smoke furling
above my brows back to its fetal nature.
somewhere, somebody is making a killing
in front of the billion-blooded.

misshapen. lungs struck harshly by a barrage
of quiet. i can barely keep my soul together
past the horrible billboards of EDSA.
the lampposts, the sun that looks like a lazy eye
magnifying everything that hurt.
I thrive with faces whose existences have nothing
to add me – damage further
I keep working up the old moon’s wane.

we will all fall to the ground,
we will all have our skin scraped out
of the body
and we will hear the paring of the flesh
sifting away from the bone
and it will hurt
like old haunts revisiting us

not because we are out of choices
not out of weakness;
the simple truth that teaches us
to be kind does not have its same potency.
there is an epidemic of death
crawling past hills crunched to the death
by the unrests of horses.

pain sends its
tired battalion of people
lining up across the turnstiles.
the ****** utter
the flimsiest of moans.
the soldiers beat their
wives to the ground with nothing
but bare-knuckled discomfitures.
I fear that soon enough,
what keeps the walls together may soon
touch the end
while I assault the windows

with photographs of slow mornings
reduced to slower evenings.
such falseness teems where
truth should have prevailed.

someone’s time is up
and death strays in the room
proud of its stench championing the perfumes
of boys and girls in the flesh -

we’re all next,
first one to go
finds the impasse all the same.

i mentioned it before, lost the 2nd volume
of the critique of pure reason
for about a year...
resorted to claiming the the end of the cantos,
and i did, at one point i was subconscious
imitating Ezra, it wasn't on purpose,
the cantos just rubbed against me like
a perverted mongrel dog ******* my leg,
i swear to got that happened to me, once,
tried to kick the ****** off my leg,
but he wrapped his front paws around my leg
and started *******, i was a about 7 or 8,
so if you're talking abuse... i was abused
by a dog... but i laughed at his attempts to
get satisfied... anyway... this afternoon,
started rereading the critique..
first thing that hit me was how i haven't been
reading prose, of whatever nature...
poetry has no claustrophobia, prose is riddled
with it... the way you have to strain your eyes
and scrutinise... the way you sometimes
lose the plot not because you're not understanding
what's being said, but because everything is
so tightly packed that sometimes to skid off
the narrative road and end up on a different line...
but after Kant completes his fourth antinomy
**** turns into a fudge bog of dialectical stink...
this afternoon it ended up being a 50 page
marathon (which is pretty good in one sitting)...
and let me tell you, reading philosophy can be
like entering the army, there's this need
for patience as if it were obedience,
and with philosophy you get the chance to become
rigorous... read one philosophy book
from the godfathers, and i promise you, you will
finish Don Quixote, or James Joyce's Ulysses...
you will... for 50 pages after leaving the
thesis parallel antithesis section of the 2nd volume
Kant launched into the fundamentals of
space & time (abhorring) in terms of regression...
but i've noticed the game they're playing
those philosophers... they're purposively avoiding
a certain pronoun usage, the existential movement
went as far as to ditto the i... in orde that
psychologists could work on the ego in abstract form
mediating a non-existent person using
the universal applicability and the particular applicability
ref. point of someone being studied;
Kant is the precursor of how this one pronoun use has
to be avoided to write philosophy, imagine it as
a novel, written philosophy is pure narration
that attempts to expel the narrator, even though there
is narrator, and there are no characters in philosophical
prose because the philosopher is inflecting the lost
first-person into a multitude of how problems are
to be addressed in abstract... he speaks of the indivisible
presence: the ego mediating both thought
and the soul, with the former activated by thinking,
the latter by odd-behaviour... anyway...
key phrases of note from the 50 pages:
it's basically about regression, the contrast of
phrasing in versus, how mathematicians would
have encompass regression in the phrasing
progressus in infinitum while philosophers
(noun sharpeners) would rather state
progressus in indefinitum, yes, it is really
a case of pedantry, but a pedantry that arose when
words became more and more ambiguous
or were no longer specifically one-dimensional,
and like a woman's womb with triplets were
given several meanings, or elasticity, for no one's
benefit other than for politics, and our current
political movement: that one about childish pranks
and even more childish denials.
the distinction in this case rests upon a choice,
within the framework of in infinitum is that
you must continue writing a sequence
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7...  1034... 90754... to see infinity,
the elusive variant ad infinitum was missing
in Kant's argument, but i guess both are mediums worth
assembling as literally impossible to mind
considering in indefinitum... as in indefinitely...
infinity is definite, but the process by which you
define it is not necessarily worth defining...
you may choose to do so, but not necessarily.
yet he's applying this to regression, so it's about
the distance of cared for interpretation between
the interests of Darwinism                 the Big Bang Theory
        and major religious events...
or if you're American concern for the founding fathers'
genius in crating a constitution...
how far back will you go to make a modern standpoint
relevant to how you want to shape current affairs?
i mean, i can cite you quantum continuum
about how this principle is concerned with filling space,
i mean there's so much here, but you pay it
with a hefty price, yet even if you don't understand it,
such works train you to be a non-defeatist
when it comes to lighter works you probably like
reading... i know there's a necessary need to understand,
but strain yourself on a philosophy book
and the oeuvre of Balzac or Dickens awaits you
like a spring-time breeze in lightness...
and out of concern for your eyes...
the reason they packed it to feel stuffy and claustrophobic,
well back in the day printing books was expensive,
you had to write tightly, almost like the small-print
legal restrictions in whatever it is you're using...
poetry wasn't popular because it wasn't considered
economically viable... the digital age and
social media changed that (even though it's not
taken seriously), because it will be some time before
people realise that:
y                                      o                   ­                  u

             d                   o                         n
                                                               ­             't

                 n           e                             c        e           s
s                   a                 r        i              l                               y

h               a
                                             v                           e
t
                           o
                                                               ­                 w
                                              ­                                   r
                                                               ­                  i
                                                               ­                  t
                                                               ­                  e

like that to get emphasis across,
you're just lucky to be using a pixel medium...
and even so... we're not saving the Amazonian rainforest,
sure we've bankrupted paper, and this allows
us to really write poetry pixels, because no
capitalist would be crazy enough to invest in such
p

                          r
                             ­                i
                                                              
                                                                ­   n
              
                                                                ­                        t;
unless he was printing it on toilet paper.

A Poem On A Failed State
......
Do you know my country
Where the leaders of tomorrow
Are wallowing in perpetual sorrow
Where the rulers selfishly borrow
To make our future hopelessly hollow?

Don't you know my country
Where "light" is never available
And potable water is not achievable
Where good roads are not sustainable
And security is woefully unattainable?

Tell me you know my country
Where corruption is applauded
And lies and failed promises lauded
Disregard for the rule of law is flaunted
And oppositions are relentlessly haunted

I am sure you know my country
Where hopes and aspirations die
As they feed us with this rotten pie
Cos today's failure sits on yesterday's lies
Chained to a bad system we cannot untie

Now you must know my country
Where we build places of worship
Rather than developing entrepreneurship
Where those who do not sow reap
While the suffering masses weep

What's the name of my country
Where education and health suffer
To satisfy the avarice of law makers
And past leaders continue to plunder
Under the guise of being godfathers?
.............
© Max Ese Anderson 17/06/2020

IG: www.instagram.com/maximo4real
FB: www.facebook/maxeseanderson

metal music, notably a genre most effective
at brain massaging, or easing
a headache... pardon me, though,
through all the screaming i am sure
I misheard something, notably on
<slipknot's> eyeless...
    not that i'll actually check the lyrics,
but I'm pretty sure they're not:

    you can't see California without
Marlon Brando's eyes...

there goes playing music backwards
trying to find devilish messages
in the godfathers of the 70s,
   there it goes, out the window
with the piano and the pianist still
playing it (yes, the piano) -

you can't see California without
Marlon Brando's eyes...

    it would make sense, coming from
a bunch of Iowans;
as I'm sure that some would call
that masochism, id est:
      easing a headache, conjured by
a strained bladder from
          a decent night's sleep...
   massaging the brain with
         music by a cohort of banshees;

hell, whatever the original lyrics,
you can't see California without
Marlon Brando's eyes sounds a lot better.

Expressive as onomatopoeia,
Come in with that boom, bang, clash.
That assalamualakum ****.
A dismissive villain with mad ideas,
Make these bad divas act up like Madea.
Rebel and find out *****!
When I lay this piece upon ya sis!
Nobody ruthless as this!
So dark and faceless, ya would think…
I was made in the abyss.
Made something out nothing,
Big bang up in this!
I sustain, pull the clip.
Like Rick James, I’m the ****!
Cold blooded, **** the simp.
Yes I made it, I admit!

Coked out chollos,
Cringe when I hear em say yolo,
Sirens ring out,
Uh oh here come the popo,
The supposed superheroes,
That is till they be tempted by dinero,
Eating out the hands of monsters,
Whose the real bad guy? Al Pacino.
Want protection pay the mobsters.
Wondering the difference between that and our tax dollars?
Don’t kid yourself brother!
Politicians are the real Godfathers!
Where God is replaced by the almighty dollar.
That could turn a scholar,
To a Rottweiler.
A sharped dressed deviant that wears a white collar,
But instead of being arrested they are honoured.
Left feeling sick to my stomach,
Watching this union between cops and robbers.

Living in a reality where dark knights get annihilated.
Matched the profile,
So, better prepare to be violated!
Don’t matter if all your life you’ve been docile.
That **** don’t matter when it comes to hatred!
Where tragedies like the green mile,
Happen every other day!
Justice is dead,
If it ever really lived in the first place!

for one, memory, but i'll come to that
cue later...

    what could be more entertaining
   than watching two woodland pigeons
flying to and fro
           with pinched twigs from trees
in their beaks,
        building a nest in a tree in my garden?

woodland pigeons?
      no, not the urban type,
     the urban types you see limping with
   one claw-foot that resembles a pirate's
  stump, ready for the next act
             of gangrene;
woodland pigeons, meaty *******,
much bigger than
     their urban "cousins"...
    with what resembles a priest's dog-collar
around their neck.

the memory entertainment?
  just remembered stealing
     queens of the stone age album from
wh smith, and getting away with it...
   wh smith? oh they sell all sorts of things,
i think it's quiet a miracle that they
still exist, in the current climate of
   amazon dot com.
    you really don't need to leave the house
these days, which is a shame...
   but then shopping online has
that element of delayed gratification...
  the instant thrill of clicking and buying,
sure... but the adrenaline rush is spread
over several days, until the ****** thing
you bought arrives.

  i used to remember times that when
i would run through a shopping mall
   when i heard about a release date
   of a new ps1 game... those days? bye bye,
it was nice living in the summary
of the 20th century that was the 1990s...

    correct me if i'm wrong, but i still think
pearl jam's yield album was the zenith
  of some sort, not the zenith of the oeuvre,
but some sort of zenith...
     and as grunge goes,
    nirvana will always have a cult status,
by comparison...
       but pearl jam matured, and they sort
of became the godfathers of indie,
in some twisted way...
                  well **** on me, if we're not going
to discuss opposing opinions within
the realm of dialectics, we can at least
indulege ourselves in chameleon eclectic(s),
    or have such a variety of opinions
   that they almost seem pointless to discuss...
but in the modern world,
     it's only in the realm of music
  that we can be friendly, having opposite
opinions, and become passionate about
each other's opposite stance... that's it,
     only music;

but one unshakeable opinion i have is that,
pearl jam is the only band with the most
genius marketing project of the album
   sleeve... ten? well, they just started...
      but after their debut?
     phooooooom! into the stratosphere....
            no other band i know does their end
product to just a meticulous end result...
       sure, tool came 2nd with their
                        lateralus album...  but that's
about it, ah ****, and also 2nd comes
           radiohead with their kid a album...
but i don't know of any band,
                               quiet like pearl jam;
strange, going to a nightclub and hearing of
new generations getting intro. to grunge,
                     and then the declassification of
pearl jam from grunge... to simply: pearl ham...
        i don't know what they can be classified
as... perhaps it's a canadian thing.